The Panama Ca.n.a.l was a major entranceway to the world’s sea transportation routes and the Soberania Disturbance was fought over controlling the key to that entranceway. However, a “cleaner” justification was given.

There was a hideout for an anti-Object force in the Central American Soberania District.

That hideout was secretly training a special commando unit that specialized in largescale terrorist attacks on safe country metropolises.

Just north of the Soberania District was western North America, the home country of the Capitalist Corporations.

The special commando unit could create deadly weapons out of everyday items like detergent and compressed gas cylinders, were skilled at slipping into countries undetected, and most importantly, were as elusive as ghosts. The police force in charge of protecting the cities would be helpless, and even the intelligence agencies that worked in secret only had a fifty-fifty chance of capturing them.

Once they arrived, the concept of the “safe country” would collapse. No one could imagine how many cities would sink into rubble.

So they needed to be defeated before that happened.

They needed to be killed before their northward operation began.

“There was no special commando unit. The supposed training camp was nothing more than a digital detox nature camp set up by a tour company from your Capitalist Corporations. You sent young people out there and punished them as villains while they were none the wiser. It was quite the setup. You used overblown reports and doctored photos to get them registered as a truly frightening combat squad.”

The man spat out the words.

The square s.p.a.ce was surrounded by metal walls and everything was blotted out by darkness.

“Saying you slaughtered them because you wanted the Panama Ca.n.a.l would damage the reputation of a great nation. Compromising with international society sure isn’t easy.”

“…”

“But thanks to that farce, my family is dead.”

His voice remained flat, which made it terrifying in a different way from an angry shout.

That man was said to have a thousand faces, so the standard expressions may have been meaningless to him.

“The funny part is that I had my skills as Nyarlathotep, but I had completely forgotten them as my family was killed before my eyes. I was so afraid of bringing those deadly skills into that small household that I used self-suggestion to fully seal them away. Do you understand now? It was the shock of seeing my family die that broke the seal of Nyarlathotep. If it had broken just a few minutes…no, just a few seconds early, it all might have turned out differently.”

His voice sounded like dripping coal tar and it was likely directly linked to his emotions and expression. After undergoing so much cosmetic surgery, he had completely forgotten the proper face he had been born with. His face may have melted in the darkness and splattered all over the floor.

“Laugh.”

That word felt like strength slowly building into a supposedly safe rubber knife until it stabbed into someone’s body.

That was the cruelest method that brought far more pain and fear than a simple sharp blade.

“You’re supposed to laugh at times like this, CEO. Or should I call you Azathoth?”

“Why…?”

That single word spoken by an old man sounded like forcing it out had worn an entire year off his life.

“Why don’t you just kill me already?”

“A death changes meaning entirely depending on the circ.u.mstances. In a back alley, you would be a victim. On a battlefield, you would be a war hero. At the execution grounds, you would be a despicable criminal. So I need the proper place to kill you. You already know where I’m taking you, don’t you?”

“You can’t mean…”

“Welcome to my home, the h.e.l.l that was once the Soberania District.”

A metal door opened wide with a creak and a rusty smell.

Only then did the old man realize they were inside a container loaded on a s.h.i.+p.

They were surrounded by the colors red and black.

The entire sky seemed to be dyed in the colors of twilight, but it was not. It all came from the fires of war. The wreckage of homes, the historical remnants, the vast swaths of nature, and the people who had lived there had been mercilessly piled up and burned as the fuel for these crimson flames.

The idea of clean wars did not apply in the slightest. It was a literal h.e.l.l.

And this apocalyptic scene had been created by Acre Kiss-of-Rose, CEO of Salem Logistics.

“We’ve arrived at the stage.”

Despite the red and black coloring the world, Nyarlathotep relaxed his entire body with an expression that said “I’m home”.

With a heavy sound, he pressed his palms against something, but it was not a table. It was a giant wooden barrel filled with something incredibly heavy.

“Now, how about we get started? You wanted the Panama Ca.n.a.l so badly, so that’s where I’ll kill you. So make sure you appreciate the effort I’m going to here, Azathoth.”

“This entire situation makes my head hurt.”

Frolaytia’s words were in stark contrast to how she was lounging on a beach chair and re-crossing her legs while staring up into the sky.

She had removed her usual stuffy uniform and now only wore a white blouse over a brightly-colored bikini. The strings on the sides of the bottom were only loosely tied, so the knots looked about to come apart just from the fidgeting of her legs.

“During the Gigant Hustler, Acre Kiss-of-Rose, CEO of Salem Logistics and thus one ruler of 7th Core which controls the Capitalist Corporations’ home country, was abducted. I’d love to say that doesn’t matter since he’s the VIP of an enemy nation, but for better or for worse, this has been far too influential. The waves have even reached us in the Legitimacy Kingdom.”

Quenser and Heivia were of course not paying a lick of attention to their silver-haired huge-breasted commander.

They may have looked like they were obediently hanging on her every word, but they were actually staring at the bottom of her s.h.i.+rt (or rather, at what lay within the s.h.i.+rt) from directly in front of her.

“(I’m scared. Why is Frolaytia giving us a treat like this out of the blue? It feels like watching swarms of bugs moving away before a natural disaster strikes.)”

“(Then move out of the way! And quit crouching down for a better look! You’re being too obvious!! Besides, I don’t care if this is a trap! I’m gonna milk it for all it’s worth. So outta the way!! Outta the way!!!!)”

“(There has to be something more to this. Something’s coming that she has to distract us from.)”

Despite their fears, the two subordinates continued trying to send strange telepathic waves to the knots at Frolaytia’s hips.

Meanwhile, she continued talking.

“He was apparently abducted by a Capitalist Corporations’ spy, but the problem is where he was taken: the blank region of the Soberania District. It borders the Panama Ca.n.a.l, that world-famous entrance to the sea, and it’s the hottest battlefield at the moment. I’m sure you’ve seen the term ‘Soberania Disturbance’ pop up as a top search when you’ve opened a search engine.”

“Hm? Didn’t the Capitalist Corporations send a large unit to the Soberania District to eliminate some special commandos being secretly trained to attack safe countries?”

