Yari no Yuusha no Yarinaoshi (LN) - Volume 2 - Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: Half-Burnt Charcoal 

“You—you—!” I gasped. 
Like the final piece of a puzzle, my memories all fell into place. He killed the filolials. He injured Father. The man behind it all was standing in front of my very eyes, trying to hurt Father and my friends again. 
I, Motoyasu Kitamura, had to act at once. 
I matched the direction of my spear with the burst of light from Wahnsinn Claw and redirected it to strike down one of the pigs. It oinked in horror and blood spurted everywhere. Then I carved a hole in the airship floor. 
“W-Wahnsinn Claw . . . blocked? M-my weapon, defeated . . . ?” 
The pigs, shivering in terror, looked to Takt, who was staring blankly downward. 
“I have no idea what you want to achieve here, but if you’re trying to betray us—” Father seemed to be talking about something with Takt. But there was no point in even exchanging words with scum like him. 
“What exactly was the fox beast pig, hmm?” I interjected loudly. “Even being your ally was enough reason to take its life! But that was its punishment for daring to impersonate a hero!” 
“You bastard!” Takt roared. He raised a claw and started to charge at me. 
“Motoyasu! Stop!” 
“This fiend, this villain—we can’t let him live!” I said. After the crimson swine, Takt was the second-most evil creature alive! He had to be punished for his deeds, even if no one could remember them. I felt blood rush to my head. 
Father’s screams, Filo-tan’s sorrow, the corpses of my precious filolials . . . This man standing before me now was the cause of it all. 
“Calm down!” Father was yelling at me. “You’re facing the seven star hero! If you make the wrong move—” 
I knew I shouldn’t ignore Father’s orders, but this time my anger overpowered his calls for restraint. 
“I will end your life no matter what!” 
“Motoyasu!” 
I broke free from Father’s restraint. I raised Brionac to its maximum power and aimed it at Takt. I launched all of my strength at him, full throttle. 
A pig in a maid outfit let out a high-pitched squeal and rushed between me and Takt. 
“Briiiiooooonac X!” 
The high-powered beam of light unleashed from my spear pierced clean through the pig’s body and Takt screamed in agony. 
I turned him to half-burnt charcoal, I say. You couldn’t stop Brionac with a pig like that. 
Wind rushed through the hole in the observation deck with a hiss. 
I suddenly realized that even though I had killed one of the heroes, the time loop hadn’t reset. It seemed like the only conditions for the loop were the lives of Father, Ren, Itsuki, and me. 
Which means that it was no problem at all for me to kill villains like Takt. 
I almost started to laugh. This time, yes, this time I would send them all to the grave! This time, I would kill all of the enemies of Filo-tan and Father! 
“Pigs!” I bellowed. “Your deeds are unforgivable! I’ll make you regret having been born into this very world!” 
The pigs started squealing frantically. They really needed to calm down. I was going to treat them all the same—and send them to the afterlife to meet their precious Takt. 
“Oh, Takt!” 
“Takt! Where did Takt go!?” 
Two pigs started to show their true forms. One transformed into a dragon and another into a griffin. 
“Spear Hero, you’ve killed Takt and even our father! I’ll kill you!” 
Even in such a small room, the griffin started to charge at me. 
“Your father? I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said. “But now that you mention it, I did kill a big griffin in the mountains. His drop items were superior.” 
“Die!” she shrieked. 
What a bunch of grumpy griffins, grumbling on and on about things I knew nothing about. How childlike. But as Takt’s subordinates, they were complicit in his crimes, so their lives belong to me, I say! 
“Air Strike Javelin X!” 
Brionac was in cooldown mode, so I had to use a different skill. The chaos on the deck was getting a bit out of hand, so I had to use Aiming Lancer to make sure I didn’t accidentally hit any of the filolials. Eventually I decided to just aim directly at the griffin. 
But weak attacks weren’t nearly enough to clear up my pent-up rage. 
The griffin howled madly as I blasted off her head. 
“That’s it!” I declared. “I remember that the great filolial Fitoria-tan mentioned how much she wanted to kill you griffins. You all ought to know that the world would be better off without you!” 
According to one tale, griffins were the ones who exterminated flying filolials. That was enough reason for me to punish them ten thousand times! Every time I saw a griffin, it was my duty to exterminate it. They might even be worse than the dragons. 
Meanwhile, the dragon roared. “This machine just gets in the way!” it shouted. “Enemy of Takt, prepare to die!” I heard crackling bones as the dragon expanded to a monstrous size and, tearing through the airship with its claws, started to breathe fire. 
So Takt was hiding a beast like that after all! I was itching to fight it. There was no reason dragons should even be allowed to live in the first place, but the fact that this dragon was Takt’s colleague made it even more abominable. Merely killing this dragon would be far from satisfactory! 
