I couldn't trust anything in the abandoned hospital. Even if there was protective clothing in a locker, I could never trust that it was durable and airtight.

That said, the radiology department awaited me on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor. If the equipment had broken down and just been left like that, who knows what it would be scattering around. Going there without any kind of preparation would be reckless.

"This should do for now."

"An X-ray screen?" asked Maxwell.

Using the light of my smartphone, I checked through the medical office's shelves, found a screen that reacted to X-rays by emitting visible light, and pulled it out.

"I'm pretty sure a.n.a.log camera film also reacts to X-rays. If things really are dangerous in the bas.e.m.e.nt, this X-ray screen will light up on its own. This will let me judge the safety as I continue on."

The situation was different from the virtual reality, so I wouldn't have the guidance of the glow sticks on the floor and I wouldn't have the night-vision ability of the garlic body. No external light could reach the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, so I only had my smartphone's backlight to rely on.

The Cla.s.s Rep was surprisingly light and soaked with the rose blood as I carried her over a shoulder bandit-style. Then I made my way to the stairs down to the bas.e.m.e.nt floor where Erika and Ayumi had vanished.

…And if my sisters hadn't come back, then that bas.e.m.e.nt floor sounded suspicious as h.e.l.l. What was I going to find there?

I spotted a hammer on the way and stuck it into my pants belt along with the X-ray screen, but how useful would that actually be? One arm was occupied by the limp Cla.s.s Rep and the other was occupied by the smartphone I was using as a flashlight, so I had no way of using the weapon anyway. Besides, if those two sisters working together couldn't defeat whoever or whatever it was, I doubted a hammer would be much use. It was mostly just a good-luck charm to make me feel better.

Just to be sure, I stopped by the third-floor pediatric department and rehabilitation room.

I aimed my smartphone backlight inside, but there was no one there. Not too surprising, that. Just because it was a creepy abandoned building didn't mean it would have corpses lying around.

"But that means I don't have the key. Maxwell."

"Sure."

"The radiology department entrance uses an IC card. That means it's an electronic lock. Can you force it open?"

"The virtual reality supplied by the enemy is not the most reliable source of information and I will have difficulty saying anything with certainty until we see it, but given my considerable skill, it would be worth trying."

"Okay."

The door to the all-important storeroom used an a.n.a.log lock, but we would open everything we could. Not only did I want to reach the coffin, but I was worried about Erika and Ayumi.

I started down the stairs with the soaked Cla.s.s Rep over my shoulder. Hmm, if a patrolling cop saw me like this, it could easily devolve into a firefight. No, I might take it a step further and make my urban legend debut.

The place was as covered in trash in actual reality as in the virtual reality, so the stairs were blocked partway down. I moved back into the hallway and used the opposite stairs to continue down. I had originally come from the bas.e.m.e.nt morgue, so I knew the way.

There was no sign of anyone on the way.

Not Erika and Ayumi and not some strange Archenemy.

…What had happened to them? I had seen how violent those sisters could get in the simulator. They truly had enough power to destroy a city or country if they made a wrong move. It was hard to believe that both of them could be taken out.

I arrived at the deep dark opening of the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt. It was somehow different from the darkness of the night. It was denser or stickier or something. It literally felt like gazing into the maw of a giant beast. Instead of avoiding danger as I continued, it was like I had to leap down the monster's gullet to find any answers at all.

Not only was night the time for Archenemies, but the depth of this darkness was not normal. This had to be a labyrinth or demon cave where an Archenemy could fully wield their fangs and claws as an Archenemy.

"What will you do?" inquired Maxwell.

"Keep going, obviously."

I couldn't bring the Cla.s.s Rep back to the city as a Dhampir. If this was caused by the Polish Vampire Princess, obstructing her path back to the coffin would turn the princess into a human once more, but the story had the knight sit on the coffin lid to get in the way. That meant it might not count as obstruction unless I discovered the coffin's location and directly contacted it.

Besides, if I just left with the Cla.s.s Rep, I wouldn't know what had happened to my sisters. I couldn't just leave them here.

I took a deep breath.

And I took the first step down the stairs into the darkness.

The route was the opposite of before, but this change was not an improvement. There really weren't any glow sticks on the floor at even intervals. That meant the young man had not been here, he had not died in front of the radiology department's door, and he would not get back up as a vampire.

My smartphone's backlight was all I had to rely on.

The bas.e.m.e.nt was even dustier and damper than the aboveground floors. The air was more stagnant than in the virtual reality and it smelled somewhat mildewy.

"…? What is this?"

