Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter2 (section)

===Between the Lines 1===

This had to be some kind of joke.

Letnahe Kurent softly bit her lip.

She had left the control tower to help calm herself, but being alone only let the impatience grow. She seemed to be losing track of time more by the second, like she was trapped inside a room with no clock, but noticing the effect was not enough to stop it.

She was in a small smoking area to the side of the staff entrance. She was not a smoker, but she wanted to make that walled space into her territory. She could never calm her nerves otherwise.

“Phew.”

After reflexively letting out a heavy breath, she noticed how disturbed she really was.

The mobile watch synced with her phone was covered in red.

There was a nearby chair for taking breaks, but she ignored it. She sat directly on the floor in her tight skirt and followed a set process to slowly move her body.

She breathed in and out.

That was all, but breathing was the key to everything.

By consciously taking control of her muscles, blood flow, and organs one after another, she forcibly calmed her mind as well. At her level, it was as simple as turning an invisible knob.

She did not even need to look down at the mobile watch around her left wrist.

Her breathing, heartrate, blood pressure, and brainwaves had all returned to normal levels.

Then she began to think.

(There is a lot I don’t know. I especially need to rethink the effectiveness of a nuclear attack. Although this delay is alarming when we are supposed to be the ones managing the world by supporting the strongest.)

When attempting to manipulate several threads at once, you wanted as much information as possible. But that craving could also lead you astray.

At times like this, it was best to cut away all the outside noise and look inward. By looking to your center, you would not lose sight of what you most needed to accomplish.

Yes.

(''But that isn’t what really matters to me.'')

“******-kun,” she muttered while focused on her left hand.

She had uttered the one thing she never should have said on the frontline where both sides hunted each other’s lives.

Then she looked up all of a sudden. As if a small bug had just flown by in front of her.

This was a deadly scent only an expert could pick up on.

The floating general airport had been rented out as a frontline base, so only Grimnoah people should have been here. That meant the scent was directed toward the students and teachers.

If things were allowed to continue, death would reach them.

An error displayed on her mobile watch. The mechanical calculations could not keep up with the changes occurring within her. Her breathing, heartrate, blood pressure, and brainwaves had moved beyond those of an ordinary human. They had all grown placid, like a chilly subterranean lake.

A moment later, she swung an axe to the side to mercilessly slice at the empty air.

No, it was not empty air sliced by that axe that was less than 50cm including the handle.

Gray static ran through the emptiness and something appeared there. It was a 2-ton powered suit covered in so much composite armor and various sensors that it must have been difficult to fold down into a humanoid shape. It was a PS Sudarshana used by the Indian Navy Port Security Unit during shipboard searches. The thing surrounding its entire right arm looked a lot like the mandibles of a giant centipede or something similar. That was a piece from one of the decoy Threats in the reports.

The powered suits could not ordinally blend into their surroundings like that. And as examples like the chameleon and tree frog make clear, it was not surprising for the decoy Threat to have a camouflage ability since they incorporated biological structures into their mechanical forms. However, the navy did not use that kind of thing.

“The Indian Space Force.”

That safe weapon could make it ''look like'' the Threat’s doing if any important figure were to meet an unnatural demise.

She whispered while spinning her axe around after it was deflected by the thick armor.

“Was the idea to trip Grimnoah up so you could force the nuclear attack? You have guts going over the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who command every branch of the Indian military. Do you think you have special privileges for not belonging to the traditional three branches?”

“Have you grown confused, Lieutenant Colonel Kurent!?”

The voice came from the powered suit that had appeared from thin air. It had already stepped back after the initial attack.

“That parashu is only meant for revenge. You had the ability to pursue your true target and this silly camouflage would not have been enough to deceive you, so no one will believe you if you say mistook me for an enemy.”

“I could say the same thing. Our enemy is the Threat, not Grimnoah. It would be one thing if they were ‘accidentally’ caught in the nuclear attack we were regrettably forced to launch, but taking their lives in a direct attack sounds like the start of an international incident to me.”

