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Chapter 16 — We Don’t Plan On Killing You. Now Hand Over the Treasure

In simple terms, the squid that Van had called an ancient relic was a kind of biological weapon that people could ride inside of and control. Since Yogiri had never explained it to him, Hanakawa was unaware of that, but it was the same giant squid that had attacked Yogiri and Tomochika aboard the cruise ship on their way to the eastern nation of Ent. The same pirates who had used it back then were now using it to attack again.

“Boss! What are you doing?!” a clearly low-ranking member of the crew called out to the woman in the control seat.

“Good question. It’s rampaging around on its own.” The woman wearing men’s clothes and speaking as if she had nothing to do with what was happening was Degul, the leader of the pirates. No matter how she moved the helm or stepped on the pedals, the squid didn’t respond. They didn’t really understand how it worked, so they didn’t know how to stop it or take back control in case of emergency. Degul felt like there wasn’t much point panicking about it, though.

“Did you feed it?” she asked.

“We did, but this is the first time it’s ever flown. It may have consumed more energy than expected in order to do so.”

The squid was smashing all the buildings around it, grabbing the people inside, and throwing them into its mouth. Normally it rested underwater, and so was fed seafood. It had never acted on its own to get food, so they didn’t worry too much about it, but apparently it would do so if forced to the point of starvation.

“It should stop once it’s full. Nothing we can do but wait ’til then.”

“Well...I guess this is just some foreign country in the sky...”

If this was some nation or organization they had a connection with, there might be some reason to panic, but Degul didn’t feel that guilty about attacking this mysterious city floating in the sky. Besides, they were pirates. Pillaging was their bread and butter. Their ride may have been rampaging and destroying things on its own, but the most Degul thought was that it was a waste it was destroying so much they could have stolen.

“I was planning on attacking them anyway, but I was hoping we’d have more time to investigate and prepare. After a blatant attack like this, they’ll be much more on guard next time.”

“True. I doubt they never expected people from below to attack them. There must have been a more effective way for us to attack than this.”

Degul’s group of pirates had used the large squid-shaped relic for their piracy numerous times. While doing so, they had found wing-like parts that could be added onto it. Once added, they’d given the squid the ability to fly. When they had tried testing the new function out, they had found an entirely new world above them. Everyone knew there were islands floating in the sky, but they hadn’t known there were cities or people on them.

At first, they had been excited to find fresh hunting grounds, but then the squid had suddenly gone into a frenzy. This had just been a test flight, so they had minimal crew on board. They’d had no intention of actually attacking.

“Either way, looks like my power’s working. Actually, doesn’t it look like we’ll be able to wipe them out at this rate?”

The ability to nullify others’ powers came not from the squid but from Degul herself. She could nullify any powers within a set distance. She could only do that to special skills in this world, so they’d be defenseless against something like cannons, but it seemed the city relied entirely on skills to defend itself.

“Is that how we do things?”

“Yes, depending on the situation. Normally, if they hand over the loot, there’s no reason to kill them...but we’ve already attacked them. If we just say, ‘We don’t plan on killing you; hand over the treasure,’ do you think they’ll comply?”

“Yeah...I guess we’ve basically declared war on them.”

“Right? Even if we had no intention of fighting, we can’t avoid it now. It’s already started. We gotta go all in at this point.”

Their guess that flying took more energy than usual seemed correct, as the squid began using its tentacles to grab onto the buildings around them. Some were being used to pull itself between the buildings, while others were destroying the buildings and grabbing the people inside. It must have been extremely hungry, as it was proactively throwing people into its mouth. There were no signs of it stopping anytime soon.

“Uhh. We’re gonna have to fly again to get back to the hideout, aren’t we?” Degul said.

“Looks that way.”

“Is it gonna do the same thing there?”

“Maybe we can get it to eat enough here that it doesn’t have to.”

“Can it store that much?”

“Before we left, the energy gauge was at about two-fifths. It’s around one-fifth now.”

“So you didn’t feed it.”

“We feed it plenty before we launch an attack. We were only planning on testing if the flight worked this time.”

“I guess we just have to deal with the situation at hand. We’ll let it eat ’til it’s full.”

To the enormous squid, individual humans were tiny as food. If they let it eat until it was full, the city would be effectively wiped out, but that was none of Degul’s concern.

Passing between the buildings, it made it to something like a main street. There was a crowd of young people wearing identical uniforms there. It seemed they were attempting to fight off the creature but were starting to realize they couldn’t use their powers.

