Chapter 6 — You Are Being as Much of an Antiheroine as Ever
“This seems pretty bad!” Tomochika said, stepping up to Sion.
“You think so? As far as I am aware, the Seyla only makes them immortal. Most people would be more than happy to receive such a curse, don’t you think?”
“Uhh...I suppose becoming immortal isn’t all that bad. But it seemed like a real problem for Scott...”
Scott was a boy infected by the Seyla who they had met on the floating continent. He was acting as a representative for the residents of an infected settlement. He had asked Yogiri to kill the infected, including Scott himself. The game taking place on that continent had exploited the infected by killing them repeatedly. Unable to bear the endless oppression, they had all wished for a final end. Yogiri’s power was a godsend to them. But barring any special circumstances like that, maybe becoming immortal wasn’t something to be worried about.
“Ah, maybe I’m wrong.”
Everyone followed Sion’s gaze. Plants falling from the sky were attacking people. Anyone they touched underwent an immediate transformation. It wasn’t a particularly drastic one. Humans were still bipedal, and the beastkin still had all of their inhuman parts, but the transformation twisted them in a bizarre way. Some had their arms extended, some swelled to double their original size, some had their arms and legs twist and bend unnaturally, some had their skin turn black as coal, some had ivy begin sprouting from their body. Each person transformed in a strange and different way.
Despite the change in their physical bodies, there didn’t seem to be much impact on their mental state, judging by the shock, lamentation, and fear coming from the victims as they realized what had happened to them.
“That seems much too steep a price to pay for immortality!” Hanakawa complained.
“You’d probably get used to it, right?” Carol remarked, totally unconcerned.
“Are you serious?!”
“There isn’t really a limit to what a reasonable trade-off for immortality is, right? It’s a pretty big deal.”
“I don’t think it’s quite the same if it happens against your will,” Yogiri replied. Whether the trade was worth it or not, the people being attacked now had no choice in the matter. No matter what the result was, he couldn’t think of this as anything but a disaster.
“You’re a Sage. Can’t you do anything about this?” Tomochika pressed Sion. “If this is your territory, don’t you have a responsibility to protect these people? It might not be an Aggressor, but it’s basically the same thing, right?” This situation did look very similar to an Aggressor attack.
“I suppose. I do not like seeing the people in my territory hurt needlessly, so I will protect them if I can. Let us see what I can do.” As she spoke, countless shadowy figures appeared throughout the city and began helping people. Some were knocking the falling balls of Seyla out of the city, others were restraining the infected, and still others guided people who had yet to be infected to the hotel. As the shadows weren’t living things, the Seyla didn’t seem able to infect them.
“Allow me to ask just in case. Is there anything you can do about this situation, Takatou?” Sion asked.
“That would be hard. It’s easy to kill anything that attacks me, but discriminating between the falling Seyla and the infected people would be pretty hard. I could kill all of them together, but that’s obviously not an option.” It would be one thing to kill the people who wished for it, like at the infected settlement, but he couldn’t bring himself to kill the people here without asking them.
“Then I suppose we will just have to manage like this for now.”
“Uhh...I appreciate that you are attempting to help the people, Miss Sion, but with your immense power, should you not be capable of resolving this whole incident in a flash?” Hanakawa asked.
Now that he’d brought it up, creating familiars to help the people of the town did seem like a rather plain, roundabout way of fixing the issue. Yogiri felt like Sion should have been able to do something more impressive, like teleporting everyone to safety or teleporting all of the infected to a single place to imprison them.
“Actually, among the Sages, I am not especially strong.”
“Huh? But are you not over level one hundred million? Should that not make you immensely powerful?”
“Yes, I am currently level 5.3 billion. Your Discernment skill is likely unable to perceive any numbers over one hundred million, though.”
“Ah, so that explains the joke about being over level fifty-three thousand!”
