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User:Lofthouse

2015-03-12T06:13:15Z

Lofthouse: Blanked the page

Talk:Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume10 Chapter 14

2014-05-24T19:39:11Z

Lofthouse:

'travelled/travelling' or 'traveled/traveling'? Atm, the translations use the former, whereas the latter is proper American English because of a very obscure rule (a single final consonant preceded by a single vowel in a two-syllable word is doubled only if the stress falls on the second syllable), but tbh, this rule seems to be extremely lenient (nobody cares about it). opinions? --[[User:Lofthouse|Lofthouse]] ([[User talk:Lofthouse|talk]]) 14:38, 24 May 2014 (CDT)

Talk:Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume10 Chapter 14

2014-05-24T19:38:56Z

Lofthouse:

'travelled/travelling' or 'traveled/traveling'? Atm, the translations use the former, whereas the latter is proper American English because of a very obscure rule (a single final consonant preceded by a single vowel in a two-syllable word is doubled only if the stress falls on the second syllable), but tbh, this rule seems to be extremely lenient (nobody cares about it). opnions? --[[User:Lofthouse|Lofthouse]] ([[User talk:Lofthouse|talk]]) 14:38, 24 May 2014 (CDT)

2013-01-17T16:22:18Z

Lofthouse:

== Chapter 1==
 
=== Part 1 ===
 
It began back on July 1st.

“A demonstration?” asked her underclassman, Shirai Kuroko, over the phone.

Misaka Mikoto was dressed in her usual summer clothes as she responded over the cell phone at her ear.

“Yes. They said one of Academy City’s seven Level 5s is the easiest kind of sample for others to understand and that my power is the most suitable to be explained of those seven. That’s why I need to go to a cooperative organization and carry out a large-scale performance.”

In reality, a power that clearly exceeded normal physical phenomena like Shirai Kuroko’s Teleportation would be even easier for others to understand, but those who did not understand how espers worked wanted to see someone from the “strongest group”.

Whether she understood that or not, Shirai Kuroko spoke.

“Oh, onee-sama!! So basically, you’re going to be dragged up on stage for some kind of secret human exhibition!? How dirty! I have been truly careless for someone who calls herself your herald!! Ah! It is not too late. I can rush to your side and save you at the perfect moment when you are being displayed half naked!!”

“I’m going to ignore your ramblings. I just wanted to let you know I won’t be back for a week.”

“A-a whole week!? With no break!? That’s simply too much of that kind of erotic thing!! That is not a kind of marathon you can get through on youth alone!!”

“Shut up. I don’t want to do go along with this school play-like thing either. And Kuroko, I really don’t think you can come along this time no matter what you say.”

“Onee-sama, please do not take my power so lightly. If I wanted to, I could sneak into a nuclear shelter.”

“Yeah, but I still don’t think you could do it.”

Mikoto glanced over at a road sign.

However, it was not written in Japanese. It was written in Cyrillic characters.

“Not even you can cross the Sea of Japan to get to Russia.”

 
 

=== Part 2 ===
 
Some people may have been jealous if they were told that Mikoto was going to Eastern Russia for a school event. They may have complained about unfair treatment if they were told that only she got to go and her classmates were stuck with normal lessons.

However, Misaka Mikoto felt only melancholy.

Simply put, it was not enjoyable.

First and foremost, the school trip had a clear objective. And that objective was solely for the convenience of the school. It did not take Mikoto herself into account.

Not only was she deprived of her freedom, but she did not have any fellow students with which to share the high and low points of the trip.

It was impossible for her to enjoy it.

A school trip with a large group could be enjoyable and a trip on one’s own with complete freedom could be enjoyable, but that was not.

(A demonstration, hm?)

Mikoto recalled what the frightening dorm supervisor had told her before she came to Russia.

The trip was part of a plan to strengthen Academy City’s connections with its cooperative institutions. In other words, there was a danger of various cracks appearing if she were to fail.

It seemed a disparity in technological levels was behind it all. There was supposed to be a difference of 20 or 30 years in technology between Academy City and the rest of the world. The cooperative institutions received a certain level of benefits from that, but Academy City did not fully release their information. It was a countermeasure against information leaks, but the cooperative institutions did not particularly enjoy it.

(They’re having a demonstration of one of the Level 5s that are the center of their program in order to emphasize that they are not hiding anything.)

Of course, nothing about Mikoto would actually be analyzed.

It was nothing more than an event to overturn the appearance Academy City had. It was just a trick to make it look like they were not hiding anything. Accurate information on Academy City’s seven Level 5s would not be handed over so easily.

Misaka Mikoto’s value as a living resource was greater than even a handful of jungles.

(…I’m being treated like a large and rare spider.)

Mikoto then noticed someone approaching her.

It was the local guide.

“Oh, hello! Welcome, welcome!!”

A tall woman approached Mikoto while speaking in a cheerful voice. She had long blonde hair, white skin, and a smooth, slender body. She was taller than Mikoto and appeared to be around college age.

“I am Setali S Skinikia, a security guard. As a member of one of Academy City’s cooperative institutions, I am honored to meet the Number Three Level 5.”

She skipped straight past shaking Mikoto’s hand without permission and embraced her. If the woman had been Shirai Kuroko, Mikoto would have fired a high voltage current at her, but she was not sure how to react when it was the first time meeting the person.

“Oh, I just can’t believe one of those Level 5s would come here alone…”

“This is a demonstration to show our trust, so it would be meaningless if I was surrounded by security, don’t you think?”

Mikoto used both hands to gently push away the guide and Setali let out a laugh of unknown meaning.

“Nya ha ha! I heard you have already checked in, so I’m guessing you were looking around at the cityscape. What do you think? Our technology isn’t at the level of Academy City, but I still think it’s a pretty characteristic city.”

“Do you mind if I speak frankly?”

“Of course not.”

“It’s hurting my eyes.”

“Nya ha ha,” Setali laughed again when Mikoto responded honestly and pointed at the side of a building.

The building was not painted in psychedelic colors.

In fact, the buildings in that city were not painted at all.

“It’s called a Semipublic AR,” Setali said while tapping her foot on the walkway beneath her feet. The walkway had the same process applied to it as the wall.

“Simply put, all of the roads, walls, and signs in the city have been made into giant monitors. Many different services are offered to those walking through the city by having the various pieces of information they want added on to the scenery.”

Even then, the flat walls of the buildings had various pieces of information running across them and many arrows were moving across the walkways. They seemed to display the general flow of the people allowing everyone to continue smoothly.

The general goal had been to turn the city’s scenery and terrain into a giant touchscreen and that ingenious idea had been carried out on the buildings, pillars, and other structures. The buildings came in various forms with some flat and some curved, but none of them tried to look distinct with indentations or protrusions. All of the buildings seemed smooth.

“AR or augmented reality is used on the screens of cell phones and PDAs, right? Isn’t that the thing where you look through the camera and additional information is displayed over the scenery? I’ve heard of using it with facial recognition software to make virtual labeling.”

“That way of using it is easy enough, but when you cannot detect it without using specific tools, you end up with the problem of having people essentially sticking abusive labels on people’s backs. That’s why the AR we developed is ‘semipublic’. The technology we used is borrowed from Academy City, though.”

When she thought about it, Mikoto recalled that Tokiwadai Middle School’s sports areas had a system allowing the signs to automatically display information regarding the match currently ongoing. She had also heard that some public baths had walls that had been made into giant monitors.

She looked around lightly.

“But don’t people dislike having others see the information they’re bringing up?”

“Nya ha ha. The images are made so they’re in focus only for the user, so the image is blurred beyond recognition when others look. The level of isolation for the information can be set by each individual user.”

Basically, the building walls, roads, signs, pillars, and all other objects and structures making up the scenery functioned as monitors and each individual resident could obtain information from them.

The difference from a normal electronic display was that each person using it saw different information being displayed. People could be looking at the same sign and be viewing different information.

That technology was not seen in Academy City, but according to Setali’s explanation, Academy City had provided support in its creation.

It was possible that Academy City was using that city as a wide scale test before it went into real use.

“…That doesn’t seem to fit with the advantages of it being ‘semipublic’ that you mentioned before.”

“Making an environment where things can easily be checked on by a third party tends to act as a deterrent. Not that all of the ARs are normally checked, though.”

“Hmm,” responded Mikoto halfheartedly.

The AR did not seem to be operated by any kind of exclusive device. Mikoto randomly waved her gaze down at the walkway at her feet.

With an electronic hum, an image of Mikoto wearing silk lingerie appeared in the walkway.

“Bfh!?” Mikoto started coughing. “Cough cough!! Wh-what the hell!?”

“What is it?”

“No, um, th-this is…lingerie…An advertisement for a lingerie store seems to have popped up.”

“Hm? Nya ha ha. Did you get caught by the automatic changing?”

“W-wait, this is no joke! Is something like this usually displayed in the middle of a pathway like this!? Get rid of it! Get rid of it! How do I get rid of it!?”

“Don’t worry. It’s like I told you. That kind of electronic display is set to be isolated at a high level in the Semipublic AR. Other people can’t see it. All I can see is some other advertisement.”

“Is that so? …No, wait. Before you explain it, tell me how to use this thing!! Even if no one else can see it, it’s still embarrassing!!”

“Your skin, hair, and eye colors are taken from the photo for your ID you had taken when you entered the city. The rest is just a predicted image based on what you look like with clothes on, so the breast size is actually a little off from reality, see? If we wanted to, we could get accurate measurements taken, but people have a right to their privacy. We stop at just an estimated image.”

“I didn’t ask you about that!! And you don’t need to do any of that! It’s not my fault they’re actually smaller than this!! And how can you see it if it’s a Semipublic AR!?”

“Nya ha ha. Well, y’see, if I put my face up against your cheek like this so the height and distance of my eyes are the same as yours, I can actually see what would normally be blurred beyond recognition.”

“You can see it all!? Tell me how to get rid of this AR right now or I’ll blow away the pathway monitor itself!!”

Mikoto was blushing profusely as Setali taught her how to use it. She then succeeded in getting a keyboard-like touch window to display on a nearby show window. She used her fingers to hurriedly switch it to a mode where it repelled any unnecessary electronic advertisements.

“The Semipublic AR can be a bit troublesome, but you’ll have to get used to it while you’re here. Traffic lights, signs, and crosswalk signals are all displayed using it.”

Setali glanced over at the wall of a building most likely to check on some information.

“Do you have any more questions?”

“W-well….” Mikoto sighed. “A place created by the world’s largest shopping mall becoming a large city is not something you just get used to.”

“Nya ha ha.”

As she laughed, Setali slowly started walking. She may have been scheduled to be somewhere. Mikoto followed her.

“This area is still normal. The area with facilities for visitors like hotels and duty-free stores is an aggregation of buildings like a normal city, but the main business facility has become an incredibly huge construction.”

“…So it’s like a gym big enough to cover up an entire section of a city?”

“This was originally an experimental facility for testing economic effects. It was something like a trade show for experimental products. However, all sorts of things needed to be put inside and it became obvious that the area needed would exceed the planned 650 domed stadiums, so it was decided that it would be easier to just register the entire place as a city.”

“So that’s why it suddenly appeared in the middle of nowhere in Eastern Russia, hm?”

“There were a lot of disagreements as to where to build it. It is a huge scale for a business institution after all. You can’t underestimate the economic effects it would have on the area around it. No matter how successful it is, if all the earnings are focused solely on it, the smaller stores in the area cannot survive. It was rejected from all sorts of places until it finally ended up here.”

Setali opened a window on the wall that was adjusted so Mikoto could see it and made it slide along with them as they walked. A map of Russia was displayed within the window.

“Because of where we are, we need exclusive railways, highways, an airport, and hotels for visitors. That only increased the land we needed even further.”

In other words, they regularly got enough visitors to make those things necessary. Mikoto doubted anyone would travel dozens or hundreds of kilometers to buy everyday items, so the shopping mall must have functioned similarly to a theme park.

Just walking through the facility was an event in and of itself.

Even the food corner had such a great selection and quantity that it became a sight one would not normally get to see.

“…So I guess it’s something like the world’s largest window shopping facility.”

“True. This is an extremely large shopping center with anything you could want, so there are plenty of goods that you would normally never see like professional tools from any industry you can think of. Just seeing an area full of such rare things may look like a fantasy to some people.”

Setali zoomed in the displayed window bringing up a general list of the areas within the city.

The basic makeup of the city was split into two blocks. One block had daily necessities and the other had entertainment and luxury items. The transportation and lodging facilities such as the airport, the terminal stations, and the hotels were focused around the outside edges of the city.

The buildings for hotels, duty-free shops, and other such places were lined up seeming to surround the main large business facility.

A few points of light on the map must have been the areas with highly specialized products that Setali had mentioned.

Unlike in a tourist spot in Japan, the signs did not display things in many different languages. It was all in Russian. It was possible they could be set to other languages via the Semipublic AR, but Mikoto felt no real need to do so.

“But the visitors here travel a long way to get here, so they tend to go beyond window shopping in the end. They seem to think they should buy something since they came all the way here. In fact, the airports take on more packages for delivery than they do passengers.”

“If the president of a shopping channel or a discount store heard that, they would probably be frantically trying to analyze your system.”

“Well, the city exists to research that kind of thing. Money comes first!” Setali yelled out in an unrefined voice. “Have you ever noticed how there can be multiple department stores on the same street, but what sells and what doesn’t is different with only a few hundred meters of difference? Two of the same chain of convenience store can exist within a few dozen meters of each other, but for some reason one of the two will sell a lot more than the other. Putting things on sale can make people think the goods are “cheap”, so no one will buy them. If you put new and used accessories next to each other, the new ones will sell better despite having the higher price. …Well, there’s a lot to commerce. There is something that alters how well something sells making it either prosper or fail. This city aims to thoroughly research the psychological effects related to money. Customers pleasantly buy things and that data is used to calculate what environment allows customers to gather more easily and what environment has the opposite effect.”

It was a simple concept to understand because the city had a simple goal.

Drawing in large amounts of visitors like a world-famous theme park allowed them to get even better results for their research.

The city had to be overflowing with various ingenious ways of getting people to go past window shopping and actually buy something. If you did not watch out, your hotel room could end up filled with strange souvenirs.

Mikoto sighed.

