Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

Talk:No Game No Life:Names and Terminology Guideline

2014-06-22T22:33:35Z

EnigmaticRepose:

Proposal: アッシェンテ > Ascente? Sounds a bit more fluid, and is apparently even a word in some obscure language.

*I don't particularly mind since it may just be a word the author made up. But I'll go ahead and state why I put it as "Acciente". First off, Ascente makes me think of the word "Ascent", but with a Spanish accent. Ascent, in Japanese, is normally spelled アセント, though. Not that that really means much since some words have several ways of being spelled in Japanese. But rather than ascent, the meaning would be closer to assent (same spelling in JP), which "[http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/assente#Portuguese Assente]" is a form of the word with the same meaning in Portuguese (since the author is Brazillian). But while I know different languages cause different spellings, I don't know why he went with ッシェ instead of セ as I don't really know how Portuguese would look to a Japanese. Instead, I decided to go with a foreign flavor that could still be pronounced the same. Also, I couldn't find what "Ascente" specifically meant. Halp. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 16:39, 1 August 2013 (CDT)

:*Yep, ascente pretty much means ascent. We'll stick with yours then I guess, it certainly sounds fancier.
That being said the author's Brazillian?? Guess that explains why the sentence structures etcetc are so much simpler and easier to translate (hurrah). [[User:Seitsuki|Seit]] ([[User talk:Seitsuki|talk]]) 19:30, 1 August 2013 (CDT)

This one is more preferential but...にい > romanise directly as Nii and maybe throwing in a TL note? It just...sounds so much more moe that way >_> [[User:Seitsuki|Seit]] ([[User talk:Seitsuki|talk]]) 08:09, 2 August 2013 (CDT)

*にぃ doesn't actually translate perfectly regardless because of the small い, but yeah, all I did for the manga is "Nii". Honestly, a TL note wouldn't even be necessary; if they're reading light novels, odds are very, very good they already know what it refers to. It's basically the only exception I have since refuse to use Japanese honorifics (or any Japanese words whenever possible, but tsundere and moe don't exactly translate well) in western fantasy settings. It's just one of the things that will easily take me out of a book. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 20:28, 2 August 2013 (CDT)

(Glancing over the page in case there's something I can suggest.)<br>
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On the above (topmost) matter, I would agree that 'Assent' ((or a different-language equivalent)) (as in 'to accede') most fits the context, namely 'agreeing to conditions' (of a game). However, a recurring trickiness of this fiction is that the author uses a lot of words which are clearly based on existing words, but deliberately warped in some way. As translators, it thus probably makes sense to represent them phonetically and let readers draw their own conclusions (and/or have fun trying to guess the origins) rather than concealing that aspect of the reading experience. Putting one's own guesses about the origins in the terminology page (and/or optionally in a note when a word first appears) is likely also reasonable.<br>
:(Disclaimer: It's also possible that all words I think are warped are actually real words that I don't recognise.)<br>
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'The Late King' might be '亡き王' or similar, something which directly indicates death in the term. For '先王', how about 'The previous King'? In this case, he's presumably the previous king because he died, but if a king retired instead the same term would presumably be used.<br>
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For 'クラミー', if there's no canon romanisation how about 'Kuramie'? My clearest impression is that the lengthened Ee sound at the end should be represented, and this conveniently matches with the end of Stephanie's name. For the C->Ku, there's it's just an aesthetic impression that both 'Cramy' and 'Cramie' somehow look like male names (and sound somewhat craven?), whereas Kuramie gives a more female and elegant impression. If there's a more fitting European-style female first name, though, that would of course be better. (Though she was admittedly not raised in the human kingdom--though then again, I'm not sure where she was named.)<br>
*"Kuramie" seems to Japanese for the setting (especially since the Werebeasts are overly Japanese) and her last name. Cramy is an actual name although masculine, but it's still better than "Clammy" or the variants with K's and Ie's. That said, I don't really like any the above names and would love inspiration on what else it could be. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 16:21, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::An excellent point regarding the Werebeasts. As with Stephanie though, I'm fairly certain the first name in this format (with a clear '・') is the given name, rather than the family name. What else could possibly fit... hmmm... something using 'Q' perhaps... or maybe not... what about 'Curamie'? Feminine-looking without being overtly Japanese-style. -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 21:50, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::*I meant クラミー's last name is ツェル. Possibly intended to be a German last name. Curamie could work, but I find very little examples of it being a real name. Not that it can't be, it just makes me more hesitant. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 22:23, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::::Ahh, I see. | If there are (German?) examples of girls with the name 'Cramy' then there's no problem, but if not then if possible I would find it less disconcerting to see a made-up name that only girls would use rather than a real name that only boys use. (At least until a more accurate understanding of the author's intention is alighted upon.) -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 02:04, 6 August 2013 (CDT)
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For 'ジブリール', again to represent the lengthened Ee sound (and make sound more feminine), perhaps Jibreel? I somehow find myself pulled towards 'Gibreel' for the 'giblets' similarity, but it seems it could be misread as ギブリール. I also considered Jibriel/Gibriel but those could be misread as ジブリエル/ギブリエル.<br>
*I used actual translation to think up her name. Several places and even translations reference "ジブリール" as being a variation of Gabriel, which is why I went with it. --[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 16:21, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::Ahh, interesting. I misunderstood and didn't realise that Jibril was an accepted spelling. Checking for any instances of 'Jibreel', pages such as this ( wikiislam.net/wiki/Angel_Jibreel ) are curious; the sections use 'Jibreel', but the quotes use 'Jibril'. Though part of me still feels that Jibreel would be clearer phonetically, the larger number of Google results for Jibril than Jibreel is compelling, and I acknowledge it as very likely the better choice. *nods* -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 21:50, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
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For 'Priestess', a more widely-accepted English equivalent is 'Shrine Maiden'--but that said, 'Priestess' might indeed be most apt for her status as a leader (while not straying from the meaning of the term). It should be fine to choose the one and reject the other, as long as the decision is made with both in mind.<br>
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For 'テト', I'm inclined to favour 'Teto' over 'Tet' both because it's the closer direct phonetic representation of the name(, and sounds slightly better to me), and because when the Japanese represent words like 'Cut' (as in hair) or 'Set' (as in a set menu), they represent them as 'カット' or 'セット'. By the same process, 'Tet' would plausibly be 'テット', and the only clear reason to prefer 'Tet' to 'Teto' is to try to make it sound like Set (as in the Egyptian deity), for which there doesn't seem to be a connection.<br>
*I just assumed he went with the "Tet" from "Tetris (テトリス)," since God of games being connected to probably the first major influential game seemed logical. Both Tet and Teto sound Egyptian to me anyway. I'm fine with either, I just wanted to avoid blatant Japanese names. --[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 16:21, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::Ahh. *had not considered that line of thought* If thinking of possible reasons that a Tetris reference wouldn't fit, all Teto's associations seem to be with multi-player games rather than single-player games; even down to the markings on his clothes, they're card suits rather than Tetris blocks or similar. Of course, Chess is the game which most appears in conjunction with him. -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 21:50, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
:::Edit--Upon checking the remembered (manga) illustration, possible counter-evidence is the Rubix cube earring. (I was also surprised to find that, as far as I could see, there's no illustration of him in the--no, wait, there is one in the second volume of the Novel, and that one also has the Rubix cube.) -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 22:02, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::::(Though entirely unrelated--while I find the depictions of Shiro to be wonderful, NGNL_V1_213.jpg is somehow incredibly squee-inducing. Come to think of it, Shiro's reaction to the Tokyo-like city in Vol3 too... but the contrast in NGNL_V1_213.jpg is so great as compared to NGNL_V1_005.jpg for instance... ahh, so much wonderfulness.) -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 22:10, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
:::*"Tetr-" means four of something anyway; is he ever associated with "four"? If not, like I said, name change for him really doesn't bother me.
:::::Other than the card suit decorations, not that I've noticed so far. If any number, probably '16', as in the sixteen races and the sixteen chess pieces on one side. --Come to think of it, was it that the pawns were the top-eight 'physical races' and the non-pawns the bottom-eight 'spiritual races'..? Hmm. (And the 1-ranked race/existence might be the 'King'... I wonder if Jibril's race's piece is a Bishop...) Ah, but the Rules are 10 rather than 16, so that's more a number specific to Chess than specific to him. In any case, I haven't noticed a connection between him and the number 4. -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 02:04, 6 August 2013 (CDT)
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This may be straying too far into personal interpretation, but for 'Disboard', how about 'This Board' instead? --but since there's no '・' between the two parts, that probably actually is going too far. Uuu. By a similar line of thought, tempted to represent 'オーシェンド' as 'Oceaned'. For that one though, there may be no better representation, unless representing directly as 'Ooshend' or similar. Ah, for '東部連合', probably 'Eastern Union'. The 'Union' term choice is based on '連合王国' (United Kingdom) and 'ヨーロッパ連合' (European Union).<br>
:Edit--Reached 'Old Deus' below, and the lack of a '・' there has tipped the scales in my mind. I after all maybe do want to semi-strongly suggest that 'Disboard' be 'This Board', especially as there's probably no other katakana way that 'This' would be represented. Reminded a little of humans calling this planet 'The Earth' (or 'this planet', for that matter). Ah, there's also that 'Dys' as in 'Dystopia', or even 'Dis' as in 'Disconcerting' or similar doesn't seem to fit with 'Board' in any way for this context.
*Only reason I didn't translate オーシェンド is because I couldn't think of a way to keep "Ocean" and portray the difference with オーシャン. I'm fine with Eastern Union, I just left that in JP to encourage others to toss in their input anyway. And the only reason I said "Dis", as in disconnected, was because "Board" is an English word and I'm not fond of mashing two languages together and "This Board" isn't all that great of a name for a world. It could be "Dys" as in "dysfunctional" though; never thought of it. --[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 16:21, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::(It wouldn't be two languages mashed together, though...) I personally like the idea of referring to one's world as a board (especially given the giant Chess pieces strewn upon it for use in a game with Teto), but that's understandably a matter of taste. ('This' (ディス) rather than 'The' (ザ) because, unlike the Earth, there are lots of other smaller mortal-made boards used for games.) -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 21:50, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
::*I know it wouldn't be two languages; I meant more of a 'I bet I could find ディス meant something else more fitting in another language.' But I didn't know he liked giant chess, so it makes This Board seem more likely, but it would still be nice if the author released a dictionary book or something. Depending on how it's supposed to be interpreted, [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dis- dis] could still fit, though. Like since dis- can mean a reversal of a word, and a board is normally something they would never actually be on, the world is revered in that it's a giant board they are always a part of. Do they ever poke fun at the world's name? —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]])
::::Agreed on the dictionary book idea, something explaining how he chose all the katakana (including certain names). -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 02:04, 6 August 2013 (CDT)
::::Edit: Ah, forgot the last question. Though it would make understanding easier, I unfortunately don't remember the name being poked fun at. -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 03:05, 6 August 2013 (CDT)
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Though very minor, perhaps a representation of '発見' in the 8th rule as 'discovered' rather than 'detected'. There are cases where a person has clearly noticed ('detected') that there's some sort of cheating going on, but can't declare foul unless the specific means is proven ('discovered'). For instance, 'detection' of cheating can be done by seeing your cards are clearly suspicious, but the 'discovery' of catching you in the act of taking one from your sleeve (or otherwise discovering you had cards in your sleeve (specifically), and declaring that) would be necessary to invoke the 8th rule.<br>
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For 'unconditionally everlasting', perhaps 'absolutely unchanging'. 'unconditionally everlasting' would perhaps be 'mujouken koujou' or similar, rather than 'zettai fuhen'. Then again, it seems 'fuhen' can be used to mean 'everlasting', but that's a secondary extrapolation due to its components' meaning as 'unchanging'.<br>
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For the tenth rule, perhaps 'Everyone should' -> 'Let's all'... maybe 'Let's all play nicely'? Teto himself is able to participate (in the form of the biggest game of all), and with 'shimashou' 'should' is perhaps a little too strong... the lack of the word 'game' in the sentence also gives a little leeway with wording. Trying to think about something which sounds natural to say to a group of children, either as one of them or as a supervising adult. Maybe 'Let's all play nicely with each other', or (maybe better) 'Let's all play nicely together'? (Colloquially speaking, this should work whether or not Teto is including himself.)<br>
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This isn't a suggestion, but laughing at myself that I didn't realise the Dhampir katakana, despite being familiar with the word. *amusement*<br>
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('Imanity' feels as though it should be 'Humanity', even though it definitely is not... ah well.)<br>
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Those are probably the main thoughts I have for the moment. Good luck, all translators! -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 13:37, 4 August 2013 (CDT)
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セーレーン／セイレーン - is the normal Japanese for "Siren" as in mythology.<br>
サイレン - is the normal Japanese word for "Siren" as in a klaxon.<br>
Just wanted to point out that the foot-note on the main page is incorrect in reasoning for choosing the Greek term "Seiren/Seirenes" ([[Special:Contributions/71.202.96.194|71.202.96.194]])
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セイレーン is the most common spelling of Siren, yes. It's still derived from the Greek version of the word and the author played with the spelling with the whole セーレーン thing, even if it essentially is exactly the same thing. That said, サイレン, while less common, is an [http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%BB%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AC%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3 acceptable] [http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/86010/m0u/ form] of the mythological Siren still. I wasn't aware of the standards in the words' usage back when I wrote that, but I still prefer the Greek version due the variations with the other races, like Giants being Gigants instead.

Not that it matters since none of the translators seem interested in maintaining, correcting, or updating the terminology page, let alone keeping the terminology consistent. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 17:33, 22 June 2014 (CDT)

HEAVY OBJECT

2014-06-14T17:28:27Z

EnigmaticRepose: Undo revision 360994 by Ambjoorn (talk) The 70% is part of the title, not an out-of-date progress indicator.

[[Image:Heavy Object v01 cover.jpg|thumb|300px|right|''The cover art of volume 1'']]"HEAVY OBJECT" (ヘヴィーオブジェクト) is a science fiction series by Kazuma Kamachi (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Ryou Nagi(凪良) published under the Dengeki light novel label. Currently eight volumes have been published. There is also a manga adaptation previously serialized in the monthly magazine of Dengeki Maou.

The Heavy Object series is also available in the following languages:
*[[Heavy Object ~ (Spanish)|Español (Spanish)]]

== Story Synopsis ==
In the end, war couldn't be extinguished. But, there was a transformation. Even in the heart of a worthless accomplice in murder who was indifferently continuing his task, there was a transformation. The massive weapon "Object". This was a weapon that changed the whole definition of war. An exchange student named Quenser, who was dispatched to the battlefield, met at the base a girl with a strange aura. The girl, dubbed "Elite", is the pilot of "Object". The near future. This diminutive boy had come to take on the role of standing up against the strongest weapon "Object" for the sake of the girl. This was the motive for their first meeting.

== Translation ==

=== [[HEAVY OBJECT:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[HEAVY OBJECT:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they are working on'''

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

===Feedback===
'''If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4660 Discussion Thread] and give the project a vote'''

==Updates==
*June 14, 2014 Heavy Object Vol.8 '''completed'''.
*January 20, 2014 Heavy Object Vol.7 '''completed'''.
*February 5, 2013 Heavy Object Vol.6 '''completed'''.
*December 12, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.5 '''completed'''.
*September 19, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.4 '''completed'''.
*August 22, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.3 '''completed'''.
*July 2, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.2 '''completed'''.
*February 22, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.1 '''completed'''.
*July 23, 2011: Project Page Created. Forum translations by DNK uploaded.

== The "HEAVY OBJECT" Series ==

=== Volume 1 ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_1|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?8lte9b4umh91gta PDF] - [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4889 ePUB/MOBI]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - The Rank and File Soldiers that Tie Up Gulliver >> Battle on the Freezing Alaskan Snow]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Tom Thumb Runs through the Oil Field >> Battle to Prevent Passage through Gibraltar]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - War of the Ant and the Grasshopper >> Battle to Defeat an Oceanian Military Nation]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 2: Adoption War — ''An Audition War'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_2|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?hapktwc4xd9rtf2 PDF])===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - It is Only Natural to get Muddy in an Obstacle Course >> Battle to Control Antarctica]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - A Three Legged Race Up a Mountain is a Matter of Life and Death >> Battle of Shells in the Iguazu Mountains]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - In a Cavalry Battle, Destroy Your Opponent’s Footing >> Total War in Amazon City]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 3: Shadow of the Giants — ''Global Shadow'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_3|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?4e48a34fu12xneu PDF])===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - A Grave of Junk is a Mountain of Rare Metals >> Interception at the Remains of the Alaska Battlefield]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - A Coal Mine that Scatters Stacks of Cash >> Nighttime Surprise Blitzkrieg on the Kamchatka Peninsula]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Honor is Priceless >> Emergency Interception at Victoria Island]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 4: Treasure of Electron Mathematics — ''Theoretical Vein'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_4|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?mq8diobbijo9r8r PDF]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - What Should Have Been a Pure Blue Ocean >> Unofficial Battle in the Loyauté District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Christmas on a White Sand Beach >> Furlough Garrison Battle (?) in the Oceania District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - The Treasure of the Sea Dyed Deep Red >> Defensive Battle in the Solomon District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 5: Festival of Death — ''Purge of Technopics'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_5|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?eqfja9yro4jmgkb PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/wd52u7b9w4abm2f/ Mobi]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 6: Path to the Third Generation — ''The Coming of Third Generation'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_6|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?9yilz1037r7m8b6 PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/5olrh4u6p4p9kj5/ MOBI] ) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - The War Broker Closest to Heaven >> Intelligence Battle in the Cook District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - The Team that Carries Out Dirty Jobs More Painful than Hell >> Transportation Battle in the Athabasca District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - The Conspiracy Bank that Motivates Human Greed >> Bombardment Battle in the Amazon District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 7: ''The Police of Ghosts'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_7|Full Text]]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1: A Deadly Firefight between Two Idiots >> Mock Battle in Oceania]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2: My Job is to Transport Paint >> Intelligence Battle in Oceania]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 8: ''Dominion 70%'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_8|Full Text]])===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1: A Resource Which Cannot Be Made Plentiful >> Landing on the Island Nation’s Ame-no-Darin]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2: Where Has the New Model Disappeared To? >> Minesweeping Battle in the Far West Pacific District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3: Eyes of the Goddess Glowing Deep in the Darkness >> All-Out War in the New Caledonia District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]

===Short Story===
This short story was published shortly after the release of the first Heavy Object novel.

:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Sandy Short Program >> Second Oceanian Struggle]]

==Project Staff==

*Supervisor: N/A
*Project Manager: N/A

===Translators===
ACTIVE
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

===Editors===
All editors who speak English proficiently are welcomed.
*[[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] (Proofreader and Formatting)
*[[User:IANightfiend|IANightfiend]] (Will help in any way)
*Page Checkers
:*[[User:Wilfriback|Wilfriback]]
*Proofreaders
:*[[User:Hiro Hayase|Hiro Hayase]]

== Series Overview ==
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト / HEAVY OBJECT (10 OCT 2009, ISBN 978-4-04-868069-1)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト採用戦争 / HEAVY OBJECT Saiyou Sensou (10 JUN 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-868594-8)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト巨人達の影 / HEAVY OBJECT Kyojin tachi no Kage (10 NOV 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-870051-1)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト電子数学の財宝 / HEAVY OBJECT Denshi Suugaku no Zaihou (10 SEP 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870549-3)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト死の祭典 / HEAVY OBJECT Shi no Saiten (10 NOV 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870997-2)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト第三世代への道 / HEAVY OBJECT Daisansedai e no Michi (10 JUN 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-886624-8)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト亡霊達の警察 / HEAVY OBJECT Bourei tachi no Keisatsu (9 NOV 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-866080-8)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト七〇%の支配者 / HEAVY OBJECT Nana rei-pasento no Shihai-sha(8 MARCH 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-866379-3)

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Genre - Harem]]
[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]
[[Category:Kazuma Kamachi]]

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1

2014-04-03T05:16:28Z

EnigmaticRepose:

{{Incomplete|parts=5|tparts=20}}
==Chapter 1: A Resource Which Cannot Be Made Plentiful >> Landing on the Island Nation’s Ame-no-Darin==

===Part 1===

''From the moment I woke up, I had a bad feeling about the day to come.

The ship’s log of the luxury cruise ship Scarlet Princess contained that statement in the Legitimacy Kingdom’s official language.

It was 380 meters long, its top speed was 40 knots, and it could hold up to 2500 people. It was on such a grand scale that it was much like tilting a safe country resort on its side and taking it out to sea. Incidentally, the cost of the ship could purchase a resort and an 18-hole golf course with money to spare. All three layers of its deck contained a pool and the rear of the ship even contained a heliport.

Around twenty crew members were packed into the control room.

Electronics and automation had taken great strides forward, so the number of people needed to run the large ship had been drastically cut down. They had three shifts making three times that many crew in total, but that was still less than one hundred. Surprisingly, the number of “waitresses” outnumbered the crew who held the lives of everyone else aboard in their hands.

An elderly man let out a small sigh.

His name was Alfonso Zoom and he was the captain of the luxury cruise ship.

“Captain, we will be entering the Strait of Malacca soon.”

“I know.”

Alfonso gave a brief reply to the young (even if he was in his thirties) navigation officer.

Just like the Panama Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca was a gate of the sea. In its case, it connected the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. It was a narrow passageway and many world powers insisted it was their territory, but it was still the shortest course. Unless it was packed full of military resources or part of a transport fleet protected by an Object, a luxury cruise ship circumnavigating the world had no choice but to use the Strait of Malacca. Simply calculating the ship’s fuel expenses made that painfully clear.

Alfonso poured coffee from a thermos and into a mug as he spoke to the young navigation officer.

“Do you know what I’m worried about?”

“It wouldn’t be reefs. Is it wreckage of fishing ships that were caught in a storm? I’ve heard the sea around here isn’t very clean.”

“My daughters. Joining the military is fine. After all, this is the age of clean wars. But why did both my twin daughters have to choose to be Black Uniforms in charge of barrier duty? They are both young unmarried women and they chose to throw themselves into the part of the military with the most bullets flying around.”

“I see.”

“I bet it was a reaction to the extreme education their mother gave them. That came from a complex brought on by newfound riches. She surrounded those two in piano, violin, and ballroom dancing from a young age, so they eventually rejected high society. If you want your daughters to be brought up as proper ladies, why would you show them how oppressive it all is? Don’t you agree?”

“Um… Where are you going with this?”

“As captain, I have a lot of spare time to think about a distant safe country. Our course is simple and this isn’t all that dangerous an area. You can relax a little.”

Alfonso Zoom turned toward the large radio equipment. A few lights were flashing which showed that quite a few radio signals were being sent back and forth in this area of sea. He could tell at a glance that the situation here was complex.

“This is Ship ID PL_055 registered with the Legitimacy Kingdom’s Amazon region. Do you have our location? I want to check before heading into the crowded intersection. Over.”

“We have you perfectly. GPS, beacon, and radar are all functioning normally. Luxury cruise ship Scarlet Princess, please enter on the path given on the screen. Welcome to the Southeast Asia’s main entrance. Over.”

“Understood, harbor control. Today is another good day. Out.”

As he finished the transmission with the standard greeting, wrinkles of suspicion gradually appeared on the captain’s face.

The young navigation officer also looked doubtful.

“Captain, about that transmission…”

“Yes.” Alfonso Zoom let out a heavy sigh. “Just as famous people do not refer to themselves as famous, a professional does not normally refer to a luxury cruise ship as ‘luxury’.”

Then what had that transmission been?

The captain spoke the answer anyone could reach with a little bit of thought.

“They’re coming.”

===Part 2===

A ten-man fishing boat raced toward the luxury cruise ship while jumping from stormy wave to stormy wave. Yes, it was racing. The entire engine had been swapped out, so it was moving “above” the ocean while practically popping a wheelie. It was moving at about 80 kph. As hydrofoils made quite evident, boats could move at three digit speeds if the water resistance was lessened. And the fastest way to do that was to lift the boat itself above the water.

Thick metal panels were bolted to the sides of the fishing boat and heavily suntanned men were crammed inside. They held old rifles and submachine guns with an extra coat of paint to hide the scrapes and to stop them from rusting. Those tools were clearly not needed for fishing.

They were pirates who had butted into the transmission to put the ship where they wanted. A suntanned man returned a small microphone to the radio hook and whistled at the feast before him.

“Okay! Our prey is extra special today!! It’s got a giant antenna on top. That’s a satellite connection. They use it to check the black cards used in the casino. There must be tons of rich people on there!”

As the first man gave them some motivation, the other pirates started to grow rowdy.

“Eh? I thought it was for Wall Street which is so popular lately. They need to mess with their stocks and exchanges while on their cruise.”

“This is the Legitimacy Kingdom, so it would be the London Stock Exchange.”

“Who cares as long as they’re a bunch of rich ladies and gentlemen? More importantly, how are we on anti-ship missiles? We need at least two. The first acts as a demonstration. We need to make sure they know we’ll sink them if they don’t do what we say.”

“Leave it to me. There are four of them hanging on the sides of the ship.”

“You idiot!! Now I know why our fuel consumption’s been so bad!!”

An amateur pirate group could never mass produce missiles that were a collection of cutting-edge military secrets.

But nothing said they had to be “cutting-edge”.

What if they added modern technology to weapons produced fifty years prior?

Just as a hard disk sold in a home electronics store’s clearance sale would have been highly classified government technology fifty years ago, amateur groups could manufacture weapons.

In the festivals of Southeast Asia, rockets measuring three to five meters long were created to launch exciting fireworks 5000 to 10,000 meters into the air. If they were laid on their side, they made a decent starting point for a rocket motor.

Meanwhile, the other pirate ships gathered.

The suntanned man grabbed the radio again.

“Okay. A through F, go in front of the luxury cruise ship! Scatter some mines to stop them. G through I, take the starboard side. J through L, use anti-ship missiles to surround them from behind.”

“Shut up! You aren’t the leader!!”

“Don’t try to board the ship and earn some extra money just because it’s full of rich people. The plan is to make them lower their rescue boats. You don’t want to be killed by the peashooters they have for self-defense, do you?”

He heard a light noise.

One of his allies on the same boat was tapping the large radio.

And he whispered a question.

“Where do we fire the missile?”

“Don’t use it like you’re supposed to. If we sink the ship right off the bat, we can’t take any hostages. Don’t hit it on the waterline. Aim higher.”

He pointed into the distance while still holding the radio’s microphone.

As his finger jabbed toward the Scarlet Princess, it scooped upwards.

“For example, the control room.”

A seven meter tube shot from the side of the fishing boat. The anti-ship missile used solid fuel (aka gunpowder) to fly diagonally up from the ocean surface. In this “improper” usage, it was directly targeting the ship’s crew.

They all thought it was a success.

Blowing up the control room at the top of the luxury cruise ship would not immediately sink the ship. As previously stated, a ship’s weak point was the waterline where the seawater could surge in. However, the refined ladies and gentlemen would not realize that. If all of the professional crew was taken out at once and there was a fire on the ship, they would try to escape on the rescue boats no matter what. Afterwards, the pirates could surround the boats drifting powerlessly and carefully take hostages.

But…

The next thing the pirates knew, composite material shutters lowered over all of the luxury cruise ship’s 1000 or more windows.

The shutters covered both the outside and inside of the bulletproof glass which was already over thirty centimeters thick. This was obviously out of place on a civilian ship.

(Huh?)

For an instant, a complete blank filled the suntanned man’s mind.

The homemade anti-ship missile struck the control room, but its explosive flames and black smoke looked terribly unreliable. Once it all cleared away, only a slight dent remained in the shutters.

And then the ship began to fight back.

Strange metallic noises rang out again and again. From the bow to the stern, 20 mm Gatling guns of a close-in weapon system rose up along either side of the deck. They looked a bit like trees lining a road. The pools on the three layers of the deck split apart and 21 cm rapid-fire cannons rose high above them. The pirates could not see it, but a portion of the roof split into small sections like a chocolate bar or a honeycomb and countless vertical missile hatches opened in order.

They had stepped on a figurative landmine.

A horrible, horrible landmine.

Once they finally realized that, the captain of the luxury cruise ship spoke over the radio.

“Disguised Cruiser Scarlet Princess has confirmed an attack from the target.”

He essentially gave a death sentence.

That order opened the gates of hell.

“Begin Operation Codename ‘Blood-Soaked Princess’. Engaging target now. Pirates, this is your last chance to write your wills.”

With those words, the wolf in sheep’s clothing exposed its hidden claws and fangs.

After conceitedly thinking they could surround it with only about 15 boats, the pirates’ luck had run out.

The foxhunt had begun.

===Part 3===

The two idiots named Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell were groaning in the landing unit hold at the bottom level of the disguised cruiser named Scarlet Princess.

The exterior was made to look like a luxury cruise ship, but the inside was completely different. Of its 380 meter length, over half of the bottom was a single large space. And that space was crammed full of military hovercrafts. Quenser and the others were packed like sardines into those hovercrafts.

The hovercrafts were pitched as “small but able to hold a tank☆”, but they were far from comfortable for people to use. They reeked of machine oil.

“This is tyranny!! We were only riding along! Can you really throw us out in front of the pirate’s guns? This isn’t even the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s job! Who’s going to pay us!?”

“This is probably how we’re buying our ticket to ride the ship. I don’t feel like doing any real work either, though.”

“And how is this a ‘disguised cruiser’? It’s almost 400 meters long! They didn’t make battleships this big even back when they were relevant. That’s 100 meters more than the Island Nation’s Yamato! Are they insane!?”

“The category of battleship has vanished, so what can you do? And it’s a disguised ship, remember? Bringing escort ships along for protection would blow its cover, so it has to handle everything as a lone wolf. And it had to be heavily armored to safely draw in the pirates. It has to be tough enough to take a few rockets or torpedoes without issue.”

History had proven that aircraft would overtake the battleship in usefulness, but battleships could be useful once more now that aircraft could not be sent out. They were perfect for luring out and slaughtering pirates.

“…Why are you breathing so heavily?”

“Eh? Doesn’t seeing giant machines get you all excited? It’s human nature.”

Heivia shoved the perverted creep away with both hands as an ear-splitting buzzer rang and the lights switched to red.

Someone they could not see gave a high-spirited shout.

“Our brave ‘waitresses’, it’s time you risked your life fishing for sharks! Let’s make this an exciting enough battle to get a movie made! Rock & roll!!”

“Shut up! We’ve been ready!! And if you want to be the lead that badly, go do it on your own! Be a one-man army! Don’t drag us into it!!”

Heivia demonstrated his grace as a noble by elegantly raising his middle finger as he shouted at the man, but that changed nothing.

With a heavy rumble, the wall in front of them opened to either side. The bow of the disguised cruiser opened like a castle gate. One after another, amphibious hovercraft slid out and into the gunfire-filled battlefield of the Strait of Malacca.

And…

Whether by coincidence or design, a rocket suddenly flew into the hold.

As Heivia frantically held down Quenser’s head and got on the ground himself, a tremendous shock wave spread through the enclosed space.

A dull pain exploded more in his chest than his eardrums.

“Gbh!? Cough!! H-how the hell is this a safe and simple mop up mission!!”

“Anytime they call the mission ‘simple’, you should be suspicious.”

“Wait… Wait a second!! Did this hovercraft just start sliding? Wait!! We’ve got a bunch of injured soldiers already! You can’t just throw us out on the front liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!!”

But his protests came too late.

The hovercraft slid down the slope and shot out the bow of the “Blood-Soaked Princess”. They were suddenly forced to clash with the small fishing boats (which had been modified into high-speed boats) sitting in front.

They were about sixty centimeters away from the closest boat.

They were close enough to jump from one boat to the other.

Heivia’s gaze met that of a suntanned man.

“You bastards!!”

The man tried to raise the rifle carried over his shoulder with a sling belt, but he was too slow. Heivia pulled his handgun from its holster and fired repeatedly.

Quenser finally came to his senses as he watched three dark red holes appear in the man’s chest.

“Stop, Heivia! You can’t kill them!!”

“Ah? What!? I can’t hear you over all the noise!!”

“Don’t kill them!!”

All the 20 mm Gatling guns on the side of the disguised cruiser’s deck began to fire and shot down a homemade anti-ship missile flying over Quenser’s head. In return, several vertical launch missiles were fired at the pirates’ fishing boats. The noisy sound of rotors came from the heliport and a military attack helicopter began to take off.

The pirates had formed a half circle to envelop the Scarlet Princess’s path, but that proved a suicidal formation due to their misjudgment of the ship’s firepower. There had supposedly been around fifteen pirate boats, but half of them had already been sunk.

Everything was in motion and just watching it all made one’s eyes and head hurt.

And on top of that, the environment was so poor that one would be deafened while just sitting there.

After Quenser’s group’s hovercraft moved away, an attack from the air blew away the previous high-speed pirate boat like an empty can.

With his ears still ringing, Quenser shouted toward Heivia who was right next to him.

“If we just had to kill them, the ship’s weaponry could handle it! We were sent out for a reason!! Weren’t you listening during the pre-mission briefing!?”

“Oh? Oh, oh! Did they say something about that!?”

“They’re using fishing boats rather than used patrol boats so they can ditch their weapons in the sea and act like innocent fishermen if they have to! If we just kill them all, we’ll be suspected of slaughtering civilians. That’s why we need to capture a few of them alive and have them admit to being pirates. That’s what we were told!!”

“In other words, they’ve knocked down a hornet’s nest with a stone and now we have to retrieve it barehanded!? Goddamn this is a terrible job!! We’re at least getting paid extra for this, right!?”

Nothing the pirates did could turn the situation around.

Sounds of gunfire and explosions continued without end.

The ship’s rapid-fire cannons and the attack helicopter’s rockets were unilaterally blowing away the pirates’ boats.

“Two more! Our side just took out another two boats. Shit. If we don’t capture a pirate soon, they’ll all be dead!!”

“Shut up!! If you care that badly, jump over to that fishing boat and grab one yourself!!”

Only a few of the 10 meter high-speed pirate boats remained. The Scarlet Princess was fully equipped with the Legitimacy Kingdom navy’s best, so it was a 400 meter mass of giant guns. There was no chance of it being sunk now.

But there was a chance of the pirates fighting back in some way.

The fishing boats were equipped with homemade anti-ship missiles. They would be able to blow away at least one of the hovercrafts that used the power of air to float.

“This is way too scary!! A missile just shot by right above us!! What happened to the close-in weapon system support!?”

“Are these the type that react to magnetism to detonate? This thing’s hull is made of layered plastic and the balloon is made of synthetic fiber, so they might just slip past us.”

“Dammit. Of course the Gatling guns on the side deck wait until ''now'' to turn this way. …Hm? This way!?”

“G-get down!! And turn the hovercraft to the side! Our own side’s barrage is gonna fill us with holes!!”

The gunfire sounded like a broken buzzer as the line of CIWS weapons targeted an anti-ship missile flying a few meters above the ocean surface and scattered giant bullets at a rate of 5000 a minute. They were 20mm bullets which were masses of metal the size of a thumb. They were much larger than the standard used with anti-materiel rifles and even a single one grazing you could blow off a limb.

“They have to do all that just to shoot down a single missile. An Object’s laser beams are an entirely different story, but this says a lot about the balance between offense and defense.”

“Why are you starting that creepy breathing again!? Don’t get your design-obsessed blood pumping like it’s some instinct to preserve your genes in a life-threatening situation!!”

“Eh? I don’t mix my love of machines with lust. Making anthropomorphized girls out of weapons is kind of disturbing if you think about it.”

“Just think of it as adding on elements!! Don’t think of it as surgically cutting and pasting things!!”

The hovercraft ridden by the two idiots and 28 others had three engines resembling two meter ventilators on the back. One of them was sending out disconcerting black smoke (due to the barrage from their side’s close-in weapon system).

“How about we say the pirates did that and put in for injury pay? I think we deserve a bonus.”

“If we do that, it’ll mean we were injured by a group of amateurs. That would be a dishonor.”

Meanwhile, the battle was almost over.

The attack helicopter that had been sent out partway through was doing too good a job. It was sending down a storm of rockets which were enveloping the small fishing boats and the surrounding ocean in flames.

“Isn’t this pretty bad?” muttered Quenser as he carelessly looked up into the blue sky. “All of the pirate boats will be sunk soon.”

“What happened to capturing some alive!? If we don’t have one to say he’s a pirate, we’ll be accused of slaughtering civilians!!”

The two idiots looked around, but they saw nothing but eerie black smoke and wreckage starting to sink. It no longer felt like they were fighting. It was more like a treasure hunt.

“There!! There’s another fishing boat behind that smoke. If we miss that one, we’ll have to give up on catching anyone alive!! We’ll be mercilessly accused by a grinning international committee!!”

The attack helicopter flew by over their heads. It was clearly moving toward the same target.

Heivia brought a hand to his forehead.

“Is that pilot a coward!? I don’t think he can relax until he eliminates every threat he sees. And it’s not like those pirates can shoot down a helicopter flying around at high speed!!”

“What do we do? If we don’t take one alive, we’ll have to try our hand at necromancy during the court martial.”

“I’ve had enough of this!!” shouted Heivia in desperation as he shouted at the young soldier in charge of steering the hovercraft. “Head full speed toward the fishing boat! …I can’t believe I have to put my life on the line to protect the enemy!!”

“But what exactly are we going to do!?”

“We only have one choice.”

For some reason, Heivia removed the safety pin from the shoulder-fired missile launcher hanging from his shoulder along with his rifle. He rested one end on his shoulder and aimed the other end. Tanks on land, small patrol boats at sea, and ground attack craft in the air. Save for its ridiculous price tag, that missile was known as a masterpiece.

“We fire on our own helicopter.”

He did not hesitate.

He captured the target with both infrared and ultraviolet at the same and he pulled the trigger.

The long, narrow missile shot out like a spear and shot by right next to the helicopter.

No damage was done.

Except for Quenser who was knocked backwards by the backfire.

He flew two or three meters like an unnamed character in a kung fu movie.

“Hot!! Hot!? Wh-what just happened? Are we under attack!?”

“If you’re that lively, I’m not gonna worry too much.”

The other soldiers on the hovercraft focused on Heivia. Their gazes were asking why he had fired on an ally.

“If I had actually aimed, it wouldn’t be in the air right now! I purposefully missed. But that coward of a pilot won’t notice that!! If you don’t want to die, get ready!!”

The attack helicopter belatedly took evasive actions and then took a tight turn around. It was clearly being wary. If the pilot panicked, there was a chance he would simply attack. It was similar to an extremely sleepy soldier caught in a whirl of gunfire confusing which side was his allies.

Heivia shouted in desperation.

“I bought us some time, but it’s only a dozen or so seconds! Charge straight into the fishing boat!! We just have to take at least one of them alive!!”

The hovercraft moved straight toward the lone remaining fishing boat. Meanwhile, Heivia aimed his assault rifle into the air and fired a long spray of bullets toward their attack helicopter. Orange sparks covered a side of the helicopter.

“With proper equipment, it can deflect rifle bullets.” While firing tons of wasted bullets, Heivia gave a thin smile. “But that coward won’t know that. His desire to survive made him panic and forget the plan. He’ll actually try to avoid this peashooter.”

The hovercraft approached the modified fishing boat from the side.

More accurately, it crashed into it.

Hovercrafts floated above the ocean surface with the power of air. The skirt portion that contained the air was a giant balloon made of bulletproof and knife resistant synthetic fiber.

Rather than a straight collision, the hovercraft climbed on top of the boat.

And the pirate man standing on the boat’s deck was knocked into the ocean.

The fact that the skirt portion was a soft balloon turned out to be a stroke of luck for both sides. As the man flailed his limbs around, he was knocked several meters horizontally like a small stone.

At the same time, a rocket fell from the heavens and struck the point of intersection between the fishing boat and the hovercraft.

The blast knocked the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers into the air.

But it did not knock the will to fight from them. Or rather, they could not leave this sea of flames and smoke until they completed this. Several soldiers used strange wrestling moves to jump on the pirate who had fallen into the ocean.

Several dull sounds could be heard.

The pirate struggled as his head was forced under the salty ocean water.

Quenser and Heivia grabbed the pirate by the collar and dragged his head back above the surface.

And they shouted angrily into his ear.

“If you don’t want us to start an interrogation using the water here, then start talking!! Tell everyone that you’re a piece of shit pirate who was causing everyone all sorts of trouble!!”

===Part 4===

They were forced to participate in a “detour” to eliminate pirates, but Quenser, Heivia, and the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s original destination lay elsewhere.

Those idiots had been sent to the Strait of Malacca ahead of the rest of the battalion. Sea mines, fuel oil attacks, nets in the propeller, and pirates were all threats that even civilians could accomplish. To ensure that none of the warships were damaged, all those threats had to be eliminated before the maintenance battalion’s fleet passed through.

In other words, their target this time was dangerous enough to warrant that.

Even in an age where Object vs. Object battles decided everything, they did not want to lose the backing of a single support ship.

“We’re really here.”

Their destination was the birthplace of Objects in the seas of the Far East.

It was currently a portion of the Capitalist Corporations and it was an important point for the Asian naval forces.

“This is the Island Nation. Should we really be here? This supposedly the artisan paradise that sent out the world’s first Object and it’s also known for its healthy food. A ridiculously proportioned macho man isn’t going to attack us with all sorts of strange new weapons, is he?”

Quenser sounded bored as he stood on the deck of a small aircraft carrier. Rather than the takeoff and landing of aircraft, it was primarily used as maintenance space for the Object contained between it and another aircraft carrier.

The princess must have had nothing to do because she was sitting on the edge of the deck and looking blankly in Quenser’s direction.

“Frolaytia said our job isn’t very dangerous this time.”

“She may be skilled, but you can’t trust any verbal promises she makes. Especially when we’re talking about the Island Nation. It may be part of the Capitalist Corporations, but the level of their newly developed technology is ridiculous. In fact, it’s gone so far that it’s created a kind of Galapagos Syndrome. Naturally, the same goes for their Objects.”

“This will not be a direct fight in the first place.”

“Yeah, they are going through some infighting, aren’t they?” Quenser let out a light breath. “The Capitalist Corporations were crazy enough to go fully down the PMC route and make listed companies out of their army, but the intensification of conflicts in recent years means the armies sent around the world by the different major companies aren’t enough. That’s why they created the new framework of half-public self-defense PMCs to quickly strengthen their naval defenses.”

“But one of those self-defense PMCs went out of control and started a civil war in the ocean around the Island Nation.”

“What did they think would happen when they gathered tens of thousands of rotten soldiers given dishonorable discharges in different parts of the world and then handed them cutting-edge weaponry? Yet they let their guard down so much that they surrendered an Object to them. What’s wrong with them? Were they ''trying'' to get themselves killed?”

“They had an aging society, so they had no choice. They had no young people.”

“I know they were shorthanded, but how could they possibly think people coming in to earn some money would defend their nation to the bitter end?”

The strategic simulations of the Legitimacy Kingdom military predicted that the civil war would not last long. The self-defense PMC could not be taken lightly, but they were only borrowing the Objects and other weapons and they could not maintain them or produce more on their own. And it was unlikely anyone would provide them with further supplies. The instant they ran out of reserves was the instant they met their end.

The simulations said they would last at most two months and possibly only a few weeks. But during that time, the Island Nation’s defenses would certainly be lacking. It was possible the confusion could be used to attack in otherwise impossible places or ways.

The princess pouted her lips.

“Why do we have to interfere with the Capitalist Corporations’ fight? We should just let them go at it.”

“We don’t want them having a nice fistfight by the river and getting along again. That’s why we need to stab them in the side and make sure they can never join back up. If we kill what enemies we can while we have the chance, we don’t have to worry about carelessly running into them on some other battlefield.”

At that point, a radio transmission reached the entire battalion.

It was from Frolaytia, their local commander.

“It’s time for the pre-mission briefing on how we will split the Island Nation. Gather in your ship’s conference room. I will provide the explanation via the monitor. …Also, a special message for the idiots who were playing basketball on the flight deck. The one who dropped the ball in the ocean must take responsibility by jumping from the cliff and retrieving it. That is government property. You aren’t allowed to lose it. That is all.”

===Part 5===

“As you can see, the ocean around the Island Nation is in a state of civil war. We will use the confusion to move in deeper than their normal defenses would allow. Our mission is to scout out their forces and destroy what we can.”

Frolaytia spoke from the podium up front while a few arrows were added to the sea chart displayed on the screen.

“The biggest problem for the self-defense PMC is the supply line. According to the strategic simulation performed on our supercomputer, this civil war will run out of gas and reach a quick end. The major corporation controlling the Island Nation will likely carry out a sabotage operation to hurry that along.”

The screen showed a group of islands in the ocean south of the Island Nation. One of those islands had not originally been there. It was a manmade floating island. The industrially manufactured island could move on its own and it was created by combining giant floats.

Its center was a dodecagon and each vertex had a harbor dock extending out from it like a tree branch.

Its overall silhouette looked like the ship’s wheel used to turn the rudder.

“This is the artificial floating island Ame-no-Darin. It is made to extract resources from the ocean floor. It is the cornerstone of the self-defense PMC’s supplies and reserves. It was the discovery of oil and veins of iron ore in the deep Pacific that transformed the Island Nation into a top class resource superpower. Thanks to that, they’ve left behind an environment that’s covered in oil. Anyway, as long as they have this, the self-defense PMC will have plenty of ammunition and fuel. And by exchanging that for foreign currency, they can smuggle in food. This is the central pillar of this war.”

Frolaytia used her penlight laser pointer to indicate different points on the displayed document.

“It originally functioned as the Island Nation’s military reserves base. It was a treasure trove of fuel and ammunition and its security was left to the self-defense PMC in question as far back as the construction phase. Once the civil war began, they took full control of the Ame-no-Darin. With the standard reserves, they can fight for ninety days. With full use of its ocean floor resource extraction and refinement ability, they can create an endless supply of fuel and ammunition. It may be an expensive facility, but that expense paid for some nice features.”

“I have a question.” Quenser raised his hand. “Are we going to destroy that Ame-no-Darin? How does that benefit us?”

“An excellent question, student. But wait until I’m finished.” Frolaytia placed her long, narrow kiseru in her mouth. “Our mission is to sweep for mines in the ocean around the Ame-no-Darin and to physically remove the saboteurs thought to have infiltrated it. We intercepted the schedule for a large-scale sabotage operation and we plan to end it before it starts. Simply put, we will be protecting the Ame-no-Darin despite no one asking us to. After all, that will cause this war to drag on and cause great financial losses for the Island Nation. Any objections?”

It was a cruel plan, but they were at war and had no interest in benevolence or world peace. The Island Nation was categorized as a safe country, so they could not directly attack it or slaughter the non-combatants there, but they had no real reason to bring the civil war to a quick end or to protect the Island Nation’s mobile fleet which included an Object. If they did, the forces remaining at the end of the civil war would turn toward them.

A small hand then rose into the air.

It was the princess’s.

“Then who will I fight?”

“Did you think it would be the Object belonging to the isolated self-defense PMC? Well, it isn’t. You will be fighting the Object belonging to the Island Nation’s major corporation which has the overwhelming advantage. When we have a chance to freely defeat an enemy, it’s always best to choose the strongest one. We will extend this civil war and take the initiative in removing future rivals. Do you all understand now?”

They were fighting to protect their enemy.

They were fighting to help out the isolated underdog.

Phrasing it like that made them sound like a gunman from a Western, but the principles at the core has been twisted by the world which had shattered like stained glass.

“Then let’s begin. We are only here to benefit the Legitimacy Kingdom. Justice for the Capitalist Corporations is not our concern. How about you head out there and see what your precious Island Nation is really like.”

===Part 6===

===Part 7===

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

===Part 18===

===Part 19===

===Part 20===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

Rakuin no Monshou:Volume2 Chapter6

2014-01-30T09:07:40Z

EnigmaticRepose:

{{Incomplete|percentage=31}}
==Chapter 6:The Branded==
===Part 1===
The day of the final match, it had been all the talk since morning.

The Gladiator’s Guild had announced the pairings. Orba and Pashir would not directly confront. That was the one thing the people found most regrettable.

“When it comes to speed, then it has to be Orba. Pashir’s slow as an ox. Honestly, if those two duked it out, the battle would be settled in an instant.”

“That’s not true, Pashir doesn’t make any useless movements. He’s different from Orba who continually moves around. Those little clever tactics of his won’t work against him. If the fight is drawn out even a little, Orba would run out and stamina and be at an overwhelming disadvantage.”

At the street corners, in front of food stalls, within party venues, people argued back and forth about the gladiator match. This wasn’t limited only to the citizens of Solon, but also included the nobles. They would engage in a heated debate over who would survive, betting horses, unusual paintings, or even ten slave girls, busying themselves in wagers that flaunted their status.

Amongst the heated debates posed the question that, supposing Orba and Pashir expectantly survived, which of them would receive the honour as the dragon-slaying hero Clovis.

“If it were His Imperial Majesty,” one such noble suddenly spoke with a pompous air, “I believe he would likely want Orba to inherit the title of Clovis. After all, he is the hero who defeated Ryucown. If he were to win this and the image of him being a former slave stamped out, in goes without saying he will have earned the title of corporal or captain, he might be given the whole Solon garrison company!”

And as the time approached the evening juncture that held the deciding match, the emperor himself made his appearance, as to personally hand over the golden helmet to the victor. The Imperial Guards and slaves that accompanied the emperor, totalling roughly some thirty men, occupied the upper half of a reserved grandstand.

The figures of the imperial princess and her friends, as well as Garbera’s princess, Vileena, and her head maid, Theresia, were also present.

In the grand stadium, several battles were taking place. Once a pair finished, another pair would be sent in to fill the vacant spot, and so these battles went on without end. However, as the strength of the blazing sun waned, the vacant seats throughout the stadium began to slowly stand out.

By evening, the final battle ended. The sounds of the gladiators and their clashing weapons below them suddenly came to a dead silence, and conversely, the enthusiasm of the crowd knew no end as their roars resounded like a tidal wave.

After a short intermission that held them further in suspense, the four swordsmen who fought fiercely through their battles and won made their appearance, each armed with a weapon of their choosing. One carried a long spear, another stood ready with a battle axe and Orba carried his usual longsword.

''So it’s finally time.''

Orba murmured to himself as he rested the sword on the back of his shoulders. He may have thrown himself into the gladiator ring, but it wasn’t as if he wanted to, and it was now finally coming to an end. Next would be to use what he heard from Pashir about the plan to corner Noue and Oubary and obstruct the scheme Zaat was assisting them in.

Right now, they were likely watching the scene unfold from above, enjoying the spectacle of the slaves killing one another from their safe haven.

''Once I end ‘this’, you guys are next''

He was fired up, different from how he usually was.

The orator called out their four names, and then saluted the emperor. The four men also did the same, and the emperor lowered his chin to face them. At the same time, one of the accompanying Imperial Guards presented to him the golden helmet with both his hands. Attached to the left and right were a pair of wings, the mark of the hero Clovis.

That was the signal to start. The ground shook as the arena erupted in pandemonium and the battles began.

Orba’s opponent was a giant exceeding two metres in height. To add to that, he wielded a long spear. With a difference in reach that made him hesitant to take even a single step forward, Orba was quickly cornered. Not to mention, he had sustained injuries from his battle with Gash.

Before the end of the third thrust, Orba had fallen backwards. The arena went into a stir. The giant thrust his spear down. Orba rolled sideways towards the giant’s flank, and jumping upwards, slashed at him. Blood gushed out from the giant’s neck the moment Orba’s feet touched the ground. Orba’s single slash was well-aimed and cut open his opponent’s artery.

The giant crashed onto the floor. And in little time as well, Pashir settled his match. His victory was more clear cut. Just when it he appeared to put some distance between he and the axe-wielding man, he flung his sword over his shoulders and threw it with all his might. The sword hit spot-on and pierced the enemy’s heart.

Silence dawned on the five thousand spectators for a short moment. Not even a minute had passed since the battles began. Her hands wrapped in prayer, Vileena exclaimed a breath of relief.

“It seems they weren’t a match,” the emperor, Guhl Mephius, muttered absentmindedly. He blinked his eyes with unmistakable signs of boredom and spoke to his wife seated beside him.

“Neither were fit to be their opponents. What do you think, Melissa? Don’t you want to see a battle between real men?”

The empress replied in modest moderation, a manner befitting her age that betrayed her appearance. “Yes, I would” she assented in honesty. The emperor lowered his chin.

“It would be upsetting to have it end like this. Pashir and Orba; these two shall now contest. Until the match ends in victory or defeat, the handing over of Clovis’ helmet will be put on hold.”

Those seated in the surroundings all looked up at the emperor in shock.

On hearing this, the arena rose into a commotion, and soon roused in agreement. They were also not satisfied with the amount of bloodshed, and most of all, wanted to know which of them was truly stronger.

''What?''

At the shock of the sudden turn of events, Orba instinctively glared up at the emperor. The sword in his hand smelled immensely of blood. And now he would have to stain it with even more blood. The blood of none other than Pashir. The muscles on his arm throbbed.

On the other side,

“Please wait, your majesty,” Simon said as he stood up. “This differs from our annual custom. There exists no other reason for this tournament than to single out the select two swordsmen.”

“Do not fret over the details, Simon.” The emperor pointed towards the ring. “Honestly, I am unable to determine which of the two is more suited to inherit the title of Clovis. To have them fight and hand the golden helmet over to the winner—there’s no method more decisive than this. Should the loser die, we can have the Guild choose someone fit to act out his aide, Felipe.”

Seated beside Simon, who now stood speechless, Fedom was panting heavily. As he was about to get up and suggest a proposition, he would find himself slumping backwards onto his chair on reconsideration each time. The emperor grew more and more self-righteous each passing day. He was like a naked blade, that if Fedom did not tread carefully around, would cut him to pieces.

“Orba and Pashir! Both of you, return to the front of the gates!”

A soldier commanded them.

“Tch”

Orba spat out. His insides felt like they were on fire.

''It’s always like this. They control people’s lives and fates without a second thought.''

“Haha, that was a something to see.”

Pashir said. By ‘something to see’, he was likely meant him spitting out through his mask. Pashir wasn’t the least daunted at how things ended up.

“Are you going to listen them?” 

“The emperor said it. No one can go against that. You’d best ready yourself.”

Saying this, Pashir turned his back to Orba. His branded back heaved up and down. Orba called him to a stop in a hurry.

“Wait, Pashir.”

“I may be the leader of the rebellion for the time being, but it can’t be stopped even if someone tries to put a dent on it. So don’t hold yourself back. Let’s fight to kill to our heart’s content. This’ll be our final gladiator match.”

“Pashir.”

A stadium slave ran up to Pashir and interrupted them, and while wiping away his his sweat and pretending to look after him, spoke in a low voice.

“What if you two put up an act? Orba is popular amongst the citizens. It should be fine if you fight normally and then have Orba drop his sword in surrender to you. The people should spare Orba’s life.”

“That won’t work,” Pashir shook his head, “The people of Solon are used to seeing arena battles, and will immediately see through any concern for the opponent’s life during the match. We can’t have them becoming suspicious of the slaves’ relationships now. You already know it. We’ve no choice but to kill each other.”

“—“

Orba silently lowered his head. His motives differed from Pashir’s, but Orba also harboured a motive no one could ever imagine. Noue, Oubary, and Zaat...not a single one of their actions were to be trusted.
“Let’s swear on it.” Pashir spoke as a matter-of-factly, “No matter who wins, he’ll carry the weight of these souls. Even if you die, I’ll take on your feelings. I swear to have Gil Mephius’ head. And if I die, you’ll take on my feelings; free all the slaves and burn Mephius to the ground.”

At those words, Orba felt a lump in his throat and was unable to give an immediate reply.

''Take on his feelings...''

It went without saying that Orba hated Mephius. How he dreamed countlessly of cutting off the necks of those nobles with the swing of his sword by his own hands. However,

“Yeah...”

Orba said while nodding, in a voice that seemed like another person’s.

The two parted and moved towards the east and west gates. The slave called Mira wiped off his sweat and replaced his sword with a new one. Her face was pale and unsteady. It was clear she held feelings for Pashir, even though Orba had met her only two or three times. Orba tried to open his mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say. She wished for Pashir to win. That meant Orba’s defeat—and his death. And that sat fine with him. Orba also held his own reasons for surviving, even if it meant defeating—kiling Pashir.

''Is it really fine like this? ''

Such a thought tore at his chest. Orba shook his masked face. It wasn’t fine. Why was he hesistating now? Yes, he bore a hatred towards Mephius similar to Orba’s or one that might even have exceeded his, and Pashir’s goal resembled his own; in the not too distant future, they would surely stand side by side and fight as comrades.

''Damnit! Don’t think too much into it.”

He grasped the handle of his sword with renewed vigour. To make matters worse, Orba was covered in wounds. Even the battle just now took what little of all his remaining strength. How many more times after would he have to wield his sword to his limits? Orba hadn’t the faintest idea.

Victory seemed to get further and further away from his grasp. His blade would never reach his target if he thought of the things to come while swinging his sword.

''I’ll end it in a single blow.''

Orba decided. He would swing with his full strength one time, when he saw a surefire gap. Failing meant death.

“To the east, Iron Tiger Orba! To the west, Strong-armed Pashir!”

The two called names approached each other in the centre of the arena.

“What could be the meaning of this? Did that not end it?”

Vileena breathlessly watched in suspense at the sudden development. The crowd’s cheers were tremendous, such that they rendered Theresia’s voice inaudible. However, a brief exchange of glances, and she was able to calmly understand what she was saying. In the midst of this frenzy, a strange tranquility drifted between the two who were about to kill each other.

“Start!”

Both parties swung their swords into a clash and then jumped back in retreat.

Solon’s grand gladiator tournament; here, the fight to determine the strongest man commenced.

It was a fight unprecedented in the long history of Mephius’ gladiator fights.

As soon as the match began, the one to charge forward was Orba. He ran straight for Pashir with the tip of his sword skimming along the ground. Pashir bent his knees in ready. Orba immediately kicked off the ground to Pashir’s side. Faster than his opponent could react, he jumped once more. Orba planned to settle the match in this instant. Pashir’s legs, arms or back—he would jump in at any gap in defence he saw and finish Pashir off before he could recover.

However, Pashir stopped following Orba with his eyes and immediately rolled forward. Getting up in no time at all, he turned around and swung his sword. Orba began to chase after him, but the swing prevented him from advancing further. Orba received the blade with his own and jumped back.

Their unending exchange of blows since the beginning made everyone in the arena to go wild with excitement.

And then they approached a standstill, by the very definition of its meaning. The two ceased all movement, making their previous fast exchange of blows seem like a lie.

Orba stood as he always did, with his bent back eyeing Pashir’s every move. The arm that caught Pashir’s attack had gone numb. A bead of sweat trickled down under his mask. It was fair to say his initial movements had drained him of the majority of his stamina. He pushed for a short, decisive battle, but Pashir had completely seen through his movements.

''Come Pashir! Come, come, come!''

It was dangerous for him to move. Pashir stood with both his massive legs entrenched on the ground as blood pulsed through their muscles, ready to crush him at a moment’s notice. Jumping in would be his last, and he would easily have his attack turned on him.

So instead, Orba glared at Pashir through his mask, waiting for him to move. He still held the advantage of speed. Of course, it would also be dangerous if the enemy came charging in, but it would also make it more likely to find holes in his defence.

However, Pashir did not move. He held the sword with both hands above his shoulder, not budging an inch.

''Tch''

Orba struck the ground with the arch of his feet. His sword flickered. He jumped in a direction different from his line of sight. However, the actions of his feint were unable to perturb Pashir.

The evening wind blew beneath his mask.

The spectators had suddenly returned to silence. The thousands of eyes fixed their attention on these two swordsmen of unfathomable skill. An expectant tension hung in the air, where the outcome might be decided in the next blink of an eye; however, these two did not permit the slightest movement.

Ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds—time ticked by. A minute passed. Two minutes passed. Everyone held their breaths, but it did not last for long.

“Get him!”

Someone shouted at the five minute mark. “Kill him!” a girl shouted after him.

“Get him! Get him! Get him!”

“Kill! Kill! Kill!”

Everyone present stamped their feet in unison and burst into a clamour of boos. They created the racket in hopes that it would rouse them to movement, but still the two did not move.

Orba was also getting impatient. His sword and armour had never felt so heavy. Standing alone strained his muscles. In the previous clash, Orba had set aside everything for a single strike, but was uncertain whether he could exert his full strength even on that single strike.

''Move''

Orba prayed deeply.

“Don’t move”

Gowen spoke, while he acted as bodyguard in the grandstands.

“Don’t move in a fit of impatience, Orba. Keep that bad habit of yours in check here, please.”

Pashir likely saw through that habit from bearing witness to all of Orba’s battles until now. Orba excelled in countering. In terms of physique and power, Orba came out as mediocre amongst the gladiators, and suffered many disadvantages in a direct confrontation. Therefore, he founded on circling his opponents and luring them in. And when the enemy was pulled into his space, he would deliver a strike aimed at their vitals.

Especially because of this, Gowen lectured him time and time again, “Don’t let that quick temper get ahead of you.”

A quick temper was detrimental to his fighting tactics. Techniques that allowed him to provoke his opponent and gain control of their emotions were essential.

[[Image:Rakuin no Monshou v02 247.jpg|thumb]]
They were what allowed Orba to win throughout his two years as a gladiator. He had devised a number of ways of retreating to lure the enemy in. Sometimes he would initiate, sometimes he would be on the receiving end, and sometimes he would take actions to anger his opponent, all to pull the opponent into his pace. However, they all proved ineffective against Pashir. His firm posture was wholly free of any openings. Because Orba understood this, he could not move.

Gowen himself gritted his teeth in impatience, as time freely passed. And it was not only him. Amidst the tempest of jeers raining down on them, those the least bit curious in knowing the victor of this sword match could feel the heavy tension between Orba and Pashir, and their faces turned rigid as if they were standing there themselves.

Some wiped away the sweat dripping down their chins.

Like a candle just about to go out, the setting sun wringed its last drops of sunlight and covered the arena in a crimson red—

Suddenly, the match progressed into motion.

“Ah,” everyone in the arena let out.

The one to step into the light and aim towards the enemy was Pashir. He appeared to have been the one unable to bear the overly unusual standstill. However,

“Orba, NO!”

Gowen screamed. 

===Part 2===
<br/>

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| Back to [[Rakuin no Monshou:Volume2 Chapter5|Chapter 5]]
| Return to [[Rakuin no Monshou|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Rakuin no Monshou:Volume2 Chapter7|Chapter 7]]
|-
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</noinclude>

Toaru Majutsu no Index

2014-01-29T06:42:15Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* NT Volume 9 (Full Text) */ Correcting full text link.

[[Image:To Aru Majutsu no Index new cover.jpg|250px|thumb|New Illustration Art]]
'''''Toaru Majutsu no Index''''' (とある魔術の禁書目録（インデックス）, lit. ''A Certain Magical Index'') is a Japanese light novel series written by Kazuma Kamachi (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Kiyotaka Haimura (灰村キヨタカ). The series is published by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_Media_Works ASCII Media Works] under their [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dengeki_Bunko Dengeki Bunko] imprint. There are currently 33 published volumes of the novels, including 2 side story volumes. Regularly placing in the top 10 of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kono_Light_Novel_ga_Sugoi! Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!] rankings, it was named the '''Best Novel Series of 10 Years''' in Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! 2014.

<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" data-collapsetext="Less" data-expandtext="More">The series has produced a manga with 12 published volumes and two anime seasons based on the contents of the original novels. The series has also produced a spin-off manga titled '''''Toaru Kagaku no Railgun''''' (とある科学の超電磁砲（レールガン）, lit. ''A Certain Scientific Railgun''), which currently has 9 published volumes and has also been adapted into two anime seasons. A second spin-off manga titled '''''Toaru Kagaku no Accelerator''''' (とある科学の一方通行(アクセラレータ), lit. ''A Certain Scientific Accelerator'') began serialization at the start of 2014. A sequel novel series titled '''''Shinyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index''''' (新約 とある魔術の禁書目録（インデックス）, lit. ''A Certain Magical Index: New Testament'') began publishing in 2011.</div>

==Alternative Languages==
The ''Toaru Majutsu no Index'' series is also available in the following languages:
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ Bahasa Indonesia|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Bahasa Indonesia]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Russian|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Russian]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ (Spanish)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Español (Spanish)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ Deutsch (German)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Deutsch (German)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index ~ Italiano (Italian)|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Italiano (Italian)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index Polski|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Polski (Polish)]]
*[[To Aru Majutsu no Index - Français|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Français (French)]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index ~Brazilian Portuguese~|Toaru Majutsu no Index ~ Português Brasileiro (Brazilian Portuguese)]]

(Note: Translation progress varies for each version.)
----
Visit the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/index.php Baka-Tsuki Project Forum] to discuss this series and other information from Baka-Tsuki.

==Story Synopsis==
''Toaru Majutsu no Index'' is set in Academy City; a technologically advanced academic city located in western Tokyo which studies scientifically enhanced superhuman students known as espers who develop powers. However, within this world of scientifically developed superpowers exists an underground world of magic and occult connected to the religious institutions of the world.

Kamijou Touma, an unlucky boy who happens to be one of the many students within Academy City, possesses a mysterious power in his right hand known as the 'Imagine Breaker'; an ability which allows him to negate all forms of supernatural powers, whether they are magical or psychic. One day, he finds a young girl hanging on his balcony railing named Index. She is a nun from Necessarius, a secret magic branch of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglican_Communion Anglican Church], and her mind has been implanted with the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum Index Librorum Prohibitorum]: 103,000 original grimoires that the Church has removed from circulation. Their encounter leads him to meet others from the secretive worlds of science and magic.

Kamijou Touma's unusual power places him at the center of conflicts related to both science-based espers in Academy City and magicians. As Kamijou Touma tries to help and protect his friends, he learns that the people he knows are not as they appear and begins to attract the attention of magicians and espers alike as they try to unravel the secrets of Academy City and Index.

==Awards==

<big><div class="mw-customtoggle-2007 mw-customtoggle-2008 mw-customtoggle-2009 mw-customtoggle-2010 mw-customtoggle-2011 mw-customtoggle-2012 mw-customtoggle-2013 mw-customtoggle-2014" style="width:420px; background:#000000; cursor:pointer;" align="center">
<span style="color: white">'''Switch OPEN and CLOSED Sections'''</span></div></big>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2007" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! 2005 - 2007'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2007">
'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2005''' 
*22nd Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi

'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2006''' 
*43rd Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi

'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2007''' 
*14th Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*9th Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2008" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2008'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2008"> 
*15th Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*3rd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*29th Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator 
*11th Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto 
*5th Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma 
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2009" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2009'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2009"> 
*4th Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*2nd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma 
*11th Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*5th Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*3rd Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*9th Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2010" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2010'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2010"> 
*9th Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*12th Place in Best Illustrator, Kiyotaka Haimura
*1st Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*3rd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*11th Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*3rd Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*6th Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2011" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2011'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2011">
*1st Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*1st Place in Best Illustrator, Kiyotaka Haimura
*1st Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*2nd Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*11th Place in Best Male Character, Hamazura Shiage
*28th Place in Best Male Character, Acqua of the Back
*1st Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*3rd Place in Best Female Character, Index
*7th Place in Best Female Character, Itsuwa
*14th Place in Best Female Character, Last Order
*1st Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*2nd Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
*3rd Place in Best Character, Accelerator
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2012" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2012'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2012"> 
*2nd Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*2nd Place in Best Illustrator, Kiyotaka Haimura
*2nd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*4th Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*23rd Place in Best Male Character, Hamazura Shiage
*1st Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*15th Place in Best Female Character, Index
*24th Place in Best Female Character, Last Order
*2nd Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*3rd Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
*5th Place in Best Character, Accelerator
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2013" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2013'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2013">
*2nd Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*3rd Place in Best Illustrator, Kiyotaka Haimura
*1st Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*12th Place in Best Female Character, Index
*26th Place in Best Female Character, Last Order
*2nd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*3rd Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*28th Place in Best Male Character, Hamazura Shiage
*2nd Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
*4th Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*5th Place in Best Character, Accelerator
</div>

<div class="mw-customtoggle-2014" style="width:420px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi! (このライトノベルがすごい!) 2014'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:420px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-2014">
*3rd Place in Best Novel Series, Kazuma Kamachi
*'''1st Place in Best Novel Series of 10 Years, Kazuma Kamachi'''
*1st Place in Best Illustrator, Kiyotaka Haimura
*1st Place in Best Female Character, Misaka Mikoto
*5th Place in Best Female Character, Index
*13th Place in Best Female Character, Shokuhou Misaki
*2nd Place in Best Male Character, Kamijou Touma
*4th Place in Best Male Character, Accelerator
*30th Place in Best Male Character, Tsuchimikado Motoharu
*1st Place in Best Character, Misaka Mikoto
*3rd Place in Best Character, Kamijou Touma
*6th Place in Best Character, Accelerator
</div>

==Translation==
'''Translators Needed'''

If you would like to help translate this series, please post in the forums [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=3505 here], and we will help you get started. Thank you.

===[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Registration Page|Registration]]===
Those who wish to contribute are asked to notify a supervisor beforehand.

Translators are asked to [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on.

===Format Standards===
'''Every edited chapter must conform to not only the general format guidelines, but also this project's own guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Names and Terminology Guideline|Project-Specific Guidelines: Format, Names, and Terminology]]

'''All edited translations are to be in American English.'''

==Updates==

<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed">
<div class="mw-customtoggle-Older" style="width:450px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''Older Updates'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:450px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Older">
*February 27, 2009 - Project page created.
*March 1, 2010 - Volume 12 completed.
*March 13, 2010 - Volume 7 completed.
*April 13, 2010 - Volume 9 completed.
*June 27, 2010 - Volume 10 completed.
*August 27, 2010 - Volume 8 completed.
*September 25, 2010 - Volume 13 completed.
*October 31, 2010 - Volume 11 completed.
*January 25, 2011 - Volume 14 completed.
*February 10, 2011 - Volume SS1 completed.
*February 26, 2011 - Volume 15 completed.
*March 1, 2011 - Volume 16 completed.
*March 14, 2011 - Volume SS2 completed.
*April 7, 2011 - NT Volume 1 completed.
*May 3, 2011 - Volume 17 completed.
*May 4, 2011 - Volume 6 completed.
*May 9, 2011 - Volume 1 completed.
*May 21, 2011 - Volume 18 completed.
*May 29, 2011 - Volume 19 completed.
*June 13, 2011 - Volume 20 completed.
*June 21, 2011 - Volume 4 completed.
*June 22, 2011 - Volume 21 completed.
*June 23, 2011 - Volume 5 completed.
*June 23, 2011 - Volume 22 completed.
*July 3, 2011 - Volume 3 completed.
*July 7, 2011 - Volume 2 completed.
**First series completed.
*July 12, 2011 - Love Letter SS completed.
*July 20, 2011 - Railgun SS: Liberal Arts City completed.
*August 18, 2011 - NT Volume 2 completed.
*August 28, 2011 - Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare completed.
*October 13, 2011 - Index SS: Norse Mythology completed.
*October 15, 2011 - Railgun SS2: Shopping Mall Demonstration completed.
*November 9, 2011 - Volume SP completed.
*January 8, 2012 - NT Volume 3 completed.
*March 22, 2012 - NT Volume 4 completed.
*October 23, 2012 - NT Volume 5 completed.
</div>
*January 27, 2013 - NT Volume 6 completed.
*March 8, 2013 - Road to Endymion completed.
*May 23, 2013 - NT Volume 7 completed.
*September 25, 2013 - NT Volume 8 completed.
</div>

==Terminologies==
All terminologies, character information, and other series details are hosted on [http://toarumajutsunoindex.wikia.com/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index_Wiki this wiki].

==PDFs==
To ensure you have the most updated translation and edits, please use the PDF generator located on the sidebar.

If you would like user-created PDFs, you can find both individual volume links and batch files [http://www.mediafire.com/folder/25rdo53a0o4y0 here]. (Updated 9/26/2013)

{{INDEX MASTER TOGGLE}}

==The Toaru Majutsu no Index series==


<div class="mw-customtoggle-S1 mw-customtoggle-S1Close mw-customtoggle-S1Open" style="background:#cef2f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Season 1 Novels</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-S1">
'''These novels were covered by the first season of the anime adaptation.'''

[[Image:Toaru Majutsu no Index Light Novel v01 cover.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 1 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue: The Tale of the Illusion Killer Boy — The_Imagine-Breaker.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Magician Lands on the Tower — FAIR,_Occasionally_GIRL.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Illusionist Bestows Demise — The_7th-Egde.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Grimoire Peacefully Smiles — "Forget_me_not."]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Exorcist Chooses the End — (N)Ever_Say_Good_bye.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Conclusion of the Index of Prohibited Books Girl — Index-Librorum-Prohibitorum.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 2.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 2 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue: The Same Usual Every Day — The_Beginning_of_The_End.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Tower of Glass — The_Tower_of_BABEL.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Witch-Hunter Moves Along With the Flames —　By_The_Holy_Rood...]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Master Has Shut Off the World Like a God — DEUS_EX_MACHINA...]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Deadly Seven —　Deadly_Sins.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue: Deep Blood of Corruption —　Devil_or_God.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 3.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 3 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue: Radio Noise — Level2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Imagine Breaker — Level0(and_More)]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Radio Noise — Level2(Product_Model)]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Railgun — Level5]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Accelerator — Level5(Extend)]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue: Only One — ID_NoT_Found]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 4.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 4 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue: Parallel World in Real World]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Hex Suspect of the Magician World]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Detectives of This World at War ]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Descent of the Angel That Harms This World]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Last Magician of This One World]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Sinners of This Everyday World Who Breached the Trust]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 5.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 5 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue: Night of Opening — Good_Bye_Yesterday.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Certain Scientific One-Way Road — Last_Order.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Certain Ojou's Railgun — Doubt_Lovers.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Chapter3|Chapter 3: A Certain Misaka's Final Signal — Tender_or_Sugary.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Chapter4|Chapter 4: A Certain Freeloading Forbidden Index — Arrow_Made_of_AZUSA.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue: Night of Ending — Welcome_to_Tomorrow.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 10.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 6 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue: On the Front Side of the Stage]] 
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Opening Ceremony — Baby_Queen.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Chapter2|Chapter 2: After School — Break_Time.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Closure — Battle_Cry.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Stop Sign — Beast_Body,Human_Heart.]] 
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue: On the Other Side of the Stage]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-S2 mw-customtoggle-S2Close mw-customtoggle-S2Open" style="background:#cee6f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Season 2 Novels</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-S2">
'''These novels were covered by the second season of the anime adaptation.'''

[[Image:Vol 9.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 7 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue: Begin Action — The_Page_is_Opened.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Academy City — Science_Worship.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Roman Orthodox Church — The_Roman_Catholic_Church.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Chapter3|Chapter 3: British Puritan Church — Anglican_Church.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Amakusa-Style Church of Distinct Doctrines — AMAKUSA_Style_Remix_of_Church.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue: End Action — The_Page_is_Shut.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 8.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 8 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue: One of Five Fingers — A_TOKIWA-DAI's_World.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Chapter1|Chapter 1: After School of Girls — After_School_of_Angels.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Girls Facing Off — Space_and_Point.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Hiding Lit Debris — "Remnant"]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Judger — Break_or_Crash?]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue: Every Single Day — One_Place,One_Scene.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 7.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 9 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue: Preparations Stage Seen from Third-Person — Parent's_View_Point.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Under the Blazing Sun from the Starting Signal — Commence_Hostilities.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Stadium of Magicians and Espers — "Stab_Sword."]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Tactics of the Pursuers and Pursued — Worst_Counter.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Did the Battle End in Victory or Not? — Being_Unsettled.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 6.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 10 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Chapter5|Chapter 5: An Intermission on a Thread of Tension — Resumption_of_Hostilities.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Chapter6|Chapter 6: Resumption of Pursuit with an End — Accidental_Firing.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Chapter7|Chapter 7: The Foe Who Should Be Beaten, the Person Who Should Be Protected — Parabolic_Antenna.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Chapter8|Chapter 8: The Reason for the Clenched Right Fist — Light_of_a_Night_Sky.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Awaiting People After the Conclusion — Those_Who_Hold_Out_a_Hand.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 11.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 11 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue: The Trip to Northern Italy — Un_Viaggio_in_Italia.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Streets of Chioggia — Il_Vento_di_Chioggia.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Preparations for Going to London — Un_Frammento_di_un_Piano.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Aboard the Capital of Water's Vessel — Il_Mare_e_la_Sconfitta.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Fireboats and a Battle of Gunfire — Lotte_di_Liberazione.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Chapter5|Chapter 5: Queen of the Adriatic Sea — La_Regina_del_Mare_Adriático.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue: Return to Academy City — L'inizio_Nuovo.......]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 12.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 12 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue: Shirai Kuroko, a Pillow, and a Bed — Suffering_of_a_Negligee.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Sunny Morning Classes — Winter_Clothes.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Chapter2|Chapter 2: What Kind of Penalty Game? — Pair_Contract.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Misaka and Misaka's Younger Sister — Sister_and_Sisters.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Two Pairs Gently Cross Paths — Boy_Meets_Girl(x2).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Chapter5|Chapter 5: Vaguely Passing Sunset — Hard_Way,Hard_Luck.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 13.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 13 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Chapter6|Chapter 6: Streets Beaten by the Cold Rain — Battle_Preparation.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Chapter7|Chapter 7: Changing Raindrops into the Color of Blood — Revival_of_Destruction.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Chapter8|Chapter 8: God's Right Seat and the Imaginary Number School District — Fuse=KAZAKIRI.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Chapter9|Chapter 9: The Differences of Obstacles that Stand in One's Way — Two_Kinds_of_Enemies.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Chapter10|Chapter 10: Their Respective Battlefields — The_Way_of_Light_and_Darkness.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Paths Which the Winners and the Losers Must Go Through — The_Branch_Road.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume13 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol SS1.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===SS Volume 1 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Prologue|Prologue: The Calm Before the Start of War — Breakfast.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Pot with Meat and the Appetite for Great Tactics — A_Required_Thing.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Dull Gray Alley — Skill_Out.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Women's Dorm of the Anglican Church — Russian_Roulette.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Chapter4|Chapter 4: A Drunk Mother's Circumstances — The_Two_Leading_Roles.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Epilogue|Epilogue: A Single Will and a Small Key — The_Present_Target.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-S3 mw-customtoggle-S3Close mw-customtoggle-S3Open" style="background:#cedaf2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Prelude to War</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-S3">

[[Image:Vol 14.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 14 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue: An All-Too-Gloomy Church — Bread_and_Wine.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Too-Quick Rate of Change — In_a_Long_Distance_Country.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Trigger that Becomes a Decisive Blow — Muzzle_of_a_Gun.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Something Far Removed from Magicians — Power_Instigation.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Chapter4|Chapter 4: A Collection of Steel that Blocks Out the Sky — Cruel_Troopers.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue: That Answer Leads to the Next Mystery — Question.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 15.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 15 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Prologue|Prologue: The Finest Lead Bullet for You, My Dear — Management.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Chapter1|Chapter 1: An Unmistakable Gun, Unheard by All — Compass.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The People Who Have Slowly Begun To Move — Hikoboshi_II.]] 
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Chapter3|Chapter 3: In the Land of Sealed Powers — Reformatory.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Paper-Thin Difference Between Self-Derision and Pride — Enemy_Level5.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Chapter5|Chapter 5: Defeat the Person with the Strongest Black Wings — Dark_Matter.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Victory Prize for Those Who Survived — Nano_Size_Data.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume15 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 16.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 16 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Prologue|Prologue: The Standing of a Leader — Stage_in_Roma.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Chapter1|Chapter 1: From Peace to Ruin on the Proceeding Path — Battle_of_Collapse.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The People Who Stood Up from Defeat — Flere210. ]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Chapter3| Chapter 3: The Duel to the Death Between Entirely Different Monsters — Saint_VS_Saint.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Who Is Protected by Whom? — Leader_is_All_Members.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Guide to Even More Mayhem — True_Target_is......]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume16 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol SS2.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===SS Volume 2 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Those Who Seek Bundles of Cash and a Battle — The Third Friday of January.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Warrior and Dancer from Norse Mythology — The First Friday of February.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter3|Chapter 3: A Father's Wish Creates a Point of Contact and an Interaction — The Fourth Friday of February.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The True Strength of the Seventh of the Seven — The Third Friday of March.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter5|Chapter 5: What Is It that the World Lacks? — The First Friday of April.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter6|Chapter 6: Getting to the Heart of the Discussion at the Beauty Salon — The Fourth Friday of April.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter7|Chapter 7: Someone Behind the Scenes is Unprepared and Has to Clean Up — The Second Friday of May.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter8|Chapter 8: A Kunoichi Is Someone Who Appears Unexpectedly — The Fourth Friday of May.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter9|Chapter 9: The Relations of the Real World Are Unneeded in the Electric World — The Second Friday of June.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter10|Chapter 10: Would You Accept or Decline an Invitation for the Night? — The First Friday of July.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter11|Chapter 11: Every Field Has Exceptions — The Second Friday of July.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter12|Chapter 12: A Debate Between a Sniper and a Bomber — The Fourth Friday of July.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter13|Chapter 13: The Accuracy of Their Collective Fortunes — The Fourth Friday of August.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter14|Chapter 14: The Dance Between Gatekeeper and Intruder — The Third Friday of September.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter15|Chapter 15: Art Is Divided Between Geniuses and Eccentrics — The Fourth Friday of September.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter16|Chapter 16: There Is a Reason They Do Not Look Like Mothers — The Fifth Friday of September.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter17|Chapter 17: B Movies and Unpolished Gemstones — The First Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter18|Chapter 18: Worthy of Carrying On That Name — The First Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter19|Chapter 19: Shining Gemstones and Bloodstained Rights — The Second Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter20|Chapter 20: How to Respond to a Number of Simultaneous Tragedies — The Second Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter21|Chapter 21: Those with an Undetermined Identity — The Second Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Chapter22|Chapter 22: The Conclusion Cannot Be Grasped Individually — The Second Friday of October.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:SSVolume2 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 17.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 17 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Prologue|Prologue]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Incongruity of Casual Conversation — Irregular_Spark.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Steel Battlefield Floating Above the Clouds — Sky_Bus_365.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Magic Cabal of the British Labyrinth — N∴L∴]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Sword that Brings War and Disaster — Sword_of_Mercy.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Epilogue|Epilogue: Everyone's Expectations and In Their Hearts — War_in_Britain.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume17 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 18.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 18 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Chapter5|Chapter 5: The Mercenary and the Knight's Encounter and Clash — Another_Hero.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Chapter6|Chapter 6: Destruction of the Knights' and Princess's Defensive Line — Safety_in_Subway.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Chapter7|Chapter 7: A Wonderful Enemy Who Is Both a Princess and a Queen — Curtana_Original.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Chapter8|Chapter 8: The Queen and the People's General Election — Union_Jack.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Epilogue|Epilogue: The Nation and a Powerful Enemy Even Further Behind It All — Next_Step.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume18 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 19.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 19 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Prologue|Prologue: The Uninteresting Exchanges Between Evil-doers — Key_Shop.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Goodwill Shall Be Trusted for Now — Dark_Hero.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Chapter2|Chapter 2: A Simple Yet Complex Problem — V.S._Calamity.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Destruction Will Open Up a Wider Path — Battle_to_Die.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Two Monsters Inviting You to Hell — Dragon(≠Angel).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Epilogue|Epilogue: They Will Not Let It End a Tragedy — Brave_in_Hand.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume19 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-WW3 mw-customtoggle-WW3Close mw-customtoggle-WW3Open" style="background:#cecef2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>World War Three</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-WW3">

[[Image:Vol 20.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 20 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Proclamation of War|Proclamation of War]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Prologue|Prologue: A Sky that Stinks of Gunpowder — Shooting_Game.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Good and Evil, They Each Enter the Country — World_War_III.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Beginning of the Invasion and the Counterattack — Angel_Stalker.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Stand-Off Against the Wall of Doubt — Great_Complex.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Now Is the Time to Strike Back — Heroes_Congregate.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 War Report|War Report]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume20 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 21.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 21 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 War Report 2|War Report 2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Chapter5|Chapter 5: The Complex Game Board that Is a Battlefield — Enter_Project.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Chapter6|Chapter 6: The True Darkness Unfolds — Up_the_Castle.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Chapter7|Chapter 7: An Angel Massacring from the Heavens — MISHA_the_Angel_"GABRIEL".]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Chapter8|Chapter 8: Their Many-Sided Counterattack — Combination.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 War Report 3|War Report 3]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume21 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:Vol 22.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Volume 22 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 War Report 4|War Report 4]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Chapter9|Chapter 9: The Time When a Huge Distortion Has Been Corrected — Broken_Right_Hand.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Chapter10|Chapter 10: Completion of the Final Spell's Preliminary Preparations — Rebirth_the...]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Chapter11|Chapter 11: In the Shining Golden Sky — Star_of_Bethlehem.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Chapter12|Chapter 12: Final Battle at the Arctic Ocean — Last_Fight.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Epilogue|Epilogue: Silence and the End of the Boy — Silent_to_Small_Fire.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Proclamation of Armistice|Proclamation of Armistice.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume22 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>

==The Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament series==
[[Image:NT Index Logo.jpg|200px|thumb|New Testament Logo]]
'''Synopsis:''' World War III, caused in Russia by Fiamma, the final member of the Roman Catholic Church's secret group God's Right Seat, was brought to an end thanks to the efforts of Kamijou Touma. However, he disappeared at the end of that war.

This is a world without that hero.

The magic side is being reorganized and improved, and days of rest have arrived for its believers.

In the headquarters of the science side, Academy City, Accelerator, the strongest Level 5, has cut his ties with the darkness and is now living a noisy but calm normal life with Last Order and Misaka Worst. Not a sign of Group remains.

With the material for negotiating with the darkness in hand, Hamazura Shiage, a former Skill-Out Level 0, has returned from Russia and formed a new Item with Kinuhata, Takitsubo, and the returned Mugino. They have begun their activities once more.

Those graduates of the darkness have obtained peace and quiet. That is, until the brutal Freshmen appear before them.

<div style="clear:both;"> </div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Gremlin mw-customtoggle-GremlinClose mw-customtoggle-GremlinOpen" style="background:#f2cece; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Gremlin Saga</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Gremlin">

[[Image:NT To Aru Majutsu no Index cover.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 1 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Prologue|Prologue: The People Who Became the Protagonists By Some Kind of Mistake — War?]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A Peaceful Academy City Without "Him" — City.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Chapter2|Chapter 2: What Lies Ahead, What Should Be Chosen — Dream.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Chapter3|Chapter 3: A Slight Margin and an Omen That Connects to the Next — Girl.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Chapter4|Chapter 4: The Right to Become a Good Person and the Right to Reject It — Black.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Chapter5|Chapter 5: Even If He Does Not Become a Hero — Knight(s).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue: A Modest Feast and Invited Dark Clouds — Witch.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 2.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 2 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Prologue|Prologue: Unknown Purpose, but Still a Threat — Radiosonde_Castle.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Chapter1|Chapter 1: A New Territory, Magic Afterwards — Lecture_One.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Unchanging Days, Occasional Differences — Lecture_Two.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Accepted One, but There is Unrest — Lecture_Three.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Invitation, and That Name is... — Lecture_Four_(and_More).]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue: A Rest, but a Mixture in the Dark Side — Birdway's_Speech.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 3.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 3 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume3|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume3 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Prologue|Prologue: In the Fiftieth State — Crisis_of_Blue_Ocean.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1: Which Side Will Deliver a Preemptive Strike? — First_Contact.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Trigger — Natural_Bomb.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Target of the Scorching Lava — Case_to_War.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter4|Chapter 4: Isolation and the Collapse of the Rules — Trident.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter5|Chapter 5: For What Purpose Should That Strength Be Used? — The_Old_Glory.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue: Reliable Birdway — Queen_Period.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT_Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 4.jpeg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 4 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4|Full Text]])===
::{| class="wikitable" width="100" ; style="float:left"
|
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.01|Main.01]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.02|Sub.02]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.03|Sub.03]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.04|Sub.04]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.05|Sub.05]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.06|Sub.06]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Period.07|Period.07]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.08|Sub.08]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.09|Sub.09]]
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable" width="100" ; style="float:left"
|
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.10|Sub.10]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.11|Main.11]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.12|Main.12]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.13|Sub.13]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.14|Sub.14]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.15|Sub.15]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.16|Sub.16]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.17|Sub.17]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.18|Sub.18]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.19|Sub.19]]
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable" width="100" ; style="float:left"
|
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.20|Main.20]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Period.21|Period.21]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.22|Sub.22]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.23|Sub.23]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.24|Sub.24]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.25|Sub.25]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.26|Sub.26]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.27|Sub.27]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.28|Sub.28]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.29|Sub.29]]
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable" width="300" ; style="float:left"
|
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.30|Main.30]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Main.31|Main.31]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Period.32|Period.32]]
*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume4 Sub.33|Sub.33]]
*[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.34|A_Cardinal_Error.34]]
*[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.35|Connection Process]] 
*[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.36|Chapter n:Even if There is Death  — Dead_to...]]
*[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.37|Profound Destruction — ﾙ9ﾆ1bｶｹrｻ991ﾏ]]
*[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
|}

<div style="clear:both;"> </div>

[[Image:NT vol 5.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 5 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Prologue|Prologue: The Greatest Proposition — Question_01.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Chapter1|Chapter 1: All of a Sudden, It Begins — Open_the_Festival.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Who is the Real Enemy? — Secret_Promise.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Chapter3|Chapter 3: The Gate Opens — Impregnable.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Peace Seen From a Strange Form — Release_Monster.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue: Remove the Restraints — Install......Completion.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 6.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 6 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 ???|???]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night Before the Festival|The Night Before the Festival]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Chapter5|Chapter 5: Surely Justice Can be Found Anywhere — Black_to_Light.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Chapter6|Chapter 6: Monster, Monster, Monster, Monster — All_Bad_Stars.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Chapter7|Chapter 7: One Need Not be a Protagonist — Girls_Battle_Talk.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Chapter8|Chapter 8: The Simplest Structure in the World — One_on_One.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue: Let the Next Fight Begin — Next_Batter_Circle.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night After the Festival|The Night After the Festival]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 7.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 7 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Prologue|Prologue: A Sweet Smelling Inviolable Territory — Girl's_School.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Altar of the Wisdom King — Foreign_matter.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Chapter2|Chapter 2: The Wandering Beast and Outside the Cage — Dead_Girl.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Chapter3|Chapter 3: ??? — Agitate_Halation.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Destruction of the Pre-Established Harmony — Total_Hero.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue: Once It's Over — To_the_Main_Line.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 8.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 8 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Prologue|Prologue: Return of the God of Magic — None_Signal_Island.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Chapter1|Chapter 1: Preparations in the Background of Peace — A_Terrestial_Globe.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Chapter2|Chapter 2: Miniature Garden Within the Investigation — Area_No.23.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Chapter3|Chapter 3: Doubt at the Edge of Decision — Turning_Point.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Chapter4|Chapter 4: Disaster in the Depths of Fertility — Goddess_of_Fertility.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue: Lance — Lance_of_"Gungnir".]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:NT vol 9.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===NT Volume 9 ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Prologue| Prologue: The End of a Certain World - Game_Over.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 5| Chapter 5: Further than the Farthest Reaches - Point_Unknown.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 6a| Chapter 6: Shifting and Fluctuating World - Version_Alpha.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 6b| Chapter 6: Shifting and Fluctuating World - Version_Beta.]]
::*......
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 6c| Chapter 6: Shifting and Fluctuating World - Version_Omega.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 7| Chapter 7: “A Normal High School Boy” - Black_or_White.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Chapter 8| Chapter 8: Girl Phase, Hundreds of Billions - Create_V.S._Break.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Epilogue| Epilogue: Will You Accept It, or Not? - Continue.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]



<br>[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>

==Side Stories==


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Long mw-customtoggle-LongClose mw-customtoggle-LongOpen" style="background:#cef2d7; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Long Stories</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Long">
'''These are novel-length side stories published separately from the main series.'''

[[Image:SP.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Majutsu no Index SP ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume_SP|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Chapter1|Stiyl Magnus]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Chapter2|Mark Space]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Chapter3|Kamijou Touma]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Chapter4|Uiharu Kazari]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Volume SP Afterword|Afterword]]

[[Image:RAILGUN SS1 01 001.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS: Liberal Arts City ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter5|Chapter 5]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter6|Chapter 6]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter7|Chapter 7]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS1 Chapter8|Chapter 8]]

[[Image:INDEX Norse Mythology 01 001.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Norse Mythology ([[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index_SS:Norse_Mythology|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter1|Chapter 1: The Whereabouts of the Restraints — GLEIPNIR.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter2|Chapter 2: When Will We Outgrow Tropical Countries? — YMIR's_ocean.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter3|Chapter 3: The True Meaning of Environmental Protection — RULIC_letters.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter4|Chapter 4: This and That About Life — ALFAR.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter5|Chapter 5: Marine Prison — NAGLFAR.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter6|Chapter 6: The Best Moment — BIFROST.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter7|Chapter 7: The Destination of Salvation — GUNGNIR.]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index SS:Norse Mythology Chapter8|Chapter 8: The One who Teaches the Secret Rune — VALKYRIE.]]

[[Image:RAILGUN SS2 01 001.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS2: Shopping Mall Demonstration ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter5|Chapter 5]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter6|Chapter 6]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter7|Chapter 7]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:RailgunSS2 Chapter8|Chapter 8]]

[[Image:INDEX RtE Cover.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Majutsu no Index: Road to Endymion ([[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Road_to_Endymion|Full Text]])===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Endymion Chapter5|Chapter 5]]

[[Image:INDEX Necessarius Cover.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Necessarius Special Entrance Exam===
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Illustrations|Illustrations]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter2|Chapter 2]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter4|Chapter 4]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter5|Chapter 5]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter6|Chapter 6]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter7|Chapter 7]]
::*[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Necessarius Chapter8|Chapter 8]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>


<div class="mw-customtoggle-Short mw-customtoggle-ShortClose mw-customtoggle-ShortOpen" style="background:#e9f2ce; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Short Stories</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Short">
'''These are stand-alone, chapter-length short stories published and released as additions to other franchise related material.'''

===[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare|Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare]]===

===[[Toaru Majutsu no Index:Toaru Love Letter SS|Toaru Majutsu no Index: Love Letter SS]]===

===[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Railgun_PSP_SS|Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS: A Superfluous Story, or A Certain Incident’s End]]===

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>

==Official Parody Stories==

<div class="mw-customtoggle-Parody mw-customtoggle-ParodyClose mw-customtoggle-ParodyOpen" style="background:#e6e6e6; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Parody Stories</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 5px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Parody">

[[Image:OreImoRaigun.jpg|x200px|frameless|right]]
===[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:A_Certain_Prophecy_Index|A Certain Prophecy Index]]===

===A Certain Collaboration ([[Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai:A Certain Collaboration|Full Text]])===
::*[[Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai:Chapter 1: My Little Sister Can't Cooperate with a Railgun|Chapter 1: My Little Sister Can't Cooperate with a Railgun]]
::*[[Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai:Chapter 2: My Little Sister Can't Have a Girls' Talk with a Teleporter|Chapter 2: My Little Sister Can't Have a Girls' Talk with a Teleporter]]
::*[[Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai:Chapter 3: A Certain Electromaster's Life Counseling (Girls' Talk) Part 1|Chapter 3: A Certain Electromaster's Life Counseling (Girls' Talk) Part 1]]
::*[[Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai:Chapter 4: A Certain Electromaster's Life Counseling (Girls' Talk) Part 2|Chapter 4: A Certain Electromaster's Life Counseling (Girls' Talk) Part 2]]

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
</div>

==Story Calendar==

[[Index_Calendar|'''A Certain Unified Calendar''']]

'''An unofficial pictorial representation of all of the events which have occurred in the Toaru Series collective franchise, in calendar format.'''

[[#toc|'''<small>Back to Contents</small>''']]

==Project Staff==

*Project Administrator: ''None Designated''
*Project Supervisor: [[user:Teh_Ping|Teh Ping]]

===Translators===
'''ACTIVE'''
:*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

<div class="mw-customtoggle-Inactive" style="width:210px; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="left">'''INACTIVE'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:210px;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Inactive">
:*[[user:Flere821|Flere821]]
:*Twi from OneManga forums
:*[[User:Wilfriback|Wilfriback]]
:*[[user:Kwei|Kwei]]
:*[[User:Nera Sleith|Nera Sleith]]
:*An Anonymous imageboard user
:*[[user:Joay|Joay]]
:*[[user:pikachuwei|pikachuwei]]
:*[[user:MerrickXasis|MerrickXasis]]
</div>

'''M.I.A.'''
:*[[User:Holy|Holy]]
:*[[user:Teh_Ping|Teh Ping]] (Will only help out when there's more than 400 pages per volume)

===Editors===
:{| class="wikitable" width="150" ; style="float:left"
|
*[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]]
*[[User:Tactician J|Tact]]
*[[User:Snorca|Snorca]]
*[[User:CarVac|CarVac]]
*[[User:Kuroi Hadou|Kuroi Hadou]]
*[[User:Hiro Hayase|Hiro Hayase]]
*[[user:Teh_Ping|Teh Ping]]
*[[User:Skies|Skies]]
*[[User:Cliff|Cliff]]
|-
|}
{| class="wikitable" width="130" ; style="float:left"
|
:Proofreaders
:*[[User:Tactician J|Tact]]
:*[[User:CarVac|CarVac]]
:*[[User:Xionol|Xionol]]

:Page Checkers
:*[[User:Saganatsu|Saganatsu]]
:*[[User:Wilfriback|Wilfriback]]
|-
|}
<div style="clear:both;"> </div>
'''All editors that can speak and write English proficiently are welcome.'''

==Series Overview==
<div class="mw-customtoggle-First" style="width:100%; background:#cee0f2; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>First Series</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-First">
*Toaru Majutsu no Index (April 10, 2004, ISBN 4-8402-2658-X)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 2 (June 10, 2004, ISBN 4-8402-2701-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 3 (September 10, 2004, ISBN 4-8402-2785-3)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 4 (December 10, 2004, ISBN 4-8402-2858-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 5 (April 10, 2005, ISBN 4-8402-3025-0)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 6 (July 10, 2005, ISBN 4-8402-2973-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 7 (November 10, 2005, ISBN 4-8402-3205-9)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 8 (January 10, 2006, ISBN 4-8402-3269-5)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 9 (April 10, 2006, ISBN 4-8402-3385-3)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 10 (May 10, 2006, ISBN 4-8402-3428-0)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 11 (October 10, 2006, ISBN 4-8402-3581-3)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 12 (January 10, 2007, ISBN 978-4-8402-3683-6)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 13 (April 10, 2007, ISBN 978-4-8402-3801-4)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index SS (July 10, 2007, ISBN 978-4-8402-3912-7)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 14 (November 10, 2007, ISBN 978-4-8402-4062-8)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 15 (January 10, 2008, ISBN 978-4-8402-4145-8)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 16 (June 10, 2008, ISBN 978-4-04-867086-9)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index SS 2 (November 10, 2008, ISBN 978-4-04-867342-6)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 17 (March 10, 2009, ISBN 978-4-04-867591-8)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 18 (July 10, 2009, ISBN 978-4-04-867897-1)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 19 (November 10, 2009, ISBN 978-4-04-868069-1)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 20 (March 10, 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-868393-7)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 21 (August 10, 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-868762-1)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index 22 (October 10, 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-868972-4)
</div>
<div class="mw-customtoggle-Second" style="width:100%; background:#f2cece; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Second Series</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Second">
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament (March 10, 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870319-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 2 (August 10, 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870738-1)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 3 (December 10, 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-886240-0)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 4 (March 10, 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-886373-5)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 5 (October 10, 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-886978-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 6 (January 10, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-891253-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 7 (May 10, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-891604-2)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 8 (September 10, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-891904-3)
</div>
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament 9 (January 10, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-866222-2)

<div class="mw-customtoggle-Others" style="width:100%; background:#cef2d7; cursor:pointer;" align="center">'''<big>Others</big>'''</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="text-align:left; margin:5px 20px clear:both; font-size:100%; background:transparent; width:100%;" id="mw-customcollapsible-Others">
*Toaru Majutsu no Index SP (collection of four side stories released in one book, previously known as: Stiyl SS, Mark Space SS, Mars SS, and Uiharu SS)
*Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS: Liberal Arts City (eight-part side story, bundled with the Limited Edition DVDs of Season 1 of the Toaru Majutsu no Index anime)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Norse Mythology (eight-part side story, bundled with the Limited Edition DVDs of the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun anime)
*Toaru Kagaku no Railgun SS2: Shopping Mall Demonstration (eight-part side story, bundled with the Limited Edition DVDs of Season 2 of the Toaru Majutsu no Index anime)
*Toaru Jihanki no Fanfare (special mini-novel by Baccano! and Durarara!! author, Narita Ryogho, bundled with the Special Edition of Volume 5 of the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun manga)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: Love Letter SS (side story released in artbook Rainbow Spectrum: Colors)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index: Road to Endymion (Limited release with the Miracle of Endymion movie)
*Toaru Majutsu no Index & Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai Crossover (June 10, 2013, web chapter on Nico's website).
</div>
*Toaru Majutsu no Index SS: Necessarius Special Entrance Exam (eight-part side story, bundled with the Limited Edition DVDs/BDs of the Toaru Kagaku no Railgun S anime)

==More Information==
*[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index The wikipedia article]
*[http://www12.atwiki.jp/index-index/ とある魔術の禁書目録　Index] (日本語、そしてネタバレの危険性がある！)
*[http://toarumajutsunoindex.wikia.com/wiki/Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index_Wiki Toaru Majutsu no Index Wikia]
*[http://r-s.sakura.ne.jp/w/i_m.htm Kiyotaka Haimura website]

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Genre - Action]]

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2014-01-22T04:01:53Z

EnigmaticRepose:

==Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“The military scandal shows no sign of ending. The council has made the rare decision to treat the plan to use an Object for a military assassination as attempted murder. The brigadier general thought to be the primary individual behind the plan has been called back from Oceania for…”

The princess sat on a metal staircase of a building near the Object maintenance area. She may have been bored because she was staring blankly at a 1seg TV program on her handheld device. The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles and their tires measured over two meters in diameter. Stairs were needed simply to enter them.

In the dry desert, merely stepping into the shade felt much cooler. The princess had the front of her special suit open so the wind could reach her skin. As someone who spent long periods of time in an air-conditioned cockpit, her upper limit for heat appeared to be rather low.

A short distance away, the two idiots were using shovels to dig everywhere they could in the hot sand.

“Quenser, you idiot! You don’t remember where you buried them, do you!?”

“I marked it last night! I secretly stuck a stick into the ground.”

“When Myonri dug there, she found a ton of dead cicadas and almost passed out! Damn… What is going on? Where did we dig the hole we put the canned foods and packaged foods leftover from the victory party!? I thought we were going to be freed from those eraser-like rations for a while!!”

“Hurry, hurry! This maintenance base is mobile, remember? If the entire unit decides to move, we’ll lose all those cans! There was beef stew in there. If we lose that, it’ll traumatize me!!”

“What are those two doing?”

An old woman stuck her head out of the Object maintenance area and spoke to the princess.

The princess looked up from the screen and toward the old woman.

“It looks like a treasure hunt.”

“You aren’t going to join them?”

“I’m not in the mood for food. And I just finished building a cicada grave.”

“???”

The old maintenance woman did not quite understand, so she decided to ask them directly.

“Hey, slacking student.”

“Eeee!! One of the lecturers has locked onto us!”

“As long as she doesn’t tell that huge-breasted commander, we’re fine! Seduce her or something to bring her onto our side!! I’ll go dig over there!!”

“No fair! Don’t run off on your own!!”

“What are you doing out here?”

The old woman’s words seemed to nail Quenser to the ground.

She was asking what he was doing “out here” because he was not in the Object maintenance area.

He slowly and stiffly turned toward her.

“W-would two cans of lunchmeat be enough for us to come to an understanding? Or maybe peaches or pineapple!?”

“I’m not asking about that. Have you forgotten why you came out to the battlefield in the first place? I thought it was to spend as much time observing the Object as possible so you could learn as much as possible.”

“Are you seriously saying that?” Quenser sounded surprised as he continued digging around randomly. “They’re repainting the Object in there. They’re using tons of organic solvent in a closed space and I didn’t dodge bullets to end up high on paint thinner.”

“It is true painting an Object does not use any specialized technology. I admit that.”

“It’s the same as a normal warship. The Object’s onion armor is made from special metal plates that have high-heat resistant and reactive elements mixed in like a katana, but that also means the armor will rust when exposed to the elements. We can’t have the pride of our nation rusting, so they’re careful to use techniques of keeping it from rusting, right? They’re not mixing in ferrite to give it high-level stealth ability and they’re not using camouflage patterns based on psychology and research into human cognizance to hide it from the human brain. There’s nothing in it for a student like me.”

Those sorts of techniques had been used for the fighters and tanks of the previous age.

This had been due to the high risk of being shot down or destroyed. But that effort was unnecessary with the colossal Objects which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

Also, it would be exceedingly difficult to hide a 50+ meter armored weapon from radar or the naked eye.

“The technical issues are a factor, but the paint job has more to do with the desires of the higher ups in the military and government.”

“They don’t want their hero sneaking around?”

“When sending an obviously overpowered weapon into battle, they need a tricky argument to silence the pacifists. That’s why they like the symbolism of a hero that defeats an abominable enemy in a fair fight. The Objects have brought an end to the nuclear age by force, so they want to maintain the freshness of that impression for as long as possible. Letting it fade into history would be a waste.”

“I suppose they need a simple commercial to gain the massive military budget they need for them. That’s why they want the Objects to always be polished up bright like an exhibit at a motor show. They even have a lovely pilot Elite by its side to play the role of the companion girl. …But none of that is a job for the designer I want to be. Get a PR guy for that.”

Quenser shrugged.

“Let me touch the more…well…sensitive parts at the core. Like the JPlevelMHD reactor or the targeting sensor control system.”

“Don’t be silly. You aren’t touching those. Before you even think about it, you need to pass at least fifteen international exams.”

As the princess sat on the metal staircase and stared blankly up into the blue sky, she called out to Quenser.

“Qu-Quenser?”

“??? What is it?”

“Did something happen with that Information Alliance Elite? She said something I didn’t like about what she was going to do with you.”

“Um, that can apply to a lot of Elites. Which one are we talking about?”

“…There are a lot of them?”

The princess’s expression made it clear he had stirred up unnecessary trouble.

Quenser, however, did not understand what she had been trying to ask.

“Anyway, princess, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the karaoke!! During the battle with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, you had the nerve to say idols were worthless because anyone can sing!!”

“Uuh… I-I remember.”

“Good. These days, you can run a karaoke place anywhere using internet download services. There are even some here in Oceania. During our next day off, I demand to see if you have the skills to back up your bragging!!”

The old maintenance woman let out a quiet sigh.

This arrangement was actually almost exactly what the princess had expected to happen and wanted to happen, but she did not seem to know what to do now that things were going more smoothly than expected.

It was an example of a plan coming back to bite her.

The two youths compared their schedules to set up a date and Quenser suddenly spoke up once they had finished.

In that instant, he became a true idiotic designer.

“Oh, right. I need to ask you too, princess. The reactor may be too dangerous, but can I check out the targeting sensor control system or somewhere else that will help me study Object design?”

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

“Do you not trust me at all?”

“It’s not an issue of your skill,” said the old woman in exasperation. “There are different types of people who work with Object design. There are those who build up virtual models based on theory, there are academic types that materialize and realize those models, there are inventor types who have a single idea and go beyond their primary field to gather everything they need to realize it, and there are craftsmen who use their experience and unexplainable instincts in their fingertips to produce results greater than precision manufacturing equipment. The targeting sensor control system you’re talking about is a black box that complexly combines all of those together. Not even the princess or I will touch it without reason.”

“So you entrust your life to something no one touches?”

“That is not what she meant,” said the princess. “It is maintained in sessions including more than fifty people. You can think of it like exchanging our opinions to find the right flavor for a cocktail we do not know the recipe to. Bringing in someone who doesn’t know the flavor would distort our opinions and raise the likelihood of the final drink not matching the perfect flavor.”

“An Object has over one hundred cannons, both big and small,” continued the old woman. “Each of those has multiple sensors and the entire Object has its primary radars and sensors. Coordinating all of those is beyond human ability. Most of it is handled by computers, but there are some situations where that doesn’t cut it. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Laser weapons?”

“That’s right. Those move at the speed of light, so they can’t be avoided after seeing them fired. What matters is predicting the attack by observing the minute movements of the enemy’s cannons and sensor lenses. You can’t leave that to a computer both when attacking and when defending.”

In a battle between Objects, one could not simply continue to evade. One had to attack and hit.

If an enemy would predict the attack before it was fired, one had to predict where they would evade to and fire there instead.

“Ultimately, the whole system only works when you combine the precise sensors, the high-spec computers, and the fearful fingertips of a human. It seems the Information Alliance is researching completely automated targeting algorithms, but they have a long way to go towards making it practical. Then again, they’re more skilled than anyone when it comes to using information, so who knows how much we can trust what our intelligence division has gathered on them.”

“I won’t lose to something like that.”

This seemed to have worked up an odd sense of competition in the princess because she pouted her lips and took a sip from her drink’s straw.

Quenser then heard an electronic tone from the small radio in his uniform.

When he pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, Froleytia’s voice spoke to him.

“Study time is over for the moment, Quenser. Head over to the briefing room with the others. A pre-mission briefing is about to begin.”

“What do we have to do now?”

“That’s what I will explain to you. But it’s a simple mission. I’m not asking you to make a charge at a cutting-edge Object or anything.”

“I beg you to never ask me to do that!! I haven’t been doing it because I want to!!”

“Toward the end of the incident with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, a large underground structure was discovered when the ground collapsed. That was from your report, Quenser.”

“W-well, yes.”

“Today, you will be investigating the abandoned facility. This is simple post-battle cleanup. I suppose the police would call it a crime scene inspection. I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the war, but we have to control everything in the vicinity of the battle. I will be the one writing the annoying report to the higher ups, so you all can help me out a little.”

“So no other military is involved this time? There aren’t going to be any firefights?”

“That’s right. Unless you’ve heard reports of the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance living in holes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want us to carefully check over this place, but nothing – nothing at all – is going to happen? We just have to drive across the desert as if having a picnic, snap a few photos of these strange ruins, and that’s it? You promise?”

“And surprisingly, you actually get paid. With the people’s tax money, no less.”

“Woo hoo!! Oh, god! I can’t wait!! Please fill my team with a ton of female soldiers! This is perfect for Operation North Wind and the Sun. Partway through, our tension is sure to drop and then they’ll strip down to their thin inner clothing!! Hooray! Hooray!!”

“Yes, yes. I get it. You will be in your usual filthy guy team with Heivia. Have fun in your sweaty world of little clothing.”

“Hah hah hah. If you really do that, I’m starting a coup.”

“Hah hah hah!! Do you really think I’m the type to joke about this?”

The transmission ended with a click.

Since Froleytia said it, there was no doubt that he would end up surrounded by men. However, Quenser was not about to give up. He still had hope.

“On a boring investigation, the investigation team, guard team, and transport team will all move as one big group. Even if my team looks like a boys’ school, there’s still a chance of cute young girls in the other teams!! I haven’t lost yet!!”

“Sigh. Are you sure it will turn out that well?” asked the old woman.

“I am!! After all, the end of February is getting towards the end of the fiscal year!! The top levels of the military need to use up their extra budget or the defense budget will be lowered next year. Sending out tons of unnecessary soldiers for a boring mission could easily happen now!!”

“Why are you only this good at calculations at times like this?”

That was of course because this topic was the most compatible with the pink brain cells of adolescence.

At any rate, Quenser raised his hands in an expression of joy.

“Fwa ha ha ha ha ha!! I won’t let our commander win this time! The amount of girls in skimpy, wet, and see-through clothes would surprise a soft drink commercial! Paradise awaits me!!”

===Part 2===

[[Image:HO_v07_260.png|thumb]]
“…Ah!?”

Quenser suddenly opened his eyes.

His recent memories were fuzzy. He could not see anything properly. The blue sky of the desert spreaded out before his eyes. He seemed to be lying on his back, but he could not feel the burning of the hot sand.

He felt an unpleasant cold sweat as if he had anemia.

He detected a burning smell mixed with a rusty metallic smell.

…A rusty metallic smell?

“Gah!? Gfh! D-dammit. I just remembered. Our helicopter crashed. Then what was that dream I just had…? Don’t tell me my life was flashing before my eyes! Cough cough!!”

The surface of the desert was not flat. It had large undulations similar to a stormy sea and some areas had height differences of several meters. He was lying in a position to use one of those sand dunes as a shield.

But what was he being shielded from?

The answer was obviously the attacks being fired their way.

Seemingly never-ending sounds of bursting gunfire made him think of a fireworks show gone wrong. Quenser’s group was not on the attack. They were unilaterally being fired upon. The storm of steel was so great they would have been torn to pieces in just a few seconds if not for the dune.

Heivia had his back pressed against the dune while sticking just his rifle’s sensors up over it.

“Are you finally awake, you bastard!? I was beginning to think I wasted an adrenaline cartridge!!”

“Seriously? You mean one of those thick needles you stab directly into the heart!? I was in that bad a state!?”

“I thought this would be best. If you were hitting on an angel, I apologize.”

“Oh, right! I saw my life flash before my eyes! It seemed so real!! Um…huh? I couldn’t quite remember what happened. I remembered seeing the princess, Froleytia, and the old maintenance woman.”

“Right, right. I already knew how little fidelity you had, but it’s good to know you’re the same as ever!”

As his blood flow returned to normal, the data in Quenser’s head gradually fell into the proper order.

(Oh, that’s right.)

He had been sent on a mission by Froleytia.

They were to investigate the underground structure he had come across during the battle with the Simple Is Best and Hornet Storm. Even if it was not a very important building, she had needed detailed information on anything in the combat zone for a report to the higher ups.

Quenser and the others had been loaded into the large transport helicopters and were sent to the area of desert in question.

Nothing but cream-colored sand had continued in every direction, so it had been a frightening sight to look down on. He had wanted to avoid getting lost here. Even a South American jungle would have more opportunities for survival techniques.

The only landmarks were the remains of the rusty pipelines that travelled here and there like blood vessels of the planet. But if one was stranded, it would probably be impossible to tell a rescue team where one was using them. After all, they would continue in a straight line for 100 or even 1000 kilometers.

“It doesn’t matter how intently you stare down there, you aren’t going to find an oasis or a girl in a micro bikini,” Heivia said. “More importantly, can you believe we’re travelling over a battlefield in a helicopter? Sure, we aren’t directly dealing with an Object, but one of them may suddenly decide to go on a hunt.”

But if they had been crammed into military trucks to travel along the rough desert under the hot sun, they would have been struck by the double-punch of heat stroke and motion sickness before even arriving at the site.

After the formation of large helicopters had travelled for a while, they had spotted the remains of the terminal facility where several old pipelines gathered. That facility had been used to gather water from deep underground rather than oil.

But then they had soon spotted a few trucks with canopies parked near the old facility.

Quenser had frowned.

“Are those scavengers trying to gather anything of value?”

“There can’t be any proper machinery left. And look at the canopies. That’s the Blue Cross. They’re the world’s largest medical humanitarian organization. They head to Antarctic and the jungle to find samples of deadly bacteria, they give money to groups researching nanotech medicine, and all sorts of other things. They’re probably providing food.”

“Nanotech? Oh, you mean the techniques taken from military science where it can be used as a new method for regulating Elite’s bodies? They place drops of medicine in a membrane like a small bubble, get that bubble past the filters to the brain or kidneys, and provide the medicine directly to the target. They use ultrasonic waves to break the outer shell at the desired point, right?”

“You get excited about anything that has even the slightest connection to Objects, don’t you? Can you stop breathing so heavily? It’s creepy.”

“Anyway, what’s the Blue Cross doing at these abandoned ruins?”

At that point, Quenser’s memories suddenly lost coherency.

As he laid on his back with a hand on his sweaty brow, he let out a groan.

“That’s right. Those bastards weren’t the Blue Cross at all. Someone painted up their trucks to trick us. They removed the canopies and there were missiles inside.”

“Are you the type that needs coffee and toast to wake up in the morning? If not, get moving!! We’re gonna be surrounded!!”

The burnt smell was coming from the remains of their crashed helicopter.

The whirl of bullets was not coming from just one direction. They were partially surrounded by a C-shape.

It was unclear who the enemy was or how many of them there were.

Their group had to be at least two or three sizes larger than Quenser and Heivia’s group. More than twenty people were lying behind the sand dune like Quenser. They all had their arms or legs bound with bandages to stop their bleeding, some had the removed stock of a carbine used to set a broken bone, and a lot of them were unconscious. The area had become a makeshift field hospital.

Quenser looked up at the blue sky that seemed to continue forever.

“Where are the other helicopters? Where’s our way out!? We’ll just be worn down bit by bit like this. We can’t fight in the desert without a means of mobility!”

“All of the functioning helicopters have temporarily withdrawn! We can’t exactly overcome their surface-to-air missiles with the power of friendship. If they hover around here to pick us up, they’ll be shot down! No help is coming until we silence those!!”

“They may be transport helicopters, but they have machineguns attached to the door, right? Firing down with those will make a huge difference!!”

“In this clean age, no one wants to start a Western-style quick draw using heavy weaponry. We won’t get anywhere wishing for something that isn’t coming. Focus on reality!!”

Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see lay in every direction.

There was no escape without some kind of vehicle. Even if they began to flee on foot, they would be quickly overtaken and riddled with holes. Falling back would not improve their situation and most of those injured in the crash were in no state to walk on their own.

The enemy was advancing.

Once the enemy surpassed the sand dune, they would only sink into a puddle of blood.

“Screw this. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I thought this was supposed to be an easy mission.”

As Quenser complained, he rolled over onto his stomach. He then climbed up the dune and stopped next to Heivia.

“How many are there?”

“Somewhere between 50 and 60. Only a samurai or ninja can defeat that many in a straight fight. It will be a different story if we have support from the helicopters, but we need to silence those armored vehicles to do that.”

“Who are they anyway?”

“I don’t know. But knowing that they’re bastards who don’t deserve to live is good enough for me,” spat out Heivia. “But their equipment is relatively new. It looks like they gathered downgraded weapons that the Capitalist Corporations and the Information Alliance sell to gather foreign currency. Their ability may be intentionally lowered, but they’re expensive. I doubt a gang or slum residents who are strapped for cash can get their hands on that stuff.”

The repeated sounds of gunfire caused Quenser to grimace.

“Are you saying those are trained soldiers? They’re firing around almost at random. If they were aiming each shot, we would have already been filled with bullets.”

“Listen, skinny boy. Have you never heard of sounding out your enemy? When you don’t know where they are, you fire all over the place and wait for them to react. …It’s all over once they find out where exactly we are. They have tons of machineguns and missiles on their trucks. Specifically, they have more than ten trucks. This shield of sand is meaningless. They may be surface-to-air, but a few of those missiles will blow the terrain to smithereens.”

Quenser let out a long, slow breath.

And then he asked another question.

“Then what exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Well done getting your mind in gear.”

Heivia pulled back the rifle sensors he had been peering over the dune and used the sand to write out the information he had risked his life to collect.

“They have their machinegun and surface-to-air missile equipped trucks set up to protect the terminal facility that pumps water up from underground. They’re between five and six hundred meters away. Their rifles and machineguns can reach us from there, but fifty or sixty soldiers armed with carbines and light machineguns are slowly approaching. Once they cross a certain line, we’ll be slaughtered. We need to do something before they can manage that.”

“We can’t win if we fight? Are there too many of them?”

“As I said, we could annihilate their infantry with our helicopter machineguns, but those helicopters can’t approach right now. We need to silence those surface-to-air missile containers sitting up on their trucks.”

“But…”

Quenser glanced over at Heivia.

He carried a shoulder-fired missile launcher over his back. That could be used to blow up the armored trucks, but there was one major problem.

“That’s right. I only have one shot and there are over ten of them. This isn’t going to work.”

“…”

Quenser remained silent for a moment.

He stared at the rough map his friend had drawn on the sand.

“Heivia, my memories aren’t perfect due to the shock, so I need to ask you something.”

“I’m not your fiancé from before your memory loss if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“It’s about when they attacked our helicopter with their missiles. I knew I could’t expect a large transport helicopter to evade, but we weren’t shot down without putting up any kind of fight, right?”

“What? Well, I remembered a siren blaring as it scattered chaff and flares to trick their radar. I thought we might have activated an infrared jammer as well, but you could see how well all that worked. We were shot down and the other helicopters were forced to withdraw.”

“In other words, we had countermeasures, but they were completely ineffective,” said Quenser while emphasizing each word. “They had some large radar equipment supporting their targeting. That’s how they saw through our deceptions and shot us down. But what if all of their anti-air weaponry were reliant on it? We could take out their ‘net in the sky’ by destroying just the one piece of equipment. Guns and missiles are essentially the same. Without a means of aiming them, they won’t cause any damage.”

“It does make sense,” groaned Heivia. “All of the trucks have oddly large antennae attached. It’s definitely possible they’re using accurate data from a command vehicle that specializes in gathering intelligence. But…”

“But?”

“Where is it?” Heivia stabbed his rifle’s stock into the center of his map on the sand. “You heard me, right? There are more than ten of their armored trucks and we only have one missile. If we don’t hit the command vehicle on the first shot, it’s all over. Once we lose our trump card, we have nothing left!! Is there any way to tell which one it is!?”

“That’s a good question.”

Quenser folded his arms lightly and traced his index finger over his mouth.

He looked like he was contemplating the dinner menu.

“Heivia, how many assault rifle and handgun bullets do you have left?”

“What?”

“If it isn’t enough, gather some more from those too injured to move. They won’t do them any good anyway.”

“Wait, wait! They may have been disguised as the Blue Cross, but their trucks probably still have handmade plate inside. You can’t fight armored trucks with normal bullets!!”

“I’m not trying to destroy the trucks. I have no interest in the bullets themselves.”

“???”

Quenser ignored Heivia’s confused look and gathered a few assault rifles and carbines.

He disassembled them without any tools and removed the barrel which resembled a long, narrow pipe.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Make some giant fireworks.”

Quenser bent and crushed one end of the long, narrow tubes, removed the rifle bullets from the magazines, and scattered them across the sand.

“A long time ago, they would actually use this kind of simple rocket weapon in Asia. They were meant to set fire to castles or ships. …You said the distance is five or six hundred meters? Cramming in this much intelligent military powder should reach even with the plastic explosive and fuse attached to the front.”

“Are you saying we can oppose all those armored trucks if we go to this extra trouble?” Heivia looked displeased. “Have you forgotten what matters most with weapons, Quenser? Targeting. Reaching them and hitting them are two very different things! A simple fireworks rocket made by stuffing powder into a tube and attaching it to a stick for stability isn’t going to hit!!”

“It doesn’t have to hit.” Quenser readily overturned Heivia’s assumption. “They think they’re perfectly safe over there, so if bombs start bursting too far away to have been thrown, they’ll definitely panic. They’ll try to evacuate the most important thing first. I don’t know how stupid they are, but they are smart enough to know they can’t afford to have their radar vehicle destroyed. While they’re busy secretly moving their most important card away, you just have to blow it up with your missile.”

Heivia was dumbfounded, but Quenser continued his cunning explanation.

“You mentioned sounding out your enemy, remember? Let’s show them how it’s really done.”

===Part 3===

As planned, the makeshift rockets were fired into the Oceanian sky.

Heivia fired his shoulder-fired missile into the command truck with the large-scale radar antenna attached and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s unilateral counterattack began.

Once the threat of anti-air weapons was removed, the large transport helicopters were able to return.

They had large caliber machineguns bolted directly to the floor near the door.

As the sound of those firing exploded overhead, Quenser covered his mouth with one hand.

“Why do people like to root for the underdog? Where did my hatred for them go?”

“I think you’re actually looking down on them with a sense of superiority. But don’t worry. You’re enjoying your life well enough.”

Quenser and Heivia laid face down on the slope of the sand dune while the sounds of destruction continued.

The handmade armored trucks had been relatively well modified, but they were filled with holes, their gasoline tanks and weaponry ignited, and they violently exploded. The intense destruction of the machineguns rained down evenly on the group of infantry who had tried to corner Quenser and the others. There were no screams. Instead, a dark red sauce was splattered across the giant frying pan of the desert.

Quenser entered a philosophic mood.

“What is peace?”

Heivia picked his nose with his little finger.

“It’s when we’re still alive.”

After about ten minutes, the sounds of gunfire completely stopped.

A few of the transport helicopters remained at the ready in the air while a few others slowly descended to collect the injured.

One soldier who stepped out of a helicopter shouted over the noise of the rotors.

“Thanks for your work!! We have permission to bring back all of your injured. Leave them with us and they can recover in a bed that reeks of disinfectant!!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it! But take a look behind you before you say that. The helicopters aren’t at all ready to leave. We can’t leave until the investigation is done!!”

Quenser and Heivia watched as the investigation team and their guards started for the pump facility that connected to the giant underground structure.

The ceiling of the underground structure had collapsed during the previous battle, so it was open to the surface. However, no one would rappel down a ten meter cliff when a perfectly safe staircase was available.

Quenser used his uniform’s sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow and looked up at the roasting sun that felt like the end of the world.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to sit around here. We would dry up before they finished.”

“There’s a pipeline over there. It’s rusted and falling apart, but we can rest behind it. The humidity should be lower and it’ll block the sun.”

The pipeline was a tube with a diameter of over two meters, so it produced enough of a shadow to sit in. The two boys walked over and found most of the other soldiers already leaning up against the rusted metal pipe like a line of ants.

“This is awful.”

“Are you sure it’s cooler here? I feel like gathering together would concentrate the heat.”

Quenser pulled out the water bottle attached to his uniform and took a gulp. It had been warmed by the sun and his body temperature, so he spat it back out.

“Yuck! It feels like I’m drinking my own sweat!!”

“Use your head, student. You need to cool the water bottle with the icing spray used for machineguns. Medic!!”

Heivia’s joking shout let Quenser know the danger had truly passed.

“So what was that? This pump facility is in ruins and all the usable equipment was removed. Missiles cost 10,000 euros each. Why would they defend this place with their lives?”

“Look over here, Quenser.”

Heivia peered inside a broken portion of the pipeline. The pipe was over two meters wide, so it looked more like a metal tunnel.

In fact, it was one.

“There’s sand gathered at the bottom and there’s a thick line down the middle. It looks like a tire track. From the width, I’d say a motorcycle.”

“A tire track?”

With a confused look, Quenser peered inside the broken pipe.

And then it hit him.

“This abandoned pipeline network stretches across the entire desert. No water or oil is being sent through it, so it’s a safe empty space. You don’t mean…”

“When the military government ruled Oceania, secret funds, weapons, and drugs travelled across the country like ghosts were transporting them. They slipped right past the military checkpoints and satellite surveillance. It was said they did it by bribing or threatening the local soldiers, but this might be it.”

“A secret tunnel? So as easily as heading underground through a manhole, they could freely move across Oceania without being checked?”

It was not the pump facility or the giant underground structure that mattered.

Someone was trying to hide the large-scale smuggling network that used the pipelines.

“People armed with the latest military equipment were fighting to protect a smuggling network? That smells fishy to me. Is it an intelligence agency raising funds by selling drugs or something?”

“But who exactly were they?” Heivia looked annoyed as he glanced over at the corpses which had been almost completely destroyed. “Their equipment looks like a collection of Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance stuff. And it’s the downgraded versions sold for foreign currency rather than the official military equipment. They announce they’re lowering the quality, but still keep the price high. I doubt a local gang or mafia would want to use them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Were they soldiers or were they people hired to help out? Well, either way they would mix in a few pros to take command.”

Suddenly, an infantryman guarding the exterior of the pump facility spoke to Quenser and Heivia.

“If you’re discussing conspiracy theories, you might want to check this out.”

“What?”

Heivia sounded puzzled as the man tossed him a small rectangular handheld device.

However, this was not the type issued to Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. It also had dark red stains in places.

The soldier shrugged.

“I was scavenging. Those thugs out front were splattered everywhere, so I gathered whatever I thought I could sell.”

“Seriously? You really set foot in that poisonous swamp?”

“And in exchange, I found some interesting data. It looks less like official data and more like someone at the bottom gathered some data to figure out what he was involved in.”

“…”

Quenser turned on the device and it was not even locked with a password.

Some of the data files were filled with numbers about ten digits long. He could not read hexadecimal off the top of his head, so he could not tell anything from just that.

“Wait a second,” said Heivia as he peered in from the side. “The first four digits are all the same. I thought these looked familiar. They’re bank account numbers, aren’t they? I think these belong to a major Information Alliance one.”

“Why does a Legitimacy Kingdom noble know that?”

“Don’t be stupid. In this age of wars, you never know what levies will be imposed. Do you really think a greedy noble is going to keep all his money in a single account? We have tons of ways of spreading out our assets. My family has a group of specialist accountants working for us.”

Quenser tilted his head as he scrolled through the iron-smelling device.

There appeared to be over one hundred bank account numbers.

“So what is this list of bank accounts?”

“Probably a deposit list. In other words, these connect to the names of the people cooperating with the people running things from the shadows. Look, the numbers at the end of the account numbers are the same too. That probably refers to a branch in a tropical island tax haven. They’re probably using secret accounts to launder their money.”

“The people running things from the shadows? We still don’t know if this is really a conspiracy.”

“If we dig up the names and identities of this week’s MVPs here, we might find a connection. They disguised their trucks as the Blue Cross and loaded them with machineguns and missiles to hide the secret passageway through the pipeline. They’re definitely up to no good.”

The mischievous infantryman shrugged in utter exhaustion.

“These are secret accounts in the Information Alliance. They aren’t going to give us the information if we ask.”

“Quenser.”

“Do I look that smart to you? Do you think you can just throw any problem my way?”

Quenser looked irritated, but he begrudgingly agreed after the soldiers around him tossed some icing spray his way.

He sprayed it across his water bottle and spoke.

“Knowing the account numbers is a start. How about we leak the entire list onto the internet while making it look like they were hacked? With secret tax haven accounts, trust matters most. If information has been taken straight from the servers, the clients and managers will both panic.”

“Yes, but will that accomplish anything other than causing a commotion?”

“We can quickly open a fake website claiming to check whether your account number was stolen. If we add in some spyware to snatch the IP of anyone entering their number, we should be able to determine who entered what number. And the shadier the person, the sooner they’ll respond.”

In that instant, everyone resting in the shade of the pipeline stared silently at Quenser.

He squirmed under the pressure of the strange silence.

“Um, what is this? Is this any way to react after I give you what you want?”

“This settles it. Nothing good would come of letting him leave the military.”

They contacted the maintenance base zone’s intelligence division via radio, but they said it would take several days to create a proper fake website.

Heivia stuck out his tongue.

“Damn those desk workers. Do clocks move at a different speed over there? Are they using a vacation clock or something?”

“Either way, I’m jealous.”

“They aren’t on board with this. It’s a pain, but you heard them. Everyone, give any idea we can use to steal the credit from the intelligence department since they refuse to play along.”

Long story short, they ended up with the following ideas: “Different computer viruses are compressed and saved on a certain foreign server”, “I know a collection of templates for scam sites”, and “As long as you have the basic template for the site, you can use a cloud service to edit the details and create a false site in only a few minutes.”

“Why do all of you know about this kind of thing?”

“As a future engineer, I think you should gladly welcome useful nerds. Otherwise, your organization will end up as a dinosaur fossil.”

As they had announced, the bored helpers completed the false website in only a few minutes. Rather than building it from the ground up, they chose a template from a database containing thousands of templates for scam sites and added the necessary decorations. They did the same for the spyware.

“Where should we spread the address? Just on any major message board?”

“For the Legitimacy Kingdom, there’s Blue Blood which only nobles with bloodlines continuing back for 300 years can enter. For the Information Alliance, there’s Rank Literacy which can only be used by people who run sites with over half a million hits a day. There are sites for elitist people from the other two world powers as well.”

“Those are all closed SNSs. We can probably manage with Blue Blood, but you aren’t using my ID.”

“I don’t need to. Everyone uses different identities online. A refined noble will let off some steam by shouting insults on anonymous message boards like it’s a masquerade party. If we spread the information there, the tainted information will make its way into the closed SNSs. They’ll ruin their own attempts to seal it off.”

“It sounds like the insecticide used for roaches. It’s made to look like delicious food so they’ll take it back to their nest where it kills all of them.”

A male soldier had been curled up and fiddling with a handheld device, but he now made an OK sign with his hand.

The others peered curiously at the small screen.

“This virus site is a lot like creating a robot from an empty box and tape, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s already gotten a few pieces of personal information.”

First, they had leaked the list online and let the emergency information spread. Once the clients grew uneasy, they were lured to the false site where they entered their account number. It was unclear when exactly the different waves of attack began.

“We have a few names and identities to go with numbers on our list. About ten so far. Let’s try to find a link between them.”

“Wait.” Heivia pointed at one of the names. “This is an international satellite TV executive. He claims to bring laughter and the truth to the blank regions and dictatorships where information is being controlled. Oceania’s mass media has begun to recover, but it’s still unstable. Satellite TV still has a lot of credibility and influence here.”

He pointed at another name.

“This is a blog king. He’s known as Oceania’s leading source of sarcasm.”

He pointed at another.

“This is an entertainer famous for volunteer work.”

And another.

“An executive for an international canned drink maker. They have ads during all sorts of shows.”

As each name was described, Quenser saw a common theme.

“Are they using the media to influence people’s impressions?”

“Their impressions of what?”

“No matter how much they’re being paid, I doubt they would say something that strays too far from their ideologies and beliefs. The money is nothing but the trigger giving them the final push. In that case, what do these people believe in?”

Heivia grimaced when he heard that.

He had been the one describing the names, so he had a general understanding of the people.

“This might be a major headache for us.”

“Why?”

“They want true independence for Oceania by having the ‘thugs’ leave. They’re a bunch of people who refuse to do any real work while pretending to be pacifists. They think they’re the most important no matter what.”

“Even the corporate executives?”

“Sitting arrogantly in a leather chair isn’t normally referred to as ‘work’.”

A mysterious group in Oceania was spreading intentionally biased information to create a tendency toward hating the coalition military.

The current problem was the pipeline they were using to secretly transport something across the desert. They had even started a firefight with the Legitimacy Kingdom in order to hide it.

This was more than a newspaper editorial.

This mysterious group was prepared to use legitimate violence.

“This pipeline is being used as a secret transportation network and massive amounts of money are being given to influential people to manipulate the opinions of the Oceanian people. What are they trying to do here?”

“Hey,” spoke up the soldiers who had helped them earlier. “I checked a few more of their handheld devices and there’s a net storage site they access frequently. They may keep their larger data there.”

“Does it have a password?”

“Just like online banks, it uses a one-time password. …But this was outsourced and the company in charge of security has slipped past the firewall a few times. We might be able to use the maintenance master key.”

“Would they really use the same key for several weeks or months?”

“No, but if we find a pattern to the changes in the periodically updated alphanumeric key, it might be possible to determine what the current key is. It will take some time, though.”

“Try working on it,” said Quenser as his radio emitted an electronic tone.

Froleytia was calling them.

“I have a question for all of you. You aren’t performing unauthorized electronic warfare against an Information Alliance tax haven bank, are you? The intelligence department has detected a fascinating flow of data.”

(Shit!!)

Everyone there straightened their spines.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were at war, but wars had rules known as treaties. And as Heivia had said, secret tax haven accounts were unofficially used by nobles and royals so they could secretly divide their assets up between false names and dummy corporations. Even if this was an enemy nation, some higher ups might not want them messing with it. Someone might be placing pressure on Froleytia.

But when no amount of apology would fix the situation, Quenser did not want to continue speaking for long.

He responded casually while looking around for help.

Heivia pointed toward the pump facility with his thumb.

“(That thick concrete might cut off the signal!!)”

“Okay, okay. Eh? What!? No, no. That isn’t what we’re doing!!”

While Quenser stalled for time, he and Heivia ran toward the remains of the pump facility.

They circled around the lake of dark red sauce and continued toward the building which contained stairs leading underground.

The armored trucks disguised as the Blue Cross were still burning and smoking. They would no longer function, but the two idiots circled well away from them because the bombs or missiles could suddenly burst.

The inside of the building was a large space.

It had originally been a facility to draw up unused water from underground and send it to grain-producing land, but all of the equipment had been removed when it was abandoned. It was now a movie theater-sized space made of reinforced concrete. It was essentially empty. Broken metal stairways and passageways could be found here and there and they appeared to be built around large machinery that was no longer present.

But that did not matter.

“(Heivia! The signal’s still going strong!! Froleytia’s completely pissed!! We can’t escape like this!!)”

“(Let’s head down the spiral staircase and underground!!)”

The two idiots descended the spiral staircase and ran out into a narrow tunnel. Static finally began to fill the radio signal.

This was the moment they had been waiting for.

“Ksshhh. Wait, what is… Explain yourse-…kssssshhhhh!!”

“Eh? What? I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you at all!! Over!!”

With that, he ended the transmission and switched off the radio altogether.

Heivia leaned up against the concrete wall.

“If we hang around here, the investigation team will see us and force odd jobs on us. Let’s go pretend to be working.”

They were doing nothing more than extending their suffering, but they took an extremely positive stance and viewed it as a chance to arrange the excuses they needed to weasel out of it.

They passed through a straight corridor and arrived at the underground structure.

However…

“Wow. There really isn’t a ceiling. It feels like the world’s biggest convertible.”

The ground above had completely collapsed during the previous battle, so the blue sky was perfectly visible even in the “underground” structure. They were over ten meters down, so they were not about to climb up or down rather than using the stairs.

A lot of sand had poured in, so it looked a lot more cluttered than the pump facility.

The piles of wooden boxes may have added to that impression.

“It looks like they’ve finished investigating here. Otherwise, we never would have been allowed in.”

“What are these boxes? Surely they aren’t empty.”

After receiving permission from a man on the investigation team who was taking photographs, Quenser and Heivia removed the nails from one wooden box and opened it.

“There’s some kind of powder packed in plastic.”

“But it doesn’t look like something with a high street price.”

The bags had some kind of label, so Quenser used his handheld device to snap a photo.

They opened a few more boxes and found reels of fiber optic cable as well as nuts and bolts packaged by size.

“Did someone’s father make a secret base for his home improvement projects?”

“Wait. I think I know what that powder was,” muttered Quenser.

Suddenly, the two idiots heard the noise of something falling over.

And when they turned toward the noise…

===Part 4===

In the name of war recovery, many different types of construction had begun at a fevered pitch across Oceania: houses, shops, roads, water and sewage, etc. The coalition of the four world powers claimed bringing order to the country was their top priority, but they could not utterly eliminate anyone who was even slightly suspicious. Specialists who did not look right in a suit or work uniform and guards who carried guns could not be distinguished from actual bad guys.

If those suspicious-looking people were let into the same space as rich foreign tourists, it could lead to a situation similar to a hamster that mistook another hamster’s sex.

To keep some separation, a hidden side to the city was created for those suspicious-looking people. Drawn by the flow of money, violent restaurants, marriage scam artists who were always crying in a bar, and people from various other occupations would gather there. These were the people who had gone too far in their original country. Like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, the strength of these dark cities slowly but steadily grew.

A certain bar in one such place was quite cheap but it was best not to think about what corners were cut to make it that cheap. In a dimly lit corner of that bar, a small group sat around a table cut off from the rest of the bar by curtains.

“They have failed.”

A young man wore a black suit and hat that looked out of place in the summertime desert. His sunglasses looked more like they were hiding his face than protecting his eyes from the sun.

“Terminal 52 has been taken by the Legitimacy Kingdom. The men we hired were wiped out.”

“We knew they would lose from the beginning.”

He was not the only one in such a conspicuous outfit.

A woman sitting at the same table wore all black, down to her necktie.

“Even if they could temporarily drive them back, they are a world power and thus they have an Object. If the problem grew too large, they would have sent it in. Those men were doomed to lose.”

But it was not just the two of them. Everyone at the table was wearing all black.

“Their loss was planned for. We all understand that. In that case, could you tell us one thing? Did they die before or after achieving their goal?”

“If not, I would be a little more concerned.”

“Whatever gets in the way, no one can reach us as long as all evidence is destroyed in the end.”

Everyone turned toward the young man who had spoken first.

No, they were technically looking behind him.

A blonde woman stood there wearing the exact same suit and sunglasses. She also held the same type of handgun the rest of them possessed.

“Are you saying the objective was achieved?”

The young man slowly raised his hands in response.

The tip of the silencer was already pressed against the back of his head.

He smiled thinly and responded quietly.

“Yes. And let me add this: it was nice knowing-…”

A muffled gunshot interrupted his words.

He collapsed face-first onto the round table. The others slowly stood up and took the necessary measures. They gathered the empty shell casing from the ground, used a rag wet with alcohol to wipe down anything that might have their fingerprints or saliva on it, and cleaned up the floor with a roller of sticky tape to pick up any fallen hair.

They made sure it was the same as if nothing had happened.

“Case #022 complete. Supervisor Alaska 49’s death has cut off the trail. Case #023 will now begin. The supervisor will be me, Texas 28.”

The blonde woman spoke quietly while pulling a brand new tablet computer from her bag. The others all focused on her.

They did so exactly as they had focused on the young man who had just been killed.

It was as if it were a ritual that had begun long before that young man.

“Fortunately, Case #022’s objective was fulfilled. A link with the scene has been secured. As planned, we shall continue to the next situation.”

“In other words?”

“We shall bury it in an explosion.”

They remained in the shadows.

Even when they won and when they were superior, they would kill their allies to suppress all information.

In that case, they were not going to hesitate to kill their enemies.

===Part 5===

“Not good,” muttered Quenser.

He had seen what some kind of impact had knocked over within the underground structure.

“Not good!! Heivia, everyone else! Get out of here now!!”

“What’s the matter, Quenser?”

A 1.5 meter cylindrical container similar to a propane tank lay before them. However, it was made of transparent reinforced glass and it was filled with some kind of liquid. The center of the cylinder had a donut-like hollow area which was filled with an explosive.

“That’s an acid bomb. Militaries use it to destroy evidence!! When the explosive detonates, it destroys the container and the blast sends a thorough shower of powerful acid in every direction. In just a few seconds, it reacts with the air and a vaporized acid cloud expands out. It’ll swallow up five hundred to eight hundred meters in no time! If you get caught in that, you’ll end up in a photograph at an exhibit on the horrors of war!!”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me!? Then were those guys here to set this thing up!? There might be something hidden here!!”

“With something that large and heavy, they couldn’t transport it by motorcycle, so they couldn’t use their secret pipeline. They were forced to use a truck and that’s when we ran across them.”

“But it’s just a bomb, right? Can’t you defuse it!? Bombs are your specialty!”

“There’s no time. There’s only ten minutes left! It’s waiting for a passcode in case it was accidentally activated, but that isn’t enough time to analyze it!! If you want to live, start running! We need to get back to the helicopters!!”

Quenser and Heivia did not hesitate to flee the underground structure and they made sure to bring the investigation team and their guards with them.

As they ran through the long, narrow corridor, Quenser turned his radio back on, hit the switch, and explained the situation to the helicopters so they could leave immediately.

But that might have been a mistake.

“Ahhhhhh!! Shit!!”

As soon as they ran up the spiral staircase and out of the pump facility, Heivia swore.

They could see multiple helicopters taking off.

“Wait, dammit! Wait!! If we hadn’t told you, you would’ve been surrounded by the acid cloud! We saved your lives!!”

“Sorry, but rescuing the injured takes precedence! Can you steal one of the enemy’s trucks and escape on your own!?”

“Do you really think any of them are still running!? You were the ones that blew them up!!”

“Heivia, they aren’t coming back! More importantly, everyone who’s left needs to gather here. Anyone who makes a mistake here will be melted by acid!!”

Quenser heard a deafening sound resembling an amplified version of a shaken can of beer being opened.

A strange white cloud began to spread out not far away. It grew to the size of an Object in no time.

“That’s the acid cloud,” said Heivia as his face paled.

The giant cloud burst up from the underground structure like cotton candy. It exited the hole from the collapse and spread out across the desert. At the same time, it was likely entering the pump facility through the stairway leading up. That death had no gaps. Everyone would be wiped out.

“That thing spreads faster than a forest fire. Sixty kph was it!? It’ll overtake us if we try to escape on foot!!”

“We can escape.”

“How?”

“Through the pipeline! The thick metal should hold it off temporarily! If we can escape beyond its effective range of several hundred meters before it dissolves the metal pipe, we can survive. It’s a chance at least!!”

Quenser began running as he shouted his instructions to Heivia and the others using his radio.

“Wait, Quenser! That pipeline is falling apart. What if the pipe is completely broken partway down? The acid cloud will enter there and trap us!!”

“Would you rather stay here? Bye bye, Heivia. You can stick with 0%, but I’m going to bet on 1%. Even your dog tags will probably be dissolved, so we won’t gather your remains!!”

“I get it! I get it, goddammit!!”

The pipe was rusty and falling apart. Cracks and large holes existed in places.

Quenser and the others ran inside that empty and sandy tube as quickly as they could.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!!”

The acid cloud will hit in less than thirty seconds! Seal up the holes as best you can!! Use body bags or whatever to cover them and keep the acid cloud out!”

[[Image:HO_v07_300.png|thumb]]

They knew it was not going to be perfect.

After some quick work, they ran down the two meter tunnel with all their strength.

They were soon surrounded by a sound resembling stir-frying.

“The acid cloud has caught up!!”

“It won’t break through the pipe right away! Keep running!!”

The pipeline had been created to carry over ten tons of liquid every second, so it had been built quite thick to withstand the internal pressure. But the sound of the metal being eaten away still squeezed at their hearts so much they forgot how thick it was.

“It’s only going to last two or three minutes.”

“We just have to make it a few hundred meters. That isn’t a marathon. We can escape to safety if we run as quickly as we can!!”

“Damn them, whoever they are! What do they want to hide so badly that they’re willing to ruin the environment like this!?”

“We can think about it after we survive!!”

Strange sparks seemed to explode in their heads and it became impossible to think about anything unnecessary.

They just ran and ran and ran and ran.

As they ran, the outside world had long since vanished from their minds. They began to feel like their goal had been filled with the acid and that the acid cloud had covered the entire world.

“Hot!?”

“There are cracks here and there. Keep running while covering your head with some kind of cloth! Stopping will only eat away at our skin!!”

Fortunately, the cracks were small and not much of the acid cloud seemed to be getting in.

But Quenser and the others did not have time to objectively evaluate the situation.

They could not tell if the dampness inside their uniforms was their sweat or their melted skin.

Even so, they continued running.

It was not exactly out of stubbornness. They were simply losing themselves in the simple action of running so they could avert their gaze from the certain death closing in on them.

“Quenser,” Heivia finally called out.

Quenser could not imagine why he was calling out to him.

“Quenser! It’s over. The sizzling sound is gone. We’ve left the range of the acid cloud.”

“Ah? Eh?”

“We survived! We don’t need to run any further. Do you want to destroy your own heart!?”

It took him a while to truly realize he had survived.

He eventually collapsed to a sitting position and could tell his lips were twitching.

After a few seconds, he finally realized he was smiling.

===Part 6===

Somewhere in Oceania, the muffled sound of a gun with a silencer could be heard.

Another young man looked down at a blonde woman with a bullet hole in her forehead.

“Case #023 complete. The objective was not achieved and it has been deemed a failure. To recover, Case #024 will now begin.”

===Part 7===

Quenser worked hard to calm down Heivia who was seriously planning to punch the pilot of the slowly descending helicopter. Surprisingly, the intellectual-looking investigation team seemed to agree with Heivia. They were only human and anyone would be angry when their supposed comrades unreasonably abandoned them in an acid cloud.

“Calm down. If we all flip them off, they might fly away without us. We need to give them a smile with the kindness of a younger sister and the dependability of an older sister.”

“Got it, Quenser. You’re saying we act like a carnivorous plant, right? Once they open the helicopter door, their life is over.”

The helicopter team must have felt bad because, when they opened the door, they handed out bottles of carbonated drinks they had found somewhere. The bottles were ice cold thanks to the icing spray for machineguns. There were some enticements one’s senses could not resist. After running around in the 50 degree desert, this was more than enough to quiet them down.

The middle-aged male pilot explained the situation.

“The acid cloud is spreading out higher in the sky like a cumulonimbus cloud. We checked the weather map for the wind and there is a danger of running into it on our way back to the maintenance base. We want more accurate information if possible.”

“If that’s the only reason you picked us up, I really will shove you out.”

Growing stubborn was not going to accomplish anything.

The helicopter team’s decision had not been wrong given all the injured they had and Quenser’s group had indeed managed to hold on to their lives.

In that case, they needed to use their brains for something more important.

“So what do you think they were trying to destroy?” asked Quenser as the movements of the helicopter shook him. “Do you think it was those wooden boxes in the underground structure? Y’know, those fiber optic cables, the bolts, the nuts, and that strange powder.”

Quenser stared at the photographs he had taken on his handheld device, but then he heard someone give a sudden cry of surprise.

It came from one of the intellectual infantryman who had helped them create the fake site for the bank account numbers.

“What is it?”

“I was searching for the master key to the net storage we discovered using those thugs’ devices, remember? Well, I think I found something bad.”

Everyone gathered around the slender infantryman.

All of the stern men stared at the small screen.

It had recorded phone calls, graphs showing the exchange of money, and documents on the group’s projects and external cooperators. The infantryman displayed a summary file that looked like the minutes of a meeting.

'''“Concerning war recovery in Oceania and the influence that recovery provides within the country. A list of important infrastructure and how to drive a wedge into the provisional rule using the foundation of that infrastructure.”

“Wait, wait, wait. This contractor, this one, and this one are all major construction companies doing a lot of work toward Oceania’s recovery. Does this mean they’re all helping out this group or being unwittingly used by them?”

“Well, even the large contractors are using local people to pave roads and lay pipes. To promote employment, they’re actively seeking Oceanian personnel. These shady thugs could probably slip in there.”

“No matter what plans those at the top make, the project will be delayed if the people at the bottom secretly don’t do their job.”

“Electricity, gas, water, schools, hospitals, phones, and internet. All of them are vital pieces of infrastructure.”

“Delaying them will do a lot of damage to the provisional rule here. After all, that rule is really nothing more than a verbal promise. The people will lose faith if those promises aren’t met.”

“So either this group is actually causing this damage or they’re using it as a threat.”

“Either way, someone is definitely gaining great influence over the rulers of Oceania.”

'''“It is necessary to remove the coalition made up of the four world powers and it is necessary that we then intervene as rulers.”

“Someone’s trying to secretly shake up the provisional rule until it’s powerless. They want to swap out the structure of the nation so they can bring their interests to the forefront.”

“Does that mean it’s us, the coalition force, that’s in the way?”

“Dammit. That must be why they’re paying off that international satellite TV executive, that blog king, and the others! They’ve brought the Oceanian people’s anger to just under the boiling point using the failed infrastructure maintenance. What if they now release baseless rumors about the coalition from multiple influential sources? That will create an outlet for their pent up anger and large-scale riots will begin!!”

“We’re stationed here in Oceania in the name of preserving order, so they’re trying to guide international opinion to believe our presence is causing frequent riots that hurt or kill innocent people.”

“Then they can do whatever they want. Our higher ups are only spending the military budget on this because the image of a savior hero is useful in politics and diplomacy. Once it isn’t worth it anymore, the military might really leave.”

“And then a new oppressive dictatorship will begin. This group will be able to hide behind a puppet leader.”

'''“How to freely rearrange the national structure in the name of creating a modern justice system.”

“The Oceanian military nation had the country working on a completely flawed rulebook. Giving the country proper laws will definitely be necessary.”

“But when you remake the country’s rules from the ground up, it’s a lot easier for black-hearted people to work in loopholes than if they have to rearrange the system bit by bit.”

“Is that like how it’s easier for a baby than an adult to learn a foreign language?”

'''“Regarding the basic geographic conditions for a powerful nation.”

“Oceania has massive amounts of land and underground resources. If they can secure the water resources needed for large-scale agriculture, they don’t have to worry about food. Simply put, they have what it takes for an advantage in a long, difficult war.”

“Almost the entire continent is made up of a single power and they’re surrounded by ocean. Compared to countries that directly border a lot of other countries, they’re a lot harder to invade. The conditions are similar to what North America once was and a nation known as the world police once existed there.”

“If they create something similar here, it will cause problems in the world’s military balance. Of course, that’s what this group is probably trying to do.”

Quenser and the others read the document while discussing its contents, but a fundamental question caused Quenser to frown.

“But what are they going to do with this new dictatorship? The Oceanian military nation did something similar, but they were stopped by the combined attack of the coalition force. No matter how many conspiracies they weave together, they’ll be broken up as soon as the coalition notices them.”

“The military nation is a great example of that. I doubt any conspirator would want to meet the same fate as the leader there.”

“And the people here have to be the same. No one is going to think a riot can push back a fifty meter Object. Even a child would know that. Riots are meant to push with great numbers. If their front lines would be mowed down the instant they gathered, no one would gather.”

“They need some kind of symbol of rebellion. But what possible symbol would people think could defeat more than twenty Objects?”

“…”

Quenser glanced down at a handheld device.

This was not the one from the thugs. It was Quenser’s own that the Legitimacy Kingdom military had issued him.

It contained a few photographs he had taken in the underground structure attached the remains of the pump facility.

The photos were primarily of the wooden boxes’ contents.

One photo showed nuts and bolts divided by size.

One showed reels of fiber optic cable.

One showed bags of powder.

“Don’t tell me…”

“What’s wrong with a photo of nuts and bolts? You can buy those at home improvement stores the world over.”

“But not the fiber optic cable. This is the type that greatly raises signal stability by injecting argon gas into the tube. The price per meter is ridiculous, so it isn’t used in normal homes. It’s a military product that’s known as the nervous system of certain colossal weapons.”

“Wait… A military product? The nervous system of colossal weapons? You don’t mean…”

“And there’s this powder.”

Quenser gulped, zoomed in on the photo, and repeatedly read the bag’s label. No matter how many times he read it, it still said the same thing.

“This is the substance that gives Object armor its high-heat resistance and reactive ability. It isn’t used in anything else.”

“Then that’s the symbol of rebellion this group has built?”

When they thought about it, it was obvious.

Only one thing could pick a fight with the monstrous weapons that could withstand a direct hit with a nuclear missile.

They were synonymous with war.

They were 50+ meter masses of overwhelming military might.

“Were they using the pipelines spread out across Oceania’s desert to slowly gather the parts for an Object!?”

===Part 8===

The group of helicopters taking Quenser and the others back to the maintenance base zone was not far from arriving.

But they could barely stand to wait even that long.

“We don’t actually know when the Oceanian military government’s 0.5 generation Object was built. If it was built by smuggling the parts through this network of pipes and this group took over all that, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’ve completed an Object!!”

“Quit analyzing and report this, Quenser! Damn, I bet our huge-breasted commander is still mad. I just hope she’s willing to listen!!”

After they explained their thoughts over the radio, Froleytia responded bitterly.

“I have not forgotten about dealing with you two, but this isn’t good. It explains why things have been getting noisy outside.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have received a few troubling reports from the base’s sentries. It seems a two or three thousand of the local people have gathered. They’re only shaking the fence around the base and throwing small rocks, but we will have to forcibly make them leave if they do anything more. I want to avoid that while the journalists’ cameras are here. Also, I didn’t know what caused the commotion.”

People’s opinions varied, but the Legitimacy Kingdom military had not been all that hated by the Oceanian people.

“So they’ve already started delaying the infrastructure maintenance and pointing the people’s anger our way.”

“If they’ve already begun, that means it’s really damn likely they’ve finished their new Object! I don’t even feel like joking about this!!”

“But it takes nearly three years to build an Object from the ground up,” said Froleytia. “There hasn’t been enough time for a conspiracy thought up after seeing news of the Oceanian military nation’s collapse.”

“Wait a minute. Froleytia, you can’t mean what I think you mean!!”

“We just have to calculate backwards. If they started this project three years ago, it started before…ksshhh…military nation’s destruction…ksshh. That ridiculo-…ksshh…also part of their plan…ksssssshhhhhh!!”

“Froleytia? Hey, Froleytia!? Can you hear me!?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The military line has been jammed? By who? That alone qualifies as opposing us!!”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

Suddenly, a new voice came over the staticky radio.

It was a young man’s voice.

“Welcome to our nation of Oceania.”

“Really? We have to deal with this? I don’t see how this could lead to anything good.”

“I hear you have stubbornly survived the acid bomb and thus approached quite close to the truth. Even so, it is too late to do anything about it.”

“We at least know you were involved behind the scenes of the military nation and their 0.5 generation Object.’

“Yes. They never had the money and technology needed to construct an Object on their own. As you probably know, that was built based on a downgraded version of the design data for an Information Alliance model known as the Gatling 033...no, I suppose you refer to it by the codename of Rush.”

“Rush?”

Quenser frowned and recalled the “oh ho ho” laughter of that Information Alliance pilot Elite.

“But why did all of you so innocently believe that they had only constructed that one? If they can build one, they can build two. With the pipeline spread out across the entire desert and the one hundred terminal facilities connected to it, anything is possible. Our project had begun years and years before the fall of the military nation, so how many Objects do you think we have stocked up in that ant’s nest?”

He used the plural.

That was enough for a chill to run down the spines of everyone in the helicopter.

Just one of those monsters was more than enough.

“You’re lying. Objects are brand-name items that cost a billion dollars each. A single group can’t build that many!!”

“Money can buy something even better. Money is meant to be spent, so there is no reason to hold back. Am I wrong?”

“Something even better?”

“The world police,” said the young man over the radio.

That term was the symbol of an era.

“The world may have changed, but a North American superpower once had complete control of the world’s military balance. That was an era of peace. But that exemplary nation was smashed to pieces by the flow of time! The home countries of the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance now exist there. It is not realistic to resurrect a single superpower there.”

“You can’t mean…”

“In that case, the only option is to find another area with similar conditions. A vast land surrounded by ocean. A single nation with plenty of food, underground resources, and population. All we need to do is supply information on high-level technology. …And there was only one candidate.”

“Are you saying your goal is to remake Oceania into a second ‘world police’!?”

“Is there any better way to recover from a war? If we succeed, we will put an end to the ‘clean wars’ spreading throughout the world. We will combine the different world powers into a single world power. And Oceania will rule at the center of it all. This continent was overrun with unreasonable war and then crushed by the different world powers afterwards, so it is the perfect symbol for the new world police.”

“This is ridiculous,” spat out Heivia. “All the dark history from the creation of the Oceanian military nation was your doing, wasn’t it!? The new world police? An era truly without war? A world created by people as heartless as you would be a horrible place! You just want to create a world where you can kill as many people as you want!!”

“I have only one thing to say to that: are you aware that history is something created by someone and recorded by someone?”

The young man’s voice remained calm.

He was used to being accused of doing horrible things.

“And no matter how much of a commotion you cause, you can no longer change the current course of events. Look at the city below you. The angry cries of the crowd should reach you up in the sky. Do you know what that rumbling noise is? Those are the footsteps of the rioters marching through the streets. Can you pacify all of those people?”

“…”

Quenser stopped breathing for a moment.

He could hear a low, low sound resembling distant thunder. He peered down from the helicopter’s open door and saw something filling the desert city. The sight of countless human heads filling every inch not taken up by buildings was quite chilling.

He saw something white here and there.

They looked like placards or banners, so Quenser naturally reached for his binoculars.

But Heivia grabbed his wrist before he could look through them.

“You should stop.”

Heivia was looking up from his rifle’s scope.

It seemed he had just looked through it.

“It’s better to not see that. It’s like a fishing hook. You’ll try to pretend it’s nothing at first, but you’ll realize the small hook won’t come out. It’ll leave a wound.”

Quenser could not imagine what would cause such a negative reaction.

Earlier that day, he had seen true enemy soldiers shot to pieces by helicopters and he had almost been killed by an acid bomb. Compared to that, what could words do? Thinking that, Quenser’s curiosity led him to look through the binoculars.

And…

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

He felt like he heard the words “I told you so” coming from a long distance away.

His arms hung limply down and the magnification left his vision, but what he saw left a hole in his chest.

He felt as if all the bloody vomit and crawling through the mud in Oceania had been made meaningless in a single moment.

This was not something one or two people could easily cause.

This was a powerful current.

Like a fad or a trend, something unseen was influencing people’s lives.

Normally, only the advertising firms that created commercials were aware of that current, but it now created an obvious wall before Quenser and the others.

“What is this commotion?” asked Quenser as he stared blankly down at the city from the sliding door.

He received an answer from the young soldier messing with a handheld device they had received from the enemies.

“Wait. This isn’t good. This is really bad!!”

“Did you find another document?”

Quenser turned around and the soldier tossed him the device.

He caught it in both hands and finally realized what the small screen showed.

It was a completely normal video sharing site.

However…

“Ha ha ha. Have you discovered what everyone’s talking about?” laughed the person on the radio.

But Quenser was not listening.

His mind had left reality as his eyes focused on the video playing on the screen.

It showed a few minutes of a human trafficking incident that had occurred at an international harbor in Oceania.

It had been uploaded only half an hour earlier.

The view count had already reached ten million. It was on a site used worldwide, but the video was a bit choppy as if it was having difficulty loading.

“The news is nothing but entertainment. They complain about the depressing incidents, but that does not stop people from searching for them. TV and newspapers used to have a lot of influence, but nowadays one will never learn anything without searching for themselves. And that gives people a certain enthusiasm.”

The incidents and battles that were supposedly resolved were now being used for something else.

“And in Oceania where their infrastructure is being rebuilt, they lack the resources for entertainment. The people are starving for entertainment. Yes, they want to enjoy themselves. Merely opening a small hole in the dam leads to the result before you. The overwhelming deluge will sweep across the continent.”

The young man on the radio spoke as if singing a lullaby that hid a cruel origin.

“The night sky. This world is a night sky.”

It almost sounded like the lyrics to a song.

It sounded nice, but it seemed removed from reality.

“The starless night sky presses down on everyone from above and prevents them from seeing ahead. Someone must change this. Fortunately, that is not hard to do. Those who rule this dark era have merely convinced everyone that it is difficult.”

The one who made it had to know that.

And the ones listening most likely knew it deep down.

“By raising stars onto the starless night sky, we can make a single flag. At first, our symbol will be pure indigo like the night sky. A single star is enough. If a single star can shine in the starless indigo night sky, we can begin to gently guide this dark era. Will you stand here in the center of the world or will you be forever driven to the edges of the world? Decide for yourself.”

Even so, they would fall for it.

But why?

Was someone simply using the dissatisfaction of the Oceanian people?

Or was even that initial dissatisfaction something someone had input within them?

The video showed a few minutes of a large-scale clash between Objects in the desert night which had all been meant to kill a single soldier.

