novelVolume 8, Stage 02 - The Treasure Chest is in the Frozen Undersea World (1)
| ← Ch.091 | Ch.093 → |
Volume 8, Stage 02: The Treasure Chest is in the Frozen Undersea World (1)
"If you're insane, you creep me out. If you're not, you're scum."
"Ha ha!! Just how highly do you view the ultimate grotesque creatures we call humans, Kyousuke-chan!?"
(Stage 02 Open 08/04 11:10)
The Treasure Chest is in the Frozen Undersea World
Kyousuke kicked open the door to the leisure room.
The situation had changed.
"Olivia, we're leaving!!"
"Eh? Ah? But I haven't changed yet, Onii-chan!"
Kyousuke grabbed just one of the bag's shoulder straps and grabbed Olivia's slender hand before practically swinging them both around as he burst back out into the corridor. Changing clothes could help lose pursuit, but when the opponent had already spotted you, it was useless unless a few different requirements were met.
First, there had to be a crowd, like on the city streets or in a subway station. Second, you had to change quickly so the enemy did not catch you while you were changing.
Neither requirement was met here.
A few dry gunshots echoed through the straight corridor as they ran to the nearest staircase. There were now a few fingertip-sized holes in the bag, but it had apparently stopped the lead bullets. Kyousuke kicked down a nearby fire extinguisher to smash the jaw of a guard down the stairs and then ran past the large man as he writhed in pain.
(The ones immediately using guns are Illegal and the ones hesitating in confusion are normal guards. They're wearing the same uniforms, but that's how I can tell them apart!!)
He did the math in his head and set different levels of acceptable violence for the two categories. Although as Alice (with) Rabbit, killing was not an option for Shiroyama Kyousuke either way.
They needed to reach the starboard side where they had left their small submersible between the ship and the extra float attached by an arm. They could use that to escape into the ocean and lose their pursuers.
They first had to reach the deck level.
Kyousuke stopped at the connection between stairs and the corridor, pressed against the wall, and swung his Blood-Sign horizontally out when he heard footsteps approaching. He hit a guard with a lariat, knocking him over from the neck, and then kicked the groaning middle-aged man in the head to knock him out.
Once out in the corridor, a tremor ran through Kyousuke's body.
"Onii-chan...?"
"..."
He slowly turned around without answering Olivia's worried question.
A summoner and vessel pair was already at the end of the long, long corridor.
It was Illegal Award 749, Railroad Executioner.
Needless to say, they were a protégé of War Criminal who led one of the three major powers.
"Cheh. How many did he bring with him!?" shouted Olivia while puffing out her cheeks.
The humongous steel railroad rail may have played the role of a Blood-Sign. That rusted mass of metal rested on the shoulder of a large shirtless man who wore a black hood and had a single lens reflex camera with a bazooka-like lens around his neck. The vessel standing next to him was a young girl who looked like a Western doll. She wore a suit with a tight skirt for what may have been a train conductor motif. She flipped through what looked like a time schedule on a clipboard. The pair usually dispassionately followed their schedule to hunt down and kill anyone within Illegal who broke their ironclad rules or blood bonds. They rarely left Illegal and thus were not blessed with many opportunities to earn Awards, so it would be best to assume their actual skill was 200 Awards above what they had.
The threat here was not the rusty metal rail Blood-Sign or Garuda, Sleipnir and other divine beasts they could summon from the Divine-class.
An executioner always produced results.
They were not allowed to and could not afford to make the mistakes that a judge might.
More and more loud slamming sounds filled the corridor. All the doors lining both walls were kicked open and men in black uniforms different from the guards stepped out.
(So they're not even hiding who they are anymore. )
And they were not about to take turns fighting one at a time.
Their aim was clear. The men in black would surround Kyousuke and Olivia within the straight corridor. If that defeated them, all was well, but if it did not, those men would risk their lives to hold them in place.
And afterwards...
"Thank you very much for taking our express train to hell. The doors will soon close, so please refrain from boarding now."
The small girl in a suit spoke with a strangely flat voice.
She climbed up the large muscular masked man's back like a squirrel and placed a jump rope around his thick neck. It was like a horse's reins...no, she was using him like a train. After taking a seat on his shoulders, the small girl continued her announcements which acted like a cursed song that placed the man into a trance. As the large shirtless man listened, his muscles swelled out to two or three times their size as if from a strange new form of doping.
Shiroyama Kyousuke clicked his tongue.
And then the final line arrived.
"Now, let us depart."
An explosive din shook the air.
The difference between enemy and ally no longer mattered. The long straight corridor was the track of a runaway train. The enemy had ordered those men in black to charge into the corridor, but they were still knocked down by the rusted metal rail as the mass of muscle mercilessly approached Kyousuke and Olivia. The enemy summoner and vessel only cared that their men stopped the target long enough that they could defeat them. Personnel loss was baked into the plan.
There was no dodging it in the straight corridor.
And even if they threw an Incense Grenade now, they would be run over before the 3 seconds to detonation had passed.
"Olivia, this way!!"
Kyousuke knocked out the nearest man in black by jabbing his Blood-Sign between his eyes.
He did not stick to the corridor. He pulled on Olivia's hand and rushed into a room on the right. A moment later, the giant mass passed by in the corridor and a powerful gust of wind blew through. There was no way it would end there, so Kyousuke used the slight lag to run to the window. They were already on the deck level, so if they opened the window and climbed out, they would arrive on the starboard side deck.