“So I’m doing my demonstration here.”

“Yes.”

“(…Well, it’s not bad being the representative of Academy City, but being forced to do things for the convenience of the adults is a real pain.)”

“(…Well, from the records we received from Academy City, this girl is the most normal, has the easiest to understand power if you’re just seeing it, and has the most reasonable personality. …The other Level 5s would definitely ruin this.)”

Mikoto and Setali both muttered to themselves.

Finally, Setali changed the subject.

“As I said before, there was a problem regarding pressure on smaller stores with the advance of larger facilities such as this one. Searching for a solution to that is one of the themes of our research. …We deal with Academy City quite a bit. We may only receive the downgraded technology, but the quality is still better than anything else. Finding a way to reduce the friction between Academy City and its surroundings has more value than just as an economic effect.” Setali shrugged lightly. “But other than that, this place is surprisingly similar to a normal city. I work as a security guard, but I deal with a lot more dropped items or lost children than I do any real incidents. There are even some urban legends.”

“Urban legends?”

“Nya ha ha. There are all sorts of them. Lately, there’s been one about a ‘very valuable orange’.”

“?”

 
 

=== Part 3 ===
 
Saten Ruiko was a middle school girl that loved rumors.

Also, she was the type that pursued the rumors that were in truly bad taste and would anger the PTA types.

“Uiharuuu. Are you working on Judgement stuff again? You sure work hard for something you don’t get paid for.”

She was calling to a girl named Uiharu Kazari. Her characteristic trait was the great amount of flower decorations on her head and she was in the process of battling a PDA in order to make some sort of document.

“Saten-san, you chase after rumors despite that not getting you any money.”

“But that’s my hobby. If someone else told me to do it, I’m sure I wouldn’t,” said Saten arbitrarily turning aside Uiharu’s comment. “That boring paperwork doesn’t matter, so come with Saten-oneechan so we can go chase after the rumor about the very valuable orange.”

“…What kind of title is that? It clearly has some hidden meaning to it.”

“Listen, Uiharu!! A traveler was on an overseas trip when he found a souvenir shop in a certain country that was selling a very valuable orange!! It was said to be a mysterious orange that naturally grew in value just by having it!!”

Uiharu’s expression seemed to be saying “here she goes again” and she continued working on her PDA without looking up.

Saten continued speaking regardless.

“So the traveler bought the orange thinking it was a good luck charm or something, but when he got home and put it in his house, it started squirming.”

“…”

“The traveler was curious, so he went to the souvenir shop’s website and emailed the shop to check. The response said that the orange had over 100 eggs of a valuable type of ant called a crimson long-legged army ant laid inside. It said that it would naturally rise in value because those would hatch. …As the traveler read the email, the orange burst open!”

“Gyaaahhh!! That’s creepy! You really do love that kind of terrible story, Saten-san!!”

“Apparently, those crimson long-legged army ants love the damp and humid environment of Japan. It seems they’re quietly spreading their breeding area and if they aren’t quickly found and exterminated, the entire main island of Japan will be buried in giant army ants…”

“Stop telling me that kind of thing!! I-it’sh just a rumor!! Sho I don’t have to worry!!”

“Uiharu, those flowers on your head look like they would attract bugs. Bugs with six huge legs like this.”

“Gyaaahhhhh!!”

 
 

=== Part 4 ===
 
Mikoto’s face paled a bit upon being told the story of the very valuable orange by Setali. Even though she knew it was just a rumor, it was still creepy.

“Nya ha,” Setali laughed in her characteristic way. “It’s an expansion of the idea of an invasive species destroying the ecosystem of a land. The part about having to quickly find them and exterminate them is a stereotypical threatening message. The story has only spread through this city since it is a shopping mall where anything can be bought. Once you know what an urban legend is based on, it suddenly loses its impact and the fear it causes fades away.”

“It’s still not a very happy story,” Mikoto said in an exhausted way.

Setali seemed to realize that Mikoto was not interested, so she touched a nearby wall in order to change the subject. She seemed to be using her fingers to search for something on the AR and a report appeared on the screen.

“Let’s see, how about we talk about your schedule. Your itinerary, security postings, the progress of the demonstration, and other things are all saved in the online database. You can view any of those things at any time using your guest ID and the personal password we had you set when you entered the city.”

“So the actual demonstrations will be on the third and fourth days. And the rehearsal is on the second day.”

“Think of the first demonstration as for the press and second as for the general public. What you will be doing in both will be the same. …Are these people okay for your security?”

“It’s not like I can really say no, now can I?”

The point of the demonstration was to reduce friction between Academy City and its cooperative institutions regarding the level of technology open to them. If only Academy City personnel were deployed around Mikoto, it would be seen as Academy City not allowing anyone else near their espers which would not reduce the friction.

That was the reason that no Academy City adults such as the dorm manager were accompanying her.

Of course, the Academy City adults may have been very nervous about the whole thing. After all, it would be a major issue if Academy City’s Number Three was kidnapped, harmed, or had her DNA map stolen. It would be a loss of a living resource and it could have an effect on the international relationship between Academy City and its cooperative institutions.

As proof of that, the following happened as Mikoto headed back to her hotel where she would part with Setali.

“So what am I scheduled to do now?”

“Nothing. You’re restricted from leaving your room until tomorrow. Academy City asked that we make sure you refrain from taking any actions of your own free will. If you touch the walls or floor to search for some information, I think it will just come up with the documents Academy City sent over.”

“Seriously?”

“I would think you would be more knowledgeable of the details when it comes to Academy City.”

“Um…I’ve come all this way to a major sightseeing area, so I was kind of thinking of having a look around.”

“Nya ha ha. There will be some guards stationed in front of your room and some of the responsibility lies with me, so please restrain yourself from going out for fun tonight.”

And like that, Mikoto was escorted back to her high class hotel and thrown into her room on the 20th floor. Just before closing the main door to the hotel room, Setali peered in through the gap.

“We may not be as good as Academy City, but our guards are quite skilled, so don’t try anything.”

“Yes, yes, I get it.”

The self-locking door clicked shut. It was painfully clear how Mikoto was being treated. There was no other exit from that room, the entrance to the ventilation ducts were too small for a human to pass through, and only a sheer 20 story drop awaited one out the windows.

“Vahh.”

Mikoto let out a breath now that she was left alone.

She collapsed face up on the bed.

It was a real pain in the ass.

It was not that she did not want to do the demonstration. She had no complaints about going to Russia, either. However, she was completely bound by the schedule the entire time. It was all just for the convenience of the adults. If she did not have a minute to spare, she could understand, but she was being sealed up during what could have been free time simply because of what was scheduled for later.

Just to be sure, she used the Semipublic AR while still lying on the bed to check on what actually was scheduled for later. As she expected, it was nothing interesting.

It seemed that on the days of the demonstrations, she had to get up on stage wearing a lovely dress and show off some of her skills. She would be covered in sensors at the time, but according to the preliminary calculations Mikoto had done, devices of that level would not be able to obtain data useful for developing psychic powers.

In other words, Academy City was just putting on a show to say that there was no friction between them and the cooperative institutions. They were not actually handing anything over.

Everything was for the convenience of the adults.

It had no real value.

If you had no complaints about that, you might as well just announce you were running for student council president.

(Peter Wellgo, Ran Ryuushu, Eclek Savoge… It looks like they’re all from the diplomatic departments of overseas cooperative institutions. I guess my audience will be made up of stubborn people, too.)

Mikoto’s face grew cloudy as she viewed the list of invited people that was being displayed on the ceiling.

(Viner? What…? Are they holding a weapons show along with the demonstration? I guess that’s how psychic powers are viewed by those outside the city.)

“I can’t just stay on my best behavior,” Mikoto muttered as she lay face up on the bed.

She sat up and looked around.

Once she had decided that she was going to have some fun, that was what she was going to do.

Mikoto looked around and then approached the window.

She was on the 20th floor.

“So am I a captive princess or something?”

Normally, that would be an impossible height to escape from. There were no balconies on the wall. In fact, there were not even any protrusions or rainspouts. It was most likely made that way to heighten the effect of the Semipublic AR. The excessively flat wall had the same sense of height telling one to not get near it like an old castle or an office building.

There was nowhere one could get a foothold and there was no point around which to tie a rope.

However…

“They never seem to realize…”

Mikoto opened the window wide and leaned out.

“…that I can create as many footholds as I need using magnetism.”

She unhesitatingly jumped out.

The bottom of her loafers scraped against the wall while she was in a pose like she was skiing. Academy City’s Number Three’s sightseeing trip began.

 
 

=== Part 5 ===
 
The powerful magnetism caused the AR effects on the hotel wall to be slightly distorted, but there were no major issues.

Mikoto landed after heading vertically down the wall from 20 stories up and then looked around.

“Now then, where should I go? …This is a cooperative institution, so they might have a Russia exclusive Gekota.”

She started walking without having decided on a destination.

The hotel was near the edge of the city. All of the surrounding buildings were other hotels or duty-free shops.

High-rise buildings could not be constructed in the center of the city and the objective of the city was to be the world’s largest shopping mall. It covered a vast area, but it was not all that tall. It was only about 5 stories above the ground.

The large center facility was divided into two major facilities.

Each area was something like a giant shopping mall much larger than a domed stadium. The buildings were not perfectly rectangular. Some parts were just five-story boxes, some parts were shaped like donuts with giant courtyards in the middle, and some parts had large atriums that sank down below ground level.

(Overall, it’s kind of like a giant box that has been eaten into in various places.)

650 domed stadiums.

It was such a vast area, that one might have to ride the subway to get from one store to another. There was also more than one parking lot. Each parking lot was the size of one for a championship soccer match and there was one in each cardinal direction of the giant facility.

Mikoto entered one of the large shopping mall areas.

It did not seem like just a giant building.

For one thing, it was simply too vast.

The insides of the shops were displays full of products just like at a supermarket or a department store. However, there was an overwhelming amount of them making the stores almost seem like a type of labyrinth. It was amazing that each and every thing on display was actually for sale and not just a decoration.

The pet shop was as large as a zoo, the flower shop was like a botanical garden, and the temporary day care for small children was like a small scale amusement park. Mikoto had never before heard of a day care that had a roller coaster inside.

Even though it was evening, there were of course a large number of people there.

That may have been because it was like a theme park or it may have been because the area had no sense of the sunset.

Their prided Semipublic AR functioned as special monitors. The display used RGB instead of CMYK. In other words, the building walls, the path at one’s feet, and everything else glowed. A normal night scene was a collection of points of light, but in that city it was a collection of panels of light. There was simply so much light that any sense of dimness was done away with.

In fact, the less light there was in the surroundings, the more the presence of the Semipublic AR was forced upon you.

The races of the people walking along were varied. It was not just a general mix where some were white, some were black, and some were Asian. Misaka could see some distinctive builds even among those different groups.

(I see.)

Mikoto nodded as she looked around that building that was more a sealed off commercial district than a giant shopping mall.

(With an area this big, there would be a lot of lost children and pickpockets. I can see why they need those security guards in addition to the police. Having workers at the shops double as security was probably inspired by our Anti-Skill.)

And then Mikoto added another comment in her mind.

(…I can see how this would end up being a treasure trove of urban legends.)

There were places about which urban legends naturally popped up such as schools, hospitals, and tunnels. Large amusement parks and shopping malls also fell under that category. Perhaps because children got lost in those places on a daily basis, a lot of the stories about those last two involved human trafficking. Mikoto was not too knowledgeable about that kind of rumor, but even she knew two or three of that sort, so they were probably a fairly major genre.

Urban legends.

A very valuable orange.

(That rumor may have spread among tourists who came here because things are sold here that are not in other places. They may have thought that something like that could be found here. Well, there’s no point in thinking about a completely baseless rumor.)

Mikoto continued to walk around that foreign city as it turned to night in hopes of seeing something she had never seen before. After heading up some stairs, she realized she had entered an odd area. Instead of the vast large scale image of the places she had seen before, the shops lined up there were all quite small. The roof was narrow and the entire area seemed rather cramped. The shopping district a ways from the main streets seemed like the entire place had been dragged indoors.

“What is this place?”

She looked around, but she saw no signs. For an instant, she felt the area was quite inconvenient, but then she recalled the Semipublic AR. That city was a place where one could obtain any information one needed.

She brought her hands over to a thick round pillar and called up a keyboard. She typed in “area map” and a detailed diagram of the area immediately appeared on the pillar.

(Hmm… So they’ve invited in a few shops from outside the city. I guess it’s an economic experiment about the fusion of local stores and new stores.)

Small shops were lined up on either side of the long narrow passageway, but old-looking shops and shiny new chain shops alternated like Morse code. The experiment was most likely not seeing which one did better. They were likely trying to see how to get both to get even business.

New shops would not necessarily sell more.

For instance, in an area with a lot of brand new sushi or ramen shops, the customers would all head to the one old-looking shop.

Their goal was to analyze that to the point of knowing the actual values involved rather than just the common knowledge so they could always gain that effect.

(Trying to figure out what their ulterior motives behind things are as you walk along can be kind of fun.)

However, she would be lying if she said she was not mainly trying to see if she could find a special Gekota you could not find elsewhere.

She could feel her destiny for a once-in-a-lifetime encounter that transcended probability theory.

Encountering that Gekota would be nice.

Mikoto looked around thinking about entering a random shop. She changed the AR setting so that it would display information on her surroundings as she looked around. Matching her gaze, the signs for various shops were displayed one after another on the wall.

Suddenly, Mikoto’s gaze froze.

The data for one of the many signs was in Japanese which was rare for that city.

It read: Snack and Souvenir Shop Nihon Daruma.

Mikoto had just been thinking of that city as a treasure trove of urban legends and then that showed up.

I have no intention of explaining in detail, but it is a rather famous story in Japan, so you should be able to easily find it by searching on the internet.<ref>The urban legend being referenced is the "Daruma Woman". Simply put, it says a woman was kidnapped overseas and years later was found alive with her arms, legs, and tongue cut off in a shop in a foreign country that had "Daruma" in Japanese on its sign.</ref> However, it is a rather creepy story, so I do not recommend it. Do not look it up.

“…Are they trying to draw people in?”

It was a well-known rumor in Japan, so they may have looked it up on Japanese websites or the store may have had been opened by someone from Japan like a sushi or nabe restaurant.

