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Chapter 4 — Huh? You Want Me to Fight?! But I Don’t Have Any Powers Anymore!

At this level, the Divine King couldn’t beat the UEG. Even so, she couldn’t use her full power right away. If she fought at full strength, the place would turn into a wasteland like the canyon. There was no way the seal they were constructing would survive.

On top of that, if she released her power all at once, her body wouldn’t survive. She needed to increase her power in stages to acclimate herself to each new level.

She began by removing her first seal. The magic and life energy of the believers around her began to flow into her. Her body screamed in protest at the sudden rush of power. At this level, she would only take enough energy to make her followers feel a little tired.

With a roar, she swung her blade down. The shock wave unleashed from the tip of her sword cleaved through the earth towards the UEG, who responded by swinging her own sword up in a backhand grip. The two shock waves struck each other, dissipating harmlessly.

“This is the first time I have fought with a sword in quite a while. I was hoping to engage in some actual swordplay,” the UEG said, spinning the sword in her hand with a somewhat unsatisfied expression. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned by the Divine King’s attack. “However, it appears you have no such inclination. I suppose I will have to start us off myself!”

In the blink of an eye, the UEG closed the distance between them. The Divine King managed to bring her blade up just in time to block a fatal blow.

The Divine King cried out as the shock of the impact shot through her arms. The UEG continued to push on her weapon, but her opponent didn’t retreat a step.

“Hmm. I expected you to fold to a single blow, but you seem sturdier than I anticipated. I am impressed you can take a strike from a sword I created.”

The Divine King delivered a kick to the UEG’s stomach. It felt just like kicking any other girl of her stature. Her stomach was soft, showing no signs of muscle. In an ordinary girl her size, the blow would have ruptured her organs and snapped her spine, but the UEG was only knocked back a few steps, showing no hint of injury.

“I see, I see. So that is how you deal with our blades being locked. We cannot simply push on each other forever, so you chose to take some distance.” As her words suggested, the UEG was a novice when it came to swordplay. She was relying purely on force as she swung her sword around. “Hm. You seem to think rather poorly of my skills. That is something I cannot help. I have very few opportunities to fight with a sword like this.”

The Divine King saw a faint opening, the smallest possibility of victory. The UEG’s blinding speed and overwhelming strength were a serious threat, but they weren’t enough to overwhelm her. If she could reach a higher level of power, she should be able to win.

This time, the Divine King stepped forward. If she waited for her body to adjust to her new power level, she might become overwhelmed. Her chances were better if she kept the pressure on her opponent.

“Oh, a proper sword fight, then! Ah! You seem! Rather! Skilled!”

The Divine King unleashed a flurry of blows, leaving no space for the UEG to breathe, putting the god on the defensive. Though the newcomer seemed capable of fending off the strikes, she clearly had no skill in swordsmanship and therefore no way of dealing with the unending stream of blows.

I can do this!

If the Divine King could keep the pressure on, the opening seal on her powers would continue to feed her with more strength. So she kept up her patient assault. Rather than seeking vital spots to attack, she overwhelmed the UEG with her sheer number of strikes.

She brought her sword down. The UEG blocked it, but the impact sent a tremor through the earth beneath them. Downward slashes tore through the earth, while sideways sweeps unleashed gales of wind. The longer they fought, the greater the Divine King’s power grew, each swing of her weapon displaying more supernatural strength than the last.

 

    

 

But as the fight continued, the situation remained the same. As her body grew accustomed to her new power, the Divine King’s seal released more and more for her to use. Most of the believers engaged in the construction of the towers around them had collapsed—she was wringing as much magical energy from them as possible. The range of her power was expanding, drawing from the nearby villages now as well.

But she couldn’t deliver a finishing blow. Judging from the abilities the UEG had shown at the start, the Divine King should have won by now. The only explanation was that as she grew stronger, so did the UEG.

“Dammit!” she cursed as the UEG deflected a powerful slash into a nearby tower, pulverizing it. Her strength was already enough to manage such a feat, yet there was still no gap between her and her opponent. As the tower storing the concentrated power of her believers crumbled, her will wavered. The UEG took the opportunity to disengage, but the Divine King made no effort to chase her. There was no point in continuing this way.

“I made such an effort to avoid damaging the seal you were constructing here too. How careless of you to destroy it yourself,” said the UEG.

“What exactly is your plan?”

There was no point in asking the question in the middle of a fight. But surprisingly, the UEG answered.

“As you have guessed, I am incredibly powerful. But as a god, a contest against a human could hardly be called a fight. Therefore, I suppressed my own power to make the match more even, but you seem to be creeping ever closer to the level of a god yourself. There would be no value in fighting an opponent that has no method of resisting, though. So I have been waiting to see how you fight back. Do you not intend to use this massive contraption?”

Five of the towers were more or less complete. One had been destroyed, but the other four would be able to function. Of course, they were hardly in peak condition. Her team hadn’t gathered that many believers to use as power sources, and the circuits designed to combine and amplify their power were less than half finished.

With a close enough target, they might have still had an effect. It was getting to the point where she couldn’t afford to save the trap for Yogiri. If she held out and ended up dying, she wouldn’t be able to do anything about him either. It would take considerable time to set up another trap, but there seemed no other option.

