My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister - Book 10: Chapter 5

Part 1

The volcanic activity was lessening…I think.

An amateur like me couldn’t be sure, but looking down from higher ground, I didn’t see as many areas glowing orange. The lava was cooling and hardening. The volcanic debris wasn’t raining down on our heads anymore either.

Was this our chance?

“Maxwell.”

“Paris’s surveillance systems for traffic, weather, and security are all severely crippled. I would not recommend relying on my ability to locate anything.”

“There’s no opening letting you into the major government servers anyway. Just tell me what you can see from my phone camera.”

“What should I look for?”

“Footprints. We followed those wet suitcase wheel tracks in the catacombs, remember? Check though the older footage and locate any footprints on the floor or handprints on the walls near those tracks. Then highlight any identical prints in this scorched city.”

“Sure.”

“Oh, and ignore our own footprints.”

“Please stop imagining an incompetent personality for me. I will be unable to live up to your expectations on that front.”

A few squares of light appeared on the small screen. I held the phone on its side and slowly spun around, filming the area around me from atop a pile of rubble. Eventually, I found an area with a lot of those squares.

I couldn’t scan all of Paris like this, of course.

But we had a starting point.

Pierre Smith.

A member of JB.

Didn’t they call their own people their “cast”? They saw themselves as actors. If they wanted to stage a jailbreak, they must have known that they were currently performing on someone else’s stage.

Anastasia sighed next to me.

“JB is probably from the English speaking world since their name is based on an English word, so I wonder if they call themselves their ‘cast’ in order to take a word they dislike and make it their own.”

“?”

“The word ‘cast’ is also used to refer to throwing someone into jail. Why else would the people hoping for a jailbreak want to use a word like that?”

So it was an ironic thing.

That was the kind of thing hackers like Anastasia loved. Then again, so was the word jailbreak.

Anyway, Pierre was somewhere in Paris. I didn’t know how superhuman the bastard was, but he couldn’t just pass through walls and watch Paris from atop the clouds. If he had his feet on the ground and left a physical trace, we could pursue him.

“We’ll have to start there.”

I set a pin on my phone’s map to mark the concentrated area of hand and footprints. If I went there and checked around again, I would hopefully find another similar spot letting us pursue JB.

The map app only showed Paris as it normally looked, so it didn’t tell me where the rubble, cracks, and hardening lava were. Travel was going to be a challenge, but that had to be true for JB as well.

I made sure not to step on all the glass shards covering the asphalt and nervously walked around a tilted streetlight on my way toward a plaza. And…

“Truth, the footprints vanish here!”

“They must have used a car. Maxwell, show me the tire tracks now.”

I wasn’t too worried. I followed the line of light drawn out on the map and found an abandoned van not even 200m away. It wasn’t worth checking inside when it was almost certainly stolen. The artless way the driver’s side window was broken told me that.

With this much rubble and cooled lava around, no ground vehicle less than a tank was going to get you far. And if people had gotten stuck and abandoned their cars on the streets, it would cause even more congestion. The cars would make simple, sturdy, and convenient shelters, but in enough of a disaster, you could get trapped in one or it could fall off a brand new cliff that formed beneath you.

Since Pierre hadn’t noticed the futility of using the van until he had to abandon it, he must not have been working based on a plan. I could practically hear this mystery man clicking his tongue.

So was running into my stepmom below the Ministry of Defense and having to flee through the destroyed city an adlib outside of JB’s plan? Was their original escape route not available?

“Maxwell, any footprints?”

“A few, but the distribution is unusual. Instead of following the ground, they climb the unstable rubble toward a building rooftop.”

If he was trying to hide his tracks, he had to be aware he couldn’t fully erase his footprints.

Which meant…

“Maxwell, search for dangerous objects as well.”

“After the series of disasters here, that would just cover your entire map with red icons.”

“Prioritize explosives and poisons. If he knew his pursuers would be following his footprints exactly, then his job would be easy: lay a trap on that same path.”

The traps could reduce the number of pursuers, but even if they didn’t, it would force his pursuers to slow down and be more careful, giving him more time to escape. Against a large group performing a thorough search, he would only be giving away his position, but it was an effective tactic when a limited number of people were pursuing him from just the one direction. Unfortunately, we were the latter.

“There is a 30L container below the rubble. I can only estimate since I have not run an accurate component analysis, but the amount of light passing through the liquid suggests it is water.”

“Water?”

“It may be meant to trigger a phreatic eruption.”

“With only 30L? That wouldn’t be very reliable. And there are plenty of household items that can be turned into a bomb. Like a gas cylinder or that trick with aluminum foil.”

“Wouldn’t he avoid those simpler methods so the heat of the lava did not trigger them early?”

Well, he only needed to make us cautious to slow us down. We avoided stepping on that area of rubble just to be safe while we followed the footprints up toward the building rooftop.

“By the way, mom.”

“Yes?”

“What exactly can this Egyptian priest named Pierre do? You should know since you fought him already.”

There were Mummy Archenemies, weren’t there? They were probably something like Zombie Ayumi or that Voodoo Bokor, but they might not be directly created in that way.

