NOVEL WEB Book 7: Chapter 8
Part 1
The answer was obvious.
“They’re all wrong…”
Now that I understood, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed until now.
“This entire series of events was an illusion from the very beginning! That’s the answer!!”
Stare at a “spot the difference” image without any differences for long enough and everything might start looking suspicious. You might start seeing deeper meaning in everything, like you were succumbing to gestaltzerfall. My own doubts would only be confusing the incident further.
But that wasn’t the case here.
I couldn’t pinpoint an initial impression and I couldn’t find any evidence once I started looking. But that did not mean I was imagining things and it wasn’t there. This was the correct conclusion:
Every last part of it was fake.
If even the smallest details had been smoothly taken over, searching was meaningless.
…For one thing, what were the Zombies that Evil Spirit…no, that Voodoo as a whole excelled at?
What were those true Archenemies like Ayumi?
They had been born of a certain virus that had mutated into an acute form after exposure to the traditional enchantment drug used in the Caribbean.
But.
Contact with the virus had been a complete coincidence, but what had been the original purpose of that drug? It was a combination of several chemical compounds including the tetrodotoxin found in pufferfish.
I didn’t know what old words they used for it, like Ti Bon Ange or Nanm, but didn’t it rob people of the ability to think, allow them to be buried alive to fake their death and strip them of their civil rights, and then destroy their brain just enough to keep them alive as a malleable puppet once they were dug back up? That utterly bizarre nonlethal poison had been improved generation after generation in the serious desire to punish criminals with forced labor.
In other words, Voodoo drugs were used on the human brain.
If you were exposed to that toxin, wasn’t it possible you could be made to dream or hallucinate whatever someone wanted?
Once I was looking at things correctly, everything seemed to crumble away.
Everything rolled back to the point where it had branched off.
“Ugh, cough, gasp!?”
Everything’s outlines blurred several times over. The wild dance of psychedelic colors would not stop. Not even the ground would stay flat and the wobbling of the earth filled me with nausea, but then the scene smoothly changed altogether.
I was at school.
And it was night?
I saw the familiar scene of my high school, albeit at a different time than normal. I was…near the courtyard. I was curled up and leaning against the outside of the school building while sweating profusely.
But…
How far had it rolled back? Where had the lies begun? That was obvious if you arranged it all in a timeline and traced your finger back. If it had been a lie from the very, very beginning and the incident had yet to occur in reality…
Then.
It was about to happen.
The Class Rep was going to have her soul removed in that love fortunetelling set up by those three rotten girls!
“Oh, right... Hey, Maxwell!”
I couldn’t control my wobbling vision as I leaned against the school building and shouted into my smartphone.
“Sorry about getting lost in that mental labyrinth. Ahh, I should’ve noticed something was off when that idiot Ayumi was clever enough to think Evil Spirit was suspicious again! And I was too cavalier about the driver dying in that car chase! Anyway, what’s the situation!?”
“Sure. Misses Amatsu Erika and Ayumi have already entered the school, but the battle is still ongoing.”
“Those monstrous sisters are working together and they still can’t finish it right away?”
I felt something on my neck. Thinking it was a bug, I brought my empty hand there and shuddered when I felt something solid. When I carefully pulled it out, I found something like a syringe with an aircraft-like tail.
It was a dart from a dart gun.
Was that what had injected the Voodoo drug into my system? There were a number of nonlethal weapons – tranquilizer guns, rubber bullets, stun guns – but they weren’t a sure thing. Every method carried the risk of actually killing the target. A perfectly safe attack that would prevent the target from waking up no matter what you did to them was, in a way, far more valuable than a simple lead bullet. While I was trapped in that mental vortex, I had been in a state where I could be killed or left alive at the enemy’s convenience.
For example, if you had a method of remotely forcing someone into a state of astral projection, you could attack their defenseless body all you wanted.
The dart filled with the Voodoo drug had transformed that absurd idea into a viable method.
“This is my school, right? What happened to the night school students?”
“They were contacted through the mailing list to say classes were canceled for emergency maintenance to fix a gas leak.”
I irritatedly tossed aside the tranquilizer cartridge I held and viewed Maxwell’s report.
…Was it actually possible to escape that state on my own? Perhaps I only managed it thanks to the light and noise that a VR expert like Maxwell used to call out to me.
Simply reading through the text created a wave of nausea within me, but I couldn’t be picky right now.
“Who’s the enemy and who’s on our side?”
