Apocalypse Witch:Volume 3

Novel Illustrations

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Prologue

Unidentified readings have contacted the Second Grimnoah academy ship in the Port of Kobe. Total number unknown, but estimated to be more than 50,000 and the measurements only continue to grow.

Features similar to the Threat training decoys seen at Iceland’s Crystal Beach have been detected.

America’s Smart Arms, the primary manufacturer of said decoys, has denied all involvement. Their statements are not to be trusted, but our long-range observations suggest the materials and technology on display here differ from the units seen in the supplied intelligence on the Crystal Beach battle (including videos taken by Grimnoah students). They do have a metallic sheen, but there are aspects that make it difficult to confidently classify them as biological or mechanical. That alone is a major discrepancy from the weapons produced by Smart Arms.

These are almost certainly the real Threat.

Second Grimnoah was busy with a largescale field trip, so there were close to zero Crystal Magicians on the ship at the time. The surrounding guard ships were quickly ordered to withdraw to prevent needless casualties. (This order was approved by Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka.)

We must assume the deserted Second Grimnoah has been occupied by them.

Sinking the ship does not appear to be the Threat’s objective, but conditions inside are unknown. The Threat has gathered with too great a density to allow x-rays or terahertz radiation to see inside.

All our intelligence comes from estimates based on long-distance observations, but they appear to move more quickly than the decoys in the reports on the Crystal Beach battle. These seem more biological.

We will soon seek volunteers to secure higher-quality intelligence from a greater variety of angles.

We know that we are incapable of defeating the humanity-destroying Threat, but that does not mean there is nothing we can do. Second Grimnoah is the mobile base needed to fight back against the Threat. We cannot allow it to be lost here.

My only hope is that the intelligence we gather can be of some use to those next-generation magicians.

That is all.

-Report from Central Region 3rd Division 36th Infantry Regiment to Army Central Intelligence Team.

Once this report is complete, we will abandon our base and voluntarily go into hiding. We will focus on unofficial defenses against the Threat, so assume all lines of communication will be cut off.

“Ahh, ahh…nhhh☆”

“What in the world are you doing? Why are all sticky?”

Utagai Karuta’s exasperated comment was understandable.

Black-haired Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was lying face down on a special table. She had stripped off her purple blazer uniform and only wore a bikini bottom over her very noticeable butt. She could not be said to be “wearing” the top since the straps were untied. Her excessively large breasts were squished between the rest of her body and the table.

The floor was covered in red carpet and the walls were made of wood.

But that classic and antique interior design was at odds with the various exercise machines and massage tables.

The space was like a fusion of a café lounge and a gym for the rich, so what would you even call it?

A luxury hotel suite was probably the closest thing.

The President’s long black hair was pulled up and small hands touched her exposed back. As those hands moved up along the line of her spine, a translucent gel spread out across her. Alluring breaths left her lips and irregular jerks of movement ran through her body every time the hands moved.

The hands belonged to Crystal Girl Aine.

She looked like a small girl of about 13 with long silver hair, two horns(?) growing from the top of her head, and a white dress, but she was actually a piece of Crystal Magic that belonged to Utagai Karuta.

Her hands were covered in gel, but her expression remained unchanged. That made her look cold, inhuman, and mechanical, but that was not too surprising since she was in fact not human.

“Is this good enough?”

“Yes, yes. Don’t try to scrub hard. Start by letting the gel soak into my skin. Once it takes effect, the filth will rise to the surface on its own.”

“Why is Aine doing this?”

“It’s a beauty salon☆ We’ve got the place to ourselves, so we can use all the first-class amenities we like. This doesn’t cost us anything extra, so why would you go stuff yourself into an economy seat packed in as tight as a pack of drink bottles?”

Soft music was playing and gentle heat filled the room.

There were no rows of seats to be seen in here, so it felt more like the bar lounge in a large hotel. Drink bottles sitting on ice and an assortment of fruit had been prepared on the glass table. They had to wonder why the airline had made this selection, but they were all carbonated drinks with an alcohol content of more than 14% and none of the students had dared touch them. Nature footage was playing on the home theater that covered the entire interior wall separating this room from the next and there were also a few VR goggles lying around. The VR areas were divided off with ropes for safety and you could play simulated golf, jogging, hunting, and other games there.

This was a passenger plane.

It was hard to believe this was really all happening at an altitude of ten thousand meters. Not to mention that Japan was still in a crisis situation. Karuta had just been left speechless after reading through the sorrowful report. He wanted to make sure those soldiers did not get carried away and get themselves wiped out. Yet when he walked in here, he found that demonic body. No, demonic did not cut it. She had the body of a demon queen.

“It wouldn’t be fair to criticize just me for this. Marika-san was using this place earlier.”

“Eh? Marika was using a beauty salon???”

“No, the VR boxing game. She says exercise is the best way to improve your body. Although she decided it was too boring when you couldn’t feel the punches land, so she stormed off in a huff.”

Yeah, that sounds like her, sighed Karuta.

Amaashi Marika, his twintailed childhood friend, was the kind of girl who would innocently pull you against her curvy body to test out some new wrestling move she had thought up. She would end up pressing her glorious chest or thighs against him, which he certainly enjoyed, but the wrestling part was more on the painful end of things, making it hard to know what to think about it.

Karuta and the others had boarded a boomerang-shaped passenger plane that was taking them from Iceland to Japan via Germany. Flight was one of a Crystal Magician’s presets, but it did not let them fly halfway around the globe nonstop.

Before the technological revolution, passenger planes were designed to carry 800 people at once, but that number had reached the quadruple digits thanks to the civilian uses of the secondary technologies developed from Crystal Magic.

“There’s no use getting impatient.”

Still lying face down, Kyouka used her arms as a pillow and kicked her legs like a small child. But instead of a light motion, the kicking produced a solid metallic sound. Around her ankles, on the back of her knees, on the outside of her thighs, and around her hips, she wore a medical powered suit made from a stainless steel frame thinner than a ruler. She was testing it out as a replacement for her wheelchair.

She was smiling thinly, but not out of enjoyment.

She could smile from more than just her own emotions. He had seen hints of this before too.

“If we get impatient, fear will quickly spread through the others. And if Grimnoah panics, what happens to the people watching us? All 5.5 billion of them watching on their various screens? The fight for humanity has begun before we even reach the Threat.”

“So I’m supposed to remain calm?”

“There are only four of us Living Gods, so we need to maintain our unprecedented and legendary appearances.”

Kyouka laughed and Utagai Karuta hung his head a little.

If people knew a famine was coming, they would buy up and steal food, but they could be put at ease by eating a large feast in front of the cameras. He got that. He really did, but it still felt wrong to him. What if there was not enough water, not enough money, not enough petroleum…or not enough lives? As the ideal shown on the screen to put people at ease grew further and further removed from the reality of the people’s lives, wouldn’t the Four Living Gods end up looking just like the Problem Solvers who had always smiled so creepily on TV?

The events at the Crystal Beach had been awful.

Being the world’s strongest did not make you all-powerful. That title granted them by other people was only an illusion. At that Icelandic resort, they had had so much trouble with only the decoy Threat created by a weapons manufacturer.

And this time it was the real deal.

Worse, their home ground of Second Grimnoah was the target.

“…”

But that was exactly why he could not let it overwhelm him.

Could they really throw out their morals just because it was an emergency and they needed to survive? The Plank of Carneades was bullshit. How could you trust the morals of the ancient Greeks or Romans or whoever that had laughed as they watched slaves fight to the death? He had to remind himself that an emergency was not an indulgence that unconditionally forgave any and all misdeeds.

If the strongest forgot how to regulate themselves, the world was doomed.

“What do you think the Threat – the real Threat – is trying to accomplish?” he asked.

“Who knows,” replied Kyouka. “And worrying about a question you can’t answer is bad for your health. Hee hee. Yes, that’s the spot, Aine-chan. Get that detox process working☆”

A soft electronic tone sounded.

Then a female announcer spoke over the speaker installed in the wall.

“We will soon enter Japanese airspace from the south. The local weather is stormy, so please be ready for turbulence from sudden pressure changes.”

It happened just as the announcement was finishing up.

Something passed right by the thick two-layer window.

They were ten thousand meters up, putting them higher than Everest’s peak, but something like a long white cloud or pillar of smoke tore through the subzero, low-oxygen air from behind the plane. Based on the direction of the setting sun, it was traveling south to north. If it had the same destination as them, it would be headed toward Kansai.

“A cruise missile? Who fired that!?”

“Someone must have jumped the gun.”

Omotesandou Kyouka casually sat up with her top’s straps still undone. If not for her hair falling down, her chest would have been fully visible, but she did not seem to care.

She let Aine wipe the gel from her back with a towel while she stretched her arms up like she had just woken up.

“That was a CM-05C Francisca. The C designation means it’s a small ship-loaded model, not a surface-to surface model. It’s based on an American missile, but the fins have been improved upon. I think Japan has a license to produce them. Hee hee. And you know the only complaint that got? It violates noise pollution regulations when flying at low altitude. Perhaps that’s why it’s up at this altitude.”

“Are you saying the soldiers meant to protect our country fired a missile into our borders from out at sea?”

“Yawwwn. At this scale, I doubt they can pass it off as an experiment. Those things are officially designated for ‘disaster prevention’. Such as sinking tankers that are burning out at sea.”

She must have been a little sleepy because she held a hand to her mouth and yawned while seated on the massage table.

That first spear of smoke was not alone.

Karuta managed to count more than 50 of them and he could guess there were more than three times that many he could not see from that window. The same model of missile continued to fly out ahead of their plane, like the smoke was threads being woven up in the sky. They were all headed toward a ship floating in the inland sea surrounded by Shikoku and Kansai.

But…

“And I doubt this will accomplish anything either way.”

At the same time, several beams of light brighter than lightning flashed out, producing just as many explosive booms. The disturbance of the air violently shook the boomerang-shaped passenger plane that could carry more than a thousand passengers.

But not because the many missiles had fallen on a well-populated area.

He could tell just by pressing against the window.

Every single one was shot down long before it reached the surface. The evening sky was scorched by the afterimages of beams colored the unnatural green of a neon sign. That solid defense had proven it would not allow drones or stealth fighters through and it had just proven that a saturation attack of cruise missiles did not work either.

“Anti-air lasers.”

“That’s what it looks like, at least. We don’t actually know what those are, so they might not actually be beams of light created through optical pumping.”

They could shoot down everything regardless of quantity or quality.

“Sparkle, the optical Threat. The name is extremely tentative of course.”

And whether that Threat was a machine or a creature, it was not alone. Second Grimnoah was crawling with them to the point that they did not have an accurate count.

Kyouka childishly puffed out her cheeks (with only her bikini bottom and hair to cover her soft skin).

“God, what are those grownups thinking? Why make it so the Threat’s presence saved the city? I get that they lost their temper after their attempts with drones failed, but still.”

“At least they were using normal warheads.”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

Fuel-air explosive bombs, thermobaric bombs, and nuclear bombs.

There were a few different weapons that could blow away a wide area, but none of it mattered if they could not reach their target. If an ordinary warhead could not reach, then neither could a nuclear one. Those overeager elites in camouflage had just implicitly proven that it was impossible for traditional military technology to eliminate the Threat.

That meant it was time for the Crystal Magicians who surpassed such ordinary things.

“…”

The next battlefield would be at the source of those lasers.

A Threat that could fire beams of light was attached to the roof of the Second Grimnoah academy ship.

“Karuta-kun.”

“Yes?”

“Be honest with me: you were glad that failed, weren’t you?”

“I mean, even an ordinary warhead creates a blast and shockwave across dozens or even hundreds of meters. And while they were targeting a ship out at sea, one of the missiles could still end up falling on a city.”

“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”

He heard a metallic sound and sensed someone approaching from behind.

With the mechanical joints supporting her weight in place of a wheelchair, Omotesandou Kyouka pressed up against his back in nothing but a bikini bottom.

These were the actions of a girl who knew how to play the game.

The sweet demon whispered to him as if blowing a heated breath in his ear.

“I’m saying it would be a problem for you if those had hit and damaged Second Grimnoah. They called it deserted, but the students of the first ship remain crystallized on the lowest level.”

“…”

“Don’t worry. I feel the same. I am even willing to thank the Threat this one time. Hee hee. There are times when your honest thoughts must remain hidden because they would receive a flood of criticism if you ever spoke them aloud.”

Aine tilted her head while wiping her hands off with the towel a short distance away.

The first ship had been obliterated by the former world’s strongest known as the Problem Solvers. Karuta and Kyouka’s classmates and upperclassmen had been slaughtered and those fatal injuries had caused them to fully crystallize. All because of other humans, not the unidentified Threat.

It would take them long enough to recover as it was, but if their crystallized forms were shattered, that penalty would grow dizzyingly long.

Kazamuki Gekiha.

Karuta recalled the face of the friend he had once laughed with and clenched his teeth without turning toward the President whose body heat he could feel on his back. He wanted to save them, no matter what it took. He would not let the Threat do anything to them and those Japanese soldiers were a problem too. Then there was the coalition force champing at the bit in the distant ocean. He did not want to let them begin a general attack or allow any “noble sacrifices” if this developed into an all-out war.

Those were his classmates, his friends, and living human beings.

He was not going to give up on them and have their names carved into some pretty memorial.

“But…”

“Yesss? Hyah!”

A cute cry reached his ears.

All strength left Omotesandou Kyouka’s knees and she wrapped her arms around his neck to support herself. Just like a small child jumping onto her father’s back while throwing a tantrum.

She laughed bitterly.

“Ah ha ha. I guess untested prototypes only work like a charm in fiction. Was this the battery, or does it have a loose connection? I suppose I will be stuck on logistical support again this time. I thought I might be able to join the fight if I could run freely around the battlefield, but one malfunction like this on the front line would mean death.”

This time, it was not calculated out or a performative action similar to a speech made up on a large stage. Her large chest pressed against his back even more solely due to this unexpected trouble.

The sensation of her flesh was too powerful a stimulus for the teenage boy, but he did not bat an eye at her sighs, that sensation, or the unusual glimpse at her honest thoughts.

He only looked bitter as he stared out the window.

And he spoke like a lost child at an amusement park.

“This has nothing to do with Yamanen or Natlena who only arrived for the second ship. No one is going to agree to risking their lives to take back Second Grimnoah just because it would save some people who most people think of as already dead.”

“True, but I can give you an official reason for it. You can leave all the tricks and conspiracies to your black-hearted President.”

The strongest could only reveal their weakness to another strongest.

That was why Omotesandou Kyouka’s childlike behavior was quickly replaced by an all-accepting, motherly smile.

“I will give them an emotional and idealistic but also beneficial and logical justification. I will set up the conditions just right so they have no escape and could not back out even if they wanted to.”

“…”

The ordinary people could only guess at how the great heroes and warriors felt.

There were battles from which you could not run.

And after coming this far, there was a clear division within Grimnoah.

Only the survivors of the first ship had any attachment to that first ship, so only the Four Living Gods shared that attachment. This was not like the Crystal Beach where everyone had banded together to survive. Those four would be getting the rest of the students involved for their own personal reasons.

This would be a guilty battle built on secrets.

So…

“Karuta-kun.”

A giggling breath reached his ear.

She may have been afraid too. That may have been why she made sure to maintain her confident demeanor. She had several different faces, but which one was she using to laugh here? Utagai Karuta was having a harder and harder time of reading her. Even though they had relied on each other to survive so many deadly battles.

“At this point, the two of us are nothing but villains,” whispered the alluring demon.

Chapter 1

Part 1

The boomerang-shaped passenger plane, Flight JSL-710, landed at a floating general airport built off the coast of Osaka as an entrance to Kansai.

The usual passenger planes, businessmen waiting to board, and tourist groups were nowhere to be seen. From the moment the Four Living Gods disembarked, this changed from being a civilian international airport to a frontline marine base rented out to the world’s strongest fighting force.

“This is Osaka. This floating airport is about 30km by sea from the Port of Kobe.”

Amaashi Marika, a girl with her twintails hair dyed strawberry blonde, looked down at her waterproof map while descending to the runway with the many other students. That was more dangerous than walking around looking down at your phone.

“We’re lucky to have approached even this far unharmed. Hey, Karuta! You split them up into teams cause I’m no good at that. Ugh, I just want to get moving ASAP!”

“30km? Um, i-isn’t that too close? Can’t those lasers reach us here?”

That nervous comment came from Natlena Blast, a girl with short and wavy blonde hair. She had been the young avenger attempting to get back at them for her sister’s death, but now she was on their side.

She had never been the type to do anything wrong, but now that she had stopped forcing herself to be bad, she could no longer hide her adorable side. She was too pure to look at for Karuta, a truly bad person who had killed five people and received nothing but praise from the world at large.

He absentmindedly spoke to that underclassman who descended to the runway a step below him.

“You really are the puppy type, Natlena.”

“Mh, what is that supposed to mean? Um, there are other animals you could compare me to.”

“Huh? Why are you mad? I meant it as a compliment.”

“How stupid are you, Senpai? Only weirdos like being called a dog!”

He was pretty sure she was indeed the puppy type since she would bite at any rubber ball waved it in front of her small face, but there was no use arguing the point.

That aside, it might seem odd for a 12-year-old girl who could not drive a car or motorcycle to think of 30km as “close”, but Crystal Magic flight was superior to a fighter craft. With nothing in the way, 30km would take them less than a minute.

“We don’t have to worry about the Threat’s projectiles while on the surface because the horizon acts as a range limit. We haven’t heard anything about their lasers curving or bending in midair.”

Karuta was holding the handles of a wheelchair as he descended the stairs behind Natlena. He was turned backwards so he descended first to make sure Omotesandou Kyouka did not accidentally fall down the stairs. Out on the runway, they were already in their public mode.

They were outside. From now on, they had to assume that their every action would influence the 5.5 billion nervous people out there.

“Also, the grownups are really eager to do something, so they’re helping out. And unlike that reckless bombardment, their help will actually be useful this time.”

3, 2, 1, counted down Karuta.

Then an unnatural downpour fell down from the evening sky like a shower had been turned on.

Natlena held down her beret with both hands.

“Wah!! Wh-what is going on!?”

“Artificial rain. I believe it uses silver iodide. The weather was looking iffy already, but it’s safer when we can switch it on and off ourselves. This should weaken those lasers and also divert the course of the light much like a prism or filled fish tank. Of course, that’s all assuming the beams fired by the Threat really are physical light.”

Karuta, Marika, and the others used magic powered by occult high and low pressure fronts, so they knew supernatural powers did exist in the world and could be systemized into a form of technology. They still knew nothing about the real Threat, so it would be naïve to assume their enemy could not do something they themselves could do.

“And Marika, try to keep that map folded up. The airport itself is locked down, but modern devices can still see us from a rooftop or other elevated location past the bridge here. Not to mention how high quality satellite cameras are. The world might be in danger, but there will still be people who see that as an opportunity.”

“Oh, is that so? Since when are you so duty-focused, Karuta? And if that’s true, you should probably try to dress nicer for the cameras. Oh ho ho. Your appearance is a disgrace to the name of the Four Living Gods who are meant to put the people’s minds at ease.”

“?”

He gave her a look that said “but we’re all wearing the same uniforms”.

Natlena, their mascot of a middle school girl, looked up at him while fidgeting her small fingers.

“Um, Senpai, your tie is a bit crooked, so if you don’t mind, I could fix it for-”

“Stand back, flirting brat! You’re interrupting childhood friend quiz time! Why would you just give him the answer like that!? This is the problem with you newcomers that don’t know how the game is played!”

The two girls just about got into a fight in front of Karuta, but then Hashizaki Tayori, one of the girls in his class, reached over with an exasperated sigh. She quickly untied and retied his crooked tie with just the one hand.

“C’mon, try to look sharp, world’s strongest. You yourself said there are cameras watching us, right? Those paparazzi love nothing more than scandals of the romantic variety, so stop giving them fuel for the fire yourself.”

“R-right. Thanks?”

The cutting-edge magicians screamed “She stole my job!” and “Senpai!”, but no one was paying any attention to them anymore.

That gyaru-type was one of Marika’s friends, but Karuta himself had rarely interacted with her. A friend of a friend was just another term for a stranger, but Tayori winked at the confused boy.

“What, curious why I know how to handle guy’s ties? That conversation might be a little too grownup for you.”

Not only did she know how to tie one around someone else’s neck, but Karuta could not tie his own with just one hand. However, it seemed almost second nature to her. The capable girl waved as she walked off into the orange sun shower.

Matsuda Imi, the other girl always hanging out with Marika, held a hand to her mouth as she grinned.

“Did that inspire some indecent fantasies? Like a romance with an older man?”

“Bff!?”

“Ah hah hah! Don’t worry! Tayori’s just used to looking after her brothers. She has the gyaru look down, but she’s the caretaker type on the inside. She’s a veteran of the bargain hunting wars and she can sew and mend clothing with both speed and quality. But maybe that just makes her more of a catch? Oh, and Marika?”

“What?”

“We can see through your blouse. Wow, that is a really plain bra. Did you grow careless?”

Marika screamed while soaked with the artificial rain and hid her large chest with her hands. Karuta blushed and looked away like normal, but the girls apparently did not see this as sexy. It was an unforgivable crime.

Matsuda Imi sighed as she continued.

“That’s about what I would wear while lazing around in the kotatsu shortly after New Year’s, but you’re not in your dorm room right now. At least tell me the top and bottom are matching colors.”

“But, um, Imi-sensei! I have a good reason for this. I didn’t have anything to wear after losing my suitcase in the confusion caused by those decoy Threats, so I was forced to tearfully buy something at the duty-free shop in the airport at Iceland!!”

“Wow, that is just sad. I’d want to crawl in a hole and die if I were you. You do realize that’s just as bad as being so busy you forgot to do laundry, running out of clean clothes, and rushing out to a 24-hour discount store to buy some underwear? Without any underwear on at the time? Peh heh heh☆”

“Well, what did you do, Imi? That duty-free shop had to be the only real opportunity for any of us. If you didn’t buy any underwear there, are you saying you’re a sweaty girl who hasn’t changed her underwear?”

“Huh? You never know what’s going to happen on an overseas trip, so you’re supposed to carry around a separate bag with spare underwear, menstrual products, deodorant, and a small bath and toothbrushing set. Oh, what’s this? Why are you hanging your head and trembling, Marika-chan? What, did this never occur to you? Bwa ha ha! You really need to up your girl power!!”

Trembling, Marika looked over in search of help, but for some reason both Kyouka and Natlena would not look her in the eye. The looks on their faces said they had overcome that feminine crisis with their own forms of ingenuity, so they could not assist her here. On that note, where had Kyouka gotten that swimsuit?

Also, Karuta could not at all keep up with this crazy girl’s talk. Anyone who said they wanted to spy on girls’ secrets was living in a fantasy world. Karuta was not confident he could maintain his own fantasies after learning the truth. Those fantasies were shattering before his eyes. Really, he just wanted them to stop openly talking about sweat and menstruation in front of him like this. Talk of lazing around in the kotatsu was too real! It was going to make the boys cry!!

Meanwhile, small Natlena was covering her small chest with one arm, hanging her head, and pouting her lips after being caught in the crossfire due to the misfortune of choosing the same color as Marika.

“Wh-what’s wrong with white?”

“Oh, it’s still perfectly fine for you. It suits you. In fact, I’m impressed you have a real wire bra instead of a sports bra. That’s pretty mature for an AA. Wa ha ha ha!!”

“Mine are an A!! Not an AA!!”

That unnecessary correction made Karuta blush all the more and Kyouka (whose size spoke for itself) smiled bitterly with her head resting in her hand.

If you were proud enough of what you were wearing, you apparently felt no need to hide it. Matsuda Imi (who had been looking down on her friend while wearing a kiddy striped bra herself) spread her arms at her sides to enter airplane mode as she chased after her gyaru friend who was on her way to the terminal.

“…”

It was hard to believe they were about to begin a major battle.

It felt more like a scene out of a peaceful school.

They were about to give their all toward reclaiming Second Grimnoah, but even that was only viewed as taking back what was rightfully theirs.

If the Crystal Magicians known as the world’s strongest were to fail here and lose their base, all human hope would crumble. In the worst case, the 5.5 billion could be gradually worn down into extinction without ever finding their next strongest.

And Karuta’s group had no guarantee they would return from this alive.

This was the real deal. Their opponent’s specs were unknown, but the coming battle could easily be even worse than the one against the decoys at the Crystal Beach.

The general assumption that you would survive did not apply in real battles. It was Karuta’s group’s job to put together a realistic plan of action that would make that assumption a reality. They could not rely on the adults either. If they did not do this themselves, their plan would fall apart and they would all be slaughtered. And yet…

(I know it’s better than being traumatized, but is our previous success making them overconfident?) “It’s better this way,” whispered Omotesandou Kyouka (who was wearing a surprisingly cute pastel color).

She was trying to encourage her fellow outcast.

“If they were feeling the real fear of battle, they would break before the fighting even began.”

Part 2

The real Threat’s strength was unknown, but they did know one thing for sure at this stage.

They were about 30km away, but flying in and attacking the Port of Kobe from the air was not an option.

Thanks to the Sparkle’s lasers, they would all be shot down before arriving.

That was why they were using large tour buses to travel from Osaka to Hyogo, traveling north along a curving highway. A convoy of camouflaged military trucks would be too conspicuous, so it could gather the attention of the Threat and even the bored media.

Natlena Blast fidgeted nervously in the next seat over.

“A-are you sure this is a good idea, Senpai? It’s true the Threat might not notice us like this, but aren’t we using the city buildings as a shield!?”

“An evacuation order was put out quite a while ago and I doubt anyone will choose to ignore that with the Threat here. Word will be spreading that the city will be destroyed overnight.”

“Evacuate to where? Um, don’t the prefectures bordering Osaka Bay contain more than 10 million people?”

The blonde girl knew an awful lot about Japan for a US citizen. And things like this went more smoothly when following an existing process than when attempting something new and unprecedented. For example, Fukui had the highest concentration of nuclear power plants in Japan and Nara was a mountainous region famous for its hot springs, meaning it was also an active volcano. With several possible causes for concern, a largescale disaster response manual had been developed to cover the entire Kansai region.

In another seat, his classmates Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke were looking out the window.

“Noo! How did we visit Osaka without getting any of the local specialties!? I at least wanted to try some akashiyaki!”

“Farewell, Osaka, and hello, Kobe. What other part of Kansai is known for its beauty at night? Sapporo?”

“Senpai,” said Puppy Girl Natlena while dying to correct those two, but Karuta placed a hand on her shoulder from the next seat over to restrain her. She had to learn to not chase after every single ball that flew past her.

Karuta was getting a mild headache from his high school classmates who were exposing their idiocy a little too freely in front of the middle schooler, but he had to focus.

They did not drive down from the interchange to the ordinary roads. The Port of Kobe was right in front of them – he could already see its tall gantry cranes. The tour buses parked in a row at a nearby service station and Karuta stepped out into the sun shower. He detected the salty sea breeze mixed in with the rain. He flicked the Crystal Blossom on his chest and sent out a transmission to let everyone know what was happening.

He of course switched over to his public mode for this.

“We will continue as planned, but I cannot guarantee you that following your training will be enough to overcome this. We have all already experienced the cruelty of real combat. So let us protect Second Grimnoah, protect the Port of Kobe, and protect the world to show the bored media the pride of true veterans. Begin!!”

Several high-pitched sounds followed.

Around 100 middle and high school students had been gathered here. The boys and girls all shattered the Crystal Blossoms on their chests to cover themselves in translucent armor. They could not fly high in the sky thanks to those anti-air lasers, but they could still ignore the paths of the roads as they jumped straight down from the service area to the ordinary road below.

Natlena had already donned her armor, so she checked on the ski-like parts on her feet before looking back toward Karuta.

He alone could not wear amor like the other students. Nor could he fly.

“Um, uh, what about you?”

“Power up. Come on out, Aine.”

His Crystal Blossom shattered, his shirt pulled up, and a pale-skinned crystal girl crawled out from his stomach.

This was the irregularity he alone possessed.

Aine tilted her head while awaiting orders.

“What shall I do?”

“Well, first you can- wah!?”

“?”

Aine was puzzled by his shout.

The crystal girl had no center or core. Everything from the tip of her sword to her heart was an equal part of her and she had been wearing that white garment the first time she emerged.

But at the moment, it was raining.

In that downpour, well, the dress grew see-through. It clung to her fine skin, revealing the shape of her relatively uncurvy body. It was the white fabric’s fault!!

Aine herself did not bat an eye.

“Is something wrong, Sacri-sama?”

“Okay, I guess I have to make this an order. Listen, Aine, please hide your body. Immediately! It’s just that, um, are you unfamiliar with the concept of a bra!?”

The crystal girl silently lowered her gaze to check on her own disastrous state.

“But keeping my clothing constantly dry in this continuing rain is unrealistic and it would be highly inefficient to cover my body with my hands while I- byah!”

“You’re squeezing your eyes shut, blushing, trembling, and you even bit your tongue just now! I can tell you’re embarrassed too, so please stop pretending otherwise! There must be some solution to this!!”

Their field trip to the Icelandic Crystal Beach had not been a fun experience, but it had not been a total failure. For example, he had gotten Aine to feel embarrassment about her own nudity.

Another of his few victories there had been Natlena Blast, but she was now giving him a cold look.

“Senpai, um, why did you react so differently to her than to me?”

She was imagining things.

In fact, he also felt awkward looking at Natlena when she was so thoroughly soaked in the rain.

“Countermeasure: unknown. This particular problem must be put on hold.”

“Okay, fine. Then let’s get to work, Aine!”

After giving that command half in desperation, a pleasant slapping sound reached his ears.

Aine had swept him off his feet, flipped him around in midair, and grabbed him in a princess carry.

Then the crystal girl notices something.

“Oh, my hair covers it pretty well.”

“Don’t get careless, Aine. A hair bra is not generally accepted as covering up. That still counts as defenseless.”

Her movements remained precise as they discussed it. She did not hesitate to jump gently down to the hard asphalt 15m below the elevated service area with him in her arms.

It could be hard to tell with how easily she did it, but that was as tall as a school’s roof. It was a deadly height that was dangerous to jump from with or without a parachute. Natlena ended up watching it in a daze, but then she frantically activated her flight.

“W-wait, Senpai!”

“Never fly for more than 5 seconds, Natlena. We’re already within lethal range of the Sparkle’s lasers, so it’s over the instant it notices you.” After that quick rebuke, Karuta left Aine’s arms and planted his feet on the rain-wet road. “And we’re less than 500m from the Port of Kobe. If you count the adjacent airport, the Port of Kobe covers 10km of the coast, but we have to start here. Let’s go, Natlena. Real or decoys, we need to take the Second Grimnoah back from the Threat.”

“R-right. Um, to take back humanity’s mobile base!”

“…”

(Gekiha.)

He tried to keep it off his face.

But he was not at all confident he had succeeded.

He made all these valiant statements, but his real motives were much more personal. He was only interested in the dead dream of those lethally-wounded crystal statues, but working to rescue them had to be nothing but a nuisance to the rest of humanity. He doubted anyone would understand if he was honest about his motives. Not just the outsiders who knew nothing of Crystal Magic, but the other Grimnoah students and teachers too. If they knew, they would all tell him to get lost and they would abandon the fight. They would say the first ship’s problems were meaningless to their second ship. And they were right about that.

Was that his reason for not telling them? Was that really a valid justification?

But…

Even so…

(I don’t care if it’s wrong. I will save my friends even if it makes me a lying sack of shit!!)

Aine used her sword to slice through the tall fence and Karuta silently stepped into the Port of Kobe’s grounds.

It was finally beginning.

The world’s strongest magicians were about to contact the true and legitimate Threat.

Part 3

Osaka’s floating general airport was located 30km to the south and Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was humming as she operated the equipment in the control tower there. The number of buttons and dials there reached the quadruple digits and even licensed professionals had trouble dealing with it all, but Kyouka managed it more casually than searching for videos on a phone or tablet.

“Will that actually tell you anything?” asked Marika in exasperation.

“A number of things. For example, that the stubborn coalition force is preparing a nuclear launch.”

Marika did a shocked double take, but Kyouka did not look back her way. She only waved a headset in one hand.

“Care to take a listen? They’re talking about filling a landing ship with armored trucks and spacesuits for those shut-ins, about their remaining supply of iodine chemical, and about how a big old missile would be too noticeable and get shot down by a laser so they want to drag a field gun near the city and fire a nuclear warhead into the Port of Kobe from close range. What ever happened to the three non-nuclear principles, I wonder? Besides, thinking nukes will solve all the world’s problems is such an old way of thinking. Maybe those military officials are still upset they never got to fire a single one during the Cold War, so they’re hoping to finally do so before they retire.”

“Wh-wh-what coalition force?”

“All the usual suspects – America, China, Russia, France, and the UK – but India and Australia have decided to join in the fun this time. That’s strange, though. Since when does Australia have nukes? Sigh, I suppose this means the Southern Hemisphere has finally entered the age of nuclear weapons.”

Marika’s mouth flapped wordlessly because Karuta and the others would be entering the Port of Kobe right about now.

The President laughed without even looking back.

“I am making some adjustments to ensure they don’t interfere, so there is nothing to worry about. You focus on your job, Marika-san.”

“Um, Miss President? I assume you’re aware of this, but…”

“Yes?”

“That’s the smile of someone powerful hoping to receive something in return. But I don’t know what has you worried or what you’re hoping to get me to say. Not without you telling me first.”

Kyouka chose to remain silent.

She gave no answer and did not look back.

Eventually the President once more spoke without showing her honest side even to that fellow avenger.

“Don’t worry.”

“…”

“I won’t let the grownups have their way. The first ship may have been built for their purposes, but not the second one. We reclaimed that Crystal Magic academy for our own selfish reasons, so it will be us who settle things here. I will not allow the grownups to barge in and interfere when they don’t really care about any of this – it’s all just a job for them.”

“Fine, whatever works,” was all Marika said.

It was already known that the scope of what Marika would protect was extremely narrow. If something would help her protect what she cared about, she would go along with it no matter how dangerous it might be. Her stance was exceedingly simple in such things.

The curly twintails girl sighed too quietly for the President to hear.

(I almost wish she wasn’t someone I wanted to protect.)

Also, she did not have time to stand around in the airport control tower all day.

Karuta had gone to the front line and Kyouka had found something to do. And as always, Aine would put the boy’s orders first.

In the same way, Amaashi Marika had her own job to do.

She stretched out the equipment that had been supplied to her and gave it an extremely skeptical look.

“Can I really put this tight thing on by myself?”

“I have heard that the banned shark skin racing swimsuits required the help of someone else to put on. Eh heh heh. Marika, would you like some help getting changed?”

Part 4

The Port of Kobe in Hyogo had received an evacuation order.

But some workers had remained because the fuel pipelines running through the port continued to transport 20 tons of flammable material every minute. The pipelines could not be shut down so quickly and the flammable materials had to be removed from the pipes or else damage to the pipes could trigger a largescale oil fire. The many safety checks built into the usual auto-controlled system were not going to finish in time, so workers in jumpsuits were relying on the old-fashioned methods. Their only option was to run all over the port and forcibly turn the giant metal wheels to complete the emergency shutdown.

“Pant, pant.”

One large man gasped for breath while pressing his back against a metal wheel taller than he was at the foot of a gantry crane.

(The oil refinery section’s sea berth was shut down. That just leaves the LNG storage section’s pipe that cuts through here.)

He stared at a notebook-sized tablet and operated it with trembling fingers.

A flat four-wheel drive vehicle began to move a short distance away. It was as long and wide as a large bus, but it was only about a meter tall. It was an automatic transport vehicle meant to carry containers around the port. Designate a location and it would carry a container there with a margin of error of only 2cm, so it could be used as a decoy or a shield.

However.

He heard several deep metallic crashing sounds in a row.