“Answer me this instead, Satori. How many ways do you think there are in this world to defeat a Demon Lord with brute strength?”

“…”

Oh, no.

I could only think of one answer there: Magatsu Taori, my biological mother, who had modified every last part of her body into a specialized Archenemy hunter.

“Pierre Smith has at least one of those. He has the strength needed to win a direct fight with Lilith or Leviathan. And that might not be his only trump card. And I may not have drawn out the full strength of the one I saw. Satori, you need to stop basing your plans on your own assumptions. The enemy’s strength isn’t limited to only whatever you can handle.”

That was JB for you.

They had the ability to bend true gods to their will, so they could do just about anything.

That confusing trap may have only been meant to bring down our guard, or it could have had some meaning based on Egyptian mythology.

“Nothing up to and including nukes is going to surprise me at this point.”

“What makes you so sure it won’t be worse than nukes, Truth?”

“Because if they had even greater firepower already, they wouldn’t need to steal those nukes from France. They could have used their own occult explosions to compress all the asteroids into a new planet.”

But that didn’t mean we could relax.

If they had a formless curse that could hit with perfect accuracy from any range, then it was even worse than a nuclear weapon, at least from a certain point of view. And, well, maybe I was letting fiction and entertainment influence me here, but that sounded pretty likely.

Egyptian mythology seemed to have a lot of curses.

It was rare you heard something about mummies or the pyramids that didn’t include curses and traps.

“Maxwell, can you search for some basic Egyptian mythology knowledge? And I mean for absolute beginners.”

“There is a plethora of surviving artifacts for such an ancient religion, but a lot of the stories have been distorted over the years by the influence of the Roman Empire and the cross. Then again, very few people could read and write the language until quite recently, so you can’t really blame the compilers for including a lot of speculation and assumptions.”

Personally, I felt like Egyptian mythology had even more surviving artifacts than Norse mythology. But maybe that was only because those artifacts were used for global tourism.

“What’s your point?”

“The threat posed by Pierre Smith’s techniques differs wildly depending on whether it comes from the original mythology or if it is a diluted imitator. If he really and truly uses undiluted Egyptian magic, there is nothing I can do. I could search every archive in existence and come up emptyhanded.”

So we might be looking at secret magic that had been buried in the shadows of history and long forgotten? Hardly seemed fair when I was Japanese, but I couldn’t use secret onmyodo and ninjutsu techniques.

Then again, I wasn’t exactly playing fair either. Anastasia was a fairy with no known weakness and a maid. And Amatsu Yurina was a part-time cashier Demon Lord with a Seven Deadly Sins class power.

The magma wasn’t bursting from the ground anymore, but the crumbled city wasn’t going to return to normal right away.

We had been following Pierre along a rooftop, but we soon found ourselves descending a pile of rubble. His tracks suggested he was rushing and unsure where to go.

We avoided a half-collapsed wall, walked down the center of the street, and checked for the scent of gasoline before passing by a crushed car.

“I can’t find any landmarks to tell me which part of the city we’re in anymore.”

Anastasia nervously looked around while holding tightly to her pet robot that doubled as her phone. We hadn’t actually walked all that far. Climbing up and down the piles of rubble was exhausting, but I think she was more bothered by how different it all was from the Paris she knew.

I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like, but it was still a fearsome sight.

The map app covered in Maxwell’s markers showed the ordinary, orderly city, but that didn’t match what I actually saw. A lot of buildings had collapsed and even some of the roads were buried beyond recognition. There was supposed to be a large thoroughfare around here, but I couldn’t find it. It was like having one foot in a different era, or using an old map from the Edo period to walk around modern Tokyo.

The time was…nearly 10 at night.

It was still only 10.

I felt more like we had been walking for 3 or 4 days, but I realized I hadn’t actually eaten anything this whole time. Since I hadn’t collapsed from dehydration or malnutrition, it couldn’t have been all that long.

“I have found footprints matching the samples. They lead into that alley. There are matching handprints on the wall.”

“You mean this alley?”

“Sure. Based on last time, there is a high possibility of a trap along this narrow pathway.”

I wouldn’t have even noticed the alley if Maxwell hadn’t said something.

There was barely even a gap.

It would have originally been a narrow space between buildings, but that had all filled in with rocks and concrete. There was a small hole about the size of a doghouse entrance near the ground, but that was it.

“This looks like a job for me, Truth.”

“Don’t, Anastasia. Crawl in there and I can’t rescue you if you get stuck.”

Anastasia had her small pet robot, but that was a bad idea for the same reason. I tried sticking it in by hand and it immediately lost its signal. Send it any further and it would be trapped in there.

On the other hand…

“Anastasia, can I borrow your pet robot?”

“What for?”

“Maxwell, switch on data sharing with the phone forming the animal’s face.”

“I strongly recommend against this!! Linking to a legit hacker’s phone is like asking to get infected!!!!!!”

“Just do it.”

Maxwell wasn’t my phone, so even if this screwed up my phone beyond repair, it wouldn’t do anything to Maxwell’s hardware back in Japan. And Anastasia had previously tried to get into Maxwell’s software to no avail.

