Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter Ep

Epilogue: The Fear of Those Who are Eternal

“Brother, is that the end of our fight?” Fohl asked.

“I don’t know. If this ends the waves, that would be perfect . . . but we still need to find a way to get back to our time,” I said. Mamoru, R’yne, Keel, and the others were dashing over and defeating monsters along the way. Keel and Eclair were wiping out the monsters that had emerged from the waves by simply swinging the modified ancient weapons that Holn had provided. They had certainly received quite the upgrade. They might not be able to match a hero, but putting sufficient magic into these weapons allowed them to really pull their weight.

“Bubba, that was amazing! I wanted to help out too!” Keel said.

“Raph, raph, raph,” said Raph-chan.

“Dafu, dafu,” said Dafu-chan.

“That would be very dangerous,” Natalia said, joining the Raph-chans in cautioning Keel.

“Indeed. Your eagerness is worthy of praise, but if you don’t understand your own limits, then you’ll simply be killed,” the Water Dragon added. Their voices were pitched a little higher than normal though. That just showed what a powerful enemy we had defeated, even from their perspective.

“He only allowed heroes to take part, anyway,” I told her.

“I’m amazed you defeated one who assumes the name of god,” Natalia said. “When you were all called up there, I prayed that maybe one of you would survive.”

“He was pretty powerful,” I admitted. We’d basically defeated him using a sucker punch. If we had to fight him when he was prepared, at full strength, I wasn’t sure we would win.

“You were amazing up there, Naofumi,” Ruft said, riding up on the head of Rat’s monster Mikey. “We didn’t get to do much this time.”

“Raph,” said Mikey.

“I think you did well for your first battle, Mikey,” Rat said.

“Raph!” said Mikey. I hadn’t seen much, but Mikey had basically been a giant Raph species smashing through the enemy. Rat was also standing next to Ruft.

“I’m happy for him, but . . . I also miss Gaelion,” Wyndia said, moving over toward Ren and holding the former caterpilland Raph species.

“You’ll see him again once we get back to the future,” Ren assured her.

“Yeah. You did well today, Ren,” Wyndia said.

“It was great,” Ren said. “We’re going to take down the enemies in the future too, just like this.” He looked pretty pleased with himself. I hoped we could keep this momentum going.

“You really know how to worry me, Naofumi,” Melty said with a sigh.

“We didn’t really have a choice this time, in case you didn’t notice. However. . . we’re always fighting on a knife-edge, pretty much,” I admitted.

“You said it. I need to fight. That way I can help out more in this kind of situation.” Melty sighed.

“Why not use one of the weapons Holn just gave us?” I suggested. Melty was pretty enhanced, so she’d attained considerable strength. She had plenty of innate magic too. She’d be well-matched with a weapon that could turn that magic into strength.

“I know, but I just don’t like the look of them. Even if Fitoria gave them to us . . .” Melty admitted.

“I understand that. But we can’t really be picky, can we?” I reminded her. The fact the high priest had used them was probably why Melty didn’t like them. I could also tell that with Melty’s magic behind them they would be powerful weapons. She was more in a command position, but being able to fight when she needed to made a big difference. That said, we weren’t going to have her fight any of the ones who assumed the name of god. Then Eclair made a thoughtful noise.

“If I’m going to continue to be involved in this fighting, I’m really starting to think that I want a vassal weapon of my own, Ren,” she said.

“Eclair . . .” Ren replied a little awkwardly.

“I know. I need to work with you, Hero Iwatani, and the others, and wait for a weapon like the ones you just used. I’ll keep training until that happens,” Eclair said.

“That’s right! Let’s make some weapons, all together . . . weapons that can kill gods!” Ren replied. Everyone was in pretty high spirits, and conviction had definitely been renewed.

“Wow! World peace, baby!” R’yne said. They were making it sound like we had completely won. If it meant the end of the waves, of course, I would be fine with that. If we’d changed the future and ended the waves there too, so be it.

Maybe that was all a pipe dream though.

“I can’t believe this.”

A pipe dream that was short-lived.

“This is bad. This is really, really bad.” The voice was coming from behind me, and it sounded a lot like the voice of the one who assumed the name of god that we already killed. I turned to look and saw someone similar to the dead one but with a dog mascot head. It looked at the crushed body and muttered to himself. “You scum! Primeval pond scum! How dare you do this! Murderers!”

There was another one of them here. This could be a problem.

