Mitou Shoukan://Blood-Sign

“Biondetta, you hit #5 and #8 into the pocket too. This is a complete mess.”

“Call me Detta! And am I only here so everyone can bully me!?”

(Stage 01 Open 09/17 07:00 “Before the War”)

Named Summoners, the 15 Children

Kyousuke was faced by an unbelievable reality.

“I dyed my hair pink.”

“…”

Biondetta’s flowing hair had been blonde before, but she had suddenly taken a step into the realm of fantasy. And it was more than just her hair that had left reality. She had cow-like horns on her head and an arrow-shaped tail on her b.u.t.t. It badly clashed with her chemical-colored surgical gown.

The 15 children’s living s.p.a.ce in the Miniature Garden’s Inner Circle had a number of s.p.a.ces used for socializing. Kyousuke frowned inside one of those which seemed larger than two school cla.s.srooms.

“What in the world is this?”

“It’s called preparation.” Biondetta tried to act like the big sister, but the innocence of her smile overshadowed it. “The Queen of Hearts – that is, Kyoumi – has some unexpected skills. Of all things, she says she can make clothes all on her own! She’s going around taking requests right now. It won’t be long until I can say goodbye to this skimpy thing covered in knots.”

“Hm? Aren’t there tons of clothes in the walk-in closet?”

“…You want me to choose from there?”

Despite being underground, the Miniature Garden was supplied well enough that they could play baseball or soccer if they wanted to. The stock of clothing was stacked up in giant piles. …Yes, it was just like a giant warehouse at a port used for exporting goods.

But…

“With all that surrounding me, I get dizzy. I don’t want to get anywhere near that closet anytime soon. I really do feel like I’ll get los-…I mean, get stranded while surrounded by all those piles of clothes.”

“So when you have too much choice, you end up unable to make a decision?”

“Hm?”

“Oh, nothing.”

Kyousuke and the rest of the 15 were not restricted in their life cycle. They could get up when they wanted, eat what they wanted, and do what they wanted. There was no schedule like a school’s cla.s.s schedule or a prison’s work schedule.

Nevertheless, most of them, including Kyousuke, were still wearing the surgical gowns they had been initially given. There were no windows and the concepts of morning and night meant little here, but they mostly functioned on a 24 hour schedule, got up at about the same time, and spoke with the others they got along with.

There was nothing rewarding or punishing them, so the adults were only manipulating them by having them enter that “framework” of their own free will.

This experiment was meant to turn the 15 of them into a single family.

Whether she had noticed that or not, Biondetta continued with an innocent smile.

“Instead of trying on an endless number of combinations like I’m brute-forcing a pa.s.sword, Kyoumi says she can create the image I have in my head! You should go speak with her too.”

“I’m fine with anything as long as it’s easy to move in…”

It sounded like this would be the next trend, so Kyousuke made his decision a lot like checking the weather before deciding if he would hang the laundry out to dry.

Biondetta giggled in her short surgical gown.

“Kyoumi would be upset if she heard you say that.”

“But won’t it be a lot of work for her if everyone asks her?”

“Not at all. She likes doing it, so she’ll be upset if you take the chance away from her.”

Was that how it worked?

Kyousuke’s eyes mechanically dilated as he discovered another correction to make in the future.

And then a floral scent tickled his nose. The next thing he knew, he felt something soft on his back. Someone seemed to have hugged him from behind. They wrapped their arms around his head, so he saw feminine arms pa.s.sing over his shoulders and draping down to his chest.

He turned his head in her arms.

And what did he find?

The white clothing and silver twintails of a Queen with incredible pow-

A pink-haired girl with a welcoming smile that seemed to cover her entire face.

“Oh, Kyoumi!”

“Heh heh. I made this before anything else.”

When he called her name, the girl responded with a smile br.i.m.m.i.n.g with humanity.

She had somewhat drooping black eyebrows and a lively face. She looked nothing like a being spoken of in legends. She must have made a pattern from scratch, cut the cloth herself, taken apart clothing from the humongous closet, and incorporated pieces of those. She wore a luxurious wedding dress with pieces cut away and it glittered with plenty of red, green, and yellow plastic decorations dangling from it.

She was Shiroyama Kyoumi.

She was one of the 15 and her card was the Queen of Hearts.

She was about two sizes taller than Kyousuke and Biondetta and she would probably be in high school in the outside world. She had prepared an alternative outfit as part of her hobby, but it may have also been because she had not liked how the surgical gown had shown off her growing bodylines.

“There are a lot of paintings and sculptures in the materials room near the Mock Battlefield, remember? I based it on those. What do you think? If I can reproduce this so well, you can be deadly sure I can answer any of your requests, right?”

“…”

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

The being that Kyousuke had carelessly caught a glimpse of during battle even though she could not be summoned intentionally.

Like a tornado, she could be seen by coincidence, but the details of how she appeared were not fully understood. Three of the truly powerful had joined together and arrived one thin layer away from the front line to deal with that ultimate threat. Only people at that level could see the threat lurking behind the radiant light. And Kyoumi was dressed up as that being.

“Hmm? Your pulse is racing, you dirty little boy.”

“Kyoumi-san, you don’t have to get so close.”

“Just call me Kyoumi. And I deadly mean it. Add the ‘-san’ and I’ll punish you like this☆”

She started rubbing her cheek up against him.

Kyousuke was helpless and sighed quietly, but Biondetta seemed to notice.

“What is it?”

“Well…we’ve been here for a while now, but it’s always the same people that end up gathering together.”

The 15 were still divided into a few groups and they frequently spoke with the others in their group, but they barely interacted with anyone outside it.

“I was just wondering if this is what you would call a family.”

“Who knows. I mean, we were sold off. We don’t have an example of an average and normal family.”

There was no sarcasm or scorn in her voice. Biondetta truly sounded puzzled.

Kyousuke turned his head and only saw a troubled smile from Cosplay Kyoumi.

“It’s not like the other groups are all that different, though.”

“Oh, you went around taking requests, didn’t you!?”

Biondetta gave a beaming smile like that was a huge discovery. Unlike her or Kyousuke, Kyoumi made appearances in all of the groups.

But Kyoumi ended up settling down in this group. They had decided where she belonged and she would only “visit” the other groups.

