Miori Shiba stopped looking at the two people behaving as though no one else was present.
Whatever Kain had done to silence Kisara had clearly gone far beyond his initial retaliation, and Miori had no intention of watching the rest.
Instead, she turned her attention to the uninvited man standing on the conference table.
"Identify yourself," Lady Seitenshi commanded coldly from the screen.
"My apologies."
The masked man gave a somewhat gentlemanly bow.
"Kagetane Hiruko. That is my name, Your Incompetent Excellency. As I was saying, I am your enemy."
The Civil Security officers had already been furious with his arrogant behavior. Now that he had openly declared himself their enemy, their gazes turned murderous.
Several even drew their weapons.
"Papa!"
The cheerful voice startled Miori again.
A young girl slipped through the doorway without anyone noticing and ran toward the masked man.
"Kohina, introduce yourself to our incompetent ruler."
"I'm Kohina Hiruko. I'm ten years old!"
"Hm. She is also my daughter and my Initiator."
A father-and-daughter pair was rather unusual.
As the little girl performed an elegant curtsy, Miori noticed that something had stained the hem of her skirt and the blades in her hands.
Miori's nose twitched slightly.
She could smell blood drifting in from the doorway.
It wasn't difficult to imagine what had happened to the guards outside.
When Miori studied the Initiator more carefully, she noticed Kohina's cheerful expression stiffen slightly when the girl looked toward Kisara.
She had become wary.
More precisely, she was wary of Kain.
Among all the Civil Security officers gathered here, Kohina had immediately identified him as the greatest threat.
That was hardly surprising.
Miori had seen Kain clear an enormous area of Gastrea the previous day. His strength was on an entirely different level from everyone in this room.
Even as Kohina watched him cautiously, she tilted her head in confusion. She apparently couldn't understand why someone so dangerous was allowing Kisara to behave so casually around him.
"What have you come here for?" Lady Seitenshi demanded.
"What have we come for? Why, we want to enter your little competition, of course."
Kagetane's answer caused her expression to darken.
Miori suspected the masked man knew what was inside the suitcase.
"Enter the competition? What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said. Is that too difficult to understand, Your Incompetent Excellency? The object inside that suitcase, the Legacy of the Seven Stars, will belong to us."
The Legacy of the Seven Stars?
What was that?
Miori searched her memories but couldn't connect the name to anything important.
The other Civil Security officers appeared equally confused, and several demanded an explanation.
"My, my. You don't know?" Kagetane asked. "You accepted the assignment without even knowing what you're retrieving? It seems our incompetent ruler was afraid that if you learned how dangerous the contents were, you might lose your nerve."
Lady Seitenshi's expression grew even colder.
"Revealing everything now would spoil the fun, so let's establish some rules for our little game. Whoever obtains the Legacy of the Seven Stars first wins."
He spread his arms theatrically.
"And the wager will be the lives of everyone present."
It was an outrageously arrogant declaration of war, one that immediately enraged the Civil Security officers.
One man was the first to lose his patience.
It was Shogen Ikuma, the same man Kain had frightened into retreating earlier.
Gripping his massive sword, Shogen crossed the distance to Kagetane in an instant and swung with enough force to produce a violent gust of wind.
Judging by the speed and angle of the strike, there was no way Kagetane could evade it. The blade seemed certain to cleave straight through him.
Then something strange happened.
A thunderous sound erupted, and the massive sword was hurled away.
Miori had seen it.
Just before the blade struck, a flash of blue light appeared between the weapon and the masked man.
It vanished so quickly that most people probably missed it.
"Shogen, stand down!"
At his company president's command, Shogen immediately retreated.
By then, most of the people in the room had drawn their firearms and aimed them at Kagetane.
Miori's expression changed drastically.
These idiots!
She kicked her chair aside and darted behind Kisara's seat, placing Kain between herself and the masked man.
Almost everyone opened fire at the same moment.
Deafening gunfire exploded throughout the conference hall as countless muzzle flashes illuminated the room.
Kagetane appeared to be generating some kind of protective energy barrier.
The bullets striking it were reflected just like Shogen's sword.
Some people failed to immediately realize that their shots were ricocheting. They continued pulling their triggers and rapidly emptied their magazines, sending bullets flying chaotically throughout the conference hall.
The gunfire soon stopped.
Painful groans followed.
Some people made no sound at all. They had been struck in vital areas and died instantly.