“Thank you. We put together many different plans and you ruined a few of them, but you provided us with an even greater tool,” said the voice. “Truth Theater. That is the name of the video. When you take something formless, give it a name, and place it within a frame of your choosing, it provides a certain impression. That is the basic method of influencing people’s impressions. After that, you only need to provide them with a specific direction. For example, you can create a flag that they take as their own symbol without anyone forcing them. They will then spread the word of their existence around the world. The trick is to skillfully mix in the proper ideals and desires. The night sky flag is pure indigo, so it can easily be made by throwing a can of paint on a curtain. If you create a complex and cool-looking symbol, no one can create it for themselves. This is an application of influencing people’s impressions.”

There were no lies in the materials they had used.

However, the timing of the editing was extremely malicious. By showing only a few minutes in the video, it only showed the beginning of the problem and the growth of the chaos it produced. There were likely people watching it who did not even know these problems had been resolved.

“The stage has already been set. If it had not, I would not have so calmly contacted you. The indigo flag of the night sky could cover the entire continent at any time. When faced with this overwhelming maelstrom of people, both military and civilian, the military officials who are obsessed with clean wars will hesitate. That time lag will prevent you from ever catching up. Farewell. You have lost. Once only our victory remains, the world will greatly benefit and rejoice in its newfound peace.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“I need something to write on your gravestone.”

A short silence came from the radio.

The young man may have been laughing.

“You may call us the Company, Langley, or the Pentagon. When the former world police was lost, our true name lost its power and meaning.”

“Do you mean…?”

“We are the ghosts of a bygone era. But if you wish to refer to us, there is a name you can use. We are the strange shadows dressed in black who are whispered of in every corner of the world. We are MIB.”

At that moment, the transmission ended.

But not because Quenser or the MIB man had switched off their radio.

The transport helicopter shook violently as it was enveloped in an explosion.

“Wah!?”

“What is it, pilot!? What happened!?”

The helicopter’s door was open, so Quenser had to cling to the handrail on the inner wall with all his might so as not to be thrown out.

The pilot’s reply was tense.

“We were attacked from the surface! It was probably a cheap mortar.”

“A mortar!? Those are used to fire shells farther than a grenade can be thrown. How are they using it for an anti-air attack!?”

“I don’t know, but one just hit us! They forcibly used it beyond its intended use. Unlike a missile, it isn’t guided, so they won’t be able to reliably hit us!!”

“This is the hatred of the people,” said the young man on the radio. “Those shells cost twenty dollars each. There is a reason they have long been a best seller in this world of never-ending wars.”

“Here it comes! I just heard one being fired on the surface!! Avoid it, dammit! Move to the right!!”

“I don’t have proper control after that last explosion!”

They did not escape in time.

As the helicopter shook, Quenser worked to close the door.

As soon as he did, the next explosion hit.

The steel door bent in and stabbed into the opposite wall. However, closing the door had not been meaningless. Without the door acting as a cushion, the blast and small pieces of shrapnel would have filled the helicopter.

Nevertheless, that blast settled it.

The helicopter did not break apart in midair, but it began to spin as it lost control. Their altitude was clearly lowering. The mass of steel was obviously falling toward the ground.

“What do we do!? Hey, what do we do!? I don’t want to crash twice in one day! Can’t you recover!?”

“I’m trying! But does it look like it’s going well!?” shouted back the pilot.

Quenser felt dizzy as he braced himself so he was not thrown out of the reopened door.

The young man spoke from the radio as if to provide the finishing blow.

“Ha ha ha. Soldiers surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. A tragedy like this might work as another symbol to drive out the coalition.”

“Is this it!?”

Heivia forcibly switched off the radio and looked out the door.

He then shouted toward the cockpit.

“Hey, which way are we pointed!? I hope it’s somewhere without any people!”

“It is! We’re headed for a trash dump. The trash is piled up in hills and my sensors aren’t picking up anyone!!”

“Good.”

Heivia seemed to have made up his mind about something, so Quenser spoke to him.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The helicopter continued to fall while almost scraping the roof of a crude five-story building.

Heivia leaned into the cockpit, used his knife to cut the seatbelt of the pilot who was still intently focused on the controls, and dragged him away.

“We jump out.”

The screaming would not stop.

As if they were jumping out of a car headed for a cliff, Quenser and the others jumped out onto the flat building roof. The drop was only a few meters.

After a few seconds, the helicopter crashed into a giant pile of garbage and exploded.

They no longer had a means of returning to the base.

===Part 9===

The transport helicopter crashed into a city garbage dump. After a giant explosion, toxic-looking black smoke rose toward the heavens. Quenser stared at the sight as he rolled along the old concrete rooftop of a five-story building.

“Damn this hurts!! I didn’t break any bones, did I!?”

“If you broke one or even cracked one, you’d be crying in pain, student! Quit giving in to the placebo effect and stand up. We need to get out of here!!”

“Is this place that bad?”

“Who do you think shot us down? It wasn’t trained soldiers. Remember when we discussed this chaotic period of recovery in Oceania? Things are so bad people carry around weapons for self-…”

Heivia suddenly stopped speaking.

They heard a rumbling noise. It sounded like the cheers in a stadium after a hat trick. They worriedly looked down and saw a gold-colored tsunami rushing toward the helicopter which was still spewing black smoke.

The wave was made of people.

The gold was their hair. A group of hundreds or even thousands was approaching to drag out the crew of the helicopter. They were all waving indigo flags. They must have painted or dyed something on hand because they were all bright and not entirely dried.

That starless night sky was the symbol of their dissatisfaction toward this dark era.

“Handguns, assault rifles, rockets, mortars, and more. If we don’t leave while they’re focused on the helicopter, we’ll have nowhere to run,” complained Heivia. “They’re worked up enough that there’s a real possibility of being dragged out and publicly executed.”

Quenser gulped when he saw the other boy prepare his assault rifle.

“Wait, Heivia. Why are you preparing that?”

“This is no time to be idealistic!! Battle regulations mean nothing here. Order hasn’t been restored in Oceania yet, so even housewives and office workers walk around with guns for self-defense. Those people with their night sky flag could start shooting at any time, so we need to defend ourselves!!”

“You can’t. You can’t do that!!”

Despite the danger of a secondary explosion from ammunition or fuel, the enraged crowd surrounded the helicopter and peered inside. They resembled ants crowding around a sugar cube. If they noticed Quenser and the others on the rooftop, they would obviously surround the building.

Quenser understood that.

He really did.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of them with the flags!! With that much of a difference, it doesn’t matter if they’re pros or amateurs. They’ll ignore all their allies in every direction and fire on us. If that happens, we’ll be more than just riddled with holes!!”

“But…!”

“But some of them aren’t armed? We’ll still meet a tragic end even if they catch us. In fact, the lack of deadly weapons will just make our grotesque fate last longer! Do you really think these people will be able to stop at just almost killing us!?”

They then heard a scraping noise.

Quenser looked over and saw the helicopter pilot scraping at the inside of a ring with a metal rod. The rod may have originally been a television antenna.

“What are you doing?”

“My wife’s name is engraved in my ring. I am prepared to do what it takes no matter what happens, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for my family!!”

The atmosphere was not normal.

Quenser was suggesting the obvious choice of “not fighting”, but the others were treating that as strange.

They were being affected by the state of the nation.

If one side had guns, the other side had to have guns as well. That logic could only lead to a negative chain reaction, but it had begun to affect non-Oceanians like Quenser and the others.

Truth Theater.

They were being sucked into the world of that video.

The night sky.

That dark and hopeless era that the MIB had created was eating into Quenser and the others.

Heivia and the others who could use rifles took the lead as they moved from the rooftop and into the building. The stairway and corridors were deserted. The glass was covered in dust and sand, so the inside was dim. Several symbols had been left on the walls, so it may have been an abandoned building which was scheduled to be demolished.

What would happen if they ran across someone here?

What if someone lived here to escape the sand and rain? What if someone who lived nearby used it as storage space?

Quenser found it hard to breathe as he saw Heivia and the others unhesitatingly pointing their rifles around.

There was something wrong with it all.

Their enemy was not the people of Oceania. It was the “ghosts of a bygone era” known as the MIB who were laughing as they manipulated everyone. Getting into a firefight here would only delight them. They could use it to bring about their desire to drive out the coalition which was seen as the enemy of the Oceanian people.

Quenser understood the situation, but he could not suppress his instinctual fear.

The high-pitched sound of audio feedback struck his eardrums from outside the building.

It came from a cheap megaphone.

“Drive them away!! Don’t allow their oppression any longer! The Legitimacy Kingdom helicopter crashed right next to a hospital. They are only thinking about their own interests! They don’t care about our lives!!”

“Goddamn them! They’re the ones who shot mortars at us!! And we went out of the way to crash into a garbage dump!!”

“Don’t respond!! It won’t solve anything if we get angry too!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? Do you think the cavalry is going to show up if we sit around long enough!?”

Suddenly, something else happened.

They heard a distant rumbling cheer similar to when a decisive goal was made in an international soccer match.

Quenser could not check outside the window.

There was a risk of being spotted, but it had more to do with his own fear.

He and the other seven continued running down the stairs.

Once they reached the first floor, Heivia reached for the back door near the stairway. He slowly turned the knob and cracked the door open.

The wall of people had already reached about thirty centimeters away.

They were so close that Heivia could almost smell their breathing and sweat.

The scent of the paint used to make the indigo flags was mixed in.

He desperately suppressed a groan.

They were almost all focused on the person speaking through the megaphone, so they were not facing toward the building.

With the delicacy of defusing a landmine, he took plenty of time to close the door that was only opened a few centimeters. He instinctually wanted to lock the door too, but that would make too much noise. He used his reason to desperately fight that temptation.

“It’s no good. They’re everywhere outside.”

“You mean we can’t escape?”

Meanwhile, the megaphone voice continued.

“The cavalry is here! Our cavalry has arrived!! Open a path for the grim reaper to reach them!! Once this vehicle enters the plaza, they are done for!!”

Unpleasant sweat began to pour from Quenser’s back.

If that was not a bluff…

“We will pursue our enemy no matter where they run! The sensors equipped on this .50 caliber heavy machinegun will ensure that! Whether it’s wood or concrete, no shield will protect them!! We will search for them, find them, and then destroy them!! …What did you see in the Truth Theater? What did you feel as you waved the night sky flag? That is the truth!! That is the information that has not been altered by the media!!”

As Quenser stepped back from the back door, he frantically made use of his nearly panicking mind.

“(This is bad. Something different is approaching!)”

“(Has the MIB arrived after allying with the people? Now this interesting! We just have to destroy this machinegun-equipped off-road vehicle or whatever it is!!)”

“(But the people watching won’t know where the line between pro and amateur is drawn! Once a single gunshot is fired, the people will attack us without end!!)”

Fortunately, the vehicle in question was apparently having difficulty approaching due to all the people filling every inch of the roads. It would not arrive immediately, but it was only a matter of time. This did not actually solve the problem.

Would they remain and fight?

Or would they leave and hide somewhere?

They had to make up their minds.

“(We can’t run, Quenser! They said the heavy machinegun can shoot through building walls and it has sensors. No matter where we hide, we’ll be killed. And the weapon’s great penetrative power will bloody the angry mob as well!! We have to fight!!)”

“(But we can’t survive if we fight! Also, there’s no reason to fight!! Once a fight begins, it means we’ve lost!!)”

“(Then you can go run off on your own. Make a bet with me if you want, but I guarantee you I’ll survive longer than you!!)”

Ultimately, there was no right answer.

No matter what they chose, they could not defeat the MIB. Eventually, the building would be surrounded and they would be filled with holes or torn limb from limb.

Reinforcements from the maintenance base zone would not arrive in time.

They were completely surrounded, so they would not find a convenient opening.

Once a single shot was fired, it was all over.

But was there any chance left of convincing these people without force?

“…”

The tension had made Quenser’s breathing extremely shallow and he felt as if he would die from dizziness before the actual threat even arrived.

And…

And…

And…

The situation took a decisive turn.

A change that affected their survival occurred without them even knowing it.

===Part 10===

At that time, a certain girl looked up at the instigator mixed in with the crowd. The man stood on the roof of a European van parked on the road. He was making a loud announcement with the kind of cheap megaphone used at construction sites.

“Drive out the Legitimacy Kingdom! Get rid of the entire coalition!! They create nothing. They protect no one! Good citizens should take up arms and fight against these invaders!! Let the cavalry into the plaza so we can begin the bloodbath!! With its sensors, we can find them wherever they hide!!”

The girl was not caught up in what the man was saying.

Quite the opposite.

She knew that there were lies in the speech given by this man standing on the van and holding up an indigo flag. She had seen “them” firsthand, so she knew the rumors spreading through the city had definite malicious intent.

And so…

“…?”

A pause came in the enthralling speech.

This was because a small stone had flown at the man.

Everyone there turned from the man with the megaphone to the girl.

“I know the truth,” said the girl. “I know it isn’t true that they don’t protect anyone!! They saved me. I was taken by bad people, but they came and saved me!! There wasn’t any chaos like in Truth Theater!! There was more to it than that!!”

“Do not make such baseless claims!!”

Triggered by the man’s angry shout, several nearby people grabbed at the girl’s hair and began to drag her away.

She let out a high-pitched scream.

Some of the people accepted this as natural.

But some did not.

“Hey…”

“Yeah.”

It started with a few young men.

They stood in the way of the men trying to carry away the girl.

One of the men holding her hair spoke.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Y’see, I don’t really understand all this complicated stuff about good and evil or the coalition and invaders.” The main young man shrugged. He moved his face in and spoke from close range. “But is this justice of yours something that lets bastards like you drag crying little girls around by the hair? If so, I can’t go along with it.”

The men holding the girl’s hair prepared to silence this minority with their fists.

But then they realized the overwhelming majority was staring intently at their backs.

Which side had the backing of the majority was beginning to change.

At that time, an old woman named Dorothy opened an outdated laptop computer on a luxurious passenger ship away from Oceania. She logged in to an SNS site her grandchild had insisted she sign up for but she had not used since then.

She had noticed a commotion.

She had noticed great enthusiasm.

The short anonymously-uploaded video named Truth Theater had already been picked up by TV stations around the world. They seemed to have lost the pride in taking footage with their own cameras because the grainy video was being used as-is with the newscaster’s voice playing over it.

On the internet, people could not see each other’s faces or grab at their collars when they were angry, so it was filled with more extreme and hostile words than reality. One side supported Oceania slaughtering the coalition and declaring themselves independent. The other side said the riots would bring about oppression in their own lives, so they supported immediate military intervention.

But none of them knew the truth of Oceania.

They only knew what the few minutes of Truth Theater had showed them.

“I know the truth.”

After giving it some thought, the old woman began slowly typing on the unfamiliar keyboard.

She was acting to protect the honor of the youths who had saved her.

She was beginning to fight back.

“I know the good and the bad of that country. You daydreamers want a convenient villain that lets you feel like you are watching a movie, but rethink what you say once you hear what I have to say. I promise that you will be ashamed of yourselves.”

At that time, Sewax the battlefield cameraman sat within a box-shaped metal tent in arctic Siberia. He was checking over the photos he had just taken with his single-lens reflex camera. Just like heat, extreme cold could cause malfunctions in precision equipment. Before his hard-won images could be lost, he began sending a backup to his online storage via a small satellite communications device.

His guide, who was closer to being a child then a youth, stared interestedly at the device.

“Hey, can you use that internet thing on there? No one bothers running lines out here. If they did lay hundreds of kilometers of fiber optic cable, a bear would just dig it up. And power lines would collapse under the weight of the snow.”

Sewax had a sudden thought as he worked.

He had just trapped a piece of the truth in a rectangular frame and sent it out to the world, but how many people would it reach? And would that truth reach them accurately without someone twisting it?

Some intentionally twisted information was currently causing a frenzy on the internet, that information network the guide wished he had. As a professional photographer, Sewax had immediately noticed how much malice was contained within the few minutes of Truth Theater. A film specialist would likely have found two or three times as much as he had.

The truth could easily be twisted.

Rather than adding in lies, one only had to maliciously edit footage to give a certain impression.

But an athlete cheating with steroids was overwhelmingly powerful. Setting aside the ethical issues, that power was an objective fact. In the same way, the impact of manufactured footage could easily blow away a photograph showing the actual truth. In the end, the people wanted stimulation. The truth was but a single means of acquiring that stimulation and the original purpose of the truth had been done away with.

How much meaning did the world see in being “correct”?

The metal tent’s walls had two layers so the air between could insulate it, but Sewax still felt a chill run down his spine.

It was then that the guide asked an innocent question.

“Hey, where were you before? You haven’t been here for long, right?”

The question brought a slight smile to Sewax’s face.

Because of the state of the world, there was something he could not easily give up on.

Little by little, he would sow the seeds of truth. They would outlast the long winter and eventually bud. It was true people sought simple stimulation, but the ring of truth was another form of stimulation.

People were cruelly honest.

Even if hundreds of thousands of lives were dependent on a photograph, people would look right past it if it was boring. If it seemed preachy, some would even insult it. At the same time, people from all over the world would view a video of someone’s perfectly normal pet.

But the people also loved fairness to a surprising extent.

If it was an interesting story, they would flock to it whether it was true or not. And so Sewax decided he would aim for that. Simply saying one had the truth was not enough. The proper way to compete was to present an overwhelming true story that had enough interest and appeal to break past the empty entertainment.

No matter what anyone said, the more interesting story would win in the end.

He swapped out the micro memory for his digital single-lens reflex camera and slowly spoke as he displayed photos of the previous battlefield he had traversed.

“These photos are from the country of Oceania. What do you think happened there?”

At that time, a female soldier missing an arm appeared at a court martial in a European safe country. The court martial had entered a short recess, but the media’s cameras would not leave her.

These cameras did not merely belong to this one safe country. Large news stations were broadcasting this to many different countries and regions.

“A hero? You may say I exposed corruption, but I was closer to being someone who carried out dirty work for the military. I believe the title of hero should be given to someone else.”

She used the accurate movements of her prosthetic arm to pick up a paper cup of iced coffee and smiled thinly on a bench in the corridor outside the court room.

“Setting aside issues of good and evil, I was certainly a nuisance within the military. In fact, I may still be. But even amid a conspiracy to assassinate a nuisance like me, someone still jumped into the line of fire to save me. In the end, he even stood before an Object. People like that are what soldiers should be. My way of returning the favor is to guide the military toward accepting people like that.”

She spoke slowly as if recalling something.

“There are definitely people who should be called heroes. But unfortunately, those people rarely refer to themselves that way. I wish to show my respect for all the soldiers working in Oceania. Even if they will not name themselves heroes, I hope the day will come when everyone else will.”

At that time, an Information Alliance pilot Elite, who the two idiots referred to as the “oh ho ho”, was speaking to the world via a large-scale internet concert.

“The Information Alliance fights for the proper use of information and for a better future, so we have received some unwelcome news. The MIB? The world police? World domination using an unknown Object made with new technology?”

By usurping the continent of Oceania, they would begin to change the world’s military balance.

“Normally, I would manipulate your impression of this incident by reading off a predetermined script with a perfect smile.”

[[Image:HO_v07_347.png|thumb]]

But that did not mean only someone at the center could have an influence.

The world had grown smaller.

The overwhelming electronic network allowed people to influence the other side of the globe in real time.

“Who is right and what is accurate? Try thinking for yourselves for once☆ Oh ho ho.”

It started as a small wave.

But it slowly worked its way deep into the hearts of the people whose impressions had been manipulated.

It was similar to the difference between a natural diamond and an artificial one.

Which one would draw people in the most?

The answer was revealed by their actions.

“What?”

As they glanced around from within the abandoned building, Quenser and the others quickly picked up on that difference.

“The atmosphere has changed. The burning anger is being directed elsewhere.”

The powerful emotions of anger and intent to kill would stab into one’s heart. Some martial arts had honed it into an actual technique to throw of an opponent’s timing, Quenser and Heivia were not martial arts experts, but the level of emotion surrounding them was on a tremendous scale. Despite being used to clean wars, they could detect the change in the situation.

The crowd never broke down the door and rushed in. The MIB vehicle equipped with a machinegun was stopped as if something blocked its way.

“How odd… Something isn’t right outside.” The windows were boarded up, but Heivia peered through the gaps between boards. “I don’t see any of those indigo night sky flags. Did everyone throw them away?”

That was when a slender hand poked out from a corner of the corridor.

It was beckoning to them.

“You can escape this way,” whispered a female voice.

At first, no one moved.

They thought it was a trap.

If they approached, they suspected they would have a bag placed over their head and be taken away.

But doing nothing would not improve their situation.

Quenser was the first to step forward.

“Wait, Quenser! Are you really trusting her!?”

“Something happened while we waited here without firing a shot, so we need to go with this change. It can’t hurt to take advantage of the opportunity we won for ourselves!!”

Heivia glanced down at the assault rifle in his hands.

He uncomfortably clicked his tongue as if he had only just remembered what it was and who he was aiming it at.

“Damn, I can’t believe Heivia, the transcendently handsome, genius, and rich noble, lost track of what he was doing. When a lady calls out to you, you don’t point this at her!!”

The overall atmosphere changed once Quenser and Heivia approached the door.

Heivia was a private and Quenser was a student while most of the other surviving soldiers were ranked higher. There was no reason for them to follow.

But the helicopter pilot spoke up.

“I was told to follow the infantrymen’s lead if I crashed, so I’ll leave it to you. Anything’s fine as long as we make it back to the maintenance base alive!”

One of the middle-aged soldiers who had to be ranked higher than Heivia shrugged as well.

“As the ranking officer here, I’ll say I made the decision based on a suggestion from a soldier under my command. This situation is so far outside the norm, I can’t keep up! You can take the lead!!”

All of the soldiers, including the injured, ran toward the corner of the corridor.

A brunette woman was waiting for them and she led them through the building. They arrived at what looked like a dead end due to large piece of trash, but she found gaps leading through it and to a small door. The door led to a narrow back road that the crowd did not cover.

“Is this a shopping district?”

“All of them are old stores that sell tools for craftsmen. They all have trash filling the front like that, so only the regular customers ever visit.”

They thanked the woman and cautiously continued along the road. As they did, the owners of the various small shops called out to them.

“I only have ointment and bandages, but do you want some?”

“I was just watching TV and it looks like you’re doing some cool stuff. If we help you, you’ll crush that conspiracy, right? I don’t really understand, but do what you have to!”

“Don’t make yourself ill by drinking old water! Here, have these sports drinks!!”

“Do you have enough ammo? If you can use 5.5mm, take as much as you want!!”

Some of the offers were rather dangerous, but Quenser and the others did not hesitate to accept. They had yet to resupply after an unexpected battle, so they had no reason to refuse if they could replenish their ammunition here.

“Hey, Quenser, where do we go now!? Do we return to the maintenance base!?”

“They’re surrounded by their own mob, remember? And we don’t know how far this miracle has spread. We should defeat the MIB behind all this and return once everything has calmed down!”

“I agree with that, but do you know where their secret base is? They’ve set up their conspiracy all across Oceania!! I doubt they’ll conveniently show up right in front of us!!”

“I disagree,” declared Quenser. “If you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Our helicopter was a top-priority target, so would they really leave its destruction to an angry mob? It would be safer to mix in with the crowd and fire the mortar themselves. Also, mortars fire a shell in a long arc toward their target. No amateur could do anything as tricky as hitting a flying helicopter with one. And don’t forget the heavily armed vehicle that was on its way to the plaza.”

“Are you saying the MIB’s headquarters are nearby?”

“They used the desert pipeline and the terminal facilities it connected. Heivia, where’s the closest facility? It can be for oil, underground water, or whatever else.”

“It’s nearby. It’s less than three kilometers away! No one felt any need to pay attention to some old ruins.”

“That must be it. And their headquarters are probably where their Object is!”

Heivia’s expression stiffened.

“Wait. Are you suggesting we battle that monstrous weapon in a group with lots of injured!? I doubt we could win and it’s pointless anyway. The MIB have more than one Object, remember? What good is it to risk our lives to destroy just one!?”

“Do they really have that many?” Quenser grinned. “They are an ideological group that came from a spy organization of a former superpower. They must be experts at manipulating information. Would they really reveal the entirety of their plan like that? Would they really just brag about everything? Not a chance. They wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

“Then…”

“Once the acid bomb failed to kill us and part of their plan was about to leak out, they panicked. Completely erasing leaked information is hard, but that’s why they chose to distort it by overwriting it with new information. That allows them to hide the overall outline of their plan.”

The mortar attack had shot down their helicopter immediately after the chat with the MIB.

Quenser and the others’ first action would be to contact their maintenance base by radio. They would be afraid of dying without passing on the information they had gained, so they would report everything without thinking about its veracity.

As a result, the decoy information would be passed to their superior officer.

That false fear would spread from Quenser’s group and to the entire military.

“It may be true they are developing Objects, but they can’t use that many at once! Hell, if they did have that great a fighting force, they wouldn’t be sneaking around! They could just challenge the coalition to a direct fight!! This is the age of numbers. In a one-against-three battle, a unit will not hesitate to send out the white flag signal and withdraw. Those are the rules yet they didn’t do that. That means they lose when it comes to numbers!!”

Quenser was guessing the MIB had only one or two functioning Objects at present. If the coalition’s ten or more Objects surrounded them, they would be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

“But they’re trying to become the world police! Their plan is to take over Oceania because it has the ideal geographical position. They need more than one Object to protect such a vast area of land. They want to conquer, rule, and control the world, so they need a ton of Objects!!”

“Their preparations aren’t ready yet. That’s why they tried to make us believe they can readily attack with several Objects. They’re trying to buy time! Once the time comes, tons of new Objects really will appear across Oceania!!”

“If you’re right, the first thing they’ll want to do is give credibility to their claim. Will they use their one Object to provide an effective demonstration? Even if that one is destroyed, they can buy the time they need as long as it scares the coalition enough. Then they can finish preparing the rest.”

“I don’t know what scale their plan is on, but they won’t have gone this far if they knew they would lose. Whether it’s through sheer numbers or some kind of trick, they definitely have something we can’t let them finish.”

“Wait a second. The coalition has over ten Objects stationed here. Are you saying they’re preparing something that can defeat that?”

Battles without Objects tended to become long and drawn out.

But this was different.

This would become a long, drawn out battle between Objects.

If that happened, it was impossible to say just how much apocalyptic destruction would spread across Oceania. The distinction between battlefield and city would vanish. The combatants would not have the leeway to make the distinction. It was possible that all life on the continent could be wiped out.

“That’s why we need to crush it,” said Quenser. “We’ll make the MIB’s demonstration completely fail and nip this problem in the bud. There’s no other way to save everyone.”

===Part 11===

Atomic number 79.

Atomic weight 196.96655.

Atomic symbol Au.

In other words, pure gold.

That was supposedly the source of their massive amounts of money.

The world had shattered to pieces in the past. The collapse of the UN and the appearance of Objects were the symbols of the existing national structure coming to an end. Amid the confusion, they had stolen a massive amount of gold bars from a certain country which had possessed more than any other nation.

Normally, this would have been immediately exposed and they would have been ganged up on, but the world had been in a state of complete chaos. They had taken advantage of a situation in which no one could determine what was stored where and in what quantities.

That thought brought a twisted smile to the lips of a young man wearing all black.

In the past few years, his smiles had become very different from what they had once been.

“Such a terrible lie. Even a child could see all the holes in it if they thought about it.”

“That is why we must ensure they do not have time to think about it,” said another young man sitting next to him. “We have plenty of money. We have the power to move the world. As a rite of passage for joining our secret community, we take half of their assets as collateral. …That is the trick to securing the funds we need. A single lie provides the money and connections we need to truly change the world.”

“The truth will eventually come out.”

“We simply have to change the world before that happens. We just have to make the lie into the truth.”

That was how they lived.

It was no different from how their predecessors had used information as a weapon to protect the peace of a superpower.

Even before the internet had become common, back when information was only passed through letters and phone calls, they had cut out newspaper articles, recorded radio programs, and otherwise analyzed everything so they could classify the complicated state of humanity around the globe. …Even the internet had begun as a single nation’s military network. Spreading that information network around the world had been their accomplishment and its influence plainly proved how much influence they had shown upon the vague concept of the “era” or “history”.

“The preparations are complete.”

That report was given by and to someone wearing a black suit, a black hat, and black sunglasses.

They had no individuality.

It was unnecessary and, more importantly, they themselves did not see any use in it.

“I see.”

The Company, Langley, the Pentagon.

They were called many different things, but they never used the three letter acronym that began with C.

They preferred to use the one beginning with M that had its origin in inaccurate urban legends.

Yes.

The MIB.

That was the name of the intelligence agency in the deepest depths of the world police which had been rumored to suppress the truth by threatening witnesses of UFOs and aliens.

“Is the enemy coming?”

“They were not torn limb from limb in the public square, so they must have made their way out somehow. In that case, they are on their way here. Being so cautious as to thoroughly investigate even innocent citizens is our way.”

There was a simple reason for purposefully using that inaccurate name.

They were not yet worthy of using the true name. Their goal was to gather together the world which was broken like stained glass and once more rule it as the world police. Only once they accomplished that would they return to their true form.

The C at the beginning of their name stood for “central”, but they currently had nothing to be at the center of. An egg would not function with only the yolk. For that reason, there would be no meaning in using their true name at the present.

They would wait until it was all over before they proudly used those three letters as they gave their name to the world.

“Then let us begin the final preparations.”

“You can begin at any time.”

They were trying to do the same thing that had been left behind more as legends than actual history.

Rather than standing on the stage themselves, they would use money, information, weapons, and political power to quietly contact and build relationships with people connected to other nations. At times they would invite them in, at times they would threaten them, at times they would kill them, and ultimately they would manipulate the fate of that country.

“I know. Leave the rest to me. If I can buy enough time to activate the other two and the approximately five hundred amplification facilities, we can announce our victory to the world.”

“We have been expecting this, but are you sure you can handle it?”

“It is true I am not an Object pilot Elite.”

A young man smiled thinly.

He wore all black just like the others, but his aura was sharper.

“But that is what gives this meaning,” he said. “So…”

His last word seemed disconnected at first.

But then he pulled out a handgun with a silencer attached.

“Leave the rest to me. Case #024, the attempt to use the rioters to kill the soldiers who had grasped the truth, is now over. Nevada 36, it is time to begin Case #025. That will be handled by me, D.C. 0.”

===Part 12===

Quenser, Heivia, and the rest of their small unit somehow managed to leave the confused streets that were overflowing with people.

Once they left the city, they entered the desert, but this was the cracked and sand-colored land of the wastelands seen in westerns. Some cacti and a run-down bar would have made it perfect, but those did not seem to be common sights in this desert.

Instead, they found train cars lying around with their insides removed. The electronics, doors, windows, chairs, and lights were all missing. This appeared to be a “graveyard”. Originally, the unusable cars had been carried to the end of the rails and dismantled, but even the guiding metal rails and railroad ties had been stolen at some point.

“I can see it now. In fact, it would be impossible to miss. Do they have any idea how to hide?”

The terminal facility which had several rusty pipelines connected to it appeared to have originally drawn oil up from the ground. The exterior was a bit more cluttered than the underground water pump facility. They were both ruins which had been left to rot and this facility clearly would not function any longer.

Quenser looked around with a binoculars-like device.

“I don’t see any obvious traps. There aren’t any mines, alarms, or cameras, but I doubt conspirators like this would simply be careless.”

“Setting up traps would just end up blowing off the leg of an unrelated civilian or kangaroo. They aren’t trying to protect this spot at all costs. Explosives aren’t a good idea when you want to keep anyone from knowing you’re there.”

Even so, there were landmines made from wood or glass that a metal detector would not catch. Quenser’s group remained cautious and used the chaotically abandoned train cars as cover as they slowly approached the terminal facility.

“There aren’t any scavenging hyenas around, are there? Heivia, even you might shoot if someone surprises you right now.”

“There’s nothing but fried chicken bones here. They were left here because there’s nothing left to eat.”

Just as there was no sign of traps, there was no sign of people.

The old oil facility was about five hundred meters away, but their confidence in that being the MIB’s headquarters began to waver.

“Is this really the logical way for them to handle this? Some kids playing hide-and-seek could wander into the terminal facility and they wouldn’t stop it.”

“Or maybe they no longer care if they’re found out,” ominously suggested Heivia.

Immediately afterwards, the remains of the oil facility were easily blown to pieces from the inside.

They first detected an intense shaking in the cracked ground. Next, they saw a massive cloud of dust spreading out. They could see it happening, but there was nothing they could do. The sea of dust spread out in every direction for kilometers and it swallowed up Quenser’s group.

The phenomenon itself was similar to a sandstorm.

A thick gray wall hid even the sunlight over a limited area. The brightness of the sky dimmed as if evening or dusk had fallen.

“Cough cough!! What the hell is this? Concrete!?”

“Grab a handkerchief, a bandage, or whatever you can find! Just cover your nose and mouth! That old building was from the time of the military nation, so it wasn’t built up to safety standards. It might have used asbestos. Protect yourself now if you don’t want to regret it later!!”

Quenser heard a low rumbling as if distant thunder clouds were approaching.

A giant shadow was visible through the gray world that cut off their vision.

It used static electricity for propulsion. It had two straight floats lined up parallel to each other. They were reminiscent of the treads on construction equipment.

Its silhouette was somehow different from a normal Object. It did not have the one hundred or so cannons extending from its spherical body like a sea urchin. It looked like a soccer ball with uniform protrusions attached or perhaps like the sea mines placed to destroy warships. The protrusions looked more like giant barnacles than cannons. It looked like the Object had volcano craters attached. It was unclear what they were meant to do and that uncertainty weighed on Quenser’s mind all the more.

His instincts turned toward the giant structure and all his senses grew more focused.

His thoughts grew clear.

The scorching heat, the dryness stabbing at his throat, and unpleasant dust clinging to his cheeks were all driven out of his mind.

His soul was shouting that he did not have even a second to worry about such trivial things.

“There it is,” muttered Heivia while forgetting to cover his mouth amid the dust cloud. “We were right! The MIB really did build one! They sacrificed the Oceanian military nation to build an Object completely independent of the world powers!!”

“Get down. Everyone, get down. …Has it noticed us? Why did it destroy its hiding spot and make an appearance?”

The gray curtain prevented them from judging the distance. The giant shadow looked both close and distant. At the very least, they could tell it was not performing the light footwork of a boxer or mixed martial artist like the princess’s Baby Magnum would. It appeared to be perfectly still.

“What is it doing? Surely they know revealing it like this is a huge disadvantage for them. So why isn’t it doing anything? They wouldn’t make an appearance like that for no reason.”

It was not that an obvious attack would have put them at ease.

Their hearts were filled with an uncanny feeling similar to viewing a newly discovered insect under a magnifying glass.

That was when an electric tone came from Quenser’s radio.

Froleytia was contacting them.

“Where are all of you!? It seems you vanished from the crashed helicopter.”

“Wow, a lecture now!? I don’t feel like explaining everything. What should we do, Quenser!?”

“Don’t press the button! Once everything is over, we can destroy the radio on the way back to the base.”

“If you don’t respond, I’ll write a report saying you died.”

“We’re alive!! We’re doing just fine!!” shouted the two idiots as loudly as they could.

Froleytia clicked her tongue.

“Where are you? What appears to be an unidentified Object has appeared three kilometers from the city. Does that have anything to do with you?”

“We happen to be right in front of it.”

“Move five hundred meters away. You’ll be killed if you’re caught in the bombardment.”

“What!?”

Suddenly, another voice cut in.

But they did not recognize this one. The transmission was not coming from the Legitimacy Kingdom military.

“Can you hear me, dogs of the Legitimacy Kingdom? I am monitoring the situation via satellite.”

“Who is this?”

“A lieutenant colonel who saw what your battalion can do during the Simple Is Best battle. My name is Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. You can ignore everything but the first name. A lot of people have the other names thanks to a ridiculous genius girl project. Over a hundred, I think.”

Quenser brought a hand to his forehead.

“I remember now. I saw you in that VIP Information Alliance armored vehicle in the desert night. You’re that officer who’s young enough to still be in her rebellious phase.”

“Are you the type of soldier that never forgets a lady’s face? I see. How horribly shallow.”

Quenser was actually a student, but explaining the details to someone from an enemy nation would only increase his danger.

That member of the Martini Series spoke with scorn filling her voice.

“The four world powers have managed to work together long enough to help with Oceania’s war recovery. Our coalition will not allow anyone else to possess an Object. I hate to release one of the Information Alliance’s cutting edge machines to protect your pathetic lives, but I am calm enough to keep my priorities straight. You can rest easy now, but do not forget to bow down before me in gratitude.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

“The coalition…?”

“Does that mean multiple Objects have been sent out to hunt down the MIB?”

Their response came from Froleytia Capistrano rather than Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

“The Legitimacy Kingdom has sent the Baby Magnum, the Information Alliance has sent the Catapult Cargo, the Capitalist Corporations has sent the Desert Scorpio, and the Faith Organization has sent the Mirror Bowler. They will surround this unknown Object and destroy it.”

“Refer to our second generation Object as the Cannon 256. Hearing your codename makes me want to vomit.”

“Quenser, Heivia, and everyone else there, listen up. The real problem comes after the unknown Object is destroyed. There is a possibility the four coalition Objects will begin fighting afterwards. Keep your guard up if you don’t want to be crushed by a stray shell.”

Those were frightening words.

With four against one, the outcome was readily apparent. That was how modern wars worked.

Which meant…

[[Image:HO_v07_369.png|thumb]]

“Hey, Quenser,” said Heivia. “We came here hoping to be heroes, but there’s nothing for us to do. Let’s use this confusion to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be here once the bombardment begins.”

“It’s too late for that,” replied Wraith instead of Quenser. Her lovely voice showed no mercy. “It has already begun.”

When the great roar arrived, they sensed it in their guts more than their ears. The gray dust obstructing their view was blown away like a popped balloon. Quenser initially thought it was the sound of a shell being fired, but he quickly realized he was wrong. It was the shockwave created by the car-sized shell travelling at five or ten times the speed of sound.

He could not simply brace himself and grit his teeth.

He had gotten down on the ground, but he began rolling across the wasteland as if he had been ripped from the ground.

He brought a hand to his ear and felt something wet.

He saw red blood on his hand.

“Cough!! What the…hell was…that? Was that a railgun or coilgun they fired from long distance!?”

“It’s the same either way!!”

“No, a coilgun uses electromagnets while a railgun uses Fleming’s…”

“I’m glad to see bleeding from the ears doesn’t slow down your design obsession!!”

The MIB’s Object was sitting in place. If an ultra high speed shell was sent in, it would not have time to evade. While Quenser and Heivia’s puny human bodies trembled from the damage caused by the shell merely passing by, they checked to see what damage the Information Alliance had accomplished.

A giant cloud of dust filled the air.

More attacks flew toward the Object as if stabbing a sword into an unmoving corpse. The types of attacks and the directions they came from were different. Laser beams left orange afterimages as they fried the air and low-stability plasma cannons burned bluish-white lines of light into their eyes.

It was a slaughter.

The Object was simply being disposed of.

“Wait, wait, wait! Goddammit! Cough cough! This is going too far!! You’re going to kill us too!!”

“No, wait.”

They then saw something unbelievable.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t ask me.”

The countless attacks blew away the dust as they focused on a single point.

That tore away the filthy veil.

And on the other side…

“The MIB’s Object hasn’t been touched! And it doesn’t look like it’s moved either. Did the Information Alliance miss!?”

“I’m not a psychic girl, so I don’t have the answer to everything!!”

The speed, mass, and force had all been sufficient. It was hard to think they had deflected all of the attacks with just the Object’s armor.

The Information Alliance had not given advance warning of their attack.

They continued firing the same massive shells toward the MIB Object.

As they roared through the air, they possessed so much destructive power that Quenser and the others thought they were going to be crushed as they watched on.

But this time, they clenched their teeth and saw what happened.

“It missed?”

“What? How did it land there!? It couldn’t have landed there unless its path twisted like a crank. I’ve heard of lasers bending due to mirages, but can that happen with metal shells too!?”

The dust cloud had not been created by the destruction of the target Object. It had come from the metal shells and laser beams veering away and striking the ground.

But was that a coincidence or not?

Escaping into optimistic thought was not going to help, so Quenser voiced the worst possibility.

“It has some kind of defense system. It has some kind of tech that lets it turn aside and neutralize approaching attacks!!”

The sound of someone clicking their tongue came over the radio.

Next, multiple beams of light were fired. The burning orange beams likely came from laser beam cannons while the bluish-white beams that resembled welding likely came from low-stability plasma cannons. These were not metal shells. Light and ions were completely different, so a defense system meant for metal shells would not work.

And yet…

“You’re kidding.”

“It doesn’t matter how powerful your attacks are if they can’t hit. I don’t know what it’s using, but any Object loses all of its cards if this almighty one can repeatedly turn aside any attack!!”

It did not matter.

It did not matter if it was a metal shell, a band of excited light, or a plasma weapon given directionality with tremendous magnetism.

Each Object present was a crystallization of its world power’s technology. Their concept had been honed to the extreme.

One of them primarily used metal shells but could use many different types of attacks using the container structure filled with powerful acid and the gas that created low-stability plasma.

One of them would intentionally fire laser beams at the ground around the target to turn the sand to glass and then use that glass to complexly reflect its main laser beam cannon.

One of them scattered several electron beams like firing a shotgun to constantly cause light damage while using high-quality sensors and boosters to continually avoid the enemy’s attacks.

The MIB’s Object dealt with all of them in the same way.

It had perfected turning aside attacks.

Rather than evading, it caused the approaching attacks to miss.

And it did not stop there.

“The Capitalist Corporations’ Desert Scorpio is damaged!” came a report over the radio. “For some reason, the Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler fired on it!!”

“Don’t get mad, Legitimacy Kingdom. We may be surrounding the unknown Object, but our positions make damage from stray shots impossible. That means there must be another explanation for this damage.”

“Are you saying the laser beams the unknown Object turns aside are being targeted at our Objects?”

This time, Quenser felt as if an invisible hand were squeezing at his heart.

“This is more than a means of defense. It isn’t just turning them aside! What kind of technology lets it accurately target someone else with an attack coming in at the speed of light!?”

“Tch.” Wraith clicked her tongue. “If long-distance bombardments are out, our Cannon 256 has lost its usefulness. Your outdated first generation can take the lead role. Move in close and fire on it at point blank range.”

“Tell that to our princess!!”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Keep firing shells at it!! Even if you can’t hit, try to keep them focused on defense!!”

Before he had even finished speaking, Quenser’s mind was shaken by a terrifying roar.

But this was not supporting fire from the Information Alliance’s Cannon 256.

The MIB’s Object had started to do something.

At first, Quenser, Heivia, and the others had difficulty concluding what it was trying to do.

A ring of bluish-white light with a radius of around 200 meters had appeared around the Object’s spherical main body. As time went on, more and more rings appeared. Eventually, they formed what looked like a semispherical dome that covered the entire main body except for the very top.

The bright light completely hid the giant Object.

“You have got to be kidding.”

Quenser finally realized what was happening.

As soon as he did, he felt like his heart was being wrapped tightly in wire.

“Are those laser beams or low-stability plasma cannons? No, it must be electron beams.”

“How can you tell!?”

“Anything else would have blinded us.” Quenser continued to watch on. “That bastard is bending his own attacks into a shield. Like a large particle accelerator, it’s constantly adding electron beams and accelerating them, so the speed and energy grows as time passes!”

“Ha…ha ha. The European particle accelerator out in the middle of nowhere is buried deep underground, right? Isn’t that to stop the electromagnetic waves and radiation that leaks out when the beam bends around the curves? Is it really safe to accelerate stuff in the middle of the air?”

[[Image:HO_v07_378.png|thumb]]

“Do you really think that monster is up to safety standards!? These people didn’t hesitate to use an acid bomb, so they aren’t going to care about the safety of enemy troops! And more importantly…!!”

As Quenser tried to shout, an electron beam shot by overhead after being accelerated to the limit. The principle was not all that different from the hammer throw. However, the speeds were too great for the human eye to follow, so Quenser and the others were suddenly presented with the result.

And that result was the distant roar of the Information Alliance Object being destroyed.

“What the…hell?”

Heivia looked over his shoulder even though there was no way he could see it.

His voice was trembling as much as it ever had.

Unlike a normal low-stability plasma cannon or laser beam cannon, this attack was not limited to an instant.

It continued.

It continued on and on.

It was less a projectile and more a giant sword extending beyond the horizon.

And that “sword” was swung to the side.

It swept by horizontally.

This destruction was on a scale of greater than ten kilometers, so the fear Quenser and the others saw with their eyes did not produce real fear in their brains.

As they watched in a daze, they heard the urgent “truth” over the radio.

“E-e-eeeeeeeee!? Wh-wha-what…?”

“Do not panic, analyst!! Provide an accurate report!!”

“Y-yes, major! The Information Alliance’s Catapult Cargo has been destroyed. The Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler has been destroyed. The Capitalist Corporations’…”

“Hey, wait! I can’t move! E-eject! Ksshhhhh!!”

“…Desert Scorpio has been destroyed. The Legitimacy Kingdom’s Baby Magnum…”

It was like a cruel stroke of a pen.

No matter what technology was used to skillfully evade, the never-ending electron beam sword swept across the world. Once it caught up, it sliced the Object apart.

“…can continue fighting! The Baby Magnum is our only Object still functioning!!”

“No way…”

The princess’s survival most likely had nothing to do with her own skill.

She had simply been chosen last.

The attack had only lasted for a few dozen seconds and it had died out before reaching her.

Once it was fired again, she would be vaporized along with her metal machine.

“What do we do? What do we do, Quenser!? It’ll have the next one charged in only a few dozen seconds! What’s going to happen then!?”

The Information Alliance’s “oh ho ho” could fire along a line using her continuous beam Gatling gun, but her range was short.

The closer one was to the cannon being fired, the easier it was to avoid the attack by moving around it. But when it was pulled off at the extreme long range of ten kilometers, the speed and distance needed to evade increased dramatically.

Imagine a fan shape.

The distance to the side of the fan was not far at the base, but the closer one got to the upper edge, the greater that distance grew.

However, a future designer like Quenser saw another threat on top of that.

“The real problem isn’t the destructive power.”

He gulped.

An unpleasant sweat covered his brow, but he did not have time to worry about it.

“Objects can avoid laser weapons that move at the speed of light by predicting when they will be fired by monitoring the minute movements of the cannons and the targeting lenses. But this main cannon directly bends electron beams in midair to accelerate them via centrifugal force. There’s no hint to when it will be fired. You can only start evading once the actual beam has been fired!!”

“No one can do that!!”

“That’s why they were destroyed! Currently, no Object can evade its main cannon. None of our attacks can hit and all of its will. The MIB have created a single system that does that!!”

Only silence came from the radio.

The Information Alliance officer had either decided to withdraw or had no time to worry about Quenser’s group.

It did not matter which it was.

Quenser wiped his cheek to get rid of a liquid that might have been sweat or tears.

“Heivia, let’s find a way out of this on our own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s find a way of defeating that goddamn Object before it fires again. If we don’t, the princess will be blown to pieces!!”

“Screw that!! You can go be pretend to be a hero on your own. That thing destroyed three cutting-edge Objects in an instant. It was outnumbered, but it didn’t matter! It might even be able to destroy all twenty Objects on the continent!! This isn’t something flesh-and-blood humans can handle!!”

“She’s our final hope. If the Baby Magnum gives up, who will retrieve us from the battlefield!?”

A disturbing noise came from Heivia’s throat.

If the Baby Magnum was destroyed, there would be no one left to save them. Of all the Objects belonging to the Legitimacy Kingdom or the coalition, no one else would risk losing those massively expensive machines. Even if the MIB would eventually exterminate them, they would decide to watch from afar, analyze the situation, and try to find a way of winning in the long run.

Meanwhile, the MIB’s Object would continue its arrogant rampage and the first victims would be Quenser’s group.

“If you want to live, we have to continue forward,” said Quenser calmly. “We need to at least find a way to let the princess accomplish something here. Otherwise, we’ll be the soldiers who never returned in some tragic news story.”

===Part 13===

As Quenser and the others hid at ground zero while sweating and almost wetting themselves, an armored vehicle with lots of antennae attached was parked behind some rocks about fifteen kilometers away. It was a commanding officer’s VIP vehicle.

Those special vehicles practically announced that someone important was inside, so they rarely operated on their own.

And the same should have gone for the Information Alliance lieutenant colonel inside.

“I don’t like it,” quietly said Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl of about twelve, so the uniform of a high military officer that she wore impeccably and the number of medals on her chest seemed out of place. She was well known for using her army boots to kick anyone who jokingly mentioned the tradition of Shichi-Go-San from a certain island nation.

Inside the armored vehicle, she sat atop a sofa bed with her legs crossed. The vehicle was quite large because they would normally carry a large number of infantry, but this officer had it filled with the equipment she needed to relax: a refrigerator, a sofa bed, a dart board, a simple shower, a secret satellite internet line not connected to the military network, a laptop, and a home theater screen that took up one entire wall.

“I don’t like it.”

“The Cannon 256 was destroyed, but the pilot Elite managed to eject. We had a later model from the same line prepared, so the overall situation should not change much.”

These flowing words came from a young man in his late twenties.

He was always waiting behind the girl while she travelled across the battlefield. His rank was second lieutenant, but he looked more like a skilled secretary than a highly-trained killing machine. He was well known for immediately sending a punch toward anyone who mentioned that a certain country had once been filled with people who rejoiced at having an overbearing tsundere call them a dog.

Together, they were known as the “stopgap grim reaper”.

When a military officer committed a scandal, these two were sent in to swiftly bring that officer’s battalion back into battle. In this case, the Cannon 256’s maintenance battalion had apparently been involved in human trafficking within Oceania. For that reason, the two of them had little attachment to the Cannon 256. In fact, they had never once cared all that much for the soldiers under their command.

Wraith waved a hand in annoyance.

“Not what I meant. I don’t like what they’re claiming.”

“What the MIB are claiming?”

“They’re making the announcement around the world. They hit the top of every video site’s rankings a while ago, but this is different. I think they’re panicking a bit because the Oceanian people’s emotions have taken an unexpected turn.”

She took a sip from the soda can on the side table and displayed the screen of her laptop on the home theater screen.

This is what it said:

'''“By reducing the amount of thick onion armor which is an Object’s most unique feature, the cost can be reduced by five billion dollars.”

'''“The durability of the armor is of little importance. We have overturned what everyone thought they knew about Objects by introducing a new system which can distort any attack.”

[[Image:HO_v07_387.png|thumb]]

'''“This is the Flyby Collider.”

'''“This technology eliminates the need for repeated extreme evasive actions, so a specially selected and developed pilot Elite is no longer needed.”

'''“The selection, development, and protection of the Elite traditionally accounts for one-tenth of an Object’s cost, but we have reduced that to zero.”

'''“We will prove in Oceania that this is enough to win.”

'''“Our Early States will destroy any Object that opposes it while using a normal soldier rather than an Elite. If you think you can win, then try to destroy it, coalition. We will equally destroy everyone that wishes to preserve this era and then celebrate the arrival of a new era.”

'''“We will destroy the giant hand holding down all normal soldiers. This is a day to remember. We will regain equal possibilities for all of mankind and use that equality to produce fair competition.”

'''“Whenever someone rises up, someone else is pushed down.”

'''“Now, what will everyone do? How long will you be fooled into thinking a lifetime of being trampled on and squeezed dry is one of ‘stability’?”

'''“Before you grow sick of it all and press a gun against your head, try standing up on your own two feet.”

'''“Do not curl up on the edge of this horribly twisted world. Stand tall and walk boldly forward. We will achieve the victory needed for that. Come stand in the center of the world along with the night sky flag!!”

The young man smoothly tilted his head.

He mentally searched for the response his commander would most want to hear.

It did not matter what he himself thought.

“They are bluffing.”

“Of course they are,” spat back Wraith.

She was so irritated that she began spinning a ballpoint pen in her hand.

She was lost in thought.

(The Oceanian people are leaning toward the apes in the Legitimacy Kingdom. Even so, this much destructive power could frighten some of them into siding with the MIB. This is a conflict between emotions and interests. If the scales tilt in one direction, those idiots and their uncontrollable weapon could be invited into Oceania as heroes.)

“Mh…”

When she noticed her subconscious habit, she threw the pen away.

Spinning a pen was a mental stabilization action driven into her during the genius girl project she had gone through. There were thousands of girls with the exact same habit.

The fact that there were replacements for her had driven the girl toward bold actions. By grasping all of the dangerous opportunities that no one wanted to reach for, she had quickly risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. However, it was not unusual for a sense of superiority and an inferiority complex to go hand in hand.

The young man achieved his stable position by possessing the flexibility to accept oppression (yet he would grow angry the instant someone pointed it out), so he picked up the pen without changing his expression.

The girl officer pouted her lips and spoke to the young man.

“It doesn’t really matter if it’s a bluff, second lieutenant. What matters is how many people will believe it. You need to learn how the Information Alliance does things.”

Froleytia Capistrano, base commander of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion, was also frowning in displeasure.

'''“We will exterminate each and every one of our enemies, but we will fully support any who help bring about our new world.”

'''“Specifically, we will supply you with this brand new technology.”

'''“In wars and any other form of competition, whoever is fastest wins. The first condition is that you possess the intelligence gathering and management ability to locate and contact us. We are always waiting for some close friends.”

A young female operator cautiously spoke to Froleytia.

“Wh-what should we do? We might be able to identify who posted the video…”

“Leave that to the deskwork groups who have nothing better to do back in safe country bases. I just hope they don’t make any strange deals in the hope of acquiring technology.”

She had no way of knowing, but that was another side of the world police.

Simply wielding a great power would only make one a feared dictator.

To be accepted by the world at large, one had to supply a great merit that made up for the risk.

“Were they originally connected to some country’s intelligence agency? I see parts of their text that is meant to work up people’s emotions. …I hope the monkey-brained higher ups can see that much.”

The information itself had been spread across the normal internet, so anyone could easily read it.

'''“We will rebuild the former world police here in Oceania.”

'''“We will bring order back to the world and fix this twisted era in which war has become constant.”

'''“We do not insist that you participate in this.”

'''“The world police will not hesitate or hold back when it comes to protecting the innocent people of the world. We wish to make that system very clear.”

'''“Listen carefully. All good people can simply rejoice at the coming age while all evil people should tremble and await its arrival. No matter what anyone might think, we of the MIB will once more release the world police and then take back our former name.”

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance officers who were separated by a great distance muttered the exact some words:

“I don’t like it. How about I rub some mud on your face?”

===Part 14===

“Heivia, what should we call that thing? In fact, who decides on an Object’s name?”

“How should I know!? Why should we give any real thought to that annoying bloodbath weapon? Let’s just call it the Son of a Bitch!!”

Quenser, Heivia, and the others had crawled under the remains of a train. They did not know if the enemy had located them or not, but when faced with attacks even Objects could not avoid, they wanted to hide no matter how useless it was. Once they were targeted, they could not escape on foot.

“Something about this is bothering me.”

“What a coincidence! I was just wondering why a group of guys has to cram themselves into such a small space. Quenser, why aren’t you a beautiful girl!?”

“Railguns and coilguns are metal shells, lasers are light, and it worked on plasma and ion as well. Is there really a technology that allows them to bend all of those? And if they were using something like that, why can we see the Son of a Bitch in front of us?”

“What? …Come to think of it, you’re right. If it was constantly bending all light, it might appear and disappear like a mirage.”

“There isn’t some invisible wall evenly diverting all incoming attacks. It uses something else.”

Also, the MIB’s Son of a Bitch had remained motionless the entire time. It may have simply felt there was no need to evade.

However, that in itself was odd.

“After it destroyed the terminal facility from the inside, it sat there doing nothing for a while. Why? Was it waiting for the dust to clear up? Or did it need to boot up its mystery offense and defense system.”

While lying on the ground, Quenser increased the magnification of his binoculars and observed around the MIB’s Son of a Bitch.

Rubble had scattered about from the destruction of the terminal facility that the Object had been built inside. He saw boulder-like pieces of concrete, hunks of metal that had lost their original shape, and crushed plastic boxes.

But they all had one point in common.

“They’re all melted?”

“That thing’s been sending electron beams around it to accelerate them. That has to create a huge amount of energy. …But shit. That means the energy it’s releasing is enough to melt concrete. If one of those hits us, we’ll truly vanish from the face of the earth!!”

“…”

Quenser pointed his binoculars in several different directions.

He quickly found what he was looking for.

A beer bottle was mixed in with the rubble. It had likely been brought in by a member of the MIB.

The brown bottle was broken down the middle and the jagged edge glittered sharply.

“No, wait…”

“What is it, Quenser? Wait a second! Why are you crawling out from under the train!?”

“The Information Alliance’s first attack was a huge metal shell. It was forced off track and hit the ground instead of the Son of a Bitch. That’s the best piece of evidence. If I’m right, there should be traces left there.”

“You’re kidding. We don’t need to go on a walk right now!! Sure, our odds of survival if we hide are almost zero, but… Dammit, Quenser! Wait up!!”

Either way, it was all over once the MIB’s Son of a Bitch began attacking the Baby Magnum which was observing from afar without knowing what to do.

No one would try to rescue Quenser’s group which was isolated on the front lines.

They would either be killed by a giant hunk of metal or die of thirst in the desert.

Either way, a happy ending did not await them.

After crawling out from under the train, they circled around as far from the Son of a Bitch as they could while moving to where the shell had landed. The scattered rubble of the terminal facility acted as cover. They continued on while pressing their backs against chunks of concrete larger than cars.

“We’re gonna die. We’re definitely gonna die. The biggest mistake of my life was meeting someone with a death wish like you.”

“It’s called going for broke, Heivia. If you don’t see adversity as an opportunity, you’ll never make it anywhere in this shitty world.”

“Yeah, but an opportunity for who!? No matter how much I work, the son of the famous Winchell family will be ignored and some black-hearted fat ass will take all the credit. And yet I came to the battlefield so that position could be mine!!”

Even as impatience and tension shortened their lifespans, they made their way through the rubble and toward the metal shell. Their throats were oddly dry and the air stung them, so their water bottles quickly grew empty.

Their path took a C-shape as they avoided the Son of a Bitch.

About three hundred meters behind the enemy Object was a crater with a radius of thirty meters.

“There it is. We found it.”

“Seriously? You’re climbing down? That thing flew at Mach who-even-knows. The friction might have heated it enough to light your hand on fire the instant you touch it. Ah, wait! Are you even listening!?”

“…”

Quenser ignored Heivia. Or rather, his curiosity won out and he did not even hear the other boy. He slid down to the center of the crater and the helicopter pilot and the other middle-aged soldiers followed him.

Once he was left behind, Heivia clicked his tongue and started down into the crater.

They found the metal shell.

It was larger than the average passenger vehicle, but its shape was not all that different from the squashed bullets commonly seen at shooting ranges. It had likely originally been a cylinder with one end tapered off like a stake, but the front half was crushed into a round shape while the back half retained its form. It looked like a distorted umbrella.

“What is this? It looks like more than just a hunk of metal.”

“It’s one of the Catapult Cargo’s container-style shells. That Object can put whatever it wants inside. It can use a powerful acid spray to dissolve an Object’s armor, it can use a low-stability plasma cannon’s gas and a large scale battery, or it can use a COIL combination.”

“This thing really is dangerous! Was it a dud!? If it goes off now, not even our bones will be left behind!”

But that was not the important part.

Quenser looked at the rear half of the shell.

Specifically, he focused on the damage to the side.

“I was right. It has some odd damage. That caused it to lose its balance and veer off course. It was a deviation in air resistance.”

“What? You mean the Son of a Bitch didn’t do anything to this shell and it was just a design error on the Information Alliance’s part?”

“It doesn’t appear to be that simple.” Quenser gave a bitter look. “If the Son of a Bitch has the technology to accurately and systematically cause damage to shells in midair, it would be able to intentionally send metal shells off course.”

“Are you serious? Objects do usually have laser weapons to defend against ballistic missiles, but are you saying it can precisely alter shells flying toward it!?”

However, Quenser rejected that possibility.

But not in a good way.

“This is something simpler and more dangerous.”

“…?”

“The concrete scattered around the Son of a Bitch had melted. Same with the metal, the plastic, and everything else. But that wasn’t because of the residual energy of the electron beams. The one thing that wasn’t melted was a glass bottle. Even the sharp broken edges were fully intact.”

“What are you trying to-… Wait. You don’t mean…!?”

“It was acid,” spat out Quenser. “The Son of a Bitch is scattering a bunch of acid mist around itself! Just by entering the acid zone, the shells are damaged enough to veer off course. The laser beam weapons and the like are turned aside using that mist like a mirage!!”

“Wait. That doesn’t make any sense, you idiot!! Object armor is essentially steel made to resist high heat. If it was scattering acid everywhere, it would melt its own armor. And what about its main cannon? Its electron beams aren’t being randomly bent. It’s accurately and precisely controlling them to emulate a particle accelerator! How do you explain that with your acid theory!?”

“The acid particles are probably encased in a capsule that’s just slightly bigger. Those small capsules are what make up the mist. If they can control the density and friction, they might be able to electrically control the plasma and electron beams as well.” Quenser sounded as disgusted by the idea as Heivia. “Heivia, remember the medical nanotech I mentioned in relation to the Blue Cross? This probably uses that. The acid is wrapped in a safe outer shell and made to remain in the air as a colloid, but a signal sent at the necessary timing causes the outer shell to pop like a bubble. Once the acid inside touches the air, it rapidly vaporizes. That lets them control the location and density of the acid reacting to the air. It wouldn’t be difficult to build an accurate device like a particle accelerator.”

“That theory is insane…”

“After the Son of a Bitch destroyed the terminal facility and revealed itself, it just sat there for a while. Why? Because it takes time to disperse its acid armor around itself to set up its invincible shield!!”

“But if that’s the answer, we’re in trouble!” wailed Heivia while ignoring all logic. His words came straight from his exposed emotions. “You’re saying the Son of a Bitch uses a bunch of acid? You’re saying it has scattered a chemical that can melt through metal and concrete on contact!? We don’t have any equipment to handle chemical weapons! If they destroy the environment like this, there’s nothing we can do! This is just like the acid bomb! We’ll be melted down to our bones!! I don’t want that!!”

“Don’t worry. It’s okay! Think back to the Son of a Bitch’s main cannon. The rings from its electron beams only reached two hundred meters, remember? That must be the edge of its range. If we stay that far away, we don’t have to worry about the acid armor being activated around us. Any further than that and the remote control of the outer shells won’t work!!”

“You can’t know that! The wind could send the acid toward us after it bursts from the capsule. Or maybe the Son of a Bitch is holding some of its power in reserve!! No one can say where the safe line is. Oh, no. I drank all my water because I was oddly thirsty. Don’t tell me…”

Falling victim to self-made fear and imaginings severely reduced one’s chance of surviving on the battlefield. A sharp eye for even the smallest hint could lead to imagined dangers if one took it too far.

“Heivia! No matter how bad the situation is, you can’t overcome it if you don’t accept it! Why did the metal and concrete melt but the glass didn’t? This wouldn’t happen with just heat. You may not want to accept that nanotech is being used without a microscope to check on it, but the Son of a Bitch clearly has some means of freely controlling the acid! And the nanotech capsules is the only theory I have for how they can spread an acid mist and freely switch it on and off!! Heivia, do you have any other ideas!? Well, do you!? Yes or no!?”

“God damn you…”

“That isn’t what I asked! Yes or no!?”

“No, you idiot!! I admit it. You may be insane and forget about the danger when faced with an Object, but I admit that insanity gives you a sort of cleverness!! So what do we do now, future mad scientist? Let’s say it is using nanotech. Let’s say the area two hundred meters around it is filled with acid capsules. What can we do!? It can melt metal shells fired at Mach 4 or 5!! We can’t even get close!!”

“True.”

Quenser looked up from the bottom of the crater and toward the Son of a Bitch that towered up amid the rubble.

And he thought while aware that their survival relied on their next actions.

“I noticed something odd in the moment just before it fired its main cannon.”

“What?”

“It almost entirely surrounded itself with the electron beam rings, remember? The afterimage made it look like a giant dome. It has to release the acid to bend its own beams, so it had to have been almost entirely surrounded in an acid mist.”

“What about it?”

“If it bends both light and the electron beams, how does it target so accurately? Even infrared and radar would be distorted as it passes through the acid armor.”

“Wait. Are you saying it has a separate targeting system!? Infantry, a UAV, a satellite, or anything really. It just needs some kind of external eyes linked to it!!”

“It might have a targeting lens attached to a tentacle-like cable that directly connects back to it.” Quenser slowly focused his mind and calmed his breathing. “Whatever it is, we don’t have to worry about its powerful main cannon as long as we destroy that ‘eye’. The princess’s attacks still won’t reach it, but it will at least eliminate the threat of instant destruction. We’ll have more time to think!!”

“Thinking is your job. Give me something to actually do! If I keep worrying over this, I’m going to go crazy with fear!!”

“Okay, Heivia. It’s time to search. We need to do a thorough search for a camera, a sensor, a radar, or anything else that can be used to target. This is no different from when enter your first love’s room and she leaves to make some tea.”

“Um, Quenser… I don’t quite follow.”

“Eh? Really? Doesn’t it make you restless!? Don’t back away now!! Wait, the helicopter pilot is looking away too!? And everyone else!? Was that really such a weird thing to say!?”

Either way, the Son of a Bitch’s invincible defense system would not last forever. If a metal shell was coated with reinforced glass or pure gold, it might pierce through the acid armor without interference.

But they did not have time to implement any such theories.

For the moment, they needed to take the initiative in whatever way they could.

“I-I’m not suggesting anything perverted like looking around for her underwear or tampons. I just meant looking at the bookshelf to see what she reads! Everyone does that, right!?”

“We get it! We can argue about this all night once we get back alive, so stop clinging to me with those bloodshot eyes! Also, a bloodline-focused noble can’t get into a girl’s bedroom so easily!!”

They used their binoculars, rifle scopes, and the other sensors on their weapons to silently scan the area.

The time it took wore at their nerves.

“There’s nothing. Nothing at all! There are a few pieces of scrap metal lying around, but nothing is giving off an electromagnetic or infrared signal. Or are they sticking to passive sensors!?”

An active sensor would send out infrared rays or ultrasonic waves and measure the reflection, but passive sensors would only detect the light and sound that came to them naturally. The latter type sent out nothing themselves, so they were less sensitive but harder to detect.

“There has to be something. The Son of a Bitch can’t target accurately while surrounded by that acid armor that bends light and warps objects!”

“How long has it been since it fired? Shouldn’t the princess have arrived by now!?”

“Wait, look over there! Something’s shining in a gap in the rubble. Is it a lens!?”

“My sensors aren’t picking anything up.”

“It might be a passive sensor like a digital camera. Either way, it won’t hurt to check it out!!”

Instead of heading directly toward it, they once again cautiously circled around in a large C-shape. If it was what they were looking for, the glass lens was the Son of a Bitch’s eye. If they were detected, they would be attacked by that electron beam cannon that easily melted through Objects.

Approaching it wore at their nerves more than handling a landmine or unexploded ordnance.

“Oh, this reminds me of the teapot.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When I was at school in my safe country, I had a hands-on lesson in handling manufactured metals and explosives. To disarm an unexploded plastic explosive, we used hot water to melt the explosive.”

“Say something ominous like that again and I’m throwing you in front of the lens.”

They were checking to see if this was a sensor or lens, but they could not simply look at it from the front. They would be killed once it caught sight of them.

And so they circled around to the side and back of the rubble it was hiding under and began to search for a cable.

“This is no different from searching for a landmine. Stab your knife blade shallowly into the sand to check for something underneath.”

“Wouldn’t you use your rifle’s sensors to search for mines?”

“Not in all this rubble. There’s too much metal to trust a positive reading.”

“Just like oil pipelines have sensors to detect oil leaking out, the cable might be covered in sensors, so don’t damage it. If you find it, don’t pull it out. If it has gyro sensors, it might react to a slight change in tilt.”

The helicopter pilot and middle-aged soldiers helped Quenser and Heivia slowly search through the sand. With sweat covering their faces, they stuck their sharp blades into the soft sand and searched along millimeter by millimeter.

“Isn’t there a toy from that island nation that’s a lot like this? You stick toy knives in the side of a barrel and the pirate inside pops out.”

“When he pops out, does it mean you win or lose?”

“If it happens here, we’ll all be turned to ash, so it isn’t funny at all. The pressure is on an entirely different level.”

Suddenly, the helicopter pilot formed a twisted smile after finding something with the broken piece of rebar he was sticking into the sand.

“There’s something here! It’s long, skinny, and it bent a bit.”

“Wait, don’t move. I’ll check with my knife.”

Heivia slowly walked over to the pilot, stuck his knife in from a different angle, and made a displeased look of his own.

His expression was that of someone who had opened a door and saw a grenade fall to the floor after being activated by the turning doorknob. Rather than pure fear, it was the oddly relaxed expression of someone trying to look away from reality.

“Dammit. There is something here. It’s a long narrow tube of some sort.”

“It travels from the pilot to you, so let’s try slowly removing the sand in between.”

Quenser and the others carefully removed the sand like they were excavating some ruins. A few centimeters below the surface, they found something that resembled a snake. They had expected to find it, but it still squeezed at their hearts to see it.

However…

“Hey, Quenser. What is this thing?”

“Can’t you tell?”

“It just looks like a rubber hose to me!!” shouted Heivia now that his tension was gone and the dam of his emotions burst.

He circled around the pile of rubble and did not hesitate to reach for the location of the supposed lens.

He tossed something over.

It was the bottom half of a broken glass bottle.

“There was never a wired sensor or lens here! There’s nothing to help us here. What do we do now!? Is there really any way of keeping the Son of a Bitch from firing!?”

“Wait. In that case, how does it get targeting information? The acid mist filling the air around it bends laser beams and electron beams. Any sensors inside the shield will pick up distorted readings because…”

Quenser trailed off.

Heivia had been criticizing him, but it bothered him when Quenser stopped speaking mid-sentence. He frantically spoke up.

“What is it? Did you have an idea!?”

“It can freely bend even light,” blankly muttered Quenser. “That means it might be able to repeatedly bend the light it wants like a periscope. It doesn’t need a cable. What if it can use the acid mist in the place of an optical fiber?”

“You have got to be kidding,” cut in Heivia as if saying he did not want to hear any more. “That would mean the Son of a Bitch truly has no weaknesses. That means it can achieve offense, defense, and targeting all with that acid mist!! What can we possibly do!?”

“…”

“Please… Please don’t fall silent!! Thinking up ways to resolve this is your job! If you’re silent, there’s nothing we can do. Please come up with some crazy idea!!”

They heard a low rumbling noise.

What looked like the rings of Saturn colored bluish-white appeared around the Son of a Bitch.

“Not good. That’s the MIB’s main cannon,” said the helicopter pilot while forgetting to blink. “Is it targeting the Baby Magnum or us!? Either way, all hope of survival is gone as soon as it fires!!”

“We need something…anything! Is there any more information that might help us find a way out of this!?”

“Of course there isn’t,” said a middle-aged soldier in a dejected tone. He had a blank look in his eyes. “What will looking around tell us? There’s nothing but piles of rubble and an overwhelmingly powerful Object. What can we find with our radios and handheld devices? We’ll only find the announcement the MIB are sending over the internet.”

But that caused Quenser to frown.

“Announcement?”

“They’re triumphantly proclaiming their victory to the world! They have to be pretty confident of their victory. There’s no way we can defeat this Object!!”

Quenser stared at the screen of the handheld device the man held out.

The MIB. The ghosts of a former superpower. No need for onion armor. A normal soldier instead of a specialized pilot Elite. Drastically reduced costs. A new defense system known as the Flyby Collider. The geographical requirements for the world police. The creation of a new superpower and the construction of a peaceful world by having a single military rule. A battle with existing Objects to proclaim the coming of a new age. The Early States.

“Hey, Heivia.”

“What?”

“The container-style shells fired by the Catapult Cargo should be located around here. Those never went off. If we swap out the fuse, we can detonate them, right?”

“So what if we can!?” asked Heivia in an irritated voice.

“We might be able to win,” said Quenser before he had finished.

A silence fell as the others held their breaths.

Quenser repeated himself.

“We might be able to defeat that goddamn Son of a Bitch. Do you want in on this gamble?”

===Part 15===

Fortunately, Quenser and Heivia were not alone. With the helicopter pilot and other soldiers sharing their fate, they had a total of about eight people.

They had no time.

More and more bluish-white rings were appearing around the Son of a Bitch. They surrounded the Object like a glowing cocoon. Once it accelerated enough, it would release a long and continuous electron beam to sweep across like the stroke of a pen. The Baby Magnum would be unable to escape and Quenser’s group had no chance at all. The fate of the target would be sealed.

And so Quenser gave quick instructions.

He pulled out several pen-like electric fuses and handed them out to the soldiers.

“Everyone, pry open the Catapult Cargo’s container-style shells which landed around this area. Swap out the fuses with these! Once you’re done, escape outside the blast range of the shell. I don’t know when exactly this will begin and I don’t have time to wait! If you don’t want to be blown to pieces, protect your own life yourself!”

“What about me, Quenser!?”

“Use your radio to perform a random search of frequencies. Find one that will reach that Son of a Bitch’s cockpit. Anywhere with an unnatural amount of noise should be on the band they’re using!”

“You’re kidding, right? Are you really going to communicate with it!? Once it traces the source of the signal, it’ll blow you away!”

“That’s why I’ll route it through several radios so the source can’t be determined. The electric fuses can receive and transmit radio signals and I’ll be using all of your radios as well. Just scatter them over a wide area!”

“What will you do?”

“Make some rockets,” spat out Quenser. “I want to make a few giant rocket fireworks like we did before. I need to borrow every single rifle bullet all of you have! Also your water bottles and cooling spray. You won’t need them if you die, right?”

“What? Why do you need water for a rocket?”

“The rocket is just a vehicle. It’s what the rocket is carrying that matters. Anyway, just do as I say. This is the only way to fight back!”

It was a race against time.

They quickly scattered and began their work.

As seen in gun malfunctions, the explosive within rifle bullets could easily kill their owner if handled incorrectly. However, Quenser was an explosives specialist. Even without an electronic scale and specialized tools, he accurately and precisely repacked the explosive with the equipment on hand. Fortunately, the area was covered in rubble, so he was able to procure the containers and stabilizing rods he needed.

The worst part was the fuse.

As he twisted tissues into a string, he mixed in a small amount of explosive. If he did not add in enough, the flame would die out, but too much would cause it to explode partway through. Adding it in evenly required the most careful attention.

“I’ve swapped out the fuse in the shell. After this transmission, I’ll throw away my radio!”

“I’m done, too. I’m just going to run away now!!”

“You’ll be using my radio as a decoy, so I won’t be able to contact you. It doesn’t mean I’m dead, so don’t forget to pick me up afterwards!”

Quenser monitored the progress from the radio in his hand.

He then heard Heivia shout his way.

“I found the frequency! It’s 10.1 GHz. Are you really going to contact the Son of a Bitch!?”

“We can’t win if I don’t. Anyway, you go hide somewhere safe!”

“And where would that be!? Not even a nuclear shelter can protect you from that thing!”

Quenser could not spend any more time waiting.

The handmade rocket fireworks were the size of a 1.5 liter bottle. He stuck them into the ground, carefully adjusted the angle, and lit the fuses.

With an explosive roar, the rockets flew diagonally up toward the Son of a Bitch.

Before arriving, they veered off course.

“What are you doing!? They’ve gone off course and those toys can’t even scratch an Object!!”

“They don’t have to hit!!”

Quenser’s strange comment was immediately followed by the rockets reaching their limit above the Son of a Bitch.

They burst and scattered their contents everywhere.

===Part 16===

In that instant, a young man of the MIB known as D.C. 0 frowned a bit within the cockpit of the Object officially known as the Early States and that Quenser and the others had been calling the Son of a Bitch.

A large number of errors had just appeared on the screen.

The Early States had no onion armor, and its only means of offense and defense, the Flyby Collider, had become unusable. Control had been lost of the electron beam being accelerated and it had flown off into the distant desert without reaching its full power.

“What? It’s frozen over? Was it those rockets? Did they create a thin layer of ice to seal the ejection points for the nanotech capsules!?”

It seemed those had been more than simple toys made with gunpowder.

They had scattered water above the Early States and then instantly froze it. The MIB man initially thought of coolant, but then he came up with a much simpler answer.

(It was just cooling spray and water bottles, wasn’t it? Such a childish trick, yet it has temporarily stopped the Flyby Collider!!)

Some static came from his radio.

Someone was cutting in on the band used by the MIB. It was not encrypted, so it arrived in the cockpit as a voice.

“Hi there, MIB. Did that surprise you a bit? I know your special weapon uses nanotech acid capsules. And to efficiently spray them out, you would do so from the top of the Object. I thought a thin but wide layer of ice would seal up all of them. Was I right?”

“You idiot,” muttered the young man while pressing a few buttons with his index finger.

He tried to scan for the source of the radio signal, but he detected quite a few. And the Early States only had its main cannon, so it could not attack all of them at once with secondary cannons.

“Did you really think you could stop the Early States with such a childish trick? To create our new superpower, we have been secretly planning this since before the Oceanian military nation was even formed! It will never lose to a trick you thought up on the spot!!”

There was a slight humming noise as if from a bug zapper powering on.

Normally, the electron beam weapon which acted as the Early States’ main cannon would achieve its maximum power by accelerating in rings with the help of the Flyby Collider, but it provided plenty of heat even without the acceleration.

The ice had been meant to cover a large area, so it was only a few millimeters thick. Even if the weakened cannon would not function as a weapon, it could melt the ice.

And once it was melted, the Flyby Collider could activate once more.

The perfect armament for offense and defense would return.

“Ha ha ha!! We still have two more Early States equipped with Flyby Colliders. You have no idea where they are, do you? And we won’t give you the time to find out. This one Object can buy enough time for them to be activated. After that, the difference in strength will only continue to grow!!”

“Is that so?”

“And in addition to the Objects, we have hundreds of amplification facilities. Since you temporarily sealed off the Flyby Collider, can you guess what those do? They scatter the nanotech across the entire continent. The Flyby Collider will cover the continent and the three Early States will control it!! You know what that means, don’t you!?”

“You will be able to freely bend those high-output electron beams over the entire continent and send long-distance attacks against our Objects from any direction. The horizon will no longer be a restriction. But did you forget about attenuation in the air?”

“This is nanotech. By regulating the location and amounts of the acid, a space similar to a vacuum can be created. Like a whirlwind, it will be incredibly short lived and only exist in an exceedingly small area, but we have the technology needed to accurately pass the electron beam through that narrow tube!! In other words, we can almost entirely ignore attenuation!!”

“I see. And as the ‘flyby’ in the name suggests, I suppose you can greatly increase the output by passing the electron beam between each Son of a Bitch and reaccelerating it. What a convenient age we live in. This wonderful tech lets you overturn the simple differences between Objects. …And in exchange, acid will eat into over half the continent.”

It was similar to expanding the current local conditions over the entire continent of Oceania.

None of the Objects in range would be able to hit with their attacks and the Early States would be able to destroy any enemy by freely bending their electron beams.

It was not a long, drawn-out battle or one-on-one fight based on an implicit understanding.

They were assuming zero losses on their part.

The completely unilateral destruction would lead to all the losses being on the other side.

“The smallest system is used to rule the largest area! This is the perfect system for the new world police!! Once we succeed in Oceania, we need only expand the range bit by bit. In less than a decade, this new system will cover the entire surface of the earth. And Oceania will be at the center. Anyone who cannot keep up will be swallowed up by the new era and die!!”

“Do you really think you’ll have time for that?” mocked the enemy soldier over the radio.

But the young man’s gaze did not waver.

“Are you referring to the first generation Object waiting in the distance? It will not make it in time. This ice is only a few millimeters thick. In less than ten seconds, control of the Flyby Collider will-…”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

That declaration was immediately followed by a great roar and vibration passing through the thick sides of the Object. The noise assaulted the young man’s eardrums.

“What!?”

“Did you forget about the Catapult Cargo’s unexploded ordnance? Those are the true main weapons of an Object. What do you think is inside them? The gas for a low-stability plasma cannon? A battery filled with power taken directly from the Object’s reactor? Or maybe a COIL set? Well, it doesn’t matter what. It will all damage you just the same,” said the enemy soldier. “After all, you eliminated the expensive craftsman-made onion armor because you could rely on your Flyby Collider. Without that defense system, you only have armor which is inferior to the average Object.”

“…!!”

(Did they swap out the fuses so they could use them!?)

The young man in black looked around the cockpit once more.

There were over ten levers and hundreds of buttons. Those controls would normally be used in conjunction with a system that read eyeball movements with a laser, but he could not use that very well without the training of a pilot Elite.

Yes.

He was not a pilot Elite.

Destroying the existing style of Object with a normal soldier had held ideological meaning for them.

They would hold the most powerful position by deploying large numbers of cheap yet effective weapons.

That was their first step toward being the same as that ideal nation that had once existed.

“You aren’t an Elite! The reason you’ve just been sitting there wasn’t because disseminating the acid capsules took time. You didn’t understand the extremely complex piloting system, so a high-speed battle was out of the question for you!! You planned to remain motionless and crush any Object that approached. It makes for a nice performance, but that was your only option!! And that means one thing!!”

He could not avoid the large explosions bursting up from the ground.

If those tremendous explosions produced by the infantrymen reached the Early States before the thin ice melted, its inferior armor would be destroyed.

“Kh…”

The young man in black reached his hands toward two of the many levers.

He grabbed them.

And he pushed them forcefully forward.

“You idiot!! We knew from the beginning a normal soldier would be piloting it! We have a way of letting the computer handle as much of the piloting process as possible. Even if it is not enough for a battle against another Object, I can still move this Object! I can even move at high speeds, so I will not be caught in your explosions!!”

An explosive noise burst out.

More than one burst out.

But these were not caused by the explosions the enemy soldier had caused.

They were the sounds of the recoil as the Object moved in a lightning-like zigzag to escape the explosions.

“I’ll crush you.”

The young man in black smiled.

The thin layer of ice covering a portion of the Early States had melted.

He had his main weapon back.

“I’ll crush you!! I’ll show you how irreverent it was to think that was enough to oppose the MIB and the return of the world police! I will crush you into a cruel symbol of what happens when someone opposes us!!”

Everything turned red.

The young man’s intense anger caused his the color crimson to seep in from the edges of his vision.

And…

===Part 17===

“What are you doing?” blankly muttered Heivia. His voice quickly grew to a shout. “What in the hell are you doing!? Provoking him only made the Son of a Bitch move more quickly! This is no different from committing suicide by agitating the enemy!”

“No.”

Quenser grinned.

They had no hope.

They would be smashed to pieces if the Son of a Bitch simply gave into its anger and charged forward, but he still smiled in assurance of his victory.

“We’ve won. He’s the one who's committing suicide.”

“What?”

“Objects are over fifty meters tall and weigh over twenty thousand tons. They’re as massive as two nuclear aircraft carriers, but they rule the battlefield while moving faster than five hundred kilometers per hour.” He paused to take a breath before continuing. “The inertial Gs felt by the pilot are much greater than those of a supersonic fighter. Those Gs are resisted with a special suit filled with cutting-edge technology and thoroughly altering the Elite’s body. And do you know what that means?”

“If a perfectly normal soldier is forced through those actions…”

Heivia gulped.

Quenser gave the answer with the cruelty of stabbing in a knife.

“If they’re lucky, not enough blood will reach their brain and they’ll black out. If not, a major blood vessel or organ could burst, killing them instantly.”

With a great rumbling noise, the Son of a Bitch moved off in an odd direction. It passed right by Quenser and the others. As it forced its way through the piles of rubble, it gently continued in just that one direction. That mindless action showed the one piloting the Object had lost control.

“You…gwah…aaaaaaahh!”

The voice coming from the radio seemed to be cursing them.

Quenser smiled and brought the device to his mouth.

“What’s wrong? Did the capillaries in your eyes burst? You sound like you’re having trouble because your entire vision is being dyed red.”

“You…idiot…” The young man’s voice was intermittent as if he was having trouble breathing. “This was…the last chance…to correct this world…that was broken like stained glass… The world desires…the return of its former police…. Do you…love war that much…?”

“Are you serious?” spat back Quenser. “The collapse of the UN symbolizes the destruction of the world map, but how many decades ago was that? At the very least, it was before the time of someone who sounds as young as you. The old maintenance woman is about the only person I know who is just barely old enough to have experienced it.”

“Ah…gh…”

“You didn’t know anything, did you? It was just easier to fool the people if you had some kind of historical background. For example, I could say I am a well-known noble and that I found some old documents related to an ancestor’s sunken ship that disappeared in the stormy sea long ago. Then I would go on to ask you to help fund the mission to salvage any valuables. What you MIB did was similar to that.”

It was possible the former world police had performed a useful role.

The age ruled by a superpower may have been much more peaceful than the modern age.

As a member of the younger generation, Quenser had no intention of denying something he knew nothing about.

However…

“Are you really the successors of that superpower?” spat out Quenser. “If you can say yes with a straight face, I’ll clap my hands and laugh in your face.”

At the very least, these MIB had no connection to the world police.

They were villains who were merely using that name in the distant future.

“I think you’re mistaken about something. This isn’t your country or a colony ruled by the Legitimacy Kingdom. This country belongs to the people of Oceania and no one else!! We are merely intruding for the time being. As soon as you forget that simple fact and begin taking this land because you like it, you can’t call yourselves police!! You’re nothing but invaders who look up to a former ideal!!”

“Gh…gbh.”

The sound of someone coughing up blood came over the radio.

But the Son of a Bitch still came to a stop.

It seemed that comment was something the young man could not overlook.

The movements of the Object grew more human.

“Gbaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

The machine quickly turned toward Quenser.

The Flyby Collider activated and the bluish-white main cannon began accelerating in rings around it.

But Quenser did not even turn toward it.

What sounded like a water balloon bursting echoed hollowly from the radio.

“That finished it.”

As if a thin thread had finally snapped, the Son of a Bitch came to a complete stop.

“That’s pretty cruel.” Heivia grinned bitterly. “You knew the more he moved at high speed the more damage would build up inside him, but you kept provoking him.”

“What else could I do? I had no other way to attack him.” Quenser shrugged and raised his middle finger. “I manipulated that bastard with my words. A perfect end for a conspirator, don’t you think?”

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

User talk:DevilByMySide

2014-01-17T06:06:09Z

EnigmaticRepose:

==Heavy Objects edits==
Could you explain your edits for Heavy Object 7? I see little reason for nearly all of your changes. Your edits don't improve readability or sentence flow, but use different choice words than what the translator chose. I also noticed you leaving a few mistakes behind, and would like to revert all of your edits. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 22:34, 16 January 2014 (CST)

I'm sorry if I ever left and made some mistakes on my editing. You can revert it if you deem some of the edits are unreasonable. About my edits, well as I read throughout, some phrases/sentences need a bit of words to be understood and the rest were grammar fixes (in my opinion) because some paragraphs have sentences with verbs in inconsistent time like past phrases/sentences in between present ones and vice versa and some character lines which are in double apostrophes are not in present form. But anyways, sorry for the trouble. -[[User:DevilByMySide]]

I admit a couple of the tense changes were correct, but a lot of them were unnecessary and a few even made the sentence awkward. Changing the would/will and could/can were mostly pointless, and "machinegun" is just an alternative way to spell machine gun, just like how machine-gun is. May and might can have slightly different intended meanings, but neither were incorrect in their usages. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 00:06, 17 January 2014 (CST)

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2014-01-17T05:58:02Z

EnigmaticRepose: Reverting ‎DevilByMySide's edits to SinsI's revision for parts 1–10.

{{Incomplete|parts=12|tparts=17}}
==Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“The military scandal shows no sign of ending. The council has made the rare decision to treat the plan to use an Object for a military assassination as attempted murder. The brigadier general thought to be the primary individual behind the plan has been called back from Oceania for…”

The princess sat on a metal staircase of a building near the Object maintenance area. She may have been bored because she was staring blankly at a 1seg TV program on her handheld device. The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles and their tires measured over two meters in diameter. Stairs were needed simply to enter them.

In the dry desert, merely stepping into the shade felt much cooler. The princess had the front of her special suit open so the wind could reach her skin. As someone who spent long periods of time in an air-conditioned cockpit, her upper limit for heat appeared to be rather low.

A short distance away, the two idiots were using shovels to dig everywhere they could in the hot sand.

“Quenser, you idiot! You don’t remember where you buried them, do you!?”

“I marked it last night! I secretly stuck a stick into the ground.”

“When Myonri dug there, she found a ton of dead cicadas and almost passed out! Damn… What is going on? Where did we dig the hole we put the canned foods and packaged foods leftover from the victory party!? I thought we were going to be freed from those eraser-like rations for a while!!”

“Hurry, hurry! This maintenance base is mobile, remember? If the entire unit decides to move, we’ll lose all those cans! There was beef stew in there. If we lose that, it’ll traumatize me!!”

“What are those two doing?”

An old woman stuck her head out of the Object maintenance area and spoke to the princess.

The princess looked up from the screen and toward the old woman.

“It looks like a treasure hunt.”

“You aren’t going to join them?”

“I’m not in the mood for food. And I just finished building a cicada grave.”

“???”

The old maintenance woman did not quite understand, so she decided to ask them directly.

“Hey, slacking student.”

“Eeee!! One of the lecturers has locked onto us!”

“As long as she doesn’t tell that huge-breasted commander, we’re fine! Seduce her or something to bring her onto our side!! I’ll go dig over there!!”

“No fair! Don’t run off on your own!!”

“What are you doing out here?”

The old woman’s words seemed to nail Quenser to the ground.

She was asking what he was doing “out here” because he was not in the Object maintenance area.

He slowly and stiffly turned toward her.

“W-would two cans of lunchmeat be enough for us to come to an understanding? Or maybe peaches or pineapple!?”

“I’m not asking about that. Have you forgotten why you came out to the battlefield in the first place? I thought it was to spend as much time observing the Object as possible so you could learn as much as possible.”

“Are you seriously saying that?” Quenser sounded surprised as he continued digging around randomly. “They’re repainting the Object in there. They’re using tons of organic solvent in a closed space and I didn’t dodge bullets to end up high on paint thinner.”

“It is true painting an Object does not use any specialized technology. I admit that.”

“It’s the same as a normal warship. The Object’s onion armor is made from special metal plates that have high-heat resistant and reactive elements mixed in like a katana, but that also means the armor will rust when exposed to the elements. We can’t have the pride of our nation rusting, so they’re careful to use techniques of keeping it from rusting, right? They’re not mixing in ferrite to give it high-level stealth ability and they’re not using camouflage patterns based on psychology and research into human cognizance to hide it from the human brain. There’s nothing in it for a student like me.”

Those sorts of techniques had been used for the fighters and tanks of the previous age.

This had been due to the high risk of being shot down or destroyed. But that effort was unnecessary with the colossal Objects which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

Also, it would be exceedingly difficult to hide a 50+ meter armored weapon from radar or the naked eye.

“The technical issues are a factor, but the paint job has more to do with the desires of the higher ups in the military and government.”

“They don’t want their hero sneaking around?”

“When sending an obviously overpowered weapon into battle, they need a tricky argument to silence the pacifists. That’s why they like the symbolism of a hero that defeats an abominable enemy in a fair fight. The Objects have brought an end to the nuclear age by force, so they want to maintain the freshness of that impression for as long as possible. Letting it fade into history would be a waste.”

“I suppose they need a simple commercial to gain the massive military budget they need for them. That’s why they want the Objects to always be polished up bright like an exhibit at a motor show. They even have a lovely pilot Elite by its side to play the role of the companion girl. …But none of that is a job for the designer I want to be. Get a PR guy for that.”

Quenser shrugged.

“Let me touch the more…well…sensitive parts at the core. Like the JPlevelMHD reactor or the targeting sensor control system.”

“Don’t be silly. You aren’t touching those. Before you even think about it, you need to pass at least fifteen international exams.”

As the princess sat on the metal staircase and stared blankly up into the blue sky, she called out to Quenser.

“Qu-Quenser?”

“??? What is it?”

“Did something happen with that Information Alliance Elite? She said something I didn’t like about what she was going to do with you.”

“Um, that can apply to a lot of Elites. Which one are we talking about?”

“…There are a lot of them?”

The princess’s expression made it clear he had stirred up unnecessary trouble.

Quenser, however, did not understand what she had been trying to ask.

“Anyway, princess, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the karaoke!! During the battle with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, you had the nerve to say idols were worthless because anyone can sing!!”

“Uuh… I-I remember.”

“Good. These days, you can run a karaoke place anywhere using internet download services. There are even some here in Oceania. During our next day off, I demand to see if you have the skills to back up your bragging!!”

The old maintenance woman let out a quiet sigh.

This arrangement was actually almost exactly what the princess had expected to happen and wanted to happen, but she did not seem to know what to do now that things were going more smoothly than expected.

It was an example of a plan coming back to bite her.

The two youths compared their schedules to set up a date and Quenser suddenly spoke up once they had finished.

In that instant, he became a true idiotic designer.

“Oh, right. I need to ask you too, princess. The reactor may be too dangerous, but can I check out the targeting sensor control system or somewhere else that will help me study Object design?”

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

“Do you not trust me at all?”

“It’s not an issue of your skill,” said the old woman in exasperation. “There are different types of people who work with Object design. There are those who build up virtual models based on theory, there are academic types that materialize and realize those models, there are inventor types who have a single idea and go beyond their primary field to gather everything they need to realize it, and there are craftsmen who use their experience and unexplainable instincts in their fingertips to produce results greater than precision manufacturing equipment. The targeting sensor control system you’re talking about is a black box that complexly combines all of those together. Not even the princess or I will touch it without reason.”

“So you entrust your life to something no one touches?”

“That is not what she meant,” said the princess. “It is maintained in sessions including more than fifty people. You can think of it like exchanging our opinions to find the right flavor for a cocktail we do not know the recipe to. Bringing in someone who doesn’t know the flavor would distort our opinions and raise the likelihood of the final drink not matching the perfect flavor.”

“An Object has over one hundred cannons, both big and small,” continued the old woman. “Each of those has multiple sensors and the entire Object has its primary radars and sensors. Coordinating all of those is beyond human ability. Most of it is handled by computers, but there are some situations where that doesn’t cut it. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Laser weapons?”

“That’s right. Those move at the speed of light, so they can’t be avoided after seeing them fired. What matters is predicting the attack by observing the minute movements of the enemy’s cannons and sensor lenses. You can’t leave that to a computer both when attacking and when defending.”

In a battle between Objects, one could not simply continue to evade. One had to attack and hit.

If an enemy would predict the attack before it was fired, one had to predict where they would evade to and fire there instead.

“Ultimately, the whole system only works when you combine the precise sensors, the high-spec computers, and the fearful fingertips of a human. It seems the Information Alliance is researching completely automated targeting algorithms, but they have a long way to go towards making it practical. Then again, they’re more skilled than anyone when it comes to using information, so who knows how much we can trust what our intelligence division has gathered on them.”

“I won’t lose to something like that.”

This seemed to have worked up an odd sense of competition in the princess because she pouted her lips and took a sip from her drink’s straw.

Quenser then heard an electronic tone from the small radio in his uniform.

When he pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, Froleytia’s voice spoke to him.

“Study time is over for the moment, Quenser. Head over to the briefing room with the others. A pre-mission briefing is about to begin.”

“What do we have to do now?”

“That’s what I will explain to you. But it’s a simple mission. I’m not asking you to make a charge at a cutting-edge Object or anything.”

“I beg you to never ask me to do that!! I haven’t been doing it because I want to!!”

“Toward the end of the incident with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, a large underground structure was discovered when the ground collapsed. That was from your report, Quenser.”

“W-well, yes.”

“Today, you will be investigating the abandoned facility. This is simple post-battle cleanup. I suppose the police would call it a crime scene inspection. I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the war, but we have to control everything in the vicinity of the battle. I will be the one writing the annoying report to the higher ups, so you all can help me out a little.”

“So no other military is involved this time? There aren’t going to be any firefights?”

“That’s right. Unless you’ve heard reports of the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance living in holes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want us to carefully check over this place, but nothing – nothing at all – is going to happen? We just have to drive across the desert as if having a picnic, snap a few photos of these strange ruins, and that’s it? You promise?”

“And surprisingly, you actually get paid. With the people’s tax money, no less.”

“Woo hoo!! Oh, god! I can’t wait!! Please fill my team with a ton of female soldiers! This is perfect for Operation North Wind and the Sun. Partway through, our tension is sure to drop and then they’ll strip down to their thin inner clothing!! Hooray! Hooray!!”

“Yes, yes. I get it. You will be in your usual filthy guy team with Heivia. Have fun in your sweaty world of little clothing.”

“Hah hah hah. If you really do that, I’m starting a coup.”

“Hah hah hah!! Do you really think I’m the type to joke about this?”

The transmission ended with a click.

Since Froleytia said it, there was no doubt that he would end up surrounded by men. However, Quenser was not about to give up. He still had hope.

“On a boring investigation, the investigation team, guard team, and transport team will all move as one big group. Even if my team looks like a boys’ school, there’s still a chance of cute young girls in the other teams!! I haven’t lost yet!!”

“Sigh. Are you sure it will turn out that well?” asked the old woman.

“I am!! After all, the end of February is getting towards the end of the fiscal year!! The top levels of the military need to use up their extra budget or the defense budget will be lowered next year. Sending out tons of unnecessary soldiers for a boring mission could easily happen now!!”

“Why are you only this good at calculations at times like this?”

That was of course because this topic was the most compatible with the pink brain cells of adolescence.

At any rate, Quenser raised his hands in an expression of joy.

“Fwa ha ha ha ha ha!! I won’t let our commander win this time! The amount of girls in skimpy, wet, and see-through clothes would surprise a soft drink commercial! Paradise awaits me!!”

===Part 2===

[[Image:HO_v07_260.png|thumb]]
“…Ah!?”

Quenser suddenly opened his eyes.

His recent memories were fuzzy. He could not see anything properly. The blue sky of the desert spreaded out before his eyes. He seemed to be lying on his back, but he could not feel the burning of the hot sand.

He felt an unpleasant cold sweat as if he had anemia.

He detected a burning smell mixed with a rusty metallic smell.

…A rusty metallic smell?

“Gah!? Gfh! D-dammit. I just remembered. Our helicopter crashed. Then what was that dream I just had…? Don’t tell me my life was flashing before my eyes! Cough cough!!”

The surface of the desert was not flat. It had large undulations similar to a stormy sea and some areas had height differences of several meters. He was lying in a position to use one of those sand dunes as a shield.

But what was he being shielded from?

The answer was obviously the attacks being fired their way.

Seemingly never-ending sounds of bursting gunfire made him think of a fireworks show gone wrong. Quenser’s group was not on the attack. They were unilaterally being fired upon. The storm of steel was so great they would have been torn to pieces in just a few seconds if not for the dune.

Heivia had his back pressed against the dune while sticking just his rifle’s sensors up over it.

“Are you finally awake, you bastard!? I was beginning to think I wasted an adrenaline cartridge!!”

“Seriously? You mean one of those thick needles you stab directly into the heart!? I was in that bad a state!?”

“I thought this would be best. If you were hitting on an angel, I apologize.”

“Oh, right! I saw my life flash before my eyes! It seemed so real!! Um…huh? I couldn’t quite remember what happened. I remembered seeing the princess, Froleytia, and the old maintenance woman.”

“Right, right. I already knew how little fidelity you had, but it’s good to know you’re the same as ever!”

As his blood flow returned to normal, the data in Quenser’s head gradually fell into the proper order.

(Oh, that’s right.)

He had been sent on a mission by Froleytia.

They were to investigate the underground structure he had come across during the battle with the Simple Is Best and Hornet Storm. Even if it was not a very important building, she had needed detailed information on anything in the combat zone for a report to the higher ups.

Quenser and the others had been loaded into the large transport helicopters and were sent to the area of desert in question.

Nothing but cream-colored sand had continued in every direction, so it had been a frightening sight to look down on. He had wanted to avoid getting lost here. Even a South American jungle would have more opportunities for survival techniques.

The only landmarks were the remains of the rusty pipelines that travelled here and there like blood vessels of the planet. But if one was stranded, it would probably be impossible to tell a rescue team where one was using them. After all, they would continue in a straight line for 100 or even 1000 kilometers.

“It doesn’t matter how intently you stare down there, you aren’t going to find an oasis or a girl in a micro bikini,” Heivia said. “More importantly, can you believe we’re travelling over a battlefield in a helicopter? Sure, we aren’t directly dealing with an Object, but one of them may suddenly decide to go on a hunt.”

But if they had been crammed into military trucks to travel along the rough desert under the hot sun, they would have been struck by the double-punch of heat stroke and motion sickness before even arriving at the site.

After the formation of large helicopters had travelled for a while, they had spotted the remains of the terminal facility where several old pipelines gathered. That facility had been used to gather water from deep underground rather than oil.

But then they had soon spotted a few trucks with canopies parked near the old facility.

Quenser had frowned.

“Are those scavengers trying to gather anything of value?”

“There can’t be any proper machinery left. And look at the canopies. That’s the Blue Cross. They’re the world’s largest medical humanitarian organization. They head to Antarctic and the jungle to find samples of deadly bacteria, they give money to groups researching nanotech medicine, and all sorts of other things. They’re probably providing food.”

“Nanotech? Oh, you mean the techniques taken from military science where it can be used as a new method for regulating Elite’s bodies? They place drops of medicine in a membrane like a small bubble, get that bubble past the filters to the brain or kidneys, and provide the medicine directly to the target. They use ultrasonic waves to break the outer shell at the desired point, right?”

“You get excited about anything that has even the slightest connection to Objects, don’t you? Can you stop breathing so heavily? It’s creepy.”

“Anyway, what’s the Blue Cross doing at these abandoned ruins?”

At that point, Quenser’s memories suddenly lost coherency.

As he laid on his back with a hand on his sweaty brow, he let out a groan.

“That’s right. Those bastards weren’t the Blue Cross at all. Someone painted up their trucks to trick us. They removed the canopies and there were missiles inside.”

“Are you the type that needs coffee and toast to wake up in the morning? If not, get moving!! We’re gonna be surrounded!!”

The burnt smell was coming from the remains of their crashed helicopter.

The whirl of bullets was not coming from just one direction. They were partially surrounded by a C-shape.

It was unclear who the enemy was or how many of them there were.

Their group had to be at least two or three sizes larger than Quenser and Heivia’s group. More than twenty people were lying behind the sand dune like Quenser. They all had their arms or legs bound with bandages to stop their bleeding, some had the removed stock of a carbine used to set a broken bone, and a lot of them were unconscious. The area had become a makeshift field hospital.

Quenser looked up at the blue sky that seemed to continue forever.

“Where are the other helicopters? Where’s our way out!? We’ll just be worn down bit by bit like this. We can’t fight in the desert without a means of mobility!”

“All of the functioning helicopters have temporarily withdrawn! We can’t exactly overcome their surface-to-air missiles with the power of friendship. If they hover around here to pick us up, they’ll be shot down! No help is coming until we silence those!!”

“They may be transport helicopters, but they have machineguns attached to the door, right? Firing down with those will make a huge difference!!”

“In this clean age, no one wants to start a Western-style quick draw using heavy weaponry. We won’t get anywhere wishing for something that isn’t coming. Focus on reality!!”

Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see lay in every direction.

There was no escape without some kind of vehicle. Even if they began to flee on foot, they would be quickly overtaken and riddled with holes. Falling back would not improve their situation and most of those injured in the crash were in no state to walk on their own.

The enemy was advancing.

Once the enemy surpassed the sand dune, they would only sink into a puddle of blood.

“Screw this. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I thought this was supposed to be an easy mission.”

As Quenser complained, he rolled over onto his stomach. He then climbed up the dune and stopped next to Heivia.

“How many are there?”

“Somewhere between 50 and 60. Only a samurai or ninja can defeat that many in a straight fight. It will be a different story if we have support from the helicopters, but we need to silence those armored vehicles to do that.”

“Who are they anyway?”

“I don’t know. But knowing that they’re bastards who don’t deserve to live is good enough for me,” spat out Heivia. “But their equipment is relatively new. It looks like they gathered downgraded weapons that the Capitalist Corporations and the Information Alliance sell to gather foreign currency. Their ability may be intentionally lowered, but they’re expensive. I doubt a gang or slum residents who are strapped for cash can get their hands on that stuff.”

The repeated sounds of gunfire caused Quenser to grimace.

“Are you saying those are trained soldiers? They’re firing around almost at random. If they were aiming each shot, we would have already been filled with bullets.”

“Listen, skinny boy. Have you never heard of sounding out your enemy? When you don’t know where they are, you fire all over the place and wait for them to react. …It’s all over once they find out where exactly we are. They have tons of machineguns and missiles on their trucks. Specifically, they have more than ten trucks. This shield of sand is meaningless. They may be surface-to-air, but a few of those missiles will blow the terrain to smithereens.”

Quenser let out a long, slow breath.

And then he asked another question.

“Then what exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Well done getting your mind in gear.”

Heivia pulled back the rifle sensors he had been peering over the dune and used the sand to write out the information he had risked his life to collect.

“They have their machinegun and surface-to-air missile equipped trucks set up to protect the terminal facility that pumps water up from underground. They’re between five and six hundred meters away. Their rifles and machineguns can reach us from there, but fifty or sixty soldiers armed with carbines and light machineguns are slowly approaching. Once they cross a certain line, we’ll be slaughtered. We need to do something before they can manage that.”

“We can’t win if we fight? Are there too many of them?”

“As I said, we could annihilate their infantry with our helicopter machineguns, but those helicopters can’t approach right now. We need to silence those surface-to-air missile containers sitting up on their trucks.”

“But…”

Quenser glanced over at Heivia.

He carried a shoulder-fired missile launcher over his back. That could be used to blow up the armored trucks, but there was one major problem.

“That’s right. I only have one shot and there are over ten of them. This isn’t going to work.”

“…”

Quenser remained silent for a moment.

He stared at the rough map his friend had drawn on the sand.

“Heivia, my memories aren’t perfect due to the shock, so I need to ask you something.”

“I’m not your fiancé from before your memory loss if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“It’s about when they attacked our helicopter with their missiles. I knew I could’t expect a large transport helicopter to evade, but we weren’t shot down without putting up any kind of fight, right?”

“What? Well, I remembered a siren blaring as it scattered chaff and flares to trick their radar. I thought we might have activated an infrared jammer as well, but you could see how well all that worked. We were shot down and the other helicopters were forced to withdraw.”

“In other words, we had countermeasures, but they were completely ineffective,” said Quenser while emphasizing each word. “They had some large radar equipment supporting their targeting. That’s how they saw through our deceptions and shot us down. But what if all of their anti-air weaponry were reliant on it? We could take out their ‘net in the sky’ by destroying just the one piece of equipment. Guns and missiles are essentially the same. Without a means of aiming them, they won’t cause any damage.”

“It does make sense,” groaned Heivia. “All of the trucks have oddly large antennae attached. It’s definitely possible they’re using accurate data from a command vehicle that specializes in gathering intelligence. But…”

“But?”

“Where is it?” Heivia stabbed his rifle’s stock into the center of his map on the sand. “You heard me, right? There are more than ten of their armored trucks and we only have one missile. If we don’t hit the command vehicle on the first shot, it’s all over. Once we lose our trump card, we have nothing left!! Is there any way to tell which one it is!?”

“That’s a good question.”

Quenser folded his arms lightly and traced his index finger over his mouth.

He looked like he was contemplating the dinner menu.

“Heivia, how many assault rifle and handgun bullets do you have left?”

“What?”

“If it isn’t enough, gather some more from those too injured to move. They won’t do them any good anyway.”

“Wait, wait! They may have been disguised as the Blue Cross, but their trucks probably still have handmade plate inside. You can’t fight armored trucks with normal bullets!!”

“I’m not trying to destroy the trucks. I have no interest in the bullets themselves.”

“???”

Quenser ignored Heivia’s confused look and gathered a few assault rifles and carbines.

He disassembled them without any tools and removed the barrel which resembled a long, narrow pipe.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Make some giant fireworks.”

Quenser bent and crushed one end of the long, narrow tubes, removed the rifle bullets from the magazines, and scattered them across the sand.

“A long time ago, they would actually use this kind of simple rocket weapon in Asia. They were meant to set fire to castles or ships. …You said the distance is five or six hundred meters? Cramming in this much intelligent military powder should reach even with the plastic explosive and fuse attached to the front.”

“Are you saying we can oppose all those armored trucks if we go to this extra trouble?” Heivia looked displeased. “Have you forgotten what matters most with weapons, Quenser? Targeting. Reaching them and hitting them are two very different things! A simple fireworks rocket made by stuffing powder into a tube and attaching it to a stick for stability isn’t going to hit!!”

“It doesn’t have to hit.” Quenser readily overturned Heivia’s assumption. “They think they’re perfectly safe over there, so if bombs start bursting too far away to have been thrown, they’ll definitely panic. They’ll try to evacuate the most important thing first. I don’t know how stupid they are, but they are smart enough to know they can’t afford to have their radar vehicle destroyed. While they’re busy secretly moving their most important card away, you just have to blow it up with your missile.”

Heivia was dumbfounded, but Quenser continued his cunning explanation.

“You mentioned sounding out your enemy, remember? Let’s show them how it’s really done.”

===Part 3===

As planned, the makeshift rockets were fired into the Oceanian sky.

Heivia fired his shoulder-fired missile into the command truck with the large-scale radar antenna attached and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s unilateral counterattack began.

Once the threat of anti-air weapons was removed, the large transport helicopters were able to return.

They had large caliber machineguns bolted directly to the floor near the door.

As the sound of those firing exploded overhead, Quenser covered his mouth with one hand.

“Why do people like to root for the underdog? Where did my hatred for them go?”

“I think you’re actually looking down on them with a sense of superiority. But don’t worry. You’re enjoying your life well enough.”

Quenser and Heivia laid face down on the slope of the sand dune while the sounds of destruction continued.

The handmade armored trucks had been relatively well modified, but they were filled with holes, their gasoline tanks and weaponry ignited, and they violently exploded. The intense destruction of the machineguns rained down evenly on the group of infantry who had tried to corner Quenser and the others. There were no screams. Instead, a dark red sauce was splattered across the giant frying pan of the desert.

Quenser entered a philosophic mood.

“What is peace?”

Heivia picked his nose with his little finger.

“It’s when we’re still alive.”

After about ten minutes, the sounds of gunfire completely stopped.

A few of the transport helicopters remained at the ready in the air while a few others slowly descended to collect the injured.

One soldier who stepped out of a helicopter shouted over the noise of the rotors.

“Thanks for your work!! We have permission to bring back all of your injured. Leave them with us and they can recover in a bed that reeks of disinfectant!!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it! But take a look behind you before you say that. The helicopters aren’t at all ready to leave. We can’t leave until the investigation is done!!”

Quenser and Heivia watched as the investigation team and their guards started for the pump facility that connected to the giant underground structure.

The ceiling of the underground structure had collapsed during the previous battle, so it was open to the surface. However, no one would rappel down a ten meter cliff when a perfectly safe staircase was available.

Quenser used his uniform’s sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow and looked up at the roasting sun that felt like the end of the world.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to sit around here. We would dry up before they finished.”

“There’s a pipeline over there. It’s rusted and falling apart, but we can rest behind it. The humidity should be lower and it’ll block the sun.”

The pipeline was a tube with a diameter of over two meters, so it produced enough of a shadow to sit in. The two boys walked over and found most of the other soldiers already leaning up against the rusted metal pipe like a line of ants.

“This is awful.”

“Are you sure it’s cooler here? I feel like gathering together would concentrate the heat.”

Quenser pulled out the water bottle attached to his uniform and took a gulp. It had been warmed by the sun and his body temperature, so he spat it back out.

“Yuck! It feels like I’m drinking my own sweat!!”

“Use your head, student. You need to cool the water bottle with the icing spray used for machineguns. Medic!!”

Heivia’s joking shout let Quenser know the danger had truly passed.

“So what was that? This pump facility is in ruins and all the usable equipment was removed. Missiles cost 10,000 euros each. Why would they defend this place with their lives?”

“Look over here, Quenser.”

Heivia peered inside a broken portion of the pipeline. The pipe was over two meters wide, so it looked more like a metal tunnel.

In fact, it was one.

“There’s sand gathered at the bottom and there’s a thick line down the middle. It looks like a tire track. From the width, I’d say a motorcycle.”

“A tire track?”

With a confused look, Quenser peered inside the broken pipe.

And then it hit him.

“This abandoned pipeline network stretches across the entire desert. No water or oil is being sent through it, so it’s a safe empty space. You don’t mean…”

“When the military government ruled Oceania, secret funds, weapons, and drugs travelled across the country like ghosts were transporting them. They slipped right past the military checkpoints and satellite surveillance. It was said they did it by bribing or threatening the local soldiers, but this might be it.”

“A secret tunnel? So as easily as heading underground through a manhole, they could freely move across Oceania without being checked?”

It was not the pump facility or the giant underground structure that mattered.

Someone was trying to hide the large-scale smuggling network that used the pipelines.

“People armed with the latest military equipment were fighting to protect a smuggling network? That smells fishy to me. Is it an intelligence agency raising funds by selling drugs or something?”

“But who exactly were they?” Heivia looked annoyed as he glanced over at the corpses which had been almost completely destroyed. “Their equipment looks like a collection of Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance stuff. And it’s the downgraded versions sold for foreign currency rather than the official military equipment. They announce they’re lowering the quality, but still keep the price high. I doubt a local gang or mafia would want to use them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Were they soldiers or were they people hired to help out? Well, either way they would mix in a few pros to take command.”

Suddenly, an infantryman guarding the exterior of the pump facility spoke to Quenser and Heivia.

“If you’re discussing conspiracy theories, you might want to check this out.”

“What?”

Heivia sounded puzzled as the man tossed him a small rectangular handheld device.

However, this was not the type issued to Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. It also had dark red stains in places.

The soldier shrugged.

“I was scavenging. Those thugs out front were splattered everywhere, so I gathered whatever I thought I could sell.”

“Seriously? You really set foot in that poisonous swamp?”

“And in exchange, I found some interesting data. It looks less like official data and more like someone at the bottom gathered some data to figure out what he was involved in.”

“…”

Quenser turned on the device and it was not even locked with a password.

Some of the data files were filled with numbers about ten digits long. He could not read hexadecimal off the top of his head, so he could not tell anything from just that.

“Wait a second,” said Heivia as he peered in from the side. “The first four digits are all the same. I thought these looked familiar. They’re bank account numbers, aren’t they? I think these belong to a major Information Alliance one.”

“Why does a Legitimacy Kingdom noble know that?”

“Don’t be stupid. In this age of wars, you never know what levies will be imposed. Do you really think a greedy noble is going to keep all his money in a single account? We have tons of ways of spreading out our assets. My family has a group of specialist accountants working for us.”

Quenser tilted his head as he scrolled through the iron-smelling device.

There appeared to be over one hundred bank account numbers.

“So what is this list of bank accounts?”

“Probably a deposit list. In other words, these connect to the names of the people cooperating with the people running things from the shadows. Look, the numbers at the end of the account numbers are the same too. That probably refers to a branch in a tropical island tax haven. They’re probably using secret accounts to launder their money.”

“The people running things from the shadows? We still don’t know if this is really a conspiracy.”

“If we dig up the names and identities of this week’s MVPs here, we might find a connection. They disguised their trucks as the Blue Cross and loaded them with machineguns and missiles to hide the secret passageway through the pipeline. They’re definitely up to no good.”

The mischievous infantryman shrugged in utter exhaustion.

“These are secret accounts in the Information Alliance. They aren’t going to give us the information if we ask.”

“Quenser.”

“Do I look that smart to you? Do you think you can just throw any problem my way?”

Quenser looked irritated, but he begrudgingly agreed after the soldiers around him tossed some icing spray his way.

He sprayed it across his water bottle and spoke.

“Knowing the account numbers is a start. How about we leak the entire list onto the internet while making it look like they were hacked? With secret tax haven accounts, trust matters most. If information has been taken straight from the servers, the clients and managers will both panic.”

“Yes, but will that accomplish anything other than causing a commotion?”

“We can quickly open a fake website claiming to check whether your account number was stolen. If we add in some spyware to snatch the IP of anyone entering their number, we should be able to determine who entered what number. And the shadier the person, the sooner they’ll respond.”

In that instant, everyone resting in the shade of the pipeline stared silently at Quenser.

He squirmed under the pressure of the strange silence.

“Um, what is this? Is this any way to react after I give you what you want?”

“This settles it. Nothing good would come of letting him leave the military.”

They contacted the maintenance base zone’s intelligence division via radio, but they said it would take several days to create a proper fake website.

Heivia stuck out his tongue.

“Damn those desk workers. Do clocks move at a different speed over there? Are they using a vacation clock or something?”

“Either way, I’m jealous.”

“They aren’t on board with this. It’s a pain, but you heard them. Everyone, give any idea we can use to steal the credit from the intelligence department since they refuse to play along.”

Long story short, they ended up with the following ideas: “Different computer viruses are compressed and saved on a certain foreign server”, “I know a collection of templates for scam sites”, and “As long as you have the basic template for the site, you can use a cloud service to edit the details and create a false site in only a few minutes.”

“Why do all of you know about this kind of thing?”

“As a future engineer, I think you should gladly welcome useful nerds. Otherwise, your organization will end up as a dinosaur fossil.”

As they had announced, the bored helpers completed the false website in only a few minutes. Rather than building it from the ground up, they chose a template from a database containing thousands of templates for scam sites and added the necessary decorations. They did the same for the spyware.

“Where should we spread the address? Just on any major message board?”

“For the Legitimacy Kingdom, there’s Blue Blood which only nobles with bloodlines continuing back for 300 years can enter. For the Information Alliance, there’s Rank Literacy which can only be used by people who run sites with over half a million hits a day. There are sites for elitist people from the other two world powers as well.”

“Those are all closed SNSs. We can probably manage with Blue Blood, but you aren’t using my ID.”

“I don’t need to. Everyone uses different identities online. A refined noble will let off some steam by shouting insults on anonymous message boards like it’s a masquerade party. If we spread the information there, the tainted information will make its way into the closed SNSs. They’ll ruin their own attempts to seal it off.”

“It sounds like the insecticide used for roaches. It’s made to look like delicious food so they’ll take it back to their nest where it kills all of them.”

A male soldier had been curled up and fiddling with a handheld device, but he now made an OK sign with his hand.

The others peered curiously at the small screen.

“This virus site is a lot like creating a robot from an empty box and tape, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s already gotten a few pieces of personal information.”

First, they had leaked the list online and let the emergency information spread. Once the clients grew uneasy, they were lured to the false site where they entered their account number. It was unclear when exactly the different waves of attack began.

“We have a few names and identities to go with numbers on our list. About ten so far. Let’s try to find a link between them.”

“Wait.” Heivia pointed at one of the names. “This is an international satellite TV executive. He claims to bring laughter and the truth to the blank regions and dictatorships where information is being controlled. Oceania’s mass media has begun to recover, but it’s still unstable. Satellite TV still has a lot of credibility and influence here.”

He pointed at another name.

“This is a blog king. He’s known as Oceania’s leading source of sarcasm.”

He pointed at another.

“This is an entertainer famous for volunteer work.”

And another.

“An executive for an international canned drink maker. They have ads during all sorts of shows.”

As each name was described, Quenser saw a common theme.

“Are they using the media to influence people’s impressions?”

“Their impressions of what?”

“No matter how much they’re being paid, I doubt they would say something that strays too far from their ideologies and beliefs. The money is nothing but the trigger giving them the final push. In that case, what do these people believe in?”

Heivia grimaced when he heard that.

He had been the one describing the names, so he had a general understanding of the people.

“This might be a major headache for us.”

“Why?”

“They want true independence for Oceania by having the ‘thugs’ leave. They’re a bunch of people who refuse to do any real work while pretending to be pacifists. They think they’re the most important no matter what.”

“Even the corporate executives?”

“Sitting arrogantly in a leather chair isn’t normally referred to as ‘work’.”

A mysterious group in Oceania was spreading intentionally biased information to create a tendency toward hating the coalition military.

The current problem was the pipeline they were using to secretly transport something across the desert. They had even started a firefight with the Legitimacy Kingdom in order to hide it.

This was more than a newspaper editorial.

This mysterious group was prepared to use legitimate violence.

“This pipeline is being used as a secret transportation network and massive amounts of money are being given to influential people to manipulate the opinions of the Oceanian people. What are they trying to do here?”

“Hey,” spoke up the soldiers who had helped them earlier. “I checked a few more of their handheld devices and there’s a net storage site they access frequently. They may keep their larger data there.”

“Does it have a password?”

“Just like online banks, it uses a one-time password. …But this was outsourced and the company in charge of security has slipped past the firewall a few times. We might be able to use the maintenance master key.”

“Would they really use the same key for several weeks or months?”

“No, but if we find a pattern to the changes in the periodically updated alphanumeric key, it might be possible to determine what the current key is. It will take some time, though.”

“Try working on it,” said Quenser as his radio emitted an electronic tone.

Froleytia was calling them.

“I have a question for all of you. You aren’t performing unauthorized electronic warfare against an Information Alliance tax haven bank, are you? The intelligence department has detected a fascinating flow of data.”

(Shit!!)

Everyone there straightened their spines.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were at war, but wars had rules known as treaties. And as Heivia had said, secret tax haven accounts were unofficially used by nobles and royals so they could secretly divide their assets up between false names and dummy corporations. Even if this was an enemy nation, some higher ups might not want them messing with it. Someone might be placing pressure on Froleytia.

But when no amount of apology would fix the situation, Quenser did not want to continue speaking for long.

He responded casually while looking around for help.

Heivia pointed toward the pump facility with his thumb.

“(That thick concrete might cut off the signal!!)”

“Okay, okay. Eh? What!? No, no. That isn’t what we’re doing!!”

While Quenser stalled for time, he and Heivia ran toward the remains of the pump facility.

They circled around the lake of dark red sauce and continued toward the building which contained stairs leading underground.

The armored trucks disguised as the Blue Cross were still burning and smoking. They would no longer function, but the two idiots circled well away from them because the bombs or missiles could suddenly burst.

The inside of the building was a large space.

It had originally been a facility to draw up unused water from underground and send it to grain-producing land, but all of the equipment had been removed when it was abandoned. It was now a movie theater-sized space made of reinforced concrete. It was essentially empty. Broken metal stairways and passageways could be found here and there and they appeared to be built around large machinery that was no longer present.

But that did not matter.

“(Heivia! The signal’s still going strong!! Froleytia’s completely pissed!! We can’t escape like this!!)”

“(Let’s head down the spiral staircase and underground!!)”

The two idiots descended the spiral staircase and ran out into a narrow tunnel. Static finally began to fill the radio signal.

This was the moment they had been waiting for.

“Ksshhh. Wait, what is… Explain yourse-…kssssshhhhh!!”

“Eh? What? I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you at all!! Over!!”

With that, he ended the transmission and switched off the radio altogether.

Heivia leaned up against the concrete wall.

“If we hang around here, the investigation team will see us and force odd jobs on us. Let’s go pretend to be working.”

They were doing nothing more than extending their suffering, but they took an extremely positive stance and viewed it as a chance to arrange the excuses they needed to weasel out of it.

They passed through a straight corridor and arrived at the underground structure.

However…

“Wow. There really isn’t a ceiling. It feels like the world’s biggest convertible.”

The ground above had completely collapsed during the previous battle, so the blue sky was perfectly visible even in the “underground” structure. They were over ten meters down, so they were not about to climb up or down rather than using the stairs.

A lot of sand had poured in, so it looked a lot more cluttered than the pump facility.

The piles of wooden boxes may have added to that impression.

“It looks like they’ve finished investigating here. Otherwise, we never would have been allowed in.”

“What are these boxes? Surely they aren’t empty.”

After receiving permission from a man on the investigation team who was taking photographs, Quenser and Heivia removed the nails from one wooden box and opened it.

“There’s some kind of powder packed in plastic.”

“But it doesn’t look like something with a high street price.”

The bags had some kind of label, so Quenser used his handheld device to snap a photo.

They opened a few more boxes and found reels of fiber optic cable as well as nuts and bolts packaged by size.

“Did someone’s father make a secret base for his home improvement projects?”

“Wait. I think I know what that powder was,” muttered Quenser.

Suddenly, the two idiots heard the noise of something falling over.

And when they turned toward the noise…

===Part 4===

In the name of war recovery, many different types of construction had begun at a fevered pitch across Oceania: houses, shops, roads, water and sewage, etc. The coalition of the four world powers claimed bringing order to the country was their top priority, but they could not utterly eliminate anyone who was even slightly suspicious. Specialists who did not look right in a suit or work uniform and guards who carried guns could not be distinguished from actual bad guys.

If those suspicious-looking people were let into the same space as rich foreign tourists, it could lead to a situation similar to a hamster that mistook another hamster’s sex.

To keep some separation, a hidden side to the city was created for those suspicious-looking people. Drawn by the flow of money, violent restaurants, marriage scam artists who were always crying in a bar, and people from various other occupations would gather there. These were the people who had gone too far in their original country. Like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, the strength of these dark cities slowly but steadily grew.

A certain bar in one such place was quite cheap but it was best not to think about what corners were cut to make it that cheap. In a dimly lit corner of that bar, a small group sat around a table cut off from the rest of the bar by curtains.

“They have failed.”

A young man wore a black suit and hat that looked out of place in the summertime desert. His sunglasses looked more like they were hiding his face than protecting his eyes from the sun.

“Terminal 52 has been taken by the Legitimacy Kingdom. The men we hired were wiped out.”

“We knew they would lose from the beginning.”

He was not the only one in such a conspicuous outfit.

A woman sitting at the same table wore all black, down to her necktie.

“Even if they could temporarily drive them back, they are a world power and thus they have an Object. If the problem grew too large, they would have sent it in. Those men were doomed to lose.”

But it was not just the two of them. Everyone at the table was wearing all black.

“Their loss was planned for. We all understand that. In that case, could you tell us one thing? Did they die before or after achieving their goal?”

“If not, I would be a little more concerned.”

“Whatever gets in the way, no one can reach us as long as all evidence is destroyed in the end.”

Everyone turned toward the young man who had spoken first.

No, they were technically looking behind him.

A blonde woman stood there wearing the exact same suit and sunglasses. She also held the same type of handgun the rest of them possessed.

“Are you saying the objective was achieved?”

The young man slowly raised his hands in response.

The tip of the silencer was already pressed against the back of his head.

He smiled thinly and responded quietly.

“Yes. And let me add this: it was nice knowing-…”

A muffled gunshot interrupted his words.

He collapsed face-first onto the round table. The others slowly stood up and took the necessary measures. They gathered the empty shell casing from the ground, used a rag wet with alcohol to wipe down anything that might have their fingerprints or saliva on it, and cleaned up the floor with a roller of sticky tape to pick up any fallen hair.

They made sure it was the same as if nothing had happened.

“Case #022 complete. Supervisor Alaska 49’s death has cut off the trail. Case #023 will now begin. The supervisor will be me, Texas 28.”

The blonde woman spoke quietly while pulling a brand new tablet computer from her bag. The others all focused on her.

They did so exactly as they had focused on the young man who had just been killed.

It was as if it were a ritual that had begun long before that young man.

“Fortunately, Case #022’s objective was fulfilled. A link with the scene has been secured. As planned, we shall continue to the next situation.”

“In other words?”

“We shall bury it in an explosion.”

They remained in the shadows.

Even when they won and when they were superior, they would kill their allies to suppress all information.

In that case, they were not going to hesitate to kill their enemies.

===Part 5===

“Not good,” muttered Quenser.

He had seen what some kind of impact had knocked over within the underground structure.

“Not good!! Heivia, everyone else! Get out of here now!!”

“What’s the matter, Quenser?”

A 1.5 meter cylindrical container similar to a propane tank lay before them. However, it was made of transparent reinforced glass and it was filled with some kind of liquid. The center of the cylinder had a donut-like hollow area which was filled with an explosive.

“That’s an acid bomb. Militaries use it to destroy evidence!! When the explosive detonates, it destroys the container and the blast sends a thorough shower of powerful acid in every direction. In just a few seconds, it reacts with the air and a vaporized acid cloud expands out. It’ll swallow up five hundred to eight hundred meters in no time! If you get caught in that, you’ll end up in a photograph at an exhibit on the horrors of war!!”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me!? Then were those guys here to set this thing up!? There might be something hidden here!!”

“With something that large and heavy, they couldn’t transport it by motorcycle, so they couldn’t use their secret pipeline. They were forced to use a truck and that’s when we ran across them.”

“But it’s just a bomb, right? Can’t you defuse it!? Bombs are your specialty!”

“There’s no time. There’s only ten minutes left! It’s waiting for a passcode in case it was accidentally activated, but that isn’t enough time to analyze it!! If you want to live, start running! We need to get back to the helicopters!!”

Quenser and Heivia did not hesitate to flee the underground structure and they made sure to bring the investigation team and their guards with them.

As they ran through the long, narrow corridor, Quenser turned his radio back on, hit the switch, and explained the situation to the helicopters so they could leave immediately.

But that might have been a mistake.

“Ahhhhhh!! Shit!!”

As soon as they ran up the spiral staircase and out of the pump facility, Heivia swore.

They could see multiple helicopters taking off.

“Wait, dammit! Wait!! If we hadn’t told you, you would’ve been surrounded by the acid cloud! We saved your lives!!”

“Sorry, but rescuing the injured takes precedence! Can you steal one of the enemy’s trucks and escape on your own!?”

“Do you really think any of them are still running!? You were the ones that blew them up!!”

“Heivia, they aren’t coming back! More importantly, everyone who’s left needs to gather here. Anyone who makes a mistake here will be melted by acid!!”

Quenser heard a deafening sound resembling an amplified version of a shaken can of beer being opened.

A strange white cloud began to spread out not far away. It grew to the size of an Object in no time.

“That’s the acid cloud,” said Heivia as his face paled.

The giant cloud burst up from the underground structure like cotton candy. It exited the hole from the collapse and spread out across the desert. At the same time, it was likely entering the pump facility through the stairway leading up. That death had no gaps. Everyone would be wiped out.

“That thing spreads faster than a forest fire. Sixty kph was it!? It’ll overtake us if we try to escape on foot!!”

“We can escape.”

“How?”

“Through the pipeline! The thick metal should hold it off temporarily! If we can escape beyond its effective range of several hundred meters before it dissolves the metal pipe, we can survive. It’s a chance at least!!”

Quenser began running as he shouted his instructions to Heivia and the others using his radio.

“Wait, Quenser! That pipeline is falling apart. What if the pipe is completely broken partway down? The acid cloud will enter there and trap us!!”

“Would you rather stay here? Bye bye, Heivia. You can stick with 0%, but I’m going to bet on 1%. Even your dog tags will probably be dissolved, so we won’t gather your remains!!”

“I get it! I get it, goddammit!!”

The pipe was rusty and falling apart. Cracks and large holes existed in places.

Quenser and the others ran inside that empty and sandy tube as quickly as they could.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!!”

The acid cloud will hit in less than thirty seconds! Seal up the holes as best you can!! Use body bags or whatever to cover them and keep the acid cloud out!”

[[Image:HO_v07_300.png|thumb]]

They knew it was not going to be perfect.

After some quick work, they ran down the two meter tunnel with all their strength.

They were soon surrounded by a sound resembling stir-frying.

“The acid cloud has caught up!!”

“It won’t break through the pipe right away! Keep running!!”

The pipeline had been created to carry over ten tons of liquid every second, so it had been built quite thick to withstand the internal pressure. But the sound of the metal being eaten away still squeezed at their hearts so much they forgot how thick it was.

“It’s only going to last two or three minutes.”

“We just have to make it a few hundred meters. That isn’t a marathon. We can escape to safety if we run as quickly as we can!!”

“Damn them, whoever they are! What do they want to hide so badly that they’re willing to ruin the environment like this!?”

“We can think about it after we survive!!”

Strange sparks seemed to explode in their heads and it became impossible to think about anything unnecessary.

They just ran and ran and ran and ran.

As they ran, the outside world had long since vanished from their minds. They began to feel like their goal had been filled with the acid and that the acid cloud had covered the entire world.

“Hot!?”

“There are cracks here and there. Keep running while covering your head with some kind of cloth! Stopping will only eat away at our skin!!”

Fortunately, the cracks were small and not much of the acid cloud seemed to be getting in.

But Quenser and the others did not have time to objectively evaluate the situation.

They could not tell if the dampness inside their uniforms was their sweat or their melted skin.

Even so, they continued running.

It was not exactly out of stubbornness. They were simply losing themselves in the simple action of running so they could avert their gaze from the certain death closing in on them.

“Quenser,” Heivia finally called out.

Quenser could not imagine why he was calling out to him.

“Quenser! It’s over. The sizzling sound is gone. We’ve left the range of the acid cloud.”

“Ah? Eh?”

“We survived! We don’t need to run any further. Do you want to destroy your own heart!?”

It took him a while to truly realize he had survived.

He eventually collapsed to a sitting position and could tell his lips were twitching.

After a few seconds, he finally realized he was smiling.

===Part 6===

Somewhere in Oceania, the muffled sound of a gun with a silencer could be heard.

Another young man looked down at a blonde woman with a bullet hole in her forehead.

“Case #023 complete. The objective was not achieved and it has been deemed a failure. To recover, Case #024 will now begin.”

===Part 7===

Quenser worked hard to calm down Heivia who was seriously planning to punch the pilot of the slowly descending helicopter. Surprisingly, the intellectual-looking investigation team seemed to agree with Heivia. They were only human and anyone would be angry when their supposed comrades unreasonably abandoned them in an acid cloud.

“Calm down. If we all flip them off, they might fly away without us. We need to give them a smile with the kindness of a younger sister and the dependability of an older sister.”

“Got it, Quenser. You’re saying we act like a carnivorous plant, right? Once they open the helicopter door, their life is over.”

The helicopter team must have felt bad because, when they opened the door, they handed out bottles of carbonated drinks they had found somewhere. The bottles were ice cold thanks to the icing spray for machineguns. There were some enticements one’s senses could not resist. After running around in the 50 degree desert, this was more than enough to quiet them down.

The middle-aged male pilot explained the situation.

“The acid cloud is spreading out higher in the sky like a cumulonimbus cloud. We checked the weather map for the wind and there is a danger of running into it on our way back to the maintenance base. We want more accurate information if possible.”

“If that’s the only reason you picked us up, I really will shove you out.”

Growing stubborn was not going to accomplish anything.

The helicopter team’s decision had not been wrong given all the injured they had and Quenser’s group had indeed managed to hold on to their lives.

In that case, they needed to use their brains for something more important.

“So what do you think they were trying to destroy?” asked Quenser as the movements of the helicopter shook him. “Do you think it was those wooden boxes in the underground structure? Y’know, those fiber optic cables, the bolts, the nuts, and that strange powder.”

Quenser stared at the photographs he had taken on his handheld device, but then he heard someone give a sudden cry of surprise.

It came from one of the intellectual infantryman who had helped them create the fake site for the bank account numbers.

“What is it?”

“I was searching for the master key to the net storage we discovered using those thugs’ devices, remember? Well, I think I found something bad.”

Everyone gathered around the slender infantryman.

All of the stern men stared at the small screen.

It had recorded phone calls, graphs showing the exchange of money, and documents on the group’s projects and external cooperators. The infantryman displayed a summary file that looked like the minutes of a meeting.

'''“Concerning war recovery in Oceania and the influence that recovery provides within the country. A list of important infrastructure and how to drive a wedge into the provisional rule using the foundation of that infrastructure.”

“Wait, wait, wait. This contractor, this one, and this one are all major construction companies doing a lot of work toward Oceania’s recovery. Does this mean they’re all helping out this group or being unwittingly used by them?”

“Well, even the large contractors are using local people to pave roads and lay pipes. To promote employment, they’re actively seeking Oceanian personnel. These shady thugs could probably slip in there.”

“No matter what plans those at the top make, the project will be delayed if the people at the bottom secretly don’t do their job.”

“Electricity, gas, water, schools, hospitals, phones, and internet. All of them are vital pieces of infrastructure.”

“Delaying them will do a lot of damage to the provisional rule here. After all, that rule is really nothing more than a verbal promise. The people will lose faith if those promises aren’t met.”

“So either this group is actually causing this damage or they’re using it as a threat.”

“Either way, someone is definitely gaining great influence over the rulers of Oceania.”

'''“It is necessary to remove the coalition made up of the four world powers and it is necessary that we then intervene as rulers.”

“Someone’s trying to secretly shake up the provisional rule until it’s powerless. They want to swap out the structure of the nation so they can bring their interests to the forefront.”

“Does that mean it’s us, the coalition force, that’s in the way?”

“Dammit. That must be why they’re paying off that international satellite TV executive, that blog king, and the others! They’ve brought the Oceanian people’s anger to just under the boiling point using the failed infrastructure maintenance. What if they now release baseless rumors about the coalition from multiple influential sources? That will create an outlet for their pent up anger and large-scale riots will begin!!”

“We’re stationed here in Oceania in the name of preserving order, so they’re trying to guide international opinion to believe our presence is causing frequent riots that hurt or kill innocent people.”

“Then they can do whatever they want. Our higher ups are only spending the military budget on this because the image of a savior hero is useful in politics and diplomacy. Once it isn’t worth it anymore, the military might really leave.”

“And then a new oppressive dictatorship will begin. This group will be able to hide behind a puppet leader.”

'''“How to freely rearrange the national structure in the name of creating a modern justice system.”

“The Oceanian military nation had the country working on a completely flawed rulebook. Giving the country proper laws will definitely be necessary.”

“But when you remake the country’s rules from the ground up, it’s a lot easier for black-hearted people to work in loopholes than if they have to rearrange the system bit by bit.”

“Is that like how it’s easier for a baby than an adult to learn a foreign language?”

'''“Regarding the basic geographic conditions for a powerful nation.”

“Oceania has massive amounts of land and underground resources. If they can secure the water resources needed for large-scale agriculture, they don’t have to worry about food. Simply put, they have what it takes for an advantage in a long, difficult war.”

“Almost the entire continent is made up of a single power and they’re surrounded by ocean. Compared to countries that directly border a lot of other countries, they’re a lot harder to invade. The conditions are similar to what North America once was and a nation known as the world police once existed there.”

“If they create something similar here, it will cause problems in the world’s military balance. Of course, that’s what this group is probably trying to do.”

Quenser and the others read the document while discussing its contents, but a fundamental question caused Quenser to frown.

“But what are they going to do with this new dictatorship? The Oceanian military nation did something similar, but they were stopped by the combined attack of the coalition force. No matter how many conspiracies they weave together, they’ll be broken up as soon as the coalition notices them.”

“The military nation is a great example of that. I doubt any conspirator would want to meet the same fate as the leader there.”

“And the people here have to be the same. No one is going to think a riot can push back a fifty meter Object. Even a child would know that. Riots are meant to push with great numbers. If their front lines would be mowed down the instant they gathered, no one would gather.”

“They need some kind of symbol of rebellion. But what possible symbol would people think could defeat more than twenty Objects?”

“…”

Quenser glanced down at a handheld device.

This was not the one from the thugs. It was Quenser’s own that the Legitimacy Kingdom military had issued him.

It contained a few photographs he had taken in the underground structure attached the remains of the pump facility.

The photos were primarily of the wooden boxes’ contents.

One photo showed nuts and bolts divided by size.

One showed reels of fiber optic cable.

One showed bags of powder.

“Don’t tell me…”

“What’s wrong with a photo of nuts and bolts? You can buy those at home improvement stores the world over.”

“But not the fiber optic cable. This is the type that greatly raises signal stability by injecting argon gas into the tube. The price per meter is ridiculous, so it isn’t used in normal homes. It’s a military product that’s known as the nervous system of certain colossal weapons.”

“Wait… A military product? The nervous system of colossal weapons? You don’t mean…”

“And there’s this powder.”

Quenser gulped, zoomed in on the photo, and repeatedly read the bag’s label. No matter how many times he read it, it still said the same thing.

“This is the substance that gives Object armor its high-heat resistance and reactive ability. It isn’t used in anything else.”

“Then that’s the symbol of rebellion this group has built?”

When they thought about it, it was obvious.

Only one thing could pick a fight with the monstrous weapons that could withstand a direct hit with a nuclear missile.

They were synonymous with war.

They were 50+ meter masses of overwhelming military might.

“Were they using the pipelines spread out across Oceania’s desert to slowly gather the parts for an Object!?”

===Part 8===

The group of helicopters taking Quenser and the others back to the maintenance base zone was not far from arriving.

But they could barely stand to wait even that long.

“We don’t actually know when the Oceanian military government’s 0.5 generation Object was built. If it was built by smuggling the parts through this network of pipes and this group took over all that, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’ve completed an Object!!”

“Quit analyzing and report this, Quenser! Damn, I bet our huge-breasted commander is still mad. I just hope she’s willing to listen!!”

After they explained their thoughts over the radio, Froleytia responded bitterly.

“I have not forgotten about dealing with you two, but this isn’t good. It explains why things have been getting noisy outside.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have received a few troubling reports from the base’s sentries. It seems a two or three thousand of the local people have gathered. They’re only shaking the fence around the base and throwing small rocks, but we will have to forcibly make them leave if they do anything more. I want to avoid that while the journalists’ cameras are here. Also, I didn’t know what caused the commotion.”

People’s opinions varied, but the Legitimacy Kingdom military had not been all that hated by the Oceanian people.

“So they’ve already started delaying the infrastructure maintenance and pointing the people’s anger our way.”

“If they’ve already begun, that means it’s really damn likely they’ve finished their new Object! I don’t even feel like joking about this!!”

“But it takes nearly three years to build an Object from the ground up,” said Froleytia. “There hasn’t been enough time for a conspiracy thought up after seeing news of the Oceanian military nation’s collapse.”

“Wait a minute. Froleytia, you can’t mean what I think you mean!!”

“We just have to calculate backwards. If they started this project three years ago, it started before…ksshhh…military nation’s destruction…ksshh. That ridiculo-…ksshh…also part of their plan…ksssssshhhhhh!!”

“Froleytia? Hey, Froleytia!? Can you hear me!?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The military line has been jammed? By who? That alone qualifies as opposing us!!”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

Suddenly, a new voice came over the staticky radio.

It was a young man’s voice.

“Welcome to our nation of Oceania.”

“Really? We have to deal with this? I don’t see how this could lead to anything good.”

“I hear you have stubbornly survived the acid bomb and thus approached quite close to the truth. Even so, it is too late to do anything about it.”

“We at least know you were involved behind the scenes of the military nation and their 0.5 generation Object.’

“Yes. They never had the money and technology needed to construct an Object on their own. As you probably know, that was built based on a downgraded version of the design data for an Information Alliance model known as the Gatling 033...no, I suppose you refer to it by the codename of Rush.”

“Rush?”

Quenser frowned and recalled the “oh ho ho” laughter of that Information Alliance pilot Elite.

“But why did all of you so innocently believe that they had only constructed that one? If they can build one, they can build two. With the pipeline spread out across the entire desert and the one hundred terminal facilities connected to it, anything is possible. Our project had begun years and years before the fall of the military nation, so how many Objects do you think we have stocked up in that ant’s nest?”

He used the plural.

That was enough for a chill to run down the spines of everyone in the helicopter.

Just one of those monsters was more than enough.

“You’re lying. Objects are brand-name items that cost a billion dollars each. A single group can’t build that many!!”

“Money can buy something even better. Money is meant to be spent, so there is no reason to hold back. Am I wrong?”

“Something even better?”

“The world police,” said the young man over the radio.

That term was the symbol of an era.

“The world may have changed, but a North American superpower once had complete control of the world’s military balance. That was an era of peace. But that exemplary nation was smashed to pieces by the flow of time! The home countries of the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance now exist there. It is not realistic to resurrect a single superpower there.”

“You can’t mean…”

“In that case, the only option is to find another area with similar conditions. A vast land surrounded by ocean. A single nation with plenty of food, underground resources, and population. All we need to do is supply information on high-level technology. …And there was only one candidate.”

“Are you saying your goal is to remake Oceania into a second ‘world police’!?”

“Is there any better way to recover from a war? If we succeed, we will put an end to the ‘clean wars’ spreading throughout the world. We will combine the different world powers into a single world power. And Oceania will rule at the center of it all. This continent was overrun with unreasonable war and then crushed by the different world powers afterwards, so it is the perfect symbol for the new world police.”

“This is ridiculous,” spat out Heivia. “All the dark history from the creation of the Oceanian military nation was your doing, wasn’t it!? The new world police? An era truly without war? A world created by people as heartless as you would be a horrible place! You just want to create a world where you can kill as many people as you want!!”

“I have only one thing to say to that: are you aware that history is something created by someone and recorded by someone?”

The young man’s voice remained calm.

He was used to being accused of doing horrible things.

“And no matter how much of a commotion you cause, you can no longer change the current course of events. Look at the city below you. The angry cries of the crowd should reach you up in the sky. Do you know what that rumbling noise is? Those are the footsteps of the rioters marching through the streets. Can you pacify all of those people?”

“…”

Quenser stopped breathing for a moment.

He could hear a low, low sound resembling distant thunder. He peered down from the helicopter’s open door and saw something filling the desert city. The sight of countless human heads filling every inch not taken up by buildings was quite chilling.

He saw something white here and there.

They looked like placards or banners, so Quenser naturally reached for his binoculars.

But Heivia grabbed his wrist before he could look through them.

“You should stop.”

Heivia was looking up from his rifle’s scope.

It seemed he had just looked through it.

“It’s better to not see that. It’s like a fishing hook. You’ll try to pretend it’s nothing at first, but you’ll realize the small hook won’t come out. It’ll leave a wound.”

Quenser could not imagine what would cause such a negative reaction.

Earlier that day, he had seen true enemy soldiers shot to pieces by helicopters and he had almost been killed by an acid bomb. Compared to that, what could words do? Thinking that, Quenser’s curiosity led him to look through the binoculars.

And…

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

He felt like he heard the words “I told you so” coming from a long distance away.

His arms hung limply down and the magnification left his vision, but what he saw left a hole in his chest.

He felt as if all the bloody vomit and crawling through the mud in Oceania had been made meaningless in a single moment.

This was not something one or two people could easily cause.

This was a powerful current.

Like a fad or a trend, something unseen was influencing people’s lives.

Normally, only the advertising firms that created commercials were aware of that current, but it now created an obvious wall before Quenser and the others.

“What is this commotion?” asked Quenser as he stared blankly down at the city from the sliding door.

He received an answer from the young soldier messing with a handheld device they had received from the enemies.

“Wait. This isn’t good. This is really bad!!”

“Did you find another document?”

Quenser turned around and the soldier tossed him the device.

He caught it in both hands and finally realized what the small screen showed.

It was a completely normal video sharing site.

However…

“Ha ha ha. Have you discovered what everyone’s talking about?” laughed the person on the radio.

But Quenser was not listening.

His mind had left reality as his eyes focused on the video playing on the screen.

It showed a few minutes of a human trafficking incident that had occurred at an international harbor in Oceania.

It had been uploaded only half an hour earlier.

The view count had already reached ten million. It was on a site used worldwide, but the video was a bit choppy as if it was having difficulty loading.

“The news is nothing but entertainment. They complain about the depressing incidents, but that does not stop people from searching for them. TV and newspapers used to have a lot of influence, but nowadays one will never learn anything without searching for themselves. And that gives people a certain enthusiasm.”

The incidents and battles that were supposedly resolved were now being used for something else.

“And in Oceania where their infrastructure is being rebuilt, they lack the resources for entertainment. The people are starving for entertainment. Yes, they want to enjoy themselves. Merely opening a small hole in the dam leads to the result before you. The overwhelming deluge will sweep across the continent.”

The young man on the radio spoke as if singing a lullaby that hid a cruel origin.

“The night sky. This world is a night sky.”

It almost sounded like the lyrics to a song.

It sounded nice, but it seemed removed from reality.

“The starless night sky presses down on everyone from above and prevents them from seeing ahead. Someone must change this. Fortunately, that is not hard to do. Those who rule this dark era have merely convinced everyone that it is difficult.”

The one who made it had to know that.

And the ones listening most likely knew it deep down.

“By raising stars onto the starless night sky, we can make a single flag. At first, our symbol will be pure indigo like the night sky. A single star is enough. If a single star can shine in the starless indigo night sky, we can begin to gently guide this dark era. Will you stand here in the center of the world or will you be forever driven to the edges of the world? Decide for yourself.”

Even so, they would fall for it.

But why?

Was someone simply using the dissatisfaction of the Oceanian people?

Or was even that initial dissatisfaction something someone had input within them?

The video showed a few minutes of a large-scale clash between Objects in the desert night which had all been meant to kill a single soldier.

“Thank you. We put together many different plans and you ruined a few of them, but you provided us with an even greater tool,” said the voice. “Truth Theater. That is the name of the video. When you take something formless, give it a name, and place it within a frame of your choosing, it provides a certain impression. That is the basic method of influencing people’s impressions. After that, you only need to provide them with a specific direction. For example, you can create a flag that they take as their own symbol without anyone forcing them. They will then spread the word of their existence around the world. The trick is to skillfully mix in the proper ideals and desires. The night sky flag is pure indigo, so it can easily be made by throwing a can of paint on a curtain. If you create a complex and cool-looking symbol, no one can create it for themselves. This is an application of influencing people’s impressions.”

There were no lies in the materials they had used.

However, the timing of the editing was extremely malicious. By showing only a few minutes in the video, it only showed the beginning of the problem and the growth of the chaos it produced. There were likely people watching it who did not even know these problems had been resolved.

“The stage has already been set. If it had not, I would not have so calmly contacted you. The indigo flag of the night sky could cover the entire continent at any time. When faced with this overwhelming maelstrom of people, both military and civilian, the military officials who are obsessed with clean wars will hesitate. That time lag will prevent you from ever catching up. Farewell. You have lost. Once only our victory remains, the world will greatly benefit and rejoice in its newfound peace.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“I need something to write on your gravestone.”

A short silence came from the radio.

The young man may have been laughing.

“You may call us the Company, Langley, or the Pentagon. When the former world police was lost, our true name lost its power and meaning.”

“Do you mean…?”

“We are the ghosts of a bygone era. But if you wish to refer to us, there is a name you can use. We are the strange shadows dressed in black who are whispered of in every corner of the world. We are MIB.”

At that moment, the transmission ended.

But not because Quenser or the MIB man had switched off their radio.

The transport helicopter shook violently as it was enveloped in an explosion.

“Wah!?”

“What is it, pilot!? What happened!?”

The helicopter’s door was open, so Quenser had to cling to the handrail on the inner wall with all his might so as not to be thrown out.

The pilot’s reply was tense.

“We were attacked from the surface! It was probably a cheap mortar.”

“A mortar!? Those are used to fire shells farther than a grenade can be thrown. How are they using it for an anti-air attack!?”

“I don’t know, but one just hit us! They forcibly used it beyond its intended use. Unlike a missile, it isn’t guided, so they won’t be able to reliably hit us!!”

“This is the hatred of the people,” said the young man on the radio. “Those shells cost twenty dollars each. There is a reason they have long been a best seller in this world of never-ending wars.”

“Here it comes! I just heard one being fired on the surface!! Avoid it, dammit! Move to the right!!”

“I don’t have proper control after that last explosion!”

They did not escape in time.

As the helicopter shook, Quenser worked to close the door.

As soon as he did, the next explosion hit.

The steel door bent in and stabbed into the opposite wall. However, closing the door had not been meaningless. Without the door acting as a cushion, the blast and small pieces of shrapnel would have filled the helicopter.

Nevertheless, that blast settled it.

The helicopter did not break apart in midair, but it began to spin as it lost control. Their altitude was clearly lowering. The mass of steel was obviously falling toward the ground.

“What do we do!? Hey, what do we do!? I don’t want to crash twice in one day! Can’t you recover!?’

“I’m trying! But does it look like it’s going well!?” shouted back the pilot.

Quenser felt dizzy as he braced himself so he was not thrown out of the reopened door.

The young man spoke from the radio as if to provide the finishing blow.

“Ha ha ha. Soldiers surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. A tragedy like this might work as another symbol to drive out the coalition.”

“Is this it!?”

Heivia forcibly switched off the radio and looked out the door.

He then shouted toward the cockpit.

“Hey, which way are we pointed!? I hope it’s somewhere without any people!”

“It is! We’re headed for a trash dump. The trash is piled up in hills and my sensors aren’t picking up anyone!!”

“Good.”

Heivia seemed to have made up his mind about something, so Quenser spoke to him.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The helicopter continued to fall while almost scraping the roof of a crude five-story building.

Heivia leaned into the cockpit, used his knife to cut the seatbelt of the pilot who was still intently focused on the controls, and dragged him away.

“We jump out.”

The screaming would not stop.

As if they were jumping out of a car headed for a cliff, Quenser and the others jumped out onto the flat building roof. The drop was only a few meters.

After a few seconds, the helicopter crashed into a giant pile of garbage and exploded.

They no longer had a means of returning to the base.

===Part 9===

The transport helicopter crashed into a city garbage dump. After a giant explosion, toxic-looking black smoke rose toward the heavens. Quenser stared at the sight as he rolled along the old concrete rooftop of a five-story building.

“Damn this hurts!! I didn’t break any bones, did I!?”

“If you broke one or even cracked one, you’d be crying in pain, student! Quit giving in to the placebo effect and stand up. We need to get out of here!!”

“Is this place that bad?”

“Who do you think shot us down? It wasn’t trained soldiers. Remember when we discussed this chaotic period of recovery in Oceania? Things are so bad people carry around weapons for self-…”

Heivia suddenly stopped speaking.

They heard a rumbling noise. It sounded like the cheers in a stadium after a hat trick. They worriedly looked down and saw a gold-colored tsunami rushing toward the helicopter which was still spewing black smoke.

The wave was made of people.

The gold was their hair. A group of hundreds or even thousands was approaching to drag out the crew of the helicopter. They were all waving indigo flags. They must have painted or dyed something on hand because they were all bright and not entirely dried.

That starless night sky was the symbol of their dissatisfaction toward this dark era.

“Handguns, assault rifles, rockets, mortars, and more. If we don’t leave while they’re focused on the helicopter, we’ll have nowhere to run,” complained Heivia. “They’re worked up enough that there’s a real possibility of being dragged out and publicly executed.”

Quenser gulped when he saw the other boy prepare his assault rifle.

“Wait, Heivia. Why are you preparing that?”

“This is no time to be idealistic!! Battle regulations mean nothing here. Order hasn’t been restored in Oceania yet, so even housewives and office workers walk around with guns for self-defense. Those people with their night sky flag could start shooting at any time, so we need to defend ourselves!!”

“You can’t. You can’t do that!!”

Despite the danger of a secondary explosion from ammunition or fuel, the enraged crowd surrounded the helicopter and peered inside. They resembled ants crowding around a sugar cube. If they noticed Quenser and the others on the rooftop, they would obviously surround the building.

Quenser understood that.

He really did.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of them with the flags!! With that much of a difference, it doesn’t matter if they’re pros or amateurs. They’ll ignore all their allies in every direction and fire on us. If that happens, we’ll be more than just riddled with holes!!”

“But…!”

“But some of them aren’t armed? We’ll still meet a tragic end even if they catch us. In fact, the lack of deadly weapons will just make our grotesque fate last longer! Do you really think these people will be able to stop at just almost killing us!?”

They then heard a scraping noise.

Quenser looked over and saw the helicopter pilot scraping at the inside of a ring with a metal rod. The rod may have originally been a television antenna.

“What are you doing?”

“My wife’s name is engraved in my ring. I am prepared to do what it takes no matter what happens, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for my family!!”

The atmosphere was not normal.

Quenser was suggesting the obvious choice of “not fighting”, but the others were treating that as strange.

They were being affected by the state of the nation.

If one side had guns, the other side had to have guns as well. That logic could only lead to a negative chain reaction, but it had begun to affect non-Oceanians like Quenser and the others.

Truth Theater.

They were being sucked into the world of that video.

The night sky.

That dark and hopeless era that the MIB had created was eating into Quenser and the others.

Heivia and the others who could use rifles took the lead as they moved from the rooftop and into the building. The stairway and corridors were deserted. The glass was covered in dust and sand, so the inside was dim. Several symbols had been left on the walls, so it may have been an abandoned building which was scheduled to be demolished.

What would happen if they ran across someone here?

What if someone lived here to escape the sand and rain? What if someone who lived nearby used it as storage space?

Quenser found it hard to breathe as he saw Heivia and the others unhesitatingly pointing their rifles around.

There was something wrong with it all.

Their enemy was not the people of Oceania. It was the “ghosts of a bygone era” known as the MIB who were laughing as they manipulated everyone. Getting into a firefight here would only delight them. They could use it to bring about their desire to drive out the coalition which was seen as the enemy of the Oceanian people.

Quenser understood the situation, but he could not suppress his instinctual fear.

The high-pitched sound of audio feedback struck his eardrums from outside the building.

It came from a cheap megaphone.

“Drive them away!! Don’t allow their oppression any longer! The Legitimacy Kingdom helicopter crashed right next to a hospital. They are only thinking about their own interests! They don’t care about our lives!!”

“Goddamn them! They’re the ones who shot mortars at us!! And we went out of the way to crash into a garbage dump!!”

“Don’t respond!! It won’t solve anything if we get angry too!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? Do you think the cavalry is going to show up if we sit around long enough!?”

Suddenly, something else happened.

They heard a distant rumbling cheer similar to when a decisive goal was made in an international soccer match.

Quenser could not check outside the window.

There was a risk of being spotted, but it had more to do with his own fear.

He and the other seven continued running down the stairs.

Once they reached the first floor, Heivia reached for the back door near the stairway. He slowly turned the knob and cracked the door open.

The wall of people had already reached about thirty centimeters away.

They were so close that Heivia could almost smell their breathing and sweat.

The scent of the paint used to make the indigo flags was mixed in.

He desperately suppressed a groan.

They were almost all focused on the person speaking through the megaphone, so they were not facing toward the building.

With the delicacy of defusing a landmine, he took plenty of time to close the door that was only opened a few centimeters. He instinctually wanted to lock the door too, but that would make too much noise. He used his reason to desperately fight that temptation.

“It’s no good. They’re everywhere outside.”

“You mean we can’t escape?”

Meanwhile, the megaphone voice continued.

“The cavalry is here! Our cavalry has arrived!! Open a path for the grim reaper to reach them!! Once this vehicle enters the plaza, they are done for!!”

Unpleasant sweat began to pour from Quenser’s back.

If that was not a bluff…

“We will pursue our enemy no matter where they run! The sensors equipped on this .50 caliber heavy machinegun will ensure that! Whether it’s wood or concrete, no shield will protect them!! We will search for them, find them, and then destroy them!! …What did you see in the Truth Theater? What did you feel as you waved the night sky flag? That is the truth!! That is the information that has not been altered by the media!!”

As Quenser stepped back from the back door, he frantically made use of his nearly panicking mind.

“(This is bad. Something different is approaching!)”

“(Has the MIB arrived after allying with the people? Now this interesting! We just have to destroy this machinegun-equipped off-road vehicle or whatever it is!!)”

“(But the people watching won’t know where the line between pro and amateur is drawn! Once a single gunshot is fired, the people will attack us without end!!)”

Fortunately, the vehicle in question was apparently having difficulty approaching due to all the people filling every inch of the roads. It would not arrive immediately, but it was only a matter of time. This did not actually solve the problem.

Would they remain and fight?

Or would they leave and hide somewhere?

They had to make up their minds.

“(We can’t run, Quenser! They said the heavy machinegun can shoot through building walls and it has sensors. No matter where we hide, we’ll be killed. And the weapon’s great penetrative power will bloody the angry mob as well!! We have to fight!!)”

“(But we can’t survive if we fight! Also, there’s no reason to fight!! Once a fight begins, it means we’ve lost!!)”

“(Then you can go run off on your own. Make a bet with me if you want, but I guarantee you I’ll survive longer than you!!)”

Ultimately, there was no right answer.

No matter what they chose, they could not defeat the MIB. Eventually, the building would be surrounded and they would be filled with holes or torn limb from limb.

Reinforcements from the maintenance base zone would not arrive in time.

They were completely surrounded, so they would not find a convenient opening.

Once a single shot was fired, it was all over.

But was there any chance left of convincing these people without force?

“…”

The tension had made Quenser’s breathing extremely shallow and he felt as if he would die from dizziness before the actual threat even arrived.

And…

And…

And…

The situation took a decisive turn.

A change that affected their survival occurred without them even knowing it.

===Part 10===

At that time, a certain girl looked up at the instigator mixed in with the crowd. The man stood on the roof of a European van parked on the road. He was making a loud announcement with the kind of cheap megaphone used at construction sites.

“Drive out the Legitimacy Kingdom! Get rid of the entire coalition!! They create nothing. They protect no one! Good citizens should take up arms and fight against these invaders!! Let the cavalry into the plaza so we can begin the bloodbath!! With its sensors, we can find them wherever they hide!!”

The girl was not caught up in what the man was saying.

Quite the opposite.

She knew that there were lies in the speech given by this man standing on the van and holding up an indigo flag. She had seen “them” firsthand, so she knew the rumors spreading through the city had definite malicious intent.

And so…

“…?”

A pause came in the enthralling speech.

This was because a small stone had flown at the man.

Everyone there turned from the man with the megaphone to the girl.

“I know the truth,” said the girl. “I know it isn’t true that they don’t protect anyone!! They saved me. I was taken by bad people, but they came and saved me!! There wasn’t any chaos like in Truth Theater!! There was more to it than that!!”

“Do not make such baseless claims!!”

Triggered by the man’s angry shout, several nearby people grabbed at the girl’s hair and began to drag her away.

She let out a high-pitched scream.

Some of the people accepted this as natural.

But some did not.

“Hey…”

“Yeah.”

It started with a few young men.

They stood in the way of the men trying to carry away the girl.

One of the men holding her hair spoke.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Y’see, I don’t really understand all this complicated stuff about good and evil or the coalition and invaders.” The main young man shrugged. He moved his face in and spoke from close range. “But is this justice of yours something that lets bastards like you drag crying little girls around by the hair? If so, I can’t go along with it.”

The men holding the girl’s hair prepared to silence this minority with their fists.

But then they realized the overwhelming majority was staring intently at their backs.

Which side had the backing of the majority was beginning to change.

At that time, an old woman named Dorothy opened an outdated laptop computer on a luxurious passenger ship away from Oceania. She logged in to an SNS site her grandchild had insisted she sign up for but she had not used since then.

She had noticed a commotion.

She had noticed great enthusiasm.

The short anonymously-uploaded video named Truth Theater had already been picked up by TV stations around the world. They seemed to have lost the pride in taking footage with their own cameras because the grainy video was being used as-is with the newscaster’s voice playing over it.

On the internet, people could not see each other’s faces or grab at their collars when they were angry, so it was filled with more extreme and hostile words than reality. One side supported Oceania slaughtering the coalition and declaring themselves independent. The other side said the riots would bring about oppression in their own lives, so they supported immediate military intervention.

But none of them knew the truth of Oceania.

They only knew what the few minutes of Truth Theater had showed them.

“I know the truth.”

After giving it some thought, the old woman began slowly typing on the unfamiliar keyboard.

She was acting to protect the honor of the youths who had saved her.

She was beginning to fight back.

“I know the good and the bad of that country. You daydreamers want a convenient villain that lets you feel like you are watching a movie, but rethink what you say once you hear what I have to say. I promise that you will be ashamed of yourselves.”