“…”

“That is why I was sent in as a special envoy to peaceably acquire an outline of Grimnoah’s plan and time schedule. …It wasn’t the Indian Navy that decided to make an assault instead, was it?”

The Pinaka III was a special nuclear torpedo launched from a submarine.

But at the same time, the nuclear weapons were managed by the space force, not the army, navy, or air force. Needless to say, nuclear weapons were not operated independently. They relied on a global radar network.

That created a tug-of-war between the navy and space force.

Letnahe considered those two organizations as she spoke.

If she let herself sigh here, it would disturb her breathing, but she was not going to let something like this faze her.

“Did the Indian Space Force want to launch their Pinaka III so badly, they sent in an assassin squad…pardon me, a special forces unit? Or were you sent here by the intelligence division that’s been on edge ever since they realized the control tower was intercepting their transmissions? Either way, your equipment tells me you intended to blow up the control tower to destroy the equipment – and me I might add – in what looks like an accident. The control tower is full of largescale electronics with its radar and its server system. Mess with the wiring a little and you will have much more than an electrical fire on your hands. The machinery would burst and create arc discharges.”

No one answered her.

But not because they were upset with what she was saying. They were probably just not allowed to reveal classified information. Which made for an implicit confirmation.

“Lieutenant Colonel Kurent, we were told to avoid any unnecessary victims.”

“I imagine so.”

“So come with us. I cannot guarantee you an acquittal, but if you leave the scene, you will at least not be caught in the ''unfortunate accident''. Unlike the Grimnoah students and teachers.”

Letnahe raised both hands with the axe still in one of them.

“They are necessary.”

“That is not for us to decide. Aren’t you no more than a messenger?”

She had already demonstrated her power, but the powered suit unit wearing cutting-edge PS Sudarshanas still seemed to think they were in control here. She only held an outdoor axe less than 50cm long while they had firearms as well as the decoy Threat weapons, so they would attack her from more than 10 directions before she could even ready her first attack. And each of their attacks could tear through the latest armored trucks like tissue paper. Or so they believed.

“I warned you,” she said.

“?”

Letnahe spun something around in her hands like a baton.

She had reached into her sleeve and pulled out a military flashlight just as thick as the axe’s handle. She connected the two with a twisting motion, extending the length of the axe’s handle.

“The parashu is an axe of vengeance given to us by Shiva, God of Destruction. It is a well-known item, but its size and shape differ between the different texts. That can be used to pull off magic such as this.”

“Lieutenant Colonel, it is true the length of the handle provides more centrifugal force, but I seriously doubt that is enough to break our armor.”

She did not bother responding to that.

With a casual horizontal swing of her arm, the powered suit’s head was mercilessly severed.

It froze up.

It must not have understood what had happened.

The powered suit stood motionless for a bit, but finally collapsed backwards with a loud crash.

The other powered suits rushed in toward the silver-haired, brown-skinned woman. Those monsters had decoy Threats equipped on their arms, yet they did not manage to spill a single drop of blood.

Their attacks were all blocked and deflected by a single puny axe.

The dark gray storm left a blurred afterimage behind. This was no normal movement. This was more than just Letnahe having superior athletic abilities. There was something seriously wrong with the axe’s path. While she swung it around in both hands, its path would bend unnaturally like it had been kicked by an invisible horse.

“This is thunder,” she explained while twirling the axe like a baton. “The parashu is an axe given to us by Shiva, god of destructive winds and lightning. Although I will admit using the roar of thunder to vibrate a piece of metal is an unorthodox application of that power.”

The attackers finally realized what was going on.

She was using magic. That was of course not the actual weapon given by the Indian god of destruction. The axe was only an axe and the flashlight was only a flashlight. Her form of magic was a technical system that produced supernatural phenomena by gathering certain symbols in a single magical tool so a supernatural power would flow through it.

