Chapter 5 — What Kind of Power Is That?! Why Is It Specific to Me?!
“Uhh, please, let’s calm down first!”
Hanakawa felt like he had said something very similar recently. It had worked fine with Yogiri, who could discuss things with a level head, but this time he would really be in trouble if he couldn’t get this girl to step back.
“I am plenty calm right now,” she replied. “I just couldn’t resist for a moment.”
“That is what we consider not being calm! Normally, one would never bite off the arm of someone one just met!”
“Really?” she said, tilting her head in confusion.
“Excuse me! You are supposed to be someone who is fond of me, correct?! In that case, biting off my arm or wounding me in general is going to injure my feelings!”
“Why?”
“She really doesn’t get it... Umm! To sum it up frankly, I was looking for a girl who would permit adult activity, or rather welcome it, and allow me to do whatever I wished with her! But you are not like that at all, are you?!”
She was certainly as beautiful as he could have hoped, and her figure was exactly what he was after, but he wasn’t at all interested in someone who could open her mouth that wide, or whose jaw strength was enough to bite off a person’s arm.
“‘Adult things’?”
“Ugh! Such an innocent question leaves me troubled... It is what we call a euphemism. It means something like two becoming one, or actions taken to produce children...”
“You mean reproduction?”
“Putting it so scientifically seems like a good way to dodge the issue. Correct! That is precisely it. So inflicting injury on me does not accomplish that! While it may be true that I have something of a masochistic streak, that only goes as far as things such as being stepped on! Or having someone sit on my face! A light form of S&M, like as a fashion sense! I am not at all interested in receiving actual physical harm!”
“If I eat you, we’ll be ‘two becoming one,’ right?”
“I kind of suspected you might say something like that, but absolutely not!”
“By reproduction, don’t you mean me consuming your genetic information, mixing it with my own at random, and then creating a new being with that genetic code?” the girl asked.
“Huh? Well, uhh...” Hanakawa stumbled backwards. He was starting to realize just how dangerous this person was.
“I’m sure the two of us will be able to make adorable children.”
“Okay, I quit! Let us pretend we never met! It pains me greatly to say this after calling you here, but could you please return to where you came from?!
“No...I don’t think I will.”
“Ugh. You are incredibly cute, so that is exactly the kind of line I would like to hear from you under normal circumstances, but I feel that if I fall for you now, I’ll meet a terrible fate!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure I don’t kill you. You can grow parts back, right?”
“I can heal, yes! But that is not the issue at hand!”
“Then there’s no problem,” she said. “I could just eat you all at once, but if I eat you piece by piece, I can enjoy you forever, right? So I’ll hold back. I promise I won’t kill you.”
“How kind of you to spare me!”
This is too dangerous! I have been in so many dangerous situations, but this is clearly the worst. How do I escape from this?!
It didn’t seem like anything he could do would deceive her, so talking his way out of it wasn’t an option. And no matter how gross he tried to be, she probably wouldn’t mind.
“Please allow me to confirm one thing,” Hanakawa tried. “What do you intend to do with me?”
“Take you home and enjoy you where no one can get in the way.”
“That is not the way I want to get taken to a girl’s home!”
She pulled a bag out from somewhere.
“What is that?”
“It’s a bit rough getting back to my place,” she explained,” so if you don’t go in here, you’ll probably die.”
“I feel like I’ll die the moment I go inside it!”
It was a large bag, but it wasn’t big enough to hold him. He would need to shrink considerably to fit inside.
If I allow her to take me home, I’ll experience an eternal hell of being slowly eaten alive, won’t I? Wouldn’t dying be better? No, I mustn’t surrender! I must find a way to escape!
“Uhh, I feel like I heard once that if you raise cattle tenderly, the flavor it brings out is better than if they are raised in a stressful environment.”
“No, it’s tastier if they’re stressed out. When you suffer, your brain releases something like neurotransmitters to suppress the pain. Those make the meat taste really good.”
“Oh, this is no good. Our values are too different.”
There was no convincing her, which meant his only options were to fight, be rescued, or run away. It didn’t seem like he had a chance of beating her in a fight. Hanakawa had been unable to even follow her movements when she bit off his arm. Furthermore, she was strong enough to easily tear off his arm with her jaws. He had no chance of winning, so that was out of the question.
If he was hoping to be rescued, his best bet was Yogiri. Yogiri would be able to kill her no matter who she was. But even if he shouted from here, Yogiri wouldn’t be able to hear him. He had come to the edge of the village specifically so that no one could interfere. And even if Yogiri did hear him, it was hard to believe he would come running to his aid. He could always try and head to Yogiri himself, but that just meant the same thing as running away. Of course, if he considered fleeing, he couldn’t imagine he would be able to outrun her.
I must think of something using my own skills and items!
He possessed a number of things he had collected from the last time he was summoned to this world, but in the end they were only objects that someone of his level was capable of acquiring. There wasn’t anything particularly rare in his collection, so they were all items that almost anyone could find.
The most powerful artifact I possess is this slave collar, which I risked my life for... Is there perhaps some way I could make her put it on of her own accord?
The difference in their physical abilities was so great that forcing it on her would be impossible, and there was always the possibility that she was so powerful it wouldn’t even work in the first place.
Speaking of which, who exactly is she?
He checked the search window. Her name was Carla. Besides that, all it listed was her three measurements, but below that he saw another “details” button. He pressed it.
Foundation Eater. Her true form is large enough to swallow a Celestial Foundation (universe) whole. Although she originally ate entire worlds all at once, after hundreds of years, she has come to develop a preference for certain flavors. As her enormous form can’t differentiate tastes well, she has created smaller avatars of herself to act within the Foundations themselves. Carla is one of those avatars, and while frail and weak compared to her main body, she is on the level of a god while within a Foundation. She exists outside of the system but has registered as a user with a number of different systems to search for information on various delicacies.
