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The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume6 Chapter 2

2018-05-21T12:42:06Z

LazyHunter:

{{Incomplete|parts=7|tparts=15}}
==Chapter 2: Head to Heaven if You Want to Live==

===Part 1===

“Bwah!!!???”

Her equilibrium was shaken and psychedelic colors danced at the edge of her vision. Only after repeatedly suppressing an urge to vomit did Beatrice, the Holy Swordswoman in red armor and a white miniskirt, awaken with a start. She pressed her hands against the floor, tried and failed to get up, curled up in the fetal position with her long red and silver hair fanned out around her, and fought to suppress her trembling. It was her internal organs themselves moving, not her muscles or bones.

The experience of death and defeat was powerful.

The simulation had seemed all too real, so after awakening from that vivid dream, her memories were a mess and she was very confused.

…She had predicted it to an extent, but the “conclusion” she had seen had been far too tragic. The Reds – the Iberian Orcs afflicted with some kind of disease – had filled the world with their fierce attacks. But that memory could not be mechanically erased either. Nightmare or not, none of it was unnecessary. If she threw away the acquired information instead of accumulating it, it would all be meaningless.

“Pant, pant…”

Beatrice decided to remember it all piece by piece as she wiped the sweat from her brow.

This was Ground’s Nir.

It was nighttime and she was inside a small brick house in the mountains away from the human inn town.

It was Boo Boo’s house.

She was technically in the attic where Ultimate Weapon Abyss, who was missing an arm and whose neck was bent at an odd angle, was lying on her back. She looked like a silver-haired girl wearing a one-piece swimsuit with a large hole, but she was actually an artificial creation. However, she was equipped with digital thought circuits that surpassed the human brain.

Their current strategy was entirely reliant on Abyss who had two strands of mottled silver hair hanging down in front of her.

She had connected to Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina’s minds, extracted the basic information as electrical signals, and constructed an accurate strategic VR simulation based on that so they could experience the coming tragedy in advance.

Abyss would be seeing Earth for the first time as the simulation host, so Beatrice felt kind of bad for sullying her first experience like this.

“Filinion…Armelina…? Are you okay too…?”

She was answered by groans that made her think of large frogs being slowly crushed underfoot. Those two did not have it in them to maintain the mask of a kind and beautiful young woman at the moment.

In fact…

“Now I’m worried I looked this pathetic just a second ago. Pull yourselves together for my sake at least.”

“You really don’t show any mercy to anyone other than Boo Boo, do you?”

“You really don’t show any mercy to anyone other than Boo Boo, do you?”

While speaking in the cursed voice of someone climbing up from the pit of hangover hell, White Witch Filinion dragged along her witch’s hat and large cap and Fighter Priest Armelina gave no thought for the slit in the sides of her priest’s outfit as she finally managed to get up from the attic floor.

“S-so how did you two die? For me, the downpour started while I was moving from the armored truck to an attack helicopter, so I was caught in the flowing mud until the bottles of sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid in my duffel bag broke and dragged me into a hell of my own creation…”

“I stayed in the armored truck too long, so a Red smashed it with a blunt weapon. The entire vehicle was crushed flat and then roasted in a giant explosion. What about you, Beatrice?”

“……………………………………………………………………I really don’t want to talk about it……………………………………………………………………”

The dull look in her eyes was far greater than the other two’s.

The Holy Swordswoman’s glassy eyes were devoid of all light and that told the other two that something even worse had happened to her, so they gently lifted their feet from the gas.

“(W-was she devoured in the selection? But devoured in which way???)”

“(Shh! She’s a sensitive teenager. B-besides, it only happened in virtual reality, so it’s like being bit by a digital stray dog. Even if it was the worst case scenario, there’s nothing to worry about. Because it was only virtual. Bwa ha ha!!)”

“Dahhh!!”

Beatrice threw her hands in the air and screamed.

The pure teenager glared at the insensitive idiots who had lifted their feet from the gas but had not considered stepping on the brakes and she spoke out half in desperation.

“They rushed at me in all directions while in mating mode, but as soon as they tackled me with their fearsome strength, I was crushed to death!! And my final line was ‘nboh’. There, happy now!?”

“Crushed by a group of sweaty and horny fat men until your organs burst out of every hole? Yeah, that’s pretty tragic…”

“Crushed by a group of sweaty and horny fat men until your organs burst out of every hole? Yeah, that’s pretty tragic…”

“Don’t imagine it in such detail!! And you two were either dissolved to the bone with powerful acid or blown to charred bits, right? None of our fates were anywhere close to something we could let others see. How about I describe yours in detail too!? …And Armelina, I’m never going to forget that joke you made. That was like something an old man would say. …Come to think of it, you are reaching that age, aren’t you?”

“Ah!? You wanna fight, Beatrice!?”

While Beatrice and Armelina got into a scuffle that doubled as the beginnings of rehabilitation, Filinion just stood there and watched with no intent of healing any wounds this caused.

Fitting for the ultimate weapon, it seemed Abyss had left some horrifying data with them. If they could replay the file in VR format and send it into someone else’s brain (pain included), it could be used as a new form of projectile weapon.

They must have caused quite a commotion because a worried face poked up from the ladder leading down to the hallway. It was far too large to be human.

“Squeal. Beatrice, what happened? I know you were taking a nap, so did you have a bad dream?”

“Oh, Boo Boo. Wait just a moment. Armelina has entered her crazy mode, so don’t look! This might be something she will seriously regret later on!!”

“Shut up! It’s long since time I taught you to respect this clever, kind, nice-smelling, and perfect young woman. I won’t be satisfied until I’ve stripped your insolent ass bare and given you 100 spankings!!”

“…Spankings as punishment? How old are you?”

“…Spankings as punishment? How old are you?”

“Don’t say that in unison, little girls!! Filinion, now I’ve added you to the war crimes list too!!”

The girls went on to grab at each other and tug things out of place like they were mud wrestling, but their armor and miniskirts were meant for combat while exploring the harsh Labyrinth. They would not break so easily.

Meanwhile, Boo Boo was so unchanged that Beatrice thought she might cry tears of relief.

His skin had not turned red and he showed no sign of enacting that selection where the weak were eaten and the strong mated with. Yes, he alone was fine. He was not afflicted by the Red disease and that was why he alone had been allowed to escape when the village was attacked long ago.

She had known that.

She had known it, but the red armor and miniskirt girl was still so relieved that her heart trembled.

He held a hand to his mouth and spoke in a troubled voice.

“Boo. You shouldn’t fight. Abyss is sleeping, so keep it down! …Keep this up and I might have to hit all of you as punishment.”

“That would physically crush me, so leave me out of it!!”

“That would physically crush me, so leave me out of it!!”

“That would physically crush me, so leave me out of it!!”

Even if it had been in VR, those three girls had just seen the threat of the Iberian Orcs. Boo Boo’s words led the two muscular morons to stop grappling and for some reason the White Witch joined them in sitting apologetically before him.

Boo Boo tilted his head like he did not really understand.

“So what did your nap say?”

“Ugh… The simulation only taught us that any direct attack is guaranteed to fail. We really do have to end this before the apocalyptic Reds break loose.”

“Squeal. Beatrice, you’re such a romanticist to rely on dream prophecies.”

He indeed did not understand. Beatrice was a little curious who had taught him the word “romanticist”. Had it been Succubus Tselika who had disguised herself as a Nun, had it been the Sage, or had it been Royal Elf Sibyl?

“There’s still some food left, so you can eat if you want. I made sure not to eat it all for your sakes. I can restrain myself if I try!”

“…W-well, I think I can handle some porridge. So what’s on the menu?”

“Meat. You can never go wrong with meat! Serve meat and there will be a smile on everyone’s face!!”

Beatrice and the others were concerned about that fairly vague response, but they still followed Boo Boo from the attic and to the ground floor. There must have been further additions built because there was a second floor in between.

The hand-sized Fairies had built his house with a fireplace and chimney, but it did not have a kitchen with a hand pump well or brick oven, so when eating, he generally built a campfire outside and had a barbecue.

They stepped outside to find Ground’s Nir’s peaceful blue sky.

It was not harshly divided between a dry season and rainy season, and everything would not be swept away by mud after a sudden downpour.

Also, it seemed Boo Boo had not made the food. The hand-sized Fairies named Meridiana, Alice, and Morgan were flying around while Fairy Queen Sutriona used both hands to deal with a (Boo Boo-sized) skewer of meat and Giant Onion like it was a barbell.

That Break News had a black ribbon dress wrapped around her skinny, undeveloped body, and the large floral decorations shook as she casually spoke.

“Oh, so you’re up. You didn’t have much luck, did you? Just making an estimate from the size of their skeleton and muscles, they’re far beyond what mere humans can handle. I know you’re disheartened, but eat some tasty food and cheer up.”

The food was a lot like skewers of grilled chicken, but each piece of meat rivaled a one-pound steak in size. If a pound does not mean much to you, you can convert that into about 450 grams. Each one would probably be too big to fit in a girl’s small bento box. A single skewer contained enough meat to shock a Westerner and Beatrice had to avert her gaze since her stomach was still squirming a little.

And an odd scene came into view.

There was red, red, red, and more red as far as the eye could see.

Those powerful and horrifying Iberian Orcs were curled up and arranged in neat rows.

“…”

The way they had crouched down, curled up, and come to a complete stop made them look like giant eggs laid on the ground. But these red eggs of slaughter would bring about the end of the world once they hatched.

They had not accepted their own rampage.

They had not accepted the Redness afflicting them as an excuse.

So they had used all their might to suppress their power and entered a dormant state. Then White Witch Filinion’s tranquilizer potions and Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau’s low-temperature treatment had externally reinforced that state.

Of course, this was only a temporary calm that came with a time limit. If that had solved everything, Beatrice’s Party would not have been continuing their trial and error tests.

White Witch Filinion poked at the side of her glasses and spoke.

“We can’t actually solve this with Gruagach’s Summon Hunter power like we were trying in the simulation, right?”

“Right. That requires both sides to accept the contract, so the Iberian Orcs have to be awake for it to work. Gruagach could easily get their consent using Tselika’s Charm, but there is no stopping the Reds’ rampage once they wake up, so we would be right back where we started.”

Huldra, a miniskirt cheerleader with pink twintails and pompoms whose behavior was so overly cutesy it felt fake, casually joined the conversation.

“Chief, I’ve learned how to administer the crucial tranquilizer potion, but it doesn’t look like I can Mix it. The White Witch threw in Sutriona’s blood wings and Ireana’s roots for some kind of unique potion that’s just too dangerous for me to copy.”

“Heh. What a pain. Sounds like no one can do anything without my peerless genius around. Grin, grin.”

“Wipe that smug grin off your face, cow. If no one but you can make it, it means we can’t get a stable supply, which leaves us in big trouble.”

After Armelina’s exasperated response, curly blue-haired Wildefrau approached while holding a skewer of only vegetables. She spoke while nearly nude except for the cross sword she wore.

“Either way, the low-temperature treatment is entirely reliant on me. Simply freezing them with a great enough power would be one thing, but safely guiding them to hibernation without harming them is something else entirely. Grin, grin, grin.”

“What is it with all of you and your smug grins!? We’re not here to brag about how powerful we are! Quite the opposite!! What we want is a generic ability, not a unique one!!”

If even one of the Reds surrounding them were to awaken, they would be attacked by the scenario seen in the strategic VR simulation put together by Abyss. Once that red apocalypse began, it was all over. It was human nature to want as many safeties in place as possible.

For now, the girls began a strategy meeting while accepting one of the Boo Boo-sized skewers and deciding to share it since it was too much for one person.

Beatrice let out a slow breath and started speaking.

“To be blunt, how long will this dormant state last?”

“Theoretically, about 10 hours, but the actual limit is fairly fluid. Who knows how much it could shrink based on external stimuli. Munch.”

“Wait, Wildefrau has a vegetable skewer, so if we’re going to share one, let’s go grab a meat one. Meat!”

“Eh heh heh. The fatty meat is so good. This really is the best. Munch, munch.”

“…Are you serious? I’m a guy and even I’m a little disturbed by how extreme an athletic festival this feels like. Well, if that’s what you like, I’ll leave it to you, glasses girl. Munch.”

The girls(?) held a hand to the side of their head to keep the dripping grease from their hair as they bit into the meat with their small mouths.

The red-armored and white miniskirted Holy Swordswoman struggled with the large meat as she continued the discussion.

“External stimuli? You mean – munch – you think there could be an attack?”

“Once the scope of the threat reaches them, I imagine some people will think this dormant state is the perfect time to attack. Munch, munch.”

“Even though Level Cappers like us couldn’t even dislocate a single joint in an attack, huh?”

It was cruel, but Beatrice’s Party had already considered preventing the Iberian Orcs from moving any of their limbs to prevent the disaster. In the end, those representative examples of the Level Cappers were unable to even scratch that copper skin and their only accomplishment was possibly hastening the time limit with the pain signals.

Their opponents were that untouchable even while asleep.

How much worse would it be once they woke up and their violence blossomed?

The simulation led by Abyss had provided the answer to that.

“But won’t a lot of people refuse to believe it until they try it for themselves? Offense isn’t my specialty, so it doesn’t really make sense to me. Mm, lick…”

“…Filinion, I know you don’t want that dripping meat juice to go to waste, but you really shouldn’t hold out your hands and catch it on your tongue.”

“I bet that glasses cow would catch the meat in her cleavage if it fell off the skewer. Then she’d close one eye and shout ‘hot…!’ ”

“Yeah, she is a glasses girl.”

“It’s like she’s just asking to get the grease all over the lenses. …And, chief, don’t you wear glasses back in reality?”

“Attention, everyone!! Weren’t we holding a strategy meeting!!!???”

Perhaps thanks to the blessing of vegetables, Wildefrau remained relatively sane and steered them back on course. In a way, the fact that all their insults did not cause their friendships to break down was proof that their bonds were real.

“Mm. Hey, Filinion, you still don’t know what exactly the Redness is, right?”

“Their blood rusts over. It may be something like a hereditary disease that came about in the process of evolving in a more aggressive direction. Munch. But I’ve checked through their body tissue and I can’t find any abnormality like that. There’s no difference in the chromosomes between the elder’s group and healthy Boo Boo and there’s no sign of toxins, bacteria, or other foreign substances. And when compared to Boo Boo, I can’t find any nutrient they’re missing. On the physical front, they should be healthy as can be.”

No matter how much they bit and tore off pieces of the meat, it never seemed to grow smaller, but someone had made it for them. Armelina was an adult, so she refused to look displeased with it as she spoke up.

“But the Reds are definitely in an abnormal state, right? Munch, munch.”

“Yes. So that means there isn’t anything wrong with them ''as far as I can investigate''. And if a recovery-specialty Level Capper like me can’t get to the bottom of it, it must be something really well hidden.”

“Well, the Sage has mastered all Magic with no gaps whatsoever, but not even she could cure them. I guess we didn’t need the cow to tell us it isn’t something so simple.”

“Did you…did you have to do that!? I went to the trouble of making a grim expression for that great line, so why would you bring up someone else to obliterate my own name value!? Beatrice! Look me in the eye! Dammit, you’re wearing armor, so you can’t read your palm no matter how hard you stare at it!! W-waaaaahhhhn!!”

Another girl used her small mouth to join the giant meat eating challenge. The long ears sticking out from her glossy blonde hair twitched as she spoke.

“Munch, munch. What the humans are going to do is obvious enough from observing their inn town. They’re all raising war cries and preparing for a hunt in the mountains. They sure have a lot of excess energy when they’re still rebuilding the town after the Underworld battle.”

“Sibyl?”

Even though she wore a green miniskirt dress with the chest wide open and ate this overly sumptuous feast by brushing her fine hair back and tearing off pieces of meet with her small mouth, the Royal Elf looked somehow refined.

“People lose control more easily when acting out of fear than out of anger. From the look of things, I doubt you could stop them from making their attack if you tried to persuade them now. Of course, even if the humans join together and attack the dormant Reds, they cannot kill them. They will only shorten the time limit. But at the same time, there are so many of them. Preventing a single piece of Magic from hitting the Reds is unrealistic. We will have to assume a shortened time limit in whatever we do.”

“I get that, but is what you said before really true?”

“Yes.”

Beatrice’s comment could have been seen as a challenge or a simple question, but Sibyl responded with a composed expression.

“…Munch. The Sage has lost her cool and is no help whatsoever since this has to do with the Iberian Orc elder. As a ruler, I have decided that the shortest route to regaining control of Ground’s Nir is to guide you and indirectly achieve my objective. Munch, munch.”

“Th-this princess sure can eat.”

“I kind of like this. I did run the meat-focused Girl’s Grill when we were in the inn town, if you recall. And as the proud ruler of the forest, my metabolism works differently from you humans. I need not blind myself with external looks, bind myself with an excessive aesthetic focus, and pathetically restrict my diet.”

“Is this elitist just saying she can eat whatever she wants without gaining weight? Y’know, that concept that might as well be picking a fight with the female half of the population! Do we have to start a war of the worlds against that unreasonably thin body!!!???”

Armelina was filled with dark hatred, but Royal Elf Sibyl ignored her and maintained her elegant image as she continued.

“To find a drastic solution to the Redness afflicting the Iberian Orcs, we need the hidden treasures guarded by the three royal families, which includes me. I believe that was what we had discussed.”

===Part 2===

If they were going to share so much food, couldn’t they just remove it from the skewer? Beatrice’s Party eventually arrived at that most basic of questions, so they moved the humongous pieces of meat onto large plates, transforming the meeting into a party with the plates sitting on stumps instead of a table. …Boo Boo and Sutriona were clearly abnormal for eating a seemingly endless number of those skewers.

“So what are the three royal families’ hidden treasures?”

Sibyl resumed speaking in her green dress with the chest wide open.

She used a knife to cut off a small piece of the giant meat.

“To be honest, there is a strong tradition saying we must protect them, but we don’t actually remember why. I admit it’s kind of pathetic. The breakthrough came from Demon Lord Tselika. Without her and Skull Wave, I never would have realized the true meaning of the three treasures.”

Sibyl, Tselika, the Sage, and Skull Wave… Those four stood quite near the peak, so they must not have wanted any connections between each other. Sibyl and the Sage had worked together and there was a connection between Tselika and Skull Wave, but that was all. They had been satisfied with their small groups and had never had a chance to exchange much information.

The strongest did not let the loneliness get the better of them. Instead, to avoid the annoyance of speaking with people of differing values, they had intentionally distanced the people who would never understand them – or that they had assumed would never understand them. That was a bitter experience that Beatrice herself had gone through in the past.

Boo Boo had changed all that.

Just as his actions had opened Beatrice’s lonely heart of the strongest, he had broken through so many people’s shells and given them a chance to connect with others. If he had only been strong, he would only have violently beaten them down and forced them to obey. If he had only been kind, he would have been killed in a counterattack. It was only by possessing both qualities that he had managed to open so many people’s hearts.

Sibyl breathed an emotional sigh.

“Demon Lord Tselika is a collector with her own treasure trove in the Cave of Tears and, according to her, if you gather those three treasures, you will have a tool for viewing and understanding the composition of all matter in this world. Because of the many possibilities and even greater risks that entails, it was split in three and each piece was left with the ruler of the land, sea, or air for safekeeping…no, to be sealed away. And if Skull Wave is to be believed, it could be used as a largescale observation device like an electron microscope or particle accelerator.”

“A-a particle accelerator? And since this has to do with Ground’s Nir, it could break through the limits of Earth technology…? Th-th-th-this doesn’t mean you could create as much as you wanted of curium, einsteinium, californium, and other dangerous things, does it? Chief, if you created enough of that to be visible to the naked eye, it would cause a nuclear revolution in this world of Magic, and people could create super hydrogen bombs the size of your little finger.”

“That was only a figure of speech…I hope.”

Huldra and Armelina grew pale and whispered to each other, but Beatrice was focused elsewhere.

…Healing Expert Filinion had only just said that she could not find the cause even though the effect was clearly there, so the cause had to be buried somewhere deeper than she could see. With better equipment, perhaps Filinion would be able to deal with the mysterious Redness.

A hereditary disease, an infectious disease, a toxin, an immunodeficiency, the lack of a nutrient, or the inability to synthesize an internal substance…

It was unclear what the issue was, so they could not imagine what the appropriate response was. If all you had was X+Y=Z, you could not find the answer. But if you had fixed values for two of the three variables, you could solve for the remaining one. Before using heating or cooling for distillation or mixing some chemicals, they needed to observe the cause. Just like a crossword puzzle, filling in one answer helped reveal the answers around it.

By identifying the cause, they could work out the technique needed to eradicate the disease.

That technique might be hidden somewhere in the Magic tree diagrams that Beatrice and the others viewed on a regular basis. The glutamic acid that was expected to work as an antidote to a certain toxin was easily acquired by boiling seaweed, and cutting edge labs used normal pig and cow blood to create serums. In older times, such things had been treated as suspicious good luck charms, but once you understood how it worked, the solution was surprisingly simple. It was like finding the right way to look at a piece of trick art.

“The hidden treasures of the three royal families, hm? So that’s how you secure your rule. By the way, you mentioned land, sea, and air, but we don’t have time for a great adventure across this entire world.”

“The land one is protected and preserved by the ruler of the forest, meaning me, so you don’t need to worry about that one.”

Royal Elf Sibyl tapped at the circlet on her forehead that carried a jewel reminiscent of hot blue fire.

That must have been one of the treasures.

“So what about sea and air?” continued Beatrice.

“The sea one belonged to Elder Mermaid Vivian, ruler of the ocean. I use the past tense because she is no longer among the living, but you would recognize her appearance. …After all, her body was used by the Underworld Lord.”

At that point, Sibyl held her soft-looking palm out toward the others.

It held a ring with a bright jewel set in it.

It was colored a sapphire blue reminiscent of the most beautiful ice.

Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau wore the same color, so she spoke up in interest.

“Did you dig that up from the Underworld…that giant marine creature that had rotted away after all its nutrients were absorbed?”

“I was the one that ''cleaned up after'' the Underworld Lord in the end, so I collected it then.”

“So we only need the air treasure?”

Beatrice asked that with a frown and Sibyl quietly nodded.

“The ruler of the sky is Archangel Marinka. I do not know how much the limit will be shortened, but before the Iberian Orcs wake up, we need to acquire Marinka’s sky treasure and complete the largescale observation device that can reveal the identity of the Redness afflicting them.”

“W-we can probably manage if we only have to visit one place, right? Of course, we only have about half a day, so things might change if we have to go all the way to the edge of the world and back.”

Filinion oddly hedged her comment, but Sibyl shook her head. That was enough for her beautifully shining blonde hair to sway side to side.

“Not to worry. Marinka’s location is visible from this island. In fact, with the exception of some special cases like Vampires, it is a place anyone sees on a daily basis. However, it is also a somewhat unusual location.”

“Quit acting all mysterious. This obviously isn’t going to be as easy as heading out alone and coming back with a new souvenir. Where exactly is this Marinka located?”

The fair Royal Elf answered Armelina’s question by raising her index finger.

No, she was pointing.

Pointing straight up.

“The sun.”

“…What???”

Had they misheard or was this a figure of speech? Beatrice had to ask about that entirely unexpected term, but Sibyl was not going to correct herself.

“The sun shining in the heavens beyond the sky territory. Archangel Marinka provides the world with light from there as she awaits visitors. And she wears the final treasure: an earring bearing the jewel of the azure sky.”

===Part 3===

The sun.

How were they supposed to reach the sun?

“Oh, I don’t know what you’re imagining, but I am not talking about Earth’s sun. The sun that shines on Ground’s Nir is perfectly reachable on foot. …Why are all of your mouths gaping like that? Sigh, did that just confuse you further? Then let me tell you something to strip away your foolish assumptions. We are not going to visit Earth’s sun. We will visit the ''sun island'' that shines on all of Ground’s Nir from beyond the sky territory.”

Sibyl explained with a composed expression, but Boo Boo had trouble understanding since he had never tried going to either world’s sun.

“Boo… That was a flying island?”

That nearly-4m gray giant had arrived at a beach where small waves washed in and out in the warm sunlight. But these were not white waves. They were black. Rotten, discolored, and sticky dead flesh clung to the coastline.

If a human from Earth had been there, they might have been reminded of a tanker accident.

That ominous image may have been why there were no humans in the vicinity. No one wanted to hang around there when the black lumps were what remained of the Underworld’s giant marine creature that had attacked the island of Ground’s Nir. Because the Sage had used up all of its nutrients to save Beatrice’s Party and the elder’s group, it had fallen apart into partially liquefied rotten flesh. It was crawling with small Cleaner Crabs and Intruder Hermit Crabs. Life was powerful. At this rate, it would be entirely gone in less than a month.

Whatever the case, he was lucky.

If Royal Elf Sibyl was right, the humans were attempting to attack the dormant Iberian Orcs in order to protect their home world of Earth. The crisis would make them indiscriminate. Boo Boo would be in danger if they spotted him.

He wore a large basket on his back that the Fairies had woven for him.

But it was not to carry fish he caught.

In fact, Fairy Queen Sutriona sat inside the basket looking quite bored. She stuck her fingers inside the chest and hip of her black ribbon dress and made a snapping noise as she spoke in a drawn-out voice.

“Yawn… Have you still not found it?”

“Sniff, sniff. Sniff, sniff… I think it’s over here.”

Boo Boo moved his giant nose to search out some kind of scent as he walked along the beach. The crescent moon shape of what looked like a rib stuck out from the water. The Underworld’s bones had shined with the bluish-white light of crystal, but they had lost their shine and become a dull white now that it was no longer active.

Boo Boo sniffed in front of a small hill of black gunk and then stuck his hand inside.

He pulled out a hard object about the size of a rugby ball.

“Found it! It’s a big tree seed!!”

“Wah!? Wait, Boo Boo! Wash it off in the water before throwing it in the basket! You got that gunk all over me!! Ugh, it’s sticking to my hair! I can’t get it out!!”

Boo Boo continued the search while carrying angry Sutriona. He would collect any kind of plant seed he found.

Suddenly, the white sand swelled up nearby.

A humanoid form burst out from the beach’s sand. It was a bewitchingly beautiful woman with purple hair and brown skin. This person wearing something like a dress made of green vines and leaves was Ileana, peak of the plant Break News. Despite her strong allure that was reminiscent of sweet nectar, she was pouting her lips like a small child.

“Hmph. Hmph, hmph!”

“Squeal?”

“…Boo Boo, you and the perverted carrot both need to learn how to use actual words.”

As inadequate as it seemed, it apparently worked. Silver-haired Sutriona responded to the far-too-direct communication style with annoyance, so Ileana started speaking in an actual language.

“All of the plants on this island come from my All-Purpose Seeds, so they all belong to me.” Ileana puffed out her brown cheeks like dumplings. “But I don’t recognize those. They must be seeds from another island. Which means they’re invasive species! Growing those on this island would be too dangerous. They’ll take over my share!!”

After all, the Next Generation Embryo found deep inside the Underworld had been a giant towering tree. If more of those started growing on the island, the plants born of Ileana’s All-Purpose Seeds would be driven from the already limited land.

“But this is necessary.”

“Hmph?”

“Look over there, vegetable. There’s a big mountain, right?”

Boo Boo pointed toward the largest mountain on the island. Beyond the thick clouds, the peak was covered in perpetual snow.

When she saw that pure and unsullied white, Ileana held her skinny brown body and shivered.

“I have little to do with that land. Not even high-altitude plants would grow at that height.”

“Beatrice and the others need to go even higher than that.”

Boo Boo hopped up and down on the spot, sending an ominous tremor through the ground and rolling Sutriona around in the basket on his back.

“It’s called the sky territory. We went there when the Sage sent Disaster after us and we used those…floating islands, were they called? Squeal. I didn’t notice it then since we were sent there automatically, but it’s hard to get there normally.”

It was hard to see from this distance, but large rocks and clumps of dirt were positioned vertically up from the peak. According to Sibyl, they could reach the heavens using those floating islands.

Which meant they needed something else:

“Even from the mountain peak, the lowest part of the sky territory is floating around with no way to reach it, so we need these.”

“Y-you mean…?”

“Ground’s Nir’s plants won’t help, but a seed from elsewhere might do the trick.”

While Boo Boo explained, Sutriona righted herself in the basket and held up a seed larger than her face.

“It’s a bit of a gamble, but there is a precedent: the Next Generation Embryo. …That tall tree had almost certainly been artificially redesigned, but there had to be an original tree it was based on. If we gather as many foreign seeds as we can and plant them all on the summit, one of them should instantly sprout, reach the bottom of the islands floating in the sky territory, and provide a starting foothold.”

“Noooo! There has to be some other way! Wouldn’t it be faster to ride up there on the Thousand Dragon’s back!?”

“That wouldn’t work, vegetable. I’ve never heard of her eating the sun, so I don’t think she can fly that high.”

“And unlike me and my beautiful butterfly wings, she can fly quickly but she can’t stay in one spot…hovering, did they call it? Especially not with someone on her back. And the passengers couldn’t climb onto the islands since her giant body would knock them out of the sky.”

Sutriona gave a mischievous smile from the basket as she supplied that extra information.

“Boo. Besides, why do you not like this idea, vegetable?”

“Because…because…because there’s no guarantee it will stay on the top of the mountain. Are you sure it won’t scatter pollen and infect the entire area, or spread its roots below the ground to grow more trees? Hmph, hmph! This will never end well!!”

Boo Boo would not have considered any of that, but what about knowledgeable Sutriona?

The Fairy Queen was entirely nonchalant.

“It’s no skin off my nose if you suffer, perverted carrot. In fact, I’d probably hold my sides and laugh until I cried.”

“Hmm!!!???”

Ileana grew pale and began tearfully tugging on Boo Boo’s large hand.

“Don’t do this! Don’t do this! This feels just as ominous as finding a mysterious egg below the thick ice! Besides, nothing good will ever come from listening to a bug that’s only good for her venom!”

“Squeal?”

“You’re so good at tending to the soil, so you only need to use that talent on me. I never want to see you tending to some invasive species from who-knows-where!! Why do I have to watch those rival plants grow while I’m stuck in an untended field full of weeds!? There’s no upside for me!!”

Just then, Sutriona’s slender shoulders shook inside the basket.

She was clearly laughing.

“Peh heh heh… I see. So that’s it.”

“Hm?”

“Is the proud peak of the plants jealous? Ah hah hah! Are you that afraid of having a rival steal away your gardener, brown maiden!? Ee hee hee, ha haaa!!”

“Hmphwuh!!!?? Th-th-that-that’s not true!! You think I’m in love!? Don’t be ridiculous! I am the greatest of the plant Break News and the highest life form that creates the foundation of the food chain supporting all other life!! Just because I was having a little fun is no reason to think I am jealous or at all worried!!!!!”

“Well, normal plants don’t fall in love or get jealous, so I’m not sure what to say to that.”

While the two powerful Break News argued, Boo Boo tilted his giant head.

He waved his far-too-large hand toward the Mandragora who had started tearfully looking up at him.

“Don’t worry, vegetable. I won’t go anywhere. I can look after that big tree and the vegetables here.”

“Heh heh heh. That won’t be enough for her, Boo Boo. That love-struck perverted carrot won’t be satisfied unless she’s the only one you’re looking at. Ha ha!! It’s time you learned about love, learned what it means to be a woman, and blossomed into a giant shameless flower!!!!!”

“Give it a rest, you bug. Keep it up and I’ll suggest it’s love that brings you to Boo Boo’s place for dinner night after night when you could cook your own meat if you wanted to.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“You wanna bet?”

Giant sparks flew as the two of them glared at each other with such intensity that a Chimera would be too afraid to even run away, but Boo Boo still asked a question.

“Squeal. What is love?”

“That is the extremely immature feeling that causes someone to grow all flustered just seeing you carry the watering can to another garden and then suddenly insist on having you all to herself. Just like this perverted carrot here.”

“It is the meaningless force that leads someone pretend she’s incompetent so she can intrude on a guy’s home, have him take care of her, and act in a calculatedly cute way to stimulate a protective desire. Just like this bug here.”

“I warned you!”

“Kiss my ass!!”

The two of them shouted at each other and finally rushed at each other. Boo Boo kept his head tilted as he watched the two Break News grabbing at each other’s dresses and hair while rolling along the beach.

“…Boo, can’t everyone just get along?”

===Part 4===

And so the attack began.

Given the situation, they could not focus everyone on a single activity.

It was time to review their information.

“First of all, if the Red-afflicted Iberian Orcs wake up, it’s all over. So we need to settle this before that happens. For that, we need the three hidden treasures protected by the three royal families. Of those, we have the two of land and sea, so we need to acquire the treasure of air. We are sending one team to do that.”

Just outside Boo Boo’s house on the busy mountainside, Holy Swordswoman Beatrice raised one finger at a time.

“The Iberian Orcs placed themselves in a dormant state, but external tranquilizers and low-temperature treatment can help. We can’t have them waking up, so we can’t let our guard down there. Another team will work to keep them asleep and extend the time limit.”

She slowly drew out the frame that divided everyone up.

“Meanwhile, the humans are showing ominous signs in the inn town. They seem to think they can defeat the Reds by attacking them all at once before they wake up from their dormant state. However, not even a group effort from us Level Cappers could break their hard skin. That stimulus would only shrink the time limit, so another team will stop the humans.”

None of the teams could afford to fail, so they could not concentrate their personnel on any one of them.

Beatrice placed a hand on her hip, sighed, and began splitting up the personnel.

“Me, Boo Boo, Filinion, Armelina, and Sibyl as a guide will aim for the sky treasure guarded by Archangel Marinka. A mixed team led by Wildefrau and Huldra can work on keeping the Reds asleep while a mixed team led by Gruagach and Rusalka can set up a defensive line to stop the attack from the inn town. Don’t forget to manage the Break News as well. …Does that sound good?”

“Well, I don’t mind, but it sounds like you will be climbing the tallest peak. Don’t forget that you will need to deal with the cold yourself.”

Wildefrau readily agreed, but Alchemist Cheerleader Huldra grew pale.

“Geh, geh. White Witch, you’re going with them!? I can administer the tranquilizer potion, but I can’t Mix it. If I run out, then that’s that.”

“Um, I will Mix up a bunch of the potion before I leave. More importantly, we don’t know what kind of resistance we will find with Marinka and the rest of the heavenly forces, so I understand why they would want to bring our best healer along.”

Now that the personnel assignment was complete, it was time to get to work.

Fighter Priest Armelina looked to the giant leather backpack Boo Boo was wearing.

“That sure is stuffed full. What’s inside?”

“Boo, the gunk from the Underworld. If there aren’t any nutrients on the mountain, I can spread this around and plant the seeds in it. And Filinion is carrying a lot too.”

They were talking about Ground Nir’s tallest mountain, but it did not take months to climb like with Mt. Everest back on Earth. That was largely due to the presence of Magic, but if they worked at it, they could manage in only about 6 hours. They already had the ability to challenge the underground Labyrinth with only the clothes on their back, so outside of the materials for the cow’s Mixing, they did not need to bring much in the way of outdoors equipment.

They stood at the base of the mountain.

Royal Elf Sibyl held a twisted Shining Weapon while she stretched her arms and back upwards, pushing her flat chest out a bit.

“Nnn. Now, let’s get going. I will try to choose an ascent that is climbable by humans, but please use Magic when that is not enough. I will not help.”

“Squeal. Sibyl, have you ever met Marinka?”

“Yes, the land, sea, and air used to get along quite well. It got awkward after Vivian died, though.”

Then Armelina began laughing creepily.

“Heh heh heh.”

“Armelina?”

“Heh heh heh. Ha ha ha ha ha!! Finally. Oh, finally, there’s a girl flatter than me! Sutriona was too short to count and Kallikantzaros was cheating by having that chest with her short height! But Sibyl is plenty tall but also the flattest of us all! Thank you, the day has finally come that someone can take that title away from me!!”

“Squeal? Beatrice, can you explain what that means?”

“Don’t worry, Boo Boo. It’s nothing worth thinking about.”

Beatrice smiled confidently, but then White Witch Filinion made a merciless comment while a certain part of her jiggled.

“C’mon, you niche-demand flat-chested girls, let’s get going. I’m the indoor type, but I’m keeping my motivation high here.”

“Did you just throw me into the same category as those two!? I’m a bit above average!!”

Enraged, Beatrice snapped back with fire erupting from the top of her head, but the glasses girl only jiggled the plentiful resources held tightly between her backpack’s shoulder straps.

Armelina remained unconcerned throughout, so she must have been fine with anything other than the very bottom spot.

“I can’t stop laughing… Anyway, you’re a mountain guide, huh? Are long-eared Elves the indoor type or the outdoor type?”

“Why are you looking at my chest with that victorious look on your face? And I would rather you did not look lightly upon the ruler of all forest-born life. The very idea that being the outdoor type signifies a lack of intelligence is an insult to all life of the forest.”

(Wait, wait. It does look like Armelina has the larger size, but isn’t that only because of the muscle? I feel like Sibyl might actually ''have more'' going by cup size.)

“…? What’s with you?”

“Oh, nothing.”

“Why are you holding your hands behind your head and doing shoulder blade exercises?”

Driven by fear, Beatrice had started to become aware of her size, so the Royal Elf gave her a suspicious look.

Once they entered the mountain, Sibyl took the lead and maintained a composed expression no matter how root-covered and rocky the slope was.

Meanwhile, White Witch Filinion’s hips were already trembling.

“Pant, pant, pant…”

Beatrice could not help but mimic her earlier comment.

“Ahem. Ah, ahh… ‘Um, I will Mix up a bunch of the potion before I leave. More importantly, we don’t know what kind of resistance we will find with Marinka and the rest of the heavenly forces, so I understand why they would want to bring our best healer along.’ ”

“Ohhh!! I want to go back in time and punch my idiot self so hard it breaks my glasses!! I didn’t even think about being the only one with any luggage!!”

“Well, you do have all that extra fat to lug around. Hey, Filinion. As corrupt as you are, you’re still a White Witch, right? Then can’t you Mix an energy drink or something to recover from exhaustion?”

“!? That’s it!!!!!!”

“If a complete indoor type like you couldn’t figure out something like that, you clearly don’t have enough INT for the task. Besides, you build up a resistance to Recovery Potions when you keep using them, so they stop working. You’ll give up soon enough regardless.”

Beatrice’s annoyed comment put an end to that idea, but the glasses cow had still reached her limit.

And there was only one person she was going to rely on.

“B-Boo Boo…”

“Hm? I’m already carrying this big bag, so I can’t lend you my back.”

“…!!!???”

“W-wait,” said Armelina. “I know that was a shock, but don’t give me that look. I’m not climbing a mountain while carrying a backpack and two mounds of fat that aren’t mine!!”

“I’ll just turn you into a Fighter Priest who can’t say no☆”

“I absolutely refuse to accept that humiliating title! And that genre is way too narrow!!”

The backpack cow made a fuss and filled the others with enough fear of being weighed down that she was eventually given a spot directly on Boo Boo’s shoulders. His crammed-full leather backpack seemed to function as a seat.

The White Witch wrapped her arms around Boo Boo’s big head like a cushion, shifted the position of her butt on the backpack, and sighed like she was soaking in a hot spring.

“Ahhh… Being freed from physical labor is such bliss.”

“…I swear she’s turning into a god of pestilence who is the master of sticking to last place in the railroad game…”

Armelina groaned and Beatrice frowned and trembled. Her strength had cost her a chance to show off here.

“Squeal. Stop rubbing my ears, Filinion. It tickles.”

“…”

“Ow! Beatrice, don’t kick me!!”

Meanwhile, Sibyl turned back in the lead and gave an exasperated sigh.

“Sigh. What are you even doing?”

That was what she said.

Yes, she definitely said that.

But that super serious long-eared Royal Elf started acting strangely once the forest’s trees disappeared and they were surrounded by nothing but snow.

“Shiver, shiver, shiver…”

“…Hey.”

“I-I-I’m fine. I-I-I-I-I-I-I am the Royal Elf who rules over the forest. A-a-a-a-a-a-a mere lack of trees is n-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-not enough to trouble my l-l-l-l-l-l-leg strength built up by traversing all of the land I rule. S-s-s-s-s-so tonight we will have soup curry.”

“Your logic is a mess and I think that last part is just wishful thinking! Miss Flattest, we need you to guide us, so what are we supposed to do if you collapse first!?”

“Hmm, maybe Miss Second Flattest has trouble with the cold because she has so little subcutaneous fat.”

“Hold it right there, Filinion! Did you just switch up the order!?”

“You damn cow. Don’t act victorious just because the journey is so much easier up on Boo Boo’s shoulders.”

“Beatrice, don’t you ignore this either! The fate of the world is riding on this crucial issue! C’mon, wake up, Sibyl! And tell them that you’re definitely the flattest!!”

Armelina grew pale and began shaking Sibyl by the shoulders, but the Royal Elf’s head flopped limply back and forth, her eyes stared into the distance, and nothing more than the name of a certain dish left her lovely lips.

Beatrice placed a hand on Armelina’s shoulder.

The Holy Swordswoman shook her head and spoke.

“Forcing her isn’t going to help. It looks like it’s time for the winter mountain cliché of warming ourselves with each other’s skin. And lucky for us, we have some lewd flesh right over there we didn’t have any use for. Go, Filinion! You’re our healer, so do your job!!”

She found an excuse to tear the White Witch from Boo Boo’s head and threw her at Sibyl, and it was dramatically effective. Lying in a heap with Filinion gave the Royal Elf enough warmth to come back to her senses.

“Wh-what was I just doing…? Mghh. And why are these two crude and irritating masses pressing down on my head with a size that rivals the Sage’s!?”

“Hyah? Someone please comfort me, I don’t care who… And did you just call my boobs crude?”

“Get away from me! Didn’t I say I wasn’t going to help?”

“Ear flick.”

“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Sibyl shot to her feet when her long elvish ear was flicked in the cold air.

Filinion grinned behind her glasses.

“Heh. When the winter cold amplifies the pain signals, a flick to the ear is pretty bad for a human, so I wonder how bad it is for the pointy ear of an Elf. But if you promise to help me, I’ll geeeently warm your long ears. Ahm, ahm.”

“Ah, please don’t gently bite me there! You two! Quit watching and get this insolent slime monster off of me!!”

“Yeah, but dealing with that cow is a pain and it’s useful having found a way to discipline a certain Elf who keeps looking down on us despite being second flattest.”

“Okay, I didn’t mishear this time! You’re definitely calling me the flattest!! …That’s it. Don’t expect me to hold back any longer. If that girl with the second least interesting character – yes, and thus the second flattest in that sense – starts hallucinating again, we’ll be stranded up here! We need her to guide us up the mountain!!”

Sibyl blushed and tried to shout back, but she shrieked limply from the ground and fell silent again. Filinion had apparently broken her with the forbidden technique known as blowing in the ear.

After many sacrifices, Boo Boo’s group finally arrived at the summit.

Sibyl gasped for breath in horse-and-carriage mode with two large masses on her small head and her shoulders at different heights. There was no light in her eyes as she spoke.

“Th-this was an excellent lesson on how painful it must have been for my fellow Elves who were bought as slaves and chained together. I’m starting to think the world would be better off if their entire species went extinct…”

“We’ve arrived☆”

After relying on other people’s help, Filinion was of course full of energy as she got down from Sibyl’s back. The bright look on her face suggested she felt not even a twinge of guilt for riding that small and slender girl up the mountain.

Armelina lightly elbowed Beatrice in the side and winked.

“(Come to think of it, Beatrice, couldn’t you have used your flames to heat up Sibyl who whose presence is so flat you’d barely notice her.?)”

“(Are you that bothered about this flatness thing? Well, I might have considered it if she bowed her head flat against the ground and flat-tered us a fair bit. I would have flat out refused otherwise.)”

“Would you stop saying ‘flat’ so much!?”

“Oh, you wanna fight!?”

While those two’s private conversation grew much less private, Boo Boo trudged across the thick perpetual snow of the summit. It was more like a thick layer of ice than snow. It was impossible to tell how thick it really was. Without soil, the seed would not sprout. They had been right to bring the leather backpack. Boo Boo set it down and scattered around the black sludge within. That rotten flesh was what remained of the Underworld’s giant marine creature.

Then he planted the various-sized plant seeds he had also brought with him. The smaller ones were the size of golf balls and the larger ones were the size of coconuts or rugby balls.

“Squeal, will these really sprout?”

“Beatrice, could you help with your flame Magic?”

“I could, but can’t you Mix some fertilizer or something, Filinion?”

“No, I can’t. What do you think I am? If I could make potions from plants and make plants grow from potions, I’d be a perpetual motion machine.”

They were already above the clouds. When they looked up, they saw the clear blue sky and the sun which sent down its light with nothing to get in the way. But even with that sun, it was chilly enough to see their breath.

When Beatrice drew her Shining Weapon and produced a fireball, the effect was dramatic.

The entire mountain peak undulated with cracking sounds.

Nutrients were absorbed from the black rotting flesh of the Underworld and green sprouts opened up. Each of the leaves was larger than Beatrice’s hand. Like watching a video on fast-forward, the new sprouts swelled out, grew taller than the girls, grew thicker and longer, wrapped around each other, and pushed ever higher. They seemed to have grabbed onto one of the hunks of stone circling like a bird far overhead.

In the end, they all formed a tree too thick for the girls to reach around even if they held hands and formed a circle.

They could not tell how tall it was by looking up.

Boo Boo touched the trunk with his sturdy hand and pushed.

“Nn. It won’t budge. Boo, I think we can climb it.”

“You spread that rotting flesh on top of the perpetual snow, but the roots must have made their way down to the actual ground as the tree grew.”

“…”

Sibyl held her thin shoulders as she shivered in the cold and she narrowed her eyes to look up at the great tree. She was the ruler of the forest, but she may have felt some instinctual caution about a plant not from the island.

Had that given her a pure desire to conquer it?

She eventually reached out and touched the thick, thick trunk and then placed her feet up on it.

She began to climb as the guide.

“Oh, Sibyl’s pretty good at that.”

“Hmph. This is nothing. Praising me for that feels like an insult to the ruler of all forest life.”

“Since she has so little fat in certain places, Miss Second Flattest may be able to just climb on up there with almost no resistance. Because she’s flat.”

While Beatrice and the others watched from below, they put their hands on their hips, exhaled white sighs, and began a discussion.

“Well, it looks like we need Boo Boo to take the lead.”

“Hmm, you’re right. This doesn’t give us much other choice.”

“I’m wearing shorts, but I still don’t think I would like it. …Shorts can show the shape even more clearly, so it could be even more embarrassing than for you.”

Confused, Sibyl looked back down and saw the three girls were still looking up from the bottom. Since he was not part of the conversation, Boo Boo tilted his head and looked up at Sibyl in the same way Beatrice and the others were.

“Why are all of you just standing there? Are you even trying to take this seriously? I thought you understood that we need to reach Archangel Marinka.”

“Hey, how about we have Boo Boo take the lead?”

“Why? I am the guide here.”

“Because you’re spreading your legs like you’re doing the breaststroke to cling to the tree and that is one hell of a visual when you’re wearing an extremely short skirt. …You Elf princesses sure wear some amazing royal underwear.”

Sibyl blushed, screamed, let go of the tree to hold down her skirt, and fell. Boo Boo frantically tried to catch her, but she slipped right between his giant arms.

“Hyah!”

But he did catch her after all.

By having the side of her very royal underwear catch on his right tusk.

“Wah, wah, wait, wah!!”

“Squeal?”

The Royal Elf blushed and shouted while dangling from a single point of support with her hips sticking straight up, but she was so close to Boo Boo that he apparently could not see anything. It may have been like having a bug on your face.

“What just happened?”

“I’m swaying… Please don’t tilt your head!! I-I’m being squeezed by my own underwear…”

“Hey, Sibyl, flail your arms and legs around too much and they’ll tear. Then you’ll have an even more notable trait than being second flattest.”

“Ehh? You mean she wouldn’t be wearing anything under that miniskirt dress? That takes a lot of courage even when you’re wearing a shrine maiden outfit that goes down to the ankles.”

“I don’t want that either!! Gently!! Gently crouch down to lower me to the ground!!”

“…If it turns out you started climbing as part of a seduction plan, I will never forgive you…”

They began climbing the giant tree once more but with the Iberian Orc in the lead.

Boo Boo’s reach and grip strength were fundamentally different than the girls’, so the route he chose was not always climbable for the others. The Holy Swordswoman and the others made sure they did not reach a dead end as they climbed up the bumpy surface of the tree trunk.

“Pant, pant, pant…”

“Those aren’t even proper words, but I can still tell it’s the glasses cow. But don’t expect anything from me, cow. You preserved your strength up the mountain by clinging to Boo Boo and Sibyl, so you can handle the tree climbing yourself.”

Beatrice gave that cold comment, but then she realized something.

They were higher up than the mountain summit, but the biting cold had vanished. She initially thought she had gotten used to it or her sense of cold had numbed over, but there was no white color to the breaths leaving the lovely lips of red-faced Sibyl who was fidgeting on a nearby branch (probably because she was worried her panties had stretched). That meant it was not just a subjective thing.

There was also no issue with the air thinning.

It was like the physical sky was being replaced by an occult heaven.

“Boo. I can see it.”

Boo Boo was looking up in the lead.

The great tree’s growth had suddenly stopped. The top had bumped into and grasped tightly to a floating mass of rock with an area of about 30 square meters.

This was the bottom edge of the small floating islands known as the sky territory.

Once Boo Boo, Beatrice, and the others had climbed on top of the large rock, they found an unusual scene.

The blue sky spread out around them.

Countless islands of varying sizes floated overhead.

And above those was the sun giving off its radiant light.

“Wait, wait. The path really does continue up from here. Can we make it all the way up there?”

The distribution was uneven, but it overall looked like the islands surrounded an invisible cylindrical tower. Or like an intense meteor shower had been frozen in time, providing footholds up to heaven.

“B-but isn’t there a lot of space between islands? The closest one looks more than 20 meters away.”

Just as Filinion made that hesitant observation, a dry cracking sound rang out.

A small rock broke off at Boo Boo’s feet and then floated up in violation of gravity. It circled at the girls’ eye level and then shot straight up.

Beatrice’s eyes widened.

“Can we break pieces off of the heavy islands to send them higher using the power keeping the islands afloat?”

As soon as they had that answer, a new shadow appeared as if to block the way.

Yes, a shadow.

Much like a solar eclipse obstructing the sun overhead, a humanoid shadow definitely flew down from heaven.

She had healthy brown skin and blonde hair that reached her shoulder blades.

And she had a pair of giant white wings that resembled swan wings.

A single large cloth that looked something like a pure white tablecloth was wrapped around the important parts of her slender, undeveloped body to take the form of a dress.

And as a finishing touch, she had what was clearly a halo above her head.

The overall image led Beatrice to speak a name.

“…Archangel Marinka…?”

“No, that is technically just her shadow.” Sibyl’s response was difficult to interpret. “You cannot communicate with Marinka when viewing only one of her. Just like a solar eclipse, both Marinkas must be combined. The ideal plan here is to continue to the top and have the two Marinkas meet.”

The Archangel with girlish curves flew through the empty air in a way the surface-bound humans could not and she spoke in a quiet but far-reaching voice.

“War**ng. The hi**** *reasure being prot***d here is not curr***ly av***** *** *iewing. Please leav* ***ediately and wait until another oppor***ity.”

It was a staticky voice that sounded like having fine sand poured in your ear.

“Marinka, we have no time. We need your hidden treasure to resolve a problem on the surface. We would like to borrow it. Otherwise, the damage will not be contained to this world you love. It will mean loss of life beyond the reach of our territories.”

“I **nnot make excep***ns over perso*** ***lings.”

A great pressure bore down on Beatrice and the others like a suspended ceiling.

They looked like will-o’-the-wisps the size of tennis balls.

But they were not. They were masses of Elements: red fire, blue water, green earth, and yellow wind. At the size of a girl’s fist, they did not look very powerful, but that was merely an issue of scale. They were actually a collection of thousands or tens of thousands of tiny will-o’-the-wisps compressed too tightly to maintain their lizard or maiden forms.

The four balls slowly circled in the sky one level above Beatrice’s group and they each would have been as large as a warship at their proper size.

While Beatrice’s group felt a biological revulsion like seeing a swarm of all-consuming locusts, the brown Archangel calmly spoke.

“If you do *** heed my warn*** and lea**, **ere is only one solu***n: forced removal.”

“Marinka!!”

Sibyl knew she could not be contacted, but she cried out all the same.

However, the response was mechanical.

“This is an invio**ble free region **** must r**ain free of all worldly impu***ies. Guardians of the hea***ly t***itory, do your j*b.”

The halo above her head clearly glowed brighter.

And a moment later, formless red, blue, green, and yellow lights mercilessly rained down as if to crush all of the limited land floating in the sky.

===Part 5===

Two palm-sized fairies flew at a height of about 100 meters near Boo Boo’s house. They were the sisters Meridiana and Alice.

“Boo Boo…”

Meridiana, the elder sister, flapped her clear, bug-like wings while staring into the distance. The sky was their territory, but the sun was simply too far. They had tried flying up that high once, but their wings would not give them the lift needed to stay afloat after passing a certain point.

The others had considered having the Thousand Dragon, who was a complicated person for the Fairies, carry them up on her head and stretch upwards from the mountain peak, but there must have been some reason the idea was abandoned. For one thing, it was hard to imagine her standing straight up, including the tail.

Then Alice, the younger sister, twitched her little ears.

“Mh. What does that smelly hunk of fat matter!?”

“I will not forget that you’re still insulting him like that, Alice. You need to be punished once we return to the surface.”

Alice gave a tearful yell, but then something cut across in front of their vision.

Fairies were at the bottom of the food chain. Even a giant seabird could kill them if it caught them. That was why the sisters tensed up, but then the motion stopped. They frowned and followed it with their eyes.

It was a ring with a diameter of about 30cm. It was made of a smooth inorganic substance that was neither glass nor metal. It had no evident wings, but it was perfectly stable in the air as it slid slowly to the side. What was it? The two Fairies were still utterly confused as they flew around the mystery object to observe it. Since it had no obvious fangs, claws, or talons, their suspicion was stronger than their fear.

“I hear something like air escaping a balloon. Is it floating by expelling air downwards?”

“Hm? But it has glass eyeballs.”

The ring indeed had two round pieces of clear glass on the sides. They were about the size of the Fairies’ heads. And a closer inspection showed that it was repeatedly but irregularly turning back and forth as it moved slowly to the side.

“Is it…watching the surface from above?”

“Is it?”

The sisters exchanged a glance. That meant it served the same role as them. And what were the noncombat Fairies doing?

The Fairy sisters flew in a regular figure 8 and scattered scales from their wings to reflect the sunlight while they shouted at the top of their lungs.

“E-emergency!! If they’ve sent in a reconnaissance team, an attack is imminent!”

“The…the…the enemy is comiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!! Everyone to full alert!! The inn town humans are about to attack!!”

Meanwhile, down in the forest near Boo Boo’s house, Morgan, elder of the Fairy village, gave a quiet report while hovering near Sutriona’s shoulder.

“We have a report from above. It is about to begin.”

“I see.”

The cross-armed Fairy Queen did not even need to explain that the dormant Red Iberian Orcs were powerful. No matter how many Level Cappers were among the inn town humans, not even an all-out attack could kill the Red Iberian Orcs. It would only cause pain which would hasten their awakening.

A portion of the mountain slope was fenced off to form a simple house garden and Ileana pulled her legs out of that soft soil.

“The military textbooks change from generation to generation, but there is one basic theory all human strategy follows. They start with a small number of scouts, then they use their long-range artillery, and finally the main unit charges in to finish off the enemy. If we simply wait for the enemy to arrive, the Reds will unavoidably take some damage.”

Perhaps because she had once been made the guardian of a secret Soviet facility, brown-skinned Ileana had knowledge one would not expect of a Mandragora.

The human Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau and Alchemist Cheerleader Huldra were looking into the distance from the top of the tall conifer trees overhead. They had turned ice or a jewel into lenses to construct makeshift telescopes for checking on the enemy force.

“They number…somewhere between 5000 and 6000, I think,” said Wildefrau.

“We’re lucky the inn town’s forces were worn down so much by the Underworld battle,” said Huldra. “That said, I see Liderc, La Voisin, and…geh, is that Tlazolteotl!? They’ve got a bunch of veterans I’d really rather not have here!!”

“Maybe the battle with the Underworld Lord acted as a screening process that only left the nastiest ones here. And who are those people?”

“One is a field officer in the JSDF and one is a high-ranking member of a South American cartel. We had always worried that the organizations back on Earth would obstruct our activities here in this world.”

In other words, these fierce warriors were regularly a part of death and violence even outside this world of swords and Magic. The Cold War ghosts they had run into during the Underworld battle were proof enough of what a difference that could make. Also, the humans heading here now were the truly skilled who had endured an invasion by elite ghosts that could resurrect their single life as many times as necessary.

That was a trophy that Wildefrau and Huldra had not won since they had died at the end of the Underworld battle and been resurrected with a one-time-use trick.

The narrow vision of their telescopes showed a brown girl wearing many feathered decorations.

Huldra clicked her tongue and threw aside her telescope as the distant ground was covered by rapid flashing lights like at a press conference. All of those bright lights were Magic. Those fired seeds of destruction drew arcs through the air and soon dropped back down as a gapless downpour.

Twintailed Huldra shouted down below as the first wave arrived.

“Attention! Discharge now!!!!!!”

“You don’t have to yell. Perverted carrot, let’s do it like we planned.”

“Very well.”

Sutriona sighed with her hands on her hips and glanced over at Boo Boo’s house. Summon Hunter Gruagach and Noble Dancer Rusalka were there in mourning clothes and an armored leotard respectively. They were holding up Ultimate Weapon Abyss who remained unconscious with her twin strands of mottled silver hair falling in front of her body.

“W-we are ready too.”

“You can get started!!”

The Fairy Queen then tapped her small heel on the ground. And she spoke casually to ''someone else''.

“You heard them. Let’s get started, weakest!!”

Then the side of the mountain rose up.

The black soil was peeled away and the trees of the forest toppled without the dirt needed to support them. In their place, a sea of sinister reptilian scales, giant sail-like wings, and a brutal dragon’s maw appeared.

It was 1000 meters long.

The Thousand Dragon moved her wings while keeping just barely enough distance to not destroy Boo Boo’s house and she rolled the curled up and unmoving Red Iberian Orcs onto her back. With those red apocalyptic eggs on her back, that incarnation of violence finally flapped her massive wings.

She floated up.

She flew.

Just as the target of attack escaped into the air, the colorful lights completed their arcing path and detonated on the side of the mountain.

Tons of dirt and dust fell from the dragon’s back like a landslide and twintailed Huldra struggled not to fall off with it.

“Eek, eek. Oh, no. Boo Boo’s house…”

“We got Abyss out, so that won’t be a problem. The Fairies can always make him a new one. Still, I do wish we could have sent this mass of lift with the sun expedition team. But the world is a complicated place and this was the ideal place for her.”

Of course, the attacking humans would not stop here.

A solid sound rang out.

There was movement on the surface.

Lots of rusted metal welled up. Battered helmets, breastplates, gauntlets, and other armor were brought together as if by magnetism. The masses of red rust erupted with the force of a volcano and rapidly grew large enough to rival the Thousand Dragon.

Was it the face of a clock, or was it a great sinister insect? Several twisted legs stood on the ground, tore into it, and began a forceful attack. It trampled both level ground and mountains in its intense pursuit of the fleeing dragon.

Curly blue-haired Wildefrau’s eyes widened.

“Is that human Magic? How could you even use that in the underground Labyrinth!?”

“…Criminal Queen Tlazolteotl…” groaned Huldra in her cheerleader uniform.

The people on that bizarre rusted form’s back were held there not by anger or hatred, but by bottomless fear. The extinction of the human race and the end of the world were at stake, so they felt no pangs of conscience in their actions here.

But at the same time, it was all for naught.

Not even their greatest efforts could kill the Reds. The defenders could not afford to have the time limit shortened before Boo Boo, Beatrice, and the others returned with the proper solution.

(I never expected to risk my life to protect Earth and its humans.)

Sutriona was a paradox with a soul, one of the Break News who created breaking news if they were merely sighted. She could not be bound by the standards of good and evil that another species had invented. Nevertheless, she was still acting on the side of the defenders. And she was not alone. Many others were there with her.

Why was this happening?

Was it evolution? Or was it regression?

After some thought, Fairy Queen Sutriona gave a fierce bark of laughter.

“Humans! Have you finished loading Tselika?”

“Y-yes. That Demon Lord is with me. We are ready when you are.”

“You said that girl can control the wind and air, right? Then follow me. The Sandstorm of Red Madness made by my toxic blood wings is powerful, but if I used it here, I would drive the weakest here – this dragon – mad. You control it with your Magic.”

“Hmph. Don’t forget that I’m only helping because Onee-sama agreed to it!”

This was why the Noble Dancer had stayed here instead of joining Beatrice’s group.

The silver-haired black ribbon dress girl put her hands on her hips and looked down at the pursuers covering the ground.

Gigantic red butterfly wings burst from her back.

“It is time to fight back. It is time you many side characters lamented the tragedy of not taking my side. I will throw you into utter disarray!!”

===Part 6===

The white-winged Archangel had a small body and brown skin.

The intense Elements launched by Marinka poured down as an aerial bombing.

But there was a way out of it.

The floating islands had a special trait not shared by Boo Boo, Beatrice, and the others. They remained afloat because some kind of power was in perfect equilibrium with the weight of the stone. So if the stable islands were split and the weight altered, they would head upwards.

“Kyaaahh!?”

White Witch Filinion could not be expected to join the fight, so while she screamed and held her hands over her hat to protect her head, Boo Boo drew his Shining Weapon that looked like a log or steel beam.

Then he stabbed the flat tip into the center of the 30-square-meter mass of rock like it was a steel spike.

He split it.

Hard rock shot out like a splash and then flew through the air. It was almost like flipping over the mat someone stood on. The dirt rose above their heads and collided with the downpour of Salamander Fire Spirits, the red will-o’-the-wisps approaching them like fire arrows attempting to finish off a nearly fallen castle.

Several sticky flowers of fire blossomed like several Molotov cocktails had collided.

There was no need to dodge afterwards.

Since the entire island had crumbled like a cookie, the ground below their feet floated up on its own. Next, the blue Undine Water Spirits, which could not take their maiden forms, approached with the force of a warship’s size and grazed the spot Boo Boo’s group had just vacated. The top of the great tree was mercilessly sliced away by the ultra-high-pressure water.

Armelina used her Shining Weapon metal staff to summon a giant metal ball on a chain as she yelled to the others.

“This is worse than a mass of naphtha or an industrial cutter. I doubt directly touching these things will end well! Don’t forget to keep a projectile or shield between you and them!!”

Because the rock below their feet had split, Boo Boo and Beatrice were forced to cling to separate rocks. Filinion looked this way and that after sinking down to a sitting position.

“H-huh? Can we just guide these elevators to the goal at the top instead of making risky jumps between islands? Y-yahoo, looks like the humans win in the eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeend!”

“Squeal. Are everyone’s rocks speeding up? We’ll be in trouble if we don’t jump to a new one soon. If there’s an island above us, we’ll be squished between them.”

“Beatrice!!”

Armelina gave a shout and Beatrice reluctantly launched a fire arrow straight overhead. Before the stone could become a shooting star, it exploded like a firework, so gravity took hold once more and Filinion began to fall.

While glancing over as Boo Boo caught the soft and fluffy blonde in both hands, Royal Elf Sibyl lightly jumped from her small, accelerating rock to a different island.

Brown-skinned and white-winged Archangel Marinka ignored the only floating footholds in the sky and hovered in empty space. Sibyl glared up at her former friend who repeatedly moved left and right in a gentle circle and she raised her twisted Shining Weapon that looked like both a bow and a staff.

“Marinka…”

She could not use the Magic created for humans.

The Skill of her species simply allowed her to materialize the residual thoughts residing in objects.

“If you sit in the ruler’s throne, you must carry out the ruler’s duties!! Archangel Marinkaaa!!”

Countless people had attempted to reach heaven.

Sibyl summoned the residual thoughts of those who had fallen along the way and sent a giant rotating blade toward the brown angel.

(But the number of residual thoughts is bound to shrink as we climb. The altitude and the number people who made it that far is bound to have an inverse relationship. I can’t rely on my Skill too much!)

A group of green Gnome Earth Spirits used their weight to deflect the rotating blade that looked a lot like a helicopter’s main rotor. It smashed a nearby island in two, but no one even looked in that direction. Then the group of Gnome Earth Spirits approached like a sharp right hook from a giant in order to blow away the slender Royal Elf and the island she stood on.

“Oh, no you don’t!!”

On a different island, Armelina threw her metal ball and chain.

Instead of the green lights or Archangel Marinka, she was targeting Sibyl’s island itself. The Royal Elf stepped on top of the metal ball that landed at her feet and she grabbed onto the thick chain just before Armelina pulled the chain back. The exciting fishing maneuver whisked Sibyl away from the island just before the many Gnome Earth Spirits smashed the island to pieces and the remaining clumps of dirt shot straight up in defiance of gravity.

Armelina transformed her blunt weapon into a hammer and broke up the rock below their feet to gain some buoyancy. She then noticed a gauntleted hand holding onto the edge of that rock.

Beatrice had apparently joined them with fire wings growing from her back.

“It’s so not fair you can do that!!”

“It doesn’t let me fly around all I want like that Archangel can. I can only make straight-line midair dashes, so if I’m not careful, I’ll launch myself out into empty air.”

With a loud boom, the Holy Swordswoman jumped. She used a broken-off clump of dirt as an elevator to reach the same island as Boo Boo (and Filinion).

But heading up was not enough to shake free of the brown Archangel.

The Archangel and the four-colored Elements did not need ground to stand on. While Boo Boo’s group was restricted in their movement, they could move in any direction they liked. Needless to say, the sky was Marinka’s territory.

“So what do we do about her? Actually, maybe this is lucky. We’ve met the big boss without having to climb all the way up to the sun.”

“Like I said, that is no more than Archangel Marinka’s shadow. To contact her, we must bring both Marinkas together.”

“I’m not really sure what that means, but are you saying that isn’t actually Marinka!?”

“There is no distinction. Simply put, there is a Marinka out here on the front line and there is a Marinka staying back at the sun. They need to be brought together to contact them, but you cannot say she is only a ‘whole’ being when together. It is more like she allows certain flaws in order to personify the entire phenomenon.”

“Well, I can see you have no intention of actually explaining it. So we just have to get to the goal then!?”

Armelina breathed a heavy sigh and pressed her palm against Sibyl’s wide-open (and less flat) chest. The Royal Elf toppled backwards and off of the island, but a moment later, a yellow-glowing Element shot between the two of them like sniper rifle bullet.

And it did not end at just the one shot.

Yellow dots of light surrounded the island like watching a water balloon popping in super slow motion. Then they were all rapidly fired inwards simultaneously. Armelina jumped off of the unstable platform before she was filled with holes.

She just barely slipped through the gaps in the sniping.

The flatness of a certain part of her anatomy may have saved her.

Smashing the rock would create an upwards-floating elevator, but the girls’ bodies were still bound by gravity. Without anything to stand on, they would fall and then die on impact.

Sibyl had destroyed the stone with a materialized residual thought and she was floating back up from a somewhat lower position. While passing that island by, Armelina transformed her metal staff into a large rake and caught the edge to climb aboard.

Boo Boo, Beatrice, and Filinion were on a platform further up.

The brown Archangel chose them as her top priority target and looked away from Sibyl and Armelina.

“That was a mistake, Marinka,” said the Royal Elf who ruled the land.

“???”

“You took your eyes off of me. Doing that for even a moment was a catastrophic mistake. Because I can materialize residual thoughts and use any projectile I like.” Sibyl lightly raised her Shining Weapon that looked like both a bow and a staff. “And your territory has a few defining traits. 1: There is a force here that keeps things afloat. 2: If that force is in equilibrium with the island’s weight, the island will remain in place. 3: The island descends if it is heavier and ascends if it is lighter. That still applies when the island is broken or split. 4: Once an island begins acceleration, its speed will gradually increase.”

Those rules alone may have not have indicated much of a risk.

“In other words.”

But that was fine.

In fact, it was for the best given Sibyl’s goal.

“If I surreptitiously destroyed the bottommost island with an arrow, the small rocks would continue accelerating all the while. And by the time they reached this height, they would become quite the dangerous weapon.”

It was a lot like an inverted version of scattering pachinko balls from the top of a high-rise building.

A storm of pebbles shot up all around Archangel Marinka. There were some sporadic noises reminiscent of firecrackers, so some of them may have broken the sound barrier.

“Ghhh***.”

Marinka covered her face with both hands and called the Elements over to form a shield, but could she really cleanly block every last one of them? And Sibyl and Armelina did not stay put. While the primary Elements were focused on protecting her, they had their island ascend toward heaven.

“H-hey. We’ve accelerated a fair amount too. Are we really going to stay on this one!? Hey!!”

“This is the only way to catch up to the leading group. Your Magic is quite convenient, so I’m counting on that. Make a wire or chain we can use to jump over and get ready to use it.”

They passed by more and more floating islands as they picked up speed.

It felt a lot like a vertical version of racing down the highway, but they did not have a steering wheel. If there was another island in their path, they could not dodge it and they would be crushed flat.

They saw flames not caused by the Salamander Fire Spirits flickering on one of the higher islands.

“That’s it. Beatrice is on that island.”

“What are we supposed to do?”

“Do it now. Judge the timing well.”

“So you’re leaving all the work with me, you naturally selfish princess!!!???”

Sibyl wrapped her slender arms around the Fighter Priest while Armelina yelled at her, threw the ball and chain, and somehow managed to hit the neighboring island. Guided by the taut chain, they flew from their island and soon passed it in height. The one they had left had collided with a different island, but they had managed to regroup with Boo Boo’s group in the lead.

“S-squeal! Are you okay, Armelina, Sibyl!?”

“Yes. Don’t worry about us. Because Sibyl somehow managed to get an attack in on Marinka…”

Boo Boo must have been relieved to see the Fighter Priest because he slumped into a sitting position. While clinging to his thick leg and squeezing her breasts between her backpack’s shoulder straps, Filinion gave an excited and tearful shout.

“Th-that was an incredible storm of rocks! It was like someone was firing a Vulcan cannon from below, but what was it? It didn’t seem like the Gnome Earth Spirits.”

“…Cough, cough. It must have been Marinka’s last resort. Now let’s stop thinking about that and work our way higher.”

The righteous police officer who would never look away from the truth tried to correct the Royal Elf, but Sibyl slipped her hand into the slit in the Fighter Priest’s clothes and silenced her with a pinch to the butt. Silencing people was a ruler’s specialty.

The island they were on was ascending too.

Marinka must have been having trouble back at the lower levels because the obstruction stopped for a moment. The acceleration accumulated by remaining on the same island helped bring them higher and higher.

That was when Beatrice finally realized something and opened her mouth.

“Hm? We’re on our way to the sun, but we aren’t going to fry in the heat, are we?”

“Gyahhh!? We aren’t going to end up a real version of mythical Icarus, are we!? The real sun uses nuclear fusion, so fire-obsessed Beatrice and her 100% Fire Resistance might be fine, but what about the rest of us!?”

Filinion grew pale and screamed, but the ascending island shot straight toward the center of the light.

“…?”

The Holy Swordswoman reflexively covered her eyes with a hand, but then she frowned.

Once they passed the blinding wall of light, she found it was nothing more than a backlight. The sun was a giant disk that rivalled the island of Ground’s Nir in size. Their island passed right by it and the reverse side of the sun came into view.

There was a garden full of countless flowers that felt like a sign of spring and several white marble columns were lined up. As the rows of pillars continued, the amount of marble grew in relation to the flowers. In the very center was something like a giant pure white altar or temple.

“Is that it…?”

It looked like heaven.

But this was not the time to stare.

At this rate, they would pass by the sun and leave it behind.

“Armelina!!”

“Really!? Am I turning into your convenient gofer!?”

They all jumped down to the reverse side of the sun in their own ways: Beatrice used her flame wings, Boo Boo used his leg strength, Filinion clung to one of those legs, Second Flattest Sibyl mostly clung to Armelina, and Flattest Armelina used her metal chain.

Once they had landed, Boo Boo heard some loud destruction overhead.

He looked up to see the island they had been riding breaking apart. That alone was hardly new, but the conditions were different this time.

It had not collided with another island.

It must have crashed into something, but that something was nowhere to be seen. It was as if the island had crashed into an invisible wall.

“Squeal. What was that…?”

“It’s a lot thinner than on Earth, but maybe that was the boundary of this world’s atmosphere,” suggested Beatrice.

Now that they had stable footing, Filinion and Sibyl no longer had to rely on others. They all stood on their own feet and looked around the strange sunlit flower garden. All the plants in Ground’s Nir came from Ileana’s All-Purpose Seed, but was the same true of these flowers growing on the reverse side of the sun so far above the highest snow-covered peak?

“Argh, I’m leaving this backpack here! If I run out of materials, I’ll head back here to recharge!”

Even on the reverse side of the sun, the sky was blue and the land was filled with light like normal.

It was a perfectly normal scene of spring. However, it felt like that was a perpetual state with no nighttime and no seasonal changes, so it actually felt highly unnatural.

Looking up showed a blue sky, but no clouds or sun. It was impossible to tell the scale without any impurities to judge distances by, so it felt like a screen for filming a composite video.

Armelina spoke while returning her Shining Weapon to its original metal staff form.

“We’ve arrived, but what now? You were saying something about that brown girl not being the only Marinka, right?”
“You will understand once you actually meet her. The Marinka who guards the sky treasure should be in the central cathedral. It can be hard to tell when it’s buried in all this greenery, but if we start for the biggest building in the distance, we will arrive at a marble road that will take us the rest of the way.”

While white and yellow butterflies fluttered around with no concern for the passage of time, Boo Boo and the others followed Sibyl across heaven. As before, the air did not feel thin or cold.

Nothing obstructed their path along the way.

They saw a few shapes they thought were small animals or birds, but there was nothing concerning. They actually focused on not stepping on the small creatures running around underfoot.

The scenery changed and they were enveloped by a Western castle town made of white marble. However, there was no sign of life. No matter how beautiful it was, these were ruins.

When Sibyl viewed the lonely town, she breathed an exasperated sigh with her hands on her hips.

“I knew Marinka had grown more distant after Vivian’s death, but I didn’t realize her rejection had grown so strong. The only thing she will find here is complete loneliness. And if she is satisfied with that, I already feel sorry for her.”

They arrived at the center.

When Sibyl opened the heavy double doors, ''she'' was waiting in the center of the cathedral’s great hall.

The ceiling of that cathedral of eternal spring had partially collapsed, but was that coincidental or intentional? A single ray of light shined down on ''her''.

A single white cloth was wrapped around a body that was slender but had bewitching curves reminiscent of dripping nectar. It was a tall beautiful woman with gorgeous blonde hair that fell to her shoulder blades and skin so white it reflected the light. However, the halo floating over her head was dulled like rusted metal and the wings on her back were the black of concentrated darkness. She seemed best described as a fallen angel.

An azure color shined at her right ear.

It was an earring bearing a jewel similar to the one in Sibyl’s circlet.

“Marinka…”

The Royal Elf whispered the same name she had called their attacker.

Just then, white feathers fluttered down from the large hole in the ceiling. The feathers fell like snow and they came from the other Archangel that had already caught up with them. The Marinka with brown skin, blonde hair, and white wings slowly descended.

When the small Archangel landed in the center, the tall and slender Archangel reached her alluring arms toward her from behind. But not to embrace her or rub her back.

[[Image:BooBoo_v06_155.png|thumb]]

She stuck her hands in the smaller Archangel’s shoulder blades.

Or did the brown girl’s back absorb the tall woman’s hands?

The tall woman’s arms entered the small girl more smoothly than liquid or jelly. There was no sign of pain on the brown girl’s face and they did it so readily that the onlookers simply watched it happen without thinking. The white wings vanished from the small brown girl’s back and new white wings burst from the tall angel’s back, giving her two pairs of wings. Light and shadow. Now that she had seen that pair combine, Beatrice finally felt like she understood what Sibyl had been saying.

“She isn’t the day or the night. And she isn’t the sun or the moon. …She’s an eclipse. Does Archangel Marinka symbolize the partial sun?”

“To be more accurate, she contains all aspects of the sun, including the abnormal state of an eclipse,” explained Sibyl.

Archangel Marinka. That ruler of heaven could infinitely change her appearance depending on how the two combined. But while Boo Boo and Beatrice were strangers to her, why had she rejected an old friend like Sibyl? Was that also related to how the pair of angels combined? Or in human terms, was she just in a bad mood?

“Squeal. This might sound selfish, but we want to save the elder and the others now that we brought them back to life. And everyone says we need that final treasure of yours to do it. We want to borrow that earring. Is there no way you can do that?”

The tall woman did not respond to Boo Boo’s words.

The brown girl, who had two arms entering her from behind, raised her small hand straight up.

No, her index finger was extended and she was pointing past the cathedral’s broken ceiling, beyond the blue sky, and at the invisible barrier at the end of heaven.

The tall and glowing woman opened her lips just a bit as she rubbed cheeks with the brown girl.

“If y** *ollect the hi**en tre****es of *** three roy** ***ilies, you will be **** ** reveal the full compos***** of this world.”

Again, her voice was full of static like fine sand was pouring into their ear holes.

But the brown girl also opened her lips while her shoulder blades absorbed the two arms.

“** *ou c****** *** **dd** ***asur** ** the ***** ***al fam*****, *** **** ** able to ****** *** **** *****ition ** **** *****.”

Their words overlapped and created a single smooth, harmonious sound.

Just like an eclipse, the combination created its own meaning.

“If y''ou c''ollect the hi''dden tre''asur''es of'' the ''three roy''al fam''ilies, you will be ''able to ''reveal the full compos''ition'' of this world.”

They did not have time to grimace at that mystery.

Once the words began, they did not stop.

“''I will n''ot allow it. ''You mus''t not be'' allowed to see wh''at lies beyond that'' blue.''”

The small brown girl and the slender white woman’s words combined to create a completed hostility.

“That blue…?”

Even though they stood before an enemy, Filinion looked up in the direction the brown girl pointed.

The only things there were the unnatural blue sky and the incredibly thin atmospheric barrier.

The Iberian Orc shook his head and spoke.

“We aren’t interested in the sky. We only want to learn about the Red afflicting the elder and the others. So you don’t have to worry. Once we’re done, we’ll give back the sky treasure.”

“The ris''k rem''ains the sa''me.'' If you gather the ''three royal treasures'' there i''s a chance y''ou will discover it''s identity'' and that is ''bad enough''. Thus, I will reje''ct'' your choice to ''gather'' all of the treasures ''no matter wha''t your reasons are.”

“…Marinka, is this really worth abandoning an old friend like me over?” Sibyl spoke quietly as if slowly approaching her. “I know Vivian’s death was a great shock to our souls. We have such long lives we might as well be immortal, but we were faced with the simple truth that we can be suddenly killed. But what is with you now? Are you holed up in heaven and pushing everyone away because the surface is filled with unreasonable death? You think you alone can remain happy if you shut your ears to the cries for help? To hell with that, Marinka! If that is all you learned from Vivian’s death, then your current state makes a mockery of her life!!”

The Royal Elf was blatantly provoking her, but the Archangel slowly shook her head.

Whoever they had originally belonged to, the tall woman standing behind the brown girl bewitchingly moved and spread the four monotone wings on her back.

“Vivi''an was'' interes''ted in the end'' of the world ''bey''ond the sea. ''Tha''t is why she ''encountered the'' Underworld Lord and met ''such'' a tragic fate.”

“Marinka…”

“You ''rule the land'' which is on''ly a limited'' space these days a''nd does not connect to the beyond'', so you ca''nno''t understand this fea''r. I do'' border the beyond. The be''yond radi''ates a de''adly curiosity.'' You know the knowledge will ''destroy your'' very ''existence'', bu''t you cannot resist the tempat''ion to take a pe''ek.'' That is why ''I must reject'' all th''at leads to the beyond''. The Underworld and ''its direct methods of killing'' are a se''parate matter. The true issue lies ''elsewhere. The tr''uth I learned from Viv''ian is the ''simple fact that we'' must never come into contact wi''th the beyond''.”

The “beyond” of the sky that the two Marinkas mentioned had to be something different than just the horizon.

It was the invisible wall that existed above them here.

It was the border of the atmosphere.

“You ''must'' not loo''k beyond th''at. Eve''n the slightest poss''ibility of you doing ''so must be full''y eliminated. Sib''y''l, if yo''u had not asked for the three royal treasures'', we co''uld have'' remained fri''ends.'' But from the mom''ent you'' considered that me''thod, you have beco''me my enemy.”

It was a decisive rejection.

“Hm? Hmm??? Is there really something worth protecting beyond the atmosphere? Isn’t it just the starry sky of outer space?”

But the girl who wore glasses yet was dumb had to comment.

This world was different from Earth in just about every way. Even the shape of the sun was strange, but had she not realized the concepts of the atmosphere and outer space may have been entirely replaced with something else?

However, there were times when stupid questions would get things moving.

Archangel Marinka responded to Filinion with a slow shake of the head.

And she gave the prediction she most feared.

“There is ''nothing''.”

“…What?”

Beatrice frowned and the tall woman opened her lips once more.

“That ''blue sky is emp''ty. Mo''st likely, there is nothing bey''ond it. B''ut making predi''ctions is not a problem. My big''gest fear is for'' that nothingness to be obs''erved as fact and for'' the def''in''ition to become fixed. ''No, I cannot allow ''it. Most likely, if the ''nothingness'' of the beyond is ob''served, th''is world will be unable to b''ear the contradiction and'' it will shat''ter. Will the flow o''f time stop, will all memories be er''ased, forc''ing everything to restart, ''or will we literally f''all into the v''oid?'' I do not kn''ow what wi''ll happen, but ''I cannot allow any of i''t to happen. ''I do not know wha''t kind of ru''in you face,'' but I ''will do what''ever I can to prevent the ''ruin'' I see coming. ''No one can be all''owed to enter ''that pla''ce that ''was never created in the fir''st place.”

“Squeal, what does that mean?”

“This ''may'' be easier to ''imagine for '' the ''humans'' visiting from ano''ther world'' than for a s''oul born'' in Ground’s ''Nir in the'' first place. ''It ma''y have been the''m that crea''ted this wo''rld.''”

Boo Boo and Sibyl only grew more confused.

“The hu''mans who'' visited from ''another world, lear''ned how to use Ma''gic through a un''ique method. Man''y other control methods'' had to have exist''ed, but they cho''se this one because it was the clos''est match.''”

The brown girl spoke mercilessly with the beautiful woman’s arms absorbed into her shoulder blades.

“That ''familiar''ity ma''y signify a'' connec''tio''n.”

“You mean…?”

A thought had occurred to Beatrice, but she could not say any more.

Of course she could not when she thought of Boo Boo who she had met in Ground’s Nir.

So it was White Witch Filinion who said it first.

“You mean Ground’s Nir itself might be a game someone created? So we can’t touch the ‘beyond’ on the other side of the wall because no one ever created what was there? If we go there, it could cause a crash and everything in this world could be destroyed?”

However, four-winged Marinka shook her head once again

“N''o''.”

And she spoke her truth.

“Y''our Ear''th is ''th''e game. ''Earth wa''s created based on th''is world, so'' it does not know what lies in th''e beyond. If y''ou were to view i''t, it could cau''se a fatal feedback err''or, whi''ch would cause th''e Earth it''self to c''ra''sh.”

===Part 7===

A quiet clicking sound continued on and on.

It echoed in the darkness somewhere in the world.

The true core of a certain country filled a vast space that was cooled like a cold storage warehouse.

The giant box was simply known as The Simulator.

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Between the Lines 2===

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume6_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1

2018-04-22T09:52:18Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 1: Which is More Frightening: Shells or Overwork? >> Tank-Accompanied Battle in the Mekong District==

===Part 1===

It was October.

The continent of Asia had a wide variety of regions and climates, from landlocked deserts to the oceanic Island Nation, but in the southern sea near the equator, the weather was still quite hot in this season. The unique humidity of Asia trapped that heat around you and the smell of the rotting trees and mud of the thick subtropical forest brewed a unique kind of “air”.

The two idiots named Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell had just infiltrated the Mekong District and completed a job there, so they and the other soldiers gave a look of annoyance at the beach where the clear water was washing in and out.

“…That was supposed to be our extraction point, wasn’t it?”

“Oh, hell. We spent five days without a single bath while we snuck through mangroves and blew away white powder processing plants, so what’s with the festivities here? Are they planning a parade for the triumphant return of Heivia the super handsome genius noble?”

They were on their way back from blowing up some old-style heroin factories that had started popping up all over the map, presumably because their market share was being threatened by the synthetic drugs that had become all the rage lately. This could get a little complicated, but poppy seeds produced opium, the primary component of opium was morphine, and morphine became heroin with some chemical processing. This will not be on the test, but it is all very dangerous, so pay careful attention. Anyway, they had gotten as far as blowing up the drug factories (which were rumored to have military connections) and returned.

A transport helicopter was meant to pick them up here so they could return to the warship out at sea.

But they found something enormous there instead.

It was a battlecruiser of unknown affiliation.

It had been beached.

It was located entirely up on the white sand.

The mass of metal was more than 200 meters long and painted a faintly bluish gray. Three-gun sets of main cannons were stacked in tiers and the large ship’s bridge towered up a bit toward the right. That said, the real firepower was in the vertical missile launcher tubes lined up along the stern of the ship. There were also Gatling guns and torpedo tubes arranged along either side like roadside trees.

“What do we do? Return to the hidden base in the forest?”

“When survivors from the heroin factories could still be wandering around out there? If we flee there and give away the position of all the secret facilities, we’d be putting our allies’ lives at risk.”

They then received an appreciated transmission from Her Excellency Frolaytia Capistrano, their busty, silver-haired commander who was monitoring the situation via satellite.

“Quenser, Heivia. Change of plans.”

“What in the world is going on?”

“The start of fall is apparently the season for cyclones in Asia. You had trouble with that yesterday, if you recall. Well, an Information Alliance warship was beached by the storm. We’ve picked up their rescue signal out here at sea. Sorry about making you work again after your all-nighter, but could you start on some philanthropic work?”

“What!? You want us to help them!? Not kill them!?”

“There are international rules unrelated to war concerning shipwrecks. You’ve heard about another world power’s submarine working to rescue the crew of a ship sunk in an accident, haven’t you? If enemy and ally work together to save them, it apparently makes for a lovely story.”

“…If that thing gets back out to sea, it’s our asses it’ll be targeting.”

“The ship’s diesel engine and troop equipment are apparently still working, so if we attack them, it’s all you little foot soldiers that will be blown to bits. Are you sure you want that?”

A beached metal ship was a troublesome thing.

At sea, opening a single hole in its belly would sink it, but a much greater amount of firepower was needed to silence one on land.

“Of course, since we were ordered to help out instead of blowing it away with the Object, I can only assume there was some argument in the safe country council,” said Frolaytia. “Simply put, doing this favor here will let us withdraw from a war on the other side of the globe. This is another form of war. A great age of life and peace is counting on this. If you screw it up, that diplomatic card will fail and the councilors will be less than happy with us, so make sure you do this right.”

The two idiots stared at the radio for a while after the transmission ended. Once it was clear there was no changing this, they covered their faces with their hands.

“We don’t even get a chance to take a shower…?”

“Do you really think Miss Sadist would agree to that? She’d just say we already got one when that cyclone dumped rain on our heads all night long, so let’s get this over with so we can return to the fleet.”

And with that, the mission had begun.

The Information Alliance battlecruiser was more than 200 meters long and appeared to weigh about 70 thousand tons. They could not exactly tow it with a truck’s winch and they could not line up logs to roll it forward either. Neither were bad ideas for moving something big and heavy, but this was just ''too'' big and heavy.

“Welcome to Hotel Flagship 019!”

Someone approached them across the unnaturally white beach.

The old man seemed awfully cheerful for someone who had been shipwrecked and forced to get help from another world power. Because he worked on a ship, he wore a white uniform that did not even try to use camouflage and he was accompanied by several bodyguards. And all of those bodyguards were young women in pure white sailor uniforms. …The uniforms should not have been a problem for navy soldiers, so why did it look out of place on those sexy women?

The man who inspired thoughts of “death to the bourgeoisie” introduced himself.

“I am Alfred Silverking, captain of the Flagship 019. It would seem human race is practically brimming with good will. I truly appreciate this rescue.”

“We’ll help out, but we’re not about to enter under your command. So we’re not gonna change our language or our manners.”

“Perfectly understandable.” The gray-haired old man pulled out a thick pipe and one of his female bodyguards lit it with practiced hand. “Some of your people arrived from sea earlier and are already working, but, well, we are the ones in need. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.”

“…Why do you insist on speaking down to us, old man?”

“That is just how I am. Now, our objective is to return the ship to sea as quickly as possible, but a 70-thousand-ton ship will not be easily budged.”

“Tie it to an Object and tow it on out to sea, idiot.”

“The ship would tear in half. Sand has friction too, you see.”

The old man explained the situation to the idiot duo and their jolly friends. As they trudged through the sand on their way toward the Flagship 019, he groped the butt of one of his bodyguards while showing no sign he thought he was doing anything wrong.

“Luckily, my ship is not simply a giant hunk of metal. It has a large empty space within. And I have not received any word of a hole being torn in the hull when it was beached. So it would be best to return to the basics. Ships are built in shipyards on the land, but they are sent out to sea once they are completed. Now, how do they do that?”

Quenser frowned at that.

“…Fill the area below them with water?”

“Precisely. Luckily, there is only fine sand below my ship. That can be dug out if we put our minds to it. First, we must support it with pillars on both sides so it does not topple over. Yes, there must be more than 100 on either side to ensure the weight is not focused on a single point. Then we use heavy machinery to dig out the sand below the ship, create a large enough space, and guide seawater into that space. That will get my Flagship 019 afloat once more and it can be returned to the sea.”

“Wait, wait, wait!! Wait!! You make it sound easy, but that’s gotta mean digging out a hell of a lot of sand! Not only do we need a space below the ship, but we need a route out to sea so it doesn’t scrape its belly on the way. Are you asking us to build a canal here!?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I truly appreciate this rescue.”

The gray-haired dirty old man was entirely nonchalant about it.

Before proposing an idea, Quenser thanked god that his commander was a busty, silver-haired beauty.

“Really though, if we have the Baby Magnum drag around a wire-attached bucket like it’s trolling for fish, it can dig up the seabed and create a route out to sea pretty easily. The real problem is the beach where something so inexact wouldn’t work.”

“Stop working your brain for this piece of shit, Quenser. We’re not the Capitalist Corporations, so don’t turn into a goddamn wage slave.”

A makeshift barricade was crudely placed around the beach and Legitimacy Kingdom work vehicles were already driving around within it. Instead of cranes or diggers, they looked more like armored vehicles and tanks with those parts added on.

Heivia gave an annoyed look to the Holy Sword: Shitty Shovel he had pulled out of the beach.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me. Our military still hasn’t automated this kind of thing?”

“Weapons always have a manual step, so they never fully hand over control. A machine can’t be legally responsible for its actions, so whoever’s in charge would get in trouble even if it’s all automated.”

“But tankers and cruise ships are automated to cut down on labor costs. And the navy isn’t much different. Not to mention spy drones and bombers. If the sea and sky are going the unmanned route, why is the land alone so untouchable?”

But Quenser was interested in something other than their diligent allies.

Something thicker than a firehose descended from the battlecruiser’s deck to the beach and then continued on past the barricade.

The student stared curiously up the 9 meters to the deck and asked about it.

“What’s that?”

“Oh, that. The ship’s diesel engine has better fuel efficiency when it is kept on at all times instead of switching it on and off for every little thing. But that would be a waste of energy, so we are sending the engine’s excess power to a local village. So soon after a cyclone, they are very thankful that they can make breakfast without waiting for the torn power lines to be repaired.”

“…I seriously doubt the black-hearted military would perform volunteer work if they weren’t getting anything out of it.”

“Do not be ridiculous. We are a peace-keeping force established for the purpose of self-defense.” Alfred was saying some unbelievable things. “But to be honest, we wanted to avoid a strained post-disaster environment where the people might relieve their stress by blaming their unexpected guests. We are giving them a treat to ensure our work goes smoothly. Oppressing people with military might is not the only way to cut down on terrorism.”

…The crude barricades which left a lot of openings were apparently part of creating that image. If they strictly kept everyone out of the area, the locals might see it as outsiders occupying their land. Quenser had heard that safe country factories would leave a portion of their walls transparent to allow people to see inside. This probably had a similar psychological effect.

“It’s a metal whale!”

“Hey, can we take a picture of it?”

“Won’t the metal whale dry out if they don’t pour water on it?”

The place was already popular with the local kids. This really showed the Information Alliance’s ability to control people’s minds.

Alfred Silverking waved past the barricade with the perfect smile for a press conference.

“I am sorry you have to work on this so soon after your previous job,” he said to Quenser and Heivia.

“I’d like to complain, but I’d be revealing military secrets if I did…”

“Are you referring to the heroin factories in Mekong? We have been monitoring that. Oh, that poor Faith Organization film industry. They might be the world power most lagging behind when it comes to guiding international public opinion, but once you start relying on dirty money to pay for more CG, you really are beyond saving as an entertainment industry.”

“It doesn’t matter if you know everything about it already! We still can’t say anything, dammit!!”

Meanwhile, that captain, who was old in every way but his sex drive, received a whispered message from one of his young female bodyguards in sailor uniforms. He removed the thick pipe from his mouth and instead took a radio from the woman’s smooth hand.

“This is Alfred Silverking.”

“Commodore, surely you know what it means when you’re receiving a call from someone sent here as a troubleshooter. I apologize for how sudden this is, but we have a problem. Immediately put together a unit for a land-based mission. Quality: a specialization in covert activity. Quantity: even just a platoon would be enough. And give priority to the quality requirement.”

“My ship is part of the navy, you know? Do you know where I could find a witch’s potion to give legs to a mermaid?”

“Is this inept resistance of yours in the middle of an emergency your idea of following the Information Alliance way of life and getting information out of me for free, commodore? That is a shocking level of idiocy, but if you like the idea of being hanged for violating international law, then by all means continue wasting my time. You are the responsible party here.”

“…To be entirely honest, I do not know where I can find such a unit. Do you know the animal that kills the most people in the world? The mosquito. They carry a great many pathogens and kill more than 700 thousand people a year. That is more than crime or war. I apologize for going on and on about this, but none of my soldiers have been vaccinated for malaria or the other diseases found in the Asian jungle.”

“The two sides are working together since you’re shipwrecked, right? If necessary, you can procure some Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. Just hurry.”

“How?”

“The truth is the greatest trump card. Tell them every last one of them will be slaughtered if they get caught up in our problem. Tell them the neighbor’s house is on fire and the direction of the wind isn’t looking good.”

The transmission ended.

The two idiots had a ''very'' bad feeling where this was headed.

Then the gray-haired dirty old man turned toward them, grinned, and made a suggestion.

“Now then, gentlemen. Which would you prefer: digging out sand with a shovel, or returning to a storm of gunfire on the battlefield?”

Since he was not silver-haired, busty, or beautiful, Heivia reflexively grabbed at the man, so the young female bodyguards in white sailor uniforms knocked him to the ground and thoroughly rewarded him.

===Part 2===

Outdoor work in Southeast Asia felt like being steamed in an oven to healthily cut out the fat, but Quenser and Heivia were instead guided inside the Flagship 019 battlecruiser.

They parted ways with Alfred Silverking and a young male soldier showed them the rest of the way.

They found a space that seemed far too large for a battlecruiser. It seemed more like a crude ship’s hold from a helicopter carrier or a landing ship. A parasol, a simple table, and some chairs were set up and a girl of about 12 with long blonde hair was enjoying some tea with her legs crossed.

She wore a black military uniform that clearly identified her as not your average soldier and she moved just her eyes to look at them.

“Welcome, gentlemen.”

“…Is ''everyone'' in the Information Alliance a wannabe S who insists on looking down on people?”

“Heivia, you can’t expect much from these morons. Just be glad we traded that gray-haired old man for a cute girl…”

“Hah hah hah? A cute girl? A cute girl!? Oh, Quenser. Even if I’m being generous, we’re either looking at the investiture for some snot-nosed noble brat or the Island Nation’s Shichi-Go-San festival. This tiny, low-and-inside dead ball is clearly categorized as a little gir- bgwehohhhh!!!???”

He cut himself off with some odd noises because of the teacup full of piping hot tea that the black-uniformed grim reaper had chucked at him without batting an eye. It seemed being stomped on by the skirt-wearing women who had been hand-picked by that dirty old man had not been enough of a reward for this boy. Had he completely forgotten they were inside an enemy warship?

“Now. This high-ranking officer with a sexy and adult body will deign to ignore your adorably nonsensical statement.”

[[Image:HO_v14_025.jpg|thumb]]

With her legs still crossed, the blonde girl held another cup out toward the empty air. A butler-like young man poured her some new tea. Without even looking in his direction, the little girl…no, the girl…no, no, the beautiful woman…no, no, no, the super sexy widow…no, no, no, no, there is simply no getting around the fact that she was a Rank AAA little girl. And she gestured toward the other seats with her chin.

She seemed to be telling them to take a seat.

“I am Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. I specialize in troubleshooting for the Information Alliance military. I don’t know if it is meant as a compliment or an insult, but I am known as the Stopgap Grim Reaper. I honestly would rather not have anything to do with you for long, but let’s try to work together for the time being.”

“We’re…wait, can we give our names, Heivia?”

“You just gave mine! Th-then again, giving our name and rank shouldn’t be a problem.”

Wraith sighed lightly at their exchange.

“Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage and Private First Class Heivia Winchell.”

“Uhh?”

“You have a thing for feet and you have a thing for armpits.”

“Uhhh!?”

“Don’t let this surprise you, you innocent fools. We are the Information Alliance.”

The blonde girl provided an explanation that may or may not have had further implications.

Now that their fetishes had been exposed, Quenser and Heivia nervously took their seats as if a giant power saw had been moved up between their legs and stopped just before reaching their balls.

“So, um, what would you like to discuss?”

“I am glad to see you catch on quickly, in your own idiotic way. Sincerity is a virtue. You may have already heard from the commodore, but we have a problem. However, we do not have the ability to deal with it since we are beached here. Since you have crossed the battle line to rescue us, we are all in this together, so I will have the Legitimacy Kingdom assist in resolving this problem.”

The young man waiting behind her lined up a few paper documents on the table as if handing out restaurant menus. They may have used paper instead of a digital format because there was no way of fully erasing digital data.

In what may have been a habit of hers, Wraith needlessly spun a pen in her hand.

“The Information Alliance and Legitimacy Kingdom are currently working together because a beached ship is deemed ‘sunk’ and unable to operate according to the military regulations and leaving the 205 crewmembers with no ability to fight back would mean letting them die. A truly beautiful farce, don’t you think?”

“That just means you’re asking us to help because you can’t fight, right? What about it?”

Wraith sighed at Quenser’s question.

“…What if we secretly did have the ability to fight on land?”

“Huh?”

Heivia frowned at that ominous suggestion.

“As I said, I was sent in after the fact as a troubleshooter.” The blonde girl looked annoyed. “So I will admit it took me too long to grasp the situation. …Curse the Flagship 019. The warship was carrying five tanks in its belly. I don’t want to protect that dirty old man and his crew, but this is more like a leaked report than an intentional cover-up.”

“Why would a naval ship have tanks…?”

“I don’t know either. Maybe they didn’t want to transport them through the usual routes, or maybe they were on some covert operation that precluded having the Tank 041s show up in the records.”

It was a strange thing, but Quenser and the others were inside an unusually large space within an otherwise cramped warship. What was that space?

It was possible the Flagship 019 was more than just a warship sent out as a naval fighting force. It may have also transported armaments.

“I really don’t like where this is headed. This unlicensed taxi definitely wasn’t headed to a hotel, I can tell you that…”

“Oh, one other thing, my dear idiots. Sorry, but you will have to take this information to your graves.”

“Hold on!! You forgot to ask us if we wanted to hear about it first! Don’t stab us and then apologize!!”

“Yes, but we are the Information Alliance, you see.”

“Curse her… She opened the drawer and then slammed it back shut so we can’t turn back!!”

“As wise and merciful as I am, I will guarantee your silly human rights. Thus, you are free to turn back here, but if you do that, keep in mind that someone outside my jurisdiction will likely add your names to some assassination list or another.”

The two idiots’ eyes bugged out at that, but they were already in the middle of a secret operation. If they said anything they should not, they could easily end up the target of a cross-borders payback operation.

“To get back on topic, the problem is that we have a fighting force capable of moving on the land.” Wraith nonchalantly sipped at her tea. “The request for cooperative rescue work only works in a pressing situation, such as a small submersible being sent to help a sunk submarine where the crew is simply waiting for death as the oxygen runs out. If we have a usable fighting force at our disposal, that condition no longer applies.”

…Of course, there was no way that five tanks could get a 200 meter and 70 thousand ton mass back to the ocean, but that did not really matter. The people back in safe countries who were cramming their noses in the rulebooks tended not to care about the actual on-site situation.

“If our temporary cooperation is abandoned here, the Information Alliance’s Flagship 019 will be blown away by an Object with no way of fighting back. But the Flagship 019’s guns still work. Plus, all those diligent Legitimacy Kingdom pigs are hanging around at point-blank range. If a battle breaks out, both sides will be wiped out before they can escape back to sea. No, in the worst case, your Object’s main cannon could even blow away your own infantry as they flee along the beach.”

“Ugh…”

“…I-I can see that happening. With that violent princess and busty commander in the same deck, anything can happen.”

“I would prefer to avoid a silly battle as well. Calculating out the scope of the damage would be a pain. So I want you to move the five troublesome tanks elsewhere as soon as possible. Yes, I can see it now. The first report on the morning news will be some of that oddly tall and narrow ‘viewer-supplied footage’ that has become so ubiquitous. I expect it would take two hours before any actual reporters with a press badge hanging from their neck arrive on the scene. Make sure you have this done before then.”

Quenser and Heivia understood what she was trying to say.

They might have been fine with helping the Information Alliance with this, but not here and now. They had just finished destroying heroin factories deep in the subtropical forest, so they were not about to start another battle now. If you accepted a cruel convenience store manager’s harsh timetable even once, that would become the norm from then on. They knew for sure their sadistic and busty commander would do that. There was no way they would accept to go on a likely literal death march for the war industry.

And something else bothered them more.

“But doesn’t everyone have some kind of camera these days? Just one person with a cellphone can send that tall and narrow footage to the entire world.”

“We are the Information Alliance. We can suppress amateur witness information, even if they use a civilian satellite service. We can shout fake news or fabricate evidence about the footage having traces of being doctored. If it comes down to it, we can even hit ourselves with a cyber-attack. We create our extreme explanation to compete with theirs. If it comes down to a futile argument between white and black, the people’s judgments will fall into the neutral gray zone in the middle. We can hold it back as long as we are not talking about that media that comes with the title of ‘mass’, which is far more persuasive.”

There was no need to overthink this.

They only had to fire up the five tanks and get them out of here.

Quenser and Heivia only had to act as guards along the way.

“You will find the remnants of an airport 120 kilometers north of here. It used to be an Information Alliance airfield, but we had to abandon it after the Faith Organization demonstrated the advantages of their way of fighting properly and killing diligently. Just get those troublesome tanks to the bunker there. Once things have stabilized, the Information Alliance will put together an operation to recover them.”

“Does that mean what I think it does…?”

“Yes, you would be aware after crawling around the forest destroying those heroin factories. This is a battlefield country, but it is effectively under Faith Organization control. South Asia is a melting pot of Hinduism and Buddhism. And it would be a problem if they destroyed or captured the tanks in transit, since that material evidence could be used as a diplomatic card against us.”

In addition to simple terrain and weather information, the documents lined up on the table listed a few expected enemies and their equipment.

The threats to the Tank 041s were shoulder-fired rockets, anti-tank mines, anti-tank trenches, IEDs made from unexploded ordnance, barbed wire, tanks, attack helicopters, and…

“We would like to demonstrate some Information Alliance-style respect by relying on the data that is your experience in ‘surviving’ such things.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…”

“The Faith Organization’s Second Generation Coilgun 073 is patrolling at irregular intervals. Oh, and your silly codename for it is the Paper Bikini, I believe. …We would prefer to avoid walking through that area, but we have no time. Find a way.”

“…”

“…”

The two boys fell silent when the memories came flooding back.

Yet it normally seemed like those two idiots would suffocate if they were not constantly talking.

In a way, this was a nightmare on the level of entering a tiger den, snatching up the tiger cub, safely escaping the forest, and celebrating that you would never have to face a monster like that again, just to remember that you had dropped the car keys in the depths of that cave.

However, the clock was already ticking.

If they did nothing, the fuse would burn down and they would be caught in the explosion.

They were stuck between a hellish rock and a hellish hard place.

The only choice with the slightest chance of avoiding bloodshed was to move forward.

“I have one last question,” asked Quenser.

“What might that be?”

“…Has our big boss, Frolaytia, agreed to this joint operation?”

When he hesitantly asked, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray elegantly returned her teacup to the saucer.

Then she crossed her slender index fingers in front of her adorable lips.

While forming a small X in front of her mouth, the blonde girl gave him a somewhat upturned glance and asked for something unbelievable.

“This will just have to be our little secret.”

===Part 3===

And after all that…

“This is the worst,” someone groaned. “We only have two options here: die from a bullet or die from overwork…”

They were in a thick forest, but there was no solid ground below their feet. In fact, the seawater rose about halfway up their calves. This area was known as a mangrove. That meant it had worse footing than a normal forest, it was extremely hot and humid, and they could not even sit down to take a break.

Long ago, people had built cells that entirely ignored the captive’s human rights. The water cell had submerged the floor so the captive could not lie down and sleep while the Sisyphean cell had forced the captive to walk endlessly around and around in the small space by passing a long stick through the bars and prodding them whenever they stopped moving. Those nightmarish rooms had destroyed the captive’s mind through physical exhaustion, but marching through a mangrove without any rest was quickly reaching that level.

It was hellishly hot and humid, but they were surrounded by non-potable seawater. And even if they got desperate enough to try to cool off in the water, the osmotic pressure would still wear them out on the cellular level. This was the environment through which five masses of steel moved slowly in a line. It was an incredibly difficult route that kept switching between land and waterside, but the tanks managed to remain exactly the same distance apart.

Tropical mangroves were the perfect fit for the effects of global warming, so they seemed to have been taking over the landscape quite quickly. The greenery had swallowed up fighter jets, transport helicopters, and the like which had been shot down by an Object’s lasers. They could feel their balls shrivel up when they thought about how many small shrimps and crabs had to be living all through here.

“Are these those self-driving vehicles that are so popular lately?”

“Huh? Well, that does sound like something the Information Alliance would like.”

The tanks were clearly maintaining a walking pace so that the infantry like Quenser and Heivia could be positioned around them as guards.

“What the hell is this? There’s something wrong with placing flesh-and-blood guards around something with composite armor over a meter thick. What are we, a meat cushion used to protect that metal fruit?”

“I’d rather be here than out front. The ones who lost that game of rock-paper-scissors are taking the lead to make sure the tanks don’t trigger any tripwires or landmines, right?”

“So how far have landmines evolved these days, anyway?”

“I dunno. I’ve heard a lot of stories though. Like landmines that fly up into the air and fall right on top of the tank, or landmines that inform a remote operator when triggered and that operator uses video footage to confirm the presence of enemy soldiers before detonating it.”

“What happened to ''land''mines being something buried in the ground…?”

“There are apparently also landmines that have something like a parabolic antenna on the ground which automatically turns its head to target the side of the tank. Just like a concave mirror, it focuses the blast on a single point to launch the blast like a spear and pierce the armor from dozens of meters away.”

The weight settings for an anti-personnel mine and an anti-tank mine were different, so they would not explode if a person accidentally stepped on them. …But to reiterate, this was a mangrove with seawater covering everything. Even at a depth of a few dozen centimeters, the water pressure could add enough for a person’s weight to trigger them. And if the mine was made from glass or plastic, the metal detectors attached to the end of their rifles could not locate them, so they had to be super careful.

“Have we wandered into a post-apocalyptic world? The greenery has swallowed up all these weapons…”

“It only takes a few years for this to happen. That goddamn Oceanian forestation tech seems to have been profitable. Although that dictator said he couldn’t trust some words on paper, so he didn’t sell them the Object tech along with it.”

Unlike direct sunlight, this was the same stuffy heat as a plastic greenhouse. Heivia was completely sick of it and wiped away the sweat dripping down his chin.

“We’re doing our jobs and protecting the battalion from a threat, but our busty commander is never gonna see it that way. Will she just think we’re skipping out on our sand-digging job?”

“The focus right now is on preventing this information from leaking out, but we’ll just have to hope that little Wraithy will explain everything once this is over.”

And since the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance were working together at the moment, this would not qualify as disobeying orders and deserting…or so the two idiots hoped.

The tanks in question – the Information Alliance seemed to call them Tank 041s – had been hastily painted with Legitimacy Kingdom-ish camouflage, but anyone who knew what they were doing would quickly notice something was wrong. The tanks did not look like a crude collection of straight lines. The body and rotating turret had streamlined curves that flowed front to back and it was designed to stay low to the ground. It made Quenser think of a sports car or the front car of a high-speed train.

They had to get those tanks to the remains of some airfield.

He made a comment while glancing over at the tank which was covered with small boxes about the size of a phonebook.

“I guess not even a tank can just knock down all the trees in its path.”

He received a clear voice transmission from the tank right next to him.

“Even if they’re masses of composite armor, they still weigh a few dozen tons each. It would probably be simplest to think of them like giant trucks. They smash through concrete walls in movies, but they can actually be stopped pretty easily. And when you do have to force your way through a barrier, you need to point the gun backwards so it doesn’t get damaged.”

“Who are you?”

“Oops, I forgot to introduce myself. I’m Dorothea Martini Naked. Nice to meetcha☆”

The two idiots exchanged a glance.

“…Martini?”

“We’ve heard that name before.”

“Yeah, we’re…y’know, a part of that standard. The Martini Series,” said the voice. “Although I don’t recommend looking into that too much.”

This sudden operation existed outside normal operating procedures and it seemed to have some hidden connections to things they were not aware of. To sum it up, they had nothing but bad feelings about this.

“(Umm, have we been set up in some way?)”

“(That’s just how the military works. You’re either tricked by the enemy or caught in some conspiracy by an ally. It can come from the front or the back, but you get fucked either way.)”

Diesel exhaust filled their lungs along with the salty and muddy scent while Quenser and Heivia felt less than hopeful about the fate of the derailed train that was this mission.

Even the radios they carried felt different.

They had left their Legitimacy Kingdom format radios and handheld devices at the Disaster Rescue Base on the beach, and they had been given Information Alliance format ones instead. Everyone’s cute Wraithy claimed it was a way to prevent an intelligence leak, but everything looked suspicious once you entered that mindset.

Dorothea did not seem to mind.

“Man, it’s been a while since I worked in a group. It’s kind of exciting. And if I’m enjoying this, I guess I’m still not a true shut-in. Thank goodness I’m normal☆”

“Yeah, I’m sure it is enjoyable when the tank drives itself. Can’t you at least let us ride on top?”

“Every surface is covered in reactive armor to make sure an affordable $69.99-a-pop rocket can’t blow away a $9 million tank, so that would be a lot like sitting on top of a pile of anti-personnel mines. Ours are so sensitive they’d probably go off, but feel free to try.”

“Eeeeeek!?”

“Hm? Wait, it’s been a while??? Aren’t tanks run by groups of four or five?”

Dorothea answered Quenser’s question by waving the tank’s gun back and forth.

“That’s definitely been the tradition since tanks first appeared on the battlefield and those traditions are hard to break, but these days you can take everything from the driving to the firing control and concentrate it down to a single panel if you use a fiber-optic drive-by-light system. Even normal cars are going to be self-driving before long. It’s true you need some manpower when they break down or get stuck in the mud, but you can deal with that by keeping a movement-assistance suit or work robot onboard.”

There was a hemispherical multi-purpose camera the size of a basketball on top of the turret and there were small and narrow lenses on all sides of the tank, so a single person could control everything.

“Then why do we still use four people in each tank?”

“Don’t ask me. I don’t know what paradigm the Legitimacy Kingdom uses, but it might be a loneliness countermeasure. Being stuck in a metal coffin on the front line for long periods can be pretty taxing. So making sure there are several people in each one can mean a lot. Of course, here in the Information Alliance, we use a radio or infrared network to chat with each other. Your way is a waste of labor expenses. Nyahoo, Trevor, Magienz, Energy, and Roxeus, my friends on lonely nights.”

More calls of “nyahoo” entered the radio, so that seemed to be some kind of minor slang. Those online people holed up in their metal coffins were far from quiet.

“…Are all of them Martinis?”

“Of course not. We’re not just a dime a dozen, you know? Nyahoo.”

That pointless exchange did not last long.

Whatever they did, they were stuck walking on and on. Plus, they did not have flat asphalt to walk on. They were inside a mangrove forest with a bumpy floor of roots flooded up to the calves with seawater.

Even if they paced themselves properly, they could only march about 40 kilometers in 10 hours. And these Legitimacy Kingdom scumbags would put in any amount of work toward getting out of doing work, so there was no way they were just going to keep going like this.

“Hey, Quenser, it’s time to get creative! We can’t let them do this to us, can we!?”

“Not a chance. Okay, let’s grab some stuff from that moss-covered fighter. Its low-pressure tires are still intact. Then we’ll borrow the winch wire from that transport helicopter.”

“What about the crucial cart?”

“Won’t that broken main wing work?”

They could not ride on the tanks since their reactive armor was not much different from anti-personnel mines, but that just meant they needed to build a wheeled sled and have it pulled by a wire.

“Why are you two working up a sweat just to skip out on work?” asked Dorothea.

“I’m willing to do anything if it means taking it easy. Okay, Dorothea. You’re our cosplay reindeer crawling on all fours, so drag around this cruel Santa’s sleigh while we mercilessly whip you.”

That changed the nature of their journey.

If they ignored the diesel exhaust in the face and seawater raining down on them due to the lack of a mudguard on the treads, it was not that bad a ride. And it was sure to shorten the travel time. They wanted to finish this before the day was out.

“Yeehaw! Go, go! Whip, whip! Wah hah hah!!”

“…A-are they tormenting my butt in their imagination just from looking at the back of the tank? They don’t even know what I look like yet…”

Just then, something changed.

The deep roar of the powerful diesel engine suddenly stopped. But even if it had stopped moving, the tank’s flame had not gone out. It was for emergency use and only lasted about half an hour, but it had a fully electric mode. The idiots had not thought to add a brake to their cart, so they very nearly crashed face-first into the back of the tank. It sounded silly, but they very nearly blew themselves to kingdom come.

Also, all the chatter on the radio had suddenly vanished.

Something slowly filled their vision within a silence so great that the chirp of a bird was enough to make their hearts pound.

The giant mass was over 50 meters tall.

It was the Faith Organization Second Generation Paper Bikini.

Heivia just about rejected the truth before his eyes by taking off running, but Quenser grabbed him, got down from the cart, and moved right up next to the closest tank.

“(We’ll be killed! These metal coffins are useless against an Object!! They’re nothing but giant metal readings. Once it notices them, we’ll be blown to bits!!)”

“(Quiet down, Heivia!)”

“(We need to escape into the forest!! If we’re gonna try to wait it out, we’re best off far away from any metal readings! That fighter and transport helicopter in the forest were put there by that thing’s lasers, right!?)”

“(Are you stupid? How far do you think we’ve traveled already!?)

It did not seem the Object had a clear lock on them. It was slowly moving from right to left at a few kilometers away, but that was nothing to something the size of an Object. Dorothea Martini Naked had said the tanks could not knock over the surrounding trees, but that thing could likely plow right through the mangrove with no issue whatsoever.

It was the Paper Bikini.

It had a unique silhouette with the 50m spherical main body contained between diamond-shaped air cushion floats that looked like diagonally-flattened rectangles. It had a main cannon on either side, but they were not aimed forward. The ridiculously-huge coilguns covered the 180 degrees to the left and right.

Instead, it had two thick pieces of shield armor on the front.

Quenser groaned a quiet comment as he recalled what each part did.

“(The front is only used for charging forward. That Second Generation breaks through the barricades to move deep inside enemy territory before spraying gigantic shells everywhere.)”

“(That thing takes mobile weapon tactics back to the First World War. But it’s managed to use that to survive in this harsh age, so you can’t really criticize it either. You can’t exactly call those old methods smart, but if we’re caught, we aren’t going to get a pleasant death.)”

However, its most defining trait was not its shape or tactics. That would be the material used to make it: paper.

That might be hard to believe, so let’s say it again: paper.

[[Image:HO_v14_045.jpg|thumb]]

Objects were usually colossal masses of metal, but the Paper Bikini had been designed out of paper. In ancient times, a powerful Asian empire had used phonebook-thick bundles of paper to make armor. This was likely a similar concept.

It was the ultimate form of the shock-absorption and dispersion found in bulletproof jackets made from aramid fiber, glass fiber, or spider silk. The main cannon was a coilgun created by placing lots of electromagnets inside a cylinder given sufficient strength by combining hundreds or thousands of bulletproof papers. Even the shells were 750kg masses hardened with a special adhesive and given a pointed tip for a cone shape.

A single idea could change paper’s durability and other traits. For a close-to-home example, cardboard had caused something of a revolution. Similarly, the Paper Bikini was attempting to overturn the standard tactics by using a multi-lattice structure that was also being researched for the folding of tiny carbon nanotubes.

In the previous battles, the Princess had torn away the Paper Bikini’s armor a few times.

And yet here it was good as new.

It had an overwhelming advantage when it came to the cost per gram of armor. Melting down paper and remaking it was a lot more efficient than melting down scrap metal and reusing it. So as long as its reactor was not destroyed, it could replace its armor and return for a rematch. In addition to its simple combat specs, it placed financial pressure on its opponent as an economic strategy designed for the coming Age of Starvation.

“(So it’s a paper swimsuit that can never be removed, huh?)”

“(It pisses me off how that busty commander’s naming sense is so damn good only when she can be so malicious.)

The Faith Organization’s official codename was Hariti.

Since that name came from Buddhism which taught reincarnation, it had likely been designed as an Object made from reusable parts. Standard Objects used steel mixed with a powerful heat-resistant and reactive material, but overuse of that could easily lead to wars fought over the iron ore itself. Once that happened, the technology to build more Objects from a replacement material – especially one that could be replenished in a few years instead of the thousands or tens of thousands of years required for petroleum or mineral resources – would become a trump card against the world. And that was a realistic value for a selectively-bred mangrove.

Also, international society watched for secret Object constructions by monitoring the iron ore trade. Since paper was not monitored, it could slip right past those watchful eyes. That was another way the material could appear quite attractive.

“(No, I can’t take it anymore! If we stick with these old-fashioned tanks, we’ll be turned into some twisted piece of artwork along with all the melted metal! We need to go hide in the forest!!)”

“(Wait, that would work against us!! The Object’s thermal sensors don’t work with all the heat and humidity trapped in the mangrove. It’ll find readings of above 40 degrees everywhere, so it can’t detect human body heat!)”

“(What about the metal readings!? One look at the radar screen and we’re screwed!!)”

“(How many abandoned masses of metal do you think crashed here or were abandoned in the mud? Listen, stay here. Don’t even think about moving. It’ll overlook us if it thinks this is just a rusted hunk of metal.)”

“(So we just have to pray and hope for the best!? When we’re up against the Faith Organization!? Are you sure this isn’t their way of spreading their religion!?)”

“(It might have anti-personnel sensors, but it’s a Second Generation. If we stick by the tank, it won’t be able to tell us apart. When blowing up those heroin factories, twenty of us huddled together to create a rectangular mass it mistook for an abandoned vehicle, remember? Whereas if we run into the forest, the anti-personnel sensors will pick us up individually and it’ll grow suspicious. Then it’ll fire a shot ‘just in case’, blowing us all up in the process!)”

They could not use their radios to ask Dorothea and the others in the tanks why they had stopped, which only made their hearts pound all the harder. Quenser and Heivia had their idea, but Dorothea’s group might have a different one. If they screwed up their cooperation and the tanks suddenly started moving, the two idiots could easily get crushed by the treads.

They waited and waited as the sticky and rusty smell of steel and motor oil filled their lungs.

The beating of their own hearts was far too loud for their liking.

Their faces were soaked with sweat as they continued praying to some formless higher power.

And…

And…

And…

Finally, the Paper Bikini continued on to the left.

This action may have held no real significance for the Object.

The Paper Bikini, with its spherical main body held between diamond-shaped propulsion devices, had not noticed them, so it was simply continuing along an irregular patrol pattern that prevented anyone from predicting its course or timetable.

But to the puny humans clinging to the surface of the earth, it felt like the end of a herculean task. Even if their opponent had never even recognized them as an enemy.

They waited a lot longer to make sure that giant form had entirely vanished while restlessly moving its main cannons back and forth. Only then did a signal return to their close-range radios.

“Forward. Resume moving forward. We’re going to switch back to diesel, so move away, everyone. We do have anti-personnel radar to prevent that sort of thing, but the self-driving mode prioritizes the terrain. Make sure the treads don’t catch the bottom of your uniform.”

“Y-you have got to be kidding,” complained Heivia while wiping sweat from his brow. “How long do we have to keep playing this deadly game of Red Light, Green Light?”

Nevertheless, they seemed to have concluded that the threat had passed. The danger had shifted down to low gear, giving them a short interval to calm their body and mind before the next threat. Or so they assumed.

That was naïve.

A moment later, dry gunshots shot out from the depths of the mangrove.

===Part 4===

It was likely a short burst of fire from an assault rifle.

Since they fired without any kind of warning, it was likely the pilgrim soldiers of the Faith Organization who would patrol and proselytize simultaneously.

“Oh, crap!?”

They did not know the size or location of the enemy group. But as he ducked down and moved up alongside a tank, it was not the immediate enemy on Heivia’s mind.

“If this causes a commotion, the Paper Bikini will be back! We need to take them out fast!!”

He raised his rifle which had various sensors attached, but then he clicked his tongue. The thermal reading was useless thanks to the high temperature and humidity and the microwave anti-personnel radar was useless thanks to all the trees in the way. But he could not complain either since this was exactly why the Object had overlooked them.

“Warning to 5 o’clock. We’re about to move, so make sure you aren’t caught in the treads. We’ve shut off the anti-personnel radar safety feature, so try not to get killed by the self-driving mode!!”

“Hold on! If you move, we’ll lose our shield!”

“They’re targeting us with a rocket,” replied Dorothea. “Arr pee gee!”

The tank jerked forward like an inexperienced driver messing up with the clutch. When he saw their wire-attached cart fly his way like a morning star, Quenser frantically got down on the ground. Immediately afterwards, an explosive sliced through the air with a thin trail of smoke behind it. The rocket just missed the back end of Dorothea’s tank and flew into the forest on the opposite side, where a flash of light and explosive blast erupted out. Even if they could be made into Object armor, trees were only trees. That sounded somewhat philosophical, but no amount of pondering would change their physical durability.

No complaints or objections were being accepted.

They must have decided they would get hit by friendly fire if this continued for long because the suntanned Faith Organization soldiers broke through the smoke and emerged from the blown-up trees.

However, they were out of luck because those were not school swimsuit tan lines and because they were not girls.

“You sons of bitches!!”

Heivia hopped to his feet. He grabbed at a stubbly middle-aged man’s bayonet-equipped rifle, yanked it from the man’s grasp, dropped it to their feet, and grabbed the man’s collar. He then swung the man around and tossed him into the side of Dorothea’s tank which was turning nearby.

The enemy soldier’s back hitting the tank’s body triggered a reaction in the phonebook-sized boxes covering the surface. More and more of the pressure-activated reactive armor erupted, splitting the Faith Organization soldier’s torso in two along with the bulletproof jacket he wore.

“Blowing the enemy to pieces is fine and all, but try not to rupture their stomach and intestines!” complained Dorothea. “Now my ride is covered in puke and shit! Show some respect for this ultimate luxury vehicle loaded with the world-renowned Rosenkavalier engine!!”

“Oh, shut up. We’re risking our lives out here!! And we need support at 5 and 9 o’clock!!”

“Aye, sir.”

Instead of the tank’s gun, the heavy machinegun near the hatch at the very top of the turret began turning on its own like a telescope pursuing the stars in the sky. Unlike the self-driving tank, this part lacked the accuracy of a clock’s hands. Dorothea was probably letting the program control the driving while she focused on this shooting game. The turret-style heavy machinegun fired bullets thicker than a human thumb at a rate of 2000 per minute. A horizontal sweep of full-auto fire made short work of the mangrove trees along with the enemy soldiers hiding among them.

The initial surprise attack could be fearsome, but once the tank survived primetime and recovered, a group of infantry was not a threat. Even if the soldiers gathered at a distance, an explosive shell could finish them off. And if they tried approaching, the heavy machinegun could push them back.

There was only one real concern.

“Ah!” shouted Quenser while needlessly sitting in the shallow water.

An enemy had covered his face and limbs with his allies’ blood and hid among the corpses, but now he stood up. He was targeting the tank and he held something shaped like a spindle or a rugby ball. It was probably a spare anti-tank rocket warhead. After the gunner was lost, he must have been holding onto it and waiting for this chance. Heivia noticed and fired his assault rifle, but the man did not stop even after being shot in the back. He made the final step and collapsed in something of a tackle against Dorothea’s tank.

Dorothea spun the turret around to face the opposite direction of the attacker.

The electric fuse on the tip of the rugby ball was triggered, an explosive blast burst out, and the Faith Organization solider was blasted in the opposite direction.

“Noooo! Not more gore!”

“Hey, um…are you okay?”

“The reactive armor scattered the blast, so there wasn’t any armor damage. Whether it’s a rocket, a missile, or an anti-tank mine, all tech generally focuses the blast onto a single point to form a metal jet. As you can see, I protected the gun which is the most delicate part.”

“…That armor isn’t that convenient. You can only use it once, so another attack to the same spot will break through the armor.”

“Yeah…ta ha ha. And clothing damage isn’t exactly sexy when it’s on a tank.”

“You just need the container, a thin metal panel, and a plastic explosive to attach to the underside of the box, right? I can set back up the lost scales for you.”

That charge had apparently been the last.

That said, they had fought a battle and caused plenty of explosions. If they did not do something soon, they would be helplessly exposed to the Paper Bikini’s cannon fire. They would be killed by that colossal experimental weapon meant for the coming Age of Starvation.

“What exactly do we do now? If we just move from here at full speed and hide below the tree branches, do you really think they’ll overlook the tanks? They’re pretty big, if you hadn’t noticed!”

“We can’t hope for that, but let’s use everything at our disposal.”

“?”

“The Paper Bikini is definitely the biggest threat, but there’s only one of it. Its coilgun main cannons are made for firing directly horizontally, so they shouldn’t be able to fire extreme long range shots along an arc.”

Quenser focused on the radio he had borrowed from the Information Alliance.

However, he was not going to speak to the tank right next to him.

“Dorothea, connect this cheap radio to the Flagship 019. Use the tank to amplify the signal.”

“Hey, long-range is a really bad idea,” warned Heivia. “The Paper Bikini will detect it!!”

“Fine, but what are you going to do?” asked Dorothea.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. You said you specialize in troubleshooting, right? I want some help from the Stopgap Grim Reaper.”

It was a bit staticky, but he was connected to the other Martini girl.

“Diligent sewer rats,” replied the blonde girl wearing a black uniform. “There is not much I can do, but I will hear you out.”

“You sure are acting full of yourself when there isn’t much you can do, my tiny little kitten. The Paper Bikini has its eyes on us, so I want to give it a higher priority target. Simply put, send out an aerial bombing drone or something and cause a flashy explosion somewhere else entirely.”

“Most people would not want to give a lecture to such a smug moron, but fortunately for you, I am a kind young woman: like hell we can do that, newbie. Do that and the Object will register the beached Flagship 019 as an enemy and target us. Have you forgotten we need to put on an internal and external show of how directly and continually helpless we are on land?”

She was blunt.

But just like an expert at restructuring failing corporations, this expert troubleshooter was not just telling the soldiers on the scene to die.

“So we will send a powerful directional signal out from the ship. It will be encrypted, so it can just be gibberish. An honorable fool will assume there is a secret-filled Information Alliance base using an antenna to receive some kind of important intelligence. The best way to lay a trap has always been to trick the enemy into thinking they can accomplish something praiseworthy. Like a tablet inside a bomb-resistant case or wiring together a sealed ammo case and a landmine.”

“I see,” said Quenser while nodding despite speaking over the radio.

“Now, where should we send it?” asked Wraith.

The boy glanced toward the tank’s lenses which had just made small whir.

“Let’s avoid any villages or access routes people use to travel. Oh, I know. Use coordinate 2282-5465. That shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Understood. I’ll trust your knowledge of the land after going around blowing up those heroin plants.”

===Part 5===

The Princess was utterly bored.

The Legitimacy Kingdom was assisting the warship that had been beached by the storm, but that left nothing for the Object to do. However, without the Object staring it down, there was a risk of the ship’s guns making a surprise attack.

Thus, she was stuck on standby.

“Ahh, ahh. I want to get some exercise.”

The Princess’s privileged comment would have received a flood of hostility from the potatoes digging on the goddamn beach had they heard her. Regardless, this meant it was time for some seated stretches inside the perfectly air-conditioned cockpit.

…That might sound like neglecting her duties, but she would not do anyone any good if she succumbed to economy class syndrome before the battle even began. Her chair had a massage function, but that was far from perfect and it was recommended that she do some calisthenics when she had the spare time.

She reached for the thick manual stuck beneath the seat.

“Let’s see… Remove the seatbelts and shift your butt in front of the seat.”

Her small butt slid forward.

“Place your head at the bottom of the seat back. Lift your legs up higher than your head and move them like pedaling a bicycle. One, two, one two…”

Just then, she received a call.

Plus, it was a video call and her little butt was sticking up right in front of the face camera.

“Princess, we have an emergency ca-…oh, dear.”

“Eek!!!??? D-do you need something?”

“Um, well, uh…no, no, you can stay like that. …Now, where did I put that emergency counseling number? Thrill seeking through exhibitionism was certainly not the route I expected from her…”

“No, wait! This isn’t bizarre behavior brought on by excessive loneliness! Don’t call the counselor, Frolaytia!!”

===Part 6===

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray looked highly sadistic, but (as long as she could use you as a pawn) she apparently did not completely throw out her kindness. She must have done her part because the Paper Bikini moved elsewhere and the tank unit was not exposed and slaughtered.

“I’m starting to think being on their side wouldn’t be all that bad. Being a New Yorker sounds kind of nice, doesn’t it?”

“Heivia, that’s got to be some brainwashing using the suspension bridge effect or the exhaustion effect. Look at this rationally, compare the size of their boobs, and you’ll remember just which commander is better.”

However, they had lost some of the carts attached to the backs of the tanks due to the infantry battle with rockets flying everywhere, so the infantry had to take turns walking and resting. Well, that or get into fistfights over who got a spot on the surviving carts.

[[Image:HO_v14_059.jpg|thumb]]

Then they heard a cute grunt of effort.

They looked up to see the hatch at the top of the tank turret open up. The person who climbed out was a small girl using a barrette to keep her red hair back in a pineapple shape.

“Uhyah. Man is it hot out here. I’m sweating already…”

To prevent hearing loss, she wore something like airtight headphones over her ears. She also had a different small earphone and a wireless mic on her throat, but she was not wearing any sort of helmet.

For that matter, she was not wearing a jacket and she was not wearing pants or a skirt either.

They were on the front line, yet she was wearing nothing more than a white blouse and panties. Her outfit was blatantly just sleepwear.

“Both her thighs and navel are exposed!? Are you a legit shut-in who’s forgotten what day of the week it is!? Just how casual are you taking this!? From this low angle, it’s impossible to miss those blood-orange side-string panties!!”

“Nn, hh…???”

After a slight groan, she removed the headgear and placed it around her neck with a puzzled look. She apparently had not heard him, but she was able to guess what his question was based on his lip movements.

“Shut up. We need to wash all this gore off my ride before it dries. I’ll give you a bucket, so go get some water.”

Based on her, the other drivers may have been wearing pajamas and negligee too. The boy hesitantly accepted the metal bucket dropped down toward him, but then he found some kind of trash in the bottom.

It was the plastic wrapper for a pack of trading cards.

The cards were from a series meant for a female demographic that anthropomorphized the world’s machineguns and had you build a unit and give them an idol debut. You were meant to raise the sharp-tongued AI characters through their school life in a boys dorm where they would clash with their rivals and solve mysteries at a café afterschool. Quenser remembered hearing something about using a smartphone app to read the code on the cards to reach even further depths in that inescapable quicksand of a game.

(Don’t tell me she’s addicted to this stuff? And is she what the Island Nation calls a fujoshi?)

Just as he started doubting his conclusion, he found something more.

It was a receipt for one body pillow and one bottle of men’s shampoo.

(She said something about loneliness countermeasures for when she’s alone, but if this is a complication of that ‘rotten’ disease of hers, her case is really severe…!!)

“?”

Not everyone was willing to be open about their secret interests, so he could not predict how she would react if he was honest here. In the worst case, letting that sleepwear girl – whose blouse was unbuttoned on the bottom and revealing her navel – know what he had seen could lead to her chasing after him in that 50-ton tank in the hopes of running him over and silencing him! Sensing danger, Quenser quickly changed the subject.

“The entire tank is covered in reactive armor, so where do you climb down?”

