Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 5===

Crystal Magic was known as the world’s strongest.

That remained true even when it took the form of a small girl.

First, Aine rushed in with her clear sword at the ready. Natlena’s lengthy battle against the legged tadpole was like playing round after round of Russian roulette, but she failed to realize her odds of death rose with each move she made.

Her survival one moment was no guarantee of her survival the next. Aine’s long silver hair scattered water droplets as she bought some slight time, so Karuta spoke into his Crystal Blossom while behind cover.

“If it bites you, you’ll be burned through. You need to fall back behind cover, Natlena!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Senpai! I can still-!!”

“That tadpole isn’t the only one!! You’ll be surrounded!!”

He shouted back at her and pulled a modified military flashlight from his uniform. Blinding an enemy with its extra amps and powerful IR was effective against biological eyes and mechanical sensors.

(The problem is I’m not sure where those tadpoles’ “eyes” even are. Should I assume it’s the same as in a kid’s animal encyclopedia? Can I really entrust my life to a mere ''assumption''?)

Another transmission cut in.

It came from his classmates Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke.

“Hey, Karuta, can we save her!? She’s moved out too far on her own. I’m not into skinny little bodies like that, but it’s scaring me seeing her do this!!”

“Hee hee hee. Now’s my chance to show off to a s-sexy middle school girl!”

Yamane was at the base of a container pile and Nekoumi was searching for a sniping point at the top.

The Crystal Magicians all had their own traits and specs and the tadpoles were gathering after hearing the commotion. Karuta rationally analyzed their fighting force in his head. Taking too optimistic a view could lead to things unraveling and people dying.

He could only ask them to do what they could actually do.

“Understood, Yamanen. You can tackle Nat- ''Jane Ignition-san'' if you need to, but get her away from the front line! Plea-”

His breath caught in his throat.

An unnatural green beam of light had blasted through the container yard after being fired toward the ground at a very shallow angle. It pierced through the foundation of a metal pyramid and melted the asphalt ground into an orange liquid.

Yamane Deiri had been using that pyramid as a shield, so his right arm was torn off at the shoulder.

Which was more frightening: the fact that the blast was powerful enough to break right through the Crystal Magic barrier, or the hippo-like Threat that was in the line of fire but shrugged off the blast?

“Yamanen!!”

(A laser!? Did it come from Second Grimnoah!?)

They were about 500m away.

The special three-hull cruise ship was visible from here and something stood on the roof of the middle school building located on one of the decks.

It was larger even than the metal containers.

It was a pitch black lion with a mane and with several long cylindrical containers swept backwards from either side of its neck. Those containers may have been vacuum tubes or capacitors. Impossibly, they also looked like a flying fish’s pectoral fins.

That was the Sparkle.

Those pectoral fins were spread out like wings, their tips glowed green, and a mysterious energy gradually gathered toward its throat. With its four legs planted firmly on the artificial footing, the lion opened its great maw.

Light the color of a neon sign filled the back of its throat.

It stared straight at Utagai Karuta.

“Shit!!”

He frantically spun around and dove toward the rain-slick road just as the stack of metal containers he had been using as a shield was pierced through. The few drops of scorching orange spray that hit him caused enough pain that he thought he might pass out. Was that what it felt like to be hit by a bullet? If that high-power laser had directly hit him, he would have been vaporized and killed instantly with no chance for regeneration.

The burned skin of his arm was rapidly covered by pointed crystals. The regeneration process had begun, but if even the slightest attack caused the wound to shatter, it would never heal again.

(The artificial rain isn’t working at all!! If we don’t shut that thing down soon, it’ll just keep firing on us. We need to think up a safe way of approaching Second Grimnoah!!)

That was when he heard something odd.

“Ah ha ha.”

Laughter.

It came from the classmate whose arm had been burned off, but this was not an attempt to look tough or the result of confusion. It was the perfectly ordinary laughter you might hear in the classroom.

He casually swung around his right arm covered in pointed crystal while the rain poured down on him.

“The thing tore my damn arm off!! Not bad, Threat. Wa ha ha ha ha! How bout I attach an electric drill or pile bunker!?”

Karuta felt an unpleasant sensation crawling up his spine.

