The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign Explanation Page

==Setting==
The series takes place in an universe similar to ours, except there is "another side"/"another world" where all the gods and mythological beings hang out. These beings can only appear on Earth on special places called Sacred Grounds, which are very rare, or be summoned through special techniques. This other world has not been described in detail, as humans know very little about it.
Humans in this series are not very powerful in terms of magic. The most magic a single human can do is to create and put together a magic staff. Since they're limited, they chose instead to perfect the art of summoning supernatural creatures, the inhabitants of the other world mentioned above. Humans refer to these creatures as Materials, and they initially thought the gods of legend were the strongest Materials around, until they discovered the Unexplored-class.
==Humans==
As mentioned above, humans are not particularly strong on their own. They can't do much in terms of magic, a summoner can create a Blood Sign (the staff used for summoning) and establish a magical contract with their vessel, but they can't go around throwing fireballs. They have done some experiments with souls before, but nothing useful for combat. As such, most human characters are going to cap at Street level, not counting rare exceptions such as Lu Niang-Lan.
===Side Effects of Summoning===
There's some minor side effects involved in the summoning ceremony. When an incense grenade is used to deploy an Artificial Sacred Ground, cameras, sensors and anything more complex than a telescope/binoculars stop working. Additionally, anyone who has more than 100 Awards (marks of achievement handed over by Unexplored-class Materials to humans) has a peculiar trait: they'll be forgotten by normal people (anyone without at least 1 Award) whenever they leave their field of vision. The memories will come back if they see them again and will accumulate as long as they can see the summoner/vessel. I don't note this in the summoner pages since 99% of important characters have more than 1 Award, so it's just a minor thing overall that should be handled with verse equalization, similar to Bleach's spiritual beings being invisible to those without spiritual power.
Awards and Memories
Volume 1 Stage 1 Part 2
“That’s beside the point!! I’m trying to say that a young girl lifting her skirt in public is more than enough of a problem in and of itself! Honestly!!”
“Y-you mean you want to do it in a closed room? Tremble tremble.”
“Why are you looking at me like a terrified animal? You’re the one that started this and I’m the one trying to stop you.”
“B-but…”
Higan tilted her head with her skirt pulled at the borderline level that could be titled, “Young Lady with a Long Skirt Playing in the Water”.
“Being in public or a closed room, um, makes no difference for us.”
“Well, that is true.”
As soon as Kyousuke replied, a hand bell rang behind him and the miniskirt Santa librarian spoke up.
“Congratulations on being the two millionth person! …Huh? Where did the prize go? Well, I have a spare, so it doesn’t matter.”
She was not just forgetful. That was the correct reaction.
“Anyway, you’re the two millionth person!! Oh, and this is a joint campaign with ‘The Santa Girl who Couldn’t Get Home’.”
Shiroyama Kyousuke tossed his “small prize” into the air and caught one-handed.
Whether summoner or vessel, anyone with a close connection to Materials would begin to have their presence fade after earning an Award of around 100. Or rather, they were removed from people’s minds. People could see them, but they would forget about them as soon as they left their field of vision. There was a simple reason that summoning ceremonies had not spread throughout the entire world and it wasn’t because some dark organization was suppressing the information. The human mind simply was not strong enough to directly accept the evidence of something so vast.
It affected their friends, their lovers, and their families.
It did not matter how well they knew someone.
===Protective Circle===
During a fight summoners rely on quickly summoning a Material, which covers them in a protective barrier. This barrier is said to block anything that would harm the summoner, and it will keep them alive for as long as it's up (so they wouldn't die of bloodloss if they were shot prior to using it). The only things in-series so far that can pierce it are the White Queen and the Black Maw, which can either ignore it or overpower it. Still, the barrier is strong enough that conventional weapons are considered useless, and so far we've seen that even Divine-class Materials fails to damage it.
Protective Circle 1
Volume 1 Opening X-02
Traditional summoning techniques involved two especially important circles. The most obvious was the summoning circle itself, but the protective circle that guarded the summoner was also important.
With modern summoning ceremonies, the top priority while using a Material’s power was to prevent the summoned monster from interfering with the ceremony. The circle’s effects could be divided into two major categories: stopping all external elements and preventing the summoner from collapsing mid-ceremony due to internal elements such as lifespan or illness. (i.e. in the unlikely event that the protective circle was pierced from outside, the summoner would not die. It could happen the instant the circle was released, though.) In either case, it was less like the monster was taking pity on the human and more like a computer’s emergency power supply. It simply let the summoner safely end the ceremony before they collapsed. Only the human controlling the monster’s existence as part of the ceremony would be protected and only so they could guide the ceremony to completion.
As such, a battle between summoners came down to the clash between the Materials they had summoned. They could swap out or strengthen their Materials, but they could not interfere any more than that and they could not directly kill the opposing summoner. For better or for worse, they could only continue to watch within the protective circle.
Volume 1 Opening X-02 Facts (Each chapter has a Facts section which recaps all important info given in the chapter)
*During battle, the summoner enters a protective circle created with their Material’s power. The summoner is essentially invincible during the battle.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 2
At the cost of one middle sound, it was one of the weakest Materials, the Original Green (k).
But even if it was one of the weakest, a Material was still a Material. A protective circle that eliminated all attacks was immediately constructed around the summoner and that defended against the countless bullets.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 8
“Um, uh, I thought normal weapons didn’t work on a summoner inside the Material’s protective circle.”
The protective circle is capable of barely blocking the White Queen's casual weapon attacks. Barely here is the key word but it can reduce a planet buster attack that destroys time and space to a hard but survivable hit. Of course, the White Queen can easily pierce the barrier if she tries just a little harder.
Protective Circle 2
Volume 1 Stage 4 Part 5
She did not bother running around or approaching. A portion of the white clothing loosely wrapped around her transformed in silence. It took the form of a hammer, flew through the air on its own, and dropped toward Kyousuke like a shooting star.
The summoner was contained within a protective circle that defended against any physical phenomenon and Material attack.
The impact that rattled his brain easily overturned that assumption.
It was not an issue of any actual injury. He could clearly sense “the presence of death” approaching.
He gasped, his mind grew muddy, and his vision twisted as he worked desperately to grasp the situation.
“Bh…gah!? Im…possible…”
Fresh blood dripped to the floor from his forehead.
The next one came before the confusion faded. The protective circle might as well have been a plastic balloon as the corner of a shield thrust up into his jaw and a club knocked him back down before his toes could leave the ground. His mind was shaken as he rolled away from the scorching light of the scene.
The damage of the white rampage was clearly arriving within the protective circle. That circle protected the summoner…or rather, the ceremony itself from any external attacks, internal illness, or anything else that might get in the way. But that assumption was rejected by the approaching chill of death.
Volume 4 Stage 4 Part 5
He forcibly changed direction after fleeing to the side. To avoid the penalty of losing and – more importantly – to avoid having his beautiful partner smashed as easily as styrofoam, Kyousuke did his utmost to suppress his fear and stepped forward. He used the entirety of the protective circle to save Himekawa Mika who was no more than the Original Yellow (s).
A deafening roar followed.
The protective circle could supposedly defend against all deadly factors, but it bent like an unreliably fragile water balloon. Incredibly, it did not actually break and as the invisible wall dented inward, it struck Kyousuke’s entire body.
He literally coughed up blood.
He had no idea how many years this had shaved off his life, but a clean hit would not have left a single shred of flesh behind.
===Animal Intimidation===
Summoners have a legend that reaching 1000 Awards allow you to stop being human and become a legend on the other side, joining the gods and other Materials. Ace summoners like Kyousuke are described as already having one foot there, and apparently this has the nice side effect of preventing dangerous animals such as lions from approaching them.
Animal Intimidation 1
Vol 6 Stage 2 Part 11
Kyousuke heard a heavy metal door opening behind him. Sekurtiti looked back in shock. The sound of sharp claws clicking on the concrete ground arrived at irregular intervals. The lingering scent of straw and animals was washed away by something much stronger. What was this cage for? Its residents had gone back into the stable, but they almost sounded irritated that their normal schedule had been disturbed. Or perhaps stepping on the napping straw counted as violating the king of beasts’ territory.
“We hold the reins of otherworldly Materials on a daily basis, so those mere beasts will never get the better of us. They shouldn’t even be able to approach.”
Azalea should have been in the lethal zone as well, but she did not seem to mind at all. She maintained her confident smile.
“But in their current state, those girls lack that ‘pressure’. In fact, could 300-level amateurs like them do it at all? Regardless, you should assume they will be helplessly devoured while they ceaselessly repeat the same action.”
This can also be seen with Kyousuke's ability to intimidate a liger vessel (who should be used to summoners like him) when he's annoyed or angry.
Animal Intimidation 2
Vol 1 Stage 3 Part 2
He heard a low growl.
He glanced over and saw the five meter white liger that Aika used as a sofa sluggishly approaching him.
He did not move in the slightest.
“Stop this. I don’t have it in me to deal with you right now.”
The beast did not understand human language.
It moved its giant face in close enough for him to feel its warm breath on his own face.
Then he spoke more succinctly.
“Stop.”
The word pierced the silence.
Only once he spoke it did he realize what had happened.
That cross between a lion and a white tiger, that king of beasts that did not exist in the natural world, had pressed its stomach against the wooden flooring as it cowered down like a child after being yelled at.
When he saw the giant beast trembling, Shiroyama Kyousuke sighed a little.
Vol 6 Stage 2 Part 7
As Aika cheerfully opened the boxes, Kyousuke flatly spoke to her.
“Do you need something?”
“The liger is super scared and cowering over in a corner, so could you lower the level of irritation in here? If you rode an elevator with a normal person right now, they’d probably suffocate to death.”
“Hm?”
Kyousuke looked over in surprise and found the 5 meter combination of a lion and white tiger was indeed in the corner. More than the king of beasts, this was an emperor who did not exist in the natural world, and yet she was trembling like a kitten out in the cold. Her tail was tucked between her back legs and her body language clearly said “please don’t look at me” in the cat language.
===Senses===
Kyousuke is able to sense the presence of other people, particularly other powerful summoners, with a sixth sense developed by his combat experience. It's likely other veteran summoner also posses this type of sixthe sense.
Kyousuke's Sixth Sense detecting another ace summoner
Vol 1 Stage 2 Part 4
Shiroyama Kyousuke had sensed that presence.
It was a stinging tension and a dense premonition of death that nearly left one unable to control their body. Yet it contradictorily stirred up the combat instincts that wanted to give in to that feeling. He had detected this great presence not with his five senses, but with a sixth sense only held by those who had spent a long time on the battlefield.
Kyousuke is also able to sense hostility, even while asleep, a skill shared with his "sibling" Biondetta, who according to him has even sharper senses due to her experience and more violent lifestyle. Note: Kyousuke's comment below about those three girls succesfully "attacking" him is referring to romcom hijinks without any malice, not actual attacks.
Hostility Sense
Vol 7 Stage 1 Part 1 (Kyousuke and Biondetta have breakfast after sleeping in a remote train station)
“Then did Bridesmaid not attack again?”
“Since we didn’t sense any hostility, I can only assume so.”
Of course, he had previously been attacked in his sleep by Isabelle, the White Queen, and this demon just now, so that was no guarantee. If anything, Biondetta’s senses were sharper since she lived a life of conspiracies where so many people held a grudge against her.
===Reactions===
Some summoners and vessels have been able to block a bullet. Given that they're mostly supposed to be regular humans, this should be counted as them predicting the path of the bullet and then blocking it, not reacting to the bullet itself, especially considering multiple ace summoners are very good at predicting the enemy's movements and attacks. It is also later stated that humans can't follow supersonic movements.
Summoner/Vessel Reactions
Vol 3 Stage 2 Part 3
Biondetta’s tail decoration had been swaying as she raised her Blood-Sign. But she was not holding it like a summoner would. She pressed the bottom against her shoulder, placed her gaze along the side of the long rod to aim, and prepared her finger to flick a clasp that stuck out somewhat. It looked a lot like someone aiming a sniper rifle.
“Nee hee☆”
Scorpion 11 saw a smile.
The waitress demon was targeting his vessel Ayaka instead of him. Did she think she could crush the girl’s human body before the Material could be summoned inside it?
But…
“…”
The rifle bullet did not pierce the young girl’s face.
An extended high-pitched vibration shook the air. Scorpion 11 had held his Blood-Sign in front of the girl’s eyes to slightly divert the bullet’s path.
Vol 3 Stage 3 Part 7
It was an extreme close-range fight. The opening ritual was the breaking of the three-dimensional Rose made of White Thorns, but they interfered with even that.
“Bang☆”
Biondetta acted first. With an explosive sound, she fired a sniper rifle round at close range.
She had yet to unfold her Blood-Sign, so she pulled the trigger in that state.
Kyousuke forcibly kept it away with his Repliglass Blood-Sign and rotated the Blood-Sign to let the force escape. He swung the long rod around for a powerful blow, but Biondetta used her folded gun barrel to hold it back and forcibly grabbed the heated joint of hers. She ignored the disconcerting sizzling sound as she unfolded the Blood-Sign. A second and third exchange followed.
Vol 7 Stage 2 Part 4
Kyousuke’s flipping body obscured the lab coat and riding suit man’s vision and he moved to the side as guided by the man’s recovery technique.
And once he was out of the way, the helmeted man saw something else instead: Biondetta’s bolt-action sniper rifle.
A dry blast rang out.
The recoil ran violently through the alluring body contained in the waitress uniform.
The fact that the man managed to draw the blade and block the rifle proved his skill really was the best of the best.