Naturally, the protection of the air conditioning vanished once they were on the deck.
Perhaps because they were out at sea, the August sun felt terribly humid.
Illegal would not stay in one place. The more than 100 men in black and the summoner pair would soon use other rooms' windows to reach the side deck. And that side deck was a long straightaway itself, so that would change nothing.
"Onii-chan. Where did we stop the submarine again!?"
"We're almost there. Just another 40 meters!!"
Just then, someone smoothly stepped out from behind one of the columns that looked more decorative than functional.
It was Sinceria Highland and Rachel Wormwood.
Government Award 913, Noble Bride passed them by.
They did not really say anything.
They crossed paths like it was to be expected and the women took the delaying role.
"My, my, my, my."
Was it meant to look like snow or ice, glass or crystal? Sinceria whispered happily in a cool blue dress and with her long blonde hair blowing in the sea breeze. She pressed her hands together in front of her large chest and smiled.
Her restraint as a vessel was not the glass and alloy crown that symbolized her right to the throne. It was the locket which reminded her of the family she had lost.
"I was right to leave her with you, Kyousuke. Hee hee hee. Having a gentleman take your hand and escort you across the battlefield is not something most people get to experience?"
"All he's doing is wander around without a clue what he's doing."
Rachel loosely crossed her arms near her hips and snorted from her shapely nose. The armed glasses knight tapped a finger against the battle hook at her hip.
"Hmph. But it does seem he has kept his promise of not allowing the princess to shed a single drop of blood. I am willing to give him the lowest possible passing grade."
"Hee hee hee."
"What is it, my queen?"
"Oh, nothing. Hee hee hee? Rachel, your cute snorts always mean the same thing. Hm, hm. Mutter, mutter, mutter. Hee hee hee hee hee hee???"
"If you have something to say, just come out and say it!!"
With a great quantity of footsteps, purposefully-generic men in black exited through multiple windows. They initially ignored Sinceria and Rachel so they could pursue Kyousuke and Olivia, but...
"Wait, you insults to our kingdom."
Silver flashed.
It was the athletic body rather than the intellectual glasses that came to the forefront here.
All of a sudden, she had drawn the battle hook from her hip, extended it to nearly 2 meters, and used the J-shaped end to catch one of the men in black by the neck. A light pull forward knocked him to the floor like a poor criminal being dragged around by a rope attached to a horse.
Before caution could fill the air, the battle hook swung around like a baton some more. Sometimes it caught a man in black by the ankle, held him upside down, and dropped him to the deck. Other times, it grabbed a man in black by the belt and tossed him over the railing into the ocean.
The tension of the scene finally caught up to reality.
By the time the men in black recognized the new enemy, more than 10 of them had already been knocked out. The woman wore old-fashioned silver armor and a long wine-red tight skirt that seemed like it would restrict the movement of her legs. But even after achieving such incredible results, Rachel did not seem very excited. She simply tapped her shoulder with the battle hook and winked behind her glasses.
"Hmph. I don't care what happens to that silly mercenary, but let's not forget that a kingdom's princess is traveling with him. It is time for a social studies lesson. I will give you a thorough first-hand lesson in exactly what happens to anyone who attempts barbaric acts in front of our princess for no good reason."
"Hee hee hee. Tsundere, tsundere? Yes, yes. First Olivia and now Rachel. Kingdom F just keeps getting richer! I knew he was exactly what we needed. He may have refused once, but I absolutely must give Kyousuke a medal of national service."
"Be quiet, my queen...!!!!!!"
What sounded like a shockwave rang out as the muscular masked man ignored the windows and broke right through the wall to reach the side deck. The Railroad Executioner summoner let out a steamy breath with his rusty metal rail Blood-Sign in hand. The small vessel girl slowly walked out after him while using a red pen to mark a document on her clipboard. Was the timetable her psychological restraint?
An oddly flat voice ruled that place.
Time and accuracy took precedence over all else.
"I must apologize to all passengers who are in a hurry, but our express train to hell is experiencing a delay. We will ascertain the cause and recover ASAP, so please wait inside the train for now."
Her announcements acted as a cursed song. A trance that only applied to them must have given her complete control over his brain chemicals because energy was clearly raging within the large man's body like a steam engine after more coal was shoveled in. His own bones began to creak under the strain of his trembling muscles.
Ascertain the cause and recover.
The men in black under their command did not hesitate to draw handguns.
And a dry sound rang out.
However...
"Too bad?"
Sinceria held a hand in front of the knight's face. That hand held a timer Incense Grenade that resembled a platinum pocket watch and it had a bullet embedded in it. It was clearly made from a cheap alloy, glass, and other inexpensive materials, but its value had been increased past the limit by royally appointed craftsmen. There was no need to turn the watch crown to set the dangerous hands because a 20m cubic Artificial Sacred Ground was already opening around it.
Everything up until now had just been the lead in to battle.
It was finally reaching the realm of summoners and vessels.
Sinceria Highland even licked her lips as the thrill of combat flushed her skin and released the seductively sweet poison she had been restraining all this time.
Her overly-long ears twitched and the locket at her chest twinkled.
"You need not hold back or show mercy. I will be your beautiful opponent. So bring it on?"
"When my queen stands before you, it means you are facing our kingdom's final line of defense. Foreign threats, if you have not brought the firepower and resolve needed to ruin an entire kingdom, then you will find yourself trampled!!"
