Volume 7, 6: Beyond the Planet

Volume 7, Chapter 6: Beyond the Planet

Part 1

As soon as Beatrice and the others ended their break and returned to Ground’s Nir, they heard what Sky and Abyss had done.

“Squeal…”

Also, Boo Boo had returned to the surface and he held up a giant one-sided sword in one hand. He had taken it from the Execution Warrior. It did not seem all that out of place in his hand, but if a human tried to lift it even with both hands, it would probably crush them.

Boo Boo’s eyes were sparkling.

“Look, look, Beatrice!! This is my new partner!!”

“…”

“(Oh, is Beatrice flaring up a bit over his use of the word partner!?)”

“(He needs to be careful. She’s the type to get jealous over inanimate objects. I bet she’d blow up if she found porn in her boyfriend’s computer or phone browsing history.)”

Philinnion and Hermelina whispered their thoughts to each other.

Now, Boo Boo’s sword, Forget Good and Evil, did have a tip, but it did not seem designed for stabbing. The tip was more like a can opener, so it would be more effective to catch it on something and apply force that way.

At any rate, that was the good news.

The bad news was of course that Sky continued to watch them from outside the atmosphere.

They were in front of the brick house partway up the mountain.

Philinnion and Hermelina could not see Sky just by looking up, but she could spy on the surface from beyond the blue sky. And this was not a new state of affairs. She had been doing that for centuries now.

“We need to get up there if we want to settle things with Sky.” Hermelina pointed straight up. “But Sky will have learned from the way we reached the ‘sun’ by climbing the tallest mountain and using the islands of the sky area. I mean, that’s what allowed Beatrice to get close enough to make those eight holes in the artificial atmospheric barrier. If we use a route she knows about, she’s guaranteed to shoot us down with concentrated fire.”

“That will not be a problem,” smoothly replied a silver-haired girl in something like a racing swimsuit cut down to size. That outfit was different from the Percentage-type Magic that Beatrice and the others wore. Abyss had to be confident in the sturdiness of her own body more than the clothing. After all, she was not a biological being reliant on flesh and blood. Her neck had been repaired and she had replaced her lost arm in the Labyrinth. But most of all, there was her back. In addition to the many weapon arms attached there, there were two thick nozzles.

The girl with her long silver hair parted into two pieces explained what this was.

“Just like Sky, I possess personal rocket boosters. Please think of me as a top secret mobility platform. She is only generally observing the surface from outside the atmosphere, so I doubt she can see what is happening this deep in the mountain and forest. After all, she does not seem to have the ability to search for a target on the surface by performing a grid scan with the sensors installed across the entire island. She only seems to possess a few Palm Rat-sized drones.”

“?”

Beatrice frowned at that.

Perhaps because she could fly using the Magic flame wings created on her back, she still had a crucial question.

“But how do you and Sky get past the sky area? I thought the Fairies and the Thousand Dragon lost their buoyancy and lift once they’re above a certain altitude?”

“It is a simple concept. We complete all the acceleration we need in the lower altitudes where we have enough buoyancy and lift and then we let our momentum carry us through the unflyable altitude and outside the atmosphere. You can think of it more like firing an artillery shell than a bird that must constantly flap its wings.”

“Ugh,” groaned Philinnion while her suspenders squeezed her breasts and her butt pushed at her shorts. She was looking at the navel-exposing swimsuit girl like she was a handmade flying device predating the Wright Brothers.

Flat boob window Hermelina put a hand on her hip and sighed.

“But if we ignite a booster on the surface, Sky is bound to notice. And from then on, she’ll be locked onto us. Once you rocket off, you’re stuck on a single ballistic course, right?”

“I can of course use the boosters during my ballistic flight to evade to the left and right. I cannot change the general trajectory, though.”

There were apparently some ballistic missiles that zigzagged at random to make them harder to intercept from the surface. That would be what Abyss (who had reinforced her body with a black arm) was talking about.

Regardless, they did not really have any other option.

They realized Abyss had been in control pretty much this entire time. Beatrice was not entirely okay with that, but since this was related to the giant armory built by the humans of this world, it was too much for the humans of Earth to handle. This was indeed necessary to drag Sky out of hiding so they could settle this. Beatrice was simply thankful Abyss was not as self-serving and crafty as the Sage or the Hero.

Beatrice intentionally took a deep breath to calm her emotions.

“So. When do we begin?”

Delicate-looking Abyss responded by grabbing into Boo Boo’s thick right leg.

“Hm?”

“Immediately, if necessary.”

The rocket boosters on the bare navel girl’s back suddenly ignited. Philinnion and Hermelina were blown backwards while they just stood there. Beatrice would have been equally helpless if not for her 100% Fire Resistance.

Silver-haired Abyss’s feet rose from the ground and she made an announcement with a calm expression (and her cheek and boobs pressed against Boo Boo).

“I cannot take you all. These are only for individual use.”

“What!!!???”

Fueled by love and jealousy, Beatrice quickly grabbed onto Boo Boo’s other leg. Magic circles appeared over Abyss’s head and on Beatrice’s back.

A moment later, Abyss, Boo Boo, and Beatrice broke free of the planet’s gravity with frightening speed.

The side characters were shouting something from the surface far below, but their complaints could not reach the airborne trio. Beatrice produced flame wings from her back, but those were only for adjustments. They were already too high to fly, so they had entered ballistic flight thanks to the “running start” Abyss had made at the lower altitudes. If Beatrice was thrown off from this high up, she would never survive.

That was when a flash of light appeared at a point in the blue sky.

“!?”

“…”

Beatrice’s flame wings and Abyss’s boosters erupted. This twisted their course around just enough to avoid the white beam that tore through the space they had just vacated.

“Stop interfering. You are disturbing our trajectory.”

“Don’t be dumb! She predicted your evasion course!! If I hadn’t intervened, we would’ve been shot down!!”

Meanwhile, several more beams flashed from beyond the blue sky. Abyss and Sky were from the same model line. Without the random element that Beatrice provided, it was true Sky might be able to use their specs to predict what optimal action Abyss would take.

