Chapter 21 — A Resounding Victory for Daimon Hanakawa!
Stepping out of the tent, Hanakawa and Yogiri faced off. Tomochika and Enju stood a small distance away to watch. They had decided to fight, but as discussed earlier, they’d agreed beforehand that the battle would end in a draw, so there was little meaning to it. At best, it would extend Hanakawa’s life a little. At worst, Malnarilna wouldn’t accept a draw as a legitimate result.
That was Hanakawa’s plan. It wasn’t guaranteed to work and would require him to make a number of risky gambles, but it was better than doing nothing at all.
“So, how exactly do you want to fight?” Yogiri asked, a little confused, which was to be expected. If Hanakawa tried to do anything that might kill Yogiri, he would die first. It was almost impossible to have a real fight.
“Actually, you see. As an apostle, I was given a special power.”
“Powers, huh? I saw lots of them from the others.”
“I was told to think of a power that would be able to defeat you, so what I decided on was a summoning ability.”
“I see. That way it doesn’t matter if the thing you summon dies.”
“Precisely!”
To put it simply, he just had to summon someone who could beat Yogiri. His ability was to summon anything he pleased. However, as much as he was capable of summoning anything, there was a single condition: they had to consent to the summoning. So while he technically had the ability to summon anyone, he couldn’t actually use it that freely. The first gamble he had to make was whether the person he summoned would answer.
“All right... Come forth! Malnarilna! Daimon Hanakawa summons you!” he called out in a loud voice.
After waiting a while, nothing happened.
“Looks like they’re not coming,” Yogiri remarked, giving him a pitying gaze.
“Gah! Failing right from the start?! Uhh, Malnarilna! This is the power you gave me, remember?! If you don’t show up, it will be a stain on your honor!”
“Whaaaat? That’s no fair!”
“But we did say he could summon anyone,” a voice echoed from nowhere in particular.
The ground began to shine with a brilliant light. The plants and trees in a wide area around them vanished as a huge magic circle appeared. A blizzard of flower petals filled the air, and sparkling lights lit up all around them. The light gathered in the center of the magic circle and with an impressive chime revealed two young girls.
Hanakawa had succeeded with his first gamble. He had successfully summoned Malnarilna.
“What was that all about?” he complained. “That’s totally different from when I was summoned. I just appeared from the magic circle without any of those effects!”
“That’s because your rarity is, like, common.”
“We’re, like, ultra god rare or something.”
“There’s no way we’d have the same effects.”
The two girls stepped over to Hanakawa’s side. “So, we answered your summon and all.”
“But we already said we’re not going to fight Yogiri Takatou, remember?”
“Wait! Perhaps your pride will not allow you to take action against him directly, but now that you’ve been summoned by my power, there should be no problem if you defeat him!”
“Ahh, I get it.”
“You’re trying to give us a good excuse to fight him ourselves.”
“E-Exactly! Does that not make me look exceedingly quick-witted? If I have the power to summon anything, what did you think I would summon? Of course it would be a god! In this case, even if you defeat Yogiri Takatou, things will end well!”
“I guess so.”
“It’s been pretty fun so far.”
“But we’re starting to get sick of it.”
“Should we call an end to this game, then?”
His second gamble, getting Malnarilna to agree to end it themselves, had also succeeded.
“Okay, I guess this is the first time we’ve met face to face.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m Malna!”
“I’m Rilna!”
“The two of us together are Malnarilna! Yay!” The two clapped their hands together, posing for Yogiri.
“Hanakawa, is this the god you were talking about?”
“Quite so. Now, all you must do is slay them where they stand! Once defeated, you will no longer have to put up with the constant stream of apostles bothering you!”
The third gamble wasn’t much of a risk. No matter who won the fight, he would come out safe. If Malnarilna won, he just needed to do as they said, and if Yogiri won, he just needed to do what he said. Therefore, if he was going to bet on Yogiri winning, he needed to make a better impression on him. The reason he had summoned Malnarilna in the first place was because he was confident Yogiri would win. That was all.
“All right, what should we do?”
“Good question. How about we show off our instant death abilities?”
“An instant death contest!”
“Okay, first a demonstration!”
“Let’s kill Hanakawa!”
“Why would you choose to kill me?!” Hanakawa cried.
“I mean, you’re on Yogiri Takatou’s side, right?”
“You’ve been so cheeky about it.”
Maybe trying to ingratiate himself with Yogiri had been a mistake.
“Th-That is just...uhh...right! I am simply trying to encourage Sir Takatou to spur him to action so that the match can be settled quickly! Also, perhaps it is strange for me to say this, but Sir Takatou will probably feel nothing at all if you kill me, so it is actually a waste of your time!”
Hanakawa offered a flurry of excuses that were hardly good enough.
“I guess you’re right.”
“No one would really care if Hanakawa died.”
“That is in itself something I feel the need to object to!” Hanakawa protested.
“Then how about that girl over there?”
“Her name is Tomochika, right?”
“Huh?” Tomochika was startled by the sudden mention of her name.
“Okay, then die.”
“No, you die.” Yogiri’s words overlapped with those of the god. The result was unsurprising. One girl collapsed to the ground. Was it Malna or Rilna? Hanakawa honestly had no idea which was which.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Huh?”