“Hey, Kyoumi. Do you think this structure is a success for the grownups?”

“Something might be happening soon. Something deadly.”

The Queen of Hearts finally left Kyousuke’s back as she said that.

Perhaps because he had dropped the “-san” as she asked.

“After all, they said they would put us through trials and disasters to break down the barriers between us and turn us into a single family. Maybe they’re checking where the gaps between us are while they adjust things to fill those in. They might be using a supercomputer or something.”

It was like gathering everyone in a movie theater to have them all face the same direction and shed the standardized tears.

Or like taking each other’s hands to board the lifeboat while escaping a sinking ship.

“More importantly, I visit all of the groups, so I have a lot of information on all 15 of us. And if you ask me, Kyousuke, you’re a flashing yellow light right now. You should be careful.”

“?”

When he tilted his head a little, Shiroyama Kyoumi presented an extremely realistic problem despite her otherworldly outfit.

“You’re breeding some jealousy. Especially from that berserker, the Hatter. You need to be deadly careful.”

The Miniature Garden was quite large.

Each room tended to be the size of a school gym and they were arranged like a necklace of morning dew on a spider web. The main corridors connecting rooms were large enough for semi-trailer trucks to pa.s.s each other and even the secondary corridors were large enough for a normal car to drive around. Kyousuke and the others could use program-controlled electric carts if they wanted, but a lot of them chose to travel on foot.

There was a simple reason for this.

They could jog to build up their strength.

“Hey, Rabbit Boy. If you’re headed south, then join me.”

“…”

Kyousuke did not bother matching his pace to the boy who arrived next to him.

They both maintained their high-speed pace, but Kyousuke did not reject the boy either and continued running as planned.

This was the Hatter, the leader of another group. That group had the most people in it. He was even older than the Queen of Hearts and, from Kyousuke’s perspective, he looked almost like he belonged with the adults. He had messy blond hair, dark skin, and a strong body.

Instead of a surgical gown with pants like Kyousuke, he casually wore a white jacket without a necktie. And true to his a.s.signed name, he had a small straw hat on his head. But that hat had a silverwork decoration wrapped around it, so it looked a lot like a crown.

He gave off a similar scent to that man from Illegal. Or perhaps it was the scent of a Central or South American criminal organization.

It was obvious from the way the fabric was used, but his outfit probably had not been made by Kyoumi. Everyone else had been daunted by the humongous closet, but he had looked through the tens of thousands of options and found the optimal combination on his own.

In other words, he had spontaneously left the rails set by the adults.

And Shiroyama Kyoumi had called him a berserker.

Even in Lewis Carroll’s already absurd and nonsensical story, the Hatter on his card was known for being insane and broken.

“If you’re headed south, are you taking a cla.s.s with someone? Like with Kuresawa?”

“With Shigara-san.”

“Madam Professor, huh? I doubt you’ll get much out of that anytime soon…”

“But she seems to be the most normal. Both in the theories she presents and in her personality.”

The Hatter laughed scornfully.

They were conversing while running at an above average pace, but neither of them seemed at all out of breath.

“That’s a good one.”

He was the madman.

He had been given the role deemed nonsensical even in a children’s story full of absurdities.

“But, Kyousuke, you’re probably the only specimen who finds any solace in the fact that someone’s the ‘most normal’.”

“…”

“Does Biondetta look normal to you? Or for someone else near you, what about Kyoumi? Don’t make me laugh. They’re warped in their own ways. Not that I’m one to talk when I’m the craziest of us all. For one thing, it isn’t normal to be taken to this Miniature Garden. We were invited here to the far end of the world, so there had to be some reason we were selected. That’s how it works. So,” continued the Hatter. “I’m curious about you. If we were going to rank the 15 of us, Humpty Dumpty and the Jabberwock might end up higher than you. But I’m still curious. My nose for combat ignores my crazy brain and I can’t stop myself from talking. Shiroyama Kyousuke, the strangest and least normal one here is you, the one who looks the most normal. After all…”

He arrived at a certain conclusion.

“You were still the most normal when we had our first experience with the Summoning Ceremony and made our contract with the Three.”

They stopped moving.

Their high-speed pace came to a sudden end because the Hatter held a long spear-like stick out horizontally to block Kyousuke’s path.

It was a Blood-Sign.

That crystallization of human knowledge could freely summon otherworldly beings and even used the G.o.ds in heaven as a stepping stone to reach even greater heights.

Their shapes and materials varied, but the Hatter’s started as a single silver coin. At some point, more and more coins stacked on top of the one in his hand until it had transformed into a long and heavy metal rod.

“You’d normally be afraid when something like this is suddenly handed to you. And when you learn that G.o.ds exist so nearby and that our d.a.m.ned human hands can control the laws of heaven.”

This boy did not judge people based on their size or age.

That madman judged all threats equally if he deemed them to be insane.

“You’d normally tremble in fear when you learn you’ll be cut off from normal society and will be forgotten by normal people once you leave their field of vision. It isn’t that I really want to head outside or that I want go around working to help people in society. But even if it’s only a hypothetical, it’s hard to accept that someone else took away the option to live a normal life.”

Had there been any meaning in him drawing the Hatter card?

Was he someone who measured the size of people’s heads and gave form to something to contain them?

“It would make sense to tear at your hair and writhe on the floor. It was only the very first step and we were already at that level. And yet you’ve somehow managed to maintain yourself. That’s because you weren’t normal in the first place. What I’m saying is…you’re weird. It’s weird that you can stay normal while you accept this decidedly abnormal environment. In fact, did you even bind a contract there?”

The hatter quietly stared at him.

His eyes may have contained madness, but they were steady.

Strangely, his eyes seemed more focused on reality than anyone else’s.

“Who exactly are you?”

“…”

“Why are you here? You’re the most normal and the most deeply involved, so it doesn’t feel like you were ‘brought’ here.”

That was when a quiet metallic sound reached them.

Instead of from ahead, behind, left, or right, it came from directly above. It came from the tall, tall Great Ceiling. Something was tangled around the steel beams from which the countless halogen lights hung. It was a dark shadow. It was an octopus-like dark blue night combat uniform with a gas mask. In addition to the two legs, mechanical tentacles extended from the waist and wrapped around the steel beams.

