Editing HEAVY OBJECT:Volume8 Chapter 1 (section)

===Part 20===

What Quenser had done was quite simple.

He did not use the blast to kill.

He instead modified the amount of explosive to keep it nonlethal. It was just enough force to apply tremendous pressure to the inner ear that controlled balance.

If he had simply set it off, he would have collapsed along with Angela.

And that well-trained woman would have recovered faster than a scrawny boy like him, so she would have killed him afterwards.

But that was why he had put on the diving suit’s helmet. The helmet was made to withstand a fair bit of water pressure. It could not withstand the pressure of an explosion that could smash a human skeleton, but it could hold off a blast weakened so it only affected the inner ear.

He removed the helmet, looked around, and finally realized that Angela had approached within a step of his back. The discovery did not please him.

“I’m glad I didn’t try to say anything clever before setting it off.”

As he spoke, a rope fell down from the top of the “ravine”.

“Hey, Quenser!” shouted down Heivia. “Get on up here!!”

“Sure,” he answered as he grabbed the bottom of the rope.

He could not climb up on his own, so he would have to let those with some strength left pull him up.

But then he glanced over toward the many pillars.

The base of one of them appeared to have been opened up, but it was not due to the explosion. A part had been removed.

He had seen something similar before.

With a very bad feeling in his gut, he frantically pulled out his handheld device. He found similar opened spots in the photos he had previously taken in the Ame-no-Darin.

He had assumed construction of the facility had stopped before it was complete.

But if that was not the case…

“Wait.”

After tying Angela’s hands with the end of the rope, he slapped her cheek.

He had to check on something.

“What is this? Why are there pieces missing here and there from the walls and ceilings as if this is an unfinished jigsaw puzzle!? It’s almost like the parts needed to build something else were secretly shipped in during the construction of the Ame-no-Darin!!”

“You didn’t know?”

Angela opened her eyes a bit and grimaced after noticing how tightly her arms were bound.

“This was a giant workshop that the Island Nation…no, that the rogue self-defense PMC prepared in order to construct a new model of Object without anyone interfering. And if it isn’t here anymore, that means it was completed and let out into the world.”

The trigger of the next war had long since been pulled.

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