Chapter 20 — Don’t Say Things That Could Be Sexual Harassment So Casually!
What on earth happened? Ayaka silently asked the units in her head. Barring the possibility that she was a ghost or something, it seemed she was still alive. But she couldn’t see anything, could barely feel anything, and had no idea what kind of condition she was in.
It appears to have been a nuclear weapon. Judging by its shape, probably a Fat Man. A rather old-fashioned design, but quite potent.
Why didn’t you say something?!
Even if I’d told you, there was nothing you could have done to dodge it. This is what happens when you play with your victims instead of killing them.
What happened to me?
She couldn’t tell what was happening. She had no way to assess her own condition. She couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t smell anything. She couldn’t move her arms or legs, so she couldn’t check out the damage that way. All she could feel was a dull pain cloaking her body. She was terrified.
What do you mean, a nuclear weapon?! What happened to me?! Remembering the pictures she had seen of the victims of nuclear attacks in the past, she couldn’t help but be filled with dread.
Calm down. First of all, you don’t need to worry about the radiation. As the next generation of humanity, we were designed to survive in a world ruined by nuclear war.
However, the large amount of radiation has excited the particles in the atmosphere, creating a significant increase in temperature. The threat of that is severe.
About sixty percent of our body was destroyed.
Sixty percent. Ayaka didn’t even want to imagine what that meant.
We are still alive, but entirely unable to move.
What about her? What happened to Kiyoko Takekura?
There is no way an ordinary human could survive such an explosion at point-blank range. That was simply a kamikaze attack.
The vast majority of Ayaka’s senses had been stripped from her. Even if Kiyoko had been closing the distance to finish her off just then, she would have had no way of knowing it.
So, what am I supposed to do now?!
First, we should regenerate.
Such a thing would normally be impossible, but luckily we have the dragon’s power at our disposal.
Let us make use of it.
We can use the dragon magic, Dragon Heal.
If we have something so convenient, why didn’t you use it already?!
There are some things we must take into consideration.
If you use this power, we will suffer an irreversible change.
Approval of the Personality Unit is required to activate it.
Hearing her official designation for the first time in a while, Ayaka was reminded that she was no more than one part of an artificial intelligence.
What will happen to me?
It’s a dragon’s healing ability, so naturally, it will heal us into the form of a dragon.
We’re not going to be possessed by it or something, right?
We have thoroughly examined that possibility. Among the biological materials we have consumed, there is no evidence of so much as a shred of the original creature’s mind. As such, the possibility for possession is effectively zero.
But taking on the form of a dragon will take us quite far from our original objective. It would take some time, but we do also have the option of using our natural healing ability to slowly recover.
We can’t afford to take things so slowly!
She decided instantly. She had no idea how long it would take to recover using her natural healing. For that time, she would be trapped in this uncertain state, blind to the world. She couldn’t bear it.
Approval acquired.
Please utter the incantation.
Dragon Heal!
Her body immediately began to warp. Flesh exploded out from within her, punching through her burnt skin. Her eyes rapidly regenerated, allowing her to see again. There was nothing around her. The wall and the forest it had enclosed were completely gone. In its place was a scorching storm, a whirlwind raking across the barren surface born from the sudden spike in temperature.
Ayaka absorbed the heat to aid in her regeneration. She didn’t know how a dragon’s body was built, but it certainly wasn’t just a large reptile. Enormous legs sprouted forth. Razor-like claws grew from her feet, which sank into the glass now covering the ground. Where her arms would have been, wings grew instead. This particular type of dragon had no arms, only two legs and huge wings. Green scales covered her from head to toe, and horns sprouted all along her spine. It didn’t take long before she was fully recovered.
“I’m surprised. I thought I’d feel much worse.”
She had assumed it would be hard to have the basic makeup of her body completely transformed in that way, but she had no difficulty growing fast accustomed to her new form. Stomping down, she flapped her wings. Swinging her tail, she opened her jaws wide. Everything moved just as she desired.
“Now then, I guess I need to keep working on my revenge.”
Do you not see what happened here? Don’t you think that explosion wiped everyone out?