Volume 8 Stage 2 Part 2
The men in black under their command did not hesitate to draw handguns.
And a dry sound rang out.
However…
“Too bad♪”
Sinceria held a hand in front of the knight’s face. That hand held a timer Incense Grenade that resembled a platinum pocket watch and it had a bullet embedded in it. It was clearly made from a cheap alloy, glass, and other inexpensive materials, but its value had been increased past the limit by royally appointed craftsmen. There was no need to turn the watch crown to set the dangerous hands because a 20m cubic Artificial Sacred Ground was already opening around it.
===Prediction Abilities===
Multiple ace summoners have powerful prediction abilities consisting in analyzing the situation, enemy and environment to predict the enemy movement or the movement of Petals and other objects during a summoning match.
Kyousuke's Prediction Abilities
Vol 2 Stage 2 Part 6 (Kyousuke vs Hayato)
Even now, the world seemed to be spinning around and around as their footing moved to new walls, floors, and ceilings. Each time they moved to a building, bridge, attraction rail, or pillar, all of the preconditions crumbled away.
Before even thinking about landing, it should have been difficult to make any sense of one’s shaken vision. And yet…
“It’s simple.”
Kyousuke raised his Blood-Sign and spoke as if he had read Hayato’s mind.
And he landed on the new footing almost more nimbly than Hayato, the supposed master of this place.
“It’s just like the long jump or the high jump. The athletes don’t start preparing for their landing only after making their jump. They determine how to position their body before the jump and even before the approach run. They only start moving after deciding on their target.”
“You don’t mean…”
“Your breathing, the movement of your eyes, the tension in your muscles, the adjustments to your balance… All the information I needed was right there in your body. All I had to do was read that and I knew when and where the next footing would be.”
In a world turned 90 degrees on its side, Kyousuke and Hayato landed on streetlight and a traffic light poles.
“And the calculations for the moving Petals are simple too. …I just have to think of it from a starting point of 45 degrees. If I hit a moving Petal at a right angle with a White Thorn moving at the exact same speed, the Petal will continue at a diagonal angle of 45 degrees. That’s an easier calculation than determining the position of the sun with the hands of your watch.”
That was nonsense.
It was nothing more than a theoretical value. If he did not perfectly hit the center of the Petal or if either one had even a slight spin to it, the Petal would veer off course.
But Kyousuke had actually done it.
He had the power needed to do so.
But Hayato could not accept it.
(That just means he’s intercepting my behavior patterns to predict our footing and the movement of the Petals. Even if he could catch up like that, he couldn’t pass me.)
“No, wait.”
The assassin boy looked down at his own feet.
He finally grasped something as he stared at the traffic light pole that had become something like a log bridge.
(Is this like shogi or chess? I get to choose our next footing, but my choices aren’t unlimited. I have to create the Artificial Sacred Ground relative to where I next place my feet, so I can’t use any location I can’t reach on the first step.)
Which meant…
(The summoner’s location, the cost and sound range of the Materials, and the terrain conditions… If you could accurately analyze all that, you could create a tree diagram of the possible courses we could take. Then this wouldn’t be the same as a highly random game of rock paper scissors. So…did he…see through all of that?)
“Is something the matter?”
Hayato heard a voice.
He heard the voice of a summoner who had likely predicted their next footing before the assassin boy himself had.
“Did you figure something out this late in the game?”
Vol 2 Stage 4 Part 9 (Kyousuke vs Genetically Modified Killer)
In that instant, Shiroyama Kyousuke determined the location of his opponent’s center of gravity from his build, determined the range of motion of the man’s arms and legs, and accurately calculated out where he could strike to knock him out in a single blow. At the same time, he was thinking about something entirely unrelated to his victory.
(I need to at least take out his knee so the girl can definitely escape. I need to make sure he can never get back up. I can only interfere while they’re in this place that was summoned based on people’s “searches”. Once it’s all over, she has to step back into the world where she belongs. If she can’t reach safety on her own, this will all be meaningless.)
He coolly analyzed the situation and stood up while just barely remaining within the limitations of Alice (with) Rabbit.
Vol 4 Stage 3 Part 3 (Kyousuke vs Repliglass Soldiers)
“You’re kidding. This was a surprise attack, but he still dodged Divine-class weapons!?”
[...]
The Repliglass soldiers thought they knew the situation but actually knew nothing, so they rushed in to attack. The scorpion tail parts had 2 meter Japanese swords attached and electricity scattered from those. Those divine weapons could slice right through a tank like a hot knife through butter and more than 30 of them rushed in at speeds and angles far surpassing the greatest swordsman.
But with Blood-Sign in hand, Kyousuke took an extremely simple action.
He took one flowing step to the side.
That was all.
And despite that being all, the countless slicing lines failed to reach his body as they rushed in like a storm. Of course, this would never occur by pure coincidence. Even if the action had been simple, the process had involved extremely complex calculations.
Meaning…
“Even if those are divine weapons, they are equipped on Repliglass and are being controlled by mere humans.”
A light sound followed.
The tip of his Repliglass lightly tapped the slender feminine arm of one of the Emperor Scorpions.
“You are trapped by the concepts of distance and time, you follow your designs, you cannot escape your joints’ range of movement, and you cannot surpass the limits of inertial Gs.”
“Gh, ah!?”
The elbow and the shoulder.
The Blood-Sign immobilized the joints and swung them around to shake the Emperor Scorpion. The tail was also swung around wildly…and the sword of Takemikazuchi sliced through the air.
The damage mostly spread to the other Repliglass soldiers. Some had the arm or leg armor cleanly cut away and some had the feminine upper body shallowly split open vertically. And as the armor or helmets fell away, the surprisingly slender and cute girls inside were revealed.
“So it’s simple. With the Blood-Sign method, I need excellent spatial awareness and I need to determine the enemy summoner’s range of movement by observing their joints, muscles, and center of gravity. Those techniques are just as valid here.”
A powerful wind followed.
The Emperor Scorpions rushed toward Kyousuke in a state of panic instead of using a controlled fighting instinct. Kyousuke spun the captured one around and shoved it into the enemies after a single beat. He was trying to get them to destroy each other. He would guide a scorpion tail to stab into another one or he would use his Blood-Sign to knock one off balance such that it knocked another one down as well.
This was no longer a battle.
It was nothing more than a group of nails being pulled around by a magnet.
“You probably needed a human being as a summoner to summon the Divine-class weapons, but that worked against you.”
Kyousuke spun his Blood-Sign around.
He rested his weapon on his shoulder and spoke.
“If you had thoroughly eliminated all human elements and sent in entirely unmanned machines that ignore the human limits of inertial Gs, muscle strength, and skeletal structure, you might have been able to kill me pretty easily.”
He was surrounded by a pile of rubble.
And despite the storm of cuts, not a single soldier had been bisected or lost an arm or leg. They had all been defeated while just barely avoiding any injures. They shuddered at the thought of those perfect calculations and slumped to the floor.
Vol 7 Opening X-02 (Kyousuke vs Alphas)
They had a variety of advantages, but the biggest was how difficult their movements were to predict. Using the traits of existing plants and animals gave you a treasure trove of data to work with, but it was also easy to imagine just how a mantis model, grasshopper model, or hornet model would move. A Released Creation did not have that. And in battle, calmly observing and putting together a new plan would require placing the chips of human lives on the table. When faced with bizarre, never-before-seen, and supersonic movements, waiting was the same as standing still while you were killed instantly.
Yes.
Unless your brain had greater calculation power than a supercomputer like Kyousuke’s did.
“…I see.”
Without any actual data to work with, he could only make general calculations, but with that much Repliglass muscle fiber bundled together into those tentacles, they could likely make jabs that surpassed Mach 2.5. He estimated them to be heavily-equipped models that weaponized their power and speed which could grab and crush their enemy with instantaneous speed rivalling a fighter jet’s top speed and could knock down every last bullet when a Gatling gun was fired at them head-on.
Once they stood on the same stage as you, the Repliglass had essentially already won, whether they wanted to restrain you or simply behead you. The end effect would be little different from having them move freely while time was frozen for you.
[...]
As soon as he finished speaking, everything set in motion.
But the Repliglass weapons should have noticed that control of this place had already secretly shifted to the Freedom 900 levels.
Modern warfare compressors sliced through the air from multiple directions with enough intensity to break the sound barrier, but the greatest weapons of those Alphas – as Kyousuke dubbed them – were the seven pairs of tentacles and those failed to reach the summoners’ heads.
They had misread Shiroyama Kyousuke.
He took a step to the side so as not to get the old lady involved, but they should have noticed just how far he was planning ahead with that action.
A great crashing sound soon followed. The deadly stretching weapons grabbed at the heads and torsos of their supposed allies and the Repliglass weapons tore each other apart.
“You mechanically lock on using microwaves or infrared. At speeds surpassing Mach 2.5, the human pilots themselves can’t hope to visually follow the action from beginning to end.”
If a more cheerful color had seeped into Kyousuke’s soul, he might have hummed a tune.
As seen with a tightrope walker crossing between buildings, it was while relaxed that humans could draw out their greatest performance. You only hurt your chances if you let your muscles tense up from the nerves of brought on by great danger or a major challenge.
The summoner continued his one-way conversation while surrounded by a unique aura similar to “the zone” for a golf or shogi player and while constructing a world into which no one could enter.
“So I can intervene all I want during that ‘blank period’. I don’t have to face you head-on and stop you. If I give a slight push on your joints with the end of this stick to shift your movements just a little bit, those tentacles will end up going somewhere else entirely.”
However, this strategy should only work if he could accurately predict where those tentacles would go while moving with speed rivalling an afterburner and if he could reproduce precise movements akin to touching the side of a flying bullet with his finger.
Nothing could be more unreasonable than a subsonic object repeatedly controlling supersonic objects and guiding them to destroy each other.
But this was the proper form of a summoner.
A summoner was a puny human who controlled the higher Materials. You could not discuss their essence without mentioning the absurdity of a lower being exceeding a higher being.
The high-spec Alphas surrounded the slender and puny human and swung down their many tentacles and powerful arms in unison, but they suddenly found themselves turned to the side and destroying their fellow units.
The area sounded much like a scrap factory, the masses of special armor were tossed into the box seats and windows, and the entire car soon fell silent.
Alberto S. Divinesmith's Prediction Abilities
Vol 5 Stage 1 Part 5 (Alberto vs Claudia)
With a series of impacts that sounded like a thunderclap, the Hatter swiftly knocked Petal after Petal into the Spots.
Humpty Dumpty had set up the trick, so it was likely her who sensed just how superhuman this feat was. She alone could see the world properly though her spacesuit’s protective shade. But it did not seem to matter that the polarized smokescreen had created a world of red. One after another, White Thorns secured a Petal. With each collision, a primitive song of destruction played while the Hatter’s stock grew. Humpty Dumpy had to have felt most clearly how thoroughly he was trampling her garden.
“What…?” muttered Claudia in a daze. “What is going on!? Only I should be able to see the Petals in this world!!”
“It’s not like you have to see them to know where they are. The world of the Summoning Ceremony only requires your eyes when throwing the Incense Grenade at the start,” readily explained the Hatter. “6 x 6 x 6. That’s 216 in all. If you note where all of the letters are on the initial mass of Roses and compare the angle of the White Thorn hit with the layout of the terrain, you can tell exactly where all of them will bounce. You don’t need to see them if you calculate it all out from the beginning.”
“…”
It made sense at first.
But it was nearly an impossible contradiction when applied to the macro world of reality. It was like making an argument based on the fictional being known as Laplace’s Demon. But he forced it through so that even rationality had to back off. He used his insane mind to control everything, so it was truly the logic of a madman.
Vol 5 Stage 1 Part 6 (Alberto's Training)
The Hatter was inside what looked like a giant die.
It was a perfect cube with each side at precisely 15 meters. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all perfectly white and the lights shined in through a glass material, so the light fixtures were not directly visible. The door was made like a yosegi box, so not even the slightest crack remained when closed. It also had no knob for opening on the inside, so it would be easy to lose sight of the exit if one was not paying attention.
The highly unnatural scene worked to destroy the concepts of front and back, left and right, and even up and down.
[...]
It had a pearly glow like a thick alloy diving suit. It had the silhouette of a bowler hat, but it was actually a fancy blindfold meant to fully cover his head and cut off most of his senses.
The Silk Hat had a large glass lens on the front and an earhole on either side. Once he put it on, everything looked small and distant, like he was looking through a telescope backwards.
But that was not the point of the hat.
Springs and gears were used to periodically seal off his eyes and ears.
The “window” might open just once every three seconds, so the subject would need to desperately memorize the scene and then move based on the memories burned into their mind like a photograph.
Meanwhile, the hands of the clock continued moving in the real world.
The subject would correct their movements each time the window opened every three seconds, so it was a lot like artificially having their senses slowed by three seconds.
[...]
As soon as Alberto donned the fancy hat and sealed away his senses, a portion of each wall slid open and men armed with body armor and police batons stepped in. There were more than 20 of them. The collapsible batons were long enough and heavy enough to be even more dangerous than metal bats.
But Alberto did not even pull out his silver Blood-Sign.
[...]
Immediately afterwards, the batons roared toward him from every direction at once.
But the Hatter twisted his body in a world three seconds delayed. He took a step. He rotated his hips to easily avoid the batons swinging toward him from every direction. No, he did more than that. He thrust out his hand and dropped his raised heel. In a series of dull sounds, the men supposedly protected by cutting-edge shock-absorbing materials were knocked unconscious one after another.
