Chapter 22 — One of Those Situations Where Some Occurrence during the Tournament Arc or the Exam Arc Throws Things into Chaos!
Things had started to get interesting, but Mitsuki figured it was about time to wrap it up. It had been fun to see so many unexpected developments, but with things getting this chaotic, it was starting to become clear how it would end.
Forced out of Cavern Quest, he found himself on the surface again. He was floating in the air, looking down at a completely changed world. Most of it had been overrun by the Seyla, making it more or less impossible for people to survive. The few who had stayed on the surface had almost all been infected already, and those who had just been ejected from Van’s game would soon face the same fate.
Erasing the Seyla and rebuilding humanity was possible, but it seemed like it would be an exhausting amount of work. Beyond that, Mitsuki didn’t like interfering so directly. Even if the starting parameters for a game were bad, he found no joy in fiddling with them to create an ideal world. He enjoyed watching people learn through trial and error in the midst of unfavorable conditions. That was where drama came from and what made it all worth watching.
Of course, there were some situations where no amount of struggle would be interesting to watch. Under certain circumstances, he was willing to reset things. This was one of those situations. At this point, there was no saving the world. There would be no one overturning the current status quo, no new drama to observe.
The only problem was Yogiri Takatou. As long as he was alive, those who he had killed couldn’t be brought back to life. That wasn’t a huge issue, but it was a shadow that would linger forever over Mitsuki’s dreamworld. He much preferred things to be clean and tidy if he was going to reset.
“Alexia.”
“You called, Lord Mitsuki?” The moment he spoke, Alexia was at his side.
“Things have gotten too crazy, so I’m going to end it now. Do you know where Yogiri Takatou is?” Mitsuki was functionally omnipotent, so finding out himself was well within his power, but he preferred to leave small things like this to his subordinates. It was easier for him that way.
“He is one hundred kilometers to the northwest, in the Meld Plains. Do you intend to meet with him face-to-face?”
“Yeah, I’d like to at least talk to him.” Mitsuki had guided developments to lure those who were participating in the Last Boss Quest to kill Yogiri. They might well still be trying to do so, making any action from Mitsuki unnecessary. He hadn’t been that worried about Yogiri, so that was what he had thought.
He was capable of instantly teleporting there, but a hundred kilometers didn’t seem far enough to justify it. As they started moving, the Meld Plains quickly came into view. Also known as the Crystal Plains, everything there had been transformed into crystal.
As Mitsuki made to touch down, he noticed that something had changed in the sky. As far as he could see, it was now filled with huge, spherical objects. They all seemed to be approaching him.
“What is that, a space fleet? Star forts?”
“It appears so,” Alexia replied.
If that was the case, they must have come from another world. This world didn’t have anything like space, so the concept of a spaceship or a space fortress was entirely nonexistent.
“What shall we do?” Alexia asked.
“If they’re coming for me, I’m curious to see why they’re making such a big show of it.”
The star forts began to transform. Holes opened in their sides, long cannon-like objects protruding from them. The cannons began to shine as they all pointed at Mitsuki.
It seemed like a weapon designed to unleash a stored amount of energy all at once. Even one of them seemed powerful enough to destroy an entire planet, so with this many, if they fired, there would be nothing of this world left.
“They don’t really look like weapons you’d use inside the atmosphere of a planet, do they?”
“This world does not really possess an atmosphere, though,” Alexia pointed out.
“I’ve never been hit by something like this before. Maybe I’ll see what they’ve got.”
“Please do not. I cannot imagine it harming you, but I would be most displeased to see it happen regardless.”
Despite Alexia’s request, Mitsuki couldn’t suppress his curiosity.
◇ ◇ ◇
“What the heck is going on?!” Tomochika shouted, voicing a confusion very similar to Yogiri’s.
They had been waiting in the Antechamber Area after the fourth round had finished when a line had suddenly cut through space. Yogiri hadn’t felt any danger from it, but in the next moment he found the scenery around them had completely changed. The sudden change had confused him, but once he had a chance to calm down and look around, he recognized this place.
The grass, the trees, even the buildings of what looked like some sort of settlement all seemed to be made of crystal. He remembered passing through this place before—the Meld Plains, also known as the Crystal Plains. After their trial in the tower, they had passed through here on their way to the capital.
The difference was that now the netlike thing hanging in the sky had disappeared, to be replaced by creatures that looked like people woven together out of some kind of ivy wandering the plains.
“Is that the Seyla?”
When the Seyla had first fallen from the sky, it had mostly been in the form of plants, so it had moved quite slowly. Now, however, it was much more monsterlike, and was clearly quite mobile. Looking closely, it almost seemed to be taking the form of a human girl.