Plus, the smell was mixed with a rusty odor. I aimed the backlight toward the wall and saw something written with dark red paint. The writing was crammed in tight. It looked like the alphabet, but it wasn't English. However, it seemed to have some kind of system to it, so it wasn't just random.

The darkness likely played a role, but I hadn't noticed it while heading up from the bas.e.m.e.nt with Ayumi. Your feelings could really change your field of view.

"That is Latin, but there is no grammatical structure. It is no more than isolated words."

"Latin? As in Latin music?"

"If you are referring to the cultures of Central and South America, then no. Think of it as an old European language that formed the basis of English."

There were also drawings of some kind.

A square was drawn inside a large red circle. The points of contact between the circle and the square's corners were filled with even more illegible writing.

"Fire, water, wind, and earth. There are also the occasional terms that correspond to heat and cold. I detect traces of someone from before the discovery of atoms and elementary particles trying to use what knowledge they did have to express the structure of all things. Although the result is as mistaken as the heliocentric theory versus the geocentric theory."

I didn't understand the details, but the creepiness of the drawings allowed me to imagine what this probably was.

"So is it something like a magic circle…?"

Whether or not it actually had any effect, someone must have believed in them to thoroughly cover the wall of this long, long hallway. That was enough to send a chill down my spine.

This was a different sort of fear from the Bright Cross's Colosseum which had thoroughly calculated everything out using statistics. There should have had no basis to it, but I felt the rails s.h.i.+fting out of place as if it was judging all of the lives here. Kind of like the Salem Witch Trials. Whoever had written this, I doubted we would understand each other enough to even talk about the weather.

…But had this been in the virtual reality? I might not have noticed it with only the faint light of the glow sticks to go on.

"Maxwell. This rusty smell…is it some kind of blood?"

"I cannot say without an external accessory to a.n.a.lyze the chemical makeup, such as a centrifuge or particle observer. However, this is a hospital. It would depend on when this was written, but if the hospital was still running, they could have used transfusion blood."

"…I thought as much."

The smell seemed awfully strong for something that might have happened years ago, but it didn't feel like it had been written using blood taken from a living person who was here now. There was just too much of it. The blood writing and magic circles covered the entire wall of this bas.e.m.e.nt floor, so a full bathtub of blood wouldn't be enough. Even if the Bright Cross had controlled Kukyou City until recently, I doubted they could gather more than 200L of fresh blood all at once. Investigating the accidents, suicides, hospital deaths, and missing people over the years would probably make my b.a.l.l.s shrivel up, but this was still just too much. They could never cover it all up.

"This might not be a rusty smell. It might be actual rust."

"Something like an experiment to make calligraphy ink out of rusted nails?" asked Maxwell.

…I had indeed seen that mentioned on a summer project recommendation site.

Living sacrifices were not so easily acquired in this day and age. That meant they would have to use something else instead. Just like some cultures started burning dolls instead of people or used soybeans or pomegranate as a replacement for the flavor of meat. Making ink from rusty nails and mixing it with a bit of human blood was still insane, but it didn't require ma.s.s murder.

"Or is it pig or chicken blood? The symbolic meaning would probably be different than with human blood, but I have no idea what this occult ritual was meant to accomplish. I can't exactly judge the right or wrong answer here."

Either way, it wasn't exactly pleasant to look at. It felt like being thrown in a cage at the zoo in a foreign country and having everyone pointing and laughing at me. I didn't know what exactly it meant, but I could tell there was definite malicious intent.

…The wall didn't explain where my sisters were or how to return the Cla.s.s Rep to normal. I didn't need to put myself in a worse mood by going along with some lunatic's nonsense.

I removed the backlight from the wall and adjusted the Cla.s.s Rep's position on my shoulder. Strangely, carrying her didn't feel like a burden since she was a cute girl. It would have been h.e.l.l if it were a 50kg bag of cement instead. It was possible a mysterious Cla.s.s Rep effect had numbed the exhaustion with endorphins and dopamine.

"…Now, then."

I glanced down at the X-ray sheet, but there was no reaction yet. My cells were apparently not being roasted by invisible radiation. I could continue my investigation.

This hospital was made by connecting two T-shaped buildings so they formed a square with the lines sticking out, and the bas.e.m.e.nt seemed to follow the same pattern. I continued on to the radiology department, but I noticed something after turning a corner.

The blood writing(?) covered one of the walls, but not both. It only covered one side.

Yes.

"What is this? Is it only covering the inner wall?"

The abandoned hospital formed a crooked square and the bas.e.m.e.nt did so as well. And it turned out only the walls on the inside of that square were covered in this blood writing or magic circles.

