Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume5 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

The transport helicopter carried injured Kyousuke through the sky.

The battlefield below them was not just burning; it was glowing like lava. The earth itself had crumbled like a cookie and pure white light surged out from the cracks.

The sporadic fighting had ended and the remaining fighting force seemed to be regrouping.

The clash would begin before long.

Hundreds if not thousands of Unexplored-classes would be forced out and used as a simultaneous saturation attack to push back the White Queen.

“…”

This showdown would cost many lives and it would make the White Queen the one and only bad guy.

What was right and what was wrong?

Kyousuke’s woozy mind could not find the answer.

But there was one thing he knew.

This was not the end of the White Queen.

This half-measure would never settle things.

The world shook violently.

And as Kyousuke looked down at the battlefield from the open cargo door, he recalled Lewis Carroll’s fairy tale. He remembered the story he had told the White Queen.

Lewis Carroll had boldly included nonsense, absurdities, contradictions, and paradoxes, but there was apparently one rule or pattern that only he could understand. In that story with no standard structure at all, there were a few similar incidents throughout.

One of those was the eternal girl changing size. In one case, she had grown to giant size.

“Brooooooooooooootherrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr?”

A sound like straining muscles and scraping bones continued on and on without end. More than one of this girl could exist at once, so it may have been simple for her to grow or shrink her body.

Just the hand grabbing at the earth was several dozen meters long.

As she stood up, she rivalled a small mountain in size.

And even then, she was only looking to Kyousuke. It was obvious what would happen when she spotted him escaping on the transport helicopter.

“Owwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

With a roar and while crushing everything on the ground, that giant form ran.

The transport helicopter had been keeping its altitude low to avoid being pierced by the Queen’s beams of light, so they could not ascend quickly enough now. The Queen would reach out her hand and crush them in her fist.

Kyousuke’s pulse pounded in his chest as a developer in a lab coat held him.

He could not allow those others to be caught in this too.

It was too late for everything, but what if he had the chance to save at least one person?

He could fight. He could face this without breaking.

“Kh…”

“Ah, wait!!”

[[Image:BloodSign_v05_308.jpg|thumb]]

In his T-shirt and shorts, Kyousuke forcibly stretched out his broken arm and grabbed one of the retrieved objects. It was a Blood-Sign that likely belonged to a dead summoner.

And he shook everything off as he stood on his own two feet once more.

He had no vessel and he had no Incense Grenade. He could not use the Summoning Ceremony and he could not have defeated the White Queen even if he could.

He understood all that.

And yet…

“Queeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!!!!!!”

He ran and he jumped.

He leaped from the transport helicopter’s cargo door and toward the giant White Queen.

He held the Blood-Sign like it was a spear.

There was no way he could even scratch her.

But that was not his aim.

The helicopter was being targeted because he was on board. So if he jumped toward the White Queen, he could save the helicopter. Shigara Masami, Biondetta, Claude, and all the others. So many people had kept him alive this long, but he could not stand it any longer even if it meant wasting all their efforts.

He wanted to take part in this showdown as much as possible.

The Blood-Sign was deflected by the Queen’s nose and the boy flew through the air again.

The White Queen caught Shiroyama Kyousuke in her palms like something truly precious and she held him to the center of her chest.

She held him truly deeply against her chest.

For a brief moment, she shut her eyes and savored that warmth.

Her insane mind understood that would never again be directed her way.

But even so…

“…Brother.”

“Why don’t you kill me?”

The boy was also enveloped by so much warmth he thought he would drown, but he asked a clear question.

He looked up at the giant face with a mixture of love and hatred in his eyes.

“After everything you did!! After opposing everyone like that!! And after taking so many other lives, why would you spare only me!? Do you want me to suffer that badly!?”

“You don’t understand, brother?”

The White Queen gently smiled.

“Why don’t I kill you, brother? Do you really not understand why?”

He thought.

He thought.

He thought.

“…How could I understand?”

“…”

“No matter how great a tragedy it was and no matter how dreadful the truth was, I had to have been able to save you there. But you let go of that possibility yourself! You turned your back on what was right and reached for that empty and false love!! I myself, Shiroyama Kyousuke, you should have thrown it all away. And as a result, so many lives have been needlessly lost! How could anyone ever forgive something like this!!!???”

“There are some things,” the White Queen did not take a step back even as she was torn to shreds, “that you can never let go of no matter how great a contradiction they bring. That is what we call love. Although you might not yet understand that, brother.”

“I don’t need that.”

Kyousuke clenched his teeth and rejected it in the Queen’s hands.

He chose what was right over love.

…More and more people would die.

He knew that. The deaths of so many influential and powerful people would influence both the hidden world of the Summoning Ceremony and the ignorant outside world and that would cause even more people to suffer.

He could not stop any of it.

He could not prevent the changing of the age.

But.

Even so.

He would save as many as he could. He was one of the people who had caused that age, so he could not ignore the voices of the people struggling, suffering, being tossed about, and asking for help from the bottom of their heart.

He wanted to be someone like that.

No.

He would become that here.

He would become the strongest.

He would become the strongest human who would not let any Regulation-class, Divine-class, Unexplored-class, the Three beyond them, or even the White Queen at the peak of the peak do as they pleased.

“I don’t need that! I’ll eliminate it here before that happens!! I’ll throw out all of my weakness to settle things with you!!”

And Shiroyama Kyousuke completed himself.

He became a true precision guided missile that had completely cast out one half of his love and hatred for a certain girl.

“I won’t…forgive you.”

He wobbled.

The last strand of consciousness was snapping in the Queen’s hands.

“I will never…forgive you…Queen…”

He had never spoken in this tone before and his logic was unreadable.

This boy should have been the closest to her, but he felt the farthest away.

“…”

The peak of the peak looked down at the unconscious boy with an unbelievable expression.

Her face was crumpled up.

“I am the peak of the Unexplored-class beyond the gods, so there is nothing I cannot do. Eventually, the day will surely come. I swear to you we will hold each other’s hands again.”

And she could not continue like this forever.

The White Queen returned to her normal size. She was only human-sized, but the power inside her was not affected. And she laid Kyousuke’s battered and broken body on the ground.

She looked around.

She was surrounded on all sides by a group of Unexplored-classes. There were hundreds if not thousands of them. Government, Illegal, and Freedom were working together to force the White Queen back with the violence of numbers and send her back to the other world. It was the first and last counterattack.

It was all about timing.

If she was taken out now, Kyousuke’s unconscious form would be caught in it.

Unlike the peak of the Unexplored-class, that small boy would be crushed and killed even if none of the attacks directly hit him. He was not using the Blood-Sign method of the Summoning Ceremony, so she could not share her power with him in the form of a protective circle.

The boy would die.

He would simply die.

“…Fine, then.”

The White Queen reignited once more.

She chose love over what was right and chose to accept all this hatred for the boy she loved.

And in doing so, she would protect him.

She would protect him to the end.

She would protect the one precious person she had found in this world.

She would protect the person who briefly allowed her to forget the extreme madness inside her.

“My name is ''Mary Ann''. I am my brother’s sword and shield and I have been promised the love of the one who named me. So I will utterly destroy all who would harm him!!”

And.

A war came to an entirely meaningless end.