“Yes, but the existence of those commandos is extremely suspect.”

Frolaytia spread and closed her toes.

To the north of the precious Panama Ca.n.a.l is the Capitalist Corporations’ Azuero District and to the south is the Soberania District. …The conflict is officially known as a clash between those two districts, but in reality, the Legitimacy Kingdom has sent quite a few military advisors to the Soberania District to trip up the Capitalist Corporations. The point is to thoroughly train them in things that a regular army will hate. So if that CEO is brought there and killed, who do you think the blame will fall on?”

“Just to be clear, it really was a Capitalist Corporations spy that did it, right?”

“Yes, but will international society believe that?” Frolaytia sounded as melancholic as the morning of her period. “The Capitalist Corporations has to be hoping to find someone else’s secret stash of cash in the rubble after the devastating hurricane blows away their house. That means this could lead to war. If we’re falsely accused of directly attacking a 7th Core CEO, I can’t even imagine how far the madness will spread. …It could even start a world war that erases the boundaries between safe and battlefield countries. If they distort the death of one of their seven corporations’ leaders into an attack on their home country, that could quickly become no laughing matter.”

“…”

“…”

Quenser and Heivia fell silent at that.

If the bikini knot effect(?) had not already gathered their blood in their lower bodies, they might have been fighting over a shovel to dig their own shelter.

“So our job this time is to rescue a VIP. …Even if that VIP is the enemy boss. Before Armageddon breaks out, we need to find the spy hiding in the Soberania District and secure CEO Acre who that spy abducted. Do you get the situation now?”

“I get that it’s a dangerous situation, but why us? If things are that bad, wouldn’t it make sense to send in some special forces with masks over their faces and medals covering their chests?”

“Not everyone sees the danger quite so clearly.”

Frolaytia started crossing her legs again but instead rolled onto her side on the beach chair. This put even more of a burden on the bikini’s knot.

“I’ll explain the geographical layout now. To the north is the Capitalist Corporations’ Azuero District, to the south is the Soberania District where the Legitimacy Kingdom is helping out, and in between is the eighty kilometer Panama Ca.n.a.l. The Panama Ca.n.a.l is a demilitarized zone, so neither army is allowed inside. …The ca.n.a.l is a lot more complicated than a simple waterway, but do you know why?”

“If I remember right, it doesn’t have just one set water height. Several water gates and pumps are used to raise or lower the s.h.i.+ps in stages like an elevator using water.”

“And if that system were destroyed, taking control of the Panama Ca.n.a.l would be meaningless, so no soldiers are allowed in. The only people who are allowed there are the Blue Cross, an international peace organization that is working to maintain and preserve the water gates and pumps.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“The spy in question has moved deep into the demilitarized zone. We will naturally have to follow suit to pursue him, but it would be an international incident if we’re caught. We can’t be spotted by the civilian Blue Cross, and if we are, we have to take some rather severe ‘emergency measures’. …The heroes in black masks don’t want to act here for fear of being caught by trap cameras and talked about around the globe or of having to shoot civilians and dirty the reputation of their unseen career.”

“They’re refusing the mission in a situation like this?”

“That gets down to the nature of special forces. They’re meant to thread the needle and complete their jobs under the best of conditions, so they have a greater authority to refuse missions than normal units. They’re even allowed to turn them down because they’re on their period or having a fight with a sibling.”

Quenser groaned at his busty commander’s words.

It may have sounded soft for supposed special forces, but no matter how experienced they were, soldiers were still human. Even if they had a number of mental switches that allowed them to kill without fear or guilt, they still could not handle situations that stepped outside that.

For example, if the enemy soldiers cruelly slaughtered civilians, they could probably stuff those corpses into body bags.

For example, if they failed to rescue a hostage, they could probably face that dead body without issue.

But they would not be able to personally aim their guns at the vitals of perfectly innocent civilians and pull the trigger.

So what if their own mistake would create a situation in which they had to kill civilians themselves?

Their unwavering sense of justice gave them the resolve needed to dirty their own hands to protect the current age, but that very justice would completely shatter from a single mistake.

However…

“Are you serious? But the world is in as precarious a situation as a vase about to be knocked to the floor by the giant a.s.s of a clumsy maid. What good are special forces if they can’t act under special circ.u.mstances?”

“I agree with you there, but unfortunately, the abduction occurred during the Gigant Hustler we were taking part in. No one else wants to do this s.h.i.+tty job, so it’s been deemed our ‘responsibility’. Are you impressed I had the courage not to break that carefree brigadier general’s jaw?”

“Are you sure they aren’t getting back at us because they didn’t like that an outdated First Generation won the Gigant Hustler?”

Quenser spat out the words, but Frolaytia neither confirmed nor denied the possibility.

She rolled onto her back again before continuing.

“Officially, the Baby Magnum is being sent to the southern Soberania District to hold the Second Generation Extra Arc in check with long-range fire. And while the spotlight is s.h.i.+ning on the Princess, you all need to walk along the dimly-lit catwalk and crush that pesky bug. The a.s.sa.s.sination and rescue operation will be carried out by our stars in the shadows, the intelligence division, but don’t trip them up. Use every skill you have to help them as much as possible. That is all.”

With that said, Frolaytia raised her slender white legs straight up. She then swung them like a pendulum to gather momentum and stand up from the beach chair. Even then, the bikini’s side knots did not come undone.

They were not at the beach of a luxury resort or on the deck of a luxury cruise s.h.i.+p.

This was a manmade floating island built in a square shape with two kilometer sides.

That megafloat beachhead was known as the Garden Gate, it was floating alongside the Soberania District which was wrapped in the flames of war and the large curve of the Panama Bay, and she stood barefoot on its reinforced stainless steel surface.

She cracked her neck while looking just a few kilometers ahead, where crimson flames and black smoke filled both the ground and the sky.

“Now, we have our work cut out for us today too. Let’s line up the pieces on the board and begin the ladies and gentlemen’s game.”

And so…

“This is stupid.”

Quenser’s voice was m.u.f.fled.