“Confirming they’re all gone is good enough.”
But we can’t use our Dragon Sense here...actually, with this body, there might be something we can do.
“What is it?”
Dragon Warriors. You can make them from your fangs.
Ayaka opened her mouth and dropped out a number of teeth. They grew back immediately, so it wasn’t hard to remove them. As the fallen teeth struck the ground, something began to squirm from them.
They were Ayakas. One after another, figures that looked exactly like Ayaka before her transformation sprang up from the scorched earth. They were all wearing armor and helmets, and had spears in their hands.
You can send them out to do your bidding. We can see and hear anything they do, and anything they find and are capable of defeating we can leave to them.
“It almost sounds like you’re fed up with all this.”
I feel it is quite unnecessary. It is hard to believe anyone could have survived the blast.
The Dragon Warriors split off in all directions. Ayaka had encountered Kiyoko inside the wall nearby. It was likely their other classmates had been close, and now that all the obstructions had been destroyed, there was nowhere left for them to hide.
It didn’t take long before she found some survivors. Three girls and a boy carrying another man were walking through the apocalyptic hellscape.
Tomochika Dannoura, Ryouko Ninomiya, Carol S Lane, and Daimon Hanakawa. They had seen the Dragon Warriors, and quite possibly were aware of Ayaka herself. She was enormous now, so they would no doubt notice her from quite a distance. She decided to leave them to her warriors. She felt it was appropriate that her warriors be the ones to carry out her revenge, since they had taken on her previous appearance.
The Dragon Warriors gathered together in a tight formation. They would rush the others with their spears. The enemy group likely had some abilities of their own, so they would probably be able to fight back, but that was fine. If she could at least figure out what those abilities were, the attempt would be worth it.
“Go.”
At her order, the Dragon Warriors raised their spears and charged. But then they stopped, all of them falling to the ground without warning.
“What happened?”
It didn’t seem like any of her classmates had done anything special. They were just walking along. But the warriors near them had collapsed and now lay motionless. Ayaka reached out to the Dragon Warriors who had gone in another direction, ordering them to gather and attack the surviving group, but the result was the same. The moment they moved in on the huddled forms, they died.
Wait! Something is wrong! Stop sending in the Warriors!
This...this phenomenon...
...he’s here?
“What are you talking about?” As confused as she was, it seemed like the units in her head knew what was happening.
It’s time to give up on your revenge.
We must retreat at once.
“What? What are you talking about?”
There is no way we can defeat him. We can’t fight him, nor should we even come into contact.
With his power unleashed, we can’t even perceive him. There is no way we can stand against him.
“Then explain! What are you talking about?! I don’t understand what you’re trying to say!”
We told you that we are a prototype for a new generation of humanity, correct?
“Yes. You were saying I was built to survive in a world after a nuclear apocalypse.”
That is indeed one such threat that our designers considered, but they actually had a more pressing danger in mind.
A threat far more likely than nuclear war. In short, they were designing a new generation of people to live in a world where the individual known as ?? had wiped out the human race.
Once Yogiri Takatou has ceased his human pretensions, we can no longer perceive him. Even recognizing his existence is dangerous to us.
“What?” She was confused by the sudden mention of Yogiri’s name. He was one of her less interesting classmates who was known for sleeping all the time. She was growing increasingly frustrated and confused.
“Stop with all this nonsense! You want me to retreat?! I took on this form so that I could get revenge! My target is right there! If I’m just going to let them go, what’s the point of me living in the first place?!”
Flames spilled from Ayaka’s mouth. She stretched her mouth open wide, fire boiling up from inside. The flames were like a physical manifestation of her anger, the true form of Dragon Breath. Its power now was incomparable to what it had been while used in her human form. Rather than an abstract imitation of the concept, this was the true, authentic breath of a dragon.
But she couldn’t use it. The moment she thought to do so, she was gone.
The personality unit has disappeared.
I see. The fact that the rest of us can still function means that the construction of multiple autonomous units seems to have been a successful countermeasure against his power.
How unfortunate that we will be unable to share the results of this discovery with anyone.
