Chapter 19 — I Was Erased, but Sorry, That Is Not Enough to Kill Me
They were in a sea of stars. It was not the “sea” that contained the celestial foundations that housed their worlds, but a different space ruled by different laws. It was a universe beginning with a big bang. It was a world where planets revolved around stars, stars gathered into constellations, constellations mixed with nebulae to form galaxies, galaxies came together to make up clusters, and clusters were organized into superclusters. That was the kind of world it was.
“You seem to be a higher-level being than I first thought. I did not expect something like this,” the UEG called out to him.
Of course, Touichirou had hidden his potential. He didn’t want to stand out. It was hard not to stand out when he was a League Member of the Slow Life League, but he had done everything he could to leave things to the other members so that he didn’t have to use his own powers. He just wanted to live an easygoing life that made his powers superfluous.
“You too. I was hoping you wouldn’t be able to follow me here.” In truth, the barrier surrounding Belm was no obstacle for him. He could leave anytime he wished and could have ended the war in a heartbeat. But he didn’t care about that. He just wanted a peaceful rural life. If he could keep that up for the rest of the world’s short lifespan, he’d be happy. “But you ended up following me anyway. Hey, can I suggest something?”
“Oh? A suggestion for me? I suppose I will hear you out.”
“Don’t mess with the world we just came from.”
“Very well. I am not so skilled at reconstruction, so I cannot guarantee I would be able to return it to its former state. And I certainly do not wish it destroyed.”
“In that case, why don’t we quit the fight altogether? It’s a pain in a lot of ways.”
“You speak far too much. Do you not understand buying time will accomplish nothing for you? No matter. Whether you wish it or not, we begin now!”
The UEG vanished. Touichirou would have been happy if she had decided to run away, but given how motivated she was, he couldn’t bring himself to believe that had happened. Searching out her location, he jumped to where she was, finding her in no time.
She had grown enormous. Even in this space, where there was so little to gauge size against, she was obviously huge. Enough that she could hold a planet in her hands.
“Going all out from the start would end things too quickly. Let us begin with a small test!”
“That’s ridiculous!”
With a swing of her arm, the UEG threw a planet at him. Touichirou hurriedly dodged out of the way. If there had been any life on that planet, it would have been wiped out in an instant. The planet vanished into the depths of the universe.
Touichirou grew in size to match the UEG. Size made no difference to the power he could wield, but if he allowed her to remain so much larger than him, he would be overwhelmed mentally. In a battle between gods, that could be enough to tip the scales.
“You can become large too. What of it? If that is all, I can still grow even larger.” The UEG expanded again, swinging a hand above her head. As she did, stars began to gather in her palm. Planets, asteroids, stars, and gasses, the material that served to make up intelligent life gathered together into the form of a spear.
Such an act was pointless. She could have just attacked using her power directly. But these kinds of bluffs were important. If the opponent recognized it as a powerful attack, that would be enough to make the attack actually stronger. That was what a battle between gods looked like.
The UEG threw her spear. Touichirou dodged around it, gathering stars as well. After he had collected enough, he threw them forward without aiming. They exploded outwards, showering the UEG like buckshot.
“Such an attack is meaningless!” she shouted, pulling out a black hole and absorbing the assault.
“A black hole? Is that the real thing?”
“Who knows? It looked like one, so I used it as one!”
At some point, they had tacitly agreed it would be a battle using celestial bodies as weapons. The two continued to grow ever more massive, using galaxies, clusters, and superclusters against each other. No intelligent life in the universe would be able to stand it. Two unbelievably massive beings had suddenly appeared and were bringing the cosmos to ruin.
“Hmm. This will get us nowhere,” the UEG suddenly said. After having wreaked such havoc in this universe, Touichirou couldn’t help but feel exasperated, though he could hardly complain, as he’d been just as active a participant in the destruction. “Very well, let us move on to the next stage of our test!”
Light burst from the UEG’s body. In an instant, the universe around them was incinerated. The attack struck in literally every direction possible, leaving no room to run or hide. It would be pointless for Touichirou to do the same thing. It was an attack that could destroy an entire universe. There would be no canceling it out, only overpowering it.
He would have to defend against it, but that wouldn’t be so difficult. He just needed to go to another universe. He fled to a parallel world, one where a disaster like the UEG had never appeared.
“I thought this place had nothing to do with her, but it’s already a mess...”
“That is because I was never here. I would strike down anyone who attempted to sow such chaos in my own world.”
“Dammit!”
The UEG unleashed light again. Touichirou fled to yet another parallel world, but her light was already there. He tried to flee again as the attack scorched him, but the UEG was always one step ahead. In the end, his only option was to take the attack head on.
“Hmm. Though I was holding back, I am impressed you survived.”
“Now it’s my turn!” He had been unmotivated before, but he was starting to feel the urge to fight back.
Touichirou headed to a universe governed by entirely different laws and immediately erased the one he had just come from along with all the parallel universes connected to it.
“Honestly...I fail to understand what you are attempting to do in destroying all the parallel universes like that.” The UEG appeared behind him, calm and composed.
“I don’t want to hear that from you.”
She had followed him from an entirely different world first, so it was no surprise she could follow him here as well. Now what would follow would be even greater tragedy. They would both leap between universes, trying to predict their opponent’s moves and erase their destination before they made it there. They would attempt to jump out of the dimensional space occupied by their opponent and destroy it from the outside. As they did, their opponent would jump to an even higher level universe and attempt the same thing.