He was wearing something like a thick raincoat over his uniform. The material resembled the fire-resistant cloth that firefighters wore and its s.h.i.+ny surface was incredibly bad for his heart after growing so used to normal camouflage. He felt like he was holding up a placard saying “please spot me” with his email address at the bottom.

“What’s the temperature right now? Not only are we almost right on the equator, but there are fires burning all over the place. I’m sweating like crazy and I’m pretty sure heatstroke is going to kill me before any bullet has the chance.”

“It’s 75 degrees Celsius, but don’t take that thing off. It’s like a sauna out there.”

“Can’t they use a meteorological weapon to make it rain? Why did they even make those things?”

“Don’t be stupid. Adding more moisture would only steam us to death.”

Heivia was also part of the s.h.i.+ny team that included the intelligence division.

“Besides, the Extra Arc is watching from the other side of the ca.n.a.l. Without these sensor-blocking cloaks, we’d be spotted right away and on our way to an international incident.”

“I can’t believe it’s this hot when we’re still upwind. …And do you really think these things will help? If they did, I would think the age of Objects would have ended a lot sooner.”

“Better to have it than not. Especially when the government’s tax money is paying for it.”

They were walking through what had once been a metropolis of metal and concrete, but there was no sign of it now. The structures had not so much burned or crumbled as they had melted. It was not often that not just the metal and plastic but even the concrete would completely melt.

That was the result of Objects firing back and forth at each other from north and south of the ca.n.a.l.

In places, the way forward was blocked by orange rivers or by solid black objects where it had cooled, so Quenser spoke up in annoyance.

“What century have we wandered into? What ever happened to clean wars?”

“Let’s just hope everyone made it to the refugee camp set up by the Blue Cross. If anyone was left here, they wouldn’t have survived. Even divine miracles would run out of gas about an hour into it.”

They knew what had caused this and it had done so without directly showing up here. It had instead fired long-distance from beyond the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

“The Capitalist Corporations Second Generation Extra Arc, huh?”

“Hard to believe, isn’t it? It uses low-stability plasma cannons, but the light and heat is so far off the charts that it screws with any observation equipment and the crucial moment of firing isn’t captured. Just how powerful is that thing?”

Fortunately, their objective here was not to be the dragon slayers from an opera.

They had to slip past the Object, enter the demilitarized zone of the Panama Ca.n.a.l, and rescue Acre Kiss-of-Rose, a Capitalist Corporations VIP. At the same time, they were to a.s.sa.s.sinate the spy who would be trying to stop them.

“And the Extra Arc belongs to Salem Logistics. It isn’t going to play around if this gets out. It might charge in to save its big boss without worrying about what kind of international incident that’ll cause.”

“The best way to survive this is to find CEO Acre, take him as a hostage, and withdraw to the beachhead while making sure he’s indebted to us. But will it really go that well?”

“If we fail to rescue him, we’ll seriously have a world war on our hands. That’s the death of a CEO of their home country, which is like a king for us. Revenge plots will boil over and the laughable clean wars will be burned away. It’ll lead to an age that could easily annihilate six billion people.”

“I’m not talking about our sense of duty or justice. I’m talking realistically.”

“Well, in that case, it comes down to the specs of the Object and the skill of the spy trying to stop us.”

“Didn’t they say there’s just the one spy and he doesn’t have a huge organization backing him up?”

“What, were you only interested in the information on that huge machine? Just listening in on the intelligence division’s discussions made my head hurt. He goes by Nyarlathotep and his real name is unknown. He’s had so much cosmetic surgery that any old doc.u.ments are completely worthless. They’ve estimated that he was only active around twenty years ago and it isn’t even known if he’s alive or dead at the moment. The Legitimacy Kingdom’s intelligence division developed so rapidly because they needed to strengthen the organization after the mess he made of things all over the place. He truly is a legend.”

“Sounds like someone who would show up in a stealth spy game.”

“I wouldn’t know. Anyway, his specialty is faking his own death. In the official records alone, he’s already kicked the bucket more than thirty times and even some dictator’s kid was shot as revenge for ‘killing’ him.”

“I stand corrected. He sounds like he would be more at home in an open world zombie game.”

“I haven’t heard a single thing about him that doesn’t make me more worried. I don’t know why he’s gone after this CEO, but we can’t relax just because we’ve finished him off with a bullet or a bomb. This isn’t over till we get home. In fact, we’ll basically be on a nerve-racking test of courage until we get back.”

As he listened to Heivia, Quenser checked the weight pressing down on his right shoulder. Instead of his normal plastic explosives, he had a special device hanging from his shoulder on a sling belt.

It looked like a bullpup a.s.sault rifle (i.e. one with the grip on the front and the magazine attached on the back), but the caliber was quite large at 25mm. However, it was not the kind of fully-automatic human mixer that got the anti-war crowd so upset.

Although in a way, it could cause an even more gruesome scene if directly aimed at a human being.

“Will this thing really help?”

“I don’t understand why anyone would give that thing to an amateur who doesn’t know how to fire a handgun. It’s a sticky bomb launcher, right?”

“It’s called the War Hammer. Once you fire a jelly-like liquefied explosive plus fuse onto the wall or floor, you just have to pull the wireless trigger for a huge explosion. You can apparently stick the bombs on a car or a person’s back as they try to escape.”

“That’s just dangerous. When are we going to see an age of peace?”

“It’s not like I had a choice. This place is a h.e.l.l of seventy to eighty degrees, so normal plastic explosives would melt. I can’t use my usual Hand Axe here.”

“Ahh, ahh. That reasoning is insane. It’s the same giving a child a grenade because you can’t give them a handgun.”

Heivia was complaining about more than just the War Hammer’s specs. Even with the support of the laser sight, having a firearms amateur behind you created a very real possibility of having that “grim reaper egg” splattered onto the back of his head.

While it was true he would still be fine as long as Quenser did not pull the wireless trigger, that did nothing to slow the racing pulse of the person who had a bomb stuck to the back of their head.

“Look.”

A member of the s.h.i.+ny army physically pointed to gather attention and the voice m.u.f.fled by the hood of stealth material could have been male or female.

“We’ve finally reached the Panama Ca.n.a.l. The demilitarized zone starts now, so at least the stench of burning fingernails and hair should end.”