Yogiri had heard that Seyla was the younger sister of Sage Lain. A divine relic had given her immortality, but Yogiri didn’t know the details beyond that. When he had encountered the Seyla on the floating continent, it had taken the form of a virus that infected all living things it came into contact with.
Back then, things infected by the Seyla had retained their original shape and personality, but here it was attacking anything that moved on sight. Even now it was chasing something. After observing for a time, they could see the Seyla was chasing a crystalline dog.
“Wait, didn’t we see that dog the last time we were here?” Tomochika said.
Though there were creatures living here, the Meld Plains had been a melancholy place on their last visit. It seemed much more lively now with the countless pieces of Seyla writhing around. Each piece seemed to have a human face, all identical. Maybe that was how Seyla had looked when she was alive.
“Wait, is it heading towards us?!” Tomochika exclaimed.
The dog was running in their direction, bringing the Seyla along with it. The expressions on the Seyla’s faces clearly showed they were hunting prey. But rather than triumphant and victorious, they were twisted with anguish.
I guess she did ask me to kill Seyla, Yogiri thought to himself. Risley had asked him to do so, having inherited Lain’s will. He had replied that he couldn’t do so without knowing why, to which she said he would know why when he met her.
Yogiri could sort of understand now. The Seyla didn’t act like this because it wanted to. Tormented by what could only be called a curse of immortality, it continued to spread with no understanding of its situation. If it could die, that was no doubt what it would ask for. Maybe that was just Yogiri making assumptions, but he could finally agree with Lain’s point of view.
Yogiri used his power. The Seyla chasing the crystalline dog toppled, collapsing around them and all over the world.
“Wait, didn’t you say dealing with the Seyla was going to be difficult?” Tomochika asked.
“I said killing the Seyla separate from the people it infected would be difficult. I didn’t bother to distinguish between them just now. I killed them all together.”
It does not appear the infected possessed any hints of their former selves, Mokomoko observed. I cannot imagine there was much one could do for them, even were they to be cured.
“Okay! So we just killed them because they attacked us! No problem, then!” Maybe out of concern for Yogiri, Tomochika seemed to force herself to agree.
“We’re out of immediate danger, but now what do we do? Oh, we’ve been to that station before, right?”
Looking around, they saw a familiar structure. Yogiri remembered the army of some foreign nation having attacked it.
“Ah! That means we’re pretty close to the capital of Manii, aren’t we?”
“True. But that means we’re back on the surface. I wonder why?”
Is that not exactly what we wished for? That was why we were attempting to beat the game, Mokomoko pointed out.
“I’m curious about why we got moved, though.”
“Not like we’ll figure it out just by thinking about it,” Tomochika said.
It is like one of those situations where some occurrence during the tournament arc or the exam arc throws things into chaos! her guardian spirit replied.
“That’s annoyingly vague, but I guess we have no choice but to act as if Cavern Quest is over.” The current situation was entirely beyond his understanding, but Yogiri had no desire to dive back into Cavern Quest. Their only option was to keep moving forward.
“If we’re going anywhere, I guess we should start with the capital, huh?” Tomochika said. “There’s nothing here but cold.”
“It’s still pretty far from us...and I guess there won’t be any trains running?”
“Should we at least check?” Tomochika asked.
“I guess it’s better than standing around here doing nothing—”
As he made to start walking, a huge roar shook the air. The vibration caused the crystallized trees around them to shake to the point of cracking and breaking. Yogiri looked up to see countless huge spheres filling the sky.
“What are those, star forts?!” Tomochika exclaimed.
We saw something similar before the reset. Are these perhaps their allies? Mokomoko suggested, recalling the streamlined spaceships they had encountered near the ruins in the elven forest. Those ships had shown a clear killing intent aimed at Yogiri, so he had wiped them out, but they had never figured out who they were or what their attackers wanted.
“They don’t seem to be trying to kill us,” Yogiri said.
Even so, they couldn’t casually start walking to the train station now. As they watched, the star forts began to shine. A huge cannon emerged from each one, light condensing at the tip of their barrels.
“What is that, some kind of wave cannon?! And is that Alexia and the Great Sage over there?!”
“Your eyes are still as good as ever,” Yogiri commented.
Impressed she could see anything, he followed her gaze but saw nothing but a couple of specks in the distance, though it did seem the cannons were aimed at them.
“What on earth is going on here?!” Tomochika cried.
It was clear the star forts were going for the Great Sage. Their killing intent was very obviously aimed in that direction, but the damage from the cannons was also clearly overlapping Yogiri and Tomochika’s location. To Yogiri’s eyes, the whole world had grown dark.
“It doesn’t seem like they care about us either way, but I don’t want to get wrapped up in this...”
Yogiri made the decision to act around the same time his power activated automatically.
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