Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume1 Chapter1

That absurdly large broadcast station had a range that crossed national borders to cover the entire Southeast Asia region.

After growing to a bloated 200 stories tall, there was one thing it was bound to have: elevators.

They needed quite a few of those to quickly and comfortably transport a large number of personnel and materials such as props.

There were general elevators for tourists and audience members, shipping entrance ones that could carry an entire loaded midsized truck, special ones that let entertainers sneak out the back way, and business ones for the other personnel.

The white-haired woman named Elicia Luxverg was riding a VIP elevator. It was made of glass to give a view of the evening cityscape, so it may have been similar to those at a resort hotel.

Its riders would normally be accompanied by station staff acting as a guide, their secretary, or a bodyguard, but Elicia was different.

She had a simple reason for refusing any of that:

“They would get in the way.”

The giant building had an unusually complicated layout to make sure the entertainers could avoid running into obsessive fans, but Elicia had learned her own way around. She also kept track of her own schedule down to the minute or second and she could intercept any unexpected attacker.

She was the world’s strongest all on her own.

With power on her level, not harming the people around her was the most difficult part of resolving any trouble that occurred. After all, her dinosaur did not allow for finetuned control. She went to the trouble of smiling for the cameras and performing some lip service for the masses, so she wanted to avoid ''making mincemeat'' out of an ally. That would waste all the effort put into that hours-long facial workout.

(Although the best form of defense is to keep your location a secret.)

In that sense, being at an obvious landmark and leaving by helicopter was not the best choice. If she was being honest, driving a half-rusted used car through a small road lined with plywood and prefab buildings was more her style.

Currently, she caught scent of something inside that empty elevator.

She pulled out her phone and made a video call to the station chief on the top floor.

“I am scheduled for four interviews, a one-on-one talk, and then dinner with some ‘influential people’, correct?”

“Y-yes. I do apologize for the busy schedule when you must be exhausted, but just think about how much good will come from-”

“Cancel them all.”

“Huh?”

She did not bother responding to his peace-dulled confusion.

She summed it all up as much as possible.

“You need to prepare yourself. You have an intruder.”

Her prediction proved accurate.

A moment later, the elevator’s lights cut out, informing her of a power outage.

She heard an ear-splitting screech similar to sparks scattering as a train’s wheels were caught by the emergency brakes. The elevator came to a rapid stop on its way to the top floor.

“…”

It was evening. The building was so tall these higher levels would somewhat extend the time until sunset, but it was still horrifyingly dark. Did the loss of the artificial lights really make this much of a difference?

Her phone’s screen cast some light into that darkness, but the call had ended.

It said “no signal”, so it must have been using this very broadcast station and tower to make the call. But there was no chaos in the city she could see through the glass, even though a largescale blackout would likely cause accidents at the traffic lights and train crossings. That meant the power was out only for the broadcast station.

(National broadcasts are key to restoring order in emergencies. Counterterrorism measures in place for this crucial infrastructure should have it back up in less than five minutes, but surely they don’t hope to attack during that short time.)

The digital floor display had vanished with the power out, but this was probably near the 190th floor.

The next noise she heard came from the center of the metal elevator door. A katana-like blade made of crystal jabbed out at her chest height. It slid down along the gap between the double doors and sliced through some kind of latch like a hot knife through butter.

The automatic doors were forced open by human hands to reveal who awaited her.

“I recognize that blazer.” The world’s strongest kept her voice low but she smiled despite being trapped in a dangling birdcage. “A survivor of Grimnoah, I take it?”

“No.”

It was a slender boy.

He was accompanied by a pale crystal girl wielding a bladed weapon.

A stagnant light filled his eyes as he introduced himself.

“I am the one who will kill and surpass you.”

How did they reach that point?

That bloated broadcast station was 200 stories tall.

It was bound to have a solid security network of guards, cameras, and sensors, but security was surprisingly lax at one point: the orange-dyed rooftop.

“No one would ever expect someone to enter a 200-story building from the very top,” laughed strawberry blonde Marika with translucent armor covering her body.