The Hatter could not see it all.
The lens allowing him to see and the metal tubes of the earholes were only opened by the springs and gears once every three seconds.
He only experienced equidistant points in time.
And yet he easily kept even a single blow from hitting him.
“You just have to fill in the gaps of the limited footage.”
It was like a sport to him.
No, the Hatter did not refer to this room as a ring or a stadium. He called it the Tablecloth. So to him, anything placed on top of it was not even an animal: it was no more than food.
“I can see the movable range of their muscles and skeleton, where they’ll move in the future based on their center of gravity, where they’re looking, where their fingertips are, and what they’re thinking based on the tension of their facial muscles. If you loosen a screw in your head and release those resources, you can steal time.”
Was he focusing on that passage from Lewis Carroll or not?
In the original story, the Hatter had invited the eternal girl to a mad tea party that ignored the concept of time.
The adults sounded both impressed and exasperated as they spoke through the speaking tube.
“Your brainwaves remain unchanged. …You can break through so easily it almost seems silly to monitor them.”
“This is nothing compared to the Summoning Ceremony,” scoffed the madman.
He scoffed while casually wielding violence. His hands flew, his legs roared, and he devoured the food that showed confusion and fear through their thick body armor.
“You have to calculate out everything: the locations of the Petals and Spots, the paths of your White Thorns, the traits of the Material you just summoned, simulations of what your enemy will summon 100 moves from now, the Cost and Sound Range you’ll need to beat that, and everything else. It’s all about calculations. If you’re not insane, you’ll never keep up.”
A normal person would have their hands full simply memorizing all of the Materials.
So there was not even a faint hope of memorizing the thousands or tens of thousands of patterns required to know what led to what, what detours to make when one route was blocked, and what changes to make to match the enemy’s Cost and Sound Range or the location of the Petals and Spots. Not to mention when it all had to be recalled with perfect accuracy while actually moving your body to match.
But he did it.
The Hatter calmly walked through a realm that would drive a normal person insane.
[...]
“How boring. Hey, I can give you more time if you want. 5 second intervals? 10? That’s probably a better delay for the world.”
“Hm,” said the voice as if considering it.
Then the four walls opened up once more to send in the preset assassins.
However, these were not protected by body armor.
The speaker was known for his cyberphobia, so they likely were not made of electronics. These men’s flesh-and-blood bodies had clearly manmade bug wings, pincers, grasshopper-like back legs, and compound eye goggles equipped. The bizarre group surrounded the Hatter.
Elvast Toydream's Prediction Abilities
Vol 6 Stage 4 Part 1 (Instant White Queen Summoning)
Was that man skilled in his control of the White Thorns? Had he broken out of the rock-paper-scissors arrangement between Materials? Had he done a brilliant job of understanding the terrain and incorporating it into his tactics? No, this was on an entirely different level.
It was just one attack.
The very first shot.
It was that first move that shattered the three-dimensional rose and sent the countless Petals into the Spots. There was enough of a random element there that every summoner could only secure one of the Cost 1 slimes of the Original Series. No one could break that rule.
And that was why it had caught Kyousuke entirely off guard.
With that very first shot, the White Queen had appeared.
Now, it was true that hole-in-one of a miracle was technically possible. To reach an Unexplored-class, a summoner normally had to summon 100 Regulation-classes and 50 Divine-classes. The White Queen was the peak of the peak, so the summoner would have to climb to even greater heights even after reaching the Unexplored-class. But there was a way to directly summon her. If the summoner hit the Petals into the Spots in the precise order that spelled out her name, they could skip past that cumbersome process and summon an Unexplored-class.
But pulling off that theoretical possibility in combat was very nearly impossible.
And it would be even more impossible on the first hit which was mostly random.
Vol 6 Stage 4 Part 4 (Calculation Abilities)
“And your first-move win looks like it leaves a lot to chance, but that isn’t accurate. The Rose is formed by a three-dimensional arrangement of the 6 x 6 x 6 = 216 Petals. The arrangement of those letters and the location of the Spots seem random, so calculating out where to send your White Thorn might seem pointless, but that isn’t true. …The letter arrangement and Spot locations are based on the terrain. So if you accurately search out all the terrain conditions in advance, you can calculate out those seemingly random factors. And that leads to a nightmarish attack that summons the Queen in a single move!”
Of course, knowing how it worked was not enough to actually pull it off. Even Kyousuke had merely been able to guess that it might be possible to calculate that out, but he had not actually reached the level of making those calculations. No, they were no longer calculations. This man had reached Award 1000, so it was a miracle only possible for him. It was a complex combination of natural intuition and vast experience, like a fortuneteller outdoing a weather satellite’s forecasts just by reading the wind and looking at the shapes of the clouds.
===Kyousuke Shiroyama===
This will list other skills/feats for the main character of the series.
Volume 1
Volume 1 Opening X-02
An instant later, she heard a series of loud metallic sounds.
Something fell to the boat’s deck. It was a man in a suit dark enough to blend into the night. As he lay sprawled out with both his strength and consciousness gone, he looked more like an abandoned doll than a human. She was surprised to find Guard of Honor had already made it that close, but the real shock was that the enemy summoner had been defeated.
Who had done it?
What had done it?
She desperately worked her mind that was still fading in and out, but she could not find an answer. However, as she tried to focus her blurry vision, she heard a certain sound.
It was the whoosh of something lighter than a bat tearing sharply through the air. She had heard the sound countless times before. It came from a Blood-Sign, the long rod that summoners used to hit the White Thorns. However, this was not the sound of someone jabbing with the tip. They were instead casually and lazily spinning it around.
(A Blood…Sign?)
Meinokawa Higan desperately tried to raise her head.
(But there’s…no Material here. There’s no summoning…ceremony. Then…did they use it to stab like a spear…and hit the man directly?)
Volume 1 Stage 1 Part 1
The Meinokawa sisters belonged to Freedom, but Freedom was a group of five hundred “individual” summoners. They couldn’t ask for help from a colleague unless they knew each other personally.
However, Shiroyama Kyousuke was a summoner and Meinokawa Higan was a vessel.
Kyousuke was skilled enough to hold Freedom Award 902 and he had accomplished the Hive Crusher feat in which he destroyed an entire organization on his own.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 2
But by that time, Shiroyama Kyousuke had already moved right up to his next target.
However, that target was not the female summoner.
He suddenly changed direction and moved right up to one of the bizarre Repliglass soldiers that had grasshopper-like legs added near the waist to help with jumping. The soldier was a sturdy armored weapon, but the carbine he held was a standard model. Kyousuke made a spear-like jab with the tip of his 180 cm stick to tear off the high-powered military light attached on the bottom.
At the same time, the counterattack began. The enemy selected the face out of the many vitals available and threw a frightening kick with its silicon leg. This rear leg held the strength needed to send the soldier himself flying ten to twenty meters or to crush a traditional armored truck like a steamed bun.
Shiroyama Kyousuke swung his upper body to avoid it by a hair’s breadth.
A few of his own hairs flew through the air.
His entire body was noticeably emitting extreme tension.
[...]
`But I was wrong. He even knows, um, how to fight with the weakest Material. No, did this battle begin b-before even summoning the first Material!?´
Yes. That was right.
When Higan had been separated from Renge in that harbor region, Kyousuke had saved her from the Guard of Honor pursuers.
But he would not have had a vessel with him then. So how had he protected her from those members of a professional summoner’s organization?
`Th-this must be…the answer.´
He could get involved in the world of summoning ceremonies and yet return alive without summoning a single Material. He could return with at least a single person in his arms. And he did not have the muscular strength of some ferocious beast, he was not a kung fu master living deep in the mountains, and he was not using the world’s greatest prototype weapon that a stranger had given him.
Then again, he was not the same as Lu Niang Lan who was feared as the Perfect Dragon. He was not an expert in slaughtering veteran summoners using only his own body and hidden weapons instead of Materials.
But when in a bind, he knew enough about this small field to put together a workable strategy on the fly that would let him fight without a Material.
It could be written off as a series of adlibs, but he did not bring about the optimum result by gambling. He simply had enough useful experience to instantly search for the relevant information in any given situation. He may have been physically using his arms and legs, but his true weapon was his intellect as a summoner.
That had been enough to save a girl from that hellish harbor, so he would not lose here.
Shiroyama Kyousuke could gain the upper hand against Guard of Honor with a handicap, so there was no way he would lose when he had Meinokawa Higan as his vessel and could use his full power.
“Higan, focus on weight more than speed! Repliglass is a mass of silicon muscle fibers, so they won’t be able to move if you press down on them enough to snap them. You don’t even need to knock them out. Destroy the outer shell and they’ll be trapped in their own armor!!”
Shiroyama Kyousuke ran all across the Artificial Sacred Ground and Higan swung her giant Material body around based on his instructions. Repliglass soldiers were the main players of modern warfare and they were a symbol of fear for the guerillas and terrorists being wiped out around the world, but she easily swept them all away.
[...]
Two summoners remained. Someone with devastatingly slow reaction speed quickly raised their Blood-Sign and struck a White Thorn. To Higan, the movement was slow, like someone moving underwater.
And Kyousuke did not just sit idly by.
He took a powerful step forward and charged toward the enemy summoner. By this point, Higan had caught on that even that step had a meaning. If he had only been swinging around his Blood-Sign randomly, he would have been shot up by the Repliglass soldiers before the Incense Grenade could detonate. His movements also had the psychological effect of creating a gap and throwing off one’s timing.
If someone who could easily jump to either side instead charged straight toward the large truck driving their way, anyone watching would be briefly paralyzed with shock.
A baseball would sometimes slip between two infielders who could have easily caught it.
This was the same.
He seemed almost supernaturally skilled at binding the enemy’s body with a stimulus that they could not fight with their rational mind.
He took a short breath, shot forward like a bullet, and literally collided with the enemy summoner.
Both of them were guarded by the protective circles powered by their Materials, so they did not actually come into contact.
With a solid sound of impact, Kyousuke’s charge was obstructed at extreme close range. Both of their protective circles had decided allowing him in range would bring death.
But…
“Kh…!? Wh-what…? You’re in the way…”
“You can’t see the world behind me, can you? And when we’re this close, you can’t swing your 180 cm Blood-Sign like you want to. Isn’t that right?”
A summoner could freely build up their Material by gaining an accurate understanding of the vast Artificial Sacred Ground and using their glowing White Thorns to knock the Petals of low, middle, high, and lowest sounds into the Spots. The pressure tactics that Shiroyama Kyousuke was using with his own body produced a simple yet devastating effect.
“B-but neither can-…!”
The summoner trailed off as he finally noticed the sound of something whipping through the wind.
Kyousuke had reached both hands behind his back and spun his Blood-Sign like a baton.
With a top-class summoner’s spatial awareness, one did not always need to rely on sight. He could manipulate his Blood-Sign behind his back to accomplish the exceedingly precise summoning ceremony.
The tip struck a White Thorn with enough frightening speed to sense the absolute confidence behind it.
With several hard sounds of reflection, it collided with several Petals and knocked them into Spots. The crimson trails of light and the dance of a broken song filled that small world.
He did not even bother to check on the result.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 3
A school had become a battlefield.
She had expected it, but not even disastrous was enough to describe the situation. The four summoner groups had already been defeated and the soldiers wearing Repliglass equipment supplied by Quad Motors had been wiped out. And they had all been incapacitated without spilling a single drop of blood.
The girl felt a little faint at the fact that the enemy had showed mercy. She could feel the noble blood stirring inside her delicate body.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 14
Shiroyama Kyousuke raced forward like a bullet in the instant they landed and absorbed the shock with their knees. He pulled the long Blood-Sign from his back, extended it, and thrust the tip toward the center of the girl’s neck that seemed more fragile than glass. This was the same as crushing someone’s throat with the flat tip of a wooden sword. The full-strength strike of the military Repliglass Blood-Sign was clearly a killing technique.
[...]
Kyousuke grabbed the middle of the long Blood-Sign with both hands and used both ends to make repeated strikes from a variety of angles. He was trying to knock the Incense Grenade into the distance before it exploded, but the butler acted as a barrier and would not let any attack through. Also, Azalea poked her slender fingertip into the face of the collapsed nurse to guide her toward the boy. Before the slowly-moving figure could get in the way, Kyousuke swung the tip of his Blood-Sign near her nurse’s face to send that loser walking in a different direction. Fractal Leskins’s arms moved swiftly and nearly grabbed the Blood-Sign, so Kyousuke clicked his tongue and jumped back.
Only a few seconds had passed, but he had missed his final chance.
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 15
“Yes. We were searching for the method used in the miracle that you alone once successfully created.”
“…!!!!!!”
A dull sound rang out.
It was the sound of Kyousuke gripping his primary weapon as a summoner so tightly it nearly broke.
“Hee hee. Ah ha ha ha ha ha!! Do I detect a disturbance in your strokes? We do not have your level of genius, but we have gathered the techniques we need to reach that former genius. So we no longer need a genius. Knowing that it is indeed possible by human hands is more than enough, don’t you think?”
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 17
“It’s the same idea as what you built so long ago, brother. It’s just that Guard of Honor is nowhere near your level, so I seem to recall it being ugly and overly large. …Honestly, the original one was a cute little toy that would fit in a household shrine…yes, like the size of a bottle ship. So why has it spread enough to cover two-sevenths of the world’s continents with this city in the center?”
Volume 1 Stage 4 Part 8
The black Queen did not even bother looking that way.
