Apocalypse Witch:Volume 4

Novel Illustrations

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Prologue

(Author: Robert Ring. Filename: Manuscript Data 6/13/20XX 1-Page Article)

What is the true power of the world’s strongest crystal magicians known as the Four Living Gods?

Several pieces of new information were discovered during their battle against the Threat in the ocean near Japan’s Port of Kobe.

We now know more about the power of the world’s strongest magicians.

They must not have been able to spare the energy to cover up that information like they did during their unconfirmed operation at the Crystal Beach. Several witness accounts and videos of the battle in the city have turned up and official records remain for the damage caused by the leaked crude oil and the naval petroleum fire.

Is crystal magic really all that useful in the fight against the Threat? And just how powerful are the Four Living Gods really?

They would not try to hide this information if they did not benefit from doing so, so I believe there is great value in the fragments of information that slipped through this time.

Whatever their official specs are listed as on paper, the reality before our eyes is what truly matters.

The Four Living Gods failed to prevent damage to the city and they struggled to retake their own mobile base of Second Grimnoah. In your great wisdom, I ask that you determine for yourselves whether or not they truly have the power they are rumored to.

I repeat: just how powerful are the Four Living Gods really?

Remember, these are just a collection of minor students. They were forced to sacrifice others to take back their home, so can we really expect them to take back this world of 5.5 billion unharmed?

(* Hidden Note: We do live in a better world now, though. If I had written an article like this back in the Problem Solver days, I would have been demoted, fired, or even blacklisted from the entire industry.)

The ocean seemed to stretch on forever, but beyond the horizon, a long wire stretched ever upward like some kind of mistake. That was the space elevator constructed on the equator. The wire was surrounded by crackling light even with the sky as blue as could be. That was due to the energy being sent from the facility into the thunderclouds to intentionally release their lightning into the surrounding ocean where the high voltage would not harm the elevator wire.

It was June. Specifically, it was 10:09 AM of the 13th.

The equator in Southeast Asia was apparently one of the least rainy areas in the world. But if it rained even 140mm in a month, it would rival Tokyo’s rainy season. The problem was how the area had some of the world’s highest temperatures. It was better than the stagnant jungles, but it still felt like being inside a plastic greenhouse with water spraying on the plants inside.

Directly below the Second Grimnoah’s heliport, Utagai Karuta bowed his head and spoke.

“Thanks for helping me with this.”

“It’s no problem. That President’s clever plan has me working as an emergency lecturer on Second Grimnoah anyway.”

Letnahe Kurent had one foot held above her head like she was about to perform an axe kick, except that heel was pressed against the nearby metal wall to stretch her hip joint. She was a beautiful woman in her late 20s with distinctive long silver hair and brown skin. She currently wore a baggy t-shirt and ankle-length skintight pink leggings. Indian yoga had modernized itself a lot as time passed, so colorful synthetic garments were now a common sight when it was practiced. She wore a ring on her ring finger and a mobile watch around her wrist. She had a sports band attached to her glasses to keep them in place while she moved.

Karuta, on the other hand, wore a short-sleeved dress shirt over a sports brand shirt and purple slacks. That was actually an official summer uniform of Second Grimnoah – the combat variation he had used when fighting the Problem Solvers and the Threat.

(Not that these are made to provide any real defense. And this situation doesn’t really allow me to go into hiding and get in a sneak attack. If only the world’s strongest was allowed to hide weapons in their clothing.)

He tapped his fingers against the modified military flashlight he wore in his belt at the side of his hip.

The woman continued her stretches and spoke (while breathing an oddly alluring sigh).

“You are officially known as the world’s strongest, so you can’t let people see you working so hard. That actually makes the lockable gym a bad choice. The more strictly you lock something up, the more people will want to see inside. A blind spot like this, that no one even thinks about as being hidden from view, though? Now that makes the perfect secret base.”

The fact that below the heliport had been Karuta’s first thought when asked to find a secret base may have been a remnant of the sunk first ship living on within him.

(God, how long are you going to keep saving my ass, Gekiha?)

While applying gentle pressure to her lithe body with her stretches, the Main Category dance teacher (and special envoy from the Indian military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, and member of the human string-pullers) casually began the lesson.

“There are a wide variety of ancient martial arts, but I personally see four major categories defined by whether or not they use the legs and whether or not they allow grappling. Weapons? They all use that. Even karate uses the tonfa and boxing protects the fists. Human fists break far too easily when punching people barehanded.”

“Wait, but I recognize that stance.”

Karuta sounded puzzled.

He was not all that knowledgeable of martial arts, but he had seen similar movements used by karate fighters to judge the distance from their opponent.

The new teacher(?) smiled a little.

“India is an old country with a population of 1 billion even with the losses brought by the Threat. You can find more than 2000 martial arts styles there that can be classified as ‘ancient’.”

“Then why not use those?”

“If we combined those to create some kind of ultimate combination, we would get complaints about whose styles we used and whose we didn’t. So we avoid all that trouble by using foreign karate or jujutsu instead. You have to remember, the Indian military includes people from regions all across the country, so it’s safest to eliminate any source of friction rooted in love for one’s home region. The last thing you want is fights breaking out among your own troops.”

What a bitter reason.

And he had been hoping to see a scimitar like Kali’s or a trident like Shiva’s.

“Then again, Kenpo had its origins in ancient India before it arrived in China,” she added. “Now, if you just want as much destructive power as fast as you can get it, then Muay Thai with its punching, kicking, and grappling would be your best bet. But that is designed for close-quarters combat and is poorly suited for dodging weapons like knives and tasers. In the world of killing, you want to be an outfighter who keeps their distance from their opponent while making sure it remains a one-sided fight. But explaining it all verbally makes for poor training. You can figure out the logic behind it all while trying it out yourself.”

Karuta glanced awkwardly down at the object in his right hand.

The military flashlight that doubled as a striking weapon was about 60cm long and thicker than a relay baton. He had made use of that weapon on several occasions in this cruel world. He had also swapped out the light for a powerful IR laser that could dazzle eyes and jam sensors.

It was only a makeshift handmade device, but it was the most familiar weapon for him.

Letnahe coolly gestured him toward her with her fingertips in the sweltering equatorial heat.

“I don’t mind. Before they were developed into sports, ancient martial arts were designed with weapons in mind. Anyone who fights emptyhanded is making a choice to do so. There is no need to hold back.”

This wasn’t going to start until Karuta made his move. He slowly exhaled, flipped around the blunt weapon that had been aimed at her face, and aimed for her right shin instead.

Anyone would move to protect their face on reflex. Blows to the shin were an easy source of great pain and applying too much force had less risk of causing a lasting injury than with the knee. It was a “safe weak point” with almost no chance of killing someone if you attacked there.

But.

“Un.”

Letnahe easily pulled back her right leg to avoid the swing of his modified military flashlight.

“Deux.”

With a dull sound, stars scattered in Karuta’s vision. He had naturally lowered his head in order to attack her leg, so she had jabbed her elbow straight into his face. His flimsy barrier was easily breached, he lost control of his weight, and he could not stop himself from toppling back onto his ass. Meanwhile, Letnahe kept moving.

“Trois.”

He felt something soft on the back of his head.

Letnahe had cut sharply behind him and placed an arm around his neck. She used the inside of her elbow much like someone cracking a walnut with a door hinge. He had fallen onto his butt and his legs were pinned because she wrapped her legs around his hips from behind in a kani basami. She had essentially sat down and tangled her entire body around his, so he had no way of shaking her off after falling down. It was a lot like being strangled by the shoulder strap of the backpack you were wearing.

She did it with such overwhelming speed that the gemlike beads of sweat that flew from her brown skin only fell to the floor after the fact.

(If that’s her chin against the top of my head, then this softness against the back of my head must be her brea- gweh!?)

“Chokeholds are nearly impossible to break out of once they’re in place, but I also could have used an axe kick. The distance from the heel to the head increases the force of the blow, so it can shatter the skull of an opponent that has fallen to the ground.”

He felt the warmth of a grown women across his back and the heat of her breaths on his ear, but he could not afford to tense up. If she bent her elbow just a little further, she would fully constrict his carotid artery. Then he would have less than 30 seconds before he passed out.

Instead, she released him and stood up, brushing back her long hair with a hand, leaning over, and holding her other hand out toward the dazed boy.

“You cannot learn from a single loss. You need to continue losing until you understand why you lost. We don’t have much time, so you have to stay focused on that trial-and-error process.”

“…”

He took her hand.

No, just before he did, he flipped his entire body around to sweep her feet out from under her.

“Nice try.”

The teacher looked somewhat amused.

She stomped on his sweeping foot, but he could not just grimace at the explosion of primitive pain in his ankle bone. She had already pinned him in place.

With his one leg held to the ground, she spread her legs in her leggings and sat down on his belly. She made the temporary restraint much more permanent. She had to be lighter than him, but he couldn’t force her off of him with his center of gravity so accurately pinned.

“But not good enough.”

She held his hands down, swung her head back, and then slammed her forehead against his without even removing her glasses. He tasted rust while his vision blurred.

“Of course, I could have tightened your collar with my hands to knock you out instead.”

The kind teacher’s lecture continued with forehead against forehead like she was checking his temperature.

They were close enough for him to notice a cool minty scent in her sweet breath. It may have been her toothpaste.

“Do you see now that you can’t just attack at random? There are rules you must follow. Any attack you can think up on the fly can be just as easily blocked. You need to have at least two options at any single moment – preferably three. Do that and you can either win or draw – you will never lose.”

“Jab, strike, kick. Grab, choke, throw. Not to mention weapons and magic… Combat can happen in any context and with any kind of attack, so is it really that simple?”

“It is true there are as many methods of attack as stars in the sky.”

“Sh!!”

He threw a punch toward her side while she was talking and his vision darkened.

It took him three whole seconds to realize the teacher seated atop him had apparently tensed her side to block and thrown her own fist as a counterattack. Yes, seconds. In his battles against the Problem Solvers and the Threat, he would have been killed several times over in that time.

Letnahe maintained a composed expression as she continued speaking.

“But there aren’t all that many different forms of defense. Blocking, dodging, breaking free, parrying – well, there are four or five more if you include counterattacks that combine offense and defense. And your options there don’t change all that much whether you have a weapon or not. Plus, people can only perform one form of defense at a time. You cannot lower your hips to brace yourself against an incoming attack while also deftly dodging out of the way.”

“Gah…ow.”

“I will teach you several ways to efficiently destroy your opponent, so once you have a decent repertoire of attacks, you need to learn which forms of defense they can defeat. For example, a sway used to move the body out of the way of punch can be crushed by a kick or a tackle. A method of breaking free of an attempted grapple is powerless against all forms of striking attacks. Again, people can only perform one form of defense at a time, so if you always have at least two attack options at the ready, you can switch between them at a moment’s notice to render their defenses meaningless.”

“Ugh, cough.”

“In this case, you don’t need to worry about being caught in a brawl against multiple opponents, but that rule is still worth keeping in mind.”

Their lips were less than 2cm apart, so Karuta didn’t dare move his head aside when he coughed. He was afraid any movement at all would make their lips touch. This must have delighted some weirdly sadistic side of Letnahe because she rubbed her forehead against his in obvious amusement.

“You need to be an outfighter with excellent dodging skills, but your attacks also need real weight behind them. In that sense, Japanese karate isn’t bad. And you should avoid using leg techniques for a quick power boost since they will also reduce your mobility. Fancy taekwondo is best left to the experts.”

“But won’t my attacks be too weak like that? Even I can tell a kick is more powerful than a punch. Won’t this increase the risk of the battle dragging on?”

“Of course it will. The ideal result is to defeat your opponent within 4 seconds. Otherwise, you lose the element of surprise and the bullets and screams will start flying. And in real combat, either one is deadly. In your case, you will immediately be put on the defensive once that happens.”

She was so close he couldn’t get his eyes to focus on her face and he felt her breath of laughter on his lips.

But then she pulled back and got off of him.

“But there is no need to insist on using just one form of martial arts in combat. Just like the Japanese police have combined karate, judo, and kendo to create their own arresting techniques, you can take parts of different martial arts to make up for what one might lack. I assume you are more familiar with Japanese martial arts, so…yes, take this for example.”

Letnahe planted her feet at shoulder width and lowered her hips.

While partially crouched, she pressed her palms against her knees and lifted her right leg up high. Then she slammed the foot down against the hard floor.

In other words, she performed a sumo stomp.

“In sumo, greater body weight obviously provides an advantage, but you can still pose a threat with an average weight as long as you know how to throw that weight around. You can rattle your opponent’s vision and mind with a swift sumo slap and use that opening to tackle them. As long as you learn the effective patterns, you can nearly guarantee a win that way. There is a brief risk as you move in close to slam your weight against them, but you still have a greater chance of dodging an unexpected attack than if you raised your leg for a kick.”

“…”

Karuta greatly appreciated her valuable advice, but he was having trouble looking her in the eye.

She gave him a confused look through her glasses, but then realization filled her eyes. She must have heard the straining of the synthetic material. Yes, she shouldn’t have spread her legs so wide and placed such a large burden on the pink leggings already stretched tight over her skin. …The shape of her crotch was showing through a little too clearly. Mrs. Camel was showing off her toes.

Letnahe held herself in her arms and rapidly backed away, glaring at him like he was a bug on the bathroom floor.

“What kind of animal has time to lust after a married women wearing a wedding ring when his life is on the line?”

“How is it my fault you decided to do this combat training in yoga pants? An ordinary long-sleeved track suit would’ve worked fine!!”

Just then, a bright white beam of light shot from the heliport above and shook the entire world around them.

This was not like an ordinary explosion spreading out in every direction like a dome.

Had it been given even more brutal destructive power by focusing it all in a single direction? One of the cruisers patrolling nearby nearly had its bow torn off and a desert island on the horizon and an ocean wind power plant were erased from the world.

This was magic.

However, it was not the crystal magic Utagai Karuta and his friends were so familiar with.

“Aaaaand there it is!! Soufflehilde S. Gerbline’s Valkyrie rune magic just landed a solid hit!! Fortunately, the stands only had a piece of their base torn away, but do remember it’s up to you to dodge any foul balls that fly your way. Now, what has become of Eikele and her Celtic wicker man? Was she blasted outside the ring, or was she vaporized on the spot? The satellite and drone footage is being rewound for a careful analysis as we speak, so please wait until we have a ruling!!”

The amplified and cracking voice coming from the speakers was the excited yelling of a little girl much too young to be commentating a deadly event like this. The cheering crowd soon followed. The cheers were so loud they shook the 600m ship that was Second Grimnoah.

That was all happening atop the heliport directly above Karuta and Letnahe’s heads.

For all that to fit up there, it was obviously much larger than the average rooftop heliport.

Emotions were contagious, so excitement could spread from a single person just as well as panic could. Maybe the edgy little girl’s shouts were meant to excite the crowd that way, or maybe she was just stalling until the result of the match was confirmed.

“But you can’t hope to face the real star of this tournament if you don’t pack at least that much of a punch. Now, everyone, use this new information to inform your next bets. Wouldn’t it be boring if the world’s strongest just won it all!? That kind of fuck up isn’t gonna make anyone rich!! So grip those tickets in your hands and raise a greedy prayer for whoever you’ve got your money riding on! Who do you think will kill Utagai Karuta and claim the title of world’s strongest for themselves!!!???”

No one questioned it.

The cheers only grew louder and filled their surroundings with the strange energy of a festival.

“You don’t have time to zone out.”

Was it Letnahe Kurent who said he could not let other people see him right now? She checked her blood pressure and other vital signs on the mobile watch synced with her phone while she performed some stretches more to stimulate her internal organs through yoga than to loosen her muscles.

“Remember, you don’t have the luxury of Aine fighting by your side this time.”

Chapter 1

Part 1

So, what exactly was going on at Second Grimnoah as it floated in the equatorial ocean on June 13? Take a look back in time and that will become clear enough.

“A martial arts tournament with magic allowed, huh?”

Amaashi Marika, the childhood friend with her curly twintails dyed a bright strawberry blonde, sounded skeptical. She was wearing a brand-new short-sleeved blouse of a summer uniform. She was the generally cheerful and extroverted gyaru type (while actually being extremely dangerous, obsessive, and vengeful), but unlike Karuta, she actually tied her tie.

“We never got a chance to do this on the first ship.”

“So it’s this year’s Catastrophe? It sounds a lot more friendly than the rumors I heard on the first ship.”

Kazamuki Gekiha and the other 700 students and teachers of the first ship were preserved as unspeaking crystal statues at the bottom of this ship, but Karuta did not see anything inappropriate about this conversation. They were talking about a dream those students never had a chance to live out.

They were inside the air-conditioned gym early in the morning, but it still felt hot and stuffy with all the Sub Category and Main Category students gathered there. The waxed floor and the stage at one end perfectly reproduced the look of a school gymnasium and it was large enough to play two volleyball games at once or to play a regulation basketball game. With that size, it was easy to forget this was all on a ship. But this gathering looked too fancy to be a simple student assembly. Countless cameras were filming everything from the stands on the second floor. Traditional TV cameras were carried on cameramen’s shoulders and swiveling webcams were affixed to the metal railings. All in all, there had to be more than 10 thousand lenses.

This assembly doubled as an audienceless opening ceremony.

Wheelchair spokes creaked up on the stage.

When she remained silent, no one would suspect Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was anything more than a busty black-haired beauty, but she was in fact the Four Living Gods’ black-hearted strategist. She barely seemed to notice all the eyes on her as she spoke. She did have a transparent prompter in front of her, providing her with the text of her speech, but Karuta suspected she didn’t really need it.

“We at Second Grimnoah have had the good fortune to claim the position of world’s strongest with our cutting-edge crystal magic. But growth is not possible if we fail to look outwards. So to establish an effective exchange of knowledge, we ask for assistance from other types of magicians. We hope that you will participate in order to assist our fight against the mysterious Threat and to help bring peace to our world.”

Colorful images danced on the screen covering the wall behind her. This used a special projector that arranged its scan lines so the image would remain crisp and clear even through the mechanical lenses. It was clearly designed to be world-class entertainment. The artificial depth given to the video was so well done it was hard to tell whether the images seen in front of the screen or behind it were the fake ones.

The Four Living Gods referred specifically to Utagai Karuta, Aine, Amaashi Marika, and Omotesandou Kyouka, but Karuta and Marika had not been given seats of honor as members of the world’s strongest. They sat with the other students in their class, which gave them a chance to whisper to each other.

Karuta spoke to Marika while keeping his eyes on Kyouka shining up on the stage.

“The Four Living Gods must remain the strongest no matter what happens.”

“And?”

“Frankly, we keep getting our asses handed to us. At the Port of Kobe and here on Second Grimnoah, ordinary people saw us fighting the Threat. We managed to cover up most of the information about what happened at the Crystal Beach, but we couldn’t stop people online from speculating that we were caught up in some kind tragedy there. Which is true, but we can’t let people know that. We aren’t allowed to lose or even draw like ordinary humans.”

“Because if we aren’t perfect, people will be worried we can’t defeat the Threat?”

“You should know with all the online news alerts that get automatically pushed to that phone in your hand. There are protests verging on riots in several cities out there.”

“Justice and fear and frustration, huh?”

“The usual recipe for a witch hunt. Looting doesn’t happen because people see a chance to steal – it happens because people are afraid they won’t be able to defend themselves if they don’t. It’s the same impulse as bulk-buying during a disaster, so the people doing it don’t even think they’re doing anything wrong. Humans can steal and kill as long as they can give themselves a benevolent justification for doing it, like feeding their family or protecting the weak. That’s just how we work.”

Karuta’s tone of voice tended to drop when he was discussing matters of morality.

He had thrown out such lies after his “baptism” aboard the first ship.

“The fear market has people making a bundle remodeling people’s bathrooms into panic rooms or selling family shelters buried in the backyard. Not to mention self-sufficiency products like rooftop solar panels or herb planters that can be installed on a balcony. There are even services to manage your possessions or to fully erase your search history or hard disk after your death. Hell, we’re even seeing apocalyptic cults and cold sleep services. This event is needed to put an end to those things.”

Simply put, crystal magic had to be powerful. And that did not necessarily mean they needed some secret training regimen to actually increase its power. In fact, that sort of power boost was too subtle a flavor, so it would mostly go over the public’s heads.

Instead, they needed some strongly-flavored junk food that everyone could appreciate.

The Catastrophe was the perfect candidate there.

“Just like we used our crystal magic to battle against the god-worshiping magic, there are plenty more forms of magic out there. According to Omotesandou-san, Letnahe Kurent of the human string-pullers used Indian mythology magic.”

“So we just have to kick all their asses on camera? Sounds pretty immature.”

“The point is to prevent any riots by showing the world that crystal magic really is the strongest in the world. We don’t actually need to get any stronger to do that. As long as we defeat the competition in the Catastrophe tournament, the world will see that we’re a step above everyone else.”

Besides, if wanting to get stronger was enough to do so, they would already be as strong as they needed to be. As pathetic as it might sound, they had already hit their upper limit. Their power wasn’t going to suddenly level up just because they had run into a new problem.

Instead, they would con the world.

Solving these social problems was where Omotesandou Kyouka’s cunning mind came into play. Her idea had been to invite different magic systems from around the world to participate in a martial arts tournament. This wasn’t a subtle secret ingredient requiring in-depth culinary knowledge to identify; it was omurice smothered in ketchup.

“Marika.”

“Yes?”

“Given the point of tournament, all four of us should be automatically entered. I’m sure you get this already, but this event is only using the Catastrophe name. I’ll say this as many times as it takes for it to stick, but the entire point of the tournament is to bring peace of mind to the nervous people around the world. So don’t take things too far. Or to spell it out for you: don’t kill anyone. Please, Marika, I’m begging you.”

“Is that any way to talk to your cute and heroic childhood friend?”

Unfortunately, that was exactly how he had to talk to God of Destruction Marika. What would happen if she carried out a gruesome execution on a global livestream? This entire event was meaningless if people walked away thinking crystal magic was an even greater monster than the Threat.

Then Karuta felt small fingers tugging on his short-sleeve dress shirt.

The white figure seated on the other side of him from Marika was the only person not wearing a Second Grimnoah summer uniform. That pure white dress with large slits for ease of movement stood out like a sore thumb in the sea of purple uniforms.

She was Crystal Girl Aine.

She seemed upset that Karuta was only speaking with Marika, so she started whispering to him to draw his attention.

“Sacri-sama, Sacri-sama.”

“Huh? I mean that’s cute and all, but since when does Aine-chan get so blatantly jealous over Karuta?”

“Sacri-tama.”

“Again, since when is this a thing!? She hasn’t been infected with – I don’t know – crystal malware or something, has she!?”

Karuta himself slapped a hand against his forehead.

A lot had happened while they were retaking Second Grimnoah near the Port of Kobe. How had the crystal girl interpreted things when he fought for her against the armored warrior Threat in this very gym? That was something only she could know. And once the battle was over, he had sensed a subtle change in how Aine acted around him. It was a weird sensation, like one side of his headphones was intermittently going out, and Karuta himself was unsure how to process it.

“Anyway, Aine, I’m counting on you. There’s nowhere to hide in the limited field of a tournament ring, so my usual trickery isn’t going to work. I imagine most of my fights are going to come down to sending you in as the vanguard the instant the battle begins.”

“Roger that, Sacri-tama. You can count on me.”

“Playful answers like that only make me more worried, you know?”

Their exchange made it clear Karuta was not really all that worried. The entire event was meaningless if the crystal magic users didn’t win. In a way, it was a major gamble with no redos, but he couldn’t imagine how Aine or Marika could possibly lose to an ordinary magician. He didn’t mean to insult all the participants who had gathered from around the world, but he did not sense the same skin-crawling pressure he had felt from simply being near the Problem Solvers or the Threat. Karuta himself could not use any real magic and might only get in the way, but Aine could easily defeat any challenger even with him weighing her down. In fact, he was more worried that she wouldn’t be able to make nonlethal strikes with her crystal sword.

“Aine. If anyone other than us wins, they earn the title of world’s strongest plus a large sum of prize money. That money comes from all the money people lose betting on the tournament – in other words, the jackpot. Omotesandou-san says that should reach more than 2 billion. You can’t take human greed lightly. It’s a powerful motivator different again from the vengeance that drove us. It’s best not to underestimate something just because you don’t have it yourself.”

However.

A subtle change happened then.

So subtle only Karuta and Marika could notice it thanks to the time they had spent with the sexy Student Council President after the destruction of the first ship.

Images of the four world’s strongests were displayed on the wall behind her.

And then the photos of Aine, Amaashi Marika, and Omotesandou Kyouka were removed one by one.

“The primary objective of this year’s Catastrophe Magic Combat Tournament is the exchange of valuable magic, so we can’t have people skipping it because they assume the world’s strongest are guaranteed to win. That is why we will be accepting a few handicaps.”

Omotesandou Kyouka’s eyes blinked at an odd moment. It was the look she made when something caught her by surprise but she was working hard to not let it show.

“We are the current world’s strongest, but we could not learn anything new if the four of us all took part and immediately crushed the competition. These handicaps were our own idea to make this a more valuable experience, so do not feel like you are being given an unfair advantage. If your opponent has a weakness, do not hesitate to attack it. As the four who must always defeat the Threat, we know that greedy ambition very well.”

“What the hell?” muttered Karuta.

They had shifted to another set of rails. What in the world was being displayed on the transparent prompter in front of Kyouka?

“You didn’t hear anything about this either, did you, Karuta?”

Kyouka herself looked uncertain whether or not she should go along with it.

But the footage was already being played on the screen behind her. Any discrepancy between that footage and her explanation would prove to everyone that something was wrong. The entire event was meant to prevent the people from worrying, so Kyouka must have decided she could not allow any hint of trouble to enter the global livestream of this opening ceremony.

They were in the middle of a fear market where even half a second of unnatural silence could cause a stock price to crash and start riots. To avoid any unnecessary damage to the entire world’s crowd psychology, she ended up saying exactly what she was told. The screen behind her displayed each item as she said it.

“1. Utagai Karuta shall be Second Grimnoah’s only contestant.

“2. The Four Living Gods are considered a group of four, so Aine is considered her own independent person despite being his crystal magic. Thus, Utagai Karuta is forbidden from ‘using’ her during the tournament.

“3. If Utagai Karuta is killed in an accident during the tournament, his opponent will not be charged with a crime regardless of how it happens. And to fill the gap his death would create, any contestant who kills him and wins the tournament shall become a new member of the Four Living Gods.”

This is really bad, realized Karuta.

He hadn’t heard anything about this. Weren’t they motivating people to participate by awarding them the betting jackpot as prize money?

Something was happening here. They had switched over to the most dangerous set of rails for the Four Living Gods. He did not have many good memories of Grimnoah’s gym – on the first or second ship.

“Or to put it another way, if you can kill Utagai Karuta – good luck, by the way – then feel free. If you are willing to risk your life and pride on it, then this is your chance to steal the title of strongest for yourself. Now, everyone, do you think you can kill Utagai Karuta? This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so do not expect it to come again. Drag out the musty-old magic of a bygone era and join the fight. If what I just said pissed you off, then maybe you have the fighting spirit needed to join us in the fight against the Threat.”

Part 2

The hallway was abuzz with chatter. The students in identical summer uniforms were staring down at their phones, perhaps waiting for the tournament’s official gambling service to go online. Even if it was officially sanctioned, they were oddly excited about being able to access the world of gambling through the convenience of their phones.

And the instant the opening ceremony was over, Utagai Karuta rushed to the student council room.

He was already soaked with sweat.

“What is this!? What did they do!?”

“I’m not sure either.”

The words had come from Omotesandou Kyouka’s mouth, but she shrugged like this had nothing to do with her. The gym had overpowered air conditioning to keep such a large place cool, so the weaker cooling of the student council room felt like something had malfunctioned in comparison. The president’s summer uniform blouse had sweaty see-through patches.

“I had the entire speech memorized, but I had to match what was being shown behind me, right?”

“~ ~ ~”

“Sacri-sama, that is just the kind of person Miss Kyouka is.”

He was curious about Aine’s response, but there was no point asking something like that at such a pressing time. Still, he wanted to know what kind of person the crystal girl thought the president was.

The upperclassman elegantly placed a hand on her cheek.

“It did not look like they were swapping out the video and text in real time, so was the data for the screen and prompter replaced in advance? If so, it must have been someone with direct access to the original event planning sheet stored on Second Grimnoah’s central computer.”

“Hm? Is that hard to get at?”

“Hard to say. The machine was set up by the teachers, not me. I’ve never been a fan of biometric authentication myself.”

Come to think of it, Karuta recalled Kyouka being shocked by the carelessness of the security on his phone. She looked like the old-fashioned and traditional type, but she was actually the kind of person who insisted on building her own computer. Karuta viewed her pickiness about graphics cards and memory as the computer version of the rich young wife who would only feed her child food she personally prepares using organic produce grown by a farmer she could meet herself.

But why did she bring up biometric authentication here?

“If you look at it, it must have been either me, you, or Marika-san. The lock uses our DNA and we couldn’t extract any from Aine-chan, so she can’t get past the lock screen herself.”

That last part was frightening, but it was not the point at the moment.

Did she say the only suspects were the three human members of the Four Living Gods?

“Are you suggesting I would go to the trouble of creating a ruleset that gets me slaughtered on a global livestream? I’m barely different from a normal high school boy without Aine!”

“I wouldn’t either. I assume you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t send you to your death like this.”

“Should I list the multiple past events that would lead him to think you would do just that?” asked Aine.

Kyouka shrugged that one off without protest.

She brushed her hair off her shoulder and continue speaking.

“Needless to say, none of us would benefit from doing this. That means someone found a vulnerability in our security and broke in. I don’t know how difficult that would be since I didn’t build this system myself. I intend to look into the hardware and software side of this, but I can’t guarantee you I will find the culprit and put a stop to this anytime soon.”

“Sacri-sama. If Miss Kyouka cannot do this, shouldn’t we assume no one can track them down?”

Some artificial means had set things in motion to make the Four Living Gods suffer. A strange weight bore down on Karuta’s shoulders.

“Could this be the human string-pullers?” he asked carefully.

“It’s too soon to say. It could be some country’s military cyber team or it could be a group of anonymous hackers. We’ve made ourselves such a conspicuous target that there are as many suspects across the world as there are stars in the sky. They could be motivated by a grudge, hoping to profit in some way, or just think it’s funny. For all we know, their reasons for targeting us aren’t even true. I just hope I can work out some personal characteristics while analyzing the method used for this prank.”

“Also, who ever said the Threat can’t use human tools, Karuta? Aine-chan isn’t human either and she could play the piano or use a phone if you taught her how. Of course, you would need to know how to teach first,” cheerfully added Amaashi Marika.

But the two girls were only listing off possibilities and they were both focusing on the same thing Karuta was. They all knew the most likely suspect here.

The human string-pullers.

Letnahe Kurent had been sent to Second Grimnoah as their vanguard, but Kyouka had somehow managed to get her cooperation as a double agent. Thanks to that, Kyouka was supposed to have all the spoilers in advance, yet she had still been caught by surprise. Someone had slipped past their defenses even though they had a double agent in place. It was unlikely they could find the identity of this person by questioning Letnahe. This was a dangerous submarine of a person who could lurk under the surface until the time came to strike.

“Hello, hello, hello! Delane here with another announcement as the super cute Cinderella Queen.”

Someone was making a lot of noise on the video site displayed on the student council room’s computer monitor.

Cinderella Queen was a girl of about 10 with sky silver hair, but she called herself a free net idol. She wore a dress with a wide skirt just like a storybook princess, but the dangerous black and yellow colors and the bulky leather belts strapped all over it clashed with the fairy tale look. Her young age made the wide open back and plunging neckline seem a lot harsher than they would on a fully-grown idol still trying to act all pretty and pure. For that matter, the fishnet stockings just looked wrong on a 10-year-old. And at that age, heels that high weren’t so much sexy as they made you worry about the development of her bones.

Delane winked toward the camera before continuing.

“In this magic combat tournament, 15 magicians who passed the grueling preliminaries around the world will battle each other plus Utagai Karuta of the Four Living Gods, rumored to be the world’s strongest! A real magic show is just the thing to snap you out of the boredom of real life☆ Now, will someone drag the champion from his throne and claim the title of strongest for themselves, or will the world’s strongest mercilessly slaughter all of these insolent challengers? Only one way to find out!!”

The first round would include 8 one-on-one battles.

And the tournament bracket would narrow down like a house for cards from there.

But that crucial bracket remained entirely blank. No names or photos were displayed. Everyone knew Utagai Karuta was one of them and the staff had let him know he would be fighting in the first round’s seventh match, but he knew nothing at all about who his opponent would be.

He couldn’t imagine how he could win.

Plus, this tournament was officially allowing people to gamble. Not revealing who was fighting who until the very last second was bound to affect the online placing of bets, so why do this?

“Omotesandou-san, do you think this is one of the ‘accidents’ we heard always happen during the Catastrophe?”

“It’s probably a showbusiness thing. They know they’ll make the most money from your battles since you’re the current world’s strongest. So if word got out you would be fighting in Round 1 Match 1, most people wouldn’t bother buying viewership tickets for the other matches. So by hiding that information, anyone who wants to make sure they see your match is forced to buy tickets for all eight matches. I bet that’s their official reason, anyway.”

“You mean there’s a possibility of an ulterior motive there?”

“If you don’t need any evidence to back it up, then almost anything is a possibility. Maybe the string-pullers are actually aliens wearing human skin and maybe Cinderella Queen is actually your long lost little sister.”

If they started blaming everything that didn’t go their way on the human string-pullers, all they had was a conspiracy theory. Karuta told himself to maintain the proper balance in his head. Because he knew about three sad and inexperienced avengers who had once destroyed themselves in a snowy hell by suspecting the people they should have trusted most.

He clapped his hands together.

“New topic. It looks like the only path forward is for me to fight and win this on my own. If I find an excuse to forfeit or we make a last-minute change from me to Marika, it would only breed unnecessary anxiety and speculation. Any doubts at all are dangerous right now. I don’t know who did this, but the most effective way to overcome their malice is to win this fair and square. …Cowards like us should understand that all too well, right?”

“What do you want?” asked Kyouka.

Karuta quickly formed a list in his mind.

The mysterious Threat were not the only foe they had fought. After taking on the Problem Solvers, they knew what dirty battles between humans were like.

After taking a deep breath to refocus his mind, he relayed the list to Kyouka.

“First, I want data on my opponent in the first round. The more the better. After all, I don’t even know their name or what they look like.”

That was the most basic and crucial of things. He had learned in the battles against Elicia and Yukino that information was the most powerful weapon. He had no chance at survival if he was thrown into the ring without knowing the first thing about his opponent.

Was digging up information in advance unfair? Karuta scoffed at the lingering speck of goodness inside himself.

He couldn’t forget that he was the famous world’s strongest. His opponent would have all the information they could want on him. Crystal magic might be enshrouded in mystery, but it had been captured on many a camera during the largescale battle near the Port of Kobe the other day. Humans were not so kind. If his opponent had strategic data on the Four Living Gods, it would be unfair if Karuta had to go in blind.

Plus…

“If I have to fight alone in a ring that makes trickery difficult, we need to boost my own skills. What can we do there? I want to know the specific rules…and use those to search for loopholes. For example, it sounds like you can bring in a magic wand or broom for these magic battles, but if you can bring your own weapons, what about a gun or bomb?”

“Only if that weapon is necessary for the activation of your magic,” smoothly explained Kyouka.

That answer scared him because it meant he might find himself up against just such an opponent. The most he could do was repair nonlethal wounds with crystal and there was no cover in the ring. A single bullet to the head would kill him just as much as an ordinary person.

“But you would have a hard time of claiming that yourself. This tournament is meant to put people at ease by demonstrating that the Four Living Gods really do possess the strongest power. Do you think the people watching in their living rooms will be put at ease if you just pull out a hidden handgun and fire a bullet into your opponent’s chest?”

“I’m not sure I can survive this at all and you want me to think about the effect on the viewer at home?”

This was a demand entirely separate from the battle itself.

When you discovered that professional wrestling was an independent system born in 19th century circuses, it gave you an idea of how difficult an act it was. Professional wrestlers put their lives at risk to entertain an audience, just like the trapeze artists and lion tamers. The wrestlers who had dedicated their lives to that field could not just go on a chaotic rampage; they had to demonstrate the beauty of combat for the audience. That was not something a high schooler could learn to do overnight.

Working to win beautifully was the opposite of an ugly struggle to survive. This was quite possibly the worst handicap for him.

But Kyouka did not sound remotely worried.

“If all you’re interested in doing is surviving, then you could call in a fake bomb threat and get the tournament canceled. But you won’t do that. You understand the danger of the social unrest running rampant across the world. You know the Threat aren’t the only ones that can kill humans.”

He had no rebuttal for that one.

He had already accepted that he had to win this despite being placed at a severe disadvantage. If he didn’t make that result convincing, it would only lead to unnecessary bloodshed.

Justice and fear were powerful explosives. And frustration was like oil dumped onto that small fire. The looting and riots rooted in the same anxieties as bulk-buying were a bad sign.

“Okay, you can be in charge of the electronic paperwork, Omotesandou-san. If they need to meet certain conditions to bring a weapon with them, then they must submit a request explaining that weapon and the magic that requires it, right?”

“Yes, but that data could always have been altered. Still, it’s worth checking – just don’t place too much trust in it. It’s only a rough estimate.”

“Then Aine and Marika can scout out my opponent to make that information more reliable. Check with your own two eyes to see if anything contradicts the paperwork.”

“Understood, Sacri-sama.”

“…”

“Now, Marika? I’m only asking you to scout them out. Do not – I repeat, do not – put on a mask and attack them in their dressing room to injure them and force them to drop out of the fight. I’m serious here. I’m not winking and I’m not nodding, okay!?”

“I get it, childhood friend. Sheesh, you don’t trust me at all, do you? And are you sure you should put all three of us on intel duty? Don’t you need someone to train you?”

Aine and Marika had such absurd mobility that secret training from them would be entirely meaningless, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. His physical abilities were the same as an ordinary high schooler. He couldn’t fly and he couldn’t boost himself with what amounted to a powered suit of crystal armor. He couldn’t accomplish anything if his expectations were unrealistic, so he had to focus on what an indoorsy high schooler could manage on short notice.

His would be the 7th and penultimate match of the day, but that still gave him less than 6 hours to work with. Anything that wouldn’t bear fruit in that timespan was wasted effort. He readily admitted he was weak, so he would instead ask for a secret technique that even a powerless human could use.

“I guess I should either ask Natalena or Letnahe for help. That woman is from the military, isn’t she? She’s like a global online store where you can buy deadly techniques for ordinary people at the click of a button.”

Part 3

With that, we arrive back at the present.

Utagai Karuta hesitantly looked up at the bottom of the giant heliport being used as the tournament stage.

The people couldn’t be allowed to see the world’s strongest working so hard, but no one would expect to find anything hidden so close to the action. Tightly locking up the gym and training there would have roused much more suspicion. According to the president, the best hiding places were also the easiest to guess, which was why everyone always checked below the bed or in the attic. He really wished she wouldn’t grin and ask him if he knew what she meant, though.

The beam that had blasted a desert island and an ocean wind power plant was burned into his retinas as an afterimage. Was the audience safe? If something like that hit Karuta head on, he would be vaporized before the regeneration could even begin.

“Whoa, now who saw that coming?” said the commentator.

But it wasn’t the great power of the magic that scared him.

It was how everyone accepted it as normal.

“Eikele Tir-na-Nog was not in fact vaporized! She used her magic to blend into the background while the bright beam hid her from view and she just got a solid hit in on the back of the Valkyrie’s head when her guard was dowwwwwwwwn!!!!!!!”

The crowd cheered, shaking the entire 600m triple hull ship.

No one seemed bothered by the bloodshed.

They were simply boiling over with this new form of excitement.

“Yikes. What is this, Ancient Greece? The fighters and the audience aren’t remotely bothered by the killing, are they?”

“Magical battle already don’t feel real to most people, they’re officially allowed to bet on the matches, and this is a big festival separated from their everyday lives. It isn’t uncommon for bloodshed and property damage to be accepted on special days, like Spain’s running of the bulls or Japan’s cart-pulling festival,” explained Letnahe with a composed expression.

“Is that how it works?”

“I know Japan dives into the frigid midwinter ocean or rolls down a hill on giant logs, but India has its fair share of bizarre festivals too.”

She grabbed the chest of her baggy t-shirt to wipe the sweat from her face, but she also kept her arms and legs gently moving during her break so her breathing rhythm never left combat mode. She was probably also intentionally controlling the movements of her internal organs, but Karuta couldn’t see that part. The watch synced with her phone was beeping to alert her of an error.

“You must face them with almost no magic and then win the entire Catastrophe. Once in the ring, no one can help you. Fortunately, your round one match is #7, which puts it near the end of the afternoon matches, so you still have time. Repeat this training and prove just how much someone can accomplish if they truly want to win. The more you know, the more you can respond to.”

“Um, Letnahe-san? Are you enjoying this by any chance?”

“I can’t deny I have some pent-up frustrations and humiliation regarding crystal magic. Mostly thanks to a certain Student Council President I could mention.”

She really did beat him up.

He sparred with her for about two hours until lunchtime, but she was a professional soldier. He had never stood a chance in a direct one-on-one fight. It ended without him ever getting a real counterattack in. All he had learned was that his paper-thin barrier was entirely useless.

