The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume4 Chapter2

Status: Incomplete

2/6 parts completed

   

Stage 02: There Will Certainly Be Consequences

“Do you know why my color is white?”

“Because that way I can be dyed in your colors, brother! Kyah☆”

(“Now” Stage 01 Open 06/03 09:00)

(“Past” Stage 01 Open 05/31 09:30)

There Will Certainly Be Consequences

Part 1

(Timeline “Past”)

It was just past ten at night on June 2. As always, the darkness of D.R.O.K.’s night was swept away by the bright lights of the stages, but the remaining shadows functioned as useful blind spots.

Shiroyama Kyousuke and Himekawa Mika were moving through one of those blind spots.

However, walking directly to Pandemonium would have been difficult.

With microwave anti-personnel radars and invisible infrared searchlights, the 5km radius field at the center of the donut-shaped trade show became a thick barrier with no blind spots.

Normally, anyway.

“Good thing this is a weapons trade show. There were plenty of oxygen tanks lying around.”

Kyousuke set a few heavy objects down on the grass.

He had bought the night vision binoculars at a business booth.

“Good, good. The six craters from yesterday’s aerial bombing are nice and connected. That gives us a direct line to Pandemonium five kilometers away.”

“I’m sure it’s better than the perfectly flat field, but is that really enough to hide us from the anti-personnel radar? Especially when they’ll have increased security?”

“Isn’t that why we dug up the underground water veins and waited more than half a day for the craters to flood?” Kyousuke answered her with a bitter smile. “The microwaves the radar uses are weak against water. Most of them will be reflected off the water’s surface and what does make it through will be severely weakened. It isn’t a good method for searching through water.”

“What about the infrared searchlights?”

“Do I even have to say it? Whether visible or invisible, light acts the same. Once it contacts the water’s surface, it will reflect or refract, so they won’t be able to pull off a proper search.”

They would have been found immediately on the surface, so their general plan was to approach through the dark water. That was the reason for the oxygen tanks.

But…

“…I do have one question.”

“Wh-what is it?”

As Himekawa stuffed her clothes and brand-name shoulder bag inside a waterproof bag, a dry cracking sound came from her hand and she pulled it back.

“Oops, I need to be more careful. …I scraped my index fingernail on the metal zipper. Where’s the repair solution? The manicure quick-drying repair solution?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

Kyousuke ignored the chemical she used to hide the scrape on her nail in just as few seconds like it was instant glue.

He was not going to let her avoid explaining herself here.

“I told you to obtain a diving outfit, didn’t I? I let you handle it on your own so you could keep your privacy about your measurements and such…but why are you wearing a racing swimsuit? We’re still more than a month away from the pools opening.”

“Eh? B-but! I couldn’t think of a more functional swimsuit… I-it’s not like I chose a bikini or something! I’m not just messing around!!”

She could not bear to have him stare at her with his blank expression, so she started covering different parts of her body with her hands, twisting around, running her fingers down the white accent line, and reaching down to fix the navy blue swimsuit where it was riding up in her butt.

“…”

Incidentally, Kyousuke was wearing a diving wetsuit that covered him from neck to toe. It was meant for special operations rather than leisure, so when he compared her swimsuit to him, he wanted to mock and curse her. In fact, it would have been harder to find a skintight racing swimsuit at the weapons trade show, but her efforts had been entirely misguided.

“And the scrunchie. You don’t want that getting soaked, do you?”

“Uuh…”

He felt nothing but worry as the vessel pouted her lips, reached behind her head, and redid her hair with a rubber hairband while needlessly pushing out her shapely breasts.

That bad feeling grew when she put the oxygen tank on her back.

“Hyah!”

He heard a strange shout and then Himekawa nearly fell backwards. He quickly supported her from behind and she started flailing her slender limbs. She was acting like a new part-timer wearing a full-body mascot costume for the first time. It would have been a normal sight back in Toy Dream 35, but it was a problem here.