“Then again, I am not using the vibration or shockwave to cut. The vibration is uneven, so I can create intentional deviations to unnaturally strike the entire axe from within.”

She was someone who had failed to reach the level of God Worshiping Magic or Crystal Magic.

She could not interfere with the occult pressure fronts. She could only produce a small change, similar to scooping up water in a ladle and sprinkling it around to cool things down.

That incomplete magician winked behind her glasses and stopped the thick blade meant to attack her.

“That allows me to move the axe’s blade as I like. If you don’t believe me, feel free to bring in a Gatling gun. I will knock down every last bullet from head on.”

“…”

“And by striking on the back of the blade to accelerate it, I can produce destructive power far greater than my arms ever could. Of course, taking it too far could always damage my shoulders.”

She did not give them time to ask any further questions.

She slayed the cutting-edge powered suits one after another with a combination of power, speed, and precision nimbler than a large knife and more powerful than a cannon. She deflected bullets fired from silenced weapons, accurately dismantled the fuses of explosives on the verge of detonation, and severed the centipede arms. If her attacks had not all been in the form of “cutting”, the entire airport might have exploded from within.

“But even this is not enough to make me the strongest. That is how the world of magic works. I heard the great God Worshiping Magic sword used by one of the former strongest was more convenient than this.”

She did not bat an eye.

“And I doubt I would be any match for the Crystal Magic students who can easily break the sound barrier. But while it isn’t #1, it still has its uses. And if you know something is useful, there is no need to try to make it the very best. War is a boring thing, isn’t it?”

She could not become the world’s strongest and she could not keep up in a battle against the Threat, but she was second to none when it came to tripping up fellow humans. Letnahe Kurent was a magician who had made a place for herself using that.

She was the grim reaper of a certain force.

She was the secret silencer that was sent in to correct a global plan when the people raised to the position of strongest took things too far and started to grow tyrannical.

She was the woman who wielded Shiva’s axe.

She was a monster who could use that weapon on the level of an army.

“…”

The last surviving powered suit looked down at himself instead of at Letnahe.

He was already covered in gouging lacerations.

“Why?”

“Because Grimnoah seems more useful than ''a perfectly ordinary'' assassination squad that does not officially exist within the Indian military. For now, anyway.”

“We might want different things, but we’re from the same military…yet you cut us down without a second thought.”

“What?”

She stared like a puzzled child at first. She really did tilt her head with the axe still in both hands.

“Oh, that.”

It took her a few seconds to realize what he meant, but then she gripped the axe tight once more.

“Did you not wonder why I kept specifying the ''Indian'' military? I wouldn’t talk about my own home as the Kurent home, would I? So why would I bother making the distinction here?”

“?”

“It’s simple,” she said. “I do not work for the nuclear state of India. I work for someone even higher than that.”

After one final desperate spray of gunfire, the final powered suit was bisected.

The secret unit had been eliminated without anyone ever knowing they existed.

The battle would not have made much noise, but she could not let her guard down. She wanted a janitorial cart to transport the multiple corpses and special detergent for the blood stains. Her axe and magic could turn them into mincemeat easily enough, but the mass media’s long-range lenses were watching outside. She calmly worked out what she needed to do as someone who worked behind the scenes.

No one could prove those soldiers existed, so she could never be charged with their deaths.

But after cutting down and eliminating that hostile force without allowing them a single scream, Letnahe Kurent pictured a certain girl in her mind: Omotesandou Kyouka.

(I have a secret, but I am in no position to reveal it to you.)

She looked down at her left hand and focused on a warm feeling other than her duty as a cold soldier.

“You owe me one.”

<noinclude>
{| border="1" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; padding: 0.2em; border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
| Back to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume3_Chapter1|Chapter 1]]
| Return to [[Apocalypse_Witch|Main Page]]
| Forward to [[Apocalypse_Witch:Volume3_Chapter3|Chapter 3]]
|-
|}
</noinclude>