He had received the very un-teacherly comment that the regeneration was useful “because I can punch you in the face over and over and never leave any blood or bruises.” But since he was going to be livestreamed around the world as the world’s strongest it probably was best that he didn’t show up with a split lip and a black eye.

And Letnahe had not given him a break at lunchtime because she was hungry.

“Senpai.”

A small girl approached him while he was sprawled out on his back.

Her name was Natalena Blast.

The 12-year-old middle school girl had fluffy blonde hair cut at shoulder length. The arrival of the underclassman girl here meant the rhythm of the outside world was changing, for better or for worse. The four morning matches must have ended, so most of the audience had left their seats to grab some lunch.

The ship had the energy of a disturbed hornet’s nest. The random flow of people made them harder to predict. Letnahe had given him a break because the crowds could not be allowed to see the world’s strongest working so hard because he was terrified of death and defeat. So once the afternoon matches began, the frustrated wife would once more be beating up with her military skill.

“Natalena,” Karuta groaned from the floor.

“Um, what is it, Senpai?”

“Why are you dressed up as a maid?”

“Let me ask you this: um, do you think I wanted to dress this way? Our class chose to run a maid café. And by ‘chose’, I mean the boys formed a strong pro-maid voting bloc.”

Approaching a high school boy sprawled out on his back while she wore a short maid uniform gave him a very good look at her cute panties, but she didn’t seem to have thought through the viewing angles that well. And once she did notice, he was pretty sure she would deliver a finishing blow to the center of his face with the heel of her enamel shoe, so he forced his aching body to sit up sooner than he would have liked.

“Also, there’s something wrong with Japan’s laws if they can force middle schoolers to work as long as they call it a ‘school event’.”

“Oh? Natalena, what makes you think this ship is bound by Japanese law now that we’re out in international waters?”

“Why did I ever trust this Panama-registered ship!!”

He was pretty sure the ship was not actually registered in Panama and he doubted middle schoolers were allowed to work in Panama either.

For Karuta, this crazy tournament had him one step away from death at any moment, but the rest of the students, who didn’t have to fight in it, were rejoicing at having all their classes canceled throughout. Nothing excited a student more than a weekday without classes. At times, that excitement could win out over the fear of a typhoon or blizzard. And with the large crowd out and about, there was a large demand for food. They would also want to take a look around Second Grimnoah, since they wouldn’t normally be allowed onboard. Since the students didn’t have classes, it was unsurprising they had decided to earn some extra money by having each class open restaurants and such like this was a cultural festival.

Karuta’s 12-year-old underclassman sat directly on the floor and placed a small basket on her lap. She would have been very mad and argued with him if he said so out loud, but she was a natural at this maid thing.

“Here, I brought you some lunch. Um, it’s only a simple sandwich and a drink, though.”

“Thanks.”

When Karuta neatly grabbed the sandwich with a paper napkin, Natalena held a hand to her mouth and laughed. That may not have looked like the action of the arrogant and condescending world’s strongest.

Was this off the maid café’s menu? The sandwich was of unexpectedly high quality. Not only did it have some excellent honey chicken inside, but it was given an extra kick with some whole grain mustard and it contained stir-fried vegetables chopped up finely enough to not be noticeable. It provided an excellent balance of meat, vegetable, and grain in something that was pleasant to eat. You didn’t often see a product with such care in its design even in the professional food service industry.

On the other hand…

“Munch, munch. But if you give people everything they need in one simple package, you’re basically killing any chance at further sales, aren’t you? A maid café isn’t about getting customers in and out as quickly as possible like a stand-up soba stall, so don’t you make your money by having people stay a while and continue to order more food? Like a cake that’s so sweet they need to order a drink, or omurice that’s so greasy they start craving a salad. The key to success is for each item on the menu to be somewhat imperfect.”

“Ugh. I-I don’t care. Um, uh, the maid café was the result of a stupid conspiracy by the dumb boys. We girls wanted nothing to do with it. Anyway, Senpai, can I ask you something that just occurred to me?”

“Sure.”

“Does this mean the Utagai Karuta – world’s strongest, bane of the Threat, and guardian of the world – has visited maid cafes? And based on how opinionated you are on the topic, I get the feeling it wasn’t just once or twice.”

“Bff!?”

He just about spat out the sandwich.

That was a perfectly legitimate part of the service industry and the employees there took pride in their work. Karuta had done nothing wrong by going there, but for some reason he found himself unable to look the 12-year-old in the eye.

“…”

He withered under the pressure of her gaze.

It didn’t look like this was something he could escape by shrouding himself in the veil of manly mystery. The underclassman’s silent gaze was quickly turning into the look she would give an insect.

“Um, Senpai? Is this why your crystal magic takes the form of a girl who obeys your every command?”

“Natalena, let’s not get carried away with groundless speculation here! And I take issue with comparing her to a maid. She goes and hides somewhere cramped if you get after her about anything, she carries around a sword, and she eats pure gold! I would be offended if someone pointed at her and called her – her – the ideal maid!!”

“Oh, god. You really are opinionated about this, aren’t you? I barely said anything and you went on a long rant about it.”

What could he do but look away and clear his throat?

Utagai Karuta needed more training if he would fall for a 12-year-old’s feint.

“Sigh…is every single boy an idiot?”

“Probably, but did you bring me lunch just so you could ask me that?”

“Um, be honest with me. How does it look?” The small maid sighed and refocused her mind. “Can you survive this?”

She did not ask if he could win.

Natalena Blast knew the real Utagai Karuta, not just his title. He slowly shrugged.

“Well, it can’t be as bad as fighting the real Threat.”

“That’s not what I asked.” She bluntly rejected his answer. “I’ve seen a wicker man and I’ve seen Futhark runes, but none of the people here seem like they could defeat my sister and the rest of the Problem Solvers. But that’s not the real issue. Karuta-senpai, you became the world’s strongest after defeating Anastasia Blast and her Anubis, but, um, you didn’t defeat her in a one-on-one battle, did you?”

“…”

This girl was watching him carefully.

Which wasn’t too surprising when she had started out hunting him down to avenge her sister.

“You only defeated those much-more-powerful opponents by observing them, making careful preparations, and using trickery and the element of surprise. And it’s not like that always worked. But with the Problem Solvers and the Threat, your starting point and basic stance has always been assassination. In other words, you never let them use their real power against you. …So, um, are you really going to be okay? You can’t run or hide in the ring, so your usual tricks won’t work. Both sides will be going full throttle as soon as the bell rings, so you can’t defeat them before they can attack. The spotlight removes all the shadows and the many cameras will see everything that happens. You can’t hide your true abilities in this fight, Senpai.”

The rules had been reset.

Other than his ability to rapidly heal any nonlethal wound, he was more or less an ordinary high school boy, but he had to defeat magicians gathered from around the world without surprise attacks as an option. If he lost and died or if he won in an ugly way, the world would be disappointed in him and the social unrest leading to riots and looting would spread.

That expectation weighed heavily on him. Even if that was a fairly ordinary concern to have.

The boy who had been made into the world’s strongest exhaled and spoke.

“I’ll win.”

“…”

“We’re the ones that made the world this way. This only happened because we followed our desire for revenge and killed your sister without even considering what it would do to the world. So we’re responsible for what happens now. None of this will have been worth it if we can’t at least make the world a happier place than it was under the Problem Solvers. We didn’t like how the world was run and now unrest is running rampant and there’s a real threat of riots and looting. So we need to create a better world ourselves.”

There had been no morality in that battle.

It was true Anastasia and the other four had sunk the first ship and slaughtered most of the students and teachers, but that was no justification for Karuta’s group to hunt them down for revenge without ever considering the possibility of letting the police and the courts resolve the issue.

Two wrongs did not make a right, so now everything had sunken into a thick bog. But the sun still rose in the mornings and set in the evenings as it had before.

The strongests’ battles were nothing but a great farce full of hypocrisy and deception, but he did know that most of the people living in this same world had done nothing wrong. So he couldn’t just give up because the world had gone wrong. If he did that, he wouldn’t just be crushed below the contradictions of morality – he would have fallen to the level of pure evil.

“So my basic policy remains the same: I’ll do whatever I can. It’s just that ‘whatever I can’ is going to look different this time.”

“Senpai…”

“And, Natalena, you know how greedily stubborn I can get when I have my mind set on something, don’t you? So I’ll be fine. If I say I’ll win, then I swear to you I’ll win. No matter what it takes. Maybe I’m not the best fit for this job, but that just means I have to make myself fit.”

Part 4

After returning from wherever she had gone, Mama Letnahe Kurent beat Karuta up even more for a post-lunch workout. His arms and legs could not keep up, but he did manage to follow her punches and kicks with his eyes. However, the difficulty of predicting her actions shot up when she added grappling to the mix. His instincts told him to protect his face and gut…but that manifested itself as his reflexes curling him up in a ball out of fear. It was also strange how the hem and collar of his short-sleeved dress shirt or the belt of his slacks counted as weak points now. Since he had to engage his brain to remember why it was dangerous to let her reach those parts, his reactions were unavoidably slower.

How much harder would it be to respond when one-shot-kill weapons and magic came into play?

If he froze up because he had never seen something before, he would lose his life immediately.

“We’re running out of time. Have you learned anything at all from this?”

“Ugh, this has at least gotten me accustomed to pain before the real fight,” replied Karuta, standing up on unsteady legs.

Yes. He now had it in him to get up under his own power instead of lying sprawled out on the floor.

“Also, those two ideas show some promise.”

“Glad to hear it. This would have been awkward if it only served to let me blow off some steam.”

But he could not just relax this afternoon. This was not like a soccer or basketball game with a set starting time. Just now, the fifth match came to an end and the crowd erupted into an earth-rattling cheer.

After going through some fairly kinky training where he was unilaterally beaten by a lovely mother of two, Karuta chose to meet up with Marika and Kyouka in the student council room. Due to the unexplained security breach with their electronics, they were reluctant to exchange detailed information over their phones.

“Karuta.”

Just as he passed by a manga club girl carrying several booklets at her chest, someone called out to him and he turned back to find Marika approaching. Aine was waiting by her side.

Marika did not look directly at them, but she glanced over at the reflection of a newspaper club member in the window.

“We can talk in the student council room. That way you only have to explain it once and this open space isn’t great for a private conversation anyway.”

“Sacri-sama, why are you in such a good mood?”

“I feel like I made some real progress. I-I assure you it isn’t that I like getting beat up by women.”

The three of them walked along the side deck together.

Marika placed a hand on the side of her head to hold her hair down against the sea breeze while she glanced past the side deck railing.

“Looks like they’ve added some more new ships. I hear their composite armor makes them surprisingly light for their size. These two are a drone carrier and an electric warship, right?”

“The Radioquartz and the Chrisbart.”

“Oh, do you know a lot about that stuff, Karuta? You really are a boy, huh?”

“Hey, don’t assume the world’s strongest don’t have to take their final exams. Those are both names you’ll find in our history textbook.”

Modern warships tended to be named after historical scientists. And due to the modern age, the names of a magician and a crystal magic researcher could be found right alongside Galileo and Einstein.

“Who knows, we might eventually see a Karuta aircraft carrier or a Marika-class submarine.”

“Please no!” protested Marika. “I can’t imagine having a warship named after me. It has to be even more embarrassing than a statue of yourself in the schoolyard.”

The ordinary visitors could not spend the night on Second Grimnoah. Because there were too many of them. So separate cruise ships had been brought along for lodging. Add in the escort ships (which had been heavily reinforced after what happened near the Port of Kobe), and there had to be at least a hundred thousand people here. It was like an entire city’s population traveling across the sea.

“I just hope Second Grimnoah doesn’t tip over from all the weight,” said Karuta.

“But it’s a 600m triple hull ship. Eh? You’re not serious are you? Surely a bunch of people isn’t enough to sink it.”

He could not let his guard down even while holding this silly conversation with Marika.

Sure, he still had the 6th match to go, but that could always end in a one-hit KO immediately after the bell, so he could not predict how much time he actually had. So he needed to complete his preparations for the 7th match.

Those three met up with Kyouka in the student council room. The Four Living Gods were all together.

Training himself as much as he could was not enough.

He wanted information on the opponent he would be facing.

But the ordinary people could not be allowed to see the world’s strongest working so hard to avoid defeat. Asking for help on social media would only make him a laughing stock for all the anonymous people out there.

The redheaded buns secretary was standing guard in front of the student council room. She reluctantly moved out of the way when she saw Karuta and the others. Then she moved to stop the newspaper club member who tried to sneak in after them.

“I need results!” shouted Karuta as soon as he was inside their other hangout.

“Your opponent in the 7th match is Hetepheres Men-Nefer. Age: 15. Sex: Female. As you can probably guess from her name, she uses Egyptian mythology magic. She is supposedly a descendent of a sinful tomb keeper family that, fearing European invaders would discover it, stole the mummy of Pharaoh Khufu from the world’s largest pyramid and hid it where no one would ever find it.”

Omotesandou Kyouka listed out the basic data. It meant a lot to have the help of the student council president who could view all of the documents submitted to Second Grimnoah.

“Egypt…”

He didn’t know all that much about it, but that mythology kept turning up around him. Or maybe the Blast Sisters and Anubis had just left a strong impression on him.

Kyouka continued in front of her large desk.

“Egyptian mythology is polytheistic, just like Japanese mythology. You can assume that everything in the world, from the flowing of water to the growing of crops in the field, has a god assigned to it. But you can largely divide the gods into two groups, one led by Ra, god of the sun, and the other led by Osiris, god of death and resurrection. Keep that in mind first and foremost.”

Marika threw herself into the leather sofa and Aine took up her usual motionless position standing in the corner. Those two had approached Hetepheres herself and observed her directly.

“Our observations didn’t show any taboos related to food or drink and, even if she is a priestess or whatever, she doesn’t seem to be a vegetarian. I was surprised at what I saw, but apparently they ate a lot of bread in ancient Egypt. She wears a loose-fitting white garment with tons of pure gold accessories. Gold is soft, but it has a high relative density, making it heavy. Those things could do some real damage if she swung them around. I don’t know what kind of mythological meaning any of it has, but you could probably use all the frilly parts of her outfit to grab her.”

“To add to that, if she is a priestess with a solid sense of purpose, she would not attempt to borrow the power of a god or monster that goes against her faith. For example, Set is the enemy of both Ra and Osiris, so you can rule him out as a possibility right away.”

It could be confusing, but it was not as simple as Ra, god of heaven, being good and Osiris, god of the underworld, being evil. Even in Asia, Yama, king of the underworld, was the one who judged the dead, so he was not actually evil himself.

In Egyptian mythology, it was generally the righteous gods who ruled heaven and earth. The ones considered to be evil were not allowed in either camp.

After hearing everything they had to say, Karuta slowly inhaled on his feet.

And…

“That’s all?”

That was his response.

“Hold on. That’s all just general information on Egyptian mythology and their priests! None of it’s specific to Hetepheres at all! Elicia of the Problem Solvers used the power of Vishnu from Indian mythology, but that alone isn’t enough to know she attacked using a dinosaur. This leaves so many unknowns I can’t even put together a plan. Didn’t you find any more personal traits or idiosyncrasies!?”

Magic was not the only thing to fear here.

Ancient Egypt was a large and highly developed culture. They would have needed to take up weapons as a group and defend themselves against the surrounding civilizations, so they had to have their own military strategies and martial arts. Karuta honestly couldn’t picture it at all. Greek gods wielded double-edged swords and tridents and Buddhist ogres wielded metal clubs. He had a general idea of what kind of weapons those cultures used, but with the Egyptian gods, he could only think of musical instruments and scales – neither of which were weapons. If he didn’t even know that, he could be defeated by ordinary brute force before she even got to her magic.

He also didn’t know if Hetepheres would insist on using some mysterious ancient Egyptian martial art. It was always possible she could surprise him by suddenly using jujutsu or systema.

Simply put, he didn’t know anything solid.

But he couldn’t blame Marika, Kyouka, and Aine for that. They had only had 6 hours. How much could he have accomplished in their position? None of them had expected the magical tournament to be altered in this way.

When they were up against Elicia “Saurus” Luxverg of the Problem Solvers, they had spent days taking turns watching her every move. They had been so nervous they had even investigated her favorite brand of lip balm. He should have known there was only so much data they could gather when adlibbing on such a short time schedule.

The entire 600m ship shook.

Something big must have happened in the current match. He got the feeling that energy blast was not something someone would get back up from. And he himself would be thrown out in that same ring with nothing to defend himself.

His phone received a message before they could check the student council room’s TV.

He took a deep breath to calm his irritation and opened the message app.

“Stardust (for tournament staff only): Afternoon Message 2 – Round 1 Match 6 has ended sooner than expected. We intend to keep the audience busy with the cheerleaders and the commentator, but Match 7 could still begin ahead of schedule. Mr. Utagai, please report to the contestant waiting room so you may begin at any time.”

“…”

There was no escape now.

His chance to prepare had come to an end.

He pulled the modified military flashlight from the belt on the side of his pants. It had the perfect weight and length to work as a club and it contained an IR laser emitter that could dazzle an opponent’s eyes.

“One last thing, Omotesandou-san. I know I can’t use Aine, but what about this thing?”

“That won’t be a problem. If your opponent can’t defeat you with your Threat-fighting equipment, they can’t exactly say they defeated one of the world’s strongest, can they?”

With a dull sound, Aine pulled a crystal katana out of thin air and held it out toward him, but Kyouka shook her head.

“I’m sorry, but that won’t be allowed. It counts as part of you, Aine-chan.”

“But isn’t everything from her sword to her heart part of my crystal magic?”

“Yes, but good luck convincing the other 5.5 billion people out there that’s true when she has to lend it to you.”

He was really wishing he normally armed himself with an assault rifle and grenades while wearing a full-body blast-resistant suit. He got the feeling the entire world was out to get him, but he had never imagined his everyday clothing choices would come back to bite him so badly.

He was horribly underprepared. He was more or less defenseless once Aine, his greatest trump card, was taken from him. Being called the world’s strongest on paper did nothing at all to protect him. The mysterious rule change had dragged him down nearly to the same level as an ordinary person.

“No Aine this time. I have to do it all on my own.”

“Hmph.”

The crystal girl did not like this any more than he did and she puffed out her cheeks from within, but no one was going to listen to her complaints either.

One of the basic crystal magic presets was a protective barrier, but Karuta’s was as flimsy as paper and he doubted it could block a real sword or bullet. Similarly, he couldn’t use the flight preset at all. The only preset he did have was the regeneration, but that only rapidly healed nonlethal wounds. It wouldn’t do a thing to keep him from being killed instantly. If he took a bullet between the eyes, his entire body would become a crystal statue before he could even begin to heal.

And when he barely knew anything about his opponent, that was almost certainly what was going to happen against Egyptian tomb keeper Hetepheres Men-Nefer.

Aine silently tilted her head and whispered in a cold voice from where she stood in the corner like a potted plant.

“What will you do?”

“I’ll make it work. No matter what it takes.”

Part 5

It was time to think.

The first day of the Catastrophe covered the 8 matches of the first round. That meant the tournament had 16 contestants in all. In a straightforward tournament with no seeding, the winner had to fight in four matches. Trying to win them all fair and square was exactly what the unseen string-pullers wanted. Because they had set things up so Karuta would die in the attempt.

But he didn’t need to do things their way. As long as he demonstrated that the Four Living Gods were in fact the world’s strongest, they could eliminate the social unrest around the world. For example, if something even more powerful than the tournament opponents – like the Decoy Threat that turned out to be simple machines – were to attack Second Grimnoah and those four protected the other contestants and the audience in front of all the cameras.

“No, that wouldn’t work.”

A chair bolted to the floor creaked.

A trick like that could turn into a long-lasting Achilles heel. The instant the truth came out, the social unrest would be back with a vengeance, so it wasn’t a real solution.

He had to win this.

Karuta smiled in self-deprecation after reaching that conclusion all alone in the contestant waiting room.

And the person on his mind now…was not one of the people he held dear.

(Warrior Doll.)

That armored warrior had towered over Karuta and fought with a plasma jet sword. That Threat had sought human goodness more than anyone and occupied Second Grimnoah to learn about crystal magic. His many companions had been mercilessly slaughtered while trying to learn, but he had still sought a fair duel, so what would he think if he saw Karuta still trying to come up with some kind of trick here?

(Sorry. I can’t resign myself to my fate like you. I’m an ugly person deep down, so I can’t help but cling to life. And that’s what makes me want to protect the people I hold dear and the world as a whole.)

So.

No matter how much he was spat on or how many stones were thrown at him, Utagai Karuta would still seek victory.

A female voice left the speaker in the tiny space.

“Round 1 Match 7 will begin shortly. Mr. Utagai Karuta, please step out into the ring.”

He sighed and pulled the modified military flashlight from the side of his purple slacks. He slowly rose from the bolted-down chair and walked to the metal double doors.

He pushed them open.

A thick wall of cheering voices slammed into his face.

Evening had fallen.

The powerful film lights were more for the TV broadcasts than for the contestants, so they were already hurting his eyes, forcing him to squint.

The next thing happened before he could hold his hand up and let his eyes adjust.

“Hello, hello, hello! I’m Cinderella Queen Delane, the shining new child star with an edge, and I will be providing commentary for this match. But I will be sharing that duty with a special guest! If you want to know about crystal magic, look no further than Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka!! …I get the feeling we’ll need an expert’s commentary to even hope to follow along here.”

“Thank you for having me. I will remind you that I am still a student, though.”

The concert band’s music and the deluge of cheers were like a booming explosion, but the large concert speakers played the commentary at an even greater volume.

The vortex of noise gave Karuta a pounding headache as he noticed a gondola supported from above by a crane. Was that the commentator’s booth? Kyouka had been invited in as a guest, but she wouldn’t be able to help him while in the public mode she used when addressing the world. She couldn’t help him even if she wanted to. If anyone thought they were cheating, the public wouldn’t accept their display of superiority and definitive cracks would form in the people’s already-shaken faith in the world’s strongest. Then the social unrest would spread like wildfire.

He had to protect this world, so he had to fight.

(They’re somewhere out there.)

So many eyes were focused on him.

The tension of standing up on stage clutched at his heart.

(Some of the eyes out there carry malice. Someone forced these new conditions on us in order to have me killed while the world watches on.)

The tiered stands surrounded him in all 360 degrees, but only so many people could fit. The horizontal safety bars in front of the seats on each level were covered with webcams and aerial drones buzzed around overhead. They were like a flock of starlings blotting out the sky. They were generally manually controlled, but they used invisible IR sensors to measure the distance between each other and automatically adjusted their positions accordingly. Still, he could hardly believe they managed to avoid colliding while packed together so tightly.

(They sold more than a million viewing tickets, right? And those aren’t just to watch the livestream on the official site. That only covers the people who wanted to control their own swiveling camera to enjoy the live event as much as possible. Thanks to that, this empty area of ocean has an EM density as high as New York.)

Remote viewers would buy the usage rights for a swiveling webcam and watch the matches that way.

Those who wanted to watch in person were required to sign a document waiving the tournament’s liability if they were killed by a stray shot of magic or something. Surprisingly, they had still received tens of thousands of times as many applicants as they had available seats. All ten thousand seats split across three levels were full. Were people just that eager to witness a legend? They had the full surface of the 600m ship to work with, but they had gathered all ten thousand people on the heliport.

Karuta heard a dull metallic thud behind him.

The waiting room he had been in was actually an oblong metal container. It was dangling from a cutting-edge tiltrotor by thick wires and it was swiftly removed from the heliport.

He had nowhere to run or hide now.

An excited little girl’s voice echoed through this hellish evening where murder was allowed.

“Our first contestant in Round 1 Match 7 needs no introduction! He’s the current world’s strongest and the eye of the storm who absorbs all the envy and grudges of the world’s 5.5 billion people!! His victory is assured, so how the hell are we supposed to make any money off your bets this time!? This boy can use cutting-edge crystal magic and he’s protected the world from the Threat. He’s here to represent the whole Four Living Gods – it’s Utagaiii Karutaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!”

On the other side of the 20m square ring, an identical oblong metal container was dangling down for his opponent.

Cheers erupted from all around. The thick wall of noise slammed into him and threatened to crush him.

He was trapped in a deadly cage with the entire world watching.

“And then there’s our challenger hoping for a shortcut to the good life!! If you need a new title, why not just steal it!? She refuses to believe anyone’s stronger than her! And she promises to charm us with a show put on with Egyptian mythology – a mythology so important we’ve all heard of it☆ This priestess is hoping to tear crystal magic down from its throne – it’s Hetepheres Men-Neferrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!”

After shouting her lungs out, the small girl named Delane turned to ask the guest commentator her opinion.

“So what’s your opinion of this matchup, Miss Expert? Who has the upper hand here?”

“Hard to say. But the priests and priestesses of Egyptian mythology are important enough to get quite a few mentions in our crystal magic classes. They are the representative example of someone who could read the occult high and low pressure fronts and determine their effect on crops and sailing in order to support a large populace.”

“I see, I see.”

“You could say this is a showdown between the classic original and the latest update. We should see the oldest form of magic clashing with the newest.”

“Hm, so you’re saying it’s hard to say which way this will go!? That’s a relief. This event won’t be very exciting if Mr. Karuta doesn’t die!!”

He had expected this even if he didn’t like it.

Omotesandou Kyouka was not going to take his side while in public mode. Still, her long explanation was not only directed at the crowd.

Yes, she was giving Karuta information as well.

(She’s as crafty as ever.)

His opponent had long black hair and brown skin.

She appeared to be around his age and she wore an ethnic white priestess outfit with golden decorations all over her body.

“Utagai Karuta.”

Their gazes collided while the girl lifted the four thick and highly elastic ropes and climbed into the ring situated a level above everything else.

She spoke in Japanese, so she clearly wanted him to understand her.

“I know you are powerless.”

“…”

She probably wanted to apply pressure before the match began to throw him off his game.

She hoped to prevent him from fighting at his best so she could crush him with ease. Karuta was impressed because that idea hadn’t occurred to him. It was an unimaginable tactic with the Problem Solvers or the Threat who would kill you if you tried it.

So he did not bat an eye and whispered back so only she could hear him.

“Would you prefer this ends with you unconscious or dead?”

“You can’t trick me. You can’t do anything without that crystal girl of yours.”

No hesitation from her.

Was that a sign of confidence or of nerves? He had never met her before, so he had no way of making that judgment.

Cinderella Queen began an explanation of the rules, probably a formality required for the TV broadcast.

“The match has no time limit, but both contestants will be disqualified if it is determined they are working together to intentionally extend the match. The match continues until one or the other of them loses consciousness. Oh, and dead counts there! That also means the match keeps going no matter how badly they’re hurt as long as they’re still conscious, so they’ll need to keep that in mind☆”

Karuta sighed without letting it show on his face.

Crystal magic provided a regeneration power. Any nonlethal injury would be healed in thirty seconds. That made it incredibly difficult to knock him unconscious with a physical blow. In fact, it was very nearly impossible without using a chokehold like Letnahe had done, a special witch potion, or causing a lightning strike with a weather manipulation power.

In other words…

(They’ve set up the rules so it’s easier to kill me. Who is this asshole who secretly changed the rules Omotesandou-san worked so hard to put together?)

With a deep thrum, the poles in the four corners of the ring glowed red.

“Also, they need to watch out for the ring’s ropes. They’re what we call detonating cords, which means they’re packed full of explosives. Touching one of them will cause more damage than a jammed gun blowing up your hand, if you’re curious. They detonate the instant either contestant touches the ropes and a composite explosive made with everything from smokeless powder to penthrite will blast the offender to smithereens with a burning velocity of 5km/s, so they’re gonna want to be verrrrry careful out there.”

The red glow of the poles signaled that the ropes had been activated. This was worse than an electric deathmatch. Karuta glanced up at Kyouka, but she only winked down at him.

This was just like the introduction in the gym.

She looked calm, but something she didn’t understand was at work here. She must have only been called in as a guest commentator for the match with Crystal Magician Karuta, so she had not seen the other matches. And that was coming back to bite them now.

The unseen person who had changed the rules had altered everything with obvious malicious intent.

“Simply put, if they touch the rope, they’ll have their body torn apart for their trouble!! …Ugh, explaining the same damn thing 7 times in one day is a real pain. You’d better have the basic rules down pat by the next round cause I’m not doing this again tomorrow☆”

Karuta and Hetepheres faced each other in the center of the ring with about 5m between them.

Standing in front of an enemy was always terrifying.

He had nothing to shield him here and he could not escape outside the ring. If she “accidentally” jumped the gun and shot some powerful magic at him, he would have no way to avoid being reduced to ashes.

That was the world he lived in now.

In fact, someone who would actually wait for the bell seemed like an oddity to him.

An accident would be good enough.

Hetepheres might be disqualified for jumping the gun, but she would still hold the title of the person who won a flawless victory over one of the world’s strongests. She didn’t need Second Grimnoah’s help after that. As long as she had that title, she could milk it for all it was worth, like a martial artist known for killing a bear with his bare hands, and live however she liked in the world of magic. Really, she had no reason not to do it. The loss by technicality would be a temporary blot on her record and a small price to pay for the fame it would bring her. All of the contestants were risking their lives in a major gamble, so why actually wait for the starting bell?

Something worked its way into his ear along with the growing cheers.

He heard some whispered non-Japanese words. This was something Hetepheres would prefer did not reach him. But Egyptian hieroglyphs were a fully decoded language. Karuta had learned the basics in his magic classes. Translated into Japanese, this is what he heard.

“…ction – Ho…s – 1/1…4…”

Or was he overthinking this?

Utagai Karuta had gotten his start in bloody revenge, so maybe he had a bad habit of viewing everything in as noncharitable a light as possible. It was possible that Hetepheres Men-Nefer had come here carrying the pride of the many generations that had passed down her Egyptian magic and thought this only counted if she fought fair and square. This all came down to what was in her mind. That was not something that could be measured with logic or numbers. Karuta had no way of seeing what was going on inside Hetepheres’s head.

In this tournament, they had to fight one-on-one in accordance with the rules until one side or the other emerged victorious.

If she had agreed to those rules, then she may have viewed the world in a more favorable light than Karuta did.

She grinned and extended her right hand. Almost like she was asking for a handshake.

“I hope my trash talk didn’t offend you.” She switched back to Japanese for his benefit. “Let’s enjoy this, okay? Let’s do this fair and square so we can both accept the result, whatever it might be.”

Karuta smiled a little too. Or he thought he did.

Her gentle expression made him glad he had fought to protect this world. He felt ashamed of himself for assuming an ulterior motive and tensing up instead of shaking her proffered hand. He and the others had gotten rid of that sort of malicious world when they had defeated the Problem Solvers. They had created a pure and just world. He was so glad he had clenched his teeth and fought for this!! This girl here proved to him that he had done the right thing.

He wanted to make this an enjoyable match.

If at all possible.

Cinderella Queen raised her voice with her finger on the button for the bell.

“Now, let’s get this match started! Join me in the countdown, everyone! Threeee, twoooo, o-”

“You’re dead meat, Utagai Karuta.”

Some Ancient Egyptian words proved he had been right the first time.

Humans were trash after all.

Part 6

The tournament stadium shook violently.

Something had clearly exploded.

No one had time to protest that someone had jumped the gun. The audience was having trouble deciding what to make of this, so they raised their voices in shouts that weren’t quite cheers and weren’t quite screams. Sword-wielding tournament staff was positioned around the stands to erect barriers to protect against stray shots, so they activated their pointy and translucent crystal armor, floated up into the air with their magic, and adjusted their viewing angle to try and see inside the cloud of dust.

“What happened to Karuta!?” shouted Amaashi Marika on the second-level aisle after pushing past the cheerleading squad that had reflexively stopped their dancing.

The match had already begun, but that did not mean she had no way at all of passing information on to Karuta. Transmissions made through their crystal blossoms were likely being monitored, but there were still plenty of ways of sending him data on Hetepheres, like a flashing light or rhythmic clapping.

But she couldn’t even do that now.

After all, there had been an explosion in the ring. There was nowhere to hide there and Karuta couldn’t use the preset barrier very well, so he would have been hit by the brunt of the blast.

“…”

Was it possible?

Could it be over already?

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

Marika felt a weight in the pit of her stomach.

It had all happened so fast her feelings couldn’t keep up.

No, she was already in denial. Her mind was full of unreasonably optimistic ideas like “the world’s strongest wouldn’t die that easily” or “the Utagai Karuta couldn’t be killed like that”.

In a tear-jerking success story, he would have made it well into the tournament. He might not actually win, but he would at least meet a shocking loss or die in some dramatic way in the final round.

But reality didn’t work that way.

She knew all too well how cruelly unpredictable reality could be.

The strongest would be safe?

Who made that a rule? Who was it that had looked up from the bottom, thrown the established rules into chaos, and ultimately killed all five of the previous strongests?

They had known the surprise rule change had been implemented maliciously, so why had they just gone along with it? Why had they just assumed that he would get through at least the first round safely!?

“Miss Marika.”

“Hm? What do you want?”

“Miss Marika, we need to complete the task Sacri-sama left with us. You cannot obtain any valuable information on Hetepheres Men-Nefer by standing here. Weren’t we planning to sneak into her waiting room container? There is no one there now.”

“And what good is that information if Karuta is gone!? He was right in front of her when she blasted him with magic ahead of the bell!”

“Perhaps so.” The inhuman crystal girl tilted her head in confusion and smoothly provided an explanation. “Yet I am still functioning as normal.”

“…Wait.”

Yes. That was right.

Aine looked like a skinny girl, but she was not an independent being. She was a variation on the crystal armor used by crystal magicians, so she could not exist if her magician were gone.

Which meant…

Part 7

Hetepheres Men-Nefer felt a burning sensation in her temples.

The ring had exploded.

She had attacked the world’s strongest before the bell rang.

But.

“That wasn’t me.” Her right hand was still held out, palm forward. “That initial explosion wasn’t me!! That threw off my magic’s aim!”

“You should probably shut up and make your next move,” whispered Utagai Karuta, already making his next move.

One of his leather shoes was missing. He had swiftly removed and chucked it backwards with a snap of his wrist. Right into the detonating cord ropes that were set to explode if anything touched them.

That had caused an explosion just before Hetepheres’s Egyptian magic had activated. It hadn’t been enough to be lethal, but it had shaken her physically and mentally, throwing off her aim just enough.

And so he had survived.

Utagai Karuta rushed straight toward her holding the modified military flashlight he could use as a club.

He didn’t know what her specialty was, but he had no choice but to get close. His killing range was the range of that club.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on there!! I haven’t rung the bell yet, you two!!”

“Are you volunteering to pull them apart and start this over from the beginning? When the crowd is going wild like this? Why would you want to be such a wet blanket, Delane?”

His strike was rejected with a dull clang.

His flashlight was forcibly held back by an empty patch of air. He grimaced at the pain in his wrist bones and forced himself to make careful observations.

“Jackal – Connection – Anubis – 1/96.”

A bluish-white light spread from her outstretched palm like an opening umbrella and that blocked his blunt weapon.

“The judgment of the dead is permanent and there is no false second judgment for the sinful souls. Your judgment has been made. If you cannot accept it, then leave this place!!”

“I’ve torn your mask away now.”

“You aren’t surprised?”

“Sorry, but I’m not naïve enough to be surprised by a simple supernatural barrier. That’s one of the standards for crystal magic!!”

(But am I really up against Anubis again!?)

If she could cover her entire body with that barrier at all times, she would have done so from the beginning. She had only tried to cheat and kill him with her first attack because she was worried about something.

There was a downside.

And not just that it didn’t last long.

The smoke and dust from the detonating cord blast had gotten in her black hair. That meant the barrier didn’t provide 360-degree protection.

It was a shield, not armor. So if he didn’t attack from head on, he could hit her!

“Ibis – Connection – Thoth – 1/96.”

Her right palm turned to face him, her shoulder moving in a way the joint shouldn’t have allowed.

He dodged out of the way and made a feint, but his flashlight was still deflected by the shield of bluish-white light. He tried a second and third time, but he could not slip past that swiveling shield.

(Is she predicting my moves!? But if she could always do this, that first attack wouldn’t have caught her by surprise.)

“Bull – Connection – Apis – 1/8.”

The shield swelled out.

No, she took a forceful step toward him with the glowing shield still held out in front. It was like a dump truck’s bumper crashing into a human.

Shields were generally considered defensive tools, but there were techniques that struck with the edge or tackled with the full front surface. Based on this, he guessed Ancient Egypt had some kind of specialized shield techniques.

His own thin barrier was breached immediately and he fell backwards. If he had tried to stand his ground, she would have snatched his only weapon from his hand.

“Gah!?”

“Utagai Karuta, you are powerless.”

He heard a high-pitched clink as a thumb-sized clear vial dropped to Hetepheres’s feet. The action was reminiscent of an empty cartridge, but it wasn’t empty.

Karuta watched as dry brown sand crumbled away, but he had seen the true identity of the vial’s contents first.

(A…mummy?)

“And a powerless boy can never defeat me.”

But this mummy was not the preserved remains of a pharaoh. It looked like an animal. That stout livestock was a cow, but it didn’t look like a fetus. Somehow, it had been dried down to the point that it could fit in a vial no larger than a size-D battery.

(But more than that…)

Where had it come from?

He did not know what it was, but if it was necessary for her magic, he could stop her from using her magic by preventing her from pulling those things out.

He had been distracted.

He had not seen the moment when she pulled it out. Her loose-fitting Egyptian priestess outfit looked perfect for hiding small objects, but she had not actually reached into a pocket or something. And she wasn’t wearing long sleeves, so it couldn’t be hidden at her wrists. So when had she pulled it out and from where!?

“Falcon – Connection – Horus – 1/144.”

He had seen this one before.

The bluish-white shield vanished and a compressed ball of fire appeared in her hand instead. This was the bomb she had attempted to throw at him before the bell.

He also saw another vial in her hand. But he had again missed precisely when she pulled it out.

“Now it is my turn to tear your mask away. Die like the powerless fool you are!!”

Part 8

Hetepheres Men-Nefer was an efficient person.

Karuta wasn’t about to call her a good person, but he had to admit that much. So if she thought a method was effective, she would repeat it as many times as it took.

Her initial attack had only missed because of Karuta’s trick.

And the fact that he had used a trick essentially told her that he would have been in trouble had he not used it. So if she had the chance, she was sure to try that explosion again.

Also, Karuta only understood that part of her so well because he was the same kind of person.

So when he saw that explosion, he knew exactly what to do.

He removed his remaining shoe and threw it.

But this time, he threw it toward her fireball instead of the exploding ropes behind him.

“Ah.”

Once she threw that fireball, it would explode.

So instead of waiting for her to throw it, he could trigger it himself.

Now, that explosion was designed to be thrown first – which meant she needed to move it away from herself before it detonated – so would she escape unscathed if it detonated in her hand?

“Gahhhhh!!!???” she screamed, swallowed up by her own explosion.

Karuta did not let his guard down while he gripped his flashlight and stood back up. He wanted to rush in and ensure she stayed down, but the blows from his blunt weapon would be blocked by her bluish-white barrier shield.

That swiveling defense blocked his attacks automatically.

He gathered strength in his arms and sent his eyes racing around.

(What could I use to make that malfunction?)

“Fuck off, you powerless frauuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuud!!!!!”

She interrupted his thoughts.

She shouted at him while the explosive flames burst like a balloon. And a white tornado emerged from within.

No, that wasn’t accurate.

He heard the rustling of cloth because these were long bandage-like strips of fabric. And not even her expertise in Egyptian magic allowed her to create something from nothing.

Her loose-fitting white priestess outfit was coming apart into those bandage-like strips.

The strips were curled up like an old phone cord and each loop contained a small vial.

“Papyrus,” said Utagai Karuta with a grin.

She had been pushed far enough to let her clothing fall apart and reveal the majority of her brown skin so she could access those vials more quickly. She trembled and blushed in the humiliation of having her methods revealed, but the boy continued the verbal assault.

Words could be used as a weapon to throw people off their game and keep them from fighting to their full potential.

She had taught him that herself.

“Most people think of papyrus as the water plant used to make Ancient Egyptian paper, but it was actually an all-purpose material with so many more applications, wasn’t it? It was used for carpets, tableware, boats, and buildings. The pith could even be eaten. But most importantly, it was used to make clothing. You didn’t just have a secret pocket or two. You could open slits anywhere you wanted to pull out your weapon.”

“Don’t…don’t think you have me all figured out.”

“But.”

“You don’t know ANythIng aBOUt mE!!!!!!!”

“Now that I know where you get those vials from, I can throw off your timing. I can stop your magic.”

A small light flashed at the edge of Karuta’s vision.

That had to be Aine or Marika. Did they assume contacting him with their crystal blossom transmissions would count as assisting him with their magic? They were using a pen light to send him a signal from the stands. He mentally converted the message to Japanese.

(Hetepheres is a priestess of the Osiris line of Egyptian mythology. She specializes in mummification. Egyptian mythology has divine beasts that correspond to the gods and mummified birds or cattle worshiped as divine incarnations have been discovered in the ruins much like the mummies of the human pharaohs.)

“…”

(She uses this by indirectly drawing on a god’s power through a mummified version of an animal corresponding to that god, such as a falcon or jackal. They are so small because, after the life-size mummy is made, each part is boiled down and concentrated into something like a soup stock, making them portable.)

The information was valuable, but not enough to give him an actual plan.