There was of course a heliport on the station rooftop, so they would have the bare minimum of control equipment. The entire station could function as a largescale broadcast tower so they did not have to use an external one and they could use the distortion in that signal to detect any approaching aircraft.

But.

What if?

“If you fly straight up along the building’s wall, the radar can’t detect you,” said Karuta after being carried up to the top. “Although a normal plane or helicopter would definitely crash into the building if they tried it.”

At 200 stories, they were more than 1000m up. The oppressive equatorial heat was swept away and replaced by a light chill. The nearby planter even had lovely alpine plants growing in it.

''“If you ask me, we won’t be accepting interviews at TV stations.”

He suddenly recalled what his old friend had said.

''“Won’t Crystal Magicians like us be more like special forces? Y’know, we’ll be wrapped in a veil of mystery that gathers the public’s attention without having to show off to the media. But we’ll be able to go see the movies based on Crystal Magicians and laugh at how inaccurate they are. Heh heh heh.”

“…”

Come to think of it, hadn’t that flipbook in the corner of his stuck-together textbook been an imagined scene from those movies he dreamed of?

Karuta narrowed his eyes, let out a white breath, and whispered under his breath.

“Power up.”

The back of his purple blazer swelled out unnaturally and pale Crystal Girl Aine appeared from within.

“Aine, prepare your weapon. We’re up against one of the Problem Solvers, so we can’t hold back in the slightest. When I give the signal, you give this your all from the very first move.”

“Understood.”

Aine swung her right hand and what looked like a crystal katana appeared there. The base had a jitte-like fork with a laser gun on the short end.

“You too, Marika.”

“Leave it to me.”

There were sensors on the rooftop exit, but they would mean nothing before long.

They did not even need to cut the sensor when the entire station would be flooded with alerts.

Karuta and Aine pressed against either side of the door while Marika headed to the boxes lined up where they would not get in the way of the heliport. Those were the large exterior air conditioning unit, the water tank, and the gear boxes for the many elevators.

“Now we have to wait for that Student Council President.”

They took their positions and waited for things to begin.

And begin they did.

The bright guide lights for helicopters all went out.

As soon as the TV station building blacked out, Aine’s sword sliced through the door’s hinges like a hot knife through butter and Karuta kicked the door in. Marika jumped into an elevator shaft through a different entrance.

The Student Council President’s voices reached them through the vibration of their Crystal Blossoms.

Omotesandou Kyouka’s job was to use gas line explosions to destroy the normal cables and the transformers outside the broadcast station and then to observe the TV station using binoculars.

“Elicia is using the third VIP elevator from the left. Um, it should be stopped at the 190th floor.”

“Got it.”

“The power should be back up in about five minutes, so make contact before then!”

Karuta and Aine ran down the dark emergency stairs to reach the elevator in question. He would have to use the crystal girl to neutralize anyone they ran into along the way, but fortunately, that was not necessary. That was probably thanks to the highest area being used for the executives, so it was nowhere near the actual production area. There were very few people this high up.

“It’s about to begin.”

Utagai Karuta clenched his teeth as he left the emergency stairway and ran down a hallway.

The fear in his mind was joined by an odd heat.

“It all starts here!! Aine, we’re about to challenge Elicia ‘Saurus’ Luxverg, one of the world’s strongest with the Problem Solvers! You need to be ready too!!”

“Yes, Sacri-sama.”

They arrived at the 190th floor’s elevator hall.

Aine’s sword sliced through the metal door and Karuta helped pry it open.

And on the other side…

At long last.

It really did feel like so very long.

Utagai Karuta encountered his sworn enemy.

The woman had long white hair and wore a pantsuit.

The stopped elevator was like a dangling birdcage trapping her.

But there was no fear on Elicia’s face.

She returned her phone to her pocket and did not even pull her hand back out.

“How stupid are you? You could have just played dead, you know? Or are you here to receive the honor of being trampled below the great Elicia Luxverg’s feet?”