She bit at the feast before her eyes. The protective circle was meaningless. Kyousuke kept his eyes on the White Thorn while ignoring the intense pain and disturbing chewing noise coming from his shoulder.
[...]
Still covered in blood, Shiroyama Kyousuke watched as the strange monster transformed into a certain girl.
“…Uuh…?”
As the girl collapsed from extreme exhaustion, she groaned and that told him she had been freed before her heart was entirely eaten away.
He determined he had fulfilled both sisters’ requests to save the other.
“Now, then.”
He slowly breathed out.
He grabbed the Blood-Sign with a hand that had nearly been torn to pieces, used his unharmed hand to place Meinokawa Higan over his shoulder, and slowly looked up at the ceiling.
He heard quite a few hurrying footsteps. He had taken the shortest route here while avoiding as much combat as possible. He had defeated the White Queen at the center of it all, but Guard of Honor’s elites were still active.
And his goal had not been to save the world or defeat the Queen.
It had been to bring Meinokawa Higan safely back to her sister Renge.
“It isn’t over until we’re back home.”
The door was thrown open from outside.
Kyousuke looked over.
He could no longer use the summoning ceremony that used the Blood-Sign.
They would have put together a countermeasure for his surprise attack using eye drops and darkness.
But he had not given up.
After all, he was Alice (with) Rabbit.
Volume 1 Stage 4 Facts
Despite being at a disadvantage, Shiroyama Kyousuke took control of every battle facing him and kept his promises to the Meinokawa Sisters.
Volume 5
Volume 5 Stage 1 Part 2
They could jog to build up their strength.
“Hey, Rabbit Boy. If you’re headed south, then join me.”
“…”
Kyousuke did not bother matching his pace to the boy who arrived next to him.
They both maintained their high-speed pace, but Kyousuke did not reject the boy either and continued running as planned.
[...]
The Hatter laughed scornfully.
They were conversing while running at an above average pace, but neither of them seemed at all out of breath.
Volume 5 Stage 1 A Happy Memory from an Unknown Point on the Timeline 1
“Sorry, sorry. I panicked and took too long to respond. I’m deadly sorry. Yeah, I should have abandoned the boat and swam over like normal.”
“At least nothing happened.”
“That’s all that matters. Then again, I’ve heard that Biondetta can hold her breath for 15 minutes, so I never thought it was that serious.”
She casually announced that the upper limits of humanity had been shattered.
That meant Biondetta could keep up an intense infighting rush in boxing for 15 minutes or she could easily run at a sprint for 15 minutes straight. She was truly the master of anaerobic exercise.
But Kyoumi was interested in something else.
“Anyway, Kyousuke,” she said while still clinging to the banana boat. “You know a very strange way of swimming.”
“?”
“Isn’t that a military style? It was developed to remain afloat with just your legs so you can hold your equipment overhead and cross a river without getting it wet.”
Kyousuke could not carelessly respond.
He could easily say the grownups had taught it to him, but if Kyoumi went around and found out that none of them knew this way of swimming, that explanation would fall apart.
Volume 5 Stage 3 Part 4
He wanted to deny it, but he could not.
So he could not hold back any longer.
He did not bother unlocking the door and cracking it open to peek inside. He kicked the door down. The thick door had a double digit number of locks installed along the side, but every last one of them broke and the door really did collapse into the room.
Volume 8
Volume 8 Opening X-02
He gasped for breath, but also looked away from his obvious goal. He could not help but look.
Hell on earth lay before him.
He saw the magic king of Norse mythology whose name begins with an O and who offered up one eye at a spring.
He saw the trident king of Greek mythology whose name begins with a P and who rules the sea.
He saw the light king of Celtic mythology whose name begins with an L and who excels at using projectiles.
He saw the black king of Slavic mythology whose name begins with a C and who rules over death and the underworld.
Outside the aircushion ship, several beings had appeared on the concrete of the 2nd dock in Iron Range’s commerce area. They were all Divine-class and they were Materials who held dreadful power at the center of their respective mythologies. Viewed from a different perspective, they could be seen as a treasure trove of material on what Leonardo should make people think of when he used his tricks.
But that was not the center of the hell he saw.
They were cut down, crushed, broken, or suppressed.
The Blood-Sign Summoning Ceremony had changed everything.
He knew that, but how many people would believe that a single individual could do all this?
[...]
“There he is…”
But it was not even the Red Lady that made the middle-aged man gulp when he saw them.
He was looking at the boy who stood by her side.
That veteran summoner was calm and composed as he controlled one of the Three.
“I had a feeling you would show up, Queen Executioner!!”
Even at such a great distance, he could tell something the instant their eyes met: the owner of those rusty eyes was a true berserker. He would show no mercy whatsoever. He was not just a wild beast or a faceless unmanned weapon. He felt like an incarnation of ruthlessness itself.
[...]
With a horribly sticky sound, the lump of flesh sitting in the pilot’s seat crumpled to the side.
What in the world had happened? The convulsing figure’s face was so badly covered in red and black that it was unclear where the eyes, nose, or mouth were.
“Eh? Ah?”
Leonardo did not even feel the proper sense of danger.
He was simply confused.
(Who did this to Kevin? Him? The Queen Executioner? No, he still wasn’t on the ship last I saw him. He couldn’t have gotten here so soon. An ambush? No, this is bad. These depressions look a lot like a Blood-Sign tip. Was he jabbed with that flat tip? This is bad, bad, bad!! This isn’t even about the Summoning Ceremony anymore!!!)
More than the clear threat approaching him, he wanted to avoid breathing the same air as that disturbing mass of flesh and blood. Leonardo Pounds had used flea markets to design a cult, but it was an extremely primitive sense of disgust that bound his soul right now.
And that was why he misjudged the threat.
Just as he reached for the door to leave the helicopter, something broke through the helicopter’s even-thicker glass like it was thin paper.
An object with flat tip mercilessly approached his face: a Blood-Sign. The fact that it would not kill him instantly like a spear actually made it an even more ruthless attack, but did the middle-aged man even manage to see it before it hit?
The first attack crushed the bridge of his nose.
He rolled the other way as if torn from the door he had grabbed at, he hit his back, and then the second attack arrived. He shook his head in protest, so his right cheekbone was broken from a blow powerful enough to knock him out the other door where his girth fell onto the heliport.
“Bwah, bghee!?”
While collapsed and curled up, he reached for his own face and trembled in his heart when he found it had been horribly misshapen. His chin had been shifted to the side so that his top teeth and bottom teeth no longer fit together. Was he lucky or unlucky that there was no mirror here? His mind returned to the image of Kevin’s red and black face as he convulsed in the pilot’s chair. The attacker – the Queen Executioner – showed no mercy. He would “process” Leonardo as if preparing to cook him.
The middle-aged man’s entire body shook when he heard some footsteps that should not have been here.
Something was circling around toward him.
(A-are you kidding me…?)
There was something there. There was definitely something there. Leonardo had poured his all into studying the Blood-Sign method for the inappropriate purposes of using that paranormal system to satisfy his own desires, but he could not explain how this threat had arrived at the heliport.
(Did he release the Artificial Sacred Ground that pins the summoner and vessel to the ground like a powerful anchor? But that would mean giving up his Unexplored-class and finding himself surrounded by Divine-classes without his protective circle. Did he ignore all of that and make it here!?)
The threat was well past anything he could calculate by this point.
He felt the pure terror of facing a formless ghost, like a young child fearfully peering into the darkness.
“Ah, abh. Abfhh…”
He knew nothing about them, but they knew everything about him.
They really were a ghost.
The bloody middle-aged man was certain they knew he had planned to take advantage of the White Queen’s defeat to start a new cult and that he would try to prey on all the young women he wanted when he did so.
He heard something slowly swishing through the air.
It was the sound of someone casually spinning a long, long Repliglass stick.
Just for now, that boy’s Blood-Sign was not a divine-yet-blasphemous ceremonial tool. It was no more than a ruthless tool for processing a human body by primitively crushing the flesh and smashing the bones. There was no room for otherworldly beings to intervene.
[...]
Even now, bursting sounds were ringing out in the distance.
With Olivia still clinging to his waist, Kyousuke swung his Blood-Sign like a baseball bat to hit the bolts and nuts he scooped up from the floor. Before the summoners and vessels in the harbor could plot a comeback, he “sniped” them one after another to knock them unconscious.
While continuing to unilaterally hit them with his 1000 fungoes from hell, Kyousuke held his smartphone in his other hand and viewed a blog by a housewife who used a form of English distinct from that of England or America.
“Let’s see. With more than 80% of its territory taken up by a vast desert, Australia is known for its insect dishes that combine aboriginal knowledge with cutting-edge nutritional science.”
“Eh?”
“Worms, caterpillars, and ants are favored because they are nonvenomous, have no strong flavor, and reproduce easily. Eating bugs has gathered the attention of the wealthy the world over as a next generation source of protein needed to survive an age of famine brought on by global warming and overpopulation, but roach cakes made from the giant burrowing cockroach (known to be the largest in the world) can be easily made by anyone with a blender and an oven. It is a unique Australian-…Olivia? Why are you backing away so quickly? Hey!”
“Onii-chan, you wouldn’t understand since you’re a freak who only has standards when it comes to cereal!”
While enjoying himself like that, Kyousuke continued sniping the cult’s elites from a distance before they could throw a new Incense Grenade.
Volume 8 Stage 1 Part 2
After tossing the rope straight up and tangling it around the ship’s railing, he climbed up while carrying the small girl on his back. It looked simple enough, but climbing a vertical rope was a dangerous technique that could kill even a professional soldier. There were plenty of simple but deadly mistakes that were not featured in movies. And you should not even think about climbing a curved slope that was steeper than vertical with no powered assistance unless you had participated in a special training program for mountain soldiers or an assault team.
On his back, Olivia placed her slender chin on his right shoulder, rubbed her cheek against his, and made an innocent comment.
“You’re like a spider… Is there not a Repliglass that can do this?”
“I’m sure there is, but we can’t carry around a bunch of tools that can only do one thing.”
While carrying all their equipment and an entire person (albeit a child), Kyousuke took only 15 seconds to climb more than 10 meters. He had combat-level climbing skills rather than sports-level. His speed was impressive, but it was also necessary. With the burden it placed on your arms and legs, you only wanted to climb for a short period of time. Even on a wall, you would search out small footholds and indentations where you could rest in between climbs. Even if the wall was large and vast, it could be heard to search out a route that moved from one rest point to another. Meanwhile, the smooth ship’s hull had no footholds and sloped outward toward them. There was no hope of taking a rest there. If he could not finish the climb and cross the railing in less than a minute, he would have had to abandon the idea.
Volume 8 Stage 1 Part 5
As soon as they opened the door, they ran into a security guard in a navy blue uniform who ran around a corner in the corridor.
He may have thought no one would see as long as there was no window nearby because he held a handgun customized for full-auto.
(Tch! So are we finally seeing the Illegal soldiers who are using the ship’s uniforms!?)
But Kyousuke did not face him head on.
He adjusted the angle of the waterproof steel door just before the merciless rapid-fire attack began. A clay model worth millions of yen shattered atop its rectangular pedestal, but Kyousuke was not focused on the horizontal downpour of bullets. A door built to withstand powerful water pressure was enough to block those.
What mattered was the ridiculously loud gunshots.
That was the natural result of firing in a closed space. The guard was knocked out by the wall of noise he himself had created.
“Let’s go, Olivia.”
“How did you do that? Ricocheting?”
He had not done anything so dangerous. Summoners needed decent spatial senses to handle the White Thorns and Petals with their Blood-Sign. If he adjusted the locations and angles of objects with a focus on how and where the soundwaves would be reflected, he could focus the noise on a single point like gathering sunlight with a concave mirror. That transformed it into a powerful nonlethal weapon.
Whenever they ran across an enemy, he would open a nearby door, knock down the ceiling panels with his Blood-Sign, and otherwise interfere with the reflecting soundwaves.
Each time, the brawny guards would collapse to the floor with amusing ease. He would approach the enemy while their limbs trembled like a dying insect and he would kick their handgun far away before hurrying on.
[...]
She held a unique Incense Grenade made by sticking a rolled-up yellow journalism newspaper in the top of a small liquor bottle. She then used the tip of the thick cigar to light a blue flame in the wet paper.
And she threw it.
Before it could hit the floor and break, Kyousuke flicked a glass pellet from his finger and fired it like a bullet with a horizontal swing of his Blood-Sign. That was a piece of food for Phosphorous. The Artificial Sacred Ground would be established as soon as the bottle broke, so that seemed like a wasted action. The sound of shattering glass followed.
But it was not wasted.
Kyousuke’s pellet shot right past the airborne Molotov cocktail, ignored both the summoner and vessel, and broke through the wall there. No, it broke through the reinforced glass of the window embedded in the wall.
Once it hit the lever on the control panel there, a change occurred.
Volume 8 Stage 2 Part 4
As the top of Illegal roared such an obviously fake name that it could have been on a sample form at a bank or post office, Kyousuke kicked something with the heel of his shoe.
He kicked up a dropped handgun like he was juggling a soccer ball.
Shiroyama Kyousuke of all people did not hesitate to pull the trigger.
Multiple gunshots rang out and Olivia reacted more than War Criminal. She covered her ears and curled up. Some of the bullets flew straight and others ricocheted off the thick steel walls. The lead projectiles used multiple angles and time delays to essentially surround Boy A as they flew toward him.
