Chapter 525: 523
Tokyo Area, Operations Room One.
The silver-haired girl stared at the screen, unable to collect herself for a long time.
“Lady Seitenshi, what should we do?”
The bewildered question finally brought her back to her senses. She looked at the official who had spoken.
She didn’t know what to do either.
They had thought a savior had arrived. Instead, this could push them into an even deeper abyss.
Most of Tokyo Area’s Cursed Children were already under the newcomers’ protection.
If the Initiators working with civil security officers also decided to leave, Tokyo would have almost no fighting force left.
“I-It’s descending!”
“It looks like it’s coming straight toward us!”
The frightened cries drew everyone’s attention back to the screens.
The enormous object captured by their satellites, several kilometers long, was slowly descending.
Its projected course would bring it directly over Tokyo Area.
Even the cameras on the ground could now see the object beyond the atmosphere growing larger.
Meanwhile, another announcement came through the commandeered communications systems.
The Parallel World Humanity Salvation Agency would give this world a chance to redeem itself.
In one year, it would return and reassess the situation.
If the results were satisfactory, it might help eradicate the Gastrea and rebuild human civilization.
Some people breathed a sigh of relief.
Others remained indignant. They insisted that this so-called Parallel World Humanity Salvation Agency was plotting something.
These people were taking the Cursed Children away under the pretense of saving them.
Some even claimed that the agency itself had released the Gastrea virus. Now that the virus had produced the Cursed Children they wanted, they had come to harvest them.
Conspiracy theories abounded, but those spreading them could do little more than shout in impotent anger.
Another video was forced onto their screens.
It showed the Cursed Children’s new home: an Earth without Gastrea, a beautiful world.
Some of the children ran excitedly through the unfamiliar natural surroundings. Others played with small animals.
Seitenshi recognized them.
Many were children who had been living in Tokyo Area’s Outer District only days earlier.
Communications systems around the world had been commandeered to broadcast these scenes.
And among those now collecting Cursed Children across the globe were girls who had already visited that other world and returned.
Most Cursed Children had never received a proper education. They were innocent and easily deceived.
But when choosing between adults and their own kind, they trusted their fellow children more.
As Cursed Children themselves, they were especially sensitive to the goodwill of others like them. They believed what the returning girls told them and were willing to leave their appalling living conditions for that beautiful home.
Still, not all of them wanted to go.
Some Initiators already had partners, and they were reluctant to leave their Promoters behind.
Then the evening sky over Tokyo Area darkened rapidly, as though night had arrived all at once.
In reality, an immense shadow had fallen over the city.
The enormous vessel was directly overhead.
“What are they doing?”
Someone’s voice shook with fear.
A dense swarm of machines was descending from the vessel.
They had rather peculiar designs: block-shaped heads with arms and legs attached beneath them, but no torsos.
They looked like maintenance robots used to service the warship.
Now vast numbers of them were floating down toward a particular part of the city.
The warehouses holding the blocks used to construct Monoliths.
“Lady Seitenshi!”
“They’re taking the construction materials! Without those, we won’t be able to rebuild the Monoliths!”
“We can’t let them do that! Order the military to attack!”
“Calm down! Look where they’re taking them!”
Seitenshi had initially been alarmed as well. Then she noticed that the robots carrying the blocks weren’t returning to the fortress above.
They were heading toward the sites of Monoliths No. 11 and No. 31.
Apparently, they intended to help rebuild them.
Constructing a Monolith mainly involved transporting the materials and assembling them.
Spare components were manufactured in advance so that damaged Monoliths could be replaced promptly.
They weren’t cast as single, enormous structures. Each Monolith consisted of a vast number of smaller blocks fitted together.
Otherwise, how could a replacement possibly be manufactured from scratch in ten days?
Those ten days were needed to move the prefabricated materials into position with heavy transport equipment and assemble them.
With enough transport aircraft, that time could be drastically reduced.
With this enormous swarm of robots moving and assembling the blocks, the work might take less than an hour.
“What are those for?”
More objects were being deployed.
Thousands dropped into Tokyo Area.
As they unfolded, they revealed themselves to be spiderlike robots.