“Please don’t tell me…”

“Wh-what is it, Kyousuke-kun?”

“This doesn’t mean you don’t know how to keep your balance in the water, does it?”

“U-um, well, I might be able to manage if I have a float or a kickboard.”

Kyousuke covered his face with his hands. This was a diving mission and he was only discovering this now. And since she was not even certain in her ability with a float, most likely…

“Can you not swim?”

“I-I can too! Or at least float. I can float! You shouldn’t give adults that pitying look! I can even do the flutter kick and bring my head up to breathe! Well, if the instructor is holding my hands…”

“Or are you just entirely useless?”

“Don’t call an adult that!!”

When he saw Himekawa mindlessly reach down toward the whistle attached to her sin necklace, Kyousuke covered her mouth with all his might. She’s worse than useless!! he concluded in his heart.

It looked like taking care of her was his only option.

Specifically, he had to pass his arms below hers to essentially embrace her as they swam together.

“This is kind of embarrassing. This swimsuit leaves my back pretty bare…”

“Don’t worry. I can only feel the metal oxygen tank.”

“Perhaps I should thank you for not asking to do this from the front.”

“That’s a good way to have the other person grab onto you so you both drown.”

With that, he began his dive through the crater lakes while carrying his heavy burden. It was a surprisingly long swim. The unchanging scenery of the dark manmade lakes made it seem all the longer. On the way, Himekawa Mika squirmed inside her skintight navy blue racing swimsuit, but Kyousuke restrained her and maintained a set pace.

The craters differed in size, but they were ten meters at the deepest. They could not take the most direct route to Pandemonium, so their path zigzagged between the center points of the complexly overlapping circles. The distance they traveled was greater than five kilometers and they had to be very careful so they did not forget which direction to go at each turning point.

(I’m sure it’s partially due to using underground water veins, but the water is pretty cold. I can’t force her through too much more of this.)

He could pick up his speed to be considerate, but rushing this would only hurt them.

If they ended up swimming in circles, she really could die.

He maintained that form of callousness and they finally arrived at their destination.

“Puhah.”

Kyousuke stuck his head up from the edge of the crater and removed the oxygen tank’s mouthpiece. They were near the tentacle-like propulsion device of the colossal Repliglass mobile fortress.

He let Himekawa Mika climb up first, but since she seemed to be having trouble doing so under the power of her own arms, he pushed up on her butt and thighs to force her up. He then climbed up after her, but she wrapped her arms around him before he could remove the oxygen tank on his back.

“Ah, ahh, so cold…chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter.”

“Didn’t I tell you? Your lips are blue. C’mon, there are towels in that waterproof bag, right? Using that would be more constructive.”

A guy and a girl warming each other with their skin in a snowy mountain was not all that effective in reality. Wiping off the moisture with one towel and then rubbing yourself with another towel for the frictional heat was more immediately effective. She was older than him, but he felt like he was dealing with a child.

(Another way that she’s a lot like that woman…)

Himekawa Mika simply let him do what he wished as she lay sprawled out on the ground in her racing swimsuit. Not that he wanted her to scream sexual harassment and blast her whistle when he was trying to help her.

After confirming she had recovered to a certain extent, Kyousuke shoved a waterproof bag into her arms.

“C’mon, hurry up and change before the heat escapes. You’ll be better off in your usual suit.”

“Ah, ahhh…”

“Please don’t tell me you need help with that too.”

Kyousuke immediately turned his back, pulled his hoodie and track pants from his own waterproof bag, and began to change. The wetsuit and oxygen tank would be a needless burden, so he did not want to carry them around. He hooked the bag’s string on a part of the crater’s edge and let the bag itself sink into the water.

He turned back around to find Himekawa had only just finished putting on her underwear. She must not have been thinking straight because she next started swapping out the rubber hairband for her scrunchie.

“Hurry up! Am I going to have to help you out after all!?”

