Chapter 17 — Good Evening. My Name is Sage Sion. Do You Remember Me?
The plump young man, Daimon Hanakawa, and the spawn of the Dark God, Lute, who had now taken the form of a young girl, had finally made their way to the capital.
“It’s pretty crowded, huh? Is there a festival or something going on?” Lute asked upon seeing the nighttime streets still filled with people.
“Heheheh, you sound like a true country bumpkin! Something like this could be seen anywhere in Japan. Are you saying it’s rare in this world?”
“You’re really letting the fact that I spared you go to your head, aren’t you?” Lute was getting fed up with the guy but had given up on getting angry with him. Hanakawa was running his mouth almost nonstop, as if he were totally safe. “You realize there are plenty of ways I can hurt you without killing you, right?”
“Heheh! As long as I know I won’t die, there’s nothing for me to fear. I am a Healer, after all! No matter what injuries you inflict, I can return myself to normal right away. As long as I resolve myself to seeing your torture through to the end, I have nothing to fear!”
“Is that so? By the way, our objective is underneath the city.”
“Oh? It must take a lot of guts to build a city of this size on top of a Dark God that’s intent on killing people.”
“That’s because of my lord’s seal. It’s not like it can escape whenever it wants.”
That was information the humans didn’t have. The sealing had happened over a thousand years ago, after all, so it wasn’t surprising that they didn’t know the particulars. According to legend, the High Wizard had sealed the beast below and built the town on top of it, but in reality, all the High Wizard had done was put up the walls around the city. The Underworld itself had all been created by the Dark God Albagarma for the sake of locking away his own sister.
“But even if she’s trapped down there,” Lute continued, “her spawn can still reach the surface. Of course, the humans haven’t just been sitting on their hands up here. A certain bloodline has been maintaining another seal on top of that. As such, the ranks of all skills are reduced while in the area. So, what do you think? Shall we test how effective your healing is here?”
Hanakawa moved in a flash. Before Lute could even finish talking, he had dropped to his hands and knees, paying no mind to the people around them.
“I let it go to my head! I’m sorry!”
“Don’t you think you rely on begging a bit too much?” Lute retorted, looking down at him.
“If someone like you is willing to talk if I do this, then at least it will buy me some time! If I have time, then maybe they’ll change their mind about what they were planning to do, and my chances to live will go up!”
“Fine, just stand up already.” Having him on his hands and knees in the middle of the street was attracting too much attention.
Hanakawa slowly got to his feet. “So, now that we’re in the city, what’s next?”
“Well, obviously we need to go into the Underworld, but I don’t know where the entrances are or how strictly they’re controlled. First, we’ll need to do some information gathering.”
“I see. In situations like this, I suppose the typical thing to do is visit a tavern,” Hanakawa said, recalling details he had gleaned from various manga and video games.
“A tavern, huh? You mean like that one?”
“The problem is that we look like children. We could certainly go in, but they’ll just be like, ‘Hey, where’s your mom?’ or ‘If you’re looking for some milk, try somewhere else.’” Numerous shop signs around them bore pictures of beer glasses, bottles, and kegs. “Aren’t there an awful lot of them, though? Well, I suppose we might as well try taking a look inside.”
With nothing else to go on, they chose the closest option. While they might be accosted for looking too young, the fact of the matter was that Hanakawa had a spawn of the Dark God with him. With the confidence that thought engendered, he strode boldly into the tavern.
“Welcome! Table for two?” a waitress greeted them in a friendly voice. She didn’t seem to have any intention of trying to shoo them away.
After being guided to a table, Hanakawa ordered some food and drinks. He had spent a great deal of time living in this world, so he was well aware of the best things to order to get the most out of a place like this.
“This is my first time coming to a tavern,” Lute said. “How do we gather information here?”
“Now that you mention it, I’m not sure. Maybe we just listen in on others’ conversations?”
“Jeez, you were so confident, I thought you had an actual plan. Hey, excuse me,” his companion called to one of the waitresses, “can I ask you a question?”
“Ohh! How natural! Maybe I could imitate you to attract girls for myself?!”
“There seem to be a lot of people outside. Is there a festival or something going on?”
“Hey! Didn’t you hear me?!” Hanakawa interrupted. “For a city like this, that many people is perfectly normal —”
“There is!” the waitress interjected. “The Sage candidates made it all the way to the fifth floor of the Underworld! No one has ever made it past the third floor before, but they got that far after only a few days! It’s the first time anyone has made significant progress in almost a thousand years, so everyone is celebrating!”
“Wh-What?!” Hanakawa cried as Lute looked at him with a smug expression.
“And even better! Some of the Sage candidates even came to our establishment! Look, right over there!”