“Everyone, get out of here!” Werwer cried to the Siltvelt leaders, who started to escape from the hole I had carved in the airship floor. 
I heard more ear-piercing squeals. 
“Die! I say!” 
I chased around after Takt’s pigs that were trying to escape and stabbed them all. The airship was falling apart thanks to the dragon’s fire, and the whole surrounding area had turned into an ocean of flames. I continued to use Aiming Lancer to target Takt’s pigs, but there were so many of them, and Aiming Lancer was too weak to get all of them at once. So even though it was easy to target them, I wasn’t killing nearly as many as I would’ve liked. I was starting to get frustrated. 
“Motoyasu! Motoyasu!” 
I turned to Father, who had been calling my name. 
“What the hell is happening?” Father asked. “This is a disaster—you killed Takt. Well, maybe you needed to kill Takt . . . but to kill people who are begging for their lives . . . What are you doing!?” 
“I remember everything!” I proclaimed. “He—Takt—he’s not just the Whip Hero. He’s gathering the weapons of all the other heroes by killing them all! He’s on his way to becoming your mortal enemy, Father!” 
“That’s exactly . . . Why . . . Motoyasu, dammit, just look around!” 
Only because Father told me to, I looked around. 
Fires raged everywhere, in the airship, in the field, and fires had even spread to the forest surrounding the castle. A group of Siltveltians were desperately trying to put out the flames, but the massive dragon had started to attack them as well and cause a panic. 
“The dragon’s attacking!” they cried. 
“Get it! Get it!” 
“Everyone, save the castle!” 
The filolials were just barely managing to protect the castle from the dragon. But the damage could start to drastically increase at any moment. 
That meant I had to kill all of Takt’s pigs as fast as humanly possible! 
“Stop—stop it, Motoyasu!” Father grabbed me. “If you don’t stop, the people you want to protect are going to die!” 
Father was grabbing me from behind amidst the flames, I say. 
“This is horrible,” Father said, turning me to face him. “I understand that you remembered something horrible. That’s why I want you to calm down—because if you don’t, something even worse than what happened in your memories could happen today!” 
“Father . . .” I whispered. 
“Motoyasu—you saved my life. I want to be able to help you in return. So please, please, stop.” 
In the raging cascade of fire, I lowered my spear. 
“Thanks to Takt, you shed so many tears, Father,” I whispered. “Countless filolials died.” 
“I get it,” Father said. “I get it. And it looks like Takt was the one who killed the Claw Hero and sent the fox beast as well.” 
Near the castle, Yuki continued to direct the filolials in battle against the dragon. 
“Okay,” Father said. “Did you calm down?” 
“Cool as a cucumber,” I said. “It looks like that even though I killed Takt, the time loop didn’t reset.” 
“That’s true. That could be good for us. But for now, let’s stop the damage from getting worse—we need to finish them off. The wave of destruction is almost here too.” 
“Whatever you say!” I declared. 
Just like Father told me to, I rushed to fight the dragon in a boiling whirlpool of rage. 
“Brionac X!” 
I aimed for its head and unleashed the skill with all of my might. I heard its furious roar ring out. 
But because I was too far away, the dragon managed to dodge the straight-line attack. Curse you! If it could dodge Brionac, then I had to go for a different high-level attack. A certain high-level Aiming Lancer skill, named after the Norse god renowned for its power and accuracy. My spear glittered darkly as it homed in on its target. 
I shouted, “Gungnir X!” 
I hurled my spear in a black curve and an enormous ray of light blasted right into the dragon’s eye. 
The dragon bellowed. Gungnir had struck the monstrous beast right between the eyes. After a moment, a high-pitch sound rang out—and then the dragon’s head exploded. 
With a tremendous thud, the dragon landed dead across the castle gardens. 
“You did it! You did it, Motoyasu!” cried Father. 
“Of course I did it! Now I just have to kill the rest of Takt’s pigs!” 
“Wait, wait! They already ran away, and, Motoyasu, we have to prepare for the wave of destruction!” 
I took a glance at the clock in my field of vision. We had exactly ten minutes until the wave of destruction hit. 
“Well, since we still have a whole ten minutes, should I take care of the pigs until then?” 

“No, Motoyasu, no!” yelled Father. “What do you have against those poor women?” 
Oho? I stared at Father in shock. I supposed he was right. I shouldn’t discriminate against pigs. If I chased after them now, I might end up killing plenty of Siltveltian pigs, too, since I had no idea which pigs were Takt’s and which weren’t. 
“Let’s hurry up and do whatever preparation we can,” Father said. “If we don’t, it could get rough.” 