A nearby stack of containers had collapsed. Worse, a young worker was caught below one of the rolling metal containers.

The large man stuck his head out from behind the metal wheel taller than an adult and his face immediately stiffened. He pressed his back against the wheel, squeezed his eyes shut, and clicked his tongue.

He felt a powerful pressure from directly above. From above the roof of the simple prefab three-story office/breakroom. Something was up there and staring down at the ground. It was like a thick and invisible wall that left less room for escape than the falling ceiling in some ancient ruins. It was not actually staring at the large man, though. If it had spotted him, he would be dead already. That thing was staring at the young man pinned below the container.

It was a monster.

A monster simply known as the Threat. He had never seen the Threat before and no one had told him that was indeed what this was, but the large man had known at a glance. What else could you call that thing?

“…”

The shape alone was something like a tadpole with legs.

But it was not.

Tadpoles were not so large they could easily step over a 20-ton truck.

Tadpoles could not knock over a pyramid of metal containers by tackling it.

Tadpoles would not form a group to block off all escape for the humans.

And tadpoles did not split apart their round body made of black metal to reveal a horrific array of crocodile-like teeth. Nor did they have plasma jets more terrifying than a welding torch crackling in their mouths.

It did not have an obviously fearsome appearance like a tiger or T-rex. Slaughter by an almost humorous-looking creature was a brand new sort of fear.

There was no dignity in death here.

Dying to that would feel as pathetic as being drugged and placed on the ground so you could not resist as pigs devoured you, starting from the extremities.

The large man felt entirely helpless.

The automatic transport vehicle he had hoped to use as a decoy or shield had been flipped over as a mere side effect of the collapsing containers.

During his brief glimpse earlier, the younger man had been shaking his head while crushed below the metal container. The younger man’s face had been pale with terror, but he had desperately pleaded the large man not to come out and try to rescue him.

(Dammit.)

He heard a noise.

That sound of strength gathering in metal somewhat reminded him of straining muscles. After an ominous silence similar to a bowstring being drawn, a heavy crash destroyed the prefab roof.

The legged tadpole had leaped from the roof toward its prey.

“Dammit!!”

A dull sound soon followed.

Yes.

The automatic transport vehicle had flown in from the side and knocked the airborne tadpole away.

Meanwhile, something was heard whizzing through the air. It was Natlena Blast’s legs. Her ski-like armor had fanned out and ultra-thin wires emerged from each piece.

Those were the scales of Anubis, Egyptian god of judgment.

With every roundhouse kick, side flip, and breakdance-like rotation of her body, the metal flowers at the end of the wires opened up and those grab buckets “grabbed” various obstacles. They grabbed them and swung them around. The 12-year-old girl wielded a storm of metal to make an additional fierce attack against the legged tadpole.

“Aine,” said a boy’s voice.

A much cleaner sound of destruction followed. It came from a sword. Several lines ran through the metal container pinning the younger man down so solidly, orange sparks flew, and the container fell apart. It happened so cleanly the rescued younger man was taken aback.

The boy who had commanded the pale-skinned crystal girl walked calmly up from a short distance away.

He walked toward the large man hiding behind the gantry crane’s metal wheel.

“You need to evacuate. More Grimnoah students are at the northern gate, so they will guide you out.”

“I…”

The large man shrank down like a scolded child even as the rain hit him.

But not because of fear.

“I was in charge of keeping him safe. And yet…”

Utagai Karuta sighed.

Karuta too had failed to save people when the first ship met its doom. His pride had been left in tatters and he had felt like his entire being had been denied, but he had still clenched his teeth in the depths of incompetence and figured out how to crawl back up again.

But this man could redo things without needing to rely on revenge.

Revenge had been the only option for the boy, so he crouched down to match the seated man’s eye level.

“I just saved one life. There is no denying that.”

“…”

He peeled back the mask of his public mode. Or he made it look like he had.

“So you only have to save three lives over the rest of your life. You can easily outdo the world’s strongest that way. But to do that, you can’t let yourself die here. So get out of here. Hurry!!”

He slapped the man on the back to urge him on and the large man ran from the collapsed container yard while lending a shoulder to the injured younger man. He looked back several times to lower his head in thanks as he did so.

Aine approached with sword in hand and whispered too quietly for the men to hear.

“That math does not add up.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

A pyramid scheme did not have to be a bad thing. If someone saved three people, those three people saved three more each, and so on like that, it was bound to improve this shitty world more than all the efforts of a single world’s strongest.

Karuta brushed up his wet bangs in an irritated way and turned around.

He and Aine faced the battlefield. Visibility was poor with several of the container piles collapsed, but the scent of the sea was strong. They were not far from the Second Grimnoah academy ship now.

He flicked the Crystal Blossom on his chest and gave an order using its communication function.

“Send a few people to make sure the LNG pipeline is shut down!”

He heard several heavy clanging sounds.

Clear drops of water scattered from the short skirt of Natlena’s uniform while she used the wires on her legs to “grab” and swing around containers, trucks, water, and even the air itself. Rapid-fire attacks sounded good, but they also meant a single hit was not enough to finish off your enemy.

This was the real Threat.

As expected, they would not die so easily.

And if they could do the same thing the decoys at the Crystal Beach had done, then any that did die would only have their remains taken in by the others to create even more formidable monsters. Karuta was beyond being surprised by things not going as planned. After surviving two intense battles, he had learned that god was not going to grant you divine salvation no matter how much you pleaded for it. That was a lesson he would much rather not have learned.

He breathed in and out while gathering his resolve.

“We can’t leave this to Natlena alone. I’ll need your help here, Aine.”

“All that leadup is unnecessary. Simply give me my orders.”

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.”

Part 6

“Nh, kh,” groaned a voice back on the floating general airport about 30km south of the frontline.

More specifically, it was inside a flight attendant locker room.

Amaashi Marika tried to suppress her voice, but she could still feel it escaping through her nose. She made one final effort while feeling her entire body squeezed tight from the outside.

“Nhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Yes, yes. There aren’t any teenage boys around to excite, so you can stop making all that noise. Look, all done.”

She had cleared the final barrier with the help of her more mature classmate Hashizaki Tayori. A special synthetic material less than a millimeter thick now covered her all the way up to her shoulders.

She blushed when she saw herself in the large mirror.

The skintight, waterproof, and heat insulating material covered her arms, legs, and torso equally, leaving only her head exposed. It was apparently a cutting-edge silent diving suit, but the shape of her breasts, butt, collarbones, and even navel showed through.

She twisted around to get a look at her back in the mirror.

“Yikes. I knew this would show off my figure, but not this much.”

“You always sleep in the nude, so why does this bother you so much? Anyway, if you’re done, then help me out.”

“Sure thing, Imi.”

Cutting-edge or not, Marika thought there was something wrong with a suit so tight you could not get it on by yourself. Matsuda Imi had managed to get it on her legs by herself, so Marika and Tayori stood on either side of her and worked together to tug the thin material up over the girl’s shoulders. It felt a lot like struggling with a thick rubber panel stuck to the ground.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!!”

“Bear with it.”

“I…I think it’s kinda caught on my boobs! Ow! I-it’s rubbing!”

“You’re imagining it. It’s perfectly smooth on the inside.”

With a solid snap, Imi was dressed.

“So now the oxygen tanks and our luggage?” asked Tayori who had gotten into hers first.

“Ugh, will this thing really work? I feel like the crotch is going to rip as soon as I spread my legs a little.”

“If you’re worried, then why not test it out? Do some gymnastic stretches, Marika.”

That was a good point, so Marika cautiously moved her body while Tayori supported her. She knew it was designed to allow this kind of movement, but she was still scared since she found that hard to believe.

“First, lower your hips like normal.”

“Okay.”

Tayori placed her hands on Marika’s shoulders while standing in front of her. The two of them bent their knees to lower their hips.

“Once your butt is on the floor, keep your knees bent and slowly spread your legs to the sides.”

“Nh, like this?”

“And with your legs still spread, I just have to flip you over and lift your butt up high. Tah dah! Now you’ve mastered that embarrassing pose they do in porn all the time!”

“Bffhhh!!!??? What is wrong with you, Tayori!?”

“It didn’t tear, did it?”

Marika blushed and struggled (while flipped upside down) and Tayori laughed while still holding the girl’s legs in place.

Meanwhile, Matsuda Imi was restlessly rubbing her thighs together.

“Um, uh.”

“What, is it tighter than you expected and you’ve taken a liking to it? Y’know, like a bike seat?”

“It’s not that…ahh, I can’t take it. I’m so nervous it’s about to leak out on its own. Marika, Tayori, help me get this thing off! I need to use the restroom.”

“What a pain. We just got it on you!!”

Marika complained while stripping the teenage girl bare. Once she was naked again, Imi left the room, but this was actually a problem that fighter pilots and astronauts had yet to fully solve. The best solution was to avoid drinking very much fluids while on standby, just like a small child afraid of wetting the bed.

(It’s going to be cold in the water, so we need to look after our health on this mission.)

The other two sensitive teenage girls kept that thought on their minds as they awaited their friend’s return.

Yes.

Marika grabbed some thick goggles and used her other hand to flick the Crystal Blossom on the chest of her suit.

“Okay, Omotesandou-san. We’re about to leave.”

“Understood. Once you’re in the ocean, avoid any communications other than short-range ones with your team. Long-distance communications are off limits both with your Crystal Blossom and your phone.”

“Do you really think the Threat can intercept those? Not even research lab quantum computers have been able to analyze how Crystal Blossom communications work. And the Threat might not even understand the concepts of encryption and transmissions.”

“The trick to survival is to always assume the worst when you aren’t confident about something. And do you remember the observation reports of a sea urchin Threat covered in moving rods that looked an awful lot like TV antennas? Plus…”

“Plus?”

“This is more of a jinx than anything with real data to back it up, but they swear the manned high-altitude spy planes that don’t send out any signals last longer than the unmanned spy drones that are constantly sending signals back to their base. The Sparkle’s anti-air lasers supposedly fire more often with the latter. Of course, the altitude, speed, material, size, and shape are all different, so it’s hard to say if the signals are really what’s causing it.”

Last longer.

That meant the manned and unmanned ones were both shot down in the end. Even the professional soldiers had thrown in the towel without finding a workable strategy. The apocalypse had arrived at the Port of Kobe – most people were just not aware of it yet.

Kyouka continued like they were only having a casual chat.

“By the way, Karuta-kun and the others seem to be having a harder time than expected as they make their attack on the surface. He says they’re going to withdraw and bring back their raw data and experiences.”

“What is he doing?”

“We had a feeling this might happen, didn’t we? Which is why you need to do your part down there in the ocean. That is our real attack, after all.”

Imi returned naked and with a bashful smile, so it was time to get that annoyance of a skintight suit back on her.

“I bet that President says the same thing to everyone,” commented gyaru-ish Tayori while they worked at Imi’s suit.

“Really? She seems surprisingly naïve deep down to me.”

Tayori and Marika were of split opinions on this, but that was not a problem.

The three girls grabbed some metal tanks that felt heavy out of the water and placed them over their backs. They grabbed some waterproof bags before moving outside. Even with the special suits on, the rain still felt unpleasant. They walked across the flat megafloat to the straight-line edge.

Imi put on some large goggles and looked down toward the water.

“Wow, I didn’t realize we were so high up. Is that about three meters?”

“Less talking, more jumping.”

“Hey, don’t push on my butt, Tayori…gyaaahhh!?”

Imi was shoved off into the ocean by a hand on her butt (that had avoided the tank on her back) and then Marika and Tayori jumped into the water dyed orange by the light.

With their cutting-edge silent diving suits, they could ignore the water temperature and pressure and the slight bumps on the surface reduced the noise of their movement through the water as much as possible. Supposedly anyway. They had no way of knowing if any of that was really happening.

“Ugh, I hear a lot of bubbling when I breath out. Are you sure this thing’s working?”

“Quite complaining, Imi. We need to follow the fiber optic cable on the ocean floor to reach the Port of Kobe.”

“If only things were still going as planned. I really wish Karuta had actually done his job as a diversion and drawn their attention more.”

The girls spoke using the short-range communications of their Crystal Blossoms while they began to move just off the ocean floor. Since they could swim straight there and ignore the land route, it was about 30km north from the floating general airport to the Port of Kobe. That would eat away their stamina more than a full marathon if they swam like normal, so they would be too exhausted to fight once they arrived. That was why they needed to surround themselves in crystal armor and take advantage of the flight that provided.

Yes, they could use Crystal Magic underwater.

This was a nonstandard usage, though, so there were a few things they had to watch out for.

“Power up. …Imi, Tayori, don’t move too quickly. The water creates a lot of resistance, so you would only crush yourself with your own speed.”

“And with the goggles and mouthpiece on. I’m afraid of hurting my teeth by flying with this thing in my mouth.”

“The tank is dangerous too, but we still need it. If the wall of water causes our preset barrier to activate, all our luggage will be deflected away from us.”

However, the points of the crystal armor rendered the silent diving suits mostly useless as far as water resistance was concerned.

And of course, this required some level of caution. They were approaching the Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapons commonly known as the Threat. No one knew if they were biological or mechanical. If they did not need oxygen or had gills, they would be able to move through the water just fine.

And in fact…

“Be careful,” said Marika while they advanced through the ocean.

There was a large mass up ahead. A hemispherical umbrella of black metal was floating in the seawater. Perhaps it was meant to look like a jellyfish. The 2m object was attached to the ocean floor with a thick chain and had long tentacles thinner than hairs flowing freely in the current. It looked more like a sea mine meant to obstruct travel through the ocean than it did a predator with a mind of its own.

That jellyfish Threat slowly wobbled side to side in the orange ocean, but it was not alone. When looking off into the distance, red lights could be seen slowly flashing like the lights on top of skyscrapers at night.

“Mines? They have red lights, but they don’t seem to have eyes.”

“How can you tell, Tayori?”

“If they could locate us with lenses, they would have surrounded us by now. Hey, Imi, can you think of any reason for the Threat to spare a human? And these real ones attacked Second Grimnoah for some reason. That suggests they know the value of Crystal Magic.”

The girls made sure to avoid touching the long tentacles as they swam past the black jellyfish along the ocean floor. Luckily, none of them suddenly opened a large mouth or exploded as they passed by.

“What do we call those?” asked Imi while looking back a few times. “Does the discoverer get to name them???”

“Don’t use your long-range communications to ask the President. The Threat would notice and surround us immediately.”

But Marika was not ready to celebrate having successfully avoided them.

“It isn’t just the Port of Kobe. The Threat has spread over a much wider area of ocean. How far has their contamination spread?”

“We can only pray they don’t already have the entire Japanese Archipelago surrounded.”

The fact that no one could laugh at Tayori’s melancholic statement showed just how bad the situation was.

For one thing, the Threat had supposedly come from the bottom of the ocean when they attacked Second Grimnoah, so the girls could not let their guard down.

They kept their speed low so as not to be crushed between their own speed and the water resistance as they followed the underwater fiber optic cable to the Port of Kobe. Even with the water resistance reducing their speed, it only took them 45 minutes to cover the 30km.

They saw a few oddities other than the jellyfish at the bottom of the bay.

Giant red flowers were blossoming on the ocean floor.

“What are those?” asked Imi. “Sea urchins? No, these look softer.”

“They might be sea anemones,” said Tayori.

The smaller ones had a diameter of 10m and the larger ones had a diameter of more than 100m. Countless tentacles were spread out in a circle, almost like a sunflower. The tentacles looked too soft to be made of metal as they expanded and contracted to envelop their fellow Threats that dropped down from the ocean.

(Why are they so jiggly? Are they a liquid despite being made of hard metal? No, maybe they’re a collection of small hard pieces, like a beanbag cushion.)

Most of the sea anemones were glowing red, but some were emitting a green light instead. Those ones were spreading their tentacle flowers wide and sending out the tadpole Threats contained within them. And those tadpoles were the size of a large truck.

Imi’s eyes widened behind her thick goggles.

“Their tentacles are stabbing into the other ones.”

The red light would then turn green.

That reminded Marika of something. Even if it was not accurate.

“Are they charging the others up???”

“They do seem to be throbbing in places. But that’s making an awful lot of noise for transporting a liquid. It may be some kind of solid, like a jelly or blocks of something. Whether you would call it fuel or food would depend on the exact mechanism they use, but I bet they are securing some kind of power source.”

Destroying those underwater gas stations may have dealt a blow to the Threat, but Marika stopped that line of thinking. The jellyfish and sea anemone Threats may not have had eyes and ears, but the ones on the surface would. Vision in the seawater was not great, but they would still be noticed if they moved too close. Plus, they had no data on how many of these gas stations existed in the ocean. If they were everywhere, then destroying just what they could see here would not be enough to stop the Threat as a whole.

They would be needlessly revealing their presence with no guarantee of any real effect.

In that case, it was not worth changing their plan for.

Marika shook her head to shake off the temptation.

“Let’s go, Imi, Tayori. That isn’t our target.”

“Understood.”

They knew those red and green glowing sea anemone gas stations were carrying other Threats, so they made sure they did not run into any other Threats moving to and from the ocean’s surface as they swam upwards.

Their heads silently emerged from the orange surface of the ocean.

“Pwah.”

Imi lifted her goggles to her forehead and removed the oxygen tank’s mouthpiece from her mouth while salty-smelling water dripped from her bangs.

“We’re back, Second Grimnoah. My phone contract is still in my dorm room, so I can’t have you kicking me out. I’ve already forgotten the PIN I was given in case I had any trouble.”

A giant wall towered up before them.

The wall of laminated material had an angle of more than 90 degrees, so it was leaning out toward them. Needless to say, that was the hull of the Second Grimnoah academy ship’s special three hull structure.

Tayori stared into the distance instead of at their objective. There was some obvious black smoke there.

“The ship has drifted away from shore. The port is all the way over there.”

“There’s an oil fire on the ocean near the port, so we’re actually lucky it’s drifted away.”

Marika looked up from the water. They could not fly up on top of the ship since it had to be crawling with Threats of all shapes and sizes, but that was not what she was interested in.

“Where’s that laser one?”

“The Sparkle was up on the flat roof, so it shouldn’t be able to see us unless it intentionally looks out over the edge. And as an anti-air weapon, it’s probably more interested in what’s at a distance than at its own feet.”

The Threat would find them if they carelessly flew into the sky, so Marika put her mouthpiece back in and gestured downwards.

She added more with her Crystal Blossom’s short-range communications.

“We can move freely in the water, so let’s dive back down. They’ll have a harder time finding us there.”

“Eh? Is there even an entrance below the water level? Wouldn’t the ship sink with a hole there???”

“Imi, a ship of this size doesn’t move around with just the rudder and propeller on the back. It’s bound to have side thrusters.”

Side thrusters were propellers that pushed seawater out of holes on the sides of the ship. They were used when leaving port or to spin the ship like a turntable by sending water out of the front right side and the rear left side or vice versa.

The motionless propeller was twice as tall as Marika.

After using their oxygen tanks to swim into the tunnel, they entered the ship through a maintenance airlock that used a pressurized pump. It felt a lot like opening a manhole cover and crawling out onto the street.

“Pwah! That was…the worst!!”

Marika spat out her mouthpiece, pulled up her goggles, and shook her head.

The weight of the thick tank weighed down on her again now that the water’s support was gone.

She was also worried about her hair. It was even more soaked with salty seawater than she had expected.

She saw metal pipes, stairs, and strange machinery. There were of course no windows. The place looked more like a workshop than a school. Second Grimnoah looked very different belowdecks than abovedeck.

This was her school and the dorm where she lived, but she did not at all feel the relief of coming home. The pressure squeezing at her heart may have been even greater than in the blizzard at the Crystal Beach. This was an extreme battlefield crawling with the true Threat. They could not be spoken to and the war treaties did not apply. If they were cornered in a dead end and raised their hands to surrender, they would only be swarmed and slaughtered. The tension was on a much greater level.

Now, why had the girls taken such a great risk to sneak into enemy territory with just the three of them?

They had already mentioned the answer.

Marika brushed up her wet bangs and looked to the heavy ceiling.

“That anti-air laser one is on the roof, right? I just hope it hasn’t moved from there.”

“The Sparkle can’t see us in here.”

“Just to be sure, let’s climb up from within the school building. If we can just take out the Sparkle in a surprise attack, the others can fight their way here. We’ll have our school back in no time.”

Of course, this plan fell apart if the Threat found them before that surprise attack succeeded. They understood the power and accuracy of that green laser all too well. They wanted to approach from a blind spot and finish it off in a single attack, not allowing it any attacks of its own.

The middle school building was directly above them.

Gyaru-ish Tayori put a hand on her hip.

“Do we take the stairs like normal?”

“I’m betting they’re watching all the ordinary routes.”

They still did not know why the Threat had attacked Second Grimnoah and occupied it instead of sinking it, but they knew there were some Threats inside here.

Something large and round was slowly rolling near a distant bulkhead.

“Shh!”

Imi immediately reached for her Crystal Blossom, so Marika quickly grabbed at her slender wrist and dragged her behind cover. Tayori slipped behind a different piece of machinery.

Marika held her friend in her arms while silently checking on whatever that was. It had a nearly spherical body with something like TV antennas sticking out in every direction. Each of those wriggled independently from the rest to push its body forward. It was maybe 2m tall if you counted out to the ends of the spines.

Was it…a slate pencil urchin?

Those lived among the tropical fish and coral reefs of the tropical seas, so Marika had often seen them on the first ship.

Of course, this only resembled one and behaved nothing like them.

The power of this Threat was unknown. Would it crush them with its giant body, would it shoot those spines like spears, or would it roast them with invisible EM waves? And even if they could defeat it, how many more Threats would rush in afterwards? They would gain nothing from trying to fight here.

“Gah. Marika, your boobs are too big.”

“How is that my fault?”

“What is that thing, anyway? One of the sea urchins they were talking about at the airport???” Imi tilted her head while not looking all that upset about drowning in her friend’s chest. “It’s pretty small compared to the tadpoles and that lion. And isn’t this the engine room – well, sub engine room. We’re right in the heart of their fortress.”

“Maybe the bigger ones simply can’t move around in the ship very well,” suggested Tayori.

Marika listened to those two while silently expanding her pointed crystal armor again.

But not to fight.

She could fly using Crystal Magic. She floated up from the floor using a thick pipe as a shield and slipped inside an emergency smoke vent near the ceiling. They did not need to follow the map or blueprint of the ship. And they did not have to worry about being shot down by the Sparkle’s high-power lasers while inside the ship.

“Wait, Marika, how did you fit inside there? My armor’s catching on the entrance.”

“Put your armor away. I know it’s a pain to power it up every time you need it, but just do it.”

This smoke vent was for emergencies, so it was rarely if ever used and thus nice and clean inside. Using this, they could easily reach the school building or dorm up above the deck.

Except…

“Argh, this suit is clinging to my skin. And the tank and goggles are in the way!”

Marika clicked her tongue at herself for only noticing that now, but she could not change inside the cramped smoke vent. After arriving in an area above the deck, she removed the metal grate on the ceiling and looked down into the hallway.

She gasped.

They were already in the middle school building. A tingling fear crawled up from her fingers now instead of when they had entered the ship. It was like being forced to stick your hand into a drain that was not just covered in sticky goop but coated with small unidentified bugs.

The school was awfully dark.

But not just because tons of Threats were covering the windows. Something like metal panels had been pasted onto the outside with some kind of adhesive. Those had apparently been taken from Second Grimnoah’s repair materials and deck-top equipment. The girls could hear claws scratching at the other side.

“Are they making nests? Do they have a bagworm type?”

(How lived-in this place looks makes it so much worse.)

That thought came to Marika’s mind as she hung upside down from the ceiling. Finding yourself in a strange forest at night would be a disaster, but finding yourself in a familiar hospital or amusement park at night would become a test of courage. This was the same.

The school looked entirely different now.

Marika gulped, but the fear remained below her throat.

Unlike a famous suicide spot, the darkness here could be swept away. She forced herself to focus on that fact. If they only got rid of the Threat, the usual Second Grimnoah would be back. She knew what was causing the problem, so she knew where to go. She would at least not be wasting her time.

Which meant…

(Hm.)

The classroom windows were covered with scrap material too, so they were full of scratching noises from outside. Was the metal over the windows meant to give the Threats footholds, not to provide armor?

“Now’s our chance to get changed.”

“In there? In what world, Marika? Could you sleep soundly in a mortuary freezer just because it’s about the same size as a sleeping bag?”

Imi’s eyes widened in shock, but this was enemy territory – there was no such thing as a safe zone here. With that metal covering the windows and thus blocking the inside of the room from view, this was as close to safe as they were going to get. In fact, building a sturdy but conspicuous shelter would only draw attention and get them surrounded.

First, Marika dropped down from the ceiling into the hallway and then she supported Imi from below while the girl’s legs flailed.

Once inside the empty classroom, Marika silently lowered the oxygen tank from her back and pulled her usual school uniform from the waterproof bag she had been carrying. The silent diving suit was useful in the water, but it would only get in the way while trying to fight on the ship. And if the Threat was intelligent enough to notice unnatural drops of water on the floor and investigate, the wet diving suits would get them tracked. The three girls balled up their used suits and stuffed them in their bags before sticking the bags, oxygen tanks, and goggles in the cleaning supply lockers lined up by the wall.

They lacked the guts to use a loud dryer, but wiping down their wet hair with a towel helped a lot. Marika tied her uniform’s tie with practiced hand.

“Note where this empty classroom is. If we screw up and have to withdraw, we’ll need to retrieve our equipment.”

“I’d rather not think about that possibility.”

They were keeping their tone light to avoid being swallowed up by fear, but one of the girls remained silent.

Marika and Tayori looked over in confusion.

“Imi?”

“…”

The girl did not respond even as they called her name.

She had not even finished changing. The salty water was dripping from her bangs and her short skirt remained haphazardly caught on her hips because she had not zipped it up as she stared at something. Whatever it was, it was not in the classroom. Her eyes were on the glimpse of the hallway visible through the not-quite-closed sliding door.

There was something there.

A slender hand beckoned at them through that gap in the door.

It eerily drew the attention of whoever that looked at it.

“Wait, Imi!?”

Imi started to stagger toward the classroom door with her underwear and soft skin still not fully covered. This was strange. Something was not right. Marika and Tayori grabbed at her shoulders to stop her, but they were dragged out of the classroom too.

Immediately, their eyes met those of a naked girl.

The younger girl’s long blue hair fluttered behind her despite the lack of wind. Her skin was so bright it was almost painful to look at, but something really was not right about this. The Threat had occupied this ship and Marika’s group should have been the only three who had snuck onboard.

Then whatever this was, it should not be categorized as human.

It may have been a lure like an anglerfish’s luminescent organ. In fact, the blue-haired girl lacked feet, just like a ghost. Instead of ankles, her legs extended down and attached to the hallway floor.

The thing that looked like a blue-haired girl never stopped smiling.

They did not have time to regret it.

(Oh, no.)

The camouflage was removed from the walls, floor, and ceiling and sea anemone tentacles blossomed out in all directions. The many tentacles rushed in toward the prey that had been lured into the center of its territory.

Part 7

Karuta had known they would have multiple plans for the one problem.

If he had not had an inkling that they had some form of insurance, he would not have been able to order a withdrawal so reluctantly but readily.

However…

“You’ve lost contact?”

He was in the deserted airport control tower.

It had apparently been turned into the temporary Student Council Room, but with everyone else sent away, only President Omotesandou Kyouka was there.

This was a conversation between only the strongests.

Karuta had completed the withdrawal after confirming that the Threat was not attacking Kobe and was instead returning to the ocean where Second Grimnoah was drifting away.

It was already transitioning from evening to night.

Nevertheless, the ocean refused to take on an ominous black color. The floating general airport was about 30km from the Port of Kobe, but an orange light was still visible from beyond the horizon. That unnatural light came from the crude oil fire spreading out across the ocean.

President Omotesandou Kyouka responded to his question with a soft sigh.

And a confirmation.

“Since we saw those weird sea urchins covered in what look like TV antennas, I told them not to use their radios so the Threat couldn’t detect them, but the satellite still hasn’t detected the IR signal they were supposed to send into the night sky at set times. It is possible the black smoke from the fire is blocking their signal, but…”

Kyouka’s rule was to assume the worst when you did not know for certain.

Because that way you could survive.

“We have no idea if Marika-san and the two volunteers are still alive and we should not be optimistic about their chances.”

“That was our real plan, wasn’t it?”

“It was.”

“The point was for my diversion to reduce the risk for them, right!? I…I said we needed to look after the people we asked to cooperate with us, yet you…!!”

“Sacri-sama.”

He had not ordered her to, but Aine interrupted while standing at his side.

Her expression remained blank.

“Criticizing Miss Kyouka will not improve the current situation. She is stuck providing logistical support, so she has no way of directly controlling what happens on the front line. On paper at least, her plan was a reasonable one. What actually happened on the battlefield is the responsibility of those fighting on the battlefield.”

“Kh.”

That would mean Marika’s group on the underwater route since they had accepted that plan while fully aware of the risks and it meant Karuta’s group on the surface route since they had failed in their diversion and been forced to withdraw early.

Kyouka smiled thinly.

“You can be angrier with me if you like.”

“No, I’m sorry. My own weakness is partly to blame. It was wrong of me to shove all the blame onto you.”

When he clenched his teeth and lowered his head, Kyouka’s usual confident smile was replaced by a much more unusual look.

It was the troubled look of a lost child who had been left behind.

“Karuta-kun. One of your few faults is how overly polite you are.”

“…?”

“It would be a lot easier on you if you chewed me out at times like this. Then you could make me the one and only villain who betrayed everyone’s expectations.”

Silence fell.

The atmosphere between them had never been this heavy when they were pursuing the Problem Solvers or when they had been struggling to survive in the blizzard.

One of the four was missing. This was the first time that had happened.

“Miss Kyouka.”

“Yes?”

The silence was broken by Aine. At times like this, they could always count on the crystal girl who could not read the room (because she was not actually human).

“Tell me what I should do next. My Sacri-sama has become entirely useless, so I feel like obeying him right now would only serve to shorten his life.”

“True,” sighed the President.

She seemed somber, but her instructions were precise. Although that did make it look like she was using her work to distract herself from emotions she was unsure how to process.

“Let’s put together a rescue operation for Marika-san’s group. Have we confirmed the Sparkle is shaped like a lion? Regardless, you’ll have to force your way past those anti-air lasers with it still around, but we can’t just ignore this.”

“…”

“This plan will lead to a lot of losses and it provides no guarantee of success. After all, it gives us nothing at all if Marika-san is already dead. So I suppose we’ll need a solid justification for it. Instead of keeping anyone from questioning it, we’ll want something that will keep them from backing out.”

Part 8

We will now begin an underwater operation based on data received from Karuta-kun and Marika-san.

The dual attacks from the surface and underwater have revealed that the underwater route is the more difficult one. Marika-san’s group will have successfully arrived within Second Grimnoah by now.

The biggest problem we must overcome before recovering Second Grimnoah are the anti-air lasers from the lion-shaped Sparkle on the middle school’s roof.

That is why we are gathering volunteers to make a largescale attack along the underwater route. The team will be made up of the first 200 to volunteer. All other students will provide a diversion along the surface route.

We only had wishful thinking before, but now we have actual experience to tell us the anti-air lasers are not fired into the ocean. So you will actually be safer approaching the enemy along the underwater route than providing a diversion on the surface where you will be constantly targeted by the lasers until the operation is complete.

Once we have our 200 volunteers, the underwater operation will begin.

Think carefully about whether you want to fight on the surface route or the underwater route.

That is all.

Once the briefing held via their Crystal Blossom communications was complete, the entire airport was bustling with energy.

Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke were chatting in the large lobby.

“Hey, which one are you choosing?”

“Underwater, I think. I don’t like the idea of constantly dodging lasers with no end in sight.”

“Right? Underwater might be more dangerous, but it’s better to have some say over how it ends.”

“B-but they’re only taking 200 for that team. If we don’t hurry up, we’ll miss our chance.”

“Heh. And the missing students are girls from our class, so let show off by swooping in and saving them.”

The 12-year-old blonde girl named Natlena Blast looked up at Karuta while listening to that conversation and sipping at a can of hot milk she had bought from a vending machine.

“Wh-what will you do, Senpai? Hot – are you going to choose the underwater route, um, because you’re worried about Amaashi-senpai? Hot, hot.”

“…”

“Y-yeah, I guess you would. She is another one of the Four Living Gods, so of course you’re worried about her! I-I will volunteer too. It would be a problem for me too if you were defeated here. We still haven’t dealt with those string pullers who pushed my sister to do what she-”

She was cut off by a loud bang echoing through the lobby.

Utagai Karuta had slammed his fist against the nearby wall, so all the boys and girls walking through the lobby looked over to see what this was about.

“What is wrong with all of you?”

That was enough to surprise or even frighten them.

So why did none of them realize how strange the things they were saying were?

“Why aren’t any of you saying you don’t want to do this!? Listen, we’re talking about the real Threat here. This isn’t just the decoys from Iceland. After all that fighting, we still haven’t heard a single report of one being destroyed. They’re on another level entirely!! And even if we do defeat them, the others might devour the remains and grow into larger customized models. Doesn’t this scare you? This isn’t about duty. It isn’t about whether the surface route or underwater route is better. Aren’t you afraid to be fighting the real Threat!!!???”

This was Omotesandou Kyouka’s trickery.

She had only provided them with two options: the surface route and the underwater route. And then she had pointed out that the underwater route was safe from the lion’s anti-air lasers. By creating a limited number of spots for the underwater route and making it first come, first serve for volunteering, she had tricked them all into joining the attack on the Threats occupying Second Grimnoah.

She had told them the truth.

But she had not told them the whole truth.

What guarantee did they have that the lion-like Sparkle was the most frightening one out there? With that many Threats all over the ship, there might very well be an even stronger and less manageable Threat there. In fact, they had lost contact with Marika, Imi, and Tayori. They needed to assume those three had been attacked by some kind of predator, but Kyouka had not touched on that at all.

But he did not see the President as the only villain here.

He had feared this possibility before, but now he was certain of it.

The students of the second ship had grown numb to the fear. They were still drunk on their success at the Crystal Beach, so they were assuming that things would work out somehow this time too. So they did not question it. They did not bother reading between the lines and noticing the gaps in the information presented to them.

“Hey, Yamanen, what did you see at the Crystal Beach?”

“You have to ask? Sure, they were only decoys, but we kicked the Threat’s ass!”

“34 of us died in that one battle!! That was a miserable defeat for us!!!!!!”’

Karuta shouted louder than an alarm clock.

Had that woken them up?

But this was how they should have been viewing it all along. It was normally a huge deal when just one student at your school died. The school would try to keep the media away, send counselors running around, and deal with all sorts of problems ranging from protecting the students’ privacy to dealing with students who stopped coming to school.

So how could they take this in stride?

34 of them had died. More if Riho and Sanae were included. An entire class’s worth of students were dead due to command mistakes by Karuta and the rest of the Four Living Gods. If they could calmly analyze that and accept it as the unfortunate result of an unpredictable situation, then the entire school’s senses had clearly numbed over. To a devastating degree.

They should have been criticizing him, blaming him, and rejecting his humanity.

They were all handling it too well. It was creepy. How could they accept it just because there was a reasonable explanation?

“Even if we’re the strongest and even if we have the regeneration and barrier, we still die when the time comes. We’re only human.”

He repeated that obvious definition once more.

He criticized those boys and girls who only had the one life to live.

“So think this through!! There aren’t just two options in this world – there are options surrounding you in all 360 degrees! You don’t have to stick with the Four Living Gods no matter what. If you’re scared, then say so! No one’s going to blame you if you want to run away and hide!! Why are you acting like simple cogs in the machine, doing whatever you’re told!!!???”

Silence fell.

He felt a powerful pressure that told him he was at odds with everyone else in the large lobby.