“Over there or over there,” she said while lazily pointing toward the corners of the tank which were likely the hardest points. Quenser used those paths to hold the seawater-filled bucket up as an offering to the pineapple-haired girl.

He had fulfilled her orders perfectly, but she still seemed irritated.

“Ohh, this is just the worst, the worst, the ''worst''… I normally wouldn’t want seawater anywhere near my precious ride…”

“Shut up, you’re the one that was driving it through all this seawater covering the mangrove!”

“If we start driving again like this, you’ll get all the gore right on your heads as you ride your cart. Are you sure you want that?”

The potatoes groaned and gagged as the pineapple girl’s words quieted them down. They could not exactly complain when they had done this themselves.

“This is the latest product of Rosenkavalier, a status symbol for the wealthy the world over. Its elegant form manages both a low hit rate and excellent aerodynamics. Plus, the engine provides both quick bursts of speed and high horsepower! Let the rumble of the engine intoxicate you! Well, I doubt some fancy-pants Legitimacy Kingdom nobles would understand when you people are happy in the back seat of something as overly-long as a dachshund and only worth a million bucks. Tanks are doing battle in a world worth ten times as much.”

“Then why don’t you go ahead and paint that lame penis logo on the front of the tank!?”

“P-penis…!? (blush)”

“What else is that curved thing supposed to look like!?”

It was actually based on the tower card in tarot and represented the company’s constant vigilance to make sure they never grew arrogant even when they stood at the top of the world, but that did not really matter here.

“There, I’ve finished replacing the reactive armor. That should make up for what you lost.”

“Th-thanks so much. Oh, you even got the color right so it doesn’t stand out. It loses points for not being the maker’s official product, but I still appreciate the effort☆”

“It really only needed to function properly, but once I got started, I felt my modeling spirit beginning to burn.”

“I know just what you mean.”

For the paint, he had used the kit meant to apply makeup to the face, hands, or anywhere else that stuck out from the camouflage. Everyone might have forgotten by this point, but those idiots had just returned from a serious job where they hid deep in the forest and blew up heroin factories. …This seemed to be a world where actual effort only made things worse for you.

“Okay, if we’re done sunbathing, let’s get back to work. I’m headed back down into my workplace.”

“Dammit, I can feel the chilly air-conditioning coming from that open hatch…!”

Their complaints were of course ignored and Dorothea even shivered in her navel-exposing blouse. The difference in temperature seemed to be affecting her. Now that they had washed off the filth and replaced the reactive armor, the girl ducked back into the hatch.

But she forgot to close it.

And that meant the indoor sleepwear girl’s odd comment escaped the confines of the tank.

“Ohh, did you miss me, my blond butler? Huggy huggy.”

(Is she talking to a two-sided body pillow made to look like a sharp-tongued butler?)

“Yes, I know you’re shy, but let’s aim your main gun forward. Hwa ha ha. Don’t cover your face and blush. That thing is impressive enough to show off to anyone.”

(Ehhh!? The tank itself is a guy♂!? Then why have I been working so hard for it? C-come to think of it, little Wraithy had a real butler serving her. She did warn me not to look into it, but what is this Martini Series…!?)

The hatch finally closed.

Had the red-haired pineapple girl noticed her mistake or not?

She once more began driving her prince or butler or whatever. The infantry figured out who got seats on the limited carts and the entirely self-driving tanks resumed their perfectly aligned drive through the submerged mangrove. But eventually, something changed.

“We’re about at the midpoint,” said Dorothea. “We should be reaching the levee soon.”

“We’re only halfway? That’s depressing as hell.”

“Stop complaining when you’re just clinging to a cart. You’re not even walking anymore.”

“It’s like riding on the slow train… Y’know, like when you’ve felt the shaking of the train for hours on end with no real destination in mind.”

“But why would they build a levee here?” asked Heivia.

He was probably asking because building a levee in the middle of this submerged area did not seem very helpful.

“It’s apparently to create a fish reef instead of preventing flooding,” said Dorothea. “Something about redeveloping the zones that were lost due to fires. At least that’s what it says on these online tourist guides.”

“Ehh? You have air conditioning ''and'' the internet on the battlefield? You really have it made.”

“Oh ho ho. I even have a simple shower and kitchen.”

“I’m really worried by the lack of a bathroom on your list there… I don’t want to hear that a girl like you is friends with drink bottles…”

In the distance, they could see a horizontal row of concrete masses with four legs arranged in Y-shapes.

The mangrove’s trees had thinned out, so they came to a stop right on the edge.

Quenser and Heivia ended their time as summer Santas of the southern hemisphere and circled in front of the first tank to join the other soldiers in investigating things from between the trees.

“Oh no…” Quenser groaned as soon as he gave a look through his binoculars. “Oh no, oh no, oh no! That’s a Faith Organization tank unit. They’ve set up a defensive line.”

“What!? How could they block off our route with such pinpoint precision!? Where’d they get that intel from!?”

They no longer heard anything from the radio.

Dorothea and the other tank operators had apparently shut down the radios to remain silent.

They were about 1.2 kilometers from the levee. The horizontal wall had gaps in places, so it definitely was not meant to hold back any high waves. It was a little hard to tell, but there were tanks waiting behind that wall. Only the turrets stuck up above it while they used the obstacle as a shield.

“It might not just be here.” Quenser thought for a bit. “Little Wraithy shook the Faith Organization for us, but that only changed their order of priority. The Second Generation Paper Bikini left, but it makes sense that they would send their tanks to investigate the combat region. They blocked off all the routes around the suspicious point and we just ran into one of those blockades.”

Would they break through here or send the less-noticeable infantry out ahead to search for a way to sneak through?

“We’ll just have to do this. The blockade will only grow thicker as time passes. Look at them: they only have three tanks and a bit of infantry. We outnumber them, so it would be better to trample them before their friends show up from elsewhere.”

“…”

“Trying to trick them would only make things worse. We might be in a submerged mangrove, but that won’t hide the tanks’ tread tracks forever. Once they start tracking us for real, it’s all over.”

“No, not that,” said Quenser. “What’s that noise?”

He then looked up at the roof of trees over their heads.

The noise of the main rotor had been reduced quite a bit in recent years, so he had heard they could get quite close before you heard them.

In other words, he heard the sound of a rotor beating at the air as a giant attack helicopter passed by overhead.

Helicopters came in many varieties, but this one was relatively short and stout. Instead of reducing its exposed surface area to avoid being hit, it seemed designed to deflect attacks with its thick armor panels. In addition to simple aerial firepower, it may have carried groups of soldiers.

Another attack had begun.

Instead of accurately pursuing a target, the rockets contained in beehive-like cylindrical containers were launched along straight lines that provided destruction over a fan-shaped area.

Quenser stood there helplessly with his mouth agape, so Heivia tackled him at the waist and tumbled along the ground with him.

“Get down!” he shouted. “Everyone, get down!!”

Luck was on their side.

The rockets raining down from above seemed to have their fuses set for an instantaneous detonation, so they detonated on the roof of mangrove branches long before reaching the ground. Thanks to that, the blast blossomed outside of lethal range and the tank armor was not penetrated despite an attack from their greatest weak point: above.

But what about the flesh-and-blood soldiers?

Razor-like fragments of the explosives poured down and their own tanks, which normally acted as their shields, threw deadly stones as their reactive armor detonated erroneously. The carts made from scrap parts were torn apart and blown away and the same amount of damage scattered over the soft and fleshy soldiers.

“That’s an attack helicopter!! It’s a tank’s worst enemy!!”

They could not just lie low and wait it out.

The large helicopter flew in a large circle through the blue sky and was clearly taking aim once more. Plus, the tanks waiting behind the levee of blocks with four legs arranged in Y-shapes began to take action.

The Tank 041s had been waiting in a line, but now they began to move. They broke their perfectly aligned formation and scattered. They had likely switched from self-driving mode to manual driving mode.

While nearly run over by their own side’s tanks and nearly hit by the morning stars that the wreckage of their carts had become, Quenser and the others desperately rolled along the ground in search of safety. And they were well aware safety was nowhere to be found.

The mangrove’s shallow seawater was stained with the red of blood.

A rusty smell mixed in with the scent of salt and mud.

The crabs and shrimp had been acting like docile little animals before, but now they grew energized. They had been waiting for all that nutritious bipedal meat to stop moving.

“Get the injured sitting up and prop them against a tree trunk! Calf height water is enough to drown in! Then gather below the thicker portions of the ‘roof’! Another downpour of rockets in an open area and we’ll actually be directly hit!!”

“No, that ‘roof’ would be in the way,” said Dorothea. “I’m heading out into the open, so give me a smokescreen.”

Just as she said that over the radio, her tank left the mangrove and entered the open battlefield.

The attack helicopter naturally took aim and rushed in toward her, but the other tanks fired smoke and blocked the enemy’s vision.

It seemed modern tanks had anti-air equipment.

The Tank 041s had four vertical missiles located behind the turret.

Quenser just about groaned when he saw the missiles fired upwards with the sound of a champagne cork popping amplified over a hundredfold. They were not just short-range; these were the same missiles as the shoulder-fired variety used by infantry.

Attack helicopters were probably easier to target than a supersonic fighter, but this one still twisted around and scattered firework-like flares. That was enough for the puny missiles, which looked like two fire extinguishers attached end to end, to fly off into empty air like rocket fireworks.

And it did not end with that failed attack.

Just as the Tank 041s had moved forward, the Faith Organization tank unit at the levee took action. There were a few lights similar to a camera flash.

Yes, a tank’s muzzle flash was faster than the sound of it firing.

“Oh, no!?”

Dorothea’s tank tried to return to the deep forest while crushing the cart it was dragging, but a shell flew toward it at Mach 5 from a distance of about 1.2 kilometers.

Dorothea immediately released the pressure from the hydraulic suspension to abandon her support and let the tank’s body sink down. By effectively ducking, she avoided the first shot targeting the top of the turret. The second shot targeted its gut from a different angle, so she turned the body at an angle – so the shell would hit the solid corner of the rectangle – to redirect the shell upwards while the armor was torn away.

She was not using lasers, EM waves, or some other lock-on medium to detect and predict the ballistic path.

Most likely, this was Dorothea Martini Naked’s skill which could not be reproduced by the self-driving mode.

(She did that by eye!? She was only basing it on the sunlight reflected from the muzzles!?)

Her defensive actions seemed like a superhuman combination of the digital and analog, but it was obvious where the missed shell was headed: into the forest where the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers hid.

“Goddammit!!”

They had agreed to no hard feelings, but it felt like the ground they had been hiding on had been flipped upside down. A rusty flavor spread inside Quenser’s mouth and his inner ear seemed to be having issues because he could not get up. He had no idea which way was up and the shallow seawater blocked his mouth and nose.

“Here’s some information…!! I think…enem…shells…rmor pierc…chemical…get through…armo…so be careful!!”

Dorothea was shouting something over the radio, but no whole sentences were getting through to him. Was that because of the seawater in his ears or had something gone wrong in his head?

“These aren’t anti-personnel rounds! Don’t act like the shockwave alone was too much for you! If you’re gonna die, do it after killing the enemy, you dumbass!!”

Quenser finally returned to reality after Heivia kicked him in the gut. He coughed up all the seawater in his throat and nose.

“Uegh, cough!!”

“This operation has failed!! We can’t continue on!! There are too many injures and there’s an attack helicopter flying around! Dorothea, if you have some extra shells, give them all timed fuses and prepare to destroy the evidence. We just have to make sure no one finds out the tanks were loaded in the Flagship 019, right? File off the serial numbers, get out of there, and blow it up from the inside!!”

“No!!”

But the girl vehemently rejected that idea.

“We have to get these five tanks to the former airfield no matter what. Protect them with your lives! I repeat, protect them with your lives!!”

“Set aside that slender-chinned blond butler in glasses, sleepwear blouse girl!!”

“Sbh!? H-heh hee hee. How did Sir Quenser discover my true form? …No, no!! We can’t! It isn’t about that! We just can’t give up on them!!”

“…Oh, hell.”

Quenser got up and pressed his back against a broken tree trunk.

“Dorothea, you can complain if you like, but what’s the actual situation here?”

“This RTS session is not looking good. The attack helicopter overhead is especially bad!!”

“But what if it was just their tanks?”

“If they think they’re invincible with just their heads sticking up over the levee, they can’t be all that skilled. Unlike a stationary turret, a tank is all about its mobility☆”

“Then get to work silencing them. We’ll deal with that thing in the air.”

Just as he said that, the five Information Alliance Tank 041s left the mangrove forest and entered the open battlefield. If they simply aimed from there, they should not have been able to hit the Faith Organization tanks located behind the levee wall, but…

“Everyone, load explosive shells. Let’s do this!!”

“What!?” shouted Heivia. “Aren’t those anti-personnel!?”

But his complaints did not change anything.

All the nearby potatoes were knocked from their feet by the tremendous noise of shellfire.

Dorothea and the other tanks were not targeting the enemy tanks. They had fired on the levee in front of them. And instead of a single thick wall of reinforced concrete, the levee was made from blocks that supported their weight on four legs arranged in Y-shapes. There was no adhesive or welding. By firing shells that scattered an explosive blast and shrapnel in every direction, the blocks were shattered and knocked from their supports before tumbling back down.

There was no need to crush the tanks themselves.

Their mistake had been taking up a position so close to the levee. Concrete blocks larger than a human head rained down on the long and narrow tank guns, denting and bending those metal tubes.

“Enemies A, B, and C have all taken damage to their guns! The tank unit is useless, or at least not a threat to the Tank 041s. How about the sky? What about the attack helicopter!?”

They had left the mangrove forest for that simultaneous attack. That position allowed the attack helicopter to fly in a straight line and slaughter them all with rockets.

Quenser leaned against a broken tree trunk while holding an Information Alliance radio.

He breathed in and out.

He placed his finger on the button.

But he did nothing.

And said nothing.

“Wait…?”

Dorothea was clearly shocked. Her tank pitched forward in a way impossible for the self-driving mode and then it frantically backed up toward the forest.

“What happened to our deal!? You said you’d do something about that chopper! Could you not come up with any clever plans!?”

“No, what happened to ''our'' deal?”

Quenser did not back down.

He did not lose sight of the odd feeling he had noticed.

“Protect the tanks with our lives? Get them to the former airfield no matter what? Why!?”

“Did the blood rush to your head after seeing your allies killed!? If the affiliation of these tanks is found out, the cooperative action surrounding the Flagship 019 will be nullified and a point-blank battle between the Information Alliance and the Legitimacy Kingdom will break out. To prevent that incalculable amount of bloodshed, the existence of these tanks must be hidden. Wasn’t this explained to you!?”

“That’s not quite right, Dorothea! There’s no point in hiding them at the airfield when we have a bunch of enemies on our tail! I thought that was a temporary hiding place and the tanks would be picked up at a later date!? That won’t work if the Faith Organization ransacks the place in the meantime!!”

“…!?”

“Besides, if all we have to do is hide the existence of the tanks, there was no need to keep the Paper Bikini from noticing them! If we managed to escape before that extra-large main cannon blew them away, no material evidence would remain!! …What have you gotten us involved in, Dorothea? What secret are these tanks hiding!?”

“This is not the time…!!”

“Then I’ll just wait until you’ve been blown away. The attack helicopter will target the large metal readings first. Since the rockets detonated in the branches earlier, it must not be loaded with proper anti-personnel sensors like an Object would be. If we fall back into the forest and wait for the heat to die down, we can check the scorched wreckage and determine the truth. I’m fine doing this either way.”

“You!!”

“Choose, Dorothea. Which will it be? Tell us now, or have us find out later?”

The approaching footsteps of death reverberated through the sky overhead. They squeezed at the impish girl’s heart more than the ticking of a time bomb.

And…

And…

And…

“Okay, fine! I’ll tell you everything! This is a project using the tanks’ drive-by-light systems to manipulate the number of deaths by self-driving cars in safe countries!!”

The wireless device he had borrowed from the Information Alliance vibrated.

It had received a file via short-range infrared instead of using a military server.

After checking the large attached file on the small screen, Quenser slowly stood up.

“I have your commitment.”

“What are you going to-….!?”

“All tanks, use your smoke!! Make sure you can’t be seen from a distance!!”

In addition to naked-eye sight, the smokescreen spread by the tanks obstructed mechanical cameras and sensors by blocking various media, including electromagnetic, infrared, and ultrasound.

The attack helicopter had three options:

1. Recapture its targets using a different type of sensor.

2. Increase the power of the current sensor to pierce through the smokescreen.

And…

3. Simplest of all, move in closer so its radar waves and IR signal could pierce through the smokescreen.

It was the same as asking whether the same voice could pass through a thin wall or a thick wall more easily. That was the fastest way to strengthen its sensors with no need for extra equipment.

But to move closer, it would naturally reduce its altitude.

And that brought it within reach of the group on the surface.

“What are we supposed to do about that thing, Quenser!?”

“We can reach it once it’s below 30 meters! Even if it has armor panels, an attack helicopter’s belly should be thinner than a tank’s!!”

“30 meters!? The missiles from one of those crashed fighters covered in greenery aren’t going to work anymore! Or are you thinking of throwing a balled up piece of clay at it!?”

“There isn’t time to explain!!”

Quenser shouted back as he pulled a small cooking knife from his survival kit, grabbed a piece of wood floating in the water nearby, and carved something into it with the tip of the knife. Heivia glanced down as if peering at a smartphone, but it was filled with functions and equations that might as well have been an alien language to him.

“Okay, a helmet should work… That just leaves filling it in and adjusting the angle…”

Idiot #1 grabbed a helmet from the ground, filled it with the sand and gravel at his feet, and adjusted the angle. He then attached a thin layer of Hand Axe plastic explosive over the top. For the finishing touch, he stuck a pen-like electric fuse into the deepest part in the center.

There were two varieties of directional landmines: concave and convex.

It worked the same as a mirror. The convex variety would scatter the blast thinly across a wide fan-shaped area. By mixing it with lots of metal balls or something similar, it would become a brutal anti-personnel mine that made short work of all the enemy soldiers in front of it with a single explosion.

So what if it was concave, like Quenser’s here?

Just think of it like a mirror again.

Concave mirrors were made to focus light on a single point.

“Directional mines meant for armored weapons can split the door to an office safe from 30 meters away. And it doesn’t matter if that distance is horizontal or vertical.”

Needless to say, he already knew what aerial course the attack helicopter was using.

It would be unable to resist the straight line that allowed it to slaughter all five tanks at once.

He only had to toss the helmet to a point on that line.

“Did you think you were safe up there in the sky? It’s time a landmine dragged you down to earth, you ruler of the air!!”

A lance of fire shot up as if to pierce the heavens.

Concentrating the blast on a single point produced penetrative power that was normally impossible and that tore through the belly of the attack helicopter and fried every last centimeter of space inside.

===Part 7===

“Oh, god! My legs are so swollen!!”

She belonged to the same military, but Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had no intention of looking after the beached ship. She dove into a beach chair beneath a parasol and pulled off both her boots and her black pants.

All that remained below were her bright white legs. Either due to the length of her jacket or her professional(?) spirit, her underwear was just barely out of sight.

“Frank.”

While lying in the chair, the blonde girl called over the young man who always served her.

And she spoke as if this was the usual way of doing things.

“It’s time to adjust my performance. Sorry, but could you massage my legs to improve blood flow?”

That was not an issue.

He did not even hesitate.

The young man looked like some kind of machine while he reached for the girl’s soft legs and applied the perfect amount of pressure to massage Wraith’s ankles, calves, and then thighs. He was simply returning the gathered blood up to her torso with movements like someone squeezing sauce inside a plastic container. There was no ulterior motive hidden in the movements of his fingertips and he showed no sign of peeking at the underwear only protected by the skirt-less bottom of her jacket.

“…”

For some reason, Wraith looked incredibly bored.

“Tah.”

So she began gently attacking the young man’s cheek with the sole of her tiny foot.

She tried rubbing the heel against him, but the young man did not respond. He only continued with his work.

That could be seen as an admirable attention to his duties, but the look in the small blonde girl’s eyes moved past anger and arrived at exasperation.

“You really are…how should I put it? A boring guy.”

He did not even respond. They had had this conversation countless times before.

Wraith no longer expected anything from him, so she simply left her body in the young man’s hands and lost herself in thought as if separating her mind from her body.

The first thing that came to mind was those idiots who were like an incarnation of rebellion.

Now ''those'' were people worth bullying.

“Quenser Barbotage and Heivia Winchell, hm? …Interesting. Hoo hee hee. What kind of nonsense should I make them do next?”

Just as her true thoughts leaked out, something odd happened.

She had not ordered him to, but the silent young man began digging his thumb into the bottom of her foot. Little Wraithy’s shriek echoed across the white beach like someone had stepped on a kitten’s tail.

The young man was this Martini’s bodyguard, but he also functioned as a safety to keep her under control. …''How'' each individual bodyguard accomplished this was up to them.

===Part 8===

The threat of the Faith Organization attack helicopter had passed.

Dorothea had survived, but only after violating military regulations by sending the following file to Quenser:

''We ask for assistance in researching the fully self-driving cars which are currently being implemented within safe country cities.

''The research in various fields is still underway, but what is ultimately desired is enough experience to qualify as a field test. However, experience on a predetermined circuit or between set hours when traffic is controlled is suboptimal for AI learning.

''The world is filled with coincidences and malice.

''If a small child runs out in front of the car in a complex downtown area, can it really avoid a collision? Would it mistake a doll or a sign shaped like a child for the real thing and slam on the brakes? Cyber attacks on the program are of course a concern, but will the decision-making program reliant on the GPS map and anti-personnel radar function properly under the effects of powerful jamming?

''Can we really eliminate all problems, anticipate all situations, and prevent all incidents of intentional and coincidental accidents?

''The answer is simple: no.

''Thus, the Information Alliance’s Automobile Coordinated Corporate Conference has decided on an acceptable number of accidents. If the number of accidents caused by the implementation of self-driving cars is fewer than the number caused by traditional driver-controlled cars, the corporations can say they improved society and would thus bear no responsibility.

''Let us discuss a hypothetical.

''If the traditional car culture took 20,000 lives a year, then an identical loss of 20,000 lives would cancel out and leave no responsibility.

…''And the same applies if the introduction of self-driving cars reduces the number of accidents by less than 10%.

''In other words, the 18,000 deaths leftover are just “excess”.

''You can say the same thing about the number of people the government or a corporation can get away with killing. Such as the mountains of bodies produced in war year in and year out.

''Of course, we will work to reduce the number of deaths.

''Taking a program originally used in military tanks and downgrading it for civilian use is one part of that. The vast plains, deserts, and jungles provide much more space to move around in than the complex arrangement of public roads. Plus, the battlefield blesses us with opportunities to test a variety of obstruction tactics such as ambushes, landmines, cyber attacks, and jamming. By repeating field tests here, the driver AI should learn to respond to unexpected situations more flexibly.

''Even then, the number cannot be reduced to zero. In fact, it is better this way.

''This is a new weapon developed by the military. We are well aware that releasing our “convenient service” will lead to people being killed. More than that, just by messing with the scale on the kind of cold graph seen at life insurance companies, we can wipe out people we dislike. Even entire races or social classes.

''We know this, yet we are spreading the technology throughout safe countries.

''We wanted to influence the people’s opinion of the technology by saying this was a resilient and safe system that had survived harsh military testing and thus the threat of the manual driving age was over.

That was why failure was not an option on this mission.

They could not afford to lose the hardware inside, so those tanks could not be abandoned.

Also.

The Information Alliance placed price tags on all information and wealth was gathered in the hands of whoever has the most data. This naturally led to giant corporations greedily seeking out, feasting upon, and filling their bellies with the private information of the masses.

As long as the number of accidents remained within the acceptable number, the corporation bore no responsibility. They would still be taken to court or sued by individuals, but it would never go any “higher” than that.

What would happen if this was implemented?

Even in the Information Alliance, there were those who refused to have their data indiscriminately collected. Some people would keep their phone’s GPS turned off and wear glasses or a mask that confused facial recognition programs.

But that would mean they were no longer “recognized as human” by the cameras of the self-driving cars.

And that mistake would increase the rate of accidents.

A car might not even brake as it ran them over in the middle of a crosswalk.

The odds of each incident occurring might be low, but that would build up over time and they would be doomed to die eventually. Yes, just like gradually increasing the amount of salt or fat in the food they ate.

An obvious cyber attack would leave traces of the culprit and be treated as a crime, but if it was setup to look like a “malfunction” in facial recognition of the victim, the position of culprit and victim would switch around. Just like someone running out in front of a car, the dead would be seen as a nuisance and the one at fault.

Meaning…

They were building a system where the uncooperative would be killed without the rulers having to lift a finger. The conspiracy would never be found out. The numbers would look as vague as with carcinogenic materials, but there would in fact be a clear dividing line between who lived and who died.

In that culture, the demon of statistics would bring certain “death by accident” to any who refused to have their data collected.

Everyone else was constantly monitored by mobile wi-fi bases and drive recorders and, if they showed the slightest sign of refusing cooperation, they would be thrown into the category of “accidental deaths”.

“Gh, kh…”

Inside the tank filled with her hobbies, Dorothea Martini Naked curled up and groaned while wearing only panties and a white blouse with the bottom buttons undone.

Now that she had escaped the fear of death, she could appreciate the true gravity of what she had done. But luckily, the radios given to the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers could not transmit a signal very far. They of course had their output restricted to keep them from sending any unnecessary information to the outside world during an operation. Without amplification from the large antennae on the Tank 041s, they could not send anything back to the Flagship 019 or the world at large. And that equipment was borrowed from the Information Alliance. As long as it was retrieved and destroyed, there was no risk of the document making it to the Legitimacy Kingdom military.

She had already been paid.

No, the amount of money the red-haired pineapple girl had did not matter. The question was how much she could make in the future as someone who could greedily gather all that big data. She needed to use this never-drying spring of money.

Even now, chat text was rapidly scrolling by on a corner of the LCD monitor used to display a variety of strategic information. It was a lot like communication in an online game, but the other posters were the other members of the tank unit wearing their own type of sleepwear, be it pajamas, negligee, or whatever else.

“Energy> Nyahoo, what’re we gonna do, Dorothea?”

“Magienz> That was a major contract violation. Now our sponsor is gonna hunt us down and kill us!”

“Roxeus> Respond, Dorothea!!”

“Trevor> You’re the leader. And you’re the one that got us all involved in this business! You started this, so you can’t just throw in the towel now!!”

Her companions were in the same boat, so their advice only sounded like threats that squeezed at her heart.

She tried to think up a way to break free of that pressure.

And there was a simple answer.

Dorothea only had one option that would allow her to walk brazenly through the world once more.

“…They can’t make it back alive.”

===Part 9===

The threat of the Faith Organization had passed.

Quenser had extra information on his screen-equipped radio.

It was obvious what would happen.

“Get ready, Heivia.”

“Huh?”

“Dorothea’s group is going to try something. I doubt they’ll let us live after this.”

“Wait…what!? When did they become our enemies!?”

The answer was simple.

The Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been enemies from the beginning. Trust and betrayal were never on the table. So it was only natural for Dorothea’s group to slaughter Quenser’s group in order to wipe clean this inconvenient situation.

“Why would you do this, Quenser?” asked Dorothea. “This is about the traffic infrastructure of the Information Alliance’s foundational cities. What does that matter to Legitimacy Kingdom people like you!?”

“This is a more fundamental problem than war. I can’t just ignore it…”

“We have a $300,000 a year contract!! Until the day we die, we get enough to buy a new cruiser in Miami every year! Do you really think we’re going to throw that out for your silly reasoning!?”

“I suppose I should’ve expected the Information Alliance to get philosophical on the battlefield. You’re all such pretentious intellectuals.” Quenser smiled fiercely with the borrowed radio in hand. “But does scum really need a reason to kill each other on the battlefield, Dorothea? I’m not talking about secret deals or common interests; this is just what war is.”

“…”

He heard an oddly wet sound through the radio.

Had she bit and bloodied her lip?

Or was it a form of laughter no normal person could imitate?

“…Fine then. It’s all-out war then.”

“Let’s settle this.”

“Are you trying to buy time with this? As long as we survive the primetime surprise attack, the difference between tanks and infantry in a pure head-on clash is absolute. You’ll be turned to mincemeat before you can get anywhere close. Would you prefer being blown up by an explosive shell or torn to pieces by a heavy machinegun? The choice is yours☆”

If they were simultaneously locked onto from five direction and exposed to all that great firepower at once, Quenser’s group could not escape. The mangrove forest might be used as materials for an Object, but the tree trunks would just be torn apart if the soldiers tried to hide behind them. And with nothing to provide cover, they would be killed instantly if the tanks began horizontal fire.

If Quenser shaped his explosives to direct the blast, he could indeed pierce through a tank’s belly. But these had reactive armor. He would want to detonate the explosive at least within 15 meters and ideally attach it directly to the armor, but Dorothea’s group would never give him the opportunity. After all, those heavy machineguns could accurately target him from 1000 meters and the explosive shells from five kilometers. He would never get close.

To sum up, there was nothing they could do.

And yet, while there was tension, there was no fear on Quenser’s face as he brought the radio to his mouth.

And he spoke with a thin smile.

“I have your commitment.”

A great tremor shook the earth.

It of course came from the main cannon of the Objects that ruled the battlefield.

What had happened?

Wasn’t it the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Paper Bikini that ruled this place?

It was not.

Something massive produced a deep whistling as it spun through the air. A main cannon had been torn off and blown away. Each individual sheet of paper looked thin and fragile, but by gathering thousands or even tens of thousands of them, this giant cylinder had gained incredible weight and shock resistance. And now it mercilessly stabbed into the ground between Quenser’s group and Dorothea’s group.

The paper main cannon belonged to the Paper Bikini, an experimental weapon that looked ahead to the coming Age of Starvation.

This meant it had been destroyed at some point.

“Wha-…?”

“Had you forgotten? We belong to the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. We maintain and operate an Object. And that means the Paper Bikini was not the only one on this battlefield. Our Baby Magnum was here too.”

“But why now…? Your borrowed radios can’t reach the Flagship 019 and I doubt that First Generation would leave the ocean and come here for no reason!!”

“Remember the diversion I had little Wraithy set up?” Quenser smiled. “She sent out a powerful directional signal to hint at the presence of a nonexistent secret base in order to distract the Paper Bikini. …But what if there really was a military installation there?”

“Ah!?”

…''Now, where should we send it?

…''Let’s avoid any villages or access routes people use to travel. Oh, I know. Use coordinate 2282-5465. That shouldn’t be a problem.

…''Understood. I’ll trust your knowledge of the land after going around blowing up those heroin plants.

What had Wraith’s trust sent that signal to?

The answer was obvious.

“If a cutting-edge Second Generation suddenly pinpoint targeted a secret Legitimacy Kingdom base, our cute Princess would have to be scrambled and sent out there.”

The rest was a chain reaction.

After heading out and engaging the Paper Bikini in battle, the Baby Magnum would investigate the area and notice any other spontaneous combat.

Even if their signals could not reach the Flagship 019 on the distant beach, the Baby Magnum’s largescale mobile radio base was a different story now that it had moved inland.

Of course, Quenser had not planned this all out from the beginning.

He had requested the initial diversion when they had thought the Paper Bikini had left but the Faith Organization’s pilgrim soldiers had found them and the Second Generation might just come back. He had been hoping to distract that Object and also get the Baby Magnum involved since that was a job for the Princess. That was all he had been thinking initially.

But it had paid off.

He had smelled something fishy, but had not initially found any actual evidence of anything.

But he had not overlooked it and he had persisted to the very, very end.

“She’ll have overhead everything we said here. And since the signal could reach her, she’ll also have the secret data you sent me. Your Achilles’ heel is already inside the Object’s recorder.”

Quenser heard a rumbling like approaching thunderclouds.

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder and gave a smiling announcement.

“If you want to cover this up, then be my guest. Let’s see that precious tank of yours blow away the Baby Magnum.”

===Part 10===

“Well, that’s one of the worst things I’ve ever heard.”

Heivia groaned when Quenser explained the situation to him after they returned to that metal beached whale known as the Flagship 019.

“A rule to dodge responsibility while accepting the deaths of tens of thousands every year? Downsizing a program from tanks to civilian cars? You’ve gotta be kidding me. Was the Information Alliance trying to start a war that covers battlefield country and safe country alike? Not even a thermobaric bomb takes that many lives at once. That’d be like dropping a nuke on their own country as some kind of yearly event.”

“The physical hardware that holds the crucial research data was inside Dorothea and the others’ tanks. And we had the Princess blow those up after Dorothea’s group surrendered and got out of them, right? That settles everything. They’ve failed to build a ‘safe system’ they can say withstood military testing. And that also eliminated any evidence of ground forces on the Flagship 019.”

“$300,000 a year for life if you cooperate, huh? That’s like winning the lottery.”

“Oh, I’m sure they would’ve been secretly assassinated once all the data was gathered. Agree to pay ‘for life’ and you don’t have to pay a single cent as long as the recipient dies during the first year.”

“Ugh…”

“That world power controls everything via information. You have to expect that kind of loophole abuse.”

At that point, the two idiots fell silent.

They paused.

After a while, Heivia resumed speaking but more quietly.

“It’s hard to say this was really resolved, though.”

“You may be right.”

They had nipped this incident in the bud.

But what if the planners had a second or third seed planted which simply had not reached the surface yet? If the major automobile makers used some other method to implement self-driving cars under the same system, a traffic infrastructure that used the acceptable number of accidents to automatically assassinate the uncooperative would blossom within the Information Alliance’s safe countries.

The rulers need not bother with a cyber attack. If anyone uncooperatively rejected indiscriminate data gathering through drive recorders and mobile wireless stations, the system would automatically kill them in an accident.

“What about that former airbase?”

“The Princess held up another team there. They were probably a retrieval team meant to physically nab the hardware protected by the Tank 041s’ thick black boxes. If we’d arrived at the airbase as planned, we probably would’ve been lined up and shot.”

And as they discussed that…

“Hi.”

Someone called out to them.

It was a blonde girl in a black uniform unsuited for the beach who had a young man standing behind her like a butler. The young man held a duralumin trunk that was probably the tiny officer’s private property. It was the product of a prestigious brand well-known in New York. It was only used to carry luggage, but it had to have cost as much as a car.

This was Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

Tension filled the air like an ominous electric charge, but Quenser held a hand out horizontally to stop Heivia from doing anything.

The young man smiled pleasantly and bowed slightly.

The next thing Quenser knew, the duralumin trunk had fallen to the young man’s feet and his hands were free.

He looked like the slender secretary type, but there was something hidden deep in his eyes. And if Wraith was willing to casually approach people armed with rifles or explosives, she must have had absolute trust in the specs of the young man serving her.

Quenser sighed.

“…But does that come from certain ‘rotten’ interests, or not?”

“???”

Since she looked utterly confused, our cute little Wraithy must not have had that specialized knowledge.

Having found an answer to that question that had been bothering him, Quenser started again.

“I don’t envy you your damage control work here. Your project failed pretty spectacularly.”

“So it seems. Well, we are the Stopgap Grim Reaper…troubleshooters brought in from outside. To be honest, I’m not all that interested in what happens to the Flagship 019.”

A violent and somewhat comical sound followed.

Had it been unlocked or had the lock weakened from overuse? Wraith kicked at the duralumin case that had fallen to the sand at her feet, forcing open the latch. The mass of metal looked solid enough to use as a shield, but that was enough for it to split open like a bivalve. However, it did not contain stacks of cash, bars of gold, classified documents, tropical clothing, or cute underwear.

It contained a shirt and underwear. More notably, this clothing was worn by a lonely old man with his hands and feet bound behind him and a gag in his mouth. He lacked the dignity he had shown when protected by all those young women.

“…Alfred Silverking…”

“The higher ups have decided to keep the chaos to a minimum by firing him, but his subordinates might put up an ill-advised resistance if we took him away right in front of them. He seemed more interested in enjoying himself than helping the Flagship 019 recover, so I thought I would give the old man some excitement by skipping town in secret.”

“How hot is it right now? Will he really survive to the airport?”

While the two frightened idiots watched on, the young man carefully pushed the old man back into the duralumin trunk and closed it once more.

It did not matter that he was also part of the Information Alliance. In fact, it did not matter to them if someone was also part of the Martini Series.

They were probably used to it after all the death and failure they had seen.

“…Oh. So that’s what seemed off to me at first.”

“Hm?”

“The Flagship 019. It’s not a battleship or an aircraft carrier. It’s a flagship, so it should be at the center of the fleet. …But isn’t that categorization really vague? If the registration on paper is all that matters, you could call a rubber boat or a life buoy a flagship.”

“Heh. Hah hah! You’re mentioning that now, you adorable fools!? That was an electronic information control ship wearing the skin of a battlecruiser. And I doubt you need to ask what kind of data it was exchanging and gathering in this case!!”

“…”

“Well, you can see how well that turned out. But my job is to troubleshoot these seemingly impossible problems, so that doesn’t matter to me. Now, gentlemen, until we meet again on whichever battlefield money and information gather on next. Which shouldn’t take long.”

That Martini Series girl waved her hand and walked past Quenser and Heivia.

But then something odd happened.

The blonde girl gently took Quenser’s hand.

And she whispered to him.

“(To be honest, I was sick of that plan for a civilian assassination traffic infrastructure using self-driving cars. You did a lot to help troubleshoot that problem. Out of respect for your righteous anger, I will dig up the rest of the seeds there, so you needn’t worry about it yourself.)”

And just once, she pressed her lovely lips against the back of his hand.

After that, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray really did leave without looking back.

===Between the Lines 1===

“Nnn.”

While riding a rented urban bicycle, a small girl pressed one slender leg against the ground to come to a short stop in the bike zone in the wide sidewalk. She had her small butt pressed against the bike seat and she raised her arms to stretch. She wore sporty cyclewear and a groan escaped her lovely lips. Despite being in a large metropolis, there was no smog blocking out the sky and the refreshing breeze carried the scent of greenery. Both facts pointed to some unusual city planning.

She had chosen New York for her first long-term leave in a while. The city’s people were walking with a bit too rushed of a pace for a vacation, but she had seen far too much picturesque rural scenery in the battlefield countries. This was supposedly her hometown, but she had clearly not visited in a while since all the electronic billboards and AR markers flooding Times Square felt more strange than familiar.

It had been a long time since she had seen her parents.

As her hometown, she knew it well, but the city changed very quickly. She should have gone around doing preliminary research if she had wanted to properly enjoy her vacation with her family. The data in which the Information Alliance found value was not just what was found scattered across the internet.

(I wish I could have had father show me around, but for a New Yorker, he really is clueless about what’s fashionable…)

OLEDs were used to place the world’s largest flat-screen monitor on a gigantic building wall.

“Gather popular objects and battle the world! Oh ho ho! The app is free to play, so anyone can enjoy it! 20 billion downloads to date! And a special collaboration with me is currently underway!!”

(That’s more than the population of the earth, isn’t it?)

After watching a sexy G-cup woman winking and reading off the advertisement on the building wall, the small girl sighed and slowly shook her head. She had performed that herself, but the flow and density of data in the Information Alliance was insane in several different ways.

At times like this, it was a lot easier being a VR idol whose motion data was used for a CG model. She could ride around on a bike without a disguise and not have to worry about any kind of trouble. And with her personal information protected at the level of a military VIP, no essentially-unemployed cyber reporter with too much time on their hands or amateur paparazzi for a cheap tabloid could discover her identity.

That was how the world worked.

You wanted to know everything about them while they could not see your true identity. That was true of the president of a monstrously-large IT company and it was true of the charismatic leader of an international hacking group. That was why people were so fixated on social media friend counts, why housewives fought to control the neighborhood discussions, and why bartenders and taxi drivers acted like they knew everything. At the very least, that was the essence of the basic pyramid structure envisioned by the people of the Information Alliance.

New York was composed of five different blocks and its registered population alone was 8 million. Include people there as laborers, tourists, and the like, and there were more than 20 million people there on a daily basis. But even with that many eyes on the girl, none of them realized she was the genius girl who was both an Object Pilot Elite and a top idol. Or that bodyguard men in suits were mixed in with the crowd at important points and that a bulletproof car was waiting to evacuate the girl in less than a minute if trouble arose.

But as much as the girl acted like she knew everything that was going on, there were definitely some things that she “could not see”. The young man selling gelato from a truck may have wanted to hear the voice of a giant IT company president in person, the beautiful woman covered in brand names who walked by may have put too much faith in the power of cards and found herself buried in debt, and the female officer with long silver hair and brown skin who was leaning out from behind a wall may have disguised herself in a lawyer suit and glasses while she writhed in joy with a video camera in hand.

(Hm? Did I just have some kind of strange hallucination…???)

While taking a break, the girl accepted a cup of vanilla gelato with cream cheese and raspberry as extra toppings from the RV food truck and did a suspicious double-take, but there was no one at that building corner. If she was seeing hallucinations like that, her job may have been more stressful than she had thought.

(Now, I think I’ll finish going through midtown while eating this and then I can head on to uptown. They do say you could see all the major Manhattan sites in a single day if you really tried.)

She knew things that others did not and others might know things she did not. It was important to keep that in mind. At the very least, this world power was not kind enough to hand success to anyone who thought they were a true genius who knew everything. If you ever found yourself convinced of that in your daily life, it was best to assume some third party was already twisting your life to their benefit.

Your possibilities are unlimited.

Any dream can come true if you keep working at it without giving up.

Not everything is determined by your position in the world. There is sure to be someone out there who needs you.

The small girl thought of those stereotypical platitudes, realized they could all be found in her songs, and grimaced. And not because the burnt caramel sauce gathered at the bottom of her vanilla gelato cup was so bitter.

(Maybe I should punch that lyricist next time I see them.)

Of course, her determination here was hampered somewhat by the fact that her punches were about as strong as a playful kitten’s.

And the girl had yet to realize something else.

…That successful lyricist was actually a huge fan of the hard rock band Boy Racer and wanted a lot more freedom in what they wrote, but a certain silver-haired and brown-haired someone (who insisted on being called a creator despite not being a manager or an agent and having no experience in the field whatsoever) had such a sharp glare that the lyricist was only allowed to use those platitudes that were one step away from being a nursery rhyme.

This was yet another good example of how the Information Alliance worked.

You knew things that others did not and others knew things you did not.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1

2018-04-16T07:45:38Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 1: Bloody Pool >> Atlantic Artificial Island Proxy War==

===Part 1===

Intense light, noise, and shockwaves.

In that moment, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage could not tell up from down, could not hold his memories together in a coherent fashion, and felt all his other senses melt together.

His vision blurred and he had trouble breathing like he had a thick translucent sheet over his face. He felt a scorching heat, but he could not get his thoughts working to the point of coming up with a course of action to eliminate the unpleasant sensation. Only the pounding of his heart sounded unpleasantly raw and real. That should have been the proof that he was alive, but it instead felt as unpleasant as putting back on a shirt after removing it.

Where was he?

What was he doing?

The blond boy focused his mind on remembering those two things. If he let go of that, it was all over. If his mind lost even more focus, he would never recover. He knew that without anyone telling him.

(Oh, right… I remember now.)

As usual, he had been on a shitty job with the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. He had been at New Caribbean Island, a tropical island near Central America where the weather completely ignored the fact that it was October. It had all started when he set out on a philanthropic mission (but really meant to earn a diplomatic card) to rescue a Capitalist Corporations submarine that was stranded at the bottom of the ocean after having engine trouble. On that submarine, they had found an old woman wanting to defect from the Information Alliance. She had claimed to be Katarina Martini, a biochemical engineer.

By taking in the old woman who had led the Information Alliance’s crucial genius girl project, they had triggered a serious military clash with the Information Alliance who did not what their technology leaking out. That had begun a fierce battle against the Nitrogen Mirage, a cutting-edge Second Generation that could bend its lasers as it pleased.

(…Kh…)

His mind was all mixed up. He felt a dull headache slowly traveling from right to left in his brain. His stomach roiled disconcertingly, like he had triggered some kind of trauma. This was an important issue. The Nitrogen Mirage was a powerful enemy. But that was not the crux of the problem. The true darkness lurked beyond that.

An Information Alliance landing team had attacked the Legitimacy Kingdom at the artificial New Caribbean Island. The Legitimacy Kingdom had struck back by directly infiltrating the Flagship 019 located at the center of the Information Alliance’s maintenance fleet.

The fierce attacks that ignored the concept of clean wars had been caused by Piranirie Martini Smoky, one of the created genius girls who had gone berserk, and the giant administrative AI network that the Martini Series was meant to manage and correct.

Quenser’s group had temporarily joined forces with Wraith Martini Vermouthspray, an Information Alliance officer, in order to defeat Piranirie and the Nitrogen Mirage.

But that alone had not solved the problem.

(Ugh. Ahhh…!?)

His mind roared at him to remember it.

His mind screamed at him to not remember it.

The positive and negative thoughts crashed into each other, tormenting Quenser Barbotage with the internal pressure. His soul thrashed about in search of any way out, even the smallest gap. And as a result, his mind was drawn toward it. He formed a link to the memory of the monster lurking beyond the thick veil.

He had heard a certain radio transmission while inside the half-destroyed Flagship 019.

It was coming.

The Manhattan was finally on the move.

(Ahhhhhh!? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!)

He thought his skull would break from within and the pain felt like having countless rusty spikes driven into his head. He could not tell if this was physical pain or psychological pain. Regardless, it continued to shake him and his soul was forcibly dragged toward a certain answer.

Yes.

That was right. After that utterly baffling transmission…

A blinding light had…

“How long are you going to lie there!? Wake up already!!!!!!”

He heard a sharp shout and felt incredible pressure across his entire face.

It took him a few seconds to realize a bucket of seawater had been dumped on his face while he lay on his back.

“Ubh, what, cough, cough!! Uehh!? Cough!!”

Quenser choked and somehow managed to sit up, but then the toe of a thick military boot mercilessly kicked him in the jaw.

His vision shook and he rolled back onto the hard ground. It felt a lot like hot asphalt that had been sitting in the midsummer sun, but it was not.

“Ughh…ubweh…!?”

(What? Is this…the deck of…an aircraft carrier…?)

“Who gave you permission to speak and move? Have you forgotten that your lives are in our hands?”

He heard a low female voice from overhead.

He could not see her face well with the tropical sun behind her.

He also heard a young man’s voice.

“Captain, he appears to be the last one.”

“Hmph. That seems less than in the report.”

“Perhaps they went down with the Flagship 019 when it lost its balance? We could send divers to the sunken ship if need be.”

“That would be a waste of personnel expenses.”

Quenser tried to roll onto his stomach, but a military boot kicked him and he decided not to move. He moved only his eyes to observe his surroundings. …They were there. There were maybe a few dozen soldiers wearing soaking-wet Legitimacy Kingdom uniform identical to his lying on the slanted flight deck. It was reminiscent of the corpses lined up for counting after a plane crash.

He saw dark clouds.

As if to predict Quenser and the others’ futures, thick clouds covered the blue sky and had started to blot out the sun. Although those may have been caused by the extra-large attack that had assaulted them.

And once the sun faded, he could see.

The person looking down at him was a tall and beautiful girl of about 18. Her skin was white…but it had a different luster from Quenser and his group’s. With that and the long black hair tied back, she was probably of Asian descent. She wore a bluish sailor uniform and a miniskirt. That clued Quenser in to the situation.

The time between the Manhattan’s attack and this assault force abducting Quenser’s group had been too short.

“…So you’re from the Flagship 019…no, from the maintenance fleet. Hah. Were you promoted because your boss Piranirie kicked the bucket?”

The girl’s subordinate gave him another kick.

She must not have felt any real hatred toward him. The Asian beauty looked down at him like he was a bug crawling along the roadside.

“We will decide what will be done with all of you. As I said, your lives are in our hands.” She then glanced to the side. “But we have a more important issue to take care of. Hello, comrade! Lieutenant Colonel Wraith Martini Vermouthspray!! My fellow Martini!!”

Quenser tensed up at that.

Yes. Wraith’s cooperation with the Legitimacy Kingdom had been a personal decision. Since the Martini Series which supported the Capulet AI Network was acting oddly, Wraith’s decision may have been correct. But this and that were two very different things.

“Hello, Taratua.”

“Hello, Wraith.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray was a blonde girl of about 12. She wore a formal black hat over her long blonde hair and a pitch black uniform that was poorly suited for the tropical sun.

She had no allies in the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance.

A young man of unknown age stood beside her, but that alone was not much to rely on.

The Asian beauty named Taratua may have meant no real harm. The way the corners of her lips curled into a smile looked childish for her age.

Yes. Almost like the look of a child tearing off a captured insect’s legs one by one.

“I was placed in the maintenance fleet as Piranirie’s spare, but what kind of mission was a fellow Martini given that required working with enemy soldiers? I certainly haven’t heard of anything like that, so was it a highly-classified special mission?”

“…”

“Yes. Silence is the best answer here. Even if you try to lie about it and invent some fake mission, you never know when you’ll blow it.”

Their ranks were captain and lieutenant colonel, but Taratua did not hold back. If it could be proven that Wraith had been colluding with the Legitimacy Kingdom and had arrived here in violation of her actual mission, she would be no more than a traitor or deserter. Then no one could complain if she was shot in the back here and now.

“I’ll give you a chance.”

Taratua drew an impractically large revolver from her hip. It must have absorbed the dark color of the thick clouds overhead because the polished black weapon looked sinister. Wraith held out a hand to stop the young man who tried to move in front of her.

She winked her right eye and asked a question.

“You want to test my luck? That is impressively unscientific.”

“Ha ha! Oh, we’re not playing Russian roulette. Ignoring someone’s actual actions and only seeing if god loves them is more of a Faith Organization thing. You’re almost certainly guilty, but I know just how valuable the contents of your mind are. So, comrade, it isn’t your head you’ll be blowing away.”

Taratua spun the entire revolver around like a cheap pen and then held the grip out toward Wraith.

“The Second Generation Laser Beam 069, Piranirie, the recently sunk Flagship 019…and now an attack from that Manhattan 000. Our maintenance fleet is in tatters and our higher ups have probably been wiped out. We can’t let this continue. And if we’re going to recover, we need as many soldiers as we can get. And that includes you, my comrade and my fellow Martini.”

And.

She said it as casually as could be.

“Shoot that boy there. I’ll judge your true intentions based on that.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The atmosphere solidified.

Still on his back, Quenser checked on the situation by turning his head so stiffly the joint seemed rusted.

His eyes met Taratua’s.

He could not read Wraith’s emotions at all.

Before breathing her last, Piranirie Martini Smoky had said there was something breaking and driving the entire Martini Series mad. And it was controlled by someone outside the Information Alliance rather than Katarina, the old woman in charge of the genius girl project.

Was this also a product of that artificial madness?

Or was this normal for the Asian beauty known as Taratua?

“As I said, this isn’t Russian roulette, so none of the bullets have been removed.”

He understood.

What would Wraith Martini Vermouthspray do in this situation? Wasn’t there anything else she could do? Quenser understood. If she obeyed, one would die. If she did not, they would all die. It was simple arithmetic. Even if the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been temporarily working together because their interests aligned, they were still enemies.

There was no reason for her ''not'' to do it.

Once you had 1 + 1 = 2, no amount of searching would turn up another answer.

“We went to an effort to rescue these lives, so we will have these idiots work for us to make up for it. And they will keep working until they wear out and die.”

But.

Could it be…?

“But things are different for this one: Quenser Barbotage. This irregular actor ignores the rules of cost-effectiveness by running around destroying Objects. We will kill him here. It functions as camouflage and gives us a prize for the higher ups.”

“Wait!!”

That was when a soldier lying a short distance away raised his voice and was kicked in the jaw by one of the sailors walking between the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers who were lined up like corpses. A dark red liquid splattered from his split lip, but he kept shouting with the eyes of a chained dog.

“He isn’t a soldier! He’s a battlefield student!! If you know who he is, you must know that. Be careful how you handle him or it’s you who’ll be in trouble later!!”

It was Heivia Winchell.

But it was no use. All he could do was yell from the aircraft carrier deck.

Taratua paid him no heed.

“You are more like disposable parts than prisoners of war. The fact that any of you survived will be erased from any and all reports, so what does it matter how one or two of you is treated now?”

She sounded somewhat exasperated, but there were several endlessly ominous phrases mixed in.

And it was time to decide.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray grabbed the proffered magnum’s grip with a troubled look.

Taratua reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a device much like the collapsible opera glasses sold at concert halls. She casually unfolded it and winked.

“Say cheese. The time it takes to decide, your breathing, your perspiration, your eye movements, the trembling of your fingertips. I’m measuring them all like a true Information Alliance soldier, so don’t do anything suspicious.”

“…”

The Asian beauty gestured with her chin and her subordinate soldiers grabbed Quenser’s arms and lifted him up. They were near the railingless edge of the slanted flight deck, so there was no escape.

[[Image:HO_v15_027.jpg|thumb]]

A small girl stood directly in front of him.

The unsuitably large handgun’s muzzle was pointed toward the boy’s face.

(…Think.)

Sweat poured from his body.

He even had trouble blinking for the first time in his life.

Death.

True death was approaching.

(What is the Manhattan doing? If Taratua’s group is just the survivors of the maintenance fleet, are they really working as a solid group? Has anything been done to that handgun? What does Wraith think? Is there something I could use as a bomb or another weapon? What’s security like? This flight deck is unstable and tilted. The others are lying on the deck. …What happened to the Princess’s Baby Magnum? There has to be something! There has to be at least one thing I can use!!!!!)

“I’m sorry, Quenser. It looks like you’re still working your mind and foolishly haven’t given up hope.”

A voice seemed to slice right through the boy’s thoughts.

Wraith’s blue eye stared quietly at him through the sight.

“But this time, there really is…''nothing''.”

The dry gunshot…

…sounded far too light.

===Part 2===

“The world’s…gest Obje… New Yo…Manhattan…tself was…mation Alliance’s Object!?”

“An offici…statement was…with a video. The Manhat…intends…join this war!!”

“Not good…ood!! Everyone, brace for impact! The enemy…an electromagnetically…ched reactor cannon. It’s a demonic weapon that…the heat usually contai…the reactor which uses lasers…pellet fuel!! Our New Caribb…blown away!?”

“Curse the Marti…ries. How insane…they!?”

It was pandemonium.

The busty silver-haired high-ranking officer named Frolaytia Capistrano’s vision had been entirely flipped upside down and she initially could not remember where she was.

Light flashed before her eyes like she had been slapped the instant she ran across someone. The core of her mind was unsteady and she spent a while in an unthinking daze.

Slowly, like thin ice being melted by a blow dryer, her mind managed to focus on the cruel reality.

“Uh, kh…?”

She first realized she was collapsed face down.

She had been in the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s officer’s barracks using her laptop to receive a report from a subordinate in their distant home country. But the scene around her had entirely changed. The ceiling was too low. No, the entire barracks building had been crushed down. The space was too cramped and the other things in the room were so close she could barely see. She did not have time to check on her Island Nation collection. Her military-issued items and personal possessions were scattered around her. Among those, she grabbed a laptop with a broken LCD screen and a keyring of hardware keys. Then she crawled through the cramped space.

Luckily, she was not trapped by an ankle caught in the rubble or anything else like that.

Did she have to crawl a few meters or a few dozen meters? Her sense of time and distance were far too vague as she bit her lip and made her way outside. She could see the outside light ahead of her, but the end never seemed to arrive. She had no guarantee this was the right way to go. The collapsed ceiling approached ever closer overhead the further she crawled, so she might find her hips trapped before she reached the exit.

That self-produced doubt gnawed at her mind as she dug at the ground with neatly clipped and filed nails to slowly but surely make her way forward.

(Finally…)

The light was approaching.

She had somehow managed to escape the pile of rubble under her own power.

(…Finally.)

And as soon as she did, a hellish scene spread out before her eyes.

As a reminder, Frolaytia Capistrano was on New Caribbean Island located in the Atlantic Ocean near Central America. It was a special island made by the lava of an artificial eruption caused by stimulating a submarine volcano with explosives. The island was a collection of small black rocks that looked like crunchy chocolate and it had originally been made as a bluefin tuna breeding base for her brother Bloodrics Capistrano. Frolaytia had stationed her Object maintenance battalion there and had been in the middle of a battle with an Information Alliance maintenance fleet and its Second Generation Object, the Nitrogen Mirage.

Those assumptions had been blown away.

First of all, the color was wrong.

The dark stone ground was glowing like an electrically-heated wire or a reactor. The cooled and solidified lava had been melted anew by an outside heat source. Like two scoops of ice cream dropped on the midsummer asphalt, the melted surface formed orange rivers that flowed toward the sea and then formed rising walls of billowing steam. Thanks to the immense light, heat, and steam, the bright sun overhead appeared to waver and dim. It may have been the same as the lights of a metropolis erasing the stars from the night sky.

“…”

It took Frolaytia a while to accept her situation here.

(This was done by the Manhattan’s main cannon. And it fired from a few thousand kilometers away…)

But she had to face reality.

There were around 1000 people in the maintenance battalion and half of them had gone to the front line based on the military operation Frolaytia had planned. So how many of the approximately 500 logistical support and standby personnel remained in this hell containing several orange rivers? That was about two schools’ worth of people. She had no idea how many more were lost with each passing second. She did not have time to stop just because she found it hard to accept.

“Report…”

Frolaytia raised her voice so it would not be drowned out by the explosive steam rising from the coast.

“Someone give me a report!! We need to know the scope of the damage, we need a relatively undamaged area we can evacuate to, and we need a set of surviving equipment and facilities! Simply saving the lives in front of you will only waste valuable resources. Then we can’t even save the lives you think you’ve saved. We need to avoid redundancies and carry out a rescue operation with maximum efficiency!!”

There was no response.

Not even the very basics were functioning.

“Hi, Tia-chan…”

“…”

The busty silver-haired commander’s shoulders jumped when someone spoke gently from behind her.

She just about let out her face as a family member, but she just barely managed to suppress it before turning around. She greeted the young man as the commander of the maintenance battalion.

It was Bloodrics Capistrano.

He had worn a black tailcoat even on this tropical island, but he had removed that, leaving him with just a white shirt. Had he used the coat to treat a wounded soldier, or had he discarded it before it melted in the heat?

He held a drawn katana in one hand.

There was no scabbard. For some reason, the blade was wet with a red liquid. It was unclear what had happened on the way here, but that was a clear sign of just how chaotic the situation was.

The sweat on his brow may have gotten in his eye or he may have had some other reason, but Bloodrics kept one eye unnaturally shut as he forced a smile on his blatantly exhausted face.

“Shouting won’t do you any good. The previous war is over. This has gone beyond Piranirie Martini Smoky or the Nitrogen Mirage. The conditions have changed.”

“What are you talking about? That isn’t for me to decide! It’s true the damage is severe, but we can’t just quit fighting a war like flipping a switch!! No matter the devastation before our eyes, we can still gather the surviving personnel and equipment for a counterattack. I’ll admit it’s like whipping the dead, but if we give up and stop resisting, everyone under my command will simply sink into the lava!!”

Frolaytia was not illogically relying on pure willpower.

She had more to say.

“Calm down, think, and never give up on being human! Why did the Information Alliance suddenly pull out their greatest secret weapon like this? It was at the center of their home country, so they shouldn’t have had any reason to send it to the front line. I don’t know the details of the issues with the Martini Series who monitor the AI network which may not even have a core, but if they have the full authority of a world power, they had to have had a better way of doing this.”

“…”

“We do not know how far the problems have spread within the Martini Series. If it’s limited to the ones in charge of protecting New York, it makes sense that only the Manhattan was sent out. But this is a fluid situation. If the other Martinis also begin acting oddly, the problems could spread uncontrollably throughout the Information Alliance!”

“Tia-chan, you are overwhelmingly correct here.”

Her brother slowly breathed out.

Bloodrics was supposedly a civilian, but he spoke to his sister like he was calmly explaining something while she threw a tantrum.

“But there is no one to answer your call.”

“!?”

“By a general estimate, 60-70% of those remaining on the island were lost. And losing 30% is normally considered a rout, is it not? You can no longer maintain ordinary military activity here. Tia-chan, your job here is to remove or destroy all classified information so the Information Alliance cannot steal it. And that includes yourself as the major in command of the entire battalion.”

“…”

“You must not be captured. No matter what. Do you really think the Manhattan is finished with only that one shot? Whether it fires a second and third shot or they send a large landing unit to the devastated remnants of the battalion, you have a single job here, Tia-chan: …Escape. It does not matter how pathetic or cowardly you feel. Tia-chan, you carry a responsibility here, so you must get yourself away from here. Even if you are the only one that escapes.”

She intellectually understood that.

If she was captured, the enemy could steal the biometric information like her center of gravity or iris scan that allowed access to the military datalink. Or they could get her to talk about future operations no one was supposed to know about or the names of spies who had infiltrated enemy countries. Then the damage would spread beyond ''just this war''. To minimize the losses, she had to make sure it was limited to ''just this war''.

The busty silver-haired commander slowly breathed out.

After throwing the laptop and hardware keys into the lava, she drew her military handgun from its holster.

“…I will withdraw only after saving as many lives as I can. As their commander, I will be rear guard.”

“Tia-chan.”

“Yes, yes!! I know it’s inefficient!!”

Frolaytia shouted back at him and pressed the military handgun’s muzzle against her own temple.

Brother and sister glared at each other and she gathered strength in her brow to keep her face as a girl from coming out.

“But there are still so many allies buried alive in this rubble and lava, unable to even groan! Not to mention the soldiers fighting the Information Alliance at the maintenance fleet out at sea!! They’re out there because I ordered them there! I can’t use insufficient data as an excuse. I can’t abandon them and run away. They would die pointless deaths if I did!!”

“…”

“Destroying all classified information was the bare minimum requirement, wasn’t it? That won’t be a problem. Officers aren’t issued guns to shoot the enemy. It’s to blow their own brains out if need be!!”

Still holding his drawn katana, Bloodrics shook his head with a sorrowful look on his face.

He must have understood his sister’s feelings all too well.

She did not let her status as a noble bind her. When necessary, she had risked her life and used her own strength to protect her soldiers. That was a joyous thing for Bloodrics. If his sister had something she wanted to protect, he wanted to fight alongside her as her brother. He truly did.

Finally, he took a deep breath of resignation.

And the brother spoke to his sister.

“I’m sorry, Tia-chan. But I can’t let you do that.”

Did Frolaytia even know what caused the quiet sound on her head?

“Bh…?”

The pommel of the katana held by the silver-haired young man had dug into the side of her head. Just like knocking someone out with a pistol grip. Before she could even move her finger to pull the trigger, the ''girl''’s eyes grew unfocused and her body went limp.

Before she fully collapsed, Bloodrics wrapped an arm around her waist which, as her brother, he felt was too skinny. If he was not careful, the finger on the trigger could accidentally fire the bullet.

“Striking my own sister… I am truly a disgrace to the concept of chivalry.”

He sounded utterly disgusted, but he was extremely dry when it came to this. Those military reasons meant nothing to him since he was a civilian, albeit a noble one. His first and foremost objective was to protect his precious sister no matter what it took.

On his way here, he had heard many voices begging him to kill them.

Some had had lava dumped on their head and others were caught in the rubble. Bloodrics had turned the tip of his katana on those soldiers who had no hope left.

He would not forget their words of thanks.

How could he ever forget?

“…I’m sick of it all.”

Frolaytia had built up this world of hers bit by bit as she resisted the noble society, so he could not allow her to see it tragically fall apart.

She could resent him if she liked.

She could hate his guts if she had to.

Bloodrics tossed aside his bloodstained katana and placed a finger to his ear. He was about to send out a transmission.

“It’s me.”

As soon as he focused on the small earpiece, the young man took on the face of a noble.

“Yes, I would like an emergency exit. Use that submarine. I would like to pick up as many Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers as possible, but there is no need to force it. We leave in 15 minutes. Give up on any we cannot pick up. Don’t worry. None of you need play the villain’s role. That I will do alone.”

Still supporting his unconscious family member’s weight, Bloodrics looked through the lava’s heat and steam to view the distant horizon.

According to Frolaytia, she had sent some of her soldiers out to sea.

It had been necessary. Even if it had required ignoring her personal feelings.

But if the maintenance battalion withdrew from New Caribbean Island, they would have nowhere to return to. Once isolated out at sea, no one would come to save them no matter how much they screamed.

Bloodrics Capistrano was doing that to them.

He was prepared to dirty his hands with the things that someone had to do.

“…Such a disaster. For us and them.”

===Part 3===

And no one came.

The Legitimacy Kingdom military was supposedly stationed at New Caribbean Island. The Princess’s Baby Magnum was supposedly out in the wide ocean.

And yet.

No one.

“…I’ll kill you…”

A voice burning with resentment echoed across the rusty flight deck.

It belonged to Heivia Winchell who could not even shed any tears.

He moved his trembling body as best he could to crawl to the edge of the flight deck, but there was already no sign of his friend’s corpse.

Only a strange dark red liquid stained the water’s surface as a large shadow slowly swam below.

“Ha ha. Don’t do that, Wraith!”

Taratua held her stomach as she laughed.

There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

“You can feed his corpse to the sharks if you like. Peh heh heh. But we’ll never hear the end of it if you feed them the metals and plastics along with it. Ah hah hah hah!!”

With that, something really did snap inside Heivia’s mind. He crossed a line.

“I’ll kill you!! I’ll murder you!! I don’t care anymore if you’re insane or broken or whatever the hell. I’ll turn every last one of you to mincemeat in a hail of bullets!!!!!”

In the end, where was that threat directed?

No one knows.

===Part 4===

“Attention, 101st Zombie Platoon!!”

They were out in the open.

There were not even any chairs or tables.

Heivia and the other defeated survivors of the Legitimacy Kingdom were gathered on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which was tilted too far to be of any use. Rain was pouring down from the thick storm clouds, but there was no roof or anything else to protect them. There were not even any railings, so if they got careless and slipped on the wet flight deck, they could roll right off into the ocean where the hungry sharks waited.

The only person with a smile on her face was Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks, but she stood below a large umbrella held by a male subordinate.

“That impressive attack from my piece of shit comrade on the Manhattan 000 has whipped up quite the storm. That gives us an opportunity for the dead to do some work.”

“…Are you unfamiliar with the concept of war treaties? This is no way to treat POWs.”

“What, do you want to be thrown inside a zoo cage like the amusing animal you are?”

She was blunt.

Whether it had been injected from an external source like with Piranirie or if she had always been like that, the thoroughly-broken Asian beauty did not bat an eye.

“You cowards boarded our maintenance fleet’s flagship and then shared the fate of the Flagship 019 after a variety of attacks finally sunk it. Thus, there were zero survivors. Your survival has been scrubbed from any and all records, so worry not and go have some fun.”

“…”

Heivia gave her a murderous glare, so she winked.

“Do you understand your position now? The dead do not belong to any of the usual categories, so we can ignore all those pesky treaties and military regulations. Plus, any number of you can die without it counting in the official records. Ignore the people in their living rooms. You can fight as you like and die as you like! I’m honestly jealous! That’s the paradise dreamed of by any soldier!!”

In other words…

The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were being forced to wrap their arms around the pile of shit that the Information Alliance did not want to grab with their bare hands. Their target of attack could be a region of hopelessly fierce fighting, or a symbol of peace that was bound to earn international criticism. They did not want to imagine the other possibilities.

It was time for a true death march where they were lined up in a row and forced at gunpoint to walk through a minefield. Each step would be terrifying, but standing still would get them shot. Yes, the death march was more than just this one battle. They would never be released. Heivia and the others were disposable tools. This situation would continue endlessly until they were worn out and died.

“…What are you telling us to do?”

“It’s all about balance.” Taratua toyed with the end of her black hair that was damp despite the umbrella. “I’m sure you saw a lot on the Flagship 019. The Capulet AI Network that supports the Information Alliance, one of the four world powers, is correct but too pure. After all, after the New Yorker’s used various countermeasures to avoid security cameras and email spying, it was rendered unable to see New York itself. If the entire Martini Series in charge of maintenance returns a strange echo, it could create a similar flaw in Capulet. …But that is not the problem.”

“?”

Taratua was supposedly a part of that Martini Series, but she did not seem worried about herself.

“As its name suggests, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. Nevertheless, we were not told anything about the risk to Capulet or about the Manhattan 000.”

“You’re pissed at being left out, so you want to take revenge by having us blow up New York?”

“Are you braindead? This is an opportunity,” whispered the black-haired beauty below the umbrella. “The Manhattan 000 is currently traveling south at around 388 knots. The distance from New York in the Information Alliance home country and the ocean near New Caribbean Island is about 3500 kilometers, so it should arrive within 4 or 5 hours. It’s still a mystery why they would send their king to the front line like this, but there is one thing we know for sure: we were blessed with a chance to gather raw data.”

388 knots was 700 kilometers per hour, so it was not much different from a passenger plane. What had happened to the city of Manhattan and the people in it?

The usual technical nerd was not here.

With nowhere to direct his question, Heivia just spat it out.

“700…? How?”

“At the very least, it must not be using an aircushion or static electricity floats. The colossal structure itself is parting the water. It’s probably using supercavitation or something to reduce the water’s resistance with small air bubbles, but the exact system is still unknown. This is all information we must find.”

That gigantic a presence was staring them down from the darkness. Wasn’t that enough to sound instinctual alarm bells within any living creature?

And yet this girl had called it an opportunity.

“…Are you the kind of person who goes out to see the hurricane and gets blown away into the sky?”

“I will shoot you next time. What matters here is who can monopolize the most raw data available at the scene. As I said, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. The Manhattan 000 started moving and can apparently move under its own power whenever it wants. After we gather what data we can on it, we are not foolish enough to send all of it back to our higher ups, which includes the core-less Capulet AI Network. …I mean, it already fired on all of you to cover its tracks.”

“Don’t drag us into your internal conflict.”

“Don’t be silly. Then I would have to take responsibility here.”

Even the simplest rules did not apply.

This was completely different from not having your words get through to someone. It was like emphatically speaking and even gesturing for emphasis only to see all that effort outright rejected. There was simply no opening in this girl. She was as inhuman as a giant praying mantis wearing human skin.

Was she an alien? Was she from the Shit Planet?

“They went to a lot of effort to hide this for so long. There must be some great secret to the Manhattan 000. And that would be very, very valuable information.”

Taratua giggled after glancing at the notebook-sized tablet she took from the subordinate holding the umbrella.

Was it showing a video site or online news? Or maybe the myriad posts on message boards and social media?

There was a lot of information related to Manhattan, but it was meaningless if none of it was accurate. When faced with a situation like this, it was the lowest of the low who could only think about shouting strange apocalyptic theories or fabricating a witness account to gather views for their videos.

“After taking this much blame, I’m not going to obediently stand aside and stay a lowly Captain. I will provide myself with a path to special promotion. I’m sure all four world powers, both our enemies and the Information Alliance itself, are rushing to gather information. That’s perfect. Those onlookers will trip each other up and fail to gather anything of note. Meanwhile, we will move a step or two ahead. I will hold the valuable information on the Manhattan 000 and I will decide how to use it. Perhaps I will use AI and big data to join the upper class and enjoy a high society life of wealth. Or maybe I will threaten those people and use them as a stepping stone to an even more comfortable and leisurely life.”

“So it’s all about money? You sound just like the goddamn Capitalist Corporations.”

“Are you musty old nobles too stupid to tell the difference? The order is reversed. An information illiterate fool and their money are soon parted. When the poor hit the jackpot at the lottery, the story always has a tragic end. The truly powerful are those who first gather information. Whether or not they reveal their educational history, their occupation, the size of their bank account, and so on is all part of someone’s status.”

Heivia shook his head like he was hungover.

He may have given up on trying to understand the thought process of this thinly-smiling resident of Shit Planet.

“And the problem there is balance.”

But how did Taratua view these disposable Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers?

She looked down on the rain-soaked group from her position of safety.

“Hopefully, the four world powers will begin a mutual game of whack-a-mole that keeps any of them from popping up. The danger is if one of them manages to stay up. I want to restrict their data acquisition speed. That way we alone can grasp these secrets and use them as exclusive bargaining chips against the higher, higher, higher ups. So if any of those moles pops up, we need to whack them back down. Even if our target is from the Information Alliance, we still must thoroughly destroy them. Even more so for outsiders.”

This was sounding ominous.

Heivia, Myonri, and the rest tensed up as Taratua spun the notebook-sized tablet around so they could see the screen.

And it showed…

“A symbol of peace: the Olympia Dome☆”

“Bff…!?”

She was broken.

She was completely insane.

“That artificial floating island travels slowly around the Atlantic and hosts the Technopics global sports festival. It officially claims to be fully neutral and not affiliated with any world power, but it is actually heavily dyed in the colors of the Faith Organization. And since it needs to broadcast an international event, it is equipped with largescale broadcast equipment. That makes it a gigantic EM spy device wandering across the Atlantic. It doesn’t really matter whether or not it was originally built for that purpose. It has ended up that way. It is in our way. You need to whack down that mole so it doesn’t discover the Manhattan 000’s secrets before we do. Blow it up and sink it.”

“…That’s against the rules. You want us to sink the site of the Technopics with military might? That would turn into an international incident requiring centuries of reparations!!”

“That isn’t part of the calculation. Even if you’re right, I won’t be the one paying them. Why do you think I’ve kept you dangerous Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers alive this long? Now get to work, my dead soldiers☆”

She made it sound so simple.

If this was an operation that could be pulled off with the normal methods, she would not have put together this unstable enemy unit of zombie soldiers. She was not expecting Heivia and the others to fight valiantly. They were being used as jokers to whom the rules did not apply specifically because she did not care when they were destroyed either legally or physically.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks smiled thinly.

“Luckily, all of our maintenance fleet’s ships were at least half-destroyed by the Manhattan 000’s attack. No one will suspect a thing if a few of them lose control and start to drift. You assisted a stranded Capitalist Corporations’ submarine for no reward, didn’t you? This will be the same. The rules of the sea are kind. So we’ll use that to our advantage by getting the Olympia Dome to assist you so you can crush them from within.”

Heivia tried to continue arguing, but Taratua gently raised a hand.

The sailors surrounding them lazily aimed shotguns at the curled-up Legitimacy Kingdom dumplings. Heivia might or might not be killed when the first trigger was pulled, but once it began, the number of survivors would be quickly reduced.

Refusal was not an option.

If they disobeyed, they would receive a bullet to the head. If they obeyed, they would be used as disposable elements of ridiculous missions. Even if they managed to win and survive, they would not be freed; they would simply be sent out on the next mission. The death march would continue until every last one of them was dead.

[[Image:HO_v15_051.png|thumb]]

The Asian beauty gently lowered her hand and grinned.

“Do you understand the rules now? Then begin.”

“…Wait.”

A low voice spoke.

It was Heivia as the pouring rain continued to hit him.

“You’re the only one that gains anything from that. It’s not worth our while. We’re risking our life on a deadly attack with guns aimed at our backs. There has to be something in it for us.”

“Using data to achieve a fortune only applies to those in the Information Alliance. Or are you saying you will defect to our side to share in the profits here?”

“Not what I meant,” spat out Heivia. “I’m not interested in your dirty money.”

And he said it.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. Once this is all over, hand that bitch over to us. Those are our terms.”

The tall girl silently tilted her head.

She rubbed at her shiny black hair as she finally answered.

“What do I gain by accepting that? Depending on your answer, I might just return you to your grave.”

“You’re both from the Martini Series, aren’t you? Keep her with you and your share is divided in half.”

“Then you can kill her if you want.”

She said it so easily.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks may have had no concept of camaraderie.

No.

Dorothea, Piranirie, and Wraith.

Even that small blonde girl had lost the guarantee of the safety myth. So was it safe to conclude it was a general trait of the Martini Series as a whole? The one question was whether that was a mistake at the design phase or if it was the result of an outside force taking advantage of a vulnerability.

The tall Asian beauty concluded the briefing with a carefree look.

“So we have a deal☆ Now, 101st Zombie Platoon, this is your first mission, so it is a cause for celebration. It’s time for a true bloodbath mission!”

===Part 5===

The Frigate 042 was tossed about by the nearly-black gray of the stormy sea. It was about 100 meters long. It would have originally been neatly painted the mix of light gray and blue associated with warships, but large parts had been scorched black and the surface had bubbled up like someone had held a match to the back of a photograph. The rapid-firing guns were bent, the vertical-launch missile tubes lined up like a honeycomb were melted shut, and most of the various antennae had been blown off of the bridge. The entire ship was tilted at an angle, so it was clearly in no state for cruising.
If an empty-headed youth came across it in a cruiser, they might snap a photo with their smartphone and create a new ghost ship legend.

Its tragic state was a testament to the power of the Manhattan 000’s ultra-wide-range attacks.

“…This is the worst, goddammit.”

Inside the ship, Heivia Winchell spat out his words while sitting with his back to the wall and an assault rifle in his arms. He and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were inside the mess hall that was one of the larger intact areas.

“I’m a noble heir, but those bastards rewrote the records to report me as dead. Those old men with giant beards, fat asses, or both have got to be fighting over the right of succession back in the home country. And who knows what’s happened to the relationship between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families…”

“Ch-cheer up, Heivia. We just have to wait for an opportunity.”

“You sure are hopeful, Myonri. Do you really think there will be one? With those pieces of shit watching our every move!?”

The zombie-like soldiers slowly turned their attention in the direction Heivia pointed.

There, a single pair of non-matching uniforms stood out from the rest.

It was the Information Alliance officer Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

And the young man who acted as her aide.

“I doubt you’ll trust anything I say at this point. …But it’s even harder for me to trust myself. Just like with the Capulet AI Network, the Martini Series can’t make judgments about itself.”

“…”

“By spreading its influence thinly out across all of the Information Alliance’s territory of influence, Capulet lost any symbol of a ‘core’. Piranirie said she had succumbed to the AI’s correctness, but it is hard to say she had no confidence in her actions. I don’t know what it is that is destroying us, but it may be using our active self-denial.”

“Active…self-denial?”

Myonri looked confused and Wraith nodded.

“Like giving up on climbing a mountain because of a blizzard. Or making a courageous withdrawal. …It depends on the person’s willpower, but people have a strange mindset where the stronger their desire, the further they move from their initial objective. That is why Piranirie charged full speed toward her own destruction.”

The blonde girl sighed in the heavy atmosphere.

“Our original, Cassandra Martini, was apparently a rational killer. She must have chosen to give up on so much in the course of that life. If Katarina were here, she might have been able to corroborate that.”

She was acting differently from her previous chatting.

There may have been an absolute difference between Wraith and Heivia’s group.

Of course, Heivia’s group was in charge of hesitantly walking onto the minefield while Wraith’s group was in charge of firing into their backs the instant they took issue with Heivia’s group’s speed or anything else.

“(I can’t believe Taratua. She’s actually sending our reward out into battle with us. Does she see it like shaking a carrot on a stick in front of the dumb horse?)”

“What’s this? You’re acting awfully suspicious here. Did you ask for my head as a reward for this mission?”

“Tch.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue.

It did not matter if she found out here. The secret deal was with Taratua. Even if that girl was broken on a fundamental level, she could still do the math. In other words, she was a high-IQ serial killer. Her “emotions” could not be overturned even if Wraith went crying to her now. It did not matter that they were comrades.

Meanwhile, Wraith sighed.

“You’re apparently clinging to hope to an ugly extent, but that’s fine with me. You can think about what comes afterwards if you like, but don’t lose sight of the immediate hurdle. Taratua has very good reason to be cautious of Olympia Dome. First, if the Manhattan 000 is headed for us, there is a good chance that wandering artificial floating island will pass very close by. Second, the Faith Organization is sending soldiers and equipment to that symbol of peace. Primarily STOL transport planes and tiltrotors. This isn’t over once we get inside with this Trojan horse. Learn how to use the Information Alliance equipment we have lent you. You need to act like you stole it from this half-destroyed ship. Also…”

“Shut up. That’s enough.”

Heivia rudely cut her off.

His tone with her was clearly different from just a few hours before.

“How long are you going to act like we’re on the same side? There’s a really obvious line in the sand now. And you drew it your damn self. You sicken me. Don’t think you can just move from one side to the other whenever you damn well please. It pisses me off even though I know it’s coming from a completely broken lunatic.”

“…Do you think growing emotional is a virtue? I’ll admit it’s pure to a fault, but do you actually plan on surviving this?”

“How the hell can you say that after taking his life with your own hands!? Do you really think you’re the hero? Have you gone as nuts as Joan of Arc? Say it yourself: who do you think it was that shot Quenser to save her own hide!?”

The girl’s shoulders shook at the blatant verbal abuse.

Her already-small body shrank down all the more, but her eyes opened unbelievably wide.

Her lips trembled as she tried to say something. They opened and closed, but nothing ever came out.

“Say it, crazy girl.”

There was now a definite focus to Heivia’s previously gloomy eyes.

There may have been nothing rational there. There was someone here he had reason to criticize, so he may have simply been using that as an outlet.

His back left the wall, he slowly stood up, and a bright light glinted in his eyes as he roared at her.

“Sure, you probably did the right thing!! You probably used that clever head of yours to work out the optimal solution and that told you to shoot Quenser!! So how about you hold your head high? After killing so many people, did you think you could become the tragic heroine who gets tears in her eyes and laments how hard it was for her!? That wouldn’t make him happy. That wouldn’t make Quenser happy. Did you really think anyone would accept that, you piece of shit!?”

“…”

“Do you remember what happened when that damn Manhattan fired on us?”

Wraith remained motionless, so Heivia kept up the verbal assault.

He seemed to be saying he would not forgive her even if her heart lay in tatters.

“He protected you. That skinny bastard threw himself over you to protect your tiny body from whatever was going to happen. It’s true that was right after everything with Piranirie, so he’d just experienced a kid dying. …But the fact remains that he protected you. Do you know what that means? That softhearted idiot didn’t want you to die and he thought he could trust you to have his back! And then you-…!!!!!”

There was a small movement.

It may have been similar to a small child trying to cover their head as an unreasonable adult shouted angrily down at them.

But in Wraith’s case, her small hand hovered near the holster on her hip.

The blonde girl winced as if that fact pained her, but Heivia gave a broken, asymmetrical grin.

“…That’s who you really are. A crazed killer. And I’m not talking about that active self-denial or some strange mindset. I’m talking about the very nature of your soul. You can claim to support equality or pacifism all you like, but the first hint of a threat and ''this happens''. If you aren’t on top, you can’t relax or even look the other person in the eye. There was no other choice? You’re just a child, so you aren’t responsible? Then you shouldn’t have stretched up on your tiptoes to set foot on the battlefield. None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t participated in that genius girl project.”

He had started on what-ifs that had no bearing on reality.

But Heivia did not care since he was only interested in finding fault.

So he did not hold back.

“You should’ve stayed back in your safe country hiding behind your mommy’s skirt.”

This was even more than before.

Everyone watching could tell the girl’s pale face grew another shade closer to pure white. It was easy to imagine how tightly her heart was squeezing inside her juvenile body.

Heivia had to have heard Quenser and Wraith’s conversation on the Flagship 019.

He would have heard about the DNA computer spread out across the Information Alliance, he would have heard about the Anastasia Processor at its core, and he would have heard whose cancer cells were used to create it.

He would have heard about that impossible what-if where the girl would never have had to take the Martini name and would have been protected by a normal, warm family if not for her mother’s sickness.

But he still said it.

He did not care. He only saw her as an enemy.

A military boot could be heard scraping against the floor.

The young man ever-present by Wraith’s side had taken a step forward while tightly clenching his teeth.

“Get back to jerking off in front of the position-detection camera with some VR goggles on, you Information Alliance pervert. Did you think you could become her knight now that Quenser’s dead?”

Heivia did not back down.

In fact, he immediately stepped forward so they were less than a meter apart.

“What a gentleman you are for bothering to stand up over nothing more than an exchange of words. Well? Am I supposed to fight to the death without a single complaint even after being given legit bullets? Is that how you think a gentleman should act? Go fuck yourself!!!!!”

Next, there were several dull sounds of impacts that crushed flesh and struck the bone.

First, the young man’s iron fist hit Heivia’s cheekbone. Heivia retaliated by grabbing at him. The rest was too chaotic to describe. The two of them knocked over the mess hall’s tables and chairs as they rolled along the floor to get on top of the other. All the while, dull and potentially deadly sounds rang out and dark red drops of blood scattered around.

“…Stop.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray moved her trembling lips to force out the word.

Neither Heivia nor the young man was listening.

The Legitimacy Kingdom boy grabbed a glass ashtray from the floor and the Information Alliance mechanical man reached for the pin of a grenade hanging form the delinquent soldier’s jacket. Seeing that, Wraith finally made up her mind.

“Stop this!!”

She had drawn it.

She drew her handgun from the holster.

The atmosphere froze. A decisive chasm had opened between the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance. If that grenade had detonated, those two and all those gathered in the enclosed mess hall would have been killed. But no one was focused on that.

Everyone there – and that probably included Wraith herself – had pictured something else entirely.

They vividly saw that scene of someone shooting someone else on the tilted flight deck.

“…Do whatever you want.” Heivia recklessly threw his hands up while the young man leaned down on him. “You have two options here. One: if the mission fails, you’ll be filled with lead at Olympia Dome along with us. Two: if the mission succeeds, Taratua will sell you to us. …There’s no way out for you. Your life is already over, crazy girl.”

That was the end of it.

The young man swung his fist down into the center of Heivia’s face and the unfunny idiot’s consciousness was swiftly taken from him.

===Part 6===

“Naval Security Sigma 3 to all. We have reached the unidentified ship. It has been sending out a distress signal…but it isn’t responding to our radio transmissions, flashing light signals, or loudspeaker calls. Please advise.”

“This is OD Control. Wait, Sigma 3. Olympia Dome lacks the authority to board and raid ships.”

“Sigma 3. Isn’t it already within 200 nautical miles?”

“OD Control. An artificial floating island cannot claim territorial waters or an exclusive economic zone. Also, Olympia Dome is neutral in every possible way.”

“(How can you say that after letting in Faith Organization troops like us?)”

“OD Control here. State your call sign before speaking, Sigma 3. We can only board ships that have already sunk. That one is still floating, isn’t it? As planned, attach the buffering material and then let the waves carry it into the dock.”

“Sigma 3. They aren’t controlling the rudder or decelerating. This might destroy the harbor block.”

“OD Control. Unlike a normal harbor, an artificial floating island can alter its direction and speed. That means we can match our speed to theirs. If they aren’t moving, we just have to move.”

“Sigma 3 to all. Starboard bow complete.”

“Theta 7. Port middle complete.”

“Phi 2. Starboard stern complete.”

“Psi 4. Starboard middle complete.”

“Delta 9. Port stern complete.”

“Sigma 3 to Lambda 1. What happened to the port bow?”

“…”

“Lambda 1!”

“Zeta 0 to Sigma 3. Lambda 1 has a phobia of sharks and micro bikinis. It’s all thanks to being swept out to sea when a carnivorous young woman licked her lips and devoured his virginity on a rubber boat. He’s probably off trembling somewhere right now.”

“Sigma 3. How is that traumatic? I’m jealous as hell. I lost mine to the old lady at the cigarette store. I’ll make up for his absence.”

“OD Control here. Trouble, Sigma 3?”

“Sigma 3. Nothing worth saving to the control recorder.”

“OD Control. Then stop discussing your virginities. Just so you know, I’m still afraid of holes in walls. Specifically ones just big enough to hold a nice breakfast banana.”

“Sigma 3 here. Shut up. And we’re done now anyway. What even happened to that cool-headed operator woman? Anyway, match their speed and catch them softly. Softly!”

“OD Control. You don’t have to shout. This entire rescue operation would be pointless if the impact was strong enough to kill the people inside.”

“(Curse these softhearted people who only know peace. Makes it hard to fight a war.)”

“OD Control here. Use your call sign, Sigma 3.”

===Part 7===

“Thanks for the help” was all they could say.

“Let’s get started.”

On Heivia’s word, the battle began.

Once the Faith Organization had firmly affixed the ship to the harbor block, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes kicked open the bent metal door and rushed out toward the edge of the deck with assault rifles and carbines in hand.

Their first target was the concrete wharf area about 9 meters down from the starboard side of the ship.

A continuous hail of bullets filled the armed Faith Organization soldiers with holes. While exposed to the recoil of the gunfire, Heivia was honestly relieved that they were professional soldiers. If these were simply Olympia Dome staff, this would have been a nightmare.

This was in line with the information they had been given, but he had not been trained to the point that he would thank Taratua for anything. He gave a shout while ducking behind the thick metal panel attached to the railing to swap out his assault rifle’s magazine.

“There’s a sniper on the gantry crane! And if the gathered soldiers start to move apart, that’s the sign for a rocket. Destroy them first!!”

This time, Heivia had a separate shotgun attached below his rifle’s barrel. By swapping between real and rubber bullets, he could neutralize the harmless workers without killing them. Of course, this had nothing to do with mercy or philanthropy. …It was an efficiency optimization policy that used that “kindness” to lighten the soldier’s trigger finger.

“Don’t get your ammo type mixed up, Myonri. You won’t just get a red or white flag for it!”

“I know that!!”

They exchanged fire for a while, but the Legitimacy Kingdom’s chances of taking the wharf area did not look promising. They would have their best chance when their opponent was surprised by this unexpected attack, but Olympia Dome was the Faith Organization’s home turf and they held all the advantageous ground. Once they recovered from their shock, it would be the Legitimacy Kingdom’s turn to be overwhelmed.

“Is turning the entire slug into a rubber bullet really a humanitarian measure?” asked Myonri.

“It’s mostly just an excuse to yourself. Even if the enemy finds it silly, they can’t respond to the double tactics. Meanwhile, our trigger fingers are a lot lighter since we ‘might not kill them’, so our efficiency rises. It’s the same as the Island Nation’s concept of ‘striking with the back of the blade’. There’s apparently a theory that the samurai could attack so boldly because katanas weren’t double-edged.”

So before they were overwhelmed, they had to thoroughly strike the enemy and secure a foothold on land.

This was an away game and they knew in advance the enemy had more personnel and equipment. They had to throw them off their pace and break through regardless.

Heivia’s group’s enemies were not just those in front of them. They had been warned in advance that they would be shot in the back if they fell behind schedule.

Black-uniformed Wraith was hiding behind a different steel panel from the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and she shouted at them while pointing toward the area with the most intense counterattack. She was the overall supervisor who was the only one allowed to shoot Heivia’s group in the back. And if Heivia’s group tried to retaliate, they would of course be executed by gunfire. Their actions were restricted by both force and military regulations.

“Avoiding work seems to be the only thing you fools are good at, but set up more of a barrage! I want to throw some more of these things while I can!!”

“Shut up and die, dead-end girl! Will those toys really accomplish anything…!?”

If he did not have to hit, he did not have to expose himself to danger. Heivia kept his body hidden behind the steel panel and stuck only his assault rifle up to randomly spray bullets down. And that made him one of the harder workers. Some of the soldiers were busy “pretending” by creating fake muzzle flashes with a strobe light and speaker linked together. It sounded silly, but unlike in movies, real battles did not have unlimited ammunition. That was a surprisingly handy item for conserving bullets.

“…The creep toward technology has already begun.”

“Oh.” Myonri sounded oddly cheerful. “It looks like those things have started to move.”

Behind her steel panel, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had a focused look on her face as she operated something with both hands. The device looked like a smartphone with a sold-separately H-shaped game pad attached.

No, that may have been exactly what it was.

Something the size of a baseball silently rolled around the Faith Organization’s cover and into their hiding spot.

Immediately, an explosion erupted behind cover as if a fragmentary grenade had gone off there.

The lethal range was 5 meters and the incapacitation range was 10 meters, but those basic specs barely mattered. After a sudden explosion within the wall or vehicle they were hiding within, the people relying on that shield would be blown to bits.

“Wah!? Wha-!?”

Other Faith Organization soldiers behind nearby cover cried out in panic before they were blown away by other explosions that resembled dirty smokescreens. Some soldiers decided they could not stay where they were and rolled out from behind their shields, but Heivia and Myonri picked them off with bullets.

“Remote grenades that can roll along the ground and behind cover? How cruel can you get…?”

“Those simply incorporate the tech from sticky tape cleaning robots, don’t they?”

That was the identity of the devices Wraith had thrown earlier. After scattering the spherical explosives around the targets, you could control their exact locations with a smartphone or tablet. You rolled them behind the enemy’s cover and stealthily detonated them at the defenseless enemy’s feet. They could also be thrown over a prison’s thick walls and sent through a vent to explore the ducts.

“Should we really be relying on tech like this?” asked Heivia.

“They aren’t IoT devices, so they won’t be connected to Capulet,” replied Wraith. “Besides, unmanned weapons run on systems even more simplified than a pet robot. They won’t rely on an AI network.”

“Eh? Really?” asked Myonri.

“It’s true it would take a server with massive capacity to fully reproduce the flowchart for the predetermined movement patterns of the wings and legs of a single fly. …But what if we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing artificial as far as the eye could see? An unmanned weapon would be useless if it needed to constantly send out signals to inform a server of its location. The ideal form of modern unmanned weapons is generally a submarine. It only sends out a signal when absolutely necessary. Capulet might want to connect to everything and suck up all the data it can get, but even it has to make concessions here.”

Black-uniformed Wraith gave them the pitying look of a teacher to a poor student.

“They use the Insect Colony Theory that takes artificial creatures that learn and construct the simplest ways to move a spider or butterfly’s body and combines it with the swarm intelligence that uses machines to reproduces the social structures of ants and bees. That allows them to communicate and take the optimal action without the need for a server. This is an ideal. Just like a grazing herd, the group of unmanned weapons automatically works toward a single goal while we are the sheepdog who watches on and intervenes only when necessary.”

“That all sounds wonderful, but I’m more afraid of you going nuts then the machines!” shouted Heivia. “Are you sure this is okay!?”

This was somehow different from Quenser who had shaped bombs with his own hands and used them to realize his clever ideas.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s explosions were merciless and unemotional.

It felt like she was trapping the enemy and efficiently killing them.

A motor that sounded a lot like an electric shaver passed by over their heads. They did not bother looking up. It was an aerial drone shaped like a four-winged water strider. Instead of just flying in a straight line, those things would include figure-eight movements, perhaps to divert the enemy’s aim.

Or was it a form of non-EM communication between the unmanned weapons?

It was thanks to these drones that the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had been able to so accurately fire on the Faith Organization soldiers immediately after opening the metal doors. Intelligence was the greatest weapon. The battle was decided before the bullets and knives began to fly. It really was the Information Alliance’s style.

Wraith pointed at the drones being tossed about by the storm.

“If we have them self-destruct at an altitude of 50 meters and rain shrapnel down on the enemy’s head, we should be able to secure a route to C Dock. We need to reach land before enemy reinforcements arrive. Don’t be slow.”

“It doesn’t really matter, but…hey, watch out! Get down, Myonri!!”

Perhaps because of the powerful storm, some of shrapnel downpour reached the ship’s deck as well. After they were nearly decorated with some delicious plastic and rare earth seasoning, Heivia tried to grab at Wraith, but Myonri held him back. A single retort could get them reduced to a bloody pulp right now.

At the moment, time was of the essence.

No gangway had been nicely attached for them, but the actual docking work had been completed. If they descended the ropes attached to the railing, they could reach the concrete wharf area they had stained with blood a moment before.

They were not searching out each other’s position in the jungle or anything, but just to be sure, Heivia made sure not to step in any of the blood.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of what kind of shitty tactics the Information Alliance uses, but what about the Faith Organization?”

“Guts maybe?” suggested Myonri. “Like making a gutsy charge?”

Just as Heivia dismissed that as ridiculous, the wall of a nearby warehouse broke open from within. A gigantic firetruck for fuel oil fires had crashed through.

“I don’t know if it’s for bulletproofing, but they’ve attached a thick wire mesh over the glass. And it’s not just handmade. It’s just like the ‘observation helicopters’ owned by a certain environment protection group. That thing was designed to accommodate this attachment!!”

But that was not the biggest problem. Soldiers were clinging to the sides and roof of the boxy vehicle. They looked like countless ants swinging around a sugar cube. Before Heivia’s group even did anything, some of the soldiers were caught on the jagged edges of the warehouse wall or had their uniforms caught in the giant tires, turning them to mincemeat.

It was tank desant.

“Huh, so it is guts,” said Heivia.

“Definitely guts,” replied Myonri.

Regardless, Heivia raised a hand and one of their allies fired a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. More than 10 Faith Organization soldiers were blown away like the contents of a jack-in-the-box.

“Shit, they’re still alive!?”

They must have mastered the use of willpower and guts because the soldiers lying on the road or on top of the warehouse roof still fired toward the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers.

But that was not why Heivia’s group quickly dove behind rusty metal drums and wooden boxes.

“What is with them…? They’re firing something else along with their bullets.”

“Probably collapsible bows. They take a more arching path than rifle bullets, so be on your guard even when behind cover. It’s the same as you diligent and clever lot using both rifle bullets and rubber bullets. Individually, they wouldn’t be that effective, but mix them in and the enemy has to perform more mental gymnastics.”

“That’s not what I was talking about, crazy girl. Look at the arrowhead over there. Why have they rubbed seagull shit all over it!?”

“Maybe as a form of poison arrow? They probably hope to increase the damage done by shoving germs into the wound. The military use of rotten corpses and excrement is an effective strategy that has been used since BCE times.”

“Heivia, look at that on the road over there,” said Myonri. “Wow, I don’t want to see that at all. Isn’t that just the worst!?”

“Don’t just say ‘that’! Explain what it is!! …!? W-wait, you’re kidding, right? Not dogshit!”

It did not at all look like they were kidding and little Wraithy did not want a face full of dogshit, so she threw a baseball-sized explosive. The blonde girl operated her smartphone’s H-shaped game pad while hiding behind cover to blow up the Faith Organization soldier groaning on the ground 20 meters away.

“You idiot!! You just scattered dogshit and human entrails everywhere!! Be more careful!!”

“I feel like this is turning into biological warfare,” commented Myonri.

Just then, they sensed what seemed like a sound but was not. A slight vibration reached their feet from the ground.

They frowned.

“What’s this? Cheering from a stadium?”

“Why would it be that?” asked Myonri. “I thought this city was essentially dead except during the Technopics.”

“Can you professionals not even find a scientific explanation of the occult?” complained Wraith. “The winds and waves of the storm may be causing a resonance within the artificial floating island. It is not rooted in the actual earth, so looking at the overall ratio, it must be thinner than a pizza.”

“Don’t butt in, Loli Grim Reaper. I’m not a pedo or a necro.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

“And don’t just smile and say things like that, Myonri! People will think it’s true!!”

But in reality, a powerful vibration erupted in the distance and reached them like someone had scored a decisive point near the end of a soccer game. There was no way this was a natural phenomenon. The sound of mayhem had human intent behind it.

“…So is it really guts after all?” asked Myonri, sounding annoyed.

“Curse those perverted mythology fetishists. Did they start some self-loving to blow through the limiters in their minds!?”

The digital vs. analog war had finally begun.

Heivia’s group was not trying to remain in C Dock and protect the ship with their lives, so they had no reason to stay in place and put up a thorough resistance. Instead, they moved elsewhere.

Wraith looked up from her customized smartphone.

“Our objective is the broadcast station where most of the communication equipment is. We can ignore the broadcast tower and parabolic antennae. As long as we destroy the core, they can’t manage the exchange of information and that other equipment will be useless.”

“Wait, that’s not what we discussed. I thought that Martini sister you love so much was talking about sinking the whole damn island. Unlike you, we could get executed by Taratua if we make a single wrong move!”

“I can’t believe how little you can adapt to the situation… What does it matter what she hopes for? Can your poor little mind do nothing more than what it’s told? Besides, we don’t even know if it’s possible to sink Olympia Dome as a whole with the equipment we’re carrying. Most of its power is supplied by the generator satellite in orbit and the transformer ships in the ocean, so we can’t expect to trigger any explosives within Olympia Dome. The Faith Organization military infiltrating the artificial floating island doesn’t matter. Our top priority is robbing the Manhattan 000 of the ability to gather information.”

“Sure, sure. How kind of you. Such a pillar of charity. Is that the spirit of Nightingale I see hovering behind you? I’m sure Quenser is weeping for joy in the afterlife right now, you piece of shit.”

The aide young man punched Heivia and Heivia returned the favor.

Before it devolved into a serious grapple, timid Myonri aimed her assault rifle at those allies to restore order.

“This isn’t supposed to be my job!” she protested. “Wraith, please manage our people better!”

“R-right…”

“Just shoot him, you idiot!” shouted Heivia. “Whose side are you on, anyway!?”

“If you don’t quiet down, I will fire rubber bullets into your balls. Then the rest of us can keep moving while the two of you bond over your shared experience. Nonlethal weapons sure are convenient, aren’t they?”

She was smiling.

Was she aware that rubber or not made little difference when it came to balls? Myonri seemed to have awoken to her calling as a fearsome Black Uniform. This was another example of how frightening serious girls were when they got mad.

“…Is there some kind of special campaign in effect this month? When did plain old Myonri transform into this shiny ultra-rare?”

“I imagine it was the result of everyone’s daily treatment of me.”

“You have some nerve, Myonri. What good is an ultra-rare if you aren’t even going to show any more skin?”

“That’s what I’m talking about! Everything about your treatment of me is the worst!!”

They left the harbor block and entered the outer city region.

It was probably due to the thick storm clouds overhead, but the city looked very gray in the pouring rain.

“Are you sure we aren’t dragging civilians into this…?”

“There are apparently no athletes or spectators here except during the Technopics. The only civilians are the Olympia Dome inspection and maintenance staff. The city’s population density is less than 8%, so there’s very little chance of a stray bullet causing any harm.”

“I read you loud and clear: we don’t actually know anything for sure and we need to be careful if we want to avoid a nightmare later on.”

They heard the dull sound of several thick tires tearing at the ground. Garbage trucks and mobile cranes drove out from intersections and parking garages like crocodiles poking their heads out of the bushes. Soldiers covered them like a packed train in Southeast Asia, and…

“Oh, no! They’ve attached heavy weaponry with bolts and slide rails!!”

“Look how perfectly those fit. This is clearly how they were designed to look. They just normally have the equipment removed so those look like civilian equipment!! With the infrastructure support of a frontline base, they’re just military weapons!!”

In this case, it was heavy machineguns instead of construction equipment. If Heivia’s group remained standing in that wide-open six-lane road the size of a runway, they would have their torsos torn in half by a horizontal flash of light.

Driven on by the deep booms of gunfire, Heivia’s group broke the window to one of the shops lining the road and fled indoors.

Only after rushing inside did they realize it was a trendy bar.

“Damn, this is no time to let a horizontal stream of bullets hold us in place. They’ve broken through the limiters in their minds to free themselves from the fear of death. They’re sure to charge in at us!!”

“Do not worry, cowardly expert. This beautiful and kind young woman will wear down their numbers for you.”

Wraith sounded oddly confident. Thinking back, Heivia recalled that her aide had fired a 25mm grenade launcher straight up several times as they ran.

Or…?

“Parachute deployment confirmed. We have access to all rounds. None were lost. We can begin at any time.”

“Understood, Frank. Mark the heat readings around the engines and start by blowing away all of the modified vehicles.”

It happened after a 10 second delay.

A deafening explosion erupted outside with enough force to drown out the deep gunshots of the heavy machineguns that reverberated in their stomachs. And it was not just the one. Wraith’s smartphone was linked with the cameras of the grenades slowly swept up by the blasts, so when she set their targets, the explosives released their own parachutes, used their small wings for course corrections, and fell directly on the garbage trucks and mobile cranes with pinpoint accuracy. Their guidance was perfect despite the storm and the speed of the vehicles.

“Exactly the scary stuff I would expect from a crazy girl…” grumbled Heivia as he realized what it meant that the heavy machineguns had been entirely silenced.

Those grenades could be fired at random and individually locked onto targets later on. That was not something he could freely celebrate. He hated to think what would happen if they showed up in the enemy’s hands. This was an urban battlefield with roofs for protection, but an attack from above would be devastating out on an open field.

But Wraith herself did not seem delighted with her incredible results.

“Instead of worrying about their obvious active forces, you should focus on their passive enemy-location infrastructure. In other words, how did they know where we were? The Faith Organization is supposed to be dangerous in a simple way, but have they moved past their outdated analog warfare? Unless we take out their ‘eyes’, they’ll quickly reclaim the initiative.”

The stadium cheering erupted from unexpectedly close by.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“They’re coming. And they’ll have learned to hold back their special pieces to avoid having them crushed by explosives.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” asked Myonri.

“They’ll push in with overwhelming numbers! They’ll use their allies as shields and climb over the corpses!!”

When she heard Heivia’s words, Wraith took out one of the serverless remote grenades she had used at the harbor block and placed it among the jumble of drink bottles behind the counter.

Then they all left through the back exit.

They could not deny the fear of facing more heavy weaponry, so they did their best to choose the alleyways and small roads that garbage trucks, mobile cranes, and other large vehicles could not drive down.

“Keep an eye on the windows above and the manholes below. Urban areas that can’t be leveled are crucibles of death…”

Wraith ignored Heivia’s words and used her smartphone to check the camera footage from the remote grenade she had set up. A crowd resembling a rioting mob more than soldiers flooded inside the shop through the door and the broken window and trampled everything within.

Wraith spotted a distinctive tattoo on the backs of their hands.

“Aztec? …No, it’s Mayan, but is that an even older god?” The blonde girl gently rubbed her slender chin with her empty hand. “We can’t take them lightly just because they’re from an ancient civilization. Their largescale stone architectures and accurate astronomy was supported by a high-level of scientific learning. Their idea of crafting giant structures with an accurate hand could apply to modern Object development.”

“Can you look up how to use the ultimate magic with that thing? If not, it’s a waste of time. What a joke.”

The young man responded by quietly clenching his first and showing off his large bicep bulge, so Wraith kicked her aide in the shin without even looking up from her smartphone. She had learned how to put a stop to it by now. Blonde 12-year-old girls had endless possibility for growth.

“W-Wraith, can you at least look up from that screen?” suggested Myonri. “Handle it so halfheartedly and you’ll probably make him feel bad. This isn’t much of a reward.”

“It’s a good lesson for him. This is what happens when he tries to speak for someone as lovely as me with his dimwitted and sweaty masculinity.”

One of the many soldiers in the shop seemed to have noticed the camera, so Wraith tapped the screen to swiftly detonate the remote grenade. The screen simply displayed the text “Access Lost”, but there had actually been an explosion in the middle of that crowd. Small metal balls only a few millimeters across had been scattered in every direction to take lives as efficiently as possible.

“The drones flying above have detected the movement of a different unit. Simply fleeing will not shake them.”

“How many?”

“First of all, about 200 managed to pass through the bar and are pursuing us from behind.”

“…Hey, do you have so many brain chemicals pumping that you’ve forgotten how to do math?” complained Heivia. “We’re lucky if we still have 50 people. An enemy four times our size is too much.”

“And there are more than 300 approaching up ahead. The enemy is about 10 times our size and who can say how much larger it will grow.”

Regardless of the soldiers’ skill and equipment, the difference in numbers was simply too great. They had already used up the advantage provided by a surprise attack, so at this rate, they would be ganged up on and slaughtered.

While Wraith relayed this information with her smartphone in one hand, she pulled a few disks from her pocket and threw them. They were a little larger than movie disks and, when they fell to the ground, they came apart on their own and transformed into meter-long serpentine robots. It was unclear how closely their structure matched that of a snake, but when the head portion tapped against the ground, was it reading the heat to communicate with the other units?

“The worst case is to be trapped between two forces on this small road. Staying on this annoyingly straight path would be the absolute worst plan. It would be better to move out onto the major road to include a lateral vector to our path. We should bend the battle line so we’re only being attacked from a single direction.”

“U-umm, are those robots explosives too?” asked Myonri.

The robots wriggled like endoscopes as they either wrapped around vertical pipes to climb to the rooftops or slipped underground through the small holes in manholes.

Wraith answered with her eyes still on her smartphone screen.

“No, these are high-speed cameras. The cameras themselves have been made quite small by making them mirrorless, but blurring is a major issue. They can somewhat correct using their gyros, but then there’s no point in making them high speed. The engineers are apparently still having a hard time making flying versions.”

“Cameras…?”

“Yes. In an away game like this, we can’t help but be outnumbered. So to make up for what we lack, I was thinking we could play some soccer. Baseball and basketball would work just as well. As long as we have viewpoints from around 32 directions on the X, Y, and Z axes, we should manage well enough.”

“???”

===Part 8===

“Goddamn them…!!”

Sigma 3, real name Robinson King-Cole, groaned within the rubble of the harbor block. They had tried to be very cautious, but this was the result as soon as that crumbling ship entered C Dock. The zombies had flooded out from the Trojan horse and bared their fangs against the symbol of peace known as the Olympia Dome. It had been quickly transformed into a battlefield reeking of gun smoke and blood.

The large Hispanic man looked up at the crumbling ship that was more than 9 meters tall. The ship itself seemed to be from the Information Alliance, but the flag raised above it was the Legitimacy Kingdom’s.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Who are they!? Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers that captured an Information Alliance ship, Information Alliance soldiers disguising themselves as the Legitimacy Kingdom, or someone else altogether!?”

Many varieties of rifle and shotgun cartridges were lying around. Yet normally there would be a single standard used within a unit.

(There’s so much evidence here, but it feels like that’s actually obscuring the truth. It’s always like this when the Information Alliance’s name pops up!!)

Robinson felt a physiological disgust at a level above reason, but that may have been because he belonged to the Faith Organization that saw value in a single absolute truth. He simply could not understand the people who used post-truth politics and fake news to muddy the truth and make all sorts of noise.

After regrouping with some fellow soldiers who had also arrived on personal watercraft, they ran along the dock, checked the pulses of their collapsed allies, stopped the worst of the bleeding and attached GPS tags to those who were still breathing, and moved on to the next one.

Leaving the harbor block did not wake them from the nightmare.

They smelled smoke, gunpowder, and death.

The ominous odor of the city before them could not be washed away by the blowing rain.

(This is awful…)

It would be easy enough to hate the enemy for this, but it was Robinson’s group that had allowed this to happen. The fact that they had just been following orders did not soothe his conscious. Bringing that ship to C Dock and stationing themselves at Olympia Dome in the first place were both the Faith Organization’s decisions.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Send the plan to me too. I want to join the battle, but what kind of operation are we running!? OD Control!!”

“…Oh, Zeus, god of life and punishment. Your pure shrine maiden beseeches thee. Lend us the power that once guarded Olympus to send lightning upon the villains who would lay waste to your modern temple…”

“Dammit!!”

That female operator usually kept a head as cool as ice, but she had driven her mind to an elevated state with that flat and expressionless prayer. Robison and the others in charge of the actual combat were professional soldier, but the people monitoring communications and making decisions based on a variety of regulations were civilians who were only meant to inspect and maintain the sports facilities. They could not necessarily endure the pressure of knowing their decisions could lead to so many deaths.

(The damage is spreading throughout the entire city. I doubt ''just'' the intruders could cause all this. Did the ground troops cut their limiters and begin a war of attrition?)

Robinson’s group had not rushed to the Olympia Dome in response to the Manhattan issue. There had not been enough time for that.

It was more accurate to say they had happened to be in the right place at the right time while making their near-standard naval resupply stop.

(If we had predicted things that well, we could have handled this better! Curse the Manhattan. It just shows up and then starts scattering disaster everywhere. Who are we even fighting against here!? Are they trying to protect that thing or destroy it!?)

This had all been a stroke of good luck in the first place. It was entirely coincidental that they had acquired the closest base to Manhattan without having to risk their lives for it. And yet they had been told that revealing the purpose and value of Manhattan was a mission that had to succeed even if it cost them their lives. Their lives were being thrown away for the whims of their higher ups who had been blinded by greed. That was Robinson’s blunt assessment.

They were up against a faceless enemy.

That was a threat on the same level as some strange form of the occult.

(And when we were already transporting ''something so dangerous''… What even happened to our original mission, dammit!?)

“What should we do, Sigma 3?” asked the large female soldier next to him while she stared off into the distance. “Should we cut the circuits in our minds too?”

“…No,” spat out Robinson. “If this were the ending god had given us, then so be it, but both sides here are no more than human. I’m not about to die for human greed. We’ll regroup with the main unit. I don’t care about that digital war nonsense. We have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so as long as we keep our cool, we should be able to win this.”

===Part 9===

Even when they knew it was the best course of action, abandoning cover and running out into an open area was not good for their hearts. Do not break any branches, do not step in the mud, do not cast a long shadow, do not press up against doors or walls, do not shine your light on mirrors or windows – there was a lot of “etiquette” to something as simple as walking, but actual war did not always allow you to follow the textbook for all of those little things.

The situation was awful.

“Run, Myonri! No one can complain if they’re shot in the back now!!”

“But Jonathan was-…”

“Just run!!”

Trying to rescue someone in this open space would only get them shot too. And this soldier had been shot on his center line such that it probably shattered his spine, so there was nothing they could do. They could only clench their teeth and shake free of their regret.

They ran across the runway-like six-lane road and entered the subway station building on the opposite side. Only after diving behind the closest wall did Heivia take in a large gulp of air.

“Pant, pant! Goddamn them. Did they at least shoot Wraith!?”

“You will be sad to hear I am alive and kicking.”

“Oh, hell. Well that proves that it’s the good people who die first…”

Near the entrance, there was a vending machine from a major online store that was forcing its way into the market, so Heivia blew away its earthquake-resistant bolts with his rifle and knocked it over as a barricade as he seriously spat out those words.

But now it was time for the rioting Faith Organization soldiers to suffer. If they simply pursued, they would have to cross the same road that had exposed Heivia’s group to such danger.

“If they really have cut their mental limiters, they’ll push their way through even if we fire 5.56mm rounds at a rate of 700 a minute. Modern warfare is all about smart tactics, but there’s nothing we can do if a large army is willing to step on their comrades’ corpses and cross a river of blood. I’m sure you know why the directional landmines that scatter small metal balls in a fan shape were developed.”

“Yes, I am aware,” said Wraith. “Keep an eye on the subway tunnels and emergency exits. The drones are not enough to fully grasp the distribution of these aggressively generic enemy soldiers.”

“Th-this is an artificial island floating in the ocean, isn’t it…?” asked Myonri.

“And? Just like with a ship, the lower the center of gravity the better. In marine construction, child-bearing hips and a large ass are more highly valued than giant tits, so they would have wanted the island to be a little thicker for the added weight.”

Wraith snapped her fingers and the young man next to her provided the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers with a few items the size of baseballs. They were more of the serverless remote grenades.

“Use them more as ‘eyes’ than explosives since a frag grenade can’t pierce that shield of flesh. They can also be used to flood the underground area in case that large army tries to push in from below.”

“That kind of trick isn’t my area of expertise. Hey, someone put together a unit of combat engineers. You help too, Quen-…”

Heivia stopped mid-sentence and clicked his tongue.

He scratched his head in an awkward silence.

“…Never mind. Myonri, you’re skilled with your hands, right? Would you rather stand out front in the path of that hail of bullets, or move to the back and set things up there? Select 10 people you can use and seal off all the entrances. Hurry! This enemy isn’t kind enough to wait until the transformation scene is over!!”

A muffled explosion rang out outside and the shockwave shattered a few of the windows bordering the main road.

Jonathan had been unable to get up as the Faith Organization soldiers had approached to secure their prisoner, so he had mustered his last ounce of strength to pull the pin on a grenade.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Damn, it’s already started!!”

“Prepared or not, we have to respond.”

Heivia hid behind the collapsed vending machine and Wraith hid behind a bookstore cart that carried a stack of unsold magazines taller than she was. Both of them aimed their weapons outside.

The explosion seemed to have pushed their excitement over a line. With the roar of a battle scene in a knight movie, Faith Organization soldiers flooded the large street that panoramically filled their vision.

There were people, people, people, and more people.

The thick wall pushed in with such force that it was easy to forget that each gunshot fired toward it was taking a human life. Dark red blood and flesh flew, the soldiers on the front line collapsed, and countless boots trampled their allies’ bodies before they had even stopped breathing.

This was different again from the nightmarish mission led by Piranirie Martini Smoky. Instead of being threatened into it, these people were charging in of their own free will.

“This is just the worst!!!!!!” said Heivia.

“It really is a vision of hell,” agreed Wraith. “I feel silly reminding you of something so basic, but coordinate your magazine changes so the barrage never stops. If the density of bullets thins out, they’ll push in all at once.”

She hatefully spat out the words, but her movements were accurate as could be.

And while calmly firing on the soldiers running out into the road like a sensor-controlled machine, Wraith said something without looking over at Heivia.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Is that supposed to be foreshadowing an emotional sacrificial charge or something? If not, then shut your mouth, crazy girl, because your words are meaningless to me. Your sentimentality is as ridiculous as blood-type fortunetelling, so don’t think it takes away my right to hold a grudge!!”

Static reached Heivia’s ears.

Then a voice came over the radio.

“They’ve put together a unit aside from the one crossing the road. They’re circling around to reach the station from the west entrance while you’re focused on the main group!”

“Are you kidding me…!?”

“It’s hardly surprising when they have so many people to work with,” said Wraith. “And lowering the metal shutters isn’t going to stop them at this point. Yes, don’t randomly spread out your forces. No matter what kind of clichéd new truths come to light, the station will still be filled with blood if they break through the front.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? They’re coming from behind. Are we supposed to just sit here and keep fighting until they shoot us in the ass!?”

“Were you not listening? I said not to ''randomly'' spread out your forces.”

Wraith emphasized the one word while waving a 5-inch monitor in the hand not holding her gun. It was her beloved smartphone.

“Those snake robots can find filming spots without the map data of a server, so I’ve been observing the battlefield from 32 directions to accurately analyze the enemy’s small idiosyncrasies using the high-speed cameras. That’s 10,000 frames a second. And thanks to their battle of attrition using such great numbers, I’ve gathered an incredible amount of data in a very short time. Charge, retreat, diversion, coordination – the big data is boiling in the magic pot. And it’s about time to take a look at the whole.”

“…Is that really going to make a dramatic difference?”

“This is the Information Alliance style and it works for any kind of group sports. That said, the data is useless without enough people to work with. A single director can’t do everything on her own even with the optimal answer in hand. So will you obey me and live, or defy me and die? The choice is yours, my dear sworn enemy.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue and forced out some words while creating a pile of corpses from the Faith Organization troops outside.

“…You can do as many good deeds as you want now. It won’t change a thing.”

“That’s fine. I never said I didn’t want to die. I just said I don’t want to die here.”

They had a plan.

The black-uniformed girl took the overall command role.

“Frank, fire more of those grenades into the air. Five should do it for now. Send them between the troops in the road and those preparing to enter the road to crush and separate them with the blasts.”

“Understood.”

“Once those in the road can neither advance nor withdraw, mow them down with your assault rifles. It’s the same as keeping water pipes clean: the charge can continue because of the constant ‘flow’, but once it stops, the fear of death will come rushing back. The slightest stop is all we need.”

“Are you serious?” complained Heivia. “I thought psychology was as much a superstition as tarot readings.”

“Since you have yet to evolve beyond an ape, I will respectfully answer you. It is human nature to be distracted by detours when the way ahead is blocked. Their secondary candidate is the western entrance. Once the pressure here has been reduced, send out three groups with shoulder-fired missiles. Their secondary unit is a minority, so if we blow up their front line right away, we can stop their momentum.”

The difference in overall numbers was 50 against 500 or even more.

When outnumbered by more than four to one, they should have been overwhelmed regardless of each individual’s strength.

However.

To put it another way…

“We don’t have to look at the overall numbers. We only need to recalculate the localized human density,” proclaimed Wraith while looking down at the smartphone screen inserted into the H-shaped gamepad. “Sports data analysis thoroughly analyzes the idiosyncrasies of the players. Once you have detailed information on how individuals and teams handle offense, you know where to focus your defense. That allows you to reveal everything about the situation. It’s the same in soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey. This is a simple matter of applying that to war instead.”

Even if the overall difference in Olympia Dome was 50 against 500, that did not necessarily apply to the numbers that clashed at any one time. By judging the timing, using the terrain, and firing bullets and bombs to divide the enemy into groups of ten or fewer, the Legitimacy Kingdom would have the advantage of superior numbers against those individual groups.

Of course, they would never pull that off if they simply fought at random. Shouting that they would overcome the difference in numbers was the same as relying on guts.

This tactic was only possible because they had high-speed cameras thoroughly filming everything from 32 directions, international competition level algorithms analyzing that footage, and soldiers who could follow the enemy arrangement and distribution, move as the information on the screen told them to, and turn that ideal into a reality.

The statistics in the data began to encroach on the real scene before them.

It was stagnation.

This did not just apply to the Faith Organization soldiers’ charge across the road. The excited energy between them rapidly cooled, their momentum faltered, and the fear of death and the confusion was clearly spreading among them once more. Even though that general “atmosphere” should have been invisible.

“Stop firing for 5 seconds.”

“?”

“We’ll give them a moment of relief before throwing them back into deadly danger. It’s just like getting in a hot bath before being thrown right back out into the midwinter night. That’s the most effective means of shaking them. Resume firing.”

Heivia’s short burst of fire caused a previously-unseen change.

One young soldier out in the road came to a stop, turned around, and tried to run back to the alley from which he had come.

“That woke him up,” coldly said Wraith.

She saw the change, but she did not instruct the soldiers to cease firing.

“All that about their mental limiters was a temporary thing. No matter your beliefs or convictions, forgetting the instinctual fear of death is not a natural state for a living creature. So we just have to control that on/off switch. Once this unwanted look at reality has taken away their purity, they cannot rebuild the resolve to trample their allies’ corpses and cross that river of blood.”

“Thanks for the lecture, but what do we do now!?”

“The minority pushes back against the majority. Instead of that young soldier himself, shoot a few nearby soldiers in the head. Seeing familiar faces destroyed and feeling their blood splattering on him will be more effective. Once the fear of death makes him panic and he starts to scream, the rest will come quickly.”

It was like throwing oil on a fire.

Their coordination clearly crumbled. There were cracks running through that army which had been like a solid wall before. Heivia’s group only had to use sporadic fire to widen those rifts. The enemy was shoving each other to avoid being on the front line and some fistfights were even breaking out.

“They’re just a chaotic crowd now,” cruelly said Wraith. “Finish them off.”

“You’re really scaring me.”

They did not even need to shoot all the remaining soldiers. Simply aiming their assault rifles in that direction produced short shrieks as the soldiers ignored their orders and fled.

“Should we go after them? It’d be a pain if they regrouped and regained their cool.”

“It’s quite the opposite. The calmer people are, the more they remember the fear of death. Give them time, and the fear of death will ensnare their mind like a nightmare. In fact, if we try to deal with them individually, we will lose. Have you forgotten how outnumbered we are? Plus, we only have so much ammo. Data analysis is not all powerful and its effects only show themselves in a limited arena.”

Their goal had always been to blow up the broadcast station that supported the Olympia Dome’s largescale broadcast infrastructure (which could be seen as an EM spying facility that indiscriminately gathered signals from the surrounding area). Using up all their ammunition before arriving there would be meaningless.

Wraith made a casual decision like she was staring at a schedule book.

“We were lucky to rout them like this at all. They didn’t see through our trick. It will take some time for them to prepare for combat once more after abandoning victory of their own volition. Let’s achieve our objective and leave the Olympia Dome before that happens.”

After gathering their dead comrades’ dog tags, Heivia’s group left the subway station and resumed the journey to the broadcast station. Since it was a large facility, the giant boxy building was visible from a distance. They were of course cautious in their approach, but the sense of having cleared the largest hurdle enveloped the Legitimacy Kingdom survivors like a cradle.

However…

“What…is this?”

“?”

Heivia gave Wraith a puzzled look when she uttered a low comment toward her smartphone screen. What was that small LCD screen connected to and what was it displaying?

“There’s…there’s no way they overlooked this!! Did Taratua just decide not to tell us!?”

She seemed to be cursing someone.

And at the same moment, a 50m mass passed by in the sky over their heads.

Their eyes could see it, but their brains refused to accept it.

For one thing, its position made no sense.

It was above all the high-rise buildings in the city. A mass of steel mixed with a heat-resistant reactive substance was positioned at an altitude of more than 200 meters. It was floating. It was flying. If the spherical main body was viewed as the earth, then the 3 Y-shaped wings were attached at the equator. Were those coaxial rotors? The two sets of wings rotated in opposite directions, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise, to free the 200,000-ton mass from the bonds of gravity like a helicopter. There was something like an undercarriage, but could that even be used to move it? The equilateral triangle below it was like a helicopter’s skids or an upside-down version of the tripod used to support the bottom of a pot or frying pan on a gas burner. It may have only been meant to let it take off and land.

“An…”

This was no time to just stare in shock.

It had moved into position above Heivia’s group. Which meant…?

“An Object!?”

A moment later, the colossal weapon that had ended the nuclear age began its ''attack''.

===Part 10===

Why had that information been kept from them?

Far away on a relatively-intact cruiser, Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks answered her aide’s question with a smile.

“Because I have no real reason to be their friends☆”

===Part 11===

All sound had vanished.

Heivia had no idea what had happened.

“Bwahh, ahhhhhh!!!??? Abfweah!!”

Something had fallen from directly above and crushed the subway station building like a cardboard box. Then, like drawing a thick line along the ground, the reinforced concrete building and asphalt road were destroyed and a cascade of destruction pressed in on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes.

It was like a child crushing a line of ants below their shoe.

Heivia just barely escaped the threat.

Something cut by horizontally in front of him and familiar faces were transformed into red and black stains.

“Get indoors!!”

The extreme situation had left Heivia in a daze, but Wraith’s shout acted like a slap to the face.

“They’re placing the metal balls used for grenades and mines inside the ridiculously powerful artificial air current used to keep that 200,000-ton mass afloat and firing them down from that height. If you don’t want to be torn apart by that deadly waterfall, then run!!”

Heivia still could not react, so Myonri grabbed his limp hand.

“Let’s go! We can’t just die here!!”

“…”

Something else happened before he could say anything.

A different shockwave hit Heivia and the others from above. Their legs could not support them and they were sent rolling across the asphalt. They looked up from the ground just in time to see all of the high-rise buildings’ windows shatter and a downpour of glittering glass enter the sky.

“Dammit!!”

This time, Heivia picked up Myonri and crawled below a nearby truck. An ear-splitting cacophony followed. The glass downpour was crashing into the ground.

“What happened to Wraith? Did she actually die this time?”

“She’s waving from behind cover over there. More importantly, what was that just now?”

If the Object was simply launching a cruel attack on the ground, it only had to use that same combination of wind and metal balls. The glass was merely a side effect of something. This only made sense if it had done something else.

A low rumbling and shaking finally reached them.

They were confused at first, but it slowly dawned on them.

“It was firing something…no, it was a shockwave. That was all it took to shatter all the glass here…”

“But there wasn’t anything like a main cannon,” said Myonri.

“Damn, we have no idea how it works without Quenser here. And we can’t come up with a weird name for it without our busty commander. Yeah, that settles it. I’m definitely groping those tits later on since she ran off and left us!!”

“I get that your lust won out over your friendship there, but could you at least put me down before saying things like that?”

Since the enemy could crush a tall, reinforced-concrete building like it was a cardboard box, staying in one spot would be a bad idea, so Heivia and Myonri crawled out from below the truck.

“Hey,” said Wraith when they regrouped. “How were you planning to escape?”

“What?”

[[Image:HO_v15_105.png|thumb]]

“That came from the harbor block. In a reliable but boring move, I imagine that thing fired its main cannon on the Frigate 042 in C Dock. Those of us here in Olympia Dome will be next. If you had personal watercraft or submersibles loaded on that ship, we need to find a new method.”

“I-its main cannon!? But there was no sign of that…”

“It used the coaxial rotors that support it. It probably has giant, heavy-metal shells loaded inside it like a handgun magazine. Those things have a rotation speed high enough to support 200,000 tons. It only has to open the end of the magazine and release the shell within. Just imagine the destructive power of using centrifugal force to throw a shell like a meteor.”

A storm of small metal balls launched downward by the wind and giant heavy-metal shells launched into the distance using centrifugal force. That left the Faith Organization’s flying Object with no bind spots. There was nowhere they could hide that it could not fire on them.

“Are you kidding? This really is a nightmare…”

“Is it? This seems better than if they had attached a laser cannon to the end of the main rotor and sliced us to pieces with that rotating blade. Would you prefer to be chased by an infinitely-expanding circular saw?”

Wraith nonchalantly upgraded the nightmare while protected by the aide young man. The history giving form to her imagination had to be insane.

“Centrifugal force, shell throwing…no, it might be better to think of it like the hammer throw. Yes, for now, let’s use the enemy codename of Hammer Throw 001.”

“We have to call it that too? We just keep getting more and more influenced by the shitty Information Alliance method.”

“Yes, it is hard to say we are a perfect world power. The one who holds the most information is the winner, but so many idiots misunderstand that concept to the point that they think the sign of the privileged class is cutting off all information to the point that you can buy a private beach in Miami and swim in the nude. All the bored young wives with ringlet-curls are turning into nudists who claim to aspire to a natural lifestyle.”

“Are you just clueless, or are you trying to win me over!?”

“Please, can someone take this seriously!? Our lives are on the line here!!”

Myonri pleaded with them, but she had not taken into account the possibility that the idiots were trying to avoid facing the intense fear before them.

And the Hammer Throw 001 no longer had a distant target to prioritize.

It would be their turn soon.

Myonri’s shout had dragged Heivia back to reality, so he felt sweat on his brow.

“…What do we do?”

What would that boy who was not here have done at a time like this?

What would Quenser Barbotage have done?

“What the hell are we supposed to do!?”

A moment later…

It fell.

The flying Object that had been looking down on them dropped far too easily.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Ah?”

Heivia’s thoughts could not keep up with the crazy sight before him.

But it was no illusion.

After a brief delay, an incredible storm of destruction was thrown out in all directions. More than just the glass, entire groups of buildings were knocked over this time. And it was more than just a shockwave. The connections between the dice-like floating objects made of aluminum and stainless steel were smashed and shaken.

“Ohhhhhwah!?”

Shouting was not going to accomplish anything.

The fact that the ground could softly “sink” into the ocean, allowing some of the force to escape, was the only reason they did not end up with anything like an ice age brought on by an asteroid strike.

“The Hammer Throw 001…fell???”

The rising curtain of dust was swept away by the storm. Myonri reported on what she saw in a daze.

“It was…a crane. …Did the crane on a building rooftop swing around and…catch on the main rotor?”

“It didn’t swing the arm around,” corrected Wraith while seawater swelled up from below.

An old guerilla tactic against helicopters and tiltrotors was to throw a wire or net over them from the top of a building. But…

“The crane rotated vertically. Some kind of explosive blasted it at the base to tangle the thick wire in the rotor. It didn’t matter that the spherical main body can withstand a nuke.”

An explosive.

A flesh-and-blood soldier had attacked one of the Objects which were synonymous with war.

The 50-meter and 20,000-ton spherical main body had lost its balance and fallen at one corner of the city. It seemed to be near the broadcast station. The exact level of damage was unclear while on the ground like this.

“Could it be…?”

However.

That had to be Heivia’s greatest hope.

So the delinquent soldier could not help but say it aloud.

“Quen-…”

“No.”

A voice bluntly cut him off.

It came from Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

She could not look him in the eye as she forced out the words.

“I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t possible.”

===Part 12===

Sigma 3, Robinson King-Cole, was just as stunned as the incredible shaking reached him.

“What happened…?”

He doubted the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, or a third group disguised as them could have done this.

Nevertheless, the Second Generation Ix Chel being resupplied at the Olympia Dome had indeed been brought down. It had happened so suddenly that he felt like he was analyzing movement in a video game one frame at a time.

“OD Control! What the hell happened!?”

He already half-suspected that he would receive no response.

At the same time, a hopeless chill ran down his spine. What possibilities could he think of? When he laid out the cards, he could not rid himself of this unease. After all, their mission had been to transport something dangerous.

And that “something” had not been the flying Object called Ix Chel. As extraordinary as it was, that colossal weapon had already belonged to Robinson’s maintenance battalion, so it would not be counted as an external “package”.

But in a way, Ix Chel was nothing compared to the true “package”.

Had it really taken advantage of this confusion…?

“Nee hee hee hee.”

He heard a voice.

A lovely but wicked girl’s voice sounded from directly behind Sigma 3. And the next thing he knew, all other voices had vanished. And he heard no noises at all from the comrades he had been fighting alongside for so long.

“Did you not even notice? You didn’t, did you? Well, that doesn’t really matter. Thanks for your work, though. Oh, this is my destination. And it’s also the end of the line for you. You’ve been waging war day in and day out for so long you have to be familiar with the concept of ‘acceptable losses’, right? If you were tasked with looking after me without being informed…well, just remember that concept.”

He did not even have time to turn around.

But the scene he did not want to see was reflected in the show window in front of him.

It was a red and black hell.

And one violent and brutal visual overpowered even the deaths of his allies.

A young girl with long, long blonde twintails wore an Object Elite’s blade, bullet, explosion, and environment resistant special suit which revealed even the slightest contour of her slender body.

She was not the grim reaper that brought death and demise according to predetermined rules, like one’s natural lifespan.

She was an incarnation of destruction on a much higher dimension who destroyed the world on a whim.

…He should have noticed.

Whether they were the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance, the intruders alone could not have caused so much damage. He had assumed the Faith Organization soldiers’ rampage was to blame, but that was not it. It was neither the enemy nor his allies. A third party had used the confusion to remove heads and pierce hearts.

“I followed ''his'' example and learned how to use bombs to destroy Objects, but…hmm, what does this mean? I don’t see any sign of him… Well, I just need to search a little longer.”

This was not war.

It was crime, yet it had done greater harm than an official war.