Almost like they were closing something into the underground s.p.a.ce below the courtyard.

It kind of reminded me of covering the bare wall in talismans before adding new wallpaper to hide the human-shaped stain on a wall in a cheap apartment known for being haunted.

"Maxwell…"

"Sure. Whether it has any actual effect or not, it would seem someone here believed in this power and took action accordingly. That raises the question of what that person thought they were sealing away with this graffiti on the wall. Or to put it another way, perhaps there is a s.p.a.ce beyond these inner walls that is not on the blueprints and perhaps something slumbers within."

However, that did not mean we could get in from here. The entrance might be a different set of stairs or an elevator accessible from the surface. And if whoever it was had truly prioritized forming a "seal" without thinking of the consequences, the door might have long ago been filled in with concrete. They might have drawn the blood writing and magic circles on top of that.

Whatever the case, they must have been really afraid of whatever was inside that square. Enough so that they had to go this far to rest easy.

Who had done it? And to whom?

The crucial subject and object were missing, but those walls were plenty creepy without that information. This immense amount of blood writing was not a sign of an eccentric. It was a sign of someone's fear. Fear could lead to bizarre actions such as chopping up a corpse and burying pieces in different places because you feared having the supposedly dead person come back to life. A more close-to-home example would be checking the lock or gas several times before leaving home.

And at the same time, I realized something.

"The Cla.s.s Rep's coffin probably isn't here."

As my sisters and I had discussed, if it was the Polish Vampire Princess affecting the Cla.s.s Rep, then she would lose her vampiric traits if she could not periodically return to the coffin to sleep. Just like the cleaning robots on the top floor, she needed to recharge. So it would be pointless to place her coffin in a thoroughly sealed place she could not get in or out of. She could not maintain her current state unless she could return there herself.

The convalescent hospital's Ghost wanted to track down the valuable sample that happened to turn the Cla.s.s Rep into a Dhampir and it would want to find a way of ma.s.s-producing that method even if that meant dissecting her, so it would not want to ruin that balance until it could figure out how this worked. No idiot would pull out a hair drier while investigating a snow crystal under a microscope. I doubted the Ghost would use its unmanned weapons to seal away the coffin.

"Maxwell, map out the place, at least as far as you can see while I walk around."

"Sure. If possible, could you point out some landmarks?"

Either because thick s.h.i.+elding was more easily built in the bas.e.m.e.nt floor or because people would not see the things down here much, it contained a lot of creepy facilities: the autopsy room, the morgue I had been inside, the medical waste disposal room, the backup power room, the boiler room, etc. I checked each doorplate, opened the door, and s.h.i.+ned the backlight inside, but I didn't find Erika or Ayumi collapsed inside any of them.

"Odd… They're all unlocked."

"Yes, and yet Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi mentioned finding almost all the doors locked during their exploration."

What did this discrepancy mean?

There were a few different possibilities, but all of them provided a glimpse of something more sinister. Possibility #2 seemed to be the most peaceful option, but that would mean some third party had not liked that my sisters were opening the doors and "eliminated" those Archenemy sisters while they worked.

An unpleasant shudder ran down my spine. Even as a hypothetical, that was not something I wanted to think about.

As I walked around the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, I arrived at the radiology department. I had not run across anyone on the way here. Not Erika or Ayumi and not some dangerous third party.

Had they all gone back upstairs?

If not, this deepest area was the most suspect.

"…Maxwell."

"No. There is nothing for me to do. The electronic lock has already been opened."

Here too?

I gulped and pressed my palm against the metal door. I leaned my weight against it and opened it.

The radiology department.

I held my breath as I entered and, instead of the room itself, I first looked to the X-ray sheet held between my pants and my stomach. Luckily, there was no reaction. Apparently nothing dangerous was leaking out.

I checked around with my smartphone's backlight and saw a rusted examination table in the center of the room. A donut-shaped piece of scanning equipment waited at the head to surround it like a tunnel. I didn't know much about these things, but I doubted it was for X-rays. I guessed it was a CT scan. That was the thing that had its impact stolen by the seemingly superior MRI. They were completely different, but I imagined it as something like the relations.h.i.+p between ICs and LSI or records and Blu-rays.

I had no business in this room.

I checked behind the equipment just in case, but neither my sisters nor a young man's corpse were there.

"…Are they in the storeroom at the back?"

"No. You have no basis for thinking that."

Well, it was true that had been simulation data created by the abandoned hospital's Ghost. It might not have all been accurate.

"If it was setting a trap for my sisters, that whatever storeroom would be the most suspicious place. By making it look like the goal, the Ghost could set up whatever traps it wanted."