Since those were real mummies, he felt like they would have a weakness to moisture, but that wasn’t much help when they were sealed inside airtight vials.

“Why do you assign different ratios to each power?”

“?”

“Is it because reworking the power back to life size takes too long, so you’ve found shortcuts that make that method viable in combat? So the greater the denominator, the more shortcuts you use. That would also explain why you can use some of the powers simultaneously and not others. Our crystal magic seals the name of a god in our crystal blossom, so we aren’t using the god directly. Of course your way would be trickier to use.”

She did not respond.

But tensing her face to avoid letting anything show in her expression was as good as a confirmation.

Hetepheres Men-Nefer looked furious as she held a vial containing a miniature mummy. Karuta squeezed his modified military flashlight in return.

He could not defeat this Egyptian priestess with a head-on strike.

But that was not his only weapon. He had replaced the ordinary light with a powerful IR laser emitter.

“Wha-?”

Only after reflexively moving to cover her eyes did the doubt enter her mind.

He had aimed his flashlight straight up instead of at her.

Then his malice bared its fangs.

A hammer dropped down from heaven to earth.

But this hammer was made of an aluminum frame, plastic, and silicon chips and it dropped because the IR scrambled its image-processing-based attitude control sensors.

“A drone!!!???”

It was only a toy, but it still weighed two or three kilograms. That was about the same as a small plant pot filled with soil. Dropped from a height, that was plenty deadly.

Hetepheres moved to protect herself, but then she noticed the invisible web she was trapped in.

Yes, something wasn’t right.

She had nothing to fear from a head-on blow by a blunt weapon heavier than a bat and she had plenty of mummy vials left. She only had to calmly draw on Anubis’s power and knock Karuta away with her bluish-white shield to solve this problem.

Yet she couldn’t do it.

The signals from her mind to her body seemed awfully slow, like her body’s gears were jammed.

“Your reflexes kick in for weak points your instincts know about.”

That was a solid rule.

Nothing was more reliable than information that came from painful experiences.

“But when you need your mind to recognize the threat posed by an attack, your reactions slow.”

Bringing down drones through malfunctioning sensors wasn’t actually going to hit her when they had no targeting or homing function.

Instead, he threw his heavy flashlight straight at her.

She gasped and moved, like her bonds had been broken.

She immediately held a brown palm out in front of her, activating the bluish-white shield to deflect the attack aimed at her face.

But had she noticed that this was exactly the reaction Karuta had wanted? The falling drones had needed her mind to recognize the threat, but her instincts were enough with the projectile toward her face.

Her defenses were a shield she held out in front of her, not enveloping armor.

As soon as she activated that shield to deflect the flashlight, Karuta stepped diagonally outwards and then sharply back in to move behind her. Then he wrapped his entire arm around her neck. He held her from behind and then let himself fall backwards.

Both of them landed face up.

“Gah!?”

On top, Hetepheres’s back was arched like she was performing a bridge, except her feet were lifted from the floor. Karuta raised one knee to lift her hips from behind. She tried to swing her elbow back into him, but it only found air. The more her back was arched, the less she could move her elbow like that. While nearly in the bridge position, it was next to impossible for her to attack behind herself.

“Oh, has he got her in a chokehold!?” shouted Delane. “Damn, chokeholds and joint locks are basically a win since they’re nearly impossible to break free from. Where’s the drama we all crave!!”

“Not only does this keep Miss Hetepheres from reaching the tool she uses for her magic, but the pressure to her carotid artery will keep her from thinking at all. That is two ways this prevents her magic,” explained Kyouka.

Karuta knew just how agonizing this was after Letnahe did it to him.

It took several minutes to pass out if you simply couldn’t breathe, but constricting the carotid artery changed that. A human would pass out in less than 30 seconds.

With so little time to work with, he had not managed to learn much from Letnahe Kurent and she mostly just beat him up, but this was one of the few things he had learned. From all the innumerable forms of violence out there, Karuta’s interest had been piqued by how this was nearly impossible to escape while also preventing any resistance or even screaming once it was in place. But that wasn’t the only reason.

He had also wondered if he could have avoided bloodying his hands if he had learned some nonlethal methods of knocking people unconscious at an earlier stage.

(No, it’s not worth thinking about that.)

“Also, Hetepheres, since you tried to elbow me instead of using magic, can I assume you have nothing else left?”

“!?”

“In real street fighting, there is no escaping chokeholds and joint locks. The fight is as good as over once one is in place. It’s time you lost. You don’t have to lose everything in this fight against the world’s strongest!!”

“Who, gh, gives you the right, ugh, to talk down to me, ah, like that!?”

She had foam leaking from the corners of her mouth, but she managed to free her trembling fingers form their meaningless instinctive movements.

A hand reaching for her throat instead stretched slowly to the side.

She reached for something that shouldn’t have been there.

It was one of the ropes meant to surround the ring. The initial explosion triggered by Karuta had left an unignited detonating cord lying out on the floor.

Black powder had spilled from where it had broken away. That was apparently a mixture of smokeless powder, penthrite, and other explosives to get the speed and power just right.

The rope had not been ignited yet, so it would explode if touched!

“This…this isn’t over yet. Agh, as long as I can reach this…”

“Hetepheres!”

“It’ll detonate when I touch it, but I just have to make sure the blast reaches you. Maybe my elbow can’t reach, but I can swing this soft rope around to hit you.”

It would never be that easy. That thing had a burning velocity of 5km/s, so it would almost certainly blow her hand off before she could swing it.

But almost certainly wasn’t certainly.

There was a chance she could swing the rope around before it exploded, or her blown-off fingers or bones could stab deep into his head through his eyes. There were no 100% guarantees in combat. Karuta had learned the hard way how terrifying malicious coincidences could be.

(What do I do?)

He could not stop her slowly-moving arm with his knee up and his arm around her neck. And chokeholds took time to knock people out no matter how much force you used. Squeeze any harder and he would only break her neck.

He would have to wait until later to feel good about the inefficient decision to reject that idea outright.

Because as things were, that decision wouldn’t even matter. He only needed the one arm to hold her neck in his elbow like a finger caught in a door’s hinge, so what could he accomplish with his other arm?

(What do I do!?)

Part 9

Efficient people would reuse a method any number of times once they knew it was effective.

He already had his answer.

What had he done to defend against an explosion from her Egyptian magic earlier?

He had triggered his own explosion first.

In other words, he only had to reach out his hand and grab the rope snaking across the floor.

With a muffled explosion, the effect was immediately evident.

He doubted she would have had time to swing it around after grabbing it. The instant the detonating cord received the pressure of his grip, it provided an electric shock to ignite the explosives. The flammable gas’s volume instantly expanded several hundredfold, blowing away the boy’s clenched hand from within. His paper-thin barrier was meaningless here. Instead of expanding in a sphere from a single point, this was more like a line of destruction used to burn through a thick metal door. The hunks of flesh blasted across the mat rapidly crystallized.

“Kah…”

With her last-ditch counterattack – her final hope – snuffed out, she finally hit her limit.

“Huh?”

Hetepheres’s hand dropped to the floor. This time, she really did appear to have passed out.

But Karuta could not just sit around.

His felt woozy and the lack of pain actually scared him.

Even a child knew that slitting your wrist was enough to kill you. His crystal magic would help him regenerate, but only with nonlethal injuries. He helped himself to one of the bandage-like strips of cloth wrapped around Hetepheres and used his right hand and mouth to tie it tight just below his mutilated hand. That didn’t fully stop the bleeding, but it didn’t have to. It only had to get the wound deemed nonlethal.

He heard several high-pitched cracking sounds.

Sharp pieces of crystal were covering his incomplete hand.

He raised that hand overhead.

With an especially loud noise, the crystal shattered away, revealing his clenched fist to be as good as new. Glittering crystal dust reflected the bright film lights, illuminating him in his raised-fist pose.

“Oh!” shouted Cinderella Queen. “Ohhhhhhh!! I-I don’t believe it! Did he protect her? He didn’t just defeat her Egyptian magic! Utagai Karuta grabbed the detonating cord rope himself to protect Hetepheres against her own last-ditch suicide attack!!!!!!”

After a short pause, the crowd erupted into cheers.

“The guy’s a legit monster! Was I the only one that thought his life was ever at risk here?”

“Damn, I guess the strongest really does look at the world differently.”

“Why didn’t he kill her!? Cause she’s a girl?”

The deluge of voices pushed in at him from all sides. Karuta’s victory meant all the money bet against the world’s strongest went right into Second Grimnoah’s pockets, but no one sounded angry.

But Karuta felt any icy chill himself.

The odds had been low, but there had been a chance she could have turned that detonating cord into a win. To prevent that small but very real possibility, he had rationally sacrificed his hand to save his life. His biggest fear had been her fingers or bones stabbing into his brain through his eyes, so he had prevented Hetepheres’s unpredictable action, chosen where he would take his damage, and turned his face away from the blast to protect his eyes from the pieces of his own hand.

That was the real reason for his decision.

But the people in the audience had chosen to dramatize the action.

“I only did it for myself,” he said just the once.

His confession was picked up by a distant shotgun microphone, but it only led to more cheers. They only saw this as the modesty of a saint.

Eat shit, silently spat the ordinary boy.

He was afraid how they would interpret that one if he said it out loud.

Part 10

Somehow, he had made it through the first round of the deadly Catastrophe.

Night had fallen and he wanted to get away from anywhere as public as the arena. But he wanted to get some advice for his future plans before he climbed into bed and slept like a log. After using his phone to say as much, Kyouka gave him a location to meet up at. It was near the gym.

“They say that is the Southern Cross Meteor Shower.” The student council president was looking out the window. “It should continue for a while. The first wave alone has more than ten thousand and the total amount is supposed to be over 300 million. Most of them will burn up in the thermosphere, though.”

“Where has all that stardust been floating?”

“Maybe further out than Pluto but closer than the Oort cloud. And since it will continue for a while, this should be the top night event since there aren’t any matches to watch. Well, it technically continues through the day, but we can’t see it thanks to the sunlight. Ha ha. Woof, woof.”

“?”

Omotesandou Kyouka was acting weird.

Come to think of it, wasn’t she the one who had been the most excited about the decoy astronomical observations they used to sneak into the outskirts of Silicon Valley for their battle against Anastasia?

However, the ship itself had no light restrictions, so this did not make for a proper astronomy event. The deck had to be covered with couples waving around penlights meant for concerts. Karuta’s only thought on the matter was “Oh, so that’s why those timelapse apps are trending in the app store.” Ordinary videos didn’t get good images of the starry sky.

“Your life could really use more romance, Karuta-kun.”

“Hey, don’t diss my entire life just because I’m not into your hobby. …Anyway, what did you want to talk about?”

“They lost it,” said Omotesandou Kyouka in her wheelchair.

His wounds had all been regenerated, but he still felt like something was straining inside his body. He clenched and unclenched his fist and rolled his shoulder around.

“Who lost what?”

“Her family lost Pharaoh Khufu’s mummy after removing it from his pyramid long ago. They apparently hid it a little too well and its location never made it to the current generation. That’s why she wanted the authority of the world’s strongest to perform a largescale search in secret.”

“…”

Hetepheres had called him powerless and a fraud.

Maybe that was a reflection of how she felt about herself. Maybe she had been relieved to find someone so much like herself.

She had been willing to sacrifice her life in her struggle to acquire the title of world’s strongest. Every single contestant had their own reason for that and Karuta had to crush those hopes and dreams if he was to survive.

He scratched his head which felt much heavier than usual.

“I want to take a shower and get to bed. At least the regeneration means I can relax without fearing any muscle pain or lasting effects from my injuries.”

“Oh? But you still have several jobs left as one of the world’s strongest.”

He put on a “what now?” look as someone approached him.

It was the toxic little girl named Cinderella Queen (which was obviously only a stage name). She looked even less developed than Natalena. A high schooler like him was bad at judging the ages of kids more than a few years younger than him, but he guessed she was around 10.

She moved with the air of someone accustomed to making herself look nice. First, she bowed with the meteor shower out the window acting as a backdrop.

“Hee hee hee. Nice to meet you, Mr. Strongest. Congratulations on clearing the first round. And you have my personal thanks for that as well. I know what I said during the match, but if you lost in the first round, we’d have trouble keeping people interested for the rest of the tournament.”

“You’re welcome, I guess.”

“Still, it would be pretty boring if you went on to win the whole thing. It’d be a lot more dramatic if the jackpot built up from the 5.5 billion people betting against you all of a sudden paid out, so I’d appreciate it if you could cough up some blood and lose in a shocking upset.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” cut in a new voice.

A beautiful woman maybe a little older than Kyouka approached, but this young woman in glasses had a puppyish vibe to her.

“She doesn’t mean any harm when she says these things. She’s still just a child, so I would greatly appreciate it if you would forgive her.”

“Hold it, assistant!! This is the crucial scene where I overpower this talentless fighter with my powerful entertainment aura, so don’t ruin the whole thing by interrupting. My fans will be discussing this moment for years to come and I’d just feel bad for them if they had to see your sad face every single time they revisit it!”

“Is that any way to speak to your own sister? You’re the one whose constant problematic statements, unplanned adlibs during live broadcasts, and attacks on the program sponsors got you fired by your entertainment agency, forcing you to work as a free net idol. And you could never keep this up without me working as your manager, so I would appreciate some thanks.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m thankful or whatever.” Cinderella Queen grinned in a way that looked much too mean for such a small child and then she turned back toward Karuta. “Now, you, Karuta, you I really am thankful for. You see, I pushed the envelope in ways the bigshots in the TV industry weren’t comfortable with and they canceled me for it, forcing me onto the internet instead. But now that you murdered the old strongests, I’m actually making a comeback in the TV industry. Remember how you destroyed that giant TV station when you killed Elicia in Southeast Asia? The losers who thought they could keep me down got the boot after that☆”

“…”

Karuta’s group had been very careful to avoid any civilian deaths during that dinosaur battle, but it sounded like some important people had lost their jobs over it. …And at least one person had made a comeback.

People’s interests tended to gather around the world’s strongest.

Still, he couldn’t believe such a small child was caught up in all that.

This Cinderella wasn’t just a storybook princess who found happiness. If necessary, she was willing to throw her Prince Charming under the bus to get ahead. Cinderella Queen winked and grabbed her black and yellow leather skirt to perform a perfect curtsy, but when she spoke, her tone was too provocative to just call it mischievous.

“I’m counting on you in the second round as well, Karuta. I need you to win it and give me unprecedented stream viewership numbers.”

“Is that all you wanted to say?”

“Oh, and this is more than just a magic combat tournament. Well, the students are including some aspects of a sports festival and cultural festival, but that isn’t my point.”

“?”

“My point is the tournament is only during the day, so we’re holding a dance party tonight and that girl over there got all dressed up for it. Heh heh heh. Yeah, you want to look your best if you’re going to step out into the spotlight☆”

He looked over to see the crystal girl not looking her usual self.

This was not her usual combat outfit, which was technically a dress but eliminated any sleeves or collars that an opponent could grab onto, was formfitting, and had bold slits in the skirt for easier movement. Her one-night-only party dress had the long skirt of a fairy tale princess. She also wore her hair up, which showed off the nape of her neck and made her look quite a bit different.

“Sacri-sama,” whispered Aine.

He wasn’t sure what nuance that “Sacri-sama” was meant to carry, but she did seem to be waiting for a response.

If Cinderella Queen had set this up to take the initiative against him, then she was cleverer than he had given her credit for. She made things difficult in a way different from the Problem Solvers.

Aine held out her small hand, so he saw no choice but to take it.

Cinderella Queen laughed and sent them off into the gym.

“Hmm, I know this was a surprise and you didn’t have time to change, but it doesn’t look right for the guy to still be in his school uniform. Or does a school uniform count as all-purpose formal wear? Well, either way, have fuuuun☆”

They stepped through the door to find dazzling lights.

It was well done for something thrown together so quickly. The floor was covered with low pile carpet and heavy chandeliers hung from the ceiling, giving the place a very different look. The main dance floor was in the center and tables of food were lined up along the walls. The concert band that had been playing during the match was up on the stage.

This was not a mandatory event, but there were still a lot of people in attendance. It helped that there was no strict dress code and people could use the free food as an excuse if they were too embarrassed to actually ask anyone to dance. Some middle school girls were shrieking in delight and pointing at Karuta and Aine, so he had to hope they weren’t the type to spread rumors to the entire school overnight.

The two of them began dancing to the soft classical music like a needle placed on a record.

“I didn’t know you knew how to ballroom dance,” he said to Aine.

“When it comes to coordinated movement, the two of us are second to none. Also, I just have to follow your lead.”

“Sorry. I’ll apologize in advance for when we inevitably fall down together. I swear I was born with two left feet. I will do my best not to step on your skirt, but I doubt I can do much more than that.”

“Activating relaxation mode: <Hee hee hee. Now, boy, you need to relax your shoulders more. I’m not going anywhere, so just take your time while I give you some hands-on lessons.>”

“Hey, the monotone voice kind of ruins that, you know? You really have been acting weird all day. But in this case, I get the feeling you were basing that dialogue on something.”

“I prefer to crawl into small spaces when I sleep, so three days ago on June 10 12:34 local time, I crawled under your bed and discovered-”

“Huhhhhhh!? N-no, that’s not possible. There couldn’t have been anything there! I tend to use the internet for that these days, so unless that’s been there for a while, I don’t see how…ah!?”

“…”

He realized how badly he had put his foot in his mouth when Aine glared at him with her cold, emotionless eyes. But that had also eliminated the pressure of having to ballroom dance. But instead of removing a weight from his shoulders, it was more like he had cut out a hunk of flesh with a knife to get rid of the pain from a simple scrape.

Two of the world’s strongests held each other close as they continued their private whispered discussion.

“Do not worry. I have studied up on human biological functions, so I am aware humans have an abnormal fixation on viewing the surface area of the opposite sex.”

“I’ll admit we like it when they take off their clothes so we can see everything, but it’s not the surface area that matters. I mean, I’m not about to start skinning girls and creating a collection of their flayed skin. Oh, crap, thinking up that idea only makes me sound worse, doesn’t it!?”

“?”

Come to think of it, hadn’t Aine started showing embarrassment about being seen undressed or in a swimsuit ever since the Crystal Beach incident? But he still felt like there was something off about what she was learning.

Karuta was famous(?) for moving like a cursed doll in dance class, but trying to match the rhythm of classical music was unusual for him since he normally listened to rock or techno on his phone. But if he focused too much on keeping the rhythm, he felt like he would bump into one of the other dancing couples.

While he was struggling with that, Aine whispered to him with no emotion on her face or in her voice.

“Today was full of surprises.”

“Yeah, we were focused on that one match all day long. Who set this up? If we don’t find them soon, they’re going to end up strangling us somewhere down the line.”

“…I was worried.”

“?”

He just about came to a stop with confusion on his face.

Aine, the girl who would sever his arm without a moment’s hesitation if he ordered it, had been worried?

“I could not let my guard down for a moment all day because I never knew when Miss Marika would go on a rampage. If you had lost or died, we might have seen a deadly early summer laser light show.”

“Aine, excellent work keeping her under control. You can never predict what Marika will do when she’s about to snap, so restraining her with nothing but your words might just be the most superhuman thing you’ve ever done.”

“Well, I am not human in the first place,” she replied. “You will be fighting alone again tomorrow, won’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Next time…”

Just as he pulled her crystal hips toward him, she pressed her forehead against his chest. Those horns(?) kind of hurt.

“Next time, I will make myself useful. Even if I cannot be by your side.”

“…I see.”

He smiled a little.

Evidently, she wasn’t aware that she had already accomplished that goal.

Karuta would again be the only one risking his life in the ring tomorrow, but he knew he wouldn’t be alone.

Between the Lines 1

“Would this be the best option for today?” muttered Amaashi Marika.

She wore a short red dress glittering with sequins and high heels. She also wore a transparently thin silk shawl around her shoulders and back. She of course had plenty of accessories around her neck and wrists as well. While Aine appeared to have stepped out of an old picture book, Marika wore a modern dress that would look perfect with a small brand-name bag. But she had let the crystal girl have Karuta for tonight, so she would not get to be the star of the dance hall.

Instead of the dance floor, she was interested in the buffet lined up along the wall. Specifically, the cakes. They let you place takeout orders, so she had a few cake slices that caught her interest boxed up for her.

After leaving the dance hall, she made her way to her true destination. She walked down a hallway decorated with chains of streamers and viewed a starry sky different from Japan’s outside a window covered in cellophane cut into stars and hearts. There was also a meteor shower tonight. She glanced restlessly down at her phone to see excitement on the sports livestream channel of an online TV station.

“This is Cinderella Queen with the night’s final news report straight from Second Grimnoah, the hottest place in the world right now☆ Now…just to spice things up for this stream, I’ve actually stripped off all my clothes under that table you see on your screens right now. Tah dah!!”

“Ehh? You didn’t mention anything about that to me!?”

“Shut up, assistant! No interrupting! Now, being timely is everything for the live news, so if I fail to get through my script before I run out of time, then my cameraman will be shoving his massive camera right into my hiding place under the table. Are you ready, everyone? Make sure you have a nice, firm grip on your, uh, stopwatch and don’t you dare blink while I give you the latest news!!”

Marika walked down the school hallway and smiled bitterly at the terrible ways that show was trying to get views. She was honestly not all that worried. She had lived with Karuta ever since they had started their revenge against the Problem Solvers, but she may have seen him more like family than a friend.

If she was thinking about a friend she could completely open up around, this was who came to mind first.

“Imi, are you there?”

She knocked gently and announced her presence before opening the infirmary door.

The person seated in the stool was not who she was looking for.

“Oh?”

The silver-haired, brown-skinned magician was wearing the white officer’s uniform of the Indian navy.

It was Letnahe Kurent.

“This is a surprise. I didn’t think you were capable of this sort of kindness.”

“Oh, shut up. And aren’t you a gym teacher?”

“Technically, yes. But those skills can be used for medicine as well. I’m a specialist in the human body. The question is whether I am attempting to destroy it or heal it.”

So was she like a judo therapist? It made sense that a professional soldier would have studied the workings of the human body. But Marika was not here to chat with the new teacher.

“Where’s Imi?”

“In the back. But I don’t know if you’re going to like what you find. Oh, and if you will excuse me, I have to get started on my nighttime rounds. Tonight that means checking on Miss Hetepheres who is recovering in her room.”

With that, Letnahe stood from the stool, patted Marika on the shoulder, and left the infirmary. She may have been giving Marika privacy for what was about to happen.

“…”

Left alone, Marika walked toward the curtain. She knew there were a few beds past that partition.

“Imi,” she whispered while grabbing the curtain.

She found a large lump in one of the bed’s blankets. But she could not see the pillow. The blanket was pulled up over the occupant’s head, closing them in like a turtle shell.

She had heard this girl refused to leave the infirmary while at school, but she had not heard it was this bad. Marika’s visit must have reopened her unseen wounds. Just because Imi had made some kind of decision on the inside didn’t mean she would be making any major progress right away.

Yes, Marika had done this to her. It had been necessary to save her friend from bleeding out, but Matsuda Imi had ended up this way after Marika used her laser beam to cauterize the wound from a Threat severing her leg.

“…”

“I don’t think she’s ready yet.”

That gentle comment came from Hashizaki Tayori who was seated in a folding chair near the bed. She had been watching over her friend the entire time Karuta and the others were out there fighting for their lives.

Those three had once been the center of their class.

And Marika refused to accept that was a thing of the past.

She placed the box of cakes on the bedside table.

“I’ll be back later.”

“Please do. Keep this up and she should get used to it, little by little. She’s fighting too. Remember that and can you stay strong too, right?”

Chapter 2

Part 1

Tanba Musubi was a magician with a mastery of Onmyodo.

Magician was the correct term here. The Onmyoji had once been a central part of the country’s government, but their very presence had been erased from the public consciousness, leaving them with no official shrines or temples and no respect of any kind. The lucky directions known as Ehou were originally an Onmyodo concept, but who gave a single thought to that when they saw Ehoumaki sushi at the convenience store?

So no matter how much influence an Onmyoji might retain, they could never be a saint. And if they could not be a saint, there were no religious or moral restrictions requiring them to clear their mind of all worldly desires and only use their abilities for the public good.

(I will bring us back to the center.)

What was wrong with using the world for her own sake?

The world had already used her people and thrown them out.

(The Taira city of Kyou remains the rightful capital. And if I can prove to everyone that we are the center of the world – heh heh – then I am more than willing to chew up Second Grimnoah and spit them out.)

They had once been known as saints.

And now this lonely heart longed for the public to once more recognize the miracles they controlled.

Onmyodo came in many forms, but she specialized in Katatagae. That technique allowed you to accurately determine each day’s new unlucky directions. By avoiding those directions, you could eliminate any danger on the way to your destination. For example, if south was to be avoided, you could zigzag southeast and southwest to avoid ever moving directly south.

And.

Refine that process enough and you could waltz through a minefield just by knowing your unlucky directions.

When you got down to it, Tanba Musubi did not actually view her opponent in battle. By understanding the currents of the world around her, she could avoid any battles before they began and peacefully resolve any problems that did crop up. But she had intentionally thrown all of that out to come here today.

She sought battle.

She felt bad doing this to her opponent. This was a tragedy she could have avoided if she had put in the effort. But she had let it happen.

And once the battle began, she would take all the right steps to reach her destination.

Anyone who stood in her way would be automatically destroyed by the path she chose.

To repeat, Tanba Musubi did not even view her opponent in battle.

(I’ve completed the Ehou reading. I cast a spell to the northeast and south, where Taihakujin and Tenichijin are located, I have cut off all evil omens from reaching me. Now I need to lure my prey into the slight opening I left to the west-southwest to plunge them into deadly misfortune. I know all the unlucky directions for this date and the labyrinth has been formed. By avoiding those directions and walking accurately across the board, I can win as easily as following a guide to a tsume shogi problem.)

“Heh heh. I may have overdone it.”

“Ouch, that has gotta hurt!! The horned shrine maiden Onmyoji, Tanba Musubi, was brought down to the mat by the very first blow, but Alchemist Tribikos Yorkshire is not letting up. Do those kanji-filled directional calculations not work right with all those shooting stars and down this far south where the Big Dipper isn’t in the center of the sky? And wow, this is why you don’t want to get on the wrong side of a woman!! To be clear, this is being livestreamed around the world. Hey, sexy blondie, did you not notice the first blow already had her convulsing on the mat!? You aren’t changing the odds by continuing to hit her in the face. Don’t mount your opponent and beat her until her blood splatters back on you!! Keep that kind of thing in the bathroom or break room where no one can see you!!!!!”

Part 2

The bed creaked and shook a little.

Then something felt wrong near his eyelids.

“Sacri-sama.”

A familiar voice reached Karuta’s ear, but his mind could not figure out what was going on.

“Sacri-sama, it is morning. You need to wake up.”

“Nh, huh?”

He tried to shake his oddly heavy head.

When he finally opened his eyes, he found Aine’s face unusually close by. Her silver hair was hanging down and tickling his cheeks. She appeared to have crawled up onto his bed like a puppy begging to play on a weekend morning.

Her breath was sweet. Despite her favorite food being pure gold.

“Good morning, Sacri-sama.”

“I had the second-to-last match yesterday, so if they follow the tournament bracket, my match today should be in the latter half – so in the afternoon. I still have time, so just let me get some more sleep.”

“Sleep would be useful, but that thing is buzzing. It refuses to stop.”

Crawling Aine pointed to where his phone was charging on the bedside table.

“That can’t be good.”

“Agreed. But doesn’t it mean things are already underway?”

He sighed and grabbed his phone without getting up.

He had received a short message.

“Stardust (for tournament staff only): The match order has been changed. Mr. Utagai, please report to the contestant waiting room. Your match will begin soon.”

After a moment, he clicked his tongue, left the messaging app, and made an actual phone call.

But not to the tournament staff.

“Hello, hello, hello! This is Cinderella Queen’s work phone. What do you need?”

“You have a private and a work phone, Delane? Anyway, what is going on? I was sure my match would be in the afternoon. Have all the other matches ended almost immediately or something?”

“Oh, that. No, this is purely a show business thing.”

Cinderella Queen’s light tone made him wonder if she was really aware his life was on the line here.

“As I’m sure you are aware, Karuta, the majority of the focus on the tournament is centered on you. Some want to see you win and others want to see you suffer a humiliating defeat. So we can’t let people think your matches will always be in the afternoon. Then no one would bother watching the morning ones, right?”

“…”

“So who fights who is still following the original bracket, but we’ve shuffled around when your matches will be. That way the audience can’t let their guard down for a second. Now, this is a gamble for us too. We’re using up your valuable match in the morning. But if we didn’t do that, it would only spread the impression that we’re going through the boring matches in the morning. We need to make this risky move to keep everyone on their toes☆”

This was more bad news for Karuta.

Without much time before his match, he wouldn’t be able to gather much information on his opponent.

(Damn. How much were the string pullers involved in this decision? The problem is this could be exactly what Delane says it is – no conspiracy required.)

“Anyway, give us another good fight today. Whether you survive or die on the mat, make sure you put on a real show to give me lots and lots of viewers.”

“Which match is mine?”

“Round 2 Match 2.”

“Oh, hell. That’s the very next one!!”

He hung up and got out of bed. He would only have time to shower and change, not even to eat breakfast.

“What should I do?” asked Aine.

“For now, give me whatever information you have on my opponent and then continue gathering more! This isn’t like before! All of the contestants fought in Round 1, so that analysis should be a lot easier!!”

He spoke quickly while grabbing a notepad from the bedside table and jotting down a quick list with a ballpoint pen.

• Basic data, such as opponent’s name, sex, age, height, and weight

• Background information, such as education level, religion, occupation, and combat experience

• Any martial arts, magic, etc. they specialize in

• What kind of equipment they will have with them and what kind of magic it uses

“Listen, Aine. We don’t have time for you to investigate everything, so focus on getting me just these things for now.”

“Understood. But I cannot guarantee I can find all of this on such short notice.”

“?”

That was unusually vague for cold and mechanical Aine.

Unlike the first round, they would have match footage for everyone this time. This was an international tournament being viewed the world over. Just by pausing that and viewing it in slow motion, they would be able to gather so much more information so much faster than before. (Of course, Karuta’s opponent could analyze him in the same way.)

“We have no footage to use.”

He wasn’t sure what she could mean by that.

He grabbed his phone again.

“Hold on. But this year’s Catastrophe is being streamed worldwide! And there are more than a million spectator drones flying around!! How in the world could there be no footage to analyze!?”

Aine did not tilt her head.

That told him this was not even a mystery to her.

“According to Miss Kyouka, that global livestreaming is in fact the problem. The broadcaster that spent so much money for the broadcast rights cannot have phone and drone footage spreading freely across the internet, so special protections have been added to the remote audience’s viewing data. They can watch it real-time, but they cannot save or upload the footage, meaning none of it can be found on ordinary video sites.”

“But what about the broadcaster’s site? We can just use the officially released-!!”

“They have been having server trouble since last night,” answered Aine before he was even done with his question.

Refusing to believe this, he tapped at his phone several times, but it was true. He could open the official site’s top page, but he would either get an error message or nothing at all when he tried to go any deeper. Searching for and playing those high-quality videos was completely out of the question.

“They claim to have underestimated the traffic they would receive as the only global source, but the truth of the matter is unknown. Miss Kyouka said it might be a DDoS attack disguised as no more than heavy traffic.”

Karuta held a hand to his forehead.

Another bad coincidence. But it wasn’t enough to prove the human string pullers were behind this or to track them down. He wanted to suspect every new thing that happened, but if he took that too far, he would succumb to paranoia. Which was exactly what the string pullers wanted.

Some of his classmates might have seen the previous day’s matches, but he had no time. If he couldn’t directly ask his friends, any information would be at least thirdhand: Classmate -> Aine -> Karuta. Could he really get accurate information through that game of telephone? Thinking he knew the answer could only end badly. In a deadly battle where mere moments could be the difference between life and death, an inaccurate idea could lead directly to his death.

With information of dubious accuracy, he would have no idea what was useful and what was a landmine. That would only get him killed.

Even if his classmates were legitimately trying to help.

(So malice isn’t all I have to watch out for. What a pain.)

He sighed.

“Then we’ll just have to deal with it. Aine, go out and directly gather whatever information you can find for that list I gave you. Knowing what exactly it is we don’t know is a useful strategy too. If I only have one or two blanks left, I can focus on getting those things out of them during the match.”

“That I can do,” said Aine. “Athabaskan Rio Grande. Age: 27. Sex: male. According to Miss Kyouka’s official paperwork, he is registered as a Native American shaman.”

“So the people famous for their tomahawks and gunstock war clubs? I can’t really picture what kind of martial arts someone like that would use. But if they have their own unique weapons, they must have their own ways of using them.”

“Correct. Although your conception appears to be drawn from all across North America. But you need to focus on the occult, not the martial arts. That means his native magic. He apparently uses totem curses, but the details are unknown. I will focus on that in my continued investigation.”

“Got it. Then I’ll just have to fill in the rest of the blanks in the ring.”

Kyouka had the paperwork, but he was short on time. He couldn’t read through a stack of papers thicker than the phonebook at this point.

Once he met this man in the ring, he would be able to see his basic physical attributes and what equipment he had. And Aine had announced she would look into the magical details. It scared Karuta to not know how big or muscular this man was, but he really needed to focus on any secret martial arts.

“I don’t have time for breakfast, but I should still take a shower since I’ll be on camera. …Wait, where’s my towel?”

“In here.”

“Wait, Aine- gwah! Wh-why are you crawling inside me!?”

He shouted, but the crystal girl had already bent over at the hips and stuck her head into him near the navel. After some rummaging around, she pulled out a large towel. Karuta and Aine were linked. Technically speaking, she was the crystal armor that emerged from within a crystal magician’s body, but she had lately started using the space inside him as a second room for herself.

Trying to explain why this bothered him was meaningless since she wasn’t human, so he sighed, accepted the towel, and walked to the bathroom.

He didn’t have time to fill the tub, so he took a hot shower instead. And then it occurred to him.

“Wait. Aine, why did you have my towel? Isn’t that space inside me where you go for privacy?”

He heard an odd crashing sound beyond the door.

This was unusual. Had Miss Unbeatable Swordswoman tripped and fallen?

“Um, Aine?”

“Nothing is wrong. I am not flustered. Everything is perfectly normal.”

She stopped him from asking anything, so he responded while massaging his shampoo-covered head with his palms.

“Well, as long as you weren’t sleeping with it wrapped around you or something. Not that you would do that. You’re not a kitten that can’t sleep without curling up inside some clothing covered in its master’s scent.”

He heard an even louder crash from beyond the door.

“???”

He went to the effort of using conditioner, quickly dried his hair with the hairdryer, and donned his sports shirt and short-sleeved dress shirt.

He left the bathroom to find Aine inexplicably down on all fours with her small butt sticking out toward him and her head looking back at him over her shoulder.

If he didn’t know better, he would have thought she was trembling with tears in the corners of her eyes and a flush in her cheeks.

“Sacri-sama,” said the crystal girl in her mechanical way. “I have heard human culture includes a process known as confession.”

“Sorry, but I don’t have time for that. And I’m not a priest, so I don’t know how it’s done.”

Karuta checked the remaining battery and the heft of his modified military flashlight before sticking it in his pocket to finish his preparations. Aine slowly stood up, straightened her back, and lowered her head in an impeccable bow.

“Take care.”

“I will. But don’t forget one thing,” he replied while they left his dorm room. “Someone out there is using this tournament to get at us. They must have set things up to get me killed in the ring, so don’t assume you’re safe just because you aren’t in the ring too. In fact, those behind-the-scenes areas are their hunting ground. Same as us.”

He parted ways with the crystal girl.

They each had their own battles to fight.

They were not alone by any means, but they could not immediately come to the other’s rescue if anything happened.

If he hoped to survive the day, he had to fight for himself.

(Now, back to that cell of a waiting room.)

“Ah!”

He heard a quiet shriek when he turned a corner after avoiding the school’s rock band carrying their instruments.

He had nearly run into someone coming the other way.

“S-s-s-sorry! Huh!? Are you Utagai Karuta!!!???”

“Hello. You do know visitors aren’t allowed in this area, don’t you?”

He reflexively switched over to his public mode.

He did not recognize this small girl. She wore her black hair in a bob cut and she was dressed in a light green – maybe even a yellowish-green – kimono. She was even shorter than Aine and he wasn’t sure if she always wore a kimono or if she was dressed up for a special occasion. Either way, that had to be hot in this equatorial region where most girls had their tanned midriffs showing. The hat on her head was the only thing she had to fight the sun.

She had some tears in her eyes as she explained why she was here.

“Um, I was looking for my sister, but I’ve never been on such a confusing ship before. You said I’m not allowed here, but where is here exactly?”

“I see. Then follow me. But next time you get lost, just ask a tournament staff or a teacher for help. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Letnahe soon arrived after hearing the commotion, so he left the girl with her (since she was technically a teacher).

And the gym teacher whispered to him so the kimono girl couldn’t hear.

“(Are you sure you can do this? You don’t look very prepared.)”

“(I’ll make it work. Because I’m dead if I don’t.)”

That was all he said before continuing on to the contestant waiting room.

With the sunlight pouring down on the broad deck, the whole place looked inappropriately bright. A metal container sat there. That was the temporary room that would carry him to the cage of death. He opened the double doors, stepped inside, and locked it from the inside, blocking his view of anything outside.

He sat in the chair bolted to the floor.

The order of the matches had been shuffled around, so he had not had any time for investigation. He had to go into his fight against Athabaskan Rio Grande, a specialist in Native American curses, very nearly blind.

(I can do this.)

He felt his balance shift.

The tiltrotor must have lifted the container with a thick wire.

(Remember how cheap and underhanded you can be. Reinstall your identity as the boy who will swallow mud if it gets him what he wants. After going through hell to reach this point, I’m not going to let anything else defeat me now.)

He felt a low tremor below his feet. He had arrived. A cold announcement came over the speaker installed on the wall.

“Your match will begin shortly. Mr. Utagai, please step out into the ring.”

“…”

He stood up from the chair and walked to the double doors.

His second deadly match was about to begin.

He opened the door to see the blue sky, cumulonimbus clouds, and the scorching sunshine.

Cheerleaders and drink sellers in swimsuits were located here and there in the stands.

This morning match felt wrong in a different way from the yesterday’s afternoon one. Karuta grimaced at the deluge of light and sound that hit him, but then an even louder boom came from the gondola supported by a crane.

“Once again, I, Cinderella Queen, will be providing the commentary☆ I’m showing off my super-cute nurse costume today, so if you get a limb blown off, I’ll make sure to kiss it and make it better! And without further ado, I’ll introduce you to Round 2 Match 2’s contestants.”

The child commentator with bluish-silver hair was being her usual edgy self.

She directed the crowd’s attention toward Karuta first.

“First up, we have one of the Four Living Gods – the guy willing to play dirty to cling to his position as the world’s strongest! Now, which is louder – the voices calling for him to win, or the ones calling for him to go down? He’s one of the world’s cutting edge crystal magicians – it’s Utagaaai Kaarutaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!”

Cinderella Queen must have been responding to popular demand based on an analysis of the many comments posted on the official streaming site (perhaps from people who had lost their bets in the first round) because she was being a lot harsher than yesterday.

But none of it actually got through to Karuta. Because he had something much more horrifying in front of him. Even he could tell his pupils were narrowing down.

(Oh, damn.)

“Next, we have the man who conquered his first deadly battle by becoming the ultimate weapon. This Native American crossed the deserts of North America to make it here today and his totem curses can bend nature’s power to his will, but is that really enough to defeat the highly artificial crystal magic?”

(Really? That’s what we’re doing here!?)

“This charming modern mercenary is rocking a thick bulletproof vest and a mobility-boosting leg powered suit with a 12-gauge shotgun accessory that really brings the ensemble together. It’s Athabaskaaaaaan Rio Grandeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”

Karuta heard the unique metallic sound of a firearm.

He had to play the role of the strongest to avoid a global explosion of social unrest, so he could not escape this ring. He gulped as silently as possible and lifted the detonating cord ropes to climb into the ring. Then the poles in the corners glowed red to announce the explosives were switched on. The deadly cage had been shut behind him.

Athabaskan Rio Grande.

The muscular black-haired man had to be at least 180cm tall. He looked like a mass of muscles roughly carved from heavy stone.

Plus, that body was protected by a cutting-edge black bulletproof vest with plenty of belts and pouches holding spare ammo and grenades. He even wore machines on his legs to mechanically boost their abilities.

He was a Native American.

He used totem curses.

Karuta had been misled by that information. Whoever his opponents were and whatever magic they might use, they were still residents of the modern world. That meant they could use everything human civilization had developed.

That pitch black shotgun made of a special alloy and plastic looked far too sinister in a ring of only 20m. And if Cinderella Queen hadn’t just made it up to make things sound more exciting, then it was a 12 gauge. That was the ultimate weapon found in zombie movies. A direct hit from that at close range would tear his torso in two without even giving him a chance to regenerate.

“Oh, hey,” continued Cinderella Queen. “What’s this it says the shotgun is loaded with? Triple aught f- oh, that’s a ‘b’. Boring.”

“Triple aught buck refers to the size of the shot used,” explained Kyouka. “This is the largest, not counting slugs, so Utagai needs to be careful if he wants to avoid being filled with holes.”