At that time, Sewax the battlefield cameraman sat within a box-shaped metal tent in arctic Siberia. He was checking over the photos he had just taken with his single-lens reflex camera. Just like heat, extreme cold could cause malfunctions in precision equipment. Before his hard-won images could be lost, he began sending a backup to his online storage via a small satellite communications device.

His guide, who was closer to being a child then a youth, stared interestedly at the device.

“Hey, can you use that internet thing on there? No one bothers running lines out here. If they did lay hundreds of kilometers of fiber optic cable, a bear would just dig it up. And power lines would collapse under the weight of the snow.”

Sewax had a sudden thought as he worked.

He had just trapped a piece of the truth in a rectangular frame and sent it out to the world, but how many people would it reach? And would that truth reach them accurately without someone twisting it?

Some intentionally twisted information was currently causing a frenzy on the internet, that information network the guide wished he had. As a professional photographer, Sewax had immediately noticed how much malice was contained within the few minutes of Truth Theater. A film specialist would likely have found two or three times as much as he had.

The truth could easily be twisted.

Rather than adding in lies, one only had to maliciously edit footage to give a certain impression.

But an athlete cheating with steroids was overwhelmingly powerful. Setting aside the ethical issues, that power was an objective fact. In the same way, the impact of manufactured footage could easily blow away a photograph showing the actual truth. In the end, the people wanted stimulation. The truth was but a single means of acquiring that stimulation and the original purpose of the truth had been done away with.

How much meaning did the world see in being “correct”?

The metal tent’s walls had two layers so the air between could insulate it, but Sewax still felt a chill run down his spine.

It was then that the guide asked an innocent question.

“Hey, where were you before? You haven’t been here for long, right?”

The question brought a slight smile to Sewax’s face.

Because of the state of the world, there was something he could not easily give up on.

Little by little, he would sow the seeds of truth. They would outlast the long winter and eventually bud. It was true people sought simple stimulation, but the ring of truth was another form of stimulation.

People were cruelly honest.

Even if hundreds of thousands of lives were dependent on a photograph, people would look right past it if it was boring. If it seemed preachy, some would even insult it. At the same time, people from all over the world would view a video of someone’s perfectly normal pet.

But the people also loved fairness to a surprising extent.

If it was an interesting story, they would flock to it whether it was true or not. And so Sewax decided he would aim for that. Simply saying one had the truth was not enough. The proper way to compete was to present an overwhelming true story that had enough interest and appeal to break past the empty entertainment.

No matter what anyone said, the more interesting story would win in the end.

He swapped out the micro memory for his digital single-lens reflex camera and slowly spoke as he displayed photos of the previous battlefield he had traversed.

“These photos are from the country of Oceania. What do you think happened there?”

At that time, a female soldier missing an arm appeared at a court martial in a European safe country. The court martial had entered a short recess, but the media’s cameras would not leave her.

These cameras did not merely belong to this one safe country. Large news stations were broadcasting this to many different countries and regions.

“A hero? You may say I exposed corruption, but I was closer to being someone who carried out dirty work for the military. I believe the title of hero should be given to someone else.”

She used the accurate movements of her prosthetic arm to pick up a paper cup of iced coffee and smiled thinly on a bench in the corridor outside the court room.

“Setting aside issues of good and evil, I was certainly a nuisance within the military. In fact, I may still be. But even amid a conspiracy to assassinate a nuisance like me, someone still jumped into the line of fire to save me. In the end, he even stood before an Object. People like that are what soldiers should be. My way of returning the favor is to guide the military toward accepting people like that.”

She spoke slowly as if recalling something.

“There are definitely people who should be called heroes. But unfortunately, those people rarely refer to themselves that way. I wish to show my respect for all the soldiers working in Oceania. Even if they will not name themselves heroes, I hope the day will come when everyone else will.”

At that time, an Information Alliance pilot Elite, who the two idiots referred to as the “oh ho ho”, was speaking to the world via a large-scale internet concert.

“The Information Alliance fights for the proper use of information and for a better future, so we have received some unwelcome news. The MIB? The world police? World domination using an unknown Object made with new technology?”

By usurping the continent of Oceania, they would begin to change the world’s military balance.

“Normally, I would manipulate your impression of this incident by reading off a predetermined script with a perfect smile.”

[[Image:HO_v07_347.png|thumb]]

But that did not mean only someone at the center could have an influence.

The world had grown smaller.

The overwhelming electronic network allowed people to influence the other side of the globe in real time.

“Who is right and what is accurate? Try thinking for yourselves for once☆ Oh ho ho.”

It started as a small wave.

But it slowly worked its way deep into the hearts of the people whose impressions had been manipulated.

It was similar to the difference between a natural diamond and an artificial one.

Which one would draw people in the most?

The answer was revealed by their actions.

“What?”

As they glanced around from within the abandoned building, Quenser and the others quickly picked up on that difference.

“The atmosphere has changed. The burning anger is being directed elsewhere.”

The powerful emotions of anger and intent to kill would stab into one’s heart. Some martial arts had honed it into an actual technique to throw of an opponent’s timing, Quenser and Heivia were not martial arts experts, but the level of emotion surrounding them was on a tremendous scale. Despite being used to clean wars, they could detect the change in the situation.

The crowd never broke down the door and rushed in. The MIB vehicle equipped with a machinegun was stopped as if something blocked its way.

“How odd… Something isn’t right outside.” The windows were boarded up, but Heivia peered through the gaps between boards. “I don’t see any of those indigo night sky flags. Did everyone throw them away?”

That was when a slender hand poked out from a corner of the corridor.

It was beckoning to them.

“You can escape this way,” whispered a female voice.

At first, no one moved.

They thought it was a trap.

If they approached, they suspected they would have a bag placed over their head and be taken away.

But doing nothing would not improve their situation.

Quenser was the first to step forward.

“Wait, Quenser! Are you really trusting her!?”

“Something happened while we waited here without firing a shot, so we need to go with this change. It can’t hurt to take advantage of the opportunity we won for ourselves!!”

Heivia glanced down at the assault rifle in his hands.

He uncomfortably clicked his tongue as if he had only just remembered what it was and who he was aiming it at.

“Damn, I can’t believe Heivia, the transcendently handsome, genius, and rich noble, lost track of what he was doing. When a lady calls out to you, you don’t point this at her!!”

The overall atmosphere changed once Quenser and Heivia approached the door.

Heivia was a private and Quenser was a student while most of the other surviving soldiers were ranked higher. There was no reason for them to follow.

But the helicopter pilot spoke up.

“I was told to follow the infantrymen’s lead if I crashed, so I’ll leave it to you. Anything’s fine as long as we make it back to the maintenance base alive!”

One of the middle-aged soldiers who had to be ranked higher than Heivia shrugged as well.

“As the ranking officer here, I’ll say I made the decision based on a suggestion from a soldier under my command. This situation is so far outside the norm, I can’t keep up! You can take the lead!!”

All of the soldiers, including the injured, ran toward the corner of the corridor.

A brunette woman was waiting for them and she led them through the building. They arrived at what looked like a dead end due to large piece of trash, but she found gaps leading through it and to a small door. The door led to a narrow back road that the crowd did not cover.

“Is this a shopping district?”

“All of them are old stores that sell tools for craftsmen. They all have trash filling the front like that, so only the regular customers ever visit.”

They thanked the woman and cautiously continued along the road. As they did, the owners of the various small shops called out to them.

“I only have ointment and bandages, but do you want some?”

“I was just watching TV and it looks like you’re doing some cool stuff. If we help you, you’ll crush that conspiracy, right? I don’t really understand, but do what you have to!”

“Don’t make yourself ill by drinking old water! Here, have these sports drinks!!”

“Do you have enough ammo? If you can use 5.5mm, take as much as you want!!”

Some of the offers were rather dangerous, but Quenser and the others did not hesitate to accept. They had yet to resupply after an unexpected battle, so they had no reason to refuse if they could replenish their ammunition here.

“Hey, Quenser, where do we go now!? Do we return to the maintenance base!?”

“They’re surrounded by their own mob, remember? And we don’t know how far this miracle has spread. We should defeat the MIB behind all this and return once everything has calmed down!”

“I agree with that, but do you know where their secret base is? They’ve set up their conspiracy all across Oceania!! I doubt they’ll conveniently show up right in front of us!!”

“I disagree,” declared Quenser. “If you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Our helicopter was a top-priority target, so would they really leave its destruction to an angry mob? It would be safer to mix in with the crowd and fire the mortar themselves. Also, mortars fire a shell in a long arc toward their target. No amateur could do anything as tricky as hitting a flying helicopter with one. And don’t forget the heavily armed vehicle that was on its way to the plaza.”

“Are you saying the MIB’s headquarters are nearby?”

“They used the desert pipeline and the terminal facilities it connected. Heivia, where’s the closest facility? It can be for oil, underground water, or whatever else.”

“It’s nearby. It’s less than three kilometers away! No one felt any need to pay attention to some old ruins.”

“That must be it. And their headquarters are probably where their Object is!”

Heivia’s expression stiffened.

“Wait. Are you suggesting we battle that monstrous weapon in a group with lots of injured!? I doubt we could win and it’s pointless anyway. The MIB have more than one Object, remember? What good is it to risk our lives to destroy just one!?”

“Do they really have that many?” Quenser grinned. “They are an ideological group that came from a spy organization of a former superpower. They must be experts at manipulating information. Would they really reveal the entirety of their plan like that? Would they really just brag about everything? Not a chance. They wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

“Then…”

“Once the acid bomb failed to kill us and part of their plan was about to leak out, they panicked. Completely erasing leaked information is hard, but that’s why they chose to distort it by overwriting it with new information. That allows them to hide the overall outline of their plan.”

The mortar attack had shot down their helicopter immediately after the chat with the MIB.

Quenser and the others’ first action would be to contact their maintenance base by radio. They would be afraid of dying without passing on the information they had gained, so they would report everything without thinking about its veracity.

As a result, the decoy information would be passed to their superior officer.

That false fear would spread from Quenser’s group and to the entire military.

“It may be true they are developing Objects, but they can’t use that many at once! Hell, if they did have that great a fighting force, they wouldn’t be sneaking around! They could just challenge the coalition to a direct fight!! This is the age of numbers. In a one-against-three battle, a unit will not hesitate to send out the white flag signal and withdraw. Those are the rules yet they didn’t do that. That means they lose when it comes to numbers!!”

Quenser was guessing the MIB had only one or two functioning Objects at present. If the coalition’s ten or more Objects surrounded them, they would be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

“But they’re trying to become the world police! Their plan is to take over Oceania because it has the ideal geographical position. They need more than one Object to protect such a vast area of land. They want to conquer, rule, and control the world, so they need a ton of Objects!!”

“Their preparations aren’t ready yet. That’s why they tried to make us believe they can readily attack with several Objects. They’re trying to buy time! Once the time comes, tons of new Objects really will appear across Oceania!!”

“If you’re right, the first thing they’ll want to do is give credibility to their claim. Will they use their one Object to provide an effective demonstration? Even if that one is destroyed, they can buy the time they need as long as it scares the coalition enough. Then they can finish preparing the rest.”

“I don’t know what scale their plan is on, but they won’t have gone this far if they knew they would lose. Whether it’s through sheer numbers or some kind of trick, they definitely have something we can’t let them finish.”

“Wait a second. The coalition has over ten Objects stationed here. Are you saying they’re preparing something that can defeat that?”

Battles without Objects tended to become long and drawn out.

But this was different.

This would become a long, drawn out battle between Objects.

If that happened, it was impossible to say just how much apocalyptic destruction would spread across Oceania. The distinction between battlefield and city would vanish. The combatants would not have the leeway to make the distinction. It was possible that all life on the continent could be wiped out.

“That’s why we need to crush it,” said Quenser. “We’ll make the MIB’s demonstration completely fail and nip this problem in the bud. There’s no other way to save everyone.”

===Part 11===

Atomic number 79.

Atomic weight 196.96655.

Atomic symbol Au.

In other words, pure gold.

That was supposedly the source of their massive amounts of money.

The world had shattered to pieces in the past. The collapse of the UN and the appearance of Objects were the symbols of the existing national structure coming to an end. Amid the confusion, they had stolen a massive amount of gold bars from a certain country which had possessed more than any other nation.

Normally, this would have been immediately exposed and they would have been ganged up on, but the world had been in a state of complete chaos. They had taken advantage of a situation in which no one could determine what was stored where and in what quantities.

That thought brought a twisted smile to the lips of a young man wearing all black.

In the past few years, his smiles had become very different from what they had once been.

“Such a terrible lie. Even a child could see all the holes in it if they thought about it.”

“That is why we must ensure they do not have time to think about it,” said another young man sitting next to him. “We have plenty of money. We have the power to move the world. As a rite of passage for joining our secret community, we take half of their assets as collateral. …That is the trick to securing the funds we need. A single lie provides the money and connections we need to truly change the world.”

“The truth will eventually come out.”

“We simply have to change the world before that happens. We just have to make the lie into the truth.”

That was how they lived.

It was no different from how their predecessors had used information as a weapon to protect the peace of a superpower.

Even before the internet had become common, back when information was only passed through letters and phone calls, they had cut out newspaper articles, recorded radio programs, and otherwise analyzed everything so they could classify the complicated state of humanity around the globe. …Even the internet had begun as a single nation’s military network. Spreading that information network around the world had been their accomplishment and its influence plainly proved how much influence they had shown upon the vague concept of the “era” or “history”.

“The preparations are complete.”

That report was given by and to someone wearing a black suit, a black hat, and black sunglasses.

They had no individuality.

It was unnecessary and, more importantly, they themselves did not see any use in it.

“I see.”

The Company, Langley, the Pentagon.

They were called many different things, but they never used the three letter acronym that began with C.

They preferred to use the one beginning with M that had its origin in inaccurate urban legends.

Yes.

The MIB.

That was the name of the intelligence agency in the deepest depths of the world police which had been rumored to suppress the truth by threatening witnesses of UFOs and aliens.

“Is the enemy coming?”

“They were not torn limb from limb in the public square, so they must have made their way out somehow. In that case, they are on their way here. Being so cautious as to thoroughly investigate even innocent citizens is our way.”

There was a simple reason for purposefully using that inaccurate name.

They were not yet worthy of using the true name. Their goal was to gather together the world which was broken like stained glass and once more rule it as the world police. Only once they accomplished that would they return to their true form.

The C at the beginning of their name stood for “central”, but they currently had nothing to be at the center of. An egg would not function with only the yolk. For that reason, there would be no meaning in using their true name at the present.

They would wait until it was all over before they proudly used those three letters as they gave their name to the world.

“Then let us begin the final preparations.”

“You can begin at any time.”

They were trying to do the same thing that had been left behind more as legends than actual history.

Rather than standing on the stage themselves, they would use money, information, weapons, and political power to quietly contact and build relationships with people connected to other nations. At times they would invite them in, at times they would threaten them, at times they would kill them, and ultimately they would manipulate the fate of that country.

“I know. Leave the rest to me. If I can buy enough time to activate the other two and the approximately five hundred amplification facilities, we can announce our victory to the world.”

“We have been expecting this, but are you sure you can handle it?”

“It is true I am not an Object pilot Elite.”

A young man smiled thinly.

He wore all black just like the others, but his aura was sharper.

“But that is what gives this meaning,” he said. “So…”

His last word seemed disconnected at first.

But then he pulled out a handgun with a silencer attached.

“Leave the rest to me. Case #024, the attempt to use the rioters to kill the soldiers who had grasped the truth, is now over. Nevada 36, it is time to begin Case #025. That will be handled by me, D.C. 0.”

===Part 12===

Quenser, Heivia, and the rest of their small unit somehow managed to leave the confused streets that were overflowing with people.

Once they left the city, they entered the desert, but this was the cracked and sand-colored land of the wastelands seen in westerns. Some cacti and a run-down bar would have made it perfect, but those did not seem to be common sights in this desert.

Instead, they found train cars lying around with their insides removed. The electronics, doors, windows, chairs, and lights were all missing. This appeared to be a “graveyard”. Originally, the unusable cars had been carried to the end of the rails and dismantled, but even the guiding metal rails and railroad ties had been stolen at some point.

“I can see it now. In fact, it would be impossible to miss. Do they have any idea how to hide?”

The terminal facility which had several rusty pipelines connected to it appeared to have originally drawn oil up from the ground. The exterior was a bit more cluttered than the underground water pump facility. They were both ruins which had been left to rot and this facility clearly would not function any longer.

Quenser looked around with a binoculars-like device.

“I don’t see any obvious traps. There aren’t any mines, alarms, or cameras, but I doubt conspirators like this would simply be careless.”

“Setting up traps would just end up blowing off the leg of an unrelated civilian or kangaroo. They aren’t trying to protect this spot at all costs. Explosives aren’t a good idea when you want to keep anyone from knowing you’re there.”

Even so, there were landmines made from wood or glass that a metal detector would not catch. Quenser’s group remained cautious and used the chaotically abandoned train cars as cover as they slowly approached the terminal facility.

“There aren’t any scavenging hyenas around, are there? Heivia, even you might shoot if someone surprises you right now.”

“There’s nothing but fried chicken bones here. They were left here because there’s nothing left to eat.”

Just as there was no sign of traps, there was no sign of people.

The old oil facility was about five hundred meters away, but their confidence in that being the MIB’s headquarters began to waver.

“Is this really the logical way for them to handle this? Some kids playing hide-and-seek could wander into the terminal facility and they wouldn’t stop it.”

“Or maybe they no longer care if they’re found out,” ominously suggested Heivia.

Immediately afterwards, the remains of the oil facility were easily blown to pieces from the inside.

They first detected an intense shaking in the cracked ground. Next, they saw a massive cloud of dust spreading out. They could see it happening, but there was nothing they could do. The sea of dust spread out in every direction for kilometers and it swallowed up Quenser’s group.

The phenomenon itself was similar to a sandstorm.

A thick gray wall hid even the sunlight over a limited area. The brightness of the sky dimmed as if evening or dusk had fallen.

“Cough cough!! What the hell is this? Concrete!?”

“Grab a handkerchief, a bandage, or whatever you can find! Just cover your nose and mouth! That old building was from the time of the military nation, so it wasn’t built up to safety standards. It might have used asbestos. Protect yourself now if you don’t want to regret it later!!”

Quenser heard a low rumbling as if distant thunder clouds were approaching.

A giant shadow was visible through the gray world that cut off their vision.

It used static electricity for propulsion. It had two straight floats lined up parallel to each other. They were reminiscent of the treads on construction equipment.

Its silhouette was somehow different from a normal Object. It did not have the one hundred or so cannons extending from its spherical body like a sea urchin. It looked like a soccer ball with uniform protrusions attached or perhaps like the sea mines placed to destroy warships. The protrusions looked more like giant barnacles than cannons. It looked like the Object had volcano craters attached. It was unclear what they were meant to do and that uncertainty weighed on Quenser’s mind all the more.

His instincts turned toward the giant structure and all his senses grew more focused.

His thoughts grew clear.

The scorching heat, the dryness stabbing at his throat, and unpleasant dust clinging to his cheeks were all driven out of his mind.

His soul was shouting that he did not have even a second to worry about such trivial things.

“There it is,” muttered Heivia while forgetting to cover his mouth amid the dust cloud. “We were right! The MIB really did build one! They sacrificed the Oceanian military nation to build an Object completely independent of the world powers!!”

“Get down. Everyone, get down. …Has it noticed us? Why did it destroy its hiding spot and make an appearance?”

The gray curtain prevented them from judging the distance. The giant shadow looked both close and distant. At the very least, they could tell it was not performing the light footwork of a boxer or mixed martial artist like the princess’s Baby Magnum would. It appeared to be perfectly still.

“What is it doing? Surely they know revealing it like this is a huge disadvantage for them. So why isn’t it doing anything? They wouldn’t make an appearance like that for no reason.”

It was not that an obvious attack would have put them at ease.

Their hearts were filled with an uncanny feeling similar to viewing a newly discovered insect under a magnifying glass.

That was when an electric tone came from Quenser’s radio.

Froleytia was contacting them.

“Where are all of you!? It seems you vanished from the crashed helicopter.”

“Wow, a lecture now!? I don’t feel like explaining everything. What should we do, Quenser!?”

“Don’t press the button! Once everything is over, we can destroy the radio on the way back to the base.”

“If you don’t respond, I’ll write a report saying you died.”

“We’re alive!! We’re doing just fine!!” shouted the two idiots as loudly as they could.

Froleytia clicked her tongue.

“Where are you? What appears to be an unidentified Object has appeared three kilometers from the city. Does that have anything to do with you?”

“We happen to be right in front of it.”

“Move five hundred meters away. You’ll be killed if you’re caught in the bombardment.”

“What!?”

Suddenly, another voice cut in.

But they did not recognize this one. The transmission was not coming from the Legitimacy Kingdom military.

“Can you hear me, dogs of the Legitimacy Kingdom? I am monitoring the situation via satellite.”

“Who is this?”

“A lieutenant colonel who saw what your battalion can do during the Simple Is Best battle. My name is Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. You can ignore everything but the first name. A lot of people have the other names thanks to a ridiculous genius girl project. Over a hundred, I think.”

Quenser brought a hand to his forehead.

“I remember now. I saw you in that VIP Information Alliance armored vehicle in the desert night. You’re that officer who’s young enough to still be in her rebellious phase.”

“Are you the type of soldier that never forgets a lady’s face? I see. How horribly shallow.”

Quenser was actually a student, but explaining the details to someone from an enemy nation would only increase his danger.

That member of the Martini Series spoke with scorn filling her voice.

“The four world powers have managed to work together long enough to help with Oceania’s war recovery. Our coalition will not allow anyone else to possess an Object. I hate to release one of the Information Alliance’s cutting edge machines to protect your pathetic lives, but I am calm enough to keep my priorities straight. You can rest easy now, but do not forget to bow down before me in gratitude.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

“The coalition…?”

“Does that mean multiple Objects have been sent out to hunt down the MIB?”

Their response came from Froleytia Capistrano rather than Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

“The Legitimacy Kingdom has sent the Baby Magnum, the Information Alliance has sent the Catapult Cargo, the Capitalist Corporations has sent the Desert Scorpio, and the Faith Organization has sent the Mirror Bowler. They will surround this unknown Object and destroy it.”

“Refer to our second generation Object as the Cannon 256. Hearing your codename makes me want to vomit.”

“Quenser, Heivia, and everyone else there, listen up. The real problem comes after the unknown Object is destroyed. There is a possibility the four coalition Objects will begin fighting afterwards. Keep your guard up if you don’t want to be crushed by a stray shell.”

Those were frightening words.

With four against one, the outcome was readily apparent. That was how modern wars worked.

Which meant…

[[Image:HO_v07_369.png|thumb]]

“Hey, Quenser,” said Heivia. “We came here hoping to be heroes, but there’s nothing for us to do. Let’s use this confusion to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be here once the bombardment begins.”

“It’s too late for that,” replied Wraith instead of Quenser. Her lovely voice showed no mercy. “It has already begun.”

When the great roar arrived, they sensed it in their guts more than their ears. The gray dust obstructing their view was blown away like a popped balloon. Quenser initially thought it was the sound of a shell being fired, but he quickly realized he was wrong. It was the shockwave created by the car-sized shell travelling at five or ten times the speed of sound.

He could not simply brace himself and grit his teeth.

He had gotten down on the ground, but he began rolling across the wasteland as if he had been ripped from the ground.

He brought a hand to his ear and felt something wet.

He saw red blood on his hand.

“Cough!! What the…hell was…that? Was that a railgun or coilgun they fired from long distance!?”

“It’s the same either way!!”

“No, a coilgun uses electromagnets while a railgun uses Fleming’s…”

“I’m glad to see bleeding from the ears doesn’t slow down your design obsession!!”

The MIB’s Object was sitting in place. If an ultra high speed shell was sent in, it would not have time to evade. While Quenser and Heivia’s puny human bodies trembled from the damage caused by the shell merely passing by, they checked to see what damage the Information Alliance had accomplished.

A giant cloud of dust filled the air.

More attacks flew toward the Object as if stabbing a sword into an unmoving corpse. The types of attacks and the directions they came from were different. Laser beams left orange afterimages as they fried the air and low-stability plasma cannons burned bluish-white lines of light into their eyes.

It was a slaughter.

The Object was simply being disposed of.

“Wait, wait, wait! Goddammit! Cough cough! This is going too far!! You’re going to kill us too!!”

“No, wait.”

They then saw something unbelievable.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t ask me.”

The countless attacks blew away the dust as they focused on a single point.

That tore away the filthy veil.

And on the other side…

“The MIB’s Object hasn’t been touched! And it doesn’t look like it’s moved either. Did the Information Alliance miss!?”

“I’m not a psychic girl, so I don’t have the answer to everything!!”

The speed, mass, and force had all been sufficient. It was hard to think they had deflected all of the attacks with just the Object’s armor.

The Information Alliance had not given advance warning of their attack.

They continued firing the same massive shells toward the MIB Object.

As they roared through the air, they possessed so much destructive power that Quenser and the others thought they were going to be crushed as they watched on.

But this time, they clenched their teeth and saw what happened.

“It missed?”

“What? How did it land there!? It couldn’t have landed there unless its path twisted like a crank. I’ve heard of lasers bending due to mirages, but can that happen with metal shells too!?”

The dust cloud had not been created by the destruction of the target Object. It had come from the metal shells and laser beams veering away and striking the ground.

But was that a coincidence or not?

Escaping into optimistic thought was not going to help, so Quenser voiced the worst possibility.

“It has some kind of defense system. It has some kind of tech that lets it turn aside and neutralize approaching attacks!!”

The sound of someone clicking their tongue came over the radio.

Next, multiple beams of light were fired. The burning orange beams likely came from laser beam cannons while the bluish-white beams that resembled welding likely came from low-stability plasma cannons. These were not metal shells. Light and ions were completely different, so a defense system meant for metal shells would not work.

And yet…

“You’re kidding.”

“It doesn’t matter how powerful your attacks are if they can’t hit. I don’t know what it’s using, but any Object loses all of its cards if this almighty one can repeatedly turn aside any attack!!”

It did not matter.

It did not matter if it was a metal shell, a band of excited light, or a plasma weapon given directionality with tremendous magnetism.

Each Object present was a crystallization of its world power’s technology. Their concept had been honed to the extreme.

One of them primarily used metal shells but could use many different types of attacks using the container structure filled with powerful acid and the gas that created low-stability plasma.

One of them would intentionally fire laser beams at the ground around the target to turn the sand to glass and then use that glass to complexly reflect its main laser beam cannon.

One of them scattered several electron beams like firing a shotgun to constantly cause light damage while using high-quality sensors and boosters to continually avoid the enemy’s attacks.

The MIB’s Object dealt with all of them in the same way.

It had perfected turning aside attacks.

Rather than evading, it caused the approaching attacks to miss.

And it did not stop there.

“The Capitalist Corporations’ Desert Scorpio is damaged!” came a report over the radio. “For some reason, the Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler fired on it!!”

“Don’t get mad, Legitimacy Kingdom. We may be surrounding the unknown Object, but our positions make damage from stray shots impossible. That means there must be another explanation for this damage.”

“Are you saying the laser beams the unknown Object turns aside are being targeted at our Objects?”

This time, Quenser felt as if an invisible hand were squeezing at his heart.

“This is more than a means of defense. It isn’t just turning them aside! What kind of technology lets it accurately target someone else with an attack coming in at the speed of light!?”

“Tch.” Wraith clicked her tongue. “If long-distance bombardments are out, our Cannon 256 has lost its usefulness. Your outdated first generation can take the lead role. Move in close and fire on it at point blank range.”

“Tell that to our princess!!”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Keep firing shells at it!! Even if you can’t hit, try to keep them focused on defense!!”

Before he had even finished speaking, Quenser’s mind was shaken by a terrifying roar.

But this was not supporting fire from the Information Alliance’s Cannon 256.

The MIB’s Object had started to do something.

At first, Quenser, Heivia, and the others had difficulty concluding what it was trying to do.

A ring of bluish-white light with a radius of around 200 meters had appeared around the Object’s spherical main body. As time went on, more and more rings appeared. Eventually, they formed what looked like a semispherical dome that covered the entire main body except for the very top.

The bright light completely hid the giant Object.

“You have got to be kidding.”

Quenser finally realized what was happening.

As soon as he did, he felt like his heart was being wrapped tightly in wire.

“Are those laser beams or low-stability plasma cannons? No, it must be electron beams.”

“How can you tell!?”

“Anything else would have blinded us.” Quenser continued to watch on. “That bastard is bending his own attacks into a shield. Like a large particle accelerator, it’s constantly adding electron beams and accelerating them, so the speed and energy grows as time passes!”

“Ha…ha ha. The European particle accelerator out in the middle of nowhere is buried deep underground, right? Isn’t that to stop the electromagnetic waves and radiation that leaks out when the beam bends around the curves? Is it really safe to accelerate stuff in the middle of the air?”

[[Image:HO_v07_378.png|thumb]]

“Do you really think that monster is up to safety standards!? These people didn’t hesitate to use an acid bomb, so they aren’t going to care about the safety of enemy troops! And more importantly…!!”

As Quenser tried to shout, an electron beam shot by overhead after being accelerated to the limit. The principle was not all that different from the hammer throw. However, the speeds were too great for the human eye to follow, so Quenser and the others were suddenly presented with the result.

And that result was the distant roar of the Information Alliance Object being destroyed.

“What the…hell?”

Heivia looked over his shoulder even though there was no way he could see it.

His voice was trembling as much as it ever had.

Unlike a normal low-stability plasma cannon or laser beam cannon, this attack was not limited to an instant.

It continued.

It continued on and on.

It was less a projectile and more a giant sword extending beyond the horizon.

And that “sword” was swung to the side.

It swept by horizontally.

This destruction was on a scale of greater than ten kilometers, so the fear Quenser and the others saw with their eyes did not produce real fear in their brains.

As they watched in a daze, they heard the urgent “truth” over the radio.

“E-e-eeeeeeeee!? Wh-wha-what…?”

“Do not panic, analyst!! Provide an accurate report!!”

“Y-yes, major! The Information Alliance’s Catapult Cargo has been destroyed. The Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler has been destroyed. The Capitalist Corporations’…”

“Hey, wait! I can’t move! E-eject! Ksshhhhh!!”

“…Desert Scorpio has been destroyed. The Legitimacy Kingdom’s Baby Magnum…”

It was like a cruel stroke of a pen.

No matter what technology was used to skillfully evade, the never-ending electron beam sword swept across the world. Once it caught up, it sliced the Object apart.

“…can continue fighting! The Baby Magnum is our only Object still functioning!!”

“No way…”

The princess’s survival most likely had nothing to do with her own skill.

She had simply been chosen last.

The attack had only lasted for a few dozen seconds and it had died out before reaching her.

Once it was fired again, she would be vaporized along with her metal machine.

“What do we do? What do we do, Quenser!? It’ll have the next one charged in only a few dozen seconds! What’s going to happen then!?”

The Information Alliance’s “oh ho ho” could fire along a line using her continuous beam Gatling gun, but her range was short.

The closer one was to the cannon being fired, the easier it was to avoid the attack by moving around it. But when it was pulled off at the extreme long range of ten kilometers, the speed and distance needed to evade increased dramatically.

Imagine a fan shape.

The distance to the side of the fan was not far at the base, but the closer one got to the upper edge, the greater that distance grew.

However, a future designer like Quenser saw another threat on top of that.

“The real problem isn’t the destructive power.”

He gulped.

An unpleasant sweat covered his brow, but he did not have time to worry about it.

“Objects can avoid laser weapons that move at the speed of light by predicting when they will be fired by monitoring the minute movements of the cannons and the targeting lenses. But this main cannon directly bends electron beams in midair to accelerate them via centrifugal force. There’s no hint to when it will be fired. You can only start evading once the actual beam has been fired!!”

“No one can do that!!”

“That’s why they were destroyed! Currently, no Object can evade its main cannon. None of our attacks can hit and all of its will. The MIB have created a single system that does that!!”

Only silence came from the radio.

The Information Alliance officer had either decided to withdraw or had no time to worry about Quenser’s group.

It did not matter which it was.

Quenser wiped his cheek to get rid of a liquid that might have been sweat or tears.

“Heivia, let’s find a way out of this on our own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s find a way of defeating that goddamn Object before it fires again. If we don’t, the princess will be blown to pieces!!”

“Screw that!! You can go be pretend to be a hero on your own. That thing destroyed three cutting-edge Objects in an instant. It was outnumbered, but it didn’t matter! It might even be able to destroy all twenty Objects on the continent!! This isn’t something flesh-and-blood humans can handle!!”

“She’s our final hope. If the Baby Magnum gives up, who will retrieve us from the battlefield!?”

A disturbing noise came from Heivia’s throat.

If the Baby Magnum was destroyed, there would be no one left to save them. Of all the Objects belonging to the Legitimacy Kingdom or the coalition, no one else would risk losing those massively expensive machines. Even if the MIB would eventually exterminate them, they would decide to watch from afar, analyze the situation, and try to find a way of winning in the long run.

Meanwhile, the MIB’s Object would continue its arrogant rampage and the first victims would be Quenser’s group.

“If you want to live, we have to continue forward,” said Quenser calmly. “We need to at least find a way to let the princess accomplish something here. Otherwise, we’ll be the soldiers who never returned in some tragic news story.”

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2014-01-17T05:49:50Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 12 */

{{Incomplete|parts=12|tparts=17}}
==Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“The military scandal shows no sign of ending. The council has made the rare decision to treat the plan to use an Object for a military assassination as attempted murder. The brigadier general thought to be the primary individual behind the plan has been called back from Oceania for…”

The princess sat on a metal staircase of a building near the Object maintenance area. She may have been bored because she was staring blankly at a 1seg TV program on her handheld device. The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles and their tires measured over two meters in diameter. Stairs were needed simply to enter them.

In the dry desert, merely stepping into the shade felt much cooler. The princess had the front of her special suit open so the wind could reach her skin. As someone who spent long periods of time in an air-conditioned cockpit, her upper limit for heat appeared to be rather low.

A short distance away, the two idiots were using shovels to dig everywhere they could in the hot sand.

“Quenser, you idiot! You don’t remember where you buried them, do you!?”

“I marked it last night! I secretly stuck a stick into the ground.”

“When Myonri dug there, she found a ton of dead cicadas and almost passed out! Damn… What is going on? Where did we dig the hole we put the canned foods and packaged foods leftover from the victory party!? I thought we were going to be freed from those eraser-like rations for a while!!”

“Hurry, hurry! This maintenance base is mobile, remember? If the entire unit decides to move, we’ll lose all those cans! There was beef stew in there. If we lose that, it’ll traumatize me!!”

“What are those two doing?”

An old woman stuck her head out of the Object maintenance area and spoke to the princess.

The princess looked up from the screen and toward the old woman.

“It looks like a treasure hunt.”

“You aren’t going to join them?”

“I’m not in the mood for food. And I just finished building a cicada grave.”

“???”

The old maintenance woman did not quite understand, so she decided to ask them directly.

“Hey, slacking student.”

“Eeee!! One of the lecturers has locked onto us!”

“As long as she doesn’t tell that huge-breasted commander, we’re fine! Seduce her or something to bring her onto our side!! I’ll go dig over there!!”

“No fair! Don’t run off on your own!!”

“What are you doing out here?”

The old woman’s words seemed to nail Quenser to the ground.

She was asking what he was doing “out here” because he was not in the Object maintenance area.

He slowly and stiffly turned toward her.

“W-would two cans of lunchmeat be enough for us to come to an understanding? Or maybe peaches or pineapple!?”

“I’m not asking about that. Have you forgotten why you came out to the battlefield in the first place? I thought it was to spend as much time observing the Object as possible so you could learn as much as possible.”

“Are you seriously saying that?” Quenser sounded surprised as he continued digging around randomly. “They’re repainting the Object in there. They’re using tons of organic solvent in a closed space and I didn’t dodge bullets to end up high on paint thinner.”

“It is true painting an Object does not use any specialized technology. I admit that.”

“It’s the same as a normal warship. The Object’s onion armor is made from special metal plates that have high-heat resistant and reactive elements mixed in like a katana, but that also means the armor will rust when exposed to the elements. We can’t have the pride of our nation rusting, so they’re careful to use techniques of keeping it from rusting, right? They’re not mixing in ferrite to give it high-level stealth ability and they’re not using camouflage patterns based on psychology and research into human cognizance to hide it from the human brain. There’s nothing in it for a student like me.”

Those sorts of techniques had been used for the fighters and tanks of the previous age.

This had been due to the high risk of being shot down or destroyed. But that effort was unnecessary with the colossal Objects which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

Also, it would be exceedingly difficult to hide a 50+ meter armored weapon from radar or the naked eye.

“The technical issues are a factor, but the paint job has more to do with the desires of the higher ups in the military and government.”

“They don’t want their hero sneaking around?”

“When sending an obviously overpowered weapon into battle, they need a tricky argument to silence the pacifists. That’s why they like the symbolism of a hero that defeats an abominable enemy in a fair fight. The Objects have brought an end to the nuclear age by force, so they want to maintain the freshness of that impression for as long as possible. Letting it fade into history would be a waste.”

“I suppose they need a simple commercial to gain the massive military budget they need for them. That’s why they want the Objects to always be polished up bright like an exhibit at a motor show. They even have a lovely pilot Elite by its side to play the role of the companion girl. …But none of that is a job for the designer I want to be. Get a PR guy for that.”

Quenser shrugged.

“Let me touch the more…well…sensitive parts at the core. Like the JPlevelMHD reactor or the targeting sensor control system.”

“Don’t be silly. You aren’t touching those. Before you even think about it, you need to pass at least fifteen international exams.”

As the princess sat on the metal staircase and stared blankly up into the blue sky, she called out to Quenser.

“Qu-Quenser?”

“??? What is it?”

“Did something happen with that Information Alliance Elite? She said something I didn’t like about what she was going to do with you.”

“Um, that can apply to a lot of Elites. Which one are we talking about?”

“…There are a lot of them?”

The princess’s expression made it clear he had stirred up unnecessary trouble.

Quenser, however, did not understand what she had been trying to ask.

“Anyway, princess, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the karaoke!! During the battle with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, you had the nerve to say idols were worthless because anyone can sing!!”

“Uuh… I-I remember.”

“Good. These days, you can run a karaoke place anywhere using internet download services. There are even some here in Oceania. During our next day off, I demand to see if you have the skills to back up your bragging!!”

The old maintenance woman let out a quiet sigh.

This arrangement was actually almost exactly what the princess had expected to happen and wanted to happen, but she did not seem to know what to do now that things were going more smoothly than expected.

It was an example of a plan coming back to bite her.

The two youths compared their schedules to set up a date and Quenser suddenly spoke up once they had finished.

In that instant, he became a true idiotic designer.

“Oh, right. I need to ask you too, princess. The reactor may be too dangerous, but can I check out the targeting sensor control system or somewhere else that will help me study Object design?”

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

“Do you not trust me at all?”

“It’s not an issue of your skill,” said the old woman in exasperation. “There are different types of people who work with Object design. There are those who build up virtual models based on theory, there are academic types that materialize and realize those models, there are inventor types who have a single idea and go beyond their primary field to gather everything they need to realize it, and there are craftsmen who use their experience and unexplainable instincts in their fingertips to produce results greater than precision manufacturing equipment. The targeting sensor control system you’re talking about is a black box that complexly combines all of those together. Not even the princess or I will touch it without reason.”

“So you entrust your life to something no one touches?”

“That is not what she meant,” said the princess. “It is maintained in sessions including more than fifty people. You can think of it like exchanging our opinions to find the right flavor for a cocktail we do not know the recipe to. Bringing in someone who doesn’t know the flavor would distort our opinions and raise the likelihood of the final drink not matching the perfect flavor.”

“An Object has over one hundred cannons, both big and small,” continued the old woman. “Each of those has multiple sensors and the entire Object has its primary radars and sensors. Coordinating all of those is beyond human ability. Most of it is handled by computers, but there are some situations where that doesn’t cut it. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Laser weapons?”

“That’s right. Those move at the speed of light, so they can’t be avoided after seeing them fired. What matters is predicting the attack by observing the minute movements of the enemy’s cannons and sensor lenses. You can’t leave that to a computer both when attacking and when defending.”

In a battle between Objects, one could not simply continue to evade. One had to attack and hit.

If an enemy would predict the attack before it was fired, one had to predict where they would evade to and fire there instead.

“Ultimately, the whole system only works when you combine the precise sensors, the high-spec computers, and the fearful fingertips of a human. It seems the Information Alliance is researching completely automated targeting algorithms, but they have a long way to go towards making it practical. Then again, they’re more skilled than anyone when it comes to using information, so who knows how much we can trust what our intelligence division has gathered on them.”

“I won’t lose to something like that.”

This seemed to have worked up an odd sense of competition in the princess because she pouted her lips and took a sip from her drink’s straw.

Quenser then heard an electronic tone from the small radio in his uniform.

When he pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, Froleytia’s voice spoke to him.

“Study time is over for the moment, Quenser. Head over to the briefing room with the others. A pre-mission briefing is about to begin.”

“What do we have to do now?”

“That’s what I will explain to you. But it’s a simple mission. I’m not asking you to make a charge at a cutting-edge Object or anything.”

“I beg you to never ask me to do that!! I haven’t been doing it because I want to!!”

“Toward the end of the incident with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, a large underground structure was discovered when the ground collapsed. That was from your report, Quenser.”

“W-well, yes.”

“Today, you will be investigating the abandoned facility. This is simple post-battle cleanup. I suppose the police would call it a crime scene inspection. I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the war, but we have to control everything in the vicinity of the battle. I will be the one writing the annoying report to the higher ups, so you all can help me out a little.”

“So no other military is involved this time? There aren’t going to be any firefights?”

“That’s right. Unless you’ve heard reports of the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance living in holes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want us to carefully check over this place, but nothing – nothing at all – is going to happen? We just have to drive across the desert as if having a picnic, snap a few photos of these strange ruins, and that’s it? You promise?”

“And surprisingly, you actually get paid. With the people’s tax money, no less.”

“Woo hoo!! Oh, god! I can’t wait!! Please fill my team with a ton of female soldiers! This is perfect for Operation North Wind and the Sun. Partway through, our tension is sure to drop and then they’ll strip down to their thin inner clothing!! Hooray! Hooray!!”

“Yes, yes. I get it. You will be in your usual filthy guy team with Heivia. Have fun in your sweaty world of little clothing.”

“Hah hah hah. If you really do that, I’m starting a coup.”

“Hah hah hah!! Do you really think I’m the type to joke about this?”

The transmission ended with a click.

Since Froleytia said it, there was no doubt that he would end up surrounded by men. However, Quenser was not about to give up. He still had hope.

“On a boring investigation, the investigation team, guard team, and transport team will all move as one big group. Even if my team looks like a boys’ school, there’s still a chance of cute young girls in the other teams!! I haven’t lost yet!!”

“Sigh. Are you sure it will turn out that well?” asked the old woman.

“I am!! After all, the end of February is getting towards the end of the fiscal year!! The top levels of the military need to use up their extra budget or the defense budget will be lowered next year. Sending out tons of unnecessary soldiers for a boring mission could easily happen now!!”

“Why are you only this good at calculations at times like this?”

That was of course because this topic was the most compatible with the pink brain cells of adolescence.

At any rate, Quenser raised his hands in an expression of joy.

“Fwa ha ha ha ha ha!! I won’t let our commander win this time! The amount of girls in skimpy, wet, and see-through clothes would surprise a soft drink commercial! Paradise awaits me!!”

===Part 2===

[[Image:HO_v07_260.png|thumb]]
“…Ah!?”

Quenser suddenly opened his eyes.

His recent memories were fuzzy. He could not see anything properly. The blue sky of the desert spreaded out before his eyes. He seemed to be lying on his back, but he could not feel the burning of the hot sand.

He felt an unpleasant cold sweat as if he had anemia.

He detected a burning smell mixed with a rusty metallic smell.

…A rusty metallic smell?

“Gah!? Gfh! D-dammit. I just remembered. Our helicopter crashed. Then what was that dream I just had…? Don’t tell me my life was flashing before my eyes! Cough cough!!”

The surface of the desert was not flat. It had large undulations similar to a stormy sea and some areas had height differences of several meters. He was lying in a position to use one of those sand dunes as a shield.

But what was he being shielded from?

The answer was obviously the attacks being fired their way.

Seemingly never-ending sounds of bursting gunfire made him think of a fireworks show gone wrong. Quenser’s group was not on the attack. They were unilaterally being fired upon. The storm of steel was so great they would have been torn to pieces in just a few seconds if not for the dune.

Heivia had his back pressed against the dune while sticking just his rifle’s sensors up over it.

“Are you finally awake, you bastard!? I was beginning to think I wasted an adrenaline cartridge!!”

“Seriously? You mean one of those thick needles you stab directly into the heart!? I was in that bad a state!?”

“I thought this would be best. If you were hitting on an angel, I apologize.”

“Oh, right! I saw my life flash before my eyes! It seemed so real!! Um…huh? I couldn’t quite remember what happened. I remembered seeing the princess, Froleytia, and the old maintenance woman.”

“Right, right. I already knew how little fidelity you had, but it’s good to know you’re the same as ever!”

As his blood flow returned to normal, the data in Quenser’s head gradually fell into the proper order.

(Oh, that’s right.)

He had been sent on a mission by Froleytia.

They were to investigate the underground structure he had come across during the battle with the Simple Is Best and Hornet Storm. Even if it was not a very important building, she had needed detailed information on anything in the combat zone for a report to the higher ups.

Quenser and the others had been loaded into the large transport helicopters and were sent to the area of desert in question.

Nothing but cream-colored sand had continued in every direction, so it had been a frightening sight to look down on. He had wanted to avoid getting lost here. Even a South American jungle would have more opportunities for survival techniques.

The only landmarks were the remains of the rusty pipelines that travelled here and there like blood vessels of the planet. But if one was stranded, it would probably be impossible to tell a rescue team where one was using them. After all, they would continue in a straight line for 100 or even 1000 kilometers.

“It doesn’t matter how intently you stare down there, you aren’t going to find an oasis or a girl in a micro bikini,” Heivia said. “More importantly, can you believe we’re travelling over a battlefield in a helicopter? Sure, we aren’t directly dealing with an Object, but one of them may suddenly decide to go on a hunt.”

But if they had been crammed into military trucks to travel along the rough desert under the hot sun, they would have been struck by the double-punch of heat stroke and motion sickness before even arriving at the site.

After the formation of large helicopters had travelled for a while, they had spotted the remains of the terminal facility where several old pipelines gathered. That facility had been used to gather water from deep underground rather than oil.

But then they had soon spotted a few trucks with canopies parked near the old facility.

Quenser had frowned.

“Are those scavengers trying to gather anything of value?”

“There can’t be any proper machinery left. And look at the canopies. That’s the Blue Cross. They’re the world’s largest medical humanitarian organization. They head to Antarctic and the jungle to find samples of deadly bacteria, they give money to groups researching nanotech medicine, and all sorts of other things. They’re probably providing food.”

“Nanotech? Oh, you mean the techniques taken from military science where it can be used as a new method for regulating Elite’s bodies? They place drops of medicine in a membrane like a small bubble, get that bubble past the filters to the brain or kidneys, and provide the medicine directly to the target. They use ultrasonic waves to break the outer shell at the desired point, right?”

“You get excited about anything that has even the slightest connection to Objects, don’t you? Can you stop breathing so heavily? It’s creepy.”

“Anyway, what’s the Blue Cross doing at these abandoned ruins?”

At that point, Quenser’s memories suddenly lost coherency.

As he laid on his back with a hand on his sweaty brow, he let out a groan.

“That’s right. Those bastards weren’t the Blue Cross at all. Someone painted up their trucks to trick us. They removed the canopies and there were missiles inside.”

“Are you the type that needs coffee and toast to wake up in the morning? If not, get moving!! We’re gonna be surrounded!!”

The burnt smell was coming from the remains of their crashed helicopter.

The whirl of bullets was not coming from just one direction. They were partially surrounded by a C-shape.

It was unclear who the enemy was or how many of them there were.

Their group had to be at least two or three sizes larger than Quenser and Heivia’s group. More than twenty people were lying behind the sand dune like Quenser. They all had their arms or legs bound with bandages to stop their bleeding, some had the removed stock of a carbine used to set a broken bone, and a lot of them were unconscious. The area had become a makeshift field hospital.

Quenser looked up at the blue sky that seemed to continue forever.

“Where are the other helicopters? Where’s our way out!? We’ll just be worn down bit by bit like this. We can’t fight in the desert without a means of mobility!”

“All of the functioning helicopters have temporarily withdrawn! We can’t exactly overcome their surface-to-air missiles with the power of friendship. If they hover around here to pick us up, they’ll be shot down! No help is coming until we silence those!!”

“They may be transport helicopters, but they have machineguns attached to the door, right? Firing down with those will make a huge difference!!”

“In this clean age, no one wants to start a Western-style quick draw using heavy weaponry. We won’t get anywhere wishing for something that isn’t coming. Focus on reality!!”

Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see lay in every direction.

There was no escape without some kind of vehicle. Even if they began to flee on foot, they would be quickly overtaken and riddled with holes. Falling back would not improve their situation and most of those injured in the crash were in no state to walk on their own.

The enemy was advancing.

Once the enemy surpassed the sand dune, they would only sink into a puddle of blood.

“Screw this. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I thought this was supposed to be an easy mission.”

As Quenser complained, he rolled over onto his stomach. He then climbed up the dune and stopped next to Heivia.

“How many are there?”

“Somewhere between 50 and 60. Only a samurai or ninja can defeat that many in a straight fight. It will be a different story if we have support from the helicopters, but we need to silence those armored vehicles to do that.”

“Who are they anyway?”

“I don’t know. But knowing that they’re bastards who don’t deserve to live is good enough for me,” spat out Heivia. “But their equipment is relatively new. It looks like they gathered downgraded weapons that the Capitalist Corporations and the Information Alliance sell to gather foreign currency. Their ability may be intentionally lowered, but they’re expensive. I doubt a gang or slum residents who are strapped for cash can get their hands on that stuff.”

The repeated sounds of gunfire caused Quenser to grimace.

“Are you saying those are trained soldiers? They’re firing around almost at random. If they were aiming each shot, we would have already been filled with bullets.”

“Listen, skinny boy. Have you never heard of sounding out your enemy? When you don’t know where they are, you fire all over the place and wait for them to react. …It’s all over once they find out where exactly we are. They have tons of machineguns and missiles on their trucks. Specifically, they have more than ten trucks. This shield of sand is meaningless. They may be surface-to-air, but a few of those missiles will blow the terrain to smithereens.”

Quenser let out a long, slow breath.

And then he asked another question.

“Then what exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Well done getting your mind in gear.”

Heivia pulled back the rifle sensors he had been peering over the dune and used the sand to write out the information he had risked his life to collect.

“They have their machinegun and surface-to-air missile equipped trucks set up to protect the terminal facility that pumps water up from underground. They’re between five and six hundred meters away. Their rifles and machineguns can reach us from there, but fifty or sixty soldiers armed with carbines and light machineguns are slowly approaching. Once they cross a certain line, we’ll be slaughtered. We need to do something before they can manage that.”

“We can’t win if we fight? Are there too many of them?”

“As I said, we could annihilate their infantry with our helicopter machineguns, but those helicopters can’t approach right now. We need to silence those surface-to-air missile containers sitting up on their trucks.”

“But…”

Quenser glanced over at Heivia.

He carried a shoulder-fired missile launcher over his back. That could be used to blow up the armored trucks, but there was one major problem.

“That’s right. I only have one shot and there are over ten of them. This isn’t going to work.”

“…”

Quenser remained silent for a moment.

He stared at the rough map his friend had drawn on the sand.

“Heivia, my memories aren’t perfect due to the shock, so I need to ask you something.”

“I’m not your fiancé from before your memory loss if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“It’s about when they attacked our helicopter with their missiles. I knew I could’t expect a large transport helicopter to evade, but we weren’t shot down without putting up any kind of fight, right?”

“What? Well, I remembered a siren blaring as it scattered chaff and flares to trick their radar. I thought we might have activated an infrared jammer as well, but you could see how well all that worked. We were shot down and the other helicopters were forced to withdraw.”

“In other words, we had countermeasures, but they were completely ineffective,” said Quenser while emphasizing each word. “They had some large radar equipment supporting their targeting. That’s how they saw through our deceptions and shot us down. But what if all of their anti-air weaponry were reliant on it? We could take out their ‘net in the sky’ by destroying just the one piece of equipment. Guns and missiles are essentially the same. Without a means of aiming them, they won’t cause any damage.”

“It does make sense,” groaned Heivia. “All of the trucks have oddly large antennae attached. It’s definitely possible they’re using accurate data from a command vehicle that specializes in gathering intelligence. But…”

“But?”

“Where is it?” Heivia stabbed his rifle’s stock into the center of his map on the sand. “You heard me, right? There are more than ten of their armored trucks and we only have one missile. If we don’t hit the command vehicle on the first shot, it’s all over. Once we lose our trump card, we have nothing left!! Is there any way to tell which one it is!?”

“That’s a good question.”

Quenser folded his arms lightly and traced his index finger over his mouth.

He looked like he was contemplating the dinner menu.

“Heivia, how many assault rifle and handgun bullets do you have left?”

“What?”

“If it isn’t enough, gather some more from those too injured to move. They won’t do them any good anyway.”

“Wait, wait! They may have been disguised as the Blue Cross, but their trucks probably still have handmade plate inside. You can’t fight armored trucks with normal bullets!!”

“I’m not trying to destroy the trucks. I have no interest in the bullets themselves.”

“???”

Quenser ignored Heivia’s confused look and gathered a few assault rifles and carbines.

He disassembled them without any tools and removed the barrel which resembled a long, narrow pipe.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Make some giant fireworks.”

Quenser bent and crushed one end of the long, narrow tubes, removed the rifle bullets from the magazines, and scattered them across the sand.

“A long time ago, they would actually use this kind of simple rocket weapon in Asia. They were meant to set fire to castles or ships. …You said the distance is five or six hundred meters? Cramming in this much intelligent military powder should reach even with the plastic explosive and fuse attached to the front.”

“Are you saying we can oppose all those armored trucks if we go to this extra trouble?” Heivia looked displeased. “Have you forgotten what matters most with weapons, Quenser? Targeting. Reaching them and hitting them are two very different things! A simple fireworks rocket made by stuffing powder into a tube and attaching it to a stick for stability isn’t going to hit!!”

“It doesn’t have to hit.” Quenser readily overturned Heivia’s assumption. “They think they’re perfectly safe over there, so if bombs start bursting too far away to have been thrown, they’ll definitely panic. They’ll try to evacuate the most important thing first. I don’t know how stupid they are, but they are smart enough to know they can’t afford to have their radar vehicle destroyed. While they’re busy secretly moving their most important card away, you just have to blow it up with your missile.”

Heivia was dumbfounded, but Quenser continued his cunning explanation.

“You mentioned sounding out your enemy, remember? Let’s show them how it’s really done.”

===Part 3===

As planned, the makeshift rockets were fired into the Oceanian sky.

Heivia fired his shoulder-fired missile into the command truck with the large-scale radar antenna attached and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s unilateral counterattack began.

Once the threat of anti-air weapons was removed, the large transport helicopters were able to return.

They had large caliber machineguns bolted directly to the floor near the door.

As the sound of those firing exploded overhead, Quenser covered his mouth with one hand.

“Why do people like to root for the underdog? Where has my hatred for them go?”

“I think you’re actually looking down on them with a sense of superiority. But don’t worry. You’re enjoying your life well enough.”

Quenser and Heivia laid face down on the slope of the sand dune while the sounds of destruction continued.

Even if the handmade armored trucks had been relatively well modified, they were not perfect. So when they were filled with holes, their gasoline tanks and weaponry ignited, and they violently exploded. The intense destruction of the machine guns rained down evenly on the group of infantry who had tried to corner Quenser and the others. There were no screams. Instead, a dark red sauce was splattered across the giant frying pan of the desert.

Quenser entered a philosophic mood.

“What is peace?”

Heivia picked his nose with his little finger.

“It’s when we’re still alive.”

After about ten minutes, the sounds of gunfire completely stopped.

A few of the transport helicopters remained at the ready in the air while a few others slowly descended to collect the injured.

One soldier who stepped out of a helicopter shouted over the noise of the rotors.

“Thanks for your work!! We have permission to bring back all of your injured. Leave them with us and they can recover in a bed that reeks of disinfectant!!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it! But take a look behind you before you say that. The helicopters aren’t at all ready to leave. We can’t leave until the investigation is done!!”

Quenser and Heivia watched as the investigation team and their guards started for the pump facility that connected to the giant underground structure.

The ceiling of the underground structure had collapsed during the previous battle, so it was open to the surface. However, no one would rappel down a ten meter cliff when a perfectly safe staircase was available.

Quenser used his uniform’s sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow and looked up at the roasting sun that felt like the end of the world.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to sit around here. We will dry up before they finish.”

“There’s a pipeline over there. It’s rusted and falling apart, but we can rest behind it. The humidity should be lower and it’ll block the sun.”

The pipeline was a tube with a diameter of over two meters, so it produced enough of a shadow to sit in. The two boys walked over and found most of the other soldiers already leaning up against the rusted metal pipe like a line of ants.

“This is awful.”

“Are you sure it’s cooler here? I feel like gathering together would concentrate the heat.”

Quenser pulled out the water bottle attached to his uniform and took a gulp. It had been warmed by the sun and his body temperature, so he spat it back out.

“Yuck! It feels like I’m drinking my own sweat!!”

“Use your head, student. You need to cool the water bottle with the icing spray used for machine guns. Medic!!”

Heivia’s joking shout let Quenser know the danger had truly passed.

“So what was that? This pump facility is in ruins and all the usable equipment was removed. Missiles cost 10,000 euros each. Why would they defend this place with their lives?”

“Look over here, Quenser.”

Heivia peered inside a broken portion of the pipeline. The pipe was over two meters wide, so it looked more like a metal tunnel.

In fact, it was one.

“There’s sand gathered at the bottom and there’s a thick line down the middle. It looks like a tire track. From the width, I’d say a motorcycle.”

“A tire track?”

With a confused look, Quenser peered inside the broken pipe.

And then it hit him.

“This abandoned pipeline network stretches across the entire desert. No water or oil is being sent through it, so it’s a safe empty space. You don’t mean…”

“When the military government ruled Oceania, secret funds, weapons, and drugs traveled across the country like ghosts were transporting them. They slipped right past the military checkpoints and satellite surveillance. It was said they did it by bribing or threatening the local soldiers, but this might be it.”

“A secret tunnel? So as easily as heading underground through a manhole, they can freely move across Oceania without being checked?”

It was not the pump facility or the giant underground structure that mattered.

Someone was trying to hide the large-scale smuggling network that used the pipelines.

“People armed with the latest military equipment were fighting to protect a smuggling network? That smells fishy to me. Is it an intelligence agency raising funds by selling drugs or something?”

“But who exactly were they?” Heivia looked annoyed as he glanced over at the corpses which had been almost completely destroyed. “Their equipment looks like a collection of Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance stuff. And it’s the downgraded versions sold for foreign currency rather than the official military equipment. They announce they’re lowering the quality, but still keep the price high. I doubt a local gang or mafia would want to use them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Were they soldiers or were they people hired to help out? Well, either way they would mix in a few pros to take command.”

Suddenly, an infantryman guarding the exterior of the pump facility spoke to Quenser and Heivia.

“If you’re discussing conspiracy theories, you might want to check this out.”

“What?”

Heivia sounded puzzled as the man tossed him a small rectangular handheld device.

However, this was not the type issued to Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. It also had dark red stains in places.

The soldier shrugged.

“I was scavenging. Those thugs out front were splattered everywhere, so I gathered whatever I thought I could sell.”

“Seriously? You really set foot in that poisonous swamp?”

“And in exchange, I have found some interesting data. It looks less like official data and more like someone at the bottom gathered some data to figure out what he was involved in.”

“…”

Quenser turned on the device and it was not even locked with a password.

Some of the data files were filled with numbers about ten digits long. He could not read hexadecimal off the top of his head, so he could not tell anything from just that.

“Wait a second,” said Heivia as he peered in from the side. “The first four digits are all the same. I thought these looked familiar. They’re bank account numbers, aren’t they? I think these belong to a major Information Alliance one.”

“Why does a Legitimacy Kingdom noble know that?”

“Don’t be stupid. In this age of wars, you never know what levies will be imposed. Do you really think a greedy noble is going to keep all his money in a single account? We have tons of ways of spreading out our assets. My family has a group of specialist accountants working for us.”

Quenser tilted his head as he scrolled through the iron-smelling device.

There appeared to be over one hundred bank account numbers.

“So what is this list of bank accounts?”

“Probably a deposit list. In other words, these connect to the names of the people cooperating with the people running things from the shadows. Look, the numbers at the end of the account numbers are the same too. That probably refers to a branch in a tropical island tax haven. They’re probably using secret accounts to launder their money.”

“The people running things from the shadows? We still don’t know if this is really a conspiracy.”

“If we dig up the names and identities of this week’s MVPs here, we may find a connection. They have disguised their trucks as the Blue Cross and have loaded them with machine guns and missiles to hide the secret passageway through the pipeline. They’re definitely up to no good.”

The mischievous infantryman shrugged in utter exhaustion.

“These are secret accounts in the Information Alliance. They aren’t going to give us the information if we ask.”

“Quenser.”

“Do I look that smart to you? Do you think you can just throw any problem my way?”

Quenser looked irritated, but he begrudgingly agreed after the soldiers around him tossed some icing spray his way.

He sprayed it across his water bottle and spoke.

“Knowing the account numbers is a start. How about we leak the entire list onto the internet while making it look like they are hacked? With secret tax haven accounts, trust matters most. If information has been taken straight from the servers, the clients and managers will both panic.”

“Yes, but will that accomplish anything other than causing a commotion?”

“We can quickly open a fake website claiming to check whether your account number was stolen. If we add in some spyware to snatch the IP of anyone entering their number, we shall be able to determine who entered what number. And the shadier the person, the sooner they’ll respond.”

In that instant, everyone resting in the shade of the pipeline stared silently at Quenser.

He squirmed under the pressure of the strange silence.

“Um, what is this? Is this any way to react after I give you what you want?”

“This settles it. Nothing good would come of letting him leave the military.”

They contacted the maintenance base zone’s intelligence division via radio, but they said it would take several days to create a proper fake website.

Heivia stuck out his tongue.

“Damn those desk workers. Do clocks move at a different speed over there? Are they using a vacation clock or something?”

“Either way, I’m jealous.”

“They aren’t on board with this. It’s a pain, but you heard them. Everyone, give any idea we can use to steal the credit from the intelligence department since they refuse to play along.”

Long story short, they ended up with the following ideas: “Different computer viruses are compressed and saved on a certain foreign server”, “I know a collection of templates for scam sites”, and “As long as you have the basic template for the site, you can use a cloud service to edit the details and create a false site in only a few minutes.”

“Why do all of you know about this kind of thing?”

“As a future engineer, I think you should gladly welcome useful nerds. Otherwise, your organization will end up as a dinosaur fossil.”

As they had announced, the bored helpers completed the false website in only a few minutes. Rather than building it from the ground up, they chose a template from a database containing thousands of templates for scam sites and added the necessary decorations. They did the same for the spyware.

“Where should we spread the address? Just on any major message board?”

“For the Legitimacy Kingdom, there’s Blue Blood which only nobles with bloodlines continuing back for 300 years can enter. For the Information Alliance, there’s Rank Literacy which can only be used by people who run sites with over half a million hits a day. There are sites for elitist people from the other two world powers as well.”

“Those are all closed SNSs. We can probably manage with Blue Blood, but you aren’t using my ID.”

“I don’t need to. Everyone uses different identities online. A refined noble will let off some steam by shouting insults on anonymous message boards like it’s a masquerade party. If we spread the information there, the tainted information will make its way into the closed SNSs. They’ll ruin their own attempts to seal it off.”

“It sounds like the insecticide used for roaches. It’s made to look like delicious food so they’ll take it back to their nest where it kills all of them.”

A male soldier was curled up while fiddling with a handheld device, but then he made an OK sign with his hand.

The others peered curiously at the small screen.

“This virus site is a lot like creating a robot from an empty box and tape, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s already gotten a few pieces of personal information.”

First, they had leaked the list online and let the emergency information spread. Once the clients grew uneasy, they were lured to the false site where they entered their account number. It was unclear when exactly the different waves of attack began.

“We have a few names and identities to go with numbers on our list. About ten so far. Let’s try to find a link between them.”

“Wait.” Heivia pointed at one of the names. “This is an international satellite TV executive. He claims to bring laughter and the truth to the blank regions and dictatorships where information is being controlled. Oceania’s mass media has begun to recover, but it’s still unstable. Satellite TV still has a lot of credibility and influence here.”

He pointed at another name.

“This is a blog king. He’s known as Oceania’s leading source of sarcasm.”

He pointed at another.

“This is an entertainer famous for volunteer work.”

And another.

“An executive for an international canned drink maker. They have ads during all sorts of shows.”

As each name was described, Quenser saw a common theme.

“Are they using the media to influence people’s impressions?”

“Their impressions of what?”

“No matter how much they’re being paid, I doubt they will say something that strays too far from their ideologies and beliefs. The money is nothing but the trigger giving them the final push. In that case, what do these people believe in?”

Heivia grimaced when he heard that.

He had been the one describing the names, so he had a general understanding of the people.

“This might be a major headache for us.”

“Why?”

“They want true independence for Oceania by having the ‘thugs’ leave. They’re a bunch of people who refuse to do any real work while pretending to be pacifists. They think they’re the most important no matter what.”

“Even the corporate executives?”

“Sitting arrogantly in a leather chair isn’t normally referred to as ‘work’.”

A mysterious group in Oceania was spreading intentionally biased information to create a tendency toward hating the coalition military.

The current problem was the pipeline they were using to secretly transport something across the desert. They had even started a firefight with the Legitimacy Kingdom in order to hide it.

This was more than a newspaper editorial.

This mysterious group was prepared to use legitimate violence.

“This pipeline is being used as a secret transportation network and massive amounts of money are being given to influential people to manipulate the opinions of the Oceanian people. What are they trying to do here?”

“Hey,” spoke up the soldiers who had helped them earlier. “I checked a few more of their handheld devices and there’s a net storage site they access frequently. They might have kept their larger data there.”

“Does it have a password?”

“Just like online banks, it uses a one-time password. …But this is outsourced and the company in charge of security has slipped past the firewall a few times. We may be able to use the maintenance master key.”

“Will they really use the same key for several weeks or months?”

“No, but if we find a pattern to the changes in the periodically updated alphanumeric key, it may be possible to determine what the current key is. It will take some time, though.”

“Try working on it,” said Quenser as his radio emitted an electronic tone.

Froleytia was calling them.

“I have a question for all of you. You aren’t performing unauthorized electronic warfare against an Information Alliance tax haven bank, are you? The intelligence department has detected a fascinating flow of data.”

(Shit!!)

Everyone there straightened their spines.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were at war, but wars had rules known as treaties. And as Heivia had said, secret tax haven accounts were unofficially used by nobles and royals so they could secretly divide their assets up between false names and dummy corporations. Even if this was an enemy nation, some higher ups might not want them messing with it. Someone might be placing pressure on Froleytia.

But when no amount of apology would fix the situation, Quenser did not want to continue speaking for long.

He responded casually while looking around for help.

Heivia pointed toward the pump facility with his thumb.

“(That thick concrete might cut off the signal!!)”

“Okay, okay. Eh? What!? No, no. That isn’t what we’re doing!!”

While Quenser stalled for time, he and Heivia ran toward the remains of the pump facility.

They circled around the lake of dark red sauce and continued toward the building which contained stairs leading underground.

The armored trucks disguised as the Blue Cross were still burning and smoking. They would no longer function, but the two idiots circled well away from them because the bombs or missiles could suddenly burst.

The inside of the building was a large space.

It had originally been a facility to draw up unused water from underground and send it to grain-producing land, but all of the equipment had been removed when it was abandoned. It was now a movie theater-sized space made of reinforced concrete. It was essentially empty. Broken metal stairways and passageways could be found here and there and they appeared to be built around large machinery that was no longer present.

But that did not matter.

“(Heivia! The signal’s still going strong!! Froleytia’s completely pissed!! We can’t escape like this!!)”

“(Let’s head down the spiral staircase and underground!!)”

The two idiots descended the spiral staircase and ran out into a narrow tunnel. Static finally began to fill the radio signal.

This was the moment they had been waiting for.

“Ksshhh. Wait, what is… Explain yourse-…kssssshhhhh!!”

“Eh? What? I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you at all!! Over!!”

With that, he ended the transmission and switched off the radio altogether.

Heivia leaned up against the concrete wall.

“If we hang around here, the investigation team will see us and force odd jobs on us. Let’s go pretend to be working.”

They were doing nothing more than extending their suffering, but they took an extremely positive stance and viewed it as a chance to arrange the excuses they needed to weasel out of it.

They passed through a straight corridor and arrived at the underground structure.

However…

“Wow. There really isn’t a ceiling. It feels like the world’s biggest convertible.”

The ground above had completely collapsed during the previous battle, so the blue sky was perfectly visible even in the “underground” structure. They were over ten meters down, so they were not about to climb up or down rather than using the stairs.

A lot of sand had poured in, so it looked a lot more cluttered than the pump facility.

The piles of wooden boxes might have added to that impression.

“It looks like they’ve finished investigating here. Otherwise, we will never have been allowed in.”

“What are these boxes? Surely they aren’t empty.”

After receiving permission from a man on the investigation team who was taking photographs, Quenser and Heivia removed the nails from one wooden box and opened it.

“There’s some kind of powder packed in plastic.”

“But it doesn’t look like something with a high street price.”

The bags had some kind of label, so Quenser used his handheld device to snap a photo.

They opened a few more boxes and found reels of fiber optic cable as well as nuts and bolts packaged by size.

“Did someone’s father make a secret base for his home improvement projects?”

“Wait. I think I know what that powder was,” muttered Quenser.

Suddenly, the two idiots heard the noise of something falling over.

And when they turned toward the noise…

===Part 4===

In the name of war recovery, many different types of construction had begun at a fevered pitch across Oceania: houses, shops, roads, water and sewage, etc. The coalition of the four world powers claimed that bringing order to the country was their top priority, but they could not utterly eliminate anyone who was even slightly suspicious. Specialists who did not look right in a suit or work uniform and guards who carried guns could not be distinguished from actual bad guys.

If those suspicious-looking people were allowed into the same space as rich foreign tourists, it could lead to a situation similar to a hamster that mistook another hamster’s sex.

To keep some separation, a hidden side to the city was created for those suspicious-looking people. Drawn by the flow of money, violent restaurants, marriage scam artists who were always crying in a bar, and people from various other occupations would gather there. These were the people who had gone too far in their original country. Like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, the strength of these dark cities slowly but steadily grew.

A certain bar in one such place was quite cheap but it was best not to think about what corners were cut to make it that cheap. In a dimly lit corner of that bar, a small group sat around a table which was cut off from the rest of the bar by curtains.

“They have failed.”

The young man wore a black suit and hat that looked out of place in the summertime desert. His sunglasses looked more like they were hiding his face than protecting his eyes from the sun.

“Terminal 52 has been taken by the Legitimacy Kingdom. The men we hired have been wiped out.”

“We have already known that they would lose from the beginning.”

He was not the only one in such a conspicuous outfit.

A woman sitting at the same table wore all black, down to her necktie.

“Even if they can temporarily drive them back, they are a world power and thus they have an Object. If the problem grows too large, they will have sent it in. Those men have been doomed to lose.”

But it was not just the two of them. Everyone at the table was wearing all black.

“Their loss has been planned for. We all understand that. In that case, can you tell us one thing? Have they died before or after achieving their goal?”

“If not, I would be a little more concerned.”

“Whatever gets in the way, no one can reach us as long as all evidence is destroyed in the end.”

Everyone turned toward the young man who had spoken first.

No, they were technically looking behind him.

A blonde woman stood there wearing the exact same suit and sunglasses. She also held the same type of handgun the rest of them possessed.

“Are you saying the objective was achieved?”

The young man slowly raised his hands in response.

The tip of the silencer was already pressed against the back of his head.

He smiled thinly and responded quietly.

“Yes. And let me add this: it was nice knowing-…”

A muffled gunshot interrupted his words.

He collapsed face-first onto the round table. The others slowly stood up and took the necessary measures. They gathered the empty shell casing from the ground, used a rag wet with alcohol to wipe down anything that might have their fingerprints or saliva on it, and cleaned up the floor with a roller of sticky tape to pick up any fallen hair.

They made sure it was the same as if nothing had happened.

“Case #022 complete. Supervisor Alaska 49’s death has cut off the trail. Case #023 will now begin. The supervisor will be me, Texas 28.”

The blonde woman spoke quietly while pulling a brand new tablet computer from her bag. The others all focused on her.

They did so exactly as they had focused on the young man who had just been killed.

It was as if it were a ritual that had begun long before that young man.

“Fortunately, Case #022’s objective has been fulfilled. A link with the scene has also been secured. As planned, we shall continue to the next situation.”

“In other words?”

“We shall bury it in an explosion.”

They remained in the shadows.

Even when they won and when they were superior, they would kill their allies to suppress all information.

In that case, they were not going to hesitate to kill their enemies.

===Part 5===

“Not good,” muttered Quenser.

He had seen what some kind of impact had knocked over within the underground structure.

“Not good!! Heivia, everyone else! Get out of here now!!”

“What’s the matter, Quenser?”

A 1.5 meter cylindrical container similar to a propane tank laid before them. However, it was made of transparent reinforced glass and it was filled with some kind of liquid. The center of the cylinder had a donut-like hollow area which was filled with an explosive.

“That’s an acid bomb. Militaries use it to destroy evidence!! When the explosive detonates, it destroys the container and the blast sends a thorough shower of powerful acid in every direction. In just a few seconds, it reacts with the air and a vaporized acid cloud expands out. It’ll swallow up five hundred to eight hundred meters in no time! If you get caught in that, you’ll end up in a photograph at an exhibit on the horrors of war!!”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me!? Then were those guys here to set this thing up!? There might be something hidden here!!”

“With something that large and heavy, they couldn’t transport it by motorcycle, so they couldn’t use their secret pipeline. They were forced to use a truck and that’s when we ran across them.”

“But it’s just a bomb, right? Can’t you defuse it!? Bombs are your specialty!”

“There’s no time. There’s only ten minutes left! It’s waiting for a passcode in case it is accidentally activated, but there isn’t enough time to analyze it!! If you want to live, start running! We need to get back to the helicopters!!”

Quenser and Heivia did not hesitate to flee the underground structure and they made sure to bring the investigation team and their guards with them.

As they ran through the long, narrow corridor, Quenser turned his radio back on, hit the switch, and explained the situation to the helicopters so they could leave immediately.

But that might have been a mistake.

“Ahhhhhh!! Shit!!”

As soon as they ran up the spiral staircase and out of the pump facility, Heivia swore.

They could see multiple helicopters taking off.

“Wait, dammit! Wait!! If we hadn’t told you, you would’ve been surrounded by the acid cloud! We saved your lives!!”

“Sorry, but rescuing the injured takes precedence! Can you steal one of the enemy’s trucks and escape on your own!?”

“Do you really think any of them are still running!? You were the ones that blew them up!!”

“Heivia, they aren’t coming back! More importantly, everyone who’s left needs to gather here. Anyone who makes a mistake here will be melted by acid!!”

Quenser heard a deafening sound resembling an amplified version of a shaken can of beer being opened.

A strange white cloud began to spread out not far away. It grew to the size of an Object in no time.

“That’s the acid cloud,” said Heivia as his face paled.

The giant cloud burst up from the underground structure like cotton candy. It exited the hole from the collapse and spreaded out across the desert. At the same time, it was likely entering the pump facility through the stairway leading up. That death had no gaps. Everyone would be wiped out.

“That thing spreads faster than a forest fire. Sixty kph was it!? It’ll overtake us if we try to escape on foot!!”

“We can escape.”

“How?”

“Through the pipeline! The thick metal should hold it off temporarily! If we can escape beyond its effective range of several hundred meters before it dissolves the metal pipe, we can survive. It’s a chance at least!!”

Quenser began running as he shouted his instructions to Heivia and the others using his radio.

“Wait, Quenser! That pipeline is falling apart. What if the pipe is completely broken partway down? The acid cloud will enter there and trap us!!”

“Would you rather stay here? Bye bye, Heivia. You can stick with 0%, but I’m going to bet on 1%. Even your dog tags will probably be dissolved, so we won’t gather your remains!!”

“I get it! I get it, goddammit!!”

The pipe was rusty and falling apart. Cracks and large holes existed in many places.

Quenser and the others ran inside that empty and sandy tube as quickly as they could.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!!”

The acid cloud will hit in less than thirty seconds! Seal up the holes as best you can!! Use body bags or whatever to cover them and keep the acid cloud out!”

[[Image:HO_v07_300.png|thumb]]

They knew it was not going to be perfect.

After some quick work, they ran down the two meter tunnel with all their strength.

They were soon surrounded by a sound resembling stir-frying.

“The acid cloud has caught up!!”

“It won’t break through the pipe right away! Keep running!!”

The pipeline had been created to carry over ten tons of liquid every second, so it had been built quite thick to withstand the internal pressure. But the sound of the metal being eaten away still squeezed at their hearts so much they forgot how thick it was.

“It’s only going to last two or three minutes.”

“We just have to make it a few hundred meters. That isn’t a marathon. We can escape to safety if we run as quickly as we can!!”

“Damn them, whoever they are! What are they hiding so badly that they’re willing to ruin the environment like this!?”

“We can think about it after we survive!!”

Strange sparks seemed to explode in their heads and it became impossible to think about anything unnecessary.

They just ran and ran and ran and ran.

As they ran, the outside world had long since vanished from their minds. They began to feel like their goal had been filled with the acid and that the acid cloud had covered the entire world.

“Hot!?”

“There are cracks here and there. Keep running while covering your head with some kind of cloth! Stopping will only eat away at our skin!!”

Fortunately, the cracks were small and not much of the acid cloud seemed to be getting in.

But Quenser and the others did not have time to objectively evaluate the situation.

They could not tell if the dampness inside their uniforms was their sweat or their melted skin.

Even so, they continued running.

It was not exactly out of stubbornness. They were simply losing themselves in the simple action of running so they could avert their gaze from the certain death closing in on them.

“Quenser,” Heivia finally called out.

Quenser could not imagine why he was calling out to him.

“Quenser! It’s over. The sizzling sound is gone. We’ve left the range of the acid cloud.”

“Ah? Eh?”

“We have survived! We don’t need to run any further. Or do you want to destroy your own heart?!”

It took him a while to truly realize he had survived.

He eventually collapsed to a sitting position and could tell his lips were twitching.

After a few seconds, he finally realized he was smiling.

===Part 6===

Somewhere in Oceania, the muffled sound of a gun with a silencer could be heard.

Another young man looked down at a blonde woman with a bullet hole in her forehead.

“Case #023 complete. The objective has not been achieved and has been deemed a failure. To recover, Case #024 will now begin.”

===Part 7===

Quenser worked hard to calm down Heivia who was seriously planning to punch the pilot of the slowly descending helicopter. Surprisingly, the intellectual-looking investigation team seemed to agree with Heivia. They were only human and anyone would be angry when their supposed comrades unreasonably abandoned them in an acid cloud.

“Calm down. If we all flip them off, they may fly away without us. We need to give them a smile with the kindness of a younger sister and the dependability of an older sister.”

“Got it, Quenser. You’re saying we act like a carnivorous plant, right? Once they open the helicopter door, their life is over.”

The helicopter team must have felt bad because, when they opened the door, they handed out bottles of carbonated drinks they had found somewhere. The bottles were ice cold thanks to the icing spray for machine guns. There were some enticements one’s senses could not resist. After running around in the 50 degree desert, this was more than enough to quiet them down.

The middle-aged male pilot explained the situation.

“The acid cloud is spreading out higher in the sky like a cumulonimbus cloud. We have checked the weather map for the wind and there is a danger of running into it on our way back to the maintenance base. We want more accurate information if possible.”

“If that’s the only reason you pick us up, I really will shove you out.”

Growing stubborn was not going to accomplish anything.

The helicopter team’s decision had not been wrong given all the injured they had and Quenser’s group had indeed managed to hold on to their lives.

In that case, they needed to use their brains for something more important.

“So what do you think they were trying to destroy?” asked Quenser as the movements of the helicopter shook him. “Do you think it was those wooden boxes in the underground structure? Y’know, those fiber optic cables, the bolts, the nuts, and that strange powder.”

Quenser stared at the photographs he had taken on his handheld device, but then he heard someone give a sudden cry of surprise.

It came from one of the intellectual infantryman who had helped them create the fake site for the bank account numbers.

“What is it?”

“I was searching for the master key to the net storage we discovered using those thugs’ devices, remember? Well, I think I found something bad.”

Everyone gathered around the slender infantryman.

All of the stern men stared at the small screen.

It had recorded phone calls, graphs showing the exchange of money, and documents on the group’s projects and external cooperators. The infantryman displayed a summary file that looked like the minutes of a meeting.

'''“Concerning war recovery in Oceania and the influence that recovery provides within the country. A list of important infrastructure and how to drive a wedge into the provisional rule using the foundation of that infrastructure.”

“Wait, wait, wait. This contractor, this one, and this one are all major construction companies doing a lot of work toward Oceania’s recovery. Does this mean they’re all helping out this group or being unwittingly used by them?”

“Well, even the large contractors are using local people to pave roads and lay pipes. To promote employment, they’re actively seeking Oceanian personnel. These shady thugs can probably slip in there.”

“No matter what plans those at the top make, the project will be delayed if the people at the bottom secretly don’t do their job.”

“Electricity, gas, water, schools, hospitals, phones, and internet. All of them are vital pieces of infrastructure.”

“Delaying them will do a lot of damage to the provisional rule here. After all, that rule is really nothing more than a verbal promise. The people will lose faith if those promises aren’t met.”

“So either this group is actually causing this damage or they’re using it as a threat.”

“Either way, someone is definitely gaining great influence over the rulers of Oceania.”

'''“It is necessary to remove the coalition made up of the four world powers and it is necessary that we then intervene as rulers.”

“Someone’s trying to secretly shake up the provisional rule until it’s powerless. They want to swap out the structure of the nation so they can bring their interests to the forefront.”

“Does that mean it’s us, the coalition force, that’s in the way?”

“Dammit. That must be why they’re paying off that international satellite TV executive, that blog king, and the others! They’ve brought the Oceanian people’s anger to just under the boiling point using the failed infrastructure maintenance. What if they now release baseless rumors about the coalition from multiple influential sources? That will create an outlet for their pent up anger and large-scale riots will begin!!”

“We’re stationed here in Oceania in the name of preserving order, so they’re trying to guide international opinion to believe our presence is causing frequent riots that hurt or kill innocent people.”

“Then they can do whatever they want. Our higher ups are only spending the military budget on this because the image of a savior hero is useful in politics and diplomacy. Once it isn’t worth it anymore, the military may really leave.”

“And then a new oppressive dictatorship will begin. This group will be able to hide behind a puppet leader.”

'''“How to freely rearrange the national structure in the name of creating a modern justice system.”

“The Oceanian military nation has made the country work on a completely flawed rulebook. Giving the country proper laws will definitely be necessary.”

“But when you remake the country’s rules from the ground up, it’s a lot easier for black-hearted people to work in loopholes than if they have to rearrange the system bit by bit.”

“Is that like how it’s easier for a baby than an adult to learn a foreign language?”

'''“Regarding the basic geographic conditions for a powerful nation.”

“Oceania has massive amounts of land and underground resources. If they can secure the water resources needed for large-scale agriculture, they don’t have to worry about food. Simply put, they have what it takes for an advantage in a long, difficult war.”

“Almost the entire continent is made up of a single power and they’re surrounded by ocean. Compared to countries that directly border a lot of other countries, they’re a lot harder to invade. The conditions are similar to what North America once was and a nation known as the world police once existed there.”

“If they create something similar here, it will cause problems in the world’s military balance. Of course, that’s what this group is probably trying to do.”

Quenser and the others read the document while discussing its contents, but a fundamental question caused Quenser to frown.

“But what are they going to do with this new dictatorship? The Oceanian military nation has done something similar, but they have been stopped by the combined attack of the coalition force. No matter how many conspiracies they weave together, they’ll be broken up as soon as the coalition notices them.”

“The military nation is a great example of that. I doubt any conspirator will want to meet the same fate as the leader there.”

“And the people here have to be the same. No one is going to think a riot can push back a fifty meter Object. Even a child knows that. Riots are meant to push with great numbers. If their front lines are mowed down the instant they gather, no one will gather.”

“They need some kind of symbol of rebellion. But what possible symbol will people think that can defeat more than twenty Objects?”

“…”

Quenser glanced down at a handheld device.

This was not the one from the thugs. It was Quenser’s own that the Legitimacy Kingdom military had issued him.

It contained a few photographs he had taken in the underground structure attached the remains of the pump facility.

The photos were primarily of the wooden boxes’ contents.

One photo showed nuts and bolts divided by size.

One showed reels of fiber optic cable.

One showed bags of powder.

“Don’t tell me…”

“What’s wrong with a photo of nuts and bolts? You can buy those at home improvement stores the world over.”

“But not the fiber optic cable. This is the type that greatly raises signal stability by injecting argon gas into the tube. The price per meter is ridiculous, so it isn’t used in normal homes. It’s a military product that’s known as the nervous system of certain colossal weapons.”

“Wait… A military product? The nervous system of colossal weapons? You don’t mean…”

“And there’s this powder.”

Quenser gulped, zoomed in on the photo, and repeatedly read the bag’s label. No matter how many times he read it, it still said the same thing.

“This is the substance that gives Object armor its high-heat resistance and reactive ability. It isn’t used in anything else.”

“Then that’s the symbol of rebellion this group has built?”

When they thought about it, it was obvious.

Only one thing could pick a fight with the monstrous weapons that could withstand a direct hit with a nuclear missile.

They were synonymous with war.

They were 50+ meter masses of overwhelming military might.

“Are they using the pipelines that are spreading out across Oceania’s desert to slowly gather the parts for an Object!?”

===Part 8===

The group of helicopters taking Quenser and the others back to the maintenance base zone was not far from arriving.

But they could barely stand to wait even that long.

“We don’t actually know when the Oceanian military government’s 0.5 generation Object was built. If it has been built by smuggling the parts through this network of pipes and this group has taken over all that, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’ve completed an Object!!”

“Quit analyzing and report this, Quenser! Damn, I bet our huge-breasted commander is still mad. I just hope she’s willing to listen!!”

After they explained their thoughts over the radio, Froleytia responded bitterly.

“I have not forgotten about dealing with you two, but this isn’t good. It explains why things have been getting noisy outside.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have received a few troubling reports from the base’s sentries. It seems a two or three thousand of the local people have gathered. They’re only shaking the fence around the base and throwing small rocks, but we will have to forcibly make them leave if they do anything more. I want to avoid that while the journalists’ cameras are here. Also, I didn’t know what caused the commotion.”

People’s opinions varied, but the Legitimacy Kingdom military had not been all that hated by the Oceanian people.

“So they’ve already started delaying the infrastructure maintenance and pointing the people’s anger our way.”

“If they’ve already begun, that means it’s really damn likely they’ve finished their new Object! I don’t even feel like joking about this!!”

“But it takes nearly three years to build an Object from the ground up,” said Froleytia. “There hasn’t been enough time for a conspiracy thought up after seeing news of the Oceanian military nation’s collapse.”

“Wait a minute. Froleytia, you can’t mean what I think you mean!!”

“We just have to calculate backwards. If they started this project three years ago, it started before…ksshhh…military nation’s destruction…ksshh. That ridiculo-…ksshh…also part of their plan…ksssssshhhhhh!!”

“Froleytia? Hey, Froleytia!? Can you hear me!?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The military line has been jammed? By who? That alone qualifies as opposing us!!”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

Suddenly, a new voice came over the staticky radio.

It was a young man’s voice.

“Welcome to our nation of Oceania.”

“Really? We have to deal with this? I don’t see how this could lead to anything good.”

“I hear you have stubbornly survived the acid bomb and thus have approached quite close to the truth. Even so, it is too late to do anything about it.”

“Well.. At least we know you are involved behind the scenes of the military nation and their 0.5 generation Object.”

“Yes. They never had the money and technology needed to construct an Object on their own. As you probably know, that was built based on a downgraded version of the design data for an Information Alliance model known as the Gatling 033...no, I suppose you refer to it by the codename of Rush.”

“Rush?”

Quenser frowned and recalled the “oh ho ho” laughter of that Information Alliance pilot Elite.

“But why do all of you so innocently believe that they have only constructed that one? If they can build one, they can build two. With the pipeline spreading out across the entire desert and the one hundred terminal facilities connecting to it, anything is possible. Our project has begun years and years before the fall of the military nation, so how many Objects do you think we have stocked up in that ant’s nest?”

He used the plural.

That was enough for a chill to run down the spines of everyone in the helicopter.

Just one of those monsters was more than enough.

“You’re lying. Objects are brand-name items that cost a billion dollars each. A single group can’t build that many!!”

“Money can buy something even better. Money is meant to be spent, so there is no reason to hold back. Am I wrong?”

“Something even better?”

“The world police,” said the young man over the radio.

That term was the symbol of an era.

“The world may have changed, but a North American superpower once had complete control of the world’s military balance. That was an era of peace. But that exemplary nation was smashed to pieces by the flow of time! The home countries of the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance now exist there. It is not realistic to resurrect a single superpower there.”

“You can’t mean…”

“In that case, the only option is to find another area with similar conditions. A vast land surrounded by ocean. A single nation with plenty of food, underground resources, and population. All we need to do is supply information on high-level technology. …And there was only one candidate.”

“Are you saying your goal is to remake Oceania into a second ‘world police’!?”

“Is there any better way to recover from a war? If we succeed, we will put an end to the ‘clean wars’ spreading throughout the world. We will combine the different world powers into a single world power. And Oceania will rule at the center of it all. This continent has been overrun with unreasonable war and has been crushed by the different world powers afterwards, so it is the perfect symbol for the new world police.”

“This is ridiculous,” spat out Heivia. “All the dark history from the creation of the Oceanian military nation has been your doing, isn’t it!? The new world police? An era truly without war? A world created by people as heartless as you will be a horrible place! You just want to create a world where you can kill as many people as you want!!”

“I have only one thing to say to that: are you aware that history is something created by someone and recorded by someone?”

The young man’s voice remained calm.

He was used to being accused of doing horrible things.

“And no matter how much of a commotion you cause, you can no longer change the current course of events. Look at the city below you. The angry cries of the crowd shall reach you up in the sky. Do you know what that rumbling noise is? Those are the footsteps of the rioters marching through the streets. Can you pacify all of those people?”

“…”

Quenser stopped breathing for a moment.

He could hear a low, low sound resembling distant thunder. He peered down from the helicopter’s open door and saw something filling the desert city. The sight of countless human heads filling every inch not taken up by buildings was quite chilling.

He saw something white here and there.

They looked like placards or banners, so Quenser naturally reached for his binoculars.

But Heivia grabbed his wrist before he could look through them.

“You should stop.”

Heivia was looking up from his rifle’s scope.

It seemed he had just looked through it.

“It’s better to not see that. It’s like a fishing hook. You’ll try to pretend it’s nothing at first, but you’ll realize the small hook won’t come out. It’ll leave a wound.”

Quenser could not imagine what would cause such a negative reaction.

Earlier that day, he had seen true enemy soldiers shot to pieces by helicopters and he had almost been killed by an acid bomb. Compared to that, what could words do? Thinking that, Quenser’s curiosity led him to look through the binoculars.

And…

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

He felt like he heard the words “I told you so” coming from a long distance away.

His arms hung limply down and the magnification left his vision, but what he saw left a hole in his chest.

He felt as if all the bloody vomit and crawling through the mud in Oceania had been made meaningless in a single moment.

This was not something one or two people could easily cause.

This was a powerful current.

Like a fad or a trend, something unseen was influencing people’s lives.

Normally, only the advertising firms that created commercials were aware of that current, but it was now being created into an obvious wall before Quenser and the others.

“What is this commotion?” asked Quenser as he stared blankly down at the city from the sliding door.

He received an answer from the young soldier messing with a handheld device they had received from the enemies.

“Wait. This isn’t good. This is really bad!!”

“Did you find another document?”

Quenser turned around and the soldier tossed him the device.

He caught it in both hands and finally realized what the small screen showed.

It was a completely normal video sharing site.

However…

“Ha ha ha. Have you discovered what everyone’s talking about?” laughed the person on the radio.

But Quenser was not listening.

His mind had left reality as his eyes focused on the video playing on the screen.

It showed a few minutes of a human trafficking incident that had occurred at an international harbor in Oceania.

It had been uploaded only half an hour earlier.

The view count had already reached ten million. It was on a site used worldwide, but the video was a bit choppy as if it was having difficulty loading.

“The news is nothing but entertainment. They complain about the depressing incidents, but that does not stop people from searching for them. TV and newspapers are being used to have a lot of influence, but nowadays one will never learn anything without searching for themselves. And that gives people a certain enthusiasm.”

The incidents and battles that were supposedly resolved were now being used for something else.

“And in Oceania where their infrastructure is being rebuilt, they lack the resources for entertainment. The people are starving for entertainment. Yes, they want to enjoy themselves. Merely opening a small hole in the dam leads to the result before you. The overwhelming deluge will sweep across the continent.”

The young man on the radio spoke as if singing a lullaby that hid a cruel origin.

“The night sky. This world is a night sky.”

It almost sounded like the lyrics to a song.

It sounded nice, but it seemed removed from reality.

“The starless night sky presses down on everyone from above and prevents them from seeing ahead. Someone must change this. Fortunately, that is not hard to do. Those who rule this dark era have merely convinced everyone that it is difficult.”

The one who made it had to know that.

And the ones listening most likely knew it deep down.

“By raising stars onto the starless night sky, we can make a single flag. At first, our symbol will be pure indigo like the night sky. A single star is enough. If a single star can shine in the starless indigo night sky, we can begin to gently guide this dark era. Will you stand here in the center of the world or will you be forever driven to the edges of the world? Decide for yourself.”

Even so, they would fall for it.

But why?

Was someone simply using the dissatisfaction of the Oceanian people?

Or was even that initial dissatisfaction something someone had input within them?

The video showed a few minutes of a large-scale clash between Objects in the desert night which had all been meant to kill a single soldier.

“Thank you. We put together many different plans and you ruined a few of them, but you have provided us with an even greater tool,” said the voice. “Truth Theater. That is the name of the video. When you take something formless, give it a name, and place it within a frame of your choosing, it provides a certain impression. That is the basic method of influencing people’s impressions. After that, you only need to provide them with a specific direction. For example, you can create a flag that they take as their own symbol without anyone forcing them. They will then spread the word of their existence around the world. The trick is to skillfully mix in the proper ideals and desires. The night sky flag is pure indigo, so it can easily be made by throwing a can of paint on a curtain. If you create a complex and cool-looking symbol, no one can create it for themselves. This is an application of influencing people’s impressions.”

There were no lies in the materials they had used.

However, the timing of the editing was extremely malicious. By showing only a few minutes in the video, it only showed the beginning of the problem and the growth of the chaos it produced. There were likely people watching it who did not even know these problems had been resolved.

“The stage has already been set. If it has not, I will not have so calmly contacted you. The indigo flag of the night sky can cover the entire continent at any time. When faced with this overwhelming maelstrom of people, both military and civilian, the military officials who are obsessed with clean wars will hesitate. That time lag will prevent you from ever catching up. Farewell. You have lost. Once only our victory remains, the world will greatly benefit and rejoice in its newfound peace.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“I need something to write on your gravestone.”

A short silence came from the radio.

The young man may have been laughing.

“You may call us the Company, Langley, or the Pentagon. When the former world police was lost, our true name lost its power and meaning.”

“Do you mean…?”

“We are the ghosts of a bygone era. But if you wish to refer to us, there is a name you can use. We are the strange shadows dressed in black who are whispered of in every corner of the world. We are MIB.”

At that moment, the transmission ended.

But not because Quenser or the MIB man had switched off their radio.

The transport helicopter shook violently as it was enveloped in an explosion.

“Wah!?”

“What is it, pilot!? What happened!?”

The helicopter’s door was open, so Quenser had to cling to the handrail on the inner wall with all his might so as not to be thrown out.

The pilot’s reply was tense.

“We have been attacked from the surface! It is probably a cheap mortar.”

“A mortar!? Those are used to fire shells farther than a grenade can be thrown. How are they using it for an anti-air attack!?”

“I don’t know, but one just hit us! They have forcibly used it beyond its intended use. Unlike a missile, it isn’t guided, so they won’t be able to reliably hit us!!”

“This is the hatred of the people,” said the young man on the radio. “Those shells cost twenty dollars each. There is a reason they have long been a best seller in this world of never-ending wars.”

“Here it comes! I just heard one being fired on the surface!! Avoid it, dammit! Move to the right!!”

“I don’t have proper control after that last explosion!”

They did not escape in time.

As the helicopter shook, Quenser worked to close the door.

As soon as he did, the next explosion hit.

The steel door bent in and stabbed into the opposite wall. However, closing the door had not been meaningless. Without the door acting as a cushion, the blast and small pieces of shrapnel would have filled the helicopter.

Nevertheless, that blast settled it.

The helicopter did not break apart in midair, but it began to spin as it lost control. Their altitude was clearly lowering. The mass of steel was obviously falling toward the ground.

“What do we do!? Hey, what do we do!? I don’t want to crash twice in one day! Can’t you recover!?’

“I’m trying! But does it look like it’s going well!?” shouted back the pilot.

Quenser felt dizzy as he braced himself so he was not thrown out of the reopened door.

The young man spoke from the radio as if to provide the finishing blow.

“Ha ha ha. Soldiers surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. A tragedy like this may work as another symbol to drive out the coalition.”

“Is this it!?”

Heivia forcibly switched off the radio and looked out the door.

He then shouted toward the cockpit.

“Hey, which way are we pointed!? I hope it’s somewhere without any people!”

“It is! We’re headed to a trash dump. The trash is piled up in hills and my sensors aren’t picking up anyone!!”

“Good.”

Heivia seemed to have made up his mind about something, so Quenser spoke to him.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The helicopter continued to fall while almost scraping the roof of a crude five-story building.

Heivia leaned into the cockpit, used his knife to cut the seatbelt of the pilot who was still intently focused on the controls, and dragged him away.

“We jump out.”

The screaming would not stop.

As if they were jumping out of a car headed for a cliff, Quenser and the others jumped out onto the flat building roof. The drop was only a few meters.

After a few seconds, the helicopter crashed into a giant pile of garbage and exploded.

They no longer had a means of returning to the base.

===Part 9===

The transport helicopter crashed into a city garbage dump. After a giant explosion, toxic-looking black smoke rose toward the heavens. Quenser stared at the sight as he rolled along the old concrete rooftop of a five-story building.

“Damn this hurts!! I didn’t break any bones, did I!?”

“If you broke one or even cracked one, you’d be crying in pain, student! Quit giving in to the placebo effect and stand up. We need to get out of here!!”

“Is this place that bad?”

“Who do you think shot us down? It wasn’t trained soldiers. Remember when we discussed this chaotic period of recovery in Oceania? Things are so bad people carry around weapons for self-…”

Heivia suddenly stopped speaking.

They heard a rumbling noise. It sounded like the cheers in a stadium after a hat trick. They worriedly looked down and saw a gold-colored tsunami rushing toward the helicopter which was still spewing black smoke.

The wave was made of people.

The gold was their hair. A group of hundreds or even thousands was approaching to drag out the crew of the helicopter. They were all waving indigo flags. They must have painted or dyed something on hand because they were all bright and not entirely dried.

That starless night sky was the symbol of their dissatisfaction toward this dark era.

“Handguns, assault rifles, rockets, mortars, and more. If we don’t leave while they’re focused on the helicopter, we’ll have nowhere to run,” complained Heivia. “They’re worked up enough that there’s a real possibility of being dragged out and publicly executed.”

Quenser gulped when he saw the other boy prepare his assault rifle.

“Wait, Heivia. Why are you preparing that?”

“This is no time to be idealistic!! Battle regulations mean nothing here. Order hasn’t been restored in Oceania yet, so even housewives and office workers walk around with guns for self-defense. Those people with their night sky flag could start shooting at any time, so we need to defend ourselves!!”

“You can’t. You can’t do that!!”

Despite the danger of a secondary explosion from ammunition or fuel, the enraged crowd surrounded the helicopter and peered inside. They resembled ants crowding around a sugar cube. If they noticed Quenser and the others on the rooftop, they would obviously surround the building.

Quenser understood that.

He really did.

“There are hundreds if not thousands of them with the flags!! With that much of a difference, it doesn’t matter if they’re pros or amateurs. They’ll ignore all their allies in every direction and fire on us. If that happens, we’ll be more than just riddled with holes!!”

“But…!”

“But some of them aren’t armed? We’ll still meet a tragic end even if they catch us. In fact, the lack of deadly weapons will just make our grotesque fate last longer! Do you really think these people will be able to stop at just almost killing us!?”

They then heard a scraping noise.

Quenser looked over and saw the helicopter pilot scraping at the inside of a ring with a metal rod. The rod may have originally been a television antenna.

“What are you doing?”

“My wife’s name is engraved in my ring. I am prepared to do what it takes no matter what happens, but I don’t want to cause any trouble for my family!!”

The atmosphere was not normal.

Quenser was suggesting the obvious choice of “not fighting”, but the others were treating that as strange.

They were being affected by the state of the nation.

If one side had guns, the other side had to have guns as well. That logic could only lead to a negative chain reaction, but it had begun to affect non-Oceanians like Quenser and the others.

Truth Theater.

They were being sucked into the world of that video.

The night sky.

That dark and hopeless era that the MIB had created was eating into Quenser and the others.

Heivia and the others who could use rifles took the lead as they moved from the rooftop and into the building. The stairway and corridors were deserted. The glass was covered in dust and sand, so the inside was dim. Several symbols had been left on the walls, so it may have been an abandoned building which was scheduled to be demolished.

What would happen if they ran across someone here?

What if someone lived here to escape the sand and rain? What if someone who lived nearby used it as storage space?

Quenser found it hard to breathe as he saw Heivia and the others unhesitatingly pointing their rifles around.

There was something wrong with it all.

Their enemy was not the people of Oceania. It was the “ghosts of a bygone era” known as the MIB who were laughing as they manipulated everyone. Getting into a firefight here would only delight them. They could use it to bring about their desire to drive out the coalition which was seen as the enemy of the Oceanian people.

Quenser understood the situation, but he could not suppress his instinctual fear.

The high-pitched sound of audio feedback struck his eardrums from outside the building.

It came from a cheap megaphone.

“Drive them away!! Don’t allow their oppression any longer! The Legitimacy Kingdom helicopter crashed right next to a hospital. They are only thinking about their own interests! They don’t care about our lives!!”

“Goddamn them! They’re the ones who shot mortars at us!! And we went out of the way to crash into a garbage dump!!”

“Don’t respond!! It won’t solve anything if we get angry too!!”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? Do you think the cavalry is going to show up if we sit around long enough!?”

Suddenly, something else happened.

They heard a distant rumbling cheer similar to when a decisive goal was made in an international soccer match.

Quenser could not check outside the window.

There was a risk of being spotted, but it had more to do with his own fear.

He and the other seven continued running down the stairs.

Once they reached the first floor, Heivia reached for the back door near the stairway. He slowly turned the knob and cracked the door open.

The wall of people had already reached about thirty centimeters away.

They were so close that Heivia could almost smell their breathing and sweat.

The scent of the paint used to make the indigo flags was mixed in.

He desperately suppressed a groan.

They were almost all focused on the person speaking through the megaphone, so they were not facing toward the building.

With the delicacy of defusing a landmine, he took plenty of time to close the door that was only opened a few centimeters. He instinctually wanted to lock the door too, but that would make too much noise. He used his reason to desperately fight that temptation.

“It’s no good. They’re everywhere outside.”

“You mean we can’t escape?”

Meanwhile, the megaphone voice continued.

“The cavalry is here! Our cavalry has arrived!! Open a path for the grim reaper to reach them!! Once this vehicle enters the plaza, they are done for!!”

Unpleasant sweat began to pour from Quenser’s back.

If that was not a bluff…

“We will pursue our enemy no matter where they run! The sensors equipped on this .50 caliber heavy machinegun will ensure that! Whether it’s wood or concrete, no shield will protect them!! We will search for them, find them, and then destroy them!! …What did you see in the Truth Theater? What did you feel as you waved the night sky flag? That is the truth!! That is the information that has not been altered by the media!!”

As Quenser stepped back from the back door, he frantically made use of his nearly panicking mind.

“(This is bad. Something different is approaching!)”

“(Has the MIB arrived after allying with the people? Now this interesting! We just have to destroy this machinegun-equipped off-road vehicle or whatever it is!!)”

“(But the people watching won’t know where the line between pro and amateur is drawn! Once a single gunshot is fired, the people will attack us without end!!)”

Fortunately, the vehicle in question was apparently having difficulty approaching due to all the people filling every inch of the roads. It would not arrive immediately, but it was only a matter of time. This did not actually solve the problem.

Would they remain and fight?

Or would they leave and hide somewhere?

They had to make up their minds.

“(We can’t run, Quenser! They said the heavy machinegun can shoot through building walls and it has sensors. No matter where we hide, we’ll be killed. And the weapon’s great penetrative power will bloody the angry mob as well!! We have to fight!!)”

“(But we can’t survive if we fight! Also, there’s no reason to fight!! Once a fight begins, it means we’ve lost!!)”

“(Then you can go run off on your own. Make a bet with me if you want, but I guarantee you I’ll survive longer than you!!)”

Ultimately, there was no right answer.

No matter what they chose, they could not defeat the MIB. Eventually, the building would be surrounded and they would be filled with holes or torn limb from limb.

Reinforcements from the maintenance base zone would not arrive in time.

They were completely surrounded, so they would not find a convenient opening.

Once a single shot was fired, it was all over.

But was there any chance left of convincing these people without force?

“…”

The tension had made Quenser’s breathing extremely shallow and he felt as if he would die from dizziness before the actual threat even arrived.

And…

And…

And…

The situation took a decisive turn.

A change that affected their survival occurred without them even knowing it.

===Part 10===

At that time, a certain girl looked up at the instigator mixed in with the crowd. The man stood on the roof of a European van parked on the road. He was making a loud announcement with the kind of cheap megaphone used at construction sites.

“Drive out the Legitimacy Kingdom! Get rid of the entire coalition!! They create nothing. They protect no one! Good citizens should take up arms and fight against these invaders!! Let the cavalry into the plaza so we can begin the bloodbath!! With its sensors, we can find them wherever they hide!!”

The girl was not caught up in what the man was saying.

Quite the opposite.

She knew that there were lies in the speech given by this man standing on the van and holding up an indigo flag. She had seen “them” firsthand, so she knew the rumors spreading through the city had definite malicious intent.

And so…

“…?”

A pause came in the enthralling speech.

This was because a small stone had flown at the man.

Everyone there turned from the man with the megaphone to the girl.

“I know the truth,” said the girl. “I know it isn’t true that they don’t protect anyone!! They saved me. I was taken by bad people, but they came and saved me!! There wasn’t any chaos like in Truth Theater!! There was more to it than that!!”

“Do not make such baseless claims!!”

Triggered by the man’s angry shout, several nearby people grabbed at the girl’s hair and began to drag her away.

She let out a high-pitched scream.

Some of the people accepted this as natural.

But some did not.

“Hey…”

“Yeah.”

It started with a few young men.

They stood in the way of the men trying to carry away the girl.

One of the men holding her hair spoke.

“What do you think you are doing?”

“Y’see, I don’t really understand all this complicated stuff about good and evil or the coalition and invaders.” The main young man shrugged. He moved his face in and spoke from close range. “But is this justice of yours something that lets bastards like you drag crying little girls around by the hair? If so, I can’t go along with it.”

The men holding the girl’s hair prepared to silence this minority with their fists.

But then they realized the overwhelming majority was staring intently at their backs.

Which side had the backing of the majority was beginning to change.

At that time, an old woman named Dorothy opened an outdated laptop computer on a luxurious passenger ship away from Oceania. She logged in to an SNS site her grandchild had insisted she sign up for but she had not used since then.

She had noticed a commotion.

She had noticed great enthusiasm.

The short anonymously-uploaded video named Truth Theater had already been picked up by TV stations around the world. They seemed to have lost the pride in taking footage with their own cameras because the grainy video was being used as-is with the newscaster’s voice playing over it.

On the internet, people could not see each other’s faces or grab at their collars when they were angry, so it was filled with more extreme and hostile words than reality. One side supported Oceania slaughtering the coalition and declaring themselves independent. The other side said the riots would bring about oppression in their own lives, so they supported immediate military intervention.

But none of them knew the truth of Oceania.

They only knew what the few minutes of Truth Theater had showed them.

“I know the truth.”

After giving it some thought, the old woman began slowly typing on the unfamiliar keyboard.

She was acting to protect the honor of the youths who had saved her.

She was beginning to fight back.

“I know the good and the bad of that country. You daydreamers want a convenient villain that lets you feel like you are watching a movie, but rethink what you say once you hear what I have to say. I promise that you will be ashamed of yourselves.”

At that time, Sewax the battlefield cameraman sat within a box-shaped metal tent in arctic Siberia. He was checking over the photos he had just taken with his single-lens reflex camera. Just like heat, extreme cold could cause malfunctions in precision equipment. Before his hard-won images could be lost, he began sending a backup to his online storage via a small satellite communications device.

His guide, who was closer to being a child then a youth, stared interestedly at the device.

“Hey, can you use that internet thing on there? No one bothers running lines out here. If they did lay hundreds of kilometers of fiber optic cable, a bear would just dig it up. And power lines would collapse under the weight of the snow.”

Sewax had a sudden thought as he worked.

He had just trapped a piece of the truth in a rectangular frame and sent it out to the world, but how many people would it reach? And would that truth reach them accurately without someone twisting it?

Some intentionally twisted information was currently causing a frenzy on the internet, that information network the guide wished he had. As a professional photographer, Sewax had immediately noticed how much malice was contained within the few minutes of Truth Theater. A film specialist would likely have found two or three times as much as he had.

The truth could easily be twisted.

Rather than adding in lies, one only had to maliciously edit footage to give a certain impression.

But an athlete cheating with steroids was overwhelmingly powerful. Setting aside the ethical issues, that power was an objective fact. In the same way, the impact of manufactured footage could easily blow away a photograph showing the actual truth. In the end, the people wanted stimulation. The truth was but a single means of acquiring that stimulation and the original purpose of the truth had been done away with.

How much meaning did the world see in being “correct”?

The metal tent’s walls had two layers so the air between could insulate it, but Sewax still felt a chill run down his spine.

It was then that the guide asked an innocent question.

“Hey, where were you before? You haven’t been here for long, right?”

The question brought a slight smile to Sewax’s face.

Because of the state of the world, there was something he could not easily give up on.

Little by little, he would sow the seeds of truth. They would outlast the long winter and eventually bud. It was true people sought simple stimulation, but the ring of truth was another form of stimulation.

People were cruelly honest.

Even if hundreds of thousands of lives were dependent on a photograph, people would look right past it if it was boring. If it seemed preachy, some would even insult it. At the same time, people from all over the world would view a video of someone’s perfectly normal pet.

But the people also loved fairness to a surprising extent.

If it was an interesting story, they would flock to it whether it was true or not. And so Sewax decided he would aim for that. Simply saying one had the truth was not enough. The proper way to compete was to present an overwhelming true story that had enough interest and appeal to break past the empty entertainment.

No matter what anyone said, the more interesting story would win in the end.

He swapped out the micro memory for his digital single-lens reflex camera and slowly spoke as he displayed photos of the previous battlefield he had traversed.

“These photos are from the country of Oceania. What do you think happened there?”

At that time, a female soldier missing an arm appeared at a court martial in a European safe country. The court martial had entered a short recess, but the media’s cameras would not leave her.

These cameras did not merely belong to this one safe country. Large news stations were broadcasting this to many different countries and regions.

“A hero? You may say I exposed corruption, but I was closer to being someone who carried out dirty work for the military. I believe the title of hero should be given to someone else.”

She used the accurate movements of her prosthetic arm to pick up a paper cup of iced coffee and smiled thinly on a bench in the corridor outside the court room.

“Setting aside issues of good and evil, I was certainly a nuisance within the military. In fact, I may still be. But even amid a conspiracy to assassinate a nuisance like me, someone still jumped into the line of fire to save me. In the end, he even stood before an Object. People like that are what soldiers should be. My way of returning the favor is to guide the military toward accepting people like that.”

She spoke slowly as if recalling something.

“There are definitely people who should be called heroes. But unfortunately, those people rarely refer to themselves that way. I wish to show my respect for all the soldiers working in Oceania. Even if they will not name themselves heroes, I hope the day will come when everyone else will.”

At that time, an Information Alliance pilot Elite, who the two idiots referred to as the “oh ho ho”, was speaking to the world via a large-scale internet concert.

“The Information Alliance fights for the proper use of information and for a better future, so we have received some unwelcome news. The MIB? The world police? World domination using an unknown Object made with new technology?”

By usurping the continent of Oceania, they would begin to change the world’s military balance.

“Normally, I would manipulate your impression of this incident by reading off a predetermined script with a perfect smile.”

[[Image:HO_v07_347.png|thumb]]

But that did not mean only someone at the center could have an influence.

The world had grown smaller.

The overwhelming electronic network allowed people to influence the other side of the globe in real time.

“Who is right and what is accurate? Try thinking for yourselves for once☆ Oh ho ho.”

It started as a small wave.

But it slowly worked its way deep into the hearts of the people whose impressions had been manipulated.

It was similar to the difference between a natural diamond and an artificial one.

Which one would draw people in the most?

The answer was revealed by their actions.

“What?”

As they glanced around from within the abandoned building, Quenser and the others quickly picked up on that difference.

“The atmosphere has changed. The burning anger is being directed elsewhere.”

The powerful emotions of anger and intent to kill would stab into one’s heart. Some martial arts had honed it into an actual technique to throw of an opponent’s timing, Quenser and Heivia were not martial arts experts, but the level of emotion surrounding them was on a tremendous scale. Despite being used to clean wars, they could detect the change in the situation.

The crowd never broke down the door and rushed in. The MIB vehicle equipped with a machinegun was stopped as if something blocked its way.

“How odd… Something isn’t right outside.” The windows were boarded up, but Heivia peered through the gaps between boards. “I don’t see any of those indigo night sky flags. Did everyone throw them away?”

That was when a slender hand poked out from a corner of the corridor.

It was beckoning to them.

“You can escape this way,” whispered a female voice.

At first, no one moved.

They thought it was a trap.

If they approached, they suspected they would have a bag placed over their head and be taken away.

But doing nothing would not improve their situation.

Quenser was the first to step forward.

“Wait, Quenser! Are you really trusting her!?”

“Something happened while we waited here without firing a shot, so we need to go with this change. It can’t hurt to take advantage of the opportunity we won for ourselves!!”

Heivia glanced down at the assault rifle in his hands.

He uncomfortably clicked his tongue as if he had only just remembered what it was and who he was aiming it at.

“Damn, I can’t believe Heivia, the transcendently handsome, genius, and rich noble, lost track of what he was doing. When a lady calls out to you, you don’t point this at her!!”

The overall atmosphere changed once Quenser and Heivia approached the door.

Heivia was a private and Quenser was a student while most of the other surviving soldiers were ranked higher. There was no reason for them to follow.

But the helicopter pilot spoke up.

“I was told to follow the infantrymen’s lead if I crashed, so I’ll leave it to you. Anything’s fine as long as we make it back to the maintenance base alive!”

One of the middle-aged soldiers who had to be ranked higher than Heivia shrugged as well.

“As the ranking officer here, I’ll say I made the decision based on a suggestion from a soldier under my command. This situation is so far outside the norm, I can’t keep up! You can take the lead!!”

All of the soldiers, including the injured, ran toward the corner of the corridor.

A brunette woman was waiting for them and she led them through the building. They arrived at what looked like a dead end due to large piece of trash, but she found gaps leading through it and to a small door. The door led to a narrow back road that the crowd did not cover.

“Is this a shopping district?”

“All of them are old stores that sell tools for craftsmen. They all have trash filling the front like that, so only the regular customers ever visit.”

They thanked the woman and cautiously continued along the road. As they did, the owners of the various small shops called out to them.

“I only have ointment and bandages, but do you want some?”

“I was just watching TV and it looks like you’re doing some cool stuff. If we help you, you’ll crush that conspiracy, right? I don’t really understand, but do what you have to!”

“Don’t make yourself ill by drinking old water! Here, have these sports drinks!!”

“Do you have enough ammo? If you can use 5.5mm, take as much as you want!!”

Some of the offers were rather dangerous, but Quenser and the others did not hesitate to accept. They had yet to resupply after an unexpected battle, so they had no reason to refuse if they could replenish their ammunition here.

“Hey, Quenser, where do we go now!? Do we return to the maintenance base!?”

“They’re surrounded by their own mob, remember? And we don’t know how far this miracle has spread. We should defeat the MIB behind all this and return once everything has calmed down!”

“I agree with that, but do you know where their secret base is? They’ve set up their conspiracy all across Oceania!! I doubt they’ll conveniently show up right in front of us!!”

“I disagree,” declared Quenser. “If you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. Our helicopter was a top-priority target, so would they really leave its destruction to an angry mob? It would be safer to mix in with the crowd and fire the mortar themselves. Also, mortars fire a shell in a long arc toward their target. No amateur could do anything as tricky as hitting a flying helicopter with one. And don’t forget the heavily armed vehicle that was on its way to the plaza.”

“Are you saying the MIB’s headquarters are nearby?”

“They used the desert pipeline and the terminal facilities it connected. Heivia, where’s the closest facility? It can be for oil, underground water, or whatever else.”

“It’s nearby. It’s less than three kilometers away! No one felt any need to pay attention to some old ruins.”

“That must be it. And their headquarters are probably where their Object is!”

Heivia’s expression stiffened.

“Wait. Are you suggesting we battle that monstrous weapon in a group with lots of injured!? I doubt we could win and it’s pointless anyway. The MIB have more than one Object, remember? What good is it to risk our lives to destroy just one!?”

“Do they really have that many?” Quenser grinned. “They are an ideological group that came from a spy organization of a former superpower. They must be experts at manipulating information. Would they really reveal the entirety of their plan like that? Would they really just brag about everything? Not a chance. They wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

“Then…”

“Once the acid bomb failed to kill us and part of their plan was about to leak out, they panicked. Completely erasing leaked information is hard, but that’s why they chose to distort it by overwriting it with new information. That allows them to hide the overall outline of their plan.”

The mortar attack had shot down their helicopter immediately after the chat with the MIB.

Quenser and the others’ first action would be to contact their maintenance base by radio. They would be afraid of dying without passing on the information they had gained, so they would report everything without thinking about its veracity.

As a result, the decoy information would be passed to their superior officer.

That false fear would spread from Quenser’s group and to the entire military.

“It may be true they are developing Objects, but they can’t use that many at once! Hell, if they did have that great a fighting force, they wouldn’t be sneaking around! They could just challenge the coalition to a direct fight!! This is the age of numbers. In a one-against-three battle, a unit will not hesitate to send out the white flag signal and withdraw. Those are the rules yet they didn’t do that. That means they lose when it comes to numbers!!”

Quenser was guessing the MIB had only one or two functioning Objects at present. If the coalition’s ten or more Objects surrounded them, they would be destroyed in the blink of an eye.

“But they’re trying to become the world police! Their plan is to take over Oceania because it has the ideal geographical position. They need more than one Object to protect such a vast area of land. They want to conquer, rule, and control the world, so they need a ton of Objects!!”

“Their preparations aren’t ready yet. That’s why they tried to make us believe they can readily attack with several Objects. They’re trying to buy time! Once the time comes, tons of new Objects really will appear across Oceania!!”

“If you’re right, the first thing they’ll want to do is give credibility to their claim. Will they use their one Object to provide an effective demonstration? Even if that one is destroyed, they can buy the time they need as long as it scares the coalition enough. Then they can finish preparing the rest.”

“I don’t know what scale their plan is on, but they won’t have gone this far if they knew they would lose. Whether it’s through sheer numbers or some kind of trick, they definitely have something we can’t let them finish.”

“Wait a second. The coalition has over ten Objects stationed here. Are you saying they’re preparing something that can defeat that?”

Battles without Objects tended to become long and drawn out.

But this was different.

This would become a long, drawn out battle between Objects.

If that happened, it was impossible to say just how much apocalyptic destruction would spread across Oceania. The distinction between battlefield and city would vanish. The combatants would not have the leeway to make the distinction. It was possible that all life on the continent could be wiped out.

“That’s why we need to crush it,” said Quenser. “We’ll make the MIB’s demonstration completely fail and nip this problem in the bud. There’s no other way to save everyone.”

===Part 11===

Atomic number 79.

Atomic weight 196.96655.

Atomic symbol Au.

In other words, pure gold.

That was supposedly the source of their massive amounts of money.

The world had shattered to pieces in the past. The collapse of the UN and the appearance of Objects were the symbols of the existing national structure coming to an end. Amid the confusion, they had stolen a massive amount of gold bars from a certain country which had possessed more than any other nation.

Normally, this would have been immediately exposed and they would have been ganged up on, but the world had been in a state of complete chaos. They had taken advantage of a situation in which no one could determine what was stored where and in what quantities.

That thought brought a twisted smile to the lips of a young man wearing all black.

In the past few years, his smiles had become very different from what they had once been.

“Such a terrible lie. Even a child could see all the holes in it if they thought about it.”

“That is why we must ensure they do not have time to think about it,” said another young man sitting next to him. “We have plenty of money. We have the power to move the world. As a rite of passage for joining our secret community, we take half of their assets as collateral. …That is the trick to securing the funds we need. A single lie provides the money and connections we need to truly change the world.”

“The truth will eventually come out.”

“We simply have to change the world before that happens. We just have to make the lie into the truth.”

That was how they lived.

It was no different from how their predecessors had used information as a weapon to protect the peace of a superpower.

Even before the internet had become common, back when information was only passed through letters and phone calls, they had cut out newspaper articles, recorded radio programs, and otherwise analyzed everything so they could classify the complicated state of humanity around the globe. …Even the internet had begun as a single nation’s military network. Spreading that information network around the world had been their accomplishment and its influence plainly proved how much influence they had shown upon the vague concept of the “era” or “history”.

“The preparations are complete.”

That report was given by and to someone wearing a black suit, a black hat, and black sunglasses.

They had no individuality.

It was unnecessary and, more importantly, they themselves did not see any use in it.

“I see.”

The Company, Langley, the Pentagon.

They were called many different things, but they never used the three letter acronym that began with C.

They preferred to use the one beginning with M that had its origin in inaccurate urban legends.

Yes.

The MIB.

That was the name of the intelligence agency in the deepest depths of the world police which had been rumored to suppress the truth by threatening witnesses of UFOs and aliens.

“Is the enemy coming?”

“They were not torn limb from limb in the public square, so they must have made their way out somehow. In that case, they are on their way here. Being so cautious as to thoroughly investigate even innocent citizens is our way.”

There was a simple reason for purposefully using that inaccurate name.

They were not yet worthy of using the true name. Their goal was to gather together the world which was broken like stained glass and once more rule it as the world police. Only once they accomplished that would they return to their true form.

The C at the beginning of their name stood for “central”, but they currently had nothing to be at the center of. An egg would not function with only the yolk. For that reason, there would be no meaning in using their true name at the present.

They would wait until it was all over before they proudly used those three letters as they gave their name to the world.

“Then let us begin the final preparations.”

“You can begin at any time.”

They were trying to do the same thing that had been left behind more as legends than actual history.

Rather than standing on the stage themselves, they would use money, information, weapons, and political power to quietly contact and build relationships with people connected to other nations. At times they would invite them in, at times they would threaten them, at times they would kill them, and ultimately they would manipulate the fate of that country.

“I know. Leave the rest to me. If I can buy enough time to activate the other two and the approximately five hundred amplification facilities, we can announce our victory to the world.”

“We have been expecting this, but are you sure you can handle it?”

“It is true I am not an Object pilot Elite.”

A young man smiled thinly.

He wore all black just like the others, but his aura was sharper.

“But that is what gives this meaning,” he said. “So…”

His last word seemed disconnected at first.

But then he pulled out a handgun with a silencer attached.

“Leave the rest to me. Case #024, the attempt to use the rioters to kill the soldiers who had grasped the truth, is now over. Nevada 36, it is time to begin Case #025. That will be handled by me, D.C. 0.”

===Part 12===

Quenser, Heivia, and the rest of their small unit somehow managed to leave the confused streets that were overflowing with people.

Once they left the city, they entered the desert, but this was the cracked and sand-colored land of the wastelands seen in westerns. Some cacti and a run-down bar would have made it perfect, but those did not seem to be common sights in this desert.

Instead, they found train cars lying around with their insides removed. The electronics, doors, windows, chairs, and lights were all missing. This appeared to be a “graveyard”. Originally, the unusable cars had been carried to the end of the rails and dismantled, but even the guiding metal rails and railroad ties had been stolen at some point.

“I can see it now. In fact, it would be impossible to miss. Do they have any idea how to hide?”

The terminal facility which had several rusty pipelines connected to it appeared to have originally drawn oil up from the ground. The exterior was a bit more cluttered than the underground water pump facility. They were both ruins which had been left to rot and this facility clearly would not function any longer.

Quenser looked around with a binoculars-like device.

“I don’t see any obvious traps. There aren’t any mines, alarms, or cameras, but I doubt conspirators like this would simply be careless.”

“Setting up traps would just end up blowing off the leg of an unrelated civilian or kangaroo. They aren’t trying to protect this spot at all costs. Explosives aren’t a good idea when you want to keep anyone from knowing you’re there.”

Even so, there were landmines made from wood or glass that a metal detector would not catch. Quenser’s group remained cautious and used the chaotically abandoned train cars as cover as they slowly approached the terminal facility.

“There aren’t any scavenging hyenas around, are there? Heivia, even you might shoot if someone surprises you right now.”

“There’s nothing but fried chicken bones here. They were left here because there’s nothing left to eat.”

Just as there was no sign of traps, there was no sign of people.

The old oil facility was about five hundred meters away, but their confidence in that being the MIB’s headquarters began to waver.

“Is this really the logical way for them to handle this? Some kids playing hide-and-seek could wander into the terminal facility and they wouldn’t stop it.”

“Or maybe they no longer care if they’re found out,” ominously suggested Heivia.

Immediately afterwards, the remains of the oil facility were easily blown to pieces from the inside.

They first detected an intense shaking in the cracked ground. Next, they saw a massive cloud of dust spreading out. They could see it happening, but there was nothing they could do. The sea of dust spread out in every direction for kilometers and it swallowed up Quenser’s group.

The phenomenon itself was similar to a sandstorm.

A thick gray wall hid even the sunlight over a limited area. The brightness of the sky dimmed as if evening or dusk had fallen.

“Cough cough!! What the hell is this? Concrete!?”

“Grab a handkerchief, a bandage, or whatever you can find! Just cover your nose and mouth! That old building was from the time of the military nation, so it wasn’t built up to safety standards. It might have used asbestos. Protect yourself now if you don’t want to regret it later!!”

Quenser heard a low rumbling as if distant thunder clouds were approaching.

A giant shadow was visible through the gray world that cut off their vision.

It used static electricity for propulsion. It had two straight floats lined up parallel to each other. They were reminiscent of the treads on construction equipment.

Its silhouette was somehow different from a normal Object. It did not have the one hundred or so cannons extending from its spherical body like a sea urchin. It looked like a soccer ball with uniform protrusions attached or perhaps like the sea mines placed to destroy warships. The protrusions looked more like giant barnacles than cannons. It looked like the Object had volcano craters attached. It was unclear what they were meant to do and that uncertainty weighed on Quenser’s mind all the more.

His instincts turned toward the giant structure and all his senses grew more focused.

His thoughts grew clear.

The scorching heat, the dryness stabbing at his throat, and unpleasant dust clinging to his cheeks were all driven out of his mind.

His soul was shouting that he did not have even a second to worry about such trivial things.

“There it is,” muttered Heivia while forgetting to cover his mouth amid the dust cloud. “We were right! The MIB really did build one! They sacrificed the Oceanian military nation to build an Object completely independent of the world powers!!”

“Get down. Everyone, get down. …Has it noticed us? Why did it destroy its hiding spot and make an appearance?”

The gray curtain prevented them from judging the distance. The giant shadow looked both close and distant. At the very least, they could tell it was not performing the light footwork of a boxer or mixed martial artist like the princess’s Baby Magnum would. It appeared to be perfectly still.

“What is it doing? Surely they know revealing it like this is a huge disadvantage for them. So why isn’t it doing anything? They wouldn’t make an appearance like that for no reason.”

It was not that an obvious attack would have put them at ease.

Their hearts were filled with an uncanny feeling similar to viewing a newly discovered insect under a magnifying glass.

That was when an electric tone came from Quenser’s radio.

Froleytia was contacting them.

“Where are all of you!? It seems you vanished from the crashed helicopter.”

“Wow, a lecture now!? I don’t feel like explaining everything. What should we do, Quenser!?”

“Don’t press the button! Once everything is over, we can destroy the radio on the way back to the base.”

“If you don’t respond, I’ll write a report saying you died.”

“We’re alive!! We’re doing just fine!!” shouted the two idiots as loudly as they could.

Froleytia clicked her tongue.

“Where are you? What appears to be an unidentified Object has appeared three kilometers from the city. Does that have anything to do with you?”

“We happen to be right in front of it.”

“Move five hundred meters away. You’ll be killed if you’re caught in the bombardment.”

“What!?”

Suddenly, another voice cut in.

But they did not recognize this one. The transmission was not coming from the Legitimacy Kingdom military.

“Can you hear me, dogs of the Legitimacy Kingdom? I am monitoring the situation via satellite.”

“Who is this?”

“A lieutenant colonel who saw what your battalion can do during the Simple Is Best battle. My name is Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. You can ignore everything but the first name. A lot of people have the other names thanks to a ridiculous genius girl project. Over a hundred, I think.”

Quenser brought a hand to his forehead.

“I remember now. I saw you in that VIP Information Alliance armored vehicle in the desert night. You’re that officer who’s young enough to still be in her rebellious phase.”

“Are you the type of soldier that never forgets a lady’s face? I see. How horribly shallow.”

Quenser was actually a student, but explaining the details to someone from an enemy nation would only increase his danger.

That member of the Martini Series spoke with scorn filling her voice.

“The four world powers have managed to work together long enough to help with Oceania’s war recovery. Our coalition will not allow anyone else to possess an Object. I hate to release one of the Information Alliance’s cutting edge machines to protect your pathetic lives, but I am calm enough to keep my priorities straight. You can rest easy now, but do not forget to bow down before me in gratitude.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

“The coalition…?”

“Does that mean multiple Objects have been sent out to hunt down the MIB?”

Their response came from Froleytia Capistrano rather than Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

“The Legitimacy Kingdom has sent the Baby Magnum, the Information Alliance has sent the Catapult Cargo, the Capitalist Corporations has sent the Desert Scorpio, and the Faith Organization has sent the Mirror Bowler. They will surround this unknown Object and destroy it.”

“Refer to our second generation Object as the Cannon 256. Hearing your codename makes me want to vomit.”

“Quenser, Heivia, and everyone else there, listen up. The real problem comes after the unknown Object is destroyed. There is a possibility the four coalition Objects will begin fighting afterwards. Keep your guard up if you don’t want to be crushed by a stray shell.”

Those were frightening words.

With four against one, the outcome was readily apparent. That was how modern wars worked.

Which meant…

[[Image:HO_v07_369.png|thumb]]

“Hey, Quenser,” said Heivia. “We came here hoping to be heroes, but there’s nothing for us to do. Let’s use this confusion to get the hell out of here. I don’t want to be here once the bombardment begins.”

“It’s too late for that,” replied Wraith instead of Quenser. Her lovely voice showed no mercy. “It has already begun.”

When the great roar arrived, they sensed it in their guts more than their ears. The gray dust obstructing their view was blown away like a popped balloon. Quenser initially thought it was the sound of a shell being fired, but he quickly realized he was wrong. It was the shockwave created by the car-sized shell travelling at five or ten times the speed of sound.

He could not simply brace himself and grit his teeth.

He had gotten down on the ground, but he began rolling across the wasteland as if he had been ripped from the ground.

He brought a hand to his ear and felt something wet.

He saw red blood on his hand.

“Cough!! What the…hell was…that? Was that a railgun or coilgun they fired from long distance!?”

“It’s the same either way!!”

“No, a coilgun uses electromagnets while a railgun uses Fleming’s…”

“I’m glad to see bleeding from the ears doesn’t slow down your design obsession!!”

The MIB’s Object was sitting in place. If an ultra high speed shell was sent in, it would not have time to evade. While Quenser and Heivia’s puny human bodies trembled from the damage caused by the shell merely passing by, they checked to see what damage the Information Alliance had accomplished.

A giant cloud of dust filled the air.

More attacks flew toward the Object as if stabbing a sword into an unmoving corpse. The types of attacks and the directions they came from were different. Laser beams left orange afterimages as they fried the air and low-stability plasma cannons burned bluish-white lines of light into their eyes.

It was a slaughter.

The Object was simply being disposed of.

“Wait, wait, wait! Goddammit! Cough cough! This is going too far!! You’re going to kill us too!!”

“No, wait.”

They then saw something unbelievable.

“What the hell?”

“Don’t ask me.”

The countless attacks blew away the dust as they focused on a single point.

That tore away the filthy veil.

And on the other side…

“The MIB’s Object hasn’t been touched! And it doesn’t look like it’s moved either. Did the Information Alliance miss!?”

“I’m not a psychic girl, so I don’t have the answer to everything!!”

The speed, mass, and force had all been sufficient. It was hard to think they had deflected all of the attacks with just the Object’s armor.

The Information Alliance had not given advance warning of their attack.

They continued firing the same massive shells toward the MIB Object.

As they roared through the air, they possessed so much destructive power that Quenser and the others thought they were going to be crushed as they watched on.

But this time, they clenched their teeth and saw what happened.

“It missed?”

“What? How did it land there!? It couldn’t have landed there unless its path twisted like a crank. I’ve heard of lasers bending due to mirages, but can that happen with metal shells too!?”

The dust cloud had not been created by the destruction of the target Object. It had come from the metal shells and laser beams veering away and striking the ground.

But was that a coincidence or not?

Escaping into optimistic thought was not going to help, so Quenser voiced the worst possibility.

“It has some kind of defense system. It has some kind of tech that lets it turn aside and neutralize approaching attacks!!”

The sound of someone clicking their tongue came over the radio.

Next, multiple beams of light were fired. The burning orange beams likely came from laser beam cannons while the bluish-white beams that resembled welding likely came from low-stability plasma cannons. These were not metal shells. Light and ions were completely different, so a defense system meant for metal shells would not work.

And yet…

“You’re kidding.”

“It doesn’t matter how powerful your attacks are if they can’t hit. I don’t know what it’s using, but any Object loses all of its cards if this almighty one can repeatedly turn aside any attack!!”

It did not matter.

It did not matter if it was a metal shell, a band of excited light, or a plasma weapon given directionality with tremendous magnetism.

Each Object present was a crystallization of its world power’s technology. Their concept had been honed to the extreme.

One of them primarily used metal shells but could use many different types of attacks using the container structure filled with powerful acid and the gas that created low-stability plasma.

One of them would intentionally fire laser beams at the ground around the target to turn the sand to glass and then use that glass to complexly reflect its main laser beam cannon.

One of them scattered several electron beams like firing a shotgun to constantly cause light damage while using high-quality sensors and boosters to continually avoid the enemy’s attacks.

The MIB’s Object dealt with all of them in the same way.

It had perfected turning aside attacks.

Rather than evading, it caused the approaching attacks to miss.

And it did not stop there.

“The Capitalist Corporations’ Desert Scorpio is damaged!” came a report over the radio. “For some reason, the Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler fired on it!!”

“Don’t get mad, Legitimacy Kingdom. We may be surrounding the unknown Object, but our positions make damage from stray shots impossible. That means there must be another explanation for this damage.”

“Are you saying the laser beams the unknown Object turns aside are being targeted at our Objects?”

This time, Quenser felt as if an invisible hand were squeezing at his heart.

“This is more than a means of defense. It isn’t just turning them aside! What kind of technology lets it accurately target someone else with an attack coming in at the speed of light!?”

“Tch.” Wraith clicked her tongue. “If long-distance bombardments are out, our Cannon 256 has lost its usefulness. Your outdated first generation can take the lead role. Move in close and fire on it at point blank range.”

“Tell that to our princess!!”

“Is there anything we can do to help?”

“Keep firing shells at it!! Even if you can’t hit, try to keep them focused on defense!!”

Before he had even finished speaking, Quenser’s mind was shaken by a terrifying roar.

But this was not supporting fire from the Information Alliance’s Cannon 256.

The MIB’s Object had started to do something.

At first, Quenser, Heivia, and the others had difficulty concluding what it was trying to do.

A ring of bluish-white light with a radius of around 200 meters had appeared around the Object’s spherical main body. As time went on, more and more rings appeared. Eventually, they formed what looked like a semispherical dome that covered the entire main body except for the very top.

The bright light completely hid the giant Object.

“You have got to be kidding.”

Quenser finally realized what was happening.

As soon as he did, he felt like his heart was being wrapped tightly in wire.

“Are those laser beams or low-stability plasma cannons? No, it must be electron beams.”

“How can you tell!?”

“Anything else would have blinded us.” Quenser continued to watch on. “That bastard is bending his own attacks into a shield. Like a large particle accelerator, it’s constantly adding electron beams and accelerating them, so the speed and energy grows as time passes!”

“Ha…ha ha. The European particle accelerator out in the middle of nowhere is buried deep underground, right? Isn’t that to stop the electromagnetic waves and radiation that leaks out when the beam bends around the curves? Is it really safe to accelerate stuff in the middle of the air?”

[[Image:HO_v07_378.png|thumb]]

“Do you really think that monster is up to safety standards!? These people didn’t hesitate to use an acid bomb, so they aren’t going to care about the safety of enemy troops! And more importantly…!!”

As Quenser tried to shout, an electron beam shot by overhead after being accelerated to the limit. The principle was not all that different from the hammer throw. However, the speeds were too great for the human eye to follow, so Quenser and the others were suddenly presented with the result.

And that result was the distant roar of the Information Alliance Object being destroyed.

“What the…hell?”

Heivia looked over his shoulder even though there was no way he could see it.

His voice was trembling as much as it ever had.

Unlike a normal low-stability plasma cannon or laser beam cannon, this attack was not limited to an instant.

It continued.

It continued on and on.

It was less a projectile and more a giant sword extending beyond the horizon.

And that “sword” was swung to the side.

It swept by horizontally.

This destruction was on a scale of greater than ten kilometers, so the fear Quenser and the others saw with their eyes did not produce real fear in their brains.

As they watched in a daze, they heard the urgent “truth” over the radio.

“E-e-eeeeeeeee!? Wh-wha-what…?”

“Do not panic, analyst!! Provide an accurate report!!”

“Y-yes, major! The Information Alliance’s Catapult Cargo has been destroyed. The Faith Organization’s Mirror Bowler has been destroyed. The Capitalist Corporations’…”

“Hey, wait! I can’t move! E-eject! Ksshhhhh!!”

“…Desert Scorpio has been destroyed. The Legitimacy Kingdom’s Baby Magnum…”

It was like a cruel stroke of a pen.

No matter what technology was used to skillfully evade, the never-ending electron beam sword swept across the world. Once it caught up, it sliced the Object apart.

“…can continue fighting! The Baby Magnum is our only Object still functioning!!”

“No way…”

The princess’s survival most likely had nothing to do with her own skill.

She had simply been chosen last.

The attack had only lasted for a few dozen seconds and it had died out before reaching her.

Once it was fired again, she would be vaporized along with her metal machine.

“What do we do? What do we do, Quenser!? It’ll have the next one charged in only a few dozen seconds! What’s going to happen then!?”

The Information Alliance’s “oh ho ho” could fire along a line using her continuous beam Gatling gun, but her range was short.

The closer one was to the cannon being fired, the easier it was to avoid the attack by moving around it. But when it was pulled off at the extreme long range of ten kilometers, the speed and distance needed to evade increased dramatically.

Imagine a fan shape.

The distance to the side of the fan was not far at the base, but the closer one got to the upper edge, the greater that distance grew.

However, a future designer like Quenser saw another threat on top of that.

“The real problem isn’t the destructive power.”

He gulped.

An unpleasant sweat covered his brow, but he did not have time to worry about it.

“Objects can avoid laser weapons that move at the speed of light by predicting when they will be fired by monitoring the minute movements of the cannons and the targeting lenses. But this main cannon directly bends electron beams in midair to accelerate them via centrifugal force. There’s no hint to when it will be fired. You can only start evading once the actual beam has been fired!!”

“No one can do that!!”

“That’s why they were destroyed! Currently, no Object can evade its main cannon. None of our attacks can hit and all of its will. The MIB have created a single system that does that!!”

Only silence came from the radio.

The Information Alliance officer had either decided to withdraw or had no time to worry about Quenser’s group.

It did not matter which it was.

Quenser wiped his cheek to get rid of a liquid that might have been sweat or tears.

“Heivia, let’s find a way out of this on our own.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Let’s find a way of defeating that goddamn Object before it fires again. If we don’t, the princess will be blown to pieces!!”

“Screw that!! You can go be pretend to be a hero on your own. That thing destroyed three cutting-edge Objects in an instant. It was outnumbered, but it didn’t matter! It might even be able to destroy all twenty Objects on the continent!! This isn’t something flesh-and-blood humans can handle!!”

“She’s our final hope. If the Baby Magnum gives up, who will retrieve us from the battlefield!?”

A disturbing noise came from Heivia’s throat.

If the Baby Magnum was destroyed, there would be no one left to save them. Of all the Objects belonging to the Legitimacy Kingdom or the coalition, no one else would risk losing those massively expensive machines. Even if the MIB would eventually exterminate them, they would decide to watch from afar, analyze the situation, and try to find a way of winning in the long run.

Meanwhile, the MIB’s Object would continue its arrogant rampage and the first victims would be Quenser’s group.

“If you want to live, we have to continue forward,” said Quenser calmly. “We need to at least find a way to let the princess accomplish something here. Otherwise, we’ll be the soldiers who never returned in some tragic news story.”

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

User talk:DevilByMySide

2014-01-17T04:35:00Z

EnigmaticRepose: Heavy Object edits inquiry.

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2014-01-12T10:42:25Z

EnigmaticRepose:

{{Incomplete|parts=8|tparts=17}}
==Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“The military scandal shows no sign of ending. The council has made the rare decision to treat the plan to use an Object for a military assassination as attempted murder. The brigadier general thought to be the primary individual behind the plan has been called back from Oceania for…”

The princess sat on a metal staircase of a building near the Object maintenance area. She may have been bored because she was staring blankly at a 1seg TV program on her handheld device. The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles and their tires measured over two meters in diameter. Stairs were needed simply to enter them.

In the dry desert, merely stepping into the shade felt much cooler. The princess had the front of her special suit open so the wind could reach her skin. As someone who spent long periods of time in an air-conditioned cockpit, her upper limit for heat appeared to be rather low.

A short distance away, the two idiots were using shovels to dig everywhere they could in the hot sand.

“Quenser, you idiot! You don’t remember where you buried them, do you!?”

“I marked it last night! I secretly stuck a stick into the ground.”

“When Myonri dug there, she found a ton of dead cicadas and almost passed out! Damn… What is going on? Where did we dig the canned foods and packaged foods leftover from the victory party!? I thought we were going to be freed from those eraser-like rations for a while!!”

“Hurry, hurry! This maintenance base is mobile, remember? If the entire unit decides to move, we’ll lose all those cans! There was beef stew in there. If we lose that, it’ll traumatize me!!”

“What are those two doing?”

An old woman stuck her head out of the Object maintenance area and spoke to the princess.

The princess looked up from the screen and toward the old woman.

“It looks like a treasure hunt.”

“You aren’t going to join them?”

“I’m not in the mood for food. And I just finished building a cicada grave.”

“???”

The old maintenance woman did not quite understand, so she decided to ask them directly.

“Hey, slacking student.”

“Eeee!! One of the lecturers has locked onto us!”

“As long as she doesn’t tell that huge-breasted commander, we’re fine! Seduce her or something to bring her onto our side!! I’ll go dig over there!!”

“No fair! Don’t run off on your own!!”

“What are you doing out here?”

The old woman’s words seemed to nail Quenser to the ground.

She was asking what he was doing “out here” because he was not in the Object maintenance area.

He slowly and stiffly turned toward her.

“W-would two cans of lunchmeat be enough for us to come to an understanding? Or maybe peaches or pineapple!?”

“I’m not asking about that. Have you forgotten why you came out to the battlefield in the first place? I thought it was to spend as much time observing the Object as possible so you could learn as much as possible.”

“Are you seriously saying that?” Quenser sounded surprised as he continued digging around randomly. “They’re repainting the Object in there. They’re using tons of organic solvent in a closed space and I didn’t dodge bullets to end up high on paint thinner.”

“It is true painting an Object does not use any specialized technology. I admit that.”

“It’s the same as a normal warship. The Object’s onion armor is made from special metal plates that have high-heat resistant and reactive elements mixed in like a katana, but that also means the armor will rust when exposed to the elements. We can’t have the pride of our nation rusting, so they’re careful to use techniques of keeping it from rusting, right? They’re not mixing in ferrite to give it high-level stealth ability and they’re not using camouflage patterns based on psychology and research into human cognizance to hide it from the human brain. There’s nothing in it for a student like me.”

Those sorts of techniques had been used for the fighters and tanks of the previous age.

This had been due to the high risk of being shot down or destroyed. But that effort was unnecessary with the colossal Objects which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

Also, it would be exceedingly difficult to hide a 50+ meter armored weapon from radar or the naked eye.

“The technical issues are a factor, but the paint job has more to do with the desires of the higher ups in the military and government.”

“They don’t want their hero sneaking around?”

“When sending an obviously overpowered weapon into battle, they need a tricky argument to silence the pacifists. That’s why they like the symbolism of a hero that defeats an abominable enemy in a fair fight. The Objects brought an end to the nuclear age by force, so they want to maintain the freshness of that impression for as long as possible. Letting it fade into history would be a waste.”

“I suppose they need a simple commercial to gain the massive military budget they need for them. That’s why they want the Objects to always be polished up bright like an exhibit at a motor show. They even have a lovely pilot Elite by its side to play the role of the companion girl. …But none of that is a job for the designer I want to be. Get a PR guy for that.”

Quenser shrugged.

“Let me touch the more…well…sensitive parts at the core. Like the JPlevelMHD reactor or the targeting sensor control system.”

“Don’t be silly. You aren’t touching those. Before you even think about it, you need to pass at least fifteen international exams.”

As the princess sat on the metal staircase and stared blankly up into the blue sky, she called out to Quenser.

“Qu-Quenser?”

“??? What is it?”

“Did something happen with that Information Alliance Elite? She said something I didn’t like about what she was going to do with you.”

“Um, that could apply to a lot of Elites. Which one are we talking about?”

“…There are a lot of them?”

The princess’s expression made it clear he had stirred up unnecessary trouble.

Quenser, however, did not understand what she had been trying to ask.

“Anyway, princess, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the karaoke!! During the battle with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, you had the nerve to say idols were worthless because anyone can sing!!”

“Uuh… I-I remember.”

“Good. These days, you can run a karaoke place anywhere using internet download services. There are even some here in Oceania. During our next day off, I demand to see if you have the skills to back up your bragging!!”

The old maintenance women let out a quiet sigh.

This arrangement was actually almost exactly what the princess had expected to happen and wanted to happen, but she did not seem to know what to do now that things were going more smoothly than expected.

It was an example of a plan coming back to bite her.

The two youths compared their schedules to set up a date and Quenser suddenly spoke up once they had finished.

In that instant, he became a true idiotic designer.

“Oh, right. I need to ask you too, princess. The reactor may be too dangerous, but can I check out the targeting sensor control system or somewhere else that will help me study Object design?”

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

“Do you not trust me at all?”

“It’s not an issue of your skill,” said the old woman in exasperation. “There are different types of people who work with Object design. There are those who build up virtual models based on theory, there are the academic types that materialize and realize those models, there are the inventor types who have a single idea and go beyond their primary field to gather everything they need to realize it, and there are the craftsmen who use their experience and the unexplainable instincts in their fingertips to produce results greater than precision manufacturing equipment. The targeting sensor control system you’re talking about is a black box that complexly combines all of those together. Not even the princess or I will touch it without reason.”

“So you entrust your life to something no one touches?”

“That is not what she meant,” said the princess. “It is maintained in sessions including more than fifty people. You can think of it like exchanging our opinions to find the right flavor for a cocktail we do not know the recipe to. Bringing in someone who doesn’t know the flavor would distort our opinions and raise the likelihood of the final drink not matching the perfect flavor.”

“An Object has over one hundred cannons, both big and small,” continued the old woman. “Each of those has multiple sensors and the entire Object has its primary radars and sensors. Coordinating all of those is beyond human ability. Most of it is handled by computers, but there are some situations where that doesn’t cut it. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Laser weapons?”

“That’s right. Those move at the speed of light, so they can’t be avoided after seeing them fired. What matters is predicting the attack by observing the minute movements of the enemy’s cannons and sensor lenses. You can’t leave that to a computer both when attacking and when defending.”

In a battle between Objects, one could not simply continue to evade. One had to attack and hit.

If an enemy would predict the attack before it was fired, one had to predict where they would evade to and fire there instead.

“Ultimately, the whole system only works when you combine the precise sensors, the high-spec computers, and the fearful fingertips of a human. It seems the Information Alliance is researching completely automated targeting algorithms, but they have a long way to go towards making it practical. Then again, they’re more skilled than anyone when it comes to using information, so who knows how much we can trust what our intelligence division has gathered on them.”

“I won’t lose to something like that.”

This seemed to have worked up an odd sense of competition in the princess because she pouted her lips and took a sip from her drink’s straw.

Quenser then heard an electronic tone from the small radio in his uniform.

When he pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, Froleytia’s voice spoke to him.

“Study time is over for the moment, Quenser. Head over to the briefing room with the others. A pre-mission briefing is about to begin.”

“What do we have to do now?”

“That’s what I will explain to you. But it’s a simple mission. I’m not asking you to make a charge at a cutting-edge Object or anything.”

“I beg you to never ask me to do that!! I haven’t been doing it because I want to!!”

“Toward the end of the incident with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, a large underground structure was discovered when the ground collapsed. That was from your report, Quenser.”

“W-well, yes.”

“Today, you will be investigating the abandoned facility. This is simple post-battle cleanup. I suppose the police would call it a crime scene inspection. I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the war, but we have to control everything in the vicinity of the battle. I will be the one writing the annoying report to the higher ups, so you all can help me out a little.”

“So no other military is involved this time? There aren’t going to be any firefights?”

“That’s right. Unless you’ve heard reports of the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance living in holes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want us to carefully check over this place, but nothing – nothing at all – is going to happen? We just have to drive across the desert as if having a picnic, snap a few photos of these strange ruins, and that’s it? You promise?”

“And surprisingly, you actually get paid. With the people’s tax money, no less.”

“Woo hoo!! Oh, god! I can’t wait!! Please fill my team with a ton of female soldiers! This is perfect for Operation North Wind and the Sun. Partway through, our tension is sure to drop and then they’ll strip down to their thin inner clothing!! Hooray! Hooray!!”

“Yes, yes. I get it. You will be in your usual filthy guy team with Heivia. Have fun in your sweaty world of little clothing.”

“Hah hah hah. If you really do that, I’m starting a coup.”

“Hah hah hah!! Do you really think I’m the type to joke about this?”

The transmission ended with a click.

Since Froleytia said it, there was no doubting that he would end up surrounded by men. However, Quenser was not about to give up. He still had hope.

“On a boring investigation, the investigation team, guard team, and transport team will all move as one big group. Even if my team looks like a boys’ school, there’s still a chance of cute young girls in the other teams!! I haven’t lost yet!!”

“Sigh. Are you sure it will turn out that well?” asked the old woman.

“I am!! After all, the end of February is getting towards the end of the fiscal year!! The top levels of the military need to use up their extra budget or the defense budget will be lowered next year. Sending out tons of unnecessary soldiers for a boring mission could easily happen now!!”

“Why are you only this good at calculations at times like this?”

That was of course because this topic was the most compatible with the pink brain cells of adolescence.

At any rate, Quenser raised his hands in an expression of joy.

“Fwa ha ha ha ha ha!! I won’t let our commander win this time! The amount of girls in skimpy, wet, and see-through clothes would surprise a soft drink commercial! Paradise awaits me!!”

===Part 2===

[[Image:HO_v07_260.png|thumb]]
“…Ah!?”

Quenser’s suddenly opened his eyes.

His recent memories were fuzzy. He could not see anything properly. The blue sky of the desert spread out before his eyes. He seemed to be lying on his back, but he could not feel the burning of the hot sand.

He felt an unpleasantly cold sweat as if he had anemia.

He detected a burning smell mixed with a rusty metallic smell.

…A rusty metallic smell?

“Gah!? Gfh! D-dammit. I just remembered. Our helicopter crashed. Then what was that dream I just had…? Don’t tell me my life was flashing before my eyes! Cough cough!!”

The surface of the desert was not flat. It had large undulations similar to a stormy sea and some areas had height differences of several meters. He was lying in a position to use one of those sand dunes as a shield.

But what was he being shielded from?

The answer was obviously the attacks being fired their way.

Seemingly never-ending sounds of bursting gunfire made him think of a fireworks show gone wrong. Quenser’s group was not on the attack. They were unilaterally being fired upon. The storm of steel was so great they would have been torn to pieces in just a few seconds if not for the dune.

Heivia had his back pressed against the dune while sticking just his rifle’s sensors up over it.

“Are you finally awake, you bastard!? I was beginning to think I wasted an adrenaline cartridge!!”

“Seriously? You mean one of those thick needles you stab directly into the heart!? I was in that bad a state!?”

“I thought this would be best. If you were hitting on an angel, I apologize.”

“Oh, right! I saw my life flash before my eyes! It seemed so real!! Um…huh? I can’t quite remember what happened. I remember seeing the princess, Froleytia, and the old maintenance woman.”

“Right, right. I already knew how little fidelity you had, but it’s good to know you’re the same as ever!”

As his blood flow returned to normal, the data in Quenser’s head gradually fell into the proper order.

(Oh, that’s right.)

He had been sent on a mission by Froleytia.

They were to investigate the underground structure he had come across during the battle with the Simple Is Best and Hornet Storm. Even if it was not a very important building, she had needed detailed information on anything in the combat zone for a report to the higher ups.

Quenser and the others had been loaded onto large transport helicopters and sent to the area of desert in question.

Nothing but cream-colored sand had continued in every direction, so it had been a frightening sight to look down on. He had wanted to avoid getting lost here. Even a South American jungle would have more opportunities for survival techniques.

The only landmarks were the remains of the rusty pipelines that travelled here and there like blood vessels of the planet. But if one was stranded, it would probably be impossible to tell a rescue team where one was using them. After all, they would continue in a straight line for 100 or even 1000 kilometers.

“It doesn’t matter how intently you stare down there, you aren’t going to find an oasis or a girl in a micro bikini,” Heivia had said. “More importantly, can you believe we’re travelling over a battlefield in a helicopter? Sure, we aren’t directly dealing with an Object, but one of them might suddenly decide to go on a hunt.”

But if they had been crammed into military trucks to travel along the rough desert under the hot sun, they would have been struck by the double-punch of heat stroke and motion sickness before even arriving at the site.

After the formation of large helicopters had travelled for a while, they had spotted the remains of the terminal facility where several old pipelines gathered. That facility had been used to gather water from deep underground rather than oil.

But they had soon spotted a few trucks with canopies parked near the old facility.

Quenser had frowned.

“Are those scavengers trying to gather anything of value?”

“There can’t be any proper machinery left. And look at the canopies. That’s the Blue Cross. They’re the world’s largest medical humanitarian organization. They head to Antarctic and the jungle to find samples of deadly bacteria, they give money to groups researching nanotech medicine, and all sorts of other things. They’re probably providing food.”

“Nanotech? Oh, you mean the techniques taken from military science where it could be used as a new method for regulating Elite’s bodies? They place drops of medicine in a membrane like it’s a small bubble, get that bubble past the filters to the brain or kidneys, and provide the medicine directly to the target. They use ultrasonic waves to break the outer shell at the desired point, right?”

“You get excited about anything that has even the slightest connection to Objects, don’t you? Could you stop breathing so heavily? It’s creepy.”

“Anyway, what’s the Blue Cross doing at these abandoned ruins?”

At that point, Quenser’s memories suddenly lost coherency.

As he lay on his back with a hand on his sweaty brow, he let out a groan.

“That’s right. Those bastards weren’t the Blue Cross at all. Someone painted up their trucks to trick us. They removed the canopies and there were missiles inside.”

“Are you the type that needs coffee and toast to wake up in the morning? If not, get moving!! We’re gonna be surrounded!!”

The burnt smell was coming from the remains of their crashed helicopter.

The whirl of bullets was not coming from just one direction. They were partially surrounded by a C-shape.

It was unclear who the enemy was or how many of them there were.

Their group had to be at least two or three sizes larger than Quenser and Heivia’s group. More than twenty people were lying behind the sand dune like Quenser. They all had their arms or legs bound with bandages to stop their bleeding, some had the removed stock of a carbine used to set a broken bone, and a lot of them were unconscious. The area had become a makeshift field hospital.

Quenser looked up at the blue sky that seemed to continue forever.

“Where are the other helicopters? Where’s our way out!? We’ll just be worn down bit by bit like this. We can’t fight in the desert without a means of mobility!”

“All of the functioning helicopters have temporarily withdrawn! We can’t exactly overcome their surface-to-air missiles with the power of friendship. If they hovered around here to pick us up, they’d be shot down! No help is coming until we silence those!!”

“They may be transport helicopters, but they have machineguns attached to the door, right? Firing down with those would make a huge difference!!”

“In this clean age, no one wants to start a Western-style quick draw using heavy weaponry. We won’t get anywhere wishing for something that isn’t coming. Focus on reality!!”

Nothing but sand as far as the eye could see lay in every direction.

There was no escape without some kind of vehicle. Even if they began to flee on foot, they would be quickly overtaken and riddled with holes. Falling back would not improve their situation and most of those injured in the crash were in no state to walk on their own.

The enemy was advancing.

Once the enemy surpassed the sand dune, they would only sink into a puddle of blood.

“Screw this. You’ve gotta be kidding me. I thought this was supposed to be an easy mission.”

As Quenser complained, he rolled over onto his stomach. He then climbed up the dune and stopped next to Heivia.

“How many are there?”

“Somewhere between 50 and 60. Only a samurai or ninja could defeat that many in a straight fight. It would be a different story if we had support from the helicopters, but we need to silence those armored vehicles to do that.”

“Who are they anyway?”

“I don’t know. But knowing that they’re bastards who don’t deserve to live is good enough for me,” spat out Heivia. “But their equipment is relatively new. It looks like they gathered downgraded weapons that the Capitalist Corporations and the Information Alliance sell to gather foreign currency. Their ability may be intentionally lowered, but they’re expensive. I doubt a gang or slum residents who are strapped for cash could get their hands on this stuff.”

The repeated sounds of gunfire caused Quenser to grimace.

“Are you saying those are trained soldiers? They’re firing around almost at random. If they were aiming each shot, we would have already been filled with bullets.”

“Listen, skinny boy. Have you never heard of sounding out your enemy? When you don’t know where they are, you fire all over the place and wait for them to react. …It’s all over once they find out where exactly we are. They have tons of machineguns and missiles on their trucks. Specifically, they have more than ten trucks. This shield of sand is meaningless. They may be surface-to-air, but a few of those missiles will blow the terrain to smithereens.”

Quenser let out a long, slow breath.

And then he asked another question.

“Then what exactly are we supposed to do?”

“Well done getting your mind in gear.”

Heivia pulled back the rifle sensors he had peering over the dune and used the sand to write out the information he had risked his life to collect.

“They have their machinegun and surface-to-air missile equipped trucks set up to protect the terminal facility that pumps water up from underground. They’re between five and six hundred meters away. Their rifles and machineguns can reach us from there, but fifty or sixty soldiers armed with carbines and light machineguns are slowly approaching. Once they cross a certain line, we’ll be slaughtered. We need to do something before they can manage that.”

“We can’t win if we fight? Are there too many of them?”

“As I said, we could annihilate their infantry with our helicopter machineguns, but those helicopters can’t approach right now. We need to silence those surface-to-air missile containers sitting up on their trucks.”

“But…”

Quenser glanced over at Heivia.

He carried a shoulder-fired missile launcher over his back. That could be used to blow up the armored trucks, but there was one major problem.

“That’s right. I only have one shot and there are over ten of them. This isn’t going to work.”

“…”

Quenser remained silent for a moment.

He stared at the rough map his friend had drawn on the sand.

“Heivia, my memories aren’t perfect due to the shock, so I need to ask you something.”

“I’m not your fiancé from before your memory loss if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“It’s about when they attacked our helicopter with their missiles. I know I can’t expect a large transport helicopter to evade, but we weren’t shot down without putting up any kind of fight, right?”

“What? Well, I remember a siren blaring as it scattered chaff and flares to trick their radar. I think we might have activated an infrared jammer as well, but you can see how well all that worked. We were shot down and the other helicopters were forced to withdraw.”

“In other words, we had countermeasures, but they were completely ineffective,” said Quenser while emphasizing each word. “They have some large radar equipment supporting their targeting. That’s how they saw through our deceptions and shot us down. But what if all of their anti-air weaponry is reliant on it? We could take out their ‘net in the sky’ by destroying just the one piece of equipment. Guns and missiles are essentially the same. Without a means of aiming them, they won’t cause any damage.”

“It does make sense,” groaned Heivia. “All of the trucks have oddly large antennae attached. It’s definitely possible they’re using accurate data from a command vehicle that specializes in gathering intelligence. But…”

“But?”

“Where is it?” Heivia stabbed his rifle’s stock into the center of his map on the sand. “You heard me, right? There are more than ten of their armored trucks and we only have one missile. If we don’t hit the command vehicle on the first shot, it’s all over. Once we lose our trump card, we have nothing left!! Is there any way to tell which one it is!?”

“That’s a good question.”

Quenser folded his arms lightly and traced his index finger over his mouth.

He looked like he was contemplating the dinner menu.

“Heivia, how many assault rifle and handgun bullets do you have left?”

“What?”

“If it isn’t enough, gather some more from those too injured to move. They won’t do them any good anyway.”

“Wait, wait! They may have been disguised as the Blue Cross, but their trucks probably still have handmade plate inside. You can’t fight armored trucks with normal bullets!!”

“I’m not trying to destroy the trucks. I have no interest in the bullets themselves.”

“???”

Quenser ignored Heivia’s confused look and gathered a few assault rifles and carbines.

He disassembled them without any tools and removed the barrel which resembled a long, narrow pipe.

“What are you trying to do?”

“Make some giant fireworks.”

