Chapter 78

SUB.26 “Owww…” Maria Kumokawa slowly got up, rubbing her head with one hand. She was no longer in that underground passage where she’d lost consciousness. This looked more like a medical office, and she was on an examination table. A facility meant for Natural Selector? “You up?” The voice sounded casual, belonging to a woman. Kumokawa looked over and saw a lady in a gaudy dress surprisingly close to her. She had blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin, and a figure that would have been good enough to be a magazine model. But Kumokawa knew better. Her lithe physique hid an exceptional set of muscles. “…Where am I?” she murmured. “What happened?” “You were lying on the floor in that hellish passageway, so I carried you to the infirmary,” the woman explained. “I don’t know much about what happened myself. Then again, would anyone?” “Who are you?” “Saflee Opendays.” Then she heard a rummaging from the corner of the room. A little girl was stuffing ice into a vinyl bag. Next to her was a tall man—and what kind of freak show was he? If she had to describe him, he was over two meters tall with all sorts of different antennae decorating him. “I’m a Natural Selector contestant,” continued Saflee. “I’m not a Kihara, and I’m not with Gremlin—just a side character. That pretty little girl is Mistray Flakehelm, and the street entertainer next to her is Orthid Flakehelm, her daddy. Once I rescued them, I couldn’t just leave them alone. So I figured, why not try to be the main character for a while?” “…And I’m another person you rescued, huh? I can feel my pride buckling under the weight,” said Kumokawa, her tone self-deprecating. “There was someone else in that passage—a lady who looks like a little kid carrying a schoolbag. Ring any bells?” “A lady who looks like a little kid? Is that some sort of riddle?” Saflee frowned. “Nobody else was there but me. But judging from the leftover destruction, it seemed like someone was chasing somebody else. I had to prioritize you since you were wounded, though.” “……” Kumokawa narrowed her eyes. But Saflee’s next words surprised her. “Ah. Right. A lady who looks like a kid? I can’t really picture that, but that would mean your acquaintance is short, right? If she’s short, then I don’t think you need to worry.” “?” “’Cause I mean, based on the scene, it seemed like the shorter one was chasing the taller one.” “???” Does that mean that…Shuri Oumi is alive? “But you shouldn’t be worrying about the winners. You should be worrying about yourself. You’ll need to figure out what your next move will be.” “……” Kumokawa paused at her words. Shuri Oumi was still fighting, trying to reach her goal. What about her, then? What was her next move? She’d come this far chasing Kagun Kihara. She wanted to know one of the truths behind death that he’d discovered, so she’d disappeared from the public and ventured into the outside world. But the gaping darkness was just so deep that she couldn’t make sense of it. It was like she was being forced to play a board game without being able to understand the rules. This was the world of the Kiharas. Or maybe this was the world they had to fight against with the Kiharas. The girl, apparently named Mistray Flakehelm, handed her the ice-filled bag. Kumokawa pressed it to her forehead. The comfortable coolness permeated her bruise, but it immediately clued her in to something strange. Something was wrong. “…Awfully cold, isn’t it? Your breath is white.” Saflee Opendays smiled a little. It seemed somehow forced. “The water-heating facility is Baggage City’s lifeline,” she explained. “It seems like its core has been destroyed—either the waste treatment plant or the oil refinery. The Guardians are desperately trying to protect their last heat source, the thermal power station… That’s probably not enough, though. They can’t heat all of Baggage City with only that thermal power.” “But…who?” stammered Kumokawa. “The Kiharas. We only heard the name on a stolen radio, though.” Kumokawa’s heart leaped when she heard the name. But she endeavored to keep calm and consider the danger right in front of her. “Naturally, if push comes to shove, their higher-ups will focus on keeping themselves safe at the cost of others. They won’t care if innocent civilians freeze to death,” said Saflee, adding, “Not that we know if the higher-ups are even still alive at this point.” Some of the soldiers were still active, but they were all in total panic, and it didn’t seem like they’d be able to get any assistance. Considering the Guardian’s forces were just barely remaining hidden, if this group tried to contact them anyway, they ran the risk of being sniped by the true enemies. And so the soldiers had refrained from making the attempt. “Freeze to death…,” repeated Kumokawa. It was negative twenty degrees Celsius outside. No matter how thick one’s heat-retaining materials were, if they didn’t have heat at all, the interiors of buildings would reach the same temperature within half a day. When that happened, it would cause immense damage to all life in the city. “Actually, get this,” said Saflee. “Apparently, there’s a pretty easy way to solve the heating problem.” “?” “Well, it’s something they do up in Northern Europe. They use the heat generated