The world’s strongest’s public mode had collapsed.

“Just consider your options again before making a decision.”

Had his words gotten through to them?

He clenched his teeth before saying one last thing.

“Because this is your life.”

Part 9

Utagai Karuta slowly let out a breath.

“Sacri-sama.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that, Aine.”

The boy looked over with weary eyes as he sat on the floor.

He was at an airport boarding gate.

If his words had gotten through to the students, they would worry for their own lives. And even if they had not gotten through, his popularity would plummet because he failed to understand them. No more students would be willing to risk their lives on his instructions.

Believe him or not, the operation had already failed. He had ruined everything in the preparation phase, so Kyouka had to be extremely disappointed in him.

Which was exactly what he had wanted.

He had been sick of getting other people involved in his own issues.

He did not care if his feelings failed to get through to them and he did not care what happened to his social standing. Their own lives had to take top priority.

The word “strongest” could mean a number of things and he had chosen the card he wanted from that deck. So now he had to continue down this path. He could look back after he had accomplished something.

“…”

He would be alone from now on. He should have been alone from the beginning. His desire to take back Gekiha and the others from the first ship was his own personal thing.

(It’s the same for Marika.)

Everything tasted bitter in his mouth.

It was too late to feel regret now.

(I shouldn’t have assumed she would participate just because she’s one of the world’s strongest too. Stepping down should have been an option for her, but I took it from her!!)

He would save Amaashi Marika, so he would fight the real Threat.

But he could not drag the second ship’s students along with him for that.

“I threw out every advantage I had.” Self-deprecation filled his voice. “I lost their trust and cooperation, so this battle isn’t going to be easy.”

“That is fine.”

“Sorry. Our link means there’s no way you can back out of my selfish fight here.”

“If you desire something, then I will fight for- hm?”

The ever-calm Aine’s eyes widened a little.

He had shoved a perfectly ordinary piece of chocolate into her lovely lips and she munched on it.

“What is this?”

“My thanks.”

Securing basic necessities like food and shelter had been a challenge in the frigid cold of the Crystal Beach artificial resort, so he had started carrying around emergency food like that.

“This seems inefficient to me,” said Aine. “If you wish to expand my abilities, I strongly recommend giving me pure gold to ingest. Strongly recommend.”

“This isn’t about that.”

He smiled a little.

It was a genuine smile.

He tried to imagine the look on her face if he strongly ordered her to remain here. He then imagined the possibility of leaving her where it was safe so he could continue down the path of his selfish fight all on his own.

(That’s a meaningless fantasy.)

“Sacri-sama?”

He shook his head.

That crystal girl tilting her head curiously there was an alternate form of Crystal Magic armor, so she was supported by the Crystal Magician, which meant Karuta. Even if they were separated, she would no longer function if he died.

(I will win this.)

Hence why they were linked.

Plus, there was only so much he could do on his own.

(I need to think about what I can do under the conditions I’ve decided on. The strongest will stumble if I let myself get distracted, so I need to keep running forward no matter how bad it gets.)

“We should get going soon. Aine, are you ready to go?”

“Yes. What is our primary objective?”

“?”

“Is it defeating the Threat, rescuing Miss Marika and the others from the second ship, or retrieving Sir Gekiha and the others from the first ship?”

“All of the above. That’s what it means to protect the world.”

He did not hesitate to answer as he got up from the cold floor. Night had fully fallen in the world visible outside the glass wall, but the oil fire was still burning ominously beyond the horizon.

He was on his way there.

How many of the real Threat were on that ship? Thousands? Even more? And he could not just slaughter them. Rescuing Marika, Gekiha, and the others increased the difficulty dozens of times over.

An ordinary attack would never work.

(So it’s time to become that real pain-in-the-ass who researches everything in detail to find a weak point.)

That thought put a smile on his face, but then…

“Senpai.”

He heard a voice.

A voice he had never expected to hear reached him from behind, causing his thoughts to briefly grind to a halt.

He slowly turned around to find Natlena Blast standing there. She must have been looking all over for him because she was out of breath and red in the face.

“Thank goodness you’re still in the airport. You seem logical at first, but, um, when it comes down to it, you’re really hard to predict.”

“Natlena?”

“Please let me help you.”

She was very upfront about what she wanted.

She looked like her breath was catching in her throat, but not because he had yelled at her earlier

One look in her eyes was enough to tell.

“I’ll be honest, I’m really scared. But because I’m scared, I want the help of the world’s strongest – of the Four Living Gods. So please don’t abandon us now. This might be simpler and easier for you if you leave us behind, but please think about how we’ll feel.”

“You can’t, Natlena! You’d just be letting us manipulate you!”

“But,” cut in the 12-year-old girl with the slight smile of someone trying to calm a frightened child. “I said I’m being honest, didn’t I? So let me lay it all out there. If Omotesandou Kyouka told me to fight for her, I wouldn’t be able to trust her. What she says is accurate, but accurate is all it is. There isn’t a person I can trust behind those words. …But it’s different with you. We wouldn’t follow just anyone with the title of world’s strongest. You’re the one that told us to consider our options again before making a decision. Because this is our life. So we’ve decided for ourselves who it is we want to follow. Are we just throwing all our problems on the world’s strongest so we don’t have to deal with them ourselves? Maybe. But we were the ones who considered our options and decided which of the Four Living Gods we felt we could trust the most.”

“…”

“I won’t regret this no matter how it ends, so please take me with you, Senpai. We finally ended the chain of revenge between the two of us, so you can’t just leave me now.”

The boy forced his lips together for quite a while before finally squeezing out some words.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll follow you anyway. Because I couldn’t just let you be torn to pieces by the Threat after you so stubbornly insisted on worrying about us more than yourself.”

He actually laughed a bit at that one.

He felt like his cunning image was crumbling away and though he would start sobbing if he let his guard down, but he managed to avoid that.

“You can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because one extra person wouldn’t change anything. I can’t just bring you to your death.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about, Senpai. I said ‘we’ earlier, didn’t I?” She smiled. “Because I thought up this argument with the help of Yamane-senpai, Nekoumi-senpai, and, um, a lot of the others too.”

This time, Utagai Karuta stopped breathing altogether.

He had thought he had to protect her. He had thought the Four Living Gods were done for if he let her be killed for no reason. But Natlena Blast had surpassed him at some point.

“I’m not worthy to fight alongside the rest of you.”

That was not something to say in front of an underclassman.

He knew that, but the words spilled out all the same.

He bit his lip.

“I lied to you all so I could save my friends. We really should have abandoned Second Grimnoah to the Threat and built a Third Grimnoah, but I insisted on retaking the second one because of my friends from the first one crystalized on the lowest level. Even though they’re nothing but strangers you never even met. Dead strangers.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

She did not even hesitate to respond and she smiled at the shocked look on his face.

“All that tells us is that you never abandon your friends no matter what, right? And that you truly believed you could save your friends with our help. It meant you trusted us enough to leave them in our care. Why would we have a problem with that?”

“…”

“I’m glad the world’s strongest is someone with so much kindness in his heart. So I don’t want this age to end and I don’t want someone else to take over the title of strongest. Do you get what I’m saying now, Senpai?”

How much strength had it taken for her to say that? Even if they had reached an understanding, he would forever be the person who had killed Anastasia Blast, her sister and the former strongest. But she had still said she would accept it and that she was happy with this era.

“Those people mean so much to me.”

“I can tell.”

“But I don’t want to lose anyone else to rescue them. I don’t want to see that happen again.”

“I know that too, Senpai.”

He was asking for so much, but the small girl slapped her own small chest to accept the job.

“So let’s make it happen together. There is no first ship and second ship – we’re all Grimnoah together.”

Part 10

“Sigh, so he rejected me, did he?”

President Omotesandou Kyouka smiled sadly in the control tower.

Was it Amaashi Marika who had identified that smile as the one she used when trying to get something from someone?

(This is for the best. Karuta-kun has a hotblooded streak that can get out of hand, so I can control everything better and get better results when he’s out there doing his thing than when we’re licking each other’s wounds as fellow villains.)

“Assuming I don’t die of loneliness first,” complained the President.

But how much of this had been an intentional attack? It almost felt like the Threat had gone after Second Grimnoah in order to tear apart the students of the first and second ship, if not tear apart the Four Living Gods as well.

Were they really that intelligent?

And even if they were, how had they gathered that much information on Grimnoah’s situation? Had they gotten it from Second Grimnoah’s computers and documents? Or…

While she was gloomily resting her upper body down on a control tower console and losing herself in thought (to distract herself with her work), the redheaded buns Secretary poked her head into the room.

“President Omotesandou.”

“What is it?”

Kyouka straightened up and immediately put on a perfect smile, so the Secretary would not have noticed anything was amiss.

“I hate to interrupt you now, but you have a visitor from outside. I could kick them out since they don’t have an appointment. Shall I?”

The redheaded buns girl suggested they kick this person out before even mentioning who it was, but Kyouka could make a pretty good guess. She could only think of one option for a visitor right now.

“What country are they from?”

“She claims to be a representative of the coalition force, but she is actually a special envoy from the Indian military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. She herself is from their navy.”

(I was right. The human grownups have arrived.)

No official announcement had been made concerning Amaashi Marika’s disappearance, but 24-hour surveillance of the students leaving and arriving would be enough to have a general idea of who had and had not returned to the floating general airport. One of the world’s strongest had left and not returned, so word of the oddity would travel quickly.

Now was not the time to be worrying about what happened with Karuta.

The President silently refocused her mind.

She could be the villain here. She would fulfill her role as the President who protected everyone from Grimnoah.

(I kind of hate that I really can refocus my mind so easily. If only I was only fooling myself about that.)

“I’m curious. Let her through.”

“Understood.”

The person the redheaded buns girl eventually showed in was a young woman with glasses. She had brown skin, long silver hair, and a look equal parts intelligent and attractive. If not for the white military uniform with a tight skirt, she would have been turning heads as she walked down the street.

She knew her looks were a weapon and she had intentionally honed them.

She was accustomed to having her appearance praised. She fully understood how every little movement of her fingers would make those around her feel and she made full use of that. The ring glittering on her left hand’s ring finger was probably a calculated act. But not to show off that she was married and thus should not be invited out to drink past 8 at night. Quite the opposite. The guilty feelings that ring would instill in people had been worked into her calculations.

Sensing a villain much like herself, Kyouka grinned and got the conversation started.

“A pleasure to meet you.”

“We already met at a party in New Delhi two years ago. You were still only a freshman in the first ship, but I recall the lack of freshmen-like naivete you displayed.”

Kyouka cleared her throat to distract from that initial misstep.

This woman was clearly the type to point out and correct people’s mistakes, not to kindly let them slide. She seemed to assume that she held the superior position and the other person would adapt to her way of doing things.

The brown woman smiled thinly in front of the girl with the title of world’s strongest.

“I am Letnahe Kurent. It is a pleasure to meet you again.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

(Um.)

The President smoothly continued with the conversation.

Her “initial misstep” had of course been a boring little bluff on her part. She generally never forgot someone she had glimpsed even once. But she had also heard the name Letnahe from a different source.

That conversation played out in the back of her mind now.

She remembered what Natlena Blast, sister of the former strongest, had said at the end of the Crystal Beach incident.

(The person who came to me after I, um, learned that my sister had died was…)

“I hope we can get to know each other a little better than last time.”

Chapter 2

Part 1

“Okay.”

The sun had already set and the artificial rain was still pouring down.

Yamane Deiri muttered to himself while activating his pointed and translucent crystal armor.

He was at an altitude of about 100m.

He was not moving and standing perfectly upright, but anyone who had read an aircraft manual would know how difficult it was to come to a complete stop in midair. Airplanes, airships, hot-air balloons, gliders, helicopters, and even VTOL craft could not come to a “complete” stop.

This was truly magic.

Natlena Blast shouted up a warning from about half that height.

“Um, it’s dangerous up there. You need to descend some. Do you want to be shot down by the Sparkle!?”

“Hey, no fair!” cut in a voice over the radio. “If flying that high gets a middle school girl to worry over you, I’m going up there too!!”

“What is wrong with you!? And, um, didn’t we receive a report that using long-range communications would increase the frequency of anti-air lasers!?”

Natlena was not sure what to do about these boys. Water droplets were scattering from her blonde hair while she realized just how much Utagai Karuta must have worked to create a positive image of an older upperclassman when she was trying to take revenge on him.

“You say that,” said Yamane Deiri. “But I wouldn’t be much of a diversion if I wasn’t up here.”

“That’s true, but still.”

“Oh, crap! Here it comes!!”

With a flash of light similar to lightning striking nearby, a green beam capable of breaking through their Crystal Magic barriers shot up from the deadly black and orange horizon at a shallow angle.

That was an anti-air laser beam from the true Threat occupying Second Grimnoah.

It of course moved too quickly to do anything about once you saw it. By the time the girl blinked at the flash of light brighter than a welding torch, a straight-line afterimage had been burned into space itself.

It had apparently been aimed at Yamane Deiri who was flying up above the others, but he had rapidly flown downwards just beforehand. That drop had dodged the brutal laser flying at a diagonal angle.

“I knew it.”

Yamane grinned wildly while once more coming to a complete stop at the same altitude as before.

He only used his physical voice here. Either because Natlena was close enough to hear him or because he wanted to avoid drawing the Sparkle’s anti-air lasers toward his middle school underclassman.

(Do all grownups try to show off all the time? Like Karuta-senpai and Onee-chan.)

“Ah ha ha! It really does provide cover!!”

“Um?”

“Because the earth is round. Well, it’s technically not perfectly spherical since the gravitational differences distort it, but that isn’t what matters. Laser beams are made of light, right? Light travels in a straight line, so it can’t circle around the curve of the earth to attack. So I only have to move up and down a little to use the ground itself as cover. Just like peeping on the women’s bath from over the fence! Ha ha!”

He was using the earth itself as a shield. The distance to the horizon depended on the height from which you were looking. It was about 5km from the surface, but you could see a few dozen kilometers away from a broadcast tower’s viewing deck.

Yamane Deiri’s analogy could not have been worse, but his survival meant that method was effective.

But Natlena’s question was not about that.

“H-how did you predict when it would fire just now? It moves at the speed of light, so you can’t start dodging after you see it coming. And we can’t see over the horizon either, so you can’t base it on the Threat’s actions.”

“I felt a tingle.”

Natlena thought he must have been using a special fortunetelling effect of his Japanese god named Kagutsuchi, but apparently not. That rough upperclassman placed his index finger against his temple.

“You know how pressure changes can give you a headache? Like when you ride an elevator? I don’t think that laser is just a laser. Maybe it’s when it boosts the energy level and maybe it’s to protect against radiation, but it does something that gives me an invisible sign the laser is about to be fired.”

“Oh, no. If you’re only relying on wild instincts, it doesn’t do me any good!!”

While the normal person cried out in despair, Yamane shook the lawnmower-like weapon he held at his hip. That embodiment of fire acted as a rotating blade at close range, a flamethrower at mid range, and a launched flammable tank at long range.

“Crystal Magic is similar though, right? We use our magic by reading the invisible occult high and low pressure fronts, setting up our sails, and letting the wind carry us. So we know it exists. The question is how to perceive it. Maybe it gives you a headache, maybe an old wound aches, maybe you aren’t very hungry today, or maybe you feel really horny and turn into the carnivorous sort of girl. It’s different for everyone, so just accept the change, no matter how embarrassing it might be.”

“Wh-wh-why are you assuming my sensor would be something embarrassing!?”

Their role was not to directly attack Second Grimnoah about 30km away.

They were the decoys meant to draw the anti-air laser lion’s attention to keep Karuta and his team safe while they actually made their way to the ship.

“Hey, word of warning: your clothes are getting pretty see-through in this rain.”

“I’m bothered by the pitying look you’re giving me, but, um, I changed into some thick sports innerwear before heading out. It’s the same as a yoga tank top. Heh heh.”

“Oh, well, that’s no fun.”

“(Also, I made sure to put on bandaids below that. I actually thought this through.)”

“M-more details please!!” cut in the second boy over their communications, but she ignored him.

“Anyway, I’m glad,” said Yamane.

“Um, about what?”

“It was Karuta’s analysis saying the Sparkle’s laser didn’t bend, right? I was worried it might use the ionosphere or a mirage or something, so I’m glad he was right. Now we can act as decoys all we want without the city behind us getting blown away.”

“…”

“This is called an inland sea since it’s surrounded by Osaka, Hyogo, and Awaji Island. On a flat map, any position we could take would send the lasers toward land. So in that sense, we’re lucky that the lasers can escape into the night sky.”

She had thought he was being careless, but he had actually given this some thought.

It could be hard to tell since the initial trigger tended to be instinct rather than reason, but Yamane Deiri ultimately acted on (his own brand of) logic.

“Now Karuta-chan won’t have to worry so much.”

“I guess.”

“I’ve always thought that idiot overthinks everything. The real Threat is right there, so we can’t let anything distract us for a second if we want to survive. Being the world’s strongest doesn’t mean you have to take the brunt of the damage yourself to ensure everyone else comes back alive. He’s really starting to piss me off. Leaving us in reserve just because he’s the world’s strongest is pathetic. He should really take better care of himself!!”

Part 2

Utagai Karuta stood on the edge of the floating general airport’s artificial land. The dark ocean was only a step away. He was soaked from the artificial rain and he heard most of the diversion team’s transmissions coming from the Crystal Blossom at his chest.

“Ha ha! C’mon, don’t chicken out just cause your barriers don’t work!! We’re nowhere near the end here – we’ve gotta keep these anti-air lasers occupied for several more hours. If you don’t learn how to do it right early, you’ll burn through your stamina and have trouble keeping it up later!”

“Tch, we really are too far away for sniping. Maybe the oil fire is causing weird updrafts and messing with the heat distribution. A-anyway, let’s play a game of chicken. Whoever draws the laser in closest before dodging wins. Let’s show off our skills to the middle schoolers!”

“Wait, can you please take this seriously, you stupid upperclassmen!? Um, um, uh, what is that energy drink you’re chugging!? Isn’t that one triple concentrated!? Oh, god, why couldn’t you be more like Karuta-senpai!?”

“What? Since when do you use his given name, little kitten?”

“Bfff!? I-It doesn’t mean anything! You’re imagining things! Um, um, uh, stop asking questions and let it slide!!”

“…”

“Sacri-sama,” said a voice from behind Karuta.

“They’re still numb to the fear,” he said without turning around. “Our success taught them the wrong lesson.”

Sending out Crystal Blossom transmissions while flying through the night sky was risky in and of itself. Not even stealth fighters could avoid those green lasers and a single hit would vaporize Yamane or Natlena. And yet.

“Although they do appear to have calmed down some since they are no longer insisting on charging at Second Grimnoah with us.”

The boy shook his head while looking up into the rainy sky where the green beams of anti-air lasers kept flashing like lightning.

Karuta had tried to go save Marika, Gekiha, and the others even if it meant abandoning his post. He had nothing but thanks for Natlena for chasing after him and for his many other friends who had supported her. He was so happy it brought tears to his eyes, so he doubted he would ever forget it.

They had taught this filthy avenger that it could be meaningful to make a direct attack at times.

These emotions were delightful.

These emotions were wonderful.

These emotions felt really good.

“But we can’t let the emotion take control, Aine. That would be taking it too far.”

“If you say so.”

He could tell without looking back that the inhuman crystal girl was tilting her head with a blank expression.

She would not understand justice.

A single mistake would cost any one of his friends their life, so allowing emotion to cloud his judgment would only lead to endless regret.

He could not forget.

No matter how valiant and reliable a Crystal Magician Yamane Deiri might look like now, he had panicked and tried to flee the hotel when they first encountered the decoy Threats at the Crystal Beach. And when they had fought the decoy Threats in the C World dome, he had been so desperate to prove that Crystal Magic worked on the Threat that he had gotten himself nearly deadly injured.

Pretty words meant nothing to the force tasked with defending the world. The way Deiri had acted before was much more correct for a high schooler. Karuta could not misjudge the others’ limits. They were human beings, so they would feel fear and they had a limit. If he pushed them too far, they would fail.

(I’m forcing them to carry an endless burden here. I need to figure out how to ensure they don’t do anything reckless.)

The boy wielding artificial magic stood on the artificial float in the artificial rain and turned back toward Aine.

How could he repay his new friends? The answer was obvious: achieve his goal as quickly as possible to shorten how long they had to play the dangerous decoy role. That was the best way of keeping them alive.

He had to defeat the Sparkle and rescue Marika’s group.

“Time to go, Aine.”

“Yes.” The rain was pouring down on Aine too, but she stood tall without even brushing aside the wet hair plastered to her cheek. “How shall we do it this time? Shall I carry you on my back or in my arms?”

“Whichever way is easier for you.”

He answered half in exasperation, but then she gently nestled up against his chest.

Their faint warmth mixed together, but then her slender hand pushed on the center of his chest and he fell from the float and toward the dark ocean.

However, the loud splash never came.

Since contact with Marika’s group had been lost, they knew there was some kind of trap along the route those three had taken. So instead, Aine grabbed his body while falling with him and flew rapidly just above the dark sea.

She used the Crystal Magic preset of flight.

“This is the most stable method. What was it called again? Oh, right. A princess carry.”

“Oh, I see…”

The raindrops hurt as they hit his cheek. It felt like having pebbles thrown at him. That may have been a unique risk for him since his barrier was imperfect.

(It would be a pain if this triggered a regeneration.)

The regeneration would usually be enough to recover from a single instance of a powerful force as long it did not hit his vitals. It was a thinly-spread and lengthy barrage that presented problems. The regeneration would heal any wound in 30 seconds, but that also meant even the slightest scratch required 30 seconds away from harm because another hit would shatter the healing crystal and tear the wound open wider. And that would never return to normal. If they were slammed with something like a sandstorm, there would be no avoiding it and it could easily tear him apart.

“I have no means of attacking with you in my arms, so I would like for you to handle fighting back against the enemy. Is that acceptable, Sacri-sama?”

“Thanks for leaving me a chance to look cool, Aine!!”

Crystal Magicians ruled the sky with speed and mobility greater than a fighter craft, so 30km was nothing. They did not need a gyro or compass to determine the direction since they only had to fly toward the light.

The dark sky and sea were defiled in one direction by an orange glow that almost looked like a sunset. That was due to the oil fire where the crude oil had leaked out into the ocean. Second Grimnoah awaited them on that burning night sea.

The Threat took action before the giant ship even came into view.

Shapes similar to water striders the size of cars appeared to be sliding across the ocean surface made rough by the artificial rainstorm. The water striders clustered together to block Aine and Karuta’s path, so Karuta pulled a modified military flashlight from his uniform. It was as hard and heavy as a police baton, but he doubted he could smash through the real Threat with no more than a blunt weapon.

He switched it on and sent out a shower-like conical laser.

When the powerful IR hit its glass eyes(?), one of the water striders lost control. It failed to judge the distance from its neighbor and collided with it, producing a sound of bending metal.

There was no fear on Aine’s face.

She continued flying about 50cm above the water to weave in the gap between enemies.

They did not have time to celebrate their survival.

The ocean directly below glowed faintly green and that glow was catching up with them as they flew at supersonic speed.

“Aine, watch out!!”

“Did you think I was not already observing my surroundings?”

With the puny mass of carbon in her arms, the crystal girl swerved in an S-shape as a deterrent.

That was when a mass of green light burst through the ocean surface as it flew straight up. It was not alone. More and more colored pillars of water rose into the air like an inverted sweep of machinegun fire pursuing Aine and Karuta.

“A jellyfish!?” Karuta’s eyes widened. “What kind of tactics did that weapon evolve for!?”

“I have heard of landmines that are launched into the air, but that is unusual for a sea mine.”

They must have been attached to the ocean floor until now because something like broken chains trailed after them.

It was close – paper thin even – but Karuta and Aine’s reaction speed was slightly faster. The sea mines reacted by leaping into the air one after another, but those two were never hit from below.

However, they could not rejoice.

They heard a sound like an aluminum can being crushed below a car’s tire. One of the water striders trying to pursue from behind was hit from below by one of their own jellyfish mines, launching it into the air. The jellyfish must have been the more destructive of the two because the water strider’s legs were torn off and its black armor shattered and flew away while the whole thing twirled through the air.

“Oh, no.”

Karuta vision grew scattered.

He felt like he was going to hyperventilate and pass out if he did not consciously regulate his breathing.

He had only seen the decoy Threats from the Crystal Beach do it, but those training weapons would have been modeled after the real Threat’s structure and abilities.

That led to a single conclusion.

He did not want to admit it. He really, really did not want to, but if he refused to admit when things were taking a turn for the worse, he could not recover from that. He had to avoid sitting idly by and allowing the rolling snowball to grow out of control.

He bit his lip and forced his mind toward the view up ahead.

He focused on it.

The Threat grew by devouring their fallen brethren.

“Oh, no!!”

There was no turning back the hands of the clock. Jellyfish tentacles thinner than hairs tangled around the wreckage in midair and the dome-like jellyfish moved up onto the water strider’s back. The countless tentacles tangled together to form thick legs to replace the ones that had been torn away.

The massive sea mine could now move freely across the surface of the water, so it began to pursue Karuta and Aine from behind. Aine expressionlessly swerved side to side at supersonic speed, but she could not escape the guided weapon. It gradually closed in on them.

“Sacri-sama.”

“It’s no use!! Is the jellyfish in control now? The IR isn’t affecting it, so it must not be using optical lenses! The jellyfish must locate its prey with ultrasound or microwaves!!”

“We will suffer critical damage if it catches up. Requesting an effective countermeasure.”

“I’m trying!!”

He twisted around in her princess carry to change targets.

The IR blinding worked fine on the unaltered water striders.

Aine used one of their thin legs as a landmark to perform a hairpin turn at more than four times the speed of a sports aircraft. Karuta focused on his modified military flashlight while she did so. On the way past the water strider, he shined the powerful IR on its lenses to trigger a malfunction.

The ordinary(?) water strider crashed into the approaching guided weapon, causing a large explosion. Instead of orange flames from normal powder or fuel, it was a bluish-white electric explosion similar to welding or lightning.

“What custom version are they making now!?”

“None, it would seem. Those two appear to have been utterly obliterated.”

And they could not afford to be preoccupied with an enemy they had already defeated. Aine was still flying faster than a fighter craft less than a meter above the ocean’s surface. And to reiterate, 30km was nothing to a Crystal Magician.

The ocean was no longer pitch black.

At some point, their surroundings had grown orange. They were out at sea, yet a crimson fire was burning all around them. That sticky light came from the oil fire started when the crude oil on the ocean’s surface had ignited. There were no stars to be seen. The view above reflected the orange light, so the black up there was smoke, not the dark night sky.

Aine would have charged straight on in if it was only her, but because she was carrying Karuta in her arms, she crossed the burning ocean by weaving through the gaps that had ended up with less crude oil.

She spoke with a voice even more coldly inhuman than a car navigation system.

“Visual confirmation of the Second Grimnoah academy ship.”

“Kh.”

“If we can see it, then we are in the optical weapon’s line of fire. Watch out for the anti-air lasers.”

He could see a faint glow up above the giant ship’s roof.

That green light was the capacitors extending back on either side of the lion that ruled the skies. Light was gathering within those parts that resembled a flying fish’s pectoral fins and the lion opened its jaws. The green light glared down at them from deep within its throat.

The fearsome attack tore through the air, but Aine did not flip around to try to escape it. She only shifted about 70cm to the right to avoid the brutal green laser with as little movement as possible before crashing through one of the ship’s more than a thousand windows.

The countless Threats of various sizes crawling along the ship’s exterior like armor were thrown away from where she hit.

Part 3

“Please compile all of your data related to this operation. And organize it so even I can understand it. Try to avoid hiding the truth below a deluge of data, will you?”

As soon as she was done with her greeting to Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka, the silver-haired brown-skinned soldier named Letnahe Kurent made that rude demand.

And with that said, the messenger from the coalition force surrounding them out at sea promptly left the control tower.

Water poured down in a shower.

But this was not the artificial rain pounding on the reinforced glass from the outside. It came from the shower room installed in the airport’s personnel standby area.

“Japan has such terrible air and it’s so humid,” Letnahe had said. “So please let me do something about my sticky hair and skin before I have to use my head.”

That was her rationale.

(She forces her claims onto you without creating any chance for a conversation, she lets her own feelings dictate the schedule, and she even disses your country. …I imagine this is a stereotypical test to see if Grimnoah will obey the grownups’ rules or if we will give into anger and do our own thing.)

This special envoy had been sent by the coalition force.

She was from the Indian military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff. Specifically, from the navy.

But no matter how much her titles complicated matters, Omotesandou Kyouka was never going to forget what Natlena Blast had said.

When the Problem Solvers had been destroyed and her sister Anastasia had died, someone had approached that 12-year-old girl and given her information she should not have had to set her up as an avenger.

And the name Natlena had given was…

(How far does it go?)

The President thought to herself while her long black hair fluttered behind her.

(Is the Indian military behind it? Is the coalition force behind it? Or is there some even higher organization that’s bossing the coalition force around? My first task is to determine the scale of the problem.)

“Now, then.”

Her wheelchair’s wheels creaked as she moved to the dressing and laundry room next to the shower room. The faintly sweet aroma may have been from the shampoo or conditioner being used in the shower room. The shower room must have been poorly sealed because it felt humid in the adjacent room. The President was of course not doing some laundry in this downtime. She was interested in the white uniform that Letnahe had removed and folded up.

The uniform and rank insignia were valuable sources of information. She could learn something from the stitching or fabric alone.

(Hm, this does appear to be a legitimate Indian Navy uniform. And her salute was accurate too. I doubt this is a costume meant to place the blame on the Indian military.)

It was a lot like a crossword puzzle. Each new piece of information acquired provided a hint to the next piece. But if you started on false assumptions, you would stray further and further from the truth.

The President continued her analysis like she was performing an autopsy or crime scene investigation.

(Her underwear is a New York brand…but not necessarily because she travels the world a lot. She may have just ordered it online. But this is still a surprise. The only bulletproofing she uses is thin special fibers – no plates at all. Was she more worried about looking good for the cameras than about getting shot while on the front line of a clash between the real Threat and the world’s strongest magicians? Or did she assume wearing a bulletproof jacket would not actually save her?)

Kyouka unfolded and searched through every item in the basket, but she could not find any ID, any firearms, or any communication devices such as a phone or tablet.

(Hm? But I thought she had something on her left wrist.)

“You aren’t going to find anything in there,” said the sensual silhouette in the frosted glass.

The President sighed.

“You’re the type to pack any valuables in a plastic bag to take them in the bath with you, are you?”

“A standard precaution.”

The ring she had been wearing was also nowhere to be found. That suggested she valued her privacy instead of just being a workaholic.

Kyouka gave up on this tactic, refolded the clothing, and returned it to the basket.

“You brought an axe with you?” she asked.

“Oh? You can tell without actually seeing it?”

“The shape of the leather case is fairly unique. The handle is too close to the end to be a collapsible shovel.”

“Carrying a weapon is convenient and I personally find this more useful than a survival knife. I left behind my gun out of respect for this country’s rules.”

Axes and knives also violated the country’s rules, but there was no point in telling that to a professional soldier. This and the shower were probably part of the test to see how far she could push the girl until she responded with anger.

Kyouka sighed.

“What message does the coalition have for us?”

The frosted glass door slid open.

The sweet-smelling steam grew thicker.

Letnahe stepped into the dressing room with a towel lazily wrapped around her. Her small plastic bag of valuables was held in her mouth by a string while she used both hands to quickly do up her wet hair.

Her brown left wrist wore a mobile watch that synced with a phone.

But it was too soon to assume she was righthanded. That kind of assumption could lead to a critical mistake at some crucial moment later on.

She was wearing her glasses, so she may have cautiously wanted to keep all her senses sharp even in the shower.

Once her wet hair was out of the way, the messenger grabbed the plastic bag in her hand to free up her mouth. Then she dropped a bombshell.

“Our coalition force has no intention of interfering in your mission here.”

“I highly doubt you came here just to tell us that.”

“But if we determine you are unable to continue your mission, we will take over. I assume you will understand the general situation if I tell you we are preparing a Pinaka III for use.”

“…”

That was an endless cruising nuclear torpedo deployed by the Indian Space Force that had been separated from the other three branches of their military.

Once it was launched into the ocean by a ship or submarine, the undetectable weapon would circle the earth as many times as needed. It was powered by the 30 low-orbit power generation satellites surrounding the earth, so it would surface just long enough to receive microwave power, allowing it to continue operating indefinitely. Of course, all 30 of the satellites surrounding the entire world would send down a charge every single time, so it was nearly impossible to search out the torpedo’s location based on the area of sea receiving the microwaves.

As long as it remained deep below the ocean surface, there was no fear of it being intercepted with anti-air lasers.

And after preparing a weapon as bizarre as that, no one was going to waste it by filling its warhead full of ordinary explosives. While messing with the radio in the control tower, Kyouka had learned that a landing craft out at sea was full of hazmat suits and chemical protection vehicles.

“The Pinaka III’s payload is extraordinarily large for a torpedo,” said Kyouka. “If I am not mistaken, filling it with as large a hydrogen bomb as would fit would reach 140 megatons. I recall the Indian Space Force putting together this ridiculous plan just so they could break the record set by the former Soviet Union. And the test detonation was done deep below the Pokhran desert.”

“You are a knowledgeable girl. But if a bomb that large were actually detonated on the surface, it would trigger a new ice age. To avoid that, it will only scatter 20 smaller nuclear warheads once arriving in the target area of sea. Each one will only be around 400 kilotons to ensure a minimal effect on the environment.”

“You’re sending in a strategic nuclear weapon that’s direct heat rays and blast would cover a radius of 14km and that’s radioactive contamination would cover the entirety of Japan and also thinly spread out across the entire planet’s stratosphere?”

“I said minimal, not zero.”

A Crystal Magician could recover from a powerful nuclear attack as long as they did not suffer an immediately lethal wound. Even if their skin blistered, their flesh tore from their bones, and their bones broke, they would return to normal in 30 seconds. So not even the direct shockwave and heat would necessarily mean immediate death.

But the real danger was the radioactive material known as fallout. Internal exposure was especially difficult to remove and it might repeatedly trigger the regeneration, preventing the Crystal Magician from moving. Crystal Magicians had to be careful with both poisons and medicines and radioactive materials were like an extreme version of that.

Letnahe brushed up her silver bangs that were dripping with water.

“Thus, we would like a copy of Grimnoah’s plan. That way we can monitor the situation and know exactly when your plan has failed so we can launch a weapon that is guaranteed to hit.”

(Karuta-kun began this counterattack on his own, so I have no way of knowing the details myself.)

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we will have to make our own determination.”

The President asked a daring question without revealing her ignorance of their plan, but Letnahe Kurent was not daunted. She might as well have been following a conversational flowchart she had set up in advance.

“We might end up launching the Pinaka III when you still have a chance of succeeding, but if that is what you would prefer.”

“I see.”

“This is in your best interest.”

Kyouka’s wheelchair creaked quietly, but not because she had backed away. The woman in only a towel had leaned forward and placed her hands on the armrests.

She leaned over the girl in order to take the initiative here.

“Preventing a misinformed decision on our part would eliminate some excess risk from your already risky mission. So I would like to know your general schedule along with an outline of your plan. Refusing puts your students, the Kansai region, and perhaps the entire Japanese Archipelago at risk of nuclear contamination.”

Omotesandou Kyouka gave a snort of laughter.

“What happened to respecting Japan’s rules?”

“I would prefer not to break this country’s three non-nuclear principles, so please help me avoid that by cooperating.”

“Don’t act like you aren’t itching to launch that thing.”

(Basically, she wants to take control of the world back from the children while also stealing our Crystal Magic tech that has become the world’s new image of the strongest. Our plan will of course use Crystal Magic, so you need to understand how it works to determine whether or not it would work.)