Karuta’s only weapon was the flashlight he could use as a club. With some exceptions like Aine or Marika, seeing and then blocking a bullet flying at supersonic speeds would require a miracle (in the sense that it would require dumb luck). With a shotgun that sent out a shower of deadly pellets, it was wholly impossible. He could not hope to defend himself.

Plus, that was not just a shotgun.

It was the trigger to activate some more powerful magic, just like a witch’s wand or crystal ball.

The man’s goggles had a feather decoration drawn on the side and his leg powered suit had a distinctive tattoo pattern drawn on it. Those things felt out of place to Karuta, but Athabaskan had managed to perfectly bring together tradition and technology.

Karuta tried his best to keep the tremor out of his voice.

“Well, I can’t exactly complain about this. We protect ourselves with crystal armor and use that to fly. Weapons and enhancements are nothing new.”

“…”

(Are you kidding me? He isn’t just holding his tongue – he isn’t blinking and his breathing is perfectly steady. This is bad. Really bad! This guy’s a real pro. Provoking him isn’t going to get anything out of him!!)

Karuta worked to keep his panic from showing.

The president spoke from the commentator’s booth with Delane.

“Anyone who analyzed the first round will know that attacking ahead of the bell isn’t enough to take down Utagai Karuta, so I’m curious to see what Athabaskan Rio Grande has planned. And of course, dealing with that shotgun will be Utagai’s first order of business. But if he focuses too much on that, the magic will do him in.”

“I see. So both contestants have a problem to solve here. And simple problems like this are the best because the audience can follow what’s happening! Now, let’s ring that bell. Oh, and Karuta? No attacking ahead of the bell. This is my time to shine, so I don’t want some filthy guy getting in the way!!”

They stood in the center of the ring.

They were only 5m apart.

That was basically right in front of each other with a pump-action shotgun. A shotgun fired several shots in a trumpet-like spread, so it was much more powerful at close range. This close, he would probably be torn apart even if he had specialized bulletproof gear.

“Now, let’s get Round 2 Match 2 started. All together now!! Three, two, oooone!!”

Unbeknownst to the audience, Karuta’s heart was hammering in his chest.

If he was being honest, he had not at all anticipated a shotgun. He had no plan at all!!

“Fight!!”

Did the metal gong sound even reach Karuta’s ears?

His opponent did not immediately fire his shotgun. Instead, he threw a metal can larger than a shotgun shell. More the size of an energy drink can.

(A grenade!?)

Karuta’s throat went dry.

His only chance was to knock the thing outside the ring with his flashlight.

He readied himself, but the grenade bounced off the mat weirdly.

A metal can was not a perfectly round ball.

“Geh!”

White smoke burst from it.

Tobacco played an important role in Native American rituals. They excelled in using all sorts of herbs.

“A smoke grenade!?” protested Delane. “But now we can’t see!! Do you have any idea how valuable these broadcast rights are, Athabaskan!!!???”

There was no way this would end with only a smokescreen.

The Native American warrior worked as a mercenary and he was holding a powerful shotgun. He was bound to aim for Karuta through the smoke. His own smoke kept him from aiming accurately, but if he fired in the general direction of the vague silhouette he could see, he could still fatally wound Karuta.

Karuta felt the terror of being unable to see while a gunshot could come at any moment.

He started to get down on the mat, but then a voice inside him whispered in his mind.

Can you really risk your own life and the fate of the world you saved on something as unreliable as common sense?

“!?”

He broke free of his instincts and stopped himself from dropping to the mat on reflex.

An explosion immediately followed, but he felt no pain.

He had jumped to the side, but that hadn’t really mattered.

Athabaskan had aimed down at the mat and fired. That had prevented the shot from spreading and gouged a large hole in the soft mat.

If Karuta had followed his common sense – the least trustworthy thing in this garbage world – and gotten down on the mat, that would have blasted his head off or torn through his chest.

Doing things the sensible way would get him killed. The “comment sense” result of this matchup was his death, so he had to try something else if he hoped to survive.

His heart was running wild in his chest.

Athabaskan Rio Grande broke through his own white smokescreen to charge toward his opponent.

Karuta could follow the man’s movements with his eyes, but a high schooler’s reflexes were not enough for his arms and legs to keep up.

He had experienced this same thing while sparring against a professional solider like Letnahe Kurent. The man attempted to press the black glistening pump-action shotgun’s muzzle against the bottom of Karuta’s chin. Smoothly knocking the barrel aside with his flashlight and shining the powerful laser in the man’s eyes was beyond Karuta’s abilities. His body could not keep up with moves straight out of an action movie!!

He was supposed to focus on his opponent’s defenses instead of his own attacks, making sure he always had two options at any one moment. That was how a professional ensured they could hit and silence their opponent. He understood all that intellectually, but there was only so much his body could do while he felt frozen in time like this.

So he only had one option left.

“Ohhh!!”

Without hesitation, he placed his palm over the shotgun’s muzzle and grasped it tight.

An explosion followed.

Athabaskan had pulled the trigger and the shotgun had shattered Karuta’s thin barrier and blasted his left hand into smithereens. Each of his fingers flew through the air, disturbingly intact while they crystallized.

But.

With his hand in the way, the shot had failed to destroy his skull. Tearing through his flesh and bouncing off his bone had shifted the distribution of the shot just enough. He clenched his teeth at the burning pain while his woozy mind confirmed that he had in fact survived.

The crowd screamed at the grotesque scene, but he did not.

His wound was already crystallizing.

(30 seconds!! Then I’ll have my hand back!!)

Shotguns had a lot of recoil. Not even the professional mercenary could suppress the impact sent back into his shoulder, so there was a lag of less than a second before he could slide the forend below the barrel and load the next round.

Karuta did not have time to sit around and think through it all.

He slammed his forehead into his opponent’s nose.

He poured all of his strength into the attack. Or he thought he had. But Athabaskan did not even lose his balance, much less go down.

This man was trained in a way Karuta simply wasn’t.

(He held his ground?)

But that long shotgun was not suited for such close quarters, so the mercenary swept Karuta’s legs out from under him to knock him down. Karuta could not land properly when he was missing one hand and held a flashlight in the other.

Athabaskan pinned Karuta down with a foot on his gut, pulled back the forend to expel the empty cartridge from the side, and aimed the shotgun straight down at the boy’s face. The professional stayed true to his tactics.

“!!”

Karuta shined his blinding laser up along the shotgun’s sight and twisted his body with all his might. When the man shook his head to get the powerful IR beam out of his eyes, his weight shifted enough to release some of the force on Karuta’s stomach.

Karuta rolled to the side at the exact moment the shotgun went off.

The point-blank blast was powerful, but that also meant the shot hit the floor and stopped before it could spread out. Karuta should have escaped outside the deadly blast’s range by then.

But he felt burning pain across his entire right half.

The floor had exploded at the center of the shotgun blast. This was not just a secondary effect like the mat material being sent outwards by the shotgun’s destructive force. The explosion came with bluish-white flames. It was clearly some form of attack.

Karuta kept rolling and protected his left hand. His regeneration could heal any wound, but if the crystal was shattered before then, that part would never heal. He was a step away from disaster here.

“Gahhh!?”

“Oh, was that some kind of magic?” asked Delane. “Or was it a modern weapon?”

“I believe it was magic. Since it is activated by a gunshot, it must be single use. He uses a totem for his curses, which in Japanese terms is something like your clan’s ancestors or your clan’s guardian spirit.”

“Hey, uh, I’m not Japanese, you know? But do you mean totem as in a totem pole?”

“Yes. They tend to depict wild animals like wolves, bears, buffalos, or eagles, but some native groups use totems depicting phenomena or objects, such as a stomachache or flowers. That means a totem that causes explosions is perfectly plausible. Maybe it represents a volcanic eruption?”

His entire right side felt stiff.

Protecting his left hand was the least of his worries now. His body was covered in crystals.

He managed to put some distance between them and stood up on unsteady legs, but then he noticed a flashing light out of the corner of his eye. That was a signal from Aine or Marika in the stands.

He converted the flashing light into Japanese.

(Progress report: Athabaskan uses his shotgun shells as totem poles to construct his magic.)

Unlike a normal handgun or assault rifle, Karuta had heard shotgun ammo was lined up inside a tube below the barrel. And lined up like that, they would indeed create something like a pole.

(He draws on the magical power of the symbols carved into the side of the shells, allowing him to-)

“50m SSW. Floor 3 Zone B3.”

“!?”

Without warning, the Native American mercenary’s lips moved while he slowly readied his pump-action shotgun.

“And 45m NE. Floor 3 Zone C8. I can see your hidden troops. And for a professional warfighter, a handgun has a range of 180m. This qualifies as close range.”

(Aine is pretty obvious, but Marika is the laser sniping specialist who shot Elicia in the head. But I only know that because I’m her childhood friend. How did he see through her at first sight like that!?)

The shotgun barrel rose up a few meters away.

The promised 30 seconds arrived at the same time.

Once his left hand was back to normal, he swung his arm horizontally. The unneeded crystal shards flew out in an expanding cloud to blind Athabaskan.

He still pulled the trigger, but needing to turn his head to protect his eyes threw off his aim. While the storm of hot metal tore through the air, Karuta clenched his teeth, ducked low, and charged toward the man.

Athabaskan pulled the forend back. For some reason, he did it twice, ejecting an unused shotgun shell to the floor.

The mercenary’s solid footwork was exactly what Karuta had hoped for. He spread his left hand and jabbed it against the man’s thigh. Specifically, into the joint of the powered suit that enhanced his leg strength.

With a horrific grinding and cracking sound, Karuta’s fingers were crushed like they were caught in the hinge of a heavy metal door.

He only had to bear with the pain and he could drive a wedge into the machine’s joint.

With the crystallized fingers keeping the one leg from moving, Athabaskan placed his weight on his other leg. That was when Karuta slammed his flashlight against it with his right hand. The horizontal blow to the ankle sent the mercenary’s leg sliding out from under him.

Another shot.

The shotgun went off, but an accidental shot while falling was not going to hit Karuta.

They both collapsed to the mat and began grappling.

Athabaskan’s shotgun was shocking, but since his totem pole was created from the totem shells contained within the gun, he could not freely mix and match the symbols on the fly. If he misread the situation, he had to slide the forend to eject the unneeded shell and move on to the next arrangement.

Karuta’s objective was to remove the shotgun from the battle. Whatever was in the tube, the man couldn’t use his magic if he lost the gun itself.

Karuta’s rational side swiftly reached that conclusion, but the rest of him noticed something else. He saw the glint of something other than a grenade on the equipment belt strapped across Athabaskan’s chest.

It was pink and shaped like a small egg.

(A child’s…emergency buzzer?)

That had no business being on a professional mercenary whose life depended on his camouflage.

A moment later, a totem explosion caught Karuta by surprise.

And this one did not even come from the shotgun.

Part 3

Karuta’s vision blinked in and out.

He could just barely grasp that a large chunk had been taken out of his back.

But this blast had not had anything to do with the movements of Athabaskan’s shotgun. His barrier didn’t matter in the slightest here. The explosion had been on the level of carelessly rolling onto a landmine while grappling with the man.

(Oh…I get it.)

Athabaskan’s magic was determined by the symbol or pattern carved into the side of his shotgun shells.

“You never needed to fire them. The unused rounds lying on the floor were still live. You weren’t pulling the forend to get rid of shells because you had misread the situation. You were scattering them around to create a minefield.”

“So what if I was?”

“But getting that shotgun from you is still my top priority!!” shouted Karuta.

Still curled up, he threw his heavy flashlight.

The powered suit would still be malfunctioning thanks to the translucent fingers jammed in one of the thigh joints. He normally would have avoided an amateur’s throw, but it managed to hit this time.

The shotgun thudded to the floor.

The blood rushed to Karuta’s head.

It was now a race for that weapon.

He could not use the totem magic even if he did grab it, but it would still mean a lot to steal that powerful weapon away from his opponent.

He crouched low and kicked off the floor, but something felt wrong. Yes, Athabaskan Rio Grande was not joining in. He ignored the pump-action shotgun on the floor and instead stepped back away from Karuta as the boy dove onto the mat.

The totem magic did not require firing the shotgun shells, but the shells on the floor were all visible. Without the fear of the shotgun to keep Karuta moving, he would never step on one of those mines. So why?

“I was waiting for this positioning,” said the man.

Machinegun fire poured from the sky.

A weaving trail of destruction passed over Karuta’s leg while he lay face down with the shotgun in his grasp.

He was twisted around and thrown through the air. His right leg was severed at the thigh like it had been lying on the track when the train came through and it bounced several times.

The loud cheers shaking the tournament site must have been those who had bet on Athabaskan like this was a horse race.

Those were not ordinary bullets. They clearly had some kind of magical effect because they continued to glow orange and emit black smoke even after embedding themselves deep in the mat.

(Oww!? I’m all right. Think of it as saving you the trouble of stopping the bleeding!!)

He rolled onto his back, leaving the crystallized leg behind, and looked into the sky, but there was nothing there. But he knew something had to be flying by too high up to be visible with the naked eye.

“Wha-?”

Even Cinderella Queen was at a loss for words.

What had happened? The answer was right there; he had just failed to notice it.

But he should have expected this. He was up against a professional mercenary decked out with the latest tech. And the man had located Aine and Marika with the naked eye.

“A ground attack drone!?” shouted Delane. “Is this how a professional soldier fights, Athabaskan Rio Grande!?”

“If it’s supposed to be a Native eagle symbol, is it meant to be a sort of flint shirt? But any device used for a contestant’s magic, like a witch’s broom or cauldron, is allowed by the rules. He mentioned a positioning earlier. Was he talking about Second Grimnoah moving outside the western alliance’s air-defense region – in other words, into international waters? Still, that thing is dangerous indeed when combined with stealth magic like this. Our defense ships didn’t even notice it.”

Perspective was a problem here. When anti-terrorism bomber drones gained enough altitude, they became invisible to the naked eye on the surface.

But they could still target you down on the ground.

Would this drone fire its machinegun again or would it blow Karuta away with an even more dangerous air-to-surface missile?

Karuta had gained the pump-action shotgun at the cost of his leg, but he could not shoot down the drone with it. He could emit a powerful IR laser with his flashlight, but he would need the exact specs to know if the air-to-surface missile was guided exclusively by IR. If it also used UV, microwave, ultrasound, or image processing, his flashlight would fail to interfere with its guidance and he was a goner.

He saw a light flashing in the corner of his eye.

The crystal girl was contacting him because she still trusted he could win.

He clenched his teeth and pulled back the forend below the shotgun’s barrel, ejecting the loaded shell. What could he do with it now?

“Real wars are determined before the boots are even on the ground. That is an Air RQ43-A Man Eagle. This model is loaded with a GPS ASM 55 Resin Arrowhead precision-guided air-to-surface missile designed for assassination missions. I will use everything at my disposal and I will accept no complaints. If you were unaware I had this, blame your own intel gathering failure.”

The Native American man reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone in a military bulletproof case.

He could rain down death with a tap of his finger.

“You came unprepared and so you lose, Utagai Karuta.”

Part 4

He waited.

He waited and eventually gulped.

But the person unable to bear the silence and stillness was not Utagai Karuta.

“Wh-what’s happening here?” Cinderella Queen sounded rattled in her crane-supported gondola. She kept looking back and forth between the ring and the sky overhead. “Wasn’t he bombing Utagai into tiny little pieces? Is he having technical difficulties?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Athabaskan Rio Grande clenched his teeth.

He could supposedly obliterate Karuta with a tap of his finger, but he did not do so.

No, he couldn’t do so.

“Damn you.”

“You use totemism.” Utagai Karuta spoke clearly without letting go of the outdated shotgun. Of course, all of this information came from Aine’s flashing light, not anything he had investigated himself. “That magic uses your clan’s ancestors or guardian spirit, but the effect is influenced by the animal, plant, natural phenomenon, or situation you depict. Simply put, worship a crocodile and you get a crocodile’s power. In that sense, you’re a really powerful magician if you can freely rearrange your totem on the fly. But,” whispered Karuta, to overturn all of that. “That is why your magic has so many restrictions. You’re required to treat your totem with care. For example, if a tribe adopts the crocodile as their totem animal, then they aren’t allowed to kill crocodiles.”

That was the basic rule and true essence of totemism. Basically, it was a magical barter system where they placed restrictions on themselves in exchange for great power. Thus, changing your totem mid-battle also let you swap out your weakness.

“You use the plants and animals carved into the shotgun shells to activate your magic. And you can even use natural phenomena and situations like a tornado or volcanic eruption. By storing those shells in the shotgun, they become your totem pole.”

That gave Karuta an opening.

He was a hair’s breadth away from death, but he had the shotgun, the still usable shells were scattered around as traps, and the crystal shards from his own healed injuries were enough to carve something into their metal surface.

“It didn’t have to be an artistic masterpiece. I only had to overwrite the original symbol with a quick stick figure.”

Because…

“Humans are an animal too. That shell now bears a symbol representing Utagai Karuta and you can’t harm your own totem. No matter what.”

A high-pitched cracking indicated enough time had passed for Karuta’s right side and leg to be fully healed.

That meant Athabaskan Rio Grande had failed to do anything during that time. He had to have a vast repertoire of methods that could kill an amateur high schooler, but all he could do was wait.

Utagai Karuta raised his voice with the shotgun in hand.

“Delane.”

“Um, yes!? What do you need, Karuta?”

“I have a rules question. Can contestants forfeit their match?”

“Nope. The match continues until one or the other loses consciousness.”

“You heard the little lady.”

Karuta smiled dryly.

And he slowly approached Athabaskan.

The mercenary was helpless. He could not do anything that would kill his totem animal. So from this point on, it was a one-sided game for Utagai Karuta.

The world’s strongest held the pump-action shotgun – a blunt weapon heavier than the average shovel – and raised it in both hands while focusing on the solid stock.

“Sorry, but you did try to blow me away in a drone strike.”

He swung the shotgun down with all his might.

Right into the man’s nose.

Part 5

One hit.

The large mercenary’s head wobbled backwards.

His consciousness faded.

He worked as a mercenary, so he had been prepared for his life to meet a sudden end at some point. He had known that all too well, so Athabaskan Rio Grande had not been bound by a fear of death.

A second hit.

But.

For some reason, he would not pass out.

Something other than his death made him reluctant to give up.

He heard a sound in the back of his mind, like a ringing in his ear.

It was a voice.

A girl’s voice.

“You can’t do it.”

The last of the Problem Solvers had apparently been defeated in America.

And the Four Living Gods were all Japanese. This new era unavoidably reduced America’s presence in the world. And he had wanted to preserve the value of his country.

So he had wanted to defeat a world’s strongest. Just one would do.

Anyone could use a phone or computer. The world of guns and tanks had been one of entrenched power, but the field of robotics still had room for newcomers. So he had started from there. The flying drone weapon and the powered suit to boost leg strength were both technologies that could be used to enrich people’s lives, but he had redefined them as a means to fight.

He had used them to bring himself victory.

And yet.

“You can never be the strongest.”

The third hit produced a different sound.

Utagai Karuta’s aim had unintentionally drifted.

The shotgun stock meant for the man’s face had instead swung down toward his chest. It was going to break the emergency buzzer he had been given.

Athabaskan Rio Grande refused to relinquish his consciousness and instead bit firmly at the shotgun swung down toward his face.

He could not die.

Not when he had yet to accomplish anything.

He could not give up before truly challenging his foe. He could not even consider going down in a blaze of glory. He had to grasp at victory, no matter how ugly it was. He had to reclaim the glory of the world’s strongest.

Because he knew that was enough to save some people.

Like the person who had given him this because she was worried about a mere mercenary who had sold his own life as a commercial tool.

So.

To accomplish that…

(Not…yet.)

The unpleasant grinding and cracking sounds would not stop.

It meant sacrificing his own teeth and filling his mouth with blood, but that Native American mercenary managed to bite and destroy the shotgun made of plastic and special alloy.

(My arms and legs can still move. I might be bound by my magic, but I still have my life. So I can still fight!!!!!!)

The shotgun shells spilled from the tube.

If the shells contained in the shotgun functioned as his totem, then he could break that bond by destroying the shotgun!!

Part 6

Utagai Karuta was faced with something that defied all common sense.

(This thing is made of special alloy and plastic.)

The shotgun’s broken pieces and ammo spilled out and fell to the floor. The unsteady mercenary kicked the shells to the side, triggering them along with the detonating cord rope. He used brute force to destroy the absolute protection Utagai Karuta had gained from the system that prevented him from killing the totem animal from which he drew his power.

(He bit through that with human teeth to break free of the totem pole? He’s not even using some native tobacco or herbs. This is pure willpower and strength. Has he entered the zone, letting him ignore his sense of pain!?)

Karuta was unaware that there were exceptions where a totem animal could be killed during special festivals and rituals.

Karuta had been taught to always have two methods of attack at any given time to ensure that he always had a valid option. But what if that wasn’t enough to stop his opponent? Athabaskan did not live in the world of street fights; he was a professional mercenary.

Letnahe had told him he would immediately be put on the defensive in a situation like this.

“Gahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Gahhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Karuta wondered if Athabaskan was using the power of the eagle, the wolf, the crocodile, or the serpent in that moment, but none of those was right.

This was the power of the human.

The mercenary’s eyes carried the glint of rational thought.

Karuta had no idea what even happened. He tried to send his own fist out while the large man’s fist flew toward him, but the next thing he knew, he was spinning around and his right arm was behind his back in a joint lock. A bent knee pressed against the center of his back. If the man put his full weight there, Karuta would be smashed face-first into the hard floor. His thin barrier would do nothing to protect him. With both their body weights behind it, he wouldn’t just be knocked out – his skull would split open and he would die.

This was what happened when a high schooler tried to take on a professional mercenary.

There was an insurmountable wall between them.

A professional attack filled the target with the fear of knowing there was no escape.

But Utagai Karuta did have one trick up his sleeve: crystal magic.

(I can heal any nonlethal wound in 30 seconds!!)

He actually twisted his body to apply even more pressure to the joints, destroying his right shoulder and elbow simultaneously. The pain was 100 times worse than having his back teeth grinded down with a metal file, but he could move again.

“!!!???”

He turned around with his joints bending wrong and found Athabaskan’s defenseless face in front of him.

And his jaw.

Karuta gathered the rest of his strength and swung his left fist into it.

“I…”

But the Native American mercenary was not shaken.

He remained on his feet and spoke clearly.

“I only wanted magic…that could do things crystal magic couldn’t do…that no one else could do…”

The boy sensed that the man had refused to lose until he got that message across to someone.

“Yeah.”

Utagai Karuta wanted to prevent chaos from spreading across the globe.

But that did not mean he was allowed to trample someone’s heart.

“I assure you as the world’s strongest that you accomplished something I can’t do.”

And like a thread had snapped, Athabaskan Rio Grande slowly collapsed backwards.

Part 7

“Delane here! Your beloved Cinderella Queen is about to give you the afternoon forecast during our lunch break. But doing that the normal way would be pretty boring, right? Come here, assistant! You never have any luck, so how about I shine the spotlight on you today? …Let’s see. (Whisper) If the forecast is wrong, my busty sister will bite her lip and hang her head while she strips in front of the camera for you all!”

“Gyahhh! I never agreed to that!! Wait, I’m not ready for that kind of attention. And isn’t the equator’s weather super hard to predict since squalls will start pouring rain without any warning!?”

“A round of applause for our plain but lewd weather girl who’s second to none when it comes to letting her big boobs go to waste!! And I swear I’m not just jealous. Now, let’s get to the weather. This here is the pressure map. Yeah, this is the equator all right. There’s a huge front approaching.”

“Sacri-sama,” said Aine, running down the hall toward Karuta.

“I’m fine,” was all he said.

There were no physical scars since all his injuries healed after 30 seconds, but the psychological toll was a different matter. He wanted to think he was fine since he was used to pain by now, but if it developed into a phobia, he could end up limiting his options even when his body really was fine. The placebo effect could be a scary thing.

It had been a mess, but he had survived the second round.

It actually helped a lot that he had already had his match done during the morning. He only had one match per day, so now he had the free time to get some rest, spar with Letnahe, and work out a strategy with the others. And his top priority was researching the magician he would be fighting in the third round tomorrow.

However, that turned out to be a problem.

After he left the ring utterly exhausted, Aine had a disheartening message for him.

“Your next opponent has yet to be determined. That match is in the afternoon.”

“So now I have too much time.”

It wouldn’t hurt to watch that match himself, but he had nothing to do until then. He considered sparring with Letnahe, but the bespectacled teacher shot down that idea.

“Get the bare minimum of nutrition first. One look at your face is enough to know you didn’t eat breakfast. That is foolish and sad enough as it is, but were you planning to skip lunch too? You will never make any progress if you don’t place sufficient importance on food. Sparring with you would be meaningless.”

He recalled hearing that Indians were especially strict about treating food with respect. Karuta had always been inconsistent in when he ate and he didn’t mind skipping meals, but if she wouldn’t spar with him, the decision was out of his hands. He had the free time, but he couldn’t ignore the people he needed to help him.

Aine eagerly clenched her fists in front of her face.

“Sacri-sama, this is our next Catastrophe mission. Let’s go eat.”

“What, did the world’s strongests wander into an easygoing tutorial level? That’s the kind of mission I would expect on an educational program for little kids, Aine.”

But he didn’t have the energy to drag his aching body into his dorm room’s kitchen, so it would be faster to visit one of the restaurants the students were running like this was a festival. Those very restaurants meant the usual cafeteria was closed.

Aine looked out the window to view a machine producing a whirring sound.

“That drone is made of gold and rare earths. I wonder how much I would have if I gathered up all of them. Drool.”

“Don’t eat the tournament cameras. Please. The world doesn’t need a crystal girl’s endoscope footage.”

(If I want to know the food is good, I should probably go there.)

“Um, listen up, everyone. This crystal blossom plays a key role in crystal magic. A god’s name is sealed inside a circuit board smaller than a stamp, and…”

The puppyish Sub Category teacher Sophia Firenze was surrounded by small children in an unused classroom. She appeared to be giving visitors a lecture on crystal magic. She received so many more questions than she did in ordinary classes, so she looked overwhelmed but delighted.

Soon thereafter, Karuta encountered another commotion.

Student Council President Omotesandou Kyouka was speaking with someone in a corner of the hallway.

“Oh, Kyouka! I was looking for you! If my phone has a signal on this ship, yours must too, so why did you have your phone off!?”

“Sigh. Shouka, I was providing commentary for a live broadcast, so I couldn’t have my phone ringing during the match. …Oh, Karuta-kun.”

She looked like she wished he hadn’t seen this, an unusual reaction for that mysterious dark-hearted president. Karuta approached with Aine at his side.

Also…

“Oh, you’re that kid from before.”

“Why, if it isn’t Utagai! Thank you for before!!”

It was the small girl with a bob cut and a light green (maybe yellowish green?) kimono. Her face lit up when she saw him.

Now it was Kyouka’s turn to look curious and Aine tilted her head too. Come to think of it, wasn’t Aine off doing something else when he met this girl?

“What, did you two get to know each other behind my back?” asked Kyouka.

“Utagai helped me when I was lost earlier. Leave it to the world-famous Second Grimnoah to be so large you can forget it’s even a ship. Oh, but I wouldn’t have gotten lost if my sister here hadn’t turned off her phone! Hmph!!”

“Sister?”

The girl’s retelling of that chance meeting made Karuta tilt his head.

Kyouka rubbed her temples and moved her lips like she wanted to say something, but she finally gave up and sighed. When she did speak, it sounded like a confession.

“This is Omotesandou Shouka, my brother.”

“Brother!!!???”

“Oh, did you think he was a girl? But the hat and haori are boy’s clothing. Still, people often make that mistake. Maybe it’s his babyface and maybe it’s his slight build.”

Kyouka was finally back to her usual mischievous self.

Karuta was shocked by this revelation, but Shouka failed to notice and laughed it off.

“Ah ha ha. Don’t be ridiculous, Kyouka. Just look at this muscular beauty. Maybe things were different when I was a kid, but now that I’ve been training my body daily, no one would ever make that mistake!! Right?”

He pulled back his kimono’s short sleeve and bent his arm like he was flexing his bicep, but Karuta could not look him in the eye.

The crystal girl had a question for Karuta.

“Sahri-hama? Hy are you hulling on my heek?”

“Oh, just resetting my senses. Yes, this is what a girl’s skin feels like.”

The upper arm emerging from the kimono was unbelievably bright. Shouka himself probably wasn’t aware, but the way he tilted his head and asked “right?” was more powerful than a hydrogen bomb. Karuta felt certain Yamane Deiri or Nekoumi Hirosuke would fall for him in a heartbeat. Also, Shouka only looked 10 or 12, so how exactly did he define when he was “a kid”?

“I’m going to be a crystal magician one day and then I’ll be as strong as you and my sister!”

Kyouka was not the only one unable to bear the boy’s sparkling eyes.

A filthy avenger like Karuta had to work hard not to avert his gaze.

“The Four Living Gods are so popular. Hard to believe the things they say are about us.”

“Yes, they’re even selling photo books. Photos of Aine-chan and Marika-san soaring through the sky are especially popular.”

“Is that allowed? What about that whatever-it’s-called…likeness rights?”

“It counts as ‘journalism’, so it’s hard to get after them about it. You know how military journalists take photos of cutting-edge warships and fighter planes? It’s like that.”

The president could laugh about it because she did not directly participate in combat and was not viewed as a military weapon like the others. To be fair, she made up for that by getting up on the stage as their spokesperson.

“Marika-san seems to like the attention. And, Karuta-kun, you’re fairly popular yourself.”

“?”

“Look, Utagai! This sketch card is based on your second round match! Ah ha ha. I spent my allowance to buy a whole bunch of these from the art club. That manly look of determination in profile is so cool☆”

Karuta could only scream.

It wasn’t a photo or a video, but the drawing was still embarrassing since it had the realistic look of a courtroom sketch. Kyouka herself sighed while brushing her hair back from her shoulder.

“I really wish they would stop this since it could allow the contestants to analyze each other, but it’s hard to track these analog methods. So just be careful, Karuta-kun.”

Petty bourgeois Karuta was still not used to all this attention, so his eyes widened and his soul tried to escape through his mouth. The world’s strongest would inevitably be viewed similarly to a hero in full-body tights. He was well on his way to wishing he was a masked wrestler instead.

“Anyway, I notice Shouka-kun chose a kimono to dress up nice. I had my suspicions already, but are you two from a pretty well-to-do family?”

“Karuta-kun, I have a prophecy for you: you will regret this once your family shows up. Because I am going to be ruthless.”

He had only meant it as a casual change of topic, but that was apparently a delicate issue for her.

But it was Shouka who unwittingly dropped the real bombshell.

“You somehow managed to evade me yesterday, but I am getting these things to you today, Kyouka. Pajamas, socks, a coat for chilly nights, and underwear!! Mother and the servants asked me to bring you these clothes, so I need you to take them!!”

“Gyahhh!? D-don’t show those off in the hallway with a boy right here, Shouka! And why oh why does the underwear have a kitten on it!?”

The president actually screamed for once when she saw the colorful (and surprisingly cute) piece of cloth. She was apparently fine with showing such things off and setting things up so they would be seen, but she did not want it to happen when she wasn’t in control. …And she only seemed to have a problem with Karuta seeing it. In her panic, had she too forgotten that Shouka was a boy?

(Wait a second…)

“O-oh, no. Does this mean my parents might be on this ship too? Families of contestants got priority tickets, didn’t they?”

“That is correct, but why is it a problem?”

The nonhuman crystal girl had never had a rebellious phase and tilted her head at his panic. She was still a long way from understanding the awkward feeling of having your friends meet your family.

“We were on our way to grab some lunch, so do you want to join us, Kyouka-san?”

He decided to ask, but the president, whose soul was escaping from her lolling head, shooed him away with her hand. She was apparently too mentally overwhelmed for that.

“Oh, Utagai! Please give me your autograph later! You can do it right here!”

“I am not scrawling my name on that expensive-looking kimono, so please don’t even ask!!”

He made sure to stay in public mode even though he was Kyouka’s family. After leaving those siblings, he and Aine were finally off on their quest for food. Unlike the gym’s formal redecoration or the heliport’s showbusiness transformation, the school hallways were decorated with chains of streamers and cellophane stars, giving them the same feel as a school’s cultural festival.

They found a hell of students trying to attract customers.

“We have ice cream, café au lait, cookies, custard, and cake! Come try the tea club’s authentic matcha café!!”

“The world’s cuisine reborn! Come see how tasty the chemistry club can make a simple fried egg! Why not try our unbelievable pure science style of cooking!!”

“How about some light exercise after your meal? Class 2-5 is running a target practice game outside. Hit us just once while we fly around and everyone currently playing the game wins a fabulous prize! The more players, the better your chances!”

“Craving a familiar flavor after such a long journey? The food research club is taking home cooking requests from 130 different countries and regions.”

A handmade gate forming an upside-down U had lots of balloons attached. All the rooms on this hallway had apparently worked together to create a “gathering spot” similar to a food court. It would serve its purpose as long as people thought of it as a good place to kill some time or meet up with someone.

“Now, where should I get some food. I’m not really in the mood for anything adventurous. Eating something awful would really get me down right now.”

“But won’t you have a hard time finding something good when these are all run by students doing it mostly just for fun? Hm, I get the feeling we will not find a wide variety of restaurants that use pure gold as an ingredient.”

Aine’s criteria for a good restaurant were too unique, so he could ignore her.

But he did know one good place.

“If I don’t want to be disappointed…hm, the maid café run by Natalena’s class should work.”

“…”

“Hey, Aine? This isn’t about the maids. It’s about the quality of the food they serve.”

He poked his head inside and received the ugliest look from his high-quality underclassman (in a handmade miniskirt costume). She had the same look as a student at a strictly hierarchical workplace when her friends showed up just for fun.

“Um, do you have something against me, Senpai? What did I do to deserve this kind of harassment!?”

“I couldn’t forget how good that food was.”

“A good upperclassman doesn’t punish his underclassman for being nice!!”

She had said the boys in her class had all voted for the maid café and the girls had not been thrilled with the idea.

The maid café took up two classrooms – one as the customer seating area and the other as the kitchen filled with portable stoves. That was probably standard for the all the student-run restaurants here.

Their repeated battles had caused Karuta’s title as the world’s strongest to lose some of its luster with the Second Grimnoah students, but some middle school girls in maid costumes were talking excitedly and pointing his way. They even teasingly shouted over “C’mon, Jane-san. You need to smile.”

The naughty girl who used a fake name at school put on a smile as stiff as a doll in bad need of oiling. She was technically smiling, but the silver tray held to her flat chest was straining in her grip.

“W-welcome back, master. I will guide you to your seat, so come this way.”

“Oh, you can skip the formalities with me, Natalena. I’m only here for some food.”

“Try that again and I’m starting a maid uprising to overthrow our cruel master. Please don’t drag me back to reality after I get into the part. It’s so embarrassing!!”

Was that how it worked?

Karuta pondered the challenge of mastering the maid arts as he was shown to his seat. In addition to the streamers and cellophane decorations, they had made tables by pushing four desks together and placing a tablecloth over the top. The chairs were just the ordinary classroom ones, so they looked weirdly out of place.

“Natalena.”

“Please call me Jane Ignition here. …Now, what is it, Senpai? Um, were you hoping I would make a heart with my hands and fill your omurice with love?”

“No, I noticed the menu says I can get a selfie with my table’s maid. But to fit in the frame, wouldn’t you have to practically press your cheek against mine?”

“I apologize for anything I might have done to you, Karuta-senpai, but I can only conclude you’re trying to kill me with stress at this point! Everyone has been too shy to order anything from the joke menu the stupid boys made, so please don’t make yourself the first!”

“I won’t. But I do have something I want to ask of you.”

He looked back at the homemade menu created by gluing small photos to cardboard and then attaching clear plastic on top of that and he found they had a surprisingly diverse lineup. In addition to the honey chicken sandwich he had eaten the day before, they had all the basics like omurice, hamburger steak, seafood pasta, pilaf, and shrimp gratin. They also had several options for dessert and drinks. It was all completely different, not just different variations of what could be made in a single large pot. The boys in the kitchen had to be very busy indeed. This may have been the girls’ way of taking revenge after being forced out here by the boys’ superior numbers.

“Wait, does this mean the sandwich I had yesterday was made by a boy? …Wait, wait, wait. Does this mean the very structure of a maid café means you’re never actually eating food made by one of the maids?”

“Why would that matter, Sacri-sama?”

Karuta had stumbled upon a sad quirk of the world, but the crystal girl only tilted her head. He frowned and toyed with the menu.

“I don’t even care anymore. I thought I was in the mood for bread, but now I want some omurice all of a sudden. Aine, what about you?”

“I do not require food to function.”

“But you deserve a treat.” He smiled. “You kept your promise about making yourself useful this time.”

“…”

“I doubt I could have figured out how to turn the tables against Athabaskan without you. His inability to kill his totem animal was a clue you found, right? So I wanted to thank you.”

“Some dessert is all I need. …Yes, this chocolate cake looks very good. The one with the chocolate plate bearing a message in gold leaf. We are most pleased.”

Why did she start talking like a queen lovingly tormenting her prey?

Once they had given their order (to trembling Natalena-chan), Karuta breathed an exasperated sigh.

“I guess it actually works in our favor that the battles are all one-on-one. We don’t have to worry about hidden attackers or suspect our own people.”

Those ideas came to mind so readily thanks to their previous battles. The battle against the Problem Solvers had been one surprise after another, some Sub Category girls had betrayed them at the Crystal Beach, and they had been shaken by the true identity of the Threat at Second Grimnoah.

In a one-on-one tournament, neither side could touch the other until they were in the ring.

These battles were fair, ideal, and absurdly unrealistic.

“Suspect our own people? I would never do anything to harm you, Sacri-sama.”

“Oh, really? I seem to recall you calmly slicing right through my body.”

“You mean the ruse used to break Miss Marika’s spirit when she lost control at the Crystal Beach? You ordered me to do that.”

He had only meant to tease her a little, but her reaction surprised him.

The crystal girl puffed out her cheeks from within.

It was such a rare image he immediately snapped a photo with his phone, which made her puff them out further. That was a bad sign, so he decided it was probably best if he didn’t doodle on her photo.

“Sacri-sama, you are moving your finger an awful lot for only taking a photo. Are you doodling on my face?”

“Of course not. I would never. Heh heh. Yeah, cat ears suit you so much better than dog ears.”

“I rule it 100% confirmed.”

(Uh, oh. I may have pushed my luck too far this time.)

He had only wanted to change the subject to distract her from her anger, but the crystal girl was not that simple to control.

But when he did resume talking, he looked somehow amused with this small change in her behavior.

“Okay, Aine how about this? This is a request, not a command. I ask that we never harm each other and that we always rush to each other’s aid when we’re in trouble.”

“What is that, Sacri-sama?”

“It’s called a pinky promise. It’s a human ritual.”

Aine kept her head tilted.

After a moment, she reached out her pinky to mimic him.

They gently linked fingers.

“Sorry about the wait, master. Please enjoy.”

“Whoa!?”

The superb maid spoke more stiffly than a robot and thudded down a large plate of omurice.

The omurice served to him by Natalena had a topping he had not requested. She had used the omurice and the entire plate around it as a canvas to fashionably and cutely write out a message in red ketchup or demi-glace that succinctly expressed her feelings for him.

Die.

“…”

“Humans are such baffling creatures. Is that bloody message meant to be a decoration?”

Part 8

Amaashi Marika was worried her internal groaning was going to escape as something audible.

The unruly(?) strongest girl was at a complete loss here.

“Ha ha ha. Marika-chan has grown up so much since I last saw her. Karuta is such a lucky boy. And I don’t have to worry about him when I know she’ll be by his side!” (Utagai Dad)

“I know, right? Marika, do you remember how you used to talk on and on about how you would marry Karuta when you grew up? And you would get so mad when I teasingly said I would take him for myself☆” (Amaashi Mom)

She was being attacked from all sides.

Having your parents visit school was bad enough for a teenage girl, but the neighbor boy’s parents were here too. The hellish crossfire was more than she could bear. She was tense as could be with an unnaturally stiff smile on her face while she silently cursed someone who wasn’t here.

(K-K-K-Karuta… You’re supposed to look after your own parents, so why am I stuck with them!?)

Perhaps there was still some hope in the world. Marika had traveled the world and hunted down the Problem Solvers for revenge and she was willing to assassinate an underclassman if they would harm one of her friends, but there was still something out there she couldn’t stand.

That aside, what did the peaceful members of the Amaashi and Utagai families think this magic tournament even was? The Utagai family in particular had been watching as their only son was bloodied and nearly killed while the crowd went wild.

“Hey, I had a question.”

After stepping aside to let a clown balanced on a ball and a bunny girl past (what club were they from?), Utagai Dad tilted his head in the decorated hallway.

“When is your match going to be, Marika-chan? It doesn’t seem fair to give our Karuta all the attention.”

“I know. Or is it a team battle? Either way, this is your big chance. I just hope Karuta isn’t stealing the limelight from you.”

“…”

They didn’t even know the basic rules.

They had to have some kind of understanding, but they were just so carefree. She had to wonder if they could even keep track of which fighter was their son when Karuta and his opponent rushed at each other at close range, constantly switching positions.

(In fact…)

Would they even understand her if she explained Karuta’s plight to them?

