Chapter 12 — You Should Have Relied on My Glasses Flash
The Sage Shirou was in the castle town, where he had been placed at the start of the tournament.
Things had turned out rather annoying in his opinion. He wasn’t the kind of Sage who liked to do much. He was the type who preferred living in peace and quiet, and had only agreed to help with Van’s game because it meant getting out of his duty to fight off Aggressors. His job was just to make weapons and armor and keep an eye on the game’s balance. It was a trivial amount of work if it meant he could get out of his obligations as a Sage.
In the end, if the Great Sage was going to reset everything anyway, losing didn’t mean much, so he considered losing immediately just to get the fight over with, but he doubted the Great Sage would be satisfied with that. He didn’t think a fight he was involved in would be very interesting to watch, but he would have to do what he could to liven it up.
“Yo!”
Shirou looked around to find the source of the disembodied voice. There was no one around. The speaker must have been hiding in the shadow of one of the buildings. With a flash of light, Shirou was moved to one of the battle channels. Even if he couldn’t see his opponent, they must have come within ten meters of him.
“You really want to fight me without meeting face-to-face?” Shirou called back.
“Nice try! I’m not going anywhere you can see me. I know you’ll just turn me into a weapon again!”
“Have we met before?” Shirou asked.
“I am one of Gorbagion’s Four Heavenly Kings, Naltine the Weakest!”
Shirou thought for a moment. “Sorry, I can’t say I remember you.” He honestly couldn’t remember encountering anyone with that name.
“Guess I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself last time. I’m the guy you turned into some NPC shop sword in front of Yogiri Takatou!”
“If I turned you into a weapon, you shouldn’t have been able to go back to normal.” Shirou’s ability allowed him to turn living things into weapons, but anything he transformed could never be turned back to normal.
“That’s ’cause you didn’t get my main body,” Naltine called back.
“I see. I guess that makes sense.”
“Anyway, let’s do this. This is gonna be a fight to the death!”
“That’s fine with me,” Shirou replied. “Just keep in mind being turned into a weapon counts as dying.”
Sage Shirou VS Demon Lord Gorbagion: FIGHT!!!
An announcement appeared in the air above him. It seemed the leader of the opposing party was someone named Gorbagion. Naltine seemed to be the most motivated of the bunch, but he would have to assume the other Four Heavenly Kings were around somewhere.
Looking around again, he still couldn’t find signs of anyone. It seemed his opponents had guessed that he needed to be able to see a person to turn them into a weapon. There were plenty of buildings around them, creating plenty of blind spots. They could be hiding more or less anywhere.
First, Shirou would need to deal with this environment. Looking around the city, he turned every plant he could find in the flower beds and pots around him into bombs. As simple plants, he couldn’t expect tremendous results from them, but if he had them in large enough numbers, it would be a different story. The chain reaction of explosions was enough to blow away the surrounding buildings.
Smoke and dust filled the air, a visual obstacle that should have been a good chance for his opponents to attack. But still, he saw no movement from them. The clouds of debris settled and visibility returned, showing that the buildings around him had been annihilated and the area around Shirou was now clear.
There were still no signs of the enemy. It seemed they hadn’t been hiding in any of the nearby buildings.
“What a pain...” If they were going to attack him, he wished they’d just hurry up and do it. All this posturing was boring. He wasn’t anxious or unsettled by their behavior, just annoyed. “Van, what happens if your opponent isn’t willing to fight?” Shirou called out.
“Hmm. A passive fight isn’t really that fun to watch. I guess if they won’t fight, they lose.”
“There you have it,” Shirou called out to his invisible opponents.
“What the hell, you trying to bend the rules to win? This is part of our plan! Hey, Admin! If you’re going to say that, then give us a time limit!” Though Shirou could hear Naltine’s voice, he still couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.
“Okay, fine. If you don’t do anything for five minutes, you lose. That goes for you right now, right?”
“Fine!”
Shirou looked around again. There was still no sign of anyone. But just as he thought that, something struck the back of his head. He had been hit by something that had punched through the back of his head and out of his forehead.
Shirou fell forward, landing face first. Something like a needle must have punched through his head, dragging him down to the ground. He hadn’t let his guard down. There were no enemies in the immediate area, and he had been watching for attacks coming from a distance.
“Where did that come from?”
“The ground.”
“Ah, I see.”
Shirou recalled that Naltine had been able to spawn a large number of monsters. Back then, they had come from the huge pillar he was carrying, but apparently, he could do something similar with the ground.