“Heh…eh heh heh… Apparently I’m really a poikilotherm…”

She must not have had the energy to scream, “Kyah! Pervert!”, so she clearly needed to be wound back up as a human being. Her weak smile was so pitiful that Kyousuke did end up helping her into her clothes. This time he really was treating her like a child.

And then it was finally time to face their present goal.

Pandemonium.

That giant black mobile fortress measured more than 800 meters

The entrance was blocked by a thick Repliglass door much like one found at a bank vault.

Himekawa Mika seemed to have recovered somewhat because she intentionally tore her new stockings and then tapped on the back of her hips near her tailbone.

“Shall I break it open?”

“No, even if it was weakened quite a bit by the ridiculous method they used, this armor still survived an explosion from the Unexplored-class Lady of Purple Lightning. Hm, more than the material being solid, they’ve applied a special treatment to the surface. Just like magic circles guide the power according to a set of rules, I think the pattern here redirects the paranormal burden and dilutes it into the planet. And it’s also grounded against curses. Now, can we really take that on directly with a Divine-class?”

“Then…?”

“According to the information we acquired, the entrance uses multiple biometrics such as fingerprint, pulse, and iris. I don’t know the exact process, but it would probably be fastest to find someone involved in all this. And fortunately, anyone who loses in the Summoning Ceremony enters a mindless state and can be guided like a zombie. We might just be able to draw out the information we need.”

With that, Kyousuke glanced to the side.

Himekawa did the same and finally noticed something.

A man and a girl slowly walked out from behind one of the tentacles supporting the fortress.

“Are you pawns of Pandemonium…no, of the Deltaston family that has infiltrated all three major powers?”

“Maybe,” answered the pompadour man.

He wore a baggy T-shirt and pants and he held a Blood-Sign made from ski material with a swollen metallic part on the bottom end.

“But first you can call us Government Award 501, Perfect Game!!”

Kyousuke pulled his Repliglass Blood-Sign from his back while also sticking a hand in his pocket and grabbing a weighty object the size of a coffee can.

It was an Incense Grenade.

No matter which major power his opponent belonged to or how many Awards they had, he would go all out to crush them.

“Mika, let’s defeat them as quickly as we can. They were nice enough to bring us the fingerprint and iris we needed.”

“That’s Mika-san, you damn kid!”

Kyousuke ignored his vessel’s unfair comment, pulled the pin, and dropped the metal can at his feet. In the five seconds before it detonated, he finished observing the surrounding space and came up with around 45 different ways of finishing within 30 seconds no matter where the 36 Spots appeared.

But…

He heard the sound of shattering glass.

Only 0.4 seconds after Kyousuke’s Artificial Sacred Ground appeared, that field was smashed to pieces.

“What…?”

There were no White Thorns, Petals, Rose, or Spots. And Kyousuke himself froze in place for a moment with his Blood-Sign raised.

A roaring wind slipped through that gap. The summoner known as Perfect Game approached from straight head. At some point, he had changed how he held his weapon. He held what had been the upper end and he used the metallic stabilizer as a weight. He spun his body like a tornado and the Blood-Sign made of glass fiber bent like a fishing rod. The blunt weapon had built up power like a spring and it approached like a morning star.

This called for a change of plans.

Kyousuke adjusted his grip to hold his Repliglass Blood-Sign like a staff and blocked the blow that would have landed on the side of his head.

The two summoners who used even the gods as stepping stones glared at each other from a distance of only a few dozen centimeters.

The mass of athletic muscle smiled fiercely.

“Did you think a Government 500-level would be an easy win?”

“…”

“You probably wouldn’t understand, Mr. All-Powerful Freedom 900-Level. It’s not that I know why I’m bound to win this. I’m carrying the great weight of knowing why I can’t afford to lose.”

A strange feeling ran down Kyousuke’s spine.

He obeyed that danger signal and focused on something in the corner of his vision: Perfect Game’s vessel. The small glasses girl had blonde hair and brown skin and she wore a black and orange Halloween witch’s hat, a sleeved cape, a bright orange camisole, and a combination of black hot pants and an ultra-miniskirt with a jagged bottom to cover her butt. She was not hiding behind anything or covering her face. She had been standing right in front of him from the beginning, so why had it taken until just now to recognize that girl with swimsuit tan lines?

