Volume 7, Ending X-01: Mission Accomplished, But For Whom?
“What are you going to do now, Onii-chan?”
“Good question…”
(Ending X-01 Open 07/21 11:00)
Mission Accomplished, But For Whom?
The following day arrived.
“So what happened in the end?”
That question from the black-haired shrine maiden named Meinokawa Renge showed just how tough they were.
The Bridesmaid summoners and Repliglass soldiers who had done such great damage to Houbi Village were now gone. Losers in the Blood-Sign method would enter a mindless state for at least 24 hours after receiving the same shock as seeing their god slaughtered before their eyes, but they truly had seen that when the White Queen was defeated. Bridesmaid had been entirely unable to resist, so Government had arrested them and taken them somewhere. Unless they had worshipers inside Government’s ranks, they would never escape those cells.
The real Meinokawa Aoi had been swapped out for the White Queen and she had apparently been found in the underground lake. She had been torn limb from limb and sunk to the bottom of the lake, which normally would have been more than enough to declare her dead.
However, Meinokawa Aoi was humanity’s oldest Joruri Method.
“Hey, I’m missing some of my insides. Send in more of those scoo-ba divers and gather every last one of them!”
Once she had been mostly reassembled, she was back up and running.
…Incidentally, it pained Renge that she could not explain what a Joruri Method was to Higan and thus could not correct her twin sister’s mistaken assumption that they had seen the right arm of a mutilated corpse that had washed up on the shore of the underground lake.
The tents and large Repliglass landing craft left by Bridesmaid had been moved aside and recovery work was already underway. All of it was fake and that cheap look may have been directly connected to their strength.
With this, the Queen-worshiping cult had collapsed.
The White Queen had stood at the center of it all, but she was gone as well.
“Phew…”
It still did not feel real to Kyousuke.
Even so, he breathed a sigh of relief for the first time in a day.
“Onii-chan.”
Then he was approached by Olivia Highland who still wore the straw hat over her double blonde braids.
That girl had broken free of her bonds at the last moment, so she had not received a psychological shock from the White Queen’s defeat.
“What are you going to do now, Onii-chan?”
“Good question…”
What would he do now that the White Queen was defeated?
He had known he would have to do it eventually, but he had never thought he would actually pull it off. Not even Kyousuke could answer that question immediately.
However.
“Even if the White Queen herself is gone, some of the scars she left on the world must remain. In that case, I might be busy cleaning all of that up.”
But not even that would last forever.
Kyousuke and the Queen had made the world like this. Those “bonds” would eventually disappear. And once that happened, Shiroyama Kyousuke might finally be able to retire from the world of the Summoning Ceremony.
Something about this world still felt wrong to him.
It was like he had a gaping hole in his chest.
Even so, he wanted to accept this result.
Accept that he had defeated the White Queen.
And a moment later…
“Oh? It might be best hold off on ending your contract with that little vessel. Don’t you think, brother?”
Facts:
*The White Queen was defeated. Nevertheless, the story is not over yet.