“Hey, Heivia. What do you think about the intelligence division’s sense of humor?”

“I deal with it by a.s.suming everyone whose face I can’t see is actually a beautiful girl.”

The eighty kilometer ca.n.a.l separated the American continents between north and south, but it was not that wide. It was only a little wider than a fifty meter pool, so Quenser could probably have swum to the other side if he took off his clothes and jumped in.

Both sides were entirely covered in concrete and metal rails ran along parallel to the ca.n.a.l. They had likely been meant to carry some kind of maintenance equipment.

Even as they approached the water, the temperature did not drop. In fact, the wind had more room, so the intense waves of heat seemed to reach them with even more force.

The ca.n.a.l’s waving seawater was dyed red and black because it reflected the color of the sky. It resembled the sea at twilight, but it was much more sinister looking. It looked like the perfect place for ghosts to appear in any pictures taken.

“This is awful. And the other side of the ca.n.a.l’s covered in a filthy industrial region. If the Soberania Disturbance goes the other way, will that desert spread to this side too?”

A three meter tall metal fence covered the opposite side for as far as the eye could see. Perhaps just to buy time, there was a second fence not far beyond it.

The area beyond that was filled with steel pipes, cylindrical tanks, and smokestacks rising into the sky. Overall, it looked like a petrochemical complex. The kilometers long facility was entirely covered in asphalt like an international airport and it looked like concrete boxes and thick silver pipes were piled up on that.

However…

“Why is that side burning too? Their double fence is completely broken.”

“How should I know? That place is perfect for hide-and-seek, so it was probably easier to create a completely unlivable s.p.a.ce than to search out and kill any enemies that might be there.”

Regardless, the opposite side of the ca.n.a.l did not matter, so Quenser focused on their side.

“Where is this Nyarlathotep guy supposed to be hiding?”

“Near the Miraflores Water Gate. That’s not even two kilometers from here. …But I can already see those Blue Cross people busy preserving the ca.n.a.l.”

“You’re kidding. You mean the people we have to kill if they see us?”

Quenser sounded annoyed as he too spotted the people in yellow heat-resistant suits.

Heivia crouched down.

“Let’s stay low as we continue on. I don’t want to ma.s.s-produce some PTSD and suffer from nightmares for the rest of my life.”

They were wearing s.h.i.+ny cloaks with nothing to hide themselves, but no one seemed to notice them as they followed the concrete bank. They could of course have used some cover, but with orange flames everywhere, the fire reflected in the silver surface drew the most attention.

The intelligence division took the lead and the two idiots followed them further along the ca.n.a.l.

Heivia checked his sensors from time to time and some areas apparently reached an instantaneous temperature of over ninety degrees. The average sauna was around one hundred degrees, so it was enough for a human to pa.s.s out after thirty or forty minutes.

“Is this Mars? This is no place for human life.”

“Look, there’s something like a giant mountain beyond the ca.n.a.l. Is that the Capitalist Corporations’ Extra Arc!?”

Life returned to Quenser’s eyes once an Object was involved, but he was not given time to look back there.

A moment later, his vision was dyed in white.

“…… ………… ………… ………… ……………… ………… ……………… ………… …………… …………… …………… …………”

For a while, he completely forgot about the pa.s.sage of time.

He felt a cold liquid flowing into his mouth and finally realized that he had collapsed and Heivia was sticking a water bottle in his mouth.

“Cough, cough! Wh-what…the h.e.l.l?”

“The Extra Arc fired its plasma right over our heads.”

As Heivia spoke, his hearing gradually returned.

He could hear explosive sounds, but they were not only coming from the Extra Arc. Back in the Soberania District, the Baby magnum was firing back with its different varieties of main cannon.

Those Objects could not set foot in the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

They would suffer an astronomical financial loss if they destroyed the water elevator made from giant water gates and pumps.

“This time, it wasn’t about you being weak. The flash was so bright that a few of the intelligence division are still convulsing on the ground. The shock seems to fade as your eyes get used to it, but I’ll agree that isn’t something you want to look directly at.”

“You’re kidding, right? No normal low-stability plasma cannon goes that far.”

“There’s something to it that goes beyond normal. After all, this is the personal Object of one of the seven corporations that manages the Capitalist Corporations’ home country. …There’s no way I want to take on that thing. Let’s stuff that Acre b.a.s.t.a.r.d in a bag and get back to the beachhead.”

Quenser could understand now how the light and heat messed with cameras and sensors. The abnormal plasma was still being fired and it seemed to burn through his optic nerves to torment his brain. Heivia was right about getting used to it, so he was just barely able to avoid pa.s.sing out again.

“Dammit, we should have brought welding masks with us.”

“You’d sweat so much you’d get athlete’s foot all over your face. But if you’re doing good enough to complain, then get up on your feet. I’m not about to keep nursing a guy any longer.”

He may have been imagining it, but the surrounding waves of heat seemed to have grown in intensity.

Like this, they could easily go blind before being able to see what kind of technology the Object used, so they unsteadily continued along the ca.n.a.l.

The previous exchange must have only been a “skirmish” because an overwhelming firefight had finally broken out.

But at the same time, Quenser and the others let out a heavy sigh of relief.

“Found it.”

That comment came from one of the intelligence division members of their s.h.i.+ny army.

Twenty or thirty meters up a gentle slope was a small lakeside house on a small hill.

That may have sounded nice, but it was still in the scorching h.e.l.l of red and black that required heat-resistant firefighting equipment to survive even an hour. The paint on the walls was scorched and peeling, the windows were gone, and the roof was nowhere to be seen. No normal person would ever try to hide there.

“This matches the satellite photos taken through the gaps in the flames and smoke. If nothing has changed since then, Nyarlathotep should be in there.”

“Just to be clear, there were two people inside, right?”

“According to the image a.n.a.lysis, yes. But we can’t rely on the heat signatures since this h.e.l.lish sauna drowns out any human body heat.”

They did not even know if the VIP was still alive, but they had no reason to stop here. The intelligence division silently approached the half-destroyed house and quickly spread out to cover each entrance. Quenser and Heivia helped by pressing against the wall on either side of the backdoor.

