Chapter 6 — Oh, Even Though I Merged It with Your Clothes, They Didn’t Come Off with It
Yogiri, Tomochika, and Mokomoko waited in the elven girl Fuwat’s house. They didn’t know what the elves’ lifestyle was here in the forest, but it appeared Fuwat lived alone. After Haruto Ootori’s departure, they had nothing else to do, so they just waited for Fuwat’s return.
“Okay, let’s go,” Fuwat said as she stepped into the house.
“Huh? What about meeting the elves?! Aren’t we going to at least have some tea or something?!” Tomochika snapped out of her bored stupor and jumped to her feet. She must have been disappointed by the lack of hospitality since they had simply been told to sit there and wait.
“Don’t be silly. Don’t forget, humans are our enemies. We just want you to leave as soon as possible.”
“You know there are elves here now. Isn’t that good enough?” With no interest in elves himself, the treatment they had received didn’t bother Yogiri.
“Are you having problems?!” Tomochika pleaded. “Maybe we can help you solve them! And then we can earn friendship from the elves!”
“The current issue we have is humans wandering into our forest. If you would hurry up and leave, that would solve one of our problems.”
“Ugh...I guess we can’t just stick around if they hate us that much.”
Since they were being rushed out, Yogiri stood up. “Actually, where did Hanakawa go?” Looking around, he finally realized Hanakawa was missing.
“He split off on our way here,” Tomochika replied.
“We are rather busy here, so we can’t stick around to look for someone who wanders off on their own,” said Fuwat.
“He tends to disappear like that, so I guess it’s all right.”
“That’s true. He always just sort of vanishes.” Since it was a pretty common occurrence, neither Yogiri nor Tomochika were particularly concerned.
“Come on, you two. Should you not be a little worried? Or at least try looking for him?” Mokomoko urged.
“I mean, it’s Hanakawa.”
“He’ll show up again sooner or later.”
“Then let’s go,” Fuwat ordered. Having judged that they’d come to an agreement on Hanakawa, she led them out of the house.
Just as when they had arrived, the village was quiet. It was a small settlement in the middle of the forest, so it wasn’t surprising that it wasn’t tremendously lively, but there were hardly any elves walking around. In fact, there were more bug-monkeys than actual elves.
“Are there fewer elves here because there are fewer elves in general?” Normally, one would be attacked by elves the moment they set foot in the forest, but Yogiri had heard that such attacks had stopped happening recently.
“It’s nothing I would discuss with a human,” Fuwat replied sharply. Of course there was no reason for her to share with someone she considered an enemy that their defensive strength had dropped harshly, but the way she spoke was almost as good as a confession.
“Is it possible that me killing Izelda had this much impact on the elves?” Yogiri whispered to Mokomoko.
Izelda was an enemy they had defeated on the cruise ship. He had spread his essence through all sorts of creatures across the world. Normally, his essence kept itself hidden, and the majority of his hosts lived their whole lives not knowing they had any connection to him. But his network had spread far, so even if only the active ones had died, it would have been possible for more to awaken later on.
Yogiri had been surprised when he’d killed Izelda. He had a pretty good sense of what happened when he used his powers, and at that point it had felt like millions of people had died.
“Hm. I do not know how Izelda’s scheme functioned, but if the elves were already small in number, it is possible for such a thing to happen. Even if his essence was dispersed at random, one would expect there to be some places with higher concentrations.”
“I see.”
There didn’t seem to be much room for conversation, so they walked silently through the village. Yogiri looked around along the way to see if there were any signs of Hanakawa, but he found none.
They left the village behind and headed into the forest. Fuwat walked without hesitation, but Yogiri immediately felt lost. Everywhere he looked seemed exactly the same. Even getting a grasp on his current location would be too much to ask for.
“If space cycles like this, how do you get out?” he asked. Beyond the hexagon formed by the giant trees, the forest looked like it continued forever. Either space was warped or the forest was like its own separate world.
“I suppose I can tell you that much,” Fuwat answered. “If you follow a set path, you can escape.”
“So it is like the Lost Woods.” If that was true, then getting out without any hints would be more or less impossible.
