Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume4 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

'''(Timeline “Now”)

Three attacks.

Just three attacks.

“Owwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

As soon as the Artificial Sacred Ground was set up, Kyousuke launched a White Thorn with all his might. It struck the three-dimensional Rose, the many red Petals scattered, and they poured into the Spots.

“Hee hee. Ah ha ha!! Relying on a mere Regulation-class? How brave, brother. And yet those are no more than ''imitations that humans artificially created and placed in the other world'' to reach the Divine and Unexplored-classes.”

The Regulation and Unexplored-class could do nothing to the White Queen. Before even thinking about their strength, they would succumb to their fear and stop moving.

They could move freely if he built them up to the Unexplored-class, but the Queen’s power would still be overwhelming. He had once seen the Lady of Purple Lightning slaughtered in a single attack. He doubted even the strongest ones known as the Three could stand up to the White Queen. After all, Pandemonium existed to turn that impossibility into a possibility.

So he did not even need to think about fighting, defeating, killing, or destroying her.

He had to survive these three attacks. To do that, he transformed his vessel into a Material and surrounded himself with a protective circle.

That may have been logical for a human.

“Hee hee.”

But with refreshing laughter, the White Queen brought all of those assumptions crumbling down!!

It was not a question of something actually happening.

It was simply the fact that the White Queen had him in her sights. He had the protective circle defending him, and thus the entire ceremony, from all external and internal factors, but he lost sight of that basic fact and nearly forgot how to breathe. Unpleasant sweat poured down his body and his eyeballs were shaking too much for his vision to settle down. If he did not remain focused, his thoughts would have faded like he had severe anemia.

That was the sense of the White.

It was an omen of the greatest and most evil fate that would tear away the basic elements of either world and would not allow him even a normal death.

Shiroyama Kyousuke obeyed his biological instincts more than his human rationality.

He cast everything aside and used every last ounce of strength to leap to the right.

The very next moment, a portion of the Queen’s clothing rippled and instantly formed a double-edged Western sword measuring several dozen meters.

Destruction seemed to recite a single word.

“One.”

Light.

Sound.

Both were entirely erased by the horizontal slash. That was more than just a sword. As it swung around, it came apart and formed a storm of thousands or tens of thousands of thin wires. The ends formed sharp fish hooks, the sides formed vicious jigsaw blades, and the storm of violence would tear flesh and eat into bone. The interior of the 50m cubic Box was torn whitely apart and even the barriers of time and space were easily shredded as the very essence of destruction poured down all at once.

(The Material…Mika will be killed!!)

He did not even have time to cry out.

He forcibly changed direction after fleeing to the side. To avoid the penalty of losing and – more importantly – to avoid having his beautiful partner smashed as easily as styrofoam, Kyousuke did his utmost to suppress his fear and stepped forward. He used the entirety of the protective circle to save Himekawa Mika who was no more than the Original Yellow (s).

A deafening roar followed.

The protective circle could supposedly defend against all deadly factors, but it bent like an unreliably fragile water balloon. Incredibly, it did not actually break and as the invisible wall dented inward, it struck Kyousuke’s entire body.

He literally coughed up blood.

He had no idea how many years this had shaved off his life, but a clean hit would not have left a single shred of flesh behind.

“Two.”

And he was not even given time to correct his posture.

The next thing he knew, he heard a gentle voice from directly behind him. His heart leaped in his chest. An overwhelming presence or aura slowly approached from behind him. That alone held enough violence to beat down and bring an enemy to their knees. Kyousuke felt like his nerves had been fried by a stun gun, but he desperately turned around.

That was precisely when the White Queen slowly raised her slender arm.

Shiroyama Kyousuke honestly thought he was dead.

And since he could not prevent his body from being destroyed, he rationally calculated out what percentage he could allow to be destroyed. Until an arm or a leg had been torn off? Until one of his eyes or ears had been plucked out or ripped away? Until a portion of his kidneys or liver had ruptured?