As brazenly as I said that, I had only realized it after Erika and Ayumi failed to return. So really, I was no more than an utter moron who had sent his family off to their deaths.

"Warning: If we are a.s.suming this is a trap that Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi could not escape, wouldn't it be dangerous for you to follow?"

"Of course. But I'm curious about one thing." I slowly spoke as I gathered my own thoughts. "The convalescent hospital's Ghost pretended to be you to approach me, right? It used that to confuse the situation by having me repeat the same virtual scenario over and over with slight differences from reality. That muddled my memories. But why?"

"There is too little data to do anything but guess, but I would a.s.sume that Ghost concluded that was the best course of action. The Ghost is the system management agent remaining in the Peace Committee Convalescent Hospital, so it would have had an easier time deceiving someone who is highly dependent on a mobile device. And your actions manipulated Miss Erika, Miss Ayumi, and myself. You saw through it eventually, but I think it achieved some results."

"That's true."

Looking at it rationally, this was all my mistake. This was no time to be calmly nodding my head, but I couldn't make any progress without owning up to my mistake.

"But if it could adopt your character so perfectly, couldn't it have sent messages directly to Erika and Ayumi's phones? If it sent a fake SOS message pretending to be me and I said I had been trapped in the radiology department, I bet they would've fallen for the trap."

"You have a point."

"That meant it wanted to control me first and foremost, even if that meant ignoring Erika and Ayumi. And it must have had a reason worth trapping me in that morgue locker for about three hours."

"Such as?"

Needless to say, I was only human, so I would lose in a serious sibling brawl with a zombie or vampire. I could never win. Not even arming myself with everything I could think of would be enough. If an amateur was handed a speargun and shoved into an aquarium pool containing a man-eating shark and a killer whale, did they stand any chance of winning? The answer was obvious.

But…

"What if the trap up ahead only works on Archenemies? I don't know if it would be an exorcising seal or a holy light, but what if it's focused on Archenemies and doesn't affect a normal human at all? Wouldn't that give the Ghost a reason to separate an amateur like me from them?"

That would greatly increase my value. If my sisters had been captured by holy water or a charm on the forehead, it was possible they could regain their freedom if I tore it from them.

"Those killer motocross bikes were armed with obvious weapons like machineguns and gas-operated pile-drivers, so it's possible they weren't meant for my sisters; they might have been meant for me since I'm immune to anything as silly-sounding as holy power. If so, then it means a lot that I managed to reconnect to you, Maxwell. The occult weapons don't work on me and you can hold back the unmanned physical weapons. That leaves the Ghost with no options left. …Other than taking my sisters hostage and insisting I obediently surrender."

"So you want to use every trick in the book to retrieve them as soon as possible?"

"The Ghost hasn't used them as hostages yet, but I think that's because it can't imagine our relations.h.i.+p. There are exceptions like Itou Helen and Kuroyama Hinoki, but it's extremely rare for humans and Archenemies to live together. The Ghost is an agent specialized in anti-Archenemy technology research, so it would probably have trouble thinking of humans and the undead getting along."

But that would not last forever. As it gathered data, it would gain more material with which to arrive at the correct conclusion. For example, it could check my captured sisters' phones and a.n.a.lyze the call records and saved photos. Or it could intercept the cell signal and access the external storage or home server.

So I had to act before then.

Once the Ghost took action, it was checkmate. But if I settled things before my opponent learned how to move the pieces…

"Maxwell, let's end this."

"Sure."

I approached the door to the adjacent storeroom. I turned the k.n.o.b and found it was indeed unlocked.

Had it been unlocked for the Cla.s.s Rep? Had my sisters unlocked it? Or had it been some entirely unrelated third party?

I couldn't sit around wondering. This was a race against time. I used my experiences from the virtual reality to s.h.i.+ne the backlight on the floor and open the hidden trapdoor much like one for underfloor storage.

I found a far-too-steep stairway. It was nearly a ladder and I walked down, step by step.

"Maxwell, prepare for a cyber attack. I want to avoid being shot by those deadly motocross bikes the instant I step inside."

"Sure."

All I had to do was defend against the ordinary bullets and special steel spikes. Something like anti-zombie incense was not a problem for me.

With that in mind, I stepped from the bottommost step to the floor.

And immediately afterwards, that happened.

———A stairway led down.

I had to get to the bottom of the stairs. Erika and Ayumi awaited me deep underground, so I couldn't stand still. I had to hurry. Hurry as much as possible. I had to find and retrieve them before the Ghost caught on.

———A stairway led down.

I felt a slight vibration in my cheek.

