Baka-Tsuki - User contributions [en]

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2020-09-06T04:00:49Z

Zakashi:

{| class="mw-wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 14|Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 15|Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 16|Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Afterword|Afterword]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Extra|?]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 17|Volume 17]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume17 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:MonicaSS|Short Story 2]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2019-05-16T06:27:14Z

Zakashi:

{| class="mw-wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 14|Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 15|Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 16|Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Afterword|Afterword]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Extra|?]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:MonicaSS|Short Story 2]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2019-05-16T06:20:28Z

Zakashi:

{| class="mw-wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 14|Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 15|Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 16|Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Afterword|Afterword]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume16 Extra|?]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT

2018-07-03T10:24:11Z

Zakashi:

{| class="mw-wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:100%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF"
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:100%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:Toaru Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT|action=edit}} e]][[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament]]
|-
|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1|NT Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2|NT Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3|NT Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4|NT Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.01| Main.01]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.02|Sub.02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.03|Sub.03]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.04|Sub.04]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.05|Sub.05]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.06|Sub.06]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.07|Period.07]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.08|Sub.08]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.09|Sub.09]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.10|Sub.10]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.11|Main.11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.12|Main.12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.13|Sub.13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.14|Sub.14]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.15|Sub.15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.16|Sub.16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.17|Sub.17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.18|Sub.18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.19|Sub.19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.20|Main.20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.21|Period.21]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.22|Sub.22]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.23|Sub.23]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.24|Sub.24]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.25|Sub.25]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.26|Sub.26]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.27|Sub.27]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.28|Sub.28]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.29|Sub.29]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.30|Main.30]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.31|Main.31]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.32|Period.32]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.33|Sub.33]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.34|A_Cardinal_Error.34]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.35|Connection Process]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.36|Chapter n]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.37|Profound Destruction]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5|NT Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6|NT Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_???|???]] - [[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night Before the Festival|The Night Before The Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter6|Chapter 6]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT Volume6 The Night After the Festival|The Night After the Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7|NT Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8|NT Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9|NT Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6a|Chapter 6a]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6b|Chapter 6b]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6c|Chapter 6c]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10|NT Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_19|Chapter 19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11|NT Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12|NT Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13|NT Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14|NT Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15|NT Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16|NT Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17|NT Volume 17]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume17_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18|NT Volume 18]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Afterword|Afterword]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume18_Ending|?]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19|NT Volume 19]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Afterword|Afterword]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume19_Ending|?]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20|NT Volume 20]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Afterword|Afterword]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume20_Ending|?]]

|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|navname=Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT}}[[Category:Templates]]</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2018-05-02T10:38:59Z

Zakashi:

{| class="mw-wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 14|Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 15|Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3

2018-04-30T10:37:58Z

Zakashi: /* Part 9 */

==Chapter 3: Selector y/n >> All-Out Battle in the Bermuda Triangle==

===Part 1===

In the end, what was Quenser Barbotage to that girl?

They were Information Alliance and Legitimacy Kingdom. They were undeniably enemies. And while the girl was successfully wearing the two hats of Pilot Elite and international idol, Quenser was incomplete even as a puny foot soldier. He was no more than a battlefield student who had cheerfully walked in from a safe country.

Nothing about them fit together and they could not hope to strike a balance. If they found themselves on opposite sides of a war, the girl would probably kill him as just one of the dots on her display, without ever knowing he was there.

That was all it should have been.

But there was something there that could not explain.

Not even the girl knew what that something was. It might have been easy to put to words, but she was hesitant to make it something “ordinary” by defining it with a simple phrase. The movements of her heart seemed simple but held complex meaning. It seemed to reject the very foundation of the Information Alliance that digitally processed everything, slapped a label on it, and adjusted it for easy searching.

So…

So…

So…

===Part 2===

At that time, Heivia Winchell should have been standing on the flat roof of Columbia University’s second gym.

But those standard assumptions suddenly crumbled away.

By the time he felt a heavy impact pass through his entire body, he had already been launched to the side and thrown off of the large roof.

“Oh…?”

He did not understand.

But reality did not wait for the delinquent soldier’s understanding to catch up. The situation was underway. No matter how unreasonable it was, the fact remained that he had been thrown from the equivalent of a four-story building.

Manhattan had moved.

It was only a slight stirring, but it produced enough inertial force to break gravity’s hold on the people there so they “fell” to the side.

That included Heivia, Myonri, Wraith, the aide young man, Melly, and Serial Killer Skuld.

Every last one of them was helpless.

“Oaaahhhhhhhh!!!???”

Were Heivia’s instincts desperately searching for something to grab onto, or was his rational side trying to regain his balance in midair? He had no idea as his limbs flailed meaninglessly. A four story rooftop was the same as a school rooftop. If he fell from there without a plan, he could die on impact.

He heard continuous sounds of something breaking.

“Gah…”

His groan contained the flavor of blood. He had apparently landed in the trees of the thick artificial woods surrounding the gym. It was a complete coincidence. That may have softened the impact, but his tough uniform was torn in places and a dark red color was seeping out.

But he did not have time to lament his misfortune.

He was not sure why, but Oh Ho Ho was boiling over after learning of Quenser’s death. Royce’s safety could not restrain her now. Heivia did not understand the detailed issues regarding Rush and Juliet, but it seemed Oh Ho Ho could use the Capulet AI Network to take control of Manhattan.

“Hee hee.”

He heard laughter.

It was a girl with long blonde twintails who looked like a fairy.

Had her Pilot Elite special suit come in handy, had the luck granted by the grim reaper’s love provided something to cushion her, or was an excessive amount of brain chemicals silencing her sense of pain?

Whatever the case, Skuld Silent-Third danced nimbly between the trees. She spread her arms, shook her small butt, and took rhythmic steps.

The greatest serial killer was released into the world once more.

“Nee hee hee. Ah ha ha! Ha ha ha hah hah hah ha ha ha ha hah hah ah ha ah ha ha ha!!”

“God…dammit!!”

Heivia pulled out the branch stabbed into his upper arm, tossed it aside, and fiercely got to his feet.

“Where are you, swim ring girl? What happened to Manhattan? What did Oh Ho Ho do!?”

His shouts received no response.

Had that girl lost all authority, or was she simply unconscious?

But he could not just sit around and wait for an answer. Even now, Skuld was spinning further and further away between the trees. After collecting the handgun he had dropped during the fall, Heivia fired twice while down on one knee, but he could not hit with the tree trunks in the way. She looked like she was just having fun, but it was a calculated move.

“Myonri, if you’re still alive, cover me!! If you’re dead, I’m leaving you here!!”

“Ugh, isn’t the Legitimacy Kingdom supposed to be the land of chivalry…? Y’know, like ladies first…?”

A short girl groaned and answered him. She was safe after apparently landing in a pile of recyclable materials – in other words, bags stuffed full of leaves for making mulch.

He began pursuit, but he just about stepped on something with his boot.

Melly’s thin game system was lying there, but an amateur like Heivia had no idea how to even switch screens after picking it up. But when Myonri looked at it, she frowned at the numbers scrolling across the screen.

“Is this saying that Capulet…''isn’t'' controlling Manhattan?”

“Huh!?”

“The AI network’s resources are actually being sent to some other task. Um, like if a mischievous cat won’t stop after you scold it, so you distract it by drawing its attention elsewhere. So Oh Ho Ho might be manually operating Manhattan now that it’s free.”

“But the Rush and Manhattan are entirely different machines, right!?”

“I don’t know how it works either!!”

Neither of them were experts, so they would not find the answer by staring at the screen.

For now, they had to deal with the problem before their eyes. They had to chase after Skuld’s lovely back.

“What do we do about the other people?” asked Myonri. “Like Wraith and Melly!?”

“This is no time to worry about Information Alliance soldiers. Skuld is what matters now!! She’s generally heading west, so is there anything there!?”

“Riverside Park. And the ocean beyond that!!”

It was hard to believe she would try to escape a 20,000 meter enemy by stealing a motorboat or small submarine. But aside from those rational thoughts, losing sight of Skuld Silent-Third would be far too dangerous. Manhattan was the center of the Information Alliance, but it was also a safe country that had never seen war. Heivia’s morals were not so broken that he would let them be the target of a serial killer who had even used the clean wars to satisfy her desires.

He heard the rustling of the underbrush parting and a black-uniformed girl stepped out.

“Capulet is an AI. There is a fundamental difference in speed, but I suppose the work done over the network is no different from if a human did it. The Gatling 033 and Manhattan 000 have entirely different structures, but Juliet and Capulet are directly related. If Capulet can do something, then so can an Idol Elite familiar with Juliet.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had her self-defense handgun aimed at Skuld’s back.

“No, curse that Idol Elite. She isn’t simply looking at what Capulet is doing and controlling Manhattan 000 in the same way. She checked on Capulet’s tendencies and now she’s controlling the Object through a different line that even the AI network would overlook. You made this happen, you bright and horrific serial killer!!”

“Ha ha.”

Everyone’s eyes were drawn to the beautiful girl who danced like a fairy.

Even with guns aimed at her from multiple directions, she did not put her hands up or cover her head. As if to tell the shortest and optimal route to eat shit, she included pointless and playful actions and danced in quick circular steps as she celebrated her own freedom.

She spread her arms wide, bent her back, pushed her flat chest out, looked up to heaven, and spoke in the loud, carrying voice of an actor in a musical.

“Ha ha! Ah ha ha!! It’s too bad. It really is too bad. So Quenser’s dead, is he? And just when I thought I could show my teacher how I had grown. …But it’s strange, isn’t it? The Information Alliance that killed him and the Legitimacy Kingdom that let him die are standing side by side and pursuing me for their own benefit. If – you – ask – me, it’s almost like they’re compromising on something.”

“Damn you…!”

She was not trying to provoke Heivia and the others there.

Just as she finished speaking, Manhattan as a whole shook once more. Heivia had to grab onto a nearby streetlight and he heard a low, twisted voice of resentment sounding from all of the speakers linked to the Object.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you…”

“Oh Ho Ho, you idiot!!”

“I will blow you away, destroy you, and slaughter you!!!!!!”

The ground lifted up.

No, Manhattan itself tilted, remaking the entire ground around Heivia’s group into a steep incline. The ocean had to be just a few hundred meters ahead, but that shortest escape route was now an unscalable cliff. Metal trashcans, felled logs, and even small cars rolled toward them like boulders.

She was receiving no help from the AI network as she controlled the giant system entirely manually.

“Kh…!!”

Heivia clung tightly to the streetlight and looked ahead to where Skuld was madly dancing among all the falling items. She seemed to have given up on reaching the ocean along that steep slope. However, her actions showed her enjoyment of adlibbing.

“Hey, is that all your love is worth!? My teacher’s killer is still standing over there acting like she’s the hero!!”

“…!!!???”

A deafening blast followed.

It couldn’t be. Surely she wouldn’t go that far.

That sensible side of Heivia’s mind was wiped clean.

She had fired.

Did she still hold the reins of that wild horse known as Manhattan or had she lost control of the world’s largest Object? Whatever the case, Oh Ho Ho had fired something capable of instantly vaporizing the standard nuke-resistant Objects, as if to say she was willing to tear large chunks out of Manhattan’s own giant form. Despite the 10 million people who filled that city.

“Owaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

Was it a giant metal shell from a railgun or coilgun that fell?

It might as well have been a meteor. The artificial scenery of Columbia University’s campus garden was torn from the ground. Heivia’s body floated up and was slammed on top of the burning grass. He did not have time to choke. If he writhed in one spot, the flames would spread to him.

“Dammit… There’s something wrong with my neck. I don’t care if it’s the Martini army or Capulet; can’t someone stop Oh Ho Ho?”

“Capulet is working on the world’s ten toughest unsolved problems. AI’s purpose is to support human work, so the allotment of resources can vary depending on the amount of human work being done. If that shockingly extraordinary Idol Elite really is controlling Manhattan 000 entirely on her own, Capulet may have decided none of its resources were necessary.”

“That’s not what I was-…ow, did my neck just crack!?”

“This is not a normal response. Capulet is more like a cat than a dog. Curse that Idol Elite. She’s already started figuring out how it works. Instead of recklessly shutting it out, she’s distracted it from the tissue box by drawing its attention to the cat toy. That way it withdraws its resources from the Manhattan 000.”

The problem was that Oh Ho Ho was not calmly selecting targets to attack. It was someone else who fully controlled this scene.

“Ah ha, ha ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

They heard the innocent laugher of a child given a new toy by Santa Claus. Skuld danced with her blonde twintails and large decorative ribbon spread out behind her and her back moved into the distance beyond the flames and smoke. Instead of defying the newly-formed steep slope, she gave up on the shortest route to the ocean and returned to densely-populated Manhattan.

“What happened to Oh Ho Ho’s power of friendship!?” asked Heivia.

“Weren’t you just saying something about the Information Alliance soldiers not mattering?” asked Myonri. “More importantly, that’s Harlem over there. If she cuts through there, she can still reach the ocean. And even if she doesn’t go that far, there could be heliports everywhere around here.”

“That G-cup’s dad was in the university, right? What do you think? She’s keeping all this straight in her head, isn’t she!?”

There was a long and narrow area of land to north as well, but Skuld had not gone that way. So was she searching for the water after all?

Just then, a giant form cast a shadow overhead. Heivia quickly slid down the steep grassy slope to get away before a mass larger than a refrigerator crashed into the ground, crushing the metal pillar he had been clinging to.

It was a clear die with 3 meter sides.

Someone who looked like a beauty pageant winner was contained inside as if time had stopped for them.

“Hey…”

“Is that resin or something?”

Heivia and Myonri was dumbfounded as the burning lawn unnaturally swelled up from below. Was this another of Manhattan’s abilities? Something like clear ivy rose like large snakes rearing their heads. They tangled around the nearby buildings, took the mysterious cubes with them, and came to a complete stop.

Hadn’t Melly said the movable parts mimicked a plant’s structure? Something about turgor pressure? In that case, the clear ivy may have been trees and the dice containing humans may have been fruits.

Civilians could not take a ride on a normal Object.

So with an Object measuring more than 20,000 meters, not even a professional fighter pilot could bear the inertial forces. Then was the Manhattan a waste of ability? No. This was the answer to the problem presented by combat mobility.

By sealing the people away and putting them in a state of suspended animation, the harmful effects could be prevented. The skyscrapers would not have been able to withstand the horizontal shaking of true combat mobility, so the strange ivy was wrapped around them to provide the support needed to prevent a collapse.

Oh Ho Ho intended to provide this assistance to all ten million people in the city.

There was no denying it now. Based on Myonri and Wraith’s opinions, it was a clear possibility that Oh Ho Ho could manually control the entirety of Manhattan with just her ten fingers.

“Are you kidding!? How self-righteous can she be!?”

The Information Alliance civilians might be safe with the reinforcement and protection, but if the enemy Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were caught in that, they could easily find themselves in a cell or a forced labor camp the next time they opened their eyes. If they were made a specimen of cold sleep at room temperature in those cubes, their life was effectively over. The risk was greater for Heivia and Myonri, so they began running without worrying about Wraith.

The Object could have its rampage without any risk of killing the people.

They had to continue pursuing Skuld while being pursued by the out-of-control Oh Ho Ho. That high-IQ serial killer was developing a method of manipulating Manhattan and Oh Ho Ho who should have been the greatest threats to her.

They heard what sounded like a heavy freight train moving along the road.

“Oh, no! Watch out for the road! There’s a combat train loaded with heavy cannons there. This looks different from those Bullmites and the like. Get behind the buildings!!”

“We can’t go there either! I see swiveling rocket launchers hidden among the parabolic antennae on top of the broadcast tower there! There are at least two with 20 linked boxes each!! They don’t look like autonomous unmanned weapons, so they’re probably linked directly to Manhattan. And the swiveling range overlaps!!”

Was there no safe zone in this city?

Unsure what to do, Heivia and Myonri desperately tried to come up with somewhere for them to go.

“Is Harlem the place I’m thinking it is!?” asked Heivia.

“I’ve heard you don’t want to go there at night or set foot in the back alleys there. In addition to the original local rules, the influx of Hispanic, Asian, Italian, and Russian organizations has made such a mess of the place that first-time tourists can step on a landmine of a taboo at any time.”

But even if it was a dangerous area, it was still in a safe country. Skuld had breathed the air of battlefield country slums all around the world, so to her, it might feel like her own backyard.

However, when they circled behind the buildings, they did not find drug dealers and guns much too large for simple self-defense.

The clear ivy was already wrapped around all the buildings to reinforce them and people of all races and occupations were enclosed in cubes.

Heivia clicked his tongue, avoided the main road while on the lookout for a special camera that stuck out through the small holes in manhole covers, and spotted blonde twintails lightly dancing in the distance.

It was Skuld Silent-Third.

“!!”

He gave no warning this time. Heivia aimed his gun at her like a machine, but she must have seen his reflection in a show window or side mirror because she placed her small hands around her mouth like a megaphone and shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Shoot this coldblooded boy!! Doesn’t it piss you off to see him doing his job like normal even though Quenser’s gone!?”

“Ahhhh!! Uhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!?”

Heivia and Myonri’s bodies were once more tugged to the side and yanked from gravity’s grasp. What had been a wall covered in wall art of a jazz player had transformed into the ground by the time their feet reached it.

They did not have time to be surprised by every little thing.

They ran along the wall to pursue Skuld. Heivia fired his handgun a few times along the way, but Manhattan would shake to the left or right each time and he could not aim properly. If he was not careful where he stood, he could easily “fall” into the empty gap of the main road which continued for dozens or even hundreds of meters.

“Ugh, we’ve been standing on the wall for more than a minute now! Is this not a temporary thing!?”

“It depends on how she’s doing it, but if she just spins around in one place, it could last for years. This Object could maintain a 1G environment even if it was launched into space.”

That said, Oh Ho Ho was in a state of extreme confusion. She seemed unable to focus on any one thing, so it was more like they were thrown out into a storm of violent winds blowing in from every direction. An electric car could not support itself and was thrown sideways and a large dumpster fell from the sky. Using a car or motorcycle in this environment would actually be more dangerous. With each intermittent cannon blast, the skyscrapers along the line of fire were mercilessly destroyed and the rubble poured into the road like an avalanche. The very scenery seemed to distort around them, so the course of pursuit they planned to run down would crumble every few seconds and they would have to think up a new one. At this point, they were not really sure whether they were pursuing Skuld or simply trying to survive.

“The next thing they knew” was the best way of putting it.

While Heivia and Myonri ran recklessly through Harlem, they found themselves on the coast. This had likely been the border of the Harlem River to begin with. The fairy-like murderer hopped across the colliding yachts and cruisers still moored there. She finally hopped into a high-speed motorboat that probably cost as much as a house.

“Skuld Silent-Third!!”

“Whoops.”

It was a casual thing.

The twintailed demon broke the keyhole with her heel, turned back their way, gave up on hotwiring it, and snapped her fingers.

“After coming all the way to the middle of the Information Alliance, I was hoping to get the powerful engine of a Rosen Kavalier…but oh well. Still, it’s true I also kind of wanted to get a taste of my own death.”

“Let’s end this. The world has enough problems without you. So I’ll end it here. I’ll return you to your grave where a ghost like you belongs!!”

“You can try, but doom is already on its way.”

Skuld placed a hand on her a hip that looked as fragile as glass and pointed her other hand straight up.

A moment later, the Manhattan’s cannon blast arrived.

The entire scene was blown away.

It affected the docks, all the yachts and cruisers moored there, and even the uncountable number of skyscrapers knocked down along the line of fire.

Heivia himself was freed from gravity’s hold.

He may have flown up dozens…no, more than a hundred meters.

The next thing he knew, the ocean’s surface filled his vision.

It felt like landing on solid concrete. It did not matter what he thought or did just before hitting. The shock of impact swiftly took away Heivia Winchell’s consciousness.

===Part 3===

When Heivia Winchell awoke next, he initially could not piece his memories together in order.

What had happened to Skuld, Oh Ho Ho, Myonri, Lendy, and, well, everything?

But the first thing that moved into view was a different face.

He was lying inside a room that felt like a steel box and the Legitimacy Kingdom officer who had abandoned him was looking down at him.

It was Frolaytia Capistrano.

“!!”

(I’ll kill that traitor for abandoning us!!)

The chain of command and hierarchical society meant nothing. Heivia practically sprang up, moved his arms out on reflex, and tried to grab her collar and constrict her carotid artery, but she grabbed his wrists and mercilessly threw him to the floor located a level below the medical bed.

“Ugh, uwehh… Dammit, I see our busty commander is as sadistic as ever. That rules out this being a convenient dream…”

“So you’re awake. That’s what I wanted to know. Now, get back out there. We are seriously lacking in personnel.”

“…Wait, what happened now? You don’t even need to question me?”

“Time was not frozen while you were asleep. Myonri has already filled us in on most everything and the Information Alliance group has corroborated it. That group being Melly Martini Extradry, Lendy Farolito, and Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.”

Hearing the name of the girl who had shot Quenser felt like having a nail slowly driven into his heart. But if he let that get the better of him, he would be no better than Oh Ho Ho and her rampage in the Manhattan.

Frolaytia had referenced the Legitimacy Kingdom and the Information Alliance, but that did not cover everything.

“…Then is the Faith Organization’s Skuld Silent-Third still at large?”

“That is certainly a problem, but let’s start with what we can handle now. That means the Manhattan.”

The busty silver-haired commander gestured back with her index finger. She was apparently telling him to go with her. That suggested he really was being sent back into the war. He could not expect any special treatment for being injured. He had essentially taken a step into the afterlife, but as Frolaytia guided him to the medical room’s exit, she looked back and spoke to him.

“There is a lot I would like to say…but for now, good job returning alive. For that you have my praise.”

“…A lot more of us didn’t make it.”

“Yes. It’s a shame what happened to Quenser.”

Once they stepped out into the corridor, it became clear they were on some kind of warship. He found it unlikely, but had they approached the Manhattan to collect him and the others as they floated in the ocean? That did not seem realistic. It would have honestly been suicide.

“It was fortunate that coincided with our fourth recon mission. The battle line had moved somewhat because the Princess was engaged in a quick battle with the Manhattan, so we collected you once that area of ocean was free. Then again, one side of the Baby Magnum was fried as a result.”

“…”

“To be honest, we have to conclude defeating that thing with an external attack is not possible. Even if it was risky, we wanted to collect some people who had internal information.”

…She must have used that excuse to forcibly convince the higher ups.

Heivia’s group had not simply been abandoned and written off in the paperwork. They had been collected alive. The Manhattan had to be moved away to do so. Just how much of a tightrope walk had the Baby Magnum risked to push that monster back a mere meter? And how many times had she had to do so back to back? The Princess had fought on the front line with no hope of victory and Frolaytia had fought against the high-ranking officers back in the safe countries, so they had to have worn down their souls.

They had given it their all.

But if they had only been a little faster…

“The crux of the issue has shifted from the Martini Series to the Information Alliance Idol Elite. Is that correct?”

“Yes…”

Once they arrived at the ship’s briefing room, many eyes gathered on Heivia. In addition to the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers, he saw Lendy, Melly, Wraith, the aide young man, and some other Information Alliance people in one corner. Their respective standpoints had changed. It was now their turn to be on a bed of nails, but given how they had treated him, Heivia was not about to show them any kindness. They needed to be thankful they had been collected at all.

Heivia then realized that he stood out as much as the Information Alliance group.

It was true most everyone here was Legitimacy Kingdom, but they were primarily new faces who had been gathered together here. The losses had just been too great, so Heivia and Myonri stood out even though they had been with the group from the beginning.

“Hi, Lilim Gazette, Age 17. So you managed to survive too, huh?”

“…I’ve realized something. The trick to a happy life is to blend into the group and not stand out. I can’t believe you people who push your way to the front at times like that…”

The dark-eyed girl was apparently carrying another trauma with her. She was curled up on a folding chair with her arms around her raised knees.

Frolaytia left Heivia, stepped up onto the podium, and operated the projector as she opened her mouth.

“We were already aware the Manhattan was a problem, but the situation has changed. This here is Melly Martini Extradry. She is the Martini Series tasked with defending New York and, hard as it is to believe, she is also the Object’s original Pilot Elite. As you can tell from the fact that she is here and Manhattan continues to move, it has left her control.”

When everyone’s gazes fell on her, the girl in a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper began to tremble for some reason. Unlike the previous potatoes, these were all new faces, so her tension value may have been reinitialized.

“Gh!?”

Melly seemed somehow excited and then her spine jerked backwards like a jolt of electricity was running down it.

“Ah, ghh… When I’m not linked with the Manhattan 000, this is really hard on my spine.”

She seemed to be putting up with something.

Also, her voice was no longer supported by the ring’s speakers. The ring was apparently a wireless accessory for the Manhattan 000 rather than a device linked directly to Capulet. It could function on its own in safe mode, but that only allowed the ring itself to move around slowly.

She took a deep breath to suppress something and then switched over to her serious mode. She folded up her arms and legs like a fetus on the giant ring and she held the thin game system to her chest.

“This probably goes without saying, but none of this would be a problem if I was capable of regaining control of Manhattan. That Idol Elite has completely taken it from me. 831. Sorry about that.”

An image of Manhattan was displayed on the wall, but it was very different from the streets Heivia and Myonri had run through. The electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon in Central Park had already been there, so this went well beyond that. Large cannons jutted out on either side like giant wings and cannons the size of normal Object main cannons were artlessly lined up throughout the streets. Radars and camera lenses had also grown all over.

It now looked more like a weapon than a city.

“Those of us in the Martini Series pitted our opinions against Capulet’s to eliminate the errors and lead it to the optimal action,” said Wraith. “So keeping our losses to a minimum was seen as the best course of action. If we lacked our full numbers, we could not draw out 100% of our specs. …But that innocent yet dangerous Idol Elite is different. She does not even need to converse with Capulet. She’s doing it all manually. And she’s easily producing more than 100% of the expected performance. Think of children working away with cooking implements in a cooking class only for the kind mother to gently confiscate the knife from her child’s hand.”

“A manual interface. …AI is generally meant to support people’s tasks. So even if there is a fundamental difference in speed, a human should be able to perform any task an AI can. 299. Even if the Gatling 033 and the Manhattan 000 are different machines, if Capulet can do it, then so can the Idol Elite who looked after the directly-related Juliet. No, she might even be able to find a superior line. But even so, it’s hard to believe she can control such a massive system with keyboards…”

“If she did simply try to pit her opinions against Capulet’s, they would only trip each other up and she could not gain the initiative. Just like a cat that keeps getting into trouble no matter how many times you scold it. The Idol Elite was smart about that. AI is meant to support human work. So by controlling the Manhattan 000 all on her own, she isn’t leaving any room for Capulet and she is also displaying more interesting tasks so it will redirect its resources on its own.”

“She kindly confiscates it like a teacher and she tempts it away like a demon. 992.”

“Of course, this is all based on the extraordinary assumption that she can do a faster job without Capulet. What a pain. I’ve heard of AI making humans lazy, but I’d never heard of the opposite until now…”

“Anyway.” Frolaytia ended that line of discussion to reclaim control of the conversation. “Currently, the Manhattan is being controlled by the Elite in charge of the Information Alliance Second Generation Rush. The relationship between Object and Elite is supposed to be one-to-one, meaning an Elite cannot control a different Object, but the software for these two apparently had related development histories. They’re like a parent and a child. And those similarities in the design phase apparently mean Manhattan can be controlled with the Juliet and Capulet’s shared control system.”

“So which one is Oh Ho Ho really controlling? Capulet or Manhattan?”

“We should look at it as both, Mr. Foot Soldier who is only earnest when it comes to clinging stubbornly to life. She is redirecting Capulet’s attention and then controlling Manhattan 000 as a weapon. Like someone avoiding the cat playing in their room while also working on some paperwork on the computer.”

Heivia scrunched up his entire face in response to Wraith’s words. He could not even imagine doing anything on that scale.

“So if cute little Capulet can do something, then the young G-cup wife can do an even better job? You can say that if you want, but is this really limited to just Manhattan anymore? We aren’t going to have other metropolises transforming into humanoid robots and attacking us, are we?”

Frolaytia responded to Heivia’s question by glancing over at the Information Alliance group. Wraith sighed quietly.

“This is only my intuition talking, but I think we can view of this problem as exclusive to the Manhattan 000.”

“Wait, so you have no proof?”

Frolaytia’s voice lowered in tone, but Wraith was unfazed.

“That Idol Elite is using some other interesting material to redirect Capulet’s focus, but she’s mostly treating it like a nuisance. She’s holding Capulet’s reins so she can focus on controlling the Manhattan 000. That suggests she won’t use the AI network to spread her rampage to the other side of the globe. The gears aren’t set up that way.”

“Also, there aren’t many AI-controlled Objects. The Information Alliance is on the cutting edge there, but even we primarily use human hands to control Objects. It should be fine. It’s all good.”

Melly’s words may have been accurate, but they did not seem to carry much weight. The black-uniformed girl must have been annoyed that even she had to risk her life based on speculation because she shrugged as she continued.

“As the Gatling 033’s Pilot Elite, she’s familiar with looking after Juliet which is directly related to Capulet. …The system structure might be easier to picture if you focus on the obvious hardware of that one weapon instead of on the vague idea of the whole AI network.”

The busty silver-haired commander winked at Wraith’s words.

“Meaning?”

“Don’t worry about anything else. Focus only on the Manhattan 000 problem.”

Some images of the G-cup Idol Elite were added above the footage of Manhattan as a weapon. The boxes for personal information were blank because not even the Legitimacy Kingdom’s intelligence department had been able to track that down. That showed just how much the Information Alliance treasured her. And that treatment would of course be the result of her extremely high level of skill.

“Her objective is unknown.” Frolaytia used a baton to point at an image of the sexy idol’s face. “But for some inexplicable reason, it was the death of Quenser Barbotage, a battlefield student from our maintenance battalion, that triggered this rampage. We can only speculate how that was processed in an enemy nation, but the problem is that the Idol Elite has left the military’s chain of command and holds the power to destroy the world.”

The Manhattan’s attack range (based on the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon) was displayed around its location on the map in the ocean off of Central America. That covered the Information Alliance home country in eastern North America, the Capitalist Corporations home country to the west of that, and even some important Legitimacy Kingdom ports down in South America. Wherever it attacked, it was bound to drag the world into a long, drawn-out war that surpassed the usual clean wars.

“But the fact remains that we don’t know what it is she wants to do. Does she simply want revenge against the person who killed Quenser, is she aiming more broadly for the higher ups of the four world powers, or is she clinging to the desperate hope that she can resurrect Quenser Barbotage as a clone, robot, or AI program? Whether or not those would be possible, she can cause a lot of destruction in the attempt.”

“Have you predicted…how far she will go?” asked Myonri.

“What good is worrying about the worst case scenario when we have so little information? Would it help to speculate about an explosion large enough to hit us even if we fled the solar system?”

Hearing that girl being spoken about like a complete madwoman must have pushed her patience to the limit. Lendy Farolito, a silver-haired and brown-skinned commander with a different look to Frolaytia, silently raised her hand.

Once she had permission to speak, the Information Alliance commander opened her mouth.

“I will admit that the current situation is extremely dangerous. If that girl has a manual interface, she might very well be capable of distracting Capulet while manually controlling the Manhattan 000.”

Forcibly avoiding the points against her would have only earned suspicion.

To draw the enemy in and lead them in an advantageous direction, Lendy decided she needed to be careful what information she used here.

“But at the same time, she is the Gatling 033’s Elite and this is her first time using the Manhattan 000’s system. So she is not used to it. It might be similar, but the control system is not identical and she must make up for the discrepancies between the two Objects before she can control this one. She must focus on Capulet’s Juliet-related Object controls while also actually operating the manual controls, so it will be little different from climbing into a brand-new Object. You could say she is taking it for a test drive or breaking it in right now.”

That produced a groan not from Heivia but from the Object maintenance soldiers. They knew how much damage the Princess’s Baby Magnum had taken. That battle had been a series of miracles with her life at risk each and every instant, but for their opponent, it had been no more than a side job to learn the ropes.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“So once she’s done breaking it in, the world will truly be exposed to Manhattan’s fury?”

“That could be in a few days or a few minutes for all I know. But she is not a dangerous element that is plotting to overthrow the world and she is not a cultist who believes in some apocalyptic theory. That I can promise you.” Even after all this, Lendy still intended to defend the Idol Elite. “I assume her actions here are impulsive in nature, so she likely has no concrete objective in mind. If anything, I think we should view this as the result of provocation by Skuld Silent-Third, that serial killer released by the Faith Organization.”

“And?”

Frolaytia remained coolheaded. She would use whatever she could, but she would throw out whatever she could not. So she would not necessarily flatly reject something she emotionally agreed with.

“As I said, I admit this is extremely dangerous. And with that in mind, we need to keep her desire for revenge above a certain level. Even if that means intentionally propping it up.”

“W-wait, she has her finger on a trigger that could destroy the world at any moment!” protested Heivia. “Didn’t we say she’s on a rampage that could start a war between the four world powers!?”

“That is my point.” Lendy enunciated each word carefully. “Her head is boiling over with an impulsive desire for revenge, but once she calms down, she will realize what it is she has done. And she will realize that the destructive power she has obtained cannot change the cold reality of the situation. Humans are most dangerous in the instant mania is replaced by depression. To prevent her from suddenly and utterly losing control, I believe we must keep her psyche at a certain level.”

===Part 4===

She was in a daze.

The Information Alliance Idol Elite known as Oh Ho Ho was not inside a cockpit surrounded by strange machinery. She was in Midtown, Manhattan, New York. Specifically, she was in the center of Times Square which was one of the biggest tourist locations.

Time had stopped.

That was likely one of Manhattan’s abilities. All the people in the square were closed in 3m clear cubes with their looks of shock frozen on their faces. That they still held their smartphones with the lenses pointed outward may have been their Information Alliance-ness showing through.

The scenery had greatly changed. Giant clear ivy was tangled tightly around the outside of the towering skyscrapers to thoroughly reinforce them so they would not collapse from the movements of the world’s largest Object. They were harder than steel beams, more flexible than muscles, and designed to allow any external force to escape safely.

Was this heaven or hell?

Either way, the ringlet curls girl spoke weakly in that strange and unfamiliar world.

“Now I’ve done it…”

The extremely bitter and heavy feeling she felt may have been similar to the “sage time” whispered of on the internet.

No one responded to her, of course. Oh Ho Ho thought about the situation while touching the cold surface of a giant die containing a mother protecting a stroller.

[[Image:HO_v15_363.png|thumb]]

She hated it.

She hated the world beyond all measure.

…But what exactly was she supposed to do now? It was clear as day that nothing she did now would bring Quenser back. For the Oh Ho Ho who performed as the G-cup top idol using the Information Alliance’s 3D modeling, perfectly recreating an individual using AI, robots, clones, virtual reality, or other methods seemed plausible enough, but none of those would ''really'' be him. She recalled the 4m G-cup idol she had been operating earlier. It simply was not the same. She wanted to see Quenser again. That was a grand and emotional task, but asking the adults for the highest quality body pillow made from all sorts of cutting-edge technology was not what she wanted.

In fact…

(Th-the adults must be working hard to figure out why I went nuts… O-ohhh, it’s so embarrassing!! Are they giving out all my information!? Are they posting blown-up pictures of me on the briefing room screen!?)

In addition to her personal feelings as a teenage girl, this was also dangerous for her side job as an idol.

Her entire face grew bright red, but she could not turn back time. She hoped the Information Alliance would do its things and seal away all that information as national secrets.

“…Sigh.”

Staying here would accomplish nothing. But going elsewhere would not change anything either.

Her small stomach growled inside the silence of a city devoid of human voices. She wondered if feeling hungry like normal was a good sign. She was surprisingly resilient to stress, so she looked around and found she would have a hard time even finding a burger with everyone enclosed in resin. It looked like she would have to wander around in search of a bread vending machine or something. And it would have to be one that accepted the e-money from a smartphone or card. As a top-level Pilot Elite and a top idol, Oh Ho Ho was not the type to walk around with change. Even tips were paid electronically these days.

But then one piece of clear ivy smoothly bent over to her. It was thicker than her arm and the tip opened in front of her face like a beautiful flower made of crystal. Something like sticky nectar dripped out. The Manhattan 000 was supposedly being controlled by Oh Ho Ho via countless keyboards, but when she got distracted, Capulet would move in to fill the gap.

AI was meant to support human work. When she came to a stop, Capulet moved its resources back in.

Oh Ho Ho gave the dripping clear liquid a very troubled look.

“…Are you telling me to eat that?”

Her voiced question received no response.

She had no idea how much it was all linked, but as her doubts grew, the presence of the AI network also grew. It was like a GPS navigation app that mistakenly thought the user was lost and provided predictive route popups and control tip popups when they had only stopped in front of a vending machine to take a break.

Oh Ho Ho hesitantly scooped some up on her special suit’s fingertip, moved her mouth in hesitation, and finally squeezed her eyes shut and stuck her finger in her mouth. It was unexpectedly sweet and thick. It reminded her of a diet drink that was meant to fill the stomach. She used one hand to brush her hair off of her cheek like she was using a park water fountain and she stuck her tongue out toward the clear flower for more of the mystery health food.

“Nn…gulp. Gulp, gulp.”

It did not seem harmful.

As a Pilot Elite, she was used to the stimulation of many different chemicals on her tongue, so she had decent instincts for such things. If it was dangerous, she would have known as soon as it touched the tip of her tongue.

“Pwah. Hmm, I would get tired of this pretty quickly…”

Her comment was answered by more and more ivy approaching in much the same way. The diet drink may have had coffee and yogurt flavors, but she slapped them aside. She did not like how they kept pushing up toward her nose and blocking her vision, like people handing out tissues on the roadside or full screen smartphone ads.

It was time to drive them away.

She generally used a console, but she did have an emergency method. She used a one-handed wireless keyboard that resembled a numeric keypad to send the world’s ten toughest unsolved problems toward Capulet and redirect its resources there.

(Phew…)

Once the biological desire for food was met (albeit in an unconventional manner), her thoughts could face the realistic problem. In that utterly silent city, Oh Ho Ho returned to a work van parked on the curb in Times Square. The windowless back space contained a single seat surrounded by keyboards and it was normally used as a mobile console room for remotely controlling the powered suit, but that had changed.

It was now an indirect cockpit for fully controlling the Manhattan 000, the world’s largest Object. Melly Martini Extradry and the thousands of other Martinis around the world did not matter. Just by moving her fingers and hitting those countless keys, she could redirect Capulet’s attention elsewhere and control the Manhattan 000 herself. That small space had to be far more valuable than a lunar villa.

But Oh Ho Ho ignored the traffic laws and hopped into the driver’s seat which had no connection to the Object. Clear ivy was anchoring the van to the ground, so she used the one-handed wireless keyboard to send the bare minimum of commands needed to have that ivy retract, freeing the van. After lowering the seat as far as it would go so her feet reached the pedals, she grabbed the steering wheel. It was an electric van with an automatic transmission, so it did not feel like operating a real vehicle. It felt more like a go-kart at a run-down amusement park.

She could have changed the traffic lights as she pleased, but with no one else around, there was no need to obey the lights in first place. This was another of the Manhattan 000’s abilities. She skillfully avoided the abandoned vehicles and the people encased in cubes as she made her way toward Columbia University.

She had no idea how much hardware had been linked together to create Capulet or how much processing power it had, but after contacting it, she had realized it was more like a cat than a dog. Telling it to not scratch the walls would only create a confrontation that wore them both down, so it was more efficient to approve of the action while guiding it in a better direction, such as attaching packing tape to the wall or buying a scratching board. That was a lot like Juliet which she was quite familiar with. But even with that mutual contact with the AI network that occasionally attempted to interfere, she could not escape the stifling sense of loneliness.

(Rationally thinking, I can’t force the 10 million people in Manhattan to go along with my selfishness.)

The work van was nothing compared to a 20,000 meter monster. She easily operated the steering wheel to drive the van through silent Manhattan while she lost herself in thought. As she drove down Broadway to approach her goal, she saw the remains of large vehicles and unmanned Bullmites. It was the aftermath of the previous fighting.

Some of them were still functioning, so two or three Bullmites ran alongside the work van.

After arriving at Columbia University accompanied by her unmanned bodyguards, Oh Ho Ho ignored the no parking sign and stopped the van right in front of the university. She got out and approached the second gym and the toppled trees around it. The serverless but coordinated Bullmites followed her.

Finding the person she wanted was not easy.

She had done this herself and should have known the exact location, but it all seemed different when seeing it for herself.

The area was full of clear cubes. It was like cutting open the belly of a giant fish full of eggs. An explosion of her personal emotions had caused all of this. She had trapped them and sealed them away. The number of cubes packing the gym made her feel nauseous, but she eventually found the one she was looking for.

“…Father…”

He was a sickly-looking middle-aged man with a beard.

Even with all this going on…no, because all of this was going on, he had been using his smartphone’s voice recorder to leave a record of what was happening when his time was frozen. He had carelessly not set the screen to shut off after a few minutes. The background photo of the whole family smiling together was visible through the translucent window.

It was not the top-level Pilot Elite or international top idol he had been trying to protect. He had been focused on a completely different side of her.

Quenser Barbotage was no more.

But that did not mean she could throw everything else into the flames.

She placed her palm on the cold cube, squeezed her eyes shut, and thought. She had already made an unforgivable mistake, but what should she do even so?

If she wanted to have her revenge, she could do it.

She could kill the person who actually did it. She could request a list of everyone pulling the strings and profiting from it behind the scenes and reduce every last one of them to ashes. She could even send the responsibility for the wars and military actions back to the world’s safe countries which enjoyed peace and tranquility.

But. However.

Was that really what she ''should'' do?

“…I need to surrender…”

Finally, Oh Ho Ho forced the words from her small mouth.

“That would be the fastest way to resolve all of the issues surrounding Manhattan. I did all this without thinking, but it is true I separated the possibly-dangerous Martinis from Manhattan. If I return this to the Information Alliance, it should resolve the original problem.”

That decision may have been correct.

It may have been the best available choice in the world created by her decisively incorrect choice.

But there was no guarantee everyone else would also make the right decision.

An alarm rang at the same frequency as a baby’s crying to most effectively draw people’s attention to their eardrums. All of the phones held by the people inside the cubes lit up at once, sending the emergency information into Oh Ho Ho’s field of vision.

It was not that something had been found.

Quite the opposite. More and more screens were going dark. The unmanned drones automatically monitoring the ocean around the Manhattan 000 were being shot down by someone. A great threat was approaching. And the fact that she could not see what it was only made it feel more threatening.

“What is this…?”

===Part 5===

Shortly before that…

“Uuh…bh…”

Rigas Blackpassion uttered a groan that carried the sticky flavor of blood. The middle-aged man was a Captain in the Capitalist Corporations and the commander of a submarine, but he was now so badly injured it was hard to tell whether he was the mummy man in the center or all the medical equipment surrounding that. It was hard to believe he was still alive. Technically speaking, Frolaytia had killed him over and over only to forcibly resurrect him once more, but for now, he was still alive.

A messenger had arrived for him.

It was a crane fly drone that could freely move in any direction by turning its six wings. The collection of delicate machinery was equipped with a camera and microphone and it produced a sound quieter than a fan as it hovered near the window.

Someone spoke through the machine.

“Hello, Captain. Your attempt to trigger emergency demand using the Manhattan has failed.”

“…Levert? Any chance of rescuing me?”

“We have made some attempts through diplomatic routes, but it does not look promising. The Manhattan issue is so large that all of our contacts are putting the requests off until later.”

“Then what is this? Even if you supply me with additional equipment, I can no longer move.”

“I will admit you are in a worse state than I expected, but that leaves us with only one option.”

There was not a hint of disappointment in that machine-like voice. And the young man’s voice continued.

“Captain, if you cannot return to your duties, I would like for you to transfer your authority.”

“…”

“If you could escape under your own power or had died after intense torture, this would not have been necessary. But unfortunately, you still live and remain in an enemy nation’s hands. For the largescale operation we are about to begin, we require the signatures of the operation commanders for all the naval ports on the west coast. Captain, the delay of your authorization is hindering the entire operation. Even if it must be done via camera, I will see this through. Make your decision before it is too late.”

There was no hesitation there.

Giant gears were crushing an individual life.

The mummy man gave a snort of laughter.

“I must know. …What will happen to my family?”

“Our military and the PMC’s sponsors promise to support them in every way. It might be suicide, but your action here is also a high-level military action. Thus, it qualifies for the special high payout life insurance policy you signed up for in place of a bereaved family pension.”

“That is fine then.”

“I have prepared the tool. Just like before, it contains two rounds to ensure you will succeed even if your hand is shaking. I also have the ’12 Highland you enjoyed drinking so much. Single malt.”

The drone contained an assassination handgun small enough to fit in the palm of his hand and a glass container only a bit larger than a vial of eye drops. Rigas twirled the amber-colored liquid around, removed the cap, and drank it.

“What I am about to say does not need to be recorded. Think of it as the ramblings of a drunk.”

“Very well.”

“You are a good soldier. Do not let yourself turn out like me, Levert.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot promise you that. You are already my role model, Captain.”

A slight smile appeared on the mummy man’s lips.

And a dry sound rang out.

The drone swiftly left from the window before the shocked military doctors could open the curtain partition around the bed. There was no need to speak through the speaker since there was no one to hear it, but whoever-it-was did so anyway.

“A decisive judgment with no hesitation whatsoever. A truly wonderful end.”

Another dark flame.

The world seemed to solidify and create only the worst of things.

“The transfer of authority is confirmed. We now have authorization from the commanders of every west coast naval base. Notify every Object already waiting in the Bermuda region of ocean. It is time for an all-out attack on the Manhattan.”

===Part 6===

The Legitimacy Kingdom military in that area of sea quickly learned of the “change”.

When Frolaytia received word from a military doctor, she clapped her hands in the briefing room to gather everyone’s attention.

“Rigas Blackpassion has committed suicide. At the same time, all of the Capitalist Corporations Objects in the area appear to have begun moving. That was some kind of trigger, dammit!!”

Little Wraith interrupted there.

“I question whether they really intend to win. The Capitalist Corporations has the Cayman Islands in the Central American ocean. Their wealthy hide their ugly sides by keeping their money there, so they cannot have the islands destroyed before they can withdraw their electronic money from their secret bank accounts.”

The ocean map projected on the wall was greatly rewritten. It had previously shown the Legitimacy Kingdom maintenance fleet centered on the Baby Magnum staring down the Information Alliance’s Manhattan, but now a large Capitalist Corporations unit arrived from the side.

The operator raised her voice in a shout.

“I cannot get an accurate number thanks to their deceptive actions, but there have to be 20 to 30 in all! And they are all cutting-edge Second Generations!! Did they send in every one of the naval specialists guarding their home country on the west coast!?”

“…This will end the same way regardless. 760.”

That quiet comment came from the Melly Martini Extradry, the brown girl who wore a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper and whose butt was contained inside the swim ring. As its original owner, she had to know the Manhattan’s specs better than anyone.

Even with Frolaytia’s cold gaze on her, she moved carefully to avoid an explosion in her spine that was not receiving appropriate support from the ring that was only barely moving in its safe mode.

“That Idol Elite is not part of the Martini Series. If she can manually draw out more than 100% of its specs without relying on Capulet, not even 100 traditional Objects would be able to defeat her. Normal Objects would have to desperately protect the reactor at their core, but the Manhattan 000 is an extraordinary machine that does not have to worry about its reactors. 350. It does use the same reactors, but its entire concept as a weapon is different. And if it starts to move in ways not even we are familiar with, there is no predicting how far it can go.”

It happened a moment later.

The briefing room was supposedly surrounded by thick steel on all sides, but it was filled with a pure white flash of light. It took Heivia a few seconds to realize something had happened on the ocean being shown via projector. The footage was supposedly being corrected in real-time, yet it was still this bad. If they had actually been there, they might have gone blind.

The female operator shouted a report from her distant station.

“The Manhattan has begun to move. It was the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon!!”

“Damn, be on the lookout for artificial weather changes. Another major storm is coming!”

[[Image:HO_v15_377.png|thumb]]

And once the footage on the wall reached their retinas once more, it showed hell itself.

Manhattan had finally begun to move as an Object of more than 20,000 meters.

First, the central electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon made a general strike which covered a radius of a few dozen kilometers. That dented in the surfaces of the Capitalist Corporations Objects. Once the turkeys had briefly stopped moving, the other cannons opened fire while spread out on either side like wings.

There were railguns, laser beams, coilguns, rapid-fire beam cannons, and low-stability plasma cannons.

There was no grand logic or system to it.

The weapons were simply fired with extraordinary power. As an extension of the most basic of strategies, great firepower was used to wear down the enemy force. Like an all-star pro baseball team hitting homerun after homerun against a quickly-gathered team of amateur boys.

Everyone knew the rules, so anyone could produce this same result if they did the same thing, right? It seemed to display that kind of confidence.

The Capitalist Corporations had supposedly sent in their greatest specialists.

The Offensive Mine, the Octoblade, and the Snipe. They were the top of the pyramid and they directly defended the home country of a world power. There were no greater warriors on the sea. It was doubtful whether Heivia’s group could have defeated any one of them.

Yet it was as easy as taking candy from a baby.

They desperately returned fire with laser beams and low-stability plasma cannons, but as Oh Ho Ho operated Manhattan, she sometimes used low-stability plasma blasts to bend the path of a shot and sometimes swung that giant form to left or right to just barely dodge them. It was like a surfer riding a wave or like a bullfighter parrying a charging bull. Of course, all that moving around could not dodge laser beams, but she used the plasma “deflections” for that. The movements were so nimble they seemed to have no weight behind them. Such a large mass was being simultaneously attacked from multiple directions, but instead of letting thick armor deflect it, she did not allow any hits at all. That was why it looked so absurd and filled all who saw it with terror.

The way she surfed quickly back and forth while taking down the enemy with rapid-fire shots was far more polished than when Melly had worked with Capulet to destroy the five Faith Organization Second Generations. And it looked somehow familiar to Heivia.

Yes, it was a lot like the Rush’s movements.

Also, the freedom of movement seemed to gradually rise with time.

“Dozens? No, hundreds!? How many reactors would it need to force its way through those kinds of actions!?”

“It was plenty shocking and more than enough of a threat for her to move the Manhattan 000 at all by considering the AI network’s methods but using her own manual methods…but that Idol Elite is producing results that easily surpass 100% of the design specs while also distracting Capulet. This is more than I ever imagined.”

Wraith sounded annoyed but also awed.

“She would never hold back against a foreign invasion,” said silver-haired and brown-skinned Lendy Farolito. “Plus, she has 10 million people, including her father, onboard with her. She will go all out to shake free of every last spark if it is to protect those civilians.”

“She’s the one that got them in this mess to begin with!!”

“That may be why she’s so intent on protecting them.” Myonri sounded dazed too. “N-now I’m wondering how the Princess managed to fight… The Manhattan is easily winning against 20 or 30 naval experts, but she fought it on her own to rescue us, didn’t she?”

That was answered by the Princess who was walking past the briefing room while leaning on the old maintenance lady’s shoulder. Due to exhaustion, sweat was visible on her doll-like face and her blonde hair was plastered to her cheeks.

She looked like a girl who had gotten up while she had a cold. The beads of sweat gave off the sweet smell of a girl while the Princess shared her information.

“It wasn’t too difficult. First, I didn’t have to worry about winning. I was only stalling for time, so I could focus on dodging. But the second reason was more important: no matter how extraordinary the Manhattan is, it’s still that loathsome Oh Ho Ho piloting it. It was fortunate I clashed with her in the Oceania District. I already knew the small idiosyncrasies of her movements.”

Just as Oh Ho Ho had learned Capulet’s small idiosyncrasies through Juliet, the Princess had not forgotten Oh Oh Ho’s small idiosyncrasies.

Everyone there could tell it was not as simple as she made it out to be.

Even if every one of the potatoes there was given a cutting-edge Second Generation Object designed to match them individually and developed a plan to attack Manhattan with 1000 Objects at once, not one of them would have agreed to stand before that monster.

But she had done it. She had gone that far, yet there was a life they had failed to save.

Quenser Barbotage had died.

The Princess was too exhausted to brush her bangs aside, but she still made a clear statement while the survivors like Heivia and Myonri watched her.

“…Quenser’s death is a sad thing.”

It was not that she was not shaken.

It was not that she had not been tempted.

“But I refuse to let her start a war over that. I will not let any of the survivors distort Quenser’s death for their own convenience.”

When he heard her perfect answer, Heivia found he could not look her straight in the eye. Did the Princess understand what his action meant? That delinquent noble had been unable to accept his awful friend’s death like that.

Regardless, the situation was underway.

Frolaytia thought with her long, narrow ''kiseru'' in her mouth, and then…

“Since the maintenance chief is away from her post, can I assume the Baby Magnum is back in working order? Then I have new orders for you, Princess. Fight. Please. We too will join the fight soon.”

“D-don’t be ridiculous,” said Heivia. “You mean we’re going out there to get hit by stray shells? Can’t we just let those Capitalist Corporations idiots get destroyed on their own!?”

“Look at this way: we can take advantage of this confusion. We have better odds than if we resume throwing stones after this is over. Do that and it will just lock onto us with pinpoint accuracy.”

Frolaytia cut off the footage filled with bright lights and deafening roars and instead focused on the dizzying changes on the naval map.

“As you know, the Manhattan is an extraordinary Object with a great number of reactors. And the Idol Elite herself is incredible too, so we can’t hope for the weapon to be too much for her to fully handle.”

“…”

“Since its reactors are as numerous as weeds, it is likely that targeting and destroying a reactor will not stop it like we are used to in anti-Object combat. …With that much firepower, it is possible an explosion at one location could start a chain reaction that causes much greater damage, but I doubt that is realistic. Even if they are packed in boxes, there are 10 million civilians onboard if we include the visitors. I have not lost enough of my morals to forget that fact and attempt to sink it.”

“We can’t do this and we can’t do that. Then what are we supposed to do?” asked Heivia.

“Melly Martini Extradry. She is our greatest key.” Frolaytia exhaled sweet pipe smoke in an apparent attempt to calm herself. “Manhattan should be under her control, but that Information Alliance Idol Elite has taken full authority of Manhattan through pure manual control and she is operating it as a weapon. She is using keyboards rather than the original control system. Oh Ho Ho only knows the online system viewed through a screen, so she may not understand the physical design diagrams. Do you see how that could present an opportunity?”

“You mean…” said short Myonri. “Since that Idol Elite is controlling Manhattan herself while keeping Capulet away like a kitten, she might not be in the actual cockpit…? She doesn’t know where it is, so she’s intervening through a cyber-attack opening? And so she might be exposed in an apartment or car somewhere in the city of Manhattan?”

“Manhattan is not allowing a single lucky hit through, but that may be driven by more than simple philanthropy. She can’t have a stray shot fall into the city and reduce her to ashes.”

In other words…

Looking at it in reverse…

“If we knew where exactly the Idol Elite was located, we could make a counterattack. We would only need to crush that single point while leaving Manhattan as a whole intact.”

“You-…!?”

Lendy started to yell something, but she ultimately held her tongue with a bitter look on her face. She knew nothing she said here would get through to them.

Frolaytia glanced over to observe Lendy’s actions as she continued.

“The Baby Magnum will head back out and draw Manhattan’s attention. Meanwhile, our real goal is searching for the Idol Elite’s location. Fortunately, this incident seems to have woken up the peace-dulled higher ups in the safe countries. They’ve lent us a relic of an older age.”

“What kind of relic?”

“A Mobus Variant. Simply put, a laser sniping system is sent into satellite orbit, it circles the earth a few times to stabilize its orbit, and then it fires on a certain point on the surface. Shockingly, it is equipped with an atomic battery. The victory of Objects eliminated nuclear weapons from the world, but as long as it isn’t ‘directly’ used, it apparently doesn’t violate the treaties.” The busty silver-haired commander crossed her arms such that they pushed up her large breasts. “We use that to fire a laser down from the heavens to eliminate the Idol Elite. It moves at the speed of light. The overall power might seem insufficient in this age of Objects, but its speed can’t be beat. It would be one thing if she was in a shelter or a tunnel, but there is no better assassination method for directly targeting someone. It will all fall apart if she predicts the location of this game piece, but if she doesn’t know about it, not even she can dodge it. By the time she notices, she and the piloting equipment will have been vaporized.”

If Oh Ho Ho had known Manhattan’s layout and had been inside the proper cockpit covered in thick, nuke-resistant armor, there would be nothing they could do.

Although that would have changed their respective positions for better or for worse.

“But how do we get that information? You make it sound like spying from a satellite won’t be enough.”

“If the Idol Elite is in the subway tunnels or inside a building, we cannot rely on overhead surveillance. The people packed in resin boxes still have body heat, after all.”

“Surely you aren’t telling us to climb back onto that monster,” said Heivia. “Just to be clear, that wouldn’t be possible even if you made a million clones of me for extra lives.”

“You don’t need to do that,” casually said Frolaytia. “Because someone has already gotten onboard. Or should I say, someone never escaped.”

“…Wait. You’re kidding, right?”

Come to think of it, he had only been told about his Legitimacy Kingdom group and Wraith’s Information Alliance group being collected. But nothing had ever been said about the Faith Organization.

“Skuld Silent-Third.”

Frolaytia Capistrano was another person familiar with the nightmare sealed away within the Madagascar Report. She knew this was dangerous enough to leave the category of war altogether, but she still made the suggestion.

“She remains hidden in Manhattan and we have managed to contact her. …This truly is a worst case scenario, but it looks like our only option is to trust a report from that serial killer.”

===Part 7===

It was less exciting than expected.

That was Skuld Silent-Third’s honest opinion about being left alone in Manhattan. Her plan had been to remain in the center of the city while pretending to be defeated and then send the Manhattan after the Legitimacy Kingdom as they desperately attempted to confirm her death. Once the ocean was littered with wreckage, corpses, and other detritus, she could steal a functioning vehicle and drift through the ocean. In the best case, she had hoped to slip out from under the Faith Organization’s watchful eye, but…

(Hmm, they recovered more quickly than I expected. Restarting all that from here might be difficult.)

The combat mobility had shaken her enough for gravity to lose its hold on her, but that had stopped for the moment.

While rage boiled within the Idol Elite, she had been able to manipulate that girl who controlled the Manhattan, so Skuld would be in trouble if the girl calmed down.

Of course, not even Skuld could directly pilot the Manhattan. She needed the Idol Elite to put in the effort of her own volition. Threatening her would be meaningless. If this conflict ended with the girl’s death, the Capulet AI Network would return to normal. And then Skuld would be immediately killed as an enemy of the Information Alliance.

(Should I kill her father, Royce, to shake her again? No, doing the same thing again would be boring…)

The clear cubes visible here and there contained Manhattan residents with carefree looks on their faces. Skuld had tried picking up a metal pipe and hitting them, but it had been no use. Instead of being solid, they were springy, like rubber or gelatin. Plus, these protective shields were meant to endure the combat mobility of the world’s largest Object. Human hands would not be enough to break through.

That meant she would have trouble killing Royce if she tried. And if she viewed the cubes like Object armor, not even her bombs were likely to work.

Unless she caused some confusion here, she was like a bird in cage while on Manhattan. First of all, the extraordinary Object’s warning system prevented her from escaping and, even if she did escape into the ocean, the Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization’s naval forces were waiting.

(What should I do…?)

She rubbed her fingertips across her slender chin.

(Which option would be the most fun?)

That was her priority, not her life.

And after a lot of thinking, the twintail girl arrived at a conclusion.

She fished through the equipment of one of the many dead Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers and grabbed the radio.

“I guess I’ll contact the Legitimacy Kingdom and save the world! After I do that, I can figure out what to do next!!”

===Part 8===

“Shit!!”

Once she was guided from the briefing room to a guest room, silver-haired and brown-skinned Lendy Farolito spat out a curse.

The Manhattan 000 could not be destroyed with direct firepower, so they were going to pinpoint target the out-of-control Pilot Elite. It made sense, but she could not allow it. She wanted to stop it however she could, but she lacked the actual ability to do so. Even now, there would be two muscular guards right outside the door. Her weapons had been confiscated, so she could not even eliminate those two. She knew the situation was extremely pressing, but she could not find anything to do.

Except…

“…”

Once she judged the timing was right, Lendy reached inside her uniform’s short skirt. She had had a good reason for altering her electronic medical records and implanting an unnecessary metal bolt inside her body to have an excuse when a metal detector went off. She had more than 10 components hidden inside her uniform and underwear so they would slip through a search. Once she assembled them, she had a radio smaller than a pack of cigarettes. The antenna was larger than the rest of the device because it used satellite phone technology. It was originally so she could call for rescue. It could make a call from anywhere on the planet, but to give it such a small size, it could only be used for 3 minutes. She could only give a short warning to the Pilot Elite on the distant Manhattan. Also, the Legitimacy Kingdom was not dumb. Once they detected a signal coming from here, they were sure to restrain Lendy immediately. She would only have one shot at this. One shot with the silver bullet known as information.

She did not care if she was arrested and court martialed. She was willing to live out her life in an enemy nation’s prison or even be shot on the spot.

She had to think.

When, where, and what should she transmit? How she used this one silver bullet could mean the life or death of that girl.

And just before she made up her mind…

“…?”

Lendy raised her beautiful face. Something was not right. As a soldier, she was fairly sensitive to people’s presences, but the pressure from beyond the door had vanished. She stuck the rescue radio in her pocket and cautiously approached the metal door.

She tried silently opening it and found both guards collapsed on the floor.

Lendy had not lived a normal enough life to immediately scream. She quietly crouched down and checked on the corpses. Countless screws, nails, and other fragments had pierced the front of their bulletproof vests. Those were used to increase the power of explosions, not gunfire. Still crouched down, she looked up and saw the knob of the nearest waterproof door had also been sliced off with great firepower. But she had not heard anything like an explosion. Nor had she heard any screams or shouts from the two professional guards.

Was the mysterious explosion the work of a combat engineer who specialized in that sort of thing?

A certain individual’s face flashed through her mind, but…

(No, Skuld Silent-Third should be on the Manhattan right now.)

Then who else could it be?

Whose example had that serial killer been following when she began using plastic explosives for her killing? Who had originally wielded the Legitimacy Kingdom military explosive known as Hand Axe?

Who was that complete amateur who still managed to destroy the occasional Object and had won that girl’s heart with that unique ability?

“Hi.”

When she heard that sudden voice, Lendy grabbed a carbine from one of the corpses and quickly turned around to find someone standing there.

This was completely unexpected.

She kept the gun aimed at him while her instincts told her this was not enough. This person had killed the two heavily-equipped guards without even giving them a chance to cry out.

In that seemingly perfect yet imperfect state, the silver-haired and brown-skinned commander asked a question.

“Who…are you?”

That was the issue.

Even if they were an enemy, she would not have sounded so confused if she had recognized them.

Lendy Farolito had no idea whatsoever who this person was.

“Module Quenser,” whispered the mystery man.

He must not have been the type to show off with his clothing. The gray-haired man of at least 70 wore a cheap gray suit that could be bought anywhere. But he wore something else on his back. …What was it? It looked something like a cross…but, no. It was a sword. He was equipped with a unit that resembled a sheathed double-edged sword. The kind of chains seen on bicycles or chainsaws extended from the sword and attached to gears on his shoulders, elbows, wrists, thighs, knees, and ankles. All of the chains glittered green like emerald.

[[Image:HO_v15_395.jpg|thumb]]

But the old man himself was even stranger. The look on his face was innocent. It was a childlike expression that seemed entirely removed from worldly interests.

“It is very user-friendly, but it leaves a lot of openings when breaching a single point.”

Asking further seemed pointless.

Lendy placed her finger on the trigger, but then the old man moved without warning.

His movements did not seem so much fast as oddly timed.

The green chains produced a disconcerting sound of rapid rotation. Just as Lendy noticed that, he approached like the wind, grabbed the carbine, lifted it straight up, and pressed his other hand against the silver-haired, brown-skinned commander’s throat. Was he trying to strangle her or break her neck?

“Module Skuld. …Yes, this is much easier to use here.”

It seemed very much like a prototype. It was incredible the rapidly-rotating chains did not catch on his hair, skin, or suit. And strangely, the wrinkly old man’s movements were oddly girly. He could have played a female role in the Island Nation’s ''kabuki''.

Or did that have something to do with the name he had mentioned?

“So…”

The trembling of her brown throat let her feel the sweaty hand pressed against it.

“Does that sword-like…thing use the chains to reproduce the behavior of a specific individual? Does it use their motion data to support your own actions with the chains? But I doubt nothing more than chains and gears could protect your body’s joints.”

“We are not trying to do it all with just that. Everyone’s skeletons and muscles are the same, yet successful people’s movements can be classified into their respective fields. Why is that?”

“…”

“What matters is the gait and center of gravity used by the individual. So more than just the simple movements, their individual rhythms form their internal clock which alters them on the inside. And people face the general concept of time based on the planet’s rotation and revolution. Ascend to those heights, and you can obtain it. They say different people see the world differently, and I could not agree more.”

Was the person controlling the machine, or vice-versa?

Lendy belonged to the Information Alliance, but even she found it odd to see an obvious contraption externally manipulating the movements of his limbs.

“We of the Faith Organization stand opposite of you in the Information Alliance. We do not treat the Pilot Elites as a component of the giant military system known as an Object. In fact, we look for the charisma of a strategist or commander in an exceptional individual person and we focus on drawing out their individuality and characteristics as much as possible. Although since that involves things like synesthesia and perfect pitch, you outsiders sometimes misinterpret it as esper research.”

“Faith…?”

“Oh, did I forget to introduce myself? I am Tyrfing Boilermaker. Back home, I am known as the Venerable Elder. I am really not worth introducing, but I stand on the side of good. Of course, my identity is not worth hiding either.”

He was even higher ranked than the Founders. In Legitimacy Kingdom terms, he was a major king. In Capitalist Corporations terms, he was the president of a major conglomerate or international corporation.

“It could be Sladder Honeysuckle, Putana Highball, Mariydi Whitewitch, or even the rumored Nyarlathotep. Oh, excuse me. I was not trying to say we have no interest in the Information Alliance’s people. At any rate, we focus on the body and mind of individual humans. So we gather data on enemy and ally strategists and commanders and then attempt to faithfully reproduce them or escalate them further. It should be no surprise that we would be researching such things.”

In other words, this old man was both a single person and multiple people.

He could freely switch between different strategists and commanders. Did he have hundreds, thousands, even more? He might as well have had countless monsters waiting behind him.

“Since you attacked me – part of the Information Alliance minority – instead of the Legitimacy Kingdom majority, does this have to do with the Manhattan 000?”

“Attack you? Perish the thought.”

He gave a bright smile that did not match his age at all.

He then spread his arms and casually waved his hands which could kill at any moment.

“I have a merciful heart, so if I intended to kill you, I would have done so before you even knew I was here. With a metal jet, I could painlessly slice through your heart from the other side of the wall. To be honest, I want you to work even harder. That is why I arrived to set you free. Only because I was already here, though.”

“Work…harder?”

“I mean, it looks like the Legitimacy Kingdom might succeed.” He sounded exasperated. “I can’t have this ending in an anticlimax now. The Faith Organization has been ready to go from the beginning and the Capitalist Corporations has helpfully begun an unwinnable fight to buy enough time to withdraw their electronic money from the Cayman Islands. With each of their attacks, they inspire more hatred toward the Manhattan. No matter what the Information Alliance as a whole thinks, you cannot avoid being viewed as the aggressors here. That just leaves the Legitimacy Kingdom. If they would only take this seriously, we would have a global war between all four world powers. But for that, we can’t accept an easy ending where the Pilot Elite is sniped from satellite orbit. Faith Organization and Capitalist Corporations vs. Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance. The worst possible result is to settle into a 2-against-2 cold war where everyone sits still and glares at each other. Then nothing will happen.”

Save a life in order to spread the chaos of war.

Rescue an individual to throw all of humanity into the flames.

“What are you thinking…?”

“I wish to save everyone. Isn’t that the natural desire for the Faith Organization’s leader?”

His tone was smooth and she could easily forget the gravity of the situation if she let her guard down.

This old man had an invisible attraction that dragged in the souls of everyone around him.

“This age was a mistake. There is something wrong with these clean wars. Everyone says so, but none of them mention what exactly needs to be fixed to bring everything back into order. And that false sense of understanding is the greatest cause of stagnation. So we will reveal the answer. We will show everyone what is wrong with the clean wars. We will show them how easily that transient structure collapses and that the world powers and the vague distinction between battlefield country and safe country are powerless. Then the people wandering through this chaotic age are sure to see the truth. We will all look ahead to the coming age. Whatever form it takes, no one will attempt to bring back the broken clean wars. Because we will have already proven they were a mistake.”

The Norse myth of Ragnarok did not end with the gods fighting and being destroyed.

After all the gods and giants were destroyed, the story ends with some immortal gods and a few human survivors appearing and creating a new world.

If that final battle had not happened, Odin and the other arrogant gods would have continued oppressing the humans, elves, giants, and other species.

This old man had introduced the nonexistent idea of the Ragnarok Script and attempted to drag all four world powers into the conflagration of war, so was he too a consequence of that?

Tyrfing.

It was not clear if that was his real name, but it came from a Norse magic sword that would take a life and return to its master each time it was drawn but would ultimately destroy its master as well.

He had sent word of the nonexistent Ragnarok Script to the Capitalist Corporations, used that to spread chaos through the Information Alliance, shaken Piranirie and the rest of the Martini Series with active self-denial (even if it was actually an illusion), set the Manhattan 000 in motion, and even released Skuld Silent-Third to sow further chaos.

He was the source of it all.

This old man had drawn up the blueprints for it all.

Lendy grimaced and asked a question of the old man who wore a sheathed magic sword strapped to his back with green chains.

“Are you saying you’re willing to die yourself?”

“If necessary, I will accept any death. Walking out ahead of everyone and providing an example of how to behave is the duty of a religious man.”

He had no hesitation or fear.

Skuld Silent-Third had seemed twisted, but had that really been entirely a matter of her personal qualities? If all cultures sought the power to conquer the fear of death, then the Faith Organization may have focused more on psychological matters than on physical fortresses and weapons. …Yes, take humans far enough and they might just reach this point.

“Now.” The Venerable Elder stepped aside to clear a path down the corridor. “Struggle desperately for happiness. Ragnarok does not simply mean death. It is a small number, but there are some survivors who create the next age. The people around me are trying to make me one of them, but I am honestly not that interested. But you are different, aren’t you? If there is something you care about more than your own life, then I believe now is the time to act, not the time for distractions.”

“…”

“The optical bombing from the Mobus Variant is not much of a threat if you know it is there. Simply put, you only need to hide below a roof thick enough to defeat its specs. Even a standard subway tunnel should be effective. That is why it is known as relic that could not overthrow the age of Objects. It is up to you how you contact Manhattan, but just one quick warning will resolve this: watch out. She might not listen to an outsider like me, but that Elite is sure to heed your words. And you have no obligation to the Legitimacy Kingdom. Protecting their plan is a task for them, not for the Information Alliance. You can shatter the pre-established harmony. There is no value in the old rules of the world which produce nothing, save no one, and yet continue to restrict us all. We must rebuild the world from the very foundation, even if that means tearing it all down first.”

This may have been the chance she was looking for.

It may have been the moment to gain the freedom she needed to save that girl.

However.

“!!”

“Oh?”

Lendy gave up on the stolen carbine and held out a sidearm handgun instead. She had stolen it with some sleight of hand while swiping the other firearm from the corpse. She repeatedly pulled the trigger, but it was like trying to push together identical poles of two magnets. With the disconcerting sound of rapid rotation from the green chains, Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker casually dodged the bullets.

“Back in Madagascar, it seems Skuld feigned weakness to inspire a protective desire. Based on her specs, she should be able to pull this off.”

The old man was far stranger than any self-styled espers and he never stopped smiling. He had likely caught on to what she was doing. Lendy Farolito had not expected to hit this monster with normal bullets. This old man had taken a step into the occult, so killing him would require something like Odin’s spear. Nevertheless, the gunshots had sounded. They had to have echoed throughout the ship with a far more sinister noise than if she had simply shouted. She had informed the others of the emergency. There would be no hiding the intruder’s presence even if she was defeated here.

“I was always going to save that girl no matter what anyone does.”

“I see.”

“To be honest, your intervention is nothing more than a nuisance. So get lost. It affects my purity. The stage has no room for you and your sudden appearance!!”

“You are even more virtuous than I imagined. But unfortunately, I have currently chosen Module Skuld. Her motto seems to be that a strong offense is the greatest defense, so I will likely act accordingly.”

His fingers had been gently swaying, but now they came to a complete stop.

He did not hesitate to take a step toward Lendy as she aimed the handgun at him.

He looked truly regretful, but with the thorough support of the chains and magic sword, the old man perfectly reproduced the sinister and beautiful motions of a serial killer who had experienced the joy of killing in the very core of her being.

“May a peaceful holy age arrive to this sinful and impure world.”

===Part 9===

The dry gunshots reached the busty silver-haired commander and Heivia’s ears.

“Don’t tell me they were given liquor before the mission is even over. What idiot switched off their safety like it’s some kind of festival!?”

“No. Everyone, be on full alert. Don’t assume it was an accident. Assume a rat and hit them with everything we’ve got.”

After all, sneaking aboard a maintenance fleet and attacking from within was the exact strategy they had used against Piranirie Martini Smoky. If they could do it, so could someone else.

The Baby Magnum had already left now that its armor had been quickly replaced.

Even if the Princess knew the Information Alliance Oh Ho Ho’s small idiosyncrasies, that was not enough to call an absolute trump card. Without logistical support, she would be quickly defeated and that would be that.

“Skuld! Something has come up on our ship. We’ll give you some time to act freely, but we might not be able to provide immediate support. Locate the target ASAP.”

“Sure thing. This place is so boring with everyone frozen. There’s no life in them. So if hers is the only soft flesh on Manhattan anymore, I’ll just go search her out.”

“…I already have a really bad feeling about this,” said Heivia. “So what should we do?”

“Data processing,” replied Frolaytia. “The Princess might be able to see through to Oh Ho Ho’s individual idiosyncrasies, but she needs data on the surrounding environment to act on that knowledge. We will act as her eyes and ears by analyzing all the data from the radars and sensors, rewriting it in an understandable format, and sending it to her. In other words, the standard.”

(Even her orders are decent when Quenser isn’t here.)

A fairly inappropriate comment passed through Heivia Winchell’s mind, but unsurprisingly, the word “decent” did not apply for long. As he stared at the LCD display like the radar analyst he was, he saw an unbelievable reading.

“Wahh, wah, gyahh!? Warning, warning!! Something like a wall is approaching. It’s probably a wave produced by the Manhattan!!”

“Grab onto something!!”

The busty commander’s instructions arrived too late.

The wave slammed into the side of the giant warship and Heivia was tossed all the way to the wall. And the shaking did not end there. Their vision rose and fell over and over while the entire ship tilted diagonally. The high and low points of the waves differed by more than 10 meters. It was like being repeatedly dropped from a mountain into a valley.

The desks and LCD monitors were bolted in place, but they flew into the air with the sound of snapping metal. They could easily be crushed by their own machinery in the closed room, like a ball mill that ground up materials with stones.

And it did not end there.

“Report: the waves have knocked the fleet out of formation! At this rate, we will collide with the Cesare positioned alongside us!!”

“Tch!! Can we recov-…no, you wouldn’t have reported it like that if so. Heivia, gather a small group of the more nimble soldiers!!”

Frolaytia shouted that while tossing over a few large backpacks located nearby. They were stuffed full of computers for communication soldiers.

“This won’t end with just the one ship. There’s going to be a chain-reaction of collisions, but we can’t lose our connection to the Princess. We could easily lose the relay equipment on the ships, so make sure you survive and continue supporting the Princess!!”

“Are you serious…? Hey, Myonri, you’re coming with me!! I’m not suffering through this alone!!”

“Thanks for the worst invitation in the history of the world!!”

With another powerful impact, Heivia and Myonri were torn from gravity’s grasp and had their backs slammed into the ceiling. But this was something other than a wave. It was accompanied by the disconcerting sound of thick steel being crushed.

“…Ugh, cough. We really did hit our own ally. This ship is going to sink. The rest of you need to prepare boats for yourselves!!”

“We can take care of ourselves,” said Frolaytia. “Hurry up and get that communication equipment out of here!!”

Heivia and Myonri entered the corridor with the giant backpacks on and made their way to the deck. The impact must have broken some pipes and started some fires because some areas were smoky.

“What exactly are we going to do?”

“Jump over to a surviving ship. Give this your all. If we fall into the ocean wearing these, it’s over. C’mon!!”

After pressing his shoulder against the metal door to push it open, a powerful gust of wind pushed back at them.

The sky had been perfectly clear before, but it was now filled with thick storm clouds. It felt as oppressive as being buried alive below the bedrock.

“Dammit, is this because of that electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon!?”

In the blowing rain, the giant gray ship was as misshapen as a crushed candy box. A destroyer that was meant to protect them from external threats had collided with their small aircraft carrier.

While focusing on the wind, Heivia and Myonri jumped over the bent surface of contact to board the other ship. There was of course no guarantee of safety. If their leg was caught between the two ships, it would be bitten off by those steel teeth.

“Is this really the right thing to do!?” asked Myonri. “I feel like all those missiles are about to explode!!”

“Look ahead. See that burning supply ship approaching!?”

“Gyah!!”

“Just jump to the next one, idiot!!”

There was no hope of putting out that fire, so the crew would be jumping into the ocean. Just as Heivia and Myonri jumped onto a radar ship that approached at just the right time, the flaming supply ship collided with the destroyer that had more missiles than guns.

What followed was like an accident at a fireworks festival. Countless missiles and torpedoes were blown away inside their metal tubes in a chain reaction of explosions. Some were anti-air, some were anti-surface, some were anti-ship, and some were anti-sub, but they would all blow a flesh-and-blood human to smithereens.

“This is the worst!!”

Despite what Heivia shouted, they had yet to see how bad it could get.

Myonri was the first to notice. Radars were attached to the front wall like tiles or a bug’s compound eye and the light next to them had changed from green to red.

“Ah, the radars are activating!!”

“Are you kidd-…aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!?”

They could only scream.

Just before they were hit by microwaves far more harmful than a microwave oven, they pushed open a metal door and dove into the protected ship. Their soaked uniforms were heavy. It was no longer just the communication equipment on their backs. They felt like they had weights hanging from every part of their body.

“Damn, is my big magnum all right!? That didn’t fry humanity’s greatest treasure, did it!?”

“I think it fried your brain first! You can stick the contents of a balled-up tissue under the microscope later! We aren’t safe here either, so we need to get out of here!!”

The next impact was more of an explosion.

With lots of sparks, the ship’s lights went out, but they did not have time to worry about that. One of the destroyer’s shells or missiles must have hit because a nearby wall was torn away, leaving a gaping hole.

“Ah.”

Just as they felt the floor shaking below them, Heivia and Myonri tumbled toward that large hole.

And right before they fell, a giant dark submarine parted the water and surfaced like a whale.

Heivia and Myonri just barely managed to avoid falling into the water with so much extra weight, but they could not exactly rejoice. That spectacular emergency surfacing was shown off in military exercises, but it was generally only done in a crisis when the submarine needed air.

“It’s not just on the surface. Are they colliding with each other like billiards balls below the water too!?”

This would not last forever.

The gray ocean was full of debris: a ship’s armor panel, a large tank, a pin-up poster, etc. Even without the heavy communication equipment, if they fell into the water, they would probably be crushed between the jagged metal floating in the waves.

“Eek, eek…”

“Myonri, brace yourself!! Roll off and I’ll have to give you the mouth-to-mouth punishment!!”

“No, thank you! And how much do you hate yourself to acknowledge it would be a punishment!?”

At this rate, Heivia and Myonri would be killed by their allies before the Princess was killed by the Manhattan.

But then a familiar voice reached them over the giant communication equipment they wore on their backs.

“Report, report. Target located.”

“Skuld?”

“One, three, cypher, alpha, lima, bravo. I repeat: one, three, cypher, alpha, lima, bravo. You can look that up on the grid, right? Then hurry up and finish her off with that laser!!”

===Part 10===

“Gh…”

Lendy Farolito held her right side, leaned back against a corridor wall in the sinking ship, and slid down to a sitting position. Her vision flashed in and out. She went limp and could not lift her butt from the floor. She had been stabbed by a jagged piece of metal, probably a byproduct of an explosion. It was less than 20cm, but the fact that it was duller than an industrially-made combat knife made it a brutal fang.

Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker was no longer there.

Would she survive or not? She did not know.

But the silver-haired, brown-skinned officer had something more important than her life.

Her trembling hand reached into her pocket and produced an emergency radio smaller than a pack of cigarettes. She extended the antenna which was larger than the rest of the device.

(It isn’t…broken. Good. Thank goodness.)

Her actions here might be the worst possible move which would bring ruin to the world.

It might lead to a war that would throw all four world powers into a sea of flames, just as that old man wanted.

But.

Even so.

Lendy Farolito had something she wanted to protect even if it meant making an enemy of the world.

“…”

And.

She hit the switch with her thumb.

With a scratchy voice, she called a certain name and then raised a shout like she was coughing up blood.

“Get away from theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!!”

===Part 11===

When the ringlet-curls girl all of a sudden left the work van, Skuld Silent-Third stuck out her tongue while observing from afar. She first crouched down and placed her hands over her head.

“Uh, oh.”

The strike from the heavens blew away the thick clouds overhead. The work van was mercilessly blown away in an orange blast before being literally vaporized. The laser itself was invisible, but a light as bright as welding surged out from the center of the impact point. That temporarily blinded the serial killer, but she could rely on her other senses.

She could tell just by licking her lovely lips.

(She’s there. She hasn’t been vaporized. The air doesn’t taste like flesh.)

The attack had opened a hole, but the dark clouds must have closed it again. Since they did not immediately fire a second shot in that storm, the light and heat of the hit may have prevented them from getting an accurate view from orbit. Or maybe it took time to charge, or could only fire a single shot in the first place.

Whatever the case, the Pilot Elite had noticed the Mobus Variant, that optical bombing weapon targeting her from orbit.

She would not let that happen again.

She could defend against it by simply moving into a nearby subway station.

“Now, then.”

Skuld looked around as her vision gradually returned, but she did not see anyone. However, the girl had done a poor job of hiding. She was a fellow Elite, but she must not have been the fighting type. If Skuld used her hunter’s nose to track her, she could kill her. She could recover from this failure. The girl was probably somewhere on the Columbia University campus.

(But what should I do?)

She scratched her twintailed head and shook her small butt in time with the music playing around her while she began the pursuit. Before long, she saw the slender form curled up behind the counter of a café near the impact point. She was far smaller than Skuld had expected from how the others had talked about her. The actual blast had not hit her, but it looked like her entire body had been exposed to the secondary shockwave and small fragments. Without her special suit, her soft skin would have been shredded. Still, she would have difficulty moving very nimbly right away. She had shown an impressive attachment to life simply by dragging her body this far while nearly drowning in the tiny puddles on the ground.

“Are you…”

“Hm?”

“…going to…kill me…?”

The girl looked like she would kick the bucket all on her own, so Skuld clicked her tongue at that question. She liked killing fresh lives. Their death felt so raw specifically because they put up a fierce resistance and she had to restrain them with both hands. Skuld was a hopeless serial killer, but she was not cruel enough to torment a defenseless elderly person while pretending to provide care.

Also, what would await her if she followed the Legitimacy Kingdom’s instructions to the end? Would she be handcuffed, judged in a foreign military court, and thrown in a cell for the rest of her life?

And even if she was returned to the Faith Organization, what would happen to her there?

(I’d rather not be put to sleep with drugs so I can be observed by those perverted old men.)

Despite what she had told Heivia and the others, she had been dissatisfied with that.

That left only one answer.

Skuld placed a hand on her skinny waist.

“I’m done. You’re not my type.”

“What?”

“Have you not read the Madagascar Report? If you were a boy who looked like that, you would score a perfect 100, but you really are just a girl. That’s too straightforward and boring.”

Also, the work van being used as a mobile console room had been vaporized. If the Legitimacy Kingdom’s view was correct, that Idol Elite had been using a great number of keyboards. Once those were lost, she was done. Even her one-handed wireless keyboard was useless without the console to link back to. Most likely, this Elite could not do anything even if she did find the actual cockpit. The layout would be entirely different from what she had taught herself.

That meant the Pilot Elite could not control the extraordinary Object on her own any longer.

Simply put, the war was over.

“Ahh, ahh. Nothing’s better than my teacher. Cute like a girl but willful like a boy. You can’t get any better than that. It was just completely and utterly enjoyable.”

With that simple statement, Skuld turned around.

Oh Ho Ho was supposedly her target, but she was so taken aback, she called out to her.

“W-wait! Where are you going!?”

“To find the cockpit. It doesn’t matter if I can control it or not. This is what my teacher would do. I just know I’ll find something interesting there.”

The twintailed serial killer casually replied and waved without looking back.

And she spoke from the unique viewpoint of a lunatic.

“I feel like there’s still a piece missing here.”

===Part 12===

“I saw some light.”

Heivia spoke from atop the surfaced black submarine while the artificial storm pummeled him.

“I saw some light from the Manhattan’s direction. That was the bombing, wasn’t it? Did we do it!? For real!?”

“Ohh? But that ending would be something of a problem.”

Heivia and Myonri turned around in surprise when they heard an old man speaking like he was joining a chat over tea. While the submarine was rocked by the storm and waves, someone stood on the side deck of the radar ship that was starting to sink due to the missile explosion.

He was an extremely bizarre and innocent old man who wore a cheap suit, carried a double-edged sword on his back, and had chains extending to his arms, legs, and torso.

“Not even Module Skuld can accurately control the Second Generation Norn… But, well, as long as I can move it at all. It only needs to stir enough to point at something. We achieve our objective as long as the great social unrest causes all four world powers to clash. It doesn’t really matter if the Manhattan itself can fight. As long as the people think it can, we can bring salvation to a world that desires chaos.”

“What’s with this extremely immature old man with a magic sword on his back!?”

“Yes, I have no maturity whatsoever. My name is Tyrfing Boilermaker.” That old man gave no thought to his age and he was clearly saying something. “And one more thing: If necessary, I would like to approach the Manhattan now, but first I want to know that it has really stopped moving. I must apologize, but could you send your Object against it to see if it resists?”

“Huh?”

“You can do that, can’t you?”

Even in the storm, they could hear the disconcerting sound of the green chains rapidly rotating.

At the same time, the old man named Tyrfing had disappeared.

“That communication equipment on your back is being used to support your Pilot Elite’s decisions, so if you send out mistaken data, she should charge further and further forward without realizing she is headed to her death.”

“Behind…us…!?”

“Yes, the boy or the girl. I do not care which one assists me.”

When had he jumped over the debris-strewn ocean? By the time Heivia quickly turned around, Myonri was already unconscious in the old man’s arm.

Had he reached his arm around from behind and constricted her carotid arteries? Tyrfing Boilermaker gently set her down on the submarine and began talking with oddly feminine mannerisms.

They had entered an insane world where firearms were useless.

“This is known as Module Skuld. It teaches me by using my center of gravity and gait to alter my internal clock. So as long as that serial killer does not feign weakness, I can even use the blowing wind. You I do not recognize, so there must be no plans to create a Module from you. In that case, your standard techniques cannot keep up with my movements now that I have become one with various strategists and commanders. Too bad.”

“Wait a second. What are you talking about? Did I just stumble into a supernatural battle school story or an alternate-world reincarnation story!?”

“No one has researched humans themselves more than the Faith Organization, so if this world had the capacity for such things, we would surely have gained supremacy much sooner.”

Heivia could not afford to lose sight of the old man as he stood atop the submarine that floated in the ocean along with dishes that looked like a cross between a plate and a bowl, a convenience store bag, lightweight blankets, and other trash.

He knew that, but he could not imagine how he could make the first move. This monster did not care about cover or line of fire. He could approach while dodging a bullet fired straight at him, so what page of the military textbooks was Heivia supposed to reference?

Just then, something slowly extended over Heivia’s shoulder from behind him. It was a beautiful and sinister curve of steel from the Island Nation. It was a katana blade thoroughly forged by expert hands.

The delinquent soldier could not look back, but the words of the person behind him stabbed into his ears.

“I am Bloodrics Capistrano. I shall be your opponent.”

A black tailcoat rapidly spun around to circle in front of Heivia. Tyrfing moved in response. He dropped a small plastic explosive at his feet and grabbed a thin, sword-like piece of armor that had come off of the submarine’s hull.

Heivia could follow it up to the point that they both made a light strike to judge the distance between them.

He also managed to keep up through the third flash of sparks.

But that was his limit.

He had no idea what was happening with the following exchanges.

After some silver and black flashes, he all of a sudden found the two men had their blades locked together. The battle had shifted from active to passive. Meanwhile, the old man was still smiling.

“Bloodrics Capistrano. I have your data recorded. If we both take the exact same actions, this will continue indefinitely. Of course, external factors like our weapons and positions are sure to alter the outcome.”

“That is no more than your personal and very selfish belief. As is the idea that the world desires chaos and the naïve estimation that you are unbeatable as long as you have your special equipment. In truth, I see no basis for those things beyond your words.”

“Is that so?” The Venerable Elder’s expression seemed to accept that his opponent was his equal. “An endless stalemate is such an ugly thing, so I think I will speed this up by altering my body’s axis. Module Skuld. …My apologies if you die.”

An even more intense flash followed.

Bloodrics Capistrano’s katana swung in response.

Tyrfing Boilermaker had seemed untouchable, but his cheap suit tore and dark red blood was visible on his upper arm and side.

But in exchange, Bloodrics fell to his knees.

“Gh!!”

“Injuring me is quite impressive for a member of the 5th prototype generation. And you there. Do not hold this defeat against him. He was definitely the greatest obstacle in my path today.”

The old man defended Bloodrics while also casually kicking him in the face to knock him aside. It may have been due to the Modules he kept mentioning, but his words and actions did not match at all.

“The greater they master their respective paths, the shorter a showdown between two experts will be. Expert chess players will grasp the flow of victory with their very first move. By the time an expert begins moving, they can already see the ending. They will never have a flashy and extended fistfight like in a kung fu movie or a close-quarters dual pistol battle. There is no such thing as a repetition draw in combat. I was always interested in Skuld as a tool.”

How were you supposed to deal with this using the logic of modern warfare?

Wouldn’t he have to purify the demon world’s land before challenging the great demon king? Even that ridiculous thought occurred to Heivia. If he did not do something, he would be killed far too easily and start his reincarnated life in another world.

“Could you assist me?”

Sorry I am so strong.

Tyrfing Boilermaker was seemed to be thinking exactly that.

“Even without you, I could steal the equipment, eliminate anyone who might interrupt me, and do it myself, but, well, I would prefer to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. …On the other hand, I will spill any amount of blood if it ''is'' necessary.”

“Kh…!!”

Raising his carbine may have been a purely reflexive action on Heivia’s part.

The old man only gave him a pitying look.

“Too bad.”

But immediately afterwards…

“Hold on. Are you getting forgetful, old man? Was your precious Skuld Silent-Third really that unstoppable a girl? Or are you indirectly praising us potatoes for having defeated her?”

The voice came from the communication equipment on Heivia’s back.

It made sense that someone else from the Legitimacy Kingdom would be able to contact it.

But that voice!

“In the Madagascar Report, that serial killer wouldn’t budge even if you sent the average Object against her. And guns and knives were useless after she abandoned the Trinity Style and fled.”

By then, the old man must have seen it out of the corner of his eye. Even with the warships colliding with each other and leaving fragments and wreckage floating in the water, there was one thing among the pin-up magazines and dishes that did not belong in a maintenance fleet.

It was colored white.

An inflated convenience store bag floated on the ocean. The number 52 was crudely written on it with thick permanent marker as some kind of sign.

Anything that did not sink would probably have worked.

Because the detonation only required a radio.

How did Tyrfing Boilermaker interpret it?

Did it remind him of Skuld or a certain boy?

At any rate, he spoke in the exact same way as the mystery transmission.

“But bombs alone she could not dodge.”

“But bombs alone she could not dodge.”

There was truly nothing he could do.

The more the old man tried to be Skuld Silent-Third, the less he could avoid this form of destruction.

Heivia lay on top of unconscious Myonri and Bloodrics and used the thick communication equipment as a shield just before the plastic explosive that had silently snuck up with the waves finally detonated right next to Tyrfing Boilermaker.

A wet sound rang out, the green chains arranged around his body audibly burst, and Heivia finally raised his head.

The backpack had apparently stopped the many small metal balls scattered to make the explosion more deadly. Heivia, Myonri, and Bloodrics were safe, but Tyrfing was nowhere to be seen. It was unclear if that had been a fatal blow, but it was unlikely his bones had survived unscathed. And if he had fallen into the ocean with broken bones, he was sure to drown.

“What the hell…just happened?” muttered Heivia.

But the communication equipment had been destroyed, so contact was cut off.

The plastic explosive was likely Hand Axe.

And a certain boy was oddly able to operate marine sports vehicles but not cars or motorcycles.

In other words…

“Is it really, truly you…Quenser!?”

===Part 13===

The raging storm had calmed and the ocean glittered bright red as it absorbed the color of the setting sun.

This was a small tropical island, a common sight in the Central American ocean.

It would likely be described as a desert island. It had a single palm tree and a large refrigerator that must have washed up from somewhere. The island had a radius of at most 10 meters, but it oddly showed no sign of sinking below the waves as a result of global warming.

But at the same time, someone who could land on the tiny and generic island was not supposed to “exist”.

The legends of ships suddenly vanishing in the Bermuda Triangle was proof of that.

Whether intentional or coincidental, everyone who discovered and landed on that island would “disappear” from the world. They were promised the full support of the Information Alliance, but in exchange, the secret was preserved by fully erasing their very presence from the vast network. It was like being rejected from the connections of human society and receiving the position of a god who sat one step removed.

The greatest privilege in a highly digitized society was not to be a king or president who stood above the masses in a high-risk/high-return position where a single wrong word would lead to an onslaught of criticism.

It was to be a skilled hacker who was unknown to the masses but knew everything about them. It was to fall into the gap of that no-risk/high-return position.

No one could escape the far-too-sweet temptation of being an emperor who stood one step to the side.

That was why they had all kept the secret so far.

“What’s this, what’s this? You got here first?”

A carefree voice rang out.

The ocean and the island were dyed by sunset. A twintailed girl had ridden a high-speed motorboat onto the opposite beach from a boy and she walked over to him with a smile. That girl with risqué undeveloped bodylines approached like a puppy.

“You always are first, aren’t you? Then again, that’s what makes you so worth obsessing over.”

“I would really rather you didn’t.” The blond boy slowly sighed. “So you managed to reach the island too, huh? I had a feeling you would find it no matter what you chose or what happened.”

“The Idol Elite was doing it all manually, but only over the network. The route was disguised thousands or even tens of thousands of times over, but the Capulet AI Network had to be secretly contacting the Manhattan somehow. They’re two separate things. So I thought I would find something interesting if I found the actual cockpit. For example, a way to send out an undisguised code for the AI network to pick up directly.”

In other words.

Skuld Silent-Third casually pointed at the large and beaten-up refrigerator that had washed up below the palm tree.

“That’s Capulet’s core, isn’t it? Or was it upgraded to Anastasia for this generation?”

“…”

“No, a network wouldn’t have a core. It would be ‘stronger’ for it to all be parallel so that the system could survive even no matter what part of the world was enveloped in flames. So was there some other purpose? For example, maybe the AI company set this up as a breaker so they could bring down the entire network from here if it went berserk. Or maybe they were just more comfortable giving the network an obvious form. To put it in Faith Organization terms, it’s like how legendary goddesses are always drawn as beautiful women.”

At that point, the twintail girl placed her index finger on her slender chin and tilted her head.

If you forgot she was a pure serial killer, she would have looked like a fairy or something.

“By the way, everyone was saying you’re dead, so what was that about? A funeral gift scam?”

“Wraith put on an act.” The boy shrugged. “At the time, the Information Alliance maintenance fleet had sent down a small submersible. And Taratua’s outside group had only been told to search for the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers. That left Katarina Martini free. She was overlooked.”

“Hmm. So she pretended to shoot you in the head or chest, dropped you in the ocean, and let someone else pick you up to escape in the submersible?”

“More or less. After Wraith pretended to shoot me and dropped me in the ocean, the silhouette of the approaching submersible may have been mistaken for a shark or something. Speaking of sharks, that kind of submersible apparently carries blood to lure sharks away during rescues. Anyway, whoever the target was going to be, that old woman apparently predicted Taratua’s cruelty perfectly.”

It was not the boy who had put on the act or collected him from the ocean, so there was nothing for him to brag about.

Wraith had so hated the old woman responsible for the genius girl project, so how had it felt for her to ultimately leave everything in Katarina’s hands? It would be nice if she had managed to get over her issues with her stepmother during the battle against Piranirie, but had that really happened?

Either way, she had to have been in a tough position ever since. No matter what kind of verbal abuse she received from the people she had fought with up to that point, she would not have been given a chance to clear her name of shooting an ally for self-defense.

Even if the girl had chosen that path herself, he could never make it up to Wraith. Without that choice, the boy really would have lost his life there.

“Wraith let me live because she focused on solving the issue from a viewpoint outside the four world powers framework. That’s why I didn’t report my survival back to the Legitimacy Kingdom. And this was the result. You may have been the only one to reach this island if I had stayed inside the framework.”

“Probably so.” Skuld put her hands on her hips and smiled innocently on the twilit island that felt even more detached from the busy world than a private beach. “But is that fridge really so important? I mean, what can you even do with it?”

Skuld Silent-Third’s indifferent tone made it clear which of the two options she placed more weight on.

The boy carefully observed the serial killer’s actions.

“Throwing the breaker is exactly what Tyrfing wants. The fall of the Information Alliance would lead to a war involving all four world powers.”

“So?” She looked confused. “Whether the world is filled with peace or slaughter, I will still kill. And I want to kill as many people as possible. I know you know what kind of person I am, teacher. You managed to stop me and you learned so much about me, so you must understand.”

“…”

“I will hide within the chaos of war and kill as I please. So a world-encompassing war isn’t a problem for me. In fact, I would appreciate the extra space to hide. Then I can enjoy so much death.”

Wasn’t that what Skuld had come here to do?

It was unlikely that serial killer had gone out of her way to do something unrelated to killing.

Wanting to stop a coming war would seem natural to the people of a peaceful country. But to those already soaking up to their shoulders in war, the two options could be hard to tell apart. Their everyday was war. They killed like it was normal. And to a true madwoman who had freely crossed the battlefield to satisfy her own desires, war was not even worth stopping.

“There’s something wrong with the current age.”

The serial killer spoke from a somehow innocent viewpoint.

Her eyes contained a light never seen in a normal person.

“The four world powers keep talking about these clean wars, but aren’t they so twisted? You understand after seeing so much war, don’t you? Stopping me will not end the tragedy. In fact, continuing like this might actually mean a greater number of victims. But you’ll let it continue? These clean wars focus entirely on being ‘clean’ and don’t protect anyone’s lives, so are they really worth believing in? Plus, we’re from the Legitimacy Kingdom and Faith Organization, but this is an Information Alliance system.”

The world’s breaker was within reach.

This would not end with just the Manhattan. No one knew what would happen, but at the very least, the world would enter a new age. Whatever form it took, there would be no going back. This was a one-time-use breaker with devastating power.

“C’mon, let’s do it.”

The twilight tropical island would provide liberation to anyone.

And a demon whispered there as if tempting a student into pulling the school fire alarm.

That hopeless girl’s voice was a temptation to slothful, degenerate, selfish, ephemeral, and sweet change.

“Let’s end the world. We can end it. Why we do it doesn’t matter. I’ll end it to kill and you can end it to save. Isn’t that good enough? The way things are is so oppressive and boring. So let’s just go for it and see what happens.”

The words of the insane were most frightening when they made a certain amount of sense.

Allowing the clean wars to continue would only mean more vague sacrifices they were barely aware of and it was obvious to everyone that it would not bring peace. Forcibly ending it might indeed require a powerful wake up call. Even if that would come with many sacrifices for a time.

However…

On top of that…

Quenser Barbotage placed his finger on his radio.

That was the deadly trigger which sent a signal to the electric fuse stabbed into the Hand Axe plastic explosive.

“Oh?”

Skuld Silent-Third did not look at all displeased as she stood on that small, twilit island.

In fact, she smiled in apparent enjoyment of her opponent’s reaction.

“Can I ask one thing? Why are you fighting?”

“It isn’t even worth mentioning,” spat out the boy while toying with the clay-like bomb. “I owe Wraith Martini Vermouthspray big-time for what she did. I would have died if not for her painful and difficult decision. So no matter what might happen to the world, I can’t ignore that she wordlessly ordered me to save it. That’s why my objective was this island and not the Manhattan. Running to the same place where my companions were getting killed one after another would have just added another body to the pile. And after my investigation revealed the existence of this island, I knew you would be here. It wasn’t a rational thing. I just knew you would find your way to the last place anyone wanted you.”

“You’re so cool.”

The twintail girl said that in all seriousness.

And like magic, she now held something in her hand.

It was a Hand Axe plastic explosive identical to Quenser Barbotage’s.

Was that part of her admiration for her “teacher”?

The serial killer had not stopped updating. Left unchecked, just how far would her evil grow?

“But you understand, don’t you? This is an unknown desert island, so there is zero chance of your companions rushing in to save you like normal. An extreme battle against an Object would be one thing, but I don’t see how you can defeat me one-on-one as humans.”

“Have you completely forgotten the Madagascar Report incident? Who do you think ultimately brought that nightmare to an end?”

“Nee hee,” she laughed.

This was different from before. Skuld did not even try to hide her killer intent. But this was not the same as malice or hostility. It was more like hunting. She was enveloped in the joy of a hunter who walked through the mountains and followed the footprints to find a great beast that could kill her if she made even the slightest mistake.

“Yes, yes. You really are wonderful… Quenser Barbotage is the best in the world. Cute like a girl and willful like a boy. You’re completely and utterly enjoyable.”

[[Image:HO_v15_435.png|thumb]]

Quenser altered his view of her.

In the end, that may have been all there was to Skuld Silent-Third.

The heart of the Information Alliance, the fate of the world, and even enjoying countless deaths all came second.

What that pure serial killer wanted first and foremost was a second chance at tasting the flesh she had missed out on the first time around. That was all. That was why she had set out for the location he was sure to visit. She was truly insane because she did not hesitate to throw the world’s 7 billion people into hell for that purpose.

At the same time, Quenser Barbotage had to settle things with her too. There was also the silent promise he had made to Wraith. If he did not defeat Skuld, he could not continue onward. That was who she was to him.

With no concern for the world’s breaker sitting below the palm tree as a broken fridge, those two sworn enemies calmly observed each other’s actions.

Bomb vs. bomb.

They glared at each other with the exact same weapons in hand.

“Let’s do this.”

“I’m ready when you are.”

And…

The “choice” that would determine the fate of the world was made on an unknown tropical island.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2

2018-04-25T12:25:23Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 2: Parasite Kill >> Battle for Liberation Within Manhattan==

===Part 1===

Bloodrics Capistrano chose the “beaten up” option.

“Pant, pant, pant!!”

“…G-gbweh. Wait, it would really help your Onii-chan if you ended this attack…”

Frolaytia Capistrano gasped for breath while holding her brother’s bowtie in her left hand. Her dominant hand was of course clenched in a fist.

They were in a military port of the Amazon District where the Legitimacy Kingdom held a lot of sway.

They were a few hours away from the Central American ocean. They had taken a submarine which clearly had too much speed and stealth for civilian ownership. Its distress signal had been picked up and the few survivors, including Frolaytia, had set foot on dry land once more.

After arguing with her blood relative in a guest room for noble visitors, the busty silver-haired 18-year-old clicked her tongue and let go of the trash. She then spoke to the laptop sitting on the heavy work desk.

“Princess. Things have calmed down here for the time being. You’ve gathered enough information, so return to base before you go too far and get burned.”

“But…”

“…I know what you’re trying to say, but if we waste our trump card here, we really will lose all means of rescuing our people from the Bermuda Triangle.”

Needless to say, Frolaytia and the others had not been sitting around doing nothing.

The Princess’s Baby Magnum was a multi-role First Generation that could race along the ocean at more than 500km/h and swap between multiple different main cannon types: low-stability plasma cannons, railguns, coilguns, laser beams, rapid-fire beam cannons, etc. Even if it could not immediately supply a decisive blow, it was the perfect Object for directly engaging the enemy force to get a sense for what it could do.

And what had they learned after firing various types of cannons from a distance with no expectation of a hit?

“Electronic simulation division.”

“We only have rough estimates, but we have finished analyzing the footage.”

Frolaytia spoke to a different channel and received an immediate response from one of the experts who continued working with what equipment had survived. She was clearly exhausted, but there was no dissatisfaction in her voice. Everyone knew it was only coincidence that they had been protected. If the luck of the draw had placed them in the other category, they would have been devoured by the Information Alliance.

“To start with, the Manhattan really does have extraordinary firepower. That electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon is essentially detonating a JPlevelMHD reactor with each shot. By firing that main cannon in every direction like the face of a clock, it could entirely surround itself with a wall of plasma like some kind of fortress city.”

“That’s a lot like an old-fashioned ABM system…or a defensive theory using nuclear mines.”

Frolaytia stuffed unique-smelling shredded tobacco into her long and narrow ''kiseru'' as she spoke.

Laser beams were light, so they could be bent if high temperatures altered the refractive index. Plasma and rapid-fire beams were weak to electromagnetism. Railguns and coilguns used metal shells, so their trajectory could be bent using expanding air or explosive blasts.

Simply put, an absolute defense was possible if you forced it through with enough firepower.

However, it was a strategy only possible for the Manhattan and its hundreds or possibly thousands of reactors.

“But it didn’t do that, did it? It only used the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon the very first time.”

“Yes. And the theory of bending a laser was also used by the Nitrogen Mirage. It still used ultra-high temperatures – albeit not as high – but it achieved that by firing low-stability plasma fireballs around the battlefield and then firing the laser beam or railgun. It was a lot like a rollercoaster. It ignores all existing artillery theories.”

But when the Manhattan had responded to the Princess’s “test firing”, it had not filled the area with firepower; it had returned fire with pinpoint sharpshooting. It had shot down each of the Baby Magnums various shells and lasers like a venomous snake targeting mice or frogs.

The metal shells had been fried with electron beams or laser beams.

The optical weapons had been reflected and neutralized by metal shells.

“So far, it has only intercepted our attacks, but if it goes on the attack itself, the Baby Magnum will not last five minutes,” said the electronic simulation division.

“Ah, you idiot!!”

Frolaytia tried to stop her, but it was too late.

The Princess was already childishly pouting her lips on the screen.

“I don’t mind. Because it’s true. Hehh, hohh, hmm.”

“Listen, everyone can get along when things are going well. The true value of teamwork is when things are going badly. Everyone needs to keep that in mind!!”

“Also,” continued the electronic simulation division. “Including Manhattan’s visitors, there should be more than 10 million civilians onboard. If they are used as hostages, any direct attack will be a target of international criticism.”

“Have you not even noticed the trouble you’ve caused us, you geek!?”

Frolaytia shouted, but the Princess still looked suspicious. She brushed back the short blonde hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, unzipped her special suit, and sprayed a coolant directly on her flushed soft skin. Everyone, including the analyst, was female, so she did not need to restrain herself.

The fact that arrogant Frolaytia had to act as a cushion for her showed just how chaotic the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s situation was.

(Heivia can wait until later, but we really need Quenser back immediately!!)

Frolaytia placed a hand on her forehead while having that very rude thought.

And as stated, they could not use an Object’s firepower to fry 10 million civilians, even if they belonged to an enemy nation. Thus, the Baby Magnum had made sure its main cannons would not hit during its reconnaissance mission.

…Of course, that was also because moving too close before understanding their enemy’s specs was likely to result in the Baby Magnum being turned to ashes by a variety of super weapons, including the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon.

The Manhattan had easily fired a deadly blast from New York to New Caribbean Island – from North America to Central America.

The Princess used her small hand to fan air into her opened special suit and made a suggestion while sounding dazed from the heat.

“Since it intercepts attacks that are not actually going to hit, could we fire randomly but rapidly so it uses up all its ammo?”

“It’s not a bad idea, but remember how large the Manhattan is. Even if it’s forced into back-to-back battles without resupplying, we’ll dry up first.”

What could they do?

How could they supply an effective blow to that monster?

(If a direct attack won’t work, I guess we’ll have to try some kind of trick. Like sending a small group right up to that giant thing…)

Frolaytia narrowed her eyes with a quiet look on her face, but then slowly shook her head.

Had she been infected by those idiots’ way of thinking?

The Princess breathed a heated sigh and spoke with a blank look in her eyes.

“I want to see Quenser and the others soon.”

(Agreed. This is hard work without anyone to shove the most annoying parts onto.)

Frolaytia kept that part to herself and then spoke up.

“Analyst, the Martini Series holds the AI network’s reins, so why do you think they authorized this?”

“That is unknown, including just how many of them have malfunctioned. We simply have too little information to say. But assuming they are not wishing for their own destruction, I can’t imagine why they would send the Manhattan to the front line on its own…”

“…”

“Capulet is an AI network. If it sees no special meaning in the loss of individual physical devices, then it might view even the Manhattan as a disposable game piece.”

“If the algorithm was that digitally destructive, I doubt the Information Alliance would have prospered as much as it has. At the very least, it would not be so accepting of the highly-wasteful lifestyles of humans.”

If not all that many Martinis had actually lost control, it would explain why Manhattan itself had taken action all of a sudden. But they had no real evidence and the situation was fluid. And if the other Martinis were affected in a rapid chain reaction, it would hardly matter.

“Any sign of our people who disappeared at sea?”

“None at all. Our embassies and consulates have received no notification that they were taken prisoner. …We cannot even say whether they are still alive or not.”

“It’s too late to go check the Information Alliance maintenance fleet that was nearly obliterated by their own side. I wish we had at least sent out a spy plane to keep an eye on it, but it’s simply too late. Thanks to a certain moron!!”

Bloodrics responded to Frolaytia’s shout by raising both hands without getting up off the floor.

“Tia-chan, you know that would not have been realistic either way, don’t you?” said the pummeled brother. “Even if you had accomplished something then, they would have gotten serious and vaporized New Caribbean Island.”

An alarmed cry came from the screen.

Bloodrics could not see the laptop screen from his position, but the Princess must not have known that. As soon as she heard a male voice, she blushed and quickly held the front of her special suit closed with her small hands.

Frolaytia ignored that and spoke coldly to her blood-related brother.

“So what?”

“If no one reports on it, no one would know any of your people were left with the Information Alliance maintenance fleet. Then there would be zero hope of rescue for them.”

“…”

The brother’s point made the sister grimace so hard she nearly bit off the end of the long, narrow ''kiseru'' in her mouth. He was right, but she did not want to accept it. Anyone could tell just by looking at her.

There was nothing they could do.

But that did not mean they had no thoughts on the matter.

They knew their comrades were clinging to life on a deadly battlefield across the ocean where they could not even ask for help, but they could not reach out a hand. They wished they could trade places. That was not just a nice thing to say after seeing some tragedy on TV. They all meant it. Otherwise, they would not have forced their exhausted bodies to keep moving and continued gathering information without any sleep or complaint. The Pilot Elite, the base commander, the maintenance soldiers, and the analysts were all in agreement on that.

Bloodrics Capistrano understood that.

And that was why he had done more than ''just'' flee.

“I provided a starting point for you. How is he doing?”

“Rigas Blackpassion was one of the people on that Capitalist Corporations submarine.”

“But you saw that report that he said something interesting, didn’t you?” Bloodrics got up from the floor. “The Ragnarok Script. It seems to be a toy capable of interfering with the Martini Series that forms the core of the Information Alliance. Although we don’t know if they inject something of pure data into their heads or stimulate their senses using pheromones, ultrasound, flashing lights, or whatever else. That means solving this might require more than simply attacking the Information Alliance. This might sound somewhat dirty, but this Ragnarok Script might be an opportunity for us. …If an external attack looks hopeless, causing them to crumble from within might create enough of a ‘crack’ to rescue your people stranded in that deadly ocean.”

“…”

Frolaytia clicked her tongue again and sent a fist into the center of Bloodrics face for getting carried away.

Without even a glance toward her collapsed brother, the sister left the guest room with her laptop full of classified information. She walked to the interrogation room with some large men from base security. There, she found an upper middle-aged man bound by leather belts to something like a dentist’s chair.

The long-haired, gloomy, and timid interrogator girl whispered to Frolaytia. Her face was hidden by her bangs, an eyepatch, a mask, and some headphones, so her nickname when she was younger may have been Kuchisake Onna.

“H-he seems to have lost a lot of blood when Sir Bloodrics severed his hand with a katana, so I need to stabilize his blood pressure first. We should be able to administer the drug after that, so, um…”

“Rigas Blackpassion,” cut in Frolaytia. “The Ragnarok Script. I want to know what that means. Did you really procure it yourself? I doubt a small fry like you is pulling all the strings. What is hidden behind the scenes?”

The Capitalist Corporations man raised his limply-hanging head.

“I don’t expect the war treaties to apply in this sealed room…but my life still has value. Look at my arm. Ha ha. Push me too hard and I’ll die before you can get any information out of me. Treat me with care or you will be wasting your time.”

“Is that so?”

There was nothing more than that.

Frolaytia must not have been expecting anything from the beginning because she casually glanced over at the interrogator who had desperately hidden her face.

“The plan was to loosen his lips by ridding him of his mental willpower with a drug, right?”

“Y-yes, um, we will be using an animal anesthetic. It’s the same idea as someone talking more readily when they’re sleep-deprived or intoxicated. But before any of that, we have to give him a blood transfusion to stabilize his blood pressure…”

“No, that gives us another option. Hold this a moment.”

“?”

Frolaytia pushed her laptop into the interrogator’s arms, shocking the flat-chested girl into silence.

And with a dry gunshot, a dark red hole opened in Rigas’s neck.

“Ah…bah?”

There was a blank in his memories.

As Rigas looked over his sweaty body, he tasted a rusty flavor spreading through the back of his throat, saw dark, dried blood on his uniform, and felt the pain receding. He must have been given some kind of anesthetic.

The Capitalist Corporations officer blinked in confusion at the unnatural passage of time and Frolaytia spat some disinterested words his way.

“Your heart stopped for about 1 minute 45 seconds. From the shock of blood loss. You should be thankful Luce was skillful enough to revive you.”

His breathing was not functioning properly.

He heard a whistling sound with each breath.

“Y-you’re kidd-…”

Another bang.

“35 seconds.”

“Wait, are you saying you-…”

“1 minute 2 seconds.”

“Abbeh. Gurgle gurgle…”

“Oh, that was a close one. You were out for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.”

A yes or no answer changed nothing. To transform him into a human device that would spit out whatever they wanted to know, his mind had to be thoroughly torn down first. The violence would continue until Rigas Blackpassion no longer said anything unnecessary.

Each time his consciousness cut out and returned, the amount of boxy medical equipment surrounding the dentist-like chair had increased. At this point, the electronics probably weighed more than Rigas himself.

For some reason, the interrogator girl (who was now soaked with blood) was gagging and crying behind her eyepatch and mask more than the Capitalist Corporations officer himself.

The look in Frolaytia’s eyes had not changed. The handgun drawn from her hip was still aimed directly at him.

“Not even an expert can completely control the revival. So it might not work next time.”

“…You…what about the war treaties…the fundamental articles on treatment of prisoners…?”

He was killed twice more.

Rigas was now covered in tubes. He had essentially been turned into a living mummy and was nearly encased in the blocks of medical equipment. And Frolaytia’s eyes were even colder than the machinery.

“Blood loss intoxication. That’s the excuse used by perverts with an abnormal fetish for drinking blood or having their own blood drunk. It’s also theorized to explain why a police officer can dramatically stand back up after being shot in the gut. If all we need to do is adjust your body’s internal state to loosen your lips, we don’t need to inject a drug. We only need to cause enough blood loss to leave you woozy. Of course, take too much and you’ll die before telling us anything, so it isn’t exactly favored by experts. And sure enough, you’re approaching death pretty quickly now.”

They were neither killing him nor not killing him.

Her casual tone led the Capitalist Corporations officer to move his tense vocal cords and force out the words.

“Y-you’re insane…”

“Don’t even try it, you fool. I’m the piece of shit that retreated to this safe base while ignoring so many of my people who needed help. And yet you think ''your'' life should be guaranteed when you’re the one that messed with the Information Alliance and set up some kind of conspiracy? Just how convenient a world do you think you live in!?”

He could no longer speak.

While Rigas gasped as he struggled to breath, Frolaytia Capistrano pressed her handgun muzzle to the center of his forehead and roared at him while the heat sizzled on his skin.

“I will do whatever it takes to get the information I need to rescue those idiots. The Ragnarok Script. Either tell me everything you know or you can continue playing ding dong dash at the pearly gates!! Now, what will you do, you piece of shit!!!????”

===Part 2===

“Simply put, it was practice.”

The tall Asian beauty named Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks spoke on the cruiser’s bridge.

Unlike the past, modern ship’s bridges were not all that important. Ship and weapons control were generally done in the windowless combat command center on a lower level, so this bridge was mostly just for show. In an intense battle, the captain on down would have to withdraw from this central point. That seemed like a case of mismatched priorities, but it had gained a new value.

Yes.

It was the perfect place for the privileged class to clear everyone else away for a private conversation.

Although it did require some caution for female officers in skirts because the reinforced glass window extended all the way to the floor just like a broadcast tower’s viewing deck.

“To be honest, the Olympia Dome’s broadcast facility was not all that high a priority. It was better off destroyed, but we could have dealt with the issue even if it was not. Same with forcing the Legitimacy Kingdom to pay reparations. That must have left quite a few bodies behind, but it seems the Faith Organization was up to no good as well. What really mattered was proving the method as effective. …That is, a method of directly accessing the moving Manhattan 000, gathering information, and sabotaging it if necessary.”

“…”

Wraith, another Martini Series, maintained a troubled expression.

Taratua remained seated in her fancy chair and casually clapped her hands twice at her fellow Martini who had safely returned from the Olympia Dome.

“As a giant artificial floating island, the Olympia Dome has many similarities to the world’s largest Object. To be honest, the Olympia Dome is the more difficult of the two when looking only at the infiltration phase. After all, our maintenance fleet and the Manhattan 000 are both from the Information Alliance. If we set a damaged ship adrift and send out a distress signal, the Martini holding the Manhattan 000’s reins will follow the rulebook and approve a rescue even as she argues with the AI network. Simply put, we can get onboard using the exact same method.”

“But how many Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers are left? Thanks to your meaningless harassment, they were driven nearly to disaster and most of them were slaughtered by that flying Object.”

“Oh, is that why you’re so irritable?” Taratua did not seem to care. “Disposable personnel are only valuable when you dispose of them. Can you win a war if you’re too afraid to fire a single bullet? We just have to gather spare personnel from elsewhere. Any new soldiers can be provided the necessary information through training. They work and we profit. Simple, right?”

“Is what you’re doing even war?”

“Oh, it’s war. A war by me and for me. In that sense, I may have wronged you, Wraith. They’re only disposable, but they do have experience packed in their heads. So I promised them your head as a reward for a successful mission.”

“…”

“Given how much the blood had rushed to their heads, I imagine they’ll kill you before they can even think up a cleverer but more perverted plan. Well, just accept it as your fate. I will increase the value of the Martini Series, so you can be part of the foundation.”

Wraith sighed.

“Let’s discuss a hypothetical.”

“Hold on, do you think this is a chat between friends or something? Romantic advice is simply outside my area of expertise.”

“…Let’s say there is a method of completely destroying the Martini Series from without, using the same kind of active self-denial as throwing out everything you own to get a new start on life. Would someone as universally capable and foolish as you be able to forgive your fellow Martinis who went insane?”

“Is that what this is about?” Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks gave a snort of laughter while elegantly crossing her legs. “It would be one thing if you were born with it, but when it’s something done to you afterwards, then you should have been able to prevent it or stop it. No attack or defense is perfect if it is made by human hands. That is why the Martini Series was created to make up for the AI network’s flaws. We’re supposed to play house with Capulet which may not even have a center anymore.”

“Your point?”

“Active self-denial? If someone takes advantage of a vulnerability, the responsibility lies with the person who knew of it but didn’t put together a countermeasure.”

“I see,” muttered Wraith while squirming a bit.

Now, did Taratua notice that the medals on her chest reflected the sunlight to inconspicuously send a signal somewhere?

A moment later, a spider web of cracks ran through the thick bulletproof glass on the floor of the bridge.

“Oh…?”

There was a surprised expression there.

The leather chair’s stuffing scattered everywhere. Taratua’s butt slid forward in that luxurious chair. She tried to hold onto the armrests, but her entire body had gone limp. Her hips fell from the chair and she collapsed to the floor.

Had the wet sensation finally caught up to her by then?

Fresh blood was splattered around like someone had rubbed red paint around with a mop. Needless to say, it drew out the path Taratua had taken as she rolled along the floor.

And lastly…

[[Image:HO_v15_137.png|thumb]]

There was a dark red hole in the tall Asian beauty’s stomach.

“Ah…bh.”

“If someone takes advantage of a vulnerability, the responsibility lies with the person who knew of it but didn’t put together a countermeasure? You are awful through and through, but it doesn’t really matter if you were broken or if you were always that way.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s expression had not changed.

“Who do you think did this?”

She slowly leaned forward to bring her face in close, but she showed no sign of stopping the hemorrhaging blood or providing any other first aid to her fellow Martini.

“You’re the kind of asshole who hides information on the Hammer Throw 001 for no other reason than to be cruel. You probably can’t even keep track of how many people hold a grudge against you. If you were mediocre enough to be convinced, I would not have had to rely on this.”

“…———”

“Yes, yes. No need to worry. None of our people will be blamed. They made sure to bring back some Faith Organization guns and ammunition as souvenirs. Shoot you with those and, well, all the documents will say you were shot by an enemy soldier in the normal course of the war. War is not treated as a crime. Although this might change some rules so we can’t hold private conversations on the bridge any longer. The adults will be sad to lose another valuable smoking area. Personally, I’m not too fond of the combat command center and its thick walls. It feels too oppressive.”

Nothing dramatic happened.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks could not close her wide-open eyelids and she simply stopped moving like her battery had run dry.

Humans were selfish creatures. She did not inspire the kind of emotion that Piranirie had.

Wraith held a hand to her ear and spoke into her earpiece.

“She is dead. I will send her body to the military doctor and have it proven that the wound came from a shot fired from 400 meters. And that it was done by the Faith Organization bullet embedded in the wall.”

“Oh, is that so? Thanks for actually choosing to kill her. I don’t think I could have handled it if you had tried to bring Taratua into this. But what else would I expect from one of the great Martinis? No one’s better at sending people to their death.”

“…”

“Honestly, this is the last time I do anything as annoying as a sniper job from a one-man submersible rocking in the waves. Now you need to take command. You can do that as a Martini, right?”

“Hold on. That’s much easier said than done. It’s not just an issue of rank. You need to consider affiliation and the command structure as well. You are aware how many hurdles I have to clear here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t care, Madam Lieutenant Colonel. The only reason I didn’t shoot you first is because you’re easier to control and thus more valuable than Taratua. Well, there was also all the people who died because she hid the information about the Hammer Throw 001. After we settle this Manhattan issue, you need to modify the records so they don’t list us as dead. That’s the only way we can return to our normal lives.”

“Understood.”

“Are you sure?”

This was not an icy voice.

Heivia’s voice was somehow mechanical. That was proof that he had passed the temporary surge of emotion and his drive for revenge had settled in as a normal thing. With the exception of a certain individual, no pain or death he witnessed would shake his heart now.

Wraith had seen plenty of people like that on the battlefield.

As a Martini, she had maintained order within the Information Alliance military by managing losing armies and occasionally eliminating berserk units or indirectly executing war criminals by sending them to certain death.

“Your life is a limited-time-only deal that lasts as long as you’re useful to us. Once you’re useless, you will meet the same fate as Taratua. You can give me an upturned look with tears in your eyes and you can place your hands on the wall and stick your ass out toward me, but it won’t change a thing. I’m having a hard time finding reasons not shoot you right in your insane head. So work hard for the Legitimacy Kingdom.”

The cold and mechanical transmission ended.

Wraith was all alone for the moment.

No, it was possible no one had ever filled the gap left by that one boy. Not even the young man who was always by her side. Especially when she knew how angry it would make her if someone casually offered to fill that gap.

===Part 3===

“Captain Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks was killed in a cowardly and calculated surprise attack by a Faith Organization remnant. I will take command for the remainder of the operation. I am sure some of you will not like having me go over your heads, but I would like you to leave this to me as I am an expert at recovering from failure in combat.”

Inside the tilted supply ship, Wraith explained that with her aide by her side.

The operation was already underway.

“I am having a retaliation list put together based on who could have made that sniper shot given the conditions, but that is being handled by a different team. Because we have our own timetable. We will show all standard condolences and respect to Taratua by continuing with her suggestion. We will disguise one of ‘our’ maintenance fleet’s ships as a wreck and place it along the Manhattan 000’s predicted path. We will have it pick up the crew and bring them directly onboard.”

“…So it’s essentially the same as with the Olympia Dome. The problem is it’s still hard to say whether that was a success or a failure.”

Heivia sounded fed up with the whole idea.

The fox saw that look on the tanuki’s face and nodded.

“The Manhattan 000 has extraordinary size and power and it is currently the world’s largest Object, but it cannot attack us if we are right up on it. Because it can’t fire on itself. Boarding it will be the first obstacle.”

After all, a normal(?) Object was about 50 meters, while just the portion of the Manhattan visible above water was more than 20,000 meters. It also had more than one reactor and the total number was unknown. The fact that its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon had obliterated Heivia’s unit in the blink of an eye from North America to Central America made it clear that its range and power were both far beyond the norm. Any standard Object that challenged it would be vaporized before it even arrived within firing range.

Any explanation would just sound like someone bragging about its abilities.

Did it not have even the slightest weakness or flaw?

“Is our objective to destroy it?”

“If necessary.” Wraith readily agreed even though she too was from the Information Alliance. “But while the Manhattan 000’s specs are on another level entirely, it still has more than 10 million normal residents on its surface. We cannot make a general attack from the outside.”

“What has even happened to them?”

That alone was an honest question. Taratua had said Manhattan itself was traveling south at 388 knots, which was around 700km/h. If that was true, it would be like clinging to the wing of a passenger plane.

But Wraith only shook her head.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem there has been any major damage.”

“??? Were they all evacuated to the subway stations or something?”

“No, not that.” The blonde girl answered Myonri’s question while her hand wandered through empty air as if in search of a pen to twirl. “It seems they’re artificially manipulating the air currents to protect the Manhattan surface from the violent winds.”

“Wait, what? Manipulating the air currents???”

“It makes sense in theory. Even your average factory uses air curtains. By blowing an artificial wind vertically, you can keep out the dust and dirt that would otherwise get in horizontally. By scaling that up by a lot, they’re using the wind blown up from below to divert the fierce headwind hitting them from the front. It forms a dome.”

“That’s simple enough to say, but we’re talking about the same winds a passenger plane would experience!”

“So what? Just how much does your ordinary, everyday common sense do you think applies to the Manhattan 000? Not even I know how many JPlevelMHD reactors it has.”

Just how forceful could it be?

But that was exactly how Objects had ended the age of stealth bombers and nuclear weapons.

“As long as they can solve the air current problem, the rest is easy. 700km/h might sound scary, but it’s really the same as riding a linear motor train or a passenger plane. It should be a comfortable ride as long as it doesn’t make any of the sharp footwork seen in Object combat.”

But once you were onboard, you could not get off.

And no one could predict what the Martinis or Manhattan would do. There was no guarantee the 20,000m mass wouldn’t suddenly perform footwork that exceeded a fighter craft’s movements.

“…What’s going on there?”

“Who knows. We are intercepting some of the EM signals as a part of analyzing the Object, but it seems the people’s usual smartphone-dependent lifestyle is continuing. They’re still posting on social media and video sites without a care in the world.”

Myonri blinked at that.

“Um, they’re not connected to the outside internet, are they?”

“You can analyze someone’s conversational patterns if you can see their social media friends list and message log. They’re probably receiving automated responses disguised as their online friends’ accounts. The Martini in charge of New York may be doing her best to deny reality as a part of her active self-denial. Thanks to that, the logical and thoughtless Capulet AI Network is in top form today. Everyone in New York probably thinks they’re internet heroes. Their desire for approval is probably being satisfied more than ever before.”

Heivia found it hard to decide whether or not that just meant their senses had been dulled by peace.

Legitimacy Kingdom military textbooks told the story of a man who cooked instant ramen even as his house burned down around him. When humans were faced with a situation too difficult to accept, a defense instinct would apparently kick in and they would continue their normal daily routine to preserve their mental balance. That way they could tell themselves they were still living their normal life and had yet to stray beyond it.

Wraith brought a hand to her slender chin.

“Our objective is to discover the reason why the Manhattan 000 is on its way here. From the look of things, I doubt we can hope for the Pilot Elite to go on strike. As I said before, the ultimate decision is up to the Capulet AI Network that supports the Manhattan 000 and the Martini who holds its reins. The idea that it is here to settle the mess around New Caribbean Island concerning the Nitrogen Mirage and Katarina Martini is no more than speculation, so we don’t know the actual reason. If that girl is acting in the overall interest of the Information Alliance, I will protect her. If she is ignoring an error in Capulet and has steered in the direction of annihilating the human race, then I must destroy and stop the Manhattan 000 that acts as her eyes and ears and her arms and legs.”

“Is that the Information Alliance’s overall opinion?” asked Heivia. “If not, this will count as treason and you’ll be reduced to a slave.”

“It’s an issue of the human heart. I was ‘created’ in the hopes that I would have the humanity to stop a rampaging machine when the adults alone could not make the appropriate decision. So that is what I will do.” The Martini Series girl did not bat an eye. “Also, I will share the details on Melly Martini Extradry who was in charge of New York security. All contact with her has been lost and there has been no report of her death. The very fact that she has intentionally failed to report to the military is an irregularity. It is possible she has been broken by abuse of active self-denial just like Piranirie. As you experienced with Piranirie, a broken Martini is more dangerous than a machine. The Elite may have been affected as well.”

Wraith closed her mouth for a moment there.

Before death, Piranirie had mentioned some external factor that could drive the Martini Series mad. She had assumed the culprit was Katarina, the engineer asking for asylum, but she had been wrong. And she had said an enemy force was the most likely suspect as they would gain the most from doing that to the Martini Series who preserved order in the Information Alliance.

Was the true enemy in the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Capitalist Corporations, or the Faith Organization?

Myonri must have been quick to adapt to new environments because she raised her hand before speaking to an enemy commander.

“U-umm, then, uh, how do we from the Legitimacy Kingdom benefit from looking into the secrets of the Martini Series and Manhattan?”

“To be blunt, you don’t.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray sounded indifferent.

But she may have been better than Taratua since she did not hide the truth and deceive them.

“But if you fake your deaths during the intense fighting with the Manhattan 000, you will have a chance to escape the control of Capulet which manages the entire Information Alliance.”

“You have to be joking. You’re the commanding officer here. Aren’t we free once you sign the right document?”

“I am not Piranirie or Taratua. Without their rule of fear, the many people below me will grow suspicious and might shoot you in the back if you attempt to leave with a smile.” Wraith quietly sighed. “With how big the Manhattan 000 is, a single shot will reduce you to ashes, preventing anyone from identifying your corpse. And a naval facility should have plenty of ways to escape in an emergency. More than just small boats and submersibles, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it has an entire giant submarine. …All I want are the results. When you see a chance, then run off on your own.”

“What about the documents the Information Alliance rewrote!? I was a noble heir back home, but they’ll treat me like a ghost now!! I don’t want to get home only to be turned away as a lookalike and forced to live in a cardboard box!!”

“Your military will have your DNA data on file. Run to a base or embassy with a hair or tissue full of squid-smelling filth and have them check the genetic information. You can tell them the report of your death was just more of the Information Alliance’s usual harassment.”

“…You have got to be kidding. We’re not talking about a loan shark’s 5-second smartphone eligibility check. That’s not exactly a guarantee.”

“Then this knowledgeable beauty will write up some memoirs on a website anyone can access. If I mention the harassment operation, you won’t have anything to worry about.”

It was a very Information Alliance kind of thing to write up fake memoirs as a way of getting out the truth.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray lightly clapped her hands to gather attention.

“We all have our own goals here, but right now we need to clear the first hurdle. Then we can use the situation to our advantage. The strategy itself is simple. Taratua said the Olympia Dome incident was practice, so we just have to do that again.”

“That sounds great. Very reassuring.”

Heivia breathed a heavy sigh.

And then he said it.

“The problem is that the damn Manhattan saw right through our trick, fired a giant blast our way, and tore a huge chunk out of our ship, so now we can see the ocean right there. Goddammit!!”

A rapid-fire beam had punched through the side of the ship, so the entire thing looked like a half-circle arch. Even if its height was restricted to keep the center of gravity low, it was still more than 9 meters. The steel supply ship just ended all of a sudden and there was the ocean directly below. The exposed cabins and corridors were visible in the other end of the cross section a few dozen meters away.

The artificial storm had passed, so it was sunny.

They were afraid to remain on the flimsy deck. The sea shining in the light of the blue sky and sun had never looked so sinister before.

A single attack from Manhattan had transformed a nearly 80m steel ship into an arch, but it must have been more of a game for it. It was like an exterminator poking at the beehive with the insecticide nozzle to see if it was still full of pests or if it was empty.

It had been a cannon, but only the smallest of the small.

If it had used its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon, all metal would have been melted over an area of several dozen kilometers.

“I-I’m actually surprised,” said Myonri. “Information Alliance ships can take this much damage without sinking!?”

“Well, the ballast tanks are functioning as floats and the bulkheads and watertight doors were shut. Plus, a supply ship will have more tanks than usual. It’s basically filled with small balloons like the packaging material used to protect online store shipments.”

“She meant that as a rhetorical question, you overly serious idiot!! More importantly, what do we do? The Manhattan knows we’re here. Lightning is about to strike on the level of your parents finding out you were browsing porn on the tablet you borrowed from them!!”

According to Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks, the Manhattan was supposed to arrive near New Caribbean Island 4 or 5 hours after leaving New York. They could not tell from the edge of the arch, but they were already sharing the ocean with it.

There was a bright beam of light.

But it was not the Manhattan.

“What idiot did that!? What bastard just poked the hornet’s nest without even asking permission!?”

“Those are…probably Faith Organization Second Generations. Challenging that thing with only 5 Objects is suicidal, but maybe they were ordered to gather information no matter what.”

Wraith’s judgment was proof enough that this had surpassed the assumptions of the clean wars.

They did not have time to figure out the individual traits of the Objects. Cannons were fired one after another. Any one of those Faith Organization elites would have been able to easily defeat Heivia’s group in a proper fight, but they were almost immediately blown away like a sugar sculpture placed too close to a heater.

“It…The Manhattan took ''some'' damage from that, didn’t it!?”

“Probably not,” said Wraith. “With that much firepower, it can divert anything from plasma to lasers. And have you not noticed what the weather is like?”

“It’s bright and sunny, but what does that have to do with-…ah.”

“So even a fool like you has finally caught on. A single shot from its prized electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon will stir up the atmosphere to the point of causing rapid pressure changes that produce a major storm, but there’s no sign of that. That means it was holding back. The Manhattan 000 is intentionally keeping its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon in reserve.”

Needless to say, it was not holding back for the Faith Organization’s sake.

Wraith’s opinion was rational.

“A storm would expose the people of Manhattan to lightning strikes. That’s the only concern it has. If any of the Faith Organization cannons could have scored a direct hit and done serious damage to the people, it probably would have ended the battle even sooner using its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon. It showed no hint of that.”

It had been too easy.

The last of the five Objects was unemotionally blown away.

“That’s awful. The battle is already over. That wasn’t even enough time to cook some instant noodles.”

Heivia had gone pale as he fiddled with his assault rifle and shoulder-fired missile launcher at the edge of the arch, so Wraith continued in exasperation.

“Since you might actually be that stupid, I guess I’ll ask: You don’t think you can sink the Manhattan 000 with those, do you?”

“It’s already learned of our plan!! I’ve never heard of a would-be surprise attacker being treated with much care. We’ll definitely be executed for their amusement. There will be no kindness for us after we used this method. If we raise our hands in surrender, we’ll just be vaporized! I’m not about to excite people’s living rooms as a shocking year-end news story!!”