Hanakawa looked over to where the waitress was pointing. Three boys wearing a familiar uniform were sitting around a table: Shinya Ushio, Keiichi Munakata, and Mitsuo Yatate. Three guys he had regularly seen hanging out together at school.
They had been outcasts a bit because they talked about nothing but eroge, but even though Hanakawa was treated in the same way by their peers, he’d never had much contact with them. Of course, part of that was just a difference in their hobbies, but they had also made fun of him for being a disgusting nerd when they did speak.
“Who cares if the game makes you cry, you’re still just going to rub one out in the end,” Hanakawa muttered as he glared at the trio, old grudges quickly rising to the surface. “Wait, this is bad! We can’t be seen by them! We have to do something!” As far as those three were concerned, Hanakawa had ditched the class without warning. He couldn’t just show up in front of them like nothing had happened.
“‘Something,’ huh? Well, that’s no problem.” Lute waved a hand in the air. “I put up a barrier to make people pay no attention to us.”
“Will that be enough?”
“If I made us completely invisible, it would be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“For being a spawn of the Dark God, you’re pretty stingy about stuff like this, don’t you think?”
“All right, fine, let’s go introduce ourselves. Oh, come on! If you do that now, the camouflage won’t work!” Lute stopped Hanakawa the moment he saw him try to drop to his hands and knees again.
“Heheh! If they won’t notice us, perhaps we should get closer and try to overhear their conversation? They’ve been spending time in the Underworld after all, right?”
“That sounds like a good idea...but something seems off.” Lute stopped Hanakawa again as the boy made to stand up. Looking back at the three candidates, he saw a woman in a hood standing beside them.
“Who the hell does Takatou think he is?!” Shinya Ushio, the Eroge Master, complained drunkenly. “Just showing up out of nowhere and snapping up all the good girls...”
“He goes off every night with Ninomiya, Carol, and Dannoura, right? Jeez, I’m jealous!” the Eroge Meister, Keiichi Munakata replied. He had numerous empty beer bottles beside him. And while that would be a problem in Japan, more than half of the students had taken up drinking since they had come to this world.
“He didn’t do nuthin, either,” Mitsuo Yatate, the Eroge Maniac, agreed. “They only call him when there’s bugs. Ushio’s working way harder, so why aren’t we popular like he is?!”
The three of them had been good friends since they had entered high school.
“Well, that’s because they started calling us the Eroge Nobles, right?”
“But why just us? We didn’t get powers like this because we wanted them!” Ushio raged as Munakata slammed back another drink.
“If the Gift reflects people’s likes and interests, anyone would want to be able to stop time, or see through people’s clothes, or be invisible in a changing room, or be able to tie people up with tentacles, right?! So why do the girls look at us like we’re trash?!”
“No, the tentacles thing is just you.”
“Yeah, that’s kind of different.”
“Why?!” Yatate wailed, rejected by even his own friends.
“Well, you guys are still better off,” Ushio vented enviously. “You can do what you want without anyone noticing.”
They couldn’t use their powers on their own classmates, but as long as they targeted anyone else, their abilities could be used freely.
“I suppose. I did get a good look at that waitress earlier.” Munakata’s invisibility power was pretty wide in scope, allowing him to see through anything he wished as well.
“Hey, I can’t use the tentacles secretly either. And no, I don’t use them like that. I just enjoy feeling things with them.” Yatate could sprout tentacles from wherever he wanted, and he could feel anything that the appendages did.
“But there’s nothing I can do with my Time Stop that wouldn’t be illegal.” Ushio’s power allowed him to freeze objects in time. It was incredibly useful in battle, but it wasn’t particularly well suited to covert erotic pursuits. The objects he stopped were made completely inanimate, so even if he froze a girl, she would feel like stone to the touch.
“But really, do we even need to use our powers? We don’t need the girls in our class. Why don’t we just go to, like, a brothel or something? This city seems degenerate enough to have places like that.”
“Don’t you think the girls will look down on us even more if they find out?”
“They already see us as hopeless perverts; who cares what they think anymore? We have lots of money, and we’re heroes exploring the Underworld now, right? Don’t you think we’ll be popular with the locals?”
“That’s...that’s right! Who cares about the class?!”
Having struck on a great idea, the trio toasted themselves. After gulping down their drinks, they noticed that someone was standing beside them.
“Good evening. You are the Sage candidates, correct?”
It was a young woman. Even without hearing her voice, the hooded cloak she wore wasn’t enough to hide her figure. The three boys immediately grew excited at the sight of her.
“Hey, just like I said, heroes like us are popular!”
“Looks like. There’s no way guys as amazing as us wouldn’t be popular, right? Normally, all kinds of girls would be coming to us!”
