“But we do know cities are disappearing around the world,” said Marika. “And in some cases, entire small countries. They’re just gone without at trace, like someone used a giant eraser. That’s the one thing we do know.”

[...]

Cities and countries were disappearing around the world.

And it always happened overnight without anyone able to resist in the slightest.

[...]

The Problem Solvers.

Those five were said to have successfully physically removed the Threat in combat.

[...]

The Problem Solvers.

Their ability in combat tended to get all the focus, but they were used for more than just fighting.

Their powerful magic could support an entire era.

That included everything from the world’s production facilities to things like garbage disposal.

Those monsters could run global-scale infrastructure all on their own.

They were known as monsters because of that energy that was too great to simply call “massive” and because of their influence on the world.

Karuta’s group had their hands full with just the fighting part, so these people were on more than just another level.

The world would grind to a halt without them.

The internet, convenience stores, and air conditioning did not simply exist. Someone was supporting all of those things on a daily basis. And those monsters were the ones supporting those everyday things for 5.5 billion people.

“North America, South America, Eurasia, Oceania, and Africa,” said Marika. “Whatever it says on paper, it’s those five who effectively hold it all together.”

“Yeah, just those five,” said Gekiha.

A mere five people kept the world economy going.

“But.” Utagai Karuta chose his words carefully. “Those Problem Solvers don’t use Crystal Blossoms like us. I hear they use the old-fashioned God-Worshiping Magic.”

“Isn’t that what makes it so impressive?” asked Marika.

“Yeah, it makes you wonder why they haven’t switched to Crystal Blossoms,” said Gekiha. “It’s scary that they can go into battle with the presets of flight, barriers, and regeneration. Well, maybe they aren’t part of the 0.0002% that can use them, but that just makes them all the more monstrous for standing at the top like that.”

Crystal Blossoms. That cutting-edge magic technology controlled printed circuit boards smaller than stamps to produce various supernatural phenomena by catching the optimal currents produced by the occult high and low pressure fronts created by the collision between the energy emitted from the Original Crystal Embryo in the center of the earth and the various powers raining down from outer space.

But you could never reach the level of the Problem Solvers by mastering that path.

There were a lot of rumors about the Problem Solvers like that their attack power was so specialized that they could resolve any situation with a single attack, or that they could use a barrage as fearsome as an Aegis ship to shoot down every last grain of sand of whatever might oppose them, but the details were unknown. They were world-famous, yet so very little was known about them that it was kind of creepy.

If Karuta and his schoolmates were the ones reading the weather maps, then those five were the ones firing dry ice or thermobaric warheads into the sky to produce artificial rain.

The students here could not stand up to them no matter how hard they tried.

[...]

Crystal Magic was like reading the wind and raising your sails.

The energy from the Original Crystal Embryo at the center of the earth and the various powers raining down from outer space would interact and produce variation points similar to high and low pressure, and their power simply read where those were and used the invisible tailwinds to produce supernatural phenomena.

But the Problem Solvers were different. They were like artificial rain. They used giant bombs or dry ice to directly alter the atmospheric pressure, produce clouds, and mess with the weather. They called in a storm for their own convenience. Studying the weather map was no use against a monster like that. Forcing up your sails would only get your ship capsized.

“There are already four other people with the title of world’s strongest.”

“You mean that group of five who have their hands tied because of a stalemate akin to nuclear strategy? When was the last time any of you fought each other?”

“What are you getting at here?”

“I am saying you cannot stop the world from changing, so you should position yourself to use that change as a tailwind. You five are so evenly matched you cannot hope for any more experience points there. Not as enemies or as allies.”

They never arrived at the general reception lobby of Building A.

Something happened before they could.

The entire giant boxy factory was slashed diagonally from within.

Everything collapsed and so much dust filled the scene.

But that screen was sliced through and swept away so nothing remained.

Below the purple sky, a woman grinned at Karuta and Marika. She had long, wavy blonde hair and she wore a tight skirt military uniform with a yellow and black coloration that signified danger.

She could move faster than light. It felt like there was no hitting an enemy like that, but that was not true. That was simply how most people would view it since they thought of the speed of light as an absolute boundary.

After all…

(Anastasia’s childish form of evil does not think of…no, does not believe that light is the world’s fastest. She believes that plenty of things move faster than light.)

He gulped.

(So she knows how to conquer light, but she does not believe that is enough to bend the world to her will. It could be vibrations, or electrons, or wind, or fire. She believes that plenty of other ordinary things have the possibility of surpassing light. So, so, so…)

“Aine! Hit her directly!!”

(This only lets her dodge laser attacks since they use light, so another form of attack has a chance of hitting her!!)

A roar of wind came from a katana made from a translucent, crystal-like material. It had a jitte-like branch on the back of the blade and a special laser gun unit was attached there. Crystal Girl Aine’s clear white dress fluttered around her as she raced forward with weapon in hand.

There was less than 20m between them.

Her nonhuman legs could clear that distance in a single second.

But Anastasia laughed and took a step back.

That was all it took to kill Aine’s speed. She stopped. For some reason, she was running and running but could not reach the woman in a yellow and black uniform.