She felt like they would pepper her with whys and never actually come to terms with what she was saying.

They refused to actually think through the information presented to them.

They believed they could get by without understanding all the details. They believed they could get what they wanted if they just clicked the first option on the list and chose “agree” on ever TOS they came across. They truly believed the world was so kind.

Even though they lived in an age where the Threat had reduced the earth’s population to 5.5 billion.

They were still convinced that everything would work out in the end.

There was not actually a safe path through this world of malice and violence. Life was a sequence of crises where you had to make your own observations, think for yourself, and take action or you would be killed instantly.

“What are your plans for today, Marika-chan?”

“Eh? Oh, there’s a match I’m interested in, so I was thinking of watching that.”

“Is it Karuta’s match?”

They weren’t even aware that Karuta had already fought his match for the day. The question had so little basis in reality that Marika froze up for a second and smiled stiffly when she did answer.

“Nooo, it’s not his. It’s between a Greek mythology astrologist and an occult kunoichi.”

The world’s strongest gyaru tried her best to be polite to the neighbor boy’s parents.

That match would determine Karuta’s opponent in the third round. She didn’t know which one would win, but it couldn’t hurt to use the match for research.

But she received an unexpected response.

It came from her own parents who were so accustomed to a peaceful life they could not keep up with what was really happening here.

“Oh, then that’s too bad, Marika.”

“Eh? Why’s that, mama?”

“You didn’t see the emergency news on the screen over there earlier? Round 2 Match 3 ended in a win by default.”

“…”

Something was happening.

Something decidedly different from all the past matches.

It was nothing concrete and she couldn’t find an appropriate word for it, but if she had to describe it she would say it was the density and concentration of malice rapidly increasing.

This oppressive feeling was the same thing she had felt when up against the Problem Solvers or the Threat.

“One of the contestants was in an accident, so they couldn’t participate. They were injured pretty badly, so the tournament was the least of their worries,” said Marika’s mother, with a hand on her cheek. She sounded as carefree as if she were talking about vegetable prices going up again. “The poor girl. I don’t know the details, but how can the other contestants feel comfortable walking around when they won’t tell anyone what happened? Marika, will you be okay? Accidents like these are so scary.”

The battle was not restricted to the ring.

This opponent was not going to wait that long.

There was something different about this one.

Between the Lines 2

“Sorry about the wait. Let’s get started.”

That night, Letnahe Kurent visited an important section of Second Grimnoah. She completely ignored the meteor shower event going on outside and her outline was swollen by the thick positive pressure protective suit she wore. This place was not controlled by the Sub Category or Main Category students. The adult teachers were in charge here.

Sophia Firenze and Kiyosawa Hadome were already there.

The latter Letnahe had never intended to see again after she sealed away the memories of her first love. He did not know she was one of the string pullers.

The bulky protective suit came in handy there. The thick shields kept them from seeing each other’s faces clearly and they were fully separated despite standing in the same space.

(Hadome-kun.)

“Make sure to record your work in three different formats. This one is in good shape compared to the thoroughly-destroyed samples collected during the days of the previous strongests. An opportunity like this might not come again, so we need to avoid any possibility of losing these records due to a silly mistake.”

She kept her feelings hidden inside and maintained a businesslike demeanor as she looked to the “sample” lying on the work table. It was a reddish-purple hunk of metal nearly 3m long.

It was a Threat.

Specifically, it was the one known as the Warrior Doll. It had been the most powerful Threat occupying Second Grimnoah. The part analogous to a head was missing, but this was still a crucial sample toward learning more about the Threat.

They were known as Metal-Derived Autonomous-Origin Higher Lifeform Combat Weapons.

They were a threat to humanity of extraterrestrial origin that rained endlessly down on the earth.

They fiercely fought against the Original Crystal Embryo that slept at the earth’s core and was the source of crystal magic.

The Threat had caused great damage during their occupation of the Port of Kobe and Second Grimnoah. That the battle had allowed the details of crystal magic to reach ordinary people’s phone lenses was especially damaging.

But some good had come of that battle.

A great many Threats had ceased to function within the massive closed room that was Second Grimnoah. If they were only going to meticulously deliver a finishing blow to each one anyway, they could easily fudge the official numbers of Threats discovered and secretly capture some.

That meant they could keep this fact from the human string pullers who Letnahe knew so well.

This was one of those.

Since Letnahe had taken such a risk on this, she was hoping for a discovery bigger than anything her higher ups had told her.

“Now, should we call this a dissection or a dismantling?” groaned Kiyosawa Hadome, standing around the same work table.

This was not a human. They all knew that. But the metal armor clearly had more joints than were necessary for pure efficiency. They may have been unsure how exactly to classify their actions here.

But they got to work regardless.

“The weapon is…wow, it’s the same material as the Threat’s body.”

There was no plasma jet anymore, but Sophia Firenze was very careful not to touch the blade as she examined the weapon. She may have started with a weapon instead of the Threat itself because the consequences of a mistake were far less.

The sword was designed to emit a plasma jet and it had fine, branching wiring on the inside. Letnahe initially likened it to a plant’s roots, but then she realized what it really was.

“Blood vessels and nerves…or a mimicry of them.”

“We do not even know if the Threat transports oxygen or carbon dioxide. Amaashi Marika saw Threats operating underwater.”

Hearing Hadome’s voice from unexpectedly close by made Letnahe’s heart leap a bit.

And he was right.

They had heard that the real Threat could not be defeated by ordinary means, so Sophia and Hadome were ready to activate their crystal magic if need be. But that did not prove necessary. Their surgical saws and drills – designed for use on human bones – worked just fine.

“I-is their armor only solid while they’re alive? Or do they activate a thin magical barrier around themselves?” nervously suggested Sophia.

They were recording all of this, so it was best to vocalize any idea that came to mind. Letnahe agreed with that stance anyway.

“When Utagai Karuta fought this armored warrior in the gym, he said he avoided an attack by using one of the tadpole corpses as a shield. Maybe the armored warrior is special and maybe micro-damage spreads through them at an accelerated rate as time passes after their death. We just don’t know enough to say.”

They could not focus on the weapon and exterior forever.

They finally shifted their focus to the armored warrior itself lying there on the table.

According to Utagai Karuta’s battle report, the armored warrior had not taken this form to begin with. It had initially been a lion-shaped Threat they had dubbed Sparkle. It had taken this humanoid form only after devouring several of the tadpole ones. Yet when they removed the armor piece by piece, none of it felt out of place. A closer inspection showed some notches that looked like a single unified pattern when viewed together.

“It’s beautiful.”

Kiyosawa Hadome’s assessment felt out of place here, but Letnahe had to agree with him. The gray artificial muscles were so perfectly laid out she would have sworn it was based on a wiring chart.

Once they split the Threat open, that was what they found.

Letnahe felt no biological disgust – only the artificiality of a wax food sample. Maybe that was due to her not viewing the armored warrior as a living creature like them, but she did not bat an eye even when viewing the burned-out capacitors arranged like wings.

“This is its heart?”

Letnahe went through a few different processes to open up the chest and gently extracted the object protected by rib-like metal pillars.

The unit was a little bigger than a clenched fist. It was constructed from a few gears and a U-shaped tuning fork.

It reminded her of something, so she stated it aloud through her protective suit.

“Is this a tuning fork clock?”

A tuning fork would ring at a set frequency, so a clock could track time using the tuning fork’s constant amplitude. The Threat supposedly received solid fuel from the sea anemone ones, but Letnahe had not known that fuel was used to run something like this. It was fascinating to find they had this in place of a heart. What meaning did the Threat find in their own pulse?

And the idea of a clock increased the nagging sense she had that something was wrong here.

Yes.

That’s right.

“Crystal magic,” whispered Letnahe.

She could not use crystal magic herself, but its presence rapidly grew in her mind.

She recalled whose lair she was inside.

Crystals could also be used to produce a fixed vibration. And there were clocks that accurately measured time using that trait.

They were the one thing that could defeat the Threat which had tuning fork clocks inside them. They were the one thing the Problem Solvers had chosen to dirty their hands in order to eradicate. They were the vanguards chosen by the Original Crystal Embryo.

They could deflect any external interference with a barrier, they could defy gravity and fly through the sky, and they could regenerate any injury in 30 seconds. And if they died, they were not even allowed to rot. They would instead transform into solid crystal statues.

What if?

What if they too had a clock embedded in them? What if that was the true identity of their crystal blossom? And if they were ruled by a clock just like the Threat, then could they still be called human? If you looked past their ribs and sternum, would you even find the crucial component known as a heart?

This was a battle between two different types of clock – tuning fork and crystal.

Did that mean anything? Simplifying it down like that had actually left Letnahe more confused.

“What is it?” said Kiyosawa Hadome. He asked the fundamental question – a question that’s answer continued to elude scientists the world over. “What even is crystal magic?”

Humanity was beginning to rely on it.

They were reaching a point where they could not protect the earth without it.

Chapter 3

Part 1

First thing in the morning and he was already getting beaten up.

“I see you can sense a grab coming with your instincts instead of your conscious mind. That’s good. Your reactions are a little too blatant, though.”

“Ugh…”

“God, how can I hit you this many times and still none of it seems to sink in?”

In their secret base located directly below the heliport where the tournament was being held, Letnahe (the overheated and frustrated young wife in glasses and workout gear) spoke to him, looking entirely composed.

She had already slammed Karuta to the hard ground and twisted his wrist to get him in an armlock. She had easily broken through his paper-thin barrier.

“I didn’t get much sleep,” said Sandbag Utagai Karuta like it was an excuse.

He had been woken that morning by a deafening boom and a violent tremor. They were sparring in the surprising blind spot located directly below the heliport, but the place was unrecognizable.

It looked like a solid waterfall made of steel and rebar.

The round, platelike heliport had collapsed and sent large pieces of rubble pouring down to this level. They had been lucky that it had poured past the ship’s railing and into the sea. Karuta was truly thankful none of the audience had been killed.

(How did someone do this to the tournament site?)

Letnahe glanced over at her smartwatch to check her heartrate while holding Karuta in her armlock.

“I heard it was over instantly.”

“And that’s who I’ll be facing in the finals if the next match goes well.”

But there was no point in worrying about that right now. He had to focus on his semifinal this afternoon.

Fortunately, Second Grimnoah was a three hull ship with the school buildings split between the Sub Category and Main Category. One of the heliports had been destroyed, but the tournament could continue using the heliport above the other school building. The staff was working madly to get the seats and cameras set up there.

“Like I said, your movements are too blatant. Knowing how to respond to a grab is useful, but if you flinch at every single attack, a simple feint will be enough to take you out with ease.”

“You say that, but the only way to know if something is a real attack or a bluff is to think about it. If I do that, I’ll be slow to react and take a blow to the face.”

“And I’m saying that assumption is wasting your speed. Keep in mind that your body can’t move while you think and you will be hit by an attack while your body can’t move. Now, hurry back onto your feet. I’ll keep hitting you until your body learns how to move on reflex.”

Karuta was growing more and more impressed that he managed to defeat the Problem Solvers and the Threat. Did this just prove how much he had avoided fair battles and stuck to cheap shots?

Still, things were somewhat different from the first day.

It didn’t happen often.

But from time to time, like some kind of mistake, he actually managed to get an attack in on Letnahe. He was no longer losing every single time.

Except…

“There!!” shouted Karuta, but Letnahe’s low kick was a feint and she managed to grab his collar and lift him onto her back.

Then she made such a perfect shoulder throw it could have been used for a tutorial video, but Karuta intentionally shifted his center of gravity to the side. That sent a dull pain shooting through her fingers. He had twisted his collar, applying a twisting force to her fingers. Her smartwatch played an alert.

This was only practice, so he could not twist to the point of breaking her fingers.

And in exchange, he lost his balance and landed unnaturally on his shoulder instead of on his broad back. The impact was concentrated on that one point, sending pain through his bone.

Letnahe held her hand with the other one and grimaced, but she seemed more worried about him.

“Y-you’ll break a bone landing like that!”

“I know. But breaking my shoulder isn’t fatal.” He smiled. “I can regenerate any injury in only 30 seconds, so I need to take advantage of that. Of course, I can’t let my opponent know I need to protect the crystalized body part during the recovery period, but it means a lot that these near-suicidal attacks leave permanent damage on them but not on me.”

“…”

“Hm? Is something wrong, Letnahe-san?”

“No.”

She did not take his proffered hand and got up on her own. She was not looking him in the eye and seemed to be changing the subject when she spoke again.

“This is troubling, isn’t it? An accident outside the ring.”

“I heard their waiting room fell while the tiltrotor was carrying it to the ring.” Karuta sighed. “Machibula Delphi. That accident won her the second round, so she obviously benefited the most. But it seems she has an alibi and everything.”

She used Greek astrology.

That was a popular enough form of the occult to have a section on the morning news, but it was unclear how exactly she converted that into something deadlier than guns or blades.

Letnahe wiped the sweat from her brow with a towel and sipped some sports drink through her bottle’s straw.

“Will you be okay? Isn’t she your next opponent?”

“I really doubt she would try to knock me out with an accident.”

Two unnatural accidents in a row would be a risky gamble.

Plus, all of the tournament contestants were fighting these deadly battles because they wanted official recognition that their power had defeated crystal magic. If he was taken out without stepping into the ring, she might not take home that trophy she wanted.

However…

“That doesn’t mean nothing will happen though, does it? She only has to trip you up enough that you can still fight but she gets an easy win.”

“True…”

But how exactly would she accomplish that?

To repeat, crystal magic gave him a regeneration power. That preset ability would heal any nonlethal injury in 30 seconds. So with him, she couldn’t injure him before the match to give her an advantage.

…Am I being naïve?

Maybe he didn’t realize how far someone could go if they felt trapped. (However strong he really was,) Utagai Karuta was considered the world’s strongest and that title would place a lot of pressure on the challengers. If someone was willing to do anything to win, how far would they actually go? Had he failed to consider that because he had started looking down on them all at some point?

That was a problem.

What had Karuta himself done to the Problem Solvers in a similar situation?

“Well, my match isn’t until the afternoon. The third round is the semifinals, so there are only two matches today. I still have time, so let’s take it slow and think this through, Letnahe-san.”

“That also gives her more opportunities to attack you before the match. It might be better if you could just get it over with this morning.”

Part 2

“Cinderella Queen here! Out of respect for the Japanese-style seaside restaurants, I’m wearing a bikini apron today! If one or the other strap was going to come undone, would you want it to be the bikini or the apron? Now, it’s time to introduce you to today’s matches!!”

“Sigh. You only say that because accidents like that scare you so much.”

“Silence, assistant! No analyzing my motives on the air. Besides, I’ve never been afraid of accidents.”

“You say that, but you’re the one that barged into the program organization office and made a scene, demanding they didn’t air the part where you wet the sleeping bag during that camping project. If only you weren’t so cute, I might blame you for getting yourself kicked out of the TV industry for that one.”

“Gyahh!? Shut up, shut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup, assistant!!!!! None of that is true! Stop spreading fake news!! A-a-a-a-anyway, the third round is this tournament’s semifinals. Ha ha. Eh heh heh. We have one match this morning and one in the afternoon, so make sure you stay glued to your screens and witness this historic moment with the cutest queen on the planet☆ Assistant, I am murdering you the instant this stream is over!!!!!!”

“Yamanen,” said Karuta.

He was away from Aine.

After his morning training was complete, he walked past an LCD monitor set up in the hallway and peeked inside his own classroom. They were running a restaurant too, but he was too busy with the tournament to participate. He hadn’t even been told what they were serving.

He took a look inside the classroom decorated with streamers and cellophane.

“Wow, that is quite a smell. Is that habanero?”

“No, no, no. We’re four generations of selective breeding past that, you ignorant fool. This is our super-spicy seafood curry. It’s free.”

A small boy in a light green (or maybe yellowish-green?) kimono staggered out of the classroom. Wasn’t that Omotesandou Shouka, the president’s brother? And how did even his hat look down for the count?

There had to be more to this.

The ingredients weren’t free and then there was the labor that went into preparing the food. He knew his class better than to think they had volunteered to give food away out of the goodness of their hearts. Yamane Deiri answered his skeptical look with a shrug.

“But a glass of ice cold water will set you back 500 yen. We were hoping the starving athletes would come in, chow down, and spend a fortune, but it’s not going so well.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He could tell they had even mercilessly gone after Shouka’s elementary school allowance. He could guess the entire class was channeling the spirit of a crooked festival game runner, but Karuta made a mental note to get the boy’s money back before the president said some truly frightening things with a smile.

Yamane Deiri breathed a heavy sigh and shook his head.

“It’s that sexy dance teacher, Kurent-sensei! We worked together to come up with the perfect money-making scheme, but now we’re in the red after that real Indian locked onto us. Can you believe it? We dumped in a ton of crazy peppers so spicy a grove of them is supposed to protect you from a tiger, but she hasn’t ordered a single glass of water. And she criticized it for being nothing but spicy!! She even started giving us advice on spice mixtures that would soften the aftertaste!! C’mon, that’s not the point! We’re trying to rip people off, not make good food! Ugh, and she keeps ordering more free plates, putting us further in the red!!”

(How are you losing that much money on curry when you can just make a single big pot of it? What kind of super rare peppers did they buy? Online shopping can be a scary thing.)

Despite his complaints, Yamane Deiri seemed to be enjoying himself. He loved older girls, so he likely enjoyed all this attention from the teacher. …Which also meant he wasn’t the type to care at all about the ring on her finger.

Karuta lowered his voice.

“Anyway, do you think you can manage what I asked you?”

“Why are you asking that now when you already paid up front? With Amaashi Marika, I mean. Now, I don’t get it at all since I’m into older girls, but lending us one of the strongest has been giving us a lot more customers. We’re still in the red, but the Kurent Recession would already have bankrupted us without the Amaashi Waitress Effect.”

Karuta took another peek inside the classroom and saw the curly twintails girl dressed in a skimpy dancer outfit and surrounded by the class’s girls. Since this was a curry shop, were the waitresses dressed in an Indian-style sari? It had been heavily customized and left her midriff bare, so it looked more like something from an isekai fantasy. It made her look like a model doing a photo shoot or fashion show, so the design was popular with the girls as much as the boys.

(What is this place? It’s turning into a power spot where you can see the world’s strongest in person.)

Marika may have been perfect for the job since she loved attention, but Karuta wanted nothing to do with it. Public appearances always made him so nervous it had to be bad for his heart. But a lot of the audience(?) was satisfied with seeing the famous girl from out in the hallway because they left instead of taking a seat.

Yamane Deiri shrugged.

“So you want to know about Machibula Delphi? The entire class is working to secretly research that sneaky bitch who somehow took her opponent out outside the ring and passed it off as an accident. And if she’s willing to do that, why should we hold back? We’re doing everything we can find her weakness. It would stand out if you did it yourself, so leave all the behind-the-scenes research to us.”

“Thanks, but will you be okay?”

“The world’s strongests aren’t the only ones who fought the fake Threat at the Crystal Beach and the real one at Second Grimnoah and lived to tell the tale. We can handle being your opening act. And I think you’ll be satisfied with the results.”

Yamane Deiri winked and smiled before shoving a plastic sleeve full of paper against Karuta’s chest.

As the “opening act”, they had apparently written up a report on the previous day’s accident.

This was not a game of telephone. By compiling it into a single document, they would have worked out any discrepancies between witness accounts, so he could trust this information from his classmates. Karuta kept to the side of the hallway to not get in people’s way while he flipped through the document.

• The “accident” occurred yesterday preceding Round 2 Match 3 shortly after 1 PM. While the waiting rooms containers were being carried in by tiltrotors, the metal wires snapped and the entire room dropped to the heliport 7m below. Hattori Shizuku’s right wrist and ischium were broken, requiring two months of recovery time. She was forced to forfeit the match.

• The tiltrotor and waiting room container underwent a regular inspection that morning and was inspected a second time just before Hattori entered the waiting room. Both inspections showed no issue with the wires or clasps. Assuming the records have not been tampered with and no employees have been bought off, the sabotage must have occurred after that, when the tiltrotor was ascending and the container was suspended by the wires.

• The actual damage was to the wire attached to the container’s front right corner. It is thought the one wire snapping altered the weight distribution, causing the others to snap in a chain reaction. There is evidence that the metal clasp was burned away by a great heat. A natural heat increase from a twisted wire or friction could not have caused this. And since no one could have physically contacted the container after it was lifted into the air, a slow-acting incendiary chemical or powerful acid could have been applied in advance, or a laser could have been fired from long distance.

“…”

(A laser?)

Then a cheerful voice reached him.

“Hey, handsome. Table for one?☆”

“Huh? Hey, wait, Marika!?”

Karuta looked up in shock to see the isekai dancer waitress had emerged into the hallway and captured his arm. And with smile, she got him in an armlock in order to drag him toward the nearby door.

Yes, into their class’s ultra-spicy curry shop.

Afraid what she would do to his wrist, he didn’t dare tell her his elbow was touching something awfully soft. Still smiling, his childhood friend whispered to him.

“(You’re scaring away our customers by standing at the entrance with a big frown on your face. Don’t forget that we’re officially the world’s strongest, skinny boy.)”

“No, wait! I’ll leave, I’ll leave, so just let me go! Ow, ow, ow, ow!?”

“I will break your arm. I’m not exactly pleased that I’m the only one out here using her body to drive up sales, so you’re going to play your part too. Shouka-kun claimed he could handle anything after his sister’s spicy homemade curry, but that didn’t last long. So we need you to eat some of that red hot curry rice while going on about how it isn’t spicy at all and how it’s so good you could eat plate after plate of it.”

“Um, Marika? I am relieved to learn that you aren’t cruel enough to go after an elementary schooler’s allowance, but you’re my childhood friend. I know you know I can’t handle anything remotely spicy.”

“Surely one of the Four Living Gods who can go head-to-head with the Threat isn’t going to cry over some amateur curry, right? And we need to end this Kurent Recession. She showed up wondering what Japanese curry rice was like compared to the authentic Indian stuff and then she wouldn’t stop ordering more free plates of it! I refuse to accept that a restaurant with me as a waitress can lose money!!”

Part 3

He had a match coming up, but his lips were all swollen.

What if his opponent targeted that weak point?

“U-ugh…”

The light-green kimono boy Omotesandou Shouka called out to him in one of the giant ship’s hallways. He used both hands to hold an apple juice box he had bought at one of the vending machines set up in the hall during festivals, but his slender shoulders were still drooping.

“My tongue is still burning. You really are the world’s strongest, Utagai. How did you polish off that plate of curry so easily? I couldn’t even get through half of mine. And I thought my sister’s curry had prepared me for anything…”

Karuta did not want that to be why he was known as the world’s strongest. Also, he had lived with Omotesandou Kyouka in an RV while they were hunting down the Problem Solvers and, if anything, she had a sweet tooth. He recalled Marika complaining that her curry had milk in it. It sounded like Shouka was spoiled by his sister. The loving big sister was a surprising side of her for Karuta who only knew her as a strategist and avenger.

“Sacri-sama.”

Meanwhile, Aine returned.

Shouka must have expected the two crystal magicians would be talking about something he couldn’t understand, so he doffed his hat and politely bowed before taking his leave. The elementary schooler was more considerate than most adults Karuta had met.

Karuta waved goodbye and Aine tilted her head before speaking within the noisy hallway.

“I have checked with Cinderella Queen and Miss Kyouka as planned. They say the starting time of your match will not change at the last second this time since there are only two matches today.”

“I see.”

Karuta beckoned Aine over to the wall where they could talk without getting in the way of the small children attempting the stamp rally spread out across Second Grimnoah’s entire 600m length.

“I had time left for some surface-level investigation of Machibula Delphi. She appears to have some unique traits.”

“?”

“Ordinarily, contestants stay on Second Grimnoah and all other visitors stay on the cruise ships. Trainers and coaches are no exception. But Machibula has been granted an exception, so a few servants she calls Orpheus’s Orchestra are staying with her. The exception was granted because she has been raised as a priestess, cut off from the world since birth, so she does not know how to look after herself.”

“So even if we’re watching her, the others can be committing all the sabotage they like?”

“Yes. In that case, we might not detect a lie in Machibula herself even if we are monitoring her temperature, pulse, eyes, and breathing. Orpheus’s Orchestra may be acting on her behalf without her directly instructing them to.”

How could she be complicit when she wasn’t even aware of it? It was a common defense used by the powerful. And since she had so many servants looking after her, apparently Machibula Delphi lived a traditional Ancient Greek life in this modern age of smartphones and the internet. And that included the emperor and the slaves.

Then Karuta heard a footstep.

“Sacri-sama.”

“No.”

It was obvious what that sudden word of rejection meant.

“Do not attack her. A conflict outside the ring will only work against us.”

He saw fluffy blonde hair worn at hip length.

Bright skin reflected the light and the loose-fitting white priestess robes had so many openings he was seriously worried she might not be wearing any underwear. She only wore leather sandals on her feet. No socks or stockings.

She wore a luscious laurel wreath on her head.

The woman of about 20 looked like she had stepped right out of Greek mythology. Or if you weren’t familiar with that religious background, you might identify her as the goddess of the fountain in a picture book.

“Machibula Delphi.”

“Nice to meet you.”

She silently held her right hand out to the side.

Three women stood around her like her shadow. They all wore tattered black dresses and produced a jangling metallic sound when they moved. That was thanks to a brutal collar and shackles and the thick chains attached to them. They also had long, loose chains connecting their legs.

(Is that Orpheus’s Orchestra?)

“Collars and chains?”

“My, my. I think this gentleman is interested in you, Kildna.”

Machibula had cut herself off from the world but still lived a comfortable life. That priestess could not look after herself, so these servants did so instead.

Orpheus’s Orchestra.

If Machibula had not held her hand out to stop them, what would they have done for that priestess? They had clearly been trained to the point they would not complain about being chained up and managed by shackles and collars.

(Including the emperor and the slaves, huh?)

Karuta was not so full of himself that he thought being the world’s strongest gave him the right to judge entire cultures or civilizations as right or wrong or that one was better than another. But it still felt intensely wrong to see the system of slavery continuing in the current age.

“It would seem my previous opponent was caught in an unfortunate accident, but I am not going to rejoice at this unexpected windfall. Second Grimnoah is the one managing this tournament, correct? You need to ensure our safety better than this.”

“Don’t bother, Machibula. Just so you know, we know a thing or two about deception and sneak attacks. Try as you might, our match will begin as scheduled. You can’t stop me with sabotage.”

“Oh? What an odd thing to say. Could this be a difference of opinion? Your implications are not at all in line with what I heard happened.”

“What…are you talking about?”

“Simply put.” She placed a gentle hand on her cheek and tilted her head. “I was under the impression that it was you who laid a trap for us.”

The change started at the wall.

An LCD monitor had been installed near the ceiling for the event and an internet TV stream was playing.

“Hello, hello, hello! Are you ready for the midday news from everyone’s girlfriend Delane? A-and I’m not doing this just cause I’m lonely after only having the one match to commentate this morning! Ahem. Now, the latest story relates to yesterday’s accident. Supposedly, they’ve found evidence it was intentional.”

The fact that they were going with a story requiring a “supposedly” qualifier showed how loose the standards were for an internet-based program.

But.

What did that matter?

Machibula was the one who had gained the most from the supposed accident since it got her to the third round without needing to fight. So why did she look so confident if her crimes were coming to light?

However.

That view of the situation was instantly overturned.

“This information comes from all of your posts, so we can’t help it if the phone camera footage doesn’t fit the screen. But pay attention to Zone A4 on the second floor. Maybe it’s too blurry, but you can at least tell there’s something of interest there, can’t you? Now let’s pause this and zoom in.”

Karuta noticed something odd about his own body.

He was sweating. His short sleeve dress shirt felt gross clinging to his skin. But he had to wonder why he was sweating inside the air-conditioned ship.

“Keep in mind, everyone, that only a crystal magician could fire a laser capable of severing the wires holding up the container.”

His breathing had grown shallow.

The amount of oxygen you were getting affected the flexibility of your thoughts, so it was not just superstition that stopping and taking a deep breath could help. But that also meant your breathing grew faster and shallower when you were extremely tense or angry.

“And it goes without saying that the most powerful of the crystal magicians are the Four Living Gods.”

The conditions were torn down one by one.

Karuta could have managed if he were the one at risk here, but he could tell the rails had been switched over at some point.

“And which one of them has long silver hair and a white dress?”

That settled it. The enemy’s next move had already begun.

An icy death sentence was being passed on a certain girl in this festive hallway full of cheerful people.

“And let’s not forget the katana. Ah ha ha!! Was I a little too cruel this time?”

“What did you do,” he growled.

“Who says I did anything?” replied Machibula.

“What did you do to her!!!???”

“Kildna, wait, sit. Don’t worry. He won’t bite me outside the ring☆”

“This really, really looks like Aine of the Four Living Gods, doesn’t it?” continued Delane on the monitor. “And if it is, then that container accident where it looks like one of the wires was sliced through with a laser may have been a nasssty bit of sabotage carried out after Utagai Karuta figured out whether he would have an easier time of it against Greek mythology or an occult ninja☆ Lucky for him, Japanese law doesn’t apply out at sea because I’m pretty sure the house manipulating gambling results is extremely illegal.”

Part 4

He had been naïve.

He had been naïve to even assume their attack on him hadn’t already begun.

A true strategist had their target trapped before that target even realized what was going on. No Jorogumo set up her web in a location that already looked dangerous.

The setup for Round 3 had begun back in Round 2.

No one could avoid a trap they had already stepped in. He would just have to continue on with it latched onto his leg.

“No one knows the truth at this point,” said Omotesandou Kyouka over the phone. “Delane herself kept saying ‘it seems’ or ‘looks like’ when reading off the news, so I will start by working to put out this fire. We don’t know how deep Machibula’s trap goes, so making a flustered denial now might actually hurt us in the long run.”

She paused for a moment.

“Karuta-kun, just to be absolutely certain, you didn’t do this, did you?”

“Of course not!! This entire event is meant to eliminate the global social unrest brought on by people’s wavering trust in crystal magic, so winning through blatant sabotage would defeat the entire point of winning!”

He hung up.

He knew Kyouka didn’t actually suspect him. If she thought this was really that dire, she wouldn’t have done it over the phone.

(Still, I still have a problem left to deal with.)

“Sacri-sama?”

He didn’t answer Aine as he returned to his classroom.

The classroom itself was full of challengers attempting the “free to eat” curry with “in-meal purchases”, so he gathered everyone in the neighboring classroom they were using as a kitchen.

“Yamanen, Hirosuke. Can we hold a strategy meeting now? I need everything you have on Machibula Delphi! Immediately!!”

“I mean, if you want…”

They seemed deflated.

Yamane Deiri hesitated to speak and glanced over next to Karuta.

He had obvious suspicion and distrust in his eyes as he viewed Crystal Girl Aine. And that awful friend wasn’t the only one. It had spread to the girls he didn’t normally hang out with. He had to assume the suspicion had spread throughout the class.

He consciously took a deep breath and made sure not to snap back in anger as he slowly opened his mouth.

“I didn’t order her to do that.”

“We don’t doubt that. Unless the tension got the better of you or anything as pathetic as that, we know everything you do is based on logic. It would’ve been weird to rig who you fought in the third round when you had your second round match to deal with. If you panicked and did something stupid, you would’ve sabotaged that mercenary guy instead.”

The footage looked an awful lot like Aine had fired her laser, but Yamane Deiri did not suspect Karuta.

And that logic matched what Karuta was thinking now. The morning semifinal match had ended as soon as the bell rang. If he won his own match today, that would be his opponent in the finals. But he had to focus on today for now. If he couldn’t defeat Machibula Delphi, then that other person didn’t even matter. Coming up with a plan for the finals was meaningless if he lost the semifinals.

So what possibility did he need to consider next?

“Could someone have made themselves look just like her with special makeup? If we peeled away that Aine’s face, would we find the stubbly face of a phantom thief? To be blunt, that would be quite a feat. I won’t say it’s impossible, but it’s as unrealistic as trying to claim a closed room murder was done by someone using the ultrasound weapon an alien gave them.”

“Sure,” interrupted gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. “But aren’t there some other more realistic possibilities to consider first?”

She had been spending a lot of time in the infirmary to look after a friend, but that was the tone she took when taking a peek into the classroom. But not because the class’s gloomy atmosphere had gotten to her. She had arrived at the same answer even with a more detached viewpoint.

She had been skipping classes to be with her friend in the infirmary, but that was why she wanted to eliminate any possibility that might harm another classmate.

Kindness for one person could become a harmful weapon for another person.

Tayori pointed straight at Aine from a short distance away.

Karuta noted that short distance was just out of sword range as the gyaru-ish girl made her suggestion.

“Could Aine-chan have done it on her own?”

“She would never start a battle without being ordered to.”

“Then,” said Yamane Deiri with no tremor in his voice. He sounded like he had been waiting to say this the entire time. “Could she be acting on an order from someone other than you? That’s what I’m getting at here. Can you tell me it’s absolutely, positively not possible, Karuta?”

Yes.

That was it.

It didn’t help that no one could actually explain why Aine obeyed Karuta’s orders so faithfully. Not the teachers who understood the theory behind crystal magic and not Karuta who was a part of her.

From a human perspective, so many of her actions were unbelievable. She had sacrificed her own arm on his command and she had sliced through his body because he had told her to.

Was she acting on some kind of trust, was something forcing her to do it, or did she just mechanically obey?

And.

If Utagai Karuta himself couldn’t explain how his commands worked, then how could he say for certain a third party couldn’t intervene and hijack her? Did he really understand the crystal girl that well?

“…”

Marika did not take either side. She just crossed her arms and leaned against the wall in her heavily customized waitress outfit.

She would do anything to protect Karuta.

But that did not mean she would always take Aine’s side. If she learned Aine’s presence would tear the Four Living Gods apart from within, would she try to save Aine or would she cut Aine away to protect the other three? That was impossible to tell from the outside.

Karuta and Aine had not been together the entire time after lunch that day, so she could have gone off and done something on her own.

“W-wait a second,” interrupted Nekoumi Hirosuke (who would always side with the little girl). “You keep saying Aine-chan did this, but if she did, would she really leave such obvious evidence behind? There’s an etiquette to these things, like wearing a mask or changing your clothes.”

That might sound reasonable at first.

But…

“If a third party is controlling her, why would they care if it gets out she did it?”

“Uh.”

Yamane Deiri’s thorny comment silenced Hirosuke.

Of course it did. If she was meant as a disposable pawn, why bother looking after her? If she had been hijacked, she wouldn’t do anything to protect herself. That blatant and unnatural lack of even the most obvious defenses made it all the more suspicious.

Hirosuke hadn’t meant any harm. He just couldn’t bear to watch everyone turning on Aine like that. But a poor defense could sometimes lead to even harsher criticism. If your counterattack didn’t push back the attack, it would only add fuel on the fire.

With accusations from a central figure among the boys and the girls, the students’ vague suspicions were growing to a solid conviction. Karuta knew this was bad, but he couldn’t think of any way to stop it.

He was the world’s strongest.

But his schoolmates still accepted him because they had seen his weakness during the battle near the Port of Kobe. And that came back to bite him here. He could not take control of this situation by raising his voice.

In this class, Utagai Karuta only had a single vote.

They had him outnumbered.

“I am always with Sacri-sama. I have not accepted any commands from anyone else.”

“That’s exactly what you would say if you were being controlled, Aine-chan.”

Gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori remained calm even as she drove someone into a corner.

Yamane Deiri, on the other hand, looked disgusted with himself as he said what he knew needed saying.

“You could have been ordered to never mention what you did and to not let it show on your face no matter what you might be thinking on the inside. I don’t think you’re a bad person, Aine-chan, but one command like that and we can’t trust a thing you say.”

She was shut down by a hypothetical.

Both her thoughts and any attempt to prove her innocence.

A “what if” was convincing everyone that this was a trap laid by Machibula.

With a computer virus, you could run a full system scan with your security software, but this crystal girl was an irregularity even among crystal magic. Her very existence was an inhuman black box, so there was no known way to prove her safety.

There were no standards they could rely on here.

With no endpoint to reach, their suspicions would lead to a never-ending cycle of checking and rechecking. Just like a clean freak washing their hands so much they harmed their skin.

“I’m sorry, but this is the only thing that makes sense.” Tayori pushed on, probably deciding to make herself the villain here. “Aine-chan’s sabotage benefited Machibula and the blame will fall on her next opponent, Utagai-kun. She’s trying to play the victim, but Machibula is the one who comes out on top from this.”

“So let’s have our strategy meeting, Karuta. I’m willing to whisper in secret to help you. But I want to know one thing before we start: is Aine-chan safe? No one knows her better than you. Is there any chance everything we say here will be passed right on back to Machibula?”

“Sacri-sama,” muttered Aine.

Utagai Karuta slowly shut his eyes and took a deep breath.

He calmly reviewed the situation here.

(Is there any way for someone to take control of Aine? Or at least to make it look like they did? Either way, Machibula Delphi definitely has something set up. It started yesterday and it was all planned out. It must give her a major advantage, but what is it?)

He had to look to his own crafty nature.

This was not something Yamane Deiri or Hashizaki Tayori could do. It was separate from one’s ability to use crystal magic. He had to remember who he had been back when he was hunting down the Problem Solvers.

A cornered rat will bite the cat.

But where had Machibula bitten him?

(If she only wanted an easy way through Round 2, she wouldn’t need to place all this suspicion on Aine. And if she only needed to divert suspicion away from herself, she could have made the inspection and maintenance staff into the villain. Why did she bring Aine into this? And how does she benefit from it? Think. Aine isn’t her opponent; I am. So why take aim at her?)

This had people suspecting he and Aine had cheated, but he doubted Machibula was only trying to get them arrested to prevent their match. Like he had said before, she had to actually fight and defeat a crystal magician to earn the title of world’s strongest. If he had to forfeit, it would only look like she had run from a real fight.

Aine was his greatest trump card and this distrust was pushing her away from Karuta, but that was meaningless in the match itself. Aine couldn’t fight in the match to begin with, so unless Machibula was planning to attack Karuta outside the ring, Aine was never an obstacle to begin with.

Which meant…

“The most likely option is she’s trying to make things awkward with my allies and turn the audience against me. She hopes to rattle me enough that she can take the initiative before the battle even begins.”

That was all.

It was about the same as trash-talking him. She couldn’t even be certain it would have any effect at all.

Utagai Karuta gnashed his teeth. He could feel a great heat burning in his gut. It infuriated him that a part of his mind was whispering to him that he would have done the same thing if their positions were reversed and that this was exactly the sort of cheap and ugly move he had used to defeat the Problem Solvers.

But.

That bitterness also revealed to him a way to strike back. The situation could hardly be worse, but he had found something in this short time.

Unlike with security software, there were no standards to rely on here?

Nonsense. There was a bottom to be reached here.

He placed his hand on the crystal girl’s head. The two hornlike things hurt.

“Sacri-sama?” she muttered, staring up at him with that emotionless look.

“Don’t worry. No one is controlling you and I know how to prove it.”

He had to recall the conditions at play here.

If Aine was somehow being controlled by Machibula Delphi, she would be working toward Machibula’s benefit. So if she tried to do something that would ruin Machibula’s plans, she would either stop or correct that action, no matter how unnatural it looked.

And again, Machibula needed to defeat Karuta during the official match.

“Listen, Aine. I have a command for you. A command that will save you,” said Utagai Karuta.

He kept his hand on her head like he was calming a lost child.

And he gave the command without hesitation.

“Chop off my head.”

Part 5

He heard a whooshing sound as a crystal sword appeared in Aine’s hand. It had a short laser sniping unit on the back, making it look like jitte.

Yes, this command was devastating to Machibula Delphi.

To repeat yet again, she was fighting in this tournament because she wanted to increase the reputation of her Greek mythology magic. He didn’t know her specific situation, but she had to have some reason to defeat the crystal magic and become the new world’s strongest.

So she needed him to fight in their match.

She could avoid all the other ones by underhanded means, but if she did not defeat him in front of the cameras, it would look like she got lucky.

And Aine would unhesitatingly carry out any command given to her.

This was not his first time ordering her to cut him down. She had immediately carried out a similar command at the Crystal Beach.

If she was her normal self, she would draw her sword and strike at his neck.

But if she was being controlled by Machibula, who needed to defeat him in their match, that command would be unnaturally canceled.

And Karuta was betting on Aine swinging that crystal sword.

(If she kills me, she’s innocent. If she spares me, she’s guilty. This works as a litmus test! Of course, this only works if I can avoid the attack when she does try to obey my command!!)

The pressure squeezed at his heart.

The neck and head were more difficult targets than the torso and decapitating him in a single blow limited the paths of her blade by a lot. Or so he told himself.

He couldn’t block this with his weak barrier, but he could heal any nonlethal injury in 30 seconds. If he was willing to sacrifice an arm, would he be able to just barely dodge the initial attack? He would have to prove that Letnahe Kurent’s training had not been for nothing.

She was the greatest warrior he knew and he trusted her more than anyone. It was necessary, but now she would be attacking him. Was this what it would feel like to play Russian roulette with your favorite gun?

Utagai Karuta gulped as he waited for the moment to come.

He waited.

And he waited while sweat dripped down his temples.

“Um, Aine?”

She had drawn her sword, so that just left doing it.

This couldn’t be chalked up to it being a ridiculous command.

The quickest path to eliminating everyone’s suspicions was to swing her sword and attack him with the great force she always used.

So why was she stopping?