The figure stood upside down and motionlessly readied a carbine with a grenade launcher equipped on the bottom.

The adults had said they would not interfere with the 15’s life.

But that had been retracted thanks to the threat approaching Kyousuke’s throat.

Faced with that inhuman accuracy, the Hatter sighed and put away the silver coin Blood-Sign. The coins fell away, but not a single one was heard hitting the floor. They all vanished into empty air.

“The guards, huh?”

They relied on guns, but since they could perceive Kyousuke and the others, they likely had Awards. Since they were not focused on summoning, they may have stopped below 100 to maintain a compromise with the real world.

“They have to know the superiority of guns isn’t gonna cut it.”

But the Hatter had not fallen back because he feared the bullets.

He had more to say as he left.

“I think there was meaning in the cards we chose at the beginning. You could call it fate.”

“…And what did you see in the Hatter?”

“First, that I’m unexplainably insane. And second, that I’m obsessed with crowns.”

The madman laughed and poked at his temple.

“And I’m not talking about this straw hat thing. Taking on bulletproof armor and bullets won’t get you anywhere. The expenses will just keep piling up and you won’t have anything to show for it. If you head into the mountains with a nice polished hunting rifle, you don’t just want shoot some crows and rats, right?”

“…”

“I want to fight someone with a larger crown on their name. Now that would be worth stuffing and mounting on the wall. Shiroyama Kyousuke, you’re probably the master of this mountain. And the crown on your head isn’t anything as cheap as ‘strongest’ or ‘invincible’ is it?”

The Hatter turned down another road.

Sensing the threat had pa.s.sed, the gas mask figure up above moved his or her tentacles to leave.

Left all alone, Kyousuke stared in the direction the madman had gone.

The way that boy spoke, no one would believe anything he said. And he seemed to enjoy that, so he showed no sign of changing.

But how much of the truth had he seen in Kyousuke?

Had he seen through to the foundation of the Fifteen Siblings Project? Or had he seen through the next thin layer and to what lay even deeper?

“You really like to make things exciting, don’t you?”

Shigara Masami sighed on her stool with her long black hair held in a ponytail by a scrunchie and while wearing a dark blue tight skirt suit and a lab coat.

In addition to the living s.p.a.ce for the developers and guards, the Outer Circle contained several research facilities of various sizes. They all took different approaches toward making the 15 into a single family.

Madam Professor of Government used a s.p.a.ce much like a hospital examination room.

It contained a stool, a steel desk, and a simple examination table. There was a light box for viewing X-rays on the wall and a computer and flat-screen monitor on the desk. The desk also had a small bottle of sunflower seeds, so she may have been keeping some sort of pet. Or did she eat them herself? It was hard to tell.

This was likely a form of roleplaying.

The Fifteen Siblings Project was structured like a family, but the adults had each constructed their own independent worlds: a school, a corporation, an army, a prison, a pa.s.senger plane, a cooking cla.s.sroom, a workshop, a fitness gym, and a hospital. They all had their own unique color, but anything worked as long as it formed a hierarchy or a society with a host.

However, this was not actually an examination room. There would be a bunch of frightening machines beyond the white cloth part.i.tion behind Shigara Masami.

“Any risks to your safety or peace are reported to us. So things are tense enough for someone to pull out their Blood-Sign? …You do understand that continuing in that way would lead to an appearance from the G.o.ds of legend or something even greater, don’t you? We manage all the Incense Grenades, but they aren’t entirely impossible to make on one’s own. Especially for kids like you who aren’t exactly normal.”

“I didn’t do it.”

“Well, they say rain hardens the ground and conflict is a form of communication. And you wouldn’t be much of a family if you never fought.”

She whispered that last comment to herself.

She also toyed with the stethoscope (which was probably a prop for her roleplaying) resting on her large chest and she glanced over at the flat-screen monitor on the desk.

It displayed a colorful line graph that changed in real time, but it did not seem to be an EKG or stock prices.

There were 15 lines in all.

That matched the number of siblings.

“This is a Relective Graph. …Of course, it’s just one of the indicators we use.”

It measured their heartrate and brainwaves to create a general approximation of them as a person.

So the closer the lines came together, the less distance there was between them as people. And they would eventually converge enough to call them a family.

There were about three main branches and Kyousuke was part of one of those.

The Hatter was wandering all alone near the very top of the graph.

It was looking difficult for them all to converge into a single main river. And even if they did, there was little data suggesting that would actually prove they were a family. The researchers had simply taken statistical data from thousands or tens of thousands of volunteer families and the majority of those sample families had converged to that extent.

(Plus, summoners and vessels disappear from all cameras and sensors while inside an Artificial Sacred Ground, so this allows them to notice right away if we try to use the Summoning ceremony in secret.)

That said, Kyousuke and the others had simply been told to “become a family”, so it was nice having some visible numbers to set as a goal.

The lab coat beauty intentionally changed the mood while crossing her legs.

“Okay, we don’t want to waste any time, so let’s get to ‘studying’, Kyousuke-kun. Thank you for choosing my basic theory again.”

To reiterate, Kyousuke and the rest of the 15 were generally free to do as they wished and they were not forced to follow anything like a school schedule or a prison work schedule.

They were free to choose if they would take lessons from the adults and which one they would choose as a teacher. Some stuck to a single individual, some stayed away from them and studied alone, and others wandered from one to another in search of one that suited them.

They were free to do as they wished, but they naturally aimed for the top.

Why? There was a simple reason.

No one wanted to be branded incompetent and mocked as an idiot. There were two ways to avoid that: trip up everyone else or outdo everyone else. For the time being, the 15 were tending toward the latter.

She placed the negative to some data in the light box meant for viewing X-rays.

“Okay, pay attention here. The framework of a ‘family’ can mean many different things, but there are a few theories as to how we define a family. Simply using blood relationships is a tad unrealistic. After all, human beings are not skilled enough to perform a blood test just by looking at someone.”

“But the closer someone’s genetics, the more similar their facial features will be. Isn’t it defined as people who look a lot like you?”

“In that case, you can never grow any closer to your wife or your step sister.”