“Just you try it.”

Aine kept her sword at the ready and the boy took a step back from the dangling elevator. The avenger boy stepped into the safe zone of the solid elevator hall and he smiled with sweat soaking his body.

“You are standing on very thin ice right now. Safety devices? Emergency brakes? There’s no way those things can support the weight of that huge-ass dinosaur. Summon it here and all that will snap, sending you tumbling nearly 200 stories down to the ground. But if you’re fine with that, then summon your strongest.”

This was their first move.

It was all logically sound. If Elicia summoned her prized dinosaur, the elevator’s wires and emergency brake shoes would snap and she would fall. And if she hesitated, he would send Crystal Girl Aine toward her. Summoning the dinosaur meant falling and not summoning it meant getting sliced and diced. By normal standards, this was checkmate.

Yes.

Assuming the monster known as Elicia “Saurus” Luxverg fell into the categories of “normal” and “standard”.

“Heh.”

She laughed. Her undaunted ferocity sent a chill down Karuta’s spine.

“Aine!!” he immediately shouted. “Cut her down!!”

But the crystal girl did not follow his command.

There was a simple reason for this.

“I beseech thee, Vishnu, Indian God of Change.”

That reason was directly behind him.

It came from the sturdy elevator hall floor, but still within five meters of Elicia.

Tens or even hundreds of thousands of rusty metal pieces gathered together to produce a dinosaur as if it were rising up from a body of water.

“Sacri-sama!!”

Aine’s pure white clothing whipped around as she immediately changed the course of her blade. Instead of attacking the target directly in front of her, she used it as a shield against the dinosaur approaching from behind the boy.

That must have been the correct choice.

But the dinosaur made from a jumble of swords, spears, axes, and bows had much more force behind its charge. It sent Karuta flying horizontally with the crystal girl trapped in the middle. They were thrown through the pried-open door and into the elevator.

“Gah!?”

He did not feel the solid floor.

He was instead surrounded by something oddly warm, soft, and feminine-smelling.

Elicia had spread her arms to catch him and then buried his face in her chest.

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

Sweat poured from his body.

When he looked up from her chest, he saw a grin on the white-haired woman’s lips.

He did not have a second – or even an instant – to spare.

“Aineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

His shout was answered by the crystal girl swinging her clear blade upwards.

The laser beam fired along the curving course of that blade tore through the elevator’s ceiling.

The thick wires, safety devices, and emergency brake latches were all destroyed and the boxy birdcage began to fall.

It happened in the moment just before the charging dinosaur broke through the doorframe.

The dinosaur just missed the dropping elevator, so it seemed to have crashed through the glass wall beyond that and flown out into the evening sky, but Karuta and Aine were too busy to check.

They had entered freefall along with the rectangular box.

Their weight seemed to vanish. Just like a weightlessness experiment using a rapidly descending aircraft or an astronaut training facility using the extra-large freefall inside a broadcast tower, they were able to forget about the concept of weight while still on earth.

This must have been a bit of a surprise for Elicia as well because he was released from her slender arms.

Once freed from her chest, Karuta glared at his sworn enemy.

“Your dinosaur is a gravity attack using its great mass, so can you really make use of it in a weightless world!?”

“A meaningless question. You have failed to trap the crucial dinosaur – my Avatar – in this weightless cage.”

“Don’t be so sure. This prevents you from abandoning the old one and summoning a new one inside the elevator. That makes you powerless. I can have Aine cut you down now or I can wait for you to die from the fall!”

“Again.” Elicia floated in the weightless box while pointing her thumb toward the orange world beyond the glass. “I said it was a meaningless question, didn’t I?”

A reddish-black cascade could be seen out there.

It was a rusty collection of weapons like swords, spears, axes, and bows, of junk like refrigerators and cars, and of components like screws and springs. They had abandoned their dinosaur form to enter freefall along with the elevator. In fact, they were maintaining the exact same speed to remain alongside it.

Then they formed the carnivorous dinosaur’s maw once more.