However, even if it was shocking, the store won by catching people’s attention.

Mikoto was at a loss for words for a bit, but once the shock wore off, she started to get curious. For one thing, she had been wandering around that foreign city at night in hopes of finding something with some impact. Mikoto headed for the shop like she was being sucked in.

The door slid open.

The inside was odd, too. It was a lot like a Japanese convenience store. The clean and modern interior seemed unnatural. The shelves for the products were the same as a normal convenience store, but the products themselves were clearly different.

On the magazine racks were old books made of parchment with mysterious cursive writing in an unknown language.

Instead of plastic bottles in the glass door refrigerators covering one wall were bottles filled with a mysterious liquid as well as things like snakes and insects.

Next to the register where heat insulated containers for hot snacks would usually be were small dried heads of animals.

Nothing there was normal.

It could perhaps be described as occult.

Everything there would be laughed off as ridiculous if it was listed as a mail order product on the back cover of a manga magazine. However, with so many of them gathered and logically laid out within the store, there was a sense of unity to it all.

“Yah ho ho!”

The girl at the register gave a meaningless cry of greeting.

The girl was shorter than Mikoto but actually had breasts, so she annoyed Mikoto.

“Are you a tourist, miss? Well, I guess everyone in this city is a tourist. Although it’s rare for a Japanese girl to come in after seeing that sign. Are you starving for some stimulation?”

“What about you?” Mikoto said as she poked at something that looked like a crystal packed in plastic. “With that name and this design, I thought someone Japanese was running the store, but I guess I was wrong.”

The girl at the register had white skin and long black hair with just the ends braided. However, her eyes were blue and her skin color was not that of a normal Japanese person. She had the characteristics of a European, of an Anglo-Saxon.

Mikoto looked at the nametag on the girl’s chest that had her name written in hiragana.

“Lessar?”

“Yup, I’m Lessar-chan. We have all sorts of souvenirs. And don’t worry. Everything we have here won’t get you caught up at customs. So just loosen the purse strings.”

“You say that, but…”

Mikoto looked around the horrid convenience store again.

Instead of snack foods, dried bats wrapped in plastic were lined up.

[[Image:RAILGUN_SS2_01_018.jpg|thumb]]

“How am I supposed to tell what’s good or not?”

“It’s like an amulet. You just need to use your feelings to choose the one that matches your situation the best. I don’t really like putting added value on art or antiques.”

“Hmm… This selection goes a bit far for just grabbing people’s attention, don’t you think?”

“They’re souvenirs, so just random things are fine, right? And the things here are nothing more than materials. I don’t think you could make a proper spiritual item from them.”

Mikoto did not understand what the girl named Lessar was talking about.

Was she using terms commonly used in fortune telling magazines or something?

“I don’t think I need to buy anything that’s sole purpose is to bury one’s troubles.”

“Hm? Are you the type that denies the effects of good luck charms? But I think normal convenience stores are more or less the same. You go to the store because you feel you need something and then buy items to make up for your general dissatisfaction. Isn’t that all those everyday products are? This store specializes in the things that cannot be seen, but is otherwise the same.”

“I see. So this really is a convenience store?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, at any rate, it doesn’t look like I’ll find a Russia exclusive Gekota here.”

“I have no intention of stocking anything I have no interest in or knowledge of. After all, this is basically just a hobby. But I will always be here. This is basically a convenience store, so come back if you ever have any kind of dissatisfaction similar to if you were to suddenly want some ice cream during this warm night.”

“I see. Well, I have no worries right now.”

“Worries fluidly come and go. Even if you have none now, that will not necessarily be the case later.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

Mikoto headed for the sliding door. When she stepped on the floor mat, a soft electronic tone sounded. Even that was just like in a normal convenience store.

However, the words of the worker named Lessar alone were not stereotypical.

“Oh, one more thing. Watch out for oranges,” she said.

“Hah?”

“Watch out for oranges.”

With the smile of the service industry on her face, Lessar repeated her warning.

 
 

=== Part 6 ===
 
Mikoto’s frank impression of the store could be summed up in the word “strange”.

She had thought there might be some occult stores like that outside of Academy City and overseas, but it was still strange. She may have been affected by the atmosphere of the world’s largest shopping mall that gave the baseless impression that anything could be found there.

But then…

(If I stay away too long, the guards may figure out something’s wrong from the lack of noises. I probably need to be heading back.)

Over the next three days, she had a rehearsal, a demonstration for the press, and a demonstration for the public. She was of course planning to duck out when she found an opening, but she would still not be able to play around as much as that day.

Mikoto started regretting not having taken a picture of that store with her cell phone and then decided to head straight back to the hotel.

However, not everything went as planned.

On her way along the path leading to the exit of the large shopping mall area, Misaka Mikoto was forced to come to a stop.

This was not because the exit had been sealed.

Nor was there a thug or someone blocking her way.

At that time, in that instant, everyone but Mikoto was coming and going through the entrance like nothing was happening. Despite it being late in the evening, a large flow of people was formed by the great number of people entering or exiting the facility. Parents were heading for an amusement park with their kid who was waving a helium balloon around. Tall lovers were huddled together and talking while pointing at the floor. They were likely using the Semipublic AR to call up a guide to the facility. Mikoto was the only one that stopped.

There was a single reason.

There was something small that gave her an uncomfortable feeling lying on the floor near the entrance.

Lying on the floor as if someone had accidently dropped it was a single large orange.

“…”

It was an unpleasant coincidence.

There was a boy carrying many paper bags full of souvenirs and a girl walking into the facility while biting into a hamburger, but Mikoto alone was purposefully regulating her breathing.

Mikoto recalled the story she had heard from Setali about the very valuable orange. In the story a traveler sightseeing in a foreign country bought an orange that had the eggs of a large kind of ant packed inside of it. Mikoto felt the rumor should just be dismissed as absurd, but she could not get it out of her head.

(That…couldn’t really be true…right?)

Mikoto tried to deny it in her head, but it still bothered her. She could not just overlook it.

She slowly looked around, but there was no store selling fruits nearby.

While looking at the orange that looked oddly isolated just lying there on the floor, Mikoto approached a nearby thick pillar.

The Semipublic AR reacted to her presence.

She searched for “crimson long-legged army ants”.

Mikoto had no real plan behind doing so.

What looked like an encyclopedia page opened up.

''Crimson Long-Legged Army Ants.

''2-3 cm long. As their name suggest, they have characteristically long legs. They also possess 5 mm fangs.

''Their bodies are black, but their six legs are bright red. Also, the males have transparent wings.

''Carnivorous.

''In this rare species, both males and females are soldier ants. They prefer mammals to other insects or arthropods. They have been found within the flesh of fruits, but this is not because they are eating the fruit. It is speculated that they enter the fruit when a colony is destroyed due to lack of food so that they can camouflage themselves and more likely capture some prey.

''As army ants, they have no specified nest and instead construct a colony of around 50,000-100,000 ants with the queen in the center. They then wander around a set area in search of prey.

''While hiding within a fruit, a stimulus to the fruit can remove the queen’s limiter causing the eggs to hatch with a seemingly inexhaustible supply. When that happens, a great number of queens have been reported to appear despite queens usually being limited to one.

''There have been numerous reports of such out of control colonies attacking human habitations.

''In the Second International Conference on the Prevention of Harm from Dangerous Insects, it was decided to work on bringing down the number those incidents to half what they are in 10 years’ time and Academy City is providing technology to help.

''-> Related: The Hennis Village Incident.

Mikoto knew that only regret would await her if she clicked on that link, but she did so anyway.

She was taken to a video sharing site.

She could not tell the exact location shown, but it seemed to either be Africa or South America. The area had small spots of short vegetation growing on dried earth. A few run-down wooden buildings were standing there.

A black and red sandstorm was blowing.

Below that, people with tanned skin were running about.

It almost looked like they were trying to avoid sparks from a conflagration, but they were not. The large amounts of red light were squirming around. They were bright red insect legs. Thin, transparent wings were moving.

Doors closed one after another.

The people who luckily managed to slip inside the buildings beforehand were the lucky ones.

However, the people who had the doors slammed in their faces were…

“…!!”

Mikoto slammed her palm against the thick round pillar. Her strike had enough force to break a panel of glass and the Semipublic AR took it as the command to close the window and complied.

Her breathing was erratic.

She had not been able to watch that video any longer.

Instead of those images of the past, Mikoto turned her gaze on something from the present.

She looked over at the oddly isolated orange.

She thought she saw its skin move slightly.

“…Eh…!?”

It really may have only been her imagination.

It also could have been due to the minute vibrations from the feet of the people walking around it.

But whether it had been a mental effect or physical movement, that vague appearance of movement did not stop with that one instant. Mikoto continually saw the same thing happening. A strange chill ran down her spine.

What if that story had been true…?

(…I need some kind of sealed container.)

Mikoto looked around.

(If I have a something like a microwave that can contain it, then the contents of the orange won’t be scattered around even if it does explode.)

That shopping mall had all sorts of things for sale. They had to at least have the basic kinds of appliances sold in department stores. The problem was that the stores were so large she had no idea where to find what she wanted.

Mikoto operated the Semipublic AR on the floor and a twisting arrow appeared there indicating where the appliance corner was. Mikoto looked back at the orange lying on the floor and…

“You’ve gotta be kidding…” she muttered.

It was gone. The orange was gone.

Mikoto frantically looked around for it. A lot of people were coming and going through the entrance like a shopping district on a holiday. It did not seem that the orange had been trampled underfoot, but she could not tell where it had gone. Someone may have kicked it.

And then she heard children’s voices. She could not see the children because of all the people, but she clearly heard the innocent voices of children speaking in Russian.

One was a boy’s voice and the other a girl’s voice.

“What’s with this? It’s all squishy.”

“What did you get that for? Are you going to eat it?”

“Of course I’m not going to eat it. I found it on the floor. I’m gonna kick it all the way to the car.”

Mikoto’s head shot up.

She really could not see the ones speaking. She hurried in the direction of the voices which led her to the exit.

“Wait,” Mikoto called out despite not knowing who she was speaking to as she pushed her way through the crowd.

She was in such a panicked hurry that she was tempted to emit a weak electrical current, but she resisted.

The eggs forming the colony of crimson long-legged army ants were hiding within the fruit waiting for some prey.

A stimulus to the fruit would remove the queen’s limiter causing the number of ants to increase seemingly endlessly. The normal limit of a single queen would also disappear.

Once that happened, it would end like the video she had seen on that site…

“Wait!!”

Mikoto charged out of the building.

There was a parking lot large enough to be at a major soccer match, but tools for home gardens such as spades and buckets were lined up nearer the exit. The crowd was cutting around various corners creating a large flow of people.

(The voices sounded around 10, I guess. The boy’s voice didn’t sound like it had changed yet.)

She looked around.

There were a lot of parents with their children. There were even quite a few around the age of 10. Some were holding their parent’s hand, some were waving around balloons, and some were riding on their parent’s shoulders.

The boy had mentioned kicking the orange.

Mikoto looked down to the ground and quickly moved her gaze into the distance.

She saw something orange-colored fly by.

“There it is!!”

About 200 meters ahead, a family of four was walking in one section of the packed parking lot. The orange was at the boy’s feet. He must have kicked it again and again. Part of the skin had torn off. The orange was squirming eerily. It looked a bit like a heart about to die.

It looked like something breathing was about to burst out of it.

There was no time.

Mikoto had no idea how many crimson long-legged army ants were hiding within the orange, but she did not want to think about what kind of damage would be done to the boy that was kicking the orange were it to burst and there were even 50 or 100 of them inside. And if even a few of the ants that would scatter in every direction were allowed to escape, they would begin breeding after only a short period of time creating a seemingly infinite number of them.

She could fire a lightning spear or her Railgun.

A few options came to mind, but none of them would work.

She may be able to obliterate the orange, but that level of attack would only scatter the tiny ants around making it entirely pointless.

She could not solely rely on her power.

“…!!”

Like she was juggling a soccer ball, Mikoto lightly kicked up a tin bucket lying in the outside area for home garden products.

She manipulated magnetism.

An invisible force caused the tin bucket to swing around like a wrecking ball on a chain.

A heavy sound echoed out like when one swung a bat through the air.

The bucket flew down from diagonally above the boy, flew upside down just past his shoulder at high speed, and struck the ground covering up the orange on the parking lot ground. A metallic clang rang out as orange sparks flew.

“Ee!”

“Out of the way!!” yelled Mikoto, but she clicked her tongue immediately afterwards because Japanese wasn’t going to get through to the boy.

Luckily, the family of four was paralyzed by the sudden occurrence. Their lack of motion made things easier for Mikoto.

Purple electricity flew from her bangs.

With a feeling like the power in her forehead was being released externally, she controlled her power and the charged high voltage current was released all at once.

A loud noise similar to a gunshot rang out.

Mikoto put herself between the boy and the bucket and forced him away. She kept her gaze on the upside down bucket.

(I-is it over…?)

She then heard a slight scraping noise.

It sounded like claws scraping at metal.

Mikoto’s shoulders jumped and the noise continued.

It was coming from the bucket.

From inside it.

From within.

The scratching noise continued and continued and continued.

(You don’t mean…)

“They’re trying to eat through the metal bucket…!?”

One shot had not been enough to annihilate them.

The simple command telling them to frantically survive gave the ants greater leadership.

Mikoto stepped forward and fired two more high voltage currents into the bucket. She stepped on top of the bottom of the upside down bucket with one foot. She then poured a massive amount of electricity into the bucket just to be sure.

The tin bucket conducted electricity.

The inside would have been transformed into an environment more severe than an electric chair.

“…”

After firing over 20 electrical attacks at it, Mikoto finally stopped. The noise and light had been so great that even the onlookers remained silent.

She remained still for 30 long seconds with her foot still on top of the tin bucket.

She could not grasp the situation like that.

Without removing the bucket, she could not check to see what had been inside the orange or if they had been properly exterminated.

When dealing with bombs, checking to make sure it was truly not functioning was as nerve-wracking as deactivating it in the first place. It was a similar feeling to that.

Mikoto slowly took her weight off of the bottom of the upside down bucket.

She gulped.