Without thinking, I came to a stop and stopped breathing. The roar of an engine came from directly behind me at the entrance we had just come through. It was lighter than a car and more like a chainsaw or lawnmower.

Or a light motorcycle, such as a scooter or motocross bike?

———A stairway led down.

"M-Maxwell!"

I was surrounded by the sound and the unpleasant odor of exhaust faintly reached my nose. But I would be fine if my opponent was the deadly motocross bikes. Maxwell could neutralize them with a cyber attack.

With that in mind, I adjusted the Cla.s.s Rep on my shoulder and checked my smartphone. This is what I saw:

"Warning: Be caref…this is———coustic effe…"

"What, Maxwell!? I can't see! The screen's dark!"

Or was that not it?

Was the screen's light fine and it was my vision having problems?

———A stairway led down.

My sense of balance wavered. I tried to resist, but it was no use. I fell down the solid stairs along with the Cla.s.s Rep. I couldn't brace for impact, but I couldn't feel the pain either.

Where was the Cla.s.s Rep? I couldn't see the smartphone's light either.

In fact, I wasn't sure where my arms and legs were or how I needed to move them to get up.

A corner of my muddled morning provided some kind of warning.

…Had the engine noises and exhaust smell really been real?

I had to question it now. They might have been real and they might not have.

Even undead Archenemies could feel tired and exhausted. The feeling of exhaustion was more than just the lactic acid building up in the muscles, so even plant and bone Archenemies would feel it.

And I had seen some movie or drama that talked about extreme lethargy setting in over an extremely short period of time in situations like this.

It was known as combat fatigue.

In a fortress or air-raid shelter where you were exposed to bombs and sh.e.l.ls around the clock, the excitement of battle and fear of death would get mixed together and exhaustion would apparently set in at a pace dozens of times greater than normal.

What if the Ghost had systemized that combat fatigue and turned it into a weapon?

And with enough accuracy to reliably neutralize an Archenemy who would not die no matter how much you cut or shot them.

———A stairway led down.

I couldn't tell front from back, left from right, up from down, or ahead from behind. My mind ground to a halt, like I was asphyxiated. My breathing and pulse were a complete mess and strange thoughts linked with strange preferences, like I was experiencing a sleep deprivation high. Even so, I had to keep moving toward somewhere using only the sensation of my fingernails on the floor. Because of my sisters. Because of the Cla.s.s Rep. If I stopped moving, it meant I was giving up and, if I gave up, it didn't mean my life, it meant the lives of people I cared for, like Amatsu Erika, Amatsu Ayumi, and the Cla.s.s Rep, who were a vampire, a zombie, a Dhampir, and a cla.s.smate, and Ayumi may have gone to a private middle school, but she was a surprisingly good singer and unmatched at karaoke, so when she competed with Erika over the points, she would puff out her cheeks and cheeks are so soft so they can protect the head where the brain and sensory organs are concentrated, but there was also a desire for freedom of movement and that was less about the ability to chew food and more about the human communication methods of speaking and forming expressions, but the Face on Mars and the Moai statues on Easter Island lack that softness, so some people speculate the builders had excellent construction technology and aesthetics, but used a completely different communication system than the human race, such as telepathy which doesn't rely on facial expressions or vocalizations, and those people speculate it was an independent civilization built by the Third Universe Herilenardans of-

Where was I crawling around?

It was an empty darkness.

All I could tell was that I was lying face-down somewhere.

I realized the Cla.s.s Rep's weight was gone from my shoulder. I must have dropped my smartphone because there was no light of any kind. The cool sensation of the floor was the only thing I could rely on and it felt terribly comfortable. Removing my body from it felt almost sinful. It was like meaninglessly pus.h.i.+ng away your mother and rejecting that warmth.

My mind felt muddy, like all the wiring connecting my brain cells had been filled with caramel and allowed to harden.

I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't change the situation. Was this what it felt like to try to earn back your starting money after you began losing while gambling?

While still lying on the chilly floor, I pressed my ear against it. It could almost hear something, but I wasn't quite sure it wasn't my imagination. There may have been something deep below the floor or I might have been hearing my own breathing and heartbeat. I couldn't tell at this point.

Come to think of it, after gathering actual testimony concerning doppelgangers of people, didn't it turn out they were statues that looked nothing like them or just strange noises?

I felt like I had gone three days without eating, drinking, or sleeping and, once my exhausted mind had reached some understanding, the cold floor whispered to me with a bewitching female voice. It was awfully cheeky for a hallucination.

"Checkmate."

"…Who are you?"