“What choice do we have? We have two phones and you have to be in one of them.”

“No. The other one does not have to be Miss Anastasia’s.”

“What, you’d prefer my stepmom’s phone? She’s the big boss of Absolute Noah, remember?”

“…”

Now this was a rare treat. Maxwell couldn’t figure out whether to say “sure” or “no”.

“Hold on, Truth. You’re the one asking me a favor, so why do you seem so reluctant about it?”

“And why don’t you want to connect to your own mother’s phone? We’re a happy family, aren’t we?”

Anyway.

I didn’t actually need a real one. It just had to function enough like one. Fortunately, there were some sticks and nylon thread lying around.

Anastasia looked puzzled.

“A fishing rod?”

“There’s no need to send out an unstable drone with everything else going on. The sky is probably a mess of volcanic ash and updrafts.”

Once I had my handmade rod and line, I attached the pet robot I had borrowed from Anastasia.

I wanted to check down that blocked alley, but climbing up and down the rubble would be too dangerous.

That’s where the fishing rod came in.

Let the pet robot hang down on the line and we could safely get a look from above the rubble.

A few square markers appeared right away.

Those were that guy’s handprints and footprints.

“Found him.”

“They continue on in, but the specific path is meaningless,” said Maxwell. “Even if it is longer, it would be faster and safer to take a detour around instead of forcing your way through here.”

The only reason I could think for him to take a more dangerous route was to shake any pursuit. This JB guy had already clashed with my stepmom and been forced to retreat. Even if he had already rewritten the nuclear launch codes, he would be worried she might still be after him.

So you’re more afraid of people than disasters, JB?

I didn’t know what this guy looked like, but I was starting to get a picture of who he was.

“Where does the alley lead?”

“To Boulevard des Invalides. Assuming we can still rely on the map.”

The French place names still meant nothing to me. I had trouble knowing where in Paris I was from the names alone.

We weren’t going to walk through an alley full of rubble and likely traps as well, so we used the larger street to travel around the partially-collapsed building and reach the other end of the alley.

On the way, I realized all the artificial structures were gone. The city had felt like a labyrinth before, but now the view ahead opened up.

I saw dark trees growing on a green lawn. It was hard to tell with the electricity out, but I could barely make out the silhouette of a building in the distance. It had taken damage and parts of it had collapsed, but its silhouette still reminded me of a palace or cathedral.

“What’s this? Some kind of park? Or a garden?”

“The Hôtel des Invalides is a commemorative complex related to Napoleon,” explained Maxwell. “It contains his tomb and a military museum. This must be the plaza surrounding it.”

There were still cracks running through the ground, but the damage looked less severe on the dirt and grass ground than the hard stone and concrete found elsewhere. The lush lawn and tree leaves may have kept the embers at bay.

I glanced over at the largescale botanical area and walked down the bumpy asphalt until my phone reacted.

“Hand and footprints!”

“They leave the alley, cross the wide street, and then appear to enter the Hôtel des Invalides’s grounds,” said Maxwell. “But based on the direction, they are not headed toward the building itself. They are on their way to the outdoor plaza on the grounds.”

?

The trees there were only meant to give the place some color, so we weren’t talking about thick woods here. Then why was this JB person rushing toward an open area of grass? Even during a blackout, that seemed way too risky for someone trying to stay hidden. Or was this not his destination and he intended to cross the plaza and go somewhere else?

“This is weird, Truth.” Anastasia was holding her pet robot tight. “The Hôtel des Invalides may be close to collapse, but that plaza is a wide open area of green grass decorated with a few trees. Staying there won’t keep you safe from the disasters, but isn’t it human nature to prefer a park or plaza to a partially collapsed concrete building? And yet…”

“There’s no one here?”

Anastasia and I aimed our phones here and there within the Hôtel des Invalides grounds.

My stepmom held a hand to her chin.

“I see. I was wondering how he planned to escape Paris in this state, but if that’s his plan, he would indeed need a wide open space.”

“Something is slowly flashing.”

It wasn’t visible to the naked eye.

But I could definitely see it on my phone camera which was applying some mechanical analysis.

“It’s a really bright light. We only don’t see it because it’s UV!”

My stepmom gasped when she peeked at my phone’s screen. The look on her face said this confirmed her suspicions.

“That’s an air beacon. Most people don’t use UV, though, since it’s outside the visual range. JB must be calling a helicopter!”

That explained why he had driven everyone out of this open area. If there was a crowd here when the helicopter arrived, they would rush toward it in hopes of being rescued.

But even if the volcanic activity was in a lull, I couldn’t believe someone was willing to fly a helicopter through the volcanic ash, phreatic eruptions, and firestorms. Only a skilled pilot could get through without crashing.

If we didn’t hurry up, the JB guy would get away.

JB wasn’t planning an indiscriminate nuclear attack, but they might destroy who-knows-how-many cities or countries “just in case” or to prevent anyone from pursuing them. That was really the extent of the reason they had directed a meteor shower onto France’s capital.