Within the resultant deluge of horrific sounds, Elicia Luxverg kept her back to the destruction and bathed in the light of sunset so her body’s outlines seemed to be burning.

“Now, ghost, I will be leaving. Incidentally, do you have an effective means of escaping this?”

“Aine.”

“If not, then it is you who will be splattered on the ground.”

“Kill her now, Aineeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

The crystal girl responded with the short laser gun on the jitte-like branch of her transparent sword, but something else was faster.

The dinosaur had fully regained its form and the claws of its feet dug into the small concrete wall built along the steel beams running between the glass panels. It used this to slow down while crashing its great maw through the glass.

The tremendous vibration threw off Aine’s aim.

The beam of light scorched the empty air right next to Elicia’s face, but she did not bat an eye.

It was all over if the dinosaur took the entire elevator into its jaws. Elicia could escape by climbing onto the dinosaur, but the other two would be stuck inside as the elevator was tossed out into the evening sky like used gum.

But that was not what happened.

Just before it could, an orange beam of light pierced vertically through the elevator from top to bottom. A twintail girl with sharp crystal armor growing from her body flew into the large hole this created in the ceiling.

“Mari…ka!?”

The girl must have been too focused to respond.

She took Karuta and Aine’s hands while they floated in the artificial weightlessness and she flew down through the hole in the floor.

Sounds of destruction continued from up above.

Most likely, the dinosaur had dug its claws into the TV station’s wall to gradually slow its descent with the elevator in its mouth.

“Marika, this isn’t over! We haven’t rid Elicia of her ‘strongest’ yet!!”

“I know…that!”

Marika turned ninety degrees away from the elevator shaft to break through the thick glass wall and fly outside.

They faced Elicia, who was riding the dinosaur’s shoulder, from a distance of 20 meters.

However, they were standing on the vertical glass wall.

Karuta’s group was supported by Crystal Magic flight and Elicia was using the dinosaur’s claws digging into the wall, but they were both freed from the concepts of gravity and the ground.

They stood on that glass battlefield.

“So you are finally facing me head on, ghost.”

The white-haired woman was delighted.

They had dropped a lot, but their surroundings still looked like a sunset ocean. Their glass footing glittered as it reflected the orange light.

Some artificial light was mixed in with that.

The lights inside were turning back on. The broadcast station was coming back to life as it switched over to emergency power.

They had expected the blackout to last about five minutes, so all this could not have taken any longer than that.

What a dreadfully intense battle this had been. It felt like they had been fighting for days.

“Are you all out of tricks? Then let’s end this with me sending you back to your graves. Your experience on that sunken ship should have taught you that you cannot defeat my Avatar in an exchange of pure violence.”

Marika and Aine.

The boy could not even stand on this wall without those two girls’ support, but he still spat back a response.

“Don’t screw with us.”

“My obvious superiority is not enough to deter you? If this is what you’re like, I can’t imagine how you managed to survive back then. …Do it.”

Crystal Magic and God-Worshiping Magic.

The wielders of those different powers took action simultaneously.

They charged straight ahead on that glass ground to take the shortest route toward a clash.

A single hit from that dinosaur meant death.

The spatial vibration field and auto-regeneration were useless. Not even the 700 people in the Ocean Crystal Magic Academy had been able to defeat this world’s strongest. Just because Karuta’s group had gained a few personal reasons for fighting now did not mean they could overturn everything that happened and defeat this dinosaur.

So.

That had never been their intent.

“Marika! Our footing!!”

“Got it!!”

The guard of her rapier-like weapon moved. It had covered the back of her hand before, but now it turned inside out like a broken umbrella in a gust of wind to form a firing unit. A blinding beam of light surged from there.

Their footing was nothing more than glass.

It shattered and the flat battlefield suddenly vanished, as if the three of them were diving underwater.

“…?”

Elicia briefly looked puzzled while left behind.

“–––––!!”

But then she clenched her teeth.

Something else had begun.