This was the dangerous thing that Robinson King-Cole’s maintenance battalion had been transporting.

“Don’t worry about the Manhattan and all that annoying stuff. I, Skuld Silent-Third, will take care of it, so you all can rest in peace. By byyye☆”

===Between the Lines 1===

The continuous IV drip has been ended.

Saint Skuld Silent-Third is active once more.

The Saint has a glowing record as the primary Pilot Elite of the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Norn, but she is also known by the Faith Organization to be the greatest war criminal. She generally chooses her victims carefully within the bases which are seen as small cities, but that is not always the case.

*Former Oceanian Dictatorship: Annihilation of a pro-government village.

*Cape of Good Hope District: Burning of a mercenary camp.

*Alaska District: The mysterious deaths of a foreign press group.

*Malacca District: The sinking of a cargo ship.

*And the infamous Madagascar Report. Please reference that report so it need not be repeated here.

Her primary killing method is strangulation using her own hands, but she is extremely fickle and changes a lot from moment to moment. In the Madagascar District, there was evidence she used old-fashioned torture equipment. These are the crimes of an individual, but if they are slow to be discovered or dealt with, she has the skill to destroy a mid-level guerilla base and construct a mountain of corpses on her own. She intentionally includes shifts and swings of analog emotion in her digital mission operations, so her actions are incredibly hard to simulate and existing troop management rules do not apply. Once she has been released into the wild, do not focus too much on any fixed idea and be extremely careful in how she is handled.

It is dangerous to assume you are safe just because you are the one in with a gun.

What she says and her carefree changes of expression cannot be relied on. The Saint is an extremely intelligent war criminal, so she can use various psychological tests and counseling methods to her advantage to win one’s trust.

Be extremely cautious of the unique “charisma of death” found in many serial killers. She generally prefers acting alone, but she has something that destroys the morals of those around her. If you begin to think that you alone can communicate with her, you are in an especially dangerous situation. Make sure you have regular meetings with your supervising officer to receive an objective, third-party view of your mental state.

The Saint is a genuine serial killer, so she shows some fixations that normal people find hard to understand.

Currently, she appears obsessed with a specific individual named Quenser Barbotage. For information on him, view the records from the Madagascar District, specifically concerning the destruction of the Norn.

Most likely, it is simply not possible to fully control Saint Skuld Silent-Third. If you are giving her freedom as part of your operation, you must build in a high level of acceptable losses for enemy, ally, and civilian alike. Also, it is more effective to lure her with bait than to give her orders. Gathering information on the aforementioned Quenser Barbotage and using that name to distract her may be one possible method.

Offered to Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker.

May a peaceful holy age arrive to this sinful and impure world.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume8 Chapter4

2018-03-11T19:09:42Z

LazyHunter:

==Stage 04: Crushing the Silver War from the Heavens==
''“Then I’ll do it myself.”

''“I don’t care if it violates my rules or causes my soul to rot away. I will **** you!!!!!!”

'''(Stage 04 Open 08/04 06:00 “UTC+03 Flanguild time”)

'''Crushing the Silver War from the Heavens

===Part 1===

Even in August, the early morning was cold enough to see one’s breath.

Since the country’s primary agricultural products were rare alpine plants rather than wheat or beef, you can probably imagine just how biting a cold it was.

The small Eastern European country was surrounded by steep mountains.

It was known as Kingdom F.

The orange of dawn collided with and reflected off the thick layer of fog washing over the surface, creating some uniquely picturesque scenery. The breathtaking view looked like fine gold dust had been laid out across every inch of the earth as far as the eye could see.

There was no real reason it had to be this country.

The vein had just so happened to be nearby. And it would have been a pain if the country had later decided to resist, so they had to be crushed in advance. Either way, the countries and regions the war reached were treated as a part of the villainous East Europe Axis. As long as they followed the rules of war based on international treaties, the US Army would not be criticized for their attack.

''The actual foreign policy that used the help of Toy Dream was not actually going that well, but the boots on the ground had not been informed of that and simply played their role.

An electronic information control plane with antenna rods all over its fuselage was taking a pleasure flight just outside the national border. It was a mobile base for a war of the internet age. The fact that the flying command room was right there on the front line felt somewhat brazen.

The aircraft was the size of a large passenger plane and it contained countless computers and the technicians to operate them, but it also had a fancy visitor’s room where the high-ranking officers were gathered.

They had a map spread out on a table and were moving small pieces across it while holding a secret conversation.

“Phase 1 is progressing well. The East Europe Axis’s communication and information network have been accurately severed along with the power lines. Both wired and wireless communications are down. This really is a small country. They do seem to have some tanks given modern modifications, but they have shown no real resistance to our aerial forces.”

“To the west is Varsfork Fortress. To the north is Ilijinika Tunnel Shelter. Once we have completed our groundwork in Phase 2, we will send a division of troops to each and pry open the front gate of the East Europe Axis’s mountain fortress. At the same time, we plan to send some special commandos in through the relatively gentle mountain ridge to the east.”

“…Tch. Curse those marines. Are they trying to steal the credit even when we’re fighting deep in the mountains?”

“This should be over in a day or two. Please be cautious so none of the small neighboring countries try to attack us. If those nearby countries confuse our humanitarianism for weakness and refuse to allow us through their airspace, the disruption of our air supply line could delay the timetable. Of course, this is more of a political issue than a military one.”

“Make sure even the lowest grunt is told to behave like a gentleman. This is not just an issue of morals. I am discussing textbook sociology here. The intensity of the postwar terrorism hinges on our actions here. Do not force our noble American way onto them. Make allowances for the local national character and do it by the book. I don’t want to make an enemy of the viewers in their living rooms and have Congress glaring at me.”

They were fighting under the assumption they would win.

Rather than thinking about how many of the enemy they could kill, they thought about how many allies they could keep alive.

The real-time battle status reports were only confirming what they already knew. To them, the mere act of receiving an irregular report was humiliating. This was not a clash between their plans and the enemy’s plans. They had determined the entire schedule themselves. This was a superpower’s war.

“Varsfork shouldn’t be a problem, but Ilijinika Tunnel Shelter is a relic of the Cold War which was thought to be the final war between the US and Russia, right?”

“If everything is functioning properly, the civilians will be evacuated there. Although it won’t be properly airtight since the internal filters and rubber seals will have deteriorated.”

“No one is talking about using B or C here. We don’t want to pay war reparations after they use humanitarian treaties as a shield. Are we prepared to break through with standard firepower?”

“How about we use an old relic too? I will prepare the 500mm heavy artillery.”

“The Grad Killer, huh? It might be a fossil, but use it properly. It doesn’t matter if the enemy fights back. We can’t afford a delay if it jams.”

Even here, they were simply obtaining vocal commitments from each other.

The people viewing the strategic actions from above would never be ignorant of the firepower they had procured the budget for after negotiating with the pacifists while rubbing their hands and grinning. In the end, they were really only tossing around the ball of “responsibility” like a hot potato. They were only negotiating over who would have to take the blame if their one and only fear came true: human error on the part of one of their own soldiers.

“It is extremely low scale, but Kingdom F does seem to have an unidentified fighting force…”

“Hmph. What can some musty old knights do? Can they bring down a stealth bomber while drawing their bowstrings on horseback?”

Those normal soldiers were unfamiliar with the Summoning Ceremony and could not perceive anyone involved in it, so they were lucky to even know of a vague organization name. They saw no reason for concern there.

And that was why they remained ignorant until the threat took visible form before their eyes.

A moment later, a massive form shot past right next to the electronic information control plane.

It was a giant space station transformed into a blazing fireball by massive friction.

After flying so elegantly through the sky, the operation command room was shaken like a leaf in the wind. The ones who flipped over and hit their head on the corner of the desk could count themselves lucky. Some of the officers were slammed into the ceiling like they were caught in some turbulence.

Finally, the aircraft regained control.

They had all been thrown to the floor and soaked in the black coffee and single malt whisky they had been drinking. One of the high-ranking officers, who had never before tasted the floor, forced out a trembling voice while clinging to the table which was bolted to the floor.

“Wh-what…what happened…?”

And his well-trained subordinate gave an appropriate response even in this chaotic situation.

He saluted and spoke.

“It would appear that the war has begun, sir.”

===Part 2===

The Missing Princess was still back in Japan.

Due to the time difference, lunchtime was close to finishing there.

“Phew.”

Sinceria Highland, Queen of Kingdom F, used a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from her brow while her oddly long ears twitched.

There was only one reason why a vessel like her would have returned from her Material form.

“…Well, that should about do it.”

The Chain had ended.

After defeating more and more and more enemy summoners, she found several hours had passed. That was an extraordinarily long battle since the Artificial Sacred Ground could only last 10 minutes at the most, but all Sinceria did was use that handkerchief. Her cool-colored dress still looked like snow or ice, glass or crystal.

Her stamina as a vessel was abnormal.

The battle had begun on the side deck, but it had gradually drifted, leaving her on the casino floor now. The Illegal summoners and vessels were strewn about in the defeated state, some passed out on a broken roulette table and some convulsing with their head crashed into a slot machine. Stuffing a vessel head-first into the air conditioning vent designed to look like a fireplace may have been a mistake. The casino area was not being properly cooled.

The glasses knight named Rachel Wormwood tapped her shoulder with her Blood-Sign which had the silver rod and J-shaped end of a battle hook.

“These were no more than foreign threats and insults to our kingdom who were so obsessed with gathering the Awards before their eyes that they lost sight of their true purpose as a summoner and even failed to collect the very Awards they sought. They never stood a chance against us.”

“Rachel.”

“Yes?”

Sinceria clasped her hands in front of her large chest and gently smiled.

The unbelievably beautiful head of state in a cool blue dress cut to the heart of the issue.

“Was this unofficial investigation merely an excuse to distance me from the war?”

“…”

Rachel fell silent for a moment and then shook her head.

She seemed to resign herself to something as she opened her mouth once more.

“The foundation of Kingdom F will be established where our queen is located. As long as you are safe, we can rebuild the kingdom as many times as it takes. It was also fortunate that the nobody took the princess away.”

“That is a shocking thing to hear as Kingdom F’s last line of defense…”

“Real war is not fought solely through the Summoning Ceremony. In fact, a large army firing common bullets is more frightening. When you get down to it, war is supported by the three pillars of population, technology, and resources. Was that never explained to you during your close relationship with that nobody?”

Once she got that far, Rachel faced the head of state once more.

She kneeled before Sinceria and bowed her head.

She got down on one knee and kept her tall and athletically-fit body as low as she could.

But she did not hesitate to speak.

“I will offer up my treacherous head once Kingdom F has been rebuilt. There is no need for the likes of me in the coming age. Please expunge my name from the court records and place my head in the guillotine, my queen. There is only a common criminal before you. The knight named Rachel Wormwood never existed.”

“''Don’t be ridiculous''…”

Sinceria’s tone slowly changed.

This was likely a voice she could never use in front of her daughter.

“I’m sure this was a group decision by all of the knights. No, there was probably a petition from the people before that. So why must you pass it off as your independent decision and take the full blame yourself?”

Rachel’s shoulder’s jumped.

She fidgeted with her head still lowered.

“No, that is…not what happened. This was a foolish act planned only by the traitor before you…!!”

“You are a terrible liar and that is one of your virtues. Finding no words to speak is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Sinceria than added a “however”.

“What is good and what is evil? Who should be punished and who should be forgiven? As the sovereign ruler of the kingdom, we hold the right to pardon criminals. Lady Rachel Wormwood. It is true we have given you some authority as a knight, but I have a question for you here. ''When did you gain the right to disrespect the entire divine right of kings''?”

“…”

Rachel clenched her teeth.

But she did not raise her head.

She clenched her teeth, clenched her teeth, clenched her teeth, and spoke in a vanishingly quiet voice.

“But if you were to graciously pardon me, it would mean I survived by sharing the special seat reserved for you. If I do not offer up my head, I will be setting a poor example for the others who allowed you to escape at great risk to their own li-…”

“Enough.”

She was rejected.

A regional knight’s pride could not bend the orders of a kingdom’s queen.

“You…no, the knights as a whole only prioritized my life because you heard the people’s pleas. If you still wish to be punished for your crime, then live on in disgrace, Lady Rachel Wormwood. Make up for not protecting the people, for abandoning the people, and for giving up on the people by ensuring this ends very differently from the result you imagine is coming. That is the punishment I will give to my trusted partner. Learn from your mistake and aim to be an even stronger strongest. We will use all of our authority as Kingdom F Queen Sinceria Highland to prevent you from shirking responsibility and accepting an easy death like a coward. Take this to heart, ignorant and proud knight. We will never listen to the likes of you and let you order us around.”

Silence followed.

What was burning in the trembling knight’s soul: the intense humiliation of losing her place to die, or appreciation for being saved from execution?

Rachel would snap at Shiroyama Kyousuke more than necessary whenever they met and she showed an intense revulsion to Sinceria’s idea that they were both summoners who protected the same royal family, but that may have been a sign of her jealousy. Kyousuke had looked far too bright as he fought head-on with nothing hidden and had that work in favor of Kingdom F’s royal family.

But that was none of Sinceria’s concern. She would look right past the #2 or #3 as she always sought the #1 summoner. If Rachel lived up to her queen’s expectations through ceaseless effort, Sinceria would have to do her very best to protect her subordinate.

There was no right answer in war, but you still had to make a decision.

If Sinceria had chosen to remain in Kingdom F and fight the foreign threat to the end, Rachel would have gone down in history as a fool who had stood by Sinceria’s side yet failed to get the head of state out of the country before they were surrounded. That knight had been stuck between a rock and a hard place from the beginning. And in the very, very end, she had chosen to listen to the will of the people, preserve the honor of the knights, save Sinceria’s life, and offer up her head and her head alone.

Sinceria smiled at that knight who had been raised to be honest to a fault and had thus ''become perfect''.

If she were to rid herself of someone like this out of fear of damaging her own reputation, then Kingdom F would truly be done for. The monarchy would have to be dismantled.

“Worry not, Rachel. This will not end the way you fear it will. There was never any need to feel that regret burning within you. So relax and raise your head.”

“?”

“Have you forgotten? We are not the only ones working to resolve this.”

Sinceria had declared this issue over when she told Rachel to live on in disgrace.

So now it was time to encourage her #1 subordinate who was still trembling like a fawn.

“After all, my adorable daughter and the hero who saved our kingdom have teamed up. With Olivia and Kyousuke working together, how can this have anything but a happy ending?”

She raised her index finger.

And she made a definite statement with a gentle smile on her lips.

“Just you watch, Rachel. Kyousuke will undoubtedly save the entirety of Kingdom F, including you.”

===Part 3===

Let us step back to shortly before the crash landing.

Kyousuke had no further need for War Criminal who was also aboard the Toy Dream OP-01 space station. After stuffing him and his vessel in an emergency pod, he produced a sound much like a dry branch snapping.

“???”

Olivia tilted her head outside the pod.

“Onii-chan, what did you just do?”

“Nothing. It’s fine.”

Kyousuke answered the small girl while making sure she could not see inside as he closed the escape pod door to contain a liquid floating like red rubies in the zero-g space.

''Now that he had settled an old conflict,'' they finally had to face the war.

Yes, the Silver Resource War was marching onward even without the mastermind behind it. The snowball had already started rolling down the hill.

Their objective had changed.

They had to stop the war itself.

Kyousuke pulled an Incense Grenade the size of a hair spray can from the rolled-up hood on the back of his hoodie.

Double blonde braided Olivia tilted her head.

“Huh? The one you keep there instead of your pocket is your final spare, isn’t it? So are you out after this?”

“To be honest, far too much has happened today.”

Even though he had calculated out the proper reentry angle, the giant space station was dyed orange as it was scorched by the atmosphere. Parts were peeled up and blown away from the extremities as the surface temperature reached around 3000 degrees at the highest. That was an incredible temperature since the melting point of iron was around 1600 degrees.

Locating the enemy was not that difficult.

An army division included around 10,000 people. With more than one division-class forces on the scene, their locations were immediately obvious when viewed from above. Approaching them on the flat surface would have been difficult, but they would never expect the vanguard to fall right on top of their heads.

A dull metallic sound came from Kyousuke’s hand.

It was a makeshift Incense Grenade launcher made by attaching a grip and other parts to a sliced-off piece of copper pipe with liquid fuel injected inside. It was blatantly handmade, but it provided enough force and it was using rocket fuel. The real hurdle had been preventing the explosive force from rupturing the pipe from within.

Kyousuke sat with his back pressed to the wall, stuffed the one remaining metal can inside the front of the barrel like he was placing a lid on it, and filled the chamber with the amount of liquid fuel he had measured out with a tube.

“Olivia, come here.”

“Right.”

Olivia approached, so he casually held her close just as there was a change to their apparent weight. They were tugged forward, their speed only continued to accelerate, and it never seemed to stop. Unlike when an apple fell to the ground, objects falling from orbit did not fall along a straight vertical line. It was better to think of them as spiraling as they were swallowed up by the earth’s gravity, so the angle of their fall would gradually shift from horizontal to vertical. So as Kyousuke and Olivia rode that intense roller coaster, the direction and magnitude of their ''apparent gravity'' was changing from one moment to the next.

They had already reached approximately 4 Gs, which was at the level of an actual roller coaster.

By the end, it surpassed 9.5 Gs, so the floor and the concept of up and down became meaningless. That was why Kyousuke had pressed his back against the wall and held small Olivia in place. He would have liked to have seatbelts or lap bars, but they were not enjoying a safe attraction here. They were approaching the battlefield on a space station that would fall apart on its own. Strapping themselves in for the duration would only mean committing suicide with the station.

“Nbh, ngweh.”

“You don’t have to hold back, Olivia. The contents of your stomach are being tugged on too, so nothing will come out no matter how much you gag.”

“Onii-…urp…I need to lecture you…later…!!”

<…Ni…sama…>

Some static crackled in the back of their minds.

The scorching atmosphere meant nothing. She could hitch a ride even at reentry speed.

Olivia went entirely pale.

“Th-th-that isn’t normal…”

“Hm, looks like I was right that she goes berserk in response to me being in danger. The enemy we seek is at Toy Dream OP-01’s destination.”

After they passed the obvious thermosphere, the sound of a giant file scraping at the outer walls only seemed to grow louder. The atmospheric pressure was growing and the density of impurities like air and dust was increasing. The slight sense of deceleration as something pushed up at them may have been the air friction applying the brakes.

The space station’s angle was changing as it drew a gentle curve in its fall.

The obstacle that Kyousuke and Olivia believed to be a wall had to be facing upwards like a ceiling when viewed from the surface.

“On your mark.”

Kyousuke spoke below his breath while holding Olivia’s small body.

He was as accurate as the hands of the clock attached to an accurate time bomb.

“10, 9, 8, 7, 6…”

The launcher made from a thick sliced copper pipe was aimed straight ahead.

In terms of earth’s gravity, it was aimed straight down toward the surface.

“…5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”

Something large passed right by the space station. No, it was Kyousuke and Olivia who passed right by the transport plane or bomber.

That caused them to shake side to side more than before, but Kyousuke did not bat an eye.

He spoke with his finger on the trigger.

“Zero. Let the battle begin.”

A cross-shaped crack ran through the “wall” in front of them.

Just as the orange-burnt anti-radiation aerospace material was stripped away by the wind pressure, Kyousuke aimed at the center of it all and fired his projectile.

It all happened in an instant. It was like quickly passing your palm horizontally through a candle’s flame. He acted too quickly for the heat to reach them. It looked like a reckless action at first, but it was actually the safest option.

The space station resembled a giant fireball and it did not actually crash into the surface.

The giant structure broke apart in midair and scattered, as if the entire thing was peeled apart from a single point. Thanks to that, the earth was spared an ice age.

After stripping away their grand raiment, Kyousuke and Olivia were pulled down by a different force.

The Incense Grenade had detonated after being fired toward the ground ahead of the station.

(There’s a division of 10,000 to the north and one to the west. The supply line, intel management, logistical support, and reserve forces probably amount to another 5000.)

Kyousuke and Olivia swiftly flew to the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground.

This direct descent should have been impossible for a human being with no space suit or parachute.

The golden land created by the dawn’s light and the mist crawling across the surface was blown away in an instant. The bared battlefield had finally shown itself.

(This is the frontline base for attacking the Ilijinika Tunnel Shelter to the north. Good, it’s all going according to plan. This is a 3.2 margin of error in landing coordinates, but that’s within acceptable bounds.)

Overall, it was about 5km in each direction.

The vast plain’s stability could not even be broken by the irregular flow of the rivers produced by the snow thawing on the tall mountains, but two field runways for giant transport planes intersected at a right angle and a 2km vehicle maintenance base was set up at the inner angle. A control tower and hangars for working on the transport planes themselves and unloading cargo were constructed on the outer edge of the runways.

Kyousuke and Olivia had descended to the vehicle maintenance base on the inner angle.

Kyousuke first placed his feet on a thin fragment travelling at a similar speed to establish the Artificial Sacred Ground around him. Then he fired a White Thorn to surround himself with a protective circle before landing on the ground. The station’s fragment shattered and a new Artificial Sacred Ground appeared on the surface. Olivia’s small feminine body had transformed into a thick slime.

There were four observation towers, a barracks, a communication command center, and a roofed maintenance bay larger than a school gym. Alice (with) Rabbit ignored all of them and instead focused on the vehicle management space filled with countless tanks, armored trucks, mobile rocket launchers, and more.

They were all deadly industrial products waiting impatiently for the cruise missiles and bombers to finish the preparations.

It was not flesh-and-blood humans who were operating those steel weapons. The soldiers wore Quad Motors Repliglass Snapping Turtles and the short and round armor completely eliminated any hint of a human silhouette.

Those military facility suppression devices could shrug off a point-blank barrage from a 30mm machinegun and, in addition to using firearms, used the two special machine arms on the shoulders to tear off a tank’s hatch or a shelter’s door – and the occasional leaked video of those being used against flesh-and-blood enemy soldiers or terrorists raised humanitarian concerns. Those demonic weapons perfectly fused the nimbleness of infantry with the toughness of tanks.

After the space station broke apart in midair, a single glass shard from the solar panels or a single screw had become a deadly weapon. Those would not be lethal to the American soldiers covered in thick Repliglass, but it would have normally required heading below a roof to protect themselves.

However, no one did that.

And not because they trusted too much in the Snapping Turtles the military had issued them.

They could not take their eyes off of the grim reaper descending upon them without warning.

They did not know what ''it'' was, but they knew something bad would happen if they took their eyes off of ''it''. The modern battlefield was like a video game in how it was ruled by the internet and mass-produced machines, but that baseless jinx eerily permeated and spread among them all.

And.

Kyousuke continued to calmly observe the industrial products lined up around him.

''He could see why they were known as the world’s most powerful army.

''And that meant he need not worry about killing them even if he used a Material against them.

(Okay.)

He was surrounded by the afterimages of the White Thorns that continued to ricochet wildly around him. The red light of the Petals was mixed in among them.

Meanwhile, his eyes had already picked out the most important parts of the scene around him.

(If they want to pry open the gate to Ilijinika and Kingdom F as a whole, generally scorching the mountainside with rockets and missiles would be meaningless. Bunker busters dropped from bombers would be equally useless. Then that roofed maintenance bay must contain a landmark weapon specially made for breaking into something like that. That would be the top priority.)

His enemy was the world’s most powerful army and more than 25 thousand had been sent in for the first wave of the Silver Resource War.

And Shiroyama Kyousuke reigned at the center of the great fortress containing half that force.

“Now, then.”

With the protective circle and Material, it did not matter how many guns and missiles were aimed at them.

Kyousuke gave a fierce smile while holding the best position for acquiring as many Petals as he wanted when he wanted.

“You’ve done nothing wrong, but it’s time you took a nap.”

===Part 4===

Now.

What does it mean to win a war?

Different people would think of different situations and phases: destroying the radar facilities and securing air superiority, cutting off the supply line and isolating the enemy troops, destroying the computers to prevent the enemy from approving their operations, etc. But Kyousuke decided none of those would work here. He wanted something more immediate. Given the difference in strength between the two sides, America would have put together a timetable where they completed their invasion of Kingdom F in just a day or two. Simply tripping them up a bit would only end with them forcing their way through the defensive line. Just like a freight train, a large nation could not be stopped by the average brakes once it had gotten moving. Sparks would fly from the wheels, but it would still plow through anything on the rails.

So…

“Let’s go, Olivia.”

<Okay, Onii-chan!!>

Olivia Highland had already given her body over to an abnormal being. She was a red translucent slime, one of the Original Series that was a necessary starting point no matter how the Material was built up. It had a Cost of 1 and belonged to the low Sound Range. It was the bottommost foundation and the weakest of the weak, but it still held great meaning.

First of all, Materials existed beyond human understanding and normal military might was useless against them.

This army may have been the strongest in the world, but that meant nothing to a resident of another world.

“That thing is hostile! I repeat, that thing is hostile!! We can fire!!”

“Don’t be stupid! If we fire into the center, we’ll just hit each other!! Arnold, ignore as much of what that inexperienced Captain says as we can without actually disobeying orders. We need to form our ranks first!!”

“Yes, sir. This is on you now. I’ll draw back the tanks since they’re too powerful and use the infantry to buy some time. After they’ve been fanned out, we can eliminate this thing with the combat vehicles. Get started.”

Tanks and armored trucks were lined up as neatly as the parking lot of a mall on the weekend, but those armored vehicles were trying to move gradually away from Kyousuke and Olivia. Infantry wearing thick Repliglass appeared as they weaved their way through the gaps in that “moving wall” which would cause a disastrous scene if someone’s clothing got caught on one. They had likely sent in the Snapping Turtles because they could survive a direct hit from an autocannon or a grenade launcher. Instead of securing cover, they started by aiming their assault rifles at Kyousuke and the Original Red (b).

They provided no warning.

In fact, the red slime started it by tackling one Snapping Turtle that failed to escape and flipping over an armored truck by pushing up on it from below.

The endless ear-splitting popping noises were a lot like having all the firecrackers in Chinatown go off at once.

But those were no more than the back dancers that complemented the star dancing below the spotlight. The otherworldly Material and Kyousuke in his protective circle could not be harmed by normal bullets.

<Um, where should I aim in general?>

“Focus on the maintenance bay to the northeast. Destroy the landmark weapon being constructed inside.”

He gave her some quick instructions, but they did not head directly there.

A large force was already approaching them.

“Olivia, sweep away the 30 directly in front of us.”

<Right.>

“After that, take out the bazooka unit at four o’clock. Those are powerful enough for friendly fire to kill the Repliglass soldiers, so deal with them quickly.”

<You sure are nice, Onii-chan.>

They must have decided this was not going to end as things were because some Repliglass soldiers wielding heavy machine arms rushed directly in while receiving covering fire, but they could not get any closer to Kyousuke thanks to the protective circle. As the arms strained with effort, the Original Red controlled by Olivia crashed into the thick Repliglass’s sides and then followed Kyousuke’s instructions by charging into the group starting to use shoulder-fired anti-tank weaponry.

They could ignore the 10-minute restriction in this case.

After all, 10,000 people were crammed into a small space here. By opening the Artificial Sacred Ground based on one person, defeating them, and opening another one based on someone else during the 90 seconds of the Chain state, they could fight almost indefinitely. The strength of the built-up Material was carried over, so Kyousuke and Olivia’s advantage only grew.

Olivia’s form changed again and again.

A giant rotting dog crushed a group of four Repliglass soldiers along with their heavy machinegun fixed to the ground with a tripod.

A man-eating plant with countless blades instead of petals launched steel seeds with the force of bullets to neutralize the snipers lying atop the barracks roof.

A beautiful Western doll with round and fat maggots wriggling in the cracks covering its body slowly shifted its aim toward a soldier attempting to lend a shoulder to a Repliglass soldier who could not move due to a malfunction.

“…I guess not every member of the world’s most powerful army can be a veteran hero.”

<What do you mean?>

“It’s common for people to enlist because they need a job during a recession or for immigrants to enlist to contribute to society and gain the right to citizenship. Being the world’s most powerful army is another way of saying its soldiers die a lot less than other countries’. ''They don’t send in their true elites without good reason.'' I bet they leave the annoying groundwork to the rookies and the kind of machos seen in movies and games show up later for the part that gets their names in the history books. Because as long as they have Repliglass, even rookies can perform adequately.”

<…>

The silence contained a strained tension.

This was a war fought with just one hand and interspersed with yawns. Although that was no solace for the people of Kingdom F.

Still, it was fortunate for Kyousuke who wanted to stop the war.

He heard a voice from a radio that had fallen at his feet.

“We have had some success with the losses still in the acceptable range. The vehicles have been moved into place. Lieutenant Stallone?”

“—————”

“Attention, everyone. We have lost contact with the Lieutenant. I will take command from here on. Fire!!”

The tanks and armored trucks had moved a certain distance away.

Tank guns and howitzers were fired though the newly-opened gap to hit Kyousuke and Olivia. The explosive booms were accompanied by filthy dust blossoming up like overlapping flowers. In addition to the simple blast and shockwave, a horizontal downpour of small metal balls and sharp fragments assaulted them. The storm of destruction filled the entire space, so it was well beyond the point that any kind of martial arts could hope to dodge it. The blasts were occurring at such close range that orange sparks occasionally flew from the armor of the tanks themselves. Steel claws flying at supersonic speeds were wearing down the composite armor.

However…

“Olivia.”

With that one word, the cloud of dust was blown away from within and a great form stood upon the battlefield.

Divine-class. Cost: 8. Sound Range: Middle.

That giant being that looked down upon the cutting-edge tanks was a great black dog with three heads. It was the faithful guard dog of the underworld in Greek Mythology whose original Greek name began with a K. The orange sparks spilling from the gaps in its violently uneven teeth were reminiscent of the heat at the depths of the earth.

Its great size caused the Artificial Sacred Ground to expand outwards so that it now contained the tanks which had supposedly fallen back.

Before beginning its fierce attack, it howled once toward the heavens. The tanks were controlled by an electronic network, yet they still froze in place for just a moment.

“He might seem frightening since he belongs to the underworld, but he’s no more than a guard dog. It’s true he shows no mercy to those that try to break the rules and crawl out of that land of the dead, but that isn’t all.”

And.

Kyousuke rested his Blood-Sign on his shoulder and used his other hand to point at the group of targets.

“He will never allow the living to wander blindly into the underworld and needlessly forfeit their lives. He’s a kind guard dog.”

There was no hesitation whatsoever.

Whose lives was that guardian of death protecting: Kingdom F which was relying on it, or the US Army which was opposing it?

They shared the one body, but the three heads roared at each other in competition as the giant guard dog charged in at the helpless tanks. Before the treads could dig into the ground, a mass of composite armor was held down from above and had its gun grabbed and yanked off by giant jaws. The soldiers inside were now exposed, so they stared blankly up at their enemy. They did not have time to hurriedly don their Repliglass.

As soon as the stolen tank gun was chomped through like an aluminum can, they raised both their hands even though no one had ordered them to.

That was the end of the damage wrought by the three-headed guard dog.

It moved on to its next target without devouring the flesh-and-blood humans who had lost the will to fight.

“Olivia, attack at three o’clock.”

A tank next to the one turned into a convertible was aiming its gun at the Divine-class. If the shell exploded, it would harm their own exposed allies, but they apparently were too panicked to think it through that far.

The guard dog’s giant foreleg dropped down and bent the entire tank gun at a right angle before it could fire.

When she shell was launched, the tank itself was pushed backwards. The explosion opened the gun barrel like a flower, so that one had been knocked out of the fight.

After a short break, Kyousuke raised his Blood-Sign once more and used White Thorns to gather Petals. Olivia changed form a few times before he settled on a Cost 8 from the middle Sound Range. It was a giant from Mayan Mythology whose 8-letter name began with C and referred to earthquakes. That colossus began kicking the tanks around like soccer balls.

Why was Kyousuke meaninglessly building up the Material?

The Original Series at the very bottom would be enough to simply “defeat” this enemy, so he had to have some other reason for building it up like this.

Reaching the Divine-class required summoning 100 Regulation-classes.

Reaching the Unexplored-class required summoning 50 Divine-classes.

So what was Kyousuke aiming for?

(Here we go.)

“Olivia, focus on the sky overhead! Cruise missiles are being fired on Kingdom F. We can’t target them with the Artificial Sacred Ground since they’re unmanned, but they’re top priority targets!!”

Unexplored-class. Cost: 19. Sound Range: Middle.

The Lady of “Purple Lightning” that Separates Good from Evil (iu – ao – eu – ei – kub – miq – a – ci – pl).

A sickly-thin beautiful woman sat in a battered wheelchair. Her purple hair blew in the wind, her unhealthily skinny naked body only had some purple cloths halfheartedly wrapped around it, and she was as limp as a doll someone had tossed aside. But her power was undeniably real. Her head was still hanging down, but a withered branch of an arm was lifted just enough for the slender index finger to point into the empty air.

A dreadful purple beam shot out and that sword of light accurately sliced through the four cruise missiles using GPS to carry explosives at Mach 1.9. Materials normally could not leave the Artificial Sacred Ground, but projectiles could pass right through its walls. To deal with aerial explosives flying overhead, it was fastest to summon a Material that specialized in ranged attacks.

When it rang directly in Kyousuke’s head, Olivia’s voice contained an impatience separate from that overwhelming accomplishment.

<Is the Phase 1 information attack over, so they’ve started the Phase 2 bombing? Th-there really will be victims now!!>

“That’s why we’re stopping it. Warning to ten o’clock. Altitude: 25 thousand meters. The drones flying there ''have babies''. Shoot them down before they can drop the bombs in their bellies.”

As he had pointed out before, they could not contain unmanned weapons in an Artificial Sacred Ground. But they could destroy anything that existed outside of Alice (with) Rabbit’s no-killing rule.

…The most frightening nightmare scenario was to be left alone in a deserted location, being attacked with countless missiles and rockets from 3 or 4 kilometers away while unable to use an Incense Grenade, and have the explosive blast fill the entire area. Summoners and vessels could be killed by normal firepower if it was used correctly. That was why the veteran warriors like Kyousuke and Biondetta did not take normal soldiers lightly. That fact had permeated them to the bone since it had been normal people managing the children in the Queen’s Miniature Garden located deep underground.

Riding down on the space station had not been a meaningless performance. As a summoner, the center of the most populated area was the one safe area where he could keep the Artificial Sacred Ground and protective circle going as he fought. If he had tried to reach the center along the surface, he would have been shredded into mincemeat in an empty field.

The Lady of Purple Lightning specialized in surefire projectile attacks.

There was no need to approach their top priority target.

“Olivia, the northeast maintenance bay! Slice it apart!!”

<Will do!>

The roofed maintenance bay was larger than a school gym, yet it crumbled before their eyes.

But not from the Lady of Purple Lightning’s attack.

Something had broken out from within before the shutter covering the one wall could fully open. A gigantic mass of steel rolled out from the rubble. The giant gun barrel looked like a steel bridge and far surpassed the category of mobile artillery. The fortress cannon had been forcibly loaded onto a 32-wheeled special transport vehicle meant to carry 7000ton frigates at shipyards.

“The Grad Killer 500mm heavy cannon, huh?”

<What’s that?>

“It’s a large weapon that fires special liquid container shells into the bedrock to intentionally cause a deep-seated landslide and destroy natural fortresses. A deep-seated landslide is normally a largescale landslide caused by underground water veins, but that thing shapes that liquid into a shell and injects it into the ground. Mountains can be structured in a number of ways, but the Grad Killer can destroy any of them.”

To put it another way, it took an environment surrounded by mountains for the weapon to display its power.

It was not an easy weapon to utilize, but weapons were always designed and refined for the convenience of those who would use them. An island nation surrounded by ocean would develop its navy, while a desert nation surrounded by sand would develop its army.

And a look back in history showed a time when the US and the Soviets were staring each other down with enough intensity to destroy the world.

It was not that surprising to find an outlandish weapon had been designed for use in Eastern Europe in order to pry open the Warsaw defenses and directly reach Moscow via a European route separate from the Alaskan route.

However.

Its appearance only sped things up.

Shiroyama Kyousuke spoke two simple words.

“Do it.”

It took just one attack.

The Lady of Purple Lightning lowered her skyward-pointed finger of destruction and aimed toward the surface.

It did not matter if this weapon used 500mm shells which were even larger than those used by a battleship’s guns. That movement was all it took for the mass of steel to be sliced through like a boiled egg pressed against a taut wire.

It ended far too easily.

But Olivia Highland sounded concerned despite having done most of the work herself.

<But how is this supposed to ''end it'', Onii-chan?>

“Don’t worry.”

<We’re in the north, but there was another big unit along the western route, right? We’ve already used our last Incense Grenade. If we travel across the empty space between units, the Artificial Sacred Ground will disappear after 10 minutes. And wait. Aren’t they supposed to have another 5000 troops in reserve!?>

The destruction was already complete.

When the Lady of Purple Lightning pointed her finger at the remaining enemy forces, the Repliglass soldiers must have decided their tanks and armored trucks would not function as shields because they scrambled out of them. They raised their trembling hands in surrender.

<And that’s not even the main point. Even if we do defeat the full 25,000 in this first battle, it won’t defeat the superpower beyond the sea. The Grad Killer? Destroying that extraordinary landmark weapon doesn’t change a thing. Defeat the first wave and they’ll just send in a second and a third. And they’ll only respond with even greater force once we’ve damaged their pride! This might end the battle, but that’s not the same as ending the war!!>

“Good girl, Olivia. So you do understand. ''That’s why the wind is blowing in our favor.''”

Olivia’s voice ground to a halt.

For some reason, she had the lady in the wheelchair turn to face Kyousuke and aim her slender finger toward the summoner. Even the US soldiers poking their heads out of their convertible-ized tank tilted their head in confusion.

<…Say what?>

“Calm yourself down, Olivia. This isn’t Normandy or Stalingrad during World War Two. Nor is it the swamps of Vietnam. No one in the world wants this to develop into a head-on battle where blood is paid for with blood.”

Kyousuke gave a thin smile.

The boy who had defeated even a revenge demon did not hesitate to speak.

“This is a war that a superpower started under the assumption that it would be a 100-to-0 perfect game. That alters the victory conditions into something quite unique.”

===Part 5===

The chaos was at the northern fortress.

But the other frontline base to the west was silent and ignored.

“…What are they doing?” muttered a large black man with a plethora of medals decorating his chest.

His large glove of a hand slapped and rubbed his head which he kept shaved in a habit he had picked up when he was a new recruit.

Yes, the distant western front had also received reports of the spontaneous battle.

That Colonel had been left in charge of the great force meant to pry open the western gate, but he did not immediately send reinforcements when the terrified reports arrived. But not because he was too reliant on doing things “by the book” to make a decision. There was a bigger problem.

“Sir,” said his saluting Asian aide. “This will not end well if the rookies who viewed this deployment like a field trip have snapped under the pressure of live fire.”

“An explosive outbreak of PTSD and soldiers gone berserk under the influence of mass hysteria…”

Everyone in the command room grimaced, but they were missing some fundamental information.

They knew a battle had broken out in the makeshift base of the company to the north.

But that battle was centered on a summoner and vessel.

And normal people would forget about such supernatural beings as soon as they were out of sight.

Now.

Given those conditions, ''what did the world look like to them?

Here is the answer.

They knew their distant allies were fighting.

But they could not at all see who those allies were fighting against.

“''Attacking each other and creating unnecessary victims within the fortress? Those fools. And they expect us to share responsibility!?''”

“''There do seem to be some witness accounts of something like a ghost.''”

“''You want to send that report back home? They’ll question our mental health.''”

“''Others are saying they are fighting mythological gods. And it seems like everyone there can see them.''”

“''Shut up!! Curse those part-timers who grabbed a gun to earn a stable income. Did the fear and confusion of that space station falling on their heads cause them to lose all control!?''”

The conversation continued while unclear whether they were on the same page or not.

This was what it meant for a summoner and vessel to drop into the center of a large army and slip into the crowd of soldiers. Even the soldiers standing side by side and directly fighting some kind of strange enemy gave contradictory witness reports. And even if the fragmentary reports that miraculously survived were patched together, it would only lead to the nonsensical idea of fighting against ghosts or gods.

Of course, those reports were not the only source of information. The large black man and the others waiting in the west viewed the chaotic northern division using satellites and drones. But the summoner and Material inside an Artificial Sacred Ground could not be seen with cameras or sensors.

They had vague witness reports and hard proof of nothing there.

Of course they were going to doubt the sanity of the other group.

“~ ~ ~”

Whatever the case, their timetable had fallen apart.

Even if the cruise missiles, rockets, and bombers of Phase 2 completed on schedule, they could not continue past that. This was a devastating blow to their ground forces. And unfortunately, technology had not reached the point that wars could be ended with only aerial bombings. The ground forces were needed to declare checkmate by attacking the remaining forces hiding among the rubble.

Also…

“There has been some difficulty with Phase 2 as well. The cruise missiles were lost for no apparent reason. It happened to every last one of them, so I doubt it was a mere accident. We are speculating that the northern unit’s anti-air weaponry was used.”

“Ugh.”

“And we only have satellite imagery to go on, but the Grad Killer that forcibly causes deep-seated landslides appears to have been damaged beyond repair. How this has happened is a complete mystery, but won’t it be difficult to pry open the tunnel shelter? Bunker busters are not suited to the terrain conditions.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!!”

The large black man shouted futilely.

They could not move things forward without first dealing with those idiots.

The Asian aide remained at attention.

“If the entire division of 10,000 has gone berserk, that is more than 40% of our forces rendered unusable. Thus, we can claim our overall force has been routed. How about that?”

“How about what…?”

In war, it was not after every last soldier had been killed that a force of 25,000 was considered defeated. It differed between militaries and units, but once between 30% and 50% had been taken out, the entire army would withdraw because they could no longer accomplish what they had set out to do.

“We could attempt to suppress them, but if we head north and get into a fight, we might be lumped in with them as an uncontrollable force. So couldn’t we leave them be and withdraw?”

To be blunt, the US Army’s enemy was not Kingdom F.

In this backcountry war, victory was assumed and defeat was unthinkable. Rather than thinking about how many enemies they could kill, they thought about how little damage they could take while ending the war according to their timetable. That was the logic of a powerful nation’s war.

Their biggest fear was the living rooms across the US mainland.

It could be the number of young new recruits who died while deployed overseas. It could be mysterious health problems caused by chemical substances. It could be psychological problems like PTSD brought on by a variety of pressures. If a war cameraman snapped a photo of those social problems and it spread across the internet, intense anti-war protests would begin across the US mainland. This was an age where the chemical fertilizers used by farmers were criticized because they could be used to make bombs. And now this was happening to the high school and college graduates who had excitedly rushed to a foreign land so they could legally fire big guns. If a newscaster displayed a line graph of the tragedy befalling those youths, the politicians would realize how this would affect their approval ratings and the war would fall apart before the military’s eyes.

This was meant to be a deathless perfect game that would be over in a day or two, but now 10,000 of their troops had gone berserk and it could devolve into a shootout between allies. If word of that nonsense got out, they would receive an onslaught of criticism from the civilians with too much time on their hands.

When the alternative was holding a war of words with the made-in-America housewives whose self-consciousness had been fattened to the limit, starting World War Three with those brown bear bastards fueled by vodka did not sound so bad. They were a formidable foe, but they understood the rules of the battlefield.

(…It’s all over…)

In the end, there was no threat of the world being split between east and west. Losing here would not allow anyone to trample all over the United States and it would not get their families and lovers killed back home.

They were not facing a precipice. And that may have been why the large black man and the others did not give this their absolute all. In a game of chicken without a cliff, you could slam on the brakes at any time.

Would they wash their hands of the berserk unit and withdraw, or would they stop the berserk unit despite the danger of misunderstandings?

The large black man slapped the back of his head with his glove-like hand.

“…Relay this to the troops: Those bastards still haven’t taken the pacifiers out of their mouths, so let’s slap them upside the head and wake them up.”

“Colonel.”

“It would be easy to abandon the berserk unit and prove we’re still of sound mind. But if they drag the locals into this and there are victims, we’ll be criticized for not stopping them when we could! ''It doesn’t matter if these are the people of Kingdom F we’re talking about!! Killing as a strategic action in accordance with a plan is entirely different from killing as a chaotic and barbaric act!!''”

“…”

“If it comes to that, it’ll be more than just the liberals in Congress criticizing us. What about Free Feather, the war bereaved families association? No, this goes beyond just one country. The UN General Assembly which includes more than 180 nations and regions will start talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity! If it gets that bad, any groundwork we laid will be null and void. And if they can claim they’re protecting civilians from the berserk unit, Russia might get involved. I don’t care if World War Three breaks out here, but I will not let it happen with us as the villains!!”

“Sir, I marvel at your foresight. Now, what are your real motivations?”

“I’ve already bought a farm in Colorado to live out my old age in retirement. Hunting in the forest, fly fishing in the river, golf all day long, and even a natural hot spring. It will be a private paradise for me and my family!! I spent ages slowly building up to that dream, so I would rather die than have it taken from me by throwing me into Guantanamo just to pacify the TV viewers in their living rooms. I’ve paid my dues to our nation and I’ve followed every last rule since I was a new recruit. It wasn’t easy having a shootout with my own brothers in arms when they disobeyed orders and attacked a jewelry store after we secured that desert nation. So why does my career have to end with some idiots going nuts and getting me thrown into a cell smaller than a phone booth where I only get beans and salt soup to eat!?”

They made a swift decision.

The western division, who were safe here but found their futures at risk, took action.

“Haul out everything we have!! Including the land SDI…yes, the carbon gas laser!!”

“Isn’t that the landmark weapon meant to pry open the western gate?”

“It would only get in the way when we withdraw. If we start breaking it down and loading the pieces on transport planes now, we would never make it in time. We’ll scrap it on site and incinerate it until it can’t be captured and analyzed. They’ll be mad as hell if we report we abandoned it, ''so make sure we use this confusion to properly dispose of that bulky weapon.'' Okay, let’s go!!”

Destroying a large mass of technology would earn them a harsh scolding, but if a weapon was damaged in the fighting and they disposed of it so that it could not be analyzed, they would actually be praised or it.

The aide breathed a somewhat exasperated sigh.

The life of an upstart required some clever solutions at times, but this young man had not enlisted to see this.

“Sir. Won’t your very outdoorsy hobbies not sit well with your wannabe New Yorker of a wife?”

“Drop the ‘wannabe’ next time, boy. And don’t worry. I’ll give her a tablet with an Amalon Premiere account. She’ll be able to shop and watch videos as much as she wants.”

===Part 6===

“Here they come.”

Once they reached the Unexplored-class, there was no need to build up the Material any further. Kyousuke stuck with the Lady of Purple Lightning while resting his Blood-Sign on his shoulder and looking to the massive cloud of dust covering the horizon.

North and west.

The two divisions had been deployed far apart, but that just meant he had to get them to come to him.

“Olivia, the other half have arrived. Crush them and our war is over.”

<Nweh? But I only see a few armored trucks here and there.>

“They’re sending some scouts in first and a larger group will follow. They should send a few sets of 500 to a 1000.”

Kyousuke was right.

The few armored trucks were followed by a horizontal line of tanks that looked like a wall of steel. They did not even use the hills as cover. There were probably troop transport trucks loaded with Repliglass soldiers behind them. Prioritizing personnel over equipment may have been an American trait since they wanted to minimize casualties and avoid criticism from the TV viewers. If those had been Russian troops, there may have been infantry clinging to the outside of the tanks as they charged from the front line.

“If we crush them too, the ''bizarre reports'' will continue and they won’t be able to escape the suspicions of mass hysteria, but the TV viewers will soon boil over with anger and criticize the White House for starting this war.”

<Onii-chan, won’t Rachel slap you for fighting by stripping your opponent of their honor?>

The youth had been deployed on what was supposed to be the world’s safest war, yet they had been harmed. This was not what they had signed up for.

…It looked silly spelled out like that, but that was how a superpower with absolute strength viewed war.

Because they were the strongest, they were unaccustomed to losing.

Or rather, they did not know how to accept defeat.

<nowiki><I could shoot them now if it doesn’t have to be super precise.></nowiki>

“Draw them forward some more. The closer the two units, the better for us. …Oh, so now it’s a giant laser cannon? If they’ve brought out the west division’s crucial weapon, they must be ready to withdraw, no matter what the higher ups might think.”

The tanks without turrets may have been collection trucks meant to retrieve broken vehicles. Four of them were being used to pull a giant flatcar like a horse-drawn carriage. Instead of a canopy, it carried a cylindrical cannon enclosed within a boxy metal tower. The weapon was intended to intercept missiles from space, so that was likely meant to reinforce it so it did not bend within earth’s gravity.

<Onii-chan, I didn’t realize you liked painting models with dirt and camouflage.>

“2000 meters. Yes, this should be good.”

Tank guns generally aimed in a straight line, but 2km was close range for them. They had approached so close because they were sick of the confusing reports coming from the satellites and drones and they wanted to check things out for themselves.

That might sound silly for an age of digital warfare, but there was a report saying a temperature of just two degrees higher than their body temperature would lower infantry’s attentiveness. And if they were inattentive, it increased the risk of stepping on a landmine or tripwire. That was the state of the incomplete digital warfare that had not fully eliminated humans from the battlefield. There was no avoiding the emotions that had been a part of war since BCE times.

No matter how many reinforcements were sent in, Kyousuke and Olivia only had to keep doing the same thing.

The protective circle and the Lady of Purple Lightning would not allow normal bullets or shells to harm them. Without Princess Olivia’s extremely precise control over the Unexplored-class, it would have actually been harder to avoid killing the enemy. Their one concern was that they had already used up their last Incense Grenade. That meant they had to protect the Artificial Sacred Ground they already had. If the enemy was scattered over too wide an area to reach them during the 90s Chain, this would get a lot trickier.

It was risky and they were walking on thin ice.

If the Artificial Sacred Ground vanished, Kyousuke and Olivia would return to being vulnerable humans who could lose their lives to common bullets and explosions.

Between two battles, Kyousuke spoke while stepping on a tank shell that rolled out of a supply truck.

“We’ve pretty much settled things here, so let’s go crush the reinforcements.”

<But the Chain only lasts 90 seconds! And they’re about 2 kilometers away!>

“It’s time to join civilization, Olivia. We don’t need to go on foot.”

Kyousuke sharply jabbed his Blood-Sign at something on the ground.

He detonated the tank shell he was stepping on.

The close-range blast was not a problem thanks to the protective circle. And the rules of the Summoning Ceremony stated that the Artificial Sacred Ground’s base surface was the surface on which the Incense Grenade detonated, but if that surface was broken and destroyed, it would instead be based on the surface stood on by the summoner who had thrown the Incense Grenade.

Kyousuke was propelled upwards by the blast and flew more than 10m straight up. He flipped himself upside down so the soles of his feet touched something while pointed skyward.

They touched the bottom of a large transport plane that had approached surprisingly close.
It seemed to have been trying to land on the field runway because it was low on fuel, but it must have given up upon seeing how large the battle on the ground had grown. Kyousuke designated its belly as the next foothold while it cruised at fairly low altitude.

The feeling of landing must have been different while seated in a wheelchair because Olivia screamed while existing within the Lady of Purple Lightning.

<Wah!?>

“If this is one of the new C-1092s, it uses electronic control support when landing, so it can fly at more than 300km/h even with its wheels out. It’ll carry us those 2000m in just 20 or 30 seconds.”

With that, Kyousuke ran upside-down along the bottom of the fuselage to reach the front.

The Chain was still in effect, but to set the next foothold on the ground, they would need to destroy the old one…which meant the transport plane. That was why he moved to the front, circled around the round nose, and looked through the thick reinforce glass at the pilot who looked so shocked he was about to have a heart attack.

Kyousuke viewed the pilot.

And after confirming the next 10 minutes had begun, he smashed the glass canopy with the tip of his Blood-Sign. The protective circle was in the way, so he used the end of the long stick to snag the military uniform’s collar.

“Olivia, destroy the plane.”

<You may be the strongest pacifist, Onii-chan, but all of your ideas are insane.>

With that exasperated comment, a purple beam sliced the transport plane apart.

Kyousuke carried the screaming pilot with him as they returned to the surface. He set foot in the center of the western tank unit sent in to suppress the mysterious riot.

They were outside the base.

It was a flat, featureless plain, making it a poor location for taking on tanks.

But Kyousuke shook the pilot (who had gone quiet after his eyes rolled back in his head) from his Blood-Sign and winked.

He sounded like he was reading off the warnings in a user’s manual.

“Sorry about starting with an Unexplored-class right off the bat. Even an expert would cry foul at that, but you’re the world’s strongest. I’m praying you’ll find a way to escape this.”

It only took an instant.

The sickly woman in the rickety wheelchair launched a purple beam from her fingertip.

Kyousuke thought about the state of the battle while watching as the tanks were sliced apart to leave just the soldiers behind. It was like a magic trick.

<Is that big thing our top priority?>

“They aren’t even trying to preserve it, so they’re probably planning to abandon it here. Still, destroy it just to be safe.”

The lasers fired by the giant strategic weapon and the Unexplored-class collided, but the result had been obvious from the beginning. No matter how much firepower that thing boasted, physical methods of harm could not even scratch the protective circle or Material.

With the north and west landmark weapons destroyed and Kyousuke right in the middle of the tank reinforcements, it was clear what would become of the Silver Resource War.

After thoroughly cleaning things up here and letting their mistaken view of the situation work to its fullest, it would no longer be feasible to continue that economic activity known as war.

If it became known that 20,000 soldiers had succumbed to mass hysteria and destroyed each other, the higher ups in charge of those promising youths would undoubtedly be asked to take responsibility. And international society would be hesitant to let such dangerous units enter their borders or pass through their territorial waters. In the worst case, every last unit would have to keep a motherly school counselor or fortune teller with them at all times.

<But, Onii-chan, isn’t Government the world police? They must have a lot of subordinate groups in America, so wouldn’t some professional summoners and vessels have been deployed with the troops?>

“Some were.”

Kyousuke readily confirmed it and Olivia fell silent again.

Only her impatience and confusion reached Kyousuke’s mind.

<Wait, but, that’s bad! If our plan is to trick the world because they won’t remember us, we can’t have any professionals on the battlefield ''who can actually see what’s going on''!!>

“The ignorant TV viewers will still be angry, so it won’t change anything. I mean, the truth of the matter is that a single summoner and vessel pair defeated the world’s most powerful army and a being greater than the gods went on a rampage. …What good would it do for the military officials and IT company presidents to explain that at a press conference? People would think a mysterious war disease had spread to the US mainland and they’d be sent to a mental hospital.”

<…>

“It doesn’t matter whether or not the truth is known. We need to focus on how many people will believe it.”

<Onii-chan, I need to have Rachel give you a spanking. She’ll whip you into shape at our training ground.>

That was a frightening threat, so Kyousuke made a mental note to give her some candy later to placate her. As tiny as she was, she was a member of the royal family and could be particular about her food, so he would have be careful.

“Would this be a job for the forbidden chocolate chip cereal? It’s hard to judge that one since it’s taken a step outside the category of food, but it is overflowing with an immediate charm…”

<Onii-chan? Hm? What are you analyzing now???>

Had they finally identified the threat now that it was right in front of them? Or were they still utterly confused because a single boy could not account for all of the damage? Either way, Kyousuke wanted to defeat them before they could recover, so he did not wait around. He wanted to end this before they came up with the ''actual right answer'': have all of the US soldiers fall back and attack endlessly with drone bombings and cruise missiles. Just like with food and ammunition, depriving your opponent of time had long been used as an extremely effective method of applying pressure.

The boy snapped his fingers.

“Olivia, it’s time to end it.”

However.

That was when an unexpected voice burned into the back of his mind.

<…Nii-sama…are you there…?>

He felt a pressure in his heart.

This was the one thing that not even Shiroyama Kyousuke had been able to predict. After all, this was the Unexplored-class who had directly killed the White Queen and been broken by it. Her childishness, purity, and obedience made this monster far too different.

There was only one thing he knew.

She had suddenly appeared during his battle with War Criminal and destroyed the Artificial Sacred Ground with the touch of her fingertip. Regardless of the summoner and vessel’s skill, the Third Summoning Ceremony simply could not last until the conclusion when she was involved.

(Why now…!? If she had waited just a bit longer, we could have fully neutralized both US divisions!!)

He of course had no more Incense Grenades.

If this final Artificial Sacred Ground was taken from them, that was the end for Kyousuke and Olivia. Their momentum would grind to a halt and the stalled car would never start up again. The tension he felt now was far different from before.

Olivia’s voice was trembling too.

<O-O-Onii…chan…>

The environment that allowed her to use the Unexplored-class strength of the Lady of Purple Lightning could end at any second.

There was only one possible key to overcoming this.

“A summoner and a vessel…”

<?>

“Government summoners and vessels must have been unofficially sent here with the American troops. If there’s a way out of this, it has to be that.”

===Part 7===

And.

A group was secretly waiting in a forest at the midpoint between west and north where no pieces were thought to have been placed on the map.

It was only 50 strong. That was about the size of a platoon or two, but the coordinator who knew the truth of the Kingdom F knights knew it was nowhere near enough. The US military was composed of four branches – the army, navy, air force, and marines – but they were woefully unable to prepare anyone capable of directly using the Summoning Ceremony. That was why the summoners and vessels cooperated as mercenaries who were not counted on paper. America had always led the world in its 300 years of history, but that short history also left it weak when it came to the mystical and the occult.

25 pairs had been gathered to fill that mystical gap.

One of the pairs was Government Award 501, Perfect Game.

The summoner was Max Layard, a macho man with a pompadour. The vessel was Ellie Slide, a small brown girl with bright swimsuit tan lines.

“G-god this is dangerous. He’s reached the Unexplored-class while we just watch. Ahh, ahh. And the Grad Killer and Land SDI landmark weapons have both been destroyed. At this rate, he really will crush both 10,000-man divisions.”

“Now, we still haven’t received any instructions from the coordinator, but what should we do about this?”

“I’m not about to guess what that Alice (with) Rabbit is thinking, but he’s beating up people who’ve never even heard of the Summoning Ceremony. I’m still not fond of what the American military or monster corporations do, but this is different. Attacking without explaining the rules just ain’t fair!!”

“So…what? Are you going to charge in shirtless and wielding a Gatling gun like a Hollywood hero? He already has the Lady of Purple Lightning of the Unexplored-class, but are you going to take him on with a Cost 1 Regulation-class, Max?”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Okay, I’m sorry. So what are we supposed to do, miss?”

American culture taught you never to apologize, even if you hit a child with an 18-wheeler, but the incense expert with glasses and a bare midriff liked Max’s break from that. An idiot who knew they were an idiot was better than someone who had been so spoiled by their parents that they were convinced they were a genius.

The girl in a large witch hat carried a Native American ritual item taller than she was that looked like a cross between a single-edged axe and a tobacco pipe, but she currently had it stabbed into the ground so she leaned her small butt against it through her miniskirt and shorts.

“He might be Freedom Award 903, but Shiroyama Kyousuke is still human. Have you forgotten that he was affected by my incense during the Pandemonium incident? If a direct attack won’t work, then we just have to be sneakier about it. Don’t underestimate a witch’s secret techniques. If we can destroy the Artificial Sacred Ground and remove his protective circle, I can burn some incense smoke and send his brain to a world of illusion.”

“(That’s as cheap a trick as the gloomy rabbit bastard.)”

“Max. Who is it that is kiiiindly soothing the pain from your front teeth since you were throwing a childish tantrum over your fear of visiting a foreign dentist? If you doubt a witch’s secret techniques, I can respect your wishes and end that before heading home.”

“Yes, ma’am. I have no objections whatsoever, you sexy lady in glasses, blonde hair, and brown skin!!”

“Good.”

The girl with a height of less than 140cm gave a snort from her small nose. The dreamcatcher hanging from her neck did not budge from her sadly flat chest.

The age of feminine superiority may have arrived.

That girl possessed a fusion of the techniques developed by the Native American tribes and the witches who had fled to the New World, so what meaning did she find in this Eastern European forest? In a process incorporating Native American asceticism, Ellie Slide had piercings in her navel, her tongue, and even below her clothing. At the moment, she took a deep breath.

“Let’s get started. Let’s take up a position upwind and send in some Incense while keeping enough distance that Shiroyama Kyousuke won’t notice our presence. We came here to do a job and we can’t refuse to fight just because we think we can’t win. We need to achieve the results we were paid for.”

However, Max did not respond.

He was the man who had not hesitated to punch his supervisor because he could not allow a tropical village to be sacrificed for a superpower to further its plans. No matter what he said, he may have been questioning the invasion of Kingdom F. Or did he think he could apply the brakes at the right point if he was involved? He was an idiot, but his was an idiocy Ellie never got tired of seeing. Claiming both Kyousuke and the US Army were oppressive was a fair argument, but making an enemy of both sides would only isolate yourself. That man was amusingly ignorant.

Or so she thought, but that was apparently not the case here.

Max wobbled on his feet and then collapsed to the side.

“Hello, young lady. Care to lend a hand with your incense expertise?”

Despite the silly tone, the presence directly behind Ellie Slide was like a drawn blade. Nothing was pressing against her windpipe or heart, but if she moved, she would be cut down. This warrior had honed their skills until their killer intent alone served as a warning. Ellie considered a few options, but they would all be too slow. She would be killed before the incense could take effect.

Unable to turn around, she asked a question.

“…Who are you?”

“You can call me Biondetta or Freedom Award 920, Liar Cat.”

This could not be worse.

She had even more Awards than Shiroyama Kyousuke.

Ellie heard the quiet rustling of leaves at her feet and looked down to see something approaching her from where Max had collapsed.

A white snake slithered between the legs of that young girl with bright tan lines.

And Ellie belatedly realized that the area was too quiet. The others in the forest had also been secretly knocked out. Presumably so they would not get in Shiroyama Kyousuke’s way.

“I agree 100% that there is no need to challenge a powerful enemy head on. So I won’t bother throwing an Incense Grenade. Because this adorable little thing can sneak up to the target and use its fangs to send venom swiftly coursing through their veins.”

“I live with rattlesnakes in the New World, so I’m familiar with snakes. The pattern is hard to tell since that one is albino, but I doubt that is a venomous variety.”

“Then how do you explain the people who have collapsed? Surely you aren’t going to suggest it was the placebo effect.”

With a sound much like rustling cloth, a damp sensation slithered up her leg. And not figuratively. After passing between her legs, the mystery white snake coiled around Ellie Slide’s brown right leg and slowly climbed that healthy bare leg.

Its tongue moved in and out.

It showed off its mysterious fangs.

“''Did you replace its fangs?'' So people would assume it was harmless and let their guard down before it injects them with whatever chemical you’ve decided to place inside it?”

“Oh? I wouldn’t have thought someone with a piercing ''here'' would take issue with extensions and implants. I’ve replaced half my body with artificial bone, so it doesn’t really bother me.”

The white snake passed the girl’s knee and reached her thigh.

The carrier of a powerful venom seemed to tilt its head while in position to bite at the center of Ellie Slide’s body past her miniskirt and shorts.

“You knocked Max out immediately, but you didn’t with me. What do you want from me?”

“I’m glad to see you understand. And speaking of that…Max was it? That summoner also functions as a hostage, so keep that in mind. If you do as I say, I’ll swap in the antidote cartridge and have my girl bite him again.”

“…”

“Or are you going to rely on your witch’s skill to attempt mixing an antidote? That would be tricky. First of all, this is a super rare chemical with very few samples to come by.”

Ellie Slide shut her eyes behind her glasses.

She let go of the combination of an axe and pipe and slowly raised her hands.

Without opening her eyes, the young witch breathed a heavy sigh and spoke in a low voice.

“…I am going to murder Shiroyama Kyousuke.”

“Yes, thank you. Now, it would seem you are only pretending to surrender to put me at ease, but drawing out the conversation long enough for an incense to take effect won’t work on me. I take so many antibiotics and other things on a daily basis that the inside of my body is a complete mess. Both poisons and medicines aren’t going to function normally.”

The person seemed to have casually circled in front of Ellie Slide.

When Ellie opened her eyes again, she saw a waitress demon with sexy proportions and long hair dyed pink. She got down to business with a sticky smile on her face.

“You’ve made a name for yourself with your incense expertise, so I would like for you to create an Incense Grenade for my client, Shiroyama Kyousuke. Right this instant.”

“I remember his basic composition from the Pandemonium incident, but what exactly does he want it for? He’s asking for help from a former enemy. I doubt he would accept the risk of sabotage if he only wanted to resupply his ''normal Incense Grenades''.”

“I do not know what he wants it for.”

Ellie’s summoner partner was at risk of dying, but the waitress’s behavior was completely irresponsible.

[[Image:BloodSign_v08_379.jpg|thumb]]

“I was given two jobs by my client. One, to sneak into the American summoner unit that had to be here for the Silver Resource War and trip them up from within if a battle broke out. And two, approach the Perfect Game pair, which he knew would almost certainly be here thanks to information from a Government intermediary, and get Incense Expert Ellie Slide’s help if a battle broke out. How exactly I went about these jobs was up to me, so do not blame my poor, adorable client.”

“…I cannot stand how much those boobs are jiggling. How about I fill them with holes to criticize your methods here?”

“Squish squish☆”

To show off the overwhelming difference in bust size, the smiling waitress demon brought her loosely-clenched fists together at face height and used her arms to press in on her breasts from both sides.

“''He wants you to take a look at the scene and create the perfect cocktail for the occasion''. As dangerous as it is, he has no choice but to rely on your skill which your average incense maker could never hope to match. And that leads us to the present. So work hard for your beloved Max☆”

===Part 8===

<…Nii-sama…>

The noise was awful.

Each time that “voice” sounded in Kyousuke’s head, it felt like the wiring of his brain was being fried piece by piece.

<…Nii-sama…>

The limit was approaching. He could tell.

The Artificial Sacred Ground was already straining and it felt as unreliable as a suspension bridge on the verge of snapping. Meanwhile, Kyousuke worked to finish things.

“Olivia!! Blow away as many of the remaining tanks as you can! Right now!!”

The young woman in a rickety wheelchair made quick movements of her fingers like she was performing a mudra. Purple light sliced across the scenery in a straight line. To follow Alice (with) Rabbit’s methods, it skillfully avoided the human bodies while slicing apart the Repliglass armor and tank armor panels. It was reminiscent of the die cutting game played with hardened sugar at festivals. The dance of destruction was so powerful that it was a miracle the entire thing did not shatter.

The enemy had been defeated.

That should have been the end of it.

But sweat poured from not just Kyousuke’s face but his entire body. He knew this was only the beginning and that the true battle had yet to begin.

He did not hesitate.

<Nii-sama.>

The staticky voice grew much clearer.

The air split open vertically and a young hand broke through.

With a deafening noise, a being from another world once more appeared in this one. Met with the screams of the world itself, the ephemeral girl’s full body appeared. And that changed the phenomena that came with her.

Unexplored-class. Cost: 21. Sound Range: None.

The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee).

That honest, pure, obedient, and insane girl would not play games like the White Queen.

She would destroy everything with her very first move.

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Her appearance pushed the Artificial Sacred Ground past its limit, so Shiroyama Kyousuke could not stop it from bursting like an overinflated balloon.

With that special power gone, he and Olivia were merely human.

If she swung her right hand, the boy would die. If she then swung her left hand, the girl would die. That was the only possible result while exposed like this.

“Hello, sir. Your delivery has arrived☆”

Which was why they were so fortunate to hear the jocular tone of a demon who had snuck up to them at some point.

Of all the cards he had prepared, this was the very last one he had wanted to draw. Given the situation, not even he had known whether this would arrive in time. The slightest coincidence could have kept it from working.

But she had in fact arrived.

Biondetta Shiroyama threw an Incense Grenade so it detonated precisely when the Artificial Sacred Ground ruptured. It fused with that bursting Artificial Sacred Ground, changing its nature.

Biondetta had thrown it, and not even she could escape it. She was blasted toward the center.

Out of habit, she started pulling out her silver Blood-Sign that looked like a collapsible rifle, but Kyousuke just barely saved her life by shouting at her.

“Don’t pull it out!! Protective circle or no protective circle, you can’t block the Colorless Little Girl’s attacks. Using a Material will only make you stand out!!”

“Tch. So I have to run around this enclosed Artificial Sacred Ground without anything to protect me? I see, I see. So that’s how much you trust my abilities. But how about some advance warning next time, sirrrrrr!?”

He would of course never ask anyone other than Biondetta to do this.

Even the weakest Cost 1 Regulation-class could unilaterally kill a Repliglass soldier.

On the other hand.

Olivia had precise enough control over her Material that there was no fear of friendly fire. And while the Colorless Little Girl’s destructive power was incredible, she was only focused on Kyousuke.

…A summoner of Biondetta’s caliber had a chance of surviving this. As long as she could cleanly fit herself inside a psychological blind spot.

That let Kyousuke focus on the enemy in front of him.

He would use the chance Biondetta had given him to make sure she did not have to die.

“…Ha ha. I finally have a chance at winning.”

In other words, he had an Artificial Sacred Ground that could withstand the Colorless Little Girl’s presence.

“Olivia! Just a little longer! We can protect Kingdom F here…no, protect the world!!”

<That sounds fantastic, but how about you explain what’s going on!? Even if we can actually fight against her, can we win with this Unexplored-class? She’s the assassin who easily killed the White Queen!>

Normally, it would not be possible.

Not even using all of the Three would be enough to deliver a finishing blow to the Colorless Little Girl.

However…

“The Colorless Little Girl keeps appearing in an unnatural state.”

<Nweh?>

“She isn’t relying on an Incense Grenade and she isn’t supported by an Artificial Sacred Ground or the Petals. She smashed the White Queen who could distort the world’s laws like a black hole, so you could write this off as her being able to do anything, but this gives a simple solution. ''She’s been summoned in a twisted way, so we only have to resummon her in the proper way.'' If we trap her in an Artificial Sacred Ground that won’t be destroyed by her appearance, she should be drawn back into the other world when the 10-minute limit arrives and the Artificial Sacred Ground disappears.”

Ghosts like the one known as the Rainy Girl were spirits of the dead who got caught somewhere and could not leave the world properly, so they could be eliminated by throwing an Incense Grenade and correcting things.

It was like they stood on a wire mesh floor.

In the Colorless Little Girl’s case, it was not the location or environment causing the problem. Her presence was simply so great that she could not fit through the normal holes in that wire mesh. When she appeared, she forced those holes open from the other world and pushed her body through, but since she saw no need to leave this world, she closed up and strengthened those holes so she could remain standing there without her feet slipping through.

She was cheating.

But once they understood that, they could fight back.

They would not allow the holes in the wire mesh to be widened and tightened. They would return them to the normal size. The wire mesh would likely be too weak and would break. Just like a black hole distorted space around it, the Colorless Little Girl would be caught in the borderline surrounding her and fall back to the other world. And once she had fully returned to the other world, they just had to repair the broken wire mesh. Ellie Slide’s incense could accomplish that.

So they just had to outlast.

It was only 10 minutes. A mere 10 minutes. This brief showdown only required enduring the Colorless Little Girl’s fierce attacks which made an instant feel like an eternity.

Even if they could not deliver a finishing blow here, they could at least get through the day.

Biondetta began shaking her hands inside the same Artificial Sacred Ground.

“U-u-umm… You seem to have some kind of master plan here, but I can’t do anything. I mean, you’re the one that ordered me not to summon a Material, sir!!”

“Don’t worry. I’m not expecting anything from you.”

“…That pisses me off too. Is that any way to treat someone who saved your life by getting you this Artificial Sacred Ground? It seems my naughty little brother doesn’t know how to say ‘thank you’ and ‘sorry’, so perhaps he needs a spanking later.”

<Hey, Onii-chan. I’m still not sure who this person is, but the world really is doomed if a demon is the voice of reason…>

A special Incense Grenade, a special Artificial Sacred Ground, a special Unexplored-class, and special combat rules.

This was a new kind of battle that differed from the Third Age ruled by the White Queen.

“Now, how about we get started, Colorless Little Girl?”

Something swished through the air.

The boy made a statement while lifting the Blood-Sign from his shoulder and pointing it at the enemy dead ahead of him.

“Time for the Fourth Summoning Ceremony that we ''ended up'' creating!!”

===Part 9===

The win condition was surviving for a set period of time.

To reiterate yet again, none of the Unexplored-classes they could summon could directly defeat the Colorless Little Girl.

The wheelchair woman used her unsteady finger to fire a purple beam in a horizontal sweep toward the Colorless Little Girl’s skinny neck.

<That. Nii-sama. In the way.>

“Oooooaaaahhhh!!”

The purple beam was deflected upwards and away from the Colorless Little Girl.

No, it was broken.

The Lady of Purple Lightening’s withered branch of a right arm was broken, that is.

The bones from her wrist to elbow were snapped at a right angle. The vessel’s scream rang in Kyousuke’s head.

<Nnnnheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!>

<…>

Something like a shotgun had fired from the countless weapons surrounding the Colorless Little Girl like a long skirt. That was all it took to incapacitate an Unexplored-class.

But they were lucky the one attack had not “annihilated” her.

Was this the result of so perfectly tuning her for use against the White Queen?

The tip of Kyousuke’s Blood-Sign launched a White Thorn at about the same time as the Colorless Little Girl tossed a bookmark back over her shoulder.

One of the 12 books floating behind that juvenile Unexplored-class devoured the bookmark like a carnivorous beast. As if following the law of equivalent exchange, something shot out from the gaps between the pages.

It was the end of the world.

A swarm of black, glistening cockroaches with a hopelessly powerful resistance were released as a single mass like floodwaters. That ultimate pest consumed all, infected all with disease, and left all living things with nowhere to live. They rushed toward the Lady of Purple Lightning.

Once inundated by them, the wild dance of small mandibles would work at your entire body like a thick file and tear away every last strip of flesh.

(That single-shot attack style is the high Sound Range, so we need a low Sound Range Material!!)

Just before the collision, Kyousuke rearranged the letters to achieve a new Unexplored-class. It was a gracefully beautiful woman wearing a red kimono and swimsuit. She had two horns on her forehead and her long hair was endlessly stretched out in a group of gears reminiscent of the world’s fate. It was said she would determine the fate of all she gazed upon if she opened her coolly shut eyes.

Unexplored-class. One of the Three. Cost: 20. Sound Range: Low.

The “Red-Eyed” Lady who Sees Through all Sin and Calamity (fa – ao – ab – ei – fj – cib – b – du – a – eif).

“Sorry!!”

<Isn’t it a little late for that…?>

A voice that was clearly not Olivia’s responded with an independent thought and statement. What Ellie Slide had made was not so much an Incense Grenade as a small-scale Box.

As the insects approached like a black flood, the Red Lady merely swung her large sleeve out like she was dancing. That was enough for the roach swarm’s perfect angle to shift. It was like redirecting a tank shell with angled armor. And she did not stop there. At some point, she had opened the eyelids that functioned as a seal. That was a sinister ill omen. The Red Lady accurately viewed something and thrust her hand out toward the roach swarm once more.

With a wet popping sound, a portion of that world destruction was annihilated. Countless wings, legs, and bodily fluids thick with glittering exoskeletons scattered everywhere.

Of course, the Red Lady was not unscathed herself. After touching that ultimate source of infection, her kimono sleeve melted away and her fingertips grew purple and dissolved until the white bone was visible. The fact that she could not feel the pain was proof of how powerful the infection was.

<Uehhhh!? G-gross…!!>

<Innocent vessel, please remain silent. And Shiroyama Kyousuke, it does not seem I alone can carry you through this.>

“I’m aware…of that!!”

The greatest merit of the Summoning Ceremony was that the god providing their protection could be swapped out instantly.

Kyousuke accurately acquired more Petals while watching the Colorless Little Girl toss several more bookmarks behind her.

Unexplored-class. One of the Three. Cost: 18. Sound Range: Middle.

The Wicked “Green” Woman who Fills the World with Empty Treasure (lu – o – np – e – qo – ei – r – k – a – rum – pl).

<Ee hee hee. You sure about this?>

Short wavy hair glittered like an emerald. She had the upper body of a young girl and the lower body of a great sinister serpent. Rusted swords and scepters that symbolized the patriarchy formed a giant who was down on all fours. A different peak sat atop that giant.

<This vessel has that same virginal scent as that loathsome red goody-goody, but what I do is lay evil eggs. She might just experience something unexpected.>

That disrespectful mouth came to a stop.

Two ends of the world arrived at once. Two of the books behind the Colorless Little Girl devoured the bookmarks and released brightly-colored torrents on either side of her. One was a spatial distortion cannon created by giving directionality to an artificial black hole and firing it in a straight line. The other was God Hazard One, in which the entrails of slaughtered gods lost sight of their original purpose and attacked humanity.

The two forms of ruin approached from either side like a giant pair of scissors cutting through the world.

<Deflect.>

But after a series of dull sounds, the Wicked Green Woman pierced her own snake body with several swords and scepters. The wounds bubbled up and then giant soap bubbles separated off from them.

They were like snowdomes with immoral scenes contained inside.

When they contacted the approaching disasters like balloon bombs, they burst and scattered “never-before-seen forms of immorality”. It could be a strange bomb, a sweet chemical formula, or a gang that no one could capture. When the concepts of ruin and immorality collided, the deadly trajectories were slightly diverted and the end of the world swept past above Kyousuke and the others’ heads.

<N-nwohhhhh… Ngwehhhhh… Th-there’s something stirring in the middle of my body…>

<Ah ha ha!! I guess a mammal wouldn’t be able to accurately interpret the feeling of laying eggs. Not even the most experienced woman ever feels that, so count yourself lucky you get to enjoy it while still a virgin☆>

The Colorless Little Girl’s long skirt squirmed. That collection of weapons had blown away the Lady of Purple Lightning with a single shotgun blast. Seeing that, Kyousuke chose his next hand with the Petals he had earned with his White Thorns.

Unexplored-class. One of the Three. Cost: 16. Sound Range: High.

The Spirit of Fluttering “Yellow” Gills that Rules the Heavens (s – a – so – voz – tix – ei – yw – za).

A yellow-haired girl sat on a crescent moon bed while wearing pajamas that resembled an oriental Taoist outfit. But the bed she rested in had the most bizarre shape, as if every last kind of living creature had been molded like clay and stuffed into it.

<…Don’t wake me up. What a pain. You have to know how much I hate anything that disturbs my slumber…>

“Unfortunately, I’m not about to go easy on anyone who survived in the depths of the Queen’s Miniature Garden. Everyone who fought honorably there is dead. The only survivors – myself included – are those who offered up some kind of sacrifice.”

(Since I’ve been focused on strengthening our defense with the rock-paper-scissors Sound Range for each attack, the Cost keeps dropping! Damn, is the Colorless Little Girl guiding me…!?)

The direct line of fire did not matter.

Each of the projectiles fired from the many weapons that composed the Colorless Little Girl’s long skirt bent away at impossible angles. Or was it the people watching it who failed to perceive it properly? She was a psychological warfare specialist who fought by dragging her opponent into a dream.

Something grew from the normal ground.

It was the Colorless Little Girl herself. But not just one of her. There were two, five, ten…no, even more. The Yellow Gills gave herself more pawns as carelessly as weeds that grew up on their own.

<…>

The White Queen’s killer was surrounded by her own face.

But she did not let it bother her.

Her entire long skirt spread out like an umbrella and the weapons began firing in all directions. With deafening noises and blinding flashes, giant holes blossomed in the scenery that was modeled after reality. And with no concern for the many Colorless Little Girls between her and the border of the world. Once that holey world reached its limit, it shattered like glass.

The Yellow Gills looked annoyed that her opponent had used physical destruction in a mental world.

<Tch. You don’t have to wake me up with all that noise. So showing you some doppelgangers doesn’t trigger a malfunction in your raison d’etre? Mass-producing White Queens or Shiroyama Kyousukes might have been a better decoy.>

“What happened to Olivia?”

<She wasn’t ready to sync with me, so she’s too busy fighting the sleepiness to talk. Silly, isn’t it? Reality is no more than a material used to build dreams.>

The Yellow Gills smiled thinly, but a dark-red and sticky liquid flowed from the corner of her mouth.

Without creating confusion in that mental world, she could not dodge the Colorless Little Girl’s attacks.

<…Cough. She has the strength to do this even with the Sound Range working against her. And unlike those weapons, she herself doesn’t belong to a Sound Range. This Unexplored-class you made is pretty good.>

“Sorry.”

<Your life is just one regret after another, isn’t it? I said reality is a material to build dreams, but it still needs some upkeep. Going to sleep next to that thing wouldn’t be much fun at all.>

He swung his Blood-Sign and switched to yet another Unexplored-class.

It felt like someone was using a black hole to infinitely stretch out each minute and each second. Feeling that much pressure made Kyousuke wonder how the White Queen had felt while facing the Colorless Little Girl.

He had a feeling that White had smiled at the very, very end.

She had been happy to see how thoroughly he had studied her.

“Three minutes left! I am measuring the time with multiple types of clock, so it must be accurate! Sir!!”

“…”

Kyousuke calmed his breathing when he heard Biondetta who was also inside the Artificial Sacred Ground.

''Three minutes.

''That was more than he had thought.

<…Onii-cha-…>

“Just a bit more, Olivia!! Don’t let the Yellow Gills’ sleepiness stick with you!!”

He knew that was asking too much of her, but that was all he could do at the moment.

Vessels had their fight just like summoners had theirs.

Simply using the Three was not enough. He helped her endure the Colorless Little Girl’s fierce attacks by summoning more and more Unexplored-classes: the Ashen Shrine Maiden, the Liquefying Rainbow, the Gray Mollusk, etc.

Unexplored-class. Cost: 18. Sound Range: Middle.

The Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer who Returns Twice the Roaring Flames (zb – ei – sd – wp – e – be – xu – a – kk – pl).

At the moment, Olivia resided within a girl who had a slender silhouette and latte-colored hair. The only things she wore were a makeshift skirt and chest covering made of dry grass and a dry flower necklace that decorated her chest. The dry grass scattered around her as she danced, but it was all fuel to be ignited. She never released any fire of her own. Her alluring dance drew her opponent’s attack, she just barely danced out of the way, and the fire user was hit with a thorough counterattack.

However…

<Gah!?>

“Olivia!!”

Even Kyousuke cried out without thinking when he saw a short spear pierce her near the heart where the Silhouette was.

This Unexplored-class specialized in counterattacks and he had hoped that would buy some time, but it had not worked at all. The dry flower necklace decorating the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer’s flat chest was shredded and scattered by the sharp blade.

Kyousuke immediately began collecting more red Petals to summon another Material, but then he clicked his tongue. He had been gathering the Petals in such an unbalanced way that he was running somewhat short.

He needed a full set of vowels to spell an Unexplored-class’s name, so he would have to resupply with a new Rose.

That meant a time loss of a few seconds.

But the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer could not move and the Colorless Little Girl pressed her slender hand against her. An eerie light slowly flashed within that hand like a clione. With a straining sound, that light twisted around and transformed into a strange arrowhead.

He would not make it in time.

Olivia would be killed.

“…!!”

As time stretched out infinitely, Kyousuke realized there was an option available that he had been subconsciously avoiding.

Unexplored-class. Cost: 21. Sound Range: None.

The “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth (iu – nu – fb – a – wuh – ei –kx – eu – pl – vjz).

Of course he had not used her.

Of course he had not relied on her.

But the Colorless Little Girl was a Material created for the express purpose of killing the White Queen. He did not have to entrust himself to her. He only had to use her and throw her out. Bringing the White Queen here would be the greatest bait for the Colorless Little Girl. And even if she had failed to defeat the Colorless Little Girl, the White Queen had lasted a fairly long time.

Why had he not done that?

Had he chosen to sacrifice everything to preserve his own puny pride?

An ignorant person in some corner of the world had to have thought it:

“If only someone with overwhelming power would take away this vague anxiety.”

The powerful people who knew the origins of the Silver Resource War had to have thought it:

“If only the Unexplored-class known as the strongest of the strongest was by my side.”

Even the knights constructing the line of defense meant to protect Kingdom F’s people and land had to have hoped for it:

“If only we could fight alongside the White Queen!!”

Just give up.

Your personal preference does not matter.

Simply search for the optimal solution and you will find it.

What do you need to resist the Colorless Little Girl?

It might not be enough to defeat her. But if you summon the target she was designed to destroy, she is sure to strike there first. That will create a distortion in that pure strongest and it might lead to a large enough opening to find a way out of this. So compromise. It’s fine as long as you’re just using her as bait. Anyone in the world would tell you it’s the right answer.

And.

And.

And.

“…”

Shiroyama Kyousuke clenched his teeth hard enough he thought they would break.

He made his decision.

The boy moved in between the Colorless Little Girl and the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer controlled by Olivia.

The clione-like orange light…

…mercilessly smashed Kyousuke’s protective circle.

<Onii-chan!?>

Kyousuke bent backwards and realized he now had nothing to protect him. Two Materials clashed inside the Artificial Sacred Ground, but his one defense had been pierced, shattered, torn away, and ''broken''.

A single hit would be fatal.

Even a stray shot from Olivia would mean instant death.

And yet he was smiling.

He had heard Olivia’s voice and that meant he had successfully diverted the attack. The obstacle in the way had kept the Colorless Little Girl’s attack from hitting the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer controlled by the vessel. There was a precedent for this. Boy A’s vessel had intentionally sacrificed one of her wings to protect her summoner.

No matter how risky it was, buying a few seconds gave him another chance.

The White Thorns ricocheted around and knocked the Petals into the Spots until a new Rose appeared in the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground. Now he could summon any Unexplored-class he wanted.

So what should he summon?

What Material would shake the Colorless Little Girl and change the state of the battle?

The normal Unexplored-classes were not enough and the Three had not worked.

No matter how much he tried to reject it, a certain color flashed in the back of his mind.

White.

The frightening Queen symbolized by that color.

But.

However.

“I won’t…”

The thick presence of death approached to within a hair’s breadth away. The pressure might have crushed a normal person’s heart, but Kyousuke definitely said it.

He spoke directly to the Colorless Girl.

“I won’t rely on the White Queen.”

<Nii-sama?>

“I’m sorry, Colorless Little Girl.”

Hearing that, she silently tilted her head with her palm still held out toward him.

The broken little girl may not have known what he was saying to her. She may not have been able to comprehend the unreasonable situation she found herself in.

''Yes.

''She had done nothing wrong.

She had been made at someone else’s convenience, she had killed at someone else’s convenience, and she had broken at no one’s convenience.

It did not mater how much of a threat she was, how much incredible power she had, how much she distorted the world around her, and how much chaos she brought to people.

All of those were Shiroyama Kyousuke’s issues.

They could not be used to criticize the Colorless Little Girl who wandered the world without an objective.

“…I don’t care how difficult it will be or how crazy it is to try.”

He had no protective circle.

And that was why he approached death just like death was approaching him.

He gently touched the Colorless Little Girl’s cheek with his empty hand.

<Protect Nii-sama. Nii-sama…>

“I will save you. I swear it. Listen. Remember this one thing: I will never abandon you. You haven’t done anything wrong and you’re only lost, so I will grab your hand and return everything to normal. I swear it!!”

She looked puzzled.

She mechanically stared at his face using the emotionless eyes half hidden behind her bangs and then she slowly opened her lips.

<nowiki><I…></nowiki>

“…”

<nowiki><I don’t want that.></nowiki>

Her rusted throat moved.

She spoke a series of words other than “Nii-sama” in a way that others could understand.

<If those words would make you suffer. If those words would bind you. And if you could not escape those words.>

Thinking back, the Colorless Little Girl’s actions had always had the same motivation: protect Shiroyama Kyousuke.

But her targeting was broken, so she may have shot him in the back as she did so.

So that monster had only one answer to the boy.

<nowiki><I</nowiki> will not ask you to ''help me''. If it would only make you suffer, then I won’t ask to be saved.>

Kyousuke breathed a heavy sigh.

He had not even considered this possibility. It was the worst of the worst case scenarios.

This girl was strong.

On a different level than Kyousuke or the White Queen.

For Alice (with) Rabbit, this was a more tragic ending than having his own heart ripped out.

Someone needed saving, but they refused to say the words “help me”.

It was the worst ending Shiroyama Kyousuke knew of.

He had worked so hard to make sure this would not happen. He had sometimes used straightforward methods and sometimes used more deceitful methods to gain the authorization of the Alices standing by his side even if it meant half forcing the words out of them. Biondetta had said it was him who wanted to save the girls and not the girls who wanted saving. She had speculated that was his form of insanity. She had been exactly right. The truth of the matter was Shiroyama Kyousuke was weak. ''He could not bear to see someone else’s tragedy through to the end.'' When reading a picture book of The Little Match Girl or A Dog of Flanders, he could not flip to the end of the story and he would close the book partway through. And despite not seeing the end for himself, he would act like he knew what he was talking about when he said the tragic end was wrong and he could handle it better himself.

So.

So.

So.

He could not just step back when someone said he was not needed. He could not be satisfied when someone said they would descend into hell for his sake. Shiroyama Kyousuke was afraid. He did not help people because he was strong. He could not accept the alternative because he was weak. The tragic picture book was about to the turn the page to the climax and he could not bear to watch. His heart would not last unless he found some way of slamming the book shut before reaching the end.

He had found what she wanted.

And she had not given him authorization.

''But what did that matter?'' The extremely selfish and childish part of him was throwing a tantrum. That was supposed to only be a rite of passage to maintain his self-consciousness. Binding himself with his own rules and losing sight of why they existed was the height of folly. Of course, the mature and rational part of him understood. Forcing unwanted salvation on someone would be wrong. It was the same as a ''jidaigeki'' samurai storming into the governor’s mansion and slaughtering everyone he saw there. He would only be spreading around the kind of damage no one had asked for. The process had been necessary. It was a safety never meant to be removed. Given what his actions had caused when he tried to save the Queen in the Queen’s Miniature Garden, it was clearly an ironclad rule he could never forget even for a moment.

But.

Was there no cure for being a fool?

“…Then.”

He finally forced it out.

The part of the strongest boy that was not the strongest spat out the words.

“Then I’ll do it myself. I don’t care if it violates my rules or causes my soul to rot away. I will save you!!!!!!”

===Part 10===

''Immediately afterwards, the world broke.

===Part 11===

That was not a figure of speech or just from the boy’s point of view.

It was hopelessly physical.

“No fair…”

There was a voice.

But it did not belong to the Colorless Little Girl. Nor did it belong to Olivia who he was contracted with. It was purer and more sinister. It was hopelessly beautiful and hopelessly ugly. It was a repulsive voice from the depths of the earth that covered Shiroyama Kyousuke’s entire body with goose bumps.

“No fair…”

Thinking back, could the Colorless Little Girl really have supported her existence in this world without a vessel, an Artificial Sacred Ground, or the Petals? While it may not have explained everything, wouldn’t there have been some kind of structure supporting her existence here?

And.

When that being had been killed in Houbi Village, she had been working with Kyousuke in the guise of the artificial vessel named Meinokawa Aoi. That had gone beyond her appearance. Despite being a Material, she had been able to play the role of a vessel.

So it was not impossible.

That being could have the Colorless Little Girl reside within her.

No one could say that kind of cheating was beyond the pure white’s ability!!

“''You never said that when it was me''…!!!!!”

An impossible scene played out in front of Kyousuke.

The Colorless Little Girl’s undeveloped chest split vertically open.

[[Image:BloodSign_v08_410.jpg|thumb]]

There was no blood or anything else. And it did not matter that her body had been transparent. Ten fingers grabbed the right and left edges and something peered out from the deep, deep darkness within like someone spying out of a cracked door.

This may have been the first time ever that there was none of her crazed love to be found there.

There was nothing else mixed in. She unleashed pure hatred in her words.

“…!?”

It all fell apart.

A hand in a pure white glove shot out of the wound in the Colorless Little Girl’s chest. At this close range, there was no way he could dodge or defend. Even if he had still had the protective circle, there would have been no escaping this attack.

An instant seemed to stretch out infinitely as he tried to come up with something he could do.

Kyousuke had only one option.

He formed a gun with his fingers and aimed it at the Unexplored-class that was his vessel.

“Olivia…I’m ending the contract!!!!!!”

<Wha-!? Ah, Onii-chan!?>

This was the greatest and strongest attack from the White Queen. Its force might just affect his contracted vessel as well and he had to prioritize that over the sturdy body of the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer.

So he severed it.

Kyousuke and Olivia truly became mere humans.

And then.

Without mercy.

The White Queen’s right arm was absorbed straight toward Shiroyama Kyousuke’s heart.

===Facts===

*The Colorless Little Girl’s only objective was to protect Kyousuke. Thus, she refused to say “help me” to him because that would have bound him unnecessarily.
*Kyousuke steeled himself to rescue the Colorless Little Girl even if it meant abandoning his pride as Alice (with) Rabbit.
*They did succeed in forcing the US Army to withdraw from the Silver Resource War.
*The Colorless Little Girl’s independent actions were supported by the White Queen acting as a vessel.
*With nothing to protect him, Shiroyama Kyousuke was hit by the White Queen’s attack of hatred.

<noinclude>
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|-
| Back to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume8_Chapter3|Stage 03]]
| Return to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume8_Ending1|Ending X-01]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>

My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume6 Chapter 3

2018-01-21T17:23:39Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 3==

It was night.

That was the time for a Vampire like Erika. Ayumi was with us too, but she seemed more of a daytime person even as a Zombie Archenemy.

At any rate, we met up in front of the train station, which was even busier than usual thanks to the festival mood. With Erika, Ayumi, and Anastasia, I was the only human in the group.

“Oh? Onii-chan, you didn’t invite the Class Rep?”

“Sister. Do you really think I’m going to bring that precious girl to the Techno Parade which is neither sexy nor cute and full of hackers who have no experience being around girls? I’m not going to spend the night listening to her exhausted sighs.”

“Fuguu!!”

Ayumi was already puffing out her cheeks again, but I honestly found it a mystery why my sisters wanted to visit such a niche festival. Then again, they were family, so I could relax more when walking around with them.

“It’s 7:30, so how about we go the standard route of checking out what food is available?”

“Erika, it’s impressive how you just come out and say what Ayumi was fidgeting restlessly about because she was really looking forward to it but couldn’t bring herself to say it.”

“Fuguu!? Onii-chan, don’t treat me like an incarnation of gluttony…!”

“Ayumi-chan. Satori-kun was only trying to get that cute reaction out of you.”

There were no age or gender restrictions on being a hacker, but it did look like there were more guys here. It may have been an extension of how engineering departments were full of guys even in the idealized campus life seen in dramas.

“By the way, Onii-chan, what’s that hanging from your hip? A giant water gun???”

“It’s my secret weapon. It was a real lucky find.”

But just as I answered her…

“Wah, what is that!? There’s a mech carrying shaved ice on a tray, Onii-chan!”

“That’s based on a bomb squad robot. I doubt those are sold commercially, so did they steal the designs from somewhere and build one?”

“I wish they would stop abusing 3D printers,” said Anastasia. “The tech itself is good.”

“Oh? Satori-kun, the menu says I’ll choose the melon flavor. Does it use leading questions to draw out that answer?”

“Yeah. It might use predictive algorithms to predict what you’ll choose and then provides comments to restrict any other opinion.”

…But while we engineering types tended to take an arrogant and cynical attitude about everything, my sisters’ more naïve reaction seemed to have gathered more performers around us.

And when it came to making money at night, there would always be lots of food available. There were the standards like yakisoba, takoyaki, okonomiyaki, candied apples, shaved ice, and chocolate bananas, but also some Western options like crepes, donuts, and frankfurters. That unique midpoint between a snack and a meal tugged at a half-forgotten childlike part inside you.

Anastasia’s eyes widened because she was unfamiliar with this country’s festivals.

“Why do Japanese foods look so nice? Even the candies are so elegant.”

“This is some of the greasiest food available in Japan, so what kind of diet do you have to have for this to look refreshing!?”

“Eh? During the Los Angeles convention, it was all pizza, fried chicken, thick-cut ham steak, and poutine. Do you know what that is? It’s a giant pile of fries covered in cheese, lard, and gravy.”

“…Is your country trying to wage war with food?”

That was what you got with a culture that went beyond “meat, vegetables, meat, meat, rice, bread, and vegetables” to have “beef, beef, chicken, beef, chicken, and a supplement”. They weren’t interested in vegetables or even fish, yet they claimed to be a healthy nation.

Anyway.

“I heard they’re doing fireworks afterwards.”

“There will probably be drones flying around to record it, so we should watch from a distance. One of them might even get hit by a firework and crash.”

Since Erika and Ayumi were with us, we stuck to the normal festival area and avoided the denser areas with a junk trade show or where four people sat around a table arguing while the mahjong match was played out by preset programs. But there were hints of insanity even in the relatively normal areas, like small robot fish swimming around in the goldfish scooping game or simulators being used to predict the results of the bingo game.

“Is it even possible to catch these goldfish robots? They swim away whenever the scoop gets close.”

“Think of it like a puzzle, Ayumi. They always swim away in the same direction, so stick a scoop in at these two points and you can drive it into a corner.”

It was a little different, but it still felt like a festival that would make for some nice memories.

Then my smartphone vibrated.

Maxwell’s speech bubble was displayed on the screen.

“Cyber attack detected. It is clearly specifically targeting your device. I am stopping it, but would you like to handle this manually?”

“…”

I immediately looked around, but that wasn’t going to tell me who was doing this. It was even possible the culprit was using fiber optic cables and wireless LAN to attack from the other side of the planet.

…This was not some hacker attacking on a whim and if Anastasia was to be believed, then this would be Hack or Slave that worked for Wild@Hunt.

“Hm? What is it, Onii-chan?”

“Nothing. More importantly, you catch this one, Ayumi. You can take the prize for yourself.”

There was no reason to worry my sisters. I communicated with Maxwell by typing in text instead of the usual voice recognition.

“Maxwell, pretend you’re being overwhelmed so Hack or Slave will continue their attack. Use that time to investigate the exact method they’re using. Knowing that will tell us what kind of person we’re dealing with.”

“The task is already underway. I believe this is an antlion trap where a fake public wireless router is used to lure in the target and steal the mobile device’s data.”

…They had not given up.

They had screwed up at the harbor container yard, but they were still searching for official evidence that I was the one that had defied Wild@Hunt by revealing the fabricated abuse incident. They had even launched a cyber attack.

If they could prove it had been me, my life would be left in tatters. In fact, my family would be in trouble too.

And if they drove out their enemy, it would only encourage them. They might repeat that fabricated abuse incident.

''I want to be alone.

''If I am, I won’t cause any trouble for anyone.

''Then mom and dad and everyone can smile again.

Laugh at me if you want.

We were talking about a complete stranger. I would gain nothing in return for saving them. Not a reward and not any kind of money. And yet I was taking on an international corporation over it.

But I couldn’t help but remember that Elf girl crouched down and muttering those words with empty eyes. I couldn’t help but remember seeing the same expression I had once had…no, her case was even worse because it included unwarranted violence.

I had just so happened to visit that old secret base.

And I had found someone already there.

That was all it was.

But…

…I could not allow this to continue.

They were finally regaining what they once had. Parent and child were regaining a relationship in which they could share a nikuman. Wild@Hunt? Hack or Slave? Who cares what they want! Those parents managed to avoid divorcing. They were approaching recovery, something my family could never do. It might seem perfectly normal, but that’s exactly what makes it so had and so important! I would never allow anyone to carelessly tear off the scab of that half-healed wound!!

“…”

We finished the robot goldfish scooping and attempted a ring toss that altered the path of the airborne ring with tons of fans. All the while, I operated my smartphone with just my thumb.

“That’s all? If it primarily uses a wireless router, they would have to set it up and then wait like a spider in its web. That seems too random to be targeting an individual.”

“Public wireless routers do more than communicate between the base station and the mobile devices. They also communicate between the base stations owned by different companies.”

“Well, yeah. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a shared worldwide internet. Besides, they should be monitoring each other so they don’t cause interference by sending similar frequencies in the same area.”

“So it seems the target of the antlion trap is not the mobile devices. It is all of the base stations in the area. When the identification signal of a base station is detected, it seems to send back malware disguised as a response code.”

“Wow! Why did yours fly straight, Onii-chan?”

“The point of this game is to input the angle and rotation speed of the fans into a simulator to calculate out the complex movements of wind and gain a predictive path for the ring toss.”

Of course, no matter how strict the defenses of an individual computer, if the router used to connect to the world at large was infected, its defenses were suspect.

And my smartphone connected to the container yard using a normal line. They must have been targeting that.

“Can we switch to a different base station?”

“At any time. But their attack seems to be indiscriminately infecting anything they come across, from public wireless LANs to home wireless devices that are leaking all their information. It is only a matter of time before there are no safe lines left.”

“Ayumi can have the teddy bear, Anastasia can have the plastic bath bunny, and Erika can have the glass high heels.”

“I sense a difference in our gifts.”

“I sense a difference in our gifts.”

I ignored the glare from the two small ones.

“Then what vulnerability is the malware using? Can we knock out their way in or write an anti-virus program to regain safe wireless routers to use?”

“I have already checked and have detected 24 different kinds of malicious software. Instead of persistently showing off their own malware, I believe Hack or Slave is sending out many varieties with similar results and seeing if any of them are successful.”

“What a pain… Locating the router at the source of the infection and cutting off the data isn’t going to stop the attack, is it?”

“About that. There is one point I find curious.”

“Tell me anything you have.”

“Sure. The antlion trap wireless router sending out the infected signal seems to be moving.”

“Hm?”

I thought we were done with the ring toss, but Ayumi complained and insisted on continuing to play. Beating it without the help of a simulator was like crossing a minefield without a metal detector, but she must have really hated losing.

“Its average speed is 3km/h. That is about the same as walking speed and it is moving irregularly around the festival much like you. However, it does not seem to be pursuing anyone. Instead, it seems to be searching out wireless routers in the area to infect them. Based on the data from a map app, it is not following the roads or sidewalks, but it is not passing through buildings. So unless they are using a flying drone…”

“Hack or Slave is here on the ground at the Techno Parade? Wearing a backpack containing a computer, just like the surveyors for a map app? Maxwell!!”

“Sure. The ‘!!’ was unnecessary. You have given me permission to attack Hack or Slave, so I will not hold back.”

I heard a bursting sound like something had exploded nearby. No it was the inflation of a large and solid balloon like a car’s airbag. And while a stir ran through the crowd, I saw a small man wearing a bulging backpack floating up from the ground like he was on a moonwalk.

That was the source of the trouble: Hack or Slave.

He was the one who had rewritten online data to make it look like a girl was secretly causing her parents trouble and betraying them. He was the one applying all that external pressure so they would resort to violence…!!

The earth’s gravity seemed to not apply to him as he planted his feet on a large tour bus and then jumped to the top of a 5-story multi-tenant building in the very next step.

I threw out all my assumptions and gave a shout.

“A hovering suit? Is he going to get away!?”

That was a flight device that used a large balloon to secure buoyancy that matched your own body weight and allowed you to steer using small gas jets. It was more like jumping than flying, but it allowed you to make pole vault jumps with each and every step. I had heard the military was putting serious research into the technology as mountain gear.

“Hack or Slave can continue to infect nearby wireless routers while on the run, so they can continue to attack us. So do not forget that they will maintain the upper hand.”

“I know that. Let’s go, Maxwell!!”

“Eh? Ah? Onii-chan!?”

“Erika, take care of Ayumi and Anastasia. Keep an eye on your surroundings!!”

“Yes, yes.”

I left Anastasia with my sisters and took off running through the gaps in the crowd. A hovering suit was mostly meant to let you float, so it could not quickly pick up speed like an airplane or helicopter. But being able to ignore the roads and crowds and take the shortest route gave him an overwhelming advantage. And when looking up from the ground, the large building rooftops formed blind spots. Once I lost sight of him, he could hide somewhere and continue targeting my data!

“User, you are on the ground and Hack or Slave is in the air. Even if you successfully pursue him, how will you settle this? Even if you reach him on a roof, he can jump to the next building and you will have no way of pursuing.”

“Maxwell, sync my secret weapon with my smartphone.”

I pulled out the device hanging at my hip that looked like a two-handed water gun.

“Once that’s complete, I’ll shoot that guy down. I’ll shoot down Hack or Slave.”

“Sure, understood. Begin when you are ready.”

This was not the gun nation of America, so he probably thought I couldn’t reach him if he was off the ground.

But that was too naïve.

I ran along while aiming the thick gun barrel into the sky. It didn’t use gunpowder, so I didn’t need to think about recoil. I targeted the distant flying man with what looked a lot like a shotgun microphone and I pulled the plastic trigger.

Anti-Materiel Redtooth.

The name was ridiculous, but the EM signal emitted by that ultimate weapon did devastating damage to the flight device keeping the Hack or Slave man afloat.

The same short-range Redtooth signal used for wireless headphones and keyboards was given powerful directionality to send illegitimate data to every device within 1000 meters. Since I had not known when or how I would be attacked, I had bought it from the various junk that Anastasia and I had looked through that evening.

“That stopped the input of malware, but the output was so powerful that Hack or Slave’s system connections seem to have failed.”

“Well, I didn’t see many cables for how big a system that is, so I figured it was probably managed wirelessly!”

I had essentially sent out a jamming signal. Even without infecting it with a virus and making some subtle changes to the registry, I could cause a malfunction.

The balloon man lost his balance and seemed intent on making an emergency landing somewhere. Even if the problem was temporary, he was entrusting his life to that flight device. Until he detected a virus or another obvious cause, he would not immediately attempt another flight. Anyone would hesitate if they were handed a cracked spacesuit and placed in front of a spaceship’s airlock. Your life was important.

In Anastasia’s world of hackers, a malfunction that might have been an attack but might not have been was far more frightening than an obvious attack.

I used some wire to tie the Redtooth cannon to the metal pole of nearby road sign and adjusted the angle so it was aimed near the rooftop.

“Maxwell, use the building plans to check the location of the emergency stairs. I’m going to run up to the rooftop and end this while Hack or Slave is afraid of crashing!”

“Sure. The emergency stairs are on the outside. They are near the back, so you should be able to reach them from the alley.”

Knowing that, I just had to hurry.

With the Redtooth cannon’s EM attack continuing from the surface, the Hack or Slave man would think I was still down there aiming at him, but that wouldn’t last forever. If I didn’t end this before that small man regained his cool, I would lose my chance.

I ran into the alley and found the stairs in question. The entrance to the rusty metal stairs was blocked with a locked door, but it was little different from a cheap metal fence. I ignored the lock and climbed right over it. Then I ran up the stairs.

I clicked my tongue when I reached the roof.

“What is this mess? It’s like a jungle gym covered in sponge guard and morning glory vines!”

“User, you are already in the danger zone. Please watch your voice and any other noises.”

When looking up from the ground, I had thought it was an open space the size of four home ec classrooms. But instead of a flat square rooftop, I found not just the standard water tank and elevator motor room, but industrial air conditioners larger than fridges, a home garden, and storage containers stacked several high. Even the owner must have found it to be a pain to deal with because they had set up construction scaffolding and diagonally-leaning ladders to create shortcuts through it all.

It was like a 3D maze or a basic training obstacle course in a movie. The Hack or Slave man could come from any direction: front, back, left, right, above, or below.

“Maxwell, the Redtooth cannon is still active on the ground, right?”

“Sure. The link with your smartphone is still active. I am using the errors in satellite TV reception in the surrounding homes as a substitute for radar to monitor for airborne objects, but there is no sign of the hovering suit jumping from that roof.”

That meant the small man was somewhere on this rooftop.

I gulped and crouched low. I slowly moved further in alongside a fence covered in the vines growing out from the home garden.

…''Damn.'' I was supposed to be the one who had him cornered, but his landing spot had worked in his favor and I felt cornered.

“Hack or Slave is continuing the antlion trap attack, right? Can’t you detect the location of the source signal?”

“That is unreliable at this distance. I can only tell it is coming from that rooftop.”

That was when I heard a quiet metallic sound from the side.

…''Wait, the side?

''Is there something on the other side of the vine-covered fence?

“Warning!!”

Rather than actually detecting something, I simply ducked my head down in response to Maxwell’s message.

And then…an artillery shell or something broke through the fence and flew my way!

Technically, it was impossible for me to know what had happened. I just knew the fence had been torn to pieces and blown my way and that had hit me and sent me rolling along the concrete.

The sudden explosion echoed across the rooftop and through the noise of the festival on the surface. I just hoped that wouldn’t cause a panic that got people hurt.

“Gah…bah…!!”

“Warning: this is not over yet. Please hide behind nearby cover!!”

I could no longer visually process the text from Maxwell. Because of the truly bizarre thing I had seen.

''What is that?

''What is that, what is that, what is that, what the hell is that!?

…If my eyes could be trusted, it was a round octopus with its five sucker-covered tentacles spread out in a star shape like a handmade cookie. I had seen a documentary about this before. If artificial muscles reached a practical level, it would be easier to design mollusk robots that did not have to stand, like slugs or octopuses, rather than dogs, cats, crabs, scorpions, or humans.

Of course, this was no mere toy.

Even now, it was giving off the ominous sound of high-voltage electricity.

Was its round body a circular loop gun barrel? For something like a railgun!?

The round body alone was 3 meters. If the 5 tentacles were stretched out, it would probably be around double that, but if the round body contained a circular loop railgun, then there would be no space inside for a person. It was an attack drone. Since it did not immediately move in close, the movement must have been an afterthought and was really only used to attach it to a firing point on the floor, wall, or ceiling.

But that thing was larger than a surfboard, so the Hack or Slave man could not have been walking around with it. And landing here should have been an accident for him. So where had hat ultimate weapon come from!?

The large hole in the center of the round body was aimed at me. That was likely the muzzle.

The flashes of electricity were converted into a violent musical scale.

“!!”

As soon as I got down and rolled to the side, a fearsome gust of wind passed by. The shortcut scaffolding collapsed and the jagged shards of air conditioning units flew every which way.

Think.

I had to think.

…He would not have lucked into something like this. And it was odd for the first shot to not hit when I had been defenseless. I had not dodged it, so its aim had to have been off. Something had interfered with the targeting algorithm that it had prioritized over pursuing its target.

Which meant…

“Maxwell, check to see what was in the path of that shot. Hack or Slave must be afraid of being shot by his own weapon!!”

“There is a backup power gas pipe running along the straight line path that links you and the unknown.”

“Predict a ballistic path!”

I grabbed a shovel from the home garden and swung it horizontally to throw it at the small pipe running up the side of a metal pillar 10 meters away.

The hit made a loud noise.

I didn’t know if that had actually damaged the gas pipe, but I heard a rustling sound from the jungle-gym-like area overhead.

Flames, smoke, and heat all rose, so he must not have wanted an explosion.

“There he is. Calculate every pillar or flammable object that would affect Hack or Slave’s safety if they were broken or detonated. I can move around while staying near those off-limits targets.”

“Sure. I will display a cursor on your smartphone’s image. Please move from circle to circle.”

A course was drawn out on the smartphone like stepping stones, but the situation was fluid. If the small man changed location, this would all fall apart.

Waiting around would not improve anything.

I could not afford to lose here.

I would protect my and my family’s futures. And I wouldn’t let them restart that fabricated abuse!!

The octopus kept its 5 tentacles spread out in a star shape and constantly glared at me with its anti-personnel radar and IR guidance while I passed right in front of it on my way to the top of the half-collapsed jungle gym.

…But where had the small man gotten that 3m octopus attack drone from? It may have been larger than my bed. I had been right when I assumed he wouldn’t have been able to carry it around.

“Come to think of it, that’s true of the hovering suit as well.”

It would be portable since it was worn, but it would still stand out. It would be like walking around town while dressed for sky diving. The Techno Parade hacker festival was underway, but he was not a performer or cosplayer. Would someone trying to blend into the crowds for their antlion trap really want to stand out like that?

“In that case, did the hovering suit appear out of thin air just like the octopus? Like some kind of magic?”

He was doing what should have been impossible. He was showing techniques that could not be explained with the laws of physics.

Which meant…

“Is this the work of a supernatural hacker using an Archenemy’s power?”

“Don’t predict my lines, Maxwell.”

Had this been the trick to locating the harbor container yard and procuring a system for hacking into that retro machine?

I used a diagonally-leaning ladder in place of stairs to reach the upper level. This felt much the same. It was like lining up empty rectangular pipes to create a jungle gym.

“It’s about time I had a weapon of my own.”

I borrowed a wrench that was hanging from a pillar (probably for tightening the scaffolding’s bolts) and I dismantled a bug zapper to remove the chip inside.

“These industrial ones are scary. Check out this capacitor. It’s bigger around than my thumb.”

“Get carried away if you like, but do not blame me when you shock yourself.”

The power source looked like a solar-powered rechargeable battery. The battery was the size of two light novels, so I borrowed that.

I took the wire around a plastic umbrella I found lying around, wrapped it around like a candy cane, and attached it to either end to create a stun rod.

“Maxwell, use my smartphone screen and color code what is and isn’t an electrical conductor. I might be able to use this at a distance by sending the charge through the wall or floor. …As long as I make sure I don’t hit my own feet in the process.”

Not even this would be enough if the Hack or Slave man was an Archenemy on the same level as a Vampire or Zombie. But at the same time, they were not all powerful. No matter how mysterious the phenomenon, if I kept that in mind, I wouldn’t be led astray.

…If he could just summon any device he imagined, he wouldn’t have to stop at this. If he could send a boomerang-shaped bomber into the sky, he could crush all resistance. And if he could create a computer large enough to fill the desert, he could brute force his way past Maxwell’s defenses.

But he hadn’t done either of those.

So why couldn’t he?

Mass? Complexity? The barrier between manned and unmanned? A distance from himself?

It was the same as why that artificial muscle octopus could not attack me. No matter how big the enemy was, if I understood the rules, I could use them to my advantage. And I was up against an immortal who was far more powerful than a human. If I gave up on thinking, I had no future.

Or so I thought.

Until I heard that “roar” anyway.

The entire rooftop was ruled by the crude roaring of an engine.

Cold sweat poured from my body.

It couldn’t be a car in this complex jungle gym. And what was the stereotypical weapon loaded with an engine?

“A chainsaw!?”

As soon as I shouted that, he appeared from behind a storage container. The man looked middle-aged, but he was even shorter than me. This was the hacker from Hack or Slave. And the item he held at his hip was a power tool caked with dirt!!

Had he summoned this instead of the octopus!?

“Dammit!!”

I frantically moved back and away from him.

Just then, an unknown sensation crawled along my spine. I had no proof, but I imagined it was the fingertip of a beautiful grim reaper.

Yes.

That was right.

The chainsaw was caked with dirt? Even though he had summoned it like magic, just like the hovering suit and slow octopus???

“…Oh, no.”

''Oh, no. Oh, no! Oh, no!!

''That means…!?

The wall right next to me was suddenly blown through from a completely different direction than the chainsaw man.

…The Hack or Slave man had been trying to draw my attention to the chainsaw and move me away from the dangerous pillar. That way he had a line of fire for that long-range attack.

In other words, the chainsaw itself had been picked up from the home garden and he had used his device summoning for something else.

I was completely caught off guard.

So why was I still conscious?

“Gahahh!?”

I had pressed the stun rod against my own stomach, using the high-voltage current to knock myself in an irregular direction. That had sent me just barely outside of the enemy’s predicted aim.

I had escaped the first shot.

But now I could not move properly. I could not stand up and I could only just barely manage to crawl. Through the hole in the wall, I saw a thick metal pipe reminiscent of a bazooka that was supported by three legs driven into the ground like stakes. There had been no sound or smell of gunpowder, so I guessed it fired metal shells with a spring thicker than a human arm, just like a bizarre British weapon I had heard about.

If that octopus railgun with tentacles spread out in a star shape had fired at the floor from below, I would have been done for, but that had not happened.

One thing was obvious since he had gone out of his way to pick up a power tool as a decoy.

“Pant, pant…”

He could only summon one device at a time. Instead of making and summoning them anew, it was more like he could transform a set amount of mass like he was molding clay. If it had become that spring cannon now, then the octopus was not down there anymore.

And he had not brought out anything on as ridiculous a scale as a bomber or nuclear bomb. He may have been restricted by some kind of range.

On top of all that, the Hack or Slave man was not instantly producing or swapping out devices in front of me. That small man always hid and made a surprise attack from a position of safety.

“Gh…”

…The preparations took time.

That meant he could not leave himself exposed to even an amateur human like me.

I had to use that.

I had to trust in the data I had gained through my survival.

I would mostly be relying on speculation from here on out, though.

I doubted it was any manual work on his part. He wasn’t creating a miniature that was turned to life size or drawing on the back of a flyer and having the picture come out of the paper. I mean, I was close enough that I could hear it when he jumped in surprise. If he was doing that kind of work, I would hear him carving down the material or smell the paint. And there were no stains on his sleeves or fingertips. So the trigger was likely a mobile device. Maybe he created 3D blueprints with a CAD program, made a full color illustration, or viewed the blueprint or a 3D diagram to perfectly memorize its structure.

And I didn’t have to work out the exact conditions he needed. If all I wanted to do was defeat him, then knowing the source of his attacks was enough.

Besides, what was it that had caused him to panic before?

Because I had driven him onto the rooftop?

No.

Because I hit him with a powerful directional EM waves using the Redtooth cannon. More than a cyber attack or his hovering suit crashing, he had been afraid of the jamming cutting off his mobile signal!

The small man approached with roaring chainsaw in hand. And from the other direction, the spring cannon…did not fire a second shot? The powerful spring used to propel the shell must have needed to be compressed again.

I could not speak out loud. While crawling as close as I could, I operated the smartphone with my thumb.

I had not given up yet.

I was not going to die here. I would not allow Erika, Ayumi, or the others to be placed on the chopping block. I would not allow those newfound smiles to be smashed anew by that fabricated abuse!

I didn’t care if it was ugly.

I didn’t care if rescuing Sakai Iori was really just a vicarious way of overcoming my own past!!

“Maxwell. This Hack or Slave man is a malicious hacker who sends viruses to all the nearby wireless routers to steal the communication data of the mobile devices using them.”

“Sure.”

“But that also means he’s setting up a bunch of hotlines for the infected routers to send data back to him. …Search for a nearby router that’s still uninfected and send it a virus of our own. As soon as he opens his hotline, we’ll use that to infect his own mobile device.”

“That will mean infecting the many users of that router.”

“Hack or Slave is randomly using a few dozen different data leakage viruses. Attack only mobile devices that have cleanly patched up every last one of those vulnerabilities.”

“Understood.”

No one was stupid enough to get infected by their own virus, but commercial security software could not protect against some viruses. If someone had taken aim at exactly these viruses, they had to be the culprit.

“Backdoor setup complete. I can take control of the Archenemy Dwarf’s mobile device at any time.”

''Dwarf?

''Oh, right! A Dwarf!

That tiny species from Norse Mythology was known for being skillful with their hands and was most well-known for creating the weapons of the gods out of pure gold. It made perfect sense once I had the answer and pure gold was used in the wiring of precision circuits.

…If he had started his search from the TV station, had he investigated that trunk room and arrived at the tower computer I used as a honeypot? I had completely destroyed that and disposed of the multiple pieces separately, but had he built some kind of hardware that could restore some of the data from just a portion of the destroyed device? Using pure gold, of course. Then he had reached the harbor and spotted the retro machine that managed the cargo list. Even if he had not found my name, the data concerning an industrial power source and cooling system would have told him which container was Maxwell’s.

For a modern Dwarf, did a cyber attack correspond to the wrath of the gods? As someone using simulators bearing the names of demons, I had to keep that in mind.

“Shall I destroy the target’s system files to stop the device?”

“That would leave me to fight over a chainsaw with a perfectly normal and inhumanly-strong Archenemy even if he doesn’t have the use of his special skill at the moment! I’d fare worse than in a sumo match against a mountain gorilla!!”

If Erika and Ayumi heard that, they would probably get mad with a “my, my” and a “fuguu” respectively, but it was a fact that a mere human could not hope to overpower an Archenemy. You couldn’t judge them based on their apparent body type.

“I’ll inform you what your main task is. Your sub task is to buy time. Once you’re inside the Hack or Slave mobile device, let’s attack his email.”

“As it is encrypted, that will require taking control of the email server rather than the mobile device itself. That will take some time.”

“Don’t target the email folder. Access the kanji prediction file for his virtual keyboard. It should store the terms he uses in order of frequency. Search for proper nouns!”

In a way, this was like a malicious key logger installed by the manufacturer. Even if his email was properly encrypted, this file was often left untouched.

“Big data, Wild@Hunt, search, Archenemy, reaction, Hack or Slave, experiment, deposit, home, directly, outsourced, invoice…”

“Use an advertisement emotional prediction algorithm and place those in the order most likely to inspire anxiety.”

The chainsaw Dwarf was right in front of me now. If I was killed, everyone would be placed on the chopping block. Before I was filleted, I checked the list of speech bubbles on the screen, chose the ones I needed, and released my physical voice into the world.

“You failed. The secret data got out.”

“…?”

Still crawling on the ground, I shook my smartphone so he couldn’t see the screen.

“I had thought it was odd for Hack or Slave, a major corporation’s hacker unit, to be sent out for a case of domestic abuse, but this was an experiment by Wild@Hunt, wasn’t it? To see if you could use big data to find the Archenemies blending into normal lives. The unjustified persecution and abuse was no more than something like sonar or radar. You sent out the waves and watched for a reaction. That was all it was. You were looking for wounds that healed differently from a normal human or the use of a power that can’t be explained using existing biology or physics.”

I felt goose bumps at my own words.

I still wasn’t sure if this was true. I was only piecing together the phrases in the order that would inspire the most anxiety.

But I had a feeling this was pretty accurate.

It went back to the Elf Archenemy named Sakai Iori.

Why had Wild@Hunt chosen her as a target? There had been some reason why it had to be her. And yet there were other people who stood out far more, either in a good way or a bad way.

There were Archenemies in this world. Humans were not the full population of the earth. There was a system for them to register with the government, but there were some who thought they were human like Itou Helen had until recently and others simply did not get around to submitting the paperwork. And the most important fact here was that the conditions were different for humans and Archenemies. For example, a company might use big data to create advertisements for cosmetic and health products, but immortal Archenemies could not be half-threatened into buying a product using the fear of aging or disease. Wild@Hunt ruled the world using data, so they were trying to completely control even that which existed outside the human side. That was the goal here.

They had caused that fabricated abuse.

They had done it for no other reason than she was tougher than a normal human. If that system became established, that kind of tragedy would repeat again and again as nothing more than a periodic scan!

Meanwhile, the Dwarf looked as pale as I did. However, that Hack or Slave man was probably more concerned about having his client’s secret data posted on a message board than he was about the severe moral hazard being carried out by that global corporation.

“What you wanted most of all were repeated experiments. You needed to test it as many times as you could. Sakai Iori the Elf was already registered with the government. You could have found her the normal way, but you went out of your way to search for her this way! …That fabricated abuse wasn’t isolated to that one case. You began with the simple ones and planned to gradually crank up the difficulty. So you could ultimately make a simple search that not even the Archenemy involved knew was happening! How many of those experiments are underway right now in the world!?”

“You’re lying! A crawler would never find anything talking about that. Where in the world did you find that data!?”

“The problem isn’t where it was posted. The problem is that I know it and your client will know who let me know.” I grinned. “If Wild@Hunt learns the leak came from your mobile device, what will their American HQ think? You’re just an outsourced hacker group: Hack or Slave. If they start to suspect you were only feigning obedience to steal all their internal data, you will have an awfully hard time ridding them of those doubts. I mean, these are the people who were willing to expose a child to abuse so they could earn even more obscene profits. I doubt your bosses will take kindly to professional traitors.”

“…Give me that smartphone.”

“I chose this old-fashioned model because I’m quite fond of it. I’d really rather not have some old guy’s oily fingers all over it.”

“I’ll know the truth if I check that phone! So just hand it here!!”

The Hack or Slave man roared at me and he must have felt the chainsaw alone was not enough. I saw something golden sparkling out of the corner of my eye.

Had he just barely made it in time!?

“Analysis complete. The Dwarf’s mobile device has been frequently accessing an industrial printer brought into Kukyou City. It is container sized and designed for printing cardboard models for city planning dioramas.”

Oh, so he didn’t mess with blueprints or 3D diagrams on the screen. The trigger was the creation of a life-size model in a distant location. That would explain why he couldn’t create something as large as a bomber or with complex chemical phenomena like a nuclear bomb.

At any rate, now I could save them.

I could save my precious family and the small Elf girl who was finally restarting her life after suffering from unwarranted violence.

“Make the attack, Maxwell!!”

“Sure.”

It only took an instant to end it.

A gale of destruction blew through just 5cm to the side of where the Dwarf stood.

Instead of the spring cannon, it was a spike gun that used the explosive force of a camping propane tank. A metal spike thicker than my thumb was launched 50m and that projectile’s weight and speed would leave as brutal a mark as an anti-materiel rifle. …The plans for one had been easy to find on blogs. If you could translate the English or Russian, you could see some truly insane home research projects.

But.

The supernatural hacker of Hack or Slave must have had no idea what happened. The weapon that appeared was entirely different from the one he had asked for, he had lost control of it, and it was attacking him instead.

But what he did was send an order from his mobile device to the distant printer and then use his Dwarf power to create an actual weapon based on the cardboard model.

By hacking his mobile device and sending different plans to the printer, I could have him create something else entirely. By doing that just as he was planning to use his power, I could hack his supernatural power!

“Wha-…ah!?”

“This is pretty hard to control. Also, you should probably shut off the chainsaw engine.”

I let him see my smartphone’s screen which displayed targeting crosshairs on the footage from the propane spike gun’s camera.

“If it’s still moving, the broken chain will flail around.”

The second shot hit the side of the chainsaw. The blade portion bent to the side and the chain snapped and did indeed flail around like a snake writhing in pain. The Dwarf’s face was not sliced open because the great force ripped the grip from his hands and sent it flying away from him. The broken power tool flew to the side, began leaking a fluid, and finally burst into flames as the gasoline ignited.

“Gh, hhh…!!”

His fingers must not have escaped unscathed. The Hack or Slave man had dropped his mobile device and he looked down at his hands. They were discolored a bluish-purple.

“Work with me,” I spat out while making sure to keep the distant propane spike gun aimed at him. “The way things are, you will soon be eliminated to silence you. Just like you’ve seen happen to so many people in the past.”

“…”

“I’m not talking about where to direct your resentment. I’m simply saying there’s only one way to survive this. Either you crush Wild@Hunt to release the pus, or you die.”

I too had a reason to bring down Wild@Hunt.

If that fabricated abuse really was being repeated in randomly-selected experiments all around the world, I couldn’t just ignore it. I couldn’t accept saving one small Elf as a happy ending!

The Dwarf clenched his teeth and kicked his mobile device toward me. He seemed to have accepted my terms.

“First, I need an environment where I’m free to act.” I picked up the device. “Maxwell, I’ll connect this with a cable, so start it up in debug mode. If we activate the tethering option and have it access the internet through my smartphone, we can do the same thing as the infected routers. We should be able to access all of the data he receives.”

“No. Hack or Slave are outsourced staff, so I doubt they will have full access to Wild@Hunt’s internal storage.”

“Your prediction still needs work. Hear me out.” I smiled. “Wild@Hunt’s weapon is the global big data taken from their business operations. But you can’t gather big data by holing up in a shell. They create that giant monster by snatching up data from all sorts of places: police stations, courthouses, city halls, TV stations, newspapers, hospitals, schools, supermarkets, and convenience stores.”

For example, if someone was pulling a certificate of residence out of a convenience store copier to submit it to the city hall, they should keep in mind that the data would remain inside the industrial copier’s memory. Convenient services always exposed your data to danger. So should you really resent the effort it took to do it right?

“Oh?” said Maxwell. “In that case…”

“Even if we can’t go after Wild@Hunt HQ, the small stores that supply that data use normal Winners with normal Bordon or Astersky. Well, some of them might use fancy Dac desktops with that pear logo on them. The city halls and police will at most have their own servers and a contract with a security company. By swapping out that data and having Wild@Hunt HQ gather nonsense, they’ll lay a rotten golden egg of mistaken big data.”

Even if you had 10,000 people take a survey, you couldn’t analyze the views of the urban youth if every participant lived in the mountains. You would end up thinking kids in the city wanted boar meat.

So as long as we had a list of what stores Wild@Hunt gathered its data from, we could attack them. And since they were supposedly an outsourced security group, Hack or Slave would have been instructed to take data even from the uncooperative companies. They couldn’t do their job without a list of which was which.

“I have found 89 companies and 156 organizations. But even that is likely only his section’s share and thus just the tip of the iceberg.”

“Now I’m not going to feel comfortable even buying a drink from a vending machine with a camera on it. Okay, Maxwell, let’s swap out each company’s data to lead Wild@Hunt’s supercomputer to a false conclusion.”

“What exactly should that be?”

“Let’s invent a fictional hacker group that only exists as data. And make sure to leave traces of past activities that show a coherent history if you follow it. Make it so they did Kukyou 1st Broadcasting. No, make it so they’re the top suspect for revealing that the fabricated abuse was a Wild@Hunt experiment. And have it look more likely that the data was gathered from everyone instead of just that Dwarf’s report. That way I’ll be free.”

I was already taking on Hack or Slave like this, but this was the Techno Parade hacker festival. It would make perfect sense to assume I had struck back after someone attacked my smartphone based on false suspicion. This was pretty common for the hackers and engineers who came here from all around the globe. …In fact, they were constantly making benign cyber attacks to communicate with each other or test their strength.

“Task setup complete. Executing…”

“Now Wild@Hunt’s elites will be forced to eternally pursue a phantom that never really existed.”

Big data was undoubtedly convenient, but blindly trusting it would trip you up. Even if an individual thought something seemed off, it was hard to overturn an answer reached by a giant computer.

“What should I name the fictional hacker group?” asked Maxwell.

“Choose two English words that are far removed from my tastes.”

“Sure. Then I will go with Possession Spirit.”

This was the first step.

''Now that I’ve freed myself from suspicion, it’s time for an all-out attack, Wild@Hunt.

===[Support by] Records of Possession Spirit’s Activities [DELTA brain]===

Possession Spirit is a hacker group. Opinions are split over whether they are an individual or a group, but the leading theory is that they are a group.

Records of their activities were cleverly hidden, but their first known case was the malfunctioning of an American lobster breeding plant in Fiji. After that, they were involved in crashing the guest records of luxury tourist hotels in South Pacific countries such as Vanuatu or Samoa and in leaking bank data from tax havens.

There are records of them using videos to criticize celebrities in the past (although those videos have all been deleted by the site administrators). Based on the remaining transcripts, they especially hate Western IT companies and tend to advocate an intellectual liberation of the southern hemisphere.

They have never directly targeted Japan, but there is always a risk of being indirectly targeted due to Japan taking stances very similar to America’s on many issues.

…I will make a clean copy using this format. Is that okay? (y/n)

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| Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume6_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
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My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume2 Chapter 1

2017-11-05T14:14:28Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 1==

===Part 1===

Everything had happened in such quick succession that my mind was nearly overloaded, but I couldn’t just stand around forever.

The first battle began at 10.

That was when a public execution would be broadcast live nationwide.

“Right now it’s…just past 8.”

I had less than 2 hours until it began.

Where was this crucial match being held?

Itou Helen had been walking out in the open not long before. Even if the Bright Cross had taken her away, they couldn’t have taken her too far. And that blue bunny girl had said their home ground was Kukyou City, so they had to be nearby. The Bright Cross still had its roots in this city.

Where had Itou Helen been captured and where had she been taken?

“Maxwell, call the police.”

“No. And send them where? We do not know where the victim or perpetrators are, so no police officers can be sent in.”

“You saw what they were showing on TV! There had to be more than 100 million witnesses. How can they not stop this!?”

“No. They cannot be accused of anything if this is a recording passing itself off as a live broadcast or if it is entirely fictional. It could also be a live broadcast from outside the country while only pretending to be inside Japan. The police would first have to do some investigation to determine whether or not Japanese law even applies to those ‘on the television screen’.”

“We only have 2 hours.”

“Sure. And that is likely why they felt comfortable announcing this so boldly. They decided that no one can stop it now.”

“…Dammit.”

The Bright Cross was not just some insane moron uploading videos to the internet, so they would think about how to cover their asses.

So if they’re going this far, did it mean they had a system in place to make sure they couldn’t be charged with a crime?

…''Wait, uploading videos?

“Maxwell, can we leak the data of the true Colosseum onto the internet? Do that and everyone should be able to tell how horrific this really is!”

“No. What you have is merely simulation data and not actual witness information. In other words, it does not qualify as evidence. …And the underground facility was cleared out.”

The Bright Cross covered everything up in reality while we had divulged the truth in virtual reality.

If the two came into conflict, the Bright Cross would win.

And yet they were the ones that abandoned their underground facility because they knew it was inconvenient for them!

I couldn’t rely on the police.

Leaking the truth onto the internet would accomplish nothing.

No one was on my side.

“What do I do?”

The Bright Cross had surpassed our simulation.

They had upgraded their cruel Colosseum to the level of national authorization.

And one of the combatants there would be Itou Helen, an underclassman from my school.

“What can I even do now…?”

What could I do?

I didn’t need unrealistic heroic fantasies here. I could wait until later to complain about how weak and powerless I was.

What was truly within my grasp? How far would my hand reach?

I didn’t know where the Bright Cross’s new headquarters were or where Itou Helen was being imprisoned now that she had apparently been captured.

What I wanted was information.

If I could locate either the Bright Cross or Itou Helen, I could find the other. That underclassman who was apparently a witch had been abducted by the Bright Cross, so she would have been brought to one of their bases or hideouts.

I didn’t have much time.

I didn’t want to waste any of it.

