Before Lucky Roux and the others could recover from the world-ending shock, Shirahoshi's crisp, calm voice drifted over.
"The target has been completely purged."
Immediately afterward, the world spun around them again.
When they came to their senses once more, they were stunned to find themselves back in the grand assembly hall of Marine Headquarters.
Around them were still the rows of neatly arranged seats, the massive sea map floating in midair, and the solemn Marine officers filling the hall.
Everything was exactly the same as before they had left, as though nothing had changed at all.
If not for the faint smell of gunpowder and salty seawater still lingering in their nostrils from the high-altitude deck.
Lucky Roux and the others would almost have suspected that they had fallen under some sophisticated illusion, that they had never left this spot from beginning to end.
But the lingering scent in their noses, their hearts that had yet to settle, and the weakness still remaining in their legs silently reminded them.
Everything that had just happened was real.
The island called Bita Island, and every living thing on it, had truly been completely erased before their eyes.
The abrupt transition from an apocalyptic Purgatory to a solemn assembly hall, that extreme contrast, instead left Lucky Roux and the others overwhelmed by a powerful sense of dizziness and unreality.
A moment ago, they had been standing high in the sky, watching an island sink beneath the sea.
The next moment, they were sitting safely in this solemn hall, while the officers around them looked perfectly normal, as though nothing had happened.
The destruction of an island. The death of tens of thousands of lives.
Here, it had been reduced to seven casual words in the meeting's proceedings: "The target has been completely