“The main members of Andou Star, Sagawa Akemi, and Hishigami Ai are not much of a threat, but the Bokor that the Evil Spirit Voodoo black market sent to support them is a different matter altogether.”
Him, huh?
That Bokor was really just a human, right? He seemed to use drugs or potions like Itou Helen the Witch, but it was still impressive he could take on multiple Archenemies at once.
“Let’s meet up with Erika and Ayumi to save the Class Rep. Search out the source of the noise using my phone’s microphone and find the best route.”
“I do not recommend entering the building at all…”
“You don’t have to add the ellipsis. I know you’re always correct. But the world is a strange place where you’ll be left with nothing but regrets if you always choose what’s correct. Just do the search.”
“Sure.”
When I viewed the school through the smartphone, a very long green arrow appeared. I crouched low, stayed by the wall, picked up a gardening shovel heavier than a metal bat, and stepped inside the school building from a random sliding door.
The viscosity of the air changed.
I was even more reluctant to continue than if I had gotten a face full of spider web inside an abandoned house. It felt like I was submerging my face in a washbasin of rotten animal blood and guts. All of my senses were exposed to an unpleasant stickiness and slight warmth. How much of it was an illusion and how much was toys made from flour? If I didn’t stay focused, I would start to see long hands and purple shadows approaching from the corners of my vision.
I held the shovel handle below my arm and tried using my hand to cover my mouth and nose with a handkerchief, but there was nothing in my pocket. Damn, had I dropped it somewhere? It wasn’t that it was there and I wasn’t able to perceive it, right?
“Should I focus more on what the screen shows than on what my naked eyes see, Maxwell?”
“No. Even if the mechanical sensors cannot be fooled, what you see on the screen is still reliant on your own senses and thus you cannot fully trust the information you see there. You made that mistake last time as well.”
It wasn’t just a psychological effect.
If they were using a secret drug that stimulated my hormones, brain chemicals, pheromones, etc., then this was about chemistry. Just like you couldn’t deflect sulfuric acid with pure willpower, this was more than guts and mental fortitude could handle.
Everything inside was worse than on the outside. Erika and Ayumi’s rampage had left broken glass everywhere, but that might have been to help air the place out.
I could hear explosions and destruction from overhead. While dust fell from the ceiling, I grabbed the shovel’s handle once more and followed the smartphone’s arrow to the stairs.
I saw someone on the landing.
The moonlight shined on a small Vampire with short silver hair, a baggy black military uniform jacket worn like a dress, and a synthetic material covering her slender legs.
“Fly Villiers!?”
“Oh, the younger brother. I had wondered where you got off to. I am glad to see you are safe.”
I tensed all of my muscles and tried to figure out what I could do with the shovel if it came to that, but something about that silver fly’s response seemed off.
Wait.
What was this relaxed and friendly atmosphere?
“Maxwell. Is she on our side?”
“Sure. There might be some confusion in your memories, but she belongs to the 13 Eastern European Families and is an old acquaintance of Miss Amatsu Erika.”
…That was all correct, but it wasn’t enough to erase my suspicion. And with Fly fixing her flat hat in front of me, I couldn’t directly ask Maxwell if she was a traitor who had joined the Hidden Cloud to take revenge against the gods!
“Is something the matter, younger brother?”
“Oh, right. What about Meslayate? He should-…”
That proud Vampire would never join the Hidden Cloud…except once I started thinking about it, I realized that knowledge came from the dream or hallucination produced by the Voodoo drug. How much of that – if any – was real?
Was Fly Villiers an enemy?
Was Meslayate an ally?
Or was it the exact opposite?
Damn, if it had all been complete nonsense, I could have just reset all my knowledge. But it borrowed some details here and there, so I had no way of knowing how much of the data I could keep.
I needed to solidify my knowledge starting with what I knew for sure.
“So where are Erika and Ayumi?”
“Upstairs,” said Fly. “About half the reason they have shifted fully into attack mode is because you went missing after being shot by that dart gun, younger brother. They asked me to transform into a swarm of flies and search for you.”
If that was true, it meant Erika and Ayumi at least believed Fly was trustworthy.
However, that silver-haired Vampire was still in her girl form and there was an ominous aura around her. Yes, it came from her feet. It felt like there was a rotten bog down there in the darkness the moonlight could not penetrate.
It was bubbling.
And smoldering.
“And be very careful, younger brother.”
“Hm?”
“That Bokor has redefined the battlefield into a truly devilish place. Simply seeing it is not enough to drive you mad, but there is much wandering this place, so I must ask that you do not leave my side.”