So even if it was a roundabout route, I had to take the definite course ahead of me. That way I wouldn’t run into dead ends later and have to make pathetic U-turn after pathetic U-turn.

Which meant…

“…Erika and Ayumi.”

Those two had once overcome the Bright Cross’s final test and been given the freedom to live in human society. They had a connection to all this, so they might be able to give me a hint if I asked.

However.

Once I returned home and opened the front door, Erika and Ayumi both immediately attacked me.

“Orahhh! What happened to my melon bread, Onii-chaaan!? Fuguuu!!”

“Oh, dear. This is a problem. Your big sister prefers to avoid these more inappropriate methods, but you leave me no choice.”

Yes.

I had never resolved the melon bread issue back home!

“Gyaaahh! If both of you perform a cross armlock on an arm, I can never escape! I can’t even tap out!!”

''And you both know that performing an armlock means holding my arm to your crotch, don’t you? I’m not letting you do additional damage by going all ‘kyah, pervert!’ after the fact! Especially you, negligee big sister. Based on the feeling on my arm, you aren’t wearing any underwear, are you!?

“Huh? Onii-chan, what’s this plastic bag?”

“This aroma… Why is there Asamiya melon bread here!?”

''L-looks like I have to explain.

“It’s true that Asamiya’s melon bread is a super rare limited product that they only sell 20 of each day, but they also send some to regional retail stores. And for some reason, that somewhat expensive organic vegetable convenience store called Natural Seven is registered with them and gets some of Asamiya’s melon bread! You can thank Maxwell for all that information!!”

Those magic words dispelled the curse of the double armlock.

“Ohhh! So this is the limited edition bread I dreamed of…”

“Oh? You even bought 2 of them. How adorable of you.”

From their perspective, the single bread they had been willing to perform wrestling moves over had doubled into 2. I could only pray it didn’t taste weird to them.

But then Erika and Ayumi both split their melon bread in half.

“Wait, what are you two doing? Can you not fit that much in your mouth?”

“Eh? Well…”

“With only 2 of them, there’s none for you, Onii-chan.”

I was caught off guard by that one.

“Wait, wait. This was a purification ritual to wash away my own sin. I already ate the first one.”

“That doesn’t matter. Your beautiful, kind, and smart big sister has a heart as big as her boobs, so she could never eat this while leaving you with nothing.”

It didn’t really add up right. When both sisters handed me a half, I ended up with a whole one. Nevertheless, they both began eating the melon bread with the biggest smiles imaginable.

They may have been more upset that they couldn’t share the bread with everyone than at having it taken from them.

But now that the tense atmosphere was gone, I felt like I could bring up the real topic at hand.

“Erika, Ayumi. I’d like to discuss something with you.”

“Wut ih it?”

“Ayumi-chan, don’t talk with food in your mouth. So, Satori-kun, what would you like to discuss?”

“Well.” I nodded. “Um, about the Bright Cro-…”

Two pairs of glowing eyes seemed pierce my soul.

“Kah…hah…?”

My breath caught in my throat.

They were still only eating melon bread in their pajamas, but the look in their eyes had entirely changed.

“Hmm. If possible, I never wanted to hear that name from your mouth, Onii-chan.”

“There’s no helping that. The pandemonium is out in the open now. It was even playing on our living room TV.”

Yes. That broadcast had played on TV.

That meant my sisters would know about it. They would know the Level 4 Colosseum hidden deep underground had mutated into something else.

Trapped by the brightly shining light in their eyes, I sat down like a frog cowering in front of a great snake.

“U-umm. An underclassman at school was apparently captured for this Colosseum, so I’d like to do something about that before the match begins…”

“Ohh? Now that’s interesting. So my super indoorsy and scrawny Onii-chan is going to pick a fight with the great Bright Cross? When did you turn into a warrior of justice chosen by heaven?”

“That’s right. If anything, I think letting Ayumi-chan and me go on a rampage has better odds. Eh heh heh. Not even the Bright Cross’s plans could continue if Kukyou City was filled with vampires and zombies.”

''Wait, wait, you idiots.

''Aren’t you getting everything backwards!?

“This isn’t a virtual reality built in a disaster environment simulator! There are no continues here!! You can’t fill the real world with vampires and zom-…!!”

As I shouted, my sisters placed their index fingers on my lips.

I stopped speaking and they took over.

“Do ''you'' understand that, Onii-chan? We’re talking about real lives here.”

“…”

“Oh, dear. And unlike a vampire or a zombie, a human like you has even less of a chance. I bet you haven’t even imagined what failure means when you’re dealing with ''the'' Bright Cross.”

Yes.

Of course they understood.

Those two had survived the true Colosseum in that hellish subterranean world, so they knew firsthand how cruel the Bright Cross was.

Would the Bright Cross go easy on me because I was a human like them? Would they overlook me?

Of course not.

If “something” happened, would I be the only one harmed? What about my sisters and parents back home? What about my school and neighborhood? Even the Class Rep might be used as a shield. They would go that far.

Itou Helen was an underclassman from school.

That was all.

If I weighed her against my sister sand the Class Rap, it was obvious who would win out.

Was it really worth going this far to rescue her?

What did I want to do?

I thought.

I contemplated.

And then I raised my head again to face those two who knew true hell.

“That’s all the more reason I have to stand up to them. If there’s any risk of them laying even a finger on the people I care about, of course I have to destroy them.”

Yes.

That’s right.

The Bright Cross had already done that. They had built a strange execution facility below the city I had been born and raised in, they had mercilessly disposed of countless Archenemies, they had placed Erika and Ayumi on the chopping block, and now they had reached for an underclassman at school.

Who could say for sure that it would end there?

Tomorrow I might find Erika or Ayumi being threatened on TV. If the Class Rep or I became an inconvenience for the Bright Cross, they might claim we were some random Archenemy or another to have us killed in a battle with the undead.

“Anyone who’s willing to abandon someone else will be abandoned by others.”

Heat boiled in the pit of my stomach.

And I let that heat out in the form of words.

“I think an honest person will sometimes run into trouble, but someone who refuses to save anyone will eventually not be saved by others. I don’t want to end up like Itou Helen there on the TV screen. And because I don’t, I’ll save someone who’s in that position now. I have to save her! It doesn’t matter how well I know her!!”

After all, I would never want to see Erika or Ayumi maliciously displayed on the TV screen.

I would never want to see odds placed on their chances as people bet on or against them.

I had no idea if Itou Helen would come to save us if our situations were reversed.

But that was no reason to abandon her.

I wanted to live with pride.

I wasn’t going to live a life where I hung my head and held my stomach whenever I caught sight of the name Itou Helen!

“This time it’s real. There are no redos or continues here.”

Dammit.

It was obvious once I said it. It was so simple.

And that’s why I can’t afford to fail! I refuse to give up on her here! I will not let them drag us away from the path of normalcy! Will I save Itou Helen? If I couldn’t say ‘of course’, how could I call myself human!!!???”

Erika and Ayumi looked dazed.

They might have been shocked at how vague my “plan” was.

“…If only everyone in the world was like you, Satori-kun.”

“?”

Erika muttered something under her breath.

“It’s nothing. Anyway, I refuse to take my precious little brother anywhere dangerous, so I’m not giving you any hints. I won’t tell you anything that would lead you to the Bright Cross.”

“Kh.”

“But, Onii-chan, you’ll still head out alone to save Itou Helen, won’t you?”

“Y-yes. Of course I will. If you two won’t help out, then I’ll go do it on my own! Why wouldn’t I!? How is that girl any different from us!?”

“Then go look into it on your own,” said Erika with a sigh. But she had more to say. “Satori-kun, the Bright Cross is large. Incredibly so. But giant organizations have their own holes.”

“They do information warfare differently, Onii-chan. You can do 3 things with information: gather it, spread it, and hide it. The Bright Cross exists all around the world, so they specialize in gathering and spreading information. But that makes them very poor at the hiding part.”

“Ah.”

Now that they mentioned it, we all knew of the Bright Cross.

The CIA was the world’s largest intelligence agency, but being a household name the world over was a bad thing for them. They had not worked to be well known. They had simply become well known after growing so large.

Why had the Bright Cross left their underground facility?

Because I had discovered it.

They had feared receiving a perfect attack based on massive simulation data.

They had feared it?

Such a large organization had feared me?

“…”

I couldn’t let them distract me.

I had to look back over the situation.

Who, where, and what had been involved in this incident surrounding Itou Helen? What was the deepest darkness here? My sisters had said the Bright Cross was so large that they could not fully hide their own existence. That was why they had forcibly set up a situation where no one could touch them even if they were seen.

“Thanks, Erika and Ayumi. I’ve finally seen what I have to do.”

My sisters shrugged in an exasperated sort of way.

''Sorry I’m such a terrible brother.

''But I have to go. I have to stand up to this wicked and unreasonable absurdity.

And so I turned my back on the family waiting back home and spoke two simple words.

“I’m going.”

===Part 2===

I left the house.

I was exposed to the night air.

It was a true night where even the moonlight looked sinister.

“Maxwell.”

“Sure. Exiting standby mode. User, give me my orders.”

“Check for any calls from around Itou Helen’s home. Start with any calls to the police.”

“There was an emergency call from her home’s landline at 8:03 PM. The call lasted 2 minutes and 45 seconds.”

Well, it makes sense after their daughter was suddenly placed in the ring on TV.

No.

“Unlike me, they would have no way of knowing that’s a real fight to the death. The bunny girl might have mentioned the loser’s body, but that could have just been talk. Calling the police right away seems sudden.”

“Perhaps they thought she was forcibly recruited or abducted. After the police, they called the general reception desk at Kukyou 1st Broadcasting.”

“The TV station is claiming not to know anything either? But how?”

“They claim to have purchased and broadcasted a foreign TV program and thus have not played any role in the production. They say to direct any questions to Socialist Carnalgrad National Broadcasting.”

So that was why.

And did that country even exist?

“Then that’s where we’ll start.”

I could understand the police being caught off guard. The higher ups might be in the Bright Cross’s pocket, but the workers at the bottom would never believe that anyone would be brazen enough to kill people in the middle of a live TV broadcast.

But the way the TV station was brushing people off was clearly more malicious. I could tell they already had a script to follow.

I doubted everyone working there was also working for the Bright Cross, but they obviously had taken root there.

Kukyou 1st Broadcasting.

I was sure I could find something there.

With any luck, Itou Helen would be there, but if not, I could probably mess with their broadcast equipment to cause a malfunction and perhaps even put a stop to their farce.

“Maxwell, let’s get to the broadcast station. I’ll need your help to get in. Can you do that?”

“Sure. You are the only user I accept.”

I was glad to hear that second part.

Especially when attacking a TV station could easily get me labeled a terrorist in the newspaper headlines.

It was just before 9.

The trains were still running.

I was on my way to fight an international organization, so it was laughable that I needed my IC card to get there.

It wasn’t even the weekend, but the area around the station was crowded.

The large screen on an electronics store wall displayed a smiling bunny girl colored the bright blue of a rainforest butterfly.

“The Colosseum is finally beginning. But, but. I might not know exactly what an Archenemy is, so I wonder if the witch or the mermaid is more frightening.”

“The definition of a witch is too broad to say anything for sure, but a mermaid is much simpler. Unlike in the fairy tales, historical mermaids are man-eating creatures. They sit on stones, lure sailors into the ocean with their alluring song, drag their struggling prey to the bottom of the ocean, and devour them. Truly a stereotypical Archenemy.”

“Oh, my, my. So as most people seem to expect, will the more monstrous mermaid have the advantage here?”

“It’s hard to say. I’ve heard that Itou Helen is a Greek-style witch. More specifically, one based on the Circe tradition. In that case, the more frightening of the two would be…”

It pissed me off.

But no one at all was throwing stones at the screen. In fact…

“Don’t push! Please don’t push! The tickets are on sale until 9:50! There’s still plenty of time, so calm down, everyone!!”

A young woman was yelling from a stand much like for a local lottery.

“It’s all or nothing! You bet everything on one of the two. It’s the most basic form of gambling and is far simpler than horse racing or keirin. If you don’t know what to do, this tipster will tell you how it’s done. Don’t you want some information to help you make easy money!?”

There were a lot of voices like that near the ticket stand crowd.

I could even see some uniformed police officers here and there:

“Ksshhh! Yes, yes. All of you good kids follow the rules and enjoy this game meant for proper ladies and gentleman. The dancer police would really prefer not to ruin your lovely evening.”

…They were all like this.

Not all of them would be involved with the Bright Cross. I doubted even that strange tipster man had been informed in advance and then simply kept quiet until today. And this had to have been a complete surprise for those dancer police or whatever they were.

“Beautiful Japanese High Vision provides a new age of HD for a new age Colosseum.”

“Hachitama is advertising the Dive Device’s Reading Company. The latest forms of entertainment can be seen and touched. Hachitama Electronics supports the Colosseum.”

They were even adapting to it.

They were riding this sudden wave and even egging it on.

“In a way, this is even uglier than the Bright Cross itself.”

“Shall I bring down the power in this area?”

That would have been oh-so-satisfying but ultimately meaningless.

I entered the station and boarded a train.

The electronic advertisement above the automatic door displayed the following text:

“The Circe Witch vs. the Man-Eating Mermaid. The billionaire’s countdown has reached 43:20. Buy your ticket now!”

When had the world gone insane?

I didn’t want to think it always had been.

I wanted to believe something had caused this. That I could fix the broken gear to return everything to normal.

After arriving near the broadcast station, I found a commotion there too.

But it looked different from a simple gambling frenzy. I don’t know where they got it from, but a group had blown up a photo of Itou Helen and placed it all over the panels and placards they held.

“Helen-taaan! Can you hear us cheering for you!?”

“Ohhhh! We’re on your side!! We’re praying for your victory!! Go, go, Helen-taaaan!!”

''What do you mean you’re on her side?

''If you really were, you wouldn’t push her toward an actual fight to the death!

“User, reaching the broadcast station is easy enough, but how do you intend to get inside?”

“I’ll rely on you.”

I walked right up to the front gate.

The guards on either side naturally glared at me, but…

“Good evening.”

With that, I pressed my palm against the ID panel on the side of the automatic glass door.

…With my smartphone still in my hand.

It was probably a vein scanner like at a bank ATM, but that didn’t matter with Maxwell’s machine power.

With a standard beep, the entire panel glowed green to show I was approved.

The tough-looking guards nodded at me.

“Good evening.”

“Yes, yes.”

After that, I walked right through the glass gate.

“It would be best to slip in as a part-time janitor. Labor standards ban anyone under 18 from working past 8, so it would be easiest to pass you off as a baby-faced college student.”

“Seriously? So in the data here, I’m older than Erika? I can’t imagine living in a world like that.”

What I needed was data on the Colosseum’s live broadcast.

“Hacking station intranet…” said Maxwell.

The results were displayed 30 seconds later.

“There are records of a great quantity of materials being delivered to the 2nd song hall. The format is much like that of an MMA tournament.”

“Where is the waiting room for contestants?”

“I searched for records of one, but did not find anything. However…”

“What is it, Maxwell?”

“The delivery list contained two large animal cages. They are the type used by vets and circuses and are built to contain even a Bengal tiger.”

“Goddamn them!!”

At any rate, I had to get to the 7th floor.

If I was lucky, the cages holding Itou Helen and her opponent would be there, but if not, I could still gather information from any computers or phones I found.

Or so I thought.

Until I actually rode the elevator up to the 7th floor, that is.

“Ah.”

I stared blankly for a moment.

It was right there in the middle of the hallway.

As if they had hired a moving company, a girl in a cage had been carried in by attaching wheels and handles to the box.

I didn’t count how many men were standing around it.

My eyes were drawn to the tearful blonde girl curled up in the cage.

There was no sign of the baggy white sweater or chocolate-colored miniskirt from before.

Instead, she wore a short black dress, a pointed wide-brimmed hat, and a thick cape. She used both hands to hold a glass wand that looked like a complex collection of clear tubes and protuberances. She looked just like a witch from a children’s picture book, but I doubted Itou Helen would choose to dress like that after being abducted.

So what had happened here?

What had happened to her original clothes?

The answer was obvious.

They had been stripped from her.

By the many hands gathering around her.

“Ohh.”

I couldn’t maintain my thoughts beyond that point. In fact, I was amazed I managed it that far.

“Owwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

I yelled.

I let out a roar.

The various stubbly men finally turned around to see what was going on, but I was already charging straight toward them. I tackled one of them to the ground, punched him in the face, and bit at another man’s arm that reached for me from the side. The curse in my heart hoped to see the bone.

“What’s wrong with this kid!? He’s gone insane!!”

They kicked me in the back.

As I writhed on the ground, the soles of their shoes pressed down on my gut, my chest, my back, and my head. They pummeled me from all sides.

To be honest, I could not stop the fire burning inside me. So I wasn’t even pretending to be tough; I honestly couldn’t feel the pain.

Before long, I heard a shrill scream. It wasn’t mine and it wasn’t from the scum kicking me.

It was the girl in the cage.

The witch threw down the glass wand someone had given her and grabbed the cage’s bars with her small hands as she cried.

Not at her own circumstances, but at seeing me being punched and kicked.

I learned for the first time that my anger could kick into an even higher gear.

“Maxweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!”

“Sure.”

His response was immediate.

I heard something popping and bursting from the chests and hips of the men around me.

It was the lithium batteries of their radios and cellphones.

The explosion in their pockets and right next to their skin was enough to smash the bone.

As the men screamed and writhed in pain, I slowly stood up.

The cage’s lock…was analog. I thought it was called a dimple lock, but I didn’t know the details and I couldn’t just leave it to Maxwell.

Then it didn’t matter who.

I grabbed one of the men by the collar and slammed his back against the hallway wall.

“Gah!?”

“Where’s the key?”

“I-I don’t know. We’re…ow…we’re just bottom level ADs! I don’t know about any key!!”

“Maxwell.”

“Sure. User, please press your smartphone against the target’s ear.”

“Are you going to use ultrasonic waves?”

“No. This is a mobile phone, so I can directly use microwaves,” calmly replied Maxwell’s message. “An international health agency has reported that a conversation of more than 20 minutes increases the risk of a brain tumor. If the microwaves are redirected to focus inside the target’s cranium, we can plant the seeds of the invisible grim reaper there. Let us induce cancer cells in an entirely inoperable location.”

I was pretty sure this was a bluff.

But part of me didn’t care if it wasn’t.

“W-wait! You’re kidding, right!?”

“You can believe it or not. But do you really think this is an innocent prank after I blasted your leg with a cyber-attack?”

“I-I really don’t know! C’mon, I’m sorry! So, waaaaaaait!?”

“Cancer risk…30%...40%...50%...”

“This is taking too long. Maxwell, kick it up to 100% right away. We can have him talk after we’re sure he’s gonna die. Just like a head blinking after being removed with a guillotine.”

I heard a loud thud.

The man’s eyes had rolled back in his head and he crumpled to the ground. I’d prefer to leave out this detail, but he also pissed himself.

“He didn’t talk even after that, so he really must not have known,” surmised Maxwell.

“I’m not so sure.”

But even without the key, I had made it to Itou Helen in her cage.

As long as I could keep her from entering the Colosseum studio, I could save her. I could even cart the cage outside of the building.

Itou Helen sobbed in the cage.

“Um, Senpai, um, uh, why…?”

“I don’t know. What do you think? Is this also just like your ‘Onii-chan’?”

“…”

“Anyway, leave the rest to me. Once I get you out of the TV station-…”

I trailed off.

A voice spoke from the broadcast equipment in the hallway.

“Ding dong dong dong. The legal gambling Colosseum will begin airing in 10 minutes. All staff gather in the studio. I repeat…”

I checked my smartphone’s clock and saw it was nearly 10.

''Damn!

All the doors around me opened. Men and women exited them. They all looked at Itou Helen who picked back up the glass wand and held it to her flat chest as she cowered inside the cage. They were approaching!!

“Maxwell.”

“You are outnumbered. The battery attack is not almighty.”

“I wasn’t asking for that. How far have you made it into the TV station’s system? Can you place a fake ID for me in there?”

“Sure. But you have no time. Make your order quickly.”

That was when I threw my hands in the air and shouted at the arriving staff.

“What is the meaning of this!? Are you even thinking about the condition of my fighter!?”

“Who are you…?”

“Amatsu Satori.”

I was hesitant to use my real name with these monsters, but I didn’t have time to sit around thinking up a cool fake name.

“You can check if you want, but I’m from that witch’s school! I’m here as her second!! I know you’ve probably paid a lot of money to put on this TV show, but don’t you forget that I’ve got a ton of money riding on this too! Don’t treat her so carelessly! How is she supposed to win like this!?”

I had to buy some time.

Until Maxwell could finish his work.

“Or what? Is this whole thing fixed from the start? Ohh, so that’s it. Well, how about I go reveal it all on some message boards, blogs, and SNSs!? If it turns out this new legal gambling was fixed from the very first match, all those drunks spending all their money on tickets are gonna riot, don’t you think!?”

A heard a quiet beep from my smartphone.

At the same time, another staff member sighed after confirming my identity on their tablet.

“He really is the Archenemy’s second. We also have a record of him entering the studio.”

“Our apologies.”

As the female staff member relaxed, I clenched and unclenched my hands in front of my face.

“I’m glad you understand.”

“Amatsu-san, the broadcast time is approaching. Please follow us to the stage.”

“Fine. But! Next time!! Don’t you dare approach my golden-egg-laying goose without my permission!”

I grabbed at the handle of Itou Helen’s cage as if snatching her away from the staff who had given me a lame apology.

The small animal style of blonde witch looked confused, so I secretly showed her my smartphone screen.

It said:

“Sorry. I promise I’ll get you out of here, so please focus on surviving this one match for now.”

And…

“We’re in this together. I won’t abandon you. Let’s both get out of here alive.”

The studio was close by.

As soon as the soundproofed double doors opened, I was hit by an overwhelming deluge of noise and light.

“Ladies and gentlemen!! It’s time for the Colosseum, the game that is sure to excite any reasonable adult!!”

The backlight was too bright to see anything.

Finally, a square ring came into view through the blinding spotlight.

But it was not surrounded by ropes like for boxing or professional wrestling. It was a giant 15 meter bug cage made of transparent reinforced glass. That was the stage for the deadly battles.

And the cheers came from the stepped stadium-style seating surrounding it in every direction.

It was not all that different from the setup for professional wrestling or mixed martial arts.

But where had all these people come from?

This was a Colosseum where people would really fight to the death. The location was supposed to be a secret.

My question was answered by the bunny girl standing on top of the bug cage.

Her long hair and the bunny costume were both the bright blue of a rainforest butterfly.

She stood tall with microphone in hand and she vied for everyone’s attention as the flood of light seemed to stab down toward her.

“Good evening, all of you who won the strict lottery based on your ticket number! But, but! Are you sure that was a good thing? This gamble is entirely decided on the result of the battle itself. I hope you didn’t use up all your luck just getting here.”

I couldn’t believe them.

There was something wrong with both the blue bunny girl and the cheerful crowd! There were so many of them. When they were sent the location through email or whatever, did none of them run to the police? Really? Not even one!?

“On one side we have the motivated Itou Helen who has been certified as a witch! How does it feel to have deceived all your friends at school for so long? But tonight let’s throw out those lies and fight with everything we’ve got! We need a real battle between monsters!!”

…''You!!

My underclassman cowered down in the cage as the many strobe lights and camera lenses turned her way, but did she really look that wicked?

I clenched my teeth.

“Maxwell.”

“Sure.”

“Turn my smartphone’s HD mode on. It may be silly now that she’s standing in front of the TV camera, but I want to record her face. I’m not letting her be forgotten.”

“Understood. I will also record her behavior and stance and create a color chart for her face. That way, I can search for her even without a front-on shot.”

“And if they’re going to throw out their morals, I’ll just have to do the same. If that domineering bunny is going to look down on me, I’ll just have to get some low angle shots of her crotch!!

Isn’t it strange how the tighter the fabric over a girl’s crotch, the puffier it looks!?”

“User, I must question your character here.”

Meanwhile, the situation advanced.

There was no escape now, so we would have to overcome this rather than avoid it.

“We might have a lovely image of mermaids, but they’re more like the gangsters of the sea. These man-eating monsters mercilessly bare their fangs against drowning humans. Please welcome Kuroyama Hinoki!!”

On the other side of the giant bug cage, an identical cage was carted in. It contained a girl with long black hair who looked the same age as if not a little older than me. And her hair really was long. It looked more than ankle length. That hair was wrapped tightly around her bare legs to create a silhouette much like a fish’s tail fin.

She was not wearing any clothes. Her chest and lower stomach were hidden by the hair wrapped around her torso.

“What…is that? That’s a mermaid?”

“Sure. There are a variety of theories as to the origin of mermaids, but one says they normally wear the skin of a seal and a naked woman emerges when they arrive on land. This may be that subspecies.”

Even if it was a part of her body, this Archenemy covered her body with something other than her own skin to achieve new function while moving through the water.

“And if the seal skin is taken from her while she is on land, the mermaid must marry that person. While naked.”

“Dammit, just analyze this opponent. Dammit!!”

“User, please do not tap the shutter icon so quickly while pointing the lens at a naked hair-wrapped girl. People might question my character as well.”

Among the many staff members on that side, one young man had a tense expression.

That was probably her second.

He was the one and only person who had decided to take the side of the monster in the cage. Unlike the foolish prince from the fairy tale, he had realized what the mermaid was and still accepted her.

“…”

“…”

Our eyes met for just a brief moment.

His eyes showed hopeless panic but also hostility.

“Is everyone ready? Are you clutching your tickets? Then let’s get started! Let’s begin this new entertainment and new industry that is sure to usher in a new age! Japan’s dawn is nigh. Fly into the world, Colosseum! The first battle of that brilliant vision begins now!!!!!!”

===[Search Engine] From a Security Company Intercom [Absolute NOAH]===

“Onii-chan left,” said Ayumi in the entranceway. “Onee-chan, you understand that Onii-chan has no chance of winning, right? He’s almost certain to fail and then his life will be in danger.”

“Well, it is true that real life isn’t like a melodrama.”

But Erika had more to say.

“But how could we stop him? Weren’t we both always hoping and praying for this when we were trapped in that dark space underground? Hoping and praying that a knight in shining armor we had never met would come to save us?”

That knight had not arrived in time for them.

Erika and Ayumi had bravely paved their own way to survival.

But what if someone was becoming that knight now? And what if there was some other girl who had no choice but to wait for that knight in shining armor?

“There’s really nothing we can do about this.”

“Yeah, but what if Onii-chan is captured by the Bright Cross?”

“Oh? I think you know exactly what we do then, Ayumi-chan.”

The sisters smiled cheerfully together.

And those residents of the night answered in unison.

“If it comes to that, we’ll have to drown the world in a sea of blood.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll have to drown the world in a sea of blood.”

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| Back to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_0|Chapter 0]]
| Return to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
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My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume1 Chapter 3

2017-10-21T16:26:39Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 3==

I took the collapsible bike back from the Swimsuit Class Rep, rested it on my shoulder, and pulled her into a nearby multi-tenant building. I didn’t want to stay on the ground floor, so we ran up the emergency stairs.

The Swimsuit Class Rep glanced out the window and commented on the scene outside.

“Wow, it’s already started.”

“Yeah, an elephant’s already shown up.”

“And people’s very skeletons are being crushed beyond recognit-…”

“You don’t have to report all the details! If you have the resources for that, then use them to read me a porn novel! And do it in the Class Rep’s strict voice!!”

“After being pushed back onto the cheap bed, Kyouko looked up at the man’s face as he leaned in close. The breath that left her red rouge lips was as sweet as-…”

“Wait, stop. I don’t need that vision mixed into this grotesque scene! And where did you get data on a porn novel!?”

The inviable wall of rusty-smelling “pressure” was far stronger than before.

I shut all the rooms’s windows as hard as I could.

This was bad.

What was bad, you ask? The zombie people were being crushed as much as anyone else. Sometimes the ferocious beasts butted heads and got into fights and I could tell their rampage was crushing cars and motorcycles.

It was all so insane I felt some inappropriate laughter coming on.

That was how unrealistic it all was.

If a bear or lion had shown up first and started chomping on people, we might have gone pale and trembled. But an elephant? Just by stomping through the shopping district, the people who were supposed to be there seemed to have been transformed into mere “things”. It was too much to actually imagine the pain for myself.

There were also plenty of rhinos and hippos.

The twitching masses of blood being thrown around…were unlikely to be survivors. That vitality could only belong to zombies. Just like at the school, they had no unity whatsoever.

And it seemed like my little sister was going through an herbivore-loving phase. "Oh, no. She might be holding a grudge for our argument over the strongest animal during that trivia show we were watching. But Onii-chan still thinks that pyramid wouldn’t exist if herbivores were unbeatable."

“This is strange.”

“What is?”

“Aren’t those animal zombies a lot more beaten-up looking…that is, injured than Ayumi and the other human zombies? With a lot of them, I can see their bones…”

The zombies were only walking around, so they would not end up that way at the normal pace of decomposition. Ayumi had supposedly only attacked the zoo a moment ago.

I wondered if it was due to the fighting between animals, but Maxwell provided a different explanation.

“It may be an issue of compatibility.”

“?”

“Miss Ayumi is a slender girl who could probably do gymnastics or figure skating, but the animals are all masses of muscle. The Acute Zombie Powder allows them to surpass their upper limits, but that risks an increase in their speed of self-destruction.”

“So everything has its downside, huh?”

I groaned.

Rotting without healing was just how it worked with zombies.

In that case, the elephants and rhinos would probably be knocked out of the fight fairly quickly after their giant body’s strength was increased beyond its limits. They would be taken out by their own weight and power.

That said, we couldn’t just wait around for the giant ones to destroy themselves. That was like waiting for a time bomb’s battery to die because you didn’t know how to disarm it. Odds were pretty good it would blow you up first.

“So why are the rhinos and hippos so aggressive? If the zombification increased their hunger, wouldn’t they be fighting over the grassy empty lots or the river water?”

“They may just be fighting back as the human zombies bite them. But the animal zombies cannot distinguish the normal people from the zombies, so they go after everything with a human-sized silhouette. They are attacking that fried chicken mascot as well.”

“What a pain-in-the-ass combination!!”

I could generally tell which animals were on the biggest rampage due to the blood splattered on them like marks on a plane for each enemy shot down. The African elephant was at the top. Nearly its entire body was red and it had flattened silhouettes stuck to it that almost looked like nothing more than skin. Had those been normal people or zombies? Could they still move like that? I seriously doubted it. At any rate, I wanted to avoid joining them there.

“As the simulation has yet to end, I can deduce that she is fine, but isn’t it possible Miss Ayumi has been crushed by one of them or ended up inside one of their stomachs?”

“I want to believe not even Ayumi is that dumb, but then again…it is Ayumi.”

With Ayumi, I couldn’t be 100% certain that wouldn’t happen.

Unlike Erika, she was unpredictable in a negative way. She would say she had bought some underwear even more adult than our older sister and end up with some kind of cute and frilly girl’s loincloth shipped in from overseas!

“And they do not seem interested in entering the buildings.”

“I wonder why not. Maybe the elephants and rhinos are afraid of small spaces like this. The ceilings are low and there are all sorts of store shelves inside. You see them sleeping under trees, but you don’t really see them escaping into cramped caves.”

“Even as zombies?”

“I’ve never seen animal zombies before, so I don’t how they’ll act.”

Normal zombies continued walking upright even after abandoning all rational thought and that was a very human trait. Just as zombies didn’t start running around on all fours, ones based on other animals might continue following their primitive instincts.

That said, our safety was not assured up in the building. The elephant seemed to be the biggest one, but Ayumi would have prepared some other animals. There had to be a mixture of herbivore and carnivore, big and small. When debating over the strongest animal while watching TV, what was it Erika and I had said that made that herbivore-supporter cry? At any rate, there might be some that could enter the building and climb the stairs or maybe even climb the drain spouts like they were trees.

Was it cheetahs that could climb trees? Or leopards? Wait, no. Jaguars???

At any rate, I had to watch out for the big felines!!

Although if those carnivores were out there, I was pretty sure they would be chowing down on the normal humans and zombies alike, but then what happened inside the animal zombie’s body? It was hard to picture things on the microscopic scale, but the odds of infection likely grew when more of the virus was present. They were dangerous regardless, but would they gain an infection boost when they bit someone?

Increasing the power of a bite with viruses and bacteria reminded me of the Komodo dragon’s fangs.

'H-huh? Am I restricting myself with this pointless trivia? An idiot like Ayumi wouldn’t give it that much thought and once I’m bitten by the animal, it doesn’t much matter whether I make a pretty zombie or one that’s falling apart.'

“User, what will you do now?”

“Hmm. I don’t want to stay put, so let’s see if we can move between rooftops.”

Heading down to the surface would be suicide. Once the animals locked onto us, we couldn’t escape and the color red was splattered everywhere. Plus, I couldn’t tell which of the half-crushed remains had been humans and which had been zombies. Even a corpse too flattened to move on its own could be dangerous and zombies were indistinguishable from normal corpses if they couldn’t walk around.

That meant it could be a minefield.

I didn’t want one of them to stand up while we were running through the sea of blood.

The animal zombies being powerful didn’t weaken the normal zombies any. A single bite would turn me into a zombie regardless. The more of them there were, the more hopeless the situation was.

I wanted to go for an elegant midair stroll using the buildings packed in so close together.

“Also, pay close attention to the lighter on the desk there.”

“I’m not one to talk after all the stuff I took at the hardware store, but it looks like you’ve finally learned how to loot too, Maxwell. Then again, I kind of want to see that serious Class Rep turn into a shoplifting girl, so I say go for it.”

“No, it's that isn’t it possible the animals will keep their distance from a fire?”

“Yeah, you do often hear that animals are afraid of fire. But…”

“But what?”

“To be honest, it’s more of an urban legend, so I’m not sure how credible it is. I could understand if they’d run afoul of a forest fire in the past, but are animals really afraid of fire? I feel like they’re more likely to gather around something bright. Y’know, like bugs around streetlights.”

“…”

The Swimsuit Class Rep silently set down the lighter she was toying with.

Instead of trying to take them on, we had to find a safe way to escape. To kill an elephant, we would need a magnum round or a shotgun slug. It was far beyond what a handmade stone-throwing weapon could accomplish. I pulled out my smartphone and spoke to the Class Rep next to me.

“Maxwell.”

“What is it? Should I pose for a photo?”

“No, you can do that later!! What happened to the balloon drone flying around up above? This says it’s right above us.”

“Sure.”

I looked to the screen.

The Swimsuit Class Rep moved close to also look at the screen. She smelled nice even in this virtual world.

“Awaiting instructions…”

“Maxwell, can we jump from rooftop to rooftop? I mean, the buildings look pretty close together.”

“I would have to see the actual scale to judge that. But look at this…”

“Yeah, the city is stained with blood all over.”

Looking down from our eye in the sky, I we could see the horrific state of the zoo. Even from the sky, the roads in the area were colored red like the aftermath of a bizarre Spanish tomato-throwing festival. I could not even imagine how many lives had been used to create that artwork.

“Hey, um, I keep zooming out, but I’m not seeing an end to the gore.”

“The entire place was taken out.”

“Yeah… I’ve zoomed all the way out and it’s still all red. How many people have to die to cause this?”

“Calculating…complete. Eight hun-…”

“I didn’t actually want to know the answer! ‘Eight hun’? Not a single good answer starts that way!”

It was not limited to the shopping district. I could not view the distant residential and high-rise office districts, but I could see black smoke rising from them.

The stain had begun at a single point, but it was spreading across the entire city.

Our viewpoints were on too small a scale to notice, but eight hundred thousand people were caught in the middle of this.

“Whatever the case, it would be best to escape the shopping district as soon as possible.”

“Even though there’s a herd of animal zombies out there, not to mention the red minefield where someone could get up and attack you at any moment? Moving around at random sounds dangerous.”

“Of course. But the Acute Zombie Powder is not the only virus in the world. With that many corpses rotting, I believe many more pathogens will begin to spread. And some of them might travel through the air. …No, with that many, the concentration of gases produced in the decomposition process might be dangerous.”

“…”

Amazingly, there were actually worse deaths than being bitten by a vampire or zombie.

What was going through the heads of the people who monitored the city through the Weather Spheres that checked for signs of and damage from tornados and flooding? Eight hundred thousand people were sinking into a sea of blood and there was nowhere to run. That nightmarish scene may have led them to hang themselves.

I didn’t know how long we had, but I had a feeling the zoo animals had more germs than the humans. That meant they would decompose faster and they would spread more biological toxins. We had to make a run for it before those things could run rampant in that red medium.

“Elephants, rhinos, hippos, and…what is that?” I asked. “Were giraffes always that violent!?”

“It is not every day you get to see a panda attack someone.”

“Well, they are a type of bear.”

“Why is the ground moving like that? Is it a group of hamsters?”

“No, it might be moss or something… That swollen lump there might be modeled after a brain.”

“Does it work on plants too?”

“I don’t have any proof, but maybe that’s why she’s such a glutton and always finishes all of her food. If she doesn’t finish her apple or squash, please don’t tell me it would start to move on its own.”

“I merely inputted the parameters as you requested, but calling this a virus outbreak might drive bacteriology and immunology experts insane with anger.”

“And does this mean Ayumi’s started biting the moss and rocks she sees lying around…?”

“She is making full use of her stupidity (front teeth sparkle).”

“Oh, well said, Maxwell-san.”

Something cut across the drone footage. I thought it was a bird or something, but it turned out to be another drone. However, it did not seem to be piloted by anyone. It was wobbling unsteadily as it continued in the same direction forever.

It seemed to have lost its signal from whoever was flying it from the surface.

“User, this is the footage I found by following the unknown drone.”

“Pin that location and zoom in. …What’s that? A tour bus?”

A large bus had ignored a one-way sign and drove right through the shopping district. It ignored the corpses collapsed on or getting up from the road and ran them all over to escape the shopping district.

But that was a short-lived dream.

A powerful impact hit the side of the tour bus. It was that African elephant. Its eight ton body charged in from the side of the road and slammed into the bus from the side. Even a truck would flip over from that. And this was an elephant that Ayumi had zombified. Since it was acting so aggressively toward a vehicle, some cars may have already run into it.

After losing balance, the bus crashed into a supermarket for trendy foreign foods.

Then the rhinos and hippos gathered around.

The windows on the other side shattered and several figures jumped out.

They were well-built and dressed in black, but what were they? They didn’t look like police or firefighters.

At any rate, “they” climbed down and then reached up toward the windows to help lower down the normal people that followed.

“The elephant is coming.”

“Ahh, ahh! Wow…Not good! Not good, not good, not good! Wow! Not good!!”

“User, try to say something other than ‘not good’ and ‘wow’.”

“I can’t think of any other words besides ‘red’!! Giving up on their escape and staying inside the bus will only mean waiting for death and climbing on top of the bus now won’t help.”

“They are indeed screwed. The elephant’s nose is like a tentacle.”

The core of my body trembled in fear as I watched the pandemonium of the strange rescue team and dozens of people they had been trying to rescue. Not even a giant mass of steel had allowed them to escape that deadly shopping district, so how could they do anything without that?

My collapsible bike was made of metal pipes, so I could swing it around as a blunt weapon, but it was obvious what would happen if I took on heavily-equipped soldiers who looked like they could raze everything in their path.

At any rate, we used the emergency stairs to reach the roof.

The concentrated smell was like a punch to the nose.

Just breathing in and out struck my entire body with a rusty-smelling wind.

But…

“User, do you think it is possible to jump over the gap?”

“Not a chance!”

That was the only answer I could give.

From the sky, the buildings had looked close enough to easily make the jump if I worked up a little courage, but from the rooftop, it was obvious that the buildings were not all the same height. Jumping to a roof three or four stories shorter would probably break my ankles and there wasn’t even a 1% chance when the situation was reversed.

But as I’d already said, descending to the ground was truly hopeless. A tour bus weighing more than ten tons had been flipped over and I could still hear a great many animal noises. Only a superhuman who could catch a crane’s wrecking ball would be able to break through there. The normal human zombies kept biting at the animals, which essentially poked at the hornet’s nest and made the animals impossible to predict. Not even throwing some canned food or a smelly sock and making a run for it while they were distracted would work here.

Which meant…

“Maxwell, search for a ladder or wooden plank. If we use something that lets us cross over despite the height difference…”

As I spoke, I looked back to the roof entrance we had come through.

I spotted a gigantic snake climbing the stairs.

In fact, our eyes met.

Was it an anaconda?

It looked about ten meters long.

''Hey, its eyes are surprisingly cute!!

“…!!!!!!”

Forcing a joke did nothing to erase the fear.

Neither of us had moved, but I already felt a squeezing at my heart. A thick but invisible wall of menace surpassed the limits of the physical world and tried to break my core.

But a moment later, I heard the sound of “something” bursting. It was like the sound of a of soda can being opened multiplied several dozen times over. Then “something” passed me by in midair.

At first, I thought it was a rocket or missile with smoke trailing behind it.

But I was wrong.

Something heavy collided with the giant snake. It had a head, two arms, and two legs. It was a human. What had looked like the smoke of a rocket was actually his body’s surface crumbling into gray dust. If he was turning to ashes in the sunlight…was he a vampire? The tackle had not accomplished much, but the anaconda was distracted by the new target. It ignored us and coiled around the vampire instead.

“Yahoo☆”

A relaxed female voice reached me from a taller building’s rooftop.

I looked up and saw my older sister there.

My older sister?

It was still daytime and she should have turned to ashes in the direct sunlight, but that was not happening.

Why not?

“Wah, wah, waaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

“Eh heh heh. Thank you for the over-the-top reaction☆”

Erika stood there elegantly with quite a few men, woman, boys, and girls around her. It was like a jigsaw puzzle using human bodies. Or like a giant umbrella or dome. It covered her and fully blocked out the sunlight.

“She’s done it! She’s finally done it!!”

“User, you are quickly growing incomprehensible.”

“How can I stay calm in the face of such a psychedelic vision!?”

The disturbing umbrella was likely made from my sister’s vampire minions.

She had called it “hot” before, but what did it actually feel like to turn to ashes and crumble away while you were still alive? At any rate, the 3D puzzle dome was turning to ashes starting from the people on the outside. But they did not react. It wasn’t clear where they were coming from, but new vampires would jump in to fill the holes. By repeating that process, my sister and their queen remained unharmed.

And…

“Oh, it can still move?”

Erika sounded conversational, but she was looking at the zombie anaconda thrashing about to fight the person scattering ashes everywhere.

And the queen cheerfully snapped her fingers.

“Do something about that.”

Something jumped over her head. The trails of ashes looked like those of missiles or acrobatic jets, but they belonged to the vampires who were being burned away by the sunlight. Win or lose, this kamikaze unit would be annihilated. They stabbed into the anaconda’s side with ferocious speed.

The zombification must have strengthened it because their attacks were all deflected.

“But only from the outside,” said my sister as she smiled below her human parasol.

The anaconda must not have wanted its hard-won flesh to turn to ashes because it began to swallow a living(?) vampire whole.

Not long afterwards, rice-sized caterpillars poured from the anaconda’s eyes like a flood of tears.

“We vampires can transform into a great variety of animals,” said Erika in her dress. “Bats, wolves, rats, moths, and so on. Even if a ferocious beast tears us apart and swallows us bit by bit, we can still transform inside its belly. This one became countless moth larvae and ate through the thick blood vessels to reach the head.”

“Ah.”

“Zombies cease to function as long as the brain is destroyed. That’s how Ayumi-chan and her type work, isn’t it?”

It made my skin crawl.

This was entirely different from having your head beat in with a hammer or tripping on some stone steps and hitting your forehead on a corner. Dozens if not hundreds of small caterpillars would crawl through the inside of your body, reach the inside of your skull, and stir up your brains like clay. And it would not stop until you were dead. It was truly hellish.

And it would be no different for a bear, tiger, or crocodile.

Because their jaws were so strong and they did not need to bite their prey into small pieces, they had plenty of space in their bodies for the vampire bugs to crawl through.

As we watched, the giant anaconda gave a large jerk. Its brain had likely been fully destroyed. The cascade of bugs spilling from its eyes crumbled into ashes as soon as they reached the sunlight.

“Does that mean…a vampire would win in a fight against a zombie?”

“Now that I can’t say. It would be hard to move around after being bitten apart by Ayumi-chan’s small mouth and we might lose control of the flesh after it’s infected by the Acute Zombie Powder. Plus, it isn’t realistic for a vampire to bite a zombie. There are some exceptions like the Upior, but vampires generally only suck the blood of the living. …And even if I was lucky enough to get an Upior, it would be a waste to use it to fight the Acute Zombie Powder.”

My sister changed the subject there.

“But anyway, if you can blow away a one billion yen tank with a fifty thousand yen rocket, doesn’t that sound a lot better than a tie? We just have to fill those powerful elephants and hippos with bugs to stir up their brains and then use old-fashioned external attacks on the animal zombies that are human-sized or smaller. Then there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

The zombie would die and there was no saving the vampire.

Just like using a bullet to kill a target, it was a strategy that assumed some consumption.

“User,” modestly interrupted the Swimsuit Class Rep.

She pointed to the drone footage on my smartphone.

Similar kamikaze units were on the attack on the ground and all over the city. As the sunlight washed over them, multiple vampires would sometimes cling together for something like a three-stage rocket. One after another, they would push through until they reached their ferocious target. They planned to be eaten so they could transform into tiny bugs inside the animal zombie’s body and stir up the animal’s brain. After their job was done, they would be annihilated by the sunlight. It was all meant to perfectly achieve that cycle.

All that deadly violence was worn down in no time.

“…”

The ferocious beasts did not go quietly. In fact, as soon as the rhinos and hippos were taken out, the flattened human zombies stuck to their outer surface began to squirm. Unless the brain was taken out, zombies never died. The vampires who had finished off the giant animals were quickly pinned down.

And this was out in the sun.

Even if the human zombies could not deliver a decisive blow, the vampires would turn to ashes if they were delayed even a little.

For a normal human, this would have been like having nightmarish jack-in-the-boxes spring all around them in the moment of relief after defeating a powerful foe.

And if the zombies could still move after being flattened that much, was it possible some of them were still moving inside the carnivores’ stomachs? No, given the width of the esophagus, it probably wasn’t possible for them to be swallowed without destroying the brain. But the more zombies the animals ate, the greater the concentration of pathogens. Erika had sad they might lose control of their chunks of flesh if the Acute Zombie Powder infected it, so it was still possible those swallowed zombies could lead to an unexpected comeback. A large percentage of moth larvae could be wiped out in a microscopic attack.

But…

Even so…

My older sister was only thinking about cost performance, so she was ignoring her own side’s losses. It was like ignoring the soldiers clinging to a tank for transportation and blowing up the tank itself first. As long as they could pursue and hunt down the scattered and fleeing soldiers, these losses did not harm the vampire side in any significant way.

The rocket had blown away the tank.

They just had to load their launcher with an identical rocket and target the fleeing grunts.

If a single tactic worked across the board, the different varieties of enemy did not matter.

“There we go.”

My sister in the gothic lolita dress hopped down to my rooftop so elegantly she seemed weightless. The queen smiled as her many minions sizzled and vanished just to grant her selfish desire to move around under the sun.

“It’s nice to see you again, Satori-kun. I really am a bit of a clean freak, so I’m not too fond of this zombie outbreak business. But I’m willing to put in some effort for you. Kyah☆”

“…”

A distant look entered my eyes. Was my aesthetic sense really okay with a human parasol girl fidgeting and covering her face with her hands?

I was growing more and more confused by her definition of “clean freak”!

But did that mean that both Erika and Ayumi were idiots to the core!?

“But you’re so mean, Satori-kun. I was working so hard, but you ran the other way as soon as you saw me.”

“You look gentle at first, but are you actually a huge S?”

“Eh heh☆ It was fun slipping into human society while pretending to be human, but I felt I was hitting a limit there and decided to reveal my true form. I even helped you out by destroying Ayumi-chan’s advantage and showed up to cheer you on, so I was hoping you’d be more excited.”

“Your…true form?”

“Yes. At the city council, the police stations, the broadcast stations, the newspapers, and all the other places where mankind was putting up their final resistance while hiding behind barricades, I consumed them from within to expand my control. I had already taken over their chains of command, but now everyone meant to maintain law and order has been wiped out. Well, there might be a few police officers who were out on patrol, but they can’t do much without the power of their organization, right?”

Erika gave the beaming smile of someone seeking praise by showing off their piano contest trophy.

“Also…oh, right. I’ve set things in motion at the chain-reaction spots where the civilians were gathered in theatres and stadiums. A third of the city’s population and all the important institutions will belong to me and my vampires!! Kyahah☆”

“This is not a ‘kyahah’ kind of issue, Onee-chan!!”

I had always wondered whether zombies and vampires were really all that different.

But they were different. Completely different.

Zombies like Ayumi tore down law and order. They destroyed the city, smashed the bonds between people, filled the streets with the dead, and brought civilization to a screeching halt. That was their brand of horror.

But vampires like Erika were the exact opposite.

They created law and order. They entirely ignored the civilization that humans had built up and filled the city, the country, and the world with a new order with their queen at the top. Yesterday’s rules no longer applied and we were all thrown into an insane vampire’s world.

They were both part of the horror genre, but zombies and vampires were entirely different.

I started to think that no one could defeat this.

But…

“Urp.”

“Erika?”

As my older sister elegantly held a hand to her mouth, she turned away from me for some reason.

“Wait just a moment, Satori-ku-… Ugh, urp. If I take a deep breath, I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, honestly. This is what happens when you force yourself after eating such tiny lunches all the time.”

“No! You can’t, Satori-kun! Rub my back that gently now and…no, this is no time to be rejoicing. Mgh, ah, ah, ahhhh!!”

Erika suddenly ran off with her psychedelic human parasol. She ran toward the edge of the square rooftop and then leaned over it.

“B-bghhh!!”

“Wahh!! You idiot, why are you spewing that stuff onto the world below!? You’re turning into a scarlet bomber!!”

“U-ugh… It saddens me that you don’t understand that I wanted to preserve my pride by not doing that in front of you.”

Below the human parasol, my sister lamented while bending over and sticking her shapely butt out toward me.

“Besides, you’ll make fun of me if I don’t go this far. Bhh.”

“Eh?”

“At the conveyor belt sushi place, at the buffet, and at the all-you-can-eat cake place, you always look so happy feeding more and more to Ayumi-chan who can keep eating forever. …And you just said I eat tiny lunches.”

“Were you hoping to match that crazy meat-eater when it comes to food!? No one wants that from a clean and kind older sister!!”

Was she like the greatest pro baseball player or something? It was hard to find things she ''couldn’t'' do, so did she want to go for anything she could do to score more points!?

“(User, user.)”

Then an index finger poked at my shoulder from the side.

When I looked over, the Swimsuit Class Rep leaned in and whispered to me.

“(Miss Erika is leaning out over the rooftop railing and she is not looking this way. Isn’t this your chance?)”

“?”

I was confused, so Maxwell felt the need to say it.

“(I’m telling you to go for that butt with both hands! Won’t she fall?)”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“N-no, that sounds like a bad idea. I’d be done for if it failed! When she gets mad, she crushes walnuts in her hands with a smile on her face!”

“Is that so?”

“Besides, we haven’t even taken statistics on whether a vampire would die from being pushed off a roof.”

“Then to provide support for such an indecisive user, I would like to assist you. Take this!”

“Wait, what, Maxweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeellllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!?”

In physics class, there was an experiment to demonstrate the propagation of forces where multiple metal balls were lined up and clacked together like pendulums. That experiment flashed through my mind.

In other words, the Swimsuit Class Rep gave a shove to my back and my hands grabbed…or rather, pushed on my older sister’s large butt through her dress.

“Ah.”

''Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?

She utterly vanished.

The dome-shaped human parasol was dragged down with her.

My mind seriously went blank and I frantically leaned out. What floor was this? Was there concrete or asphalt below? This was a disaster either way!!

Or so I thought.

“Satooori-kuuun?”

“Hyaaaaaaaaah!? She’s clinging to the wall…to the vertical wall!?”

“Vampires have a grip strength ten to twenty times greater than a human’s, so bouldering is a cakewalk☆ More importantly, you didn’t think anything about my butt being big, did you?”

“Oh, no! I’ve never seen her anger gauge this full! Is the concrete wall creaking!?”

The 3D jigsaw puzzle dome of the human parasol was fine. They all climbed up the wall like they were going for a world record in group gymnastics.

The queen spoke with a smile.

“Satori-kun, try to guess how angry I am?”

“P-pun-pun?”

“Oh, c’mon. This is more of a biki-baki.”

“Isn’t that the sound of bulging veins from a martial arts or delinquent manga!?”

“So I’m hoping you can put me back in a good mood. Are you ready?”

“Wh-what?”

I flinched.

My gothic Lolita dress sister bent her hips and her face moved in toward me while she kept her arms behind her back.

A sweet aroma…no, that rusty smell floated toward me.

“I was holding back in the real world, but this is a virtual world, right? So don’t you think we can go for a nice, sweeeet kiss followed by a delightful bite? Right, right? Aren’t you listening? I did it because I had to, but I’m a little sick of sucking the blood of people I don’t even like. I can’t stand the taste of cigarettes, alcohol, perfume, or grease. It’s awful. But you, Satori-kun? You’re perfect☆”

“I had a feeling this was coming!! With the zombies gone, it had to shift to a vampire fever, didn’t it!? This isn’t the peace I wanted!!!!!!”

“Eh heh heh. Give up and let your Onee-chan have her way with you☆”

Her slender arms embraced me from the front. And her large breasts bumped into me. As she rubbed her cheek against me, I was paralyzed like jolts of electricity were racing through my body.

“Eri-…time out! C’mon, I said time out! This is really a bad idea!!”

“Heh heh. You say that, but I can feel your heart pounding. You can’t hide the movement of your blood.”

I heard a wet sound from my neck.

But it wasn’t her fangs.

''Is that her lips? It’s just the sweet sensation of her ski-…wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah!!

That was when I saw something unpleasant over her shoulder.

“M-Maxwell! Stop just coldly watching it happen with the Class Rep’s face!!”

“I was doing nothing of the sort. I had nothing to do and entered standby mode. If you have any orders, please give them.”

''Eeek!! What is this guilty feeling!?

''And is Erika getting even more heated up with me in her arms!?

“Yes, yes. I can feel Satori-kun’s carotid artery just on the other side of this skin. I can feel the hot blood…the gathering of youth… Heh heh. Eh heh heh. Pant, pant. What do I do? I only meant this as a joke, but now my heart is pounding so much I’m not sure I can hold ba-…oh, dear.”

Erika suddenly came back to her senses and pulled back a bit.

A moment later.

“Now!!”

It started with a high-pitched shout.

I looked back just in time to see something jumping over from another building.

“What! Do! You! Think! You’re! Doing! Onii-chaaaaaan!?”

“What? I’m-…bfoh!?”

I don’t know if she messed up or if it was intentional, but something suddenly filled my vision.

What was it, you ask?

''Is this soft sensation Ayumi’s crotch…aghrbr————

The shock was so great that my user seemed to lose consciousness, so I, Maxwell, shall fill in the gap for him as an emergency measure.

Miss Amatsu Ayumi was a short, slender, and cute girl with her long black hair in twintails with the ends curled. She jumped in from a different building with her legs and spread landed with her thighs around my user’s head as if for a backwards piggy-back ride. Then the two of them spun vertically. After enjoying the bliss of shoving his face in his younger stepsister’s crotch, the two of them and the collapsible bicycle he held dove right over the railing and off the building.

“Oh, how bold. I’m so jealous of their youth.”

“As a more fundamental problem, I find it odd that my user’s neck did not break. Is that also due to his youth?”

Maxwell, signing off.

——————''glmlnmvryuh…what is this floating sensation?

We had apparently hopped right off of the rooftop.

My head was finally freed from Ayumi’s extremely healthy (even though she was a zombie) thighs.

But she still grabbed my collar with one hand in midair.

I did not even have time to fear the fall. We spun around some more, completely messing with my inner ear, and my back collided with something soft on the ground several floors below.

We had landed on the corpse of the elephant that Erika’s vampires had killed.

I was lying on my back and Ayumi was straddling me.

She was puffing her cheeks out.

“Fuguu!!”

“Ayumi, a good first step would be using human language.”

“You were making fun of me, weren’t you!? You thought a zombie like me couldn’t beat a vampire like Onee-chan, didn’t you!? You thought I was only a half-rotten mid-boss, didn’t you!?”

“You’re overthinking this.”

“You’re always staring at Onee-chan’s boobs! But you walk right past me even when I just got out of the bath!!”

“Well, there’s a bit of a difference between you and-…ow!!”

“Then what about the Class Rep!?”

“Don’t be silly! Why can’t you tell that hers may be small, but they have a rare ability to make their glorious presence known!?”

“You don’t…you don’t think anything of me, do you? Fuguu!!”

“I give, I give!! Ayumi, you’re really overthinking this. I’m not thinking any of the things you’re so worried about. In fact, I have no idea what’s going on in your head.”

“Really? I’m pretty sure I heard some irritating things in there.”

“Really. For one thing, I’m far too worried about the Class Rep (finding out about all this and killing me) to even think about you-…oborgergorch!!”

“…!!!???”

She shook my collar back and forth while straddling me and I nearly vomited.

Then our older sister looked elegantly down at us from the top of the building.

“Ayumi-chaaan.”

“Onee-chan!!”

“Have you used up all your precious trump cards? If you have another plan, I would recommend using it sooner rather than later☆ After all…”

Still protected by her human parasol, the queen pointed straight up with her slender index finger.

“The sun is going down and evening is arriving. It will be nighttime before long now.”

“Grr, grr!!”

“And Satori-kun, you’re acting an awful lot like none of this matters to you.”

“Well, it doesn’t reall-…ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!!”

Ayumi tugged on my ear and our queen of a sister continued smiling.

“Are you sure you should be saying that? I believe I just gained a trump card against you.”

“?”

“This. Girl.”

She moved her raised hand to the side and her alluring fingertips traced across a slender chin before pulling it toward her.

“…Class Rep.”

“I won’t bite her right away.” Erika gave a melting smile. “If I did, we wouldn’t have anything to fight over. Right, Satori-kun?”

“!!”

I could see how this was set up.

The zombie side had my little sister Ayumi and me.

The vampire side had my older sister Erika and the Class Rep.

All the important pieces had been placed in the two camps and Erika was telling us to fight over them.

“You can’t, Onii-chan…” said Ayumi as she also looked up at the roof.

Still straddling me, she grabbed my collar with both hands.

“I can’t let her have you here, Onii-chan! So I won’t let you do anything rash!!”

She swung me around with tremendous strength.

I was pulled up as she hopped to her feet and we ran off through the bloody street before I even had a chance to board the collapsible bike in my hand. Or rather, she dragged me through the bloody street.

There were corpses everywhere and some might have been zombies that would get up and grab at our ankles, but we had no time to worry about that.

Something far worse was coming.

We had turned our back on the vampire queen.

“Hee hee.”

Our older sister did not bother to give chase.

It was probably a way to show her confidence, but even with her human parasol, it was an away game for her in the sun.

Time was on her side.

Night was arriving too soon for us to put together any kind of plan. The stage would soon belong to Erika alone.

“Hee hee hee. Hee hee hee hee.”

“Fuguu…!!”

There was no scorn in her laughter. It was more like the warm affection of viewing a family member’s growth, but that stabbed into my little sister’s back all the more.

Ayumi bit her lip to bear with it as we escaped the shopping district together.

What could we do against a monster like that?

Was there any way to rescue the Class Rep now that she was in Erika’s grasp?

===[Pick Up] Report on the Acute Zombie Powder [Net Files]===

Originally, Zombie Powder refers to a new virus discovered in the Caribbean. It mostly infects livestock.

It spreads orally.

However, it resides in gelatin matter, especially tendons, rather than flesh and blood and the infection mainly spreads when the carrier consumes the living tissue of a healthy subject.

It is extremely weak to the open air, so the virus is quickly exterminated when directly floating in the atmosphere or even when the blood or saliva is exposed to the air as spray. As such, the risk of infection is nearly zero unless the carrier bites deep enough to reach the tendons.

At this point, the virulence to humans is weak and in many cases there are no symptoms at all. The virus cannot be entirely exterminated, but it will live in a state of coexistence for the rest of their life and causes no apparent problems in their day to day life.

The Acute strain was artificially created by transforming the Zombie Powder virus with a few different chemicals.

The fact that one of those chemicals has long been used in Haiti is of especial symbolic interest, but that is straying from the topic at hand and will be set aside for now.

As the Acute name suggests, it is extremely virulent and has a nearly 100% chance of causing symptoms in both infected livestock and infected humans. In fact, a cellular change has even been seen in some plants which should not even have animal gelatin matter. That should likely be classified as an infection as well.

The symptoms include an extreme sense of starvation, slowed blood flow, and the vitality to continue moving even after the heart has been crushed. Most likely, the oxygen and nutrients transported by the blood are being transported in some other way to preserve brain function even when the other organs have failed, but it is still unknown what medium is used.

Also, they have no community queen like vampires do, but there are some rare individuals who maintain a high level of intelligence and sense of self even after infection.

This new request for additional funding is absolutely necessary to pierce this darkness with the scalpel.

===[Pick Up] Regional Plans [Net Files]===

As mentioned in the message the other day, a look at the geographic conditions suggests Kukyou City is an eligible candidate.

The term penal colony may bring to mind a remote island, but many of them existed inland as well. Kukyou City’s predecessor was one. While it looks like a picturesque land surrounded by the sea and mountains, it can actually be made into an isolated land just by blockading a few highways and railroad tracks.

And for our purposes, simply isolating it is not enough. If it were, we could simply use the South Pole or a desert.

Isolation is nothing more than a last resort and safety measure.

Given our purpose, it must have a certain level of population density and a high level of society. These conditions must be seen as the higher priority.

The land must have a certain level of economic activity while also allowing for a suppression plan divided into multiple levels in case the unexpected occurs.

With that in mind, Kukyou City is the best candidate in Japan if not the entire world.

It is of course necessary to lay some groundwork in the city council, the police, the firefighters, etc., but Kukyou City strikes an excellent balance even there. It falls into the framework of a National Reinforced Planning Zone, so whoever controls the money that comes with strings attached can take almost complete control of the city.

Local government treasuries are always in dire straits.

Of course, that’s partially because we’ve set things up to make our move easier.

As long as we have everyone’s approval, we are ready to begin the task at any time.

Let our good hearts guide us to benevolent action.

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| Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume1_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
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My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume4 Chapter 2

2017-10-09T11:06:42Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 2==

Let’s all work together to create Director John Knocker’s next film! We are in need of some cheerful extras who can film with us in Vegas!!

Simply put, that was the reason we had left Japan and traveled halfway around the world to Las Vegas.

We had won an online drawing.

It seemed the reason for this was threefold: they wanted a lot of Asian extras, they were using the extras as a way of providing a bonus for fans, and John Knocker was impressed with Kukyou City’s focus on disaster prevention after losing a villa during a giant hurricane the year before.

“…Sorry, Maiden.”

“Hm? For what?”

“For not leaving this hotel room even though I was in Las Vegas. Saying I couldn’t leave the Class Rep or that we might miss each other out there is only an excuse. The fact remains that I didn’t do anything.”

“Don’t be silly. What could you have done if you did head out there? What would your destination have been? You don’t even know how to fight those gels. Getting all justice-y for no reason would only increase the risk of getting eaten. In fact, you did well to restrain yourself with all that going on. It’s because of that that we managed to meet like this.”

I wasn’t sure what to say.

I wasn’t used to being a target of anger. But I also couldn’t figure out how to react when a friend smiled and forgave me in a situation like this.

“Sure. This would be my user’s fault for being an unfortunate sort of person who prefers for girls to look down on him and insult him. But if you leave it like this, a new world might open up for him.”

“Oh, it’s Maxwell-chan! Hey, hey, can I connect via Redtooth? I found a new vulnerability in a Pearphone’s wireless keyboard authentication.”

“No. Most definitely no. Please do not view me like a fish needing gutting.”

“You sure are shy for a program. Hey, Truth, did she become a gloomy ''kokeshi''-haired ''Yamato Nadeshiko'' because of your Japanese coding style?”

“No. I would prefer you said I have a flexible and delicate processing architecture that cannot be imitated by a boisterous American cheerleader of a supercomputer whose every piece of clothing – down to the underwear – bears the stars and stripes.”

“Here in the States, a container-sized machine is treated like a baby-faced and underdeveloped little girl.”

Maxwell’s interruption gave me the time I needed to sort through my feelings.

…''Okay.

“Hey, underdeveloped little girl. The real one, I mean.”

“That hurts, you know!? But what is it, Truth? …Stop patting my head!!”

“The connection cut out for a while, so I want to know what happened. What are the gels up to? Have they gotten into this hotel yet?”

“I don’t know. And how about we come up with a proper name for them? I think I lost them while moving from roof to roof, but we can’t stop the fallen gels from getting in through the hotel’s entrance. …Hey, how long are you going to keep patting my head? You are just incorrigible, Truth.”

For all her complaining, she didn’t try to fight it. It made me think of a prideful white cat purring as you rubbed her chin.

“So the question is what to do now. But…”

“Yeah.” Anastasia honestly nodded at what I said. “Look out the window, Truth. It looks pretty bad out there. Everything from family cars to shuttle buses are toppled over and spewing smoke. You couldn’t even get a round light car through there now. And Vegas is right smack in the middle of the desert, so you can’t reach the next city without a car.”

“Not to mention that we can’t drive.”

“No. I can take over if you find a program-controlled self-driving car.”

“You? Driving? When communication trouble could cut off the signal at any moment? I don’t think so, Maxwell.”

“But then what ''do'' we do, Truth?”

Just as Anastasia pouted her lips, I heard a loud noise from overhead. It reminded me of a sheet snapping at the air.

Anastasia’s head shot up to view the ceiling. No, she was focused on something even higher than that: the rooftop.

“Hey, is that a helicopter!?”

“You’re the one from the aircraft nation. When traveling from one end of the country to the other, you use passenger planes instead of bullet trains or linear motor trains. Although that’s what lets my nation stay at the leading edge of train tech.”

Meaning…

“If the land routes are backed up, they’ll send rescue teams in from the air. The exit we need is right above us, not to the east, west, north, or south. So instead of wandering around, it would be best to stay put in a solid building with a heliport.”

“Of course, they will assume you were wiped out and pass you by if they cannot see you from the air, so it would be best to aim a television remote out the window and set it up to flash on and off at an irregular rate.”

“Yeah, if we used a normal flashlight, we could get ourselves wiped out if those things end up being attracted to light after all.”

“No. Most animals and insects can distinguish between infrared and ultraviolet, so I doubt that countermeasure would be much use.”

That meant we couldn’t leave this place.

I wanted to at least get the jetlagged Forehead Glasses Class Rep on a helicopter. The gels were all moving independently at the moment, but if they gathered together like army ants, then they might be able to form a bridge to directly cross between buildings. That was why it was better to stay inside a room near the rooftop instead of the exposed rooftop itself.

Of course.

No matter how much we discussed the odds and possibilities, we were doomed if no helicopter showed up. That was why I hadn’t originally wanted to guide Anastasia here.

It was to keep her safe and feel more certain she would be rescued.

I had thought I would find her more quickly if I could search for her from the sky where the gels couldn’t reach us. The main rotor’s wind might have been able to draw the gels away while she was guided to safety.

But that didn’t change the fact that I had waited before doing anything for Anastasia. Instead of instantly running out of that hotel room, I had calmly stayed put. I had stopped myself.

“Ha ha.”

And yet that 11-year-old girl laughed innocently while I irresponsibly patted her head.

The look on her face was a lot like the unconstrained smile given to a family member.

“Wow! You really are incredible, Truth! What was your hometown called? Kukyou City? Does living there really change your outlook that much? Or is it your experience? I mean, you’re the hero who crushed the Bright Cross! Every thought in your head must be so cool!!”

“…”

I couldn’t find anything to say and merely narrowed my eyes, but then my smartphone screen flashed. Maxwell was drawing my attention.

“User, you can lose yourself in sentimentality later. Now, I suggest you hurry to the roof. If there is no sign of life, the approaching rescue helicopter might leave without landing.”

“Yeah, that’s right. To the rooftop, then. Class Rep, c’mon, grab on…”

“Urrrgh.”

The graceful Class Rep groaned like a ''kaiju'' and wrapped her arms around my neck. This was hardly the time, but my heart was pounding like crazy. I mean, that scent, that softness, and that warmth! And her pulse! I could feel her pounding heart through her modest but impressive chest! And she was so weak that it felt like she would do anything I asked!!

Then I felt a mysterious strength wrap its arms around me from behind.

It was that troublesome girl Anastasia.

“No fair, Truth. I didn’t realize you were such a lady killer.”

“?”

“If you’ve already got a girlfriend, then you don’t need Maxwell-chan, right? You can hand control of her over to me, can’t you? C’mon.”

“No! Warning: She might be acting cute and hugging you, but I have detected a close-range wireless cyber attack. This is a serious threat!!”

Maxwell was actually using exclamation points for once. She hadn’t even done that when the Bright Cross’s Laplace was attacking her. While sandwiched between the Class Rep in front and Anastasia behind, I wandered around the hotel room grabbing the important items like our passports and my wallet.

“Okay, let’s get to the rooftop heliport.”

“Do you have any snacks in here?”

“Weren’t you just eating enough fried food to give me heartburn just looking at it?”

With that exasperated comment, I tossed her a stick of Japanese gum that was sitting on the bedside table. She stared it from varying distances and angles with a frown on her face.

“…Sugarless and no added colors? This is a health food.”

“Gum is pretty much nothing but chemicals, so you’re about the only person who would call it that. Now let’s get going.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

I didn’t like leaving behind our suitcases, but we couldn’t exactly bring them with us. I just hoped we could collect them a week or a month later once the gel stuff had died down.

Anastasia tossed the gum into her mouth and we got moving with the sluggish Class Rep in tow.

I opened the door and, after a moment of hesitation, decided to bring the card key with me just in case. I couldn’t seem to rid myself of those normal habits.

The hallway was deserted.

The sound of the helicopter rotors had to be reverberating through the entire building, but was everyone else afraid to leave their rooms?

“That would depend on how long they expect this to last,” said Maxwell. “If they predict the problem to be resolved in a matter of hours, it would indeed be safest to hole up in their room and wait for the storm to pass.”

“I can see why you wouldn’t want to head out into danger when there’s so much gunfire outside. But I feel like they’re completely screwed if their guess is wrong.”

“Sure. There is no absolute correct answer in a disaster environment. It is very rare that all the necessary hints are available to you. Even if you have some experience, you must ultimately make a gamble.”

Anastasia finally let go of my back and gave me a mischievous look.

“This might be more like horseracing or poker than roulette or a lottery. I’m glad I have such an excellent forecaster on my side.”

“…”

The helicopter only had so much space, so we would be in trouble if the entire hotel rushed for it. Still, I wasn’t sure we could leave it like this. I seriously doubted this would be over in a few hours.

Maxwell’s opinion was even harsher.

“Go ahead, user. But only if you are willing to take responsibility when everyone in the building tries to board the helicopter, fails to get on, and is wiped out. Otherwise, you should not interfere any further. It is best to let everyone’s decisions send them down different paths so that as many as possible can find a chance at survival.”

Perhaps so.

And I didn’t have time to argue.

I could always think about the hotel guests once we were on the roof and had gotten the rescue chopper to stop. We were all done for if it passed us by.

“…I’ve really learned how to make cheap excuses to myself.”

“Hm? What is it, Truth?”

Anastasia had trusted in me and arrived here on her own, so she seemed so very innocent and pure.

“User, I have received a video chat. It is from Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi’s desktop.”

“Okay, Maxwell. Put them through.”

On my instruction, the smartphone screen changed. This was another function of the short-text SNS I used to communicate with Maxwell.

Two people were pressing their soft cheeks together to cram both their heads onto the screen: my vampire older sister, who had gorgeous blonde ringlet curls and sexy proportions, and my zombie little sister, who had black twintails with wrapped butter rolls at the end and slender proportions.

“Onii-chaaan.”

“Oh, my. I had heard there was some trouble there…but it seems you really are in trouble. You already have two girls clinging to you.”

Were those two all right?

The answer was obvious if I thought about it, but when I was caught in a natural(?) disaster, it was easy to feel like the people I knew were also in a bind.

Anastasia was still trapped by her old “habits”, so she started toward the glass elevators before remembering it was an emergency and stopping.

At times like this, you had to use the stairs.

“Erika, perfect timing.”

“Fuguu!? What about me, Onii-chan!?”

“Satori-kun only does that to get your attention. Anyway, is there something you want to ask me?”

“Yes,” I replied. “There are red slimes crawling around and they can dissolve a human whole. But what are they? What kind of Archenemy are they?”

“I don’t know.”

I hadn’t expected that answer.

It was not often that my knowledgeable older sister tilted her head so cutely.

“Are you even sure they’re Archenemies?”

“Eh? Eh? But, I mean…aren’t gelatinous Archenemies really, really famous? More so than vampires and zombies even.”

“In RPG worlds, yes.” Ayumi puffed out her cheeks like a pufferfish while wearing sportswear that was as skimpy as a swimsuit. “Colorful slimes aren’t really a traditional fantasy creature. Aren’t they more like UFOs or cryptids? They aren’t based on any legend or religion.”

“Yes,” continued Erika. “Formless monsters are generally made of fire. Wind would be the next most common, I suppose. But formless monsters made of slime aren’t really seen in any legends or mythologies. Water monsters tend to be fish, frogs, or beautiful women.”

“Eh? …Then what in the world are these things?”

I felt something cold and heavy in my stomach as I threw open the metal door to the emergency stairs. Using a familiar word to describe the unknown was something like a defensive reaction. Kind of like how I compared them to army ants. By reaching an understanding like that, you could push the fear away.

But my sisters’ words brought it all back. The fear of Unknown Creature X pushed in at me from all sides.

However…

“Can’t you just call them gels?” asked Erika.

“Eh? Ah? What???”

“I’m just saying to call them gels as a sort of placeholder until you know what they really are. Because just calling them X would be confusing.”

“Onii-chan, I say you can call them the wrong name if it’ll keep you from mentally restraining yourself for no reason.”

Was that how it worked?

Maybe so.

“…We’re there, Truth.” Anastasia tugged on my sleeve. “That’s the door to the roof.”

“Satori-kun, don’t do anything rash,” said Erika.

“I won’t.”

With that, I grabbed the knob to the thick metal door. It wasn’t locked. It may have been set up to automatically unlock in an emergency.

As soon as I opened the door, a gust of wind hit me in the face like a solid object. The Class Rep and Anastasia’s hair whipped behind them.

A complex arrangement of steel beams formed a giant’s table situated a step higher than the air conditioning units and electronic signs. That was the heliport.

And a short and fat helicopter with a rotor on the front and back was hovering between ten and fifteen meters above that table.

They must have been unsure there was anyone coming, but they couldn’t bring themselves to abandon anyone who might be there. And things set in motion as soon as we appeared on the roof.

A male voice shouted over a megaphone.

“…!! ———!?”

“Maxwell, you’re gonna have to translate that! You’ve seen my grades in English!”

“Really, Truth? There’s something wrong when you can write C++ code in English, but can’t hold a conversation.”

I silenced the exasperated 11-year-old with some head-pats while I waited, but Maxwell did not respond.

…''?

“Warning.”

“What is it, Maxwell?”

“I have received some information from the personal websites of several civilian weather forecasters. A cloudburst has been detected in the desert 70km south of Las Vegas’s center.”

“So…so what? Who cares if it rains in the empty desert?”

“Ugh,” groaned the jetlagged Class Rep who was leaning against me from the side. “Rain in the desert…is a lot more dangerous…than you think.”

“Sure. When a large quantity of rain falls on a desert that has been heated to 50 or 60 degrees Celsius, it will produce a rapid change in air pressure and lead to a largescale downburst. Of course, the cause is more multifaceted than that and rain does not always produce a downburst.”

“Kilometers? Celsius? Why’d you have to teach Maxwell-chan such confusing units, Truth?”

“Because I believe in the metric system. Maxwell, sum it up for me. Why and how is this bad?”

“Sure,” began the simple response.

The rest of the message appeared on top of Erika and Ayumi’s faces.

“In the worst case, the entire Las Vegas city center will be engulfed in a sandstorm with ferocious speeds of several dozen meters per second.”

My eyes shot up from my smartphone.

Something rose like smoke from beyond the horizon. It was a thick wall that extended endlessly to the left and right like the Great Wall of China. And by the time I saw it, it was too late.

“Get out of here!!”

I shouted at the helicopter, but did my voice even reach them?

The large rescue chopper had seemed so solid and heroic, but now it flipped over like a submarine toy floating in the bath. It couldn’t even make an emergency landing on the hotel rooftop and disappeared toward the surface. It all happened in an instant, so it had no chance to recover.

And we didn’t have time to sit around and watch it happen.

All of a sudden, it was nighttime.

I thought it was a solar eclipse at first.

That bright summer sun was instantly hidden from view and the darkness of midnight covered Las Vegas. The sand felt almost like static electricity as it hit my exposed skin. I couldn’t keep my eyes fully open. The smartphone kept vibrating in my hand, but I couldn’t even see the screen.

I knew opening my mouth would get me a stomach-full of sand, but I had to do it.

“Anastasia!! Get back inside the hotel!!”

“……——————!?”

I heard some kind of response from the girl, but I couldn’t make out any actual words. My voice might have sounded similar to her.

But that didn’t matter.

I could only pray she would follow after my voice if I kept shouting at the top of my lungs. I held the Class Rep in my arms and slowly moved back. I had almost entirely lost my sense of direction. The only things I could rely on were the grooves in the concrete roof below my feet.

My back finally bumped into the metal door leading inside.

Then Anastasia’s small body ran into me. Her pet robot seemed to be fine too.

“Let’s get inside! I’m opening the door, Anastasia!”

“Just get in there, Truth!!”

We pushed back inside the hotel with all three of us jumbled up together and then I kicked the door shut.

“Ugh, peh, peh!! There’s so much sand in my mouth!!”

Anastasia seemed about ready to spit out her sandy gum, so I handed her the wrapper.

But this meant our one hope, the rescue chopper, had crashed.

No, it was worse than that.

The scraping sound I heard from the door was odd. Was the storm really that bad? It was supposedly fine sand hitting the door, but it sounded more like a wild beast was clawing at it.

It was so odd that Anastasia forgot to brush the sand off of her silk camisole and miniskirt.

“Satori-kun, Satori-kun! If there’s a sandstorm, you can’t let your guard down!! Get away from there immediately!!”

“Eri…ka?”

“Sure. There are reports of windows breaking and front doors bending during intense downbursts. And you compared those gels to army ants earlier, didn’t you? It would be incredibly dangerous if damage to the building left it no longer airtight.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The focus of Anastasia’s and my eyes strayed a bit from the smartphone screen. Our eyes were still looking down, but we viewed the ground instead of the phone.

The gels could crawl on the ground or walls, so climbing to a building rooftop was not enough to escape them. We had proven that while Anastasia was on the run. And we knew the gels reacted to vibrations and currents in the air. What if the deafening noise of the helicopter had drawn them in and some of them had already crawled up the hotel wall to the roof?

Couldn’t they get in below the metal door?

A translucent red slime oozed in through that gap.

“Ugh.”

Unable to bear the chill racing down my spine, I just about screamed, but Anastasia’s small hand covered my mouth.

“…!!!???”

Unable to stay still, we made a mad dash down the stairs. But there we ran into another strange phenomenon.

We heard a loud noise that sounded a lot like all the building’s windows shattering. That meant they had more ways in. And just like on the roof, what if some of them were already clinging to the wall?

“This is not good…”

Just as Anastasia said that, the previously-silent guest rooms threw open their doors. A blond man ran out into the sandy hallway, but a red slime enveloped him like a blanket.

There was nothing we could do.

His eyes seemed to meet mine at the final moment. He was shouting something, but I had no idea what it meant and he was engulfed and dissolved.

It was times like this when I really wished I understood English.

That was how hellish the situation was.

Some people rolled out through the door already covered in a gel and some doors shook while the person on the other side tried and failed to kick them down… However it happened, human lives were being lost at a rapid pace. There was some wet cloth clinging to the wall. ''Oh, I guess they really do only eat living beings and can’t consume synthetic clothing.'' My thoughts were wandering. I was trying to avoid focusing on this, just like someone who started reading an old manga volume they found while cleaning their room.

“All the guest room windows were broken by the wind…and the gels clinging to the windows and wall got in…”

“We can’t stay here. We need to get downstairs…”

Anastasia started to run, but I held her back.

“All the windows downstairs will be broken too! We need to assume the gels are on every floor. At this rate, we’ll probably end up trapped between two groups of gels if we take the stairs. Anywhere with a window will have gels!”

“Then what do we do, Truth? Take the elevator!?”

“No,” said Maxwell. “That hotel’s elevators are glass. The risk would be little different from the guest rooms even if you simply climbed down the shaft.”

Yes, that was the problem.

This hotel was no longer safe. We had to escape if we were to survive. But how were we supposed to do that? We were helpless with both the stairs and elevator off limits.

“…No?”

“What is it, Truth?”

“Maxwell, what about the staff elevators? Surely not even shiny Las Vegas would use a glass elevator to carry the room service and linen carts.”

“Sure. Acquiring data via hotel intranet. There are three staff elevators relatively close to that emergency staircase.”

“Run, Anastasia.”

I was hesitant to go. Was it really right to turn my back on the tragedy filling this floor? But there was nothing I could do. The hallway was filled with red slimes and there was no way around them.

Some of them reacted slightly to our movements – that is, to how our movements disturbed the dust and particles in the air – and they would leap at us if we got any closer.

We had to survive.

No matter what.

“What do we do about the elevator? They’ll all be stopped.”

“Even if they aren’t, we can’t escape an ambush if we simply ride it down normally. Maxwell. The top right of the door says EDE and the button panel says 11381518. Perform a search.”

“Sure. That is version 5 of the midsized industrial elevators made by Eddy Electronics. It is a special model that simplified the air conditioner to lighten the elevator and allow it to carry more weight. During a power outage, it can be unlocked by pressing the metal hook hidden on the door rail. You should have the best odds of success if you use a long and thin piece of metal similar to a ruler, slip it into the gap between the door and the lower rail, and move it like a saw.”

“Anastasia, let me borrow your Swiss Army knife. If we unscrew the fire extinguisher holder on the wall, its stainless steel frame should work perfectly.”

“It’s Maiden. And that flexible interface is really second to none, isn’t it?”

''Is this any time to be praising Maxwell?

Once I had the L-shaped metal frame, I slipped it into the gap in the elevator and jerked it around. I felt kind of like a car thief. And damn was it ever loud. It worried me. If those gels reacted to sound directly instead of the disturbed air, then we were done for.

I detected the change from the solid sensation in my wrist rather than from the sound. I stuck my fingers in between the double door and spread them apart.

“Kh.”

I found a pit that felt a lot like a giant square smokestack. There was no need to keep the area lit at all times, so it was of course completely dark. When you couldn’t see the bottom of a hole, it filled you with an instinctual fear.

We had no lifeline and that pit was more than ten stories tall. All we had to rely on was a metal ladder with bars thinner than my thumb and our own arm strength.

But we had no choice but to go for it.

It was the one solid route with no windows.

“Class Rep… I guess I can’t exactly carry you down. You’ll have to do it yourself.”

“I-I’ll be fine…”

“Hey, I can’t see to the bottom. Are you sure there aren’t any gels lying in wait?”

Anastasia was more afraid than necessary and starting to freeze up, so I took the lead going down.

I grabbed the ladder’s rung and climbed down a bit.

“I guess the Class Rep can go second.”

“Eh? Why, Satori-kun?”

“Warning: Looking up in this situation could be seen as a dishonest act.”

''Tch, Maxwell caught on.

At any rate, escaping the hotel came first. We descended the ladder with me first, the Class Rep second, and Anastasia third.

“Hm? Erika, Ayumi???”

At some point the video chat had cut off.

“Entering the elevator shaft has affected the signal,” explained Maxwell.

“But you’re still connected. And you’re back in a container in Japan.”

“Sure. However, I have routed my signal through the hotel’s local intranet while your sisters are using a signal sent directly in from outside.”

I had thought climbing down through seemingly endless darkness would be nothing but terrifying, but it was actually pretty easy. Just like with stairs, you didn’t have to check each and every step before taking it. You just had to get a rhythm going and follow that.

But I could feel my thoughts growing more inwardly focused as I repeated the simple task with nothing to look at. I could hear shouts and screams through the closed doors every time we reached another floor down, but I had no way of knowing if they were real or a figment of my imagination. The truth was I would have been happier to know they were only in my head.

How much time had passed?

“…It’s gotten quieter,” said the Class Rep.

That comment held great meaning, but no one said anything more. Not even the Class Rep herself.

We just continued down the ladder.

It made me feel like everyone else had vanished from the face of the earth, leaving only us behind.

And while I was in that forlorn state of mind, Maxwell gave a warning.

“User, you have reached the first floor.”

“Eh? But the shaft keeps going down…”

“There must be a basement.”

That was obvious once Maxwell mentioned it. And I had completely forgotten to count the floors each time we reached an elevator door. I may have been more panicked then I had realized.

Unlocking the door from the inside proved simple. The metal hook was like a thick lever and it was entirely exposed. I just had to push it with my hand to unlock the door. Once I pushed open the doors, I leaned out onto the inorganic floor. This was probably the back area for employees. A door somewhere would lead out to the familiar front lobby.

There was no one there.

I couldn’t sense any kind of presence.

Calm music played in the distance. Following that would probably lead us to the front lobby…but for some reason, none of us moved. We felt like we would regret seeing whatever was there.

“What do we do now, Satori-kun?”

“There’s an emergency exit sign over there…”

We could hear dry sand scraping against the other side of the door. The sandstorm was still underway, so we probably couldn’t even stay standing out there. Running out there would be far too reckless. The gels would end up surrounding us while the wind and sand tossed us around. The sandstorm would be affecting the gels too, but that was like blindfolding both sides and having us wander when touching them meant instant death for us.

That said, the hotel was far from safe with the windows broken. We had to assume every floor – from the lobby to the roof – had been contaminated. If we stayed here, we would eventually be found and we would have nowhere to run.

While my mind raced, Anastasia slowly looked up.

“No, there might be a way.”

“?”

“Look at this, Truth. It’s this hotel’s security, but the basement block is isolated from the rest.”

She had apparently been casually performing a cyber attack with the handheld game system used as her pet robot’s head, but now was not the time to worry about that.

“There’s a casino down there, right?”

“It is Vegas, after all. This here is supposed to be the vault, but there’s some equipment that makes no sense with that.”

“?”

“A large fan. That kind of equipment is meant to keep the oxygen supply up during tunnel construction.”

“Wait a second. Are you saying what I think you are?”

“They’ve surreptitiously built a secret tunnel so they can escape from below the casino if robbers show up. It doesn’t branch off anywhere else, so it shouldn’t be contaminated as long as the entrance is intact. What should we do, Truth? Isn’t this our last chance?”

===[confidential] Interview Records of an Imprisoned Group of Thieves [storage A51]===

Vegas casinos aren’t like South American banks. Only a complete dumbass would charge in the front entrance with a mask over their head and a gun in hand, but there’s also a trick to secretly digging a tunnel to the vault.

America is a car culture, so unlike Europe, people say no one sees any real need to develop underground, but that’s a complete and utter lie. There’s the obvious things like power, gas, and plumbing, but people also tend to dig into the ground for anything they don’t want the government to know about, so there’s a whole mess of tunnels below Vegas. Alien autopsies and secret UFO labs are supposed to be deep underground, right? It’s the same for everyone. From the sicko criminals to the government officials, everyone truly believes their secrets will be safe as long as they’re hidden underground.

I was only caught because some moronic newbie screwed up and damaged a gas pipe.

So with that out of the way, what did you want to know about our tunnel digging? It’s been a while since the guilty verdict. The newspapers, TV news, and even the online news will have forgotten all about it by now, so I doubt you’re here to have me write up some tips on our crime technique.

Not that it matters to me.

But if you’ve got a question, make it quick. Don’t assume you can see me again tomorrow or the day after that. I mean, we’re tunnel diggers. Don’t you forget that.

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| Back to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
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| Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume4_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
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My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister:Volume2 Chapter 2

2017-09-28T15:52:12Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 2==

===Part 1===

It had begun.

It had finally begun.

A fight to the death being broadcast live nationwide. The Bright Cross pitted Archenemies against each other to dispose of them.

Level 4. The Colosseum.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Karen-chan here will be your host tonight!! And for some high-level analysis, we’ve brought in experts in the fields of martial arts, biology, religion, and more!”

The blue bunny girl continued her mic performance.

Even if the start time was 10, that apparently did not meant the actual fight would begin then. It seemed to be like the live broadcast of an international volleyball match. And I wasn’t going to sit there and listen to the lengthy ceremony.

I probably had 15-30 minutes…no, even less.

Whatever the case, I had to make the best of it.

“Itou-san, take this!”

“?”

After an official took the blonde girl from the cage, I handed her a small headset.

“At this point, we just have to do this. So focus on surviving, Itou-san!”

“…”

The small girl tried to say something, but it looked like the words wouldn’t come out. The officials grabbed her on either side and tossed her into the transparent bug cage with her glass wand in hand.

I hated it.

But it wasn’t over yet. We still had a chance.

It was only a thin, thin thread, but we couldn’t give up hope yet!!

“Maxwell. Let’s start by checking both sides’ specs. A witch and a mermaid. That sounds like a combination from a fairy tale, but what can they actually do and how much can they do with it?”

“Sure. First of all, Western and Eastern mermaids are very different, but since they are pitting her against a witch, it should be a fairly safe assumption that this is a Western mermaid.”

Maxwell communicated using a short text SNS, so he could not send much text at once. He instead sent message after message.

“With that in mind, a Western mermaid lures sailors into the ocean with her song. There are a variety of theories as to why they drag the sailors down to the ocean bottom: to eat the human, to gather mates, to eliminate an external enemy, etc. In each case, there is no chance of escape once you have been dragged down. The few known countermeasures are all ways to prevent the mermaid’s song from luring you in, so there is no mention of how to recover after falling into the ocean.”

“Where did you get this data from?”

“Sure. Randomly from the internet.”

Page after page displayed and they were from both personal and corporate sites. Some were even web novel sites and encyclopedia-format game walkthrough sites. Some had a harp and some didn’t and the design of their swimsuit-like outfit changed, but all of them had a woman with a fish tail for legs singing as she sat on a stone jutting up from the ocean surface. And as I looked at it, one thought came to mind.

…Could we really rely on this?

This wasn’t walkthrough information for a game we could retry as many times as it took. This wasn’t a message board post of someone who thought they knew what they were doing and made a fool of themselves.

This was a life.

A human life was riding on this decision and all I had was online information gathered by who even knows who?

“No, I can’t just stop here. I have to make a decision. Maxwell, what about the witch? And is a witch even an Archenemy?”

“Sure. During the age of the witch hunts and the inquisition, witches were already legally known as nonhuman, so they could be subjected to various tortures, executed, or stripped of their property. In other words, their ‘human’ rights were taken from them.”

“Is Itou Helen a medieval witch?”

“No. That was merely an example. If the official announcement was accurate, she is a Circe witch. Circe is spoken of in Greek mythology.”

“Be more specific.”

“Circe mixed a special potion that could remake humans into animals or grotesque monsters. It was identical to the way the Greek gods punished humans. And those who have inherited those techniques are classified as Circe witches.”

…

''I see. So that’s why.

It had honestly seemed weird to me that witches were classified as Archenemies alongside vampires and zombies.

“Maxwell. Give me the definition of the undead…of Archenemies.”

“Sure. 1. A life form that has surpassed the limits of known biology and has a lifespan either infinitely or immeasurably long. 2. A life form created from or by a human. 3. A life form that’s individual traits present a risk of spreading to or infecting unrelated people around it. The details can change somewhat depending on the exact conditions, but that is the general definition.”

“They stole the technique of the gods and spread it throughout earth. By transforming humans with a divine potion, they count as a source of infection.”

Looking at it that way, it made sense that they were classified the same as vampires and zombies.

“Then let’s get to the crux of the issue. …Is Itou Helen really a witch? Or did the Bright Cross just make that up?”

“It is hard to say.”

It was rare for Maxwell to not give a clear yes or no answer.

“Her medical records show she was once hospitalized for a broken bone and the flu. And her recovery was within the average range. But…”

“But?”

“The patients in the same room as her recovered quickly. Or rather, the drugs they were treated with worked too well and with no side effects.”

She was a human herself, but she could change those around her.

That was a witch.

“I can surmise that she escaped notice until now due to that unusual pattern. A video site contains a video of a parrot Itou Helen looked after as the school’s student animal caretaker. Someone secretly filmed her wrapping a bandage around the injured bird only for it to recover at unnatural speed. This may have been when they discovered her.”

…What was she doing?

She had been caught because she was saving the lives of others? That was what did it? How did that make her a monster?

No.

It was possible Itou Helen had been unaware of her power or true nature before she was captured by the Bright Cross.

She may have found it odd how quickly the bird was recovering and merely been delighted by the small miracle.

Was that really an evil that needed eliminating?

I was much more disgusted that someone at our school had secretly filmed the girl, released it without her permission, and then creepily criticized her with their gossiping curiosity hidden by a thin veil of supposed justice. Was that only because I had Archenemies in my family?

“User, the Bright Cross is the world’s largest international organization with a powerful influence on humanitarian and medical fields.” Maxwell calmly interjected. “They are officially registered as a non-profit organization, but they receive considerable donations from pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment producers the world over. That is likely because they have a great impact on rulings concerning pharmaceutical decisions, welfare standards, and health insurance.”

“Get to the point.”

“Sure. From their perspective, the speed of recovery is unimportant. But they need their products to be as effective as the data says they should be. If someone near Itou Helen were to collapse, their product could be criticized. An unstable miracle is only a risk from a business perspective. …Isn’t it possible that this was influenced by those who think like that?”

I couldn’t believe it.

As the data says? A risk from a business perspective? That was only a theory, but it was still too much!

Itou Helen hadn’t done anything herself. The people around her had apparently recovered, but there had been no negative effects to their health. And yet she was being sent to the gallows because of a hypothetical?

“Understood, Maxwell. Whatever the details might be, Itou Helen is definitely an Archenemy, right? These aren’t false accusations and she really can do it?”

“Sure. In all likelihood.”

“Then what can a witch do? You said something about Circe making potions that remake people into animals, but…”

That was when the lights on the ceiling changed direction. The intense light dazzled me. And atop the giant transparent die-shaped bug cage, the blue bunny girl raised her ecstatic voice with microphone in hand.

“Now then, now then! The atmosphere has started to heat up in here, so let’s end the talk and get to the main event. Witch vs. Mermaid! Who will win!? Whether here, in the live viewing theater, or in front of the TV, get those tickets ready!! This is the cutting edge mixed species martial arts tournament: the Colosseum!!”

“Goddammit…!!”

Whatever we were going to do, we had no time.

Itou Helen had some power, but she was not even aware of it. At this rate, she was no different from a normal high school girl who looked after the animals. She would be tormented to death by the mermaid who wrapped her hair around her bare skin and could breathe underwater!

“This would be pointless if both sides couldn’t take advantage of their strengths! To make things fair for Kuroyama Hinoki the Mermaid, the ring will be filled with water to a depth of 1 meter.”

…

“And in exchange, Itou Helen the Witch will be given 42 different chemicals free of charge! Okay, you two! Show off your utterly inhuman and entirely unrealistic powers as Archenemies!!”

''To hell with you!

I brought my smartphone to my mouth and shouted into it.

But I was speaking to Itou Helen in the bug cage and not Maxwell.

“Itou-san! Can you think of a way to use those chemicals!?”

“Um, uh, umm…”

The voice reaching my smartphone via the headset on her ear did not sound very hopeful. Of course it didn’t. What were those colorful bottles sitting on a silver cart? Cocktail ingredients and even fluorescent paint would have looked less threatening. And she was surrounded by water up to her waist. If those were powerful chemicals, using them wrong and dropping some around her would be dangerous!

Meanwhile, the situation refused to wait around.

The woman named Karen said more.

“It’s time for the valuable first battle of a new age! This death match has no time limit! I hope you’re excited!!”

A low, deep buzzer rang like when a prison door opened.

That signaled the beginning of the match.

But that was blown away only a moment later.

It was the mermaid.

It was the queen of the sea who had her slender body wrapped in her own long hair.

Irregular ripples ran across the surface of the water filling the die-shaped bug cage and then small white cracks covered every single reinforced glass surface. This was not Itou Helen the Witch who could not move. It was the first attack from Kuroyama Hinoki the Mermaid.

But she was not controlling the water.

Nor was this a power to destroy glass.

It was a song.

It was soundwaves.

It was the pressure from those waves.

Unlike my vampire older sister or zombie younger sister, mermaids did not actually remake their opponent’s body. But their song could break through a stormy night, win over wartime sailors, and manipulate them into falling into the ocean. The sailors offered their own lives. In that way, the mermaid was a source of infection. An Archenemy that controlled people.

“Agwah!?”

There was an explosive sound so dangerously loud that it nearly broke the smartphone speaker only indirectly playing it. And with that smartphone to my ear, I had to cover my ears and double over.

But.

That sound.

It wasn’t coming from Kuroyama Hinoki and her great mermaid’s song!?

The girl with wavy shoulder-length blonde hair was cowering down and trembling like a small animal. But around Itou Helen, a scarlet blast of flames swept in a horizontal crescent moon shape and that explosive blast pushed back the mermaid’s song!?

“Rechecking Itou Helen’s words. There was an unnatural waver in the amplitude of her voice. I estimate she was having trouble breathing due to extreme tension.”

Maxwell sent several messages to the screen.

“When you asked her if she could think of a way to use those chemicals, she grew nervous but not because she did not know how. She likely hesitated because she could instinctually tell how to use them at a glance.”

“…!!”

Knowing that was a type of proof.

Just like a vampire was sensitive to the smell of blood and a zombie to the taste of flesh, that witch could just tell how to use those suspicious-looking chemicals. And she had despaired at that fact.

I was speechless as I watched Itou Helen adjust her grip on the glass wand made of countless transparent tubes and protuberances. She stuck the openings of the colorful bottles into a trumpet or trombone-like collection of pipes and vigorously operated several pistons like she was playing a musical instrument.

The colorful liquids were separated out by color as they passed through the clear tubes like it was a roller coaster and I finally felt like I could see what that glass wand was.

“What…is that? A vertical siphon coffee maker?”

“Sure. Analysis complete. The concept is the same. It provides heating and cooling. It also allows for distillation and fractionation using steam. It contains the burner, reflux condenser, and three neck flask needed for all that. It also supports pressurization and decompression using air compression.”

“And what does that mean!?”

“That one device contains everything found in your high school’s chemistry lab. It should be enough to create a simple chemical weapon. An impressive display by a medical organization like the Bright Cross.”

And an impressive display by Itou Helen for using it so well the first time she touched it.

Computers and smartphones were so convenient that people could be overwhelmed by their many services, but I didn’t see any hesitation of that sort.

Meanwhile, the small witch continued releasing combinations of colorful chemicals from the glass wand. Each time, a mass of flames or a tornado of vacuum blades would sweep across the inside of the bug cage.

How was Itou Helen herself viewing this?

Was she proud that she was someone special?

Her back looked even smaller than before, so I seriously doubted it.

And the mermaid…Kuroyama Hinoki was not just sitting idly by.

Her song was apparently not her only weapon. However, she could not control all of the water to sweep the attacks away with a water gun.

It was something much more unexpected.

The tail fin created from the long hair around her legs slapped the water’s surface, and…

“What!?”

They were rocks.

The bug cage’s floor and the water’s surface were split by several sharp rocks that jutted up in front of the mermaid like a giant shark’s teeth. They acted as a shield and deflected the mass of fire that Itou Helen had summoned.

She could control rocks?

Even though she was a mermaid that lived in the ocean?

No.

“Maxwell, show me the mermaid pictures. Weren’t they all sitting on a rock as they sang?”

“Sure. What about it?”

Needless to say, the mermaids that lured sailors off their ship or dragged them and their boat down were anthropomorphized versions of shipwrecks. They tended to appear in difficult locations such as reefs or straits.

But that meant mermaids weren’t symbols of the ocean or water.

They were rocks.

They were reefs.

They hid below the surface, struck the ship before they were noticed, opened a hole in the hull, and mercilessly took the lives of the crew. They were the anthropomorphized version of those sharp rocks.

In that case, this was bad.

One of them might “jut up” directly below Itou Helen.

No.

There was another issue.

“Where did the mermaid herself go!?”

She was gone.

She must have sensed that her song would just be pushed back, but if she had run away, where had she gone?

That was obvious.

Kuroyama Hinoki was a mermaid.

Her slender body was wrapped in her long hair to form the tail fin needed to swim freely through the water. And the bug cage was filled with a meter of water.

Worst of all, the mermaid sending the sailor into the ocean and sinking the ship with her song and reef were only the beginning. The preparation. Hadn’t it been said that the real threat was when she bared their fangs and preyed on the fallen humans?

I didn’t have time to yell a warning into my smartphone.

Her small body suddenly vanished. Into the water. It was as unnatural as someone being dragged from a car by a rope around their ankle.

The blue bunny girl rejoiced.

“What’s this!? Has this battle between girls super-evolved into a watery swimming tournament!? Then here’s hoping for some wardrobe malfunctions!! That’s bound to do wonders for our ratings!!”

''Shut the hell up.

Why did she have to be so hot? If I wasn’t careful, I felt like my soul would be taken away by her cleavage and the curves of her hips.

I sent a mental curse her way and shouted into my smartphone.

“Itou-san! She eats people after dragging them underwater. That means you’re safe if you leave the water. Use wind or something. Yes, can’t you make a potion that lets you fly!?”

“No. If Itou Helen is a Circe witch, then that is the wrong method.” Maxwell calmly rejected my idea. “As Circe is from Greek mythology, she can likely use the concept that all things are made from the four great elements of fire, water, wind, and earth. This has nothing to do with the laws of physics or chemical formulas. I can only call it the occult. That is how Archenemies work.”

“And? We don’t have time here, Maxwell!”

“Sure. Directly using fire, water, wind, and earth is the same as directly eating sugar or flour. The flavor and nutrition absorption is more efficient when it is reworked into bread or cake. Is that a simple enough explanation?”

“But what’s your point? What is the equivalent of ‘cooking’ for a Circe witch…for Itou Helen!?”

“Needless to say, that is a potion that remakes humans into an animal or monster.”

In other words, a reproduction of the gods’ punishment for humans.

“There is a monster known as the Scylla. It was originally a beautiful girl, but she was given a grotesque form by one of Circe’s potions and she ultimately ruled the sea and killed 6 heroes. It would likely be more efficient to have Itou Helen herself take the potion than to use it against the mermaid.”

We weren’t talking about a tiger’s claws or a shark’s teeth here. We would be turning her into a great demon lord that had sent a whole group of legendary heroes to their graves.

If so…

“Itou Helen should know how to use the chemicals. Check encyclopedias of animals, dinosaurs, or whatever else. Just search all the archives that might provide her inspiration!”

“Sure.”

We had no time.

A human could only survive a few minutes underwater. But that was when a trained professional attempted it with a stopwatch in one hand. If an amateur was pulled underwater without warning, they might breathe water into their lungs right off the bat.

I just hoped the headset still worked.

I recalled what I had watched on the living room TV with Erika and Ayumi. We had debated it with a snack in one hand. What was the strongest animal? Ayumi went for the large herbivores like hippos and elephants and Erika went for the oceanic carnivores like sharks and killer whales, but what had I said?

“Anyway, getting that mermaid off of her comes first.”

“This is an underwater battle, so would a shark be best?”

“No, an octopus or squid would be more efficient for getting the mermaid off. Itou-san! Can you hear me, Itou-san!?”

There was no response.

And I doubted it was just that she couldn’t open her mouth underwater. If all she had to do was send a sign, she only had to tap at the headset with her fingertip.

“She seems to be refusing to respond.”

Why?

Could she not trust us?

No, even then it was odd. She had been dragged underwater and would not live another 100 seconds at this rate. Whether she trusted us or not, she would want any information she could get. Like a drowning man grasping at straws.

Then what was this?

I had to read the thoughts in Itou Helen’s heart.

On the verge of death, she wouldn’t have it in her to take a detour on a whim. This had to be something worth risking her life over. And unless I figured that out, our words would never each her.

…

''Wait, could it be…?

“Maxwell.”

“Sure.”

“Give me this data. That will probably work.”

I remembered what I had proposed as the strongest animal when discussing it with my sisters.

I took in a deep breath and released it to drive out as much of the tension in my chest as I could.

And I spoke.

“Itou-san, please listen.”

It didn’t matter whether she responded or not.

I only had to know that she was listening.

“I was only thinking about saving you before. To be honest, that hasn’t changed. But if this is what you want, I can point you to a different way.”

It could be a single second or a single instant.

It just had to reach her in time.

Before the final moment.

“So even if you feel like I’m deceiving you, please hear me out. I can only submit one option to you and it isn’t a tiger or a lion. It’s…”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

I heard the water splitting.

It came from the smartphone and the headset it was connected to, so that meant Itou Helen had brought her head above water.

And if someone had won, that meant someone had lost.

“Ohhh? What could this be?”

As the distant camera zoomed in toward her, the blue bunny girl voiced her confusion while pointlessly leaning in toward the camera, tilting her head, and emphasizing her cleavage.

The answer soon arrived.

Someone else silently and shockingly calmly floated up to the surface.

It was the mermaid.

Kuroyama Hinoki.

Now that she had lost consciousness, she must have lost control of the long, long hair wrapped around her because it gradually came undone as it floated in the water.

“Would you look at that! She’s floating there just like a dead fish! But what could have happened in the water there? Surely the mermaid didn’t drown!!”

The sound of something whizzing through the air provided the answer.

It came from Itou Helen, the witch with a glass wand.

Several long, thick, and transparent tails rose from around her small butt like a nine-tailed fox.

They were jellyfish tentacles.

===Part 2===

“I really think a venomous animal can’t be beat.”

That was what I had said in the living room.

Ayumi suggested a hippo or an elephant while Erika suggested a shark or a killer whale. But as I watched the TV program, I suggested a different candidate for the strongest animal.

“It can be a hornet, a scorpion, a pit viper, or a habu, but they can kill a human several dozen times their size, right?”

“But, but. A bear will dig up hornet’s nests to get at the honey. It’ll writhe around after being stung all over, but the cute thing won’t stop lapping up the honey.”

“No, hornets don’t gather honey, so isn’t the bear eating the larvae? Hornet babies look disgusting, but they’re really nutritious.”

“Eh, ehhh!? No…no, that can’t be. Don’t destroy my vision of the cute bearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!”

“Anyway…”

A great variety of animals were venomous, but there was generally another animal that their venom was useless against. Like the bear that attacked the hornet’s nest through brute force or the small clownfish that lived symbiotically with the anemone.

But.

There was just one animal with the ultimate venom that lacked any such exceptions.

“The Irukandji jellyfish. A deadly jellyfish found in the ocean near Australia. They’re less than 2cm long and can slip through the shark nets set up around swimming areas, but they’re covered in venomous stingers that can kill a human with a single prick. There is no chance of survival like with a habu serum. They’re transparent, so they can’t be seen. And the young ones are less than a tenth the size of a grain of rice, so they can slip through any net. I think they’re the strongest. I want to meet one them even less than a tiger or shark.”

===Part 3===

Everyone was shocked.

But that did not matter.

Everyone was more worried about the ticket clutched in their hand than seeing an exciting battle. And the result was now known. No matter how it had happened, their bets would now pay off (or not).

An earth-shaking cheer arrived a moment later.

Even if they couldn’t follow what had happened, they could not call the match off now. The blue bunny girl atop the bug cage went along with it.

She hopped up and down on the spot, allowing her ample breasts to bounce on her slender frame to a needless extent.

“What’s this, what’s this!? We just had an upset that entirely ignored the odds! This match was conquered by Itou Helen, the small animal of a girl who looks like she couldn’t hurt a fly! From the looks of that, did she use a venomous stinger on a jellyfish tentacle? That’s far crueler than it looks, but that’s why it fooled everyone! The electrode attached to her opponent has already confirmed cardiac arrest!! She ended this perfectly!!”

On the opposite corner of the square bug cage, I saw a young man scream as he fell to his knees. What was he to that mermaid named Kuroyama Hinoki? Her family, her friend, or her lover? I didn’t know. I only knew that Archenemy also had someone willing to weep for her.

Was he experiencing what I would if I watched Erika or Ayumi breathe their last for some show business?

He might kill me.

I didn’t even know his name, but I was somehow certain of that.

And there was no stopping now.

I had to “settle” this before the passion of payback cooled.

On the ground, I shouted up at the rainforest butterfly blue bunny girl who looked down at us all from above the bug cage.

“Hey!”

“Yes, yes. You’re the witch’s second, aren’t you? What’s the matter? You got the first win you wanted so badly, so you need to smile! Smile!!”

I entirely ignored her big round eyes and the lightly clenched fists in front of her cheeks.

“I want to confirm our reward.”

“This was her first win, so Itou Helen will be awarded 10 million yen. That’s the base amount and it doubles with each consecutive win. We can discuss the details of the payment method off camera, can’t we?”

“That isn’t all.”

I breathed in and out.

And I made myself a monster to achieve my goal.

“The winner is given the body of the loser. And we’re free to use it however we want: eat it, use it as an ingredient, or whatever else. That’s what you said, so don’t forget it.”

“Ah ha ha! Of course. Archenemies aren’t human, so abandoning and damaging their corpses aren’t crimes. And the Bright Cross keeps its promises. But, but. Eating a Western mermaid won’t make you immortal, you know?”

“How we’re going to use it is none of your concern.”

That was all.

Our conversation was interrupted by a great indescribable cry that could not be expressed with any known emotion. Needless to say, it came from the young man who was our opponent’s second.

We were desecrating the mermaid’s corpse.

''But I’m sorry. You lost, so you have no right to do anything here. So just shut up and watch.

Under the bright spotlight, the blue bunny girl wiped sweat from her brow (showing off her armpit as she did) and cackled.

“Well, I’m sure the witch can use it for something. Or is this for your…interests, boy? Come to think of it, she does have a pretty tempting body☆ Well, we won’t look into it. That’s the right of the victor! You can just chuck her in a dumpster for all we care!!”

The blue bunny girl brought it to an end and her every word rubbed me the wrong way.

“Now then, now then. That brings this match to an end! Whether you won or lost money tonight, let’s enjoy another exciting night at the Colosseum next time!! Okay, everyone! Have a good night. Adieu!!”

===Part 4===

In a cold room, “that” was delivered on a rolling stretcher like it was hotel room service.

The pale delivery lay motionless on its back with a white sheet covering it up to the chest.

It was the mermaid.

Kuroyama Hinoki.

“R-really?”

In her witch costume and holding her glass wand, Itou Helen spoke weakly as she trembled nervously.

“She’s really…ours now…?”

“Yeah, I made sure that bunny girl said so. And on a national broadcast. They can’t overturn that decision now no matter what happens.”

There was no one else here.

When I told them not to bother me because I wanted to have some fun, the officials all gave me sleazy smiles and left.

I seriously hoped they all died.

And then we faced the loser.

The corpse spoke.

“Kah…hah! Ugweh!? Cough, cough cough!!”

She started coughing right on schedule, like an alarm clock had woken her.

This had been Itou Helen’s “request”.

A tiger or lion wouldn’t work. She refused to use a shark or killer whale. She hadn’t wanted to fight at all. She hadn’t wanted to kill. So even after being dragged underwater by the mermaid with only a few dozen seconds of life left, she had refused to kill for her own survival.

Even after I realized that, it hadn’t been easy.

We had needed to end the match without killing Kuroyama Hinoki the Mermaid. We couldn’t have them declaring a no contest and then starting a rematch. We had to definitively end it while also freeing the loser from that bug cage.

And this was the result.

Venom could put someone in a state of apparent death.

And the winner had the right to retrieve the loser’s body.

Put those two together and we could save her.

We could help a life escape that cruel Colosseum.

And I was glad it had worked.

Since it was based on that killer jellyfish, there had been a chance we could not revive her.

And as the mermaid gathered the sheets in front of her chest, I noticed how good looking she was. I had been too distracted during the battle, but the bulges below that sheet suggested she could give my older sister a run for her money.

I was glad we hadn’t killed her.

“I’m…cough!? What happened…to the match…?

“It’s fine.”

Whatever the case, I was glad I had time for those more unnecessary thoughts. It meant I had escaped that insane life-or-death situation.

So I didn’t have to say much.

I wasn’t going to ask for anything in return.

“It’s over. All of it is. You can go back home. That’s all you need to know.”

The mermaid clearly did not understand, but I still turned to face the small witch instead.

“We won’t be able to do this every time. Once the Bright Cross catches on, they’ll figure out a countermeasure.”

“I…know that…”

Also, there was no exit from the Colosseum. There was no rule releasing you after winning a certain number of battles.

If you didn’t die, you had to keep fighting until you did.

Again and again, you would be thrown into a cage with another Archenemy and made to fight them to the death. That system made sure no one survived for long.

It was an execution system.

The sports tournament format was nothing more than camouflage.

So following the rules wasn’t enough. We were only buying time here. I could walk freely outside, so there was something I had to do while Itou Helen’s life was temporarily saved.

This insane Colosseum was being boldly presented to the public. But to pull off something like this, they had to have a systems to distort information and people’s impressions of the event. If I found and destroyed that, everyone would realize what should have been obvious: that this was wrong. And their voices would become a great pressure that truly freed Itou Helen and the other Archenemies.

I heard a knock on the door.

Was it a Colosseum official or security?

Whatever the case, it would be difficult to kick down the door and break through. Even if I had a justification for Kuroyama Hinoki, I couldn’t bring Itou Helen out with me.

And if I struggled here and they had to suppress me, I would lose the thin, thin thread of connection provided by my position as her second.

“…”

I had to destroy them.

I had to have known that from the beginning. Even if I did manage to get Itou Helen out of here, what would that accomplish? Even if she gave up her home and went into hiding, the Bright Cross’s influence spread to more than 100 countries. Even abandoning everything in her life and living life on the run was not enough.

Running away wouldn’t cut it.

If we didn’t stand up to them, we would end up cornered.

We had no time.

We wouldn’t be able to talk freely for much longer.

And so I briefly asked what mattered most.

“Even so, I’d like to know what you think. Am I a worthy partner? Can you trust me?”

Her answer was simple.

Itou Helen and I exchanged a handshake.

===[Search Engine] The Red-Faced Sage [Absolute NOAH]===

It’s awful.

Oh, honestly. It’s just awful.

What’s wrong? Why are you looking so gloomy on such a cheerful night? Hah hah! Oh, is that what happened? You lost!? You should have listened to what this tipster told you and bet everything you had on the witch.

Listen, there are a lot of different Archenemies.

For example, mermaids are a symbol of shipwrecks, death at sea, and things like that. They swallow up groups of humans by dragging the living into the dark sea.

But a Circe witch is a little different.

Potions that turn humans into monsters? A genius woman that stole the gods’ punishments and recreated them with secret potions? That’s honestly all extra. It doesn’t matter. There’s more to the legends of Circe than just the animal potions.

It’s said that Circe took the souls of heroes to the island of the blissful.

Well, you could say it’s like heaven. Heaven in Greek mythology is full of Zeus, Hera, and all those pain-in-the-ass gods, so it’d probably be pretty uncomfortable for a human, but the island of the blissful is a true paradise where not even Zeus can reach you. I think it was ruled by Cronus.

In other words, this was a mermaid that kills you by dragging you into the sea and a witch that takes you to heaven.

It’s obvious which one was of a higher grade. The mermaid never stood a chance.

Her name was Itou Helen, right? If she really is a Circe witch, then she’s going to make a mess of this Colosseum some more. After all, Circe fished up the heroes – those who fought hard on the battlefield – to reward them. She’s perfect for a Colosseum, right?

You say none of this helps now that it’s over?

Yeah, you’re right. But the next match awaits you! Now, that’s all for tonight!! Whether you listened to me and won big or ignored me and regret it, don’t forget this night! If you want to make money the smart way, make sure you listen to what this tipster has to tell you!!

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| Return to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[My_Vampire_Older_Sister_and_Zombie_Little_Sister:Volume2_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
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</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3

2017-06-19T12:11:18Z

LazyHunter:

==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 same 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>

The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume3 Chapter 3

2017-03-20T11:30:38Z

LazyHunter:

{{Incomplete|parts=9|tparts=15}}
==Chapter 3: Shooting Ride!==

===Part 1===

If you were going to establish a private detective agency, it had to be in Shinjuku. The type of people changed greatly between the bar district, in front of the TV studios, or near the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, but no other area contained as much information from aboveground society and underground society alike. Choosing a restaurant to kill some time at would let you overhear the careless complaints and gossip of people from all sorts of industries.

The fastest way to blend into an area was to actually live there. And so the private detective agency rented out a room in a rundown multi-tenant building there. The room was only slightly less yellowed than a park bathroom, but Tokyo was insane and it still cost as much to rent as a family apartment in another prefecture.

The air conditioning was nearly dead and the computers were from who knows how many generations ago. In that office, a beautiful woman in a tight skirt and glasses faced a young man. They each held a clipboard and they were reading something while using red pen to check something off.

“Asamura Reina. Age: 24. Sex: Female. Born in Kyoto and lived overseas from 18-22. Majored in medical psychology and works as a counselor. A sexually frustrated young woman who looks good in glasses, a white coat, and a tight skirt.”

“Hey, Inoue, does this mean I’ll be driving around in a red Italian car loaded with a V12 turbo engine? Isn’t that more of a guy car?”

“Don’t worry. The target is into cars. If he thinks you understand his tastes, he’ll be putty in your hands.”

“But a salty dog is way too much of a guy drink. Can’t I at least go with a dry martini?”

“Pff. A woman who orders a martini when out at the bar alone is already pretty-…ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow!? Y-you can’t let anything get to you like this out there, you know!?”

As the tight suit woman struck the young man’s head with her clipboard, a young newcomer carried in some coffee and animal cookies. She had apparently chosen the coffee beans herself and baked the cookies herself.

She was a high school girl with long brown hair. In the other world, she was known as Gruagach.

“Working hard, I see.”

“…Man, things sure are different with a young girl around. This place was so lacking in femininity before, so…dabah!? What was that for, chief!? Don’t kick me!!”

After puffing out her cheeks and delivering her foot to her subordinate, the tight suit woman held one of the mugs between both hands. She must have had trouble with hot drinks because she blew on it several times and then stuck out her tongue to test the temperature.

“Inoue will eat them all if you let him, so you should take your share now.”

“No, I already posted a picture on Nanskagram, so I don’t need any.”

The career woman froze in place while still testing the coffee with her tongue.

“Wh-what? High school girls show off their cuteness like that these days!?”

“Um?”

The girl looked confused.

The trembling tight suit woman checked the personal page of the handle name and ID she was given and she found an unbelievable number of digits. This was reaching as many people as a small broadcast station.

“N-no… A photo of some homemade animal cookies has more than a million ‘sures’!? Is this the internet that connects the world together!?”

“Yeah, recipes and pet training tips always do well,” said the young man. “And just adding an English description really increases your capacity a lot. Really, I can’t believe the people who immediately start posting selfies as soon as they start Nanskagramming. It’s like they’re putting their self-consciousness on full display. We don’t care about your normal face, so show us something about your lifestyle we can use to get to know you. Do they think they’re an amateur idol or something? Bwa ha. Bwa ha ha..h-hot, hot, hot! Don’t place the bottom of your mug against my forehead! It’s burning, chief! Don’t just leave it there!? Hoooot!?”

The blazer girl tilted her head while hiding the white ribbon on her chest behind the tray she held.

“Um, what are you doing here?”

“Looking over the script and putting together a role. We’re a secret division that performs investigations the normal police can’t to pave the way for something official. Sting operations are a standard starting point. And bringing down one organization causes another organization to rise up in its place, so we’ll always have work to do.”

The girl with the tilted head showed no sign of the Religious Society anymore, but she had not actually lost her faith. She still had a small cross hidden in the chest of her uniform. A long chat with the religious adviser at the hospital had apparently been very helpful for her. As far as the tight suit woman was concerned, she would be free to go once a compromise was reached.

The woman took a sip of coffee and reached for the sugar pot.

“But this really is a pain. Couldn’t you have come up with an easier role to play, Inoue!? You know I’m terrible at playing these mature types of women, like a schoolteacher or a secretary!!”

“Yeah, you are less feminine than Huldra-chan who I turn into in the other world. My bad, my bad.”

“…”

“P-please don’t just fall silent like that. Heh…heh heh.”

While the snake glared at the frog, the girl looked curiously down at the clipboard.

“If you have her be picky about only using imported furniture, wouldn’t it make her seem more like a high class woman?”

“Eh? W-well, I can easily fake that by messing with the online shopping history.”

“And here you can say she only wears custom-ordered underwear. That would give a sexual hint to the profile which would…um…more easily gather a gentleman’s attention…”

“Th-that’s a good point. Let’s see.”

The two adults quickly grabbed their red pens and faced their clipboards again. Left alone, the girl pondered the information, hoping to be useful in some way, but then she spoke up as if humming.

Yes, that blazer girl was the unattainable flower and outstanding Student Council President of a prestigious school.

“Come here, boy. I have much to teach you tonight.”

The tight suit woman was willing to forgive Inoue for spitting out his coffee and holding his nose with a hand. But when he also bent awkwardly forward, she kicked him and his chair over and stared into the distance.

(Sigh. Maybe I should go drinking again today.)

===Part 2===

“Boo.”

One day, Boo Boo came to a stop and looked up at an impressive structure.

“My house is made of bricks now.”

He tilted his head in confusion, but he was the kind of person who would begin using the new furniture that appeared when he woke up. He gave it no further thought and walked in.

It was still a single large room inside, but there was a smaller building next to it. It was crudely made and forced him to circle around to the side to go in, but he still investigated.

As soon as he opened the door, steam billowed out at him. The unique sweet scent of a girl hit him like a thick wall. Sutriona was sitting on a bench inside. She was naked except for the large tropical leaves known as Ghost Bento Wrappers wrapped around her chest and hips, making something like a tropical-style wild bikini. The bench was built for Boo Boo’s size and would have been like a wall to a normal-sized person, but she had apparently jumped up onto it regardless. She rudely had one leg bent up on the bench like she was sitting half cross-legged. Improved blood flow meant her milky white skin had grown somewhat flushed.

“Oh, Boo Boo. You should knock before entering.”

“Sutriona, you need to think about how to explain this.”

“Mh.” The Fairy Queen with a leaf towel around her head moved her eyebrows a little. “Fine then. When we Fairies visit a sauna, we wrap our bodies in medicinal leaves to trap in-…”

“I’m pretty sure that isn’t where to start explaining this.”

It was a rare sight for the Iberian Orc to play the tsukkomi. The Fairy Queen re-crossed her legs in quite a risqué way and snorted.

“The Fairies rebuilt your house before, right? They upgraded it from leaves to logs. That set a precedent. Now that they knew they can do that, they upgraded it further. Forgive them.”

“So that’s what happened.”

“And as I am their queen, they asked me for advice. They wanted to know what kind of new feature you would enjoy. And, well, um, I kind of set aside what you would want and went with what I would want. Forgive me.”

“So that’s what happened.”

Boo Boo, man among men, was not fazed even when faced with an emergency on the level of finding someone had swapped out your computer’s entire OS. Since the Fairies’ work could not be adjusted for anyone else’s convenience, he could only choose whether or not to accept it.

“Squeal. But why are you cooking yourself in an oven, Sutriona? Are you being punished for pulling a prank on someone? If so, I’ll go apologize with you.”

“No, you imbecile. This is a way to stay healthy. You could call it a kind of bath.”

“…There’s something wrong with all of you. Why do you all want wet noses and fuzzy minds?”

“Boo Boo…?”

Sutriona spoke in a low voice and emitted a bewitching light from her eyes, but Boo Boo refused to approach. He did not try to enter the sauna.

After a while, the Fairy Queen left the steamy bath without closing the door and got in a large bucket of water next to the outer wall (while still wearing her leaf bikini that was held together by unknown means). It was a lot like metal drum bath.

“Ah, that’s my drinking water for the day!”

“You fool, the drinking water is inside the house. This is the bathwater I prepared for myself. But I’ll turn a blind eye if you get too hot and bothered and sneak out to drink it during the night. Hah hah!”

“Boo. Even if it’s one of your pranks, it would be a waste to throw out all that water, so I’ll use it to water the garden.”

The perverted carrot gave a cry of protest from the field out front, but it was unknown if it had reached the house’s owner or if she would avoid being watered with Sutri-juice. Sutriona relaxed her entire body inside the bucket that was a perfect fit for a small girl like her and clearly was no use for Boo Boo even though this was his house.

“Ahh… Toxins build up in Fairy blood, so it’s very important that we regulate our blood flow, Boo Boo.”

“Really?”

“Yes. So when we’re extremely pissed, it influences our blood flow and we lose control of the toxins. That is why we choose to hold important discussions in saunas. …In the past, that difference between growing pissed or not destroyed a beautiful lake. A holy ground known as the Womb Pot was transformed into a toxic bog. It’s a lot like the root beer floats that humans make. All the contamination is on the surface and everything from the middle down to the depths is fine, but I still feel pretty bad about that one.”

Sutriona was still one of the paradoxes with a soul known as the Break News. Even a casual chat with her provided glimpses of a legendary disaster.

===Part 3===

“Oh, so Gruagach ended up at your place, Armelina?”

The inn town took its name from the many lodging facilities there. One room in such a facility was wood patterned and only contained a simple bed and side table. The Holy Swordswoman sat on the windowsill which had its curtain closed and she held the large leaf of a decorative tropical plant between her fingers. Its aroma was stronger than normal because the pot was filled with a bluish jelly instead of dirt. The aromatic components passed through the roots and stalk and then left the leaves along with the moisture.

Armelina was lying face-down on the bed with all her equipment but her underwear deactivated and Filinion placed a towel over her hips.

“Yes, she’s on probation. Although we can only let her make tea or organize documents at the moment. Besides, even if she was the leader, she’s a minor and she was in a state of diminished capacity, right? We can’t just gang up on her and peck at her. Then again, it pisses me off that Inoue is too stricken with her to get any work done. …Dammit, and a new weapon isn’t always a good thing. You really feel it later when you use muscles you don’t normally use…”

Filinion looked at Armelina’s back and pulled out a bottle of herb oil she had made by Mixing.

“I see. So that’s why your back is so tense.”

“Ah? You’re implying I’m not very feminine, aren’t you!?”

“Now, now, officer. I’m saying I’ll reward your service with a massage. Here we go.”

The White Witch dodged the issue and poured the oil on her defenseless back.

“Hyaaah!?”

“Hee hee. Oh? So you do have some femininity.”

“You did that on purpose! You’re supposed to warm the oil with your hands first!! Hyahn.”

Filinion silenced Armelina’s protests by pressing her palms into the oil on her back. She started by spreading it out across her shoulder blades.

“Warm it with my hands? You mean like this?”

“Don’t think I’ll forget this…”

Armelina trembled and blushed as she swore to take revenge, but Filinion talked nonchalantly.

“The ‘adults’ were humiliated by letting Tselika escape, so I know they had to single someone out to save face. But still.”

“Ahh, ahh. Kh! But how can they push around a kid in need just to protect their own pride? That has the opposite effect. It’s like wearing a custom-fitted suit but forgetting to zip up the fly. But more importantly…”

Armelina raised her index finger while still lying face down. A rectangular frame made of thin chains and a bubble appeared.

“This is the problem. While I was making a mess of the Shirokanedai mansion, this turned up: a document that seems to show a connection between the Conference Room and the Sage. It’s only fragmentary, though.”

“The Sage…”

The Sage had a deep and broad knowledge of Magic, they were suspected of purging Boo Boo’s village, and only slight contact with information about them had led Skull Wave and Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau to attack. It was still unclear if the Sage was an individual or a group, but they were not just a vague legend. Their deadly fingertips really were approaching Beatrice’s group’s throat.

“Based on this document, it looks like the Sage didn’t actually give the order. It’s more like the Conference Room did it to curry their favor.”

“We can probably assume that’s how they tend to do things. The Sage can’t be heard saying it directly, so the others pick up on the clues and do it for them…”

“None of this is certain of course. Now, Beatrice. What are you going to do now? To be honest, there isn’t much we can do back on Earth. The Sage’s identity and hideout are unknown. But things are different here. Nothing’s holding us back here and we can walk around the entire island in only 3 days. If we wanted to, we might be able to track down the Sage with a thorough search.”

Of course, that might mean acting hastily and attacking the Sage prematurely. If the Conference Room was truly acting alone and the Sage was not at all involved, they could introduce a misunderstanding that earned the Sage’s true anger. And with a world-renowned VIP like the Sage, that could cast a serious shadow on their lives.

On the bed, Filinion moved her hands down to Armelina’s hips. Armelina let her do as she wished and she had mentioned that none of this was certain. The Holy Swordswoman thought about that for a bit and then opened her mouth.

“Armelina, you hold onto that document. My management smartphone might be monitored by the Detached Magic Palace, so it would be best if I didn’t make a copy. I don’t want to get Iroka in trouble by letting her see something she shouldn’t.”

“Since you’re playing this defensively, should I assume you’re really going after this? Keep in mind we’re up against the Sage here.”

Yes, this person had proposed the existence of Magic and another world, which had changed history just as much as Da Vinci or Einstein. They also had the skill to easily remove the limits of life, as seen in Skull Wave. Their power and influence were both the real deal, so this was not an opponent to face halfheartedly.

But Beatrice did not hang her head.

“Either way, there’s a lot I want to ask them, such as the attack on the Iberian Orc village and the giant Shining Weapon left with Boo Boo. …And I’m not the type to sit around in fear of a coming attack. We need to get actively involved in this to at least judge the level of the threat.”

“I see. I’m glad I exchanged contact information with you. But what about you, cow? Are you prepared to listen to the rest?”

“I get the feeling the world would treat me as one of the Three Stooges even if I said no here. I mean, Skull Wave and the Ice Waterfall Princess wouldn’t have any reason to attack me personally otherwise! If they’ll attack me even if I don’t know anything, I have to go along with this to defend myself! Wahhhhhn!!”

The White Witch held her head in her hands, realized she had oil all over those hands, and screamed even louder, but her butt never rose even a millimeter from the bed. In fact, she did not even glance back toward the door. Beatrice was honestly glad she had such good companions.

“Then let’s get down to business. …Nkh!”

“Oh, excuse me. Armpit, armpit.”

“You can skip the armpits…hyah…ah hyah hyah hyah!?”

Filinion recovered quickly and moved her fingers to Armelina’s armpits, so Armelina began flailing her arms and legs around while lying face down. Even as she struggled, she somehow managed to open a new frame. It contained the document obtained during the search of the mansion.

“Pant, pant. I said the Conference Room is trying to curry the Sage’s favor, right? That means even an old man at that level can’t get an audience with the Sage whenever he wants. …But that old man and the others like him didn’t like that, so it seems they were working through official and unofficial channels to divulge the Sage’s identity.”

“Th-that sounds like a good way to get the Sage mad at you.”

“In diplomatic relationships, secretly digging up information on the other person is pretty common. Didn’t you know more than half of what the Company does is gather clippings from newspapers and news sites from around the world?”

“And?”

The Holy Swordswoman urged her on from the windowsill, so Armelina got back on topic while lying face down.

“Sorry, sorry. I found enough of a bombshell to make me want to hold it back until the very end. Read this part here. It’s a report concerning the Sage’s base in Ground’s Nir.”

“…Wait a second. Does that say what I think it does!?”

“See what I mean? If they’re hiding here, it’s no surprise no one can find them even an island as small as Ground’s Nir, right?”

Having regained her flexibility at Filinion’s hand, Armelina winked.

“It says there’s a chance the Sage worked out the calculations behind the Labyrinth’s irregular changes and used those very calculations to construct their very own living space and lab. That piece of shit really is a step or two ahead of the rest of us.”

===Part 4===

The opponent this time was the Sage who was skilled enough to modify a portion of the Labyrinth into their own base. The silver lining was that Beatrice’s group was very familiar with the Labyrinth.

“Armelina, let’s see the map.”

“Sure thing. You should be thankful you know someone with a map obsession.”

“Okay, overlay the maps for the last 6 layouts. If there’s an area that stays the same every time, that would be the most likely spot.”

They immediately found such an area, but it was not some unexplored area in the greatest depths. In fact…

“The Labyrinth’s entrance!? W-well, I suppose that area can’t change since it’s the starting point and no one would ever question it.”

“And the Sage would probably get sick of having to traverse a deadly maze full of Gimmicks and Traps every time. Somewhere near the entrance would certainly be more convenient.”

Plus, the challengers working toward the depths would not loiter around the entrance. They would pass right by it with their first step. Everyone’s focus was on the darkness beyond, so they never noticed the secret right in front of their eyes. And when returning from the depths, everyone was too focused on the hope seen in the sunlight at the surface that they would not hang around near the exit.

“…They tricked us.”

This was not just a theory. Beatrice’s group was at the level cap. They had challenged the Labyrinth and passed that entrance area enough times to claim that things only truly began once you reached Level 99, but they had never noticed anything odd about it. They had walked through there enough times that their feet had to have worn a noticeable path on the stone, so they had to admit the Sage’s method was perfect.

The Sage was always right alongside them, yet no one noticed.