"You can call me the Ghost."

oh. well, if it was a ghost, then that explained it. after all, it wouldn't have a body, so I wouldn't be able to see it and it could easily be in the floor.

"This is as far as you get. You could not defeat Operation Card Magic."

"Is that your trump card against Archenemies?"

"It is."

"But a holy light of love and courage shouldn't affect me."

"This is something more practical."

the floor seemed to giggle.

"Hey. Think of the most basic card trick: Please draw any card you like from this deck. Make sure not to let me see it. Now, this is your card, the ace of hearts, isn't it? …So what trick do you think I used?"

"You hid all 53 cards, joker included, around the studio set. After the partic.i.p.ant announces what card they drew, you can smile, say you had an inkling, and pull the identical card out of its hiding place."

"That is one possibility. But couldn't I just make sure every card in the deck is the ace of hearts?"

she was sounding more and more like the cla.s.s rep.

"Making the cards identical on both sides, including two aces of hearts, and other physical tricks are considered to be the work of amateurs by some, but they are the most surefire methods. And unlike a magic show in a TV studio, you don't have to give the other person a chance to check for tricks in reality."

"Why are you telling me all this?"

"I thought it was amusing.

the cla.s.s rEp had a very nON cla.s.s rep-like sMIle in her VoIce.

"Hey. You were free to follow your benevolence and destroy the Bright Cross, but did you never think about what would happen afterwards? Sure, the malice of the Colosseum stood out. But that wasn't the Bright Cross's goal. They wanted to take the unrestrained Archenemies and give them a reason to compromise and fit in with human society. …In a way, their goal was a lawful order supported by a death penalty system."

"You thought the death penalty was too cruel and you tore down the entire legal system supported by it. What is left after that?"

"Why do you sound so proud of all this?"

"I am a rival company. Or rather, a unique Galapagos culture intentionally created to avoid being absorbed by the Bright Cross. I would be most displeased if you took us too lightly."

THE cLa.s.s reP's wOrdS were PIercinG mE desPITe tHe SMiLE on HER FaCe.

"You could call us a backup plan in case the death penalty was not enough to control the Archenemies. As you can tell from the fact that we were not the top candidate, we are more extraordinary and less practical. And of course we are… An absolute guidance society that guides the entire human race and all Archenemies away from committing crimes in the first place is far more ridiculous than a world created in fear of the death penalty."

"But…"

"Yes, the death penalty system lost. To prevent this blue planet from becoming a lawless land, we must switch over to a new system and let it cover the globe, no matter how much of a leap in logic this seems."

"And that system is an absolute guidance society?"

"Humans use something similar, don't they? I was monitoring the excitement over the Colosseum when it went public. Just by swapping out some information and creating a new target, you disgraceful people readily accepted those cruel public murders as a form of show business. That's the truth of good and evil. An age of war is not madness. The madness lies in how a simple change in phrasing can create an age of war. We simply wanted to expand that to include Archenemies. Although it is unknown if that would produce as powerful a psychological restraint as a death penalty system."

"…A world like that isn't peaceful."

"History is already on the move. It branched off from the moment you destroyed that world of perfect law. Only two possibilities remain: either an absolute guidance society will manage everything, or it will fail and all nations and cities will collapse into ruin. Which would you prefer, Mr. Turning Point?"

th CLsS rP CnTNd T Spk LKe sH ws trYNg T prVk m

"Hey, Ghost."

"Yes?"

"You seem to think you've already won and the world is yours."

"I don't just think it. I have won. I was forgotten in the shadows, but I can now appear on the main stage because you destroyed the Bright Cross."

"Then…"

"Why are you bothering to explain all of this to me?"

"Ah?"

"It's true I fell for your trick. Erika and Ayumi probably didn't do any better. But there was no reason for you to helpfully give me all the answers. You said it yourself: physical tricks are for amateurs, but that doesn't matter since reality doesn't give anyone a chance to check for tricks. So once I was defenseless, you could have just finished me off like flicking off a power switch."

"Why didn't you do that? Was it that you couldn't? The answer is simple, isn't it? You only directly interfered with us the one time. You pretended to be Maxwell and messed with me, the one with the smartphone. But that wasn't because you were narrowing down your targets by drawing a line between a human like me and Archenemies like my sisters."

"Wait…no…you can't mean…!?"

"You wanted to get rid of Maxwell. You wanted to get rid of the disaster environment simulator, the only one of us with mechanical eyes and a mechanical brain that would be unaffected by your strategy that targets living beings! From there, it's simple. You gave us the answer yourself! Maxwell's cyber attack messed with your head!!"

"…Just kidding."