After everything I had seen, I knew for certain that JB would do it.

They would wipe cities around the world off the map just because there was an airport or missile base there or because an aircraft carrier or submarine was located in the ocean nearby.

So we could not let this man get away.

A future disaster was already budding. We had failed to stop it. So now we had to stop JB before that disaster could spread across the world like dandelion seeds. If we captured Pierre, we could get a look at the entire group hidden somewhere in the world. And once we had that, we could strike back.

Part 2

The Hôtel des Invalides.

Apparently it contained Napoleon’s tomb and a military museum, but from here, it looked like a giant grassy park in the middle of the city. The streetlights were out, but the fires burning throughout Paris cast an orange light all the way here.

But it wasn’t enough to get rid of the darkness.

The trees were only meant to give the place some color, but the way they blocked our view was terrifying. I guess if you were inside a bento box measuring hundreds of meters, even the parsley in one side would be big enough to swallow you up.

The dark trees were impossible to ignore and the embers raining from the sky were like strange, glowing bugs. This area felt different from the city, almost unreal. The darkness made it hard to judge distances and we would reach the grassy area before long, but I still felt like I would find a natural elf on the other side of the bushes.

I couldn’t let the pitch black oppression get to me.

We were after one thing here.

“There. More hand and footprints.”

The handprints were on the tree trunks. The footprints were in the dirt and on the tree roots. When I held my phone up, the square markers appeared, giving us a straight line leading to the JB cast member named Pierre.

He had driven everyone from this vast area and he was sending a flashing UV beacon into the night sky. Most likely, that was to call in a helicopter so he could make a quick escape. There was nothing we could do if he managed that. We would have no way of finding out how many nukes had their authorization stolen or where in the world they were located.

If we failed to stop JB here, we could only watch on as more of the world met this fate. While sweating that we wouldn’t fall victim to their calculations and whims. I had to avoid a future like that.

“Another 50 meters,” said Anastasia, aiming her phone toward the night sky to visualize the invisible UV signal. “He might notice the backlight, so we should probably stop using our pho-”

Before she could finish her warning, we heard a rustling from the side. It came from between the dark trees.

“Here it comes!!” shouted Amatsu Yurina, pulling on Anastasia’s hand.

She was right.

With what sounded like an explosion, all of the trees were sliced through horizontally at just below chest height.

My survival wasn’t due to some courageous decision. The loud boom and my stepmom’s shout simply surprised me so badly I tripped over a nearby tree root.

But…the trees were sliced?

That wasn’t the work of a blade. It was clearly different. The thinnest trees in the area were as big around as my thigh and the thickest ones were bigger around than my torso. A sharply-honed metal blade couldn’t hope to accomplish this. If you tried to slice through all these trees, it was the blade that would end up breaking.

I felt something cold on my cheeks and nose. The atmosphere was still a mess thanks to the meteor shower, but it wasn’t raining right now.

“Water?” I blankly muttered. “Did he cut through the trees with water???”

The bushes parted and something emerged.

Overall, it looked like a collection of old stones and…pure gold maybe? But the terrifyingly smooth curves formed something that looked even more biological than living, breathing people like us.

It was a crocodile.

From the end of its great jaws to the tip of its tail, it had to be more than 15m long.

I had never seen a real croc, but this one kept its head low and crawled along the ground.

But even like that, its eyes were on the same level as mine.

It felt like being stared down by the headlights of a giant truck or tour bus. Whether or not I had a weapon or a shield wasn’t the issue here. It was so massive no ordinary person should ever have been facing it head on. My instincts made that all too clear for me.

Its stats were well past the limit.

A human could not lose 2 liters of blood.

A human could not swallow potassium cyanide.

A human could not have a rocket engine in their body.

In the same way, a human could not fight this giant thing.

Eyes wide, Amatsu Yurina muttered something under her breath.

“Sebek? But that isn’t what I saw in the basement.”

“Mom, if you know something about this, then tell us! Now is not the time for your cryptic bullshit!!”

“Sebek is an Egyptian water god. He’s a major god who takes the role of the evil god Set in some regions. His simple strength in combat would be bad enough, but he performs divination that ensures the accuracy of his attacks. Trying to escape using a logical route likely won’t be enough to escape.”

Demon Lord Lilith explained it all while protecting young Anastasia and slowly backing away.

She explained it all a lot more smoothly than Maxwell, perhaps because she was a mythological figure as well.

“Pierre Smith is a magic user who actively incorporates idols into his spells. Egyptian mythology deifies animals like cats and cows and they have a lot of statues modeled after gods. I can’t tell you what percentage of the god’s power is found in that thing, but if it’s even 10%, this is far more powerful than your average natural disaster!!”

This was our enemy now?

This was why Amatsu Yurina failed to stop Pierre Smith of JB in the French Ministry of Defense’s basement?

Really, I was impressed she had fought a monster like that head on and survived! At 15m, this thing was clearly far more powerful and horrifying than a natural croc. Before even considering how we could win or what tactics we could use, I couldn’t even figure out how that giant thing had fit inside the labyrinthine catacombs!

