Chapter 2 — Maybe I Should Be Acting a Bit More Hysterical
After traveling through the Garula Canyon for a few days, Tomochika and Yogiri finally reached the Meld Plains. They had made it this far using their armored truck. Now in the gap between the canyon and the plains, they had stopped to survey the landscape.
“It’s kind of different from what I expected,” Tomochika murmured from the driver’s seat. She had anticipated a green carpet stretching off into the distance — a plain rich with scenic beauty.
The Meld Plains were certainly beautiful, but it was a very different kind of beauty. Everything before their eyes was like crystal. The grass sprouting everywhere, the odd trees sticking up out of the ground, the lizards crawling around, and even what looked like the buildings of some sort of settlement...it all seemed to be made from a sharp-edged, translucent material. Even the sky had a sort of crystalline net draped over it, scattering the sunlight before it reached the ground.
On top of that, visibility in the area was rather poor. Although it was supposed to be a plain, they couldn’t see very far. The light reflecting off the ubiquitous crystal texture as well as the thin haze hanging over it all served to obstruct their view.
“Apparently they also call this place the Crystal Plains,” Yogiri said, his lack of surprise indicating he had known what they were going to see before they arrived.
“They should have called it that first! How do you even know?”
“I think the concierge told me about it when she gave me the map,” Yogiri replied unabashedly, leading Tomochika to decide it wasn’t that big of a deal.
“It looks like there’s a village or something over there. Are people living in this weird place?” she asked, changing the subject.
“I wouldn’t expect them to be ordinary people.” Everything here was sharp and hard-edged. It didn’t look like the kind of environment flesh and blood humans could inhabit.
“Ah, I got it! There are probably crystal people living there. See, there’s even a crystal dog walking around.” They could see a small creature shuffling around the settlement. It was a four-legged animal made out of crystal. Judging from its shape and the way it moved, it gave off the impression of being a dog.
“It doesn’t look like it’s going to attack. I really hate having to kill dogs, so that’s good.” It seemed the creature was aware of them as they sat inside the vehicle, but it only looked curious.
“You like dogs?”
“I have a pet dog. She’s pretty old, though, so I’m a bit worried about her.”
“We have a dog too. My sister likes animals a lot, so we have all kinds of pets.”
Yes, the Dannoura family traditionally cares for dogs of the Akita breed. The Dannoura School of Martial Arts has techniques that utilize them, after all! Mokomoko remarked, suddenly appearing between the two of them.
“So, that technique where he bites the back of someone’s neck and spins around isn’t something my sister taught him...” Tomochika had written it off as part of her sister’s own eccentricities, but apparently it was a family-wide thing.
Regardless, I didn’t come here to talk about dogs. There’s a dangerous feeling about this place, so please proceed with caution!
“If you’re that vague about it, we won’t know what to be careful of.”
I suppose you could call it a sort of curse. It seems to hang over this entire place. That being said, it’s still at a level I can deal with.
“Takatou, you didn’t randomly kill something again, did you?” He had once instinctively killed someone for being the source of an evil aura that he’d felt, and Tomochika was worried he might fall into that trap again.
“I’ve been more careful since then. Anyway, that curse or whatever it is doesn’t seem to have a distinct source. It’s so vague, I don’t think it’s much of a danger to us at the moment.”
In that case, things were probably fine, Tomochika decided. “Putting that aside, there’s nothing to do but go forward. Do you think the truck can handle it?”
It is an armored vehicle. It’s probably quite resistant to getting flats.
“I can just kill anything that gets in our way. I think it’ll be okay if I kill that grass-looking stuff.” Yogiri wasn’t quick-tempered enough to flat out kill anything that got in his way. He had his own rules for being considerate. But his idea of common sense often diverged quite a bit from what Tomochika was used to.
“If that’s really ‘grass,’ then it would never grow again, would it?”
“As long as the seeds are okay, it should be fine. I’m just killing the grass itself.”
“Well, from the map, the plains don’t look that big. Should we try to cross it all at once? It’s not a maze like the canyon was.”
