Bonus: The Grave Dilemma⑤

"Then what the hell are we supposed to do!?"

The two of them had abandoned the bike for now, sprinting through the trees to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Microbe Revenge.

Even in the twilight, Microbe Revenge seemed to have a sensor network capable of locking onto Frenda and Hamazura’s movements with pinpoint accuracy. But even so, it wasn’t engaging them in a proper battle. Its sensors had clearly been disrupted by the aftershocks of Gensei’s power, leaving its perception dulled. Otherwise, Frenda’s repeated rocket fireworks would have done nothing, and the two of them would’ve already ended up like charred scraps from a failed barbecue.

"……,"

Frenda briefly looked up at the sky.

Above, the decoy Doppelgänger had created earlier was locked in a spectacular battle with Kihara Gensei. Microbe Revenge had slipped into the shadows of the mountains, meaning that from the far side, only the decoy would be visible. At best, one might hear thunderous rumbles of movement like storm clouds rolling overhead. But Gensei wasn’t just taking the blows.

Microbe Revenge’s main cannon had overwhelming firepower, but Gensei retaliated by conjuring numerous spears of light. Even if Microbe Revenge could dodge with the speed of an F1 car and the footwork of a pro boxer, its target was fifty meters wide. Dodging everything was impossible, and in fact it looked to have suffered moderate damage several times already—

"You’ve been watching their fight, right!? Even if it’s destroyed, electricity flows out from some circuit underneath, and it repairs itself instantly. It’s got self-repairing capabilities! At this rate, our attacks are meaningless!!"

"I think… it’s basically automatic regeneration by slime mold."

As she said this, Frenda extended her hand, showing Hamazura something that had fallen into her palm.

"What… is that…?"

"When we blew off the armor earlier, this got carried off by the wind and landed. In short… I think Doppelgänger originally had the ability to control microorganisms."

"…………!?"

Hamazura caught his breath at Frenda’s words. That would mean—the ‘possession’ Doppelgänger spoke of was actually—

"Microorganisms… or maybe slime mold, to be precise. I think it controlled the growth of something almost invisible to the naked eye, manipulating matter so that it only looked like it was ‘possessing and moving it.’"

"Then… then you’re saying even that railgun was created and controlled with slime mold…? No, wait. If slime mold is the core of everything, doesn’t that not make sense!? No living organism could survive, let alone reproduce, in an environment heated to extreme temperatures by electricity!!"

Indeed, high heat would be impossible to overcome, even if you borrowed reproductive traits from Martian extremophiles. It didn’t make sense for microbes to weld metal together, or to construct something as precise as a railgun. Even if paired with the Third’s ability, overcoming extreme heat should still be unfeasible. And yet… though Hamazura countered, Frenda’s theory didn’t feel wrong either.

(…Even if I argue back, the pieces Frenda’s gathered are probably correct. It’s just a matter of putting them together properly. If I can find the missing link to fit them, I’ll get closer to the truth. There must be a piece we already have but aren’t using…!)

But no matter how he tried, his thoughts refused to line up.

And before they knew it, Frenda and Hamazura had reached the mountaintop, far from Microbe Revenge.

Then—

"A pathetic bluff!! I can take my sweet time thinking after I kill you!!!! All you should be worried about is dragging out your life one second longer!!"

Frenda nearly felt her heart stop.

Because right there, their boss Mugino was locked in battle with someone. To call that someone "an unknown" would’ve been far too disingenuous.

The hidden Fourth, Another Four—Reicia Blackguard.

Frenda and Hamazura had known Mugino was supposed to be fighting the Third. But the fact that Kinuhata was the one fighting the Third while Mugino was battling Reicia was entirely outside their expectations. More than that, officially Frenda and Hamazura had already been "taken out" by the Third’s lightning. Their ability to move freely right now was only because of that cover. If Mugino caught them acting on their own? Death was the only outcome.

"W-w-w-w-w… what do we do, Hamazura!?"

"How the hell are you scared stiff of Mugino when you didn’t even flinch fighting a walking weapon of mass destruction!?"

Hamazura instinctively yelled at the panic-stricken Frenda—then immediately covered his own mouth. He knew full well that if Mugino spotted them, it was game over for him too.

"The problem isn’t just that Mugino’s here. We’re already over capacity dealing with Microbe Revenge. The second even a shred of distraction—like worrying about being seen by Mugino—gets mixed in, we’re dead."

Right now, Mugino was tied up with Reicia. But if Mugino managed to kill her, then she would be completely free. That would severely restrict Frenda and Hamazura’s actions, and if Mugino ever laid eyes on Microbe Revenge, their chances of destroying it would drop to zero.

For the two of them, an already impossible mission had just become even more merciless.

"…The Third looks like she’s struggling."

Hamazura said this absently, watching the Third fight against Kinuhata.

"What, you just can’t resist helping a cute girl when she’s in trouble?"

"Wrong!! …We were just talking about this, weren’t we? That Microbe Revenge might be using the Third’s ability. Level Upper, Ability Uplifter—it was all about letting someone else wield an esper’s power."

"…True."