“So a family is defined by something that happens in life, not by your birth? Like the imprinting of a chick?”

“This would be a lot easier if it was that simple. I think the life cycle – especially what you eat – is important.”

“So you’ve gone back to the basics of building a nest?”

“People’s scent is influenced by what they eat. If you live in the same house and pick up the same cycle, you will naturally smell a lot alike. And one of the most well-known signs of future family troubles is when someone stops showing up for meals. That shift in the cycle alters their scent, so the two of them will stop viewing each other as part of the same group. If a large enough gap forms, they might as well be strangers.”

“That would explain why a new member can join a family, but isn’t it a little forceful? By that logic, someone who ‘leaves’ to live on their own or to marry into another family would no longer be seen as part of the family.”

“Oh? It isn’t unusual for distance to grow between family members when one begins a new life. When that family member returns for the Bon festival or New Year’s, don’t people find them to be ‘nostalgic’? Although I will admit that genetically similar people will emit similar hormones, so they gain a similar scent more easily when eating the same food.”

“But wouldn’t that mean you temporarily lose the ability to recognize your family when you have a cold or allergies?”

“In all seriousness, I think the tendency of people to act rudely while sick may be key to this. Oh, if only we could investigate the corpses of the medieval n.o.bility whose bloodline morality completely collapsed. There’s a chance that attempted poisonings and rampant venereal disease had dulled their senses…”

“I really think you’re going a bit far to suggest stuffing some balled up tissues in your nose will break down the bonds of family.”

“Ah! You’re using that example to make fun of me, aren’t you!?”

The adult woman started pouting, but stuffing tissues in her nose was unfortunately not going to fix it.

This was the theory held by Shigara Masami, one of the developers who managed the Miniature Garden.

It was but one of dozens, if not hundreds, of theories.

Learning about these things would not help them in society, nor would it lead to any special qualifications or skills. But if the 15 absorbed these, they would be able to share in the values of this Miniature Garden. It was like a guidebook with a valuable coupon in the back. Learning it came with a variety of privileges and enriched their lives. They would no longer carelessly stumble.

At a college-prep school, the students were taught the importance of educational history. At a technical school, they were taught the value of unique skills and qualifications. The uppercla.s.sman/undercla.s.sman hierarchy and the relationship between cla.s.ses and years were all built on that basis. Just as a dumb uppercla.s.sman would not be viewed with respect at a college-prep school, an egghead uppercla.s.sman would be left behind at a sports school. There might be another path for them, but that possibility was rejected. Once they strayed from the path set up by the school, they might consider themselves a dropout and even consider suicide.

“But why bring the Blood-Signs and Summoning Ceremony into this?”

“That would be more about a form of proof and testing than it is the thesis. Not only are Materials a threat to a pure family, they will crush the established theories even when they have been gathered into a system of religious morals. Can a small moral overcome a large one? No, even if it can, it would not bring us all together once it was spread through the world.”

“You’ve mentioned this before,” cut in Kyousuke in his surgical gown and pants. He spoke slowly as if speaking to a small child. “Do you have any evidence suggesting you can safely control that once you summon it?”

Shigara Masami maintained her smile.

Ignoring someone’s seniority was a simple way of igniting their anger, but this ponytail beauty was not bothered.

“If that is all it takes to crush this, then it is meaningless. If that is all it takes to crush this, it is not worth continuing. Even if we are talking about a tornado we have only received sporadic glimpses of…even if we are talking about the White.”

It was the perfect answer.

But as Kyousuke faced her, that perfection seemed to grow brittle.

Not that he was one to talk.

“Now, Kyousuke-kun, did you understand everything I told you?”

“I suppose.”

“Then can you repeat it back to me verbatim, starting from the very first word"?”

Those piercing words were the polar opposite of her smile.

That request might normally have elicited shock or a gasp, but Kyousuke was different.

“Starting from, ‘You really like to make things exciting, don’t you’? Or from, ‘Okay, we don’t want to waste any time, so let’s get to “studying”, Kyousuke-kun’?”

Shigara Masami laughed.

Shiroyama Kyousuke rattled off her own words with machine-like accuracy…

“The rankings have been updated,” said Shiroyama Kyoumi the Queen of Hearts with her somewhat drooping black eyebrows.

Kyousuke, Biondetta, and Kyoumi were in one of the party rooms of the Miniature Garden’s Inner Circle. The room was equipped for indoor leisure activities such as darts and billiards. The billiards table was too large, so Kyousuke and Biondetta would stand on a stool when they held the cue. They had to focus on balancing, so they ended up developing a unique style of play. And Biondetta was leaning over with her cue while wearing her short surgical gown, so it was dangerous in another way for her.

At any rate, Kyoumi must not have liked how Kyousuke and Biondetta were too focused on the billiards table to respond, so she moved the ranking board from the large karaoke-style screen to the LCD screen that formed the top surface of the billiards table.

Biondetta had been skillfully lowering her hips and holding her cue while standing on the stool, so she immediately gave a tearful shout.

“Ah! My guide line disappeared!!”

“The. Rankings. Have. Been. Updated.”

Kyoumi did not care. Their positions were already settling into place. The 15 were divided into a few groups and individuals were separated into castes within the groups. Shigara Masami and the others were probably frustrated as they monitored it all.

“Besides, it’s deadly boring if you just hit the ball along a monitor-controlled line. You’re only moving your hands the way you’re told.”

“It’s not supposed to be fun!! This is training. It’s defrag work meant to fine-tune my conditioning, so I have to hit the b.a.l.l.s along a preset optimal path. Oh, honestly! Watch me avoid #5 and #8 while hitting #4. If I can bounce the cue off the sides twice…”

After a loud sound, Kyousuke sighed.

“Biondetta, you hit #5 and #8 into the pocket too. This is a complete mess.”

“Call me Detta! And am I only here so everyone can bully me!?”

What kind of training was that?

Kyousuke rubbed chalk on the tip of his cue and faced the billiards table.

1st: Shiroyama Shizuku the Jabberwock.

2nd: Alberto S. Divinesmith the Hatter.

3rd: Claudia Shiroyama the Humpty Dumpty.

4th: Shiroyama Cain the Dodo.