“Squeal… I feel dizzy.”

At the same time, Boo Boo groaned while at the center of the formation tugging on his legs. Although it was a testament to his strength that all he felt was dizzy after flying with such speed at such altitude without any Magic assistance.

“Anyway, Abyss!!”

“The oxygen and pressure issues go without saying. I will use my Magic to preserve a livable environment.”

“No, not that. Well, yes that, but the sky above us is generally covered by that artificial atmospheric barrier, right?”

“Does that really bear repeating now?”

“Then where are we headed? Surely we aren’t going to find that thick ceiling blocking our way. I want to believe we’ll find a hole since Sky is shooting down form here, but do we have any concrete proof of that!?”

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

“Aaaand you’ve gone silent. Oh, and there’s some red warning lights. You aren’t going to freeze up because this wasn’t part of your calculations, are you? We’re kind of relying on Spaceship Abyss staying functional here!”

But now that they were in ballistic flight, not even that sexy high-tech girl could apply the brakes. There was only one option left.

“If there’s anything in our way, we can break it. By shooting it.”

“Real aerial fights aren’t like bullet hell games where it’s over once you defeat the enemy! The barrier overhead is in our path, isn’t it!? If it shatters, the shards will rain down on us!!”

But there was no real time to gripe.

Even thought it was transparent, it still had an imposing presence. The thick wall was right there.

“Wah!!”

Beatrice desperately summoned Fire Magic, but there was no sound of shattering glass. The lines of heat she sent out ahead passed right through. The eight holes must have created cracks that spread and let some parts break off because there was a large, lake-sized hole here. The three of them passed right through the artificial atmosphere.

They were in space.

Beatrice had never expected to be thinking about this unknown territory after traveling to another world altogether. The composition and structure must have been different from on Earth because the atmosphere was not a scorching orange hell that burned everything to a crisp like she had seen on documentaries.

Everything was so still and quiet.

A hard and cold glass shell surrounded the blue planet. Ground’s Nir’s atmosphere actually looked cold.

“I am now using Magic to provide life support.”

Were they in a vacuum or not?

Either way, when Abyss moved her white throat to produce a physical voice, it reached Boo Boo and Beatrice’s ears.

“But that means all three of us will die if I am shot down. It feels strange for an artificial object to ask this of units with irreplaceable lives, but it would help if you set me as a priority defense target.”

But they could not take their time preparing.

This was where the barrier had broken.

Sky would have been standing on the edge of the “lake” to fire down on the surface through the large hole.

Which meant…

“She’s here,” said Boo Boo even though they still had a lot of speed and had not set their feet down on the ground yet.

They saw two rough silver braids and a distinctive outfit similar to a two-piece black swimsuit that was more about cooling than covering up.

A collection of arms extended from the back of her hips like a nine-tail fox.

That collection of technology was different from what Beatrice’s group was used to on Earth.

“It’s Sky! She’s looking our way!!”

Their eyes meet and red and yellow warning lights flashed.

Abyss and Sky.

Their weapon arms crawled creepily, their glowing parts spread out like fans, and they began an intense rush of Magic cannon fire.

Part 2

“Found it,” said Iroka, the oldest of the three maid sisters, in the Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo.

She sat on a picnic sheet in the garden and she held a notebook-sized tablet…but that was of course not all she was using. When connected to a parallel processing booster in international waters, she had enough “power” to overwhelm the world’s largest social media site.

“A nonstop computer uses duplicate wiring and chips to make zero downtime a reality no matter what happens. But the maintenance hatches are all kept separate. It seems the simulator was trying to hide the fact that it even used the nonstop computer method.”

“How does it help us to know that?”

When Second Sister Misoka asked that blunt question, Iroka sighed with a hint of exasperation.

“By tracing back the flow of people going in and out, we should be able to discover where the electronic components are coming from. I imagine they are avoiding any transportation routes that would be recorded by fixed cameras, but this is the age of smartphones, drive recorders, drones, civilian satellites, portable game systems, pet robots, security buzzers, and smart glasses. There are net-connected cameras everywhere.”

Of course, that was assuming Iroka was skilled enough to break through the locks and use that data.

“Buying the parts from defense companies and labs seems most likely, but if a single company controlled it all, then an outside worker could figure out the plans for the simulator. So I imagine it will be divided into smaller sections and the parts are bought from dozens or even hundreds of different companies.”

“Um, so what’s your point?”

Adult Iroka answered Third Sister Haruka while rubbing the younger girl’s head for no real reason.

“It means we have plenty of openings through which to slip in a virus. Let’s fake a random error report and get the usual maintenance workers to swap out the parts for our malicious ones.”

For that swap to work, they had to disguise their parts to look just like the proper ones, so Iroka had to have some partial plans on her tablet. And while she checked on those…

“Maxwell? I wonder what that means.”

“?”

Perhaps.

If history had been slightly different, there may have been someone around to tell them the meaning behind that name. But this reality was not so interesting.

Anyway.

The main point here was that the insistence on secrecy had required the work to be divided up so no one knew the whole picture. People would only know what they had been told, so no one would notice if a component had been tampered with.

They could not infiltrate the giant simulator protected within a sturdy shelter, but the human workers used normal phones and computers. Iroka was skilled enough to interfere with Shining Weapons and Gates, so faking a command was a piece of cake for her.

“Compose the command format, attach a record of overheating, order the replacement part by bike courier, and use double tracking with the courier’s phone and the package’s tag.”

“But that Sky robot lives in another world, doesn’t she? They only exchanged some data, so how did that cooperative relationship help her?”

“We will find out soon. Although I can make a pretty good guess already.”

“?”

“The Hero ordered Sky to construct that artificial atmospheric barrier more than 300 years ago and Sky has followed that command ever since. I doubt the miss was lying to us when she told us all that, but was Sky’s work efficiency really consistent throughout? Perhaps she only managed to build the general framework in the first 100 years and made no real progress afterwards. My guess is she optimized the process considerably in the last few decades.”

“You mean…?”