“You won’t have to worry about that. In the Information Alliance’s internet culture, television is dead.” The black-uniformed girl smiled coldly. “And you seem to be mistaken about some things, so allow me to correct you. One: The Manhattan 000’s Elite is probably just a figurehead. Its actions are determined by the constant conversations and mutual error corrections between the Capulet AI Network contained in unknown physical devices and the Martini in charge of New York security. Two: I’m honestly skeptical that Capulet has even detected our presence.”

“Um, what do you mean?” asked Myonri.

“They are simply being cautious after what happened to the Olympia Dome. If it could accurately detect our numbers and locations from our heat and magnetic signatures, it would have vaporized us with pinpoint accuracy. It would not blast a huge hole in the ship like this. Why did it carefully ‘remove the fat’ with a smaller secondary cannon instead of vaporizing the entire ship with a powerful main cannon it can fire as many times as it wants? …The Martini, who we suspect has fallen victim to active self-denial, is not certain. So she is removing everything she is not certain of so we will panic and reveal ourselves.”

“That’s all speculation.”

“Yes. But if you climb up on the deck and fire a shot, then she will be certain. Once the Manhattan 000 detects hostile intent – even from a peashooter – it can rest easy and transform us into sea debris. And this time, it will use one of its many main cannons.”

Wraith slowly moved her lips to repeat the phrase “rest easy”.

In other words…

“The correct choice here is to wait. The Martini holding Capulet’s reins made a mistake due to her active self-denial. Silence will be more helpful than a million bullets here. No matter how suspicious this ship might be, it is officially registered as an Information Alliance supply ship, you are powerless prisoners, and I am a commander who can manage that kind of noncombatant. We have made no mistake and yet the Manhattan 000 fired on us without advance warning. And it fired right into the side of the ship instead of just a warning shot. Their Martini must really be in a crisis right now. AI can’t be charged with human crimes, after all. If this really is a harmless ship, it was all for naught. She’ll have no choice but to admit to the mistake and quickly rescue us.”

“You have no guarantee that we’ll all be saved!!”

“It’s true your odds of survival are pretty low with my plan. But if you challenge the Manhattan 000 to a hopeless final battle, those odds are precisely 0%. Now, which will it be? I know I shouldn’t say this at my age, but even a child could do that math.”

A dull metallic sound followed.

Heivia had aimed his assault rifle at Wraith.

But even more noises surrounded the delinquent soldier.

The other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes aimed identical guns at Heivia’s back. They seemed to be saying sorry in their hearts. Even Myonri was among them with an apologetic look on her face.

“Wait…you’re kidding, right? Whose ass do you think you’re aiming those tiny dicks at?”

“It would appear that everyone except for you is a rock-hard adult.” Wraith teased him by lightly raising her hands, slowly lifting her butt from the floor, and standing up. “It is highly likely that the Manhattan 000 will fire a few more test shots. And even if it doesn’t, the deck will break soon. That could throw us out into the ocean, so grab some oxygen tanks and anything that will work as float. This is a military ship, so it will be well supplied. Frank! Gather a few emergency kits for me.”

The aide young man grabbed a bag hanging on the wall. Whether it was a joke or not, Heivia bit his lip when he saw it said AED on the side.

“…I refuse to accept your methods here.”

“You don’t have to, but the clock is ticking all the same.” The black-uniformed girl winked and stuck out her tongue a bit. “By my estimate, the next attack will arrive in less than 3 seconds, so…sorry, the time passed while I was talking.”

With a deafening blast, their battlefield was transformed.

All of them were shaken by the intense impact and thrown from the edge of the arch-carved supply ship and into the glittering ocean.

“Bwah!! Bwoh!?”

Heivia misjudged the timing of his landing, so he swallowed a bunch of seawater as soon as his face hit the water’s surface. He somehow managed to get his head above water while his vision spun, but he could not stop coughing. He did not feel like he was getting any air at all.

“…Dammit.”

And he did not have time to choke.

The supply ship’s flimsy deck had broken and the entire ship sank into the ocean as it fell apart. To make sure he was not dragged down with it, Heivia grabbed onto some broken wood that must have originally belonged to a table. The sight before his eyes felt like something from another world altogether.

It was there.

A 20,000 meter length of ordinary skyscrapers was approaching.

Its 700km/h speed was nowhere to be seen, presumably because it had already arrived at its destination. It was motionless. That only made its presence all the more imposing.

If he was looking down from a helicopter while it was lit up at night, it would have been a million-dollar view. But that impossible location rose up from the clear blue ocean. It was like a dragon. A giant dragon with a thick forest growing from its back.

It had completely left the category of modern weaponry.

That was why Heivia’s mind erroneously saw it as something from another world.

He was less than 200 meters away from it.

That was barely within range for infantry to target a moving human without the assistance of a scope, but what about for that extraordinary Object? You might understand how he felt if you kissed a crocodile that was larger than you were.

He no longer felt anger at the unreasonable situation he found himself in.

Definite fear now squeezed at his heart.

“It’s there. It’s really there. And it’s way closer than I expected! This is like a sudden close-up of the actor’s you-know-what in a 3D movie, goddammit!!”

“Do not fire!!” shouted Wraith while clinging to the same waterproof bag as the aide young man. “Restrain your fear. Silence is the correct answer here. If you don’t fire, it will rescue us. This is all over if you touch your guns, you hasty and simple-minded animals. The difference in firepower and armor does not matter. You saw what happened to those 5 Faith Organization Objects, didn’t you? Step outside this ‘blind spot’ and you will be reduced to ashes in an instant!!”

“~ ~ ~!!”

What would that boy have done in this situation?

Would he have found a weakness and challenged this great a monster with just the equipment he had on hand?

Heivia thought and thought but could not find an answer. Heivia Winchell was not Quenser Barbotage.

Something shot by in the sky overhead.

The boomerang-like craft was likely an unmanned spy plane. Relaying information was their entire purpose, but just like a submarine, they only emitted signals when absolutely necessary and used simple circuits for their power system. At any rate, you would never end up with that trimmed-down silhouette with the thick armor and fire-extinguishing equipment needed to increase a pilot’s survival.

“Tch. They’re spying on our little swim, dammit!!”

It did not matter if it had missiles hanging from its wings or not. Once they were located, the Manhattan could send any number of shells their way.

Wraith said something like a prayer.

Was it meant as advice for the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers, or as a means of calming her own pounding heart?

“Slowly, slowly. Just let the current take you. That will bring us closer to the Manhattan 000… Listen, it can fry an area of several dozen kilometers with a single main cannon blast if it wants to. The one safe zone is right up next to the Manhattan 000 itself. Arrive at point-blank range and it can no longer use its main cannons. We haven’t lost and it hasn’t escaped. This is the best result. Understand!?”

They did not actually do anything.

The Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes were carried over to the Manhattan. No, that extraordinary monster had probably taken up that position to begin with. The 200 meters were gone in no time. Their sense of time may have been malfunctioning.

“…?”

Heivia felt an odd bubbly feeling around him.

It was like soaking in a bubble bath or in the jets of a jacuzzi. He looked down at his uniform below the water and saw small bubbles covering it like he was soaking in a carbonated beverage.

Hadn’t Taratua, the girl he had shot himself, theorized that it used supercavitation to reduce the resistance of moving through the water?

Heivia’s group was carried over to a location that jutted out sharply.

Wraith groaned while she rocked in the waves.

“The downtown district. Lower Manhattan. This is probably where you would normally board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.”

The distance was now zero. They had arrived at Manhattan.

Heivia managed to grab onto the concrete bank.

He sensed the presence of quite a few people.

“!?”

With no hesitation whatsoever, he obeyed his survival instincts and aimed his assault rifle straight up.

And a moment later…

“Wow. Hey, can I take a picture of that?”

He heard a silly voice.

It was a small child of less than 10.

The boy had an innocent smile that looked out of place in a city that had just been targeted by 5 Faith Organization Second Generations. Was he even aware that there was a war going on?

“That’s a Legitimacy Kingdom uniform, right? I’ve seen videos of those. The southern sea is really dirty. There are all sorts of things floating here.”

In the Central American heat, Heivia froze in place with his soaked weapon still aimed up at the unarmed children who crouched down, aimed the lenses of their phones and game systems his way, and produced electronic shutter sounds.

The children were carrying backpacks and water bottles, so they were probably on a field trip or something.

“Who is this?”

“Teacher, it’s like the person we saw juggling over there!”

“Yes, a street performer. You give them money to tell them they did a good job.”

They threw some change his way like anyone would at the water’s edge in a tourist area.

A soft female voice came from somewhere. It was probably a recorded announcement.

“Welcome to Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan! Why not take a break and enjoy the greenery to recover from sightseeing at the famous Wall Street? At our park…”

Another look around showed a park below the blue sky.

A few speakers stood up from the gently rising hills covered in a carefully-maintained lawn. And beyond that were true skyscrapers. Those were the buildings of Wall Street, the world’s largest financial street.

The field trip children were not the only ones there.

A young wife was stretching on a yoga mat laid out on the lawn. An old man was jogging slowly down the winding path and a large pet dog was running out ahead of its master. There were plenty of people practicing martial arts or playing guitars on the grass.

There was a giant divide between sea and land.

The difference was so great that Heivia could not shake the feeling that he had just traveled through time.

It was peaceful.

He had come across a true safe country.

It was enough to make Heivia and his assault rifle look absurd.

“What the hell…is going on?”

“The eye of the storm may be surprisingly calm. It is always the onlookers and not those directly involved who make the biggest fuss. Which is why you professionals should be more responsible about what you say.”

Wraith must not have been able to get up on the concrete by herself. Drenched, she climbed up into Battery Park with some help from the aide young man pushing up on her small butt.

She then extended her small hand to pull the young man up.

“See? We were right not to fire. Provoking them would have been dealt with like a major crime in a safe country. You would have been shot as a violent criminal instead of dealt with like a prisoner of war.”

Then they heard the sound of thick rubber scraping on the ground.

Something had approached them at some point. It was probably made of the same substance as a special operations rubber boat. A girl moved across the grass with her butt inside a giant swim ring. There were no apparent tires or treads on the bottom…but as far as they could tell, it was moving as smoothly as a curling stone.

“Oh, Wraith. 419. Long time no see.”

“Hi, Melly. You’ve changed your look again, I see.”

[[Image:HO_v15_165.png|thumb]]

Wraith smiled, but she gave off some slight tension. If this girl was using active self-denial, any past relationship with her was no guarantee of safety.

She was a girl of about 14 with brown skin and a blonde bob cut. The gentle curves of secondary sexual characteristics were contained by what looked like a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson oil paper. It was reminiscent of what one would wear for a massage or medical exam. She held a tablet in both hands…except it may have actually been a notebook-sized game system.

She wore what looked like a backwards baseball cap, but it was not.

Were those special VR goggles?

“Yes. The wheelchair and medical bed were not very promising. I got bedsores on my back. Ever since I partially retired after breaking my spine, the earth’s gravity is pure torture. From there, it was a battle with the literature. In the end, I decided to revert to the basics. 881. I don’t know if you should call it a waterbed or an oil damper, but it’s something like that. I fill this swim ring with a special liquid and then have it vibrate with a set pattern.”

This was Melly Martini Extradry.

If the information they had been given was accurate, she would be the Martini in charge of New York’s security.

She controlled Manhattan over the head of the Pilot Elite. She must not have been used to the male gaze despite her risqué outfit because, when she was exposed to concentrated fire from the eyes of Heivia and the other potatoes floating in the ocean, she pulled her hands back toward her chest like a praying mantis. She somewhat nervously continued as if trying to distract them from something.

“The undercarriage uses a flagellum structure. 791. Okay? Do you remember the insane team that researched the structure of euglenas based on the theory that you could overturn the food chain if you gave plants the ability to move as quickly as humans?”

“Oh, the one where they settled on the conclusion that euglenas aren’t actually plants?”

Wraith looked up at a flower-like security camera looking down at her.

“Is that for more than just decoration?”

Security cameras were all about mutual surveillance. With a square room, you could place a camera in opposing corners to cover both their blind spots. But that distribution grew much more complex outdoors.

The swim ring girl nodded proudly.

“It’s cross-pollination. Whether they use the wind, insects, or birds, flowers can prosper as far as their pollen reaches. That made them incredibly useful as an example of how to set those up to cover for each other.”

“If you were that thorough… Oh, so that’s the basic theory behind the excessively-large Manhattan 000.”

“Turgor pressure is incredible. The Bullmites were the extent of what animal research could handle. At this size, existing examples of muscular and skeletal structure are no use whatsoever. 660. It might be easier to think of it as crossing the divide between plant and animal. A 1000-year-old cedar supports more mass than a whale or mammoth.”

Wraith already looked exasperated, but Melly did not stop. It was not clear if this was her area of interest or if she wanted to keep her mind off of the male gazes focused on her, but she felt the need to say it all. Just like a child showing off their treasure in a local park, the brown girl smiled and raised the game system she held in both hands.

“Tah dah! It’s Stick VR. 721. With smartphones and computers, we reign supreme here in North America, but we just can’t seem to compete with the Island Nation when it comes to video game systems.”

“Hold on. You aren’t making any sense. Weren’t Stick VR and Paste VR rivals?”

“That’s why I forcibly built some compatible software to bypass that. Man, it was quite a job concentrating all of Manhattan’s functions down to this one device. 993. But that improved things immensely.”

It was like she was showing off her level of influence.

The next thing they knew, the gathered children had been casually led away by their teacher. Was Melly monitoring all of Manhattan on that one flat-screen monitor and could she spy on the 10 million people’s personal lives whenever she wanted? What was the actual Elite doing?

Next, they heard the sound of metal fitting together.

Two or three 2-meter quadrupedal animals made of steel and composite armor walked up alongside the girl whose butt was inside the giant swim ring. They were combat support robots modeled after bulls. They could carry weapons, act as shields, search out the enemy, drive the target out from behind cover, or even crash into the target with more force than a large motorcycle. They blatantly rubbed their bodies together. They could communicate without accessing a server by recreating the actions and society of animals.

They did not even need a controller.

Just give them a general target and their programs would have them work as a group to surround and neutralize that target as quickly as possible. The sheep dog did not even need to give any instructions. Those serverless unmanned weapons would work together and achieve victory all on their own as long as they had an objective set. The cowgirl watching over them only had to provide the herd with corrections when absolutely necessary.

Wraith glanced upwards at the 6-petalled flower shape of the devices distributed using the theory of cross-pollination.

“…Everything you do is always so involved.”

“789. Manhattan is only one of New York’s 5 boroughs, but it contains more than 700,000 security cameras. Of course we’re going to make sure they look nice.”

Needless to say, those were not the only eyes and ears in Manhattan. Even during the intense fighting with the Faith Organization, Melly must have accurately predicted where on Manhattan Wraith and the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers would wash up. She had clearly sent out that unmanned spy plane to check on the situation.

And with that in mind, the brown girl wearing nothing but a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper asked a question.

“So who are they? 002.”

“Oh, them.”

Wraith kept her cool.

And Heivia’s group still had not climbed up onto land. That proved a devastating mistake.

“They’re something of a souvenir. They’re the ones who killed Taratua.”

They did even have time to shout.

Wraith took a device the size of a large lunchbox from the young man and tossed it toward the ocean. It was an AED, a medical device that used an electric current equivalent to a stun gun in order to shock the heart.

“Bwah…!?”

The power light flashed and the two electrodes attached by the same curly cables as a home phone flew through the air. The flat electrodes contacted the ocean’s surface. Heivia was already soaked and there was nothing he could do even when he saw it coming.

With a dull bursting noise, the potatoes were neutralized in an instant.

The bright blue ocean disappeared. Everything fell into darkness.

“It seems you didn’t trust me, but did you think I would still have any fondness for you left after you kept threatening to kill me? The Information Alliance maintenance fleet corrupted by Taratua was the worst, but the Legitimacy Kingdom is just as bad for helping. To be honest, I’m sick of it all. You can’t expect someone as honest and straightforward as me to not want to switch sides.”

As Heivia’s consciousness faded, he thought he heard the girl laughing scornfully down at him.

“When you get down to it, I belong to the Information Alliance. The gears shifted out of place after I shot Quenser, but I shouldn’t have had any reason to be trapped between enemy and ally. …Melly, I will sell them to you as a sign of trust. Will that cover the Manhattan 000’s boarding fee?”

===Part 4===

Only ten minutes had passed.

“Oh? Is this what their new maple caramel parfait is? It’s just soaked in maple syrup! What does that have to do with the Island Nation!?”

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you…”

After leaving the park of betrayal and passing through Wall Street which was often seen in movies and dramas, they found a strange scene filled with Asian writing. It was the area known as Chinatown.

For some reason, Wraith the traitor and Heivia the betrayed were seated at the same table in front of an Asian chain café there. The scene was just as awkward as having a café maid kick you out and later running into her at a nearby convenience store.

The group of drenched potatoes in Legitimacy Kingdom uniforms must have seemed like better content than a kitten climbing into a bag because phone cameras were aimed their way from every direction.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray was equally soaked, but she had a towel draped over her head.

“I didn’t expect this outcome either, so what can I say?” She sounded annoyed. “I never expected the enemy soldiers I sold out to be released into the city with only their weapons confiscated.”

“Speaky! Tell me how to silence this piece of shit!!”

Heivia’s shout was only meant to comfort himself, but the bottle-shaped speaker in the middle of the table provided the clever reply of “Start by taking a deep breath. Some days are like this.”

The Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had all gathered in one place, but they had not been handcuffed or given GPS ankle bracelets.

The enemy must not have deemed it necessary.

The flower-like stationary security cameras were not the only eyes watching them. They were apparently a rare sight wherever they went because Asian strangers were aiming their phone cameras at the soldiers purely out of curiosity. Having lenses aimed their way from every direction made them feel a certain way.

“It’s like we’re animals in the zoo. I’m going to kill every last one of them…”

“Well, this is probably a cage made of data. Manhattan doesn’t have a prison, so they have several layers of human management at each coordinate.”

Water erupted upwards like a fountain from the fire hydrant at the end of the road.

New York’s proper latitude was similar to Hokkaido in the Island Nation. No one was used to the Central American climate, so they all looked overheated. They could always stay indoors and receive the benefit of air conditioning, but they were so obsessed with finding content for social media that they braved the discomfort and let the fire hydrant’s water cool them off.

“Maintaining a calm facade but going nuts on social media. That’s just how New Yorkers are.”

After giving an exasperated look to those wealthy people who were intent on showing off how unfazed they were that Manhattan had started to move, Wraith grabbed a junk food mini spring roll from a rectangular cardboard container and tossed it into her small mouth.

She winked and pointed at the floral security camera overhead.

“People who put a lot of wasted effort into appearances are willing to die for their pride. Closing yourself up in your room is the ultimate form of self-indulgence, but being closed up by someone else is solitary confinement in prison. You can live in the exact same coordinate in New York, but the label slapped onto you can make that feel like heaven or like hell. That’s probably how the people are controlled.”

“What the hell!? Does it only take you five seconds to forget who you threw under the bus, crazy girl!? Do you have any idea what you did!?”

Heivia shouted angrily and started to stand up, but then a heavy metallic noise rang out.

A 2m composite armor bull that was heavier than a large motorcycle had slowly stood up from where it had been seated on the ground.

Wraith gently raised both hands, winked, and devilishly stuck out her tongue.

“This city has the world’s highest camera density. You heard what she said about the flowers, right? If you don’t learn from the New Yorkers and increase your tech literacy, the government will be spying on you out in reality and on the internet. So until you learn the rules, how about you avoid any actions that might be misinterpreted? Those Bullmites do not use a server and only need their simple circuits to coordinate, but if one tackles you, you’ll be bedridden for the remainder of your life. I’m sure they have you surrounded in an inescapable layout calculated out using big data simulations and baseball data theory. Nonlethal weapons can be a type of sadism. Since they can beat you up without killing you, no one has to hesitate before using them.”

“Curse those weird Bullshits or whatever they’re called…”

“You probably lost another life just now. The question is how many lives you have left before it’s game over.”

Heivia, Wraith, and the others had successfully landed on the extraordinary Object, but they saw no sign of soldiers walking around. The only people they saw were the New Yorkers of that safe country known as the racial salad bowl. Instead of people, the city was being patrolled and protected by unmanned weapons, primarily the Bullmites that kept gently rubbing their bodies together.

And the passersby showed no concern when they saw several dozen soldiers from an enemy nation.

A digital surveillance society was a creepy thing, but at the same time, everyone assumed it was targeted at the anti-government guerillas, enemy soldiers, and other minorities that had been rejected from the larger framework of society. They assumed they would not be affected themselves if they did the clever thing and obeyed.

But in truth, they had no guarantee whatsoever who the unseen observers would decide to cast out on a whim.

“…This really is the Information Alliance, isn’t it?”

“Oh, is that so?” complained Heivia. “I see where we stand here now, but more importantly, the instant I get my gun back, I’m firing some bullets right up your ass, goddammit…”

A large donut-shaped swim ring slid over like a curling stone and it carried Melly Martini Extradry who only had a game system and a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. The ring looked like it would flip over on even the smallest slope, but the smiling brown girl maintained perfect balance. This was different from the unmanned weapons that used simple circuits and no server. Just like the game system, the ring may have been directly linked to the Manhattan 000.

The blonde bob cut girl held the family game system that was probably monitoring all of Manhattan, moved freely around in the liquid-filled swim ring, wore VR goggles like a backwards baseball cap, and pulled her limbs in close as if afraid of the potatoes’ gazes.

“Sorry about the wait, Wraith. 650. Oh, would you look at that unusual pairing.”

“Running across them was not exactly reassuring, just so you know.”

“029. They’re on a different layer, so it’s fine. They couldn’t touch you even if you are at the same coordinates. Okay? Now, let’s go!”

Heivia spat on the ground and raised his middle finger, so a composite armor bull knocked over the table and crashed into him. Counting each individual wrong move he had made would be too much work, but it seemed he had just used up his last life. The serverless Bullmites’ simple circuits could apparently comprehend manners.

After leaving the sweaty men, the brown girl with her butt in the swim ring looked more able to spread her wings. And that was more than a figure of speech. Her brown arms and legs had been freed, just like a butterfly spreading its wings after leaving the hard, dry chrysalis.

…Of course, Wraith did not want to let the brown girl notice her own tension.

“Hmm. What is it, Wraith? 202.”

“Well… I was just noticing that you still haven’t lost that habit.”

“I’m only tagging my memories. 751. It doesn’t really mean anything, so just ignore it.”

Wraith had heard before that she added 3-digit numbers within her words to provide arbitrary landmarks to help her accurately recall her memories later on. The numbers could be entirely meaningless. As long as they were not too close together, repeats were fine and even gave the memory an antique feel, so there would be no unintended overwriting of the sort worried about during the Y2K problem.

As New York’s defense commander, Melly held a very important position, but her eccentricities stood out even compared to the other Martinis like Wraith, Dorothea, Alisa, Rica, Orsia, Piranirie, and Taratua.

“New York’s defense commander, huh?”

“Yes, what about it?”

(How much is she involved in all this? Did Capulet simply lend her the Manhattan 000 and its Elite for the benefit of the Information Alliance as a whole? Or has she succumbed to Capulet thanks to an abuse of active self-denial?)

Wraith was definitely suspicious, but she would gain nothing by letting her suspicions be known.

She turned a skeptical eye toward Melly whose butt was inside the swim ring and who only wore a red paper surgical gown.

“…That is quite the outfit you’re wearing. You always dress so oddly.”

“This was driven by necessity, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Plus, fashions and common sense can be easily manipulated by continuous statements on social media. After establishing the basic supporting legs of beauty and health, you can add in some charitable and economic effects as the finishing touches. 515. I could make wrapping your naked body in a ribbon this year’s biggest trend and I could create a high society where you’re shunned if you don’t finish it off with strawberries and whipped cream.”

That sounded like a joke, but no one in the Chinatown aimed their smartphones toward Melly despite how much soft skin she was showing. In fact, their attention was drawn to Wraith in her black military uniform that stood out among all the colorful casual clothes.

…But Melly herself began blushing and trembling a bit with her butt still inside the swim ring. An ominous atmosphere had set in while Wraith was not paying attention.

“…Wait.”

“Oh, excuse me. Heh…heh heh. Everyone just walks by this unusual sight without even noticing. Even though I’m showing an unthinkable amount of skin in an unthinkable location. Heh heh heh heh heh. No, I can’t record this to memory. 081, 099. Yes, yes, I really shouldn’t be. When will they notice? When will someone realize this isn’t right? Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh…”

The black-uniformed girl could only form a small triangle with her mouth and fall silent.

Finding special meaning in no one noticing that something was out of the ordinary was subtly different from a perverted old man who wandered around the late night streets with only a trench coat on. It may have been more like someone who enjoyed the borderline thrill of walking through the crowds of a packed tourist beach in nothing but bikini body paint.

…This would explain the odd tension when Heivia and the others had looked at her. Unlike the residents of Manhattan, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had not been on the receiving end of any data manipulation, so they would have seen the brown girl’s paper two-piece surgical gown without any cognitive filters in place.

“You must have a…stressful job…”

“Oh, what ever are you talking about? 121. Nnn.”

Melly stretched out her arms and legs to take a strange pose atop the swim ring, so her game system may have had bad reception in that exact location. Wraith was very worried that the crimson oil paper covering her soft skin was going to tear at any moment. Was she invincible as long as she had those cognitive filters? It may have felt something like taking a selfie, but the brown swim ring girl was constantly checking on herself with the countless floral security cameras. In accordance with the concept of cross-pollination, they were positioned so their pollen range just barely overlapped.

“435. Anyway, I never expected you to visit Manhattan like this.”

“How can you say that after you stopped reporting back as your duty requires?”

Wraith and her aide did not even glance over in the direction of the chaos caused by the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and the two of them walked down the street with the other Martini Series girl. Three of the serverless Bullmites that rubbed their bodies together followed the giant swim ring that was presumably linked to the Manhattan 000.

As far as Wraith could tell, her aide did not “count” in Melly’s eyes. She did not shrink down when his cold, mechanical eyes fell on her.

Or perhaps she viewed him as belonging to someone else.

Swim Ring Girl Melly glanced over at the composite armor bulls and spoke.

“They might seem intimidating, but this is necessary. Also, the Bullmites have air purifiers attached. 223. Try to feel at home around them.”

“That sounds smart, but it’s actually pretty foolish. There’s no point in using those outdoors…”

“You’re underestimating New York, Wraith. 090. This is a shockingly gluttonous polluted region that has the world’s greatest medical development yet can’t brag about its average lifespan.”

They left the Chinatown and continued north into SoHo. As the swim ring passed right behind a uniformed police officer writing a ticket for a car parked on the curb, the brown girl started trembling again. Wraith spoke up while glancing over at the giant window of a luxury shop selling shoes and bags.

“What do you know about Piranirie Martini Smoky? I am speculating that she was using active self-denial.”

“Ahem. Do you mean the method of breaking the Martini Series using an external source? We’re near New Caribbean Island right now and I wouldn’t have brought the Manhattan 000 all the way here if I wasn’t aware of the Ragnarok Script. 381. As New York’s defense commander, I put a stop to it across the entirety of Manhattan.”

“Ragnarok?”

“Oh? You hadn’t discovered that over-the-top name? It seems some Faith Organization rats snuck into the Information Alliance to investigate our vulnerabilities. 115. I left them alone and intercepted every last one of their transmissions to ensure I had the whole picture, but that may have been a mistake. They managed to slip away and I was too slow to react.”

“…I want to ask this directly: Are you still a functioning Martini?”

“If you ask me, Piranirie was so easily corrupted because her stopper had so little influence. 991. Unlike the other Martinis, she always found some excuse to act independently.”

The brown girl smiled and let her bare legs dangle from the donut-shaped ring like she was relaxing at home, but she also looked to a spot next to Wraith.

Melly was looking at the young man who worked as Wraith’s aide.

“I’m jealous. 544. Mine died in the operation that broke my spine.”

“You were the one that refused to accept a replacement.”

“088. Imagine it happened to you. Would you be happy if they said they could supply a replacement so easily?”

After that blunt statement, Melly realized the contradiction of her words and gently shook her head.

Just as the large swim ring she controlled with her notebook-sized game system moved out onto the crosswalk, the crosswalk light switched from red to green. She had grabbed the game system with both hands, held the two detachable controllers with her toes, and stretched out her legs in a mystery pose, so had she done something?

A large truck waiting at the light was loaded full of crouching Bullmites. They looked like illegally parked bicycles or a wireless industrial power station at a security company that could charge devices by the dozen. It was a mobile power supply truck.

The surgical gown girl trembled a bit while exposed to the crowd’s view in all directions at the middle of the large crosswalk.

“Well, I might be much the same since I distract myself from the loneliness by messing with machines. 777. That’s essentially the same as being given a replacement.”

“…”

This was no time for sentimentality.

The Manhattan 000 had left the Information Alliance home country and come here. And neither the actual Pilot Elite nor Melly Martini Extradry had a partner to act as a stopper. She had a high risk of going berserk just like Piranirie. She had just about reached the peak, but things were looking ominous. Even if she started descending the mountain out of active self-denial, no one would encourage her and tell her to continue toward the peak.

If its owner was to be believed, the swim ring moved so smoothly thanks to an artificial flagellum structure. Once it finished crossing the crosswalk, the brown girl spoke with her eyes lowered toward her game system’s screen.

“Do you suspect me of going berserk? 895.”

“If you want to clear away the suspicions of another world power using that Ragnarok Script thing to influence the Martini Series, then you at least need to remove the Manhattan 000’s Pilot Elite from their cockpit. Showing that you can do that would prove your authority and sanity.”

“290. Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

As soon as great tension filled Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s small body, the young man by her side inconspicuously altered his position. He was preparing for a response from the Bullmites that coordinated their actions by rubbing their bodies together instead of using EM signals.

But the reality far exceeded his expectations.

The entire area of land shook.

The scale was so great that understanding slipped from their minds. Wraith and the others were in Manhattan, which meant they were on top of a giant Object.

It had moved ever so slightly.

Black-uniformed and blonde Wraith shrieked and clung to the nearby young man like a small child in a safe country, but the brown girl used her notebook-sized game system to hide the smile on her lips.

She could do more than monitor.

Once Melly had composed her expression once more, she lightly waved the game system.

“Didn’t I tell you it was quite a job concentrating all of Manhattan’s functions down to this one device? Okay? I am the Martini in control of New York’s defense. That means I control ''everything'' related to Manhattan at the center. 808. Yes, and that includes ''everything'' related to the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object.”

“Are you saying…it’s you?”

Wraith stared in shock as Melly placed the game system itself on her belly, grabbed the two remote-like wireless controllers in her hands, and made some light punches without her hips behind them.

Did the controllers contain gyros, or were the movements being monitored by the floral security cameras set up everywhere based on the theory of cross-pollination that allowed multiple plants to cover each other’s pollen distribution range? The exact method was unknown, but the sound of Melly’s voice clearly changed

Wraith had not noticed at all.

Until now, the ring had been using a surround sound device to place a different sound amplitude over Melly’s voice to alter it in real time.

This was what it sounded like without that support. She oddly pronounced each syllable very distinctly for a voice that sounded more machinelike than a machine.

“''Yes, I have mastered the basics of every single strengthening program. I am #29 in the Martini Series and also the Manhattan 000’s Pilot Elite.''”

That should not have been possible.

If the Martini Series could directly manage the Information Alliance’s Objects, Wraith would not be needed to clean up after their troops lost or went berserk.

“Of course, it’s just like the Gatling 033 in that it’s assumed I’ll be working with the AI. Capulet and I eliminate each other’s errors in a symbiotic relationship. I don’t know about the Information Alliance as a whole, but within my territory of New York and inside the Manhattan 000 as an Object, I have greater authority than Capulet.”

In – other – words.

The brown girl once more passed her voice through the machine to stabilize it.

“This Object is mine and mine alone. 217. The Capulet AI Network is only borrowing it over the high-speed lines. Just like remote surgery.”

“That’s ridiculous… Aren’t you afraid of a conflict?”

Wraith was dumbfounded by this product that sounded like suicide to her.

The blonde bob cut swim ring girl responded while waving her thin game system.

“Stick VR. …I said I had built some compatible software to bypass it, right? 567. Including everything I might need is my style.”

She literally controlled everything in Manhattan.

She had become one with this pricey area of New York.

That explained why Melly could not escape her loneliness.

“But I also use Manhattan to control this assistance device I’m sitting in. Like I said, walking in earth’s gravity is pure torture because of my broken spine. 765. I really am sorry, but I must ask you not to remove my helmet.”

“…”

There was nothing to be done if she was rejecting it. Either way, Wraith could not force anything. One method of neutralizing a sturdy Object was to focus your attacks on the Pilot Elite…but she likely could not use her infighting or assassination trump cards here.

Choosing to oppose Melly Martini Extradry was the same as making a head-on attack on the Manhattan 000. Needless to say, choosing that would end with her being vaporized.

For now, she would have to solidify her position here as much as she could.

“Why did you bring the Manhattan 000 here?”

“Did you think it was all my decision? 915. Even if I wield the dual swords of Martini and Elite, I am still just an individual. There is only so much I can do. In general, everything is the result of my conversations with the Capulet AI Network. I thought it was necessary, so I lent it the Manhattan 000 as the quickest tool available. So, Wraith, the problem is the exact opposite of the one you think it is.”

Of course, if Melly had fallen into active self-denial, she would simply go along with the AI’s erroneous decisions. If the mistakes were not pointed out as mistakes, even Capulet would gradually shift off course. But something felt off, so Wraith frowned and asked about it.

“What do you mean by that…?”

“111. The Manhattan 000 has not gone berserk because of a major problem. Nor have I, the checker, been broken.”

Because it was linked with the Manhattan 000, the giant swim ring hopped up with smooth movements to carry Melly up the stone steps as she got to the crux of the issue.

“Capulet detected a large enough external problem to require bringing the Manhattan 000 onto the stage, so it made a swift request to resolve that problem. That is why I lent it this Object. 901. That seems like the most natural way of looking at this.”

“Wait a second. Are you saying…?”

“I had predicted this was about swiftly purging Piranirie after the Ragnarok Script corrupted her, but it looks like that wasn’t all it was. 501.”

This was a completely different idea.

Many things shifted around inside Wraith’s mind and the brown Martini girl asked a question while peering into her eyes.

“So I have a question. Okay? 331. What happened out here near New Caribbean Island? What kind of monster slumbers in the ocean here?”

===Part 5===

“Heivia, Heivia.”

Myonri had a good reason for sounding so nervous as she called his name.

Sit. Lie down.

The 2m composite armor bull was politely standing directly above Heivia who was collapsed face down on the ground. Even without a server, they were apparently obedient enough to attack delinquent soldiers. They really were well made.

Heivia had been entirely incapacitated and could only squeeze out the voice of a squished frog.

“…Myonri, drag me out of here before this piece of junk starts moving its hips. I wouldn’t say I’ve lived a life that lets me hold my head high in front of the Virgin Mary, but don’t you think it’s a bit much to let this machine force some bestiality onto me?”

“Um, what are we going to do now?”

Myonri may have gained the ability to automatically filter out anything that would dirty her ears too much. The other potatoes also showed no sign of providing a helping hand.

Myonri was fed up of being spied on by the trumpet or flower-like security cameras that were arranged based on the ability of cross-pollinizing flowers to cover each other’s pollen distribution range.

“Manhattan has come all the way to New Caribbean Island, but at the moment, all it has done is come here. Nor does it seem to be preparing to attack anywhere else. In that case…what are we supposed to fight against once we get our guns back?”

“What are you smiling about? Are you interested in what their ass tastes like? This is the enemy’s greatest Object! There’s no sign of the actual Elite, Capulet is putting in overtime under that crazy Martini’s control, and they’ve already used their electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon for a preemptive strike with no advance warning!!”

“So we’re just supposed to shoot the innocent people walking around here? Doesn’t that seem like the wrong target?” Myonri placed a hand on her slender chin. “It’s still unclear whether that…Miss Martini? was using Manhattan to target us in the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance maintenance fleet corrupted by Piranirie. We were the ones that infiltrated that fleet, so if they say they didn’t know about it, it would mean we were simply caught in the middle of an internal purge…”

An odd groan escaped Heivia’s mouth.

That would mean there had been no act of war in the first place and they would have no reason for a counterattack. That would make Heivia and the Legitimacy Kingdom the aggressors in attacking Manhattan and the Information Alliance.

They had done a lot to hype up how frightening the Manhattan was, but now that they were onboard, they found it was peaceful. It was true it had arrived in the ocean near New Caribbean Island, but it was not moments away from vaporizing the Legitimacy Kingdom military with its extreme firepower. It was a mystery who the Manhattan’s opponent was and where it had been targeting with that initial attack. Heivia and the others had not been handcuffed or thrown in a cell. They had been released into the city.

There was nothing they could do now.

The potatoes felt silly for getting so worked up about war.

With nothing here, that macho army had lost their reason to fight. It would have been much simpler if they had discovered a plot to wipe out the human race. Like this, it looked more like they were trying to stir up trouble in the perfectly peaceful city to start a war.

This was a fully controlled society.

People were bound by data.

Heivia had glimpsed the fear of a digital city that did not even need to separate out the criminals. Something deep in the delinquent soldier’s heart told him it was all over if he let this break him. So he desperately searched for a reason.

“I’m not going to just go along with this and have my bones buried in the Information Alliance. I have noble blood, so I have to inherit the Winchell family.”

“That’s a nice idea…but what if they say they’re contacting our embassy in preparation to hand us over safely?”

They would break.

Even if nothing of the sort was actually happening, Heivia and the others would break if that Melly girl told them that. While she dodged the issue and stalled for time, they would get used to this, lose interest, and decide this was good enough.

Anyone would be afraid.

If you were thrown out in front of such a colossal weapon and told you had to fight it if you had any complaints, anyone would be scared out of their mind. That was why Myonri and the others were clinging to this temporary peace. If they could not find a reason to continue fighting, then why fight? They wanted support for that conclusion.

But that was not good enough.

For one thing, the words of the Information Alliance could not be trusted. They had to assume those words were like disposable bullets meant to manipulate their target and devour everything of value they had.

They should have learned that lesson already.

Back on that ship’s deck when their friend had been helplessly shot to death.

“We-…”

Heivia opened his mouth to resume arguing with Myonri and the others who were about to fall for it.

But he was cut off.

It was a dull and unpleasant metallic noise a lot like a poorly-crafted bell being struck. It came from directly above Heivia who still lay pinned to the ground. It came from the side of that Bullmite. A thumb-sized hole had appeared there and sparks flew from it like a handheld firework or smoke bomb.

Except circuit boards would not spew sparks like that no matter how you damaged them.

This was clearly the work of a chemical meant to fry the circuits.

“A sniper…using armor-piercing incendiary rounds!?”

After an especially large burst of sparks from within the electronics, the entire Bullmite went limp. If it had not collapsed to the side, it might have crushed Heivia under its weight.

But Heivia did not look exactly delighted after gaining the freedom he had so desperately desired.

“Who did that…?”

He asked without thinking, but no one knew the answer. All of the few dozen Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were gathered in this same location, so none of them could have left and prepared a sniper rifle on a building roof.

But that meant nothing to the people around them.

The Asian passersby widened their eyes, held out their many phones, and produced countless electronic shutter sounds.

Heivia’s group could tell they were surrounded by killer intent.

Patrolling Bullmites appeared from around seemingly every corner, as if the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had triggered the cage of data. And the machines were clearly in a different mode than before. Even if they did not use a server, their simple circuits were apparently enough to pick up on their fellow Bullmite’s demise and work together to resolve the situation.

But they were fundamentally wrong. They mistakenly thought the soldiers had broken the rules.

This time, Heivia’s group really would be killed.

“What dumbass did that!?”

There were 700,000 public security cameras and who-knows-how-many phones and drive recorders on top of that. And yet no one could answer that fundamental question.

Who had thrown the stone?

Round 2 had begun.

===Part 6===

That free and peaceful city looked entirely different now.

The countless security cameras, which were set up according to some big theory about cross-pollination or whatever, were no help at all. They would not clear the soldiers’ names of this false accusation.

“What the hell, what the hell, what the hell hell hell!?”

Even if someone else had thrown the rock, they had to deal with the pests that erupted out of the hornet’s nest. But Heivia and the others had no weapons, so they only had one option. If they did not run away, they would die. All of them would be killed together. The Bullmite on Heivia’s back had collapsed, so he had to get up and run through the Chinatown.

“Wh-where are we supposed to run to!?” asked Myonri. “All 20,000 meters of this place is on top of an Information Alliance Object!!”

“If you really want an answer, then put your hands on your knees, stick your ass out toward them, and take the time to think! Me? I’m running!!”

After turning a corner in the Chinatown, Heivia found an ordinary gun barrel aimed his way.

“!?”

He grabbed and twisted the attacker’s wrist and slammed them back-first into the ground only to find it was a college student.

“Why does a civilian have such a big submachine gun!? Are these easier to get than the Island Nation’s Stick or Pokemamo!?”

When Heivia fired a few warning shots into the air, the passersby all crouched down and hid below tables and benches. In what seemed to be a sign of surrender, they tossed guns and cartridges out like money offerings. The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers did not have time to take them all while they fled, but in something like marathon runners at a water station, they all ended up with guns from a variety of makers.

“There is something seriously wrong with the North American market,” said Heivia. “Isn’t this more guns than on the battlefield?”

“Revolvers, shotguns, submachineguns…are these really all for self-defense?” asked Myonri. “Uwehh, there’s even some LMGs and sniper rifles…!?”

Guns was more reassuring than no guns, but the serverless and highly-coordinated Bullmites were designed to be used as shields. A machine would not die even if you shot it in the head or chest.

“Normal bullets” was not going to do the trick, so they selected lightweight weapons rather than powerful ones.

Increasing their firepower was not going to stop the Bullmites.

“Oh, honestly!!”

Heivia raised the submachinegun almost on reflex, but it was no use. He was up against machines. Threats would be useless and a stream of 9mm bullets would only be deflected by the thick armor. Given how many civilians were cowering around them, ricocheting bullets would be too great a threat.

They were not alive.

They did not fear destruction.

Did the rules really change this much when unmanned weapons were sent to the battlefield?

That was when a “silver bullet” arrived in advance of its gunshot.

The armor-piercing incendiary round could punch through the thick armor and fry the circuit boards within using great heat. After being fired down from some roof or another, the sniper bullet punched through the transformer controlling a traffic light, so a large truck drove through and targeted Heivia’s group.

Yes.

The problem was that the “silver bullets” were not just targeting the monsters.

“Watch out, dammit!! God, this is a terrible orgy!! You never know when you’re going to get a face full of squid stink!!”

The truck drove right over a concrete barrier that doubled as a flowerbed and came to a half-crushed stop just short of hitting the delinquent soldier. But he did not have time to catch his breath. The mystery sniper fired a few more shots into a nearby park, calling that area’s Bullmites toward the soldiers. Just like gathering the attention of an isolated enemy in an online game.

“That sniper is following us,” said Myonri.

“Are they jumping from building to building? Hey, if you’re not using that plastic sniper rifle, toss it here! Silencing that gloomy Peeping Tom takes top priority!!”

That said, real snipers were not like in movies. You could not just look up and see them leaning out from the building. They seemed to be running along the roofs of the buildings alongside the sidewalk Heivia’s group was running down, but it was not clear where exactly they were.

There were countless floral security cameras set up, but they were arranged with the flow of people in mind. Simply put, monitoring the populated streets came first and the sky overhead was less closely watched.

Meanwhile, another Bullmite pushed in to cut off their path.

“That isn’t going to work even if you fire at it head on!”

“That’s not what I’m doing, you idiot!! Bukkake-ing on a mech’s face isn’t my idea of fun!!”

Without even using the scope, Heivia fired a high-speed rifle bullet at the fire hydrant at the end of the road. Those animal types had little surface area in contact with the ground for their weight, so they were in trouble when they lost friction. That was obvious when nothing but four small hooves were used to control the same weight as a large motorcycle.

Myonri and the others fired more bullets as the Bullmite slipped and toppled over, but that only sent sparks flying from the armor. Not even concentrated fire on a defenseless enemy had any effect.

“What do you think about that sniper!?” asked Heivia.

“Well, I definitely don’t want to be their friend!!” replied Myonri.

“Not that. I’m just talking about their skill.”

The torrent from the fire hydrant had knocked over a window washer’s bucket of industrial detergent, so the Bullmite slipped even more than expected and could not seem to get up. When it could not move, it seemed to have difficulty using its motions to communicate with the others. Thus, the other units did not move to help it. And the potatoes were not about to stay in one place. Heivia had to click his tongue and jump right over the mass of composite armor that could not return to the fight and kept spinning around and around like a giant pinwheel firework.

“They destroyed a traffic light to send in a truck and they provoked the Bullmites into attacking. Why are they being as indirect as a literary girl with a crush? All they need to do is fire bullets straight into our heads!!”

“Um, maybe they hope to make it look like an accident?” suggested Myonri.

“They’re using armor-piercing incendiary rounds. That’s more than just repacking a used cartridge bought from a gun shop. These bullets will stand out a lot more than the used gum all over the sidewalks, so there’s no room for a conspiracy there.”

They fired occasional warning shots into the air to deter the sniper who they still had not located. Normal bullet would not work on the Bullmites who pursued them in a coordinated fashion without using a server. After making sure the sporadic gunfire had rid the area of civilians, Heivia fired his sniper rifle straight into the air.

A crane’s wire snapped and several steel beams fell from a building under construction.

“Those things can still move after a direct hit!?”

“You need at least as much firepower as a powered suit!” said Myonri. “More importantly, what were you trying to say about that sniper?”

“There’s more to sniping than just distance and wind direction. Machine assistance can make up for the scientific side of things, but the more social side of it is harder. You have to predict what your target will do and place the ballistic trajectory where they will be next. This sniper was always targeting things that are easy to predict: Bullmites that have no fear of death and a stationary transformer. For those, all you need to do is line up the crosshairs in the scope.”

Realistically, Heivia’s group was as cornered as could be.

But he proposed a bold theory all the same.

“This sniper is only an amateur virgin. They’re not confident then can satisfy us, so they’re firing on the easier mechanical targets instead.”

In that case, what was the attacker’s field of expertise?

The sniper attacks with armor-piercing incendiary rounds were a lot like extremely small-scale explosions. They were also good at figuring out how gadgets like the Bullmites worked. They ignored the preparations on both sides of the fight to throw the scene into chaos and achieve more than their skill would normally allow for.

…Come to think of it, hadn’t ''someone'' well known to Heivia nervously attempted some machine-assisted sniping to rescue the Princess in the Alaska District?

(You’re kidding, right…? I’d love it if he’s alive, but he wouldn’t make his appearance like this, would he!?)

He heard what sounded like a thick metal clasp fitting into place.

He looked back while running and his eyes bulged. At some point, the composite armor bulls had received attachments resembling backpacks or saddles. And attached to those were a light machinegun, grenades, and a small container magazine that resembled a cooler.

It was as unfair as finding the relentless zombies had started cleverly aiming guns your way.

“What the hell is this…!?”

That was when the sign for a subway station entered the corner of his vision.

It was all over if those guns opened fire across the surface street. The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers and the innocent civilians who had evacuated indoors would be caught by it. Heavy machineguns used bullets thicker than a thumb, so they could tear through glass and concrete like it was styrofoam. Heivia gestured to the other potatoes and they all ran down the stairs.

“Do you really think this will save us!?” asked Myonri.

“How should I know!? Go call tech support!! But this will at least distance us from the sniper on the roofs. And underground, the 2D map alone won’t be enough. Plus, Manhattan has turned all around with no concern for the cardinal directions, so we can only hope those things will lose track of where they are…”

War was generally a contest over who could take more lives.

Thus, they would have to change how they fought when up against lifeless unmanned weapons.

Hearing the commotion, some benevolent station workers started to come out with stun guns, but Heivia’s group aimed their real guns over to force them back while running through the chaotic ticket selling area and jumping over the ticket gate.

They heard further angry shouts and screams from behind.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Damn, did it not work!? Are they using microwaves or submillimeter waves or something!?”

“Could you please explain what this means!?” asked Myonri. “I thought the Information Alliance’s unmanned weapons were autonomous and didn’t need to access a server!”

He did not have time for that. They were dead if those things caught up.

The floral security cameras were installed here too, so the Martini would know where they were. That limited what the potatoes could do. They would be trapped if they kept running and returned to the surface through a different exit. And even if they ran to the platform, Heivia doubted they would find a train conveniently about to depart like in a drama.

“It would only be the same standard wireless LAN that can misdirect the selfie a bored housewife meant to send to the guy she’s cheating on her husband with. Could we jam it!?”

“We don’t have any equipment, you moron!! Stop asking for the impossible! And why are you so fixated on signal interference? They’ll keep coming for us even if we cut off the cameras monitoring us, right!?”

They did not even have 10 seconds to think. Even a human could run across the 100-meter structure in that time.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Anyone with a hand to spare, gather as many fire extinguishers as you can!!”

“Heivia?”

“Head down to the platform!! Hurry! It’s meaningless if they catch up!!”

The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers more jumped down the stairs than ran as they rushed to the subway platform. As expected, no train conveniently slid up to the platform. The platform was empty on both sides and the college students and housewives waiting for a train all ducked down in shock when they saw the many guns.

“What are we going to do!?” asked Myonri. “Run into the tunnel!?”

“What good is playing tag with machines in a long, straight tunnel? More importantly, give me the fire extinguishers! All of them!!”

Heivia snatched away the red metal containers and aimed the hoses at a surprising location: the track below the platform.

“Subways send the power through the bottom instead of the top.”

“What does that matter?”

“How do those bull bastards track their location and their destination while the Manhattan turns? I’m guessing they use EM waves.”

“But weren’t we told that unmanned weapons can move around while offline?”

“It doesn’t have to be on a military bandwidth. It could be signals for TV, radio, cellphones, or whatever else. EM waves are waves, so the Doppler Effect comes into play. By reading the signals flying around, they can tell how Manhattan is moving. The unmanned weapons use that as a virtual compass to track their own location. Wraith said submarines are the ideal form of an unmanned weapon, right? If they’re only passively receiving the signals, they don’t have to worry about the enemy locating them!”

Which meant…

“The Bullmites didn’t get lost while underground because the microwave and submillimeter wave broadcast signals can penetrate the thick concrete. But if we use jamming to mess with the EM Doppler, they should lose track of their location and stop moving! So let’s go with a corona discharge. The third rail is normally kept at a distance so it won’t cause any interference, but if we place an impurity nearby, that will change!”

The spraying sound was like an amplified version of a carbonated beverage.

The bubble-type fire extinguishers launched their liquid chemical beyond the platform.

A moment later, they heard a lot of noise from the stairs. The quadrupedal Bullmites with a firearm attachment came crashing down toward the platform.

Myonri and the others immediately aimed their shotguns and submachineguns that way.

Their trigger fingers remained motionless.

The Bullmites had suddenly gone limp, lost their balance on the stairs, and started rolling.

The collapsed unmanned weapons did not move again.

Myonri and the others kept their guns aimed at them for a while afterwards.

“Have they…stopped?”

“A corona discharge doesn’t make a bunch of noise like a stun gun, so it can be heard to tell anything is happening. Locating a power line was not easy since New York likes to bury everything from national secrets to broken massagers, but I figured a train’s power rail would be enough to jam the EM Doppler.”

With this electromagnetic interference, any photos sent from an amateur’s phone would not reach their recipient. That meant they did not have to worry about any “unintentional spies”. Heivia used his sniper rifles to shoot out each of the security cameras installed directly around the platform.

He was a capable boy as long as he was not up against an Object.

“Okay. We’ve finally built a blind spot, so let’s change clothes and get the hell out of here. Just like swapping cars in a parking garage or below an overpass.”

Just then, there was a deep noise and the windowless subway platform was wrapped in deep darkness.

“We truly apologize for the inconvenience. The power to this station has been cut to troubleshoot a problem. Lights, air-conditioning, communications, and other services will be brought back one at a time, so to avoid tripping, please remain in place unless a station staff member provides evacuation guidance…”

The sudden darkness was like having a video game unexpectedly switched off.

Heivia worked his imagination while listening to the unnecessary announcement and then he gave a shout

“Crap!! Cutting the power stops the corona discharge!!”

He could not see his hand in front of his face in this darkness, but he could hear several metallic sounds. Needless to say, machine eyes had a greater visual range than human ones. The power outage meant nothing to them. With no power to the subway’s third rail, the EM Doppler would recover and the Bullmites would be unstoppable.

Myonri gave a short shriek right next to him.

“Eek!?”

“Don’t fire at random!! You don’t know where the civilians are in this darkness!!”

“Then what do we do!? They effectively have night-vision goggles, so they can fire accurately!”

Their firearms were commercial products taken from random people, so they were not up to military standards and were not equipped with the various cameras and sensors those soldiers were accustomed to.

In the end, Heivia Winchell could not become Quenser Barbotage.

And a moment later, the massive machines rushed in like charging bulls.

===Part 7===

Heivia had no idea what happened in the darkness then.

To start with the result, the Bullmites did not turn them to Swiss cheese. Someone’s hands reached in from behind, covered or grabbed his mouth and dominant hand, and then pulled him away. He heard no gunshots in the meantime. This third party was not suppressing the noise and light with silencers and flash hiders. Even those would have left some sign of gunfire.

Nevertheless, the Bullmites did not pursue.

After passing through two thick metal doors, brilliant light stabbed into eyes adjusted to the dark.

His vision did not return for a while.

“When in combat mode instead of marching mode, the Bullmites choose their targets based on microwave anti-personnel radar and walking-pattern analysis instead of simple image analysis using a camera.”

Heivia heard a smooth female voice.

It belonged to the mystery person using their hands to keep him from speaking or using his dominant hand.

“Your pseudo-jamming using a corona discharge affected not just the EM Doppler but also the EM scan used for their autonomous decisions. It was a decent idea, but it seems it could not knock out the proper radar equipment.”

“Bwah!”

Heivia was finally released.

[[Image:HO_v15_209.jpg|thumb]]

As his vision gradually returned, he and the other potatoes quickly glanced around to grasp their situation. First of all, they were in a narrow stone tunnel with orange mining lights hanging down at even intervals. His mouth had been covered by someone in an Information Alliance officer’s uniform who had long silver hair and brown skin. The soldiers serving her were also from the Information Alliance.

Once his eyes adjusted, it did not seem like enough.

Below those dim lights, the beautiful brown woman with silver hair introduced herself. She had an adult face and voice that were used to smiling.

“I am Lendy Farolito. My rank is lieutenant colonel.”

“I’m not going to shake that hand which could have been holding anyone’s you-know-what. I’m sick of you Information Alliance people using us as your pawns. Besides, those Bullmites are your unmanned weapons, aren’t they?”

“If we were working with the Martini, do you really think we would be hiding in this ‘gap’? If we had control over those things, we could have removed ourselves from the list of targets in advance.”

The brown beauty named Lendy sounded exasperated, but Heivia and Myonri did not understand what this dark underground path even was.

However, there were no floral security cameras or bull-like Bullmites here. Melly Martini Extradry’s ubiquitous eyes did not exist here. That was enough for this dark subterranean path to feel far more liberating than the open city streets. …Although that may have been Heivia admitting that he was Manhattan’s enemy.

“Is this city nothing but secrets on top of more secrets…?”

“This is the Underground Railroad. …And I do not mean it is a literal railroad located underground. This is a free space modeled after the organization that secretly rescued many slaves and helped them escape to safety during the civil war of an older age. The privileged class who were sick of this surveillance society altered the construction blueprints to create this ‘gap’. It is primarily used by students of Manhattan’s Columbia University and by Wall Street brokers and lawyers who graduated from there. …Since they could dig something like this without causing any real harm, the Manhattan 000 must be built thick down into the ocean.”

“N-no matter what anyone is trying to say, it always sounds like they’re bragging about the Manhattan’s specs. I have no idea if you’ve saved us or not…”

The problem was the scale of it all.

And Lendy nodded toward dumbfounded Myonri.

“In the Information Alliance, the powerful rule the weak through information management. There is always a risk that the higher ups are well aware that we believe we have fooled them. You should assume there is no such thing as a perfect safe zone.”

They had no words in response to that.

They still could not tell what was going on, but it seemed the Information Alliance was not a monolith. There were two groups: the standard one that had sent the Bullmites to finish off Heivia’s group, and the special group that had gathered the potatoes and taken them to a surveillance blind spot.

Lendy brought a hand to her slender chin.

“We too are focused on the Manhattan 000’s actions. In this case, that means the actions of the Capulet AI Network, which even the military has stopped worrying about the hardware side of, and the Martini, who is constantly conversing with that network. We have decided someone has to apply the brakes on the entire affair. Even if the AI is correct, its decisions will eventually stray from the truth if the inspector Martini continues giving it inaccurate responses. We have an idea of how to apply the brakes, but you need more than a trump card to play a game. We needed to gather enough ‘normal cards’ to reach the point where we can play that trump card.”

“Thank you very much for ignoring everything we’ve said. You will be pleased to know that being ignored by silver-haired brown-skinned young women has a way of making me nice and hard. Also, what about that sniper? Based on what you said, the natural assumption is that you stirred up that trouble to drive us down into the subway station.”

“…That would certainly be nice.”

However, Lendy’s response was a surprise.

Heivia had expected either a yes or no answer that might be an attempt to deceive them.

“We are at as much of a loss as you are about that, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

The brown beauty shrugged.

And she said it.

“It seems some other problem has arisen even as the Information Alliance is split in two over the Manhattan 000. This appears to be a different force altogether.”

===Part 8===

The person on a high-rise building roof had also come to a stop.

They were only 70cm away from one of the floral security cameras set up based on the theory of multiple plants providing mutual pollen range coverage, but that did not matter since they were outside the visual range supplied by the trumpet or megaphone shape.

Manhattan’s limited land meant it was densely packed even for New York. The building density was even greater than Shinjuku or Hong Kong. Jumping from building to building might sound like a superhuman action, but as long as you had the guts, it was perfectly possible with average muscle strength. You just needed the mentality to treat a tightrope walk the same whether it was 1 meter off the ground or 1000 meters off the ground.

The subway station that Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had run inside had 4 entrances. The slender person had taken up a position where they could see all of them, but they finally released a quiet sigh. They left their firing stance and leaned out over the concrete edge using the semiauto sniper rifle as support. Viewing the situation on the surface was more important than that device covered in cameras and sensors.

They set their emotions aside and rationally analyzed the situation.

…The targets had apparently escaped. There may have been a “hole” somewhere.

That was when the person heard an unpleasant buzzing as if from a mosquito or fly.

The device looked like a three-sided square frame holding a giant top instead of a globe. It was similar to a gyro, but somehow different. It was a serverless unmanned drone that used coaxial rotors to fly and used its simple circuits to guide its power system.

It did not matter whether or not it was aiming any weapons the person’s way. As long as it transmitted their location, a precision-guided missile or special unit could be sent in.

But there was no concern on the person’s face.

They reached for their skinny waist, pulled some things from a too-large waist pouch, and attached them to their face: a nose, eyebrows, lips, and – just to be on the safe side this time – left and right cheeks. It looked like the Island Nation’s ''fukuwarai'' or like a joke nose and glasses.

Or it would have if they had not been acquired by stripping the raw flesh from unknown youths.

It was an utterly grotesque montage, but they could not hide their eyes that way. They dealt with that by covering their eyes with their golden bangs.

“Yay. Peace, peace.”

That must have been enough for the facial recognition to fail. The person formed peace signs with both hands and the drone landed on the roof like it had lost sight of its target. It used top-like motions to move around the slender figure a few times, but ultimately flew off into the air again.

The person’s face was covered by a cold and damp sensation similar to putting a used shirt back on, but they did not seem to mind.

They caused the existing preparations to crumble away so they could achieve results greater than should have been possible.

And to that end, they would not hesitate to do things that would have been unthinkable under the standards of clean wars.

…The facial feature they had the least of was upper lips at just 3. They had a full 8 sets of 10 fingers for fingerprints. They knew they would have to replace them frequently, but at this point, just the harbor security group did not feel like enough. They might have to head down and “resupply”.

The person had infiltrated Manhattan using essentially the same method.

Innumerable uncollected corpses from both the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been floating in the ocean around New Caribbean Island. And Faith Organization ones had joined those after the Olympia Dome incident. The person had made their preparations by collecting a random person, removing their skin, and wrapping that around their body like a costume. Then they had floated on their back as if doing the backstroke to let the ocean current carry them to Manhattan’s harbor area while disguised as a corpse.

Of course, if an actual human had seen that, they would have immediately realized something was off about the suspicious figure wearing a bloated skin, but once the person was close enough, that hardly mattered. Defeating the harbor security had been easier than slaying a dragon in a hunting video game and then it had been time for the skinning.

…The person had not expected Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers to be so concerned for their surroundings. Such a wonderfully extraordinary Object was right in front of them. And what was more important than teamwork?

If they were to crush the Information Alliance, the person really wished those soldiers had gone on an indiscriminate rampage and gathered lots of unnecessary attention.

But a failure was a failure and they would never get anywhere if they did not accept the truth. They set aside the sniper rifle covered in cameras and sensors and quickly switched to a different weapon.

This was the weapon they really wanted to use.

“Yes. Hand Axe.”

The person put back on the backpack filled with the clay-like plastic explosive and spun one of the pen-like electric fuses in their hand.

Acquiring the genuine product had not been easy given the circumstances, so they had to make sure they made it count.

===Part 9===

The Underground Railroad was a very narrow place.

Even so, Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“As we explained earlier, we consider the Manhattan 000’s current state to be ‘berserk’. Capulet itself might be pure, but if the Martini meant to inspect it has given incorrect responses, it will not know whether it is right or not.”

Silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy Farolito began speaking while leading the way through the oppressive-feeling underground pathway. Turning her back on enemy soldiers and walking so that her butt wiggled below her short skirt may have been a way of showing her trust.

“Active self-denial, was it? Regardless, we cannot trust this Martini Series, so I doubt attempting to contact Melly would be of any value. It would only reveal our location to her. Meanwhile, the Pilot Elite has almost zero presence, so the Martini must control the Manhattan 000 through the process of rejecting errors as she and Capulet pit each other’s ideas against each other. If we silence Capulet ourselves, the Martini should have trouble controlling the Manhattan 000 on her own.”

“You aren’t telling us to break this giant island in half like a cookie, are you? Or are we supposed to sneak deep inside the Object and kill the Elite? We’re not a toy hidden in some old lady’s dresser drawer.”

“Our plan is not that reckless.”

After the pathway took countless right-angle turns, they finally entered an open space.

It seemed about the size of a city pool. A few dozen people in black uniforms different from Heivia and Myonri’s military uniforms were seated on the floor with their backs against the wall. It was unclear how they had gotten them in here, but a few bulletproof off-road vehicles were parked inside.

Lendy took some paper bags from her black-uniformed subordinates(?) and passed them around to Heivia’s group.

“What are these?”

“Some New York specialties.”

“…They aren’t more guns, are they?”

“I don’t even want to think about what kind of misconceptions you have about New York.”

The brown beauty sounded exasperated as she pulled out things like banana smoothies and salmon bagels that were practically salads. They were colored a toxic blue. There were even some pink cupcakes to fill the dessert category. It was all very Information Alliance-like. The lineup was clearly designed to look good on social media.

When she saw the skeptical looks on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes’ faces, Lendy took a bite of a bagel herself. Convinced they were not poisoned, Heivia, Myonri, and the others finally accepted the food they had been distributed.

“Dammit, why does food from the enemy have to be so tasty and healthy?”

“If they didn’t grow so reliant on doctors and end up marinated in different drugs, they might be unbeatable.”

Everyone’s focus gathered on Lendy who led the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes toward one of the off-road vehicles. She knocked lightly on the rear door’s smoked glass and spoke.

“We have gathered some usable personnel. Although it seems one of them is missing.”

“…Is that so? Oh ho ho.”

“Wait…” said Heivia with a frown.

He could not see her and he only had the voice through the intercom to go on. It was possible the vehicle itself was empty and the voice was being sent over the internet from somewhere else entirely.

Still, the delinquent soldier spoke up after removing the banana smoothie straw from his mouth.

“Is that the Rush’s Elite…?”

“The Gatling 033, you mean.” Lendy must have been particular about information because she corrected him. “This girl’s Object contains the Juliet System for testing. The truth is, the Information Alliance’s Capulet AI Network is an expanded version of Juliet which is closely related to the Gatling 033, or the Rush as you know it. Of course, Capulet has also been connected to the Montague General Database developed from the Romeo collection of big data.”

“Capulet and Montague. Shakespeare’s two major families?”

“Yes, but they are no more than project names. Whether there is really a one-to-one relationship between the machines is still a major question. Everyone claims to be an expert, but it’s possible no one actually knows what Capulet truly looks like,” noted silver-haired and brown-skinned Lendy. “By the way, the research team forced to develop them thought that only tragedy would result from connecting the two to form a single giant system. Regardless, Juliet and Capulet belong to the same family, so they are compatible. Thus, this girl can intervene if she gives it her all. The Martini Series seems to use its thousands of members to divide up the work so each one only converses with a section of the Information Alliance, but this girl can converse with the entirety of the AI network on her own. It feels exactly the same as the control system she is familiar with, so she should be able to work with the entire giant Capulet AI Network.”

Lendy breathed a gentle sigh.

“For now, we will sever the connection between Capulet and the Manhattan 000. It is unclear how involved the Martini in charge of New York’s defense is, but I doubt she can fully control such a large piece of hardware without Capulet’s support.”

“So it’s like a young wife who is a good cook but is helpless when the power goes out and she can’t use all her electronic kitchen gadgets?”

“It may be closer to having the recipe site she relies on shut down. If we can safely stop the Manhattan 000, it should bring a stop to the chaos starting to spread around the world.”

“If that was true, you wouldn’t be curled up like a hair in this dark underground blind spot. What are you plotting, you damn Information Alliance schemers?”

“There have been issues…”

This time, Lendy Farolito sighed with a truly troubled look on her face.

“The Manhattan 000 revealed itself to be the world’s largest Object, but it began as a section of New York that anyone could enter. Thus, it is hardly surprising to find safe country civilians here.”

“And?”

“…Around the time the Manhattan 000 revealed itself, this girl’s father disappeared.”

Lendy turned back toward Heivia’s group who were wholly focused on stuffing their mouths with bagels and she leaned back against the side of the bulletproof off-road vehicle.

The voices outside could not pass through the thick door without using the intercom.

“We have searched the best we could, but there is only so much we can do. We have yet to locate him, so her condition could hardly be worse. And our military doctor and battlefield counselor have agreed with that assessment. She could not produce her normal results if she made the attack now.”

“…”

That might sound silly for the military where everything was fully controlled by rules and regulations, but psychological condition was one of the factors used when selecting soldiers for special operations like snipers or the bomb squad. And that was all the more true for a Pilot Elite where a single individual was in charge of so much more.

“That girl is so fond of her father Royce that, no matter how hard her schedule must be as both an idol and an Elite, all it ever takes is a single morning call from him for her to get out of bed.”

Lendy narrowed her eyes a bit and shook her head.

“Anyway, forcing her will not give us the result we want. We have to start by collecting her father somehow or another. And he of course must be collected safely.”

“That’s a nice tear-jerking story, but it’s not making my you-know-what any harder. You want us to search for a single person in the densely-packed skyscrapers of Manhattan? Including the visitors, aren’t there 10 million people in Manhattan?”

“We have a general idea. I said we had searched as much as we could, didn’t I?” Lendy breathed a heavy sigh. “When all this began, contact with her father was lost at northern Central Park. There was ''some'' chaos when the Manhattan 000 activated. Not enough to cause injuries, but the people at work or sightseeing for the day were stranded with nowhere to spend the night, so the hotels and other lodging facilities have been overwhelmed. It seems some large public facilities have been opened for people to temporarily stay, free of charge.”

Lendy raised a hand and one black uniform tossed her a notebook-sized tablet. All unnecessary transmissions had of course been switched off.

“This is a photo of Mr. Royce. The very first thing we tried was his cellphone. We could not reach it or its location information. I seriously doubt a journalist like him would shut off his phone in a situation like this, so a third party has probably confiscated it.”

“And I guess that could be more than just a Martini Series plot. A thug would probably see a middle-aged man’s smartphone as a source of quick cash. You can find people taking advantage of chaos anywhere.”

“That does not change the top suspect, though.”

This female commander spoke in a polite but cold way that was different from Frolaytia.

“Since it is not possible to directly contact Mr. Royce, we must follow the manual and predict the flow of people. Past Central Park is Uptown. One landmark of Morningside Heights to the northwest is Columbia University, an Ivy League school. All of the stranded people in that area would have been brought there.”

“So we have to drag the Elite’s father from there for an emotional reunion?”

“Yes. The northern end of Central Park borders Harlem, but the public order is not exactly perfect in some areas. It is highly unlikely that a large group of outsiders unfamiliar with the local rules would have gone there. If that girl’s father is safe, he would probably have gone to the university in Morningside Heights along with the others.”

“Unlikely and probably, huh? …You’re telling us to risk our lives on something vaguer than a young boy’s image of a woman’s crotch?”

“We searched as much as we could. …This Underground Railroad is not enough to build a route directly there. The only option is to step out onto the dangerous surface and forcibly fight our way through Manhattan’s streets while the Capulet AI Network and Martini Series know where we are.”

Heivia’s group had already fought and fled from those unmanned weapons, so they understood the gravity of that statement.

Plus…

“As I said, there is also an unpredictable third party on the Manhattan 000. You should know that after they used a sniper rifle and armor-piercing incendiary rounds to send the Bullmites after you. We have no way of managing the risks en route.”

===Part 10===

It was a strange feeling.

“Nn…”

Oh Ho Ho tilted her head and its gorgeous ringlet curls while removing her clothes within the black vehicle. She was changing out of her casual clothing for walking around the city and into her skintight special suit for Object piloting, but there were a large number of eyes directed her way with only a single pane of glass between them.

That said, it was smoked glass, so even though she could see them, they would be unable to see her. She knew that, but she still felt their nonexistent gazes prickling her soft skin as she bared it.

They couldn’t actually see her, could they?

They weren’t just pretending not to see even though they could, were they?

“It’s the same dynamic in miniature.”

The information traveled only one way. The powerful had the weak’s information, but the weak did not even imagine the powerful were spying on them. That was the essence of the Information Alliance. In this case, was Oh Ho Ho watching the group through the smoked glass, or was the group pretending that was the case while they watched her? Only a higher authority who could view this from a higher perspective could make that judgment. And that authority would be monitored by someone higher still. It continued on and on like that.

It was all so absurd.

Normally, knowing it was smoked glass would settle the issue. The slender girl sighed, removed her surprisingly childish underwear (which might surprise her fans if they saw it) and then put on the special suit designed just for her. Some Pilot Elites wore underwear and others did not, but Oh Ho Ho wore her special suit over an otherwise nude body. The decision often came down to the role the suit played and how the Elite viewed it. Oh Ho Ho saw it as a swimsuit rather than outerwear or underwear, so it felt odd to her to wear underwear below it.

“There we go.”

After pulling it up to her neck, the girl finished putting on the special suit. However, every one of Oh Ho Ho’s bodylines showed through, down to each and every rib.

Juliet and Capulet.

The two control systems were compatible thanks to their development history.

(It’s annoying that the Gatling 033 itself isn’t getting any focus, but I can live with that. No one is more suited to this task than me.)

If the Legitimacy Kingdom was involved in this, would that boy make an appearance?

There were not many of them, but it was still a few dozen. She was not sure of exactly who was there.

And she could not deny that she did hope that he was one of them.

“Oh ho ho. I am the star today. I am the heroine in the spotlight!”

===Part 11===

“Tell me if you get tired. I’m freed from the earth’s gravity, so I can’t tell when we’ve been walking too much. 636. It was for times like this that I expanded the number of unmanned taxis and had New York’s subway cleaned up a fair bit.”

“…Are you planning to bring that ring on a taxi or train?”

“That…might be a good idea. 984. The driver or station attendant helping me in would be watching as my toes wiggled. Would that break the spell over them? They might realize it isn’t normal. Heh heh heh heh heh.”

That had been a mistake. One careless statement had brought out the perversion that was usually masked by the girl’s calm mood. It was scary that she was also an Elite.

While the Martini monsters named Wraith and Melly discussed matters, they entered Central Park.

Manhattan was normally lined with towering skyscrapers, but a rectangular area had been cut out of the city for a giant green park nearly 4 kilometers long.

Except there was no sign of that anymore.

A slit had opened in the center of the ground and then the park opened upwards like double doors. And a giant diagonal tower stuck out from that massive rectangular hole. Two barrels of different sizes were stacked on top of each other like an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached below.

The black-uniformed girl grimly narrowed her eyes.

“The electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon.”

“Really conspicuous, isn’t it? 439. The Manhattan 000 actually has 44 different main cannon systems, but everyone focused on this one. It’s like they don’t even try to imagine what’s hidden behind that bright backlight.”

The desire for this Object to be a one-trick pony may have narrowed people’s vision.

With her game system directly linked to the Manhattan 000, Melly moved the large ring her butt sank inside of to carry her alongside Central Park and the giant opening within. Uptown, Upper East Side, Madison Avenue. This area had a high density of floral security cameras and every bag or piece of children’s clothing sold there was as expensive as a piece of art. The brown girl must have been somehow stimulated by this luxurious atmosphere because she desperately pursed her lips and trembled within her two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. With Central Park rising up with rows of buildings on either side, there was no sunlight. There was a pond and a museum clinging to the side of that “wall”, so it had to look like a surreal outdoor art exhibit.

Either she wanted to fiddle with something or she just liked how it felt in her hands because Melly rubbed her thumbs against the analog sticks on either side of the game system.

“Right, right. That’s right, Wraith. I wanted to ask you something since you’ve been all over the world. 948. Do you know a journalist named Royce?”

“What about them?”

“095. I’ve collected them.”

“…You’re attacking the press now? That is the lowest form of information warfare.”

“The press…! Yes, yes, that has such a wonderful ring to it. 707. It has such a formally dangerous sound so different from having your secrets revealed on the internet. Eh heh heh heh heh.”

She must have been leaving the calculations to the extraordinary Object because the ring hopped up lightly along with the paper surgical gown girl inside. Wraith watched with cold eyes.

It did not matter that the AI network, that’s hardware could be located anywhere, was functioning properly if its observer was broken.

Wraith recalled the method of breaking the Martini Series that Piranirie had mentioned. Melly was an old acquaintance, but she felt an eerie pressure from the very existence of the Ragnarok Script that had driven Piranirie mad with active self-denial. If Wraith was asked if she could place her full trust in this girl, she would have difficulty nodding.

After all, she could not even trust herself.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to do this. He had the misfortune of being on the seam when Central Park opened. 779. To be blunt, he fell down into the classified zone…the main cannon’s storage space. He landed on a catwalk, so it wasn’t a long drop, though.”

“…”

Seeing Wraith’s indescribably uncertain expression, Melly gently sighed in just her two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. As if to say she had felt the exact same way. After breathing a heated breath on her game screen, she lightly rubbed the screen on the oil paper covering her chest and showed Wraith the screen of that game system that was like the evolved form of a tablet.

“This is the bearded man in question. 153. To be honest, he’s not my type. Although having your secrets revealed by someone who isn’t your type might be a decent situation…”

“Keep this up and I really will hate you.”

The screen seemed to display a video file.

An ordinary middle-aged man was looking around anxiously. He looked like the kind of person who cared for his family so much he forgot to look after his own life. He probably worked hard, paid his taxes, used up his bonus and paid leave over the holidays prepared by the higher ups, and got caught in traffic.

“Please let me contact my family. I beg you. I am a journalist, so I understand how your rules work to an extent. I will keep your secrets. I will not tell anyone about this. You can monitor my every move if you wish. Just let me tell that girl that I am safe. This isn’t like those online journalists who pursued the legends banned by the Faith Organization. None of this is necessary here. Please, meeting in Central Park was that girl’s idea. If I remain missing, she might blame herself. Since I am perfectly safe, there is no reason for her to harm herself like that, is there? Just let me fulfill my duty as her father.”

Of course, those Information Alliance geniuses were not emotional enough fools to judge someone based on their appearance alone. Detailed data on his breathing, pulse, perspiration, eye movement, and facial muscle movement was provided with the footage.

After reading the data, Wraith could only respond with a quiet look.

“…Well, this is troubling. He’s nothing more than a good person. Even if this is a stressful situation, 220 is high for the top blood pressure number. I’m worried about his bad cholesterol.”

They also looked through his past educational and employment history, his bank account data, his search history, his online purchase history, and his statements on social media and message boards, but it all came up clean. In fact, it was so clean that they wondered if this was an alternate account for living a double life.

“This was bad luck for everyone involved. If he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and I had even one reason to abandon him, I was planning to detain him or shoot him, but I have to save such an honest person. 600. I’m going to release him and send him to one of the shelters. The military exists to protect the people, after all.”

The brown girl breathed a heavy sigh as she explained that.

…At first glance, she seemed to be a normal and sensible person (if you ignored certain unusual proclivities), but she was the Martini in charge of New York’s defense as well as the Pilot Elite. That meant she was the culprit who had fired the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon on an Information Alliance maintenance fleet. There was also the Ragnarok Script. Active self-denial could be steering her full speed away from the safe choice. Making a hasty decision would be dangerous.

During the fight against Piranirie, it was revealed that Capulet could not “see” New York because its residents hated the surveillance cameras and email spying. The AI itself was pure, but if the Martini Series meant to check on it had gone insane, there was a fear that Capulet would lose its accuracy.

Wraith rationally observed the girl and hid her rational mindset with an indifferent smile.

“Is there some kind of problem with postponing a decision on this mere evacuee?”

“It looks like he’s going to die of an ulcer or helicobacter pylori before I got around to it. But if you don’t know him, I guess we’ll have to rely on the family member Mr. Royce keeps talking about. 657.”

“His daughter, huh? Is she in Manhattan?”

“100. Yes, fortunately for his stress levels. And this might surprise you. Okay? To use an Island Nation idiom, it’s like a kite giving birth to a hawk.”

“?”

“She’s the Pilot Elite of the Second Generation Gatling 033. 710.”

“…The Juliet’s?”

Wraith’s voice dropped in tone.

Melly nodded and narrowed her eyes with her butt inside the large ring.

“The one that shared Capulet’s development history. They were working on an AI network from a different angle than our Martini Series. This man is an indisputably good person and he’s connected to a VIP. I have no excuse to continue holding him in protective custody. 890. Even if this was an unfortunate accident, it will cause a lot of trouble.”

===Part 12===

“…Ohh?”

===Part 13===

The Underground Railroad seemed to weave through the gaps in Manhattan’s structure, but it only went so far.

Heivia Winchell groaned next to a metal shutter thick enough to be a submarine door.

“This is the worst, dammit. Couldn’t I go jerk off, take a nap, and wake up to find peace has come to the world?”

Silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy Farolito responded with no movement of her emotions.

“If one of the four major powers is completely broken, the entire planet will plummet into an uncontrollable war. You need to give up on the idea of being able to escape.”

A mixture of several deep metallic noises approached. While pressed up against the wall next to the door, Heivia and Myonri looked puzzled and turned toward the source of the noise just in time to see the approach of a nice body with G-cups and long hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls.

[[Image:HO_v15_235.png|thumb]]

It was the Information Alliance Pilot Elite and top idol. However…

“She’s huge. Isn’t she just way, way too big!? Sh-she’s gotta be like four meters or something! She could probably make a slam dunk while just standing there!!”

“Oh ho ho. This is technically classified as a powered suit.”

“Powered…”

Myonri was shocked into silence, so silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy explained.

“It is an impractical concept machine that was displayed at an Information Alliance robot show. There is almost no good use for it, but we receive maintenance and inspection funding just by having it sleeping in storage, so it is a profitable treasure for our unit.”

Its history involved some unbelievable grownup issues.

“Wh-what are those huge things it’s holding like double handguns?” asked Myonri. “They look more like exposed lab equipment than weapons.”

“Those are rapid-fire beam cannons meant to be carried by truck and fixed to a turret. They were originally meant for assassinations on the surface or in the air. I believe they were developed to vaporize VIP planes and armored cars that are using routes that avoid the Object and all its laser beams. Although they are apparently quite underpowered as they have no reactor to power them.”

“Hyehh. Is it supposed to be mimicking the Rush?”

“What do the weapons matter?” complained Heivia. “That huge thing could break through a tank’s hatch with nothing more than its fists…”

The sense of scale was way off, but the proportions were exactly those of the human G-cup idol. Whatever the actual bust size was, when you looked at it proportionally, the G-cups were still G-cups! And perhaps due to how it was maintained, it gave off a floral scent similar to shampoo or conditioner. It seemed idols really did smell of soap rather than perfume.

And when the 4m G-cups stood next to Heivia’s less than 2 meters, he could not help but have a low angle. He slapped his hand against the fake butt.

“Oh, ohh. Now this is a weird feeling. The fact that it’s soft is actually creepy. I feel a pressure coming from this ass. I’m afraid I’ll be buried alive…”

“The first time I can write off as an accident, but the second time will be considered intentional and I will kick. Oh ho ho. Just like a thoroughbred.”

This was no time to be focused on an enemy idol. He could not stop his balls from shriveling up in fear. After all, this would be more than an impact from dual-wielded steel construction beams. Those cutting-edge weapons were meant to be carried by truck and fixed to the ground with stakes, yet she was holding one in each hand. If that solid grip grabbed his balls, it would be the end of the world.

Myonri was also overwhelmed by rapid-fire beam cannons that looked like reinforced glass lab equipment forcibly covered with composite armor.

“Th-those aren’t exactly disguised. I thought you had to hide your actions from the main Information Alliance group here.”

“The best place to hide a tree is a forest. Melly’s side is skilled at gathering information, so we just have to use that against them. Look at this. Glance.”

“Made in…Nau Yoke?”

“That’s not even close to spelled right. And it has a price tag for $199.99! There’s no way truck-loaded weapons would be that cheap! What, are they like a used car that’s cursed to kill each of its owners in an accident!?”

No one would think those were real now. Heivia had trouble believing the way the Information Alliance did things.

“I-I guess it’s all about making them realistic, huh? Well, I don’t care. Just give me some Information Alliance VR goggles. I’ll shut myself in my own world and stroke my you-know-what, so go save the world without me.”

Whatever the case, if he hopped in a rowboat and left Manhattan, he would be vaporized by one of countless cannons the instant he was far enough away. Heivia, Myonri, and the rest of the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had to solve the Manhattan problem if they were to return alive.

“I don’t know or care what hand signs and footwork the Information Alliance uses. We’ll do things our own way, so try not to trip us up.”

“As long as you act as a shield or a diversion, I do not particularly care.”

“Okay, I get it. You can shut up now, plump commander. C’mon, let’s get onboard, Myonri.”

They could not seem to work together in the slightest.

Without even a basic three-count, the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance began moving independently.

The 30m, 12ton yellow school bus loaded with the potatoes broke through the thick metal shutter like it was wet paper.

The bright sunlight briefly blinded Heivia and the others as it stabbed into their darkness-adjusted eyes.

They were in Midtown West, Midtown.

“Oh, geez. Here we are on Broadway!!”

“I wish we could’ve seen it at night.”

Electronic signs and giant monitors surrounded a road as large as a runway. World-class theatres lined either side of the street. Needless to say, this was the pinnacle of the theatrical and film world. The flower or trumpet-like security cameras had detected their presence. Many eyes gathered on them. Heivia felt a definite pressure, like the air had solidified. Tires screeched as the giant vehicles were forced around. The three school busses knocked the poor civilian cars out of the way lightly enough to not kill anyone and finally arrived on Manhattan’s largest main street.

Lendy whispered quietly aboard the same large vehicle.

“We’ve been spotted.”

“Those Bullmites are looking pretty adorable now. We’re the big-ass mama who protects the kids on the way home from school!!”

Several boulder-like masses sat in the middle of the intersection. They were the composite armor bulls sitting with their four legs folded up below them. Those serverless unmanned weapons would use flexible actions with just their simple circuits. They would probably function as an immovable barrier in a head-on collision from a normal off-road vehicle, but the yellow school busses rode over them and crushed them instead of knocking them out of the way. Heivia’s group briefly left gravity’s grasp and passed through the intersection with a dreadful impact.

“Passing the Bullmites will increase the alert level. Keep an eye on the sky.”

“Then it’s about time we brought out the trick hidden up our sleeve. Let’s go, Myonri!”

Just then, a giant shadow appeared overhead. What was it? The silhouette resembled a broad, double-edged sword and it seemed to be loaded with a rocket engine. It even opened something like a square umbrella to make sure it did not overshoot them.

It did not feel remotely real to the potatoes, so Lendy shouted in their place.

“That’s a Smart Meteor. It’s an unmanned urban aerial bombing aircraft! Watch out!!”

Did it too coordinate using on-site decisions like a bee or ant? Including visitors, Manhattan had 10 million people walking around, but it did not matter that they were at Times Square, the most densely populated area there. The belly of the broad double-edge sword body opened and a precision-guided bomb was released high in the sky. That bomb used GPS and the movements of its tail fins to achieve a margin of error of only 30cm.

A moment later, an explosive was used to slice open the yellow school bus’s rear end from within. And like a sword being drawn from its scabbard, a smaller (but still large) truck slid out of the speeding school bus and onto the road.

The school bus was forcefully blown away and the flaming mass collapsed on its side and rolled away, but the large truck carrying the potatoes easily avoided the wreckage it had shed like a snake’s skin.

“Self-driving scares the hell out of me! You can just do it all with a smartphone, can’t you!?”

“It’s a good thing Dorothea’s plan using tanks was ended sooner rather than later.”

By this time, were the people of Manhattan panicking?

Or did they think a movie was being filmed?

Heivia and the others followed Broadway to leave Midtown West and entered the Upper West Side directly alongside Central Park.

They wanted to say something about the colossal cannon, but they did not have the time with their life being targeted from above in real time.

“The next one is coming.”

“Myonri! The next layer! These New Yorkers are connoisseurs, so a garter belt won’t be enough to turn them on!!”

The large truck had no one in the driver’s seat and the door on the back burst open to allow several bulletproof black off-road vehicles out. With each decoy, they were using up their extra lives and their armor was growing thinner, but it also made them lighter and nimbler.

They were in the nest. Even without a server, these unmanned weapons could coordinate using the social structure of ants or bees, so trying to eliminate the threat by destroying every single one would be a never-ending task.

They had to think up a way to continue forward without defeating them.

“The next is the last one!”

“The fun really begins once we’re buck naked.”

The luggage-loading door sprang up on the back of their bulletproof off-road vehicle and Heivia and Myonri burst out onto the road riding light off-road motorcycles.

This time, they had no armor whatsoever.

The wind seemed to slice into their flesh.

But it was also true that development of self-driving motorcycles was taking longer than with cars. That eliminated the worry of having them hijacked by a surprise cyber-attack.

“What?” asked Heivia. “There’s something other than the Bullmites. What’s that collapsible umbrella monster thing!?”

“That interpretation is not entirely wrong,” said Lendy over the radio. “It is a Gunner Bat. When folded up, it is no larger than a relay baton and it is an offshoot of portable grenade launcher design. When you throw it, the wings automatically open, it flies autonomously, and an external terminal is used to guide it over the enemy’s head where it can fire up to three explosives when instructed. Its accuracy is below average, but it can scatter more generalized damage when loaded with white phosphorous grenades or the like. It is a support weapon that uses a quantity over quality philosophy to force enemy soldiers out from behind cover with explosions and smoke.”

Heivia remembered the self-rolling grenades that Wraith had used on the Olympia Dome. Even without a server, their simple circuits could take the optimal action by mimicking the movements of insects. These were Information Alliance unmanned weapons. That electronic equipment filled Heivia with self-pity for using those pineapple-shaped explosives that required him to pull the pin and throw it like a rock. …On the other hand, these weapons would probably be vulnerable to an EMP or microwave attack.

“White phosphorous in a densely-populated area? What is wrong with them? Nothing about that makes me happy. …And what is that giant top!?”

“That is a Multi-Gyro. It is a reconnaissance drone that can travel through the air or on the ground. It has no obvious weapons, but it is loaded with a stun bomb. Get within 3 meters of it and it will scatter an 800,000-volt current. Since it does not need to access a server, it can do so without any adverse effects on itself. Not only is it harmful to human bodies, but it could easily cause a vehicle’s electronics to malfunction.”

Heivia felt his balls shriveling up as he had it calmly explained to him. And before any of those issues, if he passed out while straddling a motorcycle, he would be killed instantly.

The unmanned weapon had no tires or treads, but it still attempted to tackle the off-road motorcycle with nothing more than top-like spinning. Heivia focused on that while also desperately trying to think.

Even if Manhattan was an extraordinarily large Object, it was still only one borough of the giant city of New York. The distance from Times Square, where they exited the Underground Railroad, to Columbia University was about 10 kilometers at most. While ignoring all traffic laws and flooring it, they could travel that distance in less than 5 minutes.

“Columbia University is being used to house civilians, so it has been designated a noncombat area,” said Lendy over the radio. “Reaching our destination ASAP should be the safest plan.”

“More importantly, what happened with that Oh Ho Ho!? Did you develop a bike big enough for that fat suit and its huge ass!?”

“It is not fat, nor does it have a huge ass! Ho…ho ho…oh ho ho ho ho ho!! You need to look at the overall proportions. It has the perfect golden ratio, does it not!?”

“Besides, you are not authorized for that information,” added Lendy. “It can be easy to forget, but that girl’s very presence is a secret our unit must protect.”

By the time they heard Oh Ho Ho’s shouting and Lendy Farolito’s calm voice over their earpieces, Heivia, Myonri, and the others on the off-road motorcycles had entered the university campus.

Heivia clenched his teeth when a bomb fell just barely outside the campus. Those serverless simple circuits had done it.

“Ochre, Nex…!!”

“Keep your balance! Do you want to fall over and end up as mincemeat!?”

Myonri shouted directly at him while driving right alongside him. She had to have noticed the allies behind them had been blown away, but they could not use recovery magic that brought back the dead.

The Smart Meteor had been opening its square umbrella to adjust its speed and keep its broad double-edged sword shape overhead at all times, but it veered away so as not to enter the university campus. Heivia saw that as he rode his off-road motorcycle full-speed along the well-maintained lawn, but…

“!?”

He felt a sudden impact.

His off-road motorcycle’s front wheel was crushed like a cake dropped on the ground.

(A Bullmite…!?)

He did not have time to gasp.

He was thrown into the air, so he curled up and rolled across the lawn to reduce the impact. Meanwhile, the mass of composite armor planted its four legs on the lawn to accurately target him once more. The serverless bull used just its simple circuits to teach itself, so it began running in order to smash that soft human body.

Unmanned weapons did not fear death.

He could fire hundreds of 9mm bullets straight at it, but he would not stop it.

“!?”

Without bothering to get up, Heivia aimed his submachinegun (that he had swiped from a Manhattan resident). It was mostly just a reflex, like covering your face when a ball was thrown at it. His rational mind was screaming that firing would be useless.

He had to rethink this.

With all the unmanned weapons, this battle’s rules were different.

(Throw out the fundamentals. Work your mind to survive. Preserving your gun and ammo is useless if you’re turned to mincemeat. What would that bastard do at times like this?)

“Nwohhhhhhhhh!!”

He shook that from his mind with a bizarre yell.

As the mass of composite armor approached, he removed the submachine gun, grabbed the shoulder strap, and swung it like a caveman. He restrained his fear, stared straight ahead, and threw his precious gun toward the Bullmite’s forelegs like a cowboy’s lasso. This was only an option if he threw out the fundamental idea that a soldier’s gun was their lifeline on the battlefield.

The bulls used in bullfighting had outstanding speed and weight, but unlike an elegant horse, they lacked the strength to clear hurdles and other obstacles. The Bullmite could not avoid the submachinegun that spun at higher than knee height. It was over quickly once the firearm struck the forelegs.

The sling belt tangled around the mechanical legs and the heavy mass sank forward like a table with one of its four legs broken.

Its own speed and weight worked against it and it was incapacitated in no time at all. It plowed toward Heivia with the force of a rolling boulder.

“Watch out!!”

The delinquent soldier still could not get up, but he somehow managed to dodge by rolling to the side. If the Bullmite had had all fours legs on the ground, it would have made an adjustment even a millimeter before contact to pursue him.

(This is awful. I feel like I’m being forced to kiss the contents of my own balled-up tissue…)

Had he done it?

It was just like a traffic accident. Humans were not strong enough to destroy a gigantic truck, but if they caused an accident, the truck would reduce itself to a mangled mess. He had lost his precious submachinegun, so he hoped for that level of results. However…

“…Damn,” he groaned.

A straight line had been gouged into the lawn, but the mass of composite armor stood back up at the end of it. The four mechanical legs stood firm on the ground in order to crush that inefficient mass of muscle.

There was really nothing he could do this time.

(What do I do!? Do I use my boot laces next!? Or remove my belt and swing my prized you-know-what around!?)

But just then, something changed.

With a sizzling sound like water on a hot grill, a giant, half-melted top flew in from elsewhere. It seemed to be a Multi-Gyro falling apart in midair. The stun bomb inside it must have malfunctioned because it scattered an 800,000-volt current that fried the Bullmite’s electronics. It no longer mattered that it was a serverless machine that ran on the insect colony theory.

“Owaaaaah!?”

It was more like a rapid series of narrow lights than a single stream of water from a fire truck. The destroyed target had fist-sized chunks torn from its armor, the number of holes grew, and the entire thing melted and was blown away in no time. It was an even worse version of Swiss cheese. Heivia wanted to avoid dying like that at all costs.

The attacks were rapid-fire beams.

Unlike the lasers which had become synonymous with anti-air weaponry, these were visible, but that actually helped them stimulate fear. Heivia doubted this was simply meant as assistance. When the orange spray of melted armor passed right by his face, he frantically got down.

The 4-meter nice body that was “made in Nau Yoke” had arrived later than the off-road motorcycles. The boobs jiggled perfectly in sync with its pace, so it was clearly a crystallization of the designer’s blood and tears.

“Oh ho ho. Make sure to thank your lucky stars and the goddess of victory.”

Heivia sounded annoyed as he looked at those weapons that looked like reinforced glass lab equipment forcibly covered with armor.

“A powered suit with prototype assassination beam weapons? It always comes down to tech, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does. What do you think war is?”

He had only survived by working up a sweat and rolling through the mud, but she had cleaned it all up by wielding those giant rapid-fire beam cannons like an action star with dual pistols. And with her extra-large boobs jiggling all the while. It was clear she lived in a different world since she could take her time and arrive late while the unmanned weapons targeted her from the air in the Manhattan streets.

Myonri made a shocked comment after making a U-turn and returning on her off-road motorcycle despite the danger. …Except she may not have been motivated by the power of friendship. She may have simply been afraid of being hit by a stray shot of that futuristic beam weapon that was scattering its shots chaotically around.

“I thought Columbia University’s campus was a noncombat area!”

The ubiquitous floral security cameras remained silent. They would not disprove false charges and they ignored their own side’s rule violations, so their quality could not have been worse. Were they only good for peeping on highly-educated college girls?

“No, wait. I recognize these scratches,” groaned Heivia as he looked at the Bullmite that had flipped over like a dead bug. “This is one of the ones that rushed at us in Chinatown. This is definitely the same scratches. You can’t fool my clever eyes.”

The 4-meter ringlet curls girl tilted her head while firing her rapid-fire beam cannons at the Bullmites and Multi-Gyros that attempted to approach. Those dual cannons were devastating in an open area with no hills.

“I am not sure what you mean.”

“That can happen, can it? …Getting the Information Alliance to admit that feels like victory to me.”

The Chinatown in Downtown was the opposite direction from Columbia University in Uptown. Since Manhattan was full of these unmanned weapons, it was not logical for the same one to have come all this way.

That meant it was possible someone had brought it here.

That meant the Martini who was suspected of falling into active self-denial just like Piranirie. That brown girl with her butt inside a large swim ring.

And…

“Myonri. And the idol too. Keep your fingers on the trigger.”

“Eh?”

In place of his ruined submachinegun, Heivia reached for his hip and drew a handgun capable of firing the same bullets. Wealthy Manhattan was overrun with such things.

He would not have trouble killing someone.

“She’s coming. Wraith Martini Vermouthspray is coming!!”

===Part 14===

“Frank. Prepare for battle.”

In a second floor hallway of Columbia University’s main building, a black-uniformed blonde girl gave that command. Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s eyes were fixed on the yard visible out the window.

“Heh heh. Eh heh heh. Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. I’m inside a world-renowned Ivy League school in clothing that could be torn with the slightest tug. How☆thrilling!! 008, 774, 868, 229! Tag it, tag it, tag it some more!! The cold, rejecting atmosphere of the school hallway is so good. Ah ha, ah ha ha. I’m going crazy. Completely crazy. The world is such an amazing place…!!”

“Melly, can I just shoot you?”

“Uwebh, cough, cough!! 808. Sorry, I’ll take this seriously.”

She must have been focused on the footage from the ubiquitous floral security cameras because the brown girl with her butt inside a large swim ring made from the same material as a special operations rubber boat stared at her game system and began folding up her arms and legs that she had spread out. The approach of outsiders may have brought out her shy side.

“438. To get back on topic, Wraith, I’ve detected the attack, but I have a few questions. You should be cautious.”

“Not what I expected to hear from New York’s defense commander.”

Did Wraith sound so threatening because she suspected she herself was being affected by the Ragnarok Script? Looking at oneself was not easy. Melly, meanwhile, had folded up her limbs like a chrysalis or fetus to enter her serious mode (even if that was only skin deep).

She must have been worried about it overheating because she waved the thin game system like a fan.

“Even with everything I’ve seen here, it still doesn’t add up. I doubt the isolated Legitimacy Kingdom remnant could do all this on their own. 319. We should assume some of our own people are supporting them.”

“So they have equipment and our internal information, huh?”

“050. Also, I can’t figure out why they would target Columbia University. There have to have been better candidates if they wanted to damage the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object. This place is being used as a shelter for civilians because there was nothing of value here. Are they directly targeting me? Or do you have another idea, Wraith?”

“Nope.” Wraith waved her hand dismissively and breathed an exasperated sigh. “But I am aware they would want to kill me if they had a chance. A dangerous and earnest enemy has given up on safely remaining hidden and has made it this far while so many unmanned weapons pursue them. Since they’re actively putting their lives at risk, this has to be more than a whim or just to show off. I doubt a peaceful conversation would get through to them.”

“I see. 591.”

With her limbs folded up and the game system held between her soft-looking brown thighs, Melly lightly swung one of the remote-style controllers. A Bullmite responded to the magic wand by walking up alongside Wraith. Removing the composite armor around its belly revealed a full supply of weapons and ammunition for human use.

Wraith frowned.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“Wraith, you will put together whatever you need all on your own. This is a school with plenty of workshops, so it should be much better suited to research projects than a home garage. 171. I’ll supply the weapons, so it would be great if you could settle this with a sensible amount of equipment. And I mean that from a risk simulation standpoint as well. Okay?”

“That would help a lot, but if something happens, say I stole the weapons.”

“Sorry, but I’m not that shameless, Wraith. 903.”

The black-uniformed girl snapped her fingers and the young man stepped forward and began checking through the mountain of weapons and ammo like a guard dog given permission to eat.

“Melly, what will you do?”

“Are you asking me to deal with a gun’s recoil after what happened to my spine? 749. As usual, I will leave the annoying fighting to the unmanned weapons.”

“I doubt that will work,” declared Wraith while grabbing a small self-defense handgun. “Not against this enemy.”

===Part 15===

There were more and more sizzling sounds like water on a hot grill.

They were of course coming from the 4m idol piloted by the Information Alliance’s Oh Ho Ho. Those bizarre cannons looked like reinforced glass lab equipment with composite armor forcibly added on top. Those giant rapid-fire beam cannons were meant to be carried by truck and fixed to the ground with metal stakes, but she was holding and swinging them around with machine arms. The Bullmites were built to deflect a normal(?) assault rifle bullet, but they could not “hunt” as intended when their opponent was a bipedal powered suit. The Multi-Gyros, those giant tops filled with 800,000 volts of electricity, were also having little luck.

More and more fist-sized holes were torn into the unmanned weapons’ armor and they were soon melted like sugar sculptures and blown away.

The university had a lot of straight hallways and the Bullmites could only just barely fit their large armored forms around the corners. It was not conducive to nimble movements that used excellent footwork to approach while moving from cover to cover. They could not avoid the rapid-fire light coming from the two cannons.

“As usual, the star of the battle is the Elite. Oh ho ho!”

“More importantly, watch your head. Seeing a fancy Nau Yoke idol’s head smashing through the ceiling and fluorescent lights is one hell of a visual!”

This seemed to be the logic of a Pilot Elite born in the age of Objects.

The powered suit was unstoppable while tilting its head at a diagonal angle but still scraping its ringlet curl head against the low ceiling. Instead of individual ingenuity, it was direct firepower backed by technology and resources that eliminated the threat. Without even using cover, she ruled the battlefield with the simple idea that a strong offense was the greatest defense.

“I can’t believe they would gather all the civilians in one place and then send their unmanned weapons there…”

“Give them enough time and those monsters will decide to use them as hostages. Let’s end this before any bored wives are tied to one of those rodeo machines made of composite armor.”

“? You are being awfully malicious this time. Oh ho ho. Has the Legitimacy Kingdom been teaching you to feel more hostile?”

That said, Heivia’s group had to think about more than just the fight against the Martinis. Their top priority was getting Oh Ho Ho’s father, Royce, out of Columbia University.

Unlike a middle or high school, universities gave the students a lot more freedom, but that increased the risk to them. Some of the faded posters on the bulletin boards were asking for information on missing people. That included a journalism club that had gone missing after leaving for a battlefield country (in the name of gathering materials, but who knows what they were thinking).

“Once we’re done with this, you really will work your fingers to stop the Manhattan and Capulet, won’t you!?”

“Oh ho ho. …I would really rather do that right away, but the doctors and counselors are all stopping me.”

“Only a sage living deep in the mountains can control their own heart.”

“I really wish all of you would stop treating this perfect international idol like she has a father complex.”

“Wait, did you just add another trait in there? Idol, Elite, busty, father complex…how many scoops of ice cream are on this cone?”

It seemed idols needed to be multi-talented in this age.

They checked inside a nearby classroom and saw a few frightened students with their hands in the air. The shelters for the gathered civilians were apparently in the larger facilities like lecture halls and gyms.

“…We really should have gone there right away. Oh ho ho.”

“And where exactly is ‘there’? Will we have to check each one in turn?”

That was easy enough to say, but Columbia University had several dozen schools from both the liberal arts and the sciences, so it was an enormous educational organization with more than 20,000 teachers and students. Even a low estimate for the number of school buildings and related facilities on campus could not be counted on your fingers. Oh Ho Ho’s rapid-fire beam cannons were quite effective, but they could not get overly optimistic. For one thing, she was wielding prototype assassination weapons and those large-caliber, high-power cannons were poorly suited for close ranges. And just like the Bullmites, the powered suit could not move freely inside the complex indoor environment.

If the Bullmites used the coordination of their simple circuits to all jump out at once, the entire situation could be turned on its head. It would be very bad if the unmanned weapons used their lack of a life to carry an anti-tank chemical warhead with them. Whatever the case, they wanted to avoid wandering around if it could be avoided.

Heivia thought for a bit.

“First, let’s head to the cafeteria. With this many civilians here, they’ll have to do something about the food. If there’s a memo in the kitchen listing where they’re sending all the food, we won’t have to wander this educational labyrinth without any kind of hint.”

“Heivia, you do tend to handle everything perfectly as long as an Object doesn’t show up,” said Myonri.

“Oh ho ho. In other words, he is useless in this age of Objects.”

“Just so you know, I’m going to remember what you say here!” shouted Heivia, but they easily ignored him.

Now that they had a plan, they walked across a pathway and ran into some masses of composite armor as soon as they entered a different school building. It was those Bullmites, but while scraping her tilted head against the ceiling panels and wielding her rapid-fire beam cannons like dual pistols, the 4m ringlet curls came to a stop.

They formed two perfect rows.

It was not that they had been stopped by congestion. This formation was clearly intentional. And then they made a coordinated charge like a train.

“Why you-…!!”

Oh Ho Ho quickly fired her two rapid-fire beam cannons while her extra-large boobs jiggled, but the brilliant beams of light only hit the leading pair. The amount of fist-sized melted holes grew and those shields crumbled like a melted sugar sculpture, but the next pair of identical Bullmites now took the lead. Then the process repeated. If just one of the unmanned weapons reached the powered suit before they were all turned to Swiss cheese by the horizontal hail of beams, they would win.

Unmanned weapons did not fear death.

The Bullmites were made to carry equipment or act as barricades, so they did not hesitate to use themselves as shields. Those serverless yet coordinated monsters trampled their allies’ remains and did not hesitate to take the lead even when they knew they would be trampled next.

“Crap, crap, crap!!”

“Wh-what do we do now!? If those futuristic beam weapons don’t work, our shotguns and handguns aren’t going to help at all!”

And lamenting their situation would not help improve it.

They could not expect mercy or pangs of conscience from unmanned weapons.

“Dammit!!”

Heivia fired handgun bullets into the lockers lining one wall of the hallway to break the locks. Changes of clothing, cellphones, video disks, and other student property spilled out across the floor.

“It doesn’t matter what, just blow everything to pieces, Myonri!!”

A shotgun blasted toward the floor nearby. Several small pieces of shot flew out and instantly turned the personal possessions to scrap. They were forcibly torn to pieces and flew up into the air as small fragments.

Wildly moving metal fragments could interfere with EM and IR communications.

Compared to her Object, the powered suit’s thick armor must not have been enough to keep out the fear. Oh Ho Ho crouched down as the threat approached, so the sizzling sound of the rapid-fire beam cannons ended. But a different loud noise erupted instead. The Bullmites had been accurately coordinating their movements to act as a single whole, but now they began running into each other like a multi-car pileup.

Myonri asked a hesitant question while watching the Bullmites self-destruct thanks to her efforts.

“Wh-what happened?”

“They weren’t using their usual submarine mode, right? To move so smoothly without causing any congestion, they had to be coordinating the distance between them using IR or radar. Interfering with that using chaff naturally caused a major accident. C’mon, Oh Ho Ho! How long are you gonna lie there!? It’s over!!”

“M-mghh… How could I let you see me like that?”

With shaky movements, the 4m killer weapon got up from its maiden-like crouching position. With a dull noise, her large head shattered a fluorescent light.

“One little prank caused all this? It may have been too soon for these toys to be fully automated. Oh ho ho.”

“There’s a prank where people shine a laser pointer in a soccer player or airplane pilot’s eyes, right? What do you think would happen if you shined it into a vehicle lens from a walkway over the highway? I feel like all the arguments about these things are only focused on the plusses. It’s scary.”

Normal knives and bullets would not have their expected effect on unmanned weapons that were never alive to begin with. You needed to use a separate logic that only applied to them: magnetism, salt water, acid, high temperatures, rust, an insect infestation, etc.

If the Bullmites were coordinating over the radio, they would also notice when the transmissions ended. Thus, they could not relax just because they had wiped out the enemy here. Heivia’s group hurried on to the cafeteria before reinforcements arrived.

They wanted to keep things quiet, but a loud rumbling burst out. Heivia and Myonri ducked down and saw that the 4m Oh Ho Ho had hit her forehead like a klutz.

“Goh?”

“Be careful when walking through doorways! You’re already scraping your head on the ceiling!”

There was a giant silver refrigerator in the kitchen and the door was so covered in memos that they had no idea what its original color was.

“Here it is, here it is,” said Myonri. “There are a lot of delivery records for gyms 1 through 3. They’re all north of here.”

“Only three?” asked Heivia. “I thought they were gathering people from all over the city here.”

“These gyms are huge facilities used for international basketball and hockey tournaments. Each one can hold tens of thousands of people.”

…That meant it would be difficult to locate an individual in the crowd even if they did figure out which location he was in, but they had to think of this as a step forward.

“Father…”

“Hey, old man pandering idol. If you have time to give dreams to all those wrinkly people, then get to work.”

“C-could you not falsely accuse my father of being old and wrinkly!?”

“Aren’t you forgetting to deny the most important part?” asked Myonri. “Weren’t you claiming you didn’t have a father complex!?”

While they argued, something rolled in through the kitchen’s entrance. The cylinder was about the size of a hair spray can. It was a grenade with the pin and safety lever removed.

“Wait!”

They did not have time to question it.

The kitchen was immediately blown away.

===Part 16===

Heivia and the others were not the only ones hit by the blast and shockwave.

Wraith’s group had used the building blueprint and the floral security cameras to make the attack, but they grimaced and held their ears as small pieces of wall materials fell on their heads.

“Frank! I said to use a nonlethal flashbang!”

“Don’t blame him, Wraith. Flashbangs have had the harmful effects of their explosions reduced as much as possible, but the container still ruptures. They aren’t as safe as they appear in movies and dramas. 110. And did you forget that using one in a kitchen runs the risk of damaging the gas pipe?”

===Part 17===

Despite the fierce gas explosion so nearby, Heivia’s group was lucky in a few ways.

First, the blast had not been made more harmful with small metal balls like it would have been with a grenade or mine designed for military use.

Second, they had a 4m powered suit that would not budge even if an anti-personnel grenade detonated right in front of it.

Thus, the giant charming idol only had to lean over Heivia and Myonri to provide them with some makeshift shelter.

“Mghh. I was somewhat hopeful since the boobs actually jiggled, but this thing is heavy! Way too heavy!! How is this any different from a suspended ceiling trap!? It feels like I’m being suffocated with a thick plastic sheet filled with water!!”

“An idol and Elite is putting herself in harm’s way to protect insignificant enemy soldiers, so I would expect a more emotional reaction. Oh ho ho.”

An impact like that was apparently not even enough to cause any clothing damage on the 4m ringlet curl’s special suit. She was entirely unscathed. While they argued, Oh Ho Ho raised her arm with a motion more mechanical than a machine’s. She mercilessly aimed the right rapid-fire beam cannon toward the source of the grenade.

The swing of the arm was more important than the speed of the beam weapon itself.

Beyond the dust, a few figures fled from the sweeping series of short beams. When Oh Ho Ho prepared to supply the finishing blow, the rapid-fire beam cannon exploded in her hand since its barrel had been bent by the explosion. A capacitor had likely broken. The weapon had already looked like reinforced glass lab equipment with armor attached, so Heivia and Myonri cowered down as they watched it happen.

“Curse that prototype! It’s like the urine sample bottle breaking in your hand!!”

“The hand is fragile because of all the joints, right?” said Myonri. “I’ve heard armor craftsmen can judge someone’s skill by checking there. But that thing’s hand wasn’t harmed at all when the weapon it was holding exploded…”

Oh Ho Ho provided no comment. She switched to the left cannon, but it did not respond. The 4m ringlet curls threw the remains of the unusable rapid-fire beam cannons. Those weapons were meant to be transported by truck and staked to the ground. They weighed more than the bar of a barbell, so throwing them made for more than enough of a weapon.

“Wraith…”

It may have been as inefficient as could be.

It may have only given away his position and condition to the enemy. Melly may have been the target they needed to suppress first and foremost.

But Heivia still raised his voice.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray!!”

“Hello, diligent avenger. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but did you really think I would just sit idly by while you caused such a scene? It does not matter how many people you have sent into this university. I will remove every last threat, one by one.”

The explosion had destroyed both the wall and door. There was too much dust in the air to see. The cover and line-of-fire diagram in their heads had fallen apart. Heivia could only think of one option.

“Move out front, Oh Ho Ho. You’re our shield!”

“Oh ho ho. I see you are no more intelligent than a drone. You’re the type that gets angry when AI takes over his job.”

Despite her storm of complaints, Oh Ho Ho understood the situation. Her large head scraped along the ceiling and her boobs jiggled in sync with her pace as she took a step ahead of Heivia and Myonri and into the dust.

The deep sound of metal on metal immediately followed.

“Oh…?”

It was a blast into the center of her chest. The powered suit’s back wobbled in front of Heivia and Myonri’s eyes. She then fell onto her butt. The potatoes were nearly crushed by their ally’s giant butt, but they just barely managed to escape to either side. She had been shot by something incredible. Myonri reached a hand toward the collapsed Oh Ho Ho on instinct, but Heivia was different. There was no helping Oh Ho Ho when she was covered by thick composite armor and pseudo-moisture-retaining silicone woven with cellulose nanofibers. If they did not first do something about whoever had fired on her, more shots would be fired and there would be no stopping the demolition.

But as Heivia ducked low and charged into the dust, someone charged in below his chin. It was a small figure with a black uniform and long blonde hair. She had rushed in just like he had.

“Wrai-…”

A heavy impact ran through his right temple before he could shout.

It was not caused by Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s right hand or left hand. The aide young man had acted separately from her and swung a giant anti-materiel rifle’s stock into Heivia’s temple. It was a giant weapon meant to drop any opponent in one hit, just like that monstrous magnum made from a modified grenade launcher. But the gun’s recoil was so strong that it was hard to recover if he missed at close range. He knew that. He did, but relying on your insurance and then not killing the enemy in a single shot was always a mistake.

(Gh.)

Heivia’s vision shook and he could not control his collapsing body. But at the same time, his arm moved like an independent life form. It grabbed the uniform covering Wraith’s flat chest and used his shifting body weight to pull her down with him. After they rolled along the hallway floor, Heivia was on top. He pressed his handgun into the center of her chest and she pushed up his chin with a small self-defense handgun.

There was no fear in Heivia’s face.

The only emotion there was anger.

“What’s wrong, Wraith? Did your murderer’s luck finally run out?”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“Did you think you’d get a chance to negotiate, crazy girl? I’ve dreamed of this chance. I don’t care about that active self-denial or whatever. I haven’t forgotten what you did!!”

“But unfortunately, I’m much too busy to mess with you. Melly.”

Heivia had perfectly taken the mounted position, but then his body flew straight up. This was not the same as the ''Tomoe Nage'' of the Asian Island Nation. A powerful impact struck his back and he had trouble breathing. Gravity seemed to lose its hold on him and his back slammed into the ceiling like he was being thrown around by turbulence on a passenger plane.

Even now, the brown girl named Melly Martini Extradry must have been worried about the potatoes’ eyes on her because she folded up her arms like a fetus on top of her giant ring. She hid her mouth with her thin game system and half-tearfully trembled as she explained.

“667. D-did you forget? This is a giant Object, so I can do that by shaking the balanced city just a bit using the gyro controls.”

“Dammit… Are you saying she’s the Elite!?”

“The Manhattan 000 belongs to me. I am only lending it to Capulet.”

Once he felt the tug of gravity return, Heivia immediately let go of his handgun. Comics and movies often depicted characters being slammed into the ground while holding a drawn sword or a gun with the safety off, but in reality, the force of the impact could easily have you stab or shoot yourself in the gut or thigh. Holding onto your weapon too tenaciously and accidentally committing ''harakiri'' was a stereotypical mistake given in military textbooks.

“…Gah!!”

He braced for impact, but the hallway ceiling was still more than three meters from the floor. The impact passing through his entire body was far greater than from being tripped or thrown to the ground. He could not fully escape it, so he ended up groaning on the floor. Meanwhile, Wraith aimed her toy-like self-defense handgun at him from a few meters away.

“Check.” The little demon smiled. “You poor avenger who could not escape the standard framework. As usual, the likes of you begin to lose as soon as an Object is involved.”

“Damn…you.”

“Well, that’s what happens when Quenser isn’t around. Not that there wasn’t room for criticism in that combat engineer.”

“Damn you!!!!!!”

Heivia roared in anger and forced his body up even though he was still having trouble breathing.

A 9mm bullet stabbed mercilessly into the center of his chest.

After being shot from outside arm’s reach, the delinquent soldier collapsed backwards. His troubled breathing was disrupted even further and his consciousness flashed in and out. If not for the pocket containing his military flashlight and mobile device, his ribs would have broken and his organs would have been pierced.

But in addition to that, Heivia was not given time to scream.

“Keep your head down,” whispered Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

Something pierced through the wall. A shot was fired in through the window. The flying sparks looked like a handheld firework or a smoke grenade. It was an armor-piercing incendiary round that could damage military vehicles and unmanned weapons by shooting through the armor and then frying the internal circuitry or fuel tank.

If Wraith had not knocked Heivia out of the way with her self-defense handgun, it would have hit him in the side of the head.

“Didn’t I tell you I was too busy to mess with you? The threat we detected was that third party. To be honest, what you are up to is irrelevant.”

“What is the meaning of this…? And who is that!? How many people are going to jump into the same bed at this crazy orgy!?”

“Don’t ask me. And for the Information Alliance, that may make this the most fearsome presence here.”

===Part 18===

“Tch.”

That person quietly clicked their tongue while moving their eye from the scope of a sniper rifle that used a lot of metal to increase the weight and thus the stability. Targeting people felt so much different from targeting things. That was why specialized snipers still existed in an age so full of machinery. No matter how much support a target received, they would still act on a whim.

…It seemed one of them had an anti-materiel weapon. If they deduced the sniper’s location from the line of fire and a shootout began, the sniper would be overpowered. Not only would that weapon have a greater range, but its destructive power meant walls could not be trusted for cover.

This person had never been good at sniping. They had tried to increase their ability with the support of the embedded programs, but they doubted they could beat a specialist. It was the same reason professional cameramen existed in an age when anyone could snap a photo with autofocus and anti-blurring measures.

Challenging someone to a battle in their area of expertise would be the height of folly.

The opportunity for an upset only arrived once the other side was dragged down to your own field of expertise.

“Now, it’s time to use this Hand Axe.”

===Part 19===

Irregular tremors suddenly ran through the entire school building.

They could not approach the windows with the possibility of a sniper, but as far as they could tell by peeking out from behind the pillars, several clouds of smoke were swelling out like cotton candy.

“Explosions?”

“It’s no use. You settle down too, Frank. In this age of cameras and sensors, I doubt they would try to hide behind a cloud of smoke with no chemical effects whatsoever. I bet that’s a diversion while they sneak in through a different entrance.”

Wraith looked annoyed, but her explanation seemed separated from her emotions.

“In the worst case, they might have even threatened some civilians into running through there, so don’t fire just because you see a shadow in the dust.”

“Tch. Hey, crazy girl, quit acting like you represent humanity’s good side.”

“What, you’re going to fight me even with all this going on? If you don’t want to be caught in a crossfire, I’d keep those thoughts to yourself, gentleman.”

Casually cruel Myonri nonchalantly aimed her weapon at Heivia to deter any rash actions and then she spoke in her usual small animal way.

“Wh-what are they trying to do…?”

“Who knows. 380.”

Myonri’s fearful question was bluntly answered by the brown girl who was still shrinking down on top of her ring. That answer carried a lot more weight coming from New York’s defense commander who had full use of the security systems. …Of course, that was assuming her active self-denial had not gotten the better of her and her word could be trusted. It was of course possible it was all a lie.

The black uniform girl shrugged while staying far enough away from the windows to avoid being shot.

“How are we supposed to know their goals when we don’t know who they are? But based on an offline search of the explosion’s acoustic signature, that was Hand Axe, a plastic explosive used by the Legitimacy Kingdom. So do you have any ideas?”

Heivia Winchell’s temples writhed irregular when he heard that.

A plastic explosive.

Hand Axe.

“…What?”

“The accuracy of such a simple search isn’t the best, but a chemical analysis looking for carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen in the dirt at the blast site would give us the answer. Although I don’t think we have enough time for that.”

“555. By the way.”

The brown girl in a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper cut in while cheerfully sitting with her butt inside the giant ring. Since her arms and legs were sticking out of the ring more than before, she had either grown accustomed to the stimulation or she was letting her guard down around them.

“From a strategic viewpoint, there is no reason at all to attack Columbia University if your goal is to take control of the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object. 200. So I doubt they’re plotting to forcibly stop or hijack the Object. They might be after me since I’ve lent it to Capulet, but very few people know I’m also the Elite.”

“Then what else is there?”

“Sorry about answering your question with a question, but why are you here?”

Heivia intentionally maintained an expressionless face, but Myonri thoughtlessly glanced over at the 4m ringlet curl powered suit. The giant girl spoke up while scraping her tilted head along the ceiling panels and fluorescent lights.

“…Father?”

“Hm. I can’t see who that is due to the silly powered suit, but I’m guessing it’s the model herself inside.” Wraith exhaled from her shapely nose. “Well, if you’d given up on negotiating with Melly, I guess it makes sense you’d go for Capulet since it’s the only other thing with power over the Manhattan 000. Given the development history and compatibility between Capulet and Juliet, it would also make sense you could hijack control of Manhattan using the Gatling 033’s Pilot Elite. She would be able to approach the AI Network from a different direction than the Martini Series. Given that, the attacker’s objective would be the Manhattan 000’s destruction. But instead of sinking it themselves, they’re trying to make it self-destruct by triggering a fight between the people on the inside…in other words, us.”

“No offense to you educated people who can achieve climax with nothing but your imagination, but isn’t that a bit of a leap? How could a little commotion between us cause this colossal weapon to blow up?”

“If that concept machine contains who I think it does, then I’m not overestimating this. The Juliet’s experimental results continue to strengthen Capulet in real time. That puts her much closer to it than mere monitors like us. She might be able to take on the thousands of Martinis singlehandedly. If the Gatling 033’s Juliet and its highly-compatible Pilot Elite attempt to bring down the Capulet AI Network using its vulnerabilities, they could be a threat to the Information Alliance as a whole. The network’s hardware and scope are a mystery because its advantage is limited to the online world. That prevents anyone from pulling the power cable to shut it down if they start to lose.” Wraith sounded somewhat exasperated. “Honestly, this is the problem with the age of Objects. The importance of specific individuals can vary so wildly. Aren’t you here to collect her father because your plan hinges on her individual performance?”

“…”

It was the same as with Piranirie and Taratua. Whether or not the Martini Series had a conscience or good sense, they could still do the calculations. Their character could not be trusted, but there would be no mistake in the actual analysis.

So it was best to base your thoughts on those assumptions.

What would cause the most chaos in this situation?

You only had to kill Oh Ho Ho’s father in the shelter which was supposedly safe thanks to the Martini Series’ management. It no longer mattered who the direct culprit was. Had the Martini Series made any mistakes? Had the Information Alliance as a whole wanted it? Once Oh Ho Ho was overwhelmed with anger, hatred, and suspicions, all of her skills could pass through the Information Alliance’s Capulet and send the Manhattan out of control.

The most frightening thing was not the amount of firepower on hand or the number of people killed.

It was the same as the samurai who had once tried to open up the Island Nation or a certain world-famous musician. When a single blade or bullet bared its fangs against an innocent person, it would create an incalculable shock. This faceless person who had leaned out over the game board was trying to do that intentionally instead of by chance.

Individuals were supported by a large system, but they also determined the outcome of wars.

This reversal was built on the rules of an already twisted era.

“You’re kidding, right? Then their target really is Oh Ho Ho’s father!?”

“B-but they don’t know where their target is in this giant university, right? Then we have time. We came to this cafeteria kitchen because we needed to work out the shelter locations from the food delivery routes.”

Wraith rejected Myonri’s words.

Had the crazy person gained a sharper mind by sacrificing someone like the crazy person she was? She had to have noticed that the timid girl’s statement contained far too much wishful thinking.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. If this lawless hunter’s specialty is bombs, then they can achieve their objective by indiscriminately blowing up each facility in turn. …No, those diversion explosions may have been part of the plan. Not only did it get them safely inside the university, but they may have been observing how people reacted.”

“What do you mean?”

“The shelters will be the most densely packed areas. They would react most noticeably to a commotion. It’s like sending out sonar to locate the enemy. They just have to cause an explosion, note where the most voices came from, and then attack there. And that means we can’t relax.”

“Right. So the key is the screams of children. 497.”

Melly casually supplied that extra information with her butt inside the large ring and while wearing only a crimson surgical gown. She was much more relaxed than when she had first met the potatoes. She built interpersonal relationships quickly. It probably would not be long until she reached the ennui stage.

She breathed a warm breath on the flat game system’s screen and wiped it off with the paper over her chest.

“Universities are attended by a higher age group than middle or high schools, so if you ignore the few students that skipped several grades, there are almost no small children there. 119. So if 100 or 1000 children begin to cry and shout in response to the explosion, you know that has to be a shelter full of outsiders.”

Another deep explosion rang out and the floor of the university hallway shook.

Everyone there exchanged a glance.

“Ignoring this much evidence would be harder than finding proof of infidelity on your lover’s smartphone and pretending you never saw anything.”

“And even if we’re completely wrong, if that third party has plastic explosives and is headed to a shelter full of civilians, we have to stop them no matter what their reasons are.”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right.”

Heivia adjusted his grip on his handgun.

And he did not hesitate to aim it at Wraith.

“But this is a separate issue.”

Multiple dry gunshots rang out at close range.

There was so little hesitation in the pull of the trigger that Myonri was unable to react despite being right next to him.

And the aide young man stood in front of the black-uniformed girl with long blonde hair.

He had used his large anti-materiel rifle as a shield to forcibly restrain the cheap 9mm bullets.

“Did that satisfy you a little?”

Wraith did not bat an eye despite having her life targeted so suddenly.

Had the Martini Series always been like that? Or had she been modified by some external factor?

“We just lost one of our valuable weapons thanks to you. You’ll have to work to make up for it.”

===Part 20===

The university had a long history, so the complex and inscrutable building additions made over that time had naturally transformed it into a labyrinth. Gyms 1 through 3 were located relatively close to the edge of campus, but they were surrounded by artificial woods which made the main entrance hard to find. It was so bad that the second story walkways were more well-known.

The gyms were large enough to be used for international tournaments, including the opening and closing ceremonies. They were squares with sides measuring more than 50 meters, so they were more like small stadiums.

“Th-they must have 50,000 people in each one,” said Myonri. “That’s like a small town. Won’t it be hard for the attacker to find their target even if they are in here?”

“Melly. What do your precious cameras say?”

The swim ring girl wearing a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper answered the black-uniform girl’s question while holding her precious game system to her chest.

“There is one weakness to cameras that look down from above: extremely dense crowds. The people end up blocking the view of the other people. We really need to find a better countermeasure for molesters on the subway during rush hour.”

“It won’t be that tricky.”

For whatever reason, Wraith and Melly had stopped attacking Heivia’s group with the Bullmites, Multi-Gyros, and other unmanned weapons. That made travel much easier.

…Of course, whether they were always that way or they had been broken by active self-denial, could anything the Martini Series said or did be trusted? That fundamental question remained.

“As you said, the gyms are crammed full of people. I doubt the blast would spread very well even if you did set off a bomb there. Even paper can act as a bulletproof vest if you have hundreds of layers. Human flesh is no different. Enough of it and it’ll stop an explosive blast. If this person wants to kill them all at once, they won’t place the bomb on the flat floor.”

“Th-then…?”

Did Myonri want to hear the answer or not? Or was she afraid to not hear it? Whatever the case, Heivia winked at her and pointed straight up.

“The ceiling. Have the bomb dangle down like a deadly disco ball and it can send its shrapnel down on everyone without the wall of people stopping it.”

“That would be easiest. 177. The ceiling is reinforced with narrow steel beams arranged like a jungle gym. A human could walk on them, but quadrupedal unmanned weapons like the Bullmites couldn’t.”

“They want to kill my father… And they’re willing to kill 50,000 people at once to do it…?”

“You don’t need to focus your justice on the general public,” smoothly said Wraith. “The one family member is more important to you than 50,000 strangers, right? There’s more to relationships than numbers. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way.”

Her words were not at all blunted and tore sharply into the human heart, so they may have been similar to those of a high-IQ serial killer. They seemed to carry deep meaning, but the more you thought about them, the more your mind was destroyed by a poison of your own making.

And just then, a flat electronic beep came from the game system held by the brown girl. She glanced down at the flat screen in her hands as if peering down at her own chest.

“114. Mr. Royce’s phone has sent out a signal. It appears to be a phone call.”

“Oh, did you give him his phone back when you released him and sent him to the general shelter? What a pain.”

Wraith sounded annoyed, but the swim ring girl continued her report.

“Any idea who he might be calling? 251.”

“…”

The 4m ringlet curls trembled as if stirring.

What was the girl inside the thick armor doing?

“Don’t answer it,” sharply warned Wraith. “There is a chance the unknown third party is monitoring Royce’s phone to gather information. We would gain nothing by letting them know we’re here.”

She knew that.

She really did.

The beeping never seemed to end and that seemed to reveal Royce’s worry for his daughter. Oh Ho Ho seemed to be clenching her teeth. Finally, it automatically switched over to voice mail and the game system in Melly’s hands stopped beeping.

Oh Ho Ho spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“I’m glad…”

Myonri tried to say something, but she did not manage to get anything out.

“I’m so glad he’s alive…”

Heivia sighed quietly like those forced-out words were messing with his mood. He wanted to maintain his purity as an avenger, but it was not working. And he gave a warning with that look on his face.

“Hey, don’t relax just because you know he’s alive. This isn’t over until we’ve actually saved him.”

“I know that. Ho…oh ho ho. You don’t have to tell me that.”

Melly got them back on topic while kicking her brown legs now that she was used to the potatoes’ rude gazes.

“The signal is coming from the second gym. Unless we assume more is going on than meets the eye, Mr. Royce should be there. But only we should know this. 125. There are three gyms and each one holds more than 50,000 people. Now, does the attacker have any way of accurately locating Mr. Royce?”

“Didn’t you mention the possibility of them monitoring his phone? Well, that’s just a possibility, so let’s set aside the accurate information about that middle-aged man’s location. Which one would be the easiest to infiltrate?”

“551. The middle one. The second gym. You can reach the ceiling’s steel beams through a maintenance hatch on the roof. That should be far easier than climbing up from below.”

“Then that’s the place.”

“W-we’re basing it on which one is easier? Ho…oh ho ho. What happened to my father’s life being in danger!?”

“I really don’t need that giant camel toe in my face, so back up some. And did you forget? There are more than 50,000 people in each gym. Even if there’s no direct damage in one, what will happen if they learn of unthinkable casualties in the one right next to it? It’s an identical facility on the same campus. They’ll assume they’re next, so they won’t just stay put like they were told. But the exits are narrow, so they’ll start trampling each other and we’ll end up with tens of thousands of people caught in the secondary and tertiary damages.”

“…”

“During the winter, the chickens on a farm will gather together for warmth, but sometimes the group in the center will be crushed to death. This will be even more horrific than that.”

They had a plan.

They of course had to keep an eye on the first and third gyms, but the second one was their top priority.

As seen at concert stadiums, it could take 15 to 30 minutes for tens of thousands of people to enter or leave a location. There was no time to evacuate everyone and unnecessary movement could lead the attacker to expedite their plan and start the detonation.

Melly Martini Extradry, the Pilot Elite and New York’s defense commander, did not seem to have any strong feelings on the matter. She must have been worried about the battery because she hooked a hand-cranked generator to her flat game system and began cranking away.

“That powered suit and I won’t be able to do much of anything on the narrow steel beams. 997. And we don’t want to trigger a panic, so firing up from the floor filled with civilians would be a bad idea.”

“I know that. Information Alliance or not, these are safe country civilians. I’m not digital enough to calmly fire within a sea of blood to complete my mission. Unlike a certain idiot who executed a civilian to save her own skin.”

“With that in mind, I have a suggestion. The second gym is the easiest to infiltrate, but it also gives us an advantage. 656. Since the ceiling beams are connected to the flat roof by the maintenance hatch, you don’t have to finish off the attacker there. You can drive them up onto the roof.”

“…What?”

“That concept machine and I can function just fine on the flat roof. Your reports suggest this person is nimble enough to move from rooftop to rooftop, so they’re almost certainly a flesh-and-blood human. I can hardly see how we would be overpowered in a direct fight. 176. It would be nice if we could just fire at them through the roof, but then the bullets could hit the civilians on the floor.”

“Are you kidding, ring girl? You’re going to fight on the front line? Didn’t you say something about your spine being messed up?”

“202. Then try shooting me.”

The brown girl readily said that despite having her butt inside the large ring and her only equipment being the crimson paper surgical gown and the game system. When he stared at her, wondering if she really understood the situation, she began trembling.

“Are you serious? I have more curly hairs in the corner of my room than I have a conscience. To be honest, it’s hard to find any reason at all to hold back against any piece of shit with the Martini name.”

“That’s my point. You won’t trust anything I say. 081. So the only way to teach you is through experience.”

Heivia wrapped a thick and fluffy scarf around a nearby plastic bottle for a makeshift silencer, pressed it against the muzzle of his handgun, and immediately pulled the trigger.

It released a muffled gunshot, but it was not Melly or Wraith who looked surprised.

Melly Martini Extradry had her butt in the large ring and her hands and feet off the floor, so she could not move around properly. There was also nothing for her to hide behind. Nevertheless, her ring spun around like the coffee cups at an amusement park and cleanly avoided all three bullets.

“Are you okay? 444. I appreciate the thought to use a silencer, but when the noise and the actual recoil are different, I’ve heard you can let your guard down and hurt your wrist.”

Her movement could not have been that fast.

But there was no way that could be explained away as a simple coincidence.

“655. To reveal the trick, I slightly tilted the Manhattan 000 below us. And unlike before, it wasn’t enough to notice.”

Melly softly exhaled and used her thin game system’s L and R triggers to rotate her ring right and left.

“The world’s largest Object is always a part of me. I take top priority. Even Capulet is only borrowing it from me. The internal parts that move the Manhattan 000 are essentially the same as the liquid inside this ring. 713. Okay? Are you familiar with carnivorous plants?”

“Carnivorous…plants?”

“Some plants can move quite quickly, like the Venus flytrap. That is done with turgor pressure, the movement of liquid between the cells. That isn’t actually all that difficult to reproduce in a machine. And it’s easier to manage in parallel than something with lots of old-fashioned motors and cranks. 409. It’s also used as the catalyst for the quantum computer needed for the balance calculations to make sure it doesn’t collapse under its own weight. In addition to lasers, Josephson junctions, and quantum dots, quantum bits can be managed with the NMR method using a liquid. You’ll even see it mentioned in comics and novels.”

Quantum computers and DNA computers were the two representative examples of non- von Neumann large-scale processors. Since they had selected something other than the Anastasia Processor that used cancer cells from Wraith’s biological mother, the Information Alliance must have had its own internal competition there, but that was not the point.

“Did you think I was dressed like this for no reason? I control it through physical contact with this ring-shaped device. 333. Simply put, my blood contains the same liquid as the supercomputer. That was the only way to make up for what the game system alone couldn’t do.”

She had predicted the ballistic trajectory in advance.

The girl was one with Manhattan.

“I have perfect calculations and the ability to physically interfere with the field itself. Plus, I command every single unmanned weapon protecting the city of Manhattan. 144. Do you still think I wouldn’t be useful in a fight?”

The Object was based on plants and the unmanned weapons were based on plants and animals. With the serverless artificial life forms and the simple circuits that used swarm intelligence, Manhattan was like a planet of machines.

Wraith did not seem all that surprised and cut in as if simply confirming what she already knew.

“But the Manhattan 000 must be too large to fire on a specific individual hiding in the shelter. You’ll probably have to put together a unit of Bullmites and other unmanned weapons, but will the law enforcement regulations really be enough?”

“You must be kidding. These things’ greatest advantage is a tactic that would run afoul of various treaties if you used it in war. In other words, artificial organic concentration.”

The ring girl spun around the flat screen to show them. It displayed a graph about the contents of the air, but they did not want to think about what it meant.

“It’s the same concept as fish and shellfish absorbing plankton and other toxins from the seawater and storing them in their stomach, but there is no limit when it comes to unmanned weapons. Because you don’t have to worry about the lethal level. And the basic toxins can be found anywhere in the world. How many pollutants do you think you can find in the exhaust and dirty water in Manhattan alone? But it’s not even a ten thousandth of the lethal level, so they say it’s safe and you don’t have to worry about it. 883. So just concentrate that down more than ten thousand times and you have a deadly weapon at zero cost. You can take a human life with the prick of a needle. I don’t normally do that, though.”

“I see. So that’s why they have air purifiers. I thought that seemed out of place.”

It was well known that the hollow point bullets banned by war treaties were commonly used by the police and thugs in cities. The line between humane and inhumane was easily changed for people’s convenience.

Heivia breathed from his nose and fired twice more for good measure, but the result was exactly the same. When he saw Melly spin around in her ring, he decided any more would be a waste of ammo. And if the makeshift silencer broke, he would spread confusion through the attacker and civilians.

“If you’re willing to go and get yourself killed, then be my guest. But your ass doesn’t look too soft, so don’t expect me to support it.”

“Then I will look after it on my own. 111. The best way to shock malicious people is to do sensible things for nothing in return.”

Was the entire Martini Series like this? She too was quite crafty.

The gyms were the size of indoor stadiums. They were as tall as four-story school buildings and they had metal emergency stairs on the outside.