Before making their move on the 200-story broadcast station, Karuta and Marika had gathered materials and made preparations in the jumbled city.

''“That should be enough shotgun shells. I’d love to buy as much as we can carry, but they might get suspicious if we buy too many in one place. Maybe we should visit a few different stores.”

Those shells that scattered small metal balls were used for hunting and riot suppression, but they were not hoping to load them in a gun and fire them.

Elicia was known as the world’s strongest, so nothing like that was going to affect her.

''“What about the traps?”

So they were using them differently.

They had chosen a method of detonating those shotgun shells without using a gun.

''“Igniting them won’t be very difficult. A single spark will do the trick, so we can create fuses out of a battery and aluminum foil. Of course, we’ll need a different device to switch them on.”

They would function as tiny little bombs.

Aiming them at her would almost certainly fail. Even if one of the metal balls grazed her skin by pure luck, the explosive energy would not have been aimed in a single direction by a gun barrel, so it would not have much destructive force.

''“We’re going to detonate them by radio? But there are bound to be signals on all sorts of frequencies flying around all the way up to the heliport!”

So it was a bluff.

They only had to make the target think she was being targeted by bullets or explosives.

''“Not to mention from the bugs set up by obsessive fans. Yeah, it might be best to pretend to be tourists while we walk around the building and check what frequencies are in use. There must be a bandwidth no one is using. More importantly, Marika, you’re our only hope here since you’re the only one who can use a standard Crystal Blossom. Do you really think you can do this?”

What they had done was simple.

They attached a wireless detonator to the shotgun shells and then coated them with adhesive.

Then they only had to throw them against the TV station wall from a distance.

That would turn that wall into a minefield.

''“Yesss, III caaaan. I’d really prefer to use lasers or masers, but I guess a non-nuclear photon rocket would be best here.”

Was that all it took to defeat Elicia “Saurus” Luxverg?

She had stood in front of 700 Crystal Magicians and used her massive dinosaur to block all the attacks sent her way and then crushed them all underfoot, so was this really enough to harm her?

''“Whatever the case, you should test fire it first.”

The answer was yes.

''“Obviously. In that case, I’ll want some rubber adhesive that works on building walls and some cushioning material if we have the budget.”

Because…

''Pop pop! Pop!! Pop pop pop!!

Elicia heard small explosions bursting all around her.

She also heard something whizzing through the evening air, so had they included nails or fishing hooks to make this more lethal? Or were they using shotgun shells?

“!!”

It was the same either way.

Elicia “Saurus” Luxverg was one of the Problem Solvers, but she was only human herself. If she was shot with a bullet, she would die. If she was caught in an explosive blast, she would be torn apart.

(Did they lure me here? No, I should assume they placed explosives all around the station’s walls so they would have traps everywhere!!)

She did not know which it was.

She was the strongest when it came to physical attacks, but she was not clairvoyant or prophetic, so she had no way of knowing the quantity and location of the explosives.

And to reiterate, a single hit would kill her.

One of the world’s strongest would be killed in a trap set by some ghosts she failed to kill.

After they broke through the orange-shining glass wall and entered the broadcast station again, Karuta finally felt a solid floor beneath his feet. He used that to run through the building along with Marika and Aine.

“She doesn’t have a body of steel and she can’t use Crystal Magic, but she always shows up on the front line and leaves herself open to attack. Why?”

They could hear the small explosions – no, gunshots – even from here.

If they did not reach their destination before those ended, they really would have no tricks left up their sleeves.

“The answer is simple: ''because nowhere is safer than by her dinosaur.'' That’s why she stood on that stage in front of 700 people in the ship’s gym. That dinosaur is tough enough to deflect any attack, but it can only shield one direction at a time. So her biggest fear was for the 700 people to spread out and attack separately. If she was surrounded, there would be a chance of an attack slipping through the gaps in her dinosaur shield and reaching her. That’s why she took a position where all those gazes were fixed on her from a single direction.”