…

…

…

“The top ranks really don’t change much. The top three switch around to a deadly extent, but none of them falls into the lower ranks.”

“I don’t like it,” said pink-haired Biondetta as she balanced on the stool and pouted her lips. “We do just as good as them in pure wins, so why don’t we ever get a top score!?”

“The Summoning ceremony isn’t a tool for fighting; it’s a technique to summon the G.o.ds. So there are a number of methods: taking the shortest course to the Material you want or making a swift recovery after some interference.”

“Then why even compete in the first place? If they just want accuracy, we could hit the White Thorns into targets drawn on the wall!”

“That’s because the Summoning Ceremony is based on the one-on-one ritual battles performed for a G.o.d.”

Biondetta let Kyoumi rub her head, so it did not look like she was going to move from that spot anytime soon. It was quickly becoming apparent that she made a stubborn show of her pride while actually being very easily swayed.

There were two simple reasons for their focus on this direct ranking system.

First, they wanted a simple method of measuring themselves, just like at a college-prep school or a sports school. If they had a basis with which to judge their status, they could more easily judge their distance from others.

And second, there were enough Blood-Signs and Incense Grenades to go around, but…

“Ahh, ahh. I guess that top 3 group really is going to hog the vessels,” sighed Biondetta while looking to Kyoumi…no, to her costume. “If they have the vessels all to themselves, will they be the first to summon that White Queen who only shows up by accident?”

If they did that, someone might praise them.

She would never admit to it, but Biondetta’s tone made it clear what it was she yearned for.

“…”

There were not enough vessels.

The adults had only prepared 3 vessels for the group of 15.

They remained in the Mock Battlefield and would renew their contract with whoever showed up for a mock battle. But once the top 3 spots were fixed in place, the adults would probably give up on the rest and focus on those 3.

That was an ominous thought in this closed Miniature Garden.

Those 3 would have exclusive use of the Materials which were immune to blades and bullets. It would create the ultimate privileged cla.s.s. Or it would be just like the ancient religious leaders who coopted the glory of G.o.d to further their own corruption. With no way out of this environment, they could not even imagine how much would be taken from the lower ranked group.

(Maybe that would count as success.)

Instead of a cheerful family, it would be structured around a powerful central pillar, but that was still a form of family. The Miniature Garden’s ultimate objective was to remove all seeds of conflict from the human race, so as long as they achieved that result, the process might not matter so much.

And just as Kyousuke considered that, an extraordinary force shook the entire giant structure located 500 meters underground.

The indoor lights had been stable enough to provide the illusion of uniform lighting, but now it blinked irregularly. Was it one of the impact buffering structures, or had things simply exceeded the limits of the design? Either way, the ground rocked like a boat in the waves and they heard disconcerting creaking sounds from overhead.

“Kyah!?”

Biondetta wobbled and nearly fell from the stool. From the other side of the billiards table, Kyousuke held out a cue longer than he was tall and stuck it below her armpit to support her.

“Thank you, but I’d rather you didn’t poke at a fragile maiden with a stick like she’s something dirty.”

“I couldn’t reach.”

For some reason, Biondetta glared at him even after he had saved her.

Relationships were hard. Following the formulae did not guarantee everyone would reach the same answer.

“That was close by, wasn’t it?”

Shiroyama Kyoumi the Queen of Hearts hesitantly glanced over toward the party room’s entrance. There must have been a poor connection somewhere because the lamp on the wall was flashing intermittently.

Some time had pa.s.sed since the explosion, but the room’s roof continued to creak. It felt like the air had grown heavier and an invisible hand was pushing down on their heads. No matter how large the s.p.a.ce looked, they were reminded of the thick rock they were trapped below.

And they quickly received an answer.

The shaking had sent the billiards b.a.l.l.s rolling all across the table, but the ranking board displayed there had changed.

Biondetta and Kyoumi exchanged a glance.

“The Jabberwock fell from #1?”

“And Humpty Dumpty moved up from #3. Is that what that was…?”

They gulped and started to leave the room…no, to visit the source of the vibration. Instead of a positive curiosity, they were driven by a negative anxiety that would only grow until they saw what had happened.

Kyousuke made sure the billiards board had saved the positions of the b.a.l.l.s just before the incident and then followed the girls.

Their living s.p.a.ces were located in the Inner Circle of the Miniature Garden’s spider web like structure. That was close to the central Mock Battlefield.

And as they approached, it was obvious something was wrong. The smooth white walls had small cracks in them and the internal wiring must have been damaged because a few of the lights were out on the Great Ceiling. The level of damage grew the closer they got to the center. Some of the internal wall panels had collapsed and some doors creaked after being knocked out of place.

“Watch out.”

“Gyubh!?”

Kyousuke grabbed the neck of Biondetta’s surgical gown from behind just before a giant halogen light fell from the Great Ceiling. The basketball-sized ma.s.s just barely missed her, but when the pink haired demon turned around, her face was red, she tearfully trembled, and she bit her lip.

“〰〰〰!”

She tried to say something, but she was interrupted.

A few boxy medical carts – something like indoor ambulances – pa.s.sed them from behind. Help must have been needed for some reason. The insides of the vehicles must not have been enough because guards wearing black clung to the roof and sides as well.

Gray dust wafted out from the Mock Battlefield’s explosion-resistant gate.

While the medical carts rushed in, someone fell out from behind a curtain that looked like dirty cotton candy. It was just like someone who had been wandering through the scorching desert for days and then got caught in a sandstorm right before reaching an oasis. They collapsed while showing no sign of speed or intent.

“Ah,” said Shiroyama Kyoumi without thinking.

Who was Shiroyama Shizuku the Jabberwock?

She was one of the superior ones who was never shaken from her spot in the top 3 on the ranking board. She specialized in the Divine-cla.s.s of Materials like Yamata no Orochi, Nidhogg, or the Hydra. She did not stick to any one Sound Range or mythology. Instead, she was known for summoning violent dragons. That strong preference led her to play around from time to time, yet she had the skill needed to never drop in the rankings. She never allowed herself to use the lower Regulation-cla.s.s or the higher Unexplored-cla.s.s. She always stuck to the Divine-cla.s.s and used that specialty to manipulate and torment her opponent. She had been a symbol of the wickedness found in the power of mythological beings.