Maxwell did not send a warning popup, so she must not have been bluffing so she could stab me in the back.
I adjusted my grip on the shovel.
“…Let’s go join my sisters.”
“Yes. That would be the best way to cool those living catastrophes’ heads.”
I walked through the moonlit school building with the black-uniformed silver fly.
What had they originally been made from?
Strange black and purple shapes wriggled about as if to block the hallways or stairs. Were they not just hallucinations!?
“Excuse me, younger brother.”
Before they could jump at us, Fly sent out a swarm of silver flies and quickly rotted them. All that remained was a sour stench that made me feel dizzy.
“It appears something has been mixed into life-sized flour dolls. I was convinced it was an army of the rotting dead approaching.”
“Archenemies are still living beings. If he was creating Zombies at random, he would have a hard time controlling the extent of the damage.”
…The Vampires may have still been restraining themselves because of Erika’s influence, but it was also a lot of work to create more Vampires since they had to suck out a lethal amount of blood. Even that world-famous Transylvanian count had attacked a victim over multiple nights to spread it out. Their situation was very different from the Acute Zombie Powder which could trigger a pandemic with a single bite.
I occasionally glimpsed something odd out the windows. There were forms climbing the opposite school building’s wall and something like the sparks of locked blades.
Wait, were those not illusions?
“Oh, would you look at that. It seems Meslayate and Elizabeth are here too. It has been a while since we fought alongside the Queen, so we may be getting a little carried away for our ages.”
…They were all working together?
What about the traitors who had sided with the Hidden Cloud? Was that not a thing in reality? That would be great if so, but wait. Then what about the Bokor sent by Evil Spirit? Erika, Ayumi, and the 13 Eastern European Families were working together, so they could control the battle without worrying about a pandemic. But did that mean their opponent had yet to be defeated? When he was a human and alone!? A Zombie’ strength was 10 times a human’s and a Vampire’s was 20 times. Then there were the irregular powers like Fly Villiers’s that had nothing to do with physical strength. Fighting against all that with a dart gun and some creatures could not be easy. Didn’t this mean the Bokor was holding his own while entirely outnumbered!?
We were approaching the explosive booms.
The blast site was up ahead.
My legs kept moving, but my soul was trying to reject something. My hand holding the shovel was slippery with sweat. My soul was telling me not to look. It told me the truth I would find up ahead would not work in my favor.
Was it lucky or unlucky that short Fly Villiers was by my side?
At any rate, I had arrived at the final stage in the depths of the school.
And there I found…
“Ah.”
A few figures were locked in combat along the long, long hallway. Two sides were holding a fight to the death. Needless to say, one side was Erika in her blade-resistant gothic lolita dress with a long skirt with the front wide open and tight black leather pants and Ayumi in her midriff-exposing jogging clothes with an unzipped track suit jacket over it. The other side was the Bokor with a black suit, tie, and glasses.
“Ahh…”
And standing there to protect him was someone in blue armor and a miniskirt. A heavenly messenger with a gold spear and shield.
She was a warrior maiden from Norse Mythology.
A Valkyrie.
“Ahhhhh!?”
…It was entirely possible.
He only needed to use that Voodoo drug on her brain. Just like I had stayed in one place while thinking I was making progress, it was possible he could bind and control that goddess even if he could not kill her. Her movements were like someone tossing and turning in their sleep. And it was true that you would need a legendary god or Demon Lord to hold their own against Erika, Ayumi, and the 13 Eastern European Families.
How much of a threat was this?
The same as my stepmom Lilith? The same as the giant Leviathan shark? Even more!?
“Fuguu!? You…!!”
“Oh, Satori-kun. I’m glad to see she found you safe.”
But.
Even so…
“Blrgh…”
I heard a highly unpleasant noise like someone had stuck their mouth to a drain and slurped up the gloop within.
That was a blue butterfly thrashing about in a nightmare after being robbed of all thought and rationality.
Karen’s right hand flashed.
“!?”
Fly Villiers’s small hand shoved me and I slammed back-first into the hallway wall.
Immediately afterwards, the heavy gold spear melted into liquid and swallowed up the girl in a baggy black uniform. My shovel was useless. That was a legit heavenly spear that could flip over an armored truck.
The girl’s shape had shattered.
If she had been unable to break apart into a swarm of silver flies, she really would have been pulverized.
“Blrgh! Gurgle!! Blrsh!!”
I gulped while too preoccupied to wipe the cold sweat from my brow.
