Zex was not a complete pushover idiot either, so he did not teach him proper programming or hacking. At most it amounted to the sorts of sites where raw information circulated and the methods for telling that information apart.
But for Odysseus as he was now, that alone was enough. Having come to know new knowledge, he stared into his device's screen all day long.
"Your eyes will go bad."
"They already are."
"Honestly, you never lose a single exchange, do you?"
And that remained the same even when the night of Ironstick's punishment came. Flag clicked his tongue at the boy who tapped at his device even inside the car. Migo in the back seat, as though she understood the feeling, was passively supporting Odysseus' behavior.
"At Yul's age it is the time to want to know new things most keenly."
"Even when the knowledge he wants to know is limited to the underworld, torture, fighting, and magic?"
"Yul is a member of an expedition team, and the land we live in is the outermost district. One must not imagine an ordinary child."
"Even soooo......."
Flag failed in the end to refute Migo's words. It was because he too knew well that the world they belonged to was a place where those who were not hard died wretchedly.
"Damn, if that bastard saw the way things are going now, he would try to kill me."
Flag recalled his own friend, who at the slightest opening had gone on about Yul this, my little brother that, that little kid this. Thinking of it now, or rather, as he had always felt, there had truly never been a brother-doting fool like him. Even accounting for the fair gap in age between them, it made one wonder whether he did not coddle the boy too much.
"Who...ah."
But since even resentment is a kind of attachment, spending some seven years stuck to a fellow like that had left the man's bad habits rubbing off on him. Or else, from associating now and then with that cheeky kid, he had grown attached.
Knowing full well how empty a claim and how impossible a thing it was for someone born in the outermost district to grow up like a flower in a greenhouse, he had come to wish for it all the same.
"Migo, shh."
"...Yes."
But this would have been difficult even had Yun been alive. And with Yun dead now, there was nothing more to say.
So Flag did not disturb Yul, absorbed in his device, any further. That was the only thing he could do for him.
The small child who had come to visit their room and boldly stolen their snacks receded steadily beyond memory.
"We arrive shortly."
In any case, amid such consideration they finally reached the harbor district where Ironstick's main base lay.
Perhaps because the warehouse was in a fairly out-of-the-way spot, the car moved several minutes more even after passing District 34's Air Platform, the Airport. Buildings crudely lashed together out of cement, brick, iron and the like continued on like the winding walls of a maze.
"This is the place."
Ironstick's main base was one such building. Perhaps everyone who had lived nearby had been evacuated; apart from Ironstick's main base, no particular sign of human presence could be felt. It was all exactly as written in the operational document.
"Well now. The big places really do handle things well."
Odysseus, Flag, and Migo entered one of the neatly emptied buildings. It was a position from which Ironstick's building could be seen to a degree while being difficult to snipe from.
"It feels a bit excessive, even."
"It does, at that."
Odysseus pressed close to a window and checked the situation outside. Naturally, the place he mainly took in was Ironstick's main base. They had somehow understood the warning at least, and figures dimly outfitted with armament of a sort could be made out.
"Just as it was in the briefing."
"Crude. Sticking the muzzle out is not all there is to it."
Well, the 'of a sort' spoken of here was ultimately a matter confined to Ironstick's own eyes. Those morons had failed even to hide their equipment purchase records, and thanks to the resident watcher, their total strength and even any peculiarities that might become variables had all been stripped bare.
"The encirclement is being completed and they aren't firing a single shot."
"They know that the moment they fire, it truly becomes irreversible."
At Flag's words Odysseus could not help letting out a hollow laugh.
"Idiots. Do they believe this situation will change somehow if they don't fire?"
Setting Odysseus himself aside, there was no reason for Pluto to come this far and withdraw. Had they not taken a hostile stance from the start it might be different, but naturally, withdrawing now would be a loss of face as well. Pluto would never leave them alive.
"It's not so much that as, hmm. It'll be a struggle to stay alive even a little longer. If misfortune is going to fall on you anyway, human psychology prefers to meet it a second later, doesn't it?"
"An astonishingly useless judgment."