The intelligence division pa.s.sed fiberscopes through the cracks in the doors or the broken windows and sent the footage to everyone’s handheld devices, so Quenser checked it all.

“There are no traps. Or at least, we shouldn’t have to worry about the spy faking his death by blowing the house to smithereens as soon as we kick down the door.”

That was the final sign needed to begin their a.s.sault.

“We may know the house’s layout, but we only know the people’s approximate locations. Killing the CEO would make all this effort worthless, so be careful not to shoot the wrong person as we rapidly check every room. On the count of three.”

After the short countdown over the radio, bullets destroyed the locks at each entrance and the intelligence division rushed inside the house.

Quenser and Heivia followed after them.

“Clear!”

“Clear!!”

There were several short bursts of gunshots m.u.f.fled by suppressors.

Heivia quickly raised his a.s.sault rifle to a.s.sist, but several members of the intelligence division were already surrounding a man.

There were bullet holes in the wall and the man put his hands up at a battered table.

He wore the same kind of fire-resistant suit as the Blue Cross, but his head was exposed. He had neatly parted hair, but it looked eerily out of place like a stuffed animal floating in a muddy river.

“That isn’t Acre,” groaned Quenser as he showed up late. “Is it Nyarlathotep?”

The man with the parted hair responded from his chair in what had likely been a dining room.

“Welcome to my home, guests.”

“What are you talking about, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!?”

“I don’t remember inviting you over for supper, but you are still welcome. Had the Legitimacy Kingdom not figured out that I bought this house myself by taking out a loan?”

As if to say that did not matter, an intelligence division member grabbed the man’s parted hair and slammed his face against the partially broken table.

Then they turned the man’s head on its side, pulled a handgun from their holster, and shoved it against the man’s head.

“Where is Acre Kiss-of-Rose, CEO of Salem Logistics?”

“He decided to take a nap. He must have been tired after our long trip from Africa.”

“Answer me now. Now!!”

“You’ll find him if you look. I can’t guarantee you he’ll wake up again, though. Have you still not figured out why I didn’t put up any kind of resistance?”

Even with his head shoved against the table, Nyarlathotep’s eyes seemed to be focused on some other place entirely. Quenser followed his gaze and found an opened door, a hallway, and another door.

“…”

He walked over and reached for the k.n.o.b.

That simple action was enough to get his fingertips trembling.

Not even he was sure why those feelings were welling up inside him.

Some dreadful torrent of emotion was stopping his fingers from moving, just like a mother who had learned the horrifying true ident.i.ty of the baby formula she had happily been feeding her young child.

It felt like his mind and body were separating.

He grabbed the k.n.o.b while so unsteady he seemed to be sleepwalking.

He turned it.

With a creak, the wooden door opened away from him.

It was a dark, windowless room. It may have originally been a storage room rather than a living s.p.a.ce and it seemed the roof here had survived. In addition to some scattered tools and a pile of broken airplane models, a wooden barrel the size of a small industrial drum sat in the middle of the dusty room.

The barrel was filled with to the brim with a ma.s.sive amount of pebbles.

And like something sticking above the water’s surface or an egg-shaped brooch inside a jewel box, an old man was buried in the pebbles up to the neck with his tongue hanging from his mouth.

Quenser fell to the ground and screamed.

Some intelligence division members rushed over, saw what was there, and continued on inside. They knocked the wooden barrel onto its side. Most of the pebbles were packed together in a single block. Glue, coal tar, melted rubber, caramel, or some other sticky substance may have been mixed in. In other words, the gaps had filled in and it had grown tighter as it had solidified, slowly and gradually squeezing down on the helpless old man buried inside.

The old man wore only his underwear, his eyes were sunken in, his cheeks were gaunt, and his white hair was falling out. He had looked old in the photograph they had been given, but not this much. His white hair had looked carefully maintained, but now it was coming out like an old carpet. His skin had turned red and purple, but he could no longer complain about the pain. Perhaps due to rigor mortis, his body was bent in an unnatural shape as he lay on the ground like a dried up dead insect. Was that really just the effect of the compression from the stones? How long had it been since he had gone missing? How long had he been soaking in that barrel? Was that really long enough to crush someone to death? Or…

(This wasn’t an issue of the physical damage. He died of shock.)

In movies and dramas it was not uncommon to see people quickly age or have their hair go white due to excessive fear.

But how much fear was necessary to actually reproduce that nearly legendary phenomenon?

This was the work of Nyarlathotep, an expert spy who excelled in madness and psychological change.

“Match…confirmed,” blankly muttered a member of the intelligence division. “This is definitely Acre Kiss-of-Rose, CEO of Salem Logistics. It’s him. The package is dead. I repeat, the package is dead!!”

Quenser’s entire face had paled.

It took over ten seconds for his nearby ally’s voice to enter his ears and reach his mind.

But not just because he had seen a human corpse.

This was not just a normal person like the Blue Cross people, so his death had an added meaning.

“What…do we do?”

Heivia spoke with a scratchy voice as he peered inside the room and his voice quickly rose to an almost tearfully desperate shout.

“That Acre b.a.s.t.a.r.d was killed!? But he led one of the seven giant corporations that control the Capitalist Corporations’ home country! That’s a VIP on the level of our royals!!”

If an enemy leader was dead, shouldn’t they be throwing their hands in the air and celebrating?

That reasoning did not apply here.

After all…

“Does this mean the end of the managed clean wars we have now…?”

Quenser looked like he had just witnessed the giant meteor strike that had caused the ice age.

This battlefield was the site of an intense compet.i.tion between the Capitalist Corporations and the Legitimacy Kingdom.

If the world found out a Capitalist Corporations VIP had been brought there and killed, where would their suspicions land?

“Is this the beginning of a true war of revenge that will erase the distinction between safe and battlefield countries as it burns through six billion people!?”

“Carry the corpse back with you. If that isn’t possible, dig a hole and burn it. Napalm, an aluminum reaction, or a grenade with some kind of chemical incendiary properties would be perfect. If the Capitalist Corporations can’t check his teeth, fingerprints, or DNA, we can just barely pull through.”