Humans played as dirty as ever even with the Threat preparing to attack them. Someone always stepped forward to use the situation to their advantage.

And if Kyouka went with the easy answer of “I will not give in to threats”, Letnahe and the coalition probably would launch the nuclear weapon. Their method of defeating the Threat was certainly a heroic thing and they probably felt like they could expose Crystal Magicians to any amount of violence because they were the world’s strongest. Just like a small child busy pretending to be a superhero would feel no guilt about hitting their father who was playing the villain.

To stand at the peak was to be an oddity.

No one would worry about whoever had been designated strongest. Just like no one had ever questioned how the Problem Solvers were made to fight the Threat back when they had been the strongest. And if someone did jump the gun and launch that nuclear torpedo early, the only ones injured in the blast would be Karuta and the others fighting on the front line.

Kyouka decided to correct the fundamental mistake here.

“You can take command if you want, but are you prepared to take responsibility as well?”

“We will have the legal basis for it soon enough. Our coalition is the will of the world itself.”

“Not what I meant,” whispered Kyouka in a voice that knew how to derive a sadistic pleasure from tormenting others with her words. “Your decision – or the coalition’s decision – is based on the assumption that you can defeat the real Threat with that nuclear weapon. But what if you use that nuke and spread radiation everywhere, but the Threat shrugs it off? You’d be in a real bind then, wouldn’t you?”

“…”

“Nuclear explosions are flashy, so you can’t exactly pretend it didn’t happen once it fails.”

Everyone knew Grimnoah did not have nuclear weapons and there was zero chance of some unrelated nuclear war starting right now.

The coalition force would be unable to pin responsibility for the nuclear explosion on anyone else.

“And if that happens, we will become more than just the world’s strongest. We would become victims as well, wouldn’t we? We could have defeated the Threat if we had been allowed to fight, but the grownups intervened and screwed it all up. Try telling people their city will be the next one to go because of that and I feel like you will have a hard time convincing the world to do much of anything you want. There would be riots around the world and you could never again leave your dark and musty shelters.”

In other words, the coalition’s attack had to be successful.

Nukes were the ultimate bargaining chip. They could force through most any demand. But if they fired one and it failed to defeat the Threat, they would lose everything. They would lose face, lose trust, and lose influence. Later historians would question their sanity.

“It’s all or nothing,” said Kyouka with a pause between each word. She smiled in a poisonous yet alluring way. “Do your higher ups really want to make such a risky gamble? You really think the top brass with more wealth and political power than they know what to do with would want that? Gambles are made by those who have no future if they lose. We aren’t talking about rich shoplifters who do it for the thrill – those grownups have their every desire fulfilled to the point of boredom, so I seriously doubt they would choose to take on such a risk now.”

“Well…”

The towel fell away.

Almost like Kyouka’s clever logic had stripped her bare.

But even with all her brown skin exposed, Letnahe did not remove her hands from the wheelchair’s armrests.

This was not enough for her to back down.

She carried an even greater weight as messenger. If she focused on her personal feelings and flinched here, people would doubt the power of the coalition’s will.

“All of that is based on the assumption that the nuclear attack would fail to defeat the Threat. We are merely exchanging empty arguments based on optimistic and pessimistic assumptions. Buying time like that will not cause the coalition to change its mind. I guarantee you that.”

“…”

“The Pinaka III will be launched if you do nothing. So put away those baseless fantasies and make a decision based on real data.”

“What if I told you I have real and very specific data backing up my claim?”

That smooth response caused Letnahe to gasp momentarily.

The talk of a nuclear attack had come as a surprise, so Kyouka would not have had time to put together a flowchart and practice this argument with a fellow student. So how had she managed to get the better of Letnahe Kurent’s perfect preparations?

The girl was like a spider tangling its prey in invisible threads.

“Needless to say, Crystal Magic is the world’s strongest combat technology. That is the age we live in, after all. Those strongest magicians are working together as they fight on the front line, yet we have not received a single report of anyone destroying a Threat. As far as I know, the only success was Karuta-kun causing two of them to destroy each other out at sea.”

“…”

“The real Threat is very different from the decoys. …If I am correct, this Threat would survive a nuclear attack. They are made to. How else could they be a true threat to humanity?”

Part 4

Karuta heard a sound like a clog being cleared from a pipe and then he realized it had come from his own throat. His vision was blurry and his head dizzy. It took him some time to recall why his entire body was wrapped in pain.

They had broken through the side of Second Grimnoah. He did not remember what had happened after they broke through the window and continued on at a shallow angle.

They appeared to be in the middle school building.

Since it had taken him some time to recover, his eyes had already adjusted to the dark.

This was not just a classroom. His nose detected the odd scent of chlorine and he heard the sound of water sloshing back and forth.

This was the indoor pool.

“Sacri-sama,” whispered the calm crystal girl while lifting up the boy who was lying limply on the poolside. She might as well have been speaking to a beach ball held against her flat chest. She was still drenched and he could feel her body heat through her soaked clothing. “We need to get moving. The Threat will notice soon.”

“Soon? What did you do???”

Why did they have any time at all? Those black lustrous things had been covering all of the exterior walls. He had assumed that was why it was so dark in the ship despite the oil fire, but…

“What is that? A wall?”

“Clinging to thin glass with their large metal forms would only break the glass. They must have learned from their mistakes.”

The glass wall was meant to let in plenty of sunlight, but it was now covered with metal panels, parasols, beach chairs, and more. It was all held in place with the ship’s repair parts and the adhesive for the deck equipment. The hole he and Aine had made on the way in was no longer visible.

Aine had used their speed and weight to force her way through the countless things crawling all over the outside of the ship. Some had looked like wharf roaches and others like tadpoles, but Karuta would have expected them to rush after them into the ship like a swarm of fire ants.

Aine lightly swung her crystal sword to scatter some clear drops of water from it.

“I have a laser sniping unit. We have no evidence it can do critical damage to the Threat, but it should work as effectively as your flashlight if used to blind them.”

He could faintly see his surroundings, so there had to be some light getting in through small cracks.

“So you just charged in without thinking it through, huh?” he sighed half in exasperation. “That wouldn’t have worked if they used ultrasound or microwave like that jellyfish from before. Then we would have been killed.”

“With so little data on the real Threat, every action we take must be based on some amount of speculation. And as an aside, I directed us toward a window covered in units with red glass-like lenses.”

That did not mean much. Those could easily have been nonfunctioning camouflage like the eye patterns on a moth’s wings.

But Karuta was more surprised by something else.

“An aside, huh? I didn’t expect to hear you defend your actions after being criticized for them.”

“…Uhh.”

“I get it. You saved my life, Aine, so quit scowling. I don’t want a sulking partner.”

“A logical analysis would suggest you are trying to provoke me, Sacri-sama.”

The crystal girl puffed out the cheeks on her expressionless face. Her hair and clothes were still soaked, so water continued to drip from her hair and the hem of her dress. She must have crashed into the pool to help slow down after bursting into the ship because her hair smelled of chlorine. She had learned to feel embarrassment when her skin was visible, but the way she would just set that problem aside when there was “no effective countermeasure available” was still pretty inhuman. It felt like a simple computer algorithm where she would follow the yes and no arrows to see if the current situation applied.

A healthy boy like Karuta had to sigh.

He walked along the poolside, checked inside the locker room, and borrowed a dry towel from one of the lockers. This was Second Grimnoah, so it had most everything a normal school would.

“Here, Aine. You need to be dried off. Whatever we do next, we can’t leave wet footprints behind, right?”

“Good point.”

“…Why are you raising your hands overhead like that?”

“I thought you said you wanted to do it.”

He could not believe her overly straightforward answer.

He had said “you need to be dried off”, but by who? He had not specified, and this was apparently how she had interpreted it.

And there was a more fundamental problem.

(Being seen is embarrassing, but being touched isn’t!?)

Her strange learned behavior had him confused, but there was no point in getting hung up on this. He started by drying her wet hair like she was a small child and then he squeezed his eyes shut and moved to her body while doing his best not to think about it. …Although he had a feeling the shut eyes only made the sensation on his fingers all the more vivid.

Then something occurred to him.

“Oh, right. If you stick a thick towel under your dress, no one can see through it no matter how wet-”

“…”

“Sorry, Aine. I don’t know why that upset you so much, but please don’t glare at me like that.”

He was truly beyond saving if the inhuman crystal girl thought he needed to be more tactful.

At any rate, Karuta could not waste time here playing with the crystal girl. Aine’s laser had dazzled the Threat’s sensory organs like a stun grenade, but she had not worked out an actual way of killing them. It was possible she could not kill the Threat even in this state. If the Threat recovered, they would be surrounded and killed.

(The real ones are incredible. They don’t just customize themselves endlessly when they get killed – they don’t even let it reach that point. You can’t even take them out in the first place.)

He had dreamed of getting back to Second Grimnoah.

Right now, it was a deadly labyrinth where Gekiha and his other friends from the first ship slept crystallized on the bottom level and where Marika’s group had gone missing. The familiar school was filled with the same powerful sense of death as a hospital late at night. Without Aine by his side, the dense darkness may have been enough to repel him.

He focused on the Crystal Blossom on his chest. It functioned as a communicator, but carelessly using it would put himself and Marika at risk. Those antenna-covered sea urchins or whatever were the biggest nuisance he had ever seen.

If they were found, they were dead.

He slowly poked his head out into the hallway from the locker room.

“We need to get moving, Aine. We shook their pursuit once, so I want to avoid letting them find us again.”

“Yes.”

“And we need to locate Marika’s group. Where did they get in, how were they pursued, and where did they escape to? I know it’s dark in here, but look for any sign of them. Use profiling techniques – read their mental state from the slightest scratches or stains. This ship is 600m long, but we should be able to find them if we gather enough actual data.”

“Well excuse me for having nothing but worthless speculation.”

“You really are sulking, aren’t you?”

He breathed an exasperated sigh as he and the crystal girl walked through the ship.

Now that he was paying attention, he could not help but notice how wrong this place felt. It was like thinking you were resting in an infirmary bed only to later realize it was an autopsy table equipped with belts to strap you down.

At night, a school became something else entirely.

The familiar artificial structure filled you with a dread different from a natural forest or cave.

A ghost would never appear on a truly desert island. With no one there, no one would die there, so no ghosts would end up there. Schools, hospitals, train stations, and other public facilities were more common settings for ghost stories than homes or sheds. That may have been because, when people found a normally crowded place to be entirely deserted, they would put their mind at ease by inventing a fictional being to fill the space left by the people that were normally there. The stories created that way could be creepy, but that was just how it was.

This, however, Karuta refused to let be “just how it was”. He would defeat the Threat and take back their usual school.

To do that, he needed cover to hide behind more than distance from the enemy. What wavelength they used was unknown, but since Aine’s laser had dazzled them, the Threats gathered on the outside of the ship had to use their vision to search out their prey.

Hide-and-seek would also work to prevent that.

When Karuta sensed a crawling in the air down the hall, he grabbed Aine’s slender shoulders and moved behind a rectangular pillar jutting out from the wall. Only Aine’s wet crystal sword was sticking out. She had apparently adjusted the angle for his use because he could use the refection on the blade like a mirror. That showed him a large form cutting across the end of the hallway. A round Threat resembling a slate pencil urchin was rolling along. Its many long spines resembled TV antennas, so that was probably the type Kyouka had mentioned that specialized in gathering data.

“Assuming Miss Marika is still alive, she must not have made a meaningless charge on the Threat or fled from the ship in fear,” whispered expressionless Aine while he still held her shoulders. “Drawing attention to herself while surrounded would only increase the risk of death. If she did not reach that conclusion on her own, she would be dead already.”

This was not about Aine knowing what Marika would do.

It was about that being the only option that did not lead to instant death.

And Aine’s harsh analysis continued.

“If holing up in here was Miss Marika’s only option for survival, then what remaining hope would she have? We do not even know if the real Threat eats food or consumes fuel. Too little is known to attempt to wait them out. So what else is there?”

“If she couldn’t do anything herself, would she hope for help to arrive?”

“Yes. And if she was desperate to survive, she would do everything she could to ensure that help found her. Thus, there is a good possibility she would have left intentional signs behind. Something that we would understand but the Threat would not.”

“I see,” said Karuta while flipping around the military flashlight in his hand.

Assuming Marika had made the right choice and was still alive, she would have gone through the following thought process.

First, attempting long-range communications – either via her Crystal Blossom or her phone – would be suicide while aboard the ship. It would only call the Threat to her.

If someone was to come rescue her, it would be one of the Four Living Gods, but it was unlikely to be Omotesandou Kyouka since she used a wheelchair and could not use magic.

That meant either Karuta or Aine, who would obey any of his orders. So Marika would have to think up a sign that only those two would recognize. After some thought, the boy switched on the flashlight. He had installed it with infrared to blind the enemy, so it did not produce an obvious beam of light.

Nevertheless, it did produce a change. A faint handprint appeared on the empty hallway wall as if in glow-in-the-dark paint. It was not alone. More of them formed a trail along the wall.

“Bingo. She slid her hand a bit when making them, so maybe that’s to tell us which way the trail leads.”

“Did she smash some used regeneration crystals into a powder and mix them with something? I have heard that synthetic emeralds will produce a red light when exposed to ultraviolet.”

They could ask Marika for the exact recipe once they caught up with her. As soon as a Threat left after peering down the hallway in search of anyone there, Karuta and Aine rushed out from behind the pillar.

“That was careless of Marika’s group. The Threat uses lasers too. Or at least that lion one on the roof does.”

“We do not know if the Sparkle really is modeled after a lion or that it is using an infrared wavelength laser. Try not to let such baseless assumptions lead you astray, Sacri-sama.”

“Tell me what I can do to fix this bad mood of yours, Aine. Do I need to give you a baby bottle or a rattle?”

“I am no more than a piece of Crystal Magic equipment, so do not expect a level of intelligence and sensitivity equal to a human like you. But for now, I would recommend shutting your mouth.”

They carefully walked down the hallway and climbed the stairs as they followed the handprints glowing in the light of his infrared laser. Karuta was scared. He was always focused on the available cover so he could hide the instant the Threat approached.

They turned around on the landing and climbed the next flight of stairs.

It was still dark, but something other than the handprints glittered as it reflected the light of his modified military flashlight’s infrared. That reflection of visible light should not have happened. The source was lying in the middle of the hallway. It was a little longer than a loaf of French bread.

“…”

Utagai Karuta said nothing.

He said nothing as he stared at it.

It was a right leg.

A girl’s slender right leg lay translucently crystalized after being torn off at the base of the thigh.

Part 5

“Heave ho, heave ho.”

Sophia Firenze, a teacher with long flaxen hair kept her voice low as she carried a large pot in both hands. She was wearing a tight skirt suit, but it had the fresh-on-the-job look of someone’s cheap first suit. She was like a puppy on two legs. She gave off an aura that inspired worry in everyone who saw her.

She was apparently preparing food for everyone.

They had the entire international airport to themselves, but she was dragging the cooking equipment out of one of the restaurants. By combining that restaurant equipment with the shelter’s outdoor equipment, she was remaking one corner of the airport into a campground cooking area. After all, there were more than 1000 students between the middle and high school. Using a whole restaurant kitchen might not be enough to cook for that many at once.

Kiyosawa Hadome, a muscular gym teacher in track pants and a tank top, called out to her.

“Firenze-sensei.”

“Oh, Kiyosawa-sensei!”

Sophia’s face lit up while still carrying the large pot.

During the battle at Crystal Beach the other day, they had been fighting against the lack of infrastructure for food and shelter. Sophia had learned a lot from that clash with the decoy Threats in an Arctic blizzard where tomorrow’s food was never guaranteed. For one, she had learned that wielding a weapon was not the only way to fight.

“At times like this, it’s best to cook a large quantity in a biiiig pot! The standard would be curry rice, right? Or would a hearty beef stew be better? Oh, but we could also skip the pot and grill the meat.”

“Each child’s condition is unique and the stress will affect them all differently too. You should probably have vegetable smoothies ready for the students with upset stomachs.”

“Oh, you’re right. That would fill them up and be decently nutritious! What a great idea!!”

Kiyosawa was generally feared by the students, but he always grew more polite when around Sophia. He knew it was a bad habit of his, but he could not stop himself.

He glanced over at the President moving by on her wheelchair a short distance away before providing more advice.

“It would also be helpful if you took down notes of the ingredients and cooking methods used when making something to feed a large group of students. You don’t want to find out later that you can’t remember what secret ingredient you added.”

After all, Grimnoah gathered people with rare talent from all around the world. It was not uncommon for students to have dietary restrictions due to allergies, religious reasons, or being a vegetarian.

Sophia seemed motivated, so he left the cooking to her. Maybe this outdated way of thinking made him an old-fashioned sort of gym teacher, but if those overly energetic brats could have the home cooking of a muscular male gym teacher or a young female teacher, he could guess which one they would choose.”

“Darjeeling, hm?”

Kiyosawa Hadome himself checked some of the tea leaves found among the cooking equipment and ingredients scattered about. Those tea leaves were so well-known and ubiquitous that it was hard to judge their quality, but as an international airport, the leaves inside the rectangular canister looked fairly high quality to him.

Tea was wonderful. You could drink it as is or you could use it to flavor a dessert. It was an elegant thing but also contained caffeine, so it could help boost morale a little on the battlefield. He found it more useful than coffee.

“Wow.” Sophia tilted her head. “You do that quick, Kiyosawa-sensei. Is this a specialty of yours?”

“I do live on my own. Although I will admit I gained these skills from a former classmate of mine who tended to boss everyone around when it came to cooking.” The muscular teacher sighed. “Also, if any students say they aren’t hungry, try recommending some stretches before giving them any digestive medicine. Hunger is a biological signal, so if you get your organs back on the proper cycle, you will feel it soon enough.”

“Eh? Even though everyone’s exhausted after fighting on the front line?”

“The muscles used for track, swimming, and martial arts are all different. You only focus on your lungs when exercising, so it is fairly common to forget all about your other organs while working so hard to move your arms and legs. Something as simple as changing the way you breathe can stimulate muscles you rarely use, so a single 10-minute yoga session can get your organs in order and really change how you feel.”

“I thought you would be a lot stricter about food.”

“If you aren’t on an extreme diet or trying to lose weight before a match, you can eat most anything in moderation.”

A tremor ran through the air.

Some boys and girls in crystal armor had gathered in the air just outside the airport’s large window as they prepared to head out to the front line. The students were quickly taking charge during this fight. Kiyosawa Hadome hated that, but there was nothing he could do to change that on his own. The local people had evacuated, but they still needed to protect the city from the Threat.

“This is all we can do for the students as they fly to a deadly battlefield without a single complaint,” he muttered to himself with the tea canister in hand. The look on his face was one he would never let the students see. “Don’t you die, brats.”

Part 6

Karuta groaned.

His throat moved against his will. The back of his mind was full of noise and he could not stop the scream that was threatening to explode in his chest.

His trembling hand was already moving, but not to cover his mouth.

It was moving toward his Crystal Blossom. His mind was focused on its communication function even though using it would mean death here.

“Sacri-sama.”

“Gh!?”

Aine kicked him in the back of the knees, his vision dropped straight down, and she pulled his head toward her flat chest while shoving him into a nearby classroom.

The heavy and damp sound coming from the hallway had to be one of the Threats. Aine pressed against the wall while sealing his mouth by holding his head to her flat chest while she also held the sword tight in her other hand.

It was all over if they were found.

But Aine’s pulse through her thin wet dress was as accurate as a grandfather clock’s pendulum. Her heartrate apparently did not rise due to tension. The sound out in the hallway was awfully sticky for black metal and it slowly moved toward them from the far end of the hallway.

Would they be safe in this empty classroom?

Of course not. The other side of the windows covered with metal panels were crawling with Threats shaped like wharf roaches and legged tadpoles. Those things produced a disturbing number of scratching sounds.

A crystalized girl’s leg had been on the floor in the hall.

There was no safe zone here. The normal assumptions had long since stopped applying.

They were isolated. Not only were none of their allies around, but they were about as surrounded by predators as it was possible to be. This was not a lonely isolation. It was the isolation of being behind enemy lines. Merely existing like this was enough to wear down the heart.

“I suggested they are not reliant on visual information, remember? As long as we keep the curtains closed, the windows will not be a problem. But we do not know how sturdy those metal panels are or if there are any gaps between them, so we must be on the lookout for any open space.”

However, Aine was worried about the hallway.

“We have less information on the hallway, so we cannot say how many methods they have to search us out or move around,” whispered the crystal girl. “The risk there is greater. The Threat may be scattering lubricant across the floor to assist their movement.”

“…”

“But leeches and slugs coat themselves in slime to prevent themselves from drying out in the air, so they generally actually want more friction with the ground in order to provide a more solid grip. …Sacri-sama?”

Karuta did not respond.

He could not stop trembling. Aine’s steady body heat did nothing to calm him. He was breathing heavily and a cold sweat poured from his body.

The crystal girl continued speaking with the boy’s head held to her flat chest.

“It appears the Threat in the hallway has gone elsewhere. There is no more danger as long as we do not provoke the ones outside the windows. Do not worry. None of them appear to have noticed us.”

No, that was not the source of his fear. His own life did not matter.

Something else was filling his mind.

He moved his trembling lips as he clung to the crystal girl’s chest.

“That was a girl’s leg.” He wanted to reject that fact, but he could find no way of doing so. “But whose? That’s obvious. There aren’t all that many Crystal Magicians on Second Grimnoah now that the Threat has taken over. So…so that had to be…”

“Sacri-sama.”

“There’s not some rule that says Marika will always make it out okay. When people die, they really do just die. That’s the kind of shitty world we live in.”

“Sacri-sama.”

She repeated herself more strongly as if to cut him off.

“That was a human right leg. Based on the shape, it likely belonged to a girl.”

“Kh.”

“But on the other hand, we only found the leg there.”

“So?”

He looked up while still pathetically clinging to her.

Their lips were only a few centimeters apart as he squeezed out a desperate voice like a baby bird asking for food.

“The rest of the body might have been smashed to pieces by the jaws of a Threat the size of construction machinery.”

“That is not my point.”

Aine stroked the back of his head while holding him to her flat chest. She was a head shorter than him, but she looked like a mother soothing a small child.

“There was no sock, shoe, skirt, or underwear crystallized along with the leg, was there?”

“Oh.”

She was a part of him, but she had pointed out something he had failed to realize himself.

He had never known how much it could help to talk something out with someone else.

“Crystal Magic regeneration is generally made to heal wounds, but when the magician receives a fatal wound and their full body crystallizes, their clothing and other possessions are solidified along with them.”

“So…so that means Marika isn’t dead yet? That wasn’t the leg of a corpse – it was the regeneration working on a living person? Please, Aine, tell me I’m right about this!”

“It means whoever it was still lived when their leg was cut off. They could always have received a separate fatal wound afterwards.”

“…”

“Since her group has been attacked by the Threat, we should assume Miss Marika’s attempt to remain hidden has failed. We should assume they remain in an extremely dangerous position.”

Aine was as blunt as ever.

Maybe because she was not influenced by emotion and maybe because she had been born only for combat.

Karuta removed his face from her flat chest and looked up at the empty classroom’s ceiling.

“Pwah. You said they had been found by the Threat, but I don’t hear any fighting.”

“The situation is unknown, but the Threat may have a reason to capture them without killing them. Or the Threat disseminated a knockout gas to hinder their movements, but Miss Marika’s group escaped before it took effect and passed out in a blind spot of theirs.”

“We have no proof of that.”

“Of course not. The above two possibilities were biased toward your own hopes. Since there is no sign of combat, the most reasonable assumption is that the battle is already over.”

That did not change what Karuta and Aine had to do. They could only search for his childhood friend using the handprints that glowed when exposed to a laser.

That was a signal from the past, not one arriving in real time. No matter how much hope they placed in it, it was always possible the person who had left it was already dead.

“…”

“Sacri-sama?”

Just then, Karuta came to a stop in the middle of the hallway. He stood completely still and stared at a single point even when Aine spoke to him.

The hallway was dark, but he could see a slender and faintly glowing hand sticking out from around the corner. When it noticed his gaze, it waved a few times as if beckoning him over and then pulled back around the corner.

“Sacri-sama.”

The boy swayed weakly side to side.

It was like a moth trap that used a moth’s tendency to gather around light, like a lure that convinced a fish to take a nibble, or like an attractant that led an ant to eat deadly food. A third party might never understand, but for the target, it was like being externally controlled by the pull of a lever.

The slender girl’s hand did not lure him in just the once.

When he turned the corner, he saw it around the next one. Or on the stairs. The hand sometimes extended from an unnatural location. On the stairs, it stuck straight down from the ceiling.

Even Karuta was vaguely aware that this was not a normal human.

But what did that change? He had to check and see what this wanted to show him.

It did not lead him to some special room.

It was an ordinary hallway in the middle school building. Just a long stretch of cold floor. He heard a quiet breath of laughter from the center of it.

A naked girl stood casually in the center of the hallway. She looked to be about 13 or 14. The Threat covered the ship’s exterior and the windows were covered by metal panels, so no one could tell what color this region of death had originally been. This girl seemed terribly out of place here, yet here she was. Her undeveloped and skinny body was faintly glowing and showed no sign of any sort of injury.

There was no wind, but her blue hair was fluttering as she beckoned to him.

She was smiling ever so gently.

At her feet…or where her feet would have been, her legs combined like a mermaid’s and tapered down to a single thin thread that attached to the floor. Something was scattered across the cold floor directly below her.

Utagai Karuta slowly lowered his gaze.

And he realized what this was trying to show him.

There were arms and there were legs.

They were connected to what looked like a torso.

But none of it had any color.

Because it was all made of translucent crystal.

There was no hint of a rusty smell at this sharp and cold scene of carnage that only looked like a piece of glassware had been smashed against the floor.

But when he looked to the smashed chest, ankles, and everything else…

He could see they were clothed.

It had all been crystalized at once. Which happened when a Crystal Magician died.

He could not tell at a glance how many bodies’ worth that was.

But it was clearly more than just one.

However, he did recognize one thing among the scattered remains.

Something round was lying there. It could perhaps be described as “small” at about the size of a melon. But when his everyday values gave meaning to that simple image and the unasked-for reality of the situation came rushing in at him, he felt sparks bursting in the back of his mind.

Utagai Karuta crumpled to the floor, picked up the translucent object, and screamed.

It was the head of a girl with one of the curly twintails broken off.

It was Amaashi Marika.

Part 7

South of Japan in the Pacific, 1000km from the Port of Kobe, gray shapes were floating on the blue. That was the coalition force’s joint fleet gathered to fight the Threat. The fleet was mostly composed of nuclear aircraft carriers with some cruisers and destroyers mixed in for good measure. There were of course plenty of submarines waiting below the water as well.

It was all technology designed to kill other people.

They had been left behind by the times as focus was placed on combating the Threat, so now all that precision machinery had nothing to do.

A male marshaller with swarthy skin and clear-cut facial features sat on the edge of an aircraft carrier flight deck larger than a schoolyard. He spoke up in annoyance while swinging a fishing rod.

“It’s ironic, really.”

“That we’re working alongside the US and China here?”

This many ships could gather anywhere in the world if they needed to.

He just about said as much, but the middle-aged marshaller held his tongue because there was no point in telling that to the female mechanic younger than his own kids. A mobile fleet sounded nice and all, but they could only travel so far in a single day without resupplying. A cruise circumnavigating the globe while stopping at plenty of ports to resupply would take around 70 to 80 days to complete its trip around the world.

Yet all these warships had gathered here so quickly.

The Threat had been noticed gathering on Second Grimnoah toward the end of Japan’s Golden Week holiday and all these ships were floating here at sea not too long afterwards. A fleet sent out from Chennai or San Francisco would not have arrived so quickly.

“Good grief.”

They were to work together as they fought the Threat. And they were to give what help they could to the cutting-edge magicians. It all sounded admirable enough, but this had clearly been secretly prepared in advance. The people could not trust each other.

(We were a little too well prepared for this.)

The middle-aged marshaller kept these thoughts to himself.

(Almost like they knew in advance where the damn Threat would attack.)

“No, that’s crazy talk.”

“What is, sir?”

The marshaller did not answer the STEM girl’s question.

“Get ready. The main dish is the Pinaka III to be launched from a nuclear sub, but that doesn’t mean our carrier has nothing to do. This will be our F/A Vajra stealth fighter’s first use in actual combat. If the Pinaka III fails to hit its target, one of those will approach while skimming just off the ocean surface and loaded with a small nuke. And all the radiation it’s giving off is guaranteed to cause malfunctions in its instruments. Even the smallest scratch while taking off could be deadly.”

“Do you think they really will choose to use nukes?”

“Don’t ask me. That’s for the higher ups to decide.”

“Hm? You don’t look happy about this.”

“The Pinaka III is a torpedo, but it’s classified as a Space Force weapon cause they control the generator satellites up above. We’re talking about some eggheads who sit in an air-conditioned office typing away at a keyboard all day. They’ve never seen a lick of combat and we’re supposed to trust them?”

“All of our nukes are being consolidated under the elites of the Space Force, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, those trump cards are in the hands of some scrawny guys who can’t even do ten pushups.”

The “higher ups” he mentioned was not a reference to the Grimnoah students fighting on the front line. He meant the higher ups who commanded the aircraft carrier. And if they said to do it, he and the others like him would have to input the nuclear launch codes.

(The economic center has moved to the Asian continent, so no one gives a crap about Japan anymore. What an age we live in.)

Japan had spent unthinkable amounts of funding in order to protect this American sea lane, but now the coalition fleet gathered there was going to launch a nuke at them. It really was ironic. The Japanese government was surely sending a flood of complaints, but those would never reach the higher ups here. The pieces on the board were not moved after a one-on-one discussion. Some low-level government official would be blocking all those complaints while stifling a yawn.

The young female mechanic held a hand over her eyes and stared at the horizon as if that would help her see past it.

“Is Letnahe okay?”

“Call her Lieutenant Colonel Kurent.”

“I really hope Let is okay. She might know the Japanese language and school system after studying abroad there, but isn’t she completely isolated while surrounded by the world’s strongest magicians? The negotiations can’t be easy and what if she can’t escape in time?”

“You don’t need to worry about that.” The dark-skinned marshaller sighed softly. “Lieutenant Colonel Kurent is top class when it comes to skill in the deadly arts. Even in a world with magicians in it. You called it negotiations, but it’s really a countdown until she gets pissed at Grimnoah.”

He felt a tug at his fishing rod.

He reeled it in to find a dark and glistening object nothing like any aquatic lifeform found in the natural world. No one could say how far the Threat had spread below the water. His young subordinate fell over in surprise and clung to him, but he checked to find it was only a boot.

The secrets of the world were not found that easily.

“Grimnoah just has to make one mistake and we’re launching that thing. And as a mechanic, you must know that completing a mission without even the slightest mistake is simply not possible.”

Part 8

(Ah.)

She held her breath.

She was curled up in the darkness holding her injured friend and soaked with sweat and with the slime or machine oil from that sea anemone thing.

The slightest movement would get them noticed and subsequently eaten. Which was why Amaashi Marika held her breath.

(Ah, ahhhh. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???)

He was here.

Utagai Karuta of all people was here.

She could tell because she was peeking out from an empty classroom’s sliding door. That blue-haired girl was actually a sea anemone Threat that used high-level mimicry to perfectly blend in with its surroundings. This time, it was her childhood friend who had fallen for its trap.

The blue-haired girl was only a lure.

When it targeted you, you could not resist it, just like how an angler fish would cause a part of its body to glow to lure prey into its mouth. Your willpower was meaningless because that girl-shaped lure trapped humans on a mechanical or structural level.

Its effects were as absolute as those of a narcotic. The boy was kneeling in the empty hallway and pantomiming holding something in his arms. An inhuman Threat was right there in front of him, but he showed no sign of caution.

All because of that blue-haired girl.

(The Gestalt.)

That was the name Marika’s group had come up with for that Threat that showed its target hints of what they longed for. But this was not the primary thing they hoped for while influenced by optimism or their memories. No, this showed them their secondary hope after they compromised and prepared themselves for what could be. It told them not to hope for too much. It showed them a harsh “reality”. It read the unvarnished thoughts within its prey and displayed them for that prey.

For Marika’s group, it had targeted Matsuda Imi and she had indeed had her right leg bitten off at the base of the thigh. The thighbone was said to be the thickest and sturdiest bone in the human body, yet it had bitten through there in a single attack.

The attack had seemingly used electricity to tear right through her barrier and sever her leg.

When faced with that (image of a) naked girl with fluttering blue hair, you would forget all about your current situation and just stand there until you were swallowed whole by the giant sea anemone that made up all your surroundings in every direction. Marika and Tayori had worked hard to tear the tens of thousands of tentacles away from Imi, but that was not a fundamental solution.

Firepower was not enough to defeat it.

When it was camouflaged, it was indistinguishable from their surroundings and one of the three would be drawn in once the blue-haired girl appeared. Strength or weakness did not even come into it – they could not even begin an actual battle.

So they had waited and hoped for help to arrive.

They had their phones and Crystal Blossoms, but they had remained silent and desperately fought the icy loneliness that threatened to slowly crush them like the water pressure in the deep sea.

Better equipment could maybe change things. They could build a bomb with the tools aboard the ship and they could maybe redefine the entire battle by rigging that up with a sensor or remote detonator. They could maybe escape and prepare for a real battle. They could maybe find a way to do damage while never actually standing directly before it.

Yet the Gestalt had chosen Utagai Karuta as its next target after he arrived to help them. He had followed the invisible handprints that glowed when exposed to a laser. It had perfectly mimicked the very signs that Amaashi Marika had left for him in order to guide him along a complex path leading directly to the most dangerous point.

Marika’s stance was a simple one: she would protect what she wanted to protect. She was willing to sacrifice her own life for that and she did not care if she had to destroy the world in the process.

“Tayori.”

“No, Marika.”

“Take care of Imi. I have to save Karuta.”

“You can’t. Didn’t we decide it’s all over if we draw the Gestalt’s attention?”

The hallway was already growing red and distorted.

It looked a lot like a carnivorous plant covering a radius of several meters. The giant sea anemone had become something like a man-eating sunflower, but Karuta was so overwhelmed by emptiness and despair that he remained collapsed on his knees at the center of it. He could no longer avoid it from there.

The countless tentacles wriggled around him and a glowing light filled them from base to tip. Their bright blood-red coloration became a green even more vivid than a plant’s leaves.

They heard a sound like a mass of air bursting.

They had seen this underwater. The sea anemones changed color once they were charged with energy. And they could wield that offensively instead of just passing it to the other Threats as fuel.

There was not some rule that said Marika would always make it out okay.

But in the exact same way, there was not some rule that said Karuta would always make it out okay either.

If the path needed to survive was cut short by even a millimeter, anyone would have nowhere left to go and would die. That was true of the good, of the evil, of a great scientist who had made the discovery of the century, and of a sickly little sister. The value people had decided someone had did nothing at all to influence whether they lived or died.

That was now a mass of electrical energy.

If the tens of thousands of tentacles surrounded him, he would not just have a limb severed – he and his weaker barrier would be entirely obliterated. Just like the filament burning out in an old light bulb. There would be no room for a tear-jerking miracle.

(I need to give a reason.)

The back of her mind had numbed over, but the girl still clenched her teeth hard.

(I need to create a reason why Karuta can survive!!)

With the words “power up”, she drew a rapier-like device out of thin air.

And at the same time…

“Aine.”

Still motionless, still holding something imaginary, and still defenselessly exposed to the Threat that had destroyed cities, states, and countries, the boy whispered with his eyes not focused on reality.

Yes.

He spoke to Aine, the inhuman girl who had therefore not reacted to the lure meant to lead humans astray.

“Do what you think is best. Don’t wait for my permission.”

The crystal girl and the lure girl tilted their heads in unison.