“Incense Expert Ellie Slide!! Did you screw with my perception!?”

The girl grinned. It was a mocking grin.

She stuck out her tongue and a piercing wetly glittered upon it.

The Incense Grenades that set up an Artificial Sacred Ground differed between summoners and they were private information on the same level as fingerprints and irises. That made them impossible to mass-produce, so the summoner either had to mix their own or hire a specialist. Ellie Slide was one such specialist. At her level, she could probably use the composition of a personal Incense Grenade to mix up some incense that would negate it.

Ellie Slide dragged around an armor-breaking axe that beat down its enemies with its weight.

A closer look showed the axe’s handle was shaped like a smoking pipe and several small bottles were inserted into the back of the one-sided axe blade. It was likely made to efficiently spray out an incense vapor created with the same process as an electronic cigarette. And an axe that doubled as a pipe was an important ritual tool used when Native Americans tribes made decisions.

She controlled it with the flute-like keys on the silver handle and the trigger released a spray. The chocolate witch with the alluring swimsuit tan lines spoke while releasing a sweet aroma.

“Surely you know who I am and what I do, Alice’s Guide. Personal views of good and evil and the benefit or detriment to any major power will not stop me. I simply find a summoner I believe can reach Award 1000 and bind a contract with them. If they do not live up to my expectations, I simply discard them.”

Also, incense itself was burned during Western magical rituals to separate the area from the world and help the user enter a trance. An expert like her would be able to alter someone’s mind enough to erase the name of the person standing right in front of them.

Her fingers raced along the handle.

The caps of the small bottles inserted into the back of the blade were pushed in like cylinders and the liquid inside shined wetly.

“And you remember my own nickname, don’t you? Amplifier 500. …I am known in this field as a vessel who can increase the upper limits of my summoner by about 500 Awards. Now, a question. When Max Layard here introduced himself, what Award level did he say he was?”

“You heard her.” Max grinned. “Everyone has a reason they can’t afford to lose. Don’t just assume you’ve got a monopoly on that, Alice (with) Rabbit!!”

To avoid being pushed back by brute force, Kyousuke fell back himself.

Pompadour Max did not bother pursuing.

No…

“But I’ll do whatever it takes to win! That’s why I’m known as Perfect Game!! Even a Freedom 900-level will be blown to bits if he’s hit by an Unexplored-class’s power without a protective circle. Here’s a taste of what D.R.O.K. has to offer!!!!!”

There was no sound.

There was only light. Kyousuke first glanced at the pattern racing across his body and then he looked across the entire dark field. He saw a magic circle several hundred meters across and a stealth bomber flew by while blending into the dark sky.

Himekawa Mika looked up in her tight skirt and then grew pale.

“A Government summon bombing!? In the demonstration, they summoned the Lady of Purple Lightning without a vessel so its power would sweep across a fixed area!!”

It was unclear how Max and Ellie of Perfect Game intended to escape the dome-shaped blast formed from raw power not filtered through a vessel’s body, but if the bombing was triggered now, Kyousuke and Himekawa would be hit by the destructive power of an unexplored-class.

“Mika.”

“That’s Mika-san! And…kyah!?”

There was no countdown.

The attack arrived immediately.

The purple flash of light created a new crater 300 meters across.

“————!!”

Max Layard and Ellie Slide had created this situation, but it had been risky for them as well. Once before, Pandemonium had been accidentally hit by the bomber and survived. That massive structure resembled a giant coffin or a giant squid. It was possible to survive if they immediately sent the exorcism request to keep the bombing time to a minimum and sheltered behind one of the giant tentacles, but they were still bringing the fury of an Unexplored-class down on top of them without a protective circle. The more one knew about the Summoning Ceremony, the more mind-numbingly terrifying that was.

But Max laughed.