“My ability as a Sage is that every time my heart beats, my level increases...though you could say that’s all my ability is. While my stats may be impressive, I have no other special abilities in particular. Even this barrier is only possible because I have large reserves of magical energy. I am not especially skilled at using magic either.”
“Excuse me, may I ask a question? If your level increases each time your heart beats, with an average heart rate of sixty beats per minute, it would take 170 years to reach that level. Something seems strange to me. Judging by your speech and behavior, it sounds as if you are familiar with modern Japan,” Ryouko said, piquing Yogiri’s curiosity too.
He didn’t know how Sion had become a Sage, but if she had gone through the Sage candidate process, she might have been summoned from Japan like they had. But in that case, that would make her from the Edo era.
“Well, Mokomoko is from the Heian era, but she has managed to adjust to modern times. Maybe it’s something like that?” Tomochika suggested.
I wonder. I have continued to collect information since my life in the Heian era, but if she were to have left Japan during the Edo period, her knowledge of Japan should stop there. Of course, it is possible that she learned some from those she summoned here.
“Ah! Did I not explain my own situation to you all yet?”
“I don’t think so. If it’ll help, can you?” Yogiri wasn’t sure this was the time to be relaxing and listening to stories, but they had already done everything they could for now, so there was no point in panicking.
“Please wait a minute!”
“What do you want now, Hanakawa?” Yogiri sighed.
“No matter what I speak of, you always tell me you are not interested! Why the sudden interest in Miss Sion’s past?!”
“Probably because we really don’t care about you.”
“Your rebuttal is as cruel as always, Tomochika!”
“Because Sion’s story might actually be useful, unlike anything you ever tell us,” Yogiri answered seriously.
“I would also appreciate it if you stopped trying to rub my nose in that!”
“You’re the one always following us. Anyway, you can ignore him,” he told Sion.
“Very well. As you have guessed, I am Japanese. My real name is Shion Ryuuouin, using the characters for the flower, not the place in Israel. You are curious about when I came to this world, no? I became a Sage a few months after arriving in this world, so your calculation for my number of heartbeats seems more or less correct. As for when I left Japan...I suppose that was shortly after I graduated university...” Using the dates she gave, they figured she had left Japan about two years before Yogiri’s class had been summoned.
“So the flow of time is different...!” Tomochika exclaimed.
“You say that as if it is a new discovery, but I believe we established that when we first met!” Hanakawa said.
“Did we?”
“Of course we did! I told you last time I came to this world, I spent a year here, but only a few hours passed in our own world!”
“Well...even if you did explain it, there’s the issue of authenticity...” Apparently even Tomochika had forgotten about that conversation.
“But that doesn’t line up with the difference Sion had, does it?” Yogiri said.
“In comparing the flow of time between worlds, there is always some fluctuation,” Sion explained. “However you can rest assured that the flow of time in this world is much faster, so you will not end up in an Urashima Tarou kind of situation.”
“Regardless, this conversation has no bearing on our current situation! What are we going to do now?!” Hanakawa asked.
“What do you mean? We’re collecting the Philosopher’s Stones, right?” After the conversation they had had in the conference room, Yogiri had figured that was the natural next step.
“How self-centered can you be?! How is this the time to be collecting Philosopher’s Stones?!”
“Sure, the world seems to be in trouble, but that’s a problem for the people of this world, right?” Tomochika said.
“You are being as much of an antiheroine as ever! In situations like this, the ideal heroine should be saying something like, ‘No matter how short our time together was, I can’t just leave the people of this world to their fate!’”
“But there’s nothing I can do. It would be pretty irresponsible for me to make a fuss over something I can do nothing about, don’t you think?”
“Ugh...you are truly cold through and through, Tomochika.”
“For now, I believe we can leave the other Sages to defend their own territories,” Sion said. “If things get too bad, I am sure time will simply be reset again.”
“That would also kind of be a pain.”
If restarts were going to happen that frequently, everything they did to try and get home would be useless. At the very least, it would be quite irritating.
