My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! - Volume 7 - Chapter 17

Chapter 17 — You’re Going to Let Something like This Happen Just for That?!

The first morning after camping in the Elven Forest, Yogiri and Tomochika finished their preparations for the day and began trying to determine which direction to proceed in.

Hm. It seems I can at least pop my head up a bit above the canopy, Mokomoko said. I looked to see if there was anything we could use as a landmark and found a number of particularly large trees. If we head for them, we should be able to keep a straight course.

She floated back down in her ghost form. The Elven Forest was a particularly harsh environment for spirits, so she had gone to check just how far she could get.

“Why is it so dangerous for you to split up from me anyway?” Tomochika asked.

Normally, maintaining a spiritual form is extremely dangerous. Without careful attention it will disperse, so keeping a persistent form requires significant focus.

“What does ‘focus’ even mean for a spirit?”

There are any number of names for it, like malice, attachment, or grudge. In my case, I persist due to my identity as the guardian spirit of the Dannoura household. If I distance myself too much from you, it makes one wonder why I haven’t passed on to the next life. Normally, a short distance would be no problem, but this forest is particularly thick with chaotic magic. If I go too far, I could lose sight of you.

As she spoke, Mokomoko re-entered the Enju robot. She could control the machine from a distance, but it was easier if she was inside it.

“Was there really a tree that big?” Yogiri couldn’t remember seeing any that large since they entered the forest. He would have thought a tree big enough to use as a landmark would have been noticeable from the outside.

“This forest has a somewhat unique environment,” Mokomoko explained. “It is almost as if it is halfway displaced into another world. You cannot perceive the interior from the exterior.”

“Huh, really?”

“And we just waltzed in without thinking?” asked Tomochika.

“I guess we were a bit too reckless yesterday. We’ll have to be more careful today.”

“Yeah. It was so hot yesterday, I lost track of what was going on...”

They had been so careless, sure that things would go well simply because they were safe from attack. Yogiri regretted not stopping to think the situation through more clearly.

“By the way, it seems like another apostle came around during the night,” he mentioned.

“I didn’t notice.”

“They attacked from really far away, so I couldn’t ask them anything.”

He had responded reflexively to the distant killing intent, so whoever it was had been killed before he could learn anything from them. The tent made from Furemaru was resilient enough to stop weaker attacks, so if Yogiri had felt killing intent, it meant it was an attack strong enough to punch through the tent and injure him directly. It was unlikely to have been a wild animal.

“I was really hoping someone we could talk to would show up.”

“Speaking of which, maybe we could find an elf that understands us?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah, that could work,” he replied with a halfhearted smile.

“What kind of reaction is that? There might still be elves here.”

“If an elf showed up, it would probably attack us. And if that happens, I’ll have to kill them.”

“Well, let’s just wait and see. I might be able to take one down without killing them. If it’s an archery contest, leave it to me!”

“I find it doubtful that any people living in this environment would rely on the bow as a primary weapon,” Mokomoko commented.

For some reason, Tomochika had decided that elves used bows. However, line of sight was so poor in the forest, it was almost impossible to draw a straight line for any significant distance. Even a novice like Yogiri could tell that using a bow would be difficult here.

“Then maybe they use magic. They are elves, after all.”

“That seems far more likely. The air is thick with magical energy, so I imagine magic used here is more powerful than normal.”

“I still don’t know exactly what magic is in this world,” Yogiri said. Since coming there, they had witnessed many types of magic. But the style, scale, power, and method were different for each person, so he wasn’t really sure what the rules were.

“Anyway, let’s go!”

Every once in a while, Mokomoko would float up and look above the trees to ensure they were heading in the correct direction. Using her information, they altered their course on the go. As for the heat, part of that could be managed simply by being mentally prepared, in addition to taking plenty of breaks throughout the day. Aside from not really knowing where they were going, things were moving much smoother than they had the day before.

“Hm. It appears something is ahead of us,” Mokomoko said, bringing Enju to a halt.

“I don’t feel any killing intent.”

“It is heading towards us.”

When they stopped to listen, they could hear the sound of something passing through the foliage, getting closer.

“Hey, is someone out there?” Yogiri called in a loud voice.

There was no response except for something like a moan.

“Was that...human?”

“It sounds like it.”

As they stood and waited, a person appeared. Perhaps they were an adventurer, as they were clad in leather armor. But their skin was purple, and their whole body had swollen up to the point that moving at all seemed difficult. It was definitely a human, but they had been so disfigured it was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. It continued to moan as it stumbled forward, with no perceivable intellect behind its voice.

“What is that? Is this another zombie?!” Tomochika cried.

It didn’t seem like it had appeared to attack them, as the adventurer collapsed to the ground. Its body was still transforming, and now it had lost the ability to walk.