A few of the men in black continued pursuing Kyousuke and Olivia along the side deck. Sinceria and Rachel must not have been able to keep them all away, but they had done enough. Now that the human wave attack had thinned out, Kyousuke could use his Blood-Sign as a staff to knock down the enemy. More importantly, the frontline summoner, Railroad Executioner, was no longer after them.
"Olivia, jump in here!!"
"U-uwehhh! Looking down, this is really high...hyahn!?"
They could not wait around, so Kyousuke picked up Olivia's small body and immediately jumped over the railing. There was almost 10 meters to the ocean surface, which was about 3 floors.
They fell into the area of sea partitioned off by the ship itself and the additional float. Still holding Olivia, Kyousuke used just his feet to get his head above the surface. The heat island effect had thoroughly warmed the urban ocean, so it felt like sweaty skin and the clothing plastered to his skin felt as unpleasant as a crowded train.
"Pwah. Olivia, climb on there. Once we untie the rope, let's take the submersible to the ocean floor."
"...Onii-chan is princess carrying me... Wow..."
"Olivia."
Had she hit her face when they landed in the water? Kyousuke's brief shout dragged the double braid girl back to reality, so he pushed on her small butt to get her on top of the spindle-shaped submersible.
Still soaking wet, he untied the rope, raised the streamlined protective cover, and climbed inside with the girl. After closing the cover again, he aimed the nose down and parted the seawater.
The men in black must have noticed.
Several gunshots rang from the side deck above and the bullets piercing the ocean surface stabbed through the thick water like spears of white air bubbles.
"Onii-chan, what about the cooling sheets?"
"We don't need them this time. In fact, they'd only leave us shivering in the cold."
Regardless, they had won now that they were in the ocean. The enemy could not hit while forced to file blindly thanks to the bright sun reflecting off the surface.
As they dove deeper, the light faded like someone was twisting a dimmer switch. Yes, ocean water was not 100% transparent, so it would block the sun if a thick enough layer was in the way.
"?"
Just as the planet's slight axial tilt altered the length of daylight time and thus created the seasons, things changed quickly once they lost the blessings of the sun.
"Onii-cha...It's kind of...eh? It's really cold...?"
"We were dealing with a greenhouse effect before, but this is what happens when sunlight is removed from the equation. We aren't directly in contact with the surface layer of seawater that has soaked up all the heat, so the change will be even faster for us than a diver." Kyousuke hit a few buttons to turn on the lights."I don't see a nuclear sub anywhere... It looks like we might need to dive further than 100 meters."
"Uuh, I'm soaked. Are you sure we shouldn't have changed, Onii-chan?"
"We didn't have time...as I already explained. And it's August, so we aren't going to catch cold."
They voiced no concern for Sinceria and Rachel. They had already seen just how skilled those two were during Kingdom F's civil war. A natural disaster or a crime would not be enough to kill them. That would take a war.
It would be one thing if Illegal Award 999, War Criminal, made an attack himself, but Kyousuke doubted his bodyguard forces could do anything.
And since the core of the Blue Film was in the nuclear submarine and not the cruise ship, the odds were extremely good that War Criminal himself was waiting at the bottom of the ocean.
"Won't they notice us if we're shining the lights like this?"
"Submarines put more focus on sound and magnetism than light, so often times normal lights will actually create a blind spot. Sound travels a lot faster than in the air."
Just as Kyousuke said that, a large torpedo shot right by the submersible, leaving a trail of white bubbles in its wake.
The war had begun.
The crude steel tube had nothing like a propeller. It combined chemicals to propel itself with the power of air.
No proximity fuse had activated and it passed right by them, but it pulled in the nearby seawater, shaking the small submersible.
"Oniiiii-chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan...?"
"That wasn't because of the light. They probably detected the sound of us moving through the water. I can't completely eliminate the noise even if I cut the engine."
But Olivia should have thought more carefully about this.
If the enemy had a complete lock on them, they never could have avoided the torpedo. There had to be a reason why it had passed by the small submersible and exploded somewhere else entirely.
"A thermocline....Ocean temperature is not fixed. The currents give it a marbled pattern. And sound travels differently through warm water and cold water. Soundwaves reflect weirdly on the border between layers, so sonar becomes useless. Whether it used soundwaves or a timer, they can't hit us if the original location data was wrong."
"Th-then can we safely descend...?"
"I'm not so sure. If they know there's a thermocline, they can take countermeasures. More importantly, that shot stirred up the water, so it might have been temporarily mixed together like Italian dressing. This isn't a repeatable method."
As they continued down, Kyousuke guided the submersible toward a cliff-like shelf.
Three more torpedoes were fired, but none of them managed to hit. By intentionally reflecting their noise off of the rock wall, he could shift the apparent source of the noise.
"...Found it."
They were in extreme danger where a single hit would tear their submersible to pieces, but Kyousuke did not bat an eye.
There was a large cigar shape lodged in the V-shaped gap between two rock shelfs. The small submersible's lights illuminated a pitch black ship nearly 100m long. The ID number had been scraped off, but it was definitely a military product. It was a US Navy San Francisco-class nuclear submarine. Those had supposedly been decommissioned in accordance with the Strategic Arms Platform Reduction Treaty signed with Russia 3 years prior, but this one at least had apparently been secretly sold to a civilian buyer. Its combat ability may have been completely removed before being sold, but parts acquired via a different route could be used to repair that. Besides, simply selling a nuclear-powered sub was an unprecedented problem and in violation of the standards.