“You won’t die from something piddly like that, right?” Naltine said as further impacts came up from the ground, punching through Shirou’s nose, mouth, and cheeks. It seemed they were desperate to restrict his vision.
“I have a Philosopher’s Stone in my body. To an extent, it makes me mostly immortal.” A situation like this wasn’t much of a concern for him. Shirou tried to force himself back up off the ground.
“Ah, okay. I’ll just rip it out of you, then.”
As Shirou pushed both hands into the ground, he tried to force himself back up, but a foot stomped on the back of his neck. A blade of some sort then tore into his back, deciding the fight.
With a clang, the newly created sword fell to the ground.
Shirou casually returned to his feet. The things pinning him down had to have been some sort of barbed needles, so it was just a matter of forcefully tearing them out. By the time he was standing, the wounds had already healed. He picked up the newly fashioned sword.
The result had come about for one simple reason: Shirou could also turn people into weapons by touching them. Even a single instant of contact from an enemy striking him was enough.
“Ah, this time I think you could qualify as a rare item.”
The next moment, a bright light filled the area. It shone from behind him, bright enough to leave him completely blind.
“How foolish you were, Naltine. You should have relied on my Glasses Flash.” This voice came from behind him, but turning around to look would no doubt burn out his eyes, so he couldn’t actually look.
“Are you another one of those Four Heavenly Kings?” Shirou asked.
“Yes. I am Graze the Enlightened.”
“Speaking of which, your leader was Gorbagion, right?”
Naturally, defeating Naltine wouldn’t bring an end to the fight. Shirou casually tossed the Naltine sword behind him. With no idea where the enemy was, there was no chance of him hitting anything.
Even so, a scream filled the air as the blinding light vanished. Turning to look, he saw a man with three pairs of eyes lying on the ground. The top of his head, from his forehead up, had been sliced off, taking his topmost pair of glasses with it. It seemed those glasses had been the source of the blinding light. The Naltine Sword was capable of not only attacking from a distance, but also automatically seeking its target.
Behind Graze were standing a man with stonelike skin, a woman whose long hair obscured her face, and a boy in a T-shirt and jeans.
“Yo, I’m Gorbagion. Nice to meet you,” the young man casually introduced himself. That was probably the entirety of Gorbagion’s party, so Shirou immediately turned them into weapons. That was the end of the fight.
Or it would have been...if anything had happened. But nothing had changed.
“Hey, come on now. I’m a Demon Lord here. There’s no way I’d lose to a status effect like that.”
“Then you should have saved Naltine...” the woman mumbled.
“That was a fight between men,” Gorbagion protested. “I couldn’t intervene, even if he was being careless. Anyway, now it’s my turn.”
“I thought I would be next...but that is fine,” Graze said, standing back up. “I will leave it to you.” Though a good chunk of his head was missing, Shirou wasn’t surprised to find he was still alive. There were plenty of impressively resilient people in this world.
“Going through all of the Four Heavenly Kings one at a time would take forever,” Gorbagion said. “Oh, and by the way, these guys are my familiars, so if you don’t kill me, the fight won’t end.”
“Is that so?” Shirou said, hurling the sword forward and rushing in to follow it up. As a Sage, his physical abilities far exceeded those of a normal person. He was also a skilled swordsman, so he was quite confident in close-quarters combat.
Making no effort to dodge, Gorbagion grabbed the blade of the Naltine Sword as Shirou grabbed its hilt.
“I get the feeling it would hurt if I let this one hit me. No wonder, since it was made from one of my Four Heavenly Kings.”
Shirou grunted, struggling with all his might, but the sword wouldn’t move. If he let go, he could easily move away, but the Naltine Sword was the only weapon he currently had, so he couldn’t just let it go.
“By the way, if I kill you, will the sword turn back into Naltine?” the Demon Lord asked.
“No. Even if I die, it’ll stay the way it is.”
“Ah. Too bad.” Gorbagion clenched his fist, shattering the Naltine Sword. “I guess we have an opening in the Four Heavenly Kings now. Interested?”
“Are you insane?!” Shirou had clearly lost, so the last thing he expected was an invitation.
“No, I’m quite serious. Actually, you don’t have a choice. My power forces you to join me.”
The next instant, Shirou realized he was, in fact, now one of Gorbagion’s Four Heavenly Kings.
Demon Lord Gorbagion Wins!
The announcement appeared in the air above them shortly before they were all teleported to another room.
“Where are we?”