“Earth and Ground’s Nir. It’s hard to say which one has the greater technology, but what if we narrow our focus down to individual fields? We likely have the upper hand in one field in particular. During the Cold War when the Sage rose to prominence, what were the West and the East in such a desperate race to develop? What field was that?”

“Space…development?”

Outer space was such a foreign concept to the residents of a small idyllic island. They had probably never even considered the possibility. The three maid sisters had no way of knowing, but the only exception who had plenty of astronomical knowledge would be Vampire Kallikantzaros who controlled the lunar eclipse. Archangel Marinka had long protected the sun island, but not even she had gone to outer space. And the residual thought trap had only needed to be set up in advance by the Hero and later placed on the sun island by Sky.

“Given when the Red began to afflict the Iberian Orcs, we should be able to estimate when the artificial atmospheric barrier was actually completed.”

Sky and the simulator’s honeymoon was still underway.

So…

“Sky does not have as much space development technology as you would think. She knows she is being used by the simulator, but her knowledge is too limited to get by without having someone she can ask for advice as insurance.” Iroka supported the side of her glasses with her slender fingers. “If we throw that connection into turmoil, it should negatively affect Sky’s movements outside the atmosphere. Our attacks can reach her through the simulator. And that will give the miss an advantage as she fights in that world. At the very least, this should be more useful than twiddling our thumbs here in Tokyo.”

Part 3

Abyss, who wore what looked like a racing swimsuit with a large hole and a belt-like supporter, intentionally placed a heavy burden on her own boosters to destroy them and use the resultant blast to forcibly cancel her ballistic flight and gently set foot on the artificial atmospheric barrier along with Boo Boo and Beatrice. Her split silver hair spread out unnaturally.

Their footing was glass.

The blue planet was visible below.

Two long braids of rough silver hair swished around. Like some kind of weird bug, Sky clung to the transparent ground with both arms and legs and targeted the intruders with the many weapon arms coming form the back of her outfit which resembled a black two-piece swimsuit. That must have been more efficient than bipedal movement while outside the atmosphere.

Only the twisted, constellation-like magic circle floated serenely above her head despite the situation.

Surprisingly, gravity still existed beyond the planet. It seemed to be about a third of Earth’s. Beatrice’s hair floated up and Abyss looked a bit like her breasts were being lifted. It might sound difficult to function like that, but it felt similar to walking along the bottom of some water.

Was the glass barrier simply being held at this altitude above the surface? If so, gravity would be pulling on it and Sky would have to be constantly supporting the entire thing with her Magic.

Or would this area normally be weightless, but Sky (who had a yellow light in her eyes) had created artificial “weight” here so she could work. Either option would require an incredible amount of power.

This was the artificial atmospheric barrier.

There might be a natural defense barrier higher up that burned everything that passed through, or there might not. Either way, Sky had protected and preserved this structure for centuries. She must have destroyed any debris or asteroids that posed even a slight threat. All to protect the transparent barrier she had created, not the surface.

“If we talk this out-…”

“Unnecessary.”

Beatrice was cut off before she could finish her statement with miniskirt fluttering.

A moment later, Sky lifted her butt a bit while on all fours to aim the spear, axe, and other weapons on their arms. Fearsome lightning shot out horizontally.

Boo Boo spun his spine-backed sword, Forget Good and Evil, to block the lightning rushing toward Beatrice’s face. Then he swung the sword to the side to discharge it. The massive high-voltage current left in a safe direction.

“Arc Discharge!?”

Beatrice’s understanding only caught up once it was all over. It had all happened too fast. Both Sky and Boo Boo’s movements had been superhuman. Without his ability to sense faint electric currents, that single attack might have led to irreversible tragedy. If you could no longer move in battle, you were in a worse state than simply being killed instantly.

Air did not normally conduct electricity.

Lightning was a unique phenomenon in which the massive electrical power forcibly broke through the insulation of the atmosphere. How easy it was to break through depended on the composition, humidity, and density of the air and all forces would avoid stronger areas and flow toward weaker ones. Simply put, by swinging around Forget Good and Evil and making the air density uneven, he could intentionally guide the lightning where he wanted. Although that required Iberian Orc muscles which could crush a tank’s armor like clay if they traveled to Earth.

“…”

Sky moved directly to the side using all the fingers and toes sticking out of the black material covering her arms and legs and she waited for her next chance to attack. True to her statement, she showed no intention of speaking. She may have simply lacked that functionality, but she was intent on following her command to the end either way. Even though it would bring about great harm and even though the Hero was no longer around to benefit from it.

“Squeal. We need to stop Sky.” Boo Boo spun his large sword around and held it in one hand. “If she calms down, I’m sure she’ll listen to us. I mean, she’s the same as Abyss. She isn’t fighting because she thinks something is good or bad!”

“Hm? Stop, Boo Boo!!”

Abyss raised her voice in a way that was unusual for an artificial being.

A moment later, the girl’s butt hopped up to adjust the arms attached to the back of her hips. A giant shield easily clashed with and stopped Boo Boo’s Forget Good and Evil. This was not an issue of sturdiness or technology. The sound of the hit was odd. It was far too light.

(Oh, I get it. Boo Boo generally fights using the weight and speed of his hits, so the change to gravity has stripped him of his power!)

The girl thought to herself while her fingers held her blunt weapon using the hole in the grip. The Iberian Orcs moved so fast as they swung their bodies and weapons around that they seemed to be swimming in the air more than running or jumping. By angling their weapons like wings and slicing them through the air, they could pull off reversals that would be impossible for the average person. But that probably would not work the way Boo Boo expected with the strange atmospheric makeup of this extreme altitude. Abyss was providing a livable environment for them, but “enough to survive” was as far as that went.

Sky removed her hands from the glass ground and spun around on the spot. And she ignited her boosters as she did so. There was no time to be enchanted by the bodylines decorated by her skintight clothing. A skirt-like yellow light spread out and a powerful roundhouse kick easily sent Boo Boo flying backwards.

Would it be harder for her if they got too close?

Once more, the many weapon arms on the back of her hips made a noise as she stared down Boo Boo. The yellow warning triangle below her chest glowed even brighter.

“Boo Boo, get down!!”