“Huh? But...” As Munakata tried to use his X-ray vision on her, he realized something was off.
Using your Gift against other classmates is against the terms of your Oath. Are you sure you wish to proceed?
He had received a warning message from Sora Akino’s skill. Due to its effects, if they broke their oaths, they would die, but at least it was lenient enough to give them a warning beforehand.
The girl removed her hood, revealing a familiar face: Ayaka Shinozaki. One of the classmates they had left behind as bait on the bus.
“So, you’re alive too?”
As the three of them stared at her in shock, she grabbed Ushio’s wrist.
“Got you,” she said with a sweet smile. She then pulled her right hand back, punching Ushio in the face with all her might.
The strike knocked him into the table, sending it flying, but Ayaka held him in place by the arm. Climbing on top of him as he fell to the ground, she began raining blows onto his face.
The sudden attack sent a wave of excitement through the tavern. Perhaps things like this were commonplace, as the other customers seemed to be enjoying the show.
“Stop it!” Yatate screamed as numerous slimy tentacles sprouted around him.
While they were forbidden from using their powers against their classmates as a rule, it didn’t apply in the case of self-defense.
His tentacles wrapped around Ayaka in an attempt to restrain her, but she didn’t slow down in the slightest. Without paying the writhing mass any heed, her continued assault on Ushio quickly tore the tentacles to pieces as well.
Yatate let out a cry, crumpling to the floor as the agonizing pain of the tentacles being ripped apart was transmitted to him.
“Wh-What is wrong with you?! Why are you doing this?!” Munakata could use his invisibility freely, but it didn’t seem all that useful in this situation.
“Revenge, of course,” Ayaka returned matter-of-factly as she continued to beat her hapless victim.
“What are you doing, Ushio?! Stop her!”
“I-I’ve been, trying —”
“There’s no way something like that would work against a dragon,” Ayaka cut in.
The other customers had been looking on merrily before, but the brutality of the scene finally struck them silent. Even so, none of them moved to stop her. Anyone who tried would likely be killed. That much was obvious to anyone witnessing her ruthless attack.
The only sound echoing throughout the tavern was that of Ushio’s face being punched over and over. Eventually, he stopped moving, and Ayaka finally ceased the bombardment of fists.
She rose to her feet, her hands dripping with blood. “Now then, Munakata?”
“Y-Yes?!”
“I’m going to be coming after you all, killing you one by one. So make sure you’re properly terrified. Can you tell the class that for me? Oh, that’s right...if there’s a body, they might be able to revive him, right?”
Ayaka pointed towards Ushio’s body. After uttering a short chant, the corpse — and the floor of the tavern below him — was incinerated.
“Every single one of you is going to end up like that.”
And at those words, the remaining customers in the tavern scattered like flies.
“Wh-What was that?! Wasn’t Ayaka supposed to be a spoiled rich girl character? When did she go insane?!” Hanakawa was completely shocked by his former classmate’s sudden display of cruelty.
“Wow, that was amazing,” Lute breathed, impressed. From the perspective of the Dark God’s spawn, Ayaka was rather something.
Hanakawa began to panic. “Judging from what we saw, she is quite offended by having been left behind on that bus. In that case, I may be one of her targets as well!”
“Oh, really?”
“What do you mean, ‘Oh, really’?! What are you going to do if I get killed?!”
“I said I wouldn’t kill you, sure, but that doesn’t mean I care if someone else does.”
“What about Yogiri Takatou? Without me, you won’t even know who he is!”
“Those boys were with the Sage candidates, right? If I ask one of them, I’m sure they’ll tell me.”
“O-Oh...but, uhh, after traveling so long together, I’m sure we’ve developed something like a friendship, right? And you’d be all, ‘Like hell I’ll let him die here! The only one who gets to kill him is me!’ And then when you and Ayaka fight, you’ll end it with something like, ‘You know, traveling with you wasn’t that bad after all...’”
“Absolutely not.”
“I figured...” Hanakawa made sure to remain as still as possible while they talked. Ayaka seemed satisfied with killing Ushio for the time being, as she quickly left the tavern after that. “W-Well, maybe we should head somewhere else to look for information.”
The customers had all left and the staff were in a total daze, so there wasn’t much to be gained by staying. But as the two of them made to leave, another customer entered.
“Oh, did something happen here?”
A beautiful girl in a white dress had entered and was looking around the tavern with an amused smile. Her eyes met with Hanakawa’s.
“Huh, looks like the stealth thing isn’t working,” Lute muttered, confused.
“Are you Hanakawa, by any chance? Good evening. My name is Sage Sion. Do you remember me?”
At the unmistakable danger now facing him, it was all Hanakawa could do not to scream.
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