If they hated the worst outcome, they should not have gotten cocky in the first place. And if not getting cocky had been impossible, they should have flattened themselves and begged forgiveness, however belatedly.
"If they knew the gap in weight class was this wide, at the very least flight would have had more possibility than resistance......."
Contemptibly incompetent and stupid. The night-vision goggles worn in place of his glasses caught the lamplight glimmering faintly from beyond the alley and leaked a reddish reflection.
"Well, there's no need for me to give any more thought to those bastards' stupidity."
Odysseus dismissed all his derision with that one remark and operated the button attached to the night-vision goggles. Not a premium product with color support, but the focus of the goggles, which provided a passably decent field of view, blurred and sharpened by turns.
Beep.
And at the end of repeating that action some six times, the ranging function mounted in the goggles finally displayed a number at the lower right of his field of view. It was the distance between Odysseus and Ironstick's warehouse.
"We begin on the hour, as planned."
Odysseus put that number into his equation, calculated, and drew out a magic array to match. A combination of figures, numbers, and characters engraved to roughly 99.8% of the whole gave off a faint light upon the ground.
"Please count down."
—Beginning the count. Thirty-two seconds to the hour.
At the on-site command room's transmission, though, the Pluto combatants in the neighboring building or above in the alley showed a little tension bit by bit. Surely a place like Pluto would not be terrified over a single engagement with riffraff... it seemed they were simply uncomfortable about having to match rhythm with a battle magician of another affiliation. The combatants' gazes kept flicking this way.
"If you have time to look this way, how about looking ahead?"
It had been a light mock battle, granted, but it was not as though they had never matched rhythm, so what was all this horseshit about?
Odysseus dragged his lips up crooked and stimulated the magic power within his body. Ten seconds. The count the command room was keeping finally dropped into single digits.
—Five seconds.
Range and power he had tested well enough at the place Pluto had provided, and the distance calculation had not differed greatly between what he had posited and the reality, so the resulting values came out within the margin of error.
—Four seconds.
Which meant the great detonation Odysseus would present to those bastards as his first strike could absolutely not end in failure. Which meant that sentencing the bastards casting suspicious looks at him to the punishment of having their eyeballs gouged out would be justified.
—Three seconds.
Of course, doing so now would throw off the plan, so he had no intention of actually acting on it. With Flag and Migo flanking him, the boy's magic power flowed into the tail end of the magic array.
—Two seconds.
At that, the magic array he had deliberately held back was completed. Roughly 99.9% of the whole.
—One second.
100%. The completed magic array spat out magic power.
—Beginning the subjugation.
The magic power the array spat out moved to the coordinates that had been set in a gap of less than 0.01 seconds and reproduced a combustion reaction. A strange combustion in which the catalyst raising the burning was magic power and the material burning was also magic power.
BOOM!
The magic power that blazed up in an instant emitted light and heat and went further, raising a detonation accompanied by pressure. Cracks ran through the concrete outer wall that made up the warehouse and the iron door crumpled and flew as though rolled inward into the warehouse.
The screams were buried under the blast so he could not be certain, but it seemed at least two or more had been caught up in it.
"Move in! Move in!"
"Ram it!"
And on top of that, Pluto's combatants charged in swiftly, using the detonation as their signal flare.
VROOOOM!
DUDUDUDUDU!
While the designated entry squad rushed in with their vehicles or infiltrated by way of the connected buildings, the covering fire that had begun shattered the small windows set in the warehouse's outer wall. What they were aiming at were the Ironstick marksmen who had been cracking the windows open and poking their muzzles out.
"Down!"
The merit of a concrete warehouse whose windows were only 60cm wide and 30cm tall and set at a height of 2m lay in making an enemy's intrusion difficult. But put another way, that meant the means of attacking the outside from within were not exactly ample either.
Bolstered by their armored vehicles, the entry squad, having evaded the antipersonnel mines and the gunfire, pressed close to the warehouse entrance. Sturdy as an armored vehicle was, it was not enough to break through a concrete wall, so there was no helping it.
They brought the vehicles right up against the wall, then opened the doors, dismounted, and moved carefully. There were mines attached to the warehouse's outer wall as well, but that part was not a great problem.