And yet that tyrant of the divine world…

“Ah, ahh, ahhhhhhhhh…”

She had lost the right to stand on two feet and could not even crawl on all fours.

She pressed her cheek to the floor like she had a rag on her face.

Her mouth hung limply open and sticky drool flowed out.

Her bangs covered her eyes which had lost the light of rational thought.

Her core as a human being and her dignity as an individual with a soul had been stolen away and she simply repeated the same action like a windup doll that had fallen on its side.

“…The loser…”

Biondetta groaned that term with the look of someone who had seen a king dragged down from the throne by the commoners.

When someone lost a battle between summoners, they received a shock equivalent to seeing their G.o.d killed before their eyes. They became unable to resist what anyone said and would not hesitate to walk off a cliff if someone gestured toward it.

And the guards’ response was simple.

“Leave the summoner. She doesn’t matter!”

“We need to do something about the vessel…”

“Hurry up and dig her out of from the collapsed wall!! She really will die!!”

There was nothing Kyousuke, Biondetta, or Kyoumi could do.

The two girls continued forward, but Kyousuke came to a stop. The most he could do was move the former ruler to the side so she would not be in the middle of the wide pa.s.sageway.

One of the pa.s.sing adults, a ponytail beauty, finally came to a stop.

It was Madam Professor Shigara Masami.

She removed her lab coat and placed it over Shiroyama Shizuku, but she also shook her head and spoke to Kyousuke.

“You shouldn’t see any more of this. …This is straying from the main point of the Miniature Garden.”

“But Biondetta and Kyoumi went in there.”

The boy could only shake his head as well.

He left the Jabberwock with Shigara Masami and continued on to find out what was going on.

The guards were rushing all around near the entrance to the Mock Battlefield, but none of them stopped him. They either were too busy to cordon off the place or they were sticking to the basic rule of not interfering with the 15’s life cycle whenever possible.

It should have been a circular s.p.a.ce larger than a school gym.

The red and white chess board floor had been peeled up, the walls had crumbled and collapsed, and the guards were struggling with a pile of rubble using a piece of heavy machinery resembling a carnivorous dinosaur.

Someone had done this.

The threat took physical form and reigned supreme beyond the clearing cloud of dust.

It was Claudia Shiroyama, aka Humpty Dumpty.

She was likely the same age as Shiroyama Kyoumi, so she would have been a high school girl in the outside world. But her entire body was contained within a roundly swollen s.p.a.ce suit colored white with pink lines, so her build, age, and even s.e.x were not apparent from outside. But her Blood-Sign was the exact opposite of that symbol of cutting-edge science. It was made by chopping up old texts on parchment and rearranging them into a stick.

And that summoner who mixed old with new had a Material by her side.

Biondetta had arrived a bit before Kyousuke and she had fallen to a seated position by the wall. She was trembling with her thighs pressed together inside her surgical gown that was only tied on the side. Just barely avoiding wetting herself seemed to be the most she could manage. Droopy eyebrowed Kyoumi always acted like their guardian, but she could do nothing more than place a hand on Biondetta’s shoulder. She had managed to remain standing, but her eyes were opened wide and she did not seem able to move.

There was a simple reason.

“The Unexplored-cla.s.s,” gulped Kyoumi. “The beings that exist even beyond the G.o.ds of legend…”

But was she even speaking of her own free will? It almost looked like it was being forced out of her by an external power.

“This isn’t a fixed match following a routine or a prearranged ritual battle. A summoner can actually summon those deadly things in a real battle where you never know what’s going to happen!?”

It was the “Ashen” Shrine Maiden who Invites Merciful and Dignified Death (e m – a o – l e v – c k – r o l – e i – v b – y u – a – p s).

She was a contradictory being that possessed soft, feminine curves while being as hard as the sculptures found in Greek ruins. She looked like a long-haired beautiful women in a shrine maiden outfit, but she had been thoroughly petrified until she reached an ashen hue void of all color and warmth. It could be her claws, her fangs, the light of her eyes, her hair, her scream, or her scent. From every possible range, she could send out deadly poisons and curses that would provide no pain and would not harm the body, but that would simply steal the soul from its container of flesh. She was the ultimate ruler of life who surpa.s.sed any grim reaper. She was an embodiment of heartwarming blasphemies such as euthanasia and the eternal preservation of a corpse.

“Why is there an Unexplored-cla.s.s here?”

But that was not the crux of the problem.

Shiroyama Kyousuke got straight to the point.

“In a Summoning Ceremony battle, the Artificial Sacred Ground vanishes and the Materials go back to being the vessels 90 seconds after the battle ends. It took 5 minutes to arrive after that loud rumbling. So why?”

“Hmm…?”

The voice was m.u.f.fled by the white s.p.a.cesuit with pink lines, so its s.e.x was hard to make out.

But the negative emotion came through loud and clear.

“That’s obviously because it’d be boring if it had ended there.”

“…”

“I had just built up a great chain and was going for a major technique, but then she suddenly collapsed. I wasn’t done and I had more to do, so I had to figure out what to do about the chain I was building up.”

“So you intentionally repeated it, didn’t you?”

“Right.”

“The loser can’t disobey any order. So each time she collapsed, you told her to stand up and fight again! And you knew she couldn’t think straight after losing!!”

“Until 45 seconds ago anyway. Just having her stand there isn’t great. She’s too weak. It took 34 times before I could finally get my Divine-cla.s.s up to the Unexplored-cla.s.s. And I rushed it too much and screwed up, so I wandered into this gray dead-end.”

The s.p.a.cesuit spun her parchment Blood-Sign around as she cheerfully explained herself.

And she used it to point at the Queen of Hearts…no, at the costume that Kyoumi wore.

“I was really hoping to go for that White One who may or may not actually be summonable.”

She had done all that yet still failed.

The time limit must have arrived because the petrified shrine maiden returned to being the original vessel. It was a woman in her early 20’s with a silver bob cut. Her entire body was tightly bound by black leather belts and other restraints to ensure evil and vengeful spirits did not hijack her body. On top of it all, she had a metal ring around her head at the forehead. The inner edge was covered in metal plugs, so it may have been based on a crown of thorns. It seemed strange and extreme even if it was used to tune her. That may have been a sign of the burden placed on the vessels to repeatedly bind contracts with the 15 children.