“So where is Pierre himself? In the cockpit of the ancient weapon he created!?”

“Of course not! Maybe he could use it to shelter himself briefly, but his body couldn’t physically survive being near that thing’s undiluted power for long. He must intentionally keep it separate from him. Because he knows that’s the safest method!”

That explained that.

Probably, anyway.

My stepmom had supposedly fought Pierre and Sebek in the French Ministry of Defense’s basement, but she sounded pretty speculative about a lot of this. But now wasn’t the time to quibble about her answers.

So was this like a remote-controlled drone weapon? There was no point in fighting this mechanical god ourselves. Not if Pierre escaped into the sky on his helicopter in the meantime. And he might have more god statues than just Sebek.

If we could get around this thing, that was our best bet.

But this artificial croc was the size of a large bus, so how fast could its muscles(?) move it? I doubted I could escape it on foot anyway.

It did not attempt to rush us right away.

Even though it was artificial, it swished its thick tail side to side in irritation and then opened his great maw.

And just like before, it launched ultra-pressurized water.

“Here it comes!!!!!!”

Part 3

When you got down to it, that was probably the most effective strategy for Water God Sebek.

It didn’t need to take us all out at once. It only had to keep us from moving and keep piling on the damage until it was destroyed. It was the ultimate tactic for unmanned weaponry. Especially when Pierre’s goal was keeping us busy until he could board his helicopter, not to destroy us.

No.

In fact, I couldn’t escape Sebek’s water jet. I had only dodged the first one because I happened to trip. That wouldn’t happen again.

“Maxwe-!!”

“Displaying effective evasion course on your screen. Please take immediate action.”

My throat went dry when I checked the screen. Did that stupid computer not know an ordinary high schooler can’t kick off the remaining stump of a felled tree and perform a midair flip!?

If that’s what I needed to do to dodge, then I really was screwed. I knew it wouldn’t help, but I still crouched down and crossed my arms over my head.

That’s when it happened.

The giant crocodile made of stone and gold exploded.

Its head burst open from within.

I didn’t know what had happened at first.

Once I realized the explosion was of water and not fire, it occurred to me that Sebek had blown itself up.

Only then did I notice Amatsu Yurina thrusting out one of the felled trees, shoving it right down the croc’s yawning gullet.

That made sense.

It was hard to imagine when water kept under that much pressure was highly unusual, but all fluids took the path of least resistance. Just like the air escaped through the open end of a balloon. A gas valve or water tap both took advantage of this.

Shoving the thick tree directly into the water jet’s outlet kept the water from escaping there. The pressure grew beyond the design specs while the water raged inside the tank, searching for an exit.

If there was a point designed weaker than the tree, then that part would rupture and the pressurized water would escape.

But it had all happened so quickly.

If she had screwed that up, she would have been bisected, but she had still managed to come up with the idea, decide to act on it, and actually do it.

“Mom!?”

“This isn’t enough to finish off Sebek. We need to run!!”

Soaking wet Amatsu Yurina gestured for me to follow her while she quickly crouched low. Sebek’s head was bent and its jaws didn’t fit together right, but its thick tail could probably turn a car to scraps.

“Anastasia, let’s go!!”

“We’re really going to run past that thing!?”

“Stay in front of it and it’ll crash into us like a bus!”

As an unmanned weapon, Sebek didn’t care about the damage. It wouldn’t stop until it physically couldn’t move anymore.

Past it was Pierre transmitting his location into the sky using the invisible UV air beacon. This was all for nothing if he got away.

JB and their cast had made a mess of Paris.

I couldn’t let them get away now. I had to make them pay. I had to crush JB, starting with this man.

I checked the giant croc head, noted the left eye looked damaged, and chose to pass on that side.

There were felled trees lying around like logs, but they were much too heavy for Anastasia and me to use as a weapon. I made sure not to trip over those while passing by Sebek, but then it lifted its front leg.

I’d forgotten about that.

I had been imagining something like tires.

But crocodile legs looked powerful. Especially when they were made of heavy stone and had sharp golden claws.

“Uh, oh.”

“Satori!!”

I heard a shout from the other side, followed by a dull impact and Sebek’s giant body sliding a bit to the side. It lowered its front leg to regain its balance.

I used that chance to tug on Anastasia’s hand and get past it.

That was when I saw my stepmom tossing aside a broken tree trunk.

“What the hell did you do!?”

“Jabbed this below its back leg so it slipped. The same idea as the rolling bed of legs used to transport the heavy stones for the pyramids. Anyway, we can’t hope to win a direct fight against Sebek!”

I made sure to run as fast as I could and left the trees in no time.

This really wasn’t large enough to call a forest or even some woods. I found a dark area of grass about the size of a soccer field.

Fear clutched my heart.

This was a lot scarier than below the trees. If Sebek was going to use a one-hit-kill projectile, this open area would be perfect for it.

“!”

I raised my phone and checked on our objective. The bright UV beacon flashing like a lighthouse was about 50m ahead. On the schoolground, I could cover that distance in less than 10 seconds.

We should have been able to see our target crouching out there, so was he hiding behind one of the dark and slanted streetlights over there?

