Volume 5, Opening X-02 - Peel Back the Outer Layer to Reveal Another

Volume 5, Opening X-02: Peel Back the Outer Layer to Reveal Another

“Now this is just awful. Is this anything an ally of justice should be doing?”

“Says the evil star who cannot keep himself going without someone to attack.”

(Opening X-02 Open 09/16 13:30 “Before the War”)

Peel Back the Outer Layer to Reveal Another

You are given just one mission.

Make the world a better place. That is all.

The wall was covered with monitors which were controlled by large consoles. In addition to the operators using that specialty equipment, a very small group relaxed in leather chairs.

They were the truly powerful.

They were the summoners that stood at the top of Government, Illegal, and Freedom.

It was close to a miracle for the three of them to be sitting at a single table. The fear of destroying that delicate balance created too much tension for anyone to even carry over a cup of tea.

The only person who rudely intruded was the visitor who opened the door and stepped inside.

It was Shiroyama Kyousuke in his surgical gown and pants.

“Right on time. Everything is going well. …In fact, it’s progressing so smoothly that I’m getting bored. You really are not a cute kid in the slightest.”

The room was in motion.

A voice filled the air.

The voice had an aged weight to it, but the speaker was actually about Kyousuke’s own age. The girl had glossy black hair cut at shoulder length and she wore a kimono with gothic lolita frills added on. Even as she elegantly sat in her seat, her shoulder supported a primitive and standard Blood-Sign carved from a single sacred tree. It was not even collapsible and could not be taken apart.

She was Government Award 2799, Humanism.

Starting from the very basics, she had crossed between the three major powers and ultimately become one of the Thousand Eaters who achieved quadruple digits. She was an embodiment of human strength, but she had not joined the gods and had instead remained in the human world. She said she would depart on that journey once all sorrow had vanished from the world of man and felt no more reluctance, but even she knew that day would never come.

“This is the problem with you allies of justice. You force people to cooperate and you truly believe you can snatch up only the tear-jerking parts for yourself.”

Those words were spat out by a man with stubble and slicked back blond hair. He was a dangerous individual who wore a fancy suit yet would never be mistaken for a professional stock trader. He looked like he had stepped right out of an old mafia movie.

He was Illegal Award 0, Open Bluff.

He had never even bound a contract and never once summoned a Material. That meant he could not be called a summoner or a vessel, but he still had enough influence on the Summoning Ceremony industry to be the head of Illegal. Just like a normal person, his Award 0 status meant he would forget everyone related to the Summoning Ceremony as soon as they left his field of vision, but he was never betrayed or attacked. This was simply because gangs did not rule through power. They ruled through the illusion of having power. If he set up an environment where his enemies would tremble in fear and his allies would be charmed by that fear, the gears would turn on their own and bring about a favorable result even if he forgot all about it. He was truly an embodiment of the Illegal ideal of rejecting all proper effort.

“…Hnyah…yawn…mutter mutter…”

Lastly, a beautiful woman was nodding off despite the tense atmosphere around her. She wore a Taoist outfit with long slits in it and she had a charm on her forehead, so she looked a lot like a Chinese Jiangshi.

She was Freedom Award 500, Perfect Equilibrium.

She had no interest in any conflict and had simply slaughtered any who disturbed her slumber, but the next thing she knew, she had been lifted up to the top of a major power. Summoners were not the type to let sleeping dogs lie, so some had tried to make a name for themselves by using that trait of hers to attack their enemies, but she had destroyed all of them while acting only for her own amusement. Her Awards were precisely at the middle because she saw meaning in that mixture of good and bad, yin and yang…or so it was rumored. No one had ever actually asked her directly. It went without saying what happened to any fool who even slightly disturbed her sleep with an unnecessary question.

The three of them did not have their vessels with them.

That was a sign that they were disarmed and gathered at a neutral table.

Kyousuke declined to take a seat and remained standing as he asked a question.

“Is it really necessary to do this in the Miniature Garden?”

“You have that backwards. This place was prepared specifically to do this. The underground facility and all the personnel are setting the stage.”

“But most of them know nothing about the White Queen.”

“Unfortunately, the White Queen will be summoned somewhere in the world even if we end this now. And she will cause endless damage outside our control…just as she always has. So we will summon her under our control, manage the damage, and thoroughly crush her so that she can never show her face again. That is the wise choice here.”

“Completely destroying the White Queen? …Be honest. What are the odds of success?”

“…Hnyah…”

Were they taking him seriously or not?

Kyousuke’s voice seemed to be sucked into a bottomless hole. A voice did respond, but did it mean anything or was it only an echo? The hole was too deep and dark to tell.

The small boy glanced over to the monitors covering the wall.

They displayed the many developers, the many guards, and the many specimens… Biondetta and Shigara Masami were among them. Those people were of various ranks and various classes, but none of them realized that they were being monitored by another stage higher than their own.

“Now this is just awful. Is this anything an ally of justice should be doing?”