A moment later, Aine’s katana sliced through the air and mercilessly severed (what looked like) the lure girl’s head.

Part 9

The fragrance of tea filled the airport control tower.

It had been made strong in the military fashion meant to keep you awake.

The kettle, ceramic pot, strainer, and hourglass might have looked like the tools for an ancient alchemy experiment to someone unfamiliar with tea, but Letnahe Kurent used them all with ease.

“Honey, has she gone to sleep yet? Eh? You made her pancakes before bed? That’s fine, but you need to be careful or you’ll make our son jealous. You know how he always gets upset when his big sister gets a treat and he doesn’t.”

The way she did it all while also speaking on her phone made her look like an expert.

Once the call was over, President Omotesandou Kyouka made a somewhat impressed comment.

“You know a lot about tea.”

“This tea is from my country. When it was grown on a plantation that’s practically in your own backyard, why wouldn’t you want to enjoy it more than anyone else?”

Letnahe poured a cup of hot tea and handed it to Kyouka.

Almost like she was testing the girl.

The silver-haired brown-skinned soldier seemed to smile a little after seeing Kyouka wait to drink any until after Letnahe drank out of a cup poured from the same pot.

Light glistened off of the ring and the face of the mobile watch on her left hand and wrist.

The President was interested in the watch.

“That’s an old model.”

“I happen to like this model.” Letnahe closed her eyes behind her glasses. “We can get back to our discussion once we’ve had time to rest. I need to calmly consider the information you have presented to me.”

“Yes.”

Kyouka bit off a small piece of a baked good she must have borrowed from one of the airport’s luxury shops. After detecting the scent of some artificial additives, she casually set it aside.

“About a nuclear attack on the Threat having the opposite effect, you mean?”

Part 10

Utagai Karuta came back to his senses.

He blinked once and his childhood friend’s head was no longer in his hands. Everything around him had lost color and had transformed into piles of black metal. The Threat was generally made of metal, but this destruction was horribly soft and disgusting. He did not know how it had achieved that flexibility. Maybe thin wires were woven into a net and maybe it had been filled with small pieces like a beanbag cushion.

He held a hand to the side of his head and grimaced.

(Were the colors being used to alter my state of mind? No, this was even harder to fight than that. Did they follow a chemical formula to create a human attractant?)

“Aine, I don’t want the other Threats to eat this, so can you destroy it more thoroughly?”

“I can, but it would produce a lot of light, sound, and heat. All of the Threats in the region would likely notice and rush in here.”

“Then we’ll have to go with the poisoning tactic. If we could find a bomb or some powerful acid…”

“K-Karuta?”

He heard a quiet voice from very close by.

He tensed up a bit, but Aine was still letting her sword dangle at her side.

“That is the real Miss Marika,” said the crystal girl. “Shall I attack her?”

Karuta sighed.

Marika still seemed to find the result of this battle hard to believe. She held her rapier device in her hand, her eyes were wide as could be, and she was trembling.

“How…how did you just kill the Gestalt?”

“Well, if either Aine or I was acting weird, I ordered her to let the unaffected one make the decisions. I made the command because I thought a human like me and a nonhuman like her might be seeing things differently here, but it didn’t do much good in that sense. And this isn’t perfect. If Aine suddenly wanted to take control, she could send out high-voltage electricity or knock-out gas and use my command to justify her ‘rebellion’.”

Gestalt was probably a tentative name for the blue-haired girl…no, for the sea anemone Threat. That was a reference to the term Gestaltzerfall, but it was not quite accurate to use just the first half like that. This may have been similar to how the spread of the term “domestic violence” had given the word “domestic” negative connotations for a lot of people.

“It can only manipulate human perceptions,” said Karuta. “So it can’t affect Aine. Or maybe the Threat only ever expected to have human enemies.”

Part 11

Letnahe Kurent was dumbfounded.

The bespectacled silver-haired, brown-skinned soldier forgot to even breath as she viewed the data displayed in the floating general airport’s control tower.

Her tea had gone cold.

“The Threat…”

She squeezed her trembling right hand in her left.

But she was not the type to look away from the reality before her eyes.

She located the most crucial piece of information and read it aloud.

“The Threat might have units capable of surviving a nuke?”

“We haven’t tested it, so we can’t say for sure.” The Student Council President looked entirely calm. “But with that sea urchin and lion, there are far more varieties here than we saw in the decoys at the Crystal Beach. They have more distinct roles. For example, there was a hippo-like Threat that is so specialized for defense it shrugged off a direct hit from the Sparkle’s laser at the Port of Kobe. Not to mention the lion-like Sparkle itself. Wielding that much energy means it must have some means of containing that much energy inside it. And I can only imagine there are tons more Threats we have yet to see.”

“B-but with the destructive power of the Pinaka III…!!”

“It won’t work. The Sparkle’s lasers have an instantaneous temperature that appears to exceed that of a nuclear reaction. Since we haven’t heard of any of them being properly destroyed, we can assume they do not just charge in with overwhelming numbers like the decoys did. They understand their individual roles and they monitor the situation so they can cover for each other’s weaknesses when need be. So they will likely do the same with a nuke.”

Kyouka spoke bluntly and clearly to ensure the soldier could understand even after her thoughts partially ground to a halt.

“And have you forgotten that the Threat will devour their own destroyed allies to endlessly customize themselves? That has been confirmed among the real ones with the water strider and jellyfish types seen earlier. Nukes are powerful, but they would leave behind a mixture of defeated Threats and surviving Threats. The amount of damage will differ depending on their individual strength, how close to the center of the blast they are, whether they are alone or gathered together, the terrain, and what kind of battle formation they take. The Threat is not a giant kaiju – it is a great army. If there is any discrepancy in the scope of the damage and even one survives, the hellish customization will begin. I would rather not imagine what would be born from that pile of rubble. What about you?”

“…”

“We can take advantage of their customization with the poisoning tactic that inserts a bomb or virus in the destroyed remains, but a nuke would leave so many remains behind that we would have a hard time ‘poisoning’ them all. The best way to do that is to make a pinpoint attack and prevent the remains from being taken back to the others. That requires swift movement and high firepower, but it also requires a check to make sure they really were destroyed and the nimbleness to ‘poison’ them at the same time. That means those of us wearing crystal armor are best suited for it. A nuke or any other wide-scale attack that spreads its power unevenly would only give them the chance to grow.”

“Y-you must be joking.”

Letnahe’s voice was trembling.

What emotion was burning in her heart: anger, impatience, or fear?

Whatever the case, she exploded once the tremor reached a certain point.

“You have to be joking!! You expect me to believe Crystal Magic is some convenient cure-all here? When you haven’t managed to defeat even one of them? If those kids fighting out there can’t do it, who are you saying can destroy them!?”

“I am a Main Category Regulation 3,” smoothly replied the President. “I doubt the dimensional leap ability would be enough on its own. Anyone who reaches their third year in our high school learns that technique, after all. No, it needs to be someone who assumes anything can happen in combat and prepares for the worst even after reaching that level. That may be something that no one can learn from a textbook, but the opportunity is there for everyone. The Four Living Gods are not the only ones to have seen hell, after all.”

“You can’t expect someone like that to just conveniently exist.”

“But they do. I’ve already found one.” Omotesandou Kyouka could see a single ray of hope. “There were VR goggles on the fancy plane we took on the way here.”

“?”

“That was convenient enough, so I played a sparring match against Karuta-kun. Using my parameters from when I was in my prime.”

Letnahe gasped. She was the one and only Regulation 3 in the world. In her prime, she had been a completed form of the strongest that was nowhere to be found anymore. But the true shock was yet to come.

“How do you think that turned out? Karuta-kun defeated me. Without using Aine-chan.”

“How!?”

“He took advantage of a bug. He baited me into using my dimensional leap, causing my VR avatar to freeze. As soon as he noticed he could not summon Aine-chan in the VR, he realized there were things the simulator could not reproduce and put together a plan built around that. And then I couldn’t move.”

Silence followed.

The President grinned at the brown-skinned soldier whose mouth flapped wordlessly.

“Ah ha ha. That wouldn’t even occur to you normally, would it? You would look at Crystal Magic’s real abilities and try to plan a way to defeat me at the peak of my abilities. But not him. He viewed the conditions of the battle on a higher level. …When fighting the Threat, you can’t let your assumptions get the better of you. You can’t win using the standard processes. If you can’t look at things from a different angle, all your efforts are nothing more than running down a path leading straight to destruction. Just like your nuclear attack would only help the Threat grow.”

“…”

“It was the same with the Problem Solvers and with the decoy Threat. He has the ability to defeat powerful opponents he should not be able to defeat. And he is pulling it off again here.”

The only report of a destroyed Threat was the two that destroyed each other on the ocean. It had happened so quickly that he did not seem to realize how great a feat he had accomplished, but the President could see the hope presented there.

“Karuta-kun was the first to pull it off, but the possibility exists for everyone. Our students panicked when the decoy Threat attacked, but not so against the real ones here. What changed? I think it is because they can see their home here. When focused on a positive goal, people can think, put together a plan, and reach for it. Unlike the Threat that focuses on their negative deficiencies and tries to make up for those to grow stronger.”

She seemed to be criticizing the adults for using the nuclear Pinaka III as a joker meant to make up for their own deficiencies, but she also seemed to be expressing some sorrow about herself.

She stuck out her tongue as she added one more thing.

“But I’m their wicked big sister, so I doubt I can believe in the same dream they do.”

That boy was the only person with fully separate Crystal Magic.

He was a true abnormality who had succeeded in controlling a Crystal Blossom without relying on an existing god’s name. That extraordinary boy was struggling every day and worried if he could ever improve, yet he already stood in a position that Omotesandou Kyouka had failed to reach even after mastering “proper” Crystal Magic.

She never wanted to betray him.

Even as she hid that weaker side like a girl pining for the prince in a picture book.

What was she hoping to gain with this smile?

“If he has the true talent required to break free of Grimnoah’s ranking system and become a Category Error, then I know he can find an opening here.”

Between the Lines 1

This had to be some kind of joke.

Letnahe Kurent softly bit her lip.

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

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

“Phew.”

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

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

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

She breathed in and out.

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

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

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

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

Then she began to think.

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

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

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

Yes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Indian Space Force.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…”

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

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

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

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

Letnahe considered those two organizations as she spoke.

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

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

No one answered her.

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

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

“I imagine so.”

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

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

“They are necessary.”

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

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

“I warned you,” she said.

“?”

Letnahe spun something around in her hands like a baton.

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

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

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

She did not bother responding to that.

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

It froze up.

It must not have understood what had happened.

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

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

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

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

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

The attackers finally realized what was going on.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“…”

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

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

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

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

She did not bat an eye.

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

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

She was the grim reaper of a certain force.

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

She was the woman who wielded Shiva’s axe.

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

“…”

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

He was already covered in gouging lacerations.

“Why?”

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

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

“What?”

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

“Oh, that.”

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

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

“?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You owe me one.”

Chapter 3

Part 1

The low thrum of motors filled one section of Second Grimnoah.

But not because some bizarre new weapon had been powered up. Large washing machines were lined up within a laundry room. They were pay models that could be operated by holding your phone up to them.

The academy ship had become a deadly labyrinth crawling with the Threat, but it was also Karuta, Marika, and the others’ home. Their classrooms and dorms were here. So were their cafeterias and shower rooms.

They could use any part of the school infrastructure they wanted.

That only seemed so twisted because the Threat had taken over.

“Ugh, this is just awful,” said Amaashi Marika.

Karuta and Aine were standing watch outside. Only the three girls remained inside, but she, Matsuda Imi, and Hashizaki Tayori had stripped off all of their clothes. All of the machines were open for use, so they separated their underwear, blouses, blazers, skirts, etc. and put them in separate machines on different settings for the true luxury experience.

Gyaru-ish Tayori looked up at the ceiling (while naked).

“Those are making a lot of noise. Won’t the Threat notice?”

“It’s a pretty big ship and there are mechanical noises coming from all over the place.”

Why were they doing this anyway?

“I have detected a chemical very similar to diallyl disulfide within the Threat liquid found all over Miss Marika’s group. It is not on Sacri-sama or myself, so it may be used to assist them when they attack.” Aine explained from the other side of the thin door. “That is normally used in crow repellants, but it can also be used as a marker to track down a target when combined with a hound or another animal with an excellent nose. It is colorless and, when watered down, it does not have a strong enough odor for humans to detect. The best solution would be to remove all of your clothing and shave off all of your body hair, but if you are opposed to continuing the mission in the nude, I would recommend thoroughly washing your clothing with a chemical detergent. Immediately.”

Tayori tilted her head.

“Why can she detect smells that humans can’t?”

“Aine-chan’s senses are the same as a human’s, but she apparently stores things in her mind differently. If she licks salt, she doesn’t sense it as ‘salty’ – she senses which of the six tastes it stimulated. So she would probably overlook something if the magnitude was too low, but I guess she can still classify things if they’re simply mixed with other smells.”

That crystal girl was not shy about letting people know pure gold was her favorite food, so she had a very different idea about what was mouthwatering.

At any rate, they were forced to strip off even their underwear and throw it all in the washing machines despite the danger. They had avoided any laundry rooms with windows covered in Threats, but all the noise was still unnerving.

The girls also had to dump detergent over their heads no matter how bad for their skin it was. Gyaru-ish Tayori must have been confident in her looks compared to Marika because she made no attempt to cover up as she let down her wet hair and dried it off with a towel.

“He cut that thing down, didn’t he?” she said.

“Yes…” replied Marika with a thoughtful look.

What had created the difference between her group and him when they were trapped by the Gestalt’s illusion?

Marika tried to find an answer as Tayori’s calm voice reached her ears.

“We had seen jellyfish ones and the tadpole ones could count as frogs, so it was possible there would be a Threat that used color or camouflage. …It makes sense in hindsight, but Utagai Karuta predicted it in advance. It’s like he has a more active imagination, or like he’s extra cautious. Then again, that really saved our butts.”

That boy prepared himself based on the assumption that he would step right into any trap awaiting him, his opponent would always be trying to deceive him, and there would be an opening somewhere he could use.

Marika sighed at Tayori’s comments.

“Yes, but there is a downside. His way of thinking can easily lead to paranoia if he isn’t careful. And that’s all well and good for him if he can keep things in balance, but how can we ever tell if he’s doing that when his only explanation is ‘he has a feeling’?”

Everything felt unpredictable, but they did know the Threat could be defeated. That was some hope at least.

Tayori glanced over at the washing machines.

“Also, you didn’t put any fabric softener in with our uniforms, did you? Based on the tag, that’ll cause them to fade like crazy. Although it might be like how lab coats are made to stain easily so you’ll notice anything toxic you got on there.”

“Oh? You’re surprisingly knowledgeable about this stuff.”

“Was that ‘surprisingly’ really necessary?”

And….

“Eek, eek, eek, eek.”

An odd breathing sound came from one point in the room.

Marika and Tayori looked over to see Matsuda Imi curled up in a corner of the laundry room. There were benches available, but she still had her bare butt directly on the tile floor wet with puddles of seawater. She had her back against the wall and her hands on her head.

She was acting strange.

She had not stopped trembling ever since they defeated the giant Gestalt sea anemone. She had always been an innocent and active girl. She would often teasingly hug you while changing for gym, but now she was trying to reject everything about the world and run away.

Her bright and extroverted personality may have left her unequipped to retreat inward at times like this.

She had not even removed her clothes herself. Marika had watched as Tayori was forced to help her out of them like a parent would do to a small child. After what happened, her age may indeed have regressed.

They did not know what the Gestalt’s camouflage had shown her, but she may have grown attached to it.

Karuta’s voice reached them through the door.

“Hey.”

“No, it isn’t about that.”

Tayori casually rejected that idea while grabbing the dryer.

Yes, Marika also knew why this had happened to her friend. Now was not the time to retreat to ridiculous ideas like her growing attached to the camouflage.

Imi’s fearful eyes were not directed at the thin door that Karuta and Aine stood on the other side of. No, those eyes were directed squarely at Amaashi Marika. At the friend she had gotten along with and had always hung around with.

“No…”

Her voice was quiet, but the intonation was unnatural.

It contained the tension of someone who had discovered unexploded ordnance that could go off at any moment.

“No. I’m going back to the others.”

“What is…”

Karuta started to ask something through the door, but Marika only quietly shook her head. And after realizing he could not see that, she spoke aloud.

Still naked, she pressed her back against the door.

“Leave her be.”

Marika’s group had experienced their own drama. A different sort of drama that Karuta and Aine could not hope to imagine. The three girls had not survived “just because”. If you did not create your own reason for survival, anyone would die in this world.

The next one to speak was Tayori in her mature gyaru-ish way.

Once her hair was dry, she held her hair tie in her mouth and reached back to do up her long hair in a complex fashion.

“Hey, Utagai-kun. Did you see a leg somewhere on your way here?”

“Y-yes.”

“That was Imi’s.”

They heard an obvious gasp from beyond the door.

Soft and honest Karuta may have assumed the fear and pain had broken Imi and he may have felt that was the proper reaction for a normal person. Being functionally able to fight was not the same thing as being emotionally able to fight. The regeneration preset did not eliminate the fear. To continue fighting was to face that fear and pain head on. So allies who always pushed you onward could become an indirect source of fear.

But he had the wrong idea.

After using the hair tie to keep her hair in place, Tayori confessed the real answer.

“The attack tore right through the barrier and took her leg off at the base of the thigh. Just like the blood vessels in your wrist, the femoral artery is pretty thick, so bandaging it up wouldn’t be enough to stop the blood normally. That would be fatal.”

“Eh?”

There was more confusion than pain in Karuta’s muffled voice because Matsuda Imi was in fact alive right now. A fatal wound should have crystallized her entire body along with her clothing instead of healing her after just 30 seconds.

“So.” Marika slowly explained the proper action she had taken. “I used my laser to cauterize the wound, buying her enough time for the regeneration to complete. That was the only way to save her.”

“Eek. Eeeeek!!!???”

Imi trembled even harder while curled up in a corner of the laundry room. That classmate had always had a bright smile on her face, but now she was holding her head while her legs (one newly regenerated) squirmed awkwardly below her. Even with only other girls here, she would normally have done a little more to cover up.

Tayori moved up next to her and gave her a hug while she wept.

“I can’t take it anymore! I just want to crawl in bed forever!! This isn’t right. I thought it was the Threat that did these awful things to people, so why are other people doing that now!?”

Karuta’s mental anguish seemed to seep through the door.

Marika breathed a heavy sigh.

She had saved her dying friend’s life. That was an undeniable fact.

But pursuing a mystery and learning the truth did not always solve everything. They had sensed this ugly feeling during their revenge against the Problem Solvers and while fighting the decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach. Karuta had to be experiencing it again here.

And.

Aine’s emotionless voice spoke from beyond the door.

“Sacri-sama, does Miss Imi wish she had died instead?”

“Aine.”

“Based on that report, I do not see any other way she could have survived, so it is unfair to view Miss Marika negatively over it.”

Marika shook her head in response, scattering some water droplets from her hair, but then she clicked her tongue at that habit.

She had to speak aloud right now. She had stripped bare, but that did not mean they could read her thoughts.

“Stop. Please.”

People did not always like what was right and dislike what was wrong.

Everyone felt differently about things.

Most children knew intellectually that vaccinations and dental fillings were necessary, but could they use that knowledge to erase the fear they felt rising from deep in their body when they saw the syringe or heard the motor grinding at their tooth? Could they remain smiling throughout?

Tayori had crouched down and hugged her friend while gently stroking her trembling back like she was soothing a small child.

“Imi can’t go on,” she said.

“…”

“But no matter how much she wants to leave, flying out of the ship will only get her swarmed with and devoured by the Threat. I doubt even changing back into the silent diving suit hidden at the bottom levels and diving into the ocean would work anymore.”

“Probably not,” agreed Karuta through the door.

Plenty of the jellyfish Threats had burst from the ocean when he had flown in just off the ocean surface in Aine’s arms.

He had already explained that to the others.

And inside the ship, they had defeated the sea anemone one that Marika’s group had named the Gestalt. After disturbing the Threat inside and outside the ship, the Threat was bound to have changed their formation. They had to assume what had worked a moment before might no longer work.

After a while, Karuta managed to say more.

“We have to continue on and kill the lion on the roof to make the sky safe for flight. Then we can call in everyone from Grimnoah. Restarting Second Grimnoah doesn’t require any of us as individuals. We’ll have achieved our goal as long as we defeat the Sparkle. Anyone who wants to leave can withdraw back to the airport during all the confusion.”

“That probably is best. Imi will only be a burden now that she’s lost the will to fight, but let’s carry her with us for a while longer.”

“Sure.”

He was saying that was fine with him.

They had already seen the lion and the sea anemone, so they knew there was more to the Threat than being tough and violent. Second Grimnoah was crawling with types they had never seen before, so there was no safe zone here. Marika was more exasperated than impressed that he could state that with such confidence. He could not leave behind that classmate who could not face the fear on her own. There was no benefit to that, but he still could not bear to leave her here.

But Tayori looked puzzled even though she had made the suggestion.

“I’m surprised.”

“Why?”

“Three of the four world’s strongest are here, so I didn’t expect you to accept someone else’s opinion so readily. I thought the bar would have been raised and I would be shut out for not making the cut.”

Karuta fell silent on the other side of the door for a bit.

Marika knew what that meant. He was smiling bitterly.

That would have been how it worked with the Problem Solvers. Which was the entire point.

Marika knew exactly how that soft childhood friend would respond and she was proven right soon thereafter.

“I’m working to not be that kind of strongest. So is Marika.”

Tayori shrugged a little. The short silence must have told Karuta that she was not panicking like Imi, so he asked another question.

“What about you? Do you want to quit?”

“I’ll follow whoever’s right,” dryly said Hashizaki Tayori. Her voice was different again from Aine who did not understand human emotion. “I don’t choose based on what I like or don’t like the way this girl does. But don’t let that put you at ease. If you ever stop doing the right thing, I’ll be disappointed in you and drop out, so keep that in mind.”

“…”

It took him 0.5 seconds before he said he understood.

That’s pretty harsh, thought Marika in the nude.

Marika understood that Karuta was thinking about the survivors of the first ship. He did not need to explain it to her. He was putting the still living students and teachers of the second ship in danger to save his dead friends from the first ship. He was clearly weighing their lives differently and he had to have noticed the contradiction there.

Even though it would be easier if he just went and did it.

Marika would use her full power as the world’s strongest to protect those she cared about, but Karuta lived a much more awkward life. If he used the watering can to water the flower pot, the flower would blossom, but he instead tried to water the entire desert with it.

(So…)

They heard a beeping as the large washing machines stopped spinning. They had finished the draining and drying phase.

(So I need to protect him. No matter what it takes.)

She let out a soft breath and reached for the drum’s lid.

She had not gotten there in time for Imi.

But she had managed to save that girl’s life. And life gave her the right to hate Marika for it.

That was thousands of times better than whitewashing death and letting her friend die.

That was her decision, no matter how harsh it was. And this was not just a whimpered excuse she made to herself – she could actually do it. That may have been what made her who she was.

“Now, all our preparations are complete,” cheerfully said the active girl. “So let’s take another peek into the depths of hell.”

Part 2

They were back in the floating general airport’s control tower.

“No, like I said in my report, we need to majorly rethink the risk presented by the Threat and- no, that is not what I am saying. If you would just look at Document #4495 I uploaded, you will see we must be cautious about using the Pinaka III because…”

Letnahe repeated her explanation again and again over her military smartphone.

President Omotesandou Kyouka shrugged and waited until the call was over.

Meanwhile, the redheaded buns Secretary whispered in her ear.

“Thank you for working such long hours for us. How about I use this time to change your socks?”

“Why? My feet are not swollen yet.”

“It is crucial that you give your feet some rest before you begin to feel it.”

The redheaded buns girl knelt on the floor without waiting for a response.

Kyouka smiled bitterly and lifted one ankle with her long legs still crossed. She could move them to an extent, but she still had difficulty with shoes and socks. This was not a normal Secretary duty, but she was still glad to have a subordinate who went above and beyond in looking after her.

She had not asked for it, but the girl gave her a massage while removing her leather shoes and socks. Her big toe and second toe clenched and unclenched in response to the stimulation to the sole of her foot, but then she heard a heavy sigh. Letnahe must have finished her call because she stuck her phone in her pocket.

The silver-haired brown-skinned wife turned toward Kyouka.

“It’s no use. They insist a special envoy is only supposed to convey their opinion, not present an opinion of her own.”

“I imagine so.”

“How can you just accept this?” Letnahe wrapped her left hand in her right hand and spoke with some barbs in her voice. “You’re the one that said we can’t expect a nuclear attack to work against the Threat.”

“Well, Letnahe-san. You don’t mind if I use your first name as a sign of affection for someone else who knows the truth, do you?” The President smiled while her kneeling subordinate put new socks on her feet. “I said I ‘imagine so’ because I know your higher ups aren’t going to change their plans just because they’ve been given new information. They had decided from the beginning they were going to make a nuclear attack. They would input the launch codes no matter the situation. They could always find some excuse or another: maybe you failed to contact them or maybe there was a mechanical malfunction.”

“But why?”

Letnahe blinked behind her glasses as she did a double take.

A nuclear attack was a big deal. If it succeeded, they might just defeat the Threat at the cost of a great many lives. But if it failed, they would only lose those lives and possibly more. It was a high risk, high return gamble, so surely the Indian Space Force would carefully recalculate everything if the situation changed, right?

Kyouka sighed before answering.

“Because they don’t mind if it fails.”

“Eh?”

“They have a plan ready for if they launch the nuclear attack and it fails. They have the rails set up so they can benefit even then. So they won’t recalculate anything. But they would have a much harder time if it got out beforehand that the attack would fail, right?”

“B-but that doesn’t make any sense! The entire country doesn’t want to commit diplomatic suicide, so why would they choose a path of failure from the very beginning!?”

“Strange, isn’t it?” The President tilted her head like a child. “But the fact remains that the coalition force has continued to take actions that clearly have no chance of success. Even you have noticed how unnatural it looks, haven’t you? The Indian Space Force is not incompetent, yet they are rejecting a plan that makes perfect sense if you think about it for two seconds. Why is that?”

“…”

“Do you want to know the answer? But your curiosity is strange as well,” smoothly continued Kyouka. “You’re an outsider here, so you could wait until you’re safely out of Japan before you puzzle over all of this. Are you worried about your Asian neighbors as a member of the Indian military? Or do you feel responsible as part of the coalition force? But this area is crawling with the real Threat and your allies could launch a nuclear weapon at any moment. To be honest, I doubt all those PR niceties really apply in a situation like this.”

“Well…”

“Do you have some reason why you can’t leave the country and think over it all while sipping at some tea? Hee hee. Yes, sorry. I know you could never do that.”

Letnahe looked up with a gasp.

The demon in a wheelchair smiled up at her like a child and did not hesitate to present the answer.

“Your left hand”

Her tone was innocent and thus precise.

She immediately attacked straight at the woman’s weak point.

“The ring is sensible enough, but that mobile watch makes no sense. It’s cheap and just not your style. In fact, it’s a men’s watch.”

Kyouka had mentioned earlier that it was an old model.

It was an antique from over a decade ago and the company had long since stopped supporting it.

Continuing to use it because you liked it did not work in this case. When the company stopped supporting an internet-connected device, it ceased to function. Plus, the military was strict about data management, so a soldier could not just sync something like that with their own phone. In fact, the phone she was carrying was a military model not available to the general public.

Yet she had made it all work.

If she had kept the mobile device functioning without the company’s support and manually solved any security problems that cropped up, then she had to be extremely attached to it. She would not have done that all this time if she simply liked its color or shape.

“Wearing someone else’s gift on the same hand as your wedding ring is rather impure, don’t you think? But you have a solid reason for doing so.”

There had been some hints scattered around.

For example, her age.

She had been familiar with the humidity and air quality in Japan in a way that suggested personal experience.

It was also curious that she had followed the President without needing any additional explanations when they discussed Crystal Magic.

Not to mention how she placed such emphasis on breathing.

She had a habit of holding her left hand in her right when feeling nervous, but she did not clutch at her ring when she did so. Her protective charm was something else that she had treated as a valuable and kept on even when she showered.

The President could deduce some things from all that.

“Your loyalty to the Indian military never really mattered to you.”

“Stop.”

“If you had remained in your comfortable home surrounded by your lovely husband and adorable children, you never would have been exposed to the danger of the Threat and a nuclear attack. What happens to Japan is irrelevant to someone living in India, right? Yet you traveled all the way here. To accomplish some other goal.”

“Please stop!!”

The enigma of Letnahe was all summed up by her left hand. She wore a ring on the ring finger and a mobile watch on her wrist. That unfaithful hand carried gifts from two different people.

The demon stated her conclusion to the other demon.

“Was Kiyosawa Hadome a friend from your school days? Someone you couldn’t forget even after marrying someone else? And now you wanted to get him away from this deadly place. That is your true purpose here, isn’t it?”

Letnahe Kurent’s knees gave out like she had taken a shot directly to the heart. A light beeping sounded from her mobile watch. It was a warning about her breathing and heartrate.

“You wanted to stop it from the beginning.”

The silver-haired brown-skinned soldier who had gone to such lengths to externally manage her internal organs had abandoned all of that.

Only Kyouka’s words filled the room.

“You wanted to stop the Indian Space Force’s nuclear attack. Why was it you tried to get a report on our plan? Were you hoping to use your viewpoint as a professional soldier to secretly correct all of our mistakes so you could convince them it was not yet time to launch the nuke?”

The military was the ultimate system of hierarchy where everything progressed according to a complete flowchart of yes or no questions. But that meant a soldier who knew what those questions were could prepare the data like a chess problem in order to keep the nuke from being launched no matter what.

She could prevent it from happening no matter how much the unseen string-puller wanted to hit the launch button based on emotion.

The President sighed softly.

“I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“…”

“I’m almost jealous of you for living a fulfilling enough life to have to choose between your marriage and your first love. Knowing your desires is a form of guarantee. I know I can trust the current Letnahe Kurent who abandoned her military orders and comfortable family to protect an old memory.”

“How…”

This was not to protect someone or to defeat the Threat.

The soldier got out what little voice she could after having everything revealed and shattered by this teenage girl.

“How can you trust someone as despicable as me?”

“I can trust the purity that brought you this far, biting your lip all the way. Goodness and purity are not always one and the same. And I am much fonder of you for approaching possible death while biting your lip than I am of the powerful who can give a public apology like it is nothing. No matter how terrible a person you might be, I know you will never lie when it comes to Kiyosawa Hadome. Isn’t that right?”

She fell silent.

Letnahe Kurent sat blankly on the floor while covering her face with her hands.

Omotesandou Kyouka knew this soldier was part of the string-pullers. She was the wicked woman who had approached Natlena, set her up as an avenger, and given her a false identity to send her to Second Grimnoah.

But what had she thought when she realized Kiyosawa Hadome was on that ship? How about when she learned he was being attacked by the decoy Threat at that artificial resort in Iceland, or when she learned he was at risk of being killed by the real Threat or a nuclear attack here in Japan?

What if she was one of the string-pullers, but only one of their agents. What if she was not in a position where she could protest such a major decision?

Kyouka placed a hand on her cheek.

“Couldn’t you have taken just Kiyosawa-sensei away with you? Either by knocking him out or drugging him?”

“I couldn’t.” Letnahe sounded like she was casting a curse with her hands still over her face. “I just couldn’t. Taking only Hadome-kun to safety wouldn’t actually save him. I know him. It would utterly destroy him to know so many students had died on his watch. He could never be like us. It would break his heart.”

This anguish was something she had been unable to share with anyone in the military or in her family.

But another wicked woman could help ease the pain as her heart was being crushed by the goodness remaining there.

“Lieutenant Colonel Letnahe Kurent,” whispered Kyouka. “This is a question that can never be answered by sending it to your higher ups and waiting for an answer like normal. But you can find an answer if you take a bit of a detour.”

With both her shoes back on, Kyouka rotated her wheelchair around.

She grabbed the headset from some control equipment.

“All sorts of transmissions are flying around here and I can intercept them with this. But the random number table needed to decrypt them is another matter. Letnahe-san, you would have that table thanks to your position deep in the Indian Navy, wouldn’t you?”

The hands lowered from her face.

The soldier spoke not so much with resentment as with the tone of a sulking child.

“Are you insane? That might save the world, but it would make me a traitor.”

“It would. Which is why this is a request, not a command or a suggestion,” said the President. “But there is a decision you can make that will protect the person you came here to protect. You took the risk of visiting the target of a planned nuclear attack, right? All so you could stop that attack from occurring.”

“Couldn’t you attack me and take it? Maybe you can’t use Crystal Magic anymore, but you have plenty of hounds you could sic on me.”

Still seated on the floor, Letnahe looked over at the redheaded buns girl who was slowly standing up. She was a Grimnoah Crystal Magician and the President had made sure to keep her around during this conversation.

But Kyouka shook her head.

“That might be easier, but I won’t do it.”

“Why not!?”

“Because we are both the type to work from the shadows and we have shared our secrets here. So I will not attack you and make just one of us the villain. If you wish to do this, you must accept just as much responsibility as me.”

The soldier squeezed her eyes shut behind her glasses.

She clenched her teeth and looked up at the ceiling. She looked about ready to stomp her feet in frustration.

“Can you not do it now that your momentum has been stopped?” whispered the President. “Then leave Japan right this instant and leave your old regrets here. The Threat is here and a nuclear attack will soon be launched, so Japan is no place to hang around for no good reason.”

“I am the special envoy sent to provide a message from the coalition force as a whole.”

A quiet jangling sound came from her neck.

But this was not her dog tags. When she removed a thin chain from her neck, flash memory smaller than a tube of lipstick was pulled from her large chest. She displayed her resolve as the wicked woman who wore both a ring and wristwatch on her left hand. She tossed the flash memory to Kyouka while trying to shake free of her doubts by speaking.

“Whatever the Indian military might be planning, a nuclear launch is unlikely to benefit the coalition as a whole, so I must reassess some information.”

“Hee hee. You’re willing to go this far for the first love you couldn’t bring yourself to forget even after getting married and having children?”

Kyouka held a hand to her mouth as she laughed and she did not hesitate to continue from there.

“If this is discovered and the Indian military kicks you out, come to us. Second Grimnoah will hire you. At the very least, you will be closer to the center of the world here than with that coalition force.”

The two wicked women shook hands.

Letnahe knew she could never tell anyone about this and she could never again walk with her head held high.

Nevertheless, there was something in this world she wanted to protect.

Part 3

“Keep going, keep going! This way!”

The silver iodide artificial rain had soaked up the oil fire’s smoke, creating a truly filthy downpour that plastered Sophia Firenze’s flaxen hair to her cheek. She was looking up into the night sky and waving her hands around. Even as an adult, she had a look of puppy-like energy on her face.

It was unclear how much it would draw the enemy fire away from the city, but Natlena Blast and the other students were accurately landing at the floating general airport. They took an almost vertical descent more like a helicopter or VTOL craft than a passenger plane that traveled down a long runway.

The woman in a soaked suit grinned (while entirely unaware that her unexpectedly boldly-colored underwear was showing through her white blouse).

“Good work, everyone. You can get a bath or change of clothes in the staff lobby. We also have a hot meal ready for you. Heh heh! If you want some food, please visit the café lounge.”

Natlena sighed at the mention of fresh clothes. She would be heading back out and getting soaked all over again after a short break, but dry clothes would still make her feel better.

She heard Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke chatting as they landed on the artificial float after her.

“Tch. What was Karuta talking about when he called her a puppy!? All she does is lecture you at length no matter what you do. If anything, she’s a grumpy cat. The kind that claws up your walls and furniture!”

“M-maybe it means she only opens up with Utagai-kun. Damn, I’m jealous.”