Beatrice felt like that got to the heart of the Sage’s character. Magic, Pieces, technological revolutions, Ground’s Nir… Just like with electricity and wireless signals, it would be hard to find a human whose life had not been influenced by the Sage to some extent, but no one knew their name or what they looked like. Plus, the Holy Swordswoman’s group had begun to realize that the Sage was a real person working out of an actual base and not just some legendary figure. That meant that he, she, or they had been standing alongside 7 billion people and snickering at them all this time. They had been secretly watching the people fall into pandemonium as they were tossed around by money and technology. They had been elegantly observing the wars of the world.

“Beatrice, what about Boo Boo?” asked Filinion. “If the Sage was involved in the attack on his village, we should probably tell him about this. But it also might bring back up some painful memories for him. I know this won’t be an easy decision…”

“Yeah.”

Beatrice understood the White Witch’s concerns. The attack on the village, Skull Wave, and the Ice Waterfall Princess. Every incident with an apparent connection to the Sage had a deep darkness behind it. That could easily become a poison that ate into a pure soul like Boo Boo.

At the same time, she recalled Elkiad, the delinquent soldier Guild that had been involved with the village attack. When he had been faced with that painful truth, he had wailed into the heavens and Beatrice had lost herself to her intense anger.

If the Sage was involved in the village attack, then they were the same as Elkiad. No, they might be even more evil. There were hints of that already. At the very least, the Sage could not be entirely innocent.

Should she let Boo Boo see and touch that darkness?

Or should she not?

“…I just had to look at it in reverse.”

“?”

“If it was me, I would never want Boo Boo to face that kind of evil alone because he wanted to protect me. Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl. And if it would make me feel that bad, I can’t put Boo Boo in the same situation. Even if this means bringing him pain.”

Filinion and Armelina only gently narrowed their eyes.

“I’ll explain it to Boo Boo. Filinion, you prepare a ton of recovery potions in case we can’t talk things out peacefully with the Sage. Armelina, you prepare for exploring the Labyrinth. I think the Sage’s base is near the entrance, but I want to improve our odds of survival if we screw up and have to escape into the deeper areas.”

“Sure thing.”

“And you two? We’ll need a lot of food if Boo Boo is with us, so gather as much dried meat and dried fruit as you can.”

“Ugh! That sounds like the hardest job of all!”

“You can use my name at the treasury to withdraw the gears I’ve been saving up.”

“Don’t be dumb. This is a life or death situation for us too. We’re not going to rely on someone else’s money for our own survival.”

Then the 3 of them left the inn.

They were finally preparing to approach the mystery of the Sage.

===Part 5===

The Labyrinth.

That vast space spread its roots deep below Ground’s Nir. The mysterious place was clearly larger than the island and had many theories and rumors whispered about it. Some said it was connected to a series of caves below the ocean, some said it transcended space-time just like the Gates and took people on trips to other coordinates or worlds, and some said it was larger than a country or continent.

But its entrance was surprisingly plain. It was located on the side of a slight hill of dark soil in the forest and it only looked like the entrance to a coal mine reinforced by some logs. It was not an impressive temple and there was no iron gate refusing entry to any without permission. There was not even a fire for illumination, so it could take some wandering in the forest to find it at night.

(Come to think of it, the Iberian Orc village was located near the Labyrinth and they didn’t like that people were going inside. It was because they were acting like gatekeepers that Elkiad barbarically slaughtered them in search of Magic and Pieces.)

But at the same time, the Iberian Orcs had not destroyed and buried the entrance. That would have been a simple task for a group with strength on Boo Boo’s level.

Plus, who could say if the justification given by Elkiad’s leader was the truth of the matter. He had spoken like the actual attackers had not understood the true motives behind it.

All of that would be known once they directly met the Sage. He, she, or they had to have a different point of view than Elkiad and yet had supported that barbaric act.

“Filinion, Armelina.” Beatrice spoke to her companions in this endeavor. “And Boo Boo, too. How about we go in already?”

“Right.”

After seeing Boo Boo nod (while he carried a food supply just in case), the Holy Swordswoman’s group passed through the entrance. Boo Boo was nearly 4 meters tall, but he did not bump his head.

The inside was a short straight path made of stone that led to a large staircase down. The walls on either side had lights at even intervals. Unlike wall-mounted lamps that used fire, they were masses of heatless particles, like countless gathered firefly lights.

Beatrice could not even guess how many times she had been here, but this was probably her first time to come to a stop. Once she knew there were no Gimmicks or Traps near the entrance, she had always walked right on through.

“…But we should have noticed.”

“?”

“There’s no locked door at the entrance, but the clockwork Gimmicks wandering the Labyrinth never come out. Almost like they’re blocked by an invisible power. So could the real secret be right at the beginning, not in the greatest depths?”

The most likely candidates were the short straight path or the stairway down. Beatrice and the others split up to look and feel along the walls and floor. A few Parties passed them by on the way deeper inside and gave them curious looks, but this was not the time to worry about that.

“Boo. Beatrice, look here. Sniff, sniff.”

Surprisingly, the first one to notice something off was Boo Boo.

He felt along a part of the wall.

“This spot is kind of weird. I’m not sure how to describe it. It smells like a smart person? Like old paper?”

“Wait just a moment.”

They may have been Mixing ingredients and a tool for Appraising them, but the White Witch rubbed a few kinds of powder on the wall with a pencil-like tool and visualized what seemed odd about the area.

Two tall rectangles appeared alongside each other like fingerprints at a crime scene.

“…They look a lot like the panels of a double door.”

“Armelina, you can open microscopic locks with your physics calculations, right? What about this?”

“Hm… There’s no keyhole, so nope. It looks more like a product of Magic than metalwork. It’s the same as creating Pieces. You have to mix together multiple Elements like a cocktail and it will only react to the accurate ratio out of the billions or trillions of possibilities, much like a DNA sequence.”

“Also…um, Beatrice? Pay attention to the floor as well as the door on the wall. Eep.”

“?”

Hearing that, Beatrice casually looked down and then froze in place.

Some of the White Witch’s powder for revealing the hidden door had fallen to the floor. And it had reacted. Reacted to some truly cruel instant-death Traps that should not have existed in the entranceway.

They had not activated yet, but they were all standing on them. Or rather, they could not help but stand on them. They were so thoroughly placed that they may have covered every inch of the floor as well as the walls and ceiling too.

(The entire area is covered with a crueler version of a bear trap? What was that about walking right through the entrance because there are no Gimmicks or Traps here!? I’m so stupid!!)

She hated herself for not noticing more than the person who had laid the Trap. She felt like she had been carelessly walking into the tooth-lined maw of a giant beast every time she entered the Labyrinth. And not only had she put herself in danger, but she had invited her companions in too. If that maw had ever snapped shut… She shuddered just imagining it.

Traps generally triggered when you stepped on them, when a switch or wire was thrown or pulled, or when a puzzle was solved incorrectly.

Beatrice’s group had already stepped on the landmine, but the maw of death had yet to shut. People from all around the world walked through here every day, but she had never heard of someone being devoured.

In that case, there was only one possible trigger.

“Wait, shouldn’t we avoid touching this door? I don’t want to screw up and get chewed up by hundreds or even thousands of man-eating Traps.”

“I-I guess this was never going to be easy. Do we have to find the key the Sage uses first?”

“While we could fall back, do we have any chance of solving this? I seriously doubt we can find info on the Sage’s master key by asking around the inn town,” said the Holy Swordswoman. “Also, we can’t just ignore all these Traps. I mean, could you continue exploring the Labyrinth like before after seeing these?”

And the world was changing as they spoke. The Pieces brought back from Ground’s Nir would lead to more and more technological revolutions.

Even if they uncovered a horrific truth, they could not allow themselves to be left behind. The more they were delayed, the more the chaotic breakthroughs would twist the world in an ugly direction.

Also, if the Sage truly had been involved in the Ice Waterfall Princess and Noble Dancer incident, the passage of time would only increase the risk. If more and more assassins of that level were sent in, Beatrice’s group would not at all be safe.

“Falling back seems like the best way to ensure our safety, but I don’t see how falling back will improve our odds and it will only increase the risk, so waiting for more information might actually be more dangerous.”

“But, Beatrice, you see how many Traps there are here, don’t you!?”

“Well, yes, but…what if we removed them one at a time? Traps have fixed positions, so if we spread word of them in the inn town, gather enough people’s attention, and get their help, we might be able to remove all these Traps in a short period of time.”

Even as she suggested it, Beatrice knew her idea was hardly realistic. She was just trying to force her way through the problem.

And at that very moment…

''Beep.

“!!!???”

“!!!???”

“!!!???”

It was only a quiet tone from the wall, but all 3 members of that frightening level cap group just about jumped out of their skin. Even if it was quieter than a smartphone’s ringtone, it was more than enough of a shock to their hearts given the current situation.

But despite their expectations, the Traps had not all activated at once. In fact, Boo Boo spoke up while tilting his head.

“Look. The door on the wall is opening.”

“Wait, but why!? We never found any kind of master key!”

They had no idea how to open it from outside. Which meant…

“Boo Boo, prepare for battle! The Sage might be coming out of there!!”

Beatrice forcefully drew her rapier from the sheath at her hip, but then she came to a stop. Her eyes were drawn to the giant Shining Weapon that Boo Boo held.

Yes, the digitized souls of the Iberian Orcs had been sealed inside that weapon, but where had he gotten it? The Sage had been involved in the attack on his village and Skull Wave had attempted to retrieve it. In that case, it could easily be connected to the Sage.

“Could it have…reacted to Boo Boo’s Shining Weapon?”

Boo Boo himself only tilted his head.

“What do you mean? I don’t know how to use the Magic you humans do.”

“More importantly, we’re still in trouble! If the Sage is in there, we’ll definitely run across them!!”

“It was going to happen sooner or later. Get ready, Beatrice! Boo Boo, too!!”

The cleverly hidden double doors slowly opened.

What waited within?

===Part 6===

“Wha-…?”

Beatrice’s eyes widened.

The space before them was wide and its ceiling was incredibly high. Rooms two or three times the size of a sports stadium or theatre were not uncommon in the ever-changing Labyrinth, but this was on the same level as the entrance, before descending the very first staircase. The horizontal size was one thing, but the vertical size should have been impossible.

(Was the theory about space-time bending inside the Labyrinth true?)

The incredibly large space was a sea of bookcases. More than just the first floor on which Beatrice’s group stood, a look up showed layer after layer of elevated pathways rising toward the endlessly tall ceiling. They had not investigated them all, but they could see lots of bookcases there as well. It felt like peering into opposing mirrors.

“Is the entire place…one giant library?”

Filinion gulped and looked around before gasping and sprinkling the same powder on the well-polished marble floor.

“N-no reaction. That was hardly a thorough inspection, but there don’t seem to be any Traps around here.”

“Well, you might have a tosa dog in front of your house to scare off burglars, but I doubt anyone would want to keep one inside their house. They’d get eaten by it.”

They were still wary of the Sage, but this place was simply too wide and tall. They even felt like the library acted as an entirely new Labyrinth. Beatrice had expected to find the Sage stooped over some work in a cramped room, so this was entirely unexpected.

“I can’t believe this. I feel like I’m going to get lost in a sea of books.”

“Boo. It’s a good thing we brought a lot of food. But are we allowed to eat where there are books? I’m a little worried about that.”

Beatrice smiled at Boo Boo’s concern as she glanced over at a nearby bookcase.

“What are you doing, Beatrice?”

“I’m trying to figure out the Sage’s habits… I don’t know if they’re an individual or a group, but they prepared this lab near the entrance to deceive us yet maintain some convenience. …This might be the same. It might be wrong to let the great size of the library get to us and head randomly into the depths.”

“That’s true. In your room, the things you need most often will naturally end up nearby. Like the TV remote, your smartphone’s charger, or a manga volume you reread a lot…”

“I see you dodged any kind of feminine touch by not mentioning jewelry or makeup.”

“I-I’m a shrine maiden in the real world, so I can’t help it!”

“Now, now. We can tease the glasses girl about her dirty room later.”

“I don’t have a dirty room!! Grandmother makes sure to clean it for me!!”

“And the problem is how you have no issue with someone cleaning your room for you at your age.”

The Fighter Priest and White Witch’s argument seemed like it would never end, so Beatrice ignored them.

She randomly pulled a thick tome from the bookcase.

“The workings of life…”

The detailed contents could wait until later. She just wanted to know the genre for now. She pulled out book after book and flipped through them. She was looking for a bookmark, some notes, or a folded corner indicating a frequently referenced page.

She came to understand some things as she did so.

“Alchemy, the possibility of artificial life, ATCG and fire/water/wind/earth, the shape of a soul, the difference between bringing back the souls of the dead and creating new souls, necromancy and possession, the soul seen in information science, embryos and bioethics, the philosopher’s stone…?”

The Sage was not randomly gathering information in all directions like in an encyclopedia. There was a clear genre here. It was all about the souls of the living, how to artificially create them, and how to resurrect them.

Was the Sage attempting to reach the territory of god, or to carry out the work of the devil? However, Beatrice had already seen partial successes in that field.

(Skull Wave, the collection of bones from those fallen in Ground’s Nir. And…)

“Boo. I wonder if this Shining Weapon was made here.”

“…It might have been.”

All of the purged Iberian Orc’s souls had been digitized and stored there. It was simple enough to say, but they did not actually know anything solid about the process. As proven by the many people who collapsed while exploring the Labyrinth, people had not conquered death even with Magic. No one would believe it was possible if it was not someone as legendary as the Sage.

That said, Beatrice was curious about the Sage’s position in all this. They might have supplied the weapon without knowing anything and they might have taken part personally.

And just as she was wondering about that, “they” suddenly arrived.

“Searching through that will reveal nothing, Holy Swordswoman.”

It was a gentle female voice. Beatrice naturally looked over and spotted a figure walking slowly out from behind the bookcases. The figure wore a large black gothic lolita dress.

She almost looked like an heiress or princess, but that conflicted with the thick silver shackle around her ankle and the metal ball resembling a pig face that was attached with a chain. Her arms drooped down in front of her and the wrists were shackled together and bound by a thick silver band. And then there was her face. Her entire face was covered by a silver bottle one size too big, but the very top had a large T-shaped handle much like a clock key or corkscrew. Was it a variation on a garrote known as a juicer? As the name suggested, that torture device applied pressure to the victim’s skull as the handle was turned. There was a flat panel of fine mesh over the eyes and another over the mouth, but the face within could not be seen.

She was reminiscent of a princess imprisoned in a tower.

(Is this…?)

Influence, wealth, knowledge, connections, and beauty.

This noble prisoner had every sort of power, but that was why the common world had robbed her of her freedom.

(This is the Sage…?)

They faced a legend.

The Sage really did have a physical body and was someone who required food and sleep.

But at the same time, it did not make sense.

Based on what Skull Wave had said and the fact that the Sage had been directly involved in the origin of Magic, they had to have been active decades earlier. Her face was not visible and her slender body was almost entirely hidden by the dress, but the skin of the visible cleavage looked far too young.

(So are they a group and not an individual? Or does a new person inherit the title every generation? Or…)

Had the Sage transcended bioethics and the concept of aging?

She physically existed there and yet her presence provided no answers. The Sage spoke from beyond the waves of the bookcase sea.

“This may look like a mountain of unknown heresy to you, but these are no more than the accumulated gravestones of failure. They were useful in the sense that carving away the failures allowed the outline of success to grow more distinct, but there is no value in the actual knowledge you will read there.”

“The outline…of success…?”

“Yes.” With her arms bound by shackles and a silver band, the woman laughed within the darkness of the juicer. “The resurrection of the dead. And I mean a complete resurrection that includes the body from before their death, Beatrice.”

“!!!???”

Beatrice forcefully told herself not to let herself be taken in, but she still found herself reacting to each and every word. She half-forced her mouth open while seemingly brushing aside an invisible spider web.

“Why...?”

“Hm?”

“Why would you want that!? Given what we know, you’re definitely one of the people who led to the erasure of Boo Boo’s village!!”

“Why do you think?”

Still calm, the Saint dragged along the hem of her gothic lolita dress and the pig-faced metal ball attached to her ankle while her shackled arms seemed to accentuate her large breasts. She finally stepped into the end of the lobby where Beatrice’s group was.

Beatrice, Filinion, and Armelina all immediately raised their Shining Weapons at the ready.

Boo Boo alone was unsure what to do.

“Boo. What does any of this mean? Did you give this to me? Have I met you before???”

“Hee hee. That is the cleverest question any of you has asked me. But will those 3 give us time to deepen our friendship?”

With a gentle smile, the person who wore both a dress and chains toyed with something in her shackled hands: a small hand bell that shined with a silver light.

“I prefer to avoid direct fights using Magic. So I must apologize, but I will provide you with another opponent. Okay, Boo Boo? And you use this as a chance to cool your head somewhat, Holy Swordswoman.”

She lightly rang the bell just once, as if summoning a maid or butler.

Immediately, the entire giant library shook.

“Wha-…!?”

Even when an extraordinarily powerful Gimmick, like a Punishment or Gatekeeper type, rampaged through the Labyrinth or a Break News roared outside, they never felt shaking so bad that the fear of a collapse squeezed at their hearts like this.

This oddity was visible. The living legend of the Sage could erode the world’s laws and generally accepted assumptions.

But if that was all, Beatrice’s mind would not have gone entirely blank. Their group included three level cap fighters and the lone surviving Iberian Orc. No reinforcements could defeat them so easily.

(We know she’s hostile now. The Sage really is someone who prefers conflict to talk. Who knows when we’ll get another chance if we let her escape. Who knows how many ways she’ll attack us both in open and in secret! So we need to finish this here and now. We need to keep the Sage from messing with us any further!!)

“Are you sure you want to fight, Beatrice?”

So the true despair was yet to come.

“If you had actually thought about what I’m researching here, you would have realized ‘that privilege’ does not belong only to you.”

“…?”

“Beatrice, up above!!”

Hearing Boo Boo’s shout, the Holy Swordswoman looked up and felt like she had left reality. Something had jumped down from one of the elevated pathways. It was incredibly large.

“Ah.”

“Beatrice!!”

[[Image:BooBoo_v03_244.png|thumb]]

The girl only stood there, so Boo Boo grabbed her arm and just barely pulled her away before “it” shattered the marble floor as it landed. That showed its scale once more. Its full body was much larger than a human’s.

It had a humanoid body and a pig face.

It was a full 5 meters tall. Plump fat covered steely muscle.

“Ahh…”

But this should not have been possible. That species had been wiped out save for Boo Boo. Surely the Sage had not been raising a secret survivor here all along.

And what past event had the Sage been present for?

What meaning was there in the lifeless expression and skin color of this new pig-faced giant? What meaning was there in the integrated circuits that crawled along its entire body like some kind of giant bite wound?

Yes, it was almost like…the aftermath of having all the souls sealed in the giant Shining Weapon. Almost like the soulless containers of flesh had been forcibly reused.

“Let me introduce you to my adorable partner and my greatest masterpiece. I simply refer to him as Disaster, though. Now, Beatrice, what do you think I used to make him?”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

This time, her mind grew entirely blank.

All rational thought left Beatrice as she howled.

===Part 7===

Disaster.

That bioethical abomination and crystallization of Alchemy began to move.

The end of his right tusk was missing and his muscles did not seem alive. It was like an empty shell that gave off the unpleasant dampness, coldness, and stench of a sweaty shirt put back on after being removed for an hour.

As the Holy Swordswoman howled in rage and started forward, she noticed a surprising weapon in Disaster’s hand. It was longer than Boo Boo’s at more than 5 meters and it was contained in a glistening black curved scabbard.

(A Japanese…sword?)

No, that was not it.

He forcefully drew it, to reveal…

“A…''tetto''…!?”

A ''tetto'' was a striking weapon with no blade that made up for it by being made extra thick. This could not be looked down on as a fake sword. The well-forged steel was more than 5 meters long and it was wielded by the strength of the supposedly destroyed Iberian Orcs, so what would happen when it was used?

“

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::!!”

Beatrice’s mind went blank.

The next thing she knew, she, Filinion, Armelina, and Boo Boo had been forced out of the giant library and into the straight passageway near the Labyrinth entrance.

And…

“Boo Boo, your hand!”

“Yeah, I’m just glad none of you are hurt. I’m fine.”

Boo Boo’s powerful right arm was dripping blood. Beatrice and the others had failed to react to the extraordinarily large blunt weapon. Boo Boo alone had moved fast enough and he had been injured covering for them.

As for his injury…

“Let me see that! Wait…huh? I don’t believe it…”

“Dammit, he’s leaving through the door!! We need to get out of here!!”

Filinion froze up with recovery potion in hand, so Armelina grabbed her arm. Beatrice and Boo Boo also began a sudden burst of movement. Then the extraordinarily large body entered the passageway like a storm. The weapon in his right hand became a flash of light, cut the air faster than the roaring wind, and sliced through the opposite wall (which the Sage had covered in countless traps) like a hot knife through butter.

Yes, it sliced through. Boo Boo’s wound was a cut.

(The lack of a blade doesn’t matter. It’s just like a helicopter rotor. When that much weight is swung at such great speed, even a blunt weapon can cut like a blade! And how the hell can it slice through the Labyrinth’s walls!? It takes Boo Boo’s level of strength to break those walls!!)

Disaster’s strength was likely even greater than Boo Boo’s. While Boo Boo used his blunt weapon to hit, Disaster used his to cut.

And Disaster had no fear of death.

But they did not have time to carefully observe their enemy’s power. Beatrice’s group had rolled aside to avoid Disaster’s charge, but they had unfortunately fled toward the stairs leading down. That meant they were headed toward the Labyrinth and not the exit.

The straight path to the exit was blocked by Disaster’s giant body. They doubted they could get past that ''tetto'' swung with greater force than a helicopter rotor.

“This is no time to stick around. Boo Boo, everyone! We need to head into the Labyrinth for now!!”

“E-eek! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!”

Filinion was already half in tears as Boo Boo grabbed her around the waist with one hand and ran down the stairs with the others. Disaster of course did not just watch them go. He threw aside the unnecessary scabbard, held the naked ''tetto'', and pursued the fleeing backs of Beatrice’s group.

If he could fully reproduce the muscular strength of an Iberian Orc, he would fill the gap in no time.

So as soon as she reached the stairs, the Holy Swordswoman twisted around to look behind her.

(All those Traps are probably linked to an error report from the hidden door. In that case!)

“Metal Jet!!”

She swung her rapier and 8 lines of heat appeared from nowhere to scorch the air. She targeted the door on the wall instead of Disaster. It must have decided the person trying to burn through was in the passageway because the sea of Traps all activated at once.

''Snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap!!!!!

More than just biting into his arms and legs, the Magically reinforced bear traps shut with enough force to tear a body to pieces as they leaped at him from the floor, walls, and ceiling. It was like a swarm of giant steel piranhas. An incredible number of metal “teeth” assaulted Disaster.

And yet he did not dodge or defend. Easily over 100 jaws were deflected by his powerful skin and muscles. Orange sparks burst from his entire body like fireworks and piranhas with broken teeth littered the floor. They really were like poor fish that had been dragged out onto land where they rotted with their bellies exposed.

Disaster was made from the bodies of Iberian Orcs who were powerful enough to hold a fistfight with a Break News. Beatrice had not expected this would defeat him. She had only wanted enough time to escape.

But even so…

“Y-you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Beatrice, this way! Hurry!!”

When Boo Boo urged her down the stairs, she came back to her senses and ran down. This battle really was somehow different. That was just how much the Sage’s evil recolored the world.

Yes, just like when she first widely revealed Magic to an entirely unprepared human race.

“Ksshh! Kssshhh!!”

After arriving in the stone floor for beginners at the bottom of the stairs, Beatrice heard a racket coming from all the walls around them.

“Do not struggle, Beatrice. There are a lot of unrelated people in the Labyrinth. And my adorable Disaster has some trouble with precision targeting. Don’t blame me if something unexpected happens.”

Was the voice being carried by Magic, or was the Labyrinth’s structure being remade in real time?

“(Either answer is bad. Beatrice, this is her lair!)”

“(I’m aware of that!)”

There was nothing they could do with the straight passageway to the exit blocked, but things changed in the next floor down. The Labyrinth was generally constructed from rooms of varying sizes connected by corridors.

Meaning…

“(Armelina, prepare the map. Filinion, you give Boo Boo a recovery potion. Let’s watch what route Disaster takes, make a wide circle around him, and return to the stairs. Then we can get out without him blocking the way.)”

They heard more and more rumbling noises. The Gimmicks wandering the Labyrinth were made to move when they did, so they were given as much time to think as they wanted so long as they stayed entirely still. But Disaster was probably running right through and sweeping aside all of the gathering Gimmicks.

“How naïve.”

A voice from the walls and ceiling cut off their thoughts.

A moment later, the wall right next to Beatrice burst apart.

“Wha-!?”

Disaster was not fighting the many small Gimmicks. He was fighting the Labyrinth itself. He did more than break through the walls. A mysterious attack resembling a beam blade sliced diagonally though the entire floor from one end to the other and the monster approached along the shortest course. In fact, even the floor had collapsed, exposing the next floor down.

“P-planning is worthless now!”

“Take this!!”

Filinion squeezed her eyes shut and threw a test tube from each hand. The cold pig-faced man thoughtlessly attacked them with his ''tetto'', slicing more than breaking them, and a colorful liquid splattered out and fell right on his head.

“Those were failed eye drops! They interrupt the signals in the optical nerves. We need to use this chance to get away from-…”

She trailed off at the killer intent she sensed.

The thick ''tetto'' was mercilessly targeting Filinion. A curving flash sliced through even sound as it accurately flew toward her neck.

“Eh?”

She felt more confusion than fear.

Boo Boo immediately cut in with his Shining Weapon. Their weapons clashed, sparked, and stirred up the wind.

“Impossible… Taking out his eyes…doesn’t accomplish anything…?”

“Pull yourself together, Filinion! Boo. Beatrice, take her away!!”

Beatrice and the other humans could not even stand on the same field.

Had the Sage sought this power? Was that why she had helped Elkiad attack the village and why she had left all the Iberian Orc souls with Boo Boo?

Had she only been throwing out the parts she did not need.

Had it all been to acquire the strongest vessel of flesh to complete a powerful fighting force that would do her bidding?

Had it all been for nothing more than that!?

“Saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaage!!”

“I told you to cool your head.” Every last wall spoke scornfully. “And I can freely interfere with the Labyrinth’s structure, making it my garden. You lost any chance of victory when you fled further inside. You lost any chance at all.”

“…!!”

It was true they might have no chance of escape when the Sage could create any number of traps and dead-ends while Disaster could ignore it all to take the shortest route. It was like running through a city where the hand of god could freely construct buildings to create dead-ends, all while being pursued by a helicopter that could ignore the map.

But could Beatrice let her say that?

Could she, when this was the piece of shit who had profaned death and trampled on the Iberian Orcs’ strength all for her own greed?

“It is useless,” said the Sage’s voice. “Haven’t you gathered a lot of your own information on the Labyrinth? For example, the floors that clearly cover more area than the island itself do not seem to just connect to undersea tunnels, so you might be teleporting around the underground space with no regard for the true layout of things.”

“What are you-…?”

“I will now give you the answer. If you interfere with the Labyrinth’s structure, you can do things like this.”

The Sage could interfere with the arrangement of rooms, staircases, elevators, Gimmicks, Traps, and Treasure.

So if the Labyrinth really included a certain feature, wouldn’t she have control of that as well?

Namely, invisible Teleportation Trap Walls.

As soon as Beatrice converted the possibility to words in her mind, the scenery changed around her.

===Part 8===

Skull Wave, a Skeleton in a cowboy hat bearing a large red stone, suddenly looked up into the sky and spoke with annoyance in his voice.

“So it’s begun. But I can’t take either side.”

“What is it, mister?”

A small light fluttered nearby. It was Alice, the Fairy in a violet dress whose short twintails resembled a candy wrapper. But the Skeleton did not have time to answer. After grinding many bones and charcoal into a powder and stuffing them into a wooden tube, he ignited it with flint.

With a loud explosion, Alice was nearly flipped upside down where she flew.

“Wh-what was that for…?”

Alice grew tearful, but Skull Wave did not respond. He stared up into the sky where milky white smoke spread out like a butterfly and he spoke in a hopelessly bitter voice.

“Figure it out, Boo Boo. …Honestly, I’ve always had such a bad habit of siding with the underdog. Not that there’s any saving them whichever side I choose.”

===Part 9===

There was no change to the girl’s body or mind. She did not feel a sense of floating or acceleration. And that was why Beatrice was overwhelmed by confusion when the scene before her eyes suddenly changed.

It was true no one would have noticed if something like this was secretly set up in the Labyrinth’s corridors. Especially within the Labyrinth where each floor was made up of corridors and rooms with identical interior designs. You would think you had walked down a long passageway, but you might have actually been sent to a completely different passageway on the other side of the world.

But this time, Beatrice had not been sent to another location on the same floor or even in the Labyrinth at all.

“What…!?”

She was high in the sky. Ground’s Nir had some water source mountains to the northeast and there was a series of floating islands positioned even higher than their peaks. The largest islands were the size of a truck trailer and the smallest ones were only clumps of rock one could hold in their arms, but they were all clustered together like an asteroid belt.

Beatrice’s group had been sent to the small island at the very top. It was unclear how water had gathered there, but fresh water flowed from a spring, fell from the floating island, branched out as it hit the various other islands and clumps of rock below, and continued flowing vertically down toward the ground like an ''amidakuji'' or tournament diagram. It ultimately fell to the peaks of the water source mountains and formed the rivers that wet the land.

“The Original Water Source? But why here?”

“I don’t think we have time to think about it. W-wahh!!”

They felt wind pressure. Beatrice instinctually understood that something was parting the air as it approached them.

Armelina threw her Shining Weapon metal staff into the water source and it quickly transformed into a steel boat.

“Get in! I you don’t want to die, get moving before asking questions!!”

After Armelina jumped in, Beatrice and Boo Boo followed with Boo Boo holding flustered Filinion’s waist in a hand.

As soon as the corpse flesh parted the air and appeared, his 5 meter ''tetto'' flashed horizontally. If they had been 3 seconds slower, the girls’ necks and Boo Boo’s torso would have been sliced through as if by a helicopter rotor.

“Armelina, what is this!?”

“My Shining Weapon can transform into just about any blunt weapon and I remembered that one of those was a toy used during the witch hunt. There was a cruel form of torture where the victim was laid face-up inside a metal boat, tied down with chains or ropes, and slowly lowered into the water. But more importantly, shut your mouth or you’ll bite your tongue from the impact!!”

“Eh? Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!?”

Filinion’s scream was caused by a floating sensation pushing up at their stomachs.

In other words…

“We’re falling…!?”

After Beatrice’s short cry, a heavy impact ran through the small metal boat. The waterfall split like an ''amidakuji'' or tournament diagram as it fell from small island to small island. Each individual drop was only a few meters, but the impact upon landing was incalculable.

“Boo Boo, can you reach the bottom of the river with your Shining Weapon? If so, please steer us! I don’t know how long we’ll last if we just go with the flow. We might take a branch with no floating island below and end up falling more than 1000 meters onto a mountain peak!!”

Boo Boo immediately stuck his log or steel beam of a club into the water and moved to the back of the boat. They did not have time to wait around. They would only continue horizontally for at most 10 seconds. The closest mountain peak was 1000 meters below them. It was more like jumping down small cliffs than rowing downstream.

(The world’s fastest waterslide reaches nearly 200 kph on a slope of about 80 degrees, right?)

And more importantly, the world shook once more.

Disaster had not hesitated to jump down from the higher level and his weight had shaken the small floating island.

He said nothing. It was unclear if he even had a mind of his own. They only knew he pursued them into the river and mechanically raised his long ''tetto''. The rapid current would have drowned Beatrice’s group, but it was only waist deep on 5-meter Disaster. He continued after them and attacked.

They were already within his range. If he swung his thick ''tetto'' down on the boat they were all crammed inside, at least one of them would be bisected along with the boat and the rest of them would fall into the water. They could never survive that.

Beatrice briefly looked back at that person who looked so much like Boo Boo. She recalled the anger of learning about the attack on the village.

But she raised her rapier.

She held out the tip and gave a roar.

“Napalm Fire!!”

Several balls of light shot out. They were combustible objects the size of soccer balls. They would persistently pursue the enemy at low speed and scatter sticky fire like a flamethrower or naphtha upon contact. They normally played the role of the hound: disturbing and confusing the enemy long enough to finish them off with some other Magic. But its power could be raised at close range by firing several of them together like a shotgun blast.

She had no idea how useful this would be.

The metal boat was already tilting as it began to fall from the next waterfall. Beatrice and Disaster’s attacks shot past their targets without even coming close to hitting.

“Oh.”

But even so, the Holy Swordswoman had made an attack of her own free will. She was no longer indirectly attacking by triggering the Traps.

She had used her own hands to attack someone who might have been Boo Boo’s friend or family.

“Oooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

As she yelled, the metal boat carrying them fell.

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

===Part 14===

===Long-Lived Royal Elf Sibyl's Live News☆===

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume3_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
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| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]]
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The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume1 Chapter 2

2016-11-20T20:31:42Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 2: Magic Processing and Paradigm Shift==

===Part 1===

“Phew…”

A girl with her hair tied in twintails using her own hair breathed a quiet sigh inside a large garden located in a clearing surrounded by verdant trees. Particles of light danced around her shoulders, but they scattered as she walked.

She walked to one corner of a marble gazebo.

However, it did not contain the chairs or table needed to hold a tea party. It contained a large round jacuzzi. The girl with long black twintails let her exhausted body sink into the open air bath kept at a comfortable temperature 24 hours a day. She practically collapsed into it without removing the red dress which had a large slit up it.

After a short delay, a small maid approached with light footsteps. The short black hair and the hat rather than a headdress meant this was the youngest of the three sisters. They could be classified as “large”, “medium”, and “small”, so it was easy to tell which one it was from a distance.

“You’re back, milady? …Waaah!? You jumped into the bath in your dress again? But that’s a top class Robe Decollete! It’s 100% silk, made by a craftsman with a royal warrant, and known as a ‘wearable mansion’!!”

“Didn’t I tell you I don’t need anyone greeting me since I didn’t know when I would be back? …And exploring another world is exhausting. I keep telling you I want to pass through the door in only a bathrobe so I can take a bath the second I get back. This thing is surprisingly hard to take off, you know?”

“We can’t let you do something so embarrassing!”

“My equipment changes when I’m in Grandnir anyway. In fact, the clothing and armor is really just Magic. If only I could bring this jacuzzi with me.”

“Anyway, um, well, anyway, I can only insist that you be more careful next time!!”

[[Image:BooBoo v01 100.png|thumb]]

The small maid was promptly preparing some iced tea, but (as always) the girl was not listening.

As she floated face up on the warm water’s surface, her red dress spread wide around her.

The outfit looked like it belonged on the star of a ball or at a mistaken sort of wedding. Her hair was a lustrous black and she always made sure to tell the adults around her that she preferred wearing a kimono, but they must have been feigning indifference because they refused to listen and continued using her as a dress-up doll.

“How was Grandnir, milady?”

The maid asked a cheerful question while shaking the red ribbon decorating her modest chest. The girl pulled out her smartphone and sent over some data while floating in the bath.

“Here’s a souvenir. We’ve opened the path to oil-producing corn that will prevent desertification while also solving the energy crisis. You can use that Piece however you like.”

“Waaah!? Th-th-that-that data could easily change the history of mankind, so why do you always toss it around like it’s a game of catch!?”

The dress girl floating in the warm water smiled at the maid who was flailing her arms around.

“My stance hasn’t changed. Then again, some things might head in a different direction now that the way through Cave 25 has opened. Still…hm, I guess there’s no point in telling you about that. Anyway, Haruka, are you using the Hourglass like you’re supposed to?”

“Ah, oops. I almost forgot!”

The girl gestured over and the maid quickly began operating the device.

It was called an Hourglass, but it was not actually one. She opened the stopwatch app on the smartphone sitting on the table and a two minute countdown started.

The girl operated her own smartphone while her floating dress and twintails swayed in water. It was of course waterproof. When she activated the AR mode, she could look through the screen to see dots of light covering the scenery and lines of light connecting them.

“B-12, G-29, and Y-03. The world still hasn’t seen any of them.”

“Do most of them not know about the future technology you can see, milady?”

“I have to guide them elsewhere before they see that path. Using V-71 and P-01 would probably be best.”

The maid remained carefree because she was not even thinking about catching up to what the sharp-eyed dress girl was thinking.

“Grandnir’s Magic certainly has its plusses and its minuses. It can easily pull off precision processing that not even laser processing can match.”

Magic could only be used in Grandnir and nothing in this world could be brought to Grandnir.

The only things they could bring back were the Pieces created from data stored in their Shining Weapons.

“Thanks to that, we can easily bend this world. ..It really is like pouring orange juice, citrus soda, milk, and chocolate into apple juice and calling it a mixed drink.”

A single breakthrough could create an abnormally powerful supercomputer.

That supercomputer could create compatible workstations, those workstations could control compatible PCs, and those would then lead to compatible mobile devices.

And this was not limited to a single field.

It could be processors, cars, homes, airplanes, ships, health, communications, sports, optical devices, food processing, satellites, robotics, agriculture, printed circuit boards…and even military technology.

And those could easily change the world.

It went beyond the inevitable decay of the prosperous. Even a small technological revolution could entirely change the balance of power, so letting your guard down even for a moment could send yesterday’s winner tumbling down to be tomorrow’s loser. The world’s most powerful army could be left in the dust while some strange mercenary group or ideological organization could suddenly rise to the top.

Technological breakthroughs were made by a single puzzle “Piece”.

That was why every country’s government and corporations desperately sought those Pieces. They thoroughly searched through the jumbled assortment of them registered online, hoping to find one they could use in their research. If they found one that fit and that resolved their personal problem, they could complete the new technology or new manufacturing method that would change the world. For a brief time, the throne would be theirs.

As the people exploring Grandnir brought back and uploaded their Pieces, they had no idea who would end up with it and what kind of research it would become. And they did not care. They were only greedily seeking Experience Points to learn Magic.

They brought back the various Pieces and uploaded them because they might as well. If that did lead to some great research breakthrough, they would receive an extremely lucrative contract payment from the nation or corporation in question. It was something like a risky lottery in which one guessed what would be useful rather than leaving it all up to luck.

And that could lead to moral hazards like with the Fairies and the Thousand Dragon.

Immoral people were beginning to appear in this world as well. They declared themselves the winners as they created a somewhat twisted world.

“I need to be careful.”

Thanks to the water, the red dress’s fabric clung to the girl’s skin and her long twintails floated around her.

The corn data she had tossed to the maid was a Piece with a complete simulation, telling them which direction it would take them. If that corn was planted in the desert, there was no chance of it leading to an outbreak of bugs or a sandstorm assaulting a city.

But what else would happen?

When the existence of Grandnir had first been revealed, mankind had had difficulty with the Labyrinth. That had lasted until a free paper was published on a message board, suggesting the Shining Weapons at the core of a Magic system modeled after video games, the best system for modern human use.

That had been the world’s very first Piece.

The unknown author of that paper (who might have been an individual or a group) was known as the Sage, but were they correct in saying that simply gathering the Pieces was the right thing to do? Was it right to go along with the Sage’s idea when they almost seemed to be enjoying the show as the world grew so twisted and no one gave any thought to correcting it?

“We don’t know what the Pieces we collect will lead to, but that’s just abandoning any responsibility. If we’re going to collect these Pieces, we need to know how they’ll change the world.”

“Milady…”

The dress girl operated her smartphone while listening to the maid. She canceled AR mode and played a normal full-seg broadcast on a normal screen.

B-12, G-29, and Y-03 had to be stopped.

V-71 and P-01 would be useful in avoiding them.

Among the endless number of new technologies to be created from the countless Pieces, the dress girl was focused on a certain industry in particular.

“As the West complains more and more about obesity, obesity, obesity, they’ve started focusing on Japan’s fish culture. You don’t have to suffer through an oppressively healthy diet and you can eat as much delicious food as you want, all while losing weight! Our Fishing Cafeteria Group is finally heading overseas!”

“The next global standard in fast food is Chinese food! Ramen, fried rice, and gyoza are already part of the world’s vocabulary, so all that remains is for us to set the standard. The FE Caiguan Zhushi Gongsi is beginning a simultaneous campaign in fifty countries around the world.”

“Burgers are old news? Well, we’re going to tear down that ‘old news’ and bring you a brand new experience based on the lessons we’ve learned in the past. This is a giant step forward and a challenge to our rivals. No one can ransack our field.”

(The fast food industry is fighting for global dominance. They want to cover the entire planet, national borders be damned, and they want to serve as many grams as possible for as little money as possible.)

The girl sighed as if to force out the unpleasant feeling growing deep in her chest.

Boo Boo really seemed to believe humans were messengers from heaven, but the reality was very different. She silently swore to never let him see this ugly side of humanity.

Then she raised her head and spoke.

“Haruka.”

“Y-yes!? What is it, milady!?”

“I know you set up the Hourglass, but you didn’t mute the smartphone, did you?”

“Waaah!!”

The maid panicked and caused the tea set on the table to clank together, but the red dress girl ignored her and shut off the image on her smartphone’s screen.

She removed the hard key inserted into the bottom connector and connected it to something hanging from her neck by a thin necklace chain.

The device dancing in front of her chest was smaller and skinnier than a USB flash drive.

The Nonhumans of Grandnir would probably think it looked like a tiny version of the sword or spear Shining Weapons that humans used.

She used her thumb to close up the connector on the blade.

(Honestly, I understand changing our appearance, but it also partially overwrites your speech patterns, personality, and thought patterns to make room for the magic you’ve learned. It really makes you think.)

Even so, the girl was not going to stop what she was doing.

She did not simply want to be some corporation’s tool.

She had another reason to continue her exploration of Grandnir.

“I’ve got to do something.”

She operated something with the movement of her eyes.

The roof of the gazebo became transparent and she could see a long contrail in the clear blue afternoon sky.

When she looked further into the distance, she saw high-rise buildings beyond the green trees.

Yes.

This was a one kilometer wide circle cleared out in the center of Tokyo’s Roppongi.

It was known as the Detached Magic Palace. That green garden “prison” had been constructed for the girl known as a Holy Swordswoman.

===Part 2===

“I made a garden.”

“Kyah! That’s amazing, Boo Boo. You’re so civilized!”

“Do you hate me, Beatrice?”

“Don’t be silly. Anyway, what are you growing?”

Boo Boo had indeed forcibly tilled the hard earth near the Fairy-protected leaf house. It must have been some extremely fast-growing vegetable because green ivy was already climbing up the supports and bearing green vegetables. They looked like tomatoes, but Beatrice could not tell if they were supposed to be green or if they would grow red later.

“Boo Boo, what kind of vegetable is this?”

“They’re called Flat Chest Eggplants.”

“Flat Chest…?”

That name included an unacceptable term for a teenage girl, but Beatrice decided to assume that was a Nonhuman term that just so happened to sound like that in human language.

However…

“If you eat it, it’s supposed to make your chest flat. But it doesn’t make me any slimmer when I eat it, so no one knows if it’s true or not.”

“It ''does'' mean that!!!???”

Beatrice backed away from that enemy of girls everywhere and used her gauntleted hands to guard her chest.

Oblivious to the girl’s terror, Boo Boo tilted his head and said more.

“Huh? Or was it touching the Flat Chest Eggplant that mattered? No, it was touching it and then touching your chest, getting the juice on you. …Or was it something else? Hmm, I’m not an old witch, so I don’t remember that tricky stuff.”

“Waaah!! Tell me that before I protect myself with the finger I used to poke the vegetable, Boo Boo!!”

Beatrice tearfully shouted with pretty much all of her strength and quickly used fire illusion Magic to call up a rectangular frame. She rapidly scrolled through the specs listed there and stopped on a certain point.

It had gone down.

It had gone down a little.

It was only a few millimeters, but she had lost the critical amount she needed to be above rather than below average.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

“Wh-what is it, Beatrice!?”

“Wh-wh-what do I do, what do I do, what do I do!? If I head back and come back to Grandnir, will my appearance reset? And if that doesn’t work, do I need to ask White Witch Filinion for help? Ask ''her''!? Ask that cow in glasses for help with my breasts!?”

The Holy Swordswoman shouted and tore at her beautiful hair with both hands.

She was afraid to think what would happen if her amateur methods did not work. Crying to that cow about this would be a suicidal declaration of defeat. But just in case (Yes, just in case!), she created a frame using the two L-shapes of her thumb and forefinger and took a Magic photo of the vegetable.

But…

“P-pant, pant, pant. B-but, Boo Boo.”

“What is all this about, Beatrice?”

“Your garden’s vegetables aren’t doing too good. There are bugs on them and is this from birds pecking at them?”

“That’s part of nature, so there’s no helping it.”

“But this doesn’t leave any for you.”

“The bugs eat the vegetables I make, the birds eat the bugs, the beasts eat the birds, and I catch the beasts, so it’s still a good deal for me.”

She tried using her illusion Magic to create a chart out of red lines and frames, but…

“Hmm… Will it really work out that way? I think you’re losing too much to luck.”

“My logic is perfect, so it’s fine.”

“Also, vegetables aren’t there to bring in meat. You need to eat the vegetables too. Everything needs to be balanced.”

“Vegetables… Why would you want me to do something I hate? Maybe you do hate me…”

Beatrice nearly asked why he had made the garden in the first place, but she wanted to avoid a pointless argument like that.

“By the way, Boo Boo. I wanted to ask you something.”

“G-gulp!? I-I’m eating my Nyandetta Fruit! I’m not secretly hiding them!!”

“…Boo Boo?”

What even was a Nyandetta Fruit?

“Vegetables are important, but let’s talk about something else. Boo Boo, have you heard of a Guild known as Elkiad?”

“I’ve never heard of a vegetable called that.”

“I see. So you really don’t know anything.”

Boo Boo had no connection with human society, so he might not even know what a Guild is, much less a specific one like Elkiad.

Beatrice prepared a few red lines and frames and showed them to Boo Boo.

“A Guild is a human organization created to explore the Labyrinth. You can think of them as a gathering of several Parties, groups that actually head out the Labyrinth. But a Guild will include noncombat logistical support members who prepare food and other things needed for everyday life.”

“I don’t like thinking about all that tricky stuff.”

“Oh, but it’s simple, Boo Boo. If you hear the name Elkiad, then avoid them if at all possible. They’re a dangerous Guild that’s been gaining power recently and they’re creating a real moral hazard among their ranks. They’re people whose words I can understand but whose thoughts I can’t. So be careful.”

She created a frame labeled Elkiad and drew an X over it without any connecting red lines.

Simply put, the humans behind the Fairy and Thousand Dragon incident had belonged to Elkiad.

If the lowest members were like that, then the central members had to be even more ''rotten''.

She left that unsaid because she did not want to remind kind Boo Boo of that unpleasant business, but she did make one thing quite clear.

“Elkiad seems to be growing impatient with their Labyrinth exploration. The wiring in their head was messed up to begin with, but that impatience is pushing them even further. Avoiding them is in your best interest.”

“Is this about Magic and Experience Points?”

“That’s right, Boo Boo. Good job remembering that.”

“I don’t really get it. Is shooting fire or ice from your hand really that great? I mean, it is pretty cool, but is it worth risking your life in that scary Labyrinth?”

“Heh heh heh. Yes, you might be right about that. It probably isn’t a testament to human intelligence that we see excess value in that. We’re just a bunch of fools that are really good at finding more than is absolutely necessary.”

“But I would like to be able to fly.”

“Yes. And I’d like to make a candy house.”

===Part 3===

After parting ways with Boo Boo, Beatrice opened her Magic map and walked toward the inn town. The inn town was the human base of operations, but it had no homes. None of the shop owners slept in Grandnir. They would look after the shop in rotations of two or three shifts, so no single person stayed in Grandnir for long. For better or for worse, Grandnir’s Nonhumans were not affected much by human culture.

Even so, Beatrice ran across two familiar faces in the inn town. One was the White Witch Filinion with her fluffy blonde hair, glasses, white cloak, dress, and low-rise shorts. As always, she was showing off her breasts that Beatrice could only call “gluttonous”, but Beatrice was smugly certain that her type was much less impressive back in their original world.

The other was Fighter Priest Armelina who had short green hair, a tall stature, and a very, very flat (ha ha) chest. She wore a long green skirt with a long slit on both sides. The boldly exposed chest seemed odd for a supposed priest, but that was actually fairly tame for Grandnir.

The two of them were speaking in front of an open-air shop with fruit juice in hand. But instead of an elegant chat over tea, they seemed to be plotting some way to get Mixing ingredients and the gears used as currency.

Then again, those two were only ever talking about the Labyrinth or Magic, which really came down to money in the end.

“Oh, Beatrice.”

“We were just talking about you.”

“?”

She joined the conversation and they both started talking to her.

“With the route through Cave 25 opened, things have gotten pretty busy around here.”

“But can we really let that Piece be uploaded to our world? I don’t know much about big data or the conspiracies of global corporations, but this one’s a little too blatant. And of course, that brings us to you.”

“I suppose it would,” casually agreed Beatrice. “So are you trying to get me to play the villain again?”

“What are you talking about? You’re the one that started this.”

The White Witch sounded exasperated and Armelina spoke up next to her.

“Do you really think Filinion can play your role when all she can do is heal people and let those giant boobs bounce around?”

“M-my breasts have nothing to do with this! I didn’t ask to have them this big!”

“What!? Don’t tell me you think they’re a negative, you cow!”

“What!? Don’t tell me you think they’re a negative, you cow!”

Filinion blushed and covered her chest with both hands, but Beatrice and Armelina snapped back at her in perfect unison. The Holy Swordswoman’s ahoge ignited as an illuminating fire.

It was the Fighting Priest who first realized this was not the time for that.

“Anyway, it’s the usual situation, so wouldn’t you be best, Beatrice? And it doesn’t look to me like you’re complaining.”

“That’s fine with me. So does that mean we’re off to the Labyrinth? When do we start?”

“Now, if that’s okay.”

The Holy Swordswoman, White Witch, and Fighting Priest were all monsters at the level cap who claimed things only began after reaching Level 99. Those three girls with tricky Jobs formed a temporary Party.

“I feel like we’re going to get stabbed in the back someday.”

“I’m counting on you to heal me when that day comes. Now let’s go.”

===Part 4===

Eternal Foods will provide safety and reliability to the world’s food!

Food poisoning, carcinogens, and other health hazards. Not even canning, freezing, drying, and vacuum sealing can wholly eliminate all of these problems, but we have eliminated them all with our thorough control of the original ingredients. The most useful technique is a natural preservative. Chemical preservatives can eliminate most food risks, but too little and you get food poisoning yet two much and you get other health hazards. This has been a real problem, hasn’t it? But Eternal Foods has developed the Imortalise Series. This mixture of natural preservative extracts can successfully reduce the pathogens behind food poisoning by 99.9% while also completely eliminating any dangerous chemical compounds. This is truly a groundbreaking health defense.

Preventing spoilage allows food to be shipped over much larger distances, allowing stores to expand, and the extended shelf life prevents food waste. This should translate into a positive reduction in price for you, the consumers.

And from a societal standpoint, food can be more easily stockpiled and wasted food more efficiently reused.

===Part 5===

After ending their Labyrinth exploration for the day and returning aboveground, Beatrice walked along a path while somewhat rearranging the map created from illusion Magic. The automap function was based on where she had walked, so it was a little crude.

(That was an awful trip. We were running for our lives the entire time… All we did was run away from that super-tough punishment Gimmick known as the Fingertip of Destruction.)

She could sync her map with map-obsessed Fighting Priest Armelina later on, but that was not a happy thought since the girl was bound to take a ton of gears as payment.

(I can’t forget the basic fact that we were lucky to get back safely at all. There is Magic to return immediately, but then you have to leave behind all of the Treasure you’d gathered. Ahh, I’m so tired.)

For a change of pace, she called up her Magic map of the area and headed to Boo Boo’s house, but then she heard a scream beyond the trees.

“Squeal! …O-ow! Y-you’re just too strong for me.”

“Hm? What is it, Boo Boo!?”

Beatrice could tell this was serious and she rushed over, but she was tilting her head even as she rushed. Boo Boo had unilaterally beaten the thousand meter Break News known as the Thousand Dragon, so was there anything he could not defeat?

Her question was quickly answered.

Right in front of his tent-like leaf house, Boo Boo was collapsed face down as he trembled with his hands over his head.

His butt rose up like a small hill and a girl of about ten with long silver hair and a skimpy black outfit was sitting cross-legged on top of that hill.

“Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!! You may have gotten carried away after beating up the Thousand Dragon, but now do you see how pitiful you truly are, Nonhuman? That thing was only the lowest of the Break News. Now tremble in the face of real power!!”

“I-I never cared about strength.”

“But you do have talent. Why not take me as your master and have me retrain you from the ground up?”

“This old hag isn’t listening to anything I-…ow!!”

Beatrice was unsure how to react.

What was this? Had four meter Boo Boo really gotten into a fight with a ten year old girl and had he really been the one to get beaten up?

(Yeah… I have no idea what’s going on here, but I am glad this didn’t go: ‘You’re my enemy’ → Boo Boo beats the ever-living snot out of a little girl.)

That said, she could not figure this out, so she tried solving it a piece at a time.

So what should she ask first?

“I kind of doubt it, but…Boo Boo, is having a girl sit on you your idea of fun?”

“The only things I do for fun are puzzle rings and the ring toss. Heh heh. I can solve even the trickiest puzzle ring before you can count to three.”

“That’s because you break them, Boo Boo. Now, would you mind explaining who this girl is?”

Beatrice had started with that because of how the girl was dressed. If she was being generous, she would call it a black dress, but it felt more like the girl had a ribbon wrapped around her body and had added a miniskirt on top of that. She also had tropical flower decorations on either side of her head and on her back, but that was not the main point. Beatrice’s armor and skirt were technically Magic and every piece of equipment increased her strength or thought speed by a certain percentage…but this girl had none of that. Her clothing was most likely special-made from Ground Spider silk, but that meant it was not Magic. These were simply clothes.

And that led to a simple conclusion.

This girl looked just like a human, but she was clearly doing something humans did not.

And as the black ribbon dress girl gave off an aura of cruel delight like an evil demon king sitting in his throne, she stood up on top of Boo Boo’s butt, placed her hands on her hips, and looked down at Beatrice.

“Hee hee. I am Sutriona, one of the Break News. I am of course the Queen of the Harlots who appears in the crimson night.”

“Bfhh!?”

Beatrice spat out the contents of her mouth at that sudden announcement.

(How can she say that with such a cherubic face!?)

“I had heard he had defeated one of us Break News, even if it was the lowliest one. I was curious, so I challenged to him to a bit of a fight. However, it was not even worth spreading my Wings of the Maddeningly Hot Night.”

“No, not that! I don’t care about that! What was that about harlots? Is this some elaborate joke!?”

“You care about that? But it’s the truth, so I’m not sure what to tell you. I am the queen of the thousands of sweltering nights and the sandstorm of maddening red heat that consumes eons of peace. What other title could I use?”

“I really, really hope this isn’t it, but…are you seriously calling yourself that? No one’s making you do it after you lost a game or something?”

“I was sick of everyone calling me cute when I was Queen of the Fairies, so I changed the title myself. For some reason, my shrine maidens at the waterfall altar have been sobbing ever since.”

“I had a feeling that was it!!”

“What is your problem? No one deserves to be called Queen of the Harlots more than me. For example, I am of course not wearing any panties.”

“G-get down from there!! Stop standing so triumphantly on top of Boo Boo, you old hag!!”

After some struggles and difficulties, Beatrice somehow managed to drag Sutriona, Queen of the Har-…of the Fairies, down from the small hill of Boo Boo’s butt.

But was this slender girl really a Break News just as strong as, or even stronger than, the Thousand Dragon?

How exactly had she knocked Boo Boo down to the dirt?

When Beatrice asked, Sutriona put her hands on her hips, gave a proud snort, and answered.

“How, you ask? With your world’s wrestling techniques.”

“Where did you learn about those!? No, that’s not the point. How could you possibly wrestle with him!? Your arms and legs are too short to deal with Boo Boo’s giant body. You’d never be able to reach for a throw or a joint lock!!”

“Oh? Did you just say ‘short’, human girl?”

The long, silver-haired girl gave a dark smile and an ominous aura surrounded her.

“Skinny, I’ll allow. Small, I’ll put up with. …But you just said ‘short’, didn’t you?”

“Eh? What?”

“If you want to know that badly, I’ll show you just how I brought down that Iberian Orc. I used this fifteen joint lock combo from hellllllllllllllllll!!”

“Eh? Iberian Orc is a real species name!? And wait, you idiot!! Are you saying you pinned Boo Boo down like this without any underwear on!? And this pincer hold- vrrvbrvrchhhhhhhhhh!?”

With an almost silly sound of violence, the Holy Swordswoman who had free use of fourteen thousand types of fire Magic was balled up like something from a joke.

Three hundred seconds later, Beatrice was face-down on the ground and trembling with her hands over her head. Meanwhile, Sutriona was sitting with her legs crossed on top of Beatrice’s butt.

“There. You should have a good idea of just how unbeatable I am now.”

“E-even after you used it on me…I still have no idea how you did it…?”

“That weak Thousand Dragon was invading my territory and devouring my Fairies when I was away. I planned to punish that thing eventually, but now I need to thank you for doing it for me. Rejoice in this rare opportunity to spar with someone so far out of your league and try to turn this defeat into valuable experience.”

Sutriona was mocking her, but Beatrice’s rapier-like Shining Weapon was emitting a flashing sign into the empty air. She drew it from its sheath with her butt still sticking into the air and was shocked to find she had earned quite a few Experience Points. It was actually far more than she would get from a trip to the Labyrinth, but she was afraid what bizarre path she would head down if she got used to earning them like this.

“B-but… We’ve come a long way if we’ve survived two encounters with a Break News…”

On top of that, this one spoke the human language and saw the Fairies as her own. That was rare for the Break News who generally followed a random route through the island as they (in a way, selfishly) spread different sorts of chaos. Of course, that did not mean this one had the same morals or standards as humans.

“Oh, it’s all connected if you pay attention. Besides, isn’t it customary to bring a small gift when moving in?”

“…? I think I just heard something I can’t just ignore.”

“Weren’t you listening?”

Boo Boo sounded fearful, but Sutriona put a hand on her slender waist and ground the finger of the other against her temple while winking.

“Defeating that weak Thousand Dragon created a change in our territories. I need to rule this area as well now, so I stopped by to say hello.”

Boo Boo decided right then and there that he was moving, but the Break News dissuaded him with a wrestling move.

===Part 6===

Palm-sized Fairy Meridiana repaired the leaf house’s roof to keep out the rain as she viewed the hellish scene below.

“Oh, dear. Oh, my. Would you look at that, Boo Boo.”

A visit from the Fairy Queen was a rare thing. The Break News generally liked to show off and the humans and Nonhumans would live peaceful lives by steering clear of their path as if they had detected a coming storm. But Sutriona was an exception. She was well-known as a Break News that no one could track. She would appear so unexpectedly that not even the Fairy village could predict it, to say nothing of the humans. Probably only the other Break News could see through her actions.

Thus, the Fairy village had Elder Morgan as a leader in Sutriona’s place and Meridiana saw Sutriona as more of a goddess than a queen. Meridiana had been taught Sutriona was always watching over them, but she was not to be mocked even if she did not come to save them. That was the unrealistic sort of higher being Sutriona seemed to be.

But now that godlike Fairy Queen had appeared so easily.

Boo Boo had caught the attention of someone on that level.

“Perhaps I should prepare some Red Rice for tonight. Eh heh heh.”

Meridiana flew down from the roof.

But even if Sutriona was playing around, she was still the Fairy Queen and one of the Break News. Boo Boo and Beatrice’s bodies would be crying out in agony. With kind thoughts in mind, Meridiana started for the forest to gather the standard Grandnir herbs used in compresses.

She planned to bring them first aid medicine and a small celebratory meal.

The Fairy saw paying back Boo Boo with housework as her meaning in life and she was the type to delight in having lots to do.

“I need to work even harder to make sure Boo Boo can live comfortably.”

That evening, Boo Boo grimaced at the sharp smell coming from his house.

“My house smells weird!”

“Your house always smells, Boo Boo. But what is this? It smells like someone soaked a compress in a bucket of water and just left it for three days.”

“I feel like you’re picking a fight with me, Beatrice.”

“You’re imagining it. But…what is this here? It’s red and sticky… Is it a grain?”

“I promised myself I wouldn’t waste food. …Ew!? This rice has the room’s smell all over it!”

“Hmm… If I put this in my mouth, I’m pretty sure something unpleasant would reach my nose.”

For a while afterwards, Boo Boo lived in fear of the poltergeist threatening his peaceful home.

===Part 7===

A kilometer wide green circle sat in the center of Roppongi, Tokyo.

It was the Detached Magic Palace.

After passing through a rectangular frame of light, the silver- and red-haired swordswoman in red armor and a miniskirt became a girl with black twintails and a ball dress.

In the garden surrounded by green trees, a round jacuzzi was protected by a gazebo-like roof. When she arrived there, she gave into her exhaustion and threw herself into the hot water without removing her clothing. The long skirt with a large slit up the side spread out along the water’s surface. The girl flipped over onto her back and pulled a hard key resembling her Shining Weapon rapier from the bottom connector of her smartphone.

She could feel the exhaustion rising within her, but she could not let the sleepiness get the better of her.

(The battles in the Labyrinth seem to wear out your head more than your body. So let your guard down for a moment and you fall asleep.)

“Phew.”

She checked the approximate time on the screen. She had spent about four days and seven hours there this time. The girl had been born in this world and on this planet, so spending too much time in Grandnir could mess with her internal clock and cause serious irregularities in her body and mind. This was the main reason that the humans used the inn town as a base but did not have any permanent residences there.

The three maid sisters were not here today.

She floated face-up in the open-air bath and grabbed a pitcher of water from a tray floating with her. She poured the cold water in a cup and gulped it down.

Allotting her earned Experience Points and learning new Magic could wait.

Her smartphone contained a Log of her time spent searching the Labyrinth since it had been saved to her Shining Weapon. When she looked back through it, she could tell the battles with the lifeless Gimmicks were very different from the battles on the surface. They were more like games of red light, green light than games of tag. The Gimmicks only moved when she did, so she had an unlimited amount of time to think up her next move right in front of the enemy. In a Party battle or Guild battle, teamwork became important. Would they all move together as a single group or would individuals stay still to give the attackers and healers more chances to move?

However, even the slightest fidget could be seen as a movement and, when there were multiple people in a single area, the Gimmick could react to someone else’s movement even if you remained entirely still. So if your accidental movement put someone else in danger, it could earn unnecessary resentment.

(Oh, this is just useless… I want to review my mistakes, but my brain doesn’t want to do anything…)

She closed the screen but then started fiddling with the smartphone to have something to do. She found a few new articles at the top of a news site.

These were the headlines:

“UN Resolution Fails, Standing Member-Nations Unable to Agree”

“Special Report: Has the Countdown in the Atlantic Really Begun?”

“The Euro Crash. Are Major US Investors Really to Blame?”

“Asia Ignored. Where will the World Police Turn Next?”

“The European Shift to the Far Right Accelerates. Is it a Reaction to Reduced Strength in Exports?”

None of them made her want to tap on the link. Checking the video sites and full-seg mobile TV would likely only show the same sort of news.

“I need to stay focused…”

The twintailed girl spoke quietly to herself as her red dress spread out in the water.

Once she had gotten a light meal and some sleep to readjust her internal clock, she would return to Grandnir. There was a Piece the nations and corporations desperately wanted and she could not let them beat her to it after so much work.

A Piece was a factor that could provide a breakthrough to stalled human technology and cause a sudden change to the global civilization. They were created with a processing technique that used Magic.

A Piece was registered by an individual and its rights were bought by an interested corporation or nation. It was not revealed who bought it and the individual simply received the payment. Only then did the Piece lead to actual production.

The Pieces were useless to the girl and the others in Grandnir if they simply held onto them. To a normal person, a physics textbook was only useful for studying, but the knowledge contained inside was used to create rockets that flew into space. This was the same.

Who would acquire them?

Where would they end up?

The girl and the others truly did hold history in their hands. Most people carelessly use their Pieces and carelessly uploaded them. They were blinded by the lucrative contract fees that rivalled a lottery win if a Piece was deemed useful by a nation or corporation (or someone pretending to be one of those), so they did not think it through that far. However, if someone was paying that much, then it was worth that much.

“Honestly…”

The red dress girl looked back down and used the hard key to allot her Experience Points and manage her Magic.

In addition to the ever-changing headlines, the news site had one special article that never moved from the very top as if it had a hall of fame position.

It had the following headline:

“Is an Atlantic Sovereignty War Really Possible? What Would be Gained in a Conflict between an Old Giant and a New Giant?”

===Part 8===

“The humans are the ones you really need to watch out for, Boo Boo.”

Fairy Queen Sutriona had not prepared anything to eat in the confusion of moving in, so she helped herself to Boo Boo’s dinner as if it were only natural.

The leaf house had no kitchen, so it was a super wild meal of venison cooked over a fire out back with only some rock salt for flavor. Boo Boo had originally planned to eat it raw, so Sutriona’s intrusion may not have been all bad.

“You need to watch out for the humans even more than the Nonhumans or even the Break News. Even though they’re weak…no, ''because'' they’re weak, they change the world in ways you would never expect.”

“Can you make this easier to understand?”

“Sure. Since I look like this, I occasionally visit the inn town pretending to be a human.”

There was a small pile of large red flower petals next to Sutriona. If Beatrice had been there, she might have said they looked like hibiscus petals. They came from the Crimson Heaven Flower and Sutriona had been munching on them like snacks while the meat cooked. They were slightly toxic, so Boo Boo did not touch them.

“Thanks to that, I’ve seen and heard for myself what they do. I know what those humans tend to be thinking.”

“Beatrice is a good person, so I bet all humans are good people. There are sometimes some weird ones, though.”

“It would be nice if it was that simple, but she’s actually an exception when it comes to humans. Humans are a selfish species.”

“But they’ve promised they’re just here to visit the Labyrinth so they won’t hurt us.”

“That’s not because they’re afraid of Grandnir’s residents or because they’re considerate. They just want to prove they’re not here to conquer our world and to show off how gentlemanly they are by following the rules.”

“Hm? Can you tell a good person from a bad person, Sutriona?”

“Keh heh heh. When you’ve lived as long as I have, it comes naturally. I don’t even need to take a direct look at the color of their soul. The look on their face and the tone of their voice is all I need to see to the very depths of their heart. It’s the same for human and Nonhuman alike. Incidentally, you fall under ‘not bad’, so rejoice.”

Sutriona roasted the venison stuck on the end of a wooden stick and let the heat remove the excess fat.

“Do you know what they’re so desperate to accomplish? How to produce a new preservative known as Imortalise. …It’s apparently a chemical that prevents food from rotting. With that, they could store it indefinitely and transport it indefinitely. If it can be carried longer distances, they claim they can obtain equality between the places with so much food it rots and the places with so little food the people starve.”

“I’m no good with complicated things.”

Sutriona responded to Boo Boo’s words by moving the meat in the fire a little.

“It means they could leave this on the ground around here and it wouldn’t rot. If the rumors about Imortalise are accurate, it would last a month or two. If the food doesn’t rot, the extra food can be shared with people who live far away, right?”

“Hm? That sounds like a good thing to me.”

“At face value, yes. …But if you can quickly transport as much food as you want, you can also make use of far more soldiers, right? Eternal Foods will provide absolute certainty to the safety of food. Canning, freezing, drying, and vacuum packing still leave a modicum of risk, but this will eliminate even that. That means the beginning of a world in which ''anyone can easily start a war.''”

“What’s a war?”

“The loss of many lives. It’s an unpleasant topic, but you need people to kill people, right? A lot of killing requires a large force of people. And the food is actually more important than the weapons, Boo Boo. Plus, if they can sell a whole bunch of food, they can use that money to buy weapons.”

Sutriona put on a cynical and crafty smile that did not suit her appearance.

“A dictator’s conscripted soldiers might obey their orders to eat rotten bread and meat that reeks of chemicals, but it seems wars these days are fought between ‘kings’. That is, between the wealthy nations. If word gets around that you will be sickened from within by your own allies if you go to war, no one will volunteer. And they can’t go to war if they can’t gather an army, so I can see why they’re eager to ensure the safety of the food if those ‘kings’ wish to wage war.”

She somewhat changed the subject from there.

“Anyway, few are powerful enough to start a war and fewer still have the true power needed to maintain a war indefinitely. That’s why wars are not so easily started. A poor command will only wear down your own country. If you want a peaceful world, it’s important to maintain a system that ''makes going to war difficult.''”

Sutriona bit off a small piece of the meat she had cooked, but it must have been too hot because she stuck her tongue out.

“Everyone’s gone to so much trouble creating that unreliable suspension bridge and now someone wants to swap it out for a stone bridge with absolute reliability. Wars of no-risk and high-return will begin. And no matter how many foolish commands are given, the wars will continue. People will begin investing in that ''great and unreachable industry'' as casually as in the development of a housewife’s nifty little invention.”

“…”

“And since supporting the food supply looks charitable and humane, no one can stop them from developing it on a large scale. In other words, the exploration of the Labyrinth and the conversion of Experience Points into Magic is nothing more than the humans competing to see ''who can first obtain a method of economizing war and who can monopolize that method.'' …Of course, I have my doubts that very many of them are even looking beyond the vast sums of money to see that their decisions here could lead to the destruction of their own civilization.”

Boo Boo fell silent for a while.

He glanced over at the wood-carved human statue sitting near the fire. It showed a human as a messenger of heaven, just as the Nonhuman oral tradition stated.

Only the crackling of the fire could be heard.

“Humans are good people. They wouldn’t want to do that war thing.”

“Don’t be so sure. Based on what I’ve heard, they can only use Magic here. So no matter how much they fight here, they can only bring back so much. First on that list are the Pieces. We need to be aware that they are almost certainly preparing for war.”

“What good is war? They’d all be happier if they ate food, lay down, and took a nap together.”

“For better or for worse, humans are a clever bunch. They have such a great desire for ever greater happiness that they end up trampling the happiness they already have. Although very few of them seem to even notice it.”

“But Beatrice wouldn’t do that. She doesn’t kill more than she needs to eat.”

“Boo Boo, it’s about who gets it first.” Sutriona gave a faint smile. “She can say she won’t do it all day long, but there’s nothing she can do if someone else gets their hands on it. And if that happens, it will lead to an age that works against her. So whether she wants it or not, she has to secure those Pieces. It’s either take them or have them taken. Those are the only options available to the human countries.”

“I refuse to believe that.” The giant Orc grew stubborn. “Beatrice wouldn’t do something so horrible. She’s way smarter than me, so she would use all her brains to make sure that didn’t happen.”

“That would be nice…”

The girl in a black ribbon dress sighed before saying more.

“Whatever the case, the humans can’t relax right now. You need to be especially careful about a Guild named Elkiad. Not only is there a severe moral hazard at work inside their ranks, but they’re different from the other Guilds on a fundamental level.”

“Yeah. Beatrice said that too. I remember her talking about Ensoed.”

“Only the first and last letters of that are right, Boo Boo.”

===Part 9===

Beatrice returned to Grandnir.

It was a small island, but she enjoyed the freedom there. A Break News would occasionally go on a rampage and significantly alter the landscape, but it was generally a peaceful and simple world.

It may have been because she could use Magic, but the world seemed to spread out endlessly before her despite the limited surface area. The underground Labyrinth was suspected to reach other islands or continents from the ocean floor or even pass through a Transfer wall to reach other dimensions, but she found the normal forests and beaches felt larger than the complex Labyrinth.

She walked to the inn town and found White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina enjoying some tea at a café. If they were indulging themselves, it meant they had sold some field guides or maps for plenty of gears rather than paper money.

Beatrice asked a question without ordering anything for herself.

“How’s the Setup going?”

“All done.”

“We have a place ready, so we’re ready when you are.”

The three of them left the café and walked down a stone-paved road.

They passed by a great variety of people. There were Knights with bulky armor and large shields, there were lightly-equipped Thieves, there were Hunters and Scouts who specialized in projectiles, and there were even provocative Dancers. The only point in common was the Shining Weapons of various shapes and sizes they all carried. There were obvious ones like swords and spears, but there were also tents, frying pans, brooms, magnifying glasses, and more.

“Where exactly is it?”

“There’s a district to the south that’s been deserted ever since there was a fire. We’ll be borrowing a place there.”

“…Oh, the waterway district.”

“Huh? Why do you sound so blue, Beatrice?”

“No reason,” she said as a non-answer.

Humans could travel between their own world and Grandnir, but the Nonhumans could not. Other than the Shining Weapons, no objects could either. That was why people worked so hard to bring back the data known as Experience Points.

That meant anyone who died in Grandnir…that is, anyone who lost their life and became a mere “object” could not be brought back. No matter how it happened, anyone who died here could not be buried in their homeland’s soil.

But Fighter Priest Armelina didn’t seem to care about those sentimental issues.

“I bet it’s because she always has so much trouble with water. Even in the Labyrinth, she’s always getting dragged away by the octopus-type Gimmicks and getting the bucket-type Traps dumped right on her head in the underground waterways. It never takes her long to end up soaking wet and all see-through. It’s always the same sad story with the strongest fire user.”

“Th-that isn’t true.”

“Ohh? Can you say that again after checking through these results? One look at your Event List and Conversation Log goes a long way toward inspiring the imagination. You should be thankful I was kind enough not to save Replay videos. And looking at this, you really do have trouble with water.”

“Curse you!! Either erase those records right this instant or I’ll turn them and your Shining Weapon to ashes! The choice is yours!!”

Perhaps due to a management issue, her ahoge began burning with a torch flame as she shouted.

At the same time, a small girl with a hood pulled deep over her head passed by.

In that instant, a voice seemed to slip into Beatrice’s ear.

“Be careful. They’re already on the move.”

Beatrice looked back, but there was no sign of the girl in the crowd.

“Is something the matter, Beatrice?”

“No…it’s nothing.”

She shook her head and started walking again, but Armelina still seemed bothered by her behavior.

“What, did someone try to hit on you? Did you feel a bolt of lightning when you saw your soulmate!? You’d never run across a knight in shining armor in a concrete jungle ruled by big data, but this is a fantasy world of swords and magic! Anything goes here!! Heh heh!!”

“Armelina, you’re surprisingly girly. You believe in soulmates?”

“No, no, I don’t! D-don’t be ridiculous. I’m a Fighter Priest, so I’m all about who can punch the hardest!!”

Armelina blushed and began fiercely swinging her hands around.

“Yes, she does seem like the type that believes in the red thread of fate or four leaf clovers.”

“Eh? You mean collecting four leaf clovers doesn’t bring good luck?”

This revelation brought a shadow over Armelina’s face and her shoulders drooped.

“A-anyway, Beatrice. Is it true you’re going out with a huge pig-faced Iberian Orc? I keep hearing rumors about that around the inn town.”

“Kh!! Th-the flow of time is cruel, but I have no regrets!! A-and he doesn’t have a pig face! It’s, um, uh, a slack boar face!!”

“Oh, dear. Does this mean you aren’t building up conversational Experience Points by interacting with other races like some of the others do? It sounds more like you’ve fallen for someone with a kind heart.”

“No, I wouldn’t put it like that. Saying someone is ‘kind’ is the same as saying they’re convenient, don’t cause any problems, and are easy to make use of, right? But Boo Boo is completely different. Setting aside whether he’s kind, he’s most certainly not convenient, he causes all sorts of problems, and I can’t make use of him at all.”

“But you are with him, aren’t you?”

“Well, he’s comfortable. I don’t have to think about all the intrigue around him. …And in Grandnir that’s rare. It’s worth a lot to have someone who you can speak honestly with while letting the weight off your shoulders and not trying to get anything out of it. That’s how I feel about Boo Boo.”

The White Witch and Fighter Priest exchanged a glance at her words…or rather, at her expression.

“Oh, I see.”

“Hm, so that’s it.”

“Wh-what are those know-it-all looks for?”

“Well, we’d assumed everything we’d been hearing was nothing more than rumors, but let’s just say this is better than what we were expecting.”

“I think it’s great. You’re not a monk in training, so it’s nice that you have more to focus on than entering the Labyrinth, earning Experience Points, and learning Magic.”

After turning a corner, the lively energy of the crowd suddenly vanished. The stone-paved road and the brick buildings were not destroyed and had not crumbled. In a town made of stone, a fire was not going to change the scene that dramatically. But all life had been stripped from the surfaces. It was a lot like sterilizing a plate with boiling water.

The Holy Swordswoman, White Witch, and Fighter Priest entered a random building and faced each other around a round table in the center.

They pulled out their differently-shaped Shining Weapons.

Holy Swordswoman Beatrice’s was a rapier.

White Witch Filinion’s was a white first-aid kit.

Fighter Priest Armelina’s was a metal staff. However, it was made so she could add on chains and metal balls with Magic.

They placed their Shining Weapons on the round table. They placed the rapier and metal staff parallel to each other with the first-aid kit in the center.

“Having the strongest fire user sure is convenient. As long as we have you with us, we have one of the necessary Elements ready to go. It’s like getting dealt a joker in a game of poker.”

“I’m thankful to have you two. I can’t use any Element besides fire, right? And your expertise in Mixing is a huge help, Filinion.”

“Being able to share Magic and create Pieces within the same Party is really useful for the people as abnormal as us.”

As they spoke, they called up the data on the Piece they were after and found the Magic they needed for it.

This process was known as Mixing.

Beatrice thought it was more like a dinner or cocktail recipe than it was an industrial processing technique. What mattered was the type and distribution of Magic needed. The rest occurred at a scale one would need an electron microscope to see, so Beatrice and the others’ senses could not keep up. It was the same as shaking the cocktail shaker and knowing a delicious drink would be waiting afterwards.

Filinion pulled out a key hanging from her neck by a thin chain and stuck it into the keyhole on her first-aid kit Shining Weapon.

“The points we must stop are B-12, G-29, and Y-03. The effective detour points needed to avoid those are V-71 and P-01. …That will be the hottest point. Where should we start?”

“Why not from the most certain point? We start at P-01 and, if that works, we can reach for V-71 as insurance.”

“Nice. I like your resolve. It’s like felling the trunk without worrying about the branches and leaves.”

Three Shining Weapons sat on the abandoned round table. White Witch Filinion placed a transparent palm-sized crystal ball alongside the first-aid kit in the center. Various types of Magic would process that into the unknown material known as a Piece.

“Now, let’s create the opposing tech. To review, what tech is it we want to keep out of the hands of the nations and corporations?”

“Imortalise. …B-12, G-29, and Y-03. These will create a composite technology that extracts a natural preservative with almost no health risks.”

“Then what is the Piece we’re creating? That is, the opposing tech brought about by V-71 and P-01?”

“Managed crops for unmaintained land. They’re wheat or potatoes that can grow in any wasteland or desert. I think it’s technically a chromosome-damaging ultraviolet emitter that messes with the seeds. Basically, the competition is between the idea of preservative-soaked ingredients being shipped around the world or the idea of crops actually being grown all over the world. And when the people are growing the crops, they can both eat them and use them for their livestock. That means as much meat and vegetables as they can eat.”

“If this works, the concept of a grain-producing region will vanish and the entire world will be covered in burgers and fries.”

“But…”

“Yes. No matter how much work is put into this tech, no one will ever complete it. ''Even with V-71 or P-01.''”

But the people being manipulated would not notice. They would not be allowed to notice.

The preparations were complete. Corn grown for oil would solve desertification and the energy crisis. But couldn’t that be used to feed people and animals as well as for energy? Because they were always just one step away from achieving their goal, they would continue to reach for it.

That mistaken hope and expectation would completely crush Imortalise which was expected to pave the way to war.

They activated the three Shining Weapons.

The flashy explosions or slashes seen when exploring the Labyrinth were absent here. Instead, lines of pale light ran both inside and outside the transparent crystal ball, showing that something was happening.

Bars appeared next to the Shining Weapons to show the status of the activated Magic and the progress of the overall work. When the slowly-moving bars filled all the way up, Beatrice breathed a sigh of relief.

“Did it…work?”

“I’ll check the structure just to be sure. …Yes, I don’t see any problems. Our P-01 matches the diagram exactly.”

Filinion touched the side of her glasses and Armelina gave a casual comment.

“So which one of us is going to break this down and register it?”

“As always, I’d like to ask Beatrice. She has the most straightforward strength and a third party would see her as the hardest one to attack.”

“Tch. See? I always end up being the villain.”

Beatrice sounded annoyed, but she still grabbed the transparent crystal ball from the table.

If she scanned it with her Shining Weapon and registered it as data, she could bring the world-changing Piece back to their world. If she released it online, the corporations and research institutions would make a technical breakthrough and give actual form to new technology that would change history.

The world was an easy thing to change.

And this was not their first time doing so.

All fields and all industries always contained the possibility of a paradigm shift. It sounded nice when it was called the blossoming of previously closed-off possibilities, but it was little different from having everyone carelessly riding around in time machines.

(We really need to be careful.)

[[Image:BooBoo_v01_150.png|thumb]]

Just as Beatrice was staring at the crystal ball Piece and about to look to her Shining Weapon, she heard the room’s window shattering.

Something had been thrown in from outside.

She looked over without thinking but stopped moving as soon as she saw the fist-sized sphere rolling along the uncarpeted floor.

Something was packed in a leather bag and a fuse about as long as the first joint of a little finger stuck out from the bag.

It happened a moment later.

An earsplitting boom hit her eardrums and refused to go away as a blinding flash filled the room.

It was a flashbang, aka a stun grenade. The nonlethal weapon used light and sound beyond the acceptable limits of human senses to rob the target of their senses while also dazing them for at least a few seconds and possibly a few dozen seconds. Even the toughest man would flinch if lightning struck right next to him and this was a continuous version of the same sensation.

And even if it lacked the ability to kill, it was obvious what would happen to someone targeted by another weapon when they were blind, deaf, and curled up in a defenseless daze.

Attackers with hoods hiding their faces rushed inside from the front door, the window, and the back entrance.

But before they could activate their Shining Weapons which resembled short swords and short bows, a downpour of orange flame arrows assaulted them. As soon as they hit, the arrows created miniature explosions that pushed the attackers back toward the entrances and tossed them outside.

Protected behind rapier-wielding Beatrice’s back, the White Witch removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes over and over.

“I feel the need to reiterate my point about how useful it is to have the strongest fire user with us.”

“I’m just used to the light and sound of my own fire attacks. They’re no match for sunglasses and earplugs, but I do keep reduction Magic in stock.” The crimson Holy Swordswoman smiled a little. “And we’re even since you made this so much easier for me. Visualizing the kinetic reactions detected through the wall to display silhouettes? It isn’t flashy, but it’s a pretty useful support technique.”

“Well, support is all my Job can do.”

“If only you didn’t insist on jiggling those giant boobs every time you did something.”

“Th-that has nothing to do with this!!”

Filinion blushed and snapped back at Armelina.

Illusion Magic displayed a digital countdown over the heads of the collapsed attackers. The White Witch was very effective at life-related techniques, so she had used a Mixed potion to determine the enemy’s level of consciousness and give an estimated time until they came to.

The men were all hiding below their hooded cloaks. When Beatrice’s Party inspected them, they found they were lightly equipped and wore no armor. However, they did not seem to have built up their defenses with Magic either. Instead, they had crude, poorly-made paper. With layer after layer of that under their clothes, they had created light defenses that protected against any penetrative force.

(Almost like…bulletproof armor?)

“Anyway, what was that just now!? It wasn’t Magic, was it!?”

“Wasn’t it obvious? A flashbang. They’re in all sorts of movies and video games these days.”

“A flashbang… But we can only bring Pieces back from Grandnir and we can’t bring any weapons into Grandnir. So how!?”

Fighter Priest Armelina was confused and she activated her metal staff Shining Weapon. A spiked metal ball appeared on the end. When she swung it around a little and hit the wall, the entire wall crumbled and the fragments flew outward.

“They may not have brought it with them,” said Beatrice as she looked toward this new exit since the door was likely being watched. “The primary ingredient in a flashbang is magnesium powder. If you know how to make one, it would probably be possible with materials found in Grandnir. The rest is just like Mixing. It wouldn’t be hard.”

“Are you serious? Then are these guys who I think they are?”

The Fighter Priest looked down at her feet as she stepped over the rubble.

They had left the back way, but attackers with Shining Weapons had been waiting there too. However, these men had been caught in the sudden destruction of the wall and either sent flying or knocked unconscious by the flying rubble.

Fighter Priest Armelina was also receiving visual support from Filinion, so she had likely known the silhouettes were there when she broke through the wall.

“B-12, G-29, and Y-03… These are the people who want to send those Pieces to the corporations and complete the Imortalise preservative that will help provide military supplies. These are the people who want to use it for military purposes. These are the people who want to go to war. Now, do we know a Guild that’s gone into full moral hazard mode and completely ignores etiquette and traditional methods?”

“Oh, so that’s what this is…”

“Their ideology is the opposite of ours.”

“Elkiad.”

Based on the countdown above the collapsed attackers’ heads, they would not wake up for another twenty minutes. Their gloves left just the index finger exposed and that finger was covered with a characteristic tattoo. Everyone who joined them had to dedicate their killing finger to the Guild as a sort of ritual.

Beatrice held the transparent crystal ball in her hand.

“They were trying to keep me from registering this. That way they can keep the world from moving in a direction they don’t want.”

“So what do we do? Do you think you can register it real quick? I doubt this was all they’re going to do, so you should probably hurry it up.”

“Given my Shining Weapon’s processing power, it would take about five minutes. Can you two hold them off on your own for that long? One of you is a White Witch that can only heal and the other is a Fighter Priest that can’t heal despite being a priest.”

“Then we’ll have to put off registering the Piece and escape to a safe place first.”

“And we can’t Sign Out like this. We’re too far away from the individual Gates and, even if we were near a Gate, that process takes two or three minutes to finish. With that much time, they’d turn us into pincushions with those short bows!”

“That’s why we just have to force our way through. We need to at least shake them from our tail. Filinion, kinetic reactions alone aren’t enough. Add on a visualization of encounter rates.”

They had a plan.

They were not about to rush out onto the main road out front. They would continue through the narrow back alleys and eventually reach another road.

Thanks to one of White Witch Filinion’s Mixed potions, numbers danced in the corner of their eyes. The numbers that moved up and down in the 20-30% range were a visualization of the threat directed at them. In other words, the probability of running across an enemy soldier or having an arrow fly their way.

But Beatrice had made a single mistake.

It was true Elkiad had made a flashbang from materials found in Grandnir and she had thought they had used it alongside their Shining Weapons to attack Beatrice’s Party.

But a moment later, the encounter rate shot up from the 20-30% range to 99.9%.

It happened suddenly.

A fingertip-sized dark red hole appeared in the center of Beatrice’s chest.

The belated blast sounded like someone had pierced a hole in the world itself.

Now. When she realized she had been shot by a sniper rifle, did she realize her mistaken assumption?

===Part 10===

On a rooftop, a man with a characteristic tattoo covering his right hand’s index finger held a long narrow gun made from nearly a meter of steel and wood. He peered through the handmade scope made by placing a glass lens inside a skinny wooden tube and he let out a very, very small breath.

The spotter next to him was observing the scene while crouched on one knee and he gave a report to the ground groups using the club-like Shining Weapon that took the place of a communicator.

“Waffle here. Target 1 was hit but survived. 2 and 3 retrieved her and are hiding behind cover. They are fleeing to the west. I am visualizing their silhouettes, but what I have on hand can’t see through buildings.”

The sniper rifles they were using were not precise industrial products.

The history of firearms was a long one. It dated all the way back to around the 15th century.

This was a flintlock musket much like the ones displayed in the pirate section of a museum. It was muzzle-loaded, meaning the gunpowder and bullet had to stuffed into the muzzle and pushed down with a long, skinny ramrod. It could launch a bullet the size of a pachinko ball as far as three hundred meters even without rifling and could hit a target at half that range using the handmade scope, so this version had undergone a bizarre form of evolution.

And in a location filled with buildings, the ability to accurately shoot someone between the eyes at a hundred meters was more valuable than the ability to shoot through a car’s fuel tank at a thousand meters.

On the ground, a few groups of four were receiving support from the roof as they moved to seal off the narrow but winding alleyways.

While following the trail of blood on the ground, they released the leash of the Hellhounds that each group had been supplied with. They barked an order while releasing them and the well-trained four-legged beasts ran on ahead.

“Donut here. Target location detected. We have the Hellhounds in pursuit to confirm it with multiple sources. If they’re cornered in the west or north, they will almost certainly move to the street. Once they do, the snipers just have to finish them off. Everyone, synchronize your maps.”

The primary flaw of muzzle-loading guns was the time it took to load each shot, so firing in quick succession was difficult. One temporary solution was to carry around several shorter guns in addition to the main one they held. It was faster to switch guns than to load another bullet. This too was a method favored by the pirates of an older age.

Another ground group was allowing their targets through according to plan.

Elkiad’s goal was not individual glory. It was to eliminate the target as efficiently as possible.

“Éclair here. We’ve opened the north route. If you block the western route, they’ll naturally come this- gagyah!?”
The report was cut off by a sudden explosion.

While supported by the White Witch’s shoulder, Beatrice breathed heavily and held out her Shining Weapon rapier. Orange sparks danced around the tip.

There was no sign of the dark red hole that had appeared in the center of her chest before.

However, she did not look unharmed. Her face was pale and yet her entire body was covered in an unpleasant sweat. Her body was sending out a mess of contradictory signals.

“Are you really okay?”

Armelina sounded worried and Filinion placed her first-aid kit on a barrel while lending Beatrice her shoulder. Filinion then pulled test tubes of dried herbs and small bottles of liquid from inside her cloak and the belt around her thigh. She dumped the contents into the first-aid kit, forced the lid closed, stuck the key in the keyhole, and turned it.

A bar appeared on the first-aid kit and it slowly filled up. Numbers appeared saying it would take thirty seconds for the Mixing to complete and the success rate was 98.8%.

“I immediately removed the bullet from your chest, so of course you’re worn out. I mean, Healing Magic can’t do everything.”

Filinion was more worried about her own Willpower gauge. If it ran out, the Mixing would stall and the healing would stop. That gauge could be seen as the entire Party’s lifeline. It would recover on its own, but it would of course run out if she used so much Magic that it depleted faster than it recovered.

“You work up a resistance, so the amount it heals goes down with each use. So please don’t think about relying on it to charge into the gunfire in zombie mode or something.”

“I know that.”

Beatrice’s Percentage-type Magic amplified her Parameters and gave her superhuman strength and speed, but that had actually worked against her. The bullet would have done less damage if it had cleanly pierced straight through her. At the very least, they would not have had to ''dig it out of her''.

“But we have to push on. The problem is the snipers that can catch us off guard, but now that we know they’re there…”

Reinforcements must have been sent in, either due to the explosion or the lack of response from their comrade.

New men with muskets leaned out from a corner in the narrow alleyway.

There was more than just the one gunshot. They were equipped with multiple single-shot guns and they were working in a group.

But the encounter rate did not rise beyond the 10-15% range. Beatrice’s Party was being fired on at close range, but none of the bullets hit them.

Phototaxis created flashing lights around the user which shifted the enemy’s focus.

Mirage bent light such that an image of oneself was created in a slightly shifted position.

Fair Wind created wind with heat and used that to give an extra push to the enemy’s blade or bullet, shifting their aim.

Each “shift” was small and they were not enough to deflect a sword or axe swung with enough force to slice right through someone, but when added together, they increased the margin of error needed to save a human life. Even in a hail of deadly bullets.

In other words…

“Magic is superior. Armelina, get to work!!”

“Sure thing!! I’ll blow them away, wall and all!!”

When Armelina activated her Shining Weapon that resembled a metal staff, a chain wrapped in light and a metal ball appeared on the end. They tore through the alleyway corner that Elkiad was using for cover. The many building materials and the attackers were knocked to the opposite wall.

If not for the Percentage-type Magic protecting their bodies, the attackers would have been killed instantly.

Armelina was a Priest, so she made sure to raise the middle finger of her empty hand as elegantly as possible.

“Hah! So all you had were some fossils from a museum? If you want to keep up with us, you should’ve at least brought a rocket launcher!!”

An Elkiad man was listening in from the main street with Magic that worked much like a directional microphone. Once its effects wore off, he lightly raised a hand.

The subordinate standing next to him rested a firing tube on his shoulder and removed the safety pin from the front end of the warhead. The weapons that followed the original designs had been called fossils, but this was a bizarre Galapagos weapon of their own design.

The man covered his ears with his hands and spoke with a smile.

“Well, if you insist.”

With an ear-splitting roar, the explosive flew toward the alleyway entrance with a trail of white smoke behind it.

The threat probability spiked to 100% once more.

===Part 11===

Boo Boo wanted a meal of fish today.

Thus, he was walking along a hill to search for a palm-sized bamboo leaf-shaped piece of wood he could make into a lure.

That was when he heard an explosion.

He looked over and saw grayish smoke rising from one part of the inn town at the base of the hill.

Next to him, Fairy Queen Sutriona stripped off a hooded cloak in annoyance to reveal her flower-like appearance and black ribbon dress.

“So it’s started.”

“I’ve heard of this. The humans use something called fireworks. Is there a festival today?”

“This is something far more frightening, Boo Boo.”

The girl Break News’s voice contained a hint of exasperation, but it was not directed at Boo Boo. It was directed at the humans who continued to act so foolishly down below.

“What a pain. I didn’t want to intervene in a conflict between humans, but if that inn town is destroyed, I won’t be able to eat the tasty treats they make there. I might be able to manage a popsicle, but that ice cream is beyond my abilities. Now, what to do about this?”

“?”

“This is about your friend, Boo Boo. It is about Beatrice.”

His giant body shook when he heard Sutriona’s words.

“Elkiad is on the move. Their target is Beatrice because they don’t want her group getting in ahead of them. This is a fight over that new preservative called Imortalise, which would fill the world with food and erase the limiting factor that empty stomachs place on war.”

“I’m no good with complicated things. But I want to know about Beatrice, so can you make it simpler?”

“Basically, ''the war has already begun,'' Boo Boo. Will Beatrice’s group bring back the Piece or will Elkiad? Even if these things are made public, whichever economic bloc they prioritize will begin a global trend in that direction. This is the final fork in the road, so they will do whatever it takes, no matter how dirty their methods. …To make it simpler for you, Boo Boo, millions are going to die and they are making a tightrope walk to determine where those deaths will occur.”

“I don’t believe that.” The hideous pig-face shook his head. “Like I said, Beatrice isn’t that kind of person. She’s smarter than me, so she has to be thinking about so much more than me to find a way that won’t hurt anyone.”

“Boo Boo, the advance of technology cannot be stopped. Even if you kill the designer of a secret weapon, someone else will eventually come up with the same idea. The only difference is who comes up with it and where their affiliations lie. No one can prevent the new technology itself from being created, no one can hold it back, and no one can erase it from existence. Once it has been discovered, someone will use it. That is simply the human way.”

Humans visited the Labyrinth.

They did so to efficiently earn Experience Points and learn Magic.

With Magic, they could process a variety of things and create fragments known as Pieces.

By turning those to data and bringing them back with them, human society could achieve technological breakthroughs.

Apparently, even the most basic of assumptions could be overturned.

…Or millions could be killed.

“Then they just have to stop bringing them back. If they hide the Pieces forever, they won’t cause any problems.”

“Boo Boo… The benefit of a Piece is only enjoyed by the person who first registers it. So even if the original discoverer hides it, if a second discoverer registers it, they will be seen as the first in the official records. And if they bring it back to the human world and the nations and corporations go for it…”

Sutriona ended her explanation partway through.

She fell silent.

She stopped to think.

“…Wait.”

“?”

“Could that be what’s going on here? Is Beatrice’s group making opposing patent requests…? In other words, is she competing for the standard while leading them into a dead end?”

“Explain it so I can understand.”

“Very well. This is something I have overhead the humans talking about. They do not know where their Pieces are used or for what. They simply make them, take them back, and submit them. And the nations and corporations are constantly searching through the thousands or tens of thousands of released Pieces in case one of them might provide a breakthrough on some stalled secret research.”

“Hmm…”

“Was that too complicated? Basically, it isn’t a simple case of Person A having a problem and Person B preparing a solution. If Person A has a problem, they can work with Person C or D if need be. …Even if the provided answer is a false answer dressed up to look nice.”

“???”

“What I’m saying is this.” Sutriona raised her skinny index finger. “Beatrice’s group may be trying to intentionally submit a mistaken Piece. That way the entire world will reach a technological dead end and no one will be able to wage war.”

Boo Boo tilted his head again.

He may have had trouble picturing it.

“Would that really stop everyone? Does giving the wrong answer really change anything if someone finds the right answer afterwards?”

“Boo Boo, there are two types of technology: those with a clear right answer and a clear wrong answer, and those with two competing right answers. For example, what do you think of the Magic the humans use?”

“I can’t use Magic, so I don’t really know. They all do weird beepy things.”

“That’s right. But there isn’t actually a reason it had to be that way. Grandnir’s Magic holds endless possibility, but that level of freedom is so great they seem to have trouble grasping it. They need to place limitations on it so they can comprehend it themselves, so rather than the secret techniques of legend, they use a more familiar and easy-to-picture system. That is, what they call a video game.”

“You mean there might have been other forms of Magic?”

“Yes. It could just as easily have been reciting strange incantations or drawing out magic circles. It isn’t an issue of which one is right; it’s an issue of which is more convenient. The one more people tended to use became the standard.”

“Then…”

“Let’s say you have System A and System B. What if System A is actually superior, but System B is announced on a grand scale first. And what if they were hiding that System B is actually entirely useless and will never make a completed product even after a century of work? Wouldn’t everyone be so blinded by System B that they would ignore System A?”

“But what if someone secretly worked on System A?”

“Society won’t let them. Once the cannonball starts rolling, it is apparently very hard to stop. There are people doing the research, people making the parts, people assembling the parts, people selling it, and people who want to use it… Even if someone tries to stop it, someone else will prevent them because they need it to continue. The video standards are apparently a well-known example. Not that this has anything to do with those like us who live freely.” Sutriona laughed. “And war is all about timing. If you miss the right time to start it, the system built for that purpose will no longer have a use. Not to mention the great financial cost of maintaining it. The deception might eventually be discovered, but if they set it up so it’s too late by the time that happens, the countdown to war might fall apart.”

In that case, Elkiad’s goal was also obvious. They wanted war, so they would secretly provide the corporation with the materials needed to produce the technology for war. But if the target corporation looked elsewhere, Elkiad could no longer guide them to the desired technology. And a Piece was meaningless on its own. It was only useful to someone who had come to a technological dead end and was stuck despite the extremely advanced technology they had accumulated.

“In other words…”

“Beatrice may not be a bad person. Of course, this is only a possibility.”

Boo Boo fell silent.

He looked to the inn town at the bottom of the hill.

He could hear consecutive bursting noises from there. He had initially thought those were the sounds of a festival, but now they transformed into something horribly uneasy and unsettling.

“What is Beatrice doing?”

“It sounds like she ran into some trouble with Elkiad.”

“She said to run away if I heard the name Elkiad.”

“That’s because she didn’t want you to see this.”

Boo Boo made up his mind when he heard that.

He adjusted his grip on his giant Shining Weapon that resembled a steel beam or log.

“I’m going.”

“Going where?”

“To the inn town. To Beatrice.”

“Looking like that? I can get by with my appearance, but you will cause a commotion the second you set foot in the town. You normally stay away from the town and roads because you don’t want to scare people, right?”

“That has nothing to do with the fact that Beatrice is in trouble.”

“Everything I said about her was mere speculation. There might not be an opposing patent and she might simply be the kind of person who is willing to allow millions of deaths if it supports her own country or corporation. The only way to know for sure is to peek into their world.”

“I can just ask her,” he said.

He had no proof and no guarantee. After enough work and pain to lose everything he had gained, it could all be for nothing.

But he said it regardless.

“I just have to find her and ask her directly.”

It was his trust in her that led him to run toward the human inn town where everyone would be an enemy.

===Part 12===

Simply following the alleyways along the roads was not going to work.

The Holy Swordswoman, White Witch, and Fighter Priest ran inside an abandoned building, climbed the stairs, broke through the wall, and took a shortcut to the neighboring building on that middle floor. They used Magic to divert the sniper bullets that flew in through the windows, they flinched back from the explosives that tried to envelop the entire floor in flames, and they continued making progress without being cornered.

“This is insane… They actually fired a rocket when I asked for one. What the hell was that?”

“They had handheld rockets in the Edo period. They were called Bo-hiya.”

“Y-yeah, but it doesn’t look like they’re simply using a three hundred year old weapon.”

They used Magic to call up a map of the inn town, but it was entirely useless because both enemy and ally were breaking down walls in the complex labyrinth of buildings.

And of course, the three of them were far from unharmed.

“I can’t believe this… I thought I had built up a decent Puncture Resistance and Arrow Resistance, but they’re breaking right through…”

“Bullets must need their own form of Resistance…”

They only looked unharmed because White Witch Filinion would Mix them a recovery potion every time they were badly injured. But as mentioned before, that was not all powerful. They built up a resistance, so it healed less each time it was used. Their bodies had grown pale and they could tell the potions would no longer stop the bleeding after a few more uses.

That resistance would reset when they returned from Grandnir, but they would not be in so much trouble in the first place if they had time to do that. The Gate for Signing Out was still a long way off.

“I-I’m sorry…”

The White Witch apologized while leaning on Beatrice’s shoulder.

The situation had been reversed after the first sniper attack, but now she was terribly weak. Her Job was not meant to stand on the front line. As soon as it had become clear that she was the healer, the attacks had concentrated on her. On top of the actual damage, using her Magic wore down her Willpower, so this was hardly surprising.

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“No, not that. I think I’m at my limit. I’m feeling really dizzy and I don’t think I can stay conscious much longer…”

The first-aid kit she used for Mixing was weakly opening and closing.

“Hey, wait.”

“The Recovery Magic is using up my Willpower faster than it recovers… I won’t be any more use. If I can’t use Recovery Magic, I’ll just weigh you down. Please leave me behind…”

Filinion tightened her grip on the first-aid kit’s handle and key. She could likely see what was left in her gauge because her eyes were wandering through empty air. Beatrice considered having it set so she could see too, but she did not use the Magic for that. That was not what was needed right now.

“Don’t be silly. Getting discouraged like that will only use up your Willpower faster. And be quiet for a moment!”

Next to them, Fighter Priest Armelina leaned against the hallway wall.

She had not lost her will to fight, but it must have been a shock for their healer to wear out first.

If they continued like this, they would be slowly tormented to death. And the result would be little different if they surrendered to Elkiad thanks to the Guild’s moral hazards.

“Really now, what do we do?” The Fighter Priest felt an unpleasant sweat on her pale face. “Magic is stronger than bullets, but isn’t there something different about these guys? I’m not sure how to put it… You could say we have the upper hand 1000-to-10 in pure power, but they use that 10 to hit our vitals from a blind spot with the accuracy of threading a needle. They have no waste or inefficiency…”

Yes. Looking at nothing but strength, Beatrice or Armelina could overwhelm Elkiad with their Magic. If they wanted to, they could blow away this entire section of the town.

But doing that would change nothing.

Even if they were 99% successful, a bullet would slip through the 1% gap and accurately pierce their flesh. The more destruction they caused, the less cover there was and the more gunfire would reach them. And if they went too far, the damage would extend behind this ghost town area. They could not solve this by indiscriminately spreading destruction like a Break News.

To sum it up…

“This isn’t like anything we’ve come across before. It’s like playing go and finding your opponent is using chess pieces.”

It was like a chess problem.

No matter where they fled, they would be in someone’s line of fire. The enemy was not thinking about individual accomplishments. They were simply doing everything they could to remove the enemy pieces from the board. Even if that meant using themselves as bait.

The 100% encounter rate that visualized the threat seemed to pierce through their souls.

There was only one thing this reminded them of.

“That isn’t surprising… Elkiad doesn’t come from a normal background like us. They must be the army of the nation that wants to go to war.”

“A real…army? Honestly, a lovely college girl has to take on an army? What has the world come to?”

“And it’s kind of disturbing that they’re a disciplined army. With the kind of moral hazards we’re seeing here, I can’t believe they’re eating on the taxpayer’s dime and having action movies made about them back in our world.”

They did not have time to grow angry over every little thing.

“What do we do? If they’re going to get their hands on it otherwise, we could always destroy the Piece as a last resort.”

“That would be meaningless. If they silence us afterwards, it’s all over. P-01 is only bait meant to guide development in the wrong direction. The war they want will start if we don’t register the bait Piece first to distract everyone from the B-12, G-29, and Y-03 that Elkiad wants to make.”

The assumed filename was “Atlantic Sovereignty War”.

Basically, traditional high-class brands such as bags, jewelry, and wine were suffering as the middle class was stolen by the increased quality of low-cost manufacturers. There was also a conflict between the European nations that were becoming marred by excessively nationalistic far-right ideologies and America which simply wanted to go to war with someone due to their extended IT recession.

In both cases, it was less a desire to stand at the center of the world and more a matter of pride. That is, they did not want to be seen as inferior to the other.

During the confusion, South America and Western Africa were dragged into the flames of war and greedy hands reached out for them on the pretext of protecting them.

Everyone was so focused on those areas that the Middle East, the Far East, and Southeast Asia went ignored and new potential wars were beginning to pop up here and there.

The talk of ridiculous wars held so much sway because everyone had been taken in by the delusion that the food supply system supported by Imortalise would be complete soon and the true “kings” could easily wage war without taking any external or internal damage.

So saying one simple thing would solve all these problems at once:

''I won’t let that happen. I’ll guide us onto a mistaken set of rails and get the heavy cannonball rolling so it will continue to spin fruitlessly forevermore.

They would not allow those cruel and hopefully imaginary wars from occurring.

They would build up a technology to rival the new technology that would truly distort the world and they would intentionally trigger a competition over what would be adopted as the standard. They would move the people in a direction that would never be completed no matter how much research was done. And even if someone noticed the mistake, the heavy cannonball of society would crush them if they tried to stop it. That would prevent anyone from moving to a different set of rails in the future.

As always and as many times as it took, ''Beatrice would not allow the rise of any technology that would not bring people happiness.

“Please leave me behind,” repeated White Witch Filinion. “This isn’t just our problem anymore… If we all die here, that war born of hopeless delusions will actually happen. So if just one of us survives and registers the bait Piece, that war won’t happen. So I’ll create a diversion for you…”

Beatrice almost shouted back on reflex.

But something else happened before she could.

Almost like a school’s broadcast system, a man’s amplified voice came from all over the building. There was of course no broadcast equipment here, so it had to be some kind of Magic.

“Can you hear me, Beatrice?”

(He won’t just want to chat. There must be some other reason.)

“You’re always causing us a lot of trouble. Yes, always. This isn’t the first time. Come to think of it, have you figured out who we are yet? To be honest, I’d like to demand payment for the war profit we should have earned, but I’ll let it slide just this once. There are no war treaties or ROE here. There are no military police either. In this world, no one goes to trial even if someone ends up dead. So prepare yourself.”

“Be careful…”

She spoke quietly to the White Witch and Fighter Priest.

The threat probability slowly hovered between 20-30% before rising to the 50-60% range.

Death was approaching.

Once it reached 100%, unavoidable gunfire would reach them.

“This has to be about their footsteps. They’re making all this noise to drown out their footsteps as they surround us. Their formation must be almost complete by now. We need to assume they’re going to all attack at once.”

“Did you enjoy playing the philanthropist?” asked the man. “Did you think you had some connection to the wider world? Ha ha. Don’t make me laugh, Beatrice. What you’re doing is nothing more than a farce. You haven’t produced a damn thing. Please stop stealing our profit for that.”

Was he intentionally rubbing her the wrong way to improve the deception?

The Holy Swordswoman held her Shining Weapon tight and focused on her surroundings as the man spoke.

“You’re nothing more than a caged bird forbidden from leaving the Detached Magic Palace for fear of your inborn talent. How long is it going to take for you to realize food is food no matter who gives it to you, you birdbrain?”

===Part 13===

Elkiad’s combat zone reached as far as three hundred meters outside the ghost town region on the east of the inn town.

They of course had soldiers (with their guns hidden below hooded cloaks) posted near those outer edges, but they doubted anyone would be stupid enough to try to reach the center of the fighting.

The people looked surprised by the sounds of gunfire and explosions that should not have existed in Grandnir, but they all understood how frightening those things were. Each of them probably had their own opinion on whether Magic or guns was stronger, but none of them were going to test their theory with their life.

Humans feared guns.

It was not a case of being caught off guard by something unknown. They were intimidated away because they knew all too well what this was.

They knew even if they had never used one.

So one of the guards, a soldier with his right index finger covered in the characteristic tattoo, was tense at first, but gradually began to relax. For one thing, there were no military police, no records, and no supervision here. He was one of the delinquent soldiers in full moral hazard mode here in Grandnir. He had already lost the will to take his orders seriously, so his behavior was hardly surprising.

But hadn’t he been taught something at the very beginning?

Carrying out his orders was at the foundation of everything. Failing to do so put his own life and the lives of his entire unit at risk.

———First, a large – very large – shadow appeared over the soldier’s head.

“Eh?”

———Next, he looked up and back, wondering if it was a cloud, only to find a giant form standing there.

“Eh?”

———Finally, that giant form raised a large Shining Weapon shaped like a steel beam or log.

“Eh?”

He did not have time to do anything.

Some strange creature had entered the human town. The Elkiad soldier’s thoughts worked to comprehend the impossible sight, but his mind was not given a chance to reach a conclusion.

The horrific blunt weapon gave a roar and the soldier’s entire body was buried below the stone pavement.

“…”

The oddity was quickly reported, but Boo Boo used his height of four meters to ignore it all.

As soon as he took another step forward, he was surrounded by Elkiad soldiers armed with large muskets and a variety of Shining Weapons such as two-handed swords, large swords as tall as their wielder, and halberds, war spears that looked like a combination of an axe, a spear, and a hook. Their numbers rapidly grew and soon rose above twenty, but Boo Boo did not care.

“I am going to Beatrice.”

He announced his intentions as simply as possible.

“I will push through anyone who gets in my way. If you don’t like it, get out of the way, Elkiad.”

They did not respond. Or perhaps their silence was their response.

He took a step forward.

They held their many Shining Weapons at the ready and those weapons glittered in the light.

He took a second step forward.

They aimed their many guns and placed their fingers on the trigger.

He took a third step forward.

Then everything began to move.

Repeated dry bursting sounds rang out.

The Elkiad members were professional soldiers who had received a certain country’s official military training, but they had developed unique habits in Grandnir that abandoned the manual. Simply put, they did not need to hide behind cover thanks to Magic. They could open a shield in front of themselves and fire from directly in front of their target. In fact, they could take up positions 360 degrees around the target and continue firing without worrying about the enemy’s attacks or friendly fire. This was especially effective given the poor rapid-fire capabilities of their muzzle-loaded muskets.

The target could always repel the bullets, but Elkiad did not worry about that.

While the target was focused on defending against the bullets, another unit armed primarily with two-handed swords and halberds would quickly approach. They would break through the enemy’s Magic shield, rendering them defenseless, and make fatal attacks from close and long range.

That was the optimal answer.

Or it should have been.

Just as Boo Boo’s giant body seemed to sway, he had already vanished. He had escaped the lines of fire reaching him from a total of five directions. He was a Nonhuman, so he did not use Magic and did not use his powerful body to forcibly stop the bullets. He simply dodged.

In other words, no amount of gunfire would hold him still.

“Eh?”

Funnily enough, some of them reacted just like the first guard soldier who had been taken out.

They were the Shining Weapon group that had assumed the target would be held still.

A moment later, a heavy tremor silenced everything.

“…”

After swiftly silencing the close-range group, Boo Boo’s fierce eyes turned toward the long-range musket group.

(H-how did he dodge that? Are you telling me he predicted where we were going to aim?)

Since loading a bullet would have taken too long, they grabbed and fired the spare guns hanging from their belts while falling back, but it was too late.

And the Elkiad soldiers had made a fundamental misunderstanding.

(No, that isn’t the issue. This should be the first time this Nonhuman has seen a gun. He shouldn’t know what will happen if we aim at him. That should slow down his response to the first attack…)

He had dodged it regardless.

Not a single shot had hit him.

(Does that mean… Does that mean…!! He didn’t predict where we were aiming. ''Did he see the bullets leaving the guns and then dodge them''!? How is that even possible!?)

The one Elkiad member finally realized his understanding of the situation was a few steps behind, but he was still wrong.

What mattered here was not proving the small details.

It was the presence of such a monster right in front of him. And the fact that his gun was aimed at that monster as an enemy. He should have been using every last mental resource to figure out how he could possibly escape this alive.

But it was already too late.

Before his understanding could catch up to the current situation, Boo Boo approached.

His thick Shining Weapon gave a roar purely as a blunt weapon.

===Part 14===

The road was lined with brick buildings. The soldiers on the roofs gasped as they set down their large guns and grabbed their sniper muskets.

“What…is that thing!? How is he still alive!?”

Snipers had to do more than just hit a stationary target. The target would be moving to some extent and they had to predict where it was moving when they aimed.

And yet they could not predict the pig-faced giant’s movements.

They had scopes, even if they were handmade from wooden tubes and glass lenses. They could see Boo Boo through the scopes. His four meter frame should have been an easy target. But each time they had him in their sights he would vanish. They would find him again and he would vanish again. The process repeated over and over, so they never had a chance to keep their sights on him and pull the trigger. And he was more than just fast; he was predicting what they would do.

One sniper and the reloader/spotter next to him were dumbfounded, but…

“Well, if you must know, your mistake is in judging all living creatures based on human standards.”

“!?”

They heard a voice behind them.

They quickly looked back, but there was no on there.

“Wh-what? …Hey, did you hear that just now?”

The sniper exchanged a glance with his spotter, but Sutriona, one of the Break News, sighed quietly nearby.

She had entirely vanished from their senses and she added more in her heart.

(From what I’ve heard, he used his four meter body to move freely across the ocean like a skipping stone and he beat up and defeated a thousand-meter Dragon. Controlling that much strength would require quite a bit of processing power. One wrong move and he could tear himself apart with his own strength.)

So Boo Boo just had to direct some of those resources toward the outside world.

A multitude of blades pierced the heavens and a hail of lead tore through the air to punch through flesh and blood.

But none of it could stop him.

===Part 15===

That great form beat down the rows of enemies.

Even if those enemies looked like slender humans, their strength was thoroughly amplified by Percentage-type Magic: STR +300%, VIT +800%, AGI +500%, etc. They were supposedly strong enough to slay a tiger or defeat a bear with their bare hands, but that was irrelevant to Boo Boo.

He was different on a more fundamental level.

He beat down those with axe or spear Shining Weapons, he hit homeruns with the soldiers wielding large muskets, and those human baseballs collided with the snipers targeting him from the rooftops. He quickly beat up the vanguard meant to hold him in place and he mercilessly used his own Shining Weapon on the rear guard before the healers there could wake up their unconscious allies.

“Hurry! Hurry!”

A short distance away, the Elkiad soldiers stuffed a rocket in a launching tube, pulled the pin, and shouted to steady their own trembling fingertips.

This was a Bo-hiya.

Unlike the muzzle-loading muskets, the propellant was loaded in the actual projectile. After increasing the efficiency with military-style thoroughness, the weapon had very nearly transformed into a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon.

“Bullets aren’t enough, but he can’t dodge this if he’s caught in the explosion… Do it, dammit! Blow him to smithereens!!”

“We’ll take out some of our own at this range!”

“Have them use a shield or something! That monster hasn’t used anything like that. We need to stop him here, so just do it!!”

The soldier protested, but once he had permission from his commanding officer, he seemed to shift the burden of responsibility away from himself. He rested the launching tube on his shoulder and did not hesitate to pull the trigger.

White smoke scattered and an explosive shaped like a thick stake flew in a straight line toward the far-too-large target.

It happened a moment later.

Boo Boo grabbed the flying rocket from the side.

“Wha-…!?”

All the soldiers gasped.

When choosing a fuse, they had gone with the bestseller of the weapons they were familiar with and used a pressure-sensitive one, but that had backfired.

In other words, the rocket would not detonate unless it received an impact to the tip.

So what if someone could accurately perceive the rocket as it flew toward them with incredible speed, what if they were blessed with the physical strength needed to instantaneously move their body, and what if they had tough enough skin to remain intact when it grabbed the rocket as it sliced through the air?

Assuming the pressure-sensitive fuse did not malfunction as the rocket came to a sudden stop, wouldn’t they be able to grab the flying rocket right out of the air!?

“…?”

Boo Boo did not seem to know what it was.

However, he did seem aware it was likely something dangerous. After tilting his head, he threw it back the way it had come.

“Ah.”

The rocket was out of propellant, so it flew in a gentle parabolic arc, and dropped toward the soldiers’ feet while obeying its center of gravity. The tip containing the pressure-sensitive fuse landed right on the rooftop.

The explosion occurred a moment later.

===Part 16===

First, their faces grew red at the reports coming in.

Then, their faces grew blue at the avalanche of backup requests pouring in.

Finally, their faces grew white when all the reports came to a stop.

“L-let’s retreat… There’s nothing we can do! We can’t continue fighting any longer! Let’s retreat!!”

“Do you have any idea what you’re saying? We must stop that Piece from being registered at all costs!!”

“No. I’m not sticking with you here. I’m not going to die in this distant world! I’ve had enough!!”

The subordinate who had always been by the man’s side turned his back and ran off at full speed.

“Tch. You imbecile!!”

The blonde commander with stubble on his chin reflexively pulled one of the short guns from his belt, raised the hammer with his thumb, aimed it at the fleeing back, and then aimed upwards instead of pulling the trigger.

Deserting under enemy fire was punishable by execution, but those basics no longer mattered.

They were ruined whether they continued on or fell back.

Elkiad was a regular army. Their very presence in Grandnir was an extra-legal act not found in the manuals. In other words, the well-regulated army had detested them from the beginning. If they did not achieve results, some kind of nitpicky fault would be found with their actions and they would be purged.

(So we need to secure that Piece. ''We have to continue forward if we want to escape!'' Why don’t they understand something so simple!?)

Fortunately, they had received a certain report early on.

That monster had said he was “going to Beatrice”.

And that woman most likely also held the bait Piece that was the key to their survival.

Which meant…

(If I get my hands on Beatrice, I have a way out of this. I can destroy the Piece and I can use her as a shield against that monster. That’s the only way. The most dangerous route always takes you to the greatest safety!! Only those who realize that can make it on the battlefield!!)

Once he had a plan, he could act on it.

He ran across the chaotic battlefield and pressed against the brick wall of a building. As soon as he stepped inside, the entire building shook. One of the walls had apparently been broken through. He also heard a creaking sound overhead, so he rushed up the stairs.

There she was.

Three girls were gathered in the center of a long hallway.

They had no real plan. They looked like they would collapse no matter where they went next. Elkiad should have been able to silence them for a perfect game, but something had gone horribly wrong at some point.

The Elkiad commander held his short gun as an outlet for his anger.

As long as Beatrice was there, nothing else mattered. He could shoot the other two dead to intimidate the package from the beginning. And a psychological shock like that would let him take the initiative to use her as a shield.

The short gun held just the one shot, but he had several of them prepared to allow rapid fire with the troublesome muzzle-loading weapons. He immediately pulled a new gun out with his left hand. It made him look like a character from a ridiculous Western rather than a soldier, but now he could kill both of the others at once.

Finally, he placed his fingers on the two triggers.

A moment later, the girls disappeared.

However, they had been too worn down by the battle to use any more Magic. They had not done anything. That meant the irregularity came from the man himself.

Yes.

For example, perhaps the Elkiad commander had broken through the hallway floor and fallen to the floor below.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?

By the time he realized what had happened, it was too late.

He tried to grab onto something, but the building materials crumbled in his hands and he was dragged down with them like he was caught in an antlion pit.

And as he lay on the floor below, he saw it.

A hideous pig face was looking down at him while resting a thick Shining Weapon on its shoulder.

“How tough are you?”

“Ha…ha ha.”

“With your Magic, you must be really tough. …So can I go all out when I hit you?”

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

It only took a single strike.

The resultant tremor shook not just the entire building, but the entire inn town.

===Part 17===

“Boo…Boo?”

Beatrice spoke to the figure she saw approaching.

“You came for me, Boo Boo?”

“I still don’t know what’s going on, so I wanted to talk with you about what all this is about.”

“Oh…”

Beatrice exchanged a glance with White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina before hesitantly opening her mouth.

She had nothing to hide or feel guilty about.

She had simply not wanted Boo Boo to worry about her, but that did not matter now that he had started a fight with Elkiad and mopped the floor with them.

She explained everything: their world had hit a technological dead-end and a single breakthrough could easily change everything, this time that had brought the world to the brink of a great war, and Elkiad had worked to trigger that war while Beatrice’s group had done everything they could to stop it.

At some points, she wondered if this was too complicated for Boo Boo, but that was no reason to hide anything. She could have him ask about the parts he did not understand and she could work to help him comprehend it all.

But a gentle look appeared on Boo Boo’s face as she explained.

Almost as if he was receiving the answer he was hoping for.

“Then that’s fine. I’m glad I saved you.”

“I know this is working against me, but do you really believe me? You can’t visit our world, so you have no way of seeing if it’s true. It’s possible the Piece we’ve created isn’t bait and will actually lead to the technology needed to start a war.”

“I trust you.”

“I see…”

Beatrice sounded relieved.

Boo Boo looked to the exhausted White Witch and Fighter Priest and said more.

“You all look tired. But you might not be able to relax in the inn town, so how about you come back to my house?”

“Good point… I want to get back home to settle all this, but if I register the Piece in my Shining Weapon for now, there shouldn’t be a problem. And it is true I want to get away from the inn town to ensure our safety. Filinion, Armelina, is that okay with you?”

As they discussed their plans, they left the half-destroyed abandoned building.

There had been no one out there before, but a large crowd was gathered now.

And they had not gathered out of curiosity or idle interest.

Their faces were covered with fear. That was the seed of hatred. They had not come to see something they liked. That crucible of emotion prevented them from relaxing until they confirmed the situation and the scope of the threat. And of course, their concerns were not directed at Beatrice, Filinion, or Armelina.

It was Boo Boo.

He was a Nonhuman, an Iberian Orc, and a hideous outsider to the humans of the inn town.

His appearance alone could easily inspire prejudice, but he had also proven his great combat ability. It was clear what emotion people would turn his way.

“Boo Boo…”

“It’s okay, Beatrice.”

Boo Boo stood in front of the three girls and responded to the Holy Swordswoman behind him as those hostile gazes focused on him.

“I knew this would happen, so it doesn’t hurt.”

He had known they would fear him.

He had known they would hate him.

He had only ever watched the festival from the hilltop despite how much fun it looked, but he had set foot inside the inn town to save his friend’s life, knowing full well what it would lead to.

And it had ended exactly how he had known it would.

“This is wrong.” Beatrice’s voice was trembling. “You didn’t do anything wrong. It was Elkiad and us who started this. If they’re going to blame anyone for this battle in the inn town, it should be us! There’s no excuse for treating you like this. You selflessly saved our lives and our world!!”

But even after hearing that, Boo Boo did not look back and simply shook his head.

He had said this did not hurt.

But there was something he most likely did not know. Just like with the Thousand Dragon, he had trusted what Beatrice had to say about this Elkiad business. He thought humans had clever minds and pure hearts. It was a nice thought, but it was not always accurate.

The people had stopped at fear for now.

But what would happen to Boo Boo if it grew into hatred and disgust?

Grandnir was an island small enough for a human to walk the perimeter in only three days. If the humans truly felt threatened and decided to hunt him down, there was no hiding.

With Boo Boo’s strength, it was possible he could defeat the entire hunting party.

But afterwards, he would surely break.

If he could endure that and if he was the type to have no trouble throwing others into pandemonium for his own sake, he never would have resisted the urge to join in at the festival!!

===Part 18===

“That should just about do it,” said Sutriona up on a rooftop.

The palm-sized Fairy named Meridiana flew alongside her.

“Wh-what’s going to happen to Boo Boo? I don’t want him to become a pariah!”

“Neither do I, and that’s why I came here. It was for Boo Boo. To be honest, I’m not too interested in interfering with a human conflict.”

The Break News were paradoxes with souls.

And this girl-shaped one had enough power to mock the Thousand Dragon as “weak”.

“But what exactly are you going to do? Oh! Are you going to speak with the humans to give them a change of heart?”

“You moron, I’m also what they call a monster. If I reveal I’m a Break News, it will cause an even greater panic. After all, they treat my very existence as a paradox.”

The Fairy Queen added an “and”.

The floral decorations of her ribbon dress were based on the red flower known as a Crimson Heaven Flower. She placed a petal of one in her mouth and tore through it with her canine tooth.

“I am thinking of giving Boo Boo some help to show my respect for how he risked his life to protect a friend. But I have no interest whatsoever in kindly protecting the entire human race.”

[[Image:BooBoo v01 199.png|thumb]]

An odd sound surrounded them.

The next thing the Fairy knew, Sutriona had butterfly-like blood wings. They were human-sized at first, but they quickly expanded and spread so the sinister red wings encroached on the entire sky.

During the Thousand Dragon issue, hadn’t it been mentioned that it was a toxin in Fairy blood that intoxicated the wicked dragon?

In that case, what could their queen do?

“There are two ways of erasing a threat from someone’s mind.”

Sutriona spoke to Meridiana as the Fairy looked up at the gigantic wings.

“For the first, you carefully explain what lies at the center of that threat to reduce and eliminate the fear. Simply put, you patiently argue your point until they are satisfied. But to be blunt, that’s a huge pain and the thought of me unconditionally lowering my head to a mere human is simply laughable. And I have no words at all for people who can’t even protect their own town, have an outsider handle it, and then treat that savior as a threat a moment later.”

“Th-then what’s the second way?”

“That should be obvious.”

That paradox put her hands on her hips and put on the most vicious grin imaginable.

“You send in an even greater disaster to reduce the impact of the previous one. And I’m used to playing the villain like this. After all, I am one of the Break News.”

===Part 19===

That threat was feared as a scorching red sandstorm.

The instant one was caught in the intense sandstorm, they could not see anything beyond their own nose. The sandstorm was actually the powerful toxin contained within the Fairy Queen’s blood wings. In other words, it was a red sandstorm made up of the pigment in her blood and it was said that breathing in the slightest bit of it would burn away the civilized part of the human mind, transforming them into a pack of wild animals that were slaves to their desires.

The lethal dosage of a poison was determined by how much it could accumulate in that creature’s body, how quickly their body could break it down, and one other very simple factor: their body weight. The Crimson Heaven Flower pigment was broken down in a Fairy’s blood. Since the amount of pigment in a single palm-sized Fairy’s blood was enough to intoxicate a thousand-meter Dragon, what would happen to the humans of the inn town as that red fury filled the entire scene like a sandstorm?

The first to notice it was Beatrice.

White Witch Filinion’s support Magic was still active on the edge of her vision.

That Magic visualized the probability of a threat or of running across an enemy.

That value suddenly jumped straight to 100%.

(Wha-…?)

“Hey, what is that?”

The next to notice was an ignorant young man who calmly commented on it. His question was less about wanting to know what this was and more about wanting to gather attention to himself as the first to speak up about it.

Then an older Swordsman’s eyes opened wide when his experience told him what this was.

“I-it’s a Break News!! It’s the unpredictable Sutriona who has no known route! Get indoors now or your brain will be fried!! Hurry!!”

From there, it devolved into a panic.

It may not be the best comparison, but people would not bother to stop a robber or dine-and-dasher when they knew a giant meteor was about to hit. The people who had shown such hostility and malice now scattered and fled. They dove inside every door they could find and sealed up the doors and windows. The people who did not get in in time pounded on the doors, rattled the knobs, and ran to another building when they realized it was not going to open.

This was only an inn town.

People took turns visiting this world, so no one had an actual residence. The basic assumptions of a normal city did not apply here, so there was no guarantee that there was room for everyone in the buildings.

The people were even more panicked than they might have been because they knew that.

Yet if they looked at it rationally, there would be more than enough room if they crammed as many people indoors as they could.

Beatrice asked a question while agonizing over the number that was wavering between 90 and 100%.

“Boo Boo, what will we do? I doubt anyone will let us in right now.”

“We just have to look at the direction of the wind. Run to the hill and we’ll be safe.”

“Hm? Then why are you headed in that direction? The usual hill is the other way.”

“There are a few other people who are stuck outside like us. You go on ahead. I’ll carry those people to the hill.”

“Do you really think you can do that right now?”

She started to follow him, but not because of the hatred she had seen just a moment before.

She thought they could not save those people if she did not help.

But Boo Boo answered without a moment’s hesitation.

The value of 90% or even 100% did not matter.

“I can do it.”

===Part 20===

And Boo Boo kept his promise.

The inn town people he saved had complicated looks on their faces, but they at least did not seem ready to do anything about Boo Boo at the moment.

The red pigment clung to the inn town for a while and no one could go outside for the three days it took for the effects to naturally fade. The Fairy Queen had said they would forget about their hatred of Boo Boo in that time and they would be filled with complaints concerning the monster named Sutriona instead.

“Boo Boo.”

Beatrice spoke to him near the leaf house.

He was looking after a campfire and had fish skewered on sticks set up next to the fire.

“I’ve been learning about fire recently. It’s tricky and hard work, but Sutriona gets upset if I don’t do it.”

“What? If you had told me, I could have taught you. Fire is my specialty.”

She sat next to him and looked to the crackling campfire.

After a while, she finally spoke.

“Sorry about all this.”

“Why are you apologizing, Beatrice?”

“I just about left no place for you in this world. In fact, it really would have happened if Sutriona hadn’t cheated her way out of this. I couldn’t do anything for you, Boo Boo. I couldn’t take responsibility for what I started.”

“But you didn’t do anything wrong. You fought to protect everyone’s lives, so I don’t regret it.”

That may have been true.

That commotion may have been small when one considered it was to stop a conflict on the ridiculous scale of the Atlantic Sovereignty War.

But that was wrong on a fundament level.

The initial conditions were wrong.

“But, Boo Boo, that was about our world. It was nothing more than human selfishness. We were using Grandnir to solve a problem we should have solved on our own.”

“…”

“We brought disaster to your world. We gave you a burden you never should have had to bear. That’s why I’m apologizing, Boo Boo.”

It was on a small scale, it was not happening on earth, and it happened outside human society.

But did that make it okay?

Accepting that was no different from Elkiad who had no problem as long as it was not their country that fell into ruin.

“That isn’t true.”

But Boo Boo disagreed.

Beatrice looked up and he continued.

“If you’re ever having trouble, tell me about it. If there’s something you can’t solve on your own, ask me for help. It doesn’t matter if it’s something from another world. If there’s anything you’re worrying about, I want to help you solve it. So I don’t care if you bring disaster and I’m fine taking on an unnecessary burden.”

“Boo Boo…”

“I mean, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

===Part 21===

White Witch Filinion and Fighter Priest Armelina observed the two from a short distance away.

“I see. So that’s the Boo Boo that Beatrice is always talking about.”

“To be honest…it would be difficult to have romantic feelings for that, but an intelligent Nonhuman might not be bad for having an acquaintance who isn’t playing the Magic and Pieces game.”

“Oh? So you’re going to sum it up like that? Then why do you look about ready to start meddling just to have some fun with someone else’s romance?”

“Oh, dear. But aren’t you the one that’s started unlocking some delightful aphrodisiac Magic despite not known any Recovery Magic at all?”

A small form appeared behind them.

It was the unpredictable Fairy Queen. She blew gently into their ears and spoke.

“Hey. Mess with my toy too much and I’ll send you to a world of crazed red passion.”

The small circle was slowly expanding.

And it was all because someone had been willing to throw it all away in order to protect someone else.

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]]
|-
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</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7

2016-10-11T17:56:49Z

LazyHunter:

==Day 7==

===Part 1===

It was the seventh and final day.

If they did not settle things and secure an escape route from Second Venice today, they would run out of food and water and everyone would die, military and civilian alike.

They got as much rest as they could beforehand.

Win or lose, this battle would decide everything, so they could not afford to be worn out.

Do-or-die was not a phrase to be used lightly, but it was an accurate description of the situation for the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion.

“Let’s review the situation.”

Early in the morning, Frolaytia Capistrano had summoned everyone in the battalion to the briefing room.

She removed the restrictions on knowledge about the infection base and killer mold and shared the details with everyone.

“The Argeiphontes is the primary component of a poison gas, but Quenser and Catherine’s cases have proven that the antidote is effective. The electronic simulation division is busy putting together a report. You could say they’re putting some pretty wrapping paper around the unadorned present, but once they’re done, the Information Alliance will lose their justification for their blockade. Once they understand that people can be tested for an infection and that the infected can avoid certain death with the antidote, their indiscriminate quarantine becomes nothing more than a human rights violation.”

A mixture of surprise and relief filled the briefing room.

They had simultaneously been informed of the deadly mold and the fact that they need not fear it. They must not have had time to decide whether or not to feel frightened.

“Thus, there is no need to force a confrontation with the Information Alliance’s Rush. With their justification gone, they should blush and withdraw in embarrassment. …The problem is this: The Faith Organization’s First Generation Old Fashion.”

Its technology was inferior even to the Baby Magnum’s.

That solitary ace could have switched to a cutting-edge derivate model at any time, but he had stubbornly stuck with the old model to keep a promise with an old friend. That should have fully cut him off from the flow of time, but he had continued to battle cutting-edge Objects in his First Generation. He was enough of a genius to make up for the inadequate technology with his piloting skill. He was brilliant enough to pull off that one-man showmanship inside the military, an organization that wished for group action from top to bottom.