Beatrice gave a shout, placed her slag-enlarged gauntlet on the grip of her log or steel beam of a Shining Weapon, and sent as big a fireball as she could manage toward Sky’s exposed bodylines. She doubted a cheap trick like this would win the battle. She only hoped it would act as a smokescreen.

But she did not get even that.

Was it Magic or was it a mechanical sensor? Several stone arrowheads entirely ignored the thick curtain of fire, tore through the air, and slammed into Boo Boo’s body.

Stone Tool.

When drops of blood floated out like round gems, it was Beatrice rather than Boo Boo himself who let out a scream.

Meanwhile, Abyss moved to the front with her weapon arms spread like wings. She took nearly-frantic Beatrice’s place and began grappling with Sky’s weapon arms.

Orange sparks and the sound of scraping metal exploded everywhere.

Ignoring how her clothes tugged at her large breasts, Abyss opened her mouth to speak while staring down her enemy at point-blank range.

“Rejected one, I am not as kind as Boo Boo.”

“…”

“And I know it is odd for an artificial being to say this, but to be blunt, I am pissed. Do you know what you are doing here!?”

She received no response.

Red and yellow warning triangles shined below their chests. Instead of using her many weapon arms, Sky used her slender leg to kick Abyss above the navel and forcibly put some distance between them.

The ideal distance for Sky was also the ideal distance for Abyss.

The twisted magic circles above their heads glowed with two different colors of light.

They fired barrages of Magic at close range to shoot down the other’s Magic and negate it all. The process repeated for hundreds, thousands, and even tens of thousands of Magic attacks. And unlike with the Sage, they showed no sign of being limited to a single Element. They really were two ultimate weapons. Beatrice had specialized in only the Fire Element, so she would have been worn down and destroyed by that onslaught. Not even Boo Boo’s thick bone and muscle could have resisted it.

But they could not afford to be reduced to mere onlookers.

“Squeal, is there anything we can do!?”

“Break us out of…this stalemate. Please destroy the ground below us!!”

Upon Abyss’s request while the recoil of the barrage made her large breasts jiggle, Boo Boo swung his spine-backed sword straight down. A tremor sank through the ground. The glass bent, but it was not enough to absorb the impact and several white cracks ran through it.

“Kh.”

Sky’s bare shoulders jumped while she was down on the ground with all fours. Was that a response to the terrain change or to the damage to the barrier she considered top priority?

She lifted her small butt and aimed a piece of Hero equipment toward Boo Boo even though he was farther back than Abyss.

“Hngh, impromptu shield.”

Abyss deflected the beam using one foot to forcibly flip up a piece of the glass that had broken off from the cracks. The flipped-up piece of transparent land protected them.

Although this seemed more of a way to adjust the level of Hate than a defense.

Sky, whose rough silver braids swayed from her movement, hated any interference with the artificial atmospheric barrier above all else. But that could be used to distract her and mess with her timing.

Sky kept switching between top priority targets, so she could not actually defeat any one target. Boo Boo, Beatrice, and Abyss might take damage, but they had time to recover. Meanwhile, Abyss had been focused on her fellow model from the beginning. That focus meant her attacks were pushing Sky back. It was slow, but the equilibrium was collapsing.

Abyss gave a roar as she wrapped her arms around her body, squishing her chest in the process, to grab her weapon arms and increase their physical range.

“I will!! Push!!!! Through!!!!!!”

“That is…not enough.”

Some kind of dark shadow appeared above their heads. But what was it? They were already on the artificial atmospheric barrier, so it seemed unlikely there would be clouds above that.

Beatrice was not green enough to carelessly look away in the middle of an intense battle, so she first saw the change thanks to the reflection in the smooth glass ground. But at first, she did not properly comprehend what she was seeing there. Or perhaps she simply did not want to comprehend.

“What?”

Come to think of it, Sky had created this barrier, but where had she acquired the materials for it? That artificial girl, who continued wiggling her butt to adjust the aim of the weapon arms, would have needed a massive amount of materials for the entire barrier, but where had they come from?

The answer was before their eyes: silicon asteroids.

A mass capable of covering the heavens was approaching them!?

Sky had always specialized in handling the silicon needed to construct and manage an artificial atmosphere large enough to cover every part of the planet. She had even used it to create a continent-sized cushion for the descent to the surface.

She probably could manipulate masses of glass even at a distance.

But even so.

The Holy Swordswoman spoke her immediate thought while her tattered cloak and miniskirt floated around her.

“Y-you have got to be joking…”

“Joking?”

Sky must have used them for materials and then redirected them to protect the completed barrier.

This was the same task she had gone through countless times over the centuries.

Ground’s Nir Reject Sky silently tilted her head.

“That is a communication tool I do not understand.”

Part 4

A moment later, it mercilessly happened.

Part 5

The asteroid with a diameter of hundreds of meters did not actually make a direct attack. But only because Beatrice and Abyss used tons of Magic to crack it.

But it did a lot of indirect damage. Striking the surface was not the only way a meteor or asteroid could do damage. For example, the friction of the air could break them apart during their descent, causing them to scatter lots of heat, light, and shockwaves. That had turned a 200 square kilometer area to scorched wasteland during the famous Tunguska explosion. Without even getting into the secondary effects and continuing damage, the simple explosion was greater in scale than a small nuke.

“Ohhh!!”

Beatrice immediately moved to cover for Boo Boo because she had 100% Fire Resistance. She could not fully protect him due to their difference in size, but it meant a lot that she managed to guard his face and chest.

But in exchange, Beatrice’s entire body was of course exposed to the blast.

“Gh…bh!?”

“Beatrice!?”

This was about more than just Fire. The asteroid was likely more Earth than anything. The blow from the shockwave and chunks larger than her head knocked the breath out of her and drops of red scattered from her tightly-closed lips. The tattered cloak was no help. The magic circle floating behind her back was flickering disconcertingly.

And it was not over yet.

The yellow light spreading out like a fan by Sky’s ears and the sides of her hips wriggled bewitchingly.

“Trajectory control set for #2 through #256. Maintaining effective course. Beginning wireless towing.”