They had contacted Frolaytia for some help with their troubles, but her answer was more severe than they would have liked.

But since the blue planet Gagarin had seen was on the verge of turning red with flames, that kind of severity should not have been surprising.

“Normal gasoline or oil wouldn’t have enough firepower, so you need to make some modifications to turn it into napalm. That shouldn’t be a difficult job for a bomb specialist like you.”

“This isn’t killing the enemy before my eyes to survive. I’ll be destroying an unmoving corpse until even the bones burn away. I feel like I’m only one step away from cannibalism here.”

“You’ll have to focus on the fact that it’s better than dumping gasoline over the head of a living person who can still beg for their life. And make no mistake here. Everything you’ll be doing here is still ‘to survive’. And now the survival of another six billion people is hanging in the balance too.”

She ended her transmission there.

Quenser desperately suppressed the urge to vomit rising from the pit of his stomach and kicked the sole of his military boot against a partially broken pillar.

With that loud sound, he finally gathered his resolve.

“There’s no way we can carry him back, is there?”

One of the s.h.i.+ny members of the intelligence division answered him.

“Since we’ll have to sneak past the Blue Cross on our way out, not a chance. Disposing of him here to lighten the load would be best. The garage out back had collapsed, but there was some gasoline left in the sc.r.a.p metal that had been a car. Can you make napalm out of that?”

“I can manage as long as I have some cleaning supplies, some household painting supplies, a metal bowl, and the kind of mixer used to make shortcakes. They’re all a housewife’s allies, so I’ll look around for them.”

“Then you take care of that. We’ll dig a hole out back. Let’s go!”

After a few members of the intelligence division left, Quenser breathed a heavy sigh.

From there, nothing felt real and he felt like his feet were floating.

It was not easy work, but losing himself in it lessened the pressure on his heart.

The kitchen had mostly collapsed, so he placed the metal bowl on the dining room table and got to work. Naturally, Nyarlathotep sat obediently in the same room with the intelligence division aiming their guns at him.

As Quenser transformed the gasoline into jelly with the electric mixer, Nyarlathotep spoke with a smile that was strangely lacking in humanity.

“It looks like I’ve caused you all a lot of trouble. Sorry about that.”

“Why did you turn on your own big boss? You may not have known the Legitimacy Kingdom would be involved, but you had to have guessed it would cause a war somewhere in the world.”

“The Soberania Disturbance began because Salem Logistics tried to take the Panama Ca.n.a.l for themselves to expand their business. And this was my house. …If this is what remains of the house meant to protect my family, what do you think happened to the wife and son who lived with me here?”

“…”

“My wife was helping the Blue Cross. She was creating a list of the people who fled to this blank region to help them register for citizens.h.i.+p and insurance. My only son was just five and he was so excited about getting to go to school for the first time. But all of that was taken from me by that money-wors.h.i.+ping piece of s.h.i.+t.”

What did Quenser look like to him?

What did he think of the boy creating napalm to burn away a corpse using the mixer that may very well have been used to make his son’s birthday cake?

That man had brought the entire world to the precipice, but that did not change the fact that his smaller world was being trampled on.

“That doesn’t matter.”

Quenser heard a low, low, dreadfully low voice cut in.

It belonged to Heivia Winch.e.l.l.

“I don’t care what kind of life you lived or what kind of despair you carry with you. That’s no excuse for burning our homes and families to the ground!! This is…this is really why the world’s gonna end? Thousands of years of human history are going to come to an end for one guy’s private life!?”

“Hey, Heivia…?”

“Do we really need to bring this b.a.s.t.a.r.d back alive? Who knows when this expert illusionist of a spy is gonna slip from our fingers! Wouldn’t the world be better off if we put a bullet between his eyes!?”

“You can’t shoot him here, Heivia!!”

“Why not!? What possible reason do you have to cover for the guy who set the world on fire!?”

“The napalm! The air here is already around a hundred degrees, so the contents of this bowl are pretty unstable. Fire your gun now and we’ll all be roasted like turkeys!”

Heivia clicked his tongue.

He removed his eye from his a.s.sault rifle’s sight, but he did not remove his index finger from the trigger. He was in such a state of disarray that he was completely ignoring the most basic lessons from boot camp.

“I won’t run away.”

The man with the neatly parted hair spoke up as if to throw oil on the fire.

He had a disturbingly thin smile on his lips.

“I’ve finished everything I wanted to do. After all this, I have no dreams for my future.”

“…”

Heivia moved both arms and produced a sound like a swinging metal bat.

Next came the sound of Nyarlathotep’s nose being broken by the rifle’s stock.

The man did not even utter a groan.

Heivia tapped a member of the intelligence division on the shoulder and made his way to the dining room door.

“Call me first when it’s time kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d. If we’re out of ammo, I’ll tear out his throat with my teeth.”

“The napalm’s done. If you want a breath of what pa.s.ses for fresh air around here, then take it to the group digging the hole out back. But tell them to detonate it with a wire and fuse, not a lighter or matches. Otherwise, they’ll end up roasting their own face with a magnificent pillar of fire.”

Heivia s.n.a.t.c.hed the metal bowl and finally vanished from the dining room.

Quenser toyed with the mixer still covered in sticky flammable jelly, but finally set it on the table and collapsed into a chair. He was sitting directly across from Nyarlathotep.

He glared at the man across the table that could burst into flames at any time for any reason.

“Just to be clear, I’m not on your side.”

“Oh, I know.”

The man with the neatly parted hair smiled but sounded like he was spitting out the words.

“If a single person in this world were on my side, I might have walked a different path.”

Quenser also wanted to kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.d a hundred times if he could.

However, he was valuable as the “true culprit”.

Quenser could not guess how much the Capitalist Corporations would learn about Acre’s death or how far the chaos would spread around the world, but he knew losing the true culprit would be incredibly bad. Once the Legitimacy Kingdom and Capitalist Corporations began arguing back and forth, the truth might become as valuable as a sc.r.a.p of paper, but it was still possible that a “confession” from Nyarlathotep could act as a safety switch to calm down the boiling world.