Lockpicking
Volume 5 Stage 1 Part 7
He was aware how far he was straying from his original objective, but his arms and legs continued to move with perfect accuracy. Perhaps because summoners and Materials vanished from cameras and sensors while inside an Artificial Sacred Ground, the Miniature Garden was equipped with surprisingly few digital security cameras. To make up for it, the doors tended to be equipped with artisan-made locks that could not be reproduced by machines, but that was not much of an obstacle for Kyousuke. Even when a single door had several different locks, his two hands and ten fingers swiftly unlocked it.
His destination was the lab run by the adults who were closely connected to Alberto S. Divinesmith the Hatter. That madman’s skill was undeniable, but he needed helpers to back him up. It would be fastest to start with someone strongly influenced by his techniques and words.
This was between Kyousuke and Alberto.
If Biondetta carelessly butted in, it was obvious she would be harmed.
So before that happened…
“…”
He sighed and released the final lock.
The vertical line of locks sealing the thick door had been in the double digits, but the work had not taken even 5 minutes.
[...]
Kyousuke approached the locked cabinets again.
He unlocked it so easily it looked like it was simply a knob shaped like a lock and he slid the glass cover aside.
Volume 5 Ending X-02
Kyousuke ignored the surrounding commotion and circled to the back of the toppled truck.
He pried open the cargo door which had an odd abundance of analog locks for a delivery truck and he peered inside. The inside was blocked off by thick bars, so it almost looked like a cage. And he saw a familiar face inside.
Volume 8 Stage 1 Part 2
They stopped in front of one dark gray door among many.
Of course, they would not have needed the submersible if they had made a reservation, but Kyousuke pulled a multi-tool from his hoodie’s pocket and easily opened the door’s electronic lock.
“Hm? How did you do that with normal tools, Onii-chan?”
“Just hurry inside.”
Volume 8 Chapter 1 Part 4
The crank-shaped passageway took several right angle turns. Kyousuke and Olivia were after the original data for the war promotion videos, so those areas that stuck out unnaturally were exactly what they wanted to find. They passed by the occasional genius who staggered down the hallway like a zombie, but Kyousuke eventually used his multi-tool’s knife to swiftly pry open a lock.
===Lu Niang-Lan===
Volume 1
Volume 1 Opening X-01
“This old woman is provoking me with the standard golden word!! Liiiigerrrrr!!!!”
“Heh heh heh hah hah. That cute pet might be an excellent beast and an excellent vessel, but I’m confident I can destroy five of its vital points before you can snap your fingers. Please don’t underestimate the Perfect Dragon, okay? Being flat as a board is one thing, but it’s painful to look at a washboard whose ribs are poking out. Also, who are you calling an old woman?”
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 2
Then again, he was not the same as Lu Niang Lan who was feared as the Perfect Dragon. He was not an expert in slaughtering veteran summoners using only his own body and hidden weapons instead of Materials.
Volume 1 Stage 3 Part 2
“That China Dress is using acupuncture to slow down the progress, but it’s really only buying us a little more time. She says we’ll be lucky to get even a few extra hours out of it.”
Volume 8
Volume 8 Stage 2 Between the Lines 2
…Aproned Lu Niang Lan had both her hands full and her back to a wild animal while giving off a mouthwatering aroma, but the 5m white liger only shrank down even further. The modified China dress beauty was only humming and fixing some lunch, but the liger’s animal instincts told her something. It was not that Lu Niang Lan did not have her guard down. She was dangerous even when she had her guard down. Trying to play with her from behind right now would probably only get the liger’s jaw broken by her heel. The strike would be even harder than a racehorse’s hind leg.
==Materials==
Material is the name used to refer to the inhabitants of the other world that are summoned by summoners calling them in and having them possess their vessel. Materials are classified into three classes: Regulation-class, Divine-class and Unexplored-class. Depending on their summoning name they'll also belong to one of three sound ranges: low, middle and high. These ranges have a rock, paper, scissors relationship, though your sound weakness can be ignored if you're sufficiently above the other Material in raw power (when your cost is 10 or more points above the other Material) However, some Materials such as the White Queen and the Black Maw don't belong to a sound range.
Materials, being supernatural beings from another world, are not harmed by conventional methods, as simple physical damage can't harm them. Materials can hurt each other just fine, but they won't be harmed by things of the human world such as bullets, bombs, lasers or nukes.
Material's Immunity
Volume 1 Opening X-02
The Regulation-class such as the DEC Tentacle that Renge and Higan had used or the Giant Hostile Eye were nothing more than manmade frameworks put together as stepping stones to reach the Divine class. Those true monsters could not be harmed with thermobaric warheads or laser bombardments and they could of course be used in battle, but that was merely a side-effect of being tools to reach the gods.
Volume 1 Stage 1 Part 4
She knew just how powerless she was at the moment.
If a summoner and vessel found her and attacked her with a Material, her flesh-and-blood body would be smashed to bits. Even if it was the weakest Material, no resident of this world could defeat a resident of the other world. That rule was absolute.
Volume 4 Ending X-02
...And even if it’s a nuclear missile, physical attacks are worthless against a Material!!...
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 3
With the protective circle and Material, it did not matter how many guns and missiles were aimed at them.
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 4
Olivia Highland had already given her body over to an abnormal being. She was a red translucent slime, one of the Original Series that was a necessary starting point no matter how the Material was built up. It had a Cost of 1 and belonged to the low Sound Range. It was the bottommost foundation and the weakest of the weak, but it still held great meaning.
First of all, Materials existed beyond human understanding and normal military might was useless against them.
This army may have been the strongest in the world, but that meant nothing to a resident of another world.
[...]
The endless ear-splitting popping noises were a lot like having all the firecrackers in Chinatown go off at once.
But those were no more than the back dancers that complemented the star dancing below the spotlight. The otherworldly Material and Kyousuke in his protective circle could not be harmed by normal bullets.
===Regulation-class===
As mentioned in one of the earlier quotes, Regulation-class Materials are Materials that were created by mankind to be stepping stones towards the Divine-class. As such, they are the weakest Materials, but every summoner has to start a fight by summoning them, and they can only move to summoning the Divine-class when they go over 100 Regulation-classes (or use a loophole in the summoning ceremony's rules, but that is very rare and really hard to pull off in actual combat).
In terms of strength, even the weakest Regulation-classes (and thus, the weakest Materials all around) like the Original Series are capable of easily defeating Pilot Soldiers. What are Pilot Soldiers? They are the powered suits of the series, and they can pull stuff like jumping 10 to 20 meters, destroy an armored vehicle through kicks and carve through concrete, so they are solid Wall levels physically. Thus, we can put the Original Series as "at least Wall level", which fits the description of their strikes.
Regulation Class 1
Volume 1 Stage 2 Part 2
With the roar reminiscent of sandbags being hit by a barrage of blows, the soldiers were easily swept away. Higan freely controlled the seven hundred liters of her body. Despite being liquid, each strike was as flexible as the human fist yet filled with an impact rivalling a car accident. She understood that she was the one doing this, but she started to lose her awareness of that fact.
The Original Series gets a better feat next volume, when it's used to destroy a bridge and make both summoners fall.
Regulation Class 2
Volume 2 Stage 2 Part 5
A moment later, the battle began.
However, it did not start with the yellow and green goo clashing at the midpoint between each other.
The Original Green that Benikomichi Fuuki had become mercilessly smashed the giant bridge.
Kyousuke and Librarian-chan immediately sank down.
Gravity was pulling them.
Their footing crumbled, but as a summoner, Shiroyama Kyousuke immediately saw what they were after.
The bridge's dimensions are not given, besides being described as giant, but in the same chapter we see it supports a lot of people crossing at the same time, and the two summoners were fifteen meters apart at the time.
Regulation Class 3
As a great number of people crossed the bridge, he heard a sound within the parade of so many lights. He heard it as clearly as a pebble thrown into a cave.
[...]
He did not have time to answer. He looked back and saw a short boy standing about fifteen meters away.
Later in the same volume a stronger Material (But still in the range of a weak Regulation-class) smashes through several bridges.
Regulation Class 4
Vol 2 Stage 4 Part 5
The Spear that Pursues Fresh Blood (bih – ei – dp – tq). Cost: 9. Sound Range: Low. A flying spear over five meters long moved in the span of a breath.
With a deafening noise, the Material stabbed through the bridge Hayato was trying to land on. The bridge broke in two and Hayato nearly lost his balance in midair after preparing his legs like springs. And Kyousuke’s Material did not stop there. It smashed through bridge after bridge.
So, weak Regulation-classes (up to cost 10) are Small Building level. After that we have middle cost Materials, which are much stronger, being able to slice trucks in half or crushing patrol boats in their grasp, and high-cost Regulation-classes are described as capable of tearing off an aircraft carrier's flight deck like a tin can. Building level and Large Building level sound good estimates for thing that should have no trouble tearing through Buildings and casually destroy tanks.
Besides raw power some Regulation-classes have special abilities. I won't bother to post quotes for the basic stuff such as Flight (bird-type and fish-type Materials have this in general) or basic elemental manipulation. Still, we have a Material that "eats space" just by moving its mouth, which would be Durability Negation. The ability is not described in detail, but "ate into the scenary" it's basically the same description that is given to White Queen's attacks, and the Material's name seems to point out to some sort of Void Manipulation.
Regulation Class 5
Volume 2 Stage 2 Part 5
Hayato’s was the Ugly and Pitiful Insect Swollen with Tragedy that Eats into the Void (lu – ei – map – ab – ou – od – nu – mel – o – yi).
Cost: 21. Sound Range: Middle.
It looked like a caterpillar larger than a car. Each time that incarnation of hunger wriggled and greedily moved its mouth, it ate into the scenery like it was biting into a leaf.
We also have a second Regulation-class Material with hax, a Material that can use Time Manipulation through sound to age its target to death.
Regulation Class 6
Volume 3 Stage 3 Part 7
Kyousuke had the Glittering Steel Mantis Reaper 05 (v i – o u – q u c – s n – a – r o l – e i – y w – f v – l i). Sound Range: Middle. Cost: 21.
Biondetta had the Bubbling Gears that Bring Aging and Reap Lifespans (n j – o u – h a – j v – a – l m – e i –t z – k r – n o – x i – g). Sound Range: Middle. Cost: 22.
One was a five meter mantis seemingly made of silver armor. That ultimate predator sliced through everything with its scythes that glittered like laser blades, bit into it all, brought it to its mouth, and chewed it apart.
The other was a collection of countless gears of varying size, making it one of the most inorganic Materials. That bizarre sadist sent the grinding sound of its interlocking gears slipping into the target’s ears, which caused them to rapidly age like some kind of curse.
===Divine-class===
Divine-class Materials are the gods and monsters of myth/legend. These beings appeared on the world on their own and were the original goal of the summoning ceremony prior to the discovery of the Unexplored-class. You need to summon 50 of them in a battle before you can escalate to the Unexplored-class. In general, the Divine-class is a lot stronger than the Regulation-class. Even a high-cost Regulation-class is basically useless when trying to face a low-cost Divine-class, who will casually oneshot the weaker Material.
Divine Class 1
Vol 3 Stage 4 Part 6
The undeniable result was eventually revealed to them.
Kyousuke had a Divine-class of the middle sound range with a cost of 9. It was the Celtic god of hunting and ruler of the underworld. The fierce male god had a pair of animal horns as a symbol of life.
As for Biondetta…
“I didn’t…reach it?”
She had the King of Serpents with an Indestructible Body which Repeatedly Sheds Its Skin in Front of All Calamity (b f – h a t l – e i – v o – o u – d v – e I – b c – I u – j k v – a – j o k – l v – n i c – a – y x – v j z).
Sound Range: Low. Cost: 38.
But…
“I’m still in the Regulation-class… I didn’t reach the Divine-class…!?”
Biondetta’s looked more powerful based on its physical appearance.
One was muscular, but only a two meter man. The other was a giant red snake that one had to look up at even when it was coiled up.
But that did not matter.
It would all be over with the swing of an arm.
There was an overwhelming power difference between the Regulation-class and the Divine-class.
Given the power difference, it seems reasonable to put them as "at least City Block level". This would fit two Divine-classes ruining a harbor pretty badly in volume 1 with what was not even an actual attack, just using their weight by falling forward.
Divine Class 2
Vol 1 Opening X-02
The entire asphalt ground shook.
While hiding behind a giant warehouse, the sisters began to sweat when they realized what had caused the shaking. They could see the gantry cranes used to lower containers from cargo ships, but several objects twice their size were slowly moving through the harbor. Yellow and green light indicated the location of the monsters’ eyes in the darkness and the great height of those eyes was enough to fill the girls with fear.
And they were not optimistic enough to think these had been summoned by their allies.
“Renge, those are…Fafnir and um, uh, Yamata no Orochi…aren’t they?”
“Dammit. They’re summoning Divine-class Materials!?”
Monsters of such high purity and power did not simply appear on their own. Long ago, people had believed the gods could appear anywhere and at any time, but once it was all calculated out, the places and conditions for them to descend were so few it had left the religious leaders speechless. There was only one possibility here.
This was the work of summoners. Those monsters had undoubtedly been artificially called in with a summoning ceremony.
But these giant dragons did not swing their arms, try to bite, or spew flames or poison from their mouths.
They simply extended their bodies and collapsed forward.
It was a very simple attack, but that was exactly what made it so difficult to avoid. It was the same principle as a giant’s hand swatting at a fly. However, the result of this simple action was massive.
At the center of the blast, warehouses, piles of containers, and cranes flew up into the air. A wave several meters tall traveled through the thick asphalt ground like it was a liquid. But even if one saw that wall approaching, there was nothing they could do about it.
