I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 3 Page 10

  That was how she really felt.

  For one thing, would Rekka really have said something to hurt his childhood friend just because he thought she’d be a nuisance? Wasn’t it more likely that it was a kind lie, just like Harissa had said?

  There was no evidence either way. But Satsuki decided to believe—in her own feelings and in her childhood friend’s kindness.

  She’d always thought that it would be her job to comfort Rekka and take care of him if he ever had to face something terrible or suffer an unbearable burden. But maybe she hadn’t considered what that really meant.

  When she was little, she took in that stray kitten. And just a little while ago, Messiah had come after her.

  Rekka had always been there for her.

  And because of that, she thought it was mutual. Satsuki had convinced herself that when Rekka was in trouble, he would come to her and tell her about his problems and rely on her for help.

  “How stupid,” she laughed at herself.

  If she wanted to help him, that wasn’t the right way. She couldn’t just wait for him to come tell her what was wrong. She had to go help him. Just like Rekka had saved Lea.

  When Lea refused their help, he grabbed ahold of her hands and refused to let go.

  Satsuki told herself that kind of resolve was what she needed now. Her tiny hands were far too frail to drag Rekka along, but she clenched them into fists with all her might just the same.

  And if that still wasn’t enough...

  “Let’s go, Harissa. All of us together.”

  “Huh? All of us?”

  “Yes, all of us,” she replied.

  She was going after someone stupid enough to go off all on his own, leaving behind the childhood friend he’d known for years. To save somebody who didn’t want to be saved, you needed incredible strength and even stronger words.

  Especially in the case of her kind childhood friend.

  Chapter 4: What Supports You When Hope Changes to Despair

  I waited alone for Kult in the empty wastes some distance from the white clayman base. And sure enough, I eventually saw him flying high up in the sky.

  “Ngh... You, huh?”

  He was still flying in his Battle Kult Ship, but he stopped when he saw me.

  “Where’s the girl?”

  He looked across the empty plains. There was no grass to duck down in, and there were no rocks to crouch behind. There was nowhere for Hibiki to hide.

  “Hibiki’s not here. She’s in that base over there.”

  “I see. Then I don’t need to waste any time on you. Off I...” he began.

  “Bad idea,” I said.

  Kult froze.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Did you see the people of this world? They look like dolls made out of clay. Every one of them was identical, right?”

  “Hmph. What about it?”

  “You got confused when there were just two Hibikis on monster mountain, right? That was because I used a certain method to transform into her. Long story short, we have a way to change our appearances.”

  Hearing that, Kult started to frown and then grimaced.

  “There are close to a thousand claymen just in that base. Do you have a way to pick her out of a thousand others that look just like her?”

  The dowsing pendulum would only tell him the general direction of what he was looking for. It would be impossible to find Hibiki among the claymen.

  “So then why wait here for me when you’ve got a way to trick me? I might take you hostage if I need to.”

  Kult’s eye narrowed behind his monocle.

  “I want to make a deal,” I said.

  “A deal?”

  “There’s a perpetual motion machine in this world called ‘Eternal Death Before Defeat.’ If you’re capable of modifying a hero’s suit of armor to make the Infinity Reviver, you should be able to use this machine of theirs to invent something to stop the heat death of your world, right?”

  A perpetual motion machine was a device designed to create energy forever, so I figured Kult would be able to do something with it.

  “...Is that true?”

  Just as I suspected, Kult was suspicious but took the bait.

  “If you think I’m lying, use your crystal ball to see for yourself.”

  If “Eternal Death Before Defeat” was a real perpetual motion machine, it would be what Kult wanted. It should show up in his crystal ball.

  Kult took out his crystal ball and chanted a spell.

  “‘Eternal Death Before Defeat’ is a huge wooden box with a dragon motif?”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” I nodded. “If you’re willing to steal it, we’ll help you. With our help, you can turn into a clayman and get close to it, for one thing.”

  “I see,” he said. “And what do you want in return?”

  “Glad to see you understand. We want two things. One is to wake up Harissa, the girl you put to sleep with one of your capsules. The other is to lend us the Infinity Reviver for a while.”

  With the perpetual motion machine, Kult could stop the imminent heat death of his world. And by stealing it, we could stop the claymen from destroying their world. Infinity Reviver was originally intended to turn one’s Fate Ratio into power. We’d use it to fight the giant nine-tailed fox, and Kokomo could seal it once it was weakened.

  That was the plan I’d come up with to solve all three stories. But if we couldn’t get Kult on board, the whole plan was doomed.

  He glared at me with stern eyes.

  “I don’t need to go through all the trouble of stealing the perpetual motion machine. I can just take you hostage. There’s nothing in this deal for me.”

  Of course. That’s how this was going to go down.

  I wanted to save all three stories, but Kult was only interested in his own world. There was no point in him agreeing to help us.