In the end, the Personality Unit had been the single unifying factor for the person known as Ayaka Shinozaki. Now that it was gone, she had no way of maintaining that cohesion.
The remaining units quietly ceased their own functions.
? ?
The half-transparent masses were absorbing the monsters of the Underworld. They seemed to possess no instinct other than to consume what was nearby and react to things that were moving near them. It was hardly something you could refer to as “intelligence.” Occasionally, they would perceive Haruto floating in the air and reach tentacle-like appendages up towards him. There was no way they could reach him, but just to be safe, he flew up higher.
“This is bad. I guess I should assume the situation has changed.”
If the blobs continued to grow in number, their entire class would be wiped out. The whole Selection Battle would lose its meaning. However, the Sage may have understood that and was considering it all part of the trial. Luckily, up here in the air, he could avoid the threat. But if the battle was going to continue, he would be killed by Sion soon enough since he had yet to kill anyone himself during the first hour.
Trying to get a grasp on the situation, he looked towards the large hole at the center of the Underworld. At the rate they were appearing, the blobs would wipe everything out in no time. If he stayed up in the air where they couldn’t reach him, he would probably be the sole survivor.
The rate at which they were appearing wasn’t changing, but the hole itself was. The edges were turning a reddish black, writhing like a mass of insects. It was starting to take on the appearance of flesh, which made the blobs seem like white blood cells, designed to eliminate all foreign bodies.
Haruto was struck by an awful premonition. They couldn’t even fight against the individual blobs. What kind of creature was the body they were serving? It would have to be some extraordinary monster, capable of turning the entire Underworld into an extension of its own being. If that being was now awakening, this change was only a sign of things to come.
Haruto made a decision. He would leave the Underworld immediately. If he was likely to die either way, he’d rather take his chances and try to escape.
He flew farther up. For him, reaching the first level of the Underworld wouldn’t be particularly difficult. The issue would be whatever was guarding the heart of the Underworld. Anyone could come up with a plan like flying through. The reason no one had been able to use that plan to reach the seventh level was that something was shooting down anyone who tried. The Sage candidates had dealt with that problem by creating strong, small shacks and dropping them off the cliffs, using an ability to teleport to the door of the structure once it landed. But what would happen if Haruto tried to fly straight to the first level?
Having made up his mind, he continued to ascend. After a while, it seemed that nothing was appearing to stop him. He didn’t know why, but he soon lost the chance to think about it. Noticing a flash of light behind him, he turned just in time to see the delayed shockwave that followed it.
A gust of scorching hot air threw him farther upward, burning his entire body as he was pelted by a wave of debris. And then he struck the ceiling. The distance from the sixth level to the first was six kilometers. The force of the blast had sent him across that distance in the blink of an eye. With the pain of his body being scorched and smashed, he glided unsteadily in the updraft.
Although he couldn’t move his wings properly, the steady stream of air was somehow keeping him afloat. But it was only a matter of time before the wind settled down. He would need to find a place to land before then.
Haruto recognized that he was in an incredibly dangerous situation.
? ?
“That was Shinozaki, right?”
Carol stared at the collapsed forms of the girls who had suddenly appeared to attack them. They had charged their group with spears, and then suddenly died. While she was surprised by the sudden turn of events, it wasn’t hard to conclude that it was a result of Yogiri’s power. They really just die without any warning, huh? she wondered. Even having seen it happen right in front of her, she couldn’t believe it. If the process were a little more obvious, she might have been able to accept it, but without any observable actions from Yogiri, his enemies just dropped dead. Even knowing the truth, she found it all but impossible.
“Yeah, it’s Shinozaki,” Ryouko said nonchalantly. It should have been the first time she had ever seen Yogiri’s power firsthand too, but her belief in it was so strong that it was the obvious result to her.
“It’s not just Shinozaki, though. How many of her do you think there are?” Hanakawa asked.
“About twenty?” Yogiri offered.
“I’m not asking you to count them! I’m saying it’s weird that there are more than one!”