"I’m Skill-Out. I’ve known guys who used Level Upper. Most of them only got as far as Level 2, but there were a few who jumped all the way up to around Level 4."

Hamazura clenched his fist.

"…And every single one of them ended up suffering and collapsing, just like the Third right now. That’s the side effect of Level Upper. I only learned later that some researcher—Ki… something—used students like test subjects."

"I want to level up. I want to stop being a dropout."

She pictured, clearly and painfully, the former friends who’d been used for that desperate wish.

"I always thought high-ranked espers were just people I enjoyed making pay for their arrogance… but y’know. It’s all the same. No matter the level, in this city… students are food for shitty researchers."

"…Is that so?"

Frenda smiled.

Students as food for researchers. Powerless people as food for high-ranked espers.

Those villains who, while fully aware of that social slot, still take delight in cunningly tearing the throat out of the strong—those people showed their sadistic faces now, as if in their element.

"You said earlier it’s pointless to attack because of the self-repair function. Sure, maybe smashing the machine to bits is meaningless. After all, Doppelgänger built Microbe Revenge so that it can tolerate however much damage its body takes."

In short, that thing was the crystallization of a strategy created by Doppelgänger. No half-baked plan could stop it—that much made sense.

But then—Frenda Seivern wove words of counterargument, a reversal that led toward a possible comeback.

"What it’s actually using is nothing more than microorganisms and a Level 5 esper’s power. It’s not some planet-destroying force. In fact, because it only has power on that scale, it makes those weird contraptions to boost its abilities. Don’t you think that’s possible?"

"Yeah, that might be true, but—"

"Then! If we land an attack that destroys the whole chassis, wouldn’t that finally render the self-repair useless?"

"…Do you have some plan?"

"I think it’s worth trying."

Frenda nodded, then said:

"Blow up the foothold."

"Huh? But we just did that—"

"That was blowing up its legs, not the foothold. That’s why it repaired right away. But the foothold isn’t part of the machine, so it doesn’t have self-repair. Even if it ‘possesses’ something, it can’t fix a cratered piece of ground with that nature."

In other words, it can’t manipulate what ‘doesn’t exist.’ If an explosion gouges the earth, the machine loses balance. The load on its base won’t be anything like simply traversing a slope—extensive destruction should occur. If things go badly, static/electrical chain reactions could cause even more damage.

"But that’d still be within the scope of self-repair, right? If it just heals itself no matter how much we break, it’s meaningless."

"What if the repair process brings in bombs?"

Frenda’s vicious smile didn’t fade an inch.

Hamazura was left speechless by that smile.

"True, Microbe Revenge’s repair function might be perfect. If it could instantly fix any destruction, every attack might be pointless. But do you think the selection of materials used during repair is flawless? You saw it, didn’t you? The way that giant body was formed by roughly gouging into the mountain."

Yes—Hamazura had watched. He’d seen it dig into the ground and create the main cannon.

Microbe Revenge wasn’t assembled from precisely manufactured parts somewhere. Using the Third’s magnetism and the ‘possession’ ability, it melted and cast the masses of iron sand and minerals in this school district’s ground—an ad-hoc weapon forged on the spot.

And its repair was equally crude: it consumed nearby material to rebuild itself. If explosives were mixed into that material, it would most likely take them in without discrimination.

In short—

Frenda put it simply.

"Take advantage of Microbe Revenge’s greatest self-repair function."

"B-but… how!? Even if we destroy the foothold, that thing could kill hundreds of us just from the blast waves alone! How are we supposed to plant bombs at its feet—"

"Told you, right?"

Frenda flashed a charming, mischievous smile at the worried Hamazura.

"Won’t you entrust your life to me?"

Chapter 3 — The Worth of a Soul Is Trivial Double(Square)_Faith.
Bonus: A Serious Dilemma >>>>Twenty-First School District Front — Kuriba Ryōko (?). Capture Operation ⑤

──So then, Frenda approached the Microbe Revenge alone, getting close enough to be dangerous.

Hamazura, for his part, had gone off to retrieve the motorcycle they'd abandoned. The Microbe Revenge kept moving at several hundred kilometers per hour, and there was no way human legs could keep up with it in real time.

『You expect me to believe you can sneak up and toss a bomb and that'll solve it!? What if you get killed by a railgun first!? Then everything’s pointless, huh!?』

Hamazura’s voice came through the comm unit.

Their original smartphone had been destroyed by the Third Rank’s discharge, so they’d grabbed a replacement comm device before joining the battlefield — something filched at random. It was low-end hardware that could barely do anything other than communicate, but it was better than nothing.

“No, that’s not a problem. Its offensive capability is basically just the main cannon. It probably didn’t have spare power to run anything else. So while Gensei is holding it off, it won’t be attacking us. …Besides, it just proved earlier that our attacks don’t destroy it. Do you really think it would waste its only attack resource on annoying little attacks from pests that don’t matter?”

『…Well, yeah, that makes sense.』

That earlier failure actually increased Frenda’s safety.