“I move back every time you move forward, thus you can never reach me.”

“Now you’re dragging out old Greek nonsense!?” shouted Marika from the sky while she charged in like a meteor with rapier in hand.

Anastasia could not use that method for an attack from above since she could not sink down into the ground. She could not bind the attack with the magic that let her ignore distance and speed, so Marika should have been able to reach her. However…

“The moon is pulling me toward it, so I can fly.”

“!!!???”

Anastasia disappeared.

Marika quickly pulled back her rapier, but then the weapon and her right arm’s armor were blown away. Even though she was using a barrier that (unlike Karuta’s) could deflect machinegun fire. The roar came a moment later. The twintail girl just barely avoided crashing and instead made an unsteady emergency landing.

Anastasia had passed through at a speed too fast to follow with the naked eye and her own right fist had been destroyed and her arm bones were sticking out at her elbow.

She stopped in midair, laughed, and kissed the back of her destroyed hand.

“I can kiss it and make it better.”

What happened next goes without saying.

There were no time limits or detailed rules like there were for Crystal Magic.

Instead of tension or a fear of the unknown, seeing the true nature of magic filled him with disgust.

It was not that Anastasia did not know how things really worked.

She had said she could fly because “the moon is pulling me toward it”. That basis required knowledge of universal gravitation, but she still prioritized her own thoughts and believed in them without a shred of doubt. Because that was the age and the world they lived in. Was this her pride in claiming the title of strongest and remaking the world as she saw fit? Even if all the possibilities of every other parallel world would not allow this ridiculous conclusion, this world was different.

This was magic that distorted a world its user had truly never seen. It was a lot like drawing a map of the ends of the earth based on your imagination instead of actually going there.

“All I did was recite a simple hex, focus my own actions on defense, and respond with the appropriate reactions to your attacks.”

They watched as floating Anastasia pulled something from the chest of her tight skirt military uniform.

The thick card set looked a lot like it could be for poker, but that was unlikely.

Or perhaps this was the original form of a card set.

“So now I will go on the offensive. Didn’t I say that magic refers to all attempts to understand the world around you? And that one of the prime examples is trying to explain the Tree of Life with tarot cards?”

The cards flew.

They followed some sort of rules to spread out like a shield in front of her.

“Technically, this is not how they are meant to be used, but I do promise you it will be entertaining.”

[...]

“Enjoy my strongest.”

The ground broke apart and a giant form rose up behind Anastasia in the sky.

[...]

Size-wise, it was like a giant mountain more than 100m tall.

Shape-wise, it had a bizarre silhouette resembling a bipedal dinosaur crossed with a grotesque deep sea fish.

It felt like a great symbol of ruin with how it repeatedly crumbled and re-solidified at its outlines and how it gave off a strangely sweet rotting smell.

[...]

“There are many different forms of tarot divination. Reading the future is the most well-known, but they can also be used to determine your compatibility with another person, to organize your own feelings…or to seek out something in the past that has already been lost.” Anastasia spoke with the giant form behind her. That monster seemed to accept that thing as perfectly normal. “This was originally an attempt to recreate a lost lifestyle by using the 22 cards of the Major Arcana and the 56 cards of the Minor Arcana. In other words, to revive a ruined civilization. But strangely, when I dropped the fishing line into the depths, I ended up catching more than just the one I was after. The line must have been a little too strong because it appears I have fished up every last thing known as a lost civilization.”

“What…are you talking about?”

“Yes, yes! This one caught even me by surprise, but now I can believe it. I had not acquired just the one specific lifestyle. Oh, no. I had fished up all of the civilizations that have vanished since the dawn of history. Altogether, that is a series of 1056 dooms and apocalypses.”

“……………………………………………………………………………………………………”

What the hell was that?

How were they supposed to defeat something as absurd as that?

The category of civilizations could not be measured with something as simple as countries or populations. Thanks to the spread of globalization in modern society, it was impossible to say how many civilizations there were. If this woman had over a thousand methods of destroying an entire civilization – be they a meteor, a flood, a virus, a war, or quieter options like depopulation or isolation – she might be able to destroy the entire world with just a small fraction of them.

[...]

Someone had said Anastasia Blast was in charge of the world’s military infrastructure.

Was this what that meant?

She could protect her allies and kill her enemies. She could alter the power balance. The military was nothing more than the means of using lives to control the rising and falling of civilizations.

She viewed the world before her on the level of civilizations, so she did not focus too much on each individual life. If she appeared before a hero or dictator powerful enough to single-handedly destroy an entire civilization, they would realize for the first time they were nothing more than a side character. Even the Demon Lord with the power to destroy humanity would be killed instantly by a flick of her fingers.

All civilizations would fall one day.

Even if globalization progressed to the point that the entire planet could be considered a single civilization, it would still fall apart eventually if viewed in the long, long term.