To be honest, having a god like Valkyrie Karen controlled by a human was an even greater shock to my heart than I had imagined. Could humans really pull this off? Was this really allowed? The word “taboo” bounced wildly through my mind. The Voodoo Evil Spirit gave people everything they wanted if they sacrificed the person they loved most and I felt like I had caught a glimpse of what that truly meant.
And he spoke.
He spoke as a Bokor of Voodoo, that flexible religion that would appropriate the teachings of any other religion and make it their own.
“It is no use. The concept of enemy and ally is of no consequence to me. Any form of flesh is no more than an ingredient to a Bokor.”
Of course, surprise attacks were flying back and forth even as he spoke. Erika’s black-gloved hand grabbed a fire extinguisher. If she threw that with strength 20 times that of a human, it would become a metal artillery shell.
It audibly tore through the air and the Bokor’s silhouette collapsed.
No, that wasn’t simple destruction.
His body swirled around like milk being stirred into a cup of coffee. He had dodged. That’s what it was. The fire extinguisher just barely missed its target and then white wings flew through the air.
Yes, the Bokor had changed form.
From a human to a giant swan.
I initially thought I had been dragged back into a hallucination, but that wasn’t what this was. Erika and Ayumi were focused on the same thing.
But for them, it did not seem to be their first time seeing it.
“Voodoo practitioners can call down any god and make its power their own. And the word Zombie originally referred to the end result of injecting someone with a special drug, dividing their body into its 5 physical and spiritual components, and rebinding all except the Z’Etoile and Ti Bon Ange to control them as you wish.”
“Kh.”
Then Ayumi smashed the fluorescent ceiling light and grabbed it, but the heavenly swan only laughed sinisterly while gliding in the air.
Nothing they threw at him had any effect.
He wasn’t particularly fast, but he dodged it all by twisting around in midair. His movements were a lot like a leaf floating in the water.
“And you keep the separated Ti Bon Ange on hand as a controller. …A normal human can only do so much, but Karen is a god, after all. The Ti Bon Ange controls the target’s memories and knowledge, so I only need to use the drug to draw it out of her. I can control the acts of a goddess to trigger a miracle within my own human body. The ability to transform into a swan is one example. Apparently, if a human man takes a Valkyrie’s swan raiment, she loses her ability to return to heaven. In other words, it is something humans may touch and control.”
Damn, first Itou Helen the Witch and now this. Did the intellectual type really like transforming into animals or something?
And whatever the logic behind it, we still had to stop Karen.
“Does that mean you can fight with more than just Karen now? Like taking pieces in shogi?”
“You seem to be mistaken about something,” said the giant swan with a sticky sigh. “My greatest pawn is you, boy. You have no direct combat ability, but you are obviously at the center of the diagram. And did you think pulling the dart from your neck was enough to remove the toxin from your body? Your Ti Bon Ange remains in my grasp.”
Part 2
Psychedelic colors filled my vision. The outlines to everything blurred several times over and pulsed like an EKG.
I was afraid to be holding a weapon with that going on. I tried to let go of the shovel, but had I really managed it? I still felt like something was sticking to my palm.
“Onii-…!? agmtk”
“bmyqd. –ri-kun, no…try to stay-…!!”
They had to be shouting right next to me, but their voices seemed to bend and spin around my skull several times. I couldn’t judge their distance and the pitches wandered unnaturally.
When I tried to focus on any one voice in particular, an intense nausea rose within me.
…This was bad.
Giving up on my body here was the same as being taken hostage. Erika, Ayumi, and the 13 Eastern European Families would be restricted by the need to protect me. And if they came to a stop, they would be hunted down by Karen’s power!
I had to make a decision.
I used my head as a hammer by swinging it back and then slamming my forehead toward that gathering of fluctuating wave lines.
With a loud noise, the bright colors dimmed and the wave lines became the hallway wall once more. I could even tell the shovel had fallen to the cold floor.
“Hm, primitive but effective. Apply a shock to the head to disturb the transfer of information between synapses and it will trigger a malfunction in both your normal thoughts and the drug’s effects. That is one way to force back your chemically-separated Ti Bon Ange.”
The Bokor remained confident in his giant swan form that Karen’s power had given him.
“But that only provides a brief moment of clarity. Try to continually maintain control of yourself that way and you will end up splitting your head open.”
I felt like an invisible hand had grasped my brain once more. It didn’t hurt. Nothing was touching my tongue, but it was unbelievably sweet!?
…Nhhhhhh!?
Ghhh, I had to stay conscious and find – nhhh – some way to get rid of these colors and fluctuating outlines.