She brought the bottom of her foot to edge of the bucket and pushed ever so slightly. The bucket moved a bit from just that. It was not a perfect defensive wall. Just tapping it with her toes had been enough to almost knock it over.

She pushed harder.

The bucket wobbled quite a bit and then flipped over. The contents were now exposed.

The skin and flesh of the fruit had been torn apart by the high voltage currents and now lined the inner edge of the bucket. Most of it was burnt black, but some still retained its original color. A marmalade-like smell reached Mikoto’s nose.

And something like black sesame seeds were scattered about. Gravity sent them pouring down into a small pile. Mikoto recognized them instantly. They were insects. The small six-legged insects had been turned to ash by the massive electric currents.

None of them were moving.

After confirming that, Mikoto manipulated magnetism to cover it all up with the tin bucket again.

She breathed a sigh of relief and sat weakly down on the parking lot ground.

An orange.

Crimson long-legged army ants.

The world’s largest shopping mall where anything could be bought.

A treasure trove of urban legends.

(So…it was true?)

The family of four was finally starting to make a fuss asking what she had done to their child, but Mikoto did not have the energy left to respond.

She ignored the cries in Russian and muttered in Japanese.

“…I guess I ended up making an unexpected demonstration a bit early.”

 
 

=== Part 7 ===
 
Much time had passed since the sun had completely set.

It was well past the time for dinner or even a bath.

Mikoto had not returned to the hotel. She had been led to one section of the shopping mall. It was not a place where normal customers went. The area was for only staff and the special workers known as security guards. It had been described as the “backyard”, but it was essentially an interrogation room for the security guards.

The room had a simple table and chairs, a recording device, and a one-way mirror covering one of the walls. It was not a comfortable place in the slightest. Even in that room the walls, floor, and ceiling were devices for the Semipublic AR, so it felt a bit unbalanced.

“I see. So there were army ant eggs within the orange,” muttered a female security guard.

It seemed her name was Enirya G. Algonskaya. She was a red-headed woman in her late twenties. Her exacting behavior vaguely reminded Mikoto of a certain frightening dorm supervisor.

“I watched over the bucket until you got there and there was no sign of any having escaped. They were all killed. However, I have no way of knowing if few of them could have made their way out while the child was kicking the orange. Just in case, I think you should spray some insecticide around the area.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“…But what is going on here? That incident was exactly like the urban legend. Whoever did it must be some crazy bastard.”

“As you can tell, we are in the middle of the investigation, so we cannot say anything yet,” Enirya said without smiling. “Of course, that is assuming that there were actually crimson long-legged army ants there.”

“…What?”

“The remains we have recovered have been completely turned to ash, so ‘we cannot say anything yet’. We cannot deny the possibility that some show-off was faking an incident that did not actually occur.”

“Are you serious?”

“It is merely one possibility. For us, that would be the best possibility, but we of course have to think about the less desirable possibilities.” Enirya shrugged. “We are currently investigating where the orange may have come from. However, there are over 80 places both large and small selling produce. This could take some time. And if the orange was brought in from outside, it could be even more difficult.”

“…”

“By the way…”

“What?”

“Did you know that the urban legend about the very valuable orange originated from a famous story about a cactus? A traveler in Central America buys a cactus and becomes suspicious when it starts twitching back at home, so he calls the florist or souvenir shop….and so forth. Also, the contents were not originally army ants.”

“??? What are you trying to say?”

“The version of the story where the cactus has turned into an orange is exceedingly rare. At the very least, it is not spreading throughout Russia. My conclusion is that the story of the very valuable orange is an exceedingly local urban legend that is only told within Japan’s Academy City.”

A searching gaze stared at her.

Mikoto frowned.

“Wait a second. You don’t mean…”

“And there just so happens to be someone from Academy City here for a demonstration right now. You do not have any guards or supervisors with you, correct?” Enirya spoke slowly. “We are a cooperative institution, but we are not knowledgeable in the local information of Academy City. I only know what I just told you because I requested some information from Academy City regarding this case. …So don’t you find it odd? This incident seems to have been based on that urban legend, so the one who caused it must have known the story of the very valuable orange. Am I wrong?”

“You’ve got to be kidding!! I only just learned of that rumor!!”

“Even if you have special powers, you are still essentially a normal middle school girl. The fact that you managed to ‘coincidentally’ resolve that incident seems suspicious to me.”

“It’s your negligence that allowed that orange to be there in the first place! Why am I being treated like a suspect just because I disposed of it!? Did I hurt your pride as a security guard or something!?”

“Oh, you need not get so worked up today.” Enirya spread out her arms to bring Mikoto back under control. “We shall continue this once your attorney has been called in. Although to be honest, I would rather get the truth out of you now.”

“…”

Enirya stood up from her seat and then left the interrogation room without turning back.

A heavy noise reverberated through the room as the door shut.

She had not promised to return Mikoto to the hotel. Would Mikoto end up staying there all night? Or would she be thrown into some kind of cell? Neither choice sounded like much fun.

Mikoto felt that things had gotten bad.

Mikoto leaned back in her cheap chair and thought while staring up at the ceiling.

Had it all just been a coincidence? Or had someone wanted to cause her demonstration to fail worsening the relationship between Academy City and its cooperative institutions? Or was there some conspiracy working to acquire Mikoto’s DNA map? She had no way of knowing. There just was not enough information.

However, she was not too worried.

After all, she had not been the criminal behind the orange incident. She had no reason to be panicked. Even the orange had been completely dealt with. There was little chance of the crimson long-legged army ants causing any real damage. As such, she just had to wait for the suspicions pointed in her direction to be cleared up. After all, Academy City let their valuable Level 5 outside the city with no guards or supervisors as a sign of their trust of the cooperative institutions. If that just ended up with her being locked up, Academy City would not stay quiet.

To pass the time, Mikoto started to pull out her cell phone. When she stuck her hand in her skirt pocket, she felt something squishy. It felt like oily skin.

(Uuh…!? What???)

Mikoto pulled her hand out in surprise and found a torn off piece of orange rind. She had used her foot when checking on the contents of the bucket, but that piece must have gotten stuck to her clothes at some point.

There were no ants left, but it was still creepy. If any small eggs were stuck on her clothes anywhere, it would be a major problem. Mikoto put the orange rind on top of the simple table. She started to move as far away from it as she could.

Suddenly, Mikoto froze.

Something like a small sticker was stuck on the surface of the rind. It reminded her of a QR code. It may take one to a web page displaying information on the product. Mikoto had heard of pages like that for produce that gave the expiration date as well as information on the area and farm it was produced in. Simply put, a small sticker could not hold all that information.

Mikoto’s eyes were fixed on the QR code.

If that orange was a product, would it really have been delivered all on its own? If it had been delivered, it would not have been packed all on its own in a box.

In other words, there was more than one orange.

It was possible there were more than ten similar items somewhere in the shopping mall.

It was possible there were more than ten oranges filled with crimson long-legged army ants.

“Wait…” Mikoto muttered.

She stood up from her seat in panic and headed for the door.

“Wait!! Listen to me!! The orange incident may not be over!! There may have been other similar oranges delivered with it!! If they had crimson long-legged army ants in them too, then this shopping mall could turn into a storm of ant colonies!!”

However, there was no response. She tried turning the knob, but it did not budge and there was no sign of anyone coming even after she pounded on the door for a bit.

Mikoto ran over to the one-way mirror covering one wall.

“I know you can hear me!! I’m not asking you to release me now!! Check on this QR code!! You may be able to find out where and when the oranges were delivered!!”

There was no response.

For an instant, Mikoto considered blowing the door down with a Railgun blast, but she decided that would not be her best option. If she broke her way out like that, a lot of people would attempt to stop her. She did not think it would be impossible for her to defeat all of them, but it would take too much time. She did not have the time needed to deal with a bunch of small fries.”

(The QR code…)

Mikoto pointed her cell phone camera at it, but there was no response. It seemed to be a different format. She looked around. The walls and floor had Semipublic AR functionality.

The fact that she had not been cut off from the network may have been because they considered her questionable but still likely innocent. At any rate, Mikoto brought her hands to the wall. After performing a few operations, she pressed the orange rind with the sticker on it directly up against the wall.

It must have read it with ultrasonic waves because a few windows opened up.

“A box of 20 entered today through the east gate. If one of them fell out, then there are still 19 of them!!”

Those crimson long-legged army ants were in oranges not in insect cages. The ants had a tendency to put a large number of eggs in a fruit waiting for prey when the number of ants making up the colony fell too low, but someone had likely purposefully created that situation.

Why?

First of all, they could bring in the ants without raising suspicion.

Second of all, they could make them breed seemingly endlessly upon removing the queen’s limiter.

In other words, a breeder had created a living time bomb with the oranges.

Had one of the oranges fallen out while in preparation for some kind of plan? Or had a number of them already been set up and that incident had been the first one to activate?

In any case, one thing was for sure.

The incident would not end only on the scale of what had already happened.

The real thing was yet to come.

A very valuable orange.

Urban legends could no longer just be laughed off in that shopping mall.

“…”

The other oranges had likely not “detonated” yet. If they had, the security guards would have been more panicked.

The time when the eggs would hatch and the ants would become active could likely be regulated by the temperature and humidity, but it was still based on living creatures. The breeder may not have been able to perfectly control the timing of the hatching of the eggs.

When Mikoto had thought things through that far, she heard a commotion on the other side of the door. They must have been watching her through the one-way mirror. They must have been waiting to make their move. However, they did not seem intent on asking her questions throughout the night either. The security guards were not going to listen to her. They were not going to investigate the oranges. In that case, they were nothing more than an obstacle to Mikoto.

Mikoto could manipulate magnetism.

She rotated the bolts fixing the table to the floor at high speed. She pressed the table into the corner of the square room where the door was to prevent it from being opened.

Now the security guards could not enter the room.

However, that also meant Mikoto could not leave through the door…

“They never seem to realize…”

Mikoto headed for the small window in the interrogation room. The room was on the fifth floor. There was nothing in the room that could be used as a rope and what one could bring in was greatly restricted. As such, the security guards had let their guard down. There were no metal bars on the window.

Mikoto opened the window and leaned out.

“…that I can create as many footholds as I need using magnetism.”

She unhesitatingly jumped out.

As the bottom of her loafers scraped against the wall while she was in a pose like she was skiing, Mikoto thought.

Who in that city had she heard the story of the very valuable orange from?

Who had told her to watch out for oranges?

Where were the remaining living time bomb oranges set up?

She had a lot to investigate.

It seemed her demonstration truly was turning into something completely unexpected.

 
 

== Notes ==
<references/>

 
 
<noinclude>
{{Toaru_Nav|prev=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:RailgunSS2_Illustrations|next=Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:RailgunSS2_Chapter2}}
</noinclude>

User:Lofthouse

2013-01-17T05:28:54Z

Lofthouse:

Sword Art Online:Caliber SS

2013-01-15T19:21:40Z

Lofthouse: fixing names and slight mistakes

== Translator's Note: ==
The Caliber SS is an alternate end to the Caliber story found in Volume 8. It takes part after Part 3 and follows a "What if Klein didn't save Freyja" scenario. In order to fully enjoy the chapter, it is recommended that one finish reading the normal end first (the entire Caliber story line).

The first half of this chapter is almost entirely the same as the first half of Part 4 (with minor changes such as removing all references to Freyja) and was translated by [[User:BeginnerXP|BeginnerXP]]. The story diverges about halfway through, in the middle of the battle with Þrym. To make it easier to navigate, I broke the chapter into sections, the third section being where the story path diverges.

'''Note:''' Here SS means 少し失敗 (sukoshi shippai) which translates to Slight Failure. However since there are no synonyms for failure starting with the letter S, therefore the title has been left the same as it was in the original.

== Caliber SS ==
=== Part 1 ===

The katana user finished off the black Minotaur evil-god by stabbing it with his special skill, as if releasing the grudges he had kept up to this moment. Not paying any attention to the drop items on the spot the enemy avatar had burst apart, he turned around and yelled,

"Oi Kiritard! What did ya do just now!?"

That question obviously referred to my usage of one-handed sword skills while equipped with two swords, and explaining in detail would be very troublesome, so I obeyed my inner thoughts and said while giving my most troubled face,

"......Do I have to say it?"

"'Course! After seeing something like that!"

It seemed I had pressed Klein's curiosity button, and since it was unavoidable, I answered briefly,

"It was a skill outside the system, «Skill Connect»."

Oo―, was the sound which flowed out of Liz, Silica, and Sinon mouth; suddenly Asuna pressed her fingertips to her right temple and growled,

"Um......somehow, I got a strong feeling of Déjà vu......"


"It's just your imagination."

I shrugged my shoulders and clapped my hand on our healer-sama's back, whom despite her support duty in the back row, had sneaked in during the battle with the gold Minotaur to deliver the killing blow.

"This is not the time for relaxed talk. Lyfa, how much time do we have left?"

"Ah, right."

After sheathing her long sword in its scabbard behind her waist, Lyfa held up the medallion hanging from her neck. From a few steps away, I could see that the light within the jewel was almost completely lost.

"......At the current pace, we still have an hour or two."

"I see. ――Yui, this dungeon structure has four floors right?"

I continued asking, so the little fairy sitting on my head the whole time responded clearly,

"Yes, the third floor is around seventy percent of the second floor size, the forth floor should be mostly the boss room."

"Thank you."

Stretching my right hand, my fingertips stroked my hair while I quickly considered the situation.

At this moment, in the Jötunheimr field far below us, the players accepting the «Frost Giant Tribe» side's quest and the hunting of the beast type evil-gods had gained momentum. The number of quest participants would only increase and not decrease. The remaining time was estimated to be around an hour. The battle with the last boss ―― probably «King Þrym» himself ―― should take about thirty minutes, we wouldn't be able to move to the third and forth floor within thirty minutes.


If there were a little more time, we could explain the situation to the players on the field, asking for their assistance in revoking the ongoing quest, but at this moment we didn't have enough time to go back to the ground. The other alternative was to message the fairy lord requesting reinforcements, but organizing a force in the capital city beyond the mountain range, moving it to the Aarun plateau, and reaching Jötunheimr from the dungeon stairs, by the time they did them the sun would have set.

