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Chapter 19 — If He’s Not Here, Then Whatever

As Yogiri’s group walked through the underground ruins, they saw a distant light.

“Is someone over there?”

“Looks like it.”

The baby babbled again, reaching towards the light. That must have been the destination she had in mind. They could hardly go back after coming so far, so they kept going forward.

As they did, they came across a group with a few familiar faces. They immediately recognized Hanakawa and Vivian. Beside the pair were a man who looked like some kind of street thug and a woman who looked to be sulking over something or other.

“Run away!” Vivian shouted upon seeing them.

“Huh? Why?” Tomochika asked, confused. Neither she nor Yogiri had any idea what was wrong.

“This guy is the Sage and emperor, Yoshifumi! You can’t beat him, so get out of here!”

If the seedy looking guy wearing a studded leather jacket was Yoshifumi, the other woman must have been one of his subordinates.

“Hanakawa, what’s going on?” Yogiri asked their former classmate, who seemed to be working with the Sage as well.

“What?! You’re talking to me in this situation?!”

“You know what the situation is, don’t you?”

“Hanakawa, you know these guys?”

“Uhh...please allow me to explain to you both! First, this small fry-looking punk is the Sage and emperor of Ent, Sir Yoshifumi!”

“The hell? You want to die or somethin’?”

“You said I could say whatever I wanted, did you not?!”

“Are you still tryin’ to play the jester?”

“Am I not the jester anymore?!”

“Well, whatever. I guess I never fired you.”

“And this unhealthy looking woman with the terrible outfit spoiling all her good looks is Miss Rena, one of Ent’s Four Heavenly Kings.”

“Good thing you tried that with Yoshifumi first or that would be enough for me to kill you,” Rena said.

“And those two over there! They are my classmates, Sir Yogiri Takatou and Tomochika Dannoura...and I don’t know who the third one is! I suppose they had a baby at some point!”

“Yogiri Takatou, huh? I feel like I’ve heard that name before. You’re the one who crushed Aoi, huh?” Yoshifumi glared at him. His expression was just like a common street thug’s.

“Did I? I’ve never heard the name. Are you talking about the guy in the canyon who was fighting that robot?”

“Canyon? You mean near Hanabusa?”

“Yeah, that one.”

“That would have been Santarou. So you killed him too, huh?”

“Did I? He never told me his name, so it’s hard to say.”

“So! What brings Sir Takatou to this place?” Hanakawa interjected. “Ah! It must be a picnic! There’s no way you’d come all the way here because you had some business with Sir Yoshifumi, right?”

“Why would we be on a picnic here? The baby seemed like it wanted us to come this way...though actually, if he’s a Sage, that’s perfect. We want your Philosopher’s Stone. Do you mind if we take it?”

“Whaaaat? What the hell do you think you’re saying, moron?!” Yoshifumi began to rile himself up, but he wasn’t all that scary. With his appearance, it was hard to actually be intimidating.

“Sir Yoshifumi! I recommend you do not consort with the likes of him! This Takatou fellow is the absolute worst! He can inflict instant death on anything and everything! He can also detect killing intent and use his power to counter it! He is totally invincible!”

“Hanakawa, whose side are you on here?” Tomochika asked.

“No one’s! I’m neutral! Neutral! I am a remora that sticks to whichever side lets me live!” Hanakawa turned defiant.

“Instant death, huh?” Yoshifumi muttered. “If he killed Santarou, then his power works on Sages too.”

“Speaking of which, the Philosopher’s Stones lose their power if the Sage dies, don’t they? That’s kind of a problem.” said Yogiri.

Killing Yoshifumi would be easy enough, but they couldn’t if they wanted the stone. That created a considerable obstacle for Yogiri.

I guess I’ll have to kill parts of him until he can’t move.

It would be the same way he had dealt with Raiza. This time, they didn’t have Furemaru so getting through his body might have been a challenge, but if they had anything with a blade, Mokomoko should be able to manage, so Yogiri was optimistic.

“So you can detect killing intent and inflict instant death... Not that it matters!”

A knife appeared in Yoshifumi’s hand.

◇ ◇ ◇

Yoshifumi didn’t feel threatened by Yogiri in the least. His Super Hero Time power wasn’t reacting to the newcomer. If it wasn’t giving him any new powers, that meant what he had now was sufficient to do the job.

Still, I guess I’ll be careful.

Yoshifumi manifested his Wandering Edge. It was his strongest weapon, capable of perfectly erasing his target. He could throw it into the past, making it so that his target never existed in the first place. He could change the past without killing them, but that was only one of its uses. This was revenge for another Sage, so he didn’t intend to play around this time.

Yoshifumi threw the knife. He had no intention of hitting Yogiri, so he had thrown it in a random direction. It disappeared in the air, flying into the past. Back to Yogiri’s past, when he was just a newborn baby, impaling his pathetic, defenseless self. If he did that, the Yogiri in front of him would disappear in an instant. The only one who would remember what had existed before he changed the past was Yoshifumi himself. No one else would believe he had existed in the first place.

A single person disappearing could create all sorts of paradoxes, but things would work out to be consistent in the end. The weapon had the ability to restore damaged space-time, so it could use other elements to make up for the hole it created.