“Senpais?” said Natlena while slowly turning around, causing the high school boys to jump and scatter. They were the perfect example of disappointing boys. Natlena sighed at how her ideal view of older boys was crumbling before her eyes.

(Karuta-senpai must have really been working hard to look like a responsible adult.)

At any rate, she entered the hidden space through a small staff-only entrance and accepted a spare uniform and underwear. She was sorely tempted when she saw the sign on the wall for the shower room, but she shook her head. She was going to head out again soon anyway, so she wanted to avoid warming up too much before heading back out into the chilly rain. She instead used the locker room to strip off her clothes and dry her hair and body with a towel.

She spread out the provided underwear between her two hands.

“Ugh, this is a bolder color than I expected.”

Whose taste was this? She would have preferred a more subdued color since she was going to get soaked in the rain and they had not provided another thick sports innerwear. Not that she would have wanted some beige granny panties either.

The inability to intuitively choose something in between those two extremes suggested these had been chosen by Sophia (who was wearing something surprisingly bold). Natlena quickly got dressed in the new clothes, placed her wet clothes in a small plastic container, attached a sticker with her class and name written on it, and handed that to the student on laundry duty.

(Well, I didn’t choose this underwear, so it won’t be my secret showing if it shows through. And I have my perfect band-aid defense just in case.)

Oblivious to her own unusual views on the subject, she walked to the café lounge where she was met with the smell of spices. She tilted her damp-haired head and realized she had forgotten to use a dryer.

“I wonder what they’re feeding everyone. Curry rice???”

“Oh, Jane-san! Over here!!”

The female teacher hopped up and down and ran over with some rice balls and sandwiches without Natlena asking for anything at all. Jane Ignition was the false name she had been given back when she infiltrated Second Grimnoah for revenge, but she did not have much of an attachment to it now. She simply had not had a chance to tell the teacher what her real name was, so she was a little unsure what to do now.

Sophia Firenze smiled in a perfectly puppyish way.

“Here, have some food. You should start with something light, but if you want something more, we have seafood curry, cabbage rolls, and chukadon.”

That menu was awfully international, or a jumbled mess really. Natlena wondered how they had settled on that, but then she realized they were borrowing the ingredients available at the airport’s cafes and restaurants. The unnecessarily fancy and international selection meant there was probably a buffet somewhere in the airport.

“I recommend the tonkotsu ramen! They had a lot of souvenir packages in stock and the one I tried was just like the real deal! How exciting!!”

Hadn’t this teacher been fixated on some expensive cup noodles from a famous Japanese restaurant when they were at the Crystal Beach? Not getting any there must have caused her desire gauge to fill up even more here.

“Um, why would a Japanese souvenir shop sell tonkotsu ramen which is the same in every part of the country? Not to mention those mysterious shortbread cookies.”

“I don’t know.”

The grownup seemed legitimately puzzled. Then again, Sophia was not Japanese, so why would she know so much about Japan? Natlena was better off asking someone like Utagai Karuta about this mystery similar to how Tokyo’s train station bentos sold better than those at any other station around the country.

Natlena took a packaged sandwich and then sat in one of the one-person sofas lined up alongside the reinforced glass windows. “Sophia-sensei!” called some girls in the distance, so the tight skirt teacher rushed over to them. She was apparently fairly popular.

Natlena looked down at the clear box sitting in her lap.

She had expected ham or egg since Sophia had called it “light”, but she found it to be quite thick when she picked it up. It was a club sandwich, but it had an excessive amount of chicken. It was so greasy she could barely taste the spices.

(Does she think girls need to eat a lot to grow up?)

Natlena felt like Sophia Firenze and Amaashi Marika would get along. Meanwhile, she grabbed one triangular sandwich slice in both hands, took a small bite from a corner, and swallowed it. She realized she had forgotten to get a drink, but she did not feel like waiting in line now.

She finished off the three sandwich slices even though it grew difficult toward the end.

“Don’t let your body cool down! Focus on your breathing while resting to make sure your body is idling on the inside. Mobile watches are great for objectively measuring your metabolism, but don’t let the numbers control you!!”

She could hear overbearing and muscular Kiyosawa Hadome’s voice.

He was causing a scene a short distance away. The massage chairs and energy drinks were apparently growing popular, but Natlena had no desire to join the crowds of people. She knew she had a habit of seeking out peace and quiet at times like this.

Just like her sister Anastasia had.

“…”

But then…

“Here.”

Someone spoke to her from the side and tossed her something. She caught it in a hand to find it was a U-shaped pillow.

Yamane Deiri waved at her.

“We’re heading out again after a short break. We’ve got a long way to go, so get some sleep while you can.”

“Um, is that really best?”

“This is a marathon, not a sprint. And if you let your guard down at any point, the anti-air lasers will get you, so don’t do anything that will hurt your focus later. Even 10 or 15 minutes of sleep can make a lot of difference. I know that from experience, so listen to your upperclassman here.”

“O-okay.”

“Because napping in class gives you all the energy you need to make the most of your lunch break! Ah ha ha!!”

Deiri left while laughing.

She felt so stupid for thinking highly of that older boy for even a moment. But it was true she had nothing to do now that she was done changing and eating. Crystal Magic did not require refueling or resupplying and no maintenance or inspections were necessary.

(10 or 15 minutes, hm?)

The green beams of light continued to occasionally tear through the darkness of the sky visible through the reinforced glass with rain pounding against it. Other students were drawing the anti-air laser fire. They were operating in shifts, but she still felt bad relaxing while they were out there doing that. Same with Marika’s group who had gone silent after leaving for Second Grimnoah and with Karuta and Aine who had gone to save those three. They were all fighting with their lives on the line, yet here she was.

On the other hand, getting some rest was part of her job.

And fretting here would accomplish nothing. She told herself that sleeping would be better than staying awake doing nothing, so she placed the U-shaped pillow behind her neck, folded her hands in front of her stomach, and then leaned back in the sofa.

She shut her eyes.

Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke looked quietly down at 12-year-old Natlena Blast as she slept soundly in her large seat.

“Uhh, Karuta-senpai…zzz…”

The two boys smiled bitterly and placed a blanket over her.

They were heading back out soon, but they decided to leave her be.

“She’s been working way too hard for a little brat,” said Deiri as he turned around.

“H-high schoolers like us are supposed to protect the middle schoolers. Especially the girls.”

“And we’ve definitely gotta ask Karuta about that dream of hers when he gets back.”

“He’d better tell us his trick to winning middle school hearts!!”

They were the decoys who could never deliver a finishing blow themselves but were also constantly at risk. Some might see that as drawing the short straw, but they looked perfectly satisfied.

Deiri spun one arm around and cracked his neck with a wild smile on his lips.

“Okay, let’s get Round 2 started to protect our pal out there.”

“R-right. We’ve gotta show off how cool high schoolers are and let those middle schoolers know there’s a single upperclassman out there waiting for them.”

Part 4

Aine produced a soft sound by hugging Marika from the front. She buried her face in the girl’s large chest and sniffed.

“Hm, acceptable.”

“Th-thanks?”

“Now we need not worry about the Threat tracking us using your scent. Sniiiiiff.”

“W-wait, um, Aine-chan, th-th-th-that’s embarrassing!”

Was more people a good thing or a bad thing?

It probably depended on the situation. In a traditional battle where both sides rushed at each other to fight, greater numbers provided an absolute advantage. But for a sniping or infiltration mission where you could not afford to be noticed, more people only increased the risk of detection.

But Karuta came to understand something now that he experienced it for himself.

Greater numbers did at least help reduce the psychological burden. Just like the grammatical terms of first person, second person, and third person, gathering three or more people may have helped provide more objectivity. He was able to keep his cool while observing and understanding his surroundings a lot better than when he had been nearly crushed by the paranoia-like pressure before. (Although part of that was because he could not share the burden with Aine since she was not even human.) The increased objectivity gave them an urge to actively share the thoughts in their heads.

In other words, it made them talkative. Dangerously so.

“Come to think of it, why did the real Threat come here at all?” asked Karuta.

He was currently crouching below the hallway windows and moving slowly along the wall. The Threat had covered these windows with metal panels and other materials just like elsewhere, but they were still concerning.

The scratching of claws on the outside had not changed, so they must not have been noticed. The Threat on the other side of the metal panels could not hear the noises from the hallway. And if those were the wharf roach and tadpole ones, they may not have been anatomically structured to “look down” even if the metal panels had not been in the way.

This seemed to confirm it.

“This means I was right about the wharf roach and tadpole ones using their red lenses to visually locate targets. Heh heh,” said Aine.

“Yes, yes. I’ll buy you a pacifier and some baby formula later, so just be quiet.”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………………Stare.”

“D-don’t silently stare at me like that, Aine. It’s scary.”

“Criticizing me for obeying your orders is unfair.”

She puffed out her cheeks while only 10cm away from him, so he was unsure what to do about her.

For now, he glanced toward a window.

“Anyway, why are they still clinging to the outside like that? They should be able to break through the glass easily enough and they even reinforced the windows with those metal panels and other junk.”

“It certainly doesn’t seem like they want to get in but can’t,” agreed Marika.

The slate pencil urchin and the Gestalt sea anemone were confirmation enough that the Threat was already active within Second Grimnoah. They had no problem getting inside, yet there was clearly one group that did so and one group that did not.

The curly twintails childhood friend crouched below the windows as she snuck down the hallway.

“So do they have some kind of division of roles? Hmm, like maybe the ones covering the outside are meant to hide what’s going on inside the ship.”

“You’re assuming the inside is more important and the outside is just armor, but that’s a human way of thinking. They might just want to eat the paint and barnacles attached to the ship. We don’t know anything about the Threat’s biology or how they think.”

“We’re not just talking about the ones on the outside of the ship,” sighed gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. “We saw an alert network of jellyfish and sea anemone ones surrounding the ship on the ocean floor. They were spread out so far it’s hard to think those are what really matter. I think Second Grimnoah really is their central point.”

If the ones spread across the ocean were the most important, then the academy ship would be an intruder and it would be odd for the all-destroying Threat to not eliminate it. In that case…

“Does the Threat have some reason for occupying Second Grimnoah instead of sinking it? It doesn’t look like they just want to destroy our mobile base.”

“But, Karuta, Second Grimnoah is just a floating school, right? Did we have any special materials onboard?”

The ship itself had been made by buying and fully remodeling a cruise ship. It may have been unusual when compared to an ordinary life, but cruise ships could be found all over the world. There was no real reason to target Second Grimnoah specifically.

“What are you talking about?” Pale-faced Matsuda Imi’s lips moved. She let out a depressing groan of a voice while her teeth chattered even though it was not cold. “Of course there’s something special on this ship. It’s the only place in the world where you can find dead and crystallized magicians.”

“…”

“She has a point, Sacri-sama. If they are preparing to fight Crystal Magicians, they would most want to test the limits of your preset regeneration. How far must they go to defeat one? How much of a risk is there of a defeated one returning to the fight? It is reasonable to assume the Threat would want to investigate such things.”

Crystal Magicians were not immortal like Susannia Evans of the Problem Solvers, but someone who did not know how their regeneration worked might see them as zombies who kept getting back up no matter what.

Killing them was not enough to relax.

So the Threat would want to know how far they had to take it before they could relax.

(It does make sense!!)

Karuta himself had checked through the corpse(?) of a decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach to figure out how they worked, so if he were in the Threat’s position, that was exactly what he would do.

On the other hand, it would be wrong to suggest they go check on Gekiha and the others.

They were kept at the very bottom level of the three-hull ship’s central hull. But to defeat the Sparkle lion so their Grimnoah allies could fly here, they had to climb to the roof of the middle school building. Those were opposite directions and illogically making a U-turn now might destroy any trust Imi and Tayori had in him.

He wanted to avoid creating a rift between them here.

This had nothing to do with who was stronger than who. Traveling through Second Grimnoah was a risky thing. If Imi finally hit her limit and screamed, broke through a nearby window, or called for help using her Crystal Blossom, the Threat would notice. And then none of them would survive.

(And either way…)

He came to a stop and shut his eyes.

He clenched his teeth and dragged up the despicable part found deep inside him.

He forced himself to think it.

(Either way, the Threat has been occupying Second Grimnoah for a while now. If they really are here to investigate those crystal statues, Gekiha and the others won’t have escaped unharmed. With this much time, I have to assume the Threat has already done something with them!!)

“Aine…the rest of you too. We’re headed to the roof.”

“Yes, Sacri-sama.”

“We need to slaughter these pieces of shit no matter what and step one is neutralizing the lion’s anti-air lasers on the roof. So…”

Just as he squeezed those words out, he and Aine jumped behind a pillar sticking out from the wall, Marika got down and slipped into the narrow space below a water fountain, and Tayori dragged Imi into an empty classroom to hide.

Something large had come down from the stairs.

It was a slate pencil urchin, suggesting there were more than one of them in the ship. But it must not have noticed them while moving around because it wandered for a bit near the entrance to the stairs and then rolled back through that entrance. They could not tell if it had gone up or down, but it was probably moving between each floor every so often.

It was on a patrol.

“Looks like we can’t use the stairs,” whispered Marika from below the water fountain. “Should we find another route? There are probably small elevators for the kitchen carts.”

Since they could fly, they did not need to follow the ordinary routes. Marika had suggested an elevator, but that did not require them to press the button and move the car like normal. They could just fly up the shaft like it was a chimney.

(But where can we actually find a usable shortcut?)

If they spent too long in the hallway, another Threat might just find them, so they moved to a nearby sliding door, slid it open a crack, checked to make sure the windows were covered by metal panels and other materials, and then hid inside.

The room was two or three times the size of an ordinary classroom. In the darkness, their eyes were drawn to the electric jigsaws, drills, and the vises attached to the thick work tables. Karuta did not have the middle schools’ layout memorized (despite helping out with some of their classes), but he could guess this was the shop classroom.

Imi had to be the most sensitive to fear because she clung to her gyaru-ish friend and spoke with legs trembling.

“Wh-what do we do now? We’re done for if we can’t get up to the roof.”

“Sacri-sama.” Aine pointed her crystal sword up toward a rectangular grated cover on the wall near the ceiling. “If necessary, we could use that.”

“The air duct?” asked Marika while looking up.

Karuta felt just as skeptical.

“Can we really fit through such a narrow space?”

“We are in no position to eliminate possibilities based on speculation. We cannot know for sure without checking first.”

“Fine, then.”

It was true none of them had any better ideas. The duct was on the shop classroom’s rear wall, so they could reach it by standing on the hip-high tables lined up there.

For some reason, Childhood Friend Marika put her hands on her hips and puffed her cheeks out.

“Why is it you’ll do almost anything if Aine-chan asks you?”

“Because she doesn’t ask for pointless things like you do.”

But…

“Oof…damn, I can only barely reach it while on my tiptoes. Getting inside would be difficult.”

“Sacri-sama, lift me on your shoulders.”

He just about agreed on reflex, but then he stopped.

“You’re a girl in a skirt.”

“Yes, and?”

She only tilted her head while standing on the same table as him with her bright thighs exposed.

The crystal girl really did have no issue with being touched despite not liking having her skin seen. She still had some learning to do.

Her white dress had a large slit on both sides, presumably so it did not hinder her movements. That made it more revealing than a China dress but less revealing than a kunoichi outfit.

It bothered him.

It bothered him so much, but then she placed her small hands on his shoulders and pushed down. She was convinced he had to be on the bottom.

“Hold on, hey, this is embarrassing! Do I really have to stick my head into this tunnel!?”

“Sacri-sama, struggle too much on the desk and you will fall off.”

“Ah, ahhh…I’m inside it…”

He looked like he had just caught a glimpse of a new world, but he had to focus on his knees and hips as he felt something warm and soft squeezing against his cheeks. He slowly stood up on the unsteady table and then Aine began to squirm on top of him. She was apparently removing the duct cover with both hands.

“Hmm, I got the cover off, but I am still not quite high enough. I cannot see inside.”

He tried to look up, but the inside of her skirt covered his entire face. It gave off a faint warmth and a sweet scent.

“Pwah, A-Aine, what are you doing up-”

“I can gain a little more height if I use my flight.”

Her thighs lifted upwards while still squeezing at his head.

The thigh heaven quickly became a hanging. Karuta flailed his legs that could no longer reach the table below.

“Agwgggghhhh!?”

“What is this?”

“I’m dying!? M-my head’s gonna pop off! Bgweh, Aine, I’m sorry! I’m sorry there was a part of me that thought I was lucky to do this!! Bweh!!”

“Ah ha ha. This is what we call karma, Karuta.”

For some reason, Marika triumphantly put her hands on her hips.

It could not have lasted more than 10 seconds, but it was a terrifying 10 seconds due more to the pain of his neck bone feeling it was going to pop out than due to suffocation. Pain you were not used to feeling could be a very different experience, like skinning your knee or cutting your finger with a knife.

“W-wait, if you could just use your flight, why get on my shoulders at all?”

Aine slowly descended and freed the boy’s head, but she was still seated on his shoulders as she tilted her head.

“Traveling through here would be difficult.”

“Is it too small?” asked Tayori from below.

“No.” Aine shook her head. “It is filled with something similar to spiderwebs.”

“Spiderwebs?”

“Something similar to. There may be a spiderlike Threat variety. These are probably simple metal wires with a current running through them. I estimate them to be weaker than paper, so if you carelessly touch one, it will break and they will immediately detect your presence. Given the density, traveling through here without being detected would be effectively impossible.”

“There wasn’t anything like that in the smoke vent.”

If the Threat had something like that, why was it not laid out all through the hallways and classrooms? Karuta had his questions, but Aine did not have all the answers. Maybe the Threat only had so many materials to work with, or maybe they decided it would be inefficient in the ordinary passageways where other Threats were traveling.

Karuta crouched down on the table to lower the thigh girl.

“We might be able to use that.”

“Are you going to ignore my warning and use that route anyway?” asked Aine.

“No, so don’t get upset. If we can’t find any other route, we can break the threads with some kind of timed device to draw the Threat’s attention. If that slate pencil urchin leaves the stairs, we can use them ourselves, right?”

That would be a last resort, of course. The risk of running across the Threat was higher if they were off their usual patrol route. If you absolutely had to approach a hornet’s nest, you would prefer to tiptoe around. Very few people would want to throw a stone and rile up the hornets before sneaking in.

(How are things over there?)

Karuta crouched in front of the classroom door and slid it open a crack to peek outside.

The stairs were silent.

Just as he started to lean out more, he quickly pulled his head back inside. He stuck a plastic ruler out as a mirror and confirmed that the slate pencil urchin was indeed there.

It made regular patrols, leaving no openings for them.

Marika leaned over him to peek out into the hallway herself. She may have thought she was only placing her head on top of his like two dango on a skewer, but she was actually placing something else on top of his head. What was it? A pair of weights. And she seemed entirely unaware how perfectly they were resting on his head.

“Yeah, there’s no getting through there. We could probably run down the hallway while it’s away, but we would run right into it if we tried to climb the stairs to the roof.”

“Y-yes. That’s probably more or less it. Maybe.”

“Why are you being so noncommittal???”

He was too distracted to give a clear answer, but then something occurred to him.

“Hold on.”

“?”

Marika could not initially tell what he was focused on.

“I hear something,” said the boy. “It’s coming from down this hallway. I think that’s where the gym is. We could pass through there, couldn’t we?”

“That might work if we just want a way to the roof to attack the Sparkle.” Tayori slid open the empty classroom’s door a bit and nodded. “The gym uses space from multiple floors to give it more height, so we could fly right up to the roof from there. And unlike a cramped and restrictive elevator shaft, we might be able to escape if the Threat has laid an ambush for us.”

They all nodded.

After the Threat patrolling the stairs appeared again and moved back up the stairs, they made their move. The route took them near the stairway in question, but they ignored it. The Threat was gone for now, but they could not blindly rush up the stairs when they could run across it at any point.

Instead, they made their way to the double doors at the far end of the hallway. Those led to the gym.

After approaching and pressing against the door, Karuta groaned. He was focused on the crack between the double doors.

“(I can see light through the door. They have the lights on in there.)”

“(That doesn’t sound good.)”

Marika sounded cautious, but she was actually raring to go. This was different from anything they had seen before, so she may have thought they would find some crucial hint about the Threat inside.

“(The Threat has some level of intelligence.)” Aine was more pessimistic. “(Based on the tentatively-named Gestalt, they are at least intelligent enough to deceive humans for an easy victory. Nowhere else has had the lights on, but it could easily be a trap, similar to a military tablet being ‘abandoned’ on top of a landmine on the battlefield.)”

They both had a point.

Karuta crouched down, pressed his hands against the double doors, and shut his eyes.

He clenched his teeth, reopened his eyes, and spoke.

He had made his decision.

“Let’s go. We have business with that lion on the rooftop regardless.”

“We must have been cursed…”

Imi’s gaze wandered diagonally up through empty space while Tayori held her close. It was unclear who she was trying to talk to.

Karuta gathered strength in his hands and pushed. The door slowly and silently opened.

The light pierced his eyes.

It felt as bright as a car’s headlights. Had the gym’s lights always been so bright?

Eventually, his senses returned to him.

They had entered on the second floor of the gym instead of the large flat area used to play basketball or volleyball. Specifically, they were in the far back.

He raised his head while still crouched down to see an orderly arrangement of steel beams and halogen lights. The roof where the lion awaited was just above those.

However…

“(I knew something wasn’t right.)”

He was focused more on the floor below than their destination above.

This rear second floor space was meant for spectators, but since it had a railing-like wall set up to prevent people from falling, they could hide from anything below by crouching. The wall was only about hip height, but they had no way of seeing what was happening while hidden there.

Yes.

“(Something’s happening in here. But what is this sound???)”

Still crouched, he approached the railing-like wall. Taking a detour from their objective would only needlessly delay the mission and put everyone’s lives at greater risk. And in this case, “everyone” was more than just him, Marika, and the others here. It also included Natlena and that group. He knew that, but he could not resist the urge.

It took him more than two minutes to reach the wall.

Curled up behind the hip-height wall, he focused his ears on the disconcerting noise he could hear.

(What is this?)

He was no longer speaking with anyone.

The confusion only grew in his mind as he slowly gathered strength in his knees. He hesitantly rose up from his crouch to peer over the low wall.

And.

He saw it.

Part 5

The floating general airport’s control tower had enough communications equipment to intercept transmissions on any frequency, but now Omotesandou Kyouka had the random number table needed to decrypt the Indian military’s transmissions.

A vast amount of clear voices and data were revealed to her.

But even with it all visible and audible, it used a lot of technical terms and codewords meant to hide those terms, so a normal person would have had a hard time comprehending what was being said. But she was different.

“I see.”

“Wh-what is it?” hesitantly asked Letnahe Kurent.

She would not escape this untouched now that she had handed over the flash memory containing the random number table. She had shaken free of her hesitation, but she would still want something useful to come of it.

She had cast out her spirit of justice for this.

Even after marrying and exchanging rings, she had never been able to throw out her first love. She would protect Kiyosawa Hadome from this crisis. She would not back down on that no matter what.

Kyouka removed her headset.

“The Indian Space Force wants to launch their nuclear strike no matter what. Since they refuse to recalculate their schedule even as the conditions change and new information comes in, they are most likely planning for their attack on the Threat to fail. I explained that much before, didn’t I?”

“But why!? If they launch a nuclear strike but it doesn’t show results, the international backlash will be fierce. Does the Indian military want to commit diplomatic suicide!?”

“What if they could bring another country down with them?”

Kyouka laughed and Letnahe stared in shocked silence.

“On who will responsibility fall if the nuclear strike fails? This mission is not being run by the Indian military alone; it is run by the larger coalition force. I don’t know if the US or China are in charge, but whatever superpower is at the top will take the blame more than any of the individual countries making up the coalition. All those smaller countries will refuse to take the blame, insisting that the superpower pressured them into it.”

“So you’re saying,” the silver-haired, brown-skinned soldier gulped while touching the side of her glasses. “Everyone would take damage, but not the same amount? And if another country took more damage than their own, then the Indian military would benefit? That’s their game!?”

“Everyone signs nuclear reduction treaties, but nuclear weapons never seem to go away, do they? Why is that? If the treaty says each country must reduce their nuclear weapons by 30%, then the burden is vastly different for a country with 100 versus a country with 10,000. Which is why they never succeed. Well, they might do it so they can dispose of the excess they don’t want to bother keeping around any longer, but a compromise to bring peace? That’s only an excuse used once they have carefully thought through everything and they know the burden on the other nation will be greater. It’s a strategic move, similar to something from shogi or chess.”

With a normal nuclear reduction treaty, the damage would not be all that great.

They only agreed to a target to aim for and there were no actual penalties in place if they failed to achieve that target. The country could weasel out of it with their usual equivocation.

But things would be different this time. They would have made a nuclear strike that failed to defeat the Threat. They would have caused many unnecessary deaths. And it would be unclear whether responsibility lay with the Indian military or the entire coalition force.

Would that be allowed to stand?

The furious people of the world would undoubtedly demand a forced reduction treaty with actual penalties for noncompliance. The actual reduction amount might be 50% or 80%, but whatever it was, the countries with more nukes would have to pay more to dispose of them.

India was officially recognized as a nuclear power, but they had far fewer than America or Russia. If they could keep the damage to themselves low, they could effectively rob their opponents of national power.

“What is my homeland doing?” asked Letnahe like it was a curse.

She cared about the family represented by her ring, but she also could not throw out the memories of her first love contained in her watch.

While trapped between those two, she had to be aware that everyone in the world had people they cared about in the same way. And they had met other people they found irreplaceable. But all of that would be brought crashing down as simply as performing a sum or subtraction.

But Kyouka shrugged.

“I can’t really blame them.”

“?”

“All of humanity must join together to fight the Threat. That one excuse is all anyone needs to endlessly expand their military these days. But the fight against the Threat will end someday. And what will everyone do with their stockpiled weapons then? Do you really think they will dispose of them after spending so much money on them? Do you honestly think the top brass will throw out all their privileges and make themselves unemployed?”

“But…”

“The fight against the Threat might end, but they will still find a way to make those weapons necessary. How about they fight against natural disasters? They could use powerful missiles to drive the greenhouse gasses out of their country and they could use underground nuclear experiments to create artificial earthquakes that provide a safe release for the power of the plates. Really, it could be anything, even missile farming or drone mining. They will all find some reason or another to protect their way of life. …We will continue to live in an age where every country wants as many weapons as it can get. So is it that strange for someone to decide now that they should take weapons away from the other nations?”

Letnahe gasped this time.

She could not believe how far this conspiracy went. Each individual piece might seem reasonable enough in isolation, but the end result had put Omotesandou Kyouka’s home of Japan in the crosshairs. Not only had she been born and raised there, but her trusted companions were fighting on the front line just before this meaningless nuclear strike that was never meant to succeed.

Yet she “couldn’t really blame them”?

She actually sympathized with India’s plans and what they hoped to gain?

“What is going on in that head of yours?” Letnahe was dumbfounded, but she could not keep her questions inside. The words came out on their own. “Do you know how many civilians with no connection to the fight against the Threat will die!? And not just from the direct blast and heat! The wind will carry the fallout across this entire archipelago!! This isn’t just some number calculated out on a document. The lives being snuffed out here are all people who someone cares about more than anyone else in the world. That someone cares about so much they would be willing to violate all their principles and morals to protect them!”

“Yes.” Even now, Kyouka responded as promptly as ever. “I’m sure you already know since you must have done a thorough investigation on me, but my family lives in Kyoto. My parents, my grandmother, and my little brother. Oh, and the servants and drivers who have worked for my family long enough that they’re basically family to me. Their only real source of information is TV and the newspaper. That and anything they hear people talking about in the neighborhood, I suppose. They’re as normal as they come and a little too accustomed to peace, so I have my doubts if they would even evacuate after hearing the siren blaring. Even so, they are fairly well known in the local area.”

“…”

“I care about them more than my own life. In the event of a nuclear explosion, they will receive a large dose of radiation. And if Crystal Magic fails and the Threat is free to attack, they might just wipe out all of Kansai.”

Yet she was unmoved.

She remained her usual self and took only the optimal actions.

She had lifted her mind to a place that Letnahe had never managed since she kept her ring on even while wearing that white military uniform.

“But why should I weep and wail? What would that change?” Anyone who saw the President here would realize that even smiles came in multiple varieties. This one looked like her face had been sliced open in a crescent moon shape. “The first ship taught me all too well that death does not discriminate. Pray all you want, no god is going to answer. God is not a vending machine that dispenses miracles for anyone who wants one. Do these not sound like the words of the strongest? Writing up a formal complaint about life being unfair would be a waste of time. We need to focus on the good fortune we have to find ourselves here and with a few different options available to us. We can still change how this plays out. So what is it we can do? And what should we do?”

“Are you saying…you know the answer to that?”

“Whether it is an ‘unfortunate misunderstanding’ or a ‘communications failure’, the Indian Space Force wants an excuse to launch their nuke. They want something that shows Grimnoah has lost and the adult military must take over.”

“Are you saying you can keep them from doing that by taking away their excuse? Like…having Grimnoah defeat the Threat right away? No, we wouldn’t be in this mess if you could-”

“Wrooong,” cut in the President. Then she presented her conclusion. “We can’t defeat the Threat right away, but don’t you think we could obscure the result, ensuring no one can tell if we won or lost?”

Part 6

When Karuta looked down from the second-floor of the gym, he saw the real Threat there. These were the legged tadpole ones, but there were a lot of them. Each one rivalled a large semi truck in size, but more than 100 of them were lined up here.

Yes, lined up.

This was odd. What were they doing? Instead of causing mayhem or crawling around, they all remained entirely motionless while staring in the same direction. A few possibilities came to mind – waiting, sleeping, resupplying – but none of them seemed quite right.

A home theater projector that could be used with the lights on was projecting some kind of footage onto the stage.

Aine had speculated the tadpoles used their vision to locate targets.

If that was true, then they were watching something here.

It included audio:

“Crystal Magic produces supernatural phenomena from the unseen occult pressure differences similar to high and low pressure fronts that are created by the collision of the powers pouring down from space and the power emanating from the Original Crystal Embryo in the center of the earth. Just like the priests and priestesses of an older age gained enough power to gather the people’s support and rule entire countries or the world by reading the wind to predict the weather for use by sailing ships or farmers.”

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

His breathing stopped.

He could not believe what he was seeing here.

What…what were they doing??? His mind could not keep up, but the cheerful female voice from the reference video did not stop.

“That is why Crystal Magic uses a god’s name to gain the ability to ‘read’ the occult calendars and horoscope charts found in different mythologies and religions. Crystal Magic cannot create the wind out of nothing and cause miracles that way, but it can cause phenomena impossible for an ordinary person by riding the existing wind and using the great power found there. Just like a windmill grinds wheat or a glider soars through the sky.”

“The Threat…the real Threat is taking a class in school?” groaned Marika like she too could not believe what she was seeing.

Why had the Threat occupied Second Grimnoah without sinking it? Why had they attacked the academy ship in the first place?

This was the answer.

“This is bad,” said gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. Instead of retreating to surreal sarcasm, she laid out the actual risks. “The Threat is powerful enough already, but are they analyzing our Crystal Magic now? That’s the human trump card. If they learn to do the same thing, their tougher bodies will let them win.”

(Is that really it?)

Karuta had his doubts.

If those Threats (that had somehow gotten their enormous bodies through the entrance) were hooked up to a computer with a cable and were mechanically installing the data, he might have feared the same thing.

But this was different.

The gym’s atmosphere was relaxed. Even if the purpose of this was to learn, he sensed something else in the atmosphere hanging over the tadpoles.

Yes.

When Karuta and his classmates had learned about Crystal Magic as a means of fighting the Threat on the first ship, they had not had a clear vision of how it would be used. They had been more focused on whether they would go to the cafeteria or the school store for lunch.

Some of the Threats here were secretly napping. Some were swaying in time with some kind of rhythm. Some were scratching at the floor with their feet. They were drawing out orderly doodles. If these tadpoles were given thick paper textbooks, they would probably draw out a flip book on the edge of the pages.

But that would mean…

(Do they not have a goal? These tadpoles are just aimlessly passing the time? Almost like they’re dying for this class to end. But could mere machines do that??? An AI that gathers data from past weather forecasts is only doing that because it was given that specific goal. Machines can’t take a break unless it’s set as a necessary task for achieving their optimum goal, like if they need to cool down or limit energy consumption. There’s no such thing as a program that can just “kill time” if you tell it to. Then are they not machines? Are they just like us?)

“Wait, wait!! Could they be harmle-”

Karuta was cut off by a dull bang.

It came from Imi who was still held in Tayori’s arms.

Her eyes were wandering while she held out her right hand. She held a bizarre weapon that had medical equipment like a scalpel and forceps spread out like a multitool in place of a bayonet.

She had already fired.

There was a hole in the head(?) of one of the legged tadpoles on the floor below.

They had been so tough, yet this one had gone down so easily.

This was the first time someone other than Karuta and Aine had defeated one.

But he could not rejoice over this because something felt off.

“No. I can’t take it anymorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre!!!!!!”

She had been pushed to the very limit and her scream echoed across the gym.

“Sacri-sama.” Aine calmly announced their coming execution while adjusting her grip on her crystal-like katana. “We have hit the limit.”

All forms of killer intent stabbed in at Karuta’s group.

Those tadpoles had been aimlessly attending the class, but that did not mean they were powerless. Karuta and Marika had attended their classes on the first ship in much the same way, but they had possessed enough power to crush the Problem Solvers, hadn’t they?

“Tch! Tezcatlipoca, power up!!”

Marika stood up immediately. She must have decided there was no point in hiding any longer. Pointy crystal armor jutted out from her body while she drew a rapier-like device out of empty air. But that was not only a close-range weapon. By turning the round guard around, she could use it as a laser sniping unit.

Several laser beams shot down like lightning strikes.

The gym floor shattered.

The doodles drawn in the middle of class were destroyed.

Karuta clenched his teeth as he turned toward Aine and gestured over the wall with his chin.

“Always have an escape route in mind and cause them some trouble without getting yourself killed!!”

“Understood.”

Aine did not hesitate at times like this.

Marika tended to solve everything through combat and even she was forced to only snipe down from the upper floor, but Aine immediately jumped down from the railing to fight on the front line below.

Meanwhile, Karuta turned toward Imi and Tayori.

“What gods’ names did you input into your Crystal Blossom circuit boards?”

“I used the Norse monster Fenrir and Imi used the Egyptian medical goddess Neith.”

Tayori activated her crystal armor with a sound like a thick spring being released. Thick claw-like weapons attached to the back of her hands. She was apparently limited to infighting and had no projectiles.

Fenrir.

A weapon named after the wolf that devoured the top Norse god might possess great power in every single blow.

“Power up complete. What do you want us to do?”

“We won’t last long like this. I want to destroy the Sparkle on the roof ASAP if possible.”

“That would be difficult. But if I went unnoticed…”

“?”

“I’m a close-range specialist, so I could climb onto the roof and bite that lion. Getting close to it would be the hard part, but if I could do that…”

Karuta nodded.

But then he heard an unusual sound from the floor below. That was not the sound of heavy and solid metal clashing. It was a high-pitched and piercing sound similar to glass.

Glass.

Crystal.

“Aine!?”

Driven by a very bad feeling, Karuta leaned over the hip-height wall and looked down despite the danger. That was when he saw it.

The legged tadpoles were shaking their truck-sized bodies. But even with the laser sniping from above and Aine going wild with her katana, they did not fight back. Was this part of their division of roles? Instead of trying to fight, they were trying to escape to safety so their accumulated knowledge could be passed on to the rest. Or to put it another way, Aine was chasing down the unresisting tadpoles and mercilessly cutting them down from behind. If his side stopped trying to fight, this hellish scene would go away on its own, yet the hell before his eyes never ended.

This almost made it look like his side had started it.

All they had wanted to do was take back their school.

