Saitake Sogen's death in the Tokyo Area provoked outrage in Osaka. Demands for immediate retaliation and outright war followed.
Then more details emerged, throwing Osaka and the other areas into turmoil.
Tendo Kikunojo publicly exposed a secret political organization known as the Five Wings Association.
Its goal was world domination, and its members were already operating behind the scenes across the globe.
President Saitake of Osaka had been one of them. So were Hokkaido's deputy prime minister, Hakata's prime minister, and Sendai's defense minister.
Albrecht Grünewald, once counted among the Four Sages, was a senior member as well. The circumstances behind Scorpio's invasion of Tokyo were also brought to light.
The method the Five Wings Association intended to use to conquer the world was utterly inhuman.
In secret, it was breeding Gastrea resistant to Varanium.
It planned to use those creatures to attack any power that refused to submit.
For the moment, there was a relatively simple way to identify its members: the organization used feather tattoos to mark rank.
Five feathers denoted its supreme authority, the leader. Below that came four feathers, three, and two. A single feather marked believers, servants, and others in the lowest ranks.
Those tattoos could be found on their bodies.
"Damn it!"
"Who leaked this?"
"The information reached the entire world practically at once. This isn't ten years ago, when communications networks were still extensive. Even the surviving satellites are closely monitored. That man named Kain and the power behind him must be helping spread it."
The Five Wings Association's senior members were shocked, frightened, and in disarray.
Their greatest secret had been exposed: they were breeding Varanium-resistant Gastrea.
That revelation had immediately made them a threat the world could not ignore.
Without it, they might have escaped serious scrutiny. There were countless organizations around the world. No country had the resources to investigate every one.
Now, some areas had already begun ordering full-body examinations to check for the identifying marks.
Certain members could remove their tattoos quickly enough to avoid detection.
But the association had never been publicly exposed before. Most people hadn't even known it existed.
Even those who had heard rumors knew neither its name nor the meaning of its tattoos.
As a result, some members might previously have allowed others to see their marks without giving it much thought.
"Tokyo's Monolith will collapse in three days. Is Kikunojo trying to take us down with him?"
"Heh. He's seriously underestimated us."
"In three days, we'll make sure to give them a proper send-off."
Amid cold laughter and murderous threats, the association's leaders planned a special operation against Tokyo.
When the time came, they would help the Gastrea breach its defenses.
Three days passed.
Today, the tension throughout the Tokyo Area reached its breaking point.
When the Monolith's condition had been discovered, the estimated time remaining before its collapse had been roughly three days.
This was the third day.
More than sixty percent of the population still hadn't reached a shelter. They gazed at Monolith Thirty-Two with a mixture of hope and dread.
They hoped it wouldn't fall today.
They hoped the prediction was wrong.
They feared it would collapse exactly as predicted.
Yet footage from the news media had all but confirmed that its destruction was inevitable.
Countless Gastrea had gathered just beyond it, waiting to swarm through the moment it fell.
They had moved closer since yesterday, too. That meant the Monolith's magnetic field, which repelled the creatures, was growing steadily weaker.
Among that horde was Aldebaran, a Gastrea infamous for the devastation it had wrought.
It had once served as the right hand of the Stage V Gastrea Taurus, accompanying it as it ravaged Asia.
Taurus had been unusual even among Stage V Gastrea. It typically moved in a swarm, commanding vast numbers of other Gastrea.
It was a commander type.
After Taurus was defeated, Aldebaran had taken its place as the swarm's leader.
Somewhere between Stage IV and Stage V, Aldebaran could do more than command other Gastrea.
It could also spray a corrosive fluid that attacked Varanium, weakening its magnetic effect until it became useless.
Under normal circumstances, the magnetic field generated by a Monolith standing 1.618 kilometers tall and roughly a kilometer wide would keep Aldebaran far enough away that its corrosive fluid could never reach the surface.
Something was clearly wrong with Monolith Thirty-Two, however.
On the night Scorpio was destroyed, Aldebaran had approached under cover of darkness and torrential rain, then applied its corrosive fluid to the Monolith.
Now, the enormous structure, once pitch-black, had turned almost entirely white.
On the inner side of that failing barrier, nearly all of Tokyo's available forces stood ready.
The military and most of the Civil Security personnel had assembled there to repel the Gastrea once the Monolith collapsed.
"Rentaro, Enju... never mind."
Kisara had been about to warn them again not to push too far forward, but she gave up.
Those two stubborn idiots wouldn't listen anyway.
The only way to keep them out of it would be to physically restrain them.
Besides, the real battlefield wouldn't be here at Monolith Thirty-Two.
The Five Wings Association was also making its move. It wanted revenge, and it intended to destroy Tokyo completely.
There were only a handful of ways it could accomplish that.
One was to destroy the Monoliths.
Surveillance around the structures had already picked up suspicious activity.
Of course, that intelligence had deliberately gone unreported.
They needed to use this Gastrea invasion to fundamentally change the circumstances of the Cursed Children.
"Kisara, hasn't he made a move yet?"
"A move to do what?"
Kisara responded to Miori's question as though she had no idea what she meant.
"You're still going to play dumb at a time like this?"
Miori's expression was grave.
She was certain Kisara had some kind of plan.
Kain had disappeared half a day ago, and there was still no sign of the force backing him.
If he truly refused to help during Aldebaran's invasion, Tokyo might be finished.
Still, Miori believed he would intervene.
He would probably wait until Tokyo was in truly desperate straits.
Once the Gastrea had severely weakened the area's forces, the power behind him would finally reveal itself and take control of Tokyo.
That was the possibility Miori had arrived at.
She suspected it was exactly what Kisara intended.
Kisara must have realized what she was thinking. Why keep pretending otherwise?
Did she really want Miori to spell it out?
That would leave little room for either of them to pretend they were still on friendly terms.
"My plan? You'll see soon enough."
Kisara's smile was dazzling.
At the same time, a report came through the communicator at her ear.
The people under surveillance were finally moving.
They had begun detonating their explosives.
Boom!
The sudden explosion made Miori whip her head toward Monolith Thirty-Two.
No.
The sound hadn't come from Thirty-Two.
It had come from the other side.
Her gaze swept across Tokyo's densely packed buildings.
Was that smoke rising from one of the Monoliths over there?
Having spent so much time around weapons, she recognized the sound. That blast had been caused by a huge quantity of explosives.
The realization drained the color from her face.
No.
It couldn't be.
The distant Monolith began to shudder violently. Enormous cracks spread across its surface, visible even from where she stood.
If she could see those cracks from this far away, the structure was finished.
She rounded on Kisara, glaring.
"You..."
"Don't look at me. Neither of us did it. You can thank the Five Wings Association for that. All we did was keep quiet about what we knew."
That only made Miori's expression uglier.
Her furious gaze remained fixed on Kisara.
A moment later, the distant Monolith finally reached its limit.
It collapsed.
The thunder of its immense mass striking the ground rolled across the entire Tokyo Area, reaching the defensive position at Monolith Thirty-Two.
Everyone turned to witness the scene of utter despair.
(End of Chapter)
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