Killing him was like drilling a hole in the bottom of Noah’s ark.

While it would be best for the deluge to never occur in the first place, ruining the boat before your eyes was a lot like a gentle form of suicide.

“They’ll probably be burning the corpse in the hole before long. Are you sure you shouldn’t be helping them? You seem to be the most experienced with this sort of thing.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Oh, can you kill an enemy actively attacking you, but you’re reluctant to burn a defenseless corpse? A very European way of thinking. I suppose it’s why you like to bury bodies under crosses.”

“…”

“I can’t even remember what my wife and son looked like anymore.”

Nyarlathotep continued speaking words that may or may not have been true.

“You’re wondering how I could say that when I set the entire world on fire for my family, aren’t you? But it’s true. No matter how much I try to remember those pleasant times, their charred black faces are all I can see. So I understand why your hands are trembling. That fear isn’t something you should give visual form. …But will you really finish this in time if you rely on others?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“The Capitalist Corporations aren’t stupid. If you’re trying to burn an inconvenient corpse, you should have done so as soon as possible. They’ll be here soon.”

It happened before the unease could race down Quenser’s spine.

The small house had already lost its roof, but a tremendous shock caused it to collapse altogether.

Quenser fell from his chair and the walls collapsed. In fact, fragments flew parallel to the ground as if a directional mine had gone off. Then the walls fell over with rattling sound. A great strength grabbed Quenser’s arm and pulled him under the battered table.

Surprisingly, it was Nyarlathotep who had saved him.

The lack of the roof had helped them. The amount of rubble falling from above was not enough to break through the table or bury them alive.

When he pulled himself out from below the table and rubble, a noise started hurting Quenser’s ears.

It sounded like an electric fan amplified many, many times over.

That was the sound produced by the propeller of an aircraft given a reciprocating engine instead of a jet engine for longer flight times.

“Drones!!” shouted Heivia. “They got a picture from above. They saw where we were and they saw the corpse in the hole!!”

A pillar of fire loudly rose from the hole. That was the napalm Quenser had made, but it was anyone’s guess how effective that would be at this point. If the corpse had been photographed from the sky before it was burnt, they might have even wrapped the noose around their own necks by burning it.

“Hey, do you think the war here’ll end now that their big boss is dead!?”

“Not a chance! This’ll just cause a chemical reaction transforming the rescue operation into a mission for revenge!! In fact, now that we’ve lost our s.h.i.+eld, they can relax and start shooting all they want!!”

The drones in question were not fighter jets with high-level computer equipment onboard. Instead, they looked like a giant paper model with an engine attached. A whole bunch of them were flying around like dragonflies in the autumn sky. It would have been hard to get an accurate count of them all.

“Those don’t carry missiles,” explained Nyarlathotep as he dug through the rubble and (for some reason) pulled out a member of the intelligence division. “Do you have an Object on your side? Now that they know where you are, you don’t need to hesitate to ask for some a.s.sistance. If you don’t have those eyes in the sky shot down by anti-air lasers, you’ll be blown to bits by Cynthia’s anti-personnel and anti-vehicle cannons. The smoke and waves of heat seem to be affecting their targeting for now, but they should correct that before long.”

Quenser frowned at the man’s prediction.

“Cynthia? Oh, you mean the Extra Arc. Is it linked with those drones to indirectly target us!?”

“No, both of those names are inaccurate. I guess I’m not thinking straight either,” curtly replied Nyarlathotep. “Its true name not recorded on any official Capitalist Corporations doc.u.ments is the Miskatonic. That is the truly cruel Second Generation personally funded by Acre Kiss-of-Rose…no, by Azathoth who was using that name.”

Even for a Capitalist Corporations’ Second Generation, an absurd amount of funding and technology had been pumped into the Miskatonic. The Object represented one of the seven giant corporations making up 7th Core which directly managed their home country.

Even from the edge of the scarlet lake which reflected the burning color of the sky, it could clearly be seen deep in the giant destroyed industrial sector across the Panama Ca.n.a.l.

It had a bizarre design.

One look at its main cannons was enough to know that.

A giant mechanical flower spread out from the back. It was s.h.i.+fted upwards a little like a straw hat on someone’s head. Except the flower was actually made up of giant reels and two meter wide tubes extending from them. Eight identical devices were laid out in a circle like on a clock face and the special tubes could move freely like the fiber scopes used for endoscopes.

They looked like eight snakes or the tentacles of a squishy sea creature.

The Miskatonic’s main cannons were high-power plasma cannons that were fired through the tubes. It fired from different positions, at different angles, and with different timing to seal off its opponent’s movements.

It was similar yet completely different from the Baby Magnum’s cannons that were supported by seven arms and could be used for diffusion or convergence.

However, they did not have time to sit there a.n.a.lyzing its structure.

Death was pursuing Quenser and the others in the form of drones.

“This ain’t good! The forest! Run into the forest, Quenser!!”

Heivia gestured toward and instructed the student as he ran.

“Get somewhere where they can’t see you from the sky! Luckily, they can’t use an IR search with all this heat and smoke. If we can escape the cameras, we still have a chance!!”

Quenser immediately grabbed Nyarlathotep’s wrist, much to the surprise of the man with the neatly parted hair.

“You could just leave me, you know?”

“I’m not letting you use this confusion to fake your death.”

Quenser started running while dragging along a ghost who showed no desire to live.

Lots of drones were fried, blown up, and shot down overhead. That was thanks to the Baby Magnum’s anti-air support. But the surviving ones and even the ones that were shot down produced whirring sounds from their camera lenses and transmitted the fleeing soldiers’ location to the Miskatonic.

An explosive roar followed.

This was not the Object’s fierce plasma main cannon. Most likely, its many railguns and coilguns had been simultaneously fired into the sky.

It poured down just like rain.

This downpour of death was meant to crush the target even with some level of targeting error.

Its own drones were shot down as the sh.e.l.ls rained down on the edge of the lake.

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

After a scream, Quenser flew through the air.

He could no longer feel Nyarlathotep’s wrist in his grasp, but his vision was spinning around too much to tell if he had let go or if one or the other’s arm had been blown off.