“Terribly rough!” I agreed. 
The shusaku representative flew down in front of the dragon’s corpse, changed from therianthrope to demi-human, and bowed his head to Father. 
“What’s wrong?” Father asked. “We only have a few minutes left to prepare for the wave of destruction.” 
“Shield Hero,” Werwer began, “I regret to announce that the Melromarc army has invaded Siltvelt!” 
Father looked dumbfounded. “Excuse me?” 
It seemed as if Melromarc decided to use the chaos to invade. This situation had become quite the emergency, if I must say so myself. 
“N-now, of all times?” Father’s face had turned pale. “What’s happening?” 
“At this very moment, we received an official declaration of war from Melromarc! Their army is advancing rapidly. The troops number—” 
He said the number. Now that was a lot of troops. But I seem to remember the Melromarc army being bigger than that. While I didn’t remember the exact number when we fought in the first go-around, I think the Melromarc army had been even larger then. 
“How long will it take them to reach the castle?” Father asked. 
“It will take at the earliest three days for them to be in the range for a battle,” Werwer said. 
“Got it. So before that, we need to take care of the wave of destruction—it’s just a few minutes away. Once we get that under control, I want to immediately begin preparations for war. The only issue is . . .” Father trailed off, but Werwer looked like he understood what Father meant. 
“Of course,” Werwer said. “We won’t use you or the Spear Hero for our wars.” 
Father had mentioned he had been concerned about getting involved in unnecessary wars, and Éclair and the old genmu had agreed and decided that we wouldn’t deploy in the case of war. But the problem isn’t just limited to the battlefield—there are still people out there who might try to hurt Father. And I, Motoyasu Kitamura, will stop them. 
It was hard to believe that Melromarc had decided to invade now. It seemed probable that they were cooperating with Takt. But no matter what enemies appeared, I’d blow them out of the water, I say! 
“Just one thing—” Father began. 
“You’re going to say that the only circumstance in which you’ll fight is if our enemies send a hero, correct?” Werwer asked. “We understand. After we’ve conducted an examination of the situation, we’ll report to you.” 
“If you violate this agreement, I’ll have no choice but to leave the country,” Motoyasu said. “My job here is to save the world by fighting the waves of destruction, not to get involved in wars.” 
“Noted,” Werwer said. “As long as King Aultcray the Staff Hero doesn’t attack us directly, we won’t call on you.” 
Werwer, of course, was responding with concern to Father. But he seemed to be ignoring me. Werwer thoroughly misunderstood the magnitude of my power! 
“So, Motoyasu,” Father said, “let’s get the filolials and fight the wave of destruction!” 
“Fight we shall!” 
“If Melromarc ends up moving alongside the remnants of Takt’s forces . . .” Father trailed off. “I just get a really bad feeling about all this.” 
“As you say, Father.” 
I saw the countdown to the wave approaching zero. I guessed there’d be no lunch break today. First, we got tricked by that villainous Whip Hero. Now we had to deal with the wave of destruction . . . There was no doubt that Melromarc was using this as the perfect time to invade Siltvelt. If the battle with Takt had dragged out, the wave would’ve struck and we’d have been flung to it during our fight. I bet they had intended to kill us that way. I do remember griffins and dragons giving us serious troubles in the last go-around. 
But compared to back then, now I had infinite power, I say! I killed them all instantly! 
The world became quiet. 
“All right, Motoyasu, it’s up to you,” Father told me. “I’m going to do my best to minimize the damage on the area.” 
“You can leave it to me! It’s still one of the early waves of destruction, after all. I don’t think it will be particularly dangerous.” 
“Just be careful,” Father said. 
The magnificent wisdom of Father! He always made sure to look before he leapt. 
The clock in my field of vision hit zero. The Siltvelt wave of destruction was on the way. 
“Here we go . . .” 
We were flung to the source of the wave. Surveying Siltvelt from our position, I saw that we were in what looked like the mountains. The boss was an enormous, bald-headed humanoid giant, like a Daidarabochi of legend. A huge shadow from the mountains started storming toward us. Just based on appearance alone, intuition told me that it wasn’t particularly strong, maybe about level 35. Piece of cake. 
But since Father told me to, I’d be careful. 
“Yuki! Filolials!” I called. 
“Got it!” Yuki announced. “Everyone, simultaneous attack!” 
The filolials chirped and cawed, rushing in a unified strike toward the enemy. Siltvelt demi-human soldiers also hurried out to meet the wave of monsters spilling out from the mountains. The Daidarabochi boss was surrounded by lots of Japanese-style demons and monsters. 
Since there were a number of nearby towns at risk, Father rode Sakura out to evacuate the villagers. But the Siltvelt demi-human villagers wanted to fight for themselves and looked like they were going to join the battle too. 