Quenser bent and crushed one end of the long, narrow tubes, removed the rifle bullets from the magazines, and scattered them across the sand.

“A long time ago, they would actually use this kind of simple rocket weapon in Asia. They were meant to set fire to castles or ships. …You said the distance is five or six hundred meters? Cramming in this much intelligent military powder should reach. Even if I attach a plastic explosive and fuse to the front.”

“Are you saying we can oppose all those armored trucks if we go to this extra trouble?” Heivia looked displeased. “Have you forgotten what matters most with weapons, Quenser? Targeting. Reaching them and hitting them are two very different things! A simple fireworks rocket made by stuffing powder into a tube and attaching it to a stick for stability isn’t going to hit!!”

“It doesn’t have to hit.” Quenser readily overturned Heivia’s assumption. “They think they’re perfectly safe over there, so if bombs start bursting too far away to have been thrown, they’ll definitely panic. They’ll try to evacuate the most important thing first. I don’t know how stupid they are, but they should be smart enough to know they can’t afford to have their radar vehicle destroyed. While they’re busy secretly moving their most important card away, you just have to blow it up with your missile.”

Heivia was dumbfounded, but Quenser continued his cunning explanation.

“You mentioned sounding out your enemy, remember? Let’s show them how it’s really done.”

===Part 3===

As planned, the makeshift rockets were fired into the Oceanian sky.

Heivia fired his shoulder-fired missile into the command truck with the large-scale radar antenna attached and the Legitimacy Kingdom’s unilateral counterattack began.

Once the threat of anti-air weapons was removed, the large transport helicopters were able to return.

They had large caliber machineguns bolted directly to the floor near the door.

As the sound of those firing exploded overhead, Quenser covered his mouth with one hand.

“Why do people like to root for the underdog? Where did my hatred for them go?”

“I think you’re actually looking down on them with a sense of superiority. But don’t worry. You’re enjoying your life well enough.”

Quenser and Heivia lay face down on the slope of the sand dune while the sounds of destruction continued.

The handmade armored trucks had been relatively well modified, but they were filled with holes, their gasoline tanks and weaponry ignited, and they violently exploded. The intense destruction of the machineguns rained down evenly on the group of infantry who had tried to corner Quenser and the others. There were no screams. Instead, a dark red sauce was splattered across the giant frying pan of the desert.

Quenser entered a philosophic mood.

“What is peace?”

Heivia picked his nose with his little finger.

“It’s when we’re still alive.”

After about ten minutes, the sounds of gunfire completely stopped.

A few of the transport helicopters remained at the ready in the air while a few others slowly descended to collect the injured.

One soldier who stepped out of a helicopter shouted over the noise of the rotors.

“Thanks for your work!! We have permission to bring back all of your injured. Leave them with us and they can recover in a bed that reeks of disinfectant!!”

“Yeah, yeah. We get it! But take a look behind you before you say that. The helicopters aren’t at all ready to leave. We can’t leave until the investigation is done!!”

Quenser and Heivia watched as the investigation team and their guards started for the pump facility that connected to the giant underground structure.

The ceiling of the underground structure had collapsed during the previous battle, so it was open to the surface. However, no one would rappel down a ten meter cliff when a perfectly safe staircase was available.

Quenser used his uniform’s sleeve to wipe sweat from his brow and looked up at the roasting sun that felt like the end of the world.

“What do we do now? I don’t want to sit around here. We would dry up before they finished.”

“There’s a pipeline over there. It’s rusted and falling apart, but we can rest behind it. The humidity should be lower and it’ll block the sun.”

The pipeline was a tube with a diameter of over two meters, so it produced enough of a shadow to sit in. The two boys walked over and found most of the other soldiers already leaning up against the rusted metal pipe like a line of ants.

“This is awful.”

“Are you sure it’s cooler here? I feel like gathering together would concentrate the heat.”

Quenser pulled out the water bottle attached to his uniform and took a gulp. It had been warmed by the sun and his body temperature, so he spat it back out.

“Yuck! It feels like I’m drinking my own sweat!!”

“Use your head, student. You need to cool the water bottle with the icing spray used for machineguns. Medic!!”

Heivia’s joking shout let Quenser know the danger had truly passed.

“So what was that? This pump facility is in ruins and all the usable equipment was removed. Missiles cost 10,000 euros each. Why would they defend this place with their lives?”

“Look over here, Quenser.”

Heivia peered inside a broken portion of the pipeline. The pipe was over two meters wide, so it looked more like a metal tunnel.

In fact, it was one.

“There’s sand gathered at the bottom and there’s a thick line down the middle. It looks like a tire track. From the width, I’d say a motorcycle.”

“A tire track?”

With a confused look, Quenser peered inside the broken pipe.

And then it hit him.

“This abandoned pipeline network stretches across the entire desert. No water or oil is being sent through it, so it’s a safe empty space. You don’t mean…”

“When the military government ruled Oceania, secret funds, weapons, and drugs travelled across the country like ghosts were transporting them. They slipped right past the military checkpoints and satellite surveillance. It was said they did it by bribing or threatening the local soldiers, but this might be it.”

“A secret tunnel? So as easily as heading underground through a manhole, they could freely move across Oceania without being checked?”

It was not the pump facility or the giant underground structure that mattered.

Someone was trying to hide the large-scale smuggling network that used the pipelines.

“People armed with the latest military equipment were fighting to protect a smuggling network? That smells fishy to me. Is it an intelligence agency raising funds by selling drugs or something?”

“But who exactly were they?” Heivia looked annoyed as he glanced over at the corpses which had been almost completely destroyed. “Their equipment looks like a collection of Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance stuff. And it’s the downgraded versions sold for foreign currency rather than the official military equipment. They announce they’re lowering the quality, but still keep the price high. I doubt a local gang or mafia would want to use them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure. Were they soldiers or were they people hired to help out? Well, either way they would mix in a few pros to take command.”

Suddenly, an infantryman guarding the exterior of the pump facility spoke to Quenser and Heivia.

“If you’re discussing conspiracy theories, you might want to check this out.”

“What?”

Heivia sounded puzzled as the man tossed him a small rectangular handheld device.

However, this was not the type issued to Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. It also had dark red stains in places.

The soldier shrugged.

“I was scavenging. Those thugs out front were splattered everywhere, so I gathered whatever I thought I could sell.”

“Seriously? You really set foot in that poisonous swamp?”

“And in exchange, I found some interesting data. It looks less like official data and more like someone at the bottom gathered some data to figure out what he was involved in.”

“…”

Quenser turned on the device and it was not even locked with a password.

Some of the data files were filled with numbers about ten digits long. He could not read hexadecimal off the top of his head, so he could not tell anything from just that.

“Wait a second,” said Heivia as he peered in from the side. “The first four digits are all the same. I thought these looked familiar. They’re bank account numbers, aren’t they? I think these belong to a major Information Alliance one.”

“Why does a Legitimacy Kingdom noble know that?”

“Don’t be stupid. In this age of wars, you never know what levies will be imposed. Do you really think a greedy noble is going to keep all his money in a single account? We have tons of ways of spreading out our assets. My family has a group of specialist accountants working for us.”

Quenser tilted his head as he scrolled through the iron-smelling device.

There appeared to be over one hundred bank account numbers.

“So what is this list of bank accounts?”

“Probably a deposit list. In other words, these connect to the names of the people cooperating with the people running things from the shadows. Look, the numbers at the end of the account numbers are the same too. That probably refers to a branch in a tropical island tax haven. They’re probably using secret accounts to launder their money.”

“The people running things from the shadows? We still don’t know if this is really a conspiracy.”

“If we dig up the names and identities of this week’s MVPs here, we might find a connection. They disguised their trucks as the Blue Cross and loaded them with machineguns and missiles to hide the secret passageway through the pipeline. They’re definitely up to no good.”

The mischievous infantryman shrugged in utter exhaustion.

“These are secret accounts in the Information Alliance. They aren’t going to give us the information if we ask.”

“Quenser.”

“Do I look that smart to you? Do you think you can just throw any problem my way?”

Quenser looked irritated, but he begrudgingly agreed after the soldiers around him tossed some icing spray his way.

He sprayed it across his water bottle and spoke.

“Knowing the account numbers is a start. How about we leak the entire list onto the internet while making it look like they were hacked? With secret tax haven accounts, trust matters most. If information has been taken straight from the servers, the clients and managers will both panic.”

“Yes, but will that accomplish anything other than causing a commotion?”

“We can quickly open a fake website claiming to check whether your account number was stolen. If we add in some spyware to snatch the IP of anyone entering their number, we should be able to determine who entered what number. And the shadier the person, the sooner they’ll respond.”

In that instant, everyone resting in the shade of the pipeline stared silently at Quenser.

He squirmed under the pressure of the strange silence.

“Um, what is this? Is this any way to react after I give you what you want?”

“This settles it. Nothing good would come of letting him leave the military.”

They contacted the maintenance base zone’s intelligence division via radio, but they said it would take several days to create a proper fake website.

Heivia stuck out his tongue.

“Damn those desk workers. Do clocks move at a different speed over there? Are they using a vacation clock or something?”

“Either way, I’m jealous.”

“They aren’t on board with this. It’s a pain, but you heard them. Everyone, give any idea we can use to steal the credit from the intelligence department since they refuse to play along.”

Long story short, they ended up with the following ideas: “Different computer viruses are compressed and saved on a certain foreign server”, “I know a collection of templates for scam sites”, and “As long as you have the basic template for the site, you can use a cloud service to edit the details and create a false site in only a few minutes.”

“Why do all of you know about this kind of thing?”

“As a future engineer, I think you should gladly welcome useful nerds. Otherwise, your organization will end up as a dinosaur fossil.”

As they had announced, the bored helpers completed the false website in only a few minutes. Rather than building it from the ground up, they chose a template from a database containing thousands of templates for scam sites and added the necessary decorations. They did the same for the spyware.

“Where should we spread the address? Just on any major message board?”

“For the Legitimacy Kingdom, there’s Blue Blood which only nobles with bloodlines continuing back for 300 years can enter. For the Information Alliance, there’s Rank Literacy which can only be used by people who run sites with over half a million hits a day. There are sites for elitist people from the other two world powers as well.”

“Those are all closed SNSs. We can probably manage with Blue Blood, but you aren’t using my ID.”

“I don’t need to. Everyone uses different identities online. A refined noble will let off some steam by shouting insults on anonymous message boards like it’s a masquerade party. If we spread the information there, the tainted information will make its way into the closed SNSs. They’ll ruin their own attempts to seal it off.”

“It sounds like the insecticide used for roaches. It’s made to look like delicious food so they’ll take it back to their nest where it kills all of them.”

A male soldier had been curled up and fiddling with a handheld device, but he now made an OK sign with his hand.

The others peered curiously at the small screen.

“This virus site is a lot like creating a robot from an empty box and tape, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it’s already gotten a few pieces of personal information.”

First, they had leaked the list online and let the emergency information spread. Once the clients grew uneasy, they were lured to the false site where they entered their account number. It was unclear when exactly the different waves of attack began.

“We have a few names and identities to go with numbers on our list. About ten so far. Let’s try to find a link between them.”

“Wait.” Heivia pointed at one of the names. “This is an international satellite TV executive. He claims to bring laughter and the truth to the blank regions and dictatorships where information is being controlled. Oceania’s mass media has begun to recover, but it’s still unstable. Satellite TV still has a lot of credibility and influence here.”

He pointed at another name.

“This is a blog king. He’s known as Oceania’s leading source of sarcasm.”

He pointed at another.

“This is an entertainer famous for volunteer work.”

And another.

“An executive for an international canned drink maker. They have ads during all sorts of shows.”

As each name was described, Quenser saw a common theme.

“Are they using the media to influence people’s impressions?”

“Their impressions of what?”

“No matter how much they’re being paid, I doubt they would say something that strays too far from their ideologies and beliefs. The money is nothing but the trigger giving them the final push. In that case, what do these people believe in?”

Heivia grimaced when he heard that.

He had been the one describing the names, so he had a general understanding of the people.

“This might be a major headache for us.”

“Why?”

“They want true independence for Oceania by having the ‘thugs’ leave. They’re a bunch of people who refuse to do any real work while pretending to be pacifists. They think they’re the most important no matter what.”

“Even the corporate executives?”

“Sitting arrogantly in a leather chair isn’t normally referred to as ‘work’.”

A mysterious group in Oceania was spreading intentionally biased information to create a tendency toward hating the coalition military.

The current problem was the pipeline they were using to secretly transport something across the desert. They had even started a firefight with the Legitimacy Kingdom in order to hide it.

This was more than a newspaper editorial.

This mysterious group was prepared to use legitimate violence.

“This pipeline is being used as a secret transportation network and massive amounts of money are being given to influential people to manipulate the opinions of the Oceanian people. What are they trying to do here?”

“Hey,” spoke up the soldiers who had helped them earlier. “I checked a few more of their handheld devices and there’s a net storage site they access frequently. They may keep their larger data there.”

“Does it have a password?”

“Just like online banks, it uses a one-time password. …But this was outsourced and the company in charge of security has slipped past the firewall a few times. We might be able to use the maintenance master key.”

“Would they really use the same key for several weeks or months?”

“No, but if we find a pattern to the changes in the periodically updated alphanumeric key, it might be possible to determine what the current key is. It will take some time, though.”

“Try working on it,” said Quenser as his radio emitted an electronic tone.

Froleytia was calling them.

“I have a question for all of you. You aren’t performing unauthorized electronic warfare against an Information Alliance tax haven bank, are you? The intelligence department has detected a fascinating flow of data.”

(Shit!!)

Everyone there straightened their spines.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were at war, but wars had rules known as treaties. And as Heivia had said, secret tax haven accounts were unofficially used by nobles and royals so they could secretly divide their assets up between false names and dummy corporations. Even if this was an enemy nation, some higher ups might not want them messing with it. Someone might be placing pressure on Froleytia.

But when no amount of apology would fix the situation, Quenser did not want to continue speaking for long.

He responded casually while looking around for help.

Heivia pointed toward the pump facility with his thumb.

“(That thick concrete might cut off the signal!!)”

“Okay, okay. Eh? What!? No, no. That isn’t what we’re doing!!”

While Quenser stalled for time, he and Heivia ran toward the remains of the pump facility.

They circled around the lake of dark red sauce and continued toward the building which contained stairs leading underground.

The armored trucks disguised as the Blue Cross were still burning and smoking. They would no longer function, but the two idiots circled well away from them because the bombs or missiles could suddenly burst.

The inside of the building was a large space.

It had originally been a facility to draw up unused water from underground and send it to grain-producing land, but all of the equipment had been removed when it was abandoned. It was now a movie theater-sized space made of reinforced concrete. It was essentially empty. Broken metal stairways and passageways could be found here and there and they appeared to be built around large machinery that was no longer present.

But that did not matter.

“(Heivia! The signal’s still going strong!! Froleytia’s completely pissed!! We can’t escape like this!!)”

“(Let’s head down the spiral staircase and underground!!)”

The two idiots descended the spiral staircase and ran out into a narrow tunnel. Static finally began to fill the radio signal.

This was the moment they had been waiting for.

“Ksshhh. Wait, what is… Explain yourse-…kssssshhhhh!!”

“Eh? What? I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you at all!! Over!!”

With that, he ended the transmission and switched off the radio altogether.

Heivia leaned up against the concrete wall.

“If we hang around here, the investigation team will see us and force odd jobs on us. Let’s go pretend to be working.”

They were doing nothing more than extending their suffering, but they took an extremely positive stance and viewed it as a chance to arrange the excuses they needed to weasel out of it.

They passed through a straight corridor and arrived at the underground structure.

However…

“Wow. There really isn’t a ceiling. It feels like the world’s biggest convertible.”

The ground above had completely collapsed during the previous battle, so the blue sky was perfectly visible even in the “underground” structure. They were over ten meters down, so they were not about to climb up or down rather than using the stairs.

A lot of sand had poured in, so it looked a lot more cluttered than the pump facility.

The piles of wooden boxes may have added to that impression.

“It looks like they’ve finished investigating here. Otherwise, we never would have been allowed in.”

“What are these boxes? Surely they aren’t empty.”

After receiving permission from a man on the investigation team who was taking photographs, Quenser and Heivia removed the nails from one wooden box and opened it.

“There’s some kind of powder packed in plastic.”

“But it doesn’t look like something with a high street price.”

The bags had some kind of label, so Quenser used his handheld device to snap a photo.

They opened a few more boxes and found reels of fiber optic cable as well as nuts and bolts packaged by size.

“Did someone’s father make a secret base for his home improvement projects?”

“Wait. I think I know what that powder was,” muttered Quenser.

Suddenly, the two idiots heard the noise of something falling over.

And when they turned toward the noise…

===Part 4===

In the name of war recovery, many different types of construction had begun at a fevered pitch across Oceania: houses, shops, roads, water and sewage, etc. The coalition of the four world powers claimed bringing order to the country was their top priority, but they could not utterly eliminate anyone who was even slightly suspicious. Specialists who did not look right in a suit or work uniform and guards who carried guns could not be distinguished from actual bad guys.

If those suspicious-looking people were let into the same space as rich foreign tourists, it could lead to a situation similar to a hamster that mistook another hamster’s sex.

To keep some separation, a hidden side to the city was created for those suspicious-looking people. Drawn by the flow of money, violent restaurants, marriage scam artists who were always crying in a bar, and people from various other occupations would gather there. These were the people who had gone too far in their original country. Like a snowball rolling down a snowy mountain, the strength of these dark cities slowly but steadily grew.

A certain bar in one such place was quite cheap but it was best not to think about what corners were cut to make it that cheap. In a dimly lit corner of that bar, a small group sat around a table cut off from the rest of the bar by curtains.

“They have failed.”

A young man wore a black suit and hat that looked out of place in the summertime desert. His sunglasses looked more like they were hiding his face than protecting his eyes from the sun.

“Terminal 52 has been taken by the Legitimacy Kingdom. The men we hired were wiped out.”

“We knew they would lose from the beginning.”

He was not the only one in such a conspicuous outfit.

A woman sitting at the same table wore all black, down to her necktie.

“Even if they could temporarily drive them back, they are a world power and thus they have an Object. If the problem grew too large, they would have sent it in. Those men were doomed to lose.”

But it was not just the two of them. Everyone at the table was wearing all black.

“Their loss was planned for. We all understand that. In that case, could you tell us one thing? Did they die before or after achieving their goal?”

“If not, I would be a little more concerned.”

“Whatever gets in the way, no one can reach us as long as all evidence is destroyed in the end.”

Everyone turned toward the young man who had spoken first.

No, they were technically looking behind him.

A blonde woman stood there wearing the exact same suit and sunglasses. She also held the same type of handgun the rest of them possessed.

“Are you saying the objective was achieved?”

The young man slowly raised his hands in response.

The tip of the silencer was already pressed against the back of his head.

He smiled thinly and responded quietly.

“Yes. And let me add this: it was nice knowing-…”

A muffled gunshot interrupted his words.

He collapsed face-first onto the round table. The others slowly stood up and took the necessary measures. They gathered the empty shell casing from the ground, used a rag wet with alcohol to wipe down anything that might have their fingerprints or saliva on it, and cleaned up the floor with a roller of sticky tape to pick up any fallen hair.

They made sure it was the same as if nothing had happened.

“Case #022 complete. Supervisor Alaska 49’s death has cut off the trail. Case #023 will now begin. The supervisor will be me, Texas 28.”

The blonde woman spoke quietly while pulling a brand new tablet computer from her bag. The others all focused on her.

They did so exactly as they had focused on the young man who had just been killed.

It was as if it were a ritual that had begun long before that young man.

“Fortunately, Case #022’s objective was fulfilled. A link with the scene has been secured. As planned, we shall continue to the next situation.”

“In other words?”

“We shall bury it in an explosion.”

They remained in the shadows.

Even when they won and when they were superior, they would kill their allies to suppress all information.

In that case, they were not going to hesitate to kill their enemies.

===Part 5===

“Not good,” muttered Quenser.

He had seen what some kind of impact had knocked over within the underground structure.

“Not good!! Heivia, everyone else! Get out of here now!!”

“What’s the matter, Quenser?”

A 1.5 meter cylindrical container similar to a propane tank lay before them. However, it was made of transparent reinforced glass and it was filled with some kind of liquid. The center of the cylinder had a donut-like hollow area which was filled with an explosive.

“That’s an acid bomb. Militaries use it to destroy evidence!! When the explosive detonates, it destroys the container and the blast sends a thorough shower of powerful acid in every direction. In just a few seconds, it reacts with the air and a vaporized acid cloud expands out. It’ll swallow up five hundred to eight hundred meters in no time! If you get caught in that, you’ll end up in a photograph at an exhibit on the horrors of war!!”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me!? Then were those guys here to set this thing up!? There might be something hidden here!!”

“With something that large and heavy, they couldn’t transport it by motorcycle, so they couldn’t use their secret pipeline. They were forced to use a truck and that’s when we ran across them.”

“But it’s just a bomb, right? Can’t you defuse it!? Bombs are your specialty!”

“There’s no time. There’s only ten minutes left! It’s waiting for a passcode in case it was accidentally activated, but that isn’t enough time to analyze it!! If you want to live, start running! We need to get back to the helicopters!!”

Quenser and Heivia did not hesitate to flee the underground structure and they made sure to bring the investigation team and their guards with them.

As they ran through the long, narrow corridor, Quenser turned his radio back on, hit the switch, and explained the situation to the helicopters so they could leave immediately.

But that might have been a mistake.

“Ahhhhhh!! Shit!!”

As soon as they ran up the spiral staircase and out of the pump facility, Heivia swore.

They could see multiple helicopters taking off.

“Wait, dammit! Wait!! If we hadn’t told you, you would’ve been surrounded by the acid cloud! We saved your lives!!”

“Sorry, but rescuing the injured takes precedence! Can you steal one of the enemy’s trucks and escape on your own!?”

“Do you really think any of them are still running!? You were the ones that blew them up!!”

“Heivia, they aren’t coming back! More importantly, everyone who’s left needs to gather here. Anyone who makes a mistake here will be melted by acid!!”

Quenser heard a deafening sound resembling an amplified version of a shaken can of beer being opened.

A strange white cloud began to spread out not far away. It grew to the size of an Object in no time.

“That’s the acid cloud,” said Heivia as his face paled.

The giant cloud burst up from the underground structure like cotton candy. It exited the hole from the collapse and spread out across the desert. At the same time, it was likely entering the pump facility through the stairway leading up. That death had no gaps. Everyone would be wiped out.

“That thing spreads faster than a forest fire. Sixty kph was it!? It’ll overtake us if we try to escape on foot!!”

“We can escape.”

“How?”

“Through the pipeline! The thick metal should hold it off temporarily! If we can escape beyond its effective range of several hundred meters before it dissolves the metal pipe, we can survive. It’s a chance at least!!”

Quenser began running as he shouted his instructions to Heivia and the others using his radio.

“Wait, Quenser! That pipeline is falling apart. What if the pipe is completely broken partway down? The acid cloud will enter there and trap us!!”

“Would you rather stay here? Bye bye, Heivia. You can stick with 0%, but I’m going to bet on 1%. Even your dog tags will probably be dissolved, so we won’t gather your remains!!”

“I get it! I get it, goddammit!!”

The pipe was rusty and falling apart. Cracks and large holes existed in places.

Quenser and the others ran inside that empty and sandy tube as quickly as they could.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me!!”

The acid cloud will hit in less than thirty seconds! Seal up the holes as best you can!! Use body bags or whatever to cover them and keep the acid cloud out!”

[[Image:HO_v07_300.png|thumb]]

They knew it was not going to be perfect.

After some quick work, they ran down the two meter tunnel with all their strength.

They were soon surrounded by a sound resembling stir-frying.

“The acid cloud has caught up!!”

“It won’t break through the pipe right away! Keep running!!”

The pipeline had been created to carry over ten tons of liquid every second, so it had been built quite thick to withstand the internal pressure. But the sound of the metal being eaten away still squeezed at their hearts so much they forgot how thick it was.

“It’s only going to last two or three minutes.”

“We just have to make it a few hundred meters. That isn’t a marathon. We can escape to safety if we run as quickly as we can!!”

“Damn them, whoever they are! What do they want to hide so badly that they’re willing to ruin the environment like this!?”

“We can think about it after we survive!!”

Strange sparks seemed to explode in their heads and it became impossible to think about anything unnecessary.

They just ran and ran and ran and ran.

As they ran, the outside world had long since vanished from their minds. They began to feel like their goal had been filled with the acid and that the acid cloud had covered the entire world.

“Hot!?”

“There are cracks here and there. Keep running while covering your head with some kind of cloth! Stopping will only eat away at our skin!!”

Fortunately, the cracks were small and not much of the acid cloud seemed to be getting in.

But Quenser and the others did not have time to objectively evaluate the situation.

They could not tell if the dampness inside their uniforms was their sweat or their melted skin.

Even so, they continued running.

It was not exactly out of stubbornness. They were simply losing themselves in the simple action of running so they could avert their gaze from the certain death closing in on them.

“Quenser,” Heivia finally called out.

Quenser could not imagine why he was calling out to him.

“Quenser! It’s over. The sizzling sound is gone. We’ve left the range of the acid cloud.”

“Ah? Eh?”

“We survived! We don’t need to run any further. Do you want to destroy your own heart!?”

It took him a while to truly realize he had survived.

He eventually collapsed to a sitting position and could tell his lips were twitching.

After a few seconds, he finally realized he was smiling.

===Part 6===

Somewhere in Oceania, the muffled sound of a gun with a silencer could be heard.

Another young man looked down at a blonde woman with a bullet hole in her forehead.

“Case #023 complete. The objective was not achieved and it has been deemed a failure. To recover, Case #024 will now begin.”

===Part 7===

Quenser worked hard to calm down Heivia who was seriously planning to punch the pilot of the slowly descending helicopter. Surprisingly, the intellectual-looking investigation team seemed to agree with Heivia. They were only human and anyone would be angry when their supposed comrades unreasonably abandoned them in an acid cloud.

“Calm down. If we all flip them off, they might fly away without us. We need to give them a smile with the kindness of a younger sister and the dependability of an older sister.”

“Got it, Quenser. You’re saying we act like a carnivorous plant, right? Once they open the helicopter door, their life is over.”

The helicopter team must have felt bad because, when they opened the door, they handed out bottles of carbonated drinks they had found somewhere. The bottles were ice cold thanks to the icing spray for machineguns. There were some enticements one’s senses could not resist. After running around in the 50 degree desert, this was more than enough to quiet them down.

The middle-aged male pilot explained the situation.

“The acid cloud is spreading out higher in the sky like a cumulonimbus cloud. We checked the weather map for the wind and there is a danger of running into it on our way back to the maintenance base. We want more accurate information if possible.”

“If that’s the only reason you picked us up, I really will shove you out.”

Growing stubborn was not going to accomplish anything.

The helicopter team’s decision had not been wrong given all the injured they had and Quenser’s group had indeed managed to hold on to their lives.

In that case, they needed to use their brains for something more important.

“So what do you think they were trying to destroy?” asked Quenser as the movements of the helicopter shook him. “Do you think it was those wooden boxes in the underground structure? Y’know, those fiber optic cables, the bolts, the nuts, and that strange powder.”

Quenser stared at the photographs he had taken on his handheld device, but then he heard someone give a sudden cry of surprise.

It came from one of the intellectual infantryman who had helped them create the fake site for the bank account numbers.

“What is it?”

“I was searching for the master key to the net storage we discovered using those thugs’ devices, remember? Well, I think I found something bad.”

Everyone gathered around the slender infantryman.

All of the stern men stared at the small screen.

It had recorded phone calls, graphs showing the exchange of money, and documents on the group’s projects and external cooperators. The infantryman displayed a summary file that looked like the minutes of a meeting.

'''“Concerning war recovery in Oceania and the influence that recovery provides within the country. A list of important infrastructure and how to drive a wedge into the provisional rule using the foundation of that infrastructure.”

“Wait, wait, wait. This contractor, this one, and this one are all major construction companies doing a lot of work toward Oceania’s recovery. Does this mean they’re all helping out this group or being unwittingly used by them?”

“Well, even the large contractors are using local people to pave roads and lay pipes. To promote employment, they’re actively seeking Oceanian personnel. These shady thugs could probably slip in there.”

“No matter what plans those at the top make, the project will be delayed if the people at the bottom secretly don’t do their job.”

“Electricity, gas, water, schools, hospitals, phones, and internet. All of them are vital pieces of infrastructure.”

“Delaying them will do a lot of damage to the provisional rule here. After all, that rule is really nothing more than a verbal promise. The people will lose faith if those promises aren’t met.”

“So either this group is actually causing this damage or they’re using it as a threat.”

“Either way, someone is definitely gaining great influence over the rulers of Oceania.”

'''“It is necessary to remove the coalition made up of the four world powers and it is necessary that we then intervene as rulers.”

“Someone’s trying to secretly shake up the provisional rule until it’s powerless. They want to swap out the structure of the nation so they can bring their interests to the forefront.”

“Does that mean it’s us, the coalition force, that’s in the way?”

“Dammit. That must be why they’re paying off that international satellite TV executive, that blog king, and the others! They’ve brought the Oceanian people’s anger to just under the boiling point using the failed infrastructure maintenance. What if they now release baseless rumors about the coalition from multiple influential sources? That will create an outlet for their pent up anger and large-scale riots will begin!!”

“We’re stationed here in Oceania in the name of preserving order, so they’re trying to guide international opinion to believe our presence is causing frequent riots that hurt or kill innocent people.”

“Then they can do whatever they want. Our higher ups are only spending the military budget on this because the image of a savior hero is useful in politics and diplomacy. Once it isn’t worth it anymore, the military might really leave.”

“And then a new oppressive dictatorship will begin. This group will be able to hide behind a puppet leader.”

'''“How to freely rearrange the national structure in the name of creating a modern justice system.”

“The Oceanian military nation had the country working on a completely flawed rulebook. Giving the country proper laws will definitely be necessary.”

“But when you remake the country’s rules from the ground up, it’s a lot easier for black-hearted people to work in loopholes than if they have to rearrange the system bit by bit.”

“Is that like how it’s easier for a baby than an adult to learn a foreign language?”

'''“Regarding the basic geographic conditions for a powerful nation.”

“Oceania has massive amounts of land and underground resources. If they can secure the water resources needed for large-scale agriculture, they don’t have to worry about food. Simply put, they have what it takes for an advantage in a long, difficult war.”

“Almost the entire continent is made up of a single power and they’re surrounded by ocean. Compared to countries that directly border a lot of other countries, they’re a lot harder to invade. The conditions are similar to what North America once was and a nation known as the world police once existed there.”

“If they create something similar here, it will cause problems in the world’s military balance. Of course, that’s what this group is probably trying to do.”

Quenser and the others read the document while discussing its contents, but a fundamental question caused Quenser to frown.

“But what are they going to do with this new dictatorship? The Oceanian military nation did something similar, but they were stopped by the combined attack of the coalition force. No matter how many conspiracies they weave together, they’ll be broken up as soon as the coalition notices them.”

“The military nation is a great example of that. I doubt any conspirator would want to meet the same fate as the leader there.”

“And the people here have to be the same. No one is going to think a riot can push back a fifty meter Object. Even a child would know that. Riots are meant to push with great numbers. If their front lines would be mowed down the instant they gathered, no one would gather.”

“They need some kind of symbol of rebellion. But what possible symbol would people think could defeat more than twenty Objects?”

“…”

Quenser glanced down at a handheld device.

This was not the one from the thugs. It was Quenser’s own that the Legitimacy Kingdom military had issued him.

It contained a few photographs he had taken in the underground structure attached the remains of the pump facility.

The photos were primarily of the wooden boxes’ contents.

One photo showed nuts and bolts divided by size.

One showed reels of fiber optic cable.

One showed bags of powder.

“Don’t tell me…”

“What’s wrong with a photo of nuts and bolts? You can buy those at home improvement stores the world over.”

“But not the fiber optic cable. This is the type that greatly raises signal stability by injecting argon gas into the tube. The price per meter is ridiculous, so it isn’t used in normal homes. It’s a military product that’s known as the nervous system of certain colossal weapons.”

“Wait… A military product? The nervous system of colossal weapons? You don’t mean…”

“And there’s this powder.”

Quenser gulped, zoomed in on the photo, and repeatedly read the bag’s label. No matter how many times he read it, it still said the same thing.

“This is the substance that gives Object armor its high-heat resistance and reactive ability. It isn’t used in anything else.”

“Then that’s the symbol of rebellion this group has built?”

When they thought about it, it was obvious.

Only one thing could pick a fight with the monstrous weapons that could withstand a direct hit with a nuclear missile.

They were synonymous with war.

They were 50+ meter masses of overwhelming military might.

“Were they using the pipelines spread out across Oceania’s desert to slowly gather the parts for an Object!?”

===Part 8===

The group of helicopters taking Quenser and the others back to the maintenance base zone was not far from arriving.

But they could barely stand to wait even that long.

“We don’t actually know when the Oceanian military government’s 0.5 generation Object was built. If it was built by smuggling the parts through this network of pipes and this group took over all that, it’s perfectly realistic to think they’ve completed an Object!!”

“Quit analyzing and report this, Quenser! Damn, I bet our huge-breasted commander is still mad. I just hope she’s willing to listen!!”

After they explained their thoughts over the radio, Froleytia responded bitterly.

“I have not forgotten about dealing with you two, but this isn’t good. It explains why things have been getting noisy outside.”

“What do you mean?”

“I have received a few troubling reports from the base’s sentries. It seems a two or three thousand of the local people have gathered. They’re only shaking the fence around the base and throwing small rocks, but we will have to forcibly make them leave if they do anything more. I want to avoid that while the journalists’ cameras are here. Also, I didn’t know what caused the commotion.”

People’s opinions varied, but the Legitimacy Kingdom military had not been all that hated by the Oceanian people.

“So they’ve already started delaying the infrastructure maintenance and pointing the people’s anger our way.”

“If they’ve already begun, that means it’s really damn likely they’ve finished their new Object! I don’t even feel like joking about this!!”

“But it takes nearly three years to build an Object from the ground up,” said Froleytia. “There hasn’t been enough time for a conspiracy thought up after seeing news of the Oceanian military nation’s collapse.”

“Wait a minute. Froleytia, you can’t mean what I think you mean!!”

“We just have to calculate backwards. If they started this project three years ago, it started before…ksshhh…military nation’s destruction…ksshh. That ridiculo-…ksshh…also part of their plan…ksssssshhhhhh!!”

“Froleytia? Hey, Froleytia!? Can you hear me!?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The military line has been jammed? By who? That alone qualifies as opposing us!!”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

Suddenly, a new voice came over the staticky radio.

It was a young man’s voice.

“Welcome to our nation of Oceania.”

“Really? We have to deal with this? I don’t see how this could lead to anything good.”

“I hear you have stubbornly survived the acid bomb and thus approached quite close to the truth. Even so, it is too late to do anything about it.”

“We at least know you were involved behind the scenes of the military nation and their 0.5 generation Object.’

“Yes. They never had the money and technology needed to construct an Object on their own. As you probably know, that was built based on a downgraded version of the design data for an Information Alliance model known as the Gatling 033...no, I suppose you refer to it by the codename of Rush.”

“Rush?”

Quenser frowned and recalled the “oh ho ho” laughter of that Information Alliance pilot Elite.

“But why did all of you so innocently believe that they had only constructed that one? If they can build one, they can build two. With the pipeline spread out across the entire desert and the one hundred terminal facilities connected to it, anything is possible. Our project had begun years and years before the fall of the military nation, so how many Objects do you think we have stocked up in that ant’s nest?”

He used the plural.

That was enough for a chill to run down the spines of everyone in the helicopter.

Just one of those monsters was more than enough.

“You’re lying. Objects are brand-name items that cost a billion dollars each. A single group can’t build that many!!”

“Money can buy something even better. Money is meant to be spent, so there is no reason to hold back. Am I wrong?”

“Something even better?”

“The world police,” said the young man over the radio.

That term was the symbol of an era.

“The world may have changed, but a North American superpower once had complete control of the world’s military balance. That was an era of peace. But that exemplary nation was smashed to pieces by the flow of time! The home countries of the Capitalist Corporations and Information Alliance now exist there. It is not realistic to resurrect a single superpower there.”

“You can’t mean…”

“In that case, the only option is to find another area with similar conditions. A vast land surrounded by ocean. A single nation with plenty of food, underground resources, and population. All we need to do is supply information on high-level technology. …And there was only one candidate.”

“Are you saying your goal is to remake Oceania into a second ‘world police’!?”

“Is there any better way to recover from a war? If we succeed, we will put an end to the ‘clean wars’ spreading throughout the world. We will combine the different world powers into a single world power. And Oceania will rule at the center of it all. This continent was overrun with unreasonable war and then crushed by the different world powers afterwards, so it is the perfect symbol for the new world police.”

“This is ridiculous,” spat out Heivia. “All the dark history from the creation of the Oceanian military nation was your doing, wasn’t it!? The new world police? An era truly without war? A world created by people as heartless as you would be a horrible place! You just want to create a world where you can kill as many people as you want!!”

“I have only one thing to say to that: are you aware that history is something created by someone and recorded by someone?”

The young man’s voice remained calm.

He was used to being accused of doing horrible things.

“And no matter how much of a commotion you cause, you can no longer change the current course of events. Look at the city below you. The angry cries of the crowd should reach you up in the sky. Do you know what that rumbling noise is? Those are the footsteps of the rioters marching through the streets. Can you pacify all of those people?”

“…”

Quenser stopped breathing for a moment.

He could hear a low, low sound resembling distant thunder. He peered down from the helicopter’s open door and saw something filling the desert city. The sight of countless human heads filling every inch not taken up by buildings was quite chilling.

He saw something white here and there.

They looked like placards or banners, so Quenser naturally reached for his binoculars.

But Heivia grabbed his wrist before he could look through them.

“You should stop.”

Heivia was looking up from his rifle’s scope.

It seemed he had just looked through it.

“It’s better to not see that. It’s like a fishing hook. You’ll try to pretend it’s nothing at first, but you’ll realize the small hook won’t come out. It’ll leave a wound.”

Quenser could not imagine what would cause such a negative reaction.

Earlier that day, he had seen true enemy soldiers shot to pieces by helicopters and he had almost been killed by an acid bomb. Compared to that, what could words do? Thinking that, Quenser’s curiosity led him to look through the binoculars.

And…

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

He felt like he heard the words “I told you so” coming from a long distance away.

His arms hung limply down and the magnification left his vision, but what he saw left a hole in his chest.

He felt as if all the bloody vomit and crawling through the mud in Oceania had been made meaningless in a single moment.

This was not something one or two people could easily cause.

This was a powerful current.

Like a fad or a trend, something unseen was influencing people’s lives.

Normally, only the advertising firms that created commercials were aware of that current, but it now created an obvious wall before Quenser and the others.

“What is this commotion?” asked Quenser as he stared blankly down at the city from the sliding door.

He received an answer from the young soldier messing with a handheld device they had received from the enemies.

“Wait. This isn’t good. This is really bad!!”

“Did you find another document?”

Quenser turned around and the soldier tossed him the device.

He caught it in both hands and finally realized what the small screen showed.

It was a completely normal video sharing site.

However…

“Ha ha ha. Have you discovered what everyone’s talking about?” laughed the person on the radio.

But Quenser was not listening.

His mind had left reality as his eyes focused on the video playing on the screen.

It showed a few minutes of a human trafficking incident that had occurred at an international harbor in Oceania.

It had been uploaded only half an hour earlier.

The view count had already reached ten million. It was on a site used worldwide, but the video was a bit choppy as if it was having difficulty loading.

“The news is nothing but entertainment. They complain about the depressing incidents, but that does not stop people from searching for them. TV and newspapers used to have a lot of influence, but nowadays one will never learn anything without searching for themselves. And that gives people a certain enthusiasm.”

The incidents and battles that were supposedly resolved were now being used for something else.

“And in Oceania where their infrastructure is being rebuilt, they lack the resources for entertainment. The people are starving for entertainment. Yes, they want to enjoy themselves. Merely opening a small hole in the dam leads to the result before you. The overwhelming deluge will sweep across the continent.”

The young man on the radio spoke as if singing a lullaby that hid a cruel origin.

“The night sky. This world is a night sky.”

It almost sounded like the lyrics to a song.

It sounded nice, but it seemed removed from reality.

“The starless night sky presses down on everyone from above and prevents them from seeing ahead. Someone must change this. Fortunately, that is not hard to do. Those who rule this dark era have merely convinced everyone that it is difficult.”

The one who made it had to know that.

And the ones listening most likely knew it deep down.

“By raising stars onto the starless night sky, we can make a single flag. At first, our symbol will be pure indigo like the night sky. A single star is enough. If a single star can shine in the starless indigo night sky, we can begin to gently guide this dark era. Will you stand here in the center of the world or will you be forever driven to the edges of the world? Decide for yourself.”

Even so, they would fall for it.

But why?

Was someone simply using the dissatisfaction of the Oceanian people?

Or was even that initial dissatisfaction something someone had input within them?

The video showed a few minutes of a large-scale clash between Objects in the desert night which had all been meant to kill a single soldier.

“Thank you. We put together many different plans and you ruined a few of them, but you provided us with an even greater tool,” said the voice. “Truth Theater. That is the name of the video. When you take something formless, give it a name, and place it within a frame of your choosing, it provides a certain impression. That is the basic method of influencing people’s impressions. After that, you only need to provide them with a specific direction. For example, you can create a flag that they take as their own symbol without anyone forcing them. They will then spread the word of their existence around the world. The trick is to skillfully mix in the proper ideals and desires. The night sky flag is pure indigo, so it can easily be made by throwing a can of paint on a curtain. If you create a complex and cool-looking symbol, no one can create it for themselves. This is an application of influencing people’s impressions.”

There were no lies in the materials they had used.

However, the timing of the editing was extremely malicious. By showing only a few minutes in the video, it only showed the beginning of the problem and the growth of the chaos it produced. There were likely people watching it who did not even know these problems had been resolved.

“The stage has already been set. If it had not, I would not have so calmly contacted you. The indigo flag of the night sky could cover the entire continent at any time. When faced with this overwhelming maelstrom of people, both military and civilian, the military officials who are obsessed with clean wars will hesitate. That time lag will prevent you from ever catching up. Farewell. You have lost. Once only our victory remains, the world will greatly benefit and rejoice in its newfound peace.”

“Tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“I need something to write on your gravestone.”

A short silence came from the radio.

The young man may have been laughing.

“You may call us the Company, Langley, or the Pentagon. When the former world police was lost, our true name lost its power and meaning.”

“Do you mean…?”

“We are the ghosts of a bygone era. But if you wish to refer to us, there is a name you can use. We are the strange shadows dressed in black who are whispered of in every corner of the world. We are MIB.”

At that moment, the transmission ended.

But not because Quenser or the MIB man had switched off their radio.

The transport helicopter shook violently as it was enveloped in an explosion.

“Wah!?”

“What is it, pilot!? What happened!?”

The helicopter’s door was open, so Quenser had to cling to the handrail on the inner wall with all his might so as not to be thrown out.

The pilot’s reply was tense.

“We were attacked from the surface! It was probably a cheap mortar.”

“A mortar!? Those are used to fire shells farther than a grenade can be thrown. How are they using it for an anti-air attack!?”

“I don’t know, but one just hit us! They forcibly used it beyond its intended use. Unlike a missile, it isn’t guided, so they won’t be able to reliably hit us!!”

“This is the hatred of the people,” said the young man on the radio. “Those shells cost twenty dollars each. There is a reason they have long been a best seller in this world of never-ending wars.”

“Here it comes! I just heard one being fired on the surface!! Avoid it, dammit! Move to the right!!”

“I don’t have proper control after that last explosion!”

They did not escape in time.

As the helicopter shook, Quenser worked to close the door.

As soon as he did, the next explosion hit.

The steel door bent in and stabbed into the opposite wall. However, closing the door had not been meaningless. Without the door acting as a cushion, the blast and small pieces of shrapnel would have filled the helicopter.

Nevertheless, that blast settled it.

The helicopter did not break apart in midair, but it began to spin as it lost control. Their altitude was clearly lowering. The mass of steel was obviously falling toward the ground.

“What do we do!? Hey, what do we do!? I don’t want to crash twice in one day! Can’t you recover!?’

“I’m trying! But does it look like it’s going well!?” shouted back the pilot.

Quenser felt dizzy as he braced himself so he was not thrown out of the reopened door.

The young man spoke from the radio as if to provide the finishing blow.

“Ha ha ha. Soldiers surrounded by a bloodthirsty mob. A tragedy like this might work as another symbol to drive out the coalition.”

“Is this it!?”

Heivia forcibly switched off the radio and looked out the door.

He then shouted toward the cockpit.

“Hey, which way are we pointed!? I hope it’s somewhere without any people!”

“It is! We’re headed for a trash dump. The trash is piled up in hills and my sensors aren’t picking up anyone!!”

“Good.”

Heivia seemed to have made up his mind about something, so Quenser spoke to him.

“What are we going to do now?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

The helicopter continued to fall while almost scraping the roof of a crude five-story building.

Heivia leaned into the cockpit, used his knife to cut the seatbelt of the pilot who was still intently focused on the controls, and dragged him away.

“We jump out.”

The screaming would not stop.

As if they were jumping out of a car headed for a cliff, Quenser and the others jumped out onto the flat building roof. The drop was only a few meters.

After a few seconds, the helicopter crashed into a giant pile of garbage and exploded.

They no longer had a means of returning to the base.

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2014-01-07T05:36:26Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 1 */

{{Incomplete|parts=1|tparts=17}}
==Chapter 3: Police are a Means of Stopping War >> Liberation Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“The military scandal shows no sign of ending. The council has made the rare decision to treat the plan to use an Object for a military assassination as attempted murder. The brigadier general thought to be the primary individual behind the plan has been called back from Oceania for…”

The princess sat on a metal staircase of a building near the Object maintenance area. She may have been bored because she was staring blankly at a 1seg TV program on her handheld device. The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles and their tires measured over two meters in diameter. Stairs were needed simply to enter them.

In the dry desert, merely stepping into the shade felt much cooler. The princess had the front of her special suit open so the wind could reach her skin. As someone who spent long periods of time in an air-conditioned cockpit, her upper limit for heat appeared to be rather low.

A short distance away, the two idiots were using shovels to dig everywhere they could in the hot sand.

“Quenser, you idiot! You don’t remember where you buried them, do you!?”

“I marked it last night! I secretly stuck a stick into the ground.”

“When Myonri dug there, she found a ton of dead cicadas and almost passed out! Damn… What is going on? Where did we dig the canned foods and packaged foods leftover from the victory party!? I thought we were going to be freed from those eraser-like rations for a while!!”

“Hurry, hurry! This maintenance base is mobile, remember? If the entire unit decides to move, we’ll lose all those cans! There was beef stew in there. If we lose that, it’ll traumatize me!!”

“What are those two doing?”

An old woman stuck her head out of the Object maintenance area and spoke to the princess.

The princess looked up from the screen and toward the old woman.

“It looks like a treasure hunt.”

“You aren’t going to join them?”

“I’m not in the mood for food. And I just finished building a cicada grave.”

“???”

The old maintenance woman did not quite understand, so she decided to ask them directly.

“Hey, slacking student.”

“Eeee!! One of the lecturers has locked onto us!”

“As long as she doesn’t tell that huge-breasted commander, we’re fine! Seduce her or something to bring her onto our side!! I’ll go dig over there!!”

“No fair! Don’t run off on your own!!”

“What are you doing out here?”

The old woman’s words seemed to nail Quenser to the ground.

She was asking what he was doing “out here” because he was not in the Object maintenance area.

He slowly and stiffly turned toward her.

“W-would two cans of lunchmeat be enough for us to come to an understanding? Or maybe peaches or pineapple!?”

“I’m not asking about that. Have you forgotten why you came out to the battlefield in the first place? I thought it was to spend as much time observing the Object as possible so you could learn as much as possible.”

“Are you seriously saying that?” Quenser sounded surprised as he continued digging around randomly. “They’re repainting the Object in there. They’re using tons of organic solvent in a closed space and I didn’t dodge bullets to end up high on paint thinner.”

“It is true painting an Object does not use any specialized technology. I admit that.”

“It’s the same as a normal warship. The Object’s onion armor is made from special metal plates that have high-heat resistant and reactive elements mixed in like a katana, but that also means the armor will rust when exposed to the elements. We can’t have the pride of our nation rusting, so they’re careful to use techniques of keeping it from rusting, right? They’re not mixing in ferrite to give it high-level stealth ability and they’re not using camouflage patterns based on psychology and research into human cognizance to hide it from the human brain. There’s nothing in it for a student like me.”

Those sorts of techniques had been used for the fighters and tanks of the previous age.

This had been due to the high risk of being shot down or destroyed. But that effort was unnecessary with the colossal Objects which could withstand a direct hit from a nuclear weapon.

Also, it would be exceedingly difficult to hide a 50+ meter armored weapon from radar or the naked eye.

“The technical issues are a factor, but the paint job has more to do with the desires of the higher ups in the military and government.”

“They don’t want their hero sneaking around?”

“When sending an obviously overpowered weapon into battle, they need a tricky argument to silence the pacifists. That’s why they like the symbolism of a hero that defeats an abominable enemy in a fair fight. The Objects brought an end to the nuclear age by force, so they want to maintain the freshness of that impression for as long as possible. Letting it fade into history would be a waste.”

“I suppose they need a simple commercial to gain the massive military budget they need for them. That’s why they want the Objects to always be polished up bright like an exhibit at a motor show. They even have a lovely pilot Elite by its side to play the role of the companion girl. …But none of that is a job for the designer I want to be. Get a PR guy for that.”

Quenser shrugged.

“Let me touch the more…well…sensitive parts at the core. Like the JPlevelMHD reactor or the targeting sensor control system.”

“Don’t be silly. You aren’t touching those. Before you even think about it, you need to pass at least fifteen international exams.”

As the princess sat on the metal staircase and stared blankly up into the blue sky, she called out to Quenser.

“Qu-Quenser?”

“??? What is it?”

“Did something happen with that Information Alliance Elite? She said something I didn’t like about what she was going to do with you.”

“Um, that could apply to a lot of Elites. Which one are we talking about?”

“…There are a lot of them?”

The princess’s expression made it clear he had stirred up unnecessary trouble.

Quenser, however, did not understand what she had been trying to ask.

“Anyway, princess, I hope you haven’t forgotten about the karaoke!! During the battle with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, you had the nerve to say idols were worthless because anyone can sing!!”

“Uuh… I-I remember.”

“Good. These days, you can run a karaoke place anywhere using internet download services. There are even some here in Oceania. During our next day off, I demand to see if you have the skills to back up your bragging!!”

The old maintenance women let out a quiet sigh.

This arrangement was actually almost exactly what the princess had expected to happen and wanted to happen, but she did not seem to know what to do now that things were going more smoothly than expected.

It was an example of a plan coming back to bite her.

The two youths compared their schedules to set up a date and Quenser suddenly spoke up once they had finished.

In that instant, he became a true idiotic designer.

“Oh, right. I need to ask you too, princess. The reactor may be too dangerous, but can I check out the targeting sensor control system or somewhere else that will help me study Object design?”

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

“Do you not trust me at all?”

“It’s not an issue of your skill,” said the old woman in exasperation. “There are different types of people who work with Object design. There are those who build up virtual models based on theory, there are the academic types that materialize and realize those models, there are the inventor types who have a single idea and go beyond their primary field to gather everything they need to realize it, and there are the craftsmen who use their experience and the unexplainable instincts in their fingertips to produce results greater than precision manufacturing equipment. The targeting sensor control system you’re talking about is a black box that complexly combines all of those together. Not even the princess or I will touch it without reason.”

“So you entrust your life to something no one touches?”

“That is not what she meant,” said the princess. “It is maintained in sessions including more than fifty people. You can think of it like exchanging our opinions to find the right flavor for a cocktail we do not know the recipe to. Bringing in someone who doesn’t know the flavor would distort our opinions and raise the likelihood of the final drink not matching the perfect flavor.”

“An Object has over one hundred cannons, both big and small,” continued the old woman. “Each of those has multiple sensors and the entire Object has its primary radars and sensors. Coordinating all of those is beyond human ability. Most of it is handled by computers, but there are some situations where that doesn’t cut it. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Laser weapons?”

“That’s right. Those move at the speed of light, so they can’t be avoided after seeing them fired. What matters is predicting the attack by observing the minute movements of the enemy’s cannons and sensor lenses. You can’t leave that to a computer both when attacking and when defending.”

In a battle between Objects, one could not simply continue to evade. One had to attack and hit.

If an enemy would predict the attack before it was fired, one had to predict where they would evade to and fire there instead.

“Ultimately, the whole system only works when you combine the precise sensors, the high-spec computers, and the fearful fingertips of a human. It seems the Information Alliance is researching completely automated targeting algorithms, but they have a long way to go towards making it practical. Then again, they’re more skilled than anyone when it comes to using information, so who knows how much we can trust what our intelligence division has gathered on them.”

“I won’t lose to something like that.”

This seemed to have worked up an odd sense of competition in the princess because she pouted her lips and took a sip from her drink’s straw.

Quenser then heard an electronic tone from the small radio in his uniform.

When he pulled it out and brought it to his mouth, Froleytia’s voice spoke to him.

“Study time is over for the moment, Quenser. Head over to the briefing room with the others. A pre-mission briefing is about to begin.”

“What do we have to do now?”

“That’s what I will explain to you. But it’s a simple mission. I’m not asking you to make a charge at a cutting-edge Object or anything.”

“I beg you to never ask me to do that!! I haven’t been doing it because I want to!!”

“Toward the end of the incident with the Simple Is Best and the Hornet Storm, a large underground structure was discovered when the ground collapsed. That was from your report, Quenser.”

“W-well, yes.”

“Today, you will be investigating the abandoned facility. This is simple post-battle cleanup. I suppose the police would call it a crime scene inspection. I honestly doubt it has anything to do with the war, but we have to control everything in the vicinity of the battle. I will be the one writing the annoying report to the higher ups, so you all can help me out a little.”

“So no other military is involved this time? There aren’t going to be any firefights?”

“That’s right. Unless you’ve heard reports of the Capitalist Corporations or the Information Alliance living in holes.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute. Are you saying you want us to carefully check over this place, but nothing – nothing at all – is going to happen? We just have to drive across the desert as if having a picnic, snap a few photos of these strange ruins, and that’s it? You promise?”

“And surprisingly, you actually get paid. With the people’s tax money, no less.”

“Woo hoo!! Oh, god! I can’t wait!! Please fill my team with a ton of female soldiers! This is perfect for Operation North Wind and the Sun. Partway through, our tension is sure to drop and then they’ll strip down to their thin inner clothing!! Hooray! Hooray!!”

“Yes, yes. I get it. You will be in your usual filthy guy team with Heivia. Have fun in your sweaty world of little clothing.”

“Hah hah hah. If you really do that, I’m starting a coup.”

“Hah hah hah!! Do you really think I’m the type to joke about this?”

The transmission ended with a click.

Since Froleytia said it, there was no doubting that he would end up surrounded by men. However, Quenser was not about to give up. He still had hope.

“On a boring investigation, the investigation team, guard team, and transport team will all move as one big group. Even if my team looks like a boys’ school, there’s still a chance of cute young girls in the other teams!! I haven’t lost yet!!”

“Sigh. Are you sure it will turn out that well?” asked the old woman.

“I am!! After all, the end of February is getting towards the end of the fiscal year!! The top levels of the military need to use up their extra budget or the defense budget will be lowered next year. Sending out tons of unnecessary soldiers for a boring mission could easily happen now!!”

“Why are you only this good at calculations at times like this?”

That was of course because this topic was the most compatible with the pink brain cells of adolescence.

At any rate, Quenser raised his hands in an expression of joy.

“Fwa ha ha ha ha ha!! I won’t let our commander win this time! The amount of girls in skimpy, wet, and see-through clothes would surprise a soft drink commercial! Paradise awaits me!!”

===Part 2===

===Part 3===

===Part 4===

===Part 5===

===Part 6===

===Part 7===

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

Talk:No Game No Life

2014-01-05T09:20:35Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Some names */ Response.

===Volume and Chapter titles===
Realized we haven't been including them, so figured we should probably do so. I'll give my take on the volume titles and translations, but as I'm not a translator for the LNs, final say goes to those who are.<br>
No Game No Life 1: The Gamer Siblings Appear to be Conquering a Fantasy World / ノーゲーム・ノーライフ1 ゲーマー兄妹がファンタジー世界を征服するそうです<br>
No Game No Life 2: The Gamer Siblings Seem to Have Their Sights on the Land of Animal Ear Girls / ノーゲーム・ノーライフ2 ゲーマー兄妹が獣耳っ子の国に目をつけたようです<br>
No Game No Life 3: A Counterpart of the Gamer Siblings Seems to have Disappeared...? / ノノーゲーム・ノーライフ3 ゲーマー兄妹の片割れが消えたようですが……？<br>
No Game No Life 4: The Gamer Siblings Have Ran Away from Realistic Romance Games / ノノーゲーム・ノーライフ４　ゲーマー兄妹はリアル恋愛ゲームから逃げ出しました<br>
Should probably work on the chapter titles too, but they're pretty straightforward. Helps the author includes their titles in what would be English. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 21:43, 3 August 2013 (CDT)
:Minor corrections:<br>
:'The Gamer Siblings Appear to be Conquering' -> 'It Seems Gamer Siblings Will Conquer' (not present tense (specifically, non-past used as future tense), and the first introduction of the siblings so no 'The' yet).<br>
:Though minor, 'Have Their Sights' -> 'Have Set Their Sights' (past tense, not present or non-past); also, perhaps 'Land' -> 'Country' or 'Nation'.<br>
:'A Counterpart' -> 'One Half' (Sora, rather than a counterpart pair).<br>
:'Have Ran Away' -> 'Have Run Away', 'Realistic Romance Games' -> 'a Realistic Romance Game' (only one game, the one with the sleeping mermaid(?) Queen person).<br>
: -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 02:17, 4 August 2013 (CDT)

Adding thoughts on chapter titles as well. Using　≪≫ to represent furigana. First one's straightforward as can be.<br>
Volume 1:<br>
Prologue / プロローグ<br>
Chapter 1: Beginner / 素人≪ビギナー≫<br>
Chapter 2: Challenger / 挑戦者≪チャレンジャー≫<br>
Chapter 3: Expert / 熟練者≪エキスパート≫<br>
Chapter 4: Grand Master / 国王≪グランドマスター≫<br>
Epilogue / エピローグ<br>

All the titles (minus epilogue) are [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_chess Chess terms].<br>
Volume 2:<br>
Opening / オープニング (Replaces the prologue.)<br>
Chapter 1: Weak Square / 駒並べ≪ウィークスクエア≫<br>
Chapter 2: Interesting /　一手≪インタレスティング≫ (Move name in Japan for an interesting move that doesn't (I think) carry over to English. "Out of Book" or "Novelty" could be good replacements.)<br>
Chapter 3: Sacrifice / 死に手≪サクリファイス≫<br>
Chapter 4: Checkmate / 王手≪チェックメイト≫<br>
Fake Ending / フェイクエンド (Also replaces the epilogue.)<br>

Not really sure what these are all about. Kanji and furigana meanings differ.<br>
Volume 3:<br>
Load Save / データロード<br>
Chapter 1: Sky Walk / 解離法≪スカイ・ウオーク≫<br>
Chapter 2: Blue Rose / 指向法≪ブルー・ローズ≫<br>
Chapter 3: Killing Giant / 誘導法≪キリング・ジャイアント≫<br>
Chapter 4: Rule Number 10 / 収束法≪ルール・ナンバー・10≫<br>
True Ending / トゥルーエンド<br>

This novel also plays with the kanji, having them be different from the furigana definitions. And two of the chapter's kanji are upside-down. I can't figure out how to make Japanese upside down (it's not that hard for English, though), but know that the kanji for chapters 1 and 3 are supposed to be upside down.<br>
Volume 4:<br>
Easy Start / イージースタート<br>
Chapter 1: Encounter / 悪魔≪エンカウント≫<br>
Chapter 2: Strategist / 太陽≪ストラテジスト≫<br>
Chapter 3: Charmer / 女帝≪チャーマー≫<br>
Chapter 4: Wildcard / 愚者≪ワイルドカード≫<br>
Interrupted Ending / インタラプトエンド<br>

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Could do fun things with this, like {{furigana|uoɯǝ  |Encounter}}, but I personally dislike the furigana text format quite a bit. I completely ignored the kanji meanings if anyone wants suggest what do with them or how to translate them. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 04:45, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

:I'll come back to this in a short while once I have more time; for now, a quick note that the upside-down names in the fourth volume's chapters seem to be Tarot (Major Arcana) references. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_arcana#List_of_the_Major_Arcana ) For instance, the chapter which bears the meaning of 'Charmer' would probably be given as 'The Empress reversed'--I suggest that Tarot-evoking representation rather than forcing upside-downness, though upsidedown-ness might in fact be more true to the original. For a non-furigana format, perhaps 'Charmer (The Empress reversed)' or similar. For each volume, the slight differences between reading and meaning are interesting (though sometimes a little hard to understand), so I would like them to be retained in some format if possible. Speaking of which, thank you for putting the kanji (and katana) here for easy copying/investigation! In a short while, when I have a little more time, I'll look at the first three volumes and give suggestions. For now, the fourth volume: Encounter (The Devil reversed), Strategist (The Sun), Charmer (The Empress reversed), Wildcard (The Fool). -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 05:17, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

::Arere? Somehow I see the last two lines above as long single lines rather than with the normal line-wraps. I wonder why..? -[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 05:19, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

Suggestions for the chapter titles (first volume too for consistency, even when redundant):<br>
[Disclaimer: I do not claim a deep understanding of certain things, and so the below can be treated as interim suggestions until someone finds more accurate equivalents.]<br>
|<br>
Beginner (Amateur), Challenger (Challenger), Expert (Expert), Grandmaster (Country's King)<br>
['Kokuou' especially it would be good if there were a better term for that which still distinguished it from 'Ou' or 'Ou-sama'.]<br>
[Ah, also 'Grandmaster' (as in Chess) is spelled as one word.]<br>
*I'm actually just for using the furigana since all but one of them match perfectly, and Grandmaster is fine for me. There's plenty of words in English for "King," but in this case, "King" is the most fitting. Don't have to specify king of what.
|<br>
Weak Square (Setting the Board), Interesting (One Move), Sacrifice (Doomed Move), Checkmate (Check)<br>
['Checkmate' would in practice be '王手詰み' perhaps... this may be ignoring intention for accuracy, however. For '死に手', I tried to use a phrasing that reflected the inevitable death of the piece without indicating whether something stood to be gained from it or not.]<br>
Since it's in katakana, it may be worth keeping the closing part for this one as 'Fake End' rather than adding sounds. Particularly, it doesn't use 'エンディング' even though Opening uses 'オープニング'.<br>
*Doomed move to me means a move that will fail whereas a sacrifice results in death, but for a purpose. So something like "Mortal Move" would be better for the kanji; somewhat difficult to word it without making it sound like a great move. There's still the whole "Interesting" isn't a Chess term in English though.
|<br>
For the third volume, I would similar suggest a direct 'Data Load'/'True End' transliteration.<br>
[Unfortunately I have no idea what source was used for these; 'Blue Rose' in particular prompts my curiosity. It's possible they are obscure references, such as the breeding of a blue rose or the killing of giant through leading it into traps. I searched somewhat for game strategy names, but could not find any of relevance. If there exists one game with these strategies, there could be more appropriate translations of the kanji words.]<br>
Sky Walk (Dissociation Method), Blue Rose (Orientation Method), Killing Giant (Guiding Method), Rule Number 10 (Converging Method)<br>
*Problem with "Data Load". Data load is a common phrase in Japanese for our equivalent of loading saves. At the very least, it would have to be "Load Data" to keep the same meaning and fluidity (as it generally only appears as an option to load save data in games). ローズ could also be "Laws," not that helps any. I still have no idea what these are reference to.
|<br>
(For the fourth volume, similarly 'Interrupt End' perhaps; 'Encount' is an exception in that it does not phonetically correspond to an/its English word.)<br>
Encounter (The Devil reversed), Strategist (The Sun), Charmer (The Empress reversed), Wildcard (The Fool)<br>
-[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 09:05, 8 August 2013 (CDT)
*Didn't realize they were Tarot names (Only used to seeing those English). Like I said, I dislike furigana so I don't have any ways I'd personally like to implement it aside from making them look together to begin with. And "Interrupt End" is Engrish unless we're talking coding, which I don't think he is considering the "End" theme. "Interrupt" has to at least be "Interrupted" or "Interruption". Even インタラプトエンド isn't really used in Japanese without it being "インタラプトエンドポイント", or Interrupt Endpoint like in English. And as noted with "Encount," the Japanese don't always (or actually most the time) use our words like we would. "End" can also be used as "Ending" despite there being differences in English, but in these cases either works fine. I just went with "Ending" to supplement "Opening," despite that "Opening" was most likely simply used as a chess term there. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 15:02, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

Okay, I added the chapter names. I kept in the Furigana because I wasn't sure whether you wanted them to be in the title's name or not. If not, go ahead and delete them. I changed Orientation Method to Directional Method because orientation sound too much like a school term in my opinion. As for the Epilogues, instead of Ending, I used End. While it may seem incorrect from an English point of view, I see phrases like these all the time (Happy End, Bad End, Good End...especially in galges and TWGOK). I'd just like to keep it more directly translated...maybe because the words seem to have a different feeling? It also stays truer to how "End" is used in other materials as well. I also kept it as Interrupt End, so you can figure out whether it's "Interrupted" or "Interrupting" or "Interrupter" or whatnot. Thanks for helping out with all of this. It really helps, and I never knew there was an epilogue...(I'm a simple editor.)

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 15:36, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

I think the katakana should be changed to english words because there are people who can't read them.

I suggest to change it to '''English of Furigana <<English of Kanji>>'''

Furigana is written first because that is how people will read it and it's followed by the kanji to show it's meaning (and maybe adding this as a footnote for the title in chapter will help readers understand it).

Or another way to write it would be like #2 in here: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Itsuka_Tenma_no_Kuro_Usagi:Volume_1#Translator.27s_Notes_and_References

-- [[User:Layrelsky|Layrelsky]] ([[User talk:Layrelsky|talk]]) 08:14, 9 August 2013 GMT+8

I don't really think that's necessary. If you can read the katakana, it reads the first word of the chapter names. For example, Chapter 4: Grandmaster/The King ≪グランドマスター≫. If I translated the katakana, it would be read: Grandmaster/The King «Grandmaster». Besides, I'm not sure if the katakana should be in the chapter titles anyway, so depending on what EnigmaticRepose says, it may be deleted at any time.

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 19:42, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

I don't see a reason to keep the katakana from the furigana in. While it can make the chapter titles look exotic, it just looks like "Grandmaster/The King/Grandmaster" to those who can read it. Could always dick with the upsidedown arcana in volume 4, too. Like: lıʌǝᗡ ǝɥ⊥. Didn't feel like doing the fancy formatting this time.—[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 21:07, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

EnigmaticRepose, did you mean "stick" instead of "dick"? If you'd want to do that, then it's fine. I have removed the katakana from the titles, and I have changed "Interesting" to "Unexpected Move". It makes sense to me, but if you disagree, then by all means, change it to what you think is right.

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 22:17, 8 August 2013 (CDT)
*Nah, I said the word I meant. I only want to keep it consistent with Chess terminology. Specifically, if you wanted a meaning of "unexpected move," "Shot" would be the chess term equivalent. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 23:06, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

Something of a flurry back and forth, so throwing in my current strongest impressions:<br>
(Though this is reiteration,) As a general pedantic tendency, I tend to suggest that translations and transliterations be kept as close to their original as possible, especially when the original author could have chosen different wording and didn't.<br>
I agree that having both katakana and the transliteration of the katakana would be redundant. Relevantly, kanji and katakana appear once each in the book's chapter titles, with no third part (other than the chapter number).<br>
I do not mind whether angle brackets or parentheses or some other form of brackets are used, but I request if possible that the kanji translations be in some form of brackets to indicate 'this is the (kanji) meaning'. As it is, with slashes, it looks as though it's two separate equal titles, losing the 'This is how it's read (This is what it means)' two-levels nuance.<br>
-[[User:Multipartite|Multipartite]] ([[User talk:Multipartite|talk]]) 22:29, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

Go ahead and do that. How about with the ≪≫ that you used for the katakana above? I would do it myself, but those two brackets always end up small and strange for some reason...don't forget that the chapters themselves need the same editing as well. I also like keeping things close to their original meaning...do you mean to say that Sacrificial Move should be changed back to Doomed Move, and Unexpected Move back to Interesting?

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 22:44, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

To Multi: I love keeping in original writing quirks and tendencies as well, it's just the author's knowledge of other languages often shows in these wording choices. So it's a problem of accuracy and fluidity over trusting the author knows a language that he has shown no real experience in. I've seen way too much Engrish to trust an author unless they straight-out spell it in English with proper grammar. Very few ever do this. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 23:06, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

He grew up in the US. I'd assume his English is at least trustable to that degree. [[User:Seitsuki|Seit]] ([[User talk:Seitsuki|talk]]) 23:17, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

I thought he was Brazilian? Or was that just his heritage?

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 23:22, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

From the wiki: Born in Brazil, primary school in US, junior high and beyond in Japan [[User:Seitsuki|Seit]] ([[User talk:Seitsuki|talk]]) 23:25, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

It gives him more credibility than I believed he had. But doesn't 「幼少期はアメリカで過ごし、小学生の時に日本に移住」 mean he spent his early childhood in the US, but immigrated to Japan sometime during elementary school? I've known a couple guys in similar circumstances who have forgotten the majority of their original language. Granted I never asked how early they moved to the US for reference. But still, final say goes to the translator (aka the one who speaks Japanese). Things like "Interrupt End" just comes off as Engrish without changing it somehow. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 23:48, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

Well, Drinkingwater is translating from Chinese...our Japanese translator is Seitsuki. On a different topic, how about cleaning this page?

-- [[User:神|神]] ([[User talk:神|talk]]) 23:56, 8 August 2013 (CDT)

== Some names ==

As you've probably noticed this novel goes with small changes to the names we commonly know (imanity=humanity, danpires=vampires, seren=siren, etc) so I suggest the change Jibril -> Gibriel, especially with the appearance of Azrael. --[[User:Jonathanasdf|jonathanasdf]] ([[User talk:Jonathanasdf|talk]]) 02:56, 5 January 2014 (CST)

Personally don't see a reason to. And they aren't small, nonsensical variations to what we know; they're mostly from different origins. Instead of calling the sea people the English "Sirens", he uses the original Greek "Seirenes". Dhampirs and vampires are also different to begin with. One thing I will note, however, is the manga localizes Steph's name as "Stephanie Dola". I'm conflicted whether I should personally care enough to change it, as both "Stephanie" and "Dora" are of Greek origin as well, and Dola is a what-are-you-even-doing thing to me. I mean, there's nothing technically wrong with it as it is a name, but it just seems off to me. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 03:20, 5 January 2014 (CST)

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1

2014-01-01T12:00:23Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 13 */

==Chapter 1: A Deadly Firefight between Two Idiots >> Mock Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“Here we are again, Oceania-side soldiers. How many times is this again?”

Private Heivia Winchell muttered those words while smearing black and sand colors on his cheeks. Needless to say, this was a type of desert camouflage.

“It sure doesn’t feel like February. In a certain island nation, they give the sexy guys chocolate on Valentine’s, right!? That kind of lovely event would’ve been perfect for me! What happened!? Then again, getting a ton of chocolate in this horrid heat might qualify as harassment.”

In an age of sensors and other electronics on even the smallest guns, types of camouflage had been developed specifically for that age. What Heivia was smearing on his face had chemical compounds that prevented sensors from detecting his exposed skin.

He leaned up against the fence surrounding the maintenance base zone and continued applying his “makeup”. Ten or so soldiers were gathered around him and also preparing.

A short female soldier named Myonri held her face paint case in both hands and hesitantly spoke up.

“U-um, what am I supposed to do with this again?”

“You’re doing it all wrong, virgin girl. You can’t make the color so dark around your eyes! The whites of your eyes show up the most, so you have to leave the color light around them to blend them in. You gradually grow darker as you move out. You can’t have any sudden changes in color.”

“If we put camouflage on here, won’t we trap the sand in with it?”

“We’re about to start a battle, so I’d be more worried about being covered in mud and bloody vomit,” said Heivia in annoyance.

Meanwhile, he grabbed a bandanna with a large crescent moon pattern.

As each of them finished applying their “makeup”, they tied on the bandannas so it covered the lower half of their face like bank robbers in a Western. The crescent moon was positioned just right to look like a large slit of a mouth.

“That’s in terrible taste.”

“What matters is that it shows up well.”

As he listened to Myonri, Heivia grabbed his assault rifle and pulled out the magazine. He looked down at the rifle bullets held in place with a clasp.

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition…check.”

While feeling annoyance at his one friend’s hesitation, Heivia stuck the magazine back in the rifle and pulled back the cocking lever to load the first bullet. He then brought his radio to his mouth.

“Team A is ready. What about the others?”

“You’re the last ones, slowpokes. Teams B-D are all ready. We can begin on your signal.”

“Understood, understood.”

Heivia glanced over at Myonri.

Instead of a heavy weapon like a light machinegun or assault rifle, she held a small and lightweight PDW like a pilot would carry in case of an emergency landing. It was commonly known as a “full auto in a business bag”.

But she was not carrying the lightweight weapon because she was a girl.

It was because her other equipment was quite heavy.

“How’s the scissor opener?”

“I tested it three times. It really scares me to carry it around.”

“Not being slowed down by a door can make all the difference. You’re our lifeline, so bear with it.”

“This tool stabs a giant pair of scissors into the gap of the door using explosives and then uses a motor to forcibly crush the lock. Did you ever think about what happens if it goes off by accident while I’m carrying it on my back?”

“It’d be your own damn fault. If you weren’t earning all those weird qualifications, you wouldn’t be stuck with all the odd equipment.”

As he spoke, Heivia turned toward the direction of their objective.

He was not looking outside the maintenance base zone.

He was looking in.

He pointed his assault rifle toward the people who he would normally have called his allies.

In the end, humans had a way of searching for enemies within if there were no enemies outside.

“Okay, let’s make this flashy. Our objective is the princess. Let’s kill her before she can get aboard the Object!!”

===Part 2===

“Good, good. Everything’s going as planned. We can hear everything they’re saying.”

Inside the maintenance base zone, a base made up of over one hundred large vehicles, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage grinned. He held a military radio over which he could hear the “enemy” clear as day.

“You damn traitors. We’ll kill every single one of you.”

“Hey, can you really do that?”

A woman next to him let out an exasperated sigh. She specialized in barrier duty which meant she was one of the Black Uniforms who dealt with criminals within the military. She had introduced herself, but he had forgotten what her name was.

He lightly shook the military radio.

“It’s their fault for forgetting they’re traitors and therefore are using the same equipment. Even if the fools changed the encryption, it’s still the same format, so there’s still a risk of us intercepting it.”

They were near the center of the maintenance base zone made up of a large convoy. Quenser was hiding behind and leaning up against a wheel larger than the door to a bank vault. He was using a black military knife to draw a simple map in the sand.

“Heivia and his group are near the southern gate. They’ve already snuck into the base’s grounds while pretending to be innocent. Meanwhile, the princess is a bit south of the center. She’s receiving body maintenance in the special lodgings for the pilot Elite. They’re definitely going to attack there.”

“Once Miss Milinda Brantini enters the Baby Magnum she is almost invincible. After all, that Object is made to withstand a direct nuclear strike. So…”

“They’ll block the path from the special lodgings to the Object hangar.”

Quenser scraped X-marks into the sand along a few routes.

The blonde-haired, large-breasted Black Uniform frowned.

“But the traitors can’t just move about as they please. The watchtowers will spot them outside. If they simply pursue the Elite, they will be shot down by light machineguns.”

“Then they’ll take out the watchtowers!”

Sounds resembling champagne corks being removed rang out across the Oceanian wasteland. Quenser looked up and saw a few thirty centimeter parachutes opening in the sky. They looked like children’s fireworks, but they were not. Instead of a weight, they had a small camera attached.

“Here they come!!” shouted the Black Uniform woman.

“Ah, damn! Shoot them down before they designate the coordinates!!”

Just as Quenser tried to shout into his military radio, the Black Uniform grabbed him by the back of the neck and dove down to the sandy ground. The beautiful woman was lying on top of him, so two soft objects were pressed against his back. Nothing could have made him happier.

But such ephemeral joys had a way of being quickly destroyed.

Quenser heard a roar and saw the real attack hit the top of a nearby watchtower. The midair cameras had specified the coordinates and then the shells had been fired. It was a stereotypical and by-the-book use of mortars.

However, what happened next was not in the textbook.

For some reason, the top of the watchtower was covered in a sticky, white liquid.

Quenser and the Black Uniform woman began to tremble.

They finally realized what the rebels had done.

“Th-that bastard!! Did he take the red paint out of the paint rounds and replaced it with white!? And he turned it into a disturbingly sticky liquid!”

“Eee!! It smells funny and won’t come out of my hair!”

Quenser did not even need the radio to hear the screams of the female soldier with guard duty who had held a light machinegun in the watchtower.

The rebels seemed to be following the standard theory of making the most of the initial confusion of the attack. The sounds of assault rifle gunfire could be heard from multiple directions.

“M-my guess is all of their paint rounds will be like that, but what do you think?”

“I agree 100%,” said Quenser.

“In that case, I think you should clear an escape path to protect my dignity as a woman!! The battlefield cameramen of this peaceful world are aiming bazooka-like cameras our way, remember? I don’t want to be on the cover of a newsletter with my face covered in that sticky stuff!!”

“Guys don’t want to be splattered with sticky, white stuff either! In a way, it’s even worse for us than for the girls!!”

But shouting at each other was not going to bring an end to the battle.

Quenser sheathed his fake military knife that had a black, rubber blade and began to move with the Black Uniform woman.

===Part 3===

Froleytia Capistrano was a silver-haired, giant-breasted, and highly-ranked soldier. As she smoked her kiseru in the operation control room, she responded to a question from one of her subordinates.

“Well, if you didn’t seriously want to avoid being hit, no one would fight seriously.”

===Part 4===

Simulation Number 101 (b).

Eliminate the rebels from within the unit ASAP while guiding and protecting the pilot Elite.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! If we take out the princess, we’re freed from those tasteless rations for a week! We can eat as much roast beef and garlic shrimp as we want!!”

Heivia and the others were traveling beneath the vehicles. That was an alternate way through the maintenance base zone which was made up of over one hundred vehicles. The vehicles left a space of over two meters above the ground, so they could remain standing as they ran and they could hide behind the giant wheels.

Myonri pointed her PDW here and there while moving cautiously and occasionally coughing.

[[Image:HO_v07_022.png|thumb]]

“Ugh. Cough! This exhaust is terrible. We aren’t going to get carbon monoxide poisoning, are we? I don’t want to die on a training mission!”

“The human body is plenty sturdy! Don’t worry!” barked back Heivia.

He then sent a sign to the other two soldiers with them: a short girl with freckles and a muscular man.

“Girly, Basic! Drive them out from the left. Once they come out from the behind the wheel, I’ll shoot them!!”

As per Heivia’s instruction, a grenade was thrown behind the wheel.

Once a high school-aged girl frantically ran to escape the (white and sticky) explosion, he mercilessly fired a paint round.

“Stop! Not the face!!”

“Fwa ha ha ha ha! Then should I fire between those huge tits of yours!?”

Travelling beneath the giant vehicles allowed them to almost entirely ignore any bombardments that would fly in a parabola arc and fall from the sky.

But there was an even bigger reason they had chosen that route.

“Myonri! Get out that tool on your back!!”

He pointed straight up.

“We’re directly below the special Elite lodgings. Let’s cut in from below as planned!!”

“Oof… Those lodgings are made by connecting a few different vehicles, right?”

“And if we stick the door-busting tool into the joint between vehicles and force it open, we can crawl in. If they’re still keeping her in here as part of Phase 1, this’ll be checkmate!!”

Heivia lifted Myonri up on his shoulders and she pressed the special tool against the vehicle bottom that looked like a thick metal ceiling. Like a pile bunker, the “beak” portion used explosives to stab in and then a motor spread the “beak” and forced open the thick metal panels that had been perfectly aligned.

“Ahh, ahh. This is ripping the metal apart! Should we really be doing this for a mock battle!?”

“I don’t remember being told not to destroy the equipment. In fact, it was that huge-breasted commander that told us to make this as realistic as possible.”

They opened a gap just barely large enough for one person to squeeze through. Myonri’s short form was pushed up first and then she reached down and helped Heivia in.

Girly had Basic lift her up, but Basic was too large to fit in the gap.

After sending Basic off to meet up with another team, Heivia and the two girls began searching the Elite lodgings.

“This is a brilliant method. …Although it would be a one-way ticket for anyone trying to pull it off for real.”

The inside was filled with high-class furnishings that looked out of place in a military facility.

The design resembled a villa made entirely of classical mahogany. When Heivia had visited with Quenser two weeks prior, it had been a sterile place filled with white and the layout had even been completely different. It may have been to match the princess’s mental condition or to prevent an attack, but it was made to be completely rearranged in an extremely short period of time.

“If it can be rearranged, does that mean we can pry it apart with the door-busting tool?”

“This isn’t going to make proper training. Paint rounds can’t pierce walls.”

Heivia and the others swiftly finished their search of the first floor.

They counted the number of exits, set up quick traps at each one, and headed for the stairs. Before charging in, Heivia grabbed a stuffed animal and tossed it forward. As expected, this produced several gunshots.

Still hiding behind cover, he fired several short bursts toward the stairs.

“Myonri! Throw a grenade on my signal!!”

Heivia stopped firing to avoid friendly fire, Myonri leaned out in his place, and she tossed a grenade toward the upper floor.

A moist explosion and a few screams soon followed.

“Oh.”

“You idiot!!”

As Girly stared up the stairs, Heivia and Myonri frantically pulled her forward.

A short burst of gunfire came from the top of the stairs.

“Don’t let your guard down until you’re sure they’re dead, you idiot!!”

“Did you have to call me an idiot twice!?”

“It’s important!! And if you were a guy, I wouldn’t have saved you, so you should thank me! Idiot, idiot!!”

“If you say it that much, you just sound like a tsundere!!”

“Say that again and I’ll fire a paint round into your back!!” shouted Heivia as he pointed upwards. “Myonri, use that tool on the roof.”

“Eh? But there’s no seam there, so I can’t pry it apart.”

“The people up above don’t know that. You scare them and I’ll finish them off while they’re preparing to run!”

Myonri did as she was told and forcefully stabbed the “beak” into the ceiling.

A dull sound rang out and the bodyguard soldiers started to move to a safer location, but Heivia accurately took them out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Clear, clear! Let’s move on.”

“Why on earth are you a radar analyst? Wouldn’t you be more at home in a VIP assassination squad?”

“Can you sit around all day in an air-conditioned room in a squad like that? If not, I’ll pass.”

They climbed the stairs and found around three bodyguard soldiers covered in sticky white paint. They held up their hands with disappointed looks.

“Where is she, dammit? The princess has to be hiding around here somewhere. Find her!!”

The mission was about protecting the Elite, but it was unclear if she would be carrying a gun or not. There was a real possibility of being shot from a closet or refrigerator.

After coming so far, it would be a shame to lose the bonus for shooting her, so Heivia and the others carefully checked each room.

“Clear!”

“Clear!!”

“Clear over here, too. Shit! Why is everywhere clear!? Where is the princess hiding!?”

After unintentionally ensuring their safety, Heivia began looking around and shouting angrily.

And then he felt a slight draft.

He turned toward the source and found an open refrigerator door. He finally shoved the entire thing to the side.

“Dammit…”

The mahogany inner wall had been torn open.

To reduce weight, the outer wall was covered in a thick blade-resistant sheet, but it could still be torn with the proper tools. A vertical tear had created a hole large enough for a human to escape through.

(As soon as the firefight began below the vehicles, they had already realized the risk of us breaking in. Dammit!)

He brought his hand to the 150 cm vertical slit and brushed it aside. Struggles were beginning along the routes leading from the Elite lodgings to the Object hanger. While both sides fired on each other, Heivia saw a short girl wearing a special suit and a boy tugging on her hand while running along the sand.

“Quenser!! I knew it had to be you!!” he shouted.

The boy’s only response was to look over his shoulder and raise his middle finger.

And then…

“Oh, shit!!”

Heivia frantically moved back inside and dove to the floor. Now that the special lodgings were no longer needed, tanks began firing on the second floor with what felt like enough force to destroy the building.

===Part 5===

Before the attack even began, Quenser’s group had snuck to the special lodgings, met up with the princess, and helped her escape. But now that they were hiding behind a tank, they had little confidence in their ability to win a normal firefight.

“Why are you even here, Quenser?”

“Ha ha ha. That question hurts, princess. If you weren’t a girl, I’d shove you out to the traitors.”

The one doing all the work was the Black Uniform woman who was travelling with the boy. As one of those who claimed to purge the military of criminals, she was used to firefights between humans even in an age where Object battles symbolized war.

That woman was currently looking toward the Elite lodgings in annoyance.

The rectangular building sat atop several large vehicles and its top half was covered in a poisonous red. It looked a bit like a horrible cranberry tart.

“Tanks in a mock battle? Couldn’t that have killed them?”

“The paint rounds can’t pierce walls, so it doesn’t count. If you assume they’re dead, it’ll come back to bite you later.”

Once mock battles began creating unique rules, there was a danger of losing any experience usable in a real battle. But at the same time, some differences were unavoidable if one was not going to train with a real battle.

“Two hundred meters to the hangar.”

“Once we get in there, I just have to board the Baby Magnum. I can use the sensors to slaughter them all.”

The Black Uniform smiled bitterly at that dangerous statement and asked a question.

“Now, how will the enemy handle this?”

“They’ll have set up a wire along a route the princess has to pass through. That could be the entrances to the hangar or the Object’s hatch.”

This mock battle was based on the possibility of traitors within the military. The bandannas around their mouths were to make them easy to distinguish, but the maintenance soldiers were kept in a gray area. It was possible an enemy could approach while pretending to be an ally.

“I will not fall for such a simple trap.”

“Research shows the people who think that are the easiest to catch in a trap.”

“Mh. Quenser, do you think I am clumsy?”

“Sorry, but I’ve never seen you act particularly sharply! I can think of a few times when you almost killed me with the Baby Magnum. That time in Gibraltar for instance!!”

“Quit complaining, Quenser.”

“Why do you think I’m complaining? It’s because our lives are on the line!!!!!”

“Calm down,” cut in the Black Uniform. “Let’s get back to the issue at hand. The wire traps are passive. We might hit them and we might not. I doubt the enemy will rely on them alone.”

“The traps are meant to slow us down. While we spend time deactivating them, they’ll attack from a distance with snipers or something.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll find the traps and deactivate them. You gather what people you can and be on the lookout.”

===Part 6===

During a mock battle that uses paint rounds, even a tank could not pierce a thick blade-resistant sheet.

But the close-range blast had still left Myonri dizzy. While writhing in pain due a sharp earache, Heivia turned toward Girly. She seemed conscious, but she had completely lost her nerve. She had fallen to the floor and was waving her hands around with tears in her eyes. Her expression made it clear taking a single step would make her wet herself. It resembled the shock of receiving the full effects of a stun grenade.

“Goddammit… That…bastard…”

Heivia took a few seconds to recover and then walked down the stairs of the Elite lodgings and exited on the first floor. There he found an enemy soldier, took them out with a handgun paint round, and then lay down behind cover.

His assault rifle had excellent rapid-fire and piercing ability, but it could perform accurate mid-range sniping with full use of its sensors.

(As long as I have line-of-sight, I can hit. And I have a direct line on the Object hangar from here!)

He licked his lips as he peered into the scope lens that was more of a small monitor with several types of information displayed.

He was targeting the main entrance to the hangar where a trap had been set up.

The trap prevented anyone from running through and he would shoot anyone who stopped for even an instant.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! I don’t like splattering guys with this stuff, but I won’t be satisfied until I get back at you!!”

While paint rounds were being used, a hit anywhere on the body counted as a kill, so he could not target the leg and then target any enemy soldiers who came to help.

He could not use any tricks. He could only target them directly.

He lay on the ground and waited.

His index finger stroked the surface of the trigger as he tried to alleviate his tension even slightly.

But…

(What’s going on? Don’t tell me they chickened out.)

He waited a few minutes, but nothing happened.

When assassinating a VIP, it was not unusual to wait for an entire day or two, but this was a frenzied battle. If he did not remain on the move while keeping a general idea where the target was located, enemy soldiers could sneak up behind him.

(They won’t be taking this slow by staying put until they eliminate all the enemy snipers. After all, the princess would be exposed the entire time. What is that guy thinking?)

And then he froze up.

Something unpleasant had entered the scope.

The giant mass of steel was known as an MBT or a main battle tank. Even the name was outdated and rarely seen on the modern battlefield.

“What the hell!? Did he throw the princess in there to protect her from snipers!?”

If the tank climbed the diagonal slope and charged through the gate, the snipers and traps would be meaningless. The anti-personnel traps would be crushed and the princess would be safely carried to the Object hangar.

Heivia tossed aside his assault rifle and grabbed the shoulder-fired missile launcher on his back.

Whether it was a tank or an attack helicopter, he could neutralize them with a direct hit from a shoulder-fired missile (loaded with paint). Those were the rules for this mock battle. One could complain it made no sense as the same weapon could not even pierce the thin walls of a building, but armored weapons would become invincible if some compromise was not made.

At any rate…

(Damn him. I don’t like having only one shot at this.)

Given their size, he could not carry around multiple missiles.

It was essentially a single-use weapon.

“But that bonus is mine if I make this one shot! And this makes my target way bigger, so it isn’t all bad!!”

He placed the launcher on his shoulder and peered into the sight on the side.

Both infrared and ultraviolet were used to lock onto the MBT heading for the hangar.

Immediately afterwards, the tank’s turret began to turn.

It stopped in exactly the right spot to stare at Heivia.

“…Crap.”

(They weren’t trying to get the princess through! The tank was a bluff used to locate everyone targeting the hangar door from afar!! Dammit. Did it detect the infrared signal I used for the lock!?)

He frantically jumped down from the large vehicle supporting the special Elite lodgings and tried to hide behind one of the giant wheels.

But he was too slow.

A beautiful Black Uniform woman popped up from a hatch on the top of the turret and fired her anti-personnel heavy machinegun.

Heivia had been close enough for mid-range sniping, so they could target him in the same way.

And the enemy’s weapon had three times the range of his assault rifle. Being hit by that thing from close range could have resulted in a “training accident”.

“Bhah!? Cough cough!! Fuck that hurts! Are you trying to make me hate tanks!?”

===Part 7===

Froleytia let out a sweet-smelling breath mixed with smoke.

The giant monitor in the operation control room displayed a detailed map of the maintenance base zone and the locations of both sides.

After seeing that the pilot Elite princess had entered Baby Magnum’s cockpit, she clapped her hands together lightly.

“That settles it! As per our crisis management manual, the Elite was safely brought to the Object where she can settle the rest. That ends the mock battle!!”

That was the special privilege of a first generation Object.

Unlike second generation Objects which were designed solely for Object vs. Object battles, the Baby Magnum was equipped with anti-fighter weapons, anti-tank weapons, and enough anti-personnel weapons and sensors to exterminate anyone. If one ignored the damage it would cause to the maintenance base zone, the enemy soldiers would be blown to pieces instantly no matter where they hid.

In other words, the battle was essentially over as soon as the princess boarded the Baby Magnum.

(But no one gets the all-you-can-eat prize yet again. It’s what I expected, but it’s still boring.)

As Froleytia thought, a female operator gave a hesitant report.

“U-um, major. You have a call.”

“Hm? Then hurry up and-…”

“No, um. It is a direct call to your cell phone. I thought it might be private. U-um, but I still have to pass it through my switchboard!!”

Froleytia waved a hand to give permission.

While serving in the military, there was no avoiding having her communications monitored. She could only think positively and view it as proving to a third party that she was not doing anything suspicious.

(No one with any sense would call my private number now, so maybe it has to do with my family.)

With that depressing thought, she reached for the cell phone in her uniform pocket.

She did not need to give a sign like in an old police drama. She simply pressed the call button and answered.

It was a male voice.

And oddly enough, he seemed to be using a voice changer.

“We have your daughter,” was the very first thing he(?) said.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

An unpleasant silence fell over the dim operation control room.

But it was not complete silence. Whispered voices could be heard here and there.

“Eh? Major Capistrano has-… Eh!?”

“She has a kid!? It can’t be! It just can’t be!”

“But she is 18… It’s a bit early, but it’s possible, right?”

Froleytia remained silent for a moment.

She was trembling a bit.

As the man(?) told her not to call the police, how much the ransom was, and how to deliver it, she slowly spoke as if crushing the words in her mouth.

“I am a virgin.”

“Eh!? Major Capistrano is-…!?”

“It can’t be! It just can’t be!?”

“But she is 18… It’s possible, right?”

The intensity of the whispered voices grew threefold. This time, female voices were mixed in accusing the guys of being disgusting.

Finally, the man(?) on the phone seemed to catch on.

“Huh? A virgin, but…huh? W-wait a minute! Don’t you have a nine-year-old daughter? Or…but…you can’t mean…!!”

“You. Have. The. Wrong. Number. You idiot!! You have guts making a threatening phone call on a military line. Don’t you know that the Legitimacy Kingdom accepts any fight someone picks with it!?”

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah!!” cried the voice frantically.

With a click, the line went dead.

The operator turned her seat toward Froleytia with a hand to one side of her headset.

“U-um, I traced his location. …What should we do?”

“…”

The duty of Froleytia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom troops stationed in Oceania was to prevent any other countries from invading the country during this chaotic time after it lost its military.

In other words, it was not their job to deal with criminals and terrorists. This was not a war, so it was a job for the local police. If the military acted here, they could be accused of intervention.

But…

“During this unstable period, I hear there are a lot of delinquent police officers who are paid off by the growing criminal organizations. A kidnapping for ransom is likely an organized crime, so they likely have pawns hidden within the police. In other words, the local police will be of no use.”

“Is this really okay?”

“The threat was sent to our military, not Oceania. If they pick a fight with us, it doesn’t count as intervention.” Froleytia adjusted the kiseru in her mouth and shrugged. “Our new mission begins now! Gather the necessary personnel and equipment and form a rescue team!! I authorize the use of weaponry suitable for attacking a concentration camp!!”

Despite her orders, the whispering seemed to never end.

“She’s a virgin.”

“Major Capistrano is a virgin!”

“She’s a noble’s daughter and a military officer. That’s one hell of a target!”

“You guys are disgusting!!”

Froleytia puffed smoke from her mouth like a demon king.

That trembling Legitimacy Kingdom officer hated damage to her pride more than anything else.

“I’ll show you just who you picked a fight with, you thieves.”

===Part 8===

And so Quenser, Heivia, and the other soldiers exhausted from the mock battle were loaded into the back of military trucks and carried over cracked asphalt. Each and every vibration of the trucks made them feel like they had been cursed by god.

“This isn’t funny… This isn’t goddamn funny!! I lose the all-you-can-eat kill bonus and now our commander is sending us off to rescue some kid for nothing but righteous indignation!? There’s not a single good thing about this. Please tell me a girl in a micro bikini is gonna show up soon!!”

“I hear the girl who was kidnapped is nine. We need to put the work in now to enjoy a lovely micro bikini ten years from now.”

Feeling fed up with it all, Heivia looked up toward the sun.

It was so bright it looked right off an orange juice package.

“And another thing,” he spat out.

An official Legitimacy Kingdom battlefield cameraman was with them on the truck. That in and of itself was no problem, but they recognized this particular cameraman and not in a good way.

“Why is ''he'' with us?”

“I went through all the proper channels,” smoothly answered the man who had a history with Oceania.

His name was Sewax.

He had previously slipped into Oceania with a press non-combatant permit, but he had broken tons of international laws by disturbing the battlefield with a sniper rifle.

“This time, I only have my camera. I’m not armed and I have no intention of getting in your way.”

“I should damn well hope so!! I doubt you’ve made up for the lives you took!!”

Heivia almost grabbed at the man, but the surrounding soldiers held him back.

This was not because they disapproved of how he was handling this civilian. Their expressions made it clear they simply did not want a disturbance within the limited space of the vehicle.

Quenser shrugged.

“Try to keep your cool. Punching him isn’t going to summon girls in micro bikinis.”

Hearing that, Heivia clicked his tongue and muttered something in a low tone.

“Y’know, Quenser, it isn’t like all you need is skimpy clothing. What you need for a beautiful woman is-…”

“I know, Heivia, I know. It’s what’s inside that counts, right? It doesn’t matter if some side character is suddenly wearing a micro bikini. What we’re after is more than simple sexiness.”

They continued chatting as the truck shook.

They showed no concern for the deadly firefight that lay ahead.

“So about this kidnapping. Is this area really that dangerous?”

“Mafias and gangs from around the world used the confusion of this postwar period to work their way in. Plus, the remnants of the old military government are still trying to earn funds to continue the war. And since the black market has become necessary for your average citizen, the criminal organizations are being welcomed.”

“What? Oceania wasn’t that bad last time we were here. Wasn’t it pretty peaceful and wasn’t everyone smiling?”

“Haven’t you heard about the wild fluctuation of the Oceanian dollar? The assistance from distant countries and relief funds from charities have come in large amounts, but they’re sporadic. Huge amounts of money briefly come flowing in like some kind of fad or sudden idea. Intermittent support is the most difficult to deal with. You can’t rely on it as a lifeline, so the local people end up finding a dirty but stable way to earn an income and supply products.”

He could have left well enough alone, but Sewax decided to butt into the conversation.

He held up his camera.

“You have to ignore where it came from, but the quality isn’t bad. One of my lens case sets was stolen at customs, but I found an identical one on the black market. I should actually get some work done now.”

Heivia seemed to decide yelling at the man would accomplish nothing, so he restrained himself while the veins on his temple bulged out.

Quenser glanced toward Sewax.

“If they just want to profit from the black market, they wouldn’t kidnap someone.”

“I’m just saying they’re no Robin Hood. No matter what they claim, they’re villains who gather money for their own convenience. They aren’t really thinking about the starving people or the fate of the country.”

The clattering line of trucks was headed toward an old industrial city along the eastern coast of the ocean. During the time of the military nation, only the discriminatory privileged class had lived there, so it had been destroyed by an Object.

All of the nearby buildings had toppled over and large piles of rubble could be found even on the road.

Only the so-called “white targets” such as schools, churches, and hospitals remained. They were completely untouched, so it showed just how frighteningly accurate the Object’s carpet bombing had been.

Heivia let out a whistle.

“Welcome to the Mouth of Truth.”

“What?”

“It’s a sightseeing spot in Rome. If you’re a student, try studying some history.”

“I don’t know anything about the Faith Organization.”

Heivia pointed toward the scenery with his thumb. Quenser could see remains of crumbled buildings that had piled on top of each other so they looked like mille-feuille.

“They go digging through all that and grab anything they can sell on the black market like music players and cans of dried milk, but if they get too greedy, the jaws of rubble bite into them.”

“…Is this country really in that bad a state?”

“Weren’t you listening? There’s nothing they can do until the local currency stabilizes. There are even rumors that straight up bartering works better. This chaos isn’t going to calm down until our euro and the other dollars stop being preferred.”

Sewax aimed his lens out the truck and toward the surrounding piles of rubble.

“When you get down to it, the liberation of Oceania is still in a period of chaos. A lot of people are being crushed underfoot. The normal people need to use the black market for food to eat and those in too much debt to use the black market are being forced to risk their lives in places like that. And they’re either working for free or for so little it barely makes a difference.”

“Seriously? We’re about to have a firefight there. And do you know what my specialty is? Explosives.”

“The area’s too dangerous, so the local police don’t go on patrol here. And the lack of police causes dangerous people to gather. But that makes the area even more dangerous. It’s a vicious cycle. All the lower level criminal organizations are crowded in together.”

The convoy of military trucks came to a stop about two kilometers away from the abandoned building that the call to Froleytia’s phone had come from. About one hundred infantry got out onto the cracked asphalt.

“Isn’t this a bit much? You’d think we were fighting a war.”

“Fighting in wars is our job. Now let’s go, student.”

A few battlefield cameramen had come along, but Sewax seemed to be travelling with Quenser and Heivia’s group. This annoyed the two boys even further.

“If you screw up, I’m not saving you. If you get injured, I’m leaving you behind. If you bring danger to the unit, I’ll use you as a shield and escape. I don’t give a crap about international law. That’s just what I’m gonna do. Got it?”

“Is your unit really weak enough to lose to a local criminal organization?”

Depending on what the enemy did, Quenser, Heivia, and the others would be forced into one of two types of battles.

First, they would besiege the enemy headquarters while the enemy was unaware they had been traced.

Second, they would pursue the swiftly fleeing enemy vehicles and carry out a car chase on the single long line of asphalt through the desert.

Either way, they controlled the satellite above, so they would not lose track of their enemy. As they were attempting to rescue a hostage, the attack on the base would be easier than a car chase.

“Would they really think they hadn’t been traced after their call passed through a military switchboard? Surely they didn’t believe the old police dramas where quickly hanging up keeps you from being traced.”

“We need to be on our guard. They might be well equipped and plan to escape after causing some damage to our first wave.”

“I pray they’re at least that smart. They need to be a worthy enough opponent for someone as great as me to head all the way out here.”

While remaining on the lookout for traps, cameras, snipers, or other dangers, Heivia and the others travelled from pile of rubble to pile of rubble. Quenser simply followed Heivia who had more or less taken the lead.

“By the way, why was a student like me sent with you?”

“God himself insisted you don’t get to lie around in bed all day while the rest of us work our asses off.”

“But I can’t take part in the firefight,” complained Quenser.

It was unclear what exactly he was taking photos of, but Sewax was pointing his camera here and there among the piles of rubble. Quenser had no idea what pictures would be worth what.

Unlike a normal stroll, they had to climb up piles of rubble that could collapse at any moment and be on the lookout for enemy soldiers that might not even be there. Even a distance of only two kilometers, a single station’s worth in a city, was rather exhausting.

“Hey, Heivia. Do you think I’ll be popular with the girls if the lower half of my body gets big and strong? Depending on your answer, I might give up right here.”

“Eh? Do you mean that in a dirty way?”

As he received an answer which earned a perfect 0 points, Quenser really did curl up on the ground. Heivia was forced to grab the stubborn child’s arm and drag him along.

“Look! That bastard Sewax is pointing his camera at you!!”

“It is my job to bring people the truth of the battlefield.”

“If you don’t want to be a source of international shame, stand up, Quenser!! Start walking!!”

As per their instructions over the radio, they arrived at a spot where they could look down on the abandoned building. Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Dammit. It’s a hospital. It survives the bombing and now it gets used for this. Let’s download a diagram and the distribution of people inside, so we can slaughter them all.”

“Just out of curiosity, what ever happened to rescuing the hostage?”

Of course, if they just had to kill everyone inside, there was no need to charge into the building. They could bombard the building from a distance and destroy it entirely.

Based on the distribution of enemy soldiers they received from the satellite, Quenser and the others used their sensors in a variety of ways to check on the details of the people inside.

“This is a pain in the ass. There are over fifty people in there.”

“Here we go. On the first floor…what is that place? Looks like an internal medicine examining room. Anyway, I found a child bound with duct tape. Oh, dear. And she has a blindfold, earplugs, and tape over the mouth. Um, I don’t see any other abducted children.”

“This is the world’s least rewarding place to peep. Let’s get this over with and peep on our huge-breasted commander’s bath.”

“Did you know that joke violates the rules regarding classified information?”

The one hundred infantry split into five groups and Quenser’s group took their position.

Sewax was still with them.

“So we get a student and a cameraman. How much variation does one unit need?”

“If you don’t need me, I’ll go set up a parasol and fall asleep. I’m not here because I want to be.”

“You all get to show the people back home that their tax money is being well spent. You should be thanking me.”

Heivia put up with a headache and spoke into his radio.

“The kid is on the first floor. Everywhere else doesn’t matter. You can make the corpses as gory as you want, so use your wall-penetrating rifles to shoot them on my signal.”

“Understood. Will you be using your pistols out of concern for the child? Seeing any corpses at all will probably traumatize her, but go to the extra effort if you want.”

“There are some lines you don’t cross. Then again, deciding where that line is for yourself is getting a bit self-righteous.”

Quenser and his group were not bothering with the strictly-guarded entrance.

They instead made their way to the outer wall of the examination room the abducted child was confined in. Quenser placed several Hand Axe plastic explosives on the wall in a systematic fashion. He finished the setup by stabbing electric fuses in.

“I’m ready.”

“Just to be sure, the explosion isn’t going to blow out the kid’s eardrums, is it?”

“We saw she had a blindfold and earplugs, remember? If we handle this well, she won’t even see the corpses. So what’ll you do, PTA?”

“Tch. Let’s do this. On a count of three.”

He casually counted down three seconds.

Immediately afterwards, an explosive noise burst out. It had actually been 53 anti-materiel rifles being fired simultaneously, but the timing was so perfect that it sounded like a single explosion.

At the same time, Quenser hit the switch on his radio while pressing against the wall.

The outer wall was blown to pieces and the filthy men inside the room were knocked to the ground. Before the criminals realized what was happening, Heivia and the professional soldiers stepped in and did not hesitate to pull the trigger.

Phase 1 took only five seconds.

Phase 2 was taking out anyone they missed in Phase 1. The existence of some leftovers who had luckily escaped the anti-materiel rifles was proven by short bursts of assault rifle fire.

“Clear?”

“Clear, clear. Help me out here, Quenser. Let’s hide the corpses before removing the kid’s blindfold. C’mon, Sewax, you help too!!”

“This was a hospital, so is there a mop and bucket anywhere?”

They could not remove the blindfold with corpses lying all over the place, but the duct tape covering the girl’s mouth could keep her from breathing. Quenser approached her and gently removed the tape over her mouth.

He expected her to cry.

But she did not.

“Run!! Hurry!!”

He had a very bad feeling.

He belatedly realized her clothes bulged out oddly and he gently lifted them up.

He saw a cell phone and colorful leads.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!!” shouted Heivia.

At the same time, someone in a distant place pressed a speed dial button.

===Part 9===

In that instant, Quenser and Heivia took the complete opposite actions.

In order to escape the blast, Heivia immediately moved backwards. On the other hand, Quenser grabbed the girls shoulders which were duct taped to the chair. He slid her along and threw the girl’s small body underneath the examining room’s bed.

All the while, Sewax was peering down his viewfinder.

“Wh-what?” asked Heivia as he coughed a bit and leaped behind a steel desk.

The silence was almost painful.

“What the hell!? It isn’t detonating!?”

“It’s a cell phone!” shouted back Quenser. “A cheap obsolete model is being used for the detonator. There are no indoor antennae in a ghost town like this. The signal sent from here has to reach an antenna in the next town over and then come back the same way. The thick walls of the building and the metal pipes and springs of this bed are enough. As long as it can’t pick up the signal, the detonation command can’t reach it!!”

As he spoke, he climbed under the bed himself. He pulled a small knife from his survival kit. The girl did not seem to know what was happening to her after suddenly being thrown into that small space. Anyone would be in a similar state with a blindfold and earplugs.

Quenser removed one of the earplugs and spoke gently.

“It’s okay. It’s okay now. The bomb won’t go off.”

“R-really?”

She simply sat their blankly, but that was fine for the time being as it made it easier to work.

“Can you get it off?” asked Heivia.

“Did you see this thing? I can neutralize a shitty detonator like this in 45 seconds.”

The explosive was homemade TNT and it was attached to her back with duct tape. The detonator, battery, and the like were mostly located under her arms. They all appeared to have been stolen from construction sites meant to rebuild the country.

“Honestly, is this supposed to be a school bag?”

There were three circuit boards, but two of them were fakes. He cut only the necessary leads with a knife and completely killed the detonator.

“Hey, it’s been a minute!”

“Don’t be stupid. It only took me thirty seconds to handle the device itself. It’s gently removing the duct tape that’s taking me so long!!”

The detonator was no longer functioning, so there was no need to remain below the bed. Quenser tossed the duct tape covered bomb out from under the bed and dragged the nine-year-old hostage out.

Heivia let out a breath and spoke into his radio.

“The situation has ended. The hostage is safe. I repeat, the situation has ended! I know it isn’t going to happen, but I request some ice-cold non-alcoholic beer and cured ham for when we return. Yeah, I know it isn’t happening!!”

“I thought the mission wasn’t over until we got back?”

“And call an ambulance. I’m on the verge of punching this annoying-as-hell cameraman!!”

The hostage girl looked around in confusion.

The corpses of the criminal organization had been moved to another room and the room had been quickly mopped, but the dangerous atmosphere filling the room was not so easily eliminated.

Sewax removed the camera’s viewfinder from his eye and spoke to Quenser.

“What do we do now? Do you put up posters like the ones you see for lost cats?”

“Don’t underestimate the military’s intelligence gathering ability. Her parents are probably being invited to the maintenance base just about now. The emotional reunion will take place inside the fence.”

The girl then looked up at Quenser.

She may have seen him as the easiest to talk to because he had dealt with the bomb.

“Hey, where are they?”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. You’ll be with your mother before-…”

“Not that,” she said, cutting him off.

The unease in her voice made it seem the incident was not yet over.

“Where are the others?”

===Part 10===

She had nothing to do.

That was how the princess felt.

No matter how many sensors her first generation Object had, there was no place for such a colossal weapon on a delicate mission to rescue a hostage. If they arrived with too much power, the criminal group could feel cornered enough to kill the hostage.

So now that the mock battle was over, the princess floated face up in a pool.

The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles, but it did not contain a facility with a large indoor pool. This outdoor facility had been created by taking advantage of the sand underfoot.

Simply put, the soldiers who misbehaved had been given shovels and forced to dig a giant hole, cover its surface with plastic, and pour water in it. That had created a makeshift pool. A nearby sign said “Female soldiers only. Cameras strictly prohibited.” The princess was surrounded by off-duty women in swimsuits and they were all splashing each other with water, hitting each other with beach balls, or getting into serious fights.

There were two reasons for the pool.

First, it was a project meant to reduce the stress of the female soldiers. It was less about the pool itself and more about providing a small event that allowed them to escape the gaze of the normal military regulations. Similar projects had resulted in events based on different cultural celebrations such as the flower viewing or carnival. There had also been the sudden appearance of a swimsuit-wearing Santa Claus.

Second, it was a means of punishment. It was not fun toiling away under the broiling sun to dig a hole that would be enjoyed by the well-behaved soldiers. It would be no exaggeration to say that over half of the work had been done by a bomb-using student and a radar analyst who excelled at using firearms.

“Sigh…”

And as a result, the princess was wearing a swimsuit and floating in a twenty meter square pool while surrounded by other female soldiers.

[[Image:HO_v07_057.png|thumb]]

And…

“Oh ho ho!! Oh ho ho ho ho!! Honestly, now the unrefined Legitimacy Kingdom Elite is so exhausted she is sighing? You sound like an old woman.”

“…Why are you connected to this line?”

The princess had heard an Information Alliance Elite’s voice coming from the handheld device attached to her wrist by a rubber bracelet. The princess almost always remained expressionless, but her eyebrows twisted in clear displeasure.

The nice-bodied Elite on the screen was laughing loudly while pressing the back of her hand against her cheek.

“Oh ho ho. Have you never heard of diplomatic routes, little girl? You can disconnect from the line if you like, but a rude Elite would bring disgrace to her unit. Oh ho ho. Then again, you do not look like the kind of girl who would care about that!!”

“I get it, so let’s fight. I will blow you to pieces with the Baby Magnum.”

“Oh ho ho. Do you really think I am in Oceania? War is not waged solely with unrefined battles. I am currently preparing for a concert. I am too busy to deal with a little girl like you.”

“Then why did you contact me.”

“I am also steadily preparing to make that gentleman mine.”

A cracking sound could be heard.

As the princess grabbed at the handheld device, its waterproof outer case very nearly broke.

“Explain further.”

“I don’t think so. But do not worry. You will find out in due time☆”

Having said that, the other Elite ended the transmission.

The princess floated on her back a while longer and looked up at a beach ball flying by above her.

“A concert… Singing…”

She stared blankly up at the blue sky and muttered to herself.

“I should take a photo with Quenser at a karaoke box and show it off to that horrible girl.”

A member of the maintenance battalion’s intelligence division secretly listened to her.

The reason was quite simple: her mental state was directly linked to the survival of the entire unit!

===Part 11===

The sky was dyed in the orange of evening.

There was no sign of the murderous sunlight which had been raining down so forcefully before. Once evening came, Oceania filled with darkness quite quickly. After only a few dozen minutes, full darkness would arrive.

“It’s a simple setup,” said Heivia as he kicked at the abandoned hospital’s floor with the heel of his military boot. He sounded truly irritated. “It’s human trafficking with no concern for age or sex. This hospital was their relay point or their gathering spot. They abduct innocent people from the nearby cities and carry them out here where the law won’t bother them. The police are too afraid to patrol this area much, so they can fully hide their tracks by swapping out their vehicles here.”

The kidnapping incident which had started with that wrong number was being treated as resolved. The abducted girl had been loaded aboard a military truck which was taking her to the maintenance base zone.

The only people left in the hospital were Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax the battlefield cameraman.

According to the girl, thirty to forty men and women of all ages had been there only about half an hour ago.

Quenser raised his hand.

“Then why call up and demand a ransom? If they’re a human trafficking group, they wouldn’t need to do that. They would get money by selling her.”

“It’s probably a secondary source of income. Before selling her to some distant place, they get as much money from the parents as they can. They never intended to give the girl back.”

“But who in the world would buy them?” asked Myonri uneasily.

Sewax answered while performing maintenance on his camera.

“Humans are in demand everywhere.”

“What I don’t get is the variety in age. Whether for organs, soldiers, labor, or a pervert’s toy, the younger the better, right? I doubt a criminal organization like that would go out of their way to abduct and sell old men and women.”

“They might,” replied Sewax without hesitation. “Whether it’s people who starved to death or died in a battle, the world wants obvious victims of war. For example, the leaders of a chaotic country without a proper Object system in place needs a way to obtain humanitarian aid from the peaceful countries.”

“…Seriously?”

“Humanitarian aid such as food and fuel can be sold for money through the proper routes. And that money can buy guns and mercenaries to tighten one’s control over the unsatisfied country that has insufficient supplies. That’s one simple way governments oppress their countries with a dictatorship.”

“So this is a business that exports ‘extras’ to play the role of corpses,” spat out Quenser.

Heivia frowned.

“But wouldn’t it look weird if Oceanians ended up as corpses in other countries?”

“To a certain extent, abducting tourists can help supply people from different regions. There are people like that cameraman who go out of their way to visit dangerous places. If they kidnap a certain number from different regions, they can divide them up to match the requests they receive.”

Quenser sounded disgusted by the idea as he spoke, but Sewax’s expression remained calm.

The student wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

“Well, that explains the wide variety of people. If all the corpses were women and children, it might draw more sympathy from the people leisurely watching TV, but they probably want to mix in a macho old man or two to make it all look less contrived.”

“That means some of these people are being kidnapped and killed for the same reason as the variation in fighting game rosters.”

“Even if it’s a dummy operation, some soldiers might be hesitant to sacrifice their own people. And that goes for dictatorships, too. But some of that guilt can be eliminated by having them kill people from other nations to protect their own people. After all, that’s basically the entire reason the military exists and what soldiers are taught to do.”

That was likely what the abductors were after.

Sewax then changed the subject.

“Any guesses where the guns used here came from?”

“They were old-style assault rifles. Not only that, but inferior ones made by melting down scrap metal and reusing it. That’s the equipment Oceania used in the days of the military nation,” explained Heivia.

“Are remnants of the old military government involved in this?” asked Myonri with a look of disbelief.

Quenser chose his words carefully as he answered.

“Well, I have been hearing about those remnants trying to take back Oceania despite the Objects stationed here giving the coalition forces an overwhelming advantage.”

Sewax smiled thinly.

“I’ve heard they’re desperate to set up pipelines to other chaotic regions that are opposed to having Objects rule over them. But to trade, they need products. The old military government’s resources have dried up, so they want some kind of diplomatic commodity.”

“And that commodity is corpse extras of all ages?” muttered Heivia quietly. “The old government’s goal is to retake Oceania. In that case, it does make sense.”

“How?”

“They want a way to control people and we’ve already glimpsed the initial preparations for that.”

After thinking for a second, Quenser grimaced.

“The black market.”

“It’s more of an ally to the people than the convenience stores. Without it, they wouldn’t have any food to eat. But not all of the black market’s products are gathered by crawling through the rubble. Someone has to obtain funds and buy products to sell.”

“Food earned by selling humans,” said Myonri with the same look as someone who had found a giant clump of hair in the food they had been eating. “If the people knew the truth, wouldn’t they begin to hate the old government’s black market?”

“Probably,” commented Sewax. “But by that time, the black market will have become an indispensable part of their lives. No matter how much they hate it, they can’t escape it. They need to get food and water somehow, so they’ll have to approve of what the old government is doing. People have a way of justifying the things they do.”

“They’re using a cruel incident to wash away the standards of good and evil and of common sense in this country. This is a form of terrorism.”

“Screw this,” spat out Quenser.

Sewax smiled.

“Fortunately, this is likely the first wave of human trafficking.”

“What?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the black market and the stock of products has been pretty unstable. So far, they have probably only had the products they dug up in the rubble. But as the supply began to dwindle, they started to panic. To prevent the people from turning their anger toward a black market without enough to sell, they put together a rushed plan. If they had already been selling people and earning a steady income, the black market would not have been so unstable.”

“So what?” Quenser glared at Sewax. “Either way, we need to rescue the Oceanian people who vanished here before they’re packed up and shipped away. Thirty people? Forty? They’re going to end up as corpse extras. They’ll be exported somewhere that doesn’t care about the concept of ‘clean wars’ and they’ll end up on some gory picture distributed around the world.”

“That’s the problem, Quenser.” Heivia scratched at his head. “Do you remember what our huge-breasted commander’s justification was? A child was kidnapped and a threatening call was made to a military officer. As a form of self-defense, that officer is sending out her unit to eliminate the criminal organization. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I do. This operation began with that wrong number, so it only applies to the girl from the phone call. Now that we’ve rescued her, we have no pretext for military action!!”

“Then what do we do? Are we just going to leave those people to their fate!?”

“I don’t want to be plagued by nightmares of lines of body bags every time I go to bed, but this is a different issue entirely!”

“Either way, Froleytia will receive the same report once the girl arrives at the maintenance base. No matter what we do, the unit will take action in the end. So is there any reason to let the number of body bags grow by waiting until that delayed action begins!?”

“At least get permission!! Acting like a hero is great and all, but I don’t want to be thrown behind bars in exchange for getting a statue made of me in a safe country!!”

Sewax let out an obvious sigh and interrupted the following silence.

“Let’s go over the situation. You just finished your mission and were about to return to the maintenance base zone. You are not allowed to make a preemptive strike on a local force, but you are permitted to fight back in self-defense in the case of an unexpected battle. Is all that correct?”

“Are you telling us to say we lost our bearings in the desert and happened across the abduction organization while driving around randomly?”

“That’s a terrible excuse! That huge-breasted commander of ours would kill us!!”

“Only if we shot at them and killed them,” said Quenser as he gathered his thoughts. “But we should be able to get by if we restrict ourselves to investigation and long-distance reconnaissance. The odds are good Froleytia will act once she hears what that girl has to say. Even if we only investigate what buildings we need to attack and where the people are inside, it might change how many people we can save.”

“You sure are optimistic. What if she doesn’t act? Even if they’re a criminal organization, they still count as civilians. If she can’t justify slaughtering them with the military, there’s nothing she can do.”

“If that happens…” Quenser paused there, threw off his hesitation, and finally continued. “Then we’ll have to resign ourselves to being thrown in the detention barracks.”

===Part 12===

There was a proper way to go about reconnaissance.

And Quenser, Heivia, and the others did not have the proper equipment.

So…

“Who would have thought we would get our equipment at their black market?”

“I kind of think it’s our own fault.”

They bought military reconnaissance equipment centered on parabolic microphones and laser bugging devices. They also made sure to negotiate them all down to half the asking price. Unlike normal souvenir shops, the night was the busiest time for the black market. The hot night produced an odd passion in people which intertwined with the heat and filled the air with an oppressive atmosphere that permeated one’s body.

“I’m burning up… I thought the desert was supposed to be cold at night.”

“This area is filled with concrete, so it gathers heat like an urban heat island.”

“All these lights are outdated incandescent bulbs and everyone’s using diesel generators. I wonder if that’s adding to it.”

Quenser was in charge of haggling.

He was knowledgeable about machines and had a better sense of what things were worth due to his life as a commoner.

“I’m afraid of running into one of those Black Uniform women who were sent to the maintenance base. If they found out about this, they’d shoot us on the spot without bothering with a court martial.”

“How about we buy some uniforms, too? They have Information Alliance and Capitalist Corporations ones here.”

“Be my guest. But if anyone finds out, it’ll cause an international incident. Personally, I’m not gonna start a war.”

As a drunk was beaten by some of the shop owners for using shoddy counterfeit money, they bought some bottles of cider and other drinks stuck in a cooler of ice and received a radio transmission from Sewax.

They had asked Myonri and Sewax to gather some general information ahead of time.

“In an unstable country like this, the currencies of safe countries are popular. It’s a bit frustrating that the Capitalist Corporations’ dollars are better received than the Legitimacy Kingdom’s euros, but I got some interesting information.”

“Damn, it’s gone flat.”

“What?”

“Just talking to myself,” said Heivia evasively. “So did you come across some bottom-level member of the criminal organization?”

“I didn’t go that far. I talked with some of the people working in the rubble called the Mouth of Truth. To help the country recover, a few of the docks at the international harbor are opened to the general public, but it seems one of them is being monopolized by a shell corporation. If they were transporting something they wanted to hide, they wouldn’t need to do that.”

“Do you have any proof the corpse extras are being shipped out there?”

“Not if ordering a few dozen more fast food hamburgers than usual doesn’t qualify as proof. It seems they also carried in a bunch of water and salt.”

Heivia and Quenser exchanged a glance.

“So once they’ve eaten, they get stuffed in a container for the long cruise?”

“If they just stuff in them in like that, will they really make it to the destination?”

“That depends on where they’re being sent,” replied Sewax. “My guess is half would die during the first two weeks and a tenth of the survivors would die off each day afterwards.”

That guess was anything but funny.

The criminal organization was not selling cheap laborers or toys for perverts. They were selling extras to play the role of corpses. Selling them alive would be best, but they could be sold at a reduced price if they were frozen after they died. When a corpse was gruesomely roasted, you didn’t have to worry about livor mortis or anything like that. It was possible an autopsy wouldn’t even be performed.

“I also got my hands on a map of the harbor. I have a few guesses where the ‘products’ will be loaded, but I don’t know for sure. We need to go see for ourselves.”

“Well, we can’t use the military satellite without restriction,” said Heivia.

“We know the shortest course, so having to take such a roundabout route is just plain exhausting,” added Quenser.

Each time the two boys bought another piece of junk, they crossed off another item on their list.

“It looks like we’ll be able to get everything we need. Is there anything you want us to get outside of the standard reconnaissance equipment?” they asked Sewax.

“A beautiful blonde, a barrel of sherry, brandy that’s at least eight years old, cigars without any unnecessary filters, and a villa with a pool,” said Sewax perfectly casually. “Oh, and a bow and arrow set.”

“?”

===Part 13===

The international harbor in question was located at one end of the city of rubble known as the Mouth of Truth.

Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax stopped their military vehicle on the road three kilometers from the harbor and stepped out onto the cracked asphalt.

The abandoned buildings with no lights looked a lot different than they had during the day.

No flashlight lights could be seen in the direction of the abandoned buildings. Either searching for trash in the dark was too inefficient or they would simply be attacked if they dug anything out.

“This area is so bad they have to gather junk, so should we really leave our vehicle here? I don’t want to return exhausted from the job and find our means of transportation gone.”

“After the attack today, the people of the slum aren’t going to pick a fight with the military for at least half a day.”

Quenser and Sewax carried the reconnaissance equipment while Heivia and Myonri carried the firearms as they walked toward the international harbor that was opened to the public to help the country recover.

“If you look at it the right way, war recovery is like a tree that grows money,” complained Heivia as he wiped sweat from his brow. “And with all this equipment being moved around, people are gonna show up to take it for themselves. No one else is here, there are tons of things to hide behind, and there are any number of great spots for an attack. I can see why this area is so dangerous.”

“Are the containers shipped by land attacked because it’s a dangerous area or did it become a dangerous area because it’s a land route on which containers are shipped? It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg question,” said Sewax smoothly.

Quenser and the others did not directly enter the harbor. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and armed workers were patrolling it. Opening the harbor up unconditionally would allow people to smuggle in weapons and drugs, so this was no surprise.

“This place is being used by human traffickers, so they’re not doing a very good job,” muttered Heivia as he hid behind some rubble.

“Just to be clear, don’t shoot them,” said Quenser in annoyance. “They’re just normal local people.”

“I know that, you idiot. But the villains might’ve bought some of them out. If this comes down to a fight, I’m classifying them as yellow. I won’t kill them, but I’ll incapacitate them.”

As an international harbor, it was quite a large place. It continued for two or three kilometers along the concrete-hardened coast. Also, about half of it had been destroyed in a fierce battle. A giant crane had broken and sunk into the ocean, and some giant metal boxes piled up in the container yard had collapsed and spread out like an avalanche.

“Myonri, where’s the dock we’re interested in?”

“N-number nine. From what we heard at least.”

Collapsed and broken buildings were lined up along the outside of the harbor. Quenser and the other three entered one of the abandoned buildings that was half-buried in the sand and climbed the stairs. They found a window overlooking the entire dock and hid by pressing up against the wall.

“Honestly, this building isn’t going to suddenly collapse, is it?”

“I’m afraid of asbestos, too. Was this thing actually made safely?”

The two idiots continued to complain back and forth.

“They’ve got someone famous here,” muttered Sewax flatly as he looked down at the dock with binoculars. “See that big man with a scar on his cheek and a false finger on his right hand? He looks like someone the major newspapers are giving an award for information on. He’s probably the man known as Blue Bottle.”

“Who’s that?” asked Quenser honestly.

“I think I heard the intelligence division whispering about that,” said Heivia in annoyance. “They were saying something about an unofficial mission to assassinate a courier that’s been making tons of money and controlling the market in Oceania by slipping past the satellites and inspections. They mentioned giving out tons of guest IDs to the maintenance base in preparation to invite in a specialized assassination team.”

“Wait a second. I thought we were in charge of wars. Aren’t we supposed to leave things like this to the local police?”

“There are always exceptions and some people force us to make an exception. The Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, the Capitalist Corporations, and the Faith Organization are all fighting over their own interests here in Oceania, but no one is going to welcome a criminal who causes damage to everyone equally.”

“Hm.” Quenser did not seem to understand very well. “So why is he called Blue Bottle? Does he roll up his money and carry it around in blue bottles?”

Sewax shrugged.

“It’s the name of a jellyfish. A poisonous one. Apparently, more people in Oceania die from jellyfish than from sharks. He got the name because of how he does business while slipping through the nets like a ghost.”

That meant the criminal organization led by Blue Bottle was heavily related to the human trafficking and the black market.

“Oh, oh. You can tell at a glance.” Heivia let out a whistle as he peered out with binoculars. “Those clearly aren’t harbor workers. Look at those giant assault rifles. I’m guessing there’s between 50 and 90 of them.”

“Eh? I can only see about 20 out there.”

“But they’ll have two or three shifts, so that makes 50 to 90. A soccer team isn’t made up of exactly eleven people, you know?”

“Hey, Heivia. Is it possible these are harbor workers who were given money and equipment?”

“Not a chance. Their complexion is different. The tone of your skin can change a lot in a short period of time, but the brightness of the whites of your eyes won’t change in just a week or a month. Based on what they’ve been eating, they’re clearly higher up on the hierarchy. These aren’t people hired for the day. We aren’t gonna kill them and find out they were normal civilians.”

In other words, they did not need to hold back.

Quenser looked back and forth between the map Sewax had spread out on the dusty floor and the actual dock outside the window.

“The first question is where Blue Bottle’s group is keeping their ‘merchandise’,” he said. “It looks like there’s a mid-sized cargo ship docked here.”

He pointed toward the ship loaded with the standard metal containers.

But Sewax immediately rejected the idea.

“They’re not on the ship. The lifespans of the humans is directly linked to temperature and humidity. They’ll wait until the last second to load them in the containers. It’s just like shipping fruit. They’ll last longer this way.”

In that case, they could also rule out the hundreds of containers in the container yard.

If all of those were options, they might very well have had to give up.

“Then where are they?”

“Look at where the soldiers are, student.” Heivia tapped Quenser on the shoulder and pointed out the window with his chin. “They’re at the exits, the points needed to look out for snipers, and on top of the cranes instead of lookout towers. All of those are standard spots you’ll find in any textbook, but some of the soldiers are in clearly inefficient places. Those are to prevent any escapees. The ‘merchandise’ is within that office.”

“Probably,” agreed Sewax. “It has a roof to block out the sun and an air conditioner to prevent heat stroke. More importantly, it has four walls to prevent escape. And they don’t have to worry about anyone spotting the shocking fact that they’re holding people captive.”

Quenser started to agree, but then he frowned.

He looked out the window once more.

“The outer fence isn’t far from it. If they shouted, their voice could get out. Doesn’t that give them a chance to escape?”

“And what would they do then?” Heivia grinned cruelly. “This is a deserted city. Everyone digging for junk is working for the black market. They won’t actively take part in the human trafficking, but they’ll keep quiet if Blue Bottle yells at them.”

“What about the harmless harbor workers?”

“They have to pass through the empty city to get back home alive. Do you really think they’ll cause any unnecessary trouble?”

With that said, Heivia made a sign toward Myonri.

He then tapped on Quenser’s shoulder.

“What was that?”

“You’re working with the military, so how about you try to learn our language?”

Quenser and Heivia left the abandoned building, leaving Myonri and Sewax inside. They crouched down and made their way along while hiding behind concrete rubble in the road.

Quenser looked confused when he saw what Heivia was holding.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“The office with the ‘merchandise’ inside isn’t far from the fence. You’re the one that pointed that out, Quenser.”

They approached almost all the way to the fence and stopped about 100 meters form the office. They could not approach any further. If they poked their heads out from behind the rubble, a firefight would begin with Blue Bottle’s criminal organization.

Needless to say, a battle with a metal fence in between would put Quenser and Heivia at a disadvantage when they were trying to rescue the abducted people.

The office was a two-story building made of reinforced concrete. The staircase was attached to the outside of the building.

All of the first floor windows had the blinds lowered, so they could not see inside.

But on the second floor…

“There we go,” muttered Quenser with binoculars in one hand. “I see an old woman. She’s probably about 80. Now that’s another kind of person who will make you want to protect them. She’s perfect for one of their extras, dammit.”

“Not again! Can we please run across a large-breasted waitress or beautiful secretary in a business suit!? I need some kind of motivation here!!”

“More importantly,” said Quenser in annoyance. “She’s the only one I can see from here. There’s supposed to be around thirty of them, right? Where are the others? I hope they aren’t locked up separately.”

Suddenly, Sewax spoke up over the radio.

“That’s probably where they’re being fed their last supper.”

“What?”

“The abducted people will be packed in containers and shipped across the ocean. How long they survive is influenced by temperature, humidity, and food supply.”

Quenser turned his binoculars back toward the second floor of the office.

The small old woman was sitting in a chair by the window. The round table contained a hamburger and fries from a fast food restaurant as well as a cup filled with soda.

“After being packed in the container, they have to subsist off of water and salt,” continued Sewax. “If they gave them proper food, it would quickly rot in the high temperature and high humidity. That’s why they have them eat as much as they can ahead of time to maintain the freshness of their ‘merchandise’.”

“And so they would be in trouble if the people went on a hunger strike?”

“Even if they forced them to eat at gunpoint, the extreme stress could make them vomit, ruining the whole idea. That’s why they give them some hope. They’re in a comfortable air-conditioned room, the outer fence isn’t far away, and they have a nice view from the second floor window. The people are made to think they might be able to escape and so they need to eat to keep their strength up. Once they eat of their own free will, they can be shipped out.”

The small old woman had food in front of her, but she showed no sign of eating it. She simply hung her head down while sitting in the chair. The hamburger had grown cold and the grease from the fries had stained their container. Quenser could not guess how long she had been sitting there.

“She knows it’s over once she eats.”

“Damn them. It’s been a while since I saw food less appetizing than our rations.”

With that offhand comment, Heivia began assembling the military bow behind the rubble. It was a reinforced version of an athletic bow and it was covered in desert camouflage.

“Hey, are we really going to do this with so few people? If we know where all the abducted people are, Froleytia might take action.”

“I’m not going to use this to kill anyone, Mr. Happy. The second-story window is 100 meters away. If I aim high, the arrow will fall through the window. It doesn’t make much noise, so the guards wandering around outside won’t notice.”

Quenser realized what Heivia meant, so he scratched at his sand-filled blond hair.

“Are you going to shoot a radio to that old woman?”

“The arrows come with transmitters already. They’re meant to tell an Object where to fire, but with some quick modifications, we can communicate over it.”

“Who’s going to modify it?”

“If you want to prove your worth, you’d better get busy, Quenser. Taking apart some headphones and removing the oscillator is easier than disarming a bomb.”

“And who’s going to pay me?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t have an answer for that either! Why the hell am I taking this so seriously!?”

Without a soldering iron or wire cutters, Quenser had to pull a small knife meant for cooking from his survival kit. He used the knife to take apart the electronic device and combine the necessary parts. His movements were broad but accurate, so he looked a bit like a cook on a fishing ship.

After putting together the arrow, Quenser handed it to Heivia.

“How’s the window?”

“It’s open. They probably have the air conditioner on inside, but the open window increases the people’s hope.”

“You only have one shot at this. Are you sure you can get it in the room first try?”

“Easily, once I pass it through a ballistic calculation program. How about I fire it right into the hamburger on the table?”

“You got something that dangerous? Should that really be out on the black market?”

“Don’t be silly. This is for golf lovers. It just so happens you can also use it to provide targeting corrections for mortars is all.”

“So it’s like using the club to break open an ATM and take out the money?”

“This is another difference between the rich and the poor. There are people who have to dig through the black market and haggle for food, but there are others who build a green golf course in the desert for fun. Otherwise, something like this wouldn’t be there.”

The ballistic calculation program worked by attaching a handheld device to the bow’s grip and looking into a small screen. The footage from the camera would add lines along courses for baseball pitches.

It was almost all sports-related.

He held the bow up and fired a large arrow. It silently passed over the head of a guard, travelled in an arc, fell diagonally down toward the office’s second story window, and shot accurately into the room.

Just like the flag on a kid’s meal, the arrow stabbed into the center of the hamburger on the table.

“Heh. Did you see that, Quenser? That’s what the super smart, beautiful, and wealthy noble Heivia can do. You don’t get a hole-in-one by relying on beginner’s luck. You need the skill and composure of a gentleman.”

“You idiot, you scared the old woman so much she fell over backwards in her chair! And weren’t you saying anyone could do this using that ballistic whatever?”

“If you’re gonna be like that, then why don’t you try it! You always leave the physical labor to me!!”

The two idiots very nearly started a light fistfight, but they remembered this was hardly the time. They would be fine if the panicked old woman fell silent from the shock, but they would lose their chance if she caused a commotion.

Quenser set the frequency on his radio and brought it to his mouth.

The modified arrow had the oscillator and electrode from some headphones added on, so they could communicate via their voices. Specifically, the amplitude of the vibrations in the air could be converted to electrical signals of 0 and 1. Simply put, it worked the same as a telephone.

“Hey there. This is Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage from the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. If that’s too much of a mouthful, you can call me hero or knight. I’d like to take the position of the red-clad hero, but unfortunately, my uniform only has the plain colors of desert camouflage.”

“No fair!! You’re acting like this was all your doing!”

“Sorry, Heivia, but I’ll do anything for the slightest chance of seeing a wonderful micro bikini once this old woman introduces me to her daughter or granddaughter. …In fact, I’d probably just roll over and go to sleep if I didn’t have that hope.”

“Why do you think I said it wasn’t fair!?”

The two idiots almost began grappling, but something happened over the radio. The old woman timidly approached the arrow stabbed into the table (through the hamburger).

“A-are you a soldier?”

“That’s right. Do you watch the news on TV? We’re from the coalition army. We’re the cavalry that’ll do anything from road construction to eliminating bad guys.”

“Do you have a gun? Are you different from the people wandering around outside?”

“Piano, violin, foreign languages, and dance. There are a lot of things for ladies to learn, but there is one thing they have to remember no matter how old they are. Do you know what that is?”

“…?”

“How to spot a decent guy. Being able to do that can change your entire life. How about I give you an example, ‘young lady’? After this, you’ll think the world isn’t completely lost as long as there’s one attractive guy left.”

For a while after that, they heard the old woman say nothing more.

It was not that the transmission had cut out.

They heard intermittent breaths as if from sobbing mixed in with a bit of static.

As he monitored the dock from the abandoned building, Sewax explained what was going on over Heivia’s radio.

“It looks like she’s crying.”

“You don’t have to report every little thing like that,” said Heivia sharply.

He and Quenser continued to wait while hiding behind the rubble.

“I feel like smoking a cigarette right about now.”

“You’re a minor. What are you talking about?”

They waited for thirty seconds or maybe a full minute.

When the old woman spoke once more, they took it as a sign they could continue.

“What should I do?” she asked. “How can I sneak out of here?”

“First, how about we get your name, ‘young lady’. I’m Quenser, but what should I call you?”

“Dorothy.”

“Also…I know. What about your home? We need to send you back there once we rescue you.”

“South Britain territory.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

They had been expecting an Oceanian city, but Dorothy had mentioned a Legitimacy Kingdom safe country.

“Were you…a tourist?”

“Yes. My daughter and her husband were visiting a shopping mall. All the bright lights made me dizzy, so I stayed in the car. But it got as hot as a greenhouse under the sun and I couldn’t bear it any longer, so…”

“(What do you think?)”

“(I’d say it’s about 50/50 whether that’s a justification. Civilian lives always take priority over military personnel and equipment, but we haven’t actually checked to see if Dorothy is a Legitimacy Kingdom citizen.)”

Heivia let out a short sigh and poked just the barrel of his assault rifle from behind the rubble. Technically, he was sticking out the sensors attached to the rifle.

“(There are three guards circling the office. If we sniped the high points to the west and southwest, it would be possible break in, but…)”

Sewax continued for Heivia.

“But it would be risky. And we would have to give up on rescuing the others because we don’t know where they are.”

“We have two options,” said Quenser while choosing his words carefully. He was speaking to Dorothy who was closest to the information they needed. “We can rescue you for sure or we can leave you there a little longer to figure out where the other thirty or forty abducted people are.”

“…”

“We can’t choose either option without your cooperation. You stand in the most important place, so you can make the decision. …Which do you want to do?”

“I will do it,” said Dorothy after thinking for a moment. “Please let me do it. Until you gave me this chance, I could not even taste the food, but now I am human again. And now that I know how wonderful this chance is, I cannot bear to take that chance from the others in my position.”

“Just to be clear, that option will increase the risk. You might be wasting this chance you’ve been given. Will you still do it for people you don’t even know?”

“I do know them. We were thrown in a truck together and trembled together as they aimed guns at us. That may be all, but I do know them.”

For a moment, Quenser was unsure what to say into the radio.

He could not decide which option was correct.

But he still said it.

There was no reason to let her know about his own doubts.

“An excellent answer.”

“What do I need to do?” she asked.

Quenser turned toward Heivia. His friend handed him the same type of arrow he had just fired into the office window.

Quenser held the radio between his cheek and shoulder while he used both hands to disassemble the metal arrow.

“The arrow stabbed into the table there is made so the back can be removed. Twist it like a screw and a ballpoint pen sized part should come off.

“Yes, yes. Do I need to tell you were everyone is with this?”

“No, you don’t need to say anything. We can tell where that ballpoint pen is. Dorothy, you just have to hide it in your clothes and follow the criminal’s instructions. Before all of you are sent aboard the ship, you should be gathered in a single spot. As long as we know where that is, we can use the power of the military to take control of the harbor.”

“I see…”

“You can’t let them know you have that hidden under your clothes. As for the rest of the arrow…I know. There’s an air conditioner near the ceiling, right? Use something as a stepstool and place it on top of the air conditioner. Eat the hamburger and… Oh, there’s a hole in the table, isn’t there? There’s a chair in that office, right? Pretend the stress got the better of you and beat the chair against the table to destroy it. Make sure they won’t notice that small hole!”

After giving all of his instructions, Quenser ended the transmission and tapped Heivia’s shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

“Sure, sure. You’re taking all the good parts, aren’t you!? Are you the type that’ll talk to anyone you lay your eyes on, whether they’re a trap or a zombie girl?”

“We would lose too much time if we waited until Dorothy gave us our answer to request assistance from Froleytia. We need to get the unit moving now.”

“How? Unless we give a justification for the military to act and prove that we can win, that huge-breasted commander will only yell at us. We’ll be stuck waiting for word from lovely little Dorothy. You haven’t escaped the delay.”

“Dorothy will give us the right answer.” Quenser raised his index finger. “But Froleytia and the others don’t know when. We can report that we’ve found the abducted people ahead of time and everything will fall into place as long as Dorothy gives us the answer before the unit arrives.”

“Are you aware providing false reports is a crime?”

“I’ll pretend I don’t. After all, I’m just a student.”

“Hah hah. That’s no different from when council members say they ‘have no recollection’ of people’s accusations. It won’t work.”

Quenser and Heivia were beginning to relax because of the difference in military might. The harbor dock was controlled by bad guys who were armed with old assault rifles and grenades, but that would be easily dealt with as soon as Froleytia sent in the power of the military.

For them, they were on the verge of having a legit military operation.

Dorothy was a Legitimacy Kingdom citizen and she would provide them the location of the others before long.

That was enough.

Froleytia would complain, but she would send in some soldiers. She might beat up the two idiots afterwards and they could even be thrown in the detention barracks, but that would be after everything had been settled.

With one word of approval, Dorothy and the others would be saved.

Quenser and Heivia had no more reason to stay there. A battle would begin if Blue Bottle’s criminal organization spotted them before they had Dorothy’s answer and the unit arrived, but that was the worst case scenario. They could prevent that from happening by leaving the rubble nearby the harbor and returning to the building Myonri and Sewax were in.

With that in mind, the two of them began to stand up.

And then a voice spoke from the radio.

It was Sewax.

“Wait a minute.”

“What? What is it? Did god finally decide to show some pity on me by dropping a supermodel from the sky?”

Sewax ignored Heivia’s casual comment as he continued.

“Something isn’t right.”

===Part 14===

Quenser and Heivia could not believe what Sewax said over the radio.

To check for themselves, they rushed back to the abandoned building. They pressed up against the wall next to the window overlooking the harbor and swiped Sewax’s binoculars.

Without looking particularly displeased, the cameraman pointed toward one side of the harbor.

A mid-sized cargo ship was moored at the dock. A short pole was located near the bow of the ship.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me! Please tell me this is a joke!!”

Heivia clenched his teeth and checked through the binoculars again and again, but what he saw did not change. It was no mistake.

“Come to think of it, some of this didn’t quite add up,” groaned Sewax. “Blue Bottle’s criminal organization may control one portion of the harbor with a shell company, but the coalition still has several naval Objects patrolling the ocean. The cargo ships would naturally undergo surprise checks. Anyone shipping out weapons, drugs, counterfeit money, humans, or anything else suspicious would need to control more than just the harbor to be safe.”

Then what did they need to be safe?

The answer was displayed on the bow of the cargo ship.

“To hell with them.” Quenser brought a hand to his forehead. “I can see it! Yeah, I can see it! That’s the Information Alliance flag fluttering in the wind on that pole!!”

“Does that mean the Information Alliance is involved in this human trafficking?” asked Myonri.

Sewax shook his head.

“Most likely, they aren’t checking what’s onboard at all. The soldiers just give the ships a free pass in exchange for money.”

“That’s just the excuse they’ll use to prevent a war if there’s a problem and this comes to light. It’s no different than the politicians who insist their secretary was behind it all,” said Heivia in annoyance. “I doubt the Information Alliance is interested in the human trafficking itself. Even if it’s profitable, it would hurt their reputation too much. I bet they’re interested in the criminal organization that has worked its way so deeply into Oceania. Their black market is directly linked to the livelihood of the people. If they can make a connection with Blue Bottle and form a pipeline to the criminal organization, they can freely manipulate public opinion within Oceania. This lets them create pressure both officially and unofficially. If they can gain the support of the local people, they can gain an advantage in the coalition’s infighting over how much of this southern continent each world power gets.”

“Probably, but if we accuse them on nothing but speculation, we’ll be the ones left hurting.” Quenser clicked his tongue. “More importantly, what about Dorothy!? As long as the criminal organization is receiving this indulgence from the Information Alliance, they officially count as cooperating with the Information Alliance military. Froleytia won’t want to attack them blindly!!”

“So they’re technically civilians yet are partially treated like soldiers.” Sewax seemed to be thinking. “Yes, it would cause a lot of trouble if a large unit was sent in to annihilate them. The Information Alliance could easily cause a much larger battle in the name of stopping the Legitimacy Kingdom from unrightfully attacking civilians. “

“Our huge-breasted commander can’t do anything,” spat out Heivia. “She isn’t stupid enough to start a war over thirty or forty people! But then what do we do!? If we could use the proper channels and send in a large unit, they’d be crushed in five seconds, but does that mean the four of us can defeat them? It’s impossible! Especially if we have to swiftly and accurately wipe them out so they can’t take away the abducted people!!”

“Wait, where’s Dorothy? We can contact her and save at least her.”

“We can’t!” Quenser kicked the floor. “The communications device we gave her has moved to another building. That’s probably where all the others are being held. Breaking in and rescuing just her isn’t an option anymore.”

Attempting an unwinnable battle would help nothing.

Making a heroic and moving charge on the harbor might reduce the number of bad guys, but they would eventually be overwhelmed and defeated. There was even a danger of the criminals shooting the captives.

Now that they knew Blue Bottle’s criminal organization was under the Information Alliance’s protection, they could only say a political problem had arisen. The criminals could claim this was an unofficial operation meant to let these people escape the poor conditions of Oceania and reach wealthier nations. The dead could say nothing, so they only had to kill all of the captives within the containers and claim it would never have happened if the Legitimacy Kingdom had not taken hasty military action.

At best, it would start as an argument between the higher ups of the two world powers and develop into a war.

At worst, Quenser and the other three would be treated as war criminals who slaughtered the civilians.

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do.” Heivia covered his face with his hands and let a heavy voice escape the gaps between his fingers. “They set this up too well! Of course they did!! They’ve spent a long time building this up so it would be safe. Why would some people who just now showed up be able to ad-lib their way through it!?”

“Then what do we do about Dorothy?”

“Weren’t you listening? We can’t start a war over thirty or forty people!”

“But I was the one that asked her to help! I can’t accept this. We’re not watching a news broadcast about something happening on the other side of the world!!”

“Then you go fight on your own! As a student, you might be able to slip through the cracks of the war treaties. But you’ll be slaughtered by the criminals. And more importantly!! That criminal organization is being treated like a group cooperating with the Information Alliance military. You’re not just up against some thugs in the city. You’ll be taking on an international military force here. Are you still going to pick a fight with them!?”

Heivia heard a light noise.

It was Quenser snapping his fingers.

“That’s it.”

“What? …No, wait just a damn second. What the hell are you thinking? Why are you grinning like that? I was in the middle of shouting at you until you gave up!”

“Military cooperators. Heivia, soldiers have a duty to rescue civilians in that position, right?”

“So what if they do? I don’t see how you can twist that into keeping the Information Alliance away. If we attack Blue Bottle and his human trafficking ring, they’re gonna show up. There’s no stopping it!!”

The female soldier named Myonri then cut in timidly.

“Huh? Wait a minute. Then that means…”

“Dorothy has no reason to fight.” Quenser pointed toward his own chest with his thumb. “It was me, someone working for the Legitimacy Kingdom military! If I hadn’t pressed her to cooperate, she wouldn’t still be there in the middle of enemy territory. That means she’s cooperating with the Legitimacy Kingdom military. It’s obvious her life is in danger if we don’t do something, so what should the military that was backing her do? Answer me, Heivia!!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” groaned Heivia.

“I see.” Sewax’s lips twisted up in an interested smile. “If Blue Bottle’s organization is protected by the Information Alliance as a military cooperator, then they can’t ignore the Legitimacy Kingdom if it claims the right to protect Dorothy for the same reason. If conflict breaks out between civilians, it’s only natural for the militaries backing them to intermediate.”

“Don’t make me laugh.” Heivia shook his head. “There’s no way it’ll work that well! There isn’t going to be a tear-jerking happy ending! Our huge-breasted commander doesn’t know we hired Dorothy and she won’t approve of it! We don’t have any documents to prove it, either!! When war is about to break out, try bringing up someone named Dorothy that no one’s ever heard of. They’ll just stare at you funny. Justification or not, our unit isn’t moving!!”

“Perhaps not,” admitted Quenser. “But we do have justification for the four of us to take action.”

“Do you have anything to prove she’s a military cooperator!?”

“She’s proof enough. But she needs to be alive to prove it, so we have to save her.”

“What we want to do and what we have to do match up,” muttered Sewax.

They could act as heroic as they wanted, but they were the ones who would be exposed to gunfire. Heivia was growing irritated because the fear was beginning to sink in, so Quenser spoke to him.

“Also, we can’t run away anymore.”

“What!? Why the hell not!? There’s no special bonus waiting for us. It’s not like we have to shoot our way out to get back to the maintenance base. In fact, we shouldn’t even be here. For once, I’m having trouble finding anything we’ll get blamed for if we just run away!!”

“And then what? Are we going to report that we recruited a civilian without permission, didn’t see it through to the end, and returned to safety while leaving her to die? Even if it doesn’t break any rules, do you really think there will be a place for us back in the unit?”

“Goddammit!! So you convince Dorothy to do this and now it’s going to bring dishonor on ''me''? This’ll affect my chances of inheriting my family!!”

But arguing was not going to solve anything.

If he truly had an issue with what Quenser had done, he should have interrupted while Quenser was speaking with Dorothy.

“But what now? What exactly do we do!? There’re only four of us and two of those are a student and cameraman. Meanwhile, we’re up against 50-90 soldiers and there might be reinforcements from the Information Alliance. That’s too much of a difference to just charge in randomly like we’re the cavalry!”

“Our objective is to rescue Dorothy and the other captives. All of them. We aren’t just going to shoot up the place until nothing’s left moving like in a Western.”

“What?”

“We need to narrow down our targets. This is like a puzzle game. We don’t have to take care of everything ourselves. If we destroy one, the rest will vanish in a chain reaction.”

===Part 15===

The most important factor was that Quenser and the others knew where Dorothy was. They could detect her location from the communication device removed from the military arrow and hidden in her clothes.

After detecting that she had been moved to the mid-sized cargo ship, Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax began to move.

“Honestly. This is no joke,” groaned Heivia. “We have no boat. We have no flippers or snorkels! We have nothing!! And now we have to jump into the ocean at night? We’re carrying rifles and missiles!! It’s all so damn heavy I just want to throw it away!!”

“The ship is leaving the harbor while you waste time shouting. Let’s jump in while we can catch up.”

They had left the dock controlled by Blue Bottle’s criminal organization and entered a block patrolled by the normal harbor workers. Instead of the main gate, they had cut a hole in the chain-link fence and snuck in. After slipping past the guards and cutting across the harbor, they threw themselves into the dark ocean at the tip of the harbor.

“Bwah! Dammit! They have a diesel engine. Can we really catch up to them like this?”

“The sea chart here is complex,” replied Sewax while skillfully treading water. He seemed to have no problem with being in the water, so his camera must have been waterproof. “A lot of rubble from Object bombardments has been swept into the ocean. This is worse than reefs. To safely reach open sea, they have to travel back and forth in an S-shape. If we swim along that route, the cargo ship will approach us.”

“The Information Alliance is in charge of security here and I hear they’ve blocked the sea routes with smart mines that distinguish between friend and foe. I don’t know if they’ll react to a human-sized mass, but try to be careful.”

After swimming through the dark sea for a while, the cargo ship came into view. As it travelled along the narrow safe regions, it did indeed approach them.

“Wait, wait, wait. It’s pointing searchlights everywhere.”

“They’re probably actually relying on radar, but human nature makes them want to see everything with their own eyes. But it’s dark below the lights. The bright light will cause their pupils to contract incorrectly. As long as the light doesn’t directly illuminate you, they won’t see you,” explained Sewax.

“Heivia, do you have the rope ready?” asked Quenser.

“Just as you asked, Mr. Knight! Once again, I prepare the food and you get to eat it!!”

As it approached, the cargo ship’s hull rose up like a cliff. It also tilted out toward them, so it would be impossible climb by hand.

Heivia and Myonri spun around ropes with claws attached to the end and used the centrifugal force to throw them straight up. After making sure they had solidly dug into the deck’s railing, the two soldiers climbed up the cliff and onto the ship.

The cargo ship itself was a giant mass with a large volume.

As Quenser and Sewax waited in the sea for their signal, they were tossed around by the artificial current and forced to cling to the ropes.

And then something heavy fell down from above.

Quenser looked down at what had fallen next to him and found the corpse of one of the criminal organization’s guards. The man’s throat had been slit.

With a look of disgust, he brought his radio to his mouth.

“You show no mercy, do you?”

“If you have time to complain, climb up. Sharks are sensitive to the scent of blood.”

But Quenser was only a student, so he could not climb what was essentially a building wall using only a rope.

Quenser glanced over at Sewax who quickly surmounted the wall on his own, but he needed Heivia and Myonri to pull his rope up.

“C’mon. I’m a noble and you’re a commoner, so I shouldn’t be pulling you up like this.”

“More importantly, how much time do we have?”

“They’ll figure out they’ve lost someone once the periodic report comes, so we have at most ten minutes. We have no time to spare after losing some time thanks to a certain idiot!”

Myonri looked down at her handheld device while covering the small screen with her hand to keep the light from escaping.

“Dorothy is at the front of the ship.”

“Let’s do what we can. There’s no way we can seajack this thing in ten minutes.”

After Quenser and Heivia formed a pair and Myonri and Sewax formed a pair, the two pairs travelled through the piles of containers on deck while covering for each other.

As an unpleasant sweat dripped down his face, Heivia muttered to himself.

“Don’t use your gun. Rely on your knife. Don’t use your gun. After a single gunshot, you’ll have to jump into the ocean.”

Fortunately, the large number of containers (which were likely there as decoys to hide the human trafficking) provided a lot of cover. The four of them carefully travelled toward the bow of the ship while making sure they did not run into any guards.

And suddenly, they heard the roaring of the wind.

Except this was no normal wind.

“(Get down, you idiot! Don’t move!!)”

Heivia whispered quietly, grabbed the back of Quenser’s collar, and got down on the deck. Ahead of them, Myonri and Sewax pressed their backs against metal containers and held their breath. Their faces were obviously covered with an unusual amount of sweat.

Quenser belatedly realized what was going on.

What he had thought was the wind was actually a disturbance in the air caused by the movement of a great mass. It was similar to when a train rushed by a subway platform.

A sealed tunnel was one thing, but not much could do the same on the open sea.

This was the symbol of war.

It was the trademark of the era that could destroy every other weapon on the battlefield.

In other words…

[[Image:HO_v07_106.png|thumb]]

“An Object!!” he groaned while lying on the deck.

Even the mid-sized cargo ship towered above the ocean surface like a cliff, but the Object was on an entirely different level. Its spherical main body was around fifty meters tall and equipped with over one hundred different cannons. Despite the cargo ships’ immense size, it looked like a plastic miniature next to the Object.

Its presence was overwhelming.

Its sense of intimidation was overwhelming.

The sense of danger it radiated was overwhelming.

Everything about it was overwhelming.

“They’re from the Information Alliance,” said Heivia as he almost lay on top of Quenser and looked like he was about to cry. “These are second generation Objects from the Information Alliance. I think that’s the Simple Is Best and the Catapult Cargo. This is no joke. There’s no way we can take on an enemy like this.”

Heivia listed two names.

The meaning of that fact arrived along with despair as Quenser forced his neck around to observe the situation.

The cargo ship was passing between two Objects that were patrolling the dark sea. As he looked up at the towering armor and countless cannons, it somehow reminded him of a thick green tunnel made of trees.

If any one of those cannons was fired, Quenser and the others would be blasted into pieces too small to even make fish food.

But at the same time…

“We were right,” he muttered. “Even if second generation Objects are specialized toward fighting other Objects, they would have detected us if they were making full use of their sensors. But they aren’t attacking and they haven’t contacted Blue Bottle to send out his men.”

“That means this ship is not being checked. If they scanned it, they might detect all the people stuffed in the containers. The data would remain in the Object’s recorder and it would be a pain to alter it.”

But that did not mean they could move around freely.

Objects were the rulers of the battlefield. They were a non-standard monster with no natural enemies that could freely devour all other life forms before them. It was as if they had been born due to some kind of bug or mistake.

No one was stupid enough to stick their own arm in the beast’s mouth to see whether it had been tamed or not.

No one wanted to be the pitiable guinea pig.

Quenser and the others held their breath and watched the two Objects slowly move away from the cargo ship. Even then, they did not move. An uncomfortable sweat grew below their uniforms.

It came down to their intuition rather than logic.

Once the Objects were several hundred meters away, Quenser finally let out a long breath.

That was still plenty close for the second generation Objects to attack, but he still felt the relief of being in the clear.

Heivia used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face as he got up off of Quenser.

“Try to remember what it is we’re fighting, lady killer.”

“Now that we’re here, we have to go through with this regardless.”

The four of them began moving at the same time.

Myonri jogged ahead from one pile of containers to another. She then pointed at the first level of containers with her thumb.

“Dorothy is in here. What should we do?”

“We might as well use this chance to rescue as many of them as we can. Quenser, set up your trick as planned!”

The four of them all moved in different directions.

Heivia and Myonri grabbed the metal lever.

But then Myonri frowned.

“Wait a second. I just noticed something.”

“What is it? I don’t see any tripwires.”

“It isn’t that.”

Myonri let go of the lever to open the door and traced her finger across the string of letters printed on the metal door.

“This is a refrigerated container. This thing is basically a gigantic freezer.”

“Why the hell would they throw an 80-year-old woman in there!?”

They forcibly pulled the lever and opened the door.

As soon as the metal door opened, chilly air seemed to cut at their cheeks. Just as Myonri had said, the inside of the wall was covered in white frost.

And…

A small figure was lying on its side in the fetal position.

And it was just the one person.

“What the hell…? What the hell!? I thought Blue Bottle’s group was working in human trafficking? Why are they freezing them from the get-go!?”

“Wait! Don’t carelessly pick her up! Her exposed skin might be frozen to the container floor!”

Fortunately, Myonri’s fears were unfounded. The old woman’s hair seemed frozen, but her skin did not stick to the floor.

Heivia picked up Dorothy and carried her out of the container.

“They might have been trying to simulate hibernation,” said Sewax as he read the writing on the container.

“What?”

“There are cases of people surviving without food or water for over a month in cars buried in snow. Only one in nine survive, but their ‘merchandise’ can survive the long trip if the conditions are artificially recreated. It has better odds than leaving it up to luck after throwing them in a hot and stuffy container with water and salt.”

“I see. So that’s why they put them in separate containers.” Myonri let out a groan as she thought about this demonic plan. “It’s the same as anesthesia. The temperature is carefully calculated out based on the person’s weight, so they all need their own container.”

“So what? This isn’t going to work 100% of the time. For one thing, humans aren’t meant to hibernate like a bear! If they force it, it has to fail and cause frostbite or hypothermia in a lot of them!!”

“True, but there’s a countermeasure that’s popular among people stranded in snowy mountains. If you warm the outside of the body with lukewarm water and eat food, it will cause an increase in body temperature.”

“I guess a normal water bottle would be warm enough on a warm night like this. I only have disgusting rations for food, though.”

“If they’re conscious enough to complain about that, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Heivia and Sewax’s discussion must have brought her back to her senses because Dorothy slowly opened her eyes while her skin was oddly cold.

She looked like someone who had just woken up in the morning, but the situation was completely different.

For one thing, she had not been sleeping. Her mind was muddled enough for her memories to be a bit vague.

“That…soldier…?”

“Yes! That’s right! We’re here to save you. There’s nothing more to worry about.”

“Are you…the one named…Quenser?”

“Sorry, but there are even better guys than him in the world.”

They could not force her to do anything more.

Heivia frantically pulled out a ration that resembled a tasteless and odorless eraser and a bottle warmed by the warm night and his own body temperature.

And then he heard a noise.

Someone was peering out from behind a pile of containers. Heivia did not know who it was, but he made up his mind when he saw the shoddily-made assault rifle in his hand. He was a criminal organization guard on patrol.

He was only seven meters away.

The assault rifle hung from his shoulder on a sling belt, but he was not holding the rifle. He held a different weapon.

But it was not a handgun or a knife.

It was a glittering black sphere about one size bigger than a golf ball.

All of Heivia’s hair stood on end when he realized what it was.

“A grenade!?”

In that instant, Sewax held up his heavy camera as if pulling a handgun from its holster and he stared through the viewfinder.

(Oh, I’m dead.)

Time seemed to flow strangely slow, but he did not try to hide or cover his face with his arms. He stood stock still and continued to keep the armed man in the center of the small world cut off by his camera.

He held a Gr-021, the grenades used by the old Oceanian military government. They were rumored to be cheap copies of the Information Alliance’s grenades. They had a kill radius of five meters and an injury radius of twelve meters. The soldier may not have known how to use it properly because he was liable to be caught in the blast that killed using shrapnel rather than the explosion itself.

If the guard holding the sphere relaxed his grip, pulled out the pin, and released the safety lever, over two hundred metal grains would fly in every direction with deadly speed exactly five seconds later. Man, woman, adult, and child alike would be turned to mincemeat.

Even so, Sewax operated his camera as if it were his mission.

He wanted to take a photo that would change the world.

War would never end no matter how many hundreds of bullets were fired. The people whose bank accounts grew every time the money-devouring Objects were sent out would continue applauding in dark rooms as more blood was shed. To truly end it all, the people’s hearts had to be moved outside of what the people in charge had to gain. That was something bullets could not achieve. No matter how great a tragedy was, it would resound in no one’s heart unless a battlefield cameraman recorded it.

He had wanted an opportunity to do just that.

It did not matter if it would take the lives of a few people here. It did not matter if that danger applied to him as well. He would not regret the loss of an arm or a leg. He was willing to lose half his body if that was what it took. If he could bring home the picture that would change history and bring peace, he would proudly say he had won.

As the person who had once relied on bullets in this very country, he felt this was something he had to do no matter what.

But…

Even so…

(Is that really okay?)

Through the viewfinder, he saw Heivia crouched down while frozen in place. At his feet was a small old woman who lay groggily on the ground after being rescued from an extreme low-temperature environment.

If they died, it would likely shake some people’s hearts.