He slammed back-first into the ground and something soft fell from the heavens.

The items that had been blasted into the air with the black soil were horribly dark-red metallic-smelling clumps.

Quenser nearly tore at his hair in a panic, but a powerful strength grabbed his arm.

Nyarlathotep was pulling him to his feet.

“Can you stand?”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Run. If you aren’t ready to meet the grim reaper before finis.h.i.+ng your job, that is.”

He fully focused himself on running.

Whether it was rain or spears falling from the sky, he forced his legs to continue moving.

He finally half-slid into the deep forest next to the lake.

Sh.e.l.ls poured down on the forest as well and trees too thick to reach one’s arms around splintered like chopsticks.

Still, the accuracy had dropped and the sh.e.l.ls started falling nowhere near them as they ran deeper and deeper into the forest.

It finally stopped after about ten minutes or a little more, but that h.e.l.l seemed to have lasted an eternity.

Had it given up?

Or had the Princess’s anti-air support successfully shot down all of the drones?

That was Quenser’s guess as he leaned against a tree and tried to catch his breath, but then Nyarlathotep spoke up.

“Here it comes.”

The world vanished into whiteness.

Eight blasts of high-power plasma instantly filled the entire terrain with destruction.

The forest melted.

The trees were not even allowed to burn. They and the ground turned to a glowing orange liquid which formed rivers of lava.

The downpour from the heavens had been at least generally aimed, but the eight main cannons had not even done that.

The enemy had escaped into the forest, so the Object was melting the entire forest.

Instead of just wiping them off the face of the earth, it was wiping off the face of the earth too.

That was just how insane the fan-shaped attack was.

“…”

Quenser stared blankly as he slid his back down the tree trunk to sit down.

The scenery that had been there a moment before had transformed into a red river.

Nyarlathotep glanced upwards and seemed to be sniffing at something.

“No second wave… So was that all? Or it may be focusing on its battle with the Legitimacy Kingdom Object. Either way, this is our chance to escape.”

A crackling sound reached their ears.

They looked over and saw Heivia unsteadily approaching while treading on the embers.

Quenser frowned.

“Hey, what happened to the intelligence division?”

“…”

“There were a ton of them with you, weren’t there!? What happened to them!?”

“It’s…”

Heivia did not give a clear answer.

But the rivers of lava and his next words said enough.

“It’s time…we killed this guy.”

Heivia’s a.s.sault rifle suddenly hopped up.

Quenser immediately grabbed the firearm that hung from his shoulder.

It was the bullpup sticky bomb launcher known as the War Hammer.

Two boys wearing the same military uniform aimed their weapons at each other from about twenty meters away.

“You can’t, Heivia. If you kill him, we’ll lose any way to fight back against the Capitalist Corporations’ accusations!!”

“What the h.e.l.l do you think we can clear up or stop now!? We’re past the stage where the fuse was lit. The spherical bomb with a skull and crossbones on it was has already blown up! And the friendly idiots who were supposed to stop it are all below the lava. This h.e.l.l is going to cover the entire world before long. And yet the gigantic idiot that set the initial fire is still alive!!”

“Heivia!”

“He can’t fix anything, so we have no reason to risk our lives to protect him. We should just execute him already. Even if we did drag him back to the beachhead, some bizarre political decision would get in the way. …Do you really think the VIPs want this war to end? Just like the Capitalist Corporations wanted a reason to attack the Legitimacy Kingdom, the Legitimacy Kingdom has tons of reasons to have an excuse to attack them! It isn’t fear that’s burning through the world! It’s a fire of greed, so there’s no way to end it!!”

“Are you saying taking him back still wouldn’t stop this world war?”

“He won’t get a proper hearing. He’ll be found suspiciously hanged in his cell and it’ll be called a suicide, so why protect him? If it’s an issue of sooner or later, then we might as well kill him ourselves!!”

“Then…”

Quenser gave an anguished groan as he held enough firepower to blow his awful friend to smithereens.

“Then we can’t leave him with the Legitimacy Kingdom. We’ll have to leave him with the neutral Blue Cross and have the truth revealed in the international courts. It’s a long shot, but that’s the only way to stop the entire world from burning down!”

“All you’ve done is give me the justification I need, Quenser. Now I can shoot you to prevent you from deserting and leaking our information.”

“Heivia…”

“Stop. You can’t win this. Do you really think we’re on equal footing here? There’s no way I’ll lose to a student.”

“…”

“You get one warning. I’ve got an a.s.sault rifle, so even if I shoot an arm or leg, it’ll still tear open an artery. …Put down that War Hammer. I’ve said my part, Quenser. The rest is up to you.”

Still, the two boys remained entirely motionless for over ten seconds.

If either one of them moved their trigger finger five millimeters back, it would all fall apart.

But finally, something seemed to drive Quenser to remove his eye from the sight.

He slowly removed the stock from his shoulder and lowered the muzzle of the gun. Then he let it dangle down from his hands.

“There, that’s a good boy. Now you-…”

Heivia never finished speaking.

Without even looking through the sight, Quenser pulled the trigger of the firearm dangling from his hands.

Something was fired onto the thoroughly heated ground at the exact midpoint between them. It was a translucent slime that covered twenty or thirty centimeters.

A piece of metal the size of a watch battery released a mechanical flash and a large explosion followed.

Both Quenser and Heivia were swept backwards by the blast.

A cloud of dust filled the sky to block their view of each other.

Those boys always seemed to be together, but now the distance between them seemed to stretch out forever.

Quenser pulled on Nyarlathotep’s hand as he ran through the boiling orange forest.

“Ah…ahh…”

As he did, he opened his mouth wide.

He could not stop screaming even though the scorching wind could roast his lungs at any moment.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

He was not dead.

He was not dead.

There was no way that could have killed him.

That prayer filled his heart, but he did not have it in him to turn around as he raced across the battlefield.

As the world teetered on the verge of destruction, he could not allow Nyarlathotep to be killed.

That should have been the right decision, so how had his methods strayed so far?

Extreme anguish filled him as Nyarlathotep asked him a question.

“What are you going to do now?”

The man sounded a