“Agh, are…are you at the center…of the Hidden Cloud!?”
“Ha ha. A laudable effort, I must admit. But even if I told you the truth now, you would be unable to distinguish it from a dream.”
“Bbh…”
Were Karen and the others still fighting? Or was I simply hearing things after smashing my forehead against the wall? Either way, I heard an irregular series of explosions.
“Also, we are not the center of the Hidden Cloud. It is a snake biting its own tail. Someone ordered that impossible structure and we gave it concrete form. Thus, it is not possible for you to destroy.”
I heard laughter.
The perspective was all wrong. A shining swan should never have looked bigger than the moon.
“The Hidden Cloud has roots everywhere. Even within this friendly group here. …Of course, siding against me here works in their favor. That way someone on the Hidden Cloud’s side will remain no matter who wins. Truly an ideal situation.”
…Was that just a bluff meant to drive a wedge between us? Or was it the unadulterated truth?
“Class Rep…”
“Oh, I have nothing against her. It is just that her soul – well, the Gros Bon Ange and Ti Bon Ange portions of it – happened to be a product. We normally never assist someone before the rite of passage is complete, but the circulation would stall if it grew too difficult. So we do occasionally accept orders before the payment has arrived.”
“That’s the…only reason?”
“Of course, once we have accepted it, we will receive payment one way or another. Class Rep did you call her? If the removal of her soul fails, then we will be taking a soul from one of those three girls. As long as the numbers work out in the end, the details are of no consequence to us.”
…It had been obvious enough when he drugged me with that dart, but this guy really was the worst. He had gone beyond pure malice and was becoming no more than a part of the black market system. Even if the Calamity rose to the surface and the earth was on its very last day, he would probably be clapping his hands to hawk his wares with some kind of bizarre apocalypse sale. He might have seen droughts and famines as no more than a chance to profit.
The scenery wobbled in time with my pulse.
I was wandering back and forth between a dream and reality.
Whenever I tried to focus on an individual change, I felt an intense wave of nausea like I was staring at a flashing light.
…Dammit…
If I was knocked out here, I would only be a burden on Erika and Ayumi. They would have to continue fighting Karen while defending me. What was right and what was wrong? Even that was unclear as everything melted together, but was there anything I could do? I had to find a way to save my family!
“Kyahh!?”
Who was screaming? Did it matter who? Dammit. Karen, I thought you were an unbeatable goddess who could keep a cold smile on her face at all times. How can you let yourself lose to some weird foreign term? How messed up is your mind if you’re letting a human manipulate you!?
…
…No.
Wait a second…
Something felt off about the dull pain afflicting my head. It was like a lightbulb had switched on. Remember. Rewind your thoughts. This isn’t a one-off gag on TV that everyone forgets as soon as it’s over. You have to be able to remember this!
“That’s right…”
I still wasn’t sure I was seeing the world around me right.
I was on the verge of having my brain controlled by that Voodoo drug.
But.
Even so.
“Could it be?”
Part 3
I couldn’t tell which way was which, my sense of time was all messed up, and the world looked like wildly fluctuating colors, but I saw Karen’s right arm wriggle while her blue butterfly hair swished behind her. Even without the drug influencing me, I never could have dodged that attack. She was a legit god of war. Just as human feet could not outrun a cheetah, cleverness and effort were useless in the face of differing bodily structures.
But I still didn’t give up.
I seemed to wander between two worlds with each beat of my heart, but I slowly swayed to the side.
And I spoke.
“Maxwell, begin recording. Once you’ve taken a few samples, run an analysis and build a flowchart.”
The sound of the air being torn and roasted by friction filled the late night school. There was a hole in the wall and a Campus Beautification Committee poster was torn in two, but that was the extent of the damage.
There was no dodging a goddess’s attack.
So the only option was to make her miss.
And I did that by flashing my smartphone’s light as she attacked.
It was a close call.
That torrent of liquefied gold had passed by just a few millimeters away from my right ear.
“Were you simply lucky? No.”
I heard a questioning voice.
Karen’s mind had been cut away, so she had no understanding of the situation. She would not know if her attack had hit or missed, so it was not her voice. The confusion came from the Bokor controlling her.
The gold reversed course and returned to Karen’s hand. She launched another attack, but I made another strobe light flash and swayed to the side just before she did. I was basically staggering, but the wall of bright light did its thing. I somehow managed to avoid the gold attack by a few centimeters.
Yes.