The train tracks that led through the canyon also cut a straight line across the plains. If they just found and followed those tracks, they should be able to make it to the capital without a problem. If they wanted to avoid the plains, they would have to make a fairly wide detour.
I suspect we won’t be able to pass through a place as ominous as this without incident.
“I guess if this were a game, that just makes it the next phase after the canyon.”
“If we go to the right, we should find the tracks, shouldn’t we?” Yogiri asked, glancing at the map in Tomochika’s hands. “It looks like there’s a station there too.”
While the plains were rather wide from an east-to-west perspective, they were fairly narrow if one headed north or south. It looked like they could clear the current plain in an hour if they drove in a straight line.
“Let’s go take a look, then,” Tomochika decided, starting the engine. She had become quite accustomed to operating the vehicle at this point.
Perhaps thanks to Yogiri’s assistance, they were able to drive over the crystalline grass without issue, making her concerns about flat tires unnecessary. Following the map, they soon came across the tracks they were looking for. As expected, the area immediately surrounding the tracks hadn’t been crystallized. While it seemed the structures comprising the station had very nearly been converted into the alien material, they still held their original forms for the moment.
“Should we take a look inside the station? This place seems pretty odd, so I kind of want to see what information we can get, but...we’re basically ‘wanted’ now, aren’t we?”
They were clearly being targeted by the Sages, although Ryouta had made no effort to capture them despite being one of the Sage’s attendants. It was hard to gauge what their standing with the public at large was.
“We can’t sneak around forever. Do you plan on hiding when we get to the capital?”
Yogiri didn’t seem the least bit concerned about whether they were being hunted. Tomochika used his confidence to steel herself, pulling up next to the station, which was itself a rather compact building. Considering the location, it wasn’t that odd. It was hard to believe anyone would want to get on or off the train here.
As the two of them stepped out of the truck, they were immediately struck by a sudden drop in temperature.
“Wow, it’s cold! Why did it change so quickly?!” Tomochika blurted out. Up until this point, the climate had been fairly warm, so it must have been something to do with the peculiar environment of the plains. Whether it was related to the overall climate or not, the crystalline landscape seemed visibly cold.
“It doesn’t really look like ice, though, does it? Anyway, let’s go inside.”
Yogiri opened the door to the station. Inside was a waiting room filled with wooden benches arrayed around a central heater. Across from the entrance was another door that likely led to the ticket gate and platform.
“No one’s here?” whispered Tomochika.
“It’s not abandoned, is it? I mean, there’s a heater and everything.”
“Okay, let’s go farther in, then.”
As Tomochika made that suggestion, the door to the next room opened. A young man in uniform stepped out, but something was clearly wrong. His face was pale as he pressed his hands to his stomach, trying — and evidently failing — to stem the flow of blood coming from it.
Lurching into the room unsteadily, his eyes darted around wildly. He was very badly injured.
“Hey, are you okay?!” Tomochika made to hurry to his side, but Yogiri grabbed her and held her back.
A moment later, the dry sound of a gunshot filled the air, a sound Tomochika could instantly recognize from how often she had heard it back home. The young man collapsed to the floor, blood pooling around him. He had been shot through the heart from behind, dying instantly.
“Did you think he’d gotten away? Too bad!”
“Goddammit! Looks like I lost. Come on, if you’re just gonna die, hurry up and get on with it! Don’t waste my time like this!”
“Right? Shooting someone in the stomach isn’t enough to kill them right away.”
“You really are sick, though. Weren’t you leading him to his friends to save him?”
“If he doesn’t think there’s a way out for him, he won’t try that hard. It’s hardly worth placing bets if he doesn’t try.”
Five men in military uniforms made their way into the waiting room. All of them were holding pistols. Apparently, the weapons had been developed locally, as they were unfamiliar styles to Tomochika.
“Oh? I thought they said there was only the one guy here. Are we lucky or what?”