But Yoshifumi immediately realized something was wrong. If he had changed the past, things should have changed the instant he let go of the knife. That was obvious enough, but a few seconds after the knife had disappeared, Yogiri was still standing there. And no matter how long he waited, nothing was happening.

“What was that?” Yogiri asked, confused. He hadn’t recognized it as an attack. So Yoshifumi wasn’t dead. But that meant Yoshifumi had done nothing at all.


◇ ◇ ◇

Yoshifumi had thrown his knife, so Yogiri figured he intended on fighting, but he didn’t feel any killing intent coming from him. So he waited to see what the Sage was doing, but nothing happened.

“What was that?” he asked, but no answer came. It appeared that whatever was going on was outside of Yoshifumi’s expectations. Yet, if the fight had started, Yogiri decided he should probably start paralyzing his opponent.

He picked a target for his power. Killing individual parts of people wasn’t the intended use of his ability, so it required a lot more concentration. But in the end, he didn’t use his power at all. For some reason, a knife appeared, sticking out of Yoshifumi’s chest.

“What?” It must have been the knife Yoshifumi had thrown, but it was sticking out of his own chest. He had no idea what Yoshifumi was trying to do.

“The Wandering Edge, is it? That is an awfully cowardly weapon.” A strangely familiar woman suddenly appeared, standing beside Yoshifumi. She had ears like a fox and wore a loose yet elegant kimono.

“Oh, it’s Miss Fox.”

“Huh? You know her?” Tomochika asked, surprised.

“I played with her back when I was a kid.”

“She’s a youkai, isn’t she?! Look at those ears!”

“Now that you mention it, I guess she’s a youkai.”

A fox youkai. Now that he thought about it, it must have been true. But it had been so long ago when they played together, his memories of her were rather vague. Thinking back on it now, it was pretty obvious, but he had never been conscious of it before.

“You fool. You total idiot. Aiming at him when he was a child was the worst thing you could have done.” The fox made no attempt to hide her disdain.

“What? What’s goin’ on? What hell is this?!” Yoshifumi shouted.

“Miss Fox,” Yogiri called out to the new arrival.

“Oh! Look how big you are now! Have you been doing well?”

“Yeah, I’m doing fine, but why are you here?”

“Well, that person tried to attack you when you were a baby with the Wandering Edge. So I came here to counter it.”

“How did you get here?”

“I just followed the blade’s path.”

“Can you bring me back with you?”

“No, I don’t think so. The me you see is just a shadow. I’ll be disappearing from here soon enough.”

Yogiri had hoped that if she could make it here so easily, she could take him back with her, but things were never that convenient.

“Okay, then can you get the Philosopher’s Stone out of that guy for me?”

“The stone? You mean this?” The fox casually punched a hand into Yoshifumi’s chest. The Sage couldn’t even react.

“Guh...you...bastard...stop...”

When she pulled her fist back, Yoshifumi collapsed to the ground. A round, transparent stone was now in her hand.

“Yeah, that’s it. We need them to get home.”

The fox handed him the stone. “Is that how it is? Well, try not to wander too far.” With that, she faded away.

“We’re not here because we want to be.” Yogiri had no idea whether she had heard his reply. If she was just a shadow, there might have been no point in replying to her at all.

“Huh? So, what is going on with Sir Yoshifumi? I don’t understand what just happened,” Hanakawa complained, but it wasn’t like Yogiri knew either.

“Yoshifumi!” Rena ran to the fallen Sage’s side.

“Yogiri Takatou... You...” Vivian was in shock.

“Yeah, we got the Philosopher’s Stone from Yoshifumi,” Yogiri explained. “He’s probably dead now.”

Defeating the Sage had been Vivian’s goal. Perhaps it was hard for her to accept that someone else had killed her target, but there was nothing he could do about it.

“You say it so plainly! What was all my suffering up until this point for?!” Hanakawa complained.

“Who cares about what you went through?” Yogiri replied. “On that note, stop just disappearing that way.”

“Huh? Were you perchance worried about me?”

“We left thinking, ‘If he’s not here, then whatever.’”

“Then please do not speak as if you have any concern for me!”

Yogiri looked at the stone in his hand. It was the same as all the others he had acquired so far. The baby on his chest began to squirm, trying to reach for it.

“Is this what you were looking for?”

More babbling.

“Sounds like it,” Tomochika said.

“What are you, a baby translator now?”

“I don’t know, I just sort of get what she wants.”

Though he wasn’t sure if it was okay to let her touch it, he ended up giving in. When the baby touched the stone, it stuck to her hand instantly. It then turned into flesh, fusing with her hand.

“So she really did come from the Philosopher’s Stones,” Yogiri commented. The baby absorbed the stone completely, leaving no trace of it behind. “Wait, you gained a lot more weight than was in that stone!”

The child in the sling suddenly became much heavier. It wasn’t so heavy that he couldn’t hold her, but it was a huge increase in weight. As they watched, she grew larger, and her hair grew down past her shoulders. In human terms, she looked to have grown to about three years old.

“Well, now you’re way too big for the sling...”

“Daddy...” The baby spoke clearly.

“‘Daddy’?”

As bothersome as caring for the baby had been before, Yogiri couldn’t help but feel like things had just gotten a lot worse.



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