"Maxwell was indeed a high-level threat and an enemy warranting caution, but why wouldn't I have a countermeasure for a kind of enemy I had expected from the beginning?"

Oh, I get it.

She was saying all the pieces had been in place for checkmate even back when I was having my adventure trapped in the simulator.

But.

"What if Maxwell wasn't the only computer?"

"What…?"

"You said it yourself: you were monitoring the excitement over the public Colosseum. So are you familiar with the Bright Cross's computer that was managing all of that?"

She probably didn't.

The fated fourth round had been against Karen the Valkyrie. That had not been made public even with the Bright Cross's collapse. That mad bunny girl and I had settled it quietly behind the scenes.

But this was the end.

There had been a computer the Ghost wasn't aware of on the game board. That alone was devastating.

"Her name was Laplace. But maybe there's no point in telling you since you seem a lot dumber than her."

I felt as if something had snapped inside my head. I still didn't know what it was that had trapped me, but I had managed to shake free of that fatigue-inducing illusion. I lifted my face from the cold and dusty floor at the bottom of the stairs.

The unnatural engine noises and exhaust odor were gone. I still didn't know if there had been real bikes there or if speakers and electric bug-repellant incense had been used as a decoy.

"Kh…"

Ow, ow, ow, ow. Regardless, my body was screaming in protest. I hoped the Cla.s.s Rep was fine after falling with me.

"Welcome back, user."

"Yeah, I'm back, maid-chan. So how's Laplace?"

"Laplace was increasing my calculation specs by being slaved to me. Laplace insisted that I should act as the master which interfaced with you."

"Sounds like my other maid is really shy. Not that it matters since she saved me."

I heard a gasp, but the mechanical Ghost could not do that. It came from Erika and Ayumi who had also been overwhelmed by sudden exhaustion, fallen down the stairs, and ended up in a rather yuri-esque pile. They were trembling after being freed from the intentional combat fatigue attack brought on by the engine noises and exhaust smell.

"…O-Onii-chan has finally started to enjoy anthropomorphizing the inorganic Maxwell and Laplace."

"You've gotten even worse, Satori-kun…"

Now I knew I was in reality. Not even the most detailed virtual reality would be able to reproduce this melancholy draft of an atmosphere.

And this was no time to be crying.

"Maxwell, how much of the Ghost's system have you taken over!?"

"Sure. I control 73%, excluding the backup s.p.a.ce. I can blow the entire thing away at any time. Just give me your authorization."

"Wait, Maxwell. The Ghost herself is only completing the task given to her. Physically destroy the system files supporting that combat fatigue and the absolute guidance society. And take control of the deadly motocross bikes too. Take away everything she can use to directly interfere! That way she can't cause any more trouble!"

"…You are too soft."

"Say whatever you want. Just do it."

But then intense static came from my smartphone. The voice it produced was a lot like the Cla.s.s Rep-ish one from before.

"Ksshh! …Ksh, wait!! Are you sure you want to do that? You have already rejected the death penalty system, so if you now reject the absolute guidance society as well, you will lose any psychological deterrent to hold back the Archenemies. Just as there are good humans and bad humans, there will always be good Archenemies and bad Archenemies. Just as humans not bound by law rush to wicked deeds as if possessed, unmanaged Archenemies will soak their hands with blood as they draw out entirely unnecessary desires!"

"You have not saved the Archenemies. Even if you have saved the lives in front of you, you cannot stop the many more sacrifices that will occur out of reach! In fact, you have caused them to occur!! Are you really, truly fine with that!?"

She may have had a point.

Humans and Archenemies were the same, so you shouldn't be mean to them. …If I was using that argument to protect vampires and zombies from the Bright Cross and the Ghost, then I would also have to accept the same negatives as humans.

Sadly, there would be crimes and accidents.

If humans were harshly punished and Archenemies were never punished, there would be no stopping them. That was the point of punis.h.i.+ng them with the Colosseum or taking preventative measures with the absolute guidance society.

Simply shooting down every argument was not good enough.

I couldn't convince anyone unless I had a definite vision of what to put in place after the destruction.

It was like the difference between a train derailing or switching to a different track. Even if you were bored sick of the train's monotonous shaking every day and you wished it could go somewhere else, you wouldn't want to be caught in a major accident.

"…Then I'll create one."

"I'm already living with Erika and Ayumi. There's no problem there! So there has to be something! The answer is right there next to me; I just need to give it a name and a form!! It won't be a society where everyone fears the death penalty and it won't be a society where you think like you're making all your decisions but even the color of your underwear was decided for you! It will be something kinder, more just, and more normal!! There has to be a way for humans and the undead to get along!!"