The roof really was entirely flat. It had no slant whatsoever.

Was the attacker already here or would they be arriving later? There was no evidence one way or the other, but they did not have time to stand around.

“Let’s act on the assumption that they’re here. Myonri, come with me.”

“O-okay.”

“What should we do?”

Black-uniformed Wraith asked that, but Heivia only gave a snort of laughter.

“Wipe that smile off your face. Do you want me to shove this right up your ass? It doesn’t matter if you were always crazy or if you were broken by that active self-denial stuff. I’m not going to trust the piece of shit that executed a supposed ally when she was told to.”

“…”

“Whatever the case is now and whatever our original affiliations were, Quenser thought of you as an ally then and he risked his life to protect you from Manhattan’s attack. And you shot him. While looking him right in the eye. That’s not even war. None of that has changed. Don’t forget that your actions are good or bad regardless of your reasons for doing them.”

That was all.

Myonri fidgeted nervously as she listened, but Wraith did not bother with it any longer. Heivia left that lonely girl and slowly opened the square trap door attached to the flat roof.

After climbing through, he found quite a few steel beams arranged like a giant jungle gym.

Naturally, there was no stable floor. If he slipped, he would fall the four-story distance down to the ground level. And people filled the stacked second and third floors as well as the fields and courts. Everyone seemed to have enough space to lie down and stretch out, but if he fell, he could not avoid hitting someone.

“I see him directly below us,” softly said Myonri.

Among the shocking number of human heads, there was one person operating a smartphone. He stood out from the many other smartphone users because he was repeating the same short action over and over instead of focusing on typing text into social media.

“So that’s Royce.”

“How many times has he tried now? He must still be trying to call his daughter.”

Of course, he would never get through since his daughter was not answering. They were on the same university campus, but he could not even get a single word to her.

But no matter how coldly he was being rejected, Royce showed no sign of irritation. He pressed the electronic device’s screen against his forehead, shut his eyes, and seemed to wish for something before repeating the same action yet again. He was simply a father hoping for his family’s safety.

“We definitely have to save him, don’t we?” said Myonri in a quiet voice. “Without even thinking about the four world powers or anything like that.”

“We can’t give her father special treatment. If we’re doing this, we’re saving all of them. It doesn’t matter if the blast actually hits them or not. If there’s an explosion somewhere, they’ll panic and trample each other. It’ll be worse than a swimming tournament full of sumo wrestlers. Once it starts, tens of thousands could die.”

Once they climbed down, they found it was harder to walk than expected. The steel beams had lots of small bumps from all the rivets and there were also thumb-thick power cables running everywhere for the halogen lamps lined up at even intervals.

Nevertheless…

Even so…

Heivia saw a silhouette. He saw a human silhouette at his eye level. They were curled up on the unsteady beam and he recognized the way they moved their thumb to prepare something. It actually felt nostalgic. It was just like that person who had always been by his side, setting up Hand Axe plastic explosives in some unbelievable place for some trick to fight against the world’s most powerful colossal weapons.

He had considered it.

Yes, he would be lying if he said he had not considered it.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had shot Quenser in front of Heivia’s eyes. But he had not actually seen what happened to the corpse after it fell into the ocean. So what if? Could it be? Perhaps Quenser Barbotage was actually still alive and following some super secret plan that not even Heivia was aware of.

So.

So.

So.

He clenched his teeth, but it was not enough. The shock was so great that it forced his voice from the depths of his throat.

And his voice formed a single name.

“Skuld…Silent-Third!?”

The person he saw there was a short and undeveloped girl with long blonde twintails who perfectly wore the skintight special suit of a Pilot Elite.

She was also the Faith Organization’s greatest and most horrific serial killer.

It was not Quenser at all.

===Part 21===

This seems sudden?

Of course it does. That was a name one must never search. The editors of an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone grew stubborn when the information was repeatedly deleted, so they had pushed for the public release of the Madagascar Report which had been sealed by the military. But as a result, they had been killed in a highly suspicious railroad accident. That was the kind of taboo this was.

There was no sign of it coming?

Again, it is only natural not to remember. The great war crime that Quenser and Heivia ran across in the Madagascar Report is not something to look back on. It is a memory that prevents one from living a bright, happy, and enjoyable life.

Skuld Silent-Third.

She was one of the three Pilot Elites of the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Trinity Style, officially designated Norn, but she was also a serial killer who used that position to sink her venomous fangs into victims in battlefields around the world.

That incident had supposedly been ended by Quenser’s bombs.

However, that same mass murderer had cast aside her blades, guns, and even her Object. She now held a bomb.

What did that mean?

Heivia Winchell’s grimaced because he knew the answer.

===Part 22===

[[Image:HO_v15_299.png|thumb]]
“Nice to see you again, Heivia. And the girl…what was her name again?”

She smiled brightly.

If that was all, it would have been an innocent girl’s smile that inspired a protective desire in all who saw it. Her bright green special suit was held tight against the minimal curves of her slender body and a large ribbon provided a florid touch that felt out of place. Her allure combined the cuteness of a younger girl with the seductiveness of an older girl. But that was exactly how she had fooled so many people, relaxed their tension, created an opening, and ultimately consumed them.

“But it’s too bad. Quenser was the one I most wanted to see. Look, it’s Hand Axe! I went to a lot of trouble getting the real deal, so I have to make its debut worth it.”

“What…are you doing?”

He knew. He knew who this was in front of him.

But Heivia raised his voice with a look of utter disbelief.

“Why the hell did the Faith Organization let you out of your cage!? Is everyone in this world a crazy girl!?”

“Love and hate are complexly intertwined, Heivia. Just like how I came to love explosions. Ah ha ha! It’s just like the stereotype that, if you look into a serial killer’s background, you’ll find they were terribly abused when they were young. Y’know, where you can say everyone involved was a victim. Ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Myonri was clearly shaken and Heivia immediately switched from his handgun to his knife. It too was a “self-defense” item he had taken from the diligent New Yorkers. It was a survival knife with a blade measuring more than 40cm, but he was not trying to show off.

His enemy’s primary weapon was bombs.

If he moved in close, she would have more difficulty using them without being in the blast radius herself.

“Nee hee hee!!”

One wrong step and they would plummet down. Heivia started running across the ceiling beam and the slender girl named Skuld only laughed maniacally. As the bare blade targeted her unguarded slender throat with a horizontal slash, she actually held out a clay-like block of Hand Axe plastic explosive.

Instead of blocking it with a solid barrier, she was causing the blade to slip as if with oil. Heivia shuddered when he felt the attack miss and then Skuld used her soft-looking lips to stick a pen-shaped electric fuse into the sliced explosive.

Since it resembled a party game where two people held either end of a skinny chocolate snack in their lips, the action carried a seduction not usually found in such a young girl, but the situation was dire.

Her blonde twintails fluttered around her in what seemed like a self-celebratory dance, but Skuld Silent-Third was preparing the explosive despite being less than a meter from her opponent!?

(Is she relying on her Elite special suit!?)

“Oh, while it can handle blades and bullets, this thing can’t protect me from a major explosion.”

She seemed to have read his mind. And at the same moment, Skuld readily detonated the bomb inside her own young hand.

“!!!???”

Something odd happened.

It was different from a normal explosion that spread destruction in a sphere from the central point. It was more like an infinitely-extending blade of light. When Skuld swung her arm, the scorching blade passed by Heivia’s face and burned right through all of the jungle gym-like beams in its path.

(This is worse than at Madagascar!? What kind of movement was that!?)

The blast had been concentrated in a single direction.

The bomb had detonated in her hand, but there was not a drop of blood on the body showing its minimal curves through the green special suit. She licked from her palm to her fingertips in a very seductive way for such a young girl.

“This is nothing unusual.”

“Damn you…!”

“Any old fireworks craftsman can do the same thing. Explosions are all about fluid dynamics, so it’s the same as the flow of water or air. If you restrain the blast with a sheet of metal and intentionally leave a single hole open, the explosively-expanding combustion gas will be naturally guided through there. Of course, the guns you’re so familiar with use the same basic principle.”

There had to be more to it.

In theory, you could create a bomb with a single metal pipe. But if an amateur actually tried it, they were guaranteed to blow themselves up in the process. Massive amounts of knowledge and technique were needed to realize that theory. And the mass murderer named Skuld had done so with her own two hands instead of factory equipment.

It was just like that boy who would rely on adlibbed methods and pull them off with no practice whatsoever.

She had inherited it.

It was like the girl carried that powerful enemy inside her undeveloped chest.

Myonri frantically raised her shotgun once more, but Skuld simply held out her hand. Another explosion drowned out the gunshot. It was like a magic trick. The single shotgun shell had to contain tons of small metal balls, but the beautiful serial killer did not have a scratch on her. Had she diverted their path with a solid shockwave barrier?

No…

“…When using explosions, the most important thing is to know what your opponent is thinking.”

With a sticky smile reminiscent of sweet nectar, Skuld embraced her own slender body. Her fingers traced across her own minimal curves. She pulled in her long blonde twintails as well, her spine trembled, and she shook from self-produced sensuality.

“I thought the feeling in my wrist when I stabbed or strangled someone was all there was. But the reality was different. Bombs have their own sensation!! You set up a trap no one is expecting, you actually detonate it, and you rule their heart with fear. Ohh, it’s so wonderful!! Take…whatever her name is there. You were afraid before you even fired. You feared that shotgun couldn’t possibly kill a true monster. So even though you had the overwhelming advantage of aiming a gun at me from a distance, the sound of no more than a tiny explosion caused you to shrink down and shift your own aim. Is there…is there any other killing method that lets you feel their soul more than this!?”

“Shut the hell up…”

Their military training no longer mattered.

It was the same as the incident from the sealed Madagascar Report. Whenever this girl made an appearance, the rules of war collapsed.

“I’ve had enough of your bitching. You’re no more than a wandering ghost who lost her place to die, so I’m not going to let you sully that bastard’s name!!”

“Nee hee. Is that the Legitimacy Kingdom’s obsession with honor?”

He swung his knife and used the handgun he had decided against earlier, but Skuld jumped to another steel beam a step behind her and he could not do any real damage. She stayed the same distance from him while her twintails and ribbon fluttered around her in a nightmarish and fantastical dance.

The goddess of death and war performed an elegant dance. And seeing that, Heivia raised his voice.

“Myonri, prepare to fire!”

“B-but I can’t hit her!”

“Don’t let the title of serial killer get to you. Whether she’s ‘awakened’ or broken through her limits, she’s still human. Aim for the power cables for the halogen lights!! The footing is already limited, so fill these metal beams with a powerful electric current and not even she will be able to escape!!”

“Oh, that’s what you’re going with? Emotional sacrifices are so boring. It’s a death as bland as a chain burger.” Skuld placed a hand on her delicate-looking hip and sounded exasperated. “Well, I don’t really care what happens after I’ve had my fun. And I believe I’ve more than half completed my initial objective.”

“?”

“Look down below.”

The twintail girl sneered as she placed her lightly-clenched fist below her navel and pointed her index finger straight down.

“I still haven’t caused any direct damage, but I have detonated a few bombs inside the gym. If everyone heads for the exits at once, what do you think’ll happen to those 50,000 people?”

“You perverted necrophile girl!!”

“Ah hah hah!!”

Heivia and Myonri knew not to, but they could not stop their eyes from briefly glancing down. And in that instant, Skuld Silent-Third climbed through one of the square maintenance hatches.

Their target had gotten away, but Myonri actually wiped the sweat from her slender chin and breathed a sigh of relief.

“That achieves the bare minimum of our objectives…right? The Information Alliance group is up there. Wraith, Melly, and the giant Oh Ho Ho.”

“…I’m not so sure.”

Heivia used his handgun to shoot out several of the large halogen lights hanging down from the steel beams. They scattered some glass and a lot of sparks.

“Wh-what are you doing!?”

“I’ve created a peaceful explanation for those explosions. Hey, Myonri, you’re good with computers, right? Rewrite that online encyclopedia that anyone can edit!! Say that in the Central American ocean the pressure change from a storm can cause incandescent and halogen bulbs to burst from internal pressure. The actual reasoning behind it doesn’t have to hold up to scrutiny. Just give them something they can look up and accept for the time being!!”

“I thought we couldn’t access the actual internet here!”

“I don’t know if it’s a virtual space or a fake server, but just get it out there so those people will see it!”

People were susceptible to multiple sources. You might hear rumors around you and then find confirmation on the screen in your hand…but in some cases, they both had the same source of information.

As Skuld had said, no direct harm had been done yet. There was nothing Heivia and Myonri could do here except prevent the people from trampling each other in a panic.

“Myonri, let’s head up top.”

“Eh? I’d rather not. A powered suit and those serverless unmanned weapons will be fighting on that flat roof. Even if the battle will end without our help, a single stray bullet can still kill us!”

“This won’t end that easily,” spat out Heivia. “I don’t care how many of those damn Martinis die, but if Skuld escapes, she’ll cause far more damage. And I’m not just talking about Manhattan. You saw the nightmare of that sealed Madagascar Report with your own eyes, didn’t you? Didn’t you see and agree to seal it all away because it felt like having your nose shoved into some old man’s hairy asshole?”

“…”

“If you want proof, just face your own trauma. That’s all you need to explain what a threat Skuld is.”

Myonri gulped.

That was all. She had no rebuttal for Heivia’s seemingly incoherent argument.

They both approached the maintenance hatch Skuld had left through.

They climbed up onto the flat and supposedly safe roof.

They saw the scene they had expected but not wanted.

“Oh, perfect timing. I’m about ready for a second helping☆”

There was a single smile there.

And it was surrounded by hell.

Despite her confidence, Melly Martini Extradry was trapped in the scraps of the many Bullmites that had protected her.

The powered suit that had supposedly carried the Information Alliance idol Elite had what looked like giant claw marks running across it and an orange horizontal line had sliced through it at about chest height. The size was larger, but it was shaped just like the real idol. The cockpit’s empty space was exposed and it lay collapsed and sparking in a more gruesome fate than for a normal tank or armored truck.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray held her small hand to the right side of the young man who lay protectively over her. She was desperately trying to stop his bleeding. It looked more like it was caused by a gunshot than an explosive blast, so it may have been a flying screw or nail rather than the actual explosion.

The girl held her slender body in her arms and her back trembled as she basked in the afterglow. Yes, the afterglow. It was already over.

She really was worse than at Madagascar. The serial killer had evolved through the acquisition of bombs.

“Well, this was a shock for me too,” she said. “I really thought there was someone inside that powered suit, but it was being remotely controlled.”

Come to think of it, the 4m ringlet curls controlled by that Elite had fallen on her butt during the makeshift chaff attack meant to eliminate the coordination of the Bullmites in the university building. And when she had avoided carelessly answering the call from her father, had it been to prevent Oh Ho Ho’s real location from being found out? She could not have anyone tripping her up until she had actually saved her father.

“That sure was elaborate,” spat out Skuld.

That was all. Her brief arousal was already cooling.

“But I guess that was the peak of my surprise. Are those all the tricks up your sleeve? If so, it just wasn’t enough. I want a dinner that will really fill my belly. So bring out the next serving already. Or do I need to visit the second and third restaurant?”

“Your attempt to cause a panic in the gym failed, Skuld…”

“Does the Faith Organization need a reason to attack the Information Alliance? Or does a serial killer need a reason to kill people? It’s just who we are. What more can you say?”

“It’s not like you’re going to follow the Faith Organization’s rules either! You were convicted under Faith Organization law, abandoned, and thrown in prison!! You except us to believe a serial killer is diligently doing her job!?”

“Ah ha ha!! Diligently? Well, does it look like I’m doing a good job?”

If she was trying to kill Royce so that his daughter, Oh Ho Ho, would spread further chaos through Manhattan, then Skuld could not have carelessly attacked Oh Ho Ho. She had only learned the powered suit was empty after slicing it in two, so it looked planned but was fundamentally flawed. Was there no way of controlling her?

“Al – so. None of that matters and I don’t care. I have no hard feelings for the Legitimacy Kingdom that defeated me in Madagascar or the Faith Organization that used me as long as they could and then judged me like they were the heroes. I have no complaints. I’m satisfied as long as I can kill. I don’t even need a war. Back at Madagascar, I made myself valuable with my skill as a Pilot Elite, so the higher ups would cover things up. Those circumstances are all that’s changed. I’ll make myself valuable in some other way and have someone important create an environment where I’m free to kill. There were no deep reasons behind it. That cruel IV had its uses! The passage of time may have blurred, but everything but the killing and the memories of killing melted away from my mind. What is that if not freedom?”

No matter what, that mass murderer could not forget the taste of killing.

She did not need to use a vast conspiracy or a superpower’s interests as an excuse. She was a purer and crueler slaughterer who faced the killing head-on.

“Still, there is one thing I want.”

Skuld Silent-Third wrapped her young hands around either side of her small face and lightly twisted her slender hips as she tried to restrain the pleasure signals rising within her. Her entire body radiated something far uglier than unrequited love.

“I wanted to see Quenser. I wanted to see my teacher who taught me this new art of bombs!! See, now I can kill even more people. You were wonderful, teacher, but I can kill far more. So now it’s my turn to teach you. I can give you a lovey-dovey hands-on lesson in how to enjoy bombs!! Heh heh. Ah hah hah hah hah!!”

“…You’re completely insane. Do you have threads sewn between the wrinkles in your brain or something?”

“Quenser Barbotage was normal.”

In an unexpected turn, there was no emotion in her voice at all.

It was the stereotypical form of someone who could not control the switch between mania and depression.

“He was normal, but he could still kill without a second thought. Had you not noticed after spending so much time with him? He was far worse than a serial killer like me. I mean, he couldn’t have survived that long otherwise. How many Objects and the armies around them do you think ''my teacher''' has blown away in the past? Killing and remaining normal is a frightening thing. How could he do it?”

She did not need to say any more.

Myonri was enthralled and stood stock still, but Heivia moved almost automatically. He had a knife in his right hand and a handgun in his left. He charged toward the twintail girl in order to suppress her at a range of less than 2 meters.

“Oh, right, right. What are you going to do about that?”

Meanwhile, twintailed Skuld had no gun or blade.

Her voice was as casual as someone making an invitation to chat over tea.

“Does the term Ragnarok Script mean nothing to you? What about active self-denial? A mysterious external factor was injected into the Martini Series, but where do you think it really came from?”

“Wha-…!?”

Heivia still had not shaken his doubts.

Even if this was Skuld Silent-Third, could she really have had such an overwhelming advantage on a roof full of unmanned weapons and a powered suit? What if the Martini Series had lost control there? What if a switch had been thrown and either Wraith or Melly had attacked Oh Ho Ho? After what had happened to the powered suit, would he be safe without that kind of armor? Could he really trust that those Martinis were defeated? What if he turned his back on the group that included the monster who had shot Quenser?

“That’s just in the way, don’t you think? It just ruins your fun.”

“!?”

The next thing he knew, Skuld was moving toward him.

The slender girl’s right hand had latched onto Heivia’s handgun. But not in order to take it from him. Quite the opposite. She pressed the muzzle against her soft-looking belly and repeatedly pulled the trigger.

Dry gunshots rang out and the impacts to her soft lower body caused the girl to double over.

“Kee hee.”

But the gun ran out of ammo in no time.

The handgun in his hand was no more than a lump of metal.

“Hee hee hee hah hah!! Yes, yes. That’s right. Pain is only another form of pleasure and defeat is the motivation needed to grow!! Right, Quenser? This is the place. This is the best. The most enjoyable aspect of life is the moment when you stand back up from overwhelming defeat to turn it all around!!”

Even if her suit provided some defense against bullets, that had still been suicidal. The bullets might not break through, but the shock still reached her, so it could have torn her muscles or damaged her organs.

And yet.

That murder fairy named Skuld showed only a smile of ecstasy.

“The Ragnarok Script?”

She questioned the thing she herself had just mentioned.

“Do you really think that exists? Ah ha ha!! Investigate all you like, you’ll never find it. After all, it never existed.”

“What are you…going on about? That’s what caused this entire mess…!”

“You take something that doesn’t exist and make it look like it does exist to produce a certain effect. Isn’t that how the Information Alliance does things? Of course, it was based on a psychological safety device set in place by the powerful people who control the formless Capulet AI Network. If the Martini Series ever gained more popular support than those powerful people, they could leak that supposed vulnerability to end that boom. …Our agents dug it up while infiltrating the Information Alliance and it was reinterpreted into a form we could use more easily. That is the Ragnarok Script.”

“…”

Ragnarok.

That was the final battle in Norse Mythology. Afraid of his prophesied death, Odin planned out a way to stop it but ultimately earned enough resentment to get himself devoured by a beast just as the prophecy foretold. It was a merciless myth with no chance for recovery.

Yet if he had never taken the prophecy seriously, nothing would have happened in the first place.

“When their self-confidence is shaken and they lose sight of themselves, those Martinis succumb to the AI far more easily. So there was no need for active self-denial. The Faith Organization has far more experience when it comes to matters of the heart.”

Skuld sounded like she was letting them in on a juicy secret.

“In Faith Organization terms, it may be a lot like banning Mary adoration or Thor worship. And as long as the true result of the lie is effective, the rest doesn’t matter. The Martinis really are bound by the nonexistent threat, aren’t they?”

Similarly, Heivia had lost his valuable firepower due to this girl’s words.

There was nothing he could do with no bullets in his gun. Since her skintight special suit was blade-resistant, his options were limited with his knife.

“We whisper about the Ragnarok Script and the Martinis are bound. Even if they know it doesn’t exist, they can’t cleanse the damage to their soul. It’s like a curse. Maybe this is the result of controlling the Information Alliance’s fear with Faith Organization methods.”

“Tch…!?”

“Oh? What are you going to do? I don’t think you have time to swap magazines.”

He did not have time to be surprised by each and every one of her actions. As soon as Skuld let go of the empty handgun, she dropped a small piece of plastic explosive to her feet, detonated it, and used the blast to rotate her own body. Her weight shifted in a way that wouldn’t have been possible for a normal human and she sent a roundhouse kick as heavy as a demolition hammer toward the side of Heivia’s head.

As long as it was enjoyable and fun, she did not care what happened to her own body.

Heivia responded to the lunatic’s joy by lowering his arm. He did not let his arm be broken to protect his head. He dropped the empty handgun and slid it into the gap between the roof and the raised heel of Skuld’s pivot leg.

“Oh?”

She lost her balance and the axis of her roundhouse kick wobbled.

Skuld missed and, before she could straighten back up, Heivia tackled her childish hips. He placed the knee of her roundhouse kick on his shoulder and flipped her over. No, his hand would still have held the large survival knife.

They collapsed in a heap with Skuld on her back and Heivia on top of her. He held the survival knife in both hands with the tip in the center of her flat chest. Skuld used both hands to push back up, but he had the mounted position. No amount of squirming would let the slender serial killer escape from below the boy. As he pushed down on the knife with all his weight, it slowly moved down millimeter by millimeter. The sharp tip was definitely approaching Skuld’s vitals.

“Enough…”

Heivia shouted with the bloodshot eyes of something other than a soldier who killed for his job.

“I’ll kill you!! I won’t let anyone else end this. We screwed up in Madagascar! We should’ve done this from the beginning!!”

“Oh? Are you forcing yourself? Quenser is one thing, but I thought you acted as the brakes.”

Skuld was weaker. She could not overturn things here, so she could only watch as the blade slowly but surely reached her heart. Even if her Pilot Elite special suit was blade resistant, the weight would still reach her. The blade might not be able to cut the fibers, but the weight would gather on one point, like she was being stepped on with high heels, and her young ribs and sternum would be broken.

But as she lay on her back, Skuld continued to smile.

And she was not forcing it. Nor was she escaping to a paradise only she could see.

All of a sudden, Heivia realized Hand Axe plastic explosives were scattered at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with Skuld and her seductive bodylines in the center. Her inappropriate outfit added to the illusion that this was a magic circle drawn out on the floor and she was holding a blasphemous sacrificial ceremony using her own body.

The girl licked her lips in a way far too sinister for her lovely facial features.

“When using an icepick, the trick to silently breaking the window to reach the lock inside is to use a triangle. You make a crack and remove the bare minimum of glass at the vertices. And can’t you look at this roof the same way?”

“Damn you…!!”

He could definitely kill Skuld like this.

But to be certain, he had to take his time slowly pushing the blade down. He could not end it right this instant.

That was why Skuld Silent-Third’s slender white throat moved alluringly as she laughed.

“I’ve made it so I’ll fall. I’ll break off the roof around me. And there are 50,000 people below. I’m covered in my full stock of Hand Axe, so if I go out in an impressive explosion, just what color of flower will blossom down there?”

“…!!!???”

“Don’t give me that look. It might not cause that much damage at all. With that many people together, their flesh will function as a barrier. Ah ha ha! So how about you pray for a miracle, Brake Boy?”

He could not let go with his hands. It was his weight bearing down on them that was restraining Skuld. If he let go and released her, she would cause even more harm.

Myonri was overwhelmed and had fallen into a seated position, so he could not rely on her. Everyone else had been defeated, so he could not expect support from them either.

There was nothing he could do.

He knew the tragedy that was about to occur, yet he could find no plan to stop it!?

“Here’s what Quenser would do.” It was entirely out of place, but Skuld sounded like a dreaming maiden. “The options are to safely draw back or charge forward despite the danger. He would definitely charge forward. He would prioritize defeating his enemy over protecting himself and allowing the situation to grow even worse. I understand him. I understand the human being named Quenser Barbotage…”

Just then, something changed.

It was a gunshot.

Right into the center of her flat chest.

A bullet was fired from the self-defense handgun held by a small bloody hand.

“Wrai…th…?”

The black-uniform girl did not respond to Heivia.

She had walked over at some point and she had not hesitated to pull the trigger while looking down on the twintailed murderer.

“Don’t joke.” Her voice was trembling like she was about to cough up blood. “Quenser Barbotage would never do that!! He…that complete moron was such a hopeless ‘human’ that he would make a split-second decision to protect an enemy soldier being targeted by the world’s largest Object!! He was a fundamentally different creature to you or me!!”

The special suit provided some protection against bullets.

But only some.

“I…see.”

Skuld’s eyes wandered aimlessly as if seeing something that was not here and words escaped her mouth.

“Teacher. I was wondering why I didn’t see you here… So ''that’s'' what happened.”

As if to say she would not allow her to say anymore, Wraith pulled the trigger several more times. She seemed to be bringing the serial killer back to her senses through sensible pain. Skuld had trouble breathing, so she could no longer hold back the knife. Just as her limiter broke and her strength dropped, Heivia used his full weight to drive the 40cm survival knife’s tip into the center of that childish chest.

Thanks to its blade resistance, the special suit itself did not tear.

But the same weight as being stepped on with high heels would destroy the girl’s slender body.

This would end it.

This would settle the entire issue surrounding the Martini Series and the Ragnarok Script. There was no need to worry about the Object losing control. The Manhattan would no longer be a threat.

“I…will not die.”

But the girl’s smile was like a curse at this point.

The mass murderer announced her immortality like the monster in a cheap horror movie.

“I’ve killed enough to know. This pain isn’t coming from my organs. More, more, more. Drive it in more. Crush my organs with my broken ribs and sternum…”

“Shut up and die. We don’t need anything extra. If you’ll just die here it’s all over. I’m not Quenser, so I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”

“Ha ha. Brake Boy, you can’t do it. Only my teacher can kill me. That must have been destined from the moment we were born.”

What meaning did that serial killer see in her own death?

Was it just one more for the pile? Or was she the one exception, so it was a treasure meant only for someone she cared for?

“Or so I thought. How disappointing. But in a way, I guess you could say I achieved my objective. For my purposes, it didn’t have to be Royce.”

“What…?”

Heivia felt like his entire body was covered in tiny insects.

She knew something.

They had already passed the minor issues of the Martini Series and the Ragnarok Script.

The world would roll toward the precipice any number of times.

She probably saw it as a way to bring herself closer to Quenser who had defeated her and had a killing method greater than her own. Just like a stalker’s obsession could gather more information than a professional detective or intelligence agent, she had thoroughly investigated everything about him. Heivia was certain of it.

If only the powered suit had not been remote controlled. If only Oh Ho Ho had been killed by Skuld sooner, this would not have happened.

This extreme evil inspired that sort of misguided regret.

“I went a little overboard and sliced it in half, but can you hear me, Miss Powered Suit? Or whoever’s controlling it, I mean.”

“What are you doing? What more could you do!?”

“You don’t know?”

She actually looked surprised.

And then Skuld Silent-Third made the worst possible move.

“That girl over there is the one who killed my teacher, Quenser Barbotage, right? I feel bad leaving someone in the dark, so we need to make sure everyone knows.”

===Part 23===

“Ah.”

That girl was in some other location.

She should not have been at any risk there. Lendy Farolito adored that Pilot Elite, so she would never allow the girl anywhere near the scene of a battle so full of unknowns. That commander had used herself as a diversion to convince everyone the Idol Elite was actually there and she had used that “information” to protect the precious girl.

“Ahh.”

But she should have considered it.

Not all danger came in the form of physical bullets and bombs. They were from the Information Alliance, so she should have known the greatest danger of all came in the form of information arriving over the internet.

Her father was safe. Royce was alive.

But her young heart was hit in the most sudden way imaginable.

Quenser Barbotage was no more.

Someone she had trusted had shot him.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

===Part 24===

“Welcome to the end of the world.”

The mass murderer spat out the words like blood.

But with a dreamy expression on her face.

“I too am an Elite, so I know the special treatment we get. You came here to protect her father for her own personal needs, didn’t you? But what if she loses someone she cares for just as much?”

Skuld had a twisted obsession with Quenser. She saw him as her teacher in the art of killing.

That was why she had investigated everything about him.

“If the Faith Organization’s predictions are correct, she is more than just an Elite. She is a VIP who can work with the entire formless Capulet AI Network of which Manhattan is just one small piece. To the point that she could singlehandedly fight against the several thousand Martinis. How badly will she lose control when someone who she has a strong connection with dies? I can’t wait to find out. Right, teacher?”

It was true the Martini Series problem had been eliminated.

An even greater threat had emerged, so of course it had.

===Between the Lines 2===

Situation 325 has been judged a failure.

Skuld Silent-Third’s defeat has been confirmed.

It was separate from Royce, but that serial killer met the minimum requirements at the very, very end. I will honestly praise how clever she is. This will safely bring us to the ignition.

This would all be for naught if we could not bring down Manhattan, the Martini Series, and the entire Information Alliance to trigger a world war that draws in all four world powers.

The world desires chaos.

Most religions cannot advance during peacetime. God’s righteousness can only be easily explained using god’s enemies, an overwhelming disaster, or something else that defies human understanding.

Formless depravity should be feared most of all.

And this clean age is exactly that.

To fight against the silently approaching trend of degeneracy, we must create an obvious enemy. That process is sure to produce a great many victims, but the world must be united if we are to fight against the true, invisible threat.

This age is wrong.

The world was mistaken to support itself with Objects and humanity will never find a bright future along that path. That is simple enough to say, but very few people can explain what exactly is wrong or how to fix it on a quantitative level.

So we must do so. We will supply what is lacking and reach out our hand. Not for social status or honor, but to regain a world where people can live as people. We will solemnly carry out all necessary actions. We will not fear the critics or historians. After all, we await an unavoidable judgment by a far greater being.

Prepare Module Quenser.

I too will head out.

–From Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker to all my beloved compatriots

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1

2018-04-24T12:59:11Z

Zakashi: /* Part 8 */

==Chapter 1: Bloody Pool >> Atlantic Artificial Island Proxy War==

===Part 1===

Intense light, noise, and shockwaves.

In that moment, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage could not tell up from down, could not hold his memories together in a coherent fashion, and felt all his other senses melt together.

His vision blurred and he had trouble breathing like he had a thick translucent sheet over his face. He felt a scorching heat, but he could not get his thoughts working to the point of coming up with a course of action to eliminate the unpleasant sensation. Only the pounding of his heart sounded unpleasantly raw and real. That should have been the proof that he was alive, but it instead felt as unpleasant as putting back on a shirt after removing it.

Where was he?

What was he doing?

The blond boy focused his mind on remembering those two things. If he let go of that, it was all over. If his mind lost even more focus, he would never recover. He knew that without anyone telling him.

(Oh, right… I remember now.)

As usual, he had been on a shitty job with the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. He had been at New Caribbean Island, a tropical island near Central America where the weather completely ignored the fact that it was October. It had all started when he set out on a philanthropic mission (but really meant to earn a diplomatic card) to rescue a Capitalist Corporations submarine that was stranded at the bottom of the ocean after having engine trouble. On that submarine, they had found an old woman wanting to defect from the Information Alliance. She had claimed to be Katarina Martini, a biochemical engineer.

By taking in the old woman who had led the Information Alliance’s crucial genius girl project, they had triggered a serious military clash with the Information Alliance who did not want their technology leaking out. That had begun a fierce battle against the Nitrogen Mirage, a cutting-edge Second Generation that could bend its lasers as it pleased.

(…Kh…)

His mind was all mixed up. He felt a dull headache slowly traveling from right to left in his brain. His stomach roiled disconcertingly, like he had triggered some kind of trauma. This was an important issue. The Nitrogen Mirage was a powerful enemy. But that was not the crux of the problem. The true darkness lurked beyond that.

An Information Alliance landing team had attacked the Legitimacy Kingdom at the artificial New Caribbean Island. The Legitimacy Kingdom had struck back by directly infiltrating the Flagship 019 located at the center of the Information Alliance’s maintenance fleet.

The fierce attacks that ignored the concept of clean wars had been caused by Piranirie Martini Smoky, one of the created genius girls who had gone berserk, and the giant administrative AI network that the Martini Series was meant to manage and correct.

Quenser’s group had temporarily joined forces with Wraith Martini Vermouthspray, an Information Alliance officer, in order to defeat Piranirie and the Nitrogen Mirage.

But that alone had not solved the problem.

(Ugh. Ahhh…!?)

His mind roared at him to remember it.

His mind screamed at him to not remember it.

The positive and negative thoughts crashed into each other, tormenting Quenser Barbotage with the internal pressure. His soul thrashed about in search of any way out, even the smallest gap. And as a result, his mind was drawn toward it. He formed a link to the memory of the monster lurking beyond the thick veil.

He had heard a certain radio transmission while inside the half-destroyed Flagship 019.

It was coming.

The Manhattan was finally on the move.

(Ahhhhhh!? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!)

He thought his skull would break from within and the pain felt like having countless rusty spikes driven into his head. He could not tell if this was physical pain or psychological pain. Regardless, it continued to shake him and his soul was forcibly dragged toward a certain answer.

Yes.

That was right. After that utterly baffling transmission…

A blinding light had…

“How long are you going to lie there!? Wake up already!!!!!!”

He heard a sharp shout and felt incredible pressure across his entire face.

It took him a few seconds to realize a bucket of seawater had been dumped on his face while he lay on his back.

“Ubh, what, cough, cough!! Uehh!? Cough!!”

Quenser choked and somehow managed to sit up, but then the toe of a thick military boot mercilessly kicked him in the jaw.

His vision shook and he rolled back onto the hard ground. It felt a lot like hot asphalt that had been sitting in the midsummer sun, but it was not.

“Ughh…ubweh…!?”

(What? Is this…the deck of…an aircraft carrier…?)

“Who gave you permission to speak and move? Have you forgotten that your lives are in our hands?”

He heard a low female voice from overhead.

He could not see her face well with the tropical sun behind her.

He also heard a young man’s voice.

“Captain, he appears to be the last one.”

“Hmph. That seems less than in the report.”

“Perhaps they went down with the Flagship 019 when it lost its balance? We could send divers to the sunken ship if need be.”

“That would be a waste of personnel expenses.”

Quenser tried to roll onto his stomach, but a military boot kicked him and he decided not to move. He moved only his eyes to observe his surroundings. …They were there. There were maybe a few dozen soldiers wearing soaking-wet Legitimacy Kingdom uniform identical to his lying on the slanted flight deck. It was reminiscent of the corpses lined up for counting after a plane crash.

He saw dark clouds.

As if to predict Quenser and the others’ futures, thick clouds covered the blue sky and had started to blot out the sun. Although those may have been caused by the extra-large attack that had assaulted them.

And once the sun faded, he could see.

The person looking down at him was a tall and beautiful girl of about 18. Her skin was white…but it had a different luster from Quenser and his group’s. With that and the long black hair tied back, she was probably of Asian descent. She wore a bluish sailor uniform and a miniskirt. That clued Quenser in to the situation.

The time between the Manhattan’s attack and this assault force abducting Quenser’s group had been too short.

“…So you’re from the Flagship 019…no, from the maintenance fleet. Hah. Were you promoted because your boss Piranirie kicked the bucket?”

The girl’s subordinate gave him another kick.

She must not have felt any real hatred toward him. The Asian beauty looked down at him like he was a bug crawling along the roadside.

“We will decide what will be done with all of you. As I said, your lives are in our hands.” She then glanced to the side. “But we have a more important issue to take care of. Hello, comrade! Lieutenant Colonel Wraith Martini Vermouthspray!! My fellow Martini!!”

Quenser tensed up at that.

Yes. Wraith’s cooperation with the Legitimacy Kingdom had been a personal decision. Since the Martini Series which supported the Capulet AI Network was acting oddly, Wraith’s decision may have been correct. But this and that were two very different things.

“Hello, Taratua.”

“Hello, Wraith.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray was a blonde girl of about 12. She wore a formal black hat over her long blonde hair and a pitch black uniform that was poorly suited for the tropical sun.

She had no allies in the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance.

A young man of unknown age stood beside her, but that alone was not much to rely on.

The Asian beauty named Taratua may have meant no real harm. The way the corners of her lips curled into a smile looked childish for her age.

Yes. Almost like the look of a child tearing off a captured insect’s legs one by one.

“I was placed in the maintenance fleet as Piranirie’s spare, but what kind of mission was a fellow Martini given that required working with enemy soldiers? I certainly haven’t heard of anything like that, so was it a highly-classified special mission?”

“…”

“Yes. Silence is the best answer here. Even if you try to lie about it and invent some fake mission, you never know when you’ll blow it.”

Their ranks were captain and lieutenant colonel, but Taratua did not hold back. If it could be proven that Wraith had been colluding with the Legitimacy Kingdom and had arrived here in violation of her actual mission, she would be no more than a traitor or deserter. Then no one could complain if she was shot in the back here and now.

“I’ll give you a chance.”

Taratua drew an impractically large revolver from her hip. It must have absorbed the dark color of the thick clouds overhead because the polished black weapon looked sinister. Wraith held out a hand to stop the young man who tried to move in front of her.

She winked her right eye and asked a question.

“You want to test my luck? That is impressively unscientific.”

“Ha ha! Oh, we’re not playing Russian roulette. Ignoring someone’s actual actions and only seeing if god loves them is more of a Faith Organization thing. You’re almost certainly guilty, but I know just how valuable the contents of your mind are. So, comrade, it isn’t your head you’ll be blowing away.”

Taratua spun the entire revolver around like a cheap pen and then held the grip out toward Wraith.

“The Second Generation Laser Beam 069, Piranirie, the recently sunk Flagship 019…and now an attack from that Manhattan 000. Our maintenance fleet is in tatters and our higher ups have probably been wiped out. We can’t let this continue. And if we’re going to recover, we need as many soldiers as we can get. And that includes you, my comrade and my fellow Martini.”

And.

She said it as casually as could be.

“Shoot that boy there. I’ll judge your true intentions based on that.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The atmosphere solidified.

Still on his back, Quenser checked on the situation by turning his head so stiffly the joint seemed rusted.

His eyes met Taratua’s.

He could not read Wraith’s emotions at all.

Before breathing her last, Piranirie Martini Smoky had said there was something breaking and driving the entire Martini Series mad. And it was controlled by someone outside the Information Alliance rather than Katarina, the old woman in charge of the genius girl project.

Was this also a product of that artificial madness?

Or was this normal for the Asian beauty known as Taratua?

“As I said, this isn’t Russian roulette, so none of the bullets have been removed.”

He understood.

What would Wraith Martini Vermouthspray do in this situation? Wasn’t there anything else she could do? Quenser understood. If she obeyed, one would die. If she did not, they would all die. It was simple arithmetic. Even if the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been temporarily working together because their interests aligned, they were still enemies.

There was no reason for her ''not'' to do it.

Once you had 1 + 1 = 2, no amount of searching would turn up another answer.

“We went to an effort to rescue these lives, so we will have these idiots work for us to make up for it. And they will keep working until they wear out and die.”

But.

Could it be…?

“But things are different for this one: Quenser Barbotage. This irregular actor ignores the rules of cost-effectiveness by running around destroying Objects. We will kill him here. It functions as camouflage and gives us a prize for the higher ups.”

“Wait!!”

That was when a soldier lying a short distance away raised his voice and was kicked in the jaw by one of the sailors walking between the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers who were lined up like corpses. A dark red liquid splattered from his split lip, but he kept shouting with the eyes of a chained dog.

“He isn’t a soldier! He’s a battlefield student!! If you know who he is, you must know that. Be careful how you handle him or it’s you who’ll be in trouble later!!”

It was Heivia Winchell.

But it was no use. All he could do was yell from the aircraft carrier deck.

Taratua paid him no heed.

“You are more like disposable parts than prisoners of war. The fact that any of you survived will be erased from any and all reports, so what does it matter how one or two of you is treated now?”

She sounded somewhat exasperated, but there were several endlessly ominous phrases mixed in.

And it was time to decide.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray grabbed the proffered magnum’s grip with a troubled look.

Taratua reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a device much like the collapsible opera glasses sold at concert halls. She casually unfolded it and winked.

“Say cheese. The time it takes to decide, your breathing, your perspiration, your eye movements, the trembling of your fingertips. I’m measuring them all like a true Information Alliance soldier, so don’t do anything suspicious.”

“…”

The Asian beauty gestured with her chin and her subordinate soldiers grabbed Quenser’s arms and lifted him up. They were near the railingless edge of the slanted flight deck, so there was no escape.

[[Image:HO_v15_027.jpg|thumb]]

A small girl stood directly in front of him.

The unsuitably large handgun’s muzzle was pointed toward the boy’s face.

(…Think.)

Sweat poured from his body.

He even had trouble blinking for the first time in his life.

Death.

True death was approaching.

(What is the Manhattan doing? If Taratua’s group is just the survivors of the maintenance fleet, are they really working as a solid group? Has anything been done to that handgun? What does Wraith think? Is there something I could use as a bomb or another weapon? What’s security like? This flight deck is unstable and tilted. The others are lying on the deck. …What happened to the Princess’s Baby Magnum? There has to be something! There has to be at least one thing I can use!!!!!)

“I’m sorry, Quenser. It looks like you’re still working your mind and foolishly haven’t given up hope.”

A voice seemed to slice right through the boy’s thoughts.

Wraith’s blue eye stared quietly at him through the sight.

“But this time, there really is…''nothing''.”

The dry gunshot…

…sounded far too light.

===Part 2===

“The world’s…gest Obje… New Yo…Manhattan…tself was…mation Alliance’s Object!?”

“An offici…statement was…with a video. The Manhat…intends…join this war!!”

“Not good…ood!! Everyone, brace for impact! The enemy…an electromagnetically…ched reactor cannon. It’s a demonic weapon that…the heat usually contai…the reactor which uses lasers…pellet fuel!! Our New Caribb…blown away!?”

“Curse the Marti…ries. How insane…they!?”

It was pandemonium.

The busty silver-haired high-ranking officer named Frolaytia Capistrano’s vision had been entirely flipped upside down and she initially could not remember where she was.

Light flashed before her eyes like she had been slapped the instant she ran across someone. The core of her mind was unsteady and she spent a while in an unthinking daze.

Slowly, like thin ice being melted by a blow dryer, her mind managed to focus on the cruel reality.

“Uh, kh…?”

She first realized she was collapsed face down.

She had been in the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s officer’s barracks using her laptop to receive a report from a subordinate in their distant home country. But the scene around her had entirely changed. The ceiling was too low. No, the entire barracks building had been crushed down. The space was too cramped and the other things in the room were so close she could barely see. She did not have time to check on her Island Nation collection. Her military-issued items and personal possessions were scattered around her. Among those, she grabbed a laptop with a broken LCD screen and a keyring of hardware keys. Then she crawled through the cramped space.

Luckily, she was not trapped by an ankle caught in the rubble or anything else like that.

Did she have to crawl a few meters or a few dozen meters? Her sense of time and distance were far too vague as she bit her lip and made her way outside. She could see the outside light ahead of her, but the end never seemed to arrive. She had no guarantee this was the right way to go. The collapsed ceiling approached ever closer overhead the further she crawled, so she might find her hips trapped before she reached the exit.

That self-produced doubt gnawed at her mind as she dug at the ground with neatly clipped and filed nails to slowly but surely make her way forward.

(Finally…)

The light was approaching.

She had somehow managed to escape the pile of rubble under her own power.

(…Finally.)

And as soon as she did, a hellish scene spread out before her eyes.

As a reminder, Frolaytia Capistrano was on New Caribbean Island located in the Atlantic Ocean near Central America. It was a special island made by the lava of an artificial eruption caused by stimulating a submarine volcano with explosives. The island was a collection of small black rocks that looked like crunchy chocolate and it had originally been made as a bluefin tuna breeding base for her brother Bloodrics Capistrano. Frolaytia had stationed her Object maintenance battalion there and had been in the middle of a battle with an Information Alliance maintenance fleet and its Second Generation Object, the Nitrogen Mirage.

Those assumptions had been blown away.

First of all, the color was wrong.

The dark stone ground was glowing like an electrically-heated wire or a reactor. The cooled and solidified lava had been melted anew by an outside heat source. Like two scoops of ice cream dropped on the midsummer asphalt, the melted surface formed orange rivers that flowed toward the sea and then formed rising walls of billowing steam. Thanks to the immense light, heat, and steam, the bright sun overhead appeared to waver and dim. It may have been the same as the lights of a metropolis erasing the stars from the night sky.

“…”

It took Frolaytia a while to accept her situation here.

(This was done by the Manhattan’s main cannon. And it fired from a few thousand kilometers away…)

But she had to face reality.

There were around 1000 people in the maintenance battalion and half of them had gone to the front line based on the military operation Frolaytia had planned. So how many of the approximately 500 logistical support and standby personnel remained in this hell containing several orange rivers? That was about two schools’ worth of people. She had no idea how many more were lost with each passing second. She did not have time to stop just because she found it hard to accept.

“Report…”

Frolaytia raised her voice so it would not be drowned out by the explosive steam rising from the coast.

“Someone give me a report!! We need to know the scope of the damage, we need a relatively undamaged area we can evacuate to, and we need a set of surviving equipment and facilities! Simply saving the lives in front of you will only waste valuable resources. Then we can’t even save the lives you think you’ve saved. We need to avoid redundancies and carry out a rescue operation with maximum efficiency!!”

There was no response.

Not even the very basics were functioning.

“Hi, Tia-chan…”

“…”

The busty silver-haired commander’s shoulders jumped when someone spoke gently from behind her.

She just about let out her face as a family member, but she just barely managed to suppress it before turning around. She greeted the young man as the commander of the maintenance battalion.

It was Bloodrics Capistrano.

He had worn a black tailcoat even on this tropical island, but he had removed that, leaving him with just a white shirt. Had he used the coat to treat a wounded soldier, or had he discarded it before it melted in the heat?

He held a drawn katana in one hand.

There was no scabbard. For some reason, the blade was wet with a red liquid. It was unclear what had happened on the way here, but that was a clear sign of just how chaotic the situation was.

The sweat on his brow may have gotten in his eye or he may have had some other reason, but Bloodrics kept one eye unnaturally shut as he forced a smile on his blatantly exhausted face.

“Shouting won’t do you any good. The previous war is over. This has gone beyond Piranirie Martini Smoky or the Nitrogen Mirage. The conditions have changed.”

“What are you talking about? That isn’t for me to decide! It’s true the damage is severe, but we can’t just quit fighting a war like flipping a switch!! No matter the devastation before our eyes, we can still gather the surviving personnel and equipment for a counterattack. I’ll admit it’s like whipping the dead, but if we give up and stop resisting, everyone under my command will simply sink into the lava!!”

Frolaytia was not illogically relying on pure willpower.

She had more to say.

“Calm down, think, and never give up on being human! Why did the Information Alliance suddenly pull out their greatest secret weapon like this? It was at the center of their home country, so they shouldn’t have had any reason to send it to the front line. I don’t know the details of the issues with the Martini Series who monitor the AI network which may not even have a core, but if they have the full authority of a world power, they had to have had a better way of doing this.”

“…”

“We do not know how far the problems have spread within the Martini Series. If it’s limited to the ones in charge of protecting New York, it makes sense that only the Manhattan was sent out. But this is a fluid situation. If the other Martinis also begin acting oddly, the problems could spread uncontrollably throughout the Information Alliance!”

“Tia-chan, you are overwhelmingly correct here.”

Her brother slowly breathed out.

Bloodrics was supposedly a civilian, but he spoke to his sister like he was calmly explaining something while she threw a tantrum.

“But there is no one to answer your call.”

“!?”

“By a general estimate, 60-70% of those remaining on the island were lost. And losing 30% is normally considered a rout, is it not? You can no longer maintain ordinary military activity here. Tia-chan, your job here is to remove or destroy all classified information so the Information Alliance cannot steal it. And that includes yourself as the major in command of the entire battalion.”

“…”

“You must not be captured. No matter what. Do you really think the Manhattan is finished with only that one shot? Whether it fires a second and third shot or they send a large landing unit to the devastated remnants of the battalion, you have a single job here, Tia-chan: …Escape. It does not matter how pathetic or cowardly you feel. Tia-chan, you carry a responsibility here, so you must get yourself away from here. Even if you are the only one that escapes.”

She intellectually understood that.

If she was captured, the enemy could steal the biometric information like her center of gravity or iris scan that allowed access to the military datalink. Or they could get her to talk about future operations no one was supposed to know about or the names of spies who had infiltrated enemy countries. Then the damage would spread beyond ''just this war''. To minimize the losses, she had to make sure it was limited to ''just this war''.

The busty silver-haired commander slowly breathed out.

After throwing the laptop and hardware keys into the lava, she drew her military handgun from its holster.

“…I will withdraw only after saving as many lives as I can. As their commander, I will be rear guard.”

“Tia-chan.”

“Yes, yes!! I know it’s inefficient!!”

Frolaytia shouted back at him and pressed the military handgun’s muzzle against her own temple.

Brother and sister glared at each other and she gathered strength in her brow to keep her face as a girl from coming out.

“But there are still so many allies buried alive in this rubble and lava, unable to even groan! Not to mention the soldiers fighting the Information Alliance at the maintenance fleet out at sea!! They’re out there because I ordered them there! I can’t use insufficient data as an excuse. I can’t abandon them and run away. They would die pointless deaths if I did!!”

“…”

“Destroying all classified information was the bare minimum requirement, wasn’t it? That won’t be a problem. Officers aren’t issued guns to shoot the enemy. It’s to blow their own brains out if need be!!”

Still holding his drawn katana, Bloodrics shook his head with a sorrowful look on his face.

He must have understood his sister’s feelings all too well.

She did not let her status as a noble bind her. When necessary, she had risked her life and used her own strength to protect her soldiers. That was a joyous thing for Bloodrics. If his sister had something she wanted to protect, he wanted to fight alongside her as her brother. He truly did.

Finally, he took a deep breath of resignation.

And the brother spoke to his sister.

“I’m sorry, Tia-chan. But I can’t let you do that.”

Did Frolaytia even know what caused the quiet sound on her head?

“Bh…?”

The pommel of the katana held by the silver-haired young man had dug into the side of her head. Just like knocking someone out with a pistol grip. Before she could even move her finger to pull the trigger, the ''girl''’s eyes grew unfocused and her body went limp.

Before she fully collapsed, Bloodrics wrapped an arm around her waist which, as her brother, he felt was too skinny. If he was not careful, the finger on the trigger could accidentally fire the bullet.

“Striking my own sister… I am truly a disgrace to the concept of chivalry.”

He sounded utterly disgusted, but he was extremely dry when it came to this. Those military reasons meant nothing to him since he was a civilian, albeit a noble one. His first and foremost objective was to protect his precious sister no matter what it took.

On his way here, he had heard many voices begging him to kill them.

Some had had lava dumped on their head and others were caught in the rubble. Bloodrics had turned the tip of his katana on those soldiers who had no hope left.

He would not forget their words of thanks.

How could he ever forget?

“…I’m sick of it all.”

Frolaytia had built up this world of hers bit by bit as she resisted the noble society, so he could not allow her to see it tragically fall apart.

She could resent him if she liked.

She could hate his guts if she had to.

Bloodrics tossed aside his bloodstained katana and placed a finger to his ear. He was about to send out a transmission.

“It’s me.”

As soon as he focused on the small earpiece, the young man took on the face of a noble.

“Yes, I would like an emergency exit. Use that submarine. I would like to pick up as many Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers as possible, but there is no need to force it. We leave in 15 minutes. Give up on any we cannot pick up. Don’t worry. None of you need play the villain’s role. That I will do alone.”

Still supporting his unconscious family member’s weight, Bloodrics looked through the lava’s heat and steam to view the distant horizon.

According to Frolaytia, she had sent some of her soldiers out to sea.

It had been necessary. Even if it had required ignoring her personal feelings.

But if the maintenance battalion withdrew from New Caribbean Island, they would have nowhere to return to. Once isolated out at sea, no one would come to save them no matter how much they screamed.

Bloodrics Capistrano was doing that to them.

He was prepared to dirty his hands with the things that someone had to do.

“…Such a disaster. For us and them.”

===Part 3===

And no one came.

The Legitimacy Kingdom military was supposedly stationed at New Caribbean Island. The Princess’s Baby Magnum was supposedly out in the wide ocean.

And yet.

No one.

“…I’ll kill you…”

A voice burning with resentment echoed across the rusty flight deck.

It belonged to Heivia Winchell who could not even shed any tears.

He moved his trembling body as best he could to crawl to the edge of the flight deck, but there was already no sign of his friend’s corpse.

Only a strange dark red liquid stained the water’s surface as a large shadow slowly swam below.

“Ha ha. Don’t do that, Wraith!”

Taratua held her stomach as she laughed.

There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

“You can feed his corpse to the sharks if you like. Peh heh heh. But we’ll never hear the end of it if you feed them the metals and plastics along with it. Ah hah hah hah!!”

With that, something really did snap inside Heivia’s mind. He crossed a line.

“I’ll kill you!! I’ll murder you!! I don’t care anymore if you’re insane or broken or whatever the hell. I’ll turn every last one of you to mincemeat in a hail of bullets!!!!!”

In the end, where was that threat directed?

No one knows.

===Part 4===

“Attention, 101st Zombie Platoon!!”

They were out in the open.

There were not even any chairs or tables.

Heivia and the other defeated survivors of the Legitimacy Kingdom were gathered on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which was tilted too far to be of any use. Rain was pouring down from the thick storm clouds, but there was no roof or anything else to protect them. There were not even any railings, so if they got careless and slipped on the wet flight deck, they could roll right off into the ocean where the hungry sharks waited.

The only person with a smile on her face was Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks, but she stood below a large umbrella held by a male subordinate.

“That impressive attack from my piece of shit comrade on the Manhattan 000 has whipped up quite the storm. That gives us an opportunity for the dead to do some work.”

“…Are you unfamiliar with the concept of war treaties? This is no way to treat POWs.”

“What, do you want to be thrown inside a zoo cage like the amusing animal you are?”

She was blunt.

Whether it had been injected from an external source like with Piranirie or if she had always been like that, the thoroughly-broken Asian beauty did not bat an eye.

“You cowards boarded our maintenance fleet’s flagship and then shared the fate of the Flagship 019 after a variety of attacks finally sunk it. Thus, there were zero survivors. Your survival has been scrubbed from any and all records, so worry not and go have some fun.”

“…”

Heivia gave her a murderous glare, so she winked.

“Do you understand your position now? The dead do not belong to any of the usual categories, so we can ignore all those pesky treaties and military regulations. Plus, any number of you can die without it counting in the official records. Ignore the people in their living rooms. You can fight as you like and die as you like! I’m honestly jealous! That’s the paradise dreamed of by any soldier!!”

In other words…

The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were being forced to wrap their arms around the pile of shit that the Information Alliance did not want to grab with their bare hands. Their target of attack could be a region of hopelessly fierce fighting, or a symbol of peace that was bound to earn international criticism. They did not want to imagine the other possibilities.

It was time for a true death march where they were lined up in a row and forced at gunpoint to walk through a minefield. Each step would be terrifying, but standing still would get them shot. Yes, the death march was more than just this one battle. They would never be released. Heivia and the others were disposable tools. This situation would continue endlessly until they were worn out and died.

“…What are you telling us to do?”

“It’s all about balance.” Taratua toyed with the end of her black hair that was damp despite the umbrella. “I’m sure you saw a lot on the Flagship 019. The Capulet AI Network that supports the Information Alliance, one of the four world powers, is correct but too pure. After all, after the New Yorker’s used various countermeasures to avoid security cameras and email spying, it was rendered unable to see New York itself. If the entire Martini Series in charge of maintenance returns a strange echo, it could create a similar flaw in Capulet. …But that is not the problem.”

“?”

Taratua was supposedly a part of that Martini Series, but she did not seem worried about herself.

“As its name suggests, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. Nevertheless, we were not told anything about the risk to Capulet or about the Manhattan 000.”

“You’re pissed at being left out, so you want to take revenge by having us blow up New York?”

“Are you braindead? This is an opportunity,” whispered the black-haired beauty below the umbrella. “The Manhattan 000 is currently traveling south at around 388 knots. The distance from New York in the Information Alliance home country and the ocean near New Caribbean Island is about 3500 kilometers, so it should arrive within 4 or 5 hours. It’s still a mystery why they would send their king to the front line like this, but there is one thing we know for sure: we were blessed with a chance to gather raw data.”

388 knots was 700 kilometers per hour, so it was not much different from a passenger plane. What had happened to the city of Manhattan and the people in it?

The usual technical nerd was not here.

With nowhere to direct his question, Heivia just spat it out.

“700…? How?”

“At the very least, it must not be using an aircushion or static electricity floats. The colossal structure itself is parting the water. It’s probably using supercavitation or something to reduce the water’s resistance with small air bubbles, but the exact system is still unknown. This is all information we must find.”

That gigantic a presence was staring them down from the darkness. Wasn’t that enough to sound instinctual alarm bells within any living creature?

And yet this girl had called it an opportunity.

“…Are you the kind of person who goes out to see the hurricane and gets blown away into the sky?”

“I will shoot you next time. What matters here is who can monopolize the most raw data available at the scene. As I said, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. The Manhattan 000 started moving and can apparently move under its own power whenever it wants. After we gather what data we can on it, we are not foolish enough to send all of it back to our higher ups, which includes the core-less Capulet AI Network. …I mean, it already fired on all of you to cover its tracks.”

“Don’t drag us into your internal conflict.”

“Don’t be silly. Then I would have to take responsibility here.”

Even the simplest rules did not apply.

This was completely different from not having your words get through to someone. It was like emphatically speaking and even gesturing for emphasis only to see all that effort outright rejected. There was simply no opening in this girl. She was as inhuman as a giant praying mantis wearing human skin.

Was she an alien? Was she from the Shit Planet?

“They went to a lot of effort to hide this for so long. There must be some great secret to the Manhattan 000. And that would be very, very valuable information.”

Taratua giggled after glancing at the notebook-sized tablet she took from the subordinate holding the umbrella.

Was it showing a video site or online news? Or maybe the myriad posts on message boards and social media?

There was a lot of information related to Manhattan, but it was meaningless if none of it was accurate. When faced with a situation like this, it was the lowest of the low who could only think about shouting strange apocalyptic theories or fabricating a witness account to gather views for their videos.

“After taking this much blame, I’m not going to obediently stand aside and stay a lowly Captain. I will provide myself with a path to special promotion. I’m sure all four world powers, both our enemies and the Information Alliance itself, are rushing to gather information. That’s perfect. Those onlookers will trip each other up and fail to gather anything of note. Meanwhile, we will move a step or two ahead. I will hold the valuable information on the Manhattan 000 and I will decide how to use it. Perhaps I will use AI and big data to join the upper class and enjoy a high society life of wealth. Or maybe I will threaten those people and use them as a stepping stone to an even more comfortable and leisurely life.”

“So it’s all about money? You sound just like the goddamn Capitalist Corporations.”

“Are you musty old nobles too stupid to tell the difference? The order is reversed. An information illiterate fool and their money are soon parted. When the poor hit the jackpot at the lottery, the story always has a tragic end. The truly powerful are those who first gather information. Whether or not they reveal their educational history, their occupation, the size of their bank account, and so on is all part of someone’s status.”

Heivia shook his head like he was hungover.

He may have given up on trying to understand the thought process of this thinly-smiling resident of Shit Planet.

“And the problem there is balance.”

But how did Taratua view these disposable Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers?

She looked down on the rain-soaked group from her position of safety.

“Hopefully, the four world powers will begin a mutual game of whack-a-mole that keeps any of them from popping up. The danger is if one of them manages to stay up. I want to restrict their data acquisition speed. That way we alone can grasp these secrets and use them as exclusive bargaining chips against the higher, higher, higher ups. So if any of those moles pops up, we need to whack them back down. Even if our target is from the Information Alliance, we still must thoroughly destroy them. Even more so for outsiders.”

This was sounding ominous.

Heivia, Myonri, and the rest tensed up as Taratua spun the notebook-sized tablet around so they could see the screen.

And it showed…

“A symbol of peace: the Olympia Dome☆”

“Bff…!?”

She was broken.

She was completely insane.

“That artificial floating island travels slowly around the Atlantic and hosts the Technopics global sports festival. It officially claims to be fully neutral and not affiliated with any world power, but it is actually heavily dyed in the colors of the Faith Organization. And since it needs to broadcast an international event, it is equipped with largescale broadcast equipment. That makes it a gigantic EM spy device wandering across the Atlantic. It doesn’t really matter whether or not it was originally built for that purpose. It has ended up that way. It is in our way. You need to whack down that mole so it doesn’t discover the Manhattan 000’s secrets before we do. Blow it up and sink it.”

“…That’s against the rules. You want us to sink the site of the Technopics with military might? That would turn into an international incident requiring centuries of reparations!!”

“That isn’t part of the calculation. Even if you’re right, I won’t be the one paying them. Why do you think I’ve kept you dangerous Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers alive this long? Now get to work, my dead soldiers☆”

She made it sound so simple.

If this was an operation that could be pulled off with the normal methods, she would not have put together this unstable enemy unit of zombie soldiers. She was not expecting Heivia and the others to fight valiantly. They were being used as jokers to whom the rules did not apply specifically because she did not care when they were destroyed either legally or physically.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks smiled thinly.

“Luckily, all of our maintenance fleet’s ships were at least half-destroyed by the Manhattan 000’s attack. No one will suspect a thing if a few of them lose control and start to drift. You assisted a stranded Capitalist Corporations’ submarine for no reward, didn’t you? This will be the same. The rules of the sea are kind. So we’ll use that to our advantage by getting the Olympia Dome to assist you so you can crush them from within.”

Heivia tried to continue arguing, but Taratua gently raised a hand.

The sailors surrounding them lazily aimed shotguns at the curled-up Legitimacy Kingdom dumplings. Heivia might or might not be killed when the first trigger was pulled, but once it began, the number of survivors would be quickly reduced.

Refusal was not an option.

If they disobeyed, they would receive a bullet to the head. If they obeyed, they would be used as disposable elements of ridiculous missions. Even if they managed to win and survive, they would not be freed; they would simply be sent out on the next mission. The death march would continue until every last one of them was dead.

[[Image:HO_v15_051.png|thumb]]

The Asian beauty gently lowered her hand and grinned.

“Do you understand the rules now? Then begin.”

“…Wait.”

A low voice spoke.

It was Heivia as the pouring rain continued to hit him.

“You’re the only one that gains anything from that. It’s not worth our while. We’re risking our life on a deadly attack with guns aimed at our backs. There has to be something in it for us.”

“Using data to achieve a fortune only applies to those in the Information Alliance. Or are you saying you will defect to our side to share in the profits here?”

“Not what I meant,” spat out Heivia. “I’m not interested in your dirty money.”

And he said it.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. Once this is all over, hand that bitch over to us. Those are our terms.”

The tall girl silently tilted her head.

She rubbed at her shiny black hair as she finally answered.

“What do I gain by accepting that? Depending on your answer, I might just return you to your grave.”

“You’re both from the Martini Series, aren’t you? Keep her with you and your share is divided in half.”

“Then you can kill her if you want.”

She said it so easily.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks may have had no concept of camaraderie.

No.

Dorothea, Piranirie, and Wraith.

Even that small blonde girl had lost the guarantee of the safety myth. So was it safe to conclude it was a general trait of the Martini Series as a whole? The one question was whether that was a mistake at the design phase or if it was the result of an outside force taking advantage of a vulnerability.

The tall Asian beauty concluded the briefing with a carefree look.

“So we have a deal☆ Now, 101st Zombie Platoon, this is your first mission, so it is a cause for celebration. It’s time for a true bloodbath mission!”

===Part 5===

The Frigate 042 was tossed about by the nearly-black gray of the stormy sea. It was about 100 meters long. It would have originally been neatly painted the mix of light gray and blue associated with warships, but large parts had been scorched black and the surface had bubbled up like someone had held a match to the back of a photograph. The rapid-firing guns were bent, the vertical-launch missile tubes lined up like a honeycomb were melted shut, and most of the various antennae had been blown off of the bridge. The entire ship was tilted at an angle, so it was clearly in no state for cruising.
If an empty-headed youth came across it in a cruiser, they might snap a photo with their smartphone and create a new ghost ship legend.

Its tragic state was a testament to the power of the Manhattan 000’s ultra-wide-range attacks.

“…This is the worst, goddammit.”

Inside the ship, Heivia Winchell spat out his words while sitting with his back to the wall and an assault rifle in his arms. He and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were inside the mess hall that was one of the larger intact areas.

“I’m a noble heir, but those bastards rewrote the records to report me as dead. Those old men with giant beards, fat asses, or both have got to be fighting over the right of succession back in the home country. And who knows what’s happened to the relationship between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families…”

“Ch-cheer up, Heivia. We just have to wait for an opportunity.”

“You sure are hopeful, Myonri. Do you really think there will be one? With those pieces of shit watching our every move!?”

The zombie-like soldiers slowly turned their attention in the direction Heivia pointed.

There, a single pair of non-matching uniforms stood out from the rest.

It was the Information Alliance officer Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

And the young man who acted as her aide.

“I doubt you’ll trust anything I say at this point. …But it’s even harder for me to trust myself. Just like with the Capulet AI Network, the Martini Series can’t make judgments about itself.”

“…”

“By spreading its influence thinly out across all of the Information Alliance’s territory of influence, Capulet lost any symbol of a ‘core’. Piranirie said she had succumbed to the AI’s correctness, but it is hard to say she had no confidence in her actions. I don’t know what it is that is destroying us, but it may be using our active self-denial.”

“Active…self-denial?”

Myonri looked confused and Wraith nodded.

“Like giving up on climbing a mountain because of a blizzard. Or making a courageous withdrawal. …It depends on the person’s willpower, but people have a strange mindset where the stronger their desire, the further they move from their initial objective. That is why Piranirie charged full speed toward her own destruction.”

The blonde girl sighed in the heavy atmosphere.

“Our original, Cassandra Martini, was apparently a rational killer. She must have chosen to give up on so much in the course of that life. If Katarina were here, she might have been able to corroborate that.”

She was acting differently from her previous chatting.

There may have been an absolute difference between Wraith and Heivia’s group.

Of course, Heivia’s group was in charge of hesitantly walking onto the minefield while Wraith’s group was in charge of firing into their backs the instant they took issue with Heivia’s group’s speed or anything else.

“(I can’t believe Taratua. She’s actually sending our reward out into battle with us. Does she see it like shaking a carrot on a stick in front of the dumb horse?)”

“What’s this? You’re acting awfully suspicious here. Did you ask for my head as a reward for this mission?”

“Tch.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue.

It did not matter if she found out here. The secret deal was with Taratua. Even if that girl was broken on a fundamental level, she could still do the math. In other words, she was a high-IQ serial killer. Her “emotions” could not be overturned even if Wraith went crying to her now. It did not matter that they were comrades.

Meanwhile, Wraith sighed.

“You’re apparently clinging to hope to an ugly extent, but that’s fine with me. You can think about what comes afterwards if you like, but don’t lose sight of the immediate hurdle. Taratua has very good reason to be cautious of Olympia Dome. First, if the Manhattan 000 is headed for us, there is a good chance that wandering artificial floating island will pass very close by. Second, the Faith Organization is sending soldiers and equipment to that symbol of peace. Primarily STOL transport planes and tiltrotors. This isn’t over once we get inside with this Trojan horse. Learn how to use the Information Alliance equipment we have lent you. You need to act like you stole it from this half-destroyed ship. Also…”

“Shut up. That’s enough.”

Heivia rudely cut her off.

His tone with her was clearly different from just a few hours before.

“How long are you going to act like we’re on the same side? There’s a really obvious line in the sand now. And you drew it your damn self. You sicken me. Don’t think you can just move from one side to the other whenever you damn well please. It pisses me off even though I know it’s coming from a completely broken lunatic.”

“…Do you think growing emotional is a virtue? I’ll admit it’s pure to a fault, but do you actually plan on surviving this?”

“How the hell can you say that after taking his life with your own hands!? Do you really think you’re the hero? Have you gone as nuts as Joan of Arc? Say it yourself: who do you think it was that shot Quenser to save her own hide!?”

The girl’s shoulders shook at the blatant verbal abuse.

Her already-small body shrank down all the more, but her eyes opened unbelievably wide.

Her lips trembled as she tried to say something. They opened and closed, but nothing ever came out.

“Say it, crazy girl.”

There was now a definite focus to Heivia’s previously gloomy eyes.

There may have been nothing rational there. There was someone here he had reason to criticize, so he may have simply been using that as an outlet.

His back left the wall, he slowly stood up, and a bright light glinted in his eyes as he roared at her.

“Sure, you probably did the right thing!! You probably used that clever head of yours to work out the optimal solution and that told you to shoot Quenser!! So how about you hold your head high? After killing so many people, did you think you could become the tragic heroine who gets tears in her eyes and laments how hard it was for her!? That wouldn’t make him happy. That wouldn’t make Quenser happy. Did you really think anyone would accept that, you piece of shit!?”

“…”

“Do you remember what happened when that damn Manhattan fired on us?”

Wraith remained motionless, so Heivia kept up the verbal assault.

He seemed to be saying he would not forgive her even if her heart lay in tatters.

“He protected you. That skinny bastard threw himself over you to protect your tiny body from whatever was going to happen. It’s true that was right after everything with Piranirie, so he’d just experienced a kid dying. …But the fact remains that he protected you. Do you know what that means? That softhearted idiot didn’t want you to die and he thought he could trust you to have his back! And then you-…!!!!!”

There was a small movement.

It may have been similar to a small child trying to cover their head as an unreasonable adult shouted angrily down at them.

But in Wraith’s case, her small hand hovered near the holster on her hip.

The blonde girl winced as if that fact pained her, but Heivia gave a broken, asymmetrical grin.

“…That’s who you really are. A crazed killer. And I’m not talking about that active self-denial or some strange mindset. I’m talking about the very nature of your soul. You can claim to support equality or pacifism all you like, but the first hint of a threat and ''this happens''. If you aren’t on top, you can’t relax or even look the other person in the eye. There was no other choice? You’re just a child, so you aren’t responsible? Then you shouldn’t have stretched up on your tiptoes to set foot on the battlefield. None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t participated in that genius girl project.”

He had started on what-ifs that had no bearing on reality.

But Heivia did not care since he was only interested in finding fault.

So he did not hold back.

“You should’ve stayed back in your safe country hiding behind your mommy’s skirt.”

This was even more than before.

Everyone watching could tell the girl’s pale face grew another shade closer to pure white. It was easy to imagine how tightly her heart was squeezing inside her juvenile body.

Heivia had to have heard Quenser and Wraith’s conversation on the Flagship 019.

He would have heard about the DNA computer spread out across the Information Alliance, he would have heard about the Anastasia Processor at its core, and he would have heard whose cancer cells were used to create it.

He would have heard about that impossible what-if where the girl would never have had to take the Martini name and would have been protected by a normal, warm family if not for her mother’s sickness.

But he still said it.

He did not care. He only saw her as an enemy.

A military boot could be heard scraping against the floor.

The young man ever-present by Wraith’s side had taken a step forward while tightly clenching his teeth.

“Get back to jerking off in front of the position-detection camera with some VR goggles on, you Information Alliance pervert. Did you think you could become her knight now that Quenser’s dead?”

Heivia did not back down.

In fact, he immediately stepped forward so they were less than a meter apart.

“What a gentleman you are for bothering to stand up over nothing more than an exchange of words. Well? Am I supposed to fight to the death without a single complaint even after being given legit bullets? Is that how you think a gentleman should act? Go fuck yourself!!!!!”

Next, there were several dull sounds of impacts that crushed flesh and struck the bone.

First, the young man’s iron fist hit Heivia’s cheekbone. Heivia retaliated by grabbing at him. The rest was too chaotic to describe. The two of them knocked over the mess hall’s tables and chairs as they rolled along the floor to get on top of the other. All the while, dull and potentially deadly sounds rang out and dark red drops of blood scattered around.

“…Stop.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray moved her trembling lips to force out the word.

Neither Heivia nor the young man was listening.

The Legitimacy Kingdom boy grabbed a glass ashtray from the floor and the Information Alliance mechanical man reached for the pin of a grenade hanging form the delinquent soldier’s jacket. Seeing that, Wraith finally made up her mind.

“Stop this!!”

She had drawn it.

She drew her handgun from the holster.

The atmosphere froze. A decisive chasm had opened between the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance. If that grenade had detonated, those two and all those gathered in the enclosed mess hall would have been killed. But no one was focused on that.

Everyone there – and that probably included Wraith herself – had pictured something else entirely.

They vividly saw that scene of someone shooting someone else on the tilted flight deck.

“…Do whatever you want.” Heivia recklessly threw his hands up while the young man leaned down on him. “You have two options here. One: if the mission fails, you’ll be filled with lead at Olympia Dome along with us. Two: if the mission succeeds, Taratua will sell you to us. …There’s no way out for you. Your life is already over, crazy girl.”

That was the end of it.

The young man swung his fist down into the center of Heivia’s face and the unfunny idiot’s consciousness was swiftly taken from him.

===Part 6===

“Naval Security Sigma 3 to all. We have reached the unidentified ship. It has been sending out a distress signal…but it isn’t responding to our radio transmissions, flashing light signals, or loudspeaker calls. Please advise.”

“This is OD Control. Wait, Sigma 3. Olympia Dome lacks the authority to board and raid ships.”

“Sigma 3. Isn’t it already within 200 nautical miles?”

“OD Control. An artificial floating island cannot claim territorial waters or an exclusive economic zone. Also, Olympia Dome is neutral in every possible way.”

“(How can you say that after letting in Faith Organization troops like us?)”

“OD Control here. State your call sign before speaking, Sigma 3. We can only board ships that have already sunk. That one is still floating, isn’t it? As planned, attach the buffering material and then let the waves carry it into the dock.”

“Sigma 3. They aren’t controlling the rudder or decelerating. This might destroy the harbor block.”

“OD Control. Unlike a normal harbor, an artificial floating island can alter its direction and speed. That means we can match our speed to theirs. If they aren’t moving, we just have to move.”

“Sigma 3 to all. Starboard bow complete.”

“Theta 7. Port middle complete.”

“Phi 2. Starboard stern complete.”

“Psi 4. Starboard middle complete.”

“Delta 9. Port stern complete.”

“Sigma 3 to Lambda 1. What happened to the port bow?”

“…”

“Lambda 1!”

“Zeta 0 to Sigma 3. Lambda 1 has a phobia of sharks and micro bikinis. It’s all thanks to being swept out to sea when a carnivorous young woman licked her lips and devoured his virginity on a rubber boat. He’s probably off trembling somewhere right now.”

“Sigma 3. How is that traumatic? I’m jealous as hell. I lost mine to the old lady at the cigarette store. I’ll make up for his absence.”

“OD Control here. Trouble, Sigma 3?”

“Sigma 3. Nothing worth saving to the control recorder.”

“OD Control. Then stop discussing your virginities. Just so you know, I’m still afraid of holes in walls. Specifically ones just big enough to hold a nice breakfast banana.”

“Sigma 3 here. Shut up. And we’re done now anyway. What even happened to that cool-headed operator woman? Anyway, match their speed and catch them softly. Softly!”

“OD Control. You don’t have to shout. This entire rescue operation would be pointless if the impact was strong enough to kill the people inside.”

“(Curse these softhearted people who only know peace. Makes it hard to fight a war.)”

“OD Control here. Use your call sign, Sigma 3.”

===Part 7===

“Thanks for the help” was all they could say.

“Let’s get started.”

On Heivia’s word, the battle began.

Once the Faith Organization had firmly affixed the ship to the harbor block, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes kicked open the bent metal door and rushed out toward the edge of the deck with assault rifles and carbines in hand.

Their first target was the concrete wharf area about 9 meters down from the starboard side of the ship.

A continuous hail of bullets filled the armed Faith Organization soldiers with holes. While exposed to the recoil of the gunfire, Heivia was honestly relieved that they were professional soldiers. If these were simply Olympia Dome staff, this would have been a nightmare.

This was in line with the information they had been given, but he had not been trained to the point that he would thank Taratua for anything. He gave a shout while ducking behind the thick metal panel attached to the railing to swap out his assault rifle’s magazine.

“There’s a sniper on the gantry crane! And if the gathered soldiers start to move apart, that’s the sign for a rocket. Destroy them first!!”

This time, Heivia had a separate shotgun attached below his rifle’s barrel. By swapping between real and rubber bullets, he could neutralize the harmless workers without killing them. Of course, this had nothing to do with mercy or philanthropy. …It was an efficiency optimization policy that used that “kindness” to lighten the soldier’s trigger finger.

“Don’t get your ammo type mixed up, Myonri. You won’t just get a red or white flag for it!”

“I know that!!”

They exchanged fire for a while, but the Legitimacy Kingdom’s chances of taking the wharf area did not look promising. They would have their best chance when their opponent was surprised by this unexpected attack, but Olympia Dome was the Faith Organization’s home turf and they held all the advantageous ground. Once they recovered from their shock, it would be the Legitimacy Kingdom’s turn to be overwhelmed.

“Is turning the entire slug into a rubber bullet really a humanitarian measure?” asked Myonri.

“It’s mostly just an excuse to yourself. Even if the enemy finds it silly, they can’t respond to the double tactics. Meanwhile, our trigger fingers are a lot lighter since we ‘might not kill them’, so our efficiency rises. It’s the same as the Island Nation’s concept of ‘striking with the back of the blade’. There’s apparently a theory that the samurai could attack so boldly because katanas weren’t double-edged.”

So before they were overwhelmed, they had to thoroughly strike the enemy and secure a foothold on land.

This was an away game and they knew in advance the enemy had more personnel and equipment. They had to throw them off their pace and break through regardless.

Heivia’s group’s enemies were not just those in front of them. They had been warned in advance that they would be shot in the back if they fell behind schedule.

Black-uniformed Wraith was hiding behind a different steel panel from the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and she shouted at them while pointing toward the area with the most intense counterattack. She was the overall supervisor who was the only one allowed to shoot Heivia’s group in the back. And if Heivia’s group tried to retaliate, they would of course be executed by gunfire. Their actions were restricted by both force and military regulations.

“Avoiding work seems to be the only thing you fools are good at, but set up more of a barrage! I want to throw some more of these things while I can!!”

“Shut up and die, dead-end girl! Will those toys really accomplish anything…!?”

If he did not have to hit, he did not have to expose himself to danger. Heivia kept his body hidden behind the steel panel and stuck only his assault rifle up to randomly spray bullets down. And that made him one of the harder workers. Some of the soldiers were busy “pretending” by creating fake muzzle flashes with a strobe light and speaker linked together. It sounded silly, but unlike in movies, real battles did not have unlimited ammunition. That was a surprisingly handy item for conserving bullets.

“…The creep toward technology has already begun.”

“Oh.” Myonri sounded oddly cheerful. “It looks like those things have started to move.”

Behind her steel panel, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had a focused look on her face as she operated something with both hands. The device looked like a smartphone with a sold-separately H-shaped game pad attached.

No, that may have been exactly what it was.

Something the size of a baseball silently rolled around the Faith Organization’s cover and into their hiding spot.

Immediately, an explosion erupted behind cover as if a fragmentary grenade had gone off there.

The lethal range was 5 meters and the incapacitation range was 10 meters, but those basic specs barely mattered. After a sudden explosion within the wall or vehicle they were hiding within, the people relying on that shield would be blown to bits.

“Wah!? Wha-!?”

Other Faith Organization soldiers behind nearby cover cried out in panic before they were blown away by other explosions that resembled dirty smokescreens. Some soldiers decided they could not stay where they were and rolled out from behind their shields, but Heivia and Myonri picked them off with bullets.

“Remote grenades that can roll along the ground and behind cover? How cruel can you get…?”

“Those simply incorporate the tech from sticky tape cleaning robots, don’t they?”

That was the identity of the devices Wraith had thrown earlier. After scattering the spherical explosives around the targets, you could control their exact locations with a smartphone or tablet. You rolled them behind the enemy’s cover and stealthily detonated them at the defenseless enemy’s feet. They could also be thrown over a prison’s thick walls and sent through a vent to explore the ducts.

“Should we really be relying on tech like this?” asked Heivia.

“They aren’t IoT devices, so they won’t be connected to Capulet,” replied Wraith. “Besides, unmanned weapons run on systems even more simplified than a pet robot. They won’t rely on an AI network.”

“Eh? Really?” asked Myonri.

“It’s true it would take a server with massive capacity to fully reproduce the flowchart for the predetermined movement patterns of the wings and legs of a single fly. …But what if we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing artificial as far as the eye could see? An unmanned weapon would be useless if it needed to constantly send out signals to inform a server of its location. The ideal form of modern unmanned weapons is generally a submarine. It only sends out a signal when absolutely necessary. Capulet might want to connect to everything and suck up all the data it can get, but even it has to make concessions here.”

Black-uniformed Wraith gave them the pitying look of a teacher to a poor student.

“They use the Insect Colony Theory that takes artificial creatures that learn and construct the simplest ways to move a spider or butterfly’s body and combines it with the swarm intelligence that uses machines to reproduces the social structures of ants and bees. That allows them to communicate and take the optimal action without the need for a server. This is an ideal. Just like a grazing herd, the group of unmanned weapons automatically works toward a single goal while we are the sheepdog who watches on and intervenes only when necessary.”

“That all sounds wonderful, but I’m more afraid of you going nuts then the machines!” shouted Heivia. “Are you sure this is okay!?”

This was somehow different from Quenser who had shaped bombs with his own hands and used them to realize his clever ideas.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s explosions were merciless and unemotional.

It felt like she was trapping the enemy and efficiently killing them.

A motor that sounded a lot like an electric shaver passed by over their heads. They did not bother looking up. It was an aerial drone shaped like a four-winged water strider. Instead of just flying in a straight line, those things would include figure-eight movements, perhaps to divert the enemy’s aim.

Or was it a form of non-EM communication between the unmanned weapons?

It was thanks to these drones that the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had been able to so accurately fire on the Faith Organization soldiers immediately after opening the metal doors. Intelligence was the greatest weapon. The battle was decided before the bullets and knives began to fly. It really was the Information Alliance’s style.

Wraith pointed at the drones being tossed about by the storm.

“If we have them self-destruct at an altitude of 50 meters and rain shrapnel down on the enemy’s head, we should be able to secure a route to C Dock. We need to reach land before enemy reinforcements arrive. Don’t be slow.”

“It doesn’t really matter, but…hey, watch out! Get down, Myonri!!”

Perhaps because of the powerful storm, some of shrapnel downpour reached the ship’s deck as well. After they were nearly decorated with some delicious plastic and rare earth seasoning, Heivia tried to grab at Wraith, but Myonri held him back. A single retort could get them reduced to a bloody pulp right now.

At the moment, time was of the essence.

No gangway had been nicely attached for them, but the actual docking work had been completed. If they descended the ropes attached to the railing, they could reach the concrete wharf area they had stained with blood a moment before.

They were not searching out each other’s position in the jungle or anything, but just to be sure, Heivia made sure not to step in any of the blood.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of what kind of shitty tactics the Information Alliance uses, but what about the Faith Organization?”

“Guts maybe?” suggested Myonri. “Like making a gutsy charge?”

Just as Heivia dismissed that as ridiculous, the wall of a nearby warehouse broke open from within. A gigantic firetruck for fuel oil fires had crashed through.

“I don’t know if it’s for bulletproofing, but they’ve attached a thick wire mesh over the glass. And it’s not just handmade. It’s just like the ‘observation helicopters’ owned by a certain environment protection group. That thing was designed to accommodate this attachment!!”

But that was not the biggest problem. Soldiers were clinging to the sides and roof of the boxy vehicle. They looked like countless ants swinging around a sugar cube. Before Heivia’s group even did anything, some of the soldiers were caught on the jagged edges of the warehouse wall or had their uniforms caught in the giant tires, turning them to mincemeat.

It was tank desant.

“Huh, so it is guts,” said Heivia.

“Definitely guts,” replied Myonri.

Regardless, Heivia raised a hand and one of their allies fired a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. More than 10 Faith Organization soldiers were blown away like the contents of a jack-in-the-box.

“Shit, they’re still alive!?”

They must have mastered the use of willpower and guts because the soldiers lying on the road or on top of the warehouse roof still fired toward the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers.

But that was not why Heivia’s group quickly dove behind rusty metal drums and wooden boxes.

“What is with them…? They’re firing something else along with their bullets.”

“Probably collapsible bows. They take a more arching path than rifle bullets, so be on your guard even when behind cover. It’s the same as you diligent and clever lot using both rifle bullets and rubber bullets. Individually, they wouldn’t be that effective, but mix them in and the enemy has to perform more mental gymnastics.”

“That’s not what I was talking about, crazy girl. Look at the arrowhead over there. Why have they rubbed seagull shit all over it!?”

“Maybe as a form of poison arrow? They probably hope to increase the damage done by shoving germs into the wound. The military use of rotten corpses and excrement is an effective strategy that has been used since BCE times.”

“Heivia, look at that on the road over there,” said Myonri. “Wow, I don’t want to see that at all. Isn’t that just the worst!?”

“Don’t just say ‘that’! Explain what it is!! …!? W-wait, you’re kidding, right? Not dogshit!”

It did not at all look like they were kidding and little Wraithy did not want a face full of dogshit, so she threw a baseball-sized explosive. The blonde girl operated her smartphone’s H-shaped game pad while hiding behind cover to blow up the Faith Organization soldier groaning on the ground 20 meters away.

“You idiot!! You just scattered dogshit and human entrails everywhere!! Be more careful!!”

“I feel like this is turning into biological warfare,” commented Myonri.

Just then, they sensed what seemed like a sound but was not. A slight vibration reached their feet from the ground.

They frowned.

“What’s this? Cheering from a stadium?”

“Why would it be that?” asked Myonri. “I thought this city was essentially dead except during the Technopics.”

“Can you professionals not even find a scientific explanation of the occult?” complained Wraith. “The winds and waves of the storm may be causing a resonance within the artificial floating island. It is not rooted in the actual earth, so looking at the overall ratio, it must be thinner than a pizza.”

“Don’t butt in, Loli Grim Reaper. I’m not a pedo or a necro.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

“And don’t just smile and say things like that, Myonri! People will think it’s true!!”

But in reality, a powerful vibration erupted in the distance and reached them like someone had scored a decisive point near the end of a soccer game. There was no way this was a natural phenomenon. The sound of mayhem had human intent behind it.

“…So is it really guts after all?” asked Myonri, sounding annoyed.

“Curse those perverted mythology fetishists. Did they start some self-loving to blow through the limiters in their minds!?”

The digital vs. analog war had finally begun.

Heivia’s group was not trying to remain in C Dock and protect the ship with their lives, so they had no reason to stay in place and put up a thorough resistance. Instead, they moved elsewhere.

Wraith looked up from her customized smartphone.

“Our objective is the broadcast station where most of the communication equipment is. We can ignore the broadcast tower and parabolic antennae. As long as we destroy the core, they can’t manage the exchange of information and that other equipment will be useless.”

“Wait, that’s not what we discussed. I thought that Martini sister you love so much was talking about sinking the whole damn island. Unlike you, we could get executed by Taratua if we make a single wrong move!”

“I can’t believe how little you can adapt to the situation… What does it matter what she hopes for? Can your poor little mind do nothing more than what it’s told? Besides, we don’t even know if it’s possible to sink Olympia Dome as a whole with the equipment we’re carrying. Most of its power is supplied by the generator satellite in orbit and the transformer ships in the ocean, so we can’t expect to trigger any explosives within Olympia Dome. The Faith Organization military infiltrating the artificial floating island doesn’t matter. Our top priority is robbing the Manhattan 000 of the ability to gather information.”

“Sure, sure. How kind of you. Such a pillar of charity. Is that the spirit of Nightingale I see hovering behind you? I’m sure Quenser is weeping for joy in the afterlife right now, you piece of shit.”

The aide young man punched Heivia and Heivia returned the favor.

Before it devolved into a serious grapple, timid Myonri aimed her assault rifle at those allies to restore order.

“This isn’t supposed to be my job!” she protested. “Wraith, please manage our people better!”

“R-right…”

“Just shoot him, you idiot!” shouted Heivia. “Whose side are you on, anyway!?”

“If you don’t quiet down, I will fire rubber bullets into your balls. Then the rest of us can keep moving while the two of you bond over your shared experience. Nonlethal weapons sure are convenient, aren’t they?”

She was smiling.

Was she aware that rubber or not made little difference when it came to balls? Myonri seemed to have awoken to her calling as a fearsome Black Uniform. This was another example of how frightening serious girls were when they got mad.

“…Is there some kind of special campaign in effect this month? When did plain old Myonri transform into this shiny ultra-rare?”

“I imagine it was the result of everyone’s daily treatment of me.”

“You have some nerve, Myonri. What good is an ultra-rare if you aren’t even going to show any more skin?”

“That’s what I’m talking about! Everything about your treatment of me is the worst!!”

They left the harbor block and entered the outer city region.

It was probably due to the thick storm clouds overhead, but the city looked very gray in the pouring rain.

“Are you sure we aren’t dragging civilians into this…?”

“There are apparently no athletes or spectators here except during the Technopics. The only civilians are the Olympia Dome inspection and maintenance staff. The city’s population density is less than 8%, so there’s very little chance of a stray bullet causing any harm.”

“I read you loud and clear: we don’t actually know anything for sure and we need to be careful if we want to avoid a nightmare later on.”

They heard the dull sound of several thick tires tearing at the ground. Garbage trucks and mobile cranes drove out from intersections and parking garages like crocodiles poking their heads out of the bushes. Soldiers covered them like a packed train in Southeast Asia, and…

“Oh, no! They’ve attached heavy weaponry with bolts and slide rails!!”

“Look how perfectly those fit. This is clearly how they were designed to look. They just normally have the equipment removed so those look like civilian equipment!! With the infrastructure support of a frontline base, they’re just military weapons!!”

In this case, it was heavy machineguns instead of construction equipment. If Heivia’s group remained standing in that wide-open six-lane road the size of a runway, they would have their torsos torn in half by a horizontal flash of light.

Driven on by the deep booms of gunfire, Heivia’s group broke the window to one of the shops lining the road and fled indoors.

Only after rushing inside did they realize it was a trendy bar.

“Damn, this is no time to let a horizontal stream of bullets hold us in place. They’ve broken through the limiters in their minds to free themselves from the fear of death. They’re sure to charge in at us!!”

“Do not worry, cowardly expert. This beautiful and kind young woman will wear down their numbers for you.”

Wraith sounded oddly confident. Thinking back, Heivia recalled that her aide had fired a 25mm grenade launcher straight up several times as they ran.

Or…?

“Parachute deployment confirmed. We have access to all rounds. None were lost. We can begin at any time.”

“Understood, Frank. Mark the heat readings around the engines and start by blowing away all of the modified vehicles.”

It happened after a 10 second delay.

A deafening explosion erupted outside with enough force to drown out the deep gunshots of the heavy machineguns that reverberated in their stomachs. And it was not just the one. Wraith’s smartphone was linked with the cameras of the grenades slowly swept up by the blasts, so when she set their targets, the explosives released their own parachutes, used their small wings for course corrections, and fell directly on the garbage trucks and mobile cranes with pinpoint accuracy. Their guidance was perfect despite the storm and the speed of the vehicles.

“Exactly the scary stuff I would expect from a crazy girl…” grumbled Heivia as he realized what it meant that the heavy machineguns had been entirely silenced.

Those grenades could be fired at random and individually locked onto targets later on. That was not something he could freely celebrate. He hated to think what would happen if they showed up in the enemy’s hands. This was an urban battlefield with roofs for protection, but an attack from above would be devastating out on an open field.

But Wraith herself did not seem delighted with her incredible results.

“Instead of worrying about their obvious active forces, you should focus on their passive enemy-location infrastructure. In other words, how did they know where we were? The Faith Organization is supposed to be dangerous in a simple way, but have they moved past their outdated analog warfare? Unless we take out their ‘eyes’, they’ll quickly reclaim the initiative.”

The stadium cheering erupted from unexpectedly close by.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“They’re coming. And they’ll have learned to hold back their special pieces to avoid having them crushed by explosives.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” asked Myonri.

“They’ll push in with overwhelming numbers! They’ll use their allies as shields and climb over the corpses!!”

When she heard Heivia’s words, Wraith took out one of the serverless remote grenades she had used at the harbor block and placed it among the jumble of drink bottles behind the counter.

Then they all left through the back exit.

They could not deny the fear of facing more heavy weaponry, so they did their best to choose the alleyways and small roads that garbage trucks, mobile cranes, and other large vehicles could not drive down.

“Keep an eye on the windows above and the manholes below. Urban areas that can’t be leveled are crucibles of death…”

Wraith ignored Heivia’s words and used her smartphone to check the camera footage from the remote grenade she had set up. A crowd resembling a rioting mob more than soldiers flooded inside the shop through the door and the broken window and trampled everything within.

Wraith spotted a distinctive tattoo on the backs of their hands.

“Aztec? …No, it’s Mayan, but is that an even older god?” The blonde girl gently rubbed her slender chin with her empty hand. “We can’t take them lightly just because they’re from an ancient civilization. Their largescale stone architectures and accurate astronomy was supported by a high-level of scientific learning. Their idea of crafting giant structures with an accurate hand could apply to modern Object development.”

“Can you look up how to use the ultimate magic with that thing? If not, it’s a waste of time. What a joke.”

The young man responded by quietly clenching his first and showing off his large bicep bulge, so Wraith kicked her aide in the shin without even looking up from her smartphone. She had learned how to put a stop to it by now. Blonde 12-year-old girls had endless possibility for growth.

“W-Wraith, can you at least look up from that screen?” suggested Myonri. “Handle it so halfheartedly and you’ll probably make him feel bad. This isn’t much of a reward.”

“It’s a good lesson for him. This is what happens when he tries to speak for someone as lovely as me with his dimwitted and sweaty masculinity.”

One of the many soldiers in the shop seemed to have noticed the camera, so Wraith tapped the screen to swiftly detonate the remote grenade. The screen simply displayed the text “Access Lost”, but there had actually been an explosion in the middle of that crowd. Small metal balls only a few millimeters across had been scattered in every direction to take lives as efficiently as possible.

“The drones flying above have detected the movement of a different unit. Simply fleeing will not shake them.”

“How many?”

“First of all, about 200 managed to pass through the bar and are pursuing us from behind.”

“…Hey, do you have so many brain chemicals pumping that you’ve forgotten how to do math?” complained Heivia. “We’re lucky if we still have 50 people. An enemy four times our size is too much.”

“And there are more than 300 approaching up ahead. The enemy is about 10 times our size and who can say how much larger it will grow.”

Regardless of the soldiers’ skill and equipment, the difference in numbers was simply too great. They had already used up the advantage provided by a surprise attack, so at this rate, they would be ganged up on and slaughtered.

While Wraith relayed this information with her smartphone in one hand, she pulled a few disks from her pocket and threw them. They were a little larger than movie disks and, when they fell to the ground, they came apart on their own and transformed into meter-long serpentine robots. It was unclear how closely their structure matched that of a snake, but when the head portion tapped against the ground, was it reading the heat to communicate with the other units?

“The worst case is to be trapped between two forces on this small road. Staying on this annoyingly straight path would be the absolute worst plan. It would be better to move out onto the major road to include a lateral vector to our path. We should bend the battle line so we’re only being attacked from a single direction.”

“U-umm, are those robots explosives too?” asked Myonri.

The robots wriggled like endoscopes as they either wrapped around vertical pipes to climb to the rooftops or slipped underground through the small holes in manholes.

Wraith answered with her eyes still on her smartphone screen.

“No, these are high-speed cameras. The cameras themselves have been made quite small by making them mirrorless, but blurring is a major issue. They can somewhat correct using their gyros, but then there’s no point in making them high speed. The engineers are apparently still having a hard time making flying versions.”

“Cameras…?”

“Yes. In an away game like this, we can’t help but be outnumbered. So to make up for what we lack, I was thinking we could play some soccer. Baseball and basketball would work just as well. As long as we have viewpoints from around 32 directions on the X, Y, and Z axes, we should manage well enough.”

“???”

===Part 8===

“Goddamn them…!!”

Sigma 3, real name Robinson King-Cole, groaned within the rubble of the harbor block. They had tried to be very cautious, but this was the result as soon as that crumbling ship entered C Dock. The zombies had flooded out from the Trojan horse and bared their fangs against the symbol of peace known as the Olympia Dome. It had been quickly transformed into a battlefield reeking of gun smoke and blood.

The large Hispanic man looked up at the crumbling ship that was more than 9 meters tall. The ship itself seemed to be from the Information Alliance, but the flag raised above it was the Legitimacy Kingdom’s.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Who are they!? Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers that captured an Information Alliance ship, Information Alliance soldiers disguising themselves as the Legitimacy Kingdom, or someone else altogether!?”

Many varieties of rifle and shotgun cartridges were lying around. Yet normally there would be a single standard used within a unit.

(There’s so much evidence here, but it feels like that’s actually obscuring the truth. It’s always like this when the Information Alliance’s name pops up!!)

Robinson felt a physiological disgust at a level above reason, but that may have been because he belonged to the Faith Organization that saw value in a single absolute truth. He simply could not understand the people who used post-truth politics and fake news to muddy the truth and make all sorts of noise.

After regrouping with some fellow soldiers who had also arrived on personal watercraft, they ran along the dock, checked the pulses of their collapsed allies, stopped the worst of the bleeding and attached GPS tags to those who were still breathing, and moved on to the next one.

Leaving the harbor block did not wake them from the nightmare.

They smelled smoke, gunpowder, and death.

The ominous odor of the city before them could not be washed away by the blowing rain.

(This is awful…)

It would be easy enough to hate the enemy for this, but it was Robinson’s group that had allowed this to happen. The fact that they had just been following orders did not soothe his conscious. Bringing that ship to C Dock and stationing themselves at Olympia Dome in the first place were both the Faith Organization’s decisions.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Send the plan to me too. I want to join the battle, but what kind of operation are we running!? OD Control!!”

“…Oh, Zeus, god of life and punishment. Your pure shrine maiden beseeches thee. Lend us the power that once guarded Olympus to send lightning upon the villains who would lay waste to your modern temple…”

“Dammit!!”

That female operator usually kept a head as cool as ice, but she had driven her mind to an elevated state with that flat and expressionless prayer. Robinson and the others in charge of the actual combat were professional soldier, but the people monitoring communications and making decisions based on a variety of regulations were civilians who were only meant to inspect and maintain the sports facilities. They could not necessarily endure the pressure of knowing their decisions could lead to so many deaths.

(The damage is spreading throughout the entire city. I doubt ''just'' the intruders could cause all this. Did the ground troops cut their limiters and begin a war of attrition?)

Robinson’s group had not rushed to the Olympia Dome in response to the Manhattan issue. There had not been enough time for that.

It was more accurate to say they had happened to be in the right place at the right time while making their near-standard naval resupply stop.

(If we had predicted things that well, we could have handled this better! Curse the Manhattan. It just shows up and then starts scattering disaster everywhere. Who are we even fighting against here!? Are they trying to protect that thing or destroy it!?)

This had all been a stroke of good luck in the first place. It was entirely coincidental that they had acquired the closest base to Manhattan without having to risk their lives for it. And yet they had been told that revealing the purpose and value of Manhattan was a mission that had to succeed even if it cost them their lives. Their lives were being thrown away for the whims of their higher ups who had been blinded by greed. That was Robinson’s blunt assessment.

They were up against a faceless enemy.

That was a threat on the same level as some strange form of the occult.

(And when we were already transporting ''something so dangerous''… What even happened to our original mission, dammit!?)

“What should we do, Sigma 3?” asked the large female soldier next to him while she stared off into the distance. “Should we cut the circuits in our minds too?”

“…No,” spat out Robinson. “If this were the ending god had given us, then so be it, but both sides here are no more than human. I’m not about to die for human greed. We’ll regroup with the main unit. I don’t care about that digital war nonsense. We have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so as long as we keep our cool, we should be able to win this.”

===Part 9===

Even when they knew it was the best course of action, abandoning cover and running out into an open area was not good for their hearts. Do not break any branches, do not step in the mud, do not cast a long shadow, do not press up against doors or walls, do not shine your light on mirrors or windows – there was a lot of “etiquette” to something as simple as walking, but actual war did not always allow you to follow the textbook for all of those little things.

The situation was awful.

“Run, Myonri! No one can complain if they’re shot in the back now!!”

“But Jonathan was-…”

“Just run!!”

Trying to rescue someone in this open space would only get them shot too. And this soldier had been shot on his center line such that it probably shattered his spine, so there was nothing they could do. They could only clench their teeth and shake free of their regret.

They ran across the runway-like six-lane road and entered the subway station building on the opposite side. Only after diving behind the closest wall did Heivia take in a large gulp of air.

“Pant, pant! Goddamn them. Did they at least shoot Wraith!?”

“You will be sad to hear I am alive and kicking.”

“Oh, hell. Well that proves that it’s the good people who die first…”

Near the entrance, there was a vending machine from a major online store that was forcing its way into the market, so Heivia blew away its earthquake-resistant bolts with his rifle and knocked it over as a barricade as he seriously spat out those words.

But now it was time for the rioting Faith Organization soldiers to suffer. If they simply pursued, they would have to cross the same road that had exposed Heivia’s group to such danger.

“If they really have cut their mental limiters, they’ll push their way through even if we fire 5.56mm rounds at a rate of 700 a minute. Modern warfare is all about smart tactics, but there’s nothing we can do if a large army is willing to step on their comrades’ corpses and cross a river of blood. I’m sure you know why the directional landmines that scatter small metal balls in a fan shape were developed.”

“Yes, I am aware,” said Wraith. “Keep an eye on the subway tunnels and emergency exits. The drones are not enough to fully grasp the distribution of these aggressively generic enemy soldiers.”

“Th-this is an artificial island floating in the ocean, isn’t it…?” asked Myonri.

“And? Just like with a ship, the lower the center of gravity the better. In marine construction, child-bearing hips and a large ass are more highly valued than giant tits, so they would have wanted the island to be a little thicker for the added weight.”

Wraith snapped her fingers and the young man next to her provided the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers with a few items the size of baseballs. They were more of the serverless remote grenades.

“Use them more as ‘eyes’ than explosives since a frag grenade can’t pierce that shield of flesh. They can also be used to flood the underground area in case that large army tries to push in from below.”

“That kind of trick isn’t my area of expertise. Hey, someone put together a unit of combat engineers. You help too, Quen-…”

Heivia stopped mid-sentence and clicked his tongue.

He scratched his head in an awkward silence.

“…Never mind. Myonri, you’re skilled with your hands, right? Would you rather stand out front in the path of that hail of bullets, or move to the back and set things up there? Select 10 people you can use and seal off all the entrances. Hurry! This enemy isn’t kind enough to wait until the transformation scene is over!!”

A muffled explosion rang out outside and the shockwave shattered a few of the windows bordering the main road.

Jonathan had been unable to get up as the Faith Organization soldiers had approached to secure their prisoner, so he had mustered his last ounce of strength to pull the pin on a grenade.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Damn, it’s already started!!”

“Prepared or not, we have to respond.”

Heivia hid behind the collapsed vending machine and Wraith hid behind a bookstore cart that carried a stack of unsold magazines taller than she was. Both of them aimed their weapons outside.

The explosion seemed to have pushed their excitement over a line. With the roar of a battle scene in a knight movie, Faith Organization soldiers flooded the large street that panoramically filled their vision.

There were people, people, people, and more people.

The thick wall pushed in with such force that it was easy to forget that each gunshot fired toward it was taking a human life. Dark red blood and flesh flew, the soldiers on the front line collapsed, and countless boots trampled their allies’ bodies before they had even stopped breathing.

This was different again from the nightmarish mission led by Piranirie Martini Smoky. Instead of being threatened into it, these people were charging in of their own free will.

“This is just the worst!!!!!!” said Heivia.

“It really is a vision of hell,” agreed Wraith. “I feel silly reminding you of something so basic, but coordinate your magazine changes so the barrage never stops. If the density of bullets thins out, they’ll push in all at once.”

She hatefully spat out the words, but her movements were accurate as could be.

And while calmly firing on the soldiers running out into the road like a sensor-controlled machine, Wraith said something without looking over at Heivia.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Is that supposed to be foreshadowing an emotional sacrificial charge or something? If not, then shut your mouth, crazy girl, because your words are meaningless to me. Your sentimentality is as ridiculous as blood-type fortunetelling, so don’t think it takes away my right to hold a grudge!!”

Static reached Heivia’s ears.

Then a voice came over the radio.

“They’ve put together a unit aside from the one crossing the road. They’re circling around to reach the station from the west entrance while you’re focused on the main group!”

“Are you kidding me…!?”

“It’s hardly surprising when they have so many people to work with,” said Wraith. “And lowering the metal shutters isn’t going to stop them at this point. Yes, don’t randomly spread out your forces. No matter what kind of clichéd new truths come to light, the station will still be filled with blood if they break through the front.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? They’re coming from behind. Are we supposed to just sit here and keep fighting until they shoot us in the ass!?”

“Were you not listening? I said not to ''randomly'' spread out your forces.”

Wraith emphasized the one word while waving a 5-inch monitor in the hand not holding her gun. It was her beloved smartphone.

“Those snake robots can find filming spots without the map data of a server, so I’ve been observing the battlefield from 32 directions to accurately analyze the enemy’s small idiosyncrasies using the high-speed cameras. That’s 10,000 frames a second. And thanks to their battle of attrition using such great numbers, I’ve gathered an incredible amount of data in a very short time. Charge, retreat, diversion, coordination – the big data is boiling in the magic pot. And it’s about time to take a look at the whole.”

“…Is that really going to make a dramatic difference?”

“This is the Information Alliance style and it works for any kind of group sports. That said, the data is useless without enough people to work with. A single director can’t do everything on her own even with the optimal answer in hand. So will you obey me and live, or defy me and die? The choice is yours, my dear sworn enemy.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue and forced out some words while creating a pile of corpses from the Faith Organization troops outside.

“…You can do as many good deeds as you want now. It won’t change a thing.”

“That’s fine. I never said I didn’t want to die. I just said I don’t want to die here.”

They had a plan.

The black-uniformed girl took the overall command role.

“Frank, fire more of those grenades into the air. Five should do it for now. Send them between the troops in the road and those preparing to enter the road to crush and separate them with the blasts.”

“Understood.”

“Once those in the road can neither advance nor withdraw, mow them down with your assault rifles. It’s the same as keeping water pipes clean: the charge can continue because of the constant ‘flow’, but once it stops, the fear of death will come rushing back. The slightest stop is all we need.”

“Are you serious?” complained Heivia. “I thought psychology was as much a superstition as tarot readings.”

“Since you have yet to evolve beyond an ape, I will respectfully answer you. It is human nature to be distracted by detours when the way ahead is blocked. Their secondary candidate is the western entrance. Once the pressure here has been reduced, send out three groups with shoulder-fired missiles. Their secondary unit is a minority, so if we blow up their front line right away, we can stop their momentum.”

The difference in overall numbers was 50 against 500 or even more.

When outnumbered by more than four to one, they should have been overwhelmed regardless of each individual’s strength.

However.

To put it another way…

“We don’t have to look at the overall numbers. We only need to recalculate the localized human density,” proclaimed Wraith while looking down at the smartphone screen inserted into the H-shaped gamepad. “Sports data analysis thoroughly analyzes the idiosyncrasies of the players. Once you have detailed information on how individuals and teams handle offense, you know where to focus your defense. That allows you to reveal everything about the situation. It’s the same in soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey. This is a simple matter of applying that to war instead.”

Even if the overall difference in Olympia Dome was 50 against 500, that did not necessarily apply to the numbers that clashed at any one time. By judging the timing, using the terrain, and firing bullets and bombs to divide the enemy into groups of ten or fewer, the Legitimacy Kingdom would have the advantage of superior numbers against those individual groups.

Of course, they would never pull that off if they simply fought at random. Shouting that they would overcome the difference in numbers was the same as relying on guts.

This tactic was only possible because they had high-speed cameras thoroughly filming everything from 32 directions, international competition level algorithms analyzing that footage, and soldiers who could follow the enemy arrangement and distribution, move as the information on the screen told them to, and turn that ideal into a reality.

The statistics in the data began to encroach on the real scene before them.

It was stagnation.

This did not just apply to the Faith Organization soldiers’ charge across the road. The excited energy between them rapidly cooled, their momentum faltered, and the fear of death and the confusion was clearly spreading among them once more. Even though that general “atmosphere” should have been invisible.

“Stop firing for 5 seconds.”

“?”

“We’ll give them a moment of relief before throwing them back into deadly danger. It’s just like getting in a hot bath before being thrown right back out into the midwinter night. That’s the most effective means of shaking them. Resume firing.”

Heivia’s short burst of fire caused a previously-unseen change.

One young soldier out in the road came to a stop, turned around, and tried to run back to the alley from which he had come.

“That woke him up,” coldly said Wraith.

She saw the change, but she did not instruct the soldiers to cease firing.

“All that about their mental limiters was a temporary thing. No matter your beliefs or convictions, forgetting the instinctual fear of death is not a natural state for a living creature. So we just have to control that on/off switch. Once this unwanted look at reality has taken away their purity, they cannot rebuild the resolve to trample their allies’ corpses and cross that river of blood.”

“Thanks for the lecture, but what do we do now!?”

“The minority pushes back against the majority. Instead of that young soldier himself, shoot a few nearby soldiers in the head. Seeing familiar faces destroyed and feeling their blood splattering on him will be more effective. Once the fear of death makes him panic and he starts to scream, the rest will come quickly.”

It was like throwing oil on a fire.

Their coordination clearly crumbled. There were cracks running through that army which had been like a solid wall before. Heivia’s group only had to use sporadic fire to widen those rifts. The enemy was shoving each other to avoid being on the front line and some fistfights were even breaking out.

“They’re just a chaotic crowd now,” cruelly said Wraith. “Finish them off.”

“You’re really scaring me.”

They did not even need to shoot all the remaining soldiers. Simply aiming their assault rifles in that direction produced short shrieks as the soldiers ignored their orders and fled.

“Should we go after them? It’d be a pain if they regrouped and regained their cool.”

“It’s quite the opposite. The calmer people are, the more they remember the fear of death. Give them time, and the fear of death will ensnare their mind like a nightmare. In fact, if we try to deal with them individually, we will lose. Have you forgotten how outnumbered we are? Plus, we only have so much ammo. Data analysis is not all powerful and its effects only show themselves in a limited arena.”

Their goal had always been to blow up the broadcast station that supported the Olympia Dome’s largescale broadcast infrastructure (which could be seen as an EM spying facility that indiscriminately gathered signals from the surrounding area). Using up all their ammunition before arriving there would be meaningless.

Wraith made a casual decision like she was staring at a schedule book.

“We were lucky to rout them like this at all. They didn’t see through our trick. It will take some time for them to prepare for combat once more after abandoning victory of their own volition. Let’s achieve our objective and leave the Olympia Dome before that happens.”

After gathering their dead comrades’ dog tags, Heivia’s group left the subway station and resumed the journey to the broadcast station. Since it was a large facility, the giant boxy building was visible from a distance. They were of course cautious in their approach, but the sense of having cleared the largest hurdle enveloped the Legitimacy Kingdom survivors like a cradle.

However…

“What…is this?”

“?”

Heivia gave Wraith a puzzled look when she uttered a low comment toward her smartphone screen. What was that small LCD screen connected to and what was it displaying?

“There’s…there’s no way they overlooked this!! Did Taratua just decide not to tell us!?”

She seemed to be cursing someone.

And at the same moment, a 50m mass passed by in the sky over their heads.

Their eyes could see it, but their brains refused to accept it.

For one thing, its position made no sense.

It was above all the high-rise buildings in the city. A mass of steel mixed with a heat-resistant reactive substance was positioned at an altitude of more than 200 meters. It was floating. It was flying. If the spherical main body was viewed as the earth, then the 3 Y-shaped wings were attached at the equator. Were those coaxial rotors? The two sets of wings rotated in opposite directions, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise, to free the 200,000-ton mass from the bonds of gravity like a helicopter. There was something like an undercarriage, but could that even be used to move it? The equilateral triangle below it was like a helicopter’s skids or an upside-down version of the tripod used to support the bottom of a pot or frying pan on a gas burner. It may have only been meant to let it take off and land.

“An…”

This was no time to just stare in shock.

It had moved into position above Heivia’s group. Which meant…?

“An Object!?”

A moment later, the colossal weapon that had ended the nuclear age began its ''attack''.

===Part 10===

Why had that information been kept from them?

Far away on a relatively-intact cruiser, Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks answered her aide’s question with a smile.

“Because I have no real reason to be their friends☆”

===Part 11===

All sound had vanished.

Heivia had no idea what had happened.

“Bwahh, ahhhhhh!!!??? Abfweah!!”

Something had fallen from directly above and crushed the subway station building like a cardboard box. Then, like drawing a thick line along the ground, the reinforced concrete building and asphalt road were destroyed and a cascade of destruction pressed in on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes.

It was like a child crushing a line of ants below their shoe.

Heivia just barely escaped the threat.

Something cut by horizontally in front of him and familiar faces were transformed into red and black stains.

“Get indoors!!”

The extreme situation had left Heivia in a daze, but Wraith’s shout acted like a slap to the face.

“They’re placing the metal balls used for grenades and mines inside the ridiculously powerful artificial air current used to keep that 200,000-ton mass afloat and firing them down from that height. If you don’t want to be torn apart by that deadly waterfall, then run!!”

Heivia still could not react, so Myonri grabbed his limp hand.

“Let’s go! We can’t just die here!!”

“…”

Something else happened before he could say anything.

A different shockwave hit Heivia and the others from above. Their legs could not support them and they were sent rolling across the asphalt. They looked up from the ground just in time to see all of the high-rise buildings’ windows shatter and a downpour of glittering glass enter the sky.

“Dammit!!”

This time, Heivia picked up Myonri and crawled below a nearby truck. An ear-splitting cacophony followed. The glass downpour was crashing into the ground.

“What happened to Wraith? Did she actually die this time?”

“She’s waving from behind cover over there. More importantly, what was that just now?”

If the Object was simply launching a cruel attack on the ground, it only had to use that same combination of wind and metal balls. The glass was merely a side effect of something. This only made sense if it had done something else.

A low rumbling and shaking finally reached them.

They were confused at first, but it slowly dawned on them.

“It was firing something…no, it was a shockwave. That was all it took to shatter all the glass here…”

“But there wasn’t anything like a main cannon,” said Myonri.

“Damn, we have no idea how it works without Quenser here. And we can’t come up with a weird name for it without our busty commander. Yeah, that settles it. I’m definitely groping those tits later on since she ran off and left us!!”

“I get that your lust won out over your friendship there, but could you at least put me down before saying things like that?”

Since the enemy could crush a tall, reinforced-concrete building like it was a cardboard box, staying in one spot would be a bad idea, so Heivia and Myonri crawled out from below the truck.

“Hey,” said Wraith when they regrouped. “How were you planning to escape?”

“What?”

[[Image:HO_v15_105.png|thumb]]

“That came from the harbor block. In a reliable but boring move, I imagine that thing fired its main cannon on the Frigate 042 in C Dock. Those of us here in Olympia Dome will be next. If you had personal watercraft or submersibles loaded on that ship, we need to find a new method.”

“I-its main cannon!? But there was no sign of that…”

“It used the coaxial rotors that support it. It probably has giant, heavy-metal shells loaded inside it like a handgun magazine. Those things have a rotation speed high enough to support 200,000 tons. It only has to open the end of the magazine and release the shell within. Just imagine the destructive power of using centrifugal force to throw a shell like a meteor.”

A storm of small metal balls launched downward by the wind and giant heavy-metal shells launched into the distance using centrifugal force. That left the Faith Organization’s flying Object with no bind spots. There was nowhere they could hide that it could not fire on them.

“Are you kidding? This really is a nightmare…”

“Is it? This seems better than if they had attached a laser cannon to the end of the main rotor and sliced us to pieces with that rotating blade. Would you prefer to be chased by an infinitely-expanding circular saw?”

Wraith nonchalantly upgraded the nightmare while protected by the aide young man. The history giving form to her imagination had to be insane.

“Centrifugal force, shell throwing…no, it might be better to think of it like the hammer throw. Yes, for now, let’s use the enemy codename of Hammer Throw 001.”

“We have to call it that too? We just keep getting more and more influenced by the shitty Information Alliance method.”

“Yes, it is hard to say we are a perfect world power. The one who holds the most information is the winner, but so many idiots misunderstand that concept to the point that they think the sign of the privileged class is cutting off all information to the point that you can buy a private beach in Miami and swim in the nude. All the bored young wives with ringlet-curls are turning into nudists who claim to aspire to a natural lifestyle.”

“Are you just clueless, or are you trying to win me over!?”

“Please, can someone take this seriously!? Our lives are on the line here!!”

Myonri pleaded with them, but she had not taken into account the possibility that the idiots were trying to avoid facing the intense fear before them.

And the Hammer Throw 001 no longer had a distant target to prioritize.

It would be their turn soon.

Myonri’s shout had dragged Heivia back to reality, so he felt sweat on his brow.

“…What do we do?”

What would that boy who was not here have done at a time like this?

What would Quenser Barbotage have done?

“What the hell are we supposed to do!?”

A moment later…

It fell.

The flying Object that had been looking down on them dropped far too easily.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Ah?”

Heivia’s thoughts could not keep up with the crazy sight before him.

But it was no illusion.

After a brief delay, an incredible storm of destruction was thrown out in all directions. More than just the glass, entire groups of buildings were knocked over this time. And it was more than just a shockwave. The connections between the dice-like floating objects made of aluminum and stainless steel were smashed and shaken.

“Ohhhhhwah!?”

Shouting was not going to accomplish anything.

The fact that the ground could softly “sink” into the ocean, allowing some of the force to escape, was the only reason they did not end up with anything like an ice age brought on by an asteroid strike.

“The Hammer Throw 001…fell???”

The rising curtain of dust was swept away by the storm. Myonri reported on what she saw in a daze.

“It was…a crane. …Did the crane on a building rooftop swing around and…catch on the main rotor?”

“It didn’t swing the arm around,” corrected Wraith while seawater swelled up from below.

An old guerilla tactic against helicopters and tiltrotors was to throw a wire or net over them from the top of a building. But…

“The crane rotated vertically. Some kind of explosive blasted it at the base to tangle the thick wire in the rotor. It didn’t matter that the spherical main body can withstand a nuke.”

An explosive.

A flesh-and-blood soldier had attacked one of the Objects which were synonymous with war.

The 50-meter and 20,000-ton spherical main body had lost its balance and fallen at one corner of the city. It seemed to be near the broadcast station. The exact level of damage was unclear while on the ground like this.

“Could it be…?”

However.

That had to be Heivia’s greatest hope.

So the delinquent soldier could not help but say it aloud.

“Quen-…”

“No.”

A voice bluntly cut him off.

It came from Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

She could not look him in the eye as she forced out the words.

“I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t possible.”

===Part 12===

Sigma 3, Robinson King-Cole, was just as stunned as the incredible shaking reached him.

“What happened…?”

He doubted the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, or a third group disguised as them could have done this.

Nevertheless, the Second Generation Ix Chel being resupplied at the Olympia Dome had indeed been brought down. It had happened so suddenly that he felt like he was analyzing movement in a video game one frame at a time.

“OD Control! What the hell happened!?”

He already half-suspected that he would receive no response.

At the same time, a hopeless chill ran down his spine. What possibilities could he think of? When he laid out the cards, he could not rid himself of this unease. After all, their mission had been to transport something dangerous.

And that “something” had not been the flying Object called Ix Chel. As extraordinary as it was, that colossal weapon had already belonged to Robinson’s maintenance battalion, so it would not be counted as an external “package”.

But in a way, Ix Chel was nothing compared to the true “package”.

Had it really taken advantage of this confusion…?

“Nee hee hee hee.”

He heard a voice.

A lovely but wicked girl’s voice sounded from directly behind Sigma 3. And the next thing he knew, all other voices had vanished. And he heard no noises at all from the comrades he had been fighting alongside for so long.

“Did you not even notice? You didn’t, did you? Well, that doesn’t really matter. Thanks for your work, though. Oh, this is my destination. And it’s also the end of the line for you. You’ve been waging war day in and day out for so long you have to be familiar with the concept of ‘acceptable losses’, right? If you were tasked with looking after me without being informed…well, just remember that concept.”

He did not even have time to turn around.

But the scene he did not want to see was reflected in the show window in front of him.

It was a red and black hell.

And one violent and brutal visual overpowered even the deaths of his allies.

A young girl with long, long blonde twintails wore an Object Elite’s blade, bullet, explosion, and environment resistant special suit which revealed even the slightest contour of her slender body.

She was not the grim reaper that brought death and demise according to predetermined rules, like one’s natural lifespan.

She was an incarnation of destruction on a much higher dimension who destroyed the world on a whim.

…He should have noticed.

Whether they were the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance, the intruders alone could not have caused so much damage. He had assumed the Faith Organization soldiers’ rampage was to blame, but that was not it. It was neither the enemy nor his allies. A third party had used the confusion to remove heads and pierce hearts.

“I followed ''his'' example and learned how to use bombs to destroy Objects, but…hmm, what does this mean? I don’t see any sign of him… Well, I just need to search a little longer.”

This was not war.

It was crime, yet it had done greater harm than an official war.

This was the dangerous thing that Robinson King-Cole’s maintenance battalion had been transporting.

“Don’t worry about the Manhattan and all that annoying stuff. I, Skuld Silent-Third, will take care of it, so you all can rest in peace. By byyye☆”

===Between the Lines 1===

The continuous IV drip has been ended.

Saint Skuld Silent-Third is active once more.

The Saint has a glowing record as the primary Pilot Elite of the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Norn, but she is also known by the Faith Organization to be the greatest war criminal. She generally chooses her victims carefully within the bases which are seen as small cities, but that is not always the case.

*Former Oceanian Dictatorship: Annihilation of a pro-government village.

*Cape of Good Hope District: Burning of a mercenary camp.

*Alaska District: The mysterious deaths of a foreign press group.

*Malacca District: The sinking of a cargo ship.

*And the infamous Madagascar Report. Please reference that report so it need not be repeated here.

Her primary killing method is strangulation using her own hands, but she is extremely fickle and changes a lot from moment to moment. In the Madagascar District, there was evidence she used old-fashioned torture equipment. These are the crimes of an individual, but if they are slow to be discovered or dealt with, she has the skill to destroy a mid-level guerilla base and construct a mountain of corpses on her own. She intentionally includes shifts and swings of analog emotion in her digital mission operations, so her actions are incredibly hard to simulate and existing troop management rules do not apply. Once she has been released into the wild, do not focus too much on any fixed idea and be extremely careful in how she is handled.

It is dangerous to assume you are safe just because you are the one in with a gun.

What she says and her carefree changes of expression cannot be relied on. The Saint is an extremely intelligent war criminal, so she can use various psychological tests and counseling methods to her advantage to win one’s trust.

Be extremely cautious of the unique “charisma of death” found in many serial killers. She generally prefers acting alone, but she has something that destroys the morals of those around her. If you begin to think that you alone can communicate with her, you are in an especially dangerous situation. Make sure you have regular meetings with your supervising officer to receive an objective, third-party view of your mental state.

The Saint is a genuine serial killer, so she shows some fixations that normal people find hard to understand.

Currently, she appears obsessed with a specific individual named Quenser Barbotage. For information on him, view the records from the Madagascar District, specifically concerning the destruction of the Norn.

Most likely, it is simply not possible to fully control Saint Skuld Silent-Third. If you are giving her freedom as part of your operation, you must build in a high level of acceptable losses for enemy, ally, and civilian alike. Also, it is more effective to lure her with bait than to give her orders. Gathering information on the aforementioned Quenser Barbotage and using that name to distract her may be one possible method.

Offered to Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker.

May a peaceful holy age arrive to this sinful and impure world.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2

2018-04-24T10:02:31Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 2: Parasite Kill >> Battle for Liberation Within Manhattan==

===Part 1===

Bloodrics Capistrano chose the “beaten up” option.

“Pant, pant, pant!!”

“…G-gbweh. Wait, it would really help your Onii-chan if you ended this attack…”

Frolaytia Capistrano gasped for breath while holding her brother’s bowtie in her left hand. Her dominant hand was of course clenched in a fist.

They were in a military port of the Amazon District where the Legitimacy Kingdom held a lot of sway.

They were a few hours away from the Central American ocean. They had taken a submarine which clearly had too much speed and stealth for civilian ownership. Its distress signal had been picked up and the few survivors, including Frolaytia, had set foot on dry land once more.

After arguing with her blood relative in a guest room for noble visitors, the busty silver-haired 18-year-old clicked her tongue and let go of the trash. She then spoke to the laptop sitting on the heavy work desk.

“Princess. Things have calmed down here for the time being. You’ve gathered enough information, so return to base before you go too far and get burned.”

“But…”

“…I know what you’re trying to say, but if we waste our trump card here, we really will lose all means of rescuing our people from the Bermuda Triangle.”

Needless to say, Frolaytia and the others had not been sitting around doing nothing.

The Princess’s Baby Magnum was a multi-role First Generation that could race along the ocean at more than 500km/h and swap between multiple different main cannon types: low-stability plasma cannons, railguns, coilguns, laser beams, rapid-fire beam cannons, etc. Even if it could not immediately supply a decisive blow, it was the perfect Object for directly engaging the enemy force to get a sense for what it could do.

And what had they learned after firing various types of cannons from a distance with no expectation of a hit?

“Electronic simulation division.”

“We only have rough estimates, but we have finished analyzing the footage.”

Frolaytia spoke to a different channel and received an immediate response from one of the experts who continued working with what equipment had survived. She was clearly exhausted, but there was no dissatisfaction in her voice. Everyone knew it was only coincidence that they had been protected. If the luck of the draw had placed them in the other category, they would have been devoured by the Information Alliance.

“To start with, the Manhattan really does have extraordinary firepower. That electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon is essentially detonating a JPlevelMHD reactor with each shot. By firing that main cannon in every direction like the face of a clock, it could entirely surround itself with a wall of plasma like some kind of fortress city.”

“That’s a lot like an old-fashioned ABM system…or a defensive theory using nuclear mines.”

Frolaytia stuffed unique-smelling shredded tobacco into her long and narrow ''kiseru'' as she spoke.

Laser beams were light, so they could be bent if high temperatures altered the refractive index. Plasma and rapid-fire beams were weak to electromagnetism. Railguns and coilguns used metal shells, so their trajectory could be bent using expanding air or explosive blasts.

Simply put, an absolute defense was possible if you forced it through with enough firepower.

However, it was a strategy only possible for the Manhattan and its hundreds or possibly thousands of reactors.

“But it didn’t do that, did it? It only used the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon the very first time.”

“Yes. And the theory of bending a laser was also used by the Nitrogen Mirage. It still used ultra-high temperatures – albeit not as high – but it achieved that by firing low-stability plasma fireballs around the battlefield and then firing the laser beam or railgun. It was a lot like a rollercoaster. It ignores all existing artillery theories.”

But when the Manhattan had responded to the Princess’s “test firing”, it had not filled the area with firepower; it had returned fire with pinpoint sharpshooting. It had shot down each of the Baby Magnums various shells and lasers like a venomous snake targeting mice or frogs.

The metal shells had been fried with electron beams or laser beams.

The optical weapons had been reflected and neutralized by metal shells.

“So far, it has only intercepted our attacks, but if it goes on the attack itself, the Baby Magnum will not last five minutes,” said the electronic simulation division.

“Ah, you idiot!!”

Frolaytia tried to stop her, but it was too late.

The Princess was already childishly pouting her lips on the screen.

“I don’t mind. Because it’s true. Hehh, hohh, hmm.”

“Listen, everyone can get along when things are going well. The true value of teamwork is when things are going badly. Everyone needs to keep that in mind!!”

“Also,” continued the electronic simulation division. “Including Manhattan’s visitors, there should be more than 10 million civilians onboard. If they are used as hostages, any direct attack will be a target of international criticism.”

“Have you not even noticed the trouble you’ve caused us, you geek!?”

Frolaytia shouted, but the Princess still looked suspicious. She brushed back the short blonde hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, unzipped her special suit, and sprayed a coolant directly on her flushed soft skin. Everyone, including the analyst, was female, so she did not need to restrain herself.

The fact that arrogant Frolaytia had to act as a cushion for her showed just how chaotic the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s situation was.

(Heivia can wait until later, but we really need Quenser back immediately!!)

Frolaytia placed a hand on her forehead while having that very rude thought.

And as stated, they could not use an Object’s firepower to fry 10 million civilians, even if they belonged to an enemy nation. Thus, the Baby Magnum had made sure its main cannons would not hit during its reconnaissance mission.

…Of course, that was also because moving too close before understanding their enemy’s specs was likely to result in the Baby Magnum being turned to ashes by a variety of super weapons, including the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon.

The Manhattan had easily fired a deadly blast from New York to New Caribbean Island – from North America to Central America.

The Princess used her small hand to fan air into her opened special suit and made a suggestion while sounding dazed from the heat.

“Since it intercepts attacks that are not actually going to hit, could we fire randomly but rapidly so it uses up all its ammo?”

“It’s not a bad idea, but remember how large the Manhattan is. Even if it’s forced into back-to-back battles without resupplying, we’ll dry up first.”

What could they do?

How could they supply an effective blow to that monster?

(If a direct attack won’t work, I guess we’ll have to try some kind of trick. Like sending a small group right up to that giant thing…)

Frolaytia narrowed her eyes with a quiet look on her face, but then slowly shook her head.

Had she been infected by those idiots’ way of thinking?

The Princess breathed a heated sigh and spoke with a blank look in her eyes.

“I want to see Quenser and the others soon.”

(Agreed. This is hard work without anyone to shove the most annoying parts onto.)

Frolaytia kept that part to herself and then spoke up.

“Analyst, the Martini Series holds the AI network’s reins, so why do you think they authorized this?”

“That is unknown, including just how many of them have malfunctioned. We simply have too little information to say. But assuming they are not wishing for their own destruction, I can’t imagine why they would send the Manhattan to the front line on its own…”

“…”

“Capulet is an AI network. If it sees no special meaning in the loss of individual physical devices, then it might view even the Manhattan as a disposable game piece.”

“If the algorithm was that digitally destructive, I doubt the Information Alliance would have prospered as much as it has. At the very least, it would not be so accepting of the highly-wasteful lifestyles of humans.”

If not all that many Martinis had actually lost control, it would explain why Manhattan itself had taken action all of a sudden. But they had no real evidence and the situation was fluid. And if the other Martinis were affected in a rapid chain reaction, it would hardly matter.

“Any sign of our people who disappeared at sea?”

“None at all. Our embassies and consulates have received no notification that they were taken prisoner. …We cannot even say whether they are still alive or not.”

“It’s too late to go check the Information Alliance maintenance fleet that was nearly obliterated by their own side. I wish we had at least sent out a spy plane to keep an eye on it, but it’s simply too late. Thanks to a certain moron!!”

Bloodrics responded to Frolaytia’s shout by raising both hands without getting up off the floor.

“Tia-chan, you know that would not have been realistic either way, don’t you?” said the pummeled brother. “Even if you had accomplished something then, they would have gotten serious and vaporized New Caribbean Island.”

An alarmed cry came from the screen.

Bloodrics could not see the laptop screen from his position, but the Princess must not have known that. As soon as she heard a male voice, she blushed and quickly held the front of her special suit closed with her small hands.

Frolaytia ignored that and spoke coldly to her blood-related brother.

“So what?”

“If no one reports on it, no one would know any of your people were left with the Information Alliance maintenance fleet. Then there would be zero hope of rescue for them.”

“…”

The brother’s point made the sister grimace so hard she nearly bit off the end of the long, narrow ''kiseru'' in her mouth. He was right, but she did not want to accept it. Anyone could tell just by looking at her.

There was nothing they could do.

But that did not mean they had no thoughts on the matter.

They knew their comrades were clinging to life on a deadly battlefield across the ocean where they could not even ask for help, but they could not reach out a hand. They wished they could trade places. That was not just a nice thing to say after seeing some tragedy on TV. They all meant it. Otherwise, they would not have forced their exhausted bodies to keep moving and continued gathering information without any sleep or complaint. The Pilot Elite, the base commander, the maintenance soldiers, and the analysts were all in agreement on that.

Bloodrics Capistrano understood that.

And that was why he had done more than ''just'' flee.

“I provided a starting point for you. How is he doing?”

“Rigas Blackpassion was one of the people on that Capitalist Corporations submarine.”

“But you saw that report that he said something interesting, didn’t you?” Bloodrics got up from the floor. “The Ragnarok Script. It seems to be a toy capable of interfering with the Martini Series that forms the core of the Information Alliance. Although we don’t know if they inject something of pure data into their heads or stimulate their senses using pheromones, ultrasound, flashing lights, or whatever else. That means solving this might require more than simply attacking the Information Alliance. This might sound somewhat dirty, but this Ragnarok Script might be an opportunity for us. …If an external attack looks hopeless, causing them to crumble from within might create enough of a ‘crack’ to rescue your people stranded in that deadly ocean.”

“…”

Frolaytia clicked her tongue again and sent a fist into the center of Bloodrics face for getting carried away.

Without even a glance toward her collapsed brother, the sister left the guest room with her laptop full of classified information. She walked to the interrogation room with some large men from base security. There, she found an upper middle-aged man bound by leather belts to something like a dentist’s chair.

The long-haired, gloomy, and timid interrogator girl whispered to Frolaytia. Her face was hidden by her bangs, an eyepatch, a mask, and some headphones, so her nickname when she was younger may have been Kuchisake Onna.

“H-he seems to have lost a lot of blood when Sir Bloodrics severed his hand with a katana, so I need to stabilize his blood pressure first. We should be able to administer the drug after that, so, um…”

“Rigas Blackpassion,” cut in Frolaytia. “The Ragnarok Script. I want to know what that means. Did you really procure it yourself? I doubt a small fry like you is pulling all the strings. What is hidden behind the scenes?”

The Capitalist Corporations man raised his limply-hanging head.

“I don’t expect the war treaties to apply in this sealed room…but my life still has value. Look at my arm. Ha ha. Push me too hard and I’ll die before you can get any information out of me. Treat me with care or you will be wasting your time.”

“Is that so?”

There was nothing more than that.

Frolaytia must not have been expecting anything from the beginning because she casually glanced over at the interrogator who had desperately hidden her face.

“The plan was to loosen his lips by ridding him of his mental willpower with a drug, right?”

“Y-yes, um, we will be using an animal anesthetic. It’s the same idea as someone talking more readily when they’re sleep-deprived or intoxicated. But before any of that, we have to give him a blood transfusion to stabilize his blood pressure…”

“No, that gives us another option. Hold this a moment.”

“?”

Frolaytia pushed her laptop into the interrogator’s arms, shocking the flat-chested girl into silence.

And with a dry gunshot, a dark red hole opened in Rigas’s neck.

“Ah…bah?”

There was a blank in his memories.

As Rigas looked over his sweaty body, he tasted a rusty flavor spreading through the back of his throat, saw dark, dried blood on his uniform, and felt the pain receding. He must have been given some kind of anesthetic.