Before the battle began, he had wondered ''if their previous success was making them overconfident''.

(This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all, Yamanen!!)

He thought he could not feel any more fear than he already was, but while he clenched his teeth behind cover, Aine approached, tilted her head, and provided an even more horrifying opinion without bothering to fix the hair plastered to her cheek.

“They might be copying you.”

“Huh?”

Karuta did not even notice as the 30 seconds passed, the crystal shattered, and his skin was as good as new.

“It was you at the Crystal Beach that showed them the optimized fighting style where you ignored all pain and fear and incorporated the destruction of your own body into your tactics. You proved those tactics to be effective while eliminating the decoy Threat, so is it really surprising that the other students who saw you fight that way would want to incorporate the world’s strongest’s tactics into their own tactical flowchart?”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

He was truly speechless this time.

(I…I made Yamanen and the others like this???)

Still soaking wet, Aine glanced over at him before continuing.

“They taught themselves to do this from their own observations. You seem displeased with the result, but I do not see why the structure of their tactical flowcharts should bother you so much.”

“Of course it bothers me.”

He also realized that the world’s strongest Four Living Gods could not simply fight and win. ''How'' they won would set history in motion. What if they saved the world from a great crisis with a suicide attack? They might be perfectly satisfied as they died, but the people who survived would learn from that action. ''It would teach them that sacrificing their own lives was effective.'' They might have plenty of other options, but their admiration of those four would give them tunnel vision and they would continue making suicide attacks. It would lead to an age where everyone gave up on trying to win without sacrificing their own lives.

The invisible pressure of being the world’s strongest weighed down on him.

He shook his head before speaking.

“Getting Natlena to fall back comes first right now. Once she’s safe, we can search for a route to approach Second Grimnoah. Aine, any ideas?”

“Yes, about Miss Natlena.”

Aine pointed her crystal-like sword toward Natlena from a distance.

Technically, she was pointing it toward one of the metal containers Natlena was swinging around.

The crystal girl’s sword had a jitte-like branch where a short laser gun unit was attached. She used that projectile to burn through one of the grab bucket wires.

When Natlena suddenly lost her balance, her small body was pulled by the weight of the remaining containers and unmanned transportation vehicles, tossing her through the air. She looked a lot like a fish being pulled from the water by a fishing rod.

“Wah!?”

Her feet were lifted from the wet ground and she flew like a long throw in baseball. Karuta quickly spread his arms to catch the 12-year-old in a princess carry, but her momentum was too great and both of them flew backwards. They ended up rolling along in a tangle, but they ended up behind a large truck. That was their next cover.

“Sacri-sama.” Aine slipped below the truck to join them and gave an expressionless report. “The lion Threat tentatively known as the Sparkle remains on Second Grimnoah’s roof. We require a fundamental countermeasure for its anti-air lasers. If you have no plan at the moment, our only options are to temporarily withdraw or to force our way to the ship, losing lives all the while.”

“…”

“But since that Threat accurately intercepted more than 100 missiles at once, I am skeptical the latter option would even work. Plus, the Sparkle is not the only Threat, so the death rate would rise even further if those tadpole ones slowed us down. Shall we attempt it?”

They could already see it.

It was only 500m away. With the flight of the ordinary Crystal Magic that Natlena, Yamane Deiri, and the others could use, that distance would take less than a second at full speed.

But.

That would mean demanding the students of the second ship sacrifice their lives for the dead first ship.

He squeezed Natlena in his arms to feel the body heat within her soaked uniform.

There was a definite life there.

They had already taken damage. Yamane Deiri’s right arm had been blown clean off by the Sparkle’s anti-air laser and he had only survived because the heat of the laser had instantly cauterized the wound, preventing any bleeding. In other words, it was only dumb luck. With a railgun or coilgun, he would have hemorrhaged blood and his full body would have crystallized.

Would it be the treasure ship that seemed within arm’s reach, or would it be the lives of his fellow students?

He had to choose.

(Dammit!!)

He had to think back.

What kind of strongest had he wanted to be when he first arrived at Grimnoah that spring and his life had still been peaceful? If he lost sight of that, he would end up no different from Anastasia Blast and the rest of the Problem Solvers.