  But...

  “There is,” I said.

  “Oh? And what’s that?”

  “You won’t have to sacrifice Hibiki.”

  “...?”

  Kult titled his head in confusion.

  “You’re not a bad person.” I spoke with certainty. “You were upset when you hit Harissa with the sleep capsule. You didn’t mean to do it. That’s what left you vulnerable then.”

  Without that opening, the bottle of spices I threw wouldn’t have hit him.

  “...”

  Kult still said nothing.

  He’d tried to sacrifice Hibiki because, at that point, there was no other way to save his world. He thought the Infinity Reviver was his last hope.

  “If you’ve got a way to avoid sacrificing anyone, you should be willing to do what it takes,” I continued. “We’ll help you get the perpetual motion machine first. Once you’ve seen for sure that you can use it to save your world, you can lend us the Infinity Reviver. There’s no risk for you.”

  After I said my piece, I fell silent.

  Now it was up to Kult to make the decision.

  Honestly, it was easier for him to use me as bait to catch Hibiki than to steal that huge engine. Even if he wasn’t risking anything, it was still extra work. And all he’d get for his trouble was Hibiki’s life. The life of a girl who had nothing to do with him at all.

  Just looking objectively at what he had to lose versus what he stood to gain, this was a bad bet for him. I was just counting on Kult’s conscience. But still, I decided to trust my intuition. Based on the tiny glimpses of what I’d seen, Kult wasn’t a bad guy.

  “...Very well.”

  And my trust paid off.

  “I see... Thanks.”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. I just decided it was faster than chasing you around everywhere. If I can’t get my hands on that perpetual motion machine, I’ll be after you again.”

  “I know.”

  I asked Kult to wait while I went to the base to get Hibiki. Step one was a success. I’d convinced Kult, but that didn’t mean we were out of the woods yet.

&nbs
p; “Rekka, is it really okay to solve the stories like this?” R asked as she followed behind me. Her face was probably more expressionless than usual.

  “...”

  But I didn’t have an answer for her.

  ▽

  Kult fiddled with his ring to summon the blue door.

  “First, I will make the preparations to steal the perpetual motion machine.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Hibiki and I nodded, and Kult reached for the blue door... or actually, for a small, red button on its side.

  “Kult, what’s that button?”

  “It’s a compressed memory button. It can recall the locations of the last three worlds visited. It will also return you to my lab.”

  “Huh...”

  So I guess the door had more functionality than just the dial on the knob. Well, that made sense. It would be a pain to have to mess with the dial each time he wanted to go to the same world.

  Wait. Did that mean...?

  “If you’d noticed that button, we could’ve gone right back to Earth,” Hibiki said, narrowing her eyes at me.

  “...Sorry.” I bowed my head in embarrassment.

  “All right, let’s go,” Kult said as he stepped through the door.

  We followed suit. After the usual vertigo, I landed gloriously on the lab floor.

  “Gwah!”

  And by gloriously, I mean face first.

  Why were the two of them looking at me like I was an idiot? And why was I the only one who couldn’t stick the landing?!

  “You’re hopeless, huh, Rekka?” Even R was on my case about it.

  ...I was starting to think she might be right.

  I stood up, feeling self-conscious.

  “S-So, what preparations do we have to make?”

  “Hmm, first I need to make the inventions I need in the workshop on the second floor, and then...”

  BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP!

  A loud noise echoed through the whole laboratory, drowning out Kult’s voice.

  “Hey, what’s that sound?” Hibiki shouted as she covered her ears.

  “The alarm from the first floor...?” Kult gasped and went pale. “Meifa!”

  Kult yelled his lover’s name as he frantically ran to the capsule on the first floor where she slept.

  Hibiki and I nodded at each other and followed after him again. I headed to the big room where I knew the sleeping pod was. Hibiki entered right behind me.

  We both froze.

  “Meifa! Meifa! Don’t die on me!”

  Kult was in the middle of the room, clutching his sleeping lover in his arms. Looming over them was a demon perched atop the broken sleeping capsule.

  “Heh. New guests.” The demon spoke more fluidly than I expected.

  But despite his human speech, there was depravity in his smile. His mouth split his face from ear to ear, and I could see red gums and fangs inside. His lidless eyes shone with a red light. Rock-like horns grew out of either side of his head, and thick, armored skin covered his whole body. On his back were enormous, leathery wings.

  I didn’t even need to ask. This was the guy who’d almost destroyed Kult’s world.

  “The Demon Who Eats Darkness... Zolphiakd.”

  “Oh? You’re not even from this world, and you know my name?”

  “How did you know we’re from another world?!” I yelled.

  “That is a trivial matter.” Zolphiakd’s lips curled up in a grin as he fiddled with something in his hand.

  It was the pendant that Meifa had been wearing. The last time I saw it, the jewel was white, but now it was foggy and black with a big crack in it.