I also heard smashing and cracking sounds behind us. I looked back while running and saw the bus-sized Sebek was turning around to face us. I had never fought a real crocodile, but this one didn’t seem very nimble. It could put a lot of weight behind its attacks, though.

It knocked over the trees and tore into the grass to reach the open area.

Water God Sebek forcibly parted its damaged jaws and sprayed water in the wrong direction while pursuing us.

It felt like playing tag with a dump truck. Human legs shouldn’t have been enough to escape, but Sebek had to tear into the grassy ground with its giant body and sharp claws. In other words, it slid. It almost seemed to be at the mercy of its own weight and the power fueling its speed.

We would have been run over in an instant otherwise.

“That is how it’s meant to be used.” Anastasia was pale in the face while I tugged on her hand. “That is how you use a disposable unmanned device. Since it isn’t alive, you don’t have to feel bad about destroying it. Since it has no mind of its own, it feels no fear. It will charge headlong into the most dangerous barrage and forcibly clear a path. This is two generations ahead of the US army which is too terrified of having their tech stolen to put their latest jets in a position where they might be shot down in enemy territory.”

At any rate, we were finished if it caught up.

But we could keep going as long as it didn’t hit us. That mechanical god was commanded by Pierre Smith of JB. Things would change I we could capture him. I didn’t know if that thing should be called an unmanned weapon or an idol, but Pierre wouldn’t want to be crushed to death by it himself.

That was when I heard a something rhythmically beating the air overhead.

Was that a main rotor?

As dark as it was, I couldn’t believe it got so close without me noticing. It must have been a fairly special model. I was reminded of the UFO-like attack drones the JSDF had used during Tokyo’s disaster.

That thought was interrupted by my stepmom’s voice.

“Get down!!”

Something rained down from above the dark screen of the sky above.

From the moment I was reminded of a military craft, I should have considered the possibility of JB’s rescue helicopter being armed.

Was it flown by their cast too!?

“Truth!?”

I had been running hand in hand with Anastasia, but her voice sounded so far away. I had no idea what had happened to me, but I could tell I wasn’t still running. Something was wrong with my vision. I tasted dirt. If I had fallen, was I lying on the grass?

“Pant, pant.”

I felt over myself while lying there. I had both arms and both legs. I had a full complement of fingers and toes. I hadn’t lost an ear or a nose. I felt pain in my right thigh, but not because a scorching bullet had pierced it. A pebble or clump of dirt must have hit it.

But how in the world had I escaped the helicopter’s mechanical lock? Was the air just that unstable with all the firestorms and everything? Had the earthquakes and volcanic eruption thrown the geothermal energy and geomagnetism out of whack? I didn’t know how it worked, which meant I couldn’t count on it working again.

I was dead if they tried that a second time.

There was nowhere to hide in this flat open space. And even if there were, how were we supposed to hide from the various sensors combined with the helicopter’s elevated vantage point!?

The sound of the rotor grew somewhat distorted. The pilot must have understood the power balance here. They were taking a wide circle to aim their nose our way and make another pass with their machinegun.

Their advantage in height and speed was insurmountable.

We weren’t a threat unless we had a powerful and guided projectile weapon. It leisurely showed us its belly as it flew overhead and focused on making minute adjustments for its own convenience.

“Run,” I groaned, still covered in dirt.

“Truth!”

“This is no different from Sebek behind us. That helicopter’s heavy weaponry isn’t super precise, so we can stop it from attacking by taking Pierre hostage while he awaits pickup. So hurry!!”

Where was he?

He had to be around here somewhere, but there was no sign of him. Was he holding his breath behind one of the dark streetlights, or was he lying on the ground with a special waterproof sheet over him? I wasn’t sure how much military sensors could see, but that might be enough to hide him from my phone’s night vision adjustments.

Whatever the case, I couldn’t just stay on the ground. There was no rest for the weary, like they said, so I had to get back up and keep moving to try and escape with my life here.

I knew where the UV beacon was coming from, so I got my trembling limbs moving, clenched my teeth, and forced myself to run forward.

Anastasia and my stepmom were moving too.

This was honestly overkill. Both Water God Sebek pursuing us from behind and the attack helicopter circling overhead were too powerful for us to hope to defeat. If this had truly been an indiscriminate attack, we would have been screwed.

But this was a rescue operation for JB.

That meant they had to protect some of the area.

Pierre Smith was around here somewhere and he was worth enough to them that they were here to rescue him. If we got our hands on him, we could turn this around. It was our only chance.

“20m until UV air beacon,” said Maxwell.

“I…know that!”

I still couldn’t see him.

Where was he? He might not be waiting right at the source of the beacon, but he had to be close enough to board the helicopter as soon as it landed.

“JB has already used Sebek and the attack helicopter,” said Maxwell. You should consider the possibility that Pierre himself is armed with some kind of weapon or occult power.”

“Damn!!”

How many times was I going to overlook an obvious factor!?

I leaped aside, pushed Anastasia down while she ran alongside me, and lay flat behind a fully collapsed streetlight. I heard several explosive sounds soon thereafter. And from very close by.