“Knights of the Divine King! Manifest in accordance with my summons!” Holding her sword to the sky, the Divine King called out and light filled the air around her. Then it faded, revealing dozens of figures. Knights of the Divine King, led by the Swordmaster to guard the Divine King herself.

“Huh? Uhh...what’s going on here?” The first to lift his voice in confusion was Lynel, a man who had passed the trial to become a Knight not long before.

“We already explained this, didn’t we? We’re Knights of the Divine King now. If she summons us, we have to go!” Frederica explained to him. She, too, had become a Knight during the events in the Garula Canyon.

“We have to go...but like this?! She just teleports us?! Teleporting so many people from so many places sounds crazy...”

The Knights weren’t an organization with a fixed base. They each acted independently, spread out across the world.

“She’s the Divine King! Of course she can do that!”

In spite of Frederica’s words, such an ability wasn’t actually something that could be taken for granted. Teleporting people across vast distances required enormous power. In order to accomplish it, a fair number of her believers’ lives had been extinguished. The Divine King’s miraculous powers were founded on the sacrifices of her followers.

“Divine King, I understand you would only summon us like this in an emergency. What is the situation?” Amidst the confusion, the Swordmaster, Rick, stepped forward to act as their representative.

The Divine King pointed at the UEG. “That girl is an enemy of humanity. She must be defeated at all costs. I shall begin preparations to seal her away. I need you all to buy time for me.”

Rick hesitated for a moment, which was natural. Their enemy looked like nothing but a cute young girl. But the moment he noticed the destroyed tower, his hesitation vanished.

“I hardly feel such a spectacle is necessary. I could have just waited for all of you. But no matter. If you are going to such lengths to prepare entertainment for me, I will not put it to waste.”

It was possible the UEG would have waited, just as she said. She had made no move to interrupt when the Divine King had stopped to summon her Knights. But there was no way they could trust such an enigmatic being.

“What? Huh? You want me to fight?! But I don’t have any powers anymore! The best I can say is that my terrible luck has gotten a little better recently!”

“Pull yourself together, Lynel,” Frederica scolded him. “You’re a Knight now.”

“Umm, shouldn’t Takatou and Dannoura be here? They were Knights too, but I don’t see them anywhere.”

“Who knows? Maybe they were too far away, or they’re busy.”

If the Divine King were capable of summoning Yogiri, she wouldn’t have hesitated. But since the two teens were not followers of the Axis Church, her power couldn’t affect them. If Yogiri had been one of her followers, she could have already manipulated or killed him as she saw fit. There wouldn’t have been any need to construct the elaborate ritual in the first place.

“You don’t have to do anything, Lynel. Please find a place to hide,” Rick said before lunging forward to engage the UEG. The other Knights grasped the situation instantly, following Rick at once.

“Umm...I don’t know how I feel about you having no expectations of me at all, though I guess I can’t really do anything here...”

Ignoring Lynel’s muttering, the Divine King left the situation in the hands of the Swordmaster and headed to the altar.

◇ ◇ ◇

Yogiri’s group was floating through the air towards the continent in the east. Hiruko was at the front, with Yogiri, Tomochika, Mokomoko, Hanakawa, and Luu behind her. Though they were floating through the air, they felt strangely stable, enough for Yogiri to lie back using his hands as a pillow. Tomochika was beside him, in a seated position with her legs stretched out in front of her.

“Hey, why are you covering your legs now?” Yogiri asked, curious as to why she had started to wear leggings. Though Tomochika frequently changed outfits, this was the first time her legs hadn’t been totally visible.

“I wasn’t worried about it before, but I don’t really want people staring at me.”

Yogiri could understand that. If they were going to be flying around like this regularly, her other outfits bore the risk of accidentally flashing her underwear to the people below them.

“Why are you looking at me all of a sudden?!” Hanakawa cried. “Sir Takatou seems just as likely to peek in situations like this!”


“I’m not going to be upset if I happen to see something, but I’m not going to go out of my way to look.”

“I am exactly the same! I have fully learned that if I overstep my bounds, something terrible could happen to me! If I thought I might see something, I would look away, and if I saw something by accident, I would pretend I didn’t! That is how kind-hearted I am!”

“Either way, it feels gross. From either of you!”

“I see. That’s too bad. I really liked your thighs.”

“O-Oh... Well, maybe when we’re not flying around so much, I’ll change again.”

As they talked, they shot out over the ocean. There didn’t seem to be any signs of them being accosted from the sky. With Hiruko keeping them hidden, it was possible they hadn’t been noticed.

“If this were an RPG, it would feel like we were closing in on the end, would it not?” Hanakawa commented. “Moving along at high speed like this with no regard for the terrain and no other encounters detracts from the adventurous atmosphere. All that is left is to head directly for the last boss, I suppose.”

Of course, they had no idea how long Hiruko would cooperate with them. Relying too much on her could end up being a liability.

“No, if it were me, I would avoid going to the last boss if I could fly like this,” Yogiri replied. “This is when I’d start checking all the places surrounded by mountains that I couldn’t reach before. That’s where you’re going to find the best equipment for the boss fight, right?”