If he stored that shocking bloodshed in the small memory of his camera, he could use it to convey the truth of the battlefield.

(But is that really okay!?)

There was no point in saving just a few lives. It would mix in with all the other boring news and reach no one, so it might as well not exist. Information that reached no one was no different from information that vanished from the face of the earth. At that very moment, the people within safe countries thought the world was a peaceful place. They truly believed it. And yet the war in Oceania had yet to truly end. To ultimately end war, those people’s help was needed.

And so…

To stop the tragedies, Sewax hoped for a tragedy to occur. That contradictory mindset led him to hesitate over whether to accept or reject this situation.

And…

He finally made his decision.

A metallic sound of impact brought Heivia back to his senses.

The battlefield cameraman named Sewax had removed the neck strap attachment to the camera he valued more than his life and he threw it at the guard holding the grenade.

“I’m not going back to the way I was. I swore I would stop doing that!! I swore during that war in Oceania!!”

As Sewax shouted out in desperation, Heivia began to move. The camera was heavy, but it was not enough to knock out that large man by striking his upper body. However, the man decided to prioritize his own safety by protecting his body with his arms. And he still held the grenade in his hand. He had not released the pin or safety lever.

They had a chance.

Heivia immediately let go of the ration and water bottle and drew his large military knife with a flowing motion of his right hand. He even had enough composure to cover Dorothy’s eyes with his left hand.

He threw the knife without hesitation.

After rotating exactly ninety degrees, the tip of the blade stabbed accurately into the guard’s throat.

(Damn.)

But Heivia’s expression twisted silently.

The man did not collapse. It was a fatal blow but not enough to kill him instantly.

There was going to be a lag of a few seconds to a dozen seconds.

(I missed the center. The blade didn’t hit his spine!!)

As Heivia watched, the man’s fingers writhed like caterpillars and reached for the grenade’s metal pin. One finger passed through the ring of the pin.

All he had to do was release it now.

Pulled by gravity, the explosive fell straight down. The pin attached to his index finger was pulled out. The shock of the round grenade striking the deck was enough to release the safety lever.

It was ready to detonate.

“!!”

Heivia saw Myonri immediately pull out her handgun, so he took action. While still crouched down, he ran forward like a beast. The man with the blade in his throat could not speak, but he glared at Heivia. The ring-shaped pin on his index finger glittered in the light like a cruel piece of jewelry.

The kill radius was five meters.

The injury radius was twelve meters.

It would explode in only five seconds.

(Just killing him isn’t enough. We’ll all be caught in the blast!!)

As the guard started to fall backwards, Heivia grabbed his collar. This was not a gentlemanly attempt to support the man. He grabbed the man’s right arm, spun him around, and used the man’s waist as a fulcrum to throw him to the ground.

He threw the man on top of the grenade he had dropped.

A muffled explosion arrived an instant later.

The cheap bulletproof plate and the living flesh and bone were enough to suppress the explosion of a grenade meant to kill with shrapnel rather than the blast. In textbooks, this method was given as a means of bravely protecting one’s fellow soldiers.

Heivia was splattered with blood and guts and he desperately shouted out with a ghastly look on his face.

“Ugh, shit!! Is anyone hurt!? If not, jump into the ocean. That explosion will draw the rest of them here!!”

“Wh-what about Quenser!?”

“He’ll have heard the explosion too!!”

Myonri grabbed Dorothy who could not move properly on her own and the girl frantically jumped over the railing. Sewax picked up his camera and followed suit. Heivia grabbed a few polyurethane foam floats from the railing and threw them in the sea before jumping into the dark water himself.

The shock of falling or having her entire body covered in lukewarm seawater seemed to have helped Dorothy recover a little from her hypothermic symptoms.

She repeatedly blinked while Myonri supported her so she would not sink.

“Where is everyone…?”

As her mind cleared, her memories seemed to recover.

Her question was filled with panic.

“Where are all the others!? They were brought onboard that ship!! There are a lot more than just me!!”

It was a legitimate question, but Heivia and the others did not answer her.

The cargo ship would be on its guard now, so it would be difficult to make their way back onboard. It would be tough to fight a few dozen armed men with only four people. On top of that, there was no guarantee they would make it back safely as things were.

And then a new figure fell from the cargo ship and into the dark water.

It was Quenser who had gone elsewhere on the boat.

“Uuh… I’m gonna sink. Give me a float, too.”

“Since you escaped with that stupid look on your face, I take it you at least completed your preparations.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to here? More importantly, what was with that explosion!? You sure screwed up badly!”

With a look of extreme confusion, Dorothy looked back and forth between Quenser and Heivia.

Quenser spoke to the old woman.

“Defeating Blue Bottle’s entire organization with just the four of us would be difficult. The same goes for rescuing all of the people trapped in separate containers. And that cargo ship is under the protection of the Information Alliance, so we’re unlikely to get any help even if we ask for it.”

“Then you are going to give up? I don’t want to be the only one rescued!!” shouted Dorothy.

Quenser smiled and waved his index finger.

“But there is a wonderful magic item that can completely turn around that hopeless situation.”

“?”

That comment caught Dorothy off guard, so she stared blankly at Quenser as he spread out the “prize” he had won on the boat.

“This is it. Do you know what this is?”

===Part 16===

(This is a strange ship.)

The man referred to as Blue Bottle, the name of a poisonous jellyfish, thought blankly to himself as he sat in a chair in the cargo ship’s control room.

Ships used fuel to move. Fuel efficiency was greatly affected by the weight loaded on the ship. Normally, cargo ships were almost entirely automated and had only around a dozen people in their crew. The people themselves weighed something and they needed food and water to last them anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, so the number of people onboard was kept to a minimum.

Nevertheless, this ship had a large number of people onboard.

Officially, they were exporting scrap metal from Oceania’s ruins so it could be recycled in other countries, but a quick calculation would show some things did not add up.

“That was an explosion,” said Blue Bottle.

“We will look into it right away,” immediately replied a man staring at the instruments.

Blue Bottle doubted the refrigerated containers with the human trafficking “merchandise” inside could be opened from within and he doubted the merchandise inside could resist or escape after being kept at such a low temperature.

But his men were not proper soldiers or even trained mercenaries.

They were nothing but thugs. It was possible one of them had forgotten to lock a container or turn on its refrigeration mode.

Nevertheless, he seriously doubted they were stupid enough to let an unarmed civilian steal a gun or grenade and fight back.

Blue Bottle’s expression showed no panic or concern.

“Tell them to be careful if they kill an escapee. Just like preserved fish, their value goes down if they die. And the amount it drops changes depending on how they are killed. Blowing them to pieces with a grenade is out of the question.”

“I will tell them, but I can’t guarantee they will listen.”

Blue Bottle did not bother listening to what the other man said.

The cargo ship was not headed directly toward the country the “merchandise” was being shipped to. It would instead travel to a certain island just outside Oceanian territory and load the containers onto a different ship. Blue Bottle would remain with this cargo ship in its short journey back and forth. To make the best use the free pass given by the Information Alliance, he had wanted a setup that travelled through that area of sea as frequently as possible.

Suddenly, the same man as before continued speaking despite the conversation having ended.

“This is from the Information Alliance Object. They want to speak with you.”

“Hand it over.”

The man sitting in front of the console removed his headset and tossed it over. Blue Bottle caught it in one hand and brought the microphone to his mouth without putting it on his head.

“What is it? We paid the fee. If you cause any unnecessary problems here, the Objects from other world powers will notice. The Information Alliance doesn’t want to damage its public image, does it? You can’t have our arrangement come to light.”

“That’s why I contacted you,” replied a staticky and slightly irritated voice. “Why are you not following our arrangement? Our free pass means nothing otherwise. We are forced to handle this normally.”

“Wait. I don’t understand. Explain what you mean.”

“The flag.” The polite Elite spoke slowly as if kindly speaking to a young child who was only just learning to speak. “Our Information Alliance flag should be on the bow of your cargo ship. Without that, we cannot prove you are under our protection. If you do not obey our arrangement, we must perform a surprise check like we normally would.”

As Quenser entrusted his life to a hard float in the dark ocean, he threw away a piece of cloth printed with the Information Alliance logo and spoke.

“Their ship was treated differently because they were announcing that they were under the Information Alliance’s protection by displaying their flag. They have a free pass with the Information Alliance and it would cause conflict if the Legitimacy Kingdom or Capitalist Corporations performed a surprise check on a ship approved by them. They had intentionally set up that situation so they could carry out things they wanted kept secret.”

“Th-then…” Dorothy looked toward the flag floating away on the waves. “If you take that flag…”

“At the very least, they won’t be treated differently anymore. The Information Alliance will have to perform the same check as with a normal ship. If they let them go, the Legitimacy Kingdom or Faith Organization would try to perform a check instead.”

“B-but!” frantically exclaimed Dorothy because there were human lives on the line. “Will that really save everyone? I thought the Information Alliance was friends with that ship. Won’t they perform an intentionally insufficient check and give their approval without looking inside the containers?”

“Perhaps. In fact, that would be the best option from their point of view. They need to perform a check before the other world powers can. They can give their approval and announce that no one else needs to check the ship. Then no one will find out there are people in those containers.”

“Th-then…!!”

“But,” said Quenser, cutting off Dorothy. He held a radio in his hand. “That’s why I set up another trick.”

The Information Alliance’s naval patrol boat rushed over.

The others in the cargo ship’s control room muttered nervously, but Blue Bottle was not worried.

It was not that he had given up.

It was quite the opposite.

An Information Alliance group he held sway with had taken action before security teams from the other world powers could intervene. Once the Information Alliance group boarded the ship, they would perform an intentionally shoddy inspection and give them approval. Rechecking the ship would be seen as doubt in the Information Alliance, so doing so was implicitly stated to create cracks in the friendly relationship between coalition members.

Why had their flag vanished?

That mystery remained. One of his men may have forgotten his instructions, it may have been poorly attached and blew away in the wind, or someone may have maliciously removed it.

But no matter the reason, they could recover.

An oddity of that level would not defeat Blue Bottle.

“The Information Alliance security team is requesting permission to board. What should we do?”

“Hide nothing. Give them permission according to normal procedures. Do not leave any unnatural actions in their records. There is no reason to panic here. This group is in on it.”

Having said that, Blue Bottle took several men and left the control room. He was on his way to greet the Information Alliance security team. And that was not a criminal euphemism for shooting them. He was truly going to greet them.

He stepped out onto the deck and found several thick metal devices attached to the railing. Synthetic fiber ropes were attached and men dressed all in black were climbing up from below.

One of the men gave a polite salute to Blue Bottle while carefully articulating each word and syllable of his script.

“This is a surprise inspection in order to stop international crime within Oceania. We will be inspecting your crew and cargo.”

“Fine. Do as you wish.”

Upon receiving permission, the men in black formed teams of two and scattered across the ship.

All of this was pre-arranged.

It was possible the other world powers forming the coalition were watching with a satellite or an Object’s ultra long distance sensors, so they had to perform a bit of role playing for safety’s sake. Nothing would go wrong and anything illegal would not be recorded. That was the agreement.

Blue Bottle spoke to one man in black standing nearby.

“How long should this take?”

“There are a lot of containers, so we would like an hour to check through them all.”

“…That’s a long time.”

“We are not doing this because we want to.”

That last comment sounded like an implicit accusation regarding the missing flag.

Even if it was meant to keep them safe, it was hard to put up with this when it would accomplish nothing. Every minute and every second seemed to stretch on forever. He had to maintain his expression and attitude in case they were being viewed from afar, but he felt as if he would yawn if he let his guard down.

But then he heard what sounded like a light explosion.

It came from the ship and it was clearly the sound of gunpowder exploding.

“I won’t let it all go so smoothly,” said Quenser while pressing the switch on his radio. “The leaders of this Information Alliance group and criminal organization have an agreement to get along, but not all the criminal thugs will be privy to all that information. After all, secret arrangements are made behind closed doors. The more the big boss handles those things on his own, the less the men working below him know.”

“Heh. So even if this is actually all a farce, you’re saying not everyone in the criminal organization will be aware of it? All they know is the Information Alliance security team has boarded them after some kind of mistake and the cargo ship is full of their half-dead human trafficking ‘merchandise’. They can’t let that get out, so they’ll be staring at the Information Alliance’s guns with their heart pounding.”

The same naturally went for the Information Alliance security team.

The leader would know about the understanding with the criminal organization and the soldiers underneath him may have received an explanation. But could they really trust those criminals? They might have been lying. Who knows when those uncontrolled criminals would fire. They would be filled with those fears.

“So.” Quenser slowly shook the radio. “With a small impetus, the guns they have pointed at each other will start to go off. For example, a radio signal could lead an electric fuse to cause an explosive noise and they could mistake it for the ‘first shot’.”

Fuses were tools used to induce the detonation of an explosive by providing a strong stimulus.

They were made to create a more intense explosion than a firecracker.

And the ocean night was filled with countless bursting noises.

A few of them were the electric fuses Quenser had prepared ahead of time, but some of the noises were clearly different. If one paid careful attention, they were obviously different noises, but these people were not calm enough for that.

“Stop them!!”

Blue Bottle covered his ears with his hands and approached a pile of metal containers while yelling at the nearby Information Alliance man. If he had not yelled, his voice would have been drowned out by the explosive noises.

“Which side shot!? It doesn’t matter! Stop them!! This is a meaningless battle. Didn’t your higher ups explain this to-…!?”

Blue Bottle trailed off.

With a damp noise, the man in black he had been speaking to collapsed to the side. His head slammed into the container and red blood splattered across the wall as if a fruit had been crushed there. Simply slamming his head against the wall would not cause that much blood. A bullet had obviously disturbed the contents of his head. The cargo ship was enveloped in such chaos that it was impossible to tell which side of the conflict the bullet had come from.

“Shit!!”

Blue Bottle felt a chill run down his spine and pulled his handgun from its holster.

And then his gaze met that of an Information Alliance soldier.

A short pause followed.

As soon as his thoughts recovered, Blue Bottle realized he had committed a fatal mistake.

“N-no!! I wasn’t trying to fight!!”

He words did not reach the soldier.

As soon as the soldier’s gun barrel moved to target him, Blue Bottle reflexively fired three bullets into the foolish soldier’s upper body.

Naturally, everyone aboard the chaotic ship witnessed it.

There was no going back now.

A hopeless battle with one of the world powers had begun.

===Part 17===

Froleytia Capistrano held her head in her hands.

A female operator’s reserved voice filled the operation control room.

“The battle has ended aboard cargo ship Mistral near St. Frank International Harbor. Level of damage to the Information Alliance team is unknown. It appears they have successfully retreated. The bodies of the crew are still being counted. They have likely all been killed.”

A sudden firefight had been detected aboard a cargo ship near Oceania. A Legitimacy Kingdom naval security team had intervened in the name of aiding the Information Alliance team being attacked.

The problem was the fact that Quenser and Heivia of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion were floating in the ocean near the cargo ship. They looked pleased with themselves and carried an old woman with them.

“Thirty nine civilians have been discovered within the refrigerated containers. This matches the information from Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell.”

“I see.”

“Also, a man closely resembling an important criminal known as Blue Bottle has been discovered among the corpses. His identity is currently being checked, but if it really is him, they are likely correct about the Mistral being owned by a criminal organization active across Oceania.”

“One filthy man isn’t enough to make up for this,” muttered Froleytia under her breath.

She changed her train of thought and focused on her transmission with a distant superior Legitimacy Kingdom officer. Even if Froleytia controlled an entire battalion, she still had to refer to this person as a superior officer.

“The human trafficking organization has been eliminated, but the Information Alliance has evidence that men from my unit intervened. They will begin applying diplomatic pressure before long. This might also start another military conflict.”

“Oh, I’d say it’s 100% guaranteed to do that,” replied the young man in a lighthearted tone. “But this would have ended the same even if your men had not acted.”

“?”

“What if they had learned of the human trafficking organization, but returned without doing anything? Or what if you had done nothing in response to the wrong number from the kidnapper? Once harm had come to Oceanian civilians, the Information Alliance would have anonymously blamed the Legitimacy Kingdom. They would have called us despicable cowards who sacrificed civilians to protect ourselves from the mafias and gangs. They would have said someone like that has no place on the coalition that is provisionally ruling the peace of Oceania. From the moment this began, we had no choice but to accept the fight they were picking with us.”

“Then that wrong number…”

“It seems odd, doesn’t it? Most likely, the Information Alliance intentionally gave the criminal organization the wrong number for the girl’s home. I also read in your report that the girl was strapped with a bomb when she was rescued from the abandoned hospital. A bomb that would be activated with a phone.”

“I get it now. If they simply planned to get as much money from her family as they could and never intended to release her, they would not have needed such a dangerous setup.”

“They wanted to create an obvious civilian victim right away. If you had failed there, they would have their justification to say we were exposing the people of Oceania to danger and needed to be eliminated for Oceania’s sake.”

It made sense.

It was obvious what they gained from it.

The housewives in safe country living rooms watching variety shows with popcorn in one hand would accept that reason for war.

But…

“In that case, the Information Alliance dug their own grave,” said Froleytia. “They created a pipeline with human traffickers of all things.”

“I doubt they were careless enough to leave any conclusive evidence behind. They are the world power that puts the most emphasis on information, after all. No matter what anyone claims, they can insist it was nothing but a desperate bluff on the criminal organization’s part.”

The superior officer’s tone remained lighthearted.

Yet his words cut accurately into the history of mankind.

“But if we are going to go to war regardless, it is easier for us on the political side if the reason has less of a bad aftertaste. You did well. And we will accept the fight they were so insistent that we begin.”

“Understood.”

The transmission came to an end.

Froleytia let out a long sigh before finally speaking quietly.

“Then let’s begin talking about war.”

===Part 18===

Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, Sewax, and the old woman named Dorothy were brought back to land by the Legitimacy Kingdom naval security team’s patrol boat. A military vehicle from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion picked them up there and took them to the maintenance base zone. On the way, they were repeatedly asked what had happened from people with curious looks. Each time they repeated their tale of heroism, they were struck lightly by a fist. However, the soldiers that complained and struck Quenser and Heivia all had smiles in their eyes.

“Where are we going?” asked Dorothy as she stared at the cityscape outside the window.

“You will be brought home…or to your hotel since you’re a tourist. Anyway, it seems your daughter and her husband have been invited to the base, so you can have your emotional reunion there,” replied Quenser casually.

The military four-wheel drive vehicle returned to the familiar maintenance base zone. When the soldiers on guard duty at the gate heard what had happened, they stared at Quenser and the others like they were some kind of rare animal.

“Hey, Quenser. Doesn’t it look like the rumor has already spread throughout the base?”

“I wish I could view that in as positive a light as you. We might be on our way to the detention barracks.”

The maintenance base was made up of over one hundred large vehicles. They thought they were being led to the section used for lodgings, but the military vehicle stopped partway there.

They had likely been spotted through the window because a man and woman who looked like tourists run out of the lodgings.

Dorothy’s eyes opened wide and she moved her trembling lips.

She looked like she was seeing people she had never expected to see again.

“That is my daughter and her husband… My grandchild is there too.”

Quenser opened the vehicle’s door.

Dorothy used all her strength to run through the maintenance base which was lit up by so many lights it did not seem like nighttime.

“…”

In that moment, the battlefield cameraman named Sewax naturally peered through his camera’s viewfinder.

A photo of a family tearfully embracing may not have been sensational or shocking enough to be titled “the truth of the battlefield”.

It was not going to win any world-famous awards and it was not enough to make one’s name as a photographer.

But that photograph surely had something powerful enough to move the world.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1

2014-01-01T10:49:35Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 13 */

==Chapter 1: A Deadly Firefight between Two Idiots >> Mock Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“Here we are again, Oceania-side soldiers. How many times is this again?”

Private Heivia Winchell muttered those words while smearing black and sand colors on his cheeks. Needless to say, this was a type of desert camouflage.

“It sure doesn’t feel like February. In a certain island nation, they give the sexy guys chocolate on Valentine’s, right!? That kind of lovely event would’ve been perfect for me! What happened!? Then again, getting a ton of chocolate in this horrid heat might qualify as harassment.”

In an age of sensors and other electronics on even the smallest guns, types of camouflage had been developed specifically for that age. What Heivia was smearing on his face had chemical compounds that prevented sensors from detecting his exposed skin.

He leaned up against the fence surrounding the maintenance base zone and continued applying his “makeup”. Ten or so soldiers were gathered around him and also preparing.

A short female soldier named Myonri held her face paint case in both hands and hesitantly spoke up.

“U-um, what am I supposed to do with this again?”

“You’re doing it all wrong, virgin girl. You can’t make the color so dark around your eyes! The whites of your eyes show up the most, so you have to leave the color light around them to blend them in. You gradually grow darker as you move out. You can’t have any sudden changes in color.”

“If we put camouflage on here, won’t we trap the sand in with it?”

“We’re about to start a battle, so I’d be more worried about being covered in mud and bloody vomit,” said Heivia in annoyance.

Meanwhile, he grabbed a bandanna with a large crescent moon pattern.

As each of them finished applying their “makeup”, they tied on the bandannas so it covered the lower half of their face like bank robbers in a Western. The crescent moon was positioned just right to look like a large slit of a mouth.

“That’s in terrible taste.”

“What matters is that it shows up well.”

As he listened to Myonri, Heivia grabbed his assault rifle and pulled out the magazine. He looked down at the rifle bullets held in place with a clasp.

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition…check.”

While feeling annoyance at his one friend’s hesitation, Heivia stuck the magazine back in the rifle and pulled back the cocking lever to load the first bullet. He then brought his radio to his mouth.

“Team A is ready. What about the others?”

“You’re the last ones, slowpokes. Teams B-D are all ready. We can begin on your signal.”

“Understood, understood.”

Heivia glanced over at Myonri.

Instead of a heavy weapon like a light machinegun or assault rifle, she held a small and lightweight PDW like a pilot would carry in case of an emergency landing. It was commonly known as a “full auto in a business bag”.

But she was not carrying the lightweight weapon because she was a girl.

It was because her other equipment was quite heavy.

“How’s the scissor opener?”

“I tested it three times. It really scares me to carry it around.”

“Not being slowed down by a door can make all the difference. You’re our lifeline, so bear with it.”

“This tool stabs a giant pair of scissors into the gap of the door using explosives and then uses a motor to forcibly crush the lock. Did you ever think about what happens if it goes off by accident while I’m carrying it on my back?”

“It’d be your own damn fault. If you weren’t earning all those weird qualifications, you wouldn’t be stuck with all the odd equipment.”

As he spoke, Heivia turned toward the direction of their objective.

He was not looking outside the maintenance base zone.

He was looking in.

He pointed his assault rifle toward the people who he would normally have called his allies.

In the end, humans had a way of searching for enemies within if there were no enemies outside.

“Okay, let’s make this flashy. Our objective is the princess. Let’s kill her before she can get aboard the Object!!”

===Part 2===

“Good, good. Everything’s going as planned. We can hear everything they’re saying.”

Inside the maintenance base zone, a base made up of over one hundred large vehicles, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage grinned. He held a military radio over which he could hear the “enemy” clear as day.

“You damn traitors. We’ll kill every single one of you.”

“Hey, can you really do that?”

A woman next to him let out an exasperated sigh. She specialized in barrier duty which meant she was one of the Black Uniforms who dealt with criminals within the military. She had introduced herself, but he had forgotten what her name was.

He lightly shook the military radio.

“It’s their fault for forgetting they’re traitors and therefore are using the same equipment. Even if the fools changed the encryption, it’s still the same format, so there’s still a risk of us intercepting it.”

They were near the center of the maintenance base zone made up of a large convoy. Quenser was hiding behind and leaning up against a wheel larger than the door to a bank vault. He was using a black military knife to draw a simple map in the sand.

“Heivia and his group are near the southern gate. They’ve already snuck into the base’s grounds while pretending to be innocent. Meanwhile, the princess is a bit south of the center. She’s receiving body maintenance in the special lodgings for the pilot Elite. They’re definitely going to attack there.”

“Once Miss Milinda Brantini enters the Baby Magnum she is almost invincible. After all, that Object is made to withstand a direct nuclear strike. So…”

“They’ll block the path from the special lodgings to the Object hangar.”

Quenser scraped X-marks into the sand along a few routes.

The blonde-haired, large-breasted Black Uniform frowned.

“But the traitors can’t just move about as they please. The watchtowers will spot them outside. If they simply pursue the Elite, they will be shot down by light machineguns.”

“Then they’ll take out the watchtowers!”

Sounds resembling champagne corks being removed rang out across the Oceanian wasteland. Quenser looked up and saw a few thirty centimeter parachutes opening in the sky. They looked like children’s fireworks, but they were not. Instead of a weight, they had a small camera attached.

“Here they come!!” shouted the Black Uniform woman.

“Ah, damn! Shoot them down before they designate the coordinates!!”

Just as Quenser tried to shout into his military radio, the Black Uniform grabbed him by the back of the neck and dove down to the sandy ground. The beautiful woman was lying on top of him, so two soft objects were pressed against his back. Nothing could have made him happier.

But such ephemeral joys had a way of being quickly destroyed.

Quenser heard a roar and saw the real attack hit the top of a nearby watchtower. The midair cameras had specified the coordinates and then the shells had been fired. It was a stereotypical and by-the-book use of mortars.

However, what happened next was not in the textbook.

For some reason, the top of the watchtower was covered in a sticky, white liquid.

Quenser and the Black Uniform woman began to tremble.

They finally realized what the rebels had done.

“Th-that bastard!! Did he take the red paint out of the paint rounds and replaced it with white!? And he turned it into a disturbingly sticky liquid!”

“Eee!! It smells funny and won’t come out of my hair!”

Quenser did not even need the radio to hear the screams of the female soldier with guard duty who had held a light machinegun in the watchtower.

The rebels seemed to be following the standard theory of making the most of the initial confusion of the attack. The sounds of assault rifle gunfire could be heard from multiple directions.

“M-my guess is all of their paint rounds will be like that, but what do you think?”

“I agree 100%,” said Quenser.

“In that case, I think you should clear an escape path to protect my dignity as a woman!! The battlefield cameramen of this peaceful world are aiming bazooka-like cameras our way, remember? I don’t want to be on the cover of a newsletter with my face covered in that sticky stuff!!”

“Guys don’t want to be splattered with sticky, white stuff either! In a way, it’s even worse for us than for the girls!!”

But shouting at each other was not going to bring an end to the battle.

Quenser sheathed his fake military knife that had a black, rubber blade and began to move with the Black Uniform woman.

===Part 3===

Froleytia Capistrano was a silver-haired, giant-breasted, and highly-ranked soldier. As she smoked her kiseru in the operation control room, she responded to a question from one of her subordinates.

“Well, if you didn’t seriously want to avoid being hit, no one would fight seriously.”

===Part 4===

Simulation Number 101 (b).

Eliminate the rebels from within the unit ASAP while guiding and protecting the pilot Elite.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! If we take out the princess, we’re freed from those tasteless rations for a week! We can eat as much roast beef and garlic shrimp as we want!!”

Heivia and the others were traveling beneath the vehicles. That was an alternate way through the maintenance base zone which was made up of over one hundred vehicles. The vehicles left a space of over two meters above the ground, so they could remain standing as they ran and they could hide behind the giant wheels.

Myonri pointed her PDW here and there while moving cautiously and occasionally coughing.

[[Image:HO_v07_022.png|thumb]]

“Ugh. Cough! This exhaust is terrible. We aren’t going to get carbon monoxide poisoning, are we? I don’t want to die on a training mission!”

“The human body is plenty sturdy! Don’t worry!” barked back Heivia.

He then sent a sign to the other two soldiers with them: a short girl with freckles and a muscular man.

“Girly, Basic! Drive them out from the left. Once they come out from the behind the wheel, I’ll shoot them!!”

As per Heivia’s instruction, a grenade was thrown behind the wheel.

Once a high school-aged girl frantically ran to escape the (white and sticky) explosion, he mercilessly fired a paint round.

“Stop! Not the face!!”

“Fwa ha ha ha ha! Then should I fire between those huge tits of yours!?”

Travelling beneath the giant vehicles allowed them to almost entirely ignore any bombardments that would fly in a parabola arc and fall from the sky.

But there was an even bigger reason they had chosen that route.

“Myonri! Get out that tool on your back!!”

He pointed straight up.

“We’re directly below the special Elite lodgings. Let’s cut in from below as planned!!”

“Oof… Those lodgings are made by connecting a few different vehicles, right?”

“And if we stick the door-busting tool into the joint between vehicles and force it open, we can crawl in. If they’re still keeping her in here as part of Phase 1, this’ll be checkmate!!”

Heivia lifted Myonri up on his shoulders and she pressed the special tool against the vehicle bottom that looked like a thick metal ceiling. Like a pile bunker, the “beak” portion used explosives to stab in and then a motor spread the “beak” and forced open the thick metal panels that had been perfectly aligned.

“Ahh, ahh. This is ripping the metal apart! Should we really be doing this for a mock battle!?”

“I don’t remember being told not to destroy the equipment. In fact, it was that huge-breasted commander that told us to make this as realistic as possible.”

They opened a gap just barely large enough for one person to squeeze through. Myonri’s short form was pushed up first and then she reached down and helped Heivia in.

Girly had Basic lift her up, but Basic was too large to fit in the gap.

After sending Basic off to meet up with another team, Heivia and the two girls began searching the Elite lodgings.

“This is a brilliant method. …Although it would be a one-way ticket for anyone trying to pull it off for real.”

The inside was filled with high-class furnishings that looked out of place in a military facility.

The design resembled a villa made entirely of classical mahogany. When Heivia had visited with Quenser two weeks prior, it had been a sterile place filled with white and the layout had even been completely different. It may have been to match the princess’s mental condition or to prevent an attack, but it was made to be completely rearranged in an extremely short period of time.

“If it can be rearranged, does that mean we can pry it apart with the door-busting tool?”

“This isn’t going to make proper training. Paint rounds can’t pierce walls.”

Heivia and the others swiftly finished their search of the first floor.

They counted the number of exits, set up quick traps at each one, and headed for the stairs. Before charging in, Heivia grabbed a stuffed animal and tossed it forward. As expected, this produced several gunshots.

Still hiding behind cover, he fired several short bursts toward the stairs.

“Myonri! Throw a grenade on my signal!!”

Heivia stopped firing to avoid friendly fire, Myonri leaned out in his place, and she tossed a grenade toward the upper floor.

A moist explosion and a few screams soon followed.

“Oh.”

“You idiot!!”

As Girly stared up the stairs, Heivia and Myonri frantically pulled her forward.

A short burst of gunfire came from the top of the stairs.

“Don’t let your guard down until you’re sure they’re dead, you idiot!!”

“Did you have to call me an idiot twice!?”

“It’s important!! And if you were a guy, I wouldn’t have saved you, so you should thank me! Idiot, idiot!!”

“If you say it that much, you just sound like a tsundere!!”

“Say that again and I’ll fire a paint round into your back!!” shouted Heivia as he pointed upwards. “Myonri, use that tool on the roof.”

“Eh? But there’s no seam there, so I can’t pry it apart.”

“The people up above don’t know that. You scare them and I’ll finish them off while they’re preparing to run!”

Myonri did as she was told and forcefully stabbed the “beak” into the ceiling.

A dull sound rang out and the bodyguard soldiers started to move to a safer location, but Heivia accurately took them out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Clear, clear! Let’s move on.”

“Why on earth are you a radar analyst? Wouldn’t you be more at home in a VIP assassination squad?”

“Can you sit around all day in an air-conditioned room in a squad like that? If not, I’ll pass.”

They climbed the stairs and found around three bodyguard soldiers covered in sticky white paint. They held up their hands with disappointed looks.

“Where is she, dammit? The princess has to be hiding around here somewhere. Find her!!”

The mission was about protecting the Elite, but it was unclear if she would be carrying a gun or not. There was a real possibility of being shot from a closet or refrigerator.

After coming so far, it would be a shame to lose the bonus for shooting her, so Heivia and the others carefully checked each room.

“Clear!”

“Clear!!”

“Clear over here, too. Shit! Why is everywhere clear!? Where is the princess hiding!?”

After unintentionally ensuring their safety, Heivia began looking around and shouting angrily.

And then he felt a slight draft.

He turned toward the source and found an open refrigerator door. He finally shoved the entire thing to the side.

“Dammit…”

The mahogany inner wall had been torn open.

To reduce weight, the outer wall was covered in a thick blade-resistant sheet, but it could still be torn with the proper tools. A vertical tear had created a hole large enough for a human to escape through.

(As soon as the firefight began below the vehicles, they had already realized the risk of us breaking in. Dammit!)

He brought his hand to the 150 cm vertical slit and brushed it aside. Struggles were beginning along the routes leading from the Elite lodgings to the Object hanger. While both sides fired on each other, Heivia saw a short girl wearing a special suit and a boy tugging on her hand while running along the sand.

“Quenser!! I knew it had to be you!!” he shouted.

The boy’s only response was to look over his shoulder and raise his middle finger.

And then…

“Oh, shit!!”

Heivia frantically moved back inside and dove to the floor. Now that the special lodgings were no longer needed, tanks began firing on the second floor with what felt like enough force to destroy the building.

===Part 5===

Before the attack even began, Quenser’s group had snuck to the special lodgings, met up with the princess, and helped her escape. But now that they were hiding behind a tank, they had little confidence in their ability to win a normal firefight.

“Why are you even here, Quenser?”

“Ha ha ha. That question hurts, princess. If you weren’t a girl, I’d shove you out to the traitors.”

The one doing all the work was the Black Uniform woman who was travelling with the boy. As one of those who claimed to purge the military of criminals, she was used to firefights between humans even in an age where Object battles symbolized war.

That woman was currently looking toward the Elite lodgings in annoyance.

The rectangular building sat atop several large vehicles and its top half was covered in a poisonous red. It looked a bit like a horrible cranberry tart.

“Tanks in a mock battle? Couldn’t that have killed them?”

“The paint rounds can’t pierce walls, so it doesn’t count. If you assume they’re dead, it’ll come back to bite you later.”

Once mock battles began creating unique rules, there was a danger of losing any experience usable in a real battle. But at the same time, some differences were unavoidable if one was not going to train with a real battle.

“Two hundred meters to the hangar.”

“Once we get in there, I just have to board the Baby Magnum. I can use the sensors to slaughter them all.”

The Black Uniform smiled bitterly at that dangerous statement and asked a question.

“Now, how will the enemy handle this?”

“They’ll have set up a wire along a route the princess has to pass through. That could be the entrances to the hangar or the Object’s hatch.”

This mock battle was based on the possibility of traitors within the military. The bandannas around their mouths were to make them easy to distinguish, but the maintenance soldiers were kept in a gray area. It was possible an enemy could approach while pretending to be an ally.

“I will not fall for such a simple trap.”

“Research shows the people who think that are the easiest to catch in a trap.”

“Mh. Quenser, do you think I am clumsy?”

“Sorry, but I’ve never seen you act particularly sharply! I can think of a few times when you almost killed me with the Baby Magnum. That time in Gibraltar for instance!!”

“Quit complaining, Quenser.”

“Why do you think I’m complaining? It’s because our lives are on the line!!!!!”

“Calm down,” cut in the Black Uniform. “Let’s get back to the issue at hand. The wire traps are passive. We might hit them and we might not. I doubt the enemy will rely on them alone.”

“The traps are meant to slow us down. While we spend time deactivating them, they’ll attack from a distance with snipers or something.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll find the traps and deactivate them. You gather what people you can and be on the lookout.”

===Part 6===

During a mock battle that uses paint rounds, even a tank could not pierce a thick blade-resistant sheet.

But the close-range blast had still left Myonri dizzy. While writhing in pain due a sharp earache, Heivia turned toward Girly. She seemed conscious, but she had completely lost her nerve. She had fallen to the floor and was waving her hands around with tears in her eyes. Her expression made it clear taking a single step would make her wet herself. It resembled the shock of receiving the full effects of a stun grenade.

“Goddammit… That…bastard…”

Heivia took a few seconds to recover and then walked down the stairs of the Elite lodgings and exited on the first floor. There he found an enemy soldier, took them out with a handgun paint round, and then lay down behind cover.

His assault rifle had excellent rapid-fire and piercing ability, but it could perform accurate mid-range sniping with full use of its sensors.

(As long as I have line-of-sight, I can hit. And I have a direct line on the Object hangar from here!)

He licked his lips as he peered into the scope lens that was more of a small monitor with several types of information displayed.

He was targeting the main entrance to the hangar where a trap had been set up.

The trap prevented anyone from running through and he would shoot anyone who stopped for even an instant.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! I don’t like splattering guys with this stuff, but I won’t be satisfied until I get back at you!!”

While paint rounds were being used, a hit anywhere on the body counted as a kill, so he could not target the leg and then target any enemy soldiers who came to help.

He could not use any tricks. He could only target them directly.

He lay on the ground and waited.

His index finger stroked the surface of the trigger as he tried to alleviate his tension even slightly.

But…

(What’s going on? Don’t tell me they chickened out.)

He waited a few minutes, but nothing happened.

When assassinating a VIP, it was not unusual to wait for an entire day or two, but this was a frenzied battle. If he did not remain on the move while keeping a general idea where the target was located, enemy soldiers could sneak up behind him.

(They won’t be taking this slow by staying put until they eliminate all the enemy snipers. After all, the princess would be exposed the entire time. What is that guy thinking?)

And then he froze up.

Something unpleasant had entered the scope.

The giant mass of steel was known as an MBT or a main battle tank. Even the name was outdated and rarely seen on the modern battlefield.

“What the hell!? Did he throw the princess in there to protect her from snipers!?”

If the tank climbed the diagonal slope and charged through the gate, the snipers and traps would be meaningless. The anti-personnel traps would be crushed and the princess would be safely carried to the Object hangar.

Heivia tossed aside his assault rifle and grabbed the shoulder-fired missile launcher on his back.

Whether it was a tank or an attack helicopter, he could neutralize them with a direct hit from a shoulder-fired missile (loaded with paint). Those were the rules for this mock battle. One could complain it made no sense as the same weapon could not even pierce the thin walls of a building, but armored weapons would become invincible if some compromise was not made.

At any rate…

(Damn him. I don’t like having only one shot at this.)

Given their size, he could not carry around multiple missiles.

It was essentially a single-use weapon.

“But that bonus is mine if I make this one shot! And this makes my target way bigger, so it isn’t all bad!!”

He placed the launcher on his shoulder and peered into the sight on the side.

Both infrared and ultraviolet were used to lock onto the MBT heading for the hangar.

Immediately afterwards, the tank’s turret began to turn.

It stopped in exactly the right spot to stare at Heivia.

“…Crap.”

(They weren’t trying to get the princess through! The tank was a bluff used to locate everyone targeting the hangar door from afar!! Dammit. Did it detect the infrared signal I used for the lock!?)

He frantically jumped down from the large vehicle supporting the special Elite lodgings and tried to hide behind one of the giant wheels.

But he was too slow.

A beautiful Black Uniform woman popped up from a hatch on the top of the turret and fired her anti-personnel heavy machinegun.

Heivia had been close enough for mid-range sniping, so they could target him in the same way.

And the enemy’s weapon had three times the range of his assault rifle. Being hit by that thing from close range could have resulted in a “training accident”.

“Bhah!? Cough cough!! Fuck that hurts! Are you trying to make me hate tanks!?”

===Part 7===

Froleytia let out a sweet-smelling breath mixed with smoke.

The giant monitor in the operation control room displayed a detailed map of the maintenance base zone and the locations of both sides.

After seeing that the pilot Elite princess had entered Baby Magnum’s cockpit, she clapped her hands together lightly.

“That settles it! As per our crisis management manual, the Elite was safely brought to the Object where she can settle the rest. That ends the mock battle!!”

That was the special privilege of a first generation Object.

Unlike second generation Objects which were designed solely for Object vs. Object battles, the Baby Magnum was equipped with anti-fighter weapons, anti-tank weapons, and enough anti-personnel weapons and sensors to exterminate anyone. If one ignored the damage it would cause to the maintenance base zone, the enemy soldiers would be blown to pieces instantly no matter where they hid.

In other words, the battle was essentially over as soon as the princess boarded the Baby Magnum.

(But no one gets the all-you-can-eat prize yet again. It’s what I expected, but it’s still boring.)

As Froleytia thought, a female operator gave a hesitant report.

“U-um, major. You have a call.”

“Hm? Then hurry up and-…”

“No, um. It is a direct call to your cell phone. I thought it might be private. U-um, but I still have to pass it through my switchboard!!”

Froleytia waved a hand to give permission.

While serving in the military, there was no avoiding having her communications monitored. She could only think positively and view it as proving to a third party that she was not doing anything suspicious.

(No one with any sense would call my private number now, so maybe it has to do with my family.)

With that depressing thought, she reached for the cell phone in her uniform pocket.

She did not need to give a sign like in an old police drama. She simply pressed the call button and answered.

It was a male voice.

And oddly enough, he seemed to be using a voice changer.

“We have your daughter,” was the very first thing he(?) said.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

An unpleasant silence fell over the dim operation control room.

But it was not complete silence. Whispered voices could be heard here and there.

“Eh? Major Capistrano has-… Eh!?”

“She has a kid!? It can’t be! It just can’t be!”

“But she is 18… It’s a bit early, but it’s possible, right?”

Froleytia remained silent for a moment.

She was trembling a bit.

As the man(?) told her not to call the police, how much the ransom was, and how to deliver it, she slowly spoke as if crushing the words in her mouth.

“I am a virgin.”

“Eh!? Major Capistrano is-…!?”

“It can’t be! It just can’t be!?”

“But she is 18… It’s possible, right?”

The intensity of the whispered voices grew threefold. This time, female voices were mixed in accusing the guys of being disgusting.

Finally, the man(?) on the phone seemed to catch on.

“Huh? A virgin, but…huh? W-wait a minute! Don’t you have a nine-year-old daughter? Or…but…you can’t mean…!!”

“You. Have. The. Wrong. Number. You idiot!! You have guts making a threatening phone call on a military line. Don’t you know that the Legitimacy Kingdom accepts any fight someone picks with it!?”

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah!!” cried the voice frantically.

With a click, the line went dead.

The operator turned her seat toward Froleytia with a hand to one side of her headset.

“U-um, I traced his location. …What should we do?”

“…”

The duty of Froleytia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom troops stationed in Oceania was to prevent any other countries from invading the country during this chaotic time after it lost its military.

In other words, it was not their job to deal with criminals and terrorists. This was not a war, so it was a job for the local police. If the military acted here, they could be accused of intervention.

But…

“During this unstable period, I hear there are a lot of delinquent police officers who are paid off by the growing criminal organizations. A kidnapping for ransom is likely an organized crime, so they likely have pawns hidden within the police. In other words, the local police will be of no use.”

“Is this really okay?”

“The threat was sent to our military, not Oceania. If they pick a fight with us, it doesn’t count as intervention.” Froleytia adjusted the kiseru in her mouth and shrugged. “Our new mission begins now! Gather the necessary personnel and equipment and form a rescue team!! I authorize the use of weaponry suitable for attacking a concentration camp!!”

Despite her orders, the whispering seemed to never end.

“She’s a virgin.”

“Major Capistrano is a virgin!”

“She’s a noble’s daughter and a military officer. That’s one hell of a target!”

“You guys are disgusting!!”

Froleytia puffed smoke from her mouth like a demon king.

That trembling Legitimacy Kingdom officer hated damage to her pride more than anything else.

“I’ll show you just who you picked a fight with, you thieves.”

===Part 8===

And so Quenser, Heivia, and the other soldiers exhausted from the mock battle were loaded into the back of military trucks and carried over cracked asphalt. Each and every vibration of the trucks made them feel like they had been cursed by god.

“This isn’t funny… This isn’t goddamn funny!! I lose the all-you-can-eat kill bonus and now our commander is sending us off to rescue some kid for nothing but righteous indignation!? There’s not a single good thing about this. Please tell me a girl in a micro bikini is gonna show up soon!!”

“I hear the girl who was kidnapped is nine. We need to put the work in now to enjoy a lovely micro bikini ten years from now.”

Feeling fed up with it all, Heivia looked up toward the sun.

It was so bright it looked right off an orange juice package.

“And another thing,” he spat out.

An official Legitimacy Kingdom battlefield cameraman was with them on the truck. That in and of itself was no problem, but they recognized this particular cameraman and not in a good way.

“Why is ''he'' with us?”

“I went through all the proper channels,” smoothly answered the man who had a history with Oceania.

His name was Sewax.

He had previously slipped into Oceania with a press non-combatant permit, but he had broken tons of international laws by disturbing the battlefield with a sniper rifle.

“This time, I only have my camera. I’m not armed and I have no intention of getting in your way.”

“I should damn well hope so!! I doubt you’ve made up for the lives you took!!”

Heivia almost grabbed at the man, but the surrounding soldiers held him back.

This was not because they disapproved of how he was handling this civilian. Their expressions made it clear they simply did not want a disturbance within the limited space of the vehicle.

Quenser shrugged.

“Try to keep your cool. Punching him isn’t going to summon girls in micro bikinis.”

Hearing that, Heivia clicked his tongue and muttered something in a low tone.

“Y’know, Quenser, it isn’t like all you need is skimpy clothing. What you need for a beautiful woman is-…”

“I know, Heivia, I know. It’s what’s inside that counts, right? It doesn’t matter if some side character is suddenly wearing a micro bikini. What we’re after is more than simple sexiness.”

They continued chatting as the truck shook.

They showed no concern for the deadly firefight that lay ahead.

“So about this kidnapping. Is this area really that dangerous?”

“Mafias and gangs from around the world used the confusion of this postwar period to work their way in. Plus, the remnants of the old military government are still trying to earn funds to continue the war. And since the black market has become necessary for your average citizen, the criminal organizations are being welcomed.”

“What? Oceania wasn’t that bad last time we were here. Wasn’t it pretty peaceful and wasn’t everyone smiling?”

“Haven’t you heard about the wild fluctuation of the Oceanian dollar? The assistance from distant countries and relief funds from charities have come in large amounts, but they’re sporadic. Huge amounts of money briefly come flowing in like some kind of fad or sudden idea. Intermittent support is the most difficult to deal with. You can’t rely on it as a lifeline, so the local people end up finding a dirty but stable way to earn an income and supply products.”

He could have left well enough alone, but Sewax decided to butt into the conversation.

He held up his camera.

“You have to ignore where it came from, but the quality isn’t bad. One of my lens case sets was stolen at customs, but I found an identical one on the black market. I should actually get some work done now.”

Heivia seemed to decide yelling at the man would accomplish nothing, so he restrained himself while the veins on his temple bulged out.

Quenser glanced toward Sewax.

“If they just want to profit from the black market, they wouldn’t kidnap someone.”

“I’m just saying they’re no Robin Hood. No matter what they claim, they’re villains who gather money for their own convenience. They aren’t really thinking about the starving people or the fate of the country.”

The clattering line of trucks was headed toward an old industrial city along the eastern coast of the ocean. During the time of the military nation, only the discriminatory privileged class had lived there, so it had been destroyed by an Object.

All of the nearby buildings had toppled over and large piles of rubble could be found even on the road.

Only the so-called “white targets” such as schools, churches, and hospitals remained. They were completely untouched, so it showed just how frighteningly accurate the Object’s carpet bombing had been.

Heivia let out a whistle.

“Welcome to the Mouth of Truth.”

“What?”

“It’s a sightseeing spot in Rome. If you’re a student, try studying some history.”

“I don’t know anything about the Faith Organization.”

Heivia pointed toward the scenery with his thumb. Quenser could see remains of crumbled buildings that had piled on top of each other so they looked like mille-feuille.

“They go digging through all that and grab anything they can sell on the black market like music players and cans of dried milk, but if they get too greedy, the jaws of rubble bite into them.”

“…Is this country really in that bad a state?”

“Weren’t you listening? There’s nothing they can do until the local currency stabilizes. There are even rumors that straight up bartering works better. This chaos isn’t going to calm down until our euro and the other dollars stop being preferred.”

Sewax aimed his lens out the truck and toward the surrounding piles of rubble.

“When you get down to it, the liberation of Oceania is still in a period of chaos. A lot of people are being crushed underfoot. The normal people need to use the black market for food to eat and those in too much debt to use the black market are being forced to risk their lives in places like that. And they’re either working for free or for so little it barely makes a difference.”

“Seriously? We’re about to have a firefight there. And do you know what my specialty is? Explosives.”

“The area’s too dangerous, so the local police don’t go on patrol here. And the lack of police causes dangerous people to gather. But that makes the area even more dangerous. It’s a vicious cycle. All the lower level criminal organizations are crowded in together.”

The convoy of military trucks came to a stop about two kilometers away from the abandoned building that the call to Froleytia’s phone had come from. About one hundred infantry got out onto the cracked asphalt.

“Isn’t this a bit much? You’d think we were fighting a war.”

“Fighting in wars is our job. Now let’s go, student.”

A few battlefield cameramen had come along, but Sewax seemed to be travelling with Quenser and Heivia’s group. This annoyed the two boys even further.

“If you screw up, I’m not saving you. If you get injured, I’m leaving you behind. If you bring danger to the unit, I’ll use you as a shield and escape. I don’t give a crap about international law. That’s just what I’m gonna do. Got it?”

“Is your unit really weak enough to lose to a local criminal organization?”

Depending on what the enemy did, Quenser, Heivia, and the others would be forced into one of two types of battles.

First, they would besiege the enemy headquarters while the enemy was unaware they had been traced.

Second, they would pursue the swiftly fleeing enemy vehicles and carry out a car chase on the single long line of asphalt through the desert.

Either way, they controlled the satellite above, so they would not lose track of their enemy. As they were attempting to rescue a hostage, the attack on the base would be easier than a car chase.

“Would they really think they hadn’t been traced after their call passed through a military switchboard? Surely they didn’t believe the old police dramas where quickly hanging up keeps you from being traced.”

“We need to be on our guard. They might be well equipped and plan to escape after causing some damage to our first wave.”

“I pray they’re at least that smart. They need to be a worthy enough opponent for someone as great as me to head all the way out here.”

While remaining on the lookout for traps, cameras, snipers, or other dangers, Heivia and the others travelled from pile of rubble to pile of rubble. Quenser simply followed Heivia who had more or less taken the lead.

“By the way, why was a student like me sent with you?”

“God himself insisted you don’t get to lie around in bed all day while the rest of us work our asses off.”

“But I can’t take part in the firefight,” complained Quenser.

It was unclear what exactly he was taking photos of, but Sewax was pointing his camera here and there among the piles of rubble. Quenser had no idea what pictures would be worth what.

Unlike a normal stroll, they had to climb up piles of rubble that could collapse at any moment and be on the lookout for enemy soldiers that might not even be there. Even a distance of only two kilometers, a single station’s worth in a city, was rather exhausting.

“Hey, Heivia. Do you think I’ll be popular with the girls if the lower half of my body gets big and strong? Depending on your answer, I might give up right here.”

“Eh? Do you mean that in a dirty way?”

As he received an answer which earned a perfect 0 points, Quenser really did curl up on the ground. Heivia was forced to grab the stubborn child’s arm and drag him along.

“Look! That bastard Sewax is pointing his camera at you!!”

“It is my job to bring people the truth of the battlefield.”

“If you don’t want to be a source of international shame, stand up, Quenser!! Start walking!!”

As per their instructions over the radio, they arrived at a spot where they could look down on the abandoned building. Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Dammit. It’s a hospital. It survives the bombing and now it gets used for this. Let’s download a diagram and the distribution of people inside, so we can slaughter them all.”

“Just out of curiosity, what ever happened to rescuing the hostage?”

Of course, if they just had to kill everyone inside, there was no need to charge into the building. They could bombard the building from a distance and destroy it entirely.

Based on the distribution of enemy soldiers they received from the satellite, Quenser and the others used their sensors in a variety of ways to check on the details of the people inside.

“This is a pain in the ass. There are over fifty people in there.”

“Here we go. On the first floor…what is that place? Looks like an internal medicine examining room. Anyway, I found a child bound with duct tape. Oh, dear. And she has a blindfold, earplugs, and tape over the mouth. Um, I don’t see any other abducted children.”

“This is the world’s least rewarding place to peep. Let’s get this over with and peep on our huge-breasted commander’s bath.”

“Did you know that joke violates the rules regarding classified information?”

The one hundred infantry split into five groups and Quenser’s group took their position.

Sewax was still with them.

“So we get a student and a cameraman. How much variation does one unit need?”

“If you don’t need me, I’ll go set up a parasol and fall asleep. I’m not here because I want to be.”

“You all get to show the people back home that their tax money is being well spent. You should be thanking me.”

Heivia put up with a headache and spoke into his radio.

“The kid is on the first floor. Everywhere else doesn’t matter. You can make the corpses as gory as you want, so use your wall-penetrating rifles to shoot them on my signal.”

“Understood. Will you be using your pistols out of concern for the child? Seeing any corpses at all will probably traumatize her, but go to the extra effort if you want.”

“There are some lines you don’t cross. Then again, deciding where that line is for yourself is getting a bit self-righteous.”

Quenser and his group were not bothering with the strictly-guarded entrance.

They instead made their way to the outer wall of the examination room the abducted child was confined in. Quenser placed several Hand Axe plastic explosives on the wall in a systematic fashion. He finished the setup by stabbing electric fuses in.

“I’m ready.”

“Just to be sure, the explosion isn’t going to blow out the kid’s eardrums, is it?”

“We saw she had a blindfold and earplugs, remember? If we handle this well, she won’t even see the corpses. So what’ll you do, PTA?”

“Tch. Let’s do this. On a count of three.”

He casually counted down three seconds.

Immediately afterwards, an explosive noise burst out. It had actually been 53 anti-materiel rifles being fired simultaneously, but the timing was so perfect that it sounded like a single explosion.

At the same time, Quenser hit the switch on his radio while pressing against the wall.

The outer wall was blown to pieces and the filthy men inside the room were knocked to the ground. Before the criminals realized what was happening, Heivia and the professional soldiers stepped in and did not hesitate to pull the trigger.

Phase 1 took only five seconds.

Phase 2 was taking out anyone they missed in Phase 1. The existence of some leftovers who had luckily escaped the anti-materiel rifles was proven by short bursts of assault rifle fire.

“Clear?”

“Clear, clear. Help me out here, Quenser. Let’s hide the corpses before removing the kid’s blindfold. C’mon, Sewax, you help too!!”

“This was a hospital, so is there a mop and bucket anywhere?”

They could not remove the blindfold with corpses lying all over the place, but the duct tape covering the girl’s mouth could keep her from breathing. Quenser approached her and gently removed the tape over her mouth.

He expected her to cry.

But she did not.

“Run!! Hurry!!”

He had a very bad feeling.

He belatedly realized her clothes bulged out oddly and he gently lifted them up.

He saw a cell phone and colorful leads.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!!” shouted Heivia.

At the same time, someone in a distant place pressed a speed dial button.

===Part 9===

In that instant, Quenser and Heivia took the complete opposite actions.

In order to escape the blast, Heivia immediately moved backwards. On the other hand, Quenser grabbed the girls shoulders which were duct taped to the chair. He slid her along and threw the girl’s small body underneath the examining room’s bed.

All the while, Sewax was peering down his viewfinder.

“Wh-what?” asked Heivia as he coughed a bit and leaped behind a steel desk.

The silence was almost painful.

“What the hell!? It isn’t detonating!?”

“It’s a cell phone!” shouted back Quenser. “A cheap obsolete model is being used for the detonator. There are no indoor antennae in a ghost town like this. The signal sent from here has to reach an antenna in the next town over and then come back the same way. The thick walls of the building and the metal pipes and springs of this bed are enough. As long as it can’t pick up the signal, the detonation command can’t reach it!!”

As he spoke, he climbed under the bed himself. He pulled a small knife from his survival kit. The girl did not seem to know what was happening to her after suddenly being thrown into that small space. Anyone would be in a similar state with a blindfold and earplugs.

Quenser removed one of the earplugs and spoke gently.

“It’s okay. It’s okay now. The bomb won’t go off.”

“R-really?”

She simply sat their blankly, but that was fine for the time being as it made it easier to work.

“Can you get it off?” asked Heivia.

“Did you see this thing? I can neutralize a shitty detonator like this in 45 seconds.”

The explosive was homemade TNT and it was attached to her back with duct tape. The detonator, battery, and the like were mostly located under her arms. They all appeared to have been stolen from construction sites meant to rebuild the country.

“Honestly, is this supposed to be a school bag?”

There were three circuit boards, but two of them were fakes. He cut only the necessary leads with a knife and completely killed the detonator.

“Hey, it’s been a minute!”

“Don’t be stupid. It only took me thirty seconds to handle the device itself. It’s gently removing the duct tape that’s taking me so long!!”

The detonator was no longer functioning, so there was no need to remain below the bed. Quenser tossed the duct tape covered bomb out from under the bed and dragged the nine-year-old hostage out.

Heivia let out a breath and spoke into his radio.

“The situation has ended. The hostage is safe. I repeat, the situation has ended! I know it isn’t going to happen, but I request some ice-cold non-alcoholic beer and cured ham for when we return. Yeah, I know it isn’t happening!!”

“I thought the mission wasn’t over until we got back?”

“And call an ambulance. I’m on the verge of punching this annoying-as-hell cameraman!!”

The hostage girl looked around in confusion.

The corpses of the criminal organization had been moved to another room and the room had been quickly mopped, but the dangerous atmosphere filling the room was not so easily eliminated.

Sewax removed the camera’s viewfinder from his eye and spoke to Quenser.

“What do we do now? Do you put up posters like the ones you see for lost cats?”

“Don’t underestimate the military’s intelligence gathering ability. Her parents are probably being invited to the maintenance base just about now. The emotional reunion will take place inside the fence.”

The girl then looked up at Quenser.

She may have seen him as the easiest to talk to because he had dealt with the bomb.

“Hey, where are they?”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry. You’ll be with your mother before-…”

“Not that,” she said, cutting him off.

The unease in her voice made it seem the incident was not yet over.

“Where are the others?”

===Part 10===

She had nothing to do.

That was how the princess felt.

No matter how many sensors her first generation Object had, there was no place for such a colossal weapon on a delicate mission to rescue a hostage. If they arrived with too much power, the criminal group could feel cornered enough to kill the hostage.

So now that the mock battle was over, the princess floated face up in a pool.

The maintenance base zone was made up of over one hundred large vehicles, but it did not contain a facility with a large indoor pool. This outdoor facility had been created by taking advantage of the sand underfoot.

Simply put, the soldiers who misbehaved had been given shovels and forced to dig a giant hole, cover its surface with plastic, and pour water in it. That had created a makeshift pool. A nearby sign said “Female soldiers only. Cameras strictly prohibited.” The princess was surrounded by off-duty women in swimsuits and they were all splashing each other with water, hitting each other with beach balls, or getting into serious fights.

There were two reasons for the pool.

First, it was a project meant to reduce the stress of the female soldiers. It was less about the pool itself and more about providing a small event that allowed them to escape the gaze of the normal military regulations. Similar projects had resulted in events based on different cultural celebrations such as the flower viewing or carnival. There had also been the sudden appearance of a swimsuit-wearing Santa Claus.

Second, it was a means of punishment. It was not fun toiling away under the broiling sun to dig a hole that would be enjoyed by the well-behaved soldiers. It would be no exaggeration to say that over half of the work had been done by a bomb-using student and a radar analyst who excelled at using firearms.

“Sigh…”

And as a result, the princess was wearing a swimsuit and floating in a twenty meter square pool while surrounded by other female soldiers.

[[Image:HO_v07_057.png|thumb]]

And…

“Oh ho ho!! Oh ho ho ho ho!! Honestly, now the unrefined Legitimacy Kingdom Elite is so exhausted she is sighing? You sound like an old woman.”

“…Why are you connected to this line?”

The princess had heard an Information Alliance Elite’s voice coming from the handheld device attached to her wrist by a rubber bracelet. The princess almost always remained expressionless, but her eyebrows twisted in clear displeasure.

The nice-bodied Elite on the screen was laughing loudly while pressing the back of her hand against her cheek.

“Oh ho ho. Have you never heard of diplomatic routes, little girl? You can disconnect from the line if you like, but a rude Elite would bring disgrace to her unit. Oh ho ho. Then again, you do not look like the kind of girl who would care about that!!”

“I get it, so let’s fight. I will blow you to pieces with the Baby Magnum.”

“Oh ho ho. Do you really think I am in Oceania? War is not waged solely with unrefined battles. I am currently preparing for a concert. I am too busy to deal with a little girl like you.”

“Then why did you contact me.”

“I am also steadily preparing to make that gentleman mine.”

A cracking sound could be heard.

As the princess grabbed at the handheld device, its waterproof outer case very nearly broke.

“Explain further.”

“I don’t think so. But do not worry. You will find out in due time☆”

Having said that, the other Elite ended the transmission.

The princess floated on her back a while longer and looked up at a beach ball flying by above her.

“A concert… Singing…”

She stared blankly up at the blue sky and muttered to herself.

“I should take a photo with Quenser at a karaoke box and show it off to that horrible girl.”

A member of the maintenance battalion’s intelligence division secretly listened to her.

The reason was quite simple: her mental state was directly linked to the survival of the entire unit!

===Part 11===

The sky was dyed in the orange of evening.

There was no sign of the murderous sunlight which had been raining down so forcefully before. Once evening came, Oceania filled with darkness quite quickly. After only a few dozen minutes, full darkness would arrive.

“It’s a simple setup,” said Heivia as he kicked at the abandoned hospital’s floor with the heel of his military boot. He sounded truly irritated. “It’s human trafficking with no concern for age or sex. This hospital was their relay point or their gathering spot. They abduct innocent people from the nearby cities and carry them out here where the law won’t bother them. The police are too afraid to patrol this area much, so they can fully hide their tracks by swapping out their vehicles here.”

The kidnapping incident which had started with that wrong number was being treated as resolved. The abducted girl had been loaded aboard a military truck which was taking her to the maintenance base zone.

The only people left in the hospital were Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax the battlefield cameraman.

According to the girl, thirty to forty men and women of all ages had been there only about half an hour ago.

Quenser raised his hand.

“Then why call up and demand a ransom? If they’re a human trafficking group, they wouldn’t need to do that. They would get money by selling her.”

“It’s probably a secondary source of income. Before selling her to some distant place, they get as much money from the parents as they can. They never intended to give the girl back.”

“But who in the world would buy them?” asked Myonri uneasily.

Sewax answered while performing maintenance on his camera.

“Humans are in demand everywhere.”

“What I don’t get is the variety in age. Whether for organs, soldiers, labor, or a pervert’s toy, the younger the better, right? I doubt a criminal organization like that would go out of their way to abduct and sell old men and women.”

“They might,” replied Sewax without hesitation. “Whether it’s people who starved to death or died in a battle, the world wants obvious victims of war. For example, the leaders of a chaotic country without a proper Object system in place needs a way to obtain humanitarian aid from the peaceful countries.”

“…Seriously?”

“Humanitarian aid such as food and fuel can be sold for money through the proper routes. And that money can buy guns and mercenaries to tighten one’s control over the unsatisfied country that has insufficient supplies. That’s one simple way governments oppress their countries with a dictatorship.”

“So this is a business that exports ‘extras’ to play the role of corpses,” spat out Quenser.

Heivia frowned.

“But wouldn’t it look weird if Oceanians ended up as corpses in other countries?”

“To a certain extent, abducting tourists can help supply people from different regions. There are people like that cameraman who go out of their way to visit dangerous places. If they kidnap a certain number from different regions, they can divide them up to match the requests they receive.”

Quenser sounded disgusted by the idea as he spoke, but Sewax’s expression remained calm.

The student wiped sweat from his face with the back of his hand.

“Well, that explains the wide variety of people. If all the corpses were women and children, it might draw more sympathy from the people leisurely watching TV, but they probably want to mix in a macho old man or two to make it all look less contrived.”

“That means some of these people are being kidnapped and killed for the same reason as the variation in fighting game rosters.”

“Even if it’s a dummy operation, some soldiers might be hesitant to sacrifice their own people. And that goes for dictatorships, too. But some of that guilt can be eliminated by having them kill people from other nations to protect their own people. After all, that’s basically the entire reason the military exists and what soldiers are taught to do.”

That was likely what the abductors were after.

Sewax then changed the subject.

“Any guesses where the guns used here came from?”

“They were old-style assault rifles. Not only that, but inferior ones made by melting down scrap metal and reusing it. That’s the equipment Oceania used in the days of the military nation,” explained Heivia.

“Are remnants of the old military government involved in this?” asked Myonri with a look of disbelief.

Quenser chose his words carefully as he answered.

“Well, I have been hearing about those remnants trying to take back Oceania despite the Objects stationed here giving the coalition forces an overwhelming advantage.”

Sewax smiled thinly.

“I’ve heard they’re desperate to set up pipelines to other chaotic regions that are opposed to having Objects rule over them. But to trade, they need products. The old military government’s resources have dried up, so they want some kind of diplomatic commodity.”

“And that commodity is corpse extras of all ages?” muttered Heivia quietly. “The old government’s goal is to retake Oceania. In that case, it does make sense.”

“How?”

“They want a way to control people and we’ve already glimpsed the initial preparations for that.”

After thinking for a second, Quenser grimaced.

“The black market.”

“It’s more of an ally to the people than the convenience stores. Without it, they wouldn’t have any food to eat. But not all of the black market’s products are gathered by crawling through the rubble. Someone has to obtain funds and buy products to sell.”

“Food earned by selling humans,” said Myonri with the same look as someone who had found a giant clump of hair in the food they had been eating. “If the people knew the truth, wouldn’t they begin to hate the old government’s black market?”

“Probably,” commented Sewax. “But by that time, the black market will have become an indispensable part of their lives. No matter how much they hate it, they can’t escape it. They need to get food and water somehow, so they’ll have to approve of what the old government is doing. People have a way of justifying the things they do.”

“They’re using a cruel incident to wash away the standards of good and evil and of common sense in this country. This is a form of terrorism.”

“Screw this,” spat out Quenser.

Sewax smiled.

“Fortunately, this is likely the first wave of human trafficking.”

“What?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on the black market and the stock of products has been pretty unstable. So far, they have probably only had the products they dug up in the rubble. But as the supply began to dwindle, they started to panic. To prevent the people from turning their anger toward a black market without enough to sell, they put together a rushed plan. If they had already been selling people and earning a steady income, the black market would not have been so unstable.”

“So what?” Quenser glared at Sewax. “Either way, we need to rescue the Oceanian people who vanished here before they’re packed up and shipped away. Thirty people? Forty? They’re going to end up as corpse extras. They’ll be exported somewhere that doesn’t care about the concept of ‘clean wars’ and they’ll end up on some gory picture distributed around the world.”

“That’s the problem, Quenser.” Heivia scratched at his head. “Do you remember what our huge-breasted commander’s justification was? A child was kidnapped and a threatening call was made to a military officer. As a form of self-defense, that officer is sending out her unit to eliminate the criminal organization. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Yes, I do. This operation began with that wrong number, so it only applies to the girl from the phone call. Now that we’ve rescued her, we have no pretext for military action!!”

“Then what do we do? Are we just going to leave those people to their fate!?”

“I don’t want to be plagued by nightmares of lines of body bags every time I go to bed, but this is a different issue entirely!”

“Either way, Froleytia will receive the same report once the girl arrives at the maintenance base. No matter what we do, the unit will take action in the end. So is there any reason to let the number of body bags grow by waiting until that delayed action begins!?”

“At least get permission!! Acting like a hero is great and all, but I don’t want to be thrown behind bars in exchange for getting a statue made of me in a safe country!!”

Sewax let out an obvious sigh and interrupted the following silence.

“Let’s go over the situation. You just finished your mission and were about to return to the maintenance base zone. You are not allowed to make a preemptive strike on a local force, but you are permitted to fight back in self-defense in the case of an unexpected battle. Is all that correct?”

“Are you telling us to say we lost our bearings in the desert and happened across the abduction organization while driving around randomly?”

“That’s a terrible excuse! That huge-breasted commander of ours would kill us!!”

“Only if we shot at them and killed them,” said Quenser as he gathered his thoughts. “But we should be able to get by if we restrict ourselves to investigation and long-distance reconnaissance. The odds are good Froleytia will act once she hears what that girl has to say. Even if we only investigate what buildings we need to attack and where the people are inside, it might change how many people we can save.”

“You sure are optimistic. What if she doesn’t act? Even if they’re a criminal organization, they still count as civilians. If she can’t justify slaughtering them with the military, there’s nothing she can do.”

“If that happens…” Quenser paused there, threw off his hesitation, and finally continued. “Then we’ll have to resign ourselves to being thrown in the detention barracks.”

===Part 12===

There was a proper way to go about reconnaissance.

And Quenser, Heivia, and the others did not have the proper equipment.

So…

“Who would have thought we would get our equipment at their black market?”

“I kind of think it’s our own fault.”

They bought military reconnaissance equipment centered on parabolic microphones and laser bugging devices. They also made sure to negotiate them all down to half the asking price. Unlike normal souvenir shops, the night was the busiest time for the black market. The hot night produced an odd passion in people which intertwined with the heat and filled the air with an oppressive atmosphere that permeated one’s body.

“I’m burning up… I thought the desert was supposed to be cold at night.”

“This area is filled with concrete, so it gathers heat like an urban heat island.”

“All these lights are outdated incandescent bulbs and everyone’s using diesel generators. I wonder if that’s adding to it.”

Quenser was in charge of haggling.

He was knowledgeable about machines and had a better sense of what things were worth due to his life as a commoner.

“I’m afraid of running into one of those Black Uniform women who were sent to the maintenance base. If they found out about this, they’d shoot us on the spot without bothering with a court martial.”

“How about we buy some uniforms, too? They have Information Alliance and Capitalist Corporations ones here.”

“Be my guest. But if anyone finds out, it’ll cause an international incident. Personally, I’m not gonna start a war.”

As a drunk was beaten by some of the shop owners for using shoddy counterfeit money, they bought some bottles of cider and other drinks stuck in a cooler of ice and received a radio transmission from Sewax.

They had asked Myonri and Sewax to gather some general information ahead of time.

“In an unstable country like this, the currencies of safe countries are popular. It’s a bit frustrating that the Capitalist Corporations’ dollars are better received than the Legitimacy Kingdom’s euros, but I got some interesting information.”

“Damn, it’s gone flat.”

“What?”

“Just talking to myself,” said Heivia evasively. “So did you come across some bottom-level member of the criminal organization?”

“I didn’t go that far. I talked with some of the people working in the rubble called the Mouth of Truth. To help the country recover, a few of the docks at the international harbor are opened to the general public, but it seems one of them is being monopolized by a shell corporation. If they were transporting something they wanted to hide, they wouldn’t need to do that.”

“Do you have any proof the corpse extras are being shipped out there?”

“Not if ordering a few dozen more fast food hamburgers than usual doesn’t qualify as proof. It seems they also carried in a bunch of water and salt.”

Heivia and Quenser exchanged a glance.

“So once they’ve eaten, they get stuffed in a container for the long cruise?”

“If they just stuff in them in like that, will they really make it to the destination?”

“That depends on where they’re being sent,” replied Sewax. “My guess is half would die during the first two weeks and a tenth of the survivors would die off each day afterwards.”

That guess was anything but funny.

The criminal organization was not selling cheap laborers or toys for perverts. They were selling extras to play the role of corpses. Selling them alive would be best, but they could be sold at a reduced price if they were frozen after they died. When a corpse was gruesomely roasted, you didn’t have to worry about livor mortis or anything like that. It was possible an autopsy wouldn’t even be performed.

“I also got my hands on a map of the harbor. I have a few guesses where the ‘products’ will be loaded, but I don’t know for sure. We need to go see for ourselves.”

“Well, we can’t use the military satellite without restriction,” said Heivia.

“We know the shortest course, so having to take such a roundabout route is just plain exhausting,” added Quenser.

Each time the two boys bought another piece of junk, they crossed off another item on their list.

“It looks like we’ll be able to get everything we need. Is there anything you want us to get outside of the standard reconnaissance equipment?” they asked Sewax.

“A beautiful blonde, a barrel of sherry, brandy that’s at least eight years old, cigars without any unnecessary filters, and a villa with a pool,” said Sewax perfectly casually. “Oh, and a bow and arrow set.”

“?”

===Part 13===

The international harbor in question was located at one end of the city of rubble known as the Mouth of Truth.

Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax stopped their military vehicle on the road three kilometers from the harbor and stepped out onto the cracked asphalt.

The abandoned buildings with no lights looked a lot different than they had during the day.

No flashlight lights could be seen in the direction of the abandoned buildings. Either searching for trash in the dark was too inefficient or they would simply be attacked if they dug anything out.

“This area is so bad they have to gather junk, so should we really leave our vehicle here? I don’t want to return exhausted from the job and find our means of transportation gone.”

“After the attack today, the people of the slum aren’t going to pick a fight with the military for at least half a day.”

Quenser and Sewax carried the reconnaissance equipment while Heivia and Myonri carried the firearms as they walked toward the international harbor that was opened to the public to help the country recover.

“If you look at it the right way, war recovery is like a tree that grows money,” complained Heivia as he wiped sweat from his brow. “And with all this equipment being moved around, people are gonna show up to take it for themselves. No one else is here, there are tons of things to hide behind, and there are any number of great spots for an attack. I can see why this area is so dangerous.”

“Are the containers shipped by land attacked because it’s a dangerous area or did it become a dangerous area because it’s a land route on which containers are shipped? It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg question,” said Sewax smoothly.

Quenser and the others did not directly enter the harbor. It was surrounded by a chain-link fence and armed workers were patrolling it. Opening the harbor up unconditionally would allow people to smuggle in weapons and drugs, so this was no surprise.

“This place is being used by human traffickers, so they’re not doing a very good job,” muttered Heivia as he hid behind some rubble.

“Just to be clear, don’t shoot them,” said Quenser in annoyance. “They’re just normal local people.”

“I know that, you idiot. But the villains might’ve bought some of them out. If this comes down to a fight, I’m classifying them as yellow. I won’t kill them, but I’ll incapacitate them.”

As an international harbor, it was quite a large place. It continued for two or three kilometers along the concrete-hardened coast. Also, about half of it had been destroyed in a fierce battle. A giant crane had broken and sunk into the ocean, and some giant metal boxes piled up in the container yard had collapsed and spread out like an avalanche.

“Myonri, where’s the dock we’re interested in?”

“N-number nine. From what we heard at least.”

Collapsed and broken buildings were lined up along the outside of the harbor. Quenser and the other three entered one of the abandoned buildings that was half-buried in the sand and climbed the stairs. They found a window overlooking the entire dock and hid by pressing up against the wall.

“Honestly, this building isn’t going to suddenly collapse, is it?”

“I’m afraid of asbestos, too. Was this thing actually made safely?”

The two idiots continued to complain back and forth.

“They’ve got someone famous here,” muttered Sewax flatly as he looked down at the dock with binoculars. “See that big man with a scar on his cheek and a false finger on his right hand? He looks like someone the major newspapers are giving an award for information on. He’s probably the man known as Blue Bottle.”

“Who’s that?” asked Quenser honestly.

“I think I heard the intelligence division whispering about that,” said Heivia in annoyance. “They were saying something about an unofficial mission to assassinate a courier that’s been making tons of money and controlling the market in Oceania by slipping past the satellites and inspections. They mentioned giving out tons of guest IDs to the maintenance base in preparation to invite in a specialized assassination team.”

“Wait a second. I thought we were in charge of wars. Aren’t we supposed to leave things like this to the local police?”

“There are always exceptions and some people force us to make an exception. The Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, the Capitalist Corporations, and the Faith Organization are all fighting over their own interests here in Oceania, but no one is going to welcome a criminal who causes damage to everyone equally.”

“Hm.” Quenser did not seem to understand very well. “So why is he called Blue Bottle? Does he roll up his money and carry it around in blue bottles?”

Sewax shrugged.

“It’s the name of a jellyfish. A poisonous one. Apparently, more people in Oceania die from jellyfish than from sharks. He got the name because of how he does business while slipping through the nets like a ghost.”

That meant the criminal organization led by Blue Bottle was heavily related to the human trafficking and the black market.

“Oh, oh. You can tell at a glance.” Heivia let out a whistle as he peered out with binoculars. “Those clearly aren’t harbor workers. Look at those giant assault rifles. I’m guessing there’s between 50 and 90 of them.”

“Eh? I can only see about 20 out there.”

“But they’ll have two or three shifts, so that makes 50 to 90. A soccer team isn’t made up of exactly eleven people, you know?”

“Hey, Heivia. Is it possible these are harbor workers who were given money and equipment?”

“Not a chance. Their complexion is different. The tone of your skin can change a lot in a short period of time, but the brightness of the whites of your eyes won’t change in just a week or a month. Based on what they’ve been eating, they’re clearly higher up on the hierarchy. These aren’t people hired for the day. We aren’t gonna kill them and find out they were normal civilians.”

In other words, they did not need to hold back.

Quenser looked back and forth between the map Sewax had spread out on the dusty floor and the actual dock outside the window.

“The first question is where Blue Bottle’s group is keeping their ‘merchandise’,” he said. “It looks like there’s a mid-sized cargo ship docked here.”

He pointed toward the ship loaded with the standard metal containers.

But Sewax immediately rejected the idea.

“They’re not on the ship. The lifespans of the humans is directly linked to temperature and humidity. They’ll wait until the last second to load them in the containers. It’s just like shipping fruit. They’ll last longer this way.”

In that case, they could also rule out the hundreds of containers in the container yard.

If all of those were options, they might very well have had to give up.

“Then where are they?”

“Look at where the soldiers are, student.” Heivia tapped Quenser on the shoulder and pointed out the window with his chin. “They’re at the exits, the points needed to look out for snipers, and on top of the cranes instead of lookout towers. All of those are standard spots you’ll find in any textbook, but some of the soldiers are in clearly inefficient places. Those are to prevent any escapees. The ‘merchandise’ is within that office.”

“Probably,” agreed Sewax. “It has a roof to block out the sun and an air conditioner to prevent heat stroke. More importantly, it has four walls to prevent escape. And they don’t have to worry about anyone spotting the shocking fact that they’re holding people captive.”

Quenser started to agree, but then he frowned.

He looked out the window once more.

“The outer fence isn’t far from it. If they shouted, their voice could get out. Doesn’t that give them a chance to escape?”

“And what would they do then?” Heivia grinned cruelly. “This is a deserted city. Everyone digging for junk is working for the black market. They won’t actively take part in the human trafficking, but they’ll keep quiet if Blue Bottle yells at them.”

“What about the harmless harbor workers?”

“They have to pass through the empty city to get back home alive. Do you really think they’ll cause any unnecessary trouble?”

With that said, Heivia made a sign toward Myonri.

He then tapped on Quenser’s shoulder.

“What was that?”

“You’re working with the military, so how about you try to learn our language?”

Quenser and Heivia left the abandoned building, leaving Myonri and Sewax inside. They crouched down and made their way along while hiding behind concrete rubble in the road.

Quenser looked confused when he saw what Heivia was holding.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“The office with the ‘merchandise’ inside isn’t far from the fence. You’re the one that pointed that out, Quenser.”

They approached almost all the way to the fence and stopped about 100 meters form the office. They could not approach any further. If they poked their heads out from behind the rubble, a firefight would begin with Blue Bottle’s criminal organization.

Needless to say, a battle with a metal fence in between would put Quenser and Heivia at a disadvantage when they were trying to rescue the abducted people.

The office was a two-story building made of reinforced concrete. The staircase was attached to the outside of the building.

All of the first floor windows had the blinds lowered, so they could not see inside.

But on the second floor…

“There we go,” muttered Quenser with binoculars in one hand. “I see an old woman. She’s probably about 80. Now that’s another kind of person who will make you want to protect them. She’s perfect for one of their extras, dammit.”

“Not again! Can we please run across a large-breasted waitress or beautiful secretary in a business suit!? I need some kind of motivation here!!”

“More importantly,” said Quenser in annoyance. “She’s the only one I can see from here. There’s supposed to be around thirty of them, right? Where are the others? I hope they aren’t locked up separately.”

Suddenly, Sewax spoke up over the radio.

“That’s probably where they’re being fed their last supper.”

“What?”

“The abducted people will be packed in containers and shipped across the ocean. How long they survive is influenced by temperature, humidity, and food supply.”

Quenser turned his binoculars back toward the second floor of the office.

The small old woman was sitting in a chair by the window. The round table contained a hamburger and fries from a fast food restaurant as well as a cup filled with soda.

“After being packed in the container, they have to subsist off of water and salt,” continued Sewax. “If they gave them proper food, it would quickly rot in the high temperature and high humidity. That’s why they have them eat as much as they can ahead of time to maintain the freshness of their ‘merchandise’.”

“And so they would be in trouble if the people went on a hunger strike?”

“Even if they forced them to eat at gunpoint, the extreme stress could make them vomit, ruining the whole idea. That’s why they give them some hope. They’re in a comfortable air-conditioned room, the outer fence isn’t far away, and they have a nice view from the second floor window. The people are made to think they might be able to escape and so they need to eat to keep their strength up. Once they eat of their own free will, they can be shipped out.”

The small old woman had food in front of her, but she showed no sign of eating it. She simply hung her head down while sitting in the chair. The hamburger had grown cold and the grease from the fries had stained their container. Quenser could not guess how long she had been sitting there.

“She knows it’s over once she eats.”

“Damn them. It’s been a while since I saw food less appetizing than our rations.”

With that offhand comment, Heivia began assembling the military bow behind the rubble. It was a reinforced version of an athletic bow and it was covered in desert camouflage.

“Hey, are we really going to do this with so few people? If we know where all the abducted people are, Froleytia might take action.”

“I’m not going to use this to kill anyone, Mr. Happy. The second-story window is 100 meters away. If I aim high, the arrow will fall through the window. It doesn’t make much noise, so the guards wandering around outside won’t notice.”

Quenser realized what Heivia meant, so he scratched at his sand-filled blond hair.

“Are you going to shoot a radio to that old woman?”

“The arrows come with transmitters already. They’re meant to tell an Object where to fire, but with some quick modifications, we can communicate over it.”

“Who’s going to modify it?”

“If you want to prove your worth, you’d better get busy, Quenser. Taking apart some headphones and removing the oscillator is easier than disarming a bomb.”

“And who’s going to pay me?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t have an answer for that either! Why the hell am I taking this so seriously!?”

Without a soldering iron or wire cutters, Quenser had to pull a small knife meant for cooking from his survival kit. He used the knife to take apart the electronic device and combine the necessary parts. His movements were broad but accurate, so he looked a bit like a cook on a fishing ship.

After putting together the arrow, Quenser handed it to Heivia.

“How’s the window?”

“It’s open. They probably have the air conditioner on inside, but the open window increases the people’s hope.”

“You only have one shot at this. Are you sure you can get it in the room first try?”

“Easily, once I pass it through a ballistic calculation program. How about I fire it right into the hamburger on the table?”

“You got something that dangerous? Should that really be out on the black market?”

“Don’t be silly. This is for golf lovers. It just so happens you can also use it to provide targeting corrections for mortars is all.”

“So it’s like using the club to break open an ATM and take out the money?”

“This is another difference between the rich and the poor. There are people who have to dig through the black market and haggle for food, but there are others who build a green golf course in the desert for fun. Otherwise, something like this wouldn’t be there.”

The ballistic calculation program worked by attaching a handheld device to the bow’s grip and looking into a small screen. The footage from the camera would add lines along courses for baseball pitches.

It was almost all sports-related.

He held the bow up and fired a large arrow. It silently passed over the head of a guard, travelled in an arc, fell diagonally down toward the office’s second story window, and shot accurately into the room.

Just like the flag on a kid’s meal, the arrow stabbed into the center of the hamburger on the table.

“Heh. Did you see that, Quenser? That’s what the super smart, beautiful, and wealthy noble Heivia can do. You don’t get a hole-in-one by relying on beginner’s luck. You need the skill and composure of a gentleman.”

“You idiot, you scared the old woman so much she fell over backwards in her chair! And weren’t you saying anyone could do this using that ballistic whatever?”

“If you’re gonna be like that, then why don’t you try it! You always leave the physical labor to me!!”

The two idiots very nearly started a light fistfight, but they remembered this was hardly the time. They would be fine if the panicked old woman fell silent from the shock, but they would lose their chance if she caused a commotion.

Quenser set the frequency on his radio and brought it to his mouth.

The modified arrow had the oscillator and electrode from some headphones added on, so they could communicate via their voices. Specifically, the amplitude of the vibrations in the air could be converted to electrical signals of 0 and 1. Simply put, it worked the same as a telephone.

“Hey there. This is Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage from the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. If that’s too much of a mouthful, you can call me hero or knight. I’d like to take the position of the red-clad hero, but unfortunately, my uniform only has the plain colors of desert camouflage.”

“No fair!! You’re acting like this was all your doing!”

“Sorry, Heivia, but I’ll do anything for the slightest chance of seeing a wonderful micro bikini once this old woman introduces me to her daughter or granddaughter. …In fact, I’d probably just roll over and go to sleep if I didn’t have that hope.”

“Why do you think I said it wasn’t fair!?”

The two idiots almost began grappling, but something happened over the radio. The old woman timidly approached the arrow stabbed into the table (through the hamburger).

“A-are you a soldier?”

“That’s right. Do you watch the news on TV? We’re from the coalition army. We’re the cavalry that’ll do anything from road construction to eliminating bad guys.”

“Do you have a gun? Are you different from the people wandering around outside?”

“Piano, violin, foreign languages, and dance. There are a lot of things for ladies to learn, but there is one thing they have to remember no matter how old they are. Do you know what that is?”

“…?”

“How to spot a decent guy. Being able to do that can change your entire life. How about I give you an example, ‘young lady’? After this, you’ll think the world isn’t completely lost as long as there’s one attractive guy left.”

For a while after that, they heard the old woman say nothing more.

It was not that the transmission had cut out.

They heard intermittent breaths as if from sobbing mixed in with a bit of static.

As he monitored the dock from the abandoned building, Sewax explained what was going on over Heivia’s radio.

“It looks like she’s crying.”

“You don’t have to report every little thing like that,” said Heivia sharply.

He and Quenser continued to wait while hiding behind the rubble.

“I feel like smoking a cigarette right about now.”

“You’re a minor. What are you talking about?”

They waited for thirty seconds or maybe a full minute.

When the old woman spoke once more, they took it as a sign they could continue.

“What should I do?” she asked. “How can I sneak out of here?”

“First, how about we get your name, ‘young lady’. I’m Quenser, but what should I call you?”

“Dorothy.”

“Also…I know. What about your home? We need to send you back there once we rescue you.”

“South Britain territory.”

Quenser and Heivia exchanged a glance.

They had been expecting an Oceanian city, but Dorothy had mentioned a Legitimacy Kingdom safe country.

“Were you…a tourist?”

“Yes. My daughter and her husband were visiting a shopping mall. All the bright lights made me dizzy, so I stayed in the car. But it got as hot as a greenhouse under the sun and I couldn’t bear it any longer, so…”

“(What do you think?)”

“(I’d say it’s about 50/50 whether that’s a justification. Civilian lives always take priority over military personnel and equipment, but we haven’t actually checked to see if Dorothy is a Legitimacy Kingdom citizen.)”

Heivia let out a short sigh and poked just the barrel of his assault rifle from behind the rubble. Technically, he was sticking out the sensors attached to the rifle.

“(There are three guards circling the office. If we sniped the high points to the west and southwest, it would be possible break in, but…)”

Sewax continue for Heivia.

“But it would be risky. And we would have to give up on rescuing the others because we don’t know where they are.”

“We have two options,” said Quenser while choosing his words carefully. He was speaking to Dorothy who was closest to the information they needed. “We can rescue you for sure or we can leave you there a little longer to figure out where the other thirty or forty abducted people are.”

“…”

“We can’t choose either option without your cooperation. You stand in the most important place, so you can make the decision. …Which do you want to do?”

“I will do it,” said Dorothy after thinking for a moment. “Please let me do it. Until you gave me this chance, I could not even taste the food, but now I am human again. And now that I know how wonderful this chance is, I cannot bear to take that chance from the others in my position.”

“Just to be clear, that option will increase the risk. You might be wasting this chance you’ve been given. Will you still do it for people you don’t even know?”

“I do know them. We were thrown in a truck together and trembled together as they aimed guns at us. That may be all, but I do know them.”

For a moment, Quenser was unsure what to say into the radio.

He could not decide which option was correct.

But he still said it.

There was no reason to let her know about his own doubts.

“An excellent answer.”

“What do I need to do?” she asked.

Quenser turned toward Heivia. His friend handed him the same type of arrow he had just fired into the office window.

Quenser held the radio between his cheek and shoulder while he used both hands to disassemble the metal arrow.

“The arrow stabbed into the table there is made so the back can be removed. Twist it like a screw and a ballpoint pen sized part should come off.

“Yes, yes. Do I need to tell you were everyone is with this?”

“No, you don’t need to say anything. We can tell where that ballpoint pen is. Dorothy, you just have to hide it in your clothes and follow the criminal’s instructions. Before all of you are sent aboard the ship, you should be gathered in a single spot. As long as we know where that is, we can use the power of the military to take control of the harbor.”

“I see…”

“You can’t let them know you have that hidden under your clothes. As for the rest of the arrow…I know. There’s an air conditioner near the ceiling, right? Use something as a stepstool and place it on top of the air conditioner. Eat the hamburger and… Oh, there’s a hole in the table, isn’t there? There’s a chair in that office, right? Pretend the stress got the better of you and beat the chair against the table to destroy it. Make sure they won’t notice that small hole!”

After giving all of his instructions, Quenser ended the transmission and tapped Heivia’s shoulder.

“Let’s go.”

“Sure, sure. You’re taking all the good parts, aren’t you!? Are you the type that’ll talk to anyone you lay your eyes on, whether they’re a trap or a zombie girl?”

“We would lose too much time if we waited until Dorothy gave us our answer to request assistance from Froleytia. We need to get the unit moving now.”

“How? Unless we give a justification for the military to act and prove that we can win, that huge-breasted commander will only yell at us. We’ll be stuck waiting for word from lovely little Dorothy. You haven’t escaped the delay.”

“Dorothy will give us the right answer.” Quenser raised his index finger. “But Froleytia and the others don’t know when. We can report that we’ve found the abducted people ahead of time and everything will fall into place as long as Dorothy gives us the answer before the unit arrives.”

“Are you aware providing false reports is a crime?”

“I’ll pretend I don’t. After all, I’m just a student.”

“Hah hah. That’s no different from when council members say they ‘have no recollection’ of people’s accusations. It won’t work.”

Quenser and Heivia were beginning to relax because of the difference in military might. The harbor dock was controlled by bad guys who were armed with old assault rifles and grenades, but that would be easily dealt with as soon as Froleytia sent in the power of the military.

For them, they were on the verge of having a legit military operation.

Dorothy was a Legitimacy Kingdom citizen and she would provide them the location of the others before long.

That was enough.

Froleytia would complain, but she would send in some soldiers. She might beat up the two idiots afterwards and they could even be thrown in the detention barracks, but that would be after everything had been settled.

With one word of approval, Dorothy and the others would be saved.

Quenser and Heivia had no more reason to stay there. A battle would begin if Blue Bottle’s criminal organization spotted them before they had Dorothy’s answer and the unit arrived, but that was the worst case scenario. They could prevent that from happening by leaving the rubble nearby the harbor and returning to the building Myonri and Sewax were in.

With that in mind, the two of them began to stand up.

And then a voice spoke from the radio.

It was Sewax.

“Wait a minute.”

“What? What is it? Did god finally decide to show some pity on me by dropping a supermodel from the sky?”

Sewax ignored Heivia’s casual comment as he continued.

“Something isn’t right.”

===Part 14===

Quenser and Heivia could not believe what Sewax said over the radio.

To check for themselves, they rushed back to the abandoned building. They pressed up against the wall next to the window overlooking the harbor and swiped Sewax’s binoculars.

Without looking particularly displeased, the cameraman pointed toward one side of the harbor.

A mid-sized cargo ship was moored at the dock. A short pole was located near the bow of the ship.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me! Please tell me this is a joke!!”

Heivia clenched his teeth and checked through the binoculars again and again, but what he saw did not change. It was no mistake.

“Come to think of it, some of this didn’t quite add up,” groaned Sewax. “Blue Bottle’s criminal organization may control one portion of the harbor with a shell company, but the coalition still has several naval Objects patrolling the ocean. The cargo ships would naturally undergo surprise checks. Anyone shipping out weapons, drugs, counterfeit money, humans, or anything else suspicious would need to control more than just the harbor to be safe.”

Then what did they need to be safe?

The answer was displayed on the bow of the cargo ship.

“To hell with them.” Quenser brought a hand to his forehead. “I can see it! Yeah, I can see it! That’s the Information Alliance flag fluttering in the wind on that pole!!”

“Does that mean the Information Alliance is involved in this human trafficking?” asked Myonri.

Sewax shook his head.

“Most likely, they aren’t checking what’s onboard at all. The soldiers just give the ships a free pass in exchange for money.”

“That’s just the excuse they’ll use to prevent a war if there’s a problem and this comes to light. It’s no different than the politicians who insist their secretary was behind it all,” said Heivia in annoyance. “I doubt the Information Alliance is interested in the human trafficking itself. Even if it’s profitable, it would hurt their reputation too much. I bet they’re interested in the criminal organization that has worked its way so deeply into Oceania. Their black market is directly linked to the livelihood of the people. If they can make a connection with Blue Bottle and form a pipeline to the criminal organization, they can freely manipulate public opinion within Oceania. This lets them create pressure both officially and unofficially. If they can gain the support of the local people, they can gain an advantage in the coalition’s infighting over how much of this southern continent each world power gets.”

“Probably, but if we accuse them on nothing but speculation, we’ll be the ones left hurting.” Quenser clicked his tongue. “More importantly, what about Dorothy!? As long as the criminal organization is receiving this indulgence from the Information Alliance, they officially count as cooperating with the Information Alliance military. Froleytia won’t want to attack them blindly!!”

“So they’re technically civilians yet are partially treated like soldiers.” Sewax seemed to be thinking. “Yes, it would cause a lot of trouble if a large unit was sent in to annihilate them. The Information Alliance could easily cause a much larger battle in the name of stopping the Legitimacy Kingdom from unrightfully attacking civilians. “

“Our huge-breasted commander can’t do anything,” spat out Heivia. “She isn’t stupid enough to start a war over thirty or forty people! But then what do we do!? If we could use the proper channels and send in a large unit, they’d be crushed in five seconds, but does that mean the four of us can defeat them? It’s impossible! Especially if we have to swiftly and accurately wipe them out so they can’t take away the abducted people!!”

“Wait, where’s Dorothy? We can contact her and save at least her.”

“We can’t!” Quenser kicked the floor. “The communications device we gave her has moved to another building. That’s probably where all the others are being held. Breaking in and rescuing just her isn’t an option anymore.”

Attempting an unwinnable battle would help nothing.

Making a heroic and moving charge on the harbor might reduce the number of bad guys, but they would eventually be overwhelmed and defeated. There was even a danger of the criminals shooting the captives.

Now that they knew Blue Bottle’s criminal organization was under the Information Alliance’s protection, they could only say a political problem had arisen. The criminals could claim this was an unofficial operation meant to let these people escape the poor conditions of Oceania and reach wealthier nations. The dead could say nothing, so they only had to kill all of the captives within the containers and claim it would never have happened if the Legitimacy Kingdom had not taken hasty military action.

At best, it would start as an argument between the higher ups of the two world powers and develop into a war.

At worst, Quenser and the other three would be treated as war criminals who slaughtered the civilians.

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do.” Heivia covered his face with his hands and let a heavy voice escape the gaps between his fingers. “They set this up too well! Of course they did!! They’ve spent a long time building this up so it would be safe. Why would some people who just now showed up be able to ad-lib their way through it!?”

“Then what do we do about Dorothy?”

“Weren’t you listening? We can’t start a war over thirty or forty people!”

“But I was the one that asked her to help! I can’t accept this. We’re not watching a news broadcast about something happening on the other side of the world!!”

“Then you go fight on your own! As a student, you might be able to slip through the cracks of the war treaties. But you’ll be slaughtered by the criminals. And more importantly!! That criminal organization is being treated like a group cooperating with the Information Alliance military. You’re not just up against some thugs in the city. You’ll be taking on an international military force here. Are you still going to pick a fight with them!?”

Heivia heard a light noise.

It was Quenser snapping his fingers.

“That’s it.”

“What? …No, wait just a damn second. What the hell are you thinking? Why are you grinning like that? I was in the middle of shouting at you until you gave up!”

“Military cooperators. Heivia, soldiers have a duty to rescue civilians in that position, right?”

“So what if they do? I don’t see how you can twist that into keeping the Information Alliance away. If we attack Blue Bottle and his human trafficking ring, they’re gonna show up. There’s no stopping it!!”

The female soldier named Myonri then cut in timidly.

“Huh? Wait a minute. Then that means…”

“Dorothy has no reason to fight.” Quenser pointed toward his own chest with his thumb. “It was me, someone working for the Legitimacy Kingdom military! If I hadn’t pressed her to cooperate, she wouldn’t still be there in the middle of enemy territory. That means she’s cooperating with the Legitimacy Kingdom military. It’s obvious her life is in danger if we don’t do something, so what should the military that was backing her do? Answer me, Heivia!!”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” groaned Heivia.

“I see.” Sewax’s lips twisted up in an interested smile. “If Blue Bottle’s organization is protected by the Information Alliance as a military cooperator, then they can’t ignore the Legitimacy Kingdom if it claims the right to protect Dorothy for the same reason. If conflict breaks out between civilians, it’s only natural for the militaries backing them to intermediate.”

“Don’t make me laugh.” Heivia shook his head. “There’s no way it’ll work that well! There isn’t going to be a tear-jerking happy ending! Our huge-breasted commander doesn’t know we hired Dorothy and she won’t approve of it! We don’t have any documents to prove it, either!! When war is about to break out, try bringing up someone named Dorothy that no one’s ever heard of. They’ll just stare at you funny. Justification or not, our unit isn’t moving!!”

“Perhaps not,” admitted Quenser. “But we do have justification for the four of us to take action.”

“Do you have anything to prove she’s a military cooperator!?”

“She’s proof enough. But she needs to be alive to prove it, so we have to save her.”

“What we want to do and what we have to do match up,” muttered Sewax.

They could act as heroic as they wanted, but they were the ones who would be exposed to gunfire. Heivia was growing irritated because the fear was beginning to sink in, so Quenser spoke to him.

“Also, we can’t run away anymore.”

“What!? Why the hell not!? There’s no special bonus waiting for us. It’s not like we have to shoot our way out to get back to the maintenance base. In fact, we shouldn’t even be here. For once, I’m having trouble finding anything we’ll get blamed for if we just run away!!”

“And then what? Are we going to report that we recruited a civilian without permission, didn’t see it through to the end, and returned to safety while leaving her to die? Even if it doesn’t break any rules, do you really think there will be a place for us back in the unit?”

“Goddammit!! So you convince Dorothy to do this and now it’s going to bring dishonor on ''me''? This’ll affect my chances of inheriting my family!!”

But arguing was not going to solve anything.

If he truly had an issue with what Quenser had done, he should have interrupted while Quenser was speaking with Dorothy.

“But what now? What exactly do we do!? There’re only four of us and two of those are a student and cameraman. Meanwhile, we’re up against 50-90 soldiers and there might be reinforcements from the Information Alliance. That’s too much of a difference to just charge in randomly like we’re the cavalry!”

“Our objective is to rescue Dorothy and the other captives. All of them. We aren’t just going to shoot up the place until nothing’s left moving like in a Western.”

“What?”

“We need to narrow down our targets. This is like a puzzle game. We don’t have to take care of everything ourselves. If we destroy one, the rest will vanish in a chain reaction.”

===Part 15===

The most important factor was that Quenser and the others knew where Dorothy was. They could detect her location from the communication device removed from the military arrow and hidden in her clothes.

After detecting that she had been moved to the mid-sized cargo ship, Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, and Sewax began to move.

“Honestly. This is no joke,” groaned Heivia. “We have no boat. We have no flippers or snorkels! We have nothing!! And now we have to jump into the ocean at night? We’re carrying rifles and missiles!! It’s all so damn heavy I just want to throw it away!!”

“The ship is leaving the harbor while you waste time shouting. Let’s jump in while we can catch up.”

They had left the dock controlled by Blue Bottle’s criminal organization and entered a block patrolled by the normal harbor workers. Instead of the main gate, they had cut a hole in the chain-link fence and snuck in. After slipping past the guards and cutting across the harbor, they threw themselves into the dark ocean at the tip of the harbor.

“Bwah! Dammit! They have a diesel engine. Can we really catch up to them like this?”

“The sea chart here is complex,” replied Sewax while skillfully treading water. He seemed to have no problem with being in the water, so his camera must have been waterproof. “A lot of rubble from Object bombardments has been swept into the ocean. This is worse than reefs. To safely reach open sea, they have to travel back and forth in an S-shape. If we swim along that route, the cargo ship will approach us.”

“The Information Alliance is in charge of security here and I hear they’ve blocked the sea routes with smart mines that distinguish between friend and foe. I don’t know if they’ll react to a human-sized mass, but try to be careful.”

After swimming through the dark sea for a while, the cargo ship came into view. As it travelled along the narrow safe regions, it did indeed approach them.

“Wait, wait, wait. It’s pointing searchlights everywhere.”

“They’re probably actually relying on radar, but human nature makes them want to see everything with their own eyes. But it’s dark below the lights. The bright light will cause their pupils to contract incorrectly. As long as the light doesn’t directly illuminate you, they won’t see you,” explained Sewax.

“Heivia, do you have the rope ready?” asked Quenser.

“Just as you asked, Mr. Knight! Once again, I prepare the food and you get to eat it!!”

As it approached, the cargo ship’s hull rose up like a cliff. It also tilted out toward them, so it would be impossible climb by hand.

Heivia and Myonri spun around ropes with claws attached to the end and used the centrifugal force to throw them straight up. After making sure they had solidly dug into the deck’s railing, the two soldiers climbed up the cliff and onto the ship.

The cargo ship itself was a giant mass with a large volume.

As Quenser and Sewax waited in the sea for their signal, they were tossed around by the artificial current and forced to cling to the ropes.

And then something heavy fell down from above.

Quenser looked down at what had fallen next to him and found the corpse of one of the criminal organization’s guards. The man’s throat had been slit.

With a look of disgust, he brought his radio to his mouth.

“You show no mercy, do you?”

“If you have time to complain, climb up. Sharks are sensitive to the scent of blood.”

But Quenser was only a student, so he could not climb what was essentially a building wall using only a rope.

Quenser glanced over at Sewax who quickly surmounted the wall on his own, but he needed Heivia and Myonri to pull his rope up.

“C’mon. I’m a noble and you’re a commoner, so I shouldn’t be pulling you up like this.”

“More importantly, how much time do we have?”

“They’ll figure out they’ve lost someone once the periodic report comes, so we have at most ten minutes. We have no time to spare after losing some time thanks to a certain idiot!”

Myonri looked down at her handheld device while covering the small screen with her hand to keep the light from escaping.

“Dorothy is at the front of the ship.”

“Let’s do what we can. There’s no way we can seajack this thing in ten minutes.”

After Quenser and Heivia formed a pair and Myonri and Sewax formed a pair, the two pairs travelled through the piles of containers on deck while covering for each other.

As an unpleasant sweat dripped down his face, Heivia muttered to himself.

“Don’t use your gun. Rely on your knife. Don’t use your gun. After a single gunshot, you’ll have to jump into the ocean.”

Fortunately, the large number of containers (which were likely there as decoys to hide the human trafficking) provided a lot of cover. The four of them carefully travelled toward the bow of the ship while making sure they did not run into any guards.

And suddenly, they heard the roaring of the wind.

Except this was no normal wind.

“(Get down, you idiot! Don’t move!!)”

Heivia whispered quietly, grabbed the back of Quenser’s collar, and got down on the deck. Ahead of them, Myonri and Sewax pressed their backs against metal containers and held their breath. Their faces were obviously covered with an unusual amount of sweat.

Quenser belatedly realized what was going on.

What he had thought was the wind was actually a disturbance in the air caused by the movement of a great mass. It was similar to when a train rushed by a subway platform.

A sealed tunnel was one thing, but not much could do the same on the open sea.

This was the symbol of war.

It was the trademark of the era that could destroy every other weapon on the battlefield.

In other words…

[[Image:HO_v07_106.png|thumb]]

“An Object!!” he groaned while lying on the deck.

Even the mid-sized cargo ship towered above the ocean surface like a cliff, but the Object was on an entirely different level. Its spherical main body was around fifty meters tall and equipped with over one hundred different cannons. Despite the cargo ships’ immense size, it looked like a plastic miniature next to the Object.

Its presence was overwhelming.

Its sense of intimidation was overwhelming.

The sense of danger it radiated was overwhelming.

Everything about it was overwhelming.

“They’re from the Information Alliance,” said Heivia as he almost lay on top of Quenser and looked like he was about to cry. “These are second generation Objects from the Information Alliance. I think that’s the Simple Is Best and the Catapult Cargo. This is no joke. There’s no way we can take on an enemy like this.”

Heivia listed two names.

The meaning of that fact arrived along with despair as Quenser forced his neck around to observe the situation.

The cargo ship was passing between two Objects that were patrolling the dark sea. As he looked up at the towering armor and countless cannons, it somehow reminded him of a thick green tunnel made of trees.

If any one of those cannons was fired, Quenser and the others would be blasted into pieces too small to even make fish food.

But at the same time…

“We were right,” he muttered. “Even if second generation Objects are specialized toward fighting other Objects, they would have detected us if they were making full use of their sensors. But they aren’t attacking and they haven’t contacted Blue Bottle to send out his men.”

“That means this ship is not being checked. If they scanned it, they might detect all the people stuffed in the containers. The data would remain in the Object’s recorder and it would be a pain to alter it.”

But that did not mean they could move around freely.

Objects were the rulers of the battlefield. They were a non-standard monster with no natural enemies that could freely devour all other life forms before them. It was as if they had been born due to some kind of bug or mistake.

No one was stupid enough to stick their own arm in the beast’s mouth to see whether it had been tamed or not.

No one wanted to be the pitiable guinea pig.

Quenser and the others held their breath and watched the two Objects slowly move away from the cargo ship. Even then, they did not move. An uncomfortable sweat grew below their uniforms.

It came down to their intuition rather than logic.

Once the Objects were several hundred meters away, Quenser finally let out a long breath.

That was still plenty close for the second generation Objects to attack, but he still felt the relief of being in the clear.

Heivia used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his face as he got up off of Quenser.

“Try to remember what it is we’re fighting, lady killer.”

“Now that we’re here, we have to go through with this regardless.”

The four of them began moving at the same time.

Myonri jogged ahead from one pile of containers to another. She then pointed at the first level of containers with her thumb.

“Dorothy is in here. What should we do?”

“We might as well use this chance to rescue as many of them as we can. Quenser, set up your trick as planned!”

The four of them all moved in different directions.

Heivia and Myonri grabbed the metal lever.

But then Myonri frowned.

“Wait a second. I just noticed something.”

“What is it? I don’t see any tripwires.”

“It isn’t that.”

Myonri let go of the lever to open the door and traced her finger across the string of letters printed on the metal door.

“This is a refrigerated container. This thing is basically a gigantic freezer.”

“Why the hell would they throw an 80-year-old woman in there!?”

They forcibly pulled the lever and opened the door.

As soon as the metal door opened, chilly air seemed to cut at their cheeks. Just as Myonri had said, the inside of the wall was covered in white frost.

And…

A small figure was lying on its side in the fetal position.

And it was just the one person.

“What the hell…? What the hell!? I thought Blue Bottle’s group was working in human trafficking? Why are they freezing them from the get-go!?”

“Wait! Don’t carelessly pick her up! Her exposed skin might be frozen to the container floor!”

Fortunately, Myonri’s fears were unfounded. The old woman’s hair seemed frozen, but her skin did not stick to the floor.

Heivia picked up Dorothy and carried her out of the container.

“They might have been trying to simulate hibernation,” said Sewax as he read the writing on the container.

“What?”

“There are cases of people surviving without food or water for over a month in cars buried in snow. Only one in nine survive, but their ‘merchandise’ can survive the long trip if the conditions are artificially recreated. It has better odds than leaving it up to luck after throwing them in a hot and stuffy container with water and salt.”

“I see. So that’s why they put them in separate containers.” Myonri let out a groan as she thought about this demonic plan. “It’s the same as anesthesia. The temperature is carefully calculated out based on the person’s weight, so they all need their own container.”

“So what? This isn’t going to work 100% of the time. For one thing, humans aren’t meant to hibernate like a bear! If they force it, it has to fail and cause frostbite or hypothermia in a lot of them!!”

“True, but there’s a countermeasure that’s popular among people stranded in snowy mountains. If you warm the outside of the body with lukewarm water and eat food, it will cause an increase in body temperature.”

“I guess a normal water bottle would be warm enough on a warm night like this. I only have disgusting rations for food, though.”

“If they’re conscious enough to complain about that, there’s nothing to worry about.”

Heivia and Sewax’s discussion must have brought her back to her senses because Dorothy slowly opened her eyes while her skin was oddly cold.

She looked like someone who had just woken up in the morning, but the situation was completely different.

For one thing, she had not been sleeping. Her mind was muddled enough for her memories to be a bit vague.

“That…soldier…?”

“Yes! That’s right! We’re here to save you. There’s nothing more to worry about.”

“Are you…the one named…Quenser?”

“Sorry, but there are even better guys than him in the world.”

They could not force her to do anything more.

Heivia frantically pulled out a ration that resembled a tasteless and odorless eraser and a bottle warmed by the warm night and his own body temperature.

And then he heard a noise.

Someone was peering out from behind a pile of containers. Heivia did not know who it was, but he made up his mind when he saw the shoddily-made assault rifle in his hand. He was a criminal organization guard on patrol.

He was only seven meters away.

The assault rifle hung from his shoulder on a sling belt, but he was not holding the rifle. He held a different weapon.

But it was not a handgun or a knife.

It was a glittering black sphere about one size bigger than a golf ball.

All of Heivia’s hair stood on end when he realized what it was.

“A grenade!?”

In that instant, Sewax held up his heavy camera as if pulling a handgun from its holster and he stared through the viewfinder.

(Oh, I’m dead.)

Time seemed to flow strangely slow, but he did not try to hide or cover his face with his arms. He stood stock still and continued to keep the armed man in the center of the small world cut off by his camera.

He held a Gr-021, the grenades used by the old Oceanian military government. They were rumored to be cheap copies of the Information Alliance’s grenades. They had a kill radius of five meters and an injury radius of twelve meters. The soldier may not have known how to use it properly because he was liable to be caught in the blast that killed using shrapnel rather than the explosion itself.

If the guard holding the sphere relaxed his grip, pulled out the pin, and released the safety lever, over two hundred metal grains would fly in every direction with deadly speed exactly five seconds later. Man, woman, adult, and child alike would be turned to mincemeat.

Even so, Sewax operated his camera as if it were his mission.

He wanted to take a photo that would change the world.

War would never end no matter how many hundreds of bullets were fired. The people whose bank accounts grew every time the money-devouring Objects were sent out would continue applauding in dark rooms as more blood was shed. To truly end it all, the people’s hearts had to be moved outside of what the people in charge had to gain. That was something bullets could not achieve. No matter how great a tragedy was, it would resound in no one’s heart unless a battlefield cameraman recorded it.

He had wanted an opportunity to do just that.

It did not matter if it would take the lives of a few people here. It did not matter if that danger applied to him as well. He would not regret the loss of an arm or a leg. He was willing to lose half his body if that was what it took. If he could bring home the picture that would change history and bring peace, he would proudly say he had won.

As the person who had once relied on bullets in this very country, he felt this was something he had to do no matter what.

But…

Even so…

(Is that really okay?)

Through the viewfinder, he saw Heivia crouched down while frozen in place. At his feet was a small old woman who lay groggily on the ground after being rescued from an extreme low-temperature environment.

If they died, it would likely shake some people’s hearts.

If he stored that shocking bloodshed in the small memory of his camera, he could use it to convey the truth of the battlefield.

(But is that really okay!?)

There was no point in saving just a few lives. It would mix in with all the other boring news and reach no one, so it might as well not exist. Information that reached no one was no different from information that vanished from the face of the earth. At that very moment, the people within safe countries thought the world was a peaceful place. They truly believed it. And yet the war in Oceania had yet to truly end. To ultimately end war, those people’s help was needed.

And so…

To stop the tragedies, Sewax hoped for a tragedy to occur. That contradictory mindset led him to hesitate over whether to accept or reject this situation.

And…

He finally made his decision.

A metallic sound of impact brought Heivia back to his senses.

The battlefield cameraman named Sewax had removed the neck strap attachment to the camera he valued more than his life and he threw it at the guard holding the grenade.

“I’m not going back to the way I was. I swore I would stop doing that!! I swore during that war in Oceania!!”

As Sewax shouted out in desperation, Heivia began to move. The camera was heavy, but it was not enough to knock out that large man by striking his upper body. However, the man decided to prioritize his own safety by protecting his body with his arms. And he still held the grenade in his hand. He had not released the pin or safety lever.

They had a chance.

Heivia immediately let go of the ration and water bottle and drew his large military knife with a flowing motion of his right hand. He even had enough composure to cover Dorothy’s eyes with his left hand.

He threw the knife without hesitation.

After rotating exactly ninety degrees, the tip of the blade stabbed accurately into the guard’s throat.

(Damn.)

But Heivia’s expression twisted silently.

The man did not collapse. It was a fatal blow but not enough to kill him instantly.

There was going to be a lag of a few seconds to a dozen seconds.

(I missed the center. The blade didn’t hit his spine!!)

As Heivia watched, the man’s fingers writhed like caterpillars and reached for the grenade’s metal pin. One finger passed through the ring of the pin.

All he had to do was release it now.

Pulled by gravity, the explosive fell straight down. The pin attached to his index finger was pulled out. The shock of the round grenade striking the deck was enough to release the safety lever.

It was ready to detonate.

“!!”

Heivia saw Myonri immediately pull out her handgun, so he took action. While still crouched down, he ran forward like a beast. The man with the blade in his throat could not speak, but he glared at Heivia. The ring-shaped pin on his index finger glittered in the light like a cruel piece of jewelry.

The kill radius was five meters.

The injury radius was twelve meters.

It would explode in only five seconds.

(Just killing him isn’t enough. We’ll all be caught in the blast!!)

As the guard started to fall backwards, Heivia grabbed his collar. This was not a gentlemanly attempt to support the man. He grabbed the man’s right arm, spun him around, and used the man’s waist as a fulcrum to throw him to the ground.

He threw the man on top of the grenade he had dropped.

A muffled explosion arrived an instant later.

The cheap bulletproof plate and the living flesh and bone were enough to suppress the explosion of a grenade meant to kill with shrapnel rather than the blast. In textbooks, this method was given as a means of bravely protecting one’s fellow soldiers.

Heivia was splattered with blood and guts and he desperately shouted out with a ghastly look on his face.

“Ugh, shit!! Is anyone hurt!? If not, jump into the ocean. That explosion will draw the rest of them here!!”

“Wh-what about Quenser!?”

“He’ll have heard the explosion too!!”

Myonri grabbed Dorothy who could not move properly on her own and the girl frantically jumped over the railing. Sewax picked up his camera and followed suit. Heivia grabbed a few polyurethane foam floats from the railing and threw them in the sea before jumping into the dark water himself.

The shock of falling or having her entire body covered in lukewarm seawater seemed to have helped Dorothy recover a little from her hypothermic symptoms.

She repeatedly blinked while Myonri supported her so she would not sink.

“Where is everyone…?”

As her mind cleared, her memories seemed to recover.

Her question was filled with panic.

“Where are all the others!? They were brought onboard that ship!! There are a lot more than just me!!”

It was a legitimate question, but Heivia and the others did not answer her.

The cargo ship would be on its guard now, so it would be difficult to make their way back onboard. It would be tough to fight a few dozen armed men with only four people. On top of that, there was no guarantee they would make it back safely as things were.

And then a new figure fell from the cargo ship and into the dark water.

It was Quenser who had gone elsewhere on the boat.

“Uuh… I’m gonna sink. Give me a float, too.”

“Since you escaped with that stupid look on your face, I take it you at least completed your preparations.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to here? More importantly, what was with that explosion!? You sure screwed up badly!”

With a look of extreme confusion, Dorothy looked back and forth between Quenser and Heivia.

Quenser spoke to the old woman.

“Defeating Blue Bottle’s entire organization with just the four of us would be difficult. The same goes for rescuing all of the people trapped in separate containers. And that cargo ship is under the protection of the Information Alliance, so we’re unlikely to get any help even if we ask for it.”

“Then you are going to give up? I don’t want to be the only one rescued!!” shouted Dorothy.

Quenser smiled and waved his index finger.

“But there is a wonderful magic item that can completely turn around that hopeless situation.”

“?”

That comment caught Dorothy off guard, so she stared blankly at Quenser as he spread out the “prize” he had won on the boat.

“This is it. Do you know what this is?”

===Part 16===

(This is a strange ship.)

The man referred to as Blue Bottle, the name of a poisonous jellyfish, thought blankly to himself as he sat in a chair in the cargo ship’s control room.

Ships used fuel to move. Fuel efficiency was greatly affected by the weight loaded on the ship. Normally, cargo ships were almost entirely automated and had only around a dozen people in their crew. The people themselves weighed something and they needed food and water to last them anywhere from a few weeks to a few months, so the number of people onboard was kept to a minimum.

Nevertheless, this ship had a large number of people onboard.

Officially, they were exporting scrap metal from Oceania’s ruins so it could be recycled in other countries, but a quick calculation would show some things did not add up.

“That was an explosion,” said Blue Bottle.

“We will look into it right away,” immediately replied a man staring at the instruments.

Blue Bottle doubted the refrigerated containers with the human trafficking “merchandise” inside could be opened from within and he doubted the merchandise inside could resist or escape after being kept at such a low temperature.

But his men were not proper soldiers or even trained mercenaries.

They were nothing but thugs. It was possible one of them had forgotten to lock a container or turn on its refrigeration mode.

Nevertheless, he seriously doubted they were stupid enough to let an unarmed civilian steal a gun or grenade and fight back.

Blue Bottle’s expression showed no panic or concern.

“Tell them to be careful if they kill an escapee. Just like preserved fish, their value goes down if they die. And the amount it drops changes depending on how they are killed. Blowing them to pieces with a grenade is out of the question.”

“I will tell them, but I can’t guarantee they will listen.”

Blue Bottle did not bother listening to what the other man said.

The cargo ship was not headed directly toward the country the “merchandise” was being shipped to. It would instead travel to a certain island just outside Oceanian territory and load the containers onto a different ship. Blue Bottle would remain with this cargo ship in its short journey back and forth. To make the best use the free pass given by the Information Alliance, he had wanted a setup that travelled through that area of sea as frequently as possible.

Suddenly, the same man as before continued speaking despite the conversation having ended.

“This is from the Information Alliance Object. They want to speak with you.”

“Hand it over.”

The man sitting in front of the console removed his headset and tossed it over. Blue Bottle caught it in one hand and brought the microphone to his mouth without putting it on his head.

“What is it? We paid the fee. If you cause any unnecessary problems here, the Objects from other world powers will notice. The Information Alliance doesn’t want to damage its public image, does it? You can’t have our arrangement come to light.”

“That’s why I contacted you,” replied a staticky and slightly irritated voice. “Why are you not following our arrangement? Our free pass means nothing otherwise. We are forced to handle this normally.”

“Wait. I don’t understand. Explain what you mean.”

“The flag.” The polite Elite spoke slowly as if kindly speaking to a young child who was only just learning to speak. “Our Information Alliance flag should be on the bow of your cargo ship. Without that, we cannot prove you are under our protection. If you do not obey our arrangement, we must perform a surprise check like we normally would.”

As Quenser entrusted his life to a hard float in the dark ocean, he threw away a piece of cloth printed with the Information Alliance logo and spoke.

“Their ship was treated differently because they were announcing that they were under the Information Alliance’s protection by displaying their flag. They have a free pass with the Information Alliance and it would cause conflict if the Legitimacy Kingdom or Capitalist Corporations performed a surprise check on a ship approved by them. They had intentionally set up that situation so they could carry out things they wanted kept secret.”

“Th-then…” Dorothy looked toward the flag floating away on the waves. “If you take that flag…”

“At the very least, they won’t be treated differently anymore. The Information Alliance will have to perform the same check as with a normal ship. If they let them go, the Legitimacy Kingdom or Faith Organization would try to perform a check instead.”

“B-but!” frantically exclaimed Dorothy because there were human lives on the line. “Will that really save everyone? I thought the Information Alliance was friends with that ship. Won’t they perform an intentionally insufficient check and give their approval without looking inside the containers?”

“Perhaps. In fact, that would be the best option from their point of view. They need to perform a check before the other world powers can. They can give their approval and announce that no one else needs to check the ship. Then no one will find out there are people in those containers.”

“Th-then…!!”

“But,” said Quenser, cutting off Dorothy. He held a radio in his hand. “That’s why I set up another trick.”

The Information Alliance’s naval patrol boat rushed over.

The others in the cargo ship’s control room muttered nervously, but Blue Bottle was not worried.

It was not that he had given up.

It was quite the opposite.

An Information Alliance group he held sway with had taken action before security teams from the other world powers could intervene. Once the Information Alliance group boarded the ship, they would perform an intentionally shoddy inspection and give them approval. Rechecking the ship would be seen as doubt in the Information Alliance, so doing so was implicitly stated to create cracks in the friendly relationship between coalition members.

Why had their flag vanished?

That mystery remained. One of his men may have forgotten his instructions, it may have been poorly attached and blew away in the wind, or someone may have maliciously removed it.

But no matter the reason, they could recover.

An oddity of that level would not defeat Blue Bottle.

“The Information Alliance security team is requesting permission to board. What should we do?”

“Hide nothing. Give them permission according to normal procedures. Do not leave any unnatural actions in their records. There is no reason to panic here. This group is in on it.”

Having said that, Blue Bottle took several men and left the control room. He was on his way to greet the Information Alliance security team. And that was not a criminal euphemism for shooting them. He was truly going to greet them.

He stepped out onto the deck and found several thick metal devices attached to the railing. Synthetic fiber ropes were attached and men dressed all in black were climbing up from below.

One of the men gave a polite salute to Blue Bottle while carefully articulating each word and syllable of his script.

“This is a surprise inspection in order to stop international crime within Oceania. We will be inspecting your crew and cargo.”

“Fine. Do as you wish.”

Upon receiving permission, the men in black formed teams of two and scattered across the ship.

All of this was pre-arranged.

It was possible the other world powers forming the coalition were watching with a satellite or an Object’s ultra long distance sensors, so they had to perform a bit of role playing for safety’s sake. Nothing would go wrong and anything illegal would not be recorded. That was the agreement.

Blue Bottle spoke to one man in black standing nearby.

“How long should this take?”

“There are a lot of containers, so we would like an hour to check through them all.”

“…That’s a long time.”

“We are not doing this because we want to.”

That last comment sounded like an implicit accusation regarding the missing flag.

Even if it was meant to keep them safe, it was hard to put up with this when it would accomplish nothing. Every minute and every second seemed to stretch on forever. He had to maintain his expression and attitude in case they were being viewed from afar, but he felt as if he would yawn if he let his guard down.

But then he heard what sounded like a light explosion.

It came from the ship and it was clearly the sound of gunpowder exploding.

“I won’t let it all go so smoothly,” said Quenser while pressing the switch on his radio. “The leaders of this Information Alliance group and criminal organization have an agreement to get along, but not all the criminal thugs will be privy to all that information. After all, secret arrangements are made behind closed doors. The more the big boss handles those things on his own, the less the men working below him know.”

“Heh. So even if this is actually all a farce, you’re saying not everyone in the criminal organization will be aware of it? All they know is the Information Alliance security team has boarded them after some kind of mistake and the cargo ship is full of their half-dead human trafficking ‘merchandise’. They can’t let that get out, so they’ll be staring at the Information Alliance’s guns with their heart pounding.”

The same naturally went for the Information Alliance security team.

The leader would know about the understanding with the criminal organization and the soldiers underneath him may have received an explanation. But could they really trust those criminals? They might have been lying. Who knows when those uncontrolled criminals would fire. They would be filled with those fears.

“So.” Quenser slowly shook the radio. “With a small impetus, the guns they have pointed at each other will start to go off. For example, a radio signal could lead an electric fuse to cause an explosive noise and they could mistake it for the ‘first shot’.”

Fuses were tools used to induce the detonation of an explosive by providing a strong stimulus.

They were made to create a more intense explosion than a firecracker.

And the ocean night was filled with countless bursting noises.

A few of them were the electric fuses Quenser had prepared ahead of time, but some of the noises were clearly different. If one paid careful attention, they were obviously different noises, but these people were not calm enough for that.

“Stop them!!”

Blue Bottle covered his ears with his hands and approached a pile of metal containers while yelling at the nearby Information Alliance man. If he had not yelled, his voice would have been drowned out by the explosive noises.

“Which side shot!? It doesn’t matter! Stop them!! This is a meaningless battle. Didn’t your higher ups explain this to-…!?”

Blue Bottle trailed off.

With a damp noise, the man in black he had been speaking to collapsed to the side. His head slammed into the container and red blood splattered across the wall as if a fruit had been crushed there. Simply slamming his head against the wall would not cause that much blood. A bullet had obviously disturbed the contents of his head. The cargo ship was enveloped in such chaos that it was impossible to tell which side of the conflict the bullet had come from.

“Shit!!”

Blue Bottle felt a chill run down his spine and pulled his handgun from its holster.

And then his gaze met that of an Information Alliance soldier.

A short pause followed.

As soon as his thoughts recovered, Blue Bottle realized he had committed a fatal mistake.

“N-no!! I wasn’t trying to fight!!”

He words did not reach the soldier.

As soon as the soldier’s gun barrel moved to target him, Blue Bottle reflexively fired three bullets into the foolish soldier’s upper body.

Naturally, everyone aboard the chaotic ship witnessed it.

There was no going back now.

A hopeless battle with one of the world powers had begun.

===Part 17===

Froleytia Capistrano held her head in her hands.

A female operator’s reserved voice filled the operation control room.

“The battle has ended aboard cargo ship Mistral near St. Frank International Harbor. Level of damage to the Information Alliance team is unknown. It appears they have successfully retreated. The bodies of the crew are still being counted. They have likely all been killed.”

A sudden firefight had been detected aboard a cargo ship near Oceania. A Legitimacy Kingdom naval security team had intervened in the name of aiding the Information Alliance team being attacked.

The problem was the fact that Quenser and Heivia of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion were floating in the ocean near the cargo ship. They looked pleased with themselves and carried an old woman with them.

“Thirty nine civilians have been discovered within the refrigerated containers. This matches the information from Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell.”

“I see.”

“Also, a man closely resembling an important criminal known as Blue Bottle has been discovered among the corpses. His identity is currently being checked, but if it really is him, they are likely correct about the Mistral being owned by a criminal organization active across Oceania.”

“One filthy man isn’t enough to make up for this,” muttered Froleytia under her breath.

She changed her train of thought and focused on her transmission with a distant superior Legitimacy Kingdom officer. Even if Froleytia controlled an entire battalion, she still had to refer to this person as a superior officer.

“The human trafficking organization has been eliminated, but the Information Alliance has evidence that men from my unit intervened. They will begin applying diplomatic pressure before long. This might also start another military conflict.”

“Oh, I’d say it’s 100% guaranteed to do that,” replied the young man in a lighthearted tone. “But this would have ended the same even if your men had not acted.”

“?”

“What if they had learned of the human trafficking organization, but returned without doing anything? Or what if you had done nothing in response to the wrong number from the kidnapper? Once harm had come to Oceanian civilians, the Information Alliance would have anonymously blamed the Legitimacy Kingdom. They would have called us despicable cowards who sacrificed civilians to protect ourselves from the mafias and gangs. They would have said someone like that has no place on the coalition that is provisionally ruling the peace of Oceania. From the moment this began, we had no choice but to accept the fight they were picking with us.”

“Then that wrong number…”

“It seems odd, doesn’t it? Most likely, the Information Alliance intentionally gave the criminal organization the wrong number for the girl’s home. I also read in your report that the girl was strapped with a bomb when she was rescued from the abandoned hospital. A bomb that would be activated with a phone.”

“I get it now. If they simply planned to get as much money from her family as they could and never intended to release her, they would not have needed such a dangerous setup.”

“They wanted to create an obvious civilian victim right away. If you had failed there, they would have their justification to say we were exposing the people of Oceania to danger and needed to be eliminated for Oceania’s sake.”

It made sense.

It was obvious what they gained from it.

The housewives in safe country living rooms watching variety shows with popcorn in one hand would accept that reason for war.

But…

“In that case, the Information Alliance dug their own grave,” said Froleytia. “They created a pipeline with human traffickers of all things.”

“I doubt they were careless enough to leave any conclusive evidence behind. They are the world power that puts the most emphasis on information, after all. No matter what anyone claims, they can insist it was nothing but a desperate bluff on the criminal organization’s part.”

The superior officer’s tone remained lighthearted.

Yet his words cut accurately into the history of mankind.

“But if we are going to go to war regardless, it is easier for us on the political side if the reason has less of a bad aftertaste. You did well. And we will accept the fight they were so insistent that we begin.”

“Understood.”

The transmission came to an end.

Froleytia let out a long sigh before finally speaking quietly.

“Then let’s begin talking about war.”

===Part 18===

Quenser, Heivia, Myonri, Sewax, and the old woman named Dorothy were brought back to land by the Legitimacy Kingdom naval security team’s patrol boat. A military vehicle from the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion picked them up there and took them to the maintenance base zone. On the way, they were repeatedly asked what had happened from people with curious looks. Each time they repeated their tale of heroism, they were struck lightly by a fist. However, the soldiers that complained and struck Quenser and Heivia all had smiles in their eyes.

“Where are we going?” asked Dorothy as she stared at the cityscape outside the window.

“You will be brought home…or to your hotel since you’re a tourist. Anyway, it seems your daughter and her husband have been invited to the base, so you can have your emotional reunion there,” replied Quenser casually.

The military four-wheel drive vehicle returned to the familiar maintenance base zone. When the soldiers on guard duty at the gate heard what had happened, they stared at Quenser and the others like they were some kind of rare animal.

“Hey, Quenser. Doesn’t it look like the rumor has already spread throughout the base?”

“I wish I could view that in as positive a light as you. We might be on our way to the detention barracks.”

The maintenance base was made up of over one hundred large vehicles. They thought they were being led to the section used for lodgings, but the military vehicle stopped partway there.

They had likely been spotted through the window because a man and woman who looked like tourists run out of the lodgings.

Dorothy’s eyes opened wide and she moved her trembling lips.

She looked like she was seeing people she had never expected to see again.

“That is my daughter and her husband… My grandchild is there too.”

Quenser opened the vehicle’s door.

Dorothy used all her strength to run through the maintenance base which was lit up by so many lights it did not seem like nighttime.

“…”

In that moment, the battlefield cameraman named Sewax naturally peered through his camera’s viewfinder.

A photo of a family tearfully embracing may not have been sensational or shocking enough to be titled “the truth of the battlefield”.

It was not going to win any world-famous awards and it was not enough to make one’s name as a photographer.

But that photograph surely had something powerful enough to move the world.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume3 Chapter ?

2013-12-29T09:46:44Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 24 (Uchimaku Hayabusa) */

==Chapter ?: Welcome to Zenmetsu Village==

===Part 1 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

“Uuh…myuh…”

I felt a slight shaking and awoke. Only once I awoke did I realize I had been asleep. I was on a tour bus and most of those on board were my classmates and my homeroom teacher. The only exceptions were the bus guide and the driver.

The tour bus was driving along an elevated highway, but the outside scenery was almost entirely cut off by the tall soundproof panels covering the sides of the road. The bus was driving so smoothly I would never have guessed it was keeping steady at 80 kph.

''Oh, that’s right.

''We had a school trip at the start of September…

“Hey, hey, Shinobu-kun.”

The eccentric beauty Madoka-chan was saying something from her seat next to me.

This was not a case of a lovey-dovey space developing. As usual, she did not fit in with the rest of the class, so she had been forced to sit next to me, the class president.

“Shinobu-kun, why do you cling to the girl next to you while you nap?”

“Hagwah!?”

I frantically moved away from Madoka.

''I-I have my reasons, Madoka-san! In fact, I think most personal mannerisms are deeply related to one’s household environment.

However, Madoka did not seem to mind.

“What a pain. They call this a trip, but we’re only headed to an Intellectual Village. Is this a way of exchanging technology?”

“Well, it’s a school event, so all of the events were decided on by some stuffy teacher. I do agree we need to make sure a school trip doesn’t involve a trip to a love hotel, though.”

Also, three days and two nights was much too short. I had the feeling we would spend more time travelling between locations than staying put anywhere.

And then…

The head of a classmate (a guy) stuck up from the seat in front of me. It was as if he was peering over a fence. He was the guy known in our class as the Love King.

“Jinnai, we’re almost to a zone simply filled with noteworthy things.”

“What? We’re on the highway. Are you the hopeless kind of student that buys a pile of souvenirs at the service area?”

“We’re almost at Four Mountains. The scenery will change once we leave the tunnel,” said the Love King while lightly waving around an expensive-looking mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera. “I hear there’s a huge junction there and it’s popular with people who like buildings and factories.”

“…That’s targeted toward an incredibly niche audience.”

“No, don’t make fun of it. Even sports stars have this hobby. It’s widely recognized.”

I wanted to argue that it didn’t matter if famous people did it too, but I decided against it since that would just lead to a long, drawn-out debate.

“It’s actually really large-scale and quite rare. As the name suggests, the junction is surrounded by mountains and tunnels on all four sides and it leads the cars into the tunnels. Well, it also seems the base of the junction is a highway exit and rumor has it the junction was created for the sake of a gigantic semiconductor factory. Is that really true, though?”

“…”

As the Love King continued speaking, Madoka looked out the window disinterestedly next to me. This was unsurprising since the Love King had been speaking only to me.

The atmosphere was a bit strained.

However, Madoka must have been used to this because she showed no sign of being hurt. Even now, she was using her cell phone to photograph a piece of chocolate shaped like an animal. It seemed she was trying to collect all of them, but…

''What animals does she still need? I know the bottle cap doll’s beckoning cat series had a total of 20 different kinds.

I could only come up with that completely unrelated data.

And as I thought, the tour bus entered the tunnel.

''Was this tunnel through Suzaku Mountain?

For a highway tunnel, it was quite small. It did not even have the standard orange lights. As soon as the bus entered the tunnel, it was pitch black. The noise of the engine must have been echoing against the wall because we were wrapped in an odd distorted noise.

It was not a very long tunnel.

After only a few minutes, the white light of the exit came into view.

“It doesn’t really matter, but will you even be able to photograph the scenery with the soundproof panels along the road?”

I received no response.

It was possible there was simply too much noise for him to hear.

It did not bother me much, so I gave a small yawn as the tour bus left the tunnel.

For an instant, the bright light of the sun blinded me.

But I would quickly adapt to it.

While I felt the thick moisture of fog on my cheek as I stood there, I raised a hand over my face to protect my eyes from the bright light.

And then I realized something odd.

“Huh?”

Why was I “standing”. Just a moment before, I had been sitting in a seat on a tour bus that was full to capacity.

And…

''Where am I?

''Why am I standing in the middle of a dense and dark forest?

I felt a pressure coming from all sides. It was as if invisible walls were pressing in against me.

The area spreading out around me was not a carefully maintained Intellectual Village plantation. Nor was it a walking path surrounded by negative ion oxygen. It was the type of place you felt like you would run into a group burying a corpse if you arrived at night with a flashlight in hand. Branches and leaves covered the sky. The sunlight was cut off, so the trees had to compete for the nutrients of the soil. Trees would kill off other trees and nature would rot nature. It was a truly “untouched” place. Thanks to the undergrowth that reached over a meter high and the great amount of ivy growing from branch to branch, many areas had almost developed into green walls.

I heard a solid clunking sound.

While still confused, I turned in the direction of the sound. I found a giant concrete pillar that seemed to stab through the green as it rose up.

“That’s part of the elevated highway… Then this must be…”

The surface of the concrete had the words Four Mountains printed on it. I realized I must have been in the area that stretched out below the highway. This was the basin surrounded by the mountains. According to the Love King, each of the four mountains had a tunnel and the Four Mountains Junction connected those tunnels in a cross shape. That meant this area was only a highway trip away from many different areas.

''Is there any kind of village in this basin?

“I don’t see any houses…”

Then again, if I made my way through this deep forest and sought help at a home, I would probably be mistaken for a Yamanba.

In every direction I only found forest, forest, and more forest.

To put it bluntly, the conditions on the surface of Four Mountains was just about as bad as it could get.

You could be as ecological as you want, but too much nature was harmful.

''But where did Madoka, the Love King, and my other classmates go?

Had they been “thrown from” the bus just like I had?

Or had I been the only one to disappear and the bus had continued along the highway without any trouble?

In other words…

“You have got to be kidding me… Don’t tell me I’ve been left behind.”

===Part 2 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

People seem to do it a lot, so I hope you are not confusing the National Police Agency with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The latter is the organization that upholds the public order of Tokyo. And so its Investigation Department 1 normally only handled incidents that occurred within the jurisdiction of Tokyo.

However, there were exceptions.

“Uchimaku, head out to Kinki right away.”

“…What?”

The department chief had a grim look when he arrived and that was the very first thing out of his mouth. I could not help but open my eyes wide.

He continued nevertheless.

“I assume you have heard Hasebe Michio is being transported.”

“Yes. Isn’t that unkillable death row inmate being transferred here from his previous regional location?”

I called him unkillable, but not because he was some ridiculous monster.

He had been sentenced to death in a murder case over twenty years prior, but the odds of it being a false accusation had been quite high from the beginning. After much heated debate, this prisoner’s execution had been pushed further and further back. That was why he was called “unkillable”. We were on the verge of finding out if a request for a retrial would be accepted or not, so the higher ups of the National Police Agency had called him in to Tokyo for a more detailed investigation.

The department chief continued speaking in a disinterested voice.

“His prison vehicle disappeared from Four Mountains Junction. It disappeared while on the highway. Both the policeman and the prisoner aboard may or may not still be alive. The prison vehicle has not even been found yet. Even its GPS signal vanished. To put it bluntly, we have no idea what to do.”

“…Seriously?”

“Normally, the search would be left to the local police, but this is no ordinary prisoner. I cannot deny the possibility of individuals or factions within the prosecutors and police who would find it troublesome for Hasebe to have a retrial. The organization’s reputation is on the line once again.”

Hasebe Michio had been in the process of being transferred from the regional police to the Tokyo police, so we did have an official reason for the two police departments to cooperate in this search.

“Are you saying it’s possible someone might try to protect the police’s reputation by making it look like Hasebe killed himself? That way the suspect dies before the retrial can take place.”

“I do not know if anything that blatant will happen, but if the physical evidence is hidden, this could easily be treated as if Hasebe escaped of his own free will. Someone could be trying to crush any chance of a retrial by framing an innocent man of an arbitrary crime.”

“…”

“At any rate, even if this is a joint operation, the local police will still do most of the work. We can only send someone to keep an eye on things. Uchimaku, I am sending you. Someone with no inconvenient titles will have the easiest time moving around. Carry out the role of a small fry like the small fry you are.”

I did not like the reason I had been chosen, but I could not ignore an official order.

This is the painful part of being a police sergeant!

As the department chief handed me a ticket for a cheap seat on a domestic flight, I asked him something that had suddenly caught my attention.

“By the way, do you really think Hasebe was wrongfully accused?”

“I have no idea. I was not in charge of that case.”

===Part 3 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

I stood still for so long I lost track of time.

I had been inside that tour bus, but had suddenly found myself standing in this forest upon exiting the tunnel.

It seemed I was in the untouched nature spreading out directly below the junction.

It was unclear what had happened to Madoka, the Love King, Nagisa, or my other classmates.

Incidentally, I had no food or water, so I really did not want to walk endlessly through the forest.

“…No good.”

I had pulled out the cell phone in my pocket, but had groaned at the “no signal” indicator.

What hurt the most was how little about the situation I knew. If my other classmates were lost in this barricade-like forest as well, it might have been best to search through it as much as I could on my own. But it was possible I alone had been trapped in this strange situation. If that was the case, searching would be completely wasted effort. Walking through a deep forest while possibly stranded would only increase the risk of death. Doing that for an illusion that might not even be there was no laughing matter. …It may sound as if I am exaggerating, but being so lost you lose all sense of direction is no joke.

If I was to call for rescue or contact my classmates to see if they were okay, I needed my cell phone.

Not being able to use it was a serious issue when it came to deciding what to do next.

“That means…”

I looked over at the giant pillar towering up in front of me. It seemed to stab through that eerie nature that looked like new trees had grown on top of old rotting ones.

The rectangular pillar had a long narrow metal staircase leading up it while reversing back and forth countless times.

''What is that staircase for?

Whatever the answer to that question, I would likely be able to make my way up onto the elevated highway using it.

If I walked along the shoulder of the highway, I could avoid being stranded in the forest. Emergency landline phones were set at fixed intervals in case of an accident, so I would be able to call for help as well.

However, there was one problem.

“This fog…”

The fog was so thick I was not sure I could see even a few meters ahead. With that fog enveloping everything, I was worried about my safety while walking along the highway, even if I was on the shoulder. The drivers might cautiously slow down a bit, but they would not be thinking about the possibility of pedestrians. If a car hit me, I would be sent straight to heaven.

Should I continue through the forest with the very real possibility of becoming stranded?

Or should I climb up onto the highway with masses of steel shooting by at high speed?

“What am I supposed to do…?”

===Part 4 (Hishigami Enbi)===

Tah dah!

I had made my way to Kansai Ocean Airport.

Unfortunately, it seemed less lively than Tokyo’s Bay Coast International Airport. For one thing, it was not used much by sightseers or business travelers. Instead, it mainly shipped products of the western Intellectual Villages to various places.

Regional airports had their own difficulties.

And the focus on shipping allowed them to cut back on the service industry personnel costs for hotels or duty free shops.

“Wait a second, Enbi. What are you doing here on a weekday at the beginning of September? What happened to your required education?”

“Oh, detective. Just so you know, this really is a complete coincidence this time. …Of course, since we’re here for the same reason, it’s only natural we would eventually end up in the same place.”

“You’re the type of mystery freak that truly runs across incidents by coincidence, so running into you here is a very bad sign.”

This removed any worries of wearing out a taxi driver from having him drive me around too much.

Instead, I could have my beloved detective drive me around in a rental car.

“Let me be very clear, mystery freak. I am here for work. I am being paid with the people’s tax money, so I don’t have time to deal with you.”

“C’mon, c’mon. Let’s go search for Hasebe Michio who disappeared from the highway at Four Mountains Junction!”

“You already know all that!? Where did you get that information from!?”

“What good would it do you to know that? What matters is that you will go through all the proper procedures to request cooperation from the regional police, but they will refuse to speak with you or even share any information with you. This will leave you with no choice but to come crying to Enbi-chan, the master of love and justice.”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Reality is not some travel mystery solved by a popular newspaper reporter and idiot policeman!!”

''Fine, fine. Then just go ahead and try.

To make a long story short, the detective tried to call someone with his cell phone, searched the airport to see if anyone was waiting for him, and tried some other things.

It was the same as the opening scene of a 2-hour mystery with a black silhouette muttering to itself. Describing it all in detail would be a waste of time.

“D-did I do something horrible in a past life…?”

“The problem is that Hasebe is a troublesome prisoner due to the possibility of a false accusation. The old members of the regional police, the prosecutors, the judge, and everyone else with influence are extremely worried about this. Even the inside of their station is in complete disarray, so they don’t have time to handle someone sent in from Tokyo. Now just go get us a rental car.”

“Wait a second. I am a police officer of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. My jurisdiction does not leave the Tokyo metropolitan area. If the regional police refuse to cooperate, I have no authority here. I will be treated just like a normal person.”

“Do you think your boss in Department 1 will accept that excuse?”

To make a long story short, we made it to stage 2.

''Hmm, not bad. He has the cell phone’s volume turned down yet I can still hear the yelling. …They don’t really serve katsudon when questioning you in Department 1, do they?

As expected, the detective was in tears.

“How does that damn chief think I can handle this with nothing but the standard right to apprehend someone caught in the act of a crime!? And he told me not to come back until I had some results, but the lodging fees are going to come out of my pay, aren’t they!?”

“C’mon, let’s go. There are tons of people who would find it troublesome if Hasebe was found innocent and now he suddenly disappeared when he might finally get a retrial. We have no time to waste.”

While half in desperation, the detective borrowed a rental car. I sat down in the passenger seat and fastened the seatbelt.

“Riding in a car alone with you is quite stimulating.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“Does it remind you of the Shokei Island Serial Murders Case?”

“Don’t bring up anything that ominous!!”

===Part 5 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

To be honest, I had not yet decided what to do at that time. After all, both options were too dangerous. On one hand, I had a deep forest I could easily end up stranded in if I casually decided to take a stroll through it. On the other hand, I had foggy highway on which cars could come flying toward me at high speed at any moment. Both options put my life at risk.

But the situation refused to wait for me.

It began with a noise.

It was an awfully metallic noise coming from directly above me. I looked up and realized it was the sound of someone walking on the narrow staircase installed along the pillar of the elevated highway.

For an instant, truly just an instant, I rejoiced.

To be honest, I had been horribly nervous up until this moment. I was surrounded by a rotting forest in every direction. If I had taken a photo, every single person I showed it to would probably have given it the title “stranded”. When I sensed another person’s presence a warm feeling filled my chest. It was as if I had been wandering through a blizzard on a snowy mountain and had spotted a cabin.

But…

Once I thought about it carefully, I realized this person was walking down into the thick forest from the elevated highway. The action itself was simple enough, but I could think of no reason for anyone to do that. After all, this was a thick forest. Unlike an Intellectual Village farm where a bunch of grapes was worth 30 thousand yen, there was no obvious reason to come here.

And…

I had been suddenly sent into this forest from a tour bus driving down that highway above. When something unexplainable happened, it was normal to first suspect a Youkai. However, there was one question I could not find an answer to.

''What type of Youkai put into what kind of system could do this?

I had too few hints.

It was possible that metallic footstep was another hint. And of course, that hint would come with plenty of danger.

The footsteps continued.

What if someone had intentionally built a Youkai’s power into their system to use it as a criminal Package and I alone had been taken from that tour bus?

Why then would this person be walking down the stairs toward the forest?

What if someone had created a situation with zero witnesses and was now descending the stairs to meet me?

“Dammit…”

I began digging through my pants pocket without even realizing it.

I knew there was nothing inside but my cell phone, but I still searched through it again and again.

“Dammit!!”

I was surrounded by the thick forest. I frantically grabbed a thick branch that had broken off a tree and begun to fuse with the greenery. I thought this would put me at ease, but the branch must have rotted all the way through because the middle crumbled as I picked it up.

Meanwhile, the footsteps showed no sign of stopping.

The noise grew louder.

The person was approaching the ground.

If this was truly the criminal (?), then they were using some Youkai’s power. Wielding a tree branch might not be much help, but facing them unarmed would be too reckless.

But despite thinking that, I was unable to do anything.

If I had instead run off into the forest, the result might have changed.

The footsteps stopped.

The person had arrived at the final step.

They would now step onto the ground.

And this person was…

“…Madoka?”

===Part 6 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

I borrowed the cheapest, smallest, and least powerful rental car at the shop and headed out onto the highway. I was on my way to Four Mountains Junction where Hasebe Michio had disappeared while being transported. From my direction, I would travel through the Byakko Mountain tunnel. The western mountain was named Byakko and the southern one Suzaku, so it was an incredibly simple naming scheme.

The mystery freak was sitting in the passenger seat. (If I had not let her, I would be given the stigma of being a police officer who left a minor in a distant city.)

“Now then, detective. How much do you know about Hasebe?”

“You’re the amateur and I’m the professional, so shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

“Don’t call yourself a professional. You have no authority here.”

“Do you want me to open the door and shove you out?”

To relieve my annoyance, I chewed some xylitol gum.

The highway was not a lot of fun. The structures at set intervals with reflective panels, an emergency phone, and a small door must have been high-speed bus stops. It was tedious and I felt like I was going to fall asleep at a moment’s notice.

Meanwhile, Enbi seemed completely carefree in the passenger seat.

Despite most of the information being confidential, the mystery freak quickly began speaking on about it.

“It was 25 years ago on November 9. Someone broke into the house of the president of Kuroyama Electronics Group, a large Osaka precision equipment maker. They support the high-tech infrastructure of Intellectual Villages, so at the time, there was a lot of talk of it being related to ''a large criminal organization'', political terrorism from those opposed to Intellectual Villages, or a foreign spy trying to steal their tech. But a major development came to light in January of the following year.”

As she spoke, the mystery freak used her index finger to operate her usual smartphone with the leather memo pad cover.

“The local police used footprints left at the crime scene to determine the maker and sales situation of the shoes. They used that to identify Hasebe Michio. In addition, the security camera from a store near the president’s house showed a figure that very closely resembled him. The police boldly arrested Hasebe Michio at the end of January.”

Afterwards, Hasebe had remained firmly silent in the interrogation room.

Hasebe had worked at a small factory in Osaka that had a contract with the Kuroyama Electronics Group. He had been highly skilled but had barely scraped by financially. At the time, the police had seen a motive there…but Hasebe had not actually done any better after the incident.

Due to my job, I could not speak easily about any of this, so Enbi continued speaking as if giving a one-man performance.

“At the trial, Hasebe finally began speaking and insisted he was innocent. He testified that he had been treated violently in the interrogation room. None of that was recognized, though. The local police had built up a large amount of small evidence and the media thoroughly manipulated the image of him they represented to turn him into a complete villain.”

Incidentally, that “large amount of small evidence” was all vague witness testimony that amounted to nothing more than circumstantial evidence and rumors.

Even their most conclusive evidence, the footprints, was not a proper form of biometrics like a fingerprint. Anyone could have made a copy of Hasebe’s shoe by buying the same size of shoe from the same maker, taking dirt from the small factory he worked at and around his home, and pressing it against the bottom of the shoe.

Even the figure that “closely resembled” him on the nearby security camera was from the grainy resolution of that time. Its credibility was only about 50/50. If someone who knew Hasebe Michio had chosen the exact same clothes he wore and worn them in the exact same way, they could likely have produced a figure that “closely resembled” him.

“The real problem are those that were involved in the investigation of Hasebe Michio back then,” I finally said in order to turn the conversation away from the case itself. Then again, this topic might actually be even more dangerous. “The department chief who gave the okay to arrest Hasebe received an irregular promotion to the Ministry of Justice, the judge from his trial is going through a national review to see if he will remain on the Supreme Court, and I heard one of the prosecutors is even sharpening his claws as the top aide to a member of the Lower House. In other words, all of them have a reason to not want Hasebe to get a retrial and be found innocent. ''It would affect their brand image.''”

“So they want to ensure Hasebe is guilty no matter what. And if they can’t do that…?”

“Don’t just say things like that without any evidence.”

However, it seemed Hasebe had almost certainly been wrongfully accused. And it was true that I could not think of anyone else who might be glad to see him disappear from the highway while being transported.

When the odds were good he would be found not guilty, Hasebe himself had no reason to make himself vanish.

“Now then, detective. Once we leave the Byakko Mountain tunnel, we will be at the Four Mountains Junction. I happen to have heard some interesting rumors about that place.”

“What?”

“You could say it is like holy ground to someone with my interests,” said the mystery freak while looking like she was about to start drooling.

Given what interested her and pulled at her heartstrings, this was obviously not going to be something I wanted to hear.

“So, detective, have you ever heard of Zenmetsu Village?”

===Part 7 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

“…Madoka?”

My grinding nerves were released.

The person who had unnaturally walked down the stairs form the elevated highway was…

“Yes, it’s your good friend the beautiful and celebrated Madoka-chan. Anyway, Shinobu-kun, where are we?”

As Madoka looked around, I noticed blades of grass and seeds were stuck to her sailor uniform in places. It did not look as if she was bruised or bleeding.

That much was fine. However…

“Where have you been up until now? You haven’t seen any of the others, have you?”

“I don’t know. Once we left the tunnel, I was suddenly thrown out into the fog. It was terrible. I was on the highway. There are better ways I could have been thrown out, you know? I noticed what had happened and quickly ran over to the shoulder, but if I had been a little slower, who knows what could have happened.”

She had ended up in the middle of the highway.

My situation had been pretty bad, but Madoka’s hadn’t exactly been great either.

When I thought about it, the situation was almost unthinkable. People had disappeared from a tour bus driving along the highway.

''How fast was that bus going anyway?

“So did the same thing happen to our other classmates?”

“I don’t know. But I have not heard any brakes screeching, cars crashing, or ambulance sirens, so I may have been the only one tossed right into the middle of the road,” said Madoka emptily as if it did not matter in the slightest to her.

It may have been too much to ask her to care about the others when she was so isolated from them.

“Oh, right. Madoka, can you use your cell phone?”

“No. Nothing works. I also tried using the emergency phone up on the highway, but I couldn’t reach anyone. I don’t know what happened, but the cord may have been cut since it did not even seem to be ringing on the other end.”

“The emergency phone…was broken?”

Those were supposed to be constantly maintained for emergencies like this. I occasionally heard on the news that overpasses, sewers, and other infrastructure was wearing down with age. This may have been the same.

I did not know what had happened to the tour bus, but it seemed most of Madoka’s luggage had left in the bus as well. All she had in hand was the animal-shaped chocolate she had been eating on the bus.

''Oh, the animal chocolates Madoka still needs are the panda and the penguin.

I could only remember that useless piece of information.

“At any rate, heading up is unlikely to help much. I had a few cars fly by me through the fog, so you can be sure of that.”

“You’re kidding… So we have to make our way through this thick forest?” I muttered blankly.

But then a sudden idea came to me.

''Is Madoka telling the truth? Or rather, is this Madoka who so conveniently appeared here really just a Kitsune or Tanuki? Or is this the real Kotemitsu Madoka?

If she was actually a transformation of whoever had sent me into this forest, she might be lying to keep me from heading up to the highway and using an emergency phone.

“Not being able to use the phone really hurts our situation. Same with the GPS.”

“I know what you mean. I haven’t been able to check the stock prices for 15 minutes now. Not being able to do what you always do is so irritating.”

“You could at least change that to checking a fortune-telling site or something cute like that, Madoka-san.”

“This makes me want to start with the meaningless conspiracy theories. Having every option to use a phone taken from us makes me think there is some reason behind it.”

“…Come to think of it, are you really okay with your money? Timing is everything in day trading, right?”

“Well, yes. In a world where every ten thousandth of a second counts, this is not okay at all. But I left it all in the hands of a Tokyo market advisor while I am on this trip. If he makes more than the target amount, he gets to keep it all as a bonus, but if he makes less, he has to pay it all back. That’s the contract we made. Nothing that happens will hurt me any.”

I had tried to ask her a leading question, but the answer I got was so complicated I had no idea if it was accurate or not.

Then again, someone who could supernaturally transform into her could likely act perfectly like her as well.

Madoka(?) cast an annoyed glance across the Japanese jungle filled with underbrush.

“What should we do now? And remember, heading back to the highway is out of the question.”

The way she continued to stress that point bothered me a bit, but it was not too unnatural since she had seen firsthand how dangerous it was.

“But walking randomly through the forest is dangerous, too. We don’t know the land and it might be filled with pit vipers and hornets.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

“According to the Love King, Four Mountains Junction has an exit. It was rumored to have been built for a large semiconductor factory. In that case, we should be safe if we can reach either the tollgate or the factory. They should have a phone we can use there.”

I was worried about our other classmates as well, but we had no map, we did not know which direction was which, and we did not know what kind of creatures lurked in this forest. With unknown after unknown, it was too dangerous to randomly search the forest. It would be best to inform someone what had happened so professionals could search for them as quickly as possible.

A white fog prevented us from seeing even a few meters ahead and the curtain of tall underbrush as well as the rotting trees blocked our path. It was about the worst possible path to take, but the highway fortunately ran above our heads. If we followed its shadow, we could keep on track to the tollgate.

Or so we thought.

It turned out we were too naïve.

When we actually began walking, we learned just how naïve we were after only five minutes.

“Dammit! I could have sworn we were walking straight. Where did the highway go!?”

“…At the very least, it is no longer overhead,” said Madoka as she looked up into the sky.

The sky we could see through the gaps in the trees was white rather than blue. It was completely covered in thick fog. We had suddenly realized the shadow of the highway had disappeared from the ground. The highway had of course not moved. We had obviously strayed from the proper route.

“Shinobu-kun. I think our direction strayed bit by bit as we took the easiest path while avoiding these thick trees.”

“…Should we head back?”

Fortunately, the tall underbrush we had parted to move forward had left an obvious trail to follow back.

Or so we thought.

“Wait, wait, wait. Where are we? We keep walking, but the highway’s pillar is nowhere to be seen.”

“We’re completely lost.”

We had only followed an obvious landmark and then followed our path back.

That was all we had done, yet where we actually stood and where we had been headed was continually off by a bit.

This was chaotic nature.

It was the polar opposite of a carefully maintained Intellectual Village.

I had thought I was well acquainted with “nature”, but the threat before my eyes here taught me that the village I lived in was like a food sample made of wax.

I had often heard that staying still was better than moving around randomly when lost in the woods or a mountain. I was now certain that was correct.

But that was when you had properly informed people that you were going to climb that mountain. It only applied when someone would automatically come looking for you if a certain amount of time had passed.

We had no way of knowing when this ridiculous fog would clear up.

It was possible it was not just temporary weather. If it had to do with the terrain, it might remain for an entire season or even year round. And if the fog was related to a Youkai…

For one thing, how were you supposed to report that someone had suddenly disappeared from the highway? Who would believe that?

If only Madoka and I had disappeared and the tour bus had continued on perfectly fine, it would be up to our classmates and homeroom teacher to report it. However, they knew where we had disappeared from but not where we had disappeared to. The police and fire fighters might not believe that, and even if they did, they might not immediately guess correctly that we were in the forest of Four Mountains. In our situation, we could die of thirst after waiting just two or three days, so we could not rely on carefree optimism.

And if everyone on the bus was wandering around somewhere like us…

At any rate, we had no way of knowing if help was coming.

The situation might not improve if we carelessly lay around. It was possible we would simply dry up and die.

“Four Mountains Junction is in an area surrounded by four mountains, right? It isn’t that large an area.”

“I would say it is only a few kilometers across from one end to the other. …Don’t tell me you’re planning to move from one end to the other.”

“If we’re lucky, we’ll run across the highway or one of the pillars supporting it. In the worst case, we’ll run into the mountain which we know has a tunnel through it. It’s a bit dangerous, but heading to the tollgate over the highway might be best.”

Given the land, that plan did not sound too difficult.

After all, the highway at Four Mountains Junction was built in a cross shape, leading to four tunnels through four mountains. If we cut randomly across the basin between the mountains, the odds were good we would run cross the highway at some point.

Madoka elegantly wiped sweat from her face with a small folded up handkerchief.

“I suppose that is our only option. A money-loving girl like me does not like forcing our way through every option until something works like this.”

“We need to find the highway before we seriously need to worry about food and water.”

“We will be trying to walk straight, but we won’t end up walking around and around in circles, will we?”

“Just because you can’t read the atmosphere is no reason to bring up that forest legend at a time like this!!”

And so we began moving.

The rotting trees covered the sky above our heads and even the shortest undergrowth was about a meter tall. Luckily, the leaves were not hard like bamboo grass, so we did not scrape ourselves as we walked through it.

“I’m soaking wet,” said Madoka.

“So am I… But with this much liquid, we shouldn’t have to worry about water. Food will still be a problem, though.”

“Have you forgotten how near the highway we are? With all the exhaust mixed in, who knows what color this water would make a litmus test turn.”

“Stop exaggerating. And you can’t exactly complain if it’s that or die of thir-…”

I trailed off at that point.

What had Madoka-san said?

She was wearing her usual summer sailor uniform that girls had enough trouble with bra straps showing through under normal conditions. And she was soaking wet now?

I needed to calmly check on this from my current position. In this thick, rotting forest, even the shortest undergrowth was about a meter tall. Madoka was wearing a skirt, so making her pass through that undergrowth first would have been unfair. I, Jinnai Shinobu-kun, had taken the extremely gentlemanly role of walking ahead and parting the undergrowth to create a simple path for her.

And that left an important question in my mind…

''What color is Madoka-chan’s bra!?

The answer to that very simple question was right behind me. If I only turned around, I would find “Kotemitsu Madoka Presents: The Pink Paradise” before my eyes. The problem was that I needed a reason to turn around!

''From her tone of voice, Madoka probably hasn’t noticed her unguarded state yet. This is my chance! My only chance!! I need to use my 105 IQ intellect to its fullest to think up an excuse!! If I don’t, I know I’ll regret it for the rest of my life and be plagued by nightmares every-

“Shinobu-kun? Why are you being so quiet?”

“Kyaah kyaah!! Don’t come peeking over all of a sudden, little kitten!!”

I did not even need to turn around. Madoka had circled around in front of me. I was not yet mentally prepared and my timing was thrown off. However, shutting my eyes now was what a coward pretending to be a pure boy would do. Even as my heart felt as if it would leap out of my throat, I chose the exemplary answer of opening my eyes wide with anticipation!

And Kotemitsu Madoka’s flower garden was finally revealed to me.

Her thin sailor uniform had been easily penetrated by the moisture. What this revealed was…

A plain gray sports bra.

“…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Tch.”

“Wait, Shinobu-kun. Wait a second. Could you stop looking so disappointed and tell me what happened?”

“This is wrong. A sports bra is just wrong on you! You’re not a sports girl!! You have no reason to end up there!!”

“Eh? Oh, this? It’s just more comfortable this way. I don’t like how bra straps and wires scrape and rub.”

“That reason is terrible too!! Nothing about this is sexy!! That’s the reasoning of a middle-aged woman! If you said that was the uniform of a girls’ boxing club, you could walk right by a police box in your underwear and no one would stop you!!”

“Underwear is underwear; it’s not a swimsuit. I would be too embarrassed to do that.”

“…Then why aren’t you trying to hide your chest?”

“Oh, well, it is a sports bra, after all.”

“So you admit it! You admit a sports bra isn’t even remotely sexy!!”

There were several types of “indifferent girls”: the kiddy type, the pure white bra and panties type, the “doesn’t care at all so she actually goes for really showy sexy lingerie” type, etc. Each of them was filled with its own type of dreams.

But a sports bra that could pass for a summer shirt despite being underwear?

And because she didn’t like straps?

“No, no!! Redo! I want a redo! I imagined a bourgeois like you would definitely wear silk underwear with tons of ribbons and frills!!”

“Okay, okay. I get it, Shinobu-kun. Next time, I will wear striped panties that tie together with strings on either side. That should be filled with plenty of dreams, so calm down.”

''That makes it sound like I can’t hope for anything from her panties either, but is that true?

After being consoled by Madoka who was only interested in money and organic vegetables, I managed to recover from a mental state one step away from breaking down into tears.

Madoka then casually changed the subject.

Her tone was no different from a classmate asking if we should stop by somewhere afterschool.

