Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume6 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

The battle was over.

The explosion was so white that it brought silence to the Chinatown. The massive blast blew out the surrounding blaze. The White Queen’s attack had been truly childish, like using a 500kg bomb to blow out the few candles on a birthday cake.

But the unbreakable legend remained standing all alone. He dropped his golden glowing Blood-Sign at his feet and muttered to himself.

“…I want to die.”

No one in the world, not even Freedom Award 903, had been able to keep up with him. That stubbly man with long, messy hair was alone no matter where he went.

Only the White Queen acted the same as always.

She clasped her soft hands in front of her ample chest and smiled.

“Oh, dear. It isn’t often that brother loses to the same person twice. If I wasn’t involved, I’d be jealous. Seeing his expectations betrayed so many times is reminding me of the Queen’s Miniature Garden☆”

Elvast gave her a look of wholehearted resentment, but the Queen did not care. A shrewd eye could tell it was really the White Queen who Shiroyama Kyousuke had lost to twice. As if to prove that they were bound by a powerful destiny.

If Elvast did not use the Queen, this might have ended differently.

“Once the 90 second Chain is over, I will disappear into the ether.” The White Queen spoke in a singsong voice. “And I have no interest in anyone other than my brother. You spoke of bonds, puny human. But in truth, I have not done anything. Do not forget that this is no more than your own soul pursuing me.”

She laughed.

“And one last thing. To reward you for distracting me from my boredom, I have a prophecy for you.”

“…?”

“Your wish will soon be granted. Bye☆”

Like a light switch being flipped or like waking from a dream, it all vanished. Containing the White Queen in her body must have been quite a burden because the woman in the shredded riding suit gasped for breath and slumped to the floor. No, she collapsed to her side and passed out.

Elvast did not care.

He had won. And by borrowing that loathsome white power. He was hopelessly strong and, at the same time, hopelessly weak. He wandered through the collapsed shop and approached that woman who had been his one light, who had possessed the possibility of shaking free of the Summoning Ceremony and severing the temptation of the White Queen’s power.

“I…”

The words escaped his lips.

He did not expect anyone to answer him.

“I was so very glad when you stabbed me in the back. I thought I had been saved.”

At first glance, his words may have seemed baffling.

But they were the undeniable truth.

“If it could have ended here, I wouldn’t have had to reach Award 1000 or move to the other side. I would have been able to die a human without becoming a strange Material. So nothing mattered to me more than you, someone who stopped me at the very last second even if it meant stabbing me in the back.”

In the end, he had pathetically survived.

A single blade had failed to stop the legend.

But the bright light he had received then had continued to shine in his chest the entire time.

“I had no one else. Government is just the world’s largest law and order organization. Everyone applauded with fake smiles plastered to their faces as they shoved my fearful back ever onward and upward. The only one with the strength to stop me, even if it meant staining their hands with blood, was you, Niang Lan.”

As he had wandered the world, he had sought countless replacements. He had crossed paths with many women, made them his vessel, given them great power, and made them a part of his legend. To the majority of the world, those women would have seemed like successes. Everyone would have envied their lives and the women themselves never doubted their own happiness. But every time he saw their smiles, Elvast had sensed something indescribably wrong and cast it all aside. No matter how much power they had, they were the same as the Government aides. They had been pathetic puppets who were too afraid of something to directly face the threat and simply tricked themselves into believing they were happy. From that point, he had already detected that white scent.

“There was no one else…”

He would find her.

He would find that person who had changed so completely since he had last seen her that it was hard to look at her. Like a rusted sword, she had been dragged back into the world of the Summoning Ceremony and now she repeated the same action again and again with empty eyes. Elvast bit his lip, knowing he never should have let her go. He should not have thought it was over when she stabbed him in the back. He should have crawled across the floor and grabbed her with his bloody hand to stop her.

He had been unable to show her his weakness.

That inability may have been the root of Elvast Toydream’s weakness.

“I do not care how much you loathe me. Killing me can be your greatest desire.”

He slowly crouched down.