Shogen suffered the worst injuries. Several holes had been punched through his body, almost as though Kagetane had deliberately redirected a portion of the gunfire toward him.
In a sense, that was exactly what had happened.
It wasn't because Shogen had attacked first.
The real reason was that not a single bullet had been reflected toward Miori's section of the room.
Kagetane had deliberately prevented the ricochets from traveling toward Kain.
He probably couldn't precisely control the direction of every reflection while standing completely still. Instead, he had subtly adjusted his position so that each bullet struck his barrier at a different angle.
It was like firing at a metal sphere. By shifting the sphere slightly, the bullets would strike different curves and ricochet in different directions.
Naturally, this caused the reflected shots to become concentrated in certain areas.
Shogen had been unfortunate enough to occupy one of those areas.
Miori was more interested in the technology Kagetane was using.
Could he possibly be allied with Kain?
No, that seemed unlikely.
"What was that?"
"A defensive barrier? How is that possible?"
"It is possible. This is a repulsion field," Kagetane explained cheerfully. "Installing the necessary equipment merely requires removing a portion of your internal organs and replacing them with machinery."
His explanation reminded Miori of a rumored military unit.
"Ah, it appears someone here has heard of us. That's right. I am Kagetane Hiruko, formerly of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force's Eastern Army, 787th Mechanized Special Unit, part of the New Humanity Creation Project."
Rumors claimed that such a unit had been created during the war against the Gastrea.
However, the project involved transforming humans into biomechanical soldiers. The procedure was both inhumane and extraordinarily expensive, so the unit was supposedly disbanded.
"Then let the competition begin."
Kagetane gave a formal parting bow.
It was not directed toward Lady Seitenshi.
He bowed toward Miori's section of the room.
More precisely, he bowed to Kain.
Either the two knew each other, or Kagetane had also recognized how dangerous he was.
"Thank you for allowing me to perform without interruption. I hope the next act will prove entertaining enough to hold your interest."
After speaking with perfect courtesy, Kagetane led his Initiator toward the windows.
He casually shattered one, and the two of them leaped outside.
They were high above the ground.
Since Kagetane had chosen that escape route, however, he clearly possessed a way to land safely.
Just before the two disappeared from sight, Miori faintly heard Kohina's voice.
"Papa, why were you so polite to that man? He does seem dangerous, but I don't think..."
"Perhaps, but there is something about him even more..."
Their voices faded into the distance before the rest of the conversation became indistinct.
Silence returned to the conference hall.
Only the last fragments of shattered glass could be heard falling to the floor, along with the faint rustling from the private moment everyone had been trying to ignore.
Miori's cheek twitched.
Kisara had gone from resisting Kain's retaliation to passively accepting it. Now she appeared to have turned the tables and taken control of the situation herself.
That woman had completely lost her mind.
Miori glanced at Lady Seitenshi on the large screen.
Her gaze also seemed fixed on Kisara, and her expression was extremely complicated.
"Ahem. Everyone, the situation has become more serious. I must add another condition to the commission. You must recover the suitcase before the man who just left."
"What exactly is inside that suitcase?"
"You still refuse to tell us?"
The survivors voiced their dissatisfaction.
Unless Lady Seitenshi gave them a clear answer, many of them would probably refuse the assignment.
Her expression became grave.
"The suitcase contains the Legacy of the Seven Stars. If misused, it could compromise the Monolith barrier and cause the extinction of everyone in the Tokyo Area. It is a designated sealed artifact."
She still hadn't revealed the artifact's exact nature.
However, that explanation was enough to make the surviving Civil Security officers understand its importance.
This was not an assignment they could simply refuse.
Miori was more concerned about how the artifact could cause such widespread destruction.
At that moment, Kain and Kisara finally ended the intimate exchange they had begun earlier.
Kain appeared to be the one who pulled away.
Kisara, on the other hand, looked faintly reluctant and gave him a reproachful glance.
She appeared not to have heard Lady Seitenshi's warning at all.
Of course, Kisara couldn't truly have been so distracted that she missed everything. The only reasonable explanation was that she already knew what the Legacy of the Seven Stars was and how it could cause the Tokyo Area's extinction.
Then again, Kisara had behaved like this directly in front of Lady Seitenshi.
Knowing her personality, she might genuinely have done it to make the ruler uncomfortable.
It was even possible that the entire performance had been intended for Kikunojō Tendo, who stood beside Lady Seitenshi.
Kisara might have wanted to humiliate and provoke him deliberately.
(End of Chapter)
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