“Robert Mistynail.” Frolaytia spoke the monster’s name. “He is the greatest success and his name always shows up in reference material concerning Pilot Elite development. Supercomputers have supposedly ‘solved’ chess to a level that no human can defeat them, but he has the insane brain needed to ignore that conclusion and win three world championships. He is reliable yet unpredictable. A group of Information Alliance scientists attempted to fine-tune a competitive AI learning program for use against him specifically, but they ended up throwing in the towel. Legend has it those scientists got drunk at a bar near their lab and were overheard complaining that his synapses had to form a wormhole.”

The Old Fashion and the Lizard Tail were both from the Faith Organization.

And the Old Fashion had made an attempt to defeat the Rush and rescue the civilians trapped in Second Venice. If he had known about the infection base from the beginning, that would mean he had tried to spread the deadly mold carriers throughout the world.

Frolaytia than named someone else with her kiseru in her mouth.

“Quenser.”

“Yes?”

“You were the one who interacted with the Old Fashion ''afterwards'', so you explain it.”

It was now the student’s turn to get up on the podium.

“I don’t know how it started. Maybe he was working with Hermes and maybe he wasn’t. But at the very least, Robert has now left the plan to break through mankind’s upper limits using the Argeiphontes. His actions appear gentlemanly at first glance, but that was only the setup. He was setting the stage to give him a justification for an enjoyable battle. Both breaking through mankind’s upper limits and rescuing the starving people from Second Venice would have worked just fine for him.”

On Quenser’s instruction, a soldier from the electronic simulation division in charge of voice analysis replayed the master data.

“This is the radio transmission I received on the way back with antidote yesterday. The analysis says it was definitely Robert.”

The recording said as follows:

''“I see. So the tide is turning. Having the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance join forces to protect Second Venice while I aim to destroy it might just be the most exciting possibility.”

“He went out of his way to announce his intentions.” Quenser explained how dangerous Robert Mistynail was. “It would have been easy to act like he was on our side only to stab the Princess and Oh Ho Ho in the back. If they were escorting a fleet carrying civilians to safety, the Baby Magnum and Rush would have been unable to make use of their great speed for fear of sinking those ships. By announcing his hostility, he put us on guard before we began a largescale escape operation. And he even gave us the best possible advice: our best bet is to have the Princess and Oh Ho Ho work together. This is the true nature of an ace. He wants to experience genius and see truly superb people. That sounds fine on its own, but he’s really only in it for the fun. He wants to experience as great a thrill as possible. I don’t know what age he comes from, but he wants to be reminded of old times. By stubbornly sticking with that outdated Object, he wants to once more enjoy an age frozen in the past. That is his only reason for piloting his Object.”

Robert Mistynail was indeed a genius Object pilot.

But it was impossible for him to function within an organization like the military.

The military likely had no intention of getting him to listen. They simply let him loose where it was convenient and reaped the benefits. It was a lot like turning a naturally-occurring typhoon or hurricane toward an enemy nation. The fact that he had something that made the military want to protect him made him seem all the more monstrous.

“We cannot avoid a battle with him,” summed up Frolaytia. “He knows Second Venice’s food and water limit and he will use that to force us into a naval battle. He has heard the legends of the abnormal strength of injured animals and starving soldiers, so he is licking his lips in anticipation of discovering if they are true or not.”

“Frolaytia, have you contacted the Rush…or rather, the Information Alliance?”

“I’m about to. We have no room for negotiation until we can logically explain the traits of the deadly mold and that there is no need for an indiscriminate quarantine. But once the electronic simulation division completes their report, that should go well. This whole incident had to have hurt the Information Alliance’s diplomatic image. I can’t say all’s well that ends well, but if they can work toward as peaceful a resolution as possible, they might be able to avoid a concentrated attack by global public opinion.”

“In other words, the Information Alliance will have to act tough while making sure they do what we want, huh? Yeah, if we don’t ask them for help, they’re stuck being the villains here. …Damn that Oh Ho Ho. I’ll make her bark for me but only after getting down on all fours and spinning around thrice.”

“Try not to mix business with pleasure, Quenser. …But it’s true this could be fun. Threatening their commander over the camera might not be a bad idea.”

They were mixing in some fun even with their lives and the futures of hundreds of thousands of civilians on the line, but that was the 37th’s style.

To get back on track…

“The Old Fashion itself is an old model, so we have quite a bit of data on it. It uses a simple two-by-two layout of amphibious air cushions and its main cannon is a tricky compressed metal cannon, but it’s pretty standard if you view it as a metal shell fired by gunpowder. …In fact, it looks like we won’t have any problems with both the Baby Magnum and Rush to work with, so I’m not really sure what else to do. This should be an easy victory, and yet we’re cornered. It’s like running across a situation where one plus one isn’t two.”

If they chalked it up to a difference in Elite skill, the discussion ended there.

To win, they needed to keep thinking in some way or another.

“He uses countless tactics, so the electronic simulation division can’t keep up. The one thing we can say is that he is not making up for his old tech by eliminating all waste and reaching the optimal answer. In fact, he would be a lot easier to predict if that were the case. The Old Fashion is…how should I put it? He seems to add some meaningless playfulness and leeway into his strategies. It was likely the way he strays from the optimal answer that kept the Information Alliance’s competitive AI from catching up with him.”

''He probably enjoys fighting,'' thought Quenser.

Or perhaps he was addicted to the thrill of putting his life in danger. No AI focused on logic and efficiency could outdo him. And that included this ultimate Elite’s insane desire to use his outdated Object against someone technologically superior to him.

He was strong.

He was simply strong.

He was an old-fashioned style of strong that tried to enjoy the difference in specs and even the difference in number of Objects. He was a living embodiment of a legendary warrior. Instead of fearing a formidable foe or growing irritated at a difficult situation, this insane genius would laugh, thank them for giving him a chance to get serious, and pleasantly break through it all.

He wished to converse with a true genius through the medium of combat.

If that really was his only goal, then the Old Fashion would have no interest in Second Venice. He saw the island as bait for the Baby Magnum and Rush, but it was no more than that. After destroying the two Objects, he might even open the way for the starving people because they were of no more use to him.

The people comfortable in their safe countries on the other side of the world might see that has a gentleman’s or warrior’s heart. When some heard the story with handkerchief in hand, they might even think about basing a new song or movie on it.

But the people here would lose everything.

They could not allow the Princess or Oh Ho Ho to be chewed up and spat out by him.

They would defeat him here.

“What do we do?” groaned Heivia. “Is there any way to beat this guy?”

“There is,” answered Quenser. “We just have to take that playfulness and leeway from him. If we do, won’t he have to recompile his actions into something we can predict?”

===Part 2===

It was strange for the final battle to be the most relaxed, but they truly had nothing left after this one.

Heivia spoke to Quenser as they left the large vehicle that functioned as a briefing room.

“Hey! I hear we’re gonna get you-know-what up and running. And I can’t believe we’ve got another new weapon after all this.”

“Well, Second Venice does belong to the Information Alliance. Frolaytia apparently made a deal with their military, so they shared data on a district not found on the public maps.”

“So is this gonna work?”

“The problem is how hard it is to calculate any of that out. We’re up against Mr. Strongest here.”

They ran across a bodyguard team who surrounded the Princess in her blue special suit.

She seemed to notice them.

“I’ve been stuck in the Object this entire time.”

“This is no time to be sulking. We’ve been crawling through a bunch of gray rubble, so I wish I’d been able to stay nice and comfortable with an air conditioner and fridge.”

“Mh. It wasn’t easy for me either.”

“Well, yeah. It couldn’t have been fun sitting there in a motionless gun platform. It’s the toughest thing we have, but it was also the easiest target.”

The Baby Magnum’s repairs were complete, so it was finally back up and running. And since Frolaytia had gained the cooperation of the Information Alliance, the Princess no longer had to be prepared for battle around the clock. They probably wanted a chance to perform a condition check on the Pilot Elite herself.

And speaking of Pilot Elites, there was another one here.

After Quenser and Heivia left the Princess, they walked to the general medical building where a small girl with a blond braid waited for them.

“Big brother…”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. You don’t need to get up.”

Catherine had started to sit up, but Quenser held out a hand to stop her.

The back of her head sank into the pillow once more.

“I’ve heard most of it. And it sounds like you really weren’t kidding about taking on the Old Fashion.”

“Why would I kid about that?”

“You can simulate a way to defeat the Baby Magnum or the Rush. …But you can’t with Robert Mistynail. Even if you have every last bit of information, the calculations never work. Do you really think you can defeat someone like that?”

Quenser could not deny that he was afraid.

Even without Robert’s legendary status, simply facing an Object was frightening.

But he could not stand still.

“We will end this today,” he said. “And we’ll send you to a safe country. We’ll send you somewhere where the rules of the Object-filled battlefield countries can’t reach you. That’s why we can fight.”

“…”

When they saw Catherine pull the blanket up to cover her face, the two idiots left the room.

“You sure like to act cool.”

“You know as well as I do that I have to say that or I’ll piss myself.”

Meanwhile, Major Frolaytia Capistrano held her kiseru in her mouth and faced her notebook computer in her private room. The video chat mode was active and it displayed a brown-skinned woman with long silver hair who was apparently the Information Alliance base commander.

“That was a very interesting document. But depending on how you look at it, you might be missing the main point. We will be going back over everything from the ground up.”

“Enough posturing. No matter how much you review that report, you will not find any errors. I feel bad for making you read a 200+ page epic, but I can sum up what that report means in a single sentence: You’re in trouble, Information Alliance. Now, what will you do? You forced some very public casualties on the world to draw out the culprit, but without a chance to recover, you really will sink this time, Lieutenant Colonel Lendy Farolito.”

“…”

“What we need to do is break free of this situation. I think we can both agree with that. But if you have time to search for nonexistent mistakes, then the wise thing to do would be to cut your losses and help us. Second Venice will dry up soon. If we do not defeat the Old Fashion and open the way out, hundreds of thousands of civilians will die. And a lot of them are wealthy or VIPs, so that will create a lot of resentment. And since Second Venice originally belonged to the Information Alliance and the trouble began as soon as it was taken from you, responsibility lies with you. Aren’t you the ones who will suffer the most if this bomb goes off?”

“But you have no time.”

“So you think you can find excuses to delay negotiations until we’re desperate enough to give you a better deal? Don’t be ridiculous, you crafty woman. You’re the ones without any time. The last train is about to leave the station. We will send it out whether it has any passengers or not, so you will be the ones left in tears if you do not board it in time.”

“Do you really think we can agree to a plan where our Gatling 033 acts as your shield!?”

“It was on your orders that the Rush blew away a transport ship with thirty days’ worth of food and living supplies and – more importantly – a crew of forty. Second Venice was a threat as an infection base, so you had no real reason to kill anyone coming in. You only had to add them to the quarantine list after they arrived. But you still fired. You wanted to avoid dragging out the issue and you wanted us to starve as soon as possible. Did you think you could strut around the world without paying for that?”

“…Tch. Understood, Major Frolaytia Capistrano.”

“Say woof.”

“Wha-!?”

“I’m sorry, lieutenant colonel. But in my unit, this is how we reeducate useless trash. You can refuse if you want, but my demands will only grow harsher as time passes. I would suggest learning who is in charge before I make you pose and beg like a dog. Got that, war buddy?”

After returning to the Baby Magnum’s cockpit, the Princess put on her goggles, operated the console with her fingertips, and confirmed that the naval floats had properly linked to the system.

(That just leaves the hardware.)

“Hello? Old lady?”

“What is it? We’re busy sewing up your dress, so keep it short. We’ve got to get you to the ball in time.”

“You’re shorthanded, aren’t you? I’ll head down and help.”

With that said, she unzipped her special suit, stripped it off, and tied the side knots to transform her naked body into a blue bikini. She used the cockpit seat elevator to exit the Object and found herself in a world where thick wires functioned as scaffolding. It looked like Gulliver had been tied up.

A few of the male maintenance soldiers whistled, but the old lady personally shoved them all into the ocean. The wiser guys kept their heads down and focused on their work. Seeing that bikini meant death.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“You can start by taking a refresher course on ethics. Anyway, we’re replacing the onion armor, so if you’re willing to face the welding sparks in a bikini, then grab a mask and burner and come with me.”

When the Princess picked up the tools, a transmission reached the radio in the tool belt around her waist.

It was from the G-cup Oh Ho Ho, Pilot Elite of the Information Alliance’s Second Generation Rush.

“Oh ho ho. Honestly, to think I would have to fight alongside you of all people.”

“I’m trying to work right now, so don’t talk to me.”

“I mean, I don’t know how much the Faith Organization’s Powder Cannon 011 can do, but it’s just a moldy old First Generation, isn’t it? I can handle this on my own, so you should really thank me for letting you share the credit. Oh ho ho.”

“…”

“A filthy First Generation should be able to take on another First Generation, but apparently you have so little confidence in yourself that you had to come crying to a cutting-edge Second Generation like me. How sad. Oh ho ho. We may be working together, but make no mistake here. You are nothing more than the backup dancer. You should thank me for even letting you stand on the same stage as me. Make sure – make ''very'' sure! – that none of your shots accidently hit me! Now, the Gatling 033 can shrug off a puny old First Generation attack, but you must know your place on the stage. Honestly, you are bad enough on your own, but that gentleman has some nerve too! I only decided to mess with him a little because I was curious, but he seems to have misinterpreted it and gotten carried away. I should probably teach him who exactly is in charge here. Oh ho ho! Yes, after blowing the Powder Cannon 011 to smithereens right in front of him, I can aim my Gatling cannon at him and have him beg for his life. Oh ho ho ho ho!! Oh ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho ho!!”

The Princess looked up in her blue bikini.

That Elite had inherited the genes of the 37th, so she was as blunt as any of them.

“Sit. Shut up and wait for me, you mutt.”

===Part 3===

The final battle began at noon.

The Faith Organization’s First Generation Old Fashion appeared 30 km out from Second Venice. That forced the united Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance group to drop what they were doing and respond.

That solitary ace determined everything about this battlefield.

Quenser, Heivia, and the rest of the soldiers quickly prepared to head out to sea.

“This is a goddamn emergency!! Did we manage to get everything ready in time!?”

“We just have to start with what we do have ready! Let’s go!!”

At this point, there was no reason to leave anyone on standby to establish a rotation. Almost all of the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s soldiers were sent out to sea. They used a great variety of vehicles: patrol boats, hovercraft, water scooters, and rubber motor boats.

The Baby Magnum took the lead.

Not only was it the key to everything, but the Object could freely move around at more than 500 kph. No normal boat could keep up.

Quenser watched the giant Object leave while crammed into a small patrol boat with other soldiers.

“If this ends nice and quickly, I’m not going to complain.”

“Like that’ll happen. Hey, looks like the Information Alliance is here. It’s the Rush.”

[[Image:HO_v12_380.jpg|thumb]]

A Second Generation surrounded by missile destroyers arrived from a different direction. It kept pace with the fleet for a while, but then the fleet changed formation. The ships opened up in front, releasing the Rush to join the Baby Magnum.

“D-does the Legitimacy Kingdom not even know how to show a bare minimum of appreciation!? You all do nothing but mock me!!”

“C’mon, it’s time for your walk. Come with me, little doggy.”

“Kiiiii!!”

The soldiers frowned when they heard the radio exchange and the two idiots exchanged a glance.

“Are they arguing about something?”

“I’m getting through this by mentally transforming it into a world of beautiful lily flowers. I don’t want even a hint of further trouble right now.”

Then there was the final Object.

The Faith Organization’s First Generation Old Fashion.

It had not moved since arriving. It had invaded this naval territory and yet it was maintaining the position it had chosen for itself. Why? For the tingling thrill and blood-boiling battle.

“This won’t be one-against-one, but you don’t mind, do you?”

“Of course not. This is war. There is not a single reason why our conditions must be identical. So come at me with everything you can muster. In fact, one-against-two feels somewhat lacking, defenders of Second Venice.”

“No,” cut in the Princess.

She did not hesitate to make her announcement with her fleet behind her.

“Including all of the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance troops, we are taking you on two-thousand-against-one, Mr. Solitary Ace.”

===Part 4===

The battle had finally begun.

When using multiple Objects, there was no real reason to fire from the same direction. In fact, spreading the Objects out and firing from multiple directions increased the odds of a hit.

Plus, the Rush’s main cannons were rapid-fire beam Gatling cannons. Simply by swinging them around while firing allowed her to fully cover 180 degrees to her left and right. A battle on land might have mountains or valleys to hide behind, but this was a naval battle. Most Objects could not escape the deadly sabre as it swept horizontally across.

But that sort of assumption did not work with the Old Fashion.

As soon as the rapid-fire beam Gatling cannons began pursuing him, Robert Mistynail did not hesitate to charge forward. He accurately decided which of his two-by-two floats to lift and which to lower to make sharp turns and position himself behind the Baby Magnum.

To avoid friendly fire, the Rush was forced to stop her Gatling cannons.

“Oh, honestly!!”

Meanwhile, the Baby Magnum was not just sitting still. She moved quickly left and right just like mixed martial arts footwork while constantly targeting the Old Fashion with her seven main cannons. This was like avoiding a tank’s gun by hiding behind another tank. He would normally get hit by a point-blank blast.

But even then…

“What…? I can’t hit him from this range!?”

“It isn’t that surprising. The instant laser beams were brought to the battlefield, Object battles were destined to become competitions in predicting each other’s actions. Distance and speed don’t matter. As long as you can predict it, it doesn’t matter what they try to do to you.”

The Old Fashion’s main cannon squirmed.

The targeting lenses whirred as they focused.

“Show me, cutting-edge Elites. It can be acrobatics or technology, but do something to surprise this aging man.”

Quenser and the others watched from the side, but they were not here as spectators.

“We need to get started too, Heivia!”

“That thing scares the shit out of me!! It’s a First Generation, so it has plenty of anti-personnel, anti-vehicle, and anti-fortress weapons, right!? It’s made to target us, so do we really have to get close!?”

The Baby magnum and Old Fashion exchanged cannons blasts while making detailed movements from less than 100 meters apart. But the countless secondary cannons growing from the Faith Organization First Generation’s spherical main body began to move as if blowing in the wind.

“Here it comes!!”

Quenser gave a yell and the entire army began taking countermeasures.

With a roar much like the fireworks signifying the beginning of an athletic festival, something was fired from the patrol boats and rubber boats. They burst in midair and produced a great quantity of bubbles. That region of ocean was covered by a ceiling of white bubbles. The entire fleet had likely been hidden from any satellites.

And a storm of laser beams did not hesitate to tear through it all like a downpour of light.

“Gyaaaaaaahhh!!”

Heivia covered his head with his hands and cowered down on the deck of the patrol boat.

The laser beams arrived dozens at a time and with only a few seconds in between waves. But none of them hit the patrol boat Quenser’s group used to navigate the bubbly sea. When the light hit the violently expelled bubbles, it was reflected randomly.

They had only managed this countermeasure because the Old Fashion was an old First Generation and because they had so much data on it.

And the older the Object, the more likely it was to prefer laser beams as an anti-air defense for nuclear missiles and the like. It was almost more a matter of faith than anything. It could have used railguns or some other method, but it chose lasers. Finding a solution had not been all that difficult.

But that did not mean they could rest easy. They could not see the lasers. The orange lines were only the afterimages of dust and moisture being burned. They only saw the result after the fact. They were repeatedly experiencing the same fear as cutting down some normal-looking grass only to find a landmine and realizing how close they had come to stepping on it. Of course their balls were going to shrivel up.

They heard an explosion from beyond the bubbles.

One of the boats had apparently been unlucky enough to be blown away by one of the reflected laser beams.

And the rest had no guarantee the same would not happen to them.

“Oh, god! Oh, god!! Urp, oh god is this scary!!”

“If you have time to scream and sob, then get working, Heivia! We need to drop our cargo!!”

Quenser kicked Heivia’s back as the boy curled up and wept and then he worked with the other soldiers to push something attached to a thick metal wire over the patrol boat’s railing. It was quite heavy and it sank instead of floating.

Meanwhile, the laser beams continued pouring down.

Someone must not have been able to stand it anymore because they shouted over the radio.

“This is Mermaid 9! We’re at our limit! The soap chaff isn’t enough to stop the laser beams. Preparing Plan 2! Emitting polarized smokescreen!!”

“You goddamn idiot!!” shouted back Quenser.

But before he even finished, some unnaturally colorful smoke rose from one corner of the bubbly sea. It was a blinding smokescreen. By scattering the light, it would deflect the laser beams, but…

“Wah…”

All the bubbles in that area vanished as soon as the smokescreen appeared. The fine powder and the bubble film collided, popping all of the bubbles in turn.

At the same time, the fine powder forming the smokescreen was caught in the liquid forming the popped bubbles.

So what happened?

They created a nice blank space with no defenses whatsoever.

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

A blinding light revealed the result.

Heivia clung to the patrol boat’s railing with both hands.

“This is bad. We have no idea where the lightning is going to strike and the soap chaff and smokescreen don’t mix. As more ships are hit and scatter black smoke, our dubious shield is going to be filled with holes!!”

“If there was a perfect defense, Objects never would have ended the nuclear age. No matter what we might do, the Objects still have an unfair advantage. That’s just the age we live in! You knew that, didn’t you!?”

As they shouted back and forth, most of the ships dropped their cargo. There were quite a few sacrifices, but they used the time that bought them to make progress.

Beyond the bubbles, the Baby Magnum and Old Fashion were firing back and forth at close range. That strongest Elite was truly frightening. He moved around like a mixed martial artist, but also maintained his position behind the Princess to use her as a shield against the Rush who was constantly trying to target him with her Gatling cannons.

He made it look easy.

The Baby Magnum and the Rush would both have been outmatched while fighting alone and his pace did not falter even when facing them both at once.

Also, the Old Fashion used more than just its main cannon, which was a compressed metal cannon with an ultra small caliber barrel that used both a normal magazine and a drum magazine.

Again and again, sharp sounds of cannon fire burst from something like a boxy metal container on the opposite side.

The Princess continually shot down what it was firing.

“What are those? Missiles!?”

These were nothing like the shoulder-fired ones meant to shoot down fighters. They were a much more overwhelming sight and they looked like a nationally-funded rocket tilted on its side.

“It might be more accurate to call them reverse-thrust rockets,” clarified the Princess. “They attach themselves with instant glue and then fire against my wishes to rob me of my mobility.”

The Baby Magnum was covered in weapons meant for use against nuclear missiles. She did not even need to use her naval floats to dodge. Even with those rockets constantly fired from less than 100 meters away, not even one could slip through her interception barrage. But using her mental resources on that could easily lead to falling behind in the direct battle between Objects.

The Old Fashion was not especially fast, its main cannon was not especially powerful, and its armor was not especially thick.

And yet no one could defeat him.

No one could keep up with his thoughts and no one could damage his Object.

“It’s like a miracle, Faith Organization!!”

“Then we just have to rob him of that mystical movement of his!!”

After that shout, Quenser sent a signal via radio.

Everyone had been waiting for it, so they all responded immediately.

And then “that” happened.

===Part 5===

The Old Fashion kept afloat with air cushions.

It emitted massive amounts of air toward the surface below it and gained lift by allowing that air to accumulate between the two-by-two arrangement of floats and the ocean surface.

The system was well known for being broadly adaptable to changes in the terrain. A flat surface was of course best, but a bumpy wasteland was not much of a problem.

However, that only went so far.

If the ground was made of a lattice like chain-link or a birdcage, the air cushion would not work. The air would escape downwards and fail to provide enough lift.

Quenser and the others had done the same thing.

They used steel beams.

For as far as the eye could see, steel beams jutted vertically up from the ocean surface like this was an asparagus farm.

They were basically a type of buoy. They were a lot like a larger version of a fishing float. A ball-shaped float made of a foam material was attached around the steel beam, a thick wire was attached, and they sank to the bottom of the ocean. The wire could be cut with a remote signal, freeing the giant buoy so its buoyancy could carry it to the surface.

A large quantity of needle-like protrusions was another terrain air cushions had trouble with.

No matter how much air they released, it would not remain atop the needles. The Object was kept afloat in relation to the ocean surface, so its floats would contact the steel “needles”.

A normal hovercraft would have its skirt torn and it would sink, but a nuke-resistant Object would not be so easily defeated. It would force its way through by pushing the steel beams back down below the surface.

But the top of the beams tearing at it from below was sure to lower its speed.

That First Generation was not especially fast, not especially destructive, and not especially well-protected. Pulling at its feet would help tear down its undefeated legend.

“I see…!!”

A voice reached them from the Old Fashion. He sounded more excited than afraid or angry.

“Wait, wait, wait! Ho…oh ho ho. I use an air cushion too, so won’t this affect me as well!?”

“Yeahhh, but you’re an enemy Elite, so we didn’t really worry about you too much.”

“You monster! Do I have to start reminding you I have basic rights as a human being!?”

They heard the blast of metal being melted and blown away.

From her safe zone a short distance away, the Baby Magnum’s low-stability plasma cannon had finally torn away one edge of the Old Fashion’s spherical main body. It was far from a clean hit, but it was still a valuable first step. This was no longer a one-sided battle and they were no longer helpless.

With its mobility taken, a grinding sound came from below the Old Fashion, but the Elite still forcibly moved the Object around. As he did, large waves formed which nearly capsized Quenser’s patrol boat once they arrived.

“What a stubborn son of a bitch!! How perfect a pilot is he, dammit!?”

“Wait a second…”

Quenser said something strange.

Something else changed as they watched. The Old Fashion was not just fleeing randomly. There was a pattern to the waves he was creating. And they interfered with the buoys floating in the ocean like giant steel needles. In fact, it looked like he was neatly guiding them so they gathered in a single place!

And why he was doing so became abundantly clear a moment later.

He climbed up on top of the mountain of needles he had created.

“Wha-?”

Quenser and the others had interfered with his air cushions because the sharp and evenly-spaced steel beams prevented the compressed air from building up. That should have caused the bottom of the Old Fashion to hit the steel beams which would lower his speed.

But Robert Mistynail had taken the opposite tack.

By gathering the scattered beams in a single place and pressing them together, he had filled in the gaps. It was like a brand-new straw container that was packed full. That prevented the air cushion’s air from escaping. Just like a tanker in a shipyard with its great weight distributed over many pillars, the Old Fashion could climb up onto the needles like it was traveling across land!

The Baby Magnum was slow to react to this unexpected freedom of movement.

That lag was less than a second, but it was enough for her armor to be torn apart.

A burning spear burst out from the cross that decorated the tip of the Old Fashion’s main cannon. That was the muzzle flash. That compressed metal cannon with an ultra small caliber barrel truly was like a needle and it targeted the Baby Magnum’s spherical main body. The left side of her armor opened up like a flower around that central point and three of the seven main cannons were torn away at once.

“The Baby Magnum was damaged!! I can continue fighting, but the partially-remaining armor will increase my air resis-…!!”

Quenser’s group did not have time to listen through to the end of their ally’s report.

One of the Old Fashion’s intermittently-fired laser beam attacks had hit the ocean nearby. It must have reacted to the bubbles or the smokescreen because it triggered an explosion of steam.

The impact from the side capsized the patrol boat.

“Goddammit!!”

Quenser frantically tried to grab onto something, but Heivia kicked his hand away. Clinging to the sinking ship would only get him dragged down to the bottom of the ocean.

They were all thrown out into the midsummer Mediterranean.

“This is the worst vacation ever…”

“Pwah. But it’s not over yet.” Quenser grinned while soaking wet. “Did you think you’d won once you crossed the asparagus farm, Old Fashion? Here it comes!!”

A moment later, something hit the Old Fashion from directly below and the Object floated up from the ocean a little.

===Part 6===

Second Venice was a giant artificial island.

It looked like a floating city 20 km across, but it was actually made by combining giant dice made of aluminum alloy or reinforced stainless steel. The air inside those was used to keep the entire city afloat. They were basically giant metal beach balls.

They naturally could not allow water in, but destroying the connection between dice was also a bad idea. To ensure the safety of Second Venice, a set number of spares had to be preserved at all times.

They had borrowed those.

They had borrowed them and used submarines to drag them down to the bottom of the ocean. The rest was no different from the previous asparagus farm. They had cut the wires and allowed the air inside to pull them up.

“Ah.”

The Old Fashion floated up into the air.

It weighed 200,000 tons, which was twice that of an outdated nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. That frightening weight was pushed up just a bit by the float used to support an entire city.

And even an Object could not accelerate or turn while on unsteady footing. When performing a long jump, it was impossible to change direction after leaving the ground.

“Phew…”

The Princess breathed a slow sigh of relief.

Her low-stability plasma cannon burst out. This time she made full use of the few seconds of opportunity by targeting the very center of the Old Fashion’s main body.

But even after that…

“You’re…kidding!” shouted Heivia.

The Old Fashion had not been destroyed. It had aimed its main cannon and all of its secondary cannons downwards to blow away the giant piece of artificial land that had knocked it into the air. And the intense shockwave slightly changed the Old Fashion’s own path through the air. That allowed it to just barely avoid the Princess’s low-stability plasma cannon. Most of its armor turned orange and tore away, but the reactor and cockpit escaped unharmed.

“You damn genius!!” groaned Oh Ho Ho.

The badly-damaged Old Fashion landed in the ocean rather than the land made of aluminum and stainless steel. Great waves spread in every direction. The float arrived right in front of Quenser and Heivia. In only a dozen or so seconds, they would be tossed around.

But Quenser did not care.

The ocean was filthy. There were boats, wreckage, buoys made from steel beams, and the dice-shaped pieces of the float drifting around. The student grabbed a piece of equipment from their patrol boat that he spotted among it all.

It was a wire shooter that used pressurized gas to fire a metal hook.

It was part of a winch used to drag around a captured enemy ship.

“The float wasn’t just to throw you into the air.”

He ignored the approaching wave and grabbed onto the float. He attached the edge of the wire shooter device onto the latch of the joint holding the dice together.

“We don’t even have to break through your armor to defeat you.”

Then he looked up at his giant foe.

He rested the wire shooter on his shoulder and took aim.

“Even an Object will sink if it capsizes!!”

With the sound of compressed air escaping, the metal hook shot out.

He was lucky the Object’s own massive shockwave had forcibly altered its trajectory. That had prevented it from using its secondary cannons to shoot down the metal hook with an anti-air laser.

Then the wire attached itself by wrapping around the main cannon.

The giant spare float was attached to the Object by a wire.

It happened just as the Object regained its balance and swung itself around to aim at the Baby Magnum from the side.

[[Image:HO_v12_399.jpg|thumb]]

The Old Fashion was already unstable, but then the wire and spare float tugged at it. It was like a horse being dragged around by a rope caught on its neck. The Object rocked and tilted. The air cushion engine blew a massive amount of air downwards to create a layer of air between the float and the ocean. If the float itself flipped upside down, the Object could no longer remain afloat. The 200,000 ton mass would simply sink.

“Sink.”

As the Old Fashion wobbled, Quenser raised what sounded like a prayer.

“Sink already, ace!!”

But then he heard the sharp sound of the thick wire snapping. Even if it was made to drag around captured ships, it had been unable to bear the Object’s weight.

Quenser glared at his powerful enemy even as the wire flipped back like a serpent and nearly took off his head.

A moment later, a further impact arrived from the side.

It was the Baby Magnum.

And the Rush.

This went beyond a volley of main cannons or secondary cannons. They used their full speed to charge in and ram their Objects against the Old Fashion as it tried to regain its balance.

“It’s time you gave up that position for someone else, ace.”

“Oh ho ho. How about you rest in peace, you ghost!?”

That clinched it.

The Faith Organization legend flipped over and sunk. The two-by-two arrangement of floats writhed about and blew air out, but they accomplished nothing while not in contact with the ground or ocean.

“He didn’t eject,” noted Quenser as he drifted in the ocean.

“Well, he flipped upside down. The water may have gotten in the way and kept the emergency exit from opening.”

“…”

Quenser could not agree with Heivia’s suggestion.

That ace had stuck with that old Object for a promise with an old friend. Quenser suspected the man had never had an ejection device installed in the first place.

===External Document – Concerning Catherine Blueangel===

This is a report concerning the requested matter.

Catherine Blueangel was exposed to a deadly mold carrying Argeiphontes, but the antidote has proven effective and she is recovering. No after effects have been noted, so there should be nothing to worry about there.

The results of the counseling session with a military doctor are less promising.

Catherine is still highly dependent on firearms and it would be difficult to send her to a safe country at the moment. And even if she is a special case due to being former Councilor Flide’s pawn, she is still a Pilot Elite who was developed using plenty of Legitimacy Kingdom technology. Even if she is given a new identity through a witness protection program, there is still a threat of foreign agents abducting her or retrieving information from her. It would be best to view her life in a safe country as a pipedream.

As for the incident in Second Venice, that only proved Catherine’s skill in combat. Placing an Elite before enemy soldiers would be truly foolish, but she could be sent to a military research institute or a training facility to analyze her combat methods for use by normal soldiers.

This will mean sending Catherine back to an institution after briefly releasing her from that life, but if we think of it as a service to her country, then there is no reason to stop it. She will only gain more medals to wear on her chest, so she might even welcome the chance.

An Elite can only live as an Elite.

Besides, the Civilian Acclimation Assistance System has always been set up so we can determine who passes. It is specifically designed to prevent skilled Elites from retiring at their own discretion. Catherine’s may have been a somewhat unique case, but since she is an Elite, we will have her live as an Elite until she enters her grave.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume3 Opening1

2016-07-25T10:51:23Z

LazyHunter:

==Opening X-01: Let’s Settle This Once and For All==
''“Oh, Onii-chan. I’m cooking a meal for-…”

''“Oh, honestly!! This is already leading to my death, isn’t it!?”

'''(Opening X-01 Open 05/20 12:30)

'''Let’s Settle This Once and For All

It was midday on May 20.

Once Golden Week ended, May grew much duller.

That may have been why Shiroyama Kyousuke, the skilled summoner also known as Freedom Award 903, Alice (with) Rabbit, had let his guard down.

(Honestly, why do I need all this money to retire? Now I’m stuck getting help from Aika as a middleman…)

As soon as he opened the door to Aika’s apartment like usual and caught a whiff of that odor, he should have turned right around. No, he should have noticed when he placed his hand on the doorknob. And he should have run out of there as quickly as possible, even if it meant jumping down the elevator shaft.

(Nothing good ever comes from the jobs that Government hires Freedom for, but this will be the last one. I can put up with just a little more.)

But he carelessly stepped inside.

He heard a cheerful girl humming some kind of tune down the hall.

When he walked on in, he found Aika wearing an apron over her white and green striped bikini that looked mint-flavored.

She looked back from the large kitchen area and spoke.

“Oh, Onii-chan. I’m cooking a meal for-…”

“Oh, honestly!! This is already leading to my death, isn’t it!?”

He could hear it. It was a bizarre sound like gas bubbling up from the depths of a horrible bog. He heard something flopping on the chopping block and heard hard bones being cut with a thick knife. What was that? What was she doing? Kyousuke’s eyes were already bulging and something other than the name of a dish came to mind: ''Oh, come to think of it, didn’t the firefighters find an old man who had turned to soup after he died while reheating the bathwater?

“Ah!? C-come to think of it, where’s Lu-san? She can cook like a normal human being. If she was supervising Aika, then this should still be within the acceptable limits of mankind!!”

“Yeah, she was supervising me…”

“Oh, I see. Good. Tell me that sooner. Now there’s nothing to worry-…”

But he trailed off.

She “was” supervising her? Why was that in the past tense?

He found the answer before long.

With no warning, the cupboard’s large door opened outwards. No one had touched it, so it had to have been pushed open from within. Then something fell out. The person who collapsed to the floor and stopped moving was Lu Niang Lan in her modified China dress.

“L-Lu-san!?”

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

'''There is no response. It is merely an empty shell.

But in all seriousness, Lu Niang Lan’s look of peaceful rest had grown ashen. People called that a pallor of death. Something red dripped from the corner of her mouth, but it may have been ketchup. However, he could not help but see it as blood.

“Y-you fool. Did you start feeling sorry for her as you watched, Lu-san? Did you decide to taste Aika’s cooking…no, test it for poison!?”

“Tch. You noticed. Anyway, yours will be ready soon, Onii-chan. Take a seat and wait.”

“You’re not even giving me time to collect the body!?”

Kyousuke reached into his hoodie’s pocket. Instead of an Incense Grenade for the Summoning Ceremony, he pulled out a military stun grenade used as a smokescreen. It looked exactly the same, so it was useful for cruelly blinding a careless summoner and then pummeling them the old fashioned way.

He pulled the pin.

But…

“Liger.”

A carnivore larger than a tiger or lion caught the airborne hairspray-sized explosive in her mouth. A stun grenade created intense light and noise, but it was almost entirely nonlethal. In some cases, there were accidental deaths when they detonated while in contact with someone, but that was when the fragments of the exterior case hit them. When using a metal case made for repeated uses, the lethality dropped even further.

It detonated inside the white liger’s mouth, but no light escaped. After it exploded like crackling gum, the liger spat out the remains. Aika’s pet, partner, and sofa slowly approached Kyousuke.

He turned tearfully around, but it was too late.

Before he took his third step, she grabbed the back of his hoodie in her mouth like he was a kitten.

“W-wait, liger!! Let’s make a deal. I’ll give you twenty kilograms of angus sirloin red meat, so can you please let me go!?”

As if to say “shut up, get over here, and do as you’re told”, the animal placed Kyousuke in the seat of honor at the dining table.

Then the time of his execution arrived.

In her swimsuit and apron, Aika placed a large plate of “it” in front of him.

That was enough for an unpleasant sweat and tears to well up on his face.

Aika sat across from him, placed her elbows on the table, rested her small chin on her clasped hands, and smiled.

She would not let him escape until he ate it.

“I made omurice today.”

“I can already smell something really raw from here.”

“It’s an egg dish, so of course it smells raw.”

“That you think that is enough reason to worry right there! There’s no way this can have a happy ending!!”

He struggled, but it was no use. The white liger growled behind him to demand he continue.

Kyousuke grabbed the silver spoon with a trembling hand as if he were picking up a handgun on the second or third round of Russian roulette. He squeezed his eyes shut, tensed his lips, and prayed to god, but when he opened his eyes, the yellow mass was still there. Perhaps a summoner who used the gods of legend as a stepping stool would not receive their blessings.

He made up his mind and touched the yellow surface. The film of cooked egg split apart with a sticky sound. Like the abdominal cavity bursting to let the organs spill out, the chicken rice inside came into view with a color halfway between red and flesh-colored. The steam and heat reached his face, so he felt like he was staring into a colorful ditch on a summer day.

It was sticky and slimy.

The bizarrely sticky sheen confused his sense of sight.

“The fluffiness is the key to making a good omurice. That’s why I only half-cooked it. Eheh.”

“A-are you serious? The raw smell is hitting me like an invisible wall.”

The stomach acid rose up his esophagus, but he just barely managed to force it back down. He had yet to take a single bite, yet he was dying for some water.

The ingredients had to be the same.

It couldn’t have anything in it that would kill him.

He tried telling himself that, but it was not working. He recalled the peaceful look on Lu Niang Lan’s face as she lay pale and unmoving on the floor. He seriously doubted it was happiness that had caused that. He had heard that a type of gas weapon would relax all the muscles of the body, so the corpses would look like they were smiling when rigor mortis set in.

Perfect Dragon had ended up like that. That Illegal woman could defeat the average summoner barehanded even within the Summoning Ceremony that allowed free use of all sorts of monsters, but even her steel body had not been enough to save her.

Escaping unscathed was not possible. He had to give up on that.

Would he cut off the leg trapped below the rubble or would he stay there and die?

He had to make that sort of warrior’s decision.

“Two days…no, three. A short stay in the hospital might not be so bad!! Toryah!!”

If he hesitated, it would never end. And most likely, it would only grow more hellish if he let it grow cold. The spoon stabbed into the omurice with an indescribable sound and he felt the utensil tearing through something stringy. He forcibly suppressed the disorientation coming from his inner ear and brought the bite to his-

''Oh, brother.

''My, my. I didn’t expect you so soon. Have you finally given up on the world of the living?

“Bh, fwoooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

He had believed people thought with their brain.

He was familiar with the folk belief that they thought with their heart.

But…

In that moment, Shiroyama Kyousuke took a step into the unknown. All living creatures ate food to obtain nutrients and continue living. So of course, the stomach had to be central to people’s lives.

Something exploded in his stomach.

The surge raced along his spine, sent irregular wriggling movements through all his organs, and stabbed into his brainstem. All five of his senses flashed in and out. The outlines of everything before his eyes were filled with an oozing dance of psychedelic colors. It made no sense for food to mess with his vision, but people used more than just their eyeballs to see. They also analyzed it with their brains.

Shiroyama Kyousuke nearly entered an artistic trance and nearly had his soul taken away by a hallucination of the White Queen lazing around and enjoying some afternoon TV, but he used all of his strength to return to the world of the living.

It was all over if he vomited. He chugged three glasses of water to force it back down.

Finally, he could speak the human tongue once more.

“What…the hell!? Was this really an egg dish!? It tasted like licking the inside of a hungover old man’s stomach!!”

“That’s a little too poetic for me to understand.”

“There’s way too much ketchup in the chicken rice and it’s so salty I think it’s dangerous on a medical level rather than a culinary one!!”

“But if I don’t put that much in, I can’t get that beautiful blood red color.”

“And why is it all so gritty!? Is it sand? Or pebbles!?”

“Onii-chan.”

Aika cut him off and got to the heart of the issue.

“A little sister’s cooking can’t be delicious, can it? It’s perfect ''because'' it isn’t any good. The hopeless flavor is what makes it so charming.”

The boy heard the thin strands of his nerves snapping.

“I knew it!! I knew you had to know it was bad!! I can accept trying your best only for it to not work out, but purposefully making it bad is an insult to the ingredients!!”

Shiroyama Kyousuke roared just like the white liger.

Clear drops fell from Aika’s eyes.

And of course, this was nothing as cute as being sad that he had insulted her cooking. She was a skilled summoner known as
Government Award 870, Hikikomori, and she worked as a top-class middleman who managed the distribution of jobs. She did not have a heart as soft as tofu.

“Onii-chan,” said the apron swimsuit girl. “You complain, but you noticed, didn’t you? You noticed how the world works, at least enough to ''have your own view of what a little sister’s cooking should be''.”

“Wha-…?”

“I’m happy. I’m so very happy, Onii-chan. I was right… I was right to continue my shock therapy for so long!!”

“I never said anything about that being ‘a little sister’s’ cooking, so stop trying to force it in that direction!!”

“I’ve spent so long waiting for this moment!! Liger! Today is Onii-chan’s first little sister day, so we need to cook some red rice!!!!!!”

“What a pain. Oh, what a pain in the ass!! Everywhere I go is a dead end, so I have no idea where to go next!!”

He struggled, but it was no use.

Round two of the insane home cooking had begun.

===Facts===

*Aika can cook, but a little sister’s cooking must not be good.
*Her deadly skill defeated Lu Niang Lan, the dreaded Perfect Dragon, in just one bite.
*As soon as Kyousuke took a bite, he saw a hallucination of the White Queen, but it is unknown what that means.
*As a form of shock therapy, Aika really just wanted Kyousuke to give his personal view of a little sister’s cooking.
*She will apparently be cooking red rice today.
*In the end, it is still unknown what Shiroyama Kyousuke thinks about “a little sister’s” cooking.

<noinclude>
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| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume3_Opening2|Opening X-02]]
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</noinclude>

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume2 Afterword

2016-07-25T10:44:42Z

LazyHunter:

==Afterword==

''“………………………………………”

''“………………………………………”

'''Afterword

'''(Postscript Open ??/?? ??:??)

And here is Volume 2.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

The conflict of Volume 1 was centered on formless things such as faith and loyalty, so I made this volume much simpler by basing the conflict directly on people’s lives.

And in Volume 1, the main enemy was Azalea who (supposedly) belonged to Government, so Illegal was a little overlooked. That is why I focused more on them here. That meant there was no Repliglass in this one, but I think that difference in technology helps show the distinction between the three main powers. And the criminal families’ bonds of blood were different again from Azalea’s noble blood. I am praying that dividing things up between Government and Illegal like that was effective.

So does that mean the next enemy will be from Freedom?

Ghost stories. You probably already know this if you’ve read a few of my books, but I like them. Still, there’s one odd thing about them. Well, it isn’t surprising that a ghost story is unreasonable, but why do those stories tend to turn the victim into a monster and not the murderer? I’ve always found that weird, so while following a ghost story here, I also tried to make it a story about not simply treating a ghost like a monster.

It of course depends on the genre, but no matter what happens along the way, I want to write a protagonist that ultimately decides they want to save the ghost rather than fearing it.

And was this the first clear school life part of this series?

I had fun writing that while thinking how a summoner would live his school life when people forget about him the second they take their eyes off of him.

Classmate, homeroom teacher, librarian, and student council president. …School characters tend to directly take their overall image from their “role”, don’t they? You need to put some distance between them and the role before fleshing them out.

But “I don’t want this to end as just a normal school story!!”, so I had them utterly destroy their school in just the one volume. That was a pretty big adventure as the one writing the story. I’ve written a few different series now, but I think this was my first time having the protagonist turn their school (a symbol of peace) into a pile of rubble.

Shiroyama Kyousuke smashed windows at his school at night while using cheap methods to save a girl who could not be saved. I think I’ve had him acting with more reckless abandon than in Volume 1, but what did you think?

For the Summoning Ceremony, I used the rose symbol and sigil from a certain magic cabal, but for the actual actions, I was using the extremely intuitive image that it would be fun to compete at bouncing a whole bunch of balls around a school or hospital. The Incense Grenade was added in for the intuitive image of wanting to walk on the walls or ceiling and wanting to fly through the sky. …Of course, it’s really just the work I put in so I could avoid just having the summoners stand there doing nothing throughout the fight.

I went a step further this time and had the summoners themselves thrown like projectiles to further emphasize that intuitive sort of action. Did it seem more like a two-on-two fight?

I just hope you thought it sounded like a fun amusement park attraction even if you didn’t quite understand it.

This was Volume 2 of Shiroyama Kyousuke going on a rampage, but I personally think the most frightening part of him is the ending when he said, “I would do whatever it took to take responsibility for every last thing my decision had changed.”

I think that one line created a definite difference from my other series’ protagonists who more optimistically say they just need a 1% chance of success if there’s a girl they can save.

At first glance, Kyousuke seems to stand on the “guardian” side, but if the system won’t save the person suffering before his eyes, he won’t hesitate to destroy that system even if it’s supporting seven billion people. He holds the “danger” of possibly reaching for that.

And he plans to make it all work whether he succeeds or fails, so he shows hints of being a monster himself as he faces the White Queen. …There’s room for discussing which one is dragging the other around.

The special summoning this time used the “End of the World” theme from Urashima Tarou or Kaguya-hime. Unlike Kaguya-hime who came “here”, it might be wrong to think of Urashima Tarou as a “summoning” since he went “there”, but as the White Queen said in the novel, who gets to decide which side is “here” and which side is “there”? From that perspective, I think it is a form a summoning.

Due to the idea of moving freely between this world and the other world, that type of summoning commonly involves resurrection, immortality, and invincibility. (There are also stories of one’s death or lifespan returning after breaking the rules.) If you have the time, it might be fun to look into all that.

And while Volume 1 included a ton of top-rank Divine and Unexplored-class Materials, I had all the fights this time stick to the Regulation-class except for the Leviathan at the beginning. That was due to the enemy using obstruction tactics, but while the previous volume was about worshiping the strongest, I was focusing more on the basics of summoners this time. That is, they were choosing the best Materials for their objective and even the gods are just a rite of passage needed to reach even greater heights. Guard of Honor and an assassin use the paranormal in very different ways.

…Also, I felt the power creep would quickly get out of hand if I didn’t do this.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Ikawa Waki-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. I think the Rainy Girl had to be the hardest part this time. She had to actually be her secret true identity and yet it couldn’t be too obvious at first glance, so she couldn’t have been easy to design. I am truly grateful.

It took place at school, he fought alongside a classmate, and a human life was on the line. I wanted to return to the starting point while also adding in some twisted elements I hadn’t used before, but what did you think? But setting aside the trickier parts, I hope you at least felt your blood pumping at the “This has to be what everyone really wanted to do!!” part.

And I will end this here.

It’s important to maintain that line where the White Queen is ''dere'' yet isn’t kind.

-Kamachi Kazuma

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| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]]
|-
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</noinclude>

The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume1 Chapter2

2016-06-18T17:51:03Z

LazyHunter:

==Stage 02: The Rabbit is Alice’s Guide==

''“Milady.”

''“Yes, let’s get started.”

'''(Stage 02 Open 04/15 00:30)

'''The Rabbit is Alice’s Guide

===Part 1===

Government Award 930, Golden Luxury.

Her real name was Azalea Magentarain. The girl seemed too delicate even for her young age of fourteen. She had smooth white skin, transparently blue eyes, and extremely long reddish blonde hair. Her ringlet curls were long enough to reach her waist.

She wore what looked like a business suit with a tight skirt, but it also had frills and lace in places. It was of course custom made. She would never be allowed to touch a premade product that could have been soaked with any number of strange chemicals.

She elegantly crossed her legs in the cargo space of a mid-sized vibration wing craft known as a Hornet.

A Hornet was an armored weapon meant for ground attacks and personnel transport in place of helicopters. It was fifteen meters long and it went without saying what its silicon shell was shaped to resemble. It was of course more than a hobby item. It used various deception weapons and its four rapidly vibrating wings created unique lifelike movements. It had achieved overwhelming results in tests, only being hit by one of fifty surface-to-air missiles and by zero of fifty air-to-air missiles.

Recently, Repliglass had been used for more than just military and construction purposes. A giant one hundred meter silicon core had been closed in a concrete box for a new type of power plant. It only consumed water and earth (or silicon waste like glass and silicone), so it was being touted as an environmentally friendly energy source. The lights decorating Toy Dream 35’s night came from the massive energy produced by that Repliglass core.

Inside that cutting-edge weapon, the girl held several colorful disks two centimeters thick and ten centimeters in diameter.

They were reels of silk ribbon.

“What do you think? If I want high speeds and am expecting a long match, then I think it would be best to shift the Blood-Sign’s center of gravity a little farther forward than normal and to make it a little thinner. I think #6 would be best.”

Her dignified voice resembled a Buddhist monk’s bell used to drive out impurities and its loveliness overwrote the surrounding atmosphere.

A single person was listening.

Due to its lifelike movements, the Hornet shook quite a bit, yet the old man in a suit stood perfectly straight.

He was her vessel and his name was Fractal Leskins.

Normally, vessels wore handcuffs, a collar, or other tools that bound them in order to avoid summoning something “unnecessary” beyond what their summoner ordered of them, but this old man wore nothing of the sort. Or rather, his suit itself was the symbol of the servitude binding him. It had grown that way over many long years.

“If you wish to suppress his movements with a series of swift attacks, I would suggest the thick, short, and heavy #5. Or if you would prefer to attack from outside his field of vision by avoiding obstacles with a spin, then what about #12?”

“No, if I’m going up against him, it’s going to be a frenetic battle from extreme close range. There will be no easy victory here. So don’t you think it would be best to take the time to build up the ideal form?”

“Ha ha. My aging eyes are no match for your discerning vision. Then I suppose #6 would be best.”

Azalea and Fractal could achieve a certain level of results in any environment, but they still had their preferences. They preferred a high speed battle in an urban environment. That was their territory.

The girl re-crossed her legs and did not even glance at the old man who respectfully lowered his head. This was nothing special. In Azalea Magentarain’s life, this was no different from drinking water or breathing oxygen. She did not think much of it, but she would be in trouble without it. That was who he was to her.

“Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit, is it?”

“We only have a report from the men down below, so it could be a fake,” said Azalea while grabbing the pink reel labelled #6. “Still, it would be wise to be careful. And if it really is him, nothing could be better. It’s been so long since I had a satisfying battle.”

When using an Incense Grenade, summoners and vessels could not be seen by mechanical cameras and sensors. Precision GPS-guided bombs and cruise missiles could not be used for a surprise attack. That was why no unmanned devices were being used as the summoners’ eyes and ears. They were forced to rely on hearsay from their subordinates and they had to assume their target could vanish from the monitor at any moment.

However, Government’s infantry were not normal soldiers. They were all new summoners who had been late to acquire a vessel. A lot of them died before being promoted, but those that fought through a true battlefield without a vessel gained quite a bit of power. Those who knew fear and had conquered it were strong.

Tentatively deciding to trust the reports from those novices still going through their baptism of blood, Azalea brought the radio mic to her mouth.

She spoke to the Hornet’s pilot.

“What is the hold up? When are we going to reach the location in the report?”

“Our ETA is ten minutes from now.”

“Make it five. If you don’t, the five units in Block R will be wiped out.”

“B-but…”

She switched off the radio without waiting for the response and she spoke to the old man next to her.

“What is the meaning of this? I personally designed this Hornet and its speed and mobility are its selling points. Is it malfunctioning?”

“I am sorry to say it, but I believe they are worried that shaking the craft too much could harm you.”

“Ridiculous,” spat out Azalea Magentarain.

The old man gently continued.

“Four groups of Government Elites from Award 501 to 780 were deployed. Don’t you think they have enough pride to fulfill their roles?”

“You say that, but you don’t actually think they can win, do you?”

Azalea and Fractal were not simply looking down on their subordinates. She had more going for her than being from a wealthy family and being a high Award summoner.

Quad Motors was the world’s greatest defense contractor that supplied cutting-edge weaponry for all four branches of the American military. These two were deeply involved in the core of that corporation. They did not design tanks using the knowhow of the automobile industry. They designed them as weapons from the ground up.

Most of her family had intentionally left themselves at around Award 50 so they would not vanish from normal society while also properly perceiving summoners. High Award summoners like Azalea were an extreme exception for her family.

On top of that, her family was not technically an American power. Quad Motors had ruled the defense industry in place of the big names of the domestic automobile and aviation industries who had lost the ability to compete, but they were in fact a Trojan Horse sent by the Round Table, a European alliance of nobility, because they were unwilling to let those “newcomers” of the New World hold the position of the world police.

They were a family of unrepatriated golden birds of prey who had sharply honed military knowledge, development skills, and financial knowhow yet possessed the iron will needed to cast aside their position of nobility to secure American citizenship as immigrants, infiltrate the field of national defense, acquire political power, and achieve their goal.

For that reason, their opinions were surprisingly cold yet accurate.

“Award 501, Perfect Game. Award 590, Tricky AAA. Award 719, Diabolos. Award 780, Bloodbath Rhapsody. …They’re all useless. Especially 501. Is that supposed to be a joke? He probably only has a perfect record because he only ever finishes off the losers that another summoner let live. Can’t he at least die here?”

“We will arrive in ten minutes, but the units deployed there will be wiped out. So what should we do?”

“Hand it over.”

The old man immediately complied with the girl’s brief instruction. That summed up just how long the two had known each other.

The butler held out a giant tube made of layered plastic. It was 130 centimeters long and the bottom surface was equipped with a cushion for the shoulder.

Azalea did not hesitate to rest it on her shoulder and Fractal forcefully slid open the cargo door on the Hornet’s side.

A chilly night wind struck the girl’s delicate body, but she did not even flinch. In fact, she gained a challenging look of fierce joy.

She stared at one point of the night scenery and spoke to the pilot over the radio.

“Sorry, but it looks like I will have to make up for everyone’s incompetence.”

The giant tube was in fact an 80mm ''grenade'' launcher.

And if a summoner was going to put all of her trust in a single projectile, it could only be one thing.

She rested the launcher on her shoulder and smoothly whispered under her breath.

“Oh, White Queen who guides us to victory in extraordinary battles, please save this fragile human soul.”

===Part 2===

In the courtyard of the Block R high school that Shiroyama Kyousuke attended on weekdays, everything looked like death to Meinokawa Higan.

Repliglass weapons were partially or entirely modeled on insects and other animals. They were the armored weapons of a new age and they had drawn a clear line between themselves and all previously existing weapons. Regenerative medicine was used to create all-purpose silicon cells which could be rearranged to form any kind of muscle, bone, nerves, blood vessels, internal organs, or sensory organs. Simply put, anyone wearing that armor took on the role of an intelligent beast that did not exist anywhere on earth.

And those weapons were commanded by four summoner-vessel pairs. Their summoning ceremony could summon life forms not of this world on a limited basis, so they could ignore even the laws of physics and in some cases achieve results not even a great Repliglass army could. …Including incidents involving paranormal phenomena that traditional military might was helpless against.

And yet Meinokawa Higan heard a loud noise.

With his long Blood-Sign in hand, Shiroyama Kyousuke left her behind and took a large step toward the enemy.

The nearest summoner responded by throwing something like a can of coffee toward him. Needless to say, it was an Incense Grenade. At the same time, the Repliglass soldiers moved back. Once a battle between summoners began, normal bullets would be useless. Leaving the fight to the summoner was the standard tactic and that was how they distributed their duties here.

Finally, two summoners would wield the paranormal to fight.

But in that moment, Higan saw something unbelievable.

Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit, held up his Blood-Sign like a baseball bat.

With a solid metallic clang, he swung the Blood-Sign and scored a homerun with the Incense Grenade. In just an instant, it vanished in the dark sea beyond the large high school campus.

And…

“Ah.”

While watching the grenade disappear, the summoner seemed to belatedly realize what that meant.

''When an Incense Grenade detonated, the summoner and vessel who had used it were carried to the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground.

“Bfgrfeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

As if they were connected to a passenger jet by an elastic cord, the summoner and vessel became two stars in the night sky.

The boy ran further forward and spoke coolly.

“Award 501: defeated.”

“You…!!”

The female summoner he turned to as his next target dropped an Incense Grenade at her feet. He could not hope for another homerun from this distance and he only had three to five seconds until it detonated.

But by that time, Shiroyama Kyousuke had already moved right up to his next target.

However, that target was ''not'' the female summoner.

He suddenly changed direction and moved right up to one of the bizarre Repliglass soldiers that had grasshopper-like legs added near the waist to help with jumping. The soldier was a sturdy armored weapon, but the carbine he held was a standard model. Kyousuke made a spear-like jab with the tip of his 180 cm stick to tear off the high-powered military light attached on the bottom.

At the same time, the counterattack began. The enemy selected the face out of the many vitals available and threw a frightening kick with its silicon leg. This rear leg held the strength needed to send the soldier himself flying ten to twenty meters or to crush a traditional armored truck like a steamed bun.

Shiroyama Kyousuke swung his upper body to avoid it by a hair’s breadth.

A few of his own hairs flew through the air.

His entire body was noticeably emitting extreme tension.

His cheeks twitched as he moved his Blood-Sign. Swinging it down like a hammer would not harm the pilot soldier contained inside the silicon muscles and armor, but he was not foolish enough to think he could destroy that armored weapon like that.

He was targeting something else.

The carbine in the bizarre weapon’s hand had been made as small as possible while completely ignoring the recoil of firing. The powerful military light that had been torn from the bottom used a honeycomb pattern of bright LEDs and it was meant to blind an opponent rather than provide illumination.

Kyousuke caught the rotating light on the tip of his Blood-Sign, pulled it back toward him, grabbed it, and switched it on.

“Oh, no…” muttered the female summoner preparing for battle with her Blood-Sign held up like a spear.

''Incense Grenades are only effective when the target can be seen with the naked eye.

Despite the muffled explosion, no Artificial Sacred Ground appeared. The flashlight was as bright as a strobe light and it had blinded her. She could not summon a Material into her vessel like this.

That brief opening was all Kyousuke needed.

He threw aside the light and stuck a hand into his pocket. He pulled out a metal can as heavy as a can of hair spray: an Incense Grenade. He threw it to the side, but not to fight like normal. He was trying to break the female summoner’s nose with the three hundred gram mass.

Caught off guard, she was unable to evade or defend.

After a metallic sound of impact, the blow hit her square in the face and she collapsed onto her back.

The grim reaper whispered his next statement.

“Award 719: defeated.”

(Not good…)

Finally, the surrounding Repliglass soldiers changed their way of thinking.

(The normal distribution of duties won’t work here. Leaving this to the summoners will only get us defeated!!)

They too would be his prey if they left this to the experts. Fortunately, this target had yet to use a summoning ceremony. Unless he activated the protective circle created from the Material’s power, he was no different from any other human. Normal bullets would fill him with holes like normal.

Their expected victory had crumbled before their eyes, they had restrained their confusion, they had swapped out their way of thinking, and they had begun to take action. All in all, it had taken four seconds.

Everyone there accurately aimed their guns and pulled the trigger.

Those battlefield soldiers recovered and reacted with extraordinary speed.

However, they had forgotten something.

The projectile used to break the summoner’s nose had not been a mere weight; it had been an Incense Grenade.

The slight explosion drowned out all else.

Gunfire rang from the Repliglass soldiers at almost the exact same moment as the Alice (with) Rabbit boy used his Blood-Sign to hit the white sphere – a White Thorn – in front of him.

The deluge of noise seemed to continue without end, but not even one of the bullets tore into Kyousuke’s body.

He and Higan had been automatically taken to the location of the detonating Incense Grenade.

The Repliglass soldiers quickly corrected their aim, but it was too late.

The Rose pieces floating in the air were knocked about, a middle sound Petal was accurately sucked into a Spot, and Higan’s body changed form with a sticky sound. She became a three meter mass of a translucent green sticky liquid. That Material contained the girl’s body at its center.

At the cost of one middle sound, it was one of the weakest Materials, the Original Green (k).

But even if it was one of the weakest, a Material was still a Material. A protective circle that eliminated all attacks was immediately constructed around the summoner and that defended against the countless bullets.

And of course, at the same time…

“Higan! Take out the Repliglass soldiers!! They don’t stand a chance now!!”

<Wow…>

Higan moved with her body transformed into a giant sticky Material.

With the roar reminiscent of sandbags being hit by a barrage of blows, the soldiers were easily swept away. Higan freely controlled the seven hundred liters of her body. Despite being liquid, each strike was as flexible as the human fist yet filled with an impact rivalling a car accident. She understood that she was the one doing this, but she started to lose her awareness of that fact.

<nowiki><I always thought summoning ceremonies were about who could summon the more powerful Material with the more effective sound range… This Original series is only costs one sound, so, um, I thought it was just a starting point with no real use.></nowiki>

She went on a rampage inside the Artificial Sacred Ground field where she could use her occult power to its fullest. As she accurately knocked the cutting-edge armored soldiers unconscious, she felt a strange feeling running through that body that was not hers.

<But I was wrong. He even knows, um, how to fight with the weakest Material. No, did this battle begin b-before even summoning the first Material!?>

Yes. That was right.

When Higan had been separated from Renge in that harbor region, Kyousuke had saved her from the Guard of Honor pursuers.

But he would not have had a vessel with him then. So how had he protected her from those members of a professional summoner’s organization?

<Th-this must be…the answer.>

He could get involved in the world of summoning ceremonies and yet return alive without summoning a single Material. He could return with at least a single person in his arms. And he did not have the muscular strength of some ferocious beast, he was not a kung fu master living deep in the mountains, and he was not using the world’s greatest prototype weapon that a stranger had given him.

Then again, he was not the same as Lu Niang Lan who was feared as the Perfect Dragon. He was not an expert in slaughtering veteran summoners using only his own body and hidden weapons instead of Materials.

But when in a bind, he knew enough about this small field to put together a workable strategy ''on the fly'' that would let him fight without a Material.

It could be written off as a series of adlibs, but he did not bring about the optimum result by gambling. He simply had enough useful experience to instantly search for the relevant information in any given situation. He may have been physically using his arms and legs, but his true weapon was his intellect as a summoner.

That had been enough to save a girl from that hellish harbor, so he would not lose here.

Shiroyama Kyousuke could gain the upper hand against Guard of Honor with a handicap, so there was no way he would lose when he had Meinokawa Higan as his vessel and could use his full power.

“Higan, focus on weight more than speed! Repliglass is a mass of silicon muscle fibers, so they won’t be able to move if you press down on them enough to snap them. You don’t even need to knock them out. Destroy the outer shell and they’ll be trapped in their own armor!!”

Shiroyama Kyousuke ran all across the Artificial Sacred Ground and Higan swung her giant Material body around based on his instructions. Repliglass soldiers were the main players of modern warfare and they were a symbol of fear for the guerillas and terrorists being wiped out around the world, but she easily swept them all away.

They were gone in no time at all. Things were progressing almost too smoothly.

She felt like she was watching an example video, so the victory did not feel like hers.

“Dammit!!!!”

Two summoners remained. Someone with devastatingly slow reaction speed quickly raised their Blood-Sign and struck a White Thorn. To Higan, the movement was slow, like someone moving underwater.

And Kyousuke did not just sit idly by.

He took a powerful step forward and charged toward the enemy summoner. By this point, Higan had caught on that even that step had a meaning. If he had only been swinging around his Blood-Sign randomly, he would have been shot up by the Repliglass soldiers before the Incense Grenade could detonate. His movements also had the psychological effect of creating a gap and throwing off one’s timing.

If someone who could easily jump to either side instead charged straight toward the large truck driving their way, anyone watching would be briefly paralyzed with shock.

A baseball would sometimes slip between two infielders who could have easily caught it.

This was the same.

He seemed almost supernaturally skilled at binding the enemy’s body with a stimulus that they could not fight with their rational mind.

He took a short breath, shot forward like a bullet, and literally collided with the enemy summoner.

Both of them were guarded by the protective circles powered by their Materials, so they did not actually come into contact.

With a solid sound of impact, Kyousuke’s charge was obstructed at extreme close range. Both of their protective circles had decided allowing him in range would bring death.

But…

“Kh…!? Wh-what…? You’re in the way…”

“You can’t see the world behind me, can you? And when we’re this close, you can’t swing your 180 cm Blood-Sign like you want to. Isn’t that right?”

A summoner could freely build up their Material by gaining an accurate understanding of the vast Artificial Sacred Ground and using their glowing White Thorns to knock the Petals of low, middle, high, and lowest sounds into the Spots. The pressure tactics that Shiroyama Kyousuke was using with his own body produced a simple yet devastating effect.

“B-but neither can-…!”

The summoner trailed off as he finally noticed the sound of something whipping through the wind.

Kyousuke had reached both hands behind his back and spun his Blood-Sign like a baton.

With a top-class summoner’s spatial awareness, one did not always need to rely on sight. He could manipulate his Blood-Sign behind his back to accomplish the exceedingly precise summoning ceremony.

The tip struck a White Thorn with enough frightening speed to sense the absolute confidence behind it.

With several hard sounds of reflection, it collided with several Petals and knocked them into Spots. The crimson trails of light and the dance of a broken song filled that small world.

He did not even bother to check on the result.

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

The poor summoner looked up at something with a blank look in his eyes.

A giant Material towered behind Shiroyama Kyousuke. The giant squid monster had gold eyes and ten thick chains that could probably squeeze a tank. It was the DEC Tentacle (nu – o – re – a – btv – ag – y).

The summoner currently had a human-sized Material with green eyes known as the Sharp Mermaid (nal – cb a – pl), but the difference in cost was too great and the matchup between sound range could not have been worse.

It would be killed in a single blow.

The Silhouette at the mermaid’s core that contained the vessel’s mind would be destroyed.

Unpleasant sweat poured from the summoner’s body and the grim reaper’s quiet voice slipped into his ears.

“Award 780: defeated.”

===Part 3===

The giant Hornet tore through the night sky that was filled with city lights.

The side cargo door was fully open and Azalea Magentarain had finally spotted her target with her “naked eye” through the optical sight of the 80mm grenade launcher on her shoulder.

He was a few kilometers away and he was only a tiny speck even through the multiple lenses.

“Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit. Confirmed.”

A school had become a battlefield.

She had expected it, but not even disastrous was enough to describe the situation. The four summoner groups had already been defeated and the soldiers wearing Repliglass equipment supplied by Quad Motors had been wiped out. ''And they had all been incapacitated without spilling a single drop of blood.

The girl felt a little faint at the fact that the enemy had showed mercy. She could feel the noble blood stirring inside her delicate body.

“Alice (with) Rabbit… Even if they were grunts, he has the nerve to mock their resolve to die if necessary!?”

“Milady, everything is prepared. You may begin at any time.”

The elderly butler knew Azalea better than anyone and his words cooled her boiling head. No, perhaps it would be more accurate to say they lowered it from an intense burn to a calmer burn.

They did not particularly care who the master was and which one was in control.

The girl did not hesitate to pull the trigger on her company’s own device.

With the deep sound of incendiary gas bursting out, a large explosive flew accurately to the courtyard of a high school in Block R.

According to their rules, ''when an Incense Grenade detonated, the summoner and vessel who had used it were carried to the center of the Artificial Sacred Ground.

===Part 4===

Shiroyama Kyousuke had sensed that presence.

It was a stinging tension and a dense premonition of death that nearly left one unable to control their body. Yet it contradictorily stirred up the combat instincts that wanted to give in to that feeling. He had detected this great presence not with his five senses, but with a sixth sense only held by those who had spent a long time on the battlefield.

That was why he ran across the courtyard at full speed.

He ran to the edge of the three hundred meter Artificial Sacred Ground and he immediately gave his instructions.

“Higan!! Destroy the ground! Hurry!!”

<Eh? Eh!?>

“''Don’t question it!!''”

The time loss may not have added up to a full second, but it was enough for Kyousuke to lose sight of his victory. The odds were dragged down to 50/50.

Finally, the DEC Tentacle’s thick chains swung down with tremendous force and smashed half the artificial ground – the courtyard that included one end of the square campus – like it was made of tofu.

They were currently in the chain state that began after defeating a target.

They had the special privilege of free movement during that time and they used it to fall straight down. This was Toy Dream 35, the giant amusement park city located over the ocean. The ground had been intentionally flooded and the transportation network had bene built up above using several layers of giant bridges.

So what was it that awaited them down below?

===Part 5===

In the frustrating but short time needed for the arrival and detonation of the fired Incense Grenade, Azalea Magentarain saw the truth through the lenses of the optical sight.

“Below them is…a reverse bungee!? Honestly, this is the problem with entertainment for the masses!!”

A reverse bungee was the opposite of a bungee jump in that it launched people upwards. A seat was fixed at the center of a thick piece of rubber that was attached on either end to a metal pole. It might be simpler to think of it as a giant slingshot with a seatbelt attached. The sides of the metal poles were engraved with the high school’s name, so it may have actually been a school event. Anything was possible in this amusement park city.

Of course, it was blatantly obvious what would happen if it was used without the safety harness.

Azalea clenched her teeth as her Incense Grenade finally landed on the outer edge just short of the destroyed part of the ground. It immediately detonated.

(Make it.)

The user of an Incense Grenade was automatically taken to the center of the created Artificial Sacred Ground. If she could arrive on the scene before her target left, she could deal with the rest herself.

(Make it!!)

As soon as the distant Incense Grenade detonated, Azalea Magentarain and Fractal Leskins of the Golden Luxury team were launched from the aircraft with tremendous force. Rather than fall, they sliced through the air. They ignored gravity and air resistance while slipping between buildings like precision guided missiles.

Their shaken vision finally stabilized, but Azalea’s brow wrinkled in displeasure.

Alice (with) Rabbit had been slightly faster.

He and his Material had fallen into the six-person party seat of the large reverse bungee. The DEC Tentacle’s great weight caused the entire device to bend and one of its ten chains slithered out like a living creature to smash the safety hook. The great force built up in the thick rubber was released and they were launched diagonally upward. To provide a greater thrill, they shot toward the ocean which contained height differences thanks to the giant bridges on the lowest level.

They were not captured by Azalea’s Artificial Sacred Ground.

At the same time, the giant squid Material was replaced by a girl in a shrine maiden outfit. Shiroyama Kyousuke had chosen to end his chain that could last up to ninety seconds, so their Artificial Sacred Ground vanished.

[[Image:BloodSign_v01_156.jpg|thumb]]

There was an obvious reason for that.

For only a brief instant, Alice (with) Rabbit and Golden Luxury passed by within a few centimeters of each other.

If he had let his Artificial Sacred Ground remain, Azalea would have been caught in his field and the battle would have continued. That was exactly what the girl wanted, but the boy refused.

“Curse you…”

Time seemed to stop and their eyes met.

There was a small but unmistakable smile in Shiroyama Kyousuke’s eyes. His goal was not to win this battle; it was to retrieve Meinokawa Higan and escape.

Such a powerful foe was within arm’s reach and yet the match would end before she could fight him.

However, this would not qualify as a draw. Given the situation, he was quitting while he was ahead.

How great was the humiliation and regret of being defeated without crossing swords even once?

The girl’s noble blood boiled over.

“Curse yoooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!!!”

Their intersection came to an end.

The speed of time returned to normal. Azalea Magentarain and her elderly butler slipped down to land on the edge of the school’s smashed artificial ground while Shiroyama Kyousuke and Meinokawa Higan vanished into the dark sea far in the distance.

The girl’s Blood-Sign was made of wrapped pink ribbons and she slammed it down at her feet. Fractal Leskins gave a respectful bow and made a suggestion.

“We have the Water Striders on the ocean surface and the Bottlenose Dolphins inside the ocean. If you order them to search for-…”

“It’s no use. Do you really think they would find anything?”

Azalea stared at the dark sea and spoke the words like she was spitting on the coward who had fled from her.

Having lost sight of her target, that golden bird of prey said one thing more.

“I know you’re wandering around the hunting grounds, wild rabbit. You had better entertain me next time.”

===Part 6===

“Oh, dear. So that’s why you’re shivering from the cold,” said Lu Niang Lan of Illegal with a light of both exasperation and admiration in her blue eyes.

She stood behind the counter of a used goods store in the large Chinatown of Block C.

The store was dimly-lit, it smelled of sweet incense, and the walls and columns were red. It was so red that one had to wonder if buildings in China were really quite that red. That was hardly surprising given this Chinatown had not developed naturally. The entire Block had been constructed as a film set for the kung fu movies distributed by the Toy Dream Company. In other words, it was the unrealistic image of China that Westerners pictured in their heads.

Incidentally, those movies included one with a shirtless muscular protagonist chaining two shotguns together like nunchucks and swinging them around while shooting in every direction. That should give you a good idea of how unrealistic this Chinatown was.

“…”

“…”

Shiroyama Kyousuke and Meinokawa Higan were shivering with chilly water dripping from their hair.

After landing in the ocean near the school in Block R, they had boarded his cruiser home that he had secretly moored nearby. From there, they had used the canals to reach Block C. They had showered and changed clothes on the way, but that had not fully rid them of the chill that had soaked them to the bone.

They had come to this store for two reasons.

First, to stock up on equipment such as Incense Grenades. The contents of an Incense Grenades had to be delicately mixed for the specific summoner who would use it, so they could not use one stolen from an enemy. A summoner either made their own or relied on a specialist.

The second was to gather information.

“Your hair is wet, Kyousuke-chan, but why are your clothes the same as always?”

“I have several pairs of the same clothes.”

“And why is Higan-chan wearing a maid outfit? And a miniskirt one at that.”

“Because the only girl’s clothing I had were the ones you forced on me when you were drunk a while back! Why did you even give a guy a miniskirt maid outfit!?”

Even if the cruiser was equipped for daily life, it did not have a washing machine or dryer. They would use too much water and power. Her wet shrine maiden outfit was soaking in a tub of water, but they needed to visit a laundromat before long. Otherwise, it would stiffen up from the seawater.

However, that revelation led the beauty in a modified China dress to lean over the counter.

“That was the only girl’s clothing you had? Then! Does that meant what I think it means!?”

“What?”

“Holy Shrine Maiden Higan-chan isn’t wearing anything under there!?”

“Tch!! I was doing my best not to think about that, so why did you have to be so blunt about it!?”

Anyone would have noticed at a glance, but Meinokawa Higan was blushing, holding down the maid outfit’s miniskirt with one hand, and fidgeting her legs. Someone who did not know the situation would have assumed she needed to use the restroom.

“(Oh, Wh-White Queen. Give me the noble heart needed to endure this extreme humili-hyah! I-I bit my tongue…!!)”

The sexy oriental beauty seemed to overflow with energy when she saw the shrine maiden muttering under her breath again.

“Th-this is some high level stuff. You’re this girl’s only chance at survival, but not only do you order her to wear a maid outfit, you don’t let her wear any underwear and then take her for a walk around Chinatown in the middle of the night. How high level can you get, Kyousuke-chan!?”

“Please stop smiling like that! Forcing her to wear my boxers would be pretty perverted too, wouldn’t it!? I-I had no choice! What else was I supposed to do!?”

Meinokawa Higan could not get a word in as the other two argued.

Was this really the Alice (with) Rabbit who had ruled that battlefield not long before?

The difference was so great that she was not sure how to approach him from now on and she began panicking a little.

Lu Niang Lan must have seen through that because she grinned and asked Higan a question.

“Are you worried because you can’t get a read on Kyousuke-chan’s character?”

“Eh? Um…”

“The answer is that everything you see there is a part of him. Show him your cleavage and he’ll grow flustered. Give him a teary upturned look and he’ll do most anything you say. Remember that because it’ll be on the test. And the clincher is ‘Help-…”

“Please stop telling her more than she needs to know!!”

Kyousuke loudly and quickly cut her off.

The modified China dress woman worked at cooling herself down and spoke to Higan again.

“Anyway, Higan-chan, don’t worry. Based on what I’ve heard, there’s nothing to worry about for the moment.”

“Eh? Um, uh, what do you mean?”

“Now that you’ve teamed up with Kyousuke-chan, the two of you have been registered as the new Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit. That means you’re no longer the kind of wandering asset that Government sees as a threat.”

“B-but, um, will they really accept it that easily?”

“Not normally, no. But while Illegal is legitimately their enemy, Government actually works with and hires summoners from Freedom. …They could eventually kill Alice (with) Rabbit, but it’s more efficient to tame you than to accept the many sacrifices it would take to defeat you. Government as a whole gains very little by forcing the two of you to fight. They’re also indebted to a certain someone☆”

“Anyway,” added Shiroyama Kyousuke as if to urge caution. “That’s really only wishful thinking, so don’t get too optimistic. That may be true of Government as a whole, but there’s still a decent chance Golden Luxury will attack as an individual. After all, we picked a fight with her, threw sand in her face, and ran off. …She’s got to be pissed right now.”

Higan let out a trembling groan.

That summoner was skilled enough for even Kyousuke to decide fleeing was the best plan. It scared her to have a monster like that know her name and face.

“A-and she specializes in the White Queen. That’s ''the'' White Queen, isn’t it?”

Her face had gone completely pale and Kyousuke sounded a little annoyed as he answered.

“Yes. It’s that queen you love so much. …And she doesn’t just pray to her. She wields her power as a deadly weapon.”

Higan’s face only grew paler.

The noble being ruling her mind would now bare her fangs as an enemy. Merely imagining that scene was probably enough to nearly faint, but that was the world of summoners.

“The Unexplored-class are beyond all of the Regulation and Divine-class Materials and she stands at the peak of even the Unexplored-class… W-we even worship her as, um, our shrine’s unofficial second god.”

“Well, she is the most popular.” Lu Niang Lan laughed while resting her elbow on the counter. “Even in this store, the White Queen sculptures and plates sell the best. Government, Illegal, and Freedom each have a contract with one of the Three to receive their Awards, but in truth, all of them think the White Queen is the strongest.”

“A-and we’ve made enemies of someone who summons her to fight?”

“In the world of summoning ceremonies, the lowest rookie and the most skilled expert have an equal chance of summoning any Material. You can’t measure someone’s strength based on what they ''can'' summon.”

Kyousuke and Lu Niang Lan were both carefree.

Could experience really change someone that much?

“But now it looks like you can focus on the main issue here. Based on what you’ve said, this new organization called Guard of Honor attacked you and your twin sister, separating the two of you. You want to meet up with your missing sister before she’s killed and the time limit would be…two days now that it’s past midnight. That was your original goal, right?”

“Lu-san… Um, I’d heard Guard of Honor is a dangerous new organization that’s been gathering a lot of strength in Illegal lately.”

“Hmm. But I’ve never heard of them.”

The altered China dress woman sounded indifferent. She felt no obligation just because she was also part of Illegal. The Russian mafia would feel no responsibility if a South American drug cocktail was being misused, so this was probably a similar way of looking at it. Illegal had their own issues to deal with.

“You twins got your information from Government, right? Can you really trust that? And…”

“And?”

“If this is an unregistered group using the Illegal name without permission…don’t you think a legit Illegal member like me would be able to tell at a glance?”

===Part 7===

Shiroyama Kyousuke could not believe his eyes.

This was due to a fifty-by-fifty centimeter cardboard box about fifteen centimeters tall. It was stuffed full of Incense Grenades just like an industrial box of drink cans.

“Lu-san, this is way too many. How am I supposed to carry all these!?”

“Divide the extras up between your cruiser and coin lockers. It’ll be a pain coming back here every time you run out, won’t it? More importantly, how about you replace your Blood-Sign’s tip? You don’t want to complain about poor maintenance if you’re attacked without warning.”

Lu Niang Lan messed with the laptop on the used goods store counter while recommending him all sorts of equipment. That included a short-bladed knife for handicraft work, fine waterproofed sandpaper, and instant glue.

Meinokawa Higan’s eyes opened wide when she saw it all. They all looked like tools for home carpentry or summer projects, so she could not imagine how they could help in a summoning ceremony that could reach even the ancient gods.

“U-um, that…”

“Yes?”

Kyousuke pulled his Blood-Sign from his back, placed the knife blade a few centimeters from the front, and pressed down with his body weight. After a dull popping sound, the entire tip came off.

A piece of wood as soft as cork rolled along the floor. They were generally made from valuable sacred trees, but something of that level could be grown in a greenhouse if one knew how.

“That Repliglass Blood-Sign…i-it’s for practice, n-not combat, right? Um, they use them in Government, don’t they?”

“I think it’s officially known as a Quad Motors Phosphorus. It’s for beginners, so it doesn’t have any outstanding features yet is still better than average overall. Adding my own customizations on top of it is the most effective method. Plus, a custom-made one using rare materials is a lot harder to replace if it gets damaged.”

Kyousuke answered her while carving off the bits of the tip still stuck to the Blood-Sign. Then he used the instant glue to attach a new piece of wood. He traced the blade across the side of the Blood-Sign to get rid of the glue that oozed out and the wood that stuck out too far.

Just seeing his practiced motions was enough to give Higan the general idea that he had been doing this for a long time.

Then Lu Niang Lan spoke up while operating the laptop.

“Oh, there we go, there we go. Found it. This looks fishy to me.”

“You found something, Lu-san?” asked Kyousuke while rounding off the surface of the newly-attached tip with the fine sandpaper.

The China dress beauty removed the laptop screen and held it out toward him. He took it and Higan peered in from the side.

“U-um, is this…an occult site?”

“It’s a collection of urban legends,” said Lu Niang Lan. “You can’t take these things too lightly.”

Higan did not seem to know how to respond and Kyousuke asked a question.

“Do you not use the internet much?”

“Well…my sister told me this is what, um, stole our god’s place in the world.”

Higan may not have been entirely wrong there.

“Isn’t it more accurate to say people assumed gods could appear in or descend to our world whenever they wanted, but it turned out the conditions and locations were quite limited?”

Shiroyama Kyousuke and his fellow summoners used an Incense Grenade to create an Artificial Sacred Ground before performing the summoning ceremony. That implied the existence of natural sacred grounds that did not require the “artificial” clarifier.

They could be unexplored regions like deep valleys or thick rainforests and they could be temples, sanctuaries, or cathedrals designed by human hands. It had to be more than someplace hidden from human eyes where people were forbidden to enter. They had to naturally fill people with a desire to stay out. Someone could easily peek inside one if they could, but they would never think to do so. People would decide they would be happier not knowing if the alternative was exploring somewhere like that. It was in those places the gods would appear.

“Well, the internet is certainly convenient, but being too convenient can be a problem,” said Lu Niang Lan. “You can easily search for satellite photos and you can freely explore 3D models of the pyramids. That’ll have really limited the number of beds the gods like so much.”

“Although if they’re really one of the mystical locations spoken of in our field, people will avoid digitizing them or viewing that data even if they have the technical capabilities,” said Kyousuke. “What really happened is we revealed just how few true sacred grounds there were in the first place.”

“There are a fair number of partial ones, but in those, the ''exit'' gets clogged up and it turns into a haunted spot. Although if monsters like the Kuchisake-Onna show up, that gives us more work to do.”

People no longer feared the darkness.

Or rather, they had forgotten the darkness existed.

That was a dry fact, but it meant they had no choice but to use whatever was available to them.

“Summoners and vessels aren’t perceived properly by normal people and you can even trick cameras and sensors in some situations,” said the modified China dress beauty. “But that will sometimes leave behind incomplete witness data.”

Shiroyama Kyousuke scrolled through the page and saw a list of various rumors.

There was supposedly a giant server for an online casino below the amusement park and anyone would be able to add in some malware if they located it. There was supposedly a human trafficking organization walking boldly through the crowds by mixing in with the official costumed characters. Like that, most of the rumors were the standard fare.

But he frowned when he saw one of them.

''~The Carnivore Girl~

''In an accident at Block Z’s zoo, a girl fell into the lion’s cage. She died and the lion was shot by the zookeeper, but she continues to wander this world in search of the person who pushed her in so she can feed them to the lion’s ghost.”

“Um, isn’t this talking about Aika? She generally holes up in her apartment, but she apparently goes out late at night to go for walks or bathe in the moonlight with that wild animal of hers.”

“I really wish she would stop calling herself a shut-in when she can go to the convenience store on her own. But you understand now, don’t you? Summoners and vessels aren’t properly perceived by normal people, but they can’t control how that perception shifts out of place. That’s why partial information like that will pop up from time to time.”

Lu Niang Lan tapped at one point on the screen and the text enlarged.

“But this is different. Someone’s been spreading information for damage control. And on a pretty large scale. This is on the level of the Cyber Force’s high-speed parallel servers.”

“??? Um, uh, wh-what do you mean?”

The modified China dress beauty smiled and answered Meinokawa Higan’s question.

“It means there’s a rumor containing some kind of dangerous truth that warrants this. Not that just anyone could tell by looking at this screen☆”

Lu Niang Lan belonged to Illegal, which was (according to Government Middleman Aika) a collection of criminal organizations. That was why she could acquire anything one might need. And that included the software or specialized groups needed to accurately analyze the “flow of data” on the internet that could not be fully grasped even by a company worth billions of yen that managed both the advertisement and search business.

“When Illegal is manipulating stock prices or dabbling in the kind of land speculation that doesn’t require any violence, then we’ll purposefully spread rumors online like this. But this one has nothing to do with us. And yet it has a very Illegal smell to it. Guard of Honor might be doing something while making it look like our doing.”

Shiroyama Kyousuke and Meinokawa Higan looked to the screen again and read the rumor in question.

''~Terror of the Part-Time Empire~

''Toy Dream 35 is a city of adults’ hopes and children’s dreams, but it is apparently putting a lot of effort into training its part-timers. If a part-timer treats a guest poorly and ruins the dream, their superiors will take them away. Recently, a black-haired girl in a shrine maiden outfit was seen being chased by men in work uniforms.”

“U-um, is this, um…”

Higan grew flustered and Kyousuke spoke for her.

“This is a city of costumes, so the shrine maiden outfit alone isn’t a sure thing. But since it matches your sister’s description, I think it’s worth pursuing.”

“By the way, this rumor has been blocked three times in just the past few hours. That is, from eleven at night to one in the morning. Where the ‘shrine maiden part-timer girl’ appears has been all over the place, though.”

“Wait. You mean…?”

“Yes, she’s being seen more often. Almost as if she’s purposefully making appearances.”

“Hm,” said Kyousuke as he stopped to think for a moment.

He did not know what route she was using, but Meinokawa Renge had apparently safely escaped the harbor area and was traveling between blocks. She should have been able to hide if she had a secret route like that, but she was purposefully showing herself from time to time.

If Guard of Honor was trying to block the information, then the information on her location was reaching them each time she appeared.

Why would she do something so dangerous?

After some thought, Kyousuke looked over at Higan who was staring at the laptop screen.

“Eh? Eh? Um, do you need something?”

“No,” was all he said.

Meinokawa Renge was putting herself in danger to draw Guard of Honor’s attention toward her and away from her sister Higan.

“Lu-san, I get that Meinokawa Renge is purposefully letting people see her, but is there a pattern to where and when she shows up? To put it more bluntly, where will she show up next?”

“Eight next morning in Block G.”

“Eh? Wait… Um, how do you know that?”

“Well, I’ll admit three data points is too little information to say for sure, but this city has twenty-six blocks from A to Z. If you convert the letters to number, compare them to her past appearances, and do a biiit of calculation, a simple pattern shows itself.”

“Material is summoned by spelling out the name with the Blood-Sign… I guess that ''is'' a summoner-esque dying message.”

Kyousuke tapped at the edge of the flat screen where the time and date were displayed.

“It would be difficult to get to the current point from here, so we’ll just have to wait until eight in the morning.”

“With that much time, the odds are good Guard of Honor will notice the pattern too.”

“U-um, uh, what does that mean?”

Higan was almost in tears and Kyousuke gave a simple answer.

“It’ll be a race to reach her first, like a game of beach flags.”

===Part 8===

They had the necessary equipment and they had some information to base their next move on.

Just as Shiroyama Kyousuke prepared to leave the store, Lu Niang Lan called out to him while leaning on the counter.

“Oh, right. Kyousuke-chan, why not take a side arm with you?”

“I think I’d be better off without one. It seems I’m Alice (with) Rabbit, after all.”

With that quick response, he stepped out the door. Meinokawa Higan seemed puzzled by that exchange but started to follow Kyousuke while worrying about the short skirt of her maid outfit.

“That’s fine. Higan-chan, take this just in case. Don’t let Kyousuke-chan know, though.”

She placed a military knife with a twenty centimeter blade on the counter. It was the kind with a jagged back often seen in movies. However, the grip was strange. It did not hold the blade equally on both sides. One side was longer.

“That’s a trick knife that also works as a gun. It has two shots inside. When firing, align the tip with the center line of your target’s body and press the button on the grip. But assume you can’t hit from more than ten meters away. It’s essentially a replacement for a blade that’s fired by a spring.”

“Eh? Eh? Wait, um…!?”

Higan was confused. She belonged to the world of the insane fights to the death known as summoning ceremonies, but the term “gun” filled her with an entirely different sense of rejection. It was strange, but a part of her still saw herself as existing within this country’s laws.

Her mind subconsciously searched for an excuse to not take it.

“Um, uh, I thought normal weapons didn’t work on a summoner inside the Material’s protective circle.”

“That’s true. But let me tell you something that I’ve already accepted.”

“?”

“Long ago, I killed a summoner with this. At the time, they were Government Award 1000.”

That was enough to shock Higan.

Not only a summoner, but a Thousand Eater who held the greatest power of one of the three groups. Their affiliation would supposedly shift from this world to the other world and they would create new legends as a resident of ''the other side''. Higan and her sister could never hope to defeat someone like that at their best, but this woman had killed them with nothing more than a modified handgun?

The modified China dress beauty laughed.

“To be blunt, I was forced to be their vessel. It was pretty awful. I really was living in a cage with a collar around my neck. I was sick of that life, so at the very, very end, I saw an opening, killed them, and ran off.”

Lu Niang Lan belonged to Illegal.

According to Government, that was a collection of criminal organizations.

“That’s why I don’t believe in the assumption that only summoners can kill summoners. You’ll find plenty of opportunities depending on the methods you’re using. I may be an exception known as the Perfect Dragon, but that isn’t something only I can do. It’s best to be on your guard.”

“…”

“Especially with high Award summoners like Kyousuke-kun, you’ll often find yourself relying on him no matter what. So you take that. You aren’t a customer or a guest anymore; you’re half of Alice (with) Rabbit. You need to compensate for the things he can’t do.”

The woman gave a thin smile.

Meinokawa Higan thought she had a point, but her hand still wandered hesitantly through the air.

“And there’s also the circumstances for tonight in particular. You might find yourself in need of some simple self-defense.”

“?”

“Kyousuke-chan lives alone in a cruiser, but where do you think you’re going to end up sleeping tonight? And with nothing underneath that miniskirt maid outfit, no less.”

Higan grabbed the trick knife so quickly she nearly set it off right there.

===Part 9===

Toy Dream 35 was a metropolis bordering the ocean. Its nightscape encroached on the dark sea as well as the land. This was due to the many ships. The small ones were boats meant to transport personnel and equipment or cruisers used as villas. The large ones were tankers and luxury cruise ships that could circumnavigate the globe.

One of the ships was especially large.

It was the Princess Azalea.

It was said the capacity of a CD had been decided because it could hold the entirety of one of Beethoven’s symphonies, but something similar could be said about this cruise ship. The bridges of major port cities around the world – New York, Shanghai, Sydney, Copenhagen, Kobe, Singapore, etc. – had been modified so this ship could just barely pass through. It had begun operation ten years before to celebrate the high society debut of a single mysterious girl, but it was well known that even the water gates of the Panama Canal had been widened for the appearance of the ship.

That legend summed up the influence of the world-famous American defense contractor Quad Motors.

However…

“Milady,” said the gentle voice of an old butler.

Azalea Magentarain sat next to a convenience store trashcan munching on Whitefish Night’s Fried Fish, a popular hot snack. With the exception of the character illustration on the cardboard packaging, there was no creativity whatsoever in the product. If the maids waiting back on the cruise ship had seen this, they might have fainted.

“If you are hungry, shouldn’t we return to the ship?”

“No, thanks. Everyone’s too strict there.”

She tossed the cardboard packaging in the plastic bag and pulled out a cheap spring roll instead.

“Seventy-eight yen each and made with entirely unknown ingredients. No lengthy menu and no bragging chef. Ahh, now this is the ultimate thrill. I could never eat something like this back home.”

“You are incorrigible, milady.”

“Just to make sure, you are going to keep this a secret, aren’t you? If my family found out about this, they’d punish me with a detailed medical examination that very day,” said Azalea as her small tongue licked up the grease on her thumb. “Any word on Freedom Award 902?”

“I apologize. We are putting in every possible effort to gather information, but…”

“Well, yelling at you isn’t going to make them appear.”

Even the old butler’s eyes sharpened when he saw Azalea’s slender hand reach for the plastic bottle of soda sitting directly on the ground, but Azalea was clearly enjoying that reaction as she gulped down the drink.

“Rather than chasing after them, we should chase after what they want. I received a report on Meinokawa Higan when she was brought under Government’s protection.”

“It seems Guard of Honor is also taking action concerning them…”

“Then this is business as usual. Either way, a summoner can’t reveal their true value without beginning a battle. As I defeat enemy after enemy after enemy after enemy after enemy, I’ll come across Alice (with) Rabbit eventually.”

She held the fizzing bottle up in front of her eyes and pictured an imaginary image inside the translucent liquid.

“Doesn’t that seem like the first worthwhile target in a while?”

She desired a powerful target, but she gave no real thought to the target itself.

There was something else that excited her.

“The peak of the Unexplored-class…the White Queen. It’s been so long since I came across a delicious target that won’t ''be crushed'' before I can summon her.”

Beyond the Regulation-class and Divine-class was the Unexplored-class.

A certain Material was said to be the most powerful of that class and thus her popularity approached the level of worship.

She was known as the White Queen.

As the summoners of Government, Illegal, and Freedom honed their skills to crush each other, they had ironically cast aside the Three at the peaks of the low, middle, and high sounds and instead named her the most powerful.

When it came down to it, a battle was not a one-on-one affair to Azalea.

It was a stage on which she alone would shine.

And the most wonderful performance of all was to dance with the beautiful White Queen.

That inhuman beauty would complete that one-night-only performance in a way that could never be captured by a painting or sculpture. That was Golden Luxury’s reason for existing in this world.

“Really, that is your biggest bad habit.”

“Call it the true essence of the summoning ceremony. It’s obvious why our combat-focused techniques can summon the gods and the Unexplored-class beyond them: combat is beautiful enough to draw them to us. Isn’t that right?”

That was why she spent so much money and used so many personnel and yet never left the conclusion to her subordinates. In a game of chess, she would have been the king, but she would charge right into the enemy lines.

It was all to stage the most beautiful battle.

No matter how much risk it entailed, she would choose to stand before an enemy powerful enough to rival her.

“I am truly, truly hoping you can last long enough for me to reach the White Queen, Alice (with) Rabbit.”

===Part 10===

The next morning arrived.

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

“Why aren’t you sleeping? And after I let you have the bed, too.”

Shiroyama Kyousuke had tried to get what sleep he could by placing the kitchen table’s chairs next to each other. He asked his question while cracking his back, but Meinokawa Higan did not answer him.

She was filling her cupped hands with tap water and washing her face that still looked discouraged. On a cruiser, fresh water was fairly valuable. Basically, mineral water was pumped into a tank. Although there were reports saying Toy Dream 35’s tap water taken from a Repliglass bacteria pool was of higher quality than commercial water bottles.

“Next up is our ‘Trend Catcher!!’ section where we discuss cutting-edge technology and the latest products. Today, we will be discussing the Logical Cables everyone has been talking about lately. Have any of you ever had trouble with your electric cords getting all tangles up at home? But prepare to be amazed! These Logical Cables will untangle themselves even if they’re as tangled as an afro!!”

“But Tomcat-chan, aren’t these made from Repliglass!? That was originally a military product, so surely it has to be expensive. …Huh? It’s this cheap???”

(Honestly, that stuff is showing up everywhere these days.)

Kyousuke listened to the cat costume and the female announcer (he could not remember her nickname) on the TV as he poured cereal and milk into two large bowls and prepared a salad from the ingredients in the fridge.

“We have at most two more days. After eating this, let’s pursue that rumor about the ‘part-time girl’ that’s probably your sister.”

“R-right. We need to find her as soon as we can.”

Higan clenched her small fists.

“And you need rice and miso soup for a proper breakfast.”

“Yeah, well cereal and damp bread is all I’ve got.”

“B-but I didn’t expect a legendary summoner to, um, buy Tomcat-chan cereal.”

“This is Toy Dream 35. Everything from toilet paper to molester-repellent spray is branded with some kind of character or another. It’s harder to find something without an illustration on it.”

To add some more flavor, Kyousuke put a single scoop of plain yogurt in his bowl.

“I-I see…”

“Why are you so on edge? None of this is genetically modified if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Our shrine performs doll funerals, so I don’t really like seeing all these mass-produced character goods that just get thrown out. Nothing’s scarier than a smile buried in mud…”

While Higan preferred Japanese food, her empty stomach won out and she stuck a silver spoon into her large bowl of cereal.

Before taking the first bite, she muttered something under her breath.

“Oh, White Queen. Thank you for the happiness of having food at the table for another day.”

“You’re praying again?”

“I-I’m a shrine maiden, so of course I am. Didn’t I tell you the White Queen is our shrine’s unofficial second god?”

“I understand wanting to rely on her when she’s known as the strongest, but you should be focusing on the entire summoning ceremony system more than a single temporary Material.”

“B-but…”

Higan took a bite of the cereal and then reached for the bottle of honey on the table.

“The name on this boat’s side is the White Queen.”

“And you have no idea how much I regret that. If I’d known how hard it is to change a boat’s name once it’s been registered, I never would have given it that name.”

Higan was puzzled by the way he seemed to spit out the words, but he changed the subject before she could find an answer.

“Oh, right. We need to do something about ‘that’ once you finish eating.”

“?”

“I’m talking about that.”

Kyousuke used his spoon to point toward the floor where the seawater-soaked shrine maiden outfit was soaking in a tub of water.

Toy Dream 35 was a giant amusement park filled with hopes and dreams, but it of course had the stores needed for daily life in addition to the souvenir shops and official fashion shops.

But Meinokawa Higan spoke up as soon as they entered the laundromat they found on the way to the nearest station.

“Oh, um, we can’t use this.”

“…Why not?”

She was looking at the synthetic detergent, not the washing machine.

“My sister said our outfits are dyed using the rubia plant, so u-using something like this will, um, wash the color out.”

“Then what kind of detergent can we use?”

“I think everything ''like this'' is off limits.”

Kyousuke held his head in his hands.

It was looking like they could not use the laundromat.

“So let me get this straight. To wash this thing, we have to use expensive dry cleaning? In this city that prices everything at hotel levels?”

“I…guess so.”

“And with the special hand-washing option needed for a kimono or dress!?”

“It would be, um, m-meaningless otherwise.”

“That costs too much. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………I guess we’ll have to give up on that.”

“?”

Meinokawa Higan blankly tilted her head and he gave what might as well have been a death sentence to a girl who was still wearing a miniskirt maid outfit.

“On buying you some panties.”

Ten minutes later, Shiroyama Kyousuke held the receipt from the dry cleaners they had dropped the shrine maiden outfit off at as soon as it had opened.

He had also been hit over and over by Meinokawa Higan whose entire face was beet red.

“Wh-why!? Um, how could this have happened!?”

“One: I got some Incense Grenades and information at Lu-san’s place. That’s an Illegal business, so it isn’t cheap. Two: this is an amusement park city, so pretty much everything is expensive. Three: hand-washing traditional Japanese clothing requires an expert, so it’s super expensive!! Just to be clear, my savings are pretty much down to zero now. Zero! Once my fridge is empty, I’m going to have to catch some dinner with a fishing rod!”

“B-but I thought you were Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit!!”

“I’ve been using up all of my savings without doing any work for about half a year now. Got a problem with that? Besides, before taking issue with my financial situation, how about you take a look in your own wallet!?”

“Uuh… B-but we had our shrine taken away because of our debt…”

“Um… Just out of curiosity, how did you and your sister even get to Toy Dream 35? Surely you have some spare clothes at the hotel or apartment you were staying at.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………We don’t have anything like that.”

“Don’t tell me you were living in a home of newspaper and cardboard… That’s just sad.”

“S-say a word more and, um, I might not be able to control myself.”

Nevertheless, they could not spend money they did not have and she could not wear panties she did not have.

She nearly accepted her fate, but then something occurred to her.

“Huh? There is a way!! Y-you can sell that cruiser!”

“Hell no!! Surely you don’t think I’m crazy enough to sell my home to buy some panties!”

And thus Meinokawa Higan was forced to continue her strategy of utter defenselessness.

“Once this is over, you should probably go running to Government or Illegal and accept a few small jobs. At this rate, you’ll be digging through the trash for food.”

“U-uuh… D-do you have to, um, verbally attack me like that?”

“Yes, I do! We’re supposed to be a pair, but I feel like one side isn’t exactly supporting the other much!”

===Part 11===

It was 7:58 in front of Block G’s monorail station. The city’s ground had been intentionally submerged and all of the roads floated in the air like elevated highways or giant land bridges. The plaza in front of the monorail station was large enough for a basketball court, but it too was not solid land.

At this time, the people on the way to work or school were mixed in with the tourists who had gotten up early. But that area in front of peaceful Block G’s monorail station was also a delicate “powder keg” where multiple summoners were prepared to clash head-on.

“I-it’s about time…isn’t it?” asked Meinokawa Higan while holding down her maid outfit’s short skirt with both hands.

She was standing out more due to her fidgeting than her clothing, but Kyousuke held his tongue because he knew telling her that would not help.

“B-but how is, um, my sister moving around? I-I was found by Government right away.”

“She’s probably using the staff-only pathways,” calmly answered Kyousuke. “There are apparently tons of passageways spread out through the city like a spider web to quickly transport supplies, trash, and famous people who might cause a scene if they were in the public eye. Some are undersea tunnels, some run through the giant land bridges, and so on. I don’t know all the detail myself, but it’s the hidden side of this land of dreams.”

But Renge had used those to survive until morning.

Although no one knew how long that would last.

“Assuming Guard of Honor isn’t filled with complete idiots, they’ll be hiding around here somewhere. …Your sister Renge and the people pursuing her are both here somewhere, so focus.”

The target was a human being and lives were on the line.

The ultimate game of beach flags would soon begin.

Meinokawa Renge had long black hair and smooth white skin, so no one could have looked more at home in a shrine maiden outfit. She was near the plaza in front of Block G’s monorail station, but she was actually on a different land bridge passing directly above that plaza. She was extremely close, but she would never cross paths with Kyousuke or Higan.

A weird costumed character that kept saying “gozaru” cheerfully passed her by.

She had an extremely simple reason for being here.

She was intentionally following a pattern to capture Guard of Honor’s attention. That would allow Higan at least to escape their information network.

(It scares me that my connection with her was severed, but I can’t go searching for her now. If I chase after her, I might lead Guard of Honor right to her. I can only trust that she’s alive and keep doing what I’m doing!!)

She would do anything for her sister.

Their opponent was skilled and this cheap attempt to remain on the run would not last forever, so she wanted to be of some use instead of dying a worthless death. She wanted to protect her family.

She had resolved herself to that, and yet…

(Why is Higan here!?)

Renge crouched behind the concrete railing to make sure she could not be seen from below.

This defeated the entire purpose of her acting as bait. Guard of Honor would soon close in on Renge, but Higan was here too.

Plus…

(And why is she wearing a miniskirt maid outfit???)

That question only brought further questions.

(Plus, who is that boy standing next to her? Eh? Don’t tell me that’s…a new summoner!? Is that why her connection with me was severed? But a contract can’t be forced through threats or hypnotism, so, um…)

Those questions brought further confusion.

(Absolute consent is needed. But that means he could have deceived her like a host chatting up women in a host club… D-don’t tell me that bastard laid his hands on my cute little Higan!!)

She nearly forgot her situation as anger flared up inside her.

“Found you☆”

But then she heard the sound of creaking metal.

The wave of pedestrians naturally opened on either side to avoid “her”.

It was a young woman wearing a light pink nurse outfit. However, her fingernails were painted a venomous color and a single tuft of her long, loose hair was dyed deep red. Both were unhygienic things an actual nurse would never do.

However, the entire city of Toy Dream 35 was an amusement park, so a costume was not going to gather much attention. The attention was drawn by something else.

The sound of creaking metal continued.

One of her hands held an IV stand with wheels. The transparent tube led to a girl in a plain, long-sleeved navy blue sailor uniform. The skirt was long and the legs poking out were covered in black tights. But very few people would think of the words “delicate” or “slender” upon seeing her. The words in their mind would be far more frail, devastating, and hopeless. They would be similar to the thoughts of someone seeing an old tree that had started to rot from within.

The girl swayed unsteadily on her feet as if she did not even have the willpower to remain standing. If some third party followed the nursing instructions and supported her back while tugging gently on her hand, she would probably have followed them to the ends of the earth.

They were a summoner and vessel.

The summoner went by Guard of Honor’s shared name of Uniquely Selfless. She was the skilled summoner who had summoned the Unexplored-class Lady of “Purple Lightning” that Separates Good from Evil (iu – ao – eu – ei – kub – miq – a – ci – pl) on a cruiser at the harbor. …However, she had used up more than fifty vessels to reach this point.

The vessel’s head continued lolling unsteadily and she did not speak a word, but that was hardly surprising when the drug in the IV kept her mind muddy twenty-four hours a day. The nameless girl probably had no idea she was a vessel.

The effect was technically somewhat different, but it may have been similar to pharmaceutically recreating the hopeless trance that left someone only able to smile a little as the final calamity of defeat approached. But here, it continued indefinitely.

“Meinokawa Renge sighted☆ And if she’s been sighted, then I’m close enough to use this☆☆☆”

The Uniquely Selfless in the nurse uniform grinned and let her slender fingers crawl along her own thigh.

She pulled a metal can from her skirt.

It was an Incense Grenade.

Summoner Meinokawa Renge did not currently have the vessel needed to summon Material, so she would be killed by even the weakest Material at a cost of one.

The enemy summoner licked her lips that were covered in an excessive amount of lipstick and she pulled the IV needle from the girl’s arm. That was another sign of the coming battle. In her long life, the vessel only had any awareness during the few minutes of a battle. To that ignorant girl, that life may have seemed like a fragment of a psychedelic nightmare.

“Hee hee☆ Ahh, I knewwww it☆ This moment when I hold a human life in my hands☆☆☆ This is the moment of ultimate bliss☆ Ha ha ha☆ Ah ha☆ Ha ha☆☆ Ah ha ha ha☆ Ah ha☆☆☆ Ah ha☆☆ Ah ha ha☆ Ah ha ha ha☆☆☆☆ Ah ha☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆”

But then she heard a girl’s voice as clear as a bell slip into her ears from behind.

“Oh? If you really want to take your cruelty to the next level, you need to create some benefit to society so its value will be widely accepted, don’t you think? …For example, like this.”

A rumbling burst out.

It was over in less than fifteen seconds.

===Part 12===

Shiroyama Kyousuke heard the whistling of something slicing through the air as it slowly rotated. The people in the plaza had started screaming and fleeing in confusion after an explosion directly above, but that quieter noise sounded oddly loud to his ears and heart.

Meinokawa Higan looked up without thinking.

At that exact moment, a woman in a nurse outfit fell from the giant land bridge crossing above the plaza.

A dull, soft sound followed.

Despite falling solidly onto her back, the woman forgot to choke and continued making a single action. She was not holding a Blood-Sign, but she slowly continued miming the act of striking something with one again and again.

“Kh!!”

Kyousuke took Higan’s hand and began to run.

He nearly leaped forward to hide below the land bridge running by overhead.

Higan looked like she was going to ask a question, so he covered her mouth with a hand and held his breath.

He heard a pure girl’s voice. In fact, it was so pure it sounded like it would kill germs.

The speaker was likely looking down at the plaza from above. And from the sound of her voice, she was speaking over a cellphone or radio.

“Yes, yes. I defeated them. It was Guard of Honor’s…well, it’s a little confusing since they’re all called Uniquely Selfless. Anyway, this is the eighth one. It’s so easy I’m having trouble holding back a yawn.”

(That voice. Government Award 930, Golden Luxury!?)

Shiroyama Kyousuke gulped with his hand still covering Meinokawa Higan’s mouth.

The timing could not have been worse.

Like the ally of justice Government was meant to be, they must have used their own information network to hunt down Guard of Honor. But the enemy of your enemy was not necessarily your friend. Kyousuke and Higan had already given Azalea Magentarain a reason to fight them.

Meinokawa Renge was nearby.

And Guard of Honor may have sent more than the one summoner.

If Golden Luxury noticed them while speaking on the phone, she would probably use a Material even in this crowd. Who could say how far the damage would spread.

“I’ll leave it to you to pick up the trash. How about putting her through a strength test to see how far you have to go before she tells you everything?”

Whatever the case, they could not afford to begin a battle here. Meeting up with Meinokawa Renge came first and then they needed to focus on safely leaving this place.

“Is this necessary? Of course it is. I am Government Award 930. Are you sure you haven’t misjudged my value?”

“(M-my sister was there…)”

In his arms, Maid Higan looked up at Kyousuke and pleaded quietly to him.

It was an earnest plea.

“(When I looked up before, I saw my sister there! We have to do something!!)”

“(Wait. …Something isn’t right.)”

Kyousuke felt a scorching sensation on the back of his neck as Azalea continued speaking overhead.

“You all have talent that rookies do not, but there is too much variation in that talent and not everyone is going to earn a passing grade. Don’t you think we need to weed the failures out at some point? With a large plan, even the smallest mistake could lead to it all falling apart.”

He had assumed Golden Luxury was speaking with a Government contact, but she was not.

“If they can keep me from catching up to them, we know other members of Government can’t catch up to them either. We are in the process of carrying out a delicate plan, so they need to be able to accomplish at least that much. Anyone caught by my network would be caught and tortured by other members of Government. You should thank me that they were only caught ''in this practice run''. If this was a real fight to the death, those incompetent grunts would have been defeated, thrown in a dark room, and tortured for every detail of our plan.”

Azalea Magentarain was speaking with someone else entirely.

===Part 13===

With a cellphone in hand, someone walked past the workers inspecting and restoring the destroyed harbor area. It did not matter that the area was open only to authorized personnel. By the time the workers tried to warn them, those normal people had already unnaturally forgotten this person even existed.

That did not matter to this person.

They had lost the concept of individuality even more than when they had gone by the name Uniquely Selfless.

However, this person spoke quietly.

“The organization has changed quite a bit since you arrived.”

“Oh? I have no interest in talk of hierarchy or the new and the old. We are equally Uniquely Selfless, after all.”

“I see. So I’m supposed to take consolation in the fact that you have changed as well? You are definitely not a queen.”

The person gave an emotionless laugh with no hint of enjoyment in their face.

“As you said, Guard of Honor needs to weed out the weaker elements that could trip up the organization as a whole. And a top member of Government, the world police who know quite well ''how official pursuit is carried out'', would be perfect for that job. But you haven’t forgotten about pursuing the escapees, have you? That too is of utmost important.”

“Yes, yes. I have already restrained Meinokawa Renge. I had to be very careful to make sure I didn’t kill her in one blow, though.”

The summoners did not bother hiding their voices.

They and everything they said would be erased from the people’s memories before long anyway.

===Part 14===

“Did you take me for the kind of fool that loses sight of her primary task while taking a detour? She’s lying handcuffed on the ground, so come collect her.”

“(They were…connected?)”

Kyousuke frowned.

From there, his expression grew more and more serious.

“(No, that isn’t it. …Doesn’t this mean Golden Luxury changed her nickname to Uniquely Selfless quite a while ago!?)”

“Now.”

The girl’s voice suddenly stabbed into his ears.

But this time it was clearly directed toward him.

“If we are willing to attack our own to secure our safety, did you really think we would let a wild rabbit like you escape, Freedom Award 902, Alice (with) Rabbit!?”

(Why would she throw away her current position to join Guard of Honor? No, I don’t have time to be questioning this now!!)

He clicked his tongue, released Higan from his arms, and spoke.

“We can’t hide any longer. Higan, are you prepared to work with me? We need to defeat Government Award 930…no, Guard of Honor’s Uniquely Selfless!!”

“O-okay!!”

The blonde girl and her aged butler dropped down from the sky.

Shiroyama Kyousuke raced forward like a bullet in the instant they landed and absorbed the shock with their knees. He pulled the long Blood-Sign from his back, extended it, and thrust the tip toward the center of the girl’s neck that seemed more fragile than glass. This was the same as crushing someone’s throat with the flat tip of a wooden sword. The full-strength strike of the military Repliglass Blood-Sign was clearly a killing technique.

A dull sound burst out.

But the girl was unharmed. The butler had calmly stepped in front of Azalea and crossed his arms to block the Blood-Sign strike.

The old man spoke to his master without the slightest change to his expression.

“Milady.”

“Yes, let’s get started.”

A solid sound followed those words. An Incense Grenade had fallen straight to Azalea’s feet and the pin remained in her hand.

“Kh!?”

Kyousuke grabbed the middle of the long Blood-Sign with both hands and used both ends to make repeated strikes from a variety of angles. He was trying to knock the Incense Grenade into the distance before it exploded, but the butler acted as a barrier and would not let any attack through. Also, Azalea poked her slender fingertip into the face of the collapsed nurse to guide her toward the boy. Before the slowly-moving figure could get in the way, Kyousuke swung the tip of his Blood-Sign near her nurse’s face to send that loser walking in a different direction. Fractal Leskins’s arms moved swiftly and nearly grabbed the Blood-Sign, so Kyousuke clicked his tongue and jumped back.

Only a few seconds had passed, but he had missed his final chance.

With a light bursting sound, an Artificial Sacred Ground explosively filled the area.

“We are both in the 900s.”

A pink ribbon wrapped in a large reel whipped through empty space and become a 150 cm rod. The girl known as a golden bird of prey grabbed the Blood-Sign from the air with one hand and gave a fierce smile.

“Truly high-quality fruits are most delicious when eaten without any kind of preparation, don’t you think? I have set this rare stage, so don’t try anything crass and let me enjoy this.”

The effect would only last ten minutes.

The gate to true hell had opened for one-sixth of an hour.

===Part 15===

As soon as the two of them clashed, the giant land bridge directly above the plaza crumbled. The summoners had their protective circles, so mere rubble was not going to kill them. The dust was simply meant to block Kyousuke’s view and prevent him from using his Blood-Sign.

Meanwhile, Golden Luxury took action.

“Un.”

Her voice ruled the battlefield.

“Deux.”

Like a Buddhist priest’s bell, the mere sound seemed to drive out evil.

“Trois.”

It was a pure voice.

It was frightening.

Meinokawa Higan had become the Original Red (b), which cost one low sound. It was a three meter tall mass of red sticky liquid. The girl’s thoughts had nearly ground to a halt when she saw the reality that accompanied that adorable voice.

“Un, deux, trois.”

Azalea Magentarain’s actions were simple.

She merely used her Blood-Sign to launch all three of her initial white spheres of light known as White Thorns.

But she was very accurate. Almost too accurate.

“Un, deux, trois. Un, deux, trois. …Un, deux, trois.”

Looking just at their paths, they drew a large rectangle that spanned the Artificial Sacred Ground. The White Thorns she had launched returned accurately to herself. They came to a stop with a slight spin and her Blood-Sign would sharply strike them once more.

As a result…

<She’s…not using up her White Thorns!? She’s endlessly hitting the White Thorns that come back to, um, remain on the attack indefinitely without having to worry about her remaining stock!?>

[[Image:BloodSign_v01_204.jpg|thumb]]

As a vessel, Higan had become one with the Material that had both an inhumanly large body and a bizarrely artistic appearance, but her heart was filled with very human fear.

A dance of crimson light exploded in that tiny world along with a broken song that destroyed the psyche of all who heard it and that sounded like someone banging their hands on a piano’s keys. The dance and song continued endlessly without any kind of break.

White Thorns that came to a stop would naturally vanish.

But if they were hit by the Blood-Sign again within the three seconds before they vanished, they could be reused. Some summoners tried running around the large Artificial Sacred Ground to reach the White Thorn’s stopping point before it arrived.

<But th-that doesn’t always work. Th-they only go for the ones they think they can actually reach. But, um, th-this person is doing it with 100% accuracy!?>

Even as the number of White Thorns grew, her accuracy did not change.

All the while, her additional stock was being replenished every ten seconds.

The White Thorns did not just strike the walls and floor.

They also hit the Petals that carved out the names of Material with the low, middle, and high sounds as consonants and lowest sounds as vowels. Whenever the Petals collided with each other or fell into a Spot, they produced a crazed rhythm with their respective sounds, further escalating the broken song.

<With this…like this…w-we can never catch up by, um, hitting individual Petals into the Spots with individual White Thorns like normal! She’s way too fast!!>

Higan’s focus turned to her summoner partner.

It may have been a form of escapism to reject the dizzying fear before her eyes.

Needless to say, Shiroyama Kyousuke had not been sitting idly by as all this happened.

He was constantly making the quickest and shortest movements to hit the White Thorns and knock various Petals into the Spots. Sometimes he knocked two or three Petals in at once. As a vessel, Meinokawa Higan could only watch the summoner’s skill and she was truly impressed.

She became a giant umbrella with fangs covering the outer edge while the old butler became a goddess statue filled with murderous gimmicks. There was a great serpent made of several chains, an automaton created by sewing together human skin, an old tome covered in countless eyeballs, a gear with a giant smile plastered on the side, and a dinosaur not found in any encyclopedia. Both sides’ Materials were changing in the blink of an eye.

But they could not catch up.

Kyousuke was controlling a single White Thorn at a time, so he was not standing in the same realm of speed as Azalea who constantly controlled several White Thorns as if juggling them.

“!!”

“Oh, dear. What seems to be the matter? Where has the supposedly imperturbable Alice (with) Rabbit gone?”

When it came down to it, the summoning ceremony was a battle between Materials.

Their strength was determined by the sound range and by the cost, aka the number of Petals hit into the Spots.

Both of those factors came down to how well the White Thorns were manipulated by the Blood-Sign.

If one was accurate yet took time to hit the Petals, they might be overwhelmed by pure numbers.

If one hit a lot of Petals but had poor aim, they might be outdone by accurate and efficient movements.

But how was one to face an opponent who had both strengths and cast aside both weaknesses?

Was there even a way of doing that?

<Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???>

There was a winged alligator, a giant face made of stone, a jellyfish giving off a putrid stench, and finally just a vague mass that was changing forms too quickly to see. It unleashed a barrage on Meinokawa Higan’s temporary form, a giant suit of armor, and she was torn into again and again. The Silhouette contained inside – the soft outline of her body – was just about to be exposed.

She could not even fight a defensive battle as she reflexively held up her arms to protect her face. Kyousuke used the most effective sound range to suppress the damage as much as possible, but the difference in cost had grown to more than ten. Normally, a hit or two would be enough to destroy her.

Nevertheless, Higan had yet to lose, and that was due to Kyousuke’s skill. When he saw Higan was just about to be defeated, he would bring her to her next Material form, providing her a new body. That way, he prevented the damage from severing Higan’s mind at the core.

It was forceful, but even with a liter package of blood, a blood transfusion could not be made without first harming the individual to shed their blood. Kyousuke was waiting until she had bled right up to the limit, providing a transfusion, waiting for her to bleed right up to the limit again, providing another transfusion, and repeating the process. He was only making sure she never lost a fatal amount of blood.

“Alice (with) Rabbit Shiroyama Kyousuke. …Since you threw the glove at me, I did some research on you.”

The girl smiled thinly while accurately controlling well over ten White Thorns with just the one Blood-Sign.

“Once you hear someone ask for ‘help’, you will end up saving everything and everyone, as if a switch has been thrown. You do not keep a single vessel and instead make a contract with someone you come across who possesses the necessary qualities before releasing them to the sunny side of the world. …The flaw in your insistence on saving everyone you lay eyes on is not that your results do not live up to that ideal. In fact, the problem is that you are too perfect, isn’t it?”

“Kh.”

“Yes, that’s right, isn’t it? Saving everything is really no different from someone who cannot clean up their room or throw anything away. So when you try to save the world, you end up saving more than necessary and end up with piles of chaos around you. Even if each individual element is desirable, as a whole, it does nothing but harm, doesn’t it?”

“You seem to know about me, but I barely know anything about you.”

They clashed at close range.

The two summoners pressed their protective circles together while glaring sharply at each other.

“You’re Government Award 930 and the daughter of Quad Motors’s president. What possible complaint could you have with the public side or the hidden side of that? I can’t imagine why you would throw all of that away to join Guard of Honor!!”

“Oh, dear. Are you serious? Do you really think the ‘normal’ way of looking at things has any bearing on our world?”

Azalea giggled, but accurately called countless White Thorns back to her.

“My position on the public stage? The number of dollar bills I own? What value does any of that have when we are immediately forgotten by earth’s entire population? If I want something, I can grab it from the store. If I don’t like someone, I can kill them in public. I can ‘normally’ accomplish those things. …''And in the same way, no one will care even if I do take things from them,''” said Azalea. “More importantly, is there any real meaning in summoner Awards? You’ve reached 902 in Freedom, so you should understand that.”

“…”

“Reaching Award 1000 reverses your affiliation between this world and the other world, so you will begin writing a new legend ''on the other side''? Hah! Not likely! Some morons who might as well be amateurs will carelessly say they’re so close once they reach the 900s, but you know that isn’t going to happen, don’t you? The Awards grow much harder to earn when there are so few left. That unimaginable difficulty makes me wonder if it was intentionally made to be impossible in order to create an upper limit for summoners. But if I change sides in hopes of earning Awards, I’d be treated as a traitor in this cramped field. You’re left blocked on all sides, yet they still tell you to simply earn the rest of the Awards.”

“I knew Government Award 1000. Although they were killed by ''a certain woman'' before making the reversal from this world and the other world.”

“Those are only the cheaters who know how to erase all the secrets and rumors about them as they walk freely between the three major powers. In the end, the human rulers and the Three have rigged the system so only those they approve of becoming a god can reach 1000, don’t you think?”

“That person’s brutal strength was nothing as soft as that,” muttered Kyousuke under his breath.

Azalea continued with a muddy look in her eyes.

“Why does the rose symbol used for summoning use the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet instead of the standard twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet? Why is the symbolism consistent between the Rose, Petals, and White Thorns, yet the Spot is not? The logic and rules must have been constructed for someone’s convenience. There must have been someone who benefited from it. It’s wrong to think you can reach 1000 and cross that line just by following their rules.”

Even as she spat out these words, Azalea showed no sign of regret.

It was as if she truly had cast aside her position as Golden Luxury, Government’s ace.

“And on top of all that, there is no objective way to confirm where the Thousand Eaters actually end up. Is ''the other side'' really an otherworldly heaven? Are they even going to ''the other side''? We have no idea, so it’s only natural to be hesitant to jump right in, don’t you think?”

Shiroyama Kyousuke had a bad feeling about this.

There was something decidedly bad about what Azalea was going to say.

“That is why we have searched for a more definite and simpler method of confirming that for all to see.”

She let out a soft giggle.

“So we have searched for a way of remaining eternally with the gods without relying on anything as uncertain as going to the ''other side''.”

Azalea Magentarain clearly stated her conclusion.

“''Yes. We were searching for the method used in the miracle that you alone once successfully created.''”

“…!!!!!!”

A dull sound rang out.

It was the sound of Kyousuke gripping his primary weapon as a summoner so tightly it nearly broke.

“Hee hee. Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Do I detect a disturbance in your strokes? We do not have your level of genius, but we have gathered the techniques we need to reach that former genius. So we no longer need a genius. Knowing that it is indeed possible by human hands is more than enough, don’t you think?”

<Wh-what?>

Even as her temporary body was incessantly torn into, Meinokawa Higan forgot her pain.

A greater question was rising within her.

<She is…no, um, you two are t-talking about ''a world I’m not familiar with''. Wh-what are you two talking about?>

“You understand nothing.”

Supposedly imperturbable Kyousuke spoke so fiercely it sounded like he was spitting out blood.

His eyes were not focused on the present world. He was shaken ''in that world Higan was unfamiliar with.

“There is no paradise or joy beyond ‘there’. That only leads to bottomless despair!!”

“Ha ha. That’s fine☆ We too wish to stand on the kind stage that lets us speak such superhuman phrases!!”

The movements of Azalea’s White Thorns grew even more skillful.

Her Material changed form again and again as it attacked Meinokawa Higan.

They could not win like this.

Kyousuke directly faced that dizzying reality and also quickly searched for a way to win.

(Uniquely Selfless…the former Golden Luxury specializes in ricocheting a set number of White Thorns back toward herself to remove the quantity limit without using them up.)

“You need to summon one hundred Regulation-class to summon a Divine-class and you need to summon fifty Divine-class to summon an Unexplored-class. Honestly, doesn’t that system seem so very annoying? Your average summoner is defeated before I can reach the Unexplored-class.”

(She uses the floor, walls, streetlights, vending machines, and anything else inside the Artificial Sacred Ground. She also often uses the boundaries of the Artificial Sacred Ground itself.)

“That is why I have high hopes for you.”

(Not all of the Materials she uses are all that large. Although I don’t know if that’s due to her personal tastes or because she doesn’t want to destroy the terrain if she can avoid it.)

“With your level of endurance, you might just last long enough for me to reach the peak of the Unexplored-class, the ‘White’ Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth (iu – nu – fb – a – wuh – ei –kx – eu – pl – vjz)!!”

Kyousuke ignored her nonsense and sucked in a quick breath while using his Blood-Sign.

The fighting spirit in his eyes grew sharper.

“In that case, can you use ‘this’?”

===Part 16===

One level above, the shrine maiden girl named Meinokawa Renge groaned on the edge of the destroyed land bridge running above the plaza.

With a click, the handcuffs unlocked behind her back.

Unlike the locks on front doors or safes, handcuff locks were generally quite simplified. If one was used to it, they could open it with a hairpin.

“Did they really think they didn’t have to worry about me if they put these on me?” spat out Renge as she rubbed her freed wrists. “Do they watch too many movies?”

The work had taken a few minutes, but even that felt like too much.

Her one and only sister was literally having her life worn away nearby.

That was the family member Renge had tried to save even if it meant throwing away her own life.

(Dammit… They’ve been fighting a completely defensive battle for a while now.)

Renge clenched her teeth as she watched from above.

The boy paired with Higan was far from weak. In fact, he was easily a few levels more skilled a summoner than Renge. He was using the Petals up at tremendous speed. New Roses were appearing and breaking apart into Petals quite frequently. Out of the 216 Petals of a Rose, there were seven each of the consonants. If all of a consonant or all of a vowel was used up, a new Rose would appear. Renge knew that rule, but she rarely saw it in action outside of a long match created by using several chains in a row.

But even then, he could not catch up to his opponent. The girl with reddish blonde ringlet curls used an unlimited strategy with unbelievable speed. Her Material grew stronger without end, so even if Higan was far from weak, she looked weak as she was torn to shreds. Her monstrous body was frequently broken apart to the extent that Higan’s soft Silhouette could be glimpsed inside.

And on top of that…

(This is bad. Their opponent is going to reach the Divine-class soon. If that happens, the sound range won’t matter. Higan and the ground around her will be smashed to pieces!!)

Renge had heard what that girl said.

That curly-haired girl was apparently fixated on the Unexplored-class “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth. With that in mind, Renge noticed something interesting when she looked across the entire Artificial Sacred Ground.

(There are two ways of summoning an Unexplored-class. The first is to summon one hundred Regulation-classes and then fifty Divine-classes to prepare the environment needed to carve out the name of the Unexplored-class.)

That was difficult to pull off. The Artificial Sacred Ground created by an Incense Grenade only lasted about ten minutes. While hitting multiple Petals at once and constantly building up a new Material every two or three seconds, it would take over seven minutes. While it was doable in a mock battle, it was not easily achieved in a real battle where the summoner had to see through the enemy’s actions and put their life on the line.

(The other is to carve out the name in order without a single letter out of place.)

That one was not easy either. The acquired Petals could not be rearranged to make the name. From beginning to end, not a single letter could be wasted and not a single letter could be replaced. Naturally, if the enemy noticed the attempt to summon an Unexplored-class and attempted to interfere, it was all over.

But…

(She’s so fixated on the “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth that she’s preparing multiple methods of summoning her. She’s working at the one hundred Regulation-classes and fifty Divine-classes, but she’s also secretly preparing other patterns around the Artificial Sacred Ground so she can hit all the Petals into the Spot in order with just a slight hit from a White Thorn.)

She was setting up those rows of dominoes here and there. And no matter whose fingertip poked at them, the tiles would fall just the same.

The dominoes were not complete yet. She was simply placing the parts here and there as a side project. But if a few of those incomplete pieces were linked together, she would have the conditions needed for the summoning. Then a single White Thorn would link it all together.

(Once a century, a lucky chance comes along. It scares me that she’s skilled enough to create that kind of chance herself, but she isn’t the only one who can use it.)

Renge thought this provided a chance at victory.

The Guard of Honor summoner baring her fangs toward Higan would soon surpass the Regulation-class and reach the Divine-class. But if the much more powerful White Queen was summoned first, the difference in skill would no longer matter.

(Anyone can summon her now. With the materials she’s set up as insurance, even I would be able to reach that peak of the Unexplored-class.)

She could tear victory from their enemy’s grasp.

But what did she need to do that?

“Begin remote resonance, begin organ synchronization, receiving life signals from organs, synchronization complete.”

This was not originally Meinokawa Renge’s ability.

She justified it to herself because this was an emergency, but she still apologized to her sister in her heart.

“Foreign reaction detected in body linked by pseudo-resonance, viewing contract, deleting and overwriting one portion…”

A quiet creaking sound came from Renge’s chest.

It was a series of ever-so-slight sounds like thin, thin wires being gradually pulled on from both ends.

“You might think you’re quite the summoner after claiming my sister for yourself.”

After the sound of rustling leaves, she held a Blood-Sign made of countless gathered charms.

A summoner could not use the summoning ceremony without a vessel.

But…

“Don’t underestimate sisterly boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooonds!!”

===Part 17===

At that moment, Shiroyama Kyousuke was aiming for a Petal using a White Thorn, but then he was overcome by the feeling of something being pulled from the center of his body. He had an abundance of experience as a summoner, but not even he had felt this before.

Something was escaping him and being stolen from him.

“Wha-…!?”

All of his White Thorns vanished and he lost his connection to Higan who had invited the Material inside herself.

“…Tch.”

Azalea Magentarain seemed to have noticed the change as she accurately controlled her Blood-Sign. But the look on her small face was not of confusion or triumph. It was irritation that her grand stage had been ruined.

Someone jumped down from the destroyed land bridge.

The shrine maiden holding a Blood-Sign was Higan’s sister Renge. When Kyousuke saw the many White Thorns floating around her, he finally grasped what was going on.

(She stole my contract between summoner and vessel!? That shouldn’t be possible. Did their blood connection as twins affect it somehow!?)

Having stolen his rights as summoner, Meinokawa Renge sharply struck a White Thorn with her Blood-Sign. As he watched the white light cut across the Artificial Sacred Ground like a shooting star, ''Kyousuke felt a chill run down his spine.

This was leading to the peak of the Unexplored-class.

This would summon the “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth (iu – nu – fb – a – wuh – ei –kx – eu – pl – vjz).

“The summoning ceremony is a technique to evenly summon any Material. It doesn’t matter if you’re the lowest rookie or the greatest veteran!! Even if you were the one to set this up, that Unexplored-class is mine as long as I knock it into the Spot!!”

The conditions were set in place.

A moment later, a tremendous pure white light blew out from Meinokawa Higan.

It was a cocoon of birth.

The intensely bright vortex stabbed into one’s retinas even with both arms covering the face, but it suddenly vanished. Instead, countless small feathers that glowed like an angel’s scattered about like a blizzard of flower petals.

A lovely girl stood in the center of it all.