CRASH, CRASH, CRASH!
Those mines had been removed long before they even reached the wall.
"Your calculations get faster and faster?"
"It's natural to grow practiced the more you do it, isn't it."
Whether from fear of croaking on what they had installed themselves, or of dropping like flies during the preparation before they even met the enemy—there had been a report that one had in fact died—Ironstick had not installed many mines.
Thanks to that, the work Odysseus had to do was not so extensive, nor was the difficulty high. All the more so with the externally installed mines, since the watcher had established all their positions.
Having quickly calculated only whether each was inside or outside the margin of error and raised combustion reactions to remove the mines one after another, the boy set up a new equation. Since he had finished off the whole of the role he had taken in the early stage, it was his judgment that he could now step into active attack.
"One more detonation at the entrance coming. Have the people who approached fall back."
—Command to Bravo 1. Superboy intends to raise a detonation. Fall back from the entrance.
While the command room pulled the assault squad back, Odysseus drew magic power out quickly. His magic-power nerves, heated up like muscles just after lifting a barbell, throbbed a little. It was the price of operating a large quantity of magic power in a short time.
Ssshhhk—
But this pain was precisely the token of growth and the proof of advance.
The boy, having finished the magic array partly with his hands and partly by clumping the magic power itself into that shape, checked the target point one last time. The green field of view particular to night-vision goggles, mingled with black, showed the emptied warehouse entrance. The iron door that should have stood firm had flown away, leaving a gaping hole, and inside and outside that hole was a strange standoff in which no one dared approach.
"Three, two, one."
The place where Odysseus had to raise a detonation, and would, was precisely that spot.
BOOOM! Vaporized magic power met magic power turned to sparks and shaped a violent blast. With no fragments flying there was hardly any lethality to it as such, but it was magic just right for startling the enemies inside the warehouse.
"Fire!"
DUDUDUDU!
And to that was added the entry squad's firepower. They all but shoved their guns inside and let bullets rip.
Since they were automatic rifles, the rounds fired quickly as well. Having emptied one magazine in an instant, they withdrew their guns and pressed their bodies tight to the wall. PABABABAK! By a hair's difference, the spot where the muzzles had been was pocked with holes.
TING, TING!
"Grenade!"
"Get down!"
Just then a grenade rolled out from inside. The silhouettes of the assault squad flopped down flat, and Odysseus' head poked forward.
TAK!
While Migo hurriedly thrust a transparent bulletproof shield in front of Odysseus, Odysseus sniped the grenade with magic power he shot out. It was a magic-power bolt meant to send it back in the direction it had come from.
BOOM!
At the point when the bomb, struck by the magic-power bolt, passed back through the entrance, the iron balls inside the fragmentation grenade scattered in every direction. Some passed out through the entrance, but most were consumed inside the building.
Screams filled the empty space left by the blast.
"Aaaaagh!"
"Fuck, fuuuuck!"
"Which piece of shit was it! Which piece of shit set off a bomb inside!"
Immediately after confirming that sound, Odysseus resumed the breathing he had stopped. Ssssss. The air that seeped slowly into his lungs was acrid.
"Grenade removed. Please tell them they may rise."
—...Command to Bravo 1. The grenade has been removed; resume your mission.
"You startled me, kid. What if you'd been sniped?"
"I'm sorry. This really was urgent."
"I know."
Meanwhile Flag, beside him, chided him lightly and directed him to lower his posture. It was a recommendation passed on because he knew how thoroughly unfunny it would get if a magician's position were discovered by the enemy.
"Just in case, we move to another point."
"Yes."
Not raising the shield in advance had also been in preparation against discovery by reflected light or a sense of wrongness caused by the shield. Flag proposed changing position in consideration of contingencies. For Odysseus there was no reason at all to refuse.
"More to the point, this really is going smoothly. It's almost dull."
"Hey, don't you know words become seeds? Say a thing like that and it always comes back."
"Like with you, Bro?"
"Ye... no, you brat!"