He held his weakened target of longing in his arms.

She was an obedient doll, a zombie in the original sense of the word, and someone who had received the same shock as seeing her god slaughtered before her eyes. The cowardly man was only able to reveal his feelings to her after tearing her down to this level, but that was why he spoke the undiluted truth now.

“I will hone you again or as many times as it takes, Niang Lan. I will ensure you can reach the choice that someone as weak as me never could.”

He pressed two objects into her back: the Diamond Master Key and the Golden Treasure Chest.

Combined with the ancient map on the brown girl’s back, they would take one to the Founder’s Gallery. Someone who had broken their bonds to the Summoning Ceremony and the White Queen might think up another use for them.

“But if I asked you to do this all again, it would probably break you. So this is a hint and some bait. Use it as you wish and then come to kill me. …If I showed you my own personal collection, I doubt you would be able to break your bonds to me. This distance is just right.”

Elvast respected this woman more than anyone but he spoke softly to her like he was trying to get an unruly child to listen.

But then something else happened.

The sound was actually very quiet. But oddly enough, the strange sound rang endlessly in the long-haired and stubbly man’s ears. No, in the center of his chest.

“Ah?”

The sound came from Lu Niang Lan in his arms.

More accurately, from her small fist.

Elvast looked down in surprise and saw her fist embedded in the center of his chest. It was only a few centimeters, but the pressure was devastating. As he watched, her fist smoothly rotated and released all of its built up power.

She did not have her feet planted on the ground and she had not spun her hips to build up power. She had used only the strength of her arm and she had only swung it blindly. It was a truly tiny attack that only used the short distance between her fist and his chest.

But it exploded.

The pressure on his heart sent immense pressure to all of his blood vessels. His sternum and ribs shattered in the blink of an eye and the spine behind his heart snapped with a solid sound. Already covered in blade cuts and bullet holes, his jacket tore and violently burst.

What happened to his heart goes without saying.

“Oh…bh…?”

He forgot to breathe in his surprise, and that may have been the only reason he did not spew blood everywhere.

Lu Niang Lan had lost the Summoning Ceremony. She had received a mental shock equivalent to seeing what she unquestioningly believed to be a god slaughtered before her eyes. For more than 24-hours, she would repeat the same action endlessly and she would be unable to resist outward stimuli, no matter who they came from. So it should have been impossible for her to make an attack after intentionally tricking him into lowering his guard.

So what was this?

What was the meaning of this refreshing barehanded attack that had instantly killed Government Award 1000 without using the Summoning Ceremony in any way?

“Ha ha.”

A laugh spilled from his lips.

That breath brought an explosion of fresh blood flowing up from his torn lungs and out his mouth. Even so, Elvast did not stop laughing. In fact, tears of joy welled up in the corners of his eyes.

After losing the Summoning Ceremony, people’s normal masks were torn from them to reveal their exposed souls.

Was that what this was?

If Elvast Toydream approached her, she would not hesitate to slay him, even at a subconscious level. The Summoning Ceremony was irrelevant. It was Lu Niang Lan’s soul that she had continued to hone all this time.

It did not matter that he had reached Award 1000, that he was the world’s strongest, or that he used the Queen.

She did not rely on anyone.

And she used only her own fist to face the enemy blocking her way.

“Incredible. Truly…incredible.”

Death assaulted his body as if he had suddenly remembered to die.

He could tell on an instinctual level that there was no saving him. But he felt no fear. He had been shown hope. Even if the rest of the 7 billion people on the planet were hopelessly dyed white and even if all those summoners and vessels spoke of plans to defeat the White Queen and yet relied on her, this woman still existed. She had snapped the thread of temptation. Now that she had demonstrated that, he felt no more attachment to the world. He felt no pain or fear, only the gentle embrace of death that would sever all his bonds.

“Yes.”

His entire body was destroyed and he endlessly coughed up blood, but Elvast Toydream embraced humanity’s hope even tighter.

He shut his eyes and spoke his last words.

“You really were…an amazing woman.”