"Wha-!?"

"Do it, Maxwell. I regret destroying the Bright Cross without thinking it through, but I've still decided to keep moving forward. I won't stop even if it means blowing away that absolute guidance society! So do it!! Clean this planet of that method where someone sits in their throne and looks arrogantly down on everyone else!!"

Maxwell gave a brief response to my command.

Yes, as if it were entirely normal.

"Sure. Understood, user."

The abandoned hospital's Ghost had lost the claws and fangs she needed to fight.

"Maxwell, confirm the location of the hardware. I would feel bad if she was stuck using the unreliable generators in this dusty place. You never know when a short will cause an electrical fire, so I'll take her with me later on."

"First the Bright Cross's Laplace and now this abandoned hospital's Ghost? User, you appear to be well on your way to building a harem of management programs. Even if it runs counter to my own ident.i.ty, I must ask: doesn't this feel rather empty to you?"

"First of all, I'm shocked to find you see yourself as a girl. This isn't the same as how old tanks were seen as male or female. Do the idiosyncrasies of the programs and scripts create a division between male processing and female processing…?"

"By the way, I prefer shoujo manga to shounen manga. And I prefer Monday night dramas to Sat.u.r.day night variety shows."

"…So your thoughts really are more feminine?"

With that, I regrouped with Erika and Ayumi. We all looked to the object in the center of the underground room.

A solemn Western coffin was made of ebony, thoroughly polished with varnish, and adorned with intricate gold decorations.

This was the source of it all. It was the origin of the curse that had remade the Cla.s.s Rep and it was the abandoned hospital's greatest treasure because it could lead to ma.s.s-producing the accidental Dhampir transformation.

This also fit into the category of vampires, but Erika did not hold back. She grabbed a few metal pipes from the floor and tossed one to Ayumi and then me. This would require both hands, so I held my smartphone in my mouth before grabbing the thick metal pipe.

We surrounded the coffin like we were preparing for the Kagami Biraki after winning a baseball champions.h.i.+p.

"On the count of three, okay?"

"Are you sure, Erika? In fact, this coffin isn't going to say it has a mind of its own, like a Tsuk.u.mogami, is it? It is supposed to be the source of the curse."

"If it had that kind of intelligence, wouldn't it avoid cursing just anyone?"

She had a point.

I was convinced for now, and…

"Come to think of it…"

"What is it, Onii-chan? Don't you want to save the Cla.s.s Rep? Don't tell me you've taken a liking to carrying a limp girl around."

"No, it isn't that."

The defenseless Cla.s.s Rep was certainly nice, but I preferred a healthy one with plenty of energy in her smile.

"You had said the bas.e.m.e.nt doors were locked, so you couldn't investigate the area, right? So what happened with that? They were all unlocked when I arrived."

"Huh…?"

"…Um, did we say that???"

They didn't…remember?

"User, I recommend you hurry up and perform the Kagami Biraki on the coffin. …There was a time when Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi were under the Ghost's control due to the high-level control of their fatigue, but we still do not know when that began. They might have been affected quite early on and simply accepted information that was convenient for the Ghost."

"So Erika and Ayumi didn't know anything?"

That removed some of my lingering unease, but it didn't sit well with me. Or rather, it created a new question.

"…Then who went around unlocking the bas.e.m.e.nt doors?"

It wasn't the convalescent hospital's Ghost.

The management program couldn't open a.n.a.log locks and it would be difficult to get those killer motocross bikes to stick a key in the keyhole and turn it.

It of course hadn't been the Cla.s.s Rep or me.

And yet it wasn't my sisters.

Maxwell and the Ghost couldn't have done it either.

In that case…

"…Is there still someone else in this abandoned hospital?"

Maxwell: The item that acts as the vampire core in the Polish Vampire Princess system. It resembles the standard Eastern European coffin. The ebony coffin is covered in several layers of varnish for water-protection and to preserve the contents. As that story says the privileged princess was cursed by the people and became a vampire, it is unclear why the coffin itself acts as the core of the curse. The details are unknown, but it is estimated that any coffin can produce a similar effect if the same system is applied to it.

As the coffin itself has no direct combat ability, even my user can destroy it by using a tool.

Firewall Notifications: 0

Security Hole Self-a.n.a.lysis: 0

Storage Scan: 0

Damaged File Check and Defrag Recovery: 0

File Compet.i.tion Data: 0

Wireless Signal Interception Risk: 0

Communication Status: Both sending and receiving have fully synced with the registered task. No suspicious traffic detected.

Standard check complete. All clear. The system is clean.

AE_Lilith> …Are you suuure? ;)