“Like fish in a barrel, huh?”

The squid reached out with its tentacles, grabbing people from everywhere and throwing them into its mouth. With no skills, weapons, or resolve to fight back, those below were no match for it. The squid continued down the road as it ate, and no one emerged to stop it. Even the people without uniforms just milled around helplessly, showing no sign of resistance.

“But this is kind of boring. Can we not get control back soon?”

“We’re now at over half a tank, so the feeding shouldn’t be so urgent anymore. Maybe it’s just having fun.”

“That’s no good for a vehicle or a weapon. It’s too unstable. I’ll have to reconsider how we use this thing from now on.”

“Yes, it doesn’t appear suited to more delicate operations. We didn’t give it much thought before.”

“No one would have expected something like this—oh, I have control again.” Degul had adopted an “in for a penny, in for a pound” attitude, deciding to let the squid continue eating people. Using a tentacle, she reached for a girl in front of her, but before she could grab her, the fat boy beside the girl threw her into a hole in the road. With a shrug, Degul grabbed the boy instead and tossed him into the squid’s mouth.

“I guess it won’t eat on its own anymore?”


“Looks that way. It won’t digest anything unless you press the ‘convert’ button.”

Now that the squid was under control, it wouldn’t eat of its own volition. Degul reached for the “convert” button, but before she could grab it, she was thrown from her chair and into the wall. She lost all sense of where she was. The impact was so strong that she blacked out for a moment, an experience she had never felt before.

“Ugh...Boss!” her subordinate said, picking himself up off the floor beside her.

The squid had been knocked onto its side. The control room was designed to stay level no matter which way the rest of the squid moved, but the impact had been so strong that it had shaken the room anyway.

“What? What happened?” Degul rose unsteadily to her feet and made her way back to the control seat. She brought the squid back upright and checked their surroundings. A dark shadow stood beside them. Roughly the same size as the squid, it was a horned, winged giant. Its body was covered in black metal, and it had six arms and glowing red eyes. It was taking a defensive stance, content to stare at them.

“Makes sense. My power won’t stop a huge thing like that from punching us.”

“Boss! What do we do?!”

“If I can’t nullify it, we’re in a bad spot.”

Deciding they were outmatched, she moved to action immediately, deploying the squid’s wings and retreating into the sky. The strange giant had wings of its own, so she thought it might pursue them, but it showed no sign of moving.

The squid flew over the city walls and into the open sky. Each of the floating islands had a similar barrier around it. Degul’s powers could nullify the barrier and allow her to pass through, but it seemed some special method was required to get through it otherwise. In short, they could assume no one would chase them.

“That was kind of dangerous. Was it some sort of devil?”

“Boss, I’m glad we got away, but we shouldn’t keep flying like this.” They could see the energy gauge dropping in real time. Hovering in the air wasn’t going to be possible for long.

“Good point. Let’s find another island to land on.”

“We’re not going home?!”

“If we’re coming back here, we need to investigate more. We don’t know anything yet. Let’s see. How about one of those islands without any large cities on it? Let’s snatch two or three people from there and see what we can learn from them.”

“I’m not sure about this...”

Ignoring the doubtful look on her subordinate’s face, Degul pushed the squid towards another of the islands.

◇ ◇ ◇

Tired of her own strength, Suudoria had created the Suudoria Academy, a school whose aim was to raise someone powerful enough to defeat Suudoria herself. She had planned to wait until that person was born, but the wait proved unbearably long. While there were certainly some promising results, the growth was far too slow.

So Suudoria decided to reincarnate herself. Skipping past the slow progress in the present, she aimed at the far future. In order to be reborn, she would be dead for a time. For an immortal being like Suudoria, death was impossible, but she could use a ritual to force herself to be reborn at a later date. For her, it was akin to a long sleep.

As planned, a few thousand years later, she was born again as a child of two teachers in the academy. She had been worried about whether the school would survive that long, so she was relieved to see it had continued to develop without issue. Through research and innovation, the students were gaining considerable power.

But there was an entirely different problem. For some reason the school had been moved to a strange continent, was at war with other organizations, and no one could leave it. The reason for these changes hadn’t survived the passage of time. At some point things had changed here, and now the students thought that was just the way the world worked.