"Come to think of it, Onii-chan, didn't the Ghost Ship Sebastian movie released this spring have a talking submarine for a main character? It was about a baby sub going an adventure through the seven seas in search of his mom."
"Can that old man turn anything into a hit...?"
Meanwhile, the small submersible approached the nuclear sub waiting on the ocean floor. Using soundwaves to detect enemies was super effective in the water, but there was one surprising weakness: you could not detect something right up alongside you. That was of course because the noise made by your own great size would drown out the enemy reading.
"Now, let's make our home visit."
"Nweh? Onii-chan, how are we supposed to get onboard? If we open this protective cover, the water will come rushing in, won't it?"
"This submersible Lu-san gave us is usually used by Illegal to make illicit deals in the dead of night. It has arms for grabbing packages in the dark ocean and it can dock with other ships. The other ship's hatch format doesn't matter here."
The San Francisco-class was covered by a thick hull built to resist the immense water pressure and explosive blasts, but that hull was not made from a single smooth panel. In addition to the boarding hatch on the bridge where the normal periscope was, there was the ballast tank's water intake, torpedo launch tubes on the front, and 12 vertical-launch mass drivers on the top. It had plenty of seams that acted as openings.
The sturdiest of them would of course be the boarding hatch.
Kyousuke checked the pressure sensor on the control column's grip and tried moving the two arms.
"Good, good. That's an Illegal smuggling submersible for you. It's pretty sensitive to make sure they don't damage the waterproof package. Hmm, so this is how you grab things."
"Onii-chan, what are you going to do about all that rock in the way?"
"If there's no accessible entrance, we'll just have to make a new one." Kyousuke looked entirely unconcerned."If we make some noise, they'll open up the hull themselves to begin the torpedo launch process. We'll provide them something more than water to flood the tube. And once the tube is clogged, the torpedo will blow open a hole for us."
A violent explosive blast disconcertingly shook the giant steel submarine.
"It detonated in the tube! The 3rd launch tube has ruptured!!"
"Have we set up a seal? Prepare the pumps and filler material! This is a race against time, so just don't let the water in!! And keep the sub balanced!!"
Seawater was of course the most frightening thing to a submarine crew. Damage from a torpedo or mine, scraping the hull on the rocks, getting a net or wire caught in the propeller, and so many other things could lead to drowning in seawater. While it did happen sometimes, it was rare for flames, smoke, or an explosive blast to directly kill them. They were working in an environment inhospitable to human life, so destroying the artificial environment they created for themselves would remind them they were on the ocean floor and their lives would be readily snuffed out. Returning their environment to normal would kill them. This was different from "unnaturally taking a life" by firing a bullet or shell at them on the surface.
However. The crew frowned when they brought filler material like metal beams and thick rubber sheets to fill the large hole in the torpedo launch tube.
There was indeed seawater flowing in, but not very much.
"What? Did the wreckage of the torpedo clog it up?"
The water was only trickling out like from a sewer pipe on a muddy river wall, so a young crewmember tried to peer inside the launch tube.
Immediately, Shiroyama Kyousuke shot out like it was a water slide and the heel of his shoe caught the defenseless crewmember on the bridge of the nose.
He then spun around his long and narrow Blood-Sign.
"And we're in."
"W-wah. Waaaaah!?"
Before the crew could actually do anything, Kyousuke used the Blood-Sign to strike the young crewmembers on the back of the neck, on the side of the head, or in the middle of the gut to quickly knock them out.
Olivia crawled out of the torpedo tube a little later.
"I'm soaking wet... Huh? Did it not attach properly?"
"Well, this wasn't a proper hatch, so there was only so much it could do."
Kyousuke and Olivia had attached the bottom of the small submersible to the hole in the torpedo tube using a large, remora-like suction cup and then they had moved the seat to open the bottom. By connecting the submersible to the submarine, they had been able to enter the latter through the damaged torpedo tube.
The torpedoes would have been fired by the defense unit sent by Illegal, but who had originally supplied the equipment? Had Toy Dream acquired the parts and gotten them back in working order, or had Illegal revived that functionality for this mission?
(Either way, the submarine's very existence is a secret, so they don't have to worry about anyone seeing what happens in here. We should assume we'll run into some even nastier people onboard. )
"The fabric is clinging to me all over. Uuh, and I don't like how it feels in the crotch."
Olivia looked troubled and moved her fingers to the butt below her pareo to fix the swimsuit. When she did, a clear liquid left the base of her legs and flowed down her inner thighs.
The blonde double braid girl seemed to notice Kyousuke's eyes on her because she blushed and began stammering.
"...Just so you know, Onii-chan, this is only seawater. It isn't anything weird."
"I know."
"Huh? This is odd. I had heard Japanese swimsuits had this weird hole here so the water that gets in through the chest could get back out more easily. Is it really working?"
"You don't have to stick your hand into that tunnel. More importantly, Olivia, help me tie all of them up."
It was unclear how she decided what qualified as embarrassing, but Kyousuke tossed her some zip ties.
"Once their arms and legs are bound, we'll remove them from this room."
"Oh? Onii-chan, you know how to use these in addition to the Japanese-style rope?"
She was clearly mistaken about something there, but now was not the time to argue.