Humpty Dumpty did not seem to care.

She had mentioned a “gray dead-end”, so she simply saw starting over from the beginning as the fastest route to what she wanted.

Yes.

Starting over.

“Now.”

Claudia tapped at her temple through the s.p.a.cesuit’s protective shade.

She was probably smiling.

“I’d like to start Round 2 while I’m still in the right mindset and before the engine cools. Yes, yes. I feel like I can reach that White One right now. I can see the chain leading me there. I can see the path to building that mountain. So how about you give me the chance to do that, siblings?”

“…”

Kyousuke glared at her and the s.p.a.cesuit moved her parchment Blood-Sign to the side.

She pointed to a pile of rubble.

“I don’t care who, but someone bind a contract with the one buried under there. Her bones might have broken and her organs might have been crushed, but none of that should matter once she turns into a Material inside the Artificial Sacred Ground. As long as I have a summoner and a vessel to fight, I’ll give you the privilege of being the foundation to my success.”

“…And if we refuse?”

“I’ll crush you and find someone else to use.”

Shigara Masami had said this strayed from the main point of the Miniature Garden, and she was right. The project was meant to bring the 15 together as a single family, but at some point, they had been swallowed up by their power in the Summoning Ceremony and by the ranking board.

And it all revolved around the word “white”.

Kyousuke glanced to the side. The threat of the Summoning Ceremony using Incense Grenades and Blood-Signs was truly astounding, but it only worked if a certain process was followed. If those conditions were removed, the Artificial Sacred Ground would fail to establish and they could escape. But could he do that while bringing along Biondetta, who had fallen to the ground, and Kyoumi, who was frozen in place? And even if they escaped for now, would they ever find peace in this gigantic but closed s.p.a.ce? They would eventually be cornered. It was only a matter of sooner or later.

And more importantly, wasn’t striking back and defeating her the more “surefire” method?

His right hand subconsciously started to move.

He was aware he had begun to seek the power to fight in the form of a Blood-Sign.

And then…

“Oh? That’s perfect then. Come have some fun with this madman here.”

His thoughts were cut off by the sound of a small metal can being thrown.

It was an Incense Grenade with the pin pulled. Someone had stepped forward when they all should have fallen back.

Once it detonated, a 20 meter cube was cut off from the world and the summoner and vessel were sucked to the center. Who had stood before top-ranked Humpty Dumpy?

It was the Hatter.

Alberto S. Divinesmith.

He lazily wore a suit and a small straw hat, and the s.p.a.cesuit scoffed when she saw him.

“Do you understand your position here, sacrifice?”

“Have you never read the Lewis Carroll story our names are from? It’s a kid’s book, so you don’t even need to be knowledgeable or educated to be familiar with it.”

It was a giant coffin and not a person who stood by the Hatter’s side.

When he rapped the back of his brown hand on it, the double doors of the coffin opened to reveal the many plugs inside.

It looked like a torture device skewering every part of the girl in thin pajamas inside.

It was the world’s most well-known torture device, but no original actually existed. Its name alone had become something of a legend as it spread fear all on its own.

It was the iron maiden.

“Humpty Dumpy had a great fall. And he couldn’t be put together again.”

That was their cue.

The black-haired girl slipped out of the torture device and the Hatter did not did not hesitate to charge full-speed toward the dead-end of death.

To get straight to the point, the battle was over in an instant.

The 60cm three-dimensional Rose made up of 216 red Petals appeared at the midpoint between Alberto the Hatter and Claudia the Humpty Dumpty. 36 fist-sized Spots appeared throughout the Artificial Sacred Ground. By hitting their own White Thorns with the tip of their Blood-Sign to knock the Petals into the Spots, they acquired the letters needed to spell out the names of the G.o.ds. While focusing on the three-way stalemate of the low, middle, and high Sound Ranges and on the Cost that referred to the number of letters, their summoned Materials constantly changed form in order to hold the advantage.

Or that was how it should have worked.

It fell apart from the very first a.s.sumptions.

It happened right after their first White Thorns struck the cubic Rose and sent the red Petals scattering in every direction.

“Wha-…ah!?”

It was Biondetta who cried out while watching from the floor.

As soon as Claudia Shiroyama twisted her parchment Blood-Sign’s grip in a half rotation, a smokescreen spread from the bottom with fierce intensity. And it was not just normal smoke. It must have had a polarization to it because the color of the light changed as it pa.s.sed through the smoke.

It turned red.

It was the exact same color as the Petals rapidly bouncing around.

“They vanished…” Kyoumi sounded dazed. “The Petals vanished into the background…!?”

The trick itself was simple. Sample problem sets for entrance exams would sometimes place red cellophane over the sheet to hide the answers written in red, but this was the same. If only red light was allowed through, red things became invisible. That was all it was, but it was tremendously effective. If you did not know where anything was, your White Thorns were entirely useless.

(But I doubt that’s all.)

Claudia Shiroyama always wore a white s.p.a.cesuit with pink lines. With its protective shade meant to block out harmful cosmic rays, she could select a specific wavelength of light to view. That meant she alone could see the position of the Petals in that red world.

Summoners and Materials inside an Artificial Sacred Ground did not show up on mechanical cameras or sensors, but there was an exception: binoculars, telescopes, and other a.n.a.log optical devices one peered through with the naked eye.

“Didn’t I tell you?”

This was how she had so soundly crushed the ferocious Jabberwock.

She had settled things before skill even came into the picture.

“Do you understand your position here, sacrifice?”

But Kyousuke had a comment of his own in his surgical gown and pants.

He did not hesitate to voice it.

“How naïve.”

With a series of impacts that sounded like a thunderclap, the Hatter swiftly knocked Petal after Petal into the Spots.

Humpty Dumpty had set up the trick, so it was likely her who sensed just how superhuman this feat was. She alone could see the world properly though her s.p.a.cesuit’s protective shade. But it did not seem to matter that the polarized smokescreen had created a world of red. One after another, White Thorns secured a Petal. With each collision, a primitive song of destruction played while the Hatter’s stock grew. Humpty Dumpy had to have felt most clearly how thoroughly he was trampling her garden.