Suudoria found that to be interesting in and of itself. She had chosen to create this school and be reincarnated because she had grown tired of her own strength. A situation so far beyond what she had imagined was plenty stimulating, and the idea of living as a student for a while wasn’t that bad. She hadn’t lost any of her powers after being reincarnated, and in fact they had grown over time, but she decided to suppress that power and live as a normal child.

Little by little she released her latent powers to match the children around her, allowing herself to smoothly pass through elementary school, middle school, and finally make her way into the high school that made up Suudoria Academy proper.

First, she intended to live as a first-year student, using more and more of her power as necessary once she was sent out into combat. She soon grew attached to her school life and lost the will to fight her fellow students. The entire endeavor had been an attempt to create worthy rivals, so refusing to fight them defeated the purpose somewhat, but luckily there were plenty of powerful enemies in the academy’s rival organizations. Apparently, the third-year students of the academy, known as L units, had absolutely absurd levels of power. She didn’t expect similar levels of power from the other organizations, but she would be happy if they were strong enough for her to use some real power against them.

One day, something from beyond the walls appeared. It was a giant squid. It began to destroy the school and attack the students. Sitting in the cafeteria at the time, Suudoria was immediately wrapped up in it.

“I’m sure they’ll be able to handle it,” she had thought to herself after stepping outside and sizing up the intruder, but the students had been unexpectedly powerless to stop it. The squid had nullified their skills and magic, making them unable to take any countermeasures against it.

“It seems they have come to rely on Battlesong too much.”

The Battlesong system hadn’t existed in Suudoria’s time. Someone had come here and added it to the world to make it easier for people to gain powers. She felt there was nothing wrong with using the tools that were available and so had used the system as well, and for the most part had had no issues with it, but it prevented one from wielding power greater than the system’s limits and could be nullified by a power like the one they now faced.

“I feel as if I have seen that squid somewhere before.” She remembered encountering a similar thing before her reincarnation. The humans of her time had created biological weapons to fight against the Demon Lord Suudoria. As it was unrelated to the Battlesong system, it was unlikely the squid was responsible for nullifying the weapons back then. If this was instead a power being wielded by the controller of the squid, that made it a problematic combination. It could nullify the powers of the Battlesong system and thus become immune to them, making it an insurmountable threat to the people of this era who relied entirely upon the Gift.

“Good grief. I suppose I’ll help.” She couldn’t stand idly by while the school she had founded and come to love was trampled. She wanted to continue hiding her powers and enjoying her school life, but at this rate the academy would be wiped out. For the first time since her rebirth, she used her true power. Floating up into the sky, she gathered the magical energy in the air around her, solidifying it into a new body.

Magic that didn’t stem from Battlesong wouldn’t be nullified by the squid, but it probably wouldn’t have much effect on it either. The creature had a reasonable level of magic resistance and could automatically repair most damage done to it. She figured overwhelming physical force was likely a more suitable solution.

It took a little time, but she eventually created a body large enough to match the squid’s. Then, while the beast was absorbed in its feeding frenzy, she punched it as hard as she could from the side. It was sent flying, knocking over more buildings. The damage to the city was increasing, but that was preferable to the enormous cost of life resulting from letting the creature rampage freely.

“Normally there are people riding inside of it, right?”

The shock of the impact had gone through the creature, so no matter how strong its armor, those within likely hadn’t survived the blow unscathed. The squid slowly lifted itself off the ground. Its movements seemed somewhat awkward, showing that her attack had had an effect.

“However, it is probably better to slice it apart—”

A slashing attack would likely be more effective than blunt force. As she decided to create a sword, the squid suddenly jumped into the air. She watched in shock as it deployed transparent wings from its body and flew off into the sky.

It had run away. Was it better to let it flee or follow it and finish it off? As she hesitated, the monster vanished. It had disappeared as it passed through the barrier surrounding the academy. It was either capable of ignoring the borders or it had some sort of ability to teleport. Either way, there was no way she could pursue it now.

“Oh well. I suppose I should focus on rebuilding the city. I will also need to think of a way to fend off that creature if it returns—”

“There is no need for that. You and all the residents of this island will now be exterminated!”

A young girl was standing in front of Suudoria. Wearing a simple white robe, she was the same size as Suudoria’s enormous form. “I am the UEG! All denizens of this world are guilty of locking me away here! As such, I will exterminate you all! Resist as you like! I do not mind playing for a bit, but I am not very patient! If you wish to fight, make it quick!”

The girl’s voice echoed throughout the academy.



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