The hole had not been filled with filler material, so even at a trickle, the flooding was continuing. Kyousuke and Olivia bound the unconscious crewmembers' hands behind their backs and tossed them into the corridor. After making sure there was no one left, they shut the steel door from outside and turned the round handle.
"Huh, so even submarines have air conditioning. I thought it would be sweltering and full of exhaust."
"The San Francisco-class is nuclear-powered, so the turbine is always turning. Unlike the battery-powered subs, they can't completely cut the power to go silent, so there's no real reason to not use air conditioning."
The room temperature was only lightly cooled, so it was actually more comfortable than the cruise ship above which had been like a supermarket's vegetable section.
All of the submarine's doors were watertight, so if they were all shut, any flooding could be contained to a single room. And that limited volume would not be enough to throw off the submarine's balance and make it roll over.
There was only one thing to worry about: Once the torpedo loading room filled with water, they would lose their route back to the submersible waiting outside. They would either have to find another way to the surface or acquire some legitimate diving suits to travel through the flooded area.
"Still..."
After sealing the watertight door, Kyousuke glanced around the corridor again.
The San Francisco-class had been mass produced. Since multiple identical submarines had been built at the same shipyard, there were more opportunities to acquire an accurate layout diagram. But Toy Dream and then Illegal could have made any number of additions and modifications. They could not fully trust that diagram.
For one thing, the standard model would not have had this kind of interior.
The dark gray and unrefined corridor took many twists and turns. The walls and ceiling were absolutely covered in large pieces of paper. They depicted long silver hair worn in twintails and an outfit that looked like a white wedding dress cut down to size with silver armor added in places.
Needless to say, these were portraits of the White Queen.
All mechanical cameras and sensors ceased to work when an Incense Grenade detonated, so they were all hand-drawn. They stirred up odd emotions, like when seeing the police use professionally-made sketches of a wanted criminal even in the modern day.
The people who wanted to start the Silver Resource War were apparently after the deposit of special silicon in the giant mountains around Kingdom F because that silicon's crystal structure miraculously contained just the right impurities in just the right amounts. And they had set up an unbelievable system where the countries and regions hit by the flames of war would be thrown into the large box labeled "East Europe Axis".
They wanted to combine cutting-edge Repliglass tech with the ancient Joruri Method to create an artificial vessel capable of perpetually summoning the White Queen.
They wanted to create a powerful anchor to re-solidify the White Queen now that word of her being killed was shaking her absolute position.
So it was true they might need portraits of the White Queen from multiple angles as reference material for the doll.
But when Kyousuke felt a strange shiver down his spine, it was not because of all the images of the White Queen's beautiful form filling this space.
"...What...is this?"
Olivia was also dumbfounded as her wet body shook.
The eyes had been torn out. Countless blade slashes ran across the mouth. A red pen had drawn Xs all over it...
Each and every one of the portraits had been destroyed.
Kyousuke held his Blood-Sign tight and Olivia clung to his waist from the side as they slowly walked further in. Then his shoes reached something like gravel. A volleyball-sized piece of marble lay at the corner between the corridor floor and wall. It took a moment to realize it was a statue's decapitated head after the surface had been thoroughly carved down with a chisel.
This was more than just persistent. It was obsessive.
It was more than just hate. It was a backlash. The messy spiral of emotions ruling this space was like someone had gone around destroying the very things they had gathered out of love. The oxygen level would not have changed, but an eerie oppressiveness hit Kyousuke like an invisible wall.
This was the chaos brought on by the Queen's death.
People were resorting to strange and destructive acts now that the foundation of their belief had been shattered.
There was an old urban legend that someone's mentality could be deduced from the lineup in their bookcase or the layout of their room. That was more an issue of folklore than science, but Kyousuke could not help but rely on it here.
(Did those belong to Toy Dream...? No, then they would have arranged the light sources, temperature, and humidity when doing the sub's interior. These must have been brought in by Illegal. They were not destroying something adorning the walls. They brought their collection here for the express purpose of destroying them and creating this scene. )
"Hmm, they sure were thorough. It looks like they don't completely hate her."
"Uwehh? It looks like they want to kill her to me..."
"They're lashing out in hatred because the White Queen got herself killed, but they still have some hope deep in their hearts. Hope that it's all a lie. That's why they only have portraits of the White Queen. I don't see any materials based on the Colorless Little Girl that killed her."
They had brought along their precious items in order to destroy them here. If they simply hated her, they would not go to the effort of carrying the collection this far. They would not have taken it anywhere at all.
"Hmm? So which is it? Do they love the White Queen or hate her?"
"I think they're trying to have it both ways. Just like someone trying to guess the murderer in a mystery novel, they can't decide on a single person. By setting up a defensive line for every possibility, they can say they saw it coming no matter who it ends up being."
Did they love or hate the White Queen?
Would they side with the White Queen or the Colorless Little Girl?
...The person who had made this scene could picture every possibility in their mind, but they could not decide on just one. So they were simply putting off making a decision while making it look like they were thinking about it. They told themselves there was no helping it because the answer had already been determined. They would tell themselves they were fine because they had seen it coming from the beginning. They might try to act all-knowing, but to someone a step removed, they had the dark eyes of someone who had lost all hope and they were simply floating aimlessly like a balloon in the wind.
And that made them hard to predict.
In the end, this was the kind of person who would smugly say things were going "according to their calculations" even if they tripped, hit their head on a pebble, and died. Shiroyama Kyousuke had to predict the actions of someone who did not know what they themselves would do. This could be far more trouble than dealing with the most meticulously planned crime.