There should have been no end to the cycle, but suddenly there was. Touichirou’s attack had erased the universe containing the UEG.
“Is it over?” They had erased numerous universes. He was naturally exhausted at this point and was starting to feel fed up with the whole situation.
“Hmm. It was entertaining in a way, but I have grown bored. It is no different from a quarrel between children. I make an invincible barrier, so you fire a beam that can destroy invincible barriers, so I make a barrier that can stop even that. I ended up losing track of what we were doing and made a mistake with my timing.”
How many times had they repeated this cycle? The UEG was standing behind Touichirou once again.
“You... You should have been erased.” He had watched her being erased along with the universe around her, failing to escape in time. And in truth, up until that point, the UEG had ceased to exist.
“Indeed, I was erased, but sorry, that is not enough to kill me. Now, if something like that takes you by surprise, I feel as if I have seen the limits of your abilities. Let us bring an end to this.”
“Someone like you...was locked up?” It was impossible to believe someone this powerful had been sealed away in one small world in one small universe.
“Well, it was done precisely because I could not be killed.” The UEG approached him from behind. Though they had long since gone past the point of needing physical bodies, they were still in humanoid form.
Touichirou spun around and swung his fist. She caught his punch and crushed his fist in her hand. Her power then flowed into him, restraining him from within. She had taken hold of him, leaving him paralyzed.
“What was the point of all that fighting?” The moment they made physical contact, Touichirou understood the difference in their power. He understood there was no way he could ever have beaten her.
“Ah, yes, I simply wished to do something exciting! So I will praise you. You are quite impressive for keeping up with me this long.” The UEG slowly wound up and threw a punch of her own. Unable to dodge her small fist, it struck him and blew his head straight off.
His body shattered and dissipated. Their fight, which had destroyed numerous universes, ended with a single punch.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Hmm...he should be unable to restore himself from here.” The UEG made extra sure that Touichirou had been thoroughly erased. After acting all high and mighty, it would be embarrassing if he turned around and did exactly the same thing she had done. After waiting a while, there was no sign of him returning. It was possible he had returned to life somewhere else, but if he wasn’t going to appear here, she didn’t care.
The UEG returned to the world she had come from, appearing in Touichirou’s village.
“I am starting to feel a little tired. I suppose I will borrow Touichirou’s house to rest.” Though she wasn’t physically tired at all, even gods felt mental fatigue. The boredom of repeating the same thing over and over could lead to them feeling tired and losing motivation.
The UEG waltzed into Touichirou’s house and immediately fell asleep.
◇ ◇ ◇
Yogiri and Tomochika walked down the middle of the road, heading south. The strange grass continued to waver in its unsettling way, but was no danger as long as they didn’t get close to it. They were on the west side of the continent, so they could see the ocean to their right. To their left was grassland that continued on into a forest a little farther away. The way the trees and their branches writhed made it seem like they were infected by the Seyla as well. They could clearly tell they were not normal living things.
After heading south for a while, they came upon a pale, translucent wall. It extended to the left and right and up into the sky, thoroughly blocking their progress. It appeared to be the area boundary they had heard about, invisible until they approached it.
“Can we get through this?”
“Who knows? If it’s the same as the barrier around the continent, we should be able to walk through it since we don’t have the Gift.” Yogiri tried touching the wall, and his hand passed through without issue. “Looks like we can do it. Okay, let’s hold hands.”
“Why?!”
“If something weird happens, we’ll be in trouble. I want to be careful.”
“O-Oh. Well, okay.” Tomochika reluctantly offered her hand, which Yogiri took in his.
“Okay, let’s step through on three.” After a short count, they jumped into the wall, passing through without issue. Turning back, they could see the road they had followed to get there.
“Looks like nothing happened.”
“It would have been a problem if it had.”
The road continued forward, so they started walking again. After climbing a gentle hill, they saw a cliff in front of them.
“Huh?” Even without turning around to check, they knew there had been no branches on the road. There was no way they could have gone the wrong way. Yogiri stepped up to the edge of the cliff, checking to see if the road continued at the bottom. Below the edge of the cliff was a sea of billowing white clouds filling the air. “What the...”
With no idea what he was looking at, he peered farther down. Through gaps in the clouds, he could see the bottom, the ocean, but it was unimaginably far away.
“Uhh...what’s going on? We had to cross the ocean to get here, didn’t we? Are we in the sky now?!”
“Did we go the wrong way?”
“I’m pretty sure this is a bigger problem than getting lost!”
“But we could see the ocean the whole time we were walking here, right?”
They tried looking to the west, but the ocean they had seen before had been replaced by a sea of clouds.
“Yeah, we could,” Tomochika confirmed. “So I never thought we were in the sky.”
“Even if that’s the real ocean down there, isn’t it weird? The Neutral Zone is supposed to be in this direction.”According to what they had heard from Matsuo of the Slow Life League, Belm was two thousand kilometers long from north to south, and they were in the center of the western region. They had walked with the ocean to their right. So if there was nothing but ocean in front of them, that meant they were in the southwestern corner of the continent. But there was no way they had walked a thousand kilometers in such a short time. Furthermore, if this was the southwestern region, they should have been at the Suudoria Academy’s home base, but they saw nothing like that.
“Did we make a mistake somewhere?” Yogiri was confused, trying to figure out what was wrong with the information they had received.
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