The Capitalist Corporations officer blinked in confusion at the unnatural passage of time and Frolaytia spat some disinterested words his way.

“Your heart stopped for about 1 minute 45 seconds. From the shock of blood loss. You should be thankful Luce was skillful enough to revive you.”

His breathing was not functioning properly.

He heard a whistling sound with each breath.

“Y-you’re kidd-…”

Another bang.

“35 seconds.”

“Wait, are you saying you-…”

“1 minute 2 seconds.”

“Abbeh. Gurgle gurgle…”

“Oh, that was a close one. You were out for 2 minutes and 30 seconds.”

A yes or no answer changed nothing. To transform him into a human device that would spit out whatever they wanted to know, his mind had to be thoroughly torn down first. The violence would continue until Rigas Blackpassion no longer said anything unnecessary.

Each time his consciousness cut out and returned, the amount of boxy medical equipment surrounding the dentist-like chair had increased. At this point, the electronics probably weighed more than Rigas himself.

For some reason, the interrogator girl (who was now soaked with blood) was gagging and crying behind her eyepatch and mask more than the Capitalist Corporations officer himself.

The look in Frolaytia’s eyes had not changed. The handgun drawn from her hip was still aimed directly at him.

“Not even an expert can completely control the revival. So it might not work next time.”

“…You…what about the war treaties…the fundamental articles on treatment of prisoners…?”

He was killed twice more.

Rigas was now covered in tubes. He had essentially been turned into a living mummy and was nearly encased in the blocks of medical equipment. And Frolaytia’s eyes were even colder than the machinery.

“Blood loss intoxication. That’s the excuse used by perverts with an abnormal fetish for drinking blood or having their own blood drunk. It’s also theorized to explain why a police officer can dramatically stand back up after being shot in the gut. If all we need to do is adjust your body’s internal state to loosen your lips, we don’t need to inject a drug. We only need to cause enough blood loss to leave you woozy. Of course, take too much and you’ll die before telling us anything, so it isn’t exactly favored by experts. And sure enough, you’re approaching death pretty quickly now.”

They were neither killing him nor not killing him.

Her casual tone led the Capitalist Corporations officer to move his tense vocal cords and force out the words.

“Y-you’re insane…”

“Don’t even try it, you fool. I’m the piece of shit that retreated to this safe base while ignoring so many of my people who needed help. And yet you think ''your'' life should be guaranteed when you’re the one that messed with the Information Alliance and set up some kind of conspiracy? Just how convenient a world do you think you live in!?”

He could no longer speak.

While Rigas gasped as he struggled to breath, Frolaytia Capistrano pressed her handgun muzzle to the center of his forehead and roared at him while the heat sizzled on his skin.

“I will do whatever it takes to get the information I need to rescue those idiots. The Ragnarok Script. Either tell me everything you know or you can continue playing ding dong dash at the pearly gates!! Now, what will you do, you piece of shit!!!????”

===Part 2===

“Simply put, it was practice.”

The tall Asian beauty named Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks spoke on the cruiser’s bridge.

Unlike the past, modern ship’s bridges were not all that important. Ship and weapons control were generally done in the windowless combat command center on a lower level, so this bridge was mostly just for show. In an intense battle, the captain on down would have to withdraw from this central point. That seemed like a case of mismatched priorities, but it had gained a new value.

Yes.

It was the perfect place for the privileged class to clear everyone else away for a private conversation.

Although it did require some caution for female officers in skirts because the reinforced glass window extended all the way to the floor just like a broadcast tower’s viewing deck.

“To be honest, the Olympia Dome’s broadcast facility was not all that high a priority. It was better off destroyed, but we could have dealt with the issue even if it was not. Same with forcing the Legitimacy Kingdom to pay reparations. That must have left quite a few bodies behind, but it seems the Faith Organization was up to no good as well. What really mattered was proving the method as effective. …That is, a method of directly accessing the moving Manhattan 000, gathering information, and sabotaging it if necessary.”

“…”

Wraith, another Martini Series, maintained a troubled expression.

Taratua remained seated in her fancy chair and casually clapped her hands twice at her fellow Martini who had safely returned from the Olympia Dome.

“As a giant artificial floating island, the Olympia Dome has many similarities to the world’s largest Object. To be honest, the Olympia Dome is the more difficult of the two when looking only at the infiltration phase. After all, our maintenance fleet and the Manhattan 000 are both from the Information Alliance. If we set a damaged ship adrift and send out a distress signal, the Martini holding the Manhattan 000’s reins will follow the rulebook and approve a rescue even as she argues with the AI network. Simply put, we can get onboard using the exact same method.”

“But how many Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers are left? Thanks to your meaningless harassment, they were driven nearly to disaster and most of them were slaughtered by that flying Object.”

“Oh, is that why you’re so irritable?” Taratua did not seem to care. “Disposable personnel are only valuable when you dispose of them. Can you win a war if you’re too afraid to fire a single bullet? We just have to gather spare personnel from elsewhere. Any new soldiers can be provided the necessary information through training. They work and we profit. Simple, right?”

“Is what you’re doing even war?”

“Oh, it’s war. A war by me and for me. In that sense, I may have wronged you, Wraith. They’re only disposable, but they do have experience packed in their heads. So I promised them your head as a reward for a successful mission.”

“…”

“Given how much the blood had rushed to their heads, I imagine they’ll kill you before they can even think up a cleverer but more perverted plan. Well, just accept it as your fate. I will increase the value of the Martini Series, so you can be part of the foundation.”

Wraith sighed.

“Let’s discuss a hypothetical.”

“Hold on, do you think this is a chat between friends or something? Romantic advice is simply outside my area of expertise.”

“…Let’s say there is a method of completely destroying the Martini Series from without, using the same kind of active self-denial as throwing out everything you own to get a new start on life. Would someone as universally capable and foolish as you be able to forgive your fellow Martinis who went insane?”

“Is that what this is about?” Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks gave a snort of laughter while elegantly crossing her legs. “It would be one thing if you were born with it, but when it’s something done to you afterwards, then you should have been able to prevent it or stop it. No attack or defense is perfect if it is made by human hands. That is why the Martini Series was created to make up for the AI network’s flaws. We’re supposed to play house with Capulet which may not even have a center anymore.”

“Your point?”

“Active self-denial? If someone takes advantage of a vulnerability, the responsibility lies with the person who knew of it but didn’t put together a countermeasure.”

“I see,” muttered Wraith while squirming a bit.

Now, did Taratua notice that the medals on her chest reflected the sunlight to inconspicuously send a signal somewhere?

A moment later, a spider web of cracks ran through the thick bulletproof glass on the floor of the bridge.

“Oh…?”

There was a surprised expression there.

The leather chair’s stuffing scattered everywhere. Taratua’s butt slid forward in that luxurious chair. She tried to hold onto the armrests, but her entire body had gone limp. Her hips fell from the chair and she collapsed to the floor.

Had the wet sensation finally caught up to her by then?

Fresh blood was splattered around like someone had rubbed red paint around with a mop. Needless to say, it drew out the path Taratua had taken as she rolled along the floor.

And lastly…

[[Image:HO_v15_137.png|thumb]]

There was a dark red hole in the tall Asian beauty’s stomach.

“Ah…bh.”

“If someone takes advantage of a vulnerability, the responsibility lies with the person who knew of it but didn’t put together a countermeasure? You are awful through and through, but it doesn’t really matter if you were broken or if you were always that way.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s expression had not changed.

“Who do you think did this?”

She slowly leaned forward to bring her face in close, but she showed no sign of stopping the hemorrhaging blood or providing any other first aid to her fellow Martini.

“You’re the kind of asshole who hides information on the Hammer Throw 001 for no other reason than to be cruel. You probably can’t even keep track of how many people hold a grudge against you. If you were mediocre enough to be convinced, I would not have had to rely on this.”

“…———”

“Yes, yes. No need to worry. None of our people will be blamed. They made sure to bring back some Faith Organization guns and ammunition as souvenirs. Shoot you with those and, well, all the documents will say you were shot by an enemy soldier in the normal course of the war. War is not treated as a crime. Although this might change some rules so we can’t hold private conversations on the bridge any longer. The adults will be sad to lose another valuable smoking area. Personally, I’m not too fond of the combat command center and its thick walls. It feels too oppressive.”

Nothing dramatic happened.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks could not close her wide-open eyelids and she simply stopped moving like her battery had run dry.

Humans were selfish creatures. She did not inspire the kind of emotion that Piranirie had.

Wraith held a hand to her ear and spoke into her earpiece.

“She is dead. I will send her body to the military doctor and have it proven that the wound came from a shot fired from 400 meters. And that it was done by the Faith Organization bullet embedded in the wall.”

“Oh, is that so? Thanks for actually choosing to kill her. I don’t think I could have handled it if you had tried to bring Taratua into this. But what else would I expect from one of the great Martinis? No one’s better at sending people to their death.”

“…”

“Honestly, this is the last time I do anything as annoying as a sniper job from a one-man submersible rocking in the waves. Now you need to take command. You can do that as a Martini, right?”

“Hold on. That’s much easier said than done. It’s not just an issue of rank. You need to consider affiliation and the command structure as well. You are aware how many hurdles I have to clear here, aren’t you?”

“I don’t care, Madam Lieutenant Colonel. The only reason I didn’t shoot you first is because you’re easier to control and thus more valuable than Taratua. Well, there was also all the people who died because she hid the information about the Hammer Throw 001. After we settle this Manhattan issue, you need to modify the records so they don’t list us as dead. That’s the only way we can return to our normal lives.”

“Understood.”

“Are you sure?”

This was not an icy voice.

Heivia’s voice was somehow mechanical. That was proof that he had passed the temporary surge of emotion and his drive for revenge had settled in as a normal thing. With the exception of a certain individual, no pain or death he witnessed would shake his heart now.

Wraith had seen plenty of people like that on the battlefield.

As a Martini, she had maintained order within the Information Alliance military by managing losing armies and occasionally eliminating berserk units or indirectly executing war criminals by sending them to certain death.

“Your life is a limited-time-only deal that lasts as long as you’re useful to us. Once you’re useless, you will meet the same fate as Taratua. You can give me an upturned look with tears in your eyes and you can place your hands on the wall and stick your ass out toward me, but it won’t change a thing. I’m having a hard time finding reasons not shoot you right in your insane head. So work hard for the Legitimacy Kingdom.”

The cold and mechanical transmission ended.

Wraith was all alone for the moment.

No, it was possible no one had ever filled the gap left by that one boy. Not even the young man who was always by her side. Especially when she knew how angry it would make her if someone casually offered to fill that gap.

===Part 3===

“Captain Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks was killed in a cowardly and calculated surprise attack by a Faith Organization remnant. I will take command for the remainder of the operation. I am sure some of you will not like having me go over your heads, but I would like you to leave this to me as I am an expert at recovering from failure in combat.”

Inside the tilted supply ship, Wraith explained that with her aide by her side.

The operation was already underway.

“I am having a retaliation list put together based on who could have made that sniper shot given the conditions, but that is being handled by a different team. Because we have our own timetable. We will show all standard condolences and respect to Taratua by continuing with her suggestion. We will disguise one of ‘our’ maintenance fleet’s ships as a wreck and place it along the Manhattan 000’s predicted path. We will have it pick up the crew and bring them directly onboard.”

“…So it’s essentially the same as with the Olympia Dome. The problem is it’s still hard to say whether that was a success or a failure.”

Heivia sounded fed up with the whole idea.

The fox saw that look on the tanuki’s face and nodded.

“The Manhattan 000 has extraordinary size and power and it is currently the world’s largest Object, but it cannot attack us if we are right up on it. Because it can’t fire on itself. Boarding it will be the first obstacle.”

After all, a normal(?) Object was about 50 meters, while just the portion of the Manhattan visible above water was more than 20,000 meters. It also had more than one reactor and the total number was unknown. The fact that its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon had obliterated Heivia’s unit in the blink of an eye from North America to Central America made it clear that its range and power were both far beyond the norm. Any standard Object that challenged it would be vaporized before it even arrived within firing range.

Any explanation would just sound like someone bragging about its abilities.

Did it not have even the slightest weakness or flaw?

“Is our objective to destroy it?”

“If necessary.” Wraith readily agreed even though she too was from the Information Alliance. “But while the Manhattan 000’s specs are on another level entirely, it still has more than 10 million normal residents on its surface. We cannot make a general attack from the outside.”

“What has even happened to them?”

That alone was an honest question. Taratua had said Manhattan itself was traveling south at 388 knots, which was around 700km/h. If that was true, it would be like clinging to the wing of a passenger plane.

But Wraith only shook her head.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem there has been any major damage.”

“??? Were they all evacuated to the subway stations or something?”

“No, not that.” The blonde girl answered Myonri’s question while her hand wandered through empty air as if in search of a pen to twirl. “It seems they’re artificially manipulating the air currents to protect the Manhattan surface from the violent winds.”

“Wait, what? Manipulating the air currents???”

“It makes sense in theory. Even your average factory uses air curtains. By blowing an artificial wind vertically, you can keep out the dust and dirt that would otherwise get in horizontally. By scaling that up by a lot, they’re using the wind blown up from below to divert the fierce headwind hitting them from the front. It forms a dome.”

“That’s simple enough to say, but we’re talking about the same winds a passenger plane would experience!”

“So what? Just how much does your ordinary, everyday common sense do you think applies to the Manhattan 000? Not even I know how many JPlevelMHD reactors it has.”

Just how forceful could it be?

But that was exactly how Objects had ended the age of stealth bombers and nuclear weapons.

“As long as they can solve the air current problem, the rest is easy. 700km/h might sound scary, but it’s really the same as riding a linear motor train or a passenger plane. It should be a comfortable ride as long as it doesn’t make any of the sharp footwork seen in Object combat.”

But once you were onboard, you could not get off.

And no one could predict what the Martinis or Manhattan would do. There was no guarantee the 20,000m mass wouldn’t suddenly perform footwork that exceeded a fighter craft’s movements.

“…What’s going on there?”

“Who knows. We are intercepting some of the EM signals as a part of analyzing the Object, but it seems the people’s usual smartphone-dependent lifestyle is continuing. They’re still posting on social media and video sites without a care in the world.”

Myonri blinked at that.

“Um, they’re not connected to the outside internet, are they?”

“You can analyze someone’s conversational patterns if you can see their social media friends list and message log. They’re probably receiving automated responses disguised as their online friends’ accounts. The Martini in charge of New York may be doing her best to deny reality as a part of her active self-denial. Thanks to that, the logical and thoughtless Capulet AI Network is in top form today. Everyone in New York probably thinks they’re internet heroes. Their desire for approval is probably being satisfied more than ever before.”

Heivia found it hard to decide whether or not that just meant their senses had been dulled by peace.

Legitimacy Kingdom military textbooks told the story of a man who cooked instant ramen even as his house burned down around him. When humans were faced with a situation too difficult to accept, a defense instinct would apparently kick in and they would continue their normal daily routine to preserve their mental balance. That way they could tell themselves they were still living their normal life and had yet to stray beyond it.

Wraith brought a hand to her slender chin.

“Our objective is to discover the reason why the Manhattan 000 is on its way here. From the look of things, I doubt we can hope for the Pilot Elite to go on strike. As I said before, the ultimate decision is up to the Capulet AI Network that supports the Manhattan 000 and the Martini who holds its reins. The idea that it is here to settle the mess around New Caribbean Island concerning the Nitrogen Mirage and Katarina Martini is no more than speculation, so we don’t know the actual reason. If that girl is acting in the overall interest of the Information Alliance, I will protect her. If she is ignoring an error in Capulet and has steered in the direction of annihilating the human race, then I must destroy and stop the Manhattan 000 that acts as her eyes and ears and her arms and legs.”

“Is that the Information Alliance’s overall opinion?” asked Heivia. “If not, this will count as treason and you’ll be reduced to a slave.”

“It’s an issue of the human heart. I was ‘created’ in the hopes that I would have the humanity to stop a rampaging machine when the adults alone could not make the appropriate decision. So that is what I will do.” The Martini Series girl did not bat an eye. “Also, I will share the details on Melly Martini Extradry who was in charge of New York security. All contact with her has been lost and there has been no report of her death. The very fact that she has intentionally failed to report to the military is an irregularity. It is possible she has been broken by abuse of active self-denial just like Piranirie. As you experienced with Piranirie, a broken Martini is more dangerous than a machine. The Elite may have been affected as well.”

Wraith closed her mouth for a moment there.

Before death, Piranirie had mentioned some external factor that could drive the Martini Series mad. She had assumed the culprit was Katarina, the engineer asking for asylum, but she had been wrong. And she had said an enemy force was the most likely suspect as they would gain the most from doing that to the Martini Series who preserved order in the Information Alliance.

Was the true enemy in the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Capitalist Corporations, or the Faith Organization?

Myonri must have been quick to adapt to new environments because she raised her hand before speaking to an enemy commander.

“U-umm, then, uh, how do we from the Legitimacy Kingdom benefit from looking into the secrets of the Martini Series and Manhattan?”

“To be blunt, you don’t.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray sounded indifferent.

But she may have been better than Taratua since she did not hide the truth and deceive them.

“But if you fake your deaths during the intense fighting with the Manhattan 000, you will have a chance to escape the control of Capulet which manages the entire Information Alliance.”

“You have to be joking. You’re the commanding officer here. Aren’t we free once you sign the right document?”

“I am not Piranirie or Taratua. Without their rule of fear, the many people below me will grow suspicious and might shoot you in the back if you attempt to leave with a smile.” Wraith quietly sighed. “With how big the Manhattan 000 is, a single shot will reduce you to ashes, preventing anyone from identifying your corpse. And a naval facility should have plenty of ways to escape in an emergency. More than just small boats and submersibles, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it has an entire giant submarine. …All I want are the results. When you see a chance, then run off on your own.”

“What about the documents the Information Alliance rewrote!? I was a noble heir back home, but they’ll treat me like a ghost now!! I don’t want to get home only to be turned away as a lookalike and forced to live in a cardboard box!!”

“Your military will have your DNA data on file. Run to a base or embassy with a hair or tissue full of squid-smelling filth and have them check the genetic information. You can tell them the report of your death was just more of the Information Alliance’s usual harassment.”

“…You have got to be kidding. We’re not talking about a loan shark’s 5-second smartphone eligibility check. That’s not exactly a guarantee.”

“Then this knowledgeable beauty will write up some memoirs on a website anyone can access. If I mention the harassment operation, you won’t have anything to worry about.”

It was a very Information Alliance kind of thing to write up fake memoirs as a way of getting out the truth.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray lightly clapped her hands to gather attention.

“We all have our own goals here, but right now we need to clear the first hurdle. Then we can use the situation to our advantage. The strategy itself is simple. Taratua said the Olympia Dome incident was practice, so we just have to do that again.”

“That sounds great. Very reassuring.”

Heivia breathed a heavy sigh.

And then he said it.

“The problem is that the damn Manhattan saw right through our trick, fired a giant blast our way, and tore a huge chunk out of our ship, so now we can see the ocean right there. Goddammit!!”

A rapid-fire beam had punched through the side of the ship, so the entire thing looked like a half-circle arch. Even if its height was restricted to keep the center of gravity low, it was still more than 9 meters. The steel supply ship just ended all of a sudden and there was the ocean directly below. The exposed cabins and corridors were visible in the other end of the cross section a few dozen meters away.

The artificial storm had passed, so it was sunny.

They were afraid to remain on the flimsy deck. The sea shining in the light of the blue sky and sun had never looked so sinister before.

A single attack from Manhattan had transformed a nearly 80m steel ship into an arch, but it must have been more of a game for it. It was like an exterminator poking at the beehive with the insecticide nozzle to see if it was still full of pests or if it was empty.

It had been a cannon, but only the smallest of the small.

If it had used its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon, all metal would have been melted over an area of several dozen kilometers.

“I-I’m actually surprised,” said Myonri. “Information Alliance ships can take this much damage without sinking!?”

“Well, the ballast tanks are functioning as floats and the bulkheads and watertight doors were shut. Plus, a supply ship will have more tanks than usual. It’s basically filled with small balloons like the packaging material used to protect online store shipments.”

“She meant that as a rhetorical question, you overly serious idiot!! More importantly, what do we do? The Manhattan knows we’re here. Lightning is about to strike on the level of your parents finding out you were browsing porn on the tablet you borrowed from them!!”

According to Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks, the Manhattan was supposed to arrive near New Caribbean Island 4 or 5 hours after leaving New York. They could not tell from the edge of the arch, but they were already sharing the ocean with it.

There was a bright beam of light.

But it was not the Manhattan.

“What idiot did that!? What bastard just poked the hornet’s nest without even asking permission!?”

“Those are…probably Faith Organization Second Generations. Challenging that thing with only 5 Objects is suicidal, but maybe they were ordered to gather information no matter what.”

Wraith’s judgment was proof enough that this had surpassed the assumptions of the clean wars.

They did not have time to figure out the individual traits of the Objects. Cannons were fired one after another. Any one of those Faith Organization elites would have been able to easily defeat Heivia’s group in a proper fight, but they were almost immediately blown away like a sugar sculpture placed too close to a heater.

“It…The Manhattan took ''some'' damage from that, didn’t it!?”

“Probably not,” said Wraith. “With that much firepower, it can divert anything from plasma to lasers. And have you not noticed what the weather is like?”

“It’s bright and sunny, but what does that have to do with-…ah.”

“So even a fool like you has finally caught on. A single shot from its prized electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon will stir up the atmosphere to the point of causing rapid pressure changes that produce a major storm, but there’s no sign of that. That means it was holding back. The Manhattan 000 is intentionally keeping its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon in reserve.”

Needless to say, it was not holding back for the Faith Organization’s sake.

Wraith’s opinion was rational.

“A storm would expose the people of Manhattan to lightning strikes. That’s the only concern it has. If any of the Faith Organization cannons could have scored a direct hit and done serious damage to the people, it probably would have ended the battle even sooner using its electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon. It showed no hint of that.”

It had been too easy.

The last of the five Objects was unemotionally blown away.

“That’s awful. The battle is already over. That wasn’t even enough time to cook some instant noodles.”

Heivia had gone pale as he fiddled with his assault rifle and shoulder-fired missile launcher at the edge of the arch, so Wraith continued in exasperation.

“Since you might actually be that stupid, I guess I’ll ask: You don’t think you can sink the Manhattan 000 with those, do you?”

“It’s already learned of our plan!! I’ve never heard of a would-be surprise attacker being treated with much care. We’ll definitely be executed for their amusement. There will be no kindness for us after we used this method. If we raise our hands in surrender, we’ll just be vaporized! I’m not about to excite people’s living rooms as a shocking year-end news story!!”

“You won’t have to worry about that. In the Information Alliance’s internet culture, television is dead.” The black-uniformed girl smiled coldly. “And you seem to be mistaken about some things, so allow me to correct you. One: The Manhattan 000’s Elite is probably just a figurehead. Its actions are determined by the constant conversations and mutual error corrections between the Capulet AI Network contained in unknown physical devices and the Martini in charge of New York security. Two: I’m honestly skeptical that Capulet has even detected our presence.”

“Um, what do you mean?” asked Myonri.

“They are simply being cautious after what happened to the Olympia Dome. If it could accurately detect our numbers and locations from our heat and magnetic signatures, it would have vaporized us with pinpoint accuracy. It would not blast a huge hole in the ship like this. Why did it carefully ‘remove the fat’ with a smaller secondary cannon instead of vaporizing the entire ship with a powerful main cannon it can fire as many times as it wants? …The Martini, who we suspect has fallen victim to active self-denial, is not certain. So she is removing everything she is not certain of so we will panic and reveal ourselves.”

“That’s all speculation.”

“Yes. But if you climb up on the deck and fire a shot, then she will be certain. Once the Manhattan 000 detects hostile intent – even from a peashooter – it can rest easy and transform us into sea debris. And this time, it will use one of its many main cannons.”

Wraith slowly moved her lips to repeat the phrase “rest easy”.

In other words…

“The correct choice here is to wait. The Martini holding Capulet’s reins made a mistake due to her active self-denial. Silence will be more helpful than a million bullets here. No matter how suspicious this ship might be, it is officially registered as an Information Alliance supply ship, you are powerless prisoners, and I am a commander who can manage that kind of noncombatant. We have made no mistake and yet the Manhattan 000 fired on us without advance warning. And it fired right into the side of the ship instead of just a warning shot. Their Martini must really be in a crisis right now. AI can’t be charged with human crimes, after all. If this really is a harmless ship, it was all for naught. She’ll have no choice but to admit to the mistake and quickly rescue us.”

“You have no guarantee that we’ll all be saved!!”

“It’s true your odds of survival are pretty low with my plan. But if you challenge the Manhattan 000 to a hopeless final battle, those odds are precisely 0%. Now, which will it be? I know I shouldn’t say this at my age, but even a child could do that math.”

A dull metallic sound followed.

Heivia had aimed his assault rifle at Wraith.

But even more noises surrounded the delinquent soldier.

The other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes aimed identical guns at Heivia’s back. They seemed to be saying sorry in their hearts. Even Myonri was among them with an apologetic look on her face.

“Wait…you’re kidding, right? Whose ass do you think you’re aiming those tiny dicks at?”

“It would appear that everyone except for you is a rock-hard adult.” Wraith teased him by lightly raising her hands, slowly lifting her butt from the floor, and standing up. “It is highly likely that the Manhattan 000 will fire a few more test shots. And even if it doesn’t, the deck will break soon. That could throw us out into the ocean, so grab some oxygen tanks and anything that will work as float. This is a military ship, so it will be well supplied. Frank! Gather a few emergency kits for me.”

The aide young man grabbed a bag hanging on the wall. Whether it was a joke or not, Heivia bit his lip when he saw it said AED on the side.

“…I refuse to accept your methods here.”

“You don’t have to, but the clock is ticking all the same.” The black-uniformed girl winked and stuck out her tongue a bit. “By my estimate, the next attack will arrive in less than 3 seconds, so…sorry, the time passed while I was talking.”

With a deafening blast, their battlefield was transformed.

All of them were shaken by the intense impact and thrown from the edge of the arch-carved supply ship and into the glittering ocean.

“Bwah!! Bwoh!?”

Heivia misjudged the timing of his landing, so he swallowed a bunch of seawater as soon as his face hit the water’s surface. He somehow managed to get his head above water while his vision spun, but he could not stop coughing. He did not feel like he was getting any air at all.

“…Dammit.”

And he did not have time to choke.

The supply ship’s flimsy deck had broken and the entire ship sank into the ocean as it fell apart. To make sure he was not dragged down with it, Heivia grabbed onto some broken wood that must have originally belonged to a table. The sight before his eyes felt like something from another world altogether.

It was there.

A 20,000 meter length of ordinary skyscrapers was approaching.

Its 700km/h speed was nowhere to be seen, presumably because it had already arrived at its destination. It was motionless. That only made its presence all the more imposing.

If he looking down from a helicopter while it was lit up at night, it would have been a million-dollar view. But that impossible location rose up from the clear blue ocean. It was like a dragon. A giant dragon with a thick forest growing from its back.

It had completely left the category of modern weaponry.

That was why Heivia’s mind erroneously saw it as something from another world.

He was less than 200 meters away from it.

That was barely within range for infantry to target a moving human without the assistance of a scope, but what about for that extraordinary Object? You might understand how he felt if you kissed a crocodile that was larger than you were.

He no longer felt anger at the unreasonable situation he found himself in.

Definite fear now squeezed at his heart.

“It’s there. It’s really there. And it’s way closer than I expected! This is like a sudden close-up of the actor’s you-know-what in a 3D movie, goddammit!!”

“Do not fire!!” shouted Wraith while clinging to the same waterproof bag as the aide young man. “Restrain your fear. Silence is the correct answer here. If you don’t fire, it will rescue us. This is all over if you touch your guns, you hasty and simple-minded animals. The difference in firepower and armor does not matter. You saw what happened to those 5 Faith Organization Objects, didn’t you? Step outside this ‘blind spot’ and you will be reduced to ashes in an instant!!”

“~ ~ ~!!”

What would that boy have done in this situation?

Would he have found a weakness and challenged this great a monster with just the equipment he had on hand?

Heivia thought and thought but could not find an answer. Heivia Winchell was not Quenser Barbotage.

Something shot by in the sky overhead.

The boomerang-like craft was likely an unmanned spy plane. Relaying information was their entire purpose, but just like a submarine, they only emitted signals when absolutely necessary and used simple circuits for their power system. At any rate, you would never end up with that trimmed-down silhouette with the thick armor and fire-extinguishing equipment needed to increase a pilot’s survival.

“Tch. They’re spying on our little swim, dammit!!”

It did not matter if it had missiles hanging from its wings or not. Once they were located, the Manhattan could send any number of shells their way.

Wraith said something like a prayer.

Was it meant as advice for the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers, or as a means of calming her own pounding heart?

“Slowly, slowly. Just let the current take you. That will bring us closer to the Manhattan 000… Listen, it can fry an area of several dozen kilometers with a single main cannon blast if it wants to. The one safe zone is right up next to the Manhattan 000 itself. Arrive at point-blank range and it can no longer use its main cannons. We haven’t lost and it hasn’t escaped. This is the best result. Understand!?”

They did not actually do anything.

The Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes were carried over to the Manhattan. No, that extraordinary monster had probably taken up that position to begin with. The 200 meters were gone in no time. Their sense of time may have been malfunctioning.

“…?”

Heivia felt an odd bubbly feeling around him.

It was like soaking in a bubble bath or in the jets of a jacuzzi. He looked down at his uniform below the water and saw small bubbles covering it like he was soaking in a carbonated beverage.

Hadn’t Taratua, the girl he had shot himself, theorized that it used supercavitation to reduce the resistance of moving through the water?

Heivia’s group was carried over to a location that jutted out sharply.

Wraith groaned while she rocked in the waves.

“The downtown district. Lower Manhattan. This is probably where you would normally board the ferry to the Statue of Liberty.”

The distance was now zero. They had arrived at Manhattan.

Heivia managed to grab onto the concrete bank.

He sensed the presence of quite a few people.

“!?”

With no hesitation whatsoever, he obeyed his survival instincts and aimed his assault rifle straight up.

And a moment later…

“Wow. Hey, can I take a picture of that?”

He heard a silly voice.

It was a small child of less than 10.

The boy had an innocent smile that looked out of place in a city that had just been targeted by 5 Faith Organization Second Generations. Was he even aware that there was a war going on?

“That’s a Legitimacy Kingdom uniform, right? I’ve seen videos of those. The southern sea is really dirty. There are all sorts of things floating here.”

In the Central American heat, Heivia froze in place with his soaked weapon still aimed up at the unarmed children who crouched down, aimed the lenses of their phones and game systems his way, and produced electronic shutter sounds.

The children were carrying backpacks and water bottles, so they were probably on a field trip or something.

“Who is this?”

“Teacher, it’s like the person we saw juggling over there!”

“Yes, a street performer. You give them money to tell them they did a good job.”

They threw some change his way like anyone would at the water’s edge in a tourist area.

A soft female voice came from somewhere. It was probably a recorded announcement.

“Welcome to Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan! Why not take a break and enjoy the greenery to recover from sightseeing at the famous Wall Street? At our park…”

Another look around showed a park below the blue sky.

A few speakers stood up from the gently rising hills covered in a carefully-maintained lawn. And beyond that were true skyscrapers. Those were the buildings of Wall Street, the world’s largest financial street.

The field trip children were not the only ones there.

A young wife was stretching on a yoga mat laid out on the lawn. An old man was jogging slowly down the winding path and a large pet dog was running out ahead of its master. There were plenty of people practicing martial arts or playing guitars on the grass.

There was a giant divide between sea and land.

The difference was so great that Heivia could not shake the feeling that he had just traveled through time.

It was peaceful.

He had come across a true safe country.

It was enough to make Heivia and his assault rifle look absurd.

“What the hell…is going on?”

“The eye of the storm may be surprisingly calm. It is always the onlookers and not those directly involved who make the biggest fuss. Which is why you professionals should be more responsible about what you say.”

Wraith must not have been able to get up on the concrete by herself. Drenched, she climbed up into Battery Park with some help from the aide young man pushing up on her small butt.

She then extended her small hand to pull the young man up.

“See? We were right not to fire. Provoking them would have been dealt with like a major crime in a safe country. You would have been shot as a violent criminal instead of dealt with like a prisoner of war.”

Then they heard the sound of thick rubber scraping on the ground.

Something had approached them at some point. It was probably made of the same substance as a special operations rubber boat. A girl moved across the grass with her butt inside a giant swim ring. There were no apparent tires or treads on the bottom…but as far as they could tell, it was moving as smoothly as a curling stone.

“Oh, Wraith. 419. Long time no see.”

“Hi, Melly. You’ve changed your look again, I see.”

[[Image:HO_v15_165.png|thumb]]

Wraith smiled, but she gave off some slight tension. If this girl was using active self-denial, any past relationship with her was no guarantee of safety.

She was a girl of about 14 with brown skin and a blonde bob cut. The gentle curves of secondary sexual characteristics were contained by what looked like a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson oil paper. It was reminiscent of what one would wear for a massage or medical exam. She held a tablet in both hands…except it may have actually been a notebook-sized game system.

She wore what looked like a backwards baseball cap, but it was not.

Were those special VR goggles?

“Yes. The wheelchair and medical bed were not very promising. I got bedsores on my back. Ever since I partially retired after breaking my spine, the earth’s gravity is pure torture. From there, it was a battle with the literature. In the end, I decided to revert to the basics. 881. I don’t know if you should call it a waterbed or an oil damper, but it’s something like that. I fill this swim ring with a special liquid and then have it vibrate with a set pattern.”

This was Melly Martini Extradry.

If the information they had been given was accurate, she would be the Martini in charge of New York’s security.

She controlled Manhattan over the head of the Pilot Elite. She must not have been used to the male gaze despite her risqué outfit because, when she was exposed to concentrated fire from the eyes of Heivia and the other potatoes floating in the ocean, she pulled her hands back toward her chest like a praying mantis. She somewhat nervously continued as if trying to distract them from something.

“The undercarriage uses a flagellum structure. 791. Okay? Do you remember the insane team that researched the structure of euglenas based on the theory that you could overturn the food chain if you gave plants the ability to move as quickly as humans?”

“Oh, the one where they settled on the conclusion that euglenas aren’t actually plants?”

Wraith looked up at a flower-like security camera looking down at her.

“Is that for more than just decoration?”

Security cameras were all about mutual surveillance. With a square room, you could place a camera in opposing corners to cover both their blind spots. But that distribution grew much more complex outdoors.

The swim ring girl nodded proudly.

“It’s cross-pollination. Whether they use the wind, insects, or birds, flowers can prosper as far as their pollen reaches. That made them incredibly useful as an example of how to set those up to cover for each other.”

“If you were that thorough… Oh, so that’s the basic theory behind the excessively-large Manhattan 000.”

“Turgor pressure is incredible. The Bullmites were the extent of what animal research could handle. At this size, existing examples of muscular and skeletal structure are no use whatsoever. 660. It might be easier to think of it as crossing the divide between plant and animal. A 1000-year-old cedar supports more mass than a whale or mammoth.”

Wraith already looked exasperated, but Melly did not stop. It was not clear if this was her area of interest or if she wanted to keep her mind off of the male gazes focused on her, but she felt the need to say it all. Just like a child showing off their treasure in a local park, the brown girl smiled and raised the game system she held in both hands.

“Tah dah! It’s Stick VR. 721. With smartphones and computers, we reign supreme here in North America, but we just can’t seem to compete with the Island Nation when it comes to video game systems.”

“Hold on. You aren’t making any sense. Weren’t Stick VR and Paste VR rivals?”

“That’s why I forcibly built some compatible software to bypass that. Man, it was quite a job concentrating all of Manhattan’s functions down to this one device. 993. But that improved things immensely.”

It was like she was showing off her level of influence.

The next thing they knew, the gathered children had been casually led away by their teacher. Was Melly monitoring all of Manhattan on that one flat-screen monitor and could she spy on the 10 million people’s personal lives whenever she wanted? What was the actual Elite doing?

Next, they heard the sound of metal fitting together.

Two or three 2-meter quadrupedal animals made of steel and composite armor walked up alongside the girl whose butt was inside the giant swim ring. They were combat support robots modeled after bulls. They could carry weapons, act as shields, search out the enemy, drive the target out from behind cover, or even crash into the target with more force than a large motorcycle. They blatantly rubbed their bodies together. They could communicate without accessing a server by recreating the actions and society of animals.

They did not even need a controller.

Just give them a general target and their programs would have them work as a group to surround and neutralize that target as quickly as possible. The sheep dog did not even need to give any instructions. Those serverless unmanned weapons would work together and achieve victory all on their own as long as they had an objective set. The cowgirl watching over them only had to provide the herd with corrections when absolutely necessary.

Wraith glanced upwards at the 6-petalled flower shape of the devices distributed using the theory of cross-pollination.

“…Everything you do is always so involved.”

“789. Manhattan is only one of New York’s 5 boroughs, but it contains more than 700,000 security cameras. Of course we’re going to make sure they look nice.”

Needless to say, those were not the only eyes and ears in Manhattan. Even during the intense fighting with the Faith Organization, Melly must have accurately predicted where on Manhattan Wraith and the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers would wash up. She had clearly sent out that unmanned spy plane to check on the situation.

And with that in mind, the brown girl wearing nothing but a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper asked a question.

“So who are they? 002.”

“Oh, them.”

Wraith kept her cool.

And Heivia’s group still had not climbed up onto land. That proved a devastating mistake.

“They’re something of a souvenir. They’re the ones who killed Taratua.”

They did even have time to shout.

Wraith took a device the size of a large lunchbox from the young man and tossed it toward the ocean. It was an AED, a medical device that used an electric current equivalent to a stun gun in order to shock the heart.

“Bwah…!?”

The power light flashed and the two electrodes attached by the same curly cables as a home phone flew through the air. The flat electrodes contacted the ocean’s surface. Heivia was already soaked and there was nothing he could do even when he saw it coming.

With a dull bursting noise, the potatoes were neutralized in an instant.

The bright blue ocean disappeared. Everything fell into darkness.

“It seems you didn’t trust me, but did you think I would still have any fondness for you left after you kept threatening to kill me? The Information Alliance maintenance fleet corrupted by Taratua was the worst, but the Legitimacy Kingdom is just as bad for helping. To be honest, I’m sick of it all. You can’t expect someone as honest and straightforward as me to not want to switch sides.”

As Heivia’s consciousness faded, he thought he heard the girl laughing scornfully down at him.

“When you get down to it, I belong to the Information Alliance. The gears shifted out of place after I shot Quenser, but I shouldn’t have had any reason to be trapped between enemy and ally. …Melly, I will sell them to you as a sign of trust. Will that cover the Manhattan 000’s boarding fee?”

===Part 4===

Only ten minutes had passed.

“Oh? Is this what their new maple caramel parfait is? It’s just soaked in maple syrup! What does that have to do with the Island Nation!?”

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you…”

After leaving the park of betrayal and passing through Wall Street which was often seen in movies and dramas, they found a strange scene filled with Asian writing. It was the area known as Chinatown.

For some reason, Wraith the traitor and Heivia the betrayed were seated at the same table in front of an Asian chain café there. The scene was just as awkward as having a café maid kick you out and later running into her at a nearby convenience store.

The group of drenched potatoes in Legitimacy Kingdom uniforms must have seemed like better content than a kitten climbing into a bag because phone cameras were aimed their way from every direction.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray was equally soaked, but she had a towel draped over her head.

“I didn’t expect this outcome either, so what can I say?” She sounded annoyed. “I never expected the enemy soldiers I sold out to be released into the city with only their weapons confiscated.”

“Speaky! Tell me how to silence this piece of shit!!”

Heivia’s shout was only meant to comfort himself, but the bottle-shaped speaker in the middle of the table provided the clever reply of “Start by taking a deep breath. Some days are like this.”

The Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had all gathered in one place, but they had not been handcuffed or given GPS ankle bracelets.

The enemy must not have deemed it necessary.

The flower-like stationary security cameras were not the only eyes watching them. They were apparently a rare sight wherever they went because Asian strangers were aiming their phone cameras at the soldiers purely out of curiosity. Having lenses aimed their way from every direction made them feel a certain way.

“It’s like we’re animals in the zoo. I’m going to kill every last one of them…”

“Well, this is probably a cage made of data. Manhattan doesn’t have a prison, so they have several layers of human management at each coordinate.”

Water erupted upwards like a fountain from the fire hydrant at the end of the road.

New York’s proper latitude was similar to Hokkaido in the Island Nation. No one was used to the Central American climate, so they all looked overheated. They could always stay indoors and receive the benefit of air conditioning, but they were so obsessed with finding content for social media that they braved the discomfort and let the fire hydrant’s water cool them off.

“Maintaining a calm facade but going nuts on social media. That’s just how New Yorkers are.”

After giving an exasperated look to those wealthy people who were intent on showing off how unfazed they were that Manhattan had started to move, Wraith grabbed a junk food mini spring roll from a rectangular cardboard container and tossed it into her small mouth.

She winked and pointed at the floral security camera overhead.

“People who put a lot of wasted effort into appearances are willing to die for their pride. Closing yourself up in your room is the ultimate form of self-indulgence, but being closed up by someone else is solitary confinement in prison. You can live in the exact same coordinate in New York, but the label slapped onto you can make that feel like heaven or like hell. That’s probably how the people are controlled.”

“What the hell!? Does it only take you five seconds to forget who you threw under the bus, crazy girl!? Do you have any idea what you did!?”

Heivia shouted angrily and started to stand up, but then a heavy metallic noise rang out.

A 2m composite armor bull that was heavier than a large motorcycle had slowly stood up from where it had been seated on the ground.

Wraith gently raised both hands, winked, and devilishly stuck out her tongue.

“This city has the world’s highest camera density. You heard what she said about the flowers, right? If you don’t learn from the New Yorkers and increase your tech literacy, the government will be spying on you out in reality and on the internet. So until you learn the rules, how about you avoid any actions that might be misinterpreted? Those Bullmites do not use a server and only need their simple circuits to coordinate, but if one tackles you, you’ll be bedridden for the remainder of your life. I’m sure they have you surrounded in an inescapable layout calculated out using big data simulations and baseball data theory. Nonlethal weapons can be a type of sadism. Since they can beat you up without killing you, no one has to hesitate before using them.”

“Curse those weird Bullshits or whatever they’re called…”

“You probably lost another life just now. The question is how many lives you have left before it’s game over.”

Heivia, Wraith, and the others had successfully landed on the extraordinary Object, but they saw no sign of soldiers walking around. The only people they saw were the New Yorkers of that safe country known as the racial salad bowl. Instead of people, the city was being patrolled and protected by unmanned weapons, primarily the Bullmites that kept gently rubbing their bodies together.

And the passersby showed no concern when they saw several dozen soldiers from an enemy nation.

A digital surveillance society was a creepy thing, but at the same time, everyone assumed it was targeted at the anti-government guerillas, enemy soldiers, and other minorities that had been rejected from the larger framework of society. They assumed they would not be affected themselves if they did the clever thing and obeyed.

But in truth, they had no guarantee whatsoever who the unseen observers would decide to cast out on a whim.

“…This really is the Information Alliance, isn’t it?”

“Oh, is that so?” complained Heivia. “I see where we stand here now, but more importantly, the instant I get my gun back, I’m firing some bullets right up your ass, goddammit…”

A large donut-shaped swim ring slid over like a curling stone and it carried Melly Martini Extradry who only had a game system and a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. The ring looked like it would flip over on even the smallest slope, but the smiling brown girl maintained perfect balance. This was different from the unmanned weapons that used simple circuits and no server. Just like the game system, the ring may have been directly linked to the Manhattan 000.

The blonde bob cut girl held the family game system that was probably monitoring all of Manhattan, moved freely around in the liquid-filled swim ring, wore VR goggles like a backwards baseball cap, and pulled her limbs in close as if afraid of the potatoes’ gazes.

“Sorry about the wait, Wraith. 650. Oh, would you look at that unusual pairing.”

“Running across them was not exactly reassuring, just so you know.”

“029. They’re on a different layer, so it’s fine. They couldn’t touch you even if you are at the same coordinates. Okay? Now, let’s go!”

Heivia spat on the ground and raised his middle finger, so a composite armor bull knocked over the table and crashed into him. Counting each individual wrong move he had made would be too much work, but it seemed he had just used up his last life. The serverless Bullmites’ simple circuits could apparently comprehend manners.

After leaving the sweaty men, the brown girl with her butt in the swim ring looked more able to spread her wings. And that was more than a figure of speech. Her brown arms and legs had been freed, just like a butterfly spreading its wings after leaving the hard, dry chrysalis.

…Of course, Wraith did not want to let the brown girl notice her own tension.

“Hmm. What is it, Wraith? 202.”

“Well… I was just noticing that you still haven’t lost that habit.”

“I’m only tagging my memories. 751. It doesn’t really mean anything, so just ignore it.”

Wraith had heard before that she added 3-digit numbers within her words to provide arbitrary landmarks to help her accurately recall her memories later on. The numbers could be entirely meaningless. As long as they were not too close together, repeats were fine and even gave the memory an antique feel, so there would be no unintended overwriting of the sort worried about during the Y2K problem.

As New York’s defense commander, Melly held a very important position, but her eccentricities stood out even compared to the other Martinis like Wraith, Dorothea, Alisa, Rica, Orsia, Piranirie, and Taratua.

“New York’s defense commander, huh?”

“Yes, what about it?”

(How much is she involved in all this? Did Capulet simply lend her the Manhattan 000 and its Elite for the benefit of the Information Alliance as a whole? Or has she succumbed to Capulet thanks to an abuse of active self-denial?)

Wraith was definitely suspicious, but she would gain nothing by letting her suspicions be known.

She turned a skeptical eye toward Melly whose butt was inside the swim ring and who only wore a red paper surgical gown.

“…That is quite the outfit you’re wearing. You always dress so oddly.”

“This was driven by necessity, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Plus, fashions and common sense can be easily manipulated by continuous statements on social media. After establishing the basic supporting legs of beauty and health, you can add in some charitable and economic effects as the finishing touches. 515. I could make wrapping your naked body in a ribbon this year’s biggest trend and I could create a high society where you’re shunned if you don’t finish it off with strawberries and whipped cream.”

That sounded like a joke, but no one in the Chinatown aimed their smartphones toward Melly despite how much soft skin she was showing. In fact, their attention was drawn to Wraith in her black military uniform that stood out among all the colorful casual clothes.

…But Melly herself began blushing and trembling a bit with her butt still inside the swim ring. An ominous atmosphere had set in while Wraith was not paying attention.

“…Wait.”

“Oh, excuse me. Heh…heh heh. Everyone just walks by this unusual sight without even noticing. Even though I’m showing an unthinkable amount of skin in an unthinkable location. Heh heh heh heh heh. No, I can’t record this to memory. 081, 099. Yes, yes, I really shouldn’t be. When will they notice? When will someone realize this isn’t right? Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh…”

The black-uniformed girl could only form a small triangle with her mouth and fall silent.

Finding special meaning in no one noticing that something was out of the ordinary was subtly different from a perverted old man who wandered around the late night streets with only a trench coat on. It may have been more like someone who enjoyed the borderline thrill of walking through the crowds of a packed tourist beach in nothing but bikini body paint.

…This would explain the odd tension when Heivia and the others had looked at her. Unlike the residents of Manhattan, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had not been on the receiving end of any data manipulation, so they would have seen the brown girl’s paper two-piece surgical gown without any cognitive filters in place.

“You must have a…stressful job…”

“Oh, what ever are you talking about? 121. Nnn.”

Melly stretched out her arms and legs to take a strange pose atop the swim ring, so her game system may have had bad reception in that exact location. Wraith was very worried that the crimson oil paper covering her soft skin was going to tear at any moment. Was she invincible as long as she had those cognitive filters? It may have felt something like taking a selfie, but the brown swim ring girl was constantly checking on herself with the countless floral security cameras. In accordance with the concept of cross-pollination, they were positioned so their pollen range just barely overlapped.

“435. Anyway, I never expected you to visit Manhattan like this.”

“How can you say that after you stopped reporting back as your duty requires?”

Wraith and her aide did not even glance over in the direction of the chaos caused by the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and the two of them walked down the street with the other Martini Series girl. Three of the serverless Bullmites that rubbed their bodies together followed the giant swim ring that was presumably linked to the Manhattan 000.

As far as Wraith could tell, her aide did not “count” in Melly’s eyes. She did not shrink down when his cold, mechanical eyes fell on her.

Or perhaps she viewed him as belonging to someone else.

Swim Ring Girl Melly glanced over at the composite armor bulls and spoke.

“They might seem intimidating, but this is necessary. Also, the Bullmites have air purifiers attached. 223. Try to feel at home around them.”

“That sounds smart, but it’s actually pretty foolish. There’s no point in using those outdoors…”

“You’re underestimating New York, Wraith. 090. This is a shockingly gluttonous polluted region that has the world’s greatest medical development yet can’t brag about its average lifespan.”

They left the Chinatown and continued north into SoHo. As the swim ring passed right behind a uniformed police officer writing a ticket for a car parked on the curb, the brown girl started trembling again. Wraith spoke up while glancing over at the giant window of a luxury shop selling shoes and bags.

“What do you know about Piranirie Martini Smoky? I am speculating that she was using active self-denial.”

“Ahem. Do you mean the method of breaking the Martini Series using an external source? We’re near New Caribbean Island right now and I wouldn’t have brought the Manhattan 000 all the way here if I wasn’t aware of the Ragnarok Script. 381. As New York’s defense commander, I put a stop to it across the entirety of Manhattan.”

“Ragnarok?”

“Oh? You hadn’t discovered that over-the-top name? It seems some Faith Organization rats snuck into the Information Alliance to investigate our vulnerabilities. 115. I left them alone and intercepted every last one of their transmissions to ensure I had the whole picture, but that may have been a mistake. They managed to slip away and I was too slow to react.”

“…I want to ask this directly: Are you still a functioning Martini?”

“If you ask me, Piranirie was so easily corrupted because her stopper had so little influence. 991. Unlike the other Martinis, she always found some excuse to act independently.”

The brown girl smiled and let her bare legs dangle from the donut-shaped ring like she was relaxing at home, but she also looked to a spot next to Wraith.

Melly was looking at the young man who worked as Wraith’s aide.

“I’m jealous. 544. Mine died in the operation that broke my spine.”

“You were the one that refused to accept a replacement.”

“088. Imagine it happened to you. Would you be happy if they said they could supply a replacement so easily?”

After that blunt statement, Melly realized the contradiction of her words and gently shook her head.

Just as the large swim ring she controlled with her notebook-sized game system moved out onto the crosswalk, the crosswalk light switched from red to green. She had grabbed the game system with both hands, held the two detachable controllers with her toes, and stretched out her legs in a mystery pose, so had she done something?

A large truck waiting at the light was loaded full of crouching Bullmites. They looked like illegally parked bicycles or a wireless industrial power station at a security company that could charge devices by the dozen. It was a mobile power supply truck.

The surgical gown girl trembled a bit while exposed to the crowd’s view in all directions at the middle of the large crosswalk.

“Well, I might be much the same since I distract myself from the loneliness by messing with machines. 777. That’s essentially the same as being given a replacement.”

“…”

This was no time for sentimentality.

The Manhattan 000 had left the Information Alliance home country and come here. And neither the actual Pilot Elite nor Melly Martini Extradry had a partner to act as a stopper. She had a high risk of going berserk just like Piranirie. She had just about reached the peak, but things were looking ominous. Even if she started descending the mountain out of active self-denial, no one would encourage her and tell her to continue toward the peak.

If its owner was to be believed, the swim ring moved so smoothly thanks to an artificial flagellum structure. Once it finished crossing the crosswalk, the brown girl spoke with her eyes lowered toward her game system’s screen.

“Do you suspect me of going berserk? 895.”

“If you want to clear away the suspicions of another world power using that Ragnarok Script thing to influence the Martini Series, then you at least need to remove the Manhattan 000’s Pilot Elite from their cockpit. Showing that you can do that would prove your authority and sanity.”

“290. Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

As soon as great tension filled Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s small body, the young man by her side inconspicuously altered his position. He was preparing for a response from the Bullmites that coordinated their actions by rubbing their bodies together instead of using EM signals.

But the reality far exceeded his expectations.

The entire area of land shook.

The scale was so great that understanding slipped from their minds. Wraith and the others were in Manhattan, which meant they were on top of a giant Object.

It had moved ever so slightly.

Black-uniformed and blonde Wraith shrieked and clung to the nearby young man like a small child in a safe country, but the brown girl used her notebook-sized game system to hide the smile on her lips.

She could do more than monitor.

Once Melly had composed her expression once more, she lightly waved the game system.

“Didn’t I tell you it was quite a job concentrating all of Manhattan’s functions down to this one device? Okay? I am the Martini in control of New York’s defense. That means I control ''everything'' related to Manhattan at the center. 808. Yes, and that includes ''everything'' related to the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object.”

“Are you saying…it’s you?”

Wraith stared in shock as Melly placed the game system itself on her belly, grabbed the two remote-like wireless controllers in her hands, and made some light punches without her hips behind them.

Did the controllers contain gyros, or were the movements being monitored by the floral security cameras set up everywhere based on the theory of cross-pollination that allowed multiple plants to cover each other’s pollen distribution range? The exact method was unknown, but the sound of Melly’s voice clearly changed

Wraith had not noticed at all.

Until now, the ring had been using a surround sound device to place a different sound amplitude over Melly’s voice to alter it in real time.

This was what it sounded like without that support. She oddly pronounced each syllable very distinctly for a voice that sounded more machinelike than a machine.

“''Yes, I have mastered the basics of every single strengthening program. I am #29 in the Martini Series and also the Manhattan 000’s Pilot Elite.''”

That should not have been possible.

If the Martini Series could directly manage the Information Alliance’s Objects, Wraith would not be needed to clean up after their troops lost or went berserk.

“Of course, it’s just like the Gatling 033 in that it’s assumed I’ll be working with the AI. Capulet and I eliminate each other’s errors in a symbiotic relationship. I don’t know about the Information Alliance as a whole, but within my territory of New York and inside the Manhattan 000 as an Object, I have greater authority than Capulet.”

In – other – words.

The brown girl once more passed her voice through the machine to stabilize it.

“This Object is mine and mine alone. 217. The Capulet AI Network is only borrowing it over the high-speed lines. Just like remote surgery.”

“That’s ridiculous… Aren’t you afraid of a conflict?”

Wraith was dumbfounded by this product that sounded like suicide to her.

The blonde bob cut swim ring girl responded while waving her thin game system.

“Stick VR. …I said I had built some compatible software to bypass it, right? 567. Including everything I might need is my style.”

She literally controlled everything in Manhattan.

She had become one with this pricey area of New York.

That explained why Melly could not escape her loneliness.

“But I also use Manhattan to control this assistance device I’m sitting in. Like I said, walking in earth’s gravity is pure torture because of my broken spine. 765. I really am sorry, but I must ask you not to remove my helmet.”

“…”

There was nothing to be done if she was rejecting it. Either way, Wraith could not force anything. One method of neutralizing a sturdy Object was to focus your attacks on the Pilot Elite…but she likely could not use her infighting or assassination trump cards here.

Choosing to oppose Melly Martini Extradry was the same as making a head-on attack on the Manhattan 000. Needless to say, choosing that would end with her being vaporized.

For now, she would have to solidify her position here as much as she could.

“Why did you bring the Manhattan 000 here?”

“Did you think it was all my decision? 915. Even if I wield the dual swords of Martini and Elite, I am still just an individual. There is only so much I can do. In general, everything is the result of my conversations with the Capulet AI Network. I thought it was necessary, so I lent it the Manhattan 000 as the quickest tool available. So, Wraith, the problem is the exact opposite of the one you think it is.”

Of course, if Melly had fallen into active self-denial, she would simply go along with the AI’s erroneous decisions. If the mistakes were not pointed out as mistakes, even Capulet would gradually shift off course. But something felt off, so Wraith frowned and asked about it.

“What do you mean by that…?”

“111. The Manhattan 000 has not gone berserk because of a major problem. Nor have I, the checker, been broken.”

Because it was linked with the Manhattan 000, the giant swim ring hopped up with smooth movements to carry Melly up the stone steps as she got to the crux of the issue.

“Capulet detected a large enough external problem to require bringing the Manhattan 000 onto the stage, so it made a swift request to resolve that problem. That is why I lent it this Object. 901. That seems like the most natural way of looking at this.”

“Wait a second. Are you saying…?”

“I had predicted this was about swiftly purging Piranirie after the Ragnarok Script corrupted her, but it looks like that wasn’t all it was. 501.”

This was a completely different idea.

Many things shifted around inside Wraith’s mind and the brown Martini girl asked a question while peering into her eyes.

“So I have a question. Okay? 331. What happened out here near New Caribbean Island? What kind of monster slumbers in the ocean here?”

===Part 5===

“Heivia, Heivia.”

Myonri had a good reason for sounding so nervous as she called his name.

Sit. Lie down.

The 2m composite armor bull was politely standing directly above Heivia who was collapsed face down on the ground. Even without a server, they were apparently obedient enough to attack delinquent soldiers. They really were well made.

Heivia had been entirely incapacitated and could only squeeze out the voice of a squished frog.

“…Myonri, drag me out of here before this piece of junk starts moving its hips. I wouldn’t say I’ve lived a life that lets me hold my head high in front of the Virgin Mary, but don’t you think it’s a bit much to let this machine force some bestiality onto me?”

“Um, what are we going to do now?”

Myonri may have gained the ability to automatically filter out anything that would dirty her ears too much. The other potatoes also showed no sign of providing a helping hand.

Myonri was fed up of being spied on by the trumpet or flower-like security cameras that were arranged based on the ability of cross-pollinizing flowers to cover each other’s pollen distribution range.

“Manhattan has come all the way to New Caribbean Island, but at the moment, all it has done is come here. Nor does it seem to be preparing to attack anywhere else. In that case…what are we supposed to fight against once we get our guns back?”

“What are you smiling about? Are you interested in what their ass tastes like? This is the enemy’s greatest Object! There’s no sign of the actual Elite, Capulet is putting in overtime under that crazy Martini’s control, and they’ve already used their electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon for a preemptive strike with no advance warning!!”

“So we’re just supposed to shoot the innocent people walking around here? Doesn’t that seem like the wrong target?” Myonri placed a hand on her slender chin. “It’s still unclear whether that…Miss Martini? was using Manhattan to target us in the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance maintenance fleet corrupted by Piranirie. We were the ones that infiltrated that fleet, so if they say they didn’t know about it, it would mean we were simply caught in the middle of an internal purge…”

An odd groan escaped Heivia’s mouth.

That would mean there had been no act of war in the first place and they would have no reason for a counterattack. That would make Heivia and the Legitimacy Kingdom the aggressors in attacking Manhattan and the Information Alliance.

They had done a lot to hype up how frightening the Manhattan was, but now that they were onboard, they found it was peaceful. It was true it had arrived in the ocean near New Caribbean Island, but it was not moments away from vaporizing the Legitimacy Kingdom military with its extreme firepower. It was a mystery who the Manhattan’s opponent was and where it had been targeting with that initial attack. Heivia and the others had not been handcuffed or thrown in a cell. They had been released into the city.

There was nothing they could do now.

The potatoes felt silly for getting so worked up about war.

With nothing here, that macho army had lost their reason to fight. It would have been much simpler if they had discovered a plot to wipe out the human race. Like this, it looked more like they were trying to stir up trouble in the perfectly peaceful city to start a war.

This was a fully controlled society.

People were bound by data.

Heivia had glimpsed the fear of a digital city that did not even need to separate out the criminals. Something deep in the delinquent soldier’s heart told him it was all over if he let this break him. So he desperately searched for a reason.

“I’m not going to just go along with this and have my bones buried in the Information Alliance. I have noble blood, so I have to inherit the Winchell family.”

“That’s a nice idea…but what if they say they’re contacting our embassy in preparation to hand us over safely?”

They would break.

Even if nothing of the sort was actually happening, Heivia and the others would break if that Melly girl told them that. While she dodged the issue and stalled for time, they would get used to this, lose interest, and decide this was good enough.

Anyone would be afraid.

If you were thrown out in front of such a colossal weapon and told you had to fight it if you had any complaints, anyone would be scared out of their mind. That was why Myonri and the others were clinging to this temporary peace. If they could not find a reason to continue fighting, then why fight? They wanted support for that conclusion.

But that was not good enough.

For one thing, the words of the Information Alliance could not be trusted. They had to assume those words were like disposable bullets meant to manipulate their target and devour everything of value they had.

They should have learned that lesson already.

Back on that ship’s deck when their friend had been helplessly shot to death.

“We-…”

Heivia opened his mouth to resume arguing with Myonri and the others who were about to fall for it.

But he was cut off.

It was a dull and unpleasant metallic noise a lot like a poorly-crafted bell being struck. It came from directly above Heivia who still lay pinned to the ground. It came from the side of that Bullmite. A thumb-sized hole had appeared there and sparks flew from it like a handheld firework or smoke bomb.

Except circuit boards would not spew sparks like that no matter how you damaged them.

This was clearly the work of a chemical meant to fry the circuits.

“A sniper…using armor-piercing incendiary rounds!?”

After an especially large burst of sparks from within the electronics, the entire Bullmite went limp. If it had not collapsed to the side, it might have crushed Heivia under its weight.

But Heivia did not look exactly delighted after gaining the freedom he had so desperately desired.

“Who did that…?”

He asked without thinking, but no one knew the answer. All of the few dozen Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were gathered in this same location, so none of them could have left and prepared a sniper rifle on a building roof.

But that meant nothing to the people around them.

The Asian passersby widened their eyes, held out their many phones, and produced countless electronic shutter sounds.

Heivia’s group could tell they were surrounded by killer intent.

Patrolling Bullmites appeared from around seemingly every corner, as if the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had triggered the cage of data. And the machines were clearly in a different mode than before. Even if they did not use a server, their simple circuits were apparently enough to pick up on their fellow Bullmite’s demise and work together to resolve the situation.

But they were fundamentally wrong. They mistakenly thought the soldiers had broken the rules.

This time, Heivia’s group really would be killed.

“What dumbass did that!?”

There were 700,000 public security cameras and who-knows-how-many phones and drive recorders on top of that. And yet no one could answer that fundamental question.

Who had thrown the stone?

Round 2 had begun.

===Part 6===

That free and peaceful city looked entirely different now.

The countless security cameras, which were set up according to some big theory about cross-pollination or whatever, were no help at all. They would not clear the soldiers’ names of this false accusation.

“What the hell, what the hell, what the hell hell hell!?”

Even if someone else had thrown the rock, they had to deal with the pests that erupted out of the hornet’s nest. But Heivia and the others had no weapons, so they only had one option. If they did not run away, they would die. All of them would be killed together. The Bullmite on Heivia’s back had collapsed, so he had to get up and run through the Chinatown.

“Wh-where are we supposed to run to!?” asked Myonri. “All 20,000 meters of this place is on top of an Information Alliance Object!!”

“If you really want an answer, then put your hands on your knees, stick your ass out toward them, and take the time to think! Me? I’m running!!”

After turning a corner in the Chinatown, Heivia found an ordinary gun barrel aimed his way.

“!?”

He grabbed and twisted the attacker’s wrist and slammed them back-first into the ground only to find it was a college student.

“Why does a civilian have such a big submachine gun!? Are these easier to get than the Island Nation’s Stick or Pokemamo!?”

When Heivia fired a few warning shots into the air, the passersby all crouched down and hid below tables and benches. In what seemed to be a sign of surrender, they tossed guns and cartridges out like money offerings. The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers did not have time to take them all while they fled, but in something like marathon runners at a water station, they all ended up with guns from a variety of makers.

“There is something seriously wrong with the North American market,” said Heivia. “Isn’t this more guns than on the battlefield?”

“Revolvers, shotguns, submachineguns…are these really all for self-defense?” asked Myonri. “Uwehh, there’s even some LMGs and sniper rifles…!?”

Guns was more reassuring than no guns, but the serverless and highly-coordinated Bullmites were designed to be used as shields. A machine would not die even if you shot it in the head or chest.

“Normal bullets” was not going to do the trick, so they selected lightweight weapons rather than powerful ones.

Increasing their firepower was not going to stop the Bullmites.

“Oh, honestly!!”

Heivia raised the submachinegun almost on reflex, but it was no use. He was up against machines. Threats would be useless and a stream of 9mm bullets would only be deflected by the thick armor. Given how many civilians were cowering around them, ricocheting bullets would be too great a threat.

They were not alive.

They did not fear destruction.

Did the rules really change this much when unmanned weapons were sent to the battlefield?

That was when a “silver bullet” arrived in advance of its gunshot.

The armor-piercing incendiary round could punch through the thick armor and fry the circuit boards within using great heat. After being fired down from some roof or another, the sniper bullet punched through the transformer controlling a traffic light, so a large truck drove through and targeted Heivia’s group.

Yes.

The problem was that the “silver bullets” were not just targeting the monsters.

“Watch out, dammit!! God, this is a terrible orgy!! You never know when you’re going to get a face full of squid stink!!”

The truck drove right over a concrete barrier that doubled as a flowerbed and came to a half-crushed stop just short of hitting the delinquent soldier. But he did not have time to catch his breath. The mystery sniper fired a few more shots into a nearby park, calling that area’s Bullmites toward the soldiers. Just like gathering the attention of an isolated enemy in an online game.

“That sniper is following us,” said Myonri.

“Are they jumping from building to building? Hey, if you’re not using that plastic sniper rifle, toss it here! Silencing that gloomy Peeping Tom takes top priority!!”

That said, real snipers were not like in movies. You could not just look up and see them leaning out from the building. They seemed to be running along the roofs of the buildings alongside the sidewalk Heivia’s group was running down, but it was not clear where exactly they were.

There were countless floral security cameras set up, but they were arranged with the flow of people in mind. Simply put, monitoring the populated streets came first and the sky overhead was less closely watched.

Meanwhile, another Bullmite pushed in to cut off their path.

“That isn’t going to work even if you fire at it head on!”

“That’s not what I’m doing, you idiot!! Bukkake-ing on a mech’s face isn’t my idea of fun!!”

Without even using the scope, Heivia fired a high-speed rifle bullet at the fire hydrant at the end of the road. Those animal types had little surface area in contact with the ground for their weight, so they were in trouble when they lost friction. That was obvious when nothing but four small hooves were used to control the same weight as a large motorcycle.

Myonri and the others fired more bullets as the Bullmite slipped and toppled over, but that only sent sparks flying from the armor. Not even concentrated fire on a defenseless enemy had any effect.

“What do you think about that sniper!?” asked Heivia.

“Well, I definitely don’t want to be their friend!!” replied Myonri.

“Not that. I’m just talking about their skill.”

The torrent from the fire hydrant had knocked over a window washer’s bucket of industrial detergent, so the Bullmite slipped even more than expected and could not seem to get up. When it could not move, it seemed to have difficulty using its motions to communicate with the others. Thus, the other units did not move to help it. And the potatoes were not about to stay in one place. Heivia had to click his tongue and jump right over the mass of composite armor that could not return to the fight and kept spinning around and around like a giant pinwheel firework.

“They destroyed a traffic light to send in a truck and they provoked the Bullmites into attacking. Why are they being as indirect as a literary girl with a crush? All they need to do is fire bullets straight into our heads!!”

“Um, maybe they hope to make it look like an accident?” suggested Myonri.

“They’re using armor-piercing incendiary rounds. That’s more than just repacking a used cartridge bought from a gun shop. These bullets will stand out a lot more than the used gum all over the sidewalks, so there’s no room for a conspiracy there.”

They fired occasional warning shots into the air to deter the sniper who they still had not located. Normal bullet would not work on the Bullmites who pursued them in a coordinated fashion without using a server. After making sure the sporadic gunfire had rid the area of civilians, Heivia fired his sniper rifle straight into the air.

A crane’s wire snapped and several steel beams fell from a building under construction.

“Those things can still move after a direct hit!?”

“You need at least as much firepower as a powered suit!” said Myonri. “More importantly, what were you trying to say about that sniper?”

“There’s more to sniping than just distance and wind direction. Machine assistance can make up for the scientific side of things, but the more social side of it is harder. You have to predict what your target will do and place the ballistic trajectory where they will be next. This sniper was always targeting things that are easy to predict: Bullmites that have no fear of death and a stationary transformer. For those, all you need to do is line up the crosshairs in the scope.”

Realistically, Heivia’s group was as cornered as could be.

But he proposed a bold theory all the same.

“This sniper is only an amateur virgin. They’re not confident then can satisfy us, so they’re firing on the easier mechanical targets instead.”

In that case, what was the attacker’s field of expertise?

The sniper attacks with armor-piercing incendiary rounds were a lot like extremely small-scale explosions. They were also good at figuring out how gadgets like the Bullmites worked. They ignored the preparations on both sides of the fight to throw the scene into chaos and achieve more than their skill would normally allow for.

…Come to think of it, hadn’t ''someone'' well known to Heivia nervously attempted some machine-assisted sniping to rescue the Princess in the Alaska District?

(You’re kidding, right…? I’d love it if he’s alive, but he wouldn’t make his appearance like this, would he!?)

He heard what sounded like a thick metal clasp fitting into place.

He looked back while running and his eyes bulged. At some point, the composite armor bulls had received attachments resembling backpacks or saddles. And attached to those were a light machinegun, grenades, and a small container magazine that resembled a cooler.

It was as unfair as finding the relentless zombies had started cleverly aiming guns your way.

“What the hell is this…!?”

That was when the sign for a subway station entered the corner of his vision.

It was all over if those guns opened fire across the surface street. The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers and the innocent civilians who had evacuated indoors would be caught by it. Heavy machineguns used bullets thicker than a thumb, so they could tear through glass and concrete like it was styrofoam. Heivia gestured to the other potatoes and they all ran down the stairs.

“Do you really think this will save us!?” asked Myonri.

“How should I know!? Go call tech support!! But this will at least distance us from the sniper on the roofs. And underground, the 2D map alone won’t be enough. Plus, Manhattan has turned all around with no concern for the cardinal directions, so we can only hope those things will lose track of where they are…”

War was generally a contest over who could take more lives.

Thus, they would have to change how they fought when up against lifeless unmanned weapons.

Hearing the commotion, some benevolent station workers started to come out with stun guns, but Heivia’s group aimed their real guns over to force them back while running through the chaotic ticket selling area and jumping over the ticket gate.

They heard further angry shouts and screams from behind.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Damn, did it not work!? Are they using microwaves or submillimeter waves or something!?”

“Could you please explain what this means!?” asked Myonri. “I thought the Information Alliance’s unmanned weapons were autonomous and didn’t need to access a server!”

He did not have time for that. They were dead if those things caught up.

The floral security cameras were installed here too, so the Martini would know where they were. That limited what the potatoes could do. They would be trapped if they kept running and returned to the surface through a different exit. And even if they ran to the platform, Heivia doubted they would find a train conveniently about to depart like in a drama.

“It would only be the same standard wireless LAN that can misdirect the selfie a bored housewife meant to send to the guy she’s cheating on her husband with. Could we jam it!?”

“We don’t have any equipment, you moron!! Stop asking for the impossible! And why are you so fixated on signal interference? They’ll keep coming for us even if we cut off the cameras monitoring us, right!?”

They did not even have 10 seconds to think. Even a human could run across the 100-meter structure in that time.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Anyone with a hand to spare, gather as many fire extinguishers as you can!!”

“Heivia?”

“Head down to the platform!! Hurry! It’s meaningless if they catch up!!”

The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers more jumped down the stairs than ran as they rushed to the subway platform. As expected, no train conveniently slid up to the platform. The platform was empty on both sides and the college students and housewives waiting for a train all ducked down in shock when they saw the many guns.

“What are we going to do!?” asked Myonri. “Run into the tunnel!?”

“What good is playing tag with machines in a long, straight tunnel? More importantly, give me the fire extinguishers! All of them!!”

Heivia snatched away the red metal containers and aimed the hoses at a surprising location: the track below the platform.

“Subways send the power through the bottom instead of the top.”

“What does that matter?”

“How do those bull bastards track their location and their destination while the Manhattan turns? I’m guessing they use EM waves.”

“But weren’t we told that unmanned weapons can move around while offline?”

“It doesn’t have to be on a military bandwidth. It could be signals for TV, radio, cellphones, or whatever else. EM waves are waves, so the Doppler Effect comes into play. By reading the signals flying around, they can tell how Manhattan is moving. The unmanned weapons use that as a virtual compass to track their own location. Wraith said submarines are the ideal form of an unmanned weapon, right? If they’re only passively receiving the signals, they don’t have to worry about the enemy locating them!”

Which meant…

“The Bullmites didn’t get lost while underground because the microwave and submillimeter wave broadcast signals can penetrate the thick concrete. But if we use jamming to mess with the EM Doppler, they should lose track of their location and stop moving! So let’s go with a corona discharge. The third rail is normally kept at a distance so it won’t cause any interference, but if we place an impurity nearby, that will change!”

The spraying sound was like an amplified version of a carbonated beverage.

The bubble-type fire extinguishers launched their liquid chemical beyond the platform.

A moment later, they heard a lot of noise from the stairs. The quadrupedal Bullmites with a firearm attachment came crashing down toward the platform.

Myonri and the others immediately aimed their shotguns and submachineguns that way.

Their trigger fingers remained motionless.

The Bullmites had suddenly gone limp, lost their balance on the stairs, and started rolling.

The collapsed unmanned weapons did not move again.

Myonri and the others kept their guns aimed at them for a while afterwards.

“Have they…stopped?”

“A corona discharge doesn’t make a bunch of noise like a stun gun, so it can be heard to tell anything is happening. Locating a power line was not easy since New York likes to bury everything from national secrets to broken massagers, but I figured a train’s power rail would be enough to jam the EM Doppler.”

With this electromagnetic interference, any photos sent from an amateur’s phone would not reach their recipient. That meant they did not have to worry about any “unintentional spies”. Heivia used his sniper rifles to shoot out each of the security cameras installed directly around the platform.

He was a capable boy as long as he was not up against an Object.

“Okay. We’ve finally built a blind spot, so let’s change clothes and get the hell out of here. Just like swapping cars in a parking garage or below an overpass.”

Just then, there was a deep noise and the windowless subway platform was wrapped in deep darkness.

“We truly apologize for the inconvenience. The power to this station has been cut to troubleshoot a problem. Lights, air-conditioning, communications, and other services will be brought back one at a time, so to avoid tripping, please remain in place unless a station staff member provides evacuation guidance…”

The sudden darkness was like having a video game unexpectedly switched off.

Heivia worked his imagination while listening to the unnecessary announcement and then he gave a shout

“Crap!! Cutting the power stops the corona discharge!!”

He could not see his hand in front of his face in this darkness, but he could hear several metallic sounds. Needless to say, machine eyes had a greater visual range than human ones. The power outage meant nothing to them. With no power to the subway’s third rail, the EM Doppler would recover and the Bullmites would be unstoppable.

Myonri gave a short shriek right next to him.

“Eek!?”

“Don’t fire at random!! You don’t know where the civilians are in this darkness!!”

“Then what do we do!? They effectively have night-vision goggles, so they can fire accurately!”

Their firearms were commercial products taken from random people, so they were not up to military standards and were not equipped with the various cameras and sensors those soldiers were accustomed to.

In the end, Heivia Winchell could not become Quenser Barbotage.

And a moment later, the massive machines rushed in like charging bulls.

===Part 7===

Heivia had no idea what happened in the darkness then.

To start with the result, the Bullmites did not turn them to Swiss cheese. Someone’s hands reached in from behind, covered or grabbed his mouth and dominant hand, and then pulled him away. He heard no gunshots in the meantime. This third party was not suppressing the noise and light with silencers and flash hiders. Even those would have left some sign of gunfire.

Nevertheless, the Bullmites did not pursue.

After passing through two thick metal doors, brilliant light stabbed into eyes adjusted to the dark.

His vision did not return for a while.

“When in combat mode instead of marching mode, the Bullmites choose their targets based on microwave anti-personnel radar and walking-pattern analysis instead of simple image analysis using a camera.”

Heivia heard a smooth female voice.

It belonged to the mystery person using their hands to keep him from speaking or using his dominant hand.

“Your pseudo-jamming using a corona discharge affected not just the EM Doppler but also the EM scan used for their autonomous decisions. It was a decent idea, but it seems it could not knock out the proper radar equipment.”

“Bwah!”

Heivia was finally released.

[[Image:HO_v15_209.jpg|thumb]]

As his vision gradually returned, he and the other potatoes quickly glanced around to grasp their situation. First of all, they were in a narrow stone tunnel with orange mining lights hanging down at even intervals. His mouth had been covered by someone in an Information Alliance officer’s uniform who had long silver hair and brown skin. The soldiers serving her were also from the Information Alliance.

Once his eyes adjusted, it did not seem like enough.

Below those dim lights, the beautiful brown woman with silver hair introduced herself. She had an adult face and voice that were used to smiling.

“I am Lendy Farolito. My rank is lieutenant colonel.”

“I’m not going to shake that hand which could have been holding anyone’s you-know-what. I’m sick of you Information Alliance people using us as your pawns. Besides, those Bullmites are your unmanned weapons, aren’t they?”

“If we were working with the Martini, do you really think we would be hiding in this ‘gap’? If we had control over those things, we could have removed ourselves from the list of targets in advance.”

The brown beauty named Lendy sounded exasperated, but Heivia and Myonri did not understand what this dark underground path even was.

However, there were no floral security cameras or bull-like Bullmites here. Melly Martini Extradry’s ubiquitous eyes did not exist here. That was enough for this dark subterranean path to feel far more liberating than the open city streets. …Although that may have been Heivia admitting that he was Manhattan’s enemy.

“Is this city nothing but secrets on top of more secrets…?”

“This is the Underground Railroad. …And I do not mean it is a literal railroad located underground. This is a free space modeled after the organization that secretly rescued many slaves and helped them escape to safety during the civil war of an older age. The privileged class who were sick of this surveillance society altered the construction blueprints to create this ‘gap’. It is primarily used by students of Manhattan’s Columbia University and by Wall Street brokers and lawyers who graduated from there. …Since they could dig something like this without causing any real harm, the Manhattan 000 must be built thick down into the ocean.”

“N-no matter what anyone is trying to say, it always sounds like they’re bragging about the Manhattan’s specs. I have no idea if you’ve saved us or not…”

The problem was the scale of it all.

And Lendy nodded toward dumbfounded Myonri.

“In the Information Alliance, the powerful rule the weak through information management. There is always a risk that the higher ups are well aware that we believe we have fooled them. You should assume there is no such thing as a perfect safe zone.”

They had no words in response to that.

They still could not tell what was going on, but it seemed the Information Alliance was not a monolith. There were two groups: the standard one that had sent the Bullmites to finish off Heivia’s group, and the special group that had gathered the potatoes and taken them to a surveillance blind spot.

Lendy brought a hand to her slender chin.

“We too are focused on the Manhattan 000’s actions. In this case, that means the actions of the Capulet AI Network, which even the military has stopped worrying about the hardware side of, and the Martini, who is constantly conversing with that network. We have decided someone has to apply the brakes on the entire affair. Even if the AI is correct, its decisions will eventually stray from the truth if the inspector Martini continues giving it inaccurate responses. We have an idea of how to apply the brakes, but you need more than a trump card to play a game. We needed to gather enough ‘normal cards’ to reach the point where we can play that trump card.”

“Thank you very much for ignoring everything we’ve said. You will be pleased to know that being ignored by silver-haired brown-skinned young women has a way of making me nice and hard. Also, what about that sniper? Based on what you said, the natural assumption is that you stirred up that trouble to drive us down into the subway station.”

“…That would certainly be nice.”

However, Lendy’s response was a surprise.

Heivia had expected either a yes or no answer that might be an attempt to deceive them.

“We are at as much of a loss as you are about that, so I don’t know what to tell you.”

The brown beauty shrugged.

And she said it.

“It seems some other problem has arisen even as the Information Alliance is split in two over the Manhattan 000. This appears to be a different force altogether.”

===Part 8===

The person on a high-rise building roof had also come to a stop.

They were only 70cm away from one of the floral security cameras set up based on the theory of multiple plants providing mutual pollen range coverage, but that did not matter since they were outside the visual range supplied by the trumpet or megaphone shape.

Manhattan’s limited land meant it was densely packed even for New York. The building density was even greater than Shinjuku or Hong Kong. Jumping from building to building might sound like a superhuman action, but as long as you had the guts, it was perfectly possible with average muscle strength. You just needed the mentality to treat a tightrope walk the same whether it was 1 meter off the ground or 1000 meters off the ground.

The subway station that Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had run inside had 4 entrances. The slender person had taken up a position where they could see all of them, but they finally released a quiet sigh. They left their firing stance and leaned out over the concrete edge using the semiauto sniper rifle as support. Viewing the situation on the surface was more important than that device covered in cameras and sensors.

They set their emotions aside and rationally analyzed the situation.

…The targets had apparently escaped. There may have been a “hole” somewhere.

That was when the person heard an unpleasant buzzing as if from a mosquito or fly.

The device looked like a three-sided square frame holding a giant top instead of a globe. It was similar to a gyro, but somehow different. It was a serverless unmanned drone that used coaxial rotors to fly and used its simple circuits to guide its power system.

It did not matter whether or not it was aiming any weapons the person’s way. As long as it transmitted their location, a precision-guided missile or special unit could be sent in.

But there was no concern on the person’s face.

They reached for their skinny waist, pulled some things from a too-large waist pouch, and attached them to their face: a nose, eyebrows, lips, and – just to be on the safe side this time – left and right cheeks. It looked like the Island Nation’s ''fukuwarai'' or like a joke nose and glasses.

Or it would have if they had not been acquired by stripping the raw flesh from unknown youths.

It was an utterly grotesque montage, but they could not hide their eyes that way. They dealt with that by covering their eyes with their golden bangs.

“Yay. Peace, peace.”

That must have been enough for the facial recognition to fail. The person formed peace signs with both hands and the drone landed on the roof like it had lost sight of its target. It used top-like motions to move around the slender figure a few times, but ultimately flew off into the air again.

The person’s face was covered by a cold and damp sensation similar to putting a used shirt back on, but they did not seem to mind.

They caused the existing preparations to crumble away so they could achieve results greater than should have been possible.

And to that end, they would not hesitate to do things that would have been unthinkable under the standards of clean wars.

…The facial feature they had the least of was upper lips at just 3. They had a full 8 sets of 10 fingers for fingerprints. They knew they would have to replace them frequently, but at this point, just the harbor security group did not feel like enough. They might have to head down and “resupply”.

The person had infiltrated Manhattan using essentially the same method.

Innumerable uncollected corpses from both the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been floating in the ocean around New Caribbean Island. And Faith Organization ones had joined those after the Olympia Dome incident. The person had made their preparations by collecting a random person, removing their skin, and wrapping that around their body like a costume. Then they had floated on their back as if doing the backstroke to let the ocean current carry them to Manhattan’s harbor area while disguised as a corpse.

Of course, if an actual human had seen that, they would have immediately realized something was off about the suspicious figure wearing a bloated skin, but once the person was close enough, that hardly mattered. Defeating the harbor security had been easier than slaying a dragon in a hunting video game and then it had been time for the skinning.

…The person had not expected Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers to be so concerned for their surroundings. Such a wonderfully extraordinary Object was right in front of them. And what was more important than teamwork?

If they were to crush the Information Alliance, the person really wished those soldiers had gone on an indiscriminate rampage and gathered lots of unnecessary attention.

But a failure was a failure and they would never get anywhere if they did not accept the truth. They set aside the sniper rifle covered in cameras and sensors and quickly switched to a different weapon.

This was the weapon they really wanted to use.

“Yes. Hand Axe.”

The person put back on the backpack filled with the clay-like plastic explosive and spun one of the pen-like electric fuses in their hand.

Acquiring the genuine product had not been easy given the circumstances, so they had to make sure they made it count.

===Part 9===

The Underground Railroad was a very narrow place.

Even so, Heivia and the other Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes could finally breathe a sigh of relief.

“As we explained earlier, we consider the Manhattan 000’s current state to be ‘berserk’. Capulet itself might be pure, but if the Martini meant to inspect it has given incorrect responses, it will not know whether it is right or not.”

Silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy Farolito began speaking while leading the way through the oppressive-feeling underground pathway. Turning her back on enemy soldiers and walking so that her butt wiggled below her short skirt may have been a way of showing her trust.

“Active self-denial, was it? Regardless, we cannot trust this Martini Series, so I doubt attempting to contact Melly would be of any value. It would only reveal our location to her. Meanwhile, the Pilot Elite has almost zero presence, so the Martini must control the Manhattan 000 through the process of rejecting errors as she and Capulet pit each other’s ideas against each other. If we silence Capulet ourselves, the Martini should have trouble controlling the Manhattan 000 on her own.”

“You aren’t telling us to break this giant island in half like a cookie, are you? Or are we supposed to sneak deep inside the Object and kill the Elite? We’re not a toy hidden in some old lady’s dresser drawer.”

“Our plan is not that reckless.”

After the pathway took countless right-angle turns, they finally entered an open space.

It seemed about the size of a city pool. A few dozen people in black uniforms different from Heivia and Myonri’s military uniforms were seated on the floor with their backs against the wall. It was unclear how they had gotten them in here, but a few bulletproof off-road vehicles were parked inside.

Lendy took some paper bags from her black-uniformed subordinates(?) and passed them around to Heivia’s group.

“What are these?”

“Some New York specialties.”

“…They aren’t more guns, are they?”

“I don’t even want to think about what kind of misconceptions you have about New York.”

The brown beauty sounded exasperated as she pulled out things like banana smoothies and salmon bagels that were practically salads. They were colored a toxic blue. There were even some pink cupcakes to fill the dessert category. It was all very Information Alliance-like. The lineup was clearly designed to look good on social media.

When she saw the skeptical looks on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes’ faces, Lendy took a bite of a bagel herself. Convinced they were not poisoned, Heivia, Myonri, and the others finally accepted the food they had been distributed.

“Dammit, why does food from the enemy have to be so tasty and healthy?”

“If they didn’t grow so reliant on doctors and end up marinated in different drugs, they might be unbeatable.”

Everyone’s focus gathered on Lendy who led the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes toward one of the off-road vehicles. She knocked lightly on the rear door’s smoked glass and spoke.

“We have gathered some usable personnel. Although it seems one of them is missing.”

“…Is that so? Oh ho ho.”

“Wait…” said Heivia with a frown.

He could not see her and he only had the voice through the intercom to go on. It was possible the vehicle itself was empty and the voice was being sent over the internet from somewhere else entirely.

Still, the delinquent soldier spoke up after removing the banana smoothie straw from his mouth.

“Is that the Rush’s Elite…?”

“The Gatling 033, you mean.” Lendy must have been particular about information because she corrected him. “This girl’s Object contains the Juliet System for testing. The truth is, the Information Alliance’s Capulet AI Network is an expanded version of Juliet which is closely related to the Gatling 033, or the Rush as you know it. Of course, Capulet has also been connected to the Montague General Database developed from the Romeo collection of big data.”

“Capulet and Montague. Shakespeare’s two major families?”

“Yes, but they are no more than project names. Whether there is really a one-to-one relationship between the machines is still a major question. Everyone claims to be an expert, but it’s possible no one actually knows what Capulet truly looks like,” noted silver-haired and brown-skinned Lendy. “By the way, the research team forced to develop them thought that only tragedy would result from connecting the two to form a single giant system. Regardless, Juliet and Capulet belong to the same family, so they are compatible. Thus, this girl can intervene if she gives it her all. The Martini Series seems to use its thousands of members to divide up the work so each one only converses with a section of the Information Alliance, but this girl can converse with the entirety of the AI network on her own. It feels exactly the same as the control system she is familiar with, so she should be able to work with the entire giant Capulet AI Network.”

Lendy breathed a gentle sigh.

“For now, we will sever the connection between Capulet and the Manhattan 000. It is unclear how involved the Martini in charge of New York’s defense is, but I doubt she can fully control such a large piece of hardware without Capulet’s support.”

“So it’s like a young wife who is a good cook but is helpless when the power goes out and she can’t use all her electronic kitchen gadgets?”

“It may be closer to having the recipe site she relies on shut down. If we can safely stop the Manhattan 000, it should bring a stop to the chaos starting to spread around the world.”

“If that was true, you wouldn’t be curled up like a hair in this dark underground blind spot. What are you plotting, you damn Information Alliance schemers?”

“There have been issues…”

This time, Lendy Farolito sighed with a truly troubled look on her face.

“The Manhattan 000 revealed itself to be the world’s largest Object, but it began as a section of New York that anyone could enter. Thus, it is hardly surprising to find safe country civilians here.”

“And?”

“…Around the time the Manhattan 000 revealed itself, this girl’s father disappeared.”

Lendy turned back toward Heivia’s group who were wholly focused on stuffing their mouths with bagels and she leaned back against the side of the bulletproof off-road vehicle.

The voices outside could not pass through the thick door without using the intercom.

“We have searched the best we could, but there is only so much we can do. We have yet to locate him, so her condition could hardly be worse. And our military doctor and battlefield counselor have agreed with that assessment. She could not produce her normal results if she made the attack now.”

“…”

That might sound silly for the military where everything was fully controlled by rules and regulations, but psychological condition was one of the factors used when selecting soldiers for special operations like snipers or the bomb squad. And that was all the more true for a Pilot Elite where a single individual was in charge of so much more.

“That girl is so fond of her father Royce that, no matter how hard her schedule must be as both an idol and an Elite, all it ever takes is a single morning call from him for her to get out of bed.”

Lendy narrowed her eyes a bit and shook her head.

“Anyway, forcing her will not give us the result we want. We have to start by collecting her father somehow or another. And he of course must be collected safely.”

“That’s a nice tear-jerking story, but it’s not making my you-know-what any harder. You want us to search for a single person in the densely-packed skyscrapers of Manhattan? Including the visitors, aren’t there 10 million people in Manhattan?”

“We have a general idea. I said we had searched as much as we could, didn’t I?” Lendy breathed a heavy sigh. “When all this began, contact with her father was lost at northern Central Park. There was ''some'' chaos when the Manhattan 000 activated. Not enough to cause injuries, but the people at work or sightseeing for the day were stranded with nowhere to spend the night, so the hotels and other lodging facilities have been overwhelmed. It seems some large public facilities have been opened for people to temporarily stay, free of charge.”

Lendy raised a hand and one black uniform tossed her a notebook-sized tablet. All unnecessary transmissions had of course been switched off.

“This is a photo of Mr. Royce. The very first thing we tried was his cellphone. We could not reach it or its location information. I seriously doubt a journalist like him would shut off his phone in a situation like this, so a third party has probably confiscated it.”

“And I guess that could be more than just a Martini Series plot. A thug would probably see a middle-aged man’s smartphone as a source of quick cash. You can find people taking advantage of chaos anywhere.”

“That does not change the top suspect, though.”

This female commander spoke in a polite but cold way that was different from Frolaytia.

“Since it is not possible to directly contact Mr. Royce, we must follow the manual and predict the flow of people. Past Central Park is Uptown. One landmark of Morningside Heights to the northwest is Columbia University, an Ivy League school. All of the stranded people in that area would have been brought there.”

“So we have to drag the Elite’s father from there for an emotional reunion?”

“Yes. The northern end of Central Park borders Harlem, but the public order is not exactly perfect in some areas. It is highly unlikely that a large group of outsiders unfamiliar with the local rules would have gone there. If that girl’s father is safe, he would probably have gone to the university in Morningside Heights along with the others.”

“Unlikely and probably, huh? …You’re telling us to risk our lives on something vaguer than a young boy’s image of a woman’s crotch?”

“We searched as much as we could. …This Underground Railroad is not enough to build a route directly there. The only option is to step out onto the dangerous surface and forcibly fight our way through Manhattan’s streets while the Capulet AI Network and Martini Series know where we are.”

Heivia’s group had already fought and fled from those unmanned weapons, so they understood the gravity of that statement.

Plus…

“As I said, there is also an unpredictable third party on the Manhattan 000. You should know that after they used a sniper rifle and armor-piercing incendiary rounds to send the Bullmites after you. We have no way of managing the risks en route.”

===Part 10===

It was a strange feeling.

“Nn…”

Oh Ho Ho tilted her head and its gorgeous ringlet curls while removing her clothes within the black vehicle. She was changing out of her casual clothing for walking around the city and into her skintight special suit for Object piloting, but there were a large number of eyes directed her way with only a single pane of glass between them.

That said, it was smoked glass, so even though she could see them, they would be unable to see her. She knew that, but she still felt their nonexistent gazes prickling her soft skin as she bared it.

They couldn’t actually see her, could they?

They weren’t just pretending not to see even though they could, were they?

“It’s the same dynamic in miniature.”

The information traveled only one way. The powerful had the weak’s information, but the weak did not even imagine the powerful were spying on them. That was the essence of the Information Alliance. In this case, was Oh Ho Ho watching the group through the smoked glass, or was the group pretending that was the case while they watched her? Only a higher authority who could view this from a higher perspective could make that judgment. And that authority would be monitored by someone higher still. It continued on and on like that.

It was all so absurd.

Normally, knowing it was smoked glass would settle the issue. The slender girl sighed, removed her surprisingly childish underwear (which might surprise her fans if they saw it) and then put on the special suit designed just for her. Some Pilot Elites wore underwear and others did not, but Oh Ho Ho wore her special suit over an otherwise nude body. The decision often came down to the role the suit played and how the Elite viewed it. Oh Ho Ho saw it as a swimsuit rather than outerwear or underwear, so it felt odd to her to wear underwear below it.

“There we go.”

After pulling it up to her neck, the girl finished putting on the special suit. However, every one of Oh Ho Ho’s bodylines showed through, down to each and every rib.

Juliet and Capulet.

The two control systems were compatible thanks to their development history.

(It’s annoying that the Gatling 033 itself isn’t getting any focus, but I can live with that. No one is more suited to this task than me.)

If the Legitimacy Kingdom was involved in this, would that boy make an appearance?

There were not many of them, but it was still a few dozen. She was not sure of exactly who was there.

And she could not deny that she did hope that he was one of them.

“Oh ho ho. I am the star today. I am the heroine in the spotlight!”

===Part 11===

“Tell me if you get tired. I’m freed from the earth’s gravity, so I can’t tell when we’ve been walking too much. 636. It was for times like this that I expanded the number of unmanned taxis and had New York’s subway cleaned up a fair bit.”

“…Are you planning to bring that ring on a taxi or train?”

“That…might be a good idea. 984. The driver or station attendant helping me in would be watching as my toes wiggled. Would that break the spell over them? They might realize it isn’t normal. Heh heh heh heh heh.”

That had been a mistake. One careless statement had brought out the perversion that was usually masked by the girl’s calm mood. It was scary that she was also an Elite.

While the Martini monsters named Wraith and Melly discussed matters, they entered Central Park.

Manhattan was normally lined with towering skyscrapers, but a rectangular area had been cut out of the city for a giant green park nearly 4 kilometers long.

Except there was no sign of that anymore.

A slit had opened in the center of the ground and then the park opened upwards like double doors. And a giant diagonal tower stuck out from that massive rectangular hole. Two barrels of different sizes were stacked on top of each other like an assault rifle with a grenade launcher attached below.

The black-uniformed girl grimly narrowed her eyes.

“The electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon.”

“Really conspicuous, isn’t it? 439. The Manhattan 000 actually has 44 different main cannon systems, but everyone focused on this one. It’s like they don’t even try to imagine what’s hidden behind that bright backlight.”

The desire for this Object to be a one-trick pony may have narrowed people’s vision.

With her game system directly linked to the Manhattan 000, Melly moved the large ring her butt sank inside of to carry her alongside Central Park and the giant opening within. Uptown, Upper East Side, Madison Avenue. This area had a high density of floral security cameras and every bag or piece of children’s clothing sold there was as expensive as a piece of art. The brown girl must have been somehow stimulated by this luxurious atmosphere because she desperately pursed her lips and trembled within her two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. With Central Park rising up with rows of buildings on either side, there was no sunlight. There was a pond and a museum clinging to the side of that “wall”, so it had to look like a surreal outdoor art exhibit.

Either she wanted to fiddle with something or she just liked how it felt in her hands because Melly rubbed her thumbs against the analog sticks on either side of the game system.

“Right, right. That’s right, Wraith. I wanted to ask you something since you’ve been all over the world. 948. Do you know a journalist named Royce?”

“What about them?”

“095. I’ve collected them.”

“…You’re attacking the press now? That is the lowest form of information warfare.”

“The press…! Yes, yes, that has such a wonderful ring to it. 707. It has such a formally dangerous sound so different from having your secrets revealed on the internet. Eh heh heh heh heh.”

She must have been leaving the calculations to the extraordinary Object because the ring hopped up lightly along with the paper surgical gown girl inside. Wraith watched with cold eyes.

It did not matter that the AI network, that’s hardware could be located anywhere, was functioning properly if its observer was broken.

Wraith recalled the method of breaking the Martini Series that Piranirie had mentioned. Melly was an old acquaintance, but she felt an eerie pressure from the very existence of the Ragnarok Script that had driven Piranirie mad with active self-denial. If Wraith was asked if she could place her full trust in this girl, she would have difficulty nodding.

After all, she could not even trust herself.

“Anyway, I didn’t mean to do this. He had the misfortune of being on the seam when Central Park opened. 779. To be blunt, he fell down into the classified zone…the main cannon’s storage space. He landed on a catwalk, so it wasn’t a long drop, though.”

“…”

Seeing Wraith’s indescribably uncertain expression, Melly gently sighed in just her two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper. As if to say she had felt the exact same way. After breathing a heated breath on her game screen, she lightly rubbed the screen on the oil paper covering her chest and showed Wraith the screen of that game system that was like the evolved form of a tablet.

“This is the bearded man in question. 153. To be honest, he’s not my type. Although having your secrets revealed by someone who isn’t your type might be a decent situation…”

“Keep this up and I really will hate you.”

The screen seemed to display a video file.

An ordinary middle-aged man was looking around anxiously. He looked like the kind of person who cared for his family so much he forgot to look after his own life. He probably worked hard, paid his taxes, used up his bonus and paid leave over the holidays prepared by the higher ups, and got caught in traffic.

“Please let me contact my family. I beg you. I am a journalist, so I understand how your rules work to an extent. I will keep your secrets. I will not tell anyone about this. You can monitor my every move if you wish. Just let me tell that girl that I am safe. This isn’t like those online journalists who pursued the legends banned by the Faith Organization. None of this is necessary here. Please, meeting in Central Park was that girl’s idea. If I remain missing, she might blame herself. Since I am perfectly safe, there is no reason for her to harm herself like that, is there? Just let me fulfill my duty as her father.”

Of course, those Information Alliance geniuses were not emotional enough fools to judge someone based on their appearance alone. Detailed data on his breathing, pulse, perspiration, eye movement, and facial muscle movement was provided with the footage.

After reading the data, Wraith could only respond with a quiet look.

“…Well, this is troubling. He’s nothing more than a good person. Even if this is a stressful situation, 220 is high for the top blood pressure number. I’m worried about his bad cholesterol.”

They also looked through his past educational and employment history, his bank account data, his search history, his online purchase history, and his statements on social media and message boards, but it all came up clean. In fact, it was so clean that they wondered if this was an alternate account for living a double life.

“This was bad luck for everyone involved. If he was a wolf in sheep’s clothing and I had even one reason to abandon him, I was planning to detain him or shoot him, but I have to save such an honest person. 600. I’m going to release him and send him to one of the shelters. The military exists to protect the people, after all.”

The brown girl breathed a heavy sigh as she explained that.

…At first glance, she seemed to be a normal and sensible person (if you ignored certain unusual proclivities), but she was the Martini in charge of New York’s defense as well as the Pilot Elite. That meant she was the culprit who had fired the electromagnetically-launched reactor cannon on an Information Alliance maintenance fleet. There was also the Ragnarok Script. Active self-denial could be steering her full speed away from the safe choice. Making a hasty decision would be dangerous.

During the fight against Piranirie, it was revealed that Capulet could not “see” New York because its residents hated the surveillance cameras and email spying. The AI itself was pure, but if the Martini Series meant to check on it had gone insane, there was a fear that Capulet would lose its accuracy.

Wraith rationally observed the girl and hid her rational mindset with an indifferent smile.

“Is there some kind of problem with postponing a decision on this mere evacuee?”

“It looks like he’s going to die of an ulcer or helicobacter pylori before I got around to it. But if you don’t know him, I guess we’ll have to rely on the family member Mr. Royce keeps talking about. 657.”

“His daughter, huh? Is she in Manhattan?”

“100. Yes, fortunately for his stress levels. And this might surprise you. Okay? To use an Island Nation idiom, it’s like a kite giving birth to a hawk.”

“?”

“She’s the Pilot Elite of the Second Generation Gatling 033. 710.”

“…The Juliet’s?”

Wraith’s voice dropped in tone.

Melly nodded and narrowed her eyes with her butt inside the large ring.

“The one that shared Capulet’s development history. They were working on an AI network from a different angle than our Martini Series. This man is an indisputably good person and he’s connected to a VIP. I have no excuse to continue holding him in protective custody. 890. Even if this was an unfortunate accident, it will cause a lot of trouble.”

===Part 12===

“…Ohh?”

===Part 13===

The Underground Railroad seemed to weave through the gaps in Manhattan’s structure, but it only went so far.

Heivia Winchell groaned next to a metal shutter thick enough to be a submarine door.

“This is the worst, dammit. Couldn’t I go jerk off, take a nap, and wake up to find peace has come to the world?”

Silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy Farolito responded with no movement of her emotions.

“If one of the four major powers is completely broken, the entire planet will plummet into an uncontrollable war. You need to give up on the idea of being able to escape.”

A mixture of several deep metallic noises approached. While pressed up against the wall next to the door, Heivia and Myonri looked puzzled and turned toward the source of the noise just in time to see the approach of a nice body with G-cups and long hair worn in gorgeous ringlet curls.

[[Image:HO_v15_235.png|thumb]]

It was the Information Alliance Pilot Elite and top idol. However…

“She’s huge. Isn’t she just way, way too big!? Sh-she’s gotta be like four meters or something! She could probably make a slam dunk while just standing there!!”

“Oh ho ho. This is technically classified as a powered suit.”

“Powered…”

Myonri was shocked into silence, so silver-haired, brown-skinned Lendy explained.

“It is an impractical concept machine that was displayed at an Information Alliance robot show. There is almost no good use for it, but we receive maintenance and inspection funding just by having it sleeping in storage, so it is a profitable treasure for our unit.”

Its history involved some unbelievable grownup issues.

“Wh-what are those huge things it’s holding like double handguns?” asked Myonri. “They look more like exposed lab equipment than weapons.”

“Those are rapid-fire beam cannons meant to be carried by truck and fixed to a turret. They were originally meant for assassinations on the surface or in the air. I believe they were developed to vaporize VIP planes and armored cars that are using routes that avoid the Object and all its laser beams. Although they are apparently quite underpowered as they have no reactor to power them.”

“Hyehh. Is it supposed to be mimicking the Rush?”

“What do the weapons matter?” complained Heivia. “That huge thing could break through a tank’s hatch with nothing more than its fists…”

The sense of scale was way off, but the proportions were exactly those of the human G-cup idol. Whatever the actual bust size was, when you looked at it proportionally, the G-cups were still G-cups! And perhaps due to how it was maintained, it gave off a floral scent similar to shampoo or conditioner. It seemed idols really did smell of soap rather than perfume.

And when the 4m G-cups stood next to Heivia’s less than 2 meters, he could not help but have a low angle. He slapped his hand against the fake butt.

“Oh, ohh. Now this is a weird feeling. The fact that it’s soft is actually creepy. I feel a pressure coming from this ass. I’m afraid I’ll be buried alive…”

“The first time I can write off as an accident, but the second time will be considered intentional and I will kick. Oh ho ho. Just like a thoroughbred.”

This was no time to be focused on an enemy idol. He could not stop his balls from shriveling up in fear. After all, this would be more than an impact from dual-wielded steel construction beams. Those cutting-edge weapons were meant to be carried by truck and fixed to the ground with stakes, yet she was holding one in each hand. If that solid grip grabbed his balls, it would be the end of the world.

Myonri was also overwhelmed by rapid-fire beam cannons that looked like reinforced glass lab equipment forcibly covered with composite armor.

“Th-those aren’t exactly disguised. I thought you had to hide your actions from the main Information Alliance group here.”

“The best place to hide a tree is a forest. Melly’s side is skilled at gathering information, so we just have to use that against them. Look at this. Glance.”

“Made in…Nau Yoke?”

“That’s not even close to spelled right. And it has a price tag for $199.99! There’s no way truck-loaded weapons would be that cheap! What, are they like a used car that’s cursed to kill each of its owners in an accident!?”

No one would think those were real now. Heivia had trouble believing the way the Information Alliance did things.

“I-I guess it’s all about making them realistic, huh? Well, I don’t care. Just give me some Information Alliance VR goggles. I’ll shut myself in my own world and stroke my you-know-what, so go save the world without me.”

Whatever the case, if he hopped in a rowboat and left Manhattan, he would be vaporized by one of countless cannons the instant he was far enough away. Heivia, Myonri, and the rest of the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes had to solve the Manhattan problem if they were to return alive.

“I don’t know or care what hand signs and footwork the Information Alliance uses. We’ll do things our own way, so try not to trip us up.”

“As long as you act as a shield or a diversion, I do not particularly care.”

“Okay, I get it. You can shut up now, plump commander. C’mon, let’s get onboard, Myonri.”

They could not seem to work together in the slightest.

Without even a basic three-count, the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance began moving independently.

The 30m, 12ton yellow school bus loaded with the potatoes broke through the thick metal shutter like it was wet paper.

The bright sunlight briefly blinded Heivia and the others as it stabbed into their darkness-adjusted eyes.

They were in Midtown West, Midtown.

“Oh, geez. Here we are on Broadway!!”

“I wish we could’ve seen it at night.”

Electronic signs and giant monitors surrounded a road as large as a runway. World-class theatres lined either side of the street. Needless to say, this was the pinnacle of the theatrical and film world. The flower or trumpet-like security cameras had detected their presence. Many eyes gathered on them. Heivia felt a definite pressure, like the air had solidified. Tires screeched as the giant vehicles were forced around. The three school busses knocked the poor civilian cars out of the way lightly enough to not kill anyone and finally arrived on Manhattan’s largest main street.

Lendy whispered quietly aboard the same large vehicle.

“We’ve been spotted.”

“Those Bullmites are looking pretty adorable now. We’re the big-ass mama who protects the kids on the way home from school!!”

Several boulder-like masses sat in the middle of the intersection. They were the composite armor bulls sitting with their four legs folded up below them. Those serverless unmanned weapons would use flexible actions with just their simple circuits. They would probably function as an immovable barrier in a head-on collision from a normal off-road vehicle, but the yellow school busses rode over them and crushed them instead of knocking them out of the way. Heivia’s group briefly left gravity’s grasp and passed through the intersection with a dreadful impact.

“Passing the Bullmites will increase the alert level. Keep an eye on the sky.”

“Then it’s about time we brought out the trick hidden up our sleeve. Let’s go, Myonri!”

Just then, a giant shadow appeared overhead. What was it? The silhouette resembled a broad, double-edged sword and it seemed to be loaded with a rocket engine. It even opened something like a square umbrella to make sure it did not overshoot them.

It did not feel remotely real to the potatoes, so Lendy shouted in their place.

“That’s a Smart Meteor. It’s an unmanned urban aerial bombing aircraft! Watch out!!”

Did it too coordinate using on-site decisions like a bee or ant? Including visitors, Manhattan had 10 million people walking around, but it did not matter that they were at Times Square, the most densely populated area there. The belly of the broad double-edge sword body opened and a precision-guided bomb was released high in the sky. That bomb used GPS and the movements of its tail fins to achieve a margin of error of only 30cm.

A moment later, an explosive was used to slice open the yellow school bus’s rear end from within. And like a sword being drawn from its scabbard, a smaller (but still large) truck slid out of the speeding school bus and onto the road.

The school bus was forcefully blown away and the flaming mass collapsed on its side and rolled away, but the large truck carrying the potatoes easily avoided the wreckage it had shed like a snake’s skin.

“Self-driving scares the hell out of me! You can just do it all with a smartphone, can’t you!?”

“It’s a good thing Dorothea’s plan using tanks was ended sooner rather than later.”

By this time, were the people of Manhattan panicking?

Or did they think a movie was being filmed?

Heivia and the others followed Broadway to leave Midtown West and entered the Upper West Side directly alongside Central Park.

They wanted to say something about the colossal cannon, but they did not have the time with their life being targeted from above in real time.

“The next one is coming.”

“Myonri! The next layer! These New Yorkers are connoisseurs, so a garter belt won’t be enough to turn them on!!”

The large truck had no one in the driver’s seat and the door on the back burst open to allow several bulletproof black off-road vehicles out. With each decoy, they were using up their extra lives and their armor was growing thinner, but it also made them lighter and nimbler.

They were in the nest. Even without a server, these unmanned weapons could coordinate using the social structure of ants or bees, so trying to eliminate the threat by destroying every single one would be a never-ending task.

They had to think up a way to continue forward without defeating them.

“The next is the last one!”

“The fun really begins once we’re buck naked.”

The luggage-loading door sprang up on the back of their bulletproof off-road vehicle and Heivia and Myonri burst out onto the road riding light off-road motorcycles.

This time, they had no armor whatsoever.

The wind seemed to slice into their flesh.

But it was also true that development of self-driving motorcycles was taking longer than with cars. That eliminated the worry of having them hijacked by a surprise cyber-attack.

“What?” asked Heivia. “There’s something other than the Bullmites. What’s that collapsible umbrella monster thing!?”

“That interpretation is not entirely wrong,” said Lendy over the radio. “It is a Gunner Bat. When folded up, it is no larger than a relay baton and it is an offshoot of portable grenade launcher design. When you throw it, the wings automatically open, it flies autonomously, and an external terminal is used to guide it over the enemy’s head where it can fire up to three explosives when instructed. Its accuracy is below average, but it can scatter more generalized damage when loaded with white phosphorous grenades or the like. It is a support weapon that uses a quantity over quality philosophy to force enemy soldiers out from behind cover with explosions and smoke.”

Heivia remembered the self-rolling grenades that Wraith had used on the Olympia Dome. Even without a server, their simple circuits could take the optimal action by mimicking the movements of insects. These were Information Alliance unmanned weapons. That electronic equipment filled Heivia with self-pity for using those pineapple-shaped explosives that required him to pull the pin and throw it like a rock. …On the other hand, these weapons would probably be vulnerable to an EMP or microwave attack.

“White phosphorous in a densely-populated area? What is wrong with them? Nothing about that makes me happy. …And what is that giant top!?”

“That is a Multi-Gyro. It is a reconnaissance drone that can travel through the air or on the ground. It has no obvious weapons, but it is loaded with a stun bomb. Get within 3 meters of it and it will scatter an 800,000-volt current. Since it does not need to access a server, it can do so without any adverse effects on itself. Not only is it harmful to human bodies, but it could easily cause a vehicle’s electronics to malfunction.”

Heivia felt his balls shriveling up as he had it calmly explained to him. And before any of those issues, if he passed out while straddling a motorcycle, he would be killed instantly.

The unmanned weapon had no tires or treads, but it still attempted to tackle the off-road motorcycle with nothing more than top-like spinning. Heivia focused on that while also desperately trying to think.

Even if Manhattan was an extraordinarily large Object, it was still only one borough of the giant city of New York. The distance from Times Square, where they exited the Underground Railroad, to Columbia University was about 10 kilometers at most. While ignoring all traffic laws and flooring it, they could travel that distance in less than 5 minutes.

“Columbia University is being used to house civilians, so it has been designated a noncombat area,” said Lendy over the radio. “Reaching our destination ASAP should be the safest plan.”

“More importantly, what happened with that Oh Ho Ho!? Did you develop a bike big enough for that fat suit and its huge ass!?”

“It is not fat, nor does it have a huge ass! Ho…ho ho…oh ho ho ho ho ho!! You need to look at the overall proportions. It has the perfect golden ratio, does it not!?”

“Besides, you are not authorized for that information,” added Lendy. “It can be easy to forget, but that girl’s very presence is a secret our unit must protect.”

By the time they heard Oh Ho Ho’s shouting and Lendy Farolito’s calm voice over their earpieces, Heivia, Myonri, and the others on the off-road motorcycles had entered the university campus.

Heivia clenched his teeth when a bomb fell just barely outside the campus. Those serverless simple circuits had done it.

“Ochre, Nex…!!”

“Keep your balance! Do you want to fall over and end up as mincemeat!?”

Myonri shouted directly at him while driving right alongside him. She had to have noticed the allies behind them had been blown away, but they could not use recovery magic that brought back the dead.

The Smart Meteor had been opening its square umbrella to adjust its speed and keep its broad double-edged sword shape overhead at all times, but it veered away so as not to enter the university campus. Heivia saw that as he rode his off-road motorcycle full-speed along the well-maintained lawn, but…

“!?”

He felt a sudden impact.

His off-road motorcycle’s front wheel was crushed like a cake dropped on the ground.

(A Bullmite…!?)

He did not have time to gasp.

He was thrown into the air, so he curled up and rolled across the lawn to reduce the impact. Meanwhile, the mass of composite armor planted its four legs on the lawn to accurately target him once more. The serverless bull used just its simple circuits to teach itself, so it began running in order to smash that soft human body.

Unmanned weapons did not fear death.

He could fire hundreds of 9mm bullets straight at it, but he would not stop it.

“!?”

Without bothering to get up, Heivia aimed his submachinegun (that he had swiped from a Manhattan resident). It was mostly just a reflex, like covering your face when a ball was thrown at it. His rational mind was screaming that firing would be useless.

He had to rethink this.

With all the unmanned weapons, this battle’s rules were different.

(Throw out the fundamentals. Work your mind to survive. Preserving your gun and ammo is useless if you’re turned to mincemeat. What would that bastard do at times like this?)

“Nwohhhhhhhhh!!”

He shook that from his mind with a bizarre yell.

As the mass of composite armor approached, he removed the submachine gun, grabbed the shoulder strap, and swung it like a caveman. He restrained his fear, stared straight ahead, and threw his precious gun toward the Bullmite’s forelegs like a cowboy’s lasso. This was only an option if he threw out the fundamental idea that a soldier’s gun was their lifeline on the battlefield.

The bulls used in bullfighting had outstanding speed and weight, but unlike an elegant horse, they lacked the strength to clear hurdles and other obstacles. The Bullmite could not avoid the submachinegun that spun at higher than knee height. It was over quickly once the firearm struck the forelegs.

The sling belt tangled around the mechanical legs and the heavy mass sank forward like a table with one of its four legs broken.

Its own speed and weight worked against it and it was incapacitated in no time at all. It plowed toward Heivia with the force of a rolling boulder.

“Watch out!!”

The delinquent soldier still could not get up, but he somehow managed to dodge by rolling to the side. If the Bullmite had had all fours legs on the ground, it would have made an adjustment even a millimeter before contact to pursue him.

(This is awful. I feel like I’m being forced to kiss the contents of my own balled-up tissue…)

Had he done it?

It was just like a traffic accident. Humans were not strong enough to destroy a gigantic truck, but if they caused an accident, the truck would reduce itself to a mangled mess. He had lost his precious submachinegun, so he hoped for that level of results. However…

“…Damn,” he groaned.

A straight line had been gouged into the lawn, but the mass of composite armor stood back up at the end of it. The four mechanical legs stood firm on the ground in order to crush that inefficient mass of muscle.

There was really nothing he could do this time.

(What do I do!? Do I use my boot laces next!? Or remove my belt and swing my prized you-know-what around!?)

But just then, something changed.

With a sizzling sound like water on a hot grill, a giant, half-melted top flew in from elsewhere. It seemed to be a Multi-Gyro falling apart in midair. The stun bomb inside it must have malfunctioned because it scattered an 800,000-volt current that fried the Bullmite’s electronics. It no longer mattered that it was a serverless machine that ran on the insect colony theory.

“Owaaaaah!?”

It was more like a rapid series of narrow lights than a single stream of water from a fire truck. The destroyed target had fist-sized chunks torn from its armor, the number of holes grew, and the entire thing melted and was blown away in no time. It was an even worse version of Swiss cheese. Heivia wanted to avoid dying like that at all costs.

The attacks were rapid-fire beams.

Unlike the lasers which had become synonymous with anti-air weaponry, these were visible, but that actually helped them stimulate fear. Heivia doubted this was simply meant as assistance. When the orange spray of melted armor passed right by his face, he frantically got down.

The 4-meter nice body that was “made in Nau Yoke” had arrived later than the off-road motorcycles. The boobs jiggled perfectly in sync with its pace, so it was clearly a crystallization of the designer’s blood and tears.

“Oh ho ho. Make sure to thank your lucky stars and the goddess of victory.”

Heivia sounded annoyed as he looked at those weapons that looked like reinforced glass lab equipment forcibly covered with armor.

“A powered suit with prototype assassination beam weapons? It always comes down to tech, doesn’t it?”

“Of course it does. What do you think war is?”

He had only survived by working up a sweat and rolling through the mud, but she had cleaned it all up by wielding those giant rapid-fire beam cannons like an action star with dual pistols. And with her extra-large boobs jiggling all the while. It was clear she lived in a different world since she could take her time and arrive late while the unmanned weapons targeted her from the air in the Manhattan streets.

Myonri made a shocked comment after making a U-turn and returning on her off-road motorcycle despite the danger. …Except she may not have been motivated by the power of friendship. She may have simply been afraid of being hit by a stray shot of that futuristic beam weapon that was scattering its shots chaotically around.

“I thought Columbia University’s campus was a noncombat area!”

The ubiquitous floral security cameras remained silent. They would not disprove false charges and they ignored their own side’s rule violations, so their quality could not have been worse. Were they only good for peeping on highly-educated college girls?

“No, wait. I recognize these scratches,” groaned Heivia as he looked at the Bullmite that had flipped over like a dead bug. “This is one of the ones that rushed at us in Chinatown. This is definitely the same scratches. You can’t fool my clever eyes.”

The 4-meter ringlet curls girl tilted her head while firing her rapid-fire beam cannons at the Bullmites and Multi-Gyros that attempted to approach. Those dual cannons were devastating in an open area with no hills.

“I am not sure what you mean.”

“That can happen, can it? …Getting the Information Alliance to admit that feels like victory to me.”

The Chinatown in Downtown was the opposite direction from Columbia University in Uptown. Since Manhattan was full of these unmanned weapons, it was not logical for the same one to have come all this way.

That meant it was possible someone had brought it here.

That meant the Martini who was suspected of falling into active self-denial just like Piranirie. That brown girl with her butt inside a large swim ring.

And…

“Myonri. And the idol too. Keep your fingers on the trigger.”

“Eh?”

In place of his ruined submachinegun, Heivia reached for his hip and drew a handgun capable of firing the same bullets. Wealthy Manhattan was overrun with such things.

He would not have trouble killing someone.

“She’s coming. Wraith Martini Vermouthspray is coming!!”

===Part 14===

“Frank. Prepare for battle.”

In a second floor hallway of Columbia University’s main building, a black-uniformed blonde girl gave that command. Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s eyes were fixed on the yard visible out the window.

“Heh heh. Eh heh heh. Eh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh. I’m inside a world-renowned Ivy League school in clothing that could be torn with the slightest tug. How☆thrilling!! 008, 774, 868, 229! Tag it, tag it, tag it some more!! The cold, rejecting atmosphere of the school hallway is so good. Ah ha, ah ha ha. I’m going crazy. Completely crazy. The world is such an amazing place…!!”

“Melly, can I just shoot you?”

“Uwebh, cough, cough!! 808. Sorry, I’ll take this seriously.”

She must have been focused on the footage from the ubiquitous floral security cameras because the brown girl with her butt inside a large swim ring made from the same material as a special operations rubber boat stared at her game system and began folding up her arms and legs that she had spread out. The approach of outsiders may have brought out her shy side.

“438. To get back on topic, Wraith, I’ve detected the attack, but I have a few questions. You should be cautious.”

“Not what I expected to hear from New York’s defense commander.”

Did Wraith sound so threatening because she suspected she herself was being affected by the Ragnarok Script? Looking at oneself was not easy. Melly, meanwhile, had folded up her limbs like a chrysalis or fetus to enter her serious mode (even if that was only skin deep).

She must have been worried about it overheating because she waved the thin game system like a fan.

“Even with everything I’ve seen here, it still doesn’t add up. I doubt the isolated Legitimacy Kingdom remnant could do all this on their own. 319. We should assume some of our own people are supporting them.”

“So they have equipment and our internal information, huh?”

“050. Also, I can’t figure out why they would target Columbia University. There have to have been better candidates if they wanted to damage the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object. This place is being used as a shelter for civilians because there was nothing of value here. Are they directly targeting me? Or do you have another idea, Wraith?”

“Nope.” Wraith waved her hand dismissively and breathed an exasperated sigh. “But I am aware they would want to kill me if they had a chance. A dangerous and earnest enemy has given up on safely remaining hidden and has made it this far while so many unmanned weapons pursue them. Since they’re actively putting their lives at risk, this has to be more than a whim or just to show off. I doubt a peaceful conversation would get through to them.”

“I see. 591.”

With her limbs folded up and the game system held between her soft-looking brown thighs, Melly lightly swung one of the remote-style controllers. A Bullmite responded to the magic wand by walking up alongside Wraith. Removing the composite armor around its belly revealed a full supply of weapons and ammunition for human use.

Wraith frowned.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“Wraith, you will put together whatever you need all on your own. This is a school with plenty of workshops, so it should be much better suited to research projects than a home garage. 171. I’ll supply the weapons, so it would be great if you could settle this with a sensible amount of equipment. And I mean that from a risk simulation standpoint as well. Okay?”

“That would help a lot, but if something happens, say I stole the weapons.”

“Sorry, but I’m not that shameless, Wraith. 903.”

The black-uniformed girl snapped her fingers and the young man stepped forward and began checking through the mountain of weapons and ammo like a guard dog given permission to eat.

“Melly, what will you do?”

“Are you asking me to deal with a gun’s recoil after what happened to my spine? 749. As usual, I will leave the annoying fighting to the unmanned weapons.”

“I doubt that will work,” declared Wraith while grabbing a small self-defense handgun. “Not against this enemy.”

===Part 15===

There were more and more sizzling sounds like water on a hot grill.

They were of course coming from the 4m idol piloted by the Information Alliance’s Oh Ho Ho. Those bizarre cannons looked like reinforced glass lab equipment with composite armor forcibly added on top. Those giant rapid-fire beam cannons were meant to be carried by truck and fixed to the ground with metal stakes, but she was holding and swinging them around with machine arms. The Bullmites were built to deflect a normal(?) assault rifle bullet, but they could not “hunt” as intended when their opponent was a bipedal powered suit. The Multi-Gyros, those giant tops filled with 800,000 volts of electricity, were also having little luck.

More and more fist-sized holes were torn into the unmanned weapons’ armor and they were soon melted like sugar sculptures and blown away.

The university had a lot of straight hallways and the Bullmites could only just barely fit their large armored forms around the corners. It was not conducive to nimble movements that used excellent footwork to approach while moving from cover to cover. They could not avoid the rapid-fire light coming from the two cannons.

“As usual, the star of the battle is the Elite. Oh ho ho!”

“More importantly, watch your head. Seeing a fancy Nau Yoke idol’s head smashing through the ceiling and fluorescent lights is one hell of a visual!”

This seemed to be the logic of a Pilot Elite born in the age of Objects.

The powered suit was unstoppable while tilting its head at a diagonal angle but still scraping its ringlet curl head against the low ceiling. Instead of individual ingenuity, it was direct firepower backed by technology and resources that eliminated the threat. Without even using cover, she ruled the battlefield with the simple idea that a strong offense was the greatest defense.

“I can’t believe they would gather all the civilians in one place and then send their unmanned weapons there…”

“Give them enough time and those monsters will decide to use them as hostages. Let’s end this before any bored wives are tied to one of those rodeo machines made of composite armor.”

“? You are being awfully malicious this time. Oh ho ho. Has the Legitimacy Kingdom been teaching you to feel more hostile?”

That said, Heivia’s group had to think about more than just the fight against the Martinis. Their top priority was getting Oh Ho Ho’s father, Royce, out of Columbia University.

Unlike a middle or high school, universities gave the students a lot more freedom, but that increased the risk to them. Some of the faded posters on the bulletin boards were asking for information on missing people. That included a journalism club that had gone missing after leaving for a battlefield country (in the name of gathering materials, but who knows what they were thinking).

“Once we’re done with this, you really will work your fingers to stop the Manhattan and Capulet, won’t you!?”

“Oh ho ho. …I would really rather do that right away, but the doctors and counselors are all stopping me.”

“Only a sage living deep in the mountains can control their own heart.”

“I really wish all of you would stop treating this perfect international idol like she has a father complex.”

“Wait, did you just add another trait in there? Idol, Elite, busty, father complex…how many scoops of ice cream are on this cone?”

It seemed idols needed to be multi-talented in this age.

They checked inside a nearby classroom and saw a few frightened students with their hands in the air. The shelters for the gathered civilians were apparently in the larger facilities like lecture halls and gyms.

“…We really should have gone there right away. Oh ho ho.”

“And where exactly is ‘there’? Will we have to check each one in turn?”

That was easy enough to say, but Columbia University had several dozen schools from both the liberal arts and the sciences, so it was an enormous educational organization with more than 20,000 teachers and students. Even a low estimate for the number of school buildings and related facilities on campus could not be counted on your fingers. Oh Ho Ho’s rapid-fire beam cannons were quite effective, but they could not get overly optimistic. For one thing, she was wielding prototype assassination weapons and those large-caliber, high-power cannons were poorly suited for close ranges. And just like the Bullmites, the powered suit could not move freely inside the complex indoor environment.

If the Bullmites used the coordination of their simple circuits to all jump out at once, the entire situation could be turned on its head. It would be very bad if the unmanned weapons used their lack of a life to carry an anti-tank chemical warhead with them. Whatever the case, they wanted to avoid wandering around if it could be avoided.

Heivia thought for a bit.

“First, let’s head to the cafeteria. With this many civilians here, they’ll have to do something about the food. If there’s a memo in the kitchen listing where they’re sending all the food, we won’t have to wander this educational labyrinth without any kind of hint.”

“Heivia, you do tend to handle everything perfectly as long as an Object doesn’t show up,” said Myonri.

“Oh ho ho. In other words, he is useless in this age of Objects.”

“Just so you know, I’m going to remember what you say here!” shouted Heivia, but they easily ignored him.

Now that they had a plan, they walked across a pathway and ran into some masses of composite armor as soon as they entered a different school building. It was those Bullmites, but while scraping her tilted head against the ceiling panels and wielding her rapid-fire beam cannons like dual pistols, the 4m ringlet curls came to a stop.

They formed two perfect rows.

It was not that they had been stopped by congestion. This formation was clearly intentional. And then they made a coordinated charge like a train.

“Why you-…!!”

Oh Ho Ho quickly fired her two rapid-fire beam cannons while her extra-large boobs jiggled, but the brilliant beams of light only hit the leading pair. The amount of fist-sized melted holes grew and those shields crumbled like a melted sugar sculpture, but the next pair of identical Bullmites now took the lead. Then the process repeated. If just one of the unmanned weapons reached the powered suit before they were all turned to Swiss cheese by the horizontal hail of beams, they would win.

Unmanned weapons did not fear death.

The Bullmites were made to carry equipment or act as barricades, so they did not hesitate to use themselves as shields. Those serverless yet coordinated monsters trampled their allies’ remains and did not hesitate to take the lead even when they knew they would be trampled next.

“Crap, crap, crap!!”

“Wh-what do we do now!? If those futuristic beam weapons don’t work, our shotguns and handguns aren’t going to help at all!”

And lamenting their situation would not help improve it.

They could not expect mercy or pangs of conscience from unmanned weapons.

“Dammit!!”

Heivia fired handgun bullets into the lockers lining one wall of the hallway to break the locks. Changes of clothing, cellphones, video disks, and other student property spilled out across the floor.

“It doesn’t matter what, just blow everything to pieces, Myonri!!”

A shotgun blasted toward the floor nearby. Several small pieces of shot flew out and instantly turned the personal possessions to scrap. They were forcibly torn to pieces and flew up into the air as small fragments.

Wildly moving metal fragments could interfere with EM and IR communications.

Compared to her Object, the powered suit’s thick armor must not have been enough to keep out the fear. Oh Ho Ho crouched down as the threat approached, so the sizzling sound of the rapid-fire beam cannons ended. But a different loud noise erupted instead. The Bullmites had been accurately coordinating their movements to act as a single whole, but now they began running into each other like a multi-car pileup.

Myonri asked a hesitant question while watching the Bullmites self-destruct thanks to her efforts.

“Wh-what happened?”

“They weren’t using their usual submarine mode, right? To move so smoothly without causing any congestion, they had to be coordinating the distance between them using IR or radar. Interfering with that using chaff naturally caused a major accident. C’mon, Oh Ho Ho! How long are you gonna lie there!? It’s over!!”

“M-mghh… How could I let you see me like that?”

With shaky movements, the 4m killer weapon got up from its maiden-like crouching position. With a dull noise, her large head shattered a fluorescent light.

“One little prank caused all this? It may have been too soon for these toys to be fully automated. Oh ho ho.”

“There’s a prank where people shine a laser pointer in a soccer player or airplane pilot’s eyes, right? What do you think would happen if you shined it into a vehicle lens from a walkway over the highway? I feel like all the arguments about these things are only focused on the plusses. It’s scary.”

Normal knives and bullets would not have their expected effect on unmanned weapons that were never alive to begin with. You needed to use a separate logic that only applied to them: magnetism, salt water, acid, high temperatures, rust, an insect infestation, etc.

If the Bullmites were coordinating over the radio, they would also notice when the transmissions ended. Thus, they could not relax just because they had wiped out the enemy here. Heivia’s group hurried on to the cafeteria before reinforcements arrived.

They wanted to keep things quiet, but a loud rumbling burst out. Heivia and Myonri ducked down and saw that the 4m Oh Ho Ho had hit her forehead like a klutz.

“Goh?”

“Be careful when walking through doorways! You’re already scraping your head on the ceiling!”

There was a giant silver refrigerator in the kitchen and the door was so covered in memos that they had no idea what its original color was.

“Here it is, here it is,” said Myonri. “There are a lot of delivery records for gyms 1 through 3. They’re all north of here.”

“Only three?” asked Heivia. “I thought they were gathering people from all over the city here.”

“These gyms are huge facilities used for international basketball and hockey tournaments. Each one can hold tens of thousands of people.”

…That meant it would be difficult to locate an individual in the crowd even if they did figure out which location he was in, but they had to think of this as a step forward.

“Father…”

“Hey, old man pandering idol. If you have time to give dreams to all those wrinkly people, then get to work.”

“C-could you not falsely accuse my father of being old and wrinkly!?”

“Aren’t you forgetting to deny the most important part?” asked Myonri. “Weren’t you claiming you didn’t have a father complex!?”

While they argued, something rolled in through the kitchen’s entrance. The cylinder was about the size of a hair spray can. It was a grenade with the pin and safety lever removed.

“Wait!”

They did not have time to question it.

The kitchen was immediately blown away.

===Part 16===

Heivia and the others were not the only ones hit by the blast and shockwave.

Wraith’s group had used the building blueprint and the floral security cameras to make the attack, but they grimaced and held their ears as small pieces of wall materials fell on their heads.

“Frank! I said to use a nonlethal flashbang!”

“Don’t blame him, Wraith. Flashbangs have had the harmful effects of their explosions reduced as much as possible, but the container still ruptures. They aren’t as safe as they appear in movies and dramas. 110. And did you forget that using one in a kitchen runs the risk of damaging the gas pipe?”

===Part 17===

Despite the fierce gas explosion so nearby, Heivia’s group was lucky in a few ways.

First, the blast had not been made more harmful with small metal balls like it would have been with a grenade or mine designed for military use.

Second, they had a 4m powered suit that would not budge even if an anti-personnel grenade detonated right in front of it.

Thus, the giant charming idol only had to lean over Heivia and Myonri to provide them with some makeshift shelter.

“Mghh. I was somewhat hopeful since the boobs actually jiggled, but this thing is heavy! Way too heavy!! How is this any different from a suspended ceiling trap!? It feels like I’m being suffocated with a thick plastic sheet filled with water!!”

“An idol and Elite is putting herself in harm’s way to protect insignificant enemy soldiers, so I would expect a more emotional reaction. Oh ho ho.”

An impact like that was apparently not even enough to cause any clothing damage on the 4m ringlet curl’s special suit. She was entirely unscathed. While they argued, Oh Ho Ho raised her arm with a motion more mechanical than a machine’s. She mercilessly aimed the right rapid-fire beam cannon toward the source of the grenade.

The swing of the arm was more important than the speed of the beam weapon itself.

Beyond the dust, a few figures fled from the sweeping series of short beams. When Oh Ho Ho prepared to supply the finishing blow, the rapid-fire beam cannon exploded in her hand since its barrel had been bent by the explosion. A capacitor had likely broken. The weapon had already looked like reinforced glass lab equipment with armor attached, so Heivia and Myonri cowered down as they watched it happen.

“Curse that prototype! It’s like the urine sample bottle breaking in your hand!!”

“The hand is fragile because of all the joints, right?” said Myonri. “I’ve heard armor craftsmen can judge someone’s skill by checking there. But that thing’s hand wasn’t harmed at all when the weapon it was holding exploded…”

Oh Ho Ho provided no comment. She switched to the left cannon, but it did not respond. The 4m ringlet curls threw the remains of the unusable rapid-fire beam cannons. Those weapons were meant to be transported by truck and staked to the ground. They weighed more than the bar of a barbell, so throwing them made for more than enough of a weapon.

“Wraith…”

It may have been as inefficient as could be.

It may have only given away his position and condition to the enemy. Melly may have been the target they needed to suppress first and foremost.

But Heivia still raised his voice.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray!!”

“Hello, diligent avenger. I don’t know what you’re doing here, but did you really think I would just sit idly by while you caused such a scene? It does not matter how many people you have sent into this university. I will remove every last threat, one by one.”

The explosion had destroyed both the wall and door. There was too much dust in the air to see. The cover and line-of-fire diagram in their heads had fallen apart. Heivia could only think of one option.

“Move out front, Oh Ho Ho. You’re our shield!”

“Oh ho ho. I see you are no more intelligent than a drone. You’re the type that gets angry when AI takes over his job.”

Despite her storm of complaints, Oh Ho Ho understood the situation. Her large head scraped along the ceiling and her boobs jiggled in sync with her pace as she took a step ahead of Heivia and Myonri and into the dust.

The deep sound of metal on metal immediately followed.

“Oh…?”

It was a blast into the center of her chest. The powered suit’s back wobbled in front of Heivia and Myonri’s eyes. She then fell onto her butt. The potatoes were nearly crushed by their ally’s giant butt, but they just barely managed to escape to either side. She had been shot by something incredible. Myonri reached a hand toward the collapsed Oh Ho Ho on instinct, but Heivia was different. There was no helping Oh Ho Ho when she was covered by thick composite armor and pseudo-moisture-retaining silicone woven with cellulose nanofibers. If they did not first do something about whoever had fired on her, more shots would be fired and there would be no stopping the demolition.

But as Heivia ducked low and charged into the dust, someone charged in below his chin. It was a small figure with a black uniform and long blonde hair. She had rushed in just like he had.

“Wrai-…”

A heavy impact ran through his right temple before he could shout.

It was not caused by Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s right hand or left hand. The aide young man had acted separately from her and swung a giant anti-materiel rifle’s stock into Heivia’s temple. It was a giant weapon meant to drop any opponent in one hit, just like that monstrous magnum made from a modified grenade launcher. But the gun’s recoil was so strong that it was hard to recover if he missed at close range. He knew that. He did, but relying on your insurance and then not killing the enemy in a single shot was always a mistake.

(Gh.)

Heivia’s vision shook and he could not control his collapsing body. But at the same time, his arm moved like an independent life form. It grabbed the uniform covering Wraith’s flat chest and used his shifting body weight to pull her down with him. After they rolled along the hallway floor, Heivia was on top. He pressed his handgun into the center of her chest and she pushed up his chin with a small self-defense handgun.

There was no fear in Heivia’s face.

The only emotion there was anger.

“What’s wrong, Wraith? Did your murderer’s luck finally run out?”

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“Did you think you’d get a chance to negotiate, crazy girl? I’ve dreamed of this chance. I don’t care about that active self-denial or whatever. I haven’t forgotten what you did!!”

“But unfortunately, I’m much too busy to mess with you. Melly.”