by all the people in packed train stations to heat other buildings. Buildings in Scandinavia, I mean. Residents and spectators combined, Baggage City has a few million people in it. If they all gathered into the dome, for example, they could survive on everyone’s body heat.” “…That wouldn’t necessarily work long-term. But if they were just trying to hold out for a while…,” murmured Kumokawa. But there were problems with that solution, too. “I don’t know. Would the people who made this place a battlefield let that happen? If everyone was gathered up in one place, wouldn’t they go straight for it?” “Probably. And they wouldn’t care how strategically sound or logical it is. It would just be a fun little detour for them, blowing away the whole thing.” Saflee nodded. “So we can’t just let time pass without fighting the big bosses—that wouldn’t work. We have to take them down first, then buy time to be rescued, not the other way around.” “So what you’re saying is…” “We have half a day at most. Within that time, we take down all the boss enemies rampaging through the city. If we can’t, millions turn into frozen food. Get the picture now?” “…I don’t think that would solve anything.” “We’ll be lucky if we can even keep fighting them for half a day. Because whether we win or lose, we’ll be frozen alive.” The Kiharas. Gremlin. They didn’t know if they could beat even a single one of their members, and they’d have to fight them all? The conditions for this battle were insane, pure and simple. But if they didn’t make that choice, they’d be taking the path of common sense, the one that would lead everyone—Baggage City and themselves included—freezing to death. Kumokawa exhaled. “So we don’t have a choice at all. Looks like it’s time to test how strong my intentionally wounded pride really is.” “Yep, you got it. I’d pegged you for the type who knows her way around a good punch. You in?” “…It’s the only way to achieve my goal anyway.” Kumokawa nodded in agreement. She would follow Kagun Kihara. After experiencing this hellish conflict, she wanted to find him even more. Unlike her, he hadn’t come here totally ignorant about all this. The man knew exactly how hellish it would be, and he’d still decided to be here. Now. In this specific place. What had happened? And how did that relate to this madness? Until she knew for sure, Kumokawa couldn’t back down. Saflee, meanwhile, revealed their current objective. “Right. So our main priority now is Enshuu Kihara.” “…Kihara?” repeated Kumokawa. “Yep. Where to begin? A different Kihara brought some mold here for battling, and Enshuu’s using it for herself now. We think she’s trying to force it to mutate abruptly, so she can make a more infectious, more toxic biological weapon and start causing chaos all over the place.” “Even if it affects the other Kiharas, too?” “Probably. We don’t know why, though.” “……” Artificially causing a sudden mutation in a microorganism. That was a sentence you’d expect to hear from a movie. In reality, though, it wasn’t actually that hard. The influenza virus mutated every year—that was common knowledge. The genetic composition of microorganisms could change relatively easily when they were exposed to external factors. But making a microorganism mutate in the exact way one wanted to produce particular effects was incredibly difficult. Kumokawa put a hand to her chin. “Mold is still a living creature, though,” she pointed out. “And it’s only active at suitable temperatures. If the temperature plummets, that would run counter to her goal of making people suffer.” “So Enshuu kills anyone she can using the super-low temps. And once the temperature comes back up to a point where the mold is active, she’ll spread it all around the city. That would kill literally everyone, wouldn’t it? You know how stubborn bathtub mold can be. Athlete’s foot, too. It deactivates in environments that make it hard for it to live in, but it doesn’t die out. It can go into hiding for a long time, and once the environment is set up for it again, it reactivates—like it never went away.” “…But I didn’t think Baggage City had any microorganism labs to begin with. At least not publicly. Without any weird conspiracy theories, they’d misuse a public facility, logically.” “Exactly! Enshuu Kihara seems to be headed for a vegetable factory. You know, the container-shaped one. The roots of the plants are soaked in nutrient solutions, and they’re kept in temperature-stabilized rooms with lighting that promotes photosynthesis. Apparently, you can get thirty harvests from it in a single year.” “I see,” said Kumokawa, sounding annoyed. “Then we go after the ultraviolet light instead of sunlight, eh? Same reason the influenza virus’s genetic information breaks down every year.” “Think it’s dangerous?” “Oh, it’s more than that.” It was simple to say, and it made her realize something. “…Wait. If you don’t understand a fundamental principle like that, then how are you predicting what Enshuu will do? It doesn’t seem like you’ve put any equations together to figure it out.” “Oh. Well, actually, I dabble, but someone tipped us off.” “Who?” “A man in a helmet and coat.” Gulp. Kumokawa froze this time for real. “Kagun, I think he said his name was? He didn’t tell us his last name, though.”