Why was she biting her lip and trembling like she was resisting something???

“…can’t…”

Some words escaped through her lovely lips.

“I…can’t.”

Karuta grimaced like an invisible needle was being slowly driven into the back of his head.

When things were really bad, the bad feeling only arrived once it was too late.

A scene seemed to explode into the back of his mind.

“Sacri-sama, Sacri-sama.”

Aine had been acting odd ever since the tournament’s opening ceremony.

Had a third party already hijacked control of her back then?

“Roger that, Sacri-tama. You can count on me.”

No.

What if she had simply been excited about the big event?

That was back before Omotesandou Kyouka had announced the new rules given in her altered data, so what if she had been excited about fighting alongside him as his greatest trump card?

When they fought, they would watch each other’s backs and when they stepped out of the ring, he would tell her what a good job she had done.

What if that expressionless fighter had been secretly imagining that likely future?

(Oh, no.)

The impossible continued before his eyes.

Or was it rude to Aine to call it impossible?

She had woken him up in the morning and she had made some odd noises when he asked her about the towel. What had she been thinking when she let Delane dress her up without complaint? Could he be so sure it was only mechanical and efficient logic?

The girl stood there, biting her lip with the sword trembling in her hand like she was trying to resist something. She held that deadly weapon, but she also gripped her skirt in both her small hands. It was like she knew she was at a dead end, but she was too afraid to attempt the only exit.

(That answer is too dangerous, Aine! Dammit, did I misread her so badly!?)

Another memory came back to him.

“Suspect our own people? I would never do anything to harm you, Sacri-sama.”

Aine supposedly obeyed his every command.

So what could be overriding this command? Could he really claim he didn’t know? Yes. He himself had done it.

Back when she was sulking over the cat ears he had drawn on her photo.

No, it had started shortly before that.

“Okay, Aine how about this? This is a request, not a command. I ask that we never harm each other and that we always rush to each other’s aid when we’re in trouble.”

She didn’t need to take it so seriously.

She should have forgotten about that silly promise and prioritized her own safety.

Aine wasn’t stupid. She could adapt to the situation and she could do what was needed to save herself when caught in a bind.

“What is that, Sacri-sama?”

But Karuta had made the order.

He had told her to prove her innocence even if it meant beheading him. He was doing what he could to protect her, but how would she interpret that in relation to the non-command they had exchanged? He had upheld his end, so what would she do?

This was the answer.

“It’s called a pinky promise. It’s a human ritual.”

She still had no expression on her face.

(You idiot.)

Clear drops dripped from that inhuman being’s mechanical eyes while she gave her answer.

(How seriously did you take that silly little promise!?)

She used her words to let go of he hand held out to help her.

“I can’t. I cannot obey that command.”

A gruesome sound followed.

She did not even hesitate.

Her very nature prevented her from disobeying him, so to protect the dumbass she served, she kneeled, grabbed the sword with both her hands, and drove it through her own gut to forcibly pin her small body in place.

She had said herself she would make herself useful next time.

A promise was not a command.

So if she couldn’t keep it, she could just give up on it and break it.

And yet…

Part 6

Isekai Dancer Amaashi Marika put her hands on her hips and stared at him like he was a bug carcass.

“You’re scum.”

“Yeah, I know!!”

The boy’s shout echoed down the deserted hallway.

With two of the world’s strongests exchanging harsh words, even the festive hallway was deathly silent. Everyone else had rushed into the closest classroom (aka restaurant).

“Do you really? She was thrown into a sticky situation where no one would believe anything she said and then the one person who would stand up for her gently pats her head and tells her to prove her innocence by cutting off his head. …You were basically telling her to join the group of bullies and let them ostracize you instead of her. Of course she’d rather die than do that! Don’t underestimate a girl’s pride!!”

Karuta looked up at the ceiling with a hand on his forehead.

Committing seppuku wasn’t enough to kill Aine. It wasn’t even clear if she had a beating heart that circulated blood through her body. So for her, it may have just been one of the options available to her.

But.

The anger boiling within Utagai Karuta did not come from anything so logical.

She couldn’t screw up her face to express herself, but a clear liquid had spilled from the corners of those eyes more inhuman than any machine. She had refused the command to decapitate him and instead publicly committed seppuku while apologizing. And as contradictory as it sounded, Karuta himself had pushed her to that worst possible result.

She hadn’t done anything wrong, but she had chosen to die before his eyes with an apology on her lips.

It had felt like seeing Kazamuki Gekiha torn apart by that dinosaur after ignoring his warnings all over again. He might be known as the new world’s strongest, but deep down, he was the same person he always had been.

Were the Threat and the human string pullers really the ugliest ones out there?

How long would he continue to be at the mercy of his own weakness and doubts?

(How long has this been happening?)

Had it started with the battle against the armored warrior when the Threat had occupied Second Grimnoah near the Port of Kobe?

Thinking back, Aine had been acting a little strange ever since then.

And this did not prove her innocence. All they knew was that she could not kill him. They had no way of knowing if that was due to some humanity developing inside her or if Machibula was intervening since she could not have him dying outside the ring.

She had started teasing him and had seemed excited, even if it didn’t show on her face.

She had been eager to fight by his side and win the champion’s trophy for him.

But now all of that had been replaced with doubts about bugs and hacking.

“Go to hell.”

Aine was not here.

After Karuta retracted his command, she had gone alone to the student counseling room on the same floor. That room was too fragile to act as a cell. Her sword could easily slice through the door or the walls. Plus, the windows and door only locked from the inside.

But if she took a step outside of there, she really would lose all trust. That was the lock that kept her inside that cell.

That cell was meant to isolate the one member of the group deemed to be dangerous. And the suspect’s obedience did nothing to determine her guilt or innocence.

Either she hadn’t betrayed them yet or she had already betrayed them.

Those were the only possible conclusions.

It wasn’t even a yes or no question at this point. What looked like it mattered was really just a no or another no – the only difference was how exactly she would be ostracized from the group. Nothing she could do and no argument she could make would eliminate their suspicion. All those basic rights were stripped away while she was placed in that cell as a spectacle.

Karuta understood this physical “ritual” had been needed to move the discussion along.

But he would not forget how small she had looked trudging through that gate of shame without even treating her stomach wound.

He would never forget how weak, foolish, and ugly he was for finding nothing he could do for her there.

He did not hesitate to slam his forehead against a nearby wall.

Breaking his own thin barrier acted as a ritual to reboot himself.

Amaashi Marika sounded utterly exasperated.

“You can be awfully hot-blooded for being such a twig.”

“This wound will heal itself in 30 seconds, so what is even the point?”

The damage to Aine was far greater.

That girl had coldly and emotionlessly observed humans, made some sort of decision, and hesitantly decided to approach them. And what had Karuta had her do? Instead of giving her a real chance to clear her name, he had rejected all other options based on a hunch or a feeling with no real evidence behind it. He had left her trembling and apologizing in public with no way to express herself other than to kneel and slice open her own gut.

What century did he think it was?

Her pain and humiliation had already been pushed past the limit.

(But who did this? And what did they do?)

Utagai Karuta touched the crystal blossom pinned to his summer uniform’s chest.

(I want to trust Aine, but I need to pursue the possibility of her being controlled if I truly want to reject it.)

He couldn’t run from his doubts. He had to harden his heart specifically because he trusted her.

If he didn’t set the hurdles up himself, he couldn’t eliminate each doubt in turn.

He listed off the possibilities he could think of.

(First of all, crystal magic is like an occult weather forecast that reads the fluctuating energy from the collision of the power pouring down from space and the power coming from the Original Crystal Embryo in the center of the earth. So if you manipulated that energy’s transmission media – either using the atmospheric pressure or using powerful magnetism on the earth’s magma and plates – could you maybe influence the path of that great current?)

(Second, I need to consider the possibility that it’s me being controlled, not Aine. I’m her only controller in the world, but could someone be externally influencing my thoughts through flashing lights or a volatile drug?)

(And third, Aine herself is a silicon lifeform. What if someone inserted electrodes or tubes into her body to directly control her? She might not be transferring oxygen, nutrients, and electricity with blood vessels and nerves like a human does. Could she be transferring information in a simpler method, like radio waves or the acid in a lemon battery?)

There could always be more. There could be loopholes Karuta himself couldn’t think of.

But aside from that…

(I can’t know anything for certain just by listing off theories. Aine is a rare independent version of crystal magic and we have no other samples of that. We know more about this field than anyone else, so how could an outsider like Machibula have found something we missed? Could she have had help from someone else? Wait, that kind of information is so rare I might be able to narrow down the suspects and find a way to counterattack. And then…)

The curly twintails girl sighed while watching Karuta fall deep into thought.

“Okay, we all get that you’re scum and a threat to women everywhere, but how exactly do you plan to come back from this? You aren’t just going to raise the white flag after pushing Aine-chan that far, are you?”

Karuta’s mouth flapped wordlessly.

She was using the same tone she had inside the super-spicy curry shop. Getting the usual childhood friend treatment here actually scared him.

“Um, M-Marika?”

“Yes?”

“Do you already believe Aine’s innocent? Why!? I would love to think that decisiveness came from her, but we can’t be certain of that! That seppuku could have been a demonstration to earn our trust!! So why!?”

“It’s simple. If she were guilty, she would have done something much nastier already.”

“…”

“I mean, she spends every night in your room. She could have poisoned your breakfast or sabotaged you in any number of ways. We might heal any injury in 30 seconds, but we’re still vulnerable to poison because it triggers an endless cycle of damage and regeneration inside us. She could have used a radioactive material, a biological weapon, or even gradually increased the flavor of the food to trigger a placebo effect. Machibula would have plenty of options for giving herself an easier time of it, but Aine-chan hasn’t done any of that.”

His mind couldn’t keep up.

He had wanted an ally like this – someone who would unconditionally trust in Aine’s innocence. But it felt too easy. Greedy Karuta ended up searching for a rebuttal.

Almost like he was tapping at the stone bridge ahead of him to make sure it would hold his weight.

Was he so afraid of betrayal because he had betrayed someone in the past?

He couldn’t believe how selfish he was. He was the one who had pushed Aine off that bridge when she approached him out of trust.

“Um, but Machibula would be the one controlling Aine and she might not know about crystal magic’s weakness to poisons or a placebo effect.”

“If she really had used some nasty method to take control of Aine-chan, don’t you think that would be her very first command? Tell me everything you know about crystal magic, especially any weaknesses it has. We use it like it’s nothing, but outside of Second Grimnoah, no one knows crystal magic’s true specs. Do you really think she would be satisfied listening in on the lecture given to the visiting children? Don’t you think she would get scared after seeing the students’ acrobatic flying? When people lack information, they crave it more than anything else. Especially when their life is on the line.” Marika shrugged. She kept the look of the challenging avenger in her eyes. “How could she relax with all of your cards still lying face down? It’s like that game where you search the grid for mines. This is the same strategy we learned to use when were up against the Problem Solvers and their god-worshiping magic. If she was in a position to give any command she wanted, that trash could never resist the temptation to escape that great pressure. Whatever the reality might be, we’re known as the world’s strongest and she’s here to challenge us. She’s buckling under that pressure, no matter how confident she might look.”

“Damn,” groaned Karuta. He couldn’t help but yell. “Then what is happening? Someone that looks an awful lot like Aine fired a laser there. We can’t argue that point no matter how bad it looks for us. Is she controlling the atmospheric pressure or magma to influence the collision of powers from space and the Original Crystal Embryo? Is she somehow controlling me since I’m the only controller? Or is she using microwaves or acid or something to send information through Aine’s silicon body? I have so many ideas, but nothing I can prove or disprove right away! And I’m not ready to believe this was some absurd performance where she created an exact lookalike with special makeup. Again, the cameras showed someone that looks an awful lot like Aine firing a laser when the incident occurred. I don’t believe that was some spy or phantom thief with seven mysterious tools, so what actually happened!?”

After a brief pause, he was given an answer.

“They faked the footage,” said Amaashi Marika.

The exasperated high school girl waved her gaudily decorated phone in his face.

Utagai Karuta’s mind froze.

There was no advanced trickery here. Gambling was a pastime for the aristocracy who had money to spare. When failure was not an option, people tended to rely on the boring straightforward methods instead of trying to get fancy.

“Security camera footage is nothing but a collection of digital data these days. And that online news site was airing phone camera footage a viewer submitted. Modifying photos and videos is so simple anyone from an elementary schooler to an old granny of over 100 can do it. Remember, we live in an age when people do livestreams while ‘wearing’ a 3D character like a costume. And Aine-chan is as famous as us, so there’s plenty of footage someone could use to get material for all 360 degrees. They’ve even put out a photobook of her in the name of military journalism. Special makeup? Why even bring up that analog antique that no one bothers with anymore? Anyone would just alter the footage with basic VFX software.”

“…”

Karuta himself had added cat ears to Aine’s photo for fun. Whether you just wanted to doodle on a photo or do time lapse photography, specialized apps were easy to find these days.

Marika displayed the online news story on her phone.

“Look at Aine-chan’s hair. With her fine hair spread out like that in the bright sun, the light should be diffracting between the hairs. There should be a pale rainbow-like halation that you need to adjust the image yourself to even notice. But that isn’t present here. That means this footage is fake.” Marika stuck out her tongue a bit. “Although to be fair, I only know this as an amateur way to see if an action movie stunt was legit or done digitally.”

They didn’t need an eccentric detective or a forensics team.

A normal high school girl was enough to see through to the truth.

“A laser attack? That edgy announcer only pushed that story because she thought it was more entertaining. Have you already forgotten how Yukino Arakawa attacked us from orbit in London? Magic can indeed fire lasers, but that isn’t exclusive to crystal magic.”

He felt defeated.

She had argued him into silence.

“Maybe you’ve forgotten.”

Amaashi Marika brushed back one curly twintail and looked away before continuing.

The look on her face said repeating something so obvious was weirdly embarrassing.

“But Aine-chan is one of our group that struck back at the Problem Solvers. I don’t want to lose her any more than I do you or the president. So a little thing like this isn’t going to shake my trust.”

She was perfect.

She acted on pure emotion and that had brought her to the correct answer so much faster and accurately than Karuta who suppressed his anger and used logic as an excuse for his actions.

“So let me ask this again: what are you going to do after screwing this up so badly?”

“The fake video idea seems the most likely to me, but we have no proof it was Machibula’s people who sent Delane’s online show the phone footage. Questioning Delane about it wouldn’t accomplish anything since searching the data isn’t going to find the culprit’s name imprinted somewhere.”

“So what, you’re done trying? I didn’t realize the guy who pursued the Problem Solvers so relentlessly would give up at the drop of a hat.”

He hadn’t given this any thought since the idea hadn’t occurred to him.

But this new viewpoint did reveal some different conditions.

What device had they filmed it with, what app or software had they used to edit it, and what process had they used to upload the video to Cinderella Queen’s server? He doubted any of those questions would lead to new evidence. This wasn’t a bomb threat sent from an internet café. Security would be a lot easier if it was that easy to trace a signal or analyze the data.

But this method did have its own Achilles’ heel.

Namely…

“Aine’s data.”

“Continue.”

Karuta had started down a new mental pathway and Marika was following him.

“Marika, you said they could get material on Aine from all 360 degrees since she’s famous, right? But could you really get everything just from the photos and videos available through a search engine? I’m sure it depends on how you search, but if you just type in ‘Eiffel Tower’, you’ll get tons of photos, but will you really get data from all 360 degrees? Won’t almost all the tourists take their photos from pretty much the same place?”

“You mean like how bird watchers and train obsessives will gather in a single spot and ready their cameras as a group? Well, even with selfies, everyone will probably end up with a similar location and angle if they can freely choose the best angle and timing for their shot.”

There were apparently photobooks of Aine and Marika as a kind of military journalism, but those would be the same. The more the pros were searching for the most photogenic angle, the fewer variations they would end up with based on the light source and golden ratio and whatnot.

“Those same restrictions would apply with Aine. If they really wanted their trap to work, they wouldn’t try to search out what they wanted on the vast internet. They would create their own material to make sure they had what they needed. For example…”

A buzzing like an electric razor passed by outside the window.

Karuta himself had used one of those in the first round.

Those drones were remote controlled by people on the other side of the globe who had bought viewer tickets.

“This empty area of ocean has an EM density as great as New York, right? Controlling those would require specialized antennas and servers. We’re out on the equator with no land nearby, so all the communications are reliant on the ship infrastructure. If they hacked the ship servers where all the drone footage and control data is gathered, they could spy on all the data from every single user. There are well over a million cameras flying around out there, so they don’t have to worry about getting the right angle or location. Combining all that data would easily give them 360-degree footage of Aine!”

There were no doors aboard Second Grimnoah that the Four Living Gods could not open.

They entered the off-limits room that was kept at 20 below. Large servers were linked in parallel there.

The culprit may have tried to hide all trace of their tampering, but one of the machines had white frost on it. The ethanol chemical they had used to eliminate any biological traces like fingerprints or spittle had frozen and left a trace of its own. There was also some small damage to the keyhole for the cover.

“Someone picked the lock. The actual key wouldn’t damage it like this.”

“You mean?” whispered Marika and Karuta nodded.

They wouldn’t need a key either. Using the process the phone-hating president had taught them, they pulled a flatscreen operating monitor from the large machine.

“We want to know where the hacked server is sending the data. They would need to receive all that data to set Aine up. If we know who it was going to, we’ll know who did it!!”

S19D15.

He checked the register to see who was staying in that room.

Guest Occupant: Machibula Delphi.

“Bingo.”

“It was probably actually Orpheus’s Orchestra staying with her, but she’s still guilty for letting them do it.”

“That’s not the real question. What are you going to do now? For Aine-chan’s sake, I mean.”

Marika winked and tapped the crystal blossom pinned to the chest of her isekai dancer costume.

She was already dangerously suggesting she would lend him her blade if need be.

But.

Karuta remained calm as he answered.

“Machibula Delphi is a tournament contestant. No matter what she has done, we can’t kill her outside the ring. Especially when we’re the ones in charge of the tournament.”

Those were the most basic assumptions here.

Those tournament rules could not be overturned or everything else fell apart.

If they gave into their emotions and broke those rules, it would only make Aine suffer more.

This event was meant to eliminate the people’ growing unease regarding crystal magic. They had proof of falsified evidence, but they had not yet rid the public of their suspicions that Aine had worked behind the scenes to determine Karuta’s opponent in the third round. If Karuta and Marika then broke the tournament rules to defeat Machibula in a surprise attack, those suspicions would only grow.

So Utagai Karuta’s suggestion was entirely in accordance with those rules.

“But the same can’t be said of her followers. Orpheus’s Orchestra isn’t registered as contestants. We can eliminate that priestess’s aides, leaving her all alone and defenseless.”

He could deliver the finishing blow afterwards.

It was his job to settle things with her in the ring.

Part 7

An air-compressing boom rumbled across Second Grimnoah’s side deck.

The color black danced about. This wasn’t just three or four people. Where had they all been hiding? Thick chains jangled as a group in tattered black dresses used the watertight door levers, side deck, railings, and anything else as a foothold to run three-dimensionally through the air.

But they did not collide with pursuing Karuta. The side deck was a straightaway less than a meter wide, so it was not suited for group combat. They were moving to escape his pursuit. The group of slaves was guiding away fluffy blonde-haired Machibula Delphi in a white priestess outfit that made her look like a goddess.

“Priestess, hurry!!”

“Oh, dear. Kildna, what is happening here? I thought I was to remain ignorant of all this dirty work.”

Karuta operated the same way, so he knew schemers could never win without trickery.

He would eliminate her Orpheus’s Orchestra and drag her into the ring where she couldn’t escape. Then he would defeat her in accordance with the rules.

Only then would he have earned the right to bow down to Aine and let her hit him.

He flicked his crystal blossom and spoke into it. He was free to use that magical communication outside of the tournament matches.

“Yamanen! How goes the evacuations!?”

“You’re good to go. There shouldn’t be anyone on the side deck. The outdoor café was already closed along with the cafeteria and the teachers hired someone interesting to help: Athabaskan Rio Grande.”

Karuta couldn’t believe his ears, but it was apparently true.

“That nervous Sophia Firenze-sensei apparently begged him to help. I know mercenaries don’t really take sides, but that is one tough guy. He’s already out of bed after you gave him such a beating yesterday. But I guess I couldn’t say no either if a young female teacher came and tearfully begged me to help. Ga ha ha!!”

Karuta wasn’t trusting enough to think the enemy of his enemy was his friend. The old strongests had taken that path from him. But he felt like he had just found a brief moment where he could try to trust in human goodness. He had a feeling that mercenary wasn’t doing this just for the money. It sounded like Karuta and the others had something that had tugged at Athabaskan’s heartstrings, so he had decided to help them out while they fought to help out Aine.

“Which is it, Yamanen? Are you into Sophia-sensei or Letnahe-sensei?”

“What kind of fool limits himself to just one kind of hot teacher?”

Orpheus’s Orchestra may have noticed what they were after. The black dress girl named Kildna ran down the outdoor passageway lined with dangling lifeboats while pulling on the radiant priestess’s hand with one hand and urging the other slaves along with her other hand.

“Go, go!! We will guide the priestess, so you all buy us time!!”

Greek mythology was one of the best known around the world, so the ancient magic developed there had to be powerful. Multiple wires sliced through the air. They held guitar-like string instruments known as a kithara. No, these devices were made to resemble the instrument, but they were actually used to send out several steel wires.

However…

“Sh!!”

Karuta held his hand out to the side and snapped his fingers.

Just as his opponent’s attention was drawn to that side, he sent a hook in through her blind spot in the other direction.

A tempo later than normal, the black dress slave forced her arm up to guard the side of her head, but he used that moment to slam his knee into her unguarded side.

(Do you have any idea how much that brown teacher beat me up? Of course, I was prepared to either knee you in the side or grab your neck chain to headbutt you, so you couldn’t have avoided it either way!!)

The impact lifted her from the deck and the blow to her diaphragm kept her from breathing as she fell to the deck and convulsed, but Utagai Karuta simply stepped over her and continued on. True to their name as an orchestra, most of their weapons were based on musical instruments, like a wire reel lyre or crotales that resembled giant pliers. Some of the apparent wires must have actually been macaroni-like fibers because some kind of glowing beam would occasionally fly his way. That beam had to be the weapon used to frame Aine by bringing down the waiting room.

Greek astrology was known around the world, but he didn’t feel a great pressure pinning his feet to the ground like he had when facing the Problem Solvers.

They were no match for the crystal magic that had defeated the old world’s strongests.

A blinding beam flew over Karuta’s shoulder and blew away the black dress girls who had been blocking his way to buy time, dumping them over the side deck railing and into the ocean.

Yes, Karuta wasn’t the only one pursuing Machibula.

“Power up!!” roared multiple voices as crystal blossoms shattered and cutting-edge crystal magicians emerged onto the side deck with spiky crystal armor adorning their summer uniforms. They kicked off the floor, the walls, and sometimes even the ceiling. They were all furious at what these people had done to their precious classmate who was not just a device.

Karuta leaped at the lever for one of the lifeboats and shouted to his classmates.

“Listen, Yamanen! Don’t kill anyone!!”

“You sure are forgiving after what they did, Karuta. A little girl committed harakiri in the middle of the classroom!! Someone had to play the villain there, but I’m still ready to bow down to Aine-chan and let her stomp on me!”

“That sounds more like a reward to me,” said a panting Nekoumi Hirosuke (who had stayed on Aine’s side from beginning to end), but he was best ignored.

“I agree that we’re getting back at them for what they did to Aine, but that’s why we can’t cause any deaths that could be blamed on her! They could use that as a way out!!”

“Tch, understood. I can’t be causing even more problems for the person I’m risking my life to apologize to.”

That was a major handicap for Yamane Deiri who specialized in flames and explosions, but he accepted it.

Karuta’s group was currently running aft down the 600m ship. Machibula and her protector slaves were a good ways down the side deck, but there was no chance of losing sight of them.

After producing her crystal armor and rapier, Marika floated up off the side deck. She did not user her supersonic speed to fly up ahead of their targets because she was afraid of any invisibly-thin wires in the way. Even with the preset barrier, relative speed and wires were a nasty combination.

She had changed back into her summer uniform and she thrust her rapier device out ahead of her like a wire cutter.

“They don’t seem interested with the heliport at the top, so where are they headed?”

“Let’s assume the worst. The most dangerous target to the stern is the main engine room. A single engine is a 2000ton behemoth. They’re also connected to a ton of fuel, so blow up that massive diesel engine and it might kill us along with the ship.”

“That’s dirty of them.”

“She can’t win her match, but she still wants to return home with the trophy of having killed the Four Living Gods and become the new world’s strongest. Why wouldn’t she start cheating? Blowing up the ship is probably meant to take out me or Omotesandou-san since we can’t fly. She might not get credit for the Catastrophe, but she still gets something out of this. And this is a home game for us, so we don’t need to hold back against those pieces of shit. So let’s capture them and keep them from reaching the goal!!”

The slaves out front were falling to the laser fire from out at sea, but the lasers were not shooting through their heads and hearts. The lasers instead targeted the thick watertight doors behind them, creating a welding-like flash of light that knocked them out like a stun grenade at close range.

One black dress girl gave some kind of hand signal and then curled up before Karuta could do anything more. Almost like she was trying to protect herself from some kind of powerful blast.

“What, do you have some trick left up your sleeve!? You’re just Greek astrology. How’s the morning horoscope supposed to defeat crystal magic, a collision between two pure forms of magic!?”

Yamane Deiri sounded exasperated, but Karuta froze.

Yes. That was right. Crystal magic was the strongest in the field of magic. They had eliminated their greatest rival to make sure of it. But who ever said Machibula would limit herself to pure magic?

He needed to think back and recall the avengers who had persistently pursued the Problem Solvers and created a bloodbath out of them. When a cheater was outmatched, why would they ever play fair?

A moment later, Yamane Deiri was blown away in a deafening boom.

Karuta saw something sparkling in his spinning vision, but were those small crystal shards? He also saw his now one-armed friend slammed hard against the metal wall next to him.

The sound of the boy’s shattering barrier only reached him after the fact.

All the ceiling lights shattered and the nearby metal door bent with a disturbing sound.

“Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

This wasn’t Greek mythology. It wasn’t even magic.

Karuta’s paper-thin barrier had been easily shattered. He had a concussion and couldn’t even stand up, but he still used his trembling fingers to grab Yamane Deiri’s collar where the boy had collapsed nearby. He clenched his teeth and fought the urge to vomit while he crawled along the floor, pressed his cheek against the floor, and dragged his unconscious friend behind a lifeboat hanging nearby. The friend’s severed arm had already crystallized on the floor.

He heard a deep rumbling coming from the vast ocean past the side deck’s railing.

“The Chrisbart electric battleship.”

The ship’s gun slowly turning their way did not use traditional explosives. That main gun was a set of three 45cm railguns. The cutting-edge 300m ship was also equipped with anti-air lasers, wirelessly powered motor missiles, and anti-missile EM weapons.

It was known as an electric warship because it specialized in converting electric energy into deadly force. The power generation unit and the various electric weapons had grown so large it had brought the extinct classification of battleship back to the battlefield. Its long-range precision strikes from more than 1000km away had shaken the theory of aircraft carrier superiority that had ruled naval warfare for so long.

That was the cornerstone of Second Grimnoah’s escort fleet. But that massive ship was now aiming its horrific main cannon at the side of its supposed master from only 500m away.

This explained it. Karuta raised his voice while removing his friend’s belt and fastening it tight around his now armless shoulder.

“When did they attack and hijack that ship!?”

Part 8

The escort ships were fighting each other. Second Grimnoah had more than one ship protecting it. That included the powerful Radioquartz drone carrier. But the electric battleship was not sunk even when outnumbered. The other ships primarily used cruise missiles which all blew up in midair due to sensor and electric fuse malfunctions brought on by the Chrisbart’s powerful EM weapons. And the many attack drones launched from the Radioquartz were shot down by the anti-air lasers.

Then the Chrisbart struck back with its large railguns.

Those guns were so powerful the destroyer class ships were bent like a V when they were hit in the side.

Given the range of the extraordinary railguns, things might have ended differently were the others ships more than 2000km away, but they could not make use of their greater aerial forces while packed in this close together. Here, superiority was determined by pure firepower and armor. Karuta and the others watched on as the Radioquartz’s EM-guided drone catapults were forcibly torn away.

They could not rely on the adults in command of the escort fleet.

Yamane Deiri had woken up and entirely ignored his missing arm as he grabbed Karuta’s collar with his other hand.

“Get going already, you idiot.”

“But what about you, Yamanen?”

“You need to get to Aine-chan and tell her she’s got nothing to worry about because we’ve dealt with everything already. It has to be you! If we tried to approach her, we’d just be the assholes who made her cry and say she can’t obey that command. We can’t fix this without putting our own rotten lives at risk, so I’m ready to do what it takes! …Listen, don’t let that girl commit harakiri again. If you agree with me, then quit worrying over every little injury and go pursue Machibula!!”

Karuta clenched his teeth.

He left Yamane Deiri with Nekoumi Hirosuke, who happened to be nearby, and looked to the ocean from behind one of the hanging lifeboats.

His eyes met with the muzzles of a few of the guns sticking out from the electric battleship like a hedgehog. After gathering his resolve, he burst from behind cover and ran across the side deck.

Sound left him behind as several bright lights quickly flashed.

Before the sound even caught up, several wirelessly-powered motor missiles were sliced apart in midair, triggering several explosions.

Amaashi Marika stared past the ship’s railing with her pointy crystal armor open and spun her rapier device around a bit while yelling.

“Karuta, you get inside the ship so that hunk of junk can’t target you! There are other ways to pursue Machibula, right!?”

“I’d love to, but the watertight doors have been bent too much to open. That’s the only reason Machibula’s group hasn’t hidden inside the ship themselves!”

The subsequent flash of light was even brighter than lightning. It was the side effect of a crystal magic laser slicing through one of the battleship’s railguns. This had reached a point that Karuta couldn’t even follow along with the naked eye.

“And if I don’t keep their aim on me, you’ll have a harder time fighting back. I mean, what if they try to crush the entire starboard side of Second Grimnoah with their electric guns!?”

“Are you serious? Young Karuta, when did you turn into a hero in tights?”

“Isn’t that what it means to be the world’s strongest?”

The Problem Solvers had been the worst, but it was also true the people had innocently believed they were heroes like that. It was up to him to not destroy the world’s dreams a second time.

“Natalena, Letnahe, little Shouka-kun, and our parents are all on this ship. I’d rather draw enemy fire than have a stray shot hit any of them! I’ll keep their attention, so you deal with their railguns and wirelessly-powered motor missiles, Marika!!”

“I notice you’re leaving me with the hard part! But fine, I’ll do it!!”

They could not ignore the attacks coming from the Chrisbart. For one thing, they had to protect the many visitors who were mistaking this for a fireworks show or acrobatics by the crystal magicians.

And by shooting down the attacks with lasers or by gathering multiple people to block the attacks with their combined barriers, they could reduce the amount of direct firepower reaching the side deck.

A few of the slaves fleeing down the side deck came to a stop and turned back toward Karuta. They were going to stop him with a human wall.

It was time for Karuta to do his job. He could not capture Machibula unless he first defeated these slaves in black dresses and heavy chains. If that scum managed to blow up the engine room to take out Karuta along with the ship, then the priestess would win. He could never look Aine in the eye if he let that happen.

But…

(There’s too many of them!)

Their weapons were crotales. Those percussion instruments looked like a bakery’s tongs with two round coaster-sized pieces of metal attached to the ends. They could be swung down like a hammer or they could grab and tear at flesh like giant pliers. The weapons inspired a primitive fear different from a blade or gun.

In the world of professional combat, you always kept two options in mind and put together a plan to crush your opponent’s defenses, but with a wall of them, he didn’t have time to focus on each individual enemy and put together an attack plan for them. In the time it took him to face one of them, another would attack him from the side.

And…

“Really? Why are you following their lead, you idiot?”

Someone shot past Karuta from behind. But not to the side. They placed their hands on his back and leaped over him like he was a vaulting box.

It was a brown-skinned soldier with long silver hair trailing behind her like the tail of a comet.

Letnahe Kurent, the combat machine in a white uniform, got one of the leading black dress girls in a wristlock and then spun her around to the side. The girl swept away the enemy formation like the grim reaper’s scythe.

“Do you still not get it, you amateur killers? The only reason I’m not using my axe is because a soldier must go easy on civilians.”

She was not coming up with two or three plans for each individual opponent. She used the body of one defeated foe to start a domino effect among the entire group. She sometimes used one captured slave as a shield and other times threw an enemy to crush the other black dress girls. She used the fact that the enemy was a group against them in a way that was simply beyond Karuta.

“Hurry. This is only the opening battle. Your real opponent is Machibula Delphi, isn’t it? The official tournament rules mean only you can deal with her.”

“Right!!”

Karuta jumped over a chained slave collapsed on the floor and continued on ahead.

But that had not taken care of all the slaves protecting their priestess.

“Do not fear! There’s only one of him!!”

Karuta heard a husky female voice from beyond the crowd of people up ahead.

“On this narrow side deck, numbers matter more than skill. He has no projectiles weapons, so swarm him and-!?”

The voice was cut off by the crackling of sparks. The scarlet light that shot horizontally from Karuta’s hand weaved between the slaves and struck their commander in the forehead.

“A signal…flare?”

She fell to her knees. A flare was not as powerful as a bullet, but it had to have shaken her brain as much as a fist.

The side deck had a surprising amount of stuff on it, including the hanging lifeboats. After throwing aside the single-use handgun-style flare launcher, Karuta grabbed another metal box and pulled out the AED bag within. He grabbed the flat electrodes in his hands and charged into Orpheus’s Orchestra which had lost any sort of strategy with their commander temporarily down.

(Did you think you knew more about Second Grimnoah’s layout and equipment than us? Whose home turf do you think this is!?)

“Gahhh!!”

He took out some with the electric shock and another group rushed in to tackle him before the AED could charge again, so he made them flinch by shoving the firework-like flame of a lit smoke bomb in their faces. He didn’t want to use the fire axe against them, but he didn’t want them to use it against him either. He grabbed it from the wall and chucked it into the sea.

But he still hadn’t taken them all out.

The colorful smokescreen split open to reveal and a black dress girl who had gotten separated from the group. Her collar and thick chains shined dully.

In the instant their eyes met, time seemed to stop.

Time resumed with a fist thrown toward Utagai Karuta’s face.

“Sh!!”

He ignored the fist itself while throwing a low kick (something that Letnahe had banned him from using). The strike swept in from the outside, forcibly sliding her legs and putting all her weight back on her heels.

Now that he had done it, he could tell she was standing straight up “at attention” and a light push on her chest would make her topple backwards. She failed to control the momentum of her swinging fist and was spun around by it. Without coming close to hitting Karuta right in front of her.

He grabbed the side of her unguarded head with one hand and slammed it against the railing, knocking her out.

I get it now, he thought, analyzing his success while kicking away her guitar-like kithara that could be used as a wire from a distance or a striking weapon close up.

(Just like them, I can only use one kind of defense, so they’ll have plenty of methods ready to get around my defenses. I need to be two steps ahead of them. If I know what I don’t want them to do, I can figure out what they’ll do, prevent it, and retake the initiative!!)

The smoke bomb’s smokescreen and the fire extinguisher powder hung in the air as a cotton candy-like curtain even though they were outdoors. Maybe thanks to the ceiling jutting out overhead.

Now that he had confused them by blinding them in multiple ways, he only had to worry about the girls directly in his path. For them, he would grab their collars or thick chains and throw them over the side deck’s railing. He weaved his way through the combat group to break through to the other side.

Not even Orpheus’s Orchestra had an unlimited supply of personnel. Their priestess only had a few bodyguards left.

He recognized one of the black dress girls who looked over her shoulder at him.

He even remembered her name.

“Kildna!!”

“Tch. Did I send too many forces to set up that trick!?”

That trick. Even with all the automation included on a cutting-edge warship, the Chrisbart had still carried a crew of more than 1000 who knew nothing of magic.

These people’s values placed so little value on a human life. But maybe that was just what you got with a group that had devoted themselves to the same religion since ancient times.

They were not just tools used to cast magic.

This organization followed a mythology or religion.

They had arrived at an outdoor café that took up a large portion of the side deck. It was set up a lot like a hospital waiting room. Beach chairs, side tables, and parasols had been set up to provide a view of the ocean. Karuta vaguely recalled the place offering an optional service for sunbathers where a drone like a disco ball could fly around and shine the sun on you. He was also relieved because the café was closed during the tournament and there was no one there to be hurt.

“Oh, what’s this about, Kildna? Is this something I should perhaps know about?”

“Priestess, use your magic on my signal!!”

“Will do.”

(Hm? They’re willing to use their contestant’s registered magic outside a match!?)

A dull rumbling blasted Karuta to the side.

If he hadn’t grabbed at the metal railing, he might have been flung into the ocean. The beach chairs and side tables were all bolted to the floor, but they were torn away and then slammed back into the floor. His flimsy barrier and his sense of equilibrium were both obliterated. But they hadn’t actually done anything to him. It was the 600m three hull ship that was shaking so violently.

“A…wave!? Are you controlling the ocean itself!?”

“Greek astrology is magic that controls the stars.”

With a mechanical hum, something crawled out from the fluffy blonde goddess’s chest and onto her shoulder. It used four legs resembling small sticks or crab legs to cling to her soft skin and it looked something like an eyeball larger than a baseball, but it was in fact a small indoor planetarium.

The artificial stars expanded across the faint mist surrounding them and the priestess smiled while enclosed in her own little universe. The false lights moved around her to match her finger movements.

Was it a physical device that supported complex calculations and images, similar to an abacus or a slide rule?

“It could be the moon or Mars, but by adjusting the positions of the stars, those celestial bodies’ gravity acts upon the earth. Altering the tides is child’s play.”

(Dammit, she can do all that!?)

“Kildna, what next?”

“Over there.”

Just as Amaashi Marika, Yamane Deiri, and the others attempted to sink the Chrisbart with a unified attack, the electric battleship seemed to hop up out of the way of the crystal magic plasma strike.

No, it rode a wave several hundred meters tall. The 300m, 40,000ton warship was lifted from below and freed from the bonds of gravity. It almost seemed to be flying a loop-the-loop. Flipped upside down, the Chrisbart aimed its railguns down at Second Grimnoah.

The slave named Kildna whispered into the miniature microphone installed in her wrist shackle.

“Fire.”

A series of explosive booms followed.

Marika and the others in the air were slow to respond when the railguns fired from an entirely unexpected angle. They all activated their barriers and sacrificed their own arms and legs to forcibly make up for the defensive power they lacked.

The scattering crystal shards created a brilliant rainbow above the equatorial ocean.

The electric warship leaped straight over Second Grimnoah and flipped back around before landing in the ocean on the other side. The ocean water spread out like a crater, violently rocking Second Grimnoah again. Karuta had been holding onto the side deck railing for dear life, but he was thrown in the opposite direction, flying clear across the outdoor cafe and slamming against the metal wall.

“Gah!?”

The few remaining bodyguards were struck by the flying cash register and side tables, knocking them over the railing and into the sea. They apparently weren’t considered all that valuable. Kildna did not even glance in their direction as she brushed off some glass shards from the fluorescent lights shattered overhead.

“Priestess, use the power of the Coriolis force next. Create a large vortex.”

“A hurricane?”

“They apparently call them typhoons here. They do not appear to have enough power to handle a natural disaster caused by an observation point combined with the arrangement of the stars. Continue to strike them and we can escape beyond their reach.”

“Using the moon’s pull and the ebb and flow of the waves to have tens of thousands of tiny red crabs eat them alive sounds like more fun, but fine. We can do things your way today, Kildna.”

(So it’s the slave making things so much more complex. This isn’t like with the Problem Solvers. Their talents and strategies are mixing together, making them harder to read.)

Without Kildna leading her, Machibula would likely have greedily hoped to turn the tables on him and win this. That would have let him lure her in and strike. But with the slave tapping the brakes, she was reminded that her objective here was simply to escape.

The miniature planetarium on Machibula’s shoulder hummed again and the Greek astrology priestess was surrounded by artificial stars even in the bright sunlight. Her outstretched fingers manipulated their arrangement.

(If she keeps this up, Second Grimnoah itself is going to break apart.)

“Ohhh!!”

Karuta swallowed his fear and forced himself forward. Fortunately, Machibula’s magic required time for the calculations. She could not activate it just by pulling the trigger, so he had a chance to intervene.

Kildna stepped forward to make up for that.

They really were Orpheus’s Orchestra. When Karuta pulled his modified military flashlight from his hip, Kildna pulled out a metal trumpet. Its design was simpler than those the concert band used and it lacked the three piston valves. Thanks to that, it looked something like a metal pipe with one end opened wide. But he seriously doubted she was just going to hit him with it.

And in fact, she placed her lips on the trumpet.

He could not just raise his arms to guard himself. He focused on putting together two different plans while considering the possibilities.

(Is it an acoustic weapon that rattles my head with a loud noise? Or is it a blowgun? The difficulty of dodging this changes a lot depending on whether it shoots a single dart in a pinpoint shot or spreads a powder in a cone-like shape.)

He heard the roar of a flame consuming oxygen.

He was again caught by surprise. The color red filled his vision because that weapon was…

(A flamethrower!?)

“Gaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”

Greek fire was perhaps the best known ancient flamethrower, but that came about in CE times, an era already ruled by the cross.

But the finished product had not just popped into existence one day. Earlier, during the 9th Century BCE, before the Ancient Greek migration or the completion of the city-states, they were already launching unnamed incendiary weapons at each other, whether they were handheld or burning arrows.

This sticky fire was launched across a surface rather than a point, so it filled the space out ahead like a wall. Karuta had no way of dodging. His barrier was lost and crossing his arms in front of his face wasn’t going to cut it. His summer sports shirt and his short-sleeved dress shirt would melt like cheese on toast and fuse with his burned skin.

So what?

What was that compared to Aine disemboweling herself in front of everyone?

(As long as I don’t breathe in the scorching air and take out my lungs, this shouldn’t be lethal!! I can breathe out, but not in! I can ignore the burned skin, so I’ll be fine. As long as it’s nonlethal, any wound will heal in only 30 seconds!!)

“!!!!!!”

He tackled right through the wall of fire. The electronic components of his flashlight were dead now. He didn’t even need to raise the burned-out blunt weapon. He didn’t need the weight. He went for a quick jab instead. He slammed the red hot flashlight into the back of Kildna’s hand.

With a sizzling sound, she felt the pain of being branded.

She dropped the trumpet.

“Gyahh!?”

(I only burned that one point and it was with your own fire. Meanwhile, I’ve been burned all over by the very clothes I’m wearing, so don’t expect a spirit of ladies first from me right now!!)

The black dress slave grimaced but still pulled out another weapon. The nine-stringed lyre she held was the symbol of Orpheus. Karuta had seen those wires used as a weapon already, but then he felt his body ache.

The crystallization of all his burns had begun. And during regeneration, he could not afford to take even the smallest injury. If those fragile crystals broke, that part of his body would never recover.

She did not use the wires to slice at him.

When the wires intersected to create some kind of string figure, the fire extinguisher, the fire axe, and the cleavers and thick skewers the café used for churrasco all defied gravity to float into the air. Karuta had to laugh. Any one of those could be fatal.

Their weight was apparently controlled similarly to a suspension bridge.

Kildna shook her thick chains and clenched her teeth.

“You cannot win,” she groaned.

“Are you sure about that?”

“No one will come to save you. You are trapped here!!”

“What do you know about our class?”

Battered and covered in crystal, Karuta smiled and stiffly swung his head to the side.

As if clearing the line of fire for someone.

“?”

Kildna raised her guard, thinking someone might be providing supporting fire, but then confusion filled her mind.

Who could possibly do that? Karuta himself was helpless.

Amaashi Marika, Yamane Deiri, Nekoumi Hirosuke, and the other crystal magicians were all struggling against the Chrisbart. Even Letnahe Kurent had her hands full with the other slaves.

Then who could it be? She found no answer.

Nevertheless, a powerful beam shot over Karuta’s shoulder and struck her.

The dangerous lyre burned and melted. The many steel wires supported by wire reels could not withstand the heat and snapped one after another, leaving shallow lacerations on Kildna’s cheeks. The floating weapons dropped to the floor one after another.

“Gah!? What?”

“Maybe Amaashi Marika, Yamane Deiri, and Nekoumi Hirosuke are busy, but there’s still someone from my class left!!”

“Who!?”

She hadn’t given up. She wasn’t out of the fight. Even if she could no longer join the others in the classroom. Utagai Karuta had not forgotten about the classmate who spent her days in the infirmary fighting desperately against herself.

A welding-like light had struck the thick watertight doors to knock out the many slaves like a stun grenade and lasers had intercepted the ship’s railguns. Those laser shots had come from out at sea. But Karuta had watched it happen with Marika by his side. That meant it hadn’t been her. Then who had done it?

He knew exactly who.

“Isn’t that right, Matsuda Imi!!!???”

Part 9

At a certain point in the sky, someone flew unsteadily while supported by gyaru-ish Hashizaki Tayori. Her flight was shaky and unreliable, but she still had her crystal armor activated and held out a gun-type device in one hand. A scalpel, forceps, and other medical devices were spread out in a fan shape below the barrel where a bayonet would be. She had borrowed the name of Neith, an Egyptian medical goddess.

Tayori whispered to her friend while holding her around the hips to support her flight.

“Are you sure?”

“…Yes.”

She was scared. Of course she was. But she was supported by the conclusion she had arrived at while curled up in bed, trembling and worrying. It had been awkward and clumsy, but she had gone through every option in her head. There was no room for falsehoods there.

“Getting hurt does scare me.”

She had built up a way of judging where she stood with others.

That would help her understand them.

She had reached the point where she could notice how much her current plans resembled what Amaashi Marika had done when she cauterized her leg.

And once she understood it, she could conquer that fear. She would hesitate no longer.

“But sitting by while I lose someone scares me even more. So I will fight again!!”

Part 10

Several explosions rang out in quick succession. The flurry of long-distance magic from Matsuda Imi struck Kildna and slammed her against the outdoor café’s metal wall. She slid to the floor, apparently unconscious. That just left one. Machibula Delphi continued running all on her own, but it was only a matter of time before Karuta caught up to her.

“…”

Letnahe Kurent sighed after dealing with the slaves and catching up. She toyed with some thick zip ties and used one to bind the last defeated black dress girl’s arms behind her back.

“Hee…hee hee.”

She heard laughter from the girl whose arms she had bound to the metal pipe of a parasol that was bolted to the floor.

That girl was Kildna, the collared and chained slave in a black dress.

Letnahe sighed again.

“Are you still not done resisting? As a professional fighter, surely you know ending a fight without killing your opponent is a lot harder than just killing them. You have no chance of turning this around.”

“You don’t understand. I was counting on this. Now I can finally break free of the infuriating hand holding me down.”

“What?”

“My name is Kildna Delphi.”

Utagai Karuta had pictured their world as including the emperor and the slaves.

But an outsider like him had not considered the implications of that as much as someone who lived it.

“I was the older sister!! All of that rightly belonged to me! And yet…and yet a match determined by no more than random chance shoved all the responsibility onto me and let her steal the position of priestess from me!!”

“…”

“Now Orpheus’s Orchestra can return to its rightful form.”

Letnahe Kurent wore a ring.

She was a mother of two.

Which was why this pained her so much to hear.

“The line of succession will be restored once Machibula is killed by the world’s strongest. No longer will that foolish girl treat her elder sister with such disrespect. I can’t erase the fact that she put me in chains and used me as her slave, but I can still reclaim my throne!!”

Part 11

Crystal Girl Aine stood all alone in the student counseling room that acted as her jail cell.

The door was not even locked, but she was not permitted to leave.

Second Grimnoah had been shaking with a dull rumbling for a while now. Some kind of emergency was clearly underway outside. That boy had to be suffering.

Aine thought once more about what her purpose was.

Was staying here as commanded really the right thing to do? That protected her, but that didn’t necessarily mean it would save Utagai Karuta, did it? If she left the room, it would confirm people’s suspicions about her. It would convince people of the false conclusion that she was being controlled by someone else.

So what? What did that have to do with Utagai Karuta currently suffering due to some unexpected turn of events? If she was truly worried for him, she should open that door and rush to his rescue.

Even if that would truly isolate her in the end.

Even if it meant Utagai Karuta himself would criticize her and give up on her.

(Sacri-sama.)

With that brief comment in her mind, she raised her head.

She walked to the door and grabbed the knob without hesitation.

But then…

“Ksh.”

She heard some static. This was a magical transmission using a crystal blossom. She did not have a blossom pinned to her chest, but her connection to Karuta let her communicate in the same way.

Was there a problem with the transmission medium of the air, or was the problem with her own control? Regardless, the static eventually became something else.

A human voice.

“Ksh…the…sbart…?”

She was unsure if she was supposed to be hearing this. Had they forgotten to exclude her from the list, or were they too focused on fighting to care? She did not know what was happening outside, but she did know the 600m ship kept shaking violently. This had to be something major.

And amid it all, she heard some savage and violent voices that were also full of cheerful excitement.

“I don’t care if that’s an electric battleship, you assholes!! We wouldn’t have to mess with this if not for you! And you’re the ones who made Aine-chan commit harakiri! Admittedly, it was that dumbass Karuta who supplied the finishing blow there, but you’d better get your asses out here! We can’t even apologize to Aine-chan until we deal with all of you!!”

“Kee hee hee. The crime of snaring a pure little girl in a dirty trap is a costly one indeed. You made one fatal mistake here: having the audacity to be high schoolers no younger than 15. I have no reason to show any mercy now! You must die for bringing tears to the eyes of an eternal little girl like Aine!!!!!!”

That was Yamane Deiri and Nekoumi Hirosuke, the boys who were always hanging around with Utagai Karuta. And they were the same people who had not even tried to listen to what Aine said when she had been trapped.

Or maybe it had only looked that way to Aine. They must have been gritting their teeth at the fact they were forced to suspect one of their own. Would Aine have felt so strongly if the situations were reversed?

And it wasn’t just them. She also heard Amaashi Marika’s voice.

“Yamane, and Nekoumi too. Get all fired up in your own idiotic way if you want, but don’t just rush in and get yourselves killed. Make Aine-chan feel any worse and I’ll make sure you’re deader than dead.”

“Yeah, yeah. We’re not gonna go down easy. We’ve gotta be all together when we go apologize to her!”

“Less than 39kg is where you find the true goddesses. A-and getting stepped on by a tearful Aine-chan’s beautiful feet sounds more like a reward to me. No way I’m dying before that happens.”

Their entire class was going nuts. Was this really a deadly battle they were fighting? It was so much different from when they had fought the Problem Solvers or the Threat. The festive elation seemed to blow away the pressure usually associated with combat.

Based on what Aine could hear, Marika had joined Matsuda Imi and Hashizaki Tayori.

“Oh, Imi!! I knew you’d make it, my BFF!!”

“I hear you made Aine-chan cry, Marika. God, never a moment’s peace when you have such an inconsiderate friend. You know I hate this kind of gloomy atmosphere. But I’ll make short work of that.”

“Hey, she came to visit you in the infirmary enough times, so I’m sure she can do the same for Aine-chan. Anyway, lets get this over with so we can apologize. I feel responsible for this too.”

They were not trapped in a bog of doubt. They were pursuing the true culprit in order to prove the crystal girl’s innocence. That entirely changed the meaning of this battle. They could join together and charge right into the hail of enemy fire without a moment’s hesitation. And they were doing it for her.

“Karuta, that goes for you too!!” roared Yamane Deiri. “Don’t you dare die there! Who’s gonna wipe away Aine-chan’s tears and comfort her if you’re gone!?”

“Yeah.”

The girl felt something leap in the center of her chest. She doubted the boy knew his words were reaching her, but they still hit her right in the heart.

“This is just the opening round. The real challenge comes afterwards, so let’s win this, come back with a nice story to tell, and show Aine how sorry we are. As a class!!!!!!”

Part 12

“Whoa!!”

Omotesandou Shouka, a small boy in a light green kimono, cried out nervously when the ship shook below his feet. That’s about what I would expect, thought his sister Kyouka. It had been a little embarrassing when he barged in and insisted she evacuate, but there was nothing the ordinary people outside could do when the crystal magicians were battling the electric battleship. He may have thought he was risking his life to protect his sister, but it looked more like he was clinging to her legs and resting his head in her lap without bothering to fix his slipping hat. If only the redheaded bob cut treasurer holding the wheelchair’s handles wasn’t breathing so heavily at witnessing this beautiful example of sibling love.

“Wh-wh-wh-what is going on, Kyouka!?”

“Hee hee.” She raised her index finger, winked, and laughed. “A display of youth☆”

Part 13

She ran and ran and raced up a narrow metal stairway to leave the outdoor café, but Machibula Delphi was ultimately cornered at the heliport that resembled a massive plate.

She and Karuta would have fought here had it not been destroyed in the previous match.

She heard the dry cracking of the sharp crystals covering the boy’s body shattering away. The severe burns from the flamethrower were nowhere to be found.

The ocean view from the rooftop heliport was marred by black smoke. The Chrisbart electric battleship was tilted, but it was not sinking. The slaves aboard it had apparently surrendered, so the crystal magician students were busy setting up a perimeter around it.

Karuta was glad they had not been forced to sink the captured ship.

It would have reminded him too much of what happened to the first Grimnoah.

“Ha.”

Without warning, Machibula moved her fingers swiftly through empty air. But he already knew what the real threat was. He forcibly tore the flashlight from the skin of his palm and threw the blunt weapon. Machibula must not have been an experienced fighter because she was slow to react and only managed to swing her head to the side. Unfortunately for her, that was not his target.

He had aimed at the miniature planetarium on her shoulder.

That physical device supported her calculations and imagination like an abacus or slide rule, but now its stars vanished.

“Ha ha ha.” Machibula Delphi laughed weakly and put her hands up. “Okay. I get it. I surrender.”

“…”

“This is going a little too poorly. I never would have missed such a major change in the light of the stars… Was this an inside job? Eh, it’s probably just Kildna rebelling yet again.”

“…”

“But you can’t kill me outside the ring. Those are the rules you set and the entire tournament would be meaningless if you broke them. I’m not aware of all the details, but I know you wouldn’t have held this tournament unless it was necessary for some reason.”

“…”

“Which means you cannot kill me! You have no choice but to back off!! Ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha!! That’s what you get for being the world’s strongest. You have to be a role model, showing the people how they should behave.”

Utagai Karuta’s fist immediately flew toward the priestess’s face.

Her eyes instantly lost their focus. She didn’t understand what had just happened and he could guess her mind had gone entirely blank.

The force of his fist alone damaged her very soul.

And his clenched fist stopped only a few millimeters from her nose.

He had followed the Catastrophe’s rules, but the Greek priestess’s legs still went limp and she collapsed to the heliport a moment later.

But this was not over yet. Just like Karuta had said to Yamane Deiri, this was revenge for what they had done to Aine.

“You’re right. I can’t kill you here.”

“Pant…gasp.”

“So.”

So he was not in a forgiving mood. And he knew exactly how to deal with someone like her.

“I’ll kill you in the ring. I promise you the world’s strongest will kill you. You no longer have your saboteurs in Orpheus’s Orchestra. And someone who resorts to tricks can’t hope to win without those tricks. Yeah, that’s right. I’m the same way, so I know that all too well. The most frightening dead end for a coward is to be forced into a direct confrontation.”

He heard a phone vibrating, but his own had been fried along with his body. It came from the chest of the blonde priestess’s loose-fitting clothing.

“Check your phone.”

“…”

“I’m sure it’s an important notification. To be clear, I win by default if you run away instead. And once that happens, you’re no longer a contestant and the rules don’t say squat about what I can or can’t do to you outside the ring.”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………”

She looked half dazed.

She pulled out her phone with a trembling hand and checked the screen to find the following message:

“Stardust (for tournament staff only): Round 3 Match 2 will begin as scheduled. Miss Dephi, please report to the contestant waiting room so you may begin at any time.”

Part 14

“Oh, ouch! Hold on there, Karuta! The human body isn’t supposed to bend at that angle!!! Medic, someone call a medic!! Oh, but she’s still just barely conscious, so we can’t declare the match over yet! H-how many of her bones has he broken now? He’s just holding her by the hair and turning her into a living punching bag at this point! At first, I thought she had thrown the match to rig the gambling results, but yikes – scratch that idea. What kind of bad blood is there between these two? Ahn. Oh, my phone is vibrating to recommend me a new video. Are the rest of you seeing this too? Eh? How to fake a video? …B-b-b-b-breaking news!! The video was fake all along! Is World’s Strongest Utagai Karuta really going to steal the role of victim from Machibula Delphi tooooooooooooo!?”

Part 15

A distant, deep rumbling physically shook the hallway.

“That was some match, huh? But with tens of thousands of viewers, we can’t end the stream now just because there were only two matches today. So get ready for a surprise performance from everyone’s favorite edgy idol – Cinderella Queen!! You there! The rock band, concert band, cheer squad, cheerleaders, and anyone else who wants to be the center of attention!! Get up here on the stage!! A million cameras and drones await you. The entertainment industry isn’t gonna give you any attention if you let a little thing like shame get in your way!!”

Utagai Karuta left the heliport and leaned against the wall in a deserted hallway.

He was in bad shape.

Orpheus’s Orchestra was gone and Machibula Delphi was out of tricks. But even if he had robbed her of the ability to cause cataclysmic events with the power of the stars, he could not keep her from struggling with her own arms and legs.

Nevertheless, he had won.

He had to get back with that report.

He needed to inform the innocent crystal girl who had refused to set foot outside her unlocked cage even though she had been framed.

“Aine.”

“Yes, Sacri-sama?”

“It’s over and there’s nothing more to worry about, so give us a chance to apologize.”

She finally took that one step over the threshold. She left the boxy student counseling room and entered the freedom of the hallway. Those invisible bonds no longer existed.

And she did something other than lower her head in front of him. She pressed her forehead against his chest, which was not exactly broad or muscular.

She said nothing.

He only felt her trembling.

She may have been holding something inside without it showing on her face.

Their classmates gathered around. Yamane Deiri shrugged and Nekoumi Hirosuke gave Karuta a jealous look. Those beat up warriors had all fought that 300m electric battleship until Machibula Delphi was no longer able to fight and her slaves had surrendered. The looks on their faces said they wouldn’t feel right with themselves until they had bowed down and apologized, but they had enough tact to not interrupt this.

So it was someone unaware of the situation who got time moving again.

“Senpai,” called a voice.

Karuta let Aine stay where she was while he looked to see Natalena Blast hesitantly approaching. That avenger girl had once infiltrated Second Grimnoah all on her own in order to slaughter the world’s strongests, but she had regained the ordinary sensibilities that made a small middle school girl nervous when approaching the giants from high school.

She was the type to do her duty even when it was forced onto her, so she held a report to her small chest. Since she was wearing the short maid costume again, it looked more like she was holding fliers to hand out to passersby.

“Um, I have some results for what you asked me to investigate, so I thought I would give you a report.”

“Huh? What’s this about an investigation?” asked Yamane Deiri, leading Maid Natalena to hide behind Karuta’s back.

She grabbed at his shirt with both hands, but Yamane himself didn’t seem too bothered by her fearful reaction. Strangely, it was Nekoumi Hirosuke who bit at a handkerchief (and glared at Karuta).

The middle school girl failed to notice that as she responded.

“He asked me to investigate the identity of the human string pullers.”

“Hey, is that true, Karuta-chan?”

Karuta nodded.

He and the rest of the Four Living Gods were too busy looking into the tournament contestants. And they would have a hard time surprising the string pullers who were constantly watching them. So how were they supposed to figure out who had used the tournament to put Karuta in such a bind? They had needed the help of someone outside their immediate group of four.

Natalena raised her index finger.

“It seems the hidden string pullers got a little overeager during your battle outside the ring. They were watching a lot more carefully, hoping you would make some kind of mistake, so they got careless. This probably would have taken longer if not for that.”

“Huh, was this like a sliver lining?” asked Yamane.

“I-I would say it’s more like a reason to never let your guard down. Eh heh heh,” added Nekoumi.

“Don’t ask me,” pouted the small maid using Karuta as a shield. She seemed more instinctually cautious when it came to Nekoumi than Yamane.

Karuta felt bad about it, but he couldn’t deny Natalena was extremely cute when she bristled like a hissing cat.

“(Also, you should have called me to help with that fight, Senpai. You work me so hard, but then, um, you start treating me like a child when it’s time to fight.)”

“Natalena?”

“Never mind. I didn’t manage to track down the string pullers themselves, but, um, they slipped through an off-limits door and climbed up to an observation tower. The electric locks aren’t perfect, but we use a proprietary offline system that requires a special connecter to hook up your phone or tablet and send it a special unlocking program. There are only three of those connectors on the ship, including the spares. If you see which one has been stolen, you can, um, uh, find some traces the culprit left, like sweat, oils, footprints, and body odor. Not even an expert can avoid sweating at all on the equator like this.”

“Did they appear to be in enough of a rush to make a mistake like that?”

“If they had been thinking straight, I doubt they would have used the off-limits observation tower at all. Um, there were plenty of places where they could have mixed in with the crowd and still gotten a good look.”

Interesting.

Karuta was thankful their system required that physical connector. Especially so soon after that digitally altered video had caused Aine so much trouble. If they had to rely on the records from a security camera or sensors, they might have needed to worry about the accuracy of that data.

“Understood, Natalena. Arrange to have those connectors investigated immediately. But now that you’ve gotten so close to them, they might view you as a target as well. You need to be on your guard around the clock from now-”

Utagai Karuta’s words came to an abrupt end.

They had been forcibly cut off by an external force.

That force was the sound of footsteps. They were awfully loud…and not just because the hallway was relatively deserted thanks to Delane’s surprise concert. It didn’t matter that the world’s strongest magicians were gathered here or that they were approaching the truth about the human string pullers. Whoever was there still made themselves the center of attention.

“…”

Someone was there.

They were coming this way.

The gorgeous girl wore her exceptionally long blonde hair in large ringlets. She was either Karuta’s age or a little older, so 16 or 17.

“Who…are you?” Karuta groaned.

“Pendet Denpasar.”

Her manner of dress, on the other hand, was very casual.

It looked like athletic wear for dance lessons: a casual tank top and puffy dance pants. On her feet, she wore basketball shoes designed for pure functionality. The outfit’s imbalance with her physical allure actually accentuated her sex appeal.

“I am your next opponent. Or should I say your last?”

“Kh.”

His next opponent.

That meant she had won all of her matches to reach the finals, just like he had.

She was what stood between him and keeping riots from erupting all over the world.

“Utagai. Utagai Karuta.”

She laughed.

The girl named Pendet kept her hands in her puffy pants pockets as she whispered seductively to him.

“It sounds like you’ve gone to a lot of trouble, but I’m afraid the truth you have worked so hard to find will not save you.”

“Get lost!”

The first to boil over was Yamane Deiri, not Karuta.

He took a large step forward, presumably to grab her collar.

“Quit acting like you know a damn thing what we’re-”

The entire right half of Yamane’s body was torn away.

Or it would have if Karuta hadn’t shoved him aside at the last second. Crystal shards sparkled in the air as Karuta’s friend’s right arm and leg simply seemed to vanish.

“Yamanen!!”

Karuta knew he had to make sure this wasn’t fatal. He pulled off his belt and started to wrap it around the wound, but he had trouble. With the entire arm gone, he had nothing to really tie the belt around.

He had to do something. Stopping the bleeding was easier said than done. It differed from person to person, but a human could only lose around 1.5 liters of blood before it killed them. Open the faucet, and they had less than 30 seconds before they died. Yet Karuta’s vision blurred as he watched the red spreading out before his eyes. There was so much noise he had trouble grasping the concepts of time and space.

“Move!”

With several high-pitched sounds, it was Matsuda Imi who stepped forward. He recalled that she used Neith, an Egyptian medical goddess.

“There isn’t time to tie off the wounds. Yamane, I’m going to cauterize the wounds. Have him bite a handkerchief or something!!”

“Imi…?”

Amaashi Marika’s voice carried a questioning tone.

But Matsuda Imi only held down the convulsing boy and raised her voice.

She had the look of someone who had already overcome this.

“Marika, what you did was awful, but I can’t deny it was the right thing to do. So help me! He already had his arm blown off by the Chrisbart, right? He only has at most 900mL left, so he’ll die before the regeneration can kick in if we don’t stop the bleeding!!”

Pendet Denpasar did nothing.

She simply grinned with her hands in her baggy pants pockets. She shrugged like that was the same thing as raising her hands.

“Barong, Rangda. Pause. Stop for now.”

Karuta could finally see something there.

Two objects about the size of a boar were circling the ringlet girl like a typhoon. But they had not just started to move. They must have been moving nonstop this entire time. They had only just slowed their rotation speed enough to be visible to the naked eye. They maintained a circle with a diameter of about 3m.

They looked like a collection of wood and cloth.

They made a sound like something beating at the air. A mask carved from wood and a brightly colored cloth sheet formed a body larger than a human. The legs were jointless sticks similar to a mop handle. The beast named Barong had four legs and the monster named Rangda had two. The girl pulled her hands from her pockets and placed them on the heads of the dolls(?) that approached her on either side.

She smiled in a way that suggested everyone there would have died as if shredded by a giant propeller if she had not stopped them.

Pendet whispered lovingly as she used her hands to calm the monsters whose stick legs rapped against the floor like they were tap dancing.

“Hold off for now. We can kill him whenever we like, but rushing things would only bring more harm to us in the process. We can simply wait until the time for his death has arrived.”

This was bad.

This wasn’t an unmanned attack drone or the Chrisbart electric battleship.

This was the truly dangerous ace up the sleeve the Catastrophe had prepared.

Utagai Karuta felt a tingling pain on his skin. This was the pressure of true power. The same indescribable sensation he had felt when facing the Problem Solvers.

Yes.

In the end, the real occult was the most frightening thing of all.

Utagai Karuta gulped and altered his position to cover Aine and Natalena.

Crystal glittered from Aine’s hand as she drew her sword out of thin air.

“Give me the word, Sacri-sama.”

“No, Aine.”

“We cannot afford to worry about the rules with an opponent like this.”

“Do that and all our efforts go down the drain!! If we don’t follow the rules of our own tournament, the social unrest we hoped to end will explode all over the world. And it isn’t us who’ll die in the frenzy of rioting and looting that follows!!”

He heard laughter.

Pendet Denpasar was looking to Aine in interest.

“That girl is correct here. Utagai Karuta, you are the same as me. Maybe she understands this so well because she too is an inhuman pawn used by a magician.”

He could not give in to her provocation.

Any outburst from him would only be playing into her hands. She couldn’t have made that any clearer.

Even if Aine was completely right, Karuta could not fight the final match outside the ring.

“How much do you know?”

“Perhaps everything.”

“Where did you come from? What connection do you have to the human string pullers!?”

“If you want to know, meet me in the ring tomorrow.”

The blonde ringlet girl laughed some more and released her hands from the two masks.

“Play. In 360-degree surround sound, okay?”

With a roaring of wind, Barong and Rangda vanished into thin air once more. No, they had sped up too fast for human eyes to follow.

They formed a circle.

An inviolable holy ground had formed around her.

She stood at the eye of the storm where nothing could touch a hair on her head. She put her hands back in her baggy pants pockets and calmly stepped away from Karuta.

“I look forward to seeing you in the final round. Assuming the answer you have found doesn’t break your spirit, of course.”

Between the Lines 3

“Wow, that was a lot of excitement. My ears are still ringing from those fireworks.”

“Well, they need a big parade for the world’s strongest, don’t they?”

A salaryman and a housewife held a carefree conversation in a hallway throbbing with the beat of Delane’s surprise concert. …Although secretly, the family finances were primarily supported by the advertisement money from the online cooking channel the wife updated on her tablet during the breaks between her housework. Even more secretly, she had an online cookbook coming out that would finally let her live off of the royalties like she had always dreamed of.

Or you could call them Utagai Karuta’s parents.

They did know how to use a phone, but they had not called their son. They did not know what Karuta was really doing any more than the other 5.5 billion people out there, but one look at their son’s face on the flatscreen monitors hanging in the hallways was enough for them to know he was busy.

They did not want to get in the way of his schedule by forcing him to make time for them. They had already seen he was doing well, so they could wait until he had more time before they spoke with him.

“Neat, they still sell chocolate bananas at these festivals.”

“I wonder what their haunted houses are like. I hear they use their cutting-edge magic for it.”

“Ahm, mm, ooh, this is good.”

“Honey, honey. Don’t use your tongue like that in public.”

“Hweh, what was that? I’m enjoying this banana now, so give me a second.”

It was lucky Utagai Karuta was not here. He would have experienced the same horror as Marika but 100 times greater. It was apparently a habit she had picked up as a child, but the usually kind and gentle wife was the type to eat a corndog by gradually peeling away the breading and working inwards. She unfortunately did not realize how ill-mannered that was.

This ship was the training ground for the world’s strongest magicians and a mobile fortress in the fight against the Threat, but it was also a school. The Utagai Couple were seeing what each class had prepared while mostly feeling nostalgic for their own school days.

And the father spoke to no one in particular, oblivious to the situation underway on this very ship.

“He seems so busy, but hopefully he’ll have some free time tomorrow.”

Chapter 4

Part 1

The next morning, Aine had healed her wound after spending the night inside Karuta’s body. It was time for an official investigation within Second Grimnoah, which was President Omotesandou Kyouka’s time to shine. Karuta had left her in charge there and the plan had been to make an early morning surprise attack on the human string pullers once she had tracked them down.

However…

“She’s not here,” he said the instant he opened the door to the student council room. “We were supposed to meet her here, but she’s not here! Hey, Marika, has she contacted you at all!?”

“No, nothing,” said Marika over the phone. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s the type to avoid communication devices and stay ‘off the grid’ when things get bad.”

That meant things had in fact gotten bad.

Crystal Girl Aine tilted her head next to him.

“Does that mean Miss Kyouka went to question the string pullers on her own?”

“But why would she do that?”

They had no reason to stay in the deserted student council room, so Karuta ran out into the hallway with his new phone in hand.

“We don’t know who the string pullers have here. We might not outnumber them!”

Yes, this might not be a lone-wolf spy or sniper in a thick trench coat hiding within the crowds. Second Grimnoah was the Four Living Gods’ home turf, but the assumptions that came with that could always be overturned. For example, what if every single visitor here to see the tournament was actually a string puller assassin? Then the 1000 Second Grimnoah residents would be surrounded by tens of thousands of enemies. And that kind of ridiculous scale was exactly what he would expect from the human string pullers.

Omotesandou Kyouka was a known tactician, so he doubted she wouldn’t have considered such an obvious possibility.

And…

“No…wait.”

“Sacri-sama?”

Karuta didn’t have time to answer Aine’s question.

He went back over the examples he had come up with in his head. Was that possible? It was true Omotesandou Kyouka was not the easiest person in the world to predict, but he couldn’t deny the possibility that even she would respond in the obvious way.

Wasn’t there an answer that she couldn’t share with the other Four Living Gods? In fact, their great power would make her even more reluctant to share it with them.

“No, it can’t be…but…dammit!!”

“Karuta?” said Marika over the phone.

“Listen, Marika. Do not hang up. I’m going to give you a location, so meet me there. Hurry!!”

They had no way of tracking where Omotesandou Kyouka had gone.

But if she was going to meet alone with the culprit that made her most cautious, she wouldn’t have many options even on this 600m ship.

It had to be a location accessible with her wheelchair.

It had to be a location with multiple exits just in case.

And it had to be a location where she could secure a bright light or smokescreen to help her reach one of those exits.

And of course, it had to be a location where she needn’t worry anyone was eavesdropping.

“Omotesandou-san!!!!!!”

Karuta and Crystal Girl Aine burst into the dining hall.

No one was here thanks to all the restaurants running out of the middle and high school classrooms. They found Omotesandou Kyouka seated silently at that temporarily empty coordinate.

She did not turn back when he called her name.

She was facing someone else while seated in her wheelchair. She did not take her eyes off of them for a second.

That would be someone sent here by the human string pullers.

That was the person they had been searching for this whole time. Identifying them should have been the clue they needed to begin a counterattack against the monsters who manipulated each generation of world’s strongest to gorge on the benefits their power brought.

But.

The answer should have been obvious. Receiving full access to the special server required the biometrics of Karuta, Marika, or Kyouka.

And hadn’t Karuta considered the possibility of the human string pullers operating on a ridiculous scale? It hardly mattered that there were 1000 magicians on Second Grimnoah if every single one of the outside visitors was working for the string pullers. Karuta and the rest of his minority group would be entirely surrounded by tens of thousands of assassins.

But wait.

Wouldn’t that mean the assassins sent by the human string pullers were in fact some people they already knew!?

Karuta could only groan the name.

“Omotesandou Shouka.”

“Oh, you remembered my name! I still can’t believe the Four Living Gods know who I am.”

He sounded genuinely delighted.

In fact, the boy in the light green kimono may not have been putting on an act as he hopped up and down with a hand holding his hat in place. If he could make the emotions look so natural with nothing but pure acting, he had to be a better actor than a professional.

Yes.

A family member could do it.

No matter how strictly Karuta or Kyouka worked to not leave their fingerprints or DNA anywhere, there would still be hairs left behind in their childhood rooms.

Their preserved umbilical cord was all someone needed to get through a biometric lock that used DNA data.

“Shouka…”

Omotesandou Kyouka remained motionless.

She gripped her wheelchair’s armrests tight and kept her back on Karuta and Aine while she viewed her transformed brother.

She had pampered that boy enough to skew his standards of spiciness by always putting milk in his curry rice, but it turned out they were willing to use even familial bonds.

Was this what happened once they got their claws into someone?

“Why? Does this mean you’re with the human string pullers? But why!? How could you sell out your own family!!!???”

“String pullers?”

“You gave them a hair, her umbilical cord, or something else from your house, didn’t you? You gave them the key they needed to get past the DNA authorization!!”

“Oh, that?”

Something wasn’t right.

Karuta had poured such contempt into the word “you”, yet Omotesandou Shouka’s face was bright without any hint of fear or panic.

How strange.

Whatever the reality might be, wasn’t Utagai Karuta known as one of the world’s strongest magicians? How could a boy of only 10 or 12 remain so calm when a monster like that yelled at him?

The boy was so young he was easily mistaken for a girl, but he only tilted his head curiously.

“I only did it because they told me it would help Kyouka.”

“…”

Who were “they”?

Had he not even bothered asking?

“I had to search all over the house to find her umbilical cord. I don’t know how that was supposed to help her, but all those important people said it would. I mean, isn’t that how the world works? I don’t know all of our country’s laws. I haven’t memorized the entire Book of Six Codes. I don’t even know how they go about making laws. But you can’t wonder if the people in charge made a mistake with every single law, can you?”

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

Finally, Karuta felt like he could see the outlines of a fundamental distortion he had failed to see until now. He kept talking about the human string pullers, but had he really understood the implications of a group like that?

“I’m going to be a crystal magician one day and then I’ll be as strong as you and my sister!”

That hadn’t been a lie. Shouka had been speaking from the heart. But he had been remade into someone who saw no contradiction between that belief and what he had done.

If someone with a fancy title came along, he would sell out his family or friends.

If an online ranking said something was #1, he would believe it unconditionally.

If all the important people said something was true, how could you question it? That might seem reasonable, but it was such a relative standard to follow. If everyone else was wrong about something, you wouldn’t even notice how their wrongness corrupted you. And who was “everyone” anyway? Was he going to stare down the barrel of a laser cannon and get fried just because he saw a bunch of other people doing it? How was that any different from the insanity of war or the witch hunts?

No, maybe it was Karuta’s group that had been naïve. The human string pullers had been waging a real war against the apocalypse witches from the beginning.

Amaashi Marika had yet to arrive here.

And his phone was still connected to hers.

“Oh, Marika. What are you doing here?”

“…”

(Damn, has she run into them too!?)

Karuta frowned, but he did not have time to come up with a plan.

If Kyouka and Marika had run into trouble, why wouldn’t he too?

“Karuta.”

A carefree voice called out to him from the side.

He knew that voice all too well. It was the last voice he wanted to hear right now.

He forced out a response with a bitter look on his face.

“Dad. And mom too.”

“What are you doing here, Karuta?”

They spoke to him just like they would while watching TV in the living room.

The same as always was the most frightening option here.

It wasn’t so bad with Marika or Kyouka who noticeably went berserk. The most frightening thing was someone who only had the one mode.

“Did you do it too? Did you search the floor back home for some hairs or pull my umbilical cord out from the back of the closet? Have you all…all been working to set us up this entire tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!!!???”

“Yes, we were setting you up for success. And now you’ve made it to the finals of this once-in-a-lifetime event. You shouldn’t be wasting time around here, should you?”

They confessed their crime with a smile and no clue they had done anything wrong.

Karuta had expected the human string pullers to be some sketchy politicians or hitmen who wore leather gloves year round.

But that was wrong. They were not limited to the shadows.

They were exactly what their name implied.

They were anywhere that the category of “human” was found. They were the idol and athlete on TV, they were the neighbors and the childhood friend next door, and they were even your own family. Anyone could be made a part of the plan at any time with a few whispered words.

And people did not even question that system or those rules.

A policeman told me to. I got a call from city hall. A judge commanded it. My teacher at school said so. They said it on TV. My parents told me. People did not even think about it enough to begin questioning it, to confirm it was true, or to protest it. When Kyouka’s brother and Marika and Karuta’s parents received the email or call, they would have truly believed they were helping out their sister, daughter, or son. They might not understand how, but it had to be true if someone important said so. That was all it was really. They had obeyed and compromised just like they would when someone showed up saying they were there to check the gas meter or to perform maintenance on the elevator over the weekend, so they had readily placed their own family into danger. The entire planet had been set up that way from the beginning.

This wasn’t an issue of people being good or evil.

The string pullers controlled people on a deeper and more fundamental level than that. And their control was absolute.

People obeyed them because “that’s just how the world works”. They weren’t just the humans who pulled the strings; they were those that pulled the strings of humans.

(Goddammit!!!)

Karuta’s phone was vibrating.

His call with Marika was still active, but she still hadn’t shown up. He only heard the occasional suppressed sigh coming from the phone. He knew Marika had to be facing her own traitorous family.

A new popup appeared on his phone’s screen.

He tapped that to display a message without ending the call.

“Stardust (for tournament staff only): Repairs to the Sub-Category rooftop heliport are complete. The tournament will now resume with the final round. Mr. Utagai, please report to the contestant waiting room. Your match will begin soon.”

“Omotesandou-san.”

“…”

“Omotesandou-san!! We can’t waste any time here!! They don’t even know what they did, so we won’t get anything out of them!! The final round matters more. And you have to commentate, don’t you? Let’s get going.”

This was unusual.

Highly unusual.

Kyouka was the one frozen in shock and Karuta had to snap her out of it. That president made of point of being skeptical of everything while setting up her own schemes, but this must have caught her completely by surprise. This may have been the one “sanctuary” she had refused to doubt no matter what.

But they had to keep going.

When they were thinking, they weren’t moving. And when they weren’t moving, they were open to attack. They were in a zone of maximum density death, just like when they had fought the Problem Solvers and the Threat. They could not let their guard drop after falling into the human string pullers’ trap.

So Karuta grabbed Kyouka’s shoulders and crouched to her eye level like he might with a small child.

“Whatever conspiracy they might have in the works, we can end it. We just have to win this final round of the Catastrophe!! So our best bet is to focus on that. If that’s what it takes to damage and tear down their plot, then it’s worth fighting, right!?”

Part 2

“Cinderella Queen here. Out of respect for our final two contestants’ determination, I’m wearing my official dress today. Now, we are about to witness something that will make us feel so lucky we were born in this era!! So join me in the loudest cheers this tournament has heard!!!!!!”

A deluge of cheers swallowed up Karuta.

Someone had set this stage for him.

He just stood there in front of a deadly cage full of good will and kindness.

“All those critics stupid enough to doubt his power need to answer for their smug overconfidence. Okay, everyone! Dig up all those articles and videos that aged like milk so we can make them the biggest laughingstocks of the age! It turns out the world’s strongest really was the world’s strongest. This crystal magician is the protector of the 5.5 billion! It’s Utagaaai Kaarutaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!”

A metal container suspended by wires was slowly lowered by a tiltrotor on the other side of the ring. The double doors opened from within and a familiar face emerged.

It was the mystery girl with gorgeous blonde ringlets and a casual outfit made from a tank top and dance pants.

She had spoken like she had already known who was working for the human string pullers and how it would affect him.

“And then we have the only person still crazy enough to get in the ring with him! But she’s also enough of a monster to survive this long, so who knows? This no-name newcomer clearly has some kind of superhuman secret!! She’s a priestess of the unique Balinese form of Hinduism and a dancer to boot. It’s Pendet Denpasarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!”

He heard what almost sounded like tapdancing. A boar-sized object floated on either side of the blonde ringlets girl. Those dolls(?) were made from a large mask, a thick, cloak-like cloth, and jointless sticks for legs.

Barong and Rangda.

Wasn’t that what Pendet had called them?

“But what kind of magic do you get with Balinese Hinduism? I really only know of Bali as an island tourist destination. And if an entertainer like me is going on a vacation, Bali and Hawaii are the place to be, don’t you think?”

“…”

“President Omotesandou?”

Not even Delane could get a response out of her.

Eventually, the president spoke in a low, quiet, and unsteady voice.

“Barong is a benevolent beast who symbolizes good while Rangda is a wicked witch who symbolizes evil. The endless battle between those two opposites is the core and whole of Balinese Hinduism. The form it takes has changed a lot from the original Hinduism, but the idea of an endless battle between good and evil which gives the current world its form is a fascinating one. It isn’t quite the same as the dance of Shiva who is a god of destruction but has also been granted the power to set the world in motion.”

“Huh? You mean good doesn’t vanquish evil for a happy ending?”

“In Balinese Hinduism, it never tilts too far in either direction. The world is an eternal mixture of good and evil. They promote a neutral or balanced state known as Rwa Bhineda. Of course, the religious philosophy isn’t the issue here. We want to know how Pendet Denpasar has converted that into a deadly power.”

The ringlets priestess gave a snort of laughter.

She did not pull her hands from her pockets.

“She makes it sound like a helpful explanation for the ignorant audience, but she’s actually giving her ally some last-minute information. What a farce. Information on Balinese Hinduism isn’t going to do me any good, so this only benefits you.”