Even if he had to force it.

“Heh… That was an Unexplored-class, the Lady of Purple Lightning. I won’t even bother checking if you’re alive. You might be a legend, but no human body could survive-…”

He was not even given time to finish his sentence.

After a light sound of impact, the pompadour man looked down and saw the tip of a Repliglass Blood-Sign neatly buried in his solar plexus.

“Dah…gabh!?”

Just as he started choking, the tip shot up. Guided by the hands of the boy holding it, it powerfully collided with Max’s chin and knocked his head upwards.

“Bhahah!? Ah, goh! Wha-!?”

Max writhed on the ground, but his confusion was greater than the pain or suffering.

How had Shiroyama Kyousuke avoided utter annihilation?

Given his location, Max doubted the boy could have hidden behind one of Pandemonium’s tentacles. He should have been standing in the very center of the blast.

“Pandemonium didn’t survive the summon bombing because of how hard its armor is. Just like ultra-high temperature plasma, that blast is far beyond anything a wall that thick can handle. The surface was treated with a certain type of magic circle that redirected the Lady of Purple Lightings power into the earth like an electrical ground.”

Kyousuke spun his Blood-Sign around and rested it on his shoulder.

“I understood the theory and I had the perfect reference material right in front of my eyes. All I had to do was analyze it and make it my own. Scraping out the shape on the ground with my foot was enough. …Of course, this only worked because the summon bombing technique is so wasteful that the blast is weakened a fair bit. If that had been properly summoned with the Blood-Sign method, not even a trace of us would remain.”

“…”

That was not as simple as he made it sound.

In fact, was it even possible for a human mind and limbs to pull it off? It was a lot like taking the pattern printed on a silicon wafer and reproducing the circuit by hand in the hopes of building the same processor.

It was impossible. It just could not be done.

This was not an issue of skill as a summoner. He lacked the necessary tools.

No scientist could research a pathogen without a microscope.

No doctor could save a patient without surgical tools.

Kyousuke was essentially saying he had seen the pathogen with the naked eye and opened the patient’s stomach with his fingers. Even at the 900-level, could someone really do something so inhuman?

There was one way.

There was a filter glass used to read magic circles more detailed than a high-density LSI. It was covered in an identical number of precise grooves that would interact with the grooves of the circle to draw out a unique pattern visible to the naked eye. There was an invention that stamped a random string of numbers or letters over the name or address of the letter’s recipient to hide that personal information, but this was more or less the opposite. Perhaps it was like taking a barcode that was not normally human readable and processing it so the information could be read with the naked eye.

But fewer than 20 filter glasses were said to exist in all of Government and they cost far more than the average electron microscope. They were a complex combination of lenses, prisms, and mirrors made from a great quantity of glass, crystal, and jewels, so the materials alone took up more space than a school building. If the design was stretched out to the point that it could be read with the naked eye, it was said it would make a full circuit of the earth.

So this had to be a bluff.

Max Layard forced himself to assume that, but…

“Ah.”

Something fluttered in the wind.

It looked like a thin translucent film.

And Kyousuke held a hand mirror he had likely taken from his female vessel.

“Ahh.”

For old gramophones, the waveforms of voices were recorded by touching a needle against a disk covered in a thin layer of wax.

And the glass in a hand mirror would vibrate when someone spoke.

If he covered the hand mirror with a quick-drying manicure repair solution that acted much like instant glue and then spoke right into it, the amplitude might be carved into that thin film.

If Shiroyama Kyousuke had fully memorized a filter glass’s designs, which would be more detailed than a silicon wafer…

And if he could use the amplitude of his voice to perfectly output those designs…

Then…

What if he peeled the repair solution from the mirror and held it in front of his eyes like sunglasses?

“Ahhhhhhh!! You’re kidding…you’ve got to be kidding! That’s not possible! Are you saying you used your voice…just your voice against the mirror coated with repair solution to create an analysis filter glass!? But those are supposed to cost more than your average electron microscope!!”