“I should have read this before I summoned her!” Hanakawa dropped to the ground, defeated. She was far too powerful for him. “What am I supposed to do?!”
It was best to assume his items wouldn’t work on her. The only options he had left were his healing and summoning skills. Healing didn’t seem particularly useful here, so it was all down to summoning.
I could summon someone who is capable of matching Miss Carla... But no, that would only make the situation worse! In that case... He could summon Yogiri. He immediately began to search for him.
“Wait, he’s not here! I’m even searching for him by name! What?! What is going on?!”
“What are you doing?” Carla interrupted. “Can I eat a bit more?”
“No, you cannot! Umm, if you are hungry, food tastes much better, so the longer you wait to eat, the more delicious I will become!”
“Oh. I never thought of that. If I hold off, you’ll taste better... That might be true.” For some reason she accepted what Hanakawa said, so he had managed to buy a bit more time.
“Uhh, okay! Then let me call Tomochika!”
If he summoned Tomochika, Yogiri would come looking for her. This time, his search successfully found his target, but her name was grayed out, indicating he was already blocked.
“Blocked?! But I can’t summon her without her consent anyway!”
There were a lot of conditions on his Summon Anything skill. It couldn’t summon someone by force. Glancing back at Carla, he saw that she was trying to stretch open the mouth of her bag. She seemed determined to fit him inside.
All I can do is run... Wait!
Struck by a new idea, he immediately tried it. He put his own name in the search window, and his information popped up instantly. He was able to summon himself. Of course, if he just summoned himself now, he would appear where he already was. But could he change the location of the summon? It seemed possible.
A map opened in the system window with a radius of about a hundred meters, centered on his current location.
I would prefer to go to where Sir Takatou is, but...
There was no way he could tell where Yogiri was on this map. All he could do was put in coordinates. Picking the farthest possible location, he summoned himself. It happened instantly. Instead of the elven village, he was now surrounded by wild forest.
“It worked! Now I just need to continue doing this!”
He didn’t consider where he was going. All he wanted to do was get away from Carla. Heading north, he summoned himself ten more times, putting a kilometer between them.
“But how are you already here?!”
Carla was standing right in front of him. “I remembered your scent, so I just followed you.”
“What?! This plan is already a dead end?!”
This was a person capable of moving between worlds on her own power. If he was only putting a distance between them that could be measured in kilometers, he had no chance of escaping.
“Umm...if I allow you to eat me, could you perhaps give up on taking me back to your home?” Hanakawa offered as a compromise. If this mysterious girl brought him back to her home, that would truly be the end of him. He wouldn’t mind a bit of pain if he could avoid that.
“This world smells a bit off,” she answered. “I couldn’t relax and eat here.”
“Huh? Do you perhaps mean there is someone in this world who is even stronger than you?”
“People are all gathering here. I think my place is actually a lot safer.”
“Are you serious?!”
“Why would I lie?”
“Uhh...” Though it was just a hunch, Hanakawa had a feeling that such a powerful being would have no reason to lie to him. In that case, this world was truly in danger. “Even so, I don’t think it would be possible for me to fit in that bag...” He looked again at the bag. There was no way he could fit inside.
Carla thought for a moment. “If I eat half of you, the rest will fit.”
“If you put me in the bag in that state, I won’t be able to heal and will almost certainly die...”
“Then what should we do?”
“What indeed. Well, actually, you said I was delicious, no? I believe indulging continuously in one flavor will spoil it for you. It is more delicious if you only eat it once in a while. So how about instead, you only come to eat me every once in a while?”
“Is that true?”
“It is!” If the conversation continued like this, he might have a chance.
The moment that thought came to him, Carla’s head dropped to the ground.
“Huh? Is this some sort of trick?”
It was so sudden, he thought at first it was something she had done intentionally. As such a powerful being, he assumed she could do bizarre things like that just to play around. But as her body was torn apart and fell to the ground, and he saw the person standing behind her, he realized he was mistaken. A woman with a sword stood there. She had been the one who had sliced Carla to pieces.
“What the hell?! One thing after another! This is too many new characters for me to keep track of!”
“I didn’t think that would work, but it looks like I managed,” the woman said offhandedly.
“I-I am most glad to hear it! But I am simply a fool with no purpose for being here, so please allow me to take my leave!”
He couldn’t say he was saved yet. Even if the threat posed by Carla was gone, he couldn’t guarantee this woman was any less dangerous.
“Please wait,” she called out to him, stopping Hanakawa in his tracks.
“Uhh, what is it? I believe we have no relation. Though I may have had some connection to the person you just dismantled.”
“You’re an apostle, right?”
“Ah, well. I was once, yes.” He suddenly remembered the senses he had gained as an apostle. Apostles could detect each other’s presence. Judging by that sense, this woman was also an apostle.
“I am too. I’m an adventurer. My name’s Kris.”
An adventurer. Part of the system that formed the core of the Empire of Ent. The Empire had an adventurer’s guild and provided services for them.
“Ha ha, well, that is interesting. So, do you have something you need from me?”
“If you’re an apostle, you got a special power from God, right?”
“Ha ha ha ha ha...I would not call what I received something so impressive.” Getting a bad feeling, he immediately summoned himself again, throwing himself another hundred meters away. “This is dangerous! I definitely should not be involved with her—”
A sword erupted from Hanakawa’s chest.
“Oh. I feel like I’ve experienced this before...”
“I got an ability from the person I just cut apart. It’s the ability to follow your scent and use it to teleport beside you.” Kris’s voice came from behind him.
“What kind of power is that?! Why is it specific to me?!”
It didn’t seem he’d have any way to escape.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login