"..."
"O-Onii-chan. The original data of that weird video is here, right? Let's destroy System Atlantis and get out of here. I don't want to stay here long and I don't want to see the person who made this. This is an atmosphere we can't - just can't - bring to Kingdom F."
"No."
Kyousuke shook his head.
While not to the extent of a cruise ship or aircraft carrier, a submarine required a fair number of people to operate. And yet they had seen no sign of a crew since those in the original torpedo loading room.
Why was no one confronting them?
Who was keeping them away?
Those questions led Shiroyama Kyousuke to the following conclusion:
"Looks like it's too late already."
They heard solid footsteps.
Illegal Award 999, War Criminal.
He was the leader of one of three major powers that dealt in the Summoning Ceremony. He was the world's greatest criminal who had taken an individual's crimes so far that he had taken a step into the realm of war.
He matched the photo from before.
He looked the same as when Kyousuke had made those five soul-rending surprise attacks in the past.
He had lazily-combed, close-cropped hair and a completely average height.
He was a very generic boy in a rough baseball practice uniform that did not even have a team name on it.
In this case, it was wrong to find it anticlimactic.
War Criminal had already achieved many records, reigned at the top of Illegal, and was known both inside and outside Illegal for possessing the skill to take on Government Award 1000, the tyrannical Elvast Toydream.
So.
This meant the person who stood at the top of every last criminal organization was the Boy A who stood by anyone's side. A shudder of terror was the correct response to that fact.
Boy A had the close-cropped hair of a baseball boy and wore black sunglasses as if they symbolized something.
There was no bridge at the nose, so they had a ruler-like shape and resembled a wicked blindfold.
"Hi, Kyousuke-chan. How've you been?"
"..."
"Ha ha ha! It's your old friend, Irigaru Tarou. Now then, Kyousuke-chan. Are you wondering if I have a bunch of body doubles or if I'm a stunt expert?"
As the top of Illegal roared such an obviously fake name that it could have been on a sample form at a bank or post office, Kyousuke kicked something with the heel of his shoe.
He kicked up a dropped handgun like he was juggling a soccer ball.
Shiroyama Kyousuke of all people did not hesitate to pull the trigger.
Multiple gunshots rang out and Olivia reacted more than War Criminal. She covered her ears and curled up. Some of the bullets flew straight and others ricocheted off the thick steel walls. The lead projectiles used multiple angles and time delays to essentially surround Boy A as they flew toward him.
Several dry sounds followed.
"Uuh..."
An obedient girl groaned in embarrassment.
The leader going by the name Irigaru Tarou had a girl of about the same age standing next to him. Her wavy, reddish-chestnut hair was simply tied back in two bunches that were not quite twintails and she wore no makeup. She had a decent body, but she was a book girl with a vanishing presence. But despite that impression, she wore a pure white bunny suit with a tailcoat-like vest.
No, there was one motif even stronger than the bunny ears and suggestive tights.
As she tearfully blushed and shrank down, a large flapping noise came from her back. The objects there looked as solid as hard plastic yet moved smoothly. If this model was based on an existing animal, then they may have been swan wings. However, they were dyed a dark red, so they were more reminiscent of a fallen angel. It was a depressing and profane coloring, like seeing a wedding dress colored blood red. And those wings had spread out like a large umbrella to block and knock back all of the bullets Kyousuke had fired. Her wavy, reddish-chestnut hair may have been tied back in two bunches in order to give those dark red swan wings space to move on her back. They must have been a collection of microlattices because they could spread out to a far greater size than their initial appearance suggested.
She held a fairly cheap-looking tote bag to her stomach with both hands. It may have been the prize for gathering the stickers from convenience store bread. Thanks to that, her arms pushed together her surprisingly large breasts.
"No! Stay...away!!"
Her shoulders shrank down and she squeezed her eyes shut, but that graceful behavior was belied by how the blood red swan wings swung out with such ferocious force.
"..."
Kyousuke wordlessly fired some more and watched as the oxidized-blood-colored wings spun around like a tornado.
Once the handgun was out of ammo, Kyousuke did not hesitate to throw it aside.
"You implanted Repliglass directly into your vessel's skeleton? But once the Summoning Ceremony battle begins, no cameras or sensors can see us. And that includes your vessel as she operates that. Did you put her through the risk of rejection, infection, and mechanical malfunction just to protect yourself against surprise attack?"
"Don't criticize me like that. I'll cry? Repliglass is the symbol of Government, so it's a sign of wealth for us and our inferior tech. Reputation is crucial for a criminal organization. I'm not interested in nuclear weapons or stealth fighters. I want something with such great value that it shows off that there's nothing I can't get my hands on. It seems weird to me too, but trust is of the utmost importance in the underworld. Ha ha!!" The generic Boy A laughed with his eyes hidden by the horizontal line of his ruler-like sunglasses."And that's not what matters here. You were testing to see if my aide would stop the bullets when you attacked with deadly force, weren't you? No matter how excellent the lackey, they wouldn't risk their life for a replaceable body double. Whiiiich meeeeans that's convinced you, hasn't it?"
It was not Kyousuke whose shoulders jumped up in shock. It was the fallen angel, who was trembling in embarrassment from the mismatched outfit she had been made to wear.
Kyousuke narrowed his eyes when he saw it.