“Kh. If a single asteroid manages to fall, it will destroy the livable environment on the surface,” said Abyss. “What good is this barrier then? Do you have any idea what you are doing!?”

“I was given just one order: build the artificial atmospheric barrier and eternally preserve it. I was never told to protect the lifeforms on the surface. This could cause the barrier to collapse, but eliminating you is worth the cost of repairs.”

It had been obvious from the moment she attacked the Hero, but this was a reminder of how broken she was.

She had not just mistaken the means for the objective. She saw no link between them at all.

And no matter how wasted it all was, she did have definite power. If she was allowed to continue, she would do great damage, not just to Boo Boo and Beatrice, but to all of Ground’s Nir.

However, if they fired on the asteroids so they broke up in the air, great heat and shockwaves would burst forth. Those were effectively colossal bombs. Your speed and toughness were irrelevant; there was no enduring that. Boo Boo had only survived last time because Beatrice had protected him. If he was hit by that repeatedly, he would be worn down and killed. And so would that person he cared for.

Then what were they to do?

Racing Swimsuit Abyss released even more sinister red lights from all across her body. Her metallic red ear lights spread out beyond their limit.

“Performing preliminary calculations of effective trajectories. Priority targets set. Detected 38 targets. Performing preliminary calculations of effect on other objectives if all are destroyed at once. Selecting for maximum efficiency. Calculations complete. Top priority initial target determined.”

“No, Abyss.”

But Boo Boo softly cut her off. While she was seemingly moving pieces across the game board in an unthinkably complex fashion, he grabbed her black right hand as if to correct the final move.

Yes.

Boo Boo generally allotted most of it to controlling his massive muscles so he did not destroy his own body, but his brain actually rivalled a supercomputer.

“That part goes here. Move a4 to r7.”

One of Abyss’s weapon arms grabbed Boo Boo’s huge body and threw him far overhead. She had already destroyed her own boosters, so in a way, this was an inevitable choice. If they waited for the asteroids to arrive at the barrier, they would be hit by the shockwaves of the asteroids’ destruction. If Boo Boo wanted to protect Beatrice, he only had to smash the asteroids from further away.

They were hundreds of meters across, but they were not protected by a complex arrangement of armor panels. They were only made of silicon - exposed glass. Boo Boo’s great sword could make critical cracks in them.

And so…

“I won’t make you do this over and over.”

It was like a straight-line charge.

Boo Boo flew toward a 100m mass of glass, swung Forget Good and Evil with his full weight behind it, forcefully shoved it into the asteroid, and sliced right through.

“Squeal!! That will take care of them all!!”

Boo Boo was not familiar with the Earth game of billiards, but once that first asteroid was shattered, the rest played out like a great cascade. Large shards scattered in every direction, hit other asteroids, altered their trajectories, and repeated the process. Asteroids #2 through #256 just barely avoided the planet below as if being dragged away by a magnet.

“…”

The only person who took damage was Boo Boo when the very first explosion occurred right in front of him.

His giant body entered a tailspin.

But it was all in how you used it. He had no boosters or wings, so he used the shockwave to change direction. And he did more than just return to the artificial atmospheric barrier. After gaining the momentum of a shooting star, he plummeted toward Sky with Forget Good and Evil in hand!!

Now he could ignore the weakening of his attacks in this low-gravity environment.

It was more like an artillery shell hitting than a sword slash. Sky reacted too late to dodge and instead raised her many weapon arms to defend, but those sank down from the force of the blow.

However.

It was not the weapon arms or Sky’s own skeletal structure that bent. What gave way was below her. The great pressure caused the glass barrier itself to bend like a plate spring.

She must have hated it since she wanted to protect that above all else, but the sinking of the ground below her meant the impact meant to be absorbed by her was instead absorbed by the bending ground similar to a car’s suspension.

A sharp noise followed.

The bending had gone too far.

A spider web of white cracks spread out from where Sky stood with her bodylines showing through what looked like a black two-piece swimsuit. Then it all shattered. With their footing gone, Boo Boo and Sky entered a fatal fall. No, that was not accurate. Sky had her boosters, so she could escape. It was only Boo Boo who would fall.

Or so everyone thought.

But.

But.

But.

The very next moment, Boo Boo kicked off of something.

Was it a fragment of the barrier that had begun to fall? No. Was it the remains of Abyss’s broken boosters? Again, no.

“The…surface?” groaned Sky while facing a threat that refused to leave even after she sacrificed the artificial atmospheric barrier she had set as her top defensive priority. “Something was launched up from the surface!?”

Part 6

It was a simple matter.

Boo Boo, Beatrice, and Abyss were not the only ones battling this threat.

“Work harder, weakest! Success here come down to you!!”

On the coast of the small island, Strigona was trying to motivate the Thousand Dragon, a dragon who measured more than 1000 meters long.

Now, the Thousand Dragon did not maintain such a large body by eating. The island was small enough to walk the perimeter in three days, so it would dry up in no time if she tried to obtain nutrition through normal means.

That was why she took a large quantity of fire, water, wind, and earth spirits inside her body and had them produce energy. It may have been like a symbiotic relationship with a parasite. When it looked like she was eating, she was only supplying those spirits with what they needed.

In other words…

“We just need an energy source more brutal than those ordinary Elements.”

At times like this, Strigona would cross her arms, stand tall, and give a vicious smile.

Strongest of the Plants: Ileana.

Bearer of the Demon Lord Title: Tselika.

Autonomous Statue: Frau Gothel.

Flammable Slime Lifeform: Flame Bubble.

Self-Baiting Trap: Gullveig.

Controller of the Lunar Eclipse: Kallikantzaros.

And lastly, Fairy Queen: Strigona.

With that group present, the answer was obvious.

“For example, the Break News! Our power has always been a step above, so you don’t get to come crying to us that you couldn’t reach some puny little film surrounding our world, weakest!!”

And the Thousand Dragon herself had a brutal weapon. By gathering the energy produced within her body and sending it in a single direction, she could fire what was known as a Dragon Breath.

It was a beam of light, an explosive roar, and a shockwave.