There's a statement that could be used to support the City-level Divine-classes we see in the crossover Kamachi made of all series, where the Divine-class Yamata no Orochi damages the Baby Magnum from Heavy Object. Still, I'd prefer something more solid in the canon novels before trying to upgrade them, especially since "destroy" is likely meant in the sense of "cause destruction to the city".
Divine Class 3
Vol 6 Stage 2 Part 2
And a summoner could only fight a Summoning Ceremony battle with another human. He could destroy a tank or fighter that happened to be inside the same Artificial Sacred Ground and a dragon’s breath or a stone thrown by a giant could leave the Artificial Sacred Ground and destroy the city, but he could not open an Artificial Sacred Ground by targeting a completely unmanned weapon.
Unfortunately, no Divine-class so far has shown good hax. Most of the Materials we see in the series are Regulation-classes.
===Unexplored-class===
Regulation-classes are man-made monsters. Divine-classes are the gods and monsters of legend. What is the Unexplored-class then? Well, humans aren't really sure who they are or where they come from since they are a pretty recent discovery. They only know the rough tiering of: White Queen>>>>>>>>>>>>>>The Three (the three Unexplored-classes at the top of each sound type)>Other Unexplored-classes; and the basic fact of "White Queen is the peak of the Unexplored-class and can probably beat all of the others at the same time".
However, at the Epilogue of Vol 4 one of them reveals the truth to Kyousuke. As it turns out, the Unexplored-classes are the antropomorphic representatios of the laws and elements of the world. They are supposed to manage the world's system and keep the other world functioning.
Unexplored Class 1
Volume 4 Ending X-02
“The Regulation-class was created by you humans as a starting point to reach the gods. The Divine-class are individual beings that appeared on their own. Then what about us? The Unexplored-class is the laws of the other world. We’re based on colors which represent fire, water, wind, earth, time, life and death, good and bad deeds, and plenty of other things. Simply put, it’s what you call ‘elements’ and the world takes shape because we each support one of them.”
“That’s getting pretty abstract. The Unexplored-classes aren’t humanoid gods?”
“Humans worship the gods because they want the gods to save their world. But the gods can’t overcome the laws of their world. Just like Cronus couldn’t escape Zeus in the beginning and just like Odin must tremble in fear of Fenrir in the end.”
She seemed to be reciting something.
“You could say the Unexplored-class is an anthropomorphized version of the rules that govern the category of the Divine-class. Our role is to manage heaven and we keep the gears of the other world running…or we were supposed to.”
There's actually a second reason they were created: the White Queen. Having someone so powerful running around doing whatever she wants and threatening the world is not ok with the laws of the world. This is why all Unexplored-classes have a female appearance and an assigned color: they were born to oppose the White Queen (the sum of all colors is white and all that) and they were hoping that their existences would take power away from the White Queen and allow them to seal her.
Unexplored Class 2
“You were supposed to?”
“Yes, that’s right. That’s right! It’s kind of funny really, but one day, someone noticed it. If we were only meant to manage the other world and keep it running, was this grand system really necessary? Couldn’t it have been simplified further? We each handled one of the other world’s laws and all of us together supported everything, but maybe there was some other meaning to that.”
Some other…meaning?”
Kyousuke thought for a bit.
“You’re kidding, right!? You mean that really is the answer!?”
“Yes, all of the Unexplored-class was given female human forms and divided up by color. And if you think about bringing all colors together, what’s the first color that comes to mind?”
“You were born to create the White…no, to oppose her!?”
“Precisely. As the laws of the world, we couldn’t exactly ignore something so dangerous. And even if the White Queen was the strongest, her power would eventually be reduced to nothing if the laws supporting her power and existence were removed, one color at a time. She would lose her light. In other words, she could be sealed.”
So the Unexplored-class are Abstracts.
The first Unexplored-class we see in the novels is The Lady of ‘Purple Lightning’ that Separates Good from Evil (iu – ao – eu – ei – kub – miq – a – ci – pl), taking the form of a sickly looking gil in a dancer's outfit confined to a wheelchair. Her main attack is a purple laser-like beam of light that sliced a large bridge from a long distance. The beam gathers things inside it, compresses them and tears their bonds. Sounds like Durability Negation?
Lady of Purple Lightning 1
Volume 1 Opening X-02
A moment later, the giant bridge that was also used as a landmark broke completely in half.
For an instant, the two girls did not understand what had happened.
Their vision shook like crazy, but they still spotted a cruiser in the dark ocean directly below. A woman in a pink nurse uniform stood on its deck and she rested a long rod – a Blood-Sign – on her shoulder.
(A summoner!? She interfered!?)
At the same time, what had destroyed the bridge came into view. A small short-haired girl could be seen on the cruiser’s deck next to the summoner. She wore a dancer’s outfit whose purple cloth just barely covered the important parts of her body. Her exposed skin felt more sickly than seductive, but that may have been because she was sitting in a worn-out and rusty wheelchair. Her head was tilted and nothing resembling a will could be seen in the green eyes half-covered by her bangs. She then made a slight movement of her terribly skinny index finger.
That was all she did, but it was enough to slice apart the several hundred ton bridge.
A massive amount of seawater burst up like a giant wall and a space of several hundred meters was forcibly sliced through. The laser beam gathered any and all objects inside itself, compressed them like a black hole, and tore apart their bonds.
This feat and statement would put her and other Unexplored-classes as "At least City level". Very poor considering their hype, but it's just a weakened portion of their power.
Lady of Purple Lightning 2
Volume 4 Opening X-02
If they had seen it from the sky, they might have understood. A dome-shaped explosion had covered a diameter of precisely 2000 meters. And it was unnatural for an explosion on that scale to not trigger any secondary atmospheric changes such as a mushroom cloud. Most importantly, the light had not been a blinding pure white; it had been the purple of glow-in-the-dark paint.
(That must have been the Unexplored-class Lady of Purple Lightning. They used a traditional magic circle, but they intentionally omitted the central vessel. The exposed power directly fills the outside world as a light so bright you can’t even see the Unexplored-class in question. If they were trying to weaponize it by creating a territory of death, then I guess they succeeded. Or maybe I should say they’ve made the gods obsolete.)
“How about that!? The laser range-finding fired from a stealth bomber instantly calculated out the contours of the terrain, projection mapping was used to optically project the largescale magic circle on the three-dimensional surface without the slightest flaw, and the Unexplored-class was positioned in the center of that region. There are countless legends that represent divine power as light that annihilates any who see it who are inexperienced or have broken a taboo. We have removed the cover known as a vessel and successfully drawn out that pure, piercing power. This is the strategy of a new age. We in Government will end everything before any summoner can even throw an Incense Grenade!! After all, the explosion of power is not just an instantaneous thing! It will continue indefinitely until an exorcism circle is added on! We set it at 2000 meters here in the interest of safety, but if we liked, we could increase the scale tenfold or project it from a satellite rather than a bomber!!”
Another Unexplored-class is the “Ashen” Shrine Maiden who Invites Merciful and Dignified Death (e m – a o – l e v – c k – r o l – e i – v b – y u – a – p s). This one has clear hax unlike the Purple Lady. Narration spells out what she embodies.
Ashen Shrine Maiden
Vol 5 Stage 1 Part 4
She was a contradictory being that possessed soft, feminine curves while being as hard as the sculptures found in Greek ruins. She looked like a long-haired beautiful women in a shrine maiden outfit, but she had been thoroughly petrified until she reached an ashen hue void of all color and warmth. It could be her claws, her fangs, the light of her eyes, her hair, her scream, or her scent. From every possible range, she could send out deadly poisons and curses that would provide no pain and would not harm the body, but that would simply steal the soul from its container of flesh. She was the ultimate ruler of life who surpassed any grim reaper. She was an embodiment of heartwarming blasphemies such as euthanasia and the eternal preservation of a corpse.
Besides them we've the Three, though they were non-combat situations and thus we only get a vague idea about them. First is The ‘Red-Eyed’ Lady who Sees Through all Sin and Calamity (fa – ao – ab – ei – fj – cib – b – du – a – eif), or Red Lady for short. She's at the peak of Low sound. Possibly the Unexplored-class representing destiny/fate.
Red-Eyed Lady 1
Volume 3 Ending X-02
The Red Lady’s actual body looked like a pale girl of about eighteen. She wore red lacquered geta on her feet, so she may not have been as tall as she looked. She had endlessly long red hair and a maple pattern kimono that had no obi and was left fully open in the front. Inside that, she wore something like a one-piece swimsuit colored the same shade of red.
Two horns protruded sharply from her forehead.
Her red eyes provided the frightening impression that one glance would send all calamity your way…no, define all calamity around you. But those eyes were currently hidden behind smooth eyelids.
And in addition to her actual body, a set of frighteningly massive interlocking gears could be seen behind her. They glistened as if from lacquer and they were made of wood. They looked like giant tropical flowers and like a loom that weaved the threads of destiny and lifespan for all things. And red threads that looked like laser beams extended in every direction from the giant gears. A closer look showed that those red threads were actually her endlessly long hair. That seemed to show that she ruled over destiny itself.
Simply put, she was the “Red-Eyed” Lady who Sees Through all Sin and Calamity.
She was not on the White Queen’s level, but she was one of the Unexplored-class as well as one of the Three who did not hesitate to lend their power to humans.
[...]
The Lady was not mistaken.
It was said she could see through and even define all calamity, and her words were cruelly accurate.
[...]
Everything grew dark. As his consciousness vaguely floated about, he thought he saw the Lady’s tightly closed eyes silently open ever-so-slightly to form blade-like slits.
It was feared that the scarlet light of those eyes could see through and define all calamity.
Red-Eyed Lady 2
Volume 6 Stage 4 Part 4
Unexplored-class. Sound Range: Low. Cost: 20.
The “Red-Eyed” Lady who Sees Through all Sin and Calamity (fa – ao – ab – ei – fj – cib – b – du – a – eif).
She was one of the Three who stood near the peak of the Unexplored-class. Her power was devastating even among the monsters of the Unexplored-class. She was the guardian of Government and she wore a partially removed kimono and a one piece swimsuit. She had long hair and she had two horns on her forehead. Her hair was caught in countless giant gears behind her that connected the hair to all destiny like a loom. The words that left her mouth were already definite truth and, if she were to open her coolly closed eyes, it was said she would fix the future in place.
Besides all that calamity talk, she also has the ability to see the future. She claims to not be able to see a future with the White Queen being defeated.
Red-Eyed Lady 3
Volume 4 Ending X-02
“It is true that you cannot defeat the White Queen…no, defeat the entirety of the Unexplored-class where she stands at the center. Not because you are inexperienced, but because it is simply impossible even if all of mankind works together. Even my eyes cannot see a vision of anyone defeating that Queen…that true monster who reached for all the laws of that world and twisted them as she saw fit. That is what this is.”
Red-Eyed Lady 4
Unexplored-class. Cost: 20. Sound Range: Low.
The “Red-Eyed” Lady who Sees Through All Sin and Calamity (f a – a o – a b – e i – f j – c i b – b – d u – a – e i f).
She looked a lot like a female Oni of Eastern folklore. Her long, beautiful hair and the two horns protruding from her forehead gave her an oriental charm. She wore a red kimono and innerwear resembling a one-piece swimsuit. Countless gears of varying sizes fit together behind her and they guided her hair to different parts of the world like a loom. The middle-aged man placed his sexual desire at top priority when making any decision, but the divinity inside her left even him hesitant to make her a target of lust. Not only could she prophesy all things to always make an accurate attack, but if she merely opened her closed eyes, it was said she would forcibly determine the target’s fate. Even the gods of legend would fail to see their fate and be swallowed up before they could dodge. Faced with one of the Unexplored-class Materials known as the Three, even gods of death and war could not make use of their powers.
Besides her we've also met The Wicked "Green" Woman who Fills the World with Empty Treasure (lu - o - np - e - qo - ei - r - k - a - rum - pl), the member of the Three at the peak of Middle sound.
Wicked Green Woman
Volume 4 Ending X-02
This was one of the Unexplored-class’s Three. It was the guardian of Illegal.
Sound Range: Middle. Cost: 18.
The Wicked “Green” Woman who Fills the World with Empty Treasure (l u – o – n p – e – q o – e i – r – k – a – r u m – p l).
She looked like a lovely young girl with her short hair dyed green, but the tongue sticking out of her mouth was endlessly long. She also had an evil, belligerent, and sadistic light in her serpentine vertical pupils.
[...]
Her long snake body was pierced in places by scepters torn from the giant’s surface. And each time one stabbed into her, something like a meter-long bubble appeared out of the empty air around her. A great mountain of them was currently accumulating. And there were visions inside the bubbles like they were snow globes.
One showed a bomb no one had ever seen.
One showed the concept of a bewitching crime much like a phone scam.
One showed an extremely simple chemical formula, a single drop of which would cause the purest of holy women’s chastity to crumble away in a single night.
When the extremely thin bubbles burst, those ideas were released.
The world learned of a new form of malice and absorbed it.
It was a dreadful fertility and an abundant crop of evil. Perhaps those were mistaken directions of growth for mankind, the wrong choice among the endless options, and a crystal that would draw out countless conflicts and great ruin.
This was different again from the Red Lady who determined the one and only path.
She was a genius at making people choose the wrong path and she stood above the Red in the Three’s three-way stalemate.
Her color was Green.
She threw the world into chaos and she ruled outside the established order as the symbol of Illegal.
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 9
The two forms of ruin approached from either side like a giant pair of scissors cutting through the world.
"Deflect."