Heivia had perfectly taken the mounted position, but then his body flew straight up. This was not the same as the ''Tomoe Nage'' of the Asian Island Nation. A powerful impact struck his back and he had trouble breathing. Gravity seemed to lose its hold on him and his back slammed into the ceiling like he was being thrown around by turbulence on a passenger plane.

Even now, the brown girl named Melly Martini Extradry must have been worried about the potatoes’ eyes on her because she folded up her arms like a fetus on top of her giant ring. She hid her mouth with her thin game system and half-tearfully trembled as she explained.

“667. D-did you forget? This is a giant Object, so I can do that by shaking the balanced city just a bit using the gyro controls.”

“Dammit… Are you saying she’s the Elite!?”

“The Manhattan 000 belongs to me. I am only lending it to Capulet.”

Once he felt the tug of gravity return, Heivia immediately let go of his handgun. Comics and movies often depicted characters being slammed into the ground while holding a drawn sword or a gun with the safety off, but in reality, the force of the impact could easily have you stab or shoot yourself in the gut or thigh. Holding onto your weapon too tenaciously and accidentally committing ''harakiri'' was a stereotypical mistake given in military textbooks.

“…Gah!!”

He braced for impact, but the hallway ceiling was still more than three meters from the floor. The impact passing through his entire body was far greater than from being tripped or thrown to the ground. He could not fully escape it, so he ended up groaning on the floor. Meanwhile, Wraith aimed her toy-like self-defense handgun at him from a few meters away.

“Check.” The little demon smiled. “You poor avenger who could not escape the standard framework. As usual, the likes of you begin to lose as soon as an Object is involved.”

“Damn…you.”

“Well, that’s what happens when Quenser isn’t around. Not that there wasn’t room for criticism in that combat engineer.”

“Damn you!!!!!!”

Heivia roared in anger and forced his body up even though he was still having trouble breathing.

A 9mm bullet stabbed mercilessly into the center of his chest.

After being shot from outside arm’s reach, the delinquent soldier collapsed backwards. His troubled breathing was disrupted even further and his consciousness flashed in and out. If not for the pocket containing his military flashlight and mobile device, his ribs would have broken and his organs would have been pierced.

But in addition to that, Heivia was not given time to scream.

“Keep your head down,” whispered Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

Something pierced through the wall. A shot was fired in through the window. The flying sparks looked like a handheld firework or a smoke grenade. It was an armor-piercing incendiary round that could damage military vehicles and unmanned weapons by shooting through the armor and then frying the internal circuitry or fuel tank.

If Wraith had not knocked Heivia out of the way with her self-defense handgun, it would have hit him in the side of the head.

“Didn’t I tell you I was too busy to mess with you? The threat we detected was that third party. To be honest, what you are up to is irrelevant.”

“What is the meaning of this…? And who is that!? How many people are going to jump into the same bed at this crazy orgy!?”

“Don’t ask me. And for the Information Alliance, that may make this the most fearsome presence here.”

===Part 18===

“Tch.”

That person quietly clicked their tongue while moving their eye from the scope of a sniper rifle that used a lot of metal to increase the weight and thus the stability. Targeting people felt so much different from targeting things. That was why specialized snipers still existed in an age so full of machinery. No matter how much support a target received, they would still act on a whim.

…It seemed one of them had an anti-materiel weapon. If they deduced the sniper’s location from the line of fire and a shootout began, the sniper would be overpowered. Not only would that weapon have a greater range, but its destructive power meant walls could not be trusted for cover.

This person had never been good at sniping. They had tried to increase their ability with the support of the embedded programs, but they doubted they could beat a specialist. It was the same reason professional cameramen existed in an age when anyone could snap a photo with autofocus and anti-blurring measures.

Challenging someone to a battle in their area of expertise would be the height of folly.

The opportunity for an upset only arrived once the other side was dragged down to your own field of expertise.

“Now, it’s time to use this Hand Axe.”

===Part 19===

Irregular tremors suddenly ran through the entire school building.

They could not approach the windows with the possibility of a sniper, but as far as they could tell by peeking out from behind the pillars, several clouds of smoke were swelling out like cotton candy.

“Explosions?”

“It’s no use. You settle down too, Frank. In this age of cameras and sensors, I doubt they would try to hide behind a cloud of smoke with no chemical effects whatsoever. I bet that’s a diversion while they sneak in through a different entrance.”

Wraith looked annoyed, but her explanation seemed separated from her emotions.

“In the worst case, they might have even threatened some civilians into running through there, so don’t fire just because you see a shadow in the dust.”

“Tch. Hey, crazy girl, quit acting like you represent humanity’s good side.”

“What, you’re going to fight me even with all this going on? If you don’t want to be caught in a crossfire, I’d keep those thoughts to yourself, gentleman.”

Casually cruel Myonri nonchalantly aimed her weapon at Heivia to deter any rash actions and then she spoke in her usual small animal way.

“Wh-what are they trying to do…?”

“Who knows. 380.”

Myonri’s fearful question was bluntly answered by the brown girl who was still shrinking down on top of her ring. That answer carried a lot more weight coming from New York’s defense commander who had full use of the security systems. …Of course, that was assuming her active self-denial had not gotten the better of her and her word could be trusted. It was of course possible it was all a lie.

The black uniform girl shrugged while staying far enough away from the windows to avoid being shot.

“How are we supposed to know their goals when we don’t know who they are? But based on an offline search of the explosion’s acoustic signature, that was Hand Axe, a plastic explosive used by the Legitimacy Kingdom. So do you have any ideas?”

Heivia Winchell’s temples writhed irregular when he heard that.

A plastic explosive.

Hand Axe.

“…What?”

“The accuracy of such a simple search isn’t the best, but a chemical analysis looking for carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen in the dirt at the blast site would give us the answer. Although I don’t think we have enough time for that.”

“555. By the way.”

The brown girl in a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper cut in while cheerfully sitting with her butt inside the giant ring. Since her arms and legs were sticking out of the ring more than before, she had either grown accustomed to the stimulation or she was letting her guard down around them.

“From a strategic viewpoint, there is no reason at all to attack Columbia University if your goal is to take control of the Manhattan 000 as the world’s largest Object. 200. So I doubt they’re plotting to forcibly stop or hijack the Object. They might be after me since I’ve lent it to Capulet, but very few people know I’m also the Elite.”

“Then what else is there?”

“Sorry about answering your question with a question, but why are you here?”

Heivia intentionally maintained an expressionless face, but Myonri thoughtlessly glanced over at the 4m ringlet curl powered suit. The giant girl spoke up while scraping her tilted head along the ceiling panels and fluorescent lights.

“…Father?”

“Hm. I can’t see who that is due to the silly powered suit, but I’m guessing it’s the model herself inside.” Wraith exhaled from her shapely nose. “Well, if you’d given up on negotiating with Melly, I guess it makes sense you’d go for Capulet since it’s the only other thing with power over the Manhattan 000. Given the development history and compatibility between Capulet and Juliet, it would also make sense you could hijack control of Manhattan using the Gatling 033’s Pilot Elite. She would be able to approach the AI Network from a different direction than the Martini Series. Given that, the attacker’s objective would be the Manhattan 000’s destruction. But instead of sinking it themselves, they’re trying to make it self-destruct by triggering a fight between the people on the inside…in other words, us.”

“No offense to you educated people who can achieve climax with nothing but your imagination, but isn’t that a bit of a leap? How could a little commotion between us cause this colossal weapon to blow up?”

“If that concept machine contains who I think it does, then I’m not overestimating this. The Juliet’s experimental results continue to strengthen Capulet in real time. That puts her much closer to it than mere monitors like us. She might be able to take on the thousands of Martinis singlehandedly. If the Gatling 033’s Juliet and its highly-compatible Pilot Elite attempt to bring down the Capulet AI Network using its vulnerabilities, they could be a threat to the Information Alliance as a whole. The network’s hardware and scope are a mystery because its advantage is limited to the online world. That prevents anyone from pulling the power cable to shut it down if they start to lose.” Wraith sounded somewhat exasperated. “Honestly, this is the problem with the age of Objects. The importance of specific individuals can vary so wildly. Aren’t you here to collect her father because your plan hinges on her individual performance?”

“…”

It was the same as with Piranirie and Taratua. Whether or not the Martini Series had a conscience or good sense, they could still do the calculations. Their character could not be trusted, but there would be no mistake in the actual analysis.

So it was best to base your thoughts on those assumptions.

What would cause the most chaos in this situation?

You only had to kill Oh Ho Ho’s father in the shelter which was supposedly safe thanks to the Martini Series’ management. It no longer mattered who the direct culprit was. Had the Martini Series made any mistakes? Had the Information Alliance as a whole wanted it? Once Oh Ho Ho was overwhelmed with anger, hatred, and suspicions, all of her skills could pass through the Information Alliance’s Capulet and send the Manhattan out of control.

The most frightening thing was not the amount of firepower on hand or the number of people killed.

It was the same as the samurai who had once tried to open up the Island Nation or a certain world-famous musician. When a single blade or bullet bared its fangs against an innocent person, it would create an incalculable shock. This faceless person who had leaned out over the game board was trying to do that intentionally instead of by chance.

Individuals were supported by a large system, but they also determined the outcome of wars.

This reversal was built on the rules of an already twisted era.

“You’re kidding, right? Then their target really is Oh Ho Ho’s father!?”

“B-but they don’t know where their target is in this giant university, right? Then we have time. We came to this cafeteria kitchen because we needed to work out the shelter locations from the food delivery routes.”

Wraith rejected Myonri’s words.

Had the crazy person gained a sharper mind by sacrificing someone like the crazy person she was? She had to have noticed that the timid girl’s statement contained far too much wishful thinking.

“I wouldn’t be so sure. If this lawless hunter’s specialty is bombs, then they can achieve their objective by indiscriminately blowing up each facility in turn. …No, those diversion explosions may have been part of the plan. Not only did it get them safely inside the university, but they may have been observing how people reacted.”

“What do you mean?”

“The shelters will be the most densely packed areas. They would react most noticeably to a commotion. It’s like sending out sonar to locate the enemy. They just have to cause an explosion, note where the most voices came from, and then attack there. And that means we can’t relax.”

“Right. So the key is the screams of children. 497.”

Melly casually supplied that extra information with her butt inside the large ring and while wearing only a crimson surgical gown. She was much more relaxed than when she had first met the potatoes. She built interpersonal relationships quickly. It probably would not be long until she reached the ennui stage.

She breathed a warm breath on the flat game system’s screen and wiped it off with the paper over her chest.

“Universities are attended by a higher age group than middle or high schools, so if you ignore the few students that skipped several grades, there are almost no small children there. 119. So if 100 or 1000 children begin to cry and shout in response to the explosion, you know that has to be a shelter full of outsiders.”

Another deep explosion rang out and the floor of the university hallway shook.

Everyone there exchanged a glance.

“Ignoring this much evidence would be harder than finding proof of infidelity on your lover’s smartphone and pretending you never saw anything.”

“And even if we’re completely wrong, if that third party has plastic explosives and is headed to a shelter full of civilians, we have to stop them no matter what their reasons are.”

“Yes, that’s right. That’s exactly right.”

Heivia adjusted his grip on his handgun.

And he did not hesitate to aim it at Wraith.

“But this is a separate issue.”

Multiple dry gunshots rang out at close range.

There was so little hesitation in the pull of the trigger that Myonri was unable to react despite being right next to him.

And the aide young man stood in front of the black-uniformed girl with long blonde hair.

He had used his large anti-materiel rifle as a shield to forcibly restrain the cheap 9mm bullets.

“Did that satisfy you a little?”

Wraith did not bat an eye despite having her life targeted so suddenly.

Had the Martini Series always been like that? Or had she been modified by some external factor?

“We just lost one of our valuable weapons thanks to you. You’ll have to work to make up for it.”

===Part 20===

The university had a long history, so the complex and inscrutable building additions made over that time had naturally transformed it into a labyrinth. Gyms 1 through 3 were located relatively close to the edge of campus, but they were surrounded by artificial woods which made the main entrance hard to find. It was so bad that the second story walkways were more well-known.

The gyms were large enough to be used for international tournaments, including the opening and closing ceremonies. They were squares with sides measuring more than 50 meters, so they were more like small stadiums.

“Th-they must have 50,000 people in each one,” said Myonri. “That’s like a small town. Won’t it be hard for the attacker to find their target even if they are in here?”

“Melly. What do your precious cameras say?”

The swim ring girl wearing a two-piece surgical gown made of crimson paper answered the black-uniform girl’s question while holding her precious game system to her chest.

“There is one weakness to cameras that look down from above: extremely dense crowds. The people end up blocking the view of the other people. We really need to find a better countermeasure for molesters on the subway during rush hour.”

“It won’t be that tricky.”

For whatever reason, Wraith and Melly had stopped attacking Heivia’s group with the Bullmites, Multi-Gyros, and other unmanned weapons. That made travel much easier.

…Of course, whether they were always that way or they had been broken by active self-denial, could anything the Martini Series said or did be trusted? That fundamental question remained.

“As you said, the gyms are crammed full of people. I doubt the blast would spread very well even if you did set off a bomb there. Even paper can act as a bulletproof vest if you have hundreds of layers. Human flesh is no different. Enough of it and it’ll stop an explosive blast. If this person wants to kill them all at once, they won’t place the bomb on the flat floor.”

“Th-then…?”

Did Myonri want to hear the answer or not? Or was she afraid to not hear it? Whatever the case, Heivia winked at her and pointed straight up.

“The ceiling. Have the bomb dangle down like a deadly disco ball and it can send its shrapnel down on everyone without the wall of people stopping it.”

“That would be easiest. 177. The ceiling is reinforced with narrow steel beams arranged like a jungle gym. A human could walk on them, but quadrupedal unmanned weapons like the Bullmites couldn’t.”

“They want to kill my father… And they’re willing to kill 50,000 people at once to do it…?”

“You don’t need to focus your justice on the general public,” smoothly said Wraith. “The one family member is more important to you than 50,000 strangers, right? There’s more to relationships than numbers. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way.”

Her words were not at all blunted and tore sharply into the human heart, so they may have been similar to those of a high-IQ serial killer. They seemed to carry deep meaning, but the more you thought about them, the more your mind was destroyed by a poison of your own making.

And just then, a flat electronic beep came from the game system held by the brown girl. She glanced down at the flat screen in her hands as if peering down at her own chest.

“114. Mr. Royce’s phone has sent out a signal. It appears to be a phone call.”

“Oh, did you give him his phone back when you released him and sent him to the general shelter? What a pain.”

Wraith sounded annoyed, but the swim ring girl continued her report.

“Any idea who he might be calling? 251.”

“…”

The 4m ringlet curls trembled as if stirring.

What was the girl inside the thick armor doing?

“Don’t answer it,” sharply warned Wraith. “There is a chance the unknown third party is monitoring Royce’s phone to gather information. We would gain nothing by letting them know we’re here.”

She knew that.

She really did.

The beeping never seemed to end and that seemed to reveal Royce’s worry for his daughter. Oh Ho Ho seemed to be clenching her teeth. Finally, it automatically switched over to voice mail and the game system in Melly’s hands stopped beeping.

Oh Ho Ho spoke with a tremor in her voice.

“I’m glad…”

Myonri tried to say something, but she did not manage to get anything out.

“I’m so glad he’s alive…”

Heivia sighed quietly like those forced-out words were messing with his mood. He wanted to maintain his purity as an avenger, but it was not working. And he gave a warning with that look on his face.

“Hey, don’t relax just because you know he’s alive. This isn’t over until we’ve actually saved him.”

“I know that. Ho…oh ho ho. You don’t have to tell me that.”

Melly got them back on topic while kicking her brown legs now that she was used to the potatoes’ rude gazes.

“The signal is coming from the second gym. Unless we assume more is going on than meets the eye, Mr. Royce should be there. But only we should know this. 125. There are three gyms and each one holds more than 50,000 people. Now, does the attacker have any way of accurately locating Mr. Royce?”

“Didn’t you mention the possibility of them monitoring his phone? Well, that’s just a possibility, so let’s set aside the accurate information about that middle-aged man’s location. Which one would be the easiest to infiltrate?”

“551. The middle one. The second gym. You can reach the ceiling’s steel beams through a maintenance hatch on the roof. That should be far easier than climbing up from below.”

“Then that’s the place.”

“W-we’re basing it on which one is easier? Ho…oh ho ho. What happened to my father’s life being in danger!?”

“I really don’t need that giant camel toe in my face, so back up some. And did you forget? There are more than 50,000 people in each gym. Even if there’s no direct damage in one, what will happen if they learn of unthinkable casualties in the one right next to it? It’s an identical facility on the same campus. They’ll assume they’re next, so they won’t just stay put like they were told. But the exits are narrow, so they’ll start trampling each other and we’ll end up with tens of thousands of people caught in the secondary and tertiary damages.”

“…”

“During the winter, the chickens on a farm will gather together for warmth, but sometimes the group in the center will be crushed to death. This will be even more horrific than that.”

They had a plan.

They of course had to keep an eye on the first and third gyms, but the second one was their top priority.

As seen at concert stadiums, it could take 15 to 30 minutes for tens of thousands of people to enter or leave a location. There was no time to evacuate everyone and unnecessary movement could lead the attacker to expedite their plan and start the detonation.

Melly Martini Extradry, the Pilot Elite and New York’s defense commander, did not seem to have any strong feelings on the matter. She must have been worried about the battery because she hooked a hand-cranked generator to her flat game system and began cranking away.

“That powered suit and I won’t be able to do much of anything on the narrow steel beams. 997. And we don’t want to trigger a panic, so firing up from the floor filled with civilians would be a bad idea.”

“I know that. Information Alliance or not, these are safe country civilians. I’m not digital enough to calmly fire within a sea of blood to complete my mission. Unlike a certain idiot who executed a civilian to save her own skin.”

“With that in mind, I have a suggestion. The second gym is the easiest to infiltrate, but it also gives us an advantage. 656. Since the ceiling beams are connected to the flat roof by the maintenance hatch, you don’t have to finish off the attacker there. You can drive them up onto the roof.”

“…What?”

“That concept machine and I can function just fine on the flat roof. Your reports suggest this person is nimble enough to move from rooftop to rooftop, so they’re almost certainly a flesh-and-blood human. I can hardly see how we would be overpowered in a direct fight. 176. It would be nice if we could just fire at them through the roof, but then the bullets could hit the civilians on the floor.”

“Are you kidding, ring girl? You’re going to fight on the front line? Didn’t you say something about your spine being messed up?”

“202. Then try shooting me.”

The brown girl readily said that despite having her butt inside the large ring and her only equipment being the crimson paper surgical gown and the game system. When he stared at her, wondering if she really understood the situation, she began trembling.

“Are you serious? I have more curly hairs in the corner of my room than I have a conscience. To be honest, it’s hard to find any reason at all to hold back against any piece of shit with the Martini name.”

“That’s my point. You won’t trust anything I say. 081. So the only way to teach you is through experience.”

Heivia wrapped a thick and fluffy scarf around a nearby plastic bottle for a makeshift silencer, pressed it against the muzzle of his handgun, and immediately pulled the trigger.

It released a muffled gunshot, but it was not Melly or Wraith who looked surprised.

Melly Martini Extradry had her butt in the large ring and her hands and feet off the floor, so she could not move around properly. There was also nothing for her to hide behind. Nevertheless, her ring spun around like the coffee cups at an amusement park and cleanly avoided all three bullets.

“Are you okay? 444. I appreciate the thought to use a silencer, but when the noise and the actual recoil are different, I’ve heard you can let your guard down and hurt your wrist.”

Her movement could not have been that fast.

But there was no way that could be explained away as a simple coincidence.

“655. To reveal the trick, I slightly tilted the Manhattan 000 below us. And unlike before, it wasn’t enough to notice.”

Melly softly exhaled and used her thin game system’s L and R triggers to rotate her ring right and left.

“The world’s largest Object is always a part of me. I take top priority. Even Capulet is only borrowing it from me. The internal parts that move the Manhattan 000 are essentially the same as the liquid inside this ring. 713. Okay? Are you familiar with carnivorous plants?”

“Carnivorous…plants?”

“Some plants can move quite quickly, like the Venus flytrap. That is done with turgor pressure, the movement of liquid between the cells. That isn’t actually all that difficult to reproduce in a machine. And it’s easier to manage in parallel than something with lots of old-fashioned motors and cranks. 409. It’s also used as the catalyst for the quantum computer needed for the balance calculations to make sure it doesn’t collapse under its own weight. In addition to lasers, Josephson junctions, and quantum dots, quantum bits can be managed with the NMR method using a liquid. You’ll even see it mentioned in comics and novels.”

Quantum computers and DNA computers were the two representative examples of non- von Neumann large-scale processors. Since they had selected something other than the Anastasia Processor that used cancer cells from Wraith’s biological mother, the Information Alliance must have had its own internal competition there, but that was not the point.

“Did you think I was dressed like this for no reason? I control it through physical contact with this ring-shaped device. 333. Simply put, my blood contains the same liquid as the supercomputer. That was the only way to make up for what the game system alone couldn’t do.”

She had predicted the ballistic trajectory in advance.

The girl was one with Manhattan.

“I have perfect calculations and the ability to physically interfere with the field itself. Plus, I command every single unmanned weapon protecting the city of Manhattan. 144. Do you still think I wouldn’t be useful in a fight?”

The Object was based on plants and the unmanned weapons were based on plants and animals. With the serverless artificial life forms and the simple circuits that used swarm intelligence, Manhattan was like a planet of machines.

Wraith did not seem all that surprised and cut in as if simply confirming what she already knew.

“But the Manhattan 000 must be too large to fire on a specific individual hiding in the shelter. You’ll probably have to put together a unit of Bullmites and other unmanned weapons, but will the law enforcement regulations really be enough?”

“You must be kidding. These things’ greatest advantage is a tactic that would run afoul of various treaties if you used it in war. In other words, artificial organic concentration.”

The ring girl spun around the flat screen to show them. It displayed a graph about the contents of the air, but they did not want to think about what it meant.

“It’s the same concept as fish and shellfish absorbing plankton and other toxins from the seawater and storing them in their stomach, but there is no limit when it comes to unmanned weapons. Because you don’t have to worry about the lethal level. And the basic toxins can be found anywhere in the world. How many pollutants do you think you can find in the exhaust and dirty water in Manhattan alone? But it’s not even a ten thousandth of the lethal level, so they say it’s safe and you don’t have to worry about it. 883. So just concentrate that down more than ten thousand times and you have a deadly weapon at zero cost. You can take a human life with the prick of a needle. I don’t normally do that, though.”

“I see. So that’s why they have air purifiers. I thought that seemed out of place.”

It was well known that the hollow point bullets banned by war treaties were commonly used by the police and thugs in cities. The line between humane and inhumane was easily changed for people’s convenience.

Heivia breathed from his nose and fired twice more for good measure, but the result was exactly the same. When he saw Melly spin around in her ring, he decided any more would be a waste of ammo. And if the makeshift silencer broke, he would spread confusion through the attacker and civilians.

“If you’re willing to go and get yourself killed, then be my guest. But your ass doesn’t look too soft, so don’t expect me to support it.”

“Then I will look after it on my own. 111. The best way to shock malicious people is to do sensible things for nothing in return.”

Was the entire Martini Series like this? She too was quite crafty.

The gyms were the size of indoor stadiums. They were as tall as four-story school buildings and they had metal emergency stairs on the outside.

The roof really was entirely flat. It had no slant whatsoever.

Was the attacker already here or would they be arriving later? There was no evidence one way or the other, but they did not have time to stand around.

“Let’s act on the assumption that they’re here. Myonri, come with me.”

“O-okay.”

“What should we do?”

Black-uniformed Wraith asked that, but Heivia only gave a snort of laughter.

“Wipe that smile off your face. Do you want me to shove this right up your ass? It doesn’t matter if you were always crazy or if you were broken by that active self-denial stuff. I’m not going to trust the piece of shit that executed a supposed ally when she was told to.”

“…”

“Whatever the case is now and whatever our original affiliations were, Quenser thought of you as an ally then and he risked his life to protect you from Manhattan’s attack. And you shot him. While looking him right in the eye. That’s not even war. None of that has changed. Don’t forget that your actions are good or bad regardless of your reasons for doing them.”

That was all.

Myonri fidgeted nervously as she listened, but Wraith did not bother with it any longer. Heivia left that lonely girl and slowly opened the square trap door attached to the flat roof.

After climbing through, he found quite a few steel beams arranged like a giant jungle gym.

Naturally, there was no stable floor. If he slipped, he would fall the four-story distance down to the ground level. And people filled the stacked second and third floors as well as the fields and courts. Everyone seemed to have enough space to lie down and stretch out, but if he fell, he could not avoid hitting someone.

“I see him directly below us,” softly said Myonri.

Among the shocking number of human heads, there was one person operating a smartphone. He stood out from the many other smartphone users because he was repeating the same short action over and over instead of focusing on typing text into social media.

“So that’s Royce.”

“How many times has he tried now? He must still be trying to call his daughter.”

Of course, he would never get through since his daughter was not answering. They were on the same university campus, but he could not even get a single word to her.

But no matter how coldly he was being rejected, Royce showed no sign of irritation. He pressed the electronic device’s screen against his forehead, shut his eyes, and seemed to wish for something before repeating the same action yet again. He was simply a father hoping for his family’s safety.

“We definitely have to save him, don’t we?” said Myonri in a quiet voice. “Without even thinking about the four world powers or anything like that.”

“We can’t give her father special treatment. If we’re doing this, we’re saving all of them. It doesn’t matter if the blast actually hits them or not. If there’s an explosion somewhere, they’ll panic and trample each other. It’ll be worse than a swimming tournament full of sumo wrestlers. Once it starts, tens of thousands could die.”

Once they climbed down, they found it was harder to walk than expected. The steel beams had lots of small bumps from all the rivets and there were also thumb-thick power cables running everywhere for the halogen lamps lined up at even intervals.

Nevertheless…

Even so…

Heivia saw a silhouette. He saw a human silhouette at his eye level. They were curled up on the unsteady beam and he recognized the way they moved their thumb to prepare something. It actually felt nostalgic. It was just like that person who had always been by his side, setting up Hand Axe plastic explosives in some unbelievable place for some trick to fight against the world’s most powerful colossal weapons.

He had considered it.

Yes, he would be lying if he said he had not considered it.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had shot Quenser in front of Heivia’s eyes. But he had not actually seen what happened to the corpse after it fell into the ocean. So what if? Could it be? Perhaps Quenser Barbotage was actually still alive and following some super secret plan that not even Heivia was aware of.

So.

So.

So.

He clenched his teeth, but it was not enough. The shock was so great that it forced his voice from the depths of his throat.

And his voice formed a single name.

“Skuld…Silent-Third!?”

The person he saw there was a short and undeveloped girl with long blonde twintails who perfectly wore the skintight special suit of a Pilot Elite.

She was also the Faith Organization’s greatest and most horrific serial killer.

It was not Quenser at all.

===Part 21===

This seems sudden?

Of course it does. That was a name one must never search. The editors of an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone grew stubborn when the information was repeatedly deleted, so they had pushed for the public release of the Madagascar Report which had been sealed by the military. But as a result, they had been killed in a highly suspicious railroad accident. That was the kind of taboo this was.

There was no sign of it coming?

Again, it is only natural not to remember. The great war crime that Quenser and Heivia ran across in the Madagascar Report is not something to look back on. It is a memory that prevents one from living a bright, happy, and enjoyable life.

Skuld Silent-Third.

She was one of the three Pilot Elites of the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Trinity Style, officially designated Norn, but she was also a serial killer who used that position to sink her venomous fangs into victims in battlefields around the world.

That incident had supposedly been ended by Quenser’s bombs.

However, that same mass murderer had cast aside her blades, guns, and even her Object. She now held a bomb.

What did that mean?

Heivia Winchell’s grimaced because he knew the answer.

===Part 22===

[[Image:HO_v15_299.png|thumb]]
“Nice to see you again, Heivia. And the girl…what was her name again?”

She smiled brightly.

If that was all, it would have been an innocent girl’s smile that inspired a protective desire in all who saw it. Her bright green special suit was held tight against the minimal curves of her slender body and a large ribbon provided a florid touch that felt out of place. Her allure combined the cuteness of a younger girl with the seductiveness of an older girl. But that was exactly how she had fooled so many people, relaxed their tension, created an opening, and ultimately consumed them.

“But it’s too bad. Quenser was the one I most wanted to see. Look, it’s Hand Axe! I went to a lot of trouble getting the real deal, so I have to make its debut worth it.”

“What…are you doing?”

He knew. He knew who this was in front of him.

But Heivia raised his voice with a look of utter disbelief.

“Why the hell did the Faith Organization let you out of your cage!? Is everyone in this world a crazy girl!?”

“Love and hate are complexly intertwined, Heivia. Just like how I came to love explosions. Ah ha ha! It’s just like the stereotype that, if you look into a serial killer’s background, you’ll find they were terribly abused when they were young. Y’know, where you can say everyone involved was a victim. Ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Myonri was clearly shaken and Heivia immediately switched from his handgun to his knife. It too was a “self-defense” item he had taken from the diligent New Yorkers. It was a survival knife with a blade measuring more than 40cm, but he was not trying to show off.

His enemy’s primary weapon was bombs.

If he moved in close, she would have more difficulty using them without being in the blast radius herself.

“Nee hee hee!!”

One wrong step and they would plummet down. Heivia started running across the ceiling beam and the slender girl named Skuld only laughed maniacally. As the bare blade targeted her unguarded slender throat with a horizontal slash, she actually held out a clay-like block of Hand Axe plastic explosive.

Instead of blocking it with a solid barrier, she was causing the blade to slip as if with oil. Heivia shuddered when he felt the attack miss and then Skuld used her soft-looking lips to stick a pen-shaped electric fuse into the sliced explosive.

Since it resembled a party game where two people held either end of a skinny chocolate snack in their lips, the action carried a seduction not usually found in such a young girl, but the situation was dire.

Her blonde twintails fluttered around her in what seemed like a self-celebratory dance, but Skuld Silent-Third was preparing the explosive despite being less than a meter from her opponent!?

(Is she relying on her Elite special suit!?)

“Oh, while it can handle blades and bullets, this thing can’t protect me from a major explosion.”

She seemed to have read his mind. And at the same moment, Skuld readily detonated the bomb inside her own young hand.

“!!!???”

Something odd happened.

It was different from a normal explosion that spread destruction in a sphere from the central point. It was more like an infinitely-extending blade of light. When Skuld swung her arm, the scorching blade passed by Heivia’s face and burned right through all of the jungle gym-like beams in its path.

(This is worse than at Madagascar!? What kind of movement was that!?)

The blast had been concentrated in a single direction.

The bomb had detonated in her hand, but there was not a drop of blood on the body showing its minimal curves through the green special suit. She licked from her palm to her fingertips in a very seductive way for such a young girl.

“This is nothing unusual.”

“Damn you…!”

“Any old fireworks craftsman can do the same thing. Explosions are all about fluid dynamics, so it’s the same as the flow of water or air. If you restrain the blast with a sheet of metal and intentionally leave a single hole open, the explosively-expanding combustion gas will be naturally guided through there. Of course, the guns you’re so familiar with use the same basic principle.”

There had to be more to it.

In theory, you could create a bomb with a single metal pipe. But if an amateur actually tried it, they were guaranteed to blow themselves up in the process. Massive amounts of knowledge and technique were needed to realize that theory. And the mass murderer named Skuld had done so with her own two hands instead of factory equipment.

It was just like that boy who would rely on adlibbed methods and pull them off with no practice whatsoever.

She had inherited it.

It was like the girl carried that powerful enemy inside her undeveloped chest.

Myonri frantically raised her shotgun once more, but Skuld simply held out her hand. Another explosion drowned out the gunshot. It was like a magic trick. The single shotgun shell had to contain tons of small metal balls, but the beautiful serial killer did not have a scratch on her. Had she diverted their path with a solid shockwave barrier?

No…

“…When using explosions, the most important thing is to know what your opponent is thinking.”

With a sticky smile reminiscent of sweet nectar, Skuld embraced her own slender body. Her fingers traced across her own minimal curves. She pulled in her long blonde twintails as well, her spine trembled, and she shook from self-produced sensuality.

“I thought the feeling in my wrist when I stabbed or strangled someone was all there was. But the reality was different. Bombs have their own sensation!! You set up a trap no one is expecting, you actually detonate it, and you rule their heart with fear. Ohh, it’s so wonderful!! Take…whatever her name is there. You were afraid before you even fired. You feared that shotgun couldn’t possibly kill a true monster. So even though you had the overwhelming advantage of aiming a gun at me from a distance, the sound of no more than a tiny explosion caused you to shrink down and shift your own aim. Is there…is there any other killing method that lets you feel their soul more than this!?”

“Shut the hell up…”

Their military training no longer mattered.

It was the same as the incident from the sealed Madagascar Report. Whenever this girl made an appearance, the rules of war collapsed.

“I’ve had enough of your bitching. You’re no more than a wandering ghost who lost her place to die, so I’m not going to let you sully that bastard’s name!!”

“Nee hee. Is that the Legitimacy Kingdom’s obsession with honor?”

He swung his knife and used the handgun he had decided against earlier, but Skuld jumped to another steel beam a step behind her and he could not do any real damage. She stayed the same distance from him while her twintails and ribbon fluttered around her in a nightmarish and fantastical dance.

The goddess of death and war performed an elegant dance. And seeing that, Heivia raised his voice.

“Myonri, prepare to fire!”

“B-but I can’t hit her!”

“Don’t let the title of serial killer get to you. Whether she’s ‘awakened’ or broken through her limits, she’s still human. Aim for the power cables for the halogen lights!! The footing is already limited, so fill these metal beams with a powerful electric current and not even she will be able to escape!!”

“Oh, that’s what you’re going with? Emotional sacrifices are so boring. It’s a death as bland as a chain burger.” Skuld placed a hand on her delicate-looking hip and sounded exasperated. “Well, I don’t really care what happens after I’ve had my fun. And I believe I’ve more than half completed my initial objective.”

“?”

“Look down below.”

The twintail girl sneered as she placed her lightly-clenched fist below her navel and pointed her index finger straight down.

“I still haven’t caused any direct damage, but I have detonated a few bombs inside the gym. If everyone heads for the exits at once, what do you think’ll happen to those 50,000 people?”

“You perverted necrophile girl!!”

“Ah hah hah!!”

Heivia and Myonri knew not to, but they could not stop their eyes from briefly glancing down. And in that instant, Skuld Silent-Third climbed through one of the square maintenance hatches.

Their target had gotten away, but Myonri actually wiped the sweat from her slender chin and breathed a sigh of relief.

“That achieves the bare minimum of our objectives…right? The Information Alliance group is up there. Wraith, Melly, and the giant Oh Ho Ho.”

“…I’m not so sure.”

Heivia used his handgun to shoot out several of the large halogen lights hanging down from the steel beams. They scattered some glass and a lot of sparks.

“Wh-what are you doing!?”

“I’ve created a peaceful explanation for those explosions. Hey, Myonri, you’re good with computers, right? Rewrite that online encyclopedia that anyone can edit!! Say that in the Central American ocean the pressure change from a storm can cause incandescent and halogen bulbs to burst from internal pressure. The actual reasoning behind it doesn’t have to hold up to scrutiny. Just give them something they can look up and accept for the time being!!”

“I thought we couldn’t access the actual internet here!”

“I don’t know if it’s a virtual space or a fake server, but just get it out there so those people will see it!”

People were susceptible to multiple sources. You might hear rumors around you and then find confirmation on the screen in your hand…but in some cases, they both had the same source of information.

As Skuld had said, no direct harm had been done yet. There was nothing Heivia and Myonri could do here except prevent the people from trampling each other in a panic.

“Myonri, let’s head up top.”

“Eh? I’d rather not. A powered suit and those serverless unmanned weapons will be fighting on that flat roof. Even if the battle will end without our help, a single stray bullet can still kill us!”

“This won’t end that easily,” spat out Heivia. “I don’t care how many of those damn Martinis die, but if Skuld escapes, she’ll cause far more damage. And I’m not just talking about Manhattan. You saw the nightmare of that sealed Madagascar Report with your own eyes, didn’t you? Didn’t you see and agree to seal it all away because it felt like having your nose shoved into some old man’s hairy asshole?”

“…”

“If you want proof, just face your own trauma. That’s all you need to explain what a threat Skuld is.”

Myonri gulped.

That was all. She had no rebuttal for Heivia’s seemingly incoherent argument.

They both approached the maintenance hatch Skuld had left through.

They climbed up onto the flat and supposedly safe roof.

They saw the scene they had expected but not wanted.

“Oh, perfect timing. I’m about ready for a second helping☆”

There was a single smile there.

And it was surrounded by hell.

Despite her confidence, Melly Martini Extradry was trapped in the scraps of the many Bullmites that had protected her.

The powered suit that had supposedly carried the Information Alliance idol Elite had what looked like giant claw marks running across it and an orange horizontal line had sliced through it at about chest height. The size was larger, but it was shaped just like the real idol. The cockpit’s empty space was exposed and it lay collapsed and sparking in a more gruesome fate than for a normal tank or armored truck.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray held her small hand to the right side of the young man who lay protectively over her. She was desperately trying to stop his bleeding. It looked more like it was caused by a gunshot than an explosive blast, so it may have been a flying screw or nail rather than the actual explosion.

The girl held her slender body in her arms and her back trembled as she basked in the afterglow. Yes, the afterglow. It was already over.

She really was worse than at Madagascar. The serial killer had evolved through the acquisition of bombs.

“Well, this was a shock for me too,” she said. “I really thought there was someone inside that powered suit, but it was being remotely controlled.”

Come to think of it, the 4m ringlet curls controlled by that Elite had fallen on her butt during the makeshift chaff attack meant to eliminate the coordination of the Bullmites in the university building. And when she had avoided carelessly answering the call from her father, had it been to prevent Oh Ho Ho’s real location from being found out? She could not have anyone tripping her up until she had actually saved her father.

“That sure was elaborate,” spat out Skuld.

That was all. Her brief arousal was already cooling.

“But I guess that was the peak of my surprise. Are those all the tricks up your sleeve? If so, it just wasn’t enough. I want a dinner that will really fill my belly. So bring out the next serving already. Or do I need to visit the second and third restaurant?”

“Your attempt to cause a panic in the gym failed, Skuld…”

“Does the Faith Organization need a reason to attack the Information Alliance? Or does a serial killer need a reason to kill people? It’s just who we are. What more can you say?”

“It’s not like you’re going to follow the Faith Organization’s rules either! You were convicted under Faith Organization law, abandoned, and thrown in prison!! You except us to believe a serial killer is diligently doing her job!?”

“Ah ha ha!! Diligently? Well, does it look like I’m doing a good job?”

If she was trying to kill Royce so that his daughter, Oh Ho Ho, would spread further chaos through Manhattan, then Skuld could not have carelessly attacked Oh Ho Ho. She had only learned the powered suit was empty after slicing it in two, so it looked planned but was fundamentally flawed. Was there no way of controlling her?

“Al – so. None of that matters and I don’t care. I have no hard feelings for the Legitimacy Kingdom that defeated me in Madagascar or the Faith Organization that used me as long as they could and then judged me like they were the heroes. I have no complaints. I’m satisfied as long as I can kill. I don’t even need a war. Back at Madagascar, I made myself valuable with my skill as a Pilot Elite, so the higher ups would cover things up. Those circumstances are all that’s changed. I’ll make myself valuable in some other way and have someone important create an environment where I’m free to kill. There were no deep reasons behind it. That cruel IV had its uses! The passage of time may have blurred, but everything but the killing and the memories of killing melted away from my mind. What is that if not freedom?”

No matter what, that mass murderer could not forget the taste of killing.

She did not need to use a vast conspiracy or a superpower’s interests as an excuse. She was a purer and crueler slaughterer who faced the killing head-on.

“Still, there is one thing I want.”

Skuld Silent-Third wrapped her young hands around either side of her small face and lightly twisted her slender hips as she tried to restrain the pleasure signals rising within her. Her entire body radiated something far uglier than unrequited love.

“I wanted to see Quenser. I wanted to see my teacher who taught me this new art of bombs!! See, now I can kill even more people. You were wonderful, teacher, but I can kill far more. So now it’s my turn to teach you. I can give you a lovey-dovey hands-on lesson in how to enjoy bombs!! Heh heh. Ah hah hah hah hah!!”

“…You’re completely insane. Do you have threads sewn between the wrinkles in your brain or something?”

“Quenser Barbotage was normal.”

In an unexpected turn, there was no emotion in her voice at all.

It was the stereotypical form of someone who could not control the switch between mania and depression.

“He was normal, but he could still kill without a second thought. Had you not noticed after spending so much time with him? He was far worse than a serial killer like me. I mean, he couldn’t have survived that long otherwise. How many Objects and the armies around them do you think ''my teacher''' has blown away in the past? Killing and remaining normal is a frightening thing. How could he do it?”

She did not need to say any more.

Myonri was enthralled and stood stock still, but Heivia moved almost automatically. He had a knife in his right hand and a handgun in his left. He charged toward the twintail girl in order to suppress her at a range of less than 2 meters.

“Oh, right, right. What are you going to do about that?”

Meanwhile, twintailed Skuld had no gun or blade.

Her voice was as casual as someone making an invitation to chat over tea.

“Does the term Ragnarok Script mean nothing to you? What about active self-denial? A mysterious external factor was injected into the Martini Series, but where do you think it really came from?”

“Wha-…!?”

Heivia still had not shaken his doubts.

Even if this was Skuld Silent-Third, could she really have had such an overwhelming advantage on a roof full of unmanned weapons and a powered suit? What if the Martini Series had lost control there? What if a switch had been thrown and either Wraith or Melly had attacked Oh Ho Ho? After what had happened to the powered suit, would he be safe without that kind of armor? Could he really trust that those Martinis were defeated? What if he turned his back on the group that included the monster who had shot Quenser?

“That’s just in the way, don’t you think? It just ruins your fun.”

“!?”

The next thing he knew, Skuld was moving toward him.

The slender girl’s right hand had latched onto Heivia’s handgun. But not in order to take it from him. Quite the opposite. She pressed the muzzle against her soft-looking belly and repeatedly pulled the trigger.

Dry gunshots rang out and the impacts to her soft lower body caused the girl to double over.

“Kee hee.”

But the gun ran out of ammo in no time.

The handgun in his hand was no more than a lump of metal.

“Hee hee hee hah hah!! Yes, yes. That’s right. Pain is only another form of pleasure and defeat is the motivation needed to grow!! Right, Quenser? This is the place. This is the best. The most enjoyable aspect of life is the moment when you stand back up from overwhelming defeat to turn it all around!!”

Even if her suit provided some defense against bullets, that had still been suicidal. The bullets might not break through, but the shock still reached her, so it could have torn her muscles or damaged her organs.

And yet.

That murder fairy named Skuld showed only a smile of ecstasy.

“The Ragnarok Script?”

She questioned the thing she herself had just mentioned.

“Do you really think that exists? Ah ha ha!! Investigate all you like, you’ll never find it. After all, it never existed.”

“What are you…going on about? That’s what caused this entire mess…!”

“You take something that doesn’t exist and make it look like it does exist to produce a certain effect. Isn’t that how the Information Alliance does things? Of course, it was based on a psychological safety device set in place by the powerful people who control the formless Capulet AI Network. If the Martini Series ever gained more popular support than those powerful people, they could leak that supposed vulnerability to end that boom. …Our agents dug it up while infiltrating the Information Alliance and it was reinterpreted into a form we could use more easily. That is the Ragnarok Script.”

“…”

Ragnarok.

That was the final battle in Norse Mythology. Afraid of his prophesied death, Odin planned out a way to stop it but ultimately earned enough resentment to get himself devoured by a beast just as the prophecy foretold. It was a merciless myth with no chance for recovery.

Yet if he had never taken the prophecy seriously, nothing would have happened in the first place.

“When their self-confidence is shaken and they lose sight of themselves, those Martinis succumb to the AI far more easily. So there was no need for active self-denial. The Faith Organization has far more experience when it comes to matters of the heart.”

Skuld sounded like she was letting them in on a juicy secret.

“In Faith Organization terms, it may be a lot like banning Mary adoration or Thor worship. And as long as the true result of the lie is effective, the rest doesn’t matter. The Martinis really are bound by the nonexistent threat, aren’t they?”

Similarly, Heivia had lost his valuable firepower due to this girl’s words.

There was nothing he could do with no bullets in his gun. Since her skintight special suit was blade-resistant, his options were limited with his knife.

“We whisper about the Ragnarok Script and the Martinis are bound. Even if they know it doesn’t exist, they can’t cleanse the damage to their soul. It’s like a curse. Maybe this is the result of controlling the Information Alliance’s fear with Faith Organization methods.”

“Tch…!?”

“Oh? What are you going to do? I don’t think you have time to swap magazines.”

He did not have time to be surprised by each and every one of her actions. As soon as Skuld let go of the empty handgun, she dropped a small piece of plastic explosive to her feet, detonated it, and used the blast to rotate her own body. Her weight shifted in a way that wouldn’t have been possible for a normal human and she sent a roundhouse kick as heavy as a demolition hammer toward the side of Heivia’s head.

As long as it was enjoyable and fun, she did not care what happened to her own body.

Heivia responded to the lunatic’s joy by lowering his arm. He did not let his arm be broken to protect his head. He dropped the empty handgun and slid it into the gap between the roof and the raised heel of Skuld’s pivot leg.

“Oh?”

She lost her balance and the axis of her roundhouse kick wobbled.

Skuld missed and, before she could straighten back up, Heivia tackled her childish hips. He placed the knee of her roundhouse kick on his shoulder and flipped her over. No, his hand would still have held the large survival knife.

They collapsed in a heap with Skuld on her back and Heivia on top of her. He held the survival knife in both hands with the tip in the center of her flat chest. Skuld used both hands to push back up, but he had the mounted position. No amount of squirming would let the slender serial killer escape from below the boy. As he pushed down on the knife with all his weight, it slowly moved down millimeter by millimeter. The sharp tip was definitely approaching Skuld’s vitals.

“Enough…”

Heivia shouted with the bloodshot eyes of something other than a soldier who killed for his job.

“I’ll kill you!! I won’t let anyone else end this. We screwed up in Madagascar! We should’ve done this from the beginning!!”

“Oh? Are you forcing yourself? Quenser is one thing, but I thought you acted as the brakes.”

Skuld was weaker. She could not overturn things here, so she could only watch as the blade slowly but surely reached her heart. Even if her Pilot Elite special suit was blade resistant, the weight would still reach her. The blade might not be able to cut the fibers, but the weight would gather on one point, like she was being stepped on with high heels, and her young ribs and sternum would be broken.

But as she lay on her back, Skuld continued to smile.

And she was not forcing it. Nor was she escaping to a paradise only she could see.

All of a sudden, Heivia realized Hand Axe plastic explosives were scattered at the vertices of an equilateral triangle with Skuld and her seductive bodylines in the center. Her inappropriate outfit added to the illusion that this was a magic circle drawn out on the floor and she was holding a blasphemous sacrificial ceremony using her own body.

The girl licked her lips in a way far too sinister for her lovely facial features.

“When using an icepick, the trick to silently breaking the window to reach the lock inside is to use a triangle. You make a crack and remove the bare minimum of glass at the vertices. And can’t you look at this roof the same way?”

“Damn you…!!”

He could definitely kill Skuld like this.

But to be certain, he had to take his time slowly pushing the blade down. He could not end it right this instant.

That was why Skuld Silent-Third’s slender white throat moved alluringly as she laughed.

“I’ve made it so I’ll fall. I’ll break off the roof around me. And there are 50,000 people below. I’m covered in my full stock of Hand Axe, so if I go out in an impressive explosion, just what color of flower will blossom down there?”

“…!!!???”

“Don’t give me that look. It might not cause that much damage at all. With that many people together, their flesh will function as a barrier. Ah ha ha! So how about you pray for a miracle, Brake Boy?”

He could not let go with his hands. It was his weight bearing down on them that was restraining Skuld. If he let go and released her, she would cause even more harm.

Myonri was overwhelmed and had fallen into a seated position, so he could not rely on her. Everyone else had been defeated, so he could not expect support from them either.

There was nothing he could do.

He knew the tragedy that was about to occur, yet he could find no plan to stop it!?

“Here’s what Quenser would do.” It was entirely out of place, but Skuld sounded like a dreaming maiden. “The options are to safely draw back or charge forward despite the danger. He would definitely charge forward. He would prioritize defeating his enemy over protecting himself and allowing the situation to grow even worse. I understand him. I understand the human being named Quenser Barbotage…”

Just then, something changed.

It was a gunshot.

Right into the center of her flat chest.

A bullet was fired from the self-defense handgun held by a small bloody hand.

“Wrai…th…?”

The black-uniform girl did not respond to Heivia.

She had walked over at some point and she had not hesitated to pull the trigger while looking down on the twintailed murderer.

“Don’t joke.” Her voice was trembling like she was about to cough up blood. “Quenser Barbotage would never do that!! He…that complete moron was such a hopeless ‘human’ that he would make a split-second decision to protect an enemy soldier being targeted by the world’s largest Object!! He was a fundamentally different creature to you or me!!”

The special suit provided some protection against bullets.

But only some.

“I…see.”

Skuld’s eyes wandered aimlessly as if seeing something that was not here and words escaped her mouth.

“Teacher. I was wondering why I didn’t see you here… So ''that’s'' what happened.”

As if to say she would not allow her to say anymore, Wraith pulled the trigger several more times. She seemed to be bringing the serial killer back to her senses through sensible pain. Skuld had trouble breathing, so she could no longer hold back the knife. Just as her limiter broke and her strength dropped, Heivia used his full weight to drive the 40cm survival knife’s tip into the center of that childish chest.

Thanks to its blade resistance, the special suit itself did not tear.

But the same weight as being stepped on with high heels would destroy the girl’s slender body.

This would end it.

This would settle the entire issue surrounding the Martini Series and the Ragnarok Script. There was no need to worry about the Object losing control. The Manhattan would no longer be a threat.

“I…will not die.”

But the girl’s smile was like a curse at this point.

The mass murderer announced her immortality like the monster in a cheap horror movie.

“I’ve killed enough to know. This pain isn’t coming from my organs. More, more, more. Drive it in more. Crush my organs with my broken ribs and sternum…”

“Shut up and die. We don’t need anything extra. If you’ll just die here it’s all over. I’m not Quenser, so I’m not going to feel sorry for you.”

“Ha ha. Brake Boy, you can’t do it. Only my teacher can kill me. That must have been destined from the moment we were born.”

What meaning did that serial killer see in her own death?

Was it just one more for the pile? Or was she the one exception, so it was a treasure meant only for someone she cared for?

“Or so I thought. How disappointing. But in a way, I guess you could say I achieved my objective. For my purposes, it didn’t have to be Royce.”

“What…?”

Heivia felt like his entire body was covered in tiny insects.

She knew something.

They had already passed the minor issues of the Martini Series and the Ragnarok Script.

The world would roll toward the precipice any number of times.

She probably saw it as a way to bring herself closer to Quenser who had defeated her and had a killing method greater than her own. Just like a stalker’s obsession could gather more information than a professional detective or intelligence agent, she had thoroughly investigated everything about him. Heivia was certain of it.

If only the powered suit had not been remote controlled. If only Oh Ho Ho had been killed by Skuld sooner, this would not have happened.

This extreme evil inspired that sort of misguided regret.

“I went a little overboard and sliced it in half, but can you hear me, Miss Powered Suit? Or whoever’s controlling it, I mean.”

“What are you doing? What more could you do!?”

“You don’t know?”

She actually looked surprised.

And then Skuld Silent-Third made the worst possible move.

“That girl over there is the one who killed my teacher, Quenser Barbotage, right? I feel bad leaving someone in the dark, so we need to make sure everyone knows.”

===Part 23===

“Ah.”

That girl was in some other location.

She should not have been at any risk there. Lendy Farolito adored that Pilot Elite, so she would never allow the girl anywhere near the scene of a battle so full of unknowns. That commander had used herself as a diversion to convince everyone the Idol Elite was actually there and she had used that “information” to protect the precious girl.

“Ahh.”

But she should have considered it.

Not all danger came in the form of physical bullets and bombs. They were from the Information Alliance, so she should have known the greatest danger of all came in the form of information arriving over the internet.

Her father was safe. Royce was alive.

But her young heart was hit in the most sudden way imaginable.

Quenser Barbotage was no more.

Someone she had trusted had shot him.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

===Part 24===

“Welcome to the end of the world.”

The mass murderer spat out the words like blood.

But with a dreamy expression on her face.

“I too am an Elite, so I know the special treatment we get. You came here to protect her father for her own personal needs, didn’t you? But what if she loses someone she cares for just as much?”

Skuld had a twisted obsession with Quenser. She saw him as her teacher in the art of killing.

That was why she had investigated everything about him.

“If the Faith Organization’s predictions are correct, she is more than just an Elite. She is a VIP who can work with the entire formless Capulet AI Network of which Manhattan is just one small piece. To the point that she could singlehandedly fight against the several thousand Martinis. How badly will she lose control when someone who she has a strong connection with dies? I can’t wait to find out. Right, teacher?”

It was true the Martini Series problem had been eliminated.

An even greater threat had emerged, so of course it had.

===Between the Lines 2===

Situation 325 has been judged a failure.

Skuld Silent-Third’s defeat has been confirmed.

It was separate from Royce, but that serial killer met the minimum requirements at the very, very end. I will honestly praise how clever she is. This will safely bring us to the ignition.

This would all be for naught if we could not bring down Manhattan, the Martini Series, and the entire Information Alliance to trigger a world war that draws in all four world powers.

The world desires chaos.

Most religions cannot advance during peacetime. God’s righteousness can only be easily explained using god’s enemies, an overwhelming disaster, or something else that defies human understanding.

Formless depravity should be feared most of all.

And this clean age is exactly that.

To fight against the silently approaching trend of degeneracy, we must create an obvious enemy. That process is sure to produce a great many victims, but the world must be united if we are to fight against the true, invisible threat.

This age is wrong.

The world was mistaken to support itself with Objects and humanity will never find a bright future along that path. That is simple enough to say, but very few people can explain what exactly is wrong or how to fix it on a quantitative level.

So we must do so. We will supply what is lacking and reach out our hand. Not for social status or honor, but to regain a world where people can live as people. We will solemnly carry out all necessary actions. We will not fear the critics or historians. After all, we await an unavoidable judgment by a far greater being.

Prepare Module Quenser.

I too will head out.

–From Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker to all my beloved compatriots

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 3}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 1

2018-04-24T09:23:20Z

Zakashi: /* Part 1 */

==Chapter 1: Bloody Pool >> Atlantic Artificial Island Proxy War==

===Part 1===

Intense light, noise, and shockwaves.

In that moment, Battlefield Student Quenser Barbotage could not tell up from down, could not hold his memories together in a coherent fashion, and felt all his other senses melt together.

His vision blurred and he had trouble breathing like he had a thick translucent sheet over his face. He felt a scorching heat, but he could not get his thoughts working to the point of coming up with a course of action to eliminate the unpleasant sensation. Only the pounding of his heart sounded unpleasantly raw and real. That should have been the proof that he was alive, but it instead felt as unpleasant as putting back on a shirt after removing it.

Where was he?

What was he doing?

The blond boy focused his mind on remembering those two things. If he let go of that, it was all over. If his mind lost even more focus, he would never recover. He knew that without anyone telling him.

(Oh, right… I remember now.)

As usual, he had been on a shitty job with the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion. He had been at New Caribbean Island, a tropical island near Central America where the weather completely ignored the fact that it was October. It had all started when he set out on a philanthropic mission (but really meant to earn a diplomatic card) to rescue a Capitalist Corporations submarine that was stranded at the bottom of the ocean after having engine trouble. On that submarine, they had found an old woman wanting to defect from the Information Alliance. She had claimed to be Katarina Martini, a biochemical engineer.

By taking in the old woman who had led the Information Alliance’s crucial genius girl project, they had triggered a serious military clash with the Information Alliance who did not want their technology leaking out. That had begun a fierce battle against the Nitrogen Mirage, a cutting-edge Second Generation that could bend its lasers as it pleased.

(…Kh…)

His mind was all mixed up. He felt a dull headache slowly traveling from right to left in his brain. His stomach roiled disconcertingly, like he had triggered some kind of trauma. This was an important issue. The Nitrogen Mirage was a powerful enemy. But that was not the crux of the problem. The true darkness lurked beyond that.

An Information Alliance landing team had attacked the Legitimacy Kingdom at the artificial New Caribbean Island. The Legitimacy Kingdom had struck back by directly infiltrating the Flagship 019 located at the center of the Information Alliance’s maintenance fleet.

The fierce attacks that ignored the concept of clean wars had been caused by Piranirie Martini Smoky, one of the created genius girls who had gone berserk, and the giant administrative AI network that the Martini Series was meant to manage and correct.

Quenser’s group had temporarily joined forces with Wraith Martini Vermouthspray, an Information Alliance officer, in order to defeat Piranirie and the Nitrogen Mirage.

But that alone had not solved the problem.

(Ugh. Ahhh…!?)

His mind roared at him to remember it.

His mind screamed at him to not remember it.

The positive and negative thoughts crashed into each other, tormenting Quenser Barbotage with the internal pressure. His soul thrashed about in search of any way out, even the smallest gap. And as a result, his mind was drawn toward it. He formed a link to the memory of the monster lurking beyond the thick veil.

He had heard a certain radio transmission while inside the half-destroyed Flagship 019.

It was coming.

The Manhattan was finally on the move.

(Ahhhhhh!? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!)

He thought his skull would break from within and the pain felt like having countless rusty spikes driven into his head. He could not tell if this was physical pain or psychological pain. Regardless, it continued to shake him and his soul was forcibly dragged toward a certain answer.

Yes.

That was right. After that utterly baffling transmission…

A blinding light had…

“How long are you going to lie there!? Wake up already!!!!!!”

He heard a sharp shout and felt incredible pressure across his entire face.

It took him a few seconds to realize a bucket of seawater had been dumped on his face while he lay on his back.

“Ubh, what, cough, cough!! Uehh!? Cough!!”

Quenser choked and somehow managed to sit up, but then the toe of a thick military boot mercilessly kicked him in the jaw.

His vision shook and he rolled back onto the hard ground. It felt a lot like hot asphalt that had been sitting in the midsummer sun, but it was not.

“Ughh…ubweh…!?”

(What? Is this…the deck of…an aircraft carrier…?)

“Who gave you permission to speak and move? Have you forgotten that your lives are in our hands?”

He heard a low female voice from overhead.

He could not see her face well with the tropical sun behind her.

He also heard a young man’s voice.

“Captain, he appears to be the last one.”

“Hmph. That seems less than in the report.”

“Perhaps they went down with the Flagship 019 when it lost its balance? We could send divers to the sunken ship if need be.”

“That would be a waste of personnel expenses.”

Quenser tried to roll onto his stomach, but a military boot kicked him and he decided not to move. He moved only his eyes to observe his surroundings. …They were there. There were maybe a few dozen soldiers wearing soaking-wet Legitimacy Kingdom uniform identical to his lying on the slanted flight deck. It was reminiscent of the corpses lined up for counting after a plane crash.

He saw dark clouds.

As if to predict Quenser and the others’ futures, thick clouds covered the blue sky and had started to blot out the sun. Although those may have been caused by the extra-large attack that had assaulted them.

And once the sun faded, he could see.

The person looking down at him was a tall and beautiful girl of about 18. Her skin was white…but it had a different luster from Quenser and his group’s. With that and the long black hair tied back, she was probably of Asian descent. She wore a bluish sailor uniform and a miniskirt. That clued Quenser in to the situation.

The time between the Manhattan’s attack and this assault force abducting Quenser’s group had been too short.

“…So you’re from the Flagship 019…no, from the maintenance fleet. Hah. Were you promoted because your boss Piranirie kicked the bucket?”

The girl’s subordinate gave him another kick.

She must not have felt any real hatred toward him. The Asian beauty looked down at him like he was a bug crawling along the roadside.

“We will decide what will be done with all of you. As I said, your lives are in our hands.” She then glanced to the side. “But we have a more important issue to take care of. Hello, comrade! Lieutenant Colonel Wraith Martini Vermouthspray!! My fellow Martini!!”

Quenser tensed up at that.

Yes. Wraith’s cooperation with the Legitimacy Kingdom had been a personal decision. Since the Martini Series which supported the Capulet AI Network was acting oddly, Wraith’s decision may have been correct. But this and that were two very different things.

“Hello, Taratua.”

“Hello, Wraith.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray was a blonde girl of about 12. She wore a formal black hat over her long blonde hair and a pitch black uniform that was poorly suited for the tropical sun.

She had no allies in the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance.

A young man of unknown age stood beside her, but that alone was not much to rely on.

The Asian beauty named Taratua may have meant no real harm. The way the corners of her lips curled into a smile looked childish for her age.

Yes. Almost like the look of a child tearing off a captured insect’s legs one by one.

“I was placed in the maintenance fleet as Piranirie’s spare, but what kind of mission was a fellow Martini given that required working with enemy soldiers? I certainly haven’t heard of anything like that, so was it a highly-classified special mission?”

“…”

“Yes. Silence is the best answer here. Even if you try to lie about it and invent some fake mission, you never know when you’ll blow it.”

Their ranks were captain and lieutenant colonel, but Taratua did not hold back. If it could be proven that Wraith had been colluding with the Legitimacy Kingdom and had arrived here in violation of her actual mission, she would be no more than a traitor or deserter. Then no one could complain if she was shot in the back here and now.

“I’ll give you a chance.”

Taratua drew an impractically large revolver from her hip. It must have absorbed the dark color of the thick clouds overhead because the polished black weapon looked sinister. Wraith held out a hand to stop the young man who tried to move in front of her.

She winked her right eye and asked a question.

“You want to test my luck? That is impressively unscientific.”

“Ha ha! Oh, we’re not playing Russian roulette. Ignoring someone’s actual actions and only seeing if god loves them is more of a Faith Organization thing. You’re almost certainly guilty, but I know just how valuable the contents of your mind are. So, comrade, it isn’t your head you’ll be blowing away.”

Taratua spun the entire revolver around like a cheap pen and then held the grip out toward Wraith.

“The Second Generation Laser Beam 069, Piranirie, the recently sunk Flagship 019…and now an attack from that Manhattan 000. Our maintenance fleet is in tatters and our higher ups have probably been wiped out. We can’t let this continue. And if we’re going to recover, we need as many soldiers as we can get. And that includes you, my comrade and my fellow Martini.”

And.

She said it as casually as could be.

“Shoot that boy there. I’ll judge your true intentions based on that.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The atmosphere solidified.

Still on his back, Quenser checked on the situation by turning his head so stiffly the joint seemed rusted.

His eyes met Taratua’s.

He could not read Wraith’s emotions at all.

Before breathing her last, Piranirie Martini Smoky had said there was something breaking and driving the entire Martini Series mad. And it was controlled by someone outside the Information Alliance rather than Katarina, the old woman in charge of the genius girl project.

Was this also a product of that artificial madness?

Or was this normal for the Asian beauty known as Taratua?

“As I said, this isn’t Russian roulette, so none of the bullets have been removed.”

He understood.

What would Wraith Martini Vermouthspray do in this situation? Wasn’t there anything else she could do? Quenser understood. If she obeyed, one would die. If she did not, they would all die. It was simple arithmetic. Even if the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance had been temporarily working together because their interests aligned, they were still enemies.

There was no reason for her ''not'' to do it.

Once you had 1 + 1 = 2, no amount of searching would turn up another answer.

“We went to an effort to rescue these lives, so we will have these idiots work for us to make up for it. And they will keep working until they wear out and die.”

But.

Could it be…?

“But things are different for this one: Quenser Barbotage. This irregular actor ignores the rules of cost-effectiveness by running around destroying Objects. We will kill him here. It functions as camouflage and gives us a prize for the higher ups.”

“Wait!!”

That was when a soldier lying a short distance away raised his voice and was kicked in the jaw by one of the sailors walking between the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers who were lined up like corpses. A dark red liquid splattered from his split lip, but he kept shouting with the eyes of a chained dog.

“He isn’t a soldier! He’s a battlefield student!! If you know who he is, you must know that. Be careful how you handle him or it’s you who’ll be in trouble later!!”

It was Heivia Winchell.

But it was no use. All he could do was yell from the aircraft carrier deck.

Taratua paid him no heed.

“You are more like disposable parts than prisoners of war. The fact that any of you survived will be erased from any and all reports, so what does it matter how one or two of you is treated now?”

She sounded somewhat exasperated, but there were several endlessly ominous phrases mixed in.

And it was time to decide.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray grabbed the proffered magnum’s grip with a troubled look.

Taratua reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a device much like the collapsible opera glasses sold at concert halls. She casually unfolded it and winked.

“Say cheese. The time it takes to decide, your breathing, your perspiration, your eye movements, the trembling of your fingertips. I’m measuring them all like a true Information Alliance soldier, so don’t do anything suspicious.”

“…”

The Asian beauty gestured with her chin and her subordinate soldiers grabbed Quenser’s arms and lifted him up. They were near the railingless edge of the slanted flight deck, so there was no escape.

[[Image:HO_v15_027.jpg|thumb]]

A small girl stood directly in front of him.

The unsuitably large handgun’s muzzle was pointed toward the boy’s face.

(…Think.)

Sweat poured from his body.

He even had trouble blinking for the first time in his life.

Death.

True death was approaching.

(What is the Manhattan doing? If Taratua’s group is just the survivors of the maintenance fleet, are they really working as a solid group? Has anything been done to that handgun? What does Wraith think? Is there something I could use as a bomb or another weapon? What’s security like? This flight deck is unstable and tilted. The others are lying on the deck. …What happened to the Princess’s Baby Magnum? There has to be something! There has to be at least one thing I can use!!!!!)

“I’m sorry, Quenser. It looks like you’re still working your mind and foolishly haven’t given up hope.”

A voice seemed to slice right through the boy’s thoughts.

Wraith’s blue eye stared quietly at him through the sight.

“But this time, there really is…''nothing''.”

The dry gunshot…

…sounded far too light.

===Part 2===

“The world’s…gest Obje… New Yo…Manhattan…tself was…mation Alliance’s Object!?”

“An offici…statement was…with a video. The Manhat…intends…join this war!!”

“Not good…ood!! Everyone, brace for impact! The enemy…an electromagnetically…ched reactor cannon. It’s a demonic weapon that…the heat usually contai…the reactor which uses lasers…pellet fuel!! Our New Caribb…blown away!?”

“Curse the Marti…ries. How insane…they!?”

It was pandemonium.

The busty silver-haired high-ranking officer named Frolaytia Capistrano’s vision had been entirely flipped upside down and she initially could not remember where she was.

Light flashed before her eyes like she had been slapped the instant she ran across someone. The core of her mind was unsteady and she spent a while in an unthinking daze.

Slowly, like thin ice being melted by a blow dryer, her mind managed to focus on the cruel reality.

“Uh, kh…?”

She first realized she was collapsed face down.

She had been in the 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s officer’s barracks using her laptop to receive a report from a subordinate in their distant home country. But the scene around her had entirely changed. The ceiling was too low. No, the entire barracks building had been crushed down. The space was too cramped and the other things in the room were so close she could barely see. She did not have time to check on her Island Nation collection. Her military-issued items and personal possessions were scattered around her. Among those, she grabbed a laptop with a broken LCD screen and a keyring of hardware keys. Then she crawled through the cramped space.

Luckily, she was not trapped by an ankle caught in the rubble or anything else like that.

Did she have to crawl a few meters or a few dozen meters? Her sense of time and distance were far too vague as she bit her lip and made her way outside. She could see the outside light ahead of her, but the end never seemed to arrive. She had no guarantee this was the right way to go. The collapsed ceiling approached ever closer overhead the further she crawled, so she might find her hips trapped before she reached the exit.

That self-produced doubt gnawed at her mind as she dug at the ground with neatly clipped and filed nails to slowly but surely make her way forward.

(Finally…)

The light was approaching.

She had somehow managed to escape the pile of rubble under her own power.

(…Finally.)

And as soon as she did, a hellish scene spread out before her eyes.

As a reminder, Frolaytia Capistrano was on New Caribbean Island located in the Atlantic Ocean near Central America. It was a special island made by the lava of an artificial eruption caused by stimulating a submarine volcano with explosives. The island was a collection of small black rocks that looked like crunchy chocolate and it had originally been made as a bluefin tuna breeding base for her brother Bloodrics Capistrano. Frolaytia had stationed her Object maintenance battalion there and had been in the middle of a battle with an Information Alliance maintenance fleet and its Second Generation Object, the Nitrogen Mirage.

Those assumptions had been blown away.

First of all, the color was wrong.

The dark stone ground was glowing like an electrically-heated wire or a reactor. The cooled and solidified lava had been melted anew by an outside heat source. Like two scoops of ice cream dropped on the midsummer asphalt, the melted surface formed orange rivers that flowed toward the sea and then formed rising walls of billowing steam. Thanks to the immense light, heat, and steam, the bright sun overhead appeared to waver and dim. It may have been the same as the lights of a metropolis erasing the stars from the night sky.

“…”

It took Frolaytia a while to accept her situation here.

(This was done by the Manhattan’s main cannon. And it fired from a few thousand kilometers away…)

But she had to face reality.

There were around 1000 people in the maintenance battalion and half of them had gone to the front line based on the military operation Frolaytia had planned. So how many of the approximately 500 logistical support and standby personnel remained in this hell containing several orange rivers? That was about two schools’ worth of people. She had no idea how many more were lost with each passing second. She did not have time to stop just because she found it hard to accept.

“Report…”

Frolaytia raised her voice so it would not be drowned out by the explosive steam rising from the coast.

“Someone give me a report!! We need to know the scope of the damage, we need a relatively undamaged area we can evacuate to, and we need a set of surviving equipment and facilities! Simply saving the lives in front of you will only waste valuable resources. Then we can’t even save the lives you think you’ve saved. We need to avoid redundancies and carry out a rescue operation with maximum efficiency!!”

There was no response.

Not even the very basics were functioning.

“Hi, Tia-chan…”

“…”

The busty silver-haired commander’s shoulders jumped when someone spoke gently from behind her.

She just about let out her face as a family member, but she just barely managed to suppress it before turning around. She greeted the young man as the commander of the maintenance battalion.

It was Bloodrics Capistrano.

He had worn a black tailcoat even on this tropical island, but he had removed that, leaving him with just a white shirt. Had he used the coat to treat a wounded soldier, or had he discarded it before it melted in the heat?

He held a drawn katana in one hand.

There was no scabbard. For some reason, the blade was wet with a red liquid. It was unclear what had happened on the way here, but that was a clear sign of just how chaotic the situation was.

The sweat on his brow may have gotten in his eye or he may have had some other reason, but Bloodrics kept one eye unnaturally shut as he forced a smile on his blatantly exhausted face.

“Shouting won’t do you any good. The previous war is over. This has gone beyond Piranirie Martini Smoky or the Nitrogen Mirage. The conditions have changed.”

“What are you talking about? That isn’t for me to decide! It’s true the damage is severe, but we can’t just quit fighting a war like flipping a switch!! No matter the devastation before our eyes, we can still gather the surviving personnel and equipment for a counterattack. I’ll admit it’s like whipping the dead, but if we give up and stop resisting, everyone under my command will simply sink into the lava!!”

Frolaytia was not illogically relying on pure willpower.

She had more to say.

“Calm down, think, and never give up on being human! Why did the Information Alliance suddenly pull out their greatest secret weapon like this? It was at the center of their home country, so they shouldn’t have had any reason to send it to the front line. I don’t know the details of the issues with the Martini Series who monitor the AI network which may not even have a core, but if they have the full authority of a world power, they had to have had a better way of doing this.”

“…”

“We do not know how far the problems have spread within the Martini Series. If it’s limited to the ones in charge of protecting New York, it makes sense that only the Manhattan was sent out. But this is a fluid situation. If the other Martinis also begin acting oddly, the problems could spread uncontrollably throughout the Information Alliance!”

“Tia-chan, you are overwhelmingly correct here.”

Her brother slowly breathed out.

Bloodrics was supposedly a civilian, but he spoke to his sister like he was calmly explaining something while she threw a tantrum.

“But there is no one to answer your call.”

“!?”

“By a general estimate, 60-70% of those remaining on the island were lost. And losing 30% is normally considered a rout, is it not? You can no longer maintain ordinary military activity here. Tia-chan, your job here is to remove or destroy all classified information so the Information Alliance cannot steal it. And that includes yourself as the major in command of the entire battalion.”

“…”

“You must not be captured. No matter what. Do you really think the Manhattan is finished with only that one shot? Whether it fires a second and third shot or they send a large landing unit to the devastated remnants of the battalion, you have a single job here, Tia-chan: …Escape. It does not matter how pathetic or cowardly you feel. Tia-chan, you carry a responsibility here, so you must get yourself away from here. Even if you are the only one that escapes.”

She intellectually understood that.

If she was captured, the enemy could steal the biometric information like her center of gravity or iris scan that allowed access to the military datalink. Or they could get her to talk about future operations no one was supposed to know about or the names of spies who had infiltrated enemy countries. Then the damage would spread beyond ''just this war''. To minimize the losses, she had to make sure it was limited to ''just this war''.

The busty silver-haired commander slowly breathed out.

After throwing the laptop and hardware keys into the lava, she drew her military handgun from its holster.

“…I will withdraw only after saving as many lives as I can. As their commander, I will be rear guard.”

“Tia-chan.”

“Yes, yes!! I know it’s inefficient!!”

Frolaytia shouted back at him and pressed the military handgun’s muzzle against her own temple.

Brother and sister glared at each other and she gathered strength in her brow to keep her face as a girl from coming out.

“But there are still so many allies buried alive in this rubble and lava, unable to even groan! Not to mention the soldiers fighting the Information Alliance at the maintenance fleet out at sea!! They’re out there because I ordered them there! I can’t use insufficient data as an excuse. I can’t abandon them and run away. They would die pointless deaths if I did!!”

“…”

“Destroying all classified information was the bare minimum requirement, wasn’t it? That won’t be a problem. Officers aren’t issued guns to shoot the enemy. It’s to blow their own brains out if need be!!”

Still holding his drawn katana, Bloodrics shook his head with a sorrowful look on his face.

He must have understood his sister’s feelings all too well.

She did not let her status as a noble bind her. When necessary, she had risked her life and used her own strength to protect her soldiers. That was a joyous thing for Bloodrics. If his sister had something she wanted to protect, he wanted to fight alongside her as her brother. He truly did.

Finally, he took a deep breath of resignation.

And the brother spoke to his sister.

“I’m sorry, Tia-chan. But I can’t let you do that.”

Did Frolaytia even know what caused the quiet sound on her head?

“Bh…?”

The pommel of the katana held by the silver-haired young man had dug into the side of her head. Just like knocking someone out with a pistol grip. Before she could even move her finger to pull the trigger, the ''girl''’s eyes grew unfocused and her body went limp.

Before she fully collapsed, Bloodrics wrapped an arm around her waist which, as her brother, he felt was too skinny. If he was not careful, the finger on the trigger could accidentally fire the bullet.

“Striking my own sister… I am truly a disgrace to the concept of chivalry.”

He sounded utterly disgusted, but he was extremely dry when it came to this. Those military reasons meant nothing to him since he was a civilian, albeit a noble one. His first and foremost objective was to protect his precious sister no matter what it took.

On his way here, he had heard many voices begging him to kill them.

Some had had lava dumped on their head and others were caught in the rubble. Bloodrics had turned the tip of his katana on those soldiers who had no hope left.

He would not forget their words of thanks.

How could he ever forget?

“…I’m sick of it all.”

Frolaytia had built up this world of hers bit by bit as she resisted the noble society, so he could not allow her to see it tragically fall apart.

She could resent him if she liked.

She could hate his guts if she had to.

Bloodrics tossed aside his bloodstained katana and placed a finger to his ear. He was about to send out a transmission.

“It’s me.”

As soon as he focused on the small earpiece, the young man took on the face of a noble.

“Yes, I would like an emergency exit. Use that submarine. I would like to pick up as many Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers as possible, but there is no need to force it. We leave in 15 minutes. Give up on any we cannot pick up. Don’t worry. None of you need play the villain’s role. That I will do alone.”

Still supporting his unconscious family member’s weight, Bloodrics looked through the lava’s heat and steam to view the distant horizon.

According to Frolaytia, she had sent some of her soldiers out to sea.

It had been necessary. Even if it had required ignoring her personal feelings.

But if the maintenance battalion withdrew from New Caribbean Island, they would have nowhere to return to. Once isolated out at sea, no one would come to save them no matter how much they screamed.

Bloodrics Capistrano was doing that to them.

He was prepared to dirty his hands with the things that someone had to do.

“…Such a disaster. For us and them.”

===Part 3===

And no one came.

The Legitimacy Kingdom military was supposedly stationed at New Caribbean Island. The Princess’s Baby Magnum was supposedly out in the wide ocean.

And yet.

No one.

“…I’ll kill you…”

A voice burning with resentment echoed across the rusty flight deck.

It belonged to Heivia Winchell who could not even shed any tears.

He moved his trembling body as best he could to crawl to the edge of the flight deck, but there was already no sign of his friend’s corpse.

Only a strange dark red liquid stained the water’s surface as a large shadow slowly swam below.

“Ha ha. Don’t do that, Wraith!”

Taratua held her stomach as she laughed.

There were tears in the corners of her eyes.

“You can feed his corpse to the sharks if you like. Peh heh heh. But we’ll never hear the end of it if you feed them the metals and plastics along with it. Ah hah hah hah!!”

With that, something really did snap inside Heivia’s mind. He crossed a line.

“I’ll kill you!! I’ll murder you!! I don’t care anymore if you’re insane or broken or whatever the hell. I’ll turn every last one of you to mincemeat in a hail of bullets!!!!!”

In the end, where was that threat directed?

No one knows.

===Part 4===

“Attention, 101st Zombie Platoon!!”

They were out in the open.

There were not even any chairs or tables.

Heivia and the other defeated survivors of the Legitimacy Kingdom were gathered on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier which was tilted too far to be of any use. Rain was pouring down from the thick storm clouds, but there was no roof or anything else to protect them. There were not even any railings, so if they got careless and slipped on the wet flight deck, they could roll right off into the ocean where the hungry sharks waited.

The only person with a smile on her face was Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks, but she stood below a large umbrella held by a male subordinate.

“That impressive attack from my piece of shit comrade on the Manhattan 000 has whipped up quite the storm. That gives us an opportunity for the dead to do some work.”

“…Are you unfamiliar with the concept of war treaties? This is no way to treat POWs.”

“What, do you want to be thrown inside a zoo cage like the amusing animal you are?”

She was blunt.

Whether it had been injected from an external source like with Piranirie or if she had always been like that, the thoroughly-broken Asian beauty did not bat an eye.

“You cowards boarded our maintenance fleet’s flagship and then shared the fate of the Flagship 019 after a variety of attacks finally sunk it. Thus, there were zero survivors. Your survival has been scrubbed from any and all records, so worry not and go have some fun.”

“…”

Heivia gave her a murderous glare, so she winked.

“Do you understand your position now? The dead do not belong to any of the usual categories, so we can ignore all those pesky treaties and military regulations. Plus, any number of you can die without it counting in the official records. Ignore the people in their living rooms. You can fight as you like and die as you like! I’m honestly jealous! That’s the paradise dreamed of by any soldier!!”

In other words…

The Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were being forced to wrap their arms around the pile of shit that the Information Alliance did not want to grab with their bare hands. Their target of attack could be a region of hopelessly fierce fighting, or a symbol of peace that was bound to earn international criticism. They did not want to imagine the other possibilities.

It was time for a true death march where they were lined up in a row and forced at gunpoint to walk through a minefield. Each step would be terrifying, but standing still would get them shot. Yes, the death march was more than just this one battle. They would never be released. Heivia and the others were disposable tools. This situation would continue endlessly until they were worn out and died.

“…What are you telling us to do?”

“It’s all about balance.” Taratua toyed with the end of her black hair that was damp despite the umbrella. “I’m sure you saw a lot on the Flagship 019. The Capulet AI Network that supports the Information Alliance, one of the four world powers, is correct but too pure. After all, after the New Yorker’s used various countermeasures to avoid security cameras and email spying, it was rendered unable to see New York itself. If the entire Martini Series in charge of maintenance returns a strange echo, it could create a similar flaw in Capulet. …But that is not the problem.”

“?”

Taratua was supposedly a part of that Martini Series, but she did not seem worried about herself.

“As its name suggests, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. Nevertheless, we were not told anything about the risk to Capulet or about the Manhattan 000.”

“You’re pissed at being left out, so you want to take revenge by having us blow up New York?”

“Are you braindead? This is an opportunity,” whispered the black-haired beauty below the umbrella. “The Manhattan 000 is currently traveling south at around 388 knots. The distance from New York in the Information Alliance home country and the ocean near New Caribbean Island is about 3500 kilometers, so it should arrive within 4 or 5 hours. It’s still a mystery why they would send their king to the front line like this, but there is one thing we know for sure: we were blessed with a chance to gather raw data.”

388 knots was 700 kilometers per hour, so it was not much different from a passenger plane. What had happened to the city of Manhattan and the people in it?

The usual technical nerd was not here.

With nowhere to direct his question, Heivia just spat it out.

“700…? How?”

“At the very least, it must not be using an aircushion or static electricity floats. The colossal structure itself is parting the water. It’s probably using supercavitation or something to reduce the water’s resistance with small air bubbles, but the exact system is still unknown. This is all information we must find.”

That gigantic a presence was staring them down from the darkness. Wasn’t that enough to sound instinctual alarm bells within any living creature?

And yet this girl had called it an opportunity.

“…Are you the kind of person who goes out to see the hurricane and gets blown away into the sky?”

“I will shoot you next time. What matters here is who can monopolize the most raw data available at the scene. As I said, the Information Alliance rules everything with data. The Manhattan 000 started moving and can apparently move under its own power whenever it wants. After we gather what data we can on it, we are not foolish enough to send all of it back to our higher ups, which includes the core-less Capulet AI Network. …I mean, it already fired on all of you to cover its tracks.”

“Don’t drag us into your internal conflict.”

“Don’t be silly. Then I would have to take responsibility here.”

Even the simplest rules did not apply.

This was completely different from not having your words get through to someone. It was like emphatically speaking and even gesturing for emphasis only to see all that effort outright rejected. There was simply no opening in this girl. She was as inhuman as a giant praying mantis wearing human skin.

Was she an alien? Was she from the Shit Planet?

“They went to a lot of effort to hide this for so long. There must be some great secret to the Manhattan 000. And that would be very, very valuable information.”

Taratua giggled after glancing at the notebook-sized tablet she took from the subordinate holding the umbrella.

Was it showing a video site or online news? Or maybe the myriad posts on message boards and social media?

There was a lot of information related to Manhattan, but it was meaningless if none of it was accurate. When faced with a situation like this, it was the lowest of the low who could only think about shouting strange apocalyptic theories or fabricating a witness account to gather views for their videos.

“After taking this much blame, I’m not going to obediently stand aside and stay a lowly Captain. I will provide myself with a path to special promotion. I’m sure all four world powers, both our enemies and the Information Alliance itself, are rushing to gather information. That’s perfect. Those onlookers will trip each other up and fail to gather anything of note. Meanwhile, we will move a step or two ahead. I will hold the valuable information on the Manhattan 000 and I will decide how to use it. Perhaps I will use AI and big data to join the upper class and enjoy a high society life of wealth. Or maybe I will threaten those people and use them as a stepping stone to an even more comfortable and leisurely life.”

“So it’s all about money? You sound just like the goddamn Capitalist Corporations.”

“Are you musty old nobles too stupid to tell the difference? The order is reversed. An information illiterate fool and their money are soon parted. When the poor hit the jackpot at the lottery, the story always has a tragic end. The truly powerful are those who first gather information. Whether or not they reveal their educational history, their occupation, the size of their bank account, and so on is all part of someone’s status.”

Heivia shook his head like he was hungover.

He may have given up on trying to understand the thought process of this thinly-smiling resident of Shit Planet.

“And the problem there is balance.”

But how did Taratua view these disposable Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers?

She looked down on the rain-soaked group from her position of safety.

“Hopefully, the four world powers will begin a mutual game of whack-a-mole that keeps any of them from popping up. The danger is if one of them manages to stay up. I want to restrict their data acquisition speed. That way we alone can grasp these secrets and use them as exclusive bargaining chips against the higher, higher, higher ups. So if any of those moles pops up, we need to whack them back down. Even if our target is from the Information Alliance, we still must thoroughly destroy them. Even more so for outsiders.”

This was sounding ominous.

Heivia, Myonri, and the rest tensed up as Taratua spun the notebook-sized tablet around so they could see the screen.

And it showed…

“A symbol of peace: the Olympia Dome☆”

“Bff…!?”

She was broken.

She was completely insane.

“That artificial floating island travels slowly around the Atlantic and hosts the Technopics global sports festival. It officially claims to be fully neutral and not affiliated with any world power, but it is actually heavily dyed in the colors of the Faith Organization. And since it needs to broadcast an international event, it is equipped with largescale broadcast equipment. That makes it a gigantic EM spy device wandering across the Atlantic. It doesn’t really matter whether or not it was originally built for that purpose. It has ended up that way. It is in our way. You need to whack down that mole so it doesn’t discover the Manhattan 000’s secrets before we do. Blow it up and sink it.”

“…That’s against the rules. You want us to sink the site of the Technopics with military might? That would turn into an international incident requiring centuries of reparations!!”

“That isn’t part of the calculation. Even if you’re right, I won’t be the one paying them. Why do you think I’ve kept you dangerous Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers alive this long? Now get to work, my dead soldiers☆”

She made it sound so simple.

If this was an operation that could be pulled off with the normal methods, she would not have put together this unstable enemy unit of zombie soldiers. She was not expecting Heivia and the others to fight valiantly. They were being used as jokers to whom the rules did not apply specifically because she did not care when they were destroyed either legally or physically.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks smiled thinly.

“Luckily, all of our maintenance fleet’s ships were at least half-destroyed by the Manhattan 000’s attack. No one will suspect a thing if a few of them lose control and start to drift. You assisted a stranded Capitalist Corporations’ submarine for no reward, didn’t you? This will be the same. The rules of the sea are kind. So we’ll use that to our advantage by getting the Olympia Dome to assist you so you can crush them from within.”

Heivia tried to continue arguing, but Taratua gently raised a hand.

The sailors surrounding them lazily aimed shotguns at the curled-up Legitimacy Kingdom dumplings. Heivia might or might not be killed when the first trigger was pulled, but once it began, the number of survivors would be quickly reduced.

Refusal was not an option.

If they disobeyed, they would receive a bullet to the head. If they obeyed, they would be used as disposable elements of ridiculous missions. Even if they managed to win and survive, they would not be freed; they would simply be sent out on the next mission. The death march would continue until every last one of them was dead.

[[Image:HO_v15_051.png|thumb]]

The Asian beauty gently lowered her hand and grinned.

“Do you understand the rules now? Then begin.”

“…Wait.”

A low voice spoke.

It was Heivia as the pouring rain continued to hit him.

“You’re the only one that gains anything from that. It’s not worth our while. We’re risking our life on a deadly attack with guns aimed at our backs. There has to be something in it for us.”

“Using data to achieve a fortune only applies to those in the Information Alliance. Or are you saying you will defect to our side to share in the profits here?”

“Not what I meant,” spat out Heivia. “I’m not interested in your dirty money.”

And he said it.

“Wraith Martini Vermouthspray. Once this is all over, hand that bitch over to us. Those are our terms.”

The tall girl silently tilted her head.

She rubbed at her shiny black hair as she finally answered.

“What do I gain by accepting that? Depending on your answer, I might just return you to your grave.”

“You’re both from the Martini Series, aren’t you? Keep her with you and your share is divided in half.”

“Then you can kill her if you want.”

She said it so easily.

Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks may have had no concept of camaraderie.

No.

Dorothea, Piranirie, and Wraith.

Even that small blonde girl had lost the guarantee of the safety myth. So was it safe to conclude it was a general trait of the Martini Series as a whole? The one question was whether that was a mistake at the design phase or if it was the result of an outside force taking advantage of a vulnerability.

The tall Asian beauty concluded the briefing with a carefree look.

“So we have a deal☆ Now, 101st Zombie Platoon, this is your first mission, so it is a cause for celebration. It’s time for a true bloodbath mission!”

===Part 5===

The Frigate 042 was tossed about by the nearly-black gray of the stormy sea. It was about 100 meters long. It would have originally been neatly painted the mix of light gray and blue associated with warships, but large parts had been scorched black and the surface had bubbled up like someone had held a match to the back of a photograph. The rapid-firing guns were bent, the vertical-launch missile tubes lined up like a honeycomb were melted shut, and most of the various antennae had been blown off of the bridge. The entire ship was tilted at an angle, so it was clearly in no state for cruising.
If an empty-headed youth came across it in a cruiser, they might snap a photo with their smartphone and create a new ghost ship legend.

Its tragic state was a testament to the power of the Manhattan 000’s ultra-wide-range attacks.

“…This is the worst, goddammit.”

Inside the ship, Heivia Winchell spat out his words while sitting with his back to the wall and an assault rifle in his arms. He and the other Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers were inside the mess hall that was one of the larger intact areas.

“I’m a noble heir, but those bastards rewrote the records to report me as dead. Those old men with giant beards, fat asses, or both have got to be fighting over the right of succession back in the home country. And who knows what’s happened to the relationship between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families…”

“Ch-cheer up, Heivia. We just have to wait for an opportunity.”

“You sure are hopeful, Myonri. Do you really think there will be one? With those pieces of shit watching our every move!?”

The zombie-like soldiers slowly turned their attention in the direction Heivia pointed.

There, a single pair of non-matching uniforms stood out from the rest.

It was the Information Alliance officer Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

And the young man who acted as her aide.

“I doubt you’ll trust anything I say at this point. …But it’s even harder for me to trust myself. Just like with the Capulet AI Network, the Martini Series can’t make judgments about itself.”

“…”

“By spreading its influence thinly out across all of the Information Alliance’s territory of influence, Capulet lost any symbol of a ‘core’. Piranirie said she had succumbed to the AI’s correctness, but it is hard to say she had no confidence in her actions. I don’t know what it is that is destroying us, but it may be using our active self-denial.”

“Active…self-denial?”

Myonri looked confused and Wraith nodded.

“Like giving up on climbing a mountain because of a blizzard. Or making a courageous withdrawal. …It depends on the person’s willpower, but people have a strange mindset where the stronger their desire, the further they move from their initial objective. That is why Piranirie charged full speed toward her own destruction.”

The blonde girl sighed in the heavy atmosphere.

“Our original, Cassandra Martini, was apparently a rational killer. She must have chosen to give up on so much in the course of that life. If Katarina were here, she might have been able to corroborate that.”

She was acting differently from her previous chatting.

There may have been an absolute difference between Wraith and Heivia’s group.

Of course, Heivia’s group was in charge of hesitantly walking onto the minefield while Wraith’s group was in charge of firing into their backs the instant they took issue with Heivia’s group’s speed or anything else.

“(I can’t believe Taratua. She’s actually sending our reward out into battle with us. Does she see it like shaking a carrot on a stick in front of the dumb horse?)”

“What’s this? You’re acting awfully suspicious here. Did you ask for my head as a reward for this mission?”

“Tch.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue.

It did not matter if she found out here. The secret deal was with Taratua. Even if that girl was broken on a fundamental level, she could still do the math. In other words, she was a high-IQ serial killer. Her “emotions” could not be overturned even if Wraith went crying to her now. It did not matter that they were comrades.

Meanwhile, Wraith sighed.

“You’re apparently clinging to hope to an ugly extent, but that’s fine with me. You can think about what comes afterwards if you like, but don’t lose sight of the immediate hurdle. Taratua has very good reason to be cautious of Olympia Dome. First, if the Manhattan 000 is headed for us, there is a good chance that wandering artificial floating island will pass very close by. Second, the Faith Organization is sending soldiers and equipment to that symbol of peace. Primarily STOL transport planes and tiltrotors. This isn’t over once we get inside with this Trojan horse. Learn how to use the Information Alliance equipment we have lent you. You need to act like you stole it from this half-destroyed ship. Also…”

“Shut up. That’s enough.”

Heivia rudely cut her off.

His tone with her was clearly different from just a few hours before.

“How long are you going to act like we’re on the same side? There’s a really obvious line in the sand now. And you drew it your damn self. You sicken me. Don’t think you can just move from one side to the other whenever you damn well please. It pisses me off even though I know it’s coming from a completely broken lunatic.”

“…Do you think growing emotional is a virtue? I’ll admit it’s pure to a fault, but do you actually plan on surviving this?”

“How the hell can you say that after taking his life with your own hands!? Do you really think you’re the hero? Have you gone as nuts as Joan of Arc? Say it yourself: who do you think it was that shot Quenser to save her own hide!?”

The girl’s shoulders shook at the blatant verbal abuse.

Her already-small body shrank down all the more, but her eyes opened unbelievably wide.

Her lips trembled as she tried to say something. They opened and closed, but nothing ever came out.

“Say it, crazy girl.”

There was now a definite focus to Heivia’s previously gloomy eyes.

There may have been nothing rational there. There was someone here he had reason to criticize, so he may have simply been using that as an outlet.

His back left the wall, he slowly stood up, and a bright light glinted in his eyes as he roared at her.

“Sure, you probably did the right thing!! You probably used that clever head of yours to work out the optimal solution and that told you to shoot Quenser!! So how about you hold your head high? After killing so many people, did you think you could become the tragic heroine who gets tears in her eyes and laments how hard it was for her!? That wouldn’t make him happy. That wouldn’t make Quenser happy. Did you really think anyone would accept that, you piece of shit!?”

“…”

“Do you remember what happened when that damn Manhattan fired on us?”

Wraith remained motionless, so Heivia kept up the verbal assault.

He seemed to be saying he would not forgive her even if her heart lay in tatters.

“He protected you. That skinny bastard threw himself over you to protect your tiny body from whatever was going to happen. It’s true that was right after everything with Piranirie, so he’d just experienced a kid dying. …But the fact remains that he protected you. Do you know what that means? That softhearted idiot didn’t want you to die and he thought he could trust you to have his back! And then you-…!!!!!”

There was a small movement.

It may have been similar to a small child trying to cover their head as an unreasonable adult shouted angrily down at them.

But in Wraith’s case, her small hand hovered near the holster on her hip.

The blonde girl winced as if that fact pained her, but Heivia gave a broken, asymmetrical grin.

“…That’s who you really are. A crazed killer. And I’m not talking about that active self-denial or some strange mindset. I’m talking about the very nature of your soul. You can claim to support equality or pacifism all you like, but the first hint of a threat and ''this happens''. If you aren’t on top, you can’t relax or even look the other person in the eye. There was no other choice? You’re just a child, so you aren’t responsible? Then you shouldn’t have stretched up on your tiptoes to set foot on the battlefield. None of this would’ve happened if you hadn’t participated in that genius girl project.”

He had started on what-ifs that had no bearing on reality.

But Heivia did not care since he was only interested in finding fault.

So he did not hold back.

“You should’ve stayed back in your safe country hiding behind your mommy’s skirt.”

This was even more than before.

Everyone watching could tell the girl’s pale face grew another shade closer to pure white. It was easy to imagine how tightly her heart was squeezing inside her juvenile body.

Heivia had to have heard Quenser and Wraith’s conversation on the Flagship 019.

He would have heard about the DNA computer spread out across the Information Alliance, he would have heard about the Anastasia Processor at its core, and he would have heard whose cancer cells were used to create it.

He would have heard about that impossible what-if where the girl would never have had to take the Martini name and would have been protected by a normal, warm family if not for her mother’s sickness.

But he still said it.

He did not care. He only saw her as an enemy.

A military boot could be heard scraping against the floor.

The young man ever-present by Wraith’s side had taken a step forward while tightly clenching his teeth.

“Get back to jerking off in front of the position-detection camera with some VR goggles on, you Information Alliance pervert. Did you think you could become her knight now that Quenser’s dead?”

Heivia did not back down.

In fact, he immediately stepped forward so they were less than a meter apart.

“What a gentleman you are for bothering to stand up over nothing more than an exchange of words. Well? Am I supposed to fight to the death without a single complaint even after being given legit bullets? Is that how you think a gentleman should act? Go fuck yourself!!!!!”

Next, there were several dull sounds of impacts that crushed flesh and struck the bone.

First, the young man’s iron fist hit Heivia’s cheekbone. Heivia retaliated by grabbing at him. The rest was too chaotic to describe. The two of them knocked over the mess hall’s tables and chairs as they rolled along the floor to get on top of the other. All the while, dull and potentially deadly sounds rang out and dark red drops of blood scattered around.

“…Stop.”

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray moved her trembling lips to force out the word.

Neither Heivia nor the young man was listening.

The Legitimacy Kingdom boy grabbed a glass ashtray from the floor and the Information Alliance mechanical man reached for the pin of a grenade hanging form the delinquent soldier’s jacket. Seeing that, Wraith finally made up her mind.

“Stop this!!”

She had drawn it.

She drew her handgun from the holster.

The atmosphere froze. A decisive chasm had opened between the Legitimacy Kingdom and Information Alliance. If that grenade had detonated, those two and all those gathered in the enclosed mess hall would have been killed. But no one was focused on that.

Everyone there – and that probably included Wraith herself – had pictured something else entirely.

They vividly saw that scene of someone shooting someone else on the tilted flight deck.

“…Do whatever you want.” Heivia recklessly threw his hands up while the young man leaned down on him. “You have two options here. One: if the mission fails, you’ll be filled with lead at Olympia Dome along with us. Two: if the mission succeeds, Taratua will sell you to us. …There’s no way out for you. Your life is already over, crazy girl.”

That was the end of it.

The young man swung his fist down into the center of Heivia’s face and the unfunny idiot’s consciousness was swiftly taken from him.

===Part 6===

“Naval Security Sigma 3 to all. We have reached the unidentified ship. It has been sending out a distress signal…but it isn’t responding to our radio transmissions, flashing light signals, or loudspeaker calls. Please advise.”

“This is OD Control. Wait, Sigma 3. Olympia Dome lacks the authority to board and raid ships.”

“Sigma 3. Isn’t it already within 200 nautical miles?”

“OD Control. An artificial floating island cannot claim territorial waters or an exclusive economic zone. Also, Olympia Dome is neutral in every possible way.”

“(How can you say that after letting in Faith Organization troops like us?)”

“OD Control here. State your call sign before speaking, Sigma 3. We can only board ships that have already sunk. That one is still floating, isn’t it? As planned, attach the buffering material and then let the waves carry it into the dock.”

“Sigma 3. They aren’t controlling the rudder or decelerating. This might destroy the harbor block.”

“OD Control. Unlike a normal harbor, an artificial floating island can alter its direction and speed. That means we can match our speed to theirs. If they aren’t moving, we just have to move.”

“Sigma 3 to all. Starboard bow complete.”

“Theta 7. Port middle complete.”

“Phi 2. Starboard stern complete.”

“Psi 4. Starboard middle complete.”

“Delta 9. Port stern complete.”

“Sigma 3 to Lambda 1. What happened to the port bow?”

“…”

“Lambda 1!”

“Zeta 0 to Sigma 3. Lambda 1 has a phobia of sharks and micro bikinis. It’s all thanks to being swept out to sea when a carnivorous young woman licked her lips and devoured his virginity on a rubber boat. He’s probably off trembling somewhere right now.”

“Sigma 3. How is that traumatic? I’m jealous as hell. I lost mine to the old lady at the cigarette store. I’ll make up for his absence.”

“OD Control here. Trouble, Sigma 3?”

“Sigma 3. Nothing worth saving to the control recorder.”

“OD Control. Then stop discussing your virginities. Just so you know, I’m still afraid of holes in walls. Specifically ones just big enough to hold a nice breakfast banana.”

“Sigma 3 here. Shut up. And we’re done now anyway. What even happened to that cool-headed operator woman? Anyway, match their speed and catch them softly. Softly!”

“OD Control. You don’t have to shout. This entire rescue operation would be pointless if the impact was strong enough to kill the people inside.”

“(Curse these softhearted people who only know peace. Makes it hard to fight a war.)”

“OD Control here. Use your call sign, Sigma 3.”

===Part 7===

“Thanks for the help” was all they could say.

“Let’s get started.”

On Heivia’s word, the battle began.

Once the Faith Organization had firmly affixed the ship to the harbor block, the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes kicked open the bent metal door and rushed out toward the edge of the deck with assault rifles and carbines in hand.

Their first target was the concrete wharf area about 9 meters down from the starboard side of the ship.

A continuous hail of bullets filled the armed Faith Organization soldiers with holes. While exposed to the recoil of the gunfire, Heivia was honestly relieved that they were professional soldiers. If these were simply Olympia Dome staff, this would have been a nightmare.

This was in line with the information they had been given, but he had not been trained to the point that he would thank Taratua for anything. He gave a shout while ducking behind the thick metal panel attached to the railing to swap out his assault rifle’s magazine.

“There’s a sniper on the gantry crane! And if the gathered soldiers start to move apart, that’s the sign for a rocket. Destroy them first!!”

This time, Heivia had a separate shotgun attached below his rifle’s barrel. By swapping between real and rubber bullets, he could neutralize the harmless workers without killing them. Of course, this had nothing to do with mercy or philanthropy. …It was an efficiency optimization policy that used that “kindness” to lighten the soldier’s trigger finger.

“Don’t get your ammo type mixed up, Myonri. You won’t just get a red or white flag for it!”

“I know that!!”

They exchanged fire for a while, but the Legitimacy Kingdom’s chances of taking the wharf area did not look promising. They would have their best chance when their opponent was surprised by this unexpected attack, but Olympia Dome was the Faith Organization’s home turf and they held all the advantageous ground. Once they recovered from their shock, it would be the Legitimacy Kingdom’s turn to be overwhelmed.

“Is turning the entire slug into a rubber bullet really a humanitarian measure?” asked Myonri.

“It’s mostly just an excuse to yourself. Even if the enemy finds it silly, they can’t respond to the double tactics. Meanwhile, our trigger fingers are a lot lighter since we ‘might not kill them’, so our efficiency rises. It’s the same as the Island Nation’s concept of ‘striking with the back of the blade’. There’s apparently a theory that the samurai could attack so boldly because katanas weren’t double-edged.”

So before they were overwhelmed, they had to thoroughly strike the enemy and secure a foothold on land.

This was an away game and they knew in advance the enemy had more personnel and equipment. They had to throw them off their pace and break through regardless.

Heivia’s group’s enemies were not just those in front of them. They had been warned in advance that they would be shot in the back if they fell behind schedule.

Black-uniformed Wraith was hiding behind a different steel panel from the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes and she shouted at them while pointing toward the area with the most intense counterattack. She was the overall supervisor who was the only one allowed to shoot Heivia’s group in the back. And if Heivia’s group tried to retaliate, they would of course be executed by gunfire. Their actions were restricted by both force and military regulations.

“Avoiding work seems to be the only thing you fools are good at, but set up more of a barrage! I want to throw some more of these things while I can!!”

“Shut up and die, dead-end girl! Will those toys really accomplish anything…!?”

If he did not have to hit, he did not have to expose himself to danger. Heivia kept his body hidden behind the steel panel and stuck only his assault rifle up to randomly spray bullets down. And that made him one of the harder workers. Some of the soldiers were busy “pretending” by creating fake muzzle flashes with a strobe light and speaker linked together. It sounded silly, but unlike in movies, real battles did not have unlimited ammunition. That was a surprisingly handy item for conserving bullets.

“…The creep toward technology has already begun.”

“Oh.” Myonri sounded oddly cheerful. “It looks like those things have started to move.”

Behind her steel panel, Wraith Martini Vermouthspray had a focused look on her face as she operated something with both hands. The device looked like a smartphone with a sold-separately H-shaped game pad attached.

No, that may have been exactly what it was.

Something the size of a baseball silently rolled around the Faith Organization’s cover and into their hiding spot.

Immediately, an explosion erupted behind cover as if a fragmentary grenade had gone off there.

The lethal range was 5 meters and the incapacitation range was 10 meters, but those basic specs barely mattered. After a sudden explosion within the wall or vehicle they were hiding within, the people relying on that shield would be blown to bits.

“Wah!? Wha-!?”

Other Faith Organization soldiers behind nearby cover cried out in panic before they were blown away by other explosions that resembled dirty smokescreens. Some soldiers decided they could not stay where they were and rolled out from behind their shields, but Heivia and Myonri picked them off with bullets.

“Remote grenades that can roll along the ground and behind cover? How cruel can you get…?”

“Those simply incorporate the tech from sticky tape cleaning robots, don’t they?”

That was the identity of the devices Wraith had thrown earlier. After scattering the spherical explosives around the targets, you could control their exact locations with a smartphone or tablet. You rolled them behind the enemy’s cover and stealthily detonated them at the defenseless enemy’s feet. They could also be thrown over a prison’s thick walls and sent through a vent to explore the ducts.

“Should we really be relying on tech like this?” asked Heivia.

“They aren’t IoT devices, so they won’t be connected to Capulet,” replied Wraith. “Besides, unmanned weapons run on systems even more simplified than a pet robot. They won’t rely on an AI network.”

“Eh? Really?” asked Myonri.

“It’s true it would take a server with massive capacity to fully reproduce the flowchart for the predetermined movement patterns of the wings and legs of a single fly. …But what if we were in the middle of nowhere with nothing artificial as far as the eye could see? An unmanned weapon would be useless if it needed to constantly send out signals to inform a server of its location. The ideal form of modern unmanned weapons is generally a submarine. It only sends out a signal when absolutely necessary. Capulet might want to connect to everything and suck up all the data it can get, but even it has to make concessions here.”

Black-uniformed Wraith gave them the pitying look of a teacher to a poor student.

“They use the Insect Colony Theory that takes artificial creatures that learn and construct the simplest ways to move a spider or butterfly’s body and combines it with the swarm intelligence that uses machines to reproduces the social structures of ants and bees. That allows them to communicate and take the optimal action without the need for a server. This is an ideal. Just like a grazing herd, the group of unmanned weapons automatically works toward a single goal while we are the sheepdog who watches on and intervenes only when necessary.”

“That all sounds wonderful, but I’m more afraid of you going nuts then the machines!” shouted Heivia. “Are you sure this is okay!?”

This was somehow different from Quenser who had shaped bombs with his own hands and used them to realize his clever ideas.

Wraith Martini Vermouthspray’s explosions were merciless and unemotional.

It felt like she was trapping the enemy and efficiently killing them.

A motor that sounded a lot like an electric shaver passed by over their heads. They did not bother looking up. It was an aerial drone shaped like a four-winged water strider. Instead of just flying in a straight line, those things would include figure-eight movements, perhaps to divert the enemy’s aim.

Or was it a form of non-EM communication between the unmanned weapons?

It was thanks to these drones that the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers had been able to so accurately fire on the Faith Organization soldiers immediately after opening the metal doors. Intelligence was the greatest weapon. The battle was decided before the bullets and knives began to fly. It really was the Information Alliance’s style.

Wraith pointed at the drones being tossed about by the storm.

“If we have them self-destruct at an altitude of 50 meters and rain shrapnel down on the enemy’s head, we should be able to secure a route to C Dock. We need to reach land before enemy reinforcements arrive. Don’t be slow.”

“It doesn’t really matter, but…hey, watch out! Get down, Myonri!!”

Perhaps because of the powerful storm, some of shrapnel downpour reached the ship’s deck as well. After they were nearly decorated with some delicious plastic and rare earth seasoning, Heivia tried to grab at Wraith, but Myonri held him back. A single retort could get them reduced to a bloody pulp right now.

At the moment, time was of the essence.

No gangway had been nicely attached for them, but the actual docking work had been completed. If they descended the ropes attached to the railing, they could reach the concrete wharf area they had stained with blood a moment before.

They were not searching out each other’s position in the jungle or anything, but just to be sure, Heivia made sure not to step in any of the blood.

“I’ve got a pretty good idea of what kind of shitty tactics the Information Alliance uses, but what about the Faith Organization?”

“Guts maybe?” suggested Myonri. “Like making a gutsy charge?”

Just as Heivia dismissed that as ridiculous, the wall of a nearby warehouse broke open from within. A gigantic firetruck for fuel oil fires had crashed through.

“I don’t know if it’s for bulletproofing, but they’ve attached a thick wire mesh over the glass. And it’s not just handmade. It’s just like the ‘observation helicopters’ owned by a certain environment protection group. That thing was designed to accommodate this attachment!!”

But that was not the biggest problem. Soldiers were clinging to the sides and roof of the boxy vehicle. They looked like countless ants swinging around a sugar cube. Before Heivia’s group even did anything, some of the soldiers were caught on the jagged edges of the warehouse wall or had their uniforms caught in the giant tires, turning them to mincemeat.

It was tank desant.

“Huh, so it is guts,” said Heivia.

“Definitely guts,” replied Myonri.

Regardless, Heivia raised a hand and one of their allies fired a shoulder-fired anti-tank missile. More than 10 Faith Organization soldiers were blown away like the contents of a jack-in-the-box.

“Shit, they’re still alive!?”

They must have mastered the use of willpower and guts because the soldiers lying on the road or on top of the warehouse roof still fired toward the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers.

But that was not why Heivia’s group quickly dove behind rusty metal drums and wooden boxes.

“What is with them…? They’re firing something else along with their bullets.”

“Probably collapsible bows. They take a more arching path than rifle bullets, so be on your guard even when behind cover. It’s the same as you diligent and clever lot using both rifle bullets and rubber bullets. Individually, they wouldn’t be that effective, but mix them in and the enemy has to perform more mental gymnastics.”

“That’s not what I was talking about, crazy girl. Look at the arrowhead over there. Why have they rubbed seagull shit all over it!?”

“Maybe as a form of poison arrow? They probably hope to increase the damage done by shoving germs into the wound. The military use of rotten corpses and excrement is an effective strategy that has been used since BCE times.”

“Heivia, look at that on the road over there,” said Myonri. “Wow, I don’t want to see that at all. Isn’t that just the worst!?”

“Don’t just say ‘that’! Explain what it is!! …!? W-wait, you’re kidding, right? Not dogshit!”

It did not at all look like they were kidding and little Wraithy did not want a face full of dogshit, so she threw a baseball-sized explosive. The blonde girl operated her smartphone’s H-shaped game pad while hiding behind cover to blow up the Faith Organization soldier groaning on the ground 20 meters away.

“You idiot!! You just scattered dogshit and human entrails everywhere!! Be more careful!!”

“I feel like this is turning into biological warfare,” commented Myonri.

Just then, they sensed what seemed like a sound but was not. A slight vibration reached their feet from the ground.

They frowned.

“What’s this? Cheering from a stadium?”

“Why would it be that?” asked Myonri. “I thought this city was essentially dead except during the Technopics.”

“Can you professionals not even find a scientific explanation of the occult?” complained Wraith. “The winds and waves of the storm may be causing a resonance within the artificial floating island. It is not rooted in the actual earth, so looking at the overall ratio, it must be thinner than a pizza.”

“Don’t butt in, Loli Grim Reaper. I’m not a pedo or a necro.”

“There’s no need to lie.”

“And don’t just smile and say things like that, Myonri! People will think it’s true!!”

But in reality, a powerful vibration erupted in the distance and reached them like someone had scored a decisive point near the end of a soccer game. There was no way this was a natural phenomenon. The sound of mayhem had human intent behind it.

“…So is it really guts after all?” asked Myonri, sounding annoyed.

“Curse those perverted mythology fetishists. Did they start some self-loving to blow through the limiters in their minds!?”

The digital vs. analog war had finally begun.

Heivia’s group was not trying to remain in C Dock and protect the ship with their lives, so they had no reason to stay in place and put up a thorough resistance. Instead, they moved elsewhere.

Wraith looked up from her customized smartphone.

“Our objective is the broadcast station where most of the communication equipment is. We can ignore the broadcast tower and parabolic antennae. As long as we destroy the core, they can’t manage the exchange of information and that other equipment will be useless.”

“Wait, that’s not what we discussed. I thought that Martini sister you love so much was talking about sinking the whole damn island. Unlike you, we could get executed by Taratua if we make a single wrong move!”

“I can’t believe how little you can adapt to the situation… What does it matter what she hopes for? Can your poor little mind do nothing more than what it’s told? Besides, we don’t even know if it’s possible to sink Olympia Dome as a whole with the equipment we’re carrying. Most of its power is supplied by the generator satellite in orbit and the transformer ships in the ocean, so we can’t expect to trigger any explosives within Olympia Dome. The Faith Organization military infiltrating the artificial floating island doesn’t matter. Our top priority is robbing the Manhattan 000 of the ability to gather information.”

“Sure, sure. How kind of you. Such a pillar of charity. Is that the spirit of Nightingale I see hovering behind you? I’m sure Quenser is weeping for joy in the afterlife right now, you piece of shit.”

The aide young man punched Heivia and Heivia returned the favor.

Before it devolved into a serious grapple, timid Myonri aimed her assault rifle at those allies to restore order.

“This isn’t supposed to be my job!” she protested. “Wraith, please manage our people better!”

“R-right…”

“Just shoot him, you idiot!” shouted Heivia. “Whose side are you on, anyway!?”

“If you don’t quiet down, I will fire rubber bullets into your balls. Then the rest of us can keep moving while the two of you bond over your shared experience. Nonlethal weapons sure are convenient, aren’t they?”

She was smiling.

Was she aware that rubber or not made little difference when it came to balls? Myonri seemed to have awoken to her calling as a fearsome Black Uniform. This was another example of how frightening serious girls were when they got mad.

“…Is there some kind of special campaign in effect this month? When did plain old Myonri transform into this shiny ultra-rare?”

“I imagine it was the result of everyone’s daily treatment of me.”

“You have some nerve, Myonri. What good is an ultra-rare if you aren’t even going to show any more skin?”

“That’s what I’m talking about! Everything about your treatment of me is the worst!!”

They left the harbor block and entered the outer city region.

It was probably due to the thick storm clouds overhead, but the city looked very gray in the pouring rain.

“Are you sure we aren’t dragging civilians into this…?”

“There are apparently no athletes or spectators here except during the Technopics. The only civilians are the Olympia Dome inspection and maintenance staff. The city’s population density is less than 8%, so there’s very little chance of a stray bullet causing any harm.”

“I read you loud and clear: we don’t actually know anything for sure and we need to be careful if we want to avoid a nightmare later on.”

They heard the dull sound of several thick tires tearing at the ground. Garbage trucks and mobile cranes drove out from intersections and parking garages like crocodiles poking their heads out of the bushes. Soldiers covered them like a packed train in Southeast Asia, and…

“Oh, no! They’ve attached heavy weaponry with bolts and slide rails!!”

“Look how perfectly those fit. This is clearly how they were designed to look. They just normally have the equipment removed so those look like civilian equipment!! With the infrastructure support of a frontline base, they’re just military weapons!!”

In this case, it was heavy machineguns instead of construction equipment. If Heivia’s group remained standing in that wide-open six-lane road the size of a runway, they would have their torsos torn in half by a horizontal flash of light.

Driven on by the deep booms of gunfire, Heivia’s group broke the window to one of the shops lining the road and fled indoors.

Only after rushing inside did they realize it was a trendy bar.

“Damn, this is no time to let a horizontal stream of bullets hold us in place. They’ve broken through the limiters in their minds to free themselves from the fear of death. They’re sure to charge in at us!!”

“Do not worry, cowardly expert. This beautiful and kind young woman will wear down their numbers for you.”

Wraith sounded oddly confident. Thinking back, Heivia recalled that her aide had fired a 25mm grenade launcher straight up several times as they ran.

Or…?

“Parachute deployment confirmed. We have access to all rounds. None were lost. We can begin at any time.”

“Understood, Frank. Mark the heat readings around the engines and start by blowing away all of the modified vehicles.”

It happened after a 10 second delay.

A deafening explosion erupted outside with enough force to drown out the deep gunshots of the heavy machineguns that reverberated in their stomachs. And it was not just the one. Wraith’s smartphone was linked with the cameras of the grenades slowly swept up by the blasts, so when she set their targets, the explosives released their own parachutes, used their small wings for course corrections, and fell directly on the garbage trucks and mobile cranes with pinpoint accuracy. Their guidance was perfect despite the storm and the speed of the vehicles.

“Exactly the scary stuff I would expect from a crazy girl…” grumbled Heivia as he realized what it meant that the heavy machineguns had been entirely silenced.

Those grenades could be fired at random and individually locked onto targets later on. That was not something he could freely celebrate. He hated to think what would happen if they showed up in the enemy’s hands. This was an urban battlefield with roofs for protection, but an attack from above would be devastating out on an open field.

But Wraith herself did not seem delighted with her incredible results.

“Instead of worrying about their obvious active forces, you should focus on their passive enemy-location infrastructure. In other words, how did they know where we were? The Faith Organization is supposed to be dangerous in a simple way, but have they moved past their outdated analog warfare? Unless we take out their ‘eyes’, they’ll quickly reclaim the initiative.”

The stadium cheering erupted from unexpectedly close by.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“They’re coming. And they’ll have learned to hold back their special pieces to avoid having them crushed by explosives.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” asked Myonri.

“They’ll push in with overwhelming numbers! They’ll use their allies as shields and climb over the corpses!!”

When she heard Heivia’s words, Wraith took out one of the serverless remote grenades she had used at the harbor block and placed it among the jumble of drink bottles behind the counter.

Then they all left through the back exit.

They could not deny the fear of facing more heavy weaponry, so they did their best to choose the alleyways and small roads that garbage trucks, mobile cranes, and other large vehicles could not drive down.

“Keep an eye on the windows above and the manholes below. Urban areas that can’t be leveled are crucibles of death…”

Wraith ignored Heivia’s words and used her smartphone to check the camera footage from the remote grenade she had set up. A crowd resembling a rioting mob more than soldiers flooded inside the shop through the door and the broken window and trampled everything within.

Wraith spotted a distinctive tattoo on the backs of their hands.

“Aztec? …No, it’s Mayan, but is that an even older god?” The blonde girl gently rubbed her slender chin with her empty hand. “We can’t take them lightly just because they’re from an ancient civilization. Their largescale stone architectures and accurate astronomy was supported by a high-level of scientific learning. Their idea of crafting giant structures with an accurate hand could apply to modern Object development.”

“Can you look up how to use the ultimate magic with that thing? If not, it’s a waste of time. What a joke.”

The young man responded by quietly clenching his first and showing off his large bicep bulge, so Wraith kicked her aide in the shin without even looking up from her smartphone. She had learned how to put a stop to it by now. Blonde 12-year-old girls had endless possibility for growth.

“W-Wraith, can you at least look up from that screen?” suggested Myonri. “Handle it so halfheartedly and you’ll probably make him feel bad. This isn’t much of a reward.”

“It’s a good lesson for him. This is what happens when he tries to speak for someone as lovely as me with his dimwitted and sweaty masculinity.”

One of the many soldiers in the shop seemed to have noticed the camera, so Wraith tapped the screen to swiftly detonate the remote grenade. The screen simply displayed the text “Access Lost”, but there had actually been an explosion in the middle of that crowd. Small metal balls only a few millimeters across had been scattered in every direction to take lives as efficiently as possible.

“The drones flying above have detected the movement of a different unit. Simply fleeing will not shake them.”

“How many?”

“First of all, about 200 managed to pass through the bar and are pursuing us from behind.”

“…Hey, do you have so many brain chemicals pumping that you’ve forgotten how to do math?” complained Heivia. “We’re lucky if we still have 50 people. An enemy four times our size is too much.”

“And there are more than 300 approaching up ahead. The enemy is about 10 times our size and who can say how much larger it will grow.”

Regardless of the soldiers’ skill and equipment, the difference in numbers was simply too great. They had already used up the advantage provided by a surprise attack, so at this rate, they would be ganged up on and slaughtered.

While Wraith relayed this information with her smartphone in one hand, she pulled a few disks from her pocket and threw them. They were a little larger than movie disks and, when they fell to the ground, they came apart on their own and transformed into meter-long serpentine robots. It was unclear how closely their structure matched that of a snake, but when the head portion tapped against the ground, was it reading the heat to communicate with the other units?

“The worst case is to be trapped between two forces on this small road. Staying on this annoyingly straight path would be the absolute worst plan. It would be better to move out onto the major road to include a lateral vector to our path. We should bend the battle line so we’re only being attacked from a single direction.”

“U-umm, are those robots explosives too?” asked Myonri.

The robots wriggled like endoscopes as they either wrapped around vertical pipes to climb to the rooftops or slipped underground through the small holes in manholes.

Wraith answered with her eyes still on her smartphone screen.

“No, these are high-speed cameras. The cameras themselves have been made quite small by making them mirrorless, but blurring is a major issue. They can somewhat correct using their gyros, but then there’s no point in making them high speed. The engineers are apparently still having a hard time making flying versions.”

“Cameras…?”

“Yes. In an away game like this, we can’t help but be outnumbered. So to make up for what we lack, I was thinking we could play some soccer. Baseball and basketball would work just as well. As long as we have viewpoints from around 32 directions on the X, Y, and Z axes, we should manage well enough.”

“???”

===Part 8===

“Goddamn them…!!”

Sigma 3, real name Robinson King-Cole, groaned within the rubble of the harbor block. They had tried to be very cautious, but this was the result as soon as that crumbling ship entered C Dock. The zombies had flooded out from the Trojan horse and bared their fangs against the symbol of peace known as the Olympia Dome. It had been quickly transformed into a battlefield reeking of gun smoke and blood.

The large Hispanic man looked up at the crumbling ship that was more than 9 meters tall. The ship itself seemed to be from the Information Alliance, but the flag raised above it was the Legitimacy Kingdom’s.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Who are they!? Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers that captured an Information Alliance ship, Information Alliance soldiers disguising themselves as the Legitimacy Kingdom, or someone else altogether!?”

Many varieties of rifle and shotgun cartridges were lying around. Yet normally there would be a single standard used within a unit.

(There’s so much evidence here, but it feels like that’s actually obscuring the truth. It’s always like this when the Information Alliance’s name pops up!!)

Robinson felt a physiological disgust at a level above reason, but that may have been because he belonged to the Faith Organization that saw value in a single absolute truth. He simply could not understand the people who used post-truth politics and fake news to muddy the truth and make all sorts of noise.

After regrouping with some fellow soldiers who had also arrived on personal watercraft, they ran along the dock, checked the pulses of their collapsed allies, stopped the worst of the bleeding and attached GPS tags to those who were still breathing, and moved on to the next one.

Leaving the harbor block did not wake them from the nightmare.

They smelled smoke, gunpowder, and death.

The ominous odor of the city before them could not be washed away by the blowing rain.

(This is awful…)

It would be easy enough to hate the enemy for this, but it was Robinson’s group that had allowed this to happen. The fact that they had just been following orders did not soothe his conscious. Bringing that ship to C Dock and stationing themselves at Olympia Dome in the first place were both the Faith Organization’s decisions.

“Sigma 3 to OD Control. Send the plan to me too. I want to join the battle, but what kind of operation are we running!? OD Control!!”

“…Oh, Zeus, god of life and punishment. Your pure shrine maiden beseeches thee. Lend us the power that once guarded Olympus to send lightning upon the villains who would lay waste to your modern temple…”

“Dammit!!”

That female operator usually kept a head as cool as ice, but she had driven her mind to an elevated state with that flat and expressionless prayer. Robison and the others in charge of the actual combat were professional soldier, but the people monitoring communications and making decisions based on a variety of regulations were civilians who were only meant to inspect and maintain the sports facilities. They could not necessarily endure the pressure of knowing their decisions could lead to so many deaths.

(The damage is spreading throughout the entire city. I doubt ''just'' the intruders could cause all this. Did the ground troops cut their limiters and begin a war of attrition?)

Robinson’s group had not rushed to the Olympia Dome in response to the Manhattan issue. There had not been enough time for that.

It was more accurate to say they had happened to be in the right place at the right time while making their near-standard naval resupply stop.

(If we had predicted things that well, we could have handled this better! Curse the Manhattan. It just shows up and then starts scattering disaster everywhere. Who are we even fighting against here!? Are they trying to protect that thing or destroy it!?)

This had all been a stroke of good luck in the first place. It was entirely coincidental that they had acquired the closest base to Manhattan without having to risk their lives for it. And yet they had been told that revealing the purpose and value of Manhattan was a mission that had to succeed even if it cost them their lives. Their lives were being thrown away for the whims of their higher ups who had been blinded by greed. That was Robinson’s blunt assessment.

They were up against a faceless enemy.

That was a threat on the same level as some strange form of the occult.

(And when we were already transporting ''something so dangerous''… What even happened to our original mission, dammit!?)

“What should we do, Sigma 3?” asked the large female soldier next to him while she stared off into the distance. “Should we cut the circuits in our minds too?”

“…No,” spat out Robinson. “If this were the ending god had given us, then so be it, but both sides here are no more than human. I’m not about to die for human greed. We’ll regroup with the main unit. I don’t care about that digital war nonsense. We have an overwhelming advantage in numbers, so as long as we keep our cool, we should be able to win this.”

===Part 9===

Even when they knew it was the best course of action, abandoning cover and running out into an open area was not good for their hearts. Do not break any branches, do not step in the mud, do not cast a long shadow, do not press up against doors or walls, do not shine your light on mirrors or windows – there was a lot of “etiquette” to something as simple as walking, but actual war did not always allow you to follow the textbook for all of those little things.

The situation was awful.

“Run, Myonri! No one can complain if they’re shot in the back now!!”

“But Jonathan was-…”

“Just run!!”

Trying to rescue someone in this open space would only get them shot too. And this soldier had been shot on his center line such that it probably shattered his spine, so there was nothing they could do. They could only clench their teeth and shake free of their regret.

They ran across the runway-like six-lane road and entered the subway station building on the opposite side. Only after diving behind the closest wall did Heivia take in a large gulp of air.

“Pant, pant! Goddamn them. Did they at least shoot Wraith!?”

“You will be sad to hear I am alive and kicking.”

“Oh, hell. Well that proves that it’s the good people who die first…”

Near the entrance, there was a vending machine from a major online store that was forcing its way into the market, so Heivia blew away its earthquake-resistant bolts with his rifle and knocked it over as a barricade as he seriously spat out those words.

But now it was time for the rioting Faith Organization soldiers to suffer. If they simply pursued, they would have to cross the same road that had exposed Heivia’s group to such danger.

“If they really have cut their mental limiters, they’ll push their way through even if we fire 5.56mm rounds at a rate of 700 a minute. Modern warfare is all about smart tactics, but there’s nothing we can do if a large army is willing to step on their comrades’ corpses and cross a river of blood. I’m sure you know why the directional landmines that scatter small metal balls in a fan shape were developed.”

“Yes, I am aware,” said Wraith. “Keep an eye on the subway tunnels and emergency exits. The drones are not enough to fully grasp the distribution of these aggressively generic enemy soldiers.”

“Th-this is an artificial island floating in the ocean, isn’t it…?” asked Myonri.

“And? Just like with a ship, the lower the center of gravity the better. In marine construction, child-bearing hips and a large ass are more highly valued than giant tits, so they would have wanted the island to be a little thicker for the added weight.”

Wraith snapped her fingers and the young man next to her provided the Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers with a few items the size of baseballs. They were more of the serverless remote grenades.

“Use them more as ‘eyes’ than explosives since a frag grenade can’t pierce that shield of flesh. They can also be used to flood the underground area in case that large army tries to push in from below.”

“That kind of trick isn’t my area of expertise. Hey, someone put together a unit of combat engineers. You help too, Quen-…”

Heivia stopped mid-sentence and clicked his tongue.

He scratched his head in an awkward silence.

“…Never mind. Myonri, you’re skilled with your hands, right? Would you rather stand out front in the path of that hail of bullets, or move to the back and set things up there? Select 10 people you can use and seal off all the entrances. Hurry! This enemy isn’t kind enough to wait until the transformation scene is over!!”

A muffled explosion rang out outside and the shockwave shattered a few of the windows bordering the main road.

Jonathan had been unable to get up as the Faith Organization soldiers had approached to secure their prisoner, so he had mustered his last ounce of strength to pull the pin on a grenade.

Heivia clicked his tongue.

“Damn, it’s already started!!”

“Prepared or not, we have to respond.”

Heivia hid behind the collapsed vending machine and Wraith hid behind a bookstore cart that carried a stack of unsold magazines taller than she was. Both of them aimed their weapons outside.

The explosion seemed to have pushed their excitement over a line. With the roar of a battle scene in a knight movie, Faith Organization soldiers flooded the large street that panoramically filled their vision.

There were people, people, people, and more people.

The thick wall pushed in with such force that it was easy to forget that each gunshot fired toward it was taking a human life. Dark red blood and flesh flew, the soldiers on the front line collapsed, and countless boots trampled their allies’ bodies before they had even stopped breathing.

This was different again from the nightmarish mission led by Piranirie Martini Smoky. Instead of being threatened into it, these people were charging in of their own free will.

“This is just the worst!!!!!!” said Heivia.

“It really is a vision of hell,” agreed Wraith. “I feel silly reminding you of something so basic, but coordinate your magazine changes so the barrage never stops. If the density of bullets thins out, they’ll push in all at once.”

She hatefully spat out the words, but her movements were accurate as could be.

And while calmly firing on the soldiers running out into the road like a sensor-controlled machine, Wraith said something without looking over at Heivia.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Is that supposed to be foreshadowing an emotional sacrificial charge or something? If not, then shut your mouth, crazy girl, because your words are meaningless to me. Your sentimentality is as ridiculous as blood-type fortunetelling, so don’t think it takes away my right to hold a grudge!!”

Static reached Heivia’s ears.

Then a voice came over the radio.

“They’ve put together a unit aside from the one crossing the road. They’re circling around to reach the station from the west entrance while you’re focused on the main group!”

“Are you kidding me…!?”

“It’s hardly surprising when they have so many people to work with,” said Wraith. “And lowering the metal shutters isn’t going to stop them at this point. Yes, don’t randomly spread out your forces. No matter what kind of clichéd new truths come to light, the station will still be filled with blood if they break through the front.”

“Then what are we supposed to do!? They’re coming from behind. Are we supposed to just sit here and keep fighting until they shoot us in the ass!?”

“Were you not listening? I said not to ''randomly'' spread out your forces.”

Wraith emphasized the one word while waving a 5-inch monitor in the hand not holding her gun. It was her beloved smartphone.

“Those snake robots can find filming spots without the map data of a server, so I’ve been observing the battlefield from 32 directions to accurately analyze the enemy’s small idiosyncrasies using the high-speed cameras. That’s 10,000 frames a second. And thanks to their battle of attrition using such great numbers, I’ve gathered an incredible amount of data in a very short time. Charge, retreat, diversion, coordination – the big data is boiling in the magic pot. And it’s about time to take a look at the whole.”

“…Is that really going to make a dramatic difference?”

“This is the Information Alliance style and it works for any kind of group sports. That said, the data is useless without enough people to work with. A single director can’t do everything on her own even with the optimal answer in hand. So will you obey me and live, or defy me and die? The choice is yours, my dear sworn enemy.”

Heivia hatefully clicked his tongue and forced out some words while creating a pile of corpses from the Faith Organization troops outside.

“…You can do as many good deeds as you want now. It won’t change a thing.”

“That’s fine. I never said I didn’t want to die. I just said I don’t want to die here.”

They had a plan.

The black-uniformed girl took the overall command role.

“Frank, fire more of those grenades into the air. Five should do it for now. Send them between the troops in the road and those preparing to enter the road to crush and separate them with the blasts.”

“Understood.”

“Once those in the road can neither advance nor withdraw, mow them down with your assault rifles. It’s the same as keeping water pipes clean: the charge can continue because of the constant ‘flow’, but once it stops, the fear of death will come rushing back. The slightest stop is all we need.”

“Are you serious?” complained Heivia. “I thought psychology was as much a superstition as tarot readings.”

“Since you have yet to evolve beyond an ape, I will respectfully answer you. It is human nature to be distracted by detours when the way ahead is blocked. Their secondary candidate is the western entrance. Once the pressure here has been reduced, send out three groups with shoulder-fired missiles. Their secondary unit is a minority, so if we blow up their front line right away, we can stop their momentum.”

The difference in overall numbers was 50 against 500 or even more.

When outnumbered by more than four to one, they should have been overwhelmed regardless of each individual’s strength.

However.

To put it another way…

“We don’t have to look at the overall numbers. We only need to recalculate the localized human density,” proclaimed Wraith while looking down at the smartphone screen inserted into the H-shaped gamepad. “Sports data analysis thoroughly analyzes the idiosyncrasies of the players. Once you have detailed information on how individuals and teams handle offense, you know where to focus your defense. That allows you to reveal everything about the situation. It’s the same in soccer, basketball, baseball, and hockey. This is a simple matter of applying that to war instead.”

Even if the overall difference in Olympia Dome was 50 against 500, that did not necessarily apply to the numbers that clashed at any one time. By judging the timing, using the terrain, and firing bullets and bombs to divide the enemy into groups of ten or fewer, the Legitimacy Kingdom would have the advantage of superior numbers against those individual groups.

Of course, they would never pull that off if they simply fought at random. Shouting that they would overcome the difference in numbers was the same as relying on guts.

This tactic was only possible because they had high-speed cameras thoroughly filming everything from 32 directions, international competition level algorithms analyzing that footage, and soldiers who could follow the enemy arrangement and distribution, move as the information on the screen told them to, and turn that ideal into a reality.

The statistics in the data began to encroach on the real scene before them.

It was stagnation.

This did not just apply to the Faith Organization soldiers’ charge across the road. The excited energy between them rapidly cooled, their momentum faltered, and the fear of death and the confusion was clearly spreading among them once more. Even though that general “atmosphere” should have been invisible.

“Stop firing for 5 seconds.”

“?”

“We’ll give them a moment of relief before throwing them back into deadly danger. It’s just like getting in a hot bath before being thrown right back out into the midwinter night. That’s the most effective means of shaking them. Resume firing.”

Heivia’s short burst of fire caused a previously-unseen change.

One young soldier out in the road came to a stop, turned around, and tried to run back to the alley from which he had come.

“That woke him up,” coldly said Wraith.

She saw the change, but she did not instruct the soldiers to cease firing.

“All that about their mental limiters was a temporary thing. No matter your beliefs or convictions, forgetting the instinctual fear of death is not a natural state for a living creature. So we just have to control that on/off switch. Once this unwanted look at reality has taken away their purity, they cannot rebuild the resolve to trample their allies’ corpses and cross that river of blood.”

“Thanks for the lecture, but what do we do now!?”

“The minority pushes back against the majority. Instead of that young soldier himself, shoot a few nearby soldiers in the head. Seeing familiar faces destroyed and feeling their blood splattering on him will be more effective. Once the fear of death makes him panic and he starts to scream, the rest will come quickly.”

It was like throwing oil on a fire.

Their coordination clearly crumbled. There were cracks running through that army which had been like a solid wall before. Heivia’s group only had to use sporadic fire to widen those rifts. The enemy was shoving each other to avoid being on the front line and some fistfights were even breaking out.

“They’re just a chaotic crowd now,” cruelly said Wraith. “Finish them off.”

“You’re really scaring me.”

They did not even need to shoot all the remaining soldiers. Simply aiming their assault rifles in that direction produced short shrieks as the soldiers ignored their orders and fled.

“Should we go after them? It’d be a pain if they regrouped and regained their cool.”

“It’s quite the opposite. The calmer people are, the more they remember the fear of death. Give them time, and the fear of death will ensnare their mind like a nightmare. In fact, if we try to deal with them individually, we will lose. Have you forgotten how outnumbered we are? Plus, we only have so much ammo. Data analysis is not all powerful and its effects only show themselves in a limited arena.”

Their goal had always been to blow up the broadcast station that supported the Olympia Dome’s largescale broadcast infrastructure (which could be seen as an EM spying facility that indiscriminately gathered signals from the surrounding area). Using up all their ammunition before arriving there would be meaningless.

Wraith made a casual decision like she was staring at a schedule book.

“We were lucky to rout them like this at all. They didn’t see through our trick. It will take some time for them to prepare for combat once more after abandoning victory of their own volition. Let’s achieve our objective and leave the Olympia Dome before that happens.”

After gathering their dead comrades’ dog tags, Heivia’s group left the subway station and resumed the journey to the broadcast station. Since it was a large facility, the giant boxy building was visible from a distance. They were of course cautious in their approach, but the sense of having cleared the largest hurdle enveloped the Legitimacy Kingdom survivors like a cradle.

However…

“What…is this?”

“?”

Heivia gave Wraith a puzzled look when she uttered a low comment toward her smartphone screen. What was that small LCD screen connected to and what was it displaying?

“There’s…there’s no way they overlooked this!! Did Taratua just decide not to tell us!?”