When one tadpole’s leg was cut off, it rolled over, exposing its belly.

Aine used her flight to jump straight up in preparation to deliver the finishing blow.

Just then, the tadpole did something strange. It forcibly bent its humorous elliptical body to bring the long tail-like part in front of its belly to defend itself. Almost like it was terrified of the coming pain.

“Wai-!!”

Not even Karuta himself knew what he had wanted to shout there. And Aine’s sword completed its merciless attack before he could get the command out. Instead of aiming for the obvious belly, she bisected the upside-down tadpole’s head starting with its giant jaw.

The giant black thing screamed, the slicing of its mouth distorting the cry.

Karuta watched on in shock as Marika fired more lasers down. She could not finish them off with that, but she could cause the other scattered tadpoles to flinch. And when that brought them to a brief stop, Aine would attack. All without batting an eye.

He had thought he understood her.

At least a little.

She had learned to feel embarrassment when her skin was seen, but she had failed to learn to feel the same when her skin was touched. She would stand by his side with sword at the ready no matter how hopeless the situation and she had accepted the bitesize chocolate reward while complaining that it was inefficient. When he had shown off his ugly side, she had held him to her flat chest and pointed out his faults like a mother.

But her sword showed no hesitation whatsoever.

The reaping had begun.

(What…?)

He could not breathe.

The next thing he knew, he was holding his head and screaming. But he was not giving any clear command. Aine would continue with her current actions until he gave her an additional command. And wasn’t he the one who had told her to “always have an escape route in mind and cause them some trouble without getting yourself killed”?

He had caused this.

He had destroyed a school and taken lives.

How was he any different from the Problem Solvers who had destroyed the first ship and taken his peaceful school from him and his fellow students?

In fact, this may have been worse. This was like unchaining a ferocious dog and releasing it in a peaceful park on the weekend.

Unlike Aine, Marika seemed focused on simply holding the Threat back. To make sure they did not customize themselves using the tadpoles that had been cut down. But was that effort even necessary in the first place? The Threat was under attack here, but they were focused on running away and did nothing to counterattack.

(What is this? What are we doing???)

“This started with Imi lashing out, but it’s still the right thing to do,” insisted Tayori. She would follow them as long as they did the right thing. Her stance there had not changed. “They don’t seem to have anything like high-speed wireless internet, but if they can carry out the knowledge stored inside them and spread it to the rest like an ant sends pheromone signals, we won’t stand a chance. What do you do if you need to stop the roaches from breeding before the majority of them develop a resistance to your bug spray? You find the ones that survive the bug spray and you squish them. That’s the best plan.”

The best plan.

If she really thought that, she could have kept quiet. Since she had gone out of her way to say it out loud and seek his agreement, this must have left a bad taste in her mouth on some level. And an excuse disguised as a justification was not going to reach Karuta.

The gym ceiling was torn through and the orderly arrangement of steel beams rained down. The anti-air laser lion dropped down along with the artificial cover it had destroyed.

That was the Sparkle.

That was their key strategic figure. The Threat should have wanted to protect it more than anything, yet it had chosen to drop down itself.

“This is our chance!!” shouted Marika as she aimed her rapier-like device at this new target.

Karuta could not understand why this made her so happy.

A straining sound filled the gym. Glowing rain poured down while rage ruled this place. Its lion-like form had changed. To reiterate, the Threat could customize itself into a more powerful form by devouring the corpses(?) of the fallen ones.

It consumed the tadpoles.

Its companions had been defenselessly cut down and it devoured the remains of those it had most wanted to protect and absorbed their parts to change its own form. The lion was not functionally capable of shedding tears, but that did not mean it felt nothing.

The twisted chrysalis created from the slaughter was torn open.

“Crystal Magic is a top candidate for the next world’s strongest, so it must be used for the public good without letting national or racial boundaries get in the way.”

The cheerful female voice sounded so out of place now as that silly reference video continued to play up on the stage.

The lion stopped walking on four legs while it emitted a burning pressure from its entire body. That 3m mass of metal now planted just two legs on the floor just like a human to display a body far more powerful than a human’s.

Something it had absorbed caused its color to change.

It looked a lot like an armored warrior creating a fusion of Eastern and Western by wearing a suit of armor glowing a reddish-purple with black belts holding it tight in places. The capacitors remained as wings on its back, but the obvious lion’s head and mane were gone. It had abandoned its identity to fulfill its objective. That stance seemed to ooze from its armor. A pair of red eyes glowed like burning flames within its newly-acquired helmet.

It held a single sword in its hand.

The sword was longer than its reddish-purple armor was tall and it looked far too heavy for a human to wield. But there was something odd about that sword. The guard extended far out to the front, but it barely existed on the back of the blade. Instead, there was a metal loop on the front. It initially reminded Karuta of an oscilloscope, but he soon realized he was mistaken.

That was a tonfa and handcuffs.

That may have been meant as a response to the jitte-like part of Aine’s sword. But unlike that laser gun unit, this did not appear to have any practical use. Does it want to steal the title of justice that badly? thought Karuta while clenching his teeth.

Its metal fingers grasped the sword’s hilt unexpectedly smoothly. That might look like armor, but it was clearly structured differently. If it was hollow, it could not move those slender fingertips that much. That was a body, not armor.

The blade of the long sword emitted a light as bright as a welding torch. At the Port of Kobe, the tadpoles’ teeth had crackled with electricity, but this was even more intense. White light surged out like the hamon was leaving the surface of the blade, so plasma emitted from the tip may have ran along the blade before being absorbed and stabilized within the guard. Or in other words, the sword was being exposed to a massive amount of heat with no effect.

Simply releasing its power seemed to cause physics to break down. All the rain-wet wreckage from the roof began to defy gravity by floating up like helium balloons.

(An electric…ionocraft?)

An unnatural humming sound shook the entire space.

It was like the amplified buzzing of an insect or like a bug zapper or transformer that used high-voltage currents.

If the excess energy escaping from it was enough to affect its surroundings like this, the power stored inside it had to be enormous. Carelessly touching the inside of that thing would turn a human to charcoal.

All of that energy was created within the armor, spread through its entire body, and then shaped into a weapon. It went out of its way to create the complex shape of a hand and then created a separate sword for that hand to hold. Why not have the weapon combined with the arm? Why even prepare an arm at all? Efficiency and logic could not explain any of this. The decisions were based on some other standard.

A sword and light. Big and strong. And a metal culture. It was like a symbol of justice – the leader of a war for good.

This was no longer the lion-shaped Sparkle.

This was a different Threat.

This armored warrior could be called…

“The Warrior Doll,” said Karuta.

He spoke loudly enough for anyone to hear him even as he felt like he was wandering through a muddy nightmare.

“You have all passed the Crystal Blossom selection process,” continued the video. “But that is not why you should feel proud. Be proud that you can use this chosen power to protect the weak. Keep that in mind as you aim to be a strong and noble magician. Keep your ears open to the cries of those in need and rush to their aid faster than anyone else. Become the people’s hope. The world became a brighter place from the moment you chose to learn Crystal Magic!!”

Its bipedal form was less stable, its center of gravity was located high up, and it had created a complex hand to hold its weapon.

If this form was only meant to fight, then its evolution could not have been based on practicality. This may have been the aesthetic sense it had learned from Second Grimnoah.

It had watched them from the sea below, boarded the ship once they left, and then learned of justice.

It had learned the meaning of wearing armor and wielding a sword.

With the baton and handcuffs, this Threat had tried to dye itself in every form of justice it could find, so it may have respected humans in a way. Not the power of Crystal Magic itself, but the way of life that had led them to wield that power. Even though the current world’s strongest were the kind of garbage people who would not hesitate to cut down unresisting lives.

“Ha.”

Utagai Karuta started laughing.

What else could he do?

This was a good reminder of his position in life. Yes, it was absurd for him to be on the side of justice. He was only a persistent stalker who had completed his filthy quest for revenge. None of the praise heaped on him by the rest of humanity could change what he was deep down.

Whenever he stood up, justice would stand up to oppose him.

It had been that way with the Problem Solvers, it had been that way with the three middle school girls controlling the decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach, and now it was happening a third time. At this point, it could not be a mere coincidence.

You’re saving the world? You’re rescuing your friends?

No, all you ever do is kill the righteous.

Admit it.

“Ha ha. Ah ha ha ha ha, hah hah hah hah hah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hee hee ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!”

He laughed.

He laughed and laughed and laughed.

So of course his vision grew blurry. Laughing so hard was bound to bring tears to his eyes.

Those tears did not fall to the floor.

They were pinned in midair and began to float upwards.

Then he made his move. Shocked Marika tried to stop him, but he ignored her, climbed over the hip-height wall, and dropped down from the second floor. There was no logic to his action. As long as he was close enough to command Aine, he would be safer while hidden.

But he no longer cared what happened to him.

His body slammed loudly against the floor and excruciating pain raced through his spine rather than his skin. Why aren’t you dead? he cursed himself as he slowly stood up.

So much had happened here.

This Warrior Doll had lost everything.

Yet it stood perfectly still with the long sword held in both hands. It made no surprise attacks. It would attack fair and square and from head on. This was different from the Gestalt’s mimicry. Karuta could sense a definite will in this reddish-purple armored warrior.

Simply gathering strength inside itself pinned the falling raindrops in the air and caused the wet rubble to float up in defiance of gravity.

It was a 3m mass heavier than steel.

It did not matter whether or not the armored warrior Threat knew the actual words

The shared concept stabbed into Karuta’s heart all the same.

I am allowed the pursuit of righteous vengeance.

I challenge you to a duel, human.

Karuta actually felt jealous.

He felt jealous of this twisted and horrific monster that had cannibalized its own to grow stronger.

All of that was allowed if it was done out of righteous anger. That armored warrior could remain on the side of justice, so it looked so bright to Karuta.

He clenched his teeth and trembled at how puny he was himself. He hated himself for being unable to die. Humanity had truly lost if the other side was the just one. He had failed in his duty as strongest. He had not protected their justice and simply handed it over to the other side. This was about more than himself. He had brought down all 5.5 billion humans.

The white light traveling along the curve of the sword was probably a plasma jet. That weapon decorated with a temperature hotter than the sun’s surface was thrust straight out. As if to prove its own righteousness.

The distance between them did not matter.

The overlapping armor at the back of the knees, behind the helmet, and elsewhere opened up and a green explosion burst from those gaps. By the time Karuta noticed that, it was already right on top of him.

That was some form of booster.

The 3m giant brought a shockwave as it approached, so its body alone would have been as deadly as an artillery shell.

Karuta could only stand there in a daze.

So what happened next was not his doing.

“Sacri-sama!!”

He could not understand it.

A dull sound rang out.

A small white figure had moved in between them at the last second. His Crystal Magic looked outmatched against that 3m armored giant, but her cold blade had caught The Warrior Doll’s hot one.

The Warrior Doll had more than just leg strength. It could accelerate its heavyweight armor using the eruption of green light behind it.

That explosive propulsive force gave the reddish-purple armor mobility surpassing that of a fighter craft. Even without its sword, it could break a warship in two with a simple tackle. How powerful would its sword strikes be if it had optimized the techniques needed to kill? The edge of a sword was determined by how much speed could be placed behind its weight.

A high-pitched sound rang out.

It had broken the sound barrier.

It was a testament to Aine’s skills that she had managed force her slender form in between the boy and the Warrior Doll and stop the latter with her crystal-like sword.

But then came the second explosion.

The white welding light ignited along the armored warrior’s blade burst outward to slam into the crystal girl trying to lock blades with it.

Karuta had researched swords since Aine wielded one. In the world of samurai, there had been attacks aimed for the face of an opponent locking swords with you. For example, spitting needles that sent a large number of needles toward the enemy’s face.

Even if that attack lowered the Warrior Doll’s strength a little, Aine had no way of blocking the heat and shockwave.

“!!”

Nevertheless, she forcibly clenched her teeth. Even Karuta could hear the straining sound. He also detected a scorched smell, like the hair drier had been blowing on something for too long. Aine adjusted her grip on her crystal sword to protect the boy and she ignored her own damage as she once more attacked the Warrior Doll in front of her.

There was a franticness to her action that was not like her. Her blade of course did not reach the armored warrior. Each time it caught her sword on its own, it caused a massive explosion to wear down her small body.

What?

What was happening?

Karuta could not believe what he was seeing. He knew for a fact he had never ordered her to do this. He had told her to always have an escape route in mind and to cause them some trouble, but this was the complete opposite.

“Oh.”

He realized something while watching that small back.

He realized why she kept going and kept getting back up from the wet floor even though she could not have any strength left.

Was it because his spirit had broken?

Was she trying to make up for what he had lost?

“Ai…ne.”

Her small back seemed to be working hard to prove something.

To prove that it was not wrong to try and take back the second ship.

To prove that it was not wrong to try and save Gekiha and the others from the first ship.

To prove it had never been wrong to fight in Kyouka’s place since she could not do it herself and to come all this way searching for Marika’s group.

It was just that the crystal girl could only express herself through combat.

“Aine.”

There was an obstinance to her actions.

And she did not seem to understand what it was she had done.

But.

She looked so small. He could not see her face with her back turned. He knew she would not be hanging her head or biting her lip, but he could still sense something from her. Even as she continued the intense battle, was hit by the wall of wind, and was gradually worn down. The sense he got from her was not of a heroic fighter or a horrific murderer. He sensed something sad, like he was looking at a lost child.

Was Aine really the one in the wrong?

Who was it that had boarded Second Grimnoah to fight the Threat?

The battle in the gym had been started by Imi’s outburst.

Aine had not started any of it, but right now that small girl had been left all alone with only her sharp sword to work with.

“That’s enough, Aine!!!!!!”

He gathered what little strength he had to approach her small back.

He hugged her from behind.

Her crystal sword came to a brief stop as he placed his hand over her smaller one.

“I’m sorry, Warrior Doll.” He tried to catch his breath while facing the armored warrior again. “Your anger is probably justified. I was clearly using her wrong.”

That should not have mattered to the Threat.

Yet it did not attack. It waited for him to speak with the tip of its plasma jet sword aimed his way.

Even though it probably did not understand human language.

“This was entirely my fault. We could have turned back as soon as we found Marika’s group safe. And even if we couldn’t find a way back, this wouldn’t have happened if we just hadn’t approached the gym. This wasn’t somewhere we had to go. I just thought it would make for a good shortcut.”

Karuta staggered to the side.

No, he moved to stand next to battered Aine. And he pulled out the puny modified military flashlight he used as a weapon.

“We’re one and the same, so Aine will have to fight too.”

He was at fault for all of it. Even if they were one and the same, he would not back down on this.

“But please. Please don’t hold this against her. Your vengeance should be targeted at me. Give me this one thing, please.”

He suddenly found himself bowing.

He could not escape this vengeance, but the Warrior Doll had to understand that challenging him directly like this introduced the possibility of being killed in the attempt. Even though that was not necessary. Karuta’s group had secretly gathered information on the Problem Solvers and then made cheap surprise attacks in every way they could. But the Warrior Doll had left a chance for its own defeat.

That was why Karuta wanted to apologize to Aine and tell her to survive.

To do that…

To do that, he was willing to lift his head!!

“I challenge you to a duel, Warrior Doll!!!!!!”

After tumbling down to the position of the despicable challenger once more, Utagai Karuta looked up at the peak from down in the mud.

Between the Lines 2

He had agonized over it.

He had worried, screamed, and wailed.

Utagai Karuta had roared from deep in his throat as he considered the pain of something inhuman and sympathized with the suffering of something inhuman.

That should have been painful to watch.

Anyone would have wanted to put a stop to it as soon as possible.

But one girl was different: Crystal Girl Aine.

The boy had hugged her from behind. He had stepped up next to her to stop something. She glanced over at him with her sword still at the ready and a thought entered her mind.

(If…)

The thought was like staticky noise.

It was a distraction from the task at hand.

Yet there it was.

(If Sacri-sama can treat inhuman things that way…if he lets himself do that…)

The thought trailed off there.

But she hesitantly moved it along as if slowly reaching out her small hand.

(Could it be?)

That Crystal Magic – that girl who belonged to the world’s strongest as a Crystal Blossom – completed the thought.

(Does he see me…that way too?)

Chapter 4

Part 1

“Oh, what’s this?”

Yamane Deiri expressed his surprise while waiting in midair.

The Sparkle lion’s anti-air lasers had stopped. He stayed on his guard while counting to 10, but still nothing.

Had something happened over there, or was this a trap meant to mess with his timing? He could not let his guard down for a moment since these were lasers. Once you saw the flash of light, it was too late to move out of the way.

“Hirosuke.”

“Oh, looks like the roof collapsed.”

Even at their height, they could not see 30km away with the naked eye at night, but Nekoumi Hirosuke did not hesitate to respond with his crystal armor active.

“That lion isn’t there anymore. M-maybe it fell in a hole?”

“Is this our chance?”

“I doubt it. The Sparkle’s lasers can easily pierce the ship’s walls, so it’s still just as powerful. If anything, this is more dangerous since we can’t use visual information to predict where it’s aiming.”

Omotesandou Kyouka had taught them all to remain pessimistic when there was any uncertainty. The anti-air lasers had stopped, but that was not enough for them to charge in toward the ship.

And…

“Y-Yamane-senpai! And Nekoumi-senpai!! Why didn’t you wake me when it was time to head back out!?”

“And here’s the little kitten in heat.”

“I am not a kitten!!”

Natlena’s face grew red with anger as she flew up to the same height as the high schoolers. Changing the subject had failed to distract her, so the two boys secretly exchanged a glance.

They knew exactly what to do. It was time for the trial in absentia plan – aka shifting the blame to someone who was not present.

Deiri shrugged in the pouring rain.

“What choice did we have? If we let you suffer a single scratch, Karuta would kill us! And your Crystal Magic regeneration doesn’t matter as far as that’s concerned!!”

“Eh?”

Her thoughts froze for a second.

The red on her face was no longer from anger.

“Y-you can’t weasel out of this by bringing up Karuta-senpai!! I can fight and it doesn’t matter what he thinks!!”

Part 2

The roof had broken and artificial rain poured down on the trashed gym. The waxed flooring was probably permanently ruined. Bent steel beams from the ceiling and the flipped-over and unmoving tadpole bodies littered the floor. Those gruesome corpses all belonged to students who had been lazily taking a class and finding their own ways to pass the time.

This was a hellish scene for the humans and the Threat.

The boy bit his lip.

He had failed to claim the side of justice, but the deadly battle was not over yet. If he did not fight and win, he would lose something he valued more than his own life.

He was not going to give up again. He knew he was wrong and he knew no outcome here would lead to a bright future, but Utagai Karuta faced and pointed at the 3m armored warrior that shined a reddish purple.

His battered face looked pale in the chilly rain.

He almost felt like he was following the same path as the Problem Solvers who had come to the Crystal Magicians and gotten killed for it.

“Aine.”

But if it would protect Crystal Girl Aine by his side, he was willing to become a devil here.

“We will win this. Even if it’s wrong.”

The wind roared as the Warrior Doll charged toward him.

There was an absolute gap between them. The Threat instantly closed the distance between them with artillery-like speed and attacked with its sword’s fearsome edge. Karuta could not stop that with his flashlight and having Aine stop it with her sword would only let the “wall of explosive wind” from the plasma jet hit her.

They could not afford to touch it.

But this opponent made that easier said than done.

The Warrior Doll’s sword had a white plasma jet running along its blade, so it could probably slice through a pillar of depleted uranium alloy as thick around as Karuta’s torso like it was made of gelatin or margarine.

A human would die instantly whether they defended or not.

When that armored warrior could use bursts of green light to pull off ultra-high-speed combat, falling back to keep your distance and predicting the path of the blade to avoid it were both unrealistic. Aine’s endurance was an unknown factor, so she could easily shatter from the very next explosion for all he knew.

The reddish-purple armored warrior roared and immediately swung down its long katana at full strength. That weapon incorporated a police baton and handcuffs as symbols of justice and it roasted the surrounding air to produce a terrifyingly sharp edge.

It was over.

And yet…

“Come to me, Aine!!”

For some reason, the blast of wind as powerful as a speeding subway train passed by a mere meter to Karuta’s side. If he had not pulled the crystal girl close with his empty hand, she would have been sliced through.

“Karuta!?” shouted Marika from somewhere.

He and Aine had dodged to the side, but that did not seem like it should have been enough to survive.

The deadly armor could not break the sound barrier if they did not give it enough distance for a “running start”, but it could still silently tear through the wind at subsonic speeds, putting it at the same level as an assassin’s bullet.

Even the greatest expert should have been helplessly pulverized.

Yet the boy had survived.

He held a modified military flashlight. It was hard and heavy enough to use as a police baton, but that was all it could do. And yet it had made the difference between life and death.

“You’re a Threat with red glowing eyes.”

He was not expecting an answer. In fact, he doubted his words even got through to this adversary.

Still, he smiled and waved the flashlight to show it off.

This was not a street fight between delinquents, so why bother glaring at each other from close range? Karuta had faced the Warrior Doll’s red eyes from head on so he could check on this.

He knew that his ability to spit out things like this meant he had fully abandoned justice. He swallowed the bitterness and spoke with the look of a minor villain driven into a corner.

“That means you rely on sight just like the tadpoles and wharf roaches. So this infrared interference will work on you!!”

There was a crackling as if from a bug zapper.

The Threat did not pull back the sword it had swung down.

The excessive amount of energy could work against it at times. The floating rubble provided advance warning of a major attack.

“Aine!!”

This time, the crystal girl pulled the boy toward her. They spun around together to dive behind the remains of a devoured tadpole.

The small rubble around them continued to float and a pure white explosion erupted from the sword longer than the Warrior Doll was tall. Even behind cover, Karuta felt a slight pain running through him like he had a sunburn. A direct hit from that firepower would have burned all of his skin and fused his melted uniform to it with just the emitted heat.

He put on the fierce but pathetic smile of the routed soldier focused only on survival.

That was two attacks survived. He should have died the instant the blade began to move. With first the blade and then the shockwave, he was in fact surviving the 3m giant’s supposedly surefire attacks.

It felt a lot like bullfighting.

He had less speed, power, and weight, but he could still survive by accurately obstructing his opponent and causing it to miss. He would be killed instantly if he screwed up and let that opponent charge him, but his side still had a chance to stick it with their sword in the instant they crossed paths.

The puny human had a chance to challenge a much more powerful monster. The Threat could customize themselves through cannibalism, but if the original lion and the absorbed tadpole had both relied on sight, it gained nothing new. That would not give it new senses that used microwaves or ultrasound.

“You were messing with the Threat’s eyes using your laser unit, right?”

“You only just now noticed? But I cannot switch modes quickly enough for the Warrior Doll. It will approach and cut me down while I am aiming the laser.”

That meant they could not attempt a feint where they occasionally swapped roles. Similarly, he did not have time to bring Aine back into his body to heal her wounds.

They would have to do this as is.

“Aine, leave the assistance to me. Just go at it with everything you’ve got!”

“I am not sure what to say when you are praising your own specs.”

She spun around and rushed out from behind cover to slice at the reddish-purple armored warrior with the intensity of a tornado. The Warrior Doll swung its long sword diagonally. The two swords clashed and Karuta felt a squeezing at his heart while clutching his flashlight behind cover.

The plasma jet did not explode and the armored warrior immediately raised its sword in a defensive pose. Only after a second strike from the crystal sword hit it from the right did the light began to expand again.

(Did it intentionally alter its previous timing!?)

“Hide, Aine!!” shouted Karuta while sending out IR with his flashlight.

Aine rolled back. There was an explosion, but she had managed to find cover behind a severed tadpole leg lying on the floor. Karuta nearly had his lungs scorched because he had been leaning out from behind cover.

(One at a time, huh?)

“Marika, help us out!”

He was answered by a sharp light attacking the Warrior Doll from the side. Marika cut through the air with her rapier device in hand, dropped down just barely inside the massive sword’s range, planted her feet on the wet floor, and sharply shoved her body in even closer.

The extreme maneuver bringing her from long to close range was a lot like a horizontal lightning strike.

But the dull sound that followed came from Marika. The tonfa-like protrusion of the armored warrior’s sword guard crashed into her crystal armor and slammed her down to the wet floor.

“Gah!!”

Tayori and Imi apparently considered joining the fight after seeing their classmate rolling along the floor, but they came to a stop after seeing the rubble around the armored warrior unnaturally float up. That ionocraft effect showed a fearsome amount of energy was gathering within the Threat. Tayori had her hands full simply restraining terrified Imi.

“S-sorry, Karuta.”

“That’s fine.”

That was not just a polite response. As he moved toward the armored warrior from the side, he said one thing more without moving his lips or looking toward collapsed Marika.

“That was all according to plan.”

“…?”

It had all been for the dry crinkling sound he heard now. Any communications using their Crystal Blossoms or phones could be intercepted by the slate pencil urchin and holding a secret conversation right in front of the armored warrior would be the height of folly.

The girl behind him had unfolded a small piece of paper and would now have read the short message it contained:

“Burn their surfaces to weld them together, or continually scorch the air to create suction from the pressure difference.”

Yes, there were plenty more Threats inside and outside Second Grimnoah. After making this much of a commotion, they would have to deal with them as well.

Marika’s Crystal Magic would be able to pull off one or the other methods written on that memo.

Also, none of the Threats except the Warrior Doll had broken through the ship’s walls or doors. Not even the Gestalt. If she fired her powerful sniping laser on the Threats packed into the hallway, she would scorch the air in the small gaps between them and cause a suction effect. That would not stop them forever, but it would help.

The armored warrior’s red eyes followed Marika as she nodded and moved behind a tadpole, but Karuta moved in between. He put on a filthy smile and forced out his voice.

“Do you really have time for distractions, Warrior Doll? Is your anger so weak you can set it aside for other things?”

He held his modified military flashlight and Aine wielded her crystal sword by his side.

He was essentially an amateur mimicking the pros and he was facing an opponent ten thousand times more frightening than a pro bullfighter ever had, but he had still claimed the right to challenge the Warrior Doll.

He took a deep breath.

He gathered his resolve and stepped out from behind the tadpole.

His opponent did not understand his words and no signal was needed.

This time, they were on equal footing.

They glared at each other and then charged straight toward each other.

The strongest human and the strongest Threat bet everything on this.

Part 3

“The Indian Space Force can only input the nuclear launch codes after reaching an ‘independent determination’ that Grimnoah has lost to the Threat. Once that happens, everyone dies. Including my family and the first love you never could forget.” Omotesandou Kyouka reviewed the situation in the floating general airport’s control tower. “They want to launch that nuke no matter what, but they still need it to make some minimal level of sense. So if they lose their ability to gather information, they will be unable to reach a determination and their plan grinds to a halt.”

“How exactly do we do that?” asked the redheaded buns Secretary.

Kyouka softly sighed.

“We can disguise it as military satellite trouble. Figure out how many satellites are passing by directly overhead and jam them. Oh, but make sure it looks like the Threat did it. We saw some sea urchins covered in antennas, remember? You can’t let anyone know the jamming signal is coming from this control tower.”

Letnahe Kurent sighed when she heard that.

They had hit their limit.

She glanced down at her left hand. The ring and watch there were both important to her and she could not betray either one.

(I doubt the official list of satellites is all of them. There will be countless unregistered ones. Even the 30 generator satellites used to power the Pinaka III are officially registered as civilian communication satellites.)

She doubted getting Grimnoah’s plan from Omotesandou Kyouka and correcting its mistakes would be enough to stop the nuclear attack.

The silver-haired and brown-skinned soldier slipped out of the control tower, descended the crude stairs, and pulled out her phone. It was a military model not available in the general marketplace, but she attached another device she pulled from the hem of her tight skirt. She attached it to a completely separate radio with a cable.

Needless to say, she was a member of the Indian Navy.

But allowing something that would benefit the Indian military was meaningless if it also brought great chaos to international society as a whole. Yes, making a nuclear attack on the Threat was acceptable, but she could not let them set a precedent that it was acceptable to make a nuclear attack on other humans just because it accomplished some other goal. Do that and India would be unable to criticize others for aiming nuclear weapons at them.

Someone who killed a person that someone else cared deeply for would earn hatred and mistrust from all the other people who did not want to lose their loved ones. She could not allow death to become an accepted outcome.

So.

(Hadome-kun. Honey!!)

Since two faces came to mind in this crisis, she could not deny her infidelity, but this was the only way she knew how to live. She clicked her tongue and opened the metal door. She pressed her back against the concrete wall while the artificial rain poured down. She manually dialed a memorized number into the phone that was unnaturally connected to a radio.

At this point, she donned a different mask. There was no way to stop the nuclear attack from within the Indian military’s chain of command, so she would have to restrain them with an even greater power.

“…”

She held the electronic device to her ear and waited as it rang five times. She knew the process that would play out. She would be connected to a small online shopping company no one had ever heard of, but by ignoring the voice instructions and entering a secret code, she would reach the true rulers of the world.

However.

The automated female voice did not stop even after she entered the number with her brown finger.

She was not connected to them.

“Your selection could not be found. Please try again from the beginning.”

There was no trying it again.

That had been a secret message from a list she had been given in advance. It meant the following:

This call is being intercepted. Immediately destroy this device and go undercover. We will send you a new method of contacting us wherever you might be.

She heard a slight metallic creaking, so she slowly turned around and then grimaced.

“How?”

“Using the elevator. And yes, I know that isn’t what you meant.”

Omotesandou Kyouka was grinning up at her. She was toying with a mobile router in her empty hand. No, that was an illicit device known as a Quicksand that gathered and analyzed all forms of wireless signal.

The girl had used that to intercept Letnahe’s line to the deepest parts of the world.

(Quicksand.)

It was true that Letnahe’s group had great power. She knew other powers both large and small were trying to discover its identity. She knew that, but…

(That thing can pick up even the frequencies not detectable with the control tower equipment. And if it’s set up to automatically analyze all forms of encryption, then she must not have even needed my help. Was that entire request a bluff meant to draw me in, create a sense of camaraderie, and bring down my guard!?)

“Why now? Whoever I might work for, I assisted you!! I was trying to use their power to stop the Indian Space Force’s nuclear strike so I could save this country!” She was trembling. Not even a child lost at an amusement park would have looked so distraught. “If this fails, you lose everything. This is not the time to be working against each other!! I revealed my secret about Hadome-kun and you talked about your family. You had accepted a woman like me… Whoever we might work for in the end, we both knew we needed to work together right now. So why do this!?”

“Why?” The President was smiling and did not stop smiling. “The greatest threat to us has always been your group since you can take everything from us at any time. What has the Threat actually done to us? Even the Indian military hasn’t done anything to us yet. But who was it that permanently scarred our lives while stifling a yawn and then tried to avoid responsibility for that? This could not be simpler. It is a matter of revenge.”

“…”

Pure nothingness.

Letnahe’s mind went entirely blank. At the same time, tears welled up in her eyes and her mobile watch was beeping warnings related to her breathing and heartrate.

“Then all that about your family still being in Kyoto wasn’t even true?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” The President coolly brushed her long hair from her shoulder. “You propped up the world’s strongest magicians so you could control them and you used a 12-year-old girl’s grief for her sister to set up her as a convenient avenger, so do you really think I would let you know anything you could use against me? Why would I tell you anything other than a mix of truth and lies you can never untangle?”

There was not even hatred on her face.

“Thinking back, your stance was always full of unknowns.” Kyouka produced a metallic sound as she spoke, but it did not come from her wheelchair. “Letnahe Kurent, do you work for the Indian military, for the coalition force, or for the string-pullers toying with all those nations? You acted like you were willing to let a nuclear blast hit Grimnoah, but you were secretly working to fix our plans so the Indian Space Force could not act. You were constantly switching between the professional and the private, but why was that?”

It was a bow and arrow. A very mechanical Western type.

It was not quite enough to call a weapon, but wielding it as a weapon here made it very clear that Second Grimnoah’s Student Council President had no intention of making friends.

And who or what was she aiming it at?

“You made it look like we had gotten to know each other while you shared that embarrassing love story and you made it look like some camaraderie had formed after we recognized each other’s skill, but we both know that was never going to happen. From the moment I heard your name from Natlena Blast, I knew you were one of the utter trash who leaked secrets to a 12-year-old girl to set her up as an avenger and who hoped to drive the four world’s strongests to self-destruction by using that inexperienced avenger as a wedge between us. But Natlena-san failed as a Trojan horse and then you were sent in. That means you had made a second move. Before all that with Kiyomasa Hadome. So what exactly was it?”

Her desire to save Kiyosawa Hadome was convincing at first glance, but the string-pullers as a whole had to have a plan here as well. Letnahe had been trying to save Hadome without defying them. She had not cared what happened to Grimnoah or the Crystal Magicians.

“Your methods have remained the same from the beginning.”

Letnahe clenched her teeth, but the President continued nonetheless.

“You did not expect Natlena-san to succeed when you sent her in. You had hoped the four strongests would fight amongst ourselves over how to deal with her. So this nuclear strike is the same. Is it acceptable to use nukes against the Threat? You wanted to use that issue to create a rift between us that would reduce our power, didn’t you?”

“…”

“It’s easy enough to imagine Grimnoah coming to a temporary stop if you show off that nuclear card you might just play. Did you think we would prioritize a nuclear weapon above the Threat? If that worked, you would be able to place Crystal Magic within the framework of the military and let the adults control the fight against the Threat. …But that is not what happened. We continued to focus on the Threat and you found yourself unable to stop the nuclear strike that was meant to only be a show of force for the adults. Isn’t that right?”

The silver-haired brown-skinned soldier had stopped responding. Everything the girl said worked to tear down her stronghold. She needed to move one step ahead and prepare for the next move instead of figuring out how to recover from the last move. Like taking a shortcut to the side instead of chasing after a fleeing opponent from behind. The bespectacled soldier toyed with the switches in her mind. Her breathing, heartrate, blood pressure, brainwaves, and other values monitored by her mobile watch grew as placid as a subterranean lake.

She switched over to her killing mode.

“In other words, the entire scenario of Letnahe Kurent stopping the nuclear attack out of concern for Kiyosawa Hadome was in accordance with your organization’s wishes.”

Kyouka briefly fell silent there.

She slowly took a breath.

And then she continued.

“Your entire deal is manipulating the current era’s strongest to reap the benefits, so you can’t have all of the strongests wiped out by some silly mistake, can you? So you needed to stop the nuclear strike you had begun. Am I wrong?”

It was a decisive statement.

Letnahe focused even stronger on the switch inside herself.

“You and your organization prioritized your own safety over retaking Second Grimnoah or the Kobe region from the Threat.” The President’s accusation was calm but biting. “You wouldn’t die if we lost here. And you were more afraid that I would gain the clue I needed. So you let it happen. You were willing to accept a loss here.”

Just as all expression vanished from Letnahe Kurent’s face, a thin smile appeared on Omotesandou Kyouka’s.

It could all be summed up as despicable. The group that had taken command of everything to fight by their own rules had never intended on protecting anyone.

“So you were sent in to get close to us by making a show of understanding Japan’s climate and how Crystal Magic works and then intentionally showing off that watch to give a hint of your school days.”

That smile had to be a show of her resolve.

“You thought revealing that untold secret of yours would convince me you had no further secrets. All so you could get us to trip each other up instead of fighting the Threat. That way you could weaken the strongest just enough to tame us.”

That had been the plan from the beginning. Letnahe Kurent had wanted to grab the reins of the Crystal Magicians who were a thorn in her organization’s side because they were so hard to control. Even if people’s lives hung in the balance, she had been willing to make every effort to accomplish that.

“Come to think of it, you talked an awful lot about your illicit love, but I never saw you actually speak with Kiyosawa-sensei. Even though you ostensibly came here to rescue him from the Threat and the nuclear strike.” Kyouka smiled as she pointed this out. “And you expect me to believe you’re placing your private life above your professional duties?”