In other words, with just seven people, we were in a hopeless situation. ―― Or rather, factoring in the failure of «Queen Urðr»'side quest from the Cardinal's automatic quest generator function, Þrymheimr castle would surface on Alfheim, and trigger the start of a large-scale campaign quest «Ragnarök». The fault was obviously the character who inherited its function from its creator.

Anyway――

"......In that case, I don't care if it's the king of the evil-gods or not, we will just «Smash» him for good!"

Lisbeth said that with a slap on my back, the rest of them altogether went "Oo!" in agreement. Where did they get that recklessness from? While thinking that, I strongly nodded.

"――Alright, everyone's HP and MP have fully recovered right? Then let's clean up the third floor quickly!"

The combined voice echoed once more, seven people then kicked the floor, and started running, aiming for the boss' room on the lowest floor, which was visible through the ice.



Just as Yui said, the third floor was clearly narrower than the second floor. It was natural for the lower parts of an upside down pyramid, but this place was quite a narrow and also had a complicated passage. For a normal clearing, we would be confused by the gimmick of the paths, but we had, enshrined on my head, the Navigation Pixie-sama which could give the latest model of an intelligent car navigation system a run for its money.

Our trump card accessed the map data, and with her instructions, we could run through the winding passage at full speed. Even the gimmick puzzles using levers, gears, or stepping switches were cleared without any time used to solve them. If this affair were to be observed from the outside, there would be no mistake for them to think that we were doing a time attack for the fastest clearing.

We ran into the sub-boss twice, but we still reached the boss room of the third floor in only eighteen minutes. What awaited us there had twice the size of the Cyclops and Minotaur from the previous floors, both sides of its long lower body had ten pairs of centipede-like feet, it was clearly the creepy evil giant, but it didn't have much physical resistance. Of course its attack power was through the roof, so the HP gauge belonging to Klein and me were in the red so many times after being targeted by it. This battle, which made my stomach sore later, when I thought that either of us dying would lead to a wipe, went on for nine minutes.


During that time; Liz, Silica, Sinon, and Pina tried their best to cut down the giant's feet one by one, I then finished it off with the «Skill Connect» which included multiple sword skills once it was unable to move. With our high spirits, we rushed into the fourth floor to beat King Þrym and his Niflheimr. Once we stepped into the passage leading to the boss room, we stopped, as in front of our eyes ―― a scene came into view.

It was a cage made of elongated icicles on the wall's edge.

Behind the fence caused by the stalactite growing sharply from both the ground and the ceiling, was a single figure. It was not of a giant's size. As it had collapsed on the ground, its accurate size was difficult to tell, but its body should be about the same height as the Undine Asuna's.

The skin was as white as the powdery snow lying thick around. The long flowing hair was a deep brown gold. The volume of the chest covered by the clothing that could be seen from her sorry state, it would be best not to say this out loud, as it could easily overwhelm all of our girl members. Both her hands and feet were shackled in the rugged ice.

The unexpected scene caused us to halt and feel worried, then the captive girl's shoulders made a sudden but subtle shake, as she lifted her face, with the blue chains ringing.

Her pupils were also of the same tea gold, like her hair. Her face, if it was a player avatar, would surely be because of overwhelming luck when it was created, or the account was bought with the large sum of money. However, her face was sublimed with the western European beauty, which was quite rare in this game.


Blinking once, her long eyelashes moved down then up, the girl said in a fine voice,

"Please...... Help me......out of here......"

The katana user was sucked aimlessly toward the ice cage, I grabbed and pulled the bandana tail which dangled from behind his head.

"It's a trap."

"Trap."

"That's a trap."

The last two were Sinon's and Liz's words.

Klein straightened his back and turned around, as he made a subtle expression while scratching his head.

"O-Oh......It's a trap. ......A trap, right?"

For the katana user on his death bed's sake, I asked in a small voice, "Yui?". The pixie on my head promptly replied,

"It's an NPC. Just like Urðr-san, there is connection to the language engine module. ――But, there is one difference. This person has the HP gauge enabled."

Normally, the HP gauge of the quest giving NPCs would be disabled to prevent them from taking damage. The exceptions were, when the NPC was the escort quest's objective, or the NPC was actually――


"A trap."

"It's a trap."

"I think it's a trap."

Asuna, Silica, and Lyfa said at the same time.

His eyebrows made a 八 shape, his eyes widened, and his mouth was pursed; I patted Klein's shoulder who was stiff in those complex expressions and quickly said,

"Of course it could be possible that it isn't a trap, but now we don't have time for trial and error. We need to reach Þrym's place as early as possible, even if it is a second sooner."

"O......Oo, hmm, well, that's right, yeah."

Klein nodded slightly and moved his glance from the ice cage.

When we ran until just a few steps before reaching the stairs, the voice came again from behind,

"......Please...... anybody............"

――To be honest, I also had the urge to help her, as I didn't think that NPCs were merely the system's automatically generated moving objects, but dwellers living in this world. If this was in a normal quest progression, helping that girl, accompanying her, and as the story progressed until the end, hearing her laugh from behind, "Uhahahaha, you fool―", would still be amusing. However, we were not in the situation to take that unnecessary risk now.

=== Part 2 ===

The width of the descending stairs increased as we went down, and the decorative objects on the surrounding pillars and statues became more gorgeous at the same time. The «approaching boss room and resulting map data would be larger» tradition from Aincrad was also present here.

Standing at the end of the path were two wolves carved into the massive ice gate. So this was the throne room of King Þrym. About 10 meters away from the gate, I cautioned everyone to slow down, as I turned to gaze at the medallion Lyfa was wearing. The delicate light orbs which once adorned the medallion were now 90% tainted black. We probably only had around 30 minutes left.

I took a deep breath, and said:

“Based on the dungeon design, the BOSS should be behind those doors. This BOSS will be harder than the previous ones, we'll need to do everything we can to defeat him. Before engaging, we'll first identify his attack pattern and focus on defense. I'll give the signal to counterattack. When the BOSS's HP bar drops to yellow or red, his attack patterns will likely change again, so please be careful everyone.

I nodded and looked at the face of my companions, before adding:

“— This is the last battle, let's give it all we have!!”

“Yeah!”

This was the third cheer we had given since the start of this quest. Even Yui who was sitting on my head and Pina who was perched on Silica's shoulders cheered.

The gate began opening to both sides automatically once we were about five meters away. The cold air, along with a difficult to explain pressure, came from within. Asuna began re-applying supporting magics, and after confirming the numbers of buff icons below our HP/MP gauges, everyone made eye contact. We all nodded and rushed in at once.

The interior was an extraordinarily huge space in both horizontal and vertical directions. The wall and floor were blue ice, like the rest of the dungeon. The purple fire swayed eerily on the ice candles. High up on the ceiling were chandeliers of the same color, lined up. But what grabbed our attention was the dazzling reflection from the left and right wall lined along the interior.

Gold. Gold coins and ornaments, swords, armors, shields, sculptures and furniture, all kinds of golden objects were piled up to a scale where it was impossible to count. As the insides of the room sank into darkness, the full extent of the treasure was entirely unfathomable.

"............How much Yurudo are all these worth......?"

Inside the room; Lisbeth, the only person who managed a player shop here murmured in a trance. “I should have emptied my inventory!” I thought, but I never mentioned this to anyone.

On the right side of the party, Klein slowly made his way towards the treasure mountain, as if motivated by his bushidō way of life. However, as he approached the treasure――

"...... A bug flew in."

The low frequency mutter could be heard from the dark open space deep within the room, causing the floor to tremble.

"I hear an annoying buzz. Where is it? I'll crush the bad bug."

Boom, the floor trembled. Boom, boom, the trembles approached, it sounded as if it were so heavy that it might break the ice floor.

Once it reached the lighting range, a human shape appeared.

Giant ―― wouldn't be a suitable word. The humanoid evil-god was huge even compared to the bosses we fought in this castle so far. Its height must be at least fifteen meters. Even if I jumped with full force, I wouldn't be able to reach the knee of those giant tree trunk sized legs.

Its skin color was dull blue, like lead. Dark brown fur coiled around its arms and legs, and I wondered what kind of large animal the fur came from. A single part of the plate armor on its waist had the size of a small boat. While the upper part of the body was bare, the prosperous muscle looked as if it was able to repel any weapons directed at it.

Its muscular chest had its blue beard hung over it. Its head above it sank into a silhouette and we could only see its outline. However, the gold crown on its forehead and the blue and bleak blinking eyes below shone brightly in the dark.

In the old Aincrad, the system limit of the floor height was a hundred meters, the boss room inside the labyrinth zone was also under the same rule, it was unavoidable for all boss monsters to have vertical size in moderation. So up until now, I had no experience in fighting with an enemy which I had to look up to. As I couldn't fly, how could I fight like this? The best I could do was cutting no higher than its shins.

While I was thinking about various things, the gigantic giant ―― the double expressions are necessary to describe its size ―― took another step closer, and laughed like a gong being hit,

"Hu, hu...... the Alfheim bugs? Creeping into this place under Urðr's seduction? How about this, you small fry. Just tell me where that woman is hiding, and you can take the gold in this room with you, hmm?"

With the enormous body and the crown on its forehead, along with the speech just now, this guy was the «Frost Giant King Þrym», no doubt about it.

It was Klein who faced and replied to the great giant, who was an AI like Urðr.

"......Heh, a warrior just needs to eat, sleep, and laugh! Don't bother trying to tame us with a cheap invitation like that!"

While we made subtle expressions of relief from behind, as in front of us, Klein pulled his beloved katana from its scabbard.

With that signal, the rest of us took out our weapons as well.

They might not be legendary class equipment, but all of them either carried the name of ancient class weapons, or were carved to a satisfactory level by the master smith Lisbeth. However, the daring smile under the long moustache of the Giant King Þrym didn't fade due to the light from our weapons. Maybe it was natural, as our weapons to him were just slightly longer than toothpicks to him anyway.

The shining phosphorescence from the dark eye sockets glared at us from a very high place, the glance stopped at the eight person who stood there unarmed.

"......Ho, ho. I hear the buzzing of wings again. Very well then, I shall crush you beneath my feet, treat it as my gift, being turned into part of Jötunheimr!”

Thump, the giant king suddenly stepped forward, its large HP gauge appeared on the upper right of my field of vision. Moreover, it was stacked three layers. Cutting that off would be very troublesome.

As the HP gauge of those evil floor bosses in the new Aincrad were invisible in order to frustrate the player's mind, compared to those bosses, this battle's pace would be much easier to grasp.

"――Here it comes! Listen to Yui's instructions and focus on avoiding at the start!"

Immediately after my shout, Þrym raised his huge rock-like right fist high up near the ceiling ―― a blue frost storm wrapped its fist, then furiously swung down.

The last battle in Þrymheimr castle ―― but probably ―― was as expected, a large and fierce battle I had never experienced.

The King Þrym's early attack patterns were punches from both fists, three continuous stomping using the right foot, an ice breath in a straight line, and summoning twelve ice Dwarf minions from the ground.

The creation of the Dwarves was the most troublesome, but they were swiftly taken care of from the back of the party by Sinon's bow, cleaning them up in the blink of an eye by piercing their weak points with marvelous accuracy. The rest of the attacks were avoidable after observing its timing once, the counts from Yui also helped the three front row attackers in avoiding direct hits.

Once the defense was in place, it was finally the time to attack, however, this was certainly the hardest part. As I had feared, our swords could only reach Þrym's shins, and the thick fur protecting that area had high physical resistance, like the gold Minotaur. I took a small chance to attack it with a three hit sword skill, risking my HP to do so, but a low delay skill also had low attribute damage. The result was an unpleasant response, like hitting an indestructible object.

We fought hard in the battle for ten minutes before the first HP gauge finally depleted, causing the giant king to make an overpowered roar.

"Pattern changed! Be careful!"

As I shouted, Lyfa who was next to me said in a nervous voice,

"This is bad, Onii-chan. Only two lights remain in the medallion. We only have about ten minutes left." 

"............"

Þrym had three HP gauges. However, we took more than ten minutes to deplete one gauge. It could be said that cutting the remaining two gauges within ten minutes would be very difficult.

But, for this opponent, the «Skill Connect» wouldn't work like it did when we were fighting the gold Minotaur. During monster delay ―― or to say the delay occurring after its attack, «striking the weak point to create heavy concentrated damage» was needed. However, Þrym was weak to neither sword nor magic, so even if the sword skill connected four times, it wouldn't be able to make much change to that amount of HP.

As if seeing the moment of my impatience――

Þrym suddenly inhaled a large amount of the air, inflating his chest like a bellows.

An overpowering wind occurred, sucking in the five people in the front and mid rows. It's bad, this is surely the harbinger of a full force wide area of effect attack. For evading, first of all, the sucking power of the wind magic must be neutralized. While I was thinking this, to my left, Lyfa started reciting a spell.

But, there was probably not enough time once I noticed the enemy motion.

"Lyfa, everyone, take defense!"

At my call, Lyfa suspended the spell, crossed her arms in front and bent her body. All members took the same posture, in that moment,

From Þrym's mouth, which had sent out a breath in a straight line many times up until this point, released a wide conal diamond dust.

The shining pale wind wrapped around us. The cold which penetrated Asuna's buff made it feel like our skin was being torn off. Gin, gin, with a sharp sound, the avatars of five people froze at once. I tried to escape, but the thick shell of the ice completely locked my movements. Lyfa, Klein, Liz, Silica with Pina being hugged tightly to her chest, and I turned into blue ice sculptures.

At the moment, our HP gauge still haven't decreased. But we couldn't feel at ease. As this kind of special skill would increase the damage taken in direct proportion to the time being suspended.

Þrym approached, then lifted up his massive right leg. Bad, pinch, danger. ―― as I screamed in my mind, at almost the same time,

"Nuuu―!"

With a thick roar, Þrym stomped furiously on the floor. The violent shock wave from it swallowed us while we were still frozen――

Gaching! the frightening sound of breaking echoed throughout the hall, those of us covered in ice shattered. My eyes went dark due to shock. My body slammed hard on the floor while the damage effect light continued on.

At the edge of my vision, the top five of seven HP gauges suddenly turned to a deep red.

While the five vanguards got caught in Þrym's large-scaled ranged attack, of course the two people in the back row weren't just watching.

