Linus glared at Echidna, who was together with him. “Hey, Echidna, you don’t know anything about this, do you?”
“I don’t know anything about this. I don’t have the sort of time to make this massive toy.” Even though she was essentially a prisoner, she remained as haughty and arrogant as ever. Then Maria spotted a large figure ahead.
“Wait, isn’t that Gadhio?” Echidna let out an “Uh oh…” and visibly grimaced. Then Gadhio spotted Echidna. Gadhio approached with sword in hand, with long strides, radiating such intense murderous intent that the temperature of the air around him seemed to drop. Linus hurriedly went between them.
“Wait, wait, wait! I understand how you feel but just wait a second!”
“Don’t stop me, Linus. I’m going to kill this woman.”
“We don’t know how to manage the Chimera without her! They’ve stopped for the time being, but if they start moving again, we don’t know of a way to stop them again!”
“I have been fighting all this time to kill this woman, until today. I have been so desperately craving to kill this woman that I don’t even know how many times I’ve killed her in my head and in my dreams! Slashing her to death. Stabbing her to death. Punching her to death. Squeezing her to death. Crushing her to death. Breaking her. Hacking away at her entire body until its original form is unrecognizable, being so through that her very soul itself disappears from this world when I kill her. Killing her again even after killing her. I have staked my entire life on killing this woman! For that reason, I—”
“I know! When we return to the royal capital, we’ll have her executed. And I will beg to have you participate in her execution. I will even bow down to Satuhkie to make that happen! So just for right now…okay?” The air was explosively tense. Gadhio exuded such raw killing intent that it looked like he might even swing his sword at Linus. Even Werner, who was just standing nearby, was breaking out in a cold sweat, and Echidna was unable to even breathe properly. However, after a brief stare-down, Gadhio compromised.
“Very well, if you say so…”
“Thank you, Gadhio. I’m really sorry.” Linus understood Gadhio’s struggle and bowed his head to him sincerely. However, Gadhio immediately shot Echidna a sharp glare.
“But it seems like she’s keeping quiet about something. If that woman is the kind of cunning person who could keep secrets at this point, then I think it would be best to kill her right here and now after all.” Of course, that wasn’t a genuine threat to kill her, but rather, a scare tactic to rile her up. However, Echidna, now cornered, couldn’t tell the difference. Her pale face was pulled into a grimace.
“J-just wait a minute… Werner, if you’re my guard, then protect me!”
“Hey, I’m not a hostage anymore!” Werner, who didn’t want to be suspected, abandoned his guard duties as well.
“I-I… I really don’t know anything!”
“Even if it’s just a guess, that’s fine.”
“Well, there is a possibility that I can think of, but…”
“Then it would’ve been better for you to have come out and told us from the start.” Maria, too, looked fed up with Echidna as she watched from the sidelines. Then Echidna took a quick breath to steady herself and began to talk about the phenomenon that was currently occurring.
“This is just speculation, nothing that has been proven. But Huyghe has skills that we still don’t know about. He had handled these Tokyo plans all by himself.”
“Huyghe is the captain of the Church Knights, if I remember right. Can he do stuff like that, like a scientist?”
“That’s the only explanation I can give. It was Huyghe who used the functionality of that underpillar to expand the control range of the central core.” It sounded like the control range was wider than that of the central core used by Necromancy. However, the underpillar was like an OOPArt used by an ancient civilization. If Huyghe understood its workings and connected it to an Origin core, then he was no ordinary person.
“Then you should have told us about that ‘possibility’ right away!” When Gadhio shouted those words with urgency, Echidna reacted with a start, trembling.
“I-I wonder if the power source for this fortress is the Chimera cores.”
“You stopped the Chimera from functioning just a little while ago, though.”
“Yes, but they’ve only stopped moving. The cores themselves are alive.”
“My knowledge may be lacking here, but if the Chimera cores, which are each some distance away, can be used as a power source, then wouldn’t it be unnecessary to install these cores as a power source from the beginning? Perhaps they’re decoys?”
“That’s why I said it was nothing more than a prediction on my part, remember? At the very least, with the technology that we have, it would be impossible to use the energy from an Origin core as a power source without connecting it directly.” If Echidna’s words were true, then that meant unless they destroyed all of the Chimera cores, Tokyo would not stop.