“Hello, people of the world. I’m a Sage. My name is Van.”
As Yogiri thought about what they could do to start collecting Philosopher’s Stones, a voice suddenly interrupted him. It was hard to tell where the voice was coming from. It was almost like it was being whispered right into his ear, despite no one standing beside him.
“Huh? What is this?” Apparently Tomochika couldn’t figure out where it was coming from either, judging by the way she looked around confused.
“I made a small mistake, so some pretty dangerous stuff is now falling all over the world. Sorry.”
“A small...”
“...mistake.” Tomochika and Yogiri muttered together.
“These creatures will infect anyone they touch, turning them into monsters too. On top of that, they’re immortal, so you can’t get rid of them. If left alone, they’ll probably take over the whole world. They can infect your food too, so even if you all hide, you’ll probably starve to death pretty quickly. I feel a little responsible for all that, so I have a suggestion for you all.”
“He doesn’t sound too serious about this, does he?” Ryouko sighed.
“Miss Concierge, how is the hotel for food?” Yogiri asked.
“We have enough emergency supplies to feed the staff for about a week. I am sure the hotel’s restaurant has more food as well, but if everyone in the city is evacuated here, the stockpiles will be exhausted in no time,” Celestina replied, almost apologetic. Though the barrier Sion had set up protected them from the immediate threat of the Seyla, they wouldn’t be able to hold out for very long.
“I’m making a new game, so you’re all invited. It’s called Cavern Quest. As the name suggests, it takes place underground. It’s been separated from the surface, so those dangerous creatures won’t be able to make it down there. There’s also plenty of food, so don’t worry about that.”
“I suspect a bit more thought could have been put into the title,” Hanakawa complained.
“I don’t know, I think a cheap, simple name like that is easier to understand.” Yogiri liked simpler, easier titles for games rather than needlessly complex ones.
“Of course, you don’t have to join if you don’t want to. It’s totally voluntary. I’ll tell you how to join, so feel free to do so whenever you like. All you have to do is say, ‘Play Cavern Quest’ out loud. You’ll be transported underground right away.”
“Hmm...that seems quite useful as a mechanism for escaping from dangerous situations.”
“Ah...was there anything else I needed to explain?”
“You didn’t explain anything yet!” Tomochika shouted back at him, though of course he couldn’t hear her.
“Oh, right! If you join the game, you won’t be able to leave. There’s a reward for beating the game, but if you’re joining just to run away from the monsters, then you don’t need to worry about it.”
“But now we’re curious, so could you please tell us?!” she complained again, but no explanation followed.
“Beyond that, he failed to even explain what kind of game it was, did he not?” Hanakawa added.
“If it’s called whatever quest, it’s probably an RPG, right?” Yogiri guessed.
“And we have to decide whether we join based on so little information?”
“A meeting for the Sages has been called. I suppose that is not strange, given the current circumstances. Do you mind if I go?” Sion asked.
“Go ahead. It might be helpful in getting more Philosopher’s Stones.” That would be the fastest way for Sion to find information on the whereabouts of the stones. It would certainly be a lot faster than anything Yogiri or the rest of them could do.
“In the meantime, I guess you will need to decide whether you will participate in Van’s game.”
“I’m pretty sure we don’t have to bother.”
“Your ability to ignore everything around you shines as always, Sir Takatou.”
“I, of course, cannot participate, but for now I will go install the Battlesong client on all of your classmates. I am sure the difficulty will be such that ordinary humans will be killed almost immediately.”
With that, Sion vanished.
“Then I guess we...uhh, we’ll go back to our rooms for now?” It didn’t seem like there was anything they could do for now. They would have to wait for Sion to return before they made any moves.
“Are you really okay with that?!” Hanakawa sputtered.
“You can go ahead and join Cavern Quest if you want.”
“Absolutely not! I will definitely meet a horrendous fate if I try!”
Despite all his protests, Yogiri felt like Hanakawa still wanted to join.
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