Were those gunshots, or magic?

Either way, we weren’t going to survive a direct hit from Pierre’s attacks either. But if he stopped us here, either Sebek or the machinegun fire would do us in.

Also…

“Truth?” uncertainly asked Anastasia while looking up at me from my arms.

She may have noticed I was smiling.

Pierre, you might be delighted you threatened us with that high firepower, but you gave yourself away when you counterattacked.

That beacon was the goal.

And he couldn’t change the helicopter’s landing spot now that he had designated it here!

“We’re 20m from the beacon. He must be nearby, so focus on a large circle around it. We need to circle around and search for him.”

“But, Truth, we don’t know what he even fired at us.”

“My stepmom is doing the same thing on the other side. And staying here will only let things get worse. So let’s go.”

I didn’t try throwing an empty can or rock in the wrong direction like in a drama or movie. A half-baked method would only give Pierre an extra hint. Nothing scared people more than absolute silence in the dark. Knowing several people who meant you harm were approaching silently had to be terrifying.

“…”

Some of the streetlights were tilted diagonally and others had fully collapsed.

I focused on even the smallest hiding spots in this flat, open area.

We were about 20m away, so too close to use our phones. Pierre had a projectile weapon. If we shined a backlight on our face every time we did anything, we would basically be asking him to target us.

“So why the Hôtel des whatever? He uses Egyptian mythology and Napoleon’s tomb is supposed to be here, so please tell me some famous historical figure’s mummy isn’t going to attack us next.”

“Didn’t you know, Truth? Without Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the famous Rosetta Stone never would have been found. Then the ancient hieroglyphics wouldn’t have been fully decoded.”

Nice trivia. I just had to pray that anecdote didn’t give Pierre some kind of power boost while here.

We walked across or around a few obstacles.

The lawn was torn up in one area. A few gardening tools and unlit outdoor lights were lying there. Someone must have been working on replacing some dried and browning grass during the day. The area was surrounded by ropes and it had a lot of stuff inside, including a pile of fertilizer bags and a wheelbarrow.

A perfect hiding spot.

“He’s there, Truth. Someone is moving behind the fertilizer.”

“Sh.”

I shushed Anastasia while moving next to a metal box for the firefighting equipment below an unlit streetlight a short distance away.

We were in an open area.

JB’s helicopter was set to land here.

There was a single figure here. They were too far away to judge their build or sex. Or if they held anything in their dominant hand. A cylindrical container the size of a fire extinguisher lay at their feet. I couldn’t check with my phone right now, but that was probably the air beacon. I couldn’t see it, but it had to still be sending out an explosion of UV light at even intervals.

“…”

I silently crouched down and pulled the firefighting hose from the metal box. More specifically, the metal nozzle bigger around than my arm. That was better than nothing.

That was the best I could do. I didn’t have time to wait for a better chance. If I didn’t act now to take this JB cast member hostage, either Water God Sebek or the attack helicopter would get us.

We couldn’t tell where my stepmom was hiding in the darkness. I just had to trust she would work with us when we made our move.

“Anastasia, you wait here.”

“Truth.”

“And, Maxwell, don’t activate the backlight but listen.”

I pulled my phone from my pocket. I didn’t have much to rely on here, but not just because I didn’t have it on hand. I wouldn’t know how to use a real gun or sword if you handed me one.

When the chips were down, I could only rely on the tools I was familiar with.

So I made my request.

“On my signal, repeatedly use the camera flash. Set the interval to 0.5 seconds!!”

The metal nozzle was heavier than a bat, so I held it in my dominant hand and held the phone in my left hand as I rushed out.

Red and blue flashing lights were the most well known example, but forcing the human pupil to rapidly expand and contract could lead to headaches, dizziness, and reduced consciousness. And the human pupil would automatically change size to match the strength of light. The person’s conscious will didn’t matter.

My phone sent out bright flashes, but I couldn’t let my guard down when this guy had a projectile weapon. I ran more diagonally than straight to approach the silhouette hiding behind the pile of fertilizer bags.

All this light would of course draw the attack helicopter’s attention, but I was less than 20m from Pierre. That had to be within the danger zone for the margin of error when firing a machinegun from an unstable midair position instead of solidly attached to a platform. Not that I had any data to back up that assumption!

Please let this be a one-on-one thing from here on!!

“!?”

The silhouette held up a hand to cover his eyes and thrust his other hand’s palm out toward me. The hand was completely open and didn’t appear to be holding anything.

So it wasn’t a gun!?

A fireball larger than a softball shot from the empty hand.

The flashing light had to be working, but he had a projectile attack. If I had rushed straight in, that attack would have vaporized me.

The fireball whizzed past my face and I heard it blast the grass and dirt behind me into the air. I didn’t have time to look back and check. I ran in a zigzagging pattern to continue my approach.

I kept the flashing going and that hand, which was wearing something like a gold bracelet, took aim again.

I didn’t even have time to take aim, raise my blunt weapon, and swing it down with my weight behind it.

“Ahhh!!”

So I just rushed in.