“What…?” muttered Claudia in a daze. “What is going on!? Only I should be able to see the Petals in this world!!”

“It’s not like you have to see them to know where they are. The world of the Summoning Ceremony only requires your eyes when throwing the Incense Grenade at the start,” readily explained the Hatter. “6 x 6 x 6. That’s 216 in all. If you note where all of the letters are on the initial ma.s.s of Roses and compare the angle of the White Thorn hit with the layout of the terrain, you can tell exactly where all of them will bounce. You don’t need to see them if you calculate it all out from the beginning.”

“…”

It made sense at first.

But it was nearly an impossible contradiction when applied to the macro world of reality. It was like making an argument based on the fictional being known as Laplace’s Demon. But he forced it through so that even rationality had to back off. He used his insane mind to control everything, so it was truly the logic of a madman.

Even in Lewis Carroll’s already absurd and unreasonable fantasy, this blond boy’s character had been deemed incomprehensible by the eternal girl.

Alberto S. Divinesmith the Hatter smiled.

The joy on his face surpa.s.sed good and evil.

“And shouldn’t you get to work? My monster’s already getting warmed up.”

“Ah.”

The Serpent that Coils in a Spiral and Wholly Devours (g v – o u – j z – e u – a o – i u – e i – b f – l v z – y x).

Regulation-cla.s.s. Sound Range: High. Cost: 21.

An already long snake had wrapped its own body like a spring or coil to transform into an even thicker and stronger serpent. At the same time, each of its shiny scales were created from collections of tiny snakes. On the macro level, it grew larger and larger. On the micro level, it grew smaller and smaller. It was like throwing the human mind into a world of infinite opposing mirrors, or like a supercomputer hanging up as it tried to simulate out every last one of the explosive number of possible moves in a game of go. It swallowed up the mind of any who saw it, so they froze in place and could not avoid the next attack. That threat guaranteed a critical hit.

“You aren’t worth a Divine-cla.s.s and the Unexplored-cla.s.s is entirely out of the question.”

The madman whispered to the poor s.p.a.cesuit who had been hypnotized before she could even prepare.

“Disappear down the gullet of the Regulation-cla.s.s at the very bottom, you trash.”

There was no avoiding the result.

The poor loser collapsed to the broken chess board floor of the Mock Battlefield, the Artificial Sacred Ground vanished without a chain beginning, and the Regulation-cla.s.s regained the body of the girl it had started out as.

The Blood-Sign made from silver coins stacked up into a metal rod came apart, one coin at a time, but they could not be heard striking the floor. They all vanished into thin air.

The ranking board was updated and the new #1 was determined.

“How boring.”

He summed it up in two simple words.

But he was not referring to Humpty Dumpty where she lay on the floor.

He looked around the area where Biondetta and Kyoumi were watching him in shock, where the adults had stopped their rescue operation to stare, and where the adults in lab coats were supposedly in control. He had been referring to all of them.

And then he spoke.

He spoke to Kyousuke alone.

“Looks like only you were able to keep up. As I thought, only you are different from the others. You’re the most normal and yet the strangest. You’re the polar opposite of me since I was insane from the beginning, but you’re looking in the same direction as me.”

“…”

“Come with me, Kyousuke.” The Hatter winked and made an invitation. “You can choose when since the two other vessels are out of commission. But make sure you come with me. Fighting the Mock Turtle or the Knitting Sheep wouldn’t help me at this point. It’d only be any fun with you.”

“And if I refuse?”

“That’s fine.”

That was the opposite response from Humpty Dumpty.

But…

“If you do that, then live out the rest of your life feeling indebted. Bow your head low, smile like a fool, and keep your head down until you’re in your grave. Shiroyama Kyoumi, Biondetta. Who do you think came to save you? Hm?”

“Ah.”

That voice of realization came from Biondetta on the floor. She looked like she had just realized she had pushed someone into this.

Kyousuke slowly sighed.

He shook his head and made an honest confession.

“I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.”

“Hah hah!! That’s fine! Only you could decide so quickly to do something as twisted as trying to kill your savior in order to obey that savior’s request! You really are the best. It’s like the faces of our clocks are a mess of a marble pattern, but we still somehow manage to show up right at the arranged time.”

He had said Kyousuke could choose when, but Kyousuke could not be optimistic about this.

It felt like surviving beyond the time his doctor said he had to live.

“See ya, Kyousuke.”

No one could guarantee how long his future would last.

It had already been determined that his life would be cut off by a cliff at some point.

“I look forward to it.”

He was Rank #1.

History’s greatest madman winked and everyone’s train switched over to the track leading to h.e.l.l.

Each of the adults in charge of the 15 children tried to interfere with their specimens using a unique social system as a basis.

It could be a school, a hospital, an army, a prison, etc.

The Hatter was inside what looked like a giant die.

It was a perfect cube with each side at precisely 15 meters. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all perfectly white and the lights shined in through a gla.s.s material, so the light fixtures were not directly visible. The door was made like a yosegi box, so not even the slightest crack remained when closed. It also had no k.n.o.b for opening on the inside, so it would be easy to lose sight of the exit if one was not paying attention.

The highly unnatural scene worked to destroy the concepts of front and back, left and right, and even up and down.

It was like a studio set meant for composite video or like a room from an old mental hospital.

It was truly an exception among exceptions.

The Miniature Garden was meant to allow minds to grow in a social system. This place focused on that intent and yet swept it all away. It was a bizarre s.p.a.ce created from the entirely unethical idea of wondering what happened when all that was taken away.

A brown-skinned boy stood in the center: Alberto S. Divinesmith.

He held something under one arm like a helmet. It was a device befitting the Mad Hatter.

The voice of the adults reached him from somewhere…or rather, from the vibration of the entire s.p.a.ce.

“Now, let us begin, Alberto.”

A simple headset would have been enough, but they went out of their way to carry the physical voice in from another distant room. It was known as a speaking tube. It used the same idea as a stethoscope and carried the vibrations of the voice through a metal tube.

“Once you put on the Silk Hat, we will begin the experiment at our discretion. As usual, we will not be telling you when that is.”

“Sure.”

It had a pearly glow like a thick alloy diving s