"I see. I may have been looking at this wrong."
"Ohh. Now you're focused on her? Yeah, making these alterations to my childhood friend might've been a mistake. She was originally the kind of person who would come running to my room cause she couldn't watch a rented horror movie on her own. That's all changed after I messed with her a bit, though."
"That girl is ultimately motivated by fear, not love, War Criminal. You yourself are a war that causes tremendous damage all around you, but the one surefire way to avoid that damage is to be the vessel by your side. You could think of it like the eye of the storm....She might look obedient on the surface, but that's sort of like Stockholm syndrome where a hostage is so desperate to read the criminal's slightest emotions in order to protect themselves that they end up empathizing with them and developing a temporary affection for them. That reaction couldn't be duplicated with a body double because your skill is needed for it to develop. So I'll have to go with the stunt theory instead of the body doubles."
The cowering girl's trembling increased explosively.
"Uuuuh... Uuuuuuh!!"
She groaned like a shabby dog chained to a post. Her spiteful eyes told him not to reveal too much and not to take away the eye of the storm, but Boy A himself did not seem bothered by the accusation of false trust.
No.
He may have never really understood what trust was.
The close-cropped hair boy was not even looking in the vessel's direction.
"Aren't you gonna ask?"
"Ask what?"
"There are standard questions for times like this: Why did you do this? How much work did you put into making a Toy Dream non-executive director your pawn? Why do you want to use the Blue Film to start the Silver Resource War? Y'know, checking your answers."
Kyousuke gave a short snort.
And he laughed.
"...Like you would have a good reason."
"I'm offended you would say that."
The generic boy laughed in a tone that would rub anyone the wrong way and smiled behind the horizontal line of his sunglasses.
Then he spoke words that sounded like some kind of curse.
"An artificial vessel made of Repliglass. Well, I guess it would be more like overclocking than creating an anchor. Materials are temporarily summoned from another world and used here. So if they're summoned wrong, they lose power, but the opposite is also possible. That's what an artificial vessel made of special silicon will do. The White Queen was apparently killed while in her base state, so now we'll use human tech to strengthen her. I guess it's similar to the experiment run with Pandemonium."
That Deltaston Family that led that project had been a special group that encompassed Government, Illegal, and Freedom. That would explain how information on the technique had reached Illegal.
The White Queen was not enough.
So they would use their clever human brains to elevate her to even greater heights.
...Had humanity made no progress since the Queen's Miniature Garden? Or had the sense of danger faded and been reset, like with the memories of war?
Did this Boy A realize it or not?
Regardless, he continued speaking with a voice as heavy as coal tar.
"You'd normally figure this out, right? You'd normally be able to do this much, right? And if you can do it, you'd normally go ahead and actually do it, right? So I did it. That's the only reason I had. There's nothing majorly twisted about this. Just think about it normally and anyone could figure it out, right?"
"..."
"Did you think this was the ramblings of a lunatic? Hey, Kyousuke-chan, you think too highly of the word 'normal'. Who was it that sold out their neighbors with dark smiles on their faces during the witch hunts? Who was it that spread mistaken training methods without feeling a shred of responsibility? Who is it that's still passionately supporting the income of the drug cartels? ...The darkness of history doesn't come from the serial killers and dictators with special minds. Drug lords can only do so much on their own. The people you really need to fear are the faceless Person As who can be found all over the world. Kyousuke-chan, you're always being watched by the As you would never suspect. Those are the pieces of sheet who will kill millions and then casually claim they're the real victims."
The White Queen was powerful, but she did not intentionally drive people insane.
It was the world and human race around her that grew twisted on their own.
However.
"The White Queen doesn't matter."
Boy A smiled coldly as the one who had destroyed all of the pictures of the Queen plastered across the walls and ceiling.
"Humanity is garbage whether she's with us or not. We'll just find another symbol, worship that, go nuts, and cause more damage. I worship the White Queen in the same way. It's like finding a new waifu each season. Ha ha. If a Red Queen or Blue Queen took the title of the strongest, I bet I'd worship her without even questioning it."
"...So that's why you're trying to have it both ways? So you can laugh and say it all went according to your calculations whether your overclocking works and you strengthen the White Queen or it doesn't work and Colorless Little Girl worship covers the planet?"
"It doesn't matter."
"Even though we're talking about how you live your life?"
"I simply wanted something that wouldn't break. I wanted a support that wouldn't be shaken even if it was hit with a war. I needed some solid rock to drive in the piton for my lifeline. That's why I worshiped her. Not cause she was the White Queen. There was something stronger than me in the world, so I used that great being to support myself. She could've been red or blue for all I cared. It just so happened that the she was white, so I placed my faith in that. That's all."
It was strange, but even members of criminal organizations had religious faith.
For example, a gang hitman would wear a cross around their neck or have a tattoo of the Virgin Mary on their back. They lived lives of a formless anxiety telling them they would be punished in an unexpected way if they strayed from the path they had set for themselves.