They moved with astonishing agility, firing lasers at the Gastrea and killing them with ease.
Most of the people in the operations room finally relaxed.
Yet their expressions remained complicated.
These outsiders were taking away the Cursed Children, humanity’s principal defense against the Gastrea.
At the same time, they were protecting Tokyo Area.
An hour later, Seitenshi stared dazedly at the rebuilt Monoliths No. 11 and No. 32.
Tokyo Area was protected once more.
The Gastrea inside the city had also been almost completely eliminated.
The robots began to withdraw, and the Cursed Children were taken aboard.
Among them were a few Initiators from civil security pairs whose Promoters wanted them to escape this hellish world.
The survivors watching them leave had already learned where the children were going through the broadcasts forced onto their devices.
Many wept bitterly, begging them to stay.
How many of those same people had been viciously cursing the Cursed Children before the Monoliths collapsed?
Their pleas and apologies didn’t mean they had changed.
They were simply afraid to die.
There were now forty-seven minutes left before the visitors departed.
They had allotted only two hours to their stay.
After helping rebuild the Monoliths, the enormous vessel headed out to sea.
As for Aldebaran, it was eliminated in passing.
A monster capable of plunging humanity into despair, one that would normally demand terrible sacrifices to defeat, had been casually erased.
It was difficult to know how to feel about that.
Ten minutes later, an unexpected flash startled everyone.
Its nature was quickly identified.
“A-A nuclear explosion?”
“Who fired it?”
Someone appeared to have launched a nuclear missile at the vessel from a submerged submarine.
Every power observing the incident was horrified.
This could provoke retaliation.
Even if that warship were destroyed, who could say the agency didn’t have another?
What arrogant idiot had done this?
Had they watched too many movies?
Did they think that after losing this vessel, the enemy would need another year to return? That crossing between worlds wasn’t something they could do whenever they pleased?
And that a year would be enough to reverse-engineer their technology and make a tremendous leap forward?
At that thought, a few observers actually began to waver.
Perhaps…
No. That was wishful thinking.
Their rising excitement immediately subsided.
As the glare faded, the enormous vessel emerged completely unharmed.
A faint, translucent barrier rippled around it.
An energy shield.
The nuclear strike had been a joke.
Then the vessel abruptly fired dozens of beams in a single direction.
Toward what appeared to be a North American fleet.
To ensure everyone understood the consequences, footage of the target area was forcibly broadcast.
A fleet of steel warships and formations of aircraft on alert might as well have been plastic toys.
Dozens of beams pierced them in an instant.
Not a single ship or aircraft evaded the attack. All were reduced to wreckage and sent plunging into the sea.
Within ten minutes, that country’s naval and air forces had suffered devastating losses.
More than eighty percent of its military bases on home soil had also been destroyed.
Surely no one would still be foolish enough to believe they could harm the visitors and try something else.
Overwhelming firepower could destroy an enemy in an instant.
That was reality.
On an island in the Pacific Ocean, a Comet-class warship had been stationed for several days.
Comet-class was the designation assigned to the five warships equipped with Wave Motion Guns. The YoRHa, meanwhile, was designated Moon-class, also known as Satellite-class.
When the passage to this world had opened a few days earlier, the decision had been made to leave this vessel behind.
Over the following days, it had infiltrated the world’s networks and gathered extensive intelligence in preparation for today.
Now a million Cursed Children were being transported to the island.
Once their commander returned to the other world and opened a dimensional passage, the warship would cross over with them.
The passage operated under a peculiar one-way restriction.
Things originating in one world could travel freely to the other and return, but things native to the destination world couldn’t pass through it.
In other words, the YoRHa couldn’t simply take the children back with it. It could return only with the same volume of material it had brought over.
The commander would first have to return to the other side and open a new passage that allowed things from this world to cross.
Then this world’s member of the Hyperdimensional Channel, Tendo Kisara, would have to confirm that the people who had crossed over were not to be recalled.
Only then would their transfer to the androids’ world become permanent.
6O really wished the commander’s Hyperdimensional Channel would develop a few more features.
Couldn’t it make the whole process a little less cumbersome?
(End of Chapter)
“Zaelum”]