But after a series of dull sounds, the Wicked Green Woman pierced her own snake body with several swords and scepters. The wounds bubbled up and then giant soap bubbles separated off from them.
They were like snowdomes with immoral scenes contained inside.
When they contacted the approaching disasters like balloon bombs, they burst and scattered “never-before-seen forms of immorality”. It could be a strange bomb, a sweet chemical formula, or a gang that no one could capture. When the concepts of ruin and immorality collided, the deadly trajectories were slightly diverted and the end of the world swept past above Kyousuke and the others’ heads. 
From the looks of it, she seems like the Unexplored-class of malice or bad deeds/ideas.
Finally we have the last member of the Three, and definitely the weirdest design so far: The Spirit of Fluttering ‘Yellow’ Gills that Rules the Heavens, who might be the Unexplored-class of dreams.
Yellow Gills 1
Vol 5 Ending X-02
The Spirit of Fluttering ‘Yellow’ Gills that Rules the Heavens (s – a – so – voz – tix – ei – yw – za).
She herself looked like a human girl in an oriental Taoist outfit. If not for the fact that her hair was pure yellow instead of blonde. And the thing she rested on like a crescent moon bed was strange indeed. A bed shaped like half a sake cup supported giant bird wings, beast legs, a fish body that extended endlessly like a scorpion’s tail, and massive gills. After evolving in all directions to respond to any situation on land, sea, or air, that overgrown mass of flesh looked almost comical. 
“My reconstructed experiences included information from an angle you would not have seen yourself. Did you find anything new in the falsehoods that overwrite reality which you call the world of dreams?”
All of the vicarious experiences he had just had were a product of the Yellow Gills’ power. 
She was an Unexplored-class that slipped into her enemy’s dreams and unilaterally tormented them to death. In a different way from the Red Lady or the Wicked Green Woman, she was a force to be reckoned with in a different dimension that entirely ignored any specs or battle preparations made in reality.
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 9
The direct line of fire did not matter.
Each of the projectiles fired from the many weapons that composed the Colorless Little Girl’s long skirt bent away at impossible angles. Or was it the people watching it who failed to perceive it properly? She was a psychological warfare specialist who fought by dragging her opponent into a dream.
Something grew from the normal ground.
It was the Colorless Little Girl herself. But not just one of her. There were two, five, ten…no, even more. The Yellow Gills gave herself more pawns as carelessly as weeds that grew up on their own.
"…"
The White Queen’s killer was surrounded by her own face.
But she did not let it bother her.
Her entire long skirt spread out like an umbrella and the weapons began firing in all directions. With deafening noises and blinding flashes, giant holes blossomed in the scenery that was modeled after reality. And with no concern for the many Colorless Little Girls between her and the border of the world. Once that holey world reached its limit, it shattered like glass.
The Yellow Gills looked annoyed that her opponent had used physical destruction in a mental world.
"Tch. You don’t have to wake me up with all that noise. So showing you some doppelgangers doesn’t trigger a malfunction in your raison d’etre? Mass-producing White Queens or Shiroyama Kyousukes might have been a better decoy."
“What happened to Olivia?”
"She wasn’t ready to sync with me, so she’s too busy fighting the sleepiness to talk. Silly, isn’t it? Reality is no more than a material used to build dreams."
The Yellow Gills smiled thinly, but a dark-red and sticky liquid flowed from the corner of her mouth.
Without creating confusion in that mental world, she could not dodge the Colorless Little Girl’s attacks. 
A notable thing about her is that she succesfully pretended to be a human summoner for an undetermined amount of time, and even became the leader of Freedom, one of the three main summoner powers. Kyousuke states that, in a certain way, this is even more twisted than what the White Queen does.
Yellow Gills 2
“Don’t pretend you weren’t involved,” spat out Kyousuke. “Freedom’s former leader was known as Perfect Equilibrium. She cast aside reality to live in dreams. …Doesn’t that sound familiar? You were there too, Yellow Gills!!”
A smile split across the Yellow Gills’ face.
“But I changed my mind when the Queen’s rampage summoned an endless supply of Materials from the ocean. I couldn’t let something similar happen to me. Or rather, it’d be really annoying to have my sleep interrupted. That’s why I used the confusion of the Secret War to fake my death and retreated to the ‘other world’.”
She made it sound simple, but that would have required numerous impossible tasks to pull off.
First, she would have to allow a Material to exist in this world indefinitely. Then she would have to pretend to be human, bind a contract with a vessel, swing a Blood-Sign around, participate in the Summoning Ceremony, and otherwise act like a summoner. How could she explain the paradoxical situation of a Material summoning a Material?
It was true that the Yellow Gills could not reach the White Queen’s level, but couldn’t an argument be made that she was even more twisted in a certain way?
====Colorless Little Girl====
The Colorless Little Girl is an Unexplored-class created by Kyousuke Shiroyama to kill the White Queen. She has casual Planet level attacks much like her and she has a plethora of abilities designed to beat the White Queen.
Colorless Little Girl Power
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5
The small girl moved her right hand while maintaining a position from which she could protect Kyousuke. Bookmarks as sharp as blades and as thin as bug wings spread out in her hand like a fan. Without even looking back, she tossed them like throwing knives. They flew accurately toward the twelve giant books floating behind her like a halo and the leather-bound books opened like great maws. They devoured the bookmarks. And something was expelled from between the thick pages as if the result of some kind of equivalent exchange.
The Queen’s swords were melted with bubbling acid.
The Queen’s spears were crushed between giant gears.
The Queen’s axes were swarmed by flying insects.
The Queen’s staffs were knocked down by aerial bombs.
They all fit perfectly like plugs fitting into the corresponding sockets, so the White Queen’s violent rush of attacks was consumed and eliminated in midair.
In that instant, the Queen understood.
Those books were apocalypse encyclopedias. Each page contained enough power to bring ruin to the world, so the Little Girl could freely choose among and release any demise – yes, including purely fictional ones that the world had yet to experience.
This was different again from the Wicked Green Women of the Unexplored-class Three.
The Wicked Green Woman’s “children” would twist and rot the existing world through the eruption of new forms of malice, such as never-before-seen drugs or special scams, but each and every one of this small girl’s attacks could cleanly blow away the entire world.
She could wipe clean the very world in which the Queen was strongest.
Absorbing Enemy Attack + Space-time Destruction
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5
She once more focused on the divinity infinitely overflowing from her beautiful body, which increased its output. It was like a massive beam weapon that fired in every direction like a planetarium surrounding that pure white. The incredible heat could punch through gods and devils by the dozens. The weapons were merely for decoration. The Queen herself was the greatest and strongest trump card. This attack would teach the unbelievers that simple fact.
But the Colorless Little Girl simply took a single step to the side.
The pure white explosion of light shot through and tore away space itself where her target had been a moment earlier.
Had the Little Girl been afraid to block it?
Had she only just barely managed dodge it in time?
No.
“?”
Something had seemed slightly off even though the White Queen had never seen her before, but that may have come from the Queen’s sixth sense or inspiration that far surpassed enlightenment or divine visions.
She swung her head to the side before she could verbalize it in her mind.
Yes.
Even the White Queen had taken evasive action on instinct.
A moment later, an even more brutal white light shot out from the Colorless Little Girl as if to return the favor.
The cat-like hair on the back of her head shook and the girl had drawn a transparent sword from among the many weapons surrounding her hips like a long skirt. Even as she just barely dodged, she had intentionally exposed that blade to the Queen’s attack and stored up the great power like charging it with static electricity.
Then the Colorless Little Girl added her own power on top of that, swung the infinitely-growing blade of light as if making a grand slam, and returned the even more brutal attack.
The White Queen’s cheek tingled.
Something remained where her head had been a moment before: a white afterimage. Only she should have been able to destroy the structure of both worlds at once like that, but the Colorless Little Girl had reached that point.
Guns
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5
With far too light a sound, a dark red hole opened in the White Queen’s palm. It was red. The twintail girl’s temple twitched eerily, but more due to the introduction of a color other than white than due to the pain.
The gunshots were only heard after the fact.
A few of the heavy firearms from the weapon skirt had pointed forward and produced a storm of blinding light and deafening noise.
There was no mysticism or allure here. It was simply raw firepower. The violent act seemed to transform the very concept of disillusionment and disappointment and fire it as a weapon. Of course, they could not possibly be using mere hunks of lead. Each time one of them broke through the White Queen’s soft skin and entered her flesh, it would change its form and volume inside her to create giant swords, spears, axes, and staffs.
Again and again, she was skewered from within and ripped apart.
At this point, there was nothing but red. She had been shredded until not a hint of her pure white remained.
She can manipulate time to an extent like the White Queen does.
Time Manipulation
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5
“Now, even if you analyze the string of letters and try to prevent me from constructing the circle, keep in mind that that is but one of my forms. Will the ten-minute Artificial Sacred Ground really be long enough to eliminate all 512 forms?”
“Interfering with theory of relativity, semi-infinitely extending timeline. Ten minutes has been redefined to an unmeasurable unit.”
“Tch!!”
The White Queen clicked her tongue, but not because the basic conditions had been so easily overturned before her eyes. The White Queen herself could extend time as easily as saying hi. Besides, extending the effective time would not change anything. The Queen simply had to use her power to slaughter this insolent challenger.
She can access the Facts of the world to get info on her opponent.
Ability to Access and Read Facts
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5 + cont
The silver twintail girl was slightly irritated because-
[...](Skipping the list of Facts about the White Queen)
“When did you start feeling around in my guts, brother!?”
The size of the values did not matter now.
Once a fear had been analyzed and quantified, you had revealed the starting point toward conquering it.
If you had numbers, you could compare them.
You could send out someone with even greater numbers to knock them down a notch.
Normally, learning just a fragment of the White Queen’s true power would have looked like such a great precipice it would break your mind and shatter your soul, but the Colorless Little Girl was different. She confirmed each handhold, scaled the cliff wall, and greedily pursued the data needed to conquer the Queen.
And more importantly…
(Did she directly view the Facts, the settings of the Third Age that I swallowed whole when I defeated all of the Unexplored-class laws…?)
She can create decoys of herself and put others to sleep.
Decoy Creation and Sleep Manipulation
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5 (cont)
“Strongest Theory: The circle that binds the hit with the return. When using a projectile weapon with great destructive power, safety is ensured by always returning the divine weapon to its owner after use so that it may not be stolen. Countermeasure: A single throw can only defeat the enemy being targeted, so evasion is possible by scattering decoys.”
[...]
“Strongest Theory: The destructive effects of flames and explosions. The deification of fire’s wrath. Especially the destructive act of an extra-large fireball destroying entire cities or civilizations. Countermeasure: End the combat state by avoiding direct combat and putting her to sleep, etc.”
She can transform enemies into food and eat it to recover from injuries and recover mana/stamina.
Transmutation of Enemies into Receovery Food
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5 (cont)
If the full-power Queen was no match for this opponent while systematically managing her energy, could these splashes of excess energy leave any claw marks in her?
The Colorless Little Girl only needed to take a single step back to measure the distance between them.
“Command: Cooking”
A kitchen knife and frying pan had appeared in her hands at some point and they produced a storm of flashing light as they instantly transformed the threat into colorful food. The Colorless Little Girl bit off piece after piece and swallowed them like some kind of joke, but the effects were instantaneous.
“Damage recovery and MANA resupply complete. They were delic-…”
She can accurately set the damage of her attacks.
Damage Setting
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5 (cont)
“Damage Restriction: Non-Lethal Mode. Remaining HP set to 3.”
A giant explosion seemed to erupt outwards from the Colorless Little Girl in the center. In actuality, the countless weapons forming her skirt had all fired, the twelve giant books behind her had produced various forms of demise, and the Colorless Little Girl herself had used her small hands to grab them, tear them apart, and throw them. Altogether, a storm swept out horizontally, tore the flesh and blood of the infected Queens to pieces, and accurately reduced them to only the Silhouette that contained the vessel’s mind. Those hunks of flesh had lost the majesty of the Queen and they simply pulsated on the ground before reverting to their original human forms. And yet all of the infected Queens were supposed to have specs identical to the main Queen.
This would not have been possible just by mastering physical destruction.
It was a more fundamental matter.
(Is she entirely blocking off the power of my invisible role as it leaves me through invisible wires?)
This was truly the Queen’s twilight.
This absolute blade of rejection not only affected the White Queen herself but all of the influence she had on the world.
She can absorb and destroy the enemy power so that their alternate forms and skills are removed from them.
Destruction of Alternate Forms and Skills
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5(cont)
“Illegal program detected. Deleting it along with the malicious plugin.”
“Don’t use such boring words to describe me!!”
It must have been acting on its own now because one of the broken swords caught the reflected heat of the flames and stabbed down into the White Queen’s shadow that stretched across the ground.
After the Colorless Little Girl grabbed it once more and pulled it out with a sticky sound, it had grown a blade by absorbing the very color of the shadow.
That too was a portion of the Queen’s power.
Once she realized that, the Colorless Little Girl used her small hand to casually grab, crush, and toss aside the mysterious blade portion. Weapon destruction. After robbing the White Queen of her many mysterious powers, she would destroy it so it could not be recovered.
The Queen lost her other forms.
Her special skills were forcibly stripped from her.
Can create a barrier similar to the one used by summoners, which can block the White Queen's attacks.
Barrier
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5(cont)
The Queen spread the fingers of her right hand and directly struck space itself.
It did not matter that she was out of range. The Queen’s attack contained the power to destroy, crush, and overwrite both worlds with nothing but white.
(All I have to do is smash this coordinate of this fragile world!!)