“Huh? You call yourselves gods, don’t you? You haven’t heard the stories about heroes who kill gods? That’s like half the job of a hero,” I taunted him, gauging the situation.

“Watch your mouth, primate!” Doghead raged. Even as we talked, Ren, Raphtalia, Fohl, and S’yne all changed to their 0 weapons and deployed their skills. That was when I noticed Doghead looked like he was about to crap himself.

“You aren’t going to come for us? If you don’t, we’re coming for you,” I warned him. He made a frightened gasp. From that noise, and from the look in his eyes, I could tell what he was afraid of. The one we just killed had talked about not being able to work out where we had come from. It was clicking into place now. They were scared of us having the ability to kill them. Which meant it wouldn’t hurt to threaten them some more. “Oh, and don’t think taking care of us will end this. Do you know what we have behind us?” I asked. I deployed the Shield 0 and really amped up the pressure.

“Pond . . . scum . . . getting full of yourselves, just because you’ve found a way to kill a god,” Doghead said.

“You’re free to think whatever you want. But you still understand the position you’re in, right?” I replied, pressing the point and pointing directly at him. “You’re next. Not just you alone, all of you. You’re all going to take responsibility for this crazy bullshit you’ve been putting us through!” That was my declaration, not just to the new one who assumed the name of god, but everyone who had to be watching.

“This humiliation!” Doghead retorted. “I won’t forget this! You’ll suffer the true wrath of the gods now!” I could tell from his voice he was pushing down his anger and his fear.

“What’s happening among your audience now?” I taunted. “Are they crying out that they don’t want to die? Crying out to be saved?” The new one who assumed the name of god seemed to have realized he was at a disadvantage, because he deployed what looked like a cape and simply vanished, right along with the body of his dead friend. It had to be some kind of instant transmission skill, like a portal. Then the crack vanished too, and the rings with the other worlds vanished, and everything returned to silence.

“Looks like we drove them off,” I said.

“You were talking a big game back there,” Holn commented.

“That’s how I roll,” I replied.

“Pretty much what I’d expect from you, Naofumi,” Mamoru said.

“Your personality and the things you can actually do don’t really match up, do they?” R’yne said. Those two seemed to understand us now. There was no need to play along with this shitty game they were running on us.

“You guys agree with me, right?” I asked. Raphtalia, Ren, Fohl, S’yne, and everyone else from the village nodded.

“You can’t surprise me anymore,” Ruft replied.

“You were using the limited information we have to lead them to the worst possible conclusions, weren’t you?” Raphtalia said. “They did sound pretty scared of these ‘god hunters,’ that’s for sure.”

“I spotted that too,” I said sardonically. “If they have something they’re so afraid of, they shouldn’t be pulling stuff like this.” It was like the mafia sitting around worrying about the police. They were scared of being punished but desired stimulation, a terrible combination.

In any case, we had dealt with them for now. They had been pretty strong, but if our weapons had been fully upgraded, I wasn’t so sure. They had felt like a challenging extra boss beyond the normal end of a game—something tough, but possible to defeat. Right now, our weapons weren’t quite at the right level.

“That was a surprise. What were those weapons you heroes from the future were using?” Holn asked. I kept an eye out for the ones who assumed the name of gods coming back.

“The 0 series. We obtained them from what looked like some kind of medicine of eternal life found in some ancient ruins. They are normally just trash, unable to do anything, but if you use them to attack a wave crack, it can delay the arrival of the next wave. They can also resist the binding of the holy weapons,” I explained.

“The quelling of irregular power . . . I’ve theorized about the existence of such a thing,” Holn said.

“I’m sure you have. That’s why when I saw the one who assumes the name of god using that illegitimate power, I thought it was worth trying them out,” I said.

“Your past, in the future . . . maybe the god hunters came to that time and left that power for future generations,” Holn said.

“Maybe,” I replied. Once we got home, we were going to be having words with Fitoria. “No matter how that turns out, it’s a fact that we took out one of those causing the waves. That means our counterattack has truly started.” Everyone nodded in agreement. “Okay! Let’s gather together even more tightly and take the fight to these sons of bitches who assumed the name of god!” That was met with a roar of general approval.

And so ended our first killing of a god. We still didn’t have a way to get back to our own time, but we’d likely resolved the issues with the waves here in this time period. At least the ones behind them were afraid for their lives now. I hoped the frequency of the waves would decrease.

We finished up the last of the wave monsters and then returned to the village and the castle.