Anyways, I figured it was about time for me to cut through the monsters’ vanguard. 
“Aiming Lancer X!” 
I locked onto the monsters and launched the attack. Instantly monsters scattered everywhere as I carved a fissure through the earth that sunk the boss along with the rest of the monsters. It worked pretty well, if I had to say so myself. 
But still, I had to be careful. Even when you think you’ve defeated them all, there could be remnants. I waited, but nothing came out of the fissure. 
Even though I had put so much effort into being careful, I guess this time it ended without an issue. 
“All right!” Father called, riding back toward me on Sakura. “Now let’s prepare for the war with Melromarc! Get back to the castle!” 
“Yes, sir!” 
Siltvelt soldiers shouted in unison, bowed, and went off to prepare for the upcoming battles. It looked like there were very few injured soldiers and that we had minimized the damage. It was all over almost too easily, but I figured there was still plenty of fighting to come. 
The shusaku representative came back toward Father and me just outside the castle. 
“So? What’s the status of the Melromarc forces?” Father asked. 
“Suddenly the forces started to retreat, withdrawing from the front,” Werwer said. “We’re in the middle of deciding whether or not to pursue them.” 
Father and I went back inside the castle and joined the meeting with the other Siltvelt leaders. 
“Deserting in the face of the enemy, huh?” Father asked. 
“We suspect that Melromarc thought we’d be distracted by the wave of destruction and Takt,” Werwer said. 
Naturally. We couldn’t throw out that possibility. It was still suspicious behavior, even if the wave monsters had ended up being fewer in number than the attacking Melromarc army. 
“It’s that Wisest King of Wisdom. What could he possibly be up to?” one of the leaders asked. 
The Wisest King of Wisdom? Oh, that was one name for Trash. But do we really need to worry about someone as powerless as him? 
“Motoyasu, you said Ren—you said the Sword Hero—went to a different country, right?” Father asked. 
“That’s what I’ve been informed,” I told Father. 
“So Itsuki—the Bow Hero—must be with the Melromarc army?” 
“Thankfully not,” Werwer said. “We’ve received a message that he is not with them.” 
So Itsuki isn’t with the army? I didn’t know if I believed that. Something was fishy. But I also figured I didn’t really know Itsuki anyways. We didn’t talk much in the first go-around. In fact, I hadn’t bothered to get to know him in the first place. 
Suddenly I remembered something. That pig—there was this pig with an unhealthy romantic obsession that was unjustly discharged for acting improperly and Father was really angry. And then . . . what was it? I remember that Father and the pig went somewhere after that. Where had they gone? 
“Where is Itsuki, then?” Father asked. 
“Our spies have reported that he’s still in Melromarc, carrying out his own activities,” Werwer said. 
“So we won’t need to face him in battle,” Father said. 
“Yes, but something suspicious may be going on,” Werwer stated and stared at the map marked with small pieces for the locations of the troops, lost in thought. 
“Okay, so there’s the potential war with Melromarc, but how’s the damage to the castle from the wave of destruction?” Father asked. 
“Due to flames from the airship battle, the surrounding forests caught on fire, but we managed to put them out without too much damage. But there were many casualties—almost all of them subordinates of the Whip Hero.” 
“Really . . .” Father frowned. 
“There were many who were shot in the chaos, as well as victims of the Whip Hero’s dragon. However, thanks to the valiant efforts of the Spear Hero, many were saved.” 
“Motoyasu really saved the day, didn’t he?” Father said. 
“I say!” I declared, overwhelmed with emotion. But deep down, I, Motoyasu Kitamura, had let Father down. Next time would be different, I swore to myself. 
I had let far too many pigs survive. Next time I’d kill every last one of them! 
“We’re making fixing up the castle the first priority,” Werwer continued, “as well as preparing our defenses for the next invasion.” Werwer was standing tall and proud, almost seeming excited. 
“I mentioned it before, but just remember that we won’t be getting involved in matters that don’t involve the heroes,” Father said. 
“Oh, we understand!” Werwer said. “Okay, everyone!” He called out to the other Siltvelt leaders. “As the Shield Hero says—we’ll never let ourselves be defeated! Remember your strength!” 
“Aye!” the crowd called. 
I, too, had to do as much as I possibly could to help Father. I couldn’t be picky about our methods here. 
“Father,” I called to him. 
“What’s up?” 
“It’s about the dragon corpse,” I said. “I hate to suggest doing anything with the likes of a dragon, but with a dragon core you can undergo a ceremony that enables power-ups beyond level 100.” 
“No kidding? Well, I don’t think we have the time to do much with it right away, but let’s definitely collect it.” 
“Understood, Father!”