Our HP gauges were taken by nearly eighty percent when suddenly, a soft blue light rained down on us, healing our wounds. It was Asuna's high ranked full recovery spell. The timing was perfect, which would be impossible to achieve without anticipating the occurrence of the damage and pre-casting the spell in advance.

However, in this game's large-scaled recovery magics, most of them were of the «Heal over Time» type, which didn't recovery all the lost HP instantly. So it'd be fatal if we were attacked again while our HP was still recovering.

Þrym stepped forward in order to deliver the final blow to us who finally stood up. The long beard that hung over its throat ―― was suddenly pierced by a rapid succession of fire arrows blazing bright red, causing a big explosion. It was Sinon's two-handed long bow sword skill «Explode Arrow». With ten percent physical, and ninety percent flame damage property striking the frost giant tribe's weak point, his HP gauge clearly decreased.

"Munuuuun!"

Þrym raised an angry voice and changed his direction to target Sinon. Flashy attacks on the enemy's weak point from the back row's damage dealers caused a massive amount of hate, taking over the hate of the vanguards, resulting in the enemy switching targets. It was a mistake beginners always did, but of course, this wasn't the case this time. Sinon acted as a decoy, knowing it would likely lead to her death, to buy us time for recovery.

"Sinon, give me thirty seconds!"

While shouting, I gulped down a recovery potion from my pouch. Next to me, the others also poured similar red liquids down their mouths. Pina, Silica's partner, seemed to have narrowly survived because of its master's guard skill. In this world, unlike Aincrad, there was a pet resurrection spell, but taking time to do so during a battle would be very difficult.

My vision switched between the irritatingly slowly increasing HP gauge, and the blue Cait Sith's continuing to avoid Þrym's fierce attacks. Even though Sinon had come to ALO not long ago, her body control was spectacular. In GGO, as a sniper who forfeited all defensive skills, running away was the only way if an attacker type approached, that experience was probably still with her now.

"......Prepare the attack."

Removing my eyes off the HP gauge, which had finally came back up to eighty percent, I called my companions. Re-gripping both of my swords, I began to start counting, in that instant――

=== Part 3 ===

“Onii-chan!”

Lyfa's trembling voice vibrated from my side.

“It's too late... The lights in the medallion, are gone...”

“What...?”

I held my breath and turned towards the large jewel on her chest. The jewel that seemed to be made of intricate carvings was almost completely black, save a small shred of light that remained near the bottom. Even as I spoke, it was gradually turning black.

That was to say, beneath the Ice Castle Þrymheimr, on the frozen fields of Jötunheimr, the beast-type evil gods, Tonkii and Urðr's brethren, were close to being completely slaughtered. In other words, we who had accepted the quest "Urðr's request" had failed, and the hundreds of players who took Þrym's quest had succeeded—

Even though my brain registered this fact, I couldn't accept it no matter what, as I stood there with my mouth wide open. From the looks on their faces, everyone felt the same too. Even so, I managed to pull myself together, and prepared to yell at Sinon, who was dodging Þrym's fierce attacks alone far away from the party, to retreat. However——

<nowiki>*</nowiki>DUUUN!* A huge shockwave shook the earth, and the wide floorboards started to vibrate.

I lost my balance and fell to the floor. Far away, Sinon slipped too, and Þrym raised his ice-covered right fist to smite her delicate body.

However, Þrym's movements seemed to have slowed down. Then, two things happened at once. First, Þrym's HP bar which had more than 60% HP remaining disappeared. Next, a string of red text messages flashed across my sight: “QUEST FAILED”.

“Uwa... Uwahahaha...”

Slowly lowering his fists, the king of Giants laughed out loud.

“Uwahahahaha...... I can feel it... I can feel it! The one who has constantly been opposing me and my brethren, that hateful woman's aura is finally gone! Wahahaha......”

Once again, the frozen ground—— No, the entire castle started to vibrate. The blue flames on the wall suddenly flared up, as if coming to life. The gleam in Þrym's eyes seemed to be magnified tenfold.

The five vanguards finally found the energy to stand and reunite with Asuna and Sinon. However, their faces no longer held that determined look they usually had. Ignoring the pitiful ones on the ground who had to spread their legs to even stand straight, Þrym let out a loud roar:

“Now! Now is the time my long-awaited wish will finally be fulfilled! Come forth... My brethren!”

His brethren? Who?

Just as I was lost in thought, huge crashes echoed throughout the throne room.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>CRASH!*

The mountain of treasure that was previously stacked high suddenly expanded, before crashing down towards the floor. And emerging from within were ——even though they weren't as tall as Þrym—— giants, with sick blue skin and sporting matching blue beards. These were undoubtedly Þrym's minions... The frost giants.

There were more than 30 of them. Creating miniature earthquakes as they walked, the lined up in a row at the center of the room, and placed one of their arms on their chests. They looked like statues from afar.

Seeing this scene full of muscle-bound males, most of us forgot about our failed quest and just stood there in shock. Even Yui, who was sitting on my head, didn't respond.

Again ignoring the fairies on the ground, Þrym lifted his head sternly, planted his left hand on his waist, and lifted his right fist high. Everyone else looked at the direction he pointed - the huge crystal chandelier.

No, that wasn't it. He was pointing to something beyond the chandelier, after penetrating the castle and the crust, the place he pointed to was——

Our kingdom, The Fairy Kingdom Alfheim.

My suspicions were affirmed as that large bearded mouth started moving.

"Let us go! With our breaths let us bury that kingdom blessed by Yggdrasil in a sheet of ice!!"

"ROAR!!!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>DUM*, *DUM DUM*. The thirty giants and Þrym marched, the vibrations throwing us off our feet.

"Þrymheimr —— ATTACK!!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>GOWAAAAAAAN!!* A huge shockwave vibrated throughout the castle. I tried to stabilize myself before realizing I had been put into some sort of Gravity Bind - a huge force was being applied to me from above. No, that wasn't it — I was being suppressed by the force of the floor — the castle moving upwards.

A huge crashed emanated from the castle's four walls, the loudest sound I had heard so far in ALO. This was undoubtedly the sound of the castle breaking through the boundary between Jötunheimr and Alfheim. Þrym's plan which Urðr spoke of, "To forever encase Alfheim in snow and make his way up Yggdrasil" had apparently been put into motion.

"...... What's going to happen... next......"

Hugging her war hammer near her chest, Lisbeth asked. Of course, no one had an answer. The only one who knew who probably be the "Cardinal System" who created this quest. No, maybe it could be said that this world had been devoured by darkness to the point not even gods couldn't tell what would happen next.

The castle had been rising for about three minutes now. In the meantime, Þrym stood with his fist pointed towards the distance, like some warped representation of a legendary hero. The rest of the giants were going "OOR, OOAR!!" non-stop, while stamping their feet in unison.

Soon, there came the final, loudest crash yet, and the castle, as well as the giants, went silent.

I noticed that the throne, which had been dark until now, suddenly lit up. I watched as light trickled in from the north wall, like rays of gold. It was Sunlight, something the underground world of Jötunheimr shouldn't posses — the radiance of the sun.

Þrym slowly retraced his right fist, coming into contact with sunlight briefly. His face contorted in displeasure, as he tightened his fists. A low sounds escaped his throat, unlike anything an NPC usually produced. It seemed as if he was speaking to himself.

"... Look out, Æsir... I will reach the top of the world tree and overthrow Midgard, before taking over Asgard which all of you are cowardly hiding, and crush everything under my feet..."

Lifting his right leg, he stomped his feet, as if trampling someone who wasn't there. Then, as if suddenly remembering our existence, the king of giants turned his blueish white eyes towards us and said, with a smile.

"......Shouldn't you thank me, insects? Hurr~?"

"W-Why should we thank you, you bastard?"

Klein shouted, his red hair shot upright. Þrym looked at him in amusement and said while smiling:

"Uwahaha, because I saved you the time to travel back here from Jötunheimr! Look around you and behold my castle's true form."

The king of giants, snapped his fingers *SNAP!*, and—

Suddenly, the floor we had been standing on slid open, revealing a huge gaping hole.

"Waah!?"

I shouted in surprise, and the wings on my back started flapping instinctively. However, even though the castle was no longer in Jötunheimr, I still couldn't fly. Just like that, the seven fairies plus one more (Yui) plus a dragon (Pina) fell into the newly formed hole. To be exact, only Silica's pet dragon was capable of flight, but because her owner was gripping her so tightly in front of her chest, she wasn't able to do anything.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!"

The loudest scream was made by Asuna, who had a fear of falling from great heights. Lisbetg and Silica also made similar screams, while the cold Sinon actually shrugged and shook her head in midair. Even the speed freak Lyfa didn't scream "YAHOO" and instead clutched my left shoulder tightly.

"I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS YOU OLD GEEZER AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!"

Klein's curse trailed into a long scream, as the seven of us fell right down the hole.

Thinking back about it, Þrym has no reason to spare our lives back there, instead of dealing the finishing blow. Though one could probably argue that falling from such heights would lead to our deaths anyway. Just as I was thinking to use magic like 'Feather Fall', the darkness in front of me began to curve, before finally becoming an icy slope. With our behinds planted on the icy surface, we had no choice but to slide down the frozen ramp. Before long, a white light appeared in front of us, and quickly began expanding. At the same time, there was a change in the air——

"...... We're gonna fly! Get your wings ready!"

I shouted out, just before the entire party plunged into the void.

I spread my shoulders and commanded my wings to fly. This time, a very reliable flapping could be heard, and a propelling force wrapped around my body. Gently picking up Yui who was perched on my head with my right hand, I placed her in my front shirt pocket, and began flying upwards. I looked to my left and right, and soon everyone noticed me.

The scenery before me that was tinted with white slowly regained its original palette. Right in front of me was a blue sky above green field, and numerous white mountains. This was, without a doubt, The Valey of Aarun, located in central Alfheim.

From the looks of the earth, it seemed as if the castle was heading south of the valley. That is to say, the great World Tree should be behind me, along with the town of Aarun which rested near one of its roots.

However, I hesitated to look back. What had happened to the beautiful scenery of Aarun, this was something I was afraid to find out. That said, I couldn't continue flying straight either, or I would end up in Salamander territory. I decelerated and gradually came to a halt, hovering in midair.

Taking a deep breath, I turned around.

"...Oh... Ohhh......"

The stiffled cry came from Lyfa, who was to my right. It was followed by the surprised cries of the other six people.

The Central City Aarun, the capital of Alfheim which was bustling with life throughout the year —— no longer existed.

The world tree, even though it looked as grand as always, had something lodged near its roots. Numerous roots had been upturned, and just a few hours ago, a lively stonework city was supposed to be there. The stones that Aarun were built on were now scattered all over, like a mountain of rubble.

Taking its place was a huge, eight-sided crystalline object that reflected off all the sun's rays.

This was without a doubt the castle Þrymheimr. However, when observed from Jötunheimr, it was the shape of an inverted triangle. That was to say, what we had previously seen was only the bottom half of the castle. Perched on top of the inverted pyramid was another similar pyramid, and it was its sharp tip that had pierced through the earth's crust.

The queen of the lake Urðr had used her powers to keep Þrymheimr sealed, but as her kind perished, so did her power. The castle had then broke free of its chains and revealed its true form. It was about 300 meters wide, and the height from the tip to the base was approximately 300 times √2, around 424 meters. Only about one tenth had pierced through the rubble, the tip pushing upwards lunging greedily for the world tree's core. The world tree still held strong with its remaining 10 or so roots, but even then it seemed it would eventually fall.

I exhaled and glanced away from Þrymheimr, surveying my surroundings.

The original inhabitants of Aarun were scattered around the valleys. Looking like ruin excavators, countless players stood there transfixed, their gaze upon the ice castle which had caused the city's ruin. If a player was running a shop in Aarun or simply taking a rest in their own house, the sudden emergence of a huge block of ice that laid waste to the entire city would certainly be quite a surprise. Because the city was a designated safe zone, none of the players had their HP reduced, though after going through such a shock it wouldn't be a surprise if their lives were shortened in the real world.

One group of players were pointing at the ice castle, their mouths moving nonstop. Because fairies had enhanced hearing, I could faintly pick up what they were saying.

"...This kinda event is too much no? Even my house is gone..."

"That's right, and not even a word of warning! It's still quite some time away to the annual end of year event too..."

"The appearance of Aincrad wasn't announced either, but this is beyond what you'd call a surprise event I think..."

Even though they hadn't fully recovered from shock, but their emotions should be turning to rage soon enough. Just like the conversation I had heard early, the entire streets of Aarun——

"...Players who had houses in Aarun or item storages, what's going to happen to them?"

Lisbeth, who was to my left, said, taking the words out of my mouth. Klein answered, seemingly robbed of spirit.

"Of course... Everything's gone, no matter how you look at it."

"No, it seems that property has been converted to Yurudo while items have been converted into scrolls and stored in the players' inventories."

This explanation came from Yui, who stuck her head out from my shirt pocket. Normally immovable objects could be converted into scrolls through the banker NPC. It seemed that even the Cardinal System wasn't cruel enough to remove players' items in an instant. It felt oddly heartwarming.

"......Is that true? At least some things can still be salvaged then..."

Just as Lisbeth was speaking.

A huge shrill scream from behind us interrupted her.

"Hey hey hey, is that true?! The scroll conversion I mean? Please please please tell me it's true!!!"

I turned around in surprise. About two meters away, a small girl wearing a round hat was standing, no, levitating in the air. A cloak was draped around her, and her right arm clutched a staff almost as tall as herself. From the rims of her hat, a large amount of golden curls fell forward, covering her eyes. Her skin was milky white, and her wings were pale yellow.

''...Who's that? No, before that, what race is she?'' Someone short enough for me to look downwards, she was either Cait Sith or a Leprechaun, but she didn't have the symbolic cat ears on her head of gold hair. Upon further pondering, I came to the conclusion that she was an NPC. If that was the case, her color cursor should be the same as Þrym.

To affirm my point, I looked straight at her and locked my cursor upon her veiled face.

However, a rectangular frame appeared at the top right corner of my vision, accompanied with a soft sound effect. This frame displayed the cursor information, and meant that the target was either a player or a monster. I nervously scanned her name. "Marinca", spelled entirely using alphabets. Wait, the ALO system shouldn't display names of unaccustomed players. No matter how much I racked my brains, I couldn't recall where had I met her before. If so, how was I able to see her name...?