“But there’s always a chance there’s a whole other world and that you aren’t actually at the end of the game, isn’t there?” Tomochika added.

“I really like games that do that. It feels like I’m getting a lot out of them for my money.”

“Really? Don’t you get frustrated thinking you’ve finished the game but it keeps going?”

“You have to keep playing whether you like it or not at that point, don’t you?” said Yogiri.

“When it happens, it feels like I’m being conned somehow...but at the same time like not finishing the game is a waste, so I often keep going.”

“In any case,” Hanakawa interjected, looking up at the sky, “though it may not end up being another world, there are still some mysterious locations here that we have yet to explore.”

Peeking out from behind the clouds were numerous rock formations. When they had first arrived, those floating islands had been proof they were in a new world, but now they were so common as to be barely noticed.

“I have heard there is an entire continent floating in the sky,” he continued, “though it is of course hard to discern from the surface.”

“It doesn’t seem totally unbelievable. Those fake angels come from the sky, after all.” Tomochika looked up. If they weren’t just appearing out of thin air, there had to be some place they were coming from.

“I don’t know what you guys are gabbing about, but look at that.” Hiruko pointed.

Yogiri looked ahead. A large white object was floating on the surface of the ocean. Beyond it, they could see something that looked like land, but a thick haze shrouded it, making it impossible to see clearly. They could only tell that it was too large to be an island.

“Is that a ship? Or wait, a city?” Tomochika asked, putting her fantastic eyesight to good use.

As they got closer, Yogiri could also see the same thing. It looked more like an enormous floating city than a ship. On the upper level was an array of uniform buildings. Yogiri knew of the Mega-Float airport built over the water in Tokyo Bay, but that was still connected to land. This city was floating in the middle of the ocean.

“What should we do?” Hanakawa asked. “It seems likely some sort of event will trigger if we visit.”

“I can’t say I’m not curious, but I doubt we’ll find a Sage there, so we should go straight ahead to the continent.” Yogiri answered.

“Then we’re ignoring it,” Hiruko stated, taking them over the city and towards land, where the haze began to grow thicker. It soon became a dense fog, obstructing all view of their surroundings.

“Are we okay like this? It seems a situation like this is intended to lead us astray,” Hanakawa suggested.

“Can’t we use Enju’s sensors to tell if we’re still going straight?” asked Tomochika.

“Her abilities are not that powerful, so I feel you should avoid relying on them too much, but we do seem to be heading in a straight line—”

Mokomoko’s voice was cut off as a tremor shook the group. After a series of surprised shouts, they looked at Hiruko to see what had happened and found her toppled over.

“What’s wrong?” Luu asked, worried.

“We ran into something! Huh? What the heck?!” Hiruko attempted to reach out with her hands, but stopped. Something was pushing her back. “An invisible wall? Are you serious?! Is there a barrier here?!”

“Hah! After all that posturing, you get defeated by a simple barrier?”

“Don’t make me come over there!”

“Hanakawa really likes to stir things up in situations like this, huh?” Tomochika snapped.

“This does appear to be the edge of the world, does it not?” said Hanakawa.

“Huh? You mean the fog?”

“You see similar things in video games from time to time. In order to hide the fact that the world ends there, they cover it in fog!”

“It feels a lot better than suddenly hitting an invisible wall, so I like that way of doing it,” Yogiri replied.

“Who cares about video games right now?!” cried Tomochika.

Even if the world did have edges, one was unlikely to be here. There was supposed to be a continent to the east of them.

Yogiri walked up to Hiruko where she was floating in the air and stretched out a hand. He was able to reach farther than she could, finding no obstacle at all.

“Let me warn you, my power doesn’t work past here. If you waltz on ahead, you’ll drop like a rock.”

“Does this barrier only block Hiruko? Can you guys try as well?”

The rest of them tested it out. Hiruko, Luu, Mokomoko, and Hanakawa couldn’t pass the invisible wall, but Yogiri and Tomochika had no trouble moving through it.

“It seems to block particular types of beings, or those of a certain power level, I guess?”

“How does Takatou qualify as an ordinary person here?!” Tomochika cried.

“Hiruko, can you do something about this?” asked Yogiri.

“Nope. I gotta follow the rules that are set up.”

A voice called out to them, though there was no visible source. “Hello! My apologies, but I cannot allow you to proceed any farther. If you came here by mistake, please turn back now. If you have some business in Belm, I am sure you saw the floating city, so please go inquire there.”

“Sounds suspicious to me,” said Tomochika.

“But we don’t really have a choice, do we?”

“It feels like a forced event. Are we yet again to be wrapped up in some sort of incident?!” asked Hanakawa.

“That seems to be the way things go for us...” Thinking back on their journey so far, Tomochika’s eyes grew distant.

“If you don’t want to go, we can leave you behind, Hanakawa.”

“Only a demon would leave me here! Of course I will accompany you!”

“I’m going too!” shouted Luu.

“Not like they can mess with us too much if a god like me is around,” Hiruko added.

They decided to do as they were asked and head to the floating city.



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