So…

“She can only summon one of those dinosaurs. She can’t summon a second or third with the same mass and she can’t split the one into two smaller ones. If she could, she could stay in hiding with a bodyguard dinosaur while she sent in an attack dinosaur!”

What was Elicia doing now that she was surrounded by explosions on that building wall?

Was she unsure which direction to use her dinosaur shield?

Or…

“Karuta-kun, be careful. Elicia is acting oddly.” Student Council President Kyouka contacted him via Crystal Blossom vibration while she observed the exterior of the station with binoculars. “It isn’t shaped like a dinosaur anymore. It looks more like a crumbling donut as she forces it to shield her in all directions!”

“That’s fine.” Karuta’s group ran up the emergency stairs. “We were hoping she would panic and not know what to do, but this still keeps her from using the dinosaur.”

They ran down the hallway.

“I just hope she hasn’t considered this possibility!!”

They arrived at the glass wall decorating the floor.

Yes.

From Elicia “Saurus” Luxverg’s perspective, they were approaching from below her feet.

She had broken down the dinosaur and spread the rusty junk out in a donut shape to protect herself in all directions while it still maintained a single form, but those “all directions” were only in two dimensions.

Had Elicia forgotten she was using a glass wall like the floor?

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Karuta’s fist broke through the thick reinforced glass wall.

“Wha-!?”

This was a first.

His sworn enemy cried out in surprise for the first time while he grabbed her ankles and dragged her inside.

He threw her to the floor.

“Khah!”

The blow to her back left her collapsed there.

From there, she must have seen what looked like a demon pulling an extendable baton from his purple blazer’s pocket.

“Aine, Marika.”

The two girls faced the broken window from either side of him. The junk donut was rapidly retaking its shape, but before it could, they used the beams fired from their katana or rapier weapons to blast the half-formed donut and forcibly tear it away from the wall.

Once gravity took hold, the dinosaur fell toward the orange surface.

Elicia reached out a hand from the floor, but there was nothing she could do.

“Ah.”

“Can you instantly eliminate that one and summon a new dinosaur? Of course you can’t. If you could effectively warp it around like that, you wouldn’t need to stick by its side to stay in the one safe zone on the front line. Once it takes form, you’re stuck using that one.”

“Ahhh.”

“This is the 104th floor, so how long do you think it’ll take for it to climb back up the wall?”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

“As long as we kill you before then, we win.”

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- <span style="font-size:200%">'''bgwahhh'''</span>!?”

He swung the first horizontal blow toward Miss Strongest lying screaming on the floor.

When he felt the raw sensation reaching his wrist through the weapon, he knew for certain that Elicia really did use God-Worshipping Magic.

She did not have the barrier or regeneration of a Crystal Magician’s presets.

He could do this now.

If he attacked her exposed human body, he could defeat this strongest!!

After delivering a second and third blow with the baton as if slapping her back and forth, it was the baton that broke and bent in a shallow V-shape. It was hollow inside to make it collapsible, but it was also quite cheap.

“This thing’s useless.”

“Pant, pant.”

He tossed it aside and pulled another weapon from his pocket.

These were knuckledusters, aka brass knuckles. He passed the four fingers of his right hand through the holes, clenched it, and prepared to throw a punch toward Elicia Luxverg with those brutal rings on his fingers.

“No, wait.”

He answered her with a solid thud.

But this did not last long either. After sitting on top of her and throwing several punches to her face, he heard an odd sound from the base of his index finger. A portion of the finger crystalized and began the 30-second healing process. He must have damaged the bone. Even though he had the barrier-like spatial vibration field, weakened though his might be.

“Dammit, are you kidding me?”

He tossed aside the useless hunk of metal and pulled out a modified military flashlight.

Elicia guarded her face with her hands. She looked just like some confused girl trying desperately to protect herself from the violence raining down her way without warning.

“How long have you been doing this!? We still haven’t killed a single person! You think this is enough? You expect me to believe you’ve learned your lesson!? You think you’re some helpless victim and it would be wrong to kill you? To hell with that!! You have to take responsibility for what you did! And that means you have to die, you piece of shit!!!!!!”