This blast was fired up toward the heavens, but even watching from nearby required great durability. Strigona felt her skin tingling and her black ribbon dress’s miniskirt fluttered dangerously. She could never have brought the normal-sized Fairies like Meridiana, Alice, and Morgan here.

“This is our world.” She roared with her hands on her hips and her eyes on the attack vanishing beyond the blue sky. “You seem to think you can do whatever the hell you want with it, so here’s a lesson for free: There are no side characters in Ground’s Nir! This is our will. We will be taking back our world, uninvited guest in the attic!!”

Part 7

Simply put, that provided a foothold.

Boo Boo planted his feet there.

He had broken through the artificial atmospheric barrier, lost his footing, and ended up in freefall, so he had used the torrent of an attack rocketing up from the surface.

“…”

He paused for a breath.

And then he jumped again. He jumped toward Sky who had used her boosters only to avoid falling.

She could not get away.

He had caught her off guard. Sky had already swung her body along an arcing path and bound herself with her own inertia to avoid his earlier punch, so she had no way of avoiding this new attack from the other side.

Boo Boo’s single-edged sword roared through the air.

Forget Good and Evil pursued Sky as accurately as a precision-guided weapon!!

“So what?”

Meanwhile.

Everyone has something they refuse to compromise on.

Sky’s eyes made a straining noise as they opened wide and their yellow light brightened.

“Connecting datalink and using access route to Earth. Requesting evasive trajectory calculations from simulator. Assist me!!”

Sky had not given up. Even while bound by the artificial gravity created by her own actions, she forcibly moved her body in a twisting fashion to shake just a bit side to side. It was only about a body’s width, but it proved she could still move. With the help of that complete simulator, she could dodge this!!

Part 8

However. It had already been revealed that Boo Boo, Beatrice, and Abyss were not the only ones fighting.

That was true back on Earth as well.

Namely, in the Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo.

“I’m in,” muttered bespectacled Iroka, oldest of the three sisters, while looking down at her tablet.

Haruka, the third sister, glanced over at the screen and tilted her head because she did not understand what she was seeing.

“Hmm? Do you not type away at a keyboard the whole time when hacking?”

“When you want to look up a recipe, do you start by staring at a black screen and typing up a script? You just tap the button, don’t you? In fact, I bet the AI advertisers send you suggestions before you even ask.”

“So what happened?”

Misaka, the second sister, kept things simple at times like this. She was willing to put off figuring something out if she did not need to understand it at the moment.

“A legitimate worker installed our modified component in the nonstop computer’s parallel board. That infected the backup that kicks in if the main one’s power goes out, but the main simulator was infected once they synced. The castle gates might be impregnable from the outside, but this let us open them from within.”

“So you have a route straight in?”

“Indeed I do.”

However.

This simulator was more efficient than the human Diet and government agencies, so it had effectively begun managing the government by assisting with the creation of national policy planning documents. The effects of destroying it were unfathomable. They might even spread beyond Japan alone.

This was the turning point.

They would turn the Detached Magic Palace into the world’s smallest country. It was all to protect a certain girl. That was easy enough to say, but could they actually do it?

After thinking through all that, Iroka smiled a little.

Iroka, Misoka, and Haruka.

The fact that all three sisters were working in the shadows of the government at their age was proof that they had no ordinary background. Haruka was young enough that she should have been part of the compulsory education system.

Since nations and corporations were affected so wildly by the Pieces brought from another world, a lot of the youth saw no real reason to bother with normal education and employment. And yet a lot of those also lacked the courage to risk their lives in the Labyrinth.

These sisters had also been in that awkward, in-between position.

But they had still wanted to be something special, so they had ended up falling to this position.

So when they first heard about that girl, they had been jealous.

They really had felt a much nastier envy.

But what they found was different.

She was much more isolated.

She was much more noble.

She was much more righteous.

Her appearance had resembled the Sage’s. She had possessed the rare traits of a Holy Swordswoman. She had produced real results. Based on the superstition born from those facts, she had been thrown into the luxurious prison known as the Detached Magic Palace, but she had continued looking to the future instead of just rotting away.

She was like a small flower growing through a crack in the stone floor of a solitary confinement cell. She used the hint of light shining through the barred window to spread her leaves and bloom.

The sisters had decided they could not let her wither away.

People were easily distorted. They themselves were an example of that. The girl had worked toward the future all this time, but no one knew what tomorrow would hold. So they decided to protect her. They would not kneel before some great saint. They would work to ensure a perfectly ordinary girl would not collapse under the external pressure bearing down on her. They would make sure she could live her life and remain ordinary.

They would do anything to that end.

That was what they had decided.

At the very least, this was far better than wandering aimlessly. It was far better than when they had obtained special power after hoping to be something special, but had failed to find a special goal.

“I may have been mistaken.”

“Onee-chan?”

“If you want a place to call home, then make one. You don’t have to wag your tail and bow down for someone while waiting for them to give you one.”

Stopping the simulator would be bad news for the country and the world.

The simulator’s supposed purpose sounded fine and all, but were the things it protected really so perfect? Was a system really just if it could only be maintained by locking a girl in what amounted to a prison with a different name and aesthetic?

For one thing, where even were they?

Did any of it matter to Iroka and the others when they would be making a brand new home for themselves?

“I do not care.”

She was not going to claim the simulator was to blame for all the tragedy.

But it calculated out how to benefit even from the incidental tragedies. That demon of statistics functioned much like it was running an organ business by maintaining a list of the sex, age, and blood type of everyone who died of illness and accidents.

She would end this age of being manipulated by something like that.

She and her sisters would leave these prison walls in order to bring freedom to their beloved master.

She placed her slender fingertip on the button displayed on the tablet’s screen.

She sent the decisive command.

“I do not care! This time, world, I will make sure you remember what it means to be free!!”

Part 9

Sky’s feet had left the shattered artificial atmospheric barrier.

She was also moving away from the blue planet.

Some slight static shook her mind during her evasive action.

“…!?”