"Ahh..."

Silica, who was hugging Pina tightly against her chest, let out a soft gasp from behind me. A moment later, I finally understood.

There was a string of shining letters hovering above the mysterious girl — Marinca's cursor.

"GAME MASTER"

"W-Woah, aren't you a GM?! Wow, it's the first time I've seen one in ALO!"

Klein muttered in amazement. I was similarly shocked. A Game Master was, as the name implied, the ones who managed to world of Alfheim Online. They were positioned higher than the Cardinal System, in other words they were employees of the company running ALO.

As to how much influence a GM had in game, this differed among games. There were MMOs where GMs specially dived in to interact with players and announce of upcoming events, but I never heard of such things happening in ALO. To me, this was the first time I had seen a GM's Avatar in Alfheim.

"E-Erm, I'm sorry, I haven't told you my name... You can call me Marinca from Ymir..."

[[Image:Sword Art Online Caliber SS.jpeg|thumb]]

Ymir, this was the name of the company running ALO. After RECTO's dissolution, ALO was supposed to be shut down too. Ymir though decided to purchase the servers despite declining player population, just like gods descending to save a doomed planet. However this wasn't revealed to the players. Even I didn't know much about the company, save that one of the employers was an old friend of Agil's.

Despite that, this GM, a supposed God in this world, gave me a feeling that she was unreliable. I shook my head, thinking of the current situation, and asked.

"...Erm, Marinca, you previously asked if the scroll conversion was true... Does that mean even Ymir doesn't know what's going on in Alfheim right now...?"

"Err——Erm... To be precise..."

Marinca lifted her staff into the air, twirled it for a moment, before saying:

"To be honest, this situation in Alfheim was just discovered not long ago."

"......W-What...?"

This low sound came from Asuna, who was standing on my right. Recognizing this voice full of agitation as the voice of "the sub-leader of the Knights of Blood" before going berserk, I hastily tried to stop her — but I was one step too late.

"What irresponsible words!! How long do you think this quest has been going on? Haven't you had ample opportunities to stop the script using administrator privileges?! To think none of you noticed this before Aarun crumbled, what are the game managers doing?"

"I'm s-s-sorry!!!"

As Asuna berated Marinca, Klein and I both tucked our heads away in fear, a habit inherited from attending her strategy meetings in the past. It was fortunate that Asuna didn't notice our gestures, as she moved a step forward —her shoes made a sound as they scrapped against the ground, this might just be me imagining things— and yelled in an enraged voice:

"Let's ignore the matter of how this happened in the first place — in a situation like this, wouldn't a simple Rollback be sufficient? How many hours can we rollback to?"

A rollback was the final measure in an MMO. Because the server was reverted back to a state in the past, it would reset all progress players' made in this time frame, including Yurudo and Experience. Of course, these were extremely important.

Even though we had took up "Urðr's request" to avoid complete destruction, we failed at the last moment. It should be dawning on the players who had taken "Þrym's quest" now, that they had indirectly caused Aarun's destruction, and the holy sword promised as a reward was nothing but the "Fake Sword Caliburn". Since things had progressed to such a level, a rollback was inevitable, and most players should be able to understand. Now to hope that the time lost was as minimal as possible. That was what I thought as I awaited Marinca's reply.

How would she reply? This GM who didn't look at a GM at all would probably stutter and smile clumsily at us.

"Well, about that... I checked the logs and it appears that the completion of the quest, in other words the beginning of this script, triggered a server backup..."

"W-What????"

This loud sound came from the seven of us. The GM's small stature quivered, as she continued nonchalantly.

"But it's such a relief that all the items were converted into scrolls! This is like casting an anchor windward... No, a blessing in disguise... That's not right either..."

"By the skin of your teeth"

In a low voice, Sinon who was situated behind me replied. "True, True", the rest of us agreed. Taking out a strand of spear mint from her pocket and placing it in her mouth, the sniper coolly asked:

"GM-kun, how did the situation get like this? Did the Cardinal System's 'automatic quest generation' feature malfunction?"

Upon hearing this, Marinca pouted "Uuuu" and said.

"Y-You sure know a lot! I've been working at Ymir for two weeks, and only known of Cardi-chan yesterday! No, I'm not joking!"

In these three sentences, there was at least one I was tempted to take a jab at, to the point my mouth was twitching on its own. Marinca waved her arms and said in an innocent tone:

"Wow, Cardi-chan sure is amazing! Not only can it identify bugs in quests, it can also fix dungeons with exploitable EXP mobs and even trace players with abnormal Yurudo and EXP stats!"

I suppose by Cardi-chan she was referring to the Cardinal System. This was one of its main advantages, of which we were all familiar of by now. In the old SAO, the Cardinal System often found our 'EXP farming spots' and quickly patched them. My lively daughter Yui was also part of the Cardinal System's low level processes; I shudder to imagine how powerful the computing levels of the Cardinal System are.

Marinca who probably had no idea the majority of us were SAO survivors, clasped her hands together.

"I also wish to one day reach Cardi-chan's level of administration! During yesterday's maintenance, even though it wasn't required, I still dived in from a specialized VR Console to monitor the situation up close. I even discovered many unused functions and models in the Quest interfaces. I thought that since the server was shut down, messing around a little wouldn't do any harm..."

"...Just like one of those movies, where the single press of a button would cause an explosion..."

Lyfa mumbled. I felt the same way too, but Marinca seemed to have missed that and continued her astonishing story as a GM.

"...But then, even when I turned the settings ON, nothing happened. So I continued watching the maintenance, and finally when it was time to reboot the server, I totally..."

"Forgot to turn the settings OFF, right?"

Asuna took another menacing step forward. Marinca immediately stopped talking and let out her third whimper.

"I-I'm the kind of person who is great at turning things like television, lights and air conditioners on, but I'm really bad when it comes to turning them off. I've been telling myself that in order to not cause trouble for others, I need to erm, mind my own business... Ahh, that's not it..."

This time Sinon didn't correct her. She continued staring straight ahead, with the spear mint still in her mouth. Maybe something about the Cath Sith's gaze caused Marinca to straighten up and finish her story.

"So um... After confirming the maintenance was complete, I slept for a while in the office. In the afternoon I was awoken by the shouts of other employees... It seemed that something huge had happened in-game. Looking at the situation, I had no idea if Cardi-chan was going on a rampage or kicking up a fuss... Actually, I was the one who had activated the 'Speed up mission' option! Ahh, this is the dream of every MMO operator — even though it's freeware, it's still capable of such intricate and powerful operations, Cardi-chan sure is awesome!! O-Oh yeah, where was I? Ahh yes, after I woke up, I was ordered to assess the situation in Aarun. Hearing that the players' items have been converted into scrolls is such a relief, like a blessing in disguise... No I mean... Ahh how should I put it!"

Taking our gazes off the GM who was frantically hugging her hat, we exchanged gazes.

"...Anyway, at least we now know the reason why the Cardinal System's quest suddenly accelerated."

Yui, who was resting in my front pocket, nodded after hearing my word.

"This fits the saying 'You can't hate a crying GM'<ref>Originally 'You can't hate a crying kid'</ref> pretty well"

"Yeah... Even the Cardinal System wouldn't be able to sit idly in dummy mode forever.<ref>Referring to the current situation of perfect autonomous server management, without the need for GMs</ref> Putting it in another perspective, it seems that the Cardinal System's finally shown its true potential..."

"It must be a desire that's been accumulating for months, finally exploding all at once."

We all agreed to Silica's words. If we treated the Cardinal system as a living being instead of a regulating program, it wouldn't be too hard for us to understand its feelings. The question was, just how much power did the Cardinal System have? Even though the world was supposedly based on the Norse Mythology of Ragnarök and the «Twilight of the Gods» seemed to be a fitting final battle, but...

I looked at Lyfa, who was gazing up at the blue, frozen castle basked under the sun.

"From Þrym's speech it seems that the Frost Giants aim to reach the top of the World Tree. If we just ignore this, not only Aarun, even the entire Yggdrasil City could be decimated..."

"E-Ehh?!"

This came from Lisbeth, who owned a smithing shop in the city of Yggdrasil. Even though the Yurudo used for purchasing the shop and the items within were safe, it was hard to accept a giant flattening her shop which she had painstakingly spent months to acquire and decorate.

Asuna and I had previously rented a small house near Liz's shop in Yggdrasil City. After we moved to the 22nd floor of the floating castle Aincrad, I no longer had any reason to defend Yggdrasil City. However, there was one thing which made me uneasy.

"Say, Lyfa."

I said to the Slyph swordswoman, who turned towards me with her golden ponytail swishing in the wind. Searching my memory of the past ten or so minutes, I asked:

"Before we were ejected from the castle, that old geezer Þrym said something about what he would do after climbing the World Tree... Something about overthrowing Midgard. What exactly is Midgard?"

"Mmm, even though I've never heard about it in ALO, but according to Norse Mythology it's supposedly one of the nine realms. Just like how Jötunheimr is the world of Frost Giants, Alfheim is the world of elves and Asgard is the world of gods... Midgard is the world of humans. But there is no human race available for ALO players."

Staring at my sister who was rapidly feeding us information, I muttered the only conclusion I came to.

"Then Midgard... Should probably refer to Aincrad..."

"W-WHAT??"

This time it was Klein, who up until now had knitted his brows and crossed his arms, that screamed.

"Overthrow from the sky... The entire Aincrad? If that's the case, shouldn't the final act be starting..."

"Final act?"

"Of course... The 'Legendary Samurai Klein' Act"

Not even bothering to come up with a reply, I dragged the swordsman by his patterned bandana aside and looked at Asuna, asking her 'What do you think?' with my eyes.

Upon hearing that Aincrad, or more specifically 'The house in the forest on the 22nd floor' was in jeopardy, she should be in a state of panic. However, the expression on Asuna's face was unbelievably calm, and after a quick moment of thinking, she nodded her head.

"Yeah... I think that's possible. In the old SAO, all of the players were human. After being incorporated into ALO, it's possible that NPCs would designate that castle as the 'Human World Midgard'."

"H-How can that..."

With an expression that looked like she was about to cry, with her ears drooped down to the lowest, Silica said in a pained voice. In perfect contradiction, the other Cait Sith who was waving her tail around like a Metronome, concluded the situation in an icy voice even colder than Asuna's.

"This means that if we don't stop the Frost Giants' imminent attack on Yggdrasil City and prevent them from obtaining the 'Golden Apple' on the tip of the World Tree, it might not only be Aarun and Yggdrasil City which lie in ruin, even Aincrad would be at danger of being destroyed. Let's stop thinking about what they plan to do next. What we need to do now is to stop them at all costs... But what can we do to prevent that..."

Everyone nodded solemnly after listening to Sinon's report. True enough, we had failed the quest "Urðr's request", but the quest window didn't point us to a follow up quest. There was bound to be another opportunity to attack Þrymheimr castle in the future, but before that battle, King Þrym's HP bar was nonexistent. In this state he was no different from an unengageable NPC. This was what I was worried about the most, as even if we made preparations and stormed the throne room again, if we were unable to fight him it would be meaningless in the end.

However, the one who gave us our next clue was unexpectedly the clumsy GM Marinca.

"No worries, there's a way!"

"......"

All of us looked at the administrator who didn't look like one at all. Her gaze unshifting, Marincase puffed out her chest and said:

"I just checked Cardi-chan's quest generation status, it seems that an event will happen later at 3 in the afternoon! If you join that event, I'm sure you'll receive a follow up quest!"

"......Erm, I think Ymir should be capable to doing something from the outside, is that not?"

I asked casually. For the fourth time a whimper escaped Marinca. We could only hope that it was the last.

"Ah, I just received a message from my superiors, it seems there are only two options — 'Rollback to two weeks ago' or 'Complete the Cardinal System's Quest!' Oh there's a postscript, 'Since you've been involved until now, take responsibility and join an in-game party in clearing the quest'! Ohh, this is like being paralyzed while you're poisoned!<ref>A pun on a proverb which roughly translates to 'adding snow to frost'. An English equivalent would be adding insult to injury.</ref>"

"That's why, please accept me into your party! Ahh the numbers don't matter, as a GM I can join as a special 8th member!"

Stunning silence.

Being able to hear such words, I don't think such opportunities will ever present themselves again.

I removed the AmuSphere from my head and continued lying down on my bed, stretching my rigid hands and feet.

A minimal amount of Winter Sunlight poured through the window into the room, landing on the surface of my alarm clock next to my bed before warmly reflecting off. The time was one thirty. The second chapter in our quest would continue only at three, hence it was vital that we ate and did any other things in the meantime. Due to this, we checked in an inn situated in the Aarun valley and logged out.

With all my might, I let out a deep sigh and said to myself.

"...Things sure have gotten bad huh..."

Cardin-chan — That is to say, the Cardinal System, even though it was a self sustaining, high level VRMMO management system, all this mess happened because it threw a ruckus. No, maybe the Cardinal System didn't think there was a problem. Instead of saying it 'managed' the world, a more appropriate term would be 'supported' it — that would be the reason for and proof of her (because of Marinca calling her affectionately, I couldn't help but visualize her as a female now) existence...

As I was lost in thought, there was a light knock on my door. Even though there wasn't a voice, I could guess who it was. Because aside from me, there was only someone else in this house.

"Please come in."

I sat up as the door opened with a *Ka-chak*. I was confused for a moment — if it was the person I expected, the door should have opened with a *Ka-chak-Pong* sound.

Slowly opening the door and peeking her head in, it was my sister Suguha after all. She wore the same green shirt as she did this morning, however her expression was different.

"Onii-chan... Before we have lunch, can we talk for a moment?"

Suguha looked very nervous, as if she was seeking assurance. I nodded and replied unsurely "Ahh... Okay, yeah". She quickly closed the door and hopped lightly across the floorboards, sitting on the other side of the bed.

Her fringe was trimmed just before her eyebrows. Lowering her head, she said softly.

"......Will it be alright?"

At first I thought she meant Alfheim, but I quickly changed my mind. If she was worried about the Elven Kingdom, Suguha would definitely shout energetically "We'll try harder this time!" or something to that effect. She was worried not about the current situation, but about her precious comrade.

