Ui and Hinata's Notes: The City
1. The City
Ui: The place where the LCB team we've been speaking with resides. In many ways it resembles Kivotos, yet it is utterly different.
Hinata: In all my life, I have never heard of a place so dreadful.
Ui: Neither have I. It feels like someone took a dystopian setting from a novel and made it several times more bleak. Just as we organized our notes on the Sinners, let us write down everything we have learned about the City. The bus team recently obtained more information, so the timing is perfect.
1-1. Structure
Ui: The basic structure is similar to ours. Kivotos is an academy city composed of countless schools, while the City is a corporate metropolis formed by twenty-six corporations known as the Wings. At the center, corresponding to our General Student Council, stand the three corporations that make up the Head—A Corp, B Corp, and C Corp—ruling over everything.
Hinata: There are far fewer corporations than academies, aren't there?
Ui: Yes. Yet according to what Yi Sang told me, the City's total area is only about thirty-five thousand square kilometers.
Hinata: That size is... wait, isn't that barely the size of a large academy's autonomous district?
Ui: Exactly. And yet the population exceeds six billion.
Hinata: That sounds far too cramped to live in...
Ui: Well, it isn't physically impossible. Just extraordinarily uncomfortable.
1-2. The Wings
Ui: The twenty-six corporations that form the backbone of the City—the Wings. Strangely enough, they often employ bird-related metaphors.
Hinata: The residential districts managed by the Wings are called Nests, right?
Ui: Yes. Technologies that even Millennium would never dare to imitate are sold here at exorbitant prices under the name of Singularities. Let me see... F Corp possesses the Fairy, which can open anything that has the concept of being locked—even people.
Hinata: O-opening a person...?
Ui: ...I would rather not imagine it. Returning to the point: opposite F Corp is J Corp, which holds a Singularity for locking things—the Lock. K Corp owns the nanomachines known as HP Bullets that rapidly heal cells. M Corp produces Moonlight Stones that aid mental concentration. P Corp deals in preservation-related Singularities. R Corp somehow manufactures vast quantities of military forces. T Corp manipulates time itself. U Corp possesses the Resonance Tuning Fork, which preserves phenomena and makes separate things resonate as if they were one from the beginning. W Corp holds spatial-transfer technology. X Corp forges alloys so hard they will never break. And so on. Just hearing the list is enough to take one's breath away.
Hinata: You mentioned before that T Corp's Nest has a culture similar to ours. And that W Corp... they call it spatial transfer, but the reality was far more cruel.
Ui: Turning passengers—or rather, what used to be passengers—into chunks of meat and then joking while piecing them back together like a puzzle... I could never do something like that.
2. Society
Ui: This is probably where the greatest difference between the City and Kivotos lies.
Hinata: Even in Kivotos there are conflicts between academies and other political troubles. During the Eden Treaty, the Arius students appeared by exploiting the tension between Trinity and Gehenna. Sensei also told me that various incidents occurred at Millennium, Abydos, Shanhaijing, and Hyakkiyako.
Ui: And the invasion of the Colors... just thinking about it again is horrifying. Hinata, you participated in the assault on the Sanctum, and I heard Hanako later boarded the Ark herself, correct?
Hinata: Yes. Hanako said that a Shiroko from a parallel world, along with Sensei, fought a decisive battle against our Sensei and allies aboard the Ark.
Ui: And every so often that Gematria group creates bizarre monsters and unleashes them... I always end up getting dragged along by Mika and taking every hit while fighting...
Hinata: Hahaha... I think I understand how you feel. The first time I saw the giant Peroro, I couldn't understand what I was even doing there.
Ui: But even with all these incidents... I still love Kivotos. At least here there is a warm sense of humanity. Yi Sang said that the people living in the Nests are feathers, and that a Wing losing one or two feathers is nothing of consequence.
Hinata: The City's total population is in the six-billion range... I wonder how many people those one or two feathers actually amount to.
Ui: Being unable to live as a human being is one of the worst fates imaginable.
Hinata: How should I put it... the City seems to actively create these horrors. Living in a Nest requires enduring enormous taxes, while living in the Backstreets means literally staking your life. In some Backstreets, murder is common—and even cannibalism.
Ui: It feels like population control. Even saying it myself sounds absurd. Regulating the number of people? Honestly. As if humans were microorganisms on a culture plate. And then there are the Outskirts and the Ruins. Places still unexplored. People do live in the Outskirts, I heard—though they risk death from monsters at any moment.
Hinata: Are the Ruins literally ruins? Like the place we saw on that island?
Ui: Yes. Overflowing with treasures. And, of course, with monsters as well. And finally, the Head we briefly mentioned before.
Hinata: For a governing body to create only a few rules and then leave a city like this to its own devices... it's far too irresponsible.
Ui: Indeed. Yet if those rules are broken, they dispatch soldiers called the Claws to take lives...
Hinata: Do they want the people of the City to understand that, in the end, they are nothing more than the Head's prey?
Ui: I don't know. What puzzles me is that they possess the power to control everything, yet choose not to. Perhaps they have some other purpose of their own.
Hinata: Whatever it is, it doesn't look good.
3. Fixers
Hinata: The Fixers that Don Quixote so admires... the name turns out to be quite literal.
Ui: Workers who will do anything—provided you have the money. Of course money is involved here as well. One can open an Office or join a Fixer Association. There are also Fixers directly under the Wings.
Hinata: Hana, Zwei, Tres, Shi, Cinq, Liu, Seven, Eight, Devyat, Dieci, Öufi, Dodeca. There are currently twelve Associations in total, each handling different duties—and different combat styles as well.
Ui: From the police-like Zwei to Öufi, which handles transactions and the like. Some seem ordinary enough, but the Shi Association openly takes assassination contracts. To advertise something like that so brazenly... Looking further, ranks run from 9 to 1, with lower numbers being higher. And among Grade 1 Fixers, those who reach the absolute peak are recognized by the Hana Association and granted a Color.
Hinata: The Guide working with the LCB team, Vergilius, is the Red Gaze, isn't he?
Ui: Yes. He may look like just another gloomy adult on the surface, but in truth he is an overwhelming powerhouse—among the very strongest of the strong.
Hinata: I suddenly wonder... what would happen if a system like this were introduced to Kivotos?
Ui: Me? I'd probably be Grade 9 or lower. You, Hinata, already have tremendous strength and the skill to back it up, so at least Grade 3 or 4—maybe higher?
Hinata: Hahaha... I really don't know if I would measure up that well.