“It’s the Antechamber Area,” Shirou replied respectfully. “We wait here until the next round starts.”
With no more enemies to fight, the system had decided that Gorbagion was the winner.
◇ ◇ ◇
Celestina had appeared in the forest. She instantly sent her threads out scouting, finding numerous other parties. She didn’t spend that much time thinking about which party she should fight, simply walking towards the closest one. Emerging from the forest, she found herself standing atop a cliff, at what was presumably the edge of the floating island.
There was a party of four ahead of her—three men and one woman, all of whom looked rather rough. At first glance she thought all four of them were men, but one was a woman in men’s clothing. Judging by her posture and more refined manner, she seemed to be the leader. They all wore swords, but the woman’s sword was clearly different from the rest, a clue as to her true identity.
As Celestina approached, the space around them flickered. Reaching the ten-meter distance, they had been moved to a separate channel to fight. Seeing the channel change, the woman turned to look at Celestina.
“Good day,” Celestina greeted them. “Shall we fight?”
“Oh? From your appearance, I thought you’d want to add some rules, but you’re actually pretty direct.”
“My goal is only to kill Yogiri Takatou, after all,” the concierge explained.
“Oh? In that case, I think we have some room to negotiate.”
“Not at all,” Celestina said. “The only thing that matters is killing Yogiri Takatou. I am taking the course of action with the highest probability of accomplishing that. There is no reason to allow an opponent who would lose to me to move forward, and if you can defeat me, the chances of defeating Yogiri improve if I let you proceed in my stead.”
“You’ve got some guts, huh? I really like straightforward people like you.”
“I appreciate the compliment,” Celestina replied.
“Let’s talk a bit. My name is Degul.”
“My name is Celestina. I am currently employed as the concierge of a certain hotel.”
“I see. You do give off that impression,” Degul said. “Out of curiosity, have we met somewhere before?”
“I am quite certain we have not. I am quite confident in my ability to remember faces.”
“Guess I must be imagining things, then,” Degul shrugged.
“No, I believe there is a reason you think we have met before.”
“Oh? Please, do tell. It’s really starting to bother me.”
“You must be royalty, yes?” Celestina said, pointing to Degul’s sword. “The weapon you hold is the Holy Sword Orz, passed down in the Manii royal family.”
“Oh, so this thing is pretty impressive?”
“You are unaware of it?” It didn’t seem like Degul was simply feigning ignorance. She must not have known about the sword.
“I just picked it up recently,” Degul explained, “though I had an idea it was linked to the royal family somehow.”
“I see. Normally that would be unthinkable, but within this chaos, I suppose it isn’t impossible for you to have come across it.”
“So? Now that you know I just found it lying around, do you still think I’m royalty?” Degul asked.
“I suppose the only thing that is left is your appearance, as your facial features closely resemble those of the royal family.”
“Is that it? I’ve never really looked at my face that hard before. Couldn’t I say the same about you, though?”
“Yes,” Celestina replied. “I am related to the royal family as well, though only through a branch family.”
“Ahh. So there are branch families scattered about, huh?”
“I would not say ‘scattered about,’ no,” Celestina corrected her. “My sister and I are very much an anomaly. There was no attempt to stop my parents’ elopement, nor any effort to track us down afterwards.”
“My luck must be crazy for me to meet two members of the royal family in one day,” Degul said.
“These are quite unique circumstances,” Celestina replied. “I cannot imagine it being that difficult to believe multiple members of the royal family would gather to attempt to save the world, given their special abilities.”
“I’m not here to save the world or anything...but all right, my curiosity has been satisfied. Let’s do this.”
Degul vs. Celestina: FIGHT!!!
Degul’s words seemed to constitute an agreement with the rules, so the fight immediately began. And as quickly as it started, it was over.
Celestina Wins!
Degul and her party were scattered in pieces across the ground, thoroughly dismembered. Celestina hadn’t given them a single moment to react. Even before the fight had begun, she had wrapped her invisible threads around their bodies. That first and deciding action had prompted the channel shift. The next moment, Celestina found herself in another room.
“I imagine she felt secure in her royal ability to suppress the Gifts of others, but I am afraid my skills with the thread are no more than plain swordsmanship.”
Degul hadn’t even noticed the thread wrapped around her, so she had no way of defending herself from it. In other words, she hadn’t been all that strong. Against another opponent, her ability to nullify powers may have brought her victory, but being so weak herself, Celestina wasn’t interested in letting her pass.
She was glad to have gotten Degul out of the running as early as she did.
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