(I should be thankful as long as my brain and heart survive!!)

A tremendous sound immediately followed.

The White Queen wielded no weapon, but that was exactly what made her the strongest. Her slender arm pierced Kyousuke’s protective circle with no hesitation.

Her outstretched fingers continued right into Kyousuke’s chest.

His ribs broke and she accurately grabbed the muscular organ protected inside. Her smooth fingers rubbed across it as if enjoying how it felt.

Simply put, it was his heart.

[[Image:BloodSign_v04_278.jpg|thumb]]

“Ebh!? Agoh! Obhgah…!!!!!!”

“Oh, dear. Oh, dear. This is checkmate, isn’t it? My – dear – brother?”

His pounding heart sounded like it was coming from somewhere else.

The White Queen gave an entranced smile as she felt the sign of his life in her hand.

“Will you be giving up now? Or would you like to enjoy the third attack as well?”

“Don’t make me…laugh…”

“I thought you would say that. You wouldn’t be my brother otherwise☆”

Kyousuke was overwhelmed by extreme tension and sweat poured from his entire body, but he showed no fear on his face even as she physically held his life in her hands. For one thing, this was what it meant to fight the White Queen. It made no difference if her opponent was on the other end of the galaxy or if she was close enough to touch their heart. From the moment she had manifested in the same world, he had to assume the very next attack could kill him.

Meanwhile, the twintailed girl was entirely unchanged.

The strongest was not shaken no matter what.

“''And unfortunately, the third attack is already complete.''”

Kyousuke’s eyeballs saw something wriggling in the corner of his vision. It was something he had cast aside but could not afford to forget about.

It was the large white sword the White Queen had tossed to him as some sort of provocation. It was stabbed into the floor like a stereotypical ultimate weapon and it began making its presence all too apparent.

The Queen’s weapons could transform into anything.

So there was no reason that it had to remain a sword.

What form had the blade – that stabbing tip – taken?

No.

''How far'' did it extend!?

“I told you to endure three attacks.” The White Queen smiled. “This attack to the heart was the third and final one. Because the very, very first attack ''had already been made before you began your efforts''!!”

That attack had not targeted Kyousuke or the others here.

It had been a cruel attack which made the entire structure of Pandemonium its target.

In other words, the 353 vessels.

“Now, a question: What did that first attack stab?”

“…”

“The 353 souls were in the process of settling into the 353 bodies. Brother, I know you of all people can imagine what would happen if Pandemonium was forcibly stopped in the middle of that.”

She had interfered with the return of the souls to take the lives he had worked so hard to save.

“Ah ha ha!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! In other words…in other words, brother!! No matter what you did, your despair was ensured from the very beginning!! You did not save the 353!! My very first attack tore apart the frame and pierced the Repliglass heart reactor, so Pandemonium is guaranteed to explode from within. It should have been obvious, right? ''Did you really think you had defended yourself against even a single attack from the White Queen? That alone is a form of irreverence.''”

The first attack had ended everything.

Of course it had.

“That’s why I told you in the very beginning to use that sword! I gave you the choice, but – my, my – you ''went out of your way'' to reject it!! Hee hee hee. Ah ha ha ha ha!! If you had pulled it out yourself, things might have been different, but you ''went out of your way'' to overlook it! Heh heh heh. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!! Now, now! Make sure to savor the nightmare you yourself invited in by trying to act so cool, my – dear – brother.”

The strongest of the strongest’s back trembled as she spoke.

The Queen’s ring of evil was complete.

He was trapped and his fate was sealed.

He was faced with the frightening truth that he had failed to save anyone after all that work.

“So what?”

But just before that happened, the boy’s extremely icy words sliced apart that path to despair.

“What..?”

The White Queen sounded puzzled even with her hand plunged into Kyousuke’s chest and her fingers gently squeezing his heart. She looked around.

There was nothing.

Nothing had changed.

“What is the meaning of this?”