The look on her face said she could no longer reach what she had been relying on. And heartless as it might seem, time did not stop. She could not change her course much thanks to her own inertia and Boo Boo leaped toward her with spine-backed Forget Good and Evil in hand.

On Earth and in Ground’s Nir, a great many people had wanted to settle things. Their resistance had taken different forms, but they had decided to break free of some form of control. They had decided to no longer live with their head forced down by someone else.

“Ohhhh!!” roared Boo Boo.

He was already within range for his large sword. Sky could not escape that thick blade by forcibly igniting her boosters now.

The many weapon arms crossed in front of her. But not in order to intercept an attack. This was meant to cushion against a blow. It was a nonstrategic reflex, similar to someone holding their hands in front of their face when a ball flew toward them.

Boo Boo did not hesitate.

He placed all his weight and speed on the end of Forget Good and Evil and he swung it down with all his might!!

“!?”

Sky audibly gasped as her two braids swayed through empty space.

Sounds of destruction followed. The weapon arms attached to the back of her hips were no defense at all. One after another, they were broken like dry twigs. The thick blade of Boo Boo’s Forget Good and Evil approached Sky’s slender body.

And.

And.

And.

(…?)

Ultimate Weapon Abyss was the first to notice something was off as she watched from the side.

This was odd.

Boo Boo’s attack had been perfect. Sky had leaped away from the planet to avoid any more damage to the barrier they were standing on, so her powerful inertia had limited her evasive choices and left her with no escape route. Desperately buying time by sacrificing the weapon arms was not enough. As a machine, she may have been willing to sacrifice parts of herself and thought she could make a counterattack if even one weapon remained, but not even that had worked. Boo Boo’s sword had smashed all of the weapon arms and continued on to slice her head apart.

And yet…

(It didn’t…reach her?)

Abyss’s artificial throat gulped as she confirmed the unfavorable situation.

(No! Did Boo Boo redirect his own blade out of the way!?)

Boo Boo felt a dull impact in his wrist. After slicing through the many weapon arms, he had twisted the thick sword at the last second to bring it down on Sky’s bare right shoulder instead of her head. Her slender form tilted to the side, but she had not ceased to function.

Even Sky herself widened her eyes in surprise at her survival. Meanwhile, Boo Boo alone viewed her face from close up.

He would not let her get away now.

And he raised his voice to a roar.

“Creating and forever preserving the artificial atmospheric barrier is your top priority and you were not told to protect the lifeforms on the surface. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

“What are you-…?”

“Is that what you actually want to do, or is it just what the Hero ordered you to do!?”

It was Abyss rather than Sky who looked like she had a stake driven into her heart.

“I don’t get how all those beepy machines work, but there’s something I figured out from talking with the Shining Weapons and Abyss. Sky, all you ever talk about is the artificial atmosphere. Almost like you aren’t allowed to do anything else! So give us the truth! Do you personally want to keep doing this!?”

“I-I…”

She tried to twist around as if to escape something, but she could not. There was no escape for her now that Boo Boo’s large sword was embedded deep in her shoulder.

“I will create and forever preserve the artificial atmospheric barrier. That is what I was created to-…”

“No!!” Boo Boo slammed her with a rejection of that standardized message. “No one’s talking about what you were born to do. The Iberian Orcs like me continually evolved to fight Abyss and the Hero turned us into materials for her body. And Abyss was forced to sacrifice everything to fight the Underworld Lord! Beatrice, Philinnion, Hermelina, and probably everyone else had roles expected of them and forced onto them! But that isn’t what matters!! We were all born in the hopes that we would do something, but it’s up to us to decide how we live!! Squeal, don’t get that confused, Sky. What you’re doing isn’t called living!!”

“…”

“So tell us. Boo, tell us in your own words!!”

Boo Boo would not stop speaking.

He pushed through.

He had to here. Someone had to!

“In the end, what does the artificial atmospheric barrier matter!? What have you accomplished by protecting it for centuries!? You’ve been watching us while all alone up here outside the planet, haven’t you? You’ve been watching us laugh, cry, and fight while no one at all knew you were up here! How did that make you feel? Can you really, truly say you’re satisfied with a life simply doing what you were told!?”

(I was commanded to create the artificial atmospheric barrier…)

A force within her kept her from saying that out loud.

Could Boo Boo hear her conflict because he had the power to read weak electrical signals? Or was it written plainly on her face?

“Tell us!!”

A great many powers had gathered together.

So many people had worked to give him this chance.

So he would not let it end prematurely. He could never spit on their efforts by killing her without asking this first.

No matter what.

“What did you really, truly want to spend that time doing, Sky!!!???”

More than the Iberian Orc’s powerful body and more than the thick sword embedded in her shoulder, it may have been those words that broke something inside Sky.

She bit her lovely lip.

“I…”

And the yellow warning lights vanished. The fan-like glowing yellow objects folded up at her ears and the sides of her hips.

With the warning triangle below her chest gone, the girl spoke a desire that she knew could never be.

“I wanted to be with everyone else.”

“Squeal, then leave it to me. You don’t have to cry anymore.”

He answered immediately, as if to say there could be no other answer.

Sky looked taken aback, so Boo Boo smiled.

“I was all alone once too, but everyone saved me. So now I can never underestimate that power.”

Something audibly burst as Boo Boo spoke.

Sky looked shocked in her heat-reduction outfit that resembled a black two-piece swimsuit.

“What…was that?”

“If there’s something in your head keeping you from living the way you want, then I’ll destroy it.”

He smiled.

And he spoke while smiling.

“Don’t worry. I don’t get these beepy machine things, but I’ve messed with them before. I can save you!”

It was Beatrice who looked up with miniskirt fluttering. What had happened when Boo Boo rewrote his Shining Weapon’s profile settings to save her?

Hadn’t they been fighting to escape that?

Was he saying they were headed right back there again?

“Wait, Boo Boo!!”

But.

But.

But.

“Don’t worry.”

She definitely heard his voice.

He was saying he would not take the easy way out and go for a desperate tear jerker of an ending.

“I won’t waste the life all of you saved. Squeal, we’re all getting back from here. I won’t let any of us be lost!! Not even one! And that includes Sky and me!!”