Even with twintails, her beautiful silver hair reached her waist. She had black jewel-like eyes that seemed to see through everything. Her pure white clothing resembled a wedding dress, but it was far too revealing for that. A bright light from behind would probably have been enough for every line of her body to show through. Some parts of the outfit glittered with a silver light, but they were unlikely to be crass armor that directly blocked blades or arrows. For one thing, nothing could hope to harm that glowing and glittering skin of hers.

She had no weapons.

In the many legends, that clothing would transform to match the current situation and would form billions or even trillions of weapons to slaughter her enemy. However, it was hard to say those weapons were the whole of her power. When speaking of pure destructive power, her two slender arms were the greatest of all.

She was the ultimate Material that stood at the peak of the Unexplored-class which lay beyond the Regulation-class and Divine-class.

She was the ‘White’ Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth.

Her very presence did not allow even a drop of impurity.

She was an incarnation of benevolence, a symbol of sanctity, and a personification of radiance.

(We can win…)

Meinokawa Renge held her Blood-Sign tight.

(We can win like this!! No matter how accurately and quickly she uses her Blood-Sign and even if she can freely summon Divine or Unexplored-classes, there’s nothing to be afraid of. The White Queen is the best of the best, so the battle is pretty much over once she’s been successfully summoned. Now no one can hurt Higan!!)

She was confident of her victory.

The distinctions between rookie and expert or individual and organization did not matter. When it came down to it, a battle between summoners was settled by what they could summon.

But a moment later, she saw something unbelievable.

“Wha-…?”

The sight was such a shock that she could not help but speak aloud.

Government Award 930, Golden Luxury, was now Guard of Honor’s Uniquely Selfless. That girl with red-tinged blonde ringlet curls released the Material serving her. Then she and the vessel who had returned to being an old man got down on one knee and bowed their heads.

Time briefly seemed to stop.

The broken song of the summoning ceremony came to an end and absolute silence enveloped them.

Renge almost forgot they were in the midst of a deadly battle.

Those two had wished to see this great existence, even if it cost them their lives. It was an audience with a great lord.

“Oh, Your Majesty… Please forgive us for not preparing more for this audience.”

Yes.

“We of Guard of Honor are doing everything in our ability to quickly construct a suitable audience chamber. That such a vulgar individual was able to summon you is but one sign of that. Please wait a while longer before we can truly invite you in from ''the other side''.”

They almost looked like knights kneeling before their queen.

This was not at all how one acted around the Materials that were treated like tools without wills of their own.

“What…is this?”

“Oh, no… Oh, no!! Release your Material at once. Summoning that…that thing in front of me is a terrible mistake!!”

The boy who had been with Higan was shouting something, but Renge was not listening.

The pure white queen gently smiled. Like a solid bud blooming into a lovely flower after being exposed to the breath of spring, just seeing the smile filled one’s heart with happiness.

But destruction soon followed.

The old man in a suit was kicked away like a ball and the blonde girl had her bowed head stomped down to the ground.

The dull sound seemed to arrive only after a short delay.

This was of course not caused by the speed of sound.

Renge’s mind had hesitated to comprehend the truth before her eyes.

“Nn…nnhh…”

As Renge watched in a daze, the White Queen raised her arms and bent a little backwards. As she did, her alluring bodylines moved seductively. It was the action of a student stretching after the boring principal’s speech was finally over. Material was supposed to be an inhuman monster that could use power beyond human comprehension in the isolated Artificial Sacred Ground, but her action completely overturned that idea.

Then her pure eyes stopped on Shiroyama Kyousuke.

She ignored the girl groaning below her foot, put on a venomously refreshing smile, and greeted him.

“Long time no see, brother. Have you been doing well since I last saw you?”

She had the enchanting voice to match her sexy body, but when she called him “brother”, the tone of a little girl was mixed in. It was imbalanced and inhuman, so it brought chaos to the heart of whoever heard it.

“…”

Kyousuke blatantly clenched his teeth.

Renge could not believe anything happening before her eyes. Not that a violent Material was speaking just like a human and not that the two of them knew each other.

That was why she voiced her confusion.

“Eh? Wait…what are you saying?”

That was a mistake.

“Hm? Who the hell do you think you are, butting in between brother and me!!???”

Sounds of snapping and breaking came from all around Renge.

“Gh…bh!?”

Even as she coughed up an impressive amount of blood, she had no idea what had happened to her. She had been hit by a tremendous amount of pressure, as if thrown from a safe submarine into the deep sea at a depth of several thousand meters.

“Gah…bah!? Aghaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!?”

“Did you think you were safe with the protective circle blocking all external and internal obstructions? Stop acting like that’s your doing! That power comes from us, the Materials!! All I have to do is alter the orientation of the circle a bit…and tah dah! Get it now?”

“…Stop it.”

“Ah ha ha!! Look at that ugly mug thanks to the pressure crushing you evenly from every direction☆ A robber with a stocking over their head would probably look better. Nowww, let’s see. If I squeeze you a little more, what color of organs will come out of that mouth-…”

“I said stop it!!!!”

Shiroyama Kyousuke shouted from the bottom of his gut and the White Queen released Renge almost amusingly easily.

Kyousuke watched the shrine maiden collapse to the ground with a sticky sound, but…

“Ahh☆ When you give me such powerful orders, it reminds me of old times, brother. Such a thrill. But there is a limit to what I will let you get away with. For example…looking at other girls in my presence.”

There was a flowing difference in temperature in her words. They were human yet unstable. It made one think she could be lovingly rubbing her pet’s head one moment and crushing that head in her fist a moment later.

Shiroyama Kyousuke had thought he could help the Meinokawa sisters if he defeated Azalea Magentarain and did something about Guard of Honor.

But this changed everything.

The White Queen had laid her eyes on the Meinokawa sisters. And when they were with Shiroyama Kyousuke. That alone raised the difficulty of his original task beyond even world domination.

That was just how difficult it was to oppose her and to protect someone from her.

“Was Guard of Honor an organization made to summon you?”

“Who knows. I am quite popular, so I receive requests from all over the world. Do you really think I pay attention to why any particular person summoned me?”

In truth, it had actually been Meinokawa Renge and not Guard of Honor that had summoned the White Queen, but she did not seem to care in the slightest. She had kicked or stomped on Azalea and the old man and she had reversed the protective circle’s power to crush Renge.

The order likely had no real meaning.

Even if the other side had done the summoning, she would likely have tormented them all the same.

“I am aware of a collection of desires to acquire me using the Control method as a more definite method than instantly summoning me with a Blood-Sign and Incense Grenade, but I don’t know the details. After all, I’m not interested in anything other than you, brother☆”

Control.

That was a twisted desire held by some summoners.

The modern summoning ceremony was simple and had few risks. Anyone could feely grasp a Blood-Sign and any rookie could summon the most powerful Material, even if it was limited to ten minutes.

But that meant the gods who were reliable allies one day could stand in one’s way as the greatest demon the next day.

“However, it would seem their techniques are far from reaching your own, brother.”

“The initial job the Meinokawa sisters received included a ghost story about a white woman appearing at the harbor filled with Guard of Honor. I had assumed that was a dummy job, but now…”

“Are you even listening? Why the hell would you bring up other girls in the middle of our date? …But, but. I love you for being so utterly clueless, so I’ll forgive you! That seems to have been ''another me'' from a failed experiment.”

They were afraid of her.

They could not allow others to use her.

And that was why they wanted a deeper bond. Even if it was an illusion, they wanted to think that the most powerful, most beautiful, and most frightening of the monsters belonged to them alone. They wanted the peace of mind that would bring.

Instead of shuffling the deck of cards and evenly dealing them out to enemy and ally alike after each game, they would cut out the dealer and keep their own deck for themselves. They would work at it, set it up, and line it all up to obtain assured victory.

They wanted to eliminate the complicated system and simplify it. They only needed to summon from that one deck. As long as that was the ultimate trump card, they did not need anything else.

“Besides, it seems less like they want to rule over me and more like they want to be my chosen servants. That way I will prioritize them over others. It’s such a submissive way of thinking. Now. Is that really what these goddess-serving priests or queen-serving guards of honor want? Or are they simply trying to distract me from their true desire to place a collar around my neck and drag me around?”

“It’s completely insane…”

That was why they wanted that Control method.

They would place a hook in the mouth of a fish and release it into the ocean so they could reel in the fishing rod only when they wished to appreciate their catch. They would provide that limited freedom and bask in the sense of superiority it gave them. They wanted to believe that was the right thing to do.

From the moment they referred to what they summoned as mere “Materials”, it was obvious what hopes and desires guided how summoners treated them.

“Well, they tested out a lot of other ideas too. There was that…Repliglass is it? Even that was an experimental product originally meant to provide an artificial and permanent body for me in place of a vessel. Although as you can see, it was a failure☆”

[[Image:BloodSign_v01_230.jpg|thumb]]

“I can’t believe this…”

Kyousuke looked down to his own Blood-Sign.

That artificial serpent that controlled the gods was a bundle of silicon muscle. Was the greatest weapon that he relied on nothing more than a failed body for the Queen?

“But these days, Repliglass is used not just for military purposes but in power plants and water purification plants. Just how fast are this world’s distortions accelerating?”

The White Queen lightly clapped her hands together in front of her face.

“It’s the same idea as what you built so long ago, brother. It’s just that Guard of Honor is nowhere near your level, so I seem to recall it being ugly and overly large. …Honestly, the original one was a cute little toy that would fit in a household shrine…yes, like the size of a bottle ship. So why is has it spread enough to ''cover'' two-sevenths of the world’s continents with this city in the center?”

Kyousuke felt a chilly fingertip running down his spine.

It did not matter to her, but that was why there was no extra layer to her words. She only spoke the truth.

“What are you all planning to do in this world?” he asked. “Wait. Don’t tell me you’re already working toward the worst possible answer!”

“Ah ha ha. I’m glad to see your proper instincts are finally coming back to you. Yes, that’s right. You need to be thinking on at least that level if you’re going to talk about me. From Toy Dream 01 to Toy Dream 40, which is currently under construction, each of the cities used a different method. It was Toy Dream 35 here that produced the greatest results. The rest of the plans were ended and all of that power and technology was concentrated here.”

The Queen’s tone was plain. Toy Dream 35 had succeeded in producing the summoning technique to control the White Queen, but that likely had little to do with Guard of Honor’s methods.

It was because a certain boy lived in that city.

The Queen had chosen to appear at that location like she was popping in for a visit on a whim.

“But it doesn’t matter to me what they might say. Guard of Honor may have been deceived, but as I already said, I am not at all interested in anyone besides you, brother. To be blunt, I wouldn’t care in the slightest if this puny city and the nation or continent around it sank into an ocean of blood.” The White Queen smiled. “But anyways, I was a liiiiittle hopeful since I thought going along with this ''would reunite me with you eventually''. I’m glad that wish came true☆”

This was the true nature of the White Queen.

If Kyousuke, who she respectfully referred to as her “brother”, would pay attention to her, she was willing to trigger a war or natural disaster. If he would rub her head, she was willing to start killing every single human being one at a time to see how many hundreds of millions she had to kill before he would do so. That was the type of girl she was.

“Then that’s enough. You got what you wanted! There’s no reason to destroy anything else!!”

“That is fine by me, but won’t Guard of Honor continue on with this? Besides, they are the ones that want to order me to ''selfishly wield my power'' once they can control me.”

“Then stop them!! If they’ll listen to you, then tell them to stop!!”

“I’d rather not☆ Doesn’t that destructive turn of events sound like so much more fun? I think I can just let Guard of Honor do what they want.”

“You really…aren’t planning anything?”

“Then what do you think I’m planning?” she asked with the ultimate smile. “Do you think I’m sending all sorts of enemies after you to finally raise you to Award 1000 so you’ll be sent to ''the other side'' where we can be together forever? Do you think I’m going to exterminate mankind and Material alike to create a new world for just the two of us? Do you think I want to stay in this world and try making a contract with you as your vessel? Or do you think I’m trying to visit you enough that you start empathizing with me so I can seduce you with this captivating body and spend those ten short minutes doing things I would rather not speak aloud with you? Yes, what exactly do I plan to do?”

“…”

“You decided it was no use thinking about and gave up, didn’t you? We have a winner! Do you really think I would put together some grand plot and make detailed preparations? That is the mentality of the weak who are afraid of losing and cannot stand back up if they do lose. I am meaninglessly strong and simply achieve victory, so do you really think I would think like that? No matter what kind of hell I am swallowed up by, I will never want to do anything more than flirt with you, brother.”

“Queen!!!!!”

“Brother. I believe I already said there is a limit to what I will let you get away with. If you refer to me like a stranger, it makes me want to kill you, you know? When calling to me, do it like you used to, in that manly yet adorable voice.”

The Queen gave a soft yet somehow insane smile.

“Yes. Alice (with) Rabbit, the cute little rabbit that respectfully welcomed the white ruler visiting from another world. Just like that oozingly sweet honeymoon when we become one inside that frame you provided me.”

===Secret Stage 01===

There once was an innocent boy.

That boy would help anyone asking for help.

“Passing between worlds is truly inconvenient.”

“As I stand at the very peak, calling for me is not easy. That would place a great burden on you, brother.”

“I simply wish to remain by your side like this, brother.”

That boy was too talented to realize there was a difference between the ideal and reality.

And thus he succeeded without hitting any major setbacks.

It was a device shaped like a small wooden box.

He had fully investigated the existing summoning ceremony using the Blood-Sign and Incense Grenade and he had built this different method, this new approach.

“I don’t think you should just have to obey the summoner’s orders just because you’re a Material.”

“I want to hear so much more of what you have to say. I want to hear your thoughts in their purest form.”

“After all, we’re comrades who place our lives in each other’s hands.”

And he succeeded in it all.

He lost nothing and was not asked to sacrifice anything in exchange.

Alice was a visitor from a different world and the rabbit was the guide who lived in this world.

“Wow! Wow!”

“It’s no longer restricted to ten minutes or to a battle. You can really summon me whenever and however you like.”

“Ah ha ha. Now I can go play with you whenever I want! I can give you anything I want!!”

And the boy came to regret his actions. He learned why they had been contained within the Blood-Sign’s ten minute restriction.

The system had seemed inconvenient at first, but there had been a reason for it all.

He had been faced with the greatest hell imaginable.

===Facts===

*The Silhouette that acts as the Material’s weak point changes size and is stored in different places depending on the specific Material.
*Guard of Honor was not simply a new force within Illegal.
*Summoners can control even the gods of legend, but some worship the Unexplored-class that lies beyond the Divine-class. Guard of Honor is an organization created to praise and serve the “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth who is most popular of them all.
*Summoning one hundred Regulation-classes earns the right to summon a Divine-class and summoning fifty Divine-classes earns the right to summon an Unexplored-class.
*The Unexplored-class can also be summoned by perfectly hitting the specific Petals into the Spots in order.
*The Petals knocked into the Spots can be freely rearranged. Also, acquired petals can be cast aside without being used. Once a Material is summoned, the unused Petals are automatically discarded.
*When the number of Petals in the Artificial Sacred Ground grows low – specifically, when all seven of one of the low, middle, or high sound consonants is used up or when all of one of the vowels is used up – a new Rose appears.
*Meinokawa Renge used some unknown method to steal the contract with Meinokawa Higan away from Shiroyama Kyousuke.
*The White Queen has no interest in Guard of Honor’s actions, but she is fine with anything if it means Kyousuke will pay attention to her.
*Shiroyama Kyousuke and the White Queen know each other and were once lovers. …Although the way she refers to him is a little strange.

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| Back to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume1_Chapter1|Stage 01]]
| Return to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Unexplored_Summon_Blood_Sign:Volume1_Chapter3|Stage 03]]
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</noinclude>

The Circumstances Leading to Waltraute's Marriage:Volume1 Chapter 3

2016-04-16T00:45:11Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 3: The Difference between the Gods and the Giants is an Incredibly Unfair One==

===Part 1===

On a certain day of a certain month, the boy and Waltraute had a fight.

It happened during one of their dates. As usual, this date came about from a challenge made by the boy to the (supposedly) reluctant Waltraute. He had challenged her to a fishing competition. The boy had only been able to catch boots and buckets, but when he puffed out his cheeks in frustration just before the time limit, he accidentally snagged the clothes of the goddess of the sea Rán and won the competition. (Incidentally, this meant Rán was half-naked when she was pulled up out of the water, so Waltraute had scolded him unfairly.)

As for the story behind the aforementioned fight…

“Waltraute, you sure are tall.”

“Yes, having a decent height gives one an advantage in battle. That is why I was designed this way.”

“I don’t grow no matter what I eat. I wish my legs were as long as yours.”

“Hyaahn!? D-do not start rubbing me there, you fool!”

But that was not the cause of the fight.

“It’s so hot.”

“Y-yes. The god of harvest Freyr may be putting in too much effort today.”

“Don’t you get hot always wearing that armor?”

“Once you are used to it, it is no big deal.”

“Hmm. You don’t have some trick making it cool inside your armor, do you?”

“Nwaaaaaahhhh!? Where do you think you are sticking your haaaaannnnnnd!?”

But that was not the cause of the fight.

“Yams!”

“Pant pant pant… Y-yes. But do not touch them if you do not intend to eat them. They will make you itchy.”

“Yams, yams.”

“…Okay, Norns, you goddesses of fate. This is not happening. I can take a guess from the previous two incidents that this will have some kind of lewd punch line. However, I have my doubts about whether it still counts as simply ‘lewd’ if things head to a more delicate area-…gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

The three goddesses Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld who were usually completely expressionless started clapping their hands together and laughing, but this was not the cause of the fight either.

It all started with the white horse the Valkyrie always rode. When Waltraute arrived in the human world of Midgard, the boy had looked up at her and asked a question.

“I want to ride it too. Can I?”

“Mh.” Waltraute held the reins to control the white horse’s movements. “Unfortunately, I cannot allow that.”

Given the boy’s height, it would have been difficult for him to ride a normal horse. He might have been able to ride something like a pony, but it seemed impossible for him to manage such a large beast. It would obviously end up as something out of a rodeo.

And on top of that, Waltraute’s horse was no normal horse. It was also a device meant to ensure the special transportation method using Bifröst went smoothly. Bifröst would break her “existence” down, but intentionally adding in an impurity allowed her to move more quickly and more accurately. Other gods used Bifröst as well, but they were not able to travel at 87% the speed of light or land with a margin of error of only a few centimeters like a Valkyrie could.

That special white horse was not as simple to handle as a normal one. There was no way she could hand that boy of the human world the reins of a rough horse that was known to easily throw off your average god.

But it seemed the boy did not understand any of that.

“Why not? Why not? I wanna ride it! I wanna ride it!!”

“Sigh. This horse is almost 2 meters tall. Can you even climb up onto it?”

The Valkyrie denied him gently.

“Uuh…uuh…”

But the boy suddenly began rummaging through the bag on his back.

“Carrot.”

And the white horse immediately knelt down.

Waltraute gritted her teeth and said, “Kh, so you’re just a beast!!”

“Climb!!”

As the boy tried to grab on to the horse, the Valkyrie grabbed his upper body with both hands and placed him right in front of her.

Looking dissatisfied, the boy said, “…No. You can’t be supporting me from behind. I have to hold the reins on my own.”

“Why are you so insistent about this? If you want go somewhere, I can bring you anywhere within the human world.”

“The whole point is to control it myself!!”

“Well, unfortunately, I cannot allow that.”

That was Waltraute’s honest response after considering the fundamental difference in physical ability between a human and a Valkyrie, but the boy’s cheeks visibly puffed up.

“I can do it!! Even if I can’t do it right now, I’ll train a whole bunch and then do it.”

“No, the problem is at a deeper level than that.”

“I can do it!!”

“This is the same as having a race between a human and a leopard. It is not something worth putting any effort into.”

“I can-…”

“I will help you with everything a human cannot do. I do not know if a human can help me with anything I cannot do, but I am not so narrow-minded as to ask for an equivalent exchange.”

“Uuh…Uuuhh…!!”

“Hm?”

Waltraute realized something was odd.

The boy held between her arms was shaking. She tried to look at his face, but before she could, the boy raised his head and shouted out.

“Shut up, you idiot!! If I work hard…If I work hard, I can get strong!! Wahhh!!”

“Wait… Wh-why are you crying!?”

“Byahhh!!”

The boy slipped from Waltraute’s arms and half-jumped down from the white horse. He ran off with his arms up in the air and Xs in his eyes.

Waltraute was completely dumbfounded.

“…What was that?” she muttered.

Her white horse twisted its thick neck to look at its master.

Its round eyes seemed to say, “This is bad. Humans have many ways of crying, but ‘byahhh’ is bad.”

===Part 2===

“Yeah, ‘byahhh’ is definitely bad,” said the 9th Valkyrie sister Rossweisse once Waltraute returned to the heavenly world of Asgard.

Waltraute was the 4th sister.

Even though she was the youngest of the nine Valkyrie sisters, Rossweisse was a 170 cm tall iron wall of a cool beauty (although she had a completely flat chest). The Valkyrie system naturally selected for those who had an affinity with both the gods and humans, but in this age, there were likely plenty of people in the human world of Midgard that would want her to look down on them and verbally abuse them.

Bifröst’s 3rd runway had been completely transformed into a gathering point for the gods and more Valkyries were there in addition to those two. They were sitting directly on the runway and speaking about something. Perhaps it was due to their constant trips to battlefields, but they showed no particular resistance towards sitting in an area void of high-class chairs or tables.

“B-but… I cannot understand why the boy would grow so emotional over that. I suppose humans are not as simple as they might seem. But as I went on that date as his reward for winning a competition, I cannot allow it to end on such a poor note.”

“You probably hurt his pride,” said the 2nd sister Gerhilde without giving it much thought.

She was the intellectual strategist type and she was never seen without her glasses. She brushed her fingers across their frame as she spoke.

“The men of Midgard use bravery as a barometer for how virtuous they are. Lord Odin taught them to be that way. That boy is exceedingly mistaken if he is viewing a Valkyrie the same as a human, but he may feel ashamed to be constantly protected by a woman.”

“Hm.”

“What do you think, Sister Brynhildr?”

The 9th sister Rossweisse turned the conversation toward the eldest sister Brynhildr, but her expression showed no particular change. She merely moved her eye slightly to look at the 4th sister Waltraute.

“…Sorry, but I doubt I could give you a decent answer on this topic,” she said in an emotionless voice. “My relationship with the human Siegfried came to a ruinous end. Not only would advice from one who failed be of no use, but it could also further confuse your decision.”

“Chehh…”

The 9th sister Rossweisse seemed more dissatisfied with the lack of an answer than the subtly of lack of emotions.

The second sister Gerhilde looked toward the end of the runway and said, “Any answer received based on conjecture is nothing but a delusion. As you can always gather more information, would it not be better to simply gather more if you do not know the answer?”

“Perhaps. Let’s see…”

The 4th sister Waltraute peered over the edge of the 3rd runway and into the human world of Midgard.

She spotted the boy swinging a wooden stick around in front of his small house.

“Whoosh, whoosh!!”

“…What is he trying to do?”

Waltraute was relieved to find he no longer seemed upset, but she also frowned. The boy’s parents who were smoking some bacon in the yard must have felt the same because they called out a question to their son who had suddenly started acting this way.

The boy replied, “Well, I had a fight with a friend today.”

“I am not a friend!! You are the one that asked to have me as your wife!”

“Waltraute, should I take how super, super, super quickly you reacted to mean that was quite a shock to you?”

“That information is related to the rules and result of our competition. I cannot have it treated so ambiguously!!”

“Yes, yes. Well, this friend is really strong, always has their back straight, and is never afraid of anything.” As the boy spoke, he continued to swing the stick around. “But I doubt this friend will allllways be strong. They might catch a cold or get injured.”

“…”

That would never be an issue for the residents of Asgard who ate tons of the immortality apples grown by the goddess Iðunn, but Waltraute remained silent.

“So if this friend is ever in trouble and can’t use their normal strength, I want to have the strength to support them. I can’t always be protected by this friend. I want to be strong too. Once I’m strong, I can support Waltraute too. We may have been born in different places and have different levels of talent or whatever, but that doesn’t matter. But…”

The boy trailed off.

An unpleasant sweat began to flow from Waltraute’s body.

What idiot had it been telling him it was impossible and that it was not worth working at?

The boy in Midgard then raised his head and spoke with a weak smile on his face.

“But I’m going to try even if it’s impossible! Even if I don’t get perfect results right away, maybe I can be useful in some other way. I hope I can help Waltraute in some way.”

As the representative of the other nine Valkyrie sisters who had heard that from the 3rd runway, the 2nd sister Gerhilde asked a quick question.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

“I’m sorryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!” cried Waltraute while on her knees and bowing down.

At times like this, the 4th sister Waltraute could get rather athletic-minded.

===Part 3===

Waltraute tried to head straight for the boy’s house, but the other 8 Valkyries held her back. It could be easy to forget, but her job was to gather the souls of the most excellent war dead in preparation for the final battle of Ragnarök. If she forced her way into that house in the human world of Midgard, the parents could very well be afraid their son was going to die soon.

And so Waltraute sent the two ravens Muninn and Huginn instead.

But they had their complaints.

“Y’know, you seem to have forgotten…”

“But we’re actually Lord Odin’s private scouts.”

But despite their complaints, they frantically flew off once multiple Valkyries glared at them. It seemed the ravens needed to go ahead and admit to being an errand-runner for the entirety of the heavenly world.

The ravens arrived in Midgard and peered in through the window to the boy’s room, but…

“Hm? The boy isn’t here.”

“What?” said Waltraute as she looked down into Midgard from the 3rd runway.

It was late at night. Even a Valkyrie who was unfamiliar with the customs of the human world knew a boy of his age should not be out that late.

“Where did he go?”

“There’s some kind of map in his room.”

“The writing is really bad, but I think it says ‘training journey’.”

When Waltraute heard that, she really did hold her head in her hands. With this, there was no way she could face his parents.

“Where did that boy go!? From our previous experiences, I doubt he will stay within Midgard!!”

That boy had already attempted to head to two different worlds out of the nine worlds that branched off of the world tree. That was rare enough for anyone in Midgard, but that boy had done it completely unarmed. It would not be surprising if he had some insane idea such as heading to the giant world of Jötunheimr in order to drink the water gushing from the spring of wisdom.

But the information Muninn and Huginn provided went beyond Waltraute’s expectations.

“Well, if what this map says is accurate…”

“It looks like he intends to explore the fire world of Muspelheim.”

“That is the enemy’s headquarters ruled by the evil Surtr!!” exclaimed Waltraute. “Why is that boy once again heading towards an area with a danger level of red!?”

When the final battle of Ragnarök happened, it was said a large number of evil spirits and giants would be dragged from that world using the giant ship Naglfar that was made from the nails of the dead. It was the most evil of all places. And Surtr, the one who ruled at the top of all that evil, would burn away all nine worlds with his burning sword.

“Hmm. If a human tries to learn the fighting techniques and magic of Asgard, it takes decades. He may be trying to take a shortcut by using a different system,” suggested one of the ravens.

“You fool. They would never simply teach him their techniques or magic! They would only deceive him and devour his soul!! Dammit. Did my foolish comment drive the boy this far!?”

As Odin and the rest of the Æsir would not grant people’s wishes so easily, it was not uncommon for sorcerers to worship Surtr or Hel, the queen of the underworld, who possessed power using a different system.

But a Valkyrie like Waltraute knew well what fate awaited those who took such shortcuts. Some had their souls taken by the queen of the underworld and some had even their souls destroyed by a Valkyrie. Either way, there was no hope for them.

She hurriedly mounted her white horse and requested permission to use the 3rd runway.

“…Tch. Too much data traffic. I can’t activate Bifröst right away.”

She glared at Heimdallr the watchman, but the timid controller merely shook his head.

She looked into the sky beyond the end of the 3rd runway and opened her eyes wide.

She looked across the entirety of the human world of Midgard.

“…There he is. He is only moving on foot, so he has not made it out of Midgard yet. I can still have him turn back. No dark shadow will grab ahold of his soul!!”

“What should we do?” asked the ravens.

“Due to the data traffic, it will be 20 or 30 minutes before Bifröst can activate. You should be able to reach him quicker. Contact that boy and inform him of the danger. Use your words to stop him before I arrive!!”

“Understood.”

As she listened to Muninn and Huginn’s words, Waltraute concentrated while sitting atop her white horse. Many magical processes were being executed at high speed, but she could not stand how the surrounding devices with poor data transfer speeds could not keep up.

“There he is. We found the boy,” reported one of the ravens.

“Hey! Wait up, wait up!!”

(Okay!!)

The boy looked surprised at Muninn and Huginn’s sudden appearance.

“It’s Huginn and Muninn,” he said.

“Yes, it’s Muninn and Huginn.”

“Were you forced to run over and give me a message again?”

“Did you have to remember that part!?” The two ravens flew around the boy. “Please do not go to the fire world of Muspelheim! That is not as safe a place as you think it is!!”

“If it isn’t dangerous, I can’t train there.”

“Good point, but we are saying its difficulty level is too high for you to level up!! While not everyone there is a great demon king, it is something like an island filled with small demon kings. You cannot gain experience points there!! You’ll just get your ass kicked!!”

“You’re only equipped with the Leather Clothes and the Wooden Stick! A beginner is supposed to train by wandering around just outside the city and heading back to the inn when your health is down too far! You have to gather money, gather equipment, search for party members, and all sorts of other things before heading there!”

“???”

Either because they had used too much jargon or because they had not planned out their argument, the boy did not quite understand.

Muninn and Huginn continued squawking.

“And didn’t your parents teach you that that the evil spirits and giants of Muspelheim will never open their hearts to a human? Why would you go somewhere that dangerous?”

“Well…” The boy swung his wooden stick around. “I want to train on my own in the same place as the people of Muspelheim.”

“What?”

“Setting aside the fact that there are no ‘people’ in Muspelheim, what do you mean by that?”

“Our human world is protected by the gods and Waltraute, right? That would be the same as having her control the horse for me. To really get strong, I have to work hard on my own!”

“…Mh. So that’s it,” muttered Waltraute as she held the reins of her white horse and frowned.

It was true that using that method could allow a human soul to contact the residents of the fire world of Muspelheim and gain skills and magic while avoiding being tainted.

If one was doing the exact same things but changing their location, there would be no problem.

The Valkyrie had a feeling that working outside of the protection of the gods would only lower his speed of growth, but she was relieved that he was not thinking of borrowing the power of the ruler of the fire world or the queen of the underworld.

“In that case, he should have asked me to teach him!! No, no, wait. I was the one that pushed him away by telling him it was impossible.”

Waltraute’s mood sank into self-condemnation.

The cause of it all really was her.

At any rate, the situation could be summed up in the following: that boy of Midgard was heading for Muspelheim. However, he was not seeking the evil skills and magic of the evil spirits and giants. He simply wanted an environment to train under his own power that was outside of the protection of the gods.

If that was all, he was not taking a shortcut or heading down the path of heresy.

The end result was perfectly acceptable, so there was no pressing need for her to stop him using the authority of a Valkyrie.

However…

“The question is whether the residents of Muspelheim will accept the boy or not. The odds of that are extremely low. Is dragging him back the only way to protect the boy?”

Waltraute was a bit unwilling to do so since it was her overprotectiveness that brought about the situation in the first place, but she had no choice here.

The Valkyrie began thinking about seeing him safely back to his house and then introducing him to a training menu a human could manage.

As she thought, the voices of the boy and the two ravens reached her ears.

“But it is true that Muspelheim is a dangerous place,” said one of the ravens. “How about you use the knowledge of the Æsir as a shortcut? We can give you that knowledge. There is no need to be reckless. Lord Odin ordered us to gather information from all across the heavenly world, so we have plenty we could teach you.”

“Actually, do you think Waltraute wanted to play the role of the sexy tutor?” added the other raven.

“Hey, wait!!” shouted Waltraute. “Do not make up nonsense, you fool!!”

“Um,” said the boy. “I want you to keep this a secret from Waltraute. I don’t want to worry her.”

“I am already incredibly worried, you fool!!”

Waltraute decided anew to drag that boy back, but then…

“And this is a manly training journey. Mr. Nebby from my neighborhood said men go on journeys to get stronger!”

“No! That was just a free spirit trying to show off!!” complained Waltraute.

“I’m going on a manly training journey! And once I get strong, Waltraute will praise me a whole bunch!! So keep this a secret!!”

“…………………………………………………………………………………Uuh.”

When Waltraute heard him talk like he was secretly preparing a birthday present, she let out a groan as the departure process for the 3rd runway continued.

For his safety, she needed to head out and take him back immediately.

But if she did that, the boy’s touching plan would be ruined.

The battle-obsessed Waltraute did not hate that kind of effort taken to obtain strength.

Training was a battle against oneself.

One who continued working while brushing aside all temptation and setbacks would win definite blessings. She felt a just beauty in that fact.

And she also knew exactly how rude it was for a third party to smash that gathered beauty.

And so…

While swearing silently that it was for purely official reasons and not because she had been shaken by him imagining the praises he would receive from her, she spoke.

“I-I can’t stop him,” Waltraute finally muttered. “I can’t believe this! I can’t stop that boy now!!”

===Part 4===

Despite what she said, Waltraute took off from the Bifröst runway and descended to the human world of Midgard while creating an unnatural aurora in the night sky. After she had dismounted from the white horse, it disappeared into the light once more.

However, she was not near the boy.

While maintaining a distance at which a human could not see her but a Valkyrie could see him, Waltraute opened her eyes wide and stared intently at the boy.

“Um,” started Muninn and Huginn upon meeting up with Waltraute. “Why don’t you head back to Asgard? You can watch him easily enough from there.”

“You fool. I need to be able to head out immediately if something happens. Bifröst cannot be used around the fire world of Muspelheim or the underworld of Niflheim because the flow of magical power is so strange there. I can be more certain from here.”

“If you’re that worried, you should have just landed right in front of the boy.”

“She’s probably too embarrassed because they haven’t made up after their fight ye-…bgyahhh!?”

Seeing Huginn about to be crushed within a fist, Muninn began trembling and changed the subject.

“W-well… A human boy approaching Muspelheim is one thing, but won’t they prepare for war if a top-class Valkyrie approaches their headquarters?”

“Mh. I can cut through them to retrieve that boy if need be.”

“Is this really okay?” muttered the two ravens doubtfully.

The fire world of Muspelheim was the primary enemy force for the heavenly world of Asgard.

Not even a top-class Valkyrie could take that world on alone. If she could, Muspelheim would have been destroyed long ago.

That was how dangerous this foe was, but Waltraute said, “If this progresses as is, I do not see there being much of a risk. Of course, I need to be prepared for unexpected circumstances.”

“?”

“The odds are very low that the boy will ever make it to Muspelheim,” said Waltraute simply. “It is an island at the farthest end of the ocean. One does not simply walk there. Nor does one sail there on a hastily constructed boat. In fact, the completion of the giant ship Naglfar is one of the signs of Ragnarök because it allows them to cross that vast ocean. I doubt that boy can accomplish something the entire force of Muspelheim might not be able to manage.”

If one could fly through the air, it was possible, but they all knew that boy possessed no such magic power.

Some of the evil spirits borrowed from Niflheim to help prepare that ship in Muspelheim would ignore gravity and cross that ocean to do damage to Midgard.

However, that was a sporadic occurrence. Even a Valkyrie would be in danger if an army of giants and evil spirits attacked, but she could deal with a small number of evil spirits before they could attack the boy.

And so…

“That boy will arrive at the shore, but that it as far as he will get. Even that is crossing the boundaries of Midgard, so it is still a great adventure to another world. The boy will give up at the shore. If I tell him his journey has made him strong once he returns, all of this will be over.”

“I suppose the boy’s legs will at least be stronger.”

“Y-yes. I cannot deny that. He has already tried to travel to three different worlds after all,” admitted the beautiful Valkyrie who was the boy’s driving force.

At any rate, it seemed all the loose ends would be tied up.

The fire world of Muspelheim was a dangerous place, but the boy would face no real risk if he never actually arrived there.

But something happened Waltraute did not expect.

“Oh, Mr. Loki. What are you doing here?”

“Oh, what a coincidence. Fancy meeting you here.”

“!? All of a sudden, I sense a storm approaching!!” shouted Waltraute.

“That’s the joker of the Æsir for you,” commented one of the ravens.

“I have business in Muspelheim. Are you heading out for a swim in the ocean, boy?”

“What a coincidence. I’m headed to Muspelheim, too.”

“No, wait. He does not have Naglfar!!” argued the Valkyrie. “Loki himself may be able to transform, but he cannot create enough lift to carry that boy even if he turns into a hawk!!”

But Loki continued, “Then how about I give you a lift? I happen to have a feather of Icarus, so just grab on to me.”

“Icarus!!” shouted the boy excitedly.

Waltraute was about ready to smash everything within reach.

“That evil god really is a joker!!”

“And he just introduced something from Greek mythology. But you’ve already crossed over to other settings when you mentioned gyms and used the metric system, so I suppose this didn’t come from nowhere.”

“But if this world has wings even a human can pilot, doesn’t the initial challenge to climb the world tree under his own power lose all meaning? And it doesn’t even require relying on Greek things. Wayland created very similar wings, so-…gygygygyaahh!? D-don’t…don’t strangle me like that!”

“How dare you spit on the results of a strict competition a human risked his life on. It seems ravens need to be taught manners before they are taught to speak.”

More importantly, the boy was about to accept Loki’s invitation and head to the fire world of Muspelheim. The level of danger was very, very different between turning back at the beach and actually entering the fire world.

“I really am going to kill that evil god this time. Come to think of it, if we just kill him instead of the giants and evil spirits, wouldn’t that prevent Ragnarök from happening!?”

Waltraute held a Spear of Destroying Lightning tightly in her right hand.

“No, wait. If you attack Loki now, won’t the boy be caught in the blast?”

“Uuh…!!”

“And it seems Loki knows it. He’s smirking in this direction.”

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Waltraute fired Spears of Destroying Lightning indiscriminately into the night sky and very nearly hit the wolf that was constantly chasing after the moon.

Carelessly approaching Muspelheim could easily cause them to prepare for war.

The Valkyrie gritted her teeth and muttered to herself.

“(But if need be, I will bring that boy back even if it starts a war. Yes. I cannot use Bifröst near Muspelheim, but I can always split the sea with a Spear of Destroying Lightning. I have to take responsibility for leaving that boy alone.)”

“This idiot in love is thinking something crazy while trying to pass it off as her battle obsession!!”

===Part 5===

Surtr, the ruler of the fire world of Muspelheim, had accurately captured the locations of Loki and the boy as they approached (as well as the location of the Valkyrie emitting a fearsome light from her eyes).

Whether it was due to being a giant or due to being an evil ruler, Surtr was large.

For one thing, he was over 4 meters tall. He also held enough energy within him to activate a magic sword with destructive power on a great enough scale to burn down the world tree.

When Loki landed on the ground, he was surrounded by an army of the Muspell giants who resided in the fire world and an army of the evil spirits dispatched from the underworld of Niflheim. However, Loki merely casually raised both hands with a thin smile.

Surtr said, “What are you here for? Surely you know what this place is.”

“My side may have changed when I became brother-in-law with Odin, but I originally had giant blood flowing through my veins.”

“Blood of the giant world of Jötunheimr. You have no connection to Muspelheim.”

“Are there a lot of different kinds of giants?” asked the boy innocently.

Still smiling, Loki answered, “The neighboring Vanir were originally considered a type of giant rather than a type of god. They are a lovely example of how race does not determine whether you are good or evil.”

“Oh…”

“Normally, giants are 3 to 5 meters tall. But when the Vanir became gods, some adjustments were made so they would be the same size as you humans. Even the goddess Freyja who is known for being the most beautiful in all of Norse mythology originally came from the Vanir. In other words, she has giant blood.”

“So there really are all sorts of giants,” said the boy with his eyes sparkling.

However, Surtr was not going to remain silent.

[[Image:Waltraute_v01_141.jpg|thumb]]

The Æsir had unilaterally decided the residents of Muspelheim were giants who had headed down the path of evil for some reason other than their race, so that should not have been surprising.

Plus, Loki had been purposefully choosing his words in order to apply damage to Surtr while using the boy’s innocence as a cushion.

And the boy was completely unaware it was happening.

“What is that?” asked the boy while pointing to the army of evil spirits surrounding them.

Despite how ridiculous an idea it was, it was possible he thought they were there to welcome Loki and him.

“They are evil spirits who have allied with Muspelheim’s forces,” answered Loki.

It may have seemed odd for evil spirits to be the enemies of the gods, but the gods used the war dead of the Einherjar as their own soldiers. They were the spirit soldiers on the evil side, so they were known as evil spirits. The line drawn by the Æsir was very simple and quite unfair.

And the ones who commanded the Muspell giants and the evil spirits were Surtr, a giant, and Hel, the queen of the underworld who possessed giant blood. But just like the Vanir had originally been giants, Surtr and Hel both possessed the attributes of gods as well.

In other words…

The organization of the heavenly world of Asgard and the fire world of Muspelheim were actually very similar. The primary difference was the location itself.

If Muspelheim controlled the world, they would be the ones known as gods.

“…Oh, so they’re evil spirits,” muttered the boy with his eyes wide.

However, he did not grow terrified or try to run away from those “repulsive things” like other humans would.

For some reason, he pulled some snacks from the bag on his back, placed them on a makeshift plate he had made from a large leaf, and held them out towards the evil spirits.

It was like he was giving an offering.

And then the boy held his hands together and spoke.

“N-Namu…”

The army of evil spirits very nearly ceased to be evil.

“H-hey!! You are the ultimate army filled with hatred for the final battle of Ragnarök! Why are you all getting that cheerful look!? And the Namu Amida Butsu is from a completely different setting!!” frantically shouted out Surtr as he very nearly suffered a severe loss of military strength.

“Hah hah hah.” Loki’s smile was as pure as that of the (formerly) evil spirits. “It looks like all that chatting we did midflight paid off. But not even I expected it to go this far.”

“Loki, you joker! What the hell are you here for!? Are you here to attack Muspelheim as one of the Æsir!?”

“I am both an Æsir and a giant. To be blunt, I have no interest in that kind of division.” Loki grinned. “I am the one who almost destroyed the Æsir by kidnapping Iðunn so that they lost the method of producing apples of immortality. And I fathered the greatest foes of Asgard: the great wolf Fenrir, the great serpent Jörmungandr, and the queen of the underworld Hel. …Doesn’t it seem that you owe me more than I owe you?”

“Mhh…”

Surtr’s anger was cooled.

“So why are you here?”

“My objective was complete from the moment I set foot on this land.”

“What?”

“Also…I know.” Loki ignored Surtr’s confusion and placed his hand on the head of the boy next to him. “While we’re here, how about you grant this boy’s wish?”

===Part 6===

Waltraute was monitoring the boy from a point just barely beyond Muspelheim’s defensive line.

When she heard that conversation, she muttered, “Hm. I doubt Loki would act so kind without reason. What is he after? …Don’t tell me he really does have an interest in other men.”

The two ravens Muninn and Huginn spoke while flying around next to Waltraute.

“Hm? That is…”

“Waahhh!! Lady Waltraute, look…look over there a second!!”

“Silence. Do not speak to me during this important moment.”

“No, this is more important!! I don’t know why, but the no-view zone in Muspelheim has been unlocked!” squawked one of the ravens. “That’s Naglfar!! That’s the giant ship Naglfar!!”

“…What?”

She was reluctant to take her eyes off of the boy, but Waltraute frowned and glanced over in the direction Muninn and Huginn indicated.

And she was left utterly speechless.

A number of large white ships were lined up along a dock on the shore of Muspelheim. They were not floating in the water. Instead, they were lined up along the flat ground and supported by many wooden pillars.

They must have been under construction.

They were the giant ships known as Naglfar. During the final battle of Ragnarök, they would carry countless evil spirits and giants to attack the human world of Midgard and the heavenly world of Asgard.

Technically, they were likely not simple ships but actually something like a mobile version of Bifröst.

Around the fire world of Muspelheim and the underworld of Niflheim, the odd flow of magical power prevented the use of Bifröst. That was one of the defensive lines set up by the giants to prevent a surprise attack from the Æsir, but it also made it difficult for the giants to use similar transportation techniques.

That was why they needed Naglfar.

Once Naglfar achieved enough distance from Muspelheim that it was outside the range of that defensive area they had set up themselves, the giants and evil spirits on the ships could be scattered throughout the nine worlds. That was how “the battle that would end the world” would spread throughout all the worlds in no time at all.

The completion of Naglfar was one of the triggers for Ragnarök.

In other words, a general time limit for Ragnarök could be calculated by the construction rate of Naglfar.

“…What was it the head of wisdom Mímir had predicted?” asked Waltraute.

“I-I think it was that the danger would likely come 300 years from now…”

“That fool!! It is over 90% complete! From the looks of it, they might be able to finish it within a week!!”

But then Waltraute received a communication in her ear.

It was from the second Valkyrie sister Gerhilde.

“We have received a report via Muninn and Huginn of what you are seeing. Waltraute, please return to Asgard.”

“What are you going to do!?”

“As the timing of Ragnarök has been accelerated, we must also prepare for war. We must begin immediately. The difference lies in whose preparations are completed first.”

“B-but…!!”

The fourth sister Waltraute looked over towards the fire world of Muspelheim.

The boy was still there.

If Ragnarök began now and the gods and the giants clashed, the boy would most certainly be caught in the middle of it all. And a soul born in the human world of Midgard was not durable enough to withstand the attacks of the gods.

Even his soul would be destroyed.

Waltraute would not even be able to retrieve him as a member of the Einherjar.

And the second sister Gerhilde was likely already aware of that danger thanks to Muninn and Huginn.

Despite that knowledge, she said, “We have always known that over 99% of the residents of Midgard will die once Ragnarök begins. The stage where you could remain attached to that boy has ended. You must change your line of thinking and prepare for Ragnarök.”

“…!!”

The creaking sound of something straining could be heard inside Waltraute’s fist. She very nearly crushed the part of her aurora armor that covered her hand.

“The information we have received from you has been very useful,” continued Gerhilde. “We can use that information to strike first against Muspelheim in a preemptive surprise attack. I will see you at the strategic control room in Valhalla.”

The transmission ended.

The two ravens cowered in fear of the killer intent coming from Waltraute, but remaining silent would not help matters.

One of the ravens hesitantly said, “But if Ragnarök has started, there really isn’t anything you can do for the human boy.”

“In fact, isn’t a good thing we managed to catch a glimpse of Naglfar? It would have been completed sooner or later even if this had not happened. If we hadn’t noticed, Midgard and Asgard would have been caught off guard.”

“…A good thing?” said Waltraute in a low voice as if it was a curse. She finally began shouting with clear hatred in her voice. “Damn you, Loki… Damn you, Loki!! You brought that boy to Muspelheim because you knew this would happen, didn’t you!? You lured in Muninn and Huginn, the scouts of the heavenly world, so they would see how far Naglfar had progressed!!”

Due to the distorted flow of magical power, Bifröst could not be used to reach Muspelheim. That distortion also interfered with Asgard’s other magic, and some of the most distorted areas could not even be seen with their magically-enhanced vision.

Surtr had hidden Naglfar’s construction in one of those areas to prevent anyone from observing its rate of completion. That was why Asgard based their decisions on the prediction made by the head of wisdom Mímir.

So why had Waltraute and the ravens “coincidentally” learned how far along Naglfar was?

The answer was simple: it was no coincidence.

“Loki forcibly opened the no-view zone from within Muspelheim! His goal was to let us see Naglfar just as it became dangerously close to completion!! And he got a soul of the human world involved to do it!!”

“But…” The ravens looked over at the boy who was asking about various things within the fire world of Muspelheim. “Wasn’t that the right thing to do as a member of the Æsir? Even if he got us involved, Loki was working to reveal the plans of Muspelheim.”

“Not a chance,” denied Waltraute immediately. “What is Naglfar made out of?”

“Well…”

“What is it made out of!?”

“Th-the fingernails and toenails of dead humans!!”

“Yes. The more humans die, the faster Naglfar approaches completion. Times of peace delay its completion. So you’re saying Loki predicted how far along Naglfar’s construction was? Of course he did. He is the one who has been causing volcanic eruptions and wars in Midgard to hasten its completion!!”

He was merely showing off the destruction he had prepared.

It was a mocking plan befitting of that joker.

But the end result would be the demise of all nine worlds. And that would of course include that innocent boy.

“B-but why!? Why is Loki doing this!?”

“…I cannot even guess,” replied Waltraute in a low voice.

The target of her hatred stood next to the boy she wished to protect. And the armies of Muspelheim stood in the way of her path to either.

===Part 7===

“Looks like it’s begun,” muttered Loki to himself so Surtr could not hear as the giant barked orders at his subordinate giants and evil spirits in one corner of the fire world of Muspelheim.

The boy next to Loki did not seem to understand the situation as he looked around at the objects and scenery he could never see in the human world of Midgard.

“What has begun?”

“The final battle of Ragnarök.”

Even that boy’s expression stiffened when he heard that. It seemed even a human of his age had been taught about Ragnarök from his parents or a shaman.

That meant the end of the nine worlds supported by the world tree Yggdrasil.

It was the final battle that would burn everything away.

“Y-you’re kidding.”

“Why would I be kidding?”

“But…you have to be kidding!! The old shaman would always laugh and say Ragnarök is something a long, long time from now!!”

“The gods have more accurate information than humans. And look. You can see Naglfar being completed, right? Surly you have heard the stories. It is very nearly complete. At this rate, it will not even take a week.”

“…”

The boy looked like he was about to cry.

The only reason he was able to resist obeying his feelings and letting out a wail was because he had come here on a journey to grow stronger.

“Really?” asked the boy with his voice hoarse. “The final battle of Ragnarök really is beginning?”

Loki used some magic on the boy. This level of magic was usable even in Muspelheim.

The boy could now hear the communications and transmissions currently being sent throughout the heavenly world of Asgard.

“If we can get in a preemptive surprise attack now, we can substantially wear down Muspelheim’s forces!! This is our only time to attack!”

“No, we can’t. This is too little time to prepare. We do not have enough Einherjar war dead yet! We need to focus on fortifying our defenses instead of attacking!!”

“Even if the preemptive surprise attack is a success, a counterattack from Surtr could burn away 40% of Midgard.”

“That does not matter. Once Ragnarök begins, the predictions say over 99% of them will die anyway. Protecting Asgard takes priority!! Once Naglfar is complete, they will head directly here!”

To the powerless human boy, those words were much too cruel.

“This is to be expected,” said Loki with an unconcerned expression. “Asgard is operating under the assumption that the battle will occur, so their plans have already eliminated the possibility of stopping the battle. Even if nothing happens now, they will still be left waiting for Ragnarök to eventually happen.”

“Why did you come here, Mr. Loki?”

“To cause some disturbance in that assumption that it will happen sooner or later.”

As he replied, Loki dismantled the wings of Icarus by melting the wax holding the feathers together and pulled something out from within them.

It was a sword contained within a scabbard colored a sinister black and red.

“This sword is Dáinsleif. It is one of the highest ranked magical swords that even humans can wield.”

Once that magic sword was removed from its scabbard, it would never return to its scabbard until the hated opponent had been killed. Either the target would be killed or the wielder would lose his own life. This “sword of endings” would inevitably bring about one or the other result.

The average human could easily have their heart destroyed by the overflowing curse even if they pulled it just a crack from the scabbard.

It was a sword of mutual destruction.

That cruel weapon was most useful when an extreme gap existed between the value of the killer’s life and the value of the killed’s life.

“Are you going to fight that Surtr guy with this?”

“That is but one of many options. Success would be difficult, though,” readily admitted Loki. “After all, Surtr possesses a magic sword of his own that can set fire to the world tree Yggdrasil and burn away all nine worlds. He has the more powerful sword and his strength is much greater than average. I doubt I could win in a direct fight.”

Then what was he hoping to do?

Loki smiled thinly when he saw the look of confusion in the boy’s eyes.

“Have you heard of the god named Höðr?”

“?”

“Ha ha. I suppose he would not be well known in Midgard. His body was weak and he was blind. Unlike a harvest god or a war god, his role was not one to have a large impact in human history.”

“What happened to this god named Höðr?”

“He was famous for a certain spear. Specifically, a throwing spear made of mistletoe that was too young. A rule existed stating that nothing could harm the light god Baldr, but this mistletoe was exempted from the rule because it was too young. And Höðr did a brilliant job of killing Baldr using a throwing spear made of that mistletoe that no one saw any danger in.”

Loki failed to mention that it had actually been Loki himself that had given Höðr that mistletoe and that Höðr had only obeyed Loki’s instructions to throw it as a joke because he had not known it would kill his elder brother Baldr.

“There is always a blind spot. If you can take advantage of it, you can even kill the light god who supposedly could not be killed. And the gods and giants are essentially the same. There is a good chance Surtr has a blind spot like that.”

A blind spot.

A means of fighting that did not involve using sword against sword.

An alternate method that parted ways with the standard functionality and the standard usage.

“I think Dáinsleif, the sword of mutual destruction, should be used, but I do not plan to draw it myself,” said Loki. “I mean to have Surtr draw it. The sword of mutual destruction puts a curse on the killed and the killer. I cannot win a straight fight, but once Dáinsleif’s curse has been applied evenly, Surtr is guaranteed to receive a certain level of damage as its user.”

During the final battle of Ragnarök, several monsters such as the great serpent Jörmungandr, the great wolf Fenrir, and the queen of the underworld Hel would join together to oppose Asgard. However, the once who held the most important role was Surtr.

His sword would burn away the world tree and all nine worlds.

In other words, if he was defeated at an early stage of the battle, the ultimate conclusion would greatly change.

“But would Surtr really touch such a dangerous sword?”

“Normally, no. That is what the blind spot is for.”

Loki pulled another object out of the wax for the wings of Icarus.

It was a giant scabbard measuring over 3 meters and a giant sword grip that matched.

But the actual blade was missing.

Instead, the scabbard contained a hole the perfect size to fit Dáinsleif and the grip contained a hole the perfect size to fit Dáinsleif’s own grip.

“I can disguise Dáinsleif to look exactly like Surtr’s own magic flame sword. That way, Surtr will ‘accidentally’ draw Dáinsleif. No matter the method used, you will be cursed if you draw the magic sword. This will alter Ragnarök.”

Unlike an Æsir like Loki, the human boy or the giant Surtr would definitely be cursed if they drew the magic sword Dáinsleif. Even if the gods and the giants were said to be the same at the root, they directionality of their powers (what the Æsir called good and evil) was completely different.

While Surtr might be able to withstand the curse that leaked from the scabbard, even he would be unable to resist it if he completely drew the sword.

“But…” The boy hesitated. “Won’t Surtr be in trouble if you do that?”

“Unfortunately, the Norns have already predicted that Surtr will lose his life even if Ragnarök goes perfectly well. Whether this happens or not, his fate is the same,” said Loki smoothly. “But altering at which stage Surtr dies will greatly affect the lives of those living in the nine worlds. Over 99% of Midgard will die, so your mother and father are at risk. And over 80% of Asgard will die as well, so the odds aren’t good for Waltraute either. If I can greatly change those numbers, what do you think I should do?”

“…”

The boy looked down to the ground, fell silent, and bit his lip.

Finally, he spoke.

“How often do your ideas work?”

“You had to ask that, didn’t you?” Loki smiled. “My success rate is 30%...no, more like 20%. The odds are pretty high he’ll catch onto the truth by detecting the faint curse leaking from the crack in the altered scabbard. And even if he doesn’t, the magic flame sword symbolizes Surtr. I can’t say for sure whether he would mistake something else for the weapon that has adhered to his existence.”

At best, the odds were 30%.

If it succeeded, Surtr and the forces of Muspelheim he commanded would be thrown into chaos. Surtr was their greatest power, so Asgard would attack and smash Muspelheim to pieces if he was gone.

Was the boy willing to make that sacrifice in order to protect the human world of Midgard and the heavenly world of Asgard?

Or would he refuse to sacrifice and simply wait for the destruction of the nine worlds?

He thought.

And he made his decision.

“…Mr. Loki.”

“Yes?”

“Give me that sword. I have an idea.”

===Part 8===

“Muninn, Huginn.”

With a Spear of Destroying Lightning in her right hand, Waltraute called the two ravens that flew nearby.

She continued, “This is enough. You return to Asgard.”

“What will you do!?”

“You need not worry about that. If you stay, you will only get caught up in it all.

Muninn and Huginn could not question her any further.

This was because multiple Spears of Destroying Lightning flew towards Waltraute from many directions at once.

It was a total of seventeen.

[[Image:Waltraute_v01_163.jpg|thumb]]

That downpour of powerful light stabbed down from heaven to earth.

The air in the surrounding area shook. A brilliant flash of light filled one corner of the night and lit it up like midday.

A single Spear of Destroying Lightning created enough destructive power to destroy the average evil spirit if it so much as grazed them.

That violent dance of light filled a set area.

However…

“None of you can outmatch me in maneuverability, you fools,” muttered Waltraute calmly.

Giant craters measuring kilometers in diameter were created everywhere, but the explosions were uneven. She moved at high speed to accurately evade through the small gaps between destruction.

An unnatural aurora covered the night sky.

The Valkyries who had fired the multiple Spears of Destroying Lightning from Asgard had descended at 87% the speed of light. The eight sisters on horseback had split into three groups to block Waltraute’s escape. Despite their attacks missing, their expression remained unchanged. The attacks had only been intended to hold Waltraute in place as they landed. They never expected to defeat her with their initial attacks.

They had Waltraute surrounded in a 20 kilometer ring around her.

But for them, that might as well have been right next to each other.

After landing on the surface, they dismounted from their white horses and held their Spears of Destroying Lightning at the ready. The horses silently disappeared into the light, leaving only the Valkyries on the battlefield.

The Valkyries could move throughout the nine worlds at 87% the speed of light, but they did not like to appear right in front of their enemy to perform an immediate surprise attack.

The Bifröst method broke their existences down to transport them and then returned their existences to normal. In other words, one’s senses could not grasp the situation for an instant after landing. If the target was already on guard, it was possible the target could get in a counter attack.

And…

The fourth sister Waltraute was the Valkyrie of the nine with the greatest maneuverability. She had the greatest odds of succeeding in such a counter attack.

A transmission from the third sister Ortlinde reached her ears.

“…Located. …Located. …Fourth sister Waltraute has been located. …She must be detached from the Wagner Valkyrie system to open a path to Muspelheim.”

“So you are going to eliminate me without warning or negotiation?” asked Waltraute.

“Nothing we say will get you to move out of the way.” This time it was the ninth sister Rossweisse. “After all, your beloved darling waits for you in Muspelheim. If we carry out a preemptive surprise attack, he is almost guaranteed to be caught in the middle of it.”

“…”

Waltraute fell silent and the second sister Gerhilde pressed her further.

“Your actions could be seen as treason against heaven as they could assist Muspelheim and bring danger to Asgard. Asking you to move out of the way and obey our instructions was only for show. We could only obtain permission to eliminate you once you failed to heed our warning, so we do not care if you did not even listen. If a wooden placeholder is set in the seat of the missing fourth sister, the system can continue functioning.”

“You may be superior when it comes to maneuverability,” whispered the eldest sister Brynhildr to finish the conversation. “But we each have our own specialties. Surely you do not think you can outdo us in any category other than maneuverability.”

For example…

The ninth sister Rossweisse had defensive power.

The much too large armor covering her slender body told it all. She sacrificed speed for that solid armor, but she could withstand several strikes from the Spears of Destroying Lightning fired by the other Valkyries.

The second sister Gerhilde had her great number of simultaneous attacks.

In both hands, she held the types of sticks used to control the strings of a marionette. She could use them to use 10 Spears of Destroying Lightning at once.

And then there was the eldest sister Brynhildr.

The aurora armor she wore flickered unnaturally. But with darkness, not light. A large bloody man floated up vaguely from within that dark flicker. The way his arms and legs hung down limply showed no sign of a human will. A single spear piercing through his back and out his chest furthered that impression. Several black strings wrapped around the spear and writhed about within the large man.

He was the legendary warrior Siegfried.

Brynhildr’s specialty was her ability to control human souls. She could command and control the army of the Einherjar war dead more skillfully than anyone else.

“It is 8 to 1. As we are all Valkyries, numbers will decide this. Sorry, but we must defeat you,” announced Brynhildr as the bloody Siegfried followed her around.

Siegfried was a soul from the human world, yet he was also a hero who had been made invincible except for the one spot on his back after bathing in dragon’s blood. She could simultaneously control hundreds of thousands of souls on that level. In a pure contest of strength, Waltraute had no chance.

===Part 9===

What if?

What if the boy drew the magic sword Dáinsleif from its scabbard? Even if he challenged Surtr to a fight with that magic sword, the boy would not win.

After all, it would be a battle between one of the strongest swords a human can wield and one of the strongest of swords that a human would never be able to wield.

It was obvious which would be victorious.

What if?

What if the boy tried to approach Surtr with that dangerous sword in hand? Surtr might be so taken aback he would frantically try to take Dáinsleif from the ignorant boy. If the sword was loose in the scabbard, it might slip out.

Whatever the situation might be, the one who drew the sword from its scabbard would be cursed. It was possible Surtr would be cursed by Dáinsleif.

But Surtr was the ruler of the fire world of Muspelheim. He understood just how great a meaning was held in his own life and the choices he made.

If the boy approached with an object dangerous enough to possibly hinder him, he would likely cut the boy down no questions asked.

And after making the correct decision, he would regret it on his own without letting anyone else know.

What if?

What if the boy drew Dáinsleif of his own free will and then told Surtr he had been tricked by Loki? Dáinsleif could not be returned to its scabbard until either its target or its wielder had died. Would Surtr hesitate to strike and be struck by the boy’s attack?

However, Surtr was a great ruler who had thoroughly trained himself and others for the sake of the coming battle. As he planned to literally rebel against the gods and sought victory despite knowing he could not overturn the predictions about Ragnarök, he had continued to strengthen his body and mind past their limits day after day.

Whatever the reason, he would cut down any human that stood before him while armed with a magic sword.

Surtr had thoroughly trained his thought processes for war, so that would be how he thought.

Even if he later regretted cutting down a powerless human, he would heartlessly act in the moment. That was simply the type of being Surtr was.

No matter what action he took and no matter what path he chose, the result would not change.

That was how most would view it and it was likely true.

But Loki was the one who had killed the light god Baldr who supposedly could not be killed no matter what. He knew from experience that those protected by an absolute always had the most vulnerable loopholes.

Even for Loki, this was a poor bet.

Replacing the magic flame sword that would burn down the nine worlds with Dáinsleif, the sword of mutual destruction, sounded simple enough, but it would be truly difficult to make Surtr mistake something else for the sword that was said to symbolize him.

And then the boy from Midgard made a suggestion.

After bringing him to Muspelheim to lure in Waltraute, Muninn, and Huginn so they would see Naglfar, that boy’s role was supposed to have ended.

The boy gathered his determination and spoke.

He stood before the evil god Loki.

He stood before the magic sword Dáinsleif.

The path chosen by that tiny boy was…

===Part 10===

The other eight Valkyrie sisters closed in on the fourth sister Waltraute.

They had their Spears of Destroying Lightning, the army of Einherjar under their command, and the hero Siegfried controlled with both love and hatred by the eldest sister Brynhildr. They used all of that to advance on the traitor they deemed to be a real threat.

But Waltraute smiled.

“Simply getting into a fight to suit the situation is too boring. Let us bet a definite prize on the outcome.”

“A competition?” muttered Brynhildr as her tone of voice completely changed. “You dare enter into a competition with the Valkyries that oversee such things for the gods who rule over war!? Surely you know how reckless that is, Waltraute!!”

“I experienced it enough thanks to that boy from Midgard. I am painfully aware what a competition entails, Brynhildr,” said Waltraute quietly. “Let the competition begin. All eight of you can come at me at once if you wish. But once all eight of you have been rendered unable to fight, you must restrain from making any attacks that might involve that boy.”

“We planned to crush you regardless of any such promises…but you have a deal, Waltraute! However, I am only giving you this small hope so I can smash it to pieces!! You never had a chance of victory here!!”

“You are the ones with no chance of victory.”

“What?”

“You likely did so to quickly begin your bombardment from above and to stress adaptability and individual strength, but it was a mistake to create a force made up entirely of Valkyries. The outcome might have been different had you added in a pure god.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I am saying that victory is mine, you fool.”

===Part 11===

The boy walked through the fire world of Muspelheim.

He was searching for Surtr.

Loki’s words were spinning around in his head. If Surtr was defeated, the result of Ragnarök might change. He might be able to protect his beloved Waltraute and others doomed to die.

The Muspell giants and evil spirits must have been busy preparing for war because they had been running every which way for a while. They did not have time to pay any attention to the boy’s movements. Just like the spear Loki had once prepared, the boy was simply too young and powerless to pay any attention to.

But he was a human.

He had what it took to wield the magic sword Dáinsleif.

He could draw the magic sword as direct power or he could use it in a deception. The boy could make either choice.

(There he is. It’s Surtr.)

The boy spoke silently to himself as he poked his head from behind a giant ship.

Surtr had his back to the boy as he gave orders along the beach lined with the ships of Naglfar. They were rushing to complete Naglfar for the final battle of Ragnarök.

“Sorry, but I don’t have time to speak with you,” said Surtr without even turning around. He used a gap between barking orders to speak to the boy. “Your idea to train in an area not protected by the gods was a good one, but you simply didn’t have the time. …To be honest, I didn’t expect to gather so many nails of the dead so quickly.”

“…”

Surtr did not even look at the boy.

He must have been confident he could immediately take action if something happened. Then again, Surtr would not even be scratched if the boy swung a normal dagger up at him.

But what if the boy used Dáinsleif?

What if he used an alternative method to a frontal attack?

Was there really no hope of success?

Was it truly correct to think there was a chance?

“Surtr.”

The boy called his name.

The ruler still did not turn around.

The boy continued regardless.

“The thing is…”

===Part 12===

Eight Valkyries attacked at once to detach Waltraute from the system.

The Valkyries’ Spears of Destroying Lightning allowed them to attack from dozens of kilometers away, but they could attack in quicker and quicker succession the closer they were. When a formation of eight was doing so from three different directions, even Waltraute’s great maneuverability could not continue to evade every single attack.

And Waltraute would die if even a single strike hit her. The aurora armor was not enough to defend against a Spear of Destroying Lightning. The other Valkyries were treating this as a simple detachment procedure rather than a competition.

But…

That was only what would have happened if this was a pure fight between the gods in an action novel.

“Unfortunately for you, this is a love comedy. As reluctant as I am to admit it.”

“What are you talking about!?”

Waltraute smiled quietly while paying no heed to the other eight charging towards her with their legs practically causing explosions along the ground and the tips of their Spears of Destroying Lightning flying towards her.

“I am saying that this competition will not be decided solely by such serious matters!!” shouted Waltraute as she released the Spear of Destroying Lightning she had been holding in her hand and reached a hand into her armor’s pocket.

Inside that pocket was the tool she had confiscated from that boy in the previous chapter.

It was the multi-tool knife created by the dwarves.

It was a golden tool that would automatically remove a Valkyrie’s armor.

“!?”

(Are you trying to remove our weapons and armor to prevent us from fighting?)

Brynhildr guessed at Waltraute’s intentions.

“Fool!! Did you really think a tool developed to remove our armor while we lie motionless on a bed can do anything while we are moving at full speed!?”

“That is not the function I am using, you fool.”

Waltraute grinned and unfolded one of the blades from the multi-tool knife.

Specifically, she unfolded the unwanted new function the dwarves had added with the extra gold.

As soon as she did, a large number of tentacles squirmed out while completely ignoring the law of conservation of mass.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………What?”

Brynhildr was left dumbfounded and Waltraute said, “It seems the dwarves put in a little too much effort on this one. A Valkyrie caught by these things will supposedly pass out and foam at the mouth.”

“Nn…nn…nwwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?!?!?”

Please wait a moment…drool.

“Hm.”

Waltraute pressed the button on the tool’s handle to stop the housewife-pleasing function at the last second. The widowed eldest sister and the other single women were left bound by those slimy objects wrapped all around their bodies.

“You should be thankful this is a love comedy. If it was an erotic novel, this would have gone beyond simply binding your arms and legs.”

“Ha…ha ha.”

Brynhildr laughed weakly after that close call.

The Einherjar she controlled could not act with their commander gone.

“It does seem there is nothing more we can do. We admit defeat. But you are in a dilemma as well, Waltraute.”

“Yes, it is true this could be turned on me at any time.”

“That is not what I meant,” said Brynhildr while twisting her bound body around. “I have been communicating with Loki. We had been planning to crush Muspelheim all at once with simultaneous attacks from two fronts, but his attack alone should be effective enough. …And it seems his attack uses that boy as its key.”

“…What?”

Waltraute looked confused and Brynhildr’s continued with a verbal finishing blow.

“It seems Loki hopes to have Surtr wield the magic sword Dáinsleif so the curse damages him. He plays the important role of burning away the nine worlds, so his defeat is bound to greatly affect the outcome of Ragnarök. But what do you think Surtr will do once he is cursed by Dáinsleif? At the very least, he is sure to view that boy from Midgard just as responsible for the plot as Loki.”

“…”

“Loki has the ability to transform, so he may be able to escape Muspelheim in the form of a hawk or something. But will he be able to bring that human boy with him? In fact, will that evil god even show the integrity to worry about the boy at all? What do you think, Waltraute?”

===Part 13===

“Surtr, do you know about the magic sword Dáinsleif?”

Surtr finally turned toward the boy with a puzzled look. Then he wrinkled his brow grimly. A great ruler like him saw through it immediately. A slight remnant of a curse clung to the boy’s right hand.

(That abominable sword? But he did not draw it from its scabbard. That is only what leaked through the scabbard. If he had actually drawn it, this boy’s fate would already be sealed.)

Surtr snapped his fingers lightly.

Sparks flew from the boy’s palm similar to when a hot piece of iron was struck. The trace of the curse disappeared.

“…Do you possess the magic sword?”

Surtr thought for a second, but he quickly realized that could not be the case.

Dáinsleif’s curse was so powerful not even he could oppose it if he were to draw the sword from its scabbard.

“No, the scabbard is not enough to completely seal away Dáinsleif’s curse. If you carried it with you constantly, you would need some kind of countermeasure built into your flesh. However, I can sense no such trick in you. …You held it for the first time recently, didn’t you?”

Loki frowned slightly as he watched from a distance.

(He touched the hilt, but he never actually drew it. When that boy whose role should have been over reached for Dáinsleif himself, I thought some great change might be coming. I guess I was wrong.)

He traced his fingers along the sinister sword of red and black he held.

(I did not think he would change his mind at the last second. Was he afraid of the curse or of Surtr? That was just one of many options, but if the result of Ragnarök is not changed in a large way, over 99% of the humans in Midgard will perish.)

“Who has it? Was Loki the one behind this?”

“That doesn’t matter.” The boy shook his head. “Y’see, I heard the final battle of Ragnarök would begin once those ships are finished. Is that true?”

“Yes. We have been preparing for this for a very long time.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Surtr in a low voice. “Originally, we were equal. There was no distinction between gods and giants. But the process they used to create the nine worlds left most of us dead while most of them survived. And instead of trying to save us, they named themselves gods and insulted us by naming us giants!! And it was all because of a plan they came up with and carried out on their own! They rose up to the heavens while driving us to the outer edges of the worlds!!”

“Uuh…uuh…” The boy let out a groan because he could not come up with a way of expressing the thoughts in his head. But then, “But a bunch of giants will die during Ragnarök, right?”

“That does not matter. This hatred was inputted into us from the moment these worlds were created. All giants were born in order to carry out our revenge by destroying the nine worlds during Ragnarök!!”

“But, but! The Vanir were originally giants, right? It makes no sense to say you need revenge because you’re giants or that you’re okay with dying because you’re giants.”

“They were taken in by the Æsir! They forgot what they must do and worked to earn the favor of those so-called gods!! They are not true giants. We will never cast aside our pride!!”

Even as he shouted, Surtr felt like something did not quite add up.

Their pride as giants?

Their pride in the bigoted and derogatory designation that had been used to drive them to the outer edges of the worlds?

“This is my first time in Muspelheim, but it doesn’t seem like the giants here are doing bad things.”

“Of course not!! We have justice on our side! It is those so-called gods who…who…!!”

“Then it’s wrong to die just to get revenge against them. I think the giants should be able to work to protect things, make things, and leave something behind. It’s wrong to throw away all those feelings just because you are giants or to give up your life for the sake of revenge. That’s…”

The boy trailed off, but Surtr knew what the boy was trying to say.

Yes.

From the moment the nine worlds had been created and from the moment they had been classified as being either holy gods or evil giants, they had been doing nothing different from the classification “those more powerful” had unilaterally forced upon them.

“…Boy. What would you have us do? What goal do you see beyond those words of yours!?”

“Put down your weapons,” said the boy decisively. “The note of the Gjallarhorn being blown may one day ring throughout the nine worlds. The sun and moon may one day be swallowed up. The chains binding the great wolf Fenrir may one day be broken. …But that day is not today.”

“…”

“We will convince our gods. We will have them lay down their weapons. So you lay down your own weapons. If you do that, this world that had begun to end can contain a few smiles once more.”

“Hah,” laughed Surtr. “Can that happen? Can that really happen!? We do not trust them. And they do not trust us. If we ask each other to put down our weapons so we can talk this out, it can only lead to deception!! When they created the nine worlds, they tried to wipe us out. Can you really put down the only weapon you have to protect yourself before an opponent that has tried to kill you before!?”

“I can,” he replied immediately.

This was not just a nice thought or an idealistic statement.

It was backed by a certain strength.

The boy spread his empty hands and spoke.

“I made sure to put down my own weapon.”

Surtr froze completely in place at those words.

He recalled the magic sword Dáinsleif.

Even if a direct attack would have been hopeless, the boy could have used that sword to kill Surtr if he used some kind of trickery. That piece would have let him greatly change the outcome of Ragnarök. He might have been able to lessen the damage to the human world of Midgard in exchange for the utter destruction of the fire world of Muspelheim.

Even setting aside whether he could have actually killed Surtr or not, he would have been able to at least fight back.

But the boy had let go of that weapon without hesitation.

Not to run away once he knew his opponent was the ruler of evil but to speak with that ruler of evil.

Did cutting down such a boy coincide with the justice Surtr and the giants claimed to have on their side?

This was not an enemy displaying clear malice.

Should the proper ruler of Muspelheim turn hatred in the direction of someone who held no hostility and even laid down his weapon out of respect?

(He said this was a journey to grow stronger.)

Surtr gritted his teeth.

Despite being the ruler of the fire world of Muspelheim and despite his overwhelming size, Surtr was jealous of this puny human.

(So is this the type of power and strength you seek!?)

“I cannot accept it.”

Surtr drew the giant sword from the scabbard on his back.

It was over three meters long. It was made entirely out of a silver that was almost black. Orange sparks flew from the blade of that ominous sword. A single swing of that sword could send a great rain of fire pouring down from the sky. If it was stabbed into the trunk of the world tree Yggdrasil, I was said it would burn away the nine worlds. It was perhaps the greatest of all magic swords. And he pulled it out when faced with a single boy.

“I cannot accept that strength!! I will give you some time. Go and retrieve Dáinsleif! Return and fight me!!”

“No.”

“Are you afraid of that magic sword’s curse? If you fear for your life, call for help from the Valkyrie just beyond our defensive lines!! Send that divine punishment to fight me!!”

“Never,” declared the boy decisively. “I came to your world to gain a strength that would not spill any blood. I still believe I can gain that strength if I train here. That is why I will never rely on this type of fighting.”

With those words, the boy was treating Surtr as something other than the ruler of evil.

He was treating him as someone with great power.

He was treating him as someone who could grant his wish.

He was treating him as someone who had been treated equally in the age before gods and giants.

He said he believed.

That is what that boy said to that existence that held such great power.

“…”

Surtr gritted his teeth as he thought about that clumsy courtesy.

But he could not put his sword away.

As the ruler of Muspelheim and the leader of the many Muspell giants, Surtr let out a roar and swung down his flame sword.

“Ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

And…

===Part 14===

After neutralizing the other eight Valkyries, Waltraute watched what was occurring within the fire world of Muspelheim.

Flames blew about.

Light and heat wiped away the night.

The destructive power was more than enough to befit the ruler of evil.

But…

“He cannot do it,” muttered Waltraute.

In the next moment, Surtr stopped that flame sword that symbolized destructive power. The boy had not moved even at the last moment. He had not shut his eyes. He had simply stared directly at Surtr the entire time. And he was completely unscathed.

Surtr had halted his attack.

“That boy treated you as a respected god rather than an evil giant. As the ruler of an entire world, you could not return such feelings with cruelty. This was a crossroads where you could either affirm or deny that Muspelheim is a world of evil. This was a decision as a ruler that would affect the fates of all Muspell giants.”

And Surtr had made the decision of a god rather than of a giant.

He had saved the life of the one who had lifted up a prayer to him.

And it had been that boy’s strength that had allowed him to remember that.

Waltraute herself had long viewed the great gap between god and giant as completely natural.

She was one of those who benefitted from it.

“Soul of Midgard,” said Surtr.

“What?”

“Even if I lay down my weapon here, the tragedy cannot be avoided unless Odin replies in kind as the leader of the Æsir. What will you do about this problem?”

“I will stop it of course,” replied the boy decisively. “We – Waltraute and I, that is – will make sure Lord Odin lays down his weapon.”

“Heh,” laughed Surtr.

It was a small but definite thing. It was possible one of the Muspell had never before been brought to laughter by a soul of the human world.

And the laughter grew.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!! Interesting. Then get going and stop that war-obsessed old man!! Prove your sincerity with that! But it won’t be easy. After all, we have yet to see even the beginning of a resolution even after facing each other down over this issue for more than 1000 years!!”

Having said that, Surtr let go of his flame sword. The giant sword stabbed into the hard ground, but no major change occurred.

That sword would no longer produce flames or burn away any of the worlds.

He had lost an element of himself as a giant and as a ruler, but Surtr only glanced down at the sword with strong feeling in his eyes.

“…I put it down. Ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!! I put it down! I put down my weapon! I don’t need to kill anyone!!”

“Yes.”

“I feel light. I can feel my stiff muscles loosening up. I see. So this is what it feels like to be freed from that environment of kill or be killed.”

“That’s right, ruler of Muspelheim.”

“But how are you going to get the Æsir and Vanir to put down their weapons?”

“Don’t worry,” said the boy with a smile. “I can get my wife’s help. If she talks it out with them, it’ll all be okay.”

“Hmph,” snorted Waltraute as she turned away.

Everyone would have things a lot easier if the Æsir were so easily dealt with. The head god was a war god who liked to start wars. Just like a harvest god would cause crops to grow for no reason, that war god did not need a real reason. If the situation allowed for a war to occur, he would cause one. That was how he had always acted throughout history.

“…What will you do?” asked the eldest sister Brynhildr.

She believed in defeating someone before they defeated her, so she no longer saw attacking Muspelheim a necessity now that it was not an immediate threat. The fact that she would not act in a heartless manner as long as one did not turn a weapon towards her displayed the humanity(?) of Brynhildr that she rarely showed on the surface.

After Waltraute threatened to send out those tentacles the instant they tried anything, the other seven Valkyries grew obedient. (Although the fact they had lost the competition may have played a larger role.) Just as the holy spear Gungnir symbolized the head god and the lightning hammer Mjölnir symbolized the lightning god, the golden tool Waltraute held symbolized the weakness of a Valkyrie.

If that tool was fully activated, their hearts might stop due to a highly unairable reason.

The only way Brynhildr and the others could resist it would be to become something other than Valkyries.

Waltraute decided the item’s abilities were too much for her to give it back to the boy for the time being.

“This is a difficult issue,” she admitted. “But it is the job of a wife and a god to meet the expectations of her husband and believer. I have no choice but to do something rather reckless.”

“Meaning?”

“I will talk this over with Odin after beating him to a pulp.”

===Part 15===

And only one final problem remained.

After making sure a sobbing Odin declared a truce, Waltraute left the heavenly hall of Valhalla. As she did, she spotted an evil god entering.

It was Loki.

He was the one who had plotted out the entire incident.

A sharp look entered Waltraute’s eyes as she recalled all the various dangers that had approached that boy.

“I suppose the Norns’ prediction has been avoided just as you planned,” she said.

“Are you trying to say Ragnarök has been completely avoided? Do not be naïve. Fate has been twisted, but it will be mended in a different form. After all, Naglfar is not the only impetus for the beginning of Ragnarök. The sun and moon disappearing, the chains binding Fenrir breaking…there are plenty prepared. Even if a single cause disappears, the core of the issue will shift to a different impetus and the countdown towards Ragnarök will continue on. This merely delayed it. It will happen sooner or later; this just shifted its timing.”

“So this will happen again?”

“It is inevitable at the current rate,” said Loki casually. “Not even Odin can avoid the Norns’ predictions. They are so accurate you would think their mouths are curses in and of themselves. …I don’t like it. As a joker, a world with everything set in stone is no fun.”

“So that is where your essence lies, you evil god.” Waltraute’s tone of voice dropped even further. “You would never have an admirable objective like avoiding Ragnarök or protecting the nine worlds. You just want to cause trouble. You only act according to your nickname of joker. Even if this pushes Ragnarök in an even worse direction, you would not care in the slightest, would you?”

“I am not the one that decides the value of a joker. That changes depending on the rules of the game. The joker can be the best card that leads one to victory or it can be the worst card that leads one to defeat. Don’t you think that is what it means to be a joker?” Loki smiled thinly. “But if you ask me, that human boy is quite something. I throw the rules into disarray as a joker, but even that is only within the confines of the rules. But that boy is different. When I handed Dáinsleif to him, that option did not exist. His actions did not exist within the rules. That may be what it is to be human.”

“…”

“At that point, the only two options were to take the weapon or to not take the weapon. But that boy saw meaning in taking the weapon but then casting it aside. He did not simply ''not'' take it. There is a difference between that and letting it go after taking it. He used that difference to his advantage.”

Even if the boy had used the exact same words while confronting Surtr, the giant would not have been as moved by his words had the boy simply come empty handed. He would have rejected the boy’s ideas as the idealistic view of someone who had never even picked up his weapon.

And if he had stood before Surtr while still holding the weapon, Surtr would have sliced the boy in two no matter what reason the boy had. That ruler of the giants had trained himself and others for battle with the gods who ruled the worlds. He would have shown no mercy. No matter how much he might have agonized over it later, he would have brought it all to a clear end when that boy stood before him.

It was unclear how much of that the boy had done intentionally.

It was possible it had been all the more effective ''because'' the boy had not done it intentionally.

But whatever the reason…

“I can see why that war god Odin is so obsessed with this boy. Odin’s role is not to protect those who fight in wars; it is to ensure war itself persists. You could say that boy is his natural enemy. I doubt Odin himself is actually aware he views that boy as his natural enemy, though. The final battle of Ragnarök is both Odin’s ultimate end and also his greatest accomplishment as a war god. Since that boy managed to easily stop such a great war, his nature must counterbalance that of Odin.”

A world where war was seen as natural.

A world where the heroic war dead were lead to the heavenly world and those who died of old age and illness were sent to the underworld.

A world in which a war god ruled at the top and people were taught that was a virtuous thing.

That boy was a puny creature and his soul would never be anything but a soul of Midgard. In other words, he would eventually die as a human. He could only live in the basic cycle of life so he was nothing but a “puny” existence from a god’s point of view.

However…

Even so, the answer the boy had given here held a possibility great enough to overturn the basic assumptions of that world ruled by a war god where war was natural.

Loki shrugged and said, “Waltraute, it seems you have an excellent eye for men. Given the nature of Valkyries, he seems a bit unsuited for you, but who else is such a great mass of military might supposed to marry? Perhaps someone like him is needed to balance out the scales. Much like how the war god Odin is bound to the goddess of marriage Frigg.”

“H-hmph. He is not that great a soul. That boy’s soul is completely overshadowed when compared to the human Siegfried who once temporarily separated Brynhildr from the nine-Valkyrie system.” Despite denying Loki’s words, Waltraute went on to say, “But he is still the boy who attempted to climb the world tree and won that competition with me. As the impartial overseer of that competition, it is my duty to pay him a proper reward.”

“When you were trapped within the gears of that war god, you would have found it difficult to say he ‘won’ given how that competition ended.”

Loki grinned, but he then changed the subject.

It seemed seeing Waltraute’s reaction had achieved his goal.

“But I will continue to carry out my role as a joker. I will cause as much trouble as I can with fate set by the Norns’ predictions. If one is able to skillfully turn the movements of the cards in a direction that benefits him, he will be able to gather a fortune. You should pray you can handle yourself well.”

“I see.” Waltraute let out a light sigh. “By the way, I just finished going on a bit of a rampage within Valhalla.”

“So it seems. It sets a bad example for the house of the gods to be in such disrepair.”

“I do not want to let anyone slip through the cracks. I need to ensure my warning is as thorough as possible.”

“…What?” muttered Loki as the Valkyrie held a Spear of Destroying Lightning in her right hand.

In the next instant, she let loose the greatest strike that day.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[The_Circumstances_Leading_to_Waltraute's_Marriage:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
| Return to [[The_Circumstances_Leading_to_Waltraute's_Marriage|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Circumstances_Leading_to_Waltraute's_Marriage:Volume1_Chapter_4|A.E. 01]]
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</noinclude>

The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume1 Chapter 1

2016-04-03T14:26:49Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 1: Fairy Red and Break News==

===Part 1===

One summer day, the beating of a drum arrived from the inn town at the base of the mountain.

Boo Boo was still young then as he watched from a small hill a short distance away.

The people’s faces could not be seen from there, but the lights of the bonfire and festival stands looked like a jewelry box and let him know that a large number of people were enjoying themselves from the bottom of their heart.

Gray Boo Boo had the back of his round stuffed-animal body to Beatrice who sat nearby, so she asked him a question.

“Aren’t you going to join in, Boo Boo? I don’t know what this festival is for since I only just got back from the Labyrinth, but I can show you around the inn town.”

He shook his head without looking back her way.

“I’m fine on my own.”

“?”

“Everyone’s afraid of me. If I went to the festival, it would ruin their fun. So I’m fine on my own.”

His round back looked small and that was likely due to more than his short height.

Beatrice sighed and sat down right next to him.

“That isn’t true.”

She smiled and stroked his head with her gauntleted hand.

“If you clear up any misunderstandings and let everyone know what kind of person you are, you won’t have to think like that anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s at least one person here who’s accepted you.”

The beating of the festival drum continued and Boo Boo said nothing for a while.

He stared at the distant flickering lights before finally speaking again.

“I want friends.”

“Of course.”

“I want to go to a festival one day.”

“You can. You can now if you want to.”

He shook his head.

“I’m scared.”

“Of the humans?”

“I’m scared of everyone being scared of me.”

Nothing anyone said was going to help with that. Boo Boo would have to overcome it himself and continue forward. Meddling and dragging him in front of everyone or pushing him forward when he was not ready would be useless.

So Beatrice said something else.

“Then let’s start with the two of us and go from there. We’re already friends, right?”

===Part 2===

In the dark forest, a Shining Weapon much like a steel beam took out a Great Rocky Mountain King Bear. The Merchants and Couriers who travelled through Grandnir called those bears a “fickle roll of the dice”. The bear was large enough to knock over a moving four-horse carriage, but Boo Boo slammed it back-first into some rocks and jumped before it could even groan in pain. His knee slammed into the monster bear’s nose and took its life before it could put up any kind of resistance.

He was three if not four meters tall.

With extremely powerful muscles covered with plenty of fat, his entire pig-faced humanoid body was a deadly weapon. He attached his metal Shining Weapon to the crude belt around his waist and wiped the sweat from his brow.

“That was some good work. I can eat for three days with this. Hm? What is it, Beatrice? Does your stomach hurt?’

“Ah…ah ha ha…The flow of time really is cruel. I’m starting to wonder if my love is being tested…”

“Hm? I’m not good with complicated things like love.”

“What you say is exactly the same, but it seems so different now that your body’s changed! Wahhhhhh!!”

Beatrice covered her face with her gauntleted hands.

The stuffed animal that would squeal when she hugged it had vanished in the world of the past. Now she could feel an invisible wall of pressure even from a short distance away. Not to mention his bestial stench. She had even heard rumors that some pioneers would cover their hair and clothes in Boo Boo’s scent to ward off beasts.

Meanwhile, he only understood that something was troubling her.

“When you’re worried, a full stomach will get rid of it. Beatrice, I brought a lunch with me.”

“Oh? Good job, Boo Boo. You’re so civilized.”

“I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“You’re imagining it. I’m not all that hungry right now, but I am curious what’s inside your lunch.”

Some might wonder why he would need a lunch when he had the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear in front of him, but it was only natural to make sure he had food in case he could not find any prey. Plus, the captured beast’s organs and blood had to be removed, so it could not be eaten right away.

As for the prepared lunch, Boo Boo opened a green basket made from a large leaf with disinfectant properties that looked like something found in a rainforest.

“Raw fruit.”

“Okay.”

“Raw mushrooms.”

“…Okay?”

“Raw fish and raw meat.”

“B-Boo Boo! W-wait. Why not try cooking things every once in a while!?”

Beatrice quickly stopped him, but he tilted his head.

“You sometimes ask for hard things.”

“Uuh… That counts as ‘hard’?”

“I know food tastes good when cooked over a fire, but it’s hard to get it just right. When it’s all burned black, it makes me sad.”

“H-hmm. Well, setting aside whether it’s cooked or not, what kind of meat is it? I’m pretty sure it’s twitching.”

“I don’t know how to answer tricky questions like that.”

“Let’s at least know what it is we’re putting in our mouth, Boo Boo!”

Her desperate plea only made the nearly four meter Orc tilt his head curiously.

“Hmm. Having too strong a stomach may be a problem. I’ve heard necessity is the mother of invention, but does this mean Orc civilization never developed because there was no necessity?”

“No, Beatrice.”

“?”

“I’m not just an Orc. I’m an Iberian Orc!”

“Ibe-…what?”

Boo Boo pulled out his log or steel beam of a Shining Weapon and showed her a spot near the base.

“Iberian is the most amazing kind. It even says it here, so it has to be true!”

The word “Iberian!” was carved there by some kind of blade.

It was in a wild sort of handwriting.

(W-well, that is the best kind…or rather, it sounds tasty. But I get the feeling he’s being made fun of. What happened, Boo Boo?)

There was a big problem here, but getting bogged down in it would not help.

He got back to the lunch issue.

“I recommend the meat. You have to remove the bones for the fish, so it’s only for experts.”

“S-sure. But this is your lunch, so I’ll pass.”

She politely retreated and he closed the lunchbox.

“Why are you here, Beatrice? To play with me?”

“While I would love to, my main goal at the moment is to ‘wait’. I’m waiting for information.”

“?”

“We’ve run into a problem in the Labyrinth and can’t move on. They’re discussing it in the inn town and I don’t want to rush randomly in before they find an answer. I’m not about to become a fatal test case.”

“I don’t get why humans go to that scary place. I’ve heard the rooms and passageways change. I’d get lost in there.”

“Heh heh. Maybe so. …In fact, there are times when I have to eat the pizza or grass fallen on the ground to survive. But Boo Boo, the treasure in the Labyrinth really belongs to all of you. Aren’t you mad we’re taking it?”

“I never go to the Labyrinth, so nothing there is mine. I don’t know what’s there, so it doesn’t matter to me who takes it.”

That may have been how it was.

Grandnir was a small island that a human could walk around in about three days. It was filled with diverse nature, but its biggest feature was the giant entrance leading underground.

Despite being a small island in the middle of the ocean, there was a vast and immense Labyrinth that stretched belowground like a spider web. It was rumored to be at least the size of a country if not an entire continent.

The humans saw that as the whole value of Grandnir, but Boo Boo and the other Non-Humans who lived on the island rarely approached the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth was scary and its structure changed at random, so not even drawing a map would help for long and it was easy to get stranded. But besides those more direct reasons, the island itself had everything they needed to live.

“In that case, I guess not even you would know how to get through Cave 25.”

“Hm? I’m not sure what you mean by Cave 25.”

“Sorry, sorry. That’s the name we humans gave it. Um, every surface looks like it’s made of crystal, steep cliffs continue as far as the eye can see, and there’s a single stone bridge across.”

“What’s the problem?”

“When a human tries to cross it, the bridge rotates around. In other words, it drops them into the abyss. It’s a simple but dangerous Trap. Plus, it bans flight Magic for a double punch. …We really might have to wait until the next transformation. We might just have to pray Cave 25 itself disappears next time the Labyrinth’s structure changes at random.”

The Labyrinth was protected by two different things.

One was the Gimmicks, extremely elaborate contraptions that mimicked existing plants and animals. The other was the Traps embedded in the floors and walls to stop intruders.

“I heard something long ago,” said Boo Boo.

“Yes?”

“The big traps in the underground Labyrinth are linked to the extraordinary monsters wandering on the surface.”

“Oh, you mean the ones known as Break News? I’ve also heard that the giant Dragons and Krakens have some kind of occult link that lets them power the giant Traps.”

Beatrice sighed, accidentally breathed in a lungful of Boo Boo’s bestial stench, and used all of her strength to keep it from showing on her face.

“But the Break News have so much power it’s said each one has a soul. They were born in a certain environment, but they grew to the point that they can produce that environment. Both sides of the equation exist on equal footing. It’s like the chicken or the egg problem. But it would be foolish to think about defeating one of those to stop the Trap. For one, we don’t know which one is linked to cave 25, so-…”

“Zzz…”

“Hey!! Don’t fall asleep while I’m talking to you. That’s rude, Boo Boo!”

Beatrice’s raised voice popped the large bubble coming from Boo Boo’s nose as he fell asleep on his feet. He rubbed his pig-face’s eyes with his huge hands.

“Yawn… Yeah, but gathering the seven crystals is too hard for me…”

“How much of that were you asleep for, Boo Boo? I won’t get mad, so be honest.”

Suddenly, a deep rumbling sound reached them from the distance.

The two of them looked over and grimaced in unison when they saw the shadow beginning to cover the entire sky.

“Looks like it’s going to rain.”

“I’ll take this home.”

Boo Boo picked up the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear’s giant body like it was a thin blanket.

“What about you, Beatrice? Will you hide from the rain at my house?”

“Hm? Your house? That sounds fun. I accept your invitation.”

With that, the two of them walked quickly through the forest as if fleeing the dark shadow approaching them.

That shadow brought destructive rain.

However, it was not a dense layer of thunder clouds.

It was one of the Break News that moved freely through the outskirts of Grandnir.

It was the Thousand Dragon.

As its name suggested, it was the king of flying dragons and it had an abnormal body that measured at a thousand meters.

===Part 3===

In what may have been a habit picked up from exploring the Labyrinth, Beatrice called up a map in the air in front of her using illusion Magic. Or perhaps she simply could not relax without checking that kind of convenient service, just like with a cell phone.

“I see…” she muttered.

Boo Boo’s house was near a mountain river yet not exposed to flooding or landslides. It was a decent location. It was not entirely safe as it could easily invite in bears, wolves, or other wild animals, but perhaps none of the forest or mountain creatures wanted to disturb Boo Boo’s territory.

The house was made from the large leaves seen in rainforests arranged into a triangular silhouette, so it was really more of a tent than a house.

“Hyah, it’s really coming down. Over here, Beatrice.”

Boo Boo carried the gigantic Great Rocky Mountain King Bear as he stepped inside the even larger house. Unsurprisingly, the house made of leaves had no lock.

Beatrice belatedly looked up at the house.

“Hm. This is better made than I expected, Boo Boo. You did a real civilized job here.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me.”

“You’re imaging it. Oh, and it looks like you’re actually cleaning the place.”

“About every three days, I destroy my house tossing and turning in my sleep, so it’s always brand new.”

It was not just like a tent; it was a tent.

There was no furniture inside and it was relatively cozy if one ignored his bestial stench.

“I’ll do something about this once the rain stops.”

Boo Boo set the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear down in one corner of the leaf house.

As Beatrice looked around, she noticed something.

“Oh? Boo Boo, there’s Fairy in your house?”

“Hm?”

“There’s a Fairy Ring here. That means there’s one nearby.”

Her steel gauntlet pointed at a ten centimeter circle cut directly into the leaf house’s leaf floor.

“You normally see these in a bush, though.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen any Fairies. They always run away when I chase after them, so I don’t know any.”

“H-hmm. They are pretty rare to begin with and they don’t like being seen, so they have a tendency to run away regardless… And you have an intimidating presence even to me, so I can’t imagine what you look like to a palm-sized Fairy.”

If Boo Boo knew nothing of the Fairy, then it might be secretly living in the house to prevent other predators from attacking it.

“But if there’s a Fairy living here, does that mean some Crimson Heaven Flowers are growing nearby?”

“I’ve heard of those. Crimson Heaven Flowers are pretty and smell sweet, but you can’t eat them.”

Only one other thing caught Beatrice’s attention.

“Boo Boo, what is this?”

The house did not have a dresser or closet, or even a pot or a frying pan, but there was one object carved from wood. It was about thirty centimeters tall.

“That’s a human statue.”

“Human…?”

“Humans suddenly appeared here one day and some people say they’re messengers from heaven. We’re all too scared to go to the Labyrinth, but it’s said the humans enter the Labyrinth to suppress the catastrophe spewing from that hole in the earth.”

“H-hmmm. We aren’t that noble a people.”

Beatrice placed her hands on her hips and made a suggestion to Boo Boo.

“Now, then. Boo Boo, this is your house and I know an unplanned guest like me shouldn’t be saying this.”

“What is it? If you need something, just tell me.”

“Well.”

The soaking wet swordswoman nodded and continued.

“Boo Boo, can you step outside?”

“Eeee!! I-I know you might be jealous, but stealing people’s homes is wrong! I worked hard to make this house!!”

“No, no. It’s not that.” Beatrice waved a slender hand protected by a gauntlet. “As you can see, I’m soaked. I can get rid of the surface moisture with my fire Magic, but I still want to wipe myself down properly.”

In truth, the combination of armor and moisture was disastrous and ignoring the issue would leave her entire body covered in athlete’s foot, but for the sake of her feminine pride and her sweet dreams, she had decided not to tell Boo Boo that. In a way, it would be even more embarrassing than being seen in the nude.

It was unclear if Boo Boo understood or not, but…

“Okay! Then you can wipe yourself off with this! I always use it to keep my Shining Weapon especially shiny!!”

“Oh…thanks. I know I shouldn’t be picky as a guest, but let’s keep at least a towel on hand from now on, Boo Boo.”

This was her only option, so she accepted the “Item Name: Cloth”.

However, Boo Boo showed no sign of leaving. He simply stared at her from directly ahead.

“…Boo Boo.”

“Yeah? What is it, Beatrice?”

“You have to know what clothes are since you have that cloth around your waist. This may be selfish since this is your house, but please leave for a moment!! And don’t come back in until I say you can! You can’t look at humans when they’re naked!!”

“Okay. I knew human skin had no fur and isn’t very tough, but I didn’t know you couldn’t expose it to light either.”

Boo Boo readily turned around and walked toward the exit.

Beatrice glared at him as he left, but he showed no sign of turning around.

Not in the slightest.

It had been too easy.

…

…

…

“Squeal!! Wh-what was that for, Beatrice!? Why would you grab my back fat like that? It hurts, it hurts!!”

“Boo Boo, I’m not saying I approve of the cowardly action known as peeping. But…”

“What’s peeping?”

“Oh, no!! That isn’t a concept I should be teaching you!!”

“You said I couldn’t look, so I’ll keep my promise.”

“Yes, but…there’s more to it than that! You can’t treat a girl like she’s some old fish bones lying on the ground!! You need to look more disappointed!!”

She knew she was being unreasonable, but she still blushed and lightly punched Boo Boo’s waist a few times.

Once Boo Boo left, the rest was easy.

The clothing she wore was really Percentage-type Magic, so it was only an effect used to adjust her physical abilities. While real armor required a helper to remove, she only had to stroke a finger along her rapier-style Shining Weapon to remove each piece of Magic until she was in her birthday suit.

(Your appearance in Grandnir is supposed to be dependent on the equipment, but while you’re here, it doesn’t change even when you strip down.)

She used the cloth (meant for Shining Weapon maintenance) that Boo Boo had given her to wipe all the moisture from her soft and slender body. Then she switched the Magic back on to don the equipment-shaped effects once more.

“You can come in, Boo Boo.”

When he stepped back inside, he did not care at all about how wet he was. It seemed a solid Iberian Orc could not catch cold and never felt chilly. Beatrice had no choice but to use the cloth to take care of him as far as she could reach. He seemed like a small child as he let her do as she pleased.

“Nn.”

“C’mon, Boo Boo. Don’t complain.”

“But there’s nothing to do until the rain stops. I’m bored.”

“Well, this rain has to do with a Break News, so it should let up once that passes by. Let’s preserve your catch before it rots.”

“There’s nothing to do at home. All I can do here is nap.”

“That’s fine. I’m not about to head out into the rain eith-..”

Beatrice trailed off and froze in place.

Sleep with Boo Boo?

An invitation to his house?

When they had once promised to get married?

But she still had an unmarried body. She wanted him to think that even roughly holding her in his arms would break her. Had she been too careless in accepting this invitation from a gentleman?

“W-we can’t do that, Boo Boo! I probably need to create some kind of specialized Magic before we can become one! In fact, if you lie on top of me, you could easily crush me to death!”

“Hm? Why are you shouting with that hair sticking up from your head on fire?”

“A-ahem!!”

As Boo Boo lay down on the floor to nap (yes, his house lacked even a blanket), Beatrice blushed and cleared her throat to disguise her runaway imagination.

She hid the Illumination Magic lighting up her ahoge and she lay down next to him.

Only the sound of raindrops striking the leaf roof continued.

Meanwhile, Boo Boo asked her something.

“Why do you go to the Labyrinth?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt and you don’t have to go to that dangerous place. Only humans go out of their way to go there.”

“Well, Boo Boo.” She rolled over to look at Boo Boo who was lying on his side. “We humans go to the Labyrinth because it’s filled with things we can never make ourselves. Yes, it’s to acquire Experience Points.”

“?”

“Nonhumans like you use inborn Skills but can’t grow beyond that, so it doesn’t have much of anything to do with you. But humans aren’t born with anything like that, so we need to learn Magic somehow or another.”

“I don’t like studying.”

“We earn Experience Points from just about everything. Even from eating meals, dancing, or just speaking with you like this. But those only provide miniscule amounts. If we really want to learn Magic, it’s best to acquire a whole bunch of them at once. That is why we attempt to conquer the Labyrinth.”

“…”

“There is a lot to do there: fight Gimmicks, disarm Traps, and find Treasure in treasure chests. …There are even some who specialize in drawing maps or filling up an encyclopedia. None of that data will be useful forever since the Labyrinth’s structure changes at random, but that’s actually preferable when the goal is to earn Experience Points.”

People grew stronger the more experience they earned, but they could not properly receive the experience earned in a different world like Grandnir.

That was why they used Shining Weapons.

Only once the experience was sorted and converted was it taken into their bodies.

That might sound roundabout and inconvenient, but it provided a groundbreaking side effect. Simply put, the experience obtained in this other world could be converted to numbers and artificially distributed. That allowed one to freely extend their Parameters that were displayed on the kind of hexagonal or octagonal graphs seen in baseball video games.

This even allowed a free ''conversion of effort'' where studying at a desk improved one’s skill at baseball or cooking food made one better at karaoke.

And that allowed people to reach the Magic that they could not use in the real world.

“That is why there is no end to our adventure. We continue advancing through the infinitely-expanding and ever-changing Labyrinth to obtain the Magic we want and to earn as many Experience Points as we want. That said, experience is a form of stimulus. If you eat curry every day, you get tired of it. The areas that provide plenty of Experience Points change based on the daily trends, so there is more to it than simply continuing as deep as you can. Even Cave 25 that we’re currently stuck at-…”

“Zzz…”

Beatrice trailed off when she heard Boo Boo’s regulated breathing. She had scolded him for being rude earlier, but manners were not something one could learn in a day.

(Honestly, at times like this, he isn’t that different from back then.)

Beatrice kindly narrowed her eyes and touched the Shining Weapon she had removed from her hip and set down next to her. It looked like a Western rapier with the tip removed. She activated it, called up the Magic she wanted, and opened an orange film of light around her. The tiny barrier was meant for getting some rest within the Labyrinth, but the people who spent all their time underground could not relax without it. It was known as sleeping bag magic at the inn town and there were quite a few variations depending on Element.

They lived a life of survival from the moment they entered the Labyrinth to the moment they returned home.

No matter how deep they explored and no matter what legendary treasure they discovered, they gained nothing if they did not bring it back with them.

When exploring, it was more important to master these means of preserving strength than how to swing around a sword or staff.

The temperature and humidity were optimized and Boo Boo’s bestial stench was driven out. Her back sank softly down and her mind itself seemed to melt away.

(Why do I go to the Labyrinth, hm?)

She reflected on the question Boo Boo had asked her and her fingers stroked the Shining Weapon that represented her Magic.

(That’s a good question. Why ''do'' I keep doing this?)

And as she began to nod off, the end suddenly came to her world.

“Bghohh!! Bghohhh!! Bshrrrr…fshhhh!!!??”

“Uuhh… Wh-what!? What is going on!?”

The sleeping bag magic was meant to provide the short-term sleep needed to safely yet quickly recover the Willpower at the core of one’s Magic while inside the dangerous Labyrinth. But even inside that, Boo Boo’s snoring mercilessly pierced Beatrice’s eardrums.

“Bffhhh!! …mumble, mumble… What do you mean it only truly begins once you get the boat…? Bghohhhhh!!”

“Wh-what is this!? Is my l-love being tested!?”

And it did not end there.

The second trial arrived.

Boo Boo’s nearly four meter body suddenly rolled toward her.

The orange film of light might as well have not been there at all.

The sleeping bag magic shattered with the sound of breaking glass. She had never seen it break before, so she was almost impressed as his giant form rolled her way.

“Wait, you idiot! Stop, stooooooooooooooooooooop!! B-Boo Boo! I’ll be crushed! My body will be crushed!!”

===Part 4===

Once the residents of the leaf house fell asleep (although it looked like only Boo Boo was asleep and the scarlet Holy Swordswoman’s soul was escaping her mouth as the giant orc crushed her), a tiny form appeared through the gaps in the large leaves.

It was a girl of only about fifteen centimeters.

She had four dragonfly wings on her back, she wore a white and pink dress, and she had short pink hair.

The red ring wrapped around her right ankle jingled as the Fairy observed the leaf house from near the ceiling.

She was generally checking over the house’s condition.

“Oh, dear. Boo Boo accidentally damaged his house again.”

The ribbon on the small Fairy’s head fluttered as she flew outside, scooped up some mud that could be used to mend the house, and packed it into the gaps in the leaves forming the floor and walls. She tore away the leaves growing mold and added new ones in their place.

This fairy protected Boo Boo’s house without his knowledge, but the entire house would occasionally collapse when he made too sudden a turn in his sleep. That was not due to the house being fragile. He was simply too dynamic in his sleep.

However, the Fairy did not seem to mind.

In fact, she even seemed delighted to have more work to do.

Fairies were often depicted as pranksters, but her race at least placed a strong emphasis on repaying both good and bad deeds in kind. This Fairy had once been saved by Boo Boo. He had rescued her while she was caught in the web of a giant spider known as a Ground Spider. …Then again, it had looked a lot like Boo Boo had gotten his head caught in the spider web as he walked through the forest. He also looked nothing like the princes in fairy tales, but the fact remained that he had saved her life.

“That should do it.”

That was why she had been living in Boo Boo’s constantly destroyed and remade house for about a month. She would repay her debt by secretly helping out in a variety of ways once he fell asleep, but…

“Hm? Who is that lady?”

After finishing her work, the Fairy flew around the house and spotted the Holy Swordswoman in red armor and a miniskirt who seemed to be wrestling with Boo Boo (or rather, was being crushed by him).

“Oh, my. Did Boo Boo bring a woman home with him? My, my! Now this is a surprise. This might be a night to remember!”

The Fairy initially placed her hands on her cheeks and rejoiced, but…

“This delicate lady and Boo Boo who is larger than a Great Rocky Mountain King Bear?”

When she thought about it more calmly, that pairing did not seem possible.

Also, one of the monstrous bears she had mentioned was lying dead in a corner of the leaf house.

“D-don’t tell me she’s supposed to be a snack for Boo Boo! No, I believe in you, Boo Boo!!”

“Bghohh!?”

Boo Boo’s rhythmic breathing came to a stop.

He snorted from his porcine nose and rubbed his eyes.

“What is this glowing thing?”

“Ee-…”

The eyes of that vast and exceedingly brutal pig face stared at the airborne Fairy.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!?”

The Fairy immediately screamed and made an emergency evacuation of the leaf house.

Just as Beatrice (who was currently being crushed below Boo Boo) had said, Fairies did not like being seen.

===Part 5===

The giant dragon Break News left.

The pouring rain let up and a large rainbow appeared in the blue sky.

Beatrice and Boo Boo dragged out the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear and removed its organs and blood to help preserve it. Once they were done, Beatrice left Boo Boo’s house.

She used Magic to call up a map as she walked.

Grandnir was a small island that one could walk all the way around in just three days, so the only human settlement was the inn town near the center.

It contained brick buildings and fairly well-maintained stone-paved roads. Beatrice really did believe that necessity was the mother of invention. Even if exploring the Labyrinth was not a direct necessity, people were willing to put any amount of effort into making themselves comfortable.

When she returned there, the town seemed noisier than usual.

She visited one of the inns that were more used to gather a party than to spend the night and a familiar White Witch soon noticed her. Her name was Filinion. The woman had long fluffy blonde hair and wore thin-framed glasses. To match her Job, she wore a white cloak. She also wore a far-too-short dress and low-rise shorts. Finally, she wore a white witch’s hat with small rings and decorative cups attached to the brim like earrings. However, there was an unnatural slit opened at the chest and the front was too tight to close properly. Yes, leaving the cleavage of her ample bust in plain view!

(N-no, I don’t care. I’m above average too! And the Magic I’m wearing has made them even bigger!!)

The White Witch specialized in recovery Magic, but her Sparkling Weapon was not a sword or a spear. It was the white first-aid kit sitting on the table in front of her. The box did not contain a variety of medicines. It was a Mixing device that combined multiple ingredients to produce the necessary medicine.

She toyed with the key that hung from her neck by a thin chain.

“Beatrice, it looks like things are on the move.”

“What happened, Filinion? If it’s about Cave 25, weren’t our discussions at a standstill? I thought we had to wait for the Labyrinth to transform and randomly alter the layout.”

“That’s the thing.”

“Did they find a way to get through?”

Beatrice took a seat and placed a stack of gears on the edge of the table in place of money. They came from within the mechanical monsters known as Gimmicks and they were convenient as currency because they could be broken down and converted into Experience Points (as experience in learning how they were structured on the inside) or they could be Mixed to create rare items for even more Experience Points (and the more complex the item the more experience it was worth).

The waitress carried over the usual drinks. The White Witch named Filinion reached for the cup with her glove that left only the ring finger exposed.

“First, a Party seems to have figured out the power source for the stone bridge Trap in Cave 25.”

“You mean the Break News?”

Beatrice sounded annoyed and she activated some fire Magic that created an illusion. It was essentially a generic memo pad that auto-mapped the Labyrinth and helped with the discussions held before fighting the giant gatekeeper Gimmicks that appeared and attacked with incredible firepower to punish anyone who stayed in an area for too long.

A hologram-like image appeared above the table which displayed a diorama of Cave 25, a black form labelled “Break News”, and a red thread connecting them.

“I seriously doubt they are, but they aren’t planning to put together a large-scale force for a Break News subjugation quest, are they? Surely not! That wouldn’t be possible. Those things are paradoxically thought to have a soul. Not even those of us at the level cap can hope to face them, so no one would accept that reckless of a request.”

She created a representation of the inn town a short distance away and connected it and the Break News with a red line. She of course added a giant x-mark on top of that line.

Filinion pulled out something like a thick encyclopedia that was hanging from the side of her leather belt. Rather than purchase the information with a giant stack of gears, she had filled the book herself. She earned Experience Points by healing others and creating collectable encyclopedias rather than fighting.

The White Witch opened it to a bookmarked page and showed Beatrice.

“I’ll start with the details of the Break News. The one connected to Cave 25 is known as the Thousand Dragon.”

“The Thousand Dragon… You mean that one?”

Beatrice recalled the pouring rain and Boo Boo’s leaf house. She also changed the “Break News” label to say “Thousand Dragon”.

The task seemed even more hopeless now.

“It is a giant Dragon over a thousand meters long. Simply splitting the air with its great form is enough to create something like a contrail that forms thick clouds. That water dragon lord creates irregular downpours like that. …But what are humans supposed to do about something like that? We aren’t the mysterious Dragon Eater from some dubious legend. We research and research some more to figure out how to ''avoid those things''. Making contact yourself is suicidal.”

“Yes.” Filinion gently traced her fingers along her glasses. “But word is getting around that we might be able to neutralize it without defeating it. Look here.”

“Once every ninety days, the Thousand Dragon enters an unexplained state of intoxication. It flies in unpredictable paths, so be careful. Probability of occurrence: 78.8%. You mean…”

“People decided to search out what exactly it is that causes that state of intoxication. And after discussing the weather conditions, the ecosystem, and people’s movements, they think they’ve found the answer.”

Beatrice drew a red thread from the Thousand Dragon, but it led nowhere. She created a box containing only a question mark. Did that monster really have a weakness?

“What exactly is it?”

“This.” Filinion opened a different page of her encyclopedia. “But let me warn you: you aren’t going to like it.”

===Part 6===

The Fairy secretly flew back to Boo Boo’s leaf house.

His brutal pig face was certainly frightening. Her mind went blank if he so much as glared at her. But he had saved the small Fairy’s life regardless.

It did not matter if that had been a coincidence or not.

What mattered was whether she could repay him with her own hands or not.

“The roof still looks okay. The rope supporting the column hasn’t come loose. Okay, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

She checked over everything, but something was different from before.

She seemed somehow reluctant.

It looked like she could no longer follow her normal routine like normal.

“Meridiana.”

Someone called her name.

Not only was it another Fairy, it was the leader of their group.

The woman had large cicada-like wings, she wore orange clothing, and she had lime green hair tied back.

“Are you about ready?”

“Yes, Lady Morgan. I reinforced the house quite a bit, so not even Boo Boo should destroy it for seven…no, five days.”

That leaf house was constantly destroyed and rebuilt, so this method of repayment may have been entirely meaningless. When Boo Boo destroyed the house in his sleep, he would rebuild it without a second thought, so he had been living in complete ignorance of Meridiana’s actions.

But that did not matter.

It only mattered that she could convince herself that she had done something for the person who had saved her life.

“I feel bad having you do this.”

“Please, raise your head Lady Morgan. This is what I wanted and it had already been decided. You didn’t actually order me to do this, right?”

“But…”

“The humans said that foul dragon grows drunk on the toxin in Fairy blood. That Dragon constantly feasts on our kind, but that pigment gradually builds up inside its giant body. I agree that we are just a step away from defeating that foul dragon.”

“…”

Fairies enjoyed eating the red petals of the Crimson Heaven Flower. The flower itself was not very toxic, but a dreadful change occurred when it was broken down within Fairy blood.

The Fairies themselves were unaware, but it was enough to intoxicate even a Dragon that was one hundred, one thousand, or even more times their size.

[[Image:BooBoo v01 061.jpg|thumb]]

“So I will end this in my generation. It will all be over once I am eaten. I will make sure to finish off that foul dragon so that no one need ever follow this path again and no one else must be eaten. Why would I hesitate when faced with such a noble cause?”

“…I’m sorry.”

Morgan apologized even after being told it was unnecessary.

Meridiana laughed and asked a question of her own.

“Is everything ready?”

“It is. The only thing left is your resolve.”

“Then we can get started right away.”

The two Fairies flew out of the leaf house.

Just once, Meridiana turned back toward the house of her savior with a sad smile on her lips.

“Farewell, Boo Boo.”

===Part 7===

The “?” box had been filled in.

The red lines and several boxes created a completed diagram for defeating Cave 25.

However, Beatrice could not hide her irritation as she spoke up.

“Who is leading this?”

“Oh, come on, Beatrice.”

“I asked who.”

She repeated herself in a threatening manner and the entire atmosphere seemed to solidify. She was not directing her anger at them, but even the other guests were overpowered and fell silent. They seemed unable to even move, for fear of getting involved.

“That would be me.”

The carefree answer came from a different table.

The temperature seemed different in that corner. Five or six men with mocking looks on their faces were gathered there.

The one in the center was a silver knight.

He had a medium build and black hair. His somewhat sharp eyes were a negative in Beatrice’s opinion. He wore silver armor that provided an image of purity but was actually so polished it reflected and thus rejected everything. He had a large shield, so he was likely a Pure Knight. That was a rare Job one was born with, just like Beatrice’s Holy Swordswoman.

“Look at that. Someone on the Black List comes waltzing back after the heat dies down and now she’s complaining like she knows what’s going on? What are you thinking, Miss ‘Expert’?”

The red and silver glared at each other from different tables.

“We’re the ones that have spent our valuable time searching for any way through Cave 25 we could find, but you’ll still get through the Trap. Really, you should be paying us a toll.”

“The only things in Grandnir we are allowed to harm are the mechanical Gimmicks that lack a soul. We customarily have the Nonhumans take care of hunting or gathering plants and animals, or we at least accompany them when we do it. Do you really think we can kill and offer up a Fairy that can think and speak just like a human?”

“We won’t be killing it. It’ll be committing suicide, so we aren’t breaking any rules here.”

“Did you lead them in that direction from the beginning?”

A creaking sound came from Beatrice’s mouth.

Her back teeth were crying out in protest as she clenched them.

“It may be true that the extraordinary Thousand Dragon grows drunk on Fairy blood, but who decided that the toxin was building up inside it and it was just one step away from death? That was a filthy lie of yours to trick the Fairy into offering up its life, wasn’t it? The Fairy thinks this will prevent any sacrifices from future generations and you’re trampling on those feelings!!”

“Ohh, I’m so scared.”

The Pure Knight remained seated, crossed his legs, and clapped his hands.

“C’mon, do you really think any cares that much about Nonhumans? They’re just monsters from another world. What kind of moron identifies with something just because it acts like it understands you? Oh, maybe the kind of moron that sleeps with a pig-faced monster. But don’t expect me to understand how a perverted woman thinks.”

The men around him laughed and Beatrice narrowed her eyes.

“So nothing I say will change anything, is that it?”

“What? You think we’d stop using those dimwitted Fairies? Ha ha! Why the hell would we? It’s not like this is over once we get to the other side of Cave 25. Surely you know what we’re after: Experience Points! We’ll head down there again and again to run around defeating Gimmicks and snagging Treasure for the Magic we want! So we’ll do this as many times as it takes. We’ll trick as many Fairies into being eaten by the Thousand Dragon as we need to keep going down there and coming back!! We just have to tell them that this time – yes, this time for sure!! – they’ll finally kill the thing!!”

“————”

“Oh, and you know what we were just talking about? What we really need to get that giant thing drunk and stop the Trap is the Fairy blood, right? So how about we drain their blood and use the rest of them as Mixing ingredients!? Those things like to run off and are pretty rare, so they might make for a pretty good Experience Point conversation item. Gya ha ha ha ha!!”

Beatrice slowly inhaled and exhaled.

She created a new frame on the image above the table and decided to label it “ringleader”.

And then she made an announcement.

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“What if it was?”

A great rumbling answered him.

The red Holy Swordswoman had slammed her fist down on the table, scattering the false diagram everywhere.

“Let’s take this outside.”

No one was able to perceive what happened next. Not the silver Pure Knight, not his followers, not the other guests nervously watching on, and not even White Witch Filinion at the same table as Beatrice.

They heard an explosive sound after a short delay and suddenly realized one of the inn’s brick walls had crumbled and the Pure Knight had been thrown out onto the stone-paved road like an artillery shell.

It took a full second before he realized he had been kicked.

“Gh…bah…”

As he rolled along, he slowed himself by digging his silver boots into the stone.

“What do you…think you’re doing, you biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch!!!???”

He raged and activated his Shining Weapon.

Countless sharp spikes jutted out from the shield that had been polished to a mirror’s surface.

There was a shield category of Shining Weapons, but they were not used to block attacks or strike things with their great weight. By placing magic on them, that ultimate weapon could stop a carriage or smash through armor. As the Pure Knight roared in anger, a dazzling silver light raced across its surface. The shield was large enough to entirely hide him if he crouched down a little and bands of light expanded behind it to form a variety of Icons.

His mind was boiling over as he watched the red Holy Swordswoman casually walking outside through the destroyed wall.

“You’re dead meat.”

He had forty Commands for pre-registered Magic. He had more than fifty for the Percentage-type that increased his Parameters. One increased his STR by 200%, one his AGI by 500%, one his LUC by 150%, and many more. His muscles, skeleton, and organs remained human, but his clenched fist could slay a tiger and he could singlehandedly defeat a mid-sized Chimera if he used his Shining Weapon.

“You’ve pulled the trigger of your own suicide… Our Magic is meant for exploring the Labyrinth, but you were the one that turned it against your fellow man first, bitch. No complaining now if I slaughter you with the same Magic. You’ve thrown your life away just like those Nonhumans you love so much!!”

“Sorry, but those Nonhumans have much more human hearts than the likes of you.”

“People seem to call you ‘Her With the Long Silver Hair’ or ‘The Deadly Dancer’, but I know the truth.”

“I’m not too fond of those nicknames because they all reference my sex or my body. People are free to call me whatever they want, but I think the only good one in the bunch is ‘The Seven Flames’.”

“I know you’re an obsessive monomaniac that only uses flame Magic!! Don’t you know anything about Elements and Affinity!? I can use my water and earth magic with impunity and turn you to sand whenever I want!!”

The sharp spikes covering the Pure Knight’s Shining Weapon gave a roar.

Each glowing Icon on the reverse side of the shield was one of his weapons. It was a collection of the ultimate Magic used to sweep aside the many Gimmicks encountered in the Labyrinth. One would smash the bedrock with a lightning strike, one would attack with a spear of ice, one would corrode everything with a black mist, and one would gradually petrify its target’s entire body.

“Don’t screw with me! I’m at Lv. 99! I’m at the level cap! All my stats are filled with nines!! Our amount of Magic is equal to our Level, so I’ve got 99 pieces of equipment and incantations stocked up! So show some respect! Bow before me!! Who do you think it is that’s been protecting you here!?”

“…”

“Cry and beg for forgiveness, you perverted bitch. I’ll slowly petrify your arms and legs and then smash them before your eyes!! Then I’ll crush your look of crazed despair underfoot and ****** your ****!!!!!”

“Right back at you.”

Beatrice drew her Shining Weapon from the sheath at her waist.

It was a strange weapon that looked like a thin rapier with the tip removed.

The instant she activated it, the world was dyed orange.

“…Huh?”

The man did not know what that meant.

He could not even react.

The inn town’s stone pavement and brick buildings had been replaced by something else entirely. Everything was enveloped in orange. It almost looked like a strange colosseum had appeared around Beatrice and the Pure Knight in all 360 degrees.

But this was not a colosseum.

It was seven tree diagrams. Each of them was a collection of Icons that indicated all sorts of Magic and they were Beatrice’s weapons. How many types of Magic surrounded them in all? One thousand? Or did it surpass even ten thousand? The Pure Knight could not even count them all.

“Y-you’ve…got to be kidding me…”

“Why?”

“Y-you…but you…!? You’re only supposed to be able to use fire Magic! Was that all bullshit!?”

“No.”

The seven tree diagrams surrounded the entire scenery like an oblong eyeball.

Beatrice chose something as if turning a dial and lining up a cursor.

“It’s just that I have collected around fourteen thousand options from fire Magic alone. Although even that is far from complete.”

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

He was entirely speechless now.

That Pure Knight had a stock of 99, but when the Percentage-types such as his armor and helmet were omitted, that left only forty or fifty of the Command-type Magic. He had thought that was enough to master the Magic of every Element, so he was completely overwhelmed.

Then he secretly activated some scanning Magic to get some information on Beatrice. One’s Percentage-type Magic came from the clothing they wore, so he was using her appearance to estimate her strength at full power.

[[Image:BooBoo v01 072.jpg|thumb]]

The result he got was frightening indeed:

''“h3nganphin1hfufvpikih6tsu6nrudfkgur8j”

“What!? It’s completely corrupted!?”

“It probably looks that way because you are still stuck in the realm of two decimal digits. ‘We’ can read it like normal.”

She sounded truly exasperated.

She gave the same sigh as a chess master faced with an amateur who did not even know how to move the pieces.

“Just so you know, this industry only truly begins ''after'' you reach Lv. 99.”

She demonstrated just how out of his league he was, but she still showed no mercy.

Like a great serpent swallowing a frog, the Holy Swordswoman did not hesitate to activate her Magic.

“Do not underestimate those of us at the level cap, newcomer.”

The outcome could not have been more obvious, but the battle mercilessly began all the same.

===Part 8===

When Meridiana arrived where her fellow Fairies were gathered, those palm-sized creatures were already setting things up. Everyone was there, even Juliet, Gretel, and her little sister Alice.

The stench was great enough to sting her eyes as well as her nose.

It came from a small container that at human size would have resembled a coffee milk pot.

A sticky liquid filled the tiny pot.

Fairies excelled at Mixing, but this was clearly different.

“I just have to drink all of this, right?”

“Yes. But…”

“I understand. The red pigment in my blood might not be enough to slay that foul dragon, so the humans provided this ‘insurance’.”

She was to fill her stomach with poison and then offer herself up to destroy the foul dragon lord from within.

“…”

Elder Morgan noticed the stiffness of Meridiana’s smile as she spoke so calmly.

She noticed, but it was too late to turn back now.

If Meridiana was stopped, then who would fill that role in her place? And if no one did, would the foul dragon continue consuming the Fairies forevermore? What was right and what was wrong? What would reduce the number of sacrifices and what would increase it? Morgan no longer knew.

So things continued.

Meridiana picked up the pot that a small Fairy had to hold in both arms and she sipped at the contents, but she began violently choking after only the first gulp.

“Cough!! Cough cough!? Ghah!!”

She doubled over and covered her mouth with a hand, but it was not spit, phlegm, or vomit she coughed up. The liquid was already dark red.

Fairies contained a pigment that could intoxicate even a giant Dragon, but that did not mean they were immune to all toxins. Just as a puffer fish would die if it was given aconite, they would suffer and writhe in pain like normal.

Meridiana’s limbs shook and tears filled her eyes, but she still worked at consuming the deadly poison.

By the time the container was half empty, she no longer had the strength to remain standing. She fell to the side and was half-crushed by her own wings as her entire body convulsed.

What would Morgan have done had Meridiana said she could not continue?

But the small Fairy did continue even while collapsed on the ground.

Her eyes were entirely unfocused as they desperately tried to view the companions so nearby.

“Cough, cough… P-please help me… I’m sorry…but I can’t do it on my own…”

“…”

“Don’t stop…even if I cry or wail… Get every last drop inside me. That’s the only way I can protect all of you…”

That built up their resolve.

They all became accomplices.

They used small spoons and ladles to scoop up the sticky liquid. Some held down Meridiana’s arms and legs, one held her nose, and several spoons and ladles poured their contents into her mouth. The Fairy’s body thrashed about with unbelievable strength and threw her companions off time and again. Even so, more hands held her down until the pot was entirely empty.

Tears spilled from every eye, but not one of them suggested they stop.

“…Ah…kah…”

Meridiana lay limply on the ground with her eyes entirely unfocused.

Elder Morgan looked down at the girl, bit her lip, and spoke to the others.

“We need to make the final preparations. Once we carry her to that foul dragon’s feeding ground, this will all be over.”

===Part 9===

No one in the inn town would be any help.

Even if they knew the Pure Knight and his ilk were monsters, they had no way of getting through Cave 25’s Trap besides deceiving the Fairies, so they were setting the Pure Knight up as the villain and continuing on without dirtying their own hands. That was likely how they viewed this.

Beatrice did not even try to deal with them.

The Break News were said to paradoxically have a soul and humans were no match for them even in a group, so what could they hope to do against that thousand meter Thousand Dragon? She did not know, but she could not just come to a stop. She had no set destination, but she called up a map using Magic and walked randomly around.

How long would it take to convince the Fairies?

Could she save them before they were eaten?

Could she escape the Thousand Dragon pursuing the Fairies?

She had a number of tasks, each more unrealistic than the last. She had no idea what to do about even the very first step: finding the village of the Fairies who hated to be seen.

(But I can’t just ignore this.)

Nothing was at stake for her and she did not actually know the Fairies, but was it so wrong to stand up for them? Wasn’t this just too much? Only the humans gained anything by getting through Cave 25. It had nothing to do with the Nonhumans that lived happily in Grandnir. Yet that was the goal of deceiving the Fairies by using their desire to save their fellow Fairies and convincing them to let the Thousand Dragon eat them. Was it that strange to find that unacceptable?

——''Why do you go to the Labyrinth?

Boo Boo’s simple question rose in the back of her mind.

At the very least, it was not to grin as she allowed tragedies like this.

The Nonhumans made reverent statues of humans. They thought the humans went to the Labyrinth to prevent disaster from spewing from that hole in the ground. They viewed them as messengers from heaven who had suddenly appeared in Grandnir one day.

That was completely wrong. Humans were ugly. They were so ugly they would deceive and devour others for their own benefit.

But surely there could be one human who would make that foolish dream come true.

(I can’t just ignore this, dammit!!)

“Hm?”

Someone spoke to her from the forest.

“What is it, Beatrice? You only just left a while ago. Did you forget something?”

“Boo Boo.”

Then Beatrice remembered something.

So she would not forget that flash of insight in one corner of her mind, she quickly used her fire illusion Magic and recorded the information using red lines and square frames.

(There was a Fairy Ring in Boo Boo’s house. That means a Fairy lives there. I might be able to get information on the Fairy village from them!!)

She connected Boo Boo’s leaf house with the formless Fairy and drew another red line out from there. She wrote a question mark there to represent their village. If she could complete that connection and convince them, she could get information on the individual Fairy trying to sacrifice herself to the Thousand Dragon. She could save them!!

“Listen, Boo Boo! I need your help!!”

“Okay. I’ll do anything if it would help you.”

She was glad to hear it.

She told him everything she had learned, although she of course omitted the sickening part about the Pure Knight.

Not that any part of this was not sickening.

As he listened, Boo Boo’s porcine face grew visibly distorted.

“That has to be a lie. Not even humans would do that. I mean, humans are the messengers from heaven who go to the Labyrinth for everyone’s sake and prevent disaster from bursting out of that hole in the ground.”

“…”

“Besides, the Thousand Dragon is gigantic. Tiny Fairies aren’t going to fill it up, so it wouldn’t try to eat them.”

“This isn’t about food, Boo Boo. ''It’s like dried grass and rock candy''. Not that you would know what I mean by that. Anyway, it’s more like an indulgence, so even a little bit is enough.”

Beatrice shook her head with a pained look and Boo Boo’s face grew even darker.

“It kills for more than what it needs to live? That’s unforgivable.”

“That’s right, Boo Boo. And we humans are trying to use that fact to get the Thousand Dragon drunk. We’re trying to make it happy enough that we can get through Cave 25. The humans are using the Thousand Dragon and the Thousand Dragon will allow us through. That way we both benefit. It’s coexistence in the worst possible way.”

“But the Fairies aren’t stupid. They’re way smarter than me. They would never believe that.”

“The Fairies are tired of being eaten by this predator, so they’re willing to agree to even this suspicious idea. Even if it doesn’t work, they’ll keep going on the assurance that next time it will work. They believe the pigment in Fairy blood will eventually finish off the Thousand Dragon. They’ll believe their fallen comrades did not die in vain…no, they won’t want to accept it, so they’ll avoid looking at reality.”

“…”

“I’m sorry, Boo Boo. This isn’t an easy topic. I’m really sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” He shook his head. “But I don’t know if you can find the Fairies. I’ve never seen one.”

“Can you at least take me to your house? We can start there.”

But the house had changed once they arrived.

It looked the same, but it lacked a certain warmth, just like the difference in the air between an occupied house and an abandoned one.

After checking around, Beatrice finally caught on.

“The Fairy Ring is gone…”

There had been a ten centimeter circle in the leaf floor that designated the territory of a Fairy, but it was completely gone. The surface had been torn away and a new leaf set down in its place.

It was clearly artificial.

“If it erased the Fairy Ring, has the Fairy left?”

A bad feeling rapidly spread through Beatrice.

She had no real proof. A lot of different Fairies lived in Grandnir, and there was no proof that the Fairy that lived here was the one.

But it was the first possibility that came to mind.

That changed the diagram of red lines and boxes. It simplified it.

“No, wait… Does that mean the one that lived here was the one!?”

“…”

Boo Boo remained silent for a while.

He looked around his leaf house again. He placed a hand on the walls and column. The leaf walls and the knotted ropes had been repaired with small bits of mud. Each fix was small but thorough and it was clear whoever had done it cared a lot for Boo Boo’s house.

Finally, Boo Boo raised his head.

“I don’t know where the Fairy village is.”

“?”

“But I do know where the Thousand Dragon’s feeding ground is. It lands in the western sea and eats whatever’s on the cliff. It didn’t work, but I think some people even created an altar to get on its good side.”

“Wait, Boo Boo…” muttered Beatrice. “Don’t tell me you’re planning to attack it directly. That’s completely reckless! I agree we need to stop the deceived Fairy, but that doesn’t mean directly facing that paradox!!”

But Boo Boo did not listen.

“I can’t say anything about that.”

He was not talking about human society, the relationship between Experience Points and learning Magic, the benefits of exploring the Labyrinth, the trick to Cave 25, the strength of the Thousand Dragon, its indifference as long as it was given Fairies, or the Fairies who would keep going even as they were deceived.