Against Kihara Gensei and the Microbe Revenge, the Microbe Revenge clearly had the advantage. For whatever reason, the doppelgänger — with only Third Rank abilities and microbial power — managed to outclass Kihara’s weird science. Still — that didn’t mean Kihara Gensei could be ignored. That provided Frenda and the others with an opening.

“What? Hamazura, are you worried about me after all?”

『Of course I am!』

“You’re being presumptuous for someone like you, Hamazura.”

‘You—’

Frenda smiled at the corner of her mouth.

“And that worry’s pointless anyway. I already set landmines on its footing.”

『When the hell did you do that!?』

“While you two were running like maniacs, I did a quick bit of work.”

Saying that, Frenda pulled out a few rocket fireworks. On their own they were nothing more than literal “pea-shooters” — fireworks so weak they’d be regenerated in an instant — but—

“But these will be enough to steal its targeting ability for a moment!”

Bopapapapan!! The rockets Frenda fired detonated in midair before reaching the Microbe Revenge, leaving white smoke drifting through the twilight.

That smoke itself was merely a smokescreen, but because Kihara Gensei’s fight was also affecting the Microbe Revenge’s sensors, any space that messed with targeting was something the machine wanted to avoid. Almost unconsciously, it steered away from the clouded area.

“Now!!”

In Frenda’s hand was a switch.

Right after she pressed it—

Dogggoooooon!!!! The ground under the Microbe Revenge exploded as if a volcano had erupted.

A landmine. The blast didn’t even scratch the outer layer of the Microbe Revenge’s armor, but the ground fared differently.

The explosion made a crater roughly five meters across — more than enough for part of the Microbe Revenge’s propulsion unit to fall into.

Naturally, the machine pitched like a car whose tire had fallen into a rut—

“Here!!”

Aiming at the likely point of damage, Frenda threw the most powerful explosive she had.

The Hand Ax.

A very expensive explosive — the gram price rivaled platinum. It’s a kind of plastic explosive that can be shaped and stuck onto surfaces, which made it indispensable to Frenda for use in critical moments.

Because it was pricey, Frenda didn’t use it lightly — but that made its effect reliably potent. If it could be taken inside the machine and detonated there, it might blow the internal mechanisms and possibly destroy the entire body of the unit.

"At the end of the day, that arrogance of sitting back and watching just because it was 'only the work of small humans'—that smug complacency is exactly what becomes the flaw that lets us topple a giant…!!"

Convinced of her victory, Frenda followed the arc of the Hand Ax as it flew—only to witness something unbelievable.

Dobaaah!!!!

From the armor-skirt-like propulsion units of the Microbe Revenge erupted a red-hot, molten liquid—searing magma.

"H…huh?"

What burst out was no mistake—it was glowing, molten red. Magma, or perhaps molten iron straight from a blast furnace. Not only did the Microbe Revenge use the eruption to cancel its fall, but it even filled in the massive crater Frenda had created, all in an instant.

And that wasn’t all.

The magma overflowed from the hole, pouring straight toward the lone girl who had thrown the Hand Ax—toward Frenda herself, standing close enough for the throw to reach.

This wasn’t a counterattack.

It was most likely just an error-handling function built into the machine. But that simple, “normal” function was enough to harvest human lives with terrifying ease. No human legs could possibly outrun a lava flow cascading down a mountain slope.

A disaster.

Confronted with an overwhelming threat that went beyond the very definition of a “machine,” Frenda stood frozen, even forgetting to run.

"You idiot!!!"

Gahh!!!

For a split second, Frenda thought she had been run over. Then she realized—she was being lifted up onto a motorcycle by Hamazura.

Shoved forcefully into the cramped space between the handlebars and Hamazura, Frenda looked up at him in a daze. Behind him, flowing lava streamed past, a vision of hell itself.

"You moron, you got a death wish or something!? Don’t just stand there like an idiot!!"

"A-ah… i-in the end, I was saved after all."

Shaking herself back to reality, Frenda regained her composure.

It was a ridiculously large-scale mechanism, but… thinking about it carefully, it was still something that could be explained by the combination of microbes and a Railgun’s electromagnetic power.

"I did think it was strange. Even if she was making full use of the Third Rank’s electricity, that output was just too high. It was beyond what a single person could handle. …Most likely, she’s got some kind of power reactor inside her."

Clinging to Hamazura’s back, Frenda continued.

"And she’s using the heat from that reactor. She overheats the mass-bred microbes until they’re beyond charcoal—turning them into something like magma."

Maybe she was also using minerals she had absorbed as part of the mix. Then she stored it up, using it as a sudden propulsion source when her footing was destroyed, or to patch over terrain.

It probably doubled as a way to wipe out any obstacles clustering underfoot with sheer heat. In fact, if not for Hamazura’s desperate intervention, Frenda would have been swallowed up by that lava back there.

"…Look. Not only did she completely escape the crater with that magma blast, but thanks to it cooling and hardening, the ground looks like it’s been paved over."

With a rumble like thunderclouds, the Microbe Revenge marched back across the battlefield with the majesty of a conqueror.

A massive weapon specialized for mountain warfare, erasing any weakness in its footing.

And faced with that overwhelming threat, Frenda and the others… had no move left to make.