Part 10

In truth.

After Boo Boo crawled out of the dirt and woke up, a red-armored and white-miniskirted woman had chased him around for a while.

“Get back here, Boo Boo!!”

“Squeal!?”

She refused to forgive him even after he cried and apologized and she had beat him over the head with some rolled-up parchment. Of course, he may have only had himself to blame for dying and worrying the others.

Beatrice was hopeless at times like this. When he had reawoken, she had only been able to cling to him and cry.

In a way, only someone who knew more about the Iberian Orcs than Beatrice was suited for that role, so beating down Boo Boo had been the Sage’s job.

“I know you wanted to save Beatrice, but you pushed yourself too far in too many ways! When you get too fixated on some girl and decide to take things into your own hands, you’re not supposed to literally send yourself to heaven. I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous!! It’s more pathetic than those mantises that are eaten by the females!”

“Squeal… But Abyss said that was the only way to save Beatrice.”

“You already saw for yourself how she jumps straight toward suicide as a solution to any problem she faces, didn’t you!? Don’t listen to the mentally ill girl with scars all over her wrists!! She mistakenly thinks it’s a virtue to lose your life in exchange for something!!”

“O-ow… If you keep hitting me on the head, my neck’s going to get stuck in my body.”

“This is the best way to teach a fool.”

“What is that you have rolled up there? A legendary weapon???”

“This is an inn town newspaper I’m going to be publishing soon. I plan to become the media lord of this world to kill some time. And I’ll use that to rid everyone of their biases about Iberian Orcs.”

That was a hell of a thing to say, but Boo Boo only tilted his head since he did not understand the threats of a digitized society.

Beatrice’s lookalike tapped her shoulder with the rolled up parchment.

“Anyway, next time you think about doing something that crazy, make sure you wait for me. I can give you a lot better advice than an ultimate weapon who’s like an embodiment of destruction. I am known as the Sage, after all. Rely on me more.”

“Boo… But you’re an elusive free spirit who only shows up when you least expect it, so how am I supposed to find you when I want to- ow! S-squeeeeeeal!?”

Boo Boo tearfully jumped up when she grabbed and tugged on his curly tail. There really was no one who knew how to deal with Iberian Orcs better than her. It was not hard to see why it was said the powerful elder could not sneak any food whenever she was around.

“My point is, Boo Boo, that the basic idea was not wrong. But the method you used ignored the entire concept of safety standards. I am not fond of that kind of emotional but meaningless decision.”

“Squeal?”

“To put it extremely simply, we can’t have you shocking yourself in the process.”

The Sage spat out the words, but that really did accurately pinpoint the problem.

And…

“You might be sort of satisfied - or even feeling pretty proud of yourself - for risking your life to save Beatrice, but I don’t want you getting into some weird habit of self-sacrifice, so I’m going to take you down a peg with a single statement. Are you ready? I really am going to ruin it all with one little thing.”

Rather than lecturing him, her cruel grin made her look more like a child preparing for an especially good prank.

Boo Boo flinched and the Sage said it straight to his face.

“Find a way to ground yourself next time.”

Part 11

That might not seem like much of a revelation to the humans of Earth, but things were different for the residents of a world without the appropriate foundation for such things.

That world only knew of electricity as lightning or the stuff that made their clothes shock them.

But he needed a ground.

A ground!!

This was not the island small enough to walk the perimeter in three days. It was the glass artificial atmospheric barrier that divided the planet from outer space.

Normally, simple glass did not conduct electricity. That meant it could not be used as a ground - that is, it would not provide a safe outlet for excess electricity.

But this was a special barrier that the Hero had ordered Sky to build in order to transform the planet’s environment. It was a planetary control system that freely bent the light falling from the heavens, caused chemical bonds in the atmosphere’s components, made the ground rise up from the gathering of heat, and was capable of other things too. That meant it was not simply glass. Some method (that very likely relied on electricity) had been used to control the refraction of light. For example, the density of the glass’s interior may have been adjustable.

It was very likely made to conduct electricity.

And it continued on for as far as the eye could see.

For Boo Boo’s purposes, it was no different from land.

He could use it as a ground to protect himself!!

“Ohhhh!!”

He no longer needed the single-edged Forget Good and Evil.

He slammed his forehead against hers and roared. Sky was indeed the root cause of it all. But had she really done anything wrong? Had she really needed to be labeled a reject? Perhaps she needed to be punished for her crimes, but could she really never be forgiven?

He would provide an answer for all of that here.

He entered her artificial head and remove the order that the Hero had placed there out of her own delusions. Once the initial command was gone, all that would remain was the true Sky - everything she had developed within herself. He would find out what exactly that was. Even if she had gone along with the Hero’s command and done such an awful thing and even if she had abandoned the Hero during that long time, Boo Boo would forgive her if it was just an ordinary girl that remained once it was all over. He would bow down to anyone to get them to forgive Sky who had been alone for so very long. And if that kind of bright salvation was even somewhat possible, it was worth trying!!

The battle no longer mattered.

No one was talking about life or death here.

Only one thing mattered.

Could he bring a smile to this girl who had never known what it was to smile and could he break her out of her centuries-long isolation? If he kept his focus there, he really did not care what happened afterwards!!

“Hero…”

Boo Boo did not understand the complex high-level programming language used by Sky and Abyss.

It was all about feeling.

Something dark lurked at the core of her mind. It was like an amorphous blob and he saw it as a much more concentrated version of the cruelty he had received from strangers.

It would have saddened him had this come from within Sky.

But it did not.

It clearly stood out from its surroundings, so he knew it did not come from Sky herself. It had been pasted there. That root cause of her evil deeds had been forcibly embedded within her by someone else so it could never be removed.

So the emotion roiling in Boo Boo’s chest was anger.

“Your story already ended! So release Sky! Release this girl you’ve kept enslaved for centuries!! Let her go freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”

Part 12

A bluish-white flash burst out so brightly it seemed to scorch the inky blackness of space.

And the twisted, constellation-like magic circle above her head - that symbol of this conflict - silently vanished.