The flashlight was meant to blind an enemy, not beat them. It had a laser pointer in place of bright LEDs and its special laser pointer lens could spread that light out like a flashlight to fry someone’s eyes. This method was well known for being used by ill-mannered sports spectators and people trying to obstruct aircraft. But with a reinforced stainless steel exterior that lived up to the “military” descriptor, with the weight of the large battery, and with the amplifier attached to the back, it worked well as a baton.

He remained sitting on her and beat her some more.

He must have been screaming something as he did so, but not even he heard what it was.

White-haired Elicia Luxverg had been using her hands to guard her face, but eventually something must have snapped inside her. She went limp and stopped resisting.

Only his heavy breathing continued.

This was the person who had torn Kazamuki Gekiha in two, sunk the entire Ocean Crystal Magic Academy ship, and slaughtered the other 700 people in that school who he had smiled alongside as fellow Crystal Magicians. No, the number of deaths had to be several times that when the escort ships were included.

If the Problem Solvers learned that the crystalized victims were in that coastal cave and that those people would eventually reawaken, they were sure to desperately search the world until they found them. They would smash up those crystals as many times as it took, mix the pieces in with tiles or bricks, spread those around the world, and make absolutely sure those people could never be resurrected.

He knew that.

He knew every bit of that.

And yet.

Despite the heat blazing in his mind, he also felt something terribly bitter building up in the pit of his stomach. As he continued to punch Elicia, he grew irrationally angry at her for not just dying already and for clinging so stubbornly to life.

Killing people was hard.

That should have been obvious, but it really was hard.

So how could they do it so easily?

“…”

The hand holding the bloody modified military flashlight dropped.

There were tears in the eyes of Elicia Luxverg’s misshapen face.

He may have been crying too as he sat atop her.

No matter how unfair those tears were to each other.

“Sacri-sama,” said Crystal Girl Aine with a composed expression. She was not warning him that the woman really would die if he kept this up. “If you are having trouble achieving your goal, wouldn’t it be fastest to use me? I can end it with a single strike of my blade.”

“Pant, pant!!”

His shoulders rose and fell as his mind finally focused on reality once more. The heat of rage did not go away, but he managed to question himself again. Would he kill her or not? Would he kill to give her a tiny taste of her own medicine? Would he stoop to her level here?

A tremor ran through his body.

For a moment – only a moment – Gekiha’s supposedly shattered face appeared in his mind’s eye.

“Dammit!!”

He threw the flashlight weapon to the floor and loudly clicked his tongue. While still sitting on her, he grabbed the collar of that Problem Solver who looked like a squashed red sack.

“I have questions.”

“P-pant, g-gasp.”

“Tell me about the other Problem Solvers! What can they do and what are their weaknesses!! Give me every last piece of even remotely useful information you have! Keep anything to yourself and I’ll kill you. I should really be doing that regardless. Got that!?”

Her face was too swollen to tell her eyes from her nose, but she still nodded repeatedly.

He wanted info on the other Problem Solvers: their hideouts, where they generally lived their lives, the kind of magic they used, and their weaknesses. Elicia’s dinosaur was magic, so it was a technique. It was nothing more than information that anyone could learn. That dinosaur was a fearsome enemy now, but it would help immensely to be able to use it themselves.

He had dealt with this now.

Or so he though. Right up until a beam of light stabbed into one of Elicia Luxverg’s temples and out the other.

A blinding light similar to welding exploded a moment later.

He blinked his eyes for a bit to deal with the burning pain in his eyes and then he realized the person he was holding by the collar had died. Her entire head was gone. There was not much blood because the top of the neck had been burned entirely black.

(Laser…sniping?)

“Marika!?”

“What, we were trying to kill her, weren’t we?”

He raised his head, but he could not turn toward the voice.

He had never heard such an icy voice.