He heard the ominous sound of fire consuming oxygen.

It was far from here, but an attack must have hit a giant tank of crude oil or liquefied natural gas. The workers had been in a rush to shut down the giant pipeline to prevent a largescale conflagration, but that did not help when the actual tanks themselves were destroyed. He could see the orange flames and black smoke. The fire was not spreading inland. It was spreading out toward the ocean which should not have been able to burn.

“That is fortunate.”

He could not believe what Aine had just said, but she apparently did have a logical reason for it.

“If the fuel burns away, there is no risk of it vaporizing and blowing in toward the city. Extinguishing it before the point of leakage is fully shut off could actually lead to the city’s destruction, so be careful.”

The city was safe, but the flames and smoke were spreading into the deserted port and would likely arrive here before long.

There was no time, so Karuta shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

One of the Four Living Gods made up his mind.

He grabbed his underclassman’s shoulders and crouched to her eye level in the rain.

“Listen, Natlena. We’re going to reorganize our forces.”

The fight would not end just because the humans wanted it to. The Threat did not understand their circumstances.

So…

“''We will temporarily withdraw from the Port of Kobe and bring our data and firsthand experiences back to Omotesandou-san and the others.'' We can work out a countermeasure for the Sparkle’s anti-air lasers then. Allowing everyone to withdraw safely requires forming a rear guard unit, so will you fight with us?”

“B-but if the fire spreads across the ocean, um, it will reach our ship!”

“It isn’t a wooden sailing ship, so a fire on the ocean surface won’t get through its cutting-edge hull. Ship fires are mostly caused by internal equipment. It rarely ever happens from an external source.”

“But…”

Natlena Blast forgot all about how soaked with rain she was as she opened her eyes wide, but he was not budging on this. The Threat’s anti-air lasers had greater specs than they had thought. They could not board Second Grimnoah by forcing their way through the storm of lasers.

(And the others like Yamanen are acting weird. I can only stand here and watch right now, but the way they’re acting, they’ll get themselves killed when they could have won!)

Or they would magically bomb the Threat without thinking of the consequences and end up sinking the academy ship. Light and flames could not be shot down with lasers, but it was unknown if plunging the Threat into the ocean would be enough to kill them. Plus, that would almost certainly shatter Gekiha and the rest of the crystallized people.

(Who do you care about more? Natlena’s group or Gekiha’s group?)

Utagai Karuta hated himself for even briefly weighing those two on the scales.

He could not get greedy.

He could not get fixated on winning. Survival was their top priority.

“Is that okay with you, Aine?”

“I do not mind, so do what you want to do. But while you can possibly fool the media on the ground, the military satellites are another story. Have you considered how the world’s strongest turning tail and running will influence society?”

“Yes. I was the one that got their hopes up, so they can place all the blame on me.”

“Senpai,” said Natlena in an accusatory way, but his mind was made up. Every move he made would influence the entire world. He had already seen that in his classmate Yamane Deiri.

He had to show them the sort of strongest he wanted to be.

Was Utagai Karuta’s idea of the strongest someone who would be broken by one measly loss?

“The real disaster would be if I got so afraid of some imagined accident that I got myself killed. If the strongest can’t lose, then their life has to be treated with the utmost care. We can just ignore all the international criticism on the TV news.”

“Understood,” said Aine. “If this is a rational choice made after serious thought, then I shall obey.”

On the roof 500m away, green light once more glowed from the capacitors spread out from the black lion’s neck like a flying fish’s pectoral fins. The energy gathered on a single point and filled its throat.

But the straight line of destruction unleashed by the Sparkle was not aimed at Karuta and the other Crystal Magicians. In the slight gap between the concrete wharf and the ship itself, the mooring ropes and anchor chain holding Second Grimnoah in place were severed.

Was even the Threat bothered by environmental pollution?

Second Grimnoah was now loose in the waves, so it slowly drifted away from the port.

Utagai Karuta clenched his teeth and forced out a command.

Was it thanks to his initial defeat against the wielders of God Worshiping Magic that he now had the strength to admit defeat as the world’s strongest?

“Withdraw.”