(Gathering all the current civilizations won’t be enough to match the total number that have been destroyed in the past. So what about Aine? She’s made from a Crystal Blossom from head to toe, so she doesn’t count as part of humanity and she might be able to deal damage from outside this conflict between human civilizations. No, that wouldn’t work. I still form the foundation as the Crystal Magician, so she’s only a portion of my civilization. Not to mention that Crystal Magic as a whole was created by human hands. So it can’t defeat that collection of our predecessors’ knowledge!)

“Hold on. Is that an ‘oh, no’ I see on your face?” There was clear amusement in Anastasia’s voice. “But I hold every civilization that has been destroyed since the dawn of history, avenger. And that would include that lost time that was stolen before your eyes and that you desire above all else. I do not know where in here the 700 from your Ocean Crystal Magic Academy can be found, but since their small Crystal Blossom civilization was destroyed, it must be found here.”

[...]

“This is the true essence of my magic.”

She moved her right hand like she was holding an invisible brandy glass and the frighteningly large form began to swirl around.

By the time a deafening roar reached his ears, the collection of doom had compressed to the size of a softball and dropped into her hand. Then it crawled out to surround her entire body. Some of it covered her limbs and some spread across her spine to cover her with yellow and black armor.

It almost looked like an incomplete Crystal Blossom.

That giant monster of more than 1000 meters had been made from all the civilizations that had met their doom in the past, yet even it was only a material to be used.

“Now, it is time for the final act,” she said while giving off an even more intensely menacing aura.

Even an ordinary person could tell this was the most efficient way to use that. They could tell this would bring about the ferocious destruction of the world’s strongest far more than letting that 1000m monster run amok.

“All who cannot overcome the doom of a civilization shall be crushed by my wall of doom.”

A yellow and black explosion followed.

As soon as he realized that was Anastasia Blast charging forward, the decisive moment had already arrived.

[...]

Anastasia had become a yellow and black spear intent on piercing the earth, but then a puzzled look appeared on her face. The time did arrive, but it was far different from what she had expected.

There was someone in front of her.

“Aine.”

An ear-splitting clang rang out. The preset barrier meant nothing. The noise sounded like crystal colliding with crystal, but that meant it was a sound of collision and not destruction.

In other words, her attack had been stopped.

Crystal Girl Aine had moved in front of Karuta with her pure white outfit fluttering around her. She held her translucent modified katana in both hands. Instead of breaking or shattering, it had stopped yellow and black Anastasia Blast’s max speed charge from the sky.

“What!?”

“We came all this way carrying the weight of Grimnoah’s 700 people on our backs.”

An unpleasant straining sound could still be heard, but this was not over. She did not collapse. The target before Anastasia’s eyes would not die. Karuta gave a roar while the crystal girl protected him.

“You have every civilization that has ever been destroyed? You have 1056 kinds of doom? Who cares!? We can overcome that without even trying!! So what if you have an ice age, floods, eruptions, and even manmade atrocities and wars? That might have been too much in an age before those things had happened, but those rules no longer apply.”

They glared directly at each other.

As long as he realized something so simple, he could stand on the same level as that world’s strongest who held every kind of doom.

“Don’t underestimate Crystal Magic. Maybe no one else has ever been able to overcome that wall, but we’re different!!”

“Have you forgotten? Those destroyed civilizations include that school that taught Crystal Magic.”

[...]

People grew stronger when they persistently worked toward a goal.

They could gain the power to overcome the kind of disaster that once would have been unavoidable doom for them.

“So we will overcome this! The doom of all past civilizations is no more than an obstacle we must surpass here!! We have to show you we’ve changed, that those older eras are a thing of the past, and that we’ve conquered those things so you can rest easy!!”

[...]

“Humans are not the dinosaurs who met their doom and were no more. We won’t just tremble in fear! No matter how pathetic, ugly, or lame it might be, we know how to learn from our mistakes and overcome them!! So we won’t let it end with our defeat. What you brought to that boat was undoubtedly doom, but that’s exactly why we have to keep going so it doesn’t end there!!”

“Kh.”

They finally pushed back.

That childishly evil voice finally gasped.

“We can learn from tragedy. The pain drives us to claim something even greater in return! The greater the doom you place before us, the stronger we will grow. From the moment you failed to kill us with your very first attack at that school, the small snowball had started rolling down the hill. You can try to stop it now, but we’ve already grown well past your expectations!! So much so that this isn’t going to end with the simple revenge we initially planned it as!!!!!!”

A cracking sound rang out, but not from Crystal Girl Aine. It came from Anastasia who was supposedly still charging forward.

[...]

The next thing he knew, sweat was soaking her face.

There was a smile plastered to her face as she spoke her mind.

“That may be true.”

But the world’s strongest was the world’s strongest to the end.

“But that equation only applies to you; it does not apply to the entirely separate Crystal Blossom that has no civilization of its own.”

“!!!???”

The cracks rapidly shifted toward Aine’s translucent katana. They spread through her pale hands and arms like the propagation of pressure.

The max speed charge was completed.

Anastasia’s arm, the yellow and black armor surrounding it, and the long claw-like thing extending from there pierced the boy’s side. The single attack was enough to break right through the spatial vibration field of his weak barrier. He doubled over and coughed up blood.