“I understand you and your evil. It was the same with the Rainy Girl, Queen. If I made my decision on the assumption that you were telling the truth back then, I would have brought about the worst case scenario and you would have delighted in that fact. So it was obvious you had built some kind of malice into this series of events too. ''After all, you had no reason whatsoever to give me any kind of handicap.''”

She literally held his life in her hands, but the boy still gave her a daring smile.

“ ‘How about it? I would very much enjoy a sword fight with you.’ …Who said that? Don’t screw with me, Queen. I know you don’t still have that kind of innocent good will inside you. You made an unnatural suggestion right after announcing the three attack limit. You saw the perfect way to throw me down as I obediently followed the rules.” 

“Don’t be silly. Then what did you do? My first attack with that sword perfectly and undeniably pierced straight through Pandemonium’s heart reactor…”

“Shigara Masami was a devil-may-care developer.”

A puny pawn could challenge the queen just this once.

The boy could reveal the answer to the Queen instead of the other way around!!

“And when she was displeased with the request she received, she was well-known for adding in her own script not found in any of the designs or manuals. She would always say the system was too coldhearted and lacked humanity.”

“You can’t mean…”

“You may indeed have made your greatest attack on exactly the correct spot.”

“This was one of predicted possibilities? But…by who? If it was in the designs, it couldn’t have been you, brother!!”

“But Shigara Masami altered Pandemonium’s design and shifted each part by just a few millimeters. The body alone is 800 meters long and it’s even more with the tentacles included and there are millions if not hundreds of millions of parts in all. Each individual alteration might be small, but they add up to a great error. I don’t know where you saw the plans, but the difference between those and reality caused you to miss the crucial reactor by a hair’s breadth. Just like you’re touching my heart now. So I only had to focus on my position and adjust the coordinates at which you threw the sword!”

Things had seemed slightly off here and there.

For example, in the break room where Himekawa Mika had recovered from her Imaginary Flashback.

———''10m x 20m x…

———''17.04m? What a shame. It’s so close to being 1 x 2 x √3.

For example, when he had first set foot in this central processing core Box.

———''50 x 50 x…

———''…49.998?

“I-I…”

The silver twintail girl seemed unsure what expression to make.

But it was definitely something other than a smile.

“Someone other than you…someone else predicted what I would do…?”

“I later met that developer in the Queen’s Miniature Garden, so she was pretty clearly a genius.”

It was now Kyousuke’s turn to smile.

“She wrote this in the Box’s blank space: ‘If Pandemonium is activated, it will bring about 59 major categories and 187,600 specific methods to end the world. I included countermeasures for every last one of them, so please use your judgement to hold off those worst case scenarios’!”

“…Ah…”

“And she also wrote this: ‘Just because the White Queen is the strongest is no reason to allow her to kill’!! I inherited Madam Professor’s will and, in so doing, I tore victory from your grasp, Queen. You may be the strongest or whatever else, but you can’t interfere with the bonds between people. You can’t intervene in the time people have spent together. Taking someone’s life isn’t enough to break those bonds! That final trap was probably meant to spit not on me but on the effort she put into planning the destruction of Pandemonium, but these things can’t be shaken by that!!”

“Don’t…don’t come between…my brother and meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

The Queen screamed and some slight strength entered her hand.

That should have crushed the boy’s heart as she gently stroked it in her hand.

“'' ‘White’ Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth. Right now…''”

But that did not happen.

There was a simple reason.

“''I’m not afraid of you.''”

He had endured three attacks.

This time, the White Queen truly lost all power, dispersed, and returned to the world where the Materials lurked.

“It’s…over,” he muttered.

With the “cork” gone, dark red liquid spilled from the five holes piercing his body.

Kyousuke fell to his knees.

Was it Himekawa Mika or Ellie Slide? Whoever it was called out to him, but he lacked the strength to reply.

(She…)

But the boy still smiled in victory for the first time in a long while.

(She really was a hell of a person.)