“What do we do?” Tomochika asked. “Should we help?”

“It looks like we’re way too late for that.”

“Yeah, I don’t want to get close.”

Then the collapsed body exploded. The swollen parts burst one after another.

“This is bad!” Mokomoko declared.

The swollen bits must have been something like pustules. As they burst, they splattered pus everywhere.

“Dannoura, stay beside me.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know, but it’s deadly.”

As the fluid sprayed out, the plants it touched suddenly changed color and also began to swell.

“It appears to be some sort of virus,” Mokomoko observed.

“That seems kind of dangerous!”

“Don’t worry. Anything that tries to hurt us will die automatically. But it could be bad if we leave it like this.”

It appeared to be contagious to any other form of life. One after another, trees collapsed, and the birds and insects flitting through the air fell soon after. And they were spreading whatever it was, expanding its range of influence. The contagion had started with the adventurer but was now growing at an accelerating pace.

“What do we do?!”

“If it’s a virus, I can just kill it, but this is kind of convenient, isn’t it?”

“How?!”

“If the forest is destroyed, it’ll be easier for us to walk.”

“You’re going to let something like this happen just for that?!”

Yogiri could have killed the trees that stood in their way, and that would have made them easier to destroy, but since their remains would still be there, it didn’t change that they would be in the way. Whatever this was, it was decomposing any living thing it came into contact with. As far as making a path to walk, it was far more useful than Yogiri’s power.

“If this was caused by another apostle, how far do you think it’ll go?” he asked. “I don’t want to think they’d go so far as to destroy the whole world.”

The trees fell to the ground and crumbled, leaving bare earth. The destruction spread for a few hundred meters around them before they noticed a person in the distance.

“Is that an apostle? I’d like to restrain them somehow if we can.”

“Very well, I will try,” Mokomoko said as Enju.

Furemaru extended from the robot’s right hand to pick up a small stone from the ground. The black substance then expanded and transformed, becoming like an extended arm before being used to hurl the stone at the distant figure. Even a plain stone had some power behind it when thrown from an arm a few meters long. It struck the distant figure head-on, and they collapsed with a cry.

“Hey! What if that person had nothing to do with it?!” Tomochika said.

“Then I’ll apologize.”

“That’s all?”

Walking over the ground covered in the fused mess of decomposed biomatter, they made it to the figure they had struck. The rock had hit his leg, and the man was holding it in pain.

“Are you an apostle?” Yogiri said, stepping up beside him.

“Y-You... Why aren’t you dead?”

“If you’re targeting me, I guess that means yes. How did you get here? Do you know how to get out?” The man was silent. “You know that I’m Yogiri Takatou, and what my power is, right? If you don’t tell us anything, I’ll kill you.”

“And if I do tell you, will you let me go?”

“As long as you don’t attack us again.”

The man hesitated a moment before responding. “Apostles have the ability to teleport to where you are. That’s how I got here. I don’t know how to get out.”

“Oh, come on...”

Things had gotten worse. Yogiri had thought it was weird that they were being attacked so regularly, but if the apostles were simply teleporting to him, that explained it.

“You know you can’t kill me, right? If you don’t stop that thing, it’ll destroy the whole forest, so could you...”

“Yeah, I’ll stop—”

Sensing killing intent, Yogiri jumped backwards. The man vanished. The spot where the two of them had been a moment prior had been replaced with a hole. An empty space one meter across had appeared in the ground, as if the earth had been punched through.

“Huh? What happened?!” Tomochika cried.

“I have no idea. Maybe some power to make holes? It looks like there’s another apostle nearby.”

If things were going to continue like this, stopping to talk to every attacker didn’t seem like it was going to be very helpful.

◇ ◇ ◇

The person with the massacre virus ability was defeated by Yogiri Takatou.

The person with the ability to create trap holes was defeated by Yogiri Takatou.

◇ ◇ ◇

“Hmm...as I thought, still not good enough,” Hanakawa muttered.

The massacre virus, as its name suggested, was the ability to create a virus that killed anything it infected. Secondary effects included making the user immune to it, allowing the user to control how long it took for those infected to die, and the ability to control the activity of the virus within a one-kilometer radius. He had thought that if one just made a virus, that would be indirect enough to avoid being killed by Yogiri. At least, that was the advice he had given, but it seemed it was pointless, as the virus itself was ineffective against him.

He had thought the trap hole power might work because it only created a hole, and thus it was possible that Yogiri wouldn’t be able to detect it. But he had avoided the first attack, so he did in fact seem to perceive it as killing intent. The second attack had been to create a hole one kilometer wide, but the user had been killed before they could activate it. In short, if the attack would inevitably lead to Yogiri’s death, it couldn’t even be activated.

“This truly feels like an impossible game. I would appreciate it if Malnarilna stopped playing around and helped out.”