She seemed to be cursing someone.

And at the same moment, a 50m mass passed by in the sky over their heads.

Their eyes could see it, but their brains refused to accept it.

For one thing, its position made no sense.

It was above all the high-rise buildings in the city. A mass of steel mixed with a heat-resistant reactive substance was positioned at an altitude of more than 200 meters. It was floating. It was flying. If the spherical main body was viewed as the earth, then the 3 Y-shaped wings were attached at the equator. Were those coaxial rotors? The two sets of wings rotated in opposite directions, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise, to free the 200,000-ton mass from the bonds of gravity like a helicopter. There was something like an undercarriage, but could that even be used to move it? The equilateral triangle below it was like a helicopter’s skids or an upside-down version of the tripod used to support the bottom of a pot or frying pan on a gas burner. It may have only been meant to let it take off and land.

“An…”

This was no time to just stare in shock.

It had moved into position above Heivia’s group. Which meant…?

“An Object!?”

A moment later, the colossal weapon that had ended the nuclear age began its ''attack''.

===Part 10===

Why had that information been kept from them?

Far away on a relatively-intact cruiser, Taratua Martini On-the-Rocks answered her aide’s question with a smile.

“Because I have no real reason to be their friends☆”

===Part 11===

All sound had vanished.

Heivia had no idea what had happened.

“Bwahh, ahhhhhh!!!??? Abfweah!!”

Something had fallen from directly above and crushed the subway station building like a cardboard box. Then, like drawing a thick line along the ground, the reinforced concrete building and asphalt road were destroyed and a cascade of destruction pressed in on the Legitimacy Kingdom potatoes.

It was like a child crushing a line of ants below their shoe.

Heivia just barely escaped the threat.

Something cut by horizontally in front of him and familiar faces were transformed into red and black stains.

“Get indoors!!”

The extreme situation had left Heivia in a daze, but Wraith’s shout acted like a slap to the face.

“They’re placing the metal balls used for grenades and mines inside the ridiculously powerful artificial air current used to keep that 200,000-ton mass afloat and firing them down from that height. If you don’t want to be torn apart by that deadly waterfall, then run!!”

Heivia still could not react, so Myonri grabbed his limp hand.

“Let’s go! We can’t just die here!!”

“…”

Something else happened before he could say anything.

A different shockwave hit Heivia and the others from above. Their legs could not support them and they were sent rolling across the asphalt. They looked up from the ground just in time to see all of the high-rise buildings’ windows shatter and a downpour of glittering glass enter the sky.

“Dammit!!”

This time, Heivia picked up Myonri and crawled below a nearby truck. An ear-splitting cacophony followed. The glass downpour was crashing into the ground.

“What happened to Wraith? Did she actually die this time?”

“She’s waving from behind cover over there. More importantly, what was that just now?”

If the Object was simply launching a cruel attack on the ground, it only had to use that same combination of wind and metal balls. The glass was merely a side effect of something. This only made sense if it had done something else.

A low rumbling and shaking finally reached them.

They were confused at first, but it slowly dawned on them.

“It was firing something…no, it was a shockwave. That was all it took to shatter all the glass here…”

“But there wasn’t anything like a main cannon,” said Myonri.

“Damn, we have no idea how it works without Quenser here. And we can’t come up with a weird name for it without our busty commander. Yeah, that settles it. I’m definitely groping those tits later on since she ran off and left us!!”

“I get that your lust won out over your friendship there, but could you at least put me down before saying things like that?”

Since the enemy could crush a tall, reinforced-concrete building like it was a cardboard box, staying in one spot would be a bad idea, so Heivia and Myonri crawled out from below the truck.

“Hey,” said Wraith when they regrouped. “How were you planning to escape?”

“What?”

[[Image:HO_v15_105.png|thumb]]

“That came from the harbor block. In a reliable but boring move, I imagine that thing fired its main cannon on the Frigate 042 in C Dock. Those of us here in Olympia Dome will be next. If you had personal watercraft or submersibles loaded on that ship, we need to find a new method.”

“I-its main cannon!? But there was no sign of that…”

“It used the coaxial rotors that support it. It probably has giant, heavy-metal shells loaded inside it like a handgun magazine. Those things have a rotation speed high enough to support 200,000 tons. It only has to open the end of the magazine and release the shell within. Just imagine the destructive power of using centrifugal force to throw a shell like a meteor.”

A storm of small metal balls launched downward by the wind and giant heavy-metal shells launched into the distance using centrifugal force. That left the Faith Organization’s flying Object with no bind spots. There was nowhere they could hide that it could not fire on them.

“Are you kidding? This really is a nightmare…”

“Is it? This seems better than if they had attached a laser cannon to the end of the main rotor and sliced us to pieces with that rotating blade. Would you prefer to be chased by an infinitely-expanding circular saw?”

Wraith nonchalantly upgraded the nightmare while protected by the aide young man. The history giving form to her imagination had to be insane.

“Centrifugal force, shell throwing…no, it might be better to think of it like the hammer throw. Yes, for now, let’s use the enemy codename of Hammer Throw 001.”

“We have to call it that too? We just keep getting more and more influenced by the shitty Information Alliance method.”

“Yes, it is hard to say we are a perfect world power. The one who holds the most information is the winner, but so many idiots misunderstand that concept to the point that they think the sign of the privileged class is cutting off all information to the point that you can buy a private beach in Miami and swim in the nude. All the bored young wives with ringlet-curls are turning into nudists who claim to aspire to a natural lifestyle.”

“Are you just clueless, or are you trying to win me over!?”

“Please, can someone take this seriously!? Our lives are on the line here!!”

Myonri pleaded with them, but she had not taken into account the possibility that the idiots were trying to avoid facing the intense fear before them.

And the Hammer Throw 001 no longer had a distant target to prioritize.

It would be their turn soon.

Myonri’s shout had dragged Heivia back to reality, so he felt sweat on his brow.

“…What do we do?”

What would that boy who was not here have done at a time like this?

What would Quenser Barbotage have done?

“What the hell are we supposed to do!?”

A moment later…

It fell.

The flying Object that had been looking down on them dropped far too easily.

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Ah?”

Heivia’s thoughts could not keep up with the crazy sight before him.

But it was no illusion.

After a brief delay, an incredible storm of destruction was thrown out in all directions. More than just the glass, entire groups of buildings were knocked over this time. And it was more than just a shockwave. The connections between the dice-like floating objects made of aluminum and stainless steel were smashed and shaken.

“Ohhhhhwah!?”

Shouting was not going to accomplish anything.

The fact that the ground could softly “sink” into the ocean, allowing some of the force to escape, was the only reason they did not end up with anything like an ice age brought on by an asteroid strike.

“The Hammer Throw 001…fell???”

The rising curtain of dust was swept away by the storm. Myonri reported on what she saw in a daze.

“It was…a crane. …Did the crane on a building rooftop swing around and…catch on the main rotor?”

“It didn’t swing the arm around,” corrected Wraith while seawater swelled up from below.

An old guerilla tactic against helicopters and tiltrotors was to throw a wire or net over them from the top of a building. But…

“The crane rotated vertically. Some kind of explosive blasted it at the base to tangle the thick wire in the rotor. It didn’t matter that the spherical main body can withstand a nuke.”

An explosive.

A flesh-and-blood soldier had attacked one of the Objects which were synonymous with war.

The 50-meter and 20,000-ton spherical main body had lost its balance and fallen at one corner of the city. It seemed to be near the broadcast station. The exact level of damage was unclear while on the ground like this.

“Could it be…?”

However.

That had to be Heivia’s greatest hope.

So the delinquent soldier could not help but say it aloud.

“Quen-…”

“No.”

A voice bluntly cut him off.

It came from Wraith Martini Vermouthspray.

She could not look him in the eye as she forced out the words.

“I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t possible.”

===Part 12===

Sigma 3, Robinson King-Cole, was just as stunned as the incredible shaking reached him.

“What happened…?”

He doubted the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Information Alliance, or a third group disguised as them could have done this.

Nevertheless, the Second Generation Ix Chel being resupplied at the Olympia Dome had indeed been brought down. It had happened so suddenly that he felt like he was analyzing movement in a video game one frame at a time.

“OD Control! What the hell happened!?”

He already half-suspected that he would receive no response.

At the same time, a hopeless chill ran down his spine. What possibilities could he think of? When he laid out the cards, he could not rid himself of this unease. After all, their mission had been to transport something dangerous.

And that “something” had not been the flying Object called Ix Chel. As extraordinary as it was, that colossal weapon had already belonged to Robinson’s maintenance battalion, so it would not be counted as an external “package”.

But in a way, Ix Chel was nothing compared to the true “package”.

Had it really taken advantage of this confusion…?

“Nee hee hee hee.”

He heard a voice.

A lovely but wicked girl’s voice sounded from directly behind Sigma 3. And the next thing he knew, all other voices had vanished. And he heard no noises at all from the comrades he had been fighting alongside for so long.

“Did you not even notice? You didn’t, did you? Well, that doesn’t really matter. Thanks for your work, though. Oh, this is my destination. And it’s also the end of the line for you. You’ve been waging war day in and day out for so long you have to be familiar with the concept of ‘acceptable losses’, right? If you were tasked with looking after me without being informed…well, just remember that concept.”

He did not even have time to turn around.

But the scene he did not want to see was reflected in the show window in front of him.

It was a red and black hell.

And one violent and brutal visual overpowered even the deaths of his allies.

A young girl with long, long blonde twintails wore an Object Elite’s blade, bullet, explosion, and environment resistant special suit which revealed even the slightest contour of her slender body.

She was not the grim reaper that brought death and demise according to predetermined rules, like one’s natural lifespan.

She was an incarnation of destruction on a much higher dimension who destroyed the world on a whim.

…He should have noticed.

Whether they were the Legitimacy Kingdom or the Information Alliance, the intruders alone could not have caused so much damage. He had assumed the Faith Organization soldiers’ rampage was to blame, but that was not it. It was neither the enemy nor his allies. A third party had used the confusion to remove heads and pierce hearts.

“I followed ''his'' example and learned how to use bombs to destroy Objects, but…hmm, what does this mean? I don’t see any sign of him… Well, I just need to search a little longer.”

This was not war.

It was crime, yet it had done greater harm than an official war.

This was the dangerous thing that Robinson King-Cole’s maintenance battalion had been transporting.

“Don’t worry about the Manhattan and all that annoying stuff. I, Skuld Silent-Third, will take care of it, so you all can rest in peace. By byyye☆”

===Between the Lines 1===

The continuous IV drip has been ended.

Saint Skuld Silent-Third is active once more.

The Saint has a glowing record as the primary Pilot Elite of the Faith Organization’s Second Generation Norn, but she is also known by the Faith Organization to be the greatest war criminal. She generally chooses her victims carefully within the bases which are seen as small cities, but that is not always the case.

*Former Oceanian Dictatorship: Annihilation of a pro-government village.

*Cape of Good Hope District: Burning of a mercenary camp.

*Alaska District: The mysterious deaths of a foreign press group.

*Malacca District: The sinking of a cargo ship.

*And the infamous Madagascar Report. Please reference that report so it need not be repeated here.

Her primary killing method is strangulation using her own hands, but she is extremely fickle and changes a lot from moment to moment. In the Madagascar District, there was evidence she used old-fashioned torture equipment. These are the crimes of an individual, but if they are slow to be discovered or dealt with, she has the skill to destroy a mid-level guerilla base and construct a mountain of corpses on her own. She intentionally includes shifts and swings of analog emotion in her digital mission operations, so her actions are incredibly hard to simulate and existing troop management rules do not apply. Once she has been released into the wild, do not focus too much on any fixed idea and be extremely careful in how she is handled.

It is dangerous to assume you are safe just because you are the one in with a gun.

What she says and her carefree changes of expression cannot be relied on. The Saint is an extremely intelligent war criminal, so she can use various psychological tests and counseling methods to her advantage to win one’s trust.

Be extremely cautious of the unique “charisma of death” found in many serial killers. She generally prefers acting alone, but she has something that destroys the morals of those around her. If you begin to think that you alone can communicate with her, you are in an especially dangerous situation. Make sure you have regular meetings with your supervising officer to receive an objective, third-party view of your mental state.

The Saint is a genuine serial killer, so she shows some fixations that normal people find hard to understand.

Currently, she appears obsessed with a specific individual named Quenser Barbotage. For information on him, view the records from the Madagascar District, specifically concerning the destruction of the Norn.

Most likely, it is simply not possible to fully control Saint Skuld Silent-Third. If you are giving her freedom as part of your operation, you must build in a high level of acceptable losses for enemy, ally, and civilian alike. Also, it is more effective to lure her with bait than to give her orders. Gathering information on the aforementioned Quenser Barbotage and using that name to distract her may be one possible method.

Offered to Venerable Elder Tyrfing Boilermaker.

May a peaceful holy age arrive to this sinful and impure world.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Prologue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume15 Chapter 2}}</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2017-10-10T11:58:33Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 14|Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume14 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword

2017-07-13T07:35:46Z

Zakashi:

==Afterword==

And with that, Heavy Object reaches its 12th volume.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Damn, this afterword made me realize the arrival of the 10th volume passed me right by. But since the 1st volume is a starter pack and the rest are booster packs you can start reading from anywhere, maybe that’s how it should be.

This time, I focused on military jobs besides gunfights. That was mainly disaster relief and disease prevention. Then again, maybe Quenser and the others were working against that when they left and reentered the quarantine zone.

And as I suggested in the afterword to Vanilla-Flavored Chemical Formula, I used some of the old characters and concepts to build up a stronger foundation. I would like for all of you readers to decide what you thought of that different way of doing things.

People’s immunity weakening due to the proliferation of antibacterial goods, skyrocketing medical costs, an infection base made into a global tourist destination, and a plan to strengthen people’s immunity by spreading germs… I always focus on going all out with the craziness in Heavy Object more than my other series, but what did you think of the flavoring of this one? Let us hope that there was not a shred of realism to it. I am praying that we live in an age that can laugh this off as ridiculous.

The Objects this time were the Rush and two one-off ones.

The Lizard Tail had the same self-destructive protection technology as a car given an intentionally weak structure so it can destroy itself and protect the driver. It was also a Zombie Object that could take control of the enemy Object with a cyber-attack. I was trying to combine it with the image of the infection base hidden in Second Venice (even if one belonged to the Faith Organization and the other to the Information Alliance). When you have a secret military facility and microbe research, it’s gotta be zombies, right? I think I really made a strange Object here. It was an undead soldier that would return no matter how many times it was shot down. I also think I made a different sort of Elite for it. By the way, the runner up idea was an Object that devoured other Objects with metal-eating bacteria.

The even more bizarre Object was the Old Fashion. To keep a promise with an old friend, that one fought the flow of time to continue his love of the old Object while also continuing to reign as the strongest. Now that is an Object just brimming with romance. You can probably tell if you compare them, but this was the polar opposite of the undead soldier. I made it an ace that had never lost. Personal circumstances trumping the organization should never happen in the military, but that may be what makes it so romantic.

Catherine was similar to Putana and Mariydi in her ability to fight directly, but I tried to differentiate her with her inability to find her own reason to fight. She was even more mechanical than a mercenary. Due to being Flide’s pawn, she fights by being “booted up” in combat mode and does not question the justification given to her. That is why I think you can feel her own will breaking free of the chains of justification when she hands over her gas mask to protect Quenser. (From a purely combat perspective, Catherine’s survival would be more important than Quenser’s.) She is the girl who wants to leave hell but cannot cut herself free of war so easily. I hope you were able to accept her.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. With the container yard mission where the containers were moved around like a crane game, the vertical tower defense mission on the broadcast tower, the underground facility mission with changing water level, etc., I was focusing more on video games than B-movies for these battlefields, but I doubt representing those locations was easy. Writing it out in text is simple enough, but drawing them in illustrations has to be entirely different. Thank you for sticking with me this time too.

I also give my thanks to the readers. With Second Venice and Councilor Flide’s pawn Elite, I tried focusing from the very beginning on what I had built up in the previous volumes (and in the other media like the manga and anime). I thought that might open up some new possibilities, but I will leave it to you to judge. Thank you very much once again.

And I will end this here.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

I have a habit of making the protagonist’s dads really cool…

-Kamachi Kazuma

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations}}</noinclude>

Haken no Kouki Altina

2017-05-07T04:23:26Z

Zakashi: /* Volume XI */

{{Status|Active}}

[[File:ALTINA v01 cover.jpg|thumbnail|right|250px|Volume 1 Cover]]
'''Haken no Kouki Altina''' (覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ), also known as '''Altina the Sword Princess''', is a light novel series written by ''Yukiya Murasaki'' and illustrated by ''himesuz''. It is ongoing with 10 volumes.

The Haken no Kouki Altina is also available in the following languages:
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina PL|Polski (Polish)]]
*[http://www.novelasligeras.com/p/haken-no-kouki-altina.html Spanish]
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina ~Brazilian Portuguese~|Português (Portuguese)]]
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina (Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)]]
*[[Haken_no_Kouki_Altina_-_Français|Français (French)]]

==Story Synopsis==
Regis is an incapable soldier, bad at both sword mastery and archery, who only reads books. He meets a girl at the remote region where he was transferred to. Altina, the red-haired and crimson-eyed princess who wields the supreme ruler’s sword. She was appointed to become the commander of the remote region's army despite being fourteen years old, simply for being the Emperor's illegitimate child. However, she is holding onto her big dream without being depressed in the environment she is in. “I trust you.” Regis, who was sought from her as a tactician, stands up to the obstacles together with her. The military fantasy interweaved by the bibliophagic boy and the princess with the supreme ruler’s sword.

(''Story Synopsis taken from Volume 1 cover.'')

==Series Information==
*Genre: Fantasy
*Original Title: Haken no Kouki Aruthiina (覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ)
*Author: Yukiya Murasaki (むらさきゆきや)
*Illustrator: himesuz
*Series Status: Ongoing

==Translation==

===[[Haken no Kouki Altina Registration Page|Registration Page]]===
'''Translators are asked to [[Haken no Kouki Altina Registration Page|register]] the chapters they want to work on.'''

===Feedback===
'''If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in this [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=6004 forum]'''

==Updates==

*August 12, 2013 - Teaser created (Chapter 1)
*October 8, 2013 - Hosted translation started by '''Skythewood Translations'''
*October 12, 2014 - Volume 1, Chapters 1-2 completed by Skythewood Translations
*October 18, 2014 - Volume 1, Chapter 3 completed by Skythewood Translations
*October 22, 2014 - Volume 1 (Chapter 4) completed by Skythewood Translations
*November 30, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 1 completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 14, 2014 - Volume 2, Interlude completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 23, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 2 completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 31, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 3 completed by Skythewood Translations
*January 4, 2015 - Volume 2, Chapter 4 completed by Skythewood Translations
*January 11, 2015 - Volume 2, Chapter 5 completed by Skythewood Translations
*April 16, 2015 - Volume 3, Chapter 1 completed by Skythewood Translations

==Haken no Kouki Altina series by Yukiya Murasaki==

===Volume I ([http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/p/altina-sword-princess.html Full Text])===
[[File:ALTINA v01 cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 1 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP11.html Chapter 1: The Girl with Red Hair and Crimson Eyes]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP12.html Chapter 2: Promise at Dawn]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP13.html Chapter 3: Altina's Resolve]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP14.html Chapter 4: The Thundering Sword]

 

===Volume II===
[[File:ALTINA v2 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 2 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/11/ASP21.html Chapter 1: The King of Barbarians]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP215.html Interlude]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP22.html Chapter 2: To Rebel or Accede]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP23.html Chapter 3: Under My Flag]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/01/ASP24.html Chapter 4: The Fifth Campaign against Fort Focker]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/01/ASP25.html Chapter 5: An Invitation into Darkness]

 

===Volume III===
[[File:ALTINA v3 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 3 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP31.html Chapter 1: Towns and Stagecoach]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP32.html Chapter 2: Duel under the Moon]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP33.html Chapter 3: Founding Anniversary]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP34.html Chapter 4: The Silver Princess]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP35.html Chapter 5: The Freed White Wolves]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP36.html Interlude & Chapter 6: The Queen's Navy]

 

===Volume IV===
[[File:ALTINA v4 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 4 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP40.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP41.html Chapter 1: Princess Elizabeth]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP42.html Chapter 2: Silent Week]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP43.html Chapter 3: Stone Bridge]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP44.html Chapter 4: The Burning Tower]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP45.html Epilogue: War War War]

 

===Volume V===
[[File:ALTINA v5 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 5 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP50.html Recap]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP51.html Chapter 1: Flames of War in the Night]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP52.html Chapter 2: Sister of the Biblophile]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP53.html Chapter 3: The Seventh Imperial Army]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/01/ASP54.html Chapter 4: The Beginning of Dusk]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/01/ASP55.html Chapter 5: The Battle of Lafressange]
 

===Volume VI===
[[File:ALTINA v6 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 6 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/03/ASP61.html Chapter 1: On Le Lucé hill]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP62.html Chapter 2: Narissa from the West Coast]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP63.html Chapter 3: All Ships, Fire Broadside!]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP64.html Chapter 4: Battle of Épée Prière Bay]
 

===Volume VII===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 07.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/04/ASP70.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/05/ASP71.html Chapter 1: Today, Tomorrow]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP72.html Chapter 2: Battle of West Lafressange]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP73.html Chapter 3: Mercenary King Gilbert]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP74.html Chapter 4: The passing of the Emperor]
 

===Volume 7.5 (Short Beautiful Stories)===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina shokitan.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/07/ASP751.html Chapter 1: The Previous Night]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP7521.html Chapter 2: Auguste, the Silver Princess (Part 1)]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP7522.html Chapter 2: Auguste, the Silver Princess (Part 2)]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP753.html Chapter 3: The Promise of the Stars]
 

===Volume VIII===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 08.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP80.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP81.html Chapter 1: News of the Emperor's Passing]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP82.html Chapter 2: Celestial River]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP83.html Chapter 3: Fanrine]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP84.html Chapter 4: The Meeting of the Stars]
 

===Volume IX===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 09.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP90.html Prologue: Regis' Letter]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP91.html Chapter 1: The Return of the Prince]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP92.html Chapter 2: The Delivered Letter]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP93.html Chapter 3: Late Night Coffee]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP94.html Chapter 4/5: The Battle to Liberate the Citizens of Grebauvar City / Vallis]
 

===Volume X===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 10.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/11/ASP101.html Prologue and Chapter 1: Situational Report / Vallis’ mission]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP102.html Chapter 2: Regis and Jessica]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP103.html Chapter 3: The Battle of Grebauvar]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP104.html Chapter 4/5: Felicia of the Steel Production Street / Turbid Waters]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP105.html Chapter 6/7: Miscalculation / Regis Assassination plot]
 

===Volume XI===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 11.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP110.html Recap, Prologue: The Corpse of Regis d'Auric, and Intermission]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP111.html Chapter 1: The Contract with the Mercenaries]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP112.html Chapter 2: Lady Regis]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP113.html Chapter 3: Regis and Bastian]
 

==Project Staff==

===Translators===
'''Active'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood]

''Teaser done by Code-Zero''

==Series Overview==

*Haken no Kouki Altina I 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ I (October 29, 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-728460-9)
*Haken no Kouki Altina II 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ II (February 28, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-728734-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina III 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ III (June 29, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-728977-2)
*Haken no Kouki Altina IV 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ IV (October 30, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-729214-7)
*Haken no Kouki Altina V 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ V (February 28, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729458-5)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VI 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VI (June 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729730-2)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VII (October 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729977-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina Shokitan 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ小綺譚 (October 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729978-8)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VIII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VIII (February 28, 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-730230-3)
*Haken no Kouki Altina IX 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ IX (June 29, 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-730516-8)
*Haken no Kouki Altina X 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ X (November 30, 2015 ISBN 978-4-04-730765-0)
*Haken no Kouki Altina XI 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ XI (September 30, 2016 ISBN 978-4-04-734041-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina XII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ XII (April 28, 2017 ISBN 978-4-04-734542-3)

[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:Famitsu Bunko]]
[[Category:Yukiya Murasaki]]

[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Genre - Drama]]
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Romance]]

File:Haken no kouki altina 11.jpg

2017-05-07T04:22:54Z

Zakashi:

Haken no Kouki Altina

2017-05-07T04:21:58Z

Zakashi: /* Volume X */

{{Status|Active}}

[[File:ALTINA v01 cover.jpg|thumbnail|right|250px|Volume 1 Cover]]
'''Haken no Kouki Altina''' (覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ), also known as '''Altina the Sword Princess''', is a light novel series written by ''Yukiya Murasaki'' and illustrated by ''himesuz''. It is ongoing with 10 volumes.

The Haken no Kouki Altina is also available in the following languages:
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina PL|Polski (Polish)]]
*[http://www.novelasligeras.com/p/haken-no-kouki-altina.html Spanish]
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina ~Brazilian Portuguese~|Português (Portuguese)]]
*[[Haken no Kouki Altina (Indonesia)|Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian)]]
*[[Haken_no_Kouki_Altina_-_Français|Français (French)]]

==Story Synopsis==
Regis is an incapable soldier, bad at both sword mastery and archery, who only reads books. He meets a girl at the remote region where he was transferred to. Altina, the red-haired and crimson-eyed princess who wields the supreme ruler’s sword. She was appointed to become the commander of the remote region's army despite being fourteen years old, simply for being the Emperor's illegitimate child. However, she is holding onto her big dream without being depressed in the environment she is in. “I trust you.” Regis, who was sought from her as a tactician, stands up to the obstacles together with her. The military fantasy interweaved by the bibliophagic boy and the princess with the supreme ruler’s sword.

(''Story Synopsis taken from Volume 1 cover.'')

==Series Information==
*Genre: Fantasy
*Original Title: Haken no Kouki Aruthiina (覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ)
*Author: Yukiya Murasaki (むらさきゆきや)
*Illustrator: himesuz
*Series Status: Ongoing

==Translation==

===[[Haken no Kouki Altina Registration Page|Registration Page]]===
'''Translators are asked to [[Haken no Kouki Altina Registration Page|register]] the chapters they want to work on.'''

===Feedback===
'''If you enjoyed the series, why don't you tell us in this [http://www.baka-tsuki.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=6004 forum]'''

==Updates==

*August 12, 2013 - Teaser created (Chapter 1)
*October 8, 2013 - Hosted translation started by '''Skythewood Translations'''
*October 12, 2014 - Volume 1, Chapters 1-2 completed by Skythewood Translations
*October 18, 2014 - Volume 1, Chapter 3 completed by Skythewood Translations
*October 22, 2014 - Volume 1 (Chapter 4) completed by Skythewood Translations
*November 30, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 1 completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 14, 2014 - Volume 2, Interlude completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 23, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 2 completed by Skythewood Translations
*December 31, 2014 - Volume 2, Chapter 3 completed by Skythewood Translations
*January 4, 2015 - Volume 2, Chapter 4 completed by Skythewood Translations
*January 11, 2015 - Volume 2, Chapter 5 completed by Skythewood Translations
*April 16, 2015 - Volume 3, Chapter 1 completed by Skythewood Translations

==Haken no Kouki Altina series by Yukiya Murasaki==

===Volume I ([http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/p/altina-sword-princess.html Full Text])===
[[File:ALTINA v01 cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 1 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP11.html Chapter 1: The Girl with Red Hair and Crimson Eyes]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP12.html Chapter 2: Promise at Dawn]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP13.html Chapter 3: Altina's Resolve]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/10/ASP14.html Chapter 4: The Thundering Sword]

 

===Volume II===
[[File:ALTINA v2 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 2 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/11/ASP21.html Chapter 1: The King of Barbarians]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP215.html Interlude]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP22.html Chapter 2: To Rebel or Accede]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2014/12/ASP23.html Chapter 3: Under My Flag]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/01/ASP24.html Chapter 4: The Fifth Campaign against Fort Focker]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/01/ASP25.html Chapter 5: An Invitation into Darkness]

 

===Volume III===
[[File:ALTINA v3 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 3 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP31.html Chapter 1: Towns and Stagecoach]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP32.html Chapter 2: Duel under the Moon]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/04/ASP33.html Chapter 3: Founding Anniversary]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP34.html Chapter 4: The Silver Princess]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP35.html Chapter 5: The Freed White Wolves]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/05/ASP36.html Interlude & Chapter 6: The Queen's Navy]

 

===Volume IV===
[[File:ALTINA v4 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 4 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP40.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP41.html Chapter 1: Princess Elizabeth]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/07/ASP42.html Chapter 2: Silent Week]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP43.html Chapter 3: Stone Bridge]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP44.html Chapter 4: The Burning Tower]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/08/ASP45.html Epilogue: War War War]

 

===Volume V===
[[File:ALTINA v5 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 5 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP50.html Recap]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP51.html Chapter 1: Flames of War in the Night]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP52.html Chapter 2: Sister of the Biblophile]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2015/12/ASP53.html Chapter 3: The Seventh Imperial Army]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/01/ASP54.html Chapter 4: The Beginning of Dusk]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/01/ASP55.html Chapter 5: The Battle of Lafressange]
 

===Volume VI===
[[File:ALTINA v6 Cover.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[[Haken no Kouki Altina:Volume 6 Illustrations|Novel Illustrations]]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/03/ASP61.html Chapter 1: On Le Lucé hill]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP62.html Chapter 2: Narissa from the West Coast]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP63.html Chapter 3: All Ships, Fire Broadside!]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/04/ASP64.html Chapter 4: Battle of Épée Prière Bay]
 

===Volume VII===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 07.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/04/ASP70.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/05/ASP71.html Chapter 1: Today, Tomorrow]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP72.html Chapter 2: Battle of West Lafressange]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP73.html Chapter 3: Mercenary King Gilbert]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.in/2016/05/ASP74.html Chapter 4: The passing of the Emperor]
 

===Volume 7.5 (Short Beautiful Stories)===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina shokitan.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/07/ASP751.html Chapter 1: The Previous Night]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP7521.html Chapter 2: Auguste, the Silver Princess (Part 1)]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP7522.html Chapter 2: Auguste, the Silver Princess (Part 2)]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP753.html Chapter 3: The Promise of the Stars]
 

===Volume VIII===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 08.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/08/ASP80.html Prologue]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP81.html Chapter 1: News of the Emperor's Passing]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP82.html Chapter 2: Celestial River]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP83.html Chapter 3: Fanrine]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/09/ASP84.html Chapter 4: The Meeting of the Stars]
 

===Volume IX===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 09.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP90.html Prologue: Regis' Letter]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP91.html Chapter 1: The Return of the Prince]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP92.html Chapter 2: The Delivered Letter]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP93.html Chapter 3: Late Night Coffee]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/10/ASP94.html Chapter 4/5: The Battle to Liberate the Citizens of Grebauvar City / Vallis]
 

===Volume X===
[[File:Haken no kouki altina 10.jpg|right|200px]]

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/11/ASP101.html Prologue and Chapter 1: Situational Report / Vallis’ mission]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP102.html Chapter 2: Regis and Jessica]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP103.html Chapter 3: The Battle of Grebauvar]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP104.html Chapter 4/5: Felicia of the Steel Production Street / Turbid Waters]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2016/12/ASP105.html Chapter 6/7: Miscalculation / Regis Assassination plot]
 

===Volume XI===
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MDrVT54VrjM/WOj4KXFz76I/AAAAAAAAIKI/ocNNA--dZTsq6ZSDAfK4kyK6bKWsjyVSgCLcB/s1600/Image00036.jpg

'''By [http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood Translations]'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP110.html Recap, Prologue: The Corpse of Regis d'Auric, and Intermission]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP111.html Chapter 1: The Contract with the Mercenaries]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP112.html Chapter 2: Lady Regis]
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.sg/2017/04/ASP113.html Chapter 3: Regis and Bastian]
 

==Project Staff==

===Translators===
'''Active'''
:*[http://skythewood.blogspot.com/p/altina-sword-princess.html Skythewood]

''Teaser done by Code-Zero''

==Series Overview==

*Haken no Kouki Altina I 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ I (October 29, 2012, ISBN 978-4-04-728460-9)
*Haken no Kouki Altina II 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ II (February 28, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-728734-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina III 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ III (June 29, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-728977-2)
*Haken no Kouki Altina IV 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ IV (October 30, 2013, ISBN 978-4-04-729214-7)
*Haken no Kouki Altina V 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ V (February 28, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729458-5)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VI 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VI (June 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729730-2)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VII (October 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729977-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina Shokitan 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ小綺譚 (October 30, 2014, ISBN 978-4-04-729978-8)
*Haken no Kouki Altina VIII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ VIII (February 28, 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-730230-3)
*Haken no Kouki Altina IX 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ IX (June 29, 2015, ISBN 978-4-04-730516-8)
*Haken no Kouki Altina X 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ X (November 30, 2015 ISBN 978-4-04-730765-0)
*Haken no Kouki Altina XI 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ XI (September 30, 2016 ISBN 978-4-04-734041-1)
*Haken no Kouki Altina XII 覇剣の皇姫アルティーナ XII (April 28, 2017 ISBN 978-4-04-734542-3)

[[Category:Light novel (English)]]
[[Category:Famitsu Bunko]]
[[Category:Yukiya Murasaki]]

[[Category:Genre - Action]]
[[Category:Genre - Drama]]
[[Category:Genre - Fantasy]]
[[Category:Genre - Romance]]

File:Haken no kouki altina 10.jpg

2017-05-07T04:21:10Z

Zakashi:

Template:Toaru Nav/Side Stories

2017-05-05T06:49:25Z

Zakashi: Adding links

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2017-04-21T06:16:52Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 13|Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Prelude|Prelude]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 1|Track 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 2|Track 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 3|Track 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 4|Track 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 5|Track 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 6|Track 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 7|Track 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 8|Track 8]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 9|Track 9]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 10|Track 10]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 11|Track 11]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 12|Track 12]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Track 13|Track 13]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Postscript|Postscript]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume13 Bonus|Bonus]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX|Volume EX]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 6|Chapter 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 7|Chapter 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:EX Chapter 8|Chapter 8]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:Toaru Nav/Parody Stories

2016-11-07T10:21:32Z

Zakashi:

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10

2016-10-12T12:42:23Z

Zakashi:

==Novel Illustrations==
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword}}

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11

2016-10-12T12:41:33Z

Zakashi:

==Novel Illustrations==
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue}}
{{:HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword}}

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|}}</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2016-10-12T12:36:56Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 12|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT

2016-10-12T12:34:24Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF"
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:100%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:Toaru Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT|action=edit}} e]][[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament]]
|-
|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1|NT Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2|NT Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3|NT Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4|NT Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.01| Main.01]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.02|Sub.02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.03|Sub.03]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.04|Sub.04]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.05|Sub.05]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.06|Sub.06]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.07|Period.07]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.08|Sub.08]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.09|Sub.09]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.10|Sub.10]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.11|Main.11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.12|Main.12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.13|Sub.13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.14|Sub.14]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.15|Sub.15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.16|Sub.16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.17|Sub.17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.18|Sub.18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.19|Sub.19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.20|Main.20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.21|Period.21]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.22|Sub.22]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.23|Sub.23]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.24|Sub.24]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.25|Sub.25]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.26|Sub.26]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.27|Sub.27]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.28|Sub.28]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.29|Sub.29]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.30|Main.30]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.31|Main.31]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.32|Period.32]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.33|Sub.33]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.34|A_Cardinal_Error.34]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.35|Connection Process]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.36|Chapter n]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.37|Profound Destruction]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5|NT Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6|NT Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_???|???]] - [[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night Before the Festival|The Night Before The Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter6|Chapter 6]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT Volume6 The Night After the Festival|The Night After the Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7|NT Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8|NT Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9|NT Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6a|Chapter 6a]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6b|Chapter 6b]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6c|Chapter 6c]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10|NT Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_19|Chapter 19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11|NT Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12|NT Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13|NT Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14|NT Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15|NT Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16|NT Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|navname=Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT}}[[Category:Templates]]</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword

2016-10-12T12:23:14Z

Zakashi:

==Afterword==

Doryahh! We’re finally at Volume 9!!

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This may be sudden, but I have a habit of intentionally leaving black boxes in my series. It’s less of a technique and more of a product of my writing process. In Heavy Object, the protagonists move between battlefields around the world, but their everyday lives are left vague (for example, what level of technology their music players are at) and the biggest example is the safe countries. Most likely, everyone who has read this series has their own idea of the safe countries, ranging from the setting of a normal school life story to that of a serious near-future SF story.

For these black boxes, I have an actual setting in mind, but I never actually reveal it. The black boxes can really relieve the author’s mental pressure. After all, it leaves room for creating a side story at any time. You can think of it like a heroine’s hair. If it’s long, you can give them a different impression by toying with the hairstyle, but if it’s short, you can’t play with it like that.

This volume focused on a safe country, but – as everyone who has read the book knows – it was mostly filled with foreign spies and the Faith Organization intentionally caused the law and order to decay in order to create a model case for a city of crime. It was far removed from the normal safe countries.

Some of the readers might be wondering why I would do something so strange, but cutting some things out like that leaves the flexibility to fit many different ideas inside the series. That’s the wonderful thing about those black boxes.

Anyway, this story was set in a single city, so the each chapter focused on the passage of time instead of a change of setting. I think Putana’s position was the most obvious example, but actions of Mustard Cowboy Leader George Coral and the other residents of the city were constantly changing.

The residents given in '''bold''' may have interacted with the protagonists and may not have, but that was to make it feel like one big city. I constructed the story so you could find out what happened to them or who they really were as you read each consecutive chapter. I couldn’t do it this time, but it might have been fun to show different sides of the city by dividing the chapters up by morning, noon, and night.

Also, spending an entire volume on the Faith Organization might be pretty rare. The Objects were based on Hinduism. The previous novel Festival of Death already had an Object with the name of Ratri, the goddess of the night. The legends say all of the stars in the night sky are her eyes, so you can see how Hindu legends are a wonderful treasure trove for things that appeal very, very, very much to the chuuni mind. This volume included Sarasvati, Garuda, Kali, and Nataraja. If you’re interested, it might be amusing to look into them. It should be about three times more appealing than what you’re expecting.

Unlike the Princess or the Oh Ho Ho, Putana Highball is the kind of Elite whose skills can be used in direct combat as well. The other two Elites are unbeatable in their Objects, but they can be dealt with if you aim a gun at them while they’re outside of their Objects. That will not work with Putana. As you would expect of the Faith Organization, she has constructed a method based on her faith that keeps her from betraying anything.

On that note, the most dangerous person in this series might be Mariydi Whitewitch who has the same specs as an Elite but isn’t bound like an Elite. She can’t defeat an Object, but I think she would be a thorough pain in the butt if she infiltrated the enemy safe country controlling the Object.

It may be because they’re used to dealing with the Princess, another Elite, but an important point is how the comments by Quenser and the old maintenance lady stabbed directly into Putana. I wanted to show through Putana that they have an understanding of all Elites (who are a symbol of awe in a way) as human beings, but what did you think?

The theme of the masterminds here was “somewhere else”.

It can take many different forms: an overseas trip, beyond the solar system, the home of the gods, simply running away from home, into your dreams, a special job such as in show business, reincarnation, an alternate fantasy world, and maybe virtual reality too? The desire itself is pretty popular. This series takes place in an age with villas on the moon, but I put together the story while thinking that wouldn’t stop people from dreaming of falling asleep on a crescent moon bench.

Then again, this is Heavy Object. When you add this series’ flavor to a popular desire, it ends up like this.

Some readers might have been excited by the sudden introduction of the term “artificial planet”, but even the Collective Farming in Chapter 1 had its beginnings in the terraforming technology that can create a livable environment on the moon or Mars. Of course, it was being used for the Re Terra project to reclaim the earth’s undesirable environments such as deserts instead of going to other planets.

The other theme this time was genius boys and girls. And not just as allies to consult with or targets of protection. They can become pure enemies as well. But when you think about it, they’re human, so it seems to me there’s going to be good ones and bad ones. Unconditionally rejecting someone’s malice feels like turning them into a doll to me.

The Hindu coloring to this volume was to use the polytheistic motif to highlight the idea of kind geniuses and frightening geniuses. Of course, it was wrong of Quenser to decide not to judge geniuses by his standards because he couldn’t know what they are thinking.

The masterminds here became malevolent gods, but they might have traveled a different path had they had someone like the old maintenance lady is to the Princess.

I intentionally omitted most of the descriptions of the adults who had decided to destroy themselves when faced with the children’s dream. But if you think about their position, it seems to fit their style best for them to speak with their backs instead of their words. If you follow the story from their point of view, it might have a somewhat bittersweet structure.

Speaking of technological geniuses, the series has already shown Sladder Honeysuckle in Adoption War and Claire Whist in Path to the Third Generation. Compare this to them, and you might see what position geniuses hold in the series. It really is like the good and evil gods of polytheism. Quenser uses his skills to destroy Objects and protect the social system, so from the polytheistic perspective, is it possible he could grow into the same position as a god of destruction?

I give my thanks to my illustrator, Nagi Ryou-san, and my editors, Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. Everyone ended up in normal clothes most of the time and I think that alone caused trouble on the design side. Thank you very much.

And I also give my thanks to the readers. What did you think of this story structure that began in a city of organized crime and ended up in a battle against an Object? There are still a lot of curveballs I want to use that fall outside “the usual”, so it would help a lot if you stuck with me for quite a while yet.

And I will end this here.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

The term Hand Axe never actually showed up even once.

-Kamachi Kazuma

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword

2016-10-12T12:22:25Z

Zakashi:

==Afterword==

If you’ve been buying one volume at a time, welcome back. If you bought them all at once, welcome.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Volume 10! I think? This series is structured so the first volume is the “starter volume” and the order of the rest doesn’t really matter, so even I sometimes forget. But that doesn’t matter as long as I know what was in them!!

The theme this time was a sixth branch of the military I made up to go after the existing five: land, sea, air, marines, and either space or cyber. I defined it as specialists in psychological warfare that thoroughly destroy a human’s inner universe. But with the morale of a small unit, the wartime propaganda of an entire nation, or the justification given to the international community, wars already deal with the human heart quite a bit. I defined the Sixth Branch as a centralization of all that which focuses on using destructive information to directly crush the enemy and destroy their organization rather than just using it to gather the most allies.

Plus, I used the terms Yog-Sothoth, Azathoth, Miskatonic, Salem which a certain city was modeled after, the Outer Gods, and Nyarlathotep. With all of that, you should be able to see a certain motif. Since I was using a theme of destroying an opponent’s mind, I added in some Cthulhu stuff.

For that reason, I immediately decided to make the Miskatonic’s main cannon into eight tentacles to resemble you-know-who’s you-know-what. But that might not seem as creepy as it should to us Japanese since we eat octopuses all the time. Firing laser beams from the squirming endoscope cannons might have been a more direct way of doing it, but I followed the theme of “once it surfaces it’s all over and simply seeing it drives you mad” by having the cannons draw energy directly from the reactor and creating such great light and heat that it blinds any and all sensors.

And since I already used a deep sea Object with the Megalodiver, I made this one an evil octopus god ruling over a sea of orange glowing lava.

I think that helped give it the impact needed for a colossal weapon bringing about the end of the world, but what did you think?

The most important aspect this time was the heart. I had a lot of fun with this one by having the great war started for one man’s revenge and having the usual two idiots forced to aim their guns at each other. There may have been some scenes that felt different from the usual Heavy Object, but I’ve always wanted to do the buddy film cliché of the two protagonists parting ways and opposing each other partway through. I think the freedom to not have to center everything on the idea of “doing everything for a girl” is one of the wonderful things about this series.

Nyarlathotep is not the kind of character who can be a protagonist, but I seem to have a habit of occasionally writing a revenge story.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. With eight Objects and a city half melted into lava, there was a lot I could write so easily but must have been hard for them. Thank you very much.

I also give my thanks to the readers. This story’s theme truly was people and not Objects. The fact that I can call that a rare thing, shows just what a miraculous balance I’ve set up with this series. I am truly thankful that you’ve given me an environment where I can spread my wings like that.

And I will end this here.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

The War Hammer might be a little too convenient…

-Kamachi Kazuma

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations}}</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword

2016-10-12T12:21:26Z

Zakashi:

==Afterword==

Here we are at Volume 11.

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

As you know if you’ve read the book already, this volume takes a deeper look at how the nobles like Heivia do things. Normally, Quenser and Heivia are looking at the external enemies like the Capitalist Corporations or Information Alliance and pointing out the twisted side of those world powers, but this time they’re looking at the twisted side of their own Legitimacy Kingdom. I tried going for the reverse of the usual pattern where the suspense grows from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3 and I think it gave a bit of a different atmosphere from normal. I will leave it to you to judge that.

The task I gave myself this time was to make an almost too obvious villain. Yes, it was just like something from a two-hour suspense drama! I made it so Azureyfear was suspicious from the start. Almost too suspicious! But she was getting along so well with them, she was cute, and she almost seemed suspicious to a suspicious extent, so surely she had to be innocent!! I was trying to build up that kind of confusion, but was I successful? To be honest, this was my first time trying it, so this will be a useful experience whether I succeeded or not.

I got into some pretty harsh stuff with the mines and drugs, but while looking through information on them, I realized that humans have a way of finding infinite possibilities in a negative way too. The evolution of mines is completely insane. When a mechanical sensor sends an explosive raining down from overhead, does it even count as a mine anymore? And the world of what is commonly called “white powder” apparently has designer drugs that are remade to slip past the latest tests like a computer virus with security software, so we really are hopeless.

Well, let’s set aside the awful accomplishments of mankind and talk about a different sort of possibility. I’ve generally made Heavy Object so you can start with Volume 1 and enjoy the following novels no matter where you start, but this was a test of having certain people reappearing more frequently and in a position necessary for the story to progress. I tried to make sure you could understand their characters well enough even with only this volume and I intend to continue with the original concept of this series, but if you’ll accept what I did here, maybe it’s possible some other characters could show up in important scenes to go on a rampage?

I give my thanks to my illustrator Nagi Ryou-san and my editors Miki-san, Onodera-san, and Anan-san. With all the small things like the various mines, the bulls, and the Armadillos in addition to the Objects, I doubt this one was easy. Thank you for sticking with me this time too.

I also give my thanks to the readers. I snuck in the series’ first space battle and a knight’s duel, so I think I ended up playing fast and loose with the structure on this one. But what did you think? I hope you sensed more and wider possibilities there.

And I will end this here.

I hope this book will remain in your heart in some way.

I really like the astronauts and the bodyguard who ran away.

-Kamachi Kazuma

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations}}</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2016-10-12T12:05:47Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 1|Day 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 2|Day 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 3|Day 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 4|Day 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 5|Day 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 6|Day 6]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Chapter 7|Day 7]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume12 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT

2016-08-22T15:13:12Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF"
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:100%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:Toaru Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT|action=edit}} e]][[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament]]
|-
|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1|NT Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2|NT Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3|NT Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4|NT Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.01| Main.01]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.02|Sub.02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.03|Sub.03]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.04|Sub.04]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.05|Sub.05]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.06|Sub.06]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.07|Period.07]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.08|Sub.08]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.09|Sub.09]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.10|Sub.10]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.11|Main.11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.12|Main.12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.13|Sub.13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.14|Sub.14]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.15|Sub.15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.16|Sub.16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.17|Sub.17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.18|Sub.18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.19|Sub.19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.20|Main.20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.21|Period.21]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.22|Sub.22]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.23|Sub.23]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.24|Sub.24]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.25|Sub.25]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.26|Sub.26]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.27|Sub.27]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.28|Sub.28]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.29|Sub.29]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.30|Main.30]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.31|Main.31]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.32|Period.32]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.33|Sub.33]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.34|A_Cardinal_Error.34]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.35|Connection Process]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.36|Chapter n]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.37|Profound Destruction]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5|NT Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6|NT Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_???|???]] - [[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night Before the Festival|The Night Before The Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter6|Chapter 6]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT Volume6 The Night After the Festival|The Night After the Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7|NT Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8|NT Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9|NT Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6a|Chapter 6a]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6b|Chapter 6b]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6c|Chapter 6c]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10|NT Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_19|Chapter 19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11|NT Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12|NT Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13|NT Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14|NT Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15|NT Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16|NT Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|navname=Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT}}[[Category:Templates]]</noinclude>

Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT

2016-08-22T15:12:05Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF"
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:100%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:Toaru Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT|action=edit}} e]][[Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament]]
|-
|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1|NT Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume1_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2|NT Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume2_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3|NT Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume3_Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4|NT Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.01| Main.01]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.02|Sub.02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.03|Sub.03]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.04|Sub.04]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.05|Sub.05]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.06|Sub.06]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.07|Period.07]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.08|Sub.08]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.09|Sub.09]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.10|Sub.10]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.11|Main.11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.12|Main.12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.13|Sub.13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.14|Sub.14]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.15|Sub.15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.16|Sub.16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.17|Sub.17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.18|Sub.18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.19|Sub.19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.20|Main.20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.21|Period.21]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.22|Sub.22]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.23|Sub.23]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.24|Sub.24]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.25|Sub.25]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.26|Sub.26]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.27|Sub.27]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.28|Sub.28]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.29|Sub.29]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.30|Main.30]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Main.31|Main.31]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Period.32|Period.32]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Sub.33|Sub.33]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.34|A_Cardinal_Error.34]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.35|Connection Process]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.36|Chapter n]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Chapter.37|Profound Destruction]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume4_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5|NT Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume5_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6|NT Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_???|???]] - [[Toaru Majutsu no Index:NT Volume6 The Night Before the Festival|The Night Before The Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter6|Chapter 6]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Chapter8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT Volume6 The Night After the Festival|The Night After the Festival]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume6_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7|NT Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume7_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8|NT Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Chapter4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume8_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9|NT Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6a|Chapter 6a]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6b|Chapter 6b]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_6c|Chapter 6c]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_7|Chapter 7]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Chapter_8|Chapter 8]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume9_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10|NT Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_9|Chapter 9]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_10|Chapter 10]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_11|Chapter 11]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_12|Chapter 12]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_13|Chapter 13]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_14|Chapter 14]] [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_15|Chapter 15]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_16|Chapter 16]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_17|Chapter 17]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_18|Chapter 18]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_19|Chapter 19]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Chapter_20|Chapter 20]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume10_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11|NT Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume11_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12|NT Volume 12]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume12_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13|NT Volume 13]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume13_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14|NT Volume 14]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume14_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15|NT Volume 15]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15|NT Volume 16]]
! style="background:transparent;" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Illustrations|Illustrations]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume16_Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:NT_Volume15_Afterword|Afterword]]

|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=Toaru Majutsu no Index: New Testament|navname=Toaru Nav/Majutsu NT}}[[Category:Templates]]</noinclude>

HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3

2016-05-02T08:31:50Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 3: A History of One or the Other >> South Atlantic Civil War of Emergency Succession==

===Part 1===

The next battlefield was in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The battle was to defend the Vanderbilt lady and her civilian cruise ship from the Destruction Fes.

Frolaytia’s response was simple.

First, she sent the Baby Magnum ahead at its naval speed of more than five hundred kilometers per hour.

Quenser and the others in the maintenance battalion gathered their surviving ships, stopped by a Legitimacy Kingdom base on the southern tip of Africa, and used transport planes to fly to Saint Helena, an isolated island in the South Atlantic Ocean. After borrowing some naval forces there, they regrouped with the Baby Magnum at the island, finally began the Object maintenance, and prepared to arrive on the scene and fight.

It had of course not been an easy journey.

If the Destruction Fes had been waiting for them, its anti-air weapons could have destroyed every last aircraft in midair. When the weight of death was bearing down on you the entire time, the flight was far from enjoyable.

“Listen up!!”

But Frolaytia Capistrano ignored that physical and mental weariness to raise her voice in the small aircraft carrier’s briefing room.

“The greatest desire of the Legitimacy Kingdom military is to protect our people’s lives, property, and honor and to destroy anything that threatens those things! That aspect of our fight remains unchanged whether our enemy is another world power or a rogue faction of our own. If Azureyfear Winchell’s faction intends to slaughter civilians en masse in their desire to strike at the Vanderbilt family over an old feud, then we will do whatever it takes to stop them!!”

Every one of them was worn down.

They had lost many colleagues and their morale had plummeted.

They were filled with the unpleasant mood of people being forced to work without pay.

But.

Oddly enough, none of them threw down their gun, tossed out their dog tags, and left the battalion.

“Currently, Celestial Flowers, the world’s largest ocean fireworks festival, is being held in the South Atlantic Ocean. Around five hundred civilian ships have gathered around the two-hull luxury cruise ship Rose & Lily for that festival. The Destruction Fes, which we speculate to be Second Generation, is approaching their location. If it arrives, we will have a true bloodbath on our hands, so I want to finish this before that happens.”

The enemy was a private unit led by Azureyfear Winchell.

Operating a Second Generation without relying on a Pilot Elite was estimated to require a crew of more than ten thousand. They had enough soldiers to fill an army division and it was to pilot just the one Object. And all of that personnel, equipment, and materiel would have been bought with the money she earned in her drug war.

Heivia and the others did not hesitate to oppose Azureyfear.

[[Image:HO_v11_209.jpg|thumb]]

The fact that it was entirely remote controlled may have helped there. Blowing it away would not kill anyone, so the extra familial connection did not have to make it awkward. And if they destroyed this strange Object, the ridiculous war…no, personal feud would be over.

As usual, diagrams were projected on the white wall behind Frolaytia.

“Luckily, the Legitimacy Kingdom Second Generation Oceanic Driver was patrolling this area of sea and it put up a decent fight. It is the true ‘owner’ of the naval force at Saint Helena. Even as they worked to slow down the Destruction Fes, they gathered valuable data on the unknown Object. We can never thank them enough. Don’t you waste their efforts!”

The Oceanic Driver was a naval Second Generation that fought bravely with a laser beam main cannon. In addition to its reactor, it was equipped with several large-scale capacitors to leave no gaps in its rapid-fire when necessary. It also had several ballast tanks attached to its outer perimeter that could be filled with or emptied of seawater to intentionally shift its balance for incredibly nimble and rapid turns.

But it was no match for the Destruction Fes.

The Destruction Fes was fully remote-controlled and had no Pilot Elite. Freed from the restrictions of the inertial Gs, its movements were like lightning. More than just its top speed, it had ultra-sharp footwork and could cut back and forth unnaturally quickly. The difference was too great to be seen, like a cutting-edge stealth fighter taking on the Wright Brothers’ plane in a serious dogfight. It fully surpassed the biological limits of a manned machine. Before the Oceanic Driver could even place it in its sights, the Destruction Fes would slip into its blind spot and unleash cruel attacks that gouged into its armor.

The Destruction Fes was supported by the air cushion float directly below its main body, but it also had three insect-like legs attached in a reverse Y-shape. Those legs had booster-like devices covering the sides and they provided explosive mobility. The pure white torrent they produced looked more like a liquid than a jet or plasma.

The difference in speed was overwhelming.

The battle was so one-sided that the field itself seemed to shift out of place.

Even so, the Pilot Elite had not ejected even in the very, very end.

Over one hundred thousand innocent civilians sat behind the Oceanic Driver, so it had to hold its position until the Baby Magnum’s battalion caught up. Every minute and every second mattered. And that determination to continue fighting had sealed the Pilot Elite’s fate.

No one instructed them to, but when the Object exploded, every soldier in the briefing room saluted.

Even Quenser and Heivia.

Frolaytia gave a short sigh and then abandoned her pride. She would use everything available to her. There was a lot she had to prioritize above her own self-respect.

She did not hesitate to do something unthinkable of a soldier.

She gave the floor to a mere student.

“Quenser, what do you think?”

“Its main cannon is a large caliber low-stability plasma cannon, but that isn’t what I’m interested in.”

After moving to the head of the room in place of his commander, Quenser paused the tragic footage, rewound it, and then pointed at something with a laser pointer. He had no intention of mocking the Elite’s death. That Elite had lost their life passing on this baton, so they had to look it straight in the eye and chew it down to the marrow.

“It has some parts on the back that look like peacock feathers, but they don’t seem to be related to the boosters. If it’s supposed to be a high-mobility Object that uses the incredible speed of its footwork as its greatest weapon, they would have eliminated anything that would create air resistance, so these are odd. And as you can see when zooming in, they are a collection of some sort of giant speakers.”

“Speakers?”

Heivia looked puzzled, so Quenser nodded and continued.

“They’re an acoustic weapon. That’s what messed with our heads back with the boats.”

“Oh, goddammit. Just remembering it is making me feel nauseous. That thing was bad. It wasn’t just the ears or the head. It felt like I’d been punched in the head so hard I was going to vomit.”

“The Destruction Fes also destroyed our aircraft carrier fleet, but a low-stability plasma cannon can only fire in one direction and can’t apply damage equally to one hundred ships. These things produce a great noise at a regulated frequency. That causes micro-vibrations in the target and destroys them a lot like a harmonic scalpel. The weaker welded points of the metal are burned through on the molecular level and then the entire ship breaks apart and sinks.”

“So you’re saying the Destruction Fes has two main cannons?” asked the Princess.

She was going to directly confront this enemy, so it was a life-or-death issue for her.

Quenser gave a troubled look.

“At that power, I don’t think it could directly damage an Object.”

“Yeah, we’re still alive,” added Heivia.

“Although we might have been turned to mincemeat if we were closer and didn’t have any cover. We didn’t survive due to luck. It was because those ships sank in our stead.” Quenser rejected the other boy’s optimistic view. “If anything, I’m betting that one’s used to hold its opponent in place. Just like how the Spectre Q&A detonated the air to stop the Princess from moving. That said, it’s powerful enough to sink an entire fleet at close range. For flesh-and-blood humans, being exposed to that would be the same as being thrown into a human meat mixer.”

“That’s a dangerous combination.”

“That it is, granny. Not only does it have footwork too fast to keep up with, but it has an additional weapon to slow us down. As the gap in speed grows infinitely wide, the Destruction Fes will move to our blind spot and safely fire its main cannon. It really comes down to relative speed, but it’ll feel like fighting an enemy that can manipulate time. I doubt there would be any way to win in a straight fight.”

He paused for a beat before adding a “but”.

The projector displayed the situation in the South Atlantic. The map displayed where the Oceanic Driver had sunk and where the five hundred civilian ships were gathered for the world’s largest fireworks festival. It also showed the Destruction Fes on its way to kill the Vanderbilt lady along with countless other civilians and it showed the Baby Magnum and Legitimacy Kingdom forces moving to intervene.

The student took all that information in.

He looked across everyone’s faces and cast the die of fate.

“If we give up, a hundred thousand civilians will sink into a sea of blood and the Oceanic Driver’s resolve will be wasted. Also, Frolaytia has ordered us to keep that from happening. I will obey that order. I’m not telling you to die here. I’m telling you to draw out every ounce of strength needed to survive. So what will you do? It’s a thin, thin thread, but we have the chance left to us by the Oceanic Driver. The rest is up to you. You need to decide here whether you’re going to hear me out.”

No one objected.

Ten minutes later, the worn-down soldiers all took their battle positions.

===Part 2===

A two-hull ship was exactly what it sounded like: a ship with two hulls.

The Rose & Lily was constructed from two cruise ships measuring four hundred meter long. They were lined up side-by-side with a few passageways connecting them. The ship had been made so large to secure more storage space and deck space, but this increased the resistance against the waves and water which reduced the fuel efficiency.

One of the hulls bore the Winchell family crest and the other bore the Vanderbilt family crest. In reference to some legend or another, a single sword was stabbed into the middle of the central connecting passageway.

A lot could be said of its origins, but none of that mattered at the moment.

The main player of the Celestial Flowers fireworks festival was not that lodging ship. Instead, it was the many ships belonging to fireworks craftsmen that were spread out around the cruise ship.

The event itself was mostly entertainment for the rich nobles.

It was the same as the nations that spent massive sums of money exploring the moon or deep sea in an older age. “We have the technology to do this.” “We are this wealthy.” “We have plenty to spare, unlike the rest of you.” By implicitly stating those things, they could build up a mistaken long-term strategy against their foreign enemies. By consuming an unnecessary countermeasure budget like water, they could indirectly torment their enemy without firing a single bullet or shell. In that way, this too was a type of war.

Of course, that was nothing more than an excuse and a pretext.

The nobles loved wine more than water and sought casino chips more than cheap meat, so they were not about to begin any stingy self-sacrifice even if the world was going to be destroyed tomorrow. They might flick some bread crust over to a charity, but they would never allow their great fortunes to be stripped from them in the name of “justice” or “self-restraint”. They would put any amount of work and argument into allowing themselves to live their hedonistic lives.

Five hundred ships had gathered around the Rose & Lily for the Celestial Flowers fireworks festival, but popular opinion had been guided on multiple levels so this festival of gluttony would not provoke the ire of the commoners.

On the Rose & Lily’s portside deck – the one engraved with a rose – the Vanderbilt lady sighed and leaned back against the railing overlooking the dark sea.

Normally, over ten thousand fireworks and the canopy of the artificial aurora would have decorated the sky while far too much food to eat was lined up and a world-class violinist provided the music for an elegant dance.

But that plan had been called off, so the sky and sea were both dark.

The nobles in dresses and suits were muttering amongst themselves and extra focused on their own safety. Not only could they no longer see the Oceanic Driver which had been sent out to protect them, but fragments of information were showing up concerning the unknown Object headed their way.

“It apparently has to do with the conflict between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families.”

“Then what does it have to do with us? I-I know. I don’t mean anything too much by it, but is it too late to request a helicopter? Yes, wouldn’t it be lovely to go for a flight between the fireworks and the aurora?”

“Don’t be stupid. If it really is an Object, its anti-air lasers will tear us to pieces. And it would be hard to reach land this far out at sea.”

The young lady could tell many eyes were glancing her way in the darkness.

(How careless. This is an age of war, so you never know who is after your life the second you take a step outside a safe country. In fact, being in a safe country doesn’t guarantee anything. And yet they fully believe they alone are safe.)

When they left their safe country despite the danger, were they contacting people from another world power to tear down both sides’ prejudices and reach a true mutual understanding that could stop war without military might?

Or was it merely a sham without any of that framework?

It seemed the VIPs gathered on the Rose & Lily did not know how to tell the difference.

“We can never let this happen, but…hypothetically. Hypothetically speaking, just to put our minds at ease…how powerful is this Winchell Second Generation? If it is on a rampage, who can stop it?”

“Why is this happening? This wasn’t part of the plan. I was promised absolute safety…”

“My family will never die! Ancient documents show it going back for five hundred years!!”

“But just because something was fine yesterday doesn’t mean it can’t fall apart tomorrow, right? Ah…ah ha…ah ha ha ha ha…”

The pressure grew.

They had lost their fangs and claws and they had grown round and fat, but when it came to their own safety, these nobles could be more tenacious than greedy wolves. They would never say it directly, but through various hints and metaphors and with the help of the secretaries by their sides, they were telling each other the following:

“This comes down to the historical conflict between those two families, so why do we have to be caught in the crossfire?”

“I only care about the survival of my family and I am indispensable as far as that is concerned.”

“The Winchell girl will be satisfied if we offer Vanderbilt to her as a blood sacrifice.”

“That means there’s something we can do here.”

“If we tie up that young lady and hand her over to the crazed lioness, we can show her we have no intention of opposing her.”

If those unpleasant nobles had been the only people at the fireworks festival, she would have abandoned them already, but unfortunately, there were also plenty of unrelated commoners. She would have trouble sleeping if she also abandoned parents who had saved up their limited pay and leave to bring their families or the couples who had secretly bought a ring for this occasion.

“Now, then.”

The Vanderbilt lady removed her back from the deck’s railing. She grabbed a glass of nonalcoholic champagne from a tray held by a passing maid in a long skirt and she calmly walked through the darkness while drinking it. The nobles were too busy practicing their wise-looking poses to think and parted in front of her without saying a word.

For the time being anyway.

Once the scales of the situation tipped too far, those ladies and gentlemen would restrain the girl’s body with more vulgar looks than thugs in an abandoned part of town.

Perhaps to show a sign of neutrality within the strained atmosphere, a courageous member of the commoner crew spoke to her while wiping down the glass door leading inside the ship.

“Lady, where are you going?”

“Unfortunately, it seems there is still something I must do.”

Faithful young men like that were the Legitimacy Kingdom’s treasure. As a noble, she could not allow those people to be killed needlessly.

She left the empty glass with him and entered the ship.

Azureyfear Winchell was behind this attack. Her goal was undoubtedly the annihilation of the Vanderbilt family and the death of this young lady as a symbol to hold up to the world. But could Azureyfear really have accomplished such a grand plan on her own? And could she really have kept it hidden for so long?

There was a possibility that something was still hidden.

Someone may have given Azureyfear a helping hand to benefit in some way.

And the White Lily of Vanderbilt had already heard someone say something curious.

The truth may have been surprisingly close by.

===Part 3===

The starry sky covered the dark ocean of the South Atlantic Ocean.

Quenser, Heivia, and the others were rushing around within the gray aircraft carrier. The soldiers were all pulling out the motor-equipped rubber boats made from the Armadillos. They stopped up on the deck and Heivia looked out to the horizon.

“I can already see the lights of the boats. Those people on the cruise ship are paying a visit to the garden of death.”

“…”

“Hey, Quenser.”

When the other idiot did not answer, Heivia asked about it.

Despite being an idiot, Quenser had a thoughtful look on his face.

“Did I do something wrong in a past life or something?”

“What?”

“It’s just…well…I’m not sure how to put it! First that Black Uniform named Meena and now the sexy little sister Azureyfear. Why!? Does every girl I flirt with end up growing a demon’s tail from her cute ass!? I’m scared! Now I can’t hope for any new love!! I’m gonna end up afraid of love!!”

“Talk about awful taste. Don’t tell me you actually had a thing for that monster Azureyfear. Ugh, just the thought is giving me the creeps.”

“Of course I did! She was walking around in a bikini and she even kissed me on the cheek! Yes, I’ll admit she was suspicious! But I thought there was more to it than that!! Why wasn’t there some kind of twist!? Stupid, stupid, stupid!!”

During that hopeless conversation, Heivia hit Quenser on the head. The student started to complain, but then he noticed something.

The Princess was walking over while surrounded by several maintenance soldiers. She was on her way to board the Baby Magnum after its hastened maintenance.

They did not even need to speak.

As Quenser and the Princess passed by, they reached out and slapped their hands together.

They were shifting their focus to the coming battle even if they had to force it.

“Oh, hell. This has already started, so I guess we have to do it.”

“Yeah. And if I don’t show off to my fiancée every once in a while, she’ll lose interest in me. Let’s blow up that remote-controlled Destruction Fes as the world’s biggest firework.”

“And once that’s over, it’ll be time to give Azureyfear some sexy punishment!!”

“Are you still going on about that? It’s scaring me!”

“You might have your girlfriend over there, but this is the only motivation I’ve got here!!”

Quenser and Heivia joined the other soldiers by throwing their rubber boat into the dark sea and then jumping down from the flight deck. After starting up the large motors, the boats scattered in different directions instead of heading in a single group.

There was a simple reason for this.

[[Image:HO_v11_223.jpg|thumb]]

Frolaytia spoke to them over the radio.

“We can’t use the White Flag here and the Destruction Fes has an overwhelming advantage. Listen. We can only roll the die of death to find out who dies first. Even if that turns out to be those of us here in the flagship, you all need to keep going. Don’t let them end this while just sitting there!!”

In addition to the low-stability plasma main cannon, the Destruction Fes could emit an ultra-high frequency acoustic weapon from its peacock feather-like speaker units. At close range, that could destroy an entire fleet or stop an enemy Object.

Anyone in an exposed rubber boat was out of the question.

However, the risk of being torn apart remained even inside a steel warship.

They did not know who would die first, so they could not allow the entire battalion to be wiped out at once.

That said, this was a lot like digging a bunch of small trenches and hiding inside them so they would not all be wiped out by a single bomb. There could be no hard feelings no matter who the bomb made a hole-in-one on. That was the only option available to them.

“That’s a hell of a way to motivate us. What ever happened to clean wars?”

“…”

“What is it, Heivia? Quieting down now isn’t going to trick anyone into thinking you’re an intellectual.”

“Why didn’t the Destruction Fes…no, why didn’t Azureyfear finish this off right away? Average speed for an Object is five hundred kph and hers is a Second Generation with its high-speed mobility as its main selling point. The attack should have begun before our patched-together cardboard fleet showed up.”

“Because she actually wanted Knight Quenser to stop her!! Heh. These delinquent girls are always turning their damaged eyes my way!!”

“I don’t care how hard you try, there’s no making that failure into some cute little girl!!”

“Then how should I know? I don’t know how nobles think. Maybe she wants to finish off her sworn enemy herself. Maybe she thinks it would damage the ‘legend’ if the Princess showed up and one of her stray shells happened to sink the Rose & Lily instead.”

“Or…she might just want to kill my fiancée in front of me,” suggested Heivia with a bitter look.

Then static ran through the two idiots’ radios.

Someone they did not remember having permission was sending a transmission over an open line.

“Heh heh heh…”

It was a noble laugh that sounded like rolling a piece of candy on the tongue, yet it also contained endless sadism.

“Azureyfear!!”

“How do you do, brother? Where do you think you’re going? Might it be a desperate struggle to save the Bitch of Vanderbilt that I have let live for the time being.”

“…”

Quenser looked to his own radio and prepared to send a certain signal to the Princess in the Baby Magnum and Frolaytia in the small aircraft carrier.

But…

“It is no use. No one can capture me. In fact, my own whereabouts mean nothing to the Destruction Fes. Even if Azureyfear Winchell is taken prisoner or killed, the ten thousand operators, the stealth submarines scattered around the world’s oceans, and the satellites in orbit will continue the fight. Not that I expect you would be able to hunt me down anyway.”

“Who do you think you are? Do you think you have an infinite stock of privilege as a noble?”

“Ah ha ha ha!! Brother, you are the one that needs to bear the responsibility and duty of Winchell. I am merely taking on the debt you failed to pay back. But don’t feel bad. We are family, after all.”

Winchell and Vanderbilt.

War and peace.

What was the reality on both sides and what were the delusions on both sides?

At the very least, it seemed Azureyfear wished to open Heivia’s eyes. And to do so, she wanted to kill in front of him.

Heivia clenched his teeth and a report came in from the Princess.

“The Destruction Fes is approaching from thirteen kilometers southwest of my position. Once it is within ten kilometers, I will engage it.”

“What? Isn’t that around where the Oceanic Driver was sunk?”

Quenser grasped the meaning of the data quicker than anyone else.

“Hm. You were acting like a god, but it looks like you weren’t all that almighty.”

“Commoner, I possess a tolerant and merciful soul, but you are not needed in a conversation between nobles. Know your place.”

The student ignored her and continued.

He was expressing his thoughts, something everyone had equally.

“Don’t act so full of yourself when you’re terrified of getting hit right in the ass. The Oceanic Driver was a Second Generation with several large capacitors in addition to its normal reactor. That allowed it to fire its laser beams with no gaps, but even after it was sunk, it might have had a program to launch an attack from beyond the grave using the massive power left in the capacitors. You were slowly making sure that wasn’t the case. You were afraid of being hit with a surprise attack!!”

Quenser’s guess was that the Oceanic Driver could not actually do that. No matter how powerful the capacitors and transformers were, they were no replacement for the extraordinary reactor. But Azureyfear’s faction had feared that risk. They had feared that formidable foe.

The Oceanic Driver had done more than fight to the death.

Even after its death, it had given the rest of them the chance they needed.

The Rose & Lily and the other five hundred ships were still intact with the hopelessly powerful Destruction Fes so close, but that was undoubtedly thanks to the time bought by the Oceanic Driver. The defender of Saint Helena had done its duty and fulfilled its mission.

How could they let that go to waste?

“Don’t let her get to you, Heivia. That thing isn’t perfect. They’re afraid like normal and they’re putting together countermeasures like normal! It’s nothing more than a normal Object! Our ally proved that. We just have to fill in the gap between the ideal and reality!!”

After saying that to his awful friend, Quenser shouted into his radio.

“Frolaytia, please get started! This is the starting line! We can still end this with zero sacrifices!!”

A massive machine passed by the rubber boats.

It was the Princess’s Baby Magnum.

The mountainous silhouette of the Destruction Fes turned their way in the darkness. The peacock feather-like acoustic weapon units were spread out wide.

A thunderclap-like noise continued without end.

It stabbed at their ears, but Quenser and the others were not knocked out at this range. However, the acoustic weapon’s power would grow the closer they got to the source. They could see the Baby Magnum’s speed dropping as if it was being buffeted by a fierce wind or invisible pressure.

“Dammit! This thing’s dangerous!!”

“Are all these waves due to the ocean surface vibrating? Shit! If we don’t pay attention, we’ll be thrown from the boat!!”

“Hee hee. Hee hee hee hee. The Orchestra System is working well. The ten thousand wolves will now devour the lone Elite.”

“Now you’re really pissing me off. I’ll show you what true piloting looks like.”

The Destruction Fes was not going to pay her any heed in a normal fight.

It was unmanned, so it could ignore the limits of inertial Gs that bound a manned Object. The boosters attached to the side of the insect leg-like units provided overwhelming speed and reversals while the acoustic weapon’s “wall” kept the enemy Object from moving. Their relative speeds widened to fatal levels, so it almost felt like it could control time. The Destruction Fes would calmly circle around to the blind spot of the Baby Magnum’s cannons and unilaterally pummel it to death.

“Eh heh heh. Heh heh heh. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!!”

Azureyfear must have had the same destructive vision in mind because her laugh reached the entire army over the radio.

But she was wrong. Quenser had a different vision in mind.

“It seemed strange once I thought about it.” He stared at that goddess of victory from the rubber boat. “That acoustic weapon uses countless speakers to create a wall of noise that vibrates the target, shakes and tears apart the molecules, and causes it to rupture at the weakest points, like the welds. But Objects move around at an average speed of more than five hundred kph. Even more so with the Destruction Fes since its high-speed mobility is its selling point. In that case, you can’t ignore how sound works. Even if you’re emitting the optimum wavelength, that wavelength can be stretched or squished depending on the situation.”

“You mean the Doppler effect?” asked Heivia.

“That means the Destruction Fes’s speakers have to emit a wavelength that takes into account the distortion due to the Doppler effect. It has to accurately read in the relative location and speed of its target. It has to do that initial checking and correction before emitting the sound, and that of course has to be done with something faster than sound.”

Quenser waved the radio in his hand.

“Namely, electromagnetic waves. As I’m sure you can guess from the existence of the term ‘Doppler radar’, electromagnetic wavelengths can’t escape the Doppler effect either. And while the wavelengths are different, light and electromagnetic waves are pretty much the same thing. First it emits microwaves in every direction to see how they’re distorted between itself and the target. Then it uses that data to calculate out the corrections needed for the acoustic weapon and sends out the corrected waveform at high volume. …To put it another way, restricting those initial microwaves will nearly defang the acoustic weapon.”

So…

“An acoustic weapon that creates a wall of pressure that can even stop an Object sounds like a big deal, but if you think about the nature of electromagnetic waves, it isn’t much of a threat.”

Of course, simply using jamming was not going to help just because it was using radar. It was an Object, so it was essentially a large-scale military fortress in and of itself. It could force its way through your standard interfering signal.

But that just meant they had to think bigger.

Quenser snapped his fingers and pointed up into the starry sky.

“The Celestial Flowers fireworks festival just so happened to have an interesting event planned! A collaboration of fireworks and an artificial aurora created with the help of a space station!!”

===Part 4===

The civilian Venus-class space station was named the Princess Nikolaschka.

It belonged to the Legitimacy Kingdom’s Organization for the Peaceful Use of Space.

It was currently 20:30 Greenwich Mean Time and the space station was in sector I-9 above the South Atlantic Ocean.

A giant blue planet was visible below and an endless expanse of darkness was visible above. Directions, including above and below, meant nothing in outer space, but since he had been born on the earth, the astronaut named Marcus still found it to be a strange and dizzying sight.

Those aboard the space station called it the “Fish Tank” because it had lab modules and solar panels installed at right angles around a thick cylindrical main shaft. Several more facilities were similarly attached to the slave shafts that branched off, so overall, it resembled a fishing hole’s fish tank made from several rectangular wooden frames connected together. Those extra frames extended from the main shaft at 120 degrees intervals.

Wearing space suits and attached by a lifeline, the astronauts were clinging to the exterior of the station and working without the option of wiping the sweat from their brows.

They were working on a strange railgun that they referred to as the Debris Homer. Rather than an uncivilized military weapon that fired shells, the barrel opened wide and released a field of power to shoot back debris without touching it. It was a safety device to be used against the debris that arrived like a sandstorm at several kilometers per second.

“Marcus to control. The socket replacement is complete. It’s a perfect job. This peaceful station has been transformed into a military facility. To be honest, it kind of want to break my arms right now.”

“Those SOBs are all insane. Don’t they know this is a civilian station? I hate the smell of gunpowder. I came all the way up here to answer kids’ questions over the satellite line while I throw paper airplanes! As a kid, I loved watching those shows while looking after my little brother, but now I feel like I’ve ruined it all!!”

“Stop it, Robin. Space development has always been a proxy war. We have to do this dirty work while the kids can’t see us.”

The countdown from control began, so they restrained their chatter. They relied on their lifelines to move along the station’s exterior and reach the safe zone.

In that soundless world, the invisible stream of solar wind was bent and fired toward earth.

But the earth’s atmosphere was effective. It protected the life living below from the threat of ultraviolet rays, radiation, heat, falling objects, and more. Most of the unnaturally bent solar wind was blocked by the ionosphere. Hazy red, green, and purple light danced over one portion of the blue planet.

Robin spoke while watching the light spread with an amoeba-like motion.

“An artificial aurora, huh?”

“That’s not the main event here, Robin.”

The aurora occurred when solar winds – massive amounts of plasma launched from the sun – collided with the magnetosphere surrounding the earth and gathered at either the North or South Pole. When they contacted the magnetosphere, the solar winds had their electrons and protons separated and those particles reacted with the ionosphere to produce light.

And a few side effects of the aurora had been noticed.

One of those was of interest here.

“Loss of electromagnetic signals in the polar regions.”

Robin may have been starving for a chance to lead a children’s educational program because he began explaining.

“Very high frequency communications and microwave communications will ‘vanish’ in the affected area. Although this might be the first time in history it hit an Object-level radar emitter.”

===Part 5===

Just as the Destruction Fes was ready to attack, it seemed to stumble a little.

Its acoustic weapon had cut out.

Instead, the night sea grew so still and silent it seemed to hurt the two idiots’ ears.

“Ksshhh! Kssssshhhhhhhh!! Click!!”

Their radios were dead.

They could no longer hear the Princess or Azureyfear.

“What? So if the communications are down, does that mean its remote control is out too!?”

“It isn’t that simple. I’m sure it’s got multiple systems like lasers to cover this kind of thing. But it still had some effect!”

The Destruction Fes resumed moving a moment later, but they were not done doing things Azureyfear’s faction did not expect.

The Princess’s Baby Magnum rushed straight forward. As soon as the Destruction Fes’s acoustic weapon was cut off, it seemed to have been released from the invisible pressure or fierce wind facing it. It had incredible speed, like a rubber band that had been stretched back to the limit.

No.

Technically…

“Thanks to the activated ionosphere, very high frequency waves and microwaves ‘vanish’ here. That affects the Doppler radar it uses to determine the wavelength correction it needs. After stumbling like that, it can’t use its wall of sound anymore! Even if it scatters sound at random, it can’t maintain the most effective wavelength!!”

The Destruction Fes was still incredibly fast, but the Baby Magnum was freed from its shackles.

It was freed from that hopeless field of relative speeds so different the enemy seemed to be controlling time.

The Princess could move.

She seemed to leap forward.

Blinding light crossed paths. The Baby Magnum and the Destruction Fes had both fired their low-stability plasmas cannons while taking evasive actions to the side. They had of course used their main cannons. It was like crossing lances in a jousting match.

The Princess just barely managed to dodge.

The Destruction Fes being remotely-controlled by Azureyfear’s faction had one of the outer peacock feather-like parts torn away. It could be heard whipping through the air as it rotated through the dark sky like a metal tower.

It fell toward the cruise ship several kilometers away.

“Hey!” shouted Heivia from the boat.

“It’s better than an attack from that thing’s main cannon. More importantly, she hit! The Princess’s attack hit!! Without the acoustic weapon slowing her down, she can shrink the gap between them. At this rate…”

The student trailed off when a bit of static ran through his radio.

“Quenser, something isn’t right. The fact that you’re getting this should tell you that.”

“Wait a second, Princess… Why is the radio working? The artificial aurora should be killing the signal!”

“My radar was down for a moment, but it’s back up now. The same should be true for them.”

Quenser and Heivia looked up.

What was happening in that starry sky? Without the assistance of the space station, the Destruction Fes could resume its high-speed fight that made it feel like time had stopped.

===Part 6===

The astronauts had other things to worry about.

Marcus and the others were busy clenching their teeth as hundreds or even thousands of shards as sharp as a razor or box cutter rained down from outside the space station.

“Robin!”

“I’m fine. There’s no hole in the ass of my jacket. More importantly, what was that? A killer satellite!?”

Satellite-destroying satellites were exactly what they sounded like.

A satellite was launched for the sole purpose of destroying an enemy nation’s satellites. Some would use powerful lasers or electromagnetic signals to damage their sensors, some would fire rockets or missiles, and some would be loaded with explosives for a suicide collision. It was known as the saddest and most fruitless field of space development.

This time, it was a collision model. It took the same orbit as its target, used boosters or an ion engine to slowly approach, and then detonated itself.

Explosions had no sound in outer space. Without any air resistance, the shrapnel did not slow down. Plus, the slightest cut or hole could cause fatal damage to equipment or human life. It was a deadly sandstorm that approached in absolute silence. Perhaps only those up in space could truly understand how frightening that was.

“They’re scattering a ton of debris out here. That’s against the treaties.”

“The solar panels on Module C and Module D were taken out. They even blew a hole in one lab module.”

“But given the situation, I doubt this was an indiscriminate attack. They had to have been after the anti-debris cannon. Dammit. It hurt aiming that safety device toward the earth.”

Explosion after explosion tore apart the framework of the Fish Tank. The main shaft was still unharmed, so the entire station would not fall apart and their living space was safe. However, the damage to the parts exposed on the exterior was bad. The railgun and a few solar panels had been damaged and bent.

They could no longer provide support to those on the surface.

However, they doubted the enemy would withdraw. They had spare parts inside the station, so destroying the station and slaughtering its crew would be the quickest method of crushing any possibility of repairing and reusing the railgun.

“Here they come,” muttered Marcus.

People in unfamiliar space suits were visible here and there. They had likely clung to the side of the satellite partway through its flight. They held rifles. The fingers of the space suit would not have fit, so the trigger guards had been cut away.

The astronauts had no way of knowing, but they were from Azureyfear’s faction that was controlling the Destruction Fes with a worldwide data network using a large number of stealth submarines and satellites. Their reach extended to the deep sea, the surface, and even space.

“Wait, wait, wait!” shouted Robin. “We’re civilians! We don’t have guns!!”

“We don’t have to do this their way. Robin, Anderson, you have your work lights, right? Twist the focus to concentrate the light on a single point. On my signal, let’s all target their faces one by one.”

“Our lights? Are we supposed to fight the bad guys with our light swords?”

“This is a lesson I’ve learned in my long time as an astronaut.” Marcus quietly sighed. “When taking a commemorative photo in zero gravity, you mustn’t use the flash. If you blind yourself, you lose your sense of balance and your body seems to move on instinct when you stiffen up because you end up spinning around until you don’t know which way is up. …Let’s take them out in the same way.”

In outer space, there was no need to force the enemy to the ground or knock them out. Once the enemy lost their balance, they could be thrown out into the emptiness of space. Even if they had attitude control boosters, the fear and panic of an out-of-control spin was not something they could break free of on their own. Without anything around to support them, they would helplessly continue their flight until their oxygen tank was empty.

“Their rifles are the same. If they pull the trigger in zero gravity, the recoil will flip them around. That would change if they pressed their backs against the station’s wall before firing, but we won’t let them do that. This is a civilian station, so if they want to fight a war, we’ll have them do so elsewhere.”

===Part 7===

Heivia loudly clicked his tongue as he stared up into the night sky from the boat floating in the dark sea.

“Is it siesta time on the station up there!? What do we do, Quenser!?”

“…”

If the Destruction Fes regained its full abilities, the Baby Magnum could not win. In fact, no Object on the planet could stand up to a Second Generation with that speed and maneuverability.

They needed to seal off its acoustic weapon without using the space station’s artificial aurora.

If they did not make this work, Heivia’s girlfriend and one hundred thousand more lives would be lost.

Quenser looked around and then brought his radio to his mouth.

(That’s it.)

“Princess! Hold on for now!!”

“That isn’t something you can do just because someone tells you to. I’ll do it, though!”

The two Objects began to move.

Once more, the din of the acoustic weapon ruled the battlefield.

Fortunately, the Princess had torn away one of the Destruction Fes’s peacock feathers. That created a dead spot in the acoustic weapon’s reach. The Princess continuously moved toward that outer edge and did whatever she could to not be swallowed up by that slowing pressure.

But not even that was perfect.

The Destruction Fes truly was fast. It always occupied the most useful spot and fired its low-stability plasma main cannon toward the Baby Magnum. As payback for before, it tore away one of the seven main canons and melted the spherical main body’s armor with a glancing blow.

The intense noise must have been affecting the amplitude of the ocean’s waves because unnaturally tall waves appeared all over, forcing Heivia to cling to the boat as he let out a yell.

“There’s nothing stopping it anymore! What do we do, Quenser!?”

“If we can stop the electromagnetic waves that guide the acoustic weapon, we’ll have the upper hand again.”

“Your everyday jamming won’t cut it.”

“What about chaff? Fill the night sky with tons of thin metal and it will reflect the electromagnetic waves. Its radar will be useless.”

“But where are we gonna find that!? That aircraft carrier was prepared in a hurry, so there won’t be much left inside its fighters. And we’d need hundreds of tons of chaff to throw off an Object’s control system!!”

But Quenser calmly tossed his radio to Heivia.

“That’s your job.”

“What?”

“Have you forgotten where you secret lover is? This is the world’s largest fireworks festival. And do you know why fireworks are colorful? Flames change color when they react to certain chemicals or metals. Ten thousand or a hundred thousand should be enough. If they fire all of their fireworks into the night sky, it’ll block the Destruction Fes’s electromagnetic waves and thus its acoustic weapon! So beg her to do that for us! Hurry!!”

===Part 8===

Explosion after explosion sounded as colorful light filled the night sky.

“Honestly, don’t make it sound so easy.”

The Vanderbilt lady sighed inside the Rose & Lily.

The rose was the Winchell family’s symbol and the lily was the Vanderbilt family’s. That was enough to know what a close connection she had to the ship, but she was still only a guest at the fireworks festival. Winchell was the one running it and their maids were moving about through the ship. And since this was the “normal” Winchell family (i.e. not Heivia), it was not exactly a pleasant atmosphere for a member of the opposing Vanderbilt family.

(Well, Vanderbilt also has its issues with the main family and the branch family. And that’s only getting worse recently. I’m the only heir to the main family, so if I died, the riffraff from the branch family would gain more influence in the inheritance issue.)

And even if she had been the one running the show, it would have been unreasonable to have the fireworks prepared by craftsmen around the world fired randomly into the night sky while completely ignoring the original program.

She had only succeeded by working up the manager’s fears by eloquently convincing him that holding onto all the unnecessary explosives might be considered intent to fight, thus leading the Object to attack them.

For a noble woman, knowing how to protect her family without picking up a weapon could be seen as a necessity.

And the more she pushed things, the more her position on the ship was worn away.

The scales were tipping.

Once it crossed a line, the savage-looking nobles would tie her up and give her to Azureyfear as a present to ensure their own safety.

She did not have much time left.

But she could not escape Azureyfear by boarding a helicopter or lifeboat to flee the ship.

What could she do?

After some thought, she slipped through a staff only door.

Like all luxury cruise ships, the Rose & Lily had a large server and satellite communications facility for casino card readers and day trading. She stepped into the server room that had communications equipment lined up like shoe lockers or bookcases.

She compared the numbers of the many guest rooms with the letters on the servers and traced her fingers along them while walking through the room. She finally stopped at a certain point.

“This is the one.”

After the sudden attack from Azureyfear’s Object, quite a few voices had filled the party deck. Most had been groundless bluffs and ways of protecting oneself, but one of them had caught her attention.

''“Why is this happening? This wasn’t part of the plan. I was promised absolute safety…”

(What a fool. I’m guessing he fanned the flames between Vanderbilt and Winchell, gave Azureyfear some help, concealed all sorts of information for his own sake…and then got caught in the crossfire at the very, very end.)

Once she took aim, she could more or less guess who it was.

Now she needed something to confirm her speculation.

The Vanderbilt lady pulled a handheld device from the chest of her dress. She had borrowed it from those pretending to be spies in the Winchell Countermeasures Office. She connected it to the server’s socket with a cable and monitored the communications of a certain room.

However, she was not intercepting the data from a suspicious mastermind’s room.

As a noble, she had been taught not to do anything that risky. “I have no memory of that. My secretary or butler did it all.” That was something all nobles had to learn.

However…

“If I place a camera in my own room, it doesn’t count as spying.”

That was why she was viewing her own room.

If the mastermind was fanning the flames between Winchell and Vanderbilt for his own benefit, then he would be constantly monitoring the actions of those in both families. If she could find some trace of that, she could find a clue leading back to him.

All of this qualified as justified self-defense.

Nobles and royals had to defend the people who served them, so what qualified as self-defense was quite broad. As per the concept of ''noblesse oblige'', the greater one’s authority, the greater their responsibility, so they carried the customary obligation to actively protect those under their care. Of course, just like the Island Nation’s idea of Kiri-Sute Gomen, it was only ever interpreted in ways that benefited the privileged classes.

“Now, now, now. Who was it that assigned the rooms for this fireworks festival? Rather than breaking in after I checked in, it would be a lot easier to place me in a room that already had a data-stealing gimmick installed in the wireless router. Whoever was in charge of that must have been bought.”

She had no specialized data processing skills, but she detected a suspicious looking entry on her device and sent it to the Countermeasures Office to hand it off to a great number of personnel. She had no idea what kind of magic they used, but a long list of results came back in no time. They may have actively search out the technicians who had completely failed as a member of an organization and thus could not be left in the military. In other words, they were the kind of hackers that could only live in the world of a movie.

A somewhat vulgar smile came to the girl’s lips when she finally spotted a certain name within the deep, deep electronic forest.

“I knew it.”

It was the same as the person who had spoken on the party deck.

As one could guess from his careless statement, he was a Legitimacy Kingdom VIP who the press often targeted as a mass-producer of gaffes. She felt like the spinning compass was finally pointing in a single direction. She shifted her focus from the Rose & Lily’s internal network to the external internet connection. After sending another request to the Countermeasures Office, another answer came back almost immediately.

She had asked for back issues of an electronic newspaper saved by one of the major communications companies.

She found an article from around when the conflict between families had grown beyond a secret feud and into full-on military conflicts.

(This is even more obvious. The Vanderbilt and Winchell families have conveniently clashed twenty-one times around the same time he made some kind of gaffe. That diverted people’s interest from that less interesting news and allowed him to escape taking any kind of responsibility.)

Nobles and royals seemed to believe in bloodline above all else, but there were always exceptions. If a family was deemed unable to protect its people, the entire family would “fall” and lose its noble status. Or if an individual was considered an exceptionally harmful example to the public, they would be “banished” from their family. And when banished, producing any children could spread their genetics and spark revolt during succession issues, so they would be charged with inciting rebellion. In other words, they were legally castrated. Heivia had gone against the wishes of the entire Winchell family and yet he had not been banished. That showed just how far one had to go to be banished, but it also meant that one could have the protection of their privileged class taken away if they did go that far.

This man had wanted to escape banishment.

But instead of closing his loose lips, he had covered it up with an even larger commotion.

This was a safety device for him.

No one from the heads of the families to the families’ butlers knew what had started the centuries-long conflict between Vanderbilt and Winchell, but someone had definitely been using it in recent years.

“Now, then.”

(Where should I strike to drive out some actual dirt?)

She decided on the things connected to the Vanderbilt family. And even then, she limited herself to the sports clubs, beauty parlors, restaurants, and salons she normally visited, not the private property. If they all had a similar setup to her room on the ship, the data would all be gathered in one place after traveling through several different servers. If necessary, she could have Heivia check on the places the Winchell family tended to visit.

Simply gathering the data was meaningless. It had to be analyzed to use it. If he was gathering the data on both families in one place and quickly determining how to drive the two families into an even larger conflict each time he made a gaffe, he would need greater analysis than even the weather forecast.

And the more a unique weapon was used, the more one could see the unique outline of the person using it.

The facilities that could pull that off were limited and the people with connections to those facilities were even more limited.

Once she knew what she was after, she only needed to send a request to the Countermeasures Office. Then she would only have to wait. They would use their specialty to swiftly hunt down the flow of money behind this. They would find all the necessary evidence.

She did not think this would fully resolve the problems between Vanderbilt and Winchell, but she could nip at least one disaster in the bud.

But…

“…?”

(The communications cut off now!?)

She was not using the sketchy Wi-Fi at a café. She was using the satellite communications antenna the cruise ship used for casino card reading and day trading. She doubted the signal would go down that easily.

Just as she began to think the mastermind was blocking the signal, the answer reached her.

She heard a loud explosion.

“Oh, all those fireworks Master Heivia asked me to have launched are acting as chaff.”

The pieces of copper and other metals had reached a certain density in the air and started to disturb the signal. It ended up harming her position, but she could not resent it when it was a request from her fiancé.

She could no longer send a request to the external Countermeasures Office.

She could not rely on those experts, so she would have to find another way on her own.

Instead of finding the analysis facility from the multiple points of data leakage, she would have to find some more direct evidence.

(The wireless router they tampered with in my room. Whether they modified the software communications log or the hardware, it would be fastest to get the device itself.)

That meant her adventure was not yet over.

She would have to return to her room when she had no idea when the nobles would give into their fear of Azureyfear, overpower her like a mob, and make a human sacrifice out of her.

She gave a truly annoyed sigh, but immediately took action.

It was the weakness introduced by her love for her fiancé that drove her to action.

And as she left the server room, she muttered a certain name.

“Flag Eggnog…”

That man was almost certainly guilty.

He was aware he often made gaffes, but rather than shut his loose lips, he had thoughtlessly and arrogantly decided to hide his problem behind a war between nobles. He was truly a terrible example for his people.

And with that in mind, the young lady moved her lips as a trail of tense sweat ran down her cheek.

“Or perhaps I should call you ‘Your Excellency’. Isn’t that right, Mr. Royal?”

===Part 9===

The fireworks swept away the darkness of the sky and sea.

A deluge of light covered it all.

An incredible number of explosions overlapped with each other and filled the space, but that was not enough on its own. The copper and other metals used to color the flames acted as chaff and once more prevented the Destruction Fes from using the electromagnetic guide for its acoustic weapon. Depending on the range, that weapon could tear a fleet to pieces or stop an Object in its tracks, but it was dead once more.

“This is our chance, Quenser!” shouted Heivia on the boat.

“But it isn’t a guarantee.”

Despite the opportunity, Quenser did not lose sight of the situation. He continued coldly analyzing the information that worked against them.

“This only took out the acoustic weapon, so it still has its legendary speed. The Princess can’t win unless we take out those special boosters on those three legs.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………How many more climaxes is this gonna have?”

“We need to observe, Heivia. This closed the gap a little, so the Princess can last a while longer.”

The problem was not the air cushion propulsion device below the spherical main body. It was the insect leg units with the boosters attached to the side. By firing those all at once, it could pull off those lightning-like back and forth movements that a manned Object could never reproduce.

And those boosters were not emitting flames like a rocket.

“We mentioned it before, but it’s shooting a liquid out. Seawater would be the likely suspect, right? It would be pumping it up and firing it out. If that’s how it gets its propulsion, can’t we just dive down and block up the pump opening?”

“I doubt it’s that simple,” muttered Quenser. “Heivia, the Destruction Fes uses an air cushion propulsion device.”

“What does that matter!? Aren’t the boosters the problem!?”

“The air cushion suggests it’s meant for use on water and on land. Then what does it spray out for its speed on land?”

“Oh.”

“Did you think they can’t use it on land? Not a chance. Azureyfear said she would exterminate the Vanderbilt family and that she would start with your girlfriend. Even if she joins with the hawks of your family later, they’ll want an amphibious Object that can operate in all environments to hunt down all those nobles scattered around the world. A purely naval Object doesn’t mesh with their design philosophy.”

“Then what? When it’s on land, does it stick a tube into the ground to dig up some underground water!?”

“…”

The student thought for a moment.

“Heivia, with the radios down, we can’t rely on our handheld devices’ maps. I need to investigate this based on memory, so help me out.”

“What could you possibly do now!?”

“I want to follow the route the Destruction Fes has taken in this battle.”

The two idiots used the rubber boat’s large motor to travel through the nighttime sea with no real landmarks. The dark sea would have thrown off their sense of direction, but the reflected colorful light of the fireworks messed with their senses in a different way.

Still, they somehow managed to find a remaining band of bubbles.

They stopped the boat and Quenser scooped up some seawater in his water bottle.

“What are you doing? It’s not like we have an examination kit!”

“Eyesight will be enough.”

Quenser showed Heivia the bottle as it reflected the fireworks.

“See those black specks?”

“What the hell are they?”

“Iron sand, most likely. The Destruction Fes’s boosters were never meant to spray water. They gain thrust by firing dirt like a railgun or coilgun. And of course, they use the iron and iron sand in the dirt as a ‘framework’.”

“Wait. You mean…?”

“Seawater conducts electricity, but that wouldn’t be strong enough.”

“Yeah, you don’t really hear about people making magnets out of seawater.”

“So just like mixing in diamond dust to increase the strength of an industrial water cutter, they’ve mixed in some iron sand to give themselves that ‘framework’. That way they can fire the water out with even more power.”

Heivia looked to the distant sea.

Even now, the battle between the Baby Magnum and Destruction Fes continued. A stray shot could fly toward the cruise ship and other ships at any time.

The sight was enough to squeeze at his heart, but he also noticed something else.

“Damn that fraud. I was taken in by the impressive appearance… I was taken in by Azureyfear’s fighting style.”

“Yes. It may look like it’s freely moving across the battlefield with unbeatable speed, but it’s really only fighting while moving back and forth across an extremely limited area. It’s retrieving and reusing the iron sand its boosters have scattered around. Of course it is. If it doesn’t have a filter to absorb the rare metals dissolved in the seawater, it can only use its limited stock during a naval battle. It isn’t replenishing its iron sand out of thin air.”

“B-but waiting for it to run out would be too reckless. The Princess is only barely getting by…no, she’s being worn down bit by bit. If she lets her guard down for just a moment, she’ll be hit straight through the center. We can’t hope for a long-term battle against something so fast.”

“I know that and that’s not what I’m going for.” Quenser tapped his temple with his index finger. “We don’t have to wait around for it to run out. If we take that stock away from it, it’ll stop in no time.”

“But how?”

“We already have the answer. We’re going over there next, Heivia. Get the boat moving.”

Before asking for details, the delinquent noble did as he was told.

The rubber boat almost seemed to hop along the nighttime sea filled with dancing colorful lights.

They were nowhere near an island or continent. They were surrounded by ocean in every direction, so the only things they could be approaching were the Objects, the aircraft carriers and cruisers where Frolaytia’s group waited, and…

“We’ve finally gotten them directly involved,” said Heivia as he operated the large motor that doubled as the rudder. “Welcome to the Celestial Flowers fireworks festival, I guess! Since we’re here, maybe I should go pay that lonely kitten a visit!!”

“If you’re going to ask a girl on a date, pay attention to your hair and clothes. Show up in that sweaty uniform and she’ll slap you.”

“Ha ha. You don’t know the first thing about nobles, Quenser. She’ll play rock, not paper.”

“Hey, if you’re going to get all lovey-dovey about your girlfriend, can you at least pay me? It sounds like more work than being a fortune teller under an overpass, but I’m willing to listen if it pays!!”

There were five hundred ships, but they came in all shapes and sizes. The biggest were the Rose & Lily and about ten other cruise ships that rivalled an aircraft carrier in size. The smallest were more like wooden river-crossing boats with plastic roofs. Some had such simple designs that taking them out to sea would clearly be suicide, but the cruise ships likely supplied water, food, fuel, and other materials like they were air refueling tankers.

The hundreds of ships were packed in over only a few kilometers, so it looked like a boat bazaar filling a river. It grew difficult to continue on even with the rubber boat. Quenser and Heivia climbed from the boat to a ship and jumped from ship to ship from there.

“That’s weird. I don’t see anyone. They’re all launching their fireworks without anyone onboard.”

“That’s convenient. They’re probably all gathered on the cruise ships. A panic here would cause the ships to start running into each other and they’re all packed full of fireworks. Who knows how far the damage would spread.”

The world-class fireworks craftsmen had likely known what would happen to radio signals when they launched their products, so they were mostly being launched by timers or wired connections.

“More importantly, where are we supposed to go!? Tell me already!!”

“To that!”

Quenser pointed into the distance where a giant structure seemed to lean over several ships.

“The wreckage of the acoustic weapon’s peacock feather the Princess tore off! It’s a giant speaker, so it has to have giant magnets inside. And a ton of them!!”

The Destruction Fes mixed large quantities of iron sand in with the seawater to fire it out like a railgun or coilgun.

Quenser wanted a large number of magnets.

Therefore…

“This is everything we need. Now we just need to set it up.”

“Wait a second!! Watch out!!”

As soon as Heivia cried out, a blinding light swept across the ships.

It was the Destruction Fes’s low-stability plasma main cannon. A fair distance from the two idiots, it slipped between a few of the cruise ships, yet dozens of the smaller ships vanished in the light. Some had simply been vaporized and others had been set alight by the intense heat, igniting the fireworks.

A chain reaction of large explosions followed.

Flowers of unnaturally colored flames meant for entertainment blossomed here and there. For the ones the size of a small fishing boat, the explosive force of the fireworks must have overpowered the ship’s weight because they were launched into the night sky like rockets. As their silhouettes fell apart in midair, a few of them approached Quenser and Heivia.

“Shit! Jump in!!”

Quenser reflexively crouched down, but Heivia grabbed his collar and threw him into the dark sea. As soon as they both plunged into the thick water, a muffled explosion and a blinding light erupted overhead. The fireworks in the falling boat and in the one they had been standing on must have ignited.

The explosions continued with no sign of ending, so the flames may have spread to the neighboring boats.

Quenser tried to rise to the surface in search of air, but Heivia held him down and forced him along. They only surfaced after diving below another ship and reaching a spot that seemed to be shielded from that ground zero.

“Bwah!! Cough, cough!! Cough, Cough! Ohaheh!!!!”

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say, but I’m not accepting any complaints. This spot won’t be safe forever either and we have no idea which ship will blow up next. If you have something to do, then hurry up and do it!!”

“Cough! Cough, cough!! Ugh… But if the Destruction Fes’s stray shots are finally ending up here…”

“Yeah, the Princess isn’t perfect. She’s gradually being pushed back this way. If she wasn’t protecting that final line, that probably would’ve been a direct hit on the cruise ships!”

===Part 10===

The Vanderbilt lady left the Rose & Lily’s server room, walked down the corridor, and quickly doubled back after turning the first corner.

Men in black clothes and sunglasses were clearly headed her way. They were still walking rather than running, but they were clearly hurrying toward a certain destination. Plus, they either had special armor or mechanical strength enhancements because their suits swelled out from within and their feet sank deeply into the carpet.

She pressed her back against the wall by the corner and took a breath.

The wall and floor were trembling from the sounds of the fireworks and an unpleasant sweat appeared on her brow.

Just as she prepared to turn around and take another path, an elderly male face appeared nearby.

“Hyah!!”

“Pardon me, lady. I did not mean to frighten you.”

He was gentle-mannered, but he wore the same black clothing. White gloves covered his dried twig-like fingers and he held a small handgun with a silencer attacked.

He held it close enough that the muzzle nearly touched her belly and he smiled.

“Please come with me, lady. You will understand why soon enough.”

“Surely you aren’t planning to take me to His Excellency of the Eggnog family. These are not my formal clothes and my family insignia is in my room. I doubt I would be given permission to have an audience with him.”

“Do not be silly. Do you really think we would put His Excellency or his honor in danger, lady? This will all fall under the category of ‘I have no memory of that. My secretary or butler did it all’.”

“…”

As expected of a royal servant, he was well trained.

(Now, will they tie me up and sacrifice me to Azureyfear or will they directly silence me while disguising it as the former?)

She placed a confident smile on her lips, but she was filled with anxiety on the inside.

There truly was nothing more she could do.

However, her pride as a member of the Vanderbilt family did not allow her to let it show.

She took her first unwilling step at the insistence of the silencer-equipped gun.

A moment later, she heard a few muffled gunshots and the old man collapsed to the floor after receiving some powerful blows to the back.

The Vanderbilt lady had no idea what had happened, but the situation did not wait for her to catch up.

“Lady, please get down.”

She heard a dignified female voice.

Someone gently slipped past the young lady as if clearing the way for her, but then she fired another shot into the head and heart of the collapsed old man. The woman held a fully-auto machine pistol. It of course had a silencer equipped. She pulled the slide back, poured a bit of mineral water into the gun through the ejection port to increase its airtightness, and did not hesitate to poke her head out from behind the corridor’s corner.

Flag Eggnog’s pawns had been rushing this way, but they were eliminated almost too easily. Those royal bodyguards had been a little lacking in skill due to their overconfidence in their equipment, but making it look that easy showed just how skilled this woman was.

The muffled sound was much quieter than the fireworks outside, but it squeezed at the young lady’s heart much more. Those blasts were meant to summon death, so they were fundamentally different.

The woman had silver hair and wore a chic maid uniform with a long skirt.

The eyepatch covering one eye and the machine pistol were dangerous looking, but something else caught her attention.

“Oh? That maid uniform… Isn’t that the kind used by the maids that serve a Winchell family manor?”

“My apologies, lady. I still haven’t introduced myself, have I? I am Karen I. Winchell. Not only have I seen you a few times at our residence, but I believe I handed you a glass of nonalcoholic champagne at the party earlier.”

“Oh…um…”

“Do not worry about it. I am merely a maid. While I have been graciously named a member of the Winchell family, it means nothing on the bloodline front. My middle initial stands for ‘imitation’ and the Winchell name is a title awarded me by my master.”

A few more maids wielding guns joined her.

As someone who was constantly being escorted, the Vanderbilt lady could tell this was a bodyguard arrangement.

[[Image:HO_v11_267.jpg|thumb]]

She thought for a moment.

“I have a few questions.”

“Ask away.”

“First, I advocate disarmament and strive to resolve the Legitimacy Kingdom’s internal and external problems with words rather than weapons.”

“We are aware this is not your preference, lady. But we will do what is in the interests of our revered and beloved Winchell family as a whole. Losing you here would be a major loss to Winchell.”

“Second, the people you defeated here are connected to the Eggnog family.”

“Lady, there are always loopholes. They carefully created an environment that left no connection back to their master in case they had to dirty their hands. But that also means that their master cannot accuse whoever might strike back at them. After all, they have made sure he and the criminals are entirely unrelated. There is no chance whatsoever of a battle breaking out over revenge. The system prevents it.”

“Three, are you prepared to oppose the overall will of Winchell and assist Vanderbilt, their official enemy?”

“I must admit, that one is harder to answer.”

The eyepatch maid smiled a little, but her lips twisted fiercely as she continued.

“But if you kick the bucket here, that snot-nosed brat will cry. I’m saying I can’t stand to even imagine that look on his face, lady. If it means protecting that smile, I’m more than willing to be branded a traitor.”

That was all she needed to hear.

The Vanderbilt lady and the Winchell maid shook hands.

“Lady, we are your pawns. Please tell us what our next move should be.”

The young lady also dropped her almost coldly elegant speech.

“Take me to my room. If Flag Eggnog is intentionally pitting our families against each other as damage control for his gaffe, he will definitely be monitoring my actions. I need to retrieve the wireless router he’s tampered with and find the evidence linking back to him in either the hardware or software.”

Additional insufficiently trained footsteps approached.

The maids from hell checked the remaining ammunition in their silencer-equipped machine pistols and poured mineral water in through the ejection port to increase the sound suppression.

“What shall we do about any obstacles on the way?”

“You should of course avoid combat as much as possible. I’m a pacifist after all.”

The young lady’s position had not changed.

But…

“And if that doesn’t work, just slaughter them all! Slaughter every last person who stands in the way of my marriage with Master Heivia!!”

Muffled gunshots rang out.

A girl in love had endless possibilities.

===Part 11===

The main battle between the Baby Magnum and the Destruction Fes approached as Quenser and Heivia watched, but that did not change what they had to do.

They wanted the gigantic speaker used as an acoustic weapon. More specifically, they wanted the electromagnets inside.

The two idiots grabbed onto a nearby ship and climbed onboard again. They jumped from ship to ship among the eerily colorful explosions to reach the fallen peacock feather.

“If the lineup of fireworks is destroyed, won’t the chaff vanish and won’t the acoustic weapon come back to life?”

“Even if the fireworks completely stopped now, it wouldn’t immediately eliminate all the metal in the air.”

“Shit! The Destruction Fes is really pushing forward now. It’s coming this way!! Is it trying to crush us by running us over!?”

“That’s actually exactly what we need! Help me out, Heivia. Let’s keep our work to a minimum!!”

They had finally reached the wreckage of the acoustic weapon leaning over several of the ships.

Even if it was made to be put together or broken down by human hands, Objects were made to withstand a nuclear blast and it would be difficult for the two of them to manually tear it apart. They spotted a speaker that had separated from the entire peacock feather due to the impact of the fall and Heivia lifted it up using a crane-like device attached to one ship to transfer cargo. Quenser dragged some plastic gas cans and metal drums from the nearby ships and attached those “floats” to it with wires.

“Throw it now! It won’t sink like this!!”

“Damn this thing’s scary. If I’m not careful, I think our ship might flip right over.”

With a loud splash, they tossed the giant speaker – or rather, electromagnet – into the dark sea.

Quenser than borrowed one of the cables used to send signals to the fireworks.

“We don’t have a power source to match an Object reactor!”

“We don’t need one! The electromagnet will still work as long as it has power! …Yes, yes. The ship’s large diesel engine will work as a generator. If I connect it here…!!”

The Destruction Fes arrived a moment later.

Dozens and even hundreds of ships broke apart as easily as styrofoam as it fiercely tackled them. It was going to skim right past Quenser and Heivia to hit the Rose & Lily in the center. And it would set off the fireworks and shrapnel scattered around it, so their human bodies could easily be turned to mincemeat.

The two idiots scrambled from ship to ship, trying to get as far away as they could.

But they made sure not to jump into the ocean and for good reason.

The Destruction Fes seemed to pitch forward as it rapidly lost speed.

The electromagnet had stolen all the iron sand it relied on for its speed.

The Destruction Fes mixed iron sand with the seawater to create the framework it needed to fire the water out like a railgun or coilgun for the massive thrust it needed. So what if a powerful electromagnet sucked up all the iron sand, leaving only the pure seawater behind?

The answer was simple.

The Destruction Fes could no longer use its boosters.

It arrived right in front of the Rose & Lily but could not take the last step, just like a fierce dog held by an invisible chain.

However, its target was a fattened luxury cruise ship.

An Object’s main cannon could easily send it to a watery grave.

They had to settle this before the Object began thinking more clearly.

“Go, Princess…”

Worried for his fiancée’s safety, Heivia ignored the fireworks going off all around him and raised his voice. With the metal for the colored flames acting as chaff, their radios did not work. His voice would not reach her, but he yelled anyway.

“Blow it awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!”

If the remote-controlled Destruction Fes was destroyed, Azureyfear’s faction could no longer move. No matter how many stealth submarines, satellites, and soldiers they had, it all came down to this one Object. Without their ultimate bargaining chip, that pack of wolves would become a flock of sheep. He would no longer have to worry about his fiancée being exposed to that excessive firepower.

The Princess did just as he had hoped.

She took the optimum position while destroying the smaller unmanned ships and she prepared to fire her main cannons without damaging the cruise ships.

The main cannons’ targeting lenses and sensor heads whirred, and…

“…?”

Something caught Quenser’s attention and he focused again on the Destruction Fes as it was lit up by the countless detonating fireworks. He grabbed a pair of binoculars from the leisure equipment thrown on the deck.

“What is it now, Quenser!?”

“This isn’t right. What is this? What does it mean?”

He was looking at the main spherical body near the top. Specifically, at the entrance hatch. It should have only been for decoration on this remote-controlled model, but it was irregularly opening and closing like a goldfish’s mouth or gills.

“Ah.”

What if?

Unlike a manned Object, the fully remote-controlled Destruction Fes did not need an oxygen supply system. It did not need a circulation system like the Princess had that used caustic soda to remove the carbon dioxide from the exhaled air so it could be reused again and again.

“Ahh.”

What if?

If the Destruction Fes was taking in oxygen, it would introduce a fair bit of risk. For example, if the dozens of bulkheads along the boarding tunnel to the cockpit could be opened and then closed one at a time in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…n. That would carry fresh oxygen from one “room” to the next. Of course, without a filter, that method would not protect against a nuclear attack.

“Ahhhh!!”

What if?

Then why would the Destruction Fes even want oxygen in the first place?

Wasn’t it unmanned?

And if not, who was onboard?

===Part 12===


The scent of roses filled the small cockpit.

That may have been because she had sprayed the wine of hatred on her skin and hair to cover up the rusted iron smell.

Azureyfear Winchell wore the kind of full-body skintight suits that Pilot Elites wore. Its design was reminiscent of blue mourning clothes with a long skirt. A thin smile could be seen on the lips covered by a translucent veil and a trail of blood dripped from the corner of her mouth.

She was not a Pilot Elite, so she could not actually pilot the Object. The control system was still reliant on the Orchestra System that used tens of thousands of people in dozens of stealth submarines and satellites.

Normally, her presence there would have been unnecessary.

Pilot Elites had been thoroughly optimized in unspeakable ways, but not even they could endure the burden of the inertial Gs produced by the Destruction Fes. Boarding that Object was more than just reckless; it was suicidal.

[[Image:HO_v11_277.jpg|thumb]]

Then why had Azureyfear done so?

She sat in that tiny and cramped cockpit with her limbs sprawled out limply and her breathing far too shallow.

Red blood dripped not just from her mouth, but from her nose, ears, and eyes too. Nevertheless, the Blue Rose smiled.

“Honestly, what a hopeless brother.”

The conflict between the Winchell and Vanderbilt families could not be stopped.

It had continued for centuries and it would likely continue for centuries more.

She had no way of fighting that, so she had reached a certain conclusion.

“If he intends to push aside all the many other candidates and inherit the Winchell family, then he cannot be so indecisive.”

A hint of happiness filled the Blue Rose’s face.

“Winchell or Vanderbilt? Your own sister or your lover? The time has come to choose.”

If she had simply brought the issue to him directly, Heivia would likely have insisted that he would protect it all, that he would not lose his family or his lover, and that he did not care if that made him indecisive.

But that gray decision would create many enemies. He could easily find himself ostracized by both Winchell and Vanderbilt.

She could not let that happen.

She had said from the beginning that she was taking on the decision her brother should have made.

“Now, brother. Please work towards your own happiness.”

She did not have the courage to publically celebrate his marriage.

Unlike her brother, she could not boldly claim she would bring an end to a centuries-old tradition.

Nevertheless, she had made her decision.

Since her indecisive brother would not, she would choose his lover over her in his stead. If the son of Winchell risked his life to protect the daughter of Vanderbilt, he would have the starting point he needed to make an attack on his seemingly impossible task.

“Kill me and continue forward!!”


===Part 13===

And…

And…

And…

“Finally…”

Quenser removed the binoculars from his eyes.

He was not even listening to the exploding fireworks or the screams of the small ships being blown away around him.

“Finally.”

He looked to the Baby Magnum and Destruction Fes as they were lit by the multicolored flames.

“Finally!!”

His thoughts seemed to explode.

Quenser Barbotage ignored the awful friend by his side and yelled into the heavens.

“Yahooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! It’s here!! The Azureyfear purity and redemption fever is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere!!!!!”

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” calmly cut in Heivia. “You have no proof. That was all in your head!! And even if it is true, it doesn’t remotely make up for the fact that my sister led a drug war, infected safe countries, shot her bought Black Uniforms to silence them, and blew up a fleet with her secret Object!! She’s one of the biggest criminals out there! She’s the perfect example of an evil girl!!”

“Shut up! I don’t care about any of that! I won’t rest until I get some punishment time with your sexy sister Azureyfear!! I’m not gonna let her quit while she’s ahead by dying a noble death here. Let’s do this!! Let’s drag Azureyfear out of there!!”

The next thing Heivia knew, Quenser had attached a parachute harness to himself. It was likely a leisure item meant for parasailing from the back of the ship. He also borrowed a large emergency hand light that came equipped with a radio, a hand-cranked generator, a large capacity battery, and a rescue strobe light.

“Quenser!?”

“Oh, this’ll affect you too, but no complaints, okay?”

He kicked the lever to get the ship started. Quite a few ships had been crammed together, but the Baby Magnum and Destruction Fes had cleared things out quite a bit. The ship scraped against the panels and chemical materials floating in the water, but it quickly exceeded 100 kph.

They could be crushed by an Object at any moment, but Quenser did not hesitate to pull the parachute’s cord amid the intense wind produced by their speed.

“You might end up being my brother-in-law!”

“Now you’re just creeping me out!!”

The wind struck the parachute and it opened wide. Quenser was thrown from the ship and floated twenty to thirty meters into the air.

The Princess’s mouth had to have been flapping wordlessly as the parachute came into contact with the Destruction Fes while it took a sharp turn.

The cloth got tangled up on the base of the low-stability plasma main cannon and caught there.

Even if it had been slowed, the Destruction Fes was still moving at about 400 kph. That was faster than the Island Nation’s high-speed rail system. It should have torn the human body to shreds.

But Quenser was wearing a parachute that intentionally distributed the weight and a harness that attached to various parts of his body. When skydiving – specifically, in the HALO jumps from extreme high altitude – the parachute was opened during a free dive of around 400 kph. In other words, when used correctly, he could survive that.

“Ha…hah…hah!! Gh…Ha ha!! Wait for me, you damn cutie! I’m not letting you quit while you’re ahead. You’re going to pay for tricking us, sinking our fleet, and blowing away the Oceanic Driver. I’ll make you cry until your face is covered in tears and snot and you rue the day you were born! Let’s introduce ourselves to each other again, young lady!!”

He clung to the base of the main cannon, climbed up, and cut away the tangled parachute that was acting as a lifeline. Once freed, the idiot relied on the emergency hand light to begin moving atop the spherical body.

The Baby Magnum had lost its chance to fire, so it was simply moving back and forth with quick footwork. He had a feeling it was aiming a main cannon right at him, but he figured he was imagining things.

He only needed to move about ten meters.

However, he felt like his organs were being squeezed out of him and his vision quickly narrowed from every direction. He gave up on choking and found it was easier simply not breathing at all. This truly was not an environment conducive to human life. If he let his guard down even a little, he thought he would be thrown out into empty air.

Entering the Destruction Fes was easy.

To obtain oxygen, it was opening the bulkhead hatches in order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5…n. One would open and then close, then the next one would. That brought the fresh air in from small room to small room.

But that method allowed foreign objects in as well.

“Cough…cough!!”

He coughed up some blood and barely managed to arrive at the hatch.

He wiped some blood up with his trembling fingertips and wrote something next to the hatch. Then he tied the hand light’s strap to a protrusion near the hatch and activated the rescue strobe light on the side.

“Let’s do this, you piece of shit. I’ll teach you just how cruel society can be.”

Quenser threw himself into the tunnel when the hatch automatically opened and then leaned against each consecutive bulkhead. He continued moving deeper and deeper toward the cockpit.

It may have lost the boosters that used iron sand and seawater, but it could still produce the speed and inertial Gs of a normal Object.

It squeezed at his organs and he could see the edges of his vision growing red. He also felt an intense urge to vomit. He doubted he would last even a few minutes in this environment.

But that few minutes was all he needed.

Once he reached the cockpit, he only had to do one thing: embrace Azureyfear who had chosen isolation and pull the ejection lever.

===Part 14===

Azureyfear Winchell breathed shallow breaths in the small, cramped space.

Her mind was like a narrow thread on the verge of snapping. She was using all her strength to remain conscious because dying in an accident would be meaningless. She needed for Heivia Winchell to kill her himself to show he was willing to cut down his own family to protect his family’s old enemy if it was the right thing to do.

That would be the first step toward stopping the conflict between the families.

She was giving a push in the right direction to the boy who, unlike the Blue Rose, had taken Vanderbilt’s hand and declared the conflict wrong.

Everyone else claimed it was justified because it was a centuries-old tradition, but her brother had followed his heart and announced that those centuries had been wrong.

That true hero had stood firm in the face of powerful opposition.

She was proud of him for drawing out that courage when no one else had been able to.

(And yet he’s such a fool.)

Azureyfear had detected the foreign object.

Someone had grabbed onto the Destruction Fes and had successfully gotten inside.

(If he saves me, everything I have done will be for naught. He will lose the first step toward stopping the conflict between Winchell and Vanderbilt. His marriage will have to be put off even longer…. He knows that, yet he still makes the indecisive decision. That must be where his heart leads him.)

All of her efforts were being wasted, yet she felt her entire body relaxing.

Oddly, she had been waiting for this moment.

The final bulkhead opened and a boy in a Legitimacy Kingdom uniform rushed into the cockpit.

“Yahoo!! Quenser, your knight in shining armor, has arrived! Now, young lady, are you ready to fall in love?”

The Blue Rose of Winchell completely forgot about the pain from the intense inertial Gs.

All expression vanished from her face and she shouted at the boy who had realized the truth and come to protect her.

“I didn’t want you!!!!!”

But Quenser was not about to let that get to him.

He replied with a sharp look on his face.

“I’m not saying I want to be your boyfriend or marry you or anything. I just can’t let you off the hook after everything you’ve done! Some sexy punishment time is still waiting for you!! Should I go with ropes, whips, or candles? Hell, why not go with a little of everything!?”

“Are you an idiot!? No, really. Are you an idiot!? I prepared dozens of stealth submarines, satellites, and the fastest Object ever!! And you’re here to trample on all that effort while thinking with your dick!?”

“Oh, get off your high horse!! After running a drug war, building an Object, sinking a fleet, and destroying the Oceanic Driver, do you really think everyone’s going to go along with what you want!? You’ll look much better with all your efforts ruined as you cry pathetically on the ground and beg everyone for your life!! More importantly, I’m pulling the ejection lever. We’re getting out of here! This is finally over. Plus, we have to share a parachute, so I have an excuse to hold you in my arms!”

“You can’t do that!! And what do you mean an ejection lever!?”

“Hm?” Quenser looked shocked. “Can I, um, ignore that as the airheaded comment of an ignorant noble girl?”

“This isn’t a cockpit.” Azureyfear revealed a shocking truth. “The control system is handled by the Orchestra System managed by ten thousand people scattered around the world’s oceans. I had screens installed so I could monitor the situation, but this is only the box where the cockpit would normally have been installed. Why would they install a single button or lever?”

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

His thread of hope had vanished.

The two hundred thousand ton Object continued moving at four or five hundred kph, applying intense inertial Gs that rivaled those of a fighter jet.

It was like a fierce compressor using artificial gravity.

And they could not get out☆

“We’re deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeead!!”

As soon as Quenser gave his honest opinion, something happened.

The Destruction Fes finally came to a complete stop.

He did not know why.

There was nothing they could do inside that box and he doubted the Destruction Fes would stop for no reason.

“Kssshhh!!”

The reason arrived after a short delay.

The fireworks chaff was still in effect, but a transmission forced its way through using lasers or other methods.

That equipment did not belong to any unit Quenser knew of.

Nor had it come from the Baby magnum.

“…is the Legitimacy Kingdom’s Organization for the Peaceful Use of Space.”

He did not recognize the voice, but he knew it was someone who had been fighting alongside them.

“This is the civilian Venus-class space station named the Princess Nikolaschka. Can you hear this? We saw the signal from the rescue strobe light and read the writing in blood near the Object’s hatch.”

===Part 15===

Astronaut Marcus placed his hand on the station’s exterior while looking down at the giant blue planet.

“The bloody instructions next to the strobe light were right.”

An unused module had been attached to the battered station.

It was bigger than an industrial refrigerator and it had the Winchell family emblem on it.

“As I’m sure you can tell from this transmission, we’re hitching a ride on your system. We finally managed to capture your satellite and work out the communications format you were using. That allowed us to interfere in your control system. You can’t use your weapon anymore. That Orchestra System came back to bite you.”

To cover the entire world with a large number of satellites, they needed a large number of contact points. That allowed someone to open the satellite’s cover, plug in a new cable, and begin a cyber attack from within the system. There was nothing anyone on the surface could do about that, but things changed for someone up in space. Plus, they had all too much experience matching their relative speed and retrieving a satellite thanks to all their rendezvouses with multi-stage cargo rockets.

None of it had been difficult.

Before Quenser Barbotage had rushed into the cockpit, he had left some bloody “insurance” by the hatch. The space station’s astronauts had read it from orbit and had perfectly carried out the task given to them.

''The Orchestra uses submarines and laser communication satellites.

''Take control from above.

He had summed it up with those short sentences and the astronauts had quickly located and retrieved a satellite with a receiver antenna and laser rod aimed at both the scene of the battle and the ocean.

“Brave Legitimacy Kingdom soldiers, thanks for providing a distraction and buying some time.”

Robin asked him for a high five, so Marcus pressed his back against the station and complied.

Marcus watched his colleague spinning from the recoil and finished his statement.

“It’s all over now. It’s time you paid for bringing the earth’s conflicts up into peaceful outer space. It’s time you paid dearly.”

===Part 16===

The fireworks continued exploding both in the night sky and near the water’s surface.

On the Rose & Lily’s outdoor party deck, the middle-aged royal named Flag Eggnog was sweating bullets.

What was this?

What had happened?

What in the world was going on?

Under Azureyfear Winchell’s command, the Destruction Fes had been preparing to kill the members of the Vanderbilt family and everyone else here, but that monstrous weapon had come to a complete stop. That in itself was a good thing, but how many problems still remained? Wasn’t there some other chain of bad news even after that thing stopped?

He received a whispered reminder from a servant whose black clothes were unnaturally swelling out from within.

“The Vanderbilt lady.”

“Oh, goddammit!! That’s right! She’s trying to get that wireless router! If we don’t get rid of that, it’ll be analyzed and eventually lead back to me!!”

The bodyguard sighed because he had made sure to whisper the reminder and yet the gaffe machine had shouted loud enough for everyone to notice.

The royal seemed to be easily excitable and he had not noticed his mistake. In fact, he began muttering inside his fatty mouth.

“No, that isn’t it. Oh, no. Oh, no. If I don’t trigger a major incident between Winchell and Vanderbilt, I can’t distract everyone from what I said at that press conference! That goddamn press conference! Why do they upload the same news to video sites so many times!? I’ll hunt down and kill every last one of them!!”

“Due to the electromagnetic interference, we cannot currently contact the outside world.”

“I can’t believe thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis!!”

Flag realized people were quickly distancing themselves from him. He was letting things slip left and right, but no one wanted to end up in a royal’s sights because they had overheard his secrets, even if he was the one being careless.

Or perhaps they simply wanted nothing to do with a VIP who was on the decline.

“Ksshh!!”

That was when some unnatural static ran through the bodyguard’s earpiece.

He was a truly loyal man.

“A radio transmission has come in for you, Your Excellency.”

“How? I thought the signals were being blocked!?”

The bodyguard did not know the answer, so he could only answer with silence. He removed the earpiece and held out the radio itself he kept on the back of his waist. Flag Eggnog snatched it from him.

“Hello, Your Highness. Do you know who this is? It’s one of the Martini Series.”

“Oh! From the Information Alliance, you mean!?”

The bodyguard was just about ready to abandon the gaffe machine and run off. If it was found out a member of the Legitimacy Kingdom’s royal council had a connection to their enemies in the Information Alliance, he would be charged with more than just treason. It was possible he would be executed right in the palace.

“H-how did you get this line through?”

“We are the Information Alliance. Do not underestimate our primary desire. But to reveal the trick, we used a directional antenna just above the ocean’s surface to get a signal through despite the Legitimacy Kingdom’s fireworks jamming. Ah ha ha ha. That should tell you we’re hiding in the ocean quite close by, but is it in a fishing boat? Or maybe a cruiser?”

“Oh, oh. The Information Alliance is giving me some valuable information for free. Does that mean you still trust me enough to help me out?”

“…”

He received a short silence in reply, but he seemed unable to judge what it meant.

“If I can use the radio, that speeds things up. Contact my rear guard waiting outside of this place. With the Destruction Fes in that state, I need to start a war in some other way if I’m going to make up for my gaffe. Even if that means poking at these two hornet’s nests.”

“About that, Your Excellency. This is very difficult to say, but…”

“What is it? Out with it. We’re on the same side, aren’t we?”

“Well, if you insist. …Isn’t it about time we stopped creepily pretending to be friends?”

He did not know what she meant.

His mind went entirely blank.

Finally, he let his emotions take over and shouted back with no real plan in mind.

“Y-you!! Wh-what!? What the hell is wrong with you!? Who do you think I am!?”

“Um, some bastard from an enemy nation we should probably defeat?”

He received what should have been an obvious answer.

“Your Excellency, the Information Alliance may have assisted you with the drug war and in the construction of the Plasma 177, that you’re calling the Destruction Fes, but it was not to help you achieve your goals. We of course had something to gain there and we of course have obtained that. You could say that we’ve reached our quota, that continuing any further would only be a negative for us, or maybe that we chose the wrong person to work with. …Well, you get the picture.”

“What…what are you saying!?”

“Sigh. This is one last favor, okay? You can think of it as payment for breach of contract if you like. The Information Alliance only ever wanted to gather, analyze, and store data on the micro-level mental structure of the noble Winchell family and on its macro-level opposition with the Vanderbilt family. You probably wouldn’t understand, but for a project known as Perfect Browsing, we wanted to gather data on as many sample incidents and disasters as possible. However, we were talking about the nobles near the top of an enemy world power. They are too well defended to easily send spies or saboteurs across borders, so we instead contacted some fool who would open the gate for us from within. The puppet you gave us, Azureyfear, was a very, very, verrrrry excellent sample. You could say the twisted side of the Winchell family is concentrated inside her.”

“…”

“Oh? So even someone as talkative as you can quiet down. Or did you finally catch on? We are experts at handling all kinds of information. Our privileged classes can manipulate stock prices with insider trading or rumors while the information illiterate will dry up and die. Spreading someone’s careless gaffe across the internet to ensure a specific target is too panicked to make a rational decision is hardly difficult for us.”

Flag Eggnog felt sweat pouring from his entire body.

This was not right. How could a royal be under someone else’s rule?

But this girl was from the Information Alliance, so she existed outside the Legitimacy Kingdom’s pyramid hierarchy.

“We had thought it might be interesting to gain your trust by gathering and controlling data on Winchell and Vanderbilt to use you as a spy within the royal council, your highest decision-making institution, but it doesn’t look like it will be that easy. Not bad, Legitimacy Kingdom. Your ability to cleanse yourself is praiseworthy.”

He sensed that the conversation was coming to an end.

He was not in charge here, even though he was a royal.

“But it does look like we’ll get an interesting sample. Perhaps I should name the file, ‘Full-Speed Collapse of a Royal’s Life’. Royals are supposed to be thoroughly protected by the preferential treatment of horribly biased laws, so how does one fall to the bottom? The chance to follow the process in real time is suuuuuuch a rare opportunity. We will be making good use of you, Your Excellency. Thank you very much☆”

“Owaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

He shouted in anger, threw the radio to the floor, and crushed it underfoot.

He was beyond worrying about gaffes. He ignored the negative attention he was receiving and pulled a handgun from his sleeve. It was a strangely-shaped self-defense gun that resembled a miniature stapler and held only a single bullet.

“I’ll kill you!! I’ll kill every last person who mocks me!! Grab your guns and follow me. First is that Vanderbilt girl with her evidence! Once that’s over and my position is stable, I can start a war with the Information Alliance to-…”

He trailed off and looked over with bloodshot eyes.

The bodyguard who had been standing next to him a moment before had vanished.

He then heard a loud splash as something heavy fell into the ocean.

“I’ll kill them aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!!”

Flagg Eggnog set off with the men who had failed to run off in time.

===Part 17===

The ferocious Destruction Fes was now as still as a cicada skin.

Heivia blankly stared at it while unable to share any information via radio.

“What? Did Quenser actually save the day with love and courage? With that violent sister??? Please no. Is he really gonna be my brother-in-law!?”

He was nearly crushed by unease, but then he noticed the Baby Magnum making some kind sign.

The chaff from the fireworks continued to provide electromagnetic interference, so the Baby Magnum could not use its radio. Instead, it gently changed the angle of one main cannon. It reflected the light of the burning ships like a mirror in the sun, creating a regular pattern of flashing.

(Is that a message in Morse code? We’re getting pretty analog here.)

''Something isn’t right.

That was a worrying beginning.

Was the Destruction Fes going to split open from within and evolve into some hellish second form? Was there going to be some strange claim about this only being 10% of its power? Was it going to turn out it had ten bodies and could only be slain with a holy sword purified by god? Heivia did his best to pretend he had not understood the message, but the Princess said even more.

''The cruise ship.

“What?”

''I have too much firepower to intervene.

“…”

Heivia looked around and his eyes stopped on a certain point.

The Rose & Lily was supposed to be a safe zone where his secret lover waited. The Princess could observe that supposed safety with countless cameras and sensors and she had determined “something isn’t right”.

The look on Heivia Winchell’s face changed.

With a manly expression, the noble grabbed the bundle of rope at his feet.

He pulled out a large knife and reflected the firelight to respond to the Princess.

He did not hesitate.

''Help me out. I’ll settle this.

===Part 18===

The Rose & Lily had a two-hull structure.

That meant it kept its overall balance with two hulls arranged like a sleigh. Its name came from the rose as a symbol of Winchell and the lily as a symbol of Vanderbilt. It had been constructed based on the desire for the two families to get along.

Although the peace it was meant to bring was being forever pushed off like the release date of an extremely largescale RPG.

Inside, eyepatch-wearing Karen and the rest of the Winchell maids protected the Vanderbilt lady as they moved along.

Karen I. Winchell had cleared the path to the girl’s room.

After retrieving the wireless router in question, they had broken the window and escaped that way.

The Destruction Fes had stopped and they were on their way to the heliport to use the opened sky route to reach the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion where they would be safest.

However…

The last leg of that journey was to the heliport atop the corridor connecting the two hulls.

That flat piece of artificial land had a sword stabbed into it in reference to the legend of the two families.

That was where they were finally caught.

A chubby man with many bodyguards behind him was illuminated by the colorful fireworks and a disgusting smile appeared on his face as he spread his arms.

He was Flag Eggnog, first prince of the Eggnog family.

He was part of the royal council and thus the poor man was targeted by the press as a gaffe machine.

As a royal, he was positioned even higher than a noble.

“Hello, hello, lady. You certainly are making this exciting.”

“Oh? Do you have any idea how it feels to have assault rifles and even a shoulder-fired rocket launcher aimed at me just because I wanted to visit my own room? And I was fairly certain I still had awhile before checkout time.”

“Even if you do, removing equipment from the room is bad manners.”

“True. But what if it contains evidence of someone breaking some more important rules?”

The air strained under the pressure.

Several metallic noises sounded as Flag’s bodyguards and the Winchell maids protecting the Vanderbilt lady aimed their guns at each other.

But the latter group had a disadvantage here.

There was very little cover on the heliport and the bodyguards had special armor and mechanical enhancements under their clothes. It was possible a handgun bullet would be useless except for a headshot. In a shootout, the maids would clearly be worn down faster.

But the Vanderbilt lady did not look concerned.

That did not mean she was not concerned, though. She was intentionally making sure she did not look that way.

“You cannot avoid banishment, Your Excellency.”

She rejected him from a position of superiority.

“If you were innocent, you would not need to put together this sort of plan. I do not even need to check inside the router. You have already made your mistake.”

“Know your place, little girl.”

Whether out of confidence or panic, Flag Eggnog pried open his lips.

Poking him a little was all it took for “the usual” to spill from there.

“Don’t you know how the Legitimacy Kingdom works? Royals are everything in this world! Our prosperity has already been assured!! I am merely playing my part. I may cause some slight trouble, but that is for the best. It fills the stagnant council with activity, leads them to a swift decision, and provides good fortune to the Legitimacy Kingdom’s people. What could be wrong with that!?”

The eyepatch maid feigned ignorance and asked a question while aiming her silencer-equipped machine pistol.

