Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume5 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

To get straight to the point, the battle was over in an instant.

The 60cm three-dimensional Rose made up of 216 red Petals appeared at the midpoint between Alberto the Hatter and Claudia the Humpty Dumpty. 36 fist-sized Spots appeared throughout the Artificial Sacred Ground. By hitting their own White Thorns with the tip of their Blood-Sign to knock the Petals into the Spots, they acquired the letters needed to spell out the names of the gods. While focusing on the three-way stalemate of the low, middle, and high Sound Ranges and on the Cost that referred to the number of letters, their summoned Materials constantly changed form in order to hold the advantage.

Or that was how it should have worked.

It fell apart from the very first assumptions.

It happened right after their first White Thorns struck the cubic Rose and sent the red Petals scattering in every direction.

“Wha-…ah!?”

It was Biondetta who cried out while watching from the floor.

As soon as Claudia Shiroyama twisted her parchment Blood-Sign’s grip in a half rotation, a smokescreen spread from the bottom with fierce intensity. And it was not just normal smoke. It must have had a polarization to it because the color of the light changed as it passed through the smoke.

It turned red.

It was the exact same color as the Petals rapidly bouncing around.

“They vanished…” Kyoumi sounded dazed. “The Petals vanished into the background…!?”

The trick itself was simple. Sample problem sets for entrance exams would sometimes place red cellophane over the sheet to hide the answers written in red, but this was the same. If only red light was allowed through, red things became invisible. That was all it was, but it was tremendously effective. If you did not know where anything was, your White Thorns were entirely useless.

(But I doubt that’s all.)

Claudia Shiroyama always wore a white spacesuit with pink lines. With its protective shade meant to block out harmful cosmic rays, she could select a specific wavelength of light to view. That meant she alone could see the position of the Petals in that red world.

Summoners and Materials inside an Artificial Sacred Ground did not show up on mechanical cameras or sensors, but there was an exception: binoculars, telescopes, and other analog optical devices one peered through with the naked eye.

“Didn’t I tell you?”

This was how she had so soundly crushed the ferocious Jabberwock.

She had settled things before skill even came into the picture.

“Do you understand your position here, sacrifice?”

But Kyousuke had a comment of his own in his surgical gown and pants.

He did not hesitate to voice it.

“How naïve.”

With a series of impacts that sounded like a thunderclap, the Hatter swiftly knocked Petal after Petal into the Spots.

Humpty Dumpty had set up the trick, so it was likely her who sensed just how superhuman this feat was. She alone could see the world properly though her spacesuit’s protective shade. But it did not seem to matter that the polarized smokescreen had created a world of red. One after another, White Thorns secured a Petal. With each collision, a primitive song of destruction played while the Hatter’s stock grew. Humpty Dumpy had to have felt most clearly how thoroughly he was trampling her garden.

“What…?” muttered Claudia in a daze. “What is going on!? Only I should be able to see the Petals in this world!!”

“It’s not like you have to see them to know where they are. The world of the Summoning Ceremony only requires your eyes when throwing the Incense Grenade at the start,” readily explained the Hatter. “6 x 6 x 6. That’s 216 in all. If you note where all of the letters are on the initial mass of Roses and compare the angle of the White Thorn hit with the layout of the terrain, you can tell exactly where all of them will bounce. You don’t need to see them ''if you calculate it all out from the beginning.''”

“…”

It made sense at first.

But it was nearly an impossible contradiction when applied to the macro world of reality. It was like making an argument based on the fictional being known as Laplace’s Demon. But he forced it through so that even rationality had to back off. He used his insane mind to control everything, so it was truly the logic of a madman.

Even in Lewis Carroll’s already absurd and unreasonable fantasy, this blond boy’s character had been deemed incomprehensible by the eternal girl.

Alberto S. Divinesmith the Hatter smiled.

The joy on his face surpassed good and evil.

“And shouldn’t you get to work? My monster’s already getting warmed up.”

“Ah.”

The Serpent that Coils in a Spiral and Wholly Devours (g v – o u – j z – e u – a o – i u – e i – b f – l v z – y x).

Regulation-class. Sound Range: High. Cost: 21.

An already long snake had wrapped its own body like a spring or coil to transform into an even thicker and stronger serpent. At the same time, each of its shiny scales were created from collections of tiny snakes. On the macro level, it grew larger and larger. On the micro level, it grew smaller and smaller. It was like throwing the human mind into a world of infinite opposing mirrors, or like a supercomputer hanging up as it tried to simulate out every last one of the explosive number of possible moves in a game of ''go''. It swallowed up the mind of any who saw it, so they froze in place and could not avoid the next attack. That threat guaranteed a critical hit.

“You aren’t worth a Divine-class and the Unexplored-class is entirely out of the question.”

The madman whispered to the poor spacesuit who had been hypnotized before she could even prepare.

“Disappear down the gullet of the Regulation-class at the very bottom, you trash.”

There was no avoiding the result.

The poor loser collapsed to the broken chess board floor of the Mock Battlefield, the Artificial Sacred Ground vanished without a chain beginning, and the Regulation-class regained the body of the girl it had started out as.

The Blood-Sign made from silver coins stacked up into a metal rod came apart, one coin at a time, but they could not be heard striking the floor. They all vanished into thin air.

The ranking board was updated and the new #1 was determined.

“How boring.”

He summed it up in two simple words.

But he was not referring to Humpty Dumpty where she lay on the floor.

He looked around the area where Biondetta and Kyoumi were watching him in shock, where the adults had stopped their rescue operation to stare, and where the adults in lab coats were supposedly in control. He had been referring to all of them.

And then he spoke.

He spoke to Kyousuke alone.

“Looks like only you were able to keep up. As I thought, only you are different from the others. You’re the most normal and yet the strangest. You’re the polar opposite of me since I was insane from the beginning, but you’re looking in the same direction as me.”

“…”

“Come with me, Kyousuke.” The Hatter winked and made an invitation. “You can choose when since the two other vessels are out of commission. But make sure you come with me. Fighting the Mock Turtle or the Knitting Sheep wouldn’t help me at this point. It’d only be any fun with you.”

“And if I refuse?”

“That’s fine.”

That was the opposite response from Humpty Dumpty.

But…

“If you do that, then live out the rest of your life feeling indebted. Bow your head low, smile like a fool, and keep your head down until you’re in your grave. Shiroyama Kyoumi, Biondetta. Who do you think came to save you? Hm?”

“Ah.”

That voice of realization came from Biondetta on the floor. She looked like she had just realized she had pushed someone into this.

Kyousuke slowly sighed.

He shook his head and made an honest confession.

“I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.”

“Hah hah!! That’s fine! Only you could decide so quickly to do something as twisted as trying to kill your savior in order to obey that savior’s request! You really are the best. It’s like the faces of our clocks are a mess of a marble pattern, but we still somehow manage to show up right at the arranged time.”

He had said Kyousuke could choose when, but Kyousuke could not be optimistic about this.

It felt like surviving beyond the time his doctor said he had to live.

“See ya, Kyousuke.”

No one could guarantee how long his future would last.

It had already been determined that his life would be cut off by a cliff at some point.

“I look forward to it.”

He was Rank #1.

History’s greatest madman winked and everyone’s train switched over to the track leading to hell.