Chapter 9 — Unfortunately, Not Even the Dannoura Family Can Shoot Beams Like That Yet
“I’m getting kind of sick of this...”
After their meeting with Ayaka Shinozaki, Yogiri and Tomochika returned to the palace. Making it through the front gate and heading for the mansion reserved for their class, Tomochika had a dark look on her face.
“It really is hard to say anything,” Yogiri replied.
Tomochika was bothered by the angry look the gate guard had given them. It had gotten out that the chain of incidents over the past few days was related to the Sage candidates, and the people of the city weren’t hiding their resentment towards the outsiders.
The damage to the capital and the palace so far had been immense. Everyone knew that one of the students was responsible, but there was nothing they could do. Their anger wasn’t surprising.
So, it was Shinozaki after all, Yogiri thought. He was starting to wonder if he should have gotten rid of her. But he also knew that if he started using his power to intervene in things that weren’t directly related to him, it would become a slippery slope.
“You should use your power however you like. Even something like, ‘Man, I hate that guy, I’m going to kill him!’ is okay. But the one thing I don’t want you to do is use it according to someone else’s logic or clever planning. Don’t get caught up in feelings of justice or ideology; just use it however you want to.” Asaka Takatou, the woman who essentially had been a mother to him, had once told him that.
The fact was, someone had killed a large number of people in the city. It was unacceptable, and they should be punished for it. Perhaps that was what Asaka had meant by “justice,” but Yogiri didn’t have any real emotional investment in the situation. He merely felt that he had an obligation to do something about it. Truthfully, hearing that a bunch of people he’d never met in an unfamiliar world had been killed wasn’t something that bothered him too much.
“I don’t think killing a bunch of innocent bystanders makes sense if you’re trying to take revenge,” Tomochika commented, interrupting his thoughts.
“But it’s okay if she kills our classmates?”
“Well, it’s not like I wish them dead, but they were pretty cruel...”
Unable to figure out exactly how she felt, Tomochika was still fretting about the situation. Yogiri, however, didn’t care one way or another about his classmates. Their decision to leave him and the other three as bait was tantamount to attempted murder, so they didn’t have the right to complain if someone decided to murder them for it. Then again, even his recent friends, like Ryouko and Carol, would be killed in the process, so he couldn’t just allow it to happen. He wasn’t trying to be cruel, nor was he trying to remain neutral. He simply wanted to support the people he had become close to.
“I guess if she tries to kill someone in front of me, I’ll have to stop her. I can’t stand by and watch.”
“Right?!” Tomochika felt the same way, if her enthusiastic agreement was any indication.
But she is rather strong, you know? Mokomoko remarked. Of course, that’s no issue for the boy, but she may be more than you can handle.
“I never claimed I could handle someone who can shoot beams of fire!”
Unfortunately, not even the Dannoura family can shoot beams like that yet...
“What do you mean, ‘yet’?”
As the group conversed, they reached the entrance to the house. The door immediately swung open and one of their classmates hurried out. It was a smaller girl with a calm atmosphere about her.
“Ah, Tomochii! I was just about to go looking for you.”
Yogiri recalled that the girl’s name was Romiko Jougasaki. She had been good friends with Tomochika before all of this, and they had been sitting next to each other on the bus when Sion first brought the class over.
“What’s up, Mikochi?” While Tomochika’s close friends called her “Tomochii,” for some reason, Romiko was known as “Mikochi.”
“Akino wants to get the whole class together to talk about something.”
“The whole class, huh? That’s pretty rare.” They almost never got everyone together for a meeting. Normally, the group leaders met then shared what had been decided with their respective groups.
“We should probably hurry. She seemed pretty tense.”
Obviously, it wasn’t something they could easily blow off. They quickly followed Romiko inside.
All of the surviving Sage candidates had gathered in the estate’s conference room, sitting behind long desks that were set up around the chamber for them.
“Now then, we don’t have much time, so let’s start with an explanation of the current situation.”
