Chapter 3 — How Are You So Calm in This Situation?! You’re Making Me Look Stupid for Panicking!
Someone was stuck to the barrier above them. His luxurious clothing meant he was likely the prince Tomochika had mentioned. An enormous woman in a red dress was floating near him.
“These guys can fly?” Yogiri asked.
“M units and above typically move around by flying. It’s probably to protect them from the Seyla,” Scott answered. The rank and file had to wear armor that completely enclosed them since they walked on the ground.
“What are they doing?”
“It takes some time to get through the barrier. Look, that’s what is supposed to happen when you move between areas.”
The color of the barrier around the man began to change. A rainbow of colors mixed together to create a multicolored circle. The man and woman were then able to pass through that circle.
“What do we do, Takatou?!”
“Nothing we can do but wait and see what they do for now.” Judging from the information they had so far, this man had leveled the village behind them and the city in front of them. It was possible he would attack them immediately, but for now he was just looking down at them. If he wasn’t doing anything, Yogiri had no reason to attack him either.
Hmm...it appears we are being investigated. He may be using some sort of information-gathering skill.
“If all he’s doing is scanning us, that’s not really a problem, is it?”
“I guess not,” Tomochika said. “We don’t have anything like jobs or skills.” That was likely why none of the factions of Belm had bothered to recruit them. Up until now, no one had ever recognized they had any particular abilities, so they had been universally underestimated. No one had been able to figure out Yogiri’s power yet.
“Marino, are you sure it’s him?”
“Yes. There is no doubt.”
“Okay. You do seem to be telling the truth...”
“Umm, considering how you’ve acted so far, I thought you would kill him right away and find out for yourself.”
“I attacked the city because it would be difficult to search through the entire place myself. If he’s definitely in front of me, though, there’s no reason to kill him right away. That said, hmm. I guess I should make sure he can’t escape.”
Their surroundings suddenly transformed. The sky turned dark and the earth crimson. Countless needle-like spires erupted from the ground, and between them the earth cracked and spurted magma. The tranquil grassland they had walked through had been erased, replaced by a veritable hellscape.
“What?! What’s going on?!” Tomochika frantically looked around. A deep crevice opened in the earth surrounding them, leaving them on an isolated island amid the destruction.
“Were we teleported somewhere? Doesn’t seem that way.” Considering how much had changed, it wouldn’t be strange to learn they had been teleported. However, Yogiri now considered being teleported against his will to be an attack against him. If someone tried to teleport him somewhere, they should have ended up dead.
No, our coordinates have not changed. It is more like he has rewritten our surroundings.
“Does that mean the infected grass around us is dead?”
“That’s what you’re worried about? But I highly doubt it. I don’t know how far this transformation spreads, but if the grass can’t exist here, it was likely just pushed outside.” Scott spoke like it was obvious.
“Oh, okay. I was hoping that would be good enough, and I wouldn’t have to kill anymore. I’m also worried about how the transformation seems to be going through the barrier.” As far as they could see, the hellish landscape continued forever. If the barrier was supposed to keep the areas separate, Yogiri would have expected it to stop the transformation as well.
“How are you so calm in this situation?!” Tomochika exclaimed. “You’re making me look stupid for panicking!”
Perhaps the barrier only restricts the movement of living things. And in the first place, what we see on the other side of the barrier is not what is actually there.
They didn’t know how it worked, but the barrier projected an image to make it look like the continent was one contiguous piece of land. While they were inside the barrier, there was no way of knowing if the effects had actually spread outside of it.
“Do you think it can be turned back to normal?”
Who knows? I am not so familiar with the techniques of this world. Considering the techniques I am familiar with, defeating the user may return things to normal. Overwriting the environment is a massive undertaking, one that is perpetually contested by the world attempting to right itself.
“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” The fissure surrounding them was about ten meters across, large enough that an ordinary human wouldn’t be able to cross it. If things stayed like this, they’d be trapped here, but they could worry about that later. For now they had to deal with the two people floating in the sky above them.
“So, you are the one who killed Nina?” The man finally called out to Yogiri.
“Who’s that?”
“Huh? Are you really choosing to play dumb?” Tomochika looked at him in shock.
“It’s not like I’ve ever heard her name.” Yogiri figured they were referring to the small girl he had killed back in the infected village, but he had no evidence of that. He had killed plenty of people since coming to Belm. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was someone named Nina among them, but there was no point admitting to killing someone if he didn’t know for sure.
“Oh? There would be no issue with killing peasants like you out of hand...but let’s be absolutely sure about this.” As the man spoke, numerous mirror-like portals appeared in the air around them. A baby lying on a bed. A young girl playing in a field. A refined young woman wearing a dress. Though they were all sorts of pictures, they all showed images that were undeniably of the same girl. They appeared to be images of her at various different points in her life. The images were large and detailed, leaving no room for error. It was definitely the girl Yogiri had killed in the village. “Her name is Nina, princess of Himeln and the younger sister of Prince Gerhardt—me! So do you remember now?!”
“What are these things?” Yogiri asked.
“Images of my memories of Nina! Judging by your response, you recognize her, don’t you?!”
“Huh? Why are there pictures of her in the bath in there?” Tomochika cringed. Though they hardly needed confirmation after what they had seen him do, it seemed this guy wasn’t a particularly upstanding individual.
“How dare you gaze upon Nina’s nakedness!”
“You’re the one who showed it to us...”
“Ha! Don’t think you can fool me! My powers allow me to glean the truth from your responses! You definitely know Nina!”
“So what? She’s the one who attacked us. I just defended myself.” Yogiri couldn’t quite tell what he was getting at. Gerhardt’s words weren’t logically connecting to each other.