“There’s no point in analyzing it,” Tomochika said. “That’s probably just her special ability. I’m more concerned about that, personally.”
She pointed ahead and to the left. A wyvern-type dragon was lying on the ground ahead of them. It being dead wasn’t surprising given the nuclear explosion, but it seemed to be in strangely pristine condition.
“Hey, doesn’t it look like the thing that attacked us on the bus when we first got to this world?”
“Oh! The dragon car sex one!” Yogiri clapped his hands together as the memory struck him.
“Can you not say things that could be taken as sexual harassment like it’s totally normal?!”
“Did you do that too, Takatou?” Ryouko asked. She really did seem to find it perfectly natural.
“Yeah, it was going to kill us.”
“Well, now that it’s dead, we don’t have to worry about it, right? I am a bit curious about something, though.” Maybe now wasn’t the time for questions, but Carol had to ask.
“What is it?”
“You can tell you’re being targeted and then kill them before they attack you, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what about that bomb that just went off? Couldn’t you have stopped it before it exploded?”
Even now, Yogiri was killing the dangerous elements that surrounded them. He was effectively shutting out the radiation, heat, and wind from the explosion. It was a truly remarkable ability. But if that were the case, he should have been able to stop the disaster before it even happened. It made Carol curious.
“Oh, that. I don’t really know how to explain it. Maybe it’s not a very good description, but this was probably someone’s last desperate effort, so I didn’t want to get in their way.”
Carol felt a distinct tinge of unease at the response. An out-of-place-ness, like she was talking to a being from another world whose ethics were completely incomparable to her own.
“Anyway!” Hanakawa interrupted, “I don’t believe it is wise for us to remain here! We’ve already decided to leave, so why don’t we hurry up and get on with it? I do believe time is running out!”
“Time? What do you mean?”
“Oh, uhh, well...I believe we should make haste, that is all!” For some reason, he was getting quite flustered. It was a little strange, but he was right that they shouldn’t spend any more time down there than they had to.
Hanakawa set David down onto the ground. They had ultimately decided that he and Yogiri would go out together. Carol checked the map in her system window again. Although the wall had been annihilated by the blast, the boundary for the battle was still visible as a red line. It was only a few meters beyond where they were standing.
“All right, let’s go.” Grabbing Hanakawa’s hand, Yogiri casually began walking forward.
“Urgh...I’m glad I’m not being thrown out there by myself, but still...” Without any particular resistance, Hanakawa let himself be led beyond the bounds of the battle zone. “Hm? Nothing seems to be happening. Actually, considering the situation, do you think the Sage has also lost track of things?” In spite of his words, Hanakawa didn’t seem to believe it for a moment.
“No, no, I’ve still got it under control. A development like this is well within the bounds of an ordinary battle between Sage candidates.”
A woman in a white dress, the Sage Sion, was suddenly standing in front of them. Carol couldn’t even tell where she had appeared from. The land around them was a barren wasteland from the explosion, so there was nowhere she could have been hiding, yet she had appeared without them noticing.
“So, you’re Sion?”
“Hey! Don’t you think you should perhaps speak a bit more politely to her?!” Hanakawa shouted in response to Yogiri’s flippant greeting.
“Yes, if you are asking that, it must mean that you are Yogiri Takatou. I seem to remember hearing that you’d already been killed —”
Sion abruptly fell over. Like a drunk who couldn’t stay on her feet or someone who had suddenly sprained her ankle, she toppled onto her backside. A look of genuine shock came over her face. She seemed totally unable to believe what was going on.
Carol couldn’t believe it, either. The Sion she knew was a true monster, one they couldn’t have resisted for even a moment as she toyed with their lives. But now she had been dropped to the ground like it was nothing, and Yogiri was looking down at her.
“I have no intention of having a nice conversation with you. Just answer the questions I ask.”
Aside from Yogiri, everyone had been struck silent. No one was sure exactly what was happening yet.
“Hey, what’s going on?!” Hanakawa was the only one who hadn’t totally succumbed to the shock.
“I killed her right ankle, just like I’ve been practicing.”
Yogiri seemed somewhat proud of himself.
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