"The basic plan is to incite Toy Dream into spreading the Blue Film that will bring about the Silver Resource War. And in the confusion, I can nab all the crystal resource needed to create the Queen lookalike for the perpetual summoning. Then my artificial vessel can overclock the failing Queen....But the success of that overclocking doesn't really matter. We just want to know what color stands at the top of the world. If strengthening the White Queen allows her to keep her spot at the top, that's great. If that isn't enough, then we'll switch over to the Colorless Little Girl. We're not fixated on a single thing here. We just want to know which is the winning side this season. We'll worship them, use them up, and throw them out. That's how normal humans work. 'I've always been a fan. ' 'I knew you would win. ' 'I was rooting for you on my blog, telling everyone you were my team. ' It's not so bad when it comes to mechanical businesses. The real horror comes from the normal, everyday humans who have no idea what they're doing. They feel no responsibility at all when they choose or abandon someone. They're grotesque creatures who will distort their own memories as long as it makes them feel good."
Olivia's small hand grabbed Kyousuke's wet hoodie. And she was not the only one feeling an indescribable tingle of fear. The vessel girl, who was forced to wear suggestive clothing and even had her body modified, was trembling in a different way now.
Sometimes it had been out of love and sometimes it had been out of hate.
Kyousuke had seen several people who were fixated on the White Queen.
Azalea Magentarain, Benikomichi Fuuki, Biondetta Shiroyama, Himekawa Mika, Akura Taisaku, Elvast Toydream...and more recently, Olivia Highland and Doctor S.
It had been obsessive, insane, and hopeless, but they had risked their lives and futures for the path they had started down.
But this was different.
Kyousuke spat out some words without rejecting the strange feeling.
"If you're insane, you creep me out. If you're not, you're scum."
"Ha ha!! Just how highly do you view the ultimate grotesque creatures we call humans, Kyousuke-chan!?"
War Criminal reached a hand out to the side.
His book girl of a vessel reached into the tote bag she held in front of her with both hands and she pulled out a hand grenade with a handle. The explosive looked like a maraca or a club with a fat end. She pulled the string on the bottom of the handle and threw it toward Kyousuke and Olivia.
There was not much space inside the submarine.
Swinging his Blood-Sign for a homerun would be difficult. Besides, if he eliminated the supernatural element and challenged them to a normal battle, he would be up against a vessel whose body had been modified. Those solid and dark-red swan wings had instantly knocked down every last bullet he had fired their way. It was hard to keep one's distance in the complex layout of the submarine, so if that monster rushed toward him, he would be unable to avoid the rush of blows. Thus, it would be best to wait for the Incense Grenade to detonate and battle using the Summoning Ceremony.
Or so the enemy wanted him to think.
"Olivia!!"
"Nweh!?"
The small girl had started to wait, so Kyousuke grabbed and tugged on her hand while reaching for a nearby watertight door. The submarine's doors were even thicker steel than the cruise ship's. As soon as he opened it wide as a shield, the grenade exploded.
Yes.
It sent out a perfectly normal explosive blast along with anti-personnel fragments.
If they had waited for the Artificial Summoning Ceremony instead of using a shield, the wall of destruction would have hit their entire bodies within the narrow space. Olivia only wore some synthetic fabric fully soaked with seawater, so a single graze from a fragment would have taken out a large chunk of her flesh.
Meanwhile, the enemy must have done it in the off chance that he got a lucky shot. A careless voice reached them through the smoke.
"Tch. So you used your dirty mind to figure it out. I guess it takes one to know one. Nothing scarier than a normal human, huh?"
"Illegal...!!"
"Ha ha. That's right. There's nothing special about us. This is the honest malice that any human carries inside!!"
The name of his group told you exactly what he believed. After all, he was the evil leader who brought together all of the world's criminal organizations. It had been wrong to expect him to play fair and square in the first place. Kyousuke dropped a hairspray-can-sized Incense Grenade at his feet behind the metal door shield to make the challenge himself.
"Oh, oh."
The suggestive fallen angel staggered as soon as the Artificial Sacred Ground opened up. Now that the cameras and sensors no longer worked, the connection between her body and the machine had been severed. War Criminal had thoroughly modified his vessel partner's body and he liked to play dirty...but that did not mean his skill was lacking.
The 20m cube had appeared.
But they barely had any room to move inside the submarine. The Summoning Ceremony was beginning at unprecedented close range.
"Goodbye, War. This time...this time I will bring an end to your slaughtering...!!"
"Ha ha!! A death match at close quarters? And stop putting on airs, cheater. You act like you alone are observing humanity from the outside!!"
Multiple swishing sounds sliced through the air.
A 150cm Blood-Sign rapidly rotated in War Criminal's right and left hands...but that was not all.
Those two sticks kept a third one airborne despite no one touching it.
The two sticks were in constant contact with the third one's sides to catch at it and lift it up.
"A devil stick?"
Olivia expressed skepticism about that juggling action, but they did not have time to worry over every bit of their opponent's trickery. While he used a juggler's illusion to swap around the sticks until it was unclear which was the third, the clock was already ticking.
The 6 x 6 x 6 - for a total of 216 - red Petals had formed the three-dimensional cube of the Rose.
36 Spots had appeared in midair.
And as soon as they appeared, white lightning raced through the submarine. Both Kyousuke and Boy A launched their White Thorns with frightening speed. A single attack shattered the red cube, causing countless Petals to scatter across the narrow corridor and ricochet wildly.
Both vessels were transferred according to the acquired Petals.
Olivia was the Original Yellow (s). Cost: 1. Sound Range: High.
The fallen angel was the Original Yellow (s). Cost: 1. Sound Range: High.
They both became translucent yellow slime Materials.
~Onii-chan, we're equally powerful...!~
"Then I just have to change that."
| ← Ch. 091 | Ch. 093 → |