“What, are you going to claim we’re cheating after you set us up with the human string pullers?”

“I never said that.”

She pulled her hands from her pockets.

But not to send her ultimate attack his way. She casually grabbed one of the detonating cord ropes surrounding the ring.

“Get up here. Only so much of the truth can be conveyed verbally. If you want to know any more, then at least clench your fists. The world should be overrun with answers that you can’t find even after giving it your very best effort, don’t you think?”

“…”

Karuta responded by wordlessly ducking below the ropes and into the ring.

The poles in the corners glowed red to signal the explosive cage had closed.

“This is it!” roared Delane. “We will soon know who the real world’s strongest magician is. All of you in the stands and all of you gathered around your screens after buying an online viewing ticket! Are you ready to be witnesses to history!? Then let’s do this! Laugh or cry, this match ends it all!!”

Pendet Denpasar wasn’t even listening.

In a move that didn’t match her fancy blonde ringlets, she pulled out some bulky wireless headphones and put them on.

Karuta could hear the music from where he was.

“Damn, that girl’s got guts to disrespect a tournament official like that. But I won’t let this get me down! After all, I’m more of a Utagai Karuta girl myself!! Maybe I’m supposed to be impartial, but since when have the rules stopped Cinderella Queen?☆ So this countdown is just for you, Karuta! Are you ready? 3, 2, 1!!”

He couldn’t even hear the bell with the entire heliport shaking from Delane’s amplified voice and the ten thousand people cheering in response.

And Pendet couldn’t hear it in the first place.

So when the Balinese Hindu dancer whispered, it was on her own timing.

Yet it still coincided with the bell.

“Play. This is goodbye, Utagai Karuta.”

Barong and Rangda. Those two dolls were waiting at her side like a Shinto shrine’s Komainu, but now they burst into motion, vanishing into thin air.

He could no longer see them.

But he knew they were most likely forming a tornado-like circle around Pendet. His flimsy barrier meant nothing to them. His right arm was immediately torn off at the shoulder and he was thrown spinning through the air.

Part 3

“What?” groaned Marika from the audience surrounding the ring.

This was well past the point where she could pass him information with a flashing light.

“What was that? What just happened!?”

“Miss Kyouka said that Balinese Hinduism believes the world is formed from an endless battle between good and evil. Isn’t that what this is? To her, a battle between the gods is no more remarkable than seeing the sun rise in the east every morning.”

There was a circle there.

Enter it and you died.

That was one of the massive gears that kept the world moving.

Gamelan and Kecak were two examples of how Balinese Hinduism used dance as a specialized tool to accurately pass down their culture and legends. Sometimes a priestess would use her body to express a legend and other times multiple people would precisely operate a single doll. Legong, Ardja, Topeng Pajegan, Baris – they would change the format depending on what kind of story they were telling and they would tell of the world’s structure through their rhythm and movements.

Thus, anyone who stood on the stage and used their body to dance was worthy of controlling miracles as an embodiment of the legends.

If the priestess using her body to represent the eternal battle between good and evil were to stop, that would mean the world had run out of steam as well.

“Is Karuta okay!?”

“That was not lethal. His severed arm will be good as new in 30 seconds.”

That was not very long, but only under normal circumstances.

And standing in the ring was not at all normal.

A single round in boxing, for example, was three minutes long. A lot of fierce fighting could happen in such a short time. It wasn’t hard to imagine the rush of attacks that could hit someone if they were defenseless for 30 whole seconds.

“And these Barong and Rangda things move too quickly for even me to see,” said Aine.

“…”

Marika and the others were magicians who could slice through the average bullet or missile with a sword.

And yet…

“If you can move faster than your opponent can even perceive while enclosed in a ring without access to any tricks, then the rush of attacks will be at a far greater density than what an ordinary human can pull off in a boxing match. This will likely have an attack density greater than a Gatling gun.”

Part 4

Karuta’s arm had been taken off at the shoulder.

His barrier had shattered and his right arm had flown off somewhere with the modified military flashlight still in its grasp, so he had lost his dominant hand and his only weapon.

He had no chance of hitting the ground safely.

For one, his center of gravity was off center with one arm missing. His midair spinning was awkwardly out of balance in a way he couldn’t account for.

“Gah!?”

His back slammed into the mat and he had so much trouble breathing he forgot all about the pain in his shoulder.

But he could not afford to writhe on the ground.

Pendet Denpasar had yet to take a single step. The large headphones still covered her ears and her hands remained in her pockets. Yet she had managed to tear a limb from Karuta’s body.

Barong and Rangda.

He was already in range of those things that kicked at the floor with mop handle legs to form a closed circle around Pendet. Without spending the time to get up, Karuta rolled across the mat to get as far away as he could.

A sound like a shrill whistle pierced his eardrums. But by the time he heard that, the benevolent beast and wicked witch had already passed through. This was a destructive tornado. Pendet was the eye of the storm, so when she took a step forward, the pressure of death moved in to crush him.

(I had my dominant hand torn away and I lost my flashlight.)

“But that doesn’t mean I’m helpless,” he whispered from the mat.

His opponent was enclosed in her own world thanks to her headphones. That Balinese Hindu priestess danced to represent the eternal battle between good and evil which gave the world it’s structure, so she may not have even paid much attention to her opponent.

Still, Karuta crawled desperately along the floor and grabbed something with his left hand.

A new weapon had rolled to him when he most needed it.

He bragged his own severed and bent right arm and threw it with all his might.

The arm had begun rapidly crystallizing after it was severed and it was still holding the modified military flashlight that doubled as a blunt weapon.

That last-ditch attempt of course failed to reach Pendet Denpasar where she stood at the center of the world.

Before it could, something unseen chewed it up, tore it to pieces, and blew it away.

But that gave color to the dense tornado of death.

The four-legged benevolent beast had vanished into thin air, but it grew visible as whitish shards surrounded it like a bullet fired through a thick layer of water.

(Yikes, that’s close!? But now I can see it. I still have a chance if I know haw far away it is!!)

“Barong, Rangda.”

“!?”

A faint whisper left the blonde ringlet girl’s lips. To reiterate, the dancer in the headphones was not looking to the outside world. Her focus remained inwards while she gave herself over to the rhythm, but that may have helped inform her of even the slightest disturbance to that rhythm.

She pulled her hands from her baggy dance pants pockets.

An she loosely spread them.

“Fast Forward. Activate noise canceling.”

This time, he could see it.

They formed a circle with a diameter of about 10m, but this one was not arranged horizontally, like Saturn’s rings, in order to protect Pendet.

This was a vertical rotation.

He could just barely make it out thanks to the small fragments of the destroyed ring and smoke of the detonated ropes. Barong and Rangda spun like a giant tire or the rotating blades used to till the earth. And they destroyed the ring’s floor as they approached him! A passive defense had done so much damage, so how destructive would they be now that they were being used for an active offense!?

(But…)

If he ran in fear, he could survive for the moment.

But that alone was not a solution.

(If I can get past this, I don’t have to worry about the defensive circle. I can charge in at her and bring the fight to close quarters!!)

“Ohhhh!!!!!!”

He focused his senses on his broken right arm and charged forward with his center of gravity still off center. This was not something he could consciously avoid, so it actually helped that he failed to stay on a straight line and staggered awkwardly to the side. After ending up right next to the giant wheel spinning with a supersonic rotation speed, he felt his feet planted solidly on the floor again.

That was when the promised 30 seconds arrived. Small crystal shards burst from his brand new right arm.

He just barely managed to get past Barong and Rangda and made his attack on unguarded Pendet Denpasar. He heard the vertically-rotating storm tear through the detonating cord ropes and burst from the ring behind him, but he focused on moving right up to Pendet!!

“Pend-!!”

“Not good enough.”

His momentum was blocked by a scorching pain in his face. Both of his attack plans were shattered and he couldn’t move how he wanted. His fist found only empty air.

She was fast.

But the strike hadn’t had her weight behind it. She had only struck him in the nose to stop his momentum, but that had been enough to break through and shred his flimsy barrier.

(An open palm? No, did she scratch me with her nails!?)

That wouldn’t be lethal unless she had painted them with a powerful poison. But if she was only stopping him in place, her true attack was sure to come next.

He could not breathe a sigh of relief at only receiving a jab. Something more was coming.

He could not have lost his focus for more than half a second.

But by the time he got his arms up to defend himself, he found his feet lifting from the floor. An unthinkably heavy blow had smashed right through his defending arms and struck him in the nose. It felt like being hit by a hammer designed to demolish concrete walls.

This time, she had spun her body all the way around and placed all of her weight behind it.

“A kick!?”

With his feet lifted from the floor, he literally could not stand his ground. And after he collapsed backwards, her foot dropped down like a pile driver.

She stomped once, twice, thrice.

He just barely managed to roll out of the way, but…

“Okay.”

“!?”

When he saw her twirl, he assumed a major attack was coming, but then she stopped before completing a full circle. That meant this was not a roundhouse kick. Instead, she stopped with her back to him, leaped toward him, and spread her legs to drop her shapely butt on his face.

She performed a butt attack.

The name might sound comical, but it was one of the simplest killing moves that placed your entire weight on someone. It was simple enough for a kindergartner to perform it without practicing and it was powerful enough to crush someone’s skull if it hit.

Karuta was too busy rolling out of the way of the deadly attack to even think about moving at her and attempting a pin or a chokehold.

In fact…

(Oh, no. I can’t come up with two different plans right now. But if I let her guide me along this singular path…!?)

A hammer flew toward him.

After landing on her butt with her legs spread, Pendet stuck her hands between her legs, pressed her palms against the floor, and then rotated the rest of her. She flipped herself upside down and swung her legs around in a tornado-like kick that resembled breakdancing. This time, she did not hit him through his defending arms. The low-to-the-ground kick slammed into his right side, launching him through the air.

Difficulty breathing was becoming the new normal for him.

After landing and rolling, he very nearly grabbed the detonating cord rope like he was grasping at straws.

He had arrived at the end of the ring.

He had no more room. He was being pushed into a corner.

“Agh, geh!?”

“Barong and Rangda are only my backup dancers.”

Pendet took a step toward him with her back straight. That alone seemed to solidify the air and shrink the world around Karuta.

He had made a mistake.

He had been focused on the wrong thing.

And the one who embodied the world was working to correct that mistake.

“The dance of the world is focused on me at the center. As long as the world exists, the priestess’s dance cannot be stopped. The Balinese Hindu dance swallows up both good and evil. Did you really think mere violence could stop this colossal vortex?”

“Sh!!”

He attacked while she was talking.

He scooped up some crystal shards from the ground and threw them at her face. While she moved her head aside to avoid that, he charged toward her again. He needed to escape this corner of the ring even if it meant forcing her out of his way.

There were parts of her she could not move out of the way just by moving her head.

For example, the gorgeous blonde ringlets that trailed behind her movements.

(Grab one of those and I can hold her in place. And then I can hit her!)

But even with her hair in his hand, she easily dropped her hips down to avoid his fist.

Her hair suddenly grew longer. Or so it seemed to Karuta.

(Ringlets? Damn, so that’s it. They can stretch out because they’re curled up like old-fashioned phone cords! I can’t restrain her just by grabbing the ends. In fact…)

“Thank you for falling for my bait.”

Her knee jabbed into his gut, easily lifting his entire body weight from the floor.

He couldn’t breathe.

Before he could fall back down, she whirled around and slammed a full-power roundhouse kick into the exact same place.

That special move was like pressing the hammer against the head of the nail before swinging the hammer down at full force.

Karuta felt something like a soft bag of water bursting inside his gut.

“Gah, ah!?”

He rolled along the mat and tried to breathe the air caught in his throat, but a clump of red came out instead. Something had really had ruptured inside him.

(Can I last…30 seconds? And what just ruptured? That wasn’t fatal, was it!?)

His trembling fingers would not listen to his commands. He tried to grab onto the pole at the corner of the ring for support, but he collapsed back to the mat instead. He was supposed to win in an impressive way worthy of the world’s strongest title, but he had already failed at that. Not that the audience was going to complain when they were so entranced by the excitement in the ring.

Pendet Denpasar slowly approached him.

He had tried to rush at her to get away from the ropes, but he had only ended up back on the ground and even more cornered than before. He had nowhere left to run.

Part 5

Specialized filming stations were located high up and beyond even the audience seating surrounding the ring. The webcams for ordinary viewers who had bought tickets were attached to the metal railings, but these stations contained the giant cameras for the broadcast station that was officially sponsoring the tournament.

And an elevated location with a view of the entire ring was not just useful to the broadcast station.

It was also useful for a sniper.

However, the sniper and spotter on this filming station were focused on their earpieces.

“Stage 2 here. I have a shot.”

“Stage 3. Pendet Denpasar might just finish him off and save us the trouble.”

“He’s either lost his spleen or one of his kidneys. And his corpse will turn into a crystal statue anyway, so it’s not like they can do an autopsy. If I hit him where he’s already wounded, no one will know the difference. That independent crystal magic girl is annoyingly hard to predict, but we don’t need them all. As long as we have another member of the Four Living Gods – Amaashi Marika or Omotesandou Kyouka would work – we can move to the next phase.”

“Stage 3 to Stage 2. Stand down until we receive further orders. I repeat, stand down until we receive further orders. Our top priority is Pendet Denpasar. Utagai Karuta doesn’t matter – just do not create a situation where a stray shot could hit that girl. Avoid even the slimmest possibility.”

The sniper clicked his tongue. Loud. Then he realized he hadn’t ended the transmission yet.

“Avoid even the slimmest possibility? Those cowards are all talk, no action.”

He received no response.

Puzzled, he looked to the side.

He saw a fountain of fresh blood and his spotter missing everything above the chest.

“Eh?”

The way the rest of him stood there without falling looked like some kind of sick joke.

Which was why the sniper failed to react with sufficient shock.

He still had no idea what was happening to them when his torso was bisected vertically.

The culprit was Benevolent Beast Barong.

Part 6

Screams of terror erupted from the audience with a rhythm very different from the cheers of excitement.

“Wait…”

At first, Cinderella Queen simply stared from her gondola suspended from a crane.

She may not have wanted to accept what she was seeing. For as edgy as she claimed to be, she may have been a good person deep down because she could not handle watching blood and death like this.

“Is, um, something else happening here!? Oh, god, what is that red stuff!? Eh? Eh? Blood? There’s blood in the stands!?”

Terror and anger.

As the spectators tried to run for their lives, they ended up knocking each other over like dominos.

And red blood and gore rained mercilessly upon them.

In their fear and confusion, they forgot all about any money they had bet on the match.

Utagai Karuta also forgot about the damage to his body as he shouted at his opponent.

“Pendet!!!!!!”

“Barong, Rangda.”

The blonde ringlets dancer put the large headphones over her ears again.

She withdrew into her own world.

“How boring. Tear through those spoilsports. They’re getting in the way of my dance.”

“Spoilsports?”

Something dropped down from the sky above.

It was a thick man’s arm still holding some kind of specialized firearm.

That arm belonged to a sniper. Had he been hiding among the crowd? But if Pendet was with the human string pullers, she would have no reason to reveal and slaughter their perfectly hidden troops.

(Does that mean…?)

“Are you not actually with the human string pullers?”

“Why would I have anything to do with them?”

She had withdrawn to her own world of music using the large headphones, so she could not actually hear him. She must have only been speaking to herself.

But her complaints continued.

She had the look of a nervous performer whose first street corner performance was interrupted by a rude drunk.

“My Balinese Hindu dance has my body represent the structure and harmony of the world. I can see every part of the world just by moving my body. And that includes the wounds and disease afflicting the world. The human string pullers? Do they really think they can hide from the Rwa Bhineda that incorporates all things with no waste? Nothing in this world can hide its presence as long as it exists.”

“Wait! Then you…?”

She was not listening.

Pendet Denpasar charged straight toward him. Meanwhile, he felt a scraping sensation inside his gut. His wound had not been fatal and the regeneration process had begun, but if he took another blow to the gut, he would lose that body part permanently. Even if it was an internal organ.

“!!”

He recalled what Letnahe Kurent had taught him. He needed to focus more on his enemy’s means of defense than his own attacks. People could only use one form of defense at a time, so if he had two methods of attacks prepared, he had nothing to fear.

But he didn’t have time for that.

He could ignore the fast but light scratching of her nails. But the following kick required him to sacrifice his right arm to protect his gut. His paper-thin barrier was torn right through. He glanced down to make it look like he was aiming for her support leg before swinging his forehead toward her nose instead.

He found her sharp nails waiting for him.

She didn’t even need to do anything. The force of Karuta’s own headbutt gouged out his right eye.

Eye pain was a unique thing and gritting his teeth wasn’t enough to endure it. The bizarre sense of loss was more powerful than the actual pain.

“Gyaaaaaaahhhh!!!???”

He was not acting when he fell to the floor and rolled around holding his bloody eye socket with his left hand.

Which was why it made for such good camouflage. Still on the floor, he used his leg to slam his foot into the shin of her support leg.

“Not all truths can be shared verbally.”

She grimaced, but she did not stop.

It was easy to cause agonizing pain at the shin, but it had a very simple bone structure. That made it strong. Attacking there would not knock someone out or immobilize them.

“If you want a real conversation, why have you stopped moving? I have yet to tell you anything. …Barong, Rangda. Play. Close the circle for 360-degree surround sound.”

A whirlwind whipped up.

Barong and Rangda kicked at the floor with their mop handle legs. This was not the Saturn’s rings arrangement used to protect the dancer. It was much wider. They started by forming a massive circle and began gradually narrowing it down to trap Karuta and ultimately kill him.

The deadly bearhug was closing in.

Meanwhile, he heard some high-pitched cracking sounds.

They came from his own ruptured organ, his sacrificed right arm, and his eye socket. His serious injuries were regenerating.

Of course, a direct hit from Barong and Rangda would kill him instantly even if he was fully healed.

He had to end this before the circle could fully close in on him.

Pendet Denpasar had rewritten the rules to that effect. And that did not necessarily work in her favor. The slightest graze could be devastating for her as well.

“Pendet.”

She was not working with the human string pullers, so how did she know about that secret side of the world? She had divined the knowledge from the shape of her dance. Because if she did not provoke him into taking the fight seriously, the accuracy of that divination would fall. That was her only reason.

There was no hidden side to Pendet Denpasar.

What was it that dancer had said before they fought?

“Ohhh!!”

“Ohhh!!”

“Get up here. Only so much of the truth can be conveyed verbally.”

Karuta charged toward her.

She only had to twist her body to easily avoid his obvious punch. She smoothly converted that twisting into a roundhouse kick, but he stomped on her supporting foot before it could land. Just as he thought he had her pinned in place, her nails slashed across his face. The primitive pain pushed fear into his heart and his stomping foot lifted just a bit.

“If you want to know any more, then at least clench your fists.”

To her, a fight to the death was no more than a divine dance.

It was a ritual offered to a god in order to receive something in return.

What future did she want to see badly enough to fight the boy known as the world’s strongest? What scene required going to such lengths to even glimpse? Utagai Karuta had no way of knowing that.

“The world should be overrun with answers that you can’t reach even after giving it your very best effort, don’t you think?”

They clashed a few more times.

Benevolent Beast Barong and Wicked Witch Rangda continued closing in while circling them, so that deadly tornado had nearly reached his back.

But for some reason, Utagai Karuta was smiling thinly.

This was an undeniably deadly battle. A moment’s inattention would get some part of his body obliterated. The tension was so great it seemed to alter his perception of time.

However.

This battle was not a gloomy revenge story. It had none of that crushing pressure, tearing fear, or boiling rage. Utagai Karuta and Pendet Denpasar were sending out their limbs, spinning their bodies, and tearing at each other’s flesh and blood, but that was all it was.

(Yeah.)

Maybe it was inappropriate to think this way.

Maybe it was wrong to abandon his own safety and put someone else’s life at risk when he didn’t have a motive burning at his soul to demand action.

But.

(Yeah, I’ll admit it. How could I even deny it at this point?)

“This is fun,” he said.

She still had the large headphones on, so she may have read his lips. Because the blonde dancer’s lips loosened into a smile.

“Yes, yes! Is this what pure battle feels like when you’re not dragging around any extra motives!?”

They observed their opponent, read their next movement, sent out their fists, and conversed through deadly combat.

Two forms of magic that considered themselves the strongest duked it out to see who was right.

Sweat flew and bodies danced.

The wild and rough ritual of adrenaline melted away the stress and frustration caught in his chest and converted it into pure catharsis.

If only all that vengeance had never gotten in the way.

If only the Problem Solvers hadn’t sunk the first ship. If only the human string pullers hadn’t set up their conspiracy.

He wished it could have always been like this.

He wished he could have fought against Aine, Marika, and even Kazamuki Gekiha like this. He also wished he could have engaged in pure magical combat with Elicia and Anastasia without needing to think so hard or fear he was about to die.

That was the kind of thrilling magical school life he had dreamed of when he first arrived at Grimnoah.

(Honestly.)

If things had been just a little bit different, could he have lived a wild but endlessly entertaining youth with all the others?

Pendet beckoned him toward her with her index finger. But this wasn’t a provocation and there was no malice behind it. She was inviting him to share her rhythm and beat while they danced as one.

(Funny that I was never any good in dance class and ended up looking like a cursed doll!)

“Ohhhh!!”

“Ohhhh!!”

Karuta’s fist and Pendet’s nails flew at the same moment.

They both had a belligerent smile on their lips. No, the girl was enjoying it more than him. She had the smile of someone seeing a drop of rain after a seemingly endless drought. Or the smile of someone having her prayers answered after sleeplessly dancing for her god.

After they knocked down each other’s attacks, Pendet tried to spin herself like she was breakdancing, but Karuta charged in to tackle her before she could get that started.

He did not hit her.

Once his weight was on her, she rolled backwards, pressing her back against the mat and lifting one leg high. And his gut happened to be pressed against the bottom of that foot.

It was similar to a tomoe nage.

Karuta’s own momentum was used to flip him upside down and throw him through the air.

With Barong and Rangda’s deadly encirclement already about to reach him.

Part 7

Barong and Rangda’s destructive force was undeniable.

They had destroyed the solid ring floor like they were tilling the dirt, they had made short work of the snipers hidden in the crowd, and they had torn off Karuta’s own arm.

However.

(Why did she do that?)

Karuta’s mind focused on a single point while time seemed to freeze with him in midair.

He couldn’t give in to fear.

He had to follow the hunch he felt now.

(Why did she say “fast forward” and switch to that vertical rotation? Her best bet was to keep Barong and Rangda protecting her while she slowly approached me. She should have stuck with her basic strategy to kill me. So why did she abandon certain victory?)

Fast forward. That term wasn’t something you would use when enjoying a song or a dance. It was a staticky shortcut used to make up for lost time. She always withdrew to her own world with those large headphones, so why had she focused on the outside world’s flow of time there?

She had said Barong and Rangda were the backup dancers and she was the focus of the dance, so it didn’t matter whether or not she had that tornado-like defense in place.

But was that really true?

Could she have had a more pressing reason?

For example, she had changed tack after he threw his severed arm and covered Barong with blood.

What if she had viewed that as a threat?

That would mean Barong and Rangda were not just backup dancers. He had also noticed how their footsteps wounded so much like tap dancing. Their rotation was like that of a record. They were the band, an indispensable part of a musical performance. She could not allow them to be harmed.

So.

What if she had switched to the vertical rotation mode to move her musical instruments away from the ring and thus out of Karuta’s reach?

(And is this tomoe nage really going to give you the checkmate you want, Pendet Denpasar? You might just find yourself regretting that decision before long!!)

“Ohh!!”

He twisted his body in midair to intentionally throw himself into the vortex of destruction.

He offered up an arm as sacrifice.

Earlier, he had his arm torn off, but the snipers’s torsos and heads had been sliced through. That suggested he could protect his vitals if he was willing to give up an arm.

This tactic only worked thanks to his crystal magic regeneration.

He heard something soft being torn through, but he did not flinch. That impact had slowed the doll, so he pressed his remaining arm down against it.

This was the four-legged benevolent beast – Barong, the symbol of good.

(So you’re the one I get to fight, huh!? And here I thought I’d been abandoned by everything good and just!!)

If the doll stopped, the song stopped. If the song stopped, the dance could not continue.

But at the same time, stopping Barong was not enough to destroy it. If he let go now, it would regain its ruinous freedom.

However, Barong and Rangda also moved as a set. The wicked witch would follow the same circular path taken by the benevolent beast.

In order to rescue trapped Barong and obliterate Karuta for interrupting their performance, two-legged Rangda rushed in at max speed.

He didn’t need to stick with Barong to the end.

He only had to let go and dodge to the side.

Barong was obliterated like it had been stopped in the tracks and struck by a freight train.

“Pendet.”

“Kh.

“Barong and Rangda work together as a pair, right? Then can you continue your performance with just one of them?”

After destroying Barong, Rangda lost its speed and fell to the floor. It fell, bounced, rolled, and finally came to a stop.

The panicked and fleeing spectators froze in place. Delane was still holding her mic, but she couldn’t say anything for a while. A painful silence settled in over the ring.

The rhythm tapped out by those mop handle legs – the song of good and evil – had come to a stop.

The ringlets girl still wore the large headphones, but her song was missing a part. Her song would sound as unnatural as a band playing without a drummer, so her dance could no longer reach the level of the divine.

Finally, she removed the headphones with one hand and tossed them aside. Dancing was everything in Balinese Hindu magic, so she could no longer perform her supernatural movements without her music and with her rhythm taken from her.

But she had not lost her will to fight.

Karuta also pulled a new right arm from the crystal shards shattering past his shoulder.

There was a future they wanted to se.

There was a truth they wanted to confirm.

So…

“Gahhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

“Gahhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

They both roared and a punch crossed with a kick.

No one could utter a word.

The first to finally speak was Utagai Karuta.

“What did you divine?”

His lips were twisted and his teeth didn’t line up properly. His flimsy barrier had been entirely useless, so Pendet’s foot had smashed into the side of his face.

“Rangda destroyed Barong, ending the divine dance that keeps the world running,” said the half-dazed Balinese Hindu dancer.

The boy’s fist had broken her cheekbone.

Perhaps she had been worried about the world, so she had wanted to put her mind at ease by seeing what kind of good future awaited them.

However.

She collapsed to the side, but the priestess dancer still finished her thought.

“Which means that is how the world will end. Not the future I was hoping to see.”

Epilogue

The magical combat tournament that served as this year’s Catastrophe had finally ended.

Karuta’s victory meant the collected jackpot of lost bets went straight to Second Grimnoah. None of that would end up in Karuta’s pocket, but he just hoped it would be used for the benefit of the world. He was afraid being given that kind of money out of nowhere would ruin his life.

He had just barely squeaked by with a victory, but he didn’t have it in him to go along with a grand award ceremony.

His torn-up body could regenerate in 30 seconds, but his battered mind was a different matter.

“A future where evil defeats good and the world ends?” was all he could say.

What was that supposed to mean?

That girl’s divination had managed to reveal the presence of the human string pullers without even trying to look for them, so he felt certain there was some meaning hidden there.

He heard some creaking metal.

It came from a wheelchair’s wheels.

“Karuta-kun.”

“Did you find anything?”

Karuta and Marika’s parents and Kyouka’s brother had been manipulated into tormenting the Four Living Gods, but interrogating them wouldn’t reveal any real information.

This, however, was a different matter.

Some snipers or assassins presumably sent by the human string pullers had been hiding within the crowd. Although they had been partially turned to mincemeat by Pendet Denpasar when they tried to interrupt the dance she was offering to her god.

They had likely been there to eliminate Karuta if things strayed from their scenario.

Kyouka had hoped to find something by checking through those bodies and their equipment.

“Let’s talk in the student council room. Where’s Aine-chan?”

“In me.”

“I already spoke with Marika-san. She should be in the student council room already.”

They could not discuss this over the phone.

She was not letting it show, but that fact showed how nervous Omotesandou Kyouka really was.

She had found something unpleasant.

Her tension reminded Karuta of Pendet Denpasar when she had discovered the outlines of something at the end of her dance.

Once Karuta, Aine, Marika, and Kyouka were in the student council room, the president got down to business.

“First, I found a few different contact points. They used satellite phones that linked directly to an unregistered communications satellite. That was probably meant to hide from random AI searches, but using a secret line was their undoing. I just had to follow that direct line to find the human string pullers at the other end.”

“And what did you find?”

“Chrisbart.”

“?”

Karuta was not the only one to frown. Marika had fought on the side deck too, so she also looked puzzled. What did any of this have to do with that electric battleship the Greek group had hijacked?

But that was not what Kyouka meant.

“Chrisbart Firenze,” she clarified. “One of the most prominent figures in crystal magic theory and also a rather unusual civilian weapons researcher who used an Italian luxury car maker as a stepping stone to get involved in the joint EU munitions and heavy industry businesses. Did you forget that modern warships are named after famous historical scientists now? Especially ones who research magic.”

There was that.

But Karuta also recognized the last name of Firenze. Sophia Firenze was a Sub Category teacher. And wasn’t that also the name of Kiyosawa Hadome’s former teacher?

“Once we start focusing on Chrisbart Firenze, the human string pullers’ identity comes into focus. Basically, they are a secret network connecting the world’s munitions companies behind the scenes. It began with a collection of amateur inventors from a time before anyone used the name World War One. That was an age where tanks, airplanes, barbed wire, and any other ideas people came up with ended up causing far more damage than they ever could have imagined. Seeing so many countries and governments going berserk, those reclusive engineers began exchanging letters in an attempt to control the spread of war from a civilian standpoint.” Kyouka sighed. “By intentionally adjusting the development speed of magic and weapons, that unseen organization could control the power balance between nations without anyone noticing. They are merchants of death who used hierarchies, discord, and antagonism to build up vast fortunes. And they were of course involved in the militarization of magic, so I’m sure they had a hand in the creation of Second Grimnoah and its escort fleet.”

“But wouldn’t they be charged with serious crimes if word got out? Aren’t they dealing with national secrets and stuff?” asked Marika.

Kyouka nodded.

“I imagine that is what led to their abnormal obsession with secrecy. And at the same time, their vast fortunes have been spread among so many industries that they have become ‘too big to fail’ so to speak. Large corporations never seem to go bankrupt even when they’re billions in the red, right? People fear those corporations’ collapse would bring down the entire country, so public funding is poured in to help prop them up. …So their position might have been precarious at first, but things have changed. I doubt it would help if we leaked this information onto the internet. The human string pullers have already evolved into an immortal monster.”

A heavy atmosphere bore down on them.

If none of the usual methods would solve this, they would have to rely on some unusual methods.

The first time Karuta’s group had been faced with that, they had played the violence card.

But since they knew Sophia Firenze personally, would they have the courage to make that choice this time?

And would doing so really qualify as “courageous”?

“Next, look at this. This is even worse. It’s the human string pullers’ plan.”

The president tossed a multipage printout of some kind of data onto the table. It was full of technical terms and Karuta didn’t understand a lot of it, but he very clearly understood one passage:

“Our top priority is Pendet Denpasar. Utagai Karuta doesn’t matter – just do not create a situation where a stray shot could hit that girl. Avoid even the slimmest possibility.”

“So…” Karuta placed a hand on his chin. “They wanted Pendet to win, not me? They wanted to shoot me during the match if they could, but they didn’t dare for fear of hitting Pendet on accident?”

“That’s not it at all.” Kyouka breathed a heavy sigh and used a red pen to circle something on the document. “Look here. These are their observation records during the third round. Specifically, when the electric battleship was firing on us. They mostly just passively observed it all, but as soon as a certain facility was going to be hit by a stray shot, they were ordered to interfere with the ship’s line of fire while disguising it as an accident. In the worst case, they were to use themselves as a decoy.”

“I get the feeling this wasn’t some noble story of self-sacrifice to protect Second Grimnoah or the cruise ships full of visitors.”

“It’s an important facility out here on the equatorial ocean.” Kyouka turned to look out the window. “The space elevator.”

“…?”

What did that have to do with any of this?

It was a relic of an older age with no connection to the tournament.

“This means there is a connection,” said Kyouka. “Forget the Decoy Threat at the Crystal Beach and focus on the real Threat that attacked Second Grimnoah. They were curious about crystal magic. They never attacked the first ship like that. It was only once we had become the new world’s strongest that they showed an interest in us.”

“But what does that have to do with the tourna- no, wait a second.”

“The Threat is said to come from outer space and their target is the Original Crystal Embryo found at the earth’s core. They appear to be attracted to the strongest beings on this planet. I don’t know if it’s to eliminate their greatest obstacle or to capture us and have us build a path to the core, but think about it. What if the Problem Solvers didn’t just go running to fight the Threat whenever they attacked? What if the Threat was actually pursuing them?”

“B-but, wait! Do you have any evidence of that!?”

“The Southern Cross Meteor Shower. Apparently all of those shooting stars are actually the Threat.”

“…”

“Do you remember the details about that meteor shower? The first wave alone is measured in the tens of thousands and there are supposed to be nearly 300 million in all. They aren’t pouring down on this region of sea by random chance. They clearly chose this location because Second Grimnoah is here.”

300 million.

Million.

That was too many. Karuta couldn’t even imagine it. How many had occupied Second Grimnoah near the Port of Kobe? And how many times more was this!?

Of course. He had seen the tadpoles and the armored warrior. Not all of the Threat were necessarily bad. But could he apply that logic to ever last one of those 300 million? If they were the same as humans, then wouldn’t that group include a mixture of the good and the bad?

If even 10% of that number wanted to slaughter humanity, it would be more than earth could handle.

And now that some of the good Threats had been killed, some of the other good ones might decide to join the fight.

The president’s red pen raced across the papers, visualizing the information buried in the sea of technical terminology.

This was something he would much rather not have seen.

“Humanity cannot defeat the Threat.”

“…”

It was so decisive.

Karuta himself had brooded over how he had been no match for the armored warrior he had fought on Second Grimnoah and felt like the righteous position had been stolen from humanity.

But hearing it from someone else – and someone much smarter than him – was something else entirely.

“But the Threat can be redirected away from this planet by taking the world’s strongest and using the space elevator to chuck them off the planet as bait.” Kyouka made it sound like a disturbing lullaby. “But first, they wanted to secure the world’s next strongest. They wanted to know who would be the strongest once the current strongest had been disposed of. The Threat arriving from space cannot ignore the strongest out there in space even if the possibility of attack is low. Just repeat that process and the planet can be protected. The string pullers just have to keep using up each new generation of strongest.”

Chrisbart Firenze was apparently a leading crystal magic researcher, but he did not seem interested in the title of world’s strongest. Why would he be when that title was ultimately meaningless and the real power was held by the hidden global network that determined the world’s military balance? He would view the position of strongest as nothing but a troublesome duty that had to be filled again every few years.

And he never gave any thought to how much the people who held that position worried over it all and tried to hold onto it.

“So when the Problem Solvers were working so hard to keep their position at the top…?” groaned Marika.

“They had to prove that they were still useful in that position and it wasn’t time to replace them yet.” Kyouka brushed her long hair from her shoulder. “If they didn’t do that, then it would be time to dispose of them. I imagine they were terrified of us, the up-and-coming world’s strongest that threatened their position at the top. It probably also has to do with the Threat wanting to do something about the Original Crystal Embryo. It can’t be moved from the earth’s core and they couldn’t even draw their power from it like we do, so they must have loathed it.”

“So they went around killing all the next strongests in order to temporarily delay the cycle of replacement? So after all their grand speeches, they only attacked the first ship to keep themselves alive a little longer!?” Karuta slammed both hands against the fancy desk as if to stop the conversation there. “That’s…that’s no reason to go along with it!! We’re already starting to break free of the string pullers’ control on us. We even know who they are. So now we can bring the fight to them!!”

“Yes, that’s true,” agreed the president. “But defeating the infuriating string pullers like that doesn’t solve the more fundamental problem, does it? We would be left with no way to protect the planet from the approaching Threat. We would have created an age where the 5.5 billion people on this planet are slaughtered.”

“…”

This world was trash.

It was a world where their own families had betrayed them with a smile.

But Karuta wouldn’t let anyone say there was no good in it. There was Yamane Deiri, Matsuda Imi, Natalena, Letnahe, and all the others who had fought alongside them.

Not to mention Kazamuki Gekiha and the others from the first ship who were waiting to recover at the bottom of the ship.

If he was willing to just give up on them, he never would have risked his life to challenge the old strongests.

“What do we do?”

He was afraid to die.

That was a normal way to feel, but he couldn’t just run away from this.

He squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth, and shouted at the top of his lungs.

“It’s us or the planet, so what the hell are we supposed to do!?”

Afterword

Apocalypse Witch has reached its 4th volume!

This is Kamachi Kazuma.

This time, we focus on the Catastrophe that was mentioned as far back as Volume 1! Volumes 2 and 3 focused on the battle against the Threat, so I went back to the series’ roots and made it all human-based battles. And I also kept Karuta from getting any help from Aine, since she’s his strongest fighter. So can Karuta protect his position as world’s strongest after being dragged out into the public eye? And what truth will he find after achieving victory? I hope you enjoyed this battle tournament full of magic.

After facing the armored warrior in Volume 3, Karuta is no longer confident that the Threat are really just villains. Aine has also started to change after that major battle. I was trying to focus on those things here.

I also shined the spotlight on regular characters beyond the Four Living Gods, such as Natalena and Letnahe, but I think the real star there was Matsuda Imi. And Yamane Deiri is still being a bro. He’s grown into such a reliable guy you have to wonder if he’s really part of Karuta’s class. And what was with his nervous behavior in Volume 2 anyway? That’s also why he chose to play the villain when it came to Aine this time. I also like how Nekoumi Hirosuke hasn’t changed at all from the battles he’s fought and wouldn’t hesitate to charge into enemy fire if it was for a trapped little girl.

For the tournament, I made the first round a standard magic battle, increased the level of technology involved further with the second and third rounds, and then went back to a purely magical battle for the fourth round. The idea was to show the threat posed by technology but then show that the occult really is the scariest thing of all. I hope it made for an engaging series of battles that felt like riding a roller coaster.

Also, we had so much dismemberment going on this time it almost seems adorable how much Matsuda Imi was freaking out over losing her leg in Volume 3. Not that this is the first time Karuta has fought a powerful enemy by destroying his body. He is an unusual protagonist for me since he can’t do much fighting without causing himself serious bodily harm.

I pictured Pendet Denpasar as a walking disaster. With the way she used the headphones to withdraw into her own world, showed no real hostility, and destroyed her opponent without really paying attention to them, I wanted her to provide a type of fear I haven’t really done before. Kind of like how a kaiju doesn’t pay attention to the tiny ants fleeing from it down on the ground.

Speaking of things I hadn’t done before, there’s Karuta’s mental change. He found an inappropriate sort of amusement in being able to simply fight without being motivated by resentment. And that is a valid answer since martial arts are recognized as a sport. This was his first battle freed from the pursuit of vengeance. Without the destruction of the first ship, he would probably have enjoyed his magical school life by fighting in tournaments like that.

I give my thanks to my illustrator Mika Pikazo-san and to my editors Anan-san, Nakajima-san, and Hamamura-san. This was a major event that combined a cultural festival, an athletic festival, and a death match and that involved a lot of costume changes, so it had to be a lot of work. Thank you so much yet again.

And I give my thanks to the readers. How did you like seeing an actual supernatural combat tournament after the fake out in New Testament Index 4…however many years ago that was? These battles were actually also about Karuta facing the righteousness he felt was stolen away by the armored warrior in Volume 3. I would love it if you enjoyed seeing Karuta gradually break free from the bonds of vengeance and begin fighting to protect something.

And I will end this here.

…If they don’t get tangled up in revenge, these kids can do all the ordinary high school stuff, can’t they?

-Kamachi Kazuma

?

“Professor Firenze.”

“How many times have you run the calculations now?”

They were floating out on the ocean.

An air-conditioned lab was contained in a marine research ship larger than a tanker. But the men in lab coats were not even checking the flatscreen monitors at this point.

They had grown sick of the coffee and energy drinks used to keep them awake.

They were so tired of holding this same discussion over and over.

“We have run 49 actual experiments and run the simulation more than a billion times.”

“Then it’s safe to say we have the answer.”

“But a lot of people aren’t going to like this answer,” cautiously mentioned a young man with the rare talent to control eccentrics.

The old man in a lab coat failed to realize he was doing that.

“There is nothing in the earth’s core. Checking the flow of geomagnetism is enough to tell that. Do we need further proof from the plate movement, the rotation speed, and the Coriolis force?”

“No.”

“The Original Crystal Embryo disappeared long ago. But where did it go!?”

They had no answer for that.

After all…

“We have never actually managed to reach the earth’s core. We have only theorized its existence based on a variety of geological data.”

“That’s true. So it’s always possible it has legs and could just walk away on its own. For all we know, it looks just like a human and is hiding among us.”

You could call that absurd, but then you would have to say the same about the very existence of crystal magic.

Humanity had thrown out their own common sense from the moment they chose to rely on magic. They had leaped at the tantalizing convenience dangled in front of them and sold their soul to the devil.

“But isn’t that embryo the Threat’s target as they arrive from outside the atmosphere?”

“Then has it given up on us?”

When his question was answered with a question, the young man fell silent.

And Chrisbart Firenze raised his voice like a child’s temper tantrum.

“Humanity cannot win. So the Original Crystal Embryo has given up on us. Is that the only conclusion we can reach here? But if so, who has it chosen to support now!?”

Return to Volume 3

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