It was sometimes said that a skilled craftsman’s fingers could surpass the limits of factory machinery.

But could he believe that now that he had seen it for himself?

Could he believe that this boy had used his voice to easily drawn out a geometric pattern so complex that even Government had only been able to create 20 of them?

Kyousuke spat out his response.

“Compared to that Queen’s productivity, this is child’s play.”

They simply lived in different worlds. The enemy they were prepared to fight was entirely different.

And it went beyond that.

Even if he had finished the analysis with that superhuman finesse, when had he put together his own theory?

Where had he actually drawn it out?

Altogether, hadn’t he had less than 10 seconds to work with? In that miniscule amount of time, he had caught up to the theoretical defense system of Pandemonium’s armor which had taken who knows how many hours to design and cost who knows how much money to build. How advanced was his mind, his hands, and every last part of him?

“Th-th-th-…!! Th-th-th-that-th-th-that’s not a very nice joke, dammit!!”

“Can you explain which part of this you think is worth laughing about?”

With that cold comment, Kyousuke pulled the pin from an Incense Grenade and tossed it away. Before Max could prepare his Blood-Sign again, he looked over at his partner Ellie Slide who was still sitting on the ground. Instead of telling her it was time to fight, it was clearly a negative act of confirming that she could use her interfering incense to avoid the fight.

And the incense expert and vessel girl only sighed quietly.

Kyousuke gave the answer for her.

“Do you really think Ellie’s incense is still floating around after that blast?”

“Kh.”

“…It might be time to find a new summoner.”

Even his own vessel gave an exasperated comment as she calmly pulled a new small bottle from her belt.

A moment later, the Artificial Sacred Ground expanded and Alice (with) Rabbit’s Blood-Sign gave a roar.

Part 2

(Timeline “Past”)

Defeating an opponent was simple when they had lost both their will to fight and their nerve.

In fact, it may not even qualify as a fight at that point.

“…”

After receiving the shock of seeing the god he worshiped slaughtered before his eyes, Max slowly wandered around like a zombie. As Kyousuke guided him with the tip of his Blood-Sign, the man unsteadily approached the side of Pandemonium’s thick entrance door and pulled out an authorization pad hidden there. After he released several locks, Kyousuke and Himekawa slipped inside.

“We’re inside now, but they had to have noticed that. An order was sent to the bomber and we fought inside an Artificial Sacred Ground. This clearly doesn’t qualify as covert anymore!!”

“That just means we need to change our plans. Either way, I never thought we could settle all of this in secret. It was only a matter of time.”

After all, the Repliglass structure was more than 800 meters across and even more if the “tentacles” were included. Two nuclear aircraft carriers would fit inside end to end, but unlike a ship, no thought had been given to a low center of gravity, fuel efficiency, or wave-making resistance. Its width and height had been expanded so much that it had become an unimaginably vast space.

Ships and airplanes tended to eliminate any unneeded volume, but Pandemonium seemed to be an exception. The corridors were needlessly wide and the rooms were all large. It was apparently a giant Box capable of supporting almost all of the bizarre summoning techniques demonstrated at D.R.O.K., so it had to be a largescale system.

And thus it had plenty of hiding places, so Kyousuke and Himekawa were not easily found even with search teams from Government, Illegal, and Freedom running around.

“Now that we’re inside, the rest is easy. We just have to get to the other side of the door leading to the central processor core where the 353 vessels are.”

“But how? You saw the diagram. Pandemonium’s sections are restricted at different levels, so moving between them won’t be easy. Plus, they’re on full alert and there are summoners everywhere. How are we supposed to travel safely through the facility now!?”

“That’s what makes it so easy.” Kyousuke pulled out the metal can of an Incense Grenade. “With that many summoners around, we just have to keep a Chain going while we safely break into the depths of the facility inside the protective circle. The greater the density of summoners, the easier it is to keep that Chain going. There are doors in the way? There are traps? Don’t you think we can break through all of that by summoning a high cost Material?”