“…”

“Well, from the moment you realized you could use that old connection, you have proven yourself to be as wicked as me.”

The girl designated as Letnahe’s top priority target smiled.

She bared her counterattacking fangs to get something out of the woman.

“Hello, human string-pullers. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Several strange metallic sounds came from Letnahe’s hand.

Her weapon was a parashu.

It used the legend of the axe given by God of Destruction Shiva, but the magic only used the name and was not actually the legendary axe. In her case, it used the rumble of Shiva’s thunder to destabilize the vibration, strike it from within, and either alter the axe’s path or provide extreme acceleration or deceleration.

A head-on attack from a Gatling gun was no threat to her. And once her target was within the axe’s range, she could use its rapid acceleration to slice through even a bank vault’s door.

Or so she thought.

And yet…

“Gah!?”

It was she who ended up groaning.

This made no sense. Kyouka was smiling in front of her, but a long metal arrow had flown in from the side to hit her in the back of her right hand. There were no hidden attackers around, so it did not add up.

The military flashlight attached to the bottom of the axe’s handle had shattered and the axe itself had fallen to the floor. Needless to say, this opponent was not foolish enough to give her time to crouch down and pick it up.

Then she figured it out.

“Oh, so that’s it.”

“The trick is simple enough, but preconceptions are a difficult thing to shake.”

This voice came from the side as well. She held her injured right hand and moved just her eyes to glare in that direction.

The illusion in front of her had already vanished without a sound.

The President was seated in her wheelchair calmly aiming her bow.

She had chosen not to aim for the left hand wearing the ring and mobile watch, but not for any strategic reasons.

“As you can plainly see, I am in a wheelchair. I can only wield a mere 1% of the power I once had, but even a weak dimensional leap allows me to slow the arrival time of light and sound.”

“The only Regulation 3…”

It was the same as the stars in the night sky. The light you saw twinkling there now had actually been emitted many years in the past. But that was not something the people living on the face of the earth could ever truly experience. They might intellectually understand the concept of a light year, but the light they saw would still feel like the present to them.

Just like people still had a general fear of a school at night in the modern age.

“I can pull off a number of tricks without actually sending my own body through.”

“You distorted the world itself for an illusion lasting only a few seconds? There had to have been other ways of doing that!!”

“Oh? I hear Anastasia did far worse with her God Worshiping Magic.”

There was a hint of sadness in Kyouka’s voice. This was only the dregs of the power she had once been able to use. She had altered the arrival time of light with her mind, but that was only the dregs.

(The reports say she wielded an undulating flamberge back in her prime, but I guess this genius can also master the use of a bow or whatever else she needs!!)

“So what will it be? Spill the beans on the string-pullers and this can be over much sooner.”

“Kh.”

Kyouka smiled in an even more toxic way than before.

“Or would you prefer I tied you to a chair and called Hadome-sensei in to interrogate you?”

“Gaahhh!!”

Natlena roared to upset the timing of the enemy in front of her.

Her brown face was colored more by embarrassment than pain or fear.

She used that moment to kick up the axe lying at her feet and grabbed at it with her left hand. But she was not given time to grasp the shortened grip or pull out a spare flashlight. A second arrow struck the parashu’s thick blade, knocking it from her hand.

“So you would rather die than have that happen? You’re such a wonderful person.”

The President smiled.

She understood how Letnahe felt, which was why she would not let it happen.

Ending this nonlethally showed the absolute skill gap between them.

Letnahe knew the details of the Problem Solver battles fought in secret. There was unconfirmed data saying this girl had used a special handgun in one of those. This genius would not stop just because she had been broken once. She was more than just multitalented or a jack of all trades. Her talent let her add anything to her skillset whenever she sensed she was lacking something. Nothing was quite as frightening as a genius who did not fear failure, did not let their pride get in the way, and would put in endless effort when they deemed it necessary.

“What are you asking me to do?” Letnahe squeezed out her voice while holding her skewered right hand and doubled over in pain. “Criticize me all you like, but you’re not doing anything about the Threat or the preparations for the nuclear strike! You haven’t told anyone about this and you haven’t even let any confusion set in. What gives you the right to put the world at risk at your own discretion like that!?”

“Yes, I am even more wicked than you. And what I am asking you to do is quite simple: tell me everything about the world’s string-pullers you belong to. You want to protect your family and your first love, don’t you? Then you should know which of your loyalties to turn your back on.”

“But…”

“Besides, you don’t even know why I can’t use Crystal Magic anymore, do you? Or rather, why I am still placing a limiter on my abilities. That would mean you’re a low-level member. The agent who visited Karuta-kun before seemed to have some idea about my secret.”

“?”

Letnahe truly looked puzzled by that and she did not even realize that her confusion signaled something to Kyouka.

“Now, then.”

Kyouka crossed her outstretched legs.

Her ankle swayed like a pendulum and Letnahe should have already learned what that sign meant.

“Are you saying I can protect everything I care about even if I betray them here?”

“I am not a good person,” said the demon in the wheelchair. “Which is why I can assure you that I will not take away those precious treasures of yours. For someone as wicked as me, they make the perfect guarantee you will do what I ask, don’t they?”

Letnahe bit her lip.

She realized there was no way to turn this around or even to escape. Which left only one option. She put off treating her injured right hand and slowly took a different action.

She kneeled in front of the President to change her socks.

That was the moment of submission.

The girl who had tamed a wicked woman whispered sweetly with an even larger smile on her face.

“At this point, the two of us are nothing but villains.”

Part 4

Sword crossed with sword.

The crystal sword branched off at the base like a jitte and the metal sword had a protrusion resembling a tonfa or handcuffs.

The wet rubble floated unnaturally from the floor, light flashed out, and a shockwave and deafening boom shook the entire gym.

Karuta and Aine should not have been able to deal with that using just the one sword, but Karuta just barely dodged the sword that the 3m Warrior Doll swung down heavier than a guillotine and faster than an airplane. Aine instead moved in to hit it with her crystal blade.

It was a lot like bullfighting.

The infrared from the modified military flashlight was just as important as the crystal sword.

This was not part of the basic tactics taught in Second Grimnoah’s textbooks. Imi and Tayori were overwhelmed and could not join the fight.

“Don’t relax just because we’re pulling off this tightrope walk, Aine. Its excess energy might make the rubble float up, but we can’t trust that signal too much.”

“I am already aware of that. If it can pull off a feint with that, the mistake would cost us our lives.”

After determining when it would attack, they would work to confuse it first before making their own attack. That Threat could achieve rapid movement with its green thrusters and it could break the sound barrier if it was allowed a running start. That was well past what a human could hope to match, so Karuta would be killed instantly if he could not reduce its movements.

But even that was far from delivering a critical blow.

After he sent in another IR blast to blind the Warrior Doll, Aine slipped past its right-side defenses and sent her blade toward its arm, leg, and torso, but the wounds were shallow. In fact, the sword was deflected with a high-pitched clang, barely leaving a mark on the reddish-purple armor.

It was fruitless.

But they kept at it regardless.

“Pant, pant!!”

Because Karuta knew his life was not the only one riding on this.

This was for Kazamuki Gekiha and the other old friends from the first ship, it was for his classmates from the second ship like Amaashi Marika and Yamane Deiri, and it was for all the people living the wide world outside of Grimnoah. If the world’s strongest fell here, all of that would be lost.

And then there was Aine who shared his fate.

It was all of those thoughts that prevented him from being cut down. Nor would he be crushed by the shockwave or roasted by the heat of the plasma jet. In fact, he moved out ahead of Aine and threw off the timing of a slash he should never have been able to dodge.

He used his flashlight’s infrared to fry the Threat’s eyes and throw off its timing. If possible, he would hide behind one of the tadpoles to avoid the explosions. If not possible, he would spread out a thin sheet of metal foil (which was probably a piece of a Threat) to at least deflect the great heat.

He doubled over and heard some popping sounds inside his body.

But the shockwave that hit him was not the end of it.

“Aine…”

“…”

“Don’t think about buying time for you to move out front. We’ll both go down if we break our rhythm.”

The Warrior Doll would not stop. If they did not head out to face it, it would likely circle behind the tadpoles itself. And if it made the attack, it would be in control.

“What you did was wrong.”

But even with all that going on, he had something important to say. He once more adjusted his grip on his flashlight while hearing the sounds of crystal fragments breaking away.

“But that was my fault too. Listen, Aine. Once this is over, let’s relearn everything from the ground up. We can return to our dorm room, sleep like a log, get some food, and get through those boring classes. But to do that, you need to do everything you can to learn how to survive.”

Crystal Magic regeneration would heal any nonlethal wound in 30 seconds. If it was discovered that shattering the healing crystals with another attack would prevent it from ever healing, then the enemy could make a series of rapid-fire attacks, but the Threat had only begun to learn the details of Crystal Magic in the gym here. If they had not learned everything and the knowledge had been erased before it could spread, then he could trick the enemy. He focused on that while wiping away the blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

Then he had to laugh.

(Nonlethal injuries don’t matter, huh? I’ve really gotten accustomed to staying just outside the line of an injury that would bring my life to an end.)

It almost felt quaint that Imi found herself unable to trust anyone after having her severed leg cauterized. Karuta would just say thanks. Imi’s response was of course the correct one. The more power he gained during his fight against the Threat, the less human he felt.

Those tadpoles who had enjoyed their pointless actions while gaining knowledge had also responded in the correct way. Of course they had screamed and gone wild when they were being sliced to pieces.

“Even if we do defeat this thing, I might only be proving how frightening humans can be.”

“If you say so.”

He had a vague premonition about that while he followed after Aine as she made an attack. The Threat did not seem able to close up its wounds like they could, but its reddish-purple armor was too tough to make a dent in. Aine had sliced right through the tadpoles, but that same sword could not cut the armored warrior.

Neither side could make any real progress.

Karuta and the armored warrior glared at each other while wearing each other down with small wounds.

The armored warrior said nothing, but he could sense confusion coming off of it.

It had gathered every form of justice it could think of to create the greatest attack, yet that was not enough.

The Warrior Doll was radiating irritation with itself for its inability to deliver a finishing blow.

Karuta snorted with laughter. That was awfully haughty for a monster. That anger was a sign of worry and panic over its inability to kill someone it should have been able to kill. Elicia and Yukino of the Problem Solvers had begun to panic near the end and started criticizing the rules of the world for not doing what they wanted.

“Did you…”

His side had a crystal sword and a flashlight.

He staggered up alongside the crystal girl and faced the reddish-purple armored warrior.

“Did you think every action has a purpose behind it? Humans are full of inefficiencies. How we master those inefficiencies is what shapes our lives. Perfect efficiency would make for the most boring kind of strongest imaginable. That would only lead to a dystopia.”

There was no response.

That thing may not have even had a complex enough tongue or throat to speak human language. Even those things were a type of inefficiency.

“But you really should know that.” The boy who got by on trickery grinned and held out his flashlight. “I mean, you’re standing there on two feet, wearing armor, and holding your weapon with needlessly complex hands.”

Again, the Threat probably did not understand human language.

But for whatever reason, its red eyes glowed brighter here.

Like they were burning.

Wreckage larger than the average car defied gravity to float into the air one after another.

“You’re pouring all your strength into the fruitless and meaningless act of revenge. You’re learned everything there is to know about how we humans enjoy our inefficiencies.”

The armored warrior gave a roar and swung its sword down with all its might.

Part 5

How many times had they done this now?

Crystal Girl Aine’s sword sliced through the air. It slipped past the Warrior Doll’s defenses on the right to strike its torso. But that only produced a high-pitched clang. It scraped the surface somewhat but was nowhere close to a critical wound.

She was not made to turn a blind eye to her deficiencies, so she directly faced the fact that this was insufficient.

That boy had been with her since the first ship was still around, so he had to know what she needed to boost her specs.

Everyone had seen it from the beginning.

They had seen it but overlooked it.

Crystal Girl Aine glanced over at one of the tadpoles lying motionless on its back. She had two decorations protruding from her head that might have been horns and might have been hair. Most likely, not even Utagai Karuta knew for sure what they were.

But right now, they squirmed on their own like the mandibles of a stag beetle or ant.

Everyone had to know by now that the girl grew by eating the pure gold needed to construct circuits. And what was the Threat?

A Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapon.

The reaction spread past the two horns and Aine’s entire head produced a straining sound like something was preparing to open wide.

There was a way to grow stronger.

She had frequently mentioned it ever since the First Out Incident that sank the first ship.

The humans had sensed a deficiency in her specs and sought greater strength.

That was the only way she could protect Utagai Karuta.

So…

“What you did was wrong.”

“…”

“But that was my fault too. Listen, Aine. Once this is over, let’s relearn everything from the ground up. We can return to our dorm room, sleep like a log, get some food, and get through those boring classes. But to do that, you need to do everything you can to learn how to survive.”

The disturbance inside her stopped.

Instead of the two horns, it was her two lovely eyes that seemed to be watching a nightmare repeat itself.

Karuta had just swung his flashlight. He could blind the Warrior Doll so it would miss, but his weapon could not actually stop that sword colored by a plasma jet. If he did not dodge it, he would be sliced in two. Yet he showed no hesitation.

He trusted Aine.

He was looking to something inside her.

She had already seen the simplest answer, but she had a feeling that was not the answer he was hoping for as he wore his own life down.

The crystal girl’s thoughts surpassed the logical.

She once more considered the boy’s words.

What was it he wanted from her here?

Part 6

Utagai Karuta knew the current equilibrium would not last forever.

But this was not how he had expected it to end. It happened after dodging a few more slashes, while he was readying his flashlight in time with Aine’s attack.

The pair of red lights vanished within the Warrior Doll’s helmet. The sword given tonfa and handcuff signals had always moved accurately, but now it grew even more mercilessly so.

(Don’t tell me.)

Karuta had a bad feeling about this. Like he felt nothing in his net as the enemy slipped right through it. The pressure weighing on his gut was the one felt in the moment your supposedly perfect plan fell apart. He was once more hit by the sensation he had felt back when he clashed with Elicia and Susannia of the Problem Solvers.

In other words…

(Did it shut its eyes!? Is it attacking based on intuition instead of its senses!?)

“Aine, watch out!!”

Their bullfighting tactics did not work if he could not blind their opponent with infrared. A direct hit meant death and a blocked hit would get her crushed below the explosive blast.

Since the flashlight would lead it astray, it chose not to look at all.

It chose to trust in its itself while taking a step forward and relying purely on intuition.

It was a simple but reasonable conclusion. For a human who often functioned on an illogical basis, anyway. But even if the machinery was malfunctioning, would an unmanned drone ever switch off the video feed and radar while soaring through the sky? Could simple circuitry rely on baseless and illogical “intuition” to shoot down a bomb or missile in the empty darkness?

This was different from the decoy Threat that had attacked the Crystal Beach. This armored warrior had a solid core it could believe in. Was the Warrior Doll more a living being than a weapon!?

This time, the reddish-purple armored warrior attacked with its max speed.

Time stopped.

The raindrops looked like round jewels scattered around as time seemed to stop for Karuta. There was nothing he could do this time. He had viewed this as bullfighting. He used his infrared to parry a monster much stronger than him, used that opening to accurately dodge the attack, and coordinated with Aine to strike back. But if the wild bull shut its eyes and charged straight in, waving the large cloth around would do nothing to lead it astray. The bullfighter would have no way of evading it. And it was all over if he was hit here. He would take far more damage than from a charging bull. An unbelievably heavy and hard blade would attack from the optimal angle with supersonic speed provided by the plasma jet. The gruesome results of that destructive power would be worse than a head on collision with a fighter craft.

(Damn.)

This time.

There really was no avoiding it.

(Damn this guy. He’s looking so cool.)

He had to admit it. And as soon as he clenched his teeth, time sped back up.

“!!”

All he could do was collide with Aine’s shoulder as she swung her sword in from the side.

He tackled her out of the way.

He had to laugh since that was not at all the action of a cheap coward. Maybe he had let the Warrior Doll influence him.

With a dull sound, the downwards slash sent his flashlight spinning through the air.

It had cut away something more important than his arm.

He had lost his disturbance weapon. Without the infrared to throw off the enemy’s timing, Aine would be unilaterally worn down by the plasma jet slashes and explosions.

But the armored warrior must have been confused when it reopened its red eyes.

Karuta was worn down and battered, but he had a fierce smile on his face.

(I don’t want to be a swordsman or a military commander. If I tried to be as cool as you, I’d screw it up and leave behind a pathetic corpse. I know I’m not cut out for that, no matter how much I wish I was and how much I regret being who I am.)

“Your attacks are too powerful.”

The reddish-purple armored warrior must have noticed its careless mistake.

“So on a subconscious level, you assumed the only two options were a hit or a miss and that I was a goner if you hit!!”

It must have noticed how careless it had been to assume this was over after cutting away Karuta’s weapon with an attack.

(But that isn’t my job.)

It had not been meaningless.

He might have let go of his temporary safety, but that was still meaningful if it created a crucial opening.

(Ordinary attacks do nothing to that armor, but you only ever tried to blow Aine away with your plasma jet explosion when she was swinging her blade horizontally in toward your right side. Are your sword’s defenses so unnecessarily tough because you’re actually scared, Warrior Doll?)

And what was it Karuta had said?

“What you did was wrong.”

In that most dangerous moment when he had abandoned his own safety, he turned toward Aine in the midst of the fierce fighting.

“But that was my fault too. Listen, Aine. Once this is over, let’s relearn everything from the ground up. We can return to our dorm room, sleep like a log, get some food, and get through those boring classes. But to do that, you need to do everything you can to learn how to survive.”

“Isn’t that right, Aine!!!!!?”

They swapped places.

Crystal Girl Aine slipped past his side and rushed sharply in toward her target with her crystal sword at the ready.

He had ordered her to learn how to survive, so she would have poured all her focus into that.

Unless something else distracted her along the way.

The Warrior Doll immediately tried to pull its massive sword back, but it had just swung it down. Its attacks carried deadly speed, but that created an opening while it pulled its blade back.

The explosive blast was likely meant to cover for that.

So what happened if it could not use that defense in time?

Crystal Girl Aine twisted around directly in front of it. She forcibly slid herself toward its right side. And she placed her full momentum on her blade for a sweeping horizontal attack.

She was in a blind spot created by having eyes tucked back inside a helmet.

She targeted an obvious seam created when patching together multiple devoured Threats in the customization process.

The crystal sword had been deflected so many times before, but it sank in deep now.

Deep into the armored warrior’s neck.

Yes, Aine’s sword had easily sliced through the tadpoles and this Threat had absorbed components from them.

With a sharp slicing sound, time came to a stop.

The armored warrior’s head slid to the side.

And that helmet-like head tumbled from its shoulders.

Karuta could not cushion his fall as he crashed down into the gym floor. That did further damage when he was already exhausted to the core. He though he heard something breaking in the center of his aching body, but he was not dead yet. And as long as he did not die, the regeneration would kick in. He still could not say if that was a good thing or not, but it did mean he would continue down the path of the devil for a while yet.

Meanwhile, he thought he saw a red light flickering inside the helmet even after it was beheaded during their final clash. Was that another human-like inefficiency it had learned? Perhaps the Threat had learned how to express emotion in that final moment.

Yes, it was watching that boy who had stayed true to his path to the very end, without letting himself be influenced by the armored warrior’s insistence on fighting fair and square.

The path of the devil was still a path.

And he had stayed true to that path which the Warrior Doll would never choose for itself.

It burned that way of life into its eyes.

And to Karuta, it looked an awful lot like the slain monster was giving the victorious human a smile of approval.

Epilogue

Report from Letnahe Kurent.

The Second Grimnoah academy ship has been reclaimed by its students.

After the so-called Warrior Doll’s defeat, the many sea anemone Threats located on the ocean floor were destroyed in an apparent chain reaction. In addition to playing a direct combat role using their mimicry, they seemed to play the role of a gas station that supplied the other Threats with power. A massive amount of energy was confirmed during the battle with the Warrior Doll, so the original lion-like Sparkle (the anti-air laser unit) could likely store just as much energy as the sea anemones, if not more. It is thought its defeat caused a phenomenon similar to a powerful microwave or electromagnetic pulse that caused the spreading chain reaction of destruction.

Without their power sources, the many other Threats are being hunted down until they cease to function.

However, we still do not know how the Threat works.

We do not know if they can gather energy from petroleum, electricity, or other methods, or if they can produce energy within themselves by eating or breathing. Even though they have stopped moving, they may only be sleeping or playing dead. I recommend quickly destroying them so they cannot split apart and cannibalize each other.

P.S.

Do something about the Indian Space Force.

With the Threat destroyed, forcing through a nuclear strike would look unnatural. If it were carried out, it would only increase the risk of further harm to all of you.

“Phew.”

The silver-haired brown-skinned soldier tapped the tablet’s screen to send her report.

She was in the floating general airport’s control tower.

This made her a traitor. If it was discovered she had intentionally included falsehoods in her report, a “grim reaper” would be immediately sent for her.

The Student Council President laughed.

“Oh, dear. Do you actually feel guilt for your misdeeds?”

“Most people do.” Letnahe massaged her shoulders that felt so much heavier now. “I hadn’t mentioned it because it isn’t really something to say on the job, but I am a mother of two. And my husband has no idea what I do for my job.”

“Or about Kiyosawa-sensei, right?”

“…”

She cleared her throat in response.

The wicked woman with both a ring and wristwatch on her left hand fell silent. Which was an eloquent enough answer.

“My point is I would rather not take unnecessary risks,” said the bespectacled wife. “Unlike you, I have something to lose.”

“But you can’t escape it anymore, can you?”

She did not protest the President’s statement.

Acting on emotion and making that emergency call had been her mistake. The wireless data had been intercepted and stolen. She had failed during the “grim reaper” phase meant to make up for that mistake, so now she was captured by an invisible chain.

However.

That was not why she was trembling.

It was true.

The documents she had been casually given showed that the information from Kyouka had not just been a bluff meant to protect them. There was a Threat that carried a massive amount of energy and a nuclear strike would not be as decisive a blow as the military liked to believe. Thus, they really did need to work with these magicians whose powers did not fit inside the existing branches of the military.

(But that isn’t the scariest part of all.)

She was smiling on the outside, but she silently gulped while thinking about her own lifeline here.

(If my betrayal is discovered, a grim reaper will be coming for me. A truly untouchable one with skill several levels above my own. But if that grim reaper manages to destroy “us”, humanity will be throwing out its one and only trump card: Second Grimnoah. Crystal Magic is the only trump card capable of fighting the real Threat.)

Letnahe Kurent was a grim reaper as well.

Her job was to prevent the creation of a tyrant. She was supposed to ensure that Crystal Magic could eventually be dragged down from its throne so that another strongest could take its place.

But at the same time, she had only been willing to offer her life as a grim reaper because there were people she wanted to protect by doing so: her husband who she had sworn her love to with a ring, the children she had had with her husband, and the first love represented by the watch she still could not bring herself to throw out. If she made the wrong move, they could die along with the rest of the 5.5 billion people out there.

“We’ve crossed the point of no return, so we’re in this together. I have people I must protect, so I can’t act as recklessly as you.”

“Oh? That’s an awful thing to say to a girl just because she hasn’t married yet.”

“Anything you might have is wasted without someone to share it with. Now, I don’t care how lonely a life you want to lead, but I do recommend doing everything you can to avoid being dragged down as tangled a path as mine. Besides…”

Smiling, Kyouka hit the console’s switch for the building-wide loudspeakers.

“Hadome-sensei, Hadome-sensei, please come to the guidance counselor’s office to discuss this naughty wife’s behavior.”

The soldier frantically covered the demon girl’s mouth with both her hands.

Kyouka grinned after removing her finger from the switch.

“You’re willing to go so far to protect him, but you still aren’t willing to speak with him face to face. What a pure little thing you are.”

“Pant, pant! I-I know you’re just teasing me,” insisted Letnahe with a tremor in her voice.

The world’s strongest was selfish. No one could hope to control them.

But it would be the height of folly to insist on controlling them to the point of throwing out the only card capable of fighting the Threat. That would be like someone stranded on a desert island throwing out perfectly good preserved food just because they were afraid of mold. They would be looking away from the fundamental problem.

At the very least, Utagai Karuta had proven that Crystal Magic could defeat the Threat. And he still had room to grow since he was not yet at Regulation 3.

Letnahe had fallen down the path of evil so she could protect people.

But offering herself up to the string-pullers would be entirely meaningless if she lost her family and first love that way.

Which was all the more reason for her decision.

(I can’t get rid of them when they’ve proven successful!!)

And once someone began to fall, they picked up speed quick. Her problems were like cords so thoroughly tangled she could not untangle them on her own.

This required absolute obedience.

The words of this President had to come before those of the man she had sworn her love to with a ring. If she wanted that happy family life to last, anyway.

The silver-haired brown-skinned traitor sighed.

“So we’re villains, are we?”

“Yes.” Kyouka admitted to it. “And you are not my friend. You will serve me.”

She drew a clear line between them.

She must have known that would actually make it easier for Letnahe.

“Then how about a piece of trivia to show you I am serious. To be clear, this is classified information that would get us both executed if it got out.”

“Oh? I hope it’s good news.”

“Have you ever wondered where the real Threat comes from? They attack different parts of the earth at random, but where do they come from?”

Letnahe Kurent pointed upwards.

“From space.”

“…”

“I’m not joking. Why do you think the sea anemone ones blossomed on the ocean floor in order to supply power for the others? The energy pouring down from space dissolves into the ocean and spreads evenly throughout it. The receivers have an easier time of concentrating it down when using the oceans that cover 70% of the planet’s surface. The solid fuel they use is not coal or a rocket propellant. You could call it the margin of error of energy that they fail to gather up.”

It was a simple answer, but that simplicity made it hard to find room to reject it.

“Crystal Magic also talks of energy pouring down from space, doesn’t it? The occult high and low pressure fronts you use are created by the conflict between that energy and the energy coming from the Original Crystal Embryo at the center of the earth. The energy source is already accounted for in your diagram.”

“Hold on. If that’s true…”

“Yes.”

“This is a fight between the inside and outside of the earth?”

According to Karuta’s report, Anastasia Blast of the Problem Solvers had said the following before their battle:

The real issue was the Original Crystal Embryo.

That gave humanity something we did not need.

This changed how she looked at the world.

Why had the Problem Solvers protected that outdated space elevator? Was it because they knew where the true battlefield was located?

Why had Yukino Arakawa managed a space facility that covered the entire planet? What if it was not to aim down from orbit and was actually a breakwater against the Threat arriving from beyond?

“You were granted your powers because you were deemed compatible.”

A note of pity entered Letnahe Kurent’s voice.

She shook her head with the look of someone viewing the monstrous result of a terribly misguided body modification experiment.

“You were made the vanguard of the Original Crystal Embryo that sleeps so deeply at the center of the earth. I cannot say if you are meant to be disposal or not, though.”

A girl stared blankly into the distance.

She was Matsuda Imi, a 1st year in high school. They had escaped Second Grimnoah and returned to the floating general airport for the time being.

“What are you going to do, Imi?” asked gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori.

Imi was so worn out her eyes seemed unfocused, but she could apparently hear when people spoke to her.

“Are you going to give up? I don’t think anyone will stop you after everything that happened.”

“…”

Imi remained silent for a while.

But eventually…

“What about Marika?”

“What about her?”

“What will she do?”

“I doubt her plans are changing. She’ll protect what she wants to protect and that means remaining on the front line. I don’t think anything you choose can change that.”

Imi fell silent again.

“Will I change anything if I run away?”

“That depends.”

“Will I never see Marika again if I run away?”

“You can make other friends.”

“But there’s only one Marika.”

Imi turned around.

She turned away from the exit that would let her run away to safety at any time.

And she waved toward her friend who was walking this way.

“I’ll stand up to it.”

Her movements were still awkward, but she was getting back on her feet.

“I won’t run away gain. No matter what.”

Marika scared her.

That had not changed. No matter what she thought in her head, her pain still rejected that girl. As long as she had a goal and knew she was doing the right thing, that girl could pin down her struggling friend and magically cauterize her wound without a second thought. Imi’s breathing grew heavy just remembering it.

But the time she had spent laughing with that girl on Second Grimnoah were also a reality. Marika laughed a lot, noticed even the small things, and made any day exciting just by being around.

She had known from the beginning that Marika had a twisted side.

And without that twisted side, Imi would have been fully crystalized back there.

So…

“I won’t let the ‘world’s strongest’ title win.”

She would take Marika’s hand once more.

Maybe the Threat was not the core of the problem.

“Marika is my friend. I won’t let our ordinary lives be consumed by war.”

Are you afraid of the world you live in?

Then you must stand up to that fear and overcome it yourself.

The dawn arrived.

The artificial rain had stopped. The oil fire out at sea had died down and the cleanup of the leaked oil was beginning.

Utagai Karuta scooped up dirt with a shovel and poured it into a hole at his feet.

“Those trucks are from museums,” said Yamane Deiri with bags under his eyes. “They apparently use them to carry dinosaur fossils. Basically, everyone’s afraid of leaving food behind for the Threat, so all the Threat wreckage is being dredged up from the bottom of the ocean. I dunno where it’s all being taken, but I hear it’s being put away somewhere no one will ever see it again.”

“…”

“Are you sure you don’t need to report that?”

Karuta did not respond.

The Port of Kobe was a modern port covered in asphalt and concrete, but it was a wide enough area that spots of unpaved dirt or gravel-covered dirt were common enough. Karuta had just finished levelling out one of those dirt patches after burying the armored warrior’s head. The shovel sticking into the ground almost looked like a grave marker. He understood this sentimentality was meaningless, of course.

Deiri referred to the remains of the unspeaking Threat as “wreckage”, so he apparently saw them as machines, just like drones.

Karuta was not so sure.

The Threat could act without a goal in mind and find meaning in pointless things.

The Warrior Doll’s eyes had seemed so much more straightforward than his own. It had fought fair and square from beginning to end and it had seemed to wordlessly praise its adversary even after its vengeance failed.

Had Karuta’s revenge been so praiseworthy?

Had he been open to accepting other ways of life?

Call it revenge if you like, but all he had done was play dirty and deceive his opponent. He had thought avengers could only be bloody criminals, but what if that assumption was wrong? What if his ugliness had not been the result of seeking revenge? What if the fundamental problem had been the part of him that led him to choose those methods for revenge?

The Warrior Doll had not tried to bring the ship, Gekiha, and the other crystallized people down with it.

Karuta had won the physical bottle but lost the moral one.

He had never imagined the Threat would make him feel that way.

“Sacri-sama.”

Aine pulled up his shirt and dove out from his stomach.

She had taken a lot of damage in the fight against the reddish-purple armored warrior, so she had been healing her wounds inside him. Just like Marika, Natlena, and the others would let their crystal armor “sleep” inside them to repair it.

“Are you ready to go now?” she asked with a tilt of the head.

“Yeah. Unlike you, I didn’t do much.”

“Didn’t do much? But I am part of your Crystal Magic.”

“All I really did was shine my flashlight around to blind them. You’re in control of all the real magic stuff.”

“…”

“And I wouldn’t it to turn out that way regardless.”

The crystal girl did not look happy with his answer, but he did not correct himself.

He tapped his finger on the handle of the shovel sticking into the ground.

“Unlike him, I don’t want to wield a sword so I can reach an emotional death. Maybe it’s too much for me, but I’ll accept this result if it’ll protect the people I care for. I will follow my path, even if it’s the path of the devil.”

He could see the ocean past the wharf.

Various work ships were moving all around to clean up the oil, but he also saw another ship slowly approaching. That was the Second Grimnoah academy ship – the home ground they had risked their lives to reclaim.

The crystal girl glanced over at the shovel he had stuck into the ground.

And she asked a question in her usual way.

“If I die, will you bury me like that?”

“I’ll learn any magic and clench my teeth in battle to make sure I don’t have to.”

Afterword

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

Apocalypse Witch has reached its third volume. The real Threat finally appears this time. What is the most frightening being for Karuta and the others? That was always my focus while coming up with ideas and you saw what I ended up with. Volume 2 had an awful lot of bugs, so I wanted to include a bit more variation for Volume 3. Dammit, if I don’t watch myself, I end up drifting toward grasshoppers and mantises. I do quite like aquatic creatures too, though.

Now you’ve seen what kind of world this is.

Destiny is cruel, hopes are never answered, and none of your ideals will come through for you.

Utagai Karuta started to grow cynical after the less-than-perfect endings of Volumes 1 and 2, so Volume 3 was one response he had to face. As long as you have the resolve, you can stay true to yourself even in this world. That is why he could not remain righteous and had the title of justice taken from him after he immediately gave up on doing things fair and square. He and the others ended up being the world’s strongest magicians against their will, so I thought this might be the most frightening thing for them. Karuta just barely avoided a total collapse on his part because the Problem Solvers did that to other humans while he had the barrier between human and Threat to cushion the blow. Yet ironically, he is now starting to question that barrier itself.

Letnahe was the unexpected unfaithful(?) wife heroine. I like how giving her the ring and watch on the same hand created a sense of guilt around perfectly ordinary items. I also realized this is something I couldn’t do in an ordinary series. The one thing keeping her from real infidelity is that her feelings for her husband have not cooled and this is not some casual fling. By the way, she never actually dated Hadome in her school days. I think the fact that they were separated without her ever telling him how she felt has led to a lot of “what ifs” in her head which are what prevent her from forgetting about him.

Karuta and the other protagonists started their story with an unspeakable desire for revenge. They have turned their backs on justice and bared their fangs toward their own goodness, but they will still risk their lives for what truly matters to them. I think this series is less about good prevailing over evil and more about the strength (or terror) of raw feelings. I hope you felt a shiver from President Omotesandou Kyouka who took things a step further and has settled down into her spot as a wicked girl. Isn’t she great!? The wicked upperclassman who’s hot and sexy but still has some childish mannerisms!!

It’s strange how Anastasia’s words grow more important with each new novel. They do say that truly great people will continue speaking even after their death. Anastasia was not a good person and she was an extremely irresponsible and self-centered person who reigned as the strongest until someone came along who could kill her (she did not care at all what the world would be like after her death), but maybe it’s easier to look fondly on people who stayed true to themselves even in death. You wouldn’t want an actual leader to have a death wish like that, though.

Since this volume was about taking back their school, I couldn’t use the school itself, so it was difficult finding a way to still give it a schooly feel. When I get too focused on the battles, I end up with no one going to school in a series that's supposed to have a school setting. Index is probably the most obvious example of that, like how they were fighting in England for so long recently.

Compared to my other series, Apocalypse Witch has a lot more group battles and shared living spaces, so it focuses more on the location than the individual people. I thought maybe I could keep the schooly feel if I always focused on that even during the battles. I want to create an attractive place where you feel like you’d want to go to school there even as the battles escalate and more unexpected things happen. That was my wish as I wrote the manuscript, but what did all of you think?

The first and second ships are both important parts of Grimnoah to Karuta, but will Natlena and the other newcomers accept that “infidelity”? That was the question facing him in Volume 3. He eventually managed to shake free of Kyouka’s temptation, but giving in and succumbing to her may have been another option for him. There were multiple paths he could have taken in this one volume, so I hope I made you think about those “what ifs”.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Mika Pikazo-san and to my editors Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. Volume 3 was all about how your usual school seems so scary at night! That different atmosphere could not have been easy for the illustrations. Thank you so much yet again!!

And I give my thanks to the readers. What do all of you see as symbols of justice and heroes? With katanas, large handguns, special attacks, transformation, and giant robots, it probably differs from person to person, but what did you think of the form shown here? I challenge you to a duel. I hope you could smile and accept Apocalypse Witch as a series where that challenge comes from the side trying to kill the protagonists instead of the protagonists themselves. Thank you so much yet again!!

And I will end this here.

Oh, no. Yamane Deiri is looking a lot more like an upperclassman now, Karuta-kun.

-Kamachi Kazuma

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