“Says the evil star who cannot keep himself going without someone to attack.”

The leaders whispered amongst themselves after following Kyousuke’s gaze.

If they had simply ridiculed the people from a position of superiority, it would have been vulgar but understandable. However, it took Kyousuke a while to understand because they expressed pity from the bottom of their hearts.

The Miniature Garden was no more than a large studio set and the Fifteen Siblings Project was no more than a script.

The White Queen.

The “White” Queen who Wields the Sword of Unsullied Truth (iu - nu - fb - a - wuh - ei -kx - eu - pl - vjz).

Out of the thousands or even tens of thousands of paths for the Summoning Ceremony, that theoretical strongest of the strongest was found by switching from Material to Material, climbing from the Regulation-class to the Divine-class and then the Unexplored-class, and ultimately reaching the peak of even that.

She was a mysterious being much like the imaginary numbers that could not actually be seen or experienced but were necessary to explain the laws of the world.

In a way, that Queen was like a tornado.

Even if they could be seen and were feared for their destructive power, no one was able to explain precisely how they formed. And it certainly was not known how to artificially create one.

Very few people could actually summon her.

Even the leaders of the three major powers preferred to use the primary colors of the Unexplored-class who were known as the Three, so they did not try to reach for that pure white. Those calm leaders had supposedly mastered their craft, but people often questioned - without voicing those doubts - whether or not those leaders could actually reach the pure white.

The White Queen had appeared here and there due to pure coincidence.

Only her overwhelming strength had spread through the world.

But the difficulty was much greater when it came to intentionally summoning her in an actual battle.

Kyousuke was one of those who had done so by accident.

It had been pure coincidence.

Just before the end of the Artificial Sacred Ground’s 10 minute time limit and just before the battle ended in a draw, she had manifested for a mere 0.02 seconds.

…On the other hand, there were a great many who claimed to rule in the name of the White Queen, but they always met tragic ends. They knew they could not reach her using the Blood-Sign method, so they forcibly twisted the formulas and only managed to glimpse her fingertip or a single hair for just a moment. However, the Queen’s stored energy and brainwashing charisma had still been enough to bring damage on an unbelievable scale to locations around the world.

She was the ultimate joker that one could not afford to draw.

She was too effective as both a poison and a medicine. That was Kyousuke’s honest opinion.

And.

This giant hole had been made to discover the people who had come into contact with that greatest evil, who had discovered a fragment of her power, or who had caught a glimpse of her charisma. And it was designed so those people would naturally step into the cage themselves.

Those people would normally be destroyed where no one could see, so the damage would only spread and spread.

So if the most dangerous people around the world were gathered in one spot and locked in, it was obvious where the White Queen would be summoned. And if she could be truly killed inside that giant cage built deep underground, then no one else would ever be exposed to that threat.

The world would have peace.

“Let’s make this mankind’s final battle,” said the embodiment of justice who led Government.

They were words as white as bleach that were so clean that they could end anyone’s life.

“So I have high hopes for the solution you presented to us: the Sewn Realm Summoning.”

Kyousuke’s shoulders moved slightly.

Next the flower of evil spoke to the boy who had created this situation.

“The small snowball you started rolling has grown quite a bit larger in our hands. It can easily crush the houses at the bottom of the slope now, so end this task yourself. It can be a coincidence, some twisted and misguided reasoning, or whatever else, but the Miniature Garden group will summon that disgusting Queen for their project. You sew her to this world so she can’t escape back to the other side. If you do…”

The atmosphere changed.

The Taoist outfit woman with a charm on her forehead had been nodding off before, but she stopped moving now.

She had briefly awoken. A thick scent of death hung over them all.

And they finally heard the words of the leader of those who put their own enjoyment first.

“We will completely and utterly kill her so that there is not even the slightest chance of her making a comeback ever again.”

Facts:

*The Miniature Garden and the Fifteen Siblings Project are no more than bluffs prepared by “the truly powerful” who lead the three major powers of the Summoning Ceremony.

*At this point, excluding accidents, summoning the White Queen using the Summoning Ceremony is extremely rare and is treated like the specifics of a tornado’s formation. Meanwhile, worshipers around the world have tried to forcibly summon even a portion of the White Queen using a method other than the Blood-Sign method, but they always receive harsh retaliation and devastating damage.

*The truly powerful made a list of everyone around the world who had come into contact with the White Queen herself or a small fragment of her (whether intentionally or not) and prepared a giant underground space and a grand project that would naturally lead those people into the cage. That way any trouble will occur under their control and they can manage the scope of that trouble.

*The truly powerful’s final objective is to fully kill the White Queen who brings chaos to the world.

*To do that, they called in Shiroyama Kyousuke and selected the Sewn Realm Summoning he suggested.

*Biondetta, Shigara Masami, and the others connected to the Miniature Garden do not know this truth.

*So they will never be able to become Shiroyama Kyousuke’s family. Ever.