"Yul, as you said earlier, there is a gap in weight class between the two powers, so it is natural. Beyond weight class there is also... the so-called 'grade,' and even that differs, so in the end this situation too should be seen as no different from a determined future."
While Flag shook his shoulder, Migo explained calmly. It was a part Odysseus already knew but became newly conscious of, because it was going too smoothly.
"Still, I thought Ironstick's captain and vice-captain at least would show some distinction somehow."
"Come on, however strong those bastards are, what could they do in a situation like this? Well, if they were superhumans closer to strategic weapons than to humans, then maybe......."
"You don't think it goes that far?"
"You saw the information Pluto researched too. Thinking it will be 100% correct is blind faith, but it isn't so untrustworthy either. And if the bastards had been stronger than this, Pluto would have turned toward recruiting them rather than trying to finish them off."
Flag snickered and explained his grounds for denial with passably coherent logic. Ordinarily it was a thing Odysseus would have accepted.
"Or then again, who knows. They might have made contact under the table without our knowing. Judging by the way things are going, it seems to have ended rather badly, though."
"Hmm."
"In any case, don't worry too much. Surely those bastards wouldn't have hidden their strength so thoroughly that even Pluto failed to notice? To begin with, with intelligence at that level they'd have grasped the rules of the bottom and this trade's territories long ago."
But today, for some reason, one corner of him felt strangely uneasy. It was one of the few such days in the life of a man who prized reason over sentiment.
"...Still, something feels off."
"Are you me? Piling up karma with your mouth?"
"Are you finally admitting it?"
"Why, you kid."
An alarm bell of instinct, rung with neither grounds nor reason. It had been like this when he reached Telepylos, the island where the cannibals lived. Every one of those who ignored his instincts had died, and those who followed them half in doubt—himself included—had lived.
Odysseus' eyes, trading quips with Flag, sank cold.
"Come to think of it, didn't they say those bastards came out of the military?"
"If men who did one or two years of service and quit can be called soldiers, then yes. You could call them military."
"Is there no chance that becomes a variable?"
"Hardly. If there were, Pluto would have mentioned it long ago. To begin with, the thing called an army is fearsome because of numbers, not a group that inspires terror because its individuals are powerful."
"For one person to be able to function as a variable, it is right to look to special forces rather than an army. On that side the very purpose of their founding is to make each individual a deterrent in himself."
"The same goes for a famous house or school known to the world. In that they try to standardize the skill of those belonging to them upward, they look slightly like an army... but their final aim lies in producing a strong one who transcends the human world."
Having said that much, Flag swept his hair back. Perhaps from the heat, a few beads of sweat had gathered on his forehead.
"In any case, don't worry. An army has no interest whatsoever in individual growth. It isn't that they raise no capable men at all, but it's an environment where a talent that could overturn the board is extremely hard to bring into bloom."
"Then......."
"If that bastard can overturn the tide of battle, it would be because of the influence of the cult rather than his past in the army. It's only a rumor going around, but there's talk of a cult that enhances abilities."
"A cult?"
Odysseus asked back instinctively over the word that remained awkward however often he heard it. Since he believed that following a mistaken faith was a matter of nothing other than intelligence, the bewilderment in his question was all the deeper.
"Yeah. A cult. You know the ones notorious as heresies, the Church of the Opened Heaven or the Church of Transmigration. Besides those there's the Church of the Dawn, which says the myriad gods will be resurrected and return. Well... that's just talk; I don't actually think anyone became a superhuman out of nowhere from believing in a cult—"
CRAAAASH!
And before his bewilderment could finish, the wall by the entrance of Ironstick's warehouse collapsed as though bursting.
"Aaagh!"
TATANG, TATANG, TATANG!
"Cease fire! Cease fire!"
"Fall back!"
"Fuck, what is that!"
What came out from among it was a person of enormous build holding the crumpled iron door as a shield.
"Uoooaaaargh!!"
As though it were no weight at all, the Kallistidai, wearing layer upon layer of body armor, roared ferociously. It was a howl that made the skin feel as though it were being torn apart by the sound alone.
The massive frame began to charge, the iron door thrust out before it.