But for pride or some other reason, they refused to get directly involved. In the end, it seemed they weren’t all that serious about it. As absolute beings like gods, they were content to play with mortals like game pieces.

“What are you mumbling about?” Yoshifumi asked.

“Nothing at all!”

The Sage and his retinue were traveling in a gold- and jewel-encrusted vehicle. It was constructed in levels, with Yoshifumi’s throne at the highest point. On the lower levels were seats for his retainers. With no seat prepared for him, Hanakawa was forced to stand beside the emperor’s throne.

This looks like a display case for dolls.

But Yoshifumi had designed it to be a palanquin. Despite how much it must have weighed, it only moved because it was being carried by a crowd of people underneath.

“But isn’t this incredibly inefficient?” Hanakawa asked.

The palanquin moved slowly through the streets of the capital. At this rate, it would take a long while for them to reach the Elven Forest.

“If I were only worried about efficiency, everything would be over instantly,” Yoshifumi responded. “You have to take your time in life, don’t you think?”

“Speaking of which, didn’t you sneak out to visit the adventurers’ bar before? Are you not worried about announcing yourself publicly like this?”

If his face was known by the people, there was little point in sneaking out into the city. Asking people to pretend like they didn’t know him would be absurd.

“Not at all. If any of them see my face, they’ll be executed.”

“Huh? Ah, I see.”

The people in the streets were all bowed low to the ground. Not a single one of them looked up.

No, no, no! Why would you execute people for seeing you when you are making such a show of coming out in public?!

Both gods and Sages seemed completely free to do as they pleased with their overwhelming power. Perhaps a bit late, Hanakawa decided that being transported to a world like this was no fun at all.

◇ ◇ ◇

The landscape around them for several kilometers had been reduced to a barren wasteland. Though it opened their field of view considerably, at this rate the entire forest would be wiped out. They had thought the death of the power’s user would stop the destruction, but it didn’t seem like it was slowing down, so Yogiri had to do it himself.

“That’s way too big!” he cried.

Now that their field of view was clear, he could see the enormous tree they were heading towards. It was larger than the other trees of the forest by an order of magnitude. With nothing to compare it to, it was hard to gauge, but it seemed to be at least a few kilometers tall, making it clearly abnormal.

“Traveling sure has become easier.”

There was no way they could get lost now. No more apostles appeared to attack them either, allowing them to reach their destination without further incident.

“But this is... Huh. Strangely sad, I guess?”

“Indeed,” Mokomoko agreed. “For its size, its presence seems remarkably thin.”

“I think it’s dead. I’m probably the one who killed it.”

“Why?!” Tomochika blurted out.

“This was also an Izelda. When I killed them all, this was part of him.”

“This is a plant though, right? How long had that Izelda guy been working on his plan?” They didn’t know how long it took trees to grow in this world, but it likely took a considerable amount of time to reach this size. She wouldn’t have been surprised to find out it was a few hundred years old.

“Let us try climbing this,” Mokomoko suggested. “We should be able to see quite far from that height.”

“If you can’t see the inside of the forest from outside, are we sure we can see outside the forest from here?” asked Yogiri.

“I think we have a bigger problem than that,” Tomochika replied. “Can we even climb this thing?”

“I guess we can’t just casually pull ourselves up.”

The bark of the tree was fairly rough and uneven, so there were any number of handholds. But the size of the tree itself would make climbing difficult. Even a little bit of climbing would soon exhaust their stamina.

“What do we do, then?”

“I guess there is no other option,” Mokomoko said. “I will have to carry you.”

“Oh, so we’re going with that pathetic scene anyway,” Tomochika remarked.

“What are you saying? Of course I will be carrying you as well. That will be much faster.” A black shadow extended from Enju’s body. It became numerous enormous talons that dug into the earth, lifting Enju up into the air. She looked like some sort of enormous spider.

“What is that?!”

“Climb on.” Enju turned to show her back. Something like a stepladder had been created there for them to stand and hold on to.

“All right.” Yogiri climbed onto Enju’s back, and with a little hesitation, Tomochika did the same.

“Here we go.”

The enormous claws made from Furemaru bit into the tree, lifting them higher. The way the claws moved one after another made it look like they were crawling up the tree.

“This is kind of fast. If you can do things like this, you should use it more often,” Yogiri said.

“Movement like this consumes a large amount of energy. I cannot use it regularly. Being unable to use Furemaru in an emergency would be too dangerous.”

After climbing for a while, they reached some large branches. Deciding that was high enough for them to look around, Yogiri stepped onto a branch.

“Well...this is kind of a problem,” he announced, looking around.

“Indeed. I said it was like another world, but...”

A bizarre sight greeted them. The forest around them continued into the distance, as far as the eye could see.