“But shouldn’t we have checked what was in the middle of the forest? It looked like something important.” Tomochika was still curious.
“They said they don’t want us to go there, so going just to satisfy our curiosity isn’t a good idea.”
They had originally been heading for the center of the forest because they had no idea how to get out. They had only come here in the first place to cross through it and reach the other side, so there was no need for them to go anywhere else.
“There were barely any events involving elves at all... Some Elven Forest,” Tomochika complained.
“You think so? I thought there were quite a few.”
With Fuwat at their side, their journey was surprisingly easy. She must have known the woods well. Though hard to find, there were places where the plants parted and the ground was fairly level, creating a sort of path.
“How much longer will it take us to get out?”
“We will enter the area you called the Lost Woods shortly. From there, if you follow the right path, it should take about thirty minutes.”
“Oh, so it’s pretty quick if you know where you’re going.”
“Not many people get far enough in that they get lost.” Until recently, most people were intercepted shortly after entering the forest. But with so many elves suddenly dying, they weren’t able to muster their usual strength.
It may be my fault, but telling them something so vague wouldn’t do any good, Yogiri thought. He didn’t have any proof, and it may have all been unrelated to him anyway. From Fuwat’s perspective, even if he tried to explain it, it would just come across as strange and unclear.
As Yogiri decided it wasn’t worth sharing, the forest came to an end, and a clearing appeared in front of them. About ten meters wide, it was a band of empty ground.
Fuwat came to a stop, turning to look at the three of them.
“Beyond here is the Lost Woods. Make sure you follow—”
“Close behind me” was what she had likely intended to say, but she was unable to finish her sentence. Partway through, she collapsed to the ground.
“Fuwat?!” Tomochika called out in surprise.
If it had been an attack, it hadn’t been aimed at the three of them, so Yogiri hadn’t seen it coming. He looked around. The dense jungle made it impossible to see very far. Someone could have been hiding there, but he couldn’t see them if they were.
“It was Furemaru,” Mokomoko muttered, also shocked.
“What do you mean?”
“I left part of Furemaru inside her, and it took on a sharp edge, destroying her internal organs.”
“Huh? Why would you do that?!” Tomochika cried.
“It wasn’t me! I cannot control it right now!”
“So someone is attacking us?” Yogiri asked.
“Correct. You could call it a demonstration.”
Although he had asked Mokomoko, the answer came from somewhere else. As they turned to face the source of the voice, a person appeared. Either she had just teleported in, or she had been hiding there before, invisible. Either way, she appeared in front of them quite suddenly.
Whoever she was, she wasn’t human. Though humanoid in shape, she had metal skin that separated to reveal mechanical joints underneath. She was a robot, making no attempt to hide her nature. Only her head looked human, giving her an unsettling appearance.
“You two girls are holding some of the material we gave you, are you not? It is all under our control. Now then. Would you like to test which is faster? My ability to kill them or your instant death power?”
“What do you want?” Yogiri asked. If they were trying to take Tomochika and Mokomoko as hostages, they must have wanted more than to just kill them.
“I want you to hand over the fragment of the goddess you possess.”
“What’s that? Are you sure you have the right person?” He had no idea what the robot was asking for. Nothing they had picked up on their journey seemed to be related to any goddess. She may have been talking about something that wasn’t a physical object, but she would need to be more specific.
“No, I am quite certain you are carrying it. I appeared here because I detected it on your person.
“If you wanted something from us, why didn’t you just ask? There was no need to threaten us.”
“I must acquire it at any cost.”
“You still could have tried talking first!” Tomochika interjected.
Now what? Yogiri considered how to proceed. He didn’t know who this robot was, but if they were going to blatantly threaten him, they weren’t really dangerous. If they tried to kill Tomochika, he could kill them first, and Mokomoko was just possessing an android, so he didn’t even have to protect her. But this newcomer seemed to have some connection to the enormous robot they had met on the train to Hanabusa. He wanted to find out why she had come here to get involved with them before he killed her.
“Mokomoko, won’t keeping Furemaru be kind of dangerous now?”