With nothing more than a camera flash. My resistance was puny compared to an exciting roundhouse kick or Frankensteiner, but a portion of the stimulus reached Karen as she wandered between dreams and reality. Just like an experiment to see if light and room temperature could change someone’s dream. And even if I could do it at the press of a button, it was still risky.
Human kinetic vision and reflexes could never keep up, but I knew when she would attack and could act in advance. That way I could use my smartphone’s flash to protect myself with a veil of light. I stood a step ahead of Valkyrie Karen.
If my timing was off even a little, it wouldn’t work.
This was different again from when my dad had used a thick tarp against the Echidna in the depths of Absolute Noah.
“There must be a reason. But your muscles and nerves are too slow to explain it. Did the drug alter your nerve transmission speed?”
“…It’s nothing that fancy. B-b-but I’d be l-l-l-l-l-lying if I said it wasn’t thanks to you…bleh.”
I didn’t know if the problem was with my tongue or my ears, but my voice didn’t sound right.
Yes, I was still under the effects of the Bokor’s drug.
I had not fully removed it from my mind or body. He supposedly had a position of absolute superiority where he could crush my brain like an overripe tomato.
But.
That was my greatest trump card at the moment.
“Karen and I are under the i-i-i-influence of the same drug, so we have to be e-e-e-experiencing the same symptoms.”
“Why would that-…no, wait.”
“If Karen is s-s-s-s-seeing the same thing as me while swinging that golden sp-sp-spear around, I sh-sh-sh-should know what timing she’ll use. That dream or illusion might be vague and out of Erika and A-A-A-Ayumi’s grasp, but I’m on that s-s-s-same trip away from r-r-r-r-reality. I know what Karen is feeling far more v-v-v-v-vividly than anyone else!”
The golden torrent shot out a third and fourth time, but it didn’t matter.
I wasn’t viewing it with my eyes.
Nor was I listening to it with my ears.
Those senses would be much too slow.
Karen and I were suffering from the same hallucination, so we were connected to the same world. Yes, and we could influence each other. Just like how you could try to scoop up a leaf floating in a pool and a slight current would allow it to slip away from you like it had a mind of its own. That was how significant this connection was.
Gods like Karen intentionally placed themselves in a divine territory from which they could look down at us humans, but the Voodoo Bokor had used his drug to separate her from that.
I could use that to my advantage.
I would strip them of what made them special by arrogantly standing on the same field as a god.
The swan-transformed Bokor must have realized I was just going to keep dodging the attacks because he sprinkled something from his large wings. Some kind of powder scattered from between the white feathers. The psychedelic colors grew brighter and Karen exploded while with her spear and shield at the ready. No, she jumped straight up and broke through the duct above her.
She vanished from view for a few seconds.
But she would arrive in a devastating location before anyone could rationally analyze the situation.
Yes.
She would take up a position directly above me to target my head.
I knew that.
I couldn’t see her, but we were still connected. And I didn’t need to rely on the hallucination every single time.
I had told Maxwell to analyze the movement routine and create a flowchart. A machine could not see biological hallucinations, but Maxwell could still observe my breathing, eye movements, and tension and relaxation of facial muscles. Measuring my eyes’ focus distance would be enough to tell where I was seeing a ghost. By indirectly sharing that “nonexistent information”, the data would accumulate and perhaps lead to a method of predicting Karen’s next move.
“Text, vibration, audio, electric currents, and the flavor and smell caused by battery heat. Beginning transfer of all 5 senses (+ some extra information) to the user,” said Maxwell. “If you think you can overwrite all of this, then just try it, Evil Spirit.”
Karen’s attack was sure to reach me no matter where I ran. For now, I picked up the shovel lying at my feet.
“Predict Karen’s action!”
“I do not recommend-…”
“Just do the calculation!!”
I didn’t have time to read it all. As soon as I shouted that, blue and gold lightning struck. No, this was a guillotine-like shield bash that broke through the duct and ceiling panel.
There was no more text or audio from my smartphone. The electrical stimulus of its internal power shot from my fingertips to my elbow. There was no bravery here. My arm shot up on its own to swing up the shovel handle. I regathered strength in my muscles on the way up and tried to catch the edge of the shield with all the strength an amateur could muster.
A dull sound exploded out.
“Onii-chan, your arm…!?”
…I expected that, so don’t give me that tearful look, Ayumi!!
My wrist and elbow were overwhelmed by a pain far worse than having your teeth worn down. The heavy shield had lost some of its force, but it still pushed on. My hand had already been destroyed, but I had never expected to conveniently defeat a true goddess without getting hurt, even if she was drugged up. I had to avoid having my skull split open at all costs, so I used the slight deceleration to swing my head to the side with all my might.