Malna looked down at the collapsed Rilna. She didn’t understand what was happening. Killing Tomochika Dannoura should have been easy. Super powerful attacks weren’t necessary to kill something like humans. As gods, they could manipulate life and death like flipping a switch. It was like turning a dial from “alive” to “dead.” A god was capable of things like that. The difference in power between a human and a god was unfathomable, so no matter how the human struggled, they had no way to resist.
There was no such thing as a real fight between a god and a human, so any contest between them wouldn’t be interesting. The moment they thought to defeat their opponent, they would win. It would be totally boring.
So she didn’t understand why, while Tomochika was standing there with a look of mild confusion, Rilna had fallen to the ground. There was no doubt that Rilna had tried to kill Tomochika. While Malna and Rilna were technically different beings, they each understood what the other thought as if they shared a mind.
But now, Malna had no idea what Rilna was thinking. It took a moment for her to realize that it meant that Rilna wasn’t thinking of anything at all. The fact that she was lying on the ground didn’t mean anything. They were only possessing temporary vessels anyway, so no matter what happened to the vessel itself, it wouldn’t affect their existence as gods in the slightest. More important was the fact that she had suddenly stopped thinking. Malna didn’t understand that, so she stopped to think herself. She realized the reason Rilna wasn’t thinking was because her ability to do so had been stopped.
Normally, one would assume at this point that Yogiri had something to do with it, but the thought didn’t even occur to her. The concept of a human being able to affect a god in any way was beyond the scope of her imagination. She didn’t know why it had happened, but if Rilna had been “stopped,” she just needed to be restarted. Yet, she couldn’t restart Rilna at all.
“Are you that shocked she died when she was trying to kill someone else?” Yogiri asked.
How long had she stood there frozen? Slowly, she lifted her head to look at him. Hearing his words, she remembered that Yogiri possessed an instant death ability, but she still couldn’t believe he had anything to do with this. With no warning at all, Rilna had collapsed. Although nothing seemed to have happened, she had completely stopped. Yogiri hadn’t done anything. Objectively, all he had done was say “No, you die.” No power had been emitted from his body, and there were no signs of anything having happened to Rilna. Even so, she had stopped moving.
Malna couldn’t connect the effect to any cause related to Yogiri. Even as a god, her eyes hadn’t seen anything. Yogiri had told her to die, and suddenly Rilna was motionless. That was all. There didn’t seem to be anything connecting those two facts, so she couldn’t even recognize that Yogiri possessed an instant death power.
It was impossible. She didn’t understand. But Rilna had stopped moving. Malna’s thoughts kept going in circles, wearing her down. That repeating process began to produce an indescribable emotion in her.
Malna and Rilna were total equals. Anything Malna could do, Rilna could do. Anything Malna liked, Rilna liked, and the same went for anything she hated. While there were some small differences in the way they thought, they weren’t enough to distinguish between them. Rather, it was more like they were one person with two personalities constantly changing places.
Together they were Malnarilna. But Rilna wasn’t moving. So they weren’t Malnarilna anymore. Once her thoughts reached that place, it felt like her heart had filled with ash. The intense feeling of loss caused her thoughts to start flickering. Despair blinded her.
“Ah...”
And finally, Malna realized that she herself might also be stopped. Her temporary body was responding to her feelings. She felt nauseous. She felt dizzy. Her ears were ringing, and her arms and legs started to tremble. Though her body was only built to reproduce the appearance of a person, her breathing became rapid, and her heart rate began to accelerate. She didn’t even realize that what she was feeling was fear. As a god, ever since her birth, the emotion of fear had been totally foreign to her. She had thought she understood what fear was from seeing it in other people, but she had never felt it herself.
Malna screamed as she ran off, having lost all sense of herself.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Bwa ha ha ha! A resounding victory for Daimon Hanakawa!”
“Why does it feel like Hanakawa is the winner in all this?” Tomochika sighed, seeing their classmate positively dancing.
“Seriously! To see that god brought low after all they put me through, I cannot help but celebrate!”
“One of them ran away, though,” Yogiri said. He didn’t know which one was Malna and which was Rilna, but the survivor had fled. Their arrival had been incredibly flashy, but that had apparently all been meaningless visual effects, as she had teleported away without warning.
“Ah! That is potentially quite dangerous! Do you not think she might return later seeking revenge?!”
“If she does, I’ll just kill her then.” Yogiri wasn’t a pacifist. If necessary, he was more than willing to preemptively kill people. In this case, he had only killed one of the pair, so it was possible the survivor would continue to send apostles after him. That would be annoying enough that he could justify killing her. But even so, he didn’t feel any desire to kill someone who had been frozen in fear.
“She was clearly pretty scared, so maybe she’ll leave us alone for a while,” Tomochika said.
“If we get attacked by any other apostles, I’ll consider it an attack from her.” Yogiri had seen Malnarilna. He was aware of their existence now and could kill them whenever he felt like it. But if the surviving god didn’t bother him anymore, he would be fine with leaving her alone.
“Okay, I guess we should continue on to the elven village,” he announced. “It should be close by, right?”
“I suppose about one kilometer?” Mokomoko replied.
“I don’t know, is that really an elven village?” Tomochika asked. “I wouldn’t expect those kinds of creatures to live in stone structures.”
“Would you mind if I were to accompany you?”
“I guess not. We can’t just leave you behind— Wait, maybe we can?”
“No, you can’t! If you do, I’ll definitely die!”
Abandoning Hanakawa in a forest when they didn’t know how to get out would be bad for his conscience. Yogiri decided to bring him along for the time being.
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