Sora Akino wasted no time in starting off the meeting. She was currently the candidate in charge of the class. She had supposedly been a pop idol back home, but Yogiri had been so disconnected from the entertainment industry that he hadn’t known until Tomochika told him.
“We originally came to the capital with twenty-six members.” Of course, it had actually been twenty-four before Yogiri and Tomochika joined them, but she was ignoring that little fact. “Currently, we are down to eighteen. Eight of us have been killed by Ayaka Shinozaki.”
She read off the names of Shinozaki’s victims. The only name that Yogiri remembered was Izumida, since he had shared a room with him for a short time.
“The Eroge Nobles were wiped out, huh?” Tomochika said.
Is that the only thing you care about? Mokomoko sighed.
It seemed that many of the candidates hadn’t realized just how many of them had died so far, and it was hard for them to hide their surprise.
“Can no one beat her?!”
“Yeah, aren’t we supposed to be strong? She’s just one person!” one of the guys cried, as if to suggest that if it had been him, he would have beaten her.
“While it’s true most of our fighting strength has been focused on taking the Underworld,” Sora explained, “I believe the main reason for her success is that she is singling out individuals to attack. I believe we told you not to act alone.”
That was something many of the students had clearly ignored, confident in their own powers.
“So, what happened with Munakata and Yatate?” Yazaki asked. “They saw Ushio die and couldn’t do anything to stop it. They should have known how dangerous she was.”
It was hard to believe those two would go out on their own after what they had witnessed. Ushio, Munakata, and Yatate...the three boys known as the Eroge Nobles had all been there when Ayaka had made her first appearance and killed Ushio. It seemed unlikely the two survivors would have taken the threat she posed lightly.
“They were killed in their rooms,” Sora answered. “It seems sneaking past the guards here isn’t too difficult.”
A ripple of unease passed through the room. If that were true, none of them could rest easy. If Ayaka’s plan had been to scare them, she had certainly been successful.
“That’s all for the current situation. As for what comes next, we have been asked to leave the kingdom immediately.”
“What do you mean ‘leave’?” Yazaki asked again. “Aren’t we here on the Sage’s orders?” The authority of the Sages was absolute. Even the king didn’t have the power to defy them.
“Yes, but it appears the people here believe their kingdom will be destroyed at this rate anyway. Given the amount of damage Ayaka Shinozaki has inflicted, they must feel there’s no point in obeying the Sages anymore.”
The students had been instructed to leave the kingdom within a day. It wasn’t an absurd request. The king himself had been killed by Ayaka, so all things considered, they were receiving relatively gentle treatment.
“Naturally, I don’t feel that we’re in a position to take on an entire country. So we’re planning on moving the entire class to the Underworld. We have two objectives: one, continue our mission to defeat the Dark God, and two, lure Ayaka Shinozaki down there with us and defeat her as well.”
Sora Akino’s declaration left no room for argument.
Romiko Jougasaki hated standing out, and she hated doing things that were difficult. That was why she presented herself as having such a flighty personality. If she pretended she wasn’t listening, she could ignore anything that annoyed her, and if she failed to keep a promise, she was more likely to be forgiven if others believed she had simply forgotten.
Unfortunately, that also worked against her desire to not stand out. Behaving like an airhead naturally drew more attention. It was an annoying necessity, though. She would rather stand out for that than have to deal with anything that required actual effort. So for the most part, she focused on the avoidance of such activities as much as possible.
With that in mind, being who she was, she couldn’t possibly tell the others what her Gift actually did. If her ability was suited to fighting, they would put her right on the front line. She had no intention of letting that happen. So the moment she’d gained her powers, she had thought about what she could do to hide them.
Her class was Necromancer, and it allowed her to manipulate the spirits of the dead. She could have claimed that her ability was simply to speak to ghosts, but in truth, she could not only control the spirits, but also temporarily merge with them in order to access their powers. So she had any number of options when it came to fighting.
But there was a possibility that someone might already know the details of her class, or have the ability to see through her lie. So trying to lie about it would have been a bad idea. Instead, she had used her Calling ability. Among the confused classmates on the bus, she must have been the first to use her new powers. Searching for spirits around her, she sought the weakest, most useless one she could find.