All of their gazes immediately snapped to Tomochika. They were vulgar, wicked looks that she had experienced numerous times since coming to this world.
“Die.”
The moment Yogiri spoke, the five men dropped to the floor. With nasty smiles still on their faces, they had died without even knowing it.
“What are we supposed to do with this situation?” Tomochika murmured, struggling to keep up with the rapid developments.
“The guy they shot is already dead, so there’s nothing we can do for him. And it doesn’t look like it had anything to do with us.”
Yogiri sounded somewhat dismissive, but Tomochika found it hard to blame him. She felt much the same way. It may have seemed a bit cold, but seeing someone die the moment she met them didn’t provoke much in the way of emotion from her.
“But now we have no idea what’s going on. Shouldn’t we at least have confirmed what they were doing here?”
“Except they were all planning on shooting me right away, so I didn’t really have a chance to talk to them.”
Yogiri was able to perceive both danger and killing intent. While there was something to be said from merely threatening people, there had been no room for less extreme measures this time.
“Couldn’t you have killed them one by one like before and threatened the last guy...hold on, I’m starting to sound kind of sadistic all of a sudden! Forget what I just said!”
Seeing you unmoved by a scene like this gives me great confidence in having you as the next successor of the Dannoura line, Mokomoko said, folding her arms and nodding.
“Maybe I should start acting a bit more hysterical...” Tomochika replied, somehow feeling disheartened by Mokomoko’s sterling evaluation of her.
Having been occupied with searching the dead men’s bodies, Yogiri hadn’t heard their little exchange. “Let’s take the guns. You know about these things, right Mokomoko?”
Indeed. Their construction seems quite similar to those I am familiar with, so I imagine they function in the same way.
“It doesn’t seem like they were carrying much stuff, so they might have a base nearby. I can’t imagine they just happen to live around here.”
“Couldn’t they be soldiers from the capital?” If there were soldiers in a place like this, Tomochika’s first thought was that they must be from the city.
“I don’t know much about the capital or the country in general, so it’s hard to say. Either way, we should probably move on sooner rather than later.”
Yogiri quickly gave up on the station and made his way outside. Tomochika couldn’t help but worry that killing those soldiers would cause trouble for them somewhere down the line.
After making their way out of the crystal landscape, an enormous wall came into view. The tall structure stretched as far as they could see to either side. If that was the capital, it must have been fairly large.
“Looks like a fortress city. With a wall that big, it would be dark all day if you lived near the edge. Seems inconvenient.” As Yogiri spoke idly from the passenger seat, Tomochika was still struggling to take her mind off what was behind them.
“Sorry, I thought I’d gotten used to this, but it really isn’t feeling that way...” Though she had decided to pretend she hadn’t seen anything, she couldn’t help but regularly check her rearview mirror. Behind them lay a trail of corpses.
Who was it who said, “If you kill one person, you’re a murderer; if you kill a thousand, you’re a hero?” The boy is well on his way to becoming a hero, don’t you think? Mokomoko remarked.
Far more than a thousand soldiers were now lying dead on the plains behind them. After leaving the station, Tomochika had followed the tracks leading to the capital. As they traveled, soldiers wearing the same uniforms as those from the station had attacked them. Naturally, Yogiri put a stop to it, but no matter how many he killed, they just kept coming.
Seeing that they weren’t about to give up, Tomochika had tried to push on through them, but in the end, it looked like Yogiri had all but wiped out the organization. It made no sense that they continued to attack to the point of annihilation, so the pair had no idea why the soldiers had done it.
“It’s their fault for attacking us. Anyway, this isn’t the time for loitering. The rest of the class might have made it to the capital already,” Yogiri said.
Time in the vicinity of the tower that had sealed away the Dark God was distorted, and it had taken them a considerable amount of time to make it this far on top of that. The trains were clearly running again, as they had seen several pass by while they drove. If their classmates had been riding one of those trains, they would have already reached the city.
“I’m kind of tired, so I’m going to take a nap,” Yogiri commented, passing out in an instant.
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