“Pardon me, lady, but that was a little too difficult for a mere maid such as myself. What did he mean?”

“Hm? He was saying he’s about to be charged with treason and inciting rebellion.”

“Nonsense. The nobles are given their position so they might support the royals to protect the many commoners. So fulfill your duty! You are supposed to be knights that raise your swords to fight for your king!!!!”

At this point, one could only be impressed with his stupidity.

He was even simpler than a soda fountain that produced the desired drink at the press of a button.

He claimed his gaffes filled the council with activity, but most likely that was the only compromise the others had found to handle the immense stress he brought them. Doctors focused on making money were likely constantly prescribing those around this man with stomach pills, relaxants, sleeping pills, and another stomach pill for all the other pills they were taking. If those people had heard this, they would likely have applauded and immediately decided to banish him.

Of course, a storm of bullets would kill the girl no matter how emptyheaded the idiot was who had ordered it.

“This is over, little girl. You must pay for so arrogantly stepping onto this royal stage when you were born a mere noble.”

“Lady, as an uneducated maid, I am very confused. Could you tell me what he is saying?”

“He’s saying it’s time for his silly skit.”

“That’s it!! Kill her nowwwwwww!!!!!”

The chubby middle-aged man shouted like he was throwing a tantrum, but the Vanderbilt lady still did not look concerned. She was not emotionless, however. She was intentionally sealing away her expressions and forcing a smile.

“You cannot do it.”

“Like hell I can’t, little girl!! How dare you object to the decisions of one with royal blood!!”

“After all, this is ''his'' battlefield.”

She had nothing to base this on, but she spoke as confidently as a dreaming maiden.

“You seem to be mistaken about something, so allow me to correct you. There is a reason I fell in love with the gentleman I did. He is strong enough to pick a fight with the centuries-old rift tearing apart Vanderbilt and Winchell. Meanwhile, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s framework is only about a single century old. My beloved darling has been fighting all alone against something several times that large, so did you really think he would falter before a newcomer like the commoner-noble-royal system!?”

“…”

“Don’t make me laugh, you unwanted royal. You have so much social status and yet you’re still a pathetic bachelor who never managed to win a single woman’s heart, so don’t underestimate the normal bonds between a man and a woman! He will be here. Even if the absurd surrounds him and the unreasonable stands in his way, he will come running if his fiancée calls for him! If I call for him as casually as asking for a drink, he would run through the apocalypse itself to come protect me!! There is no room for social status or bloodline there. If his woman is in danger, a man will silently make an enemy of the entire world. He will grab his sword, slay the dragon, and rescue the princess! It can be work, a war, a test at school, a contest, their first date, or anything else. Whether commoner, noble, or royal, they will envision that original image, grab whatever they see as their sword, find their princess, and face their dragon!! That is the driving force that ties together the Legitimacy Kingdom! And it is the framework you so definitively lack!! You utter fool!!!!”

She received no response.

No, she did hear an unintelligible cry.

The gun barrels protecting the Eggnog family and the Vanderbilt family began to move.

However, hadn’t she said something important?

''He will be here.

''He will come running.

At that exact moment, the Legitimacy Kingdom’s 37th Mobile Maintenance Battalion’s First Generation Baby Magnum moved unnaturally close to the Rose & Lily.

It also made a turn that made no sense from a tactical standpoint.

Finally, a long, long rope was wrapped around one of the countless secondary cannons covering its spherical body like a sea urchin or chestnut burr.

Something was hanging from the other end of that rope.

It was Heivia Winchell.

As he was swung horizontally around, he flew through the air with the rope in hand. He was pulled up to the nine meter height of the Rose & Lily’s deck and he collided with the many bodyguards waiting behind Flag Eggnog.

The heavy kick was just like a bowling ball hitting the pins.

Those bodyguards wielded carbines and had special armor or equipment below their clothing, but they were all swept away. A particularly unlucky one crashed right into the helicopter warming its engine to the side. He collided with the rapidly rotating tail rotor and a red smoothie splattered everywhere.

Heivia ignored them, let go of the rope, rolled a few times on the hard heliport, and then got up.

He could not have known the exact situation at that point. He did not know that the conflict between Winchell and Vanderbilt had been intentionally exacerbated or that it had been done to distract everyone from First Prince Flag Eggnog’s gaffes. Nor did he know that the Vanderbilt lady had hunted down the evidence to prove it or that she was working with Karen and the other Winchell maids.

But the noble boy did not hesitate.

He looked across the scene.

He saw his fiancée and he saw who was aiming a gun at her.

That was all he needed.

Heivia Winchell immediately made up his mind based on the rules of the world he believed in.

“Looks like you’ve got a death wish, rich boy.”

===Part 19===

A strange voice filled the stopped Destruction Fes’s cockpit(?).

“Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!”

“Stop it, Azureyfear! It’s too late to start with the brother complex!!”

===Part 20===

The middle-aged man was completely left behind.

He simply stammered about some unrelated things on the heliport.

“I…I am a royal. I am First Prince Flag of the Eggnog family! Do you have any idea what will happen to a noble family that defies-…”

He came to a sudden stop.

Heivia had walked up, smashed the prince’s nose with his assault rifle’s stock, and grabbed the back of the middle-aged man’s neck as he desperately held his explosive nosebleed.

“Ah.”

He did not even have time to reply.

He was thrown forcefully through the air to move him as far from the young lady and the maids as possible. He rolled along, screeching shrilly, and finally found something to cling to with his bloody hands.

It was the sword stabbed vertically into the heliport.

It was mostly a decorative symbol of the two families’ legend than anything, but it was still a hunk of steel. Even if it had no blade, stabbing someone with the tip would kill them.

“E-ee-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

Half in a frenzy, Flag pulled the one-handed rapier from its pedestal and pointed the tip toward Heivia.

Heivia simply narrowed his eyes.

He threw his assault rifle and military handgun aside and quietly drew a large military knife.

“Nice. I was getting sick of cleaning up all the filth, but this is finally looking a little more ‘noble’.”

“Wh-what do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re doing this like a true king and knight.”

“I am a royal! A mere noble dares turn his blade on me!?”

“You drew your blade first. Sorry, but this counts as self-defense.”

“Wha-? But…I…!?”

“And aren’t royals considered the top brass of the military from the moment they’re born? Surely you didn’t think you counted as a civilian. You’re not a commoner, after all.”

“…”

“I was officially ordered to stop this civil war. And now the man behind it all turns out to be a soldier, he’s holding a weapon right in front of me, and he intends to harm Legitimacy Kingdom civilians. To be honest, I can’t find a reason ''not'' to fight.”

Flag belatedly looked down to the sword in his hand, but it was too late. Of course, when most of his senses were numbed from having his nose smashed and he was thrown over to that pedestal, it had been obvious what Flag would do.

Heivia heard a sigh.

It came from Karen I. Winchell as she rubbed her index finger against her temple.

She was entirely onboard with this.

“I am aware it is rude for a mere maid to say this, but according to Legitimacy Kingdom law, commoners are guaranteed the right to punish nobles and nobles are guaranteed the same right to royals. …If someone has gone mad with power, the people may stage a justified rebellion or challenge them to a duel.”

“Did you really think I’d just go home after you threatened my woman?”

“Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu just had to ruin the excuse I’d given you, didn’t you?”

Even as she pouted her lips, the eyepatch maid narrowed her eyes with a hint of happiness as she viewed her master’s determination. She and the Vanderbilt lady both took a step back.

“A member of the Vanderbilt family would officially be impartial to both parties, so I would like to ask you to be the witness to the duel.”

“Hey, wait.”

“Oh? Are you sure? I am Master Heivia’s fiancée, you know?”

“Wait, wait! Don’t just ignore me!!”

“Not to worry. I know you will not judge him lightly, lady. After all, the Vanderbilt family and the Winchell family have long been enemies. Especially thanks to a certain someone. Isn’t that right, Your Excellency?”

“Don’t…don’t ignore me and prepare to turn your swords on meeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

It was too late.

A clear change came over the way Winchell’s knight held his stainless steel knife. Instead of the style taught in military textbooks, he used one seen in sports. He stuck the blade forward, gently pulled back his empty left hand, and quietly pointed it at his target’s face.

One was a knife and the other a rapier, but the latter’s two or three times advantage in reach did not seem to matter.

The boy was prepared to kill in a single strike.

“En garde. I’ll give your life the brand of loser it deserves.”

(Why!? How!? I was perfect! There wasn’t supposed to be anything to worry about!!)

The knight’s duel used in the Legitimacy Kingdom was generally based around a training method known as ''phrase d’arme'' in which each side took turns attacking. One side would strike and the other would knock their blade aside and take their turn to attack. The process would then repeat with the attacker and defender reversed. The duel ended when one side surrendered or was knocked down.

There was no restriction on the weapon used.

The right hand generally held a rapier, but the length and weight could vary. The left hand could hold anything from a shield to a knife or gauntlet to block the attacks. As it was a fight rather than a sport, that was not surprising.

If someone insisted they would fight barehanded rather than use a sword, the duel would still be valid, even if it was basically suicide.

In other words, the duel would begin even if Flag refused to raise his rapier.

Flag tightened his grip on the hilt more because he was overpowered than because he was ready to fight, so Heivia grinned and made a suggestion.

“You can take the first attack, so come on. I’m a noble and the one who challenged you to the duel, so I’ll show my respect for the royal who was willing to accept my challenge.”

To translate that noble language into modern language:

''I’ll kill you with my counterattack.

''I’ll kill you with a triumphant smirk on my face.

(What do you mean I accepted your challenge, you fool!?)

Flag trembled without end.

He could feel the approaching wall of death. His decisions meant nothing. He felt like he had been ordered to build a bulletproof truck with all the modifications he might want and then ordered to drive it full speed off the roof of a hundred-story building. He could instinctually tell that an unreasonable fate was sealing off any effort he might make.

So…

So…

So…

(Don’t joke with me, you worthless noble. You’re nothing more than an errand-runner who has been lent social status and land by us royals! I won’t die. I refuse to die here!! I have royal blood in my veins, so the Legitimacy Kingdom needs me! Without me, this thousand-year kingdom will come crashing down! So I will do whatever it takes to win. I am allowed to!! The god-given rights of a royal are absolute! Did you really think the likes of you could trample over them!?)

As soon as the middle-aged man’s internal pressure passed its limit, something unbelievable happened.

The dry sound of bursting gunpowder came from Flag Eggnog’s hand.

While he held the rapier in his right hand, he pulled a palm-sized stapler-like device from his left sleeve. It was a self-defense handgun that fired when squeezed.

The scent of sparks wafted up from the small muzzle.

The bullet had flown too quickly to be seen.

And no matter why a bullet was fired, it would still kill whoever it hit. Heivia was not a superhero from TV or comic books, so he could not spot a flying bullet and dodge it.

“A duel? Who cares!? This is a real battlefield! Only the winner gets to survive!! Just because a bug manages to crawl up a little from the dirt doesn’t mean it’s worth fighting properly. A vulgar and rude soul like yours deserves a pathetic death from a surprise attack!!”

It may have been because he was freed from the extreme tension or it may have been one of his usual gaffes, but the chubby middle-aged man shouted at the top of his lungs.

But…

“————”

“Eh?”

Heivia never collapsed to the ground.

He did not take a single step, his expression remained unchanged, and he had not shed a single drop of blood.

“Why? Why, why, why, why!? This makes no sense! You’re supposed to be dead! What is this, what is this!? Are you saying you cut the bullet!? You’re not some Island Nation samurai, so you couldn’t possibly do that! You can’t do thaaaaat!!”

“Sigh… Of course he couldn’t.” Karen I. Winchell interrupted him with an exasperated sigh. “Not only was it a weak handgun bullet, but that self-defense gun is extremely short and has no sight to guide your aim. These guns you hide in your palm are at best supposed to drive off a thug at less than five meters. They’re mostly just a decoration meant to scare them with the noise of the gunshot. Not to mention that you were shooting from the hip to make it a surprise. …The real surprise would be if it had actually hit.”

There was no restriction on the weapon used for the duel.

Once he made some kind of attack, it counted as his turn. And Heivia had implicitly said the following earlier:

''You go first.

''I’ll kill you with my counterattack.

“That’s why…”

Heivia took a step forward.

He made sure to touch the tip of the rapier with his knife to signify it was his turn.

Flag squeezed the stapler-like gun a few more times, but he completely forgot it had only been loaded with a single bullet and it simply clicked in vain.

“…you’re…”

Heivia focused on the tensed muscles of the arm he held forward as he approached stabbing range.

Flag threw the gun away and quickly raised his rapier. He no longer cared about the duel. He was clearly preparing to stab his approaching opponent, rules be damned. Even as panic and intent to kill filled his sweaty face, he formed a lowly smile and mouthed some words.

''Wait.

''I’ll pay you however much you want.

“…a failure!!!!!”

With a dull sound, Heivia’s military knife pierced the man’s heart. It plunged in with enough force that the bloody blade stuck out from his back.

There was no need to hold back.

The corpse’s expression was frozen in a smile and filthy blood flowed from the crescent moon shape like a drain regurgitating its contents. First, the rapier fell from Flag’s hand and then Heivia swung his knife to the side to fling the filth from the blade. This threw the skewered man to the ground and Heivia returned the bloody knife to its sheath.

[[Image:HO_v11_320-321.jpg|thumb]]

The Vanderbilt lady put her hands on her hips and spoke up.

“You’re late.”

“I made it in time for our date, didn’t I, baby?”

The dragon slaying was complete.

In that case, the victorious knight could expect to at least wrap his arms around the princess’s waist.

<noinclude>{{HEAVYOBJECT Nav|prev=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|next=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav

2016-05-01T06:10:14Z

Zakashi:

{| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width:65%; text-align:left; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both; font-size:100%; background:#E6F2FF; font-weight:900"
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:20%;" align="center"|{{#if:{{{prev|}}}|[[{{{prev}}}|Prev]]|Prev NA}}
| style="background:#cee0f2; width:55%;" align="center"|[[{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=view}} v] [[Template Talk:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|d]] [{{fullurl:Template:HEAVYOBJECT Nav|action=edit}} e]][[HEAVY OBJECT]]
! style="background:#cee0f2; width:25%; font-size:100%; font-weight:900" align="center"|{{#if:{{{next|}}}|[[{{{next}}}|Next]]|Next NA}}
|-
|colspan="3" style="border-top:1px solid #cee0f2;"|
{| style="text-align:left; font-size:85%; background:transparent; width:100%"
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 1|Volume 1]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 2|Volume 2]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume2 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 3|Volume 3]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume3 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 4|Volume 4]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume4 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 5|Volume 5]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 4|Chapter 4]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Chapter 5|Chapter 5]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume5 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 6|Volume 6]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume6 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 7|Volume 7]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume7 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 8|Volume 8]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 9|Volume 9]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume9 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 10|Volume 10]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume10 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume 11|Volume 11]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Illustrations|Novel Illust.]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Prologue|Prologue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 1|Chapter 1]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 2|Chapter 2]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Chapter 3|Chapter 3]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[HEAVY OBJECT:Volume11 Afterword|Afterword]]
|-

! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |Short Stories
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[HEAVY OBJECT:ShortStory1|Short Story 1]]
|-
! style="background:#cee0f2;" align="center" width="80" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover|Crossover]]
! style="background:transparent;" align="center" |[[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Illustrations| Novel Illust.]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Preface|Preface]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Prologue|Prologue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_1|Chapter 1]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_2|Chapter 2]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_3|Chapter 3]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Chapter_4|Chapter 4]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Epilogue|Epilogue]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Extra|A.E. 02]] - [[Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index:Crossover_Afterword|Aterword]]
|-
|}
|-
|}<noinclude>
----
{{Nav Doc|seriesname=HEAVY OBJECT|navname=HEAVYOBJECT Nav|pre=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 1|nex=HEAVY OBJECT:Volume1 Chapter 3}}
[[Category:Simple_Navbars]]</noinclude>

User talk:Kenji

2013-08-13T11:58:27Z

Zakashi:

Please do go ahead if you wish to translate the chapter. You can do it all over again if you wish so. I simply cannot find the time to complete the translation regretfully. Good luck! [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 06:58, 13 August 2013 (CDT)

Date A Live:
--------------------------------------
...

User talk:Asiorx22

2013-05-30T11:25:54Z

Zakashi:

Could someone unblock this account. Hi, I am quite fine with your suggestions, I will admit that I have kept thus quite close to the source in an attempt to not miss out anything. I do definitely welcome edits that do not lazily strip out extra description. If you can put out good sentences without doing that, I will encourage you to edit on. This is one of my earlier works where I was quite restrictive to myself. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 04:15, 28 May 2013 (CDT)

Hi, it seems that you are putting your comments on the translation within the text itself. Would you mind moving them to the discussion page of the respective chapters as it allows translators/editors to better follow up on your comments. It also allows for further discussion on suggested changes and would look neater in the discussion page instead of reading the comments that follow after yours. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 06:25, 30 May 2013 (CDT)

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter2

2013-05-05T07:01:36Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 2: Areishia Spirit Academy==

===Part 1===

Areishia Spirit Academy.

In this institution, all the princess maidens from across the empire are gathered and trained into full-fledged elementalists.

With a beautiful garden behind its castle walls, the school building, lined with elegant spires seemed very much like the palace of a princess. —In fact, this was nearly entirely correct. Out of all the students attending this academy, almost all of them are genuine and proper noble ladies.

"However, to unexpectedly have such a terrible encounter..."

Kamito muttered to himself as he walked along the red carpet covered hallway on the second floor of the school building.

"Lost inside the forest, I winded up contracted to a sealed spirit, and furthermore..."

Since Kamito snatched the sealed spirit from her, that crimson haired young girl apparently had her eyes on him.

After that— Claire Rouge guided Kamito to the academy school building.

That was good, but apparently her claim that Kamito was to become her personal contracted spirit was serious. Round and round, the whip was coiled around Kamito. Rather than being guided, it might be more appropriate to say that he was being dragged, and they walked through the forest in that fashion.

Regardless, Kamito had no obligation to play along with the princess. Taking the opportunity when Claire went to the restroom, he unwound the whip and escaped.

"Ah, you escaped, you traitor!"

Such a voice can be heard from inside the restroom—

(What? What made you think I wouldn't run away...)

That young girl was an outstanding elementalist but, her common knowledge of society was that of a naive lady.

"Anyways, before I am found by that girl again, I need to hurry up and meet Greyworth."

Proceeding down the hallway, Kamito let out a small sigh.

... Depressed.

After all, so far nothing good had ever resulted from getting involved with that witch.

(... But, I can't ignore this.)

Kamito took out a sheet of paper from his breast pocket.

Forty days ago, he had received a letter from Academy Director Greyworth.

If, what was written on it is true—

He might finally get some clues about that girl.

Nevertheless, Kamito could not deny the possibility that it was just some bait to lure him here.

(... It is useless to ponder on it. After all the other party is that Witch.)

And, here Kamito stopped in his tracks.

In front of him was the thick wooden front door: the Academy Director's Office.

As Kamito was about to knock on the door—

"Academy Director, I can't agree with this!"

Suddenly, a voice could be heard from inside the room.

A high pitched, young girl's alto voice.

It seemed that they were occupied currently.

(... It can't be helped, I'll kill some time outside for a while.)

While Kamito was moving away from the door—

"Why should we welcome the likes of a man to this sacred academy of princess maidens?!"

He stopped his foot steps...

(...Mm, man?)

That perked up his ears.

"Because I said that we need him here. Isn't that reason enough for you?"

It was a constrained voice. But, it carried so much power that Kamito trembled even hearing it through the door. What a fearful voice from the witch no matter how many times one hears it.

"Ar-Are you suggesting that we lack the strength?"

"Nonsense. I'm not belittling the power of your chivalric orders, but, '''He is special'''"

"... You mean the fact that he can communicate with a spirit despite being male?"

"Yes, but that is not all of it."

"What do you mean—"

And, the girl suddenly closed her mouth.

Silence fell for a brief moment. Then—

"Who is there?!"

(Darn it.) Apparently they'd noticed that someone was eavesdropping.

Kamito quickly attempted to leave—

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Bang* – suddenly, the office door was violently opened.

From the door which was kicked opened, there appeared—

With a beautiful slender leg which was swung high up, a pony tailed beautiful young girl.

A pair of sharp, long eyes. A dignified, handsome feature.

She wore a silver breastplate on top of her uniform, and it looked like the outfit of a valiant knight.

Inside the leaf pleated skirt, a pair of lace underwear flew into his sight.

"Black!?"

"Wha... Y-You, Insolent Person!"

The young girl kicked Kamito with her whole strength on his stomach, which caused him to involuntarily blurt out.

"Guoh!"

The sudden attack caught him off guard, blowing Kamito away.

In an instant, the young girl shortened the distance between them and pressed Kamito down on the floor, unsheathing the blade at her hip.

Then she thrust it violently, pointing the edge of her blade onto his cheek.

"..."

Shooting a cold piercing look.

Then, those clear reddish brown colored eyes widened. 

"You... are you... actually a man!?"

The stern face of the girl blushed and became bright red.

That time—

"Fnn, aren't you quite behind schedule, Kazehaya Kamito?"

A displeased voice came from the back of the office.

Kamito who was still being held down by the young girl, slowly raised his eyes.

Over there— there was the figure of a witch completely unchanged from three years ago.

Her ash-blonde hair was gently waving.

Her beauty extolled the seductiveness of an alluring adult.

Beneath her small pair of glasses, her eyes, the same gray as the color of her hair, were staring in his direction.

(... So you came out, witch!)

Kamito spat out bitterly in his head.

Dusk Witch — Greyworth Ciel Mais.

With the appearance of a bewitching, carnivorous, beautiful woman, she was an experienced Spirit Knight that boasted the title of being one of the twelve Knight Generals of the Empire.

The rumor that the highest ranked elementalist may transcend her age might have been real.

"—It has been three years, Kamito. Looking at your face, it seems you have changed."

"... You just don't change, Dusk Witch."

To the sarcastic response while he was still pressed down on his back, the witch let out a smile.

"Kazehaya Kamito!? Then, this guy..."

The ponytail young girl raised her eyebrow.

"Hey, isn't it about time that you let go of me?"

Kamito squinted his eyes and murmured towards the young girl sitting on his chest.

"What is that? You shameless, rude person!"

"After all, I am saying it for your own sake."

"... What do you mean?"

"Well, how to say it... since some time ago, your thigh has been touching my body."

Her moderately tight thigh felt soft. It was a pity that he had to point that out, but it wasn't rubbing so much that he would enjoy the side benefits under such a situation either.

"......~Wa!?"

The stern young girl's face blushed burning hot red.

Standing up quickly while holding down her skirt, she swung down her blade mercilessly.

[[Image:STnBD_V01_059.jpg|thumb]]
Within a hair's breadth, Kamito dodged it by twisting his body.

"Wha-What are you doing!?"

"You-You indecent... I will make you into a marinated salmon, in an instant!"

"Wait, Calm down! I'm not a salmon!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Zing*— a sharp slash, Kamito's forelock was cut.

Serious. Not even a shred of doubt in her eyes.

(... Um, in this one day, how many times have I almost been killed?)

An unlucky day. Or is it because of the curse of the Dusk Witch.

(Are all the girls of the academy like this?)

Being driven to the wall. Kamito felt the seriousness of the threat to his life— at that time.

"Sheath your blade, Ellis. Any personal struggle in this academy is prohibited."

"... Uh!"

Greyworth's voice called out, the girl named Ellis stopped instantly.

"Ac-Academy Director... I'm just—"

"Do I need to say the same thing twice? Ellis Fahrengart."

"... No, um, I apologize."

Ellis, while glaring intensely at Kamito, reluctantly sheathed her blade.

Greyworth pushed up her glasses and then smiled.

"So, you are already at that age. Well, to be pushed down by Ellis' delicate body hidden under the armor, most boys would not be able to control themselves."

"A-Academy Director!?"

"Wait, please don't say anything that will cause a misunderstanding! I'm—"

Kamito quickly objected. But, his eyes unintentionally went in the direction of Ellis' breasts—

... Indeed. She was wearing her armor so it was hard to tell, but certainly, Claire Rouge's pitiful breasts were incomparable to hers.

"Yo-You, whe-where are you looking to!"

"My bad..."

Kamito quickly averted his eyes.

"Guh, if you weren't the guest of Academy Director, I'd have made you into a Pot-au-feu already!"

"... Why a Pot-au-feu!"

Although he didn't understand her metaphor, it sounded scary.

"Ellis, you can go now. It's unpleasant to have people flirt in front of my eyes."

Greyworth's cold voice informed her.

"I-I can't leave you alone in the same room with... this man. If he impudently lusts towards the Academy Director..."

"There is no such thing!"

Kamito interrupted strongly. ... What was this girl saying?

"Well, it does not matter if that's the case. I'm always wearing my lucky underwear."

"What..."

"Mm, Your face became red, boy, quite cute. By the way the color is—"

"I don't want to hear it!"

"Just kidding. Why are you blushing?"

"Guah!"

The Dusk Witch giggled with pleasure, Kamito directed looks filled with killing intent towards her.

"Bu-But, the Academy Director should not to be alone together with such a guy without guard—"

"Ellis Fahrengart."

To that calm tone of voice , Ellis' shoulders trembled.

"Do I need to repeat what I am saying twice?"

"Um, I apologize!"

Greyworth, how frightening; with her voice trembling, Ellis nodded, and left the hallway swiftly. 

===Part 2===

Finally released, Kamito stood up letting out a sigh of relief.

Brushing the dirt from his coat, he set foot inside the office.

After Kamito closed the door behind him, Greyworth shrugged her shoulders.

"She is the daughter of the ducal House of Fahrengart. An excellent knight, but somewhat stubborn."

"Is that girl a student here, too? She was wearing armor on top of her uniform."

"She is the leader of the Sylphid Knights, a party which manages any disturbances to the order of the academy."

"Like a public morals committee. In that case, they should manage it more strictly."

Kamito remembered, what happened inside the forest when he met the crimson haired young girl.

... To leave her at large was bad, in all sorts of ways.

"Fu, I'll take that into consideration. By the way Kamito, why are you so grimy. As if you were attacked in the Spirit Forest?"

".....No, I was scratched by a cat. A tomboyish hell cat girl." 

Kamito answered impatiently with a bitter face, and Greyworth shrugged her shoulders again.

"You'd better be careful, rumors say that within the inner depths of the «Spirit Forest» that even the Spirit Investigation Committee would not enter, are S-rank spirits still slumbering. Once you encounter one, your life is forfeited— in your case, can you manage to tame it?"

"Please stop. I don't want to associate myself with an S-rank spirit again."

"Yeah. '''As you are now''', you would probably be a mincemeat in five seconds."

"Not even one second. Actually, with a contracted spirit I might last for seven seconds."

"Fu— '''with a contracted spirit'''?" 

Greyworth directed her grayish eyes towards Kamito's right hand.

"That wound? Is '''that''' also a scratch by the cat?"

"This is—"

The wound— on the right hand, that was where the spirit seal was engraved a while ago.

Kamito clicked his tongue inwardly— No, after all he couldn't possibly hide it from the Dusk Witch.

"Well, how to say it. It is just happenstance. I made a contract with a particular sealed spirit. It was ultra-violent, had I failed the contract, I would not be standing here right now."

"Ha, what a change of heart, that you have contracted with a spirit other than '''her'''."

The grayish eyes, inside the glasses, glistened sharply.

"Finally you decided to say farewell to that ghost, is that it?"

"... Guh!"

At that mocking tone, Kamito couldn't help but get agitated.

"She is not a ghost! She is..."

Kamito took out the paper in his coat's pocket, then slapped it onto the front desk.

The beautiful witch did not waver in the slightest. A detestable calmness.

Kamito bit his lips, then asked Greyworth.

"This, you sent this to me. Is it true?"

"Ah, it's true. Witches don't tell lies."

"It was... Indeed, you haven't told a lie. But, you've never spoken the truth either."

Kamito spat out what he wanted to say.

"... Well whatever. Tell me what you know."

"Oh boy, Is that the attitude of someone asking a witch? You were cuter three years ago."

"The cat changed into a tiger in three years. Do not think it will stay as your pet forever."

"A cat does not change into a tiger and never will."

Greyworth intentionally shrugged her shoulders and fixedly looked into Kamito's eyes.

Kamito was involuntarily overcome by the pressure of that overbearing stare.

"The thing written there is true. '''Your contracted spirit is alive'''."

"... Guh!"

Kamito swallowed his breath.

A Witch does not speak the truth. But, she never tells a lie either.

"Her... Restia, where is she now?"

Kamito raised his voice, leaning his body onto the office desk.

The witch without moving her eyebrow, thrust a bundle of documents to the tip of Kamito's nose.

"... What are these?"

"Agreement Terms. Sign here."

"This doesn't make any sense. What do you mean?"

"There is nothing you couldn't understand. For what purpose do you think I summoned you here? Did you take it that I, the Dusk Witch, will simply let you have the information out of goodwill?" 

"I understand fully that you have nothing but malice." 

Kamito snatched the bundle of documents, then slapped it onto the desk.

Bundled with a clip, Areishia Spirit Academy's Admission Notification.

It was written there. No doubt— Kamito's '''public''' Background Profile.

"What kind of a joke is this?"

"Today you will be admitted into the academy. Don't worry, I've already taken care of all the necessary procedures."

"How can I be calm! What do you mean by this, explain!"

"I need you. That's all."

"What?"

The witch's words were always unexpected. Like a midsummer breeze.

"What are you talking about? I mean, this academy is a garden of pure maidens."

"No problem. Such a thing is no big deal with my authority."

"That would be a problem in itself! '''Now is Different from Three Years Ago.'''"

Provoked by Kamito—

"Don't get the wrong idea, Boy. You don't have any right to choose."

Greyworth told him in a shockingly cold voice.

"... Gu!"

"Till now I have allowed you to roam freely. Originally, the elementalist must be managed by the organization. You know that, right?"

"That is——"

In the Ordesia Empire, elementalists are given various privileges, but in exchange they must be registered with the organization. If there exist stray elementalists that harbor ideologies that are against the empire, it will be extremely dangerous to the nation.

"They will sniff out your existence sooner or later. Don't underestimate the country's Spirit Knights, we don't know how it would have been three years ago, but with your current slump you will lose for sure; besides—"

Then, a demonic grin floated from Greyworth.

"There's a slight chance that I might carelessly blab out the secret."

"... What carelessly? In short this is blackmail."

"It helps a lot that you understand so quickly."

"So shameless."

Kamito threw a loathsome comment, Greyworth as if in regret shrugged her shoulders.

"Fu, why are you so dissatisfied? One man in an institution of maidens where real princesses are gathered. Isn't it like a marvelous luxury harem?"

"Oh, please, I'm—"

"If you like, you may take one student from the academy and do whatever you like to her. For example, Ellis Fahrengart from earlier— who is seriously stubborn, but she is of the type to become ultra obedient once well trained. I am sure she will respond to whatever perverted radical play you have in mind."

"Am I a sex deviant?!"

"A joke. There is no way that I have such authority."

"I can never understand your jokes..."

Kamito moaned holding his temple.

"Why did you summon me now? What do you plan to do with me?"

"Glad that we can get to the point directly."

"Since it is useless to oppose a Witch."

A casual reply, Greyworth let out a smile—

"In two months, the Blade Dance will be held in Astral Zero. I have put you up as an entrant there."

"What did you say?"

—Blade Dance.

Once every few years, it is the largest Kagura<ref>Kagura 神楽[かぐら], "god-entertainment" refers to a specific type of Shinto theatrical dance.</ref> ritual carried out in Astral Zero.

Elementalists gather from the continent, and perform Blade Dance as an offering for the Five Great Elemental Lords.

So to speak, it's a grand martial battle festival of fellow elementalists.

The country of the victorious team will be given a few years of divine protection by the Elemental Lords, a guaranteed prosperity for the country. Together with a general assembly for the champion—

A single «wish» will be granted.

"Win the cup, Kamito. Nevertheless, '''as of now''' it might be impossible for you."

"I—"

Kamito bit his lips, strongly clenching his fist.

Not his right hand where the spirit seal was engraved— It was his left hand covered by the black leather glove.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Zukiri*, A sharp pain runs in his chest.

"I-I have decided that I will never participate in the Blade Dance again." 

"No, you will compete. Otherwise, there will be trouble."

Greyworth placed both of her hands onto the office desk, calmly shaking her head.

"Because, nobody but you can win against the Strongest Blade Dancer."

"Wh... at...!?"

The moment that he heard that name, Kamito's face froze.

The Strongest— the elementalists that are given this title, currently, there was only one in the whole continent.

Three years ago, a mere fourteen year old young girl dominated the Blade Dance's individual matches.

"—That is right. '''She''' has returned."

Greyworth's grayish pair of eyes, peered into those of Kamito's.

"The Strongest Blade Dancer— Ren Ashbell."

<noinclude>

==Translator's notes and references==
<references/>

{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter1|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter3}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter1

2013-04-29T11:41:27Z

Zakashi: since it's cleanly sliced off, there should not be a need for mentioning "completely"

==Chapter 1: You Are My Contracted Spirit==

=== Part 1 ===

In a quiet forest where the sun's rays were shining through the leaves.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Splash—*

Such a sound of water resounded.

Kamito, he— opened his mouth wide and just stood there.

There was a girl. In front of his eyes was a naked girl.

On top of that, she was a cute girl.

There was her widely opened eyes of ruby pupils, and her lustrously moist cherry-red lips.

Her white skin was smooth like milk and dazzling.

Her beautifully slender legs were standing in the surface of the water.

Then, what caught his eyes more than anything was—

Her blazing-like crimson red hair that clung on her gorgeous fine glass work like body.

However, she was '''naked'''.

Stark naked.

"......"

Kamito felt cold sweat on his back.

Not good. It's nakedly not good.

......Speaking of which, he ought to run away.

His rationality was certainly telling him that.

However, his body wouldn't move.

Actually, he was '''charmed'''. The scene felt too surreal.

The girl—

[[Image:STnBD V01 013.jpg|thumb]]

Her moist and beautiful eyes blinked and were gazing at the intruder who appeared suddenly.

She had a blank expression. It seemed like she had yet to grasp the situation.

She didn't even cover her small developing breasts.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Tick.*

A water droplet fell from the young girl's bangs.

Kamito regain his senses with that sound.

"Ah— Err......"

Kamito coughed.

He removed his gaze from the naked girl who was standing motionlessly.


"How should I say it......this looks like an accident, right? It is an unfortunate accident for both of us..."

At that time, Kamito made two fatal errors.

The first, of course, was that he started to make futile explanations. The best choice was to take advantage of the fact that the girl was dazed, and run away from the trouble immediately.

And the other error was—

"Even though it was an accident, I have seen you like this. Sorry, my apologies."

Until here it was still fine, but the following......

"Though, don't worry. I'm still a healthy boy, so I don't have '''that kind of interest'''. I......"

Looking at the young girl's '''small developing chest'''—

"I have no interest towards a kid's naked body."

Looks like he stepped on a gigantic landmine.

"......"

A frozen silence fell.

The girl—
Sliently raised her arm with red hair coiled around.

Her shoulders were shaking slightly.

That wasn't because of the cold, but Kamito was oblivious to that fact.


"Sixteen—"

"Eh?"

The girl's delicate lips were mumbling something, and Kamito lifted his eyebrows.

"I-I-I am sixteen!!!"

At the instant when she screamed that out, the young girl's red hair stood on its end.

"Huuh!?"

As Kamito opened his eyes wide in surprise—

"Sixteen!? For real? A sixteen year old with such a pitiful chest—"

He quickly covered his mouth. But it was already too late.

"......Unforgivable."

The young girl said that in a low, cold voice.

"D-Definitely unforgivable......you-you-you-you peeping demon, pervert, lewd beast!"

"You're quite knowledgable to know about words like lewd beast."

Kamito said that in a low voice with narrowed eyes.

"Hn?"

......At that time, he noted that the forest's trees were making a low whisper-like rustle.


(Is that the wind? No, that's—)

——Guardian of the crimson blaze, keeper of undying hearth!

——Now's the time to abide by the blood contract, come forth and do my bidding!

From the young girl's cute lips strung out an incantation in fluent Spirit language.

At that instant, accompanied by the sound of an air blast, a '''whip of flames''' appeared in the hand of the girl.

(.....An elementalist!)

Kamito shouted in his head.

An elementalist— «Astral Zero», something that existed in a different dimension from this world.

They were princess maidens, who had made contracts with spirits living there.

Elementalists could use different types of spirits and freely wield their powers.

It seemed that the girl in front of him had a contract with a fire-type spirit.

The young girl was an elementalist. That itself wasn't something to be that surprised about.

After all, this was the place where the country's excellent elementalists were gathered together.

(.....Nevertheless, it's surprising that she can even use an elemental waffe.)

The forms of the spirits living in Astral Zero when they were summoned here were greatly separated into two.

One was a base form that appeared as a lump of divine power, which was massless and had an indeterminate form. This was purely the summoning of a spirit's power, and was used as a battery for the time when spirit magic is used.


The other type was the pure form that summoned a part of the spirit's existence as it was.

This required tremendous amount of divine power and, on top of that, it was difficult to control. So, those capable of this were said to be just a handful amongst the elementalists. Even so, the girl before his eyes was not just using a spirit, but was using it in a highly optimized elemental waffe.

(.... it means that, eh? – Would I now happen to be in a life or death situation?)

As the thought suddenly hit him, Kamito was stunned.

At the place where the flame whip touched the water's surface, a gush of white steam was rising from it.

"You, you have guts..... "

The girl murmured in a trembling voice.

Her face was red. Was it due to her anger, or her embarrassment?

"Rea-Really, you have some nerve, to p-peek , while I, Claire Rouge, am taking my bath....."

"W-Wait, that's a misunderstanding! Let me explain it first!"

Kamito shook his head in panic.

"I will not listen to your excuses. Turn into cinders, you pervert!"

The flame whip ignited furiously in the wielder's hand and was moving as if it was licking the water surface.

"Oooooh..!?"

Kamito propelled his body into the dense bushes nearby.


Nearly at the same time, the Flame Tongue brushed its way over his head.

The idle red residue remained on the trees which were cut off like a complete joke. The cut surface of the tree trunks' remains were surprisingly clean, without any trace of burning. The attack was so quick that the flames didn't even have the time to ignite the trees.

The hair on Kamito's forehead was fluttering down on his mouth while cold sweat appeared on his forehead.

(.....Um, that's a joke, right? I'm not going to die like that, am I?)

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Zing*, *biyutsu* – there was like an endless dance of crimson flash cutting horizontally and vertically in the forest. The bush was mowed down in a blink of an eye and losing his place of hiding, Kamito hurriedly dashed out.

"Don't dodge, pervert, I can't hit you!"

"Don't ask for the impossible, and I'm not a pervert!"

Kamito screamed out and at the same time, the whip swung downwards on his feet, causing a violent spark to scatter. Rising from the ground, the whip immediately sprang up in the direction of the forest woods, which got ruthlessly severed.

But fortunately among all the unluckiness, the girl— Claire's aim was quite inaccurate.

After all, one hand was hiding her pitiful chest from being revealed, and in order to conceal her most important part, she squatted down in the pond. However, considering how she handled her whip in such a position, in a normal situation she should be talented at using it.

"How conceited despite being a pervert, please obediently turn into cinders!"


"I'm saying that I'm not a pervert! By the way"

Kamito stopped and turned around.

He pointed out '''something that he had noticed for some time'''.

"You, cover yourself properly. The gaps between your fingers aren't able to hide them delicately."

"......eh?"

Instantly, Claire's facial expression froze. And—

"Kyaaaaaaaaaah!"

Blushing deeply and screaming strangely in a cute voice— she quickly hid her chest with both of her hands.

"Ah, idiot!"

Kamito involuntarily exclaimed.

Claire let go and lost control of the flame whip, and it cleanly severed the trees behind her.

Slowly, the huge trees came falling down right at her.

However, Claire didn't notice it. Her eyes were closed in embarrassment as she kept embracing her naked chest.

(Damn—)

At this instant, Kamito kicked the ground.


Running with his whole strength towards the pond, he then jumped while grabbing Claire's shoulders.

"Wha—!?"

Claire's red pupils dilated widely.

Kamito ignored it and aggressively pressed her down into the water.

The moment Claire's hand touched the water, a gush of steam rose, and the flame whip disappeared.

Immediately after, the nearby trees were mowed down and a trunk collapsed.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Duuuun!*

There was a deafening sound, and magnificently large water columns rose.

Absorbing the heat of the flames, the warm pond water poured down like heavy rain.

.....A few seconds later.

"Um......"

Making a seductive voice, Claire slowly opened her eyes.

She had an expression of shock, and her eyes blinked in wonder.

Kamito leaned on Claire, and briefly he found himself staring into her eyes.

Their faces were so close that if someone were to push his back lightly, their lips would likely touch.

The crimson red hair clung closely to her nape. Her moist lips were cherry red.

Her delicate glass doll like perfect face was in front of Kamito's eyes.


For a short moment it looked like he was subconsciously captivated by her. Kamito quickly shook his head.

"......Um, are you alright? Are you hurt.."

Claire nodded. Somehow, it seemed as if she had not fully absorbed the situation yet.

Kamito sighed, then tried to stand up.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Funyuu.*

His hand that was under the water had touched something soft.

"Hwaaah!"

(What is that? Mud?—)

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Funyu*. *Munyu*<ref>These are sounds of touching and squeezing</ref>.

"Hm, ya, hwaaa"

From her moist lips came a shallow sweet voice. Claire's submerged naked body twitched for some reason.

"Um ..this is?"

Having come this far, Kamito finally arrived at a certain conclusion. A certain......awfully frightening conclusion.

(No, wait, calm down. This can't be it... right?)

It couldn't be. There was no such thing. While releasing a flow of cold sweat, he desperately tried to deny such a possibility.


(When I looked at it earlier, it wasn't so...)

"Wh..Wha.. Wha..Whattt .... are..you...do..ing"

Claire's lip trembled, shaking involuntarily. She was blushing with tears in her eyes.

Apparently, it probably wasn't.....a lump of mud that he touched.

"You, pervert—!"

"Gwah!"

Because he got kneed hard in the stomach, Kamito collapsed into the pond's water.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gugugugugu....!*

With a rising wobbling heat haze behind her, Claire slowly stood up.

Before anyone knew, the flame whip, which was a manifestation of her flame spirit, was again grasped in her hand.

The water in the pond instantaneously started to boil, and bubbles began to show here and there.

"No..No, it's a misunderstanding! Wait, I'm really gonna die....."

"Sh..Shut up pervert, you will die here!"

Together with an almost ear-spliting deafening sound, Kamito's body whirled high into the air.

=== Part 2 ===

".....Um"

A few minutes later. Kamito started to recover his consciousness; the forest trees unfolded before his eyes.

He tried to rise—

Suddenly, he noticed something which was coiled around his neck.

It was a leather black whip for torturing. '''What is this thing...''', Kamito tried to remove it,

"Finally woke up, You Peeping Tom Pervert"

The thing on his neck tightened.

"Gweh!? Release me...."

Kamito coughed then looked upward—

The scarlet haired young girl – Claire, stood with her hands at her waist. Keeping her slim eyebrow raised in an arc, she gazed sharply down at Kamito.

This time she was not naked. The girl had changed into an adorable uniform. It had the pattern of black lines within the pure white, Areishia Spirit Academy's uniform.

A ribbon tie decorated the front of her chest. Instead of a button, a talisman was sewn on it. Between the gap her of knee length stockings and a pleated skirt, her beautifully slender legs stuck out brilliantly. Tiny ribbons tied her blazing crimson hair on both sides. This was the so called twin tail hair style. Judging from her hair, that was still wet, it seems that he hadn't lost consciousness for that long.

Keeping Kamito's neck bound tightly, Claire puffed up her small chest.

"Well, be grateful. I went easy and didn't try to kill you"

"That has to be a lie. You definitely intended to kill me. "

"What are you talking about? If I was serious, you would've been cinders by now. "

..... She just said something terribly frightening in a calm manner.

By the way, cinders are the soft ash residue left from incinerated firewood.

"I beg for your forgiveness, spare me from becoming cinders. After all, I helped you."

"Yeah, I'm a fair noble, I'll give you credit for that. You are of a higher grade than an average pervert, so you are a high grade pervert."

"In the end the pervert designation doesn't change. By the way, isn't a high grade pervert even worse than an average pervert?"

"Wh.. What.....pretending to help, you ...you touched, my breast!"

Recalling what happened earlier, Claire's shy face suddenly turned red.

(Hmm?)

Seeing such a reaction from her, Kamito had an idea.

.....This girl, could it be that she is that kind of person?

"So it seems that my lady is a pervert that has a hobby of whipping men."

Kamito teased her nonchalantly—

"What!? Wr-Wro-Wrong, I'm not!"

The response was immediate as expected. Claire shook her head, and her cheeks instantly became bright red all the way to her ears.

"Then do you enjoy being whipped?"

".....m! Wha... What.. are...you..sayi..ng?"

Claire's eyes twirled, as a steam puff rose out from her head. She is surprisingly flustered.

(Oh, as I expected....)

Kamito smiled bitterly in his heart.

(This girl is really, really innocent.)

Probably, it wasn't only this girl that was special..

After all, this Areishia Spirit academy is a school building where elementalist princess maidens were gathered.

Only pure maidens are capable of exchanging feelings with the spirits from Astral Zero. Among them, those who retain enough divine power so that they can command a contracted spirit are noble girls from the family of kings or lords of ancient and honorable lineage, whose elementalist blood was strengthened through marriage of many generations.

To maintain the purity of their body and heart, these girls are raised in an environment that's completely separated from the males since childhood: the so called elite education for elementalists. Therefore, all the girls attending the academy are super boxed-in princesses who are unaccustomed to men.

Finding the unexpected weak point of the girl, Kamito had a slight desire to play a prank on her.

Keeping a kneeling position, Kamito looked up at the embarrassed bright red face of Claire.

"Th— Then, there is something I have meant to say since earlier."

"Wh...What is it, you pervert?"

"I can see your panties from this angle."

"Fuwah!"

Tears began to float in her crimson eyes, Claire hastily pressed down the fringe of her skirt with both hands.

"You... You saw it?"

"Only a glance, you are, unexpectedly, quite daring. It has the same color as your hair."

"You... You lie! It is not red! It's white, white!"

"So, it's white."

"......huh!?"

Realizing that she was tricked, Claire bit her lips—


"U-Uuuuuuuuuh~"

..... Somehow she started to cry.

At this sudden unexpected reaction, Kamito panicked. "No, you're the pervert, a dirty ojou-sama, who reveals the color of her own panties", he had planned to tease her more with such words..... but, as expected, he was starting to feel pitiful.

Taking the chance while Claire was still in disarray, Kamito removed the whip coiled around his neck.

"My bad, I went a bit too far with my prank. Sorry."

Kamito stood up and placed his hand on Claire's head. Claire stopped crying, and looked puzzled.

"It's my fault that I saw your naked body while bathing, and I have .... have touched your breast as well. But those actions were not intentional. Please believe me."

"Wha-What....."

Seeing the truthfulness in Kamito's eye, Claire could not help but to avert her eyes.

"....What-What is this? If you are not a pervert, then '''why are you here?'''"

A question of a matter of course. This forest was under the jurisdiction of Areishia Spirit Academy, known as the «Spirit Forest». There is no reason for the presence of a man in the academy where pure princess maidens are gathered.

Even if he was not a pervert, there was little doubt that he was someone suspicious.

"I was summoned here by Greyworth."

"Greyworth..... the Academy Director!?"

Claire questioned suspiciously. Indeed, it was only natural to doubt.

"I'm not lying. Look, here's the evidence."

Kamito shrugged his shoulders, and took out a letter from his burned coat's inside pocket. The letter was signed by the renowned academy director. Also, it was stamped with the emblem seal that symbolizes the five great Elemental Lords.

"Is....that, the first rank emblem seal of the empire!?"

Claire let out a voice of dismay from her lips. The first rank emblem seal is produced by sealing spirits with a special technique. It is rated as the highest among the emblem seals issued by the empire, and is said to be completely impossible to counterfeit. Of course, it is something that is rarely seen, but as a elementalist, Claire could certainly tell its authenticity.

".....It seems to be the real thing. But, why would the academy director call a man here?"

"Well, for that you have to ask Greyworth, that old hag. It was troublesome for me, too."

"That... that old hag!?"

Instantly, Claire's face stiffened.

The Dusk Witch, Greyworth is greatly respected by the princess maidens who aim to become spirit knights. It was said that her popularity in the Ordesia Empire is neck and neck with the Strongest Blade Dancer Ren Ashbell. Even after a decade since she retired from the squad of the Twelve Knight Generals, the most elite force of the Spirit Knights known as the «Numbers», her legendary name as a witch is still being feared and revered to the highest degree.

(Well, for me, she is nothing but a nightmare....)

Tucking away the letter in his pocket, Kamito shrugged his shoulders.

"Greyworth is an old acquaintance of mine. I came all the way here, but the academy ground is very large, so I have lost my way."

Areishia Spirit Academy ground is incredibly vast. After all, besides the academic town at the foot of the hill, it also includes the entire spirit forest that spreads around it.

"Could it be, that you were misled by the spirits in the forest. That's so lame."

".....Yeah, that's how it is."

Claire chuckled, while Kamito nodded, feeling a bit dejected.

Existing in various locations of the continent, the spirit forests are connected with Astral Zero through the GATE, and are inhabited by the spirits that have wandered into this world. Most of the spirits have no interest in humankind so they are harmless. But there are also spirits who enjoy playing pranks, and they deliberately mislead the travelers who stray into the forest. As he was guided by the spirits' whispers and went deeper and deeper into the forest, he must have lost the way to the academy.

"Anyway, I'm really glad that I met a person. It is not very appealing to become a victim of the forest. From here onwards, which direction should I follow to get to the academy?"

"Which direction.....for your own information, I shall tell you, that it takes two hours to get to the academy from here on foot."

"What, that far!?"

If he was to walk for such a long distance, most likely he would once again be tricked by the spirits. Since a student of the academy was here, he had thought that the academy was much closer than it was.

(.....hmm? Why was this girl taking a bath at this kind of place?)

A plain question suddenly arises. Today is indeed a bit hot, nonetheless instead of coming all the way here, there should be showering facilities inside of the academy no matter what. Anyhow there are only girls in the school, there is nothing to be embarrassed about.

Being asked, Claire dug her hands into her wet twin tail hair and tried to comb it.

"I was here for the purification ritual for a spirit contract. Being a spring next to a shrine, the water here has the highest holy quality. Do you at least know that spirits like a woman who has a pure mind and body?"

"Spirit contract?"

The moment he heard those words, a throbbing pain came from the back of his left hand covered in leather gloves. Kamito grimaced from the burning sharp pain.

"A bit further from here, there is an ancient holy sword in a historical shrine. Rumor has it that a powerful «sealed spirit» inhabited there. Since the founding of the academy, not a single princess maiden has successfully formed a contract with it. It surely sounds like a very proud spirit."

Sealed spirits – are not the spirits that reside in Astral Zero.

Among the spirits, there are those who were sealed into weapons or armors by powerful ancient elementalists. Most of them have brought about terrible disasters to the humans, and are dreadful beings called Djinn or Ifrit by ancient societies.

Of course, they are not meant to be employed by the human elementalists. For that purpose, the ancient great elementalists sealed them in weapons or armor so that they will never be summoned again.

"You, do you plan to form a contract with a sealed spirit?"

"That's right! Do you have a problem with it?"

"Stop, it's too dangerous."

"Hmm, you seem to know it quite well, even though you are not an elementalist. I'm quite aware of the danger, but I need a powerful spirit no matter what."

Claire muttered, biting her tightly closed lips.

Seeing her serious facial expression, Kamito involuntarily shut his mouth.

"But, don't you already have a contract with the flame spirit from earlier? That is also quite a powerful spirit, won't it be fine if you raise it up?"

For its attribute, a flame spirit is not very rare. But, there are only a handful of elementalists who can control a spirit of such rank and be capable of using «elemental waffen» in the whole empire. Besides, elementalists that have formed a contract with multiple spirits are so rare that they are almost nonexistent. Discord between the spirits can cause deterioration of the balance of divine power. Without enough talent one can't control them.

"«Scarlet» is an important partner. But—"

I need more power— Claire calmly shook her head.

"I have a goal. To achieve it, I must have a strong spirit."

=== Part 3 ===

Chasing the back of Claire on which her fluffy crimson twin tails swung, Kamito followed her inside the forest. Although Claire's leather loafers looked quite difficult to walk in, Claire was a well trained elementalist after all, and her steps were light and lively.

"Here."

Then, suddenly her well proportioned feet stopped walking.

With her hands on her hips, she looked back with a half eye glare towards Kamito.

"Why are you following me? You pervert peeping maniac. "

"Without you, I don't know the way towards the academy. As I have said several times, I am not a pervert peeping maniac. It's Kamito, Kazehaya Kamito."

"Fufu, what a weird name. Kuina's origin?"

Kuina is an empire in the eastern region of the continent. It is said that its language, culture and the relationship of people with spirits largely differed from Ordeshia.

"No, it's not from Kuina. I was born in a far remote island's minority group village."

Kamito intentionally obscured his own statement. Certainly, he was born in an island country in the east, but the larger half of his childhood life wasn't spent there.

"Your name also has quite a rare taste, Claire Rouge."

"Don't call my name in a friendly manner. Anyway it's a strange name."

"Really? But, I consider it a nice name."

"Wha-What are you saying, stu-stupid!"

Claire's face blushed, then she suddenly changed back to her former direction, and briskly walked faster than usual.

Claire Rouge —— obviously a pseudonym.

Most of the students attending the Areishia spirit academy are surely young ladies of noble families who have been trained as elementalists since childhood. But Kamito has never heard of the Rouge residence. For hiding a noble family name, she must have some reason for it, but Kamito had no intention to delve more.

(.....Everyone has some secrets they want to hide.)

Kamito glanced in the direction of his left hand covered by a leather glove.

(Even I have mine, too—)

Claire kept advancing steadily. Kamito hastily chased after her back, where the twin tail were swaying. Now, losing sight of Claire inside the forest would only bring trouble for him. Kamito was well aware of the dangers of spending a night inside the «Spirit Forest».

"Is that dress the academy's uniform?"

"Yeah."

Claire nodded in a cold manner while walking.

Areishia Spirit Academy uniforms are pretty sturdy and also serve as a protective garment, which have undergone spirit's blessing, and it has the effect of raising the sacred attributes. It could also function nicely as a high ceremonial dress for contracting with spirits.

"What, are you saying that it doesn't suit me?"

"No, it suits you gorgeously. Honestly speaking, I am charmed."

Kamito shrugged his shoulder, and then answered honestly. Fine feathers make fine birds, Kamito planned to mock her with some caustic words, but it did fit her so perfectly that Kamito couldn't help but to compliment her.

"Wha-What-What are you saying!? Aren't you an idiot!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Kaatsu* Claire blushed in deep red, while *Pyun-Pyun* waving her whip.

"Uwahh, Calm down!"

"Wasn't it because you said some weird thing?"

"Me saying a weird thing?, I simply spoke the truth— *in pain*, I got it, I got it, please stop waving your whip for every little thing."

(....phew, I need her as a guide, but what a bothersome princess.)

Dodging the whip which was swung downward at a paper thin distance, Kamito sighed in his mind.

The shrine that held the holy blade stood quietly in a clearing in the forest.

Claire easily removed the ward that forbade entry, then stopped walking, and turned to Kamito.

"From here onwards, it will be really dangerous, so, as a commoner you should stay away."

"If you know that it's dangerous, why not stop?"

"As I was saying, '''I need to have a strong spirit'''."

Claire calmly shook her head, and stepped into the shrine.

Disregarding her warnings, Kamito followed her. As for coming all the way, it was true that he needed a guide, but more importantly he was just worried about Claire.

After all, "sealed spirits" were strong and at the same time have a wild nature. They prefer destruction and chaos; given the chance they would even murder the elementalist that employs them.

They are not something that can be managed by humans— that is why they have been sealed.

Sixteen years of age, with such an innate talent for wielding a spirit, Claire might as well be called a prodigy. However, if by any chance, she was to release a sealed spirit and fail to control it, what would happen?

Although she was just a girl he met by chance, Kamito couldn't leave her alone.

"Why did you follow me? I can't guarantee what will happen to you."

"Don't you have the absolute confidence to tame it?"

"Of-Of course I do!"

"Then there's no problem if I come along. "

Kamito shrugged his shoulders and Claire turned away from him.

"....Suit yourself."

Inside the shrine was misty; with a dark and gloomy atmosphere. Claire frowned slightly at the moldy smells mingling in the air.

"......Flames, let there be light."

A tiny fire ball immediately started to glow from Claire's fingertips, a basic spirit spell drawing on the power of Flame Spirit. The flickering light of the fire ball dimly illuminated the walls of the shrine which looked like a cavern filled with stalactites.

The sword was at the innermost of the shrine.

"That..... is the sword that the sealed spirit resides in?"

Kamito muttered, while Claire nodded quietly.

A naked sword was stabbed standing in a huge stone. Although without a doubt it was an antique which was hundreds of years old, it had no rust on its body nor any dents on its edge. Delicate ancient runes were engraved on its belly, radiating a dim blue light.

"Existing here even before the academy was found, «The Sacred Sword of Severian»."

"The Sacred Sword of Severian? The one that slayed Demon King Solomon?"

Demon King Solomon— commanding seventy two powerful spirits, brought chaos and destruction to the continent, and was '''the only male elementalist in history'''.

It was said that the one that slayed the demon king was the sword of Severian.

"Idiot, there's no way that's the real thing."

Claire stated like she was amazed.

"Sacred Sword of Severian stabbed into a stone can be found everywhere in the empire. Some remote villages even have one for the revitalization of the village. Anyhow, even if it is not the real deal, since it is a rune sword, there might be a powerful spirit sealed in it."

".....Indeed. Certainly, the real thing would not be in such a place..."

Claire walked towards the sword determinedly.

"Hey...."

"You stay back."

Gesturing to Kamito who was coming close, Claire clenched the hilt of the holy blade.

"Don't strain yourself."

"....Got it."

Kamito decided to watch over Claire from the edge, where the light barely reached. The sealed spirit might be provoked by the presence of other people. A heavy silence filled the surroundings.

".....Let's do this, Claire Rouge."

Breathing deeply, Claire murmured to herself. Her voice trembled a bit; it seemed that she was nervous after all.

——Oh Noble Spirit Sealed in Ancient Holy Sword!

——Thou Shall Accept Me As Thy Master, And I Shall Be Thy Sheath!

From her cherry red lips flew a fluent incantation for contract ritual in spirit language. Her crimson hair stood on its ends. A crashing wind started to swirl inside the shrine.

Holding his breath, Kamito watched her intensely. Once the contract has been exchanged and the spirit recognized Claire as its master, a spirit seal would be engraved somewhere on her body. The contract vows entered its conclusion. In this moment, a dreadful gust of wind swept inside the shrine.

"......eh?"

But, Claire was unfazed. She calmly recited her contract vow.

—And, dazzling light radiated from Severian's holy blade in her hand.

(I can't....believe it, She was exchanging a contract with the sealed spirit!?)

Preventing himself from being swept by the wind, an astonished Kamito raised his voice.

From the holy blade stabbed in the stone came an overwhelmingly tremendous amount of divine energy. If it was an average elementalist, she would have already passed out.

"—Thrice I Command Thee, Exchange Vows With Me!"

And, Claire's vow reverberated inside the shrine— in that instant.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Clink!*

"Pulled-Pulled out. I pulled it out."

".....What, seriously!?"

Brandishing the sword she pulled from the stone overhead, Claire exclaimed with joy. In the next second—

The ancient runes engraved in its blade suddenly shone violently!

"......huh!?"

Claire involuntarily released the blade from her hand—

The holy blade thrust into the ground. With a flash, it blasted into bits.

"Kyaaaaah!"

A short shriek flew, then Claire collapsed onto the ground.

"Hey, are you okay!"

Kamito quickly ran towards Claire.

"Wha-What? What exactly has...."

Claire held her temple and got up, then looked around restlessly.

"My-My sealed spirit?"

"No, I....can sense something terrible."

Sweat was flowing intensely from the back of Kamito's neck. Wearing a terrified facial expression, he looked up at the shrine's ceiling. In that place, '''swinging while floating in the air was the blade'''.

It's not the shattered holy sword. But, it was a rough steel blade that looked very sharp.

"Is that.....the sealed spirit in the sword!?"

"So it was of the «sword spirit» class. Looks like it is rather irritated."

"How do you know so much? You are not even an elementalist!"

"It is plain to see. No matter how you look at it, that doesn't seem to be someone who pledges his allegiance to his master."

".....Umm, indeed so."

Claire meekly nodded uncharacteristically.

The floating sword slanted, pointing its tip in a downward direction, when suddenly it become motionless.

Then—

".....Get down!"

In that instant Kamito pushed Claire down to the ground. A buzzing sound of an insect grazed his ear, in a flash it went far away.

"Wai-Waa-Wait, where are you touching me, I'll turn you into cinders!"

With her face deeply red, Claire beat on Kamito's chest repeatedly.

"Idiot, stop rampaging!"

Kamito quickly moved his body away, and looked in the direction that the sword spirit had flown to.

Fragments of rocks fell down with clattering sounds. The shrine's ceiling was cleanly sliced off.

"It is remarkable to release a spirit of such rank—"

Kamito glared with half opened eyes towards Claire.

"...... but the spirit has completely gone berserk."

"Shu-Shut up. The-The taming of it starts now."

"YOU...."

Kamito was stupefied, but he was in no situation to quarrel with her.

The spirit sword released a chattering noise while approaching them. Inside the shrine, they couldn't move freely, and even their range of sight was restricted.

Kamito grabbed Claire's hand and stood up. Touching each others' soft skin, *Doki* a heart beat, but Kamito did not show a vexed expression on his face. 

"Hwaah."

"Stop making such a cute reaction at every little thing. Let's flee."

"Wha.. whaa. whatt.. Cute.. what, me? Kyaa!"

"Let's run outside!"

Pulling Claire's hand while running towards the direction of the shrine's exit that was basking in the sunlight.

The spirit sword did not immediately chase after them. Maybe as of now it has not yet completely awakened. With this opportunity they might be able to run away.

The moment they were out of the shrine, the flash of the sword grazed in front of his eyes. Kamito's forelocks fell while dancing in the air. The spirit sword let out a tremendous roar, decisively knocking down the surrounding trees in succession.

"Crazy, what a wild spirit, just like a certain princess."

"Alwa-Always, you're noisy..."

Feeling slightly awkward, Claire deliberately coughed, then stood up.

"What a rebellious child.....I'll give you a proper spanking."

Her pair of crimson eyes were burning with a fierce determination; somehow she said some lines of provocation. Rolling up the fringe of her skirt, she then took out the leather whip which was coiled around her thigh, hitting it hard on the ground. Kamito's heart beat from the brief sight of her white underwear, but he said—

"Are you insane!? Your opponent is a high rank sealed spirit!"

"Easy victory. Amateurs like you please stay back!"

"Where are you getting all of your confidence? Whatever, let's run away!"

Claire shook off Kamito's hand that was grabbing her wrist.

"No, you escape yourself. I will absolutely make this spirit mine."

"You, for what reason— do you need a strong spirit that badly?"

".....You will never understand."

At the same time Clair averted her eyes.

"I need...power, I need an unbeatable powerful spirit that will not lose to any other spirit!"

——Guardian of the crimson blaze, keeper of undying hearth!

——Now's the time to abide by the blood contract, come forth and do my bidding!

Claire recited the summoning spell of her "Flame Spirit". A crimson flame surged and she was engulfed by intense heat.

"The hunting begins, Scarlet!"

Together with scorching flames – a Scarlet Red Hell Cat appeared. Instead of fur, it was blazing with scarlet red colored flames that were wrapped around the beast's body.

(Is that the real form of her flame spirit!?)

Indeed, she was not all talk.

To be manifested in beast form is proof that it was a high rank spirit. "Scarlet" might just be a name of affection, perhaps it was not the true name of the spirit. Without a doubt, it was a high rank spirit that carries a true name. 

Claire wielded her whip, and the hell cat growled with a frightful roar, then rushed towards the sword spirit. Dancing sparks scattered. The atmosphere trembled at the roar of the beast. The floating spirit sword went against them, cutting all the trees in its way.

"Scarlet, go get it!"

In response to Claire's shout, the hell cat leaped. High above the floating sword it went, and sharp blazing claws swung down at the sword. With a high pitched shrill sound, intense sparks sprinkled down, and the spirit sword dropped to the ground.

Claire ran at the same time. It was not a fatal hit. The spirit sword rose and flew in a split second, rolling over while drawing an arc in the air.

The flame spirit chased after it, trying not to let it escape. Roaring loudly, it made a great leap again.

Violent sparks scattered once again. Claire struck hard at the ground with her leather whip, slowly pressing forward against the sword spirit. It looked like the leather whip was not meant for battle, rather for signaling instructions to the spirit.

At the fierce attacks of Scarlet, the spirit sword's movement stopped— At that instant,

"Eat this, '''Searing Fire Ball'''!"

Clair released a huge fire ball from her palm.

Fire Ball is a high level spirit magic which uses ultra hot flames and can terribly burn up all of its target, leaving it completely traceless. The spirit magic's power is determined by the elementalist's own divine spiritual energy and the contracted spirit's strength as a whole.

The released fire ball drew an arch in the air, then exploded in a blast that even Scarlet was caught in. The shock wave of the explosion knocked down the trees in the surroundings and fallen tree trunks radiated from the explosion center.

(What terrible power......)

Shielding himself from the flying stones coming at his head, Kamito wrapped his tongue and marveled.

Such power was nothing like what a sixteen years old girl is capable of.

Inside the swirling fire the hell cat's figure showed up. Naturally, the hell cat can't possibly be harmed by the blazing fire because of its fire nature.

The spirit sword floated motionlessly in the air. It seemed that it had not received any damage either. Naturally, Claire didn't think that she would bring down a high rank spirit with spirit magic. But she should be able to get its attention.

"Scarlet!"

Claire exclaimed. The flame spirit's claws attacked the spirit sword again. Its scourging hot claws could melt the iron steel. If its opponent was an average spirit, it would be instantly eradicated. But, the spirit sword quickly turned around, and the attack was stopped by the steel edge of the blade.

In an instant, the strange sound of metal scratching each other reverberated in the trembling atmosphere.

"Wh...What?...."

Kamito suppressed both his ears with his hands.

Receiving the full impact of the sound, Claire's face distorted from pain and she crouched down there.

The spirit sword released a weird sound— and then, transformed. Its shape changed from an average long sword to that of a huge bastard sword.

In a flash.

"What!?"

Claire's flame spirit took the unexpected strike and couldn't avoid the big swing. The body was severed into two, and it vanished into the void together with the flames wrapped around its body.

With only one hit, it had lost the strength to manifest in this world.

(....Damn! Isn't it in a completely different league? It seemed that it has completely awakened.)

Kamito cursed, then glanced at Claire—

Claire had collapsed on the ground, and her stunned blank eyes were fixed upward at the void where the flame spirit had disappeared.

Having finished off the flame spirit in one swing, the spirit sword aimed its next attack at Claire.

The huge bastard sword flew with a bursting sound—

"Claire!"

Kamito shouted, and started to run. Without reason, his own body just moved before he knew it.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Diving in front of Claire, he thrust his palm toward the bastard sword. Not his left hand enclosed by the leather glove – it was his right hand.

(......No choice but to do this!)

——Oh Noble Spirit Sealed in Ancient Holy Sword!

——Thou Shall Accept Me As Thy Master, And I Shall Be Thy Sheath!

Sweat rushed down from his forehead, and he started to recite the incantation for spirit contract '''that he had sworn to never utter again'''. The spinning tip of the sword pierced the skin of his palm. Red blood gushed intensely from it.

(.....Gwaah, Gah!)

Crushing amounts of divine energy knocked on him, the soil and sands surrounding them were whirling up from the wind pressure. He almost lost his consciousness from the sharp pain. But if Kamito fainted here, Claire who was behind him would surely be cut in half.

——Thrice I Command Thee!

".....No way, a Spirit Contract!?"

A surprised sound came from Claire's throat.

Kamito's heels sank into the ground. And, the sound of his breaking bones resounded underneath his scalp.

——Exchange Vows With Me!

Withstanding the terrible sharp pain, Kamito finished his last word of the contract ritual.

Instantly, the body of the spirit sword radiated a pale blue light.

(What!?)

Intense flashes and thunderous sounds filled his consciousness.

=== Part 4 ===

He opened his eyes, and Claire Rouge's face was there. Hanging down onto his face was her twin tailed hair tickling his face.

It seemed that she had shouted something, but he couldn't hear it clearly. Probably the sound blast had messed up his ears.

(.....Looks like I'm still alive.)

Wearily lying on the ground, Kamito let out a breath of relief. The chance of success against a spirit of such rank was very low, but it looked like his gamble had paid off.

Raising his eyebrow, he grimaced from the torment of the pain felt by his whole body and raised his right hand slowly.

In his right hand which was stabbed—

Instead of a wound, an emblem of two swords crossing each other was engraved on it.

It was the proof of the spirit contract — The spirit seal.

(Aah, I did it....)

Staring at the carved seal on the back of his hand, Kamito murmured.

A sharp sense of guilt bit at his heart.

He had broken the promise with '''her'''—

But, to save Claire under such a situation, that was the only method.

Claire noticed that Kamito had woken up, with her hands in his nape and her face approaching him. So close that he could feel her breath. With her clear crimson eyes, she stared at Kamito. Her cherry colored lips trembled weakly.

"......Why?"

"'''Why? You're a male. How can you contract a spirit!?'''"

"......"

Kamito did not answer and slowly rose up. Being ignored, the annoyed Claire raised her eyebrows.

"My-My sword spirit!?"

"My bad. Just a moment ago, I contracted with it."

Kamito sighed and at the same time he showed her the back of his right hand where the spirit seal was engraved.

"Wha-Whaa-Wha-Whaaaat!"

Claire wore a stunned expression with her mouth wide open.

(Well, a natural reaction....)

A long sigh— Kamito felt a faint ache in his heart. Of course, he could clearly understand such a response. Originally, a privilege that was granted to no one except pure maidens— the spirit contract.

The existence of a man which could contract a spirit, throughout history, belonged solely to one person. And the one who brought chaos and destruction in the world, the so called Demon King elementalist.

It is natural to fear him, who carried the same power of spirit contracts as the Demon King.

Kamito stood up and quietly turned around.

He did not regret it. To save the girl, this was the only way he could think of.

"Wait, wait I say!"

Kamito was about to leave, but a voice called him from behind.

Turning around, he saw that Claire, with her hands on her hips, was glaring intensely at him.

"You stole...my spirit...take responsibility for it!"

"Huh?"

Kamito frowned. ....It didn't make any sense to him.

At such a reaction from Kamito, Claire impatiently brushed her twin tail.

"I should have been the one to have obtained that spirit, as I am saying, you have to take responsibility for it."

"Re..sponsibility?"

Because of that unexpected word, Kamito had become even more confused.<ref>Normally while using the Japanese language, when a girl tells a guy to take responsibility it carries the implication of marriage. Hence Kamito's confusion.</ref>

....What was the girl saying.

"Therefore...."

Claire snapped her whip, then she pointed her index finger toward Kamito.

"You have to become my contracted spirit!"

<noinclude>

==References and Translation Notes==
<references/>

{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Illustrations|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter2}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter6

2013-04-20T10:00:57Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 6: Security of Academy Town==

===Part 1===

Members of The Knights formed units of two-men-cells or three-men-cells depending on their abilities.

For the time being, Kamito, the newcomer, had formed a unit with Ellis, the Captain.

Although, rather than Kamito being a newcomer, this was because not a single girl wanted to form a unit with Kamito.

The Knights' work covered a lot of areas, more than Kamito had anticipated.

There was the mediation of duels of academy students, the exposing of traders smuggling sealed spirits, the safeguarding of spirits gone astray, the negotiations between student organizations, the rescuing of stranded people— The most frequent quest was the subjugation of beasts and rampaging spirits that passed through naturally occurring «Gates» in the Spirit Forest and came intruding from Astral Zero. Receiving a report that a large beast seemed to be rampaging outside the town this time as well, the two of them moved quickly to the scene.

Mowing down the trees of the forest, a large beast, wearing a gigantic shell, roared.

It was a beast like a spider cross-bred with a gigantic tortoise.

"What a pretty large prey, how big was the «Gate» that opened?"

"According to the Spirit Investigation Association's announcement, the size of the «Gates» appearing in the Spirit Forest seem to be getting bigger yearly. The reasons seem to be unknown."

Ellis nodded with a serious expression, and armed her elemental waffe «Ray Hawk».


It was his first time fighting side by side with Ellis like this but he knew her real ability.

Claire was more skilled in terms of her sense in flexible tactics, but in contrast with her, who would be moody and erratic, Ellis could fight in a steady way. With just the basics and without playing with shortcuts or tricks, she would force one to yield directly from the front. It was indeed an Ellis-like battle style.

"Now, Kamito!"

Matching up with Ellis attacking from the sky, Kamito plunged close towards the beast.

The shell creature's vital point was its soft abdomen. That's the same even for a beast.

Kamito kicked the ground with the elemental waffe sword in his hand.

At that moment, the beast's abdomen split vertically.

Appearing from its stomach was the head of a giant snake. Widely opening its mouth with sharp fangs, it swooped down at Kamito. The snake wriggling on the ground rolled up a large amount of sand and dirt.

"...What an absurd living thing, this beast is."

As Kamito dodged the beast's violent attack, he clicked his tongue.

Clad in the divine protection of her wind spirit and flying up in midair, Ellis released the blades of wind.

However, as if some magic effect was running— the blades were repelled by its hard shell.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Don*. Ellis landed next to Kamito.

"What a nuisance, that shell seems to be strengthened by spirit magic of the resistance attribute."

"Spirit magic? Who on earth—"


"There is the possibility that this beast didn't come from a naturally occurring «Gate» and was summoned by somebody. In addition to the chaotic Valentia Holy Festival, they caused a disturbance outside of Academy Town and are probably trying to distract the Knights' attention."

Hearing this, Kamito got it.

"It's the Cursed Armament Seal smugglers who had infiltrated into Academy Town, right?"

"There's the possibility."

Ellis nodded with a stern expression.

The beast mowed down the trees of the forest and roared like it went mad.

With Ray Hawk in her hand, Ellis took a stance for an attack.

"Kamito, we'll do a coordinated attack. Let's bring it down in the next attack."

"Ah, I got it."

The striking-like attack of the beast came.

Ellis recited the flying spirit magic at high speed, grabbed Kamito's arm and flew up.

Upon flying up right above the beast, she quickly released her hand holding Kamito.

"Let's go Est!"

Responding to Kamito's shout, the elemental waffe —Terminus Est— shone dazzlingly.

It was a nose dive attack from the sky. A technique that was Ellis' specialty.

Along with the force of falling, the silver sword pierced into the shell.


<nowiki>*</nowiki>Crack*— A dry sound was heard, and a crack had opened, traversing across the beast's hard shell.

Immediately after.

"Haaaaa!"

Ellis, who continued on and nosed dived, aimed at the crack that had appeared on its shell and thrust in her Ray Hawk!

"—Go and rampage, evil winds!"

At the moment she shouted the words of releasing.

The large frame of the beast greatly sprung up in a jolt, and it let out a roar of agony upon its imminent death and became silent.

The violent winds raging inside its body had sliced and ripped its internal organs into pieces.

"For our first time, it was a coordination of precise timing."

Kamito pulled out Est, that was pierced into the shell, as he said that.

"Ahh, I may have a good compatibility with you... th-this is only as far as battles are concerned!"

Ellis swiftly turned red and turned away abruptly.

===Part 2===

Even after the extermination of the beast in the Spirit Forest, the two of them were led around by incidents unexpectedly happening one by one.

Since there were many students out in town, due to the academy lectures being cancelled, trouble wouldn't seem to cease more than usual.

The part, where the number of Knights members decreased due to the headhunting this morning, also spurred on the business.


Time flew by while they were settling the unexpected incidents, and soon it was afternoon.

The Valentia Holy Festival began from the afternoon onwards.

As the mayor's speech seemed to be on the plaza's side, the townspeople's feet had been naturally going towards that direction.

"How dreadful, the Knights' work is."

As Kamito surveyed the state of the street springing with excitement in the preparation of the festival, he muttered.

"Still , it was special this morning. Besides, the part where the upperclassmen knights were headhunted, hurt. I've caused trouble for you right from your first day, I'm sorry."

Ellis dropped her shoulders, feeling dejected, and sighed.

She seemed to be depressed because of this morning's incident.

"Ellis, it's not that that was your fault, you know?"

"No, the fact that I couldn't restrain them is my responsibility."

Ellis slowly shook her head.

"Those four upperclassmen were Knights members from the time when Aneue was the captain. Most of the upperclassmen had resigned the moment I was selected to be the captain. Only they had remained so far, but— they ran out of patience with me, who lacks the ability as the captain."

"Ellis..."

"That reminds me, it was just a few weeks ago when you came here."

Ellis gave a talk about the Sylphid Knights from a year ago to Kamito.


The Sylphid Knights, when Velsaria was the captain, operated with iron rules and seemed to be an even-stronger organization as compared to now. They had the perfect efficient doctrine. The people, who violated even the group's rules, were punished right on the spot, and the academy students, who caused problems, were mercilessly beaten up with the armed power of the Knights.

Naturally, the academy rules seemed to have been kept well.

However, Velsaria's severe methods invited opposition from the academy students, who were highly-prideful noble girls, and before long, she had to step down from her position as captain.

Although she was the eldest daughter of the prestigious Fahrengart Duke Family, it might, after all, be the fact that she was no more than an adopted child of a lower class noble, or probably the cause of stirring animosity with the nobles, who honored their pedigree.

The one, who was elected to be that girl's successor, was Ellis of the same Fahrengart Family.

"In the past, Aneue was a splendid knight, whom I admired."

Ellis strongly bit her lips.

"She was a strict cold person, but she wasn't a person who would crush everything with power that way. Her current self is no longer the knight I aim to be."

Kamito remembered the spirit crystal he saw in Ellis' room yesterday.

The Velsaria in Ellis' memory had a completely different atmosphere as hers from this morning.

He felt it when he confronted her, that intimidating air that's even ominous.

(What on earth changed her like that?—)

Then, at that moment.


<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gyururu*.

There was the rumbling sound of a stomach..

"Ellis?"

"I-It isn't me!?"

Ellis turned bright red and denied.

Kamito made a wry smile.

"It's because we've been working since morning. The truth is that I'm also starving. Since it's almost time to change shifts, shall we have lunch or something?"

"Gu... E-Even though I'm saying that's not it."

Ignoring Ellis, who puffed out her cheeks, Kamito looked around his surroundings.

As there was the Valentia Holy Festival, there were many confection stores, but there were also plenty of street stalls selling other food. There was fried bread covered with sugar, a certain cuisine —wrapped in pie dough with vegetables and minced meat and baked— and grilled meat on skewers. ...Even if Ellis' hadn't, his stomach would have probably rumbled.

"Are you going to buy something at the stall? Or, are you going into a restaurant somewhere?"

"Mm, no, err..."

Thereupon, Ellis suddenly began to fidget for some reason.

"T-The truth is... I've made something though."

"Uh?"


Then, out of nowhere, a demon wind spirit in the form of an eagle came flying over.

It was Ellis' {{Furigana|demon wind spirit|Simorgh|margin=12}}. It was holding onto a large basket in its claws.

"As expected."

Kamito was impressed.

To even make a bento herself, she was truly a capable ojou-sama.

"Well then, I'm going to buy something at the stall."

"W-Wa-Wa-Wait!"

Ellis caught hold of Kamito's neck as he was about to walk off.

"Wh-What?"

"Th-There's also your share..."

"Eh?"

"S-So, I'm saying that I also made your share!"

"My share?"

"Y-Yeah, because whether I make one or two, the time taken doesn't change that much. D-Don't misunderstand, I only made it because it would be wasteful to have ingredients left over!"

"I thank you for that. Ellis' bento is something I could look forward to."

"Mu<ref>A sound made when someone is slightly annoyed.</ref>, if you look forward to it that much, I'll feel troubled."

"Ahem", Ellis' cheeks reddened as she coughed.


"Well then, shall we find some place we can settle down somewhere—"

Ellis looked around the vicinity, and—

"Ah, Captain, there you are, shall we have lunch together?"

"Wh—!?"

While waving their hands on the opposite side of the road, a group of three girls came running over with the sound of their light footsteps.

All of them were Sylphid Knight members, who put on lightweight armor on top of their uniforms.

"Y-You girls, what about your patrol of the town?!"

"It's currently the time for the Ryuska-unit to be responsible for the patrol. After that, I had thought of having lunch with everyone. Captain, how about having it together with us?"

"Err, I have a prior commitment with Kamito—"

"Ah, how sly. Captain, you're planning to take hold of Kamito all by yourself!"

"Abuse of authority—"

"Captain, you perv!"

The three girls criticized Ellis simultaneously.

"I'm not taking hold of Kamito all by myself or something!"

Ellis turned bright red and flared up.

"Isn't that fine? You know, I couldn't do a self-introduction properly this morning, after all."

"Th-That was so, but, however..."


Ellis sighed, and—

"...I understand. Well then, let's have lunch with everyone."

"Mu", she glared at Kamito with a reproachful-like look and nodded.

===Part 3===

Just like that, they ended up having lunch at a nearby park.

It was a lushly-green natural park near the plaza.

Within the busy town it was only quiet here, because of the Valentia Holy Festival preparations.

The Knights girls sat on top of the lawn, and opened their lunch boxes.

The three of theirs were sandwiches, but only Ellis' was different.

"Oh? That's amazingly extravagant."

"...I-Is that so? B-But it's nothing special, it's the same as usual."

Kamito raised his voice in admiration, and Ellis looked downwards as she was a little embarrassed.

There were potato-salad sandwiches, sausages, fried eggs, fruits that were cut into perfectly shaped sizes and more placed inside the slightly large lunch box.

"Lies, you usually only have peanut butter sandwiches, and yet—"

"The apples are also cut nicely into the shape of Mr. Rabbits!"


"The sausages are also made into Mr. Octopuses!"

Being glared at motionlessly with scornful eyes by the three girls, Ellis ended up being overwhelmed.

"Y-You girls too—"

Dodging the question, she faced the three and thrust her index finger out sternly.

"Despite being afraid of Kamito this morning, what on earth is with this turn of events?"

"..."

As a matter of fact, that was also bothering Kamito.

The reputation Kamito had from being a male elementalist in an academy of boxed-in ojou-samas was extremely bad. There were things like pervert, licentious beast, demon king of the night... Cruel misunderstandings were being made.

Furthermore, although there were circumstances, he had even seen the girls changing clothes this morning.

His first impression was supposed to be the worst.

The three of them mutually looked at each other's faces, and made a bewildered-like face.

"U-Um... Honestly, I'm still a little afraid."

"When I saw Captain talking normally to him, I thought he isn't such a bad person or something."

"Besides, he opposed that Velsaria head-on, how amazing."

The three of them placed both hands on their cheeks, and their faces slightly reddened for some reason.

Ellis slightly and sullenly pulled her lips back and pouted at such an appearance from the three of them.

"It's nothing, I just didn't like her."


Kamito agilely picked up a sandwich made by Ellis.

It was a ham-and-egg sandwich. The pepper was working, and it had a simple yet very pleasant seasoning.

"Delicious. To be able to make such a simple thing delicious is proof of your excellent skills."

"R-Really? ...That's great."

Ellis took a breath of relief.

"D-Don't hold back, eat up!"

"Ah, well then, I shan't hold back—"

Kamito was about to toss the sandwich into his mouth, and at that moment.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Nom*.

The sandwich in his hand suddenly disappeared.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Nom nom*.

"...Est, what are you doing?"

Est had returned to her human form from the sword and was beside him.

"Kamito, I'm also hungry. Feed me please."

"...It can't be helped, come on."

Kamito made a wry smile as he reached out to the sandwich.

He tore it into small pieces so that it'd be easy to eat, and threw it into Est's mouth.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Nom nom*.


Chewing the bread expressionlessly, Est was almost like a small animal.

"Uh, Kamito, Th-That's the sandwiches I made for you, you know."

Ellis puffed her cheeks out with a "hmph".

"Ah, Est-chan is cute～"

"I also want to feed her!"

"Eat my sandwich, eat my sandwich too!"

The three Knights girls presented Est with food one after another.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Nom*. *Nom nom*.

"As I thought she's a great one revered by humans."

"...No, she's completely being fed like an animal, you know?"

"Fua..."

Soon, Est made a lovely yawn, and threw herself onto Kamito's lap.

When he thought that she would instantly be making sweet sleeping-breaths—

Her body turned into particles of light, vanished into an empty space and returned back into her original sword form.

"Ah, she turned back into a sword..."

One of the girls muttered, seemingly disappointed.

"She ate all she could eat and went to sleep."

As Kamito placed Est back into the sword belt on his waist, he shrugged his shoulders in exasperation.


[[Image:STnBD V03 143.jpg|thumb|x200px]]
Est, who was detached from her Astral Zero body, was different from other contracted spirits, normally she would be spending almost the whole day in a sleeping state. Once she fell into this state, she pretty much wouldn't wake up.

After that, he ate the sandwiches as the time passed quietly.

The topics, which were brought up, were about the endless lectures and the books they read recently.

The Knights girls seemed tense about talking to Kamito but, a short while later, they had gradually opened their hearts. ...However, Ellis was making a face like she was not amused for some reason.

(Nevertheless—)

There was something Kamito suddenly noticed while the girls were talking.

"Even though you're in the Knights, all of you are normal girls?"

"Fue~?"

The three of them had their faces slightly reddened at the same time.

"Erm... N-Normal girls? Wh-What...do...you...mean?"

"Err, I certainly thought that you all would be like Ellis."

"Kamito, what do you mean by that?"

Ellis was sullenly glaring at him.

"Err, more strict, or rather, capable  or something—"

"It was like that before. People like us would be discharged after all."

One of the three girls muttered.



"Yeah, it was the time when Velsaria was captain."

"She suppressed everything with power, honestly, the atmosphere in the academy wasn't good."

The other two also nodded their heads together. As they were members that joined after Ellis was inaugurated as captain, they seemed to be dissatisfied with former captain Velsaria's way of doing things.

"Was there no one, who would oppose Velsaria?"

The ones attending the academy were mostly highly-prideful daughters of nobles.

If they were suppressed by power like that, there should also be many people opposing her.

"—Of course, there were. Several people too."

Ellis cut into the conversation.

"However, even the most superior class upperclassman wasn't a threat to Aneue. In the end, the reason that Aneue stepped down from the duty of captain was because of the pressure from influential nobles."

"The ones, who rebelled against Velsaria to the very end were roughly those from the Raven Class. Especially hellcat Claire Rouge, even the Knights at that time seemed to have gotten their hands burnt."

"Well, but Claire Rouge is still a problem child now."

"...I see."

The confrontation between Claire and the Knights seemed to be something from the time before Ellis was inaugurated as captain.

Suddenly, Claire's face from yesterday came into Kamito's mind.

(...Is she still angry?)


Listening to the current conversation, Kamito also reconsidered that his explanation wasn't sufficient.

Since there was such a discord, it was also natural that she got angry after hearing that Kamito joined the Knights.

The truth was that he thought of looking into her room in the morning, but he was so extremely busy with the Knights work that he couldn't meet her.

—Just at that moment.

"Hn?"

Something passed by near his field of vision.

Kamito blinked and squinted.

It was the main street of town that could be seen from the park.

A small red tail was in sight among the teeming hustle and bustle.

(...Is that Scarlet?)

Scarlet was skillfully making its way through the congestion, as it seemed to be walking to somewhere.

Claire wasn't seen beside it.

(What is it doing?)

Then, like it noticed Kamito's gaze—

Scarlet instantly stopped and turned around towards him.

After that, it immediately disappeared into the congestion.

(...Is it telling me to follow it?)


"What's the matter, Kamito?"

"Sorry, I remembered that I've got a slight errand to do. I'll come back quickly."

Chasing after Scarlet's tail, which disappeared among the hustle and bustle, Kamito ran off.

===Part 4===

"Come on, Scarlet, where the heck did you go?!"

Claire ruffled up her red twin tails, and was furiously angry.

The moment they walked into town, she ended up separated from Scarlet, and before she knew it, she got lost in some back alley.

Claire, who usually didn't go out to Academy Town, was virtually unfamiliar with the area. Also, Scarlet didn't seem to have returned to Astral Zero, so she couldn't even summon it.

There were no signs of people in the back alley. The Valentia Holy Festival seemed to be beginning over at the plaza, everyone had been gathering over there.

"...What's with this, aaah."

Claire restlessly looked around her surroundings, seemingly in anxiety.

Of course, hoodlums and the like were no match for Claire, an elementalist. Nevertheless, she somehow ended up feeling uneasy.


"...That guy too, he completely didn't return!"

Claire irritably made a *snap* sound with her whip.

To begin with, the reason Claire had gone out to town was for the sake of finding Kamito.

She had waited throughout the whole night yesterday, but Kamito didn't return in the end.

"What...? Despite the fact that I'd have forgiven you if you'd have honestly apologized."

Claire had also reflected a little about the part where she chased Kamito out without hearing his story out fully.

She absolutely couldn't forgive him for being in Ellis' room, but still, without saying cinders, she had planned on letting it end with him being about half-burnt at most.

(...Only for once, only once, I'll forgive him for swinging his tail at Ellis, despite his slave spirit social standing. I'm really tolerant, almost like a saint.)

Brushing her twin-tailed red hair quickly, Claire took out a small pouch from her uniform's pocket. It was a lovely pouch coiled with a yellow ribbon.

Inside were handmade chocolates.

Due to practicing over several times, she finally could make something that wasn't cinders.

"I-If he obediently apologized, I'd give him this as a reward. This is at most a reward. It has nothing to do with stuff like the Valentia Holy Festival."

Claire was muttering alone, when—

"Nyaa?"


"Hiwaa!"

Claire sprung up with shock.

When she turned around in a fluster, Scarlet had tilted its head to the side near her feet.

"A-Ahh, don't scare me! ...Good grief, you got lost as soon as we got here."

The one, who had been lost, was Claire, but she didn't admit that.

At that time, running footsteps were drawing closer from the other side of the alley.

"Claire!"

"...?"

Claire turned around, and the one that appeared from the corner of the alley was Kamito.

He was very out of breath, like he has been running for some time.

"Ka-Kamito! Why—"

"I caught sight of Scarlet's silhouette, and chased it here."

"Eh?"

(D-Does that mean he came looking for me?)

Claire made an angry-like, troubled-like, happy-like ambiguous face.

For the time being, as they were still in the middle of a quarrel, she didn't know what kind of expression she should be making.

(Th-That's right, I can't be making a sweet face here!)

The highly-prideful Claire had absolutely no intention of forgiving him until an apology came from Kamito. For the master to be apologizing to the slave was something that could absolutely not happen.

"Hmm, w-what did you come for at this point in time?!"

"You too, what are you doing at a place like this?"

Kamito asked, seemingly puzzled.

"...I-It's nothing, it isn't like I was searching for you." 

"Ahh, I definitely understand that, but—"

"Doesn't that mean you don't understand?!"

Claire agitatedly raised her whip up— Then, she suddenly desisted from doing so.

If she swung her whip here, it'd end up the same as yesterday.

"...W-Well, that's fine."

Claire lowered the whip she raised, and roughly brushed her hair.

Kamito was carrying a blank look.

"Hey, Kamito? Just by chance, I'm casually free this afternoon."

"...? Is that so?"

"That's right. S-So, err, treat me to cake or something at a coffee lounge or somewhere! Th-Then, I'll have... no... choice but to forgive you, you know?"

Her cheeks slightly reddened, and she glanced at Kamito with one eye.

Those words just now were the greatest compromise for this highly-prideful Claire.


It wasn't like she wanted to be treated to cake. For Claire, it was her plan to give him an easy pretext to apologize.

Kamito would say "What, it can't be helped" as he treated her to cake, and Claire would go "Hmm, I'll forgive you in consideration of this cake" while shrugging her shoulders— Just like that, she thought she could patch up their relationship with a bit-by-bit-like atmosphere.

(It's probably too late, but tentatively, he did come to apologize. I'm also not a kid, so I'll leniently forgive him.)

"Sorry, I have to police Academy Town with Ellis today."

"Oh, I understand. With Ellis...?"

Claire's face froze in a snap.

"H-Hey, Kamito... I didn't hear it well, but... what was that just now?"

"I said, I have Knights work. I am going around and policing the town with Ellis."

Kamito plainly said it once more.

"..."

"Hey, Claire?"

"O-Oh? With Ellis...it's a date, I-Isn't it."

Claire's voice was trembling all over.

"No, it isn't a date, it's Knights—"


"Oh, you've already become the Knights' dog, haven't you? That badge suits you, doesn't it?"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gogogogogogogogo...!*

"...!?"

Claire was angry.

Her red twin-tailed hair bristled up, and she was with an impulse like she was going to release a fireball anytime soon.

"You, just hear me out a little. You don't have to look at the Knights with that much hostility, do you?"

"W-What, don't say it like you understand!"

Claire flared up, and raised her whip.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gyruruu*.

"..."

A somewhat lovely sound was heard.

While Claire held her whip overhead, she awkwardly averted her eyes.

"You, could it be that you haven't had lunch yet?"

"What, isn't that because you didn't make it for me—?"

"The one who chased me out was you."

"That's... true, but..."

Claire glared at Kamito, and groaned.


"Claire, if it's alright with you, would you eat with me?"

"Eh?"

Claire widened her ruby eyes.

"...Th-That's... well..."

Her face reddened, and abruptly turned away.

"I-If you insisted no matter what, I'm fine with that."

"Well then, come. I am eating together with Ellis and the others at the park over there."

"...!?"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Pikuu*. Claire's temple twitched.

"Wh-What are you saying, you... Are you an idiot?!"

"I understand that you're on poor relations with the Knights, but they're all normal girls. If you had a meal together with them, wouldn't you become on good terms with them?"

"I have no intentions of being friends with them. I've hated the people from the Knights since a long time ago. I don't care if they're elite or not, but they utterly insulted Nee-sama!"

"Isn't that about the former Knights, Ellis isn't someone like that—"

"...What, Ellis this, Ellis that!"

Claire finally exploded. She was already at the limit of her tolerance.

Releasing her elemental waffe, she tightly grasped her blazing Flame Tongue.


...She didn't understand why.

However, it was unbearably vexing that Kamito was friendly with the Knights and Ellis.

"You are my slave spirit, so you're only mine!"

Her Flame Tongue was swung down as her emotions told.

However.

"—Leave it at that, Claire Rouge."

"...!?"

Her blazing Flame Tongue was held entangled by a lance clad in violent winds.

"It's a violation of school rules for a normal student to be using an elemental waffe in town."

"Ellis!?"

Ellis, who stood like she was protecting Kamito, was glaring at Claire with a relentless look.

"...!"

Claire gnawed down on her molars, seemingly vexed.

Large droplets of tears surfaced on her clear ruby pupils.

"...Enough."

"Eh?"

"That's enough, idiot, do as you please!"

"H-Hey, Claire... Guaa!"


Claire threw the bag of chocolates with all her strength at Kamito's face.

"I despise people like you! Wh-Why don't you just get along with Ellis—"

Claire shouted with a voice mangled with tears and ran away immediately.

===Part 5===

"—Hey, wasn't that Claire Rouge just now?"

The upperclassmen witnessed Claire's appearance of dashing out from the alley.

They were the adamantine elementalist and the demon mirror elementalist, who fought Claire's team yesterday.

The two of them glared annoyingly at Claire, who was running away.

"...She's alone now. We're also outside of the academy, where it's beyond the eyes of the teachers."

The adamantine elementalist girl exchanged looks, and

"It's useless. Look! That male elementalist and Captain-dono are around."

It was just the moment when Kamito and Ellis emerged, chasing Claire.

"Tch, that male elementalist joined the Knights, didn't he?"

"Isn't it that they're shorthanded because of the assault the other day? Compared to Velsaria's time, the quality of the Sylphid Knights had also fallen greatly."

The two of them were former members of the Knights.


Their confrontational relationship with that audacious Claire Rogue also stemmed from that period.

That said, their conduct lacked integrity to begin with. For example, they persistently misused and abused their authority as Knights to torment weaker students. After Ellis became captain, she had expelled these two from the Knights.

"However, if it's just three underclassmen, we could—"

"You better give it a rest. Even you two would be no match even if you join forces."

"...!?"

The two of them quickly poised themselves at the voice from behind.

The one, who was standing there without even her presence felt by the two elementalists, was—

A jade-green haired, bewitchingly beautiful girl.

"Hey, you two, don't you desire for more splendid power?"

"Wh...at...?"

"Mighty power, to the extent that that hellcat ojou-sama wouldn't be a problem."

{{Furigana|Corpse Federation|Murders|margin=12}} merchant, Vivian Melosa's red pupils ominously shone.

<noinclude>

==References and Translation Notes==
<references/>

{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter5|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter7}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter5

2013-04-10T15:01:54Z

Zakashi: it's the past tense of "grind" we are using here

==Chapter 5: Sylphid Knights==

===Part 1===

"...chan, please wake up."

He heard somebody's voice...

"...chan, onii-chan."

"Uh..."

Kamito rubbed his eyes as he slowly got up.

His back hurt. The muscles of his stiff joints were screaming.

"Hn..."

Feeling the hard sensation in his palms—

Kamito finally remembered.

Last night, he was driven out of the room by Claire, so he had reluctantly decided to sleep near the forest.

(...Eh, onii-chan?)

With his still-half-awakened consciousness, Kamito tilted his head.

Naturally, Kamito, who was an orphan, didn't have things like a sister.

After blinking his eyes several times, he suddenly shifted his focus to his side—

"Have you finally woken up, onii-chan?"


"E-Est!?"

A beautiful girl, fully nude save for knee-socks, was looking into Kamito's face expressionlessly.

She had a slim slender body. Morning dew wetted her milky skin and was shining.

"Wh-What's the matter?! Weren't you sleeping in Claire's room!?"

Kamito, whose face turned bright red, averted his eyes from the girl's gentle-sloping breasts in a fluster.

"In order for onii-chan to not freeze to death, I've been sleeping together with you and warming you up."

"...Th-That's a lie, right?"

"Did my thighs feel good, onii-chan?"

"...Guaa."

Kamito was greatly perplexed and groaned.

"By the way, since just now, what's with the 'onii-chan'?"

"Yes well, I tried using various ways of calling to wake you up, but you did not wake up at all, so Est tried calling you onii-chan. When I did that, Kamito immediately woke up."

"Is that true...?"

"Yes, onii-chan."

"Est, spare me the 'onii-chan'."

"Yes, onii-chan."

Est nodded expressionlessly.


"...Est. By any chance, are you angry?"

"..."

Est stared at Kamito with her mysterious violet pupils.

"I am Kamito's contracted spirit, you know."

"Eh?"

Est softly pressed her index finger onto Kamito's lips.

"Kamito, please promise me that you won't leave me behind as you please."

"..."

It seemed like she was angry about being left behind in Claire's room.

As for Kamito, he had just thought that it was pitiful to make her sleep outside with him, but—

"...Ahh, I got it. Sorry."

"It's a promise, Kamito."

Kamito entwined his pinky around Est's stretched out pinky and promised.

"—Well then, I have to go to Ellis' place."

The academy also had a day off today because of «Valentia Holy Festival» but there was a meeting being held.

Kamito had just decided to join the Knights, but it seemed like he had to work immediately from today.

"Let's go, Est."

"Okay, Kamito."


Est tightly grasped Kamito's hand, who had stood up.

===Part 2===

The Sylphid Knights' morning was early.

Even if it was the day that the academy had a holiday, there was a Knights' general meeting early in the morning.

Kamito turned up at the headquarters of the Sylphid Knights in accordance with the time he heard from Ellis.

The headquarters of the Knights was a staggeringly splendid building remodeled from an old cathedral. Considering that there were about twenty members, it might be a little too spacious.

Kamito took a breath, and pushed open the heavy steel door.

"Wh—?"

Kamito left the door open and froze for a few seconds.

It was full of girls in their underwear inside the holy cathedral.

There were girls who had just begun removing their skirts and girls who had their hands at their bra hooks.

"...!"

Ellis, who had pulled her stockings up to her knees, was widely opening her reddish brown eyes.
[[Image:STnBD V03 117.jpg|thumb]]

Her adult-like black lingerie was clearly etched into his retina.

And then—


"Gyaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Kamito received dozens of blasts of spirit magic on his body, and was even blown out of the other side of the door.



"...I see that I had taken the Knights' harshness lightly."

Kamito, whose whole body got shredded and tattered, glared at Ellis with scornful eyes.

Incidentally, the one who released the most powerful spirit magic, was this very Ellis.

If he wasn't wearing his highly blade-proof and impact-proof academy uniform, he certainly would have turned into pieces by the wild flying blades of wind.

Ellis awkwardly averted her eyes—

"Sorry. I should have told you this first. We always change our clothes here."

"Why don't you use the changing room?"

"That's because there was no need to. So far, we haven't had a male student."

"That is so, but..."

"Well, that's that. It suits you rather well, doesn't it, Kamito."

Ellis coughed in order to dodge the question.

Kamito attached a badge, which was engraved with the portrait of the wind Elemental Lord.

Since the Knights' armors were for female use only, it had been decided that he would attach this badge instead.

The Knights' girls were lined up horizontally in front of Kamito and Est.



There were twenty members all together. There also seemed to be several upperclassmen among them.

Before starting the Knights general meeting, Ellis was going to introduce Kamito.

"He'll be attached to the Knights starting from today, he's Kazehaya Kamito from the Raven Class. As you can see, he's a male elementalist, but I want you to welcome him without being afraid."

"..."

The Knights' girls were—

Glaring at Kamito with eyes discerning a suspicious person.

...It was understandable. Due to the incident just now, the impression Kamito made was the worst.

"Is that the rumored demon king of the night?" "I can't believe it, he made such a small girl into his lover..."

"However, isn't he a little good-looking?" "Don't be deceived, despite his appearance, he's a terrible pervert." "Even just now, he was looking at us like he ran his tongue all over our underwear."

...Those were the whispering voices of the girls that he heard.

"Hey, Ellis...my heart seems to be broken from the first day."

"I-It's alright. I know that you are not such a boy. If you display the part where you work as a splendid Knight, things like dishonorable rumors would instantly vanish."

"...That would be great if that was the case."

Although Kamito appreciated Ellis cheering him, he let out a heavy sigh.



===Part 3===

The Knights' general meeting started.

What was being told from Ellis' mouth was about the special quest for the Valentia Holy Festival.

"Today, the academy lectures are cancelled. Many academy students would end up flocking to the town because of the Valentia Holy Festival. In order to prevent dueling incidents from occurring in front of ordinary townspeople, all members, be cautious and take on the quest."

"Yes!"

The Knights girls all replied at once.

They were few in number, but they were superior elementalists. As expected, their morale was high.

However— there also seemed to be people harboring dissatisfaction about Ellis taking command among the upperclassmen.

Kamito didn't miss the fact that several people were plainly making seemingly dissatisfied faces.

(...I see, this is why Ellis also has it tough.)

It was the jealousy towards their junior, whose pedigree and ability was superior.

Sylphid Knights, which looked well-ordered, seemed to have various things going on internally.

However, Ellis ignored those upperclassmen and continued.

"Those Cursed Armament Seal merchants —{{Furigana|Corpse Federation's|Murders|margin=12}} people— seemed to have infiltrated into the Academy Town. They may be plotting to use this chance for some sort of contact with the academy students that are going out into the town. If you catch them in the act, please deal with it with your own judgment. Well then, dismiss—"


"—Hold on!"

Suddenly a sharp voice came from behind Kamito.

The steel door was forcefully and cleanly pushed open, and daylight shone in at once.

"...!?"

All of them were taken aback and turned around.

The one standing before the door was— a knight of a beautiful face with the appearance of an ice sculpture.

She had brilliant shiny blonde hair and cold piercing ice blue pupils. She was wearing a pure white overcoat on top of her uniform— it was a prestige overcoat that only the academy's top ranker was allowed to wear.

(The academy's strongest elementalist— Velsaria Eva.)

Something chilly ran through Kamito's spine. She, who he had faced at the arena at the Blade Dance three years ago, shouldn't have this much of a sense of intimidation.

Velsaria made a sound with her hard iron shoes and slowly walked over.

"Aneue, why are you here...!"

"It seems that the pawns have decreased considerably in numbers during the time I was absent."

"Aneue... did you say something just now?"

"I said the pawns have decreased. That's all."

"...!"

Ellis sternly lifted her eyebrows at Velsaria's spoken harsh remark.


"Are you calling the comrades of the Knights pawns?!"

"Pawns are pawns— Furthermore, they are useless sacrificial pawns. Without even being able to capture just one assailant, they were completely defeated on the contrary."

"It doesn't matter to me. However, I would like you to stop insulting the girls, who splendidly carried out their duties. Even if you are the former captain."

Velsaria looked down on Ellis, who protested, with her cold piercing eyes.

"I am a Fahrengart knight, I have never taken back words I have said."

"You...!"

"Or, you could try making me yield with brute force, Captain?"

Velsaria's thin fingers got hold of Ellis' chin.

"...!?"

Being overwhelmed by her stern gaze, Ellis spontaneously averted her eyes.

Velsaria shook her head like she was disappointed.

"Ellis, it was a mistake to entrust you with the Knights."

"—Wait."

Kamito grasped Velsaria's arm from the side.

He thought that he shouldn't meddle into the Knights' problems, but— getting Ellis involved was, as expected, something he couldn't stay silent about.


"When Jio Inzagi attacked the academy, Ellis rushed over there the fastest and fought. You don't have the right to condemn Ellis."

"Ka-Kamito..."

Ellis widened her eyes in shock.

"—Oh?"

Velsaria quickly released her hand from Ellis' chin.

"You're the male elementalist, who's said to have been admitted here with Lord Greyworth's recommendation, right?"

"Yes, so what of it?"

Kamito directly glared back at her cold piercing ice blue eyes.

"The one who captured that assailant was you, is that right?"

"It wasn't just me. The reason I won was because I fought together with the comrades of my team."

"Don't be modest. I can't understand why you're hiding your strength, but—"

Velsaria's sharp discernment shot through Kamito.

(...This person, don't tell me she knows my true identity?)

Cold sweat surfaced on Kamito's forehead.

...No, that couldn't be it. The time he met her was three years ago. Kamito's current looks should be very different from the time, when he was an innocent boy.

Velsaria—


"Your true strength is something I want to test out by all means."

"...What?"

Suddenly, one of her hands was raised overhead.
[[Image:STnBD V03 124.jpg|thumb]]

"...!?"

At that moment, a tremendous shock was radially released!

There was a thunderous sound as the whole cathedral shook.

The girls in the surroundings were blown away by the shock and thrown onto the wall.

There was a cloud of dust densely hanging over and marble tiles that were cruelly flipped up.

It was the spirit magic of the earth attribute— considering that its recital time was almost zero, it was of extraordinary power.

The ones that could avoid the shock— were only Ellis and several upperclassmen.

Kamito covered for Est and had taken the spirit magic flat on directly.

As he had reacted, he didn't collapse but his uniform was worn-out.

"You, what are you doing...?"

"Hmm, surprisingly, some remained."

Velsaria calmly moved her hand to her chin, and looked around in order to glare at the girls.

And then—

"You and you, and then... you two."

She nominated the four knights, who were standing without falling, one by one.



"Aneue, what on earth are you planning?!"

Enraged, Ellis drew closer to Velsaria.

"I'm making my selection. The people whom I nominated just now will be admitted into my team."

"Such a selfish thing—"

Her selection— was trying to headhunt the members of the Knights, which had few people even during normal circumstances.

Ellis could not stay silent.

"I don't intend to force them. It's all up to their own will to decide."

"Wh—?"

Ellis became taken aback and looked at the four nominated upperclassmen.

The four bewilderedly mutually exchanged glances, but—

"Y-Yes...!"

"It's an honor to be selected into Velsaria-dono's team!"

"Please include me by all means."

"M-Me too!"

They replied all together unanimously.

"...!"

Ellis chewed her lips, seemingly vexed.

She couldn't condemn the girls.


To be admitted into the team of the academy's strongest elementalist —ranking number one, Velsaria— was almost the same as obtaining a guaranteed ticket into the Blade Dance.

That temptation was too great, certainly because they were powerful people.

Besides, the girls were upperclassmen— members of the Knights when Velsaria was captain. In that case, they might be smoldering dissatisfaction from the start at the matter that Ellis was the captain like Kamito imagined just now.

"..."

As expected, it was probably awkward, so the girls didn't try to look at Ellis' face.

Velsaria faced toward Kamito.

"You surprised me— you had the time to cover for your contracted spirit with that distance. How about it, won't you join my team too. You seem to be able to at least be my outrider."

"I refuse. I'm with the hellcat ojou-sama's team."

Kamito glared back at Velsaria.

"«Team Scarlet»— Calamity Queen's sister's team that is currently in sixth place? Well, that's fine, if you won't be my pawn, then I'll just have to crush you."

Velsaria averted her line of sight as she lost interest—

And signaled the girls she headhunted from the Knights with her eyes.

As she made the clacking steel shoe sounds, she left the headquarters building.


Later—

The only things that remained were a cruelly up-turned mountain of rubble, plus Ellis and her comrades, in a dumbfounded state.

===Part 4===

(No matter what, it doesn't hurt...)

Velsaria, who left the Sylphid Knights building, distorted her expression in pain.

The throbbing was fast. The «Heart» was pounding like it went crazy.

(I thought that I had already gotten used to this «Heart» but—)

She had not yet reached the point of fully controlling it.

She couldn't hold back the destructive impulses that were spurring her on from the depths of her body.

Or, even her very own consciousness might already have begun to be corroded.

(However, that's fine. If it wasn't like that, it would be meaningless—)

What was important was the infinite divine power that the «Heart» brought about with it.

As long as she had this «Heart»— she could win.

Against that girl— {{Furigana|The Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=12}}, who defeated her.

Suddenly, a dark flame lit within Velsaria's cold eyes.

(However, that male elementalist— Kazehaya Kamito or so he was called?)


Those black pupils that directly glared at Velsaria.

Within those eyes— existed something familiar.

(They look similar...)

They were the same eyes as the girl three years ago.

However, there were parts that were definitely different.

Kazehaya Kamito turned his hostility-filled gaze at Velsaria.

(—She's different. '''She wasn't even looking at me'''.)

She thought nothing about Velsaria, who was her competitor.

She was looking at something much further away.

"..."

—The Blade Dance would start a few weeks later.

Finally, her rematch with her, which was her dearest wish, would come true.

"Just wait, Ren Ashbell—"

As Velsaria felt the throbbing of the raging «Heart», she ground her molars.

<noinclude>{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter4|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume3 Chapter6}}</noinclude>

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9

2013-03-31T11:22:19Z

Zakashi: /* Sentence's meaning */

Why are we emphasizing on using '''Bolds''' now? --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] 00:35, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

dont really know some ppl started added random bold's even though it's not in the original text. --[[User:RikiNutcase|RikiNutcase]]

I added the bolds, it's something due in the other chapters as well. It's for words that have the comma furigana. The author uses them to emphasis those words, I'm just fixing this lack of emphasis. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 00:51, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

==Jio's Smile==
Can someone give the original j-text for the 'extremely dreadful smile'. If I have that I might be able to suggest a better alternative. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 04:40, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

It's this 凄絶. I guess it could be fierce.
It means, 非常にすさまじいこと, something very susamajii --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 04:58, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

'''Ferocious''' is a better choice. It fits Jio's character as well. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 05:05, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

So should I replace with ferocious or not? [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 01:24, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

==Sword==
Just a question, why is the sacred sword that killed the Demon King called "vorpal sword", doesn't vorpal sword refer to Restia? [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 05:25, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

Yes, that's correct. I must have been daydreaming on that. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 05:29, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

==Lightning Strike==
Hi, in part 4, "It was one long lightning attack that had several times the one from just now.", does the "several times" referring to the lightning being longer or multiple lightning attacks? [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 23:47, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

I think multiple lightning attacks, mainly because of the following line.

The original line is this 先程の数倍はあろうかという一条の雷撃。 I believe I translated its ambiguity over as well. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 23:59, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

Well, I'm completely Japanese illiterate, so I can only base my edits on my understanding on English. Since it has something to do with the original Japanese text, I guess that translators and other editors can look into it. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 00:05, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

The first lightning attack had '''countless black lightning''' attacks/strikes. The second was a '''single''' lightning strike with many times the power of the previous attack (possibly because there was only one lightning strike so the power was also concentrated). This is what I understood. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 01:20, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

==Sentence's meaning==
Hi, in part 2, "However, it was greatly imperfect for him to call himself the Demon King— an elementalist.", "imperfect" has been replaced by "incomplete" in an edit. The sentence sounds a bit awkward here. May I know if the sentence here means that Kamito's strength is still not yet on par with the Demon King's? If it is so, would it be better to rephrase it? Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 08:16, 28 March 2013 (CDT)

Actually, that line is referring to Jio. "It's just 'wrong' to call him an elementalist." is how I'll simplify it. I've to admit 'imperfect' is not that of a good choice of wrong. Could you suggest a word along the lines of faulty? --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 08:37, 28 March 2013 (CDT)

Oops, I didn't read the whole context since I read it in the edit differences, sorry about that. Just to clarify, would the word here in a sense express that there are flaws to Jio's claim to be the Demon King given the limitations of his ability? Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 02:22, 30 March 2013 (CDT)

Yes, that would be correct.--[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 02:42, 30 March 2013 (CDT)

I was thinking along the lines of using "inadequate, inappropriate or inaccurate". Simplifying it to "it's just 'wrong'" seems great too. I'll leave it to you to decide the best way to phrase it. :p. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 06:22, 31 March 2013 (CDT)

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9

2013-03-30T07:23:33Z

Zakashi:

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9

2013-03-30T07:22:43Z

Zakashi:

Why are we emphasizing on using '''Bolds''' now? --[[User:Chancs|Chancs]] 00:35, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

dont really know some ppl started added random bold's even though it's not in the original text. --[[User:RikiNutcase|RikiNutcase]]

I added the bolds, it's something due in the other chapters as well. It's for words that have the comma furigana. The author uses them to emphasis those words, I'm just fixing this lack of emphasis. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 00:51, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

==Jio's Smile==
Can someone give the original j-text for the 'extremely dreadful smile'. If I have that I might be able to suggest a better alternative. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 04:40, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

It's this 凄絶. I guess it could be fierce.
It means, 非常にすさまじいこと, something very susamajii --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 04:58, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

'''Ferocious''' is a better choice. It fits Jio's character as well. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 05:05, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

So should I replace with ferocious or not? [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 01:24, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

==Sword==
Just a question, why is the sacred sword that killed the Demon King called "vorpal sword", doesn't vorpal sword refer to Restia? [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 05:25, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

Yes, that's correct. I must have been daydreaming on that. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 05:29, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

==Lightning Strike==
Hi, in part 4, "It was one long lightning attack that had several times the one from just now.", does the "several times" referring to the lightning being longer or multiple lightning attacks? [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 23:47, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

I think multiple lightning attacks, mainly because of the following line.

The original line is this 先程の数倍はあろうかという一条の雷撃。 I believe I translated its ambiguity over as well. --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 23:59, 20 June 2012 (CDT)

Well, I'm completely Japanese illiterate, so I can only base my edits on my understanding on English. Since it has something to do with the original Japanese text, I guess that translators and other editors can look into it. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] 00:05, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

The first lightning attack had '''countless black lightning''' attacks/strikes. The second was a '''single''' lightning strike with many times the power of the previous attack (possibly because there was only one lightning strike so the power was also concentrated). This is what I understood. [[User:Zero2001|Zero2001]] - [[User_talk:Zero2001|Talk]] - 01:20, 21 June 2012 (CDT)

==Sentence's meaning==
Hi, in part 2, "However, it was greatly imperfect for him to call himself the Demon King— an elementalist.", "imperfect" has been replaced by "incomplete" in an edit. The sentence sounds a bit awkward here. May I know if the sentence here means that Kamito's strength is still not yet on par with the Demon King's? If it is so, would it be better to rephrase it? Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 08:16, 28 March 2013 (CDT)

Actually, that line is referring to Jio. "It's just 'wrong' to call him an elementalist." is how I'll simplify it. I've to admit 'imperfect' is not that of a good choice of wrong. Could you suggest a word along the lines of faulty? --[[User:KuroiHikari|KuroiHikari]] ([[User_talk:KuroiHikari|Talk]] | ) 08:37, 28 March 2013 (CDT)

Oops, I didn't read the whole context since I read it in the edit differences, sorry about that. Just to clarify, would the word here in a sense imply that there are flaws to Jio's claim to be the Demon King? Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 02:22, 30 March 2013 (CDT)

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9

2013-03-28T13:16:26Z

Zakashi:

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9

2013-03-28T13:10:26Z

Zakashi: can't seem to find the word "ferverously"

==Chapter 9: Team Scarlet==

===Part 1===

At that moment, Fianna prepared her ritual outfit and began the arrangement of the resealing.

There were violent sounds of weapons clashing outside the door of the true shine.

"—It seems that he has come."

Claire summoned her Flame Tongue and glared at the door.

"Kamito and I'll defend the door to our last. Fianna, wait here."

"Are you saying you're going to hide me in a safe place alone!?"

"Yes, he isn't an opponent on whom you can use petty tricks many times. Even if you could, you no longer have any more Blood Stones."

"Don't misjudge me, Claire Rouge. I'm not a princess, who only has to be protected. Now, I'm an equal comrade of the team."

Fianna thrust her iron-ribbed fan, used for performing the ritual dance, towards Claire.

"I am the second rank princess maiden of the «Divine Ritual Institute»— As Rubia Elstein's sister, you know that that is not a frail existence that can only perform the dance, don't you?"

She had an expression as though she was challenging her. Claire gulped at the intensity emitted by the top-ranking princess maiden.

Certainly, the princess maidens of the «Divine Ritual Institute» did not receive battle training as elementalists.

However, by no means did it mean that they were powerless. On the contrary, as long as they chose the time and place, there were cases where their power surpassed even a high-ranking elementalist.

And, this very shrine was exactly the most suited place for her to exhibit her power.

"...I get it."

Claire brushed her red twin-tailed hair up.

"I'll protect you. Perform the most supreme Kagura!"

===Part 2===

—There was nothing like a warning sign. The blade dance suddenly began.

There were shrilling metallic sounds. Silver sword flashes flickered, intense sparks scattered inside the cave.

Terminus Est, which was swung downwards by Kamito, was repelled by Jio's sword.

Kamito stepped further in and scythed down his sword. Jio slightly shifted his center of gravity and evaded by a paper-thin margin. He made a shrilling loud laughter, as he jumped straight up.

Like a spider, he clung onto the ceiling as—

"Huh, there's no foreplay?! Let me enjoy a little conversation, {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}!"

"My bad, I don't have something like a chivalrous spirit— just like you!"

"...Wh!?"

Jio widened his red eyes. Kamito kicked the wall and jumped.


Terminus Est, swung in midair and struck Jio's sword.

As though metal was being forcibly scraped, a shriek resounded; and Jio's sword spirit was smashed up into many small pieces.

Kamito did not stop. He kicked the wall again, changed his course of direction and hit the side of Jio's face with his fist. He chased after Jio, who was pulled by gravity and falling to the ground, moreover, he kicked the ceiling and accelerated.

With movements like a bird hunting a prey in midair, he grabbed him by his collar, and the back of his head struck onto the ground like that.

A thick sound had reverberated. It was a strike without any mercy.

He threw a punch again with movements like a precision instrument— but at that moment.

Jio's right hand's spirit seal glowed. Sensing danger, he immediately jumped aside from on top of Jio.

At that moment, a silver sword-shaped flash emitted from Jio's palm.

What appeared in Jio's hand was a new elemental waffe.

It was a narrow sword attached with an ornament. It was a stabbing sword, called a rapier, used exclusively for thrusting.

Kamito retreated and put some distance between them. He prepared Terminus Est in both hands.

"As expected of {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}— What absurd movements."

"A high-order multi-sided movement in a closed environment— The first technique to be trained at the «Instructional School». '''But I wasn't doing it that thoroughly as you'''."

"..."

Jio kept silent.

"Just now, I understood it when our swords clashed. You are the same as me, an orphan of the «Instructional School»— '''A failure of the Demon King'''."

Instructional School— That was the name of the institution, where Kamito received training as an assassin when he was a child.

It was a secret training institution established by some nobles. There, they collected girls who possessed the qualities of an elementalist from orphanages all over the continent in order to raise a group of superior assassins.

At first, the establishment was supposed to be an agency for supplying assassins to their noble colleagues. However, the teachers of Instructional School became independent of the nobles before they knew it, and it had become something to embrace a monologue fanatic creed.

—Namely, the second coming of the Demon King.

He was the only male elementalist in history.

He was a Demon King, who used seventy-two spirits and led the continent to ruins.

'''It was to create his successor.'''

For that reason, the measures they took were very simple.

He was the only male elementalist left in history— If that was the case, it was natural that his successor had to be a boy.

With that thought, they collected boys who were deemed to have the ability to even slightly exchange feelings with spirits, and conducted hypnotism, drug administration, spirit possession experiments and so forth. However, the success rate should have been nil.

For this reason, the moment when Kamito was discovered eight years ago, those guys had been in ecstasy.

"—Correct."

Jio Inzagi expressed an extremely dreadful smile.


"The experiment of the Demon King's second coming by the hands of man— Its very first success is me."

Kamito—

Distorted his mouth cynically, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Its very first success? Are you joking?"

"I understand your feelings of not wanting to acknowledge it. Nevertheless, this isn't a joke."

"I do not mean it like that."

Kamito shook his head like he was commiserating.

"A male elementalist, who uses seventy-two contracted spirits— if that was considered a success, then you are '''absolutely not a success, you know'''."

"...What?"

Jio's red eyes widened, and his expression distorted in hatred.

"I too was fooled at first. Whether you were really using seventy-two contracted spirits. —However, I was wrong."

Kamito indifferently informed him.

"Your spirits aren't contracted spirits. —They're all sealed spirits."

"...!"

That's right— The spirits, that Jio Inzagi was using, were not spirits that had exchanged the ritual of contract.

'''They were spirits that were sealed and treated as equipment for the seals engraved on his body.'''


The reason Kamito realized that was that Jio never used the same spirit twice.

(...Besides, he was also using several sword spirits of the same type.)

Unless one planned on using and throwing them away from the start, there was no point in contracting a large quantity of sword spirits in that way. Compared to handling several sword spirits, it should be much more efficient to nurture one sword spirit.

Besides, no matter how powerful Est's elemental waffe was, it was strange that a sword spirit, famous for being the toughest in its endurance, was broken that easily.

"...My point is that they're the same as the spirit crystal that Fianna had used and thrown away."

As long as the ritual of contract was not exchanged, a spirit could not even be nurtured, and its true power as an elemental waffe also could not be drawn out.

The divine power that he thought was inexhaustible was also a mere illusion.

"You are a fake Demon King, Jio Inzagi. No, you're not even an elementalist."

Certainly, while he housed that many sealed spirits in his body, the fact that he could maintain his body was a definite success. If he was an ordinary person, he was sure to go crazy because of the spirits' rejection.

However, it was greatly incomplete for him to call himself the Demon King— an elementalist.

He pretended as if he was contracted with several spirits, it was no more than a deception.

"...Huh, so what?"

Jio's red eyes shone glaringly, and he spat out.


"Even if you know that, there's no changing the fact that you can't beat me!"

Jio kicked the ground. The rapier sword spirit accelerated like it exploded in his hand.

"I'm the Demon King! That verification will be achieved by killing— {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}, you!"

Just before reaching Kamito, he ducked to lower his body, aimed for Kamito's throat, and launched a thunderous thrust.

Kamito slightly turned his head and avoided it. Turning about on his pivot leg, he returned with a counter kick.

His sole gouged Jio's chest. Continuing the momentum, Kamito held aloft Est overhead.

"—, Manifest, {{Furigana|flame wolf spirit| Barguest|margin=13}}!"

Jio's arm's seal glowed— at that moment, a blazing flame fang attacked Kamito.

It was a lava hound, clad in black flames. The flame fang bit his left arm that was raised overhead.

Intense pain coursed through his whole body, as though his blood was boiling. However—

"...Raaaa!"

Kamito rotated, swung his arm, and smashed the lava hound that was biting him into a wall.

The flame exploded and scattered. There were smashed up lava rocks. If it was a contracted spirit, it would go back again to protect its master— however, a sealed spirit, which was only forcefully released, vanished into empty space as it was.

"How lukewarm... Claire's flames are much hotter!"

An extremely dreadful smile surfaced, and Kamito immediately swung Terminus Est horizontally.

Jio's posture was slightly crumbled by the wind pressure— that chance of a moment was not overlooked by Kamito.

Holding the silver shiny sword up overhead, he launched a strike with all his might—


"—Manifest, {{Furigana|shield spirit|Aegis|margin=13}}!"

However, that strike was stopped by the shield spirit Jio released.

Sword spirit against shield spirit— even for Est, the attribute compatibility was overly poor!

However, Kamito did not draw back. Without change— he further pushed the sword in.

"—Let's go Est, show me just how serious you can be!"

Responding to Kamito's shout, Teminus Est's light glowed brighter.

The brightness became a long flash and covered the sacred sword—

At that moment, it changed its appearance to a gigantic sword that far exceeded Kamito's stature.

"Wh...at!?"

"Ooooooo!"

Kamito roared. He set a crack into the released shield spirit.

And then— It was smashed right in half!

"This is absurd... A sword spirit destroyed a shield spirit!?"

"This is the power of a contracted spirit bound by the spirit seal— Jio Inzagi!"

Kamito held the large sword overhead again, at that moment—

"... You bastaarrd!"

(—What?)

Clutched within the hand that Jio stuck out, '''was a shiny red comma-shaped jewel'''.


The moment Kamito saw that jewel, an indescribable chill ran down his spine.

Terminus Est in his hand weakly shook.

The moment her blade touched the surface of the jewel—

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Pishi*— a small crack developed on Est's blade.

"...!?"

The {{Furigana|Demon King Killing Sacred Sword|Demon Slayer|margin=13}} lost its dazzling brightness.

From the place the crack was developed, something like a black stain was spreading—

(—, Est is being corroded!?)

Kamito tried to draw back Est, and at that moment.

Jio sneered at him.

"I had said that that was your weakness— Ren Ashbell."

"Guu...!"

The released rapier had pierced the side of Kamito's abdomen.

As Kamito grasped Est, who was being varnished black, he went down on his knees at that spot.

"You can't accept spirits as tools. Therefore, you are weak."

Jio calmly stood up while playing with the red shiny comma-shaped jewel in one hand.

"That spirit crystal is... don't tell me—"

"Ahh?... That's right. That princess was holding the same thing."


"A Blood Stone...?"

It was a national-level treasure that could seal the power of a top-ranking spirit.

(Why does he have—)

"That's right. This very thing is the source of my power— the power of {{Furigana|mad king spirit|Nebuchadnezzar|margin=13}} that rules over many spirits."

Jio loudly laughed with the jewel in his hand, and the seals engraved on his whole body ominously emitted a glow.

"..., I see, the reason you were using that many sealed spirits was the power of the high-ranking spirit that was sealed in that jewel."

In contrast to the Blood Stone which Fianna had possessed which had its releasing done, it seemed that the one Jio had, manifested its effect just by being attached onto his body.

"...What a complete fake. What an unthinkable Demon King-sama."

"You have the gall to say that, I'll make your sword spirit mine right here and now—"

The black stain was encroaching Terminus Est. Jio's loud laughter resounded within the cave.

However, a faint smile surfaced at Kamito's lips.

"Jio Inzagi, do you know? This tunnel reverberates voices well."

"Ahh? What are you saying—"

"Why do you think I was specially lecturing you about the true form of your magic tricks?"

"What?"

That's right, it did not mean that he was having a pointless talk.


Kamito was doing it to convey information.

That the spirits he used were not contracted spirits, but just sealed spirits.

"Don't misunderstand. The one you're fighting isn't {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}."

At that moment, Flame Tongue that was let loose coiled around Jio's right hand.

"—It's Team Scarlet."

"...!?"

The door to the true shrine was opened. There—

Brushing up her red twin-tailed hair, and holding Flame Tongue in her hand, Claire Rouge was standing.

"You did well, Kamito. As expected of my slave spirit!"

"Why you..."

Pressing onto his side abdomen injury, Kamito groaned with a deadpan look.

Jio shook off Flame Tongue, and glared at Claire.

"Huh, thank you— You opened the true shrine's door especially for me."

"Yes, to defeat you."

There was a voice coming from behind Claire.

Fianna, who had put a solemn ritual costume on her body, was calmly walking.

Even for a girl, who had acted like an imp, she wasn't a powerless girl frightened with fear.

Standing rigidly— was a white robed Queen.


"I'll show it to you. The ritual Kagura of the Empire's second princess, Fianna Ray Ordesia."

===Part 3===

Four years ago. That day— the girl's heart had been completely broken.

Being beat by the overwhelming fear and the sense of helplessness, she became unable to use her spirit.

To become a splendid Queen like Rubia-sama— The girl, who was cut off from that dream, had already lost it.

It became that her parents, even her sisters, and even the court ladies ignored her as they quickly changed their attitude.

The attitude of the girl, who was overly strict with herself and others, seemed to have incurred enmity before she knew it.

Therefore, the moment that the fact that she lost her power was known, it became that no one would care for her.

Before she knew it, it became like the girl closed her heart towards everything.

Without opening her heart to anyone, without embracing any interest— she had been secluding herself inside the castle.

—However, it was three years ago. The girl met her.

The Strongest Blade Dancer, who was advancing through the Blade Dance with overwhelming strength.

The girl became engrossed with her blade dance that blew away everything.

She felt like her blade dance had changed something.

Once again, she was given the strength to stand up.

(Kamito-kun, the real reason that I came to this academy— I feel like I understand it now.)


As long as she was alone, she would not have noticed it.

The things like the «wish» attained because of the Blade Dance might be truly inconsequential to her.

With just her, who she admired.

With the boy from that day, it might be just that she wanted to fight together.

(...Kamito-kun, you had said that I am your comrade.)

Even when he knew that she couldn't use her contracted spirit, he had said that.

(Besides, Claire Rouge... She also had come in contact with me without being different.)

Four years ago, that time when she stood against the Calamity Queen, she was just alone.

However, now— she had comrades that she had to protect.

Holding her iron-ribbed fan in both hands, Fianna Ray Ordesia danced the Kagura.

—(Dance, you many spirits, be released from that binding body, and dance crazily together with me!)

She was the second ranked princess maiden of the only Queen training institution in the continent— «Divine Ritual Institute».

That Kagura she was dancing was not a combat support dance that strengthened spirits.

Hearing Kamito and Jio's conversation that could be heard from the other side of the wall, she knew it intuitively.

Kamito had conveyed the things she could do as a Kagura dance expert.

If supposed that Jio Inzagi's spirits were mere sealed spirits—

To stamp their feet like time ticking away and move vigorously with stream-like movements.

Those were the perfect dance movements that they were trained in at the «Divine Ritual Institute» before they learned words.


"The seventh ritual of the ritual Kagura— The ritual of the mad banquet, I'll dedicate it here!"

===Part 4===

"Ga...Aaah, ah, ah... you bastard, what did you do to meeee!"

Suddenly, Jio Inzagi's body twisted and fell to the ground.

Both arms were twisted in impossible orientations, and the seals of his whole body flickered violently.

"Your sealed spirits are going on a rampage. They're reacting to Fianna's dedicated ritual Kagura."

Kamito slowly stood up with Terminus Est in his hand.

"What...was that...!"

"Listen, your body that housed sealed spirits is something like a shrine that deifies many spirits."

He shrugged his shoulders as he told him.

"Furthermore, they were certainly not contracted spirits that were bound by a bond. Because of that jewel's power, they are just sealed spirits that were forcefully made to obey. There's no way that they would not be affected by an interference from outside— like the effect of Fianna's dedicated Kagura."

"Guu... Damn, gaaaa!"

Jio yelled, faced towards Fianna, who was dancing the Kagura at the true shrine, and released spirits.

Five spirits of varying attributes became entangled, and rushed in a squirming manner.


That—

"It's useless."

Claire, who was standing before the door, gathered and knocked them down with her Flame Tongue.

"I'm sorry but something like spirits that lost control can't even be an opponent for me."

"Guu... haa..."

With his body's freedom stolen by the rampaging sealed spirits, Jio's body violently convulsed.

"I'll take you under our custody. And, we'll have you speak about the incident on the {{Furigana|strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr}}."

Kamito approached him to apprehend him, at that moment.

"—That'll be troubling, Kamito."

From an empty space, a clear girl's voice was heard.

In front of Kamito, who stopped his feet spontaneously, thick darkness appeared.

"...!?"

It was that pleasant voice, which he would never forget.

Before long, the darkness, which was born from empty space, transformed into the appearance of a beautiful girl.

"Jio is a precious experimental body. It would be troubling for you to take him arbitrarily."

"Restia..."

Kamito groaned like he was squeezing it out from the inside of his throat.

She was his former contracted spirit— that lovely appearance of hers, which had not changed in a single way from three years ago.


Despite that Kamito had changed so much.

"You, you're the darkness spirit from that day."

"Long time no see, hell cat ojou-san."

The girl sweetly waved her hand at Claire, who was taken aback and had shouted.

"...Restia, is it you? The one trying to release {{Furigana|strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr}}."

He had a premonition— a premonition that she was involved behind the scene of this incident.

There was the fact that Jio Inzagi knew Kamito's true identity.

And then, there were the darkness spirits that were holding a ritual at the shrine above ground.

Above all else, the throbbing from the spirit seal, which was engraved on his left hand, was telling him of her presence.

The lovely darkness spirit made a lonely smile and nodded.

"That's right. It's my mission to release the spirit sleeping here."

"Why are you doing..."

"Because that's her desire. That's all."

"...Her?"

"Kamito, you'll eventually meet her. However, it's not now. You have not awakened yet."

"Restia, I—"

—At that moment, Jio, who had fallen to the ground, roared.


"Move aside, darkness spirit. I have not lost yet!"

"Give it up. I've said it, haven't I? You can't even beat the current him."

"Shut up, I'm-I'm the one, who will succeed the Demon King! To be beaten at..."

"You are not the Demon King. You're not even an elementalist, you're just a failure."

The darkness spirit girl said in a cold tone.

"After all, the one, who will succeed the Demon King, is—"

"..., Shut up, shut up shut up shut up, you bratsssssss!"

Suddenly, Jio, who shouted, grabbed the darkness spirit's ankle with his hand.

He stood up like that, and hung Restia upside down.

"Jio, what are you trying to do!?"

"To thank you. I am going to use you, darkness spirit!"

Jio loudly laughed with a face filled with madness.

A shiny deep crimson comma-shaped jewel was tightly grasped in one of his hand. That—

Was struck onto the ground near his feet.

"Wh!?"

"Ha, hahahaha, ha! This is the power of the Demon King, who coercively rules over even the high ranking darkness spirit!"

The deep crimson Blood Stone made a shrill crushing sound and was smashed up.

The power of {{Furigana|mad king spirit|Nebuchadnezzar|margin=13}} poured out, became a feeler of shadow and swallowed the darkness spirit's body.


"Restia!"

Enraged, Kamito swung Terminus Est,

However, that slash, which was charged and released with the strength of all his might— did not cut and tear Jio apart.

A gigantic jet-black demon sword was grasped in Jio's hand.

That had stopped Terminus Est's blade, and was absorbing her radiance.

"That's... don't tell me, Restia's—!?"

It was her elemental waffe— {{Furigana|The sword that pierces the truth|Vorpal Sword|margin=13}}.

Its shape was certainly different, but that was no other than the demon sword, which the once {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}} was using.

"Scarlet!"

Claire shouted.

Aiming at Jio, who was madly laughing loudly, the scorching hell cat rushed on at him.

"Small fry, do not hinder the Demon Kinnggg!"

Losing his composure, Jio swung the jet-black demon sword.

Forcing back Kamito's sword— countless black lightning attacks were released from its blade.

"Kyaa!"

"Claire!"

Claire screamed, as her petite body was blown away.

"Jio Inzagi!"


Kamito roared, and swung down Terminus Est again.

"You too— Dieeeeee!"

Facing Kamito, who was rushing at him from the front, he released the black lightning attack.

It was one long lightning attack that had several times the power of the previous one.