“By the way, Shinobu-kun. I apologize for bringing up this kind of thing again, but I know of an incident about this area that is about as pleasant as your average forest legend.”

“…Do you have to bring it up now?”

“It’s called Zenmetsu Village. I only heard about it from Enbi, so I don’t actually know if that is the official name or not.<ref>Zenmetsu means “annihilation”.</ref> Over 30 years ago, it seems an crazy mass murderer in the village slaughtered everyone who lived there!! Supposedly, the murderer used pitchforks, hoes, axes, and all sorts of other farm tools.”

“Asking you indirectly to stop wasn’t enough! A crazy mass murderer!? I don’t want to hear anything worrying right now! Please understand that!!”

I rubbed at my wet hair with one hand, but Madoka was not listening.

“Well, it’s just your stereotypical legend about an eccentric village. There are legends almost anywhere in Japan or even the world about people getting lost in the mountains or forest and running across a house or village with some strange custom.”

“Are you saying it’s so common it actually has no credibility? Are you saying we should just laugh it off as nonsense?”

“The story has plenty of embellishments. Some say the murderer is still alive, some say his descendants are wandering around here, and others say a murder group decided this was holy ground to them and so they live in a psychedelic commune here. I hear there are even rumors that ''the entire village wanders around Four Mountains.'' Supposedly, the victims desperately tried to flee the village, but the deserted houses circled around to cut off their escape.”

After hearing that much, even I was not all that worried.

The overall impression was too scattered and mismatched.

It was unclear whether it was supposed to be a Youkai using its monstrous power to cause some supernatural phenomenon or if it was a human murderer going on a rampage with the tools around him.

There were of course incidents in which humans used Youkai powers, but those Youkai Packages had to be broadly and finely prepared with a group of dozens if not hundreds of people. They were used for bank robberies, scams involving large sums of money, and insurance fraud murders. In those cases, everyone involved had an obvious common desire. The story of Zenmetsu Village did not seem the same.

“It sounds like a story people in the city made up despite not knowing how Youkai and Packages work.”

“Yes. But they are not trying to insult rural areas. The cities have plenty of their own rumors about eccentric groups, be they underground organization or online communities. No matter where you go in Japan, everyone loves hearing stories about eccentric people.”

…''Madoka, I don’t think you’re in any position to call other people eccentric.

This may have been an excellent example of why it was commonly said to look at others for an example of what to do and what not to do.

“But on the other hand…” began Madoka.

She trailed off when the area before us suddenly opened up.

The quality of the soil must have changed because the tall undergrowth that had blocked our way before had dried up and died off. The damp trees were still there, but the disappearance of the obstructing underbrush changed what we could see by quite a bit.

And something was visible up ahead.

They were rocks the size of rectangular 18-liter cans…or should I call them stones? They were more black than gray and standing up on end. Unlike bricks, the surface was rough. They were likely made by hand.

At first glance, they were reminiscent of gravestones. Or perhaps handmade trophies.

And…

A quick estimate told me there were over 50 of them. They were lined up so neatly it made me think someone obsessive had arranged them.

“What…are those?”

I could feel my throat drying up despite the fog that seemed to moisten my body just by standing in it.

Zenmetsu Village.

Rumor had it a crazy mass murderer in the village had slaughtered all the other villagers. This plot of awkward gravestones gave concrete color to that otherwise blank information.

Madoka’s mouth flapped open and closed a number of times after she had trailed off earlier, but she finally continued while sounding apologetic.

“…Since Enbi always shows up at the scenes of strange murders and she was talking so excitedly about this, perhaps we should assume it has a bit more credibility than some nonsense story.”

===Part 8 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

Once we left the tunnel, we were surrounded by a ridiculous amount of fog.

I instinctually let off the gas a bit. After I checked the dropping value on the speedometer, I refocused my eyes on the distance.

For some reason, Enbi was rejoicing in the passenger seat.

She looked like a kid when school was cancelled due to a typhoon.

“Hyah! You can’t see more than a few meters ahead.”

“Yes, that’s right. Dammit. If it’s this bad, I wouldn’t be surprised if they blocked off the road until it clears.”

I started to reach for the switch to the fog lamps, but they were not made to see through fog during the day. They were meant to inform oncoming traffic of your presence. I doubted they would be of much help on a highway with both directions completely cut off from each other.

The mystery freak went out of her way to point toward the shoulder of the road.

“A few police cars are stopped there.”

“I can tell that from their lights.”

“And a prisoner transport vehicle.”

“!?”

I instinctually turned my head to check behind me, but quickly remembered that could get me killed on the highway. I checked the rearview mirror, but it had all disappeared into the fog.

Instead of slamming on the breaks, I gradually decelerated and pulled over onto the shoulder.

I parked the rental car there.

“Should you really stop here?”

“I’ll turn on the hazard lights and set up the reflector.”

“You have the same authority as a normal person right now. Won’t you get in trouble for parking alongside the highway for no good reason?”

“If you can tell when you aren’t supposed to do something, why don’t you think about your own actions more often?”

I opened the door and stepped out onto the asphalt. I removed a triangular reflector from the trunk and set it up on the road. The mystery freak and I then walked back the way we had come.

“…This is a surprisingly long distance.”

“It was several dozen seconds along the highway.”

It was probably 300 to 500 meters. Due to the thick fog, there was nothing to judge the distance by. I lost track of how far I had walked, but that was my guess as to the distance. After walking for a while, a large and dense shadow appeared on the shoulder of the road. It was a police car.

“Now, detective, show me a realism-focused drama depicting the complexity of the police organization.”

“Thanks for that not even remotely funny lead-in.”

“Oh, if you want to start shooting up the place like a Showa era police drama, just tell me. I’ll provide backup.”

“By any chance are you looking forward to seeing a struggle between two adults in suits?”

''Then again, I doubt we’ll be able to peacefully talk like we’re tourists.

This troublesome issue was deeply related to the higher ups and old members of the regional police and they had completely ignored the normal procedures when reinforcements had arrived from Tokyo. They had even denied me the bare minimum of sharing investigation data.

A police detective with no authority would be just as annoying as a mosquito flying around one’s ear.

As long as they kept things on a level that would not leave any official records behind, they might try to rough me up a bit.

But that made the mystery freak’s presence an issue.

If they tried to rough me up, we could likely settle it like adults, but… Well, I simply had to hope they would be above grabbing at the collar of an amateur middle school girl.

If they did do that, the situation would have passed the level where it could be “settled like adults”.

''Ugh, please don’t let this turn into a serious fistfight. I’m only in a dead end job with little hope of promotion.

At any rate, I maintained a bit of a defensive stance as I approached.

“…Wait a second. There’s no one inside the police car.”

“Maybe they went over to the prisoner transport vehicle.”

“Without locking the doors and with the engine running?”

“I see your point.”

Police cars were common in dramas, but those usually had drama original paint jobs. Each police station had its different designs and actual police officers would not agree to have pictures or videos of their cars taken. If perfect copies were made, they could be used for abductions and attacks on armored cars transporting money.

It was unlikely a police officer would leave one just sitting out like this.

As we continued along the shoulder of the highway, we found several more empty police cars dotting the shoulder. Beyond them was the prisoner transport vehicle.

It was a dark blue.

A small bus had been completely covered in armor plates and the windows had been sealed with thick metal bars. That should be enough to imagine it.

However…

“Why is it on its side?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“I would also love to know why the door is open.”

“If you could know the answer before doing the detective work, we would all have it a lot easier.”

The prisoner transport vehicle had fallen onto its side such that it was completely contained within the shoulder of the highway.

It did not seem to have crashed full speed into the central divider or the accident prevention wall. It was not damaged enough for that. There were no other damaged vehicles to be seen. Glass shards and light covers were strewn across the road, but it did not seem any other vehicle had been involved.

“It looks like the driver attempted a car stunt and failed.”

“Why would they do that?”

I called out randomly but received no response. I circled out to the front and tried to peer in through the windshield, but it was filled with small cracks, making the entire thing white. I could not see inside through it.

That left only one way to find out what the situation was inside: use the door pointed up due to the vehicle falling on its side.

Fortunately, the prisoner transport vehicle had police lights on the top and they were quite large and blocky. I was able to use them as footing to forcibly climb up.

The right-hand side was pointing straight up, so the window was at my feet. It was a prisoner transport vehicle, so the cracks running through the glass were oddly similar to the windshield. The cracks had spread across the entire window, but it had not shattered apart like a normal window would have.

''Does it have a special film placed across it?

“Detective, anyone in there?”

“I’m about to check.”

I moved my gaze from the window and moved toward the open door. The vehicle was essentially the same as a bus, so a tall, narrow automatic door that opened with compressed air was located near the driver’s seat.

I lay down on the side pointed up and stuck my upper body down through the door.

What I saw in my upside down vision was…

“…?”

“Detective!”

I heard the mystery freak calling for me, but I could not reply.

There was nothing.

No one was inside.

There must have been a driver, one or more police officers, and a prisoner, but not a single person remained. Helped by being flipped on its side, the completely deserted vehicle looked like a bizarre abstract painting with a theme of space or weightlessness.

I pulled my upper body out through the door.

I thought for a bit.

''Was this a complete accident or did someone plan this? Did the police evacuate the prisoner from the vehicle or did the prisoner take the police with him as hostages?

Either way, I knew that Hasebe Michio really had disappeared.

I had the information I needed to report, so I pulled out my cell phone while still standing on top of the toppled prisoner transport vehicle.

But…

“…Why can’t I get through? I thought all trains and highways these days had a perfect net environment.”

“If you’re pulling out your phone, does that mean you saw something dangerous?”

Seeing those sparkling eyes turned toward me made me not want to explain it to her.

===Part 9 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

The eerie sight of so many obviously handmade gravestones caused me to stand still in shock. Madoka then spoke up from beside me.

“Shinobu-kun, is that a snake?”

“!”

That light sense of unknown disgust was overwritten by a possible direct threat. Living in a rural area had not turned me into an expert on snakes, but I did know it was best to not be bit by a strange snake. And that was especially true when an ambulance could not be called.

And so I turned cautiously in the direction Madoka was pointing.

“…That’s…a snake?”

My statement became a question.

It was true that something long and narrow was stretched along the dried grass, but a close inspection showed it was not moving.

However, it did not seem to be a shed skin or a dead snake.

“Isn’t it just a rope?”

“Oh?”

Madoka and I approached to check.

It may have grown wet in the thick fog because it was oddly dark, but it was indeed a rotted rope. It seemed to have been left here for a long time because it had thick green moss on its surface and had almost fused with the ground.

I did not want to touch it because it was dirty, but it looked rotten enough that it would tear apart if I tugged on it.

Also…

“Hey, Shinobu-kun. Is this one of those things you see at Shinto shrines?”

“What do you call those? …I can’t remember the name.”

''Those things with white paper folded in zigzags. They’re attached to the ends of the staffs that priests wave around and decorate the shimenawa. …Um, what do we call those things?

After thinking that far, my cheek twitched.

''…Shimenawa?

“With these gravestone-like things and this strange rope… It feels like there are too many weird decorations here.”

“Do we really have to continue on through here?”

“Would you rather turn back?”

“That’s even worse.”

No matter what we said, we had to continue on. If we turned back or tried to circle around the place, we would be putting ourselves at greater risk of walking in circles.

Madoka and I continued forward while weaving between the gravestones.

It was not long before another odd object showed itself through the fog.

“…What is that?”

A sort of barricade cut across the path.

The front had a row of logs carved down like pencils and crossing each other. A horizontal log placed across them was tied in place with a rope. A line of those was placed to block our path. They appeared to be as old as the shimenawa we had seen before. The cuts on the logs had turned black and the initially sharp tips had rotted away. They also had moss and mushrooms growing on them.

Seeing them brought a few different thoughts to mind.

Madoka made a blunt comment from next to me.

“They must not have had a very high IQ.”

“I thought you would say that.”

“And these gaps are wide enough that they must have been keeping cars out instead of animals. They are violently displaying that their #1 rule is not welcoming outsiders. …Hmm, this is looking more and more like one of those eccentric village legends Enbi likes.”

“So is this Zenmetsu Village? If that rumor was true, the villagers have all been gone for over 30 years.”

“Horror stories are often decorated with the idea of the dead villagers’ ghosts or the mass murderer’s descendants to scare off any groups that might try to stop by for a test of courage.”

“Why would the victims turn into crazy killers? The only one at fault was the crazy killer who ran around with farm tools in hand.”

The X portion of the log barricades had a fair-sized gap below them. The same was true for the log passing horizontally. As Madoka had said, it seemed to be meant for vehicles. If I crouched down, I could easily pass under it.

Madoka jokingly said, “Welcome to Zenmetsu Village.”

“This village disappeared 30 years ago, right? So why can’t I see any roads or telephone poles?”

“Wouldn’t the roads have been buried below the trees and underbrush?”

“Asphalt wouldn’t turn to dirt no matter how long you waited. And what about the telephone poles?”

“They might be buried underground.”

“Even though this wasn’t a carefully maintained Intellectual Village?”

We walked across the dead grass. A rotting clearing was visible where the trees had at one point been knocked over and pulled out by someone.

Even my leather shoes were beginning to grow damp at this point. My socks felt disgusting. The school uniform was an inconvenient outfit no matter what you were trying to do. It was not suited for any kind of physical activity and it was not all that comfortable. I didn’t particularly care for the design either. On top of all that, it was expensive. That was only because everyone was required to buy it. If a normal store tried to sell them, they would stop stocking them almost immediately.

After five or ten minutes, the scenery began to change.

It happened just as I was beginning to doubt whether we had actually been travelling as straight as I thought we had.

“…That’s a building, right?”

“It looks like nothing more than a shack. In fact, it’s really just a storage shed.”

There was something there.

It was about five meters square and only maybe two meters tall. It had been made of thin plywood and strengthened with corrugated galvanized iron or something. The thin metal roof was forcibly held down with heavy stones. Simply put, the overall quality was on a level that even the pig from the Three Little Pigs that built the house of straw would laugh at.

The metal surface had rusted brown and it looked like it would break apart if we so much as touched it. It had a small window the size of the side of a goldfish tank, but I could not tell if the glass was frosted or if it was simply so dirty it had lost all transparency.

I could not see inside, but it was so dirty I would have preferred to stay out in the rain than take cover inside.

In fact, a closer inspection showed it was slightly tilted diagonally like a parallelogram. The instant I peeked inside, I could end up buried alive.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is living inside.”

“There’s something over here.”

We circled around behind the dilapidated cabin and found two objects that had turned brown from rust.

One was a metal drum.

The upper lid had been fully opened like a can of food and something like gravel had been spread across inside. However, some strange weeds were growing all across its surface.

“That metal drum has a faucet at the bottom. What is it?”

“Is it a water filter?”

If they had one of those, they must not have had running water.

And the other rusted object was a diesel generator of the type seen at the stands for temple festival fairs. However, I could see a small pipe that had completely crumbled, so I did not even need to imagine what sort of disaster would occur if someone actually poured fuel into it.

“Both the electricity and water were produced at home. What era were they living in?”

“It is looking unlikely we will find a working phone line here.”

“I’m not even sure we’ll find a red mailbox.”

We had no reason to search inside the crumbling cabin. We simply needed to cut across the basin surrounded by the four mountains and make our way to the elevated highway. The water filter must have excited Madoka’s health fanatic blood because she was showing a lot of interest in it, but I called toward her and suggested leaving the cabin.

As we continued through the thick fog, we found four of five similar buildings that also looked more like old storage sheds than houses. Each of them had the remains of a generator and metal drum as if that was a decided practice.

“If water filters were so common, did they not even have a well? They would have to go gather water in their daily cycle this way.”

“I don’t see any compressed gas cylinders. It doesn’t look like they have pipes running underground for town gas.”

They must have lived by drinking river water and cooking over a fire.

Even if the village had been abandoned for 30 years, this was clearly strange. The level of their lifestyle seemed too isolated.

Some of the shed-like cabins had their window broken, some had their pillars broken, and one’s roof had even crumbled down.

And…

As I casually glanced over at the crushed cabin, I saw something unpleasant.

“Uuh…”

It was green moss covering the floor.

However, there was an odd pattern to how it had spread. As if it had grown only in the remains of an old puddle, the green color dyed only a limited area.

This reminded me of something.

It of course reminded me of the stories about Zenmetsu Village.

“By any chance…did that grow from dried blood and the moisture of this thick fog?”

“Shinobu-kun, it’s over here too.”

Madoka pointed toward a cabin with a broken window.

A glance inside that window showed green moss growing on the walls, ceiling, and floor as if it had splattered everywhere. But the moss had not made its way into that building quite as much, so stains colored an odd dark brown could be seen in places.

It was at least old enough that there was no raw smell of iron.

But the visual was enough.

“Wait, wait, wait. How did the blood get all the way up on the ceiling?”

“Zenmetsu Village really was the golden age of crazy killer legends.”

“I prefer to think someone who heard the rumors spread chicken blood around as a prank.”

Feeling fed up with it, I began to turn away from the window, but then I looked back.

''…Oh?

“What is it, Shinobu-kun.”

“Nothing really…”

I circled around to the front of the cabin. The door was made to slide to the side, but the wooden rails had rotted away. I removed the door that was simply standing in place and leaned it against the wall. I then peered inside.

I saw dust, moisture, mildew, moss, and bloodstains.

Someone had apparently lived here, but I was not about to remove my shoes before going inside.

“I thought you weren’t going to check inside?”

“I wasn’t…but look.”

I pointed inside the small cabin and stepped inside to pick something up.

But then…

My right foot broke through the holey wooden panels and my leg sank down up to the calf.

“Ow!?”

“Shinobu-kun, be careful when you pull your leg out. If the edges dig into your skin, it will probably hurt a lot.”

I would have been careful whether she had warned me or not.

I slowly removed my leg. It seemed I had not really broken through the floor. It was the cover to a storage space under the kitchen that had broken. Naturally, no food was kept inside. Dirt had been swept inside the rectangular space which contained…the scattered remains of an old broken jar.

I initially thought I might have been the one to break it, but it seemed I was not. The edges of the pottery pieces had darkened after being left there for a long time.

“What are those?”

“It looks like a bunch of gold rings. Were they being stored in the jar?”

“They do not look like pure gold, though. They look quite cheap.”

“Of course they are. Someone who had a secret stash of pure gold wouldn’t be living in such a run-down shack.”

There was also some Japanese paper that was falling apart from the moisture. Ink had been used to write something in kanji on them, but…

“It’s written so quickly, I can’t read it.”

“Hmm…”

I pulled out my phone and took a photo.

The Zashiki Warashi might be able to decode that old writing. Nothing could be done at the moment though because my phone had no signal.

“Looking at this is not going to help us. Shinobu-kun, what were you pointing at before?”

“Oh, right. That over there.”

Madoka seemed to notice what was placed just outside the green moss zone.

“Oh? They have a gas range. The kind used for pots.”

“It doesn’t look all that rusted, does it?”

''Is it simply for cooking or does it have some other purpose?

I thought about turning the knob to see if it produced a flame, but decided against it. If something was wrong with the compressed gas cylinder, it could explode.

Instead, I took off the protective cover and removed the gas cylinder.

The bottom of the cylinder had the manufacture date written on it.

“Shinobu-kun, what does this look like it says to you?”

“It looks like February of this year to me.”

“Same here. …But why would this be here in Zenmetsu Village which was supposedly abandoned 30 years ago?”

Madoka and I exchanged a glance.

And then…

An unpleasant noise came from outside the cabin as if something had banged against the wall.

I lived in an Intellectual Village, but for the apartments I saw on TV, this may not have been that odd a noise. However, this was an abandoned village. This was Zenmetsu Village where the villagers had been slaughtered over 30 years ago. We should not have heard something hitting the wall. There should not have been anyone here but us.

“Maybe someone came here as a test of courage?”

“In the middle of the day?”

“Maybe one of our classmates is here?”

“Why would they not say anything?”

“Maybe it’s a bear or Youkai?”

“I do not see how that is any less dangerous.”

''Than what?

Both Madoka and I knew the answer, but neither of us wanted to say it.

This was Zenmetsu Village.

The villagers had all been slaughtered using farm tools like hoes and pitchforks.

A crazy mass murderer lived here.

And in that case…

The worst possible answer was…

A scraping sound began to travel along the wall. This was not the sound of someone leaving the cabin. It sounded like they were following the wall around.

Around to where?

The answer was simple. All too simple.

This cabin was a shabby building that was really nothing but a storage shed. Its design was very simple. It had only one door and the window was too small to enter or exit through.

Which meant…

Whoever was outside was circling around to the single entrance

“Sh-Shinobu-kun…”

Madoka’s face had grown pale.

I looked around, but it was hopeless to look for a tool to cover the door now. For one thing, the rails were broken and the door had only been standing in place.

What did we need?

What could function as a weapon? The wood materials, the sliding screen, and everything else had absorbed so much moisture they were practically falling apart. If I hit something with them, I had a feeling the wood would fall apart like wet paper.

And as I thought, I could hear it.

The sound continued. I heard scraping, scraping, scraping, scraping, scraping.

I could hear an object being dragged along the wall and I could hear the footsteps of someone circling around to the sole entrance and exit.

We had no time.

The eerie legend of Zenmetsu Village was beginning to swallow us alive.

===Part 10 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

The mystery freak and I made our way back to the rental car parked on the shoulder of the highway.

“Are we headed for Zenmetsu Village down below?”

“Of course not,” I spat out as I brought the car up to speed. “We know Hasebe Michio really did disappear from the prisoner transport vehicle. Who knows if it was him or the police that did it, but whoever did it will want to ensure he remains ‘vanished’. They won’t be hiding near the vehicle.”

“I thought those who do not want Hasebe to be found not guilty just had to ensure he died before the retrial?”

“Yes, but it makes no sense to have him vanish like this if that’s the case. Mystery freak, what do you think the quickest way to kill Hasebe in that situation would have been?”

“To throw him out onto the highway. After all, this fog is too thick to see even a few meters ahead of you.”

“They could also sprain his ankle to make sure he can’t move. As long as they keep it at a level that looks natural,” I agreed. “But they didn’t do that. They went out of their way to have Hasebe ‘vanish’. In that case, they may want to do something that takes some time. I can’t say what they are after, but the odds are good Hasebe is still alive at this point.”

“They might shoot him and disguise it as him trying to escape and giving them trouble while they try to arrest him again.”

“If so, this is our last chance. We need to use our time effectively.”

We were on our way to the tollgate connected to the junction.

From what I had heard, it had been created as an exit for a semiconductor factory.

“If Hasebe himself ran off, he’ll need some means of transportation. I doubt he would try to escape on foot in these mountains. That means he would head where cars are parked. My guesses are the workers at the tollgate or the parking lot for the semiconductor factory.”

“If the police are involved, they might have had someone come by on the highway and stuffed Hasebe in their trunk.”

“But they need to camouflage it as if Hasebe escaped. Either way, a nearby car will have to be stolen. If we know the model and number of the car used for camouflage, it can help us pursue them.”

“I hope they thought it through that far.”

“You have a point. True idiots are the hardest to read.”

I drove down the junction that circled around like a spring or naruto. Eventually, the rental car made it to the surface. The tollgate had become mostly unmanned with electronic toll collection, but I chose the less efficient manned gate.

“Detective, I hope the tollgate worker hasn’t disappeared.”

“I don’t think I could stand it if everyone had disappeared.”

An extremely bored looking man in his forties tossed aside a sports newspaper and fed the ticket I handed him into a machine.

“3200 yen.”

“I’m not the best driver, so is this fog going to last? I’ve been so nervous that my grip on the steering wheel has been terribly stiff.”

“3200 yen.”

“Have there been any accidents? I’m just so nervous.”

“3200 yen.”

“…Answer my questions, goddammit.”

With a sigh, I showed him my police badge and tossed it toward the passenger seat. After all, a close look would have shown I was from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. With all the realistic police dramas in recent years, a lot of people were oddly familiar with the organization and structure of the police.

The middle-aged man turned a doubtful look toward the mystery freak in the passenger seat.

“Are you really a cop? Who’s that girl?”

“Oh, oh, oh!! My position is that of an observer and a future wife, so-…!!”

“She’s a runaway girl I picked up in the area. That’s why I’m asking about the situation. You check on the people going on and off the highway, right?”

I-I technically didn’t lie.

I was just using a realllllly broad definition of “in the area”. The entire Kinki region was “in the area”. I never said a word about finding her walking along this highway.

I had only shown him my badge because I felt like it.

If the man decided to talk to me because he mistook me for a member of the regional police, that was not my problem.

That was the excuse I had to make, or I would be in a lot of trouble! This is what it’s like to be a poor public servant!!

“Hmm. Well, I haven’t heard about any accidents. I haven’t been told to block off the highway, either. Are you sure that girl didn’t walk off from a service station on the other side of one of the mountains? She might have wandered off along the shoulder of the road while her parents were shopping.”

''Oh, c’mon. Please do your job.

At the very least, a prisoner transport vehicle and some police cars had been abandoned on the highway leading toward Byakko Mountain.

“Any other questions? You didn’t just find a girl walking along the shoulder of the road while on a patrol. I’ve never heard of a traffic cop using a rental car while watching for speeding drivers.”

“Oh, right. Do you have a phone here?”

“No, I don’t. A long time ago, some idiot used an automated internet bank service while on the clock. It seems he ended up accidentally leaving the phone off the hook for several weeks. The higher ups got pissed at the huge bill and confiscated all the phones. They said to use our cell phones if we needed anything.”

“Eh? But our cell phones…”

“Yeah, the signal doesn’t reach out here at all. It’s terrible.”

''That means you can’t call for help if a robber attacks. Do you not understand how dangerous it is being in such a remote location?

''Well, if he can do this for so long, it just goes to show how peaceful this country is.

“Do you have something urgent to call someone about? What is it?”

“I have information a group of car thieves has moved into the area. Have you seen anyone suspicious recently?”

“Nope,” replied the middle-aged man right away. “In fact, isn’t this about the worst place for them? There’s nothing to steal here.”

“If you say so.”

“After all, there aren’t even any villages here. There are no cars to target.”

Enbi leaned over the driver’s seat much farther than was necessary.

She said, “Hey, hey, mister. I thought there was a huge semiconductor factory here.”

“Shut up, you damn brat. Get off of me. Ahem, what about that large factory and the cars of the workers?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” The middle-aged man must have entered gossiping mode because he stuck his elbow up on the money counter as he replied. “It’s true almost all the people who get off at the exit are related to the factory in some way. After all, over 8000 people work at it. It’s almost a small town in and of itself. All our income down here comes from that one factory. With the employees and shipments of materials and products coming in, we get a few thousand people coming in and out each day. It makes us plenty happy.”

“Then aren’t there a lot of cars?”

“There are, but they’re all in the factory parking lot. The people running the factory understand that the workers would be in trouble if they lost their car in this area that’s practically an isolated island. The entire parking lot is kept in the factory grounds and is surrounded by a thick wall. There are also tons of cameras and sensors, and they even hire guards just for the parking lot. I don’t see how anyone could steal a car from there.”

''I see.

We had to determine if a car had been stolen, so that information was worth keeping in mind.

“But do the workers live nearby? Their cars might be targeted at home.”

“No, no. That would never happen,” flatly denied the man. He laughed and continued, “Four Mountains…Oh, that’s the name of the basin between the mountains, by the way. Anyway, Four Mountains has no civilization aside from the factory.”

“What?”

“I hear there was a small village a few decades back, but it’s been abandoned. In fact, the factory would be in trouble otherwise.”

“What do you mean?” I asked while frantically trying to maintain the expression of a police officer while pushing back the mystery freak who was excitedly trying to raise her hand.

The man replied, “I don’t know the details myself, but it seems you need clean water and air to create the precision circuits that are thinner than a hair. The water is especially important. Apparently, it’s more profitable to give the most delicious water to machines rather than people. Any chaotic development would dirty the water.”

“So…”

“The Four Mountains area has been almost entirely bought up by a single corporation. It’s just a giant area of nothing though, so some kids come in as a test of courage sometimes. …Even this elevated highway was built by ‘borrowing’ the corporation’s land. On paper, it’s a private road.”

“Eh? But it’s a highway. Is that even possible?”

“Highways don’t belong to the country. Even we’re becoming privatized, so we’re a normal corporation just like with trains. That means we can make business deals with other corporations. It might have just barely been allowed, but there was no other place to bring the tunnels through.”

In other words…

Whether they would ever do so or not, they had the option of cutting off one of the highways that acted as Japan’s arteries. All the factory had to do was make an announcement saying the road was closed for the next three days or something like that. And this was a junction that stretched in four different directions, leading to different areas across the country. That alone showed how much influence a corporation could have over the country.

“Mister, does that mean everyone who works in the factory drives over the mountains to get to work?”

“Hm? Hmm?”

The middle-aged man fell silent for a moment.

I thought he might have been confused by the supposed runaway girl asking him a question, but it seemed that was not the case.

He lowered his voice before speaking.

“No, it seems about half of the workers live in the dorms on the factory grounds.”

“Half? Didn’t you say there are more than 8000 in all?”

“It isn’t that surprising. Remember the government’s new…what was it? The business-oriented low income assistance and favorable treatment system? I think it had to do with providing support related to corporate taxes. Anyway, as I said, the Four Mountains area was bought up for the water and air. The dorms are probably kept as spotlessly clean as the factory. At any rate, there’s no chance of a car being stolen from there.”

Once the man finished, I politely thanked him and finally brought the rental car toward the exit.

Surprisingly, the sign had only one arrow and it pointed toward the semiconductor factory. Not only was there no other landmark, but it seemed there weren’t even any other roads.

I stopped the car in the space at the exit prepared for large trucks to check on their tire chains or freight. It was time we discussed what to do next.

The mystery freak had a curious look on her face.

“I’ve heard of bayside industrial complexes having the final train stop head to their factory. Only those with employee IDs can get through the ticket gate.”

“Yes, but did you see the name of the factory?”

“Kuroyama Electronics Group – Four Mountains Precision Semiconductor Factory.”

We exchanged a glance

The mystery freak did not look all that surprised, so she had probably known from the beginning. She had likely discovered it while investigating the legend of Zenmetsu Village. I did not know if the legend surrounding that abandoned village was true, but just because I was a police officer did not mean I would search through the database for information on cases unrelated to the ones I was working on.

“The incident Hasebe Michio was suspected in was at the home of Kuroyama Electronics Group’s president, right?”

“Now then, now then. Is this a coincidence or is there a reason behind it?”

I decided to drive over toward the factory in question. The horrible fog was bad enough and then nothing besides the asphalt road was maintained. The entire area was covered by a thick forest. This was nothing simple like a hedge. It was a complete wall of greenery. It was so thick I felt forcing my way through it would leave my entire body scraped up. This sight told me just how much human interference there was in what we commonly thought of as “nature”.

You often heard the phrase “humans are a part of earth’s nature”, but that did not mean humans were kind to the earth and it did not mean nature would unconditionally accept us. To a naked human with no fangs or fur, untouched nature was actually a difficult environment to live in.

“Is this the factory?”

“It’s just a wall, so it’s hard to say.”

Due to the fog, no structure was visible without approaching quite close. A giant wall over five meters tall suddenly appeared alongside the road as we drove along. It was primarily made of thick concrete and the very top had barbed wire installed. Needless to say, it had cameras and sensors as well.

The wall seemed to continue forever.

In all seriousness, we continued for over a kilometer and saw no sign of a gate.

“Is this a military facility or something…?”

“It looks like a prison,” I said in annoyance

This semiconductor factory supported the technology of Intellectual Villages and received support of its own from the government.

''I can understand being more sensitive than average about having your tech leak out, but is it really necessary to take it this far?

As we continued on even longer, we finally came across what looked like a gate. The road in front of it spread out like a bus roundabout, so it was likely the materials shipment entrance rather than the front entrance.

This entrance was not a gate with a bar that lowered across it like at a coin-operated parking lot.

It had a giant double-door gate with metal bars and a row of electrically-operated spikes was located on the ground. Even if a giant truck crashed into it at full speed, I doubted it would break.

“…”

A man in workwear sat in the reception box that was as small as a storage shed. He was watching us expressionlessly.

I continued on at low speed and passed by the gate.

“…There really is nothing. Attacking a police box and stealing a police car would be easier than stealing a car from here.”

“But what does that mean?” The mystery freak tilted her head in the passenger seat. “The prisoner transport vehicle was toppled over on the highway and Hasebe Michio had disappeared. But this is no place to steal a car.”

“Whoever caused him to disappear might have had another scenario in mind.”

“Possibly, but isn’t the entire premise a bit odd?” The mystery freak raised her index finger. “Let’s say someone wants Hasebe Michio gone and they have been carefully putting together a plan for this day. If they had thought this through so carefully, would they really attack here? If they attacked somewhere other than Four Mountains Junction – a normal road off the highway perhaps – they would have had more options.”

It was not logical.

That meant it was not the work of a professional.

But what did that mean?

The most likely unprofessional possibility was…

“Are you saying the police did not intend to attack here if they intended to attack at all? So was it Hasebe Michio who initiated the escape?”

“Hasebe might have intentionally stopped the prisoner transport vehicle or it might have started with a true accident, but the possibility is there.”

“But why? If he did nothing, the odds were really good his request for a retrial would have gone through and he would have been found not guilty. Escaping here will send him back to prison where the death penalty awaits.”

“I don’t know.” The mystery freak sighed. “What if the police really did intend to eliminate him and he realized it? If he thought he was going to be killed if he did nothing, he might try to escape from the police.”

There were ways of getting down from the highway without passing through the tollgate.

Some of the pillars supporting the highway had staircases installed. They were used for high-speed bus rest stops and emergency evacuation. If he climbed down one of them, he could hide on the surface without anyone realizing it.

But…

Even if Hasebe had escaped the prisoner transport vehicle and made his way to the ground, what would he do then? He would have given the police the justification to shoot him as an escaped death-row inmate and then hidden himself in a thick forest ''with no witnesses.

Wouldn’t he want to quickly obtain a means of transportation and escape far away no matter how risky that might be?

“But,” began the mystery freak.

She was changing the subject.

She was switching over.

“All of our speculation is based on the assumption that Hasebe Michio is completely innocent and the police are desperate to eliminate him.”

“Wait. You can’t mean…”

“So.” She grinned. The mystery freak spoke with the grin of a demon that toyed with people’s lives. “Let’s talk about a simple possibility. What if there is some reason why a retrial would be a problem for Hasebe Michio? If he knew he could not win the retrial, isn’t it entirely possible he would have desperately used this chance to escape while being transported?”

===Part 11 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

The scraping continued.

That noise from the outside wall of the run-down shack approached the single exit.

In that instant, Madoka and I did not head for the door. We instead moved toward the opposite wall.

That wall had never been anything more than thin plywood with galvanized sheet iron for sturdiness and waterproofing. After decades of absorbing moisture, the wood had deteriorated and the iron was so rusted its original color had disappeared. The wall looked like it would break if we so much as touched it.

You could no longer even call it a wall.

“Ora!!” I shouted as I kicked the wall while putting my weight into the blow.

It felt more like kicking wet cardboard than wood. It more tore than broke and a large hole opened in the wall. I first let Madoka pass through before escaping the shack after her.

The previously calm scraping noise suddenly changed.

I still held the gas cylinder the size of a 500 milliliter drink bottle that I had removed from the portable stove, so I threw it back through the hole I had created.

“I hope you’re blown to smithereens!!” I shouted.

I heard a sound like grass being trod on from the other side of the small building. The attacker may have frantically jumped out of the way or gotten down on the ground.

Either way, the idiot had judged wrong.

I had thrown that cylinder in, but I had no idea how to ignite it.

It had been a bluff.

And meanwhile…

“Run, Madoka!”

“Please spare me any more trouble that can’t be resolved with money!!” shouted Madoka as I grabbed her arm and began to run.

We did not know who this enemy was, what they were armed with, or how many of them there were in all. The legend said the murders were primarily carried out with farm tools such as pitchforks and hoes, but nothing said this attacker had to remain faithful to that. It was possible they even had a hunting shotgun to use when no one was watching.

The one piece of luck was the thick fog surrounding us.

That obstacle prevented anyone from seeing more than a few meters ahead, so projectile accuracy would drop dramatically. Or so I assumed. At any rate, we needed to run as far away as we could so this enemy could not reach within “a few meters” of us. That would be better than sneaking around in search of some kind of shield.

The fog made it difficult to tell where we were or how far we had gone, but I felt as if my hearing had grown sharper in exchange for the poor visibility.

Madoka tried to look back, but I tugged on her arm to stop her.

We ran.

“Hey, Shinobu-kun. I hear footsteps following us!”

“So? That’s no reason for us to stop!!”

We passed by a few of those storage shed-like cabins and made our way outside the village. The sound of footsteps through the grass continued approaching behind us.

I was afraid the tall underbrush and rotting trees would block our path once we left the village, but fortunately only the remnants of the dead and rotten grass remained. There was nothing in our way.

Of course, that also meant there was nothing to protect us from any projectiles.

The importance of the fog only continued to grow.

If this person was armed with a shotgun or crossbow, we could be killed in one shot once the person made it close enough to see us.

“Sh-Shinobu-kun!”

“What!?”

“I…I can’t. I’m wearing leather shoes. I can’t run anymore.”

“I’m wearing leather shoes, too!!”

''You’re a health fanatic who even pays attention to what water you drink, so why is your physical ability lower than average? Can you even call that being a health fanatic?

I pulled on Madoka’s arm as her feet threatened to get tangled up beneath her and half-forcibly made her continue running. Either that proved effective or our pursuer’s sense of direction was thrown off by the thick fog because the sound of footsteps behind us gradually seemed to grow quieter.

We were gaining distance.

We might be able to escape.

And with that thought in mind, something suddenly appeared before my eyes.

It seemed to split through the white fog.

“…Eh?” said Madoka in confusion.

I also came to a stop despite the situation.

What we saw was something that should not have been there.

It was a run-down shack that looked more like a storage shed than a house.

This was the abandoned village we had supposedly just left.

It was impossible.

This should not have happened.

Madoka and I had run straight forward without worrying about the consequences. Our route might have curved slightly, but there was absolutely no way we could have made a full U-turn back to our original location.

And yet…

That village was indeed blocking our path ahead.

Zenmetsu Village.

Thirty years ago, a single serial killer had taken the lives of every single villager.

“What happened?” I said out loud. “We ran straight away from there! Why is the village right here in front of us!?”

The footsteps of our pursuer once more began growing louder through the fog behind us.

But I ignored that direct threat as the legend Madoka had mentioned replayed in the back of my mind.

Supposedly, groups using Zenmetsu Village for a test of courage would end up dragged into the incident. When they frantically fled the village, it would pursue them by circling around ahead of them and swallow them up.

===Part 12 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

With the extent that large-scale factory went to prevent information on their technology to escape, I doubted I could acquire much information on the goings on inside with by chatting with the guards. The guards would have been trained in that regard.

Whether Hasebe Michio had escaped of his own volition or he had been abducted by someone, we did not have much time left.

We could not remain long in a location with little chance of acquiring any information.

But…

“Do you have any other ideas where Hasebe might have gone after disappearing on the highway? There’s nothing here but the semiconductor factory.”

Yes.

Where else could we go?

Hasebe had to be somewhere, but we had no clues to pursue him with.

“Even in this fog, a man in a neon orange prisoner uniform would stand out walking along the highway. There are also plenty of cameras and sensors installed to detect speeding and traffic jams.”

“So is he in Zenmetsu Village?” The mystery freak in the passenger seat was doing something with her smartphone that had no signal. “But even if it isn’t maintained, this entire basin area is the private property of Kuroyama Electronics Group, right? And the semiconductor factory needs clean water, so they can’t have industrial waste dumped here. Don’t you think there must be a network of cameras and sensors running throughout this desolate forest even if it doesn’t look like it?”

It was certainly a possibility.

However…

“Do you have any actual evidence?”

“This.” Enbi lightly shook her smartphone. “We suddenly lost our cell phone signal once we left the tunnel. I had thought it was due to the area being undeveloped, but if the entire area is the private property of a corporation, another possibility comes to mind.”

“…Artificial jamming?”

“That’s a large factory with 8000 people working in it. For that and for the careful management of production amounts to match the fluctuation in currency rates, a high-speed internet connection is a necessity. They can’t do their job without phones and the internet. Even if no television or radio signals had originally reached this place, they would have provided it with a proper internet environment when the factory was built. After all, this is a corporation large enough to prepare a highway just for the factory. There’s no way they would overlook just this one aspect.”

“So is this a means of keeping technical information from leaking out?”

“I don’t know if they would set up jammers over such a wide area just for that, though.”

“What is the legality of this?”

“Laws related to electro-magnetic signals can be ignored to a certain extent on private property. Company conference rooms and rooms in high class restaurants often have jammers to prevent bugging. The given reason is to ban the use of cell phones, though.”

The land contained nothing other than the factory. While tens of thousands of cars would cross the highway each day, they only crossed the junction from one tunnel to another. They would see some interference with their cell phone signal while surrounded by the mountains, but the signal would recover upon exiting the other tunnel. No one would bother investigating it too much.

The highway was even referred to as a private road. The cables for the emergency landline phones on the highway might have been cut as well.

“So the factory secretly constructed a high-speed wired connection that only they can use and have cut off all other forms of communication?”

“That’s what…I think anyway.” Enbi may have suggested the idea, but she sounded doubtful. “But don’t the delivery companies contact the distribution center by phone? There are also services that use a GPS in the package to check its status over the internet. If Kuroyama Electronics Group has cut all of that off of their own discretion, I think someone might complain.”

They had bought up the entire basin between the mountains and surrounded their factory with tall and thick walls. On top of that, we suspected they were using jammers to create electromagnetic interference and had cameras and sensors set up to search for intruders.

That gave it all an imposing atmosphere.

It was as if they had carefully cut out their own independent territory.

But at the same time…

“If they have a surveillance network like that, the factory’s guard room might have data concerning Hasebe Michio. If he didn’t go to the factory, he must either be on the highway or in the forest.”

“But I doubt they would agree to cooperate. Having security on your personal property is perfectly legal, but it still isn’t something they want to reveal if they don’t have to. Unlike the West, Japan is sensitive to cameras and a surveillance culture. Also…”

The mystery freak trailed off.

This bothered me.

It bothered me a lot.

After all, that girl was constantly surrounded by death. Hearing her trail off gave me the unpleasant feeling that this was something that knowledge or ignorance of would affect my continued survival.

“What is it, mystery freak?”

“Well…” The mystery freak sighed. “If my guesses here are right, doesn’t that mean this is a small independent territory created by Kuroyama Electronics Group? There are 8000 workers at the factory and even the people working for the highway insist it’s a private road. …And Hasebe Michio was given the death penalty for attacking the house of Kuroyama Electronics Group’s president.”

“Wait a second. You don’t mean…?”

“We had the Hasebe theory and the police theory, but now another theory has shown itself, detective.”

A close look at Enbi’s smile showed it was a bit stiff.

She may have been interested in people’s deaths, but she of course did not want to be directly involved in it herself.

“What if someone from the Kuroyama Electronics Group took action to take revenge for their leader? What if someone could not allow this prisoner to be found innocent in a retrial? Why did Hasebe disappear in this area that is both difficult to escape from and difficult to camouflage an escape in? Because this is Kuroyama’s independent territory. Because this is the area along his transportation route that Kuroyama had the most power in. What if that is the answer?”

The story suddenly grew a lot more suspicious.

In the truly worst case, it was possible all 8000 people working in the factory were the criminals behind it. No, it went beyond that. Four Mountains Junction was a private road owned by Kuroyama Electronics Group. If they closed the road, it would not only affect the highway workers but also slow the distribution of goods throughout the country. I could not even guess how far the effects would spread.

There were plenty of ways around this junction: sea, air, rail, and normal roads. However, the time and cost of taking those routes could not be underestimated. There was a good reason the highways were the country’s primary distribution route. In the economic world, there was always a reason an alternate path was not taken.

In other words, this “private road” was a free pass that used the Japanese economy as a shield.

This went well beyond a conspiracy by the higher ups and old members of the regional police.

It was possible help in large or in small had been taken from people across Japan and possibly even foreign corporations in order to eliminate a single man.

“Wait, wait, wait. This reminds me of Zashou Island. Are you saying common sense itself is being distorted here?”

“This land has 8000 soldiers and a thick forest with no one watching,” muttered the mystery freak in shock. “Whether they are judging the criminal who killed their president or torturing him for information about the murder, doesn’t the Kuroyama Electronics Group theory seem the most dangerous and yet most likely option?”

We had no proof that the corporation had abducted Hasebe Michio.

Even if any existed, it would likely be eliminated as soon as possible.

But nothing could be worse than forcibly investigating Kuroyama Electronics Group and finding nothing. Not only did I not have a warrant, but I had no authority as a police officer because this was not within my jurisdiction. If I climbed the wall and snuck into the factory, I would be guilty of illegal entry. I could even be used as grounds for forcing through the Advanced Technology Disclosure Prevention Bill that had been in the news lately. That would bring permanent shame on me as a police officer who supposedly protected the public order.

On top of that, this was a small independent territory of a single corporation.

If an executive was in a bad mood, it was possible the police would never be called and I would be buried in the forest at the hands of those 8000 soldiers. Four Mountains had a powerful enough foundation to continue on with their peaceful lives even after doing that.

They were extremely suspicious, but they were too big to carelessly try anything against them.

“Now then, now then.” Enbi the mystery freak asked a question from the passenger seat. “What should we do now, detective?”

===Part 13 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

We had run across a mystery person in the remains of Zenmetsu Village, run as quickly as we could from the village, and then found the village waiting for us up ahead.

What were we to make of this situation?

“Shinobu-kun, we can’t stay still! The footsteps are getting closer!!”

“Dammit!!”

For the moment, we focused on running away from the obvious threat. But was that truly the correct answer? It seemed impossible, but I was afraid we would run and run and run until we found the owner of those footsteps waiting ahead of us as if we had circled around the entire globe.

I ran as if parting the thick fog while still holding Madoka’s hand.

We passed by the tilted silhouette of the shack that had been abandoned for decades.

''…?

''Wait a second. Is this…?

“Shinobu-kun!!”

That sudden shout was accompanied by a shove.

I rolled along the wet dead grass. But I did not have time to cry out in protest.

As if slicing through the fog, the pointed end of a rusted farm tool stabbed out.

It was a pitchfork. It was one of those ridiculously large fork-like tools used to carry hay. The handle was meant to be held with both hands, so it was quite long. Specifically, it was about 150 centimeters long. The fork portion made it look more like a strange spear than a farm tool. It looked large enough to kill a human if it stabbed through anywhere on the torso.

Plus, the end was fully covered in rust and the tines were of different lengths because some had broken off partway.

I was certain I would get some strange infection if I was stabbed with it.

I heard some odd breathing that almost sounded like a poorly-made whistle.

The pitchfork was pulled back slowly. The outstretched spring was being contracted in preparation for the next attack.

The tip shook.

It moved from where I had been and turned toward Madoka.

“You bastard!!”

While still lying on the dead grass, I searched around with my right hand. My fingertips found something hard and I threw the rock toward the attacker.

It did not hit. I heard a solid sound as if it had struck a distant wall.

But it had expressed my hostility.

The pitchfork’s aim clearly changed. It turned toward me.

I had no intention of doing nothing as I was attacked. By that time, I had forced myself to a standing position with a rolling motion.

“Shinobu-kun! What are you doing!?”

“Shut up! You go hide!!” I shouted.

Now that I had the attacker’s attention, I turned my back. I wanted any weapon I could find, so I ran toward a nearby shack.

At first, I had thought the exact same village had circled around in front of us.

But that was not the case.

It had been difficult to tell through the thick fog, but a closer look had shown the details were completely different. Basically, a few small villages of four or five houses were located here and there. We had run straight and travelled from Village A to Village B.

Once you knew how it worked, there was nothing to be afraid of. In fact, I could even take advantage of it.

At any rate, I needed a weapon. I needed something to put me on even footing with that psycho. The attacker had to have acquired that weapon here in Zenmetsu Village. The small cabins had no room to store huge farm tools, and if they had the money or materials to build a storehouse, they would have upgraded their homes.

In that case, the tools would most likely be found leaning up against the outer walls.

“Ah! Found one!!”

A worn-down shovel was leaning up against the wall. It had half-fused with the wall that had grown dark with all the moisture it had absorbed over the years.

Just as I reached out for it, I heard footsteps approaching from behind.

I grabbed the shovel with all my strength and did not hesitate to swing it horizontally using the motion of turning around to face the attacker.

“…?”

I felt something slip off.

The triangular metal portion made to dig holes had flown right off the handle!

With a sharp whistling breath, the giant fork-like tool attacked from beyond the fog. Instead of another stabbing attack, it was swung down like someone trying to split a watermelon.

I immediately tried to block it by holding the shovel handle up horizontally, but it didn’t help.

The handle was so rotten that it was no stronger than wet cardboard, so it broke all too easily. A heavy impact came down on the top of my head.

“Bh..gbhah!?”

The strike sent me crumbling straight down to the ground. The attacker’s pitchfork rotated around. This time, the worn down tip was being stabbed straight toward my face!

But then…

A change came over the attacker who was about to stab down the pitchfork as if leaning down on it.

With a splat, something like wet seaweed fell from the dirty cabin’s roof and covered about half of the attacker’s head.

However, this was no place to find seaweed.

This seaweed-like substance was writhing around oddly even though no wind was blowing through the area.

It was a bundle of snakes.

Over ten snakes about as thick as a little finger had fallen atop the attacker’s head.

“…!!!???”

A biological sense of disgust that had nothing to do with reason ran down my spine.

But the same had to apply to the attacker.

He frantically tried to brush away the group of snakes that had fallen on his head. In his haste, he let go of the pitchfork with one hand.

His focus wavered.

The tip of the pitchfork wavered.

“Go to hell!!”

I threw one broken half of the shovel handle toward the attacker’s face. I hit this time, but it did not seem to do much damage.

All I needed was to buy some time.

I frantically stood up and strengthened my grip on the other half of the broken handle.

I had no time for hesitation.

The handle had been rotting to pieces already. I could not stop the attacker by striking with or throwing it.

And so…

I held it with both hands as if it was a knife and immediately stabbed the jagged broken edge of the handle into the attacker’s thigh.

“Gyah!?”

I felt a soft sensation.

I did not want to think about whether that came from the rotting handle or the attacker’s leg.

“Gh, ghh! Ah, ah, ah!?”

The attacker fell to the side. The small snakes covering the attacker’s head scattered in an instant as if slipping in amongst the dead grass. The sight of something stabbing into his leg must have been a shock to the attacker because he used both hands in an attempt to pull the remains of the handle out of his leg.

Yes, he used both of the hands he had been using to hold the pitchfork.

“You bastard…”

When the attacker heard my voice, he seemed to finally catch on to the situation. He realized I had swiped the giant pitchfork he had let go of.

And I was swinging that pitchfork up above my head.

“If you’re!! Gonna try to stab people with this!! Don’t get so upset!! When someone!! Attacks you back!!!!!!”

I swung it down again and again.

The farm tool was designed like a giant fork, so it would not stab into someone unless thrust straight at them. However, I was essentially beating him with a blunt weapon similar to a wooden sword with a metal weight on the end. It could easily break a bone.

I was able to rationally analyze that in my head, but I could not stop my arms.

I could feel something boiling up in my mind.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

I let out a great roar.

I could not stand anything. I could not stand how the attacker was curling up and covering his head with his hands as if he was the victim. He had been doing whatever he wanted a minute ago, but this was how he acted once someone attacked back. I decided to continue beating him until his true nature had been fully revealed.

“Shinobu-kun?”

I then heard a familiar voice.

Madoka had come by to check on me. She seemed to be peeking around a corner of the shack.

“Shinobu-kun, wait!! You can’t go any further than this! You’ll kill him!!”

“Pant!! Pant!!”

My hands were trembling. I was breathing heavily. I stopped swinging down the pitchfork, but my fingers were so stiff with tension and anger that they refused to obey my commands. As if I was waiting for a numb leg to recover, I would have to wait a moment before being able to let go of the pitchfork.

The attacker was curled up in the fetal position.

The person who lay trembling on the ground was a man in his forties or fifties with a beard covering his entire face and wearing clothes that looked like dirty old rags.

“Who are you?”

Pain returned to my head as if it had only just now recalled being struck.

As Madoka helped support my shaky body, I shouted toward the attacker lying on the dead grass.

“Who the hell are you!?”

===Part 14 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

More than twenty years before, Hasebe Michio had been sentenced to death for the crime of killing the president of Kuroyama Electronics Group, but he had disappeared during transport while a retrial was being requested.

He had vanished in the vast private property of the Kuroyama Electronics Group. Although no evidence had been found, it was possible the Kuroyama Electronics Group had abducted him.

The key to this mystery was the surveillance recordings of the security company.

According to the mystery freak’s speculation, the communications interference in the Four Mountains basin came from jamming devices. She also theorized a large number of wired cameras and sensors had been secretly installed. If that was true, it could be an important clue to Hasebe Michio’s location whether Kuroyama was guilty or not.

Even if the Kuroyama Electronics Group had nothing to do with his disappearance, it was possible the higher ups and old members of the regional police saw him as a nuisance as well. Either way, every second counted.

“But, detective, this is the Kuroyama Electronics Group’s independent territory. You have no authority right now, so I doubt anyone will hand over the video recordings if you ask.”

“They have absolute control here, but this independent territory is not all that large,” I said while driving the rental car down the road we had come on. “Seventy percent of the security companies in the country that specialize in corporations have either their headquarters or Japanese branch office in Tokyo.”

“I see. You think you can get the recordings if you go after the Tokyo headquarters? And fortunately, your Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department badge has unrivalled power when used in Tokyo.”

“Even if the Kuroyama Electronics Group has the local guards on their side, they might not have influence over everyone at the distant headquarters. And the guards will have no choice but to obey the regulations of their company. The video footage will be sent to a server at their headquarters for storage.”

“That means we just need to know exactly what security company to check. But everyone at the gate wore a factory uniform with nothing indicating the security company.”

“We need to check the cable that the footage is sent over. Different companies have different standard infrastructure they use. If I have the desk group back at the Metropolitan Police Department check which companies use which cables, we can track them down.”

“Do we have to search that entire thick forest?”

“Are you testing me?” I gave a scornful laugh. “As the name suggests, Four Mountains is surrounded by mountains. They’ll use the tunnels to pass the cables through. The cables will be buried along the shortest route between the factory and the nearest tunnel. That would be the one through Seiryuu Mountain.”

We naturally moved from the Four Mountains’ center junction as we moved toward the location connecting the outer tunnel and the semiconductor factory.

After a while, the distance from the factory caused the menace of nature to suddenly close in on us.

“…The road is disappearing.”

“Let’s get out and deal with this quickly. The only people here are with Kuroyama, so nothing good will come of being found investigating the corporation.”

I opened the driver’s side door and the unpleasantly moist air quickly rushed in. It was fog, but it was not refreshingly cool. It was somehow hot, humid, and moist.

The mystery freak stepped out from the passenger seat, placed her hands on her hips, and looked out across the dried up and rotting forest.

“Wow, this is horrid. This forest is so thick I wouldn’t be surprised to find a few inconvenient corpses.”

“There’s something wrong with you if corpses are the first thing a forest brings to mind.”

“If we do find the model number for the cable, what do we do then? We can’t use our phones, but don’t tell me we will head all the way back to Tokyo.”

“The signal is only affected in this basin between the mountains. We only have to pass through the tunnel and leave Four Mountains to use our phones. I will report the situation to my coworkers and then we wait for information at a service area. Once we have a clue concerning Hasebe Michio, we can begin tracking him again.”

“I see. In that case, let’s use the tunnel through Genbu Heights! The moonlight service area has a pink ice cream that is supposed to grant love between the two who eat it together!!”

“That would be embarrassing to do with a lover, so why would you want to do it with a complete stranger? In fact, I’m still not sure why the two of us have been driving long distances together on the highway.”

“So you admit using the highway together like this has been a sign of our love!? In that case, I’m prepared to give you a fan service scene you will never forget!”

Saying anything would only have made it worse, so I ignored her and made my way into the forest.

As I headed deeper while stepping forcefully on the ground, I noticed something odd not even 10 meters in. I crouched down and moved a rotting black object at my feet that might have been humus or organic waste. And then I found it.

Something like a concrete ditch cut across. However, it was not meant for rainwater like a ditch in a residential area. It was a concrete covering prepared to prevent wild animals from digging up or biting through the exposed cables.

The cover was divided into blocked sections about 50 centimeters across. I grabbed one of them and forced it up.

Spider webs and earth had made their way inside, but I spotted a cable as thick as my thumb inside. It was covered in black plastic that had the same string of numbers printed at set intervals.

I took my cell phone from my suit pocket and photographed the cable.

“That should do it. Hey, mystery freak, I have the information we needed. Let’s get back to the car. If we pass through the tunnel and stop at the nearest service area…”

I trailed off because something seemed odd.

The mystery freak was not responding.

I turned around and found only the dense forest and thick fog. Enbi had been causing so much noise before, but she was completely gone. I could not even hear her voice.

“Hey…?”

''Is she messing around and trying to surprise me?

With that silly thought in mind, I glanced around.

And then…

A dull impact suddenly ran through the bridge of my nose.

“Bah…!?”

My vision flashed white. All strength left my knees and I crumbled to the ground.

''Someone…hit me? And on the nose…? They were right in front of me!? When and how did they get that close? I didn’t even see their face!!

Footsteps through the underbrush circled around.

They circled around behind me.

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_111.png|thumb]]

A slender arm wrapped around my neck from behind. Vise-like strength began strangling me. The flow of blood was cut off more than the flow of air and an intense heat swelled up in my head. From the soft sensation on my back, I could just barely surmise this attacker was female, but that was all the information I had.

My vision spun around.

This was a sign of my thoughts and consciousness leaving due to the lack of blood to my head.

And just before I fully lost consciousness…

“Oh, c’mon. Pass out already. Or are you enjoying my breasts?”

I heard a familiar abusive voice in my ear.

''Hishigami Mai… What are…you doing here?

===Part 15 (Hishigami Mai)===

Honestly.

Searching for Hasebe Michio who had disappeared from the highway? That incident I had picked up over the police radio was likely what they were here for, but Kuroyama Electronics Group had nothing to do with that. I had my own annoying issues to deal with. I couldn’t have them messing it all up with their amateurish investigation.

I threw the detective and my little sister in their rental car while they took a carefree nap. For an instant, I seriously considered stripping them both naked and positioning them in an embrace, but I stopped myself at the last second. I was on a job, so it was no time to be having fun.

Instead, I left a memo telling them Kuroyama Electronics Group was the wrong direction and they needed to look into Youkai if they wanted to find Hasebe. I of course added a note that I would physically punish them if they did not burn the memo in the car’s ashtray after reading it.

A dull electronic tone sounded.

It came from the radio I had been given by the semiconductor factory. It used a band that could slip through the jamming.

“Hello, hello.”

“Do you get it now that you’ve seen for yourself? No obvious footprints have been left. That’s the problem.”

The voice belonged to an elderly man who could easily be described as “stern”, but he seemed to have some malice following him around. He was like a diligent prisoner who would maintain the guillotine meant to be used on him. …But given the nature of the factory, that might have been more than just a metaphor.

“If you understand, return to the factory. We have mountains of troublesome issues to take care of.”

“Understood. I’ll be right back.”

I had frantically made up an excuse to leave the factory and ensure my sister and the detective did not step on any strange landmines, so I couldn’t exactly argue. And it was true we didn’t have much time.

I sat in the driver’s seat of a small Kuroyama Electronics Group company car. I simply could not get used to electric cars. Without the roar of the engine, I could sometimes forget just how fast I was driving.

However, I did like the beckoning cat bottle cap dolls lined up on the dashboard.

''How many of those are there again?

“U-um,” began the small dog sitting obediently in the passenger seat.

Technically, he was a harmless canine Youkai called a Sunekosuri.

“Should you have really left those people like that?”

“I gave them a chance. In a case needing my involvement, this is almost a miracle. If they continue their misguided attack on Kuroyama despite my kindness, there’s no saving them. I need to focus on my own job.”

“B-but wasn’t one of them your sister?”

“Try not to bring that up. The situation is a bit unique when it comes to Hishigami women. Well, just think of my abandoning her as being a form of trust.”

I drove along in the electric car for a while longer before speaking once more.

“Sunekosuri, how are you faring?”

“F-fine. I have gotten a bit used to it, but…ugh. This should be a rural area…so why do I feel so bad?”

“This is the opposite of a carefully maintained Intellectual Village. This is made for machines. It’s disguised as natural, but it is actually filled with artificial aspects. It’s a tough environment for a Youkai like you.”

I arrived at the main entrance to the semiconductor factory. I showed the guard my temporary guest ID and slowly drove the car inside the wall.

The atmosphere suddenly changed.

Anyone who saw the inside would likely notice a certain fact. The exceptionally tall outer wall and the barbed wire were not merely meant to stop industrial spies from getting in.

The fog, the air, and everything else were trapped inside this space.

Yes. All of that equipment was also used ''to keep anyone from escaping.

“As you know,” said the elderly man over the radio as I brought the car around to the parking lot. “This looks like a large scale semiconductor factory and it does in fact create and ship out goods, but its true purpose lies elsewhere. This is a facility to imprison anyone who commits a serious breach of the corporation’s trust. If someone commits an act of industrial espionage by bringing internal documents out, they will be transferred here.”

''A breach of trust and industrial espionage, hm?

''Does that also apply to employees who recommend making certain internal documents public or the victims of products that accidentally catch fire?

“I have heard it referred to as the corporate prison, but what is its official name?” I asked.

“It has no name. After all, it would be a problem if any records if it remained. That is what kind of place this is. We have the equipment needed and we can even overwrite common sense here.”

“Who would have ever thought the nation’s leading large scale factory with over 8000 employees is actually mostly automated and can run with only a few SEs?”

“The technology is not all that rare. Factories only remain manned to protect employment and to prevent the few workers actually needed from going insane from loneliness.”

In other words, the 8000 workers were completely unnecessary.

Not only did they not touch the production factory’s equipment, but they were not even allowed in the same building.

So…

“The facility is made up of 5000 foolish prisoners and 3000 jailer including you,” said the man. “No information can be allowed out and a prisoner escaping is out of the question. The prisoners here will die here. No other path is allowed for them.”

''I see. I see.

However, the cameras and sensors set up throughout the forest seemed to have a different meaning than the high walls and barbed wire. What were they for? They seemed less like a distribution of neatly optimized security and more like they were needlessly setting them up wherever they could. It was as if they could not find something they wanted to find.

I grabbed the radio and opened the car door.

The Sunekosuri hopped out through my door and onto the parking lot.

As I stood on the asphalt, I slammed the door shut and spoke into the radio.

“But you say the prisoners and jailers vanished into thin air at some point.”

Simply put, that was the circumstances surrounding the corporate prison.

With the use of the facility’s “abilities”, capturing Hasebe Michio who the detective and my sister were pursuing might indeed have been simple.

However, we were caught up in our own dangerous problem, so we had more important things to do.

As I walked from the parking lot to a giant structure of the factory, the elderly man and I continued to speak.

“Everyone disappeared leaving just a few prisoners and jailers behind,” he said. “I thought it was a mass jailbreak with most of the jailers taken hostage…but it is just too thorough. Also, there is no sign of the locks being broken or anything like that. It is unclear if they were made to vanish by someone else or if they made themselves vanish.”

“I see. So you are desperate for a solution.”

“This corporate prison is strong. Even if the escaped prisoners testify on the public stage, Kuroyama Electronics Group will not go under. However, crushing even the slightest risk is the best option.”

That was not surprising. If you included even the foreign affiliated companies, this was a corporation connected to over 150 thousand people. Any illegal operations they were involved in would be assisted by expert groups, making the structure of it all quite complex.

But if 5000 prisoners escaped and 3000 jailers were sacrificed, that elderly man would not escape blame.

He appeared calm, but he would likely be thrown into the one of those prisoner cells if the situation was not quickly resolved.

And that was why someone like me had been called in.

I had used a fictional ID that only existed online to be mistaken for a “complaint handler” who worked for a company affiliated with Kuroyama and handled any dirty jobs.

“We do not have time to treat you like a guest even if you are a temporary worker. Do your job. Depending on what happens, it is entirely possible you will be thrown into one of these cells in the future. Do not screw this up.”

The Sunekosuri at my feet looked up with a worried expression.

''Wah hah hah! Are you lonely? Then feel free to rub up against my leg!!

“Then let’s handle this in the standard way,” I said. “We reveal what exactly occurred, determine who did it, compare that to the balance of power between different groups to guess at their motive, and finally track down where the missing people are.”

“If they have left the facility, that alone is grounds for shooting them. We know how to handle the bodies, so you can leave the cleanup to us.”

“Understood. By the way, you know what the most likely possibility is, don’t you?”

“A Youkai?”

I sighed at that immediate reply.

The young lady of Hyakki Yakou had requested that I investigate the circumstances surrounding Four Mountain’s semiconductor factory because they were catching glimpses of something dangerous there.

But the situation I found made me want a bonus.

After all, Hasebe Michio’s disappearance meant the problem went beyond the corporate prison.

''Now then. What are the conditions behind this strange phenomenon and how far has it spread?

“Okay. I’ll start by investigating from that end of things.”

''What a pain.

''If I only needed evidence of a crime, I could just record this conversation and submit it. Why did the prisoners who are the biggest piece of evidence have to vanish into thin air!?

===Part 16 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

The villagers of the abandoned Zenmetsu Village were rumored to have been slaughtered. Someone there was still trying to harm intruders using farm tools such as a pitchfork.

The man must not have bathed in a long time because his hair and beard were unkempt and his skin was discolored from dark stains.

His clothes were so dirty their original color was impossible to determine and they were so tattered that I could not even imagine what kind of clothes they had originally been.

Who was he?

The man had been balled up after I assaulted him, but when I asked him that, he used his trembling jaw to somehow force out some words.

“…No. It wasn’t me.”

“Who are you?”

“I…I… I didn’t do it!! I didn’t do anything! That’s why I’m still running. I didn’t kill anyone!!”

“I’m asking who you are!!”

The man jumped in fright when I shouted at him with the stolen pitchfork in hand.

I had a feeling Madoka was looking at me with horribly, horribly cold eyes.

I understood why.

I had been chased around a strange village, struck hard on the head, and driven to the verge of death. Being released from that state seemed to be keeping me from controlling my emotions very well. It was like releasing a compressed spring.

On top of that, I now held the weapon I had been so afraid of. Even I could tell this was making me overly bold.

It was not surprising that she was annoyed by my actions.

But I could not let this chance slip by. I would not let myself be dropped into that abyss again.

“…Yokoeda Tadashi.”

“Why were you swinging this at us? What are you doing here? Are you the mass murderer from over 30 years ago or are you some psycho copycat camping here?”

“N-no!! It wasn’t me! I only live here! I’ve always lived in this village!!”

“Then what’s with this?”

I thrust the rusted tines of the pitchfork in front of Yokoeda’s nose and he turned his head as if to look away from something unpleasant.

“I-I needed it for self defense. Given the location, horrible people often come here as a test of courage or something. The worst ones are the drunk ones. I can’t rely on the police, so I have to drive them off myself. Come to think of it, what are you doing here?”

“Hey, mister,” cut in Madoka. “If you know this place is so dangerous, why are you still living here? The homeless are not meant to pick fruit and hunt boars. In fact, I think they can only survive in a city with a certain level of development.”

“…It’s necessary.” Yokeda’s gaze moved from place to place again and again in order to escape everyone else’s gaze. “It’s necessary. I’m the final survivor of those born here. And staying here in Four Mountains will make them rush things. If that causes them to make a mistake…”

“Who do you mean by ‘them’?”

“The Kuroyama Electronics Group.” Yokoeda spoke that name quickly. It was as if he were spitting an unpleasant bug out of his mouth as soon as he could. “Don’t you find it suspicious? …It was after that incident. It all ended thirty years ago in a single night. And immediately after everyone was slaughtered, the Kuroyama Electronics Group moved in. The village was opposed to the semiconductor factory that would suck up so much of the underground water. And then that incident occurred that conveniently got rid of all their opposition.”

Madoka and I exchanged a glance.

She looked confused. My expression was probably similar.

Was he speaking of a truth no one was aware of?

Or was this nothing more than the ramblings of a lonely middle-aged man.

I could not determine which it was, but I could feel some strange sort of weight.

“…”

I tried to ask Madoka’s opinion, but she was keeping a bit of distance from me. This eccentric beauty of a classmate was glancing over at me. Or more specifically, at the end of the giant pitchfork in my hands.

''Well, it is dangerous.

I did not know what the man was getting at, but I felt it was best to let him speak if he wanted to.

He needed to vent.

After all…

I had the advantage because I had the weapon with the longest reach.

However, the man could make a desperate last-ditch attack. If he did that, I was not entirely sure I could stab this giant fork into him without hesitating.

If I succeeded, I would be a murderer.

If I failed, I could be killed by that middle-aged man.

In other words, either result would ruin me.

Yokoeda Tadashi continued speaking without realizing my thoughts.

“It was a hot summer day. I…no, everyone my age was talking about having a test of courage. We drew lots to see who would take the test and who would try to scare those taking the test. At first, I thought that was what saved me. But they intentionally left me alive. I stood still in a daze for a while after it happened. The next thing I knew, people were saying I had killed everyone. That was the scenario. They killed them in such over-the-top ways with blood flying up to the ceilings to make it look like a crazy killer had done it and to rob my testimony of all credibility.”

Madoka must have been thinking anyone who might turn violent was dangerous when there were no police or mediators available. She kept her distance from both Yokoeda Tadashi and me as she frowned and asked a question.

It seemed she was trying to create a safe zone by taking a neutral position.

“Hey. You say ‘them’, so was there more than one murderer?”

“How many people do you think were needed to surround and annihilate all of the villagers who fled in every direction? At the very least, I saw five or six men wearing masks, but I don’t know who they were. That is why I’m staying here to worry Kuroyama Electronics Group. I’m staying right next to them.”

At some point, I had withdrawn the pitchfork.

Yokoeda had also sat up on the dead grass and leaned his back against the wall of the shack.

“According to Kuroyama’s scenario, I was supposed to be immediately captured and blamed for it all. But that didn’t happen, so they quickly changed the outcome. Due to certain circumstances, we had lived a life cut off from the outside world in a village of only a few dozen people. No one would cause an uproar over the village’s disappearance. Its disappearance was not a problem for anyone. …They bribed plenty of people to eliminate all information related to the village’s existence. ''The people there became a mere rumor.'' After all, the village was never on any maps to begin with.”

“What…? And what do you mean by ‘certain circumstances’?”

The village’s living standards seemed oddly low. It had no asphalt roads, no plumbing, and not even a well. No sign of any public services could be seen.

Even if satellites had not been used for standard public services thirty years before, there had to have been some major “circumstances” for them to not have their name on the map.

Yokoeda remained silent.

It seemed he did not want to talk about that.

When he did speak, it was to forcibly change the subject.

“Despite supposedly destroying the village, one of the villagers is still alive. They would be in trouble if some unwanted information got out. That is why the Kuroyama Electronics Group is even now desperately searching for me. And I have made sure they are. That is why they have set up countless cameras and sensors across the area. They claim it is to ensure the water resources of their private property, though.”

''Eh?

''Kuroyama Electronics Group’s private property?

''Cameras and sensors?

I could only frown at those terms he so readily used.

''This area feels like a monstrous forest that’s either rotting or soggy. Does it really have a security network like that in it?

“(Shinobu-kun. I can’t tell if this is some great secret or a simple conspiracy theory,)” said Madoka in secretive mode.

''I know you need to whisper right now, but don’t carelessly approach me, you damn beauty!!

“So I bring in from outside what I need to live and move between the small villages at irregular intervals. If I was only living as a fugitive, I could have gone overseas, but there has to be meaning in my staying here. The only remnants of that incident are here.”

…''Is that really true?

If this really was the vast private property bought up by a single corporation, they would likely destroy everything that was a nuisance or inconvenient to them. If they crushed the village down to an empty lot, there would be no evidence left and no further investigation could be made. However, they had left the buildings intact with the bloodstains still inside. Was that a sign of their confidence? Were they saying no investigation could find anything?

If Yokoeda’s story was true, Kuroyama Electronics Group might have been intentionally leaving some hope for him.

They were giving him a reason to remain fixated on this location. That way he would remain instead of fleeing overseas. They could then secretly capture him and eliminate him.

The worst part was that they did not even need to capture him.

Yokoeda held the only key yet he was wasting his time investigating in the wrong place and growing weaker all the while.

I could not decide whether I should point that out or not.

But then I heard the sound of the dead grass being trod on beyond the fog.

“…”

Madoka, Yokoeda Tadashi, and I all turned silently toward the sound.

The pure white veil cut off our vision as usual, so we could not see what was there.

“Hey, Madoka. Do you think it’s the Love King or Nagisa?”

“Don’t look for knowledge about our classmates from the lone beauty Madoka-chan.”

Despite asking that, I also doubted this was anyone safe.

I gulped and spoke to Yokoeda Tadashi.

“Hey. Is there anyone here besides you?”

I had not turned toward the man as I asked, so I could only hear him gulp and then reply.

“No. There was no one…no one other than me. No, wait. It can’t be!!”

We heard the sound again.

It was not coming from just one spot. As if someone was slowly approaching in a line, the sound of the dead grass filled one entire direction.

Was it a group?

“I-it’s Kuroyama,” said Yokoeda in a trembling voice. “Their troops are here!! I calculated my movements to slip through the gaps in their surveillance network, but what about you two? You two must have left a trail that led them to me!!”

“Hey, wait!!”

I did not have time to call out and stop him.

Yokoeda stood up with his back still pressed against the wall and then ran away. Madoka and I exchanged a glance. Her eyes were of course widened in surprise at this sudden occurrence

All the while, the noise drew closer.

“Wh-what should we do, Shinobu-kun!?”

“…”

Should we run? Where to? Should we oppose them? Oppose who?

Before I could gather my thoughts, the situation progressed.

I ignored Madoka as she tugged on the sleeve of my short sleeve shirt and looked blankly into the fog.

The source of the noise was approaching.

Something was coming this way.

===Part 17 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

“Uuhh…”

I woke up to the sound of myself groaning and found myself in the rental car. For an instant, I thought the attack from before had been a dream, but it seemed reality was not that convenient.

I grimaced when I saw the memo sitting on the dashboard.

It said, “Kuroyama Electronics Group is the wrong direction and you need to look into Youkai if you want to find Hasebe.” I was not a handwriting fetishist who could tell who wrote it just by looking at the writing, but I could make a good guess from the note in the corner saying, “If you don’t burn this in the ashtray after reading it, I’ll punish you☆” I could only think of one person who lived in that old spy movie world.

That was when the mystery freak woke up in the passenger seat.

“Ah!? H-huh? You woke up before me, detective? That means you did all sorts of things to me in my sleep, doesn’t it!? But don’t worry! I made sure to bring a pregnancy test with me!”

She seemed to still be half asleep, so I held out the memo to wake her up.

Enbi grimaced when she saw the short text left by her sister.

“Wow, so she’s involved in this. Does that mean this is bad enough that she’s needed to resolve it?”

“This is clearly a sign telling us to quietly leave.”

I gave an annoyed sigh before pulling out the car’s ashtray as instructed. I balled up the memo and pressed the tip of the cigar lighter against it to light it.

“But she doesn’t understand at all. Leaving this note behind is all the more reason we can’t just leave!!”

“It’s possible she planned for this reaction, but knowing my sister, she wasn’t thinking at all.”

And so we began discussing the message Mai had left in the parked rental car.

“She said Hasebe’s disappearance was related to a Youkai.”

“So the people vanishing from the prisoner transport vehicle and police cars was related to a Youkai instead of any humans such as the regional police or Kuroyama Electronics Group? Was it a criminal Package?”

“But would that really be necessary? The police officers were transporting him and Kuroyama owns all this land, so they wouldn’t need help from a Youkai. They could have abducted Hasebe on their own.”

“Then it was someone other than them?”

“Someone other than…?”

I trailed off and fell silent.

There was only one possibility.

“Hasebe Michio himself?”

“Well, he was handcuffed, chained to his seat, and being watched. If he was going to escape, it would have been difficult using any normal method.”

“But he had no reason to escape. If he had obeyed his instructions, the request for a retrial would have gone through and he would have likely been found not guilty.”

“Maybe he suspected an assassin from the regional police or Kuroyama was coming, so he panicked and ran off. Maybe he decided he would not survive until his retrial.”

“Packages use the skills of hundreds of people to draw out the power of a Youkai in a useful way. Hasebe couldn’t have used one on his own and especially not without planning.”

“Then again,” the mystery freak raised her index finger, “We keep talking about Youkai, but we don’t even know what kind of Youkai was used. This area has more nature than anyone could ever want, but there’s no sense of any Youkai around.”

“I don’t like Youkai, so I’m thankful for that.”

The smell of smoke from burning the memo stung at my nose, so I used the air conditioning vent to drive it away.

“But it is odd that no Youkai has tried anything in a forest this big. Given the way Youkai react to me, I would have expected a transformed Kitsune or Tanuki to approach me.”

“Are there really no Youkai here?”

“Or,” I cut in. “Has the terrain of the Four Mountains area been modified to increase the influence of a single type of Youkai. That way only the Youkai someone wanted to build into their Package would be able to fully manifest its power.”

That was possible in this area.

Kuroyama Electronics Group possessed a vast amount of private property.

But if that was the case…

“This is bad… I thought this case was centered on Hasebe Michio, but the actual structure may be different.”

“Are you saying this was not an attempt to abduct Hasebe Michio? Are you saying a Package with some special effect just so happened to affect Hasebe?”

I turned the key in the rental car.

The engine turned on, I moved the shift lever, and stepped on the accelerator.

“We will never find an answer at this rate. Let’s leave Four Mountains for the moment. We need to pass through the tunnel and stop at a service area where we can use our phones.”

“Detective, are you going to pass that cable model number to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department?”

“That’s part of it, but I also want to know what kinds of Youkai live in the Four Mountains area. This Package is using some part of a Youkai’s nature. If we know what kind of Youkai that is, we might be able to determine how Hasebe disappeared and where he might be.”

===Part 18 (Hishigami Mai)===

''Now then. Time to check on the semiconductor factory.

On the jailer side, the only people left other than me were two guards each from the main entrance and the materials shipment entrance as well as the elderly supervisor. That was a total of five.

On the prisoner side, only a teenage girl and an older woman who looked like she was being forced to perform hard labor in her fifties. That was a total of two.

With so few people, it was unbelievable that there had originally been 8000.

It was even more surprising that the factory continued to run without slowing.

The vast semiconductor factory known as a corporate prison was divided into a factory block and a dorm block. The dorm block was a complete decoy. The prisoners were actually contained in the prison block which was fully contained underground.

The supervisor named Itou gestured down the hallway with his chin.

“Do you want to take a peek?”

“Later, if I have a chance,” I said, gently turning down his offer.

There was something I had to do before going along with their cruelty.

Itou must have been more nervous than he let on because he sounded irritated as he continued speaking.

“I cannot believe you actually brought that Youkai here.”

The Sunekosuri jumped in fright, but I did not mind.

“The police use dogs in airports. Creatures that look at the world from a different viewpoint can be convenient. Youkai testimony may not be valid evidence in a trial, but that does not matter ''in this business.''”

“Hmph. I do not like irregularities like that. And it seems a Youkai is involved in this incident as well.”

As the supervisor of 8000 people using a sturdy plan and security system, he would naturally dislike Youkai that could be like loopholes in a treasure chest. Not that I cared what he thought.

“If you insist, I can leave him outside, but it might make it take longer to resolve this. Do you have the time for that?”

“…Do as you wish,” spat out Itou in true annoyance.

I leaned up against the wall in the smoking space of the factory grounds and mentioned what we had to do first.

“What matters most are the people. We need to gather everyone in one place.”

“What are you saying? Do you want us to release the remaining prisoners? They are negative existences to Kuroyama.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t think that matters anymore.”

“?”

“We were thinking about the basic structure of this all wrong.” I poked at the Sunekosuri’s sulking cheek with my boot because he had stopped wagging his tail. “I have a question for you. ''Which would be easier: causing over 8000 jailers and prisoners to disappear without a trace or to deceive just the few of us?''”

“You can’t mean…”

“I do. It is easier to assume we are the ones trapped by whatever is going on. I couldn’t tell you if this is a dream, an illusion, the past, the future, a parallel world, or a miniature world, though.”

Whatever the trick was, if the person in control of this “place” was in here with us, it would be best for everyone to monitor everyone else to keep them from taking action.

It was possible the culprit was someone else and therefore outside of this “place”, but if so, we would need to prove it and determine who it was we had to fight.

Itou lightly clicked his tongue.

“A Youkai, hm?”

“Any ideas what kind it might be?”

“This corporate prison is not a health resort that makes use of nature. We camouflaged it as a high tech semiconductor factory to repel any interference of that sort. But it seems someone bypassed that in some way.”

Itou’s gaze turned toward the Sunekosuri.

It seemed he really did not like that canine Youkai’s presence.

“Understood. We will search for the person behind this. If your theory is correct, this is a very serious problem.”

Itou turned around and disappeared down the hallway with a regulated pace.

Finally, the Sunekosuri spoke up.

“C-can we really allow this!? This goes beyond a violation of human rights. They’re forcibly locking up whistleblowers, the losers of conflicts between factions, and consumer groups!!”

“Why are you getting so worked up, Sunekosuri-chan? This is a large scale factory with a dorm intended to support low income workers. That’s what the official documents say. Even if you photographed the prison block with a net-connected camera, it’s possible no one would be caught.”

The system behind it had originally been created to prevent the country’s deindustrialization, but it had more recently been used to provide jobs to the rapidly-increasing numbers of domestic hikikomori to counteract the rise of labor costs in emerging nations. Many had hoped it would help decrease the amount of money spent on welfare, but as you can see, it ended up being completely misused.

“Humans are made so they cannot withstand truly doing nothing. But the general public is not aware of this fact. They will think those people ‘have it easy’ or are ‘lazy’.”

The harshest treatment in a prison was solitary confinement.

At first glance, a private room one did not have to share with a fellow prisoner might sound convenient, but after spending five to ten days doing nothing, having no one to speak to, and sitting in a small, dark room, the human mind would easily raise the white flag.

Prison sentences could come with hard labor requirements or not, but most of those without the requirement would be unable to withstand doing nothing and request work of their own free will.

Then again, this was all something you could never truly understand until you had been locked up yourself. That was why it could pass without suspicion on paper.

“According to the prison block’s secret manual, the prisoners are usually locked in their private cells and not allowed to do anything. Only the most well behaved of the prisoners are allowed to clean the facility or are given free time in the decoy dorm block. This is done as camouflage so dust does not pile up in the rooms and they look lived in. …If you get down to it, that’s all this place is. This is not a gloomy facility where prisoners are tortured or executed. It is maintained so that everyone has clothing, food, and shelter, they are given opportunities to work and earn money, and an effort is made to keep their ties to society from being severed.”

While they were all paid salaries in the official data, the prisoners never had a chance to spend that money and none of them even knew the bank account number it was transferred into.

If the prisoners who did not have to do anything and therefore “had it easy” felt cornered by the situation and committed suicide, the corporation was not responsible in the slightest. They had built up a foundation that allowed that excuse to be made. It was quite well constructed.

“How can you say that about a horrible facility with a suicide rate of over 85%!?”

“But the rest of the world does nothing about it. They just sigh and wonder how entitled these people must have been to give up when they were supported so comfortably with the people’s tax money and were allowed to laze around in an air conditioned room all day.”

“That may be the false impression being given to the general public, but isn’t that why we were sent here!?”

“Come on now. Hyakki Yakou asked me to investigate the situation in Four Mountains’ semiconductor factory. If necessary, someone will make a decision once they receive my report. …But this corporate prison is being run by human hands alone, so it might not be in Hyakki Yakou’s jurisdiction.”

“How can you say that when you are an embodiment of unrestrained violence? With your skill, you could easily crush these villains.”

“But it is you and the rest of Hyakki Yakou who prevent the occult from being used so chaotically. Don’t forget that.”

My radio then emitted an electronic tone.

It was from Itou, the supervisor from before. It seemed he had succeeded in gathering all the members who were left in the corporate prison…or more accurately, who had been taken from the real corporate prison.

I walked to the indicated location along with the Sunekosuri.

It seemed to be an employee cafeteria primarily meant for the jailers. Some beckoning cat bottle cap dolls were located here as well.

''Who’s the one who collects those?

The space contained a few long tables and folding chairs. At one end, a few men and women wearing identical workwear were gathered.

Itou Takeru: age 65, male, jailer, and the head jailer who supervised the prison block.

Yamada Ken: age 35, male, jailer, and guard for the materials shipment gate.

Sakai Haruka: age 33, female, jailer, and guard for the main gate.

Kurumaya Nozomi: age 24, female, jailer, and guard for the outdoor factory areas plus head of hard labor management.

Tanishita Hajime: age 41, male, jailer, and monitor room worker sent from the Royal Security Company.

Suzukawa Izumi: age 17, female, prisoner #0899, and sentenced to a 202 year imprisonment.

Gogan Sakura: age 50, female, prisoner #1807, and sentenced to a 150 year imprisonment.

Every single one of them was wearing the unfashionable factory work uniform, so they showed no real individuality. Then again, I was wearing the same thing.

I did think something was wrong when the Sunekosuri stood out the most, though.

Unsurprisingly, we could not hold a friendly conversation.

Suzukawa and Gogan, the two prisoners, were glancing over toward the employee cafeteria’s exit.

“You should probably give up that idea,” I pointed out in order to nip that problem in the bud. “Most likely, the ones ''trapped by some technique'' are us and not the other 8000. If you escape outside the facility right now, what do you plan to do next? That would be like returning to your normal life with some strange hypnotism in your head. You would have no idea what might cause your destruction.”

“But this is the perfect chance for them if they were the ones behind this.”

The one who said that was Yamada, a coward desperate to look intimidating so his opponent would not try to pick a fight with him. Not that that mattered.

Yamada-chi glared back and forth between the two prisoners Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura.

“They trapped us in whatever this is so they can get outside while the security network isn’t functioning! That makes this simple. If we kill the source, we’ll be sent back to where we came from!!”

“What if we need a cancellation key only the person who did this knows? We might be stuck living out the rest of our life spans in this empty world devoid of any other human life.”

“Gh,” groaned the cowardly Yamada Ken before falling silent.

Kurumaya Nozomi, another of the jailers, looked over at me nervously.

“I-I think there is someone…even more suspicious than the prisoners. In fact, I don’t see how…how the prisoners could assemble a Youkai’s power into a Package while being so strictly monitored.”

“Who do you think is suspicious?” urged Itou the supervisor.

Kurumaya’s shoulders jumped slightly and her wandering gaze turned back toward me.

Sakai Haruka, a female jailer with heavy makeup, held her hands together and raised her index finger.

“Hah hahn. That’s a good point. This bizarre phenomenon occurred once you two arrived. I suppose the outsiders would be the most suspicious.”

“We do agree you should suspect us as much as anyone,” I said gently before continuing in a sharp tone. “But if I did this, would I really suggest having everyone gather here? If I had the prisoners left in solitary confinement and another bizarre phenomenon occurred during our strategy meeting, don’t you think suspicion would turn toward the prisoners?”

“You intentionally didn’t do that so you could use that fact to turn suspicion away from you!!”

“An excellent point!!”

Sakai had tried to use that to press me even further, but my sudden announcement left her confused.

I ignored that woman in her thirties with gaudy makeup and quickly continued speaking.

“Whoever is behind this large scale plan will be after something more than causing a small panic. There has to be something else coming that they are truly after. With that in mind, why were we chosen? Can you think of any common factors between us?”

“Now that you mention it,” said the male jailor Tanishita Hajime as he nervously toyed with his glasses. “It would have been simpler if it was almost entirely jailers or prisoners, but there are a few of each. And our posts and positions are all different. I can’t think of any common factor.”

“Yes, yes. And to drive that home, the Sunekosuri and I are outsiders.”

There was also the fact that my sister and the detective were here too, but that was a secret.

To be honest, there was a possibility the core of this phenomenon was outside the corporate prison, but it would be best to search through the strictly guarded prison while my guest ID was valid.

“…”

Naturally, the jailer group controlled the conversation and Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura of the prisoner group both remained silent. They were drinking cold water from a water server in one corner of the employee cafeteria. It was one of those things with an upside down tank about the size of a daruma doll and a faucet attached. It had an incredibly vague label saying “Clean Water from Near Kyushu”.

''Hm?

''But why is there a water server here in Four Mountains?

It bothered me a bit, but I had to focus on the conversation.

“It is unclear who the culprit was trying to make vanish. It’s possible they wanted to make themselves vanish. However, they included people clearly unrelated to their ultimate goal. Why is that?”

“What do you mean by that?” asked Itou with a frown.

The nervous-looking jailer Kurumaya Nozomi continued by saying, “Wh-what if the people near the target happened to be swallowed up as well?”

“Even though the jailers here are from different posts and positions and the prisoners can’t leave their cells? Even though this group would never have gathered in one place like this otherwise?” I shrugged. “In fact, if you could freely choose any target, why not make only yourself disappear? That would give you the freedom to move wherever you wanted in the factory or even outside it. But the culprit didn’t do that. They involved others. Why?”

This was not simply a prisoner’s jailbreak plan.

The jailers had no reason to mess with the security of the corporate prison. Any prison held the risk of the workers being killed in a riot.

Unless of course, a jailer wanted to kill another jailer or a jailer wanted to elope with a prisoner they had fallen in love with.

“The culprit needed to include some kind target in this as well as themselves. Normally, just involving themselves and the target would be the simplest method. However, that would give away who caused it right away. In that case, they would need to mix in a few outsiders to hide themselves.”

“Is that why it’s a mix of jailers and prisoners and why we’re all from different posts?”

I nodded toward the cowardly Yamada-kun.

We were the padding characters in a mystery novel. With the Sunekosuri and me, there were nine people. That was just about the perfect number. Everyone looked suspicious and the number was low enough that you could recall of the characters’ faces without going over a list.

“With a Youkai Package, hundreds of people work together to assemble a single criminal system. However, both the jailers and prisoners had enough people to pull that off. The preparations could have been made here in this semiconductor factory…in this corporate prison.” I spread my arms. “But as an outsider, I do not have detailed information on the inside of the prison and I would not notice any small changes. For example, I do not know what kinds of Youkai exist in this area. How about we discuss that sort of thing in search of a clue? C’mon, even simple rumors are enough.”

Itou Takeru, Yamada Ken, Sakai Haruka, Kurumaya Nozomi, Tanishita Hajime, Suzukawa Izumi, and Gogan Sakura exchanged glances. However, there was no trust in their eyes. They were staring at each other with suspicion deep in their hearts.

“I don’t know anything about Youkai. Are you sure it wasn’t something brought in from somewhere else?”

“I-I’ve never looked in the forest, though.”

The jailers cautiously spoke up, but the prisoners remained silent. That was not surprising. The ones who did not want to draw closer to everyone else were the prisoners who had been oppressed before. Plus, I was continuing to play the role of a jailer. They did not want to do what I said.

But that was a problem.

“What about you two?”

“What? Do you two know something?”

“I…”

It happened just as the high school aged girl prisoner began speaking.

With no warning, the sole of Yamada Ken’s shoe suddenly jammed directly into the girl’s solar plexus.

“G-geh!! Cough cough…!!”

“Don’t mumble and hide shit from us! Who do you think you are!?”

As Suzukawa Izumi fell to her knees and held her stomach with both hands, Coward-kun went in for another kick.

The other prisoner suddenly cut in.

“Wait! Didn’t you hear her start to say something!?”

“Then why didn’t she say it from the beginning instead of trying to hide it!? If we tell you to show us everything your hiding, it’s your job to show us everything down to your asshole! That goes for you too, you old bitch. Who do you think you’re talking to!? If you do anything to upset me, I might just break both your legs!!”

''…Ahh ahh, does he not understand the situation here?

If the culprit was one of us, it was entirely possible the game master behind it all could be one of the prisoners. Mystery novels were my sister’s territory, but the culprit would often commit a murder not in the original plan if things grew inconvenient.

And even if the culprit was one of the jailers, the odds were not all that low that they would ''decide to kill the person causing trouble for the prisoners'' to divert suspicion away from themselves. That would send everyone’s suspicion toward the prisoners.

''Sunekosuri-chan.

''Stop letting out that rare growl toward that lame coward over there.

''He’s probably the first to die even if we do nothing.

“I-I know…” began Suzukawa Izumi while faintly breathing and being held in Gogan Sakura’s arms. “I know of a rumor passed between the prisoners about a fr-free pass. I don’t know what it is, but it seems there’s a special category of the well-behaved prisoners who are chosen to go above ground to clean. If they return by assembly time, they are free to leave the factory grounds.”

“Don’t make shit up!!”

I held out a hand to calm down the “badass” Yamada-chan who was about to grow violent again.

“What about you?” I asked the prisoner in her fifties.

“I have heard of the free pass.”

“Even though you are all in solitary confinement?”

“It is possible to speak with the other prisoners while cleaning outdoors. That refreshing feeling is one of the reasons that periodically acquiring the ticket for cleaning duty is the difference between living on and being driven to suicide.” Gogan Sakura turned a blatantly hostile look toward Yamada. “But I do not know if it actually exists or not. It might be a rumor the jailers tell to toy with the prisoners or it might be a lie one prisoner made up to take advantage of another.”

In a corporate prison without money or stores, I saw little reason for fraud.

Or…

Perhaps without any money, something else held value in this prison.

When I asked, Itou Takeru the head jailer sighed in annoyance

“I have occasionally heard of alcohol showing up. Both those selling it and those buying it are ‘dealt with’ as soon as it is found.”

“That isn’t too uncommon.”

Secretly making wine or brandy or growing hallucinogenic mushrooms was common in prisons where few pleasures were to be found. It was well known enough to appear in mafia movies. I was not surprised to hear something similar had occurred in this corporate prison.

“Alcohol is not something that can simply be left in place. The temperature and humidity need to be carefully managed. To adjust for that, wouldn’t someone need to use this free pass to periodically check on the barrel?”

“Perhaps. By the way, have you ever found the secret distillery itself?”

I had meant it as a casual question, but Itou Takeru’s shoulders drooped. Cowardly Yamada-kun and gaudy Sakai looked awkwardly away from the old man.

I sighed and said, “If they were able to hide that, they could have hidden other things as well, right?”

“Alcohol can be used to make money. We had feared one of the delivery workers that brings parts in from outside might be involved. Then again, the system we have created is not one that allows a jailbreak with only a shovel.”

“Yet that security was completely useless when a Youkai was involved.”

Instead of Itou the head jailer, all of the subordinate jailers glared at me.

It seemed none of them wanted me to give him a reason to grow angry.

I continued regardless.

“Then maybe we should start there. Where was this occasional supply of alcohol made? If we know where it was hidden, we might find signs of some other trick.”

“We checked,” said cowardly Yamada-kun in annoyance. “We checked every inch within the walls! Our only achievement was finding some termites. We didn’t find any barrels. And I’ve never seen any suspicious Youkai or anything.”

“U-um, we could check over everything again now, but it might take more than a day with the number of people we have,” added Kurumaya-chan, the nervous female jailer.

I simply replied, “Then maybe there isn’t anything within the walls.”

“You’re the one that brought it up! You keep jumping from topic to topic!”

“I only said it isn’t within the walls. Could the distillery be hidden outside the walls?”

After all, the Four Mountains area was a clean water jug for the semiconductor factory.

It contained nothing but overly untouched nature and an abandoned village that had been submerged in bloodshed several decades ago.

There were more than enough places to hide a distillery, acquire a Youkai, or put together a Package.

“It’s possible,” agreed Itou while sounding annoyed. “But that leaves the crucial question of how they periodically left the walls.”

“That would be the free pass. It seems to have been even more convenient than we thought.”

The jailer group turned toward Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura.

The high school aged Suzukawa shrank back.

“H-how should we know!?”

“That’s right. And if this free pass really exists, why would they come and go? Why not leave once and then run off?”

That was exactly right.

However…

“If the person using the free pass was planning a large scale jailbreak, escaping alone would not be their ultimate goal.”

“Wha-…!?”

“That means the prisoners really are the most suspicious!!”

Cowardly Yamada seemed to mistakenly think his IQ would go up every time he grew violent because he tried to lash out at Suzukawa-chan again. I spoke up to stop him.

“However, nothing says only the prisoner group could use the free pass. If there is a way to get a heavily guarded prisoner outside the prison walls, one of the jailers could easily sneak out as well.”

“Wait, wait, wait!! This is no time to be joking around. Why the hell would we need to do that!?”

“Maybe you were dissatisfied with the prison’s power structure or you were following some idea of justice. There were several thousand jailers, after all. It wouldn’t be surprising if one or two felt sorry for the prisoners and tried to destroy the system here.”

Was it one of the jailers, one of the prisoners, or some newly-formed group spanning both sides that wished to destroy the corporate prison?

Itou Takeru, the head jailer and supervisor, could not have liked the sound of any the possibilities.

Or was he intentionally giving off such a nervous aura to turn suspicion elsewhere?

“By the way, do you have any ideas concerning this free pass?”

“I doubt there is a hole through the walls and your security is not foolish enough to allow a tunnel to be made, right?”

“Of course not!? Are you fucking with us!?”

“In that case,” I said while winking and resisting the urge to cover my ears. “Keep in mind that this facility functions as a semiconductor factory, so it is not a completely isolated and closed off place. Materials are brought in and products and waste are brought out. Would it be easy to hide in one of those trucks?”

A few of the jailers turned toward Sakai Haruka’s gaudy face.

''Come to think of it, she managed the main gate.

“Wait, wait, please wait! We check through every single truck! Anyone would think of that!!”

“I thought as much. But there is a corporate prison truck that has to be kept secret mixed in with the official semiconductor factory trucks. That one goes without an inspection, right?”

“?”

“A truck is needed to dispose of the dead. I hear prisoners die here quite frequently, but you don’t just bury them around here, do you? You must have a corpse disposal infrastructure. There has to be some cycle set up to quickly and surely dispose of them. Am I wrong?”

Itou Takeru, the head jailer, clicked his tongue.

The look on his face plainly said he did not want to explain this.

“Any corpses in an unusual state for suicide are left to another division in Kuroyama. We freeze them and load them aboard a refrigerated truck.”

“Do you know what happens after that?”

“I have had it explained to me, but I have never been involved in it myself. They completely freeze them with liquid nitrogen or something and smash them to pieces. Supposedly, they are turned into a sherbet, bones and all. This is made into fish food. Kuroyama makes electronics, so it runs tons of freighters. In the middle of international waters, the fish food is scattered into the ocean, so no one is aware of it.”

The two prisoners, Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura, both paled.

I looked down at the Sunekosuri who looked oddly irritated.

“So someone could hide inside the corpse-filled truck and not be found. I don’t know how often the trucks come and go, but someone could make it back the same day if it’s more than twice a day. Right?”

However…

If that thinking was accurate, the situation was very bad.

Even the corporate prison grounds were too large for us to search through in a day. Now it was possible the area had expanded to the entirety of the Four Mountains area.

We would of course eventually find the answer if we performed a thorough search.

But would the culprit wait that long? They could cause mysterious phenomena as much they wanted, so wouldn’t they block us from reaching their mysterious hiding spot and cleverly work to achieve their goal?

“What the hell?” muttered cowardly Yamada in annoyance. “Outside the prison? Is some ghost of Zenmetsu Village wandering around?”

“Now that you mention it.” Inspired by cowardly Yamada’s comment, the prisoner Gogan Sakura spoke up. “I heard something about a ghost of Zenmetsu Village.”

“?”

“The semiconductor factory – or rather, the corporate prison – is made up of people who came from outside Four Mountains. Eight thousand people work and live here, but they are all outsiders.”

“And?”

“But I hear there is one mixed in,” said Gogan Sakura while stroking the girl’s back. “I do not know if it is a jailer or prisoner, but ''there is a survivor of the slaughter in Zenmetsu Village somewhere in here.''”

The atmosphere suddenly froze over.

It seemed the incident at Zenmetsu Village was a taboo topic here.

I was curious what these people had to be afraid of when they had created this corporate prison that systematically mass produced suicides by giving people nothing to do.

“That’s just a ridiculous rumor and desire,” spat out Itou Takeru the supervisor. “Let me guess. Does the story claim this survivor is waiting for a chance to take revenge against those living comfortably in the factory? It’s just a dream of someone doing to the jailers what the prisoners cannot.”

“Th-that’s right. And the incident at Zenmetsu Village happened 30 years ago during the conflict between the villagers and the corporation over who could use the underground water. To have been around back then, they would need to be-…”

The nervous jailer Kurumaya Nozomi trailed off and her face paled in shock.

''That’s right.

''Itou Takeru is a dandy in his fifties.

“Ridiculous.”

“Well, that would make me a suspect, too,” laughed the middle-aged Gogan Sakura self-deprecatingly. “And the term ‘survivor’ is pretty vague in the first place. I’ve also heard versions of the rumor that say a survivor sent a descendent to the factory, so age might not be much help. The rumors are clear about one thing though: ''this person is definitely here.''”

''I see.

''So is the murderer taking a U-turn?

''No, Itou mentioned taking revenge against those in the factory, so maybe Zenmetsu Village was systematically wiped out by an assassination group hired by the corporation.

''If that’s the case, it might be time to add a subtitle saying “the true murderer has arrived!”

“Heh! That’s just a dream of you losers!! That’s just you pathetic prisoners coming up with a convenient hero in your heads because you can’t do anything yourselves!!”

“It does not sound convenient to me,” replied the prisoner Suzukawa Izumi as if spitting out the words. She averted her gaze from cowardly Yamada. “After all, some of the rumors say ''the survivor of Zenmetsu Village will indiscriminately slaughter both jailers and prisoners.''”

Now, everything had warmed up nicely.

There were three things we needed to look into for the moment.

1. What Youkai had carried out this bizarre phenomenon?

2. Was the rumor of a free pass true?

3. Was there really a survivor of Zenmetsu Village within the factory?

Of course, the biggest question was the following:

Who was the culprit behind all this?

===Part 19 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

Sounds similar to people walking through the dead grass continued through the run-down shacks in the remains of the village.

Madoka tugged on arm to get me to run, but I could not move.

This was partly due to my hips feeling like they were going to give out.

But this intense fear also made me want to see what this was. I wanted to sweep it away. I could not stand any more, so I wanted to settle everything here. That pessimistic courage led me to focus on what lay beyond the thick fog.

And…

I saw something glitter at a very, very low position through the fog. It was as low as someone’s shoelaces.

''…Metallic luster?

The identity of what was approaching showed itself.

It was not troops from the Kuroyama Electronics Group as Yokoeda Tadashi had suggested.

“Sn-snakes?” said Madoka in confusion. “Shinobu-kun, it’s a swarm of snakes!! ''They’re everywhere!!''”

She was exactly right. They were black snakes about 30 centimeters long and about as thick as a little finger. They spread out enough to cover one entire compass direction.

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_161.png|thumb]]

Humans tended to view something in large enough numbers as a single whole and give it special meaning. For example, a city nightscape. This was the same. The writhing mass of snakes had become something different from simple reptiles. They were a single monster. A sense of disgust rushed from the tips of my fingers and up the thick nerves of my spine.

Madoka’s face paled and she shouted out.

“We need to go, Shinobu-kun. We don’t know what kind of snakes these are. They might be venomous! If we’re bit here, we have no way of being treated!”

“No, wait a second…”

The snakes had something like a gold ring around their heads.

Every single one of the snakes had this artificial sign that would never be seen on a wild snake.

''Where have I seen something like this…?

“That’s right! Below the floor in Zenmetsu Village! A broken jar had held a bunch of gold rings. Are those the same as what’s on these snakes!?”

If so, did that mean these snakes had been raised in the houses of Zenmetsu Village?

''A large number of snakes, a jar, and gold rings.

''What is this? I feel like I’ve heard something similar to this before.

''Dammit. It’s right on the tip of my tongue…

“Shinobu-kun!!”

When Madoka shouted at me from close by once more, I finally realized the swarm of snakes was about to reach my feet.

“Wah!”

I frantically jumped back and left with Madoka. We ran. We fled.

We did not know where Yokoeda Tadashi had gone, but we did not have time to search for him. We ran through the thick fog in a random direction.

“Y-you’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve been doing nothing but running around! And without any chance for warm up exercises. I had better not get a leg cramp and hurt my Achilles tendon.”

“Hey, where are we?”

We ran and ran and ran and ran.

By the time I suddenly came to a stop, the run-down shacks were nowhere to be found. Only the rotten dead grass continued on ahead of us. The fog did not help, but the lack of any visible landmarks was more frightening than I would have thought. It felt like being abandoned in the middle of a desert.

“I don’t know. We haven’t run all the way to Mars, have we?”

“I think I see something up ahead.”

After catching our breath, Madoka and I headed deeper into the fog.

Something was neatly lined up like desks in a classroom.

They were giant stones.

“…Another graveyard? We already saw one.”

“But this isn’t the same place as before. The surface of these gravestones looks a lot more carefully carved.

''Did they have some reason for splitting their graveyard into two places?

If Yokoeda Tadashi was with us, we might have been able to ask him, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Also, these gravestones did not really matter at the moment.

We had no idea when that swarm of snakes would arrive and there could easily be more than one swarm. In the worst case, the entire Four Mountains area could be the snakes’ habitat and they could fill the entire area.

I was worried about our classmates, but this was no situation in which to begin a random search.

We had to ensure our own safety first.

We walked past the graveyards and the feel of the area changed. Everything was still falling apart, but a wall made of piled up stones cut across. It did not match my impression of the people who had lived in storage shed sized houses made of plywood and galvanized sheet iron. It felt like the basic standard had suddenly shot up.

“It looks like we can get in here,” said Madoka.

Instead of a gate, she had found a crumbled area of the wall.

We stepped over it and continued on.

Two thick wooden pillars stood side by side. Madoka commented that they looked like a torii. This was not an explosion of deductive reasoning on her part. Beyond it, we found a wooden shrine that had been crushed into nothing but a pile of wood.

Compared to the plywood and iron from before, the building had likely had a fair bit of style.

If it had not been smashed into pieces, that is.

The shrine had been smashed down to its foundation and the pile of wooden material had plenty of parts that had been scorched black. It would take quite a bit of persistence to destroy a building to this extent.

“Why would you destroy a shrine? What happened?”

“Was there a coup d’etat by the people?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the grade of the shrine was clearly greater than those dilapidated shacks. There must have been a pretty big class divide. If you cannot resolve your dissatisfaction, it simply builds up. Once it passed a certain level, it can explode out in the form of physical violence.”

We circled around the destroyed shrine and realized a few houses existed beyond it.

That’s right. Houses.

These large rural houses were a lot like my own thatch-roof house. They were quite different from the plywood and iron shacks. It seemed the people belonging to a special class had been gathered within that stone wall.

But unlike the shrine, these houses had not been destroyed.

The thatch roofs had rotted away from neglect and about half of the roofs had crumbled into the buildings, but that was simply due to the passage of time. There was no sign of blunt weapons breaking pillars or fires being set like there was with the shrine.

“It looks like that shrine received special treatment.”

“These are a lot different from the plywood and iron shacks from before. These buildings make me think the owners had some money.”

''Really?

I had lived in an Intellectual Village’s thatch-roof house all my life, so I did not actually know how much a house like this was worth.

''How much would one of these cost?

“But these houses are falling apart as much as the others, so I doubt they can protect us from those snakes.”

I stepped inside one of the houses with my shoes on.

The wood floor of the hallway creaked so much I was worried about breaking through. I could see old dressers and hanging scrolls, so it had a very different atmosphere to the plywood houses where people had seemed barely able to survive.

“They look wealthy enough, but they still didn’t have gas or running water.”

“There’s something that looks like a hastily written account book again.”

I touched a bundle of Japanese paper placed on the wall. I used my phone to photograph a few of the pages that looked like they were about to crumble from the moisture.

I stepped into the kitchen that had a furnace and a giant water jug. That was a sight you did not even see in an Intellectual Village. I crouched down and tapped on the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought there might be one here too.”

After I checked around a bit, I found a spot that made a different noise. I slid my hand across and found a rusty latch. It was a door to a storage area under the floor. I pulled it open and found a small rectangular space. And inside…

“Look at that jar. It’s on its side, but it isn’t broken yet.”

“Are those things spilling out of the jar the gold rings that were on those snakes’ heads?”

I had a feeling those snakes were some kind of Youkai.

I scooped up the jar from the storage area. It must have held quite a few gold rings because it made a jangling noise when I shook it slightly.

A piece of Japanese paper that had yellowed with age was attached to the side of the jar.

The characters were written too sloppily to read, but they appeared to be the same as the ones from that plywood shack.

The paper had two kanji on it.

“…Tou? I think that first kanji is Tou.”

“But the second one is way too complex to read. I’m not even sure if that’s a kanji we use anymore.”

These jars existed in both the wealthy houses and the plywood shacks.

The jars contained gold rings identical to the ones on that swarm of snakes.

''Are those snakes a Youkai that sticks with a house like a Zashiki Warashi?

However…

I had never heard of a Zashiki Warashi that continued protecting a house even after its residents were gone. From what I had seen of Zenmetsu Village, a house Youkai would have no reason to remain here for decades afterwards.

The only exception was Yokoeda Tadashi who had lived here the entire time.

But he had mistaken the swarm of snakes for human assassins, so it seemed unlikely that he was those snakes’ family and that they were all under his control.

Thirty years before, the villagers of Zenmetsu Village had been slaughtered. If those were normal snakes, those gold rings would have to be placed on any new snakes as they were born, but Yokoeda Tadashi, the only person here, did not seem to know about them.

That left no one to put those gold rings on them.

Yet all of those countless snakes had the gold rings.

''Were they always like that?

''Are they Youkai that never age and never change form?

“What should we do now?” asked Madoka. “This is probably the most extravagant and sturdiest part of the village. …Even this wealthy district is falling apart. If those snakes arrive again, they will be able to get in through all the gaps.”

“True. Just hiding isn’t going to cut it.”

“Where should we go?”

“If those snakes are a type of Youkai, there might be some kind of text explaining how to use them. And conveniently enough, this is the home of some of the most influential people of the village.”

“But it’s all written so sloppily we cannot read it.”

“It’s better than not trying at all.”

After all, Youkai could not be killed by any normal means. Making a Molotov cocktail from the fuel in the generator outside would not be enough to protect us. There was only one way to deal with Youkai: investigate the characteristics of that type and remove yourself from the conditions causing them to attack you.

And so Madoka and I began a thorough search of the mansion.

We passed by a pillar that was bent like a bow, crouched below a rotting ceiling that looked like it could collapse at any moment, watched it actually collapse behind us, and walked across rotten straw from the thatch roof. A few documents stored in an old bookshelf were still intact, but everything else was much more difficult to deal with. Most of them had fused into a single mass like a bundle of wet toilet paper.

“But we can’t read any of this…”

“I told you.”

Madoka tossed a bundle of Japanese paper aside and leaned up against a nearby wall.

And then she disappeared.

Or so it seemed.

She had actually broken through the rotten mud wall and fallen backwards out of the building.

“Gyah!!”

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_171.png|thumb]]

“Try for a cute ‘kyahn!’ next time, Madoka!”

I ran out the square hole that had once held a sliding door and ran over to where she had fallen out into the backyard. Madoka was lying on her back while covered in rotten building material. For better or for worse, the squishy material seemed to have cushioned her head. Her uniform’s skirt was flipped up by quite a bit, revealing gray boxer shorts that were so disappointing I wanted to cry.

The world grew dark before my eyes.

“You idiot!! Do you think you’re a guy!?”

“But this is more comfortable! And it matches the sports bra!! And why are you the one getting angry when my underwear is on full display!? …Wait.”

Madoka then seemed to spot something.

She pointed through the fog.

“Shinobu-kun, look at that.”

“Hm? What is it?”

I had not noticed it before, but it seemed a sharp upward slope began right behind the house. It was either a cliff or one of the mountains around Four Mountains.

But Madoka had not been referring to it.

“No, that over there.” She pointed at the same spot once more. “There is a cave.”

===Part 20 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

We had decided to drive to a service area where we could use our cell phones to gather data.
But that plan quickly failed.

It happened once we had arrived near the interchange.

“Dammit, what is going on?”

Our speed dropped and then the engine suddenly died.

“You’re kidding! Did the battery give out!?”

“The light wasn’t on, though.”

Sitting around in the driver’s seat was not going to fix anything, so I left the mystery freak in the car and stepped outside. I wanted to know if this was something I could fix with the tools in the rental car, so I opened the hood to check the engine.

As soon as the metal hood lifted up…

I spotted a ton of strange snakes filling the engine area.

“Wah! Ah!?”

I instinctually jerked my hands away from the hood. The metal hood fell down with a loud bang. Enbi’s eyes opened wide because she did not know what was happening, but I did not have time to worry about that.

The hood had not fully closed.

Black snakes as thick as a little finger came crawling out as if overflowing through the remaining gap.

It was such a repulsive sight that I tripped and fell onto my butt as I tried to back away.

''Is this what caused the engine to stall? No wild animal would want to get inside there! And how were they not fried from being in there!?

As if in opposition to my sensible question, black snake after black snake plopped down on the road with no visible sign of burns. None of the rules I knew applied here. This gave me an intensely bad feeling. My eyes met with the eyes of one of those black snakes that all had something like a gold ring around their heads.

These were creatures that could not be killed with normal means.

''It can’t be…

''Are these…

“Youkai…?”

As soon as I uttered that word, the dozens of snakes vanished as if they had dissolved into the fog. They had not simply fled. They had clearly vanished on the spot like dry ice.

The mystery freak must have realized something was wrong because she got out of the passenger seat.

“Detective, what’s the matter?”

“Well…”

I was unsure I could accurately explain what had happened.

I was half ready to decide it was a hallucination caused by exhaustion.

However…

“Huh? Something’s stuck in the hood.”

I gave a start because I thought one of those snakes might still be there, but it seemed that was not the case.

“It’s a sneaker.”

“A sneaker?”

I stood up with a puzzled look.

The mystery freak opened the hood a bit to pull out a white sneaker. It was only the right sneaker. Its design was plain, but I recognized it.

“That goes with a prisoner uniform.”

“So does it belong to Hasebe Michio?”

Enbi and I exchanged a glance.

I undid the button on the sneaker’s clasp, removed the lining, and checked through it. My fingertips came across a small folded scrap of paper.

“Detective…”

“Don’t look at me. If you have any complaints, take them to the prison guard in charge of checking over him.”

Once unfolded, the paper was the size of a business card. It looked like a piece torn from notebook or memo pad paper.

A simple map was drawn on it.

It looked like the Four Mountains area, but it did not have the semiconductor factory marked despite that being the biggest landmark.

Instead…

“What’s this X?”

“It certainly looks suspicious.”

I got back in the car and turned the key, but the engine still refused to start. It seemed best to put off the trip to the service area until later.

I did not like how it seemed we were being guided by those snake Youkai, but I decided to check the X on the map hidden in Hasebe’s sneaker.

===Part 21 (Hishigami Mai)===

''I think it’s just about time for Mai-chan to take her turn.

As we all monitored each other in the large employee cafeteria, I embraced the Sunekosuri that had been rubbing up against my legs.

I whispered, “(The power is going to go out soon and I will kill one of them.)”

“Bh!?” The Sunekosuri almost spat out in surprise. “(What!? Wh-wh-wh-wh-what!?”)”

“(I sabotaged a breaker on the way here. This cafeteria has no windows, so it will be pitch black in here. The factory block will keep running, but the living areas will have a normal blackout.)”

This was like a game where a Kitsune and a Tanuki were trying to trick each other.

Unless I shook things up a bit, no one would make any mistakes.

My interpretation was that most of those here had no real connection to the incident. They were filler characters meant to make the real culprit harder to find. Killing them would not make this any better or worse. And so I had decided to kill the most powerful of those I had decided were definitely unrelated to the incident.

My choice was Itou Takeru.

He was the supervisor in charge of the entire corporate prison, so he had no reason to rely on a supernatural Youkai. He could freely kill a few people whether they were prisoners or jailers and he had a perfect method of disposing of the corpses using the system put in place by the Kuroyama Electronics Group.

He was a top rank candidate for the culprit’s target, but I was not trying to help the culprit. If I killed Itou before they could, that was not my problem.

The prisoners were one thing, but the jailers would definitely be shaken if the fellow jailer with the most authority suddenly died. And if you ignored the Sunekosuri and me, there were five jailers versus two prisoners. The jailers were in the majority, so if they panicked, the fear and shock would be transferred to the prisoners. That was the scary thing about groups.

And so I was going to kill Itou Takeru-san for a variety of reasons.

I hope you can forgive me.

“(B-before you said you couldn’t kill them!)”

“(Not if it isn’t absolutely necessary. I am doing this to reveal the truth of this bizarre phenomenon related to a Youkai, not to reveal the secrets of the corporate prison. That means I can have Hyakki Yakou clean up after me.)”

“(What happened to figuring out who the culprit is!? You even had everyone gather here!)”

“(What? Who ever said that was my plan? I was only pretending to handle this with logic in preparation for my real plan. Remember, my standard method is to handle everything with violence.)”

“(B-but you’re an outsider. You aren’t a prisoner or a jailer. If something goes wrong, they will blame you first.)”

“(True.)” I grinned. “(But what if that most suspicious person was killed? The group that was keeping calm by thinking of me as the villain would fall apart. And if one of those people is in control of the occult here, they will panic. And so they will use the occult that protects them even if they do not want to.)”

“(Wh-what do you mean killed?)”

“(The parking lot out front is filled with cars. I will board one and try to escape, but the car will explode spectacularly.)”

Cowardly Yamada must have grown irritated by our whispering because he clicked his tongue loudly.

Of course, I was whispering in front of everyone because I wanted to look as suspicious as possible.

“Hey, what’re you talking about over there?”

“You will see soon enough.”

I shrugged while still holding the Sunekosuri.

Immediately afterwards, the area was filled with darkness thanks to the sabotage to the breaker.

''Okay, time to go.

Having to prove to the masses that your enemy had done something wrong before you attacked was only a rule in the territory my sister and that detective worked in.

For those that worked in secret like me, it was often the case that nothing else mattered as long as you uncovered the culprit in the very, very end.

===Part 22 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

A cave.

When I heard that, my expression must have been one of great displeasure.

It was dangerous enough searching through the half-crumbled, half-collapsed house that was not up to earthquake standards or any other standards for that matter, but a natural cave was something else entirely.

If you are imagining a limestone cave at a tourist spot that has a cool and mysterious mood year round, you are quite mistaken.

A cave that has not been maintained by human hands would be filled with hundreds of bugs. There would be spiders, centipedes, pill bugs, slugs, snails, mosquitos, flies, and every type of roach you’re used to seeing. No one would want to go into a gathering spot for so many grotesque creatures.

On top of that, the ceiling could collapse at any time, the floor could collapse without warning, and overlooking a large crack could send you dropping upside down for several meters if not several dozen meters, scraping your body against a file-like wall all the while. There was also a danger of running out of oxygen or being exposed to poisonous volcanic gases.

The scariest part was that these extremely dangerous areas often looked completely normal from the outside. Even if I grew trapped inside, how likely do you think it is someone would come and rescue me? The odds seemed slimmer than those of a tights-wearing American comic book superhero gallantly showing up to rescue me from a mugging.

“Listen, Madoka-san. A city-raised bourgeois like you might not be aware, but entering a cave is just as dangerous as crossing a crumbling suspension bridge that you can’t even imagine how long ago it last underwent maintenance. You can’t just walk into one as easily as taking shelter from the rain… Wait, Madoka? Madoka-san!?”

''She’s gone!?

Madoka, who had just broken out through the fragile wall of the house and rolled into the backyard, had disappeared at some point.

As an unpleasant feeling raced up my back, I heard a girl’s voice in the distance.

“Oh, it really is cool in here. But it kind of stinks. A bear doesn’t sleep here, does it?”

“Get out of the cave!!”

''She went in on her own!?

I peered into the two to three meter tall opening to the cave, but I could not see anything through the darkness. I doubted I would have been able to see anything even without the fog.

“Madoka! Madoka-saaan!! Leaving me alone in an abandoned village overflowing with the sense that it’s cursed has about a 100% chance of making me piss myself, so could you come on back now!?”

“Eh? But this cave looks meaningful. It might lead us to a secret of Zenmetsu Village.”

''Meaningful?

I frowned at what Madoka had said.

As far as I could tell, this cave had not been maintained by human hands like some limestone cave. There was no torii, shimenawa, or stone monument with the cave’s name. I could not see any evidence that this cave was viewed as special.

“Madoka, what are you talking about? Do you have any evidence?”

“…”

“What do you mean it looks meaningful? This may be a confusing situation, but it didn’t sound like you were using the word wrong.”

“…”

“Um, Madoka-san?”

“…”

“You’re remaining silent to force me to come in after you, aren’t you!?”

''Dammit. This devil of a classmate knows how to manipulate guys too well!!

I was also saddened by how I had fallen for it and my heart had started to beat faster.

At any rate, it seemed I needed to enter the cave, but I was too afraid to grope around in that pitch black cave. I wanted a source of light.

“That thing used diesel, right?”

I circled around the outer wall of the house. There, I found a generator. It was rusted and falling apart, but a distinctive smell wafted out when I opened the fuel tank cover. I was exceedingly dubious whether it was of high enough quality to work in an engine, but it would likely still burn if you soaked it into a cloth and ignited it.

If I just had a stick of wood and an old rag, I could make a torch.

I acquire both items from the half-crumbled house and cautiously entered the cave with the light in hand.

''Wait, I just thought of something… Torches don’t cause carbon monoxide poisoning like charcoal grills, do they?

“Damn this place is cramped.”

The cave did not look like a river had worn it down bit by bit. That said, it did not look like people had dug it out either. Overall, the cave was shaped like a warped triangle. The ground below must have shifted during an earthquake and it got caught on something that was now supporting this space. In other words, it could easily all come crashing down at any moment.

As I felt my balls shrivel up in fear, the orange light illuminated Madoka’s body.

It seemed she had been quite close by.

She had only been about 15 meters from the entrance.

“Oh, Shinobu-kun. A torch is quite the wild option. I was doing my best with the backlight of my cell phone.”

Madoka was grinning as if she had no fear in her heart at all.

It may have been because she had no balls to shrivel up in fear.

“How could you light up your phone in a place that could be filled with hundreds of disgusting bugs, rats, and bats? Animals tend to move toward light. What would you have done if they all rushed toward you at once? You would be transformed into some kind of frightening insect human.”

“Ugeh. That can happen? But what about your torch, Shinobu-kun?”

“The danger is still there, but the fire can be used as a weapon. I can at least wave it around and run for the exit.”

“Wow, what an outdoorsman. To be honest, my opinion of you just went up. Can you cook a meal over a campfire?”

''Is that so? Maybe I should be honored to have a financial monster like you say that.

However…

“But it looks like there was nothing to worry about. I’ve lit up all the walls around here, but I haven’t seen an insect or any other creature.”

“Isn’t that odd, though?”

After all, if there were not hundreds of insects here, there had to be a reason for the insects to not be here. I grew a bit concerned the dangers of low oxygen or volcanic gases were about to make themselves known.

My torch consumed oxygen, so the flame weakening considerably would warn us if the oxygen levels were dropping. The volcanic gases were the worst option. By the time we realized something was wrong, it would probably already be too late.

“Madoka, this seems pretty dangerous. There has to be something keeping away those disgusting bugs that not even insecticides can kill. We need to get out of here.”

“I think we should be fine.”

“?”

“Look, there’s light over there. That means there’s an exit.”

Madoka suddenly pointed to the side.

She was standing at a T-shaped intersection.

“With where we came in and that exit right over there, air has plenty of paths to blow through. Gas wouldn’t build up in here.”

It seemed the cave was not all that large.

I held out the torch to wipe away the darkness before me and found it reached a dead end after only about 10 meters. Even if you added in the distance to where we had entered, that was only about 25 meters.

“This place is surprisingly small.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. And I was sure this place was meaningful.”

“Are you disappointed you didn’t find a legendary dragon or some thieves’ hidden treasure?”

“No, not that.” Madoka raised her index finger. “This cave may be natural, but it was located right next to a house that probably belonged to one of the village’s ruling class. If it was only an eyesore, they could have had the villagers fill in the entrance.”

“Hm? Well, I suppose… But you saw that village. They didn’t have the leeway in their lifestyle for designing an aesthetic garden.”

“Perhaps, but the ruling class would be able to build their house wherever they wanted in Four Mountains. It’s odd for their choice of the optimum land to be near a cave.”

“I see. That does sound meaningful.”

I would never want to live near a cave. They had so many insects sleeping inside and all of those insects would come swarming out once it grew warm.

“Hey, Shinobu-kun. Something is glittering over there.”

“What?”

With the torch in hand, I approached in the direction she was pointing. Near the dead end when continuing straight into the cave were some needle-shaped depressions. I initially thought something like a large puddle existed in the middle of them, but I was wrong. The water was very clear yet I could not see the bottom. It was quite deep. The light of the torch did not reach all the way down. There seemed to be a pit here and only here.

“It looks like someone dug this.”

“Is it a well?”

“It looks like the same technique, but the water level is completely wrong. It could overflow at any time.”

There was no need to dig deep into the ground. The cave was already underground, so it was possible an underground stream passed by at a higher level than us. This well with an oddly high water level (or was it a spring?) may have struck an underground stream running through the mountain.

''…If there’s an underground stream nearby, doesn’t that mean the ground here is even less reliable?

''Also…

''If they had the ability to dig a well, why did everyone in the village use water filters made from metal drums?

“Oh?”

Madoka crouched down and began poking at a stone the size of a pickling stone.

“There is something carved on here, but the kanji is too hard to read.”

“I’ll take a photo.”

I snapped a photo with my cell phone camera.

As far as trip memories went, this collection of photos was about the worst. I thought about creating an exorcism folder.

Nothing else inside caught our attention. Madoka and I walked back down the way we had come and stopped at the T-shaped intersection. We had yet to check the other exit.

The presence of the light told us the exit was nearby. That meant the tunnel did not cut through to the other side of the mountain.

“Shinobu-kun, let’s go check it out.”

As I walked forward with the torch in one hand, the path quickly narrowed. It was so narrow I had to turn to the side to fit. The path also sloped sharply upwards and spiraled around.

However, this path from hell quickly came to an end.

“This is…?”

“We’ve come out at a higher point.”

We were probably three or four meters up, but the thick fog made it hard to tell for sure. We had taken a T-shaped intersection in the cave, but the two exits likely came out on the same slope. In fact, there was nowhere else an exit could be.

“Shinobu-kun, what should we do now?” Madoka must have been tired because she sat down without worrying about getting dirty. “Do you think we could climb the mountain and cross over out of Four Mountains?”

“Trying to climb a mountain of unknown height without food or water and while wearing leather shoes is pure insanity. Don’t forget the fog and that we don’t have a map or GPS.”

“Eh? If we just head straight, won’t we make it eventually?”

“If we come across a vertical cliff, are you fine with doing some free climbing? In leather shoes? I would at least want a lifeline.”

If you looked into what routes bullet trains and highways took, it became obvious how much land routes hated mountains.

“Boo, boo,” said Madoka as she pouted her lips.

Either her exhaustion and hopelessness had reached their limit or the lack of any useful information combined with the lack of anything more to investigate had irritated her. It must have been nice being a beautiful girl. Everything they did looked great. If she wasn’t so cute, I might have punched her for being so stubborn.

“We put in all this work, but we haven’t managed to get away. This is a lot like the Shokei Island serial murders case Enbi told me about a long time ago.”

“…Could you not bring up such ominous things?”

“Apparently, there was a closed room murder case in the remains of a coal mine on a remote island to the northeast. I think the trick had to do with using a wire to throw the key in through a tiny window.”

Suddenly, an incredibly light electronic tone broke through the unpleasant atmosphere of hopelessness.

Madoka and I exchanged a glance before frowning.

It was the sound of the cell phone in my pocket receiving an email. I had received several messages from the large-breasted Zashiki Warashi saying “I’m bored. Buy me a souvenir.”

“…I have a signal. But why!?”

“Look, Shinobu-kun. There’s an abandoned car over there!” said Madoka as she tapped on my shoulder.

I looked over and spotted a mass of brown rust sitting on the grassy mountain slope. She had called it a car, but it was a compact one-person vehicle that looked like a scooter with four wheels. It was an extra small electric car that automobile companies had made to ensure the elderly could go shopping.

“It must still work. The car navigation and the automatic break system need an internet connection. The electric car itself can function as a mobile Wi-Fi and 3G wireless hotspot, so it must have picked up on our phones’ signals!”

“Wait, wait, wait!!”

Humans tended not to doubt information that was convenient for them.

But this was too much.

“That’s way too modern! Zenmetsu Village’s civilization was on the level of using water filters and diesel generators. They didn’t even have any phone lines. Why are we suddenly finding an electric car with a perfect net environment?”

“Eh? Well…”

“And the battery doesn’t last forever. If this has been left here since the slaughter 30 years ago, who has been recharging it? And what about the OS and firmware? Has it been auto-updating itself all this time? If so, who has been paying the internet contract fees? If it was just left here, the contract would expire and it would stop functioning!”

“Shinobu-kun, we were attacked by someone in a run-down shack of Zenmetsu Village. Maybe this is his.”

“I can’t deny that 100%, but if he was hard up for food, wouldn’t this be the first thing he sold? And how has he been paying the monthly contract fees?”

He had somehow obtained that portable gas stove and gas cylinder, so he may have had some kind of income. He might have collected magazines and sold them or captured rare rhinoceros beetles and sold them. But whatever he did, it would be for a tiny amount. I doubted he had a stable income to pay the thousands of yen he would need for this.

“Someone left it here to make periodic contact. They bought the lightest variety of electric car so they could leave it here on the slope where no one would notice it. But I doubt it was that man wandering around Zenmetsu Village who did it. In fact, don’t you think it was put here on the slope specifically so he wouldn’t find it?”

“If so, who did it?”

“I don’t know…”

The car had to have had a license plate, but I could not see one. It was possible it had naturally rusted away, but it looked more like someone was intentionally hiding their personal information.

But thinking about this anymore was not going to help.

I looked back down at my cell phone.

“At any rate, our cell phones have a signal now. We can get the word out that we vanished from the tour bus and call for help from professional rescuers.”

“Don’t forget this,” said Madoka as she poked at the back of my cell phone. “You took all those photos. Those sloppy kanji may be illegible to us, but don’t you think a Zashiki Warashi who has lived for a long, long time could read them?”

===Part 23 (Hishigami Mai)===

The story so far!!

Eight thousand people had vanished from a large scale factory and corporate prison, leaving only a few jailers and prisoners behind. But in reality those eight thousand had not disappeared and it was us who had been caught up in “something”. It was possible we were being treated as missing in the real world.

Now, that meant one of those few people was likely the culprit.

However, I had no intention of gathering small pieces of evidence like my sister or that detective. Physical evidence was only any use when things could be resolved in the courtroom.

I decided to kill one person I could rule out and then fake my own death when I seemed the most likely suspect. The remaining members would panic and begin suspecting each other. Basically, I was creating a situation where killing everyone but yourself would bring you peace of mind.

Would the mastermind behind all this take direct action or would they take defensive action to stop the others from growing violent? They possessed some kind of hidden occult power, so either way, they would use some strange ability.

I could resolve the situation by determining who it was and defeating them.

Anyway, after I killed the one person in the factory’s employee cafeteria, I headed for the parking lot and made it look like the stolen car I tried to flee in had exploded.

In reality, I was hiding behind a line of parked trucks, watching the burning car from a short distance.

I could see a few silhouettes through the thick fog.

“What is…going on?” muttered someone.

''Whose voice is that? Oh, right. That’s the violent jailer Yamada-kun.

“She’s dead? But that woman had to be the killer! Then who killed her!? I thought she was the one who killed the head jailer!”

The situation was not ideal.

I could see the light of the flames through the fog, but I could not grasp the details of the silhouettes. I would be unable to pick up on any small mannerisms or changes in expression like this. And I was supposed to be dead, so I could not carelessly approach either.

That meant it was time for my radio that could pierce the jamming.

“(Sunekosuri. Hey, Sunekosuri. Are you in position?)”

“I am in the factory’s guard room. There are so many surveillance monitors I am starting to feel dizzy.”

This facility was known as a corporate prison, so it would have more cameras installed than a normal factory. I had sent the Sunekosuri there to closely monitor the area I could not approach.

Meanwhile, the silhouettes in the fog continued sending stabbing words back and forth.

I heard a voice I was fairly sure belonged to the female jailer named Sakai Haruka.

“Wait a second! We decided that woman did it!”

“But her car’s burning!”

“Did she kill herself after killing the head jailer? Or maybe there isn’t a body inside. …At any rate, she’s the one behind this! It’s a real problem if she isn’t!!”

''Shit, she has some sense.

''But that last comment might have been a mistake.

“What? What do you mean it’s a real problem? You make it sound like you have some secret you want to hide by making her look like the murderer.”

“N-no…”

“Shut up!!”

I heard a loud crashing sound. I stared closely and it looked like Yamada Ken had broken a random car window. He would not have done that barehanded, so he had likely found some kind of blunt weapon on his way here.

“Heh. You were probably the one that did it,” said Yamada. “I know about the head jailer’s ‘preferences’. Once he has his eye on you, it doesn’t matter if you’re a man or a woman. This was a good opportunity for you. In a situation like this, anyone could do it without getting arrested.”

“Don’t mock me! I made sure to stay out of any of that!!” protested Sakai. “And speaking of that, what about you!?”

“Shut the hell up! If I say that’s the truth, then that’s the truth! Did you think we were gonna take a vote? If I break the knees of everyone who’s suspicious, they won’t be able to move!! In that case…!!”

''Oh, is Yamada-kun going to give this a real effort?

But the situation suddenly changed.

“Shut! Up!!”

The shy female jailer named Kurumaya Nozomi suddenly stabbed Yamada’s head with a blade.

The action took place beyond the thick fog, so the details were not entirely clear. However, she had likely grabbed one of the shards of the car window and swung it down at Yamada’s head. As Kurumaya Nozomi swung down her clenched fist, something glittered below it.

She swung it down.

Again and again and again.

It was as if she were using some strange stamp.

“Shut up! You’ve done nothing but talk and talk and talk and talk! You’re probably working with that woman to kill us all!! You knew how she was going to escape, so you set up a bomb there!!”

“Gyah!!”

Yamada held his head with both hands, but did not yet collapse. It was not like he was being stabbed with a military knife. But even if he had not yet collapsed, there was probably no saving him. He had been stabbed quite a bit.

She must have had a lot of anger built up from her everyday life because Kurumaya-chan continued swinging the glass shard down toward Yamada as if she was digging up dirt with a garden spade.

“And!! And!! I’ve never liked you! That annoying voice sounds just like that fucking dog that bit my arm when I was a kid!!”

“Wait, Kurumaya-san!?”

“Shut up!!”

I heard something slice through the air. She had likely swung the shard to keep Sakai Haruka back when the fellow woman tried to approach.

And then…

“Okay, that’s enough,” announced the male jailer named Tanishita Hajime in a decisive tone.

He was answered with a shout of anger from Kurumaya who had likely had the expression of some kind of monster at this point.

“Ah!?”

“No one move. I am with the police. I came here undercover as a jailer to investigate the corporate prison running behind the semiconductor factory. …And by the way, this is no toy.”

Silence fell as the atmosphere froze over.

I could guess that “this” was something one did not often see in Japan.

The effect it brought lasted only a few seconds.

Another voice cut in.

“You’re the one that needs to quiet down, you terrible actor,” spat out a female voice.

It likely belonged to Gogan Sakura, the prisoner in her fifties.

“You’re an industrial spy from Pallax Precision Machinery, aren’t you? Your name is Hayama Jouji. You tried to steal the plans for the semiconductor printing equipment, but were shocked to find yourself sent to work as a jailer here. You were wondering whether this was a simple reassignment or if your cover had been blown and they were preparing to imprison you here. You had to have been scared.”

“Wh-wh-who the hell are you!? What are you talking about!?”

“You’re not going to scare me by waving around a model gun. And it doesn’t look like you’ve modified it to shoot real bullets either. A real gun looks like this. Get it now, boy?”

''Hm.

''There are a lot of interesting people here.

“Thank you for going along with this PSIA undercover investigation. But this is my limit. I was hoping to get a reading on the general intentions of the entire Kuroyama Electronics Group instead of just this out-of-control corporate prison, but I have no choice now that someone has died.”

“Y-you’re kidding…” said Kurumaya Nozomi in a trembling voice. She had killed someone right in front of a police officer, it was only natural she wanted to deny it. “Th-they said on a drama I watched that the Japanese police aren’t allowed to perform undercover investigations! And if they do it’s an independent investigative department with a different jurisdiction than the normal police like the Narcotics Control Department!!”

“Officially, yes. But a lot of the PSIA’s work does not leave any official records. I’ve gotten this old while eating food earned from undercover investigations. Shouldn’t you assume your ideas about all this were wrong?”

“But…” At this point, the other female prisoner, the high school aged Suzukawa Izumi, spoke up for the first time. “If you’re a police officer who leaves no records behind, that means you can have as many illegal side businesses as you like, doesn’t it? You leave no trace of anything behind, after all. Are you really an ally of justice here to expose the evils of this corporate prison? Or do you have some other objective more in line with your own desires?”

''…Hm.

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah!!” shouted the Sunekosuri over the radio. “I-is it just me or is no one here a normal person!? D-don’t tell me all of them play some role in the underground world Hyakki Yakou deals with…”

“(No, I doubt this is ''that convenient.'' A few of them live their lives in the light. But my role is to kill anyone necessary regardless of what kind of aftertaste it will leave in my mouth.)”

However, it would be problematic if this (self-proclaimed) PSIA undercover agent took control of the situation.

I could not allow the situation to calm down.

They had to be killing each other until the person behind all this made a mistake.

“Y-you’re lying. That has to be a model gun!”

“Do you think that because yours is just a toy?”

“Freeze!! This is real! So…!!”

“Then how about you prove it?”

''This is my chance!!

I brought the radio closer to my lips.

“(Sunekosuri! Who is Gogan Sakura aiming her gun at!?)”

“Eh? Ehh? The Tanishita Hajime guy who might be a police officer or an industrial spy.”

“(Where is he? The thick fog makes it too hard to see from here.)”

“Wh-why do you want to know?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” I pulled out my handgun that had a suppressor equipped. “(I’ll shoot Tanishita Hajime as Gogan Sakura fires her warning shot. An amateur won’t notice the difference in caliber. With one gunshot and one wound, they will suspect Gogan Sakura who had been so well-behaved up until now. The others will fall straight into a panic when they’re betrayed by the person they thought they could trust.)”

“E-eeee!?”

It wasn’t clear whether Tanishita Hajime was guilty or not, so I decided it would be best to not make a deadly shot. As long as it caused a panic and they began trying to kill each other, it didn’t matter.

“(Sunekosuri, what is Tanishita Hajime’s precise location?)”

“Ah, ah wah, ah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah!”

“(Sunekosuri, this is a Hyakki Yakou job! You were sent to support me because the young lady trusts you. If you aren’t going to live up to that trust, just quit the organization already!)”

“T-Tanishita is…” began the Sunekosuri. Even over the radio I could tell he was about to cry. “He is to the right from your perspective. He is directly next to the burning car. That is about 10 meters away.”

“…?”

“He is standing alongside the side mirror. If you aim based on the reflected light, you should hit his upper body.”

This was no time to think.

I followed the Sunekosuri’s instructions and aimed my small, suppressor-equipped handgun with both hands.

And then I waited.

“Will a gunshot be enough to prove it? Or do you need the crushed bullet afterwards? I guess you won’t believe me until I shoot over there somewhere, will you?”

“Hey, wait…”

I waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

“This is an emergency situation. Waving my gun around like this would normally require more than a written apology, but there aren’t going to be any records of this. We use these pretty lightly in our world. Make sure you remember that.”

''Now!!

I focused on my trigger finger.

And…

A high-pitched gunshot rang out beyond the fog.

Silence followed.

I was hiding a short distance away, but even my ears had a sharp pain in them.

Gogan Sakura had fired a warning shot.

However…

My suppressor-equipped handgun was pointed upwards.

I had held back from firing at the last second.

“(Sunekosuriii…)” I said bitterly.

“Ee!? Wh-what is it? I have no idea what is going on…”

“(You have two options. Either I make an official report to the young lady that you gave me false information to save a suspect, or you will receive a full-body massage by me after all this is over.)”

“I will take the massage! Please, anything but telling Hafuri-sama!! Anything but having those sorrowful eyes turned in my direction!!”

''You idiot.

''If I had fired in the wrong place, one of them might have noticed the sound or sparks when it hit! That would have ruined everything! This is the sort of “kind noise” that gets professionals killed!!

“(But…)”

What was I to do now?

The warning shot had silenced everyone else. I would have no opportunity to fire randomly into them and it would not cause as much panic this way. For better or for worse, the center of their group mentality was now located in the undercover investigator Gogan Sakura. As their mental dependence on her grew, I would have to kill someone else to bring in more doubt before it would all come crumbling down.

''Gnn! This is a huge detour!!

The undercover investigator seemed to be reestablishing communications beyond the fog.

“There is no hope for this guy…Yamada Ken was it?”

“A-ahh. I…I didn’t…I…wait…”

Kurumaya Nozomi finally began to grow nervous, but Gogan was not going to listen.

“To find the culprit more smoothly, let’s go over each of our situations one by one. We need to find why the head jailer and that female jailer died as well as what is causing the bizarre phenomenon behind it all.”

And then…

Just as I almost began seriously wondering if Gogan Sakura would solve everything for me…

Something even more abnormal came from an unexpected place.

===Part 24 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

“Ugh,” groaned the mystery freak after stepping out of the rental car.

What lay before her eyes was an unmaintained forest where the rotting branches of the trees covered the sky and the tall undergrowth left the color of the ground a complete mystery. Nature here was destroying itself like a bedridden old man with bedsores.

“Are you sure we should follow the map? We aren’t going to get stranded are we?”

“The rental car refuses to run, so we can only investigate in the areas we can walk to.”

To be honest, with the almost complete lack of clues, I was beginning to doubt Hasebe Michio was even in Four Mountains.

Finding them after those snake Youkai made me incredibly uneasy, but we had a prisoner’s shoe and an old map of Four Mountains with an X marked on it. It might lead us to nothing, but it was worth trying.

“More importantly, mystery freak, are you sure you’re okay in that swimsuit-like outfit?”

“I can’t exactly take off anything else! B-but if you beg me enough, I might consider stripping further.”

“I mean the opposite, you idiot.” I pointed into the thick greenery we were about to head into. “Do you really want to walk through there with exposed skin? The small branches will scratch at your skin and who knows how many mosquitos and centipedes there are. This is no place for a nice picnic.”

“That’s what the bug spray is for!”

“How much do you think that will really help? And you have moisture all over your body from this fog.”

“Th-then what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

I pointed toward the unmoving rental car.

“The most sensible answer is for you to wait here.”

“No! I can’t send you off alone into a forest that might be filled with Youkai. You’d definitely get your butt kicked and never come back!”

''Dammit! I can’t say she’s wrong!!

''At the very least, it’s true there were some snake Youkai!!

I rubbed at my bangs with one hand, and half-resignedly stuck my upper body into the rental car’s driver’s seat to unlock the trunk. I checked inside the trunk, but only found a spare tire and a tool set.

''Damn. No good.

I had no choice but to toss my jacket over the mystery freak’s head while she wore what basically amounted to a swimsuit.

“Cover yourself with that. It’s better than nothing.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_208.png|thumb]]

“U-um, wouldn’t spraying on tons of bug spray help?”

“Using too much will lead to chemical irritation. Remember: this is a chemical that sets off the bugs’ danger sense so they will keep away.”

With that said, I pulled out the largest wrench from the rental car’s tool set. I took the lead, used the tool to sweep aside the underbrush that was over a meter tall, and stomped on through.

''Dammit. Making a path is such a pain. I’m obviously wasting three times the energy I would be otherwise.

The mystery freak took advantage of the human bulldozer ahead of her and simply walked through the path I had made.

“Detective, why are you trying to make me fall for you even harder?”

“Would you rather take the lead?”

“There are a lot fewer bugs than you said there would be.”

“The fewer the better.”

''…But that does bother me a bit, too.

The thick and extremely grassy smell of greenery filled my lungs, but I could not sense much of an animal smell. I could not spot any animal droppings or remains. It was as if there were no living creatures besides us.

It was as if all of them had suddenly disappeared just like Hasebe Michio and the police officers from the prisoner transport vehicle.

After we walked through the forest a while, the green wall came to an end. A clear area covered in rotting dead grass spread out ahead of us. As we continued on following the map, we found a number of structures made from sharpened logs. They were likely meant to stop cars from entering the area. We passed by them and came across an area with a few run-down shacks made of plywood and galvanized sheet iron and an area with a few large thatch-roof houses with crumbling roofs.

The largest of the houses looked like it would cost between 20 and 30 million yen for the house alone. It would have cost 15 times that had it had been made with Intellectual Village brand name materials and by Intellectual Village craftsmen.

These larger houses seemed out of place with the rest of the abandoned village.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is living in them. It must have been decades since they were abandoned.”

“So this is the rumored Zenmetsu Village,” said the mystery freak as she walked up next to me. “But I see some new footprints here. Look.”

“Whose are those?”

I was suspicious. One set of footprints was large and the other small, but their shape was quite similar. They looked like ready-made leather shoes.

“Maybe it was a couple like us.”

“Okay, no more comments from you.”

The footprints continued in a different direction than the mark on the map. I was curious about both, but I decided to deal with the mark on the map first since we knew we could reach it. Hasebe had not been wearing leather shoes and I doubted he had a woman with him.

“Uuh… Not having internet access makes me even more worried. We only have this hand-drawn map to rely on,” complained the mystery freak.

“We have no choice.”

“Dammit. If only I could contact my usual information broker.”

“I’ll ignore that for now since we’re in the middle of a crisis, but I’m going to keep it in the back of my mind for later.”

I looked down at the map and the mystery freak grabbed onto my shirt with one hand.

“It looks like there’s something around here. A few lines are drawn in.”

“Do you think they represent roads?”

“I don’t know. They don’t travel from the center of the village and outwards, so they might be something else.”

“Like ravines?”

The fog was too thick to see even a few meters ahead. I wanted to avoid making an accidental misstep, so I decided to continue on with caution.

“Where’s the mark on the map?”

“Not far ahead… Oh, is that it?”

The mystery freak pointed toward a vague shadow in the fog.

But…

“It looks like a shrine.”

“You might want to call it a former shrine.”

There was a building, but it had been reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble. Amid the large amount of broken wooden material, pieces that had been scorched black as if in a fire were common. The destruction could not have been natural. This looked like the aftermath of a group swept away by violence rather than the work of a single person. The way the shimenawa and…nusa did you call them? Anyway, that paper folded in zigzags. The way they were blowing in the wind was a bit depressing.

''I can tell a shrine was destroyed here, but what does it mean?

''There was a mark here on the map in Hasebe’s boot, so there has to be some kind of meaning.

The mystery freak tilted her head.

“Did Hasebe destroy it?”

“If so, why would he mark down its location to remember it?”

“So the shrine was already destroyed.”

“But what does the mark mean?”

“Maybe he had something convenient hidden in the rubble.”

We exchanged a glance.

We moved the rubble as much as we could and finally discovered a clear plastic bag.

It contained some old bundles of money and a rusted blade.

“This looks suspicious.”

“There’s three million yen here,” I muttered. “Huh? But wait. Doesn’t that mean this wasn’t the first time Hasebe Michio has been in Four Mountains?”

That belated thought came to me.

And in the next moment, something heavy struck the back of my head after a full swing.

“Bh…gh…!?”

Pain instantaneously exploded in my head before vanishing as the sense exceeded its limits. Instead, the pain from my neck bending so suddenly stabbed into my mind.

I had been attacked from behind.

By the time I realized that, my vision had been greatly shaken and I had fallen to the side.

''Who?

As I lay collapsed on the ground, I desperately tried to focus my shaking vision. My gaze landed on a man of about fifty. He wore a jumpsuit. However, it was a bright neon orange and the back had a prison identification number printed in large letters, so it was not something one saw every day.

It was a prison uniform.

There was only one possible identity for this man swinging up a branch as thick as a human arm.

“Hasebe!?”

The wrench I had used to brush aside the undergrowth had fallen from my grasp during that attack. I kicked at Hasebe Michio’s leg while lying on the ground. He lost his balance but still managed to swing down his blunt weapon. His aim was off, so he only tore up the ground right next to my face.

“Dch!!” groaned Hasebe.

Standing it up and knocking it down once more must have been too troublesome because he placed the thick branch horizontally across my neck and pressed his weight down on it. I frantically grabbed at the thick branch as well, but I was still at a disadvantage. I heard a creaking sound as that branch as thick as an arm crushed my Adam’s apple.

“…Wait. Why…are you…doing this…!?”

I moved my mouth, seeking air.

And then I spotted something that left me in shock.

It was even further above than Hasebe Michio who was leaning down on me. There I saw the mystery freak’s face which had become completely expressionless. She held the large wrench I had dropped.

''Not good.

''Not good! Not good!!

''Mystery freak, why are you unhesitatingly coming forward to split Hasebe’s head open!?

“Damn…it…!!”

I tried to cry out, but had difficulty producing a voice. I tried to escape from beneath Hasebe, but it did not work well with his weight pressing down on me. I still managed to move bit by bit as if sliding along the ground.

And then gravity seemed to suddenly disappear.

I felt as if I were sliding backwards down a playground slide.

''…Didn’t the mystery freak mention some lines on the map that might be ravines!?

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

I rolled down to the bottom of the ravine along with Hasebe.

Instead of falling from a vertical wall, it felt more like sliding down a steep slope for three or four meters.

Rather than ground made of earth, a cold, highly-transparent river waited at the bottom.

With a loud splash, I sank into the water headfirst.

Seeking oxygen, I sought the surface almost on instinct alone.

“Buhahh!!”

My head broke the surface. I greedily sucked in oxygen. The river was only about a meter deep and three meters wide.

Hasebe was…

''Where is Hasebe?

As soon as that thought came to mind, someone grabbed the collar of my dress shirt from behind.

I was tugged back by a powerful force and my head sank back under the cold water.

“Gbh! Gbagbhh!!”

''Why is Hasebe Michio attacking me?

I had thought the odds were high his request for a retrial would go through and he would be found not guilty of murdering the president of Kuroyama Electronics Group, but it was looking like the charges might not have been false after all.

Or perhaps he had mistaken me for an assassin from the regional police or the corporation.

“Ha…sebe…!!”

I somehow got my head out of the water before it was submerged once more. This repeated a few times.

The situation looked hopeless, but I had been able to manage something during that time.

I had learned where his feet were.

I frantically moved my arm in an attempt to sweep those feet out from under him.

As if our bodies had switched places, our positions suddenly changed. Hasebe fell and his body sank into the cold water.

“Hasebe! Do you understand what you are doing!?”

I grabbed the collar of his prison jumpsuit with both hands and lifted him up.

He was gasping for breath as he dangled down from my arms, but he was smiling.

He looked nothing like a decent citizen who had been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he had not committed.

“To be honest, I had already given up,” said Hasebe as if spitting out the words. “But by some coincidence, I made my way out of the transport bus. And of all places, in Four Mountains where I had hidden some stolen money 30 years ago. I figured there was no harm in trying. Betting on a coincidence isn’t bad at all!!”

“What are you-…?”

“I don’t know if the driver suddenly disappeared or what, but the bus flipped over. The police officers who came running out of their cars also vanished. It was exhilarating. I don’t know who did this or how, but only an idiot wouldn’t take advantage of it!!”

“What are you talking about!?”

As I asked that, I suddenly lost my balance.

Hasebe’s hand was on the end of my necktie.

''…Dammit! He kept talking about meaningful things to draw my attention away!!

I frantically tried to remove Hasebe’s hand, but he tugged on my tie before I could. My head sank into the water like a dog on a chain. Even worse, the water was clear enough that I could see Hasebe was stepping on my tie.

''He got me…

''Now I can’t get my head above water!!

“Gbh…gbhbgh!!”

I struck Hasebe’s leg with my fist and dug my fingers into his shin, but it was no good. I instead began to think about undoing my tie.

''Shit, shit, shit!! The knot has soaked up so much water it’s tightened up!!

“Gbh…bghbgh…If you…splash…not…gh.”

Hasebe seemed to be announcing something in triumph above, but I could not hear it well through the water.

It seemed he had more to say.

The air in my lungs tried to force its way out of my mouth in pursuit of an exit. I grew dizzy. My fingers dug into my tie’s knot with enough force to almost break my fingernails. I tried to force it looser.

''Hurry up.

''Hurry up!!

“Gbah!!”

I finally escaped the bonds of my tie and broke the water’s surface in search of air.

But two hands pushed my head back down.

Hasebe’s face had an odd smile on his dripping wet face. That moisture was more than just the fog.

“Hase…agh…Hasebe!!”

“They should have left it alone. I annihilated everyone like I was supposed to. No one was left. So what does it matter if one last thing hadn’t been dealt with!? It wouldn’t have caused anyone any problems that I ran away!!”

It sounded more like he was making excuses to himself than he was talking to me.

And then it hit me. An unpleasant feeling ran down my spine.

Zenmetsu Village. That village of annihilation.

The legend concerning that empty village we had seen on the way here.

The psycho killer of the sort that delighted the mystery freak.

“Was it…you? Were you the one that killed this entire village!?”

“Shit! Shit!! Yes, it was. That was under the old system!!” replied Hasebe Michio with a mocking smile as he tried to force my head underwater. He was what you could call the “true culprit”. “Calling me a client of the Kuroyama Electronics Group sounds nice, but I was always forced into just barely scraping by. The entire run-down downtown area was a step away from starvation. Kuroyama wanted to keep a set level of disposable troops to force their inconvenient dirty work onto.”

“Kh…!!”

I grabbed the back of Hasebe’s hands as he tried to force my head down. I dug my nails deep into them.

Hasebe’s expression twisted in pain, but he maintained his position.

''Dammit. I can tell my mind is falling toward pessimistic thoughts. By the time I start considering DNA tests and dying messages, it’s all over!!

“Are…cough…Are you saying…cough…you attacked the village so the company could profit!?”

Did he think he could win?

Did he think he could silence me?

As Hasebe breathed heavily, he spoke as if encouraging himself.

“I was part of a group. That village was opposed to the construction of the semiconductor factory. I don’t know why, but they were strongly opposed to the factory using the underground water. It was a nuisance, so we were ordered to eliminate them and make it look like the work of a crazy killer.”

''…How could this be?

But it was not over yet.

The nightmarish reality continued.

“We were rewarded nicely after finishing the job. For insurance, I hid that in the remains of the village along with what I plundered during the attack. …But I let my guard down. My name had not been removed from the list of disposables! Someone had killed Kuroyama’s president during some internal struggle and my name was used. Most likely, some executive who had changed the ‘inside’ of the semiconductor factory had taken measures before the president could criticise them!!”

“Even if you were innocent of killing the president, you still faced a fate worse than death if the truth came out about Zenmetsu Village during the investigation. Is that why you had to run away before the retrial!? Because it would look too suspicious if you withdrew the request for a retrial that the victim group was asking for!?”

“Yes…that’s right!!”

Hasebe poured even more strength into his arms and my head sank beneath the water.

''Gbh!! Dammit… Water is…getting into…some odd places.

I somehow brought my head back above water, but I could not breathe properly due to coughing too much.

“Cough!! Cough cough!!”

“I was cut off in every direction! Kuroyama was too clever. After being kicked out of the United Hive, my factory was completely under their control, but it was only a client on paper. Even if I claimed they ordered me to crush the village after cutting off all ties, no one would believe me. They would think it was a bluff meant aiming for a plea of insanity!! It would never reach Kuroyama! Whether my conviction was found to be wrong or not, I would still be sent down to the very bottom!!”

My fingertips were trembling.

The lack of oxygen must have been finally having direct effects because I could feel my strength fading. The situation was only going to grow worse from here.

''Am I really going to be silenced like Hasebe wants?

''Dammit.

''Isn’t there something?

''Isn’t there anything I can fight back with?

“Running away is the only way I can survive, so of course I’m gonna run! I’ll run to the ends of the earth!! I was a victim from the beginning. I was trapped in the system of poverty Kuroyama had created, so I could not escape by any normal means. And now I can’t escape without being willing to kill again!!”

Suddenly, I heard something slice through the air. The sound came from directly above me. I did not have time to look toward it because it dropped down in an instant.

A heavy metal wrench thrown from above the ravine struck Hasebe Michio in the head.

''That stupid mystery freak!! Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working to keep you from dirtying your hands!? And there’s no way you could aim properly in this fog. What if you had hit me!?

“Cough cough cough!! Shit!”

But I did not have time to give into my anger.

As strength left Hasebe’s arms, I quickly moved away. If I could escape his grasp, I could get out of the water.

As I tried to adjust my position, I saw something unpleasant.

Hasebe Michio had received quite a shock from the blow to the head, but he moved as accurately as an automated factory’s robot arm to reach out and grab the wrench that had bounced off his head.

''Not good.

''Not good!! If he starts beating me with that, I’ll have no way of fighting back! If I try to block the blow with my arms, it’ll just break my arms. I know various disarming methods based on aikido to aid in arrests, but I don’t think any of them will work when I’m in the water and have no footing!!

“Stop, Hasebe.”

“I’m sick of hearing about how people are supposed to be good deep down.”

“You’re well known. You’re more than just a criminal. The press is treating you like a hero who was falsely convicted. Your face and name are all over the internet and the talk shows. 150 million people know you! You can never escape. If you kill me here, you will be reported the instant you approach civilization!!”

“When in a flaming building, you head to the roof where the flames have yet to reach despite the danger. If I head back to prison, only the death penalty awaits no matter how the trial goes. Even if I know it’s a dead end, I can only continue running away from the wall of flames behind me!! There is no other path left for me!!”

He shouted angrily back at me.

As I saw him raise that heavy wrench, I felt my throat dry up.

''Is this it!?

But at that point, I finally realized something.

At some point, another elderly man had approached behind Hasebe Michio. He was horribly dirty and his clothes were nothing more than old rags.

“…I remember you.”

“!”

Hasebe turned around in surprise when he heard the other man mutter at him.

However…

“I remember you!!”

A dull sound rang out.

The dirty man held a stone the size of a baby’s head that he must have torn from the ravine wall. He swung it down toward Hasebe’s head as hard as he could. Blood sprayed out and a bundle of hair was torn off, scalp and all.

A scream burst out.

The dirty man ignored it and slammed the stone down a second and third time.

“Stop…”

I had stood in utter shock for a bit, but the growing color of red brought me back to my senses.

The victor had already been decided. There was no point in going any further.

“Stop!! If you go any further, Hasebe will die!!”

“He…”

The man’s arm was trembling.

He gripped the red dyed stone so hard I thought it was going to break.

Even so, he did not stop moving his arm.

He spat out his words while looking down at Hasebe Michio who had half sunken into the cold water.

“He yawned. He was bored. While slaughtering everyone in the village and stabbing a blade into each of the bodies to make sure no survivors were hiding below the corpses, he yawned from boredom!!”

It was a story from a world that defied imagination.

I wanted to believe this was nothing but the man’s delusion.

But I had seen it.

This was not some eerie labyrinth. The scenery around us was the completely normal scenery in which dozens of people had lived, eaten, napped, and let their kids run around.

And all of that had been destroyed in a single night.

That was the truth.

“…Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who they framed for all those murders,” replied the rag-wearing man as he dropped the stone in the water and his shoulders moved up and down as he desperately tried to catch his breath. “All this time, I had been so sick of being unjustly called a murderer. But look at this? Now a part of me feels I should become a real murderer. I will become the monster they wanted me to be…”

“You really shouldn’t,” I said. “Surely you saw that Hasebe Michio’s fate will be a miserable one regardless.”

“…”

That comment caused the rag-wearing man to look away from Hasebe.

And immediately afterwards, something happened.

“Solved it.”

I heard a voice.

It was a voice with no obvious source. It was as if I were wearing headphones. It was not my voice, Hasebe’s voice, or the rag-wearing man’s voice. It sounded like a small boy’s voice.

“Solved it. Solved it. Solved the puzzle.”

The voice sounded somehow mocking and also like it was singing a creepy lullaby that had some story behind it.

''What?

''What was that?

Before I could come up with an answer, the decisive moment arrived.

“That means you are no longer needed.”

A soft and unpleasant noise burst out.

It came from Hasebe Michio who had halfway sunken into the cold water while only partially conscious.

His body grew darker.

No, that was not what had happened.

It was dozens if not hundreds of snakes as thick as a little finger. They slithered up from below the water and quickly covered Hasebe Michio’s entire body.

It seemed the man no longer held any will to resist.

He did not cry out or scream.

As that eerie sound continued, that pure black “mass” clearly shrank in volume. The arms and legs sticking out from it turned at odd angles.

''Is he being eaten?

That was what my instincts told me, but it made no logical sense.

Snakes ate their prey by swallowing it whole. They had fangs, but they could not bite off flesh. No matter how many snakes as thick as a little finger you had, it should have been impossible for them to eat something the size of a human.

But then what was I watching?

The volume of the mass within was visibly decreasing. It was like watching butter on a frying pan.

“Wait…” muttered the other man. He walked unsteadily toward the mass of snakes. “Please wait! He is…That man is the one murderer who can prove my innocence! Please don’t get rid of him!!”

“Watch out!! I don’t think those are normal snakes! Stay back!!”

I tried to grab the rag-wearing man’s arm, but he jumped at the mass of hundreds of snakes before I could.

He grabbed snake after snake and tossed them away as if digging through dirt to rescue someone who had been buried alive. The snakes must have had some objective or condition because they showed no sign of biting at the rag-wearing man. They focused only on Hasebe.

However…

“Ah…ah…”

The man’s hands stopped moving.

His eyes were opened wide.

The next thing I knew, most of the snakes had vanished as if dissolving into thin air. And in the spot Hasebe Michio had been in were nothing but a single arm and a single leg floating at the water’s surface. A few snakes remained eating them. The limbs shrank and ultimately disappeared. The snakes had eliminated every last trace that the man named Hasebe Michio had been here.

And after Hasebe disappeared, every last snake disappeared as well.

These black snakes were the same as the ones that had appeared in the hood of the rental car. These strange snakes had something like a gold ring around their necks.

“What is going on…?” I muttered blankly while watching as the rag-wearing man’s back drooped.

What had just happened?

What was going on in this village?

===Part 25 (Hishigami Mai)===

''Um, who did what here again?

Kurumaya Nozomi was the one who had repeatedly stabbed Yamada Ken in the head with a glass shard. Sakai Haruka was the one who had cried out to stop her. Tanishita Hajime was the industrial spy desperately bluffing while waving around a toy handgun. Suzukawa Izumi was the young female prisoner. Gogan Sakura was the investigator on an unofficial undercover mission who held a real handgun and was trying to keep the situation from falling into chaos.

The change started with Tanishita Hajime, the industrial spy.

“Uuh…bah…?”

I heard a muffled noise.

That questioning voice sound like it came from a mouth forcibly plugged by a gag.

“Gh..bh. Gfh!? Ghh!! Gbgbh!!”