Boo Boo forced out a low but clear voice and made an announcement.

“I just don’t understand why anyone would like doing something like this.”

===Part 10===

Her consciousness had been flashing in and out for a while now, she could not tell up from down, and she had no idea where she was.

Meridiana could at least guess she was near the ocean thanks to the smell of the sea breeze.

This was the Thousand Dragon’s feeding ground.

It was the remnants of an altar some reckless person had made in an attempt to contact the great Dragon.

“Gasp…gasp…”

Abandoned there, Meridiana could barely breathe. The inside of her throat was swollen too much for air to pass through and her organs were not functioning properly. That was hardly surprising given the amount of poison that had been forced inside her.

But it would all end here.

No one else would need to be eaten, no one else would need to be afraid, and no one else would need to be chosen.

The roar of parting water sounded so very far away in her current state. She could not even look over in that direction. Her limbs convulsed irregularly and would not move when she told them to. She could barely think, but that at least kept the fear from gripping her too much.

Then an intense bestial odor reached her.

It was approaching.

The giant dragon’s head approached the altar as if to inspect its prize.

It would swallow the small Fairy whole and it would crush the stone altar in its jaws.

(Oh…)

She wished she had thanked Elder Morgan more.

She wished she had taken her little sister Alice on more flying practice.

She wished she had taught Boo Boo how to repair his house.

Those were the only thoughts in her fading mind. There was not a single feeling of rejection such as a fear of death or desire to be saved.

This was for the best.

With that in mind, Meridiana began to close her eyes.

But just before she could, another large form delivered a mighty blow to the side of the Thousand Dragon’s maddening head. The thousand meter Break News was knocked aside.

“Huh…?”

Meridiana thought she had to be dreaming or hallucinating.

After all, this was not possible.

No one would come to save her. No one could defeat the Thousand Dragon. That was why it was only natural for her to throw away her own life. There was simply no other option.

But all of those assumptions were overturned in an instant.

[[Image:BooBoo v01 086.jpg|thumb]]

The figure was even larger than a Great Rocky Mountain King Bear. Plenty of fat covered powerful muscles, it held an especially large Shining Weapon that resembled a steel beam or a log, and it stood in front of the altar as if to protect the Fairy being sacrificed there.

That mountain gave a roar.

Violent killer intent was directed straight toward him by that foul dragon.

But his back did not budge. Instead, the Shining Weapon spun around and its flat tip pointed right back at the dragon who had known this was a farce but accepted the humans’ invitation to indulge in pleasure.

“Are you angry?”

He spoke in a deep, furious voice that scorched the nerves of anyone who heard it.

“But unfortunately, I’m even angrier.”

The Fairy knew this had to be a lovely hallucination brought on by her poison-addled mind.

And within that dream, the Fairy recalled something.

This Iberian Orc had abnormal size and strength, but he also had a number of nicknames: the Pathmaker, Lord of the Treacherous Peak, and the Great Glutton. Most of those were baseless names given to him due to his appearance, but there was one of more unknown origins.

Someone had once called him the Dragon Eater.

===Part 11===

Again and again, deafening collisions of steel and muscle burst out. Each time, an explosion of sparks flew out, a shockwave scattered, and Beatrice had to hold down her long silver hair as she watched from the side.

“Wow…”

Even if he had a Shining Weapon, Boo Boo could not use Magic. That was not an issue of learning it. Nonhumans had inborn Skills, but could not learn Magic. Learning Magic by earning Experience Points was only possible for those who had come from another world, so the Shining Weapon was only an incredibly strong and unbreakable club for Boo Boo.

And yet as he ran freely about, he used only that weapon to face the thousand-meter Dragon. It was less like a one-on-one duel and more like a giant pushing at a mountain. But instead of being the tomfoolery of a jester, he was pulling it off. He knocked back the great head that tried to bite through everything, he pushed back the body that tried to crush everything from above, and he broke through or sidestepped the great wind of the flapping wings and the torrent of ultra-pressurized water spewing from its mouth.

Given their difference in size, Boo Boo’s attacks should have been like hitting a human with a toothpick, but his great strength and speed pushed that abnormal monster back like it was being struck by a hail of gunfire.

Also, Boo Boo was not fighting from the land next to the ocean.

He was using his opponent’s field.

''He was using the ocean as his footing.

“I can’t believe this… He isn’t relying on Magic or Skills… Is this simple physics like a rock skipping across the water!?”

It sounded like a joke to ask how far skipping a rock could be scaled up.

But if a sports car was driven horizontally onto a river at 200 kph, it would skip two or three times.

Boo Boo was doing the same.

His speed and leg strength were so great that he could use the water as his footing. He leaped about on the empty water, landed on the spikes or stones sticking out of the water, occasionally landed on the giant Thousand Dragon itself, and then used his massive leg strength to create the kinetic energy needed to leap across the water once more.

It was not Magic.

He was not using a Skill.

He had simply trained his body to the point that he had the strength for this miraculous result. His physical strength was enough to challenge the Thousand Dragon on his own, something not even Beatrice and her fourteen thousand types of Magic could do.

The great dragon’s fangs broke, its claws were torn away, and its roars became screams. The legs and wings used to kill were now used to protect itself and then to flee. When it tried to fly away, Boo Boo dropped down on it like a shooting star and mercilessly swung down the Shining Weapon in his hands.

He pinned the Thousand Dragon to the ocean as if driving a massive stake into the world.

“Kh!!”

To protect the Fairy from the massive wall of water, Beatrice activated her rapier-like Shining Weapon and created a defensive wall of flames.

But that was all.

That was the only Magic she used when faced with the Break News paradoxically said to have a soul.

Boo Boo dealt with it all single-handedly.

With no help from Beatrice, he used the blunt tip of his Shining Weapon to stab deep into the Thousand Dragon’s head.

Time stopped.

All sound vanished.

As Boo Boo stood on top of the great dragon’s head in the ocean, he spoke in an extremely deep voice as he adjusted his hold on the grip of the Shining Weapon stabbed vertically down.

“I’ll be watching you.”

The great dragon squirmed like a frightened child.

The Shining Weapon had reached its skull.

Boo Boo held the weapon at the line just before cracking open that skull.

“You can’t avoid killing to live, but if you kill for any other reason, I’ll do the same to you. Got that?”

That was all.

The monster gave in to mere words.

===Part 12===

A drumbeat arrived from the distance.

The inn town was holding a festival. After the retreat of the Thousand Dragon that provide the occult power source of Cave 25, the Trap blocking their way had ceased to function. They were likely celebrating that.

But the festival was not celebrating anyone in particular.

Boo Boo was watching the lights from a small hill located far away.

“What is it, Boo Boo? Don’t you want to check out the festival?”

When Beatrice arrived, she asked him that and he answered without looking back her way.

“I’m fine being alone.”

“?”

“I would only scare everyone, so I can’t go to the festival. In that case, I’d rather be alone.”

His back looked somehow small.

“It cried…”

“?”

“The Thousand Dragon cried and begged me to stop. But all I could do was hit it. That was the only way to save the Fairy.”

“Boo Boo…”

“I think I’m the biggest monster of all.”

His shoulders drooped and he looked on the verge of tears.

“It scares me. It scares me that this is all I can do. And it scares me that I might decide it was the right thing to do since it worked. It really scares me that I’ll more readily raise my Shining Weapon next time. It really, really scares me that I could become someone that kills for more than to live and eat.”

Beatrice narrowed her eyes at that.

Boo Boo looked so very different from when they had played together long ago. His stuffed animal body had swelled out to the point she had to look up at him. He reeked and he could easily crush her just by tossing and turning in his sleep. She doubted all of her fourteen thousand types of Magic would be enough to defeat him and he had won out against a Break News just by swinging around his Shining Weapon with pure brute strength.

But deep down, he had not changed from that small Orc that watched the festival from a distance because he did not want to scare everyone.

Knowing that was enough.

“Don’t be silly, Boo Boo.”

Beatrice stood next to Boo Boo who was taller than her even when he sat down and she leaned against him.

“I won’t let that happen. We’re friends after all.”

===Part 13===

And another individual watched those two from a short distance behind them.

She was a fifteen centimeter Fairy.

The poison had finally left her, so Meridiana was flying through the air once more.

“Boo Boo…”

Even if one did not seem to change and even if they did not wish to change, they still changed bit by bit.

And it was all so he who wished to be alone would no longer be viewed as a monster.

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
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</noinclude>

The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume6 Epilogue

2016-04-02T11:07:30Z

LazyHunter:

==Epilogue: Destruction, Execution==

Jinnai Shinobu was suddenly thrown into an unbelievable situation and he was on the verge of tears from the very beginning. But he knew just how serious Hyakki Yakou and similar groups were. He knew how easily precious human life would be lost once a legitimate battle began.

Several faces appeared in his mind’s eye, but he started by running into the thatch-roof house. He had to tell his father, mother, grandfather, and grandmother of the threat. Or so he thought.

“Granny! Dammit!!”

His grandmother was collapsed in the middle of the hall. He thought it may have been a sudden illness, but he was wrong. He was only an amateur, but he didn’t see anything obvious like pain or paleness on her face. It almost looked like she was sleeping.

But she would not wake up no matter how much he called for her or shook her shoulders.

“Shinobu, something’s wrong in the brewery too. I don’t hear any of the young men yelling.”

“So it isn’t just granny?”

Something was happening, but he did not know what.

He left his grandmother with the Zashiki Warashi and made his way from the backyard to the brewery. It was a delicate facility, so he had to wear a simple white protective suit to keep germs out. After being slowed down by that preparation, he peered through the heavy door he was normally not allowed through and saw men dressed in the same type of protective suit collapsed on the floor. One of them was his father. A bubbling sound came from a bucket twice as tall as he was, so he initially suspected it was some kind of gas.

But he was wrong again. That was not what was going on here.

“Zashiki Warashi, Succubus, Furutsubaki! Put on protective suits and help me carry out my dad and the others. Oh, not you Yuki Onna. They’ve told you to stay away from the brewery, haven’t they!?”

Inhuman Youkai were convenient at times like this. They easily lifted up the human bodies like they were paper bags. They also found and gathered Shinobu’s mother and grandfather.

It was obvious where they had to go.

Shinobu could not imagine what those bombers held inside, but he knew they could not outlast it just by trembling inside their house.

And the one with the greatest power was the Yuki Onna.

“We’ll be using your ice room.”

After stating his intention, Shinobu opened the door on the kitchen floor. An intense chill rose from it, but he went on to say more.

“Listen, Yuki Onna. Everyone here is only sleeping. If we just threw them inside the ice room, they’d die. So I don’t care if it’s an igloo or what. Just ''make something out of snow to keep them warm''. And make it as solid as possible on the outside. Solid enough to defend against a bomb. Can you do that?”

“…Easily…”

Shinobu thought while he and the Youkai removed their protective suits.

He thought of the Zashiki Warashi, the Nekomata, both Furutsubaki, and the harmless Youkai his mother had brought in, but none of them were enough to deal with Hyakki Yakou in their mobile base. Who could properly deal with an entire group or organization? After some more thought, he spoke up.

“Succubus.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“You controlled a large organization known as the European Security Force, right? Lend me your knowledge to fight against these people and drive them off.”

“Well, you are my current master. If you make a contract to that end, I will obey.”

“Shinobu.”

“I know it’s dangerous! But Madoka, Nagisa, the Love King, Tarou, and tons of other people are still in the village! I’m not going to let them destroy it all for their own convenience!”

With that said, Shinobu ran from the thatch-roof house with the Succubus in tow.

Things were not much better outside.

People were lying collapsed on the ground, a light electric truck had crashed into a dry paddy field, and he spotted a Lamp Obake and Umbrella Obake panicking on a farm road.

“S-someone! Anyone! Is there a doctor around!?”

“Mhh, was everyone really wiped out? 119 isn’t even answering.”

(You idiots.)

Shinobu’s face turned blue, not red.

He did not even have it in him to feel anger.

(You should have stayed inside the house! I’m sure the other Youkai have all fled already!!)

“Hey, Lantern and Umbrella! Come with me if you want to live!!”

“Eh? What? B-but Hiro-sama and his mother are…”

“We need to figure out what caused that and you can’t rely on the fact that Youkai don’t die. So don’t just wander around, got it!?”

Shinobu sounded full of himself, but that was only due to his experience in a few different incidents. In truth, he was only a high school boy. He could use a Package against itself, but he could not produce any paranormal power himself.

But they could.

Hyakki Yakou and similar groups most definitely could.

It was a peaceful village.

Areas of woods remained among the expanses of dry paddy fields. Hafuri, leader of Hyakki Yakou, built up her formation hidden inside one such area. It looked like a scene from a battle in the Warring States period. Except, that is, for the many invisibility and defense barriers set up around her. No one could see her and no one could get through to her. That was her position as the brains.

The airborne warning and control aircraft and strategic stealth bombers overhead were only a diversion.

They did not know how many people were in the Aoandon’s group, but that group’s focus would be on the heavens. And while they carelessly looked skyward, Hyakki Yakou would tear out their windpipe from below.

“The Top Five are all in position.”

“Understood. Everyone, begin the attack. Use the bombing and paranormal together to complete this as quickly as possible. It would help if you could keep the damage to civilians to a minimum, but if you deem that impossible, make your own decision.”

As soon as she gave those orders, an explosive sound reached her.

But it did not come from the smart bombs dropped from the bombers flying overhead or from a largescale attack carried out by Hyakki Yakou’s elite warriors.

Far, far too suddenly, the Aoandon had run up to Hafuri’s side.

Her speed was so great that the countless broken barriers only burst after the fact.

“…!?”

Before she could cry out, a young aide’s windpipe was slashed in a horizontal line.

And before the fresh blood could spray out, the Aoandon’s claws turned around to target Hafuri’s vitals.

“Young lady!!”

The Mamedanuki that acted as her body double (she was a tanuki Youkai that was as small as a stuffed animal) cut in. The entire scenery grew distorted and they all vanished, but the Aoandon did not even look surprised. She breathed in just once and blew flames from her lips like a bluish-white flamethrower.

“Hot!?”

“Ah ha ha! Tanuki transform by spreading their ballsack, but it’s commonly said they’ll reveal their true form after dropping ashes from their pipe!!”

The Aoandon spoke up in delight when she saw the scenery grow distorted again and Hafuri’s group appear out of thin air.

“Hi there. I’m the final boss. Nice to meet you. Were you surprised that I broke through the middle right off the bat?”

“…”

“It’s no use. Those Top Five of yours are busy with my team members. Kada-chan sends out a sandstorm made of the soot and impurities found on Buddhist temples and statues. Sakogawa-chan uses a Makura-Gaeshi to directly remove the target’s soul from their body. Iko-chan converts all of someone’s emotions into hatred to spread curses around. …Oh, wait. Saiki Kazu crushed that one. Well, there’s plenty of others. They might be in trouble if they tried to force their way through, but they can at least buy some time.”

The blue female oni smiled while extending her unnaturally sharp claws.

“And Hyakki Yakou is all about bloodline, so if I kill you, they’ll all lose their mental pillar of support. This is just like shogi or chess; take one particular piece and you win the game.”

“Do you really think we’ll let you do that so easily?”

“Let me tell you something neat.” The Aoandon giggled and continued. “I bring together and exist beyond one hundred fears. By gathering all of those scary stories, I can combine different parts to reproduce paranormal powers that I didn’t originally have.”

Some stories were quite similar.

For example, the Yuki Onna and the Ubume were entirely different Youkai, but depending on the legend, they both stood on the side of the road, they both begged a traveler to hold their baby, and they both crushed that traveler under the ever-growing weight of the baby.

Had a well-known legend influenced another Youkai or were they both products of the same basic fear and had thus been developed independently in different times and places? That did not particularly matter.

What mattered was that similar legends could be created.

The individual Youkai traits were not exclusive to those individual Youkai.

“Do these combinations give me 100 x 100? Or is it 100 to the 100th power? No, it’s like paint. The materials are limited, but the possibilities are limitless. Saiki Kazu’s paranormal techniques and Matsukai Hiroshi’s search program really are the best. You could even call them art. Thanks to that, I have surpassed the concept of numbers.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“Are you familiar with the Youkai known as the Aburatori? That child-killing Youkai has lost the traditions of fear. It simply appears, simply abducts, and simply kills. That’s all it does.”

She pointed straight at Hafuri.

Yes, at the center of the ten-year-old girl’s chest.

“If I emulate that, you can’t escape. I don’t know any other Youkai more perfect for killing a child.”

That made this checkmate.

That announcement meant it was already over.

Or so it would have been.

“Illness Magic.”

If only the girl had not muttered those two words.

A moment later, something stood up next to the girl.

[[Image:Zashiki_v06_452.png|thumb]][[Image:Zashiki_v06_453.png|thumb]]

Something grew from the ground like a fast-forwarded video of a mushroom or bamboo shoot growing. It was the girl known as Hafuri. However, her height had increased, her facial features had changed, her chest had grown, and the shape of her waist had become much more seductive. She was wearing black mourning clothes that hid her frame, but the curves of her body still showed through. Her arms and legs were long and slender.

Adult and child stood there.

And the two Hafuris were linked by marionette-like strings made of hyphae.

“Wha-…?”

“This is my predicted body at the age of twenty. The power of Illness Magic can accomplish even this sort of heresy.”

The technique had originally been developed in case a successor was needed in a hurry. In other words, it was an artificial surrogate mother. After studying Hafuri’s current young form, a substitute body had been thoroughly redesigned based on what she would look like as an adult. And it was of course accurate enough to take Hafuri’s ovum into its artificial womb and give birth in her place. Even if Hafuri herself had ordered him to make it, the Illness Magic User had essentially created the ultimate Dutch wife based on his master’s adult form. On the day of its completion, he had reported his success and then attempted suicide on the spot. It had taken the combined efforts of the other Top Five to stop him.

“This will have removed me from the fatal range of the Aburatori. After all, I am both a child and an adult. Just as the umbilical cord connecting mother and child combines them into the single category of a ‘pregnant woman’, the individual known as Hafuri now exists as both the large and the small.”

“I see. But didn’t I tell you? My limited materials provide unlimited possibilities. I have plenty of other fatal Youkai in stock!!”

“Then Venom Clairvoyant, lend me your eyes.”

A pale red light came from the sexy Hafuri’s eyes.

A moment later, the Aoandon sent her deadly claws out quickly enough to create multiple afterimages, but the two Hafuris moved together to easily dodge them. They moved at the same time, in the same direction, and with the same movements. They were entirely synchronized.

“What!?”

“If you wish to kill me, I recommend making more than one hundred attacks in less than two seconds. And Superhuman Trainer, lend me your knowledge.”

Everything immediately changed.

Hafuri had only been escaping before, but that clearly changed. As they quickly moved together like acrobat planes, they lowered their hips, focused on shifting their body weight, and stepped forward. They charged into the center of those deadly claws and fangs, received not a single scratch, and thrust a large and small palm into the center of the Aoandon’s soft belly.

The blow sounded like a hit on a drum taller than she was.

The sounds of breaking tree trunks continued for a while as the Aoandon flew away like a shell.

“Many regions still tell of Youkai teaching humans the superhuman techniques of the gods: the Tengu that trained Ushiwakamaru, the Yamaba that trained Kintarou, and the fox that trained Abe no Seimei. Similarly, I now have superhuman combat techniques.”

The Aoandon rolled along in confusion and saw something as she got back up.

The sexy Hafuri held the hilt of a Japanese sword contained in a scabbard held out by one of her subordinates.

“Heirloom Transcender, perfect my weapon.”

As soon as the large Hafuri drew the sword, a repulsively beautiful shine filled it.

“It is a very common legend for paranormal power to fill a tool or animal after one hundred years. Akki Rasetsu and Udou Utsuki’s body double both struggled to create a specific technique out of it, but the answer was actually quite nearby.”

The Aoandon honestly thought that sword was dangerous. It had been a surprise attack with no advance knowledge of the situation, but that girl had outdone her empty-handed. Now that she had an artificially enhanced weapon, it was anyone’s guess who would win this.

Needless to say, chopping off her head or tearing out her heart would not be enough to kill the Aoandon.

But even if it did not kill her, being chopped into tiny little pieces would be very bad for her.

After all…

(I’m a paranormal being made up of one hundred different scary stories. If I’m broken into one hundred equal parts, I lose what makes me special. The stories will be separated and weakened. I doubt I would even retain my sense of self.)

There were examples of a powerful Youkai being broken up and sealed away. For example, the Yamanba being chopped up and sealed in forty-two mounds or the Tsuchigumo’s corpse being sliced in three and buried. There were exceptions like the Killing Stone containing the curse of a nine-tailed fox. When the stone was broken, the small fragments created a new type of Youkai known as the Kuda-Gitsune. Regardless, the Aoandon’s sense of self and very existence would be destroyed.

And…

“Did I forget to mention this?”

The small Hafuri spoke while the large Hafuri adjusted her grip on the sword.

“I have their assistance, so it would be foolish indeed to forget about their presence.”

“…”

The Aoandon slowly turned around.

Everything was already over as far as the eye could see.

One was the Illness Magic User.

The large man wore the black special combat uniform of a SWAT member and the magazine holders held curse charms. That walking strategic weapon used the power of the charms to transform his own hatred into Illness Magic and create an ever changing attack and defense based on all forms of germs and bacteria.

One was the Venom Clairvoyant.

The beautiful woman had long black hair and pale white skin. She wore a shrine maiden outfit with a thin coat held in place by a decorative clasp made of St John's wort. A red cloth was bound tightly to her face such that it covered her eyes. It was said insects would warn of coming danger and she gained a special power by raising such things inside her own body. Sticking from her sleeves were two old German handguns decorated with bells and string. She was the ultimate observation device that never hid behind cover and never looked down the sights of those guns as she danced in a circle and brought destruction to everything around her.

One was the Supernatural Trainer.

The gentleman wore glasses and a black butler’s uniform and he held a riding crop. He had the power to instantly teach every one of his targets superhuman combat techniques such as unbelievable strength or the ability to jump extreme distances. If he assisted an army, every single soldier would become a match for countless enemy soldiers. And of course, that special military advisor could make himself a target of that power.

One was the Passionate Predator.

The teenage girl wore a greenish-brown twelve-layered kimono. By gaining a phantom pregnancy with her target, she would gain a false bond with them. Then her immense jealousy and hatred would become a blazing curse that was sure to assassinate that target. She had broadly interpreted and twisted the negative emotions of a woman seen in legends such as Kiyohime. The more she loved them, the more the flames grew, so that precision guided weapon could burn down even the temples and shrines protected by buddhas and gods.

One was the Heirloom Transcender.

The dried-up old man in Japanese clothing sat in a worn-out old wheelchair with a large canopy covering his face. It could be a sword, a spear, a cat, a dog, or anything else. Anything he threw in his furnace, heated up, and diligently beat with his hammer would become part of the paranormal. The sword would become a spiritual sword capable of slaying countless foes and the cat would become a monster cat that could speak the human tongue. Without even needing to reference Suzuka Gozen, that paranormal weapon designer and developer could even create floating weapons that automatically cut down their targets to protect him.

Altogether, they were Hyakki Yakou’s Top Five.

If used correctly, those ultimate trump cards could each conquer one of the five continents and hold the entire world in their hands.

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

“…”

They had already taken care of everything and stood in the center of the piles of corpses. Their eyes were directed straight at the Aoandon who had bared her fangs against their master.

It was not that the team the Aoandon had gathered was weak.

It had been a great army with strength in both quantity and quality.

It was just that the Top Five were even greater monsters who made defeating them look like plucking weeds from the ground.

(That just leaves Sachi-chan, the Oomukade, Saiki Kazu, the Byouki user, and a few more. Drat, that’s mostly just the newcomers.)

The Aoandon honestly accepted the state of the battlefield.

Even after all of her preparations and all of the dominoes she had lined up, this was the result. A massive hand had blocked the way and the boring pre-established harmony had ruined everything.

(I was already about 50/50 with Perfect Mode Hafuri-chan, so this probably wouldn’t end well if the Top Five began a saturation attack.)

“Heh heh.”

“What’s so funny?”

“Well, I’m the ally of everything who wants change, so this reliable victory of the pre-established harmony isn’t very much fun.”

“But it is reality.”

“Oh? Is it really?”

She snapped her fingers and spoke to one of her few remaining allies.

“Okay, Saiki Kazu. ''This didn’t work after all, so let’s get started.''”

Somewhere in Noukotsu Village, a young man in a dark suit spoke.

“Paranormal being imported by the Southern Barbarians, change your colors and grow scarlet. I desire a blood-red paranormal power, so take on that form.”

The word syncretism was most often used when referring to Japan’s form of Buddhism, but Buddhism had originated in India and crossed through China and Korea before arriving in Japan. And during that process, the names, forms, and roles of the buddhas and deities had changed.

The term Akuma was originally a Buddhist term. It was only later used to refer to Western devils and demons because the Japanese language lacked a more appropriate word.

So…

“Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier. Appear in the form we desire to grant what we desire to the extent we desire. …Appear, Tsuerika Nyorai. It is time to begin your work.”

An unimaginably sinister whirlwind blew through.

This paranormal being had been intentionally twisted.

This threat had been tuned to match someone’s needs.

Jinnai Shinobu saw it happen as he checked on Noukotsu Village with the Succubus.

Standing in the center of a tornado-like whirlwind was a white woman with a glamorous body and sky blue ribbons at the end of her long blonde hair. It was the Australian witch named Marguerite Steinhols. That assassin had once used the Furutsubaki (Small) in an attempt to get her hands on the Succubus.

But…

“That’s…not her.”

The Succubus sounded stunned.

For one, the woman’s clothing was different. This material kept all living creatures away with the hardness of rough gray concrete and yet it somewhat resembled reptilian scales. And that material was wrapped tightly around the beautiful woman’s seductive outline as if eating into her. It mercilessly showed off her cleavage, navel, and thighs, but that almost looked like a way of increasing the number of ports from which to eject her blasphemously ominous power.

And she was the same as the Succubus, which meant…

“That might be her body, but it isn’t her soul. Damn her! Did she borrow Marguerite’s body to appear in this world!?”

A moment later, two twisted horns burst from Margeurite’s forehead and flowed backwards. Bat-like wings came from her back and a long, thick tail came from near her butt. She became the stereotypical image of a demon seen in Western religious art and video games.

[[Image:Zashiki_v06_464.png|thumb]][[Image:Zashiki_v06_465.png|thumb]]

“Heh heh…”

With a seductive breath, she slowly embraced her own body…no, the body of the woman she had hijacked. She squeezed the large breasts and traced her fingertips along the smooth curves of her hips as if testing the size and movable range of this new body.

“Yes, yes. It’s been so long since I felt like this. I have once more violated a woman’s womb to be born into this world! I’ve lost count of how many times this is, though! Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

“Ah…”

She was a legendary-class archdemon.

She had overwhelming power but she had not quite ranked among the seven deadly sins.

She was easily on par with ridiculously well-known beings like Satan or Beelzebub.

She was from an entirely different dimension than Youkai or spirits.

That monster might even surpass a low- or mid-ranked god in a polytheistic religion.

Or perhaps she could call herself a demon lord.

“Ahhh…ahhhh….”

Jinnai Shinobu stood stock still.

The fate of the village had just crossed a certain line. He was hopelessly certain of it.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

“Welcome to the world of those who wish for change.”

The Aoandon grinned.

She showed no concern for the Top Five or the two Hafuris who had shown such abnormal power. Emotion filled her face, she spread her arms as if to embrace her enemy, and she made an announcement.

“This is a world with no pre-established harmony! A world of never-ending chaos filled with such great possibility! Now, let us fight to the death as the ultimate form of entertainment! Let’s cheer everyone up!! The people of this country are being crushed by oppressive boredom, ''so let’s show them something that they’ll think was worth dying to see''!!”

As soon as the Aoandon finished shouting, Archdemon Tselika roared toward the heavens and a certain boy’s small world was destroyed.

<noinclude>
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| Back to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume6_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]]
| Return to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Zashiki_Warashi_of_Intellectual_Village:Volume6_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
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</noinclude>

The Weakness of Beatrice the Level Cap Holy Swordswoman:Volume1 Chapter 1

2016-03-31T19:34:17Z

LazyHunter:

{{Incomplete|parts=7|tparts=13}}
==Chapter 1: Fairy Red and Break News==

===Part 1===

One summer day, the beating of a drum arrived from the inn town at the base of the mountain.

Boo Boo was still young then as he watched from a small hill a short distance away.

The people’s faces could not be seen from there, but the lights of the bonfire and festival stands looked like a jewelry box and let him know that a large number of people were enjoying themselves from the bottom of their heart.

Gray Boo Boo had the back of his round stuffed-animal body to Beatrice who sat nearby, so she asked him a question.

“Aren’t you going to join in, Boo Boo? I don’t know what this festival is for since I only just got back from the Labyrinth, but I can show you around the inn town.”

He shook his head without looking back her way.

“I’m fine on my own.”

“?”

“Everyone’s afraid of me. If I went to the festival, it would ruin their fun. So I’m fine on my own.”

His round back looked small and that was likely due to more than his short height.

Beatrice sighed and sat down right next to him.

“That isn’t true.”

She smiled and stroked his head with her gauntleted hand.

“If you clear up any misunderstandings and let everyone know what kind of person you are, you won’t have to think like that anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“Because there’s at least one person here who’s accepted you.”

The beating of the festival drum continued and Boo Boo said nothing for a while.

He stared at the distant flickering lights before finally speaking again.

“I want friends.”

“Of course.”

“I want to go to a festival one day.”

“You can. You can now if you want to.”

He shook his head.

“I’m scared.”

“Of the humans?”

“I’m scared of everyone being scared of me.”

Nothing anyone said was going to help with that. Boo Boo would have to overcome it himself and continue forward. Meddling and dragging him in front of everyone or pushing him forward when he was not ready would be useless.

So Beatrice said something else.

“Then let’s start with the two of us and go from there. We’re already friends, right?”

===Part 2===

In the dark forest, a Shining Weapon much like a steel beam took out a Great Rocky Mountain King Bear. The Merchants and Couriers who travelled through Grandnir called those bears a “fickle roll of the dice”. The bear was large enough to knock over a moving four-horse carriage, but Boo Boo slammed it back-first into some rocks and jumped before it could even groan in pain. His knee slammed into the monster bear’s nose and took its life before it could put up any kind of resistance.

He was three if not four meters tall.

With extremely powerful muscles covered with plenty of fat, his entire pig-faced humanoid body was a deadly weapon. He attached his metal Shining Weapon to the crude belt around his waist and wiped the sweat from his brow.

“That was some good work. I can eat for three days with this. Hm? What is it, Beatrice? Does your stomach hurt?’

“Ah…ah ha ha…The flow of time really is cruel. I’m starting to wonder if my love is being tested…”

“Hm? I’m not good with complicated things like love.”

“What you say is exactly the same, but it seems so different now that your body’s changed! Wahhhhhh!!”

Beatrice covered her face with her gauntleted hands.

The stuffed animal that would squeal when she hugged it had vanished in the world of the past. Now she could feel an invisible wall of pressure even from a short distance away. Not to mention his bestial stench. She had even heard rumors that some pioneers would cover their hair and clothes in Boo Boo’s scent to ward off beasts.

Meanwhile, he only understood that something was troubling her.

“When you’re worried, a full stomach will get rid of it. Beatrice, I brought a lunch with me.”

“Oh? Good job, Boo Boo. You’re so civilized.”

“I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“You’re imagining it. I’m not all that hungry right now, but I am curious what’s inside your lunch.”

Some might wonder why he would need a lunch when he had the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear in front of him, but it was only natural to make sure he had food in case he could not find any prey. Plus, the captured beast’s organs and blood had to be removed, so it could not be eaten right away.

As for the prepared lunch, Boo Boo opened a green basket made from a large leaf with disinfectant properties that looked like something found in a rainforest.

“Raw fruit.”

“Okay.”

“Raw mushrooms.”

“…Okay?”

“Raw fish and raw meat.”

“B-Boo Boo! W-wait. Why not try cooking things every once in a while!?”

Beatrice quickly stopped him, but he tilted his head.

“You sometimes ask for hard things.”

“Uuh… That counts as ‘hard’?”

“I know food tastes good when cooked over a fire, but it’s hard to get it just right. When it’s all burned black, it makes me sad.”

“H-hmm. Well, setting aside whether it’s cooked or not, what kind of meat is it? I’m pretty sure it’s twitching.”

“I don’t know how to answer tricky questions like that.”

“Let’s at least know what it is we’re putting in our mouth, Boo Boo!”

Her desperate plea only made the nearly four meter Orc tilt his head curiously.

“Hmm. Having too strong a stomach may be a problem. I’ve heard necessity is the mother of invention, but does this mean Orc civilization never developed because there was no necessity?”

“No, Beatrice.”

“?”

“I’m not just an Orc. I’m an Iberian Orc!”

“Ibe-…what?”

Boo Boo pulled out his log or steel beam of a Shining Weapon and showed her a spot near the base.

“Iberian is the most amazing kind. It even says it here, so it has to be true!”

The word “Iberian!” was carved there by some kind of blade.

It was in a wild sort of handwriting.

(W-well, that is the best kind…or rather, it sounds tasty. But I get the feeling he’s being made fun of. What happened, Boo Boo?)

There was a big problem here, but getting bogged down in it would not help.

He got back to the lunch issue.

“I recommend the meat. You have to remove the bones for the fish, so it’s only for experts.”

“S-sure. But this is your lunch, so I’ll pass.”

She politely retreated and he closed the lunchbox.

“Why are you here, Beatrice? To play with me?”

“While I would love to, my main goal at the moment is to ‘wait’. I’m waiting for information.”

“?”

“We’ve run into a problem in the Labyrinth and can’t move on. They’re discussing it in the inn town and I don’t want to rush randomly in before they find an answer. I’m not about to become a fatal test case.”

“I don’t get why humans go to that scary place. I’ve heard the rooms and passageways change. I’d get lost in there.”

“Heh heh. Maybe so. …In fact, there are times when I have to eat the pizza or grass fallen on the ground to survive. But Boo Boo, the treasure in the Labyrinth really belongs to all of you. Aren’t you mad we’re taking it?”

“I never go to the Labyrinth, so nothing there is mine. I don’t know what’s there, so it doesn’t matter to me who takes it.”

That may have been how it was.

Grandnir was a small island that a human could walk around in about three days. It was filled with diverse nature, but its biggest feature was the giant entrance leading underground.

Despite being a small island in the middle of the ocean, there was a vast and immense Labyrinth that stretched belowground like a spider web. It was rumored to be at least the size of a country if not an entire continent.

The humans saw that as the whole value of Grandnir, but Boo Boo and the other Non-Humans who lived on the island rarely approached the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth was scary and its structure changed at random, so not even drawing a map would help for long and it was easy to get stranded. But besides those more direct reasons, the island itself had everything they needed to live.

“In that case, I guess not even you would know how to get through Cave 25.”

“Hm? I’m not sure what you mean by Cave 25.”

“Sorry, sorry. That’s the name we humans gave it. Um, every surface looks like it’s made of crystal, steep cliffs continue as far as the eye can see, and there’s a single stone bridge across.”

“What’s the problem?”

“When a human tries to cross it, the bridge rotates around. In other words, it drops them into the abyss. It’s a simple but dangerous Trap. Plus, it bans flight Magic for a double punch. …We really might have to wait until the next transformation. We might just have to pray Cave 25 itself disappears next time the Labyrinth’s structure changes at random.”

The Labyrinth was protected by two different things.

One was the Gimmicks, extremely elaborate contraptions that mimicked existing plants and animals. The other was the Traps embedded in the floors and walls to stop intruders.

“I heard something long ago,” said Boo Boo.

“Yes?”

“The big traps in the underground Labyrinth are linked to the extraordinary monsters wandering on the surface.”

“Oh, you mean the ones known as Break News? I’ve also heard that the giant Dragons and Krakens have some kind of occult link that lets them power the giant Traps.”

Beatrice sighed, accidentally breathed in a lungful of Boo Boo’s bestial stench, and used all of her strength to keep it from showing on her face.

“But the Break News have so much power it’s said each one has a soul. They were born in a certain environment, but they grew to the point that they can produce that environment. Both sides of the equation exist on equal footing. It’s like the chicken or the egg problem. But it would be foolish to think about defeating one of those to stop the Trap. For one, we don’t know which one is linked to cave 25, so-…”

“Zzz…”

“Hey!! Don’t fall asleep while I’m talking to you. That’s rude, Boo Boo!”

Beatrice’s raised voice popped the large bubble coming from Boo Boo’s nose as he fell asleep on his feet. He rubbed his pig-face’s eyes with his huge hands.

“Yawn… Yeah, but gathering the seven crystals is too hard for me…”

“How much of that were you asleep for, Boo Boo? I won’t get mad, so be honest.”

Suddenly, a deep rumbling sound reached them from the distance.

The two of them looked over and grimaced in unison when they saw the shadow beginning to cover the entire sky.

“Looks like it’s going to rain.”

“I’ll take this home.”

Boo Boo picked up the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear’s giant body like it was a thin blanket.

“What about you, Beatrice? Will you hide from the rain at my house?”

“Hm? Your house? That sounds fun. I accept your invitation.”

With that, the two of them walked quickly through the forest as if fleeing the dark shadow approaching them.

That shadow brought destructive rain.

However, it was not a dense layer of thunder clouds.

It was one of the Break News that moved freely through the outskirts of Grandnir.

It was the Thousand Dragon.

As its name suggested, it was the king of flying dragons and it had an abnormal body that measured at a thousand meters.

===Part 3===

In what may have been a habit picked up from exploring the Labyrinth, Beatrice called up a map in the air in front of her using illusion Magic. Or perhaps she simply could not relax without checking that kind of convenient service, just like with a cell phone.

“I see…” she muttered.

Boo Boo’s house was near a mountain river yet not exposed to flooding or landslides. It was a decent location. It was not entirely safe as it could easily invite in bears, wolves, or other wild animals, but perhaps none of the forest or mountain creatures wanted to disturb Boo Boo’s territory.

The house was made from the large leaves seen in rainforests arranged into a triangular silhouette, so it was really more of a tent than a house.

“Hyah, it’s really coming down. Over here, Beatrice.”

Boo Boo carried the gigantic Great Rocky Mountain King Bear as he stepped inside the even larger house. Unsurprisingly, the house made of leaves had no lock.

Beatrice belatedly looked up at the house.

“Hm. This is better made than I expected, Boo Boo. You did a real civilized job here.”

“I feel like you’re insulting me.”

“You’re imaging it. Oh, and it looks like you’re actually cleaning the place.”

“About every three days, I destroy my house tossing and turning in my sleep, so it’s always brand new.”

It was not just like a tent; it was a tent.

There was no furniture inside and it was relatively cozy if one ignored his bestial stench.

“I’ll do something about this once the rain stops.”

Boo Boo set the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear down in one corner of the leaf house.

As Beatrice looked around, she noticed something.

“Oh? Boo Boo, there’s Fairy in your house?”

“Hm?”

“There’s a Fairy Ring here. That means there’s one nearby.”

Her steel gauntlet pointed at a ten centimeter circle cut directly into the leaf house’s leaf floor.

“You normally see these in a bush, though.”

“I don’t think I’ve seen any Fairies. They always run away when I chase after them, so I don’t know any.”

“H-hmm. They are pretty rare to begin with and they don’t like being seen, so they have a tendency to run away regardless… And you have an intimidating presence even to me, so I can’t imagine what you look like to a palm-sized Fairy.”

If Boo Boo knew nothing of the Fairy, then it might be secretly living in the house to prevent other predators from attacking it.

“But if there’s a Fairy living here, does that mean some Crimson Heaven Flowers are growing nearby?”

“I’ve heard of those. Crimson Heaven Flowers are pretty and smell sweet, but you can’t eat them.”

Only one other thing caught Beatrice’s attention.

“Boo Boo, what is this?”

The house did not have a dresser or closet, or even a pot or a frying pan, but there was one object carved from wood. It was about thirty centimeters tall.

“That’s a human statue.”

“Human…?”

“Humans suddenly appeared here one day and some people say they’re messengers from heaven. We’re all too scared to go to the Labyrinth, but it’s said the humans enter the Labyrinth to suppress the catastrophe spewing from that hole in the earth.”

“H-hmmm. We aren’t that noble a people.”

Beatrice placed her hands on her hips and made a suggestion to Boo Boo.

“Now, then. Boo Boo, this is your house and I know an unplanned guest like me shouldn’t be saying this.”

“What is it? If you need something, just tell me.”

“Well.”

The soaking wet swordswoman nodded and continued.

“Boo Boo, can you step outside?”

“Eeee!! I-I know you might be jealous, but stealing people’s homes is wrong! I worked hard to make this house!!”

“No, no. It’s not that.” Beatrice waved a slender hand protected by a gauntlet. “As you can see, I’m soaked. I can get rid of the surface moisture with my fire Magic, but I still want to wipe myself down properly.”

In truth, the combination of armor and moisture was disastrous and ignoring the issue would leave her entire body covered in athlete’s foot, but for the sake of her feminine pride and her sweet dreams, she had decided not to tell Boo Boo that. In a way, it would be even more embarrassing than being seen in the nude.

It was unclear if Boo Boo understood or not, but…

“Okay! Then you can wipe yourself off with this! I always use it to keep my Shining Weapon especially shiny!!”

“Oh…thanks. I know I shouldn’t be picky as a guest, but let’s keep at least a towel on hand from now on, Boo Boo.”

This was her only option, so she accepted the “Item Name: Cloth”.

However, Boo Boo showed no sign of leaving. He simply stared at her from directly ahead.

“…Boo Boo.”

“Yeah? What is it, Beatrice?”

“You have to know what clothes are since you have that cloth around your waist. This may be selfish since this is your house, but please leave for a moment!! And don’t come back in until I say you can! You can’t look at humans when they’re naked!!”

“Okay. I knew human skin had no fur and isn’t very tough, but I didn’t know you couldn’t expose it to light either.”

Boo Boo readily turned around and walked toward the exit.

Beatrice glared at him as he left, but he showed no sign of turning around.

Not in the slightest.

It had been too easy.

…

…

…

“Squeal!! Wh-what was that for, Beatrice!? Why would you grab my back fat like that? It hurts, it hurts!!”

“Boo Boo, I’m not saying I approve of the cowardly action known as peeping. But…”

“What’s peeping?”

“Oh, no!! That isn’t a concept I should be teaching you!!”

“You said I couldn’t look, so I’ll keep my promise.”

“Yes, but…there’s more to it than that! You can’t treat a girl like she’s some old fish bones lying on the ground!! You need to look more disappointed!!”

She knew she was being unreasonable, but she still blushed and lightly punched Boo Boo’s waist a few times.

Once Boo Boo left, the rest was easy.

The clothing she wore was really Percentage-type Magic, so it was only an effect used to adjust her physical abilities. While real armor required a helper to remove, she only had to stroke a finger along her rapier-style Shining Weapon to remove each piece of Magic until she was in her birthday suit.

(Your appearance in Grandnir is supposed to be dependent on the equipment, but while you’re here, it doesn’t change even when you strip down.)

She used the cloth (meant for Shining Weapon maintenance) that Boo Boo had given her to wipe all the moisture from her soft and slender body. Then she switched the Magic back on to don the equipment-shaped effects once more.

“You can come in, Boo Boo.”

When he stepped back inside, he did not care at all about how wet he was. It seemed a solid Iberian Orc could not catch cold and never felt chilly. Beatrice had no choice but to use the cloth to take care of him as far as she could reach. He seemed like a small child as he let her do as she pleased.

“Nn.”

“C’mon, Boo Boo. Don’t complain.”

“But there’s nothing to do until the rain stops. I’m bored.”

“Well, this rain has to do with a Break News, so it should let up once that passes by. Let’s preserve your catch before it rots.”

“There’s nothing to do at home. All I can do here is nap.”

“That’s fine. I’m not about to head out into the rain eith-..”

Beatrice trailed off and froze in place.

Sleep with Boo Boo?

An invitation to his house?

When they had once promised to get married?

But she still had an unmarried body. She wanted him to think that even roughly holding her in his arms would break her. Had she been too careless in accepting this invitation from a gentleman?

“W-we can’t do that, Boo Boo! I probably need to create some kind of specialized Magic before we can become one! In fact, if you lie on top of me, you could easily crush me to death!”

“Hm? Why are you shouting with that hair sticking up from your head on fire?”

“A-ahem!!”

As Boo Boo lay down on the floor to nap (yes, his house lacked even a blanket), Beatrice blushed and cleared her throat to disguise her runaway imagination.

She hid the Illumination Magic lighting up her ahoge and she lay down next to him.

Only the sound of raindrops striking the leaf roof continued.

Meanwhile, Boo Boo asked her something.

“Why do you go to the Labyrinth?”

“Hm?”

“I don’t want you to get hurt and you don’t have to go to that dangerous place. Only humans go out of their way to go there.”

“Well, Boo Boo.” She rolled over to look at Boo Boo who was lying on his side. “We humans go to the Labyrinth because it’s filled with things we can never make ourselves. Yes, it’s to acquire Experience Points.”

“?”

“Nonhumans like you use inborn Skills but can’t grow beyond that, so it doesn’t have much of anything to do with you. But humans aren’t born with anything like that, so we need to learn Magic somehow or another.”

“I don’t like studying.”

“We earn Experience Points from just about everything. Even from eating meals, dancing, or just speaking with you like this. But those only provide miniscule amounts. If we really want to learn Magic, it’s best to acquire a whole bunch of them at once. That is why we attempt to conquer the Labyrinth.”

“…”

“There is a lot to do there: fight Gimmicks, disarm Traps, and find Treasure in treasure chests. …There are even some who specialize in drawing maps or filling up an encyclopedia. None of that data will be useful forever since the Labyrinth’s structure changes at random, but that’s actually preferable when the goal is to earn Experience Points.”

People grew stronger the more experience they earned, but they could not properly receive the experience earned in a different world like Grandnir.

That was why they used Shining Weapons.

Only once the experience was sorted and converted was it taken into their bodies.

That might sound roundabout and inconvenient, but it provided a groundbreaking side effect. Simply put, the experience obtained in this other world could be converted to numbers and artificially distributed. That allowed one to freely extend their Parameters that were displayed on the kind of hexagonal or octagonal graphs seen in baseball video games.

This even allowed a free ''conversion of effort'' where studying at a desk improved one’s skill at baseball or cooking food made one better at karaoke.

And that allowed people to reach the Magic that they could not use in the real world.

“That is why there is no end to our adventure. We continue advancing through the infinitely-expanding and ever-changing Labyrinth to obtain the Magic we want and to earn as many Experience Points as we want. That said, experience is a form of stimulus. If you eat curry every day, you get tired of it. The areas that provide plenty of Experience Points change based on the daily trends, so there is more to it than simply continuing as deep as you can. Even Cave 25 that we’re currently stuck at-…”

“Zzz…”

Beatrice trailed off when she heard Boo Boo’s regulated breathing. She had scolded him for being rude earlier, but manners were not something one could learn in a day.

(Honestly, at times like this, he isn’t that different from back then.)

Beatrice kindly narrowed her eyes and touched the Shining Weapon she had removed from her hip and set down next to her. It looked like a Western rapier with the tip removed. She activated it, called up the Magic she wanted, and opened an orange film of light around her. The tiny barrier was meant for getting some rest within the Labyrinth, but the people who spent all their time underground could not relax without it. It was known as sleeping bag magic at the inn town and there were quite a few variations depending on Element.

They lived a life of survival from the moment they entered the Labyrinth to the moment they returned home.

No matter how deep they explored and no matter what legendary treasure they discovered, they gained nothing if they did not bring it back with them.

When exploring, it was more important to master these means of preserving strength than how to swing around a sword or staff.

The temperature and humidity were optimized and Boo Boo’s bestial stench was driven out. Her back sank softly down and her mind itself seemed to melt away.

(Why do I go to the Labyrinth, hm?)

She reflected on the question Boo Boo had asked her and her fingers stroked the Shining Weapon that represented her Magic.

(That’s a good question. Why ''do'' I keep doing this?)

And as she began to nod off, the end suddenly came to her world.

“Bghohh!! Bghohhh!! Bshrrrr…fshhhh!!!??”

“Uuhh… Wh-what!? What is going on!?”

The sleeping bag magic was meant to provide the short-term sleep needed to safely yet quickly recover the Willpower at the core of one’s Magic while inside the dangerous Labyrinth. But even inside that, Boo Boo’s snoring mercilessly pierced Beatrice’s eardrums.

“Bffhhh!! …mumble, mumble… What do you mean it only truly begins once you get the boat…? Bghohhhhh!!”

“Wh-what is this!? Is my l-love being tested!?”

And it did not end there.

The second trial arrived.

Boo Boo’s nearly four meter body suddenly rolled toward her.

The orange film of light might as well have not been there at all.

The sleeping bag magic shattered with the sound of breaking glass. She had never seen it break before, so she was almost impressed as his giant form rolled her way.

“Wait, you idiot! Stop, stooooooooooooooooooooop!! B-Boo Boo! I’ll be crushed! My body will be crushed!!”

===Part 4===

Once the residents of the leaf house fell asleep (although it looked like only Boo Boo was asleep and the scarlet Holy Swordswoman’s soul was escaping her mouth as the giant orc crushed her), a tiny form appeared through the gaps in the large leaves.

It was a girl of only about fifteen centimeters.

She had four dragonfly wings on her back, she wore a white and pink dress, and she had short pink hair.

The red ring wrapped around her right ankle jingled as the Fairy observed the leaf house from near the ceiling.

She was generally checking over the house’s condition.

“Oh, dear. Boo Boo accidentally damaged his house again.”

The ribbon on the small Fairy’s head fluttered as she flew outside, scooped up some mud that could be used to mend the house, and packed it into the gaps in the leaves forming the floor and walls. She tore away the leaves growing mold and added new ones in their place.

This fairy protected Boo Boo’s house without his knowledge, but the entire house would occasionally collapse when he made too sudden a turn in his sleep. That was not due to the house being fragile. He was simply too dynamic in his sleep.

However, the Fairy did not seem to mind.

In fact, she even seemed delighted to have more work to do.

Fairies were often depicted as pranksters, but her race at least placed a strong emphasis on repaying both good and bad deeds in kind. This Fairy had once been saved by Boo Boo. He had rescued her while she was caught in the web of a giant spider known as a Ground Spider. …Then again, it had looked a lot like Boo Boo had gotten his head caught in the spider web as he walked through the forest. He also looked nothing like the princes in fairy tales, but the fact remained that he had saved her life.

“That should do it.”

That was why she had been living in Boo Boo’s constantly destroyed and remade house for about a month. She would repay her debt by secretly helping out in a variety of ways once he fell asleep, but…

“Hm? Who is that lady?”

After finishing her work, the Fairy flew around the house and spotted the Holy Swordswoman in red armor and a miniskirt who seemed to be wrestling with Boo Boo (or rather, was being crushed by him).

“Oh, my. Did Boo Boo bring a woman home with him? My, my! Now this is a surprise. This might be a night to remember!”

The Fairy initially placed her hands on her cheeks and rejoiced, but…

“This delicate lady and Boo Boo who is larger than a Great Rocky Mountain King Bear?”

When she thought about it more calmly, that pairing did not seem possible.

Also, one of the monstrous bears she had mentioned was lying dead in a corner of the leaf house.

“D-don’t tell me she’s supposed to be a snack for Boo Boo! No, I believe in you, Boo Boo!!”

“Bghohh!?”

Boo Boo’s rhythmic breathing came to a stop.

He snorted from his porcine nose and rubbed his eyes.

“What is this glowing thing?”

“Ee-…”

The eyes of that vast and exceedingly brutal pig face stared at the airborne Fairy.

“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!?”

The Fairy immediately screamed and made an emergency evacuation of the leaf house.

Just as Beatrice (who was currently being crushed below Boo Boo) had said, Fairies did not like being seen.

===Part 5===

The giant dragon Break News left.

The pouring rain let up and a large rainbow appeared in the blue sky.

Beatrice and Boo Boo dragged out the Great Rocky Mountain King Bear and removed its organs and blood to help preserve it. Once they were done, Beatrice left Boo Boo’s house.

She used Magic to call up a map as she walked.

Grandnir was a small island that one could walk all the way around in just three days, so the only human settlement was the inn town near the center.

It contained brick buildings and fairly well-maintained stone-paved roads. Beatrice really did believe that necessity was the mother of invention. Even if exploring the Labyrinth was not a direct necessity, people were willing to put any amount of effort into making themselves comfortable.

When she returned there, the town seemed noisier than usual.

She visited one of the inns that were more used to gather a party than to spend the night and a familiar White Witch soon noticed her. Her name was Filinion. The woman had long fluffy blonde hair and wore thin-framed glasses. To match her Job, she wore a white cloak. She also wore a far-too-short dress and low-rise shorts. Finally, she wore a white witch’s hat with small rings and decorative cups attached to the brim like earrings. However, there was an unnatural slit opened at the chest and the front was too tight to close properly. Yes, leaving the cleavage of her ample bust in plain view!

(N-no, I don’t care. I’m above average too! And the Magic I’m wearing has made them even bigger!!)

The White Witch specialized in recovery Magic, but her Sparkling Weapon was not a sword or a spear. It was the white first-aid kit sitting on the table in front of her. The box did not contain a variety of medicines. It was a Mixing device that combined multiple ingredients to produce the necessary medicine.

She toyed with the key that hung from her neck by a thin chain.

“Beatrice, it looks like things are on the move.”

“What happened, Filinion? If it’s about Cave 25, weren’t our discussions at a standstill? I thought we had to wait for the Labyrinth to transform and randomly alter the layout.”

“That’s the thing.”

“Did they find a way to get through?”

Beatrice took a seat and placed a stack of gears on the edge of the table in place of money. They came from within the mechanical monsters known as Gimmicks and they were convenient as currency because they could be broken down and converted into Experience Points (as experience in learning how they were structured on the inside) or they could be Mixed to create rare items for even more Experience Points (and the more complex the item the more experience it was worth).

The waitress carried over the usual drinks. The White Witch named Filinion reached for the cup with her glove that left only the ring finger exposed.

“First, a Party seems to have figured out the power source for the stone bridge Trap in Cave 25.”

“You mean the Break News?”

Beatrice sounded annoyed and she activated some fire Magic that created an illusion. It was essentially a generic memo pad that auto-mapped the Labyrinth and helped with the discussions held before fighting the giant gatekeeper Gimmicks that appeared and attacked with incredible firepower to punish anyone who stayed in an area for too long.

A hologram-like image appeared above the table which displayed a diorama of Cave 25, a black form labelled “Break News”, and a red thread connecting them.

“I seriously doubt they are, but they aren’t planning to put together a large-scale force for a Break News subjugation quest, are they? Surely not! That wouldn’t be possible. Those things are paradoxically thought to have a soul. Not even those of us at the level cap can hope to face them, so no one would accept that reckless of a request.”

She created a representation of the inn town a short distance away and connected it and the Break News with a red line. She of course added a giant x-mark on top of that line.

Filinion pulled out something like a thick encyclopedia that was hanging from the side of her leather belt. Rather than purchase the information with a giant stack of gears, she had filled the book herself. She earned Experience Points by healing others and creating collectable encyclopedias rather than fighting.

The White Witch opened it to a bookmarked page and showed Beatrice.

“I’ll start with the details of the Break News. The one connected to Cave 25 is known as the Thousand Dragon.”

“The Thousand Dragon… You mean that one?”

Beatrice recalled the pouring rain and Boo Boo’s leaf house. She also changed the “Break News” label to say “Thousand Dragon”.

The task seemed even more hopeless now.

“It is a giant Dragon over a thousand meters long. Simply splitting the air with its great form is enough to create something like a contrail that forms thick clouds. That water dragon lord creates irregular downpours like that. …But what are humans supposed to do about something like that? We aren’t the mysterious Dragon Eater from some dubious legend. We research and research some more to figure out how to ''avoid those things''. Making contact yourself is suicidal.”

“Yes.” Filinion gently traced her fingers along her glasses. “But word is getting around that we might be able to neutralize it without defeating it. Look here.”

“Once every ninety days, the Thousand Dragon enters an unexplained state of intoxication. It flies in unpredictable paths, so be careful. Probability of occurrence: 78.8%. You mean…”

“People decided to search out what exactly it is that causes that state of intoxication. And after discussing the weather conditions, the ecosystem, and people’s movements, they think they’ve found the answer.”

Beatrice drew a red thread from the Thousand Dragon, but it led nowhere. She created a box containing only a question mark. Did that monster really have a weakness?

“What exactly is it?”

“This.” Filinion opened a different page of her encyclopedia. “But let me warn you: you aren’t going to like it.”

===Part 6===

The Fairy secretly flew back to Boo Boo’s leaf house.

His brutal pig face was certainly frightening. Her mind went blank if he so much as glared at her. But he had saved the small Fairy’s life regardless.

It did not matter if that had been a coincidence or not.

What mattered was whether she could repay him with her own hands or not.

“The roof still looks okay. The rope supporting the column hasn’t come loose. Okay, there shouldn’t be a problem.”

She checked over everything, but something was different from before.

She seemed somehow reluctant.

It looked like she could no longer follow her normal routine like normal.

“Meridiana.”

Someone called her name.

Not only was it another Fairy, it was the leader of their group.

The woman had large cicada-like wings, she wore orange clothing, and she had lime green hair tied back.

“Are you about ready?”

“Yes, Lady Morgan. I reinforced the house quite a bit, so not even Boo Boo should destroy it for seven…no, five days.”

That leaf house was constantly destroyed and rebuilt, so this method of repayment may have been entirely meaningless. When Boo Boo destroyed the house in his sleep, he would rebuild it without a second thought, so he had been living in complete ignorance of Meridiana’s actions.

But that did not matter.

It only mattered that she could convince herself that she had done something for the person who had saved her life.

“I feel bad having you do this.”

“Please, raise your head Lady Morgan. This is what I wanted and it had already been decided. You didn’t actually order me to do this, right?”

“But…”

“The humans said that foul dragon grows drunk on the toxin in Fairy blood. That Dragon constantly feasts on our kind, but that pigment gradually builds up inside its giant body. I agree that we are just a step away from defeating that foul dragon.”

“…”

Fairies enjoyed eating the red petals of the Crimson Heaven Flower. The flower itself was not very toxic, but a dreadful change occurred when it was broken down within Fairy blood.

The Fairies themselves were unaware, but it was enough to intoxicate even a Dragon that was one hundred, one thousand, or even more times their size.

[[Image:BooBoo v01 061.jpg|thumb]]

“So I will end this in my generation. It will all be over once I am eaten. I will make sure to finish off that foul dragon so that no one need ever follow this path again and no one else must be eaten. Why would I hesitate when faced with such a noble cause?”

“…I’m sorry.”

Morgan apologized even after being told it was unnecessary.

Meridiana laughed and asked a question of her own.

“Is everything ready?”

“It is. The only thing left is your resolve.”

“Then we can get started right away.”

The two Fairies flew out of the leaf house.

Just once, Meridiana turned back toward the house of her savior with a sad smile on her lips.

“Farewell, Boo Boo.”

===Part 7===

The “?” box had been filled in.

The red lines and several boxes created a completed diagram for defeating Cave 25.

However, Beatrice could not hide her irritation as she spoke up.

“Who is leading this?”

“Oh, come on, Beatrice.”

“I asked who.”

She repeated herself in a threatening manner and the entire atmosphere seemed to solidify. She was not directing her anger at them, but even the other guests were overpowered and fell silent. They seemed unable to even move, for fear of getting involved.

“That would be me.”

The carefree answer came from a different table.

The temperature seemed different in that corner. Five or six men with mocking looks on their faces were gathered there.

The one in the center was a silver knight.

He had a medium build and black hair. His somewhat sharp eyes were a negative in Beatrice’s opinion. He wore silver armor that provided an image of purity but was actually so polished it reflected and thus rejected everything. He had a large shield, so he was likely a Pure Knight. That was a rare Job one was born with, just like Beatrice’s Holy Swordswoman.

“Look at that. Someone on the Black List comes waltzing back after the heat dies down and now she’s complaining like she knows what’s going on? What are you thinking, Miss ‘Expert’?”

The red and silver glared at each other from different tables.

“We’re the ones that have spent our valuable time searching for any way through Cave 25 we could find, but you’ll still get through the Trap. Really, you should be paying us a toll.”

“The only things in Grandnir we are allowed to harm are the mechanical Gimmicks that lack a soul. We customarily have the Nonhumans take care of hunting or gathering plants and animals, or we at least accompany them when we do it. Do you really think we can kill and offer up a Fairy that can think and speak just like a human?”

“We won’t be killing it. It’ll be committing suicide, so we aren’t breaking any rules here.”

“Did you lead them in that direction from the beginning?”

A creaking sound came from Beatrice’s mouth.

Her back teeth were crying out in protest as she clenched them.

“It may be true that the extraordinary Thousand Dragon grows drunk on Fairy blood, but who decided that the toxin was building up inside it and it was just one step away from death? That was a filthy lie of yours to trick the Fairy into offering up its life, wasn’t it? The Fairy thinks this will prevent any sacrifices from future generations and you’re trampling on those feelings!!”

“Ohh, I’m so scared.”

The Pure Knight remained seated, crossed his legs, and clapped his hands.

“C’mon, do you really think any cares that much about Nonhumans? They’re just monsters from another world. What kind of moron identifies with something just because it acts like it understands you? Oh, maybe the kind of moron that sleeps with a pig-faced monster. But don’t expect me to understand how a perverted woman thinks.”

The men around him laughed and Beatrice narrowed her eyes.

“So nothing I say will change anything, is that it?”

“What? You think we’d stop using those dimwitted Fairies? Ha ha! Why the hell would we? It’s not like this is over once we get to the other side of Cave 25. Surely you know what we’re after: Experience Points! We’ll head down there again and again to run around defeating Gimmicks and snagging Treasure for the Magic we want! So we’ll do this as many times as it takes. We’ll trick as many Fairies into being eaten by the Thousand Dragon as we need to keep going down there and coming back!! We just have to tell them that this time – yes, this time for sure!! – they’ll finally kill the thing!!”

“————”

“Oh, and you know what we were just talking about? What we really need to get that giant thing drunk and stop the Trap is the Fairy blood, right? So how about we drain their blood and use the rest of them as Mixing ingredients!? Those things like to run off and are pretty rare, so they might make for a pretty good Experience Point conversation item. Gya ha ha ha ha!!”

Beatrice slowly inhaled and exhaled.

She created a new frame on the image above the table and decided to label it “ringleader”.

And then she made an announcement.

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“What if it was?”

A great rumbling answered him.

The red Holy Swordswoman had slammed her fist down on the table, scattering the false diagram everywhere.

“Let’s take this outside.”

No one was able to perceive what happened next. Not the silver Pure Knight, not his followers, not the other guests nervously watching on, and not even White Witch Filinion at the same table as Beatrice.

They heard an explosive sound after a short delay and suddenly realized one of the inn’s brick walls had crumbled and the Pure Knight had been thrown out onto the stone-paved road like an artillery shell.

It took a full second before he realized he had been kicked.

“Gh…bah…”

As he rolled along, he slowed himself by digging his silver boots into the stone.

“What do you…think you’re doing, you biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch!!!???”

He raged and activated his Shining Weapon.

Countless sharp spikes jutted out from the shield that had been polished to a mirror’s surface.

There was a shield category of Shining Weapons, but they were not used to block attacks or strike things with their great weight. By placing magic on them, that ultimate weapon could stop a carriage or smash through armor. As the Pure Knight roared in anger, a dazzling silver light raced across its surface. The shield was large enough to entirely hide him if he crouched down a little and bands of light expanded behind it to form a variety of Icons.

His mind was boiling over as he watched the red Holy Swordswoman casually walking outside through the destroyed wall.

“You’re dead meat.”

He had forty Commands for pre-registered Magic. He had more than fifty for the Percentage-type that increased his Parameters. One increased his STR by 200%, one his AGI by 500%, one his LUC by 150%, and many more. His muscles, skeleton, and organs remained human, but his clenched first could slay a tiger and he could singlehandedly defeat a mid-sized Chimera if he used his Shining Weapon.

“You’ve pulled the trigger of your own suicide… Our Magic is meant for exploring the Labyrinth, but you were the one that turned it against your fellow man first, bitch. No complaining now if I slaughter you with the same Magic. You’ve thrown your life away just like those Nonhumans you love so much!!”

“Sorry, but those Nonhumans have much more human hearts than the likes of you.”

“People seem to call you ‘Her With the Long Silver Hair’ or ‘The Deadly Dancer’, but I know the truth.”

“I’m not too fond of those nicknames because they all reference my sex or my body. People are free to call me whatever they want, but I think the only good one in the bunch is ‘The Seven Flames’.”

“I know you’re an obsessive monomaniac that only uses flame Magic!! Don’t you know anything about Elements and Affinity!? I can use my water and earth magic with impunity and turn you to sand whenever I want!!”

The sharp spikes covering the Pure Knight’s Shining Weapon gave a roar.

Each glowing Icon on the reverse side of the shield was one of his weapons. It was a collection of the ultimate Magic used to sweep aside the many Gimmicks encountered in the Labyrinth. One would smash the bedrock with a lightning strike, one would attack with a spear of ice, one would corrode everything with a black mist, and one would gradually petrify its target’s entire body.

“Don’t screw with me! I’m at Lv. 99! I’m at the level cap! All my stats are filled with nines!! Our amount of Magic is equal to our Level, so I’ve got 99 pieces of equipment and incantations stocked up! So show some respect! Bow before me!! Who do you think it is that’s been protecting you here!?”

“…”

“Cry and beg for forgiveness, you perverted bitch. I’ll slowly petrify your arms and legs and then smash them before your eyes!! Then I’ll crush your look of crazed despair underfoot and ****** your ****!!!!!”

“Right back at you.”

Beatrice drew her Shining Weapon from the sheath at her waist.

It was a strange weapon that looked like a thin rapier with the tip removed.

The instant she activated it, the world was dyed orange.

“…Huh?”

The man did not know what that meant.

He could not even react.

The inn town’s stone pavement and brick buildings had been replaced by something else entirely. Everything was enveloped in orange. It almost looked like a strange colosseum had appeared around Beatrice and the Pure Knight in all 360 degrees.

But this was not a colosseum.

It was seven tree diagrams. Each of them was a collection of Icons that indicated all sorts of Magic and they were Beatrice’s weapons. How many types of Magic surrounded them in all? One thousand? Or did it surpass even ten thousand? The Pure Knight could not even count them all.

“Y-you’ve…got to be kidding me…”

“Why?”

“Y-you…but you…!? You’re only supposed to be able to use fire Magic! Was that all bullshit!?”

“No.”

The seven tree diagrams surrounded the entire scenery like an oblong eyeball.

Beatrice chose something as if turning a dial and lining up a cursor.

“It’s just that I have collected around fourteen thousand options from fire Magic alone. Although even that is far from complete.”

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

He was entirely speechless now.

That Pure Knight had a stock of 99, but when the Percentage-types such as his armor and helmet were omitted, that left only forty or fifty of the Command-type Magic. He had thought that was enough to master the Magic of every Element, so he was completely overwhelmed.

Then he secretly activated some scanning Magic to get some information on Beatrice. One’s Percentage-type Magic came from the clothing they wore, so he was using her appearance to estimate her strength at full power.

[[Image:BooBoo v01 072.jpg|thumb]]

The result he got was frightening indeed:

''“h3nganphin1hfufvpikih6tsu6nrudfkgur8j”

“What!? It’s completely corrupted!?”

“It probably looks that way because you are still stuck in the realm of two decimal digits. ‘We’ can read it like normal.”

She sounded truly exasperated.

She gave the same sigh as a chess master faced with an amateur who did not even know how to move the pieces.

“Just so you know, this industry only truly begins ''after'' you reach Lv. 99.”

She demonstrated just how out of his league he was, but she still showed no mercy.

Like a great serpent swallowing a frog, the Holy Swordswoman did not hesitate to activate her Magic.

“Do not underestimate those of us at the level cap, newcomer.”

The outcome could not have been more obvious, but the battle mercilessly began all the same.

===Part 8===

===Part 9===

===Part 10===

===Part 11===

===Part 12===

===Part 13===

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| Back to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]]
| Return to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[The_Weakness_of_Beatrice_the_Level_Cap_Holy_Swordswoman:Volume1_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]]
|-
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</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3

2016-03-27T14:47:49Z

LazyHunter:

==Chapter 3==

===Part 1===

The hellish night had come to an end.

Morning came early for the soldiers…but that did not mean they had an easy time waking up. After being woken by an explosive blast from a cheerful idiot with a trumpet, Quenser rubbed his eyes in the top bunk of a triple bunk bed crammed into the barracks and he said good morning to the large nude poster within arm’s reach on the ceiling.

Unlike an officer like Frolaytia or a Pilot Elite like the Princess, the lowly soldiers and the student (who was nearly a freeloader) were crammed in together at night. The boys and girls were split up and then they had to climb into the beds stacked up almost to the ceiling. The comfort level was greater than a hammock but less than a capsule hotel.

He did not have time for a leisurely morning shower. He finished the bare minimum of preparation to make himself presentable and grabbed the day’s rations from one of the boxes piled up in the mess hall. That careless setup would allow a glutton to sneak off with more than their share, but since they were flavorless and odorless lumps reminiscent of soap or an eraser, no such trouble had been reported.

This was a maintenance base zone located near the coast.

Over one hundred large military vehicles had been gathered together. Even their barracks were built on top of a giant flat vehicle with at least thirty or forty wheels.

“…”

Quenser sat on the stairs up into the vehicle and nibbled on a corner of the rations while looking like he was facing the end of the world. He then noticed Myonri, a colleague of his, sneaking around out front.

“Hey, Myonri. What are you doing out so early? …Are those blueberries?”

“Eek!?”

The girl’s shoulders jumped and she looked back while holding a basket in both arms. The basket was filled with small fruits that must have been picked just that morning because they still had thin vines and leaves attached.

“N-nothing? There certainly isn’t an alliance trying to create pastes because we’re fed up with the flavorless rations. And I’m definitely not on my way to boil these to make jam!”

“Wait! You were sneaking around selecting ingredients while some of us were running around a hellish battlefield in the middle of the night!? Inexcusable! Share some of those with me. Simply inexcusable!!”

“Wahhhh!! My share always shrinks and shrinks like this!!”

According to teary-eyed Myonri (most likely to divert the predator’s attention), there was a rather large group that took issue with the tasteless rations and a number of communities had formed there. Some would try to get salt by boiling down seawater and some would try to make margarine using the oils from plant seeds.

Not only were the completed products tasty, but they could be used to trade for other seasonings.

“Rumor has it there are hidden groups making mayonnaise or crushing grapes to make wine.”

“The depths of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s darkness know no bounds! Absolutely inexcusable!!”

“Wahh! Quit trying to distract me!!”

Quenser was not going to wait until the jam was made, so he grabbed a few of the blueberries as-is and used their perfect acidity as an accent between the flavorless bites that seemed to sap his will to live.

“There’s so much variation in individual preferences that they can’t satisfy everyone. Since they don’t want the food to affect people’s combat-readiness, they go for something everyone finds tasteless, but there’s got to be something wrong with that reasoning.”

“Ah ha ha. But taste aside, those rations are supposed to be quite useful. They’re nutritious, they preserve well, they’re portable, and so on.”

“Really? I’ve seen rumors online that they dry restaurants’ leftover rice into a powder and cook it in the used frying oil.”

“C’mon, c’mon. That can’t possibly be…wait…”

Myonri rejected the idea with a smile, but then she realized she had no basis at all for doing so. She must have sensed that staying out in the open too long would let other soldiers notice her blueberry basket and thus take everything she had collected, so she said a quick goodbye and left.

“Ahh…”

Quenser used his dull mind to think about how peaceful things were here in the middle of the battlefield, but…

“Surely that’s just a preposterous rumor like the worm burgers, right?”

He had himself worried now.

===Part 2===

In truth, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion was in a state of limbo.

“Eh? We’re not waiting for a one-on-one fight with the Trinity Style?”

Quenser frantically spoke up inside the Object maintenance facility. The old maintenance lady sighed, but she was not working on the Baby Magnum. She was photographing the various remains of the small robots known as Dvergr and the armor panels that had come from the Trinity Style the night before.

“It’s true the Faith Organization probably wants to take a bite at us, but they’re taking their time after raising the White Flag themselves. They’ll want to get back at us since we injured them and they’ll also want to silence that Pilot Elite. …Skuld Silent-Third was it?”

She sounded disinterested.

“But that’s only what they want, so we have no reason to go along with it. We completed our original plan by attacking that flower garden with its intentionally contaminated pollen in order to end the production of the new drug they use to make Elites. There’s no reason to stick around now. A unit costs tax money every day it’s deployed like this.”

“Then why don’t we withdraw already?”

“By carelessly damaging the Trinity Style and forcing it to withdraw, you seem to have nearly changed the minds of the bored higher ups in the safe countries. They aren’t sure if we should withdraw immediately or keep going and maybe destroy a 5 billion dollar Second Generation and take its tech for ourselves.”

“There’s also something else preventing us from moving on.”

The Pilot Elite Princess must not have had anything better to do because she walked over to join them. Her unreadable eyes observed the wreckage lined up like a scene from an airplane crash investigation.

“Even under normal circumstances, we have to worry about being attacked while withdrawing, but now we have so many more people,” said the Princess. “A withdrawal is going to take time, so waiting around is dangerous.”

“Yeah, the Trinity Style ran off, but the Faith Organization soldiers were left on the battlefield,” added Quenser. “We took them all prisoner, didn’t we?”

“Frolaytia wasn’t happy about that,” said the old maintenance lady. “Even POWs need clothes, food, and shelter and that costs money. She was complaining about how you don’t even need to develop a new weapon to end the war. She said you just need to have a billion of your people surrender to the enemy in order to apply financial pressure.”

“Hold on. That doesn’t mean our rations will get even worse, does it? I’m not sure I want to see how that’s even possible.”

The Princess looked up at Quenser while she crouched down and poked at the wreckage.

“But those are good,” she said innocently. “They’re like a special treat.”

“What the hell!? Are you one of those people who thinks hospital food is something special!? You have a fridge and microwave in your cockpit, so you know nothing of our suffering!!”

“I’m so sick of pizza and burgers. There’s no surprise in the flavor…”

“Kiiii!!”

“Stop that, boy. Overwhelming anger is no reason to strip.”

At any rate, the entire battalion had nothing to do until their next orders came in. And even if they were to withdraw, it might not happen very quickly due to the Faith Organization POWs inflating their numbers.

(Well, I don’t really care as long as I can study Object design here.)

Then a transmission from Frolaytia reached the old lady’s tablet.

“Any luck analyzing that Dvergr?”

“The individual tech isn’t anything special. It looks more suited to a space station or a remote controlled Mars rover than military use, though.”

The old lady glanced over at the crushed robots.

“Then there’s the tech used to link them together into a solid fifty meter, two hundred thousand ton mass. I haven’t a clue what kind of pattern they use. These crushed ones aren’t enough. I’d need quite a few ‘living’ samples to even know where to start.”

“So it’s like the difference between pencil lead and carbon nanotubes even though they’re both carbon?”

“I’m glad you understand. The electronic simulation division was all excited about digitally reproducing it, but we’ll see if that gets anywhere.”

“That means Quenser is just wasting time over there, doesn’t it? Could you send him over here? I think I have a more important lesson for him.”

(What’s this, what’s this? Is busty silver-haired Frolaytia going to be loosening her collar to give me some ‘adult’ lessons!? O-oh, no! I have to make sure she wears glasses when in teacher mode!!)

Quenser started straining his ears to listen in, but Frolaytia’s explanation led elsewhere.

“Now that she’s had a night to recover her energy, I think it’s time to begin the interrogation of Skuld, the Faith Organization Pilot Elite. If you’re interested in enemy technology, then come watch, Quenser.”

===Part 3===

Quenser left the Object maintenance facility and started toward a different building, but he ran across a vehicle having engine trouble on the way.

“What’s this about, Heivia? Did the thing stall out inside the base?”

“Oh, shut up. …Goddammit, I can’t believe this!? Again!? I already opened up the hood and dealt with this!!”

“That’s unusual. Did someone get lax with the maintenance?”

He glanced inside the hood and saw something like white steam rising from within.

“No, it’s bugs.” Heivia sounded utterly disgusted. “I don’t know how they’re getting in, but they must think the dark and cramped engine grill is the perfect bed. You know how you’ll find a ton of them when you turn over a heavy rock? Well, they’re messing with the engine and burning onto the thing.”

“Ugh.”

“And that means I’ve got to use a brush to scrape off the bugs that are burned onto the pipes and stuff. Experimental Battlefield Madagascar can go straight to hell. These strange bugs are everywhere.”

“Well, Heivia, Frolaytia called me in to help with Skuld’s interrogation, so I’ll catch you later!”

“You coldhearted bastard!! And what’s this about interrogating a girl!? Is it gonna be sexy? And how far are you going? Is it gonna be one-on-one between that busty commander in black leather bondage gear and Skuld with a ball gag!? As your mother, I cannot allow that kind of closed-door investigation!!”

Since his awful friend would not stop complaining, Quenser raised his middle finger and continued on to the facility where Frolaytia and Skuld awaited.

The detention barracks were normally used to hold soldiers who had screwed up and it normally ate up maintenance costs without getting much use, but the problem was how indispensable it was at times. That may have been why Frolaytia seemed to be in a bad mood as she leaned against the wall with her arms crossed.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Well, I’m just watching, so I’m ready when you are. This place really is packed full of Faith Organization people, isn’t it?”

“There are 203 including the Elite, so it’s like a small school. The lower level has the group cells and the upper level has the individual cells.”

Still leaning against the wall, Frolaytia used her chin to gesture down a corridor blocked by metal bars and doors at a few points. One wall contained a row of doors with peepholes and the other wall contained a row of windows covered with a thick wire mesh. The signs painted on the walls and floor indicated there was a stairway at the end.

The cells behind the bars had originally been individual cells, but they had been left with no choice but to throw up to about ten people into each one. While they had air conditioning, they had to share the blanket and toilet, so it was not exactly a comfortable living space.

“Skuld has her own cell, but the others are all in there together. Of course, asking for funding to expand the detention barracks would be an embarrassment to our unit.”

Frolaytia opened a nearby door.

Instead of Skuld’s interrogation room, it was the neighboring room. One wall was a one-way mirror and the rest of the room was filled with flat screen monitors and analysis equipment. Two indoorsy-looking soldiers were already in there. They may have been specialists in determining the veracity of a statement based on the speaker’s expression and eye movements.

The room beyond the special mirror had a table and two chairs just like a scene from a police drama. However, the furniture was bolted to the floor and the girl in one chair had her arms handcuffed to the top of the table.

It was Skuld.

She was the Trinity Style’s Pilot Elite. Or rather, she was ''one of'' its Elites.

On the other hand, the interrogator sitting across from her looked to be from the intelligence division.

The woman wore her uniform perfectly by the book in a different way than Frolaytia did. She had long black hair, thin-framed glasses, and giant breasts.

“Damn, I need to be careful. If I’m not, I might accidentally call her ‘Class Rep’.”

“Quenser, the intercom is active.”

He quickly began to cough, but the blushing glasses woman beyond the one-way mirror could not stop her shoulders from trembling.

Frolaytia casually spoke into the microphone sitting on top of the equipment.

“Sorry about killing your enthusiasm like that, Second Lieutenant Elfily, but duty is duty. Please get this started.”

“Understood. …Now, let’s try this again. Nice to meet you. My name is Elfily Classic. I belong to the 37th’s intelligence division and my rank is second lieutenant. I have been placed in charge of your interrogation.”

“…”

“Now for some jabs. How about we start with what is protected by international law? What is your name and affiliation? …Telling me that should not qualify as treason.”

After her name, the discussion continued to age, blood type, birthplace, height, and weight. It was all personal information, but it was made to gradually dig into one’s privacy and complexes. The questions were sometimes gentle and sometimes rude. It was all so varied that Quenser could not tell what the point of the questions was.

“She called these jabs, remember?” commented Frolaytia. “We’re observing the girl’s reactions.”

“?”

“This room is filled with two million euros’ worth of equipment and it isn’t just for decoration. We’re monitoring body temperature, perspiration, eye movements, facial muscle tension, changes in breath volume, and really just any kind of reaction people make when they lie. That said, an expert can fool all of that, so we like to fine-tune the equipment as much as possible before getting to the questions that truly matter.”

As the boring(?) questioning continued, Quenser finally heard a topic he cared about.

“I would like to ask about the Trinity Style.”

“Are you going to inject me with something if I don’t talk? Oh, but I hear using the mucous membrane of the nose is the latest trend. It leaves less of a mark after all.”

“The Object in question uses three Pilot Elites at once. I have a report saying you yourself admitted to that, so will holding your tongue do you any good here?”

“Curse him and his loose lips…”

Even through the one-way mirror, her low voice made Quenser’s heart skip a beat. It was impossible, but he still felt like she was looking right at him.

Meanwhile, the Class Re-…no, the second lieutenant in glasses continued speaking.

“This concerns your own safety in addition to our technological investigation and understanding of our enemy’s capabilities. How valuable you are to the Faith Organization will tell us how likely they are to target you while you are restrained here. If we do not understand that, we cannot continue to the next stage. That remains true whether you wish to return to the Faith Organization or to defect to the Legitimacy Kingdom.”

“…”

Skuld fell silent for a while, but she finally rattled the handcuffs holding her arms to the table. She clasped her fingers together and slowly provided the desired information.

“Our Norn always uses three pilots. The Elites are Skuld – that’s me – as well as Verdandi and Urd. You know where those names come from, don’t you?”

“Three goddesses from Norse mythology. They were the goddesses of fate or of time.”

“Not only do we work together, but we really are blood-related sisters. And that’s why I doubt they’ll show any mercy.”

“Meaning?”

“Did you think we got along just because we’re sisters? Once the disappointment starts to spread, the familial hatred will settle in. Their heads will boil with anger as they go on about me being a blot on the family name.”

“You mean they will not consider you expendable and leave you here because they have multiple Pilot Elites?”

“They’ll come after me for revenge. I 100% guarantee it.”

Skuld gave an exasperated shake of the head.

“As you know, the Norn’s design and specs can change. That changes who the Object’s main pilot is. …That previous one was Urd’s, but if Verdandi takes over, the Object’s traits will change entirely. What you did last time won’t work again.”

Frolaytia spoke without using the microphone.

“That also means Verdandi is the only card still up their sleeve. We don’t know what Skuld’s mode is, but they can’t use it with her here. Maybe it would be safer to make an attack and reveal that card.”

“No, not necessarily,” reflexively replied Quenser. “We can’t completely trust what Skuld says. That might have been Skuld’s mode last time, leaving them both Urd and Verdandi’s modes in reserve. It’s also possible all three sisters can use all three modes and they’re just better with their own than the others. If so, that’s three Objects times three people for nine patterns overall. With one person out of the equation, they still have six battle patterns left.”

“Perhaps. On top of that, we have no guarantee each sister only has the one mode. If each one has three or four, the combination of cards grows indefinitely.”

“My sisters will kill me,” said Skuld in the interrogation room.

The scratchy, resigned voice sounded out-of-place coming from such a young girl.

“They will come to kill me no matter what. Fate is absolute to the Norn, so they honestly believe that throwing off our plans for victory is a violation of our proper behavior. That is why they will kill me.”

“We have heard that the Faith Organization has developed a unique process for converting belief into a fighting spirit. Is that what this is?”

“Have you heard the term ‘berserker’?”

“Doesn’t that primarily refer to a method of numbing foot soldiers’ fear before making a charge?”

“It’s based in mass hysteria. Just like a rock star’s enthusiasm spreads to the audience during a concert. We act as an amplifier to boost the berserker effect. The greater our enthusiasm, the greater the frenzy among the berserkers. That atmosphere is then sent back to use, creating an even greater explosion of emotion. Then the process repeats.”

“In that case…”

“Our base zone is probably filled with war cries right about now. They’ll be yelling for the traitor’s head. What my sisters hate most of all is letting the heat die down. They will be keeping the engine running no matter what it takes.”

“…”

It was not a pleasant conversation.

Quenser decided to ask Frolaytia a question.

“What’s going to happen to Skuld now?”

“That depends on what she wants and what the higher ups are willing to allow. It’s possible she will defect to our side or she might be thrown back to the Faith Organization. She also might be treated as a hostage and used in a prisoner exchange to settle some troublesome diplomatic issue or another.”

What she was saying sounded simple, but there was no emotion in Frolaytia’s voice.

She then changed the subject.

“Anyway, that’s about as much as we can ask about her personally. Quenser, if you have any questions about the Trinity Style, tell Elfily through her intercom. If she’s in a good mood, she’ll ask about it.”

“U-um, then…”

Quenser thought for a moment before doing so.

“Miss Elfily, if you have the chance, can you ask about something? The Trinity Style is composed of a bunch of small robots, so why are they fixated on making a giant Object? If they have spare robots, they should be able to make a second identical one. If it’s about the reactor, they could always put in a prototype one. Just thin out the armor a little and they might have been able to use two at once.”

Beyond the mirror, the glasses woman casually changed the flow of conversation.

“Miss Skuld, I have a question somewhat concerning your relationship with your sisters. The Trinity Style is composed of small robots…”

“Oh? I thought she might still be mad about what you said at the beginning, but it looks like she actually likes you, Quenser. Maybe that Class Rep has a thing for baby faces.”

“Frolaytia, the intercom is still on.”

Frolaytia started coughing, but it was too late. It was becoming unclear whether they were watching Skuld’s interrogation or enjoying how embarrassed the busty glasses Class Rep had grown.

Regardless, Skuld answered the question presented to her.

“The Object only has meaning by being an Object.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You don’t get it? It’s true we could make all sorts of things with the Dvergr. We could make a great number of them if they were on the level of tanks or armored trucks, but that would be meaningless. No one would fear that. The battle begins before a weapon is used. Only a second-rate weapon does not strike fear in the heart of the enemy before it is ever used. That is why we have no interest in anything but the most powerful Object. If we lowered the specs to split it into two or three, the enemy would just pick them off one by one.”

That was indeed one aspect of the clean wars touted by the world powers.

It was not enough to say you could never know until you tried.

When facing normal weapons like tanks or fighters, it was best to make sure the enemy never even thought about trying to use them against you. When facing another Object, you had to make sure the enemy knew their specs were hopelessly inferior before the battle began. That prevented wars from dragging on, that kept them clean, and that preserved world peace.

That was the modern trend.

And that was exactly why Skuld had reached her conclusion.

“My sisters will kill me.”

She had returned to her initial claim.

The danger she sensed was finally coming into view.

“The Norn must be the most powerful. All else must be sacrificed if it means maintaining its special position at the top. The Elite being captured alive will mar the ‘legend’. That is why Urd and Verdandi will do whatever it takes to resurrect that legend. The first thing they need to do is make a bloodbath out of the one who harmed the Norn’s status as the strongest.”

===Part 4===

They left Skuld in the interrogation room and took a coffee break.

A time of elegant ladies and gentlemen began while watching the prisoner through the one-way mirror.

“Hey, no fair! The intelligence division gets coffee!? All we get is soap-like rations and lukewarm water!”

“This is a strategy to let the scent reach the restrained Elite and shake her heart by reminding her of the finer things in life. More importantly, you two!! Why do you keep calling me a class rep while I’m trying to work!?”

Quenser and Frolaytia both began coughing.

At any rate, Quenser used the confusion to grab some iced coffee for himself and began the discussion as if simply chatting.

“Man, that was some surprisingly heavy stuff back there.”

Quenser was a little disheartened, but Frolaytia and Elfily must have been used to it. The Class Re-…no, Elfily smiled his way.

“With Elites, it isn’t uncommon to find they were taken into the military for ‘protection’ due to a complicated upbringing or family environment. If the military feels like the most comfortable place for them, they won’t get any unwelcome ideas. That kind of restraint is quite effective given the modern system of clean wars settled by one-on-one battles.”

“(Hm, she really does look happy. Maybe she’s less a class rep than she is a gentle liberal arts teacher.)”

“Major, do not forget that I belong to the intelligence division which excels at gathering information!”

When Frolaytia started to cough on reflex, some ashes burst from the end of her kiseru like a tiny eruption.

Quenser was sitting across from her, so he was hit full in the face.

“Hot!? Wait! Low temperature candles are one thing, but I think pipe ashes are a little too advanced for me!!”

“Ah! What are you two doing!? C-come here. Start by cooling your forehead with this glass of iced coffee. …Um, is there anything in this survival kit I can use?”

“(She really does like to take care of people. Could it be…?)”

That was when Quenser and the two women heard an odd sound. It sounded like a great number of small things hitting the wall. Quenser initially thought of rain blowing in the wind, but it had been sunny outside. More importantly, the monitoring room next to the interrogation room had no windows. The walls were too thick to hear the rain so clearly even during a cyclone.

“Hm? What is that?”

Asking was not going to help, so Quenser walked to the door with the glass of iced coffee still pressed against his forehead. He could see what was going on through the corridor windows which were covered with wire mesh to prevent anyone from escaping.

At first, he had no idea what was going on.

It was completely dark. Unlike the windowless interrogation room and monitoring room, the corridor’s fluorescent lights were kept off during the day. Even so, it should not have been as dark as a school or hospital at night. It was almost like the sunlight from the windows was being completely blocked off.

“The…windows?”

The mystery sound had grown much louder.

When the boy looked over, the situation finally dawned on him.

It took a moment longer before the intense revulsion and terror assaulted him.

Black bugs were covering every inch of the windows.

The outside world had become a storm of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of winged insects.

===Part 5===

“A-ahh…”

He did not know what to do.

He could not even tell if he had decided to step back. Whatever the case, he fell back onto his butt and screamed the only syllable that came to his blank mind.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

His scream brought Frolaytia and Elfily from the monitoring room. They too were shocked when they saw it.

And by this point, Quenser had realized how strange this was.

“Wh-where are the guards?”

They were in the detention barracks, the prison that one’s own war criminals or captured enemy soldiers were thrown into. Unlike the other facilities, it had strict security, but no one showed up when Quenser screamed and no one had reported on the bugs. They had not even received a radio transmission.

What was going on outside?

Were those bugs really so violent that they could bring down soldiers equipped heavily enough to deal with escapees or rioters?

“Wh-what is this…?”

Elfily was dumbfounded by this threat that went beyond mere bullets or knives. Her mind’s ability to face a threat may have short-circuited. Quenser understood all too well what that was like.

The only one with any real guts was Frolaytia.

She narrowed her eyes and observed the black bugs covering the entire surface of the windows.

“They look like a type of bell cricket. I don’t know the exact name, though.”

“Bell?”

“Because their chirping sounds like a bell. These look a lot like the ones I saw in a pet shop that specialized in the Island Nation.”

Frolaytia blew smoke from her seductive lips, but it did not reach the insects on the other side of the window.

“But this might be bad.”

“Why? When raising crickets, you feed them sliced cucumber or eggplant, right? Then this isn’t as bad as wasps or scorpions.”

“Bell crickets are omnivorous. They will even start eating each other if they aren’t given some occasional animal protein like dried sardines or ham. So with this many… Take a look at that, Quenser.”

“I-I’d rather not look at that disgusting mess!!”

“Just do it. Besides, bell crickets are nocturnal, so it isn’t normal for so many to be out during the day. They also generally can’t fly despite having wings, so it isn’t normal for so many of them to be covering the window. Most of all, most of these have faded to a slight brown instead of being pure black. Do you know what that means?”

“You don’t mean…”

It was busty Elfily who answered, not Quenser.

“Their instinctual behavior and color are meant to keep their natural predators from attacking them, right? So if they’ve abandoned that effort…”

“This might be what you call ‘brazen bugs’. When a swarm of locusts grows too large, they abandon their camouflaging coloration and begin attacking other animals and plants. This must be a similar phenomenon with the bell crickets.”

Frolaytia brushed up her bangs with a hand.

“And bell crickets are omnivorous. They normally only eat small bug carcasses and they wouldn’t think about actively preying on other creatures like this, but as you can see, things change when there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of them. Even we could be bitten to pieces if they swarmed us.”

“…”

“…”

It was not a nice death to think about.

Their focus naturally turned toward the window. Even the group that had been carefully observing Skuld through the one-way mirror was looking out into the corridor.

Some of the crickets were chewing on the wire mesh installed on the outside of the window and some kind of strange liquid was flowing out. Was that because they were squishing each other under their combined weight? Or had they started feasting on each other?

This was different from a bullet or knife. It was also different from being attacked by a lion or tiger. The thought of being brazenly eaten by creatures lower on the food chain brought feelings of humiliation and disgust. The worst part of all was the cruelty of how they could not be communicated with, how they could not be killed easily, and how they were entirely indiscriminate.

They knew all that, but what were they supposed to do now?

“I can’t believe this. It doesn’t matter how many bullets or explosives we have, there’s nothing we can do. We’ll use up all our ammo in no time and then they’ll swarm us,” said Quenser. “But if we ask the Princess to deal with them using the Baby Magnum, she would just blow away the maintenance base zone with us inside. …Hm? Come to think of it, what happened to the Princess!?”

He quickly pulled out his radio, but no amount of pressing buttons got any response.

He only heard even static.

“You’re kidding, right? Don’t tell me a bunch of bugs took out a colossal weapon that can survive a nuke!”

“No, they wouldn’t be able to do that much. Quenser, as a future engineer, you should know a lot of random trivia. Have you ever heard of insects being used to predict unexpected tornados?”

“When the radar picks up the bugs that are caught in the supercell, they know a tornado is probably coming. …Hold on.”

“Yes. Insects reflect electromagnetic waves. It normally isn’t a big deal, but when his many of them form a wall, they can probably cut off a weaker signal.”

That meant all the bugs swarming the maintenance base were separating the soldiers of the 37th from each other. It was like a blinding sandstorm outside and their allies had to be right there, but they could not reach each other.

“It might be best to stay put,” said Elfily while uneasily looking back and forth between the black window and the tablet that was of no use with communications cut off. “At the very least, there was no warning about this kind of natural disaster in the environmental report before this mission. That means this has not been seen in the last few decades. Plus, this is not something we can deal with using bullets or knives. We might take less damage if we wait for the storm to pass instead of trying to exterminate them with what we have on hand. Don’t these abnormal swarms of bugs tend to end fairly quickly?”

“Yes. It’s the sad story of the food chain. The more of them there are, the greater the threat, but they also end up eating each other. And as I said, bell crickets are perfectly willing to eat each other if there isn’t enough food. The problem should solve itself in two or three days.”

Quenser felt himself relax when he heard that passive solution.

He had truly been worried he would be ordered to build a handmade flamethrower and then run out to face the storm of bugs.

“Still…this is insane. Who would think these tiny bugs could paralyze a base for the weapon that ended the nuclear age and rules the current battlefield?”

“Insects and small animals were a constant nuisance in older wars too. You might cover the ultimate tank in dried grass for camouflage, but mice would use it as a bed and then chew through the wiring, turning it into a metal coffin.”

That reminded Quenser of running across Heivia having trouble with a malfunctioning vehicle. It had been something about a bunch of bugs getting into the engine. That may have been a sign of things to come.

However, this was a military facility and one made sturdy enough to prevent war criminals and POWs from escaping. Even if all hell had broken loose outside, the crickets could not get in so easily.

Or so he thought.

That idea proved naïve.

“Wait a second… What is this noise?”

He heard a bell-like chirping.

Frolaytia and Elfily looked up at the corridor ceiling in shock. It was the same reaction people gave during an earthquake or lightning strike.

“Are you sure it isn’t from outside the window?”

“No, it’s too clear for that. There aren’t many, but it seems some have gotten in somehow.” Frolaytia calmly shot down the Class Rep’s wishful thinking. “Quenser! We need to split up and check all the corridor’s windows and doors. Take some duct tape with you and apply it like weather stripping!!”

“Why just the corridor!? The cells also have windows!”

“Wait!!”

This time Elfily cut in with a powerful voice.

Quenser looked puzzled, so the busty glasses Class Rep continued.

Her face had grown pale.

“We cannot open the cell doors. The Faith Organization prisoners would rush out if we did!!”

“This is no time to be worried about that!”

They only had to press a button in the guard room.

No keys were needed. This kind of prison used strict security to keep people from getting in or out, but to ensure the bare minimum of human rights, there was always an emergency evacuation system that opened all of the cell exits and corridor doors.

But despite that…no, because of that, Elfily quickly stopped him.

Because it was easy, she could let him do it so easily.

“There are more than two hundred of them!! And there are only five of us including the analysts in the monitoring room. This might be a Legitimacy Kingdom base zone, but we can’t expect any reinforcements. If we open those doors, the detention barracks will become an isolated piece of Faith Organization territory!!”

“I can’t believe this,” spat out Quenser.

Painstakingly opening and closing each door to check on the windows would take too long. The crickets were getting in and they would quickly fill the entire building. Yet if they opened all the doors to ask for help, the Faith Organization prisoners could easily gang up on them. And fear of that had to be double for women like Frolaytia and Elfily.

The risk was too great either way.

Quenser understood that, but after thinking on it, he made his decision.

“Opening the cell doors is the only option.”

“Are you serious!?”

“The Faith Organization are human too, so we can explain the situation to them. The bugs on the other hand aren’t going to wait around! If they pour in here, we’ll definitely be eaten. There’s no persuading or threatening them! So we need to go with the option that has some slight chance of working!!”

Quenser and Elfily turned toward Frolaytia. After taking a puff on her kiseru, their commander exhaled the smoke.

“Let’s go with Quenser’s idea. If we don’t apply the weather stripping as soon as possible, we can’t survive.”

“~ ~ ~!!!???”

Elfily was about ready to stomp her feet in frustration, but Quenser ignored her and ran to the fire alarm on the wall. Once he smashed the glass and pressed the button, a shrill bell rang, red lights flashed, and all of the doors along the corridor slid open with an unsettling noise.

Men in neon prisoner uniforms rushed out, so Quenser raised his hands and shouted to them.

“If you want to head outside, be my guest!! But only if you have the guts to make an escape right now!!”

The cells had windows, so the prisoners would know the situation outside. A few of them still stepped forward with bloodshot eyes and it likely had to do with more than just being frustrated.

“What is-...? …!?”

A door slowly opened next to Quenser’s group and Skuld stepped out looking puzzled. That Pilot Elite was almost a target of reverence for the Faith Organization. The interrogation room had no windows, so she was clearly shocked by the truth she found before her eyes.

Frolaytia pulled a handgun from her waist.

However, she did not aim toward the prisoners. She aimed at the window right next to her.

That window was still absolutely covered with black insects.

“If I find I cannot expect all of you to act logically, I will immediately break this window. Then we will all be bug-food together. It would be a tragedy either way, but I’ll take that over being made into your plaything. Now, which will it be?”

“…”

“Help us. We need to apply weather stripping to the cell windows!”

Before they could waste any more time glaring at each other, Quenser tossed a few handcuff keys and rolls of duct tape to Skuld. When she saw the boy get to work on the corridor window, the twintail girl sighed and nodded. That seemed to settle it for the Faith Organization. Skuld followed Quenser and the soldiers given some duct tape returned to their cells.

“(Watch them carefully. They might be searching for something they can use as a weapon.)”

Elfily moved in close and whispered in Quenser’s ear while helping with the work.

She discreetly warned him without letting Skuld notice.

“(Wearing a plastic toothbrush down to a point is enough to kill and you gave them duct tape. Combine that with something else and they can make any kind of ‘science project’ they want. That is how things work here.)”

“I know that.”

“(I am not saying your decision was wrong, but you still need to be careful. And since you have explosives with you, you are the last one we can have falling into their hands.)”

“We’re done over here!”

A man in a prisoner uniform rushed out of a nearby cell.

Elfily ended her conversation, grabbed the duct tape from Quenser’s hand, and casually moved to another window.

The Faith Organization soldier continued speaking without noticing.

“Saint Skuld, allow me to do that so you need not dirty your hands …What is even going on here? What are those? Bell crickets!?”

“What’s your name?”

“Eric. Eric Kingsvalley. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Quenser Barbotage. Just come with me! Oh, right…”

Quenser removed his backpack and handed it to Eric.

Elfily stared at him in shock from a short distance away, but he did not care.

“This is my Hand Axe plastic explosive. You take it. Carrying a weapon around like that is stifling me.”

“But…”

“You can’t set them off without a fuse. Not even throwing them into a fire would work. I’ll keep those fuses, so now neither of us can detonate them.”

“…”

After some thought, Eric put the backpack on.

Then he and Quenser shook hands.

The hot-blooded exchange between guys must not have gotten through to her because Skuld tilted her head and cut in.

“What do we do now?”

“I don’t know! Just double check all the windows and doors! We can here the crickets chirping from somewhere, so we need to seal up wherever it is as soon as we can!!”

“No, wait.”

Just as he started to do that, Eric came to a stop.

He and the other Faith Organization soldiers looked up to the ceiling.

“What is it?”

“It might not just be the windows and doors. I don’t know the exact layout of this place, but how do the ventilation ducts work?”

“Goddammit, are you serious!?”

They all looked up. It was a tall ceiling and the ventilation duct covers were out of reach. Then Skuld beckoned Quenser over with her index finger.

“You said your name is Quenser, right? Give me the tools and bend over. I’ll ride on your shoulders.”

“Saint Skuld! Allow one of us to take your place!!”

“Shut up. We don’t have time and we need someone light on top, don’t we?”

No one argued.

A lot went through Quenser’s mind as he did as he was told.

(Instead of using two Faith Organization people, she’s making sure Eric can still move freely. She hasn’t forgotten the most basic etiquette.)

“But who cares about the details when I get to have a cute girl’s legs and crotch wrapped around my head!?”

[[Image:HO_EX_03_019.jpg|thumb]]

“Eh? What?”

Skuld looked confused as she climbed onto his shoulders from behind with surprisingly shameless motions.

As soon as Quenser gathered strength in his back and straightened up, he nearly lost sight of reality thanks to the sensation on the back of his neck and his cheeks.

“Ahahh…”

“There, right there. Stop, stop! Why do you keep moving back and forth like that!?”

That was of course because he wanted to delay her work and enjoy her warmth for as long as possible, gravity of the situation be damned, but then something went wrong.

Once Skuld removed the ventilation duct cover and stuck her head inside, she completely lost her balance.

“Hyah!?”

“Saint Skuld!!”

Quenser nearly performed an accidental suplex on her, but since diligent Eric faithfully held his hands out from behind, they only fell to the ground. Eric and Quenser screamed when they looked to Skuld who had cutely fallen onto her butt.

A single black bell cricket sat on top of her head.

“Gyah!?”

“Gyah!?”

Quenser quickly brushed it off and Eric crushed it underfoot.

“?”

Only Skuld looked confused.

She had likely lost her balance after looking it in the eye at point-blank range, but she must not have known it had gotten in her hair. If she had, she would have been far more panicked.

“Crap! Crap, crap, crap!!”

Frolaytia ran over when she heard the commotion.

“What is it, Quenser? Give me an intelligible report!”

“There’s…some of…a few of them in here! A few crickets!!”

“Did they eat through the gas filter?”

Frolaytia sounded annoyed and she tore her medals and battalion patch from her coat. Then she stripped off the coat.

“We need to buy some time. Stuff a few balled-up coats into the ventilation ducts to block them off. They aren’t big enough for someone to crawl through, so it should be easy to block them off.”

“B-but! There isn’t just the one duct. We would have to figure out which filter was eaten through and-…!!”

Elfily trailed off because the entire corridor shook and tilted unnaturally. No, the entire building did. The solid detention barracks creaked like a rickety suspension bridge.

Quenser grew pale.

“What is it now?”

“This is bad,” replied Elfily.

She gave a blatantly cautious look to Skuld and Eric who had the Hand Axe.

“They must have eaten through the tires. The entire maintenance base zone is made from a convoy of more than one hundred vehicles, so all of the buildings are actually a number of panels put together on top of those flat vehicles!”

The weight was distributed between thirty or forty tires as tall as Quenser was, but if one of them blew, that equation would no longer work. With the extra weight, the odds were good the rest would blow too.

And if the overall balance had shifted…

“The entire detention barracks will collapse onto its side?”

If that happened, the windows and doors would be the least of their worries. The panels of the exterior walls would bend, break, and create large gaps. Once the omnivorous crickets poured in by the hundreds of thousands, the soldiers equipped with puny guns and explosives would be bug-food.

“Does that mean we can’t hope to hole up here?”

Eric asked that while protecting Skuld and looking like even the saliva he needed to gulp had dried up.

“Then what do we do!? Are we just going to wait here for the bugs outside to eat us!?”

The rain-like sound of the bugs on the windows applied pressure to all of the human hearts inside.

Quenser thought and then looked to Frolaytia.

“Frolaytia, tell me more about the gas filter they ate through.”

“Hm? Okay. I think it was a filtration membrane type rather than an activated charcoal type. I believe several thin stocking-like membranes were placed over it.”

“Next question: Does this maintenance base have any buildings built solidly on the ground instead of on a vehicle?”

“A few impromptu storage buildings next to the Object maintenance facility. The wreckage of the Trinity Style took up some of the space for the other equipment, so I believe they threw the less-used equipment in there.”

“Then that’s our only path to survival. If we escaped to anywhere else, the tires could blow just like here.”

“Escaped?”

Elfily sounded like she was questioning his sanity.

That was hardly surprising. Anyone would think that with those brazen bugs covering the windows so thickly they blocked out the sun.

“You’re saying we should leave here and run to those other buildings!? That’s suicidal!!”

“So is staying here. And once the building does topple over, we’ll lose all chance at survival. We won’t know which direction to run. With the windows like that, it must be worse than a sandstorm out there. You won’t even be able to see a few dozen centimeters away. If we’re thrown out there while panicked, there’s no way we can survive.”

“Are you saying we can reach the sturdy storage building if we remain calm?”

Eric spoke up as the representative of the prisoners.

He continued to stand protectively in front Pilot Elite Skuld and he seemed to be choosing his words carefully in her place. He and the rest of the Faith Organization may have been judging Quenser here.

“If you have a compass and focus only on the direction, you can reach your destination without being able to see. And were you listening, Eric? The filter is only as thick as a stocking, yet it was only just now eaten through. There are still only a few crickets in here, so their jaws aren’t that strong.”

“Are you forgetting they can eat through military tires meant to bear several thousand tons!?”

“Yes, but those are on the outside, so the crickets would have been targeting them from the very beginning. That means it takes them a long time to blow a tire. Again, they aren’t that powerful. Our uniforms, Skuld’s special suit, and your prison uniforms are all sturdy. Wrap duct tape around the collar and sleeves and I think we can walk outside for a short time.”

Then he looked around and spoke to the other Faith Organization soldiers.

“Also, we can protect our faces and heads with duct tape too. We would suffocate if we covered our mouth and nose, so we’ll have to stick with towels there. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about our eyes. We don’t have enough goggles for everyone, so we’ll just have to use our own hands to protect them the best we can. Is that good enough!?”

“I see. So only the great Legitimacy Kingdom gets to safely use goggles, hm?” asked Eric. “And are you going to send us out first to see if we get eaten?”

“That would be best,” admitted Quenser. “But unfortunately, I’m only a student. I can’t make use of that kind of privilege.”

“Wait. You mean…?”

“I’m going without goggles too. We’re all in this together, so is anyone coming with me!? Or will you stay here and wait for the building to fall over!? The choice is yours, but we don’t have much time!!”

The entire corridor gave another disconcerting creak.

The building was already twisting and it could rupture at any time. If a gap opened and the bugs got in, all of this discussion would be meaningless.

It was only a matter of time.

“Get a clue already. If we wanted to kill you, we wouldn’t have taken you prisoner. Food costs money no matter who eats it. Why would we bother spending money on you just to trick you later? It would’ve been faster to just shoot you on the battlefield. Right?”

“…”

Eric began to open his mouth, but he must not have had an argument because he glanced over to his comrades for help. None of them complained, so he finally turned back to Skuld who nodded.

“Let’s go with that. The Faith Organization and Legitimacy Kingdom doesn’t have to start getting along, but I’m only here because that Quenser took me with him when he didn’t have to.”

“If you say so, Saint Skuld.”

That settled it for them.

“Let’s get started.”

Once Quenser said that, they got down to business. They sealed off the important parts of their clothes with duct tape and covered their mouths and noses with towels.

Frolaytia whispered to Quenser from nearby.

“(You need to give Second Lieutenant Elfily a thank-you gift later on, Quenser.)”

“?”

“(It might have sounded like she was snapping at you before, but that cut off any complaints the Faith Organization might have made. If they had started a flood of complaints, you wouldn’t have been able to deal with them all. I guess she really is part of the intelligence division.)”

Quenser glanced over at Elfily who was wrapping duct tape around herself not far away, but she looked away when she noticed him.

Meanwhile, they completed their preparations.

They were of course all worried. Training books for new soldiers said nothing about situations like this, but waiting around would mean waiting for the bugs to eat them.

“Once you’re outside, only focus on the compass in your hand. The safe storage building is eight hundred meters southeast. Got that? Eight hundred meters! The compass will tell you the direction, so calculate the distance using your steps. There will be almost zero visibility, so you won’t be able to see even a meter away. Looking up will probably kill your senses of distance and direction! So focus on the compass in your hand!! Only on the compass!! Got that!?”

Quenser shouted at them to motivate them.

“As I said, each individual cricket isn’t that strong. They won’t break through your uniform right away! So as long as you don’t get lost, you can reach the storage building safely. Don’t think about rushing forward. No matter how many bugs get on you, keep moving in the same direction at the same pace. This is the safest way. So let’s do this. It’s time to open the door!! Are you ready!?”

“Ohh!!”

Quenser and Frolaytia tore off the duct tape covering the door. They were discarding their own temporary peace of mind, but they had to say goodbye to that. That “temporary” peace of mind was a bottomless swamp. Once they sank into it, they would be stuck and could only wait for death.

That action changed everything.

Elfily and Skuld both gulped and looked to the door.

This would normally be unthinkable, but the detention barracks were of no more use. This felt like a symbol of that.

“We just have to do it.”

Quenser unlocked the door and grabbed the doorknob.

As he pressed his shoulder against the heavy metal door, he gave one last yell.

Instead of encouraging the others, it may have been to make sure he himself did not come to a stop.

“Begin! Let’s go!!”

He made up his mind and opened the door.

A moment later, he saw something truly unexpected.

An intense wave of heat struck his entire body.

Instead of a black storm, he saw an all-encompassing sea of flames.

===Part 6===

A little earlier, Heivia had also been facing the black hell.

Since he had been fighting the stalled vehicle outdoors, he would have noticed the strange situation earlier than Quenser and the others.

“Dammit. What the hell is that!?”

At first, it looked like a black tsunami approaching from beyond the horizon.

Once the guard in the watchtower realized it was a swarm of bugs, a biological sense of fear and disgust must have come over them. Heivia could hear them firing their semi-auto sniper rifle wildly.

But even if each bullet took out a few bugs, it did not even make a dent in a swarm of tens or even hundreds of thousands.

Heivia threw his tools aside as soon as he saw the watchtower entirely swallowed up by the black mass.

His face stiffened with fear as he turned tail and fled.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!!”

He used his radio to inform the others of the oddity and ran into a nearby building. It was the Baby Magnum’s maintenance facility.

The maintenance soldiers working inside those thick walls may not have understood the gravity of the situation.

But once they saw the storm of bugs covering the windows and sounding like heavy raindrops, the fear finally caught up to them.

They quickly sealed all the entrances, but a few had gotten inside. They quickly crushed those and finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The old maintenance lady clicked her tongue.

“The radios are cut off. Now we can’t contact the Princess while she tests the Baby Magnum out there.”

“You mean I just missed her!? Why now of all times!?”

The large space meant for the Baby Magnum was oddly empty.

Heivia cursed, but that would not solve anything.

The old lady gathered the maintenance soldiers and started gathering some equipment.

They were probably making some kind of weapon to fight back.

But what would be any use against such a large swarm of bugs? Heivia looked out one of the relatively unaffected windows and saw a pillar of fire. Someone had probably made an impromptu flamethrower out of a fuel vehicle, but they were hopelessly outnumbered. They would be roasting quite a few of them, but dozens as many flew in to swallow up those people. Some of them flew to the humans while still burning, as if to take the soldiers out with them.

“What do we do? What are we supposed to do about this?”

“We just have to figure something out on our own. C’mon, if you’re gonna be useless, at least get out of the way of our work.”

Heivia looked dubiously back at the old lady. The threat of the bugs was one thing, but that old lady was oddly calm after seeing such a hopeless scene.

The old lady appeared to be gathering nonlethal gas grenade used for riot suppression.

“Listen, our opponent is outdoors! We won’t be able to kill them without one hell of a powerful smokescreen! These are made to be safe, but a few small adjustments and we can turn them into a powerful insecticide. Our resources our limited, so I can only show you how once. Anyone who screws it up and wastes one will be tied up outside as bug-food!!”

Insecticide was the best way of killing insects.

The answer was so obvious that Heivia actually laughed.

He had been too overwhelmed to even reach that most obvious answer.

And when they were only up against small bugs.

“Will that really work?”

“That depends on the wind. If we’re lucky, it’ll cover almost the entire maintenance base in a smokescreen.”

The old lady covered her nose and mouth with a scarf and quickly manipulated the strong-smelling chemical.

“You get ready for dealing with things afterwards. We have to do something about the bugs to rescue the soldiers collapsing out there, but we’re using a smokescreen of insecticide. That’s harmful to humans too, so we need to drag the victims out of there and perform first aid as soon as the bugs are dead. You remember your rescue training, right? Let’s get started!!”

They did nothing wrong.

The insecticide using nonlethal gas grenades was a more effective weapon than bullets or knives and they showed commendable courage for opening the doors protecting them to aim the gas grenade launchers outside to rescue the soldiers still out there.

But there was one ominous factor out there: the impromptu flamethrower using a fuel vehicle.

Gas grenades and hairspray were made pretty much the same. They used pressurized gas to spray out the liquid inside as an aerosol. A number of gases could be used, but due to environmental concerns, propane gas had become more common than Freon or carbon dioxide.

And thus, the gas grenades would burn.

As soon as it made contact with the flamethrower’s flames, the smokescreen meant to rescue them all detonated and created a sea of flames.

===Part 7===

“Gyah!!”

Quenser flinched back from the intense wave of heat and tried to flee back inside.

But the sole of Frolaytia’s boot kicked him in the back and pushed him back outside.

“We can’t turn back now! If the leader slows down, the odds of survival for everyone following you drops!! You started this, so get going, Quenser!!”

“Dammit! What the hell is going on!?”

Half in desperation, Quenser ran out into the outside world that reeked of gasoline.

There was nothing but fire as far as the eye could see. The heat was like a solid wall and he thought it would burn his hair away. Black smoke caught in his throat. On top of that, the swarm of crickets had not been wiped out. They broke through the screen of flames and smoke to rush toward this new “food”.

Sharp pain reached him through his uniform and the duct tape, but not because he was being bitten. It was the pain of them flying into him. He knew that, but a strange sweat still covered him and he felt like they were eating him to the bone. The source of the pain also seemed to be gradually shifting.

A dull vibration reached him from behind. He could not look back because it would throw off his sense of direction, but the detention barracks had probably toppled over. There was no going back. There were no safe walls or doors. He could only continue forward.

(My compass! The compass in my hand! I need to calculate the distance using my steps…)

He looked down at his hand to shake off the nightmare around him.

Someone was lying on the ground nearby and he tripped over them.

“Wah, wah! Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

He lost his compass as he tripped and he had no way to search for it with the low visibility. And who had that been? Had the explosion taken them out or had they been eaten by the bugs? Just what was going on here?

His mind started going blank with panic, but then someone grabbed his arm and tugged him forward.

It was Eric from the Faith Organization.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay!! If we make it eight hundred meters southeast we can get through this, right!? I have a compass! We can survive together!!”

“W-wahh, wahhhh!”

“It’s too late for that guy back there. He isn’t moving. But we’re alive, so we have to survive this!!”

Only after Eric grabbed his shoulders and yelled into his face did Quenser regain his focus on reality.

He shook his head and spoke while covered in bugs.

“Sorry. Let’s go. Let’s survive this.”

“That’s more like it!!”

Eric slapped him on the back to urge him onward. The Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization shared a compass to slowly advance.

“What happened to Skuld? Why are you alone!?”

“Don’t look back! We got separated almost immediately. I’m worried about her too, but we can’t afford to lose our sense of direction. We can only pray that the others are heading this way too!!”

It was like a journey through hell.

There was nothing but black bugs and red flames as far as the eye could see. Eight hundred meters to the southeast was the shortest distance, but it was all over if they found a wall of flames in their way. They could not let themselves be enveloped in flames, but they also could not hope to bypass the flames with so little visibility. If they tried, they would lose their sense of direction and lose track of where their destination was.

They were nearly praying as they walked.

The pain of the crickets striking their bodies forced them to continue focusing on reality.

They could not keep up even the mental capacity necessary to think about time, distance, direction, or even the distinction between enemy and ally. Their minds went so maddeningly blank that they nearly forgot their own names. They became machines that simply moved their legs in silence.

Even so, they made it.

Without running into any walls of flames, their hands reached the distant storage building’s wall.

“We did it…”

Even in the middle of hell, Quenser smiled.

“We did it, goddammit!! We’ve finally arrived!!”

They had apparently been near the head of the group, so they grabbed the doorknob for the human entrance with bugs still covering their bodies. Fortunately, they did not find that someone else had already taken refuge there and locked the door. It opened like normal and they poured inside.

Frolaytia and Elfily arrived together.

There was still no sign of Skuld, the Pilot Elite who had been with them when they had left.

“Hurry,” said Elfily. “Hurry up and shut the door. This is all meaningless if the crickets get inside!!”’

Quenser turned around in shock, but the eyes behind her glasses were serious.

“We can’t! We can’t do that, Miss Elfily! There are still Faith Organization prisoners out there. They risked their lives to reach this building! If we shut them out, they’ll all die!! We’d be betraying them after convincing them to do this!”

“The same fate awaits them if the building fills with crickets. They can’t escape hell whether they arrive or not, so shutting the door is the only option!!”

“We can’t…”

“They would have shut us out if the roles were reversed. We just happened to get here first. That’s all this is. Or am I wrong!? Do you have some proof that they would have let us in!?”

“I don’t care if they would or not!!”

“Shut the door, Quenser Barbotage.”

The student heard a quiet metallic sound as Elfily pulled a handgun from her waist and aimed it at his face.

Still, he shook his head.

“Shut the door, Quenser!!”

She shouted at him, but he pressed his back against the open door. Even if she shot him, he would collapse against the door and continue to hold it open.

Just as she clearly clicked her tongue, the second group arrived.

Then the third and the fourth.

As the number of Faith Organization soldiers grew, Elfily lost her influence. She would be unable to deal with all of them even if she fired every bullet she had on hand.

And of course, plenty of bugs flew in with the people.

There were more than two hundred people in all.

After grabbing Skuld’s arm and pulling her in last, Eric shouted from within the bugs.

“Is that everyone? Okay! Close it, Quenser!!”

“Is everyone accounted for!?”

“Yes! It really is okay! I’m not lying!! So close it!!”

He shut the door with his entire body.

A deluge of bell-like chirping filled the building. More than just a few hundred had gotten inside. The number covering the floor and walls clearly reached quadruple digits. Normally, this would mean the building was contaminated and far from safe.

But that was not the case.

“Huh? They aren’t attacking us?”

Elfily looked confused as she kept her gun in her hand and breathed heavily.

Frolaytia explained as she observed the situation.

“These are ‘brazen bugs’. They ignore the normal pyramid structure to attack even large beasts when there are hundreds of thousands of them. …But if there aren’t that many, they lose their advantage and return to being obedient bugs.”

This was just like the cricket Quenser had seen in the duct.

It had been so close by, but it had only sat there chirping. Without a giant swarm, they would not try to bite people.

Meaning…

“Split them up and they’re just bugs.”

Quenser slowly stood up.

“They don’t stand a chance against us now.”

===Part 8===

The insect extermination began.

It was officially to ensure the safety of the storage building, but was that really why? As they crushed the nearly defenseless bugs with their boots or with mops, they may really have been releasing their built up frustrations.

They did not feel sorry for the bugs or find the action unpleasant.

Their hearts had entirely numbed over.

“Goddammit! Goddammit goddammit goddammit!!”

As he crushed them underfoot, Quenser’s chest filled with a hopeless lethargy and emptiness.

With an opponent that fought back and would try to eat him if he let his guard down, he would have been able to slaughter them without issue. But these crickets were different. They just stood on the floor, stared up at him with emotionless eyes, and vibrated their wings to create the clear bell-like chirping. It felt like they were placing all the blame on the rampaging humans.

He started feeling silly going along with it, so he moved away from the commotion and leaned against a wall without any bugs on it.

He removed the towel from his mouth and nose.

“What the hell is this…?”

He slid down to a seated position.

Even with the sea of flames outside, the swarm showed no sign of being wiped out. And yet having the Baby Magnum work toward exterminating them would only blow the maintenance base to smithereens. Could they open the door and lure small groups of them in at a time to squish them like they were now? How many days would that take to finish? The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers still outside would be eaten to the bone by then and Quenser’s group had no food or water. They could not live in this storage building forever.

So what could they do?

How were they supposed to survive this?

“Quenser.”

That was when Eric of the Faith Organization spoke to him. Quenser slowly looked up and then looked puzzled. Eric was not alone. He was gently guiding Pilot Elite Skuld by the hand like an escort at a dinner party.

“Saint Skuld wishes to discuss something with you,” said Eric. “She said she could trust you.”

“Skuld did? What do you want?”

He honestly did not think they had much of a connection. They had spoken a bit in the detention barracks, but they had been enemies during the battle the night before and she would not know he had been listening to her interrogation through the one-way mirror.

But she seemed to see things differently.

“You hold a special position among the Legitimacy Kingdom,” explained Eric. “Being a student instead of a soldier definitely helps. To be honest, I’d prefer to use you as a point of contact than those young women.”

“I see. So what is this about?”

“This.”

Skuld casually held her hand.

One of the bell crickets was clinging to the gentle curve of her palm.

“Wah!!”

“It’s okay. This one won’t bite anymore.”

Skuld remained calm and gave the chirping insect an emotionless look.

“There’s something that bothers me about these bell crickets.”

“Something that bothers you?”

“I’ve seen them before.”

At first, Quenser did not know what she meant. Insects were not exactly rare. The issue here was the ridiculous number of them.

But Skuld had more to say.

“These are not naturally occurring bugs.”

“What?”

“The Faith Organization has a project known as Draupnir. Do you know what that is?”

“?”

Quenser tilted his head, so Eric answered for him with a bitter smile.

“It’s a story from Norse mythology. It’s a gold bracelet owned by the god Odin and it increases in number after a set number of days. Just like the biscuits in that Island Nation nursery rhyme. So no matter how much money Odin spends, he will always have more. It’s a symbol of wealth.”

“Our Draupnir project was meant to secure a large amount of food,” explained Skuld. “The Objects stand out the most, but food is a necessary part of war, right? If we could develop a food source that would never run out, don’t you think we could wage war much more easily?”

“Hold on…”

At first, the bell crickets did not seem to have anything to do with a project to develop a food source, but if he removed all of his presuppositions…

“Hold on!! Are you saying these crickets are your food source!?”

“Apparently so,” said Eric. “I’ve only heard rumors, but bugs are near the bottom of the food chain and they can multiply endlessly in the right environment. Apparently some old guys in a lab were all excited about it being a more efficient source of protein than raising cattle or pigs.”

He made it sound like some theoretical issue, but then Skuld cut in.

“Oh? Aren’t the fries the most popular dish among the infantry berserkers? What do you think they squish up to shape into those?”

“G-gweeehhh!!!???”

Eric faced the other way and spewed some noises that will be omitted here.

Skuld remained calm.

“Draupnir is a genetically modified food insect and I believe that is what these are. For one thing, there are no bell crickets in the Antsiranana District’s Experimental Battlefield Madagascar. They should only be found in the Island Nation and Asia.”

“Frolaytia did say she’s seen them in a pet shop that specialized in the Island Nation.”

It was possible there were nocturnal chirping bugs on this island and an amateur might not be able to tell them apart, but that changed when they were clearly bell crickets.

Unnatural insects had been brought to an unnatural place.

Had it all been intentional?

“So they’ve been genetically modified to breed like crazy and never run out no matter how many you eat?” groaned Quenser. “I did hear crickets chirping all over the place last night. Had they already started multiplying then?”

“Let me make one thing clear. The Faith Organization only sees Draupnir as a project to provide the soldiers with food. I swear to you that they were not developed for use as a biological weapon.”

“I understand that. These are far too difficult to control to use them like that. We just have to pray your higher ups don’t see what happened here as a success.” Quenser wiped the sweat from his brow. “But this has given me some hope.”

“?”

“Skuld, you said these bell crickets have had their genes messed with, right? That’s fine, but do you know how that was done?”

“Only in general. I think a few of their chromosomes were intentionally damaged with chemicals and then they were crossbred for generation after generation. In a way, they had their genes damaged.”

“In other words, the abnormal level of breeding and growth came from damage to their chromosomes?”

“What about it?”

“It’s simple. The simpler a creature’s structure, the more easily their genes change due to outside stimuli. It’s enough for the flu to be different every year. And between humans and bugs, the bugs are much more easily affected.”

Quenser paused for a beat.

“These Draupnir are easily-altered bugs to begin with and their genes will be even more unstable after the intentional damage done to them. That means we just need one last push. If we damage the chromosomes of these killer crickets, we might be able to wipe them all out as their cells break down.”

“But how?”

“There are a few ways to alter genes. As you said, the easiest and most effective method is getting some help from chemicals, but you can also use UV, IR, coal tar, or asbestos. I think the solvent used for printing would work too. Really, just anything that’s been labelled carcinogenic should work.”

“Printing solvent? So what about Object paint?”

“They wouldn’t let our Elite Princess anywhere near something dangerous like that. Plus there’s something else that’s even more common.”

“Like what?”

“Extremely high-power microwaves. If we send out radar waves at max levels, we can exterminate all of the crickets swarming the maintenance base.”

===Part 9===

After they suggested their plan, Frolaytia created a map of the maintenance base zone using the tools and cans in the storage building. Normally that would not be something to show the Faith Organization POWs, but the base zone was made of vehicles and could thus be freely rearranged. If they did things right, this would not reveal any critical information.

“It’s nearby. The control tower and radar facility are only fifty meters west of here. Head there and we can send out high power radar waves just as Quenser suggested.”

They knew what they had to do.

Then something strange happened.

No one had been moving in the slightest, but as soon as Quenser raised his hand, Skuld did as well. And she was not the only one. Eric and Elfily did too.

“If Saint Skuld is heading out there, of course I am too.”

“The people suffering out there are Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. We have to do something.”

Finally, more and more hands were raised by Faith Organization soldiers who Quenser did not know or recognize. He realized this was never going to end if he did not put a stop to it himself.

“Okay, okay!! We’ll be going, so the rest of you wait here. We wouldn’t get the work done any faster even if we all went!”

They once more covered their mouth and nose with towels and used duct tape to close up any part of their clothing the bugs could get in through. That did not take much for Skuld whose skintight special suit already covered her entire body.

“Then let’s go. Close the door behind us as soon as we’re out.”

Their march through hell began anew.

Everywhere they looked, they only saw bugs, bugs, bugs!! The sea of flames was still burning just as strong, so the bell crickets were flying around like sparks as they themselves burned. They nearly lost track of distance and direction when faced with the overwhelming sight, but they desperately put up with the pain and supported each other’s bodies as they relied on their compasses to take one step at a time.

A mere fifty meters felt like it took years off their lives.

Quenser was gasping for breath by the time he placed his hands on the control tower’s wall. Technically, it was the giant tire of the vehicle at its base. He felt along to circle around it in search of the stairs up into the control tower.

And then…

“?”

Suddenly, the reliable feeling of the tire vanished.

The visibility was almost down to zero, but when he strained his eyes, he saw the tire floating upwards, despite being taller than he was.

No, it was not floating.

“Waaah!? I-it’s falling! It’s falling over!!”

“Move away, Quenser!!”

An arm that likely belonged to Eric pulled him back just as the air was stirred up. A gust of wind caused by great pressure briefly blew away the black smoke and crickets. The screen blocking their view was split apart as if by a giant’s sword.

What had caused this was obvious.

It was the same as the detention barracks they had come from. A few of the tires had been eaten through and the weight distribution had collapsed, causing a chain reaction of bursting tires. Then the building had been unable to maintain its balance. And since this was a control tower rising toward the sky, its center of gravity was higher up, making it easier to lose balance.
It fell over all at once.

A deafening roar and tons of dust scattered out, blowing away the flying insects.

“Ahh.” Elfily cried out in despair. “The control tower! The radar! Now we can’t give it our commands. They machinery inside must have been smashed to pieces!!”

The swarm of crickets filled the empty space and the world became hopelessly closed off once more.

“…!!”

Even so, Quenser clenched his teeth and walked over to the collapsed control tower. He felt the sharp pain of the insects tackling him and they covered his body, but he could not give up now. He had no idea how many soldiers were collapsed across the base. He could not calculate how many lives were depending on his decision here. He could not just give up and head back.

“Dammit…”

A cricket flew into one of his eyes, narrowing his vision. A dull pain stabbed deep into his brain.

“Goddammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!!”

He managed to climb inside through a broken window. There were already tons of bugs inside. The bloody soldiers groaning in pain had likely been the ones working inside when the tower collapsed. There were countless bugs covering their bodies, but pulling them off one at a time would be meaningless now.

Quenser looked around the smashed-up room and approached what looked like a radar screen.

“Ahh…”

He reached for it, but Skuld, who had to know more about radars than him, shook her head.

“The display isn’t right. In fact, it’s completely dead. I don’t know if it was the impact of the fall or the crickets chewing through the wiring, but this radar is useless.”

That was the last thing he had wanted to hear.

As the world grew dark before his eyes, he grabbed a nearby microphone. He was almost drowning in a sea of bugs, but he managed to force out a voice.

“Control to Baby Magnum, control to Baby Magnum …Can you hear me, Princess? If you can, then help us!!”

“What will this accomplish?” groaned Eric who was similarly buried in bugs. “No one can help us even if we do get an SOS out. Firing an Object’s cannons will just turn us to mincemeat.”

But Quenser viewed things differently.

This was not just a desperate shot in the dark.

He gave his answer as Skuld looked puzzled next to him.

“It never had to be ''this'' radar that we used. As long as I had communications equipment powerful enough to break through this swarm, I could ask the Princess for help. Isn’t that right?”

He looked to Skuld as if he were confirming a perfectly normal fact.

“Objects are covered in weapons, so their radars have to be even more powerful than the base’s!!”

===Part 10===

There was no light and there was no sound.

The Baby Magnum simply scattered powerful radar waves in every direction. Soon thereafter, the tens or even hundreds of thousands of bell crickets fell to the ground like their power switch had been flipped.

===Part 11===

Quenser gasped for breath while tearing the duct tape from his body.

Exterminating all those bugs was not the end of this. First they had to rescue the injured. Then they had to report on the damage caused by collapsed buildings and chewed-through wiring. They also had to extinguish the sea of flames. And if they did not dispose of the bug corpses littering the base, they could easily become a hotbed of disease.

A few of the prisoners did not show up when they were counted.

They had probably used the commotion to escape and were currently running through the humid jungle. If the Faith Organization learned about the damage here, they could make another attack with the Trinity Style piloted by Urd or Verdandi.

“Now I’m nervous,” he said without thinking.

“Yes,” replied the person next to him.

It was not the Princess or Heivia.

Faith Organization Pilot Elite Skuld sat on the ground there.

“But this was always going to happen. Urd and Verdandi will never forgive me. Even if I tried to escape this island, they would attack at some point along the way.”

“…”

“What is it?”

“Nothing really.” Quenser shook his head. “I just realized you didn’t run off is all. It does seem some of the prisoners fled into the jungle.”

“We have no idea if those were the only Draupnir around here. Besides, they have a base to return to while I’m being hunted by my own people. Frankly, I’m amazed that the people like Eric decided to stay.”

“I see.”

Quenser took another breath.

It had been a horrible day since morning, but this seemed to signal the end of that.

“Then we’re in this together. Once again, it’s nice to meet you.”

“…”

Skuld stared at the proffered hand in shock, but then she hesitantly reached out her own hand and grabbed it.

===Part 12===

Panting breaths filled the jungle.

They were carelessly rustling through the underbrush, but they did not notice they were leaving plenty of hints for any pursuers. They just wanted to get away from the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance base as quickly as possible and then return to the Faith Organization base. That was the only thing on their minds.

They were optimistic.

They had only been captured because the Norn had retreated without fighting in the very, very end. They had been left behind. The military would feel indebted to them for that and they could provide useful information on the damage to the Legitimacy Kingdom. They were confident they would be warmly welcomed back instead of judged as fools who could not even make a suicide attack.

If a surprise attack was made on the maintenance base zone, the prisoners like Skuld and Eric might be killed too, but these soldiers cared about their own wellbeing first and foremost.

Yes, they were optimistic.

“…!? Hey, what are you doing? Don’t stop! You’re in the lead, aren’t you!? What’s the holdup!?”

“No, wait. Be quiet…”

They came to a stop and strained their ears.

Even their own breathing seemed in the way.

And soon, they knew they were not just hearing things.

They heard clear chirping.

It was the very last sound they had wanted to hear.

Unpleasant sweat poured from their bodies and they just about started hyperventilating, but they still slowly, slowly turned around as if an invisible hand held their heads.

And there they saw…

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