The impact fell on my right shoulder.
It was further out than my ear or collarbone.
Swinging my head should have shifted my balance to the left, but the powerful force swung me back to the right. But I had to stay positive and remember it could have been worse. I could have lost my arm. No, I could have had my head split open and my brains splattered across the floor.
My back teeth were chattering unnaturally.
I may have been fortunate the narrow duct had prevented her from using the long spear. She had failed to kill me.
So.
I had used the shovel and my right shoulder to somehow stop the Valkyrie’s midair attack. If I pushed from here, she would screw up her landing and fall over. But I couldn’t manage to move my legs to reach her predicted landing point. I could tell the pain in my wrist and shoulder would explode and keep me from moving.
So I shouted at the top of my lungs.
I was only a high school boy. I knew I was going to scream even if I clenched my mouth shut, so all I had to do was make sure it took the form of meaningful words.
Would I call out to Erika, Ayumi, or the silver fly?
But for some reason, I shouted a different name.
It had only happened in the hallucination.
I had no proof anything like that had happened in reality. And yet…
“M-M-M-Mesl-l-layaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!!”
A violent wind roared.
We were on the third floor, but the window next to me shattered, the aluminum frame was smashed to pieces, and an extra-large furball flew toward Karen in a barely-controlled leap. He bit at her side, shattered her blue armor, sent shining shards flying everywhere, broke through the wall behind her, and tumbled with her into the empty classroom beyond.
“Onii-chan!”
“Don’t worry about…Ayumi…j-just get…Karen…shield and spear!”
My tongue wouldn’t move how I wanted, but I managed to get that much out while tossing aside the broken shovel handle and leaning against a column.
The pain from my shoulder and wrist would come roaring back soon.
I wouldn’t be able to think straight for much longer!
Erika used her boot to kick the ultra-heavy spear lying on the hallway floor and it flew into black-uniformed Fly Villiers’s gloved hands. Once the silver fly had caught it, it was over. Pure gold’s value came from its resistance to oxidation and corrosion, but there were exceptions to all things. Just like pure gold would dissolve in aqua regia, the spear melted into a black sludge in Fly’s hands.
Based on that, I had to question how well plastic tape and zip ties would work on her.
Anyway.
“Now just…the shield!!”
That was when I heard an explosive noise. I looked over in surprise just in time to hear another.
Valkyrie Karen had been pinned down by such a large figure, but she used just her arm to swing up the round shield with enough force to knock Meslayate’s jaw straight up!
This was bad.
Karen was getting up again!
“What a pain. But it is what it is.”
That exasperated comment came from Erika. But what was this? She was squeezing and crushing something in her slender black-gloved hands.
“Karen loses control of her weapons if they cease to be pure gold, correct? In that case, we might have a chance. Yes, because you can find it anywhere.”
“Erika?”
“Satori-kun, it is true pure gold is so highly valued because of its resistance to oxidation and its rarity. That is obvious from its occasional use in coins and crowns.” She continued crushing something with her superhuman strength. “But very few treasures and coins use 100% pure gold. Most of them mix in some silver or copper…or in the worst cases, lead or tin. You remember the task Archimedes was given by the king, don’t you? Find a way to tell how many impurities there were in his gold crown.”
So…
Wait, is that what she’s saying!?
“History has proven it. It might be difficult to get rid of the gold itself, but creating an alloy to change its nature is quite easy.”
The crushing came to a stop.
After thoroughly crushing some of the aluminum window frame that Meslayate had broken, she had mixed in some of her own blood and let it dry. The end result was a brutal powder mixed with iron oxide.
She lightly waved her fingers by the closest wall like she was striking a match from an older age.
That was all.
The iron oxide and aluminum powder rapidly reacted.
And it did so with a temperature of more than 3000 degrees Celsius.
Fire as bright as welding enveloped Erika’s entire right arm. Including the sleeve of her gothic lolita dress and black glove.
She showed no mercy.
A creature of the night wielding such a bright light was like the ultimate contradiction.
As Karen finally got to her feet, Erika’s long skirt fluttered, her beautiful blonde ringlet curls swayed, and she made a charge with her burning arm. The light blurred like a car’s tail lights. Karen raised her gold shield on reflex, but Erika was already swinging her glowing arm. It burned, melted, and gathered everything in the way as it flew toward Karen’s shield like an avalanche. Gold melted at about 1000 degrees, so it was no defense.