I moved next to my sister and patted her back, saying:

"Of course he'll be alright. Right now he's not a monster but an NPC, even if someone else attacks him, he'll have no HP Bar. The next time we want to descend into Jötunheimr, he'll definitely come flying over when he hears our call."

Of course, the comrade in question was the Evil god-type monster Tonkii, which we had rode on plenty of times. Right now, in the underground world Jötunheimr, hundreds of players had accomplished "Þrym's quest", which meant all beast-type evil gods had been slain. Suguha was worried about whether or not Tonkii had been slain too.

"...And that guy, he's always flying up high above ground. It's impossible for players to fly in Jötunheimr, so swords and magic definitely can't reach him."

I added enthusiastically. Suguha finally looked up at me and smiled, saying:

"Yeah... That's right. Thank you Onii-chan, now I can finally be at ease."

Suguha tilted her body and rested her head on my right shoulder. My posture was already odd to begin with, with the added weight of Suguha's body, I lost my balance and fell onto the bed.

Suguha came tumbling down moments later, her head landing on my chest.

"Uwaa..."

Upon hearing her, I immediately tried to move my body, but it was once again squashed by something warm, as I sank further into the bed.

"Oi oi, Suguha..."

As I frantically moved my body, my brain searched for words to be used in this situation. My mind however failed me and I was unable to come up with anything to say. Suguha whispered into my ear:

"...The next quest starts at 3, there's still some time left. So for a while... Just let me..."

I had no idea what to do or what was going on. At the very least, I should stop moving. A nostalgic yet slightly different smell wafted through my nostrils, and from my chest I felt my heartbeat accelerate.

"...Unbelievable."

Suguha, who was lying on my right shoulder, squinted and looked at me straight in the eye.

"After something so monumental happened over there in 'that world', it feels unbelievable to be back here again. It's just like, that's reality, and this is the illusionary world..."

"Yeah... To an extent, I understand."

I continued speaking, momentarily forgetting my nervousness.

"It's surreal... Just like a dream. I've felt that before. It's like a dream I experience once I fall asleep in the inn over there..."

"...Yeah, just like that. A dream... That could be the case maybe."

"Heh heh." That familiar, innocent yet somehow appealing face let out a laugh, causing me to hold my breath.

I closed my eyes, not due to tiredness but because I felt a wave of drowsiness wash over me in this situation. Suguha's voice was like the trickling of a stream, comforting my senses.

"If this is a dream..."

—If this is a dream?

"...Then let's redo the failed mission."

—So that's it.

With my eyes closed, I let out a bitter laugh. Maybe because my concentration was waning due to being on the verge of sleep, but my gamer's instinct told me this.

We failed the quest "Urðr's request"... Even though it was due to us being short-handed, I had this feeling that if we hadn't made a mistake or missed something somewhere, we might have been able to complete the quest.

The only point where a choice was offered in the game— that would be......

It was here that I stopped thinking further and fell asleep. It might be a short nap till our next adventure in a matter of minutes... Or an infinite sleep where I would never wake up.

(End?)

<noinclude>

==References and Translation Notes==

<references />


</noinclude>

User:Lofthouse

2013-01-15T08:27:33Z

Lofthouse:

User:Lofthouse

2013-01-14T07:15:36Z

Lofthouse:

2012-05-16T12:09:03Z

Lofthouse: /* Punctuation */

==Hi Lofthouse==

Sorry for not responding to your email, but I can't read what's on there. Please continue with the edits, and hopefully, you'll be a pioneer for more to come.--[[User:Teh Ping|Teh Ping]] 08:17, 16 December 2011 (CST)

== Punctuation ==

The standard on web (ie: soft copy) is to use typewriter quotes. The standard on paper (ie: hard copy) is to use curly quotes. Just thought I'd let you know. Besides curly quotes takes up more storage than typewriter quotes which leads to delays in loading. Check for yourself. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 06:36, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

Actually both types are considered correct in English but the main reason websites use typewriter quotes is because of the reduction in size. Which leads to faster loading. So I hope you would stop changing all the quotes I changed to typewriter. It took a long while back then. Now though thanks to Foxreplace I can correct it in a flash. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 06:44, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

So I apologize but I'll be changing them back. Rest assured though that your other edits will be untouched. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 06:46, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

In case you think I am wrong. Please read these two articles [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_marks] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotation_marks]. And Note that Baka-Tsuki uses Media-wiki thus Wikipedia Manual of Style applies for optimal style of editing. I quote from these two articles:

#'''First Link, second paragraph:''' Quotation marks are written as a pair of opening and closing marks in either of two styles: single (‘…’) or double (“…”). Opening and closing quotation marks '''may be identical in form (called neutral, vertical, straight, typewriter or "dumb" quotation marks), or may be distinctly left-handed and right-handed (typographic or, colloquially, curly quotation marks)'''; see quotation mark glyphs for details.

#'''Second Link: Under Quotation Marks heading there is a subheading Quotation characters:''' Do not use grave and acute accents or backticks (`text´) as quotation marks (or as apostrophes). There are two possible methods for rendering quotation marks at Wikipedia (that is, the glyphs, displayed with emphasis here, for clarity): Typewriter or straight style: "text", 'text'. Recommended at Wikipedia. Typographic or curly style: “text”, ‘text’. Not recommended at Wikipedia.

Since both are correct english-wise and yet the typewriter quotes are recommended on sites using mediawiki plus they take lesser space on the web, thus they are the optimal choice. Once again I humbly apologize and hope for your understanding. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 07:05, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

Fair enough, the 66 99 quotation mark edits only took max 5 minutes with my cheap programs, i'm sure you could undo them even quicker, but can Foxreplace take intersecting quotation marks into account? [[User:Lofthouse|Lofthouse]] 10:10, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

Intersecting? Please explain, I've never heard of Intersecting Quotation marks before and can't find any reference on the net. BTW I've already changed the curly quotation marks to typewriter ones. All I had to do was set FoxReplace to auto-replace on load (I have already set it to replace all curly quotes, single and double as well as other punctuation, see my talk page for more details). Then hit the edit tab and submit. Easy-peasy. As for which pages I had to do them to I could find out from [[Special:Contributions/Lofthouse|your contributions page]]. Some of the translators use MS Word to write the translations and you know that changes the quote marks to curly. At first it was a real headache to use the search and replace function manually but thanks to Firefox's FoxReplace it's easy now. If there is anything you want to know feel free to ask. And once again thank you for understanding. Not many do that. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 11:07, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

And what were all the ZERO lines about? Unfortunately I'm not from Australia. And I'm pretty sure we use US and UK standard here, either or both are fine, no problem. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 11:13, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

Hey Lofthouse you said you had some programs that allowed you to replace the quote marks with curly ones right? Can you tell me about them? There's this guy who's bent on reverting all my edits just because he's thinks curlies are right and typewriter are wrong (when they're both correct actually, it's just that typewriter takes less space). The bigger problem is that he also reverts the other edits to spelling, grammar and s-stuttering correction, etc I make. Just because he doesn't want to take the time to sort through the page. I'd appreciate it if you could tell me about the programs you used. Thanks. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 22:32, 15 May 2012 (CDT)

Intersecting Quotation marks just means quotation marks within quotation marks, but I looked up Foxreplace and I understand how it works now. I'll probably be downloading that program of yours, looks like a nice li'l add-on for CSS users. I noticed some of the Index still have wurly quotation marks (V7 and maybe a few others).

To make the edits, for the first 2 chapters, I scrolled through the whole thing and manually changed the quotation marks (much time wasted). Then I started importing the text into InDesign. It has an option to automatically convert straight quotation marks to wavy quotation marks, but it's not always perfect, so I still had to check over it.

I should be good for edits now, although I want to use ("...") for speech and ('...') for anything requiring a quotation mark that isn't speech; and alternate between the 2 if there are quotation marks within quotation marks (pretty much the same style of editting in Fate/Zero Prologue). Is that fine?

Also, unrelated question but should I be posting my replies under a new title on your discussion page? Do you receive a notification from me replying on this page? [[User:Lofthouse|Lofthouse]] 02:33, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

Use of ''italics'' for clear thought speech is recommended. That's how all English publishers do it. It's kinda like a standard. I added your talk page to my watchlist so I know whenever an edit occurs. Either is fine by me. Oh and be careful. '''If''' the Project Supervisor or Admin doesn't like that the curlies are replaced by typewriter quotation marks then they might undo all your edits. I know of one who doesn't even bother to sort through the edits. It's actually for him that I asked you for the curly script you used. Seriously that guy... despite the fact that both ways are correct yet curlies take more space and aren't even distinguishable from typewriter quote marks in view mode and the fact that he can't even say anything in favor of curlies... well... lets leave that aside. For Intersecting Quotation Marks if the outer ones are double(") then the inner ones should be single(') and vice versa. Or you could use other variants. See the Special Characters tab in the editbar then select the symbols option. You'll see «», it might be a replacement, or any other you feel is better. There's also 「　」 and 『　』. These are even better options since they are the japanese versions of single and double quotes. You'll find them used sometimes here and there as inner intersecting quote marks. Or even in other cases. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 04:51, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

So... can you tell me about the scripts you mentioned for changing into curlies? That guy I mentioned is seriously acting like a bulldozer on my edits now. I may have to make an exception on his project at least until he retires. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 04:51, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

I didn't use a script for editing into curlies. I used a program called InDesign, which has a feature to automatically recognise and change all quotation marks to curlies. The only problem is that InDesign costs alot of money. But it can also be done on MSWord 2010, since 2010 automatically uses curlies. I'm not the best at explaining things, but I can do step-by-step instructions.

# Copy the whole chapter in MSWord 2010
# Use CTRL+H to replace italic & bold fonts with @@ & @@@
# Use CTRL+H and type (") into both the 'find what' and 'replace with' box. Press the 'Replace All' button twice (it uses the wrong glyph sometimes when there are quotations within quotations, this is fixed by 'Replacing All' twice).
# Use CTRL+H to Replace all (') with (') twice
# Undo step 2.

By replacing a straight quotation mark with the same straight quotation mark, MSWord 2010 automatically changes them to curlies in the document. It's not 100% reliable, but it's the best free method I've seen for recognising and changing the single glyph ('…' "…") into two glyphs (‘…’ “…”) while also not screwing up words like she's & it's with the wrong glyph. If somebody spent their time making a script for doing this, then I haven't heard about it. [[User:Lofthouse|Lofthouse]] 07:09, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

Hello Lofthouse, I'd like to mention to you that you are in no way obliged to follow what Zero is saying, he has absolutely no authority over your edits. The only one who can decide those things are the supervisors of the project Hidan no Aria which are Onizuka-GTO and Nera Sleith. Feel free to contact them if some decision should be made. [[User:Vaelis|Vaelis]] 05:37, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

Yes, he is right about that. It's your choice in the end. I can't force you. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 07:01, 16 May 2012 (CDT)

User talk:Lofthouse

2012-05-16T07:33:40Z

Lofthouse: /* Punctuation */

User:Lofthouse

2012-05-15T15:55:30Z

Lofthouse:

Not much to say, my name's Daniel Lofthouse, I'm 17 years old and living in Australia. I love the Light Novel style of pictures and plotline rather than cloggy page-long descriptions, and I'll read anything so long as it has some elements of super-natural/magic and romance.

I'm extremely proficient in English (native language), skilled in Greek (learnt it for 4 years in High School) and familiar with Japanese (after some 2500 anime episodes). I'm trying to learn the language but still waiting on the book 'Remembering The Kanji' to arrive.

Shakugan no Shana or Zero no Tsukaima, which is better (or in need of editing more)?

== Damsels in distress saved ==

* V3-V6 ☆ Toaru Majutsu no Index
* V1-V2 ★ The World Only God Knows
* V1-V2 ☆ Hidan no Aria (rescue ongoing)

User:Lofthouse

2012-05-15T15:53:38Z

User:Lofthouse

2012-05-12T03:16:29Z

Lofthouse:

Not much to say, my name’s Daniel Lofthouse, i’m 17 years old and living in Australia. I love the Light Novel style of pictures and plotline rather than cloggy page-long descriptions, and i’ll read anything so long as it has some elements of super-natural/magic and romance.

I’m extremely proficient in English (native language), skilled in Greek (learnt it for 4 years in High School) and familiar with Japanese (after some 2500 anime episodes). I’m trying to learn the language but still waiting on the book ‘Remembering The Kanji’ to arrive.

I’m a Proof-reader, Editor and NEET-freak. I read the Light Novels and make sure it’s perfect for the next reader. I’ve made some software edits on my laptop so I can type the proper apostrophe’s 「‘’」 and quotation marks 「“”」. It is my duty to protect them from abuse.

== Protecting them from abuse ==

When I proof-read and have to change 「"」 & 「'」 to 「‘’」 & 「“”」, I follow a little formula that’s quite helpful.

# Read the Chapter and write down any Typos/broken English in Notepad.
# Fix the Typos.
# Scroll through the whole thing and wherever there is dialogue (someone talking), change 「"example"」 to 「“example”」.
# Scroll through the whole thing again and change any remaining 「"example"」 to 「‘Example’」 (use your own judgement if 「‘’」 is not right). (IMPORTANT: Don't change 「"」 if it’s part of a reference or link)
# Scroll through the whole thing again and change any 「'」 to whatever they should be, but leave it if it’s supposed to be 「’」 (e.g. don’t change: 「she's」 or the 2nd 「'」 on 'example')
# Copy the whole thing into Microsoft Word
# Use CTRL+H to replace any italic/bold formatting (「2x '」, 「3x '」, and 「5x '」) with 「italic@@」, 「bold@@@」 and 「italbold@@@@@」 respectively.
# Use CTRL+H to replace all remaining 「'」 with 「’」
# Use CTRL+H to undo Step 7.
# Paste the whole thing back into Baka-Tsuki and submit.
# Check to make sure everything is ok. Use CTRL+F to find 「‘」 and 「“」, and skim through the yellow blocks to make sure 「‘’」 & 「“”」 aren’t the wrong way around anywhere.

== Damsels in distress saved ==

* Toaru Majutsu no Index (V3 - V6)
* The World Only God Knows (V1 - V2)
* Hidan no Aria (V1 - rescue ongoing)