He suddenly held a hand up to his mouth and he doubled over.

Initially, he looked like the victim of poison.

But that was not the case.

What spewed from his mouth was a large number of snakes.

Snakes as thick as a little finger fell to the ground as if a faucet had been opened. He held a hand to his mouth, but the snakes slipped through the gaps between his fingers.

“Gyah!? Wh-wh-what is that!?”

“What is going on…!?”

The change did not stop at his mouth.

I heard a popping noise. Some foreign substance was flowing out like tears. More than ten snakes came from his eye sockets as if forcing their way out of his eyeballs. They came from his nose and ears as well. At this point, anyone could imagine what had happened. It was like snakes or moles moving through the dirt. Tanishita Hajime’s head had to be filled with countless tunnels. There was no way he was still alive.

“Bh.”

I heard another odd noise.

Tanishita collapsed sideways.

This did not look like a living human collapsing. It was more like someone had stood a branch up on its side and then let go.

“Gy-gy-gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!?”

The female jailer named Sakai Haruka let out a high-pitched scream and tried to run away. Who had done this? What had they done? How had they done it? What were the conditions? She did not know the answer to any of those questions, so she was simply trying to run as far away from the dangerous oddity as she could.

''Ew.

The stomach of her work uniform swelled up like a beach ball. After that…well, I don’t really want to explain it. There was a muffled sound and her entire lower stomach area becamse dyed a dark red. It was as if a water balloon hidden in her clothes had burst. Dozens of snakes wet with something red slithered out from the gaps in her clothes.

“E-ee!” groaned someone.

That was the limit of what they could do and it changed nothing.

Both the prisoners and the jailers collapsed as they were taken out by the snakes. Gogan Sakura may have held a real gun, but snakes even slithered out of the gun barrel. After her gun malfunctioned and blew her hand off…well, it wasn’t pretty.

Silence fell over the area.

The snakes continued to slither around.

I did not think these were some strange parasites or aliens.

They were most likely Youkai.

Snakes. A swarm. A sudden appearance.

There were several candidates, but I could not be sure of anything yet. When it came to snake Youkai, I suspected the rulers of water, the ones related to ironworking which were derived from them, or possessing spirits.

“A-ahh. Ahhhhhhh…”

I heard the Sunekosuri’s dumbfounded cry coming from the radio.

“Sunekosuri, I have no more need for you there, so come meet me here.”

With that arbitrary instruction, I walked through the fog and cautiously approached the corpses.

I was keeping the optimum level of tension and burden on my muscles so I could move at any moment, but there was no sign of the snakes attacking me. It seemed the attack condition was something other than distance.

''…Hmm.

They were scattered around a bit, but there were six corpses lying in the parking lot. The snakes were even wriggling around in the stab wounds in Yamada Ken’s head. This spread the wounds by quite a bit, so the “contents” were spilling out.

I viewed each corpse in turn.

Yamada Ken.

The worst part was the stab wounds on his head. Instead of fresh blood, over ten snakes were slithering out. The pink contents of his head were spilling out, so it was blatantly obvious there was no saving him.

Sakai Haruka.

I did not want to take a peek inside her work uniform, but her disturbingly sunken-in silhouette told me she had ruptured within it. All of her insides must have been taken out as well because she smelled the worst of any of them. It was more than just the smell of blood. A lot of different things had mixed together inside her gut.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_237.png|thumb]]

I heard an occasional whistling sound escaping from her, so I initially thought she was alive. However, she was not. I could see snakes in her chest. Her lungs had burst from the inside. As the snakes came and went, they caused the remnants of her lungs to act as a pump. That was sending some air out.

I saw a beckoning cat bottle cap doll poking out from her pocket, so she must have been the one who had placed them in the employee cafeteria.

Tanishita Hajime.

They came from his mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. Snakes pushed open every single hole on his face. The structure of his face had been utterly destroyed. It looked like a swollen fugashi.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Large numbers of snakes were coming from her mouth and nose, and her eyes were rolled back into her head. The number of snakes coming from her mouth must have exceeded the limit because her jaw had completely dislocated.

Gogan Sakura.

The explosion of her handgun had blown off her hand and tons of snakes were passing from her right ear to her left. You can imagine what had to have happened to the space between.

“Ahh, how could this happen?” groaned the Sunekosuri as he approached after exiting the factory. “Annihilation…This is a complete annihilation! I thought Hyakki Yakou sent us here to keep this from happening!!”

“What? We were asked to investigate the phenomenon in the semiconductor factory and to eliminate it if necessary. Stop adding on extra objectives.”

“Then if you had been asked to save everyone in the corporate prison, you would have done so!? Are you saying you could have done that with your superhuman abilities!? You could have saved them from this horrible situation!? There had to have been completely normal people with no connection to our world here!!”

“Sorry, but I don’t accept jobs I know I can’t handle.”

''You can get emotional if you want, but be careful because it’s only any good for motivation.

''And this isn’t over yet.

“Sunekosuri, who do you think did this?”

“Eh…?”

“Is some as yet unseen mystery character hiding somewhere? I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt that’s the case. If someone who could have killed us at any time had been watching from a distance this entire time, they would not have killed them at this time. And since they did not attack you or me, the culprit must not be viewing us from a god’s-eye perspective,” I explained. “In other words, this went just as planned. The mental pillar of the group, the head jailer named Itou Takeru, was killed in the cafeteria and then the top suspect, me, was blown up in the parking lot. One of the suspects panicked and used their occult power.”

“Then one of them used theses snakes? But they were all annihilated!! Did they lose control of the Youkai!?”

“That would make this simpler, but I don’t think so,” I said offhandedly. “After all, one of them is still alive.”

I cracked the knuckles of my right hand.

My body had been modified to specialize in fighting Youkai, but I could still crush a corpse’s head or tear out its heart with a single hand. The human body held more potential for brutality than most people thought.

To put it bluntly, if I thoroughly destroyed each of the suspects’ vitals, the incident would be resolved.

“W-w-wait a second!! But…they were…just look…it was a complete slaughter! How…what!?”

“Don’t be led astray by the shock of the scene. Look at this rationally. Why did the culprit kill everyone? To keep the conditions equal so as to hide their identity. They wanted to be another victim just in case these irregularly released snake Youkai failed and left a survivor.”

“Th-then…”

“That is also why the snake Youkai are still here. Normally, you try to hide your trump card. If someone can determine the identity of the Youkai, they will learn their weakness. But the culprit is keeping these creepy Youkai on the corpses. That is meant to keep anyone from directly touching the victims’ bodies to check for a pulse or checking the pupils. When you see these grotesque corpses, of course you aren’t going to want to approach the Youkai that did it. Who knows what they’ll do to you.”

I pointed at each of the collapsed figures in the parking lot one at a time.

Yamada Ken.

Sakai Haruka.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

Tanishita Hajime.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Gogan Sakura.

“There. That’s the one.”

===Part 26 (3rd person)===

In the Intellectual Village of Noukotsu Village, today was not just another relaxing day in the Jinnai household.

The household ran a sake brewery, so mid-September, which was harvest time for new rice, was the most nerve-racking time. This was the earliest step of the production process, so it determined whether they could make the start dash or not. No matter how much technology they had, a mistake here would prevent them from making the best possible product.

And so Jinnai Shinobu’s father was constantly calling the city’s rice farmers while Jinnai Shinobu’s grandfather drove the electric light truck around to judge and select the rice. The grandfather had supposedly retired, so the importance of this time could be seen in the fact that he stood on the front lines.

However…

The financial issues of human society did not matter to the Youkai who lived for all eternity.

In the name of searching for what Shinobu had hidden in his room, the large-breasted and glamorous Zashiki Warashi found the high school boy’s secret savings and the flat-chested and somewhat yandere Yuki Onna checked through his hidden porn magazines. However, they then found something unexpected. (Incidentally, a Youkai that protects the house and a yandere both tend to lack a sense of privacy.)

They found an old album.

“This was made with a service that makes high quality prints of the photos in a digital picture frame. That was popular a while back. …After all, digital data tends to get destroyed every few years.”

“Oh, oh, ohh!! S-so this is full of this kind of photo and that kind of photo of Jinnai Shinobu during his younger days? Pant…pant…!!”

“You’re starting to look a little damp overall. Are you sure you’re not going to melt yourself by getting so fired up over this?”

The Zashiki Warashi and the Yuki Onna brought the album into the living room and opened the thick cover as casually as if they were reading a manga volume they had found while cleaning the room.

“This is Shinobu back when he refused to let go of his baby bottle.”

“…What’s this!? His hair is a different color!!”

“And this is Shinobu when he became a wild animal and leapt toward my breasts even when I tried to tell him his bottle was over there.”

“That damn gigolo! He had that much talent that young!?”

A Nekomata muttered in shock a bit away from the two trembling Youkai.

“What are they doing…?”

She had been speaking to herself, but someone replied to her.

It was Jinnai Shinobu’s mother who preferred dealing with the accounting over actually making the sake. As she rapidly entered data into a spreadsheet program on the computer placed atop the low sitting room table, she spoke leisurely to the Nekomata.

“It can’t really be helped. Half of Shinobu’s problems with the Zashiki Warashi are his own fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her laziness and her love of video games come from Shinobu’s own actions.”

This woman was not a frugal person who was stingy with money. Instead, she was a math fanatic who grew utterly absorbed in the fluctuations of the parameters. She grinned at the spreadsheet on the screen as she spoke.

“In fact, when I married into the family, that Zashiki Warashi almost never appeared where anyone could see her.”

“…Really?”

“That’s the standard for a Zashiki Warashi, right? You would see her shadow on the sliding door but would find no one there if you circled around behind it. If you left food in the altar room, it would mysteriously disappear.” The Nekomata looked dubious as Jinnai Shinobu’s mother continued speaking. Her fingers raced across the keyboard all the while. “When Shinobu was born, she was still that elusive and eerie existence. However, Shinobu would excitedly go around searching for the Zashiki Warashi. When he was unable to find her he would grow tired and begin to cry. That’s when we began to see her face poking out from behind a pillar. After that continued long enough, she ended up like this.”

“It might be a bit too cruel to lay all the blame on that boy.”

“Probably. Shinobu also gained some habits from her. For example, he always embraces his pillow or something while sleeping.”

A smartphone then began ringing.

It was the phone (that actually belonged to Shinobu) which was placed in the chest of the glamorous Zashiki Warashi’s yukata.

“What? You left on your trip but ended up stranded with a girl from your class? Shinobu, why are you calling? Are you bragging about how great your life is?”

“A-a rendezvous!? Don’t tell me they’re trapped in a mountain cabin and have to strip down naked to warm each other with their bodies!! Th-that is the role that a Yuki Onna should play as mountains and coldness are our domain!”

“I thought seeing a Yuki Onna approaching in that situation led to being stranded and freezing to death,” pointed out Shinobu over the phone. “But that’s not the point. Anyway, we’ve already contacted the fire department, so we should be okay. In the meantime, I have a few photos to send you.”

“Are they erotic photos overflowing with youth?”

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_245.png|thumb]]

“M-making a fish print with the female body!? How twisted!!”

“Hey, could we try to get somewhere in this conversation?” asked Shinobu. “We found a bunch of old kanji and can’t read them. I thought maybe a Youkai who had lived a long life might be able to decipher them.”

“Shinobu, that sounds like a huge pain.”

“Once I hang up, I can call the card company and tell them I lost my credit card. If I do that, the smartphone, the game system’s network play, and the laptop’s internet will all be stopped. And what about the cable TV? I think the ones in my room and your room are both under my name.”

The Nekomata sighed in exasperation when she saw the glamorous Zashiki Warashi prostrate herself in front of the smart phone with tears in her eyes.

The Zashiki Warashi gave a teary sniff and looked through the photographs she had been sent.

“Um… I think this one carved into a stone in what looks like a cave says…‘arrival of the water god’.”

“Any idea what that means?”

“It means they are bringing a snake Youkai in from somewhere else.”

“…Snake?”

With the obvious example of Yamata no Orochi, snake or serpent Youkai were often related to twisting rivers and the water damages that came from them.

“Then those are…no wait. I didn’t get that feeling from them. It’s the huge serpents like Orochi or Uwabami that symbolize rivers. The ones I saw were different…”

Shinobu was muttering about something, but the Zashiki Warashi did not pay too much attention because she did not know the details.

She focused on deciphering the old writing in the photos so she could end the danger of an internet annihilation.

“These few account books on Japanese paper seem to be related to a village ritual. They explain the cave. However, the paper is so damaged I can only read bits and pieces.”

“Just tell me what you can read.”

“The village’s source of income came from gold dust collected in a river at the bottom of a ravine. There must have been a gold mine somewhere, but they did not have the technology to search for it or mine it.”

“…I was wondering how that man bought that portable stove and gas cylinder.”

“However, the amount of gold dust they could get was unstable. During years in which they found less, they did not earn enough to live off of which affected the stability of the village’s entire society. They had a common ritual they would use to resolve their worries.”

“A ritual?”

“You could call it ‘thinning the herd’ or ‘leaving fewer mouths to feed’. The ritual was performed by taking any baby born during one of those difficult years and drowning it in the spring in that cave. …Simply put, they would leave fewer people to help resolve the lack of food.”

Silence fell.

This was not a problem with the signal.

Shinobu did not know how to respond to this information that went well beyond what he had expected.

“From the format of this writing, this is something that happened over 100 years ago,” pointed out the Zashiki Warashi.

“Not necessarily,” groaned Shinobu. “There were two graveyards in the village. That’s probably because they had one for the normal villagers and one for the babies that had been killed in the ritual. Thirty years ago was the age of color television!”

No matter what anyone said or how they tried to deny it, what had happened would not change.

Occasionally, that village that seemed frozen in time would not have enough food.

To resolve that, they had continued to drown babies as if it was perfectly normal.

Even as televisions moved from black and white to color, even as bullet trains rushed around Japan, and even as air conditioners became a part of the standard household, it had continued. As if insisting that remaining unchanged was a virtue, they had continued to drown babies.

And if someone had not annihilated everyone living there, it would likely still be happening.

The victims of the incident had been human.

But there was no guarantee that they were all “perfectly innocent”.

“This is the last one. The Japanese paper you found next to a broken jar. …Hm. This must be the snake Youkai you saw in the village.”

“What is it?”

If it was a giant serpent symbolizing rivers, it would be the Orochi or the Uwabami.

But that was not it.

The Zashiki Warashi replied as if teaching a young child how to read a difficult kanji.

“Toubyou. It is a possessing spirit that comes as a set of 75 small snakes.”

===Part 27 (Hishigami Mai)===

Yamada Ken, Sakai Haruka, Kurumaya Nozomi, Tanishita Hajime, Suzukawa Izumi, and Gogan Sakura.

“There. That’s the one,” I spat out as I swung my arm forcefully down.

I aimed for the culprit’s head.

But I missed.

My right hand smashed into the parking lot asphalt up to the wrist. The culprit who had been pretending to be dead had rolled to the side to avoid my arm.

“Tch. You idiot!!”

''What the hell!? Why did my hand pierce the asphalt so easily!?

My body was specialized for anti-Youkai combat. If I forced myself to take on a metal panel or asphalt, I would smash my own flesh to pieces.

“Ah…ah…”

As the Sunekosuri let out a dumbfounded voice, I pulled my arm out of the smashed asphalt.

It seemed my attack had not been completely wasted.

A torn-off ear hung down from my index finger.

“How…? But…she was…she was dead just a moment ago!”

“You dumbass. This wasn’t like Yamada-kun’s split head with the brains leaking out or Sakai-chan’s gut that ruptured like a water balloon. If you had paid attention, it should have been obvious.”

I threw away the ear as the figure stared at me and slowly stood up.

The piece of flesh struck the culprit in the chest where it slid down in accordance with gravity.

“Having so many snakes coming from your mouth that your jaw dislocates isn’t enough to kill you. If the snakes were only in your mouth and had not entered your throat or organs, you could continue breathing through your nose,” I said to the culprit. “Isn’t that right, Suzukawa Izumi-chan?”

She was about high school age. As one of the prisoners in the corporate prison, she had been forced to wear unrefined workwear. Or so it had seemed.

However, the Sunekosuri was trembling and said, “Wh-what is that?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Why is that girl’s skin peeling off to reveal an old woman’s face!? Who is she!?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” I replied offhandedly before smiling. “But the kind of person that disguises themselves as a beautiful girl tends not to be a decent person in reality.”

Suzukawa Izumi, or the old woman wearing her skin, spoke in a hoarse voice with her face half destroyed.

“…Is that so?”

“There was a rumor of a free pass in the corporate prison and alcohol would occasionally find its way in. Whether the person using the free pass was a prisoner or a jailer, they were part of a group that wanted to destroy the corporate prison and they were using the alcohol as currency to negotiate and make deals with people. That way they could gather the items they needed for a Youkai or Package. …That was our theory so far, but it looks like the situation was actually a bit different.”

“Eh? …Oh, I get it! If that old woman could disguise herself as Suzukawa Izumi…!!”

“She could disguise herself as other people too. A single person was using the free pass the entire time. By periodically faking her death and taking over someone else’s face, she could continue taking action while escaping suspicion.”

“…”

“I don’t know how many people are cooperating with her outside the factory, but if she wanted to periodically leave, she must have had some equipment to make periodic contact. Maybe a server that uses a satellite to communicate. And it would of course work on a band that gets past the jammers.”

The old woman said nothing more.

In the very next moment, a great number of small snakes unnaturally slithered out from within the fog.

Dozens of them appeared only a few centimeters from my face. I instinctually took a step back and gravity dragged the snakes down to the parking lot asphalt.

The old woman looked confused.

“Is it that surprising?” I asked with a scornful laugh. “The snakes all came from within the others’ bodies and wounds. The medium is likely the fog. When the victim breathes it in, you can call the snakes into their body to kill them.”

“…Then there should be no way for you to avoid it.”

“How naïve. You shouldn’t think of me as having the same standards as the other creatures we call humans. I am extraordinarily powerful against Youkai and the like. ''I even have the ability to bite off Youkai flesh and digest it in my stomach.'' Once they’re inside my body, there’s nothing they can do. I can even purify all of this fog that reeks of Youkai.” And I did not stop there. “A normal human cannot kill a normal Youkai, but the same cannot be said when it is Youkai versus Youkai. That is why people in my business like to use Shikigami. Sunekosuri! If you don’t want to die, bite apart all of the snakes appearing in your mouth!!”

Unpleasant noises began coming from the Sunekosuri’s mouth.

A Sunekosuri was a Youkai without a violent side. All it could do was rub its head up against travelers’ legs.

However, these snake Youkai were only as thick as a little finger and thirty centimeters long.

Speaking purely about size and ignoring their strength and special characteristics, they were like slightly hard sausages. That meant a small dog’s teeth were enough to tear them apart.

“Ueh, uehhh!! Peh, peh! I-I hate creatures without legs! Woof woof!! Ubh!? Gehhhh!! Ow!! What is this ring!? Why is there metal mixed in with them!?”

He seemed to be having it tough since more snakes would appear every time he breathed in the fog.

He was continually biting them and spitting them out, so he did not seem in danger of having his stomach burst. I decided I could safely focus on the old woman.

“Since this was a snake Youkai related to the water in the fog, I assumed it was an Orochi or Uwabami, but it seems I was a bit off.” I got to the heart of the issue as I glanced over at the gold ring-like objects the teary-eyed Sunekosuri was spitting out. “The Toubyou. If I recall, it is a Youkai raised in a jar or pot that comes in a set of 75. In exchange for periodically giving them sake or a rice ball, they allow the master of the home to prosper by stealing gold, silver, and treasure from other houses. They are a stereotypical possessing spirit. …That must have been the characteristic used to make the 8000 people from the corporate prison vanish…no, to make the few of us here go missing. ''This Package automatically “steals” the people needed for the master’s objective. That produces this spirited away effect.''”

“…You do not understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“The Youkai I wanted to use was not a possessing spirit!!”

She must have learned she could not directly target me from within, so the arrangement of the Toubyou changed.

Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of snakes rained down around the old woman. They coiled around each other, bit into each other, became strongly intertwined, and branched off complexly. All together, they created a giant serpentine silhouette.

''Wait. Wait just a second.

“You mixed in the characteristics of the Orochi!? Dammit. I should have investigated the abandoned village!!”

“This is closer to the form of the Youkai that should have been in the village. But your regrets are meaningless. My shrine was destroyed long ago. There is nothing left.”

“So ‘Suzukawa Izumi’ was the survivor of Zenmetsu Village rumored to exist within the corporate prison.”

“How long ago do you think I am a survivor from?” spoke the old woman in a whisper with her back to the giant branching snake. “Would you believe me if I said I have been this old woman for over 100 years?”

“I see no reason not to. I have remade and swapped out everything from my fingertips to my internal organs, so it doesn’t surprise me you can alter yourself like that. I don’t really see the point, though.”

“The Four Mountains village was created over 100 years ago as a treatment facility for those suffering from spiritual injuries or other serious harm related to Youkai. Although in reality, it was mostly a quarantine area people were abandoned in.”

“Is there any need to explain this?”

“My objective was to enter the Four Mountains village, intentionally split the group so two powerful families were created, and maintain a constant state of internal conflict. Essentially, I was a spy meant to control Four Mountains. By taking the hatred pointed outwards and turning it inwards, the residents would not try to breach the walls of the village. If all went well, they would be satisfied with their extremely small cycle and extremely small society.”

“…Was that really necessary?”

“But the gold dust in the river gave them the foreign currency they need to contact the outside world. Then when the possessing spirits were brought in, they decided to spiritually arm themselves. That was 30 years ago. This caused the Kuroyama Electronics Group to view them as dangerous. The child drowning going on at the time left the underground water impure, so it was banned for anyone to drink it. Due to the timing, this intensified their opposition of the corporation that wished to use that underground water for the semiconductor factory.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v03_257.png|thumb]]

It happened as I tried to make a surprise attack during a pause in the conversation.

“That was why the Kuroyama Electronics Group planned to take the initiative and annihilate the Four Mountains village.”

The old woman’s hand moved.

“They had yet to complete the Toubyou Package that covered the entire Four Mountains area. It was left behind unfinished.”

She held a container filled with water, sake, or some other liquid. She buried that hand in the branching Orochi behind her.

“That is why I overwrote the Toubyou Package with the Youkai and ritual that village was originally meant to have.”

And she pulled her hand back out.

As if that were their cue, the giant serpent all too easily scattered apart.

“Originally, the serpent was nothing more than the scabbard.”

The old woman held a sword in her hand.

Instead of a single-edged katana, it was a double-edged sword from an older era.

The old woman spoke quietly as she casually lowered that sword that emitted a brilliant light as if it were shining in the sun.

“Its true nature is the production of a sword. The name of the sword that appeared after the defeat of a serpent branching into eight was Kusanagi.”

''…Not good!!!

''She seriously has the ability to illegally access and forcefully draw out the power of one of the Three Sacred Treasures by following the diagram of defeating Yamata no Orochi!? This has gone well outside the realm of anti-Youkai!!

By the time I realized I had completely misinterpreted how much distance I needed from her, the situation had already begun to move.

A fearsome slash assaulted me like a flash of lightning.

===Part 28 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

As I watched on, Hasebe Michio, a man deeply involved in the past slaughter of Zenmetsu Village, was eaten by a great number of snake Youkai.

The mysteries had only grown, but remaining there would not have helped.

I grabbed the arm of the rag-wearing man who seemed to be a survivor of Zenmetsu Village and urged him to get out of the ravine river and up onto land.

The cliff was only a few meters tall and it was not completely vertical.

There were uneven protrusions sticking out that we could grab or use as footing, so an amateur could easily climb up in exchange for further muddying our clothes.

“Are you okay?” asked the mystery freak once I had crawled up.

I lay collapsed on the ground catching my breath as I answered.

“Hasebe was devoured by snakes.”

“I can only imagine that is a figurative description, so could you be more specific?”

“I mean it literally! They were in the rental car’s hood too, remember? It was those small snake Youkai. A group of them suddenly attacked Hasebe!!”

“It shouldn’t have happened,” muttered the other man blankly. His entire body was trembling. “Those Youkai aren’t dangerous like that! They don’t indiscriminately attack people and cause them to vanish like a Tengu does…”

“We don’t even know your name!” I said to cut him off. “Who are you!? You didn’t call out to Hasebe or me. You called out to those snake Youkai. You told them to stop. Do you know something about them!?”

“Those are…” The rag-wearing man trailed off, but nervously continued. “They are a possessing spirit known as a Toubyou. In the past, the more influential members of the village bought them from a merchant in the Shikoku area… We managed somehow by gathering gold dust, but this small village was so cut off from the outside world that it had no stable source of food. It did not even have electricity or phone lines. It was cut off and kept at a distance! And so…”

“You borrowed the power of a possessing spirit Youkai that could steal whatever you needed from others’ houses?” said the mystery freak, finishing the man’s sentence for him.

The man averted his gaze a bit.

“The annihilation befell the village just before the Package was completed. It shouldn’t have been functioning, but it seems a preliminary framework of the Assembly was in place. That is why those snakes will listen to what I say to a certain extent. If I periodically give them rice balls and sake, that is. I just need the pot and stove to cook the rice.”

To a certain extent.

That may have been the payment for leaving the framework abandoned.

Borrowing the Youkai’s power may have been convenient, but it was like crossing a completely unmaintained suspension bridge day in and day out.

It might be fine today.

But what about tomorrow? What about the day after? What about a month from now or a year from now?

Wouldn’t your foot eventually break through a damaged board?

“Toubyou are raised in earthen jars or pots, right?”

“Yes. But getting the Toubyou to take root in Four Mountains would have been all for naught if an outsider who hated us or a traitor among us broke the jar. That is why a larger framework was prepared in addition to the jars underneath the houses.”

“…?”

“Four Mountains itself. In other words, ''a large area of land that is surrounded by mountains.'' The assembly of the Package was adjusted so that would function as the ‘jar’ the Toubyou live in. But this project was put together by the rich influential group, so I do not know the details.”

An unpleasant feeling raced up my spine.

That meant the entire basin area functioned as the snakes’ territory.

And the snakes had the ability to steal whatever items their master wished from the world outside that giant “jar”.

It was as if we had been hiding within the beast’s den. No matter how hard we tried to escape, those Youkai would easily capture us. And even if we did escape their den, our safety was not guaranteed. The Toubyou was a Youkai that travelled outside its jar to steal various items.

“Whatever the case, I think we can assume those Toubyou are deeply related to this incident.”

“By the way, detective, what are you going to do about Hasebe Michio? Will the police accept ‘he suddenly disappeared due to a Youkai’s power’ as an answer?”

“My head hurts… Well, we found that bag with a rusted blade and some money in it. I just have to use that to prove Hasebe was involved in the attack on Zenmetsu Village.”

“The Toubyou is also a Youkai that causes illnesses in those obstructing the prosperity of its house,” said the rag-wearing man almost in a groan. “But they are not powerful enough to kill. What was that we saw…? I’ve never seen the Toubyou do that before…”

“At any rate, I want you to come with us. Cases involving Youkai can be difficult to handle, but I need you to write an affidavit.”

Under current law, Youkai could not be judged directly. Or rather, locking them up had little meaning when they had no lifespan, and there was no way to execute them since they could not be killed.

And so…

This man had been built into the Toubyou Package and held the authority to control it, so it was possible he should be viewed as the culprit behind Hasebe’s disappearance (or murder).

However, that man had shouted for the Toubyou to stop while they were devouring Hasebe.

I simply had to hope that would be considered in the courtroom.

“No…”

The man uttered a word of refusal.

The mystery freak frowned and all of my muscles tensed slightly. I slowly sat up from where I had been lying exhausted on the ground.

''Is he going to run off in fear of being arrested?

I grew cautious, but the situation went well beyond my expectations.

“It seems I have already reached my limit.”

For an instant, I could not grasp what he meant.

But shortly thereafter…

“Solved it. Solved it. Solved the puzzle.”

That creepy lullaby voice returned.

When I looked back at the rag-wearing man, his expression was crumpled into something that looked like a smile yet also looked like he was crying.

And when I lowered my gaze, I saw what looked like wriggling black ropes mixed in with the dead grass. They had wrapped solidly around both his ankles.

''Those aren’t ropes.

''They’re snakes!?

“That means you are no longer needed.”

It was as if giant crocodile jaws grew out from the ground and swallowed the man.

A mass made up of dozens if not hundreds of snakes assaulted him.

===Part 29 (Hishigami Mai)===

A stick-like object spun through the air as it flew in an arc.

It spun and spun.

Yes.

I still felt no pain, but I could tell. That spinning object was my right arm. That spinning arm had been mercilessly severed at the shoulder.

Immediately afterwards, I kicked the Sunekosuri up into the air and caught him in my left hand. I forcefully bit into the right arm spinning through the air to grab ahold of it.

I then recalled the layout of the semiconductor factory and ran with all my might toward its emergency exit.

I heard a great crash.

''God dammit!

I seemed to have misjudged my strength due to the tension. I pulled my ankle out from where it had smashed into the parking lot asphalt and then I continued running.

In the meantime…

“…”

The old woman swung Kusanagi three times.

Three meter long slices appeared in the surrounding fog and equal slices appeared in the neatly lined up vehicles. Several explosions soon followed. I swung my upper body around to avoid it while charging with the speed of an artillery shell toward the factory’s emergency exit that I could see clearly through the slices in the fog.

I ran into the steel door shoulder first.

The two hinges and the deadbolt broke simultaneously, the door bent into a V-shape, and I rolled into the factory.

Before I stood back up, I spat the right arm out of my mouth and onto the floor.

“Gh…!! Pant, pant… Dammit. That damn old woman!!”

“A-are you okay!?”

“My body has been thoroughly modified. The wound hasn’t started to rot yet, so I can reconnect it with my kit.”

A cold sweat covered my body.

''Dammit. How could a man-made object catch up to my bodily control!?

“But that kit is in the trunk of our car. As long as that old woman is out there, heading out to the parking lot is suicide.”

“C-can’t you run out there while evading like before?”

“''Do you really think I was evading that?''”

''Uuh… This feels terrible.

''It’s because monsters like this sometimes appear with no warning that you can’t take this business lightly.

“I’ve been sliced up good. I didn’t dodge even one of them. ''It’s just that the cuts were so sharp the damage hasn’t caught up yet.'' If I don’t do anything, my entire body will fall apart into tiny blocks within 10 minutes.”

If that happened, there was no saving me.

To survive, I would need to finish things with the old woman and retrieve my kit from the trunk of the car in the parking lot all within the time limit.

To be honest, the situation was not good.

“Wh-what? Then…is there…anything I can do!?”

“Don’t panic. The situation may be bad, but it isn’t impossible.”

The worst possibility was the old woman hiding. If she simply waited for me to come out into the foggy parking lot, the 10 minute time limit would be over in no time.

But I was certain that would not happen.

My body may have been sliced to pieces, but I had protected the Sunekosuri.

The old woman would actively attack in order to finish off that cute canine Youkai.

However, I left that unsaid as I continued the conversation.

“Well, fortunately this is a cutting edge semiconductor factory.”

“Eh? Oh, I get it! That old woman is using the fog. This factory is perfectly sealed off and sterilized!!”

“Now that she’s drawn out Kusanagi, I don’t think she needs the fog.”

“Then…”

“Just come with me. We’re going further in.”

I grabbed my severed right arm with my bloody left hand and walked further into the factory with the Sunekosuri close behind me. The production line visible beyond thick glass was made up of nothing but conveyer belts and various robot arms. It seemed to truly be an automated factory. It was a bit surreal to see it still pumping out products like normal despite the situation. Even if humanity was wiped out, it would likely continue making electronic parts no one would use.

“To get to the production line, we have to pass through two layers of doors for the sterilization process… Sunekosuri, will a rural-loving Youkai like you be okay surrounded by so much precise machinery?”

“Not really, but I doubt you’ll listen if I complain.”

''Good enough.

We entered the sterilization room between the two layers of doors. A warning sign warned of flammability, so it likely used an ethanol spray and ultraviolet light for quick drying.

You were meant to wear a spacesuit-like outfit when entering, but this was no time to worry about that.

I ignored the error message on the control panel and kicked open the second door. I then stepped into the production line area that was so clean that every form of life was killed down to the microscopic level.

“Wh-what are you going to do here?” asked the Sunekosuri.

The area was large, but it had so much production machinery that it felt like a labyrinth.

“That old woman’s Kusanagi sliced right through all of the cars in the parking lot. I doubt anything in this labyrinth will protect us,” he continued.

“I know that. In fact, you shouldn’t even be thinking about standing up to Kusanagi which is linked to Yamata no Orochi. Our power is only effective against Youkai and things derived from Youkai. We can’t defeat an ability that enters the realm of the gods like the Three Sacred Treasures.”

I glanced around the production line and noted the positions of a few thick pipes.

“But even if that old woman primarily uses the Orochi, it’s still affected by the Toubyou. …And that’s just a Youkai. That power falls within our world, so we can stand up to it.”

“So you are going to fight back using the characteristics of the Toubyou?”

“Exactly.”

I was a Hishigami woman. Thanks to the ridiculous superstition that we invited in misfortune, we were detested by our great Zaibatsu family that was passed down the male family line and was well-known around the world. In other words, the women born to the Hishigami family could not continue on without possessing specialized skills and characteristics that allowed them to battle an entire Zaibatsu on their own. And for me, those skills had been honed in actual battle.

''Did you think you were the only special one around, old woman?

“Just like the fox or dog Youkai, the Toubyou is a stereotypical possessing spirit. They will attach to and cause illness in those who get in the way of their house’s prosperity, and they will steal valuables from other houses to help their house prosper. And they will spread to a spouse’s house if you get married.”

“While raised, they are put in earthen pots and jars and are periodically given rice balls and sake. And the one common rule among almost all possessing spirits is…”

I trailed off.

The giant semiconductor factory had been sliced diagonally.

The walls were sliced.

The production line was sliced.

The two layers of doors for sterilization, the conveyer belts, the robot arms, the thick metal pipes, the electronic control system, the lights, the floor, the ceiling, the tempered glass, and everything else were all sliced. Kusanagi had cut down everything like mowing over grass.

My upper body had been sliced through again, but that no longer mattered. As long as I could retrieve the kit from the rental car’s trunk within the time limit, I would manage.

The difference in speed between the factory falling apart and my body falling apart was due to the moisture and oils along the slices of my body holding everything together somewhat. Not that the reason mattered so long as I could move.

Thanks to the sliced pipes, a clear liquid began spraying across the production line area.

A single figure stepped forward amid it all.

It was the old woman with Kusanagi hanging from her right hand.

“What are you after?” she asked.

“What would you do if I told you?”

“Is it the ethanol for sterilization? If you ignite it, you can likely envelop me in flames, but you underestimate me if you think that will kill me.”

“True. For one thing, the name Kusanagi comes from it being used to cut down flaming grass to escape harm. It would be difficult to kill you that way.”

I heard a splashing sound.

It was the sound of the old woman stepping forward.

The liquid flowing from a severed metal pipe had already spread out across the floor of the production line.

“What did you want to do here so badly that you were willing to switch faces constantly?”

“I had to correct a mistake.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It does not matter if you do not understand,” said the old woman as she wiped off her face with a hand.

The liquid pouring down from above must have bothered here.

She then said, “Let us finish this.”

“Not a bad suggestion.” I shrugged. “''But it is already over.''”

“…?”

For an instant – just an instant – the old woman looked truly confused.

And then…

She realized it.

“…You swallowed some, didn’t you?”

“Wait… This water. Is this the pure water used in the semiconductor factory? Wait, but that means…!”

“It is the underground water from the Four Mountains area. …I didn’t do too much research concerning Zenmetsu Village, but the villagers and the corporation were arguing over the use of the banned underground water, right?”

The old woman was not listening.

She brought a hand to her mouth and frantically tried to spit out the underground water that had entered her body.

Instead of water, a great amount of small snakes came from her mouth.

“Gh…bh…!?”

The sounds coming from her mouth were no longer words.

The snakes had clearly left her control as more and more slithered out.

“Wh-what is going on…?” asked the Sunekosuri while looking flustered.

“The Toubyou are a possessing spirit Youkai that protects its house. But a lot about how the Toubyou distinguished between someone of Four Mountains and an outsider is actually still a bit of a mystery. After all, it seems Zenmetsu Village was a group brought in from outside to quarantine them. And yet the Toubyou were able to distinguish between their family and outsiders. That means they must have used some distinguishing factor.” I raised my index finger. “Was it the people who gave them rice? Was it any baby born in the village? Were the people bound to the Youkai in some sort of ceremony? …But that raises questions about a certain incident. Why were the residents of Four Mountains living in Zenmetsu Village so opposed to the semiconductor factory being built? Or more accurately, why did they refuse to allow it to use the underground water?”

“Y-you don’t mean…”

“It was who drank the underground water of Four Mountains. …I think that was what was used to distinguish between the Toubyou’s ‘family’ and ‘outsiders’.” I then pointed my raised finger at the old woman who was suffering as she coughed up more and more snakes. “A standard characteristic of all possessing spirits is that they will provide some form of benefit if used correctly but will bare their fangs at their own master if used incorrectly, used without respect, or used cruelly. This old woman focused more on the Orochi than the Toubyou, so she tried to eliminate as much of the Toubyou side from within her as she could. In other words, she treated it cruelly. …She had likely been careful not to drink any of the underground water so that she would be deemed an outsider despite being a resident of Four Mountains.”

“And the village’s underground water was used for the semiconductor factory’s pure water?” muttered the Sunekosuri blankly. “B-but! Doesn’t that mean everyone in the factory could have used the Toubyou? They were using Four Mountains’ underground water like it was normal.”

“No. The underground water is the foundation of the semiconductor production. It wasn’t used for the standard water. You saw that water server in the employee cafeteria, right? The jailers obviously used it, but they did not get angry when the prisoners used it too. The prisoners here have no human rights, so the use of water brought in from elsewhere must have been the rule here.”

“Cough…cough!!”

I heard the old woman repeatedly try to clear her throat, but it was too late.

She could not defeat the Toubyou unless she was prepared to cut open her own stomach with Kusanagi.

“By drinking the underground water, you are now considered the master of the Toubyou. And due to your continued use of Kusanagi which denies the existence of the Toubyou, they have bared their fangs against you as a master who treats them cruelly. …Unfortunately for you, your fate has already been sealed. There is no saving you now.”

“Th-this is why…I was…cough…opposed to using…possessing spirits…” replied the old woman through all the snakes. And, “So prepare yourself… With no one left to control it…gh…the Package will spread damage around…uncontrollably. It will now possess such power…that you can only call it inexhaustible…”

“…Are you saying the Toubyou and Orochi are not done for yet?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” The old woman whose name I still did not know smiled. “Those were not the Youkai…I originally wanted to control…”

A sticky sound drowned out everything else.

The woman collapsed to the ground and the snakes slithering from her mouth enveloped her body. The Sunekosuri let out a frightened cry. As we watched, that lump made up of hundreds of snakes gradually shrank.

Eventually, every single snake disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

Not even the old woman’s body remained.

===Part 30 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

To be honest, there was nothing left for us to do once we contacted the fire department.

We only had to wait for rescue to arrive.

…Or so it should have been.

“Dammit…”

“Shinobu-kun, are you okay?” asked Madoka as she peered over at me.

I was unable to provide a proper response.

My thoughts were on what had happened decades ago.

There was a collection of small villages made up of small shacks reinforced with plywood and galvanized sheet iron. In addition, there was a group of larger houses surrounding a cave. The events had occurred in that now-abandoned village.

They had regularly committed infanticide to ensure they had enough to eat. In the twisted tiny society of that village, no one had questioned it. Not only would they selfishly kill them, but they had cruelly kept their graves separate.

The information revealed by the Zashiki Warashi was too heavy for a high school boy born in this age.

“…That’s insane,” I muttered without thinking.

I felt something heavy in the bottom of my gut like when I took a nap directly after eating instant ramen. It had been there since I had learned that information and I could not imagine how long it would stick around. It was possible it would be there for the rest of my life.

“You were not directly involved in this, Shinobu-kun.”

“I know that.”

“And the tradition ended decades ago.”

“I know that too”

Madoka was speaking so indifferently it was possible the information was already nothing more than an entry on a list of dates for her.

“And no matter how much it bothers you, is there anything we can do? If not, worrying about it is meaningless.”

“…Perhaps.”

I felt some distance between myself and this financial monster who could convert anything into numbers and handle it dryly. When I had given into my anger and beaten down that middle-aged man, she had looked at me with such cold eyes.

However…

It was true there was nothing I could do.

It sounded coldhearted, but it was the truth.

“…The rescue team sure is taking its time.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You often hear that it’s best not to move around at times like this, but…”

“What do we do if they just leave us here, Shinobu-kun? Can you tell the difference between edible mountain plants and inedible ones?”

“An Intellectual Village is a carefully-maintained artificial natural environment. Don’t look to me for actual survival skills.”

I recalled there being an “edible plant app” that analyzed a photo of the plant in question, but my smartphone was currently in the Zashiki Warashi’s cleavage. I could always send the photos to her to analyze, but I had also remembered seeing reviews saying its results could be unclear due to shadows in the photo.

And as someone who had always had his parents cook for him, I wouldn’t know what to do even if I was handed a bunch of edible mountain plants. We would probably end up eating half-cooked grass.

“If it comes down to it, we might have to rely on the human ability to survive for a while on water alone.”

“Geh. Isn’t that not actually true? I think you at least need some salt and minerals…”

Suddenly…

We heard a man scream beyond the fog.

Madoka and I exchanged a glance.

“What was that?”

“The fog is too thick to see from here.”

It sounded surprisingly close by. We were near the edge of a cliff, but it was possible the wealthy area of the village was only a few meters down.

But at the same time, those snake Youkai known as Toubyou were slithering around below.

If we remained where we were, the rescue team would arrive. We had no reason to put ourselves in any more danger.

However…

“Hey, Shinobu-kun.”

“What?”

“What if that scream was from the rescue team?”

“…”

That possibility was too horrible.

I sighed and climbed down the short cliff to check on the scream.

===Part 31 (Hishigami Mai)===

After watching the final moments of the old woman who controlled Kusanagi, I opened the trunk of the car parked in the parking lot and pulled out the kit used to repair my body. Most of the cars had exploded after being caught up in the Kusanagi attacks. The area had become a sea of flames as if a napalm bomb had been gone off, but it had not reached my car.

“Y-you really are going to reconnect your right arm, aren’t you?”

Rather than sounding relieved, the Sunekosuri looked at me with a disturbed look in his eyes.

“This is half of the reason I am so valuable. I am more durable than a normal human and I can use all sorts of strategies to fake my death. I’m perfect for taking on the ninja-like role of crushing a giant organization after leading them astray with false information.”

“I-I cannot believe you can sew your body together with makeup equipment…”

“That’s just how the kit is disguised. Having a full set of skin-colored materials and precision tools is convenient.”

I temporarily sewed together my upper body that was on the verge of falling to pieces and returned the kit to the cosmetic pouch.

“Damn her. She cut through my breasts three or four times. Did she have some kind of grudge against breasts?”

“You don’t have to show me. And you don’t have to trace your fingers across them either.”

“What? Oh, stop blushing, Sunekosuri-chan. And are you the type of canine Youkai that is still aroused by human nudity?”

“Please do not stand there looking puzzled with those out in the open! Hurry up and cover yourself!!”

''You do know the world I live in, right?

''My environment isn’t kind enough to let me opt out of fighting if I’m attacked while changing.

Even after mending my body, my workwear was still torn to shreds. I put them in my bag and changed into a tank top and hot pants.

“Okay, we’ve had a short break, so let’s go investigate the abandoned Zenmetsu Village.”

“Eh? B-but wasn’t that old woman the culprit behind all this?”

“Probably. But the changes have not completely stopped. After all, this corporate prison was supposed to have 8000 people between the prisoners and jailers. I see no sign of them returning.”

Of course, it had actually been the few of us who had disappeared, not those 8000.

“Now that you mention it…”

“The culprit is dead, but the Package she used is still running. If we don’t do something about it, we can never return.”

“Th-that’s terrible! Only the culprit could know how to do that! Why did you kill her!?”

“Sunekosuri-chan? Try to think back and remember whether that was any time to get greedy.”

I tossed the canine Youkai in the car’s passenger seat, sat in the driver’s seat, and turned the key.

We left through the main gate that no one was monitoring and drove down the sole road. After a while, we came across an abandoned rental car.

“What’s this? Do they have to flirt everywhere they go? And have they started to naturally attract misfortune too?”

I parked our rental car near this other one and got out, carrying my equipment and the Sunekosuri. Walking through a forest wearing the ridiculously revealing outfit of a tank top and hot pants was suicide, but I could mend my body even if it did get destroyed. Right now, I needed to force my way through.

“Wh-what is this? I am surrounded by nature, but I do not feel very comfortable…”

“That’s because the Kuroyama Electronics Group has a surveillance network spread out all throughout here. Unlike an Intellectual Village which is maintained down to the very foundation, the stench of machinery must be quite strong here.”

''But I’m not detecting any hint of insects or wild beasts. Is that because this is the territory of the Toubyou and Orochi? They needed to preserve the quality of the underground water, so they wouldn’t use any pesticides.

We made our way out of the forest and into a run-down abandoned village.

“Where should we investigate?”

“That Kusanagi woman mentioned something about a shrine. Let’s try to find that. If we can find the roots of her techniques, we should be able to interpret what has been set up over the Four Mountains area.”

As we walked around through the fog, we came across an area where the wealthier villagers had gathered. We found some ruins there that had likely been the shrine in question.

However…

“Th-this does not look like it crumbled after rotting away.”

“It was destroyed by someone.”

The village here was jokingly called Zenmetsu Village. That was due to the slaughter that had occurred over 30 years ago. …But this looked older. It had been destroyed and left to rot before the annihilation had occurred.

Now.

I was a bit worried about pushing myself since I was only temporarily sewn together, but using force was my only option. I pushed away a portion of the mountain of rubble that had piled up on the floor.

“It looks like they just applied a lot of power to the outside to destroy it. The inside is almost untouched. Any writings are probably intact, too.”

“Did you just casually do something amazing? You did, didn’t you!?”

I ignored the Sunekosuri’s question and entered the hole in the pile of rubble I had created. As expected, I found a statue of the snake deity enshrined here, bundles of Japanese paper covered with old writing, and other items.

''Hmm.

From what I could see, the old woman’s real name seemed to be Kawabata Megumi. She had said she had been an old woman for over 100 years and I doubted this was the name of a descendent.

Everything in the old bundles of paper looked meaningful, but one was mostly an account book. I tossed it aside for the moment.

“This seems to list the records of the village. It’s filled with a lot of personal opinions, though.”

The Four Mountains village had been started as a forced quarantine for those suffering from spiritual harm thanks to Youkai. Of course, it was done in the name of healing them.

The members of this shrine had been sent in to monitor and guide the people so they would not take any actions that would be dangerous to the outside world.

The shrine had split the members of the village into two factions below two different influential families and intentionally robbed them of the ability to battle the outside world by having too much internal conflict.

However…

The members of the shrine had only wanted to efficiently maintain their control over the Four Mountains village. They had not wished for the villagers’ deaths.

When social unrest had occasionally reared its ugly head due to lack of food and less gold dust, the villager had begun killing their babies. The shrine had tried to put a stop to it but had failed.

When the villagers had tried to buy the Toubyou from outside, the shrine had interfered to stop that as well… And that was where the records ended.

In all likelihood, their role as controllers had been revealed and the villagers had branded them traitors and destroyed the shrine.

Humans are easily deceived, but not many of them like being deceived.

To correct a mistake.

This was why that old woman had stayed here in Four Mountains. The records were the most thorough in the section concerning the drowned babies. She may have given up trying to justify the infanticide and had instead tried to keep track of all the children who were killed before being given a name and then to properly mourn for all of them.

The village itself had been destroyed, so it would have been incredibly difficult to know who had given birth to who. However, it was possible the Kuroyama Electronics Group had a division or a report hidden away somewhere that they had used to ensure they had slaughtered all of the villagers and to ensure no information leaked out.

''Honestly.

''Once again, it’s that kind noise that ends up killing a professional.

Just like a Package, it had to have taken a system using hundreds of people to maintain that Kusanagi. That was why it had been worth it for her to have the prisoners work for her on the promise of a jailbreak.

“What’s written here looks like a conflict between the Orochi and the Toubyou. Is there nothing else?”

As I read through various bundles of paper, I finally found one discussing the ceremony for the shrine’s rituals.

''What’s this?

It was one of the two influential families that had brought in the Toubyou. The other family had been researching a completely different Youkai, but they had moved toward the Toubyou when their original one seemed too dangerous.

That meant a non-serpentine Youkai had to have taken root in the village as well.

''Hm.

''Hm, hm, hm… Wait a second!!

“This is very bad, Sunekosuri!! If this is true, it’s much worse than the Toubyou or the Orochi!! At least in a certain way!!”

“Eh? Eh? Wh-what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about-…!!”

I trailed off because I had heard a man screaming in the distance.

I left the ruins of the shrine, but the fog was too thick to see very far. However, I recognized the voice.

“That detective.”

“Why are you calmly observing the situation!? Something happened to someone you know, right!? Then you need to go check on him!!”

''Hm.

''I don’t actually have any obligation to go that far.

If the information on that shrine’s rituals was accurate, it did not matter if you were a professional or an amateur. What mattered was gathering accurate data on what was occurring in the Four Mountains area. And to do that, I might need to ask that detective and my sister some questions.

“I have no choice. Sunekosuri, let’s go mix together our business lives with our personal lives a bit.”

===Part 32 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)===

“Shit! Shit! What the hell is going on!?”

“Don’t, detective!!”

The rag-wearing man had supposedly been controlling the Youkai known as Toubyou, but he was now being swallowed by a lump of hundreds of the snakes.

I frantically tried to save him, but the mystery freak grabbed onto me from behind.

“Let go, you idiot! At this rate…!!”

“It’s already too late!! Even that man who held the right to control those possessing spirits was taken out. Those snake possessing spirits will never act kindly to a completely outsider like you!! If you approach, they’ll swallow you up as well!!”

“But!!”

It was not that I had all sorts of dreams about the job of police officer. This man had seemed suspicious and I did not believe everything he had told us. But was it okay to just let him die? I was not going to let someone else die before my eyes!

I could hear no screams.

The lump of snakes that had been so large was visibly growing smaller and smaller. That meant the rag-wearing man at the center was losing volume.

“The assembly of the Toubyou Package was incomplete from the beginning! It should be more surprising that it functioned up until now than that it failed now! The engine is already spewing smoke. If you get in the car, you will only be caught in the explosion! There is no safe area!!”

Finally, the snakes began disappearing before our eyes as if they were dissolving into the fog. Just as before, no trace was left of the man who had been enveloped by them. He had completely disappeared.

It was due to this lack of blood or a corpse that I was assaulted by a faint chill.

There was no hint of dignity here.

There was nothing left to bury in a grave. It was as if even the victim’s death was being covered up.

That was when I heard someone walking through the dead grass.

“Uncle…?”

I recognized the voice.

I turned around and found my nephew Shinobu and…someone else. I recalled seeing the girl during the incident in that Fuuka Village hotel.

The mystery freak let out a surprised voice next to me.

“Oh, if it isn’t Madoka.”

“What are you doing here, Enbi?”

As the two girls spoke in high-pitched voices, I heard more footsteps coming from yet another direction.

This time, it was…

“Oh? If it isn’t the detective and my little sister.”

“…Th-this group gives me a very bad feeling.”

It was the mystery freak’s sister, Hishigami Mai, and a Youkai that I was fairly certain was a Sunekosuri. As a Youkai, it would dislike me, so its identity did not really matter to me.

Mai held a bundle of old Japanese paper she must have found somewhere. She spoke in a tone of utter annoyance.

“Is this everyone left? If not, this could be bad. We have no time.”

''…I think there was that man at the tollgate, too.

“Hey, wait. Do you know what’s going on in the Four Mountains area? What do you mean there’s no time?”

“How much do you know? If you haven’t figured out the Toubyou yet, this is going to be quite a lecture. If you’ve reached the Orochi, I’ll be a bit impressed. And if you’ve figured out the Youkai beyond that, I’ll hug you and bury your face in my tits.”

“The Youkai…beyond that…?” said my nephew Shinobu in a doubtful voice. “Also, that’s the first I’ve heard of an Orochi being involved in addition to the Toubyou. And you say there’s some other Youkai involved here, too!? What is it!?”

“The Toubyou was nothing more than a convenient gimmick. It was only the means to an end. It was used for the assembly involving the real Youkai.”

“Assembly? Onee-chan, is someone trying to create a Package using the power of some Youkai?”

“Something like that,” replied Mai clearly. “The Youkai behind this incident is a bit of an exception. Even when no Package is being created out of human malice, this Youkai still needs to be constructed by human hands. What is being assembled is the Youkai. It is being made into a form that can naturally exist.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” asked the Sunekosuri with a tilt of its head.

''…I see she still doesn’t tell her allies the details of her plans.

“The traditions surrounding a Youkai hold important meaning, but this Youkai alone is different. The assembly becomes the true form rather than the Youkai itself.” Mai waved the bundle of Japanese paper as she arrived at the core of the issue. “The Aoandon. Have you ever heard of the mysterious existence that appears once the Hyakumonogatari has been completed?”

===Part 33 (Hishigami Mai)===

Now then.

Now then, now then, now then.

The detective, my sister, and the others likely could not read the old writing on the Japanese paper, so I had to explain it all to them.

“The Hyakumonogatari?” Jinnai Shinobu frowned. “That’s the thing where you light 100 candles and blow out a candle each time you tell a ghost story, right?”

“I’ve heard an alternate method that includes having 100 wicks in a single paper lantern …But wait. Is the thing that appears at the end a Youkai? I thought a ghost was supposed to appear in the dark room.”

“Technically, there is no real answer,” I readily replied. “Some say a supernatural phenomenon will occur such as a poltergeist or strange noises, some say the ghost of a dead human will appear, and some say a Youkai will appear. It is also unclear if it ends with nothing happening or if everyone there will be cursed. …However, a certain famous Youkai artist consolidated it all into a single existence known as the Aoandon. Nowadays, the Hyakumonogatari is ruled by the base structure of it being a Youkai that is ''a female oni with pale blue skin.''”

“…Um, I don’t quite understand.”

This comment came from the girl I was fairly certain was named Kotemitsu Madoka.

She was a monster in the financial world. It was unfortunate she had no connections in the occult world, but as far as assets were concerned, she likely had the power to hire someone like me.

“Are Youkai really that vague? You make it sound like a Youkai came to be because someone drew an illustration of it…”

“It varies from case to case. Youkai like the Zashiki Warashi or Yuki Onna won’t be shaken so easily, but some Youkai have their role added on afterwards like the Nurarihyon.” I shrugged. “The Aoandon is a special Youkai that can only appear when people tell ghost stories. Tsukumogami only become Youkai after years of being influenced by their environment. It seems the Aoandon has replaced that with 100 ghost stories. Just like Tsukumogami are prepared by their environment like wine or cheese, it is possible the Aoandon’s characteristics can be tuned up by gathering high-quality ghost stories. …Simply put, it’s a Youkai that can be easily altered by human hands.”

“And you’re saying that’s related to what is happening in Four Mountains?” cautiously asked the detective. “A prisoner disappeared from his transport vehicle and a swarm of snake Youkai attacked… How is an Aoandon related to that?”

“It’s at the core of it all.” I waved the old Japanese paper around. “The person who caused all this…I suppose you could call her the culprit… Anyway, that old woman caused all this in order to make a certain wish of hers come true. But it would have been difficult by any normal means. That was why she got her hands on a Youkai that’s characteristics could be freely remade like clay. She used it to acquire the occult power she wanted.”

“And that was?”

“As I said, the form and abilities of the Aoandon can be shaped by the nature of the 100 ghost stories used. The old woman simply had to regulate the situation such that the Aoandon with the power she wanted would appear.”

However, this was different from creating a Package that built a Youkai’s power into it.

She was twisting the Youkai itself in a convenient direction.

In the past, I had run across someone who had tried to alter an Umbrella Obake and a Lantern Obake to create a controller for all Youkai in Japan like the Nurarihyon. This was something similar.

“Wait, onee-chan. But you need 100 ghost stories for that, right? I don’t know anything about that. Has anyone told any scary stories? Or has it been someone other than us?”

“That area was altered. You could say the creepy ghost stories have been simplified quite a bit. They are all written here.”

“?”

“The curving writing looks really old, so it looks like something from hundreds of years ago, right? But these were written quite recently. Although, I think it used a form of thoughtography to automatically write it rather than have someone physically right it out.”

“…What does it say?”

“Question 1: Why does Shinobu-kun cling to the girl next to him while he naps? Question 2: Rumor has it the junction was created for the sake of a gigantic semiconductor factory. Is that really true, though?”

“Eh…?”

Jinnai Shinobu was left speechless.

Kotemitsu Madoka also looked surprised, so these were likely puzzles related to them.

“Puzzles, riddles, Q&A. …It seems that is what is being used as the smallest form of the stories. In other words, once 100 puzzles have been answered in the Four Mountains region, the Aoandon Youkai will appear in the real world with a physical body. This is the womb created in preparation for that.”

“S-so that’s it,” groaned the detective. “Four Mountains is stained with a gruesome history thanks to Zenmetsu Village and the Kuroyama Electronics Group. And it has Youkai in it, too. If people begin chatting here, the essence of creepy and scary stories will naturally be mixed in. By throwing a set number of people in here, ''they will create creepy puzzles and then answer them all on their own.''”

There was of course the corporate prison in addition to Zenmetsu Village.

I held up my index finger and twirled it around.

“The Toubyou were a convenient gimmick for creating this puzzle-solving story. You could say they are the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes. Those snake possessing spirits steal the necessary items from others’ houses, so they could be used for all sorts of things. For example…”

They could send those needed for the puzzle-solving to this alternate space.

If someone was having difficulty solving the puzzles, they could place an object nearby to act as a hint.

The appearance of the Toubyou themselves could be used to periodically raise the tension and create an atmosphere of needing to solve the puzzles to survive.

Then again, the Toubyou were possessing spirits that took the actions someone desired. It was difficult to think they had the will needed to act as the mastermind behind it all. It was an even more unfitting position than having the final boss be a computer with a heart.

As I explained it all, Jinnai Shinobu began speaking while almost in a daze.

“So it isn’t that we were separated from our classmates. Our classmates weren’t wandering around the forest as well. Madoka and I were the only ones needed for the Hyakumonogatari, so we were sent into some other space?”

“Dammit. So that’s why we found only Hasebe Michio in the forest and the police officers guarding him were nowhere to be found. And once someone was no longer needed to solve the puzzles, they were devoured by the snakes.”

It was all to complete the Hyakumonogatari as quickly as possible.

It was all to bring the Aoandon Youkai into reality. The Toubyou were nothing more than errand runners.

More people were not needed, so they had not been called onto the stage.

The complete lack of bugs and wild beasts was because animals were not needed to solve the puzzles.

To tell the Hyakumonogatari, the Toubyou had taken only those in Four Mountains who had been automatically judged to be useful. They had taken those people to “somewhere else”.

“Then how do we end all this? Can we give up on the Hyakumonogatari and leave Four Mountains? Or do we have to defeat the person who wants the Aoandon?”

That was the tricky part.

I sighed and said, “I have already defeated the culprit. However, the Hyakumonogatari-based assembly is still running. That means it is running on autopilot like a passenger plane without a pilot.”

The autopilot alone could not necessarily make a nice landing.

It was possible that old woman’s final words were now acting as a curse.

The Toubyou, the Orochi, and now the Aoandon.

“And I doubt the culprit who wanted to complete the Hyakumonogatari would have created a stage that would let the puzzle-solving participants escape. The Toubyou are powerful enough to drag us from reality and into some other place. This might be a dream, an illusion, some different coordinates, some different phase, the past, or the future, but it doesn’t matter. …Those snake possessing spirits can steal whatever is necessary, so they might automatically warp us right back into Four Mountains if we leave.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” asked Jinnai Shinobu with an audible gulp. “Can we not leave until the Hyakumonogatari is complete? But that means the Aoandon will appear!”

“Yes, it does. It looks like our only option is to have it appear and then defeat it. At any rate, our top priority is destroying the balance that prevents us from leaving the Hyakumonogatari stage. And to do that…”

I trailed off.

My next words never came.

I had realized something.

''Shit! I just realized!! God dammit!!

''I see! I see! So that’s it! I should have questioned it more when my hand and leg broke through the asphalt too easily when fighting the Kusanagi woman at the corporate prison or when I moved the ruins of the shrine barehanded so easily!! Even if my body has been altered, it should only be effective against Youkai!!

“Onee-chan, what is it?”

My sister’s voice was cut off by a rustling sound.

It was the sound of the dead grass. However, this was no footstep.

It was the sound of small snakes slithering.

“This is bad. As I guessed, it looks like the completion of the Hyakumonogatari had something like a time limit.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Look around you.”

The Sunekosuri let out a cry of fear before the detective could.

There were snakes.

A mountain of snakes.

The next thing we knew, everywhere we looked in all 360 degrees was filled with a tremendous amount of snakes. It was not that everything had been covered up by a giant swarm of snakes. It looked more like the landscape was made out of a giant mass of snakes.

In fact…

That may not have been wrong.

“Uuh!? What is going on? The ground is soft!!”

“Hey, detective, that man said the entire basin of Four Mountains functions as the Toubyou’s jar, right? Does that mean…!?”

“Everything we saw – the ground, the mountains, the forest, the run-down buildings – was all…all…”

The detective looked down.

He likely regretted having done so.

The ground had transformed into a giant black carpet created from tons of snakes weaving around each other. The dead grass had turned into a collection of small, narrow snakes that looked like tubifex worms. If we had gone to the village, we would likely find the silhouettes of the buildings made out of snakes.

“Is everything here made from the Toubyou!? Everything but the people needed for the puzzle-solving was fake!?”

“It looks like the stage was made to destroy itself if the Hyakumonogatari was not completed within a given period of time. That may have been one of the conditions for creating the Aoandon. If the Aoandon with the abilities the culprit wanted was not created, it would all reset like this.”

“Reset…?” Jinnai Shinobu frowned. “You just said reset, right? This isn’t just cleaning up after slicing us to pieces, is it!?”

“If my estimation is correct,” I replied with a slow sigh. I gave the worst possibility I could think of. “This is probably not the first time we have attempted the Hyakumonogatari.”

“Wha-…?”

“From the fact that they can drag us to this ‘alternate location’, it is clear the Toubyou have been assembled in a convenient way. Their ability to steal whatever is necessary may go beyond simply manipulating distances and coordinates. It may allow them to grab objects from the past or future on the timeline.”

If the Aoandon was not completed, they would destroy everything and return it all to the initial point.

In other words, it was constructed in an eternal loop that would never end until the objective was complete.

“We have to go through that life-or-death situation again? Can’t we do something!? Isn’t there anything we can do other than watch this destruction happen!?”

“Tell me everything you know!! Let’s share our information. We are still here because there are still some puzzles remaining that we are supposed to solve. That means we have to share our information to solve them all. If we don’t find all 100 puzzles and solve them all, we can never escape Four Mountains! Our greatest weapon is inside our own heads!!”

At some point, the thick fog had disappeared.

I looked up at the blue sky that had appeared behind it, but then I grimaced.

In the sky, a pure black mouth opened wide.

No. It was all Toubyou. This went beyond just dozens or hundreds of them.

''Were hundreds of millions if not billions of those snake Youkai monitoring us while creating a dome over the false Four Mountains area!?

When Jinnai Shinobu, the detective, and the others looked up into the sky as well, they were all left speechless.

Meanwhile, the black gradually ate into the blue of the sky. Over half of it was covered by snakes already.

“Well,” I muttered without thinking.

As if the surface tension of the liquid in a cup had passed its limit, a portion of the black sky crumbled.

“This chapter was a failure…”

Trying to think about evading or defending was useless.

Snakes literally poured down like a waterfall as they fell right onto our

===Part 34 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

“Ah!?”

I woke up.

I could feel an unpleasant sweat all across my body. My heart rate had increased to dangerous levels. For a moment, I was unsure where I was and it took me a bit to distinguish up from down and left from right.

''…I’m on the bus.

It seemed I was on a tour bus driving down the highway.

“Hey, hey, Shinobu-kun.”

I heard Madoka speaking from next to me.

I thought she would also be uneasy due to being unable to keep up with the sudden change. However…

“Is this where I am supposed to ask ‘Shinobu-kun, why do you cling to the girl next to you while you nap?’ ”

''Wait…

''Wait!!

''I remember this conversation.

''Isn’t this just before we entered Four Mountains!?

“Jinnai, we’re almost to a zone simply filled with noteworthy things.”

That was my classmate known as the Love King.

Just his face was peering over the seat in front of me and he was saying the exact same things I had heard before.

“We’re almost at Four Mountains. The scenery will change once we leave the tunnel.”

Unlike the Love King, Madoka likely understood.

I exchanged a glance with her and it was clear that we were the only two enveloped in tension.

Which meant…

''No, not again.

Once we passed through the tunnel, the bus driver, the guide, our classmates, and our homeroom teacher would all disappear and we would have to solve the puzzles of the Hyakumonogatari in that abandoned village filled with countless Toubyou.

Mai had said that had not been the first time. In that case, it must have been the fact that we had made it to the very end that we “remembered” this time.

There were 100 puzzles.

There were 100 answers.

Until they were all gathered and the Aoandon was born, we would have to repeat this again and again.

I began to panic, but I could not think of any way of escaping the situation.

Meanwhile, the tunnel approached like the mouth of some great monster.

The tour bus was swallowed up.

It did not matter how many times it took.

It did not matter if it lasted for all eternity.

Until the Hyakumonogatari was fully completed, Zenmetsu Village of Four Mountains would be waiting for me.

<noinclude>
===Notes===
<references/>
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| Back to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]]
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| Forward to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
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</noinclude>

The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume2 Chapter 2

2013-12-28T01:29:34Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 9 */

==Chapter 2: Hishigami Mai @ Copied Ill Will ==

===Part 1===

It was hot.

It was the end of August, so it really should have been a bit cooler. Not even my highly revealing outfit of a white tank top and hot pants was enough to combat the heat. And the heat of the sun seemed to increase as if to say it was just getting started. Long hair was very annoying in this kind of weather. I had it bound up, but I had a powerful urge to just cut it all off.

You couldn’t take the urban heat island effect lightly.

But I was a working member of society, so I couldn’t exactly head to Hokkaido for fun. I’ll leave what kind of society I mean to your imagination.

In a large city hardened with asphalt and concrete, no one was surprised to see a mirage after consecutive hot, sunny days. I approached a large vehicle parked below an overpass in that gray and wavering city. I then tapped lightly on its body with the back of my right hand.

Now then.

When you hear the term “RV”, how large of a vehicle do you picture in your head?

Well, I doubt many people would say “the size of a large tour bus”, but that was exactly how gigantic the one in front of me was.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say the entire interior of a tour bus had been removed and all the devices needed to live one’s life had been installed.

“Hey, hey, Mai-san. Long time no see. Come on in.”

The front door opened automatically using compressed air and the small man in the driver’s seat spoke to me. He was wearing the stereotypical indoor outfit of a T-shirt and shorts. Thanks to solar panels and a giant battery, the vehicle had the air conditioning on 24/7, so it should have been cool enough regardless.

I walked up the three or four steps into the vehicle and looked around.

It had a bed, a table, a couch, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a TV. Oh, and a gas stovetop, oven, and bathroom as well. The amount of furniture had increased since the last time I had been there. Why did an RV have a washer and dryer in it?

“You’re insane to spend 30 million yen on this thing.”

“Didn’t you know, Mai-san? There’s an asteroid coming. It’s going to get real close real soon. If you think of yourself as the earth, it’s going to pass right in front of your nose. It’ll be quite the spectacle. If you truly hope to survive, you’ll need more than some emergency food and flashlights. I’ve spent all this money to save my own life.”

''That may be the case, but you’re forgetting the scale of the earth and the asteroid. Even scraping right by my nose is farther away than Japan is from Brazil.

The small man’s nostrils flared as he said, “Really, it comes down to food. Food is most important. In the cargo space down below, I’ve made a baby leaf factory using ultraviolet lights and a moisture circulation device. It’s a masterpiece! Every week, I have a drum-full of leaves to eat. I’ll never starve. I can survive for 100 years without issue using this system.”

“Only a rabbit could survive off of that.”

“You’d think so, right? But you’re wrong. Chickens. I’m raising chickens, too. They lay eggs every day, so I have no shortage of animal protein. Plus, I can eat their meat too. As long as I plan it out so I don’t eat too much chicken meat and allow a tenth of the eggs to hatch into chicks, I’ll have no problems! Amazing, isn’t it? Isn’t my system just plain amazing!?”

He was an annoying man.

But the fact that someone with such a horrible lack of sociability could survive as a free agent without relying on the power of an organization showed just how skilled he was at his job.

To switch the flow of the conversation, I said, “Now then, Supplier.”

“What is it, Mai-san?”

“I need money. Either hand over all of your money or introduce me to a job.”

Those who did not understand my situation would often refer to me as the Deadly Dragon Princess of Hyakki Yakou, but I was actually a free agent just like this man. Hyakki Yakou was my usual client because it was Japan’s largest organization in my field, but I did not exclusively take jobs from them.

I did like the young lady at the top of that organization, but I had to accept jobs from elsewhere to maintain the proper balance. Otherwise, I risked binding myself too closely to the one organization.

Leaving clear signs of your neutrality could be a real pain in the ass.

The Supplier was aware of those issues, so he replied without showing any real change to his expression.

“I see. Then I have a good one for you. How about taking a trip to Kyoto?”

“Kyoto?”

“Yes, Kyoto. One of the few cities of over a million where humans coexist with Youkai thanks to thoroughly maintaining the environment. I have an order asking for someone to go crush some idiots who are acting in secret there.”

''Oh?

As the Supplier had said, Kyoto was a unique place in both Japan and perhaps even worldwide. But the one problem with sticking to the old ways too much was an inability to deal with modern circumstances and social problems.

That city contained a large number of Youkai and a large number of humans.

In other words, it was filled with easy marks for Youkai-related Packages.

“Well, anything’s fine by me. Who are these idiots?”

“Akki Rasetsu<ref>Akki Rasetsu is a Japanese phrase referring to a man-eating monster or demon.</ref>.”

“That organization numbers in the thousands. Isn’t that a little much for me to slaughter on my own?”

“That isn’t something I want to hear from the princess who caused enough infighting to destroy Inga Ouhou<ref>Inga Ouhou is a Japanese phrase referring to karma or one’s just deserts.</ref> which was three times the size.” The Supplier grinned. “Also, you don’t need to completely annihilate them. Akki Rasetsu is earning quite a bit of hatred in their attempts to expand their range of business. If you give them a good blow or two and destroy their income cycle, those around them will finish them off.”

“And is that cycle in Kyoto?”

“It seems they’ve started some huge project. This project shows no concern for morals or human life yet they’ve started it in the middle of a city of over a million. The leaders of Akki Rasetsu will gather to inspect the project soon. That is when you should crush them.”

“Have they bet the fate of the organization on this?”

“Seems that way. Crushing either the leaders or project will be enough to fulfill the order. Of course, you’ll get a special bonus if you crush both. Will you take it?”

“I might as well. I assume you have confirmed the client’s ability to pay.”

“Yes. If I didn’t check, you and the others would track down the identity of the client.”

“Then I’ll take the job.”

“One warning,” said the Supplier. “It seems this job is a race to the finish. I discovered this while making sure the client would be able to pay. It seems middlemen besides me have been given this order as well. If you don’t get there first, you might not get paid.”

“That contradicts what you said.”

“If that happens, take it up with them. It has nothing to do with me. You can always get pissed, attack the client’s mansion in the middle of the night, and break through the door of their vault.”

“I see.” I thought for a bit. “I suppose if I find any other free agents like me in Kyoto, I’ll crush them too. If I spot them on the battlefield, I have no real reason to let them live.”

“…It’s times like this that I’m damn glad I’m on your side, Mai-san.”

''Oh?

''When did I ever say I was on your side?

“I’ll be going then. Don’t count on a souvenir.”

I waved my hand and headed for the exit of that end of the century RV made from a tour bus.

But then the Supplier said, “Is a job really all you need? If necessary, I can prepare you some Buddhist equipment or sacred treasures.”

“I don’t like that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s because ''I’ve spent more money than this bus cost on my own skin.''”

“Really? That’s too bad. I have some good bargains like some sacred sake from the Jinnai Brewery. It was originally meant to be dedicated at the Ise Grand Shrine. It has yet to be given the color of a specific god, so it has quite a few uses.”

“I’d rather drink that than use it as a weapon.”

===Part 2===

And so I boarded a bullet train and headed to Kyoto. A linear motor train ran along the same route, but I did not want to deal with the grand opening fair. In my business, the convenient transportation methods that had declined in use were best.

I had a mid-sized inn in Gion lined up for temporary lodging.

But there was something I had to do before switching from the ZR Kyoto Station to the subway station.

“Suuuneeekooosuuuriii-chaaan☆ What the hell are you doing here?”

“E-eeeeeeee!? Y-you already spotted me tailing you!? Ah…no…I mean…!!”

A small canine Youkai called a Sunekosuri had his entire body twitching.

He was a cute species of Youkai that could do nothing but rub up against people’s legs, but he was still an official member of Hyakki Yakou.

Which meant…

“Well, I have to catch a train, so come with me. We can continue talking on the subway.”

“U-um, you aren’t mad?”

“Prepare yourself for tonight. We’re going to have fun in the mixed bath.”

We boarded a subway train and headed for Gion.

I asked the Sunekosuri about the situation while on the train.

“Since a member of Hyakki Yakou is tailing me, can I assume this order comes from them?”

“Uuh…”

“Akki Rasetsu is an eyesore, but that is not enough justification to crush them. If Hyakki Yakou tried to force that through as a reason to attack, they would be attacked and criticized in turn. That is why they went through free agent middlemen to crush Akki Rasetsu without anyone knowing Hyakki Yakou was involved.”

''But…

I leaned up against the train wall.

“I assume the young lady at the top of Hyakki Yakou disapproved of this method. She does not punish based on suspicion. If she did not have enough evidence to punish an evil, she would have a thorough search carried out. And if that was not enough but the evil needed to be defeated nonetheless, she would battle that evil honestly no matter how much blame it brought on her. That young lady prefers pure and immature methods like that. So what idiot is naming himself as a representative for Hyakki Yakou? I assume it is one of her aides who act like her regents or educators or something.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v02_123.jpg|thumb]]

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah,” said the flustered Sunekosuri.

But that canine Youkai was like a salaryman member of the organization, so blaming him would get me nowhere.

Whatever idiot was behind this had been the one to set it up so the payment was first come first serve and so the free agents would start killing each other. I would need to make an extra stop to “punish” that idiot afterwards.

Meanwhile, the train arrived at the Gion subway station.

The Sunekosuri and I stepped out onto the subway platform, passed through the automatic turnstile, climbed the stairs, and exited into the city.

“Wow. This is like an explosion of Kyoto.”

The administrative district in which the ZR Kyoto Station was located was lined with modern buildings, but the donut-shaped urban area not far away was completely cut off from the flow of time. The height and color of the buildings were restricted and it was filled with nothing but old wooden buildings. The roads were not paved and cars and bikes were banned from anywhere but the main roads. Police officers riding horses and rickshaws carrying tourists were a common sight.

“You can tell immediately this is one of the three biggest locations for filming period dramas. It looks like the kimono renting business is booming here.”

“They also have tons of forests and thickets. This place is really crowded.”

Despite being a city of over a million, thick forests of maple trees and thickets of bamboo could be found not far from the road. This was Kyoto. Thanks to the thorough maintenance of the environment, plenty of Youkai could be found wandering around. It was quite obvious a large portion of the income in this area was from sightseeing.

“But why are the maple and ginkgo trees changing color already? It’s still the end of August.”

“The pamphlets all say Kyoto is a city dyed in red, yellow, and green, right? They have various methods to make that a reality. For this, they use some sort of technology to make the natural trees mistake the timing for changing color.”

I entered the inn I had reserved a room in under a false name and was led to my room. I checked for cameras and bugs before assembling a few tools of the trade.

“Okay, it’s about time I crushed Akki Rasetsu.”

“The job was to either put a stop to their important project or assassinate the leaders coming to inspect it. Which will you be doing?”

“I’ll decide that once I check on the situation. I’ll go with whichever is easier.” I rubbed the back of the Sunekosuri that was politely sitting on a cushion. “Now then, Sunekosuri-kun. What do you think Akki Rasetsu is trying to do in Kyoto?”

“Eh? Well, if they came to Kyoto it must be something they can only do here, right? And Kyoto is one of the prime areas for Youkai. Even Hyakki Yakou’s structure takes it into account. The guidebook said the city was designed based on the principles of feng shui. So it must be something they need that sort of environment for, right? In that case…”

“Hah hah hah.” I gave a wooden monotone laugh. “Incorrect.”

“Eh? But…”

“C’mon, Sunekosuri-kun. You think they’re in Kyoto to do something they can only do in Kyoto? That would make their conspiracy too obvious. Doing that would be as self-destructive as streaking nude in front of the National Diet Building. I don’t know what they’re planning, but Akki Rasetsu has begun a project large enough to catch Hyakki Yakou’s attention. This is important enough for them to bet their organization on and for all of the leaders to visit. In other words, this is something they do not want to be stopped no matter what. Do you really think they would choose a setup that would be so easy to see through?”

“Th-then why would Akki Rasetsu go out of their way to go to Kyoto?”

“Think about it the other way around. Kyoto is a rare city that has both over a million people and countless Youkai. Bizarre phenomena that would stand out elsewhere will get buried under everything else in this city. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest, right? Akki Rasetsu’s project probably has little to do with Kyoto itself.”

So if you are hoping for this story to have me solve the mystery while going around to all the Kyoto sightseeing spots, eating tons of delicious local food, and providing steamy fanservice scenes at a hot spring, you should give up right this instant.

But to be honest…

I really would love to be able to mix work with pleasure like that.

“D-do you know what exactly is happening here?”

“No. They’ve set this up as a labyrinth that is incomprehensible at first glance, so I have to dig deeper before I can actually learn anything,” I said offhandedly. “And so I need to think up a way of tracking down a member of Akki Rasetsu even if it’s just someone running errands. By the way, how much do you know about all this, Sunekosuri?”

“I-I am not part of the group that knows what is going on. I was simply asked to monitor the free agents to ensure none of them went beyond what Hyakki Yakou wishes. I am supposed to call in a combat member if anything happens.”

That’s about what I had expected.

With Hyakki Rasetsu and the free agents, Kyoto was currently filled with abnormal people. The standard idea that Youkai could not be killed by normal means could no longer be counted on. The question was whether the Sunekosuri understood that risk or not.

To be blunt, his odds of returning safely to Hyakki Yakou would have been much lower had I not called out to him first.

“Th-then you will be starting by pursuing some member of Akki Rasetsu operating in Kyoto? What exactly will be your first move?”

“Well,” I cracked my neck. “How about I begin by killing all of the other free agents competing for this job?”

===Part 3===

The Sunekosuri trembled in fear.

Nevertheless, I swung the baby-sized rock down onto the head of the man with a camera hanging from his neck. He had been simple to spot with the suspicious mannerisms only a pro could spot.

“Okay, that’s 7 of them. I’d say this is a decent attempt to make it look like a large rock fell on him from that stone wall. Not a bad job at all. People really shine when they put in enough effort to work up a sweat.”

After disguising the circumstances, I took the poor victim’s cell phone and searched for personal information. Of course, if he was in the same situation as me, he would not have acquired any important data yet, and someone with any sense would not bring any private information to this sort of workplace.

Once I was done, I returned the phone to the corpse’s pocket and the Sunekosuri spoke up in a trembling voice.

“Wh-why…Why do people like you never try to work together to defeat the evil demon king?”

“Because we are all each other’s enemies.”

Plus, I had never before seen a boss of pure, unadulterated evil.

It was our job to kill them regardless.

“Not only can I not see what Akki Rasetsu is up to here, but I have to worry about another free agent stabbing me in the side. I need to complete some basic preparations before getting down to work.”

If possible, I would have liked to kill all of them, but I did not know how many of them there were. I had taken out a decent number, so I figured it was about time to turn towards Akki Rasetsu.

“U-umm, what are you going to do now?” The Sunekosuri looked up at me. “Unlike other Intellectual villages, Kyoto is gigantic. It seems it would be considerably harder to find an organization hiding here than in a small village.”

“It’s simple, it’s simple. I just have to find a starting point.”

“?”

I crouched down and wrapped an arm around the Sunekosuri to begin speaking privately.

I whispered, “Whether it’s a giant city or a small village, the first step is to gather the phone calls and emails being sent around. The technology used isn’t all that high level.”

“I-I see. But wouldn’t people like this encrypt their communications?”

“Of course. But would people making normal phone calls or sending normal emails use high level encryption? Think about it in reverse. The ones encrypting their communications are the first to suspect. If I start there, it shouldn’t be hard to run into Akki Rasetsu. But then,” I paused for a second, “Akki Rasetsu will know this. And so they will use encryption software to send decoy data all over the place. They can just use the programs for wangiri calls or spam emails to send out a whole bunch. They send out blank messages that would take hours to decrypt and have them endlessly loop through servers throughout the city.”

“Then how do you distinguish the real ones from the decoys?”

“I search on foot.”

I stuck my hand into the small pink handbag I was carrying over my shoulder.

The Sunekosuri must have been expecting a handgun because his entire body flinched.

“Huh? A video camera?”

“This alone isn’t enough to find Akki Rasetsu within the crowds.” I pressed a switch on the video camera to begin recording mode. “But when people acquire a fake name and identity, they must also prepare a new driver’s license. Those driver’s licenses have an IC chip in them. The IC chips give out information when brought near a certain device just like train passes at the automatic turnstiles at a subway station.”

The Sunekosuri still did not seem to understand, but I was wonderfully pretty in my willingness to patiently explain it all to him.

“If you up the output of the card reader next to a convenience store register, you can check the data on all the cards around you. I have a strengthened reader in my handbag.”

“O-oh.”

“So when I approach the target, it will suck out the information from the IC chip in their driver’s license. Ones that’s data has been illegally altered will leave traces of that in the code. If I find someone with that sort of suspicious license at one of the places sending out encrypted data, I have reason to be very suspicious of that person. Then again, it’s possible some group other than Akki Rasetsu is hiding here, so I will need to do some additional investigation afterwards.”

“W-will this really lead you to them so easily?”

“The strengthened reader can only read IC chips from a range of a meter. If I use the footage from the video camera along with the time the data was sucked out, I can probably narrow my target down to about 10 people. Then I just need to investigate those people. One of them will be the man using the false identity.”

To put it simply, I would be using the video camera and strengthened reader to search out someone working in some shady business.

And so I had to wander around Kyoto.

I spent over three hours going from Gion to Kawaramachi, cutting down Shijou Street, and finally walking around the Katsura Imperial Villa.

Everywhere I went was filled with tourists.

I wonder why foreigners like dressing up as samurai so much. If a Japanese person went to Europe and were asked if they wanted to dress up as a prince, I think they would refuse.

After gathering a certain amount of data, I boarded the subway and returned to the inn.

Just to be sure, I checked for bugs upon returning and then began comparing the video footage and the card data taken from passersby.

“Here, here, here, and here too. There are a lot of suspicious people in this city.”

“A-are they all from Akki Rasetsu?”

“Characteristic traces are left in the driver’s license IC chip data. The ones with the same traces are probably all from the same organization. Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see. There are 4 patterns here.”

“Kyoto really is a city of Youkai, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And that means plenty of shady organizations gather here.”

“How are you going to find Akki Rasetsu from this?”

“I’ll look into each of the 4 patterns. Okay, this is the encrypted communications data flying around near these suspicious people. I just have to decrypt it and…boom! Found it!!”

“H-how did you do that so easily?”

“If each email or phone call took hours to encrypt, they could never get any work done. Even if the security is strict to begin with, the people on the scene will soon find ways to simplify things to make them easier to use.”

Normally, this kind of simplified encrypted data would have numerical traps woven in that could never be solved such as pi. I had no idea how skilled these groups were, but the organizations based in Kyoto tended to do poorly when it came to intelligence issues.

I sifted through the data based on what I had found.

“Pattern 1 is a small revenge-for-hire group, Pattern 2 is ''a large criminal organization'' selling weapons, and Pattern 3 is an Urashima group that wishes to be taken to paradise.”

“So is it Pattern 4?”

“Yes, that’s Akki Rasetsu.”

I double-checked the faces of the people I had picked up with my video camera and compared them to the fake names and photos from the driver’s licenses. I then checked the lodging information at the inn to see if any rooms were rented out under those names.

Then all I had to do was cast my net across the inn’s phone lines and any nearby Wi-Fi routers to easily gather Akki Rasetsu’s encrypted communications data.

I headed out to take care of that work and returned to my room once I was done.

“Oh. I already found something.”

“Did you already find data related to Akki Rasetsu’s headquarters or the details of their project?”

“It’s nothing that great. These are just subcontractors, so they might not have been told all any of those details.”

As I spoke, I compiled the fragmentary information I had acquired from multiple phone calls and emails.

“It seems they are secretly monitoring a girl by the name of Amemura Ryuu. She’s clearly involved somehow with Akki Rasetsu’s project.”

“Do you know who this Amemura Ryuu girl is?”

“I’m checking on that now.” It was all going so well I felt like whistling. “She lives in Kyoto. She’s 11 years old. She’s female. She attends a local elementary school and her grades are above average. She has violin lessons on Wednesdays and dance lessons on Mondays and Fridays. No records of serious illness. She has slight atopic allergies and has issues with ticks. She has received the flu vaccine this year. She has a filling in one of her right back teeth from a cavity treatment. Her father is a stay at home dad and her mother is the secretary for the president of an assembly of small- to mid-sized corporations known as the United Hive. Her personality is shy and reserved but very curious. She has to think about it for a moment before agreeing to be someone’s friend.”

“H-how did you find all that information?”

“The residence registry, electronic medical records, and school grade reports are all kept in the cloud. If you have decent skills, you can gather all that information as easily as surfing the net.”

But that meant I had no way of determining things handled directly such as the amount of allowance she received.

“And this beloved daughter has a child’s cell phone with an alarm function. …GPS functionality can be both good and bad. If you steal the identification code, someone like me can determine her location.”

“…Wow.”

“Okay, let’s go make friends with Amemura Ryuu-chan who seems to be deeply related to this project.”

I left the inn and walked through the cityscape that seemed to turn the idea of Japan into nothing but a tourist attraction.

The foreigners in kimonos and ninja outfits stood out like sore thumbs as I walked along the unpaved road. I walked slowly and casually through the streets while obeying the traffic lights that were made to be quickly removed when a period drama was being filmed.

“But why has this Amemura Ryuu girl been marked by these shady people?”

“That is what we’re trying to find out. Youkai that only children can see are quite popular, so it might be related to that.”

But it seemed a bit odd that they had not abducted her if she was so deeply related to the project.

“Um, how are you going to approach her? She is a small child. She will probably treat adults like us as outsiders.”

“I have an idea. …But come to think of it, Sunekosuri, you could probably just run up to her given how you look.”

“Do not make fun of me! How can you say that about a dandy like me!?”

As we spoke, we approached within 50 meters of Amemura Ryuu-chan’s location. She was inside a children’s park that did not fit in with the period drama roads. Kyoto went to great lengths with its scenery, but it seemed they could not eliminate things like this and the traffic lights from before.

Just as I took one step into the park…

I felt an unpleasant feeling run down my spine. I could instinctually tell that something bad was about to happen. This was the same sort of premonition that anyone had, but oftentimes these situations were set up so it was too late by the time you felt that premonition.

“? What is it?”

“…Oh, I get it.”

The Sunekosuri was unable to understand the situation with his limited information.

Three or four children were gathered at a covered bench in the park. They were playing handheld game systems rather than on the playground equipment. I doubted kids these days would want to play out in the hot sun, so they had likely done so reluctantly to avoid their parents who always yelled at them for doing nothing but play video games.

And…

The girl named Amemura Ryuu was not among them.

However, the kid’s cell phone GPS signal was still pointing to this park.

Which meant…

“Not good! Someone swapped out the ID code of the signal!”

I did not have time to check my surroundings.

An agile kick suddenly flew at my side.

“Bfh!?”

The kick had not been intended to do damage; it had likely been meant to put pressure on my diaphragm to keep me from crying out and to knock me into a nearby thicket. Someone quickly moved to climb on top of me after I was knocked behind cover.

My hand instinctually reached for my boot.

I pulled out my small suppressor-equipped handgun.

''Shit. By the time I grab this, I’ve 80% lost!!

As expected, the attacker swung up an arm before I could take aim with the handgun. Something long and narrow was held in that hand. I would have laughed out loud had it been a knife, but it was not. The object held between the index and middle finger was…

''A magical charm!?

“…!!”

I pulled the trigger without aiming. I thought I would hit the attacker somewhere on the torso, but not even one of my three shots hit. Even at such close range, my arm was shaking too much to aim properly.

I could tell something was eating into my body.

''This is…illness magic?

''Illness magic!?

“Damn you. I had heard you disappeared after the coup d’etat in Hyakki Yakou, but what are you doing-…ghbgbh!?”

My mouth filled with dark red blood before I could finish speaking.

''Not good. This deadly illness is beginning to spread throughout my entire body!!

This was just about the worst opponent for me. I could not defeat him in a head on fight. After all, he was the type powerful enough that the most difficult thing for him was ''keeping the damage of his attacks from spreading too far.'' And yet he had kicked me behind this thicket before attacking. He must not have wanted to do anything that stood out too much.

In that case…

I gathered strength in the hand holding my small suppressor-equipped handgun. However, aiming it at my attacker would do no good. As such, I held my arm out horizontally while lying on my back. I placed my arm along the ground to keep it from trembling, peered through the sight, and somehow managed to take aim.

I took aim at the forehead of the Sunekosuri nervously looking our way.

And I pulled the trigger.

“Gyahn!? By-byaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The bullet struck the Sunekosuri in the face and he began writhing around on the ground.

He let out a scream as loud as a police car’s siren, but as a Youkai, he did not seem to have lost a single drop of blood.

“…Tch.”

That was the first I heard of the attacker’s voice.

The illness magic left my body. I stopped coughing up blood.

The attacker quickly moved away from me and tried to flee, but I used what weak strength I had left to grab his arm.

I would lose in a straight fight here, but I would never know when he might attack again if I let him go.

And so I needed to finish this. But by using some method ''other than violence.

Meanwhile, the children who had been playing handheld games approached the Sunekosuri.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Are you okay? Did someone draw eyebrows on you?”

“This isn’t a dog. I think it’s a Youkai.”

If the children saw us, we would kill them.

The Sunekosuri knew the etiquette of those like us, so he ran off in the opposite direction with tears in his eyes in order to draw the children’s attention.

Meanwhile, I spoke to the attacker.

He was one of the five most powerful official members of Hyakki Yakou.

He was the man known as the Illness Magic User.

“…Cough, cough. Were you the one who swapped out the GPS ID code?”

“What if I was?”

''Thank goodness.

If he had decided to simply kill me, it would have all been over. I was truly grateful.

He was likely trying to work out if I had an ulterior motive just as I was of him.

When the gloomy Illness Magic was not wrapped around him, he could be seen wearing a black combat outfit like a SWAT member. He carried countless magic charms instead of countless magazines. He had been walking around dressed like that in Kyoto where cameras were everywhere, so it must not have seemed too strange to people. I wondered if people assumed it was some form of cosplay since this was a tourist area.

He had a muscular body and short hair that was easy to wash. However, his face was very gloomy. It made him look like he himself was wasting away due to some illness.

“So you set up this trap to hunt down anyone trying to find Amemura Ryuu. Who do you work for now? Hyakki Yakou? Or Akki Rasetsu?”

“I am a free agent.”

“So you knew the order came from Hyakki Yakou and decided to go along with the charade, is that it?”

He had sided with the rebel faction that had caused that coup d’etat because he had thought it was best for Hyakki Yakou as a whole. Even though the coup d’etat had failed, he was likely still working to help the organization.

Really now.

And he had even tried to claim he had been acting out of logic rather than emotion.

Then again, I doubted the Illness Magic User would be allowed back into the organization so easily after what he had done.

He was probably trying to indirectly obey Hyakki Yakou’s orders by taking their jobs as a free agent.

He specialized in great destruction in a straight fight and he was loyal to a single organization through and through. He may have thought he was a samurai or something. He was heading down the path of the defeated samurai while I was more like a ninja, so we simply did not get along.

“So I take it your enemy is Akki Rasetsu. In that case, we have no reason to kill each other.”

“That is no reason to let you live either.”

“Stop it. Disposing of the body would be a pain. This has been going well so far, but that is only because those kids were so focused on their games they weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. After the Sunekosuri made such a racket, do you really think you can carry a body out without them noticing? And you were the one who got those children involved, I might add.”

I heard him click his tongue.

He really was the samurai type that always walked the proper path.

If it was me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill my enemy.

“Since you set your trap around her, am I right in assuming you are trying to find Akki Rasetsu’s headquarters from one of their agent’s hanging around her rather than from Amemura Ryuu-chan herself?”

“Someone who looks like me approaching a child would become a major incident.”

''I see.

''So he is aware how grim he looks.

He was, after all, a pure combat-obsessed idiot who would kill thousands or even tens of thousands to carry out his mission. He would cut out any waste or gentleness from his plans. Not even a soldier from ''a large criminal organization'' would be able to look him in the eye, much less a child.

“However, you have found no useful information, so you’ve been forced to continue laying traps, right? I’d say there is no way of approaching Akki Rasetsu’s project other than making contact with Amemura Ryuu-chan.”

“Are you saying you can manage that?”

“I’m an expert at that. Just watch. I don’t like being indebted to anyone, so I’ll share my information with you just this once to make up for sparing my life here.”

I reflected sunlight off the body of my cell phone to give a sign to the Sunekosuri and then I left the children’s park.

Walking with the Illness Magic User would make me stand out, but I had no choice. I bought a wide-brimmed cowboy hat from a nearby souvenir shop and put it on.

“…What are you doing?”

“I’m Hatman, you idiot. Most security cameras are located above. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat like this will at least keep my face from being recorded.”

The Illness Magic User’s magic charms did not fall under the Swords and Firearms Control Law, so he had no reason to be afraid of police questioning. Also, that samurai would face anyone head on, so he never tried to hide who he was. But the situation seemed quite fatal to a scout and spy like myself!!

As we walked, the Sunekosuri approached while weaving between people’s legs in the crowd.

''Ahh, if he can head for us that directly, we must really stand out. Sob.

“H-how could you do that!? How could you suddenly shoot a person in the head with a real bullet!? That is completely unacceptable!! Woof woof!!”

“Shoot ‘a person’ in the head? …But you’re a dog, right? Well, a canine Youkai.”

“Is that really the first thing you have to say!?”

“Sorry. I’ll listen to all your complaints in the inn’s bath.”

“Please don’t! And you aren’t sorry at all, are you!? Anyway, how far have things progressed?”

“Hishigami Mai-chan has leveled up! Illness Magic User-chan looks like he wants to join your party!!”

“Eh? I thought he had deserted Hyakki Yakou? Have you already made up with him?”

The instant the Sunekosuri asked that puzzled question, the Illness Magic User gave him one hell of a glare. The canine Youkai cowered down and began trembling.

“C’mon, stop that. Don’t scare such a pretty Youkai.”

“You shot me in the face!!”

“Can we get to the topic at hand?” asked the Illness Magic User disinterestedly. “To approach Akki Rasetsu’s project, we must approach Amemura Ryuu. But she is a minor who views someone even 1 year older as an outsider due to the school year system. She is also quite wary. How do we approach her?”

“We just have to satisfy a few conditions. You can just relax and watch a pro at work.”

===Part 4===

No matter how pleasant a smile one put on or how unthreatening a voice one used, a child would be cautious of someone who spoke to them when they were alone. Trying to draw emotionally closer to the child in that state would always end in failure.

But that could be used in reverse.

That wall of caution would not function if one spoke to the child when they are not alone. This does not mean to try it when they are with their friends or other people on their same level, but when they are near someone they feel is stronger such as a parent or teacher.

And so…

I used the proper GPS signal to locate Amemura Ryuu-chan who had a large ribbon-shaped pin in her hair, wore a frilly skirt, and otherwise made me want to fall in love with her. I waited for her to begin speaking with her stay at home dad of a father who was sprinkling water in front of their row house type of home. Then I remotely switched on the alarm of her kid’s cell phone.

A high-pitched buzzer began ringing, but it could not be turned off manually as I had control of the program.

“Wah!? Huh? Um…dad… It won’t…”

“Let me see it, Ryuu-chan. Odd. It’s supposed to stop when you press on the string’s stopper.”

''Good, good.

I took action while they were worried about the public nuisance they were causing.

While still a short distance from where the ground was wet with the water the father had been sprinkling, I spoke to the father and daughter whose guard had been lowered.

“Oh, what’s the matter? I hear an alarm going off, so were you robbed? You should probably report it.”

“Ah, no, that isn’t it. It seems my daughter accidentally pulled the string and now the alarm won’t turn off.”

“Are you not too good with electronics? Could I see it for a moment?”

I held out my hand while still at a distance and Amemura Ryuu-chan’s father approached me to hand me the cell phone. I would not approach them. A child’s personal space was much larger than adults realized.

But this easily resolved that problem.

I was a criminal, so this much is to be expected.

“Here, it’s off. It looks like it wasn’t the string but the alarm that automatically starts due to too great an impact. That’s why the alarm would not stop even after putting the string back in place. You needed to open it up and stop the program.”

“…I see. I should probably actually read the manual.”

“That is probably a good idea as far as the emergency functions are concerned. …Here you go, young lady.”

I ultimately spoke to Amemura Ryuu-chan rather than her father as I held out the phone.

She looked back and forth between me and her father’s face a few times, but then…

“Ryuu-chan, say thank you.”

Pushed on by her father, Amemura Ryuu-chan timidly reached out to take the phone I was holding out. Her small hand grabbed the plastic body of the phone.

''Good. Primary communication complete.

I had solved a problem of hers and had been certified “safe” by someone she considered stronger than herself. I had even made physical contact between our hands in addition to the verbal contact.

It had been the same as a child timidly approaching a large pet dog at a friend’s house.

She now knew it would not bite.

If she saw the dog again while walking along the street, she would not be afraid to approach it.

I smiled at the father and said, “I will be going then.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

''…No, thank you for helping me with my job.

“Goodbye to you too, young lady.”

“…Bye.”

When I waved goodbye with one hand, Amemura Ryuu-chan waved back while hiding behind her father.

That had gone well.

So well I was a bit worried about her future.

After completing my preparations there, I left the Amemura residence and met back up with my companions. When I did, both the Sunekosuri and the Illness Magic User spoke up.

“You are just like a kidnapper.”

“It scares me that you have a successful formula for that. How many times did you have to try it before perfecting that?”

''Oh, come on.

''My job begins with earning the trust of people regardless of sex, age, nationality, or religion. It isn’t like I specialize in children.

“Now then, tomorrow I will make contact with Amemura Ryuu-chan herself outside of the home. I wasn’t able to give her my name, so I want to act before she forgets me. Illness Magic User, you defeated a few members of Akki Rasetsu to gather information, right? Is there anything particular I should ask about?”

“Her family’s past.”

“You think this might be related to an Inugami or other Youkai that resides in a bloodline? Wouldn’t it be faster to search out a family tree?”

“I researched her bloodline, but found nothing suspicious. Or rather, nothing more than the small things you can find if you follow any family tree back far enough. She lacked anything decisive. I am hoping for something else related to the fate of the family.”

“The fate of the family?”

“I am wondering if anything special happened to the family in the past such as in the Rokubu Goroshi story.”

While some Youkai were referred to as “residing in the bloodline”, it did not mean the bloodline itself possessed a special base sequence. It was simply that good or evil fates earned by past actions had a tendency to stick with a bloodline. The direct bloodline between parent and child was the simplest link.

However, that kind of fate could be passed on to people not related by blood such as between a master and servant samurai, monks training at the same temple, or people who entered a forbidden zone during a test of courage. If one focused too much on bloodlines, one could receive a negative influence from an unexpected route, so it was best to be careful.

At any rate…

“If that’s what this is about, I’m not sure we would learn anything from the girl. It might be faster to trick the information out of the father.”

“Then do that if necessary.”

“Fine, fine. Oh, right. Illness Magic User, can you handle electronics? You managed to mess with Amemura Ryuu-chan’s GPS, right?”

“Well enough.”

“Then you investigate the mother while I go with the daughter. You would just have to wait for me to produce results otherwise, right?”

“The mother?” asked the Sunekosuri in confusion.

I nodded and said, “To be honest, there is no way to look into the father as he’s a stay at home dad. But the mother brings in the money for the Amemura household, so she’ll definitely leave data behind in her job. You can look into that.”

“She works as the secretary for the president of United Hive, correct? If I recall, her name is Tenkyuu. I did a basic investigation, but I found no data that seemed related to Youkai.”

“Dig deeper. She works for United Hive. They gathered together the small- to mid-sized factories that support Japan’s cutting edge technology, created a centralized structure for those factories’ patents, and make tons of money as a point of contact for them with influence as a single giant entity on the level of the biggest corporations in the world. They deal with tons of patents, so their digital defenses will be greater than average. There’s definitely something below the surface.”

“Understood. I will keep at it until I at least find some secret account files.”

Now then.

With our general plans set, I had nothing left to do that day.

I had worked up quite a sweat on the first day, so I decided to have some fun in the open-air bath with the lovely Sunekosuri-chan.

===Part 5===

The next day, I killed time in the inn with the Sunekosuri until evening. The Sunekosuri’s eyes opened wide when he saw the overall extravagant food, but it seemed the food was not made from Intellectual Village ingredients. Then again, a traditional Japanese meal where everything from the water to the rice was produced in Intellectual Villages would likely cost 2 million yen a person.

It was a bit strange how the Japanese could not afford to eat what was the pride of Japan.

It may have been used as a means of acquiring foreign currencies.

“Sunekosuri, it’s about time we headed out. Let’s begin our attack on Amemura Ryuu-chan.”

“Eh? You know she’s going to leave her house? But this is the middle of summer break.”

“She has her extracurricular lessons year round. She lives in a scenery protection zone where cars are banned from entry, so her father is unlikely to take her to and from those lessons. And even if he does, I can create an excuse to separate them.”

We once more walked through the streets of Kyoto that looked straight out of a period drama. I knew where Amemura Ryuu-chan’s lessons were held, so I headed there. To disguise myself as a tourist, I peered into souvenir shops, ate dango while embracing the Sunekosuri, and had even more fun with the Sunekosuri while heading to our destination.

Then my decoy cell phone rang.

The call was from the Illness Magic User I had exchanged numbers with the day before.

“I have found information related to Tenkyuu at United Hive.”

“Okay, okay.”

“United Hive is a collection of small- to mid-sized factories in Kansai that even create industrial technologies related to satellites, right?” asked the Sunekosuri. “I’ve heard they have successfully negotiated to use a foreign country’s launch site to launch small satellites made with their own independent technology.”

“At first glance, that appears to be going well, but they are having problems behind the scenes,” explained the Illness Magic User. “Their business related to the satellite itself has been a success, but they were badly burned when they tried to go further and create their own rocket technology. It seems a powerful rival group has interfered by claiming they plan to use the rockets as missiles.”

“But Amemura Ryuu-chan’s mother is only the president’s secretary right? If she ends her contract and distances herself, she does not need to worry going down with them. She technically works for an employment agency, so it doesn’t matter to her if the company with her contract fails. If she is skilled, she should be able to find a new job easily enough.”

“I do not know if it was in hopes of making money or if she wanted to gain the favor of the president, but it seems Tenkyuu bought the corporation’s stock in addition to her normal secretary duties. Now that this other group is interfering with the development of the rocket engine, she is in trouble. …Simply put, the Amemura family is in a lot of debt.”

“And that’s where Akki Rasetsu comes in.”

“Eh? So is the Amemura family working with Akki Rasetsu?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“They may not know the details of the project, but they likely know they’re doing something,” I replied. “They probably do realize they are helping assemble a Youkai-related Package, though.”

They likely felt it was on the level of stealing credit card information.

But unfortunately for them…

The scope of the Package had to be much greater than that for people like us to be sent in.

“Well, I had a feeling there was more to this since the Amemura family had not been abducted despite being deeply related to the project.”

“It would be simpler to abduct them than to approach them to make a deal. Why would they do it this way?” asked the Illness Magic User.

“Because they wanted to finish this quietly. That’s also why they came to Kyoto to hide a tree in the forest.” I turned towards the Sunekosuri who was the representative of Hyakki Yakou who we were truly working for. “By the way, do you think slaughtering the Amemura family would suffice to destroy Akki Rasetsu’s project?”

“Y-you can’t do that!! They are normal people who have nothing to do with us! If you get them involved in that way, I will directly go to my higher ups to see that you are not paid!! Woof woof!!”

“That’s what I thought. We don’t know what makes the Amemura family useful. If it ends up being a talent 1 in 100 people have, they could use a different candidate to continue their project. It’s also possible killing the Amemura family acts as a trigger to activate the project.”

In other words, it was possible they were intentionally being left alive so they could be killed at the proper time.

And that would of course be kept a secret to the Amemura family who thought they were simply helping.

“Should I search for more information related to United Hive?” asked the Illness Magic User.

“No, I doubt you would find anything more anyway. Tenkyuu does not seem directly related to the Youkai. I am about to contact Amemura Ryuu-chan, so just wait for my report.”

I ended the connection and stuck my cell phone in the pocket of my hot pants before turning a corner.

At the same moment, Amemura Ryuu-chan exited a building after finishing her dance lesson.

I put on a soft smile that would leave others in my business speechless and raised a hand.

“Oh, so we meet again, young lady.”

===Part 6===

It seemed Amemura Ryuu-chan was quite fond of the Sunekosuri. A rather large bag that likely contained her sportswear for her dance lessons hung down from her shoulder as she walked next to me and held the canine Youkai in both arms. It was a lovely image. Everything about it was cute.

Now then.

I had to use Amemura Ryuu-chan to learn what Youkai it was Akki Rasetsu was working with. The Illness Magic User seemed to think it was related to the past of the Amemura family.

I started with a casual opening question.

“By the way, have you ever done that thing?”

“?”

“Y’know, the thing at the Bon festival where you stab chopsticks into eggplants, cucumbers, and such to create animals.”

At first glance, things like that and traditions related to visiting the graves or household Buddhist altars of one’s ancestors seemed the same for every family. However, those things were actually packed full of small local rules. You could tell where someone was from just by seeing how they stood up the incense stick. Also, amateurs did not understand the importance of anything related to the occult, so they would usually tell you without hiding anything.

However…

Amemura Ryuu-chan shook her head and gave an explosive reply.

“We don’t do that at my house.”

“Oh? Do you not do that kind of thing anymore?”

“We never did it. It’s a family rule. We aren’t supposed to prepare to meet our ancestors even during the Bon festival because it will make a monk come.”

''…

''A monk, you say?

“But you do go visit your grandfather’s house, right?”

“Yeah. We go there to visit our family’s grave. I don’t really get it, though. I don’t know what temple the grave is at.”

“My grandfather’s house was on the beach. There would be a ton of jellyfish every year, but there was nothing to do there but swim.”

“Oh, mine too. My grandfather likes to go fishing, but I like to swim more.”

''Oh, she went along with my leading comments easily enough.

''So her grandfather’s house is on the beach.

''Does that mean that monk she mentioned is it?

“Is your grandfather a fisherman?”

“No. He was a ferry captain. My uncle is a ship captain too.”

We had made it to the Amemura family house, so I took the Sunekosuri back from the girl and parted ways with her.

I pulled out my decoy cell phone and called the Illness Magic User.

“It’s definitely an Umibouzu<ref>Umibouzu literally means Sea Monk</ref>.”

===Part 7===

An Umibouzu.

As the name suggests, it was a giant Youkai that appears in the sea. Most theories suggested they were created by the gathering of regretful souls in an area filled with a large number of drowning deaths in the past.

Living beings had souls, but they were difficult to handle. At the very least, they could not be easily removed such as with an organ transplant and they could not be replaced with something artificial either.

I felt the concept was a bit similar to quantum cryptography.

The mass of information definitely existed, but if someone forcibly tried to observe or touch it, it would transform into “something else”. That made it almost impossible to use or intentionally alter the information source of the soul when it was in its pure form. That was something only a god could manage.

Of course, Western demons used contracts written on parchment to remove human souls, but I don’t really know how that works. If they could perfectly control an act of god like that, I doubt they would be content simply being known as demons regardless of whether they are a pure species or if they can’t fully use that power and are looked down on by evil gods.

But I digress.

I was talking about the driving force that keeps living beings moving.

Directly interfering with it was difficult. The instant someone touched it, the information would change. However, it could still be used even after it transformed into “something else”. When those remnants gathered and took on a new form, they would create a certain type of Youkai.

One example was the Shichinin Misaki that let the oldest victim finally rest in peace once a new victim arrived.

Another was the Funa Yuurei that would sink a ship if not given a bottomless water ladle.

However, those should not be seen as having any real connection with the original human. A living fish and fish meat were two different things and a human did not gain the will of the fish upon eating fish meat. In the same way, that which became a Youkai did not care what its raw materials were.

“By the way, the Illness Magic User is an exception among exceptions. He has a single soul and is still a living human being, but he uses magical charms to give his own hateful grudges strong directionality in the form of illness magic. In our business, you need to borrow the power of a Youkai or demon to produce effects above a certain level, but he creates those curses solely with his own power. He’s quite the monster. He might be on the same level as that noble’s grudge that shook up Kyoto during the Heian period.”

Upon returning to the inn, I explained that to the Sunekosuri.

I had modified my own body, but it was still based on the power of the Shikigami known as the Deadly Dragon Princess. He was truly an oddity in his ability to produce paranormal phenomena without relying on a Youkai in any way.

“But to constantly produce enough hatred to give form to those curses, his organs must be a mess from the intense stress. When he was in Hyakki Yakou he would reduce that with the help of incense, but I wonder what he does now.”

While embracing a massager like a body pillow and vibrating slightly, the Sunekosuri stuck out his long tongue and said, “An Umibouzu, is it? From what I have heard, they are not much different from a Funa Yuurei. I have heard it is merely an issue of regional differences in what form the drowning dead take when they change.”

“More or less.”

“So this is a giant Youkai that frequently appears in areas of the sea where lots of people have drowned? So what about the area Amemura Ryuu-chan’s grandfather works in?”

“I checked it out. His house is on the coast at the northern side of Kyoto. Thirty years ago, a powerful typhoon sunk a bunch of ships there. Her grandfather was working there at the time, so that fate must have become intertwined with his own.”

Of course, you could find some sort of great disaster or accident in most areas of ocean if you went back 50 or 100 years.

“So preparing to meet their ancestors calls in the Umibouzu,” said the Sunekosuri sounding a bit downhearted while embracing the massager. “The ones who died in the accidents did nothing wrong, so it’s a sad story.”

“That’s how it is with those Youkai. The materials may be the thoughts of the dead after their souls have been transformed like a destroyed piece of quantum cryptography, but the Youkai created is something completely different from the original people. If the created Youkai is a deadly one, they will not hesitate to bare their fangs against a lover of one of the humans before death. The rules will have already been overwritten.”

What was Akki Rasetsu hoping to do with this Umibouzu?

The next thing to investigate was…

“Where is this Umibouzu?” asked the Sunekosuri. “It’s an ocean Youkai, so Amemura Ryuu-chan’s grandfather’s house or the surrounding area seems the most suspicious.”

“Wait, wait. If it just has to be ocean water, the fish tanks at a sushi restaurant might qualify. Technology has come a long way in this age. We should probably expand our search to include aquariums and ocean water pools.”

“Uuh…”

“And whatever Akki Rasetsu’s ultimate objective is, they’ve located themselves in the center of Kyoto to ‘hide a tree in the forest’.” It wouldn’t make sense for it to be so far from their headquarters. That would be the same as leaving the tree outside the forest.”

“S-so do you have any idea what area might be suspicious?”

“The dance classroom.” I raised a finger. “The exterior is made to fit the period look of the city, but the inside has a full complement of fitness facilities. And that includes an indoor pool.”

These days, dance lessons were given in PE class for elementary and middle schoolers. Kids sure had it tough. How did they see dance lessons at that age where they began seriously wondering how the standard subjects in school would help them as adults?

But something had caught my attention while watching the girl.

“Amemura Ryuu-chan had a bag while leaving the dance classroom, remember? It was too large to simply hold her dancewear. She may have had a swimsuit in there as well so she could play in the pool after her dance lesson. Faithfully attending lessons in this heat has to be tough. The dance classroom might provide that ‘free service’ to prevent children from skipping.”

“Then has someone switched the pool water with ocean water? B-but anyone would be able to tell if they tasted it. And it would sting people’s eyes.”

“Then they just have to do it with water no one will ever get in their mouth,” I replied casually. “For example, the water in the sterilization tub the kids enter up to their shoulders in before entering the pool. Anyone with any sense will keep their delicate face out of it. And even if someone does taste it by accident, they don’t know how powerful disinfectant is supposed to taste. Even if it tastes quite salty, they would probably just think that is how it must taste.”

“For most of the swimmers, that ocean water would be neither harmful nor helpful…"

“But Amemura Ryuu-chan would be different because of her family’s fate with the Umibouzu. Whenever she periodically uses the pool and enters the sterilization tub beforehand, she stimulates the Umibouzu. It’s the same as using her biometrics to open a lock restricted to a specific user. And it is all according to Akki Rasetsu’s project.”

“You said Amemura Ryuu-chan’s mother is cooperating with Akki Rasetsu to escape her debt, right? How does that tie in?”

“She probably set the days Amemura Ryuu-chan goes to her lessons and ensures that she goes to the dance classroom without skipping. And of course, they make sure the mother does not know what is truly going on. They might have another guiding agent in the dance classroom who ensures the girl always plays in the pool after the dance lesson.”

The dance classroom itself held no danger. There would be no problem if the mother told someone the days of the week her daughter went to dance lessons and no one would find it odd she made sure her daughter always went. It may have been an odd command, but the parents would have no problem if they were told to ensure their daughter was not involved by keeping her schedule the same as before.

How naïve.

If someone was paying money, they would be gaining something worth the money spent.

“So that means…”

“We need to investigate that dance classroom’s facility and instructor.”

===Part 8===

And so I took action in the middle of the night.

I met up with the Illness Magic User in the darkness of the night and we headed for the dance classroom’s building.

The building was about the size of a gym and was three stories tall. It was still made to match the period setting in its looks, so it was almost laughable. The inside was likely crammed full of cutting edge fitness equipment.

After we circled the building to check on the situation, I tapped the Illness Magic User on the shoulder and said, “As today’s guest, you need to charge in and wipe them out.”

“Why do I need to do what you say?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But if you don’t do anything here, you won’t get another time to shine. It would be insulting if you asked me to split the reward 50/50 after that.”

“…”

The Illness Magic User sighed, stopped hiding, and walked boldly up to the front entrance. It seemed the idea of sneaking in never even occurred to him. He kicked in the door and set foot inside the building while a home security alarm rang.

In the next instant, a deep darkness seeped out from every window in the building.

The Sunekosuri’s entire body jumped slightly.

“Wah…wah wah! Wah wah wah wah wah!! I-is all of that illness magic!?”

“There’s no escape for anyone inside.”

An unrelated security guard might be inside too, so he would start at a level which would only knock them unconscious. But once he had checked everyone inside, he would increase it to a truly deadly illness.

That’s how it was with that combat-obsessed idiot.

He practically announced that ''it was harder for him to limit the damage done.

''…Now then.

“It’s about time we made our move.”

“Eh? But the Illness Magic User is still inside. If we go in there, we’d be caught in the middle of it.”

“We’re not going in,” I said while circling around behind the building. “This may indeed be a base for Akki Rasetsu. But can we say for sure the entire project is contained here? Is it possible they have other bases or hideouts? Where are their VIPs? Attacking this place might not be enough to cut Akki Rasetsu’s Achilles tendon.”

“Th-then what are you going to do?”

“Look over there.” I guided the Sunekosuri’s gaze while holding him in my arms. “There it is. A large truck with a silent electric engine. A dangerous vehicle on a dark night.”

“Huh? But aren’t vehicles banned here in order to preserve the look of Kyoto?”

“Generally, yes. But a city of over a million can’t function like that. A few vehicles are allowed an exception at specific times. Any work that would destroy the atmosphere is done in the middle of the night so no one will see it.”

And Akki Rasetsu had prepared transportation in one of those.

The Illness Magic User was on a rampage within the building and it was obvious they were trying to transport something out.

“Look, look, look. The backdoor opened and they brought something out... What is that? A metal tank?”

“It’s bigger than a refrigerator. It takes five of them to carry it.”

“I guess they’re trying to escape with the ‘trick’ set up in the pump room.”

I had concluded they were luring Amemura Ryuu-chan into the building’s indoor pool so she would touch the “ocean water” at set intervals. That would provide the proper stimulus to the “monk” that was likely a type of Umibouzu. That meant they might be transporting the small pressure tank for the sterilization tub.

In other words…

The “monk” was contained within that tank.

“What are you going to do now?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“Simply stealing that won’t bring this to an end. I want to know where they’re taking it. That will likely be Akki Rasetsu’s most important base. That tank will be joining other things they don’t want destroyed and people they don’t want killed.”

Just as everyone would head to the emergency staircase when the fire alarm rang, a sudden attack would put people on guard for simultaneous attacks from multiple direction while evacuating the most important items and people to a safe place

Which meant…

If I followed them, I would be led straight to the location in which the enemy had gathered all of their weak points.

“Th-then you are going to tail that truck?”

“That would be the normal method, but I don’t have a vehicle of my own. I’d like to attach a tracking device.”

“…It does not look like you will be able to sneak close to it. There are five men carrying the metal tank and six got out of the truck.”

“Then I’ll have to approach without sneaking,” I said offhandedly while pulling my video camera out of my handbag.

“What are you doing?”

“People working in the underworld of society don’t like to stand out. I’ll use that against them.”

I attached a random cable to the video camera, stuck the other end of the cable into my handbag, and approached the large truck.

They quickly spotted me and tried to stick a hand into their pockets, but I shouted out before they could.

“Attack☆Late Night Dinner!!”

“Eh? Ah?”

“Okay okay. Today, I’ve come all the way to Gion in Kyoto! What an age we live in. Even an amateur like me can easily ''make an internet broadcast TV show'' just by using i@Stream! Okay, now it’s time for the usual ''live broadcast interview''!! Truck drivers like this always know the best places to eat.”

“Wait, wait!! What do you think you are doing!?” frantically protested one of the men.

Yes.

He protested peacefully.

If he pulled a handgun out here, he would be making his world debut holding it.

“You have to ask? This is a net show. ''It’s broadcast live worldwide.'' My equipment is a bit small though because my budget isn’t very big.”

“No, wait. We are…um…in the middle of work right now. We aren’t allowed to do this kind of thing. Surely even you are banned from working a different job while at work. So…”

“Okay, thank you very much.”

After approaching close enough, I tossed aside the video camera and grabbed the man’s arm. I then twisted his elbow around and upwards, swiped a suppressor-equipped handgun from within the man’s shirt, and killed all of his Akki Rasetsu comrades with it.

''Oh, that was louder than I expected.

The nightmare lasted only 5 seconds.

When caught by surprise like that, all they could do was stand still.

[[Image:Zashiki_v02_171.jpg|thumb]]

“Wh-what are you-…Hot!?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry. Did I touch you with the barrel when it was hot from the gas? While I’m at it, I’ll apologize for something else, too. I lied about the worldwide broadcasting, so don’t worry.”

I grabbed the collar of the one remaining man and slammed his back against the side of the large truck.

I then pressed the barrel against his forehead.

“Now, how about you tell me everything you know? What is this? What are you doing with it?”

“Ha ha… I’m just a subcontractor. I don’t know any of the details.”

''I thought you’d say that.

I aimed the gun lower and fired a single shot into the man’s right thigh.

I of course made sure to stop up the throat I was grabbing at through his collar to keep him from crying out.

“Gh…mgh!? Cough cough!!”

“Next, I will remove the suppressor and fire it from within your hand so it leaves gunshot residue. The gunshot will make sure the nearby residents come running out. I will run off and leave the gun here. The gun that killed your comrades will remain and you cannot run off with that leg. Whether you’re found guilty or not, your face will probably be on the front page of newspapers across the nation. You will make an enemy of not just Akki Rasetsu but the entire occult industry that wishes to remain hidden. Do you really think the bars of a prison cell will be enough to protect you then?”

“…I-I don’t know much. I’m telling the truth about that!”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Generation after generation, the Amemura family has worked as sailors. The tradition goes back as far as the Heian period. And the family has a tradition of letting the bodies of their dead wash into the ocean from their ships. They stopped doing that in recent times, but the Amemura bloodline is still strongly linked with the ocean around Kyoto.”

“So this ‘monk’ isn’t an Umibouzu?”

“Technically, we don’t even know if it is a Youkai. It is closer to a vague family guardian deity. But large accidents have happened in that ocean a few times. The unrelated people who drowned there were incorporated in with their ancestors. That may have given it properties similar to an Umibouzu.”

''Wait.

''Then what is Akki Rasetsu’s true goal in stimulating this ‘monk’ using Amemura Ryuu-chan?

Suddenly, the building’s backdoor slammed open.

“Tch!”

I tossed the man aside and fired several shots at the back door while beginning to run. Once the magazine was empty, I threw away the handgun, picked up the video camera I had dropped, and fled as quickly as I could.

Several gunshots quieted by suppressors rang out behind me.

''Not good, not good, not good!!

I frantically moved my legs and leapt behind cover while the Sunekosuri approached from a different route.

“Honestly, what are you doing!?” he shouted.

“I did what I needed to do. It’s time to disappear.”

“Eh? But what about that truck? It’s going to leave!!”

“I said I was going to attach a tracking device, remember?” I raised my index finger as the Sunekosuri froze in place. “If I had simply attached a tracking device underneath the vehicle, they would have found it right away. That is why I made the Akki Rasetsu courier think I was approaching to ask how the Amemura family is related to all this. ''That was a decoy objective.'' If they are satisfied to know why I was there, they will not think about looking for a tracking device. Okay?”

“Y-you…”

“Now let’s lose our Akki Rasetsu pursuers without slaughtering them. I want them to think I frantically ran off after being interrupted in the middle of gathering information. Once they feel safe once more, I can return and catch them off guard.”

===Part 9===

No matter how far you are from your target, there is nothing to be afraid of as long as you know where it is. I ran around the streets of Gion to lose the pursuers from Akki Rasetsu and then took a very roundabout route to the location indicted by the tracking device. Upon arriving, I saw a thick forest and the roof of a building.

“Found it, found it. It looks like an ancient mansion that was designated a Tangible Cultural Property.”

“It does look like something that could be on the same list as Kinkaku-ji or Ginkaku-ji.”

Not only was it a large Japanese-style estate, but it seemed to include a small forest with it. It looked like someone could become stranded within the grounds of the residence. The fact that something like this could exist in the middle of a city was why one could never underestimate Kyoto.

“It seems they have also hired exclusive firefighters in the name of keeping this precious cultural asset from being damaged. That means they have the right to temporarily hold off any requests for emergency services.”

“That would definitely be ideal for running a secret project. But is the person who owns the mansion involved with Akki Rasetsu?”

“I don’t know. Amemura Ryuu-chan’s family was dragged into it with money, so this may be the same.”

“…Debt? But this is such a large estate.”

“Which means it takes money to maintain it. Plus they will get less monetary aid as a lot needs to be done related to the Intellectual Village as well. The culture needs to be preserved, so it cannot be remodeled to be more energy efficient. Even the smallest scratch requires an expert craftsman to repair. Being designated a cultural asset can be quite a bother.”

The location of the tracking device told me the large truck had already entered the grounds.

“How are you going to sneak in? Even I can tell they have guards all over the place.”

“With this many people on one side of the grounds, there must be over 100 of them in all. But that also tells us they are protecting something important enough to warrant that.”

Movies often had scenes of attaché cases being transported while handcuffed to someone’s wrist. In reality, that would only tell everyone to attack you because you are carrying something valuable. This was the same.

I pulled out a radio.

“? Are you calling in the Illness Magic User?”

“If he learned I was using him back there, he would attack me in anger. That isn’t what I’m doing.” I shook my index finger. “Now, Sunekosuri-kun. You saw how large that truck was, right? Did they really need all that space when the metal tank was only a bit larger than a refrigerator?”

“Huh? Now that you mention it…”

“That extra space was for shock absorbing equipment. In other words, the contents of that metal tank need to be kept in a delicate state. It likely contains the ‘monk’ after it was altered with Amemura Ryuu-chan’s help.”

“And?”

“You still don’t get it? I attached a tracking device to the bottom of that truck. It would have been a waste to only attach a tracking device when I had the chance. I also added something a little more fun.”

“Y-you don’t mean…”

It seemed the Sunekosuri had caught on, so I replied with a full-faced grin.

“I do. I attached a remote-controlled bomb.”

I felt a blast resound in my gut as an orange pillar of fire burst into the air from within the estate grounds.

“I just detonated a bomb directly below that ‘monk’ that needed to be treated delicately. Whatever happens now, it isn’t going to be good for Akki Rasetsu. While the guards are focused on that, I can sneak in.”

“H-have you completely forgotten all of this is supposed to be kept hidden!? You just woke up half of Kyoto with that blast! Everyone is going to focus on this area!!”

“As I said before, the owner of an important cultural asset has powerful authority on his own land. Any nearby onlookers as well as the police and firefighters will be held back for a while. We don’t have to worry about anyone seeing us fight.”

While holding the Sunekosuri in my arms, I slipped into the ancient estate’s grounds. The area was surrounded by bamboo thickets. Static ran through my radio every once in a while. Someone was communicating within 10 meters of me. Quite a few someones in fact.

But they were not in their usual positions.

It may have been small, but a route had opened up that I could slip in unnoticed through.

I ran through the bamboo thicket while ensuring I made no noise.

Finally, the important cultural asset came into view.

“…Wow.”

Overall, it was shaped like a hollow square with one side missing. A few large buildings were connected by covered pathways. The yard was neither dirt nor grass; it was completely covered with small tightly packed stones. It even had a pond filled with koi that might have cost millions of yen each.

In a large open space in front of the main entrance, something was burning.

It must have been the large truck I had blown up.

But that was not the main problem.

Something else was illuminated by the flames.

It looked like a small elderly man. It was only about 130 cm tall. It looked like a human had been crumpled up so it was condensed into a single point.

However…

Its shadow stretched out oddly far. The effects of the flames were not enough to explain it. The shadow stretched for dozens of…no, it might have been over 100 meters. It looked as if the crumpled old man’s essence was leaking out in the form of a shadow.

“Is that…?”

“It’s the ‘monk’. But…dammit. I still don’t know what skill that Youkai has.”

People were collapsed around it. They were likely the skilled agents of Akki Rasetsu…so how had they been defeated?

“…No.”

“What is it?”

“The true form of the ‘monk’ is large enough to cast that shadow. The small old man we can see is probably the true oddity. It might be some sort of illusion or an interface for humans to contact it.”

“So this ‘monk’ is actually over 100 meters tall, but we just can’t see it?”

“It simply stepped on the annoying bugs gathered around it. What happened here is quite simple.”

But in that case, it would be hard to find a means of defeating it.

Just as an ant could not defeat a human, a human would have a hard time defeating that ‘monk’.

That didn’t mean it was impossible, though.

“Wh-what are you going to do now?”

“Getting into a fight with that thing would be pointless. I’ll move around it and enter the mansion. Akki Rasetsu’s important items and VIPs will have been evacuated to there. Wiping all of them out comes first.”

We circled around widely through the yard and to one of the outside pathways. We headed along it to sneak into one of the large buildings.

But a voice called out before we could.

It belonged to a young man.

“There’s no need for you to do that. ''It’s already over.''”

“…”

I turned around and found someone standing along the connecting pathway. A man wearing a samue smiled thinly. I suddenly became intensely aware of the handgun hidden in my boot.

''Not good.

''When I begin relying on this, I’ve already 80% lost.

This man contained something that made me think that.

I could instinctually tell.

“What is already over?”

“You took too long, so we ended up killing the leaders of Akki Rasetsu ourselves. To tell the truth, we were hoping to get some help from the likes of you.”

“A-a-are you from Akki Rasetsu!?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“Yes? But they complained too much despite never doing anything themselves. After ending so many projects prematurely, we couldn’t help but get angry. We discussed it and decided the organization needed to be handed over to the next generation.”

“…”

“They’re all inside. You can have their heads. You can claim you did it. In fact, it would be problematic for us if you don’t.”

I clicked my tongue.

What would happen to my reward in this case?

What if an assassin entered his target’s hideout only to find the target had committed suicide?

You didn’t often hear about that ending with him getting paid. The client would find some fault in it and turn him away.

“You lured us in to kill the leaders that were in your way.”

“Yes?”

“So was the project using Amemura Ryuu-chan a decoy?”

“No, it didn’t go that far. That project was about 5th on the priority list. It would have been great had it succeeded, but it could be abandoned if something better came along.”

“What were you even trying to access with that?” I frowned. “”That ‘monk’ is not simply an Umibouzu. It is a guardian deity of the Amemura family created from the vague idea of their ‘ancestors’. It changed form due to the effects of a major accident at sea, but the essence you wanted to contact was…”

“That’s right. The guardian deity side,” readily affirmed the man in the samue. “If you follow the Amemura family back far enough, you will reach the naval forces of the Heian period. But skilled military commanders of that time would occasionally become targets of religious beliefs. People did not want to be haunted by them.”

“Meaning?”

“You need more explanation?” He shrugged. “To put it simply, this is a means of controlling a low-ranked god. The ‘monk’ may have fallen to the position of a Youkai, but it can be rebooted back to its position as a low-ranked god if a certain type of power is injected into it. …If a formula for that process can be determined, we will be able to freely change gears between Youkai and god. And that means we can drop gods down to the position of Youkai as well.”

“…”

''I see.

''So the elderly leaders of Akki Rasetsu were trying to hold these people back.

Hyakki Yakou was the top ranked organization in this business, so why did they focus on Youkai rather than gods? There was a good reason for it.

These people had gotten so lost in their lust for power that they had lost sight of the risks.

“The original objective of Akki Rasetsu was to rearrange humans into being Youkai. Basically, it was just another form of the common desire to be immortal. The mainstream method is to transform one’s physical body using the properties of Youkai that are attached to a specific person such as an Inugami or a Jinmensou. But my methods are different.”

I waited for the proper timing of the conversation.

I then grabbed my suppressor-equipped handgun from my boot and fired repeatedly.

But I received the result I had expected.

Without changing his expression in the slightest, the man in the samue pulled a long obi-like scrap of paper from his pocket and used it to deflect the bullets.

The long, long piece of paper spread out around the man like a bird’s feathers.

“If you attach a Youkai to a human, they will not perfectly fuse together. To remake the human, you must directly alter the human. I am researching the power needed for that. If there is a power that can raise a Youkai up to the position of a god, what would happen if you injected it into a human? Isn’t it exciting to think what would be created?”

“That isn’t a magic charm. …It’s a scroll? Is it some sort of scripture?”

“Yes. It’s just a hanging scroll. I am a Youkai artist. My name is Houjou Touji. I am fairly well-known, so maybe you have heard of me? I am an artist who mass produces Youkai art that creates sinister curses.”

“I see. Art depicting Youkai or ghosts will ''possess strange power in and of itself.'' So that is your specialty. You thought you could give power to humans in the same way you give power to those scraps of paper.”

“More or less. It wasn’t easy. I had to secure my arsenal while pretending to obey the leaders in their mainstream idea of using a Shichinin Misaki.”

“In that case, why don’t you just carve a tattoo into your back?”

“I tried that. Too many of the samples destroyed themselves while wielding the Youkai’s power. When it got bad enough, some of them even tore off the skin of their back and ''fled out the window.''”

''…Is that a Yuki Onna on that hanging scroll?

I had no idea what level of reproduction that created, but that was a deadly Youkai I wanted nothing to do with.

“Well, that’s more or less the situation. We leaked information to call in assassins from across the country that could take the blame. Akki Rasetsu’s leaders have already been killed. I have nothing left to do in Kyoto. I will give the credit to you. You can lie to your client and receive your reward. Any other questions?”

“Do you really think I’ll let you leave?”

“That’s what I thought.”

The man in the samue who named himself Houjou stuck a hand in his pocket.

He scattered countless small scraps of paper like confetti.

They ignored the flow of the wind as they freely danced around.

“The sort of oddity that can be drawn out by human hands can be mass produced as much as needed.”

''…Are these photos?

''And all of them show a Yuki Onna.

“You often hear that people meet a horrible fate if they handle spirit photography too roughly, right?”

“You’re quite the talented man. So you can do it with a camera too?”

“Yes, but the accuracy drops even further. Oh, but don’t think just anyone can do this. Getting the exposure, focus, and angle just right is not easy. Just a picture showing the Youkai is not enough. ''You have to use the camera artistically.''”

Even if they were crude replicas, this was approximately 200 objects with the same power as a Yuki Onna.

And on top of that, nothing said Houjou had no other tricks up his sleeve. It was possible he had travelled around Japan and drawn or photographed Youkai with even more dangerous powers.

What if he attacked simultaneously with all of those?

“Now, how about we begin? If you made it this far, I assume you are no normal human. I cannot deny that I feel like seeing whether you are worthy of being drawn by my paintbrush.”

''…Not good.

''Could he be on the same level as the Illness Magic User? How did someone like this escape the notice of Hyakki Yakou? That organization must be falling into disorder in a lot of different ways.

''Now, what to do?

“Feel free to come at me. But do not forget that you will meet a horrible fate if you treat these mysterious photographs and paintings too roughly and destroy them.”

Not only did they cause harm, but it seemed the curse would double if you resisted and destroyed them.

It was quite an excellent means of attack.

Without thinking, I reached for the Deadly Dragon Princess. Pulling it out was the proof that I had 100% lost.

But suddenly…

An odd vibration came from the ground.

It wasn’t an earthquake.

It was the footsteps of some giant existence.

Houjou and I simultaneously looked over at the source of the noise. A depression about the size of a small pond had been made in the large yard covered in small stones.

The “monk”.

That unknown thing with its invisible form had taken a step towards us.

It spoke with a roaring voice.

“…I will help you.”

“Why would you be obligated to do that?”

“…I have always been the one who protects the Amemura family. It is obvious they plan to harm the Amemura family.”

''I see.

While Akki Rasetsu had achieved their objective and would soon leave Kyoto, it was possible they would eliminate the Amemura family to tie up all loose ends in that project.

But…

“I have no problem taking your help, but do I really look like a good person to you?”

“…I have no time to worry about the good or evil of individuals. I must combat an even greater evil in order to defeat the ones who will harm the Amemura family.”

“Either way’s fine with me.”

And in response to this…

The man in the samue, Houjou Touji, did not change his expression at all.

With the same thin smile plastered on his face, he said, “My gallery is quite full. I doubt the interference of a Youkai or two will change anything. And I have no reason to hesitate in eliminating the remnants of a project we have already abandoned.”

“So he says. What’ll you do?” I asked.

“…I will bear all of the sins for destroying the artwork. The curse affects only the one who destroys them. I will bear all of it, leaving you free. And that will eliminate all of that young man’s weapons.”

“He has 200 deadly ones around him right now. Do you have any idea how much pain you will experience receiving the death agonies of all of them? The idea that Youkai cannot be killed by normal means no longer holds in our world.”

“…If I must die along with him, then so be it. As long as you remain, you can finish off this young man once he is unarmed. I am contained in the framework of the Amemura family’s ancestors, so I will naturally appear once more after enough generations of the family pass. My individual disappearance here is no real problem to the Amemura family.”

“Let me be blunt. Amemura Ryuu-chan only sees you as a scary monster. She does not visit the family grave or Buddhist altar. You may have been originally created from their ancestors, but ''you are now a collection of the remnants left over after some souls were destroyed like a piece of quantum cryptography.'' In other words, you are not truly connected to Amemura Ryuu-chan through her ancestors. You are merely a Youkai that has taken on that role. Do you still feel an obligation to destroy yourself to protect them?”

“…Did you think I was doing this in hopes of being thanked? As long as I can protect the Amemura family, that is all that matters.”

“Heh.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Who would have thought someone as straightforward as this would have his time to shine in this world?

“You are a true hero. Stick to that path and I will take care of everything afterwards,” I said.

“…I thank you.”

“No, thank you.”

Ever so slightly…

Houjou’s smile stiffened.

“You can’t do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

“My gallery is full! A single Youkai can never take on the burden of it all!!”

“That is not for you to decide. That is up to the willpower of the sort of ancestral guardian deity that can be found in any family.”

His smile stiffened further.

“We” took a large step forward knowing full well what that stiffening meant.

''Okay.

''It’s time to settle this, you bastard.

===Notes===
<references/>
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| Back to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
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| Forward to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
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The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume2 Chapter 2

2013-12-28T01:01:30Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 8 */

==Chapter 2: Hishigami Mai @ Copied Ill Will ==

===Part 1===

It was hot.

It was the end of August, so it really should have been a bit cooler. Not even my highly revealing outfit of a white tank top and hot pants was enough to combat the heat. And the heat of the sun seemed to increase as if to say it was just getting started. Long hair was very annoying in this kind of weather. I had it bound up, but I had a powerful urge to just cut it all off.

You couldn’t take the urban heat island effect lightly.

But I was a working member of society, so I couldn’t exactly head to Hokkaido for fun. I’ll leave what kind of society I mean to your imagination.

In a large city hardened with asphalt and concrete, no one was surprised to see a mirage after consecutive hot, sunny days. I approached a large vehicle parked below an overpass in that gray and wavering city. I then tapped lightly on its body with the back of my right hand.

Now then.

When you hear the term “RV”, how large of a vehicle do you picture in your head?

Well, I doubt many people would say “the size of a large tour bus”, but that was exactly how gigantic the one in front of me was.

Or perhaps it was more accurate to say the entire interior of a tour bus had been removed and all the devices needed to live one’s life had been installed.

“Hey, hey, Mai-san. Long time no see. Come on in.”

The front door opened automatically using compressed air and the small man in the driver’s seat spoke to me. He was wearing the stereotypical indoor outfit of a T-shirt and shorts. Thanks to solar panels and a giant battery, the vehicle had the air conditioning on 24/7, so it should have been cool enough regardless.

I walked up the three or four steps into the vehicle and looked around.

It had a bed, a table, a couch, a refrigerator, a microwave, and a TV. Oh, and a gas stovetop, oven, and bathroom as well. The amount of furniture had increased since the last time I had been there. Why did an RV have a washer and dryer in it?

“You’re insane to spend 30 million yen on this thing.”

“Didn’t you know, Mai-san? There’s an asteroid coming. It’s going to get real close real soon. If you think of yourself as the earth, it’s going to pass right in front of your nose. It’ll be quite the spectacle. If you truly hope to survive, you’ll need more than some emergency food and flashlights. I’ve spent all this money to save my own life.”

''That may be the case, but you’re forgetting the scale of the earth and the asteroid. Even scraping right by my nose is farther away than Japan is from Brazil.

The small man’s nostrils flared as he said, “Really, it comes down to food. Food is most important. In the cargo space down below, I’ve made a baby leaf factory using ultraviolet lights and a moisture circulation device. It’s a masterpiece! Every week, I have a drum-full of leaves to eat. I’ll never starve. I can survive for 100 years without issue using this system.”

“Only a rabbit could survive off of that.”

“You’d think so, right? But you’re wrong. Chickens. I’m raising chickens, too. They lay eggs every day, so I have no shortage of animal protein. Plus, I can eat their meat too. As long as I plan it out so I don’t eat too much chicken meat and allow a tenth of the eggs to hatch into chicks, I’ll have no problems! Amazing, isn’t it? Isn’t my system just plain amazing!?”

He was an annoying man.

But the fact that someone with such a horrible lack of sociability could survive as a free agent without relying on the power of an organization showed just how skilled he was at his job.

To switch the flow of the conversation, I said, “Now then, Supplier.”

“What is it, Mai-san?”

“I need money. Either hand over all of your money or introduce me to a job.”

Those who did not understand my situation would often refer to me as the Deadly Dragon Princess of Hyakki Yakou, but I was actually a free agent just like this man. Hyakki Yakou was my usual client because it was Japan’s largest organization in my field, but I did not exclusively take jobs from them.

I did like the young lady at the top of that organization, but I had to accept jobs from elsewhere to maintain the proper balance. Otherwise, I risked binding myself too closely to the one organization.

Leaving clear signs of your neutrality could be a real pain in the ass.

The Supplier was aware of those issues, so he replied without showing any real change to his expression.

“I see. Then I have a good one for you. How about taking a trip to Kyoto?”

“Kyoto?”

“Yes, Kyoto. One of the few cities of over a million where humans coexist with Youkai thanks to thoroughly maintaining the environment. I have an order asking for someone to go crush some idiots who are acting in secret there.”

''Oh?

As the Supplier had said, Kyoto was a unique place in both Japan and perhaps even worldwide. But the one problem with sticking to the old ways too much was an inability to deal with modern circumstances and social problems.

That city contained a large number of Youkai and a large number of humans.

In other words, it was filled with easy marks for Youkai-related Packages.

“Well, anything’s fine by me. Who are these idiots?”

“Akki Rasetsu<ref>Akki Rasetsu is a Japanese phrase referring to a man-eating monster or demon.</ref>.”

“That organization numbers in the thousands. Isn’t that a little much for me to slaughter on my own?”

“That isn’t something I want to hear from the princess who caused enough infighting to destroy Inga Ouhou<ref>Inga Ouhou is a Japanese phrase referring to karma or one’s just deserts.</ref> which was three times the size.” The Supplier grinned. “Also, you don’t need to completely annihilate them. Akki Rasetsu is earning quite a bit of hatred in their attempts to expand their range of business. If you give them a good blow or two and destroy their income cycle, those around them will finish them off.”

“And is that cycle in Kyoto?”

“It seems they’ve started some huge project. This project shows no concern for morals or human life yet they’ve started it in the middle of a city of over a million. The leaders of Akki Rasetsu will gather to inspect the project soon. That is when you should crush them.”

“Have they bet the fate of the organization on this?”

“Seems that way. Crushing either the leaders or project will be enough to fulfill the order. Of course, you’ll get a special bonus if you crush both. Will you take it?”

“I might as well. I assume you have confirmed the client’s ability to pay.”

“Yes. If I didn’t check, you and the others would track down the identity of the client.”

“Then I’ll take the job.”

“One warning,” said the Supplier. “It seems this job is a race to the finish. I discovered this while making sure the client would be able to pay. It seems middlemen besides me have been given this order as well. If you don’t get there first, you might not get paid.”

“That contradicts what you said.”

“If that happens, take it up with them. It has nothing to do with me. You can always get pissed, attack the client’s mansion in the middle of the night, and break through the door of their vault.”

“I see.” I thought for a bit. “I suppose if I find any other free agents like me in Kyoto, I’ll crush them too. If I spot them on the battlefield, I have no real reason to let them live.”

“…It’s times like this that I’m damn glad I’m on your side, Mai-san.”

''Oh?

''When did I ever say I was on your side?

“I’ll be going then. Don’t count on a souvenir.”

I waved my hand and headed for the exit of that end of the century RV made from a tour bus.

But then the Supplier said, “Is a job really all you need? If necessary, I can prepare you some Buddhist equipment or sacred treasures.”

“I don’t like that sort of thing. Perhaps it’s because ''I’ve spent more money than this bus cost on my own skin.''”

“Really? That’s too bad. I have some good bargains like some sacred sake from the Jinnai Brewery. It was originally meant to be dedicated at the Ise Grand Shrine. It has yet to be given the color of a specific god, so it has quite a few uses.”

“I’d rather drink that than use it as a weapon.”

===Part 2===

And so I boarded a bullet train and headed to Kyoto. A linear motor train ran along the same route, but I did not want to deal with the grand opening fair. In my business, the convenient transportation methods that had declined in use were best.

I had a mid-sized inn in Gion lined up for temporary lodging.

But there was something I had to do before switching from the ZR Kyoto Station to the subway station.

“Suuuneeekooosuuuriii-chaaan☆ What the hell are you doing here?”

“E-eeeeeeee!? Y-you already spotted me tailing you!? Ah…no…I mean…!!”

A small canine Youkai called a Sunekosuri had his entire body twitching.

He was a cute species of Youkai that could do nothing but rub up against people’s legs, but he was still an official member of Hyakki Yakou.

Which meant…

“Well, I have to catch a train, so come with me. We can continue talking on the subway.”

“U-um, you aren’t mad?”

“Prepare yourself for tonight. We’re going to have fun in the mixed bath.”

We boarded a subway train and headed for Gion.

I asked the Sunekosuri about the situation while on the train.

“Since a member of Hyakki Yakou is tailing me, can I assume this order comes from them?”

“Uuh…”

“Akki Rasetsu is an eyesore, but that is not enough justification to crush them. If Hyakki Yakou tried to force that through as a reason to attack, they would be attacked and criticized in turn. That is why they went through free agent middlemen to crush Akki Rasetsu without anyone knowing Hyakki Yakou was involved.”

''But…

I leaned up against the train wall.

“I assume the young lady at the top of Hyakki Yakou disapproved of this method. She does not punish based on suspicion. If she did not have enough evidence to punish an evil, she would have a thorough search carried out. And if that was not enough but the evil needed to be defeated nonetheless, she would battle that evil honestly no matter how much blame it brought on her. That young lady prefers pure and immature methods like that. So what idiot is naming himself as a representative for Hyakki Yakou? I assume it is one of her aides who act like her regents or educators or something.”

[[Image:Zashiki_v02_123.jpg|thumb]]

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah,” said the flustered Sunekosuri.

But that canine Youkai was like a salaryman member of the organization, so blaming him would get me nowhere.

Whatever idiot was behind this had been the one to set it up so the payment was first come first serve and so the free agents would start killing each other. I would need to make an extra stop to “punish” that idiot afterwards.

Meanwhile, the train arrived at the Gion subway station.

The Sunekosuri and I stepped out onto the subway platform, passed through the automatic turnstile, climbed the stairs, and exited into the city.

“Wow. This is like an explosion of Kyoto.”

The administrative district in which the ZR Kyoto Station was located was lined with modern buildings, but the donut-shaped urban area not far away was completely cut off from the flow of time. The height and color of the buildings were restricted and it was filled with nothing but old wooden buildings. The roads were not paved and cars and bikes were banned from anywhere but the main roads. Police officers riding horses and rickshaws carrying tourists were a common sight.

“You can tell immediately this is one of the three biggest locations for filming period dramas. It looks like the kimono renting business is booming here.”

“They also have tons of forests and thickets. This place is really crowded.”

Despite being a city of over a million, thick forests of maple trees and thickets of bamboo could be found not far from the road. This was Kyoto. Thanks to the thorough maintenance of the environment, plenty of Youkai could be found wandering around. It was quite obvious a large portion of the income in this area was from sightseeing.

“But why are the maple and ginkgo trees changing color already? It’s still the end of August.”

“The pamphlets all say Kyoto is a city dyed in red, yellow, and green, right? They have various methods to make that a reality. For this, they use some sort of technology to make the natural trees mistake the timing for changing color.”

I entered the inn I had reserved a room in under a false name and was led to my room. I checked for cameras and bugs before assembling a few tools of the trade.

“Okay, it’s about time I crushed Akki Rasetsu.”

“The job was to either put a stop to their important project or assassinate the leaders coming to inspect it. Which will you be doing?”

“I’ll decide that once I check on the situation. I’ll go with whichever is easier.” I rubbed the back of the Sunekosuri that was politely sitting on a cushion. “Now then, Sunekosuri-kun. What do you think Akki Rasetsu is trying to do in Kyoto?”

“Eh? Well, if they came to Kyoto it must be something they can only do here, right? And Kyoto is one of the prime areas for Youkai. Even Hyakki Yakou’s structure takes it into account. The guidebook said the city was designed based on the principles of feng shui. So it must be something they need that sort of environment for, right? In that case…”

“Hah hah hah.” I gave a wooden monotone laugh. “Incorrect.”

“Eh? But…”

“C’mon, Sunekosuri-kun. You think they’re in Kyoto to do something they can only do in Kyoto? That would make their conspiracy too obvious. Doing that would be as self-destructive as streaking nude in front of the National Diet Building. I don’t know what they’re planning, but Akki Rasetsu has begun a project large enough to catch Hyakki Yakou’s attention. This is important enough for them to bet their organization on and for all of the leaders to visit. In other words, this is something they do not want to be stopped no matter what. Do you really think they would choose a setup that would be so easy to see through?”

“Th-then why would Akki Rasetsu go out of their way to go to Kyoto?”

“Think about it the other way around. Kyoto is a rare city that has both over a million people and countless Youkai. Bizarre phenomena that would stand out elsewhere will get buried under everything else in this city. The best place to hide a tree is in the forest, right? Akki Rasetsu’s project probably has little to do with Kyoto itself.”

So if you are hoping for this story to have me solve the mystery while going around to all the Kyoto sightseeing spots, eating tons of delicious local food, and providing steamy fanservice scenes at a hot spring, you should give up right this instant.

But to be honest…

I really would love to be able to mix work with pleasure like that.

“D-do you know what exactly is happening here?”

“No. They’ve set this up as a labyrinth that is incomprehensible at first glance, so I have to dig deeper before I can actually learn anything,” I said offhandedly. “And so I need to think up a way of tracking down a member of Akki Rasetsu even if it’s just someone running errands. By the way, how much do you know about all this, Sunekosuri?”

“I-I am not part of the group that knows what is going on. I was simply asked to monitor the free agents to ensure none of them went beyond what Hyakki Yakou wishes. I am supposed to call in a combat member if anything happens.”

That’s about what I had expected.

With Hyakki Rasetsu and the free agents, Kyoto was currently filled with abnormal people. The standard idea that Youkai could not be killed by normal means could no longer be counted on. The question was whether the Sunekosuri understood that risk or not.

To be blunt, his odds of returning safely to Hyakki Yakou would have been much lower had I not called out to him first.

“Th-then you will be starting by pursuing some member of Akki Rasetsu operating in Kyoto? What exactly will be your first move?”

“Well,” I cracked my neck. “How about I begin by killing all of the other free agents competing for this job?”

===Part 3===

The Sunekosuri trembled in fear.

Nevertheless, I swung the baby-sized rock down onto the head of the man with a camera hanging from his neck. He had been simple to spot with the suspicious mannerisms only a pro could spot.

“Okay, that’s 7 of them. I’d say this is a decent attempt to make it look like a large rock fell on him from that stone wall. Not a bad job at all. People really shine when they put in enough effort to work up a sweat.”

After disguising the circumstances, I took the poor victim’s cell phone and searched for personal information. Of course, if he was in the same situation as me, he would not have acquired any important data yet, and someone with any sense would not bring any private information to this sort of workplace.

Once I was done, I returned the phone to the corpse’s pocket and the Sunekosuri spoke up in a trembling voice.

“Wh-why…Why do people like you never try to work together to defeat the evil demon king?”

“Because we are all each other’s enemies.”

Plus, I had never before seen a boss of pure, unadulterated evil.

It was our job to kill them regardless.

“Not only can I not see what Akki Rasetsu is up to here, but I have to worry about another free agent stabbing me in the side. I need to complete some basic preparations before getting down to work.”

If possible, I would have liked to kill all of them, but I did not know how many of them there were. I had taken out a decent number, so I figured it was about time to turn towards Akki Rasetsu.

“U-umm, what are you going to do now?” The Sunekosuri looked up at me. “Unlike other Intellectual villages, Kyoto is gigantic. It seems it would be considerably harder to find an organization hiding here than in a small village.”

“It’s simple, it’s simple. I just have to find a starting point.”

“?”

I crouched down and wrapped an arm around the Sunekosuri to begin speaking privately.

I whispered, “Whether it’s a giant city or a small village, the first step is to gather the phone calls and emails being sent around. The technology used isn’t all that high level.”

“I-I see. But wouldn’t people like this encrypt their communications?”

“Of course. But would people making normal phone calls or sending normal emails use high level encryption? Think about it in reverse. The ones encrypting their communications are the first to suspect. If I start there, it shouldn’t be hard to run into Akki Rasetsu. But then,” I paused for a second, “Akki Rasetsu will know this. And so they will use encryption software to send decoy data all over the place. They can just use the programs for wangiri calls or spam emails to send out a whole bunch. They send out blank messages that would take hours to decrypt and have them endlessly loop through servers throughout the city.”

“Then how do you distinguish the real ones from the decoys?”

“I search on foot.”

I stuck my hand into the small pink handbag I was carrying over my shoulder.

The Sunekosuri must have been expecting a handgun because his entire body flinched.

“Huh? A video camera?”

“This alone isn’t enough to find Akki Rasetsu within the crowds.” I pressed a switch on the video camera to begin recording mode. “But when people acquire a fake name and identity, they must also prepare a new driver’s license. Those driver’s licenses have an IC chip in them. The IC chips give out information when brought near a certain device just like train passes at the automatic turnstiles at a subway station.”

The Sunekosuri still did not seem to understand, but I was wonderfully pretty in my willingness to patiently explain it all to him.

“If you up the output of the card reader next to a convenience store register, you can check the data on all the cards around you. I have a strengthened reader in my handbag.”

“O-oh.”

“So when I approach the target, it will suck out the information from the IC chip in their driver’s license. Ones that’s data has been illegally altered will leave traces of that in the code. If I find someone with that sort of suspicious license at one of the places sending out encrypted data, I have reason to be very suspicious of that person. Then again, it’s possible some group other than Akki Rasetsu is hiding here, so I will need to do some additional investigation afterwards.”

“W-will this really lead you to them so easily?”

“The strengthened reader can only read IC chips from a range of a meter. If I use the footage from the video camera along with the time the data was sucked out, I can probably narrow my target down to about 10 people. Then I just need to investigate those people. One of them will be the man using the false identity.”

To put it simply, I would be using the video camera and strengthened reader to search out someone working in some shady business.

And so I had to wander around Kyoto.

I spent over three hours going from Gion to Kawaramachi, cutting down Shijou Street, and finally walking around the Katsura Imperial Villa.

Everywhere I went was filled with tourists.

I wonder why foreigners like dressing up as samurai so much. If a Japanese person went to Europe and were asked if they wanted to dress up as a prince, I think they would refuse.

After gathering a certain amount of data, I boarded the subway and returned to the inn.

Just to be sure, I checked for bugs upon returning and then began comparing the video footage and the card data taken from passersby.

“Here, here, here, and here too. There are a lot of suspicious people in this city.”

“A-are they all from Akki Rasetsu?”

“Characteristic traces are left in the driver’s license IC chip data. The ones with the same traces are probably all from the same organization. Let’s see, let’s see, let’s see. There are 4 patterns here.”

“Kyoto really is a city of Youkai, isn’t it?”

“Yes. And that means plenty of shady organizations gather here.”

“How are you going to find Akki Rasetsu from this?”

“I’ll look into each of the 4 patterns. Okay, this is the encrypted communications data flying around near these suspicious people. I just have to decrypt it and…boom! Found it!!”

“H-how did you do that so easily?”

“If each email or phone call took hours to encrypt, they could never get any work done. Even if the security is strict to begin with, the people on the scene will soon find ways to simplify things to make them easier to use.”

Normally, this kind of simplified encrypted data would have numerical traps woven in that could never be solved such as pi. I had no idea how skilled these groups were, but the organizations based in Kyoto tended to do poorly when it came to intelligence issues.

I sifted through the data based on what I had found.

“Pattern 1 is a small revenge-for-hire group, Pattern 2 is ''a large criminal organization'' selling weapons, and Pattern 3 is an Urashima group that wishes to be taken to paradise.”

“So is it Pattern 4?”

“Yes, that’s Akki Rasetsu.”

I double-checked the faces of the people I had picked up with my video camera and compared them to the fake names and photos from the driver’s licenses. I then checked the lodging information at the inn to see if any rooms were rented out under those names.

Then all I had to do was cast my net across the inn’s phone lines and any nearby Wi-Fi routers to easily gather Akki Rasetsu’s encrypted communications data.

I headed out to take care of that work and returned to my room once I was done.

“Oh. I already found something.”

“Did you already find data related to Akki Rasetsu’s headquarters or the details of their project?”

“It’s nothing that great. These are just subcontractors, so they might not have been told all any of those details.”

As I spoke, I compiled the fragmentary information I had acquired from multiple phone calls and emails.

“It seems they are secretly monitoring a girl by the name of Amemura Ryuu. She’s clearly involved somehow with Akki Rasetsu’s project.”

“Do you know who this Amemura Ryuu girl is?”

“I’m checking on that now.” It was all going so well I felt like whistling. “She lives in Kyoto. She’s 11 years old. She’s female. She attends a local elementary school and her grades are above average. She has violin lessons on Wednesdays and dance lessons on Mondays and Fridays. No records of serious illness. She has slight atopic allergies and has issues with ticks. She has received the flu vaccine this year. She has a filling in one of her right back teeth from a cavity treatment. Her father is a stay at home dad and her mother is the secretary for the president of an assembly of small- to mid-sized corporations known as the United Hive. Her personality is shy and reserved but very curious. She has to think about it for a moment before agreeing to be someone’s friend.”

“H-how did you find all that information?”

“The residence registry, electronic medical records, and school grade reports are all kept in the cloud. If you have decent skills, you can gather all that information as easily as surfing the net.”

But that meant I had no way of determining things handled directly such as the amount of allowance she received.

“And this beloved daughter has a child’s cell phone with an alarm function. …GPS functionality can be both good and bad. If you steal the identification code, someone like me can determine her location.”

“…Wow.”

“Okay, let’s go make friends with Amemura Ryuu-chan who seems to be deeply related to this project.”

I left the inn and walked through the cityscape that seemed to turn the idea of Japan into nothing but a tourist attraction.

The foreigners in kimonos and ninja outfits stood out like sore thumbs as I walked along the unpaved road. I walked slowly and casually through the streets while obeying the traffic lights that were made to be quickly removed when a period drama was being filmed.

“But why has this Amemura Ryuu girl been marked by these shady people?”

“That is what we’re trying to find out. Youkai that only children can see are quite popular, so it might be related to that.”

But it seemed a bit odd that they had not abducted her if she was so deeply related to the project.

“Um, how are you going to approach her? She is a small child. She will probably treat adults like us as outsiders.”

“I have an idea. …But come to think of it, Sunekosuri, you could probably just run up to her given how you look.”

“Do not make fun of me! How can you say that about a dandy like me!?”

As we spoke, we approached within 50 meters of Amemura Ryuu-chan’s location. She was inside a children’s park that did not fit in with the period drama roads. Kyoto went to great lengths with its scenery, but it seemed they could not eliminate things like this and the traffic lights from before.

Just as I took one step into the park…

I felt an unpleasant feeling run down my spine. I could instinctually tell that something bad was about to happen. This was the same sort of premonition that anyone had, but oftentimes these situations were set up so it was too late by the time you felt that premonition.

“? What is it?”

“…Oh, I get it.”

The Sunekosuri was unable to understand the situation with his limited information.

Three or four children were gathered at a covered bench in the park. They were playing handheld game systems rather than on the playground equipment. I doubted kids these days would want to play out in the hot sun, so they had likely done so reluctantly to avoid their parents who always yelled at them for doing nothing but play video games.

And…

The girl named Amemura Ryuu was not among them.

However, the kid’s cell phone GPS signal was still pointing to this park.

Which meant…

“Not good! Someone swapped out the ID code of the signal!”

I did not have time to check my surroundings.

An agile kick suddenly flew at my side.

“Bfh!?”

The kick had not been intended to do damage; it had likely been meant to put pressure on my diaphragm to keep me from crying out and to knock me into a nearby thicket. Someone quickly moved to climb on top of me after I was knocked behind cover.

My hand instinctually reached for my boot.

I pulled out my small suppressor-equipped handgun.

''Shit. By the time I grab this, I’ve 80% lost!!

As expected, the attacker swung up an arm before I could take aim with the handgun. Something long and narrow was held in that hand. I would have laughed out loud had it been a knife, but it was not. The object held between the index and middle finger was…

''A magical charm!?

“…!!”

I pulled the trigger without aiming. I thought I would hit the attacker somewhere on the torso, but not even one of my three shots hit. Even at such close range, my arm was shaking too much to aim properly.

I could tell something was eating into my body.

''This is…illness magic?

''Illness magic!?

“Damn you. I had heard you disappeared after the coup d’etat in Hyakki Yakou, but what are you doing-…ghbgbh!?”

My mouth filled with dark red blood before I could finish speaking.

''Not good. This deadly illness is beginning to spread throughout my entire body!!

This was just about the worst opponent for me. I could not defeat him in a head on fight. After all, he was the type powerful enough that the most difficult thing for him was ''keeping the damage of his attacks from spreading too far.'' And yet he had kicked me behind this thicket before attacking. He must not have wanted to do anything that stood out too much.

In that case…

I gathered strength in the hand holding my small suppressor-equipped handgun. However, aiming it at my attacker would do no good. As such, I held my arm out horizontally while lying on my back. I placed my arm along the ground to keep it from trembling, peered through the sight, and somehow managed to take aim.

I took aim at the forehead of the Sunekosuri nervously looking our way.

And I pulled the trigger.

“Gyahn!? By-byaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The bullet struck the Sunekosuri in the face and he began writhing around on the ground.

He let out a scream as loud as a police car’s siren, but as a Youkai, he did not seem to have lost a single drop of blood.

“…Tch.”

That was the first I heard of the attacker’s voice.

The illness magic left my body. I stopped coughing up blood.

The attacker quickly moved away from me and tried to flee, but I used what weak strength I had left to grab his arm.

I would lose in a straight fight here, but I would never know when he might attack again if I let him go.

And so I needed to finish this. But by using some method ''other than violence.

Meanwhile, the children who had been playing handheld games approached the Sunekosuri.

“What is it? What is it?”

“Are you okay? Did someone draw eyebrows on you?”

“This isn’t a dog. I think it’s a Youkai.”

If the children saw us, we would kill them.

The Sunekosuri knew the etiquette of those like us, so he ran off in the opposite direction with tears in his eyes in order to draw the children’s attention.

Meanwhile, I spoke to the attacker.

He was one of the five most powerful official members of Hyakki Yakou.

He was the man known as the Illness Magic User.

“…Cough, cough. Were you the one who swapped out the GPS ID code?”

“What if I was?”

''Thank goodness.

If he had decided to simply kill me, it would have all been over. I was truly grateful.

He was likely trying to work out if I had an ulterior motive just as I was of him.

When the gloomy Illness Magic was not wrapped around him, he could be seen wearing a black combat outfit like a SWAT member. He carried countless magic charms instead of countless magazines. He had been walking around dressed like that in Kyoto where cameras were everywhere, so it must not have seemed too strange to people. I wondered if people assumed it was some form of cosplay since this was a tourist area.

He had a muscular body and short hair that was easy to wash. However, his face was very gloomy. It made him look like he himself was wasting away due to some illness.

“So you set up this trap to hunt down anyone trying to find Amemura Ryuu. Who do you work for now? Hyakki Yakou? Or Akki Rasetsu?”

“I am a free agent.”