Himekawa was overwhelmed by how simple he made it sound.

He was assuming he could defeat every last enemy even if there was 100 or 1000 of them, and even if that included anything from a Government Award 100 to a Freedom Award 900. But he was not being irrational or giving into wishful thinking. He had simply chosen that card as the optimal plan.

And then something like lightning dropped toward Himekawa Mika’s head.

The loud boom only sounded after a short delay.

Himekawa flinched back a half tempo later, but she was unharmed. The Blood-Sign made of ski material with a metal stabilizer had been blocked by Kyousuke’s Repliglass Blood-Sign.

It was a large man with a familiar black pompadour.

It was the summoner who should have been in a mindless state after being defeated with the Blood-Sign method.

But Max Layard showed no sign of that loss.

He made full use of his logic and intelligence for the very human purposes of winning through trickery.

“Another form of cheating with Ellie Slide’s incense, huh? I guess I should have expected that from an expert at strengthening summoners. How convenient is she!?”

As Kyousuke cursed, Max pulled a pineapple-shaped Incense Grenade from his pocket and threw it. Kyousuke could not immediately react after losing his balance protecting Himekawa, so he could only watch.

Wherever Ellie Slide was hiding, she was drawn in as the vessel when it detonated.

This time, Perfect Game had begun the battle.

And by the time Kyousuke had raised his Blood-Sign, some other summoners butted in from hiding. They sacrificed their White Thorns to enter someone else’s Artificial Sacred Ground even if it put them at a disadvantage.

Government Award 501, Perfect Game.

Illegal Award 808, Lionheart.

Freedom Award 897, Harem Collector 98.

Kyousuke smiled thinly as he viewed them as three coordinated enemies instead of individual summoners.

“I see.”

“I don’t want you complaining this isn’t fair. There’s no rule saying summoner battles have to be one-on-one, and none of us can afford to lose!!”

Perfect Game spat out that response, but Kyousuke actually liked that.

This man was willing to work toward his victory, try out any method available to him, and use his own strength to clear a path through any hierarchy or barrier a third party placed in front of him. This was the very strength of being human.

White Thorns were launched simultaneously from three directions and the boxy three-dimensional Rose shattered. The 216 fist-sized red balls of light known as Petals scattered in every direction.

The Blood-Sign method generally had a rock-paper-scissors structure.

So in a one-against-many situation, the multiple enemies could summon Materials from the high, middle, and low sound ranges to guarantee they had the individual’s weakness. It was rock-paper-scissors with no ties, so a group or organization had the upper hand.

However, multiple solid sounds followed.

Kyousuke had launched his White Thorn toward his enemy’s White Thorn instead of any of the Petals.

“Wha-!?”

Who was it that shouted that?

That single shot ricocheted again and again as it knocked all three enemy summoners’ White Thorns off course. They knocked Petals into Spots, but not the intended ones. The Petals a summoner had acquired could generally be rearranged at will and used whenever they wanted, but the very first Material was a different matter. Or rather, it would be suicide to not immediately use it because their protective circle would not appear, their vessel would remain human, and they would be instantly killed by the very first attack.

All three of them began with the Original Green (k). Sound Range: Middle. Cost: 1.

They were shocked to see identical three meter gelatinous Materials.

Meanwhile, Kyousuke had the Armored Beast (dr – zx). Sound Range: High. Cost: 4. As the name suggested, it was a Regulation-class shaped like a ferocious lion made of golden Western armor.

Kyousuke had the higher cost and the superior sound range.

At this rate, his enemies’ superior numbers would barely matter.

He simply had to strike the weaker sound range to mow them all down like grass.

“But it’s kind of sad.”

Kyousuke spoke just before the clash.

He honestly respected the pompadour man who would accept any cowardly or cheap method because he could not afford to lose.

But he still spoke.

“And yet this is almost adorable compared to my stubborn but futile struggles against the Queen.”

Finally, the metal lion roared and mowed everything down with its violent fangs and claws.

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