“Let’s say we tied her up and dragged her back with us. Then what? We don’t know what she needs to summon that dinosaur, so we have no guarantee even if we take all her weapons and armor and even strip her naked. That surprise attack wouldn’t have worked again and we’d be helpless if she was ready for us. Killing her makes the most sense.”

“…”

Utagai Karuta shut his eyes just once and then relaxed his hands. The corpse plopped lifelessly to the floor. Nothing remained of her dignity as the strongest. She was meat. Nothing more than a hunk of meat.

“Are you upset?” asked Crystal Girl Aine while slowly tilting her head. Her long silver hair swayed as she gave him a curious look. “If you had just used me, she would not have stolen your kill.”

They returned to the RV they were using as a mobile base.

“Was I useful? I used the gas explosion to make sure everyone was evacuated, I cut standard power to the broadcast station, and I kept watch with my binoculars. That was a lot of work, but I’m pretty sure I kept anyone from being hit by the falling glass.”

Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was waiting for them in her wheelchair.

She had blended into the background to provide logistical support, but she must have returned to the RV ahead of them. Also, the RV’s driver’s seat had been customized for her, so the gas and brake pedals could be operated with buttons on the steering wheel.

“Oh? You actually killed her, didn’t you?” was the first thing Kyouka said when they returned.

“…Yes.”

“But you don’t look very happy. Why aren’t you delighted we defeated one of the world’s strongest and took revenge for everyone?”

The boy looked up with his childhood friend and the crystal girl on either side of him.

Was he smiling or crying?

That avenger could no longer say for sure.

“I’m not sure myself.”

And he said more in his heart:

''Sorry, Gekiha.

''I don’t think we’re the kind of people who could appear in those action movies you dreamed of.

“Crystal Magic?”

Elicia Luxverg had been perplexed when she first heard that term.

Magic was the term for divine miracles performed by human hands, but this new version apparently did not require going to the gods themselves. A printed circuit board was hooked up to a unit known as a Crystal Blossom, a god’s name was sealed inside, and it was installed with a program based on that god’s legends and myths to “ride the supernatural currents” similar to someone reading the weather map before tilling their field or raising their ship’s sails.

Was that really possible?

And if it was, wasn’t it irreverent?

“It doesn’t bother me,” replied Elicia Luxverg’s shadow.

That was no metaphor. The outline of her shadow on the floor changed to create a shape very different from her own.

That was Vishnu, God of Change.

He was one of the primary Hindu gods alongside Brahma the Creator and Shiva the Destroyer. He was the preserver and one of his jobs was to take the form of ten different Avatars to resolve any problems that would disturb the public order.

Elicia’s dinosaur could be seen as a version of those Avatars created using Vishnu’s power to freely change forms.

“How can it not bother you? They are basically creating papier mache gods and drawing on your power without permission. It isn’t even an issue of good or evil. Can a real god like you really allow that to happen?”

“This isn’t about that.” Her shadow’s shoulders shook in amusement. “You cannot preserve the status quo simply by letting the flow of time take over. Standstills lead to the change known as stagnation. As a preserver god, I believe I understand just how difficult it is to preserve things. To be honest, I suspect the world has grown stagnant by the title of world’s strongest staying with you for so long.”

“…”

“So isn’t this a good opportunity to stir things up? This feels weird since I’m more or less praising the acts of that god of destruction and dance, but this should be a pretty good deal for you. Finding someone who will help you improve yourself is always a good thing.”

“There are already four other people with the title of world’s strongest.”

“You mean that group of five who have their hands tied because of a stalemate akin to nuclear strategy? When was the last time any of you fought each other?”

“What are you getting at here?”

“I am saying you cannot stop the world from changing, so you should position yourself to use that change as a tailwind. You five are so evenly matched you cannot hope for any more experience points there. Not as enemies or as allies.”

“I didn’t think you were the kind of god who gleefully sought out enemies.”

“Who says this new group has to be an enemy?” Her shadow laughed in amusement. “A formidable opponent can also be the kind of friend you can really open up to. That is what it means to find pleasant preservation.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

“A friend, huh?”