Erika used the lockers and desks.
She gathered the iron, steel, stainless steel, and even plastic. She filled the liquefied gold with all sorts of materials to rob Karen’s shield of its purity. Just like a coin given impurities to hide a recession, the gold was reduced to an inferior alloy that could no longer be called gold.
“!?”
Karen must have lost control of it and also found herself unable to avoid its heat. She sucked in a sharp gasp and dropped the scorching mass where it ignited the empty classroom’s wooden flooring.
Erika tried to throw a right punch, but then she recalled her arm had become an uncontrollable torch.
So instead, she took a step to the side and whispered a name.
“Ayumi-chan.”
Something shot forward.
The merciless impact scored a direct hit to the bridge of drugged Karen’s nose.
Part 4
Just one to go now.
At this point, there was nothing left to fear.
White feathers floated in the air. That man had borrowed the memories and knowledge of the goddess’s Ti Bon Ange to wield a miracle, but it was obvious he had been stripped of that.
That man in a black suit, tie, and glasses was a Bokor belonging to the Voodoo Evil Spirit, the world’s greatest black market.
…It was unclear what he could do on his own, but with Karen defeated, Erika, Ayumi, and the 13 Eastern European Families could focus on him. Surely there was no way the loss of Karen would somehow give him a power up.
I held my aching shoulder and trod on the white feathers as I stepped forward.
I took a step toward that gloomy man whose cane’s head was a metal skull bent in a J-shape.
“I will be taking back the Class Rep.”
“That will be a loss on the business side, but I suppose I should cut my losses here.”
“No one’s talking about business. I’m not negotiating and I’m going to crush Evil Spirit right here and now. I won’t let you make a comeback and start selling away other people’s lives again. Maxwell.”
“Sure.”
“Identify his mobile signal and hack the source. Find his secret address book and follow it back. We’ll hand that list of names over to White Hacker Anastasia and have her wipe them all out.”
“His obvious smartphone appears to be a bluff. His true devices are his GPS watch and card-sized digital camera. They are both easy to overlook as they communicate without a cellphone SIM card, but the maker leaves some garbage data at to the end of the standard data packets. That would normally be a string of zeroes, but his are occasionally converted into a hexadecimal random number. It likely contains email data.”
When the world got too high-tech, mailers could be installed on devices without keyboards or pads. Pacemakers could be connected to the medical network and convenience store security cameras could be infected with a virus to send out lots of data as a DDoS base. Basically, phones and PCs were not the only digital crime tools, but you wouldn’t overlook those if you knew what to look for.
The Bokor, whose glasses hid the dark bags below his eyes, slowly sighed.
“…We came here because we were wanted.”
“Sorry, but I’m not interested in majority rule justice. Don’t you know who I am? I’m Amatsu Satori who gave into his anger and destroyed the Bright Cross which had its roots in more than 100 countries around the world.”
“We are supported by the general will of the people! You will never be rid of us so long as the world’s people continue to desire our products!”
“I have acquired data concerning the Hidden Cloud from his secret address list,” said Maxwell. “It is likely a contact point that allows one to monitor its progress. Simply put, this can be used to locate and attack the computer that acted as the starting point of Evil Spirit and the Hidden Cloud as a whole.”
“That too was provided to fulfill a desire. More than a billion people question the gods. Including someone in your group here!!”
“Maxwell, begin the attack.”
“Can you truly trust the system? Didn’t you just see a warrior maiden defeated by a mere human? How can you watch that and still call the rules set by the gods absolute!?”
“…That isn’t for you to decide.”
I looked down at my smartphone.
I saw Maxwell’s speech bubble there.
Part 5
“Are you sure you want to completely destroy the Hidden Cloud composed of more than a billion people who wish to strike back at the gods? (yes or no)”
[crucial notice] The Fate of a Billion Accounts [on the pinup board]
There is an oddity in the server system’s traffic.
It has not triggered an alert.
This is no time for hesitation. It is enough that the system claims nothing is amiss when I have such good reason to suspect otherwise. My top priority is physically destroying the system and erasing all personal information leading back to me.
I do not have time or an obligation to worry about what happens to everyone who joined the Hidden Cloud. This will cause some confusion, but there is very little chance they will naturally gather back together. Unless someone leads them in that direction, they will likely shamelessly blend back into the very society they spat on.
I must withdraw from here, but this entire incident is a treasure trove. I will check back through everything that occurred here to learn from it all.
Back to Chapter 7