“So you knew the order came from Hyakki Yakou and decided to go along with the charade, is that it?”

He had sided with the rebel faction that had caused that coup d’etat because he had thought it was best for Hyakki Yakou as a whole. Even though the coup d’etat had failed, he was likely still working to help the organization.

Really now.

And he had even tried to claim he had been acting out of logic rather than emotion.

Then again, I doubted the Illness Magic User would be allowed back into the organization so easily after what he had done.

He was probably trying to indirectly obey Hyakki Yakou’s orders by taking their jobs as a free agent.

He specialized in great destruction in a straight fight and he was loyal to a single organization through and through. He may have thought he was a samurai or something. He was heading down the path of the defeated samurai while I was more like a ninja, so we simply did not get along.

“So I take it your enemy is Akki Rasetsu. In that case, we have no reason to kill each other.”

“That is no reason to let you live either.”

“Stop it. Disposing of the body would be a pain. This has been going well so far, but that is only because those kids were so focused on their games they weren’t paying attention to their surroundings. After the Sunekosuri made such a racket, do you really think you can carry a body out without them noticing? And you were the one who got those children involved, I might add.”

I heard him click his tongue.

He really was the samurai type that always walked the proper path.

If it was me, I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill my enemy.

“Since you set your trap around her, am I right in assuming you are trying to find Akki Rasetsu’s headquarters from one of their agent’s hanging around her rather than from Amemura Ryuu-chan herself?”

“Someone who looks like me approaching a child would become a major incident.”

''I see.

''So he is aware how grim he looks.

He was, after all, a pure combat-obsessed idiot who would kill thousands or even tens of thousands to carry out his mission. He would cut out any waste or gentleness from his plans. Not even a soldier from ''a large criminal organization'' would be able to look him in the eye, much less a child.

“However, you have found no useful information, so you’ve been forced to continue laying traps, right? I’d say there is no way of approaching Akki Rasetsu’s project other than making contact with Amemura Ryuu-chan.”

“Are you saying you can manage that?”

“I’m an expert at that. Just watch. I don’t like being indebted to anyone, so I’ll share my information with you just this once to make up for sparing my life here.”

I reflected sunlight off the body of my cell phone to give a sign to the Sunekosuri and then I left the children’s park.

Walking with the Illness Magic User would make me stand out, but I had no choice. I bought a wide-brimmed cowboy hat from a nearby souvenir shop and put it on.

“…What are you doing?”

“I’m Hatman, you idiot. Most security cameras are located above. Wearing a wide-brimmed hat like this will at least keep my face from being recorded.”

The Illness Magic User’s magic charms did not fall under the Swords and Firearms Control Law, so he had no reason to be afraid of police questioning. Also, that samurai would face anyone head on, so he never tried to hide who he was. But the situation seemed quite fatal to a scout and spy like myself!!

As we walked, the Sunekosuri approached while weaving between people’s legs in the crowd.

''Ahh, if he can head for us that directly, we must really stand out. Sob.

“H-how could you do that!? How could you suddenly shoot a person in the head with a real bullet!? That is completely unacceptable!! Woof woof!!”

“Shoot ‘a person’ in the head? …But you’re a dog, right? Well, a canine Youkai.”

“Is that really the first thing you have to say!?”

“Sorry. I’ll listen to all your complaints in the inn’s bath.”

“Please don’t! And you aren’t sorry at all, are you!? Anyway, how far have things progressed?”

“Hishigami Mai-chan has leveled up! Illness Magic User-chan looks like he wants to join your party!!”

“Eh? I thought he had deserted Hyakki Yakou? Have you already made up with him?”

The instant the Sunekosuri asked that puzzled question, the Illness Magic User gave him one hell of a glare. The canine Youkai cowered down and began trembling.

“C’mon, stop that. Don’t scare such a pretty Youkai.”

“You shot me in the face!!”

“Can we get to the topic at hand?” asked the Illness Magic User disinterestedly. “To approach Akki Rasetsu’s project, we must approach Amemura Ryuu. But she is a minor who views someone even 1 year older as an outsider due to the school year system. She is also quite wary. How do we approach her?”

“We just have to satisfy a few conditions. You can just relax and watch a pro at work.”

===Part 4===

No matter how pleasant a smile one put on or how unthreatening a voice one used, a child would be cautious of someone who spoke to them when they were alone. Trying to draw emotionally closer to the child in that state would always end in failure.

But that could be used in reverse.

That wall of caution would not function if one spoke to the child when they are not alone. This does not mean to try it when they are with their friends or other people on their same level, but when they are near someone they feel is stronger such as a parent or teacher.

And so…

I used the proper GPS signal to locate Amemura Ryuu-chan who had a large ribbon-shaped pin in her hair, wore a frilly skirt, and otherwise made me want to fall in love with her. I waited for her to begin speaking with her stay at home dad of a father who was sprinkling water in front of their row house type of home. Then I remotely switched on the alarm of her kid’s cell phone.

A high-pitched buzzer began ringing, but it could not be turned off manually as I had control of the program.

“Wah!? Huh? Um…dad… It won’t…”

“Let me see it, Ryuu-chan. Odd. It’s supposed to stop when you press on the string’s stopper.”

''Good, good.

I took action while they were worried about the public nuisance they were causing.

While still a short distance from where the ground was wet with the water the father had been sprinkling, I spoke to the father and daughter whose guard had been lowered.

“Oh, what’s the matter? I hear an alarm going off, so were you robbed? You should probably report it.”

“Ah, no, that isn’t it. It seems my daughter accidentally pulled the string and now the alarm won’t turn off.”

“Are you not too good with electronics? Could I see it for a moment?”

I held out my hand while still at a distance and Amemura Ryuu-chan’s father approached me to hand me the cell phone. I would not approach them. A child’s personal space was much larger than adults realized.

But this easily resolved that problem.

I was a criminal, so this much is to be expected.

“Here, it’s off. It looks like it wasn’t the string but the alarm that automatically starts due to too great an impact. That’s why the alarm would not stop even after putting the string back in place. You needed to open it up and stop the program.”

“…I see. I should probably actually read the manual.”

“That is probably a good idea as far as the emergency functions are concerned. …Here you go, young lady.”

I ultimately spoke to Amemura Ryuu-chan rather than her father as I held out the phone.

She looked back and forth between me and her father’s face a few times, but then…

“Ryuu-chan, say thank you.”

Pushed on by her father, Amemura Ryuu-chan timidly reached out to take the phone I was holding out. Her small hand grabbed the plastic body of the phone.

''Good. Primary communication complete.

I had solved a problem of hers and had been certified “safe” by someone she considered stronger than herself. I had even made physical contact between our hands in addition to the verbal contact.

It had been the same as a child timidly approaching a large pet dog at a friend’s house.

She now knew it would not bite.

If she saw the dog again while walking along the street, she would not be afraid to approach it.

I smiled at the father and said, “I will be going then.”

“Oh, thank you very much.”

''…No, thank you for helping me with my job.

“Goodbye to you too, young lady.”

“…Bye.”

When I waved goodbye with one hand, Amemura Ryuu-chan waved back while hiding behind her father.

That had gone well.

So well I was a bit worried about her future.

After completing my preparations there, I left the Amemura residence and met back up with my companions. When I did, both the Sunekosuri and the Illness Magic User spoke up.

“You are just like a kidnapper.”

“It scares me that you have a successful formula for that. How many times did you have to try it before perfecting that?”

''Oh, come on.

''My job begins with earning the trust of people regardless of sex, age, nationality, or religion. It isn’t like I specialize in children.

“Now then, tomorrow I will make contact with Amemura Ryuu-chan herself outside of the home. I wasn’t able to give her my name, so I want to act before she forgets me. Illness Magic User, you defeated a few members of Akki Rasetsu to gather information, right? Is there anything particular I should ask about?”

“Her family’s past.”

“You think this might be related to an Inugami or other Youkai that resides in a bloodline? Wouldn’t it be faster to search out a family tree?”

“I researched her bloodline, but found nothing suspicious. Or rather, nothing more than the small things you can find if you follow any family tree back far enough. She lacked anything decisive. I am hoping for something else related to the fate of the family.”

“The fate of the family?”

“I am wondering if anything special happened to the family in the past such as in the Rokubu Goroshi story.”

While some Youkai were referred to as “residing in the bloodline”, it did not mean the bloodline itself possessed a special base sequence. It was simply that good or evil fates earned by past actions had a tendency to stick with a bloodline. The direct bloodline between parent and child was the simplest link.

However, that kind of fate could be passed on to people not related by blood such as between a master and servant samurai, monks training at the same temple, or people who entered a forbidden zone during a test of courage. If one focused too much on bloodlines, one could receive a negative influence from an unexpected route, so it was best to be careful.

At any rate…

“If that’s what this is about, I’m not sure we would learn anything from the girl. It might be faster to trick the information out of the father.”

“Then do that if necessary.”

“Fine, fine. Oh, right. Illness Magic User, can you handle electronics? You managed to mess with Amemura Ryuu-chan’s GPS, right?”

“Well enough.”

“Then you investigate the mother while I go with the daughter. You would just have to wait for me to produce results otherwise, right?”

“The mother?” asked the Sunekosuri in confusion.

I nodded and said, “To be honest, there is no way to look into the father as he’s a stay at home dad. But the mother brings in the money for the Amemura household, so she’ll definitely leave data behind in her job. You can look into that.”

“She works as the secretary for the president of United Hive, correct? If I recall, her name is Tenkyuu. I did a basic investigation, but I found no data that seemed related to Youkai.”

“Dig deeper. She works for United Hive. They gathered together the small- to mid-sized factories that support Japan’s cutting edge technology, created a centralized structure for those factories’ patents, and make tons of money as a point of contact for them with influence as a single giant entity on the level of the biggest corporations in the world. They deal with tons of patents, so their digital defenses will be greater than average. There’s definitely something below the surface.”

“Understood. I will keep at it until I at least find some secret account files.”

Now then.

With our general plans set, I had nothing left to do that day.

I had worked up quite a sweat on the first day, so I decided to have some fun in the open-air bath with the lovely Sunekosuri-chan.

===Part 5===

The next day, I killed time in the inn with the Sunekosuri until evening. The Sunekosuri’s eyes opened wide when he saw the overall extravagant food, but it seemed the food was not made from Intellectual Village ingredients. Then again, a traditional Japanese meal where everything from the water to the rice was produced in Intellectual Villages would likely cost 2 million yen a person.

It was a bit strange how the Japanese could not afford to eat what was the pride of Japan.

It may have been used as a means of acquiring foreign currencies.

“Sunekosuri, it’s about time we headed out. Let’s begin our attack on Amemura Ryuu-chan.”

“Eh? You know she’s going to leave her house? But this is the middle of summer break.”

“She has her extracurricular lessons year round. She lives in a scenery protection zone where cars are banned from entry, so her father is unlikely to take her to and from those lessons. And even if he does, I can create an excuse to separate them.”

We once more walked through the streets of Kyoto that looked straight out of a period drama. I knew where Amemura Ryuu-chan’s lessons were held, so I headed there. To disguise myself as a tourist, I peered into souvenir shops, ate dango while embracing the Sunekosuri, and had even more fun with the Sunekosuri while heading to our destination.

Then my decoy cell phone rang.

The call was from the Illness Magic User I had exchanged numbers with the day before.

“I have found information related to Tenkyuu at United Hive.”

“Okay, okay.”

“United Hive is a collection of small- to mid-sized factories in Kansai that even create industrial technologies related to satellites, right?” asked the Sunekosuri. “I’ve heard they have successfully negotiated to use a foreign country’s launch site to launch small satellites made with their own independent technology.”

“At first glance, that appears to be going well, but they are having problems behind the scenes,” explained the Illness Magic User. “Their business related to the satellite itself has been a success, but they were badly burned when they tried to go further and create their own rocket technology. It seems a powerful rival group has interfered by claiming they plan to use the rockets as missiles.”

“But Amemura Ryuu-chan’s mother is only the president’s secretary right? If she ends her contract and distances herself, she does not need to worry going down with them. She technically works for an employment agency, so it doesn’t matter to her if the company with her contract fails. If she is skilled, she should be able to find a new job easily enough.”

“I do not know if it was in hopes of making money or if she wanted to gain the favor of the president, but it seems Tenkyuu bought the corporation’s stock in addition to her normal secretary duties. Now that this other group is interfering with the development of the rocket engine, she is in trouble. …Simply put, the Amemura family is in a lot of debt.”

“And that’s where Akki Rasetsu comes in.”

“Eh? So is the Amemura family working with Akki Rasetsu?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“They may not know the details of the project, but they likely know they’re doing something,” I replied. “They probably do realize they are helping assemble a Youkai-related Package, though.”

They likely felt it was on the level of stealing credit card information.

But unfortunately for them…

The scope of the Package had to be much greater than that for people like us to be sent in.

“Well, I had a feeling there was more to this since the Amemura family had not been abducted despite being deeply related to the project.”

“It would be simpler to abduct them than to approach them to make a deal. Why would they do it this way?” asked the Illness Magic User.

“Because they wanted to finish this quietly. That’s also why they came to Kyoto to hide a tree in the forest.” I turned towards the Sunekosuri who was the representative of Hyakki Yakou who we were truly working for. “By the way, do you think slaughtering the Amemura family would suffice to destroy Akki Rasetsu’s project?”

“Y-you can’t do that!! They are normal people who have nothing to do with us! If you get them involved in that way, I will directly go to my higher ups to see that you are not paid!! Woof woof!!”

“That’s what I thought. We don’t know what makes the Amemura family useful. If it ends up being a talent 1 in 100 people have, they could use a different candidate to continue their project. It’s also possible killing the Amemura family acts as a trigger to activate the project.”

In other words, it was possible they were intentionally being left alive so they could be killed at the proper time.

And that would of course be kept a secret to the Amemura family who thought they were simply helping.

“Should I search for more information related to United Hive?” asked the Illness Magic User.

“No, I doubt you would find anything more anyway. Tenkyuu does not seem directly related to the Youkai. I am about to contact Amemura Ryuu-chan, so just wait for my report.”

I ended the connection and stuck my cell phone in the pocket of my hot pants before turning a corner.

At the same moment, Amemura Ryuu-chan exited a building after finishing her dance lesson.

I put on a soft smile that would leave others in my business speechless and raised a hand.

“Oh, so we meet again, young lady.”

===Part 6===

It seemed Amemura Ryuu-chan was quite fond of the Sunekosuri. A rather large bag that likely contained her sportswear for her dance lessons hung down from her shoulder as she walked next to me and held the canine Youkai in both arms. It was a lovely image. Everything about it was cute.

Now then.

I had to use Amemura Ryuu-chan to learn what Youkai it was Akki Rasetsu was working with. The Illness Magic User seemed to think it was related to the past of the Amemura family.

I started with a casual opening question.

“By the way, have you ever done that thing?”

“?”

“Y’know, the thing at the Bon festival where you stab chopsticks into eggplants, cucumbers, and such to create animals.”

At first glance, things like that and traditions related to visiting the graves or household Buddhist altars of one’s ancestors seemed the same for every family. However, those things were actually packed full of small local rules. You could tell where someone was from just by seeing how they stood up the incense stick. Also, amateurs did not understand the importance of anything related to the occult, so they would usually tell you without hiding anything.

However…

Amemura Ryuu-chan shook her head and gave an explosive reply.

“We don’t do that at my house.”

“Oh? Do you not do that kind of thing anymore?”

“We never did it. It’s a family rule. We aren’t supposed to prepare to meet our ancestors even during the Bon festival because it will make a monk come.”

''…

''A monk, you say?

“But you do go visit your grandfather’s house, right?”

“Yeah. We go there to visit our family’s grave. I don’t really get it, though. I don’t know what temple the grave is at.”

“My grandfather’s house was on the beach. There would be a ton of jellyfish every year, but there was nothing to do there but swim.”

“Oh, mine too. My grandfather likes to go fishing, but I like to swim more.”

''Oh, she went along with my leading comments easily enough.

''So her grandfather’s house is on the beach.

''Does that mean that monk she mentioned is it?

“Is your grandfather a fisherman?”

“No. He was a ferry captain. My uncle is a ship captain too.”

We had made it to the Amemura family house, so I took the Sunekosuri back from the girl and parted ways with her.

I pulled out my decoy cell phone and called the Illness Magic User.

“It’s definitely an Umibouzu<ref>Umibouzu literally means Sea Monk</ref>.”

===Part 7===

An Umibouzu.

As the name suggests, it was a giant Youkai that appears in the sea. Most theories suggested they were created by the gathering of regretful souls in an area filled with a large number of drowning deaths in the past.

Living beings had souls, but they were difficult to handle. At the very least, they could not be easily removed such as with an organ transplant and they could not be replaced with something artificial either.

I felt the concept was a bit similar to quantum cryptography.

The mass of information definitely existed, but if someone forcibly tried to observe or touch it, it would transform into “something else”. That made it almost impossible to use or intentionally alter the information source of the soul when it was in its pure form. That was something only a god could manage.

Of course, Western demons used contracts written on parchment to remove human souls, but I don’t really know how that works. If they could perfectly control an act of god like that, I doubt they would be content simply being known as demons regardless of whether they are a pure species or if they can’t fully use that power and are looked down on by evil gods.

But I digress.

I was talking about the driving force that keeps living beings moving.

Directly interfering with it was difficult. The instant someone touched it, the information would change. However, it could still be used even after it transformed into “something else”. When those remnants gathered and took on a new form, they would create a certain type of Youkai.

One example was the Shichinin Misaki that let the oldest victim finally rest in peace once a new victim arrived.

Another was the Funa Yuurei that would sink a ship if not given a bottomless water ladle.

However, those should not be seen as having any real connection with the original human. A living fish and fish meat were two different things and a human did not gain the will of the fish upon eating fish meat. In the same way, that which became a Youkai did not care what its raw materials were.

“By the way, the Illness Magic User is an exception among exceptions. He has a single soul and is still a living human being, but he uses magical charms to give his own hateful grudges strong directionality in the form of illness magic. In our business, you need to borrow the power of a Youkai or demon to produce effects above a certain level, but he creates those curses solely with his own power. He’s quite the monster. He might be on the same level as that noble’s grudge that shook up Kyoto during the Heian period.”

Upon returning to the inn, I explained that to the Sunekosuri.

I had modified my own body, but it was still based on the power of the Shikigami known as the Deadly Dragon Princess. He was truly an oddity in his ability to produce paranormal phenomena without relying on a Youkai in any way.

“But to constantly produce enough hatred to give form to those curses, his organs must be a mess from the intense stress. When he was in Hyakki Yakou he would reduce that with the help of incense, but I wonder what he does now.”

While embracing a massager like a body pillow and vibrating slightly, the Sunekosuri stuck out his long tongue and said, “An Umibouzu, is it? From what I have heard, they are not much different from a Funa Yuurei. I have heard it is merely an issue of regional differences in what form the drowning dead take when they change.”

“More or less.”

“So this is a giant Youkai that frequently appears in areas of the sea where lots of people have drowned? So what about the area Amemura Ryuu-chan’s grandfather works in?”

“I checked it out. His house is on the coast at the northern side of Kyoto. Thirty years ago, a powerful typhoon sunk a bunch of ships there. Her grandfather was working there at the time, so that fate must have become intertwined with his own.”

Of course, you could find some sort of great disaster or accident in most areas of ocean if you went back 50 or 100 years.

“So preparing to meet their ancestors calls in the Umibouzu,” said the Sunekosuri sounding a bit downhearted while embracing the massager. “The ones who died in the accidents did nothing wrong, so it’s a sad story.”

“That’s how it is with those Youkai. The materials may be the thoughts of the dead after their souls have been transformed like a destroyed piece of quantum cryptography, but the Youkai created is something completely different from the original people. If the created Youkai is a deadly one, they will not hesitate to bare their fangs against a lover of one of the humans before death. The rules will have already been overwritten.”

What was Akki Rasetsu hoping to do with this Umibouzu?

The next thing to investigate was…

“Where is this Umibouzu?” asked the Sunekosuri. “It’s an ocean Youkai, so Amemura Ryuu-chan’s grandfather’s house or the surrounding area seems the most suspicious.”

“Wait, wait. If it just has to be ocean water, the fish tanks at a sushi restaurant might qualify. Technology has come a long way in this age. We should probably expand our search to include aquariums and ocean water pools.”

“Uuh…”

“And whatever Akki Rasetsu’s ultimate objective is, they’ve located themselves in the center of Kyoto to ‘hide a tree in the forest’.” It wouldn’t make sense for it to be so far from their headquarters. That would be the same as leaving the tree outside the forest.”

“S-so do you have any idea what area might be suspicious?”

“The dance classroom.” I raised a finger. “The exterior is made to fit the period look of the city, but the inside has a full complement of fitness facilities. And that includes an indoor pool.”

These days, dance lessons were given in PE class for elementary and middle schoolers. Kids sure had it tough. How did they see dance lessons at that age where they began seriously wondering how the standard subjects in school would help them as adults?

But something had caught my attention while watching the girl.

“Amemura Ryuu-chan had a bag while leaving the dance classroom, remember? It was too large to simply hold her dancewear. She may have had a swimsuit in there as well so she could play in the pool after her dance lesson. Faithfully attending lessons in this heat has to be tough. The dance classroom might provide that ‘free service’ to prevent children from skipping.”

“Then has someone switched the pool water with ocean water? B-but anyone would be able to tell if they tasted it. And it would sting people’s eyes.”

“Then they just have to do it with water no one will ever get in their mouth,” I replied casually. “For example, the water in the sterilization tub the kids enter up to their shoulders in before entering the pool. Anyone with any sense will keep their delicate face out of it. And even if someone does taste it by accident, they don’t know how powerful disinfectant is supposed to taste. Even if it tastes quite salty, they would probably just think that is how it must taste.”

“For most of the swimmers, that ocean water would be neither harmful nor helpful…"

“But Amemura Ryuu-chan would be different because of her family’s fate with the Umibouzu. Whenever she periodically uses the pool and enters the sterilization tub beforehand, she stimulates the Umibouzu. It’s the same as using her biometrics to open a lock restricted to a specific user. And it is all according to Akki Rasetsu’s project.”

“You said Amemura Ryuu-chan’s mother is cooperating with Akki Rasetsu to escape her debt, right? How does that tie in?”

“She probably set the days Amemura Ryuu-chan goes to her lessons and ensures that she goes to the dance classroom without skipping. And of course, they make sure the mother does not know what is truly going on. They might have another guiding agent in the dance classroom who ensures the girl always plays in the pool after the dance lesson.”

The dance classroom itself held no danger. There would be no problem if the mother told someone the days of the week her daughter went to dance lessons and no one would find it odd she made sure her daughter always went. It may have been an odd command, but the parents would have no problem if they were told to ensure their daughter was not involved by keeping her schedule the same as before.

How naïve.

If someone was paying money, they would be gaining something worth the money spent.

“So that means…”

“We need to investigate that dance classroom’s facility and instructor.”

===Part 8===

And so I took action in the middle of the night.

I met up with the Illness Magic User in the darkness of the night and we headed for the dance classroom’s building.

The building was about the size of a gym and was three stories tall. It was still made to match the period setting in its looks, so it was almost laughable. The inside was likely crammed full of cutting edge fitness equipment.

After we circled the building to check on the situation, I tapped the Illness Magic User on the shoulder and said, “As today’s guest, you need to charge in and wipe them out.”

“Why do I need to do what you say?”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to. But if you don’t do anything here, you won’t get another time to shine. It would be insulting if you asked me to split the reward 50/50 after that.”

“…”

The Illness Magic User sighed, stopped hiding, and walked boldly up to the front entrance. It seemed the idea of sneaking in never even occurred to him. He kicked in the door and set foot inside the building while a home security alarm rang.

In the next instant, a deep darkness seeped out from every window in the building.

The Sunekosuri’s entire body jumped slightly.

“Wah…wah wah! Wah wah wah wah wah!! I-is all of that illness magic!?”

“There’s no escape for anyone inside.”

An unrelated security guard might be inside too, so he would start at a level which would only knock them unconscious. But once he had checked everyone inside, he would increase it to a truly deadly illness.

That’s how it was with that combat-obsessed idiot.

He practically announced that ''it was harder for him to limit the damage done.

''…Now then.

“It’s about time we made our move.”

“Eh? But the Illness Magic User is still inside. If we go in there, we’d be caught in the middle of it.”

“We’re not going in,” I said while circling around behind the building. “This may indeed be a base for Akki Rasetsu. But can we say for sure the entire project is contained here? Is it possible they have other bases or hideouts? Where are their VIPs? Attacking this place might not be enough to cut Akki Rasetsu’s Achilles tendon.”

“Th-then what are you going to do?”

“Look over there.” I guided the Sunekosuri’s gaze while holding him in my arms. “There it is. A large truck with a silent electric engine. A dangerous vehicle on a dark night.”

“Huh? But aren’t vehicles banned here in order to preserve the look of Kyoto?”

“Generally, yes. But a city of over a million can’t function like that. A few vehicles are allowed an exception at specific times. Any work that would destroy the atmosphere is done in the middle of the night so no one will see it.”

And Akki Rasetsu had prepared transportation in one of those.

The Illness Magic User was on a rampage within the building and it was obvious they were trying to transport something out.

“Look, look, look. The backdoor opened and they brought something out... What is that? A metal tank?”

“It’s bigger than a refrigerator. It takes five of them to carry it.”

“I guess they’re trying to escape with the ‘trick’ set up in the pump room.”

I had concluded they were luring Amemura Ryuu-chan into the building’s indoor pool so she would touch the “ocean water” at set intervals. That would provide the proper stimulus to the “monk” that was likely a type of Umibouzu. That meant they might be transporting the small pressure tank for the sterilization tub.

In other words…

The “monk” was contained within that tank.

“What are you going to do now?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“Simply stealing that won’t bring this to an end. I want to know where they’re taking it. That will likely be Akki Rasetsu’s most important base. That tank will be joining other things they don’t want destroyed and people they don’t want killed.”

Just as everyone would head to the emergency staircase when the fire alarm rang, a sudden attack would put people on guard for simultaneous attacks from multiple direction while evacuating the most important items and people to a safe place

Which meant…

If I followed them, I would be led straight to the location in which the enemy had gathered all of their weak points.

“Th-then you are going to tail that truck?”

“That would be the normal method, but I don’t have a vehicle of my own. I’d like to attach a tracking device.”

“…It does not look like you will be able to sneak close to it. There are five men carrying the metal tank and six got out of the truck.”

“Then I’ll have to approach without sneaking,” I said offhandedly while pulling my video camera out of my handbag.

“What are you doing?”

“People working in the underworld of society don’t like to stand out. I’ll use that against them.”

I attached a random cable to the video camera, stuck the other end of the cable into my handbag, and approached the large truck.

They quickly spotted me and tried to stick a hand into their pockets, but I shouted out before they could.

“Attack☆Late Night Dinner!!”

“Eh? Ah?”

“Okay okay. Today, I’ve come all the way to Gion in Kyoto! What an age we live in. Even an amateur like me can easily ''make an internet broadcast TV show'' just by using i@Stream! Okay, now it’s time for the usual ''live broadcast interview''!! Truck drivers like this always know the best places to eat.”

“Wait, wait!! What do you think you are doing!?” frantically protested one of the men.

Yes.

He protested peacefully.

If he pulled a handgun out here, he would be making his world debut holding it.

“You have to ask? This is a net show. ''It’s broadcast live worldwide.'' My equipment is a bit small though because my budget isn’t very big.”

“No, wait. We are…um…in the middle of work right now. We aren’t allowed to do this kind of thing. Surely even you are banned from working a different job while at work. So…”

“Okay, thank you very much.”

After approaching close enough, I tossed aside the video camera and grabbed the man’s arm. I then twisted his elbow around and upwards, swiped a suppressor-equipped handgun from within the man’s shirt, and killed all of his Akki Rasetsu comrades with it.

''Oh, that was louder than I expected.

The nightmare lasted only 5 seconds.

When caught by surprise like that, all they could do was stand still.

[[Image:Zashiki_v02_171.jpg|thumb]]

“Wh-what are you-…Hot!?”

“Oh, sorry, sorry. Did I touch you with the barrel when it was hot from the gas? While I’m at it, I’ll apologize for something else, too. I lied about the worldwide broadcasting, so don’t worry.”

I grabbed the collar of the one remaining man and slammed his back against the side of the large truck.

I then pressed the barrel against his forehead.

“Now, how about you tell me everything you know? What is this? What are you doing with it?”

“Ha ha… I’m just a subcontractor. I don’t know any of the details.”

''I thought you’d say that.

I aimed the gun lower and fired a single shot into the man’s right thigh.

I of course made sure to stop up the throat I was grabbing at through his collar to keep him from crying out.

“Gh…mgh!? Cough cough!!”

“Next, I will remove the suppressor and fire it from within your hand so it leaves gunshot residue. The gunshot will make sure the nearby residents come running out. I will run off and leave the gun here. The gun that killed your comrades will remain and you cannot run off with that leg. Whether you’re found guilty or not, your face will probably be on the front page of newspapers across the nation. You will make an enemy of not just Akki Rasetsu but the entire occult industry that wishes to remain hidden. Do you really think the bars of a prison cell will be enough to protect you then?”

“…I-I don’t know much. I’m telling the truth about that!”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Generation after generation, the Amemura family has worked as sailors. The tradition goes back as far as the Heian period. And the family has a tradition of letting the bodies of their dead wash into the ocean from their ships. They stopped doing that in recent times, but the Amemura bloodline is still strongly linked with the ocean around Kyoto.”

“So this ‘monk’ isn’t an Umibouzu?”

“Technically, we don’t even know if it is a Youkai. It is closer to a vague family guardian deity. But large accidents have happened in that ocean a few times. The unrelated people who drowned there were incorporated in with their ancestors. That may have given it properties similar to an Umibouzu.”

''Wait.

''Then what is Akki Rasetsu’s true goal in stimulating this ‘monk’ using Amemura Ryuu-chan?

Suddenly, the building’s backdoor slammed open.

“Tch!”

I tossed the man aside and fired several shots at the back door while beginning to run. Once the magazine was empty, I threw away the handgun, picked up the video camera I had dropped, and fled as quickly as I could.

Several gunshots quieted by suppressors rang out behind me.

''Not good, not good, not good!!

I frantically moved my legs and leapt behind cover while the Sunekosuri approached from a different route.

“Honestly, what are you doing!?” he shouted.

“I did what I needed to do. It’s time to disappear.”

“Eh? But what about that truck? It’s going to leave!!”

“I said I was going to attach a tracking device, remember?” I raised my index finger as the Sunekosuri froze in place. “If I had simply attached a tracking device underneath the vehicle, they would have found it right away. That is why I made the Akki Rasetsu courier think I was approaching to ask how the Amemura family is related to all this. ''That was a decoy objective.'' If they are satisfied to know why I was there, they will not think about looking for a tracking device. Okay?”

“Y-you…”

“Now let’s lose our Akki Rasetsu pursuers without slaughtering them. I want them to think I frantically ran off after being interrupted in the middle of gathering information. Once they feel safe once more, I can return and catch them off guard.”

===Part 9===

No matter how far you are from your target, there is nothing to be afraid of as long as you know where it is. I ran around the streets of Gion to lose the pursuers from Akki Rasetsu and then took a very roundabout route to the location indicted by the tracking device. Upon arriving, I saw a thick forest and the roof of a building.

“Found it, found it. It looks like an ancient mansion that was designated a Tangible Cultural Property.”

“It does look like something that could be on the same list as Kinkaku-ji or Ginkaku-ji.”

Not only was it a large Japanese-style estate, but it seemed to include a small forest with it. It looked like someone could become stranded within the grounds of the residence. The fact that something like this could exist in the middle of a city was why one could never underestimate Kyoto.

“It seems they have also hired exclusive firefighters in the name of keeping this precious cultural asset from being damaged. That means they have the right to temporarily hold off any requests for emergency services.”

“That would definitely be ideal for running a secret project. But is the person who owns the mansion involved with Akki Rasetsu?”

“I don’t know. Amemura Ryuu-chan’s family was dragged into it with money, so this may be the same.”

“…Debt? But this is such a large estate.”

“Which means it takes money to maintain it. Plus they will get less monetary aid as a lot needs to be done related to the Intellectual Village as well. The culture needs to be preserved, so it cannot be remodeled to be more energy efficient. Even the smallest scratch requires an expert craftsman to repair. Being designated a cultural asset can be quite a bother.”

The location of the tracking device told me the large truck had already entered the grounds.

“How are you going to sneak in? Even I can tell they have guards all over the place.”

“With this many people on one side of the grounds, there must be over 100 of them in all. But that also tells us they are protecting something important enough to warrant that.”

Movies often had scenes of attaché cases being transported while handcuffed to someone’s wrist. In reality, that would only tell everyone to attack you because you are carrying something valuable. This was the same.

I pulled out a radio.

“? Are you calling in the Illness Magic User?”

“If he learned I was using him back there, he would attack me in anger. That isn’t what I’m doing.” I shook my index finger. “Now, Sunekosuri-kun. You saw how large that truck was, right? Did they really need all that space when the metal tank was only a bit larger than a refrigerator?”

“Huh? Now that you mention it…”

“That extra space was for shock absorbing equipment. In other words, the contents of that metal tank need to be kept in a delicate state. It likely contains the ‘monk’ after it was altered with Amemura Ryuu-chan’s help.”

“And?”

“You still don’t get it? I attached a tracking device to the bottom of that truck. It would have been a waste to only attach a tracking device when I had the chance. I also added something a little more fun.”

“Y-you don’t mean…”

It seemed the Sunekosuri had caught on, so I replied with a full-faced grin.

“I do. I attached a remote-controlled bomb.”

I felt a blast resound in my gut as an orange pillar of fire burst into the air from within the estate grounds.

“I just detonated a bomb directly below that ‘monk’ that needed to be treated delicately. Whatever happens now, it isn’t going to be good for Akki Rasetsu. While the guards are focused on that, I can sneak in.”

“H-have you completely forgotten all of this is supposed to be kept hidden!? You just woke up half of Kyoto with that blast! Everyone is going to focus on this area!!”

“As I said before, the owner of an important cultural asset has powerful authority on his own land. Any nearby onlookers as well as the police and firefighters will be held back for a while. We don’t have to worry about anyone seeing us fight.”

While holding the Sunekosuri in my arms, I slipped into the ancient estate’s grounds. The area was surrounded by bamboo thickets. Static ran through my radio every once in a while. Someone was communicating within 10 meters of me. Quite a few someones in fact.

But they were not in their usual positions.

It may have been small, but a route had opened up that I could slip in unnoticed through.

I ran through the bamboo thicket while ensuring I made no noise.

Finally, the important cultural asset came into view.

“…Wow.”

Overall, it was shaped like a hollow square with one side missing. A few large buildings were connected by covered pathways. The yard was neither dirt nor grass; it was completely covered with small tightly packed stones. It even had a pond filled with koi that might have cost millions of yen each.

In a large open space in front of the main entrance, something was burning.

It must have been the large truck I had blown up.

But that was not the main problem.

Something else was illuminated by the flames.

It looked like a small elderly man. It was only about 130 cm tall. It looked like a human had been crumpled up so it was condensed into a single point.

However…

Its shadow stretched out oddly far. The effects of the flames were not enough to explain it. The shadow stretched for dozens of…no, it might have been over 100 meters. It looked as if the crumpled old man’s essence was leaking out in the form of a shadow.

“Is that…?”

“It’s the ‘monk’. But…dammit. I still don’t know what skill that Youkai has.”

People were collapsed around it. They were likely the skilled agents of Akki Rasetsu…so how had they been defeated?

“…No.”

“What is it?”

“The true form of the ‘monk’ is large enough to cast that shadow. The small old man we can see is probably the true oddity. It might be some sort of illusion or an interface for humans to contact it.”

“So this ‘monk’ is actually over 100 meters tall, but we just can’t see it?”

“It simply stepped on the annoying bugs gathered around it. What happened here is quite simple.”

But in that case, it would be hard to find a means of defeating it.

Just as an ant could not defeat a human, a human would have a hard time defeating that ‘monk’.

That didn’t mean it was impossible, though.

“Wh-what are you going to do now?”

“Getting into a fight with that thing would be pointless. I’ll move around it and enter the mansion. Akki Rasetsu’s important items and VIPs will have been evacuated to there. Wiping all of them out comes first.”

We circled around widely through the yard and to one of the outside pathways. We headed along it to sneak into one of the large buildings.

But a voice called out before we could.

It belonged to a young man.

“There’s no need for you to do that. ''It’s already over.''”

“…”

I turned around and found someone standing along the connecting pathway. A man wearing a samue smiled thinly. I suddenly became intensely aware of the handgun hidden in my boot.

''Not good.

''When I begin relying on this, I’ve already 80% lost.

This man contained something that made me think that.

I could instinctually tell.

“What is already over?”

“You took too long, so we ended up killing the leaders of Akki Rasetsu ourselves. To tell the truth, we were hoping to get some help from the likes of you.”

“A-a-are you from Akki Rasetsu!?” asked the Sunekosuri.

“Yes? But they complained too much despite never doing anything themselves. After ending so many projects prematurely, we couldn’t help but get angry. We discussed it and decided the organization needed to be handed over to the next generation.”

“…”

“They’re all inside. You can have their heads. You can claim you did it. In fact, it would be problematic for us if you don’t.”

I clicked my tongue.

What would happen to my reward in this case?

What if an assassin entered his target’s hideout only to find the target had committed suicide?

You didn’t often hear about that ending with him getting paid. The client would find some fault in it and turn him away.

“You lured us in to kill the leaders that were in your way.”

“Yes?”

“So was the project using Amemura Ryuu-chan a decoy?”

“No, it didn’t go that far. That project was about 5th on the priority list. It would have been great had it succeeded, but it could be abandoned if something better came along.”

“What were you even trying to access with that?” I frowned. “”That ‘monk’ is not simply an Umibouzu. It is a guardian deity of the Amemura family created from the vague idea of their ‘ancestors’. It changed form due to the effects of a major accident at sea, but the essence you wanted to contact was…”

“That’s right. The guardian deity side,” readily affirmed the man in the samue. “If you follow the Amemura family back far enough, you will reach the naval forces of the Heian period. But skilled military commanders of that time would occasionally become targets of religious beliefs. People did not want to be haunted by them.”

“Meaning?”

“You need more explanation?” He shrugged. “To put it simply, this is a means of controlling a low-ranked god. The ‘monk’ may have fallen to the position of a Youkai, but it can be rebooted back to its position as a low-ranked god if a certain type of power is injected into it. …If a formula for that process can be determined, we will be able to freely change gears between Youkai and god. And that means we can drop gods down to the position of Youkai as well.”

“…”

''I see.

''So the elderly leaders of Akki Rasetsu were trying to hold these people back.

Hyakki Yakou was the top ranked organization in this business, so why did they focus on Youkai rather than gods? There was a good reason for it.

These people had gotten so lost in their lust for power that they had lost sight of the risks.

“The original objective of Akki Rasetsu was to rearrange humans into being Youkai. Basically, it was just another form of the common desire to be immortal. The mainstream method is to transform one’s physical body using the properties of Youkai that are attached to a specific person such as an Inugami or a Jinmensou. But my methods are different.”

I waited for the proper timing of the conversation.

I then grabbed my suppressor-equipped handgun from my boot and fired repeatedly.

But I received the result I had expected.

Without changing his expression in the slightest, the man in the samue pulled a long obi-like scrap of paper from his pocket and used it to deflect the bullets.

The long, long piece of paper spread out around the man like a bird’s feathers.

“If you attach a Youkai to a human, they will not perfectly fuse together. To remake the human, you must directly alter the human. I am researching the power needed for that. If there is a power that can raise a Youkai up to the position of a god, what would happen if you injected it into a human? Isn’t it exciting to think what would be created?”

“That isn’t a magic charm. …It’s a scroll? Is it some sort of scripture?”

“Yes. It’s just a hanging scroll. I am a Youkai artist. My name is Houjou Touji. I am fairly well-known, so maybe you have heard of me? I am an artist who mass produces Youkai art that creates sinister curses.”

“I see. Art depicting Youkai or ghosts will ''possess strange power in and of itself.'' So that is your specialty. You thought you could give power to humans in the same way you give power to those scraps of paper.”

“More or less. It wasn’t easy. I had to secure my arsenal while pretending to obey the leaders in their mainstream idea of using a Shichinin Misaki.”

“In that case, why don’t you just carve a tattoo into your back?”

“I tried that. Too many of the samples destroyed themselves while wielding the Youkai’s power. When it got bad enough, some of them even tore off the skin of their back and ''fled out the window.''”

''…Is that a Yuki Onna on that hanging scroll?

I had no idea what level of reproduction that created, but that was a deadly Youkai I wanted nothing to do with.

“Well, that’s more or less the situation. We leaked information to call in assassins from across the country that could take the blame. Akki Rasetsu’s leaders have already been killed. I have nothing left to do in Kyoto. I will give the credit to you. You can lie to your client and receive your reward. Any other questions?”

“Do you really think I’ll let you leave?”

“That’s what I thought.”

The man in the samue who named himself Houjou stuck a hand in his pocket.

He scattered countless small scraps of paper like confetti.

They ignored the flow of the wind as they freely danced around.

“The sort of oddity that can be drawn out by human hands can be mass produced as much as needed.”

''…Are these photos?

''And all of them show a Yuki Onna.

“You often hear that people meet a horrible fate if they handle spirit photography too roughly, right?”

“You’re quite the talented man. So you can do it with a camera too?”

“Yes, but the accuracy drops even further. Oh, but don’t think just anyone can do this. Getting the exposure, focus, and angle just right is not easy. Just a picture showing the Youkai is not enough. ''You have to use the camera artistically.''”

Even if they were crude replicas, this was approximately 200 objects with the same power as a Yuki Onna.

And on top of that, nothing said Houjou had no other tricks up his sleeve. It was possible he had travelled around Japan and drawn or photographed Youkai with even more dangerous powers.

What if he attacked simultaneously with all of those?

“Now, how about we begin? If you made it this far, I assume you are no normal human. I cannot deny that I feel like seeing whether you are worthy of being drawn by my paintbrush.”

''…Not good.

''Could he be on the same level as the Illness Magic User? How did someone like this escape the notice of Hyakki Yakou? That organization must be falling into disorder in a lot of different ways.

''Now, what to do?

“Feel free to come at me. But do not forget that you will meet a horrible fate if you treat these mysterious photographs and paintings too roughly and destroy them.”

Not only did they cause harm, but it seemed the curse would double if you resisted and destroyed them.

It was quite an excellent means of attack.

Without thinking, I reached for the Deadly Dragon Princess. Pulling it out was the proof that I had 100% lost.

But suddenly…

An odd vibration came from the ground.

It wasn’t an earthquake.

It was the footsteps of some giant existence.

Houjou and I simultaneously looked over at the source of the noise. A depression about the size of a small pond had been made in the large yard covered in small stones.

The “monk”.

That unknown thing with its invisible form had taken a step towards us.

It spoke with a roaring voice.

“…I will help you.”

“Why would you be obligated to do that?’

“…I have always been the one who protects the Amemura family. It is obvious they plan to harm the Amemura family.”

''I see.

While Akki Rasetsu had achieved their objective and would soon leave Kyoto, it was possible they would eliminate the Amemura family to tie up all loose ends in that project.

But…

“I have no problem taking your help, but do I really look like a good person to you?”

“…I have no time to worry about the good or evil of individuals. I must combat an even greater evil in order to defeat the ones who will harm the Amemura family.”

“Either way’s fine with me.”

And in response to this…

The man in the samue, Houjou Touji, did not change his expression at all.

With the same thin smile plastered on his face, he said, “My gallery is quite full. I doubt the interference of a Youkai or two will change anything. And I have no reason to hesitate in eliminating the remnants of a project we have already abandoned.”

“So he says. What’ll you do?” I asked.

“…I will bear all of the sins for destroying the artwork. The curse affects only the one who destroys them. I will bear all of it, leaving you free. And that will eliminate all of that young man’s weapons.”

“He has 200 deadly ones around him right now. Do you have any idea how much pain you will experience receiving the death agonies of all of them? The idea that Youkai cannot be killed by normal means no longer holds in our world.”

“…If I must die along with him, then so be it. As long as you remain, you can finish off this young man once he is unarmed. I am contained in the framework of the Amemura family’s ancestors, so I will naturally appear once more after enough generations of the family pass. My individual disappearance here is no real problem to the Amemura family.”

“Let me be blunt. Amemura Ryuu-chan only sees you as a scary monster. She does not visit the family grave or Buddhist altar. You may have been originally created from their ancestors, but ''you are now a collection of the remnants left over after some souls were destroyed like a piece of quantum cryptography.'' In other words, you are not truly connected to Amemura Ryuu-chan through her ancestors. You are merely a Youkai that has taken on that role. Do you still feel an obligation to destroy yourself to protect them?”

“…Did you think I was doing this in hopes of being thanked? As long as I can protect the Amemura family, that is all that matters.”

“Heh.”

I couldn’t help but laugh.

Who would have thought someone as straightforward as this would have his time to shine in this world?

“You are a true hero. Stick to that path and I will take care of everything afterwards,” I said.

“…I thank you.”

“No, thank you.”

Ever so slightly…

Houjou’s smile stiffened.

“You can’t do it,” he said.

“Do what?”

“My gallery is full! A single Youkai can never take on the burden of it all!!”

“That is not for you to decide. That is up to the willpower of the sort of ancestral guardian deity that can be found in any family.”

His smile stiffened further.

“We” took a large step forward knowing full well what that stiffening meant.

''Okay.

''It’s time to settle this, you bastard.

===Notes===
<references/>
<noinclude>
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| Back to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
| Return to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
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</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1

2013-12-26T23:43:17Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* Part 5 */ "their dead" to "they're dead".

{{Incomplete|parts=7|tparts=18}}
==Chapter 1: A Deadly Firefight between Two Idiots >> Mock Battle in Oceania==

===Part 1===

“Here we are again, Oceania-side soldiers. How many times is this again?”

Private Heivia Winchell muttered those words while smearing black and sand colors on his cheeks. Needless to say, this was a type of desert camouflage.

“It sure doesn’t feel like February. In a certain island nation, they give the sexy guys chocolate on Valentine’s, right!? That kind of lovely event would’ve been perfect for me! What happened!? Then again, getting a ton of chocolate in this horrid heat might qualify as harassment.”

In an age of sensors and other electronics on even the smallest guns, types of camouflage had been developed specifically for that age. What Heivia was smearing on his face had chemical compounds that prevented sensors from detecting his exposed skin.

He leaned up against the fence surrounding the maintenance base zone and continued applying his “makeup”. Ten or so soldiers were gathered around him and also preparing.

A short female soldier named Myonri held her face paint case in both hands and hesitantly spoke up.

“U-um, what am I supposed to do with this again?”

“You’re doing it all wrong, virgin girl. You can’t make the color so dark around your eyes! The whites of your eyes show up the most, so you have to leave the color light around them to blend them in. You gradually grow darker as you move out. You can’t have any sudden changes in color.”

“If we put camouflage on here, won’t we trap the sand in with it?”

“We’re about to start a battle, so I’d be more worried about being covered in mud and bloody vomit,” said Heivia in annoyance.

Meanwhile, he grabbed a bandanna with a large crescent moon pattern.

As each of them finished applying their “makeup”, they tied on the bandannas so it covered the lower half of their face like bank robbers in a Western. The crescent moon was positioned just right to look like a large slit of a mouth.

“That’s in terrible taste.”

“What matters is that it shows up well.”

As he listened to Myonri, Heivia grabbed his assault rifle and pulled out the magazine. He looked down at the rifle bullets held in place with a clasp.

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition check.”

“Ammunition…check.”

While feeling annoyance at his one friend’s hesitation, Heivia stuck the magazine back in the rifle and pulled back the cocking lever to load the first bullet. He then brought his radio to his mouth.

“Team A is ready. What about the others?”

“You’re the last ones, slowpokes. Teams B-D are all ready. We can begin on your signal.”

“Understood, understood.”

Heivia glanced over at Myonri.

Instead of a heavy weapon like a light machinegun or assault rifle, she held a small and lightweight PDW like a pilot would carry in case of an emergency landing. It was commonly known as a “full auto in a business bag”.

But she was not carrying the lightweight weapon because she was a girl.

It was because her other equipment was quite heavy.

“How’s the scissor opener?”

“I tested it three times. It really scares me to carry it around.”

“Not being slowed down by a door can make all the difference. You’re our lifeline, so bear with it.”

“This tool stabs a giant pair of scissors into the gap of the door using explosives and then uses a motor to forcibly crush the lock. Did you ever think about what happens if it goes off by accident while I’m carrying it on my back?”

“It’d be your own damn fault. If you weren’t earning all those weird qualifications, you wouldn’t be stuck with all the odd equipment.”

As he spoke, Heivia turned toward the direction of their objective.

He was not looking outside the maintenance base zone.

He was looking in.

He pointed his assault rifle toward the people who he would normally have called his allies.

In the end, humans had a way of searching for enemies within if there were no enemies outside.

“Okay, let’s make this flashy. Our objective is the princess. Let’s kill her before she can get aboard the Object!!”

===Part 2===

“Good, good. Everything’s going as planned. We can hear everything they’re saying.”

Inside the maintenance base zone, a base made up of over one hundred large vehicles, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage grinned. He held a military radio over which he could hear the “enemy” clear as day.

“You damn traitors. We’ll kill every single one of you.”

“Hey, can you really do that?”

A woman next to him let out an exasperated sigh. She specialized in barrier duty which meant she was one of the Black Uniforms who dealt with criminals within the military. She had introduced herself, but he had forgotten what her name was.

He lightly shook the military radio.

“It’s their fault for forgetting they’re traitors and therefore are using the same equipment. Even if the fools changed the encryption, it’s still the same format, so there’s still a risk of us intercepting it.”

They were near the center of the maintenance base zone made up of a large convoy. Quenser was hiding behind and leaning up against a wheel larger than the door to a bank vault. He was using a black military knife to draw a simple map in the sand.

“Heivia and his group are near the southern gate. They’ve already snuck into the base’s grounds while pretending to be innocent. Meanwhile, the princess is a bit south of the center. She’s receiving body maintenance in the special lodgings for the pilot Elite. They’re definitely going to attack there.”

“Once Miss Milinda Brantini enters the Baby Magnum she is almost invincible. After all, that Object is made to withstand a direct nuclear strike. So…”

“They’ll bock the path from the special lodgings to the Object hangar.”

Quenser scraped X-marks into the sand along a few routes.

The blonde-haired, large-breasted Black Uniform frowned.

“But the traitors can’t just move about as they please. The watchtowers will spot them outside. If they simply pursue the Elite, they will be shot down by light machineguns.”

“Then they’ll take out the watchtowers!”

Sounds resembling champagne corks being removed rang out across the Oceanian wasteland. Quenser looked up and saw a few thirty centimeter parachutes opening in the sky. They looked like children’s fireworks, but they were not. Instead of a weight, they had a small camera attached.

“Here they come!!” shouted the Black Uniform woman.

“Ah, damn! Shoot them down before they designate the coordinates!!”

Just as Quenser tried to shout into his military radio, the Black Uniform grabbed him by the back of the neck and dove down to the sandy ground. The beautiful woman was lying on top of him, so two soft objects were pressed against his back. Nothing could have made him happier.

But such ephemeral joys had a way of being quickly destroyed.

Quenser heard a roar and saw the real attack hit the top of a nearby watchtower. The midair cameras had specified the coordinates and then the shells had been fired. It was a stereotypical and by-the-book use of mortars.

However, what happened next was not in the textbook.

For some reason, the top of the watchtower was covered in a sticky, white liquid.

Quenser and the Black Uniform woman began to tremble.

They finally realized what the rebels had done.

“Th-that bastard!! Did he take the red paint out of the paint rounds and replaced it with white!? And he turned it into a disturbingly sticky liquid!”

“Eee!! It smells funny and won’t come out of my hair!”

Quenser did not even need the radio to hear the screams of the female soldier with guard duty who had held a light machinegun in the watchtower.

The rebels seemed to be following the standard theory of making the most of the initial confusion of the attack. The sounds of assault rifle gunfire could be heard from multiple directions.

“M-my guess is all of their paint rounds will be like that, but what do you think?”

“I agree 100%,” said Quenser.

“In that case, I think you should clear an escape path to protect my dignity as a woman!! The battlefield cameramen of this peaceful world are aiming bazooka-like cameras our way, remember? I don’t want to be on the cover of a newsletter with my face covered in that sticky stuff!!”

“Guys don’t want to be splattered with sticky, white stuff either! In a way, it’s even worse for us than for the girls!!”

But shouting at each other was not going to bring an end to the battle.

Quenser sheathed his fake military knife that had a black, rubber blade and began to move with the Black Uniform woman.

===Part 3===

Froleytia Capistrano was a silver-haired, giant-breasted, and highly-ranked soldier. As she smoked her kiseru in the operation control room, she responded to a question from one of her subordinates.

“Well, if you didn’t seriously want to avoid being hit, no one would fight seriously.”

===Part 4===

Simulation Number 101 (b).

Eliminate the rebels from within the unit ASAP while guiding and protecting the pilot Elite.

“Hee hee hee hee hee! If we take out the princess, we’re freed from those tasteless rations for a week! We can eat as much roast beef and garlic shrimp as we want!!”

Heivia and the others were traveling beneath the vehicles. That was an alternate way through the maintenance base zone which was made up of over one hundred vehicles. The vehicles left a space of over two meters above the ground, so they could remain standing as they ran and they could hide behind the giant wheels.

Myonri pointed her PDW here and there while moving cautiously and occasionally coughing.

[[Image:HO_v07_022.png|thumb]]

“Ugh. Cough! This exhaust is terrible. We aren’t going to get carbon monoxide poisoning, are we? I don’t want to die on a training mission!”

“The human body is plenty sturdy! Don’t worry!” barked back Heivia.

He then sent a sign to the other two soldiers with them: a short girl with freckles and a muscular man.

“Girly, Basic! Drive them out from the left. Once they come out from the behind the wheel, I’ll shoot them!!”

As per Heivia’s instruction, a grenade was thrown behind the wheel.

Once a high school-aged girl frantically ran to escape the (white and sticky) explosion, he mercilessly fired a paint round.

“Stop! Not the face!!”

“Fwa ha ha ha ha! Then should I fire between those huge tits of yours!?”

Travelling beneath the giant vehicles allowed them to almost entirely ignore any bombardments that would fly in a parabola arc and fall from the sky.

But there was an even bigger reason they had chosen that route.

“Myonri! Get out that tool on your back!!”

He pointed straight up.

“We’re directly below the special Elite lodgings. Let’s cut in from below as planned!!”

“Oof… Those lodgings are made by connecting a few different vehicles, right?”

“And if we stick the door-busting tool into the joint between vehicles and force it open, we can crawl in. If they’re still keeping her in here as part of Phase 1, this’ll be checkmate!!”

Heivia lifted Myonri up on his shoulders and she pressed the special tool against the vehicle bottom that looked like a thick metal ceiling. Like a pile bunker, the “beak” portion used explosives to stab in and then a motor spread the “beak” and forced open the thick metal panels that had been perfectly aligned.

“Ahh, ahh. This is ripping the metal apart! Should we really be doing this for a mock battle!?”

“I don’t remember being told not to destroy the equipment. In fact, it was that huge-breasted commander that told us to make this as realistic as possible.”

They opened a gap just barely large enough for one person to squeeze through. Myonri’s short form was pushed up first and then she reached down and helped Heivia in.

Girly had Basic lift her up, but Basic was too large to fit in the gap.

After sending Basic off to meet up with another team, Heivia and the two girls began searching the Elite lodgings.

“This is a brilliant method. …Although it would be a one-way ticket for anyone trying to pull it off for real.”

The inside was filled with high-class furnishings that looked out of place in a military facility.

The design resembled a villa made entirely of classical mahogany. When Heivia had visited with Quenser two weeks prior, it had been a sterile place filled with white and the layout had even been completely different. It may have been to match the princess’s mental condition or to prevent an attack, but it was made to be completely rearranged in an extremely short period of time.

“If it can be rearranged, does that mean we can pry it apart with the door-busting tool?”

“This isn’t going to make proper training. Paint rounds can’t pierce walls.”

Heivia and the others swiftly finished their search of the first floor.

They counted the number of exits, set up quick traps at each one, and headed for the stairs. Before charging in, Heivia grabbed a stuffed animal and tossed it forward. As expected, this produced several gunshots.

Still hiding behind cover, he fired several short bursts toward the stairs.

“Myonri! Throw a grenade on my signal!!”

Heivia stopped firing to avoid friendly fire, Myonri leaned out in his place, and she tossed a grenade toward the upper floor.

A moist explosion and a few screams soon followed.

“Oh.”

“You idiot!!”

As Girly stared up the stairs, Heivia and Myonri frantically pulled her forward.

A short burst of gunfire came from the top of the stairs.

“Don’t let your guard down until you’re sure they’re dead, you idiot!!”

“Did you have to call me an idiot twice!?”

“It’s important!! And if you were a guy, I wouldn’t have saved you, so you should thank me! Idiot, idiot!!”

“If you say it that much, you just sound like a tsundere!!”

“Say that again and I’ll fire a paint round into your back!!” shouted Heivia as he pointed upwards. “Myonri, use that tool on the roof.”

“Eh? But there’s no seam there, so I can’t pry it apart.”

“The people up above don’t know that. You scare them and I’ll finish them off while they’re preparing to run!”

Myonri did as she was told and forcefully stabbed the “beak” into the ceiling.

A dull sound rang out and the bodyguard soldiers started to move to a safer location, but Heivia accurately took them out from the bottom of the stairs.

“Clear, clear! Let’s move on.”

“Why on earth are you a radar analyst? Wouldn’t you be more at home in a VIP assassination squad?”

“Can you sit around all day in an air-conditioned room in a squad like that? If not, I’ll pass.”

They climbed the stairs and found around three bodyguard soldiers covered in sticky white paint. They held up their hands with disappointed looks.

“Where is she, dammit? The princess has to be hiding around here somewhere. Find her!!”

The mission was about protecting the Elite, but it was unclear if she would be carrying a gun or not. There was a real possibility of being shot from a closet or refrigerator.

After coming so far, it would be a shame to lose the bonus for shooting her, so Heivia and the others carefully checked each room.

“Clear!”

“Clear!!”

“Clear over here, too. Shit! Why is everywhere clear!? Where is the princess hiding!?”

After unintentionally ensuring their safety, Heivia began looking around and shouting angrily.

And then he felt a slight draft.

He turned toward the source and found an open refrigerator door. He finally shoved the entire thing to the side.

“Dammit…”

The mahogany inner wall had been torn open.

To reduce weight, the outer wall was covered in a thick blade-resistant sheet, but it could still be torn with the proper tools. A vertical tear had created a hole large enough for a human to escape through.

(As soon as the firefight began below the vehicles, they had already realized the risk of us breaking in. Dammit!)

He brought his hand to the 150 cm vertical slit and brushed it aside. Struggles were beginning along the routes leading from the Elite lodgings to the Object hanger. While both sides fired on each other, Heivia saw a short girl wearing a special suit and a boy tugging on her hand while running along the sand.

“Quenser!! I knew it had to be you!!” he shouted.

The boy’s only response was to look over his shoulder and raise his middle finger.

And then…

“Oh, shit!!”

Heivia frantically moved back inside and dove to the floor. Now that the special lodgings were no longer needed, tanks began firing on the second floor with what felt like enough force to destroy the building.

===Part 5===

Before the attack even began, Quenser’s group had snuck to the special lodgings, met up with the princess, and helped her escape. But now that they were hiding behind a tank, they had little confidence in their ability to win a normal firefight.

“Why are you even here, Quenser?”

“Ha ha ha. That question hurts, princess. If you weren’t a girl, I’d shove you out to the traitors.”

The one doing all the work was the Black Uniform woman who was travelling with the boy. As one of those who claimed to purge the military of criminals, she was used to firefights between humans even in an age where Object battles symbolized war.

That woman was currently looking toward the Elite lodgings in annoyance.

The rectangular building sat atop several large vehicles and its top half was covered in a poisonous red. It looked a bit like a horrible cranberry tart.

“Tanks in a mock battle? Couldn’t that have killed them?”

“The paint rounds can’t pierce walls, so it doesn’t count. If you assume they’re dead, it’ll come back to bite you later.”

Once mock battles began creating unique rules, there was a danger of losing any experience usable in a real battle. But at the same time, some differences were unavoidable if one was not going to train with a real battle.

“Two hundred meters to the hangar.”

“Once we get in there, I just have to board the Baby Magnum. I can use the sensors to slaughter them all.”

The Black Uniform smiled bitterly at that dangerous statement and asked a question.

“Now, how will the enemy handle this?”

“They’ll have set up a wire along a route the princess has to pass through. That could be the entrances to the hangar or the Object’s hatch.”

This mock battle was based on the possibility of traitors within the military. The bandannas around their mouths were to make them easy to distinguish, but the maintenance soldiers were kept in a gray area. It was possible an enemy could approach while pretending to be an ally.

“I will not fall for such a simple trap.”

“Research shows the people who think that are the easiest to catch in a trap.”

“Mh. Quenser, do you think I am clumsy?”

“Sorry, but I’ve never seen you act particularly sharply! I can think of a few times when you almost killed me with the Baby Magnum. That time in Gibraltar for instance!!”

“Quit complaining, Quenser.”

“Why do you think I’m complaining? It’s because our lives are on the line!!!!!”

“Calm down,” cut in the Black Uniform. “Let’s get back to the issue at hand. The wire traps are passive. We might hit them and we might not. I doubt the enemy will rely on them alone.”

“The traps are meant to slow us down. While we spend time deactivating them, they’ll attack from a distance with snipers or something.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ll find the traps and deactivate them. You gather what people you can and be on the lookout.”

===Part 6===

During a mock battle that uses paint rounds, even a tank could not pierce a thick blade-resistant sheet.

But the close-range blast had still left Myonri dizzy. While writhing in pain due a sharp earache, Heivia turned toward Girly. She seemed conscious, but she had completely lost her nerve. She had fallen to the floor and was waving her hands around with tears in her eyes. Her expression made it clear taking a single step would make her wet herself. It resembled the shock of receiving the full effects of a stun grenade.

“Goddammit… That…bastard…”

Heivia took a few seconds to recover and then walked down the stairs of the Elite lodgings and exited on the first floor. There he found an enemy soldier, took them out with a handgun paint round, and then lay down behind cover.

His assault rifle had excellent rapid-fire and piercing ability, but it could perform accurate mid-range sniping with full use of its sensors.

(As long as I have line-of-sight, I can hit. And I have a direct line on the Object hangar from here!)

He licked his lips as he peered into the scope lens that was more of a small monitor with several types of information displayed.

He was targeting the main entrance to the hangar where a trap had been set up.

The trap prevented anyone from running through and he would shoot anyone who stopped for even an instant.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon! I don’t like splattering guys with this stuff, but I won’t be satisfied until I get back at you!!”

While paint rounds were being used, a hit anywhere on the body counted as a kill, so he could not target the leg and then target any enemy soldiers who came to help.

He could not use any tricks. He could only target them directly.

He lay on the ground and waited.

His index finger stroked the surface of the trigger as he tried to alleviate his tension even slightly.

But…

(What’s going on? Don’t tell me they chickened out.)

He waited a few minutes, but nothing happened.

When assassinating a VIP, it was not unusual to wait for an entire day or two, but this was a frenzied battle. If he did not remain on the move while keeping a general idea where the target was located, enemy soldiers could sneak up behind him.

(They won’t be taking this slow by staying put until they eliminate all the enemy snipers. After all, the princess would be exposed the entire time. What is that guy thinking?)

And then he froze up.

Something unpleasant had entered the scope.

The giant mass of steel was known as an MBT or a main battle tank. Even the name was outdated and rarely seen on the modern battlefield.

“What the hell!? Did he throw the princess in there to protect her from snipers!?”

If the tank climbed the diagonal slope and charged through the gate, the snipers and traps would be meaningless. The anti-personnel traps would be crushed and the princess would be safely carried to the Object hangar.

Heivia tossed aside his assault rifle and grabbed the shoulder-fired missile launcher on his back.

Whether it was a tank or an attack helicopter, he could neutralize them with a direct hit from a shoulder-fired missile (loaded with paint). Those were the rules for this mock battle. One could complain it made no sense as the same weapon could not even pierce the thin walls of a building, but armored weapons would become invincible if some compromise was not made.

At any rate…

(Damn him. I don’t like having only one shot at this.)

Given their size, he could not carry around multiple missiles.

It was essentially a single-use weapon.

“But that bonus is mine if I make this one shot! And this makes my target way bigger, so it isn’t all bad!!”

He placed the launcher on his shoulder and peered into the sight on the side.

Both infrared and ultraviolet were used to lock onto the MBT heading for the hangar.

Immediately afterwards, the tank’s turret began to turn.

It stopped in exactly the right spot to stare at Heivia.

“…Crap.”

(They weren’t trying to get the princess through! The tank was a bluff used to locate everyone targeting the hangar door from afar!! Dammit. Did it detect the infrared signal I used for the lock!?)

He frantically jumped down from the large vehicle supporting the special Elite lodgings and tried to hide behind one of the giant wheels.

But he was too slow.

A beautiful Black Uniform woman popped up from a hatch on the top of the turret and fired her anti-personnel heavy machinegun.

Heivia had been close enough for mid-range sniping, so they could target him in the same way.

And the enemy’s weapon had three times the range of his assault rifle. Being hit by that thing from close range could have resulted in a “training accident”.

“Bhah!? Cough cough!! Fuck that hurts! Are you trying to make me hate tanks!?”

===Part 7===

Froleytia let out a sweet-smelling breath mixed with smoke.

The giant monitor in the operation control room displayed a detailed map of the maintenance base zone and the locations of both sides.

After seeing that the pilot Elite princess had entered Baby Magnum’s cockpit, she clapped her hands together lightly.

“That settles it! As per our crisis management manual, the Elite was safely brought to the Object where she can settle the rest. That ends the mock battle!!”

That was the special privilege of a first generation Object.

Unlike second generation Objects which were designed solely for Object vs. Object battles, the Baby Magnum was equipped with anti-fighter weapons, anti-tank weapons, and enough anti-personnel weapons and sensors to exterminate anyone. If one ignored the damage it would cause to the maintenance base zone, the enemy soldiers would be blown to pieces instantly no matter where they hid.

In other words, the battle was essentially over as soon as the princess boarded the Baby Magnum.

(But no one gets the all-you-can-eat prize yet again. It’s what I expected, but it’s still boring.)

As Froleytia thought, a female operator gave a hesitant report.

“U-um, major. You have a call.”

“Hm? Then hurry up and-…”

“No, um. It is a direct call to your cell phone. I thought it might be private. U-um, but I still have to pass it through my switchboard!!”

Froleytia waved a hand to give permission.

While serving in the military, there was no avoiding having her communications monitored. She could only think positively and view it as proving to a third party that she was not doing anything suspicious.

(No one with any sense would call my private number now, so maybe it has to do with my family.)

With that depressing thought, she reached for the cell phone in her uniform pocket.

She did not need to give a sign like in an old police drama. She simply pressed the call button and answered.

It was a male voice.

And oddly enough, he seemed to be using a voice changer.

“We have your daughter,” was the very first thing he(?) said.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

An unpleasant silence fell over the dim operation control room.

But it was not complete silence. Whispered voices could be heard here and there.

“Eh? Major Capistrano has-… Eh!?”

“She has a kid!? It can’t be! It just can’t be!”

“But she is 18… It’s a bit early, but it’s possible, right?”

Froleytia remained silent for a moment.

She was trembling a bit.

As the man(?) told her not to call the police, how much the ransom was, and how to deliver it, she slowly spoke as if crushing the words in her mouth.

“I am a virgin.”

“Eh!? Major Capistrano is-…!?”

“It can’t be! It just can’t be!?”

“But she is 18… It’s possible, right?”

The intensity of the whispered voices grew threefold. This time, female voices were mixed in accusing the guys of being disgusting.

Finally, the man(?) on the phone seemed to catch on.

“Huh? A virgin, but…huh? W-wait a minute! Don’t you have a nine-year-old daughter? Or…but…you can’t mean…!!”

“You. Have. The. Wrong. Number. You idiot!! You have guts making a threatening phone call on a military line. Don’t you know that the Legitimacy Kingdom accepts any fight someone picks with it!?”

“Ah wah wah wah wah wah!!” cried the voice frantically.

With a click, the line went dead.

The operator turned her seat toward Froleytia with a hand to one side of her headset.

“U-um, I traced his location. …What should we do?”

“…”

The duty of Froleytia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom troops stationed in Oceania was to prevent any other countries from invading the country during this chaotic time after it lost its military.

In other words, it was not their job to deal with criminals and terrorists. This was not a war, so it was a job for the local police. If the military acted here, they could be accused of intervention.

But…

“During this unstable period, I hear there are a lot of delinquent police officers who are paid off by the growing criminal organizations. A kidnapping for ransom is likely an organized crime, so they likely have pawns hidden within the police. In other words, the local police will be of no use.”

“Is this really okay?”

“The threat was sent to our military, not Oceania. If they pick a fight with us, it doesn’t count as intervention.” Froleytia adjusted the kiseru in her mouth and shrugged. “Our new mission begins now! Gather the necessary personnel and equipment and form a rescue team!! I authorize the use of weaponry suitable for attacking a concentration camp!!”

Despite her orders, the whispering seemed to never end.

“She’s a virgin.”

“Major Capistrano is a virgin!”

“She’s a noble’s daughter and a military officer. That’s one hell of a target!”

“You guys are disgusting!!”

Froleytia puffed smoke from her mouth like a demon king.

That trembling Legitimacy Kingdom officer hated damage to her pride more than anything else.

“I’ll show you just who you picked a fight with, you thieves.”

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Part 15===

===Part 16===

===Part 17===

===Part 18===

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT

2013-12-23T18:14:18Z

EnigmaticRepose: Added Heavy Object 7 layout to be modified as seen fit, as well as illustrations and Kamachi's translation of the subtitle.

[[Image:Heavy Object v01 cover.jpg|thumb|300px|right|''The cover art of volume 1'']]"HEAVY OBJECT" (ヘヴィーオブジェクト) is a science fiction series by Kazuma Kamachi (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Ryou Nagi(凪良) published under the Dengeki light novel label. Currently six volumes have been published. There is also a manga adaptation previously serialized in the monthly magazine of Dengeki Maou.

The Heavy Object series is also available in the following languages:
*[[Heavy Object ~ (Spanish)|Español (Spanish)]]

== Story Synopsis ==
In the end, war couldn't be extinguished. But, there was a transformation. Even in the heart of a worthless accomplice in murder who was indifferently continuing his task, there was a transformation. The massive weapon "Object". This was a weapon that changed the whole definition of war. An exchange student named Quenser, who was dispatched to the battlefield, met at the base a girl with a strange aura. The girl, dubbed "Elite", is the pilot of "Object". The near future. This diminutive boy had come to take on the role of standing up against the strongest weapon "Object" for the sake of the girl. This was the motive for their first meeting.

== Translation ==

=== [[HEAVY OBJECT:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[HEAVY OBJECT:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they are working on'''

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

===Feedback===
'''If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4660 Discussion Thread] and give the project a vote'''

==Updates==
*February 5, 2013 Heavy Object Vol.6 '''completed'''.
*December 12, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.5 '''completed'''.
*September 19, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.4 '''completed'''.
*August 22, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.3 '''completed'''.
*July 2, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.2 '''completed'''.
*February 22, 2012 Heavy Object Vol.1 '''completed'''.
*July 23, 2011: Project Page Created. Forum translations by DNK uploaded.

== The "HEAVY OBJECT" Series ==

=== Volume 1 ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_1|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?8lte9b4umh91gta PDF] - [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=4889 ePUB/MOBI]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - The Rank and File Soldiers that Tie Up Gulliver >> Battle on the Freezing Alaskan Snow]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Tom Thumb Runs through the Oil Field >> Battle to Prevent Passage through Gibraltar]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - War of the Ant and the Grasshopper >> Battle to Defeat an Oceanian Military Nation]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 2: Adoption War — ''An Audition War'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_2|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?hapktwc4xd9rtf2 PDF])===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - It is Only Natural to get Muddy in an Obstacle Course >> Battle to Control Antarctica]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - A Three Legged Race Up a Mountain is a Matter of Life and Death >> Battle of Shells in the Iguazu Mountains]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - In a Cavalry Battle, Destroy Your Opponent’s Footing >> Total War in Amazon City]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 3: Shadow of the Giants — ''Global Shadow'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_3|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?4e48a34fu12xneu PDF])===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - A Grave of Junk is a Mountain of Rare Metals >> Interception at the Remains of the Alaska Battlefield]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - A Coal Mine that Scatters Stacks of Cash >> Nighttime Surprise Blitzkrieg on the Kamchatka Peninsula]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Honor is Priceless >> Emergency Interception at Victoria Island]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 4: Treasure of Electron Mathematics — ''Theoretical Vein'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_4|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?mq8diobbijo9r8r PDF]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - What Should Have Been a Pure Blue Ocean >> Unofficial Battle in the Loyauté District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Christmas on a White Sand Beach >> Furlough Garrison Battle (?) in the Oceania District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - The Treasure of the Sea Dyed Deep Red >> Defensive Battle in the Solomon District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 5: Festival of Death — ''Purge of Technopics'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_5|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?eqfja9yro4jmgkb PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/wd52u7b9w4abm2f/ Mobi]) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 6: Path to the Third Generation — ''The Coming of Third Generation'' ([[HEAVY_OBJECT:Volume_6|Full Text]] - [http://www.mediafire.com/?9yilz1037r7m8b6 PDF] - [http://www.mediafire.com/download/5olrh4u6p4p9kj5/ MOBI] ) ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - The War Broker Closest to Heaven >> Intelligence Battle in the Cook District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - The Team that Carries Out Dirty Jobs More Painful than Hell >> Transportation Battle in the Athabasca District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - The Conspiracy Bank that Motivates Human Greed >> Bombardment Battle in the Amazon District]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]

=== Volume 7: ''The Police of Ghosts'' ===
:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*Prologue
:*Chapter 1
:*Chapter 2
:*Chapter 3
:*Epilogue
:*Afterword

===Short Story===
This short story was published shortly after the release of the first Heavy Object novel.

:*[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Sandy Short Program >> Second Oceanian Struggle]]

==Project Staff==

*Project Administrator: N/A
*Project Supervisor: N/A

===Translators===
ACTIVE
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

===Editors===
All editors who speak English proficiently are welcomed.
*[[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] (Proofreader and Formatting)

*Page Checkers
:*[[User:Wilfriback|Wilfriback]]
*Proofreaders
:*[[User:Hiro Hayase|Hiro Hayase]]

== Series Overview ==
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト / HEAVY OBJECT (10 OCT 2009, ISBN 978-4-04-868069-1)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト採用戦争 / HEAVY OBJECT Saiyou Sensou (10 JUN 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-868594-8)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト巨人達の影 / HEAVY OBJECT Kyojin tachi no Kage (10 NOV 2010, ISBN 978-4-04-870051-1)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト電子数学の財宝 / HEAVY OBJECT Denshi Suugaku no Zaihou (10 SEP 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870549-3)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト死の祭典 / HEAVY OBJECT Shi no Saiten (10 NOV 2011, ISBN 978-4-04-870997-2)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト第三世代への道 / HEAVY OBJECT Daisansedai e no Michi (10 JUN 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-886624-8)
*ヘヴィーオブジェクト亡霊達の警察 / HEAVY OBJECT Bourei tachi no Keisatsu (9 NOV 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-866080-8)
[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]
[[Category:Genre - Harem]]
[[Category:Genre - Action]]

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations

2013-12-23T18:12:37Z

EnigmaticRepose: Page creation.

<gallery>
Image:HO_v07_000.jpg|'''Cover'''
Image:HO_v07_001.jpg|'''Color Illustration 1'''
Image:HO_v07_002.jpg|'''Contents'''
Image:HO_v07_003-005.jpg|'''Color Illustration 2'''
Image:HO_v07_006-008.jpg|'''Color Illustration 3'''
Image:HO_v07_009.png|'''Page 009'''
Image:HO_v07_022.png|'''Page 022'''
Image:HO_v07_057.png|'''Page 057'''
Image:HO_v07_106.png|'''Page 106'''
Image:HO_v07_155.png|'''Page 155'''
Image:HO_v07_168.png|'''Page 168'''
Image:HO_v07_186.png|'''Page 186'''
Image:HO_v07_205.png|'''Page 205'''
Image:HO_v07_233.png|'''Page 233'''
Image:HO_v07_241.png|'''Page 241'''
Image:HO_v07_260.png|'''Page 260'''
Image:HO_v07_300.png|'''Page 300'''
Image:HO_v07_347.png|'''Page 347'''
Image:HO_v07_369.png|'''Page 369'''
Image:HO_v07_378.png|'''Page 378'''
Image:HO_v07_387.png|'''Page 387'''
</gallery>

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue}}</noinclude>

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The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village

2013-11-24T23:58:09Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village 3 (Full Text) */ Have more faith in the placement of the chapters.

[[Image:Zashiki_cover.jpg|thumb]]

The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village (インテリビレッジの座敷童) is a light novel written by Kamachi Kazuma (鎌池和馬) and illustrated by Mahaya (真早). Kamachi Kazuma is also known for the [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index|Toaru Majutsu no Index]] series and the [[HEAVY_OBJECT|Heavy Object]] series.

This project also available in the following languages:

*[[The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village (Bahasa Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)]]

==Story Synopsis==

Intellectual Villages are old fashioned rural villages recreated with cutting edge technology. Those villages attract the Japanese monsters known as Youkai. The high school boy Jinnai Shinobu lives in one of those villages and has a Zashiki Warashi living in his house. He tends to run across Youkai with unnerving frequency and this often leads to trouble for him.

==Translation==

===[[The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they are working on.'''

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]

=== Feedback ===
'''If you enjoyed the teasers, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5097 Feedback thread]'''

== Updates ==
*16 June 2012 - Zashiki Warashi teaser project begun.
*10 Nov 2012 - Zashiki Warashi Volume 1 complete.
*29 April 2013 - Zashiki Warashi Volume 2 complete.
*20 July 2013 - Zashiki Warashi Volume 3 complete.

==''The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village'' by Kamachi Kazuma==

===The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village ([[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1|Full Text]])===

*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Prologue|Prologue: Regarding a Detour]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1: Regarding Jinnai Shinobu]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2: Regarding Uchimaku Hayabusa]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Chapter_3|Chapter 3: Regarding Hishigami Mai]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Chapter_4|Chapter 4: Regarding the Slaughter]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]

===The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village 2 ([[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2|Full Text]])===

*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_1|Chapter 1: Jinnai Shinobu @ Clock With a Different Gear]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_2|Chapter 2: Hishigami Mai @ Copied Ill Will]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3: Uchimaku Hayabusa @ Shibuya Girl A]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Chapter_4|Chapter 4: ??? @ The One Who Covers Up a God]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]

===The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village 3 ([[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3|Full Text]])===

*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Chapter_?|Chapter ?: Welcome to Zenmetsu Village]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
*[[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]]

==Project Staff==

*Project Administrator: N/A
*Project Supervisor: N/A

===Translators===
*[[user:Js06|Js06]]

===Editors===
All editors who speak English proficiently are welcomed.

== Series Overview ==
*インテリビレッジの座敷童 (10 May 2012, ISBN 4-04-886554-4)
*インテリビレッジの座敷童 2 (10 November 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-891086-6)
*インテリビレッジの座敷童 3 (7 June 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-891611-0)

[[Category:Dengeki Bunko]]

No Game No Life

2013-11-05T21:14:35Z

EnigmaticRepose: Added volume 5 ISBN and release date, alongside volume 5 placeholder and quick translation of the subtitle.

[[Image:NGNL Volume 1 cover page.jpg|thumb|300px|No Game No Life Volume 1 Cover]]
<b><i>No Game No Life</i></b> (ノーゲーム．ノーライフ) is a light novel series written and illustrated by Kamiya Yuu (榎宫祐) and published in MF Bunko J. The series currently has 4 volumes published.

This series is also avaible in the following languages:

:*[[No_Game_No_Life~Brazilian_Portuguese~|Brazilian Portuguese (Português Brasileiro)]]

==Story Synopsis==

There was an urban legend that there was a legendary, undefeated gamer called [ ], but in reality he was just a NEET brother and sister called 空 (Sora) and 白 (Shiro). These hikikomori siblings who both refer to the real world as a worthless "Kuso Game" are one day summoned to a different world by a boy calling himself "God". In this world, war is prohibited by God and everything is instead decided by a game...that's right, even country borders. Can the two NEET brother and sister save the last of the human race <Imanity>, which only has one city left?

"Now...let the game begin!"

== Translation ==

===Format Standards===
'''Every Chapter (after editing) must conform to the general format guidelines.'''
*[[Format_guideline|General Format/Style Guideline]]
*[[No_Game_No_Life:Names and Terminology Guideline|Project specific Guidelines: Names and Terminology]]

=== [[No Game No Life:Registration Page|Registration]] ===

'''Translators are asked to [[No Game No Life:Registration Page|register]] which chapters they're working on'''

=== Feedback ===
'''If you enjoyed the translation, why don't you tell us in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=5520 Feedback thread] or discuss it in the [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=5444&p forum] '''

==Updates==
*September 13, 2013
**Volume 3 Prologue completed.
*August 29, 2013
**Volume 1 completed + Afterwords
*August 28, 2013
**Volume 1 Epilogue completed.
*August 19, 2013
**Volume 1 chapter 4 completed
*August 05, 2013.
**Volume 1 chapter 3 completed
*August 02, 2013
**Volume 2 Prologue completed.
*July 25, 2013
**Volume 1 Chapter 2 completed.
*July 21, 2013
**Volume 1 Chapter 1 completed
*October 10, 2012
**Initiated as a teaser project

== No Game No Life by Kamiya Yuu ==

===Volume 1 - It Seems Gamer Siblings Will Conquer a Fantasy World ([[No Game No Life:Volume 1|Full Text]])===
[[File:NGNL Volume 1 cover page.jpg|thumb|x175px]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Prologue|Prologue]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - Beginner/Amateur]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Challenger/Challenger]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Expert/Expert]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Chapter 4|Chapter 4 - Grandmaster/The King]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Epilogue|Epilogue]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 1 Afterwords|Afterwords]]
<br style="clear:both"/>

===Volume 2 - The Gamer Siblings Seem to Have Their Sights on the Land of Kemonomimi===
[[File:NGNL V2 Cover Page.jpg|thumb|x175px]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Prologue|Opening]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - Weak Square/Setting the Board]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Unexpected Move/One Move]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Sacrifice/Sacrificial Move]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Chapter 4|Chapter 4 - Checkmate/Checkmate]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 2 Epilogue|Fake End]]

<br style="clear:both"/>

===Volume 3 - A Half of the Gamer Siblings Seems to Have Disappeared...?===
[[File:NGNL V3 Cover Page.jpg|thumb|x175px]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Prologue|Data Load]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - Sky Walk/Disassociation Method]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Blue Rose/Directional Method]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Killing Giant/Guiding Method]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Chapter 4|Chapter 4 - Rule Number 10/Convergence Method]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 3 Epilogue|True End]]

<br style="clear:both"/>

===Volume 4 - The Gamer Siblings Have Run Away From a Realistic Romance Game===
[[File:NGNL V4 Cover Page.jpg|thumb|x175px]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Prologue|Easy Start]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1 - Encounter/The Devil]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2 - Strategist/The Sun]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3 - Charmer/The Empress]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Chapter 4|Chapter 4 - Wild Card/The Fool]]
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 4 Epilogue|Interrupt End]]

<br style="clear:both"/>

===Volume 5 - It Appears the Gamer Siblings Hate New Game Plus===
::*[[No Game No Life:Volume 5 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]

<br style="clear:both"/>

''Courtesy of [[User:jonathanasdf|jonathanasdf]] for the teaser of vol. 1 chapter 3''

''Courtesy of [[User:Teh Ping|Teh Ping]] for the teaser of vol. 1 chapter 1'' as part of the "a translation a day" initiative

==Project Staff==
* Project Administrator:
* Project Supervisor:

===Translators===
:*[[User:Drinkingwater|Drinkingwater]] (CL translator)
:*[[User:Seitsuki|Seitsuki]]

===Editors===

:*[[User:神|神]]

== Series Overview ==

*ノーゲーム・ノーライフ1 ゲーマー兄妹がファンタジー世界を征服するそうです (MF文庫J) (April 23, 2012) - ISBN: 978-4-8401-4546-6
*ノーゲーム・ノーライフ2 ゲーマー兄妹が獣耳っ子の国に目をつけたようです (MF文庫J) (September 22, 2012) - ISBN: 978-4-8401-4819-1
*ノーゲーム・ノーライフ3 ゲーマー兄妹の片割れが消えたようですが……？ (MF文庫J) (January 25, 2013) - ISBN: 978-4-8401-4958-7
*ノーゲーム・ノーライフ4　ゲーマー兄妹はリアル恋愛ゲームから逃げ出しました (MF文庫J) (June 25, 2013) - ISBN: 978-4-8401-5185-6
*ノーゲーム・ノーライフ5　ゲーマー兄妹は強くてニューゲームがお嫌いなようです (MF文庫J) (November 25, 2013) - ISBN: 978-4-04-066080-6

[[Category:MF_Bunko_J]]

Talk:Madan no Ou to Vanadis

2013-11-05T08:12:05Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* New volume */

There is partial translation of volume 2 in jcafe
http://www.jcafe24.net/index.php/topic,30893.msg693029.html#msg693029
[[User:Xenocross|Xenocross]] ([[User talk:Xenocross|talk]]) 12:15, 8 September 2012 (CDT)

You sure that that's the translation and not the summary? --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 12:35, 8 September 2012 (CDT)

I saw it again and only the epilogue part is fully translated. Though 'will have to ask Zephyr for posting it on BT. --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 12:35, 8 September 2012 (CDT)

Well, it's not a very good translation. [[User:Florza|Florza]] ([[User talk:Florza|talk]]) 19:46, 8 September 2012 (CDT)

Did Zephyr answer? Florza, do you intend to continue the translation of vol. 1? --[[User:Darklor|Darklor]] ([[User talk:Darklor|talk]]) 03:41, 15 October 2012 (CDT)

No, zephyr didn't reply. Guess will have to add those by [[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] though with a preview tag. --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 04:30, 15 October 2012 (CDT)

The machine translation by [[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] is quite good. Maybe a little awkward sentences and some small mistakes, but they are readable. I support putting it here with preview tag [[User:Xenocross|Xenocross]] ([[User talk:Xenocross|talk]]) 12:55, 15 October 2012 (CDT)

I am still working on some editing on the way while reading. --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 14:08, 15 October 2012 (CDT)

I have no idea how much work he's put into cleaning and editing these previews, but they are hands down the best machine translations I've ever read. Really, I don't think they even really need to be labeled 'preview'. [[User:Grimjakk|Grimjakk]] ([[User talk:Grimjakk|talk]]) 23:24, 19 October 2012 (CDT)

So can I read it and correct mistakes (if any) I come across?--[[User:Cliff|Cliff]] ([[User talk:Cliff|talk]]) 02:14, 20 October 2012 (CDT)

Should Lim in the Previews be changed to Rim? [[User:Bilagaana|Bilagaana]] ([[User talk:Bilagaana|talk]]) 02:55, 20 October 2012 (CDT)

Same for Massas to Mashas. In the preview, its Massas and in chapter 1 its Mashas.--[[User:Cliff|Cliff]] ([[User talk:Cliff|talk]]) 03:13, 20 October 2012 (CDT)

@Cliff
You can freely edit if you come across any mistakes. For your second query, is that from the preview chapter or from the other one? As you know, they are done by two different translators. So the names will vary. --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 06:15, 21 October 2012 (CDT)

Well, in the previews of volume 1, the name is Massas, and in chapter 1, it was Mashas. So should it be left as is in the preview or be changed to Mashas? And thanks for answering the question.--[[User:Cliff|Cliff]] ([[User talk:Cliff|talk]]) 06:25, 21 October 2012 (CDT)

I've updated the Terminology Page and did a pretty big addition to it, and a lot of the names aren't reflected in whatever crap I uploaded. I'm planning on going through Volume 1 and 3 to make the appropriate changes. I'll be looking at the raws for anything I feel has an odd flow. Since I can't easily read the raws, I will go on what I think sounds out of place rather than what may be mistranslated. I'll be updating the wiki and the pdf's, probably in a week or two, all in one go. I'll give a quick look over what has been updated by the users of the wiki before I do that, but whatever I put up later may end up ignoring/changes whatever people decide to change. I'll apologize in advance for that.

I'm doing this because I need a break from going through the raws, since it takes too long to read through with my lovely new dictionaries (I have a new pocket and desktop dictionary and an old pocket one I thought I lost). I am also doing this because, while it may be a crap machine translation, I would like to polish it up so people can enjoy the novel in as close a representation of the original that I can (actually, screw you people. I don't care what you read. I'm doing this because ''I'' want to read a story as accurately as it can be. I just happen to be willing to upload it :P ). After that, I probably will not bother to touch Volumes 1 or 3 ever again on the wiki. I'm also letting people know because they can point out any place they find especially awkward. I should let you know, though, that I purposely used sentence fragments in some places, so I may end up ignoring whatever people say. Try and contact me through a PM on the forums if you can, or just change it on the appropriate page.

Also, I took out the "Thank you messages" here 'cause it just clutters everything up. -- [[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticAxiom|talk]]) 17:55, 08 November 2012 (CST)

== Can someone add this to the Light Novels List? ==

If not, I wont bother but if I can I will. I have to use Recent Changes to get to here.

Then jump on to "Teaser Projects" to navigate to the series' main page. --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 06:15, 21 November 2012 (CST)

== New volume ==

Is there any information as to when will the next volume come out?

Not yet, but if the author sticks to his current pattern, it should be late December. No official news on the publisher or author's site, though. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]])

Got an update on it. It'll be coming out late January, and although I don't have a specific date, it'll probably be at least after the 20th. —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]])

Just asking but, is there an epilogue missing from volume 07 or was it left just like that "to be continued"? [[User:Oddmoonlight|Oddmoonlight]] ([[User talk:Oddmoonlight|talk]]) 01:56, 5 November 2013 (CST)

The only thing untranslated from volume 7 is the afterword. Chapter 4 ended on an actual "To be continued" note, and I went ahead and added it to hopefully avoid more confusion as it seems Setsuna didn't notice it. Although, I bet it'll still cause some misunderstandings in that they may think the translator put it there as a placeholder... —[[User:EnigmaticRepose|EnigmaticRepose]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticRepose|talk]]) 02:12, 5 November 2013 (CST)

== Image Editing ==
I'll be working on the images in the near future. Make sure all the images are uploaded. --[[User:Krytyk|Krytyk]] ([[User talk:Krytyk|talk]]) 06:05, 17 December 2012 (CST)

You should work from the raws, not the images uploaded here. The images uploaded here are resized to fit the size/dimension criteria by B-T in general. --[[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticAxiom|talk]]) 07:40, 17 December 2012 (CST)

That's theoretically true, but in fact doesn't apply to most of the images for the novels :p, tho, if they are low quality i usually work on raws from the other sites. Don't worry. --[[User:Krytyk|Krytyk]] ([[User talk:Krytyk|talk]]) 12:38, 17 December 2012 (CST)

All volumes got their image's remastered as of todai~--[[User:Krytyk|Krytyk]] ([[User talk:Krytyk|talk]]) 18:11, 20 December 2012 (CST)

Thanks for the effort and good work, Krytyk. I'll be using them when I next upload an updated pdf, if you don't mind. -- [[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticAxiom|talk]]) 18:31, 20 December 2012 (CST)

By all means~ use it as you wish. --[[User:Krytyk|Krytyk]] ([[User talk:Krytyk|talk]]) 18:41, 20 December 2012 (CST)

Please kindly edit these pictures and post them on novel illustrations on Vol 6. Thanks. -- [[User:Oninn|Oninn]] ([[User talk:Oninn|talk]]) 13:48, 08 February 2013 (EST +8)

== Readable? ==

Is this light novel fully translated already? I read that all the preview script is machine translated but it's the best machine translation I've seen and I was wondering if all the chapters that say preview are there in their entirety and not just a segment of the original text before I try giving this a read. Could someone please confirm? And I would also like to know what program was used to translate the text. Thanks--[[User:Mufarasu|Mufarasu]] ([[User talk:Mufarasu|talk]]) 22:07, 2 January 2013 (CST)

It's complete. Maybe a line or two missing, but that's it. --[[User:EnigmaticAxiom|EnigmaticAxiom]] ([[User talk:EnigmaticAxiom|talk]]) 22:27, 2 January 2013 (CST)

Awesome, thanks again.--[[User:Mufarasu|Mufarasu]] ([[User talk:Mufarasu|talk]]) 23:01, 2 January 2013 (CST)

If only all of the TA translations that I had for VN where so good ^^ Great work! --[[User:LoliDragon|LoliDragon]] ([[User talk:LoliDragon|talk]]) 23:42, 7 February 2013 (CST)

I'm actually quite impressed with this machine translation though I can see mistakes it's more than just legible I'm actually enjoying the more formal seeming text structure it's very interesting anyway volume 6 has been out for a bit now any plans to translate it now or are you going to wait for more material?

Is there a way to turn Volume 6 into a machine translated version like Volumes 1 to 5? The Enrgrish in Volume 6 was pretty bad, and 1-5 were much more enjoyable reads. 13:09 1 July 2012 (CST)

All those previous volumes were done by self (i.e TLr, having knowledge of the language) using other software as a 'secondary' help. ( That is the only reason why a machine translated script has been allowed here. ) As such, using a translation software directly will give you 'err-ingish'. Though, you can help in correcting english for volume 6. What's say? --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] ([[User talk:Chancs|talk]]) 07:56, 1 July 2013 (CDT)

In case you had trouble understanding the post above, the trouble is essentially as follows. Volumes 1-5 were "translated" by EnigmaticAxiom via a process of editing machine translated text. That is why they are previews, i.e. because they were never manually translated by a human being. Nonetheless, EnigmaticAxiom, being a native English speaker, was able to edit the text so that it flows rather well in English, although the accuracy of the translation itself remains somewhat of an open question. When it comes to volume 6, however, the translations are a work of an actual person; the chapters you are referring to in particular having been done by setsuna. Unfortunately, I believe neither English nor Japanese are a language of any great fluency for him, but he ''is'' the only translator committed to the task. Long story short, what you're asking for has no real probability of being realized. [[User:Hiyono|Hiyono]] ([[User talk:Hiyono|talk]]) 12:06, 1 July 2013 (CDT)

I see. @ First person who replied to me. I'll try to de-engrish it, but my time is limited, so it would be very slow going.

Xena are currently working on editing it albiet slowly, and please understand neither me or setsuna are native speakers. [[User:Par74583|Par74583]] ([[User talk:Par74583|talk]])

Madan no Ou to Vanadis:Volume 07 Chapter 4

2013-11-05T08:09:40Z

EnigmaticRepose: Adding a "To be continued" to the very end, as it seems it was left out by the translator.

== Chapter 4: The {{furigana|Princess of the Dancing Blades|Cortisa}} ==


A night of a certain day, Alexandra Alshavin alias Sasha had dreamt of her mother.

As she woke up, she revealed a complex smile. She wondered how many years had passed since she had last dreamt of her mother.

As Sasha spoke of it to the servant, who showed to wake her up, the devoted elderly seemed troubled as how to reply. Wrinkling his face, he answered “is that so?” He did not ask whether it was a good dream.

“Which reminds me, I happened to hear rumor that the civil war in the Kingdom of Asvarre is over.”

“Really?”

Sasha’s expression brightly shone. The aged servant was aware that he forcibly changed the topic, but it had been a while since she last heard a bright story.

Regarding Legnica that she governed, the incomes obtained from trade were very important. The civil war of Asvarre was never other people’s affairs.

''---I wonder if Sophie and Tigre are doing well.''


Although in awareness of her meddling when she assigned Matvey to Tigre, she wondered if that scary-looking former sailor was useful to him. Since it became peaceful<ref> since the civil war was over </ref>, Sophie and the others would probably come back, too. And then they would stop at the Imperial Palace, and let her listen to the story. When thinking so, Sasha became happy.

Suddenly, she felt a pain in her spine. As the breathing became painful, the black-haired Vanadis violently coughed. The servant, who was just about to leave, turned pale and ran up to Sasha.

“Alexandra-sama!”

“……I’m alright. I’m alright, so……”

It was even hard for her just to reply like that. When the cough calmed down, Sasha slightly exhaled and lay on the bed. The servant rang the bell to call the doctor.

''---Even though a diagnosis would be useless.''

She felt that the sound of the bell, which reverberated throughout the room, was very annoying.

When turning her gaze to the bedside, there were two swords there, which were proof of her being a Vanadis. Having a blade a half fist longer than a dagger, it was a pair of twin swords. Strange patterns were carved in, one had a golden blade and the other had a vermillion blade; and one could feel a faint heat when touching them.

''---How much longer will you stay by my side?''

Without voicing it, Sasha spoke so to the twin swords. This {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} called {{furigana|Luminous Flame|Bargren}} had not left her even with her being affected by disease, and had continued to stay by her side.


‘I probably won’t live long.’

A certain night of the time when Sasha was 10. Suddenly, her mother plainly told her in a casual tone as if she was talking about tomorrow’s weather.

“The women in our family have been short-lived from generation to generation. We have what is called “blood disease”. Even your great-grandmother and your grandmother’s sister, everyone died around the age of 30.”

In a small house of the outskirts of a village, sturdiness and size were bed of merit. Sasha, who went into the bed with her mother, was just surprised at the sudden talk. After leaking an “eh?” voice, her mind became pure white and she could not think anymore.

With a smile, the mother quietly waited for her daughter to recover from the shock.

Sasha, who finally pulled herself together after a long time, fixedly stared at her mother’s face.

Her mother had not yet reached 30 years old. Young and healthy, she was always cheerful. To the point that she did not seem to suffer from a disease.

However, her gaze was serious like times when she would teach something to her daughter.

As far as she could remember, Sasha had been taught various things from her mother. Sewing and laundry, not to mention how to clean, how to make a fire by rubbing woods together, how to indentify poison of grass or mushroom growing in the forest, how to set simple traps, and even how to fight with a dagger.


Her usually kind mother was very severe only at that time. Sasha held a grudge against her mother on that occasion for making her repeated many times until she came to be able to do it. Although, when she was able to do it without instructions, as her mother openly praised her, the grudge immediately disappeared.

When she realized that her mother had never told a joke or a lie, Sasha’s spine shivered of fear. While holding her chest because of anxiety and nervousness, the daughter timidly asked.

“……Is it an incurable disease?”

No shadow<ref> no signs of gloom </ref> could be seen in the smile of her mother, who nodded. That expression was so far from being that of fear or sense of grim that it surprised Sasha. The mother gently stroked Sasha’s black hair.

“Sasha. One day, you’ll also come to love someone, and bear a child. And then, tell her properly. Teach her all what you know so that she can choose the path he wants.”

The following year, her mother died.

As she caught a cold and was laid up for a long time, she died as it is. Her face was calm as to give the impression she was only asleep.

Though Sasha was surprised and sad, the adults of the village surprisingly recovered quickly.They knew it. That a day like this would some day come.


Sasha’s family was only her mother. Her mother told her that her father was gone by the time she was born. She did not know whether he died or he left the village. As long as her mother was by her side, it was enough for her.

As she had the adults of the village help her and finished her mother’s burial, Sasha was called by the village chief.

“What will you do from now on?”

The village chief, who was 53 years old in this year, straightforwardly asked. In the village, the chief or the village potentates<ref> influential people </ref> were to take over children with no relatives. The chief asked that question with the expectation that she told him by whom she wanted to be taken over.

“I’ll go on a journey.”

These words slipped out from her mouth smoothly enough to even surprise her.

While burying her mother, Sasha thought about it in the corner of her head, and understood.

She was wondering. Aside from sewing and laundry and the like, which the other children of the village were also taught by their parents respectively, why she, who was a girl, had to acquire knowledge and technique about traps and fight. Even though that should be the role of men, who went out to hunt outside of the village.

In preparation for her death that would someday come, her mother taught her all that herself.

So that she could even live alone.

“On a journey……?”

The chief’s voice was mixed with regret and sense of relief. As to shake off the atmosphere, which became awkward, Sasha responded with an especially bright expression.


“Yes. It’s a journey to look for a wonderful husband, who will marry me.”

It might have sounded like sarcasm to the chief. For the people of the village, who should know about the “blood disease”, there would be probably no curious, who would want to marry such a girl.

Getting only a farewell gift, Sasha left the village.

The 11-year-old girl’s solitary journey was more painful (difficult) than expected. Disguising herself as a man became something natural, and even the way to talk soon changed from “watashi” to “boku”<ref> In Japanese, whereas 私 is used by all, 僕 is generally used only by men; hence Sasha who got accustomed to speak like a man started to employ such a word </ref>. If not for the various knowledge and techniques learned from her mother, she would probably not have lasted one month. There were also times, when she had to beg.

However, only her body she did not sell. Though this was because she feared that she could transmit her disease, it was above all because the reason she told the village chief was partly her true intention. Besides Sasha was searching for someone, who would say “I accept your “blood disease”, let’s make a child”.

If she were to give birth to a girl, she would teach and train her all what she knew as she was asked by her mother. Even if it were a boy, who was to be born, she would also do the same thing. This was because even if her son did not show symptoms, if the child, whom her son would make with someone, were to be a girl, then she might develop the symptoms.

The dual blades technique she mastered was also something she learned in her long journey. She even trained her other hand to be able to wield a sword for when her dominant arm would no longer be usable. To avoid wielding a long sword, she chose short swords with short blades.


It was the fourth year after she went on journey that the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} chose her. When she was 15 years old.

She did not know why she, who carried a disease with that body of hers, was chosen. But, Sasha thinking that she would probably someday learn of the reason tightly grasped both gold and vermillion twin swords and obtained the title of “{{furigana|Hidden Princess of the Luminous Flame|Falpram}}”.

Sasha was officially recognized as a Vanadis by King Victor in the royal capital Silesia, received the last name of Alshavin and visited Legnica, which was her territory.

She first talked about her “blood disease” to the civil and military officers, who kneeled down before her.

She asked them whether they did not mind, even though she would probably not live long. That if there was dissatisfaction, she would leave the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} behind and leave on her own.

She also talked about the “blood disease”, when she had the audience with King Victor. But the old King waved his hand as if it was annoying and only answered that it should not be a problem if the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} chose her.

‘What kind of reaction will these people show?’ Sasha was slightly expecting a cold reaction.

One of the civil officers raised his head. It was an old man with a stern countenance. He should probably have lived more than three times of the 15 years of Sasha. Maybe even four times.

“We accepted it. Is there anything else?”

“……Don’t you mind?”

The black-haired Vanadis, who was surprised, repeated the same question to him while being somewhat confused.


“I have injured my waist three years ago, so I can hardly run. I also often catch cold in winter. However, even now I still work for this Imperial Palace. Of course, it should be nothing compared to the disease, from which Vanadis-sama suffers.”

As the old civil officer finished saying, another military officer looked up at Sasha and spoke. Wearing armor to his firm body, it was a young man who had a lot of small scars on his face.

“If it is the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}, which chooses the Vanadis, it is also the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}, which denies the Vanadis. We are people, who support Vanadis-sama being made into Vanadis, not people, who refused her.”

Maybe it was because he was young, but he was more straightforward than the old civil officer. It was a statement, which could be taken as irony regarding {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} and Vanadis. Although there were some people, who were amazed, there was no one, who blamed him.

Sasha also without rebuking the man, revealed a wry smile. This was also because she, the Vanadis of the next era, was feeling a certain sense of security in the point that ‘the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} chooses’.

To them, who were older than her, Sasha bowed her head.

“......Please, take care of me.”

Then five years passed peacefully. Although being engaged in politics was of course the first time for her, Sasha was blessed with people, who were supporting her; she was listening well to their advice and worked at the governance of Legnica.


She got to know the other Vanadis, such as Ellen, Mira, Sophie and Lisa; especially Ellen, with whom she got along so well that they exchanged an oath. Though Ellen was also a born commoner and they also had the common point of having wandered from the time she was little like Sasha, it might have made the two girls have a more intimate relationship.

It was when Sasha was 19 years old.

Another ten years until the day of her death would come. When she remembered her mother and was thinking about such a thing, she fainted. In the work office of the Imperial Palace.

When she regained consciousness, Sasha had been carried to her bedroom. She was dressed into loose clothes. It was the maid chief who worked at Imperial Palace helped her changed her clothes.

She felt pain in her spine. Her body felt heavy, and her limbs were as heavy as the lead.

She realized that she had developed the symptoms of the “blood disease”.

Sasha called an attendant, the civil officer chief, to gather the military officers and calmly told them.

“The time seemed to have come.”

Their faces uniformly turned pale. There were also some people, who leaked a groan. The black-haired Vanadis looked around at their faces, and said thank you.

And then Sasha showed the golden and vermillion twin swords, which were on her lap. It was not that someone brought them. {{furigana|Luminous Flame|Bargren}} crossed over the space on its own will and appeared to Sasha’s side. Like the time when it chose her as Vanadis.


“As you see, these children are still in my hands. It doesn’t mean that I am going to die now; regarding my duties, I want to do it smoothly like usual.”

After another two years, the present time.

Sasha was surprisingly still alive. While living an almost bedridden life, she continued to perform her official duties as Vanadis during the interval of rest.

Though she intended to leave the Imperial Palace on the same day when {{furigana|Luminous Flame|Bargren}} would leave from her hands, the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} did not yet leave her side. She had several times admonished towards the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}, but it had no effect.

The day sank outside of the window, and the darkness increased its density.

Blankly looking at the dim ceiling, Sasha heaved a sigh. After all, the day was over with her still remaining bedridden.

''---I wanted to ask someone about the civil war of Asvarre, though.''

The old servant had postponed the talk about it. Until he judged that there would be no problem seeing Sasha’s condition.

“……When will I be released?”

‘I will die someday. There’s no doubt about it. Then, when will I die?’

''---My great-grandmother, grandmother and my grandmother’s little sister all died around 30 years old……huh. Even mom died before she reached 30.''


In the worst case, her condition was going to persist another nine years. When thinking so, she felt disgusted.

Dying is scary. It’s terrifying. But, Sasha was exhausted of a life, where she spent most of her days in bed. Both her body and mind withered day by day, and becoming weaker was painful.

''---Not good. It somehow becomes dark.''

Not the scenery on the outside. But Sasha’s heart. It might be because she had dreamed of her mother. Though the black-haired Vanadis was indubitably proud of her mother, who was kind and strong, there was also the symbol of death and disease.

Suddenly, Tigre’s face flashed in her mind. It would be about last month that she met and talked with him.

''---He is completely the opposite of me.''

Sasha’s face spontaneously brightened. Though Tigre’s sincere personality was something desirable for her, his strong will of not giving up any more, and the resolution to prove that he would absolutely survive left an impression (were impressive).

''---Though there are also quite a few of such parts in Ellen, Mira and Sophie, I feel that his was stronger than theirs. I wonder if it’s because he’s a man.''

She thought that she would try to follow their example. Though for her it was a little difficult to say “I will prove I can survive”, it was Vanadis-like to think of oneself until the very end.

Sleepiness assailed her. Sasha’s thoughts about her mother, Asvarre, Tigre, Ellen and the others were strangely mingled within her.


“I wanted to have a child…… Hey, Ellen. Will you, like me─”

Breaking her words, quiet breathing of sleeper leaked from her mouth.

In the next day, Sasha’s physical condition seemed to have improved.

While returning a calm answer as usual to the servant who showed up to wake her, she asked if there was no follow-up report concerning the civil war of Asvarre.

“No, Nothing in particular─”

Though the aged servant reverently bowed his head, Sasha squinted as to blame that attitude. She did not overlook the fact that he averted his gaze after her question. If it was someone other than her, he would probably not notice first.

As she raised her body on the bed, Sasha said to the servant in a lecturing tone.

“I don’t like speaking like this, but I think that keeping a secret from me would be bad for my health.”

“Alexandra-sama……”


From the mouth of the servant, whose age was nearly three times that of his master, a begging voice spilled out. His eyes were strongly appealing “Please do not ask, give up”. It was not that he was afraid to be punished, but he was rather worried about Sasha’s condition.

“Please speak.”

Although Sasha was grateful of the elderly’s concern, she urged him in a quiet tone. The servant answered with his face filled with bitterness.

“Yesterday, a ship that was entrusted a message from Sophia-sama had appeared in the port town of Lippner.”

Since the servant refrained from reporting, she could guess that the content of the message revealed bad news. Though Sasha had fully prepared herself, even so, she could not hide her surprise to the following words of the servant.

“A {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}……?”

Sasha had never seen a {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}, but she did not doubt of its existence since she had already met an {{furigana|Earth Dragon|Suro}}. However, it was indeed a shock when she heard it like this.

“I hear that Sophia-sama left Asvarre with three escort ships in addition to one mother ship, but one escort ship and the mother ship were sunk, and the two remaining escort ships that picked up the sailors, who survived, are heading toward here.”

Sophie, who judged that it was vital to convey the situation as quickly as possible gathered the injured and loads in one of the two ships, and hurried the one, which was lightened, to Zchted. That ship arrived in the port town of Lippner around dawn yesterday.


The chief of Lippner, who heard the story, immediately sent a messenger to the Imperial Palace, gathered doctors and medicine and prepared a ship for rescue. And the servant received the report last night.

Slightly brushing her hair that was trimmed around her shoulders, Sasha nodded contentedly.

“Sophie’s decision was correct. The chief of Lippner also did well.”

Two ships were sunk. There were probably a considerable number of injured. Sophie thought that it would take too much time to board them on a ship and send that ship ahead. Therefore, it should be better to let the ship, which was lightened, go ahead, prepare and send the doctors and medicines as quickly as possible.

The servant heaved a sigh of relief to Sasha’s condition, and continued the report.

The black-haired Vanadis, who heard the part that Tigre fell into the sea and was missing, put on a serious expression as expected. Of course, she was worried about the youth, but the effect that it would have on Zchted would be hardly small.

If it came to light that Zchted made Tigre an emissary, naturally Brune would violently protest. Even regarding the country, there was no way that Vanadis like Ellen and Mira, and the aristocrats, who harbored discontent towards the King of Zchted Victor, would remain silent.

Even if it were not to develop up to war or civil war, it was fully conceivable that Muozinel nearby could try to expand the crack done inside and outside the country.


“Anyway, we should send a messenger to the royal capital. After that, gather warships in Lippner. Even if Lord Tigrevurmud defeated the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}, we cannot relax yet. I also wanted to hear about Asvarre, but…… I suppose that I should first get the permission from His Majesty for that.”

After saying up to there and showing a little hesitation, Sasha added in a calm voice.

“Also send a messenger to Elizavetta of Lebus. She should also be notified.”

The servant deeply bowed his head. It could not be said that the relationship between the Vanadis Elizavetta Fomina and Sasha was good. They even fought against each other last year regarding the matter of the pirates’ subjugation. Sasha, unable to move because of her disease, unavoidably asked Ellen’s help.

That conflict was still fresh in people’s memory, and the people of Legnica, who harbored antipathy towards Lebus and its ruler Elizavetta, were not few. Though Sasha was aware of it, even so she arranged it so that Lebus might also be informed.

“Well then, what should I do about Ellen……?”

She remembered the smiling face of the silver-haired Vanadis, who was happily talking about Tigre, when they met last year. Tigre was officially a guest, and Ellen was supposed to play the role of entertainment. However, it was clear that their relation was not only limited to this.

''---It will be hard……''


When she imagined the shock that this would give to Ellen, her chest hurt; but Sasha, as one of the Vanadis, had to tell her. Looking up at the ceiling and putting her thoughts in order, she said to the servant.

“Prepare a writing brush and a paper. I will write a letter.”

“If you could tell about the contents, the secretary would─”

“No, there will be no meaning if I don’t write it myself.”

Interrupting the servant’s proposal in a strong tone, Sasha shook her head. Ellen might come to understand, but she did not count too much on it. Besides, since it concerned Tigre, even Sasha could not predict what kind of development would be shown from now on.

As a Vanadis and as the ruler of Legnica, she had to keep doing her best.

<center><big>◎</big></center>

Two days later after the arrival of escort ship, which was sent ahead, the ship, on which Sophie and the others rode, arrived at the port town of Lippner.

“Sophia-sama, Olga-sama, it is good to see you return safe above all.”

The {{furigana|Brilliant Princess of the Light Flower|Presuvet}} courteously expressed her gratitude to the chief of Lippner, who showed at the port in order to welcome them.

“We are grateful to you from the bottom of our heart. Thanks to your quick response, many people did not lose their life.”


Next to Sophie, Olga likewise conveyed words of gratitude.

After that, as the chief of Lippner and Matvey faced each other, they smiled and tapped each other’s shoulder. The two men were old friends; this alone was enough to show that they were pleased with their reunion.

While walking towards the port, the head of Lippner and Sophie talked about the future.

“I am aware that you are very busy, but how about you rest here at least for today. I cannot say that we have enough to accommodate persons such as Vanadis-sama, but we have prepared a hotel.”

She had been aboard on a ship, which was full of injured and for a long sea trip. There was no way she would not be tired. However, Sophie refused the offer of the chief of Lippner with a gentle smile.

“Thank you. But, as you said, there are several things that we must do as quickly as possible. We appreciate the concern...... If I say that, we will be a little upside.”

The golden-haired Vanadis jokingly said so and continued to speak.

“Could you lend us about seven or eight horses? And also enough food and water for the trip from this town to the Imperial Palace.”

Sophie, Olga and Matvey with two horses each. And the remaining horse would carry the loads. The chief of Lippner, who understood her intention, replied “right away”.

Behind the two people, Olga was listening to the conversation with a serious expression. As a Vanadis, there were a lot of things that she must learn. And Matvey was heartwarmingly watching that Olga.


Then after approximately one koku, Sophie, Olga and Matvey left Lippner. They let the chief of Lippner take care of the escort ships and the injured.

While scampering on horses in the highway leading to the Imperial Palace, Sophie slightly bowed her head to Matvey.

“I am very sorry for getting you involved in this. Matvey-dono.”

“Please, don’t worry about it. Since making a report to Alexandra-sama is also in the scope of my work.”

Though the scary-looking sailor replied so in all sincerity, he felt bad not to speak words of consideration to a beautiful woman like Sophie. However, he immediately recovered his serious expression.

“By the way, it’s not sure that we will be able to meet Alexandra-sama, but……”

Sophie should know that Sasha was sick in bed. Saying so as to confirm, the golden-haired Vanadis clouded up her expression.

“It couldn’t be helped if we can’t meet her. I will only pass a letter to Sasha, and Olga and I will head to the capital. We must make a report to His Majesty.”

Saying up to there, Sophie looked back with a troubled face. She was not looking at Olga, but the horse, whose reins she was holding, and which carried the loads. Among these loads, there were the souvenirs that Tigre bought in Asvarre. Fortunately, they escaped from sinking into the sea; they were deposited to an escort ship.


Though Tigre’s face flashed across her mind, and her pupils of beryl were about to get wet with tears, Sophie replied. Before shedding tears after thinking of him, there were things that she had to do. It was not her principle to just cry without even accomplishing them.

“I will take care of that. On his behalf, to the people, who should receive it──”

“──Wait.”

Probably inferring from Sophie’s gaze, Olga quickened her horse’s pace and lined up with her.

“I’ll do it. No, let me do it.”

The light pink-haired girl’s face was no less sincere than Sophie’s. Similarly, she was strongly yearning that she wanted to do something for Tigre. However, Sophie shook her head.

“There are a lot of things you have to do from now on. I don’t want to speak cowardly like this, but do you think Tigre would wish for it?”

Olga looked downward grimly. Deeply coloring her expression were frustration and grief of not being able to do anything for Tigre. Though Sophie was feeling sorry for her, even so, only this she did not intend to leave it to her.

''---First Sasha. And then it will be Ellen, Lim, Mira and Teita. Afterwards, I think there is also Rurick of Ellen’s place…… Well, I will know once I confirmed to Lim.''

When thinking about their reaction, it was not far from daunting even Sophie, who was their friend. If Olga would be living as a Vanadis from now on, she (Sophie) should avoid as much as possible that this 14-year-old girl held a bad impression of Ellen and Mira.


Even so, to Olga, who did not completely give up, Matvey spoke as to calm her.

“Olga-dono. Let's leave this to Sophia-dono.”

Within these unadorned words, a lot of emotions were sealed. The former sailor also wanted to do something for Tigre. However, he chose to leave it to Sophie. Noticing it, Olga finally gave in.

The trio was able to meet Sasha without difficulty.

The Imperial Palace was made of solid structure, which mixed white marble here and there, and its foundation piled up sand-colored stones. Sophie, Olga and Matvey were guided to her bedroom, which was deep inside. Though Matvey took off his sword and left it into custody, Sophie and Olga had respectively {{furigana|Light Flower|Zaht}} and {{furigana|Roaring Demon|Muma}} in their hands.

Though as usual Sasha was in the posture where she raised her body on top of the bed, when she saw Sophie, she brightened her eyes and revealed a bashful smile. Sophie also returned a smile, walked up to her and gently embraced her.

“You have lost a little weight. Do you eat properly?”

“There’s no problem. You also, didn’t you eat too much delicious things and slightly gain weight?”


“A fine thing to say. But, you should be alright if you are able to joke like that.”

Sophie was 21 years old and Sasha is 22 years old, one year older than her. The only other Vanadis in her twenties was Valentina. Perhaps due to that, between Sophie and Sasha, There was a friendship with a somewhat different aspect from that of Ellen and the others.

And then Sophie introduced Olga. This was the first time that Olga met Sasha, and though her pupils of obsidian were filled with tension, she dignifiedly introduced herself.

“I am Olga Tamm, the Vanadis chosen by {{furigana|Roaring Demon|Muma}} and granted the land of Brest by His Majesty.”

Sasha held out her hand and replied “Nice to meet you”. Olga nodded and grabbed back that hand.

Then Matvey got down on a knee in front of Sasha. The black-haired Vanadis expressed short the words of gratitude “good work” with a smile. The white beluga decorated on the big man’s back trembled with joy.

After they had finished the greetings, Sophie handed over Tigre’s present. Though she did not think “even if it is not now”, and taking Sasha’s disease into consideration, she could not leisurely do something like “let’s first watch the situation”<ref> I think it meant that here, Sophie could not think something like ‘let’s first watch the situation and decide whether or not to give the present’</ref>.

When Sasha received the cushion, which had a pattern peculiar to Asvarre, she used it right away. She also replaced her pillows.

“Thank you. I will use it with great care.”

Sasha without touching Tigre, and there was no shadow fell over her smile. It was obvious that it was in consideration for the visitors; Olga and Matvey silently cast their eyes down.


Though Sophie quietly closed her eyes as if praying to the gods, after a short pause, she expressed her usual smile. With her usual tone, she talked about the events of Asvarre and the fight in the ship at their return.

Though Sasha nodded from time to time, following the story about the civil war of Asvarre, and about Torbalan and the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}} with great exuberance and interest, she knitted her brows and asked a question.

“Then, the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}} was obeying that Demon and had attacked you?”

“That Demon was calling me ‘the axe’ and Tigre the ‘bow’.”

Olga talked about the fight against Torbalan in the Fort Lux while conceiving the strong fighting spirit in her eyes.

“I think that it has something to do with the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}.”

“To think that such a thing happened in Asvarre!”

“I cannot say for sure, but I feel that it was just a coincidence that that Demon was living in Asvarre.”

It was Sophie, who replied so to Sasha’s doubt.

“There are many unnatural points. Although he has sided with Prince Elliot at first, when the Prince was defeated, he abandoned him without even trying to rescue him. Even when the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}, which was under his control, attacked us, I did not feel the impression that he attacked us for revenge.”

“What about the possibility of him working with Princess Guinevere or Lord Tallard?”


“If that was the case, then the explanation of Lord Tallard assaulting the Fort Lux doesn’t stick. It would have been good just to pretend to attack. Despite taking the trouble to disguise himself as a human and melting into Asvarre, I can’t think of a reason, why he would reveal his real nature.”

Sasha unusually frowned, folded her arms and lost herself in thought. Sophie said as to calm her.

“There are too few materials to think about it now. Let’s hear what Ellen and Mira will say next time.”

“……You’re right. If it’s Mira, she might know something.”

The mother and the grandmother of Ludmira Lurie alias Mira were both Vanadis, who had wielded the {{furigana|Frozen Wave|Lavias}}. Vanadis over three generations of mother daughter was something unprecedented even in the history of Zchted. Therefore, the possibility that she had learned what was not passed down in other Vanadis was high.

In a place where the talk was just reaching the conclusion, the door was knocked from the outside. It was the sound that marked the end of time of the black-haired Vanadis’ talk with Sophie and the others. Sophie muttered regretfully.

“Time went by quickly.”

“But, I think we were able to speak about the important things. Thank you.”

As she thanked the golden-haired Vanadis, Sasha turned her gaze towards Olga.

“Just to be curious, but can I ask you something?”

Olga nodded; the black-haired Vanadis, eight years older than her, gently asked with an expression similar to that of an elder sister to her younger sister.


“I heard that you had traveled for a long time. What brought you to come back now?”

A hard silence fell in the place. Sophie held her mouth with her hand with wide eyes; Matvey at loss for words, watched the course of events.

Speaking of Olga, who was asked the question, after frowning for a moment as if she would burst into tears, she immediately recovered her deadpan and gazed at Sasha. The black-haired Vanadis was quietly waiting for a reply with a smile.

''---Though I said that it was just to be curious.''

Judging that it seemed to be different from the interest in her meaning to dislike her, Olga opened her mouth.

“……In the battle of Asvarre, I have been watching the whole time.”

That Olga earlier looked like she was about to cry was because she remembered Tigre.

“’Let’s do that we have to do’. Tigre had said so, and I have come to agree with it. I want to stand by Tigre’s side.”

Straightening her back, Olga stated in an utmost grown-up tone, but Sophie and Matvey, who were listening to her on the side, had a very frustrating expression.

Words were not enough to describe it. At least be Matvey, who acted together with her since their departure from the port town of Lippner, was able to scoop her feelings from those words.

Whether she felt it from the look of the two adults, or she realized the insufficiency of her words, after a time of about five counts, the light pink-haired girl added.


“Even if I say that I want to be by his side, I don’t mean that I want to be acknowledged by Tigre. How much in difficulty or despair I am before the things that stand in my way, I will do what I have to do without fear and without running away. It’s what I mean. ---And then.”

Olga gently raised the {{furigana|Roaring Demon|Muma}} with its blade downward that she was holding, with both hands.

“Muma had patiently waited for someone like me. Though it might be late with the people of my land……”

The light pink-haired Vanadis repeated in a firm tone, what she once said to Sophie.

Sasha expressed her gratitude with a smile.

“Thank you. It was a sudden question, but I’m glad to have asked it.”

Promising to meet again on another occasion, the trio left from Sasha’s bedroom.

<center><big>◎</big></center>

It was the next day of when bad news had jumped in the Imperial Palace of Legnica.

“We receive a report that a group of large-scale {{furigana|paddle ships|vesuro}}, moving on the sea in a distance of about five or six days from Lippner to the west, was confirmed. They number seventy to eighty ships.”

It seemed to have created agitation. The civil officer, who received that information, breathlessly reported to the servant with a pale face. Similarly, the servant, who heard it, became speechless and swallowed his words.


A {{furigana|paddle ship|vesuro}} referred to a galley ship, which pirates commonly used. Though it required manpower, unlike a sailing ship, which easily moved by the influence of the wind, it was possible to freely move it.

Legnica, whose significant portion of territory faced the sea, had until now continued to be exposed frequently to pirates’ attacks.

However, the number of eighty ships was unheard of. It was a number equivalent to the naval forces of a small country, or more.

“Isn’t it perhaps a fleet of our country, or Brune, or Asvarre?”

Though he (servant) clung to that gleam of hope and checked, the civil officer shooked his head so vigorously that the sweat on his face splashed.

“They did not seem to float a flag or a banner of any country. The merchant ships that were passing were altogether attacked, even now in the scope of our knowledge, they considerably increase their number……”

This time, they could not afford to invade other countries like Brune or Asvarre. The lineup of those who were boarding the ships seemed to vary; they were also not people from Muozinel. There were pirates.

It was just one koku after Sophie and Olga left for the capital and Matvey for Lippner; when the servant came to his senses, he kicked the floor, an act, which was unworthy of his age.

He had to report about such important news to Sasha. And as quickly as possible. He could not afford to hesitate or worry.

He wanted to scream loudly “What is happening?”. Whether it be this or the matter of the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}, why did troublesome things have to occur one after another at such a time?


''---Why does it not let Alexandra-sama quietly rest?''

He tapped his trembling knees, wiped the sweat blurring on his forehead with the hem of his cloth, and decided to at least feign the calmness. If he was himself agitated, it would just only add unnecessary anxiety.

Though the servant had gone at the time when he always woke up Sasha, he was a half koku earlier than usual today. Knocking the door while saying “excuse me”, he gave his name.

“……What's wrong?”

He was surprised at the immediate response. He wondered since when she was awake. Slightly relieved for not having disturbed her sleep, the servant opened the door.

The bedroom, which he was seeing every day. On top of the bed placed in a corner of the room, as expected Sasha was up as usual. There was no sign that she was sleeping until just now. The servant respectfully bowed and quietly set his feet in the room.

As he reported the pirates’ appearance, the bedroom, which was made slightly dusky in consideration for the owner of the room, was wrapped in a strange silence.

“……Call the maid chief. I will have her help me change my clothes.”

With an atmosphere that calmly got rid of the silence, rather than breaking it, the black-haired Vanadis said.

“It doesn’t matter how many people may be used, but let all the port towns on the coast know about this. Also send someone to the capital. And then, gather the warships in the port town of Lippner. The rowers and the soldiers, too. They must have already been gathered with the matter of the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}} though.”


There was tension in her voice. The servant unintentionally stared wide-eyed. He wondered how long had passed since he had first heard Sasha speaking like this.

“How many ships can be prepared in two days?”

It was because the distance from this Imperial Palace to Lippner was roughly two days that Sasha asked so. The servant answered to her question with a cautious tone.

“It’s a guess, but I would say about more than thirty and less than forty.”

“It would be about that, huh. Send a messenger to Lebus. To tell that they scrape up together only the warships that can move right now. Since a matter other than the matter of the {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}}, even she would not think that it’s other people’s affairs.”

“If we continuously send messengers like this, even sarcasm might return as an answer.”

As the servant heaved a sigh, Sasha smiled as to comfort him.

“As well in the fire as in the storm, even people, who hate each other, would respond in cooperation. Let’s think that it’s the same as it.”

After the servant smiled wryly and responded “understood”, he suddenly had a bad feeling. If it was the usual Sasha, before giving orders like this, she should have first called the person, to whom she would leave the command.

However, those lines did come yet from her mouth. He timidly asked.

“Who……will take the command?”

“I will take it.”


Sasha answered as if it was a matter of course; the servant distorted his face, which was likely to burst into tears at any moment, and held his head.

“──Alexandra-sama”

Taking straight the gaze of the servant, who uttered a blaming voice, the black-haired Vanadis said.

“Yes. I’m a Vanadis. It’s in order to protect this Legnica and Zchted. So, let me go.”

The twin swords, which were on her lap, gave off a golden light as if welcoming her fighting spirit.

Though Sasha’s voice was by no means emotional, but calm, it looked like the shine of the strong will emitted in her pupils could not be ignored.

But, even so the old servant, without giving up, moved one step ahead. Even if he was to suffer a temporary anger from her, he believed that he should not let her go.

“With a body afflicted with disease, what can you do?”

“I can at least be in the battlefield.”

“The disease will─”

“It’s a body that will someday die.”

Interrupting the servant’s words, Sasha smiled. If there was something like a transparent smile without an ounce of impurity, it would probably be this. Though the servant almost unintentionally resigned, he tapped his trembling knees on top of his clothes and stared at his Lord.


“What do you think a Vanadis should do?”

Sasha suddenly asked. Taken aback, the servant could not answer right away. While dropping a gentle gaze to the twin swords in her hands, the black-haired Vanadis continued.

A Vanadis is chosen by the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}. It is not inherited by blood like in the royalty and titled nobility.

The people of this Legnica were entrusted to me by the King when I became Vanadis.

Then, is there nothing that I inherit from the previous generation Vanadis?

Is there nothing that I can pass to the next generation Vanadis?

“It’s only my thought though. Finally what I should do is not to die in my sleep on the bed. But to show to the person, who will wield this {{furigana|Luminous Flame|Bargren}} after me. To show her what a Vanadis is. What did the previous generation Vanadis accomplish? Did she do what she believed that she should do?”

As if responding to its master’s will, the twin swords with different colors were tinged with light. Though Sasha’s smile remained as it is, the servant overwhelmed finally moved backward (resigned).

“That’s why ── I will fight.”

The servant painfully clenched his teeth and desperately looked for words of persuasion. But, it seemed that whatever he said, he would not be able to return the present Sasha on the bed.

He even considered putting sturdy soldiers on guard at the door of her bedroom and not letting her go out, but he concluded that it would be useless. Since the master of the soldiers was not the servant, but Sasha.


Rather, they would be happy to fight under her command. As there were a mountain of such people he happened to know, the servant questioned such people from a certain thought.

The servant finally compromised. But he presented one condition.

“If you can also command Vanadis-sama of Lebus, then…...”

So that the soldiers’ morale do not get any lower, it was in a sense a natural measure.

If the enemy was pirates with eighty ships, it was no longer a battle of subjugation. If anything should happen to Sasha in the midst of that battle, the soldiers would be upset<ref> they would lose their composure </ref>, and there would also be the possibility for them to flee.

However, if Elizavetta were there, such a disaster could be prevented. Since, aside from the friction between Sasha and her, Elizavetta was also a Vanadis.

Sasha revealed a smile, which seemed to say “is that all?” and nodded.

“Understood. Though I think that she will come even if I don’t ask since she is serious, I will just ask her.”

To these words, the servant stared at his Lord with a surprised expression. The civil officer, who received instructions with a countenance of excitement, was waiting to leave, and frankly asked what he thought.

“Do you evaluate Vanadis-sama of Lebus?”

“She also has both good and bad points in her own way. She/I doesn’t admit it.”

Sasha added “it’s a secret” in an impish tone.


Shortly thereafter, the maid chief came for the change of clothes, and the servant bowed and left.

“Do what one should do……huh.”

While putting on a black battle outfit, Sasha muttered in a low voice. Showing a smile to the maid chief, who looked puzzled, she shook her head saying “it’s nothing”.

What came to the mind of the black-haired Vanadis was Tigre. She thought that she wanted to talk more with him.

When she appeared in the courtyard of the Imperial Palace, fifty soldiers were waiting in line. All of them wore leather armor, put on a hat reinforced in iron scraps on their head, held a spear and were wearing a small sword to the waist. It was an outfit suited for a battle by the sea. In the sea, both heavy armor and long sword would get in the way.

The servant was standing at their vanguard. Bowing to Sasha, who was, as expected, surprised, he explained.

“Vanadis-sama, those are people, who would by all means like you to take them with you.”

“Their dexterity is good.”

Sasha chuckled. About one koku had passed since she had said that she would go on the battlefield. Considering also including the personnel selection, unless she did not decide it beforehand, they should not have been able to prepare up to the equipment and stand by.

“Since Vanadis-sama is still young.”

The servant forcibly broke his wrinkled face.


“Dreaming of the time when you will someday lead us and have series of discussions with the knight captains and the others, and have been re-selected them every year.”

Sasha was really surprised this time. She did not notice. She raised her face and ran her line of sight to the fifty men. Every face was also filled with fearlessness.

“Are you all right with me?”

Finally, she returned to her old self. One of the knights let a happy feeling spread in his eyes.

“The {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}} chooses the Vanadis. We know it. But, we are serving a human (not a tool).”

All the knights, who were here, were in a certain sense people symbolizing the Vanadis Alexandra Alshavin.

It was one of the results she got by the fact that she had racked her brain and made every possible effort for the government of Legnica even while afflicted by disease.

The wind blew, disheveled Sasha’s forelock, and rustled her battle outfit. The black-haired Vanadis cast her eyes down and quickly wiped her face, pretending to mend her forelock.

And when she lifted her head, the smile had disappeared from her face. Her eyes retaining a drive, which was in no way inferior to that of the knights, she declared in a very loud voice, which could not be imagined coming from her delicate body.

“From here on, we will defeat the pirates! In order to protect this land and his people, I expect of you all to put up a good fight!”

The fifty men answered to the Vanadis’ shout (cry) with cheers.

Sasha left the Imperial Palace accompanied by the knights, and rode the horse to the port town of Lippner.

[[File:Madan no Ou to Vanadis V7 p265.jpg|thumb]]

<center><big>◎</big></center>


At that time, Ellen, who was told the unvarnished truth, was in a awful state.

The glow from her silver hair shining bathing in the sunlight was lost and looked like gray; her hair was disheveled like a worn-out broom, and her expression was nothing but dark.

Though it was five days ago that there were the first changes, it was not awful to this degree at the time.

It was three days ago that she showed a rapid deterioration. And then as the days went by yesterday and today, the silver-haired Vanadis showed a change to the extent that it even thrilled the knights and the maids, who had served her for years. From her pupils, reminiscent of the best ruby, shine disappeared and took the color of dried blood, and there were slightly dark circles on her eyelids.

It was such a state that there was no room even for the soldiers and the maids to candidly call out to her.

Regarding the messenger from the capital and the territory people, who brought a petition, she fixed her appearance, straightened her back, tightened her face and splendidly dealt with them as a Vanadis. But, when it came only to those around her, who knew her, she would immediately behave like an exhausted old cat.

Though the people, who worked at the Imperial Palace, asked for an explanation to Limlisha, who was Ellen’s adjutant, Lim was not able to give a satisfied answer.

“About the rule, a situation, which afflicted Eleonora-sama, has occurred. But, since it won’t last like that for many days, I would appreciate if you diligently worked in your duties as usual. Eleonora would also want it.”


Though Lim felt indignation towards her incompetence as she could only spit out such conventional words, she also had no other measures, which could be adopted.

Even Teita, the maid who served Tigre, was worried about Ellen; what she could only do was to make pastry and pass it to Lim. Saying that she wanted Ellen to eat it. Despite inwardly holding mixed feelings, Lim expressed her gratitude and received it.

It began five days ago. Messengers from the capital Silesia showed up respectively here and Olmutz in the south. Since the content they expressed was pretty much the same, it was about the fact that they should look out for the south and had to be ready so that they could take out the soldiers at any time.

In the south of Zchted was the Kingdom of Muozinel. The people’s skin there was brown, and it was a country, which was continuing the slavery even now in the neighboring countries. Since their current King was particularly belligerent, Zchted and Muozinel had many times crossed swords.

It seemed that one hundred thousand soldiers of that Muozinel began to move near the borderline of both countries. Though Zchted sent right away a messenger to ask them what their purpose was, they did not stop there. There was also the need to look out for the south in preparation for a sudden attack.


Speaking of the Vanadis who was in the south of the Kingdom of Zchted, there were the two persons of Ludmira Lurie who governed Olmutz, and Sophia Obertas who governed Polesia. However, Sophie was currently heading towards the capital from Legnica.

Therefore, the request came to Ellen of LeitMeritz. If the one hundred thousand soldiers were to cross the border and invade the country, Mira and Ellen were to ambush the enemy.

Although Ellen looked displeased, she ordered Lim and the knights to make preparations so that the soldiers could move at any time. Normally, she would have said ‘don’t joke by asking me to fight side by side with Mira, with who I’m on very bad terms’.

But, one hundred thousand enemies were an opponent who would not permit such selfishness. Ellen was at least aware of that.

And three days ago. This time, a letter of Sasha arrived from Legnica.

When she received the letter, which was carefully sealed with beeswax, Ellen could only think ‘it’s really exaggerated’. In the office, where she was with only Lim, she broke the seal, and looked over the letter inside.

The silver-haired Vanadis complexion changed.

“Eleonora-sama……?”

Lim, who noticed the change in Ellen, anxiously called out to her. Ellen, without saying anything, pushed to her the letter that she had finished reading. Lim received the letter while being perplexed.

And this time it was her turn to become appalled.


Tigrevurmud Vorn fell into the sea during the return from Asvarre and is missing.

Though most of the sentences that Sasha wrote, were to comfort and cheer Ellen, and claimed that there was still hope, the silver-haired Vanadis could barely bear to shout as dictated by her feelings.

“What, is this……?”

Tightly clasping her hands so strongly that her fingernails were digging in her palms and blood oozed, Ellen furiously cursed herself who let Tigre go to Asvarre about one month ago.

It was the voice of the eager Lim, who calmed her down.

“Eleonora-sama. I do not mean to complain about the content of Alexandra-sama’s letter, but with only one letter, we cannot judge just about everything. Besides, the situation may change again now.”

Though for Lim, Tigre was like a disciple, whom she was looking forward to growth, and the shock she received was also great, she was rather able to keep her composure and calmed down Ellen so that her feelings did not rampage any more than this.

As she soon settled down to the extent that she could think straight<ref> to the extent that her thoughts operated all right </ref>, Ellen asked Lim something to drink.

“Strong alcohol would be good.”

“It is still daytime.”


The voice of Lim, who briefly responded, was cold; it was because she was inwardly feeling the same way. However, the Imperial Palace’s Lord and her adjutant must not get drunk when it was still daytime.

She took out something mixed with honey and squeezed the grapevine in cold water. When Ellen swallowed it in a mouthful and sighed, she said to Lim with a wry look, which she had never shown so far.

“How will we tell this…… to Teita?”

Lim, who was also preparing one drink for herself, stood motionless with her mouth wide-opened. Though she did not let the bottle of honey that she had in her hand fall, she unintentionally inclined too much the frighteningly too sweet drink in the glass.

Teita was not just a maid. It was a girl, who had lived together with Tigre since he was little, served him as a maid when the youth became a feudal lord, and bravely followed him and acted as his personal care when it was decided that Tigre would live in LeitMeritz.

Both Ellen and Lim also knew that she was harboring feelings beyond the master-servant relation for Tigre. After Tigre left for Asvarre, whenever Teita was worrying about her master and her small chest hurt, it was Ellen or Lim, who comforted and cheered her up.

With that reason alone, they could not arrive at a conclusion. It was by no means because Ellen and Lim were indecisive, or the width of their thinking was narrow, it was just that they could not come up with a concrete plan.

“……How about we observed the situation for the time being?”


Before long, Lim made the suggestion that they could only put it off, which was unlike her. Ellen also accepted it with a bitter face. There were the only two persons who read the letter from Sasha. They could not spoke of it to anyone, since they did not know from where it would leak out.

“You’re right. Sooner or later, it will be widely known that the civil war of Asvarre is over……”

“Yes. Anyway, until then, we will leave it at that Lord Tigrevurmud has not yet returned from his trip……”

Though the two decided so for the time being, they did not work at all that day. Even if she took the documents in her hands, she did not feel inclined to follow the characters, and got the wrong passage when trying to head somewhere. Even when the meal was prepared, she did not even touch it; and when she realized, everything, even the soup, had cooled down.

And then today. This time, it was the servant, who served Sasha, who sent a letter.

''---I wonder if it’s a follow-up report concerning Tigre.''

She thought so, but if it was the case, she did not understand why it was not a letter from Sasha, but from the servant. Although Ellen looked puzzled, she broke the seal.

At this time, Ellen knew that pirates were heading towards Zchted with a large fleet of eighty vessels. And also that Sasha went to the battlefield.

''---What is the meaning of this? I haven’t heard that she was feeling better.''

The servant continued by writing up that he did not tell Sasha about this letter. That though it was a selfish wish, whether she could ascertain Sasha’s battle.


『It seems that Alexandra-sama has chosen the battlefield as a place where she wants to die. Even if we are her retainers, we are not that person’s friends. I humbly ask to Eleonora-sama, who is that person’s friend. I wonder if you could come over to the port town of Lippner. 』

The servant had probably written this letter with the thought like spitting blood. The last characters of the letter were awfully warped.

What he wanted for Ellen was not to help Sasha, but to ascertain her battle.

“Eleonora-sama.”

Lim, who read the letter after Ellen, said in a serene tone as a matter of fact.

“Please go to Lippner.”

“Lim. What are you saying……?”

Ellen was about to retort, but she unintentionally swallowed her following words before Lim’s blue eyes.

“While presumptuous, I will take care of the response to the south. Nobody but Eleonora-sama can take the role to run to Alexandra-sama’s side.”

Ellen was confused as Lim said so in an unusually firm tone. There was no way that she did not want to go. However, if Muozinel were to move during Ellen’s absence, it would be concern with the fate of Zchted itself.


Ellen’s red eyes usually filled with brightness trembled with hesitation and anxiety. Still, Lim spoke vehemently.

“Let’s suppose that Eleonora-sama does not move from here. And then we heard news of Alexandra-sama’s death. Would you still be able to make a decent judgment? With just the matter of Lord Tigrevurmud, that we only know that he is missing, you have been shaken up like this.”

“……I don’t want to hear that from you.”

Though Ellen was indeed angry and glared at her adjutant, who was older than her and also her best friend, she immediately relaxed her shoulders and made an awkward smile.

“……I‘m going.”

As she got rid of her hesitation, her decision was quick. To that answer, Lim nodded contentedly.

“Please, take care.”

On that day, Ellen rode the horse, left the Imperial Palace and headed towards the north. Just innocently galloping in the highway. And just wishing to make it in time to Sasha’s battle.

<center><big>◎</big></center>


When following the highway to the north from Legnica and crossed the very large river of Valta, one entered in Lebus. It was the land which the Vanadis Elizavetta Fomina governed. Although Legnica was still filled with the air of autumn, signs of winter had already started drifting in Lebus.

It was several days later after Sasha headed to the port town of Lippner that Elizavetta had gathered her main subordinates in the conference room of the Imperial Palace and spoke of the departure for the front.

A blazing fire was burning in the fireplace made of brick geared towards one section of the walls. The windows were closed so as not to let the warm air escape; therefore, one could hardly say that the room was bright. Elizavetta and nearly ten subordinates were surrounding a huge table of walnut.

“Will you accept the request of Legnica?”

To her subordinates, who were surprised, Elizavetta nodded with a face, which said “of course”.

“We also receive a report from the port within this territory that a large army of pirates were seen, right? So it would be natural to crush them before the territory people encounter damage.”

Swaying her red hair, which reached down to her waist, the Lord of Lebus smiled. She would be 18 years old this year. Although just like the other Vanadis, she also had nicknames such as “{{furigana|Flash Princess of the Thunder Swirl|Isgrifa}}” and “{{furigana|Danseuse of the Whip|Kuntos}}”, Elizavetta was not less called by another nickname.

“{{furigana|Rainbow Eyes|Laziris}}”. Those, who had eyes of different colors in left and right, were called so in Zchted.

The golden pupil in Elizavetta’s right eye and the blue pupil in her left eye were shining. Before that, her rich body also piled up many pieces fabrics and the impression of her fancy dress using frills or races grew dim.


Regarding the story that a {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}} appeared a few days ago, what was necessary was just to call for caution to the port town in the territory of Lebus; but if the opponents were the pirates, then it was a different issue.

She did not hear the talk that a {{furigana|sea dragon|badva}} appeared near the port town, but that the pirates would attack the port town. She had to repulse them as the Lord of Lebus and as a Vanadis.

''---Besides, there is one thing that bothers me.''

Elizavetta once again looked over the letter from Sasha. It was certainly written that Sasha herself would lead the soldiers and ride on a ship.

The shock that this sentence gave to Elizavetta was by no means small. It said that afflicted by a disease, Alexandra Alshavin, who had always been in her bedroom, went to the battlefield.

''---I haven’t heard at all that she recovered from her disease. Even if she has recovered to the extent of being able to take command in a battlefield, such rumors should have also reached my ears though.''

Elizavetta wanted to confirm Sasha’s condition with her own eyes.

“But, don’t we take over without applying any conditions?”

The complaint of one of the subordinates, who seemed to be dissatisfied, pulled back to reality Elizavetta, who was immersed in her thoughts. Similarly the people of Lebus also had hard feelings against the people of Legnica. Also regarding Sasha, there were a lot of people, who spoke ill behind her back of the fact that a sick person was calling herself Vanadis.


“If Vanadis-sama there also goes to the front, shouldn’t we let them go through hardships there for about a day or two?

“I think so too. Although the battlefield may be a Knight’s honor, it’s not something to willingly shoulder a heavy burden.”

It was when the subordinates enthusiastically further tried to persuade their Lord. To the sound, which cut through the air, the sound of something hard firmly hitting the stone floor sharply followed. The flame of the fireplace flickered.

As Elizavetta wielded the whip in her hand, her subordinates immediately understood.

The red-haired Vanadis stood up from the chair before one knew and scowled at her subordinates. The jet black whip in her hand, wore a golden light that seemed to be blown off flying if touched, and was quietly shining.

This was the {{furigana|Dragonic Tool|Viralt}}, which made Elizavetta Vanadis. She only used (wielded) this whip, which was called the {{furigana|Thunder Swirl|Valitsaif}}, on the enemy. But, there was no one among her subordinates, who did not know how frightening it was.

The conference room fell silent as if the enthusiasm until a while ago was a lie. Looking around with her two-color pupils at her subordinates, who kept quiet almost simultaneously, Elizavetta smiled contentedly.

“I love to force trouble on a hateful other party. But – I hate to let a sick person work.”

Those, who understood that, especially the latter half of her lines, which was without falsehood her true feelings, were not in this place. However, struck by a thunder- like dignity contained in the tone of her voice, the subordinates stood from the chair and all together got down on a knee<ref> to express respect </ref>. Elizavetta forgave them by nodding generously.


“If Alexandra came out, I think that the morale of the soldiers of Legnica will be very high. Isn’t it rather necessary to display the military power of Lebus? At least it is my intention.”

Stirred up by the sense of rivalry, fire was burning in her subordinates’ fighting spirit. As Elizavetta confirmed it from their expressions, she ordered the departure after one koku.

The subordinates hurriedly left; Elizavetta, who was left alone in the conference room, gazed out at the fire of the fireplace. Suddenly, a question, which gushed forth, came out of her mouth.

“……I wonder what Eleonora will do, since Alexandra departs to the front.”

Multiple feelings intricately colored the two-color pupils of Elizavetta. Whenever she thought about Ellen, she would begin to recall it. The day when the two met for the first time, in a poor village of the countryside eight years ago. The remote past when the two were not Vanadis. And also the several incidents which occurred two years ago.

When she came to her senses, though she knew that she was alone in this place, Elizavetta ran her gaze to the surroundings, and then sharply tightened her expression. She shook her head to brush aside the question and the nostalgia.

She herself knew well that, when immersed in her memories, she was putting on a face just like a child who lost sight of his mother.

[[File:Madan no Ou to Vanadis V7 p279.jpg|thumb]]

<center><big>◎</big></center>


There were two kinds of warships owned by Legnica. Though both were galley ships<ref> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley </ref>, the size was different.

One was thin galley ship called ‘spear’. There was one mast and it could load one hundred twenty rowers and eighty soldiers. Anyway, one might say that the maneuverability was the merit of this kind of ship.

The other was large galley ship called ‘crossbow’ (rook). The ship itself was of a three-step structure, and there were two to three masts. It could load two hundred eighty rowers and one hundred fifty soldiers. Though its motion was stolid because the hull was big, it was also possible to stack catapults.

In fact, unless you were either a knight or a genuine sailor, you would not make a difference by calling them ‘spear’ or ‘crossbow’. The communication by calling them more violently ‘the big one’ and ‘the thin one’ was the mainstream.

By the way, there was no sailing ship. This was because the sailing ship, with which the motion was left to the wind, was suitable for a battle.

Regarding not only Legnica, but also Lebus, and the kingdoms such as Brune and Asvarre, the division of the warship was virtually similar. Though there were those who made ships and weapons of various structures, they never happened to become the mainstream on the battlefield.

The time that Sasha arrived at Lippner, there were already more than thirty warships in the port town impatiently waiting for the departure. Though the chief of Lippner saw Sasha, who was clad in her military outfit, and revealed a surprised expression, he immediately pulled himself together and respectfully bowed.


The black-haired Vanadis returned a smile, and then noticed a familiar figure standing beside the chief of Lippner. With short hair and a visibly tanned burnt skin. A black silk hat and a deep crimson overcoat wrapping his big frame. And above all, his look that might make a child cry just by making eyes contact.

“Vanadis-sama. Though I’m not a soldier but a mere former sailor, if you could give me permission, could you add me to the end of the line of battle?”

That man, who exaggeratedly bowed was Matvey. Sasha walked up to him and asked while shrugging her shoulders.

“You just came back from a long trip, right? Aren’t you tired?”

“It is as you say, but I did not rampage enough.”

“…..What else?”

Sasha, who noticed that fragments of sincere feelings were mixed to Matvey’s touch of humor, shortly asked. Matvey erased his smile and calmly replied.

“When the pirates’ subjugation ends, I would like to borrow one ship with food and water.”

He probably wanted to search for Tigre. Though he might actually want to go out to the sea even right now, as expected he could not set foot where eighty ships of pirates were loitering. Fighting under Sasha should be the quickest way.

“Understood. Then, I will have you be my personal attendant just during this war.”


Though Sasha quickly approved, not only Matvey, who was told this, but also the chief of Lippner standing nearby was surprised. As she smiled at the two men, the black-haired Vanadis immediately put on a serious expression, and confirmed what was necessary. The number of ships, the number of rowers, the number of soldiers, food and water, future weather and wind’s direction forecasts, and the area of the sea, where the enemy was last detected. There was a lot of things she should confirm.

Then after a half koku, the naval forces of Legnica left the port. The lineup was thirty one ‘spear’ ships and three ‘crossbow’ ships, and the best state ‘crossbow’ served as Sasha’s flagship.

Though it was less than half the number of pirates who learnt by hearsay, Sasha did not particularly mind.

“We will first go to the north along the continent and join the naval forces of Elizavetta. Even if the amount of material resources counts more in a naval battle than a land battle, by the time we are waiting to gather more than 80 ships with only Legnica, the damage would just expand.”

While taking the sea breeze on her body at the deck of the flagship, Sasha explained so to her subordinates. Besides, if it was along the continent, there was self-confidence that the people of the Legnica army were more familiar with the reefs and the flow of tide in the area.

The fleet of thirty-four vessels was advancing to the north by pushing its way through the deep blue sea.

Sasha was giving orders while sitting on a chair prepared on the deck. However, if their advance was going smoothly, she would not particularly break in. Silently, what was necessary was just to show the General Commander's figure to the sailors.


Although the sky was cloudless blue and the blazing sunlight was severe, Sasha did not go down in the cabin, and she continued to show her figure on the deck.

Though there were several reasons such as the pride of a Vanadis, who was the greatest (reason), and the fact that the gloomy cabin reminded her of her bedroom in the Imperial Palace, it was also because she liked to look at the sea absentmindedly while taking the sea breeze. In addition, there was also the fact that her condition did not particularly get worse since she left the Imperial Palace.

The morale of the soldiers and rowers was high due to the fact that the Vanadis was the General Commander, and Legnica army smoothly proceeded on the sea.

After Legnica army left for the sea, three days had passed since the ship, which left for scout, reported that it saw the figure of a group likely to be pirate ships. The pirate ships were around ten, and it was said that they had gone away as soon as they were detected from far away.

Sasha, who received the report, tightened her expression while leaving the calmness (staying calm).

“A few days from now, each military force will sound out each other.”

It was scheduled that they could join Lebus army led by Elizavetta tomorrow. Sasha, though not openly, was happy that she responded to the call.

''---Lebus has also about thirty ships. Along with my naval forces, there are a little more than 60. I wonder if Elizavetta and I can fill the difference of nearly 20 ships with the pirates……''


The sun set and the ships lowered the anchor and moored. Sasha was recommended to return to her cabin, but she said “only a little more”, put on a thick coat and still stayed on the deck.

Currently, there were only several guards beside her on the deck. The golden moon shining in the sky, was faintly illuminating the sea with the stars. Though the air had considerably gotten cold, since the two blades in Sasha’s waist freely began to warm their master, she did not feel that much cold.

“It’s too late to say it, but you don’t listen to me at all, eh?”

Sasha revealed a wry smile and stared at the golden and vermillion blades.

Though these two swords were with no doubt letting one think of flame and should actively be hearing what was said, whether they had good intentions and swiftly ran, there were quite a lot of things against which they turned a deaf ear to their master’s demand. Thus, their being in Sasha’s hands now, might be said to be the proof of it.

“Even though Ellen’s Arifal and Mira’s Lavias are more obedient…… At the time of the next Vanadis, I hope you’ll listen a little more to what she said──”

Sasha interrupted her words there. She brushed off the overcoat, and when she stood up from the chair, she was tightly grasping the twin swords to her waist with both hands. She felt an ominous presence.

Even the twin swords in her hands, coiling about crimson and golden flames on each blade, briskly emitted a warning. That something dangerous beyond imagination was close.

''---The prow, huh……''


Confirming that her hands and feet did not become stiff, Sasha walked to the prow. Even though it was on the top of a shaking ship, her steps were not different from walking on the ground.

As expected, one figure was standing there. The silhouette, which emerged dimly lighted by the moon, was that of a human. Though the age was unclear, the head with no hair was round and the physique was of medium build.

What was strange was that there was a sticky hostility released from that figure. It was clearly different to that of a human. It was not that of a beast, either. For an instant, Sasha even felt an illusion like she had strayed off (was lost) somewhere that was not this world.

Small sounds of dripping water struck Sasha’s ears at irregular intervals. Looking closely, the man was soaked from head to toe. That strange sound was due to water drops drooping from the hems of the man’s clothes and his fingertips.

''---He came by swimming, huh. In this sea at night.''

“……Who are you?”

Sasha asked of his identity with a sharp voice. As there was no reply, she asked a different question.

“What happened to the man who was here?”

There was always one person placed in the prow for lookout. There was no way that he would have not raised his voice after seeing someone suspicious. The man’s figure seemed to be laughing.

“Rather than a dead person, should you not worry about yourself? ──‘Twin Swords’<ref> it’s like that that Torbalan called Sasha. By the way, he also called Tigre ‘the bow’ and Olga ‘the axe’. So I assume he would call Sophie and the others Vanadis by the weapons’ names they use </ref>.”


Though Sasha knitted her brows at the strange way of calling, recalling a certain thing, she quickly set up the twin swords. She glared at the figure and inquired.

“……Are you Torbalan?”

Olga had said so. That he was calling her ‘the axe’ and Tigre ‘the bow’.

Mixed with the sea breeze, a lukewarm air different from it was sprayed. Even though in ten steps away from the man’s figure, tension and heavy pressure, which were also similar to that in the presence of a wild beast, wrapped Sasha.

“Did you hear from ‘the axe’ and ‘the bishop’s staff’? In any case, it saves me the long talk.”

That man, who did not have any weapon and was not wearing an armor either, casually shortened the distance while joyfully laughing. The deck creaked to the strong stepping forward. At that time, Sasha also lowered her waist and kicked the deck.

“Though it’s far from my taste……but it’s a Vanadis! You shall become my sacrifice and lessen my stomach!”

At the same time with the cry, a tremendous miasma was released. The man’s eyes gave off a red light that was tinged with bloodlust, and the hempen clothes, which he was wearing, could not withstand the swelling from the inside and were torn up in countless number.

In a blink of an eye, the man’s body swelled up to more than twice to that of Sasha. The skin illuminated by the moon was eerie white to a disgusting extent. There was no body hair and there were three spiral-shaped horns on his forehead. The right half of his face was hideously burned, and from the left shoulder to the right breast, there was something like a scar, which was scooped by something.

''---So this is a Demon……!''


Though Sasha stared wide-eyed in surprise, even if she was petrified on the spot, it was just for an instant. The white strong arm, which was swung down aiming at Sasha, only pulverized the deck and dug a big hole. Within the wood chips blown away along with the destruction sound, only sparks were falling as if dancing.

In a place several steps away from Torbalan, Sasha was standing in a stance of crossing the twin swords. Though screams broke out from the sailors who were under the deck, the black-haired Vanadis ignored it. Since in this situation, whatever she might say would only foster the chaos.

While moving on top of the deck as if sliding, both gradually shortened the distance. Sasha kicked the floor with a high sound. A moment later, an invisible shockwave was released from the Monster’s whole body.

It, which was adjusted so as not to destroy the area at his feet, mercilessly smashed the prow and the gunwale, and blew barrels and number of passengers into small pieces. The dregs of flame, with which Sasha’s twin swords were tinged, were scattered and melted into the darkness.

Torbalan’s face was stained with suspicion. This was because there was no response.

“──Above!”

The Demon swung his strong arm above. The shadow which slipped through the blow and fell, landed on the floor. Its identity was of course Sasha. Towards the black-haired Vanadis, who tried to take distance using the recoil of the landing, Torbalan released a shockwave in a flash without interval of time.

But, Sasha’s speed surpassed even that.


She dodged the shockwave in a dance-like movement and reestablished the twin swords in a place nearly ten steps away from the Demon. The flame which wrapped the blades, swept out the darkness by leaving a trail.

“Oh!” Torbalan raised a voice of admiration. Where Sasha was standing was literally one step forward of the range, in which the shockwave reached. In other words, it meant that she accurately saw through the effective range of the shockwave in a single glance.

Even if she knew about the shockwave since she heard about it from Olga, judging its effective range and avoiding it to the limit within this darkness was not common skill.

“It was the right choice to expressly come up to here. I think I will really enjoy it……”

At that time, something unusual happened to Torbalan’s right arm.

As the Demon’s arm got dislocated in the area of the elbow, a tip fell on the floor from the elbow along with a heavy sound. The cross-section was burnt black, and there was no gushing of blood.

The twin swords in Sasha’s hands each let flames of different colors vigorously rise up. As if displaying their master’s fighting spirit.

“──Next time, you will lose that unpleasant head.”

Setting up the two-color blades clad in flame, the {{furigana|Princess of the Dancing Blades|Cortisa}} calmly said.

(To be continued.)

<noinclude>

==References==
<references />

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| Return to [[Madan_no_Ou_to_Vanadis|Main Page]]
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</noinclude>

User:EnigmaticRepose

2013-09-11T14:30:57Z

EnigmaticRepose: Clearing and random quotation.

You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?

No Game No Life:Names and Terminology Guideline

2013-08-10T10:15:58Z

EnigmaticRepose: /* The Sixteen Races (The Exceed) and Nations / 十六種族(イクシード) */ Adding Eastern Union in since it's been used now.

==Characters==
===Mankind (Imanity) / 人類種（イマニティ）===
* Sora (空)
* Shiro (白)
:* Blank (空白, Kuuhaku). Mostly written as 『　』.
* Stephanie Dora (ステファニー・ドーラ)
:* Steph (ステフ)
*Cramy Zell (クラミー・ツェル)
*The Late King (先王)

===The Heavenly Winged (The Flügel<ref>German for Wing.</ref>) / 天翼種（フリューゲル）===
*Jibril<ref>Presumably named after the variation of Gabriel, an archangel.</ref> (ジブリール)

===Forest Sprites (Elves) / 森精種（エルフ）===
*Feel Nilvalen (フィール・ニルヴァレン)

===Therianthropes/Beastmen (Werebeasts) / 獣人種（ワービースト）===
*Hatsuse Izuna (初瀬いづな)
*Hatsuse Ino (初瀬いの)
*Priestess (『巫女』)

===Bloodsuckers (Dhampir) / 吸血種（ダンピール）===
*Plum (プラム)

===Sea Dwellers (Seirenes<ref>Nontraditional English spelling of "Siren". Seiren for singular usage. English form of "Siren" would be spelled closer to "サイレン".</ref>) / 海棲種（セーレーン）===
*Amira (アミラ)

===Others===
*Tet (テト)

==Locations==
*Disboard, the Boardtop World (【盤上の世界】ディスボード)
*Elchea (エルキア)
*Avant Heim (アヴァント・ヘイム)
*Elven Gard (エルヴン・ガルド)
*東部連合
*オーシェンド

==Terminology==
===The Ten Oaths (十の盟約)===
*【1】 All bloodshed, war, and pillage is forbidden throughout the world. / 【一つ】この世界におけるあらゆる殺傷、戦争、略奪を禁ずる
*【2】 All disputes are to be resolved through the outcome of games. / 【二つ】争いは全てゲームにおける勝敗で解決するものとする
*【3】 In games, wagers will be made on what both parties decide to be of equal value. / 【三つ】ゲームには、相互が対等と判断したものを賭けて行われる
*【4】 Unless contrary to "Three", the game content and the things wagered do not matter. / 【四つ】゛三゛に反しない限り、ゲーム内容、賭けるものは一切を問わない
*【5】 The challenged party has the right to decide the contents of the game / 【五つ】ゲーム内容は、挑まれた方が決定権を有する
*【6】 "As per the Oath", the wager will be unconditionally adhered to. / 【六つ】゛盟約に誓って゛行われた賭けは、絶対遵守される
*【7】 All matters for group conflicts will be decided by a representative. / 【七つ】集団における争いは、全件代理者をたてるものとする
*【8】 If cheating is detected during a game, it will be regarded as a defeat. / 【八つ】ゲーム中の不正発覚は、敗北と見なす
*【9】 The above rules are unconditionally everlasting, upheld in the name of God. / 【九つ】以上をもって神の名のもと絶対不変のルールとする
*【10】 Everyone should get along while playing games / 【十】みんななかよくプレイしましょう
*Acciente (アッシェンテ) - A term of consent regarding game contents, signalling the beginning of the game.

===The Sixteen Races (The Exceed) and Nations / 十六種族(イクシード)===
*First: Divine Spirits (Old Deus) / 【第一位】神霊種（オールドデウス）
*Second: Phantasma / 【第二位】幻想種（ファンタズマ）
*Third: Elementals / 【第三位】精霊種（エレメンタル）
*Fourth: ??? / 【第四位】???
*Fifth: Giants (Gigants) / 【第五位】巨人種（ギガント）
*Sixth: The Heavenly Winged (The Flügel) - Nation: Avant Heim / 【第六位】天翼種（フリューゲル）国家名：アヴァント・ヘイム
*Seventh: Forest Sprites (Elves) - Nation: Elven Gard / 【第七位】森精種（エルフ）国家名：エルヴン・ガルド
*Eighth: ??? / 【第八位】???
*Ninth: ??? / 【第九位】???
*Tenth: ??? / 【第十位】???
*Eleventh: ??? / 【第十一位】???
*Twelfth: Bloodsuckers (Dhampir) - Nation: オーシェンド / 【第十二位】吸血種（ダンピール）国家名：オーシェンド
*Thirteenth: ??? / 【第十三位】???
*Fourteenth: Therianthropes (Werebeasts) - Nation: Eastern Union / 【第十四位】獣人種（ワービースト）国家名：東部連合
*Fifteenth: Sea Dwellers (Seirenes) - Nation: オーシェンド / 【第十五位】海棲種（セーレーン）国家名：オーシェンド
*Sixteenth: Mankind (Imanity) - Nation: Elchea / 【第十六位】人類種（イマニティ）　国家名：エルキア

===Notes===
<references/>

<noinclude>
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