“Like hell you were! Trash like you has no right to fight back against her! You should have just sat by quietly and let her kill you! Do you think you have any right to do otherwise?!”
“Uhhh...I do have the right to defend myself, right?” Yogiri turned to ask Tomochika.
“Well, sure. You can’t just sit there and let someone kill you...”
“I see. So you fail to recognize the measure of your own sin. Very well. I will explain so you can understand just how grave your crime was.”
Gerhardt began a long speech.
◇ ◇ ◇
They listened to Gerhardt’s stories about Nina. Stories of how beautiful she was, how proud, noble, and affectionate she was flowed on and on from the man. He continued uninterrupted. He spoke with such passion, it was like it was the only thing he could do to distract himself from his hatred of Yogiri.
“I’m starting to feel bad for this guy...” Tomochika commented.
Do not be fooled. No matter how loving a yakuza family is, it changes not the wickedness of their enterprise.
“He’s also pretty biased, don’t you think?”
Yogiri found it hard to believe that someone who murdered her own subordinates and tried to casually kill innocent civilians without a thought was a great person.
“What do you think?! Do you understand the depths of your sin?! Are you even capable of understanding?!”
“It doesn’t really matter if she was a loving saint. She tried to kill me, so I had to fight back.”
“So you don’t understand! Listen! Nina herself is justice! Anyone she attacks is thus evil! Therefore, you should have died! Can’t you understand something so simple?!”
“Come on, no matter how much you talk about Nina, I’m not going to think I did anything wrong. Can we stop with this stupid conversation already?”
At first Yogiri was a little interested in what Gerhardt had to say. Most of Yogiri’s enemies died with him not knowing anything about them since he never had a chance to really talk with them. Many died without Yogiri ever knowing why they had attacked him in the first place. If his opponent was willing to talk, then Yogiri was all for it, but a one-sided conversation like this was getting to be a bit too much. He was starting to want to wrap things up.
“I see. You think it’s stupid. You think talking about Nina is stupid...” Gerhardt finally lowered himself to the ground, meeting Yogiri’s gaze. One look was all they needed to see he wasn’t sane. He had spoken for so long that he had given the impression of being calm, but it seemed he was just barely able to keep his rage suppressed. “Let me ask you one final question. What did you do to Nina? What technique did you use?”
“That’s a good question. Even I don’t really know.” People died when he thought to kill them, but even Yogiri didn’t know how that was accomplished.
“It seems you are not sure either.” Yogiri didn’t know what Gerhardt’s powers were, but it seemed he was able to tell something just from Yogiri’s response. “In that case, you may die. I’ll bring you back to life and kill you again and again for all eternity.”
Gerhardt’s vague desire to kill became more overt, filling the space around Yogiri. As if in response to it, lightning began to arc across the blackened sky, and the air itself began to shake. The earth split anew, spewing forth vents of flame, and the crevice surrounding them grew wider. It was like the entire world had turned to attack him. Everything within sight obeyed Gerhardt’s will, and everything was conspiring to take Yogiri’s life.
The woman floating in the air was struck by lightning, falling from the sky. In this state, Gerhardt didn’t seem to care about even his own companions. The woman fell into a crevice in the earth, but Gerhardt didn’t even seem to notice.
Raising his palm towards them, Yogiri felt something whiz by. Gerhardt must have launched something towards them. Yogiri felt no killing intent from it, so he hadn’t been able to react. But Scott was now gone.
“It would be a problem if you got infected and became immortal now.”
If he killed Scott, he would just be revived on the spot, so instead he had sent him flying off into the distance. Of course, being sent flying at that speed would be enough to kill anyone, but as long as most of his body remained, he’d revive wherever he landed, and so would not be an issue.
Gerhardt then turned his hand towards Tomochika.
“I thought you were upset with me,” Yogiri said.
“Of course I must inflict the same pain of losing a loved one on you that you inflicted on me.”
“Uhh, we’re not really like that...” Tomochika spoke up.
“There is no use in playing dumb. I can see through any—”
“Well, that’s going to be an issue.”
Gerhardt collapsed. He had tried to kill Tomochika, so Yogiri had killed him.
“Huh? Is that all?”
A rather common ending for us.
“If that wasn’t the end, we’d be in trouble.”
The chaotic world raging around them began to settle, but that was it. The sky remained dark, the earth remained red, and the crevices and ravines that had opened up made no move to close.
“You said that if he died, things would go back to normal, didn’t you?” Yogiri asked.
I also told you I was unfamiliar with his powers, did I not?
“Uh...this is bad, isn’t it?” Tomochika asked. “We can’t get out of here anymore.” The crevice surrounding them had expanded further and was now almost twenty meters across. Escaping under their own power would be virtually impossible.
Hmm...if it had still been ten meters, we could have removed your limiter, and you could have leaped across...
“Removed my what? I’m pretty sure I’d be setting world records with a jump like that!”
“Scott was thrown really far away, but he’ll come back eventually, right?” Yogiri suggested.
“And what difference does it make if he does?”
“Maybe he can find some boards or something we can use as a bridge.”
“You think such a convenient thing would just be lying around?”
“Maybe we can figure something out with what’s in our backpack.”
“There’s a rope in there, right? If we tie something heavy to one end, we might be able to fasten it to something on the other side...”
“Gerhardt!” As Yogiri and Tomochika discussed how they would get out of the situation, a third person called out. Turning to look, they found a young girl kneeling at Gerhardt’s fallen body.
“Huh? Where did she come from?” Yogiri asked.
She seems to have appeared out of thin air...
“This is just a guess, but...doesn’t she seem like a god?” Yogiri was reminded of all the gods they had met so far in this world.
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