As cracks of light spread through space itself, the White Queen brought her hands together in front of her chest. Immediately, the entire scene was smashed inward and a great mass of pure white pressed in toward Shiroyama Kyousuke and the Colorless Little Girl. Those massive claw marks were like two giant walls. And they showed no concern for the fate of all that lay between them. That strongest compression dyed everything in its own colors, destroyed it, and brought absolute white to the world.
But.
(?)
The Queen found she could not bring her hands all the way together. A strange repulsion pushed back like there was a clump of invisible rubber between them.
And the Colorless Little Girl had her arms spread horizontally to stop the white compression. Nothing on the ground beyond that point was crushed. An incomprehensible barrier much like the protective circle had saved them. There was no point in asking where it had come from.
The only person not protected here was the White Queen.
So she could predict what the hunter would do next.
The Colorless Little Girl forcefully extended her arms to the left and right as if prying open an elevator door. The compression stopped, then it actually spread outwards, and finally the scenery that had supposedly been crushed into whiteness regained its original colors. The White Queen’s arms followed suit, so an odd sound of something shattering came from her shoulders.
Finally, she was able to absorb all the influence of the White Queen and redirect it into her so that she would be able to kill her, affecting both the human world and Material world at the same time.
Spiritual Gravitational Collapse
Volume 7 Stage 4 Part 5(cont)
As the White Queen seethed and boiled, she never managed to launch her next attack.
Just before she could, a quiet sound struck her sense of hearing just once.
She heard it via bone conduction, so it had not come through her ears. The Colorless Little Girl’s soft index finger had gently pressed against the center of the White Queen’s forehead.
When had she done this? And how?
The Queen had no time to wonder that.
The “change” had already begun.
“It…can’t be… Brother, is this…?”
“Yes. From the outset, the Colorless Little Girl was created for a single purpose. So all her other functions are superfluous. They were only meant to pave the way for her to directly touch you.”
“Spiritual gravitational collapse… My appearance caused a spiritual Big Bang, so you prepared this ridiculous method just to gather that infinitely-expanding influence back into a single point!?”
“Killing you in this universe is impossible. So first, I have to absorb and eliminate all of the influence you have caused. All of the abnormalities you have spread around must be regathered in you, the center point. And once we are back in a proper and unchanged world, you can be eliminated with a normal sword strike.”
This was a lot like creating a super-massive black hole that would swallow up the entire infinitely-expanding universe and gather every last particle in a single place.
But that was how far you had to go if you were to defeat the White Queen.
He would create the Fourth Age.
And that meant rejecting everything of the Third Age.
“Search Range: the entirety of this world and the other world. Search Target: White Queen. Comparison to bodily tissue complete.”
(I see…)
After being cornered to this extent, the final expression on the silver twintail girl’s face was, unsurprisingly, a faint smile.
“Yes, yes. If you were able to corner me so accurately and if you were able to seal off and strike down every last one of my cards without missing a single one…”
“Final check complete. Nii-sama, I will now begin.”
“…It just shows how deeply you understand me. Right, brother?”
“…”
“You don’t need to say anything at this point. If that is what this means, then I suppose it’s not that ba-…”
“Commencing execution. Once the White Queen has been absorbed from the entire world and gathered in this single point, I will cut her down and throw her out.”
This statement seems to put other Unexplored-classes at also Planet level since they can defeat her. Which I guess makes sense, since the White Queen said several dozen of them might stand a chance against her regular Blood-Sign summoned form, and she can easily destroy a planet or two.
Unexplored-class scaling to Colorless Little Girl
Volume 7 Ending X-02
“That won’t happen! She is…The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee) is an Unexplored-class thoroughly tuned to kill only you. She’s too specialized to withstand normal combat. She would lose like normal if she fought any other Unexplored-class!!”
Of course she worked that way.
Creating a Material and embedding it in the world meant that anyone could summon it if they met the conditions. Even if the conditions for the vessel were quite delicate, this would all be meaningless if she could be used for something other than killing the White Queen.
Volume 1 Stage 4 Part 5-6
“Everything Guard of Honor had to offer just wasn’t nearly enough to reach your intellect, brother. They failed to control me with their Sewn Realm summoning and there are countless weaknesses all throughout their methodology, but that has not affected my specs all that much. I seem to be restricted to about the same level of power as with the Blood-Sign method you usually use.”
[...]
“I am in an imperfect state at the moment, so you might have a chance if you make a saturation attack using several dozen Unexplored-classes. Yes, just like when your theory succeeded but your equipment lacked the strength to hold onto my reins and you could not send me back to the other world. If only you had about 10% of the fighting force sent to that largely unknown war where so many summoners and vessels died to clean your mess.”
After defeating the White Queen the Colorless Little Girl displays the following powers. It is unknown if she had them prior to said battle, considering one of her traits is stated to be a change brought by her victory over the White Queen.
Volume 8
Volume 8 Stage 2 Part 6 (Can destroy Artificial Sacred Grounds, thus forcibly interrupting a summoning ceremony)
There was a creaking sound.
With his ruler-like sunglasses hiding his eyes, Boy A, aka War Criminal, sensed the abnormality with his killer’s instincts.
“Owwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!???”
Then it shattered.
With the high-pitched sound of a glass container dropped on the floor, the Artificial Sacred Ground was destroyed with no regard for the 10-minute limit.
Kyousuke’s soul was hit by an impact that felt like a hammer to the center of his chest.
“Uh…bh…?”
He doubled over.
The protective circle, the Material, and every other mystical element had been erased. Even War Criminal had lost his grip on all three of his devil sticks. It was not just Kyousuke. Everyone fighting in the Artificial Sacred Ground shared this pain.
He heard the screams of the girls who had regained their human form.
Volume 8 Stage 2 Part 6 (She has become sacred, and thus, cannot be unwillingly touched by ordinary things/phenomena)
They were more than 200 meters below the ocean’s surface.
The Colorless Little Girl had entered from outside.
And yet there was not a drop of seawater on her clothes or her hair. She had deflected and reflected it all. No ordinary physical phenomena were allowed to touch her. She herself seemed to have become a sort of sacred ground.
[...]
Instead of breaking through the watertight door, she had used the hole in the hull to reenter the ocean and then created a new hole. The Colorless Little Girl had killed the White Queen, so the water pressure and lack of oxygen may have been meaningless to her.
Volume 8 Stage 3 Part 1 (Can fly, as she followed Kyousuke into space)
“Get ready, Olivia,” said Kyousuke with a bitter look.
“Y-you can’t be serious… This is outer space, Onii-chan. You’re saying she’s pursuing us beyond even the ends of the earth!?”
Jewel-like drops of water scattered from the twin blonde braids as Olivia widened her eyes and trembled. Kyousuke, on the other hand, used the approaching fear to focus his observation skills.
“She killed the White Queen, so a puny little planet is nothing to her.”
[...]
With a frightening boom, the Toy Dream OP-01 space station’s supporting pillar was torn away like a wild dog chomping on an empty can. The “rooms” containing System Atlantis were thrown out into empty space before they could overheat and endless stars appeared before Kyousuke’s eyes. Yes, he saw outer space itself. That view spelled death for any flesh-and-blood human and it was approaching fast.
It was just like in the submarine.
The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee).
She had returned.
She was exposed to the vacuum of space while wearing what amounted to a swimsuit or leotard.
Volume 8 Stage 3 Part 1 (Heat Manipulation)
Kyousuke, Olivia, and the dazed book girl were all pushed away from the hole. Kyousuke then twisted his body in zero-g to adjust his grip on the Blood-Sign and strike a point on the wall with the tip. He broke through a reinforced glass cover and pressed a red button. Immediately, a shutter dropped like a guillotine between them and the Colorless Little Girl.
It proved meaningless.
"Watch out, Nii-sama."
A childish hand broke right through the center of the thick shutter.
With the sound of a flame consuming oxygen, the entire shutter glowed orange around that hand. The melted metal split into multiple pieces in zero-g and they all became jewel-like spheres. Then they were sucked outside of Toy Dream OP-01 along with the artificial air.
Volume 8 Stage 3 Part 1 (Spatial Compression 1)
Kyousuke immediately pulled his hand back.
Just by clenching her small fist, it looked like she had compressed space, bent light, and stretched out the scenery like melted cheese as it was instantaneously gathered into her fist.
(Is that like a miniature black hole!?)
His nervous sweat formed beads that floated through the empty air.
If he had been a moment slower, his body would have been utterly destroyed.
Volume 8 Stage 3 Part 2 (Spatial Split)
War Criminal fought like normal by launching the initial hit on the cubic Rose, but Kyousuke launched a White Thorn toward a completely unrelated part of the floor. The Thorn ricocheted sharply, approached the Colorless Little Girl from behind, passed below her legs, and flew in front of her face.
<?>
Her child eyes moved…no, were guided.
It was like a cat reacting to a toy. Her slender hand reached out into the empty air to grab at something. And…
“Ha ha! That’s a dirty trick for a first move!!”
Space itself split apart.
Whether it was a Regulation-class or an Unexplored-class, a solid hit from the Colorless Little Girl would one-shot any Material. The fallen angel girl had transformed into a red slime Material, but she escaped the ultimate joker’s small hand by jumping backwards…or rather, by directing the Material’s aim towards an unrelated oxygen tank behind her.
Volume 8 Stage 3 Part 3 (Spatial Compression 2)
“Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee).”
"Nii-sama. What? Nii-sama."
Did that mean anything, or was it only a reflexive action?
In the face of such great danger, Kyousuke held the top of his Blood-Sign out toward the juvenile girl’s nose. And he moved it like a cat toy.
“Sic him.”
Even the vacuum of space was compressed.
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 8 (Spatial Portal)
The staticky voice grew much clearer.
The air split open vertically and a young hand broke through.
With a deafening noise, a being from another world once more appeared in this one. Met with the screams of the world itself, the ephemeral girl’s full body appeared. And that changed the phenomena that came with her.
Unexplored-class. Cost: 21. Sound Range: None.
The Colorless Little Girl Dedicated to a Single Goal (aie – a – oio – ei – ueo – ioa – e – uai – ee).
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 9 (Cockroaches)
One of the 12 books floating behind that juvenile Unexplored-class devoured the bookmark like a carnivorous beast. As if following the law of equivalent exchange, something shot out from the gaps between the pages.
It was the end of the world.
A swarm of black, glistening cockroaches with a hopelessly powerful resistance were released as a single mass like floodwaters. That ultimate pest consumed all, infected all with disease, and left all living things with nowhere to live. They rushed toward the Lady of Purple Lightning.
Once inundated by them, the wild dance of small mandibles would work at your entire body like a thick file and tear away every last strip of flesh. 
[...]
As the insects approached like a black flood, the Red Lady merely swung her large sleeve out like she was dancing. That was enough for the roach swarm’s perfect angle to shift. It was like redirecting a tank shell with angled armor. And she did not stop there. At some point, she had opened the eyelids that functioned as a seal. That was a sinister ill omen. The Red Lady accurately viewed something and thrust her hand out toward the roach swarm once more.
With a wet popping sound, a portion of that world destruction was annihilated. Countless wings, legs, and bodily fluids thick with glittering exoskeletons scattered everywhere.
Of course, the Red Lady was not unscathed herself. After touching that ultimate source of infection, her kimono sleeve melted away and her fingertips grew purple and dissolved until the white bone was visible. The fact that she could not feel the pain was proof of how powerful the infection was.
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 9 (More "End of the World" attacks)
Two ends of the world arrived at once. Two of the books behind the Colorless Little Girl devoured the bookmarks and released brightly-colored torrents on either side of her. One was a spatial distortion cannon created by giving directionality to an artificial black hole and firing it in a straight line. The other was God Hazard One, in which the entrails of slaughtered gods lost sight of their original purpose and attacked humanity. 
Volume 8 Stage 4 Part 9 (Light Attack)
But the Dry-Grass-Colored Dancer could not move and the Colorless Little Girl pressed her slender hand against her. An eerie light slowly flashed within that hand like a clione. With a straining sound, that light twisted around and transformed into a strange arrowhead. 
==Ghosts==
Volume 2 of the series deals with a ghost, and one of the things mentioned in passing is that dealing with ghosts is a common job for summoners, and that most of the time they don't need to fight them with a Material as they can exorcise them with an Artificial Sacred Ground. This has the obvious conclusion that, if necessary, a Material can fight a ghost, which is explicitly a soul that's stuck on the physical world. Summoners are capable of exorcising most ghosts simply by throwing an Incense Grenade and establishin an Artificial Sacred Ground.
Ghosts
In the world of the summoning ceremony, ghosts were said to come from a place, not an individual.
Something was needed to pass between this world and the other world.
When that grew clogged up for some reason, the soul that should have departed would be stuck there.
Ghost exterminations were one of the most basic requests.
Unless the ghost was a very powerful vengeful spirit, it was almost never necessary to fight the ghost with a Material.
In most cases, one only needed to throw an Incense Grenade and set up an Artificial Sacred Ground. The ghost was a paranormal being, so the Artificial Sacred Ground would give them a boost and allow them to wield greater power than normal.
However, they could not actually use that power.
Once the conditions were set to summon a Material, the “clog” would be forcibly removed and the ghost would vanish like the rainwater left in the drain pipe.
Did the ghosts go to heaven as the religious claimed, were they sent to the other world where all the Materials lurked, or were they simply annihilated?
The answer to that question was not yet known.
But as far as the humans in this world were concerned, the problem was solved.
Category:Blood Sign
Category:Explanation Pages