  “Oh!”

  I suddenly remembered how I’d seen a dark smoke swirling over Meifa’s chest while Hibiki and I were fighting here before. Grr... Even if Kult was on our case then, how could I have seen such an obvious sign and not even considered that possibility?

  “It was quite the challenge, breaking this seal... But it was good entertainment, Kult Graphimore,” the demon said as he tossed the necklace to Kult’s feet.

  The black jewel bounced off the floor and shattered.

  “How... How did you break the seal?” Kult glared at the demon as he spoke.

  “Simple. The mind of the woman you used as the vessel was linked with my own via dreams. I just used that connection to feed her nightmares.”

  “Nightmares...?”

  “Indeed. I devoured the darkness energy that was born of those nightmares and used that to destroy the seal.”

  Kult had said that darkness energy was the source of misery and disaster, but apparently it could even be produced from dreams. So even negative emotions had a “darkness” to them that he could consume?

  “Then you made Meifa suffer even as she slept?”

  “Don’t get the wrong idea. Being sealed away diminished my power significantly. I simply took the darkness already within that girl’s heart and turned it into nightmares.”

  “Meifa’s darkness...?”

  “Do you really think that she became the sealing vessel and fell into eternal sleep without the slightest bit of regret?”

  “That’s impossible... Meifa... Meifa chose to protect this world!”

  “When humans wish to ignore what they don’t want to see, they hide behind meaningless words like ‘resolve.’ There is darkness everywhere, which means despair and misery are always there, lurking under the surface. Mankind—the very world itself—is overshadowed with anguish. In the face of such overwhelming darkness, how does a hollow word like ‘resolve’ have any meaning at all?”

  Kult went pale when he heard the demon’s whisper.

  “In her dream, she spoke endlessly of her hatred for you.”

  “N-No...!”

  I could see the strength drain from Kult’s body. His eyes, which had once shone with a strong desire to save the world, were now as bleak and empty as a dead fish’s.

  The demon saw this and laughed, and then turned to us.

  “Now then, visitors from another world. Will you entertain me too?” Zolphiakd asked joyfully, the red light gleaming in his dark eyes.

  “Tch...!”

  Just seeing him look at me made my skin crawl. It was the same terror I’d felt when I stood against the Demon King and Bahamut. If I let my guard down, he’d crush me like an insect in an instant.

  “Hibiki... Run to the Infinity Reviver.”

  The modified suit of hero’s armor from another world, the Infinity Reviver, still stood in the corner of the room. If there was any way for us to survive this, it probably involved Hibiki getting inside of it.

  “But what if he tries to stop us?”

  “I’ll distract him.”

  “But...!”

  “There’s no other way,” I insisted.

  Hibiki looked bitter.

  “It’s too dangerous! If you die...”

  “I won’t die. I promised, right?” I managed a smile for her. “Go!”

  At my signal, we both broke into a run. I went for Zolphiakd, and Hibiki went for the Infinity Reviver.

  “So you would fight me?” The demon laughed.

  “Hyaaahh!” I forced myself to scream and formed a fist with all my might.

  “Have you steeled yourself with your ‘resolve’ to die?” Zolphiakd grinned.

  In that instant, a terrifying chill ran down my spine.

  I could barely stand. My fist almost came undone. My body froze.

  “...Gah!”

  I forced my hand into a fist again. This was all I had. I clenched both hands hard now and screamed at my shaking knees. There was no way I could win, but I had to go forward.

  Zolphiakd just stood there. Grinning. Unmoving. I forced all my strength into my arms and threw my fist at him.

  “—!”

  I missed.

  “Heh. I told you. Even if you’re willing to die, your petty resolve means nothing.”

  I heard that ominous whisper in my ears, then the
cold terror I’d felt emanating from Zolphiakd disappeared. I fell forward and slammed headlong into the sleeping capsule. The shattered glass dug into my body, and I was instantly drenched in my own blood.

  “Damn it!”

  I ignored the blood and jumped up. But by that time, it was too late.

  “Hibiki!”

  She was in Zolphiakd’s arms. She wasn’t moving, but she looked unharmed. Evidently he’d just knocked her out, but...!

  “This is what despair means, child.”

  “You bastard... Gwah!”

  As I tried to run forward, there was a horrible pain in my thigh.

  Damn it, the glass must’ve cut deeper than I’d thought! It was stuck in my leg. I reached down to pull it out, but...

  I felt something unpleasant deep within my flesh.

  “Gwaaahh! Aaah!”

  A cold sensation shot up through the lower half of my body and welled up in my gut. It made me want to throw up. I yanked the glass shard out with a nasty noise, and blood started to flow freely from the gaping wound.

  I couldn’t... stand up!

  “Look at yourself.” Zolphiakd stared down at me from a position of absolute power. And then his gaze fell on Hibiki. “