I had a fire hose nozzle – in other words, a metal rod thicker around than my arm. It couldn’t stab into anything since the end was flat, but I still held it out and tackled my target. I must have only looked like a dark silhouette to him because he seemed to misjudge the distance between us. The blow to the center of his stomach lifted his feet from the ground and his back slammed into a large, unlit outdoor light.

That had to have at least knocked the breath out of him.

First, he launched his fireball diagonally upwards, not even coming close to hitting me, but he didn’t stop there. He moved his arm to aim the palm directly at my face.

The fireball burst in the sky and lit up the ground like a firework or a flare.

The thick bracelet on his wrist looked a lot like a drone beetle, but I knew it probably wasn’t. That beetle made of gold and gems had to be one that appeared in Egyptian mythology.

“That accessary is designed to look like a scarab – in other words, a dung beetle,” said Maxwell. “But in Egyptian mythology, they are a symbol of creation and rebirth. They are also a symbol of the sun god Khepera-”

“Yeah, I don’t have time to read a whole essay! Play a loud sound at max volume!!”

“No, a smartphone’s speakers are not powerful enough to-”

“If you need more sound sources, then resonate with the glass in the outdoor lights and the plastic of the fertilizer bags. You can figure out the frequency yourself, so just do it!!”

The world around me was enveloped by noise.

The barrage of noise was more than effective against someone who had already been blinded and had their head rattled. Just as he tried to switch from vision to hearing, those second sensory organs were attacked.

That must have messed with his inner ear because he wobbled on his feet.

His next fireball failed to find its target from less than a meter away and scorched the ground instead. I could only hope no stray shots hit Anastasia. The JB cast member groaned, trembled, and clung to the large lantern-like outdoor light for support.

“Jay…bee…”

At first, the meaning of his voice failed to reach my brain.

It took me a few seconds to recognize the groaned syllables as JB.

“JB will free everyone from this cruel world. That includes you, Amatsu Satori.”

“Maxwell, check the power situation for that outdoor light. Since these are designed for construction sites, I bet they use a gasoline generator or a battery. That means they’ll work just fine with the power out. And everything is online these days, right?”

“No one can be saved as things are. Yes, you might survive the Calamity for now, but the fundamental rules governing this world will not change. That is not a true jailbreak that breaks free of god’s rule!”

“Power it up.”

As soon as the electricity flowed into the silhouette leaning against the light for support, they began to shake violently.

He couldn’t take aim like that and he passed out soon enough.

The Scylla who had ruined Absolute Noah’s plans from within had said something similar. She had said JB intended to change the world from the ground up instead of just saving the chosen few at the top.

I didn’t like the idea of holding a big piece of metal right now, so I threw away the nozzle and aimed my phone’s screen around.

“Pant, gasp. Where’s Sebek?”

“I no longer detect the sounds of it tearing at the ground. Perhaps it has ceased functioning,” suggested Maxwell.

“And the attack helicopter?”

“Look above you. With the utmost caution, of course.”

Since I could hear its rotors, it had to be close. It was probably almost directly overhead.

What could I do?

What was my next move?

That helicopter was definitely carrying a cast member here to retrieve Pierre Smith. The machine gun fire had been to keep us from interfering.

But this was JB we were talking about. If it looked like they couldn’t rescue their cast member, they would worry about him being captured and forced to talk. In that case, they might cruelly abandon their cast member. By shredding him to pieces with machinegun fire. Along with me, I might add.

…

………

…

………

I waited. Each second stretched on into an eternity of tension while I waited with my foot on unconscious Pierre Smith’s stomach.

To the very end, I couldn’t figure out what JB was thinking.

Because the sky flashed again and another meteor shower poured mercilessly down on Paris. The merciless destruction seemed to be smashing the fires that still stubbornly burned within the city’s rubble.

Was that an unexpected accident, or an intentional attack?

Either way, the helicopter responded by quickly turning around and flying out of our reach.

“Satori!”

“Mom, grab that rope over there – the rope used to mark this area off limits. Use that to tie this idiot up.”

I don’t know where she came from, but Amatsu Yurina emerged from behind an unlit street light and poked her toe lightly at Pierre Smith who lay at my feet.

“He will know everything,” she said. “Both the true identity of JB and the number and location of the nuclear warheads stolen from France.”

[Unknown_Storage] The Formation of Planets [file06]

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

That old saying applies to the formation of planets as well. The rocky planets like Earth and the gas planets like Jupiter are essentially formed the same way: gravity gathered enough dust and dirt in one place to form a giant orb out in space.

But gravity does not just appear. A great mass is required to create that gravity.

That is where the old saying comes in.

The dust and dirt will not gather without gravity, but sufficient gravity will not form until a sufficient mass of dust and dirt has gathered. It’s the chicken or the egg all over again. It is unknown how a planet forms in a natural environment. We do not actually understand how our own home came to be.

However.

Just like in so many other fields of study, you can make use of a process without understanding the fundamental principle behind it.

We can in fact create a planet.

We only need to use modern technology to compress the impurities floating in space into a single point.

Back to Chapter 4