“Hmm... I thought I had thoroughly investigated its functionality, but it appears there was something like a backdoor remaining.”
With the ghost’s implied permission, Yogiri started by killing Furemaru. The dead material lost all function, collecting into a black lump and dropping to the ground by Tomochika and Mokomoko’s feet.
“What?!” The robot girl was shocked. While they had no idea what she was like on the inside, she seemed to outwardly display an awful lot of emotion.
“Oh. Even though I merged it with your clothes, they didn’t come off with it,” Mokomoko commented.
“What exactly were you hoping would happen?!”
“It all went as planned when you were in Battle Suit mode...”
“Now your threats don’t mean anything,” Yogiri said to the robot. “So let me ask you, are you a friend of the giant robot we met earlier?”
“That is correct.” The girl’s shock lasted only a brief moment, and she returned to being calm and composed almost immediately.
“So have you been watching us the whole time?” If Furemaru was under their control, they could have used it to find the three of them anywhere.
“Of course not. We simply found what we were looking for, so we came to collect it. Your appearance was listed in our database, so I made use of what information was available.”
“And that is this goddess fragment thing? Was the giant robot looking for it too? Because I’m pretty sure we don’t have anything like that.”
If they did, the creature from before should have noticed. So it must have been something they picked up during their journey, but what could it be? If a goddess was similar in form to a person, it might have been a body part, but he didn’t remember picking up anything so gross.
“Maybe she’s talking about the Philosopher’s Stones?” Tomochika offered. That was the only thing they were going out of their way to collect themselves.
“That would still be strange. The giant robot didn’t try to take one from the Sage back then.”
And if their objective was the Philosopher’s Stones, they could attack the Sages directly. But while the Aggressors were enemies of the Sages, that was only because the Sages were deployed to fight off the Aggressors that appeared.
“I do not care how you perceive the article, only that I know it exists within your bag. Hand it over.”
“That’s easy for you to say, but if it really is the Philosopher’s Stones, I can’t give them to you.” Yogiri dropped his backpack to the ground and began looking through it. It was a magic item, so the inside was much bigger than the outside. It was divided into a number of sections, so he reached into the part reserved for important things. “Uhh...they’re not here.”
“What?! What do you mean?! You did put them in, right?!”
“Yeah. One from Sion, one from Lain, and one from Raiza. I definitely had three of them in here.” The bag was built so that if you pictured the item you wanted, it would appear in your hand. The Philosopher’s Stones were round stones, small enough to fit in your hand, but there was nothing like that within.
“Did someone steal them?!”
“It’s possible. I can detect killing intent, but I can’t detect someone trying to steal from me.”
“Excuse me! All we want is the broken fragments of the goddess—”
“That’s not important right now.”
The robot girl seemed to be reaching the end of her patience, but Yogiri was far more concerned about the missing Philosopher’s Stones that they had worked so hard to obtain.
“Well, it’s just a magic item that holds a lot, so it’s not like it has much in the way of security.”
There was no function to stop someone other than the owner from retrieving items from it. Anyone could have reached in and taken them.
“What are we supposed to do, then?! Has everything we’ve done so far been pointless?!”
“Hmm. This is bad. I never considered that someone might steal them... Wait. What’s this?”
There was something besides the Stones in the important items pocket. Yogiri grabbed it. It was warm and soft and sent a shudder through him as he touched it.
“What is this thing?”
Pulling it from the bag, he looked closely at it. It looked like a kind of skin-colored sea cucumber. It was pulsing, as if alive. Faint blue lines like blood vessels were visible under its skin.
“Gross!” Tomochika cried, mirroring Yogiri’s sentiments.
“I don’t remember getting anything like this... Did someone put it in here? Or is this—”
“The fragment of the goddess! Give it to me!” The robot girl shouted.
“No.” Though it was gross and they had no idea what it was, this is what had been left there in place of their Philosopher’s Stones. He couldn’t just hand it over.
“Then I will take it from you by force!”
A roar filled the air around them. Looking up, they saw a number of huge robots floating in the sky. Somehow, they had been hiding up there.
“That first robot we met was so understanding too...”
But this new Aggressor was totally different.
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