It was directly aimed at and converged on Kamito—

"Like such a thing will hit—"

"—'''It'll hit'''."

Jio expressed a ferocious smile.

Just before dodging, Kamito realized it.

Fianna was behind him.

===Part 5===

Fianna was staring at the assailing black lightning attack dumbfounded.

She could not dodge it. The heavy ritual costume had stolen her body's freedom.

(...Am I going to die here?)

The girl's chest was filled with a calm resignation. She reflexively closed her eyes.

However—


"Fianna!"

She was taken aback by that.

When she opened her eyes, Kamito had caught the rampaging lightning attack with his sword.

"Kamito-kun!?"

"Oooooooooo!"

While his whole body was being struck by the lightning attack, Kamito went forward.

{{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}, the one who had performed a splendid blade dance at the venue of the Blade Dance.

Was protecting Fianna in a tattered condition.

Even though he became bloody and was even barely standing.

"No, Kamito-kun! You're going to die—"

"I never want to lose it again. My precious comrades."

"...!"

His back was the same as that day three years ago.

It belonged to the boy, who had saved a powerless girl in the forest of Astral Zero.

It was the back of the boy, who she first fell in love with— And it was right in front of her eyes!

(This time I have to protect—)

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Ba-thump*. A hot emotion was filling Fianna's chest.

(—I want to protect '''him, the one who I love'''.)


Since that day— she had always been alone.

Without being needed by anyone, without anyone accompanying her, she was the Lost Queen.

Without anything to expect, she had given up on everything.

(—However, it's different now.)

She saw Ren Ashbell's blade dance three years ago.

And then, now she was looking at Kazehaya Kamito's back.

(—I've changed! After all, I have a wish I want granted!)

She wanted to aim for the «Blade Dance» together with Kamito.

(That was— my real wish.)

The black lightning attack was pushing back and covering the light from Terminus Est held by Kamito.

His body seemed like it was going to collapse at any time. However, he was still standing.

"—Thou, servant of the king of the child of man, knight and master swordsman!"

Fianna's lips spun the spirit language summoning majestically.

"—By the contract of the old blood, become the sword that protects me, come forth and do my bidding! "

A nostalgic feeling was resurrected in her chest.

It was the sensation that should have been lost four years ago— The throbbing of the spirit seal.

The princess' knight, which had not responded no matter how many times it was called since that day, was now—

"Come forth, holy knight spirit «Georgios»— Thou shalt become the sword that protects me!"


A dazzling light overflowed before her eyes.

It was the holy light that cleansed all darkness. It was the light that had been always protecting Fianna.

The armored knight, armed with a silver sword and a large shield, was standing before her.

It was the holy knight spirit, handed down in the Ordesia Empire— «Georgios».

There was no need for words. Fianna gently smiled at that nostalgic appearance.

A holy attribute spirit was a spirit that could only be used by a princess maiden possessing an absolutely pure soul.

Fianna, who had etched into her chest the pain of the past and yet recovered—

Was now recognized as the true master.

"I command you in the name of the Ordesia Empire's second princess— Protect Kamito-kun!"

Fianna, cloaked with the majesty of a queen, placed her hand at her waist and ordered it.

The holy knight spirit nodded without a word and brandished its large sword, which was approximately as long as its height.

Making an underground rumbling, like the ground was shaking, it rushed into the raging black lightning attack.

"—Why you, are you defying the Demon King!"

Jio Inzagi shouted. The lightning attack became a rushing stream and surged forward.

However— «Georgios» rushed onwards in the face of that.

The black lightning attack was being repelled by the shield it held aloft.

A high ranking holy spirit had full resistance against the darkness attribute.

Its large knightly sword cut and cleansed the darkness, and cleared the path in front of Kamito!


"Wh...at...!?"

Jio's face distorted with shock— Kamito didn't overlook that opportunity.

"Let's go, Est!"

Kamito drove in all the divine power he had into Terminus Est.

The {{Furigana|Demon King Killing Sacred Sword|Demon Slayer|margin=13}}, which was swallowed up in darkness and lost its light, shone brightly once more.

"Ooooooo!"

Kamito ran with Terminus Est, who became a gigantic sword, in his hand.

"Tch— Manifest, flame spirit!"

Aiming at Kamito, who was plunging towards him from the front, Jio released the flame spirit—

"I won't let you!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Hyun*— A red killing flash occurred and swallowed that flame.

Claire, who was covered with injuries, was standing with her Flame Tongue in her hand.

"—I told you, we are a team."

As he plunged towards Jio's chest, Kamito told him.

"Therefore, I'll continue to grow strong. Stronger than the time I was called {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}."

And then— Kamito's single hit cut off the fake Demon King's arm.

<noinclude>{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter8|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Epilogue}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter8

2013-03-28T13:04:27Z

Zakashi: "of national level" does not require "a" in front, since the term is more general, the past participle of "become" is still "become"

==Chapter 8: Fianna's confession==

===Part 1===

"Ug..."

"Kamito!"

"Kamito-kun"

When Kamito awakened, there were the faces of two girls before his eyes.

"...Claire, Fianna."

"Great, you've awakened."

"You're too rash... idiot."

...It seemed that he overused his divine power and had fainted.

Upon getting up from the cold ground, Kamito looked around his vicinity.

The flickering glow of the spirit crystal was dimly illuminating the darkness.

The tunnel had collapsed and it seemed that the path was completely blocked by the fallen earth and sand.

"Both of you, are your injuries alright?"

"Yes, we are... are you alright?"

"Ah, I only overused my divine power a little. What, have I worried you?

"Id-Idiot, it's not I like I was worried or anything!"


"Ouchhhh!"

Claire's palm landed a clean hit exactly on his wound. Kamito writhed in the intense pain.

"...Come on, what are you doing?"

Fianna sighed in astonishment.

Kamito pressed his hurting shoulder as he surveyed the surroundings,

"Are the others safe?"

"Yes...although, it's hard to say that they're safe. For now, I've given them some emergency treatment."

When Fianna held up the light, the appearance of Ellis and the others lying on the ground could be seen.

...Their condition certainly couldn't be said as 'safe'.

Rakka and Reishia, who received the poison directly, were in an unconscious critical state.

Ellis seemed to be conscious, but it seemed that walking was impossible in that condition.

Next to Rinslet, who was leaning on and sitting against the wall, Fenrir was licking its master's wounds.

"What on earth happened to him — Jio Inzagi?"

"Fianna released the spirit that was sealed in the spirit crystal. He was swallowed into the pillar of light and disappeared...Well, although, I don't think he's dead."

"Was that a spirit crystal...?"

When Kamito faced towards Fianna, she nodded with a "Yes".

"However, a spirit crystal that can seal such a spirit—"


It was such a destructive power that it forced back Jio Inzagi's Thanatos, and made the tunnel collapse.

That holy spirit that Fianna released was, without a doubt, a high ranking spirit.

However, he had not heard of something like the existence of a spirit crystal and so forth that can seal a high ranking spirit.

"Blood Stone—a treasure handed down in the Ordesia royal family."

"...?"

"Hey you, you also don't know the Blood Stone? It's common knowledge for elementalists."

Claire sighed in astonishment at Kamito frowning.

"It can't be helped, I'm different from a noble, and I'm unfamiliar with things like that."

When Kamito said that, Claire shrugged her shoulders in disappointment and gave an explanation.

"Blood Stone isn't an ordinary spirit crystal. It can seal a part of a high ranking spirit's power with a special spirit crystal that was mined at a sacred ground of Astral Zero. Of course, it isn't something that you can buy with money or power. It is a genuine treasure of national-level, after all."

"Is that so..."

Although her existence was erased from the royal family, Fianna was the former second princess of the Ordesia Empire. The moment she was admitted into Areishia Spirit Academy, she might have been made to hand it over in the screening. 

"I had tricked the stupid palace guards and pilfered it from the royal family's treasure hall. As I had switched it with an imitation, it's alright."

The princess puffed her chest out.


"Ah, I thought it was like that... Hn?"

Incidentally, Kamito picked up a strange feeling that something was out of place.

The out-of-place feeling's true identity was... Fianna's pushed out chest.

...Small. It had obviously become small.

(That reminds me, just now Fianna...)

She was hiding that spirit crystal—Blood Stone in her chest.

Although it wasn't such a big thing, how was she hiding that?

"Ug... D-Don't look..."

Fianna, who noticed Kamito's line of sight, crossed both her hands and bashfully covered her chest.

"Kamito, Fianna, you know, had been deceiving us all this time!"

Claire thrust out her finger at her in a snap like she was blaming her.

"Deceiving?"

"That's right, this girl is a fake-breast princess!"

"..."

Kamito slowly turned towards Fianna with a deadpan look,

"...Uh, is that right?"

"Th-That's right, they're pads... is that wrong?"

The princess' cheeks reddened, and she quickly faced away.


"No, it's nothing worth getting furious over, but... why did you do such a thing?"

"...To protect the Blood Stone. No one could steal it if it was within my chest. Moreover, I heard b-boys all like large breasted girls, so..."

From the start, her purpose for coming to the academy was to ensnare Kamito and make him her comrade.

...That reminded him, she had been coming and pressing her breasts on him at random, but was that for such a thing?

"No, there are also boys who like girls even if their breasts are small."

"Eh?"

For some reason, Claire's ears reacted with a twitch to Kamito's words.

"Ka-Kamito, what you said just now... is that true?"

"Yeah, after all, to each their own liking of the opposite sex. Well, personally, I think that compared to having none, having them is better... Ouch!"

At that moment, Claire's sharp whip came flying.

"Y-You, you...!"

"No, what I said just now was my personal thought. In the world, there are also many boys of such enthusiastic preference—"

"Uuu!"

Slight tears surfaced in her ruby pupils, as Claire bit her lips.

(Nevertheless, that soft feeling was the pads?...)


...He completely did not notice it. As expected, the technological level of the imperial capital couldn't be made light of.

"Although it was my plan to use that Blood Stone at the «Blade Dance» as a trump card."

Greatly lowering her volume, Fianna clasped to her breasts, as she muttered.

Although, it wasn't that they were that small. They were about normal for a girl of her age.

At the very least, they weren't deplorable breasts like Claire's—

"Uh, what?"

"...No, sorry. It was nothing."

Kamito averted his eyes in a fluster away from Claire, who was glaring sternly with her teary eyes.

Ahem, he coughed and turned towards Fianna.

"However, why did you bring such a spirit crystal?"

The spirit and part of its power, which were released from the spirit crystal, would instantly return to Astral Zero, it could not be used again.

Therefore, elementalists, who possessed contracted spirits, didn't use spirit crystals normally. After all, it was certainly more effective to use spirit magic and contracted spirits most of the time in a blade dance.

"..."

When he asked, Fianna looked downwards and calmly sighed.

"Well, it'll get exposed eventually. I'll tell you guys right here and now."

"...?"


Kamito and Claire exchanged glances at Fianna's unusually serious expression.

"—It was four years ago from now, I lost the ability to use my spirit."

===Part 2===

It was for this reason that while being expected as the Queen candidate next to Rubia Elstein— Fianna Ray Ordesia the second princess resigned from that position and was erased from the royal family.

That was '''because she could not use her contracted spirit'''.

"A princess maiden, who can't use a contracted spirit, doesn't have the qualifications to be a Queen worth serving the Elemental Lord."

Fianna looked downwards, and muttered like that in self-deprecation.

"..."

A elementalist that couldn't use her spirit was —literally— no longer an elementalist.

And the situation, where an elementalist suddenly became unable to use her spirit, wasn't something that unusual.

For example, there were cases where her body may be soiled, or the covenant made during the contract was broken— even outside of such cases, there are cases that one became unable to exchange feelings with her spirit due to some sort of emotional trauma.

In short, the exchange of feelings with the spirit was greatly dependent on the elementalist's state of mind.

What was the incident that became the cause of it— She did not even talk about anything concerning that.


Kamito didn't plan on enquiring that deeply.

(However, speaking of four years ago—)

It was that major incident that shook the Ordesia Empire.

It was the year that the Calamity Queen's— Rubia Elstein's mutiny occurred.

And then, Fianna was a princess maiden of the same «Divine Ritual Institute» as her.

She experienced that incident, which caused an emotional trauma that made her lose her spirit contract power.

A coincidence— he didn't think so.

"I'm sorry for hiding it. Although, I was thinking about telling it someday... If I was known to be unable to exchange feelings with my spirit, I would have become unable to stay in this academy."

"But, how did you pass the examination? If I'm not mistaken, there must be a practical examination."

Kamito passed exceptionally without an examination due to Greyworth's authority, but, originally, there was a strict practical examination in the academy. It was not that anyone possessing the ability of an elementalist could enter.

"I concealed several pieces of spirit crystals in my sleeves, and released them in sequence. To pretend that it was as if I was using a spirit. Since I had achievements when I was a Queen candidate of the «Divine Ritual Institute» once, they were easily deceived."

"You used valuable spirit crystals for such a dishonest entry to the academy?"

"The invigilation also would never think that there would be a person doing such a thing."

"How stupid, even if you were admitted like that, isn't it obvious that you'd be instantly exposed. For you to do such a thing, why did you come to this academy?

"That's—"

Fianna glanced towards Kamito.

Her goal was to join the team with the {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}} and be victorious in the Blade Dance.

However, he would be troubled if Claire was told that... Very troubled.

Thereupon, Fianna smirked in a way that only Kamito understood.

"That's to kiss Kamito-kun—"

"That's not it. Hey, Claire, stop taking out your whip."

Fianna saw Claire's eyebrow lifted up and giggled.

"It's a joke. My goal is to be victorious in the Blade dance and have my «wish» granted. To regain my lost spirit contract power."

"Everyone is the same in aiming for the victory of the Blade Dance. However, why did you think of joining our team? It's also weird for me to say this but our team has the lowest rank."

"..."

Thereupon, Fianna suddenly placed her finger on her lips as she pondered.

"...That's right. Since I thought that you guys would accept me."

It was subtly different from Fianna's usual impish tone.

"What do you mean?"


"After all, you have a male elementalist and you are the sister of the Calamity Queen. Even if the Lost Queen, who has lost her elementalist qualifications, joins in, it isn't that out of place, isn't it?"

She had that joking tone. She had a lonely expression like she was self-deprecating herself somewhere.

The reason that Fianna came to the academy and approached Kamito.

To be victorious in the Blade Dance, she would use Kamito, who was once the {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}— or so she claimed.

However, the true reason —unexpectedly— might be more like this.

Being lonely, being a fibber, the impish princess '''just wanted friends'''—

"Well then, I've confessed my secret but—"

Ahem, Fianna coughed and said.

"What am I going to do? The team wouldn't need an elementalist who can't use her contracted spirit, I wonder?"

The princess stared at Kamito and Claire in front of her with a lonely expression.

Her tone was certainly in a joking manner, but her black pupils were wavering, seemingly insecure.

And then, Claire had also probably noticed. That her fingertips were slightly quivering.

Before long—

"It doesn't matter, such a thing."

Kamito sighed.

"Fianna, you protected us by risking your life. You're our comrade."


"...!"

Fianna widened her eyes, astonished.

"Hey, is that alright?"

Kamito turned towards Claire—

"That's fine."

Claire nodded as she looked towards Fianna's chest, who had turned pale.

"Fianna, you are my comrade. Comrade of the breastless alliance."

"Don't put me together with you! I have more than you, Claire!"

"Wh-What was that!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gogogogogo*... Claire's red hair flared up, standing on its end; and at that moment.

"...!?"

Suddenly, the ground shook.

From the almost-crumbling ceiling, fragments of rubble were dropping in large amounts.

"...An earthquake again!?"

"Don't tell me... {{Furigana|the strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}} is already about to wake up?"

"It seems so. However, as long as Jio Inzagi hasn't found the «true shrine», he shouldn't be able to completely undo the seal."

"Well then, if we could find the true shrine first—"


Claire stopped in mid-sentence and gasped in surprised.

"The seal specification materials that was stolen from the academy— the location of the true shrine might be recorded in that."

"I see! If that was the goal for him to steal the materials—"

"No, the military materials are already enciphered. Deciphering it should take time."

The one, who raised her voice, was Ellis raising half her body up from the ground.

It seemed that she woke up from the earthquake just now.

"Ellis, can you already move?"

Kamito called out to her.

"No, I still can't walk yet. It's shameful but my legs are being paralyzed by the poison."

Ellis struck her unmoving knees as she bit her lips, seemingly vexed.

"I also have not recovered to the point that I am able to fight."

This time it was Rinslet, who was leaning against the wall, raising her voice.

"Fianna, even if you lost your spirit contract power, can you dance the ritual Kagura?"

"Yes, it isn't like when I was in the «Divine Ritual Ceremony», but I can roughly enhance the resealing. As expected, I wouldn't accept a quest that I can't even do."

Fianna nodded and softly placed her hand on her chin.

"Although, we have to first find the hidden true shrine, and seize it."

"Do we have to search the inside of this vast mine...?"


In any case, it was a mine that was abandoned several decades ago. The tunnels weren't being maintained, and on top of that, there was the danger that it'll cave in easily even at a small earthquake like a while ago.

"Besides, we might encounter that Jio Inzagi again."

Everyone became silent at Claire's utterance.

He was the male elementalist, who used a countless number of spirits.

Even if the members, who boasted of having top class ability formed a group, they were also no match for him.

(He knows about Restia...)

Kamito instinctively grasped his left hand, which was covered by his leather glove.

(Who on earth is he?)

"That boy, it was as though he was like the real Demon King..."

"Uh, he was driven away by Fianna's surprise attack just now, but I don't think that could have defeated him."

Ellis nodded with a meek expression at Rinslet's murmuring.

At that moment.

"Kamito, I know the location of the true shrine."

A sound came from the sword leaning against the wall.

"Est?"

Kamito touched Est's handle, and cancelled the elemental waffe status.

The Demon Slayer became particles of light, disappeared into an empty space, and transformed into a lovely girl in a moment.


"What do you mean that you know the location of the true shrine?"

"Yes, Kamito, in the olden days more distant than when this place became a mine— several hundred years ago, this very mountain was the high ranking shrine that was used to deify spirits. I visited this place several times before I was sealed in a sword."

That was right, Est was originally a top-ranking spirit, who was sealed several hundred years ago. It was not strange even if she was deified by everyone on the sacred mountain.

"Can you guide us to the location of the true shrine?"

"Of course."

"Remarkable, Est."

"Yes, Kamito. Then, please stroke Est's head."

"Ahh."

[[Image:STnBD V02 217.jpg|thumb]]
<nowiki>*</nowiki>Suri suri*. *Nade nade*.

"Hn, it feels good, Kamito."

Est closed her eyes partly like a cat being stroked on its chin.

"..."

Those two—

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Hyooooooo...!*

The girls stared at them with a freezing-like gaze.

"Wh-What..."



"I've been thinking since before, but Kamito, don't you think you're soft on Est?"

"I-I don't think so"

He instinctively stepped back at the girls' glaring gazes.

At that moment.

"..."

It shook again. ...This time, it was even greater than a while ago.

"We had better hurry."

"Ah—"

Kamito nodded, but— he suddenly turned around and stopped.

Ellis shook her head when she realized what Kamito was thinking about.

"We're alright. While, you were unconscious, I had released and sent Simorgh to the academy. The Knights should be rushing here to aid us at dawn."

"Ellis..."

"Go, Kazehaya Kamito. We failed in our quest. I'll entrust the rest to you guys."

"It seems I am unable to fight, I will stay behind for their treatment."

"..."

Kamito tightly clenched his fist—


"...I understand. I'll come back as soon as possible."

"Let's go Kamito, Fianna."

Claire raised her Flame Tongue over her head, and blew away the mountain of rubble blocking the path.

===Part 3===

"—Tch, oucchh..."

His stifled groan reverberated in the tunnel walls.

Jio was loitering in the thick darkness which was twined around him as though it was his own skin.

As he placed his hand on his injured face, he walked in a ghost-like manner.

"Isn't the long-awaited handsome man ruined, huh?"

A stiff smile surfaced, as he talked into the darkness before him, and the one who replied was—

"You're over conceited, Jio Inzagi. You were negligent."

—There.

Suddenly, an even darker darkness was produced in the darkness, and took the form of a beautiful girl.

"Shut up, it's because your spirit was of no avail."

"I never thought that there would be a holy spirit user. Although {{Furigana|Death Spirit|Thanatos|margin=13}} is at the top-rank for the darkness attribute, its compatibility is overly bad for a spirit of the holy attribute."


"—Where are they heading?"

"Probably to the «true shrine» that governs the control of {{Furigana|strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}}. As I am still tied with the bond of the contract to him, I somehow know roughly where he is."

The jet black girl preciously stroked the spirit seal that was engraved on her own left hand.

"Guide me, darkness spirit. I'll make them regret placing an injury on the Demon King's face."

"Let it go. He is the real Demon King— After all, you, who's no more than a fake, could absolutely not win. Besides, {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}} has never lost to an opponent he fought once."

"Watch your mouth, darkness spirit. '''I can even make you mine right here and now'''."

Jio's red eyes glared at her.

—He showed a red shiny comma-shaped jewel grasped in his hand.

"...Really, what a foolish boy."

The darkness spirit muttered disdainfully, waved her dark-colored dress, and disappeared into empty space.

===Part 4===

—Solid footsteps were heard in the long tunnels that went on endlessly.

The three of them were going deep down underground with Est, who was walking silently, in the lead.

It was as if the mine, which once flourished as a place for mining spirit crystals, was a giant maze. It was an excessively large passage for people to use. Large sized spirits might have been used for the digging of the bedrock.

There were many doors that used to be sealed, but they had all been opened.

It was probably the deed of Jio Inzagi's comrade, who had been carrying out the ritual at the shrine above ground.

Suddenly, Kamito's leather-gloved left hand hurt sharply.

"What's wrong, Kamito? Are your wounds hurting?"

"No, it's nothing..."

Kamito shook his head at Claire, who was peering at him anxiously.

Claire pouted her lips, dissatisfied with such a response from Kamito.

"...It somewhat feels like you are always fighting alone."

She muttered with a sigh.

"It was also like that when we were assembling a team for the tournament. No, it wasn't just that time during the match, I felt like that also when you were taking the lectures, and also when you were in the dormitory... how should I say it, shouldn't you trust me, your partner... that's not it, your master, more?"

"Is that so? ...Or rather, I don't want to be told that by you, who has no friends."

"Sh-Shut up, I do have friends!"

"Isn't it only Rinslet?"

"Sh-She's just a childhood acquaintance, it's not like she's a friend!"

"Ah, what a coincidence. I was also always alone while eating my meals when I was in the «Divine Ritual Institute»."


"Fianna, you too? ...What's with this deplorable party?"

As they were having such an endless conversation, they went down a long stairway.

"Hey, are we still not there, Est? Although, we have been walking for more than an hour since then."

"A few paths seem different since several hundred years ago. And Claire is noisy."

"Wh!"

"It can't be helped, it was even several hundred years before when Est was sealed."

"Unh, Kamito, you're on Est's side again..."

As they made progress down, down, the endless stairway— finally, they emerged out into a wide space.

Est continued walking straight, and stopped before a gigantic wall.

"Here, Kamito."

"...Here? Isn't this a dead end?"

Claire frowned suspiciously.

There was a stone wall towering over its surroundings before the four of them.

Est held up the light, and the subtle carving that was engraved on the wall's surface was reflected.

It wasn't something engraved during these several hundred years— it seemed that it was a historic ruin from the mythical age.

"This is the carving of the «Five Great Elemental Lords»... or looks like it."

The motif of the carving was quite a typical thing.

Fire, water, wind, earth, holy— The kings of the five attributes that control Astral Zero.


"Hn?"

Suddenly, Kamito felt something out of place in the design of that pattern, and frowned.

It had that composition that had the holy attribute Elemental Lord arranged at the top and a pentagram drawn.

At its bottom— It had a large scar like the wall was scraped off.

It was as unnatural as if the existence of the thing over there was erased.

Est went forward and placed her hand softly on that torn-off part.

"This is the carving of the mythical age— In the later times, Ren Ashdoll had its existence erased."

"...? Est, what did—"

The moment Kamito found fault with that, a thunderous roar reverberated in the underground tunnel.

A closed crevice of the wall slowly opened— a blue light illuminated.

"A hidden door?—"

"This is the historic ruins of the mythical age. The door can only be opened by high-ranking spirits."

Est muttered expressionlessly.

"Terrific, Est."

"Kamito, please praise me more."

"Ah, Est is remarkable."

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Suri suri*. *Nade nade*.

"Kamito, it feels good..."


Upon brushing the hair on her head, Est tightly closed her eyes.

"..."

Claire and Fianna glared at the two of them in that manner.

"...As I thought, you're soft towards Est."

"Kamito-kun, if we don't hurry up {{Furigana|strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}} would wake up."

"Ah, that's right..."

Drawing his hand back at Fianna strangely hurrying him, Kamito walked into the middle of the door.

—Over there, there was an unbelievably gigantic cave.

It had a polished agate floor. It had a stalactite ceiling that was inlaid with countless spirit crystals.

Each of the spirit crystals emitted a mysterious faint light, and they were dazzlingly illuminating the cave.

At the center of the large cave— there was a shrine made with precious metals and crystals.

Compared to the grand shrine above ground, it was quite small, but its solemnity was the highlight.

"—There's no doubt. Here is where this mine's «true shrine» is."

"All Fianna has to do is to dedicate a resealing ritual Kagura here, right?"

"Yes. However, before that—"

Fianna pointed at a small reservoir near the true shrine.

Clear underground water, which had trickled down from the stalactite, was being collected.

"I must do the purification ritual and cleanse my body."


"That's right, I also want to bathe. My purity has fallen greatly due to the battle a while ago."

Claire muttered— Suddenly, she noticed Kamito's gaze.

"...Err, what should I do?"

"Y-You'll stand watch outside!"

Her whip came flying immediately.

===Part 5===

—*Splash*.

Claire made a lovely "Hyan" voice at the drop of water that dripped down from the ceiling's stalactite.

She had very fair skin. She had a body that depicted elegant curves. Her breasts were certainly reserved, but they were unthinkably charming even when seen by Fianna who as of the same gender.

(They are certainly sisters, she got her beauty from her sister...)

Her facial profile with her red twintails untied certainly made Fianna recall Claire's sister's face.

The Calamity Queen— Rubia Elstein.

The one who completely crushed young Fianna's heart.

It wasn't like she resented Claire, who was her sister.

(Speaking of it, I don't even understand whether or not I hate Rubia-sama...)


Etched into Fianna's heart wasn't hatred, it was just overwhelming fear.

The moment she overcame that fear, her contracted spirit would come back—

Fianna dropped her sights onto the spirit seal engraved on her chest, and was absorbed in her thoughts.

"What? Are you looking at your breasts and immersing in a sense of superiority?"

Claire was glaring at Fianna's breasts with scornful eyes.

"Eh?"

"Even without your pads, aren't yours bigger than mine? I th-thought that we're comrades."

...Claire's eyes held in them a slightly dangerous sensation.

Somehow sensing danger to her body, Fianna cut through the water surface and waded away.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Sususu*. *Sususu*. *Susususu*.

Finally, she was cornered at the edge of the pond, and her shoulders were firmly grasped.

...She could not escape anymore.

"Hey, Fianna, swallow your shame, I have something I want to ask."

Claire was saying that with a serious expression.

"Wh-What?"

"A gi-girl's breasts would become big if they get the boy they like to rub them... Is that true?"

"...Eh?"


Fianna opened her mouth wide at Claire, who bashfully blushed.

And then—

A "gusu" laugh escaped spontaneously.

Before long, Fianna hugged her stomach and giggled.

"Wh-What! It isn't something that funny!"

"But I had someone ask me the exact same thing as that question in the past."

"...?"

Claire tilted her head to the side without understanding what she meant.

"You're definitely sisters."

As Fianna stifled her laughter, she wiped the tears that surfaced on her eyes.

On that subject, it had been a while since she really laughed naturally like that.

It might be... four years ago, since that day she lost her spirit contract power.

"Claire Rouge, I do not hate you."

"What do you mean?"

"Never mind. Ahh, as long as you grow to adulthood, your breasts will naturally become big."

"I-I somewhat feel irritated... In the meanwhile."

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Funyuu*.

Claire groped Fianna's breast.


"Kyaa, wh-what are you doing!"

"I'm confirming if they'll really become big if they're rubbed."

"Isn't it fine if you confirm that with your own breasts!"

"..., mi-mine are small and can't be properly grasped!"

"He-Hey, stop, hyaa, aan..."

Shrieks and loud water sounds were reverberated in the sacred underground shrine.

===Part 6===

(...I can hear those two here.)

Leaning in front of the closed wall, Kamito scratched his cheeks.

The tunnels caused more echoes than he had thought. It did not mean that he caught their conversation, but the sweet voices of the girls he heard at times were very bad for his heart.

"Kamito, are you eavesdropping on their voices, and getting excited?"

"Uh, absolutely not."

Kamito moaned with a deadpan look.

"Well then, what?"

"—Jio Inzagi, I'm thinking about that brat's true identity."


He was a male elementalist, who freely used countless spirits— in a certain way, an existence of greater heresy than Kamito.

However, Kamito was inferring his true identity to some extent from the battle some time ago.

"He isn't anything like the Demon King, if my thoughts are right."

"Of course. He is presumptuous calling himself the Demon King with that level of his."

Est answered expressionlessly, but her tone seemed a little angry.

"The successor of the Demon King— is more like Kamito."

"...? What do you mean?"

"Kamito is the Demon King of the night."

"Est, that's different."

Kamito retorted without a moment's delay.

...Honestly, where did this sword spirit learn these kind of things?

"—We've got to stop the frivolous talk here, huh?"

"It seems so."

Kamito separated his body from the wall, and grasped Est's small hand.

"Kamito is a rough master of an elementalists."

"Sorry. I will treat you to some parfait the next time at the Academy Town."

"Suddenly, my motivation came out."

Kamito made a wry smile, and recited the elemental waffe's release chant.


"The cool-headed steel queen, the sacred sword that destroys evil — become my sword here and now!"

The appearance of the lovely girl turned into particles of light and disappeared into an empty space—

In the next moment, Kamito's hand was grasping Terminus Est, which was shining in silver.

And then— footsteps resounded from deep in the darkness.

"Yo, let's settle the score and end this— {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}."
[[Image:STnBD V02 231.jpg|thumb]]

With his red eyes glaringly shining, Jio Inzagi showed up.



<noinclude>{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter7|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter9}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter7

2013-03-28T13:01:22Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 7: The Abandoned-Mine Battle==

===Part 1===

It was the dead of the night when, after riding their horses throughout the day, the party reached the entrance of Mine Town.

Since all the members rode here practically without rest, they were totally exhausted.

However, it wasn't possible to have a carefree rest.

"This is Mine Town Gado... It's like a ghost town."

Rinslet, who dismounted from the horse, calmly muttered.

"It's because several decades have passed since it became an abandoned mine. There should be no humans living here."

"Humans— huh."

Claire squinted her eyes staring deep into the darkness.

Bluish-white will-o'-wisps were wavering here and there near a ruin.

They were low-rank spirits that were floating about. For this sort of ruin, there were many nasty spirits gathered.

It was just like how the «Spirit Forest» was at night.

On the other side of the abandoned town, still containing countless abandoned tunnels, huge mines stood towering over the surroundings.

Gado Mine— It once produced a large quantity of spirit crystals, it was the Empire's largest mine.

During the war, the spirit crystals were dug up and exhausted, and it hadn't even been twenty years since it became an abandoned mine.

Below that mine, {{Furigana|the strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}} was sleeping; sealed by the Ordesia Knights of that time.


"—By the way, you better get away from him."

Claire glared at Fianna, who was tightly clinging onto Kamito's arm.

"I don't want to, after all, Kamito-kun will protect me."

"You may be in a position to be protected. However, to begin with, what's the matter with your contracted spirit? As that elementalist might be hiding in ambush, have it in a state where you can use it immediately."

"That's—"

Fianna's words were unusually hesitant.

She tightly closed her lips and abruptly turned away.

"I-It still isn't the time. The contracted spirit of the Ordesia royal family must not be summoned so indiscreetly. It's clearly different from your cat."

"Wh-What was that...!"

The ground where the four were standing on suddenly shook greatly.

"An earthquake...!?"

"It seems like we had better hurry. I have a bad premonition."

Claire softly muttered, and in her palm, a spirit magic fire was lighted.


The place of their objective was found instantly without even searching.

At the deepest part of the main street going through the abandoned town— before the entrance of the mine, there was a gigantic grand shrine.

It was a splendid shrine that made use of several gigantic stone pillars.

A grand shrine of this scale existed only in the capital even in the Ordesia Empire.

However—

"How terrible, this..."

The grand shrine —which had its sculptures destroyed, had the spirit crystals inlaid in its stone pillar robbed and had once entertained the spirits— had transformed into a ruin that was even tragic to look at.

"How strange—"

The one, who noticed the unusual phenomenon, was Fianna, who had received training as Queen.

"What's strange?"

"This shrine, despite being in such ruins, shows traces of someone taking the trouble to perform a ritual. Furthermore, many times over the period of these several months."

"Ritual?"

Nodding at Claire, who was frowning, with a serious face, Fianna kneeled onto the ground.

It seemed that she was looking for footprints and traces of scrape marks and so forth that were on the stone paving.

"This dance— is probably the Ritual of Releasing. It seems that it was more or less arranged, though."

"The Ritual of Releasing..."


Kamito groaned in a low tone.

It was because he remembered how the elementalist, who was also a male elementalist just like Kamito, assailed the academy and took away the highly classified material concerning the seal specification.

(Is that brat really planning on releasing the sealed {{Furigana| strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}}?)

It was impossible for any kind of elementalist to control Jormungandr individually.

If that was the case, what was his goal?

At any rate, if the spirit's seal was undone, it was certain that the towns in the vicinity would be turned into scorched earth.

"Is the seal almost undone?"

"No, it's still alright. This shrine isn't the superior «true shrine»."

"The «true shrine»...? What do you mean?"

"The grand shrine here, at most, it's purpose was to camouflage the original shrine— Which should be at an important place like the mine. There were many splendid grand shrines built needlessly above ground to hide the existence of the original shrine. Of course, it doesn't mean that this shrine isn't usable, though."

"That means there's a real shrine somewhere?"

"Yes, it's mostly likely being hidden deep in the mine."

Fianna raised her head, and at that moment.

"Be careful, there's something here!"

Rinslet, who was on a lookout of their surroundings, suddenly shouted.

Kamito turned around—


In the surroundings of the shrine that the four of them were in, there was a wriggling crowd of figures of people.

"Humans? No, they're—"

"Fire, illuminate!"

Claire recited the incantation, and a spirit magic fire lit in an empty space.

The figures that were shone by the flame's light were—

"Wh-What!?"

It was a crowd of skeletons holding rusty swords and clubs in their hands.

From the gap of their bones, something like a black fog was being emitted out.

"What, are these... spirits!?"

"The skeletons that were left behind seem to be possessed by low-rank spirits."

While muttering— Kamito noticed something with a "hmm".

Claire was slightly holding onto Kamito's uniform sleeve.

"...You, by any chance, are you weak against horror-ish things like these?"

"Th-That's not it— Who do you think I am?!"

"You don't have to push yourself, look out, hold on."

"...I-It's not anything scary."

Claire, who was hiding her face while biting her lips, was a little cute.

"At any rate, it's strange—"


Normally, the so-called low-rank spirits don't possess a distinct self.

Even if there were rare times when they attacked humans, there shouldn't be a time when they formed a group like this.

"Kamito-kun, these guys, you know. They are the ones doing the ritual here."

"What was that?"

Kamito was surprised and turned around. Fianna nodded.

"The movements of those skeletons are pretty rough, but...it's just like the Ritual of Releasing."

"Don't tell me, the low-rank spirits were doing an advanced Ritual of Releasing?"

Kamito stared at the approaching figures. Now that she mentioned it, he could see that the skeletons possessed by the spirits were moving with a fixed regularity.

"No, such a thing is impossible... There has to be some practitioner manipulating the spirits."

"Well, does it mean that these guys won't come to attack us?"

Claire tightly griped Kamito's sleeve as she said that.

The group of skeletons went up the stairs of the shrine, walking in a slow manner.

"Freezing ice fang, pierce «Freezing Arrow»!"

The ice arrow, released by Rinslet, collected and mowed down the group of wriggling skeletons.

It was the high-rank demon ice spirit «Fenrir's» elemental waffe.

To an elementalist, an enemy of this level was only small fry.

From the broken skeletons, a black fog spouted out and vanished into an empty space.


"That's a darkness attribute spirit—"

Suddenly, a flash occurred in Kamito's mind.

(Don't tell me—)

He cast his sight to his left hand covered by his black leather glove.

A piercing-like pain was running in his engraved spirit seal, at that moment—

"...!?"

The sound of a terrible explosion came from the direction of the mine.

"Don't tell me the battle is beginning!?"

"Let's go, Kamito!"

Claire sounded her whip with a snap, and began running.

===Part 2===

It was the spirit crystal mine that towered above the abandoned town. They finally arrived at its entrance—

From within the tunnel, the violent sound of weapons reverberated.

"Kamito, that—"

In the deep darkness where Claire pointed at, an intense flash occurred.

The one who was fighting, was Ellis Fahrengart, wielding her elemental waffe lance.


Her ponytail hair was fluttering in the thunderous-blowing wind.

Her appearance showed that she had her Knights armor destroyed and was covered in lacerations. From that, he could see that she had wounds all over her body.

"Ha, as expected of Captain-sama, you've entertained me considerably, haven't you?!"

A loud ear-splitting laughter resounded in the tunnel.

Before Ellis, stood a boy with glaring shiny red eyes.

Jio Inzagi— A male elementalist, who called himself the successor of the Demon King.

Rakka and Reishia, lay collapsed at his feet, injured.

"You bastard, my comrades, how dare you—"

Ellis swung her «Ray Hawk».

The tunnel wall was destroyed, and the hard bedrock was smashed up like glass.

Jio gave a shrilling laugh as he jumped up. It was not a movement possible for humans— there might be some body-strengthening-spirit possessing him.

"Hey, hey, is that it? Is being a part of the Knights, just a children's game?"

"You bastard!"

Ellis raged at the insult towards the Knights.

'''"Evil wind, thou, become countless blades and cut up my enemies—"'''

She released the power of her «Ray Hawk» — the elemental waffe of her demon wind spirit «Simorgh».

It was a spear that created blades of wind, something that tormented Kamito in their duel at the academy. Even if he were to avoid it by a paper-thin margin, the countless wind blades that were additionally invoked would cut the target into shreds—

However.

"How reckless— reflect it, {{Furigana|Demon Mirror Spirit|Mirror Wall|margin=13}}!"

The moment Jio shouted, a shiny red mirror appeared before Ellis.

When the wings of her lance of wind, clad in wind, touched the mirror surface; the countless wind blades turned to bare their teeth towards Ellis.

"...!?"

Cut up by the blades' while boisterously dancing, Ellis's body was thrown into a wall.

"—Ellis!"

Kamito ran with Terminus Est in his hand.

Having seemed to already notice their presence— Jio turned around, and sneered.

"Yo, more idiots are squirming out."

"Kamito, don't!"

Kamito's movement stopped for a moment in response to hearing Claire's voice from behind.

At that moment, an engraved spirit seal on Jio's right arm glowed—

"—It's fine till the inside of their lungs are sore, manifest, {{Furigana|Rotting Poison Spirit|Rafflesia|margin=13}}!"

A thick bluish purple smog gushed out with tremendous force.


The skin-burning smog of poison wrapped Kamito's whole body, and was invading his lungs—

"Ga, Ha...!"

Pain was running in his eyes. His throat was hot as if it was being burned.

From the gaps between his fingers covering his mouth, blood spilled out and dripped onto the ground.

(This is a poison attribute spirit... is this smog itself its elemental waffe!?)

A muttering groan echoed in the tunnel.

Bearing the burning-like pain, Kamito opened his eyes slightly.

Ellis and the two girls, flat-out bathed in the poison smog, were cowering and in agony.

"Ellis...Kuu!"

His throat muscles had a spasm, so he couldn't speak out satisfactorily. It was still possible to stand over here, but if he continued to advance, he would lose his consciousness before reaching the girls.

(...Why didn't he receive the poison?)

A wide range extermination type spirit like Rafflesia couldn't be handled normally.

As controlling it was hard, if he did it poorly, he would end up dragging himself into the smog too.

However, Jio Inzagi was calmly standing in the smog of deadly poison.

—Then, Kamito noticed it.

There was a slight wind flow in the boy's surroundings.

(...I see, he's using a wind attribute spirit at the same time!)


An elementalist that uses multiple contracted spirits— in that case, by combining the powers of the other spirits, he heard that they could also use a spirit that would be originally too much to handle.

"...Damn, isn't that almost like cheating?!"

Kamito cursed in his heart.

(If it was Rinslet's demon bow, could she shoot from outside the smog's effective range?)

He turned around and peeked behind, but—

Rinslet nocked her ice arrow, and without moving, she affixed her aim at Jio.

(—She isn't shooting?)

Rinslet's judgment was correct.

Jio was displaying {{Furigana|Demon Mirror Spirit|Mirror Wall|margin=13}}, which had reflected Ellis's elemental waffe.

If she shot poorly, she might end up finishing off Ellis and the others, who had collapsed nearby.

It seemed that Claire was standing like she was covering for Fianna, who was performing an aria with her fire attribute elemental waffe.

It was a mere second of thought, but meanwhile, the bodies of Ellis and the others were being eaten into by the poison.

(Damn...)

His body was experiencing a burning-like irritation.

—At that moment.

In the dark tunnel, a faint rumbling resounded.

(Ellis!?)


'''"Oh...winds, mow down my enemies— «Wind Bombs»!"'''

At that moment, the lump of violent wind released blew away the fog of poison without leaving a trace.

And then—

"Haa, Haa...ka...haa!"

Ellis pierced her demon lance of wind onto the ground, and stood up.

Her stab-proof uniform was cut up, and her whole body was full of wounds.

Both her legs, which were covered in her torn stockings, were having severe cramps.

Even so, the appearance of her standing up frigidly and firmly was—

Beautiful to the extent that he was spontaneously charmed.

Ellis prepared her elemental waffe lance, then she glared at Jio and declared in a hoarse voice.

"Putting the pride of the Sylphid Knights on the line, even if I lose... you will be defeated!"

"That hurt... you death escapee."

Jio, who received a direct hit from the violent wind, warped his lips, and clicked his tongue.

"If that's the case, I'll beat you to death as you wish!"

The spirit seals engraved on Jio's whole body ominously glowed—

"—Like I'll let you!"

At the same time as Kamito moved away, two blasts of fireballs were released towards Jio.

It was Claire covering him. In the moment when Jio repelled the fireballs, Kamito took his chance and accelerated— drawing close to Jio.


And then, hacking down the very space Jio was in, Kamito mowed down directly horizontally with Terminus Est.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Gaa*— The bedrock, touched by the sword's tip, was smashed up.

"Haa, don't make such a scary face, hey!"

Jio, who dodged the sword swing, jumped up and landed on a rocky area that was about to collapse.

Without pursuing, Kamito went straight towards Ellis and the others.

Ellis was out of breath, and seemed like she was going to collapse at any time.

"Ellis, are you alright? I'll lend—"

"D-Don't do something... unnecessary."

When he tried to lend her help when she wobbled, she shook off his hand.

"I do not need all of your—"

"Don't be stubborn about trivial things, think about them."

Ellis's facial expression stiffened. Rakka and Reshia had collapsed on the ground. They seemed to be alive, but if they were left like that, their lives would be in danger.

Ellis herself was in a condition where all she could do was just barely stand.

"Guu...Kazehaya Kamito, I owe you a debt."

"It isn't something like a loan. It's natural to help my comrades."

"...!"

Ellis's cheeks reddened at Kamito's words.


Laying the injured Ellis by the wall for her to rest, Kamito fixed his sights on Jio.

"You, how dare you—"

Ellis Fahrengart— She was a girl with a strong sense of justice, with her seriousness and her bravery.

Just by looking at her injured appearance, his anger surged and seemed to overflow.

"Don't get in my way, it was the long-awaited part where I beat that impertinent girl to death."

Jio smirked as he slowly got off the rocky area.

"—I'm relieved."

Kamito wielded his sword and glared at Jio.

"If it's a nasty rascal like you, I can seriously beat you up."

"Haa, aren't you saying something! It's too bad, but it's impossible for you to defeat me."

"We are also here!"

Claire and the others came running. Holding her Flame Tongue, she stood next to Kamito.

Rinslet nocked an arrow to her ice demon bow, and Fianna was grasping spirit crystals in both hands.

"Fianna, can I count on you for the treatment of Ellis and the others?"

"Yes, I'm holding a few healing spirit crystals. However, the effect is limited to only giving a temporary peace of mind."

Fianna nodded with a tense expression.

"Kamito, you and I will corner that guy. Rinslet will be the support artillery battery."

"What is a s-support artillery battery!? I am a splendid archer!"


Rinslet snarled, but Claire didn't respond.

"—Hey, is the discussion over?"

Jio calmly laughed as he came closer.

The spirit crest engraved on his right arm glowed ominously, and a bluish-white flash of lightning surged out.

What appeared in that hand was— the same sword elemental waffe as Est.

"Shall we find out which is stronger, {{Furigana|Sword Spirit|Gladius|margin=13}} or that sword?"

"Don't mess around. You'd better not confuse my Est with that third-grade sword spirit."

Wielding Terminus Est, Kamito ferociously roared.

===Part 3===

And then, the blade dance began.

High-pitched metallic sounds reverberated together. Every time a sword flash occurred, sparks scattered within that dim light.

"Jio Inzagi— what on earth is your goal?!"

"Huh, I don't have anything like a goal. Honestly, to me, I'm indifferent about {{Furigana|the strategic-class militarized spirit|Jormungandr|margin=13}}. I'll defeat you and prove that I'm the successor of the Demon King— That's all."

"What successor of the Demon King? You megalomaniac rascal!"

Kamito, who stepped into his area, mowed down with Terminus Est with both hands. 


The sword's pressure was tremendous. Jio promptly guarded with Gladius— however,

"What!?"

Together with a high-pitched metallic sound— Jio's {{Furigana|Sword Spirit|Gladius|margin=13}} was smashed to pieces.

Jio's expression distorted in shock.

"Hey, hey, what an elemental waffe— To do that to my sword spirit in one blow?"

"Sorry, my Est is the strongest sword spirit."

Kamito stepped in closer.

Jio recited a summoning, and summoned a sword spirit into his hand again.

"There's still more to come, it starts after this!"

"It's useless—"

Aiming at the sword spirit that appeared from an empty space, Kamito relentlessly swung down his sword.

There was the sound of steel shattering, and Jio's second sword spirit also tragically vanished.

In addition to making his second sword spirit vanish, Terminus Est didn't even have a chip on its edge.

It was an elemental waffe that held two names, the «Demon King Killing Sacred Sword» and «Demon Slayer».

It was terrifying because even with this, it was not in its complete state.

However, Jio still kept his composed expression.

"Hmm, in that case, this will be next!"

From the spirit seals on his whole body, flashes of lightning gushed out— a third sword appeared in Jio's hand.


(..., this guy, what the heck, how many spirits is he contracted with!?)

As expected, even Kamito's face expressed impatience.

Even the strongest sword spirit Est had a large weak point.

Her divine power consumption was too intense.

As a result of getting used to controlling it, he wouldn't suddenly faint like before, but if the battle was dragged on, he was certain that he would be exhausted eventually.

If he assumed that Jio Inzagi really was contracted to seventy-two spirits—

(It's bad if this keeps up—)

This wasn't an opponent whom he could decide the victory with one blow, like the rampaging giant spirit at Academy Town.

If this became a prolonged battle, he'd be at a disadvantage.

(...However, is that guy's divine power inexhaustible!?)

If he was using this many spirits, his divine power consumption should also rapidly increase, however—

"Kamito, I'll cover you!"

At that moment, Claire's swung her Flame Tongue, and it came flying in an arc.

There was a red hot afterglow that shone in the darkness— Her carefully-aimed whip quickly entangled Jio's face.

"Tch, don't get in my way!"

Jio summoned a spirit as a translucent ice ball, and aiming at Claire, he threw it.


"What, such a thing!"

Claire released a spirit magic fireball to intercept the ice spirit—

However, that was a trap.

"...!?"

The ice ball, which blasted before her eyes, transformed into countless needles, and cut up Claire's whole body.

"Kyaa!"

"Claire!"

Kamito's awareness strayed for a moment to Claire's scream.

"Don't look away!"

Seizing that chance, Jio quickly drove in for a slash—

Kamito barely stopped the blow with Terminus Est's edge.

However, Jio didn't slow down his attacks. He kept it up, pressing on and approaching closer—

"What's wrong, {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}— Is that all you got?"

As he stopped the sword pushing him back, Kamito grit his teeth.

If he was still the Ren Ashbell of three years ago—

He was sure to not have turned towards Claire and gave Jio the chance to use his spirit.

As an elementalist, it was a fatal three year blank.

He had a contracted spirit that couldn't draw out its original power.


(Ah, it is certain that I became weak. However—)

Exhaling with a puff— Kamito suddenly jumped back.

"Freezing ice fang, pierce «Freezing Arrow»!"

At that moment, Rinslet's released ice arrow rained at the spot the two of them were at.

It was a direct hit— Jio's silhouette was swallowed up by the downpour of arrows and disappeared.

"Hmm, it is troubling that you have forgotten me!"

Placing her hand at her waist, Rinslet quickly brushed up her platinum-blonde hair.

While Kamito was stopping the sword, she was holding an aim affixed on him.

From the crumbled rocky area, there was a thick cloud of dust rising up.

They didn't think he could be fine after receiving that rain of arrows.

However.

"Hn, did you do something just now?"

Jio— stood up from within the cloud of dust.

He smirked, and turned to Rinslet.

"No way...it should have been a direct hit!?"

"«Argos» — an earth spirit that protects its elementalist automatically."

From Jio's surroundings, cones of rocks were pierced out from the ground and standing tall.

Her Freezing Arrow was defended by that.


"...What a thing..."

"And then, this fellow, uh— can also be used in such a way."

Jio turned over his wrist.

"Kyaaaa!"

[[Image:STnBD V02 197.jpg|thumb]]
At that moment, cones pierced out from the ground at Rinslet's feet, and crucified her to the wall.

Her academy uniform was torn to pieces, and fine textured white skin became exposed.

With both her arms placed in crucifixion, Rinslet bit her lips in shame.

"Guu...Th-This is unforgivable... to do such... to me..."

Glaring firmly at Jio, Rinslet's body quivered, seemingly vexed.

"—Jio Inzagi!"

Kamito raged, and attacked with Terminus Est.

The massive slash collected and destroyed the cones standing in a line, and came close to Jio—

However, it was till that extent.

"Guu..."

Terminus Est which was a large-sized sword suddenly became a small-sized short sword.

It was the result of Est, who consumed a huge amount of divine power, being unable to maintain her form as an elemental waffe.

"Ren Ashbell— you're no longer the strongest blade dancer."

Jio sneered.



"That may be so. After all, I had a three year blank."

"No, that's not it. The reason you became weak is—"

At that moment, a spear of light was born in Jio's palm.

It wasn't a close range weapon, it was a shooting-type elemental waffe.

Kamito, who made a judgment in an instant, was about to dodge, but—

(—Wrong!)

Just before that, he realized Jio's aim.

"Something like this!"

It wasn't an attack aimed at Kamito.

The spear of light—

Was pointed and released toward Fianna and the injured female Knights behind Kamito.

(Damn...!)

Kamito thrust himself in the way at once, and caught the spear of light with his whole body.

===Part 4===

(—What?)

Fianna, who was treating Ellis and the others, raised her face startled.


At that moment, a dazzling flash was produced, and an eardrum-bursting explosion reverberated.

She reflexively closed her eyes. The fragments of rubble, which came flying, struck her whole body.

...Before long, the thunderous sound lessened.

"U..."

She moaned in pain, as she slowly opened her eyes—

Before her, Kamito, who was injured, had collapsed.

"...Ka-Kamito-kun?"

"...Fia...na... are you alright?"

Kamito pierced Terminus Est through the ground, placed his knees on the ground, and tried to stand up.

Having received a direct hit at point-blank range, his academy uniform, which excelled in its defensive abilities, had turned into shreds.

He seemed to be enduring the pain, and cold sweat was flowing on his forehead.

Fianna quickly surveyed her surroundings.

Ellis and her two female comrades had collapsed. They were especially not in a condition that they could stand up.

Claire was injured and had lost consciousness, and Rinslet was placed in a crucifixion on the wall.

And then— from the front, Jio Inzagi was slowly walking.

—Almost like a death god.

"That's your weakness. I don't care whether or not it was subconsciously, but you have been continuously taking notice of the fellows behind as you were fighting."


"Fianna...back down."

Kamito commanded Fianna, who was about to approach, with his hand.

"Kamito-kun!"

With that body, there's no way he could fight.

He also couldn't sufficiently use his elemental waffe, and it was a hopeless situation even at best, and yet despite that—

"I do not want to lose important things— never again."

Kamito faced the front, and stood up.

It wasn't the light of hope in his eyes. What was dwelling in his pupils was dark despair.

And yet, he stood up.

This boy was once called the {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}.

"..."

Jio shrugged his shoulders like he rapidly lost interest.

And then, told him in a cruel voice.

"—I see. Well then, die."

The spirit seal all over his body emitted a glow, and a black fog coiled around his right hand.

"{{Furigana|Death Spirit|Thanatos|margin=13}}— it is one of the strongest spirits I have. I received it from your contracted spirit."

"My... contracted spirit...?"

Kamito muttered in a dry voice.


"...Don't tell me...this is about Restia—!?"

His fingertip, which was clad in death approached Kamito who couldn't move sufficiently— just before that.

Fianna brushed back her long black hair, and quickly stood up.

"Hey, could you please not touch my things so thoughtlessly?"

"...Ah?"

Jio— was so shocked that he opened his mouth.

"...Fianna?"

Kamito gazed at her face profile with a dumbfounded expression as well.

"Move aside, Kamito-kun."

Fianna calmly stood before Jio and blocked his way.

"Hey, is something wrong with your head, ojou-sama?"

"Watch your mouth, who do you think I am?"

Fianna fixed a glare directly at Jio, who sneered.

Four years ago— It was like that time when she stood before and blocked the Calamity Queen.

"Fianna, you idiot, run away!"

Claire, who crawled out from the mountain of rubble, shouted.

Fianna slowly shook her head—

(You protected me— That's why this time, I'll protect you!)

"—I'll tell you my name, Fianna Ray Ordesia, the Ordesia Empire's second royal princess!"

"—I am a punisher as an impartial enforcer, and one who hands down holy judgment in the king's name!"

At that moment, a dazzling flash was produced from Fianna's bosom.

Yes, the oath she shouted just now was indeed— the spirit's releasing keywords.

She quickly untied the string at her bosom, and a shiny red stone tumbled down into her palm.

It was a blood-like red spirit crystal that was processed like a comma-shaped jewel.<ref>See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magatama Magatama].</ref>

"No way, that's... don't tell me, the Blood Stone!?"

Claire, who realized its true identity, widened her eyes.

"You witch...!"

He might have felt some sort of instinctive threat, as Jio released Thanatos at the girl before him—

"Come out, thou, the sword of judgment that buries the darkness— Sacred King of Destruction «Magna Carta»!"

The red spirit crystal exploded.

There was a dazzling flash. An enormous pillar of light went through Jio Inzagi.

And then— together with the thunderous sound, the tunnel's ceiling collapsed.

<noinclude>

==References and Translation Notes==
<references/>
{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter6|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter8}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter3

2013-03-14T13:42:30Z

Zakashi:

==Chapter 3: The Lost Queen==

===Part 1===

After that, Kamito, who parted from Claire and the others, headed towards the academy director's office immediately.

He knocked and opened the door—

"You're late, for how many seconds do you plan to make this lady wait?"

That was the first thing Greyworth, who was sitting at the office desk, coldly said.

The Dusk Witch — Greyworth Ciel Mais.

Her figure was certainly that of a bewitchingly beautiful woman but she was originally a spirit knight with a long military service, who had her name entered first on the list of {{Furigana|the twelve knight commanders|Numbers}}.

She had wavy ash-blonde hair. Her gray pupils were shining behind her small pair of glasses.

"Sorry, I heard that you have business with me, and no matter what my walking became heavy."

"Hmm, so now you're able to run your rather cheeky mouth, are you? Where did the obedient pure boy from those days go? Really, this thing called the flow of time is cruel."

"You're the only one who doesn't change, Greyworth. Your outward looks as well as your tricky character."

Kamito loathsomely said in disdain.

Greyworth is one of the few people who knew him three years ago.

And she was the perpetrator who called Kamito, who threw away the name {{Furigana|Strongest Blade Dancer|Ren Ashbell|margin=13}}, to the academy and attempted to make him participate in the Blade Dance two months later.


She did not tell him the reason for that.

Although, it was often the case that the Dusk Witch worked Kamito hard without telling him anything.

"That's right, you have certainly changed. Compared to three years ago, you've become especially weak. In the practice match a while ago, what was that sorry performance when faced with an opponent of that level? If it was the you from the past, you would have overwhelmingly defeated that one person in under three minutes."

"You were watching? ...As usual your hobbies are bad."

"In such a sorry state, your participation qualifications for the Blade Dance are also doubtful. Or, was it a fluke that you defeated that militarized spirit?"

"That time was—"

Kamito slightly mumbled.

It was not that he defeated it with just his own strength.

Kamito, who had a chance meeting with his changed former contracted spirit and was struck with despair, was given the strength to stand once again by that red haired hellcat girl.

(...!)

Suddenly, the sensation of her soft lips was resurrected in his mind.

To shake it off and cleanse the evil thoughts, Kamito shook his head in a fluster.

"I also think that I'm miserable. I can't even fully use my contracted spirit's power yet."

Kamito dropped his eyes onto his right hand, which was engraved with a spirit seal.


"Is it that you still can't forget your previous woman? How stubborn."

"Don't mess around! For me, Restia isn't like that!"

"On the contrary, getting hotheaded makes it increasingly suspicious. If you like, how about getting a lover or something in this academy? It might even divert a little of the loneliness."

"Lov—"

"Or, are the girls in the academy too childlike? If that's the case... I'm also good."

Greyworth smiled bewitchingly and slightly pushed open her breast area with her fingertips.

He accidentally saw an adult-like, black lacy lingerie in her cleavage.

"D...don't mess around!"

"It's a joke. Hmm, with that tone, it seems that you have not yet reached that level. I've heard rumors that you made a tiny breasted beautiful girl and a naked knee-socks spirit wait upon you and are indulging in an improper harem cohabitation life."

"Guu..."

Trying to refute, Kamito was at a loss for words.

...Looking at it objectively, that was the truth and so it was painful to be unable to deny it.

"Greyworth, did you call me just to tell some worthless jokes?"

"That's right— but, of course, that's not the only thing."

Greyworth creaked her chair and faced the visitor room at the inner side of the room.

"I have a girl I want to introduce to you— okay, come in"


"Okay."

From the inner room, came what sounded like a bell being turned over.

The one who opened the door and appeared was—

A girl who wore a black dresslike uniform, different from the academy's uniform.

It was a beautiful girl, whose beautiful long black hair was impressive, to the extent that he was taken aback.

She had clear black pupils. Without thinking, Kamito was charmed by her neat and clean appearance.

"...Eh?"

The moment his eyes met with hers, she made a puzzled face for some reason.

"Errm, you're ... Kazehaya Kamito-kun?"

While blinking her eyes incessantly, the girl asked.

"Ahh, that's right, however—"

"But my impression is very..."

...It was somewhat strange, but it seemed the girl received a shock.

(Wh...what's with this?)

"But, that's right... he's a boy after all, and it's already been three years."

The girl was muttering to herself in a voice that Kamito could not hear.

After that, she looked at Kamito's face again.

"Yes, there's certainly a resemblance, yeah. Besides, this is fine—"


"What's up, Fianna?"

Greyworth called out, seemingly puzzled.

"Ah, s...sorry! Err, this is the first time I've seen a male elementalist!"

The girl called Fianna shook her head in a fluster.

"Erm... who is this girl?"

Kamito faced Greyworth and asked.

Then, the girl, for some reason, made a sullen expression and pouted her lips.

"I knew it, you didn't remember... well, that's fine though."

"She is the recently admitted student who will be entering the same Raven Class as you."

"Admitted student?"

Ah! Kamito nodded. They were talking about it at the café just a while ago.

(This girl is the one...)

Carol was saying that she was a daughter of noble social status, but, in any case, in this academy the ladies of noble social status were all around him, so he did not feel anything special.

(After that, she said that... her breasts were big.)

Without thinking, he glanced towards the dress-like uniform's chest area—

(...Indeed, certainly.)

Kamito consented strangely.


"She is the Ordesia Empire's second princess, her Highness Fianna Ray Ordesia."

"...Ordesia?"

Kamito frowned for a moment—

"No way...!"

His eyes widened in surprise.

In Areishia Spirit Academy, which was an elementalist training organization, many genuine daughters of nobles were enrolled. This was the result of the empire's royalty and nobles continuing the bloodline of elementalists through marriage of convenience that even spanned over several generations.

Naturally, there were also exceptions, but, speaking of elementalists, it was normal for them to be daughters of nobles.

Fahrengart, the head of the military family, and Laurenfrost, with a family history.

Its lands were currently seized, but Claire's Elstein family was also of a noble pedigree.

However, this girl before him was— the second princess of the Ordesia Empire.

She was not even the nobility.

She was what one would call— the real princess.

(Why would the empire's princess be in the academy?)

Daughters born into the Ordesia royal family should be scheduled to stack up training as Queen candidates, serving the Five Great Elemental Lords, at the Queen training organization, the «Divine Ritual Institute».

In any case, Kamito kept that question in his chest for now and knelt down on the ground on one knee.


"Please pardon my rudeness, your Highness."

It was not that he specifically pledged allegiance to the Ordesia Empire, but the bearing to take before the royalty was harshly driven into him by his former contracted spirit.

However, Fianna quietly shook her head.

"That's alright, we are students of the same academy here. Besides, although I'm called the second princess, I'm the Lost Queen, my social status is already gone."

"The Lost Queen?"

Kamito asked back— then he recalled.

(I see, the empire's second princess!)

He heard about it from rumors.

(If I remember it, the girl was the Queen candidate to serve the Fire Elemental Lord.)

Four years ago, the Fire Queen— Rubia Elstein's absconding happened.

The empire fell into chaos for a moment by the wrath of the Fire Elemental Lord, who learned of her treachery.

For the sake of appeasing the Fire Elemental Lord's anger, the «Divine Ritual Institute» tried to support a second Queen but—

At that time, the empire's second princess should have been supported as the successor to Rubia.

However, she never became Queen. At that time, she declared that she stepped down from the Queen candidacy for some reason and her existence was erased from the royal family.

The reason that she had rejected to become Queen was not officially announced so far.


Henceforth, the second princess completely disappeared from the center stage.

That Lost Queen meant this girl in front of him?

"It's just as she says. As long as you pass through this academy's gates, no matter what social status the princess maidens have, there is no special treatment. Even a princess, a male elementalist, or the Calamity Queen's sister."

"There you have it, I'm the former princess, but nice to meet you, Kazehaya Kamito-kun."

Fianna smiled and picked up the sides of her skirt with her fingertips, then bowed elegantly.

"A...Ah, nice to meet you—"

Kamito stood up and his expression froze.

"What's the matter?"

"No, err..."

While scratching his face, Kamito looked away.

"?"

Fianna tilted her head to the side.

"Kyaa!"

It seemed she realized that what she was holding up was not a ball dress, but a short length uniform skirt.

Her mature black underwear, weaved with laces, was firmly etched into Kamito's retina.


"Ka...Kamito-kun... pervert."

The former princess' face turned red as she embarrassedly muttered.

"I...I'm sorry..."

"You two, don't flirt and act lovey-dovey in front of my eyes. It's irritating."

Greyworth glared at Kamito, with her eyes filled with bloodlust.

"...I'm sorry. And why did you call for me?"

About this witch. It was probably not just to introduce the admitted student.

(To introduce the empire's princess to me, what is she scheming?)

As if she read Kamito's emotions, the witch pushed up her glasses, seemingly sullen.

"It's regrettable, despite purposely preparing a special quest for your sake."

"A special quest?"

"That's right. It was just nice that I had a quest I wanted to entrust her with, so I wanted your team to accompany her as her guards."

===Part 2===

—A quest.

Together with official matches with fellow academy students, it was the system that supported the academy ranking system.


A given quest could set various objectives, from Kagura by a blade dance, the suppression of a rampaging spirit, the excavation and investigation of the sealed spirit, to the subjugation of elementalists gone astray.

By completing the quests that were divided into ranks depending on the danger level, the academy students could raise their team rankings just as they do by winning official matches.

"By the way, this quest's difficulty level is S rank."

"S rank?"

Without thinking, Kamito inquired back.

An S rank quest was the highest difficulty level quest in the academy's ranking.

The amount of ranking points it could net was extraordinary, but it was a dangerous quest that could even result in death depending on the situation. It should not even be possible to sign up for it with Kamito's current ranking.

"Did you prepare things behind the scenes?"

"Your hearing is bad. I said that I don't practice special treatment. It just means that the ones suitable for this quest are Fianna and you. If you disagree, then I'll spread the word around to other teams."

"..."

It was not a bad deal. On the contrary, looking at Kamito's current team, it was a godsend.

Till the opening of the Blade Dance, there already were only two months left. No, the final examination to decide the top three participating teams would take place even earlier.

With their current pace, they could not possibly make it by the means of regular official matches and quests.


Greyworth was somehow bent on making Kamito participate in the Blade Dance.

Although, forcing in a representative of the empire through the power of the academy director was not possible, as expected.

Therefore, she has got the S rank quest, whose danger level was high, and the completion bonus which was also extremely high.

(If we could complete the quest, that would be it— Huh?)

He was not pleased to move in accordance to Greyworth's expectation, but??

If it was a quest to guard an important person, he had the experience of doing such things several times in the past.

Certainly, it was far better than raising the inter-school ranking steadily through the official matches.

"—I understand. Explain the details of the quest."

"That's the spirit."

Kamito prompted and Greyworth smiled.

"Do you know Mine Town Gado?"

"Gado? Well, I roughly know its name. It is a town with the mine that was abandoned a few decades ago."

Mine Town Gado. It was formerly a town with large spirit crystal mining grounds, but, during the second Ranbal war, spirit crystal deposits were exhausted, and it became a town with a completely abandoned mine.

It should certainly be a ghost town full of ruins nowadays.

"There have been frequent occurrences of strange earthquakes at that mine recently. I want you to go there and investigate that."

"Investigate the earthquakes?"

For the academy to bring in an investigation request meant that it was probably not an ordinary earthquake.


It was often the case that the earth attribute spirits that rule over the land caused the earthquakes.

If that was because a spirit was angry or was in a frenzy, it could be appeased by a ritual of a blade dance. Depending on the situation, there were also cases where a subjugation unit of spirit knights was formed.

As a quest it was relatively typical but—

"Stop joking. Why is an ordinary earthquake investigation an S rank quest?"

He did not think that such level of danger would be involved if it was just an ordinary earth spirit investigation.

Compared to the quest's risk, the assigned rank seemed too high.

"You're being distrustful as usual, can't you trust my good will?"

"Can I trust it? You never lie. However, you also never speak the truth."

"Hmm...well, it is indeed like that."

Greyworth smiled and shrugged her shoulders in resignation.

"At that mine, it seems a strategic-class militarized spirit, who was sealed by the old Ordesia Knights, is sleeping there."

"A strategic-class militarized spirit...!?"

Kamito spontaneously groaned. Fianna beside him also gasped in surprise.

A strategic-class militarized spirit— it could not be compared to the giant spirit that went into frenzy at the Academy Town the other day.

Because of its tremendous strength, it was impossible for an individual to control it. In the end, it could only be controlled by ritual Kagura performed by several hundred elementalists— it was surely a weapon of mass destruction.

At the end of the second Ranbal war, the continental nations signed a treaty, and all the seven bodies should have sealed and disposed of such spirits, but—

"Don't tell me, the one causing the earthquake is that strategic-class militarized spirit?"

"At the very worst; it's only a possibility. I want to entrust you guys with this investigation. If your investigation confirms that the seal has come undone—"

"I'll perform the ritual of resealing by the «ritual Kagura»."

Fianna calmly opened her mouth to speak.

"That's right. For you, who are the former Queen candidate, this quest suits you perfectly."

"...I see, that's the reason you called for this princess."

The Queens, who served the Five Great Elemental Lords, were the experts in the «ritual Kagura» that appeased spirits.

They did not receive any special martial arts training, and as the result they were not suited for battle, but all forms of ritual have been driven into their bodies since they were children.

In the entire academy, there was only one former Queen academy student— a rare special skill user; the quest could only be accomplish with her, and considering that it had to do with a strategic-class militarized spirit, it might also be appropriate to set it as an S rank quest.

"..."

The terms were not bad. However, there was one more thing that he had to ask.

"...But is Fianna alright with this? With the guard being me."

If it was just about guarding her, there should have been even more competent elementalists.


For example, Ellis Fahrengart. If it was her, whose sense of responsibility was strong and who also had the ability, there would be no shortcomings to her being a guard.

There were no merits for the princess to have Kamito, who was a boy, as her guard. If Greyworth grouped them together as she pleased, ignoring Fianna's will— he planned to reject this deal.

However, Fianna—

"Of course, I'll be relying on you, Kamito-kun."

"Did Greyworth threaten you to group with me?"

"No, after all, I was the one who nominated you."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. To travel with the world's only male elementalist, isn't it great?"

Fianna entwined her fingers with Kamito's hand and gazed with upturned eyes.

Peering into her clear black pupils, Kamito spontaneously felt shock.

"Hmm, aren't you popular?"

Greyworth said, seemingly displeased, and handed over a document with the quest's key points written on it.

"If you intend to take up this quest, then sign here. This should not be a bad deal for you."

It was not bad, far from that, it was an extraordinary deal for Kamito in the current circumstances.

However—

"I can't decide this by myself. I have to at least ask Claire too."


"Hmm, well, that's alright. But hurry, I'll have you leave tomorrow."

"Claire?"

The one who raised her voice was Fianna.

"Ah, my team member, but—"

"Could she happen to be Claire Elstein?"

"...You know her?"

Kamito awkwardly scratched his head.

(That's right, this girl is... the Queen candidate to the Fire Elemental Lord.)

She was the princess maiden who was training at the same «Divine Ritual Institute» as the Calamity Queen— Rubia Elstein.

If that was the case, it would not be strange for her to know even Claire, that girl's sister.

"That person's sister..."

Fianna's lips slightly trembled.

She might be having regrets after hearing that the Calamity Queen's sister was one of the teammates.

"I'm sorry, but Claire is my teammate. I'll accomplish the quest together with her."

Kamito informed her—

"Yes, that's what I wish for as well."

As Fianna nodded, she muttered in a soft voice.

"'''I don't plan on losing to even the sister'''."



===Part 3===

As the two of them left the office, Greyworth smiled.

"However, that princess did something bold as well."

"—you knew, academy director?"

From inside of the Greyworth's shadow, a lady quickly appeared.

Shadow elementalist— Teacher Freya Grandol.

"Is it about her using spirit crystals during the entrance examination? Of course, I noticed it. She did something impious. Doesn't that stone cost twenty million rood apiece?"

"Then, I presume you are overlooking this unfair entry, right?"

"Princess Fianna was ranked next to that Rubia Elstein as the second Queen candidate at the age of thirteen. If she wakes up as an elementalist again, isn't it the best bargain?"

"However, if she tries to lead her academy life using that thing, wouldn't she be instantly exposed?"

"I think that's something she also understands. She understands it and yet she became the academy's student. If she does not awaken, that would be the end to it, but if she awakens, it would be a fortune. Therefore, I grouped her with that boy."

"Academy director, what on earth are you—"

Freya frowned, and at that moment a winged eyeball flew in from the office window.


It was a probe-use spirit, used by Greyworth.

"Hmm, it seems that an uninvited guest has infiltrated the Academy Town."

"Is it the darkness spirit from the other day?"

"Well, I wonder? I do not know what they are aiming for, but... Freya Grandol, go prepare the order for the Sylphid Knights to strengthen the security."

===Part 4===

Kamito, who left the office, took Fianna on a tour around the academy building.

She had an elegant light manner of walking. It seemed that a real princess' way of walking was also polished.

"Fianna, are you wearing the «Divine Ritual Institute's» uniform?"

"Yes, as opposed to the Areishia Spirit Academy, it seems to be a recent design. During the time I was active, it used to be an even more bombastic ritual costume. That was cute in a way, but all the girls were definitely yearning for skirts."

"...Hmm, is that so? It suits you."

"Ah, even if it's just flattery, I am happy."

As they were talking while walking, Kamito's tone had relaxed tremendously.

Since she was the Ordesia Empire princess and a princess maiden from the «Divine Ritual Institute»— he was thinking that there would be an even-harder-to-approach atmosphere, but she was a surprisingly easy girl to talk to.

The two of them, who had such conversation while walking along the corridor, were already basked in the attention of other academy students.

"Hey, take a look. Kazehaya Kamito, again, is going to rape the admitted student!" "The licentious beast's special demonstration." "But I might be a little envious." "Wh...what are you saying!" "B...but if I was to be gazed at by those sharp eyes...I...I might be unable to defy." "It's just for a mere little while only, a little while only, I want to try being played with... don't you think so?" "Th...that's true, I...if he were to approach with force... my heart would surely be pounding." " No way, after all, he's the Demon King, the Demon King that devours any girl he can lay his hands on." "The Demon King..." "The Demon King of the night..."

A soft commotion like that could have been heard from the whole corridor.

(...What! The Demon King of the night!)

He wanted to retort numerous remarks, but it seemed like it would become really troublesome, so he did not.

He had already gotten used to the girls' frightened gazes.

However, it was strange, but there also were numerous girls sending him passionate gazes for some reason.

And then, for some reason, there seemed to be ribbon-tied letters and homemade sweets placed in his locker.

...Well, it might be just a prank.

"Hmm, Kamito-kun, you're quite popular."

"They're just teasing me, after all, I'm the only male in this academy."

"I wonder?"


Mugyu!

"...!?"

Suddenly, he felt a soft sensation at his upper arm.

Fianna pressed her breasts onto Kamito's arm.

"H...hey, Fianna!?"

"Hn, what's the matter?"

The princess expressed an impish smile with an upward glance.

The throbbing of his heart would not stop with that proper softness pressed onto his arm.

"No, princess... err, your breasts are hitting..."

"I do not mind. Or—"

Fianna gave a short teasing smile.

"Do you dislike an immodest princess?"

"..."

From the breast area of the dress-like uniform, her black lingerie was slightly in sight.

...He was troubled, earth-shatteringly troubled.

He felt like the sharpness of the gazes of the girls passing by along the corridor was gradually increasing.

Fianna was enjoyably gazing at Kamito, who has tensed up.

"Fufu, it seems like everyone is jealous."


"That's definitely not it..."

Kamito sighed deeply,

"By the way, why did princess enroll into this academy?"

Suddenly, he tried to ask something that was on his mind since a while ago.

He did not care for the circumstances that made her throw away her position as a Queen candidate. He was just curious as to why she became a student of the academy now, after having once disappeared from the center stage.

"That's—"

Fianna's legs suddenly stopped. Kamito also stopped at the same time.

"Uh?"

"If I said— I came to meet Kamito-kun, would you believe me?"

"...?"

As Kamito was a little puzzled,

"No, it can't be that you came to meet me, haven't we just met, Fianna?"

"..."

Fianna pouted her lips as if she was a little sullen hearing such a reply from Kamito.

"...Idiot."

Fianna muttered and pushed her index finger softly onto Kamito's lips.

And then, she drew her face closer till her lips barely touched him.


"—Ren Ashbell."

At that moment, Kamito's expression froze.

With the unexpected name coming from her mouth— he was at a loss for words.

"...!? H...ow..."

Standing still and dumbfounded, Kamito leaked out a dry voice.

The only people who knew Kamito's true identity as Ren Ashbell are the contracted spirit Restia and the witch Greyworth— those two people only.

How did this girl...?

"...I knew it, you don't remember."

Fianna pouted her lips, seemingly displeased.

Making such a face at this distance made it look as if she were a lover pestering for a kiss.

"It's alright. I'll keep it a secret from everyone, I did promise after all."

"Promised?"

Kamito seemed to have recalled something, at that moment.

"Kamito!"

Claire came running from the other side of the corridor. It seemed that she was searching for Kamito.

"Come on, what in the world were—"

At that point, Claire suddenly stopped.


In the middle of the corridor, she saw the two's posture, which was almost like a couple kissing—

"Y...yo...yo...yo..."

Gogogo... her shoulders began to tremble bit by bit.

Her red hair bristled up like a crimson flame and blazed up tremblingly.

"Yo...yo...you slave... yo...you truly have no discretion..."

Pishii!—The moment her whip made a sound, the hell cat, cladded in red hot flames, appeared from an empty space.

The hell cat transformed into the Flame Tongue form in an instant and settled into Claire's right hand.

"Th...that's alright, I'll thoroughly train you today..."

"Wa...wait, don't misunderstand, Claire, this girl is—"

"—Claire?"

Fianna reacted to that name Kamito said.

She gently parted her arms from Kamito and glared at Claire with a sharp look.

"I see, you are Claire Rouge."

"That's right. So what?"

"You are that person's sister..."

He felt like invisible fireworks scattered in Fianna's eyes glaring at Claire.

<noinclude>{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter2|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter4}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume2 Chapter3

2013-03-14T13:41:23Z

Zakashi: either "several hundreds of elementalists" or "several hundred elementalists", I'm not sure which do you want here. I chose the latter. Fianna is the former queen candidate at that point of time for the conversation as a fact thus present tense

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume5 Epilogue

2013-03-12T06:55:28Z

Zakashi:

Since I am not an accredited translator for this project, I would like to have my work taken off here.

It is a two page work. Someone else can translate it in 10 minutes.

353 bytes is not an entire translation-I fully respect him/her for translating entire volumes far more than I did, but you can't count that particular change as a entire re-translation. Anyway, (s)he can re-do the entire thing anytime (s)he likes.

-ArchmageXin.

==Get Your Facts Straight==

For your information, ArchmageXin, here's the diff comparison of Mizuho's retranslation:
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Seirei_Tsukai_no_Blade_Dance%3AVolume5_Epilogue&diff=227618&oldid=227491

Clearly every single line was replaced, already re-translated as you now propose. Just because the total length changed by a mere 353 bytes is no indication of the extent of the changes. After all, being translations of the same short passage, one should hope there are no significant discrepancies. Furthermore, it was the project supervisor, Kuroi_Hikari, who asked Mizuho to replace yours: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=User_talk:Mizuho

On the other hand, if you believe your original translation to be superior, please feel free to petition Kuroi_Hikari to have your version reinstated and credited.

P.S. To this date, Mizuho has yet to complete an entire volume on his own.

--[[User:Zzhk|Zzhk]] ([[User talk:Zzhk|talk]]) 17:36, 11 March 2013 (CDT)

I guess we have a misunderstanding of the "+353" here, ArchmageXin. In this case, it does not mean Mizuho added 353 bytes more to your version of translation. It simply indicates that, referring to zzhk's links above, Mizuho blanked the page with your version there, and put in his version, and according to the system, Mizuho's translation has a size that's 353 bytes more than your version's. It does not indicate in any way which version is inferior or what else. I hope all parties would calm down and not let this matter blow up. Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 01:53, 12 March 2013 (CDT)

Talk:Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume5 Epilogue

2013-03-12T06:53:51Z

Zakashi:

Since I am not an accredited translator for this project, I would like to have my work taken off here.

It is a two page work. Someone else can translate it in 10 minutes.

353 bytes is not an entire translation-I fully respect him/her for translating entire volumes far more than I did, but you can't count that particular change as a entire re-translation. Anyway, (s)he can re-do the entire thing anytime (s)he likes.

-ArchmageXin.

==Get Your Facts Straight==

For your information, ArchmageXin, here's the diff comparison of Mizuho's retranslation:
http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=Seirei_Tsukai_no_Blade_Dance%3AVolume5_Epilogue&diff=227618&oldid=227491

Clearly every single line was replaced, already re-translated as you now propose. Just because the total length changed by a mere 353 bytes is no indication of the extent of the changes. After all, being translations of the same short passage, one should hope there are no significant discrepancies. Furthermore, it was the project supervisor, Kuroi_Hikari, who asked Mizuho to replace yours: http://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/index.php?title=User_talk:Mizuho

On the other hand, if you believe your original translation to be superior, please feel free to petition Kuroi_Hikari to have your version reinstated and credited.

P.S. To this date, Mizuho has yet to complete an entire volume on his own.

--[[User:Zzhk|Zzhk]] ([[User talk:Zzhk|talk]]) 17:36, 11 March 2013 (CDT)

I guess we have a misunderstanding of the "+353" here, ArchmageXin. In this case, it does not mean Mizuho added 353 bytes more to your version of translation. It simply indicates that, referring to zzhk's links above, Mizuho blanked the page with your version there, and put in his version, and according to the system, Mizuho's translation has a size that's 353 bytes more than your version. It does not indicate in any way which version is inferior or what else. I hope all parties would calm down and not let this matter blow up. Thanks. [[User:Zakashi|Zakashi]] ([[User talk:Zakashi|talk]]) 01:53, 12 March 2013 (CDT)

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter4

2013-03-11T12:14:52Z

Zakashi: Undo revision 233420 by 80.223.220.209 (talk) the edit makes sense as a sentence, the reverting isn't really justified

==Chapter 4: The Wolf, the Cat and the Knight==

===Part 1===
Yare, Yare.<ref>The term '''Yare, yare''' can be loosely translated as '''Oh dear''', basically it's like an exclamation of slight weariness.</ref> I have suffered quite a lot since coming here.

One hour had passed since then. Slowly rubbing the pain in his back away, Kamito walked through the courtyard of the academy.

Although he had not been turned into cinders after receiving a hit from that flame whip; maybe Claire had held back some of her power, still, it didn't change the fact that it was quite painful.

Claire must be harshly admonished by Madam Freya in the punishment room.

Having eluded those female classmates who had enthusiastically pursued him, Kamito finally obtained a moment of peace.

Unlike other students, he had no classes for the afternoon. After all, he had entered the school just now and had not registered for the courses.

Areishiya Spirit Academy operated on a credit system in which the students could freely choose their preferred courses so long as they could meet the requirements. Because of the enormous diversity of the contracted spirits of the students, a uniform curriculum wouldn't be able to fully develop the potential of each and every princess maiden.

"For the time being, I'll make some preparations for school life starting tomorrow."

Kamito finally reached his specially prepared dormitory, a hut erected on the side of the stable.

Its appearance now looked even worse than when it was seen from the window. On top of that, it had the smell of cattle.

The door opened with a squeak. Kamito timidly stepped in.

"Hmm, surprisingly, it's not too bad."

Kamito expressed his impression of the interior.

First of all, the bed was clean. Looking from the inside, the room itself was spacious. Straw bed, table, chair, cabinet and other furniture were prepared after all. Cooking utensils were present as well. Anyhow it wouldn't be too troublesome living here.

Kamito immediately laid down on the straw bed, and although it prickled his back a bit, the smell of sun dried straws was good for a comfortable sleep.

"Oh, well, no matter how I look at it, I just need to endure it for two months."

Lying still on the bed, Kamito fixed his eyes on his left hand, covered by the black leather glove.

Two months from now, the Blade Dance would be held in Astral Zero.

Before that, he must find four more teammates in order to enter the contest.

It was not clear what Greyworth would have him do.

But there was something he had to check with his own eyes.

A name that was deeply tied to the fate of his own self.

Participating in the contest of the Blade Dance 3 years ago, the Strongest Blade Dancer.

That accompanying her was a spirit of darkness that took the form of a human girl.

Who on earth were they?

Ren Ashbell shouldn't exist in this world anymore. Besides Greyworth, only a very small number of people were aware of this.

Even though one was just an impostor who gained the title of Strongest Blade-Dancer by fraud, it couldn't be for this reason that the witch took this much trouble to summon him here. Greyworth must be holding a huge secret.

No matter what, to find out the truth, the only way was to directly cross blades with her in the Blade Dance in two months.

"But, in your current state, you won't be able to defeat her." Greyworth had said.

That is most likely true. The witch was not lying. But surely she was not telling the truth either.

In the end, it all comes down to 'the current state'.

But in merely two months, he had to regain what was lost in the past three years.

"..."

....*Guu*, suddenly his stomach growled.

Feeling exhausted, Kamito lowered his arm that was raised towards the roof.

After all, he had not had anything to eat since wandering into the Spirit Forest this morning.

However, he decided to endure his empty stomach.

The reason was that he was out of money. Although there were restaurants for the students in the academy, the price was surprisingly high. This had already passed the level of a school for high class ladies, a school for princesses indeed.

What's the point of one cup of soup being as expensive as a normal folk's salary?

"It can't be helped. Maybe I'll ask Ellis to show me around the academic town tomorrow."

One should be able to find cheaper and delicious restaurants in the academic town at the foot of the hill.

With the cooking utensils, he could also just buy the materials and cook it on his own. For the fire all he needed to do was to go to the Spirit Forest and catch some low level fire spirits.

"Bacon and mushroom pasta sounds really good..."

He got more hungry by thinking about food.

"Should I go to the Spirit Forest and collect some mushrooms now?"

As he started to seriously entertain that thought, from somewhere, the smell of delicious soup flowed in.

"....Hmm?"

Frowning, Kamito got up from the bed.

It seemed the smell was coming in from the gap of the half opened door.

Twitching his nose to inhale the smell, Kamito opened the door...

In front of him was a bowl of soup that gave off white steam.

Filled with a lot of onions and chicken with bones, the soup looked delicious.

"...Am I imagining things, or is this the kindness from heaven for my unending misfortune?"

Drawing a blank because of the hunger, Kamito reached out with his hands towards the bowl without any suspicion.

Suddenly the bowl rose up a bit.

He stretched out his hand again.

Once again the bowl was raised.

Then in front of the Kamito was the face of that princess with platinum-blond hair.

Her name should be Rinslet Laurenfrost if he remembered correctly.

Behind her, the girl Carol in a maid's uniform stood courteously.

"What's the meaning of this?"

Kamito asked with half-closed eyes<ref>An expression one shows when humoring another especially when it is too bothersome to go against the other.</ref>.

"Fuu, you must be hungry, right? Kamito Kazehaya?"

"Yeah."

Kamito nodded honestly.

"Bark, woof, and then swear that you will be my slave, and I'll let you have this bowl of soup."

Rinslet held the bowl still, and puffed up her large chest.

"I refuse. Bye Bye."

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Bang*.

"Ahh, wait, wait a second. Listen to what I say, you insolent person."

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Bang!* *Bang!* The door was kicked repeatedly.

It would be troublesome if she breaks it. Kamito opened the door again.

"What's that? Are you going to let me have the soup now?"

"Right away if you lick my foot... Ah, why are you closing the door again!"

Rinslet quickly stuck her foot into the gap of the door, like a veteran debt collector.

"Ouch! That hurts!"

That looked painful... What the hell was she here for anyway?

"Are you alright, my lady?"

Worried about Rinslet, the Maid, Carol, asked.

Kamito had no choice but to open the door, Rinslet glared at him with tears in her eyes.

"How can you be so insolent after I offered my hands of kindness towards you?"

"No, you... Hands of kindness?"

It appeared that she was serious. Slowly, Kamito's head starts aching.

(Sheesh, all the princesses of this academy are so troublesome.)

Kamito complained inside his mind.

"Ah—"

After Rinslet got a glimpse of the inside of the hut, her face started to twitch.

"Ah, you, why are you living inside a stable?"

"The stable is next door. This is my dormitory. Home is where you make it."

"..."

"Stop looking at me with such pity. It makes me feel sad."

Her face looked like that she was seriously concerned about it. Kamito's attitude softened a little bit.

"Rather than living in a condition like this, you should come to my house. I'll specially hire you as a servant."

"Ah, my lady, I believe he will look great if we dress him as a maid."

Carol showed her support with a big smile. (This girl is troublesome as well.)

Well, even so, it seemed as if Rinslet was genuinely worried about his circumstances.

"Your sympathy is appreciated, but I don't plan to throw away my pride." Kamito shook his head.

Displeased, Rinslet perked up her lips.

"So you don't like becoming my servant?"

"That's right. It is no use to try to placate me."

"So full of yourself, even though you wag your tail at Claire Rouge."

"When did I wag my tail at her?" Kamito grumbled with half-closed eyes. Well, many people might think the same—

Could it be that this princess was trying to get close to Kamito mainly out of her rivalry with Claire?

(Yare yare, such an unexpected annoyance.)

Kamito let out a heavy sigh.

"I got it. That's fine with me if that's how you want it." Rinslet cleared her throat, and placed the bowl on the ground.

"Hmm?"

"I'll leave the soup here. From the very beginning it was because Carol cooked too much of it and it will be a shame to waste the leftovers. You should be grateful for my benevolence."

"Eh?"

(This young lady, by any chance)——

[[Image:STnBD V01 113.jpg|thumb]]
Rinslet turned around elegantly and was about to leave.

"Ahh, Wait, Rinslet!"

Kamito suddenly called out.

Rinslet winced and stopped in her steps.

"Wh-What is that? Suddenly calling other people's first name—"

"I can't be your servant, but we can be friends."

"Eh?"

Rinslet's emerald green eyes open wide.

"Thank you for being worried and coming to see me."

"Wh-Wha, you, you insolent. Of-Of course that's not true."

Rinslet suddenly blushed and turned her face away.

"Fufu, my lady is so..."

Carol covered her mouth and giggled.

===Part 2===

Right at that moment—

"Rinslet Laurenfrost!"

A voice, with which had become familiar to Kamito,, suddenly passed into his ears.

Claire was walking towards them, her red pigtails swaying.

It appeared that Madam Freya's admonishing session was finally over.

"Don't feed my contracted spirit without permission, you thieving dog."

"You... Who are you calling a thieving dog!?"

Here we go again, Kamito let out a tired sigh.

"What's that? Isn't your family crest a dog?"

"Why you— Laurenfrost's family crest is a proud White Wolf!"

"White Wolf? Changing it into a Chihuahua fits you better."

"...!"

Provoked by Claire's words—

"Claire Rouge... You really got my dander up." Rinslet said with a suppressed voice.

In a flash, a fog-like chill hung around them. The temperature dropped dramatically.

"Wait, you can't be calling your spirit—"

Kamito hastily called out, but it was too late.

The cold wind swirled. Rinslet's hair flew up, rippling.

—Oh freezing beast with Ice-teeth, merciless hunter of the forest.

—Now is the time to abide the contract of blood, hasten to my side as commanded!

As soon as Rinslet finished chanting the summoning spirit spell, a gust of ice storm engulfed all of the surroundings.

Amid the roaring and swirling blizzard, a figure appeared.


A beautiful wolf, with a coat of silver white fur.

Its body exuded a freezing chill.

"This is..."

"It is the contract spirit of my lady, the demon ice spirit «Fenrir»." Carol said with a smile.

The imposing aura that white wolf carried, was definitely incomparable to a low level spirit.

In regards to ranking between spirits, the white wolf was unmistakably higher than mid-level. To have made contracts with spirits of this level, this young lady was definitely not an ordinary person.

"Well, your dog is still the same, with its coat color barely meritable."

Claire shook her pigtails in disdain.

"You... You called it a dog again, You flat chest! I absolutely will not forgive your insult to the family of Laurenfrost!"

Covered with the chilling air, the white wolf roared, and dashed toward Claire.

"Who are you calling flat chest!? Come, «Scarlet»!"

Claire lashed at the ground with her whip. A scorching hell cat immediately appeared from the twirling rising flames.

It appeared that Claire had long conjured up her spirit already.

"—Hey you two! No fighting with your spirits here!"


Kamito cried out. The horses in the stables neighed in fear.

"I will not forgive you for putting your hand on my slave. I'll end it here today, you thieving dog."

"I'll surely steal your servant and make him mine!"

Sparks burst out between the two girls.

If one listened to these lines only, it sounded like two women in love, fighting over a man.

"The two ladies look like lovers fighting over a man!"

"Carol, you don't have to say that." Kamito looked at the maid standing next to him with squinted eyes.

"By the way, is it really OK to not stop them?"

"That's right. They have always been like this."

"These two girls have always been behaving like this towards each other...?"

"Yes, the relation between the two ladies is very good."

"Is this irony?"

Kamito grumbled with a sigh.

"You have always been an eyesore, Claire Rouge!"

"You are the same, Rinslet! Why do you have to always cause me trouble!"

Demon ice spirit Fenrir—

Flame spirit Scarlet—

The two spirits suddenly jumped up in the air and clashed.

Ice and Fire collided, sending a storm bursting around.

From Kamito's point of view, the levels of the two spirits were almost the same. But it seemed that Claire had an advantage in the skill of mastering the spirits.

However, the flame spirit in her command was apparently quite spent out.

(Because she was beaten up by the sword spirit a few hours ago—)

Receiving such a large amount of damage, she couldn't possibly have recovered by taking a short break.

Kamito observed the fighting of the two spirits.

(Eh? What? ......A burning smell?)

Kamito frowned and looked around.

When the sight came into his eyes, his expression suddenly froze.

It was burning.

Kamito's hut was burning fiercely.

The straws that were stocked next to his hut had caught the sparks of the flame spirit and started burning.

"Ah, mmmmmmm-my home!"

Hearing the cries of Kamito, Claire quickly turned towards him.

"Rinslet! Pause! We got a fire!"

"It is no use to distract me... Huh? It really is burning!"

The hut on fire burned more and more violently. Sooner or later the stables would catch fire too.

"My home—"

"Calm down. A fire of this scale, I'll put it out in no time— Fenrir!"

Rinslet cried out, the ice demon white wolf instantly came back to her side.

Just as one thought that, the white wolf suddenly disappeared in the air, and in Rinslet's hands a huge «Ice Longbow» appeared.

Spirit waffe — the second purified form of the spirit.

"Oh freezing ice fang, pierce your target! «Freezing Arrow»!"

Rinslet drew an ice arrow and shot.

The arrows turned into countless shards of ice and rained down, causing the burning flames to instantly be extinguished.

"Well, with me here it is a piece of cake!"

Rinslet stroked her long platinum blond hair and puffed up her chest proudly.

"......"

Kamito stood motionlessly with a dumbfounded stare.

By raining-down ice arrows, '''the hut was smashed into pieces'''.


"Kohon", Rinslet let out a dry cough.

"...Seems like I went a bit too far."

"This is not called a bit! Don't you have any control over your power?"

"You... Shut up! From the very beginning it was you who lit it up!"

Ignoring the stunned Kamito, those two engaged in an argument again.

At that moment—

"What are you doing!"

The footsteps of several people running from the middle court could be heard.

One of them was the ponytail girl in a silver breastplate.

Ellis Fahrengart, the commander of the Sylphid Knights, whom was in charge of upholding the Academy's discipline.

Behind her there were two girls in the same attire.

Claire clicked her tongue, and Rinslet also didn't bother to hide her face of displeasure.

"It is prohibited to fight due to private matters in school... What!?"

The hastily running steps suddenly stopped.

Her eyes widened, looking dazed at the pile of rubble that was Kamito's home.

Black smoke slowly rose from the charred rubble.

"This is...... What on earth is this?!"


Ellis questioned Kamito, her voice charged with fury.

She drew the sword that hung at her waist, pointing it at Kamito's throat.

"You, you hate the house that I made! Is that it? Is this your act of protest?!"

"No... There is absolutely no such thing! This is because—"

Kamito quickly explained.

"It was this stupid dog who blew it up to dust."

"Before that, this pitiful chest lit it on fire!"

Hearing the voices from behind, Ellis turned around.

Claire and Rinslet, pointed their fingers at each other in accusation.

"... So that's how it was. It was your work, just like always."

Ellis sighed with an expression that said 'I understand'.

"Knight commander, your greeting is more enthusiastic than usual."

"It is the usual greeting, isn't it? Problematic students of the Raven class?" Ellis looked sharply at Rinslet.

Soon, the girls from the Knight brigade who were following Ellis finally caught up.

A girl with tea colored hair tied in braids, and another girl with black hair in a tomboy style.

As soon as they saw Claire and Rinslet, the two girls put on expressions like they had bitten some bitter worm.

"...Hell cat Claire! And Ice Wolf Rinslet!"

"What did they do again this time, these guys from the lowly Raven class?"

In the eyes of the girls plainly floated a contemptuous look.

"...What did you say?"

"What did you utter just now?"

Claire and Rinslet glared at the two girls at the same time.

But the girls completely ignored them, focusing their eyes on Kamito instead.

"Are you that newly transferred male elementalist?"

"Oh, not bad. Very handsome."

The girl with braids looked at Kamito up and down like she was evaluating his value.

The girl's scrutiny made Kamito shrink away in discomfort.

"Wait, this guy is my slave spirit that I caught!"

"I tamed Kamito Kazahaya: he is my servant!"

Claire and Rinslet arbitrarily declared their ownership of Kamito at the same time.

The knight girl with braids sniffed with disdain, and said: "Alas, because nobody wants to form a team with you, you use your sex appeal to seduce the transfer student. Such a fitting style for countryside nobles."

"You dare to call me a countryside noble!"

Rinslet's face suddenly turns livid.

It appeared that the girl stepped on a mine that should not have been stepped on.

"Sure I did. The Laurenfrost family has only a big-name, they are really just country bumpkins."

"You... You... You...!"

"My-My lady. Please calm down—"

"Fu-Fufu-Fu, ...Carol, I am quite calm."

Rinslet revealed a bright smile... Although she tried to be ladylike, her face was still quite scary.

Another girl knight turned to Claire, and scorned: "As for Claire Rouge, although she is a noble, isn't she the sister of a traitor? Really, why did the Academy accept this person for admission—"

At that instant, Claire suddenly lashed at the ground with the whip.

"—Shut up. Or I'll turn you into charcoal cinders."

Claire snarled with a suppressed voice, her voice trembling, her red eyes quietly burning with anger.

(...Claire is the sister of a traitor?)

Kamito frowned.

(...What on earth is the meaning of this?)

The two girls felt the sudden change of atmosphere and fell silent.

"You went too far." Ellis chided the two, then turned to Claire.

She cleared her throat and said: "In short, I will report this instance to the knight headquarters. The charge will be using spirits to start a small fire and and causing property damage. We'll give you notice for the specifics of the punishment at a later time. Please refrain from doing such stupid things again. We are busy, you know?"

"Let's go." Ellis said and was about to lead the other two away.

However, from behind came a voice.

"Hold on! Ellis Fahrengart, are you trying to run away?"

"What?"

Ellis stopped, and turned back to Claire who called out her.

"What did you say just now?"

The calm tone of voice was full of anger. Ellis's hand was on the hilt of the sword at her waist.

"Oh, you heard it? I did not expect the Sylphid Knights to be cowards."

"Claire Rouge, do you think I'll just let it go if someone insults the Sylphid Knights?"

Ellis unsheathed her sword. The other two drew their swords at the same time.


"I'll return that line intact right back at you. You may insult me as you please, but I will not forgive anyone who insults my sister."

Claire struck the ground with her whip.

"I request a duel, Ellis Fahrengart, with the other two as well."

"Let me join as well, Claire Rouge. It is the Laurenfrost family's injunction to take revenge at those who dare to smear the Laurenfrost family name."

Rinslet ruffled her hair, and showed an undaunted smile.

At this point, Ellis pointed the tip of her sword towards these two.

"Well, it will stain the name of the Sylphid Knights if we are accused of running away. I accept the request. I can't stand the mess of your Raven class any longer."

"Hey, isn't it prohibited to fight for private matters?"

At such a precarious intense moment, Kamito instinctively spoke out.

"It is forbidden to fight for private matters within school grounds. Anyway, I have no intention of doing it here."

"What do you mean?"

Ignoring Kamito who was tilting his head, Ellis turned to Claire.

"The time will be 2am tonight, in front of the «Gate». I'll leave it to you to decide the format."

"...One-on-one is too much trouble. How about a three-man match."


"That will do."

Ellis nodded and put away the sword, then turned around and left.

Claire glared at the back of the knights and cursed viciously:

"Well I will let you regret this, especially that short haired girl. I'll definitely kick her ass!"

"Such a good opportunity. I have disliked the bunch from the Knights since long ago."

"Rinslet, try not to be a burden."

"Huh? Who are you saying that to?"

"...Why you two. After destroying the hut, now you are having a duel. Please take mercy on me."

Kamito sighed deeply. Then suddenly he realized.

(Battle as a team of three. So, who will be the third person?)

"As it turns out—"

Claire placed one hand on her waist, and pointed a finger at Kamito.

"It is time to show us your strength, slave spirit!"

"Ahhh... I knew this is how it would be..."

In front of rubble heap that was his former home , Kamito reluctantly dropped his shoulder.

<noinclude>

==References and Translation Notes==
<references/>

{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter3|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter5}}</noinclude>

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter6

2013-03-11T12:11:36Z

Zakashi: the use of "as" for a metaphor such as family seems awkward here

==Chapter 6: The Blade Dance at Midnight==

===Part 1===

—It was 2 am. The time when the academy students slept and forest spirits began stirring.

On the stone paving path illuminated by the moonlight, Kamito was walking alongside Claire.

"The academy at night has an atmosphere that is very different, "

"Of course, the night is the time for spirits."

Claire kept facing front and bluntly replied. Solid sounds of walking resounded loudly.

Since some time ago, Claire had not said much. She might be tense about the duel with the Knights.

"Where are you planning to do it?"

Private battles should be prohibited within the academy according to academy regulations. Is there a place for a duel outside?"

"Over there—"

Claire abruptly stopped.

In front of what she was pointing, there was a gigantic stone circle.

Its ground was dimly shining in bluish-white.

"That's the— «Astral Gate»!"

"Yea, the gate that connects this world with the Astral Zero. The reason why the academy was built in such a remote place."


"...I see."

He was surprised that there was a 'gate' within the academy premises. That stone circle was perhaps a prehistoric ruin, which was used with an unknown art. It probably had a function to stabilize the unstable «gate».

"Isn't it dangerous? There are spirits that cannot be controlled by humans roaming about in the Astral Zero."

"You see, that «gate» connects to a safe area where there are only low-level spirits. If not, the academy wouldn't leave it alone, right?"

Claire murmured '''stupid''', and stepped into the middle of the stone circle.

She recited the words of opening the gate in the spirit language and the blue light on the ground further increased its brightness.

"Come on, you, faster! Get on too."

Led by Claire, Kamito hurriedly jumped on top of the formation of lights.

At that moment, his field of vision was filled with a white flash.

He had a feeling that his whole body was attacked with dizziness. And then—

...

—After opening his eyes, a scenery of another world spread out."

There was a deep dark forest with twisted trees standing tall.

Shining brilliantly in the night sky was a blood-like red moon.

There was a pale purple smoke-like fog shrouding nearby.

Astral Zero— another world where spirits live in.

"If it's here, nobody can disturb us. Even if we were injured, it would not be serious, so this place is often used by the academy students for duels."

In a situation such a thing occurred, the physical body of humans possessing divine powers would be treated the same as spirits, this meant that there's almost no physical damage received.

Naturally, this was not absolutely safe. Pain was felt normally; in exchange of the physical body not receiving damage, the mind would suffer an equal damage.

To fall into a lethargic state was still a good thing but in the case of receiving a serious injury, one would receive severe memory impairment and the destruction of the mind, there was also the possibility of not regaining consciousness.

"—Flame, illuminate."

Claire recited the spirit magic and a small fire ball was born on her palm, dimly lighting up a narrow open path in the middle of the forest.

"Let's go, Kamito."

Claire gently brushed her twin-tails and calmly walked.

"Do we have a chance of winning?"

"That depends on your ability. ...Honestly, it might be a little hard.

"Is that so?"

Kamito was surprised. For an elementalist of Claire's level, it was unexpected of her to say such a thing.

"Putting aside the other two, Ellis is strong. She isn't the Knights leader just for show. Besides, Scarlet exhausted some strength from this morning's fight with the «sealed spirit». Rinslet's ability is— well, at least I recognize it, but her teamwork is the worst."

"...That was a surprisingly calm battle strength analysis. I thought you were the more impulsive type."

"You, what do you see me as?"

"A dangerous fellow, who instantly swings a whip— Ouch!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Pashii*— A whip was promptly swung down onto Kamito's back.

...After walking a while, there was a historic ruin of a gigantic theater in the forest.

It was something from when Astral Zero and the human world were one— a long gone mythical era.

The crumbling looking stone gate greeted the two. It seemed that here was the stage for the duel.

"First of all, you, the sword elementalist, are the attacker. Rinslet and I will provide cover."

"I've got the most dangerous role! Isn't it your duel?"

"What! Do you have a complaint? Alright, if that's the case, I'll let you choose a position. Attacker or cinders, which do you like?"

"I get it. I'll be the attacker."


"A wise decision."

Claire nodded seemingly satisfied.

"By the way, you can properly handle that contracted «sword spirit», right?"

"Hn, ahh...probably."

"...Probably? What do you mean?"

Claire's eyes lifted up with danger. Kamito backed off in a panic.

"Well, you see, isn't it bad if it was summoned poorly and went out of control? That's why, I have not summoned it even once since I contracted it this morning."

That was somewhat of an explanation— he thought. Actually, it was half of the explanation.

The truth was that by contracting with another spirit he felt guilty in regards to her.

He felt a sense of betrayal about using a new contracted spirit.

"You succeeded in contracting in just one try, therefore there should be little chance of losing control but— well, it is a sealed spirit with a history and it certainly won't be funny if anything happened."

However, Claire seemed to have agreed for once.

"For the time being, try releasing your elemental waffe. You are able to do that, right?"

"A...aahh... Yeah."

The releasing of an elemental waffe was not something anyone could do but—

(Can't seem to get into the mood, it can't be helped—)

Kamito closed his eyes and concentrated his consciousness to the «spirit seal» engraved on his right hand.

'''"The cool-headed steel queen, the sacred sword that destroys evil—"'''

He recited the summoning in the spirit language and the crest of two swords crossing faintly shined.

The path with a contracted spirit would be normally connected— however,

(What?)

...It was strange. He could not feel the presence of such a powerful sealed spirit.

No— he could pick up its presence but it was as if something wasn't right, like gears not fitting together.

'''"—now form a sword of steel and be the power in my hand!"'''

At that moment, small particles of light gathered at Kamito's palm.

And then, what appeared was—

"..."

One short sword.

To be more precise, it was a small sword almost like a knife.

...*Shin*. An awkward silence arrived.

"...Is that the sword spirit's elemental waffe?"

Claire said with her face twitching.


For an incarnation of the powerful sealed spirit that cut down Scarlet in one blow—

...Honestly, it was too shabby.

"D...Don't judge it by its appearance, it might actually have an amazing ability."

"Y...eah, that certainly may be true!"

Claire nodded for a moment while having a stiff expression.

Kamito tried cutting a buckwheat tree as a test.

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Bekii*. The short sword very easily broke and vanished.

"..."

...Ahh, how should I say it, it's probably that."

Kamito beared the frozen Claire's gaze and calmly opened his mouth.

"To tell you the truth, this is the first time I've used a contracted spirit in three years. I have yet to regain that feeling."

"...Huh?"

Claire blankly opened her mouth to that shocking confession.

"You're lying... after all, didn't you easily tame that sealed spirit!?"

"That time was because I was frantically trying to save you. To be honest, I don't really understand myself how I succeeded in contracting it."

No matter how powerful a spirit one contracted with, there was no point if one could not fully draw out that power. When an inexperienced elementalist contracted a spirit beyond his means, it was often the case that its power would be too much to handle.

(...However, for my case, it's a little different.)

Kamito stared at his left hand, inserted in a leather glove.

(Probably, within my sub-consciousness, I thought about her.)

—Therefore, he could not connect the path with the new spirit.

"Wh..Wha..What's with that..."

He heard a dead groan. After lifting her head, Claire was tightly grasping a leather whip, used for training animals, with her shoulders trembling.

"No, I mean, um, my battle strength is lacking..." 

"What do you mean! I am counting on your battle strength!"

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Pishii!* *Pishii!* *Pishii!*

"Ouch! Wait..stop!"

A tempest of unforgiving whips descended onto the escaping Kamito.

Then, there—

"What in the world are you doing? Claire Rouge."

From the other side of the dark tree grove, that voice was heard.

Claire stopped her whipping and sullenly turned around.


The ones who appeared were Rinslet and the maid Carol.

"You're late, Rinslet."

"Aah, a lady getting dressed takes time."

Rinslet proudly brushed her extravagant platinum blonde hair.

"...? What, is Carol here too?"

"Of course, as milady's supporter."

After Kamito heard that, Carol brought out a flag, seemingly from nowhere and began swinging it.

"By the way, why were you whipping Kazehaya Kamito?"

Rinslet placed her index finger at her chin and frowned dubiously.

That was— before Claire answered, Carol interrupted.

"Milady, that's something unrefined to listen to."

"What do you mean?"

"That was a form of a slightly unusual love. In a unique way, that was a perverted play."

"Ehh! Is that right, you two!?"

"T...Th..T..That's not it! W...What are you saying, you stupid maid!"

Claire's face became bright red as she denied it.

...Indifferently, he wanted the fuse-blowing whipping to stop, as it hurt.


(...Why am I already worn out before the duel.)

Kamito began to seriously think about the absurdity of his life. At that moment.

"—Your side seems to be all present, Raven class."

A frigid voice descended from right above.

"...!?"

The four of them looked upwards together.

There, above the crumbling theater wall was—

A figure of a gallant female knight with her blue hair fluttering in the gentle breeze.

Beside her, two knights, also wearing the same silver armor, were standing.

He heard their names from Claire. The one with the short hair was Rakka. The one with the braiding was Reishia.

"—Ellis Fahrengart, for how long were you here!"

"By the way, you wouldn't by any chance be waiting for a chance to appear at a cool moment, right?"

"Wha... T...There's no such thing! I just only got here!"

After Kamito pointed it out with his half-opened eyes, Ellis was frankly disturbed and ended up almost falling.

...Somehow, that was a rather deplorable Knights leader look.

Ellis sharply glared at Kamito and the rest, and drew her sword from her waist.


"Let's go, Raven class. Let's finish this duel by day break—"

At that moment. The illumination of a large flame lit the stage of the theater.

The one shined on by that illumination—

"That's—!?"

A large eagle was spreading its enormous wings and making an appearance in the red night.

"Let me introduce to you, Kazehaya Kamito. This is my contracted spirit— demon wind spirit, «Simorgh»!"

With a howl like the wind— The large eagle, clad in wind swooped down.

===Part 2===

At a point of an attack in-place of a greeting, —

The demon wind spirit glided closer and dived with its aim at the ground, where the four were.

An ear-splitting thunderous roar. Stone paving came unstuck and large amounts of earth and sand were whirled up.

A strong wind, brought forth from the force of the explosion, hit Kamito and his body was easily blown away.

"...Gahaa!"

He was thrown into a wall. With that bone shattering impact, he stopped breathing for a moment.

Even if one received an attack of a spirit of a purified form, the physical body cannot be hurt, however, the physical damage from a crashing impact and fragments of rubble were different. Small rocks fluttering up in the squall were cutting at Kamito's whole body. While covering his forehead with both his hands, Kamito clicked his tongue.

(...What destructive power! If I took a blow directly, I'll faint.)

That demon wind spirit... Simorgh.

Comparing just destructive power, it might surpass even Claire's Scarlet.

(That's right, where's Claire?)

He stood up and surveyed his surroundings, his two allies were at their respective positions.

Claire was providing direct cover from a mid-distance. Rinslet was providing rear support with a long distance attack.

Carol was...waving a flag at the outside of the theater where she had escaped to.

The thunderous wind that was blowing violently stopped. At that interval, Kamito began to run—

"Not yet, Kamito!"

"...!?"

At the same time Claire shouted, the roar of the demon wind spirit resounded.

From an empty large hole in the ground, a large demon bird flapped its wings—

"What are you doing, quickly release your elemental waffe!"

"Hn, even if you say that—"

At that moment, a cluster of wind that held an enormous mass gouged the earth while rushing over.


The stone paving came ripping off in a straight line. Kamito quickly jumped sideways.

While tumbling on the ground, he quickly recited the summoning of the spirit language in his mouth.

The spirit seal faintly glowed but as before the path with the contracted spirit was not connected.

(... It's no good, huh!?)

Just as he was about to give up, a glowing short sword was constructed in his palm.

It was the same unreliable elemental waffe but it was better than nothing.

"Are you just escaping? Kazehaya Kamito, I have misjudged you!"

Ellis, with a pony-tail hair swaying, alighted onto the ground.

"Ahh! I just have to fight, right—"

Kamito prepared the short sword and charged towards Ellis. The first to strike wins. If he defeated the elementalist first, then the summoned contracted spirit would vanished—

"Kamito, behind you!"

Claire's voice came from behind him— Kamito jumped straight to the side.

The wing of the demon wind spirit mowed down at the place Kamito was at just now.

"... What speed!"

Among the five grand spirit spirits, the ones boasting of being the fastest were the wind-attribute spirits. And Ellis was completely controlling one of them.

The demon wind spirit, dancing in the night sky, turned in an arc— and swooped down.


Kamito jumped again. The demon wind spirit that crashed into the ground blew up a large quantity of earth and sand— and then it immediately transformed into countless blades of the wind and cut into Kamito's arms.

"...Kuu!"

Tremendous pain was running in his right arm. Actually, it did not mean that his arm was cut off— but that pain was violently jolting his consciousness.

(—Well, I never thought it'd turn into the blades of wind with that timing.)

Kamito was astonished in his mind. Ellis's competency as an elementalist was something substantial.

"Kamito, I'll cover you!"

At the same time as her voice, A blazing flame illuminated the night sky red.

Claire wielded Scarlet's elemental waffe — «Flame Blaze».

The flame slash mowed down all the attacking blades of the wind in an arc—

"I won't let you interfere with the leader!"

The braided hair knight, Reishia, attacked Claire.

The elemental waffe held in her hand was a transparent ice sword— it seemed she also an ice elementalist like Rinslet.

Nonetheless, her spirit's rank was completely no match for Rinslet's Fenrir. It seemed she had the competency to release her contracted spirit into its elemental waffe but she had not made it hers yet.

She was not good enough to be a worthy adversary for Claire— Kamito concluded so and adjusted his direction to Ellis, who was in front of him.


In that moment, simultaneous with a violent blasting sound, the ground in front of him was being completely gouged.

"...!?"

"Huh, try taking on my elemental waffe— Rock Breaker!"

The short-haired knight, Rakka, shouted in a spirited tone.

Her specialized weapon was a large hammer with a long handle, which was easily being swung about by the thin arm of a girl.

Kamito jumped and backed away, getting some distance between them. She seemed more hot-blooded than Reishia.

While keeping his distance, he was chasing Ellis, who was within his sight—

Ellis had linked with Rakka's attack and was already moving.

As expected of the Knights' leader, Ellis' commanding ability was high.

First, she was to use her demon wind spirit to launch a preemptive attack to cause chaos on the battlefield. Next was to strike Claire on mid-guard with Reishia and Kamito on advance-guard with Rakka. While the two were pinned down, Ellis with the most battle strength would attack Rinslet on rear-guard. That was the so-called strategy.

(... Before attacking Ellis, firstly, I have to do something about this fellow.)

Kamito nimbly stepped in and let loose a slash. The flash of the silver sword shallowly cut Rakka's arm.

As it was an attack from an elemental waffe, blood did not flow out— but pain should be felt in the same way.

"This guy...!"

Rakka's face was dyed in anger. She aimed at the top of Kamito's head and swung her Rock Breaker down.


There was a thunderous roar. The ground was gouged and rubbles were whirled up. It was probably a spirit of the earth attribute. As expected, its destructive power is great but its movement was a large swing, making it easy to avoid.

"Chii, how restless!"

She too seemed to have yet to master her elemental waffe. Or perhaps, her contracted spirit's rank in contrast to her competency was too great— The spirit she was supposed to be using was manipulating her.

"Don't run, fight properly, male elementalist!"

"This doesn't mean that I'm just running away. In a group battle, you should pay more attention to your surroundings."

"What?"

"A capable hunter is taking aim."

At that moment, an ice arrow came flying and pierced the girl's chest.

Rakka was flashily blown off and bounced on the ground.

The elemental waffe, 'Rock Breaker', turned into particles of light and vanished.

"Fuu, nice shot!"

Kamito turned behind where the voice came from.

On the outer wall of the theater, there was the appearance of Rinslet brushing her hair.

"... Why are you, the support position, standing at such a conspicuous place?!"

"Ah, it's natural for me to be at a more conspicuous place than Claire!"


"Th...That stupid dog...! You were moving around and sniping, right!"

Claire shouted like she was gnawing.

"Fuu, as a worthy lady of the noble Laurenfrost family, I won't be satisfied if I'm not at the most conspicuous place at a dance party."

"That's my lady!"

Carol was delightfully swinging a flag from above ground.

"Hmm, you're pretty composed, Raven Class!"

—At that moment, at the back a strong squall was winding up.

Spreading its wings, the demon wind spirit roared and flew with its aim at Rinslet.

"A good target! Freezing ice fang, pierce— «Freezing Arrow»!"

Rinslet quickly released the Freezing Arrow—

The demon wind spirit immediately transformed to the countless blades of wind and rushed at Rinslet.

"Kyaa!"

"Rinslet!?"

In front of Claire, who planned to rush over, the braided hair knight blocked her way.

She quickly entered into the range of the whip in the gap that Claire lost her focus and slashed with her ice sword. The moment she got into the range, a sword was overwhelmingly advantageous. Claire was gradually pressured.


"Why you! How dare you do this to Rakka!"

"Kuu— Kamito, chase Ellis!"

"Ahh!"

Claire was in a predicament, but Ellis ought to be stopped now.

Ellis was running on the stairs of the theater. Her intention was to completely take out Rinslet.

Kamito aimed at Ellis's legs and threw the short sword. He concluded that it was dangerous to ignore her— Ellis jumped to the side and got into the audience seating.

In the vicinity, a high-pitched sound reverberated. The elemental waffe short sword hit the wall and got smashed up.

"Hmm, that's a pretty fragile elemental waffe."

While Ellis said that, she called the demon wind spirit to her hand.

And then—

"—Evil winds, pierce through my sworn enemy's heart, become a demonic spear and lodge within my hand!"

The moment she recited the releasing in the spirit language— winds blew violently and in her hand a very long spear appeared.

It was a ceremonial long spear and delicate patterns were engraved on its handle.

Its tip, illuminated by the red moonlight, was clad in sharp winds and was faintly making wind sounds.

Her pony-tail hair, which reached her waist, was agitatedly swaying and flowing in the wind.

Ellis completely spun the spear in one hand and stared at Kamito with a cold expression.


"This is my elemental waffe— «Ray Hawk»."

Kamito—

"...Beautiful."

Without a thought, let out such a voice.

"Hah, you too understand— the beauty of this 'Ray Hawk'."

Displaying her truly prided spear, Ellis loosened her cheeks, slightly delighted.

"Idiot, I mean you! Don't make me say that, it's embarrassing."

"Wha..? Me..!?"

Ellis turned bright red and became flustered.

"Hey, y...you're mocking me, right? Kazehaya Kamito!"

"No, I'm just normally entranced."

"E...Entranced... Ah....."

Ellis's face increasingly redden... as if purging evil thoughts, she shook her head.

"Ehh...Such a practical joke... As I thought, you are mocking me!"

"No, you really are beautiful— Owaa!"

Being enraged, Ellis thrust her spear with her face bright red.

As a result of losing her composure, it was easy to dodge.


However, when the demonic spear tip grazed the side of his abdomen, at that moment—

The blades of winds were released and cut his whole body.

(Guu...!?)

In response to the sharp pain, Kamito clicked his tongue in his mind.

(—That elemental waffe can create the blades of wind, huh!)

While bearing the pain attacking his whole body, Kamito jumped away to the back in one go.

That demonic spear could create the blades of wind, so there also was no point in evading with a paper-thin difference.

However, Ellis jumped again and released a stream of attacks like a tempest.

"Are you trying to escape... you insolent guy! I'll turn you into tiramisu<ref>[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiramisu Tiramisu] is an italian cake and desert</ref>!"

"What? Is candy-making also your forte? You cute sullen young lady."

"I...I am currently practicing making candies. For the sake of the gentleman that I'll marry in the future— Eh... What did you make me say! And who's the sullen young lady!"

Ellis pierced the theater wall with all her might in one blow and fragments of rubble flew around.

(...This person, she's seriously strong!)

As expected of someone who served as the Knights leader in this academy that gathered elementalists.

It was a beautiful blade dance like modeling after Kagura, which spirits enjoyed themselves in.

The wound in his left hand ached.


He understood that his senses were gradually getting sharper.

The serious blade dance was causing his blood to boil.

His body was recalling the sensations from three years ago.

(However, it wasn't something like this.)

It was irritating that his legs did not move as he wanted. His instinctive ability to read his opponent's movements was also falling.

(I—)

"You, don't run!"

Releasing a sharp thirst for blood and being clad in gales, Ellis came attacking.

It was not a clever thrust. It was a blow with all her might to decide the match.

However, there was a fatal chance born—

"Freezing Ice Fang, pierce— «Freezing Arrow»!"

Rinslet, who had recovered and was awaiting for a chance to snipe, released her Freezing Arrow without delay.

Simultaneously—

"Dance, crimson flame that invites ruins— «Hell Blaze»!"

After Claire settled Reishia, she released her flame attribute elemental waffe.

"...!?"

Ellis opened both her eyes in surprise.


The timing was perfect. The released ice fang and infernal flame went straight at their target—

<nowiki>*</nowiki>Pariiiin!*

They collided with each other in the air.

"...Wha!?"

Kamito's face twitched.

Ellis, in front of him, was also standing still, dumbfounded.

"Hey, Rinslet! Why did you get in my way!"

"W...What? You're the one who should not get in my way."

At that moment, the two of them began to quarrel.

"T...Those two..."

Kamito forgot that he was in the midst of the duel and deeply sighed.

(...They have the ability, yet their teamwork is really all over the place.)

"—How foolish, to fall out among yourselves!"

Ellis Fahrengart raised her elemental waffe spear once again.

Thunderously, a strong wind, unseen before, was winding up.

"T..To make a mockery of me by saying that I'm beautiful, I'll make you regret—"

There was already nowhere to run to. Kamito resigned his fate, at that time—


"Wait, Ellis! Something is strange..."

"What? Now then you're begging for your life."

Stopping mid-way— Ellis shut her mouth.

It seemed she noticed it too.

"What, this presence is ...?"

The atmosphere of the vicinity was heavy. That sensation, like one's back turning chilly, was—

"What?"

"What is this?"

Claire and the others seemed to have noticed it too. They looked up at the hazy night sky and tilted their heads in confusion.

Suddenly, a thunder-like sound roared.

And then— from a tear in the sky, that appeared.

===Part 3===

That was— a giant jaw, floating in the sky.

It had neither head nor body nor a tail. It was an eerie jaw with just rows of teeth lined up making a chattering sound.


"That's, ...don't tell me, ... a demon spirit!?"

The sudden appearance of that spirit made Kamito groan and terrified him.

A demon spirit— that was something with a spirit make-up that greatly differed from humans, and thus, that was a grotesque spirit that can never be tamed by elementalists.

"A demon spirit, why is it at such a place...?"

At that moment.

"Vo...Ruoooooooon—"

The demon spirit's rising ear-splitting roar caused the girls to cower.

There was a tremendous sense of intimidation. That divine power felt on his skin was comparable to a {{Furigana|devil-class|rank A|margin=13}} spirit.

Moreover—

(It's... going berserk?)

Kamito dropped his voice and carefully observed the demon spirit in sky.

A demon spirit was certainly a grotesque being, but it's unlikely that it would be going berserk without a reason.

(...What's going on?)

Groaning within his mind— Kamito recalled.

That reminded him, before the duel— the water spirit of the spirit device in Claire's room had went out of control.

It was a phenomenon that was normally unimaginable, but if the water spirit was in a frenzy at that time, it was natural that Claire also could not control it. ...Was that phenomenon something related?

Besides—

(Claire said that powerful spirits don't appear frequently in this area.)

For the appearance of that demon spirit to be by chance, it was too unnatural.

(What the heck—?)

The jaw floating in the sky mowed down many trees of the forest, and bit and crushed the ancient historic ruins to tiny pieces. The smashed-up rock fragments rained down from high in the sky.

"Claire Rouge, for now, we'll stop the duel. Is that alright?"

"...I understand."

Claire obediently nodded at Ellis's words.

Everyone in this place understood the danger from that demon spirit.

It did not mean that that was summoned in a purified form like contracted spirits.

If bitten by those teeth, the human body and so forth will be like mere scraps of paper.

"We're taking refuge. I'll take the rear, you all carry the fainted two."

Ellis prepared the Ray Hawk and gallantly got down to the center of the historic ruins.

"No, I'll take the rear. That is not something an ordinary elementalist can do one way or another."

The way of fighting spirits and fighting human elementalists were completely different. Of course, this didn't mean that the girls didn't learn how to fight spirits but— it was an opponent too dangerous for Ellis to fight alone.

"Stop the jokes. What can you, who can't even fully use his contracted spirit, do?"

"That's..."

Kamito firmly groaned. Certainly, it was not an opponent he could fight with that unreliable elemental waffe.

"There's no time to talk. Leave this to Ellis, let's hurry!"

Rinslet whistled and Fenrir, in a white wolf appearance, came giving both fainted Reishia and Rakka a lift. Carol also came running.

"Claire, what are you doing daydreaming!"

Rinslet pulled Claire's sleeves.

—Claire was looking downwards like she was thinking about something and she suddenly raised her head.

"Ellis, I'll take the rear."

"What?"

Ellis opened her eyes. Claire whipped her leather whip and called out her contracted spirit, the hell cat.

"..."

Claire's red pupils became nailed onto the figure of the demon spirit, raging like a storm.

...It was like she was completely entranced.


In response to Claire's appearance— Kamito realized and was taken aback.

(This fellow, don't tell me—)

Claire was obsessed with obtaining a powerful spirit.

For the sake of knowing the truth concerning her sister, Rubia Elstein, she needed power.

Therefore, she still reached out to the dangerous sealed spirit.

"You, don't tell me— You plan to make '''that''' your contracted spirit!?"

"..."

Claire did not answer. She just motionlessly gazed at the demon spirit in the sky—

"That's crazy! That's a demon spirit, furthermore it's in a frenzy!"

Kamito shouted, Claire swung her twin-tails and finally turned around.

"...It's a once in a lifetime chance."

She bit her lips and muttered with an expression like she had thought hard over it.

"Firstly, there's no such thing as encountering a spirit of that level in the «Spirit Forest». Besides, it's not like there weren't any elementalists who contracted demon spirits."

"You mean Greyworth? She's a witch."

"I too may have the qualities of a witch."

"Stop doing something stupid, you'll die."


Kamito grabbed Claire's arm, who was planning to dash anytime.

Claire sternly glared at Kamito.

"Don't get in my way. My reasons to want a strong spirit, I've told them to you, right?"

"Ahh, I understand. But that's no good. Your skills can't manage it."

"...Shut up, let go! You weakling, be silent!"

Claire shook Kamito's arm and shouted.

Within her ruby pupils, glaring at Kamito, genuine hatred surfaced.

"Despite snatching my sealed spirit! You can only use a weak elemental waffe, what qualifications do you have to say something?"

"That's—"

Kamito looked downwards. It was natural for Claire to be irritated. While he had indeed contracted with such a powerful spirit, he couldn't pull out its power completely.

"What? ... I was expecting a little something."

Claire awkwardly averted her eyes.

"I'll handle that alone. You all please escape."

"Claire Rouge, you—"

"Ellis, try to protect everyone. I don't want to think about it but if I—"


Claire did not speak after that.

And then—

"—Scarlet!"

She called her partner, flame spirit's name and ran towards the demon spirit, devouring the forest.

"Claire!"

Kamito held out his hand in a fluster.

At that moment, the demon spirit roared.

A lump of shock struck. The trees in its vicinity were thoroughly blown off.

"Winds, grant us the hand of divine protection— «Wind Wall»!"

Right away, Ellis recited the spirit magic and protected everyone at the back.

(Damn, Claire—)

While defending against the pebbles that were blown off, Kamito followed Claire with his eyes.

Claire was— dancing in the air.

She got on the winds like sparks dancing in the air.

In her hand was her flame spirit released into its elemental waffe— «Flame Tongue», which she was grasping.

The blazing crimson killing flash cut off the evening darkness.

Claire landed onto the ground and while running through the gaps of the tree grove, she drew closer to the demon spirit.


The demon spirit opened its giant jaws and made chattering sounds with its lined-up rows of teeth.

(...It's no good, this is too reckless!)

The girl, Claire Rouge, that Kamito knew was an excellent elementalist, possessing calm judgment and an insight for tactics at least in a battle.

However, she had lost sight of herself now.

Her feelings for her sister, Rubia Elstein, caused her to lose her calm judgment.

Her anger towards her sister, who betrayed her. Yet, her overwhelming love— caused a great number of conflicts to be mixed and that changed into a craving for great power.

"How tenacious! Become mine!"
[[File:STnBD V01 183.jpg|thumb]]

The flame whip dance splendidly. Her red twin-tails danced in the dark night.

That was— elementalist, Claire Rouge's blade dance.

"..."

Beautiful— he thought.

Despite being at such a time, Kamito, for a moment, was fascinated by that appearance and forgot everything.

...It was same as that time.

That time when she was fighting that rampaging sword spirit alone.

Kamito calmly clenched his fist and turned behind. And then—



"Ellis, Rinslet, I'll entrust the rest to you."

"Wha... are you an idiot!?" "Are you an idiot!?"

Both of them shouted at the same time. His ears shrilled.

"...Ah, I'm an idiot. Truly an idiot."

If Greyworth was here, she would have had relentlessly poured abusive words.

To take back the precious thing he lost, he had lived with lifeless eyes for these past three years.

Yet, he was recklessly giving his life away for such a thing.

However—

"I am her contracted spirit."

Therefore—

"That's, hm, I have to help her, that returning hell cat girl."

"Wait, Kazehaya Kamito!"

Kamito shook off Ellis's hand that planned to stop him and began running.

The crimson flame was dancing with the demon spirit in a blade dance.

It was no good for that noble flame to be extinguished. —He did not want her to die.

After all, she was— a normal girl.

Full of conceit, hot-tempered.


Putting on a strong front, easily lonely.... truly kind.

Liking canned foods and romance stories—

Merely a princess found anywhere.

"Oooooo...oon—"

The demon spirit roared.

It released a shock wave like blowing away the forest and Claire was thrown onto the ground.

"—Claire!"

===Part 4===

"...Ah...Aah, Ah..."

Claire, who thrown onto the ground, cowered.

The grotesque demon spirit made a creaky sound with its giant jaw.

It seemed— like it was laughing.

She planned to escape but her legs were shivering and did not move.

It was frightening. While she was fighting, her senses became paralyzed. However, presently—

"Y...You are not scary, therefore, become my manservant!"


The demon spirit, floating in the air, had no reason to even respond to that jeer but— it loudly laughed.

Claire's body trembled and spontaneously, she closed her eyes. The roots of the teeth did not bite at the same time. Towards an unfamiliar thing, instinctive fear bound her body.

—At that moment. The Flame Tongue in Claire's hand suddenly vanished.

It was not that she canceled the release of her elemental waffe. Scarlet opposed Claire's will and voluntary returned to the form of a hell cat.

"Scarlet!? Why...?"

Claire muttered in a blurry voice.

Was she finally being abandoned by even her contracted spirit—

However, the hell cat, clad in flames softly growl and kicked the ground and flew up.

"...!"

At that moment, Claire finally understood. Scarlet—

"Noo— Scarlet!"

Claire's scream resounded.

Scarlet did not stop. It bared its ferocious fangs and rushed at the demon spirit.

It was a red hot flame that even melted steel. However, it was not effective against the demon spirit.

In an instant, the demon spirit's teeth mercilessly bit and crushed Scarlet's body.


It screamed with agony. The flame spirit, which was bitten and crushed, vanished in the sky like a whirlpool winding.

"...Ah...Scar...let..."

Claire, as if all her body strength left her, sank down to the floor there.

Following reason, she knew that she should be escaping.

It was a last chance Scarlet made for her.

Despite that, her legs were trembling bit by bit. She could not even stand.

The extreme deep despair paralyzed Claire's whole body.

(Because of me, Scarlet—)

In the blank eyes, where the flame vanished, tears overflowed.

(...I'm an idiot. Kamito stopped me and yet—)

(—despite being unable to win, I plunged in alone.)

She was unsightly defeated.

Her contracted spirit, which was precious to her like family, was also lost.

While the demon spirit was making the chattering sound, it slowly descended.

Those sinister teeth that just ate and tore up Scarlet—

"No..."

Tears flowed along her cheeks. A stiff voice came out from deep in her throat.


"Save me... Save me— Nee-sama<ref>Nee-sama is an honorable way of referring to an elder sister in the japanese language. The term is difficult to properly translate to Englsih and so has been left as is</ref>!"

She closed her eyes in despair, and at that time.

"Claire!"

She heard his voice.

===Part 5===

"Oooooooooooo!"

While making his war cry, Kamito rushed towards the demon spirit.

The spirit seal, engraved on his right hand, emitted a bluish-white glow.

'''—The cool-headed steel queen, the sacred sword that destroys evil!'''

'''—Now form a sword of steel and be the power in my hand!'''

While running with mud splashing, he recited the summoning.

At his palm, particles of light were born and transformed into the form of a sword—

However, it was not good like this. Against the demon spirit that brought down Scarlet's level of spirit in one blow, that short sword cannot be effective.

(—I beg you, lend me your power, you stubborn spirit!)


(—I know it, your power is just like that!)

The wound on his left hand sharply ached.

Again, the opened path with the contracted spirit was closed—

However, without minding it, Kamito continued to pour divine power into the spirit seal on his right hand.

It was an intense overload. Pain like burning was running throughout his arm's nerves.

(—Sorry, Restia. What I need now isn't you.)

Yes— what he needed was not the past.

It was the power to protect her here and now.

From the spirit seal on his left hand, violent flashes of lightning surged.

That sensation from three years ago was resurrected.

Everytime he kicked the ground to speed up, his whole body's sensation sharpened.

Just that demon spirit's movement was seen as slow motion.

(Recall it, that feeling—)

The sensation of the blade dance— where he danced together with his partner, the dark spirit.

(I am—)

Kamito kicked the ground and jumped high up.

(I am the Strongest Blade Dancer — Ren Ashbell!)


At that moment, a conspicuous dazzling flash was born in his palm.

From the spirit seal on his right hand, a huge amount of divine power came surging out.

The path to that sealed sword spirit was connected!

At the next moment, in Kamito's hand; he was grasping a sword that people wielded.

It was too gigantic for people to wield— the Demon Slayer.

And then—

"—Begone, jaw rascal."

The swing of the lump of the steel pulverized the demon spirit jaw into many pieces.

===Part 6===

The rain that began falling soaked Claire's back.

Her red twin-tails withered and closely clung onto her bare skin.

"Claire..."

Kamito called out to her back, whhich was cowering on the ground.

"Hmm... it's good that you're safe."

"It's...not good..."


Claire muttered in a shivering voice.

"My... My Scarlet..."

She turned around and from her red pupils, a drop of tear came out.

"You—"

"You're late... Idiot! Despite being my contracted spirit."

"Ahh. My bad..."

Kamito awkwardly looked away.

"Why?"

"Eh?"

"You have such great power and yet, at the beginning, why—?"

Claire firmly grabbed Kamito's uniform collar—

"..."

She weakly removed her hand.

"...No. It's because I'm weak."

She let out such a defeated voice.

"It's because I'm weak, that I couldn't protect Scarlet. It's because I'm weak—"

—She could not stop her sister.


"If I had more, more power, such..."

While being struck by rain, Claire repeated that with a blank expression.

"Oi, get yourself together!"

Kamito grabbed Claire's shoulder—

(...Eh?)

His body slanted.

His field of vision was growing dark. ...His consciousness suddenly went far away.

It seemed that the strike of the previous elemental waffe had thoroughly exhausted his divine power.

(Damn, what a bad fuel consuming... spirit...)

While cursing in his mind, Kamito lost consciousness.

<noinclude>
==Translator's notes and references==
<references/>

{{SeireiDance Nav|prev=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter5|next=Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance:Volume1 Chapter7}}</noinclude>