Of course, a spirit who had no power of its own wouldn’t do. As someone who had received the Gift from the Sages, she needed a ghost with a special ability. Something unique, but not useful. It didn’t take long before she found the perfect target: a Counter.
When she searched for spirits, she could uncover information about their abilities, so she knew the Counter class had the ability to count things and nothing more, making it totally useless in battle. She immediately took in the spirit of the Counter. On the surface, her own class reflected that of the ghost, so even if someone had a way of checking on her available skills, that was all they would see. There might be someone who was capable of penetrating even that level of disguise, but there was no point in worrying about it. She could deal with such a development if and when the time came.
Thanks to her efforts, she’d been considered a person of minimal value to the class. If her goal was to not stand out, she would have been better off picking something more middle-of-the-road, but for minimizing the chance of being forced to fight, appearing completely useless seemed far better.
Unfortunately, things had taken a turn for the worse. The class had decided that everyone was going to have to participate in clearing the Underworld. She’d only heard about it secondhand, but it seemed like a dark, dirty, unpleasant place. She had no desire to go there, and absolutely didn’t want to do any fighting.
She began to wonder if she should have just gotten rid of Ayaka Shinozaki herself. Using the spirits around her, Romiko could monitor her surroundings. As such, she was well aware of when Ayaka was coming, and knew exactly when her classmates were dying. It was all too much trouble for her, though, so she hadn’t done anything about it, figuring that someone else would deal with their rogue classmate before it got out of hand. She realized now that she should have handled it herself, but that was hindsight for you.
She would have to go to the Underworld with the others. But her plan wasn’t going to change; she would continue to pretend that she was useless for as long as she could. If she was going to go all out, she’d have to wait for everyone else to die first. Otherwise, it just wasn’t worth the bother.
Was Yuugo hiding his power as well? Or did he suddenly grow in strength?
Yukimasa Aihara wasn’t sure of the truth, but he knew for a fact that Yuugo Izumida had gone out to single-handedly challenge Ayaka Shinozaki. After all, that was what was written in the book he was currently reading.
His class was Reader. It allowed him to read books written in any language. Or at least, that’s what it looked like on the surface. But the reality was quite different. His true power was the ability to read the future as if it were a novel. The small paperback book he always carried was the manifestation of that power. Generally, it was written from a first-person perspective, as if Yukimasa were the main character, but he could also read third-person side stories of related “characters” as well.
According to one of those stories, the seemingly mediocre class of Cook was actually much more powerful than one would imagine. For anything related to cooking, his skills would have been unparalleled. If he considered an enemy to be an “ingredient,” he could use his Ingredient Search skill to find them anywhere, and his Ingredient Knowledge skill told him all about their abilities. His Ingredient Dissection skill allowed him to cut apart any enemy with his kitchen knife. His Simultaneous Cooking skill allowed him to clone himself to manage the “kitchen” more efficiently, and his ability to cook and fry things gave him control over high temperatures. He could even control time to some degree, to assist in fermentation.
He was strong, but he was entirely lacking in defensive abilities. There was no reason for a Cook to have defensive skills, so it wasn’t a class that could really shine on its own. If he had worked alongside someone who specialized in defense, however, he could have compensated for that weakness and likely beaten any opponent.
If Yukimasa had offered that advice, perhaps Yuugo could have defeated Ayaka. But he had said nothing, watching quietly instead.
Well, I’m sure there are plenty of others like me.
Those who showed their powers openly for everyone to see looked like idiots. If they really wanted to survive, they would have kept their powers a secret and avoided fighting on the front lines. The strongest members of their class must have taken that approach, like Yukimasa himself.
His own disguise was simple. By writing in his book, he could change reality. As long as it didn’t affect others, he could successfully use it to hide his true nature.
In the end, someone is probably going to wipe out that Dark God with a sigh like it’s nothing.
He didn’t particularly want the job himself, but he was optimistic.
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