Chapter 8 — I Like to Play Around a Bit
After the bar was transformed into a living creature, Shigehito and the others immediately fled. There was no way for the newly made monster to recognize what was actually in its mouth, so it was impossible to have it attack only their enemies. They had no intention of saving Hanakawa either. Not because he had betrayed them, but because they had never cared about him in the first place.
Be careful, huh? Shigehito thought. That’s what the Book of Prophecy said. It had cautioned them, but how were they supposed to interpret such a vague warning?
“Hey, why are we running away? We have no way to find the Sage later, right? Why not just fight him now?” Akinobu didn’t put much trust in the prophecy. Unlike Shigehito and Rei, he had a skill that could be used in combat. With a firm grasp of what he was capable of, he was confident in his ability to fight a Sage.
But Shigehito, in turn, had no faith in Akinobu’s powers. In the end, they were merely abilities granted to them by the Sages.
“They can neutralize the Gift in anyone with a position lower than their own! That’s why we’ve been searching for a weapon that has no relation to the Sages!”
They needed to gain enough strength to fight their superiors without relying on the Gift, and Shigehito’s prophecy was the only thing that could do that. During an actual confrontation, the Sages could nullify his ability to summon the Book of Prophecy, but as long as he read it while they weren’t around, it should serve him well enough. The prophecies were simply information. No one could nullify what he already knew.
Shigehito believed that he was the only candidate who was capable of killing the Sages. That was why they had recruited Ragna, who had no connection to the Sages, and why they had been trying to obtain a special weapon for him.
“But my power worked just fine, didn’t it?” Akinobu challenged him. “If he can nullify it, why didn’t he?”
Shigehito paused. Was it because Yoshifumi was too strong to bother with them? Or maybe he had just underestimated their skills? He didn’t know, but he wasn’t conceited enough to think it meant they could win.
“Either way, we can’t fight him without making any preparations! Even you need time to gather allies, right?!”
Akinobu’s ability was powerful, but he couldn’t attack their enemies directly with it. He had to use his power of Creation to produce allies that could attack on his behalf.
“I’m already working on it.”
“What?” As they ran, Shigehito looked back. The cityscape was transforming. Not just the bar—all the buildings around them were morphing into enormous beasts. “It’s that easy for you?!”
“As long as I can picture it, I just need to touch it for a second. But creating something great does take a bit of time.”
Akinobu must have been using his power on everything he touched while they ran. Even if his creations weren’t capable of defeating Yoshifumi, their presence should have been enough to buy them some time. But that hope was immediately squashed when Akinobu suddenly fell forward as if he had tripped.
“Hey!”
“What are you, stupid?!” Rei shouted.
Shigehito continued to run. He was in no position to stop and help his classmate. He had to prioritize his own escape. But ultimately, he and Rei ended up stopping anyway.
A woman had appeared in front of them. Her revealing outfit showed a sickly looking body, accented by dark circles under her eyes. He couldn’t ignore her; not when she was holding Akinobu’s head in her hand.
A number of thoughts sprang into his mind all at once. Akinobu was dead. Who was she? How did she get ahead of them? Why did she target the Creator first? Why did she only target him? Shouldn’t she have been able to kill all three of them at once easily enough? Or did she have a reason for keeping him and Rei alive? Or was there a limit to her ability—
“Umm, it looks like you’re overthinking it, so I’ll just go ahead and say there wasn’t any particular reason I killed him first.”
Shigehito went stiff. Had she read his mind?
“No, no. That just seemed to be what you were thinking. I guess you could say because he was strong, I figured it would be a pain if I let him continue, so I killed him first.”
She must have meant that him creating additional creatures would have been a nuisance. But the area had already fallen into chaos. Even with Akinobu’s death, the giant creatures he had made hadn’t returned to normal. They were now free, rampaging through the city.
“You are?”
“The evil empire’s leadership has all sorts of people. There are some loyal hard workers who will do exactly what they are ordered to and then head back immediately, but I like to play around a bit.”
Although indirect, it was an answer of sorts. Yoshifumi was the emperor, so that made her his subordinate.
“Don’t think I’m like Akinobu,” Shigehito warned, arming himself. Solid armor suddenly wrapped around his body, and numerous amulets and rings appeared on him. A pair of swords similarly appeared in his hands along with a variety of other weapons floating in the air around him. These were all items he had obtained using his Book of Prophecy without any of his friends knowing.
Akinobu had possessed a powerful skill, so he had made no effort to strengthen himself personally. But Shigehito was different. In order to grow in the most efficient way possible, he had gathered numerous powerful artifacts. In his current state, he felt that he was on the same level as any hero.
Then the woman planted her foot deep in his stomach. The kick penetrated his numerous magical defenses, punched straight through his rare metal armor, and thoroughly destroyed the organs underneath.
Sent flying by the impact, Shigehito struck a building behind him, losing all sense of where he was. He was barely alive. One of the pieces of his equipment gave him a regenerative ability, although he wasn’t sure which one it was.
“You’ve got some pretty good stuff, but that doesn’t mean much when the user is a novice,” the woman commented. “It doesn’t matter what your level is when your base stats are shabby. You have to build up those fundamentals first.”
Shigehito hadn’t seen her attack coming. He possessed artifacts that assisted in perceiving his enemy’s movements and enhanced his reaction speed in response to potential danger, but they had all been useless against her.
“Oh? I’m surprised,” the woman continued. “I didn’t expect the Femme Fatale power to work on me. I’m not even into girls.”
As Shigehito accepted his impending death, the woman turned to Rei. From his perspective, their enemy seemed totally vulnerable at the moment, but he knew better than to trust his novice instincts. He had no desire to move.
“But I can’t let you control me that way. All right, I’ll just make you into a pet, then.”
As Rei’s level increased, her physical abilities improved, but she had no skills that were useful for fighting. Against an amateur, she might have stood a chance, but she was totally powerless in the face of this monster. However, her ability to charm the opposite sex worked to a lesser degree on women as well, and it had managed to suppress her opponent’s desire to kill her.
The woman took off with Rei, who was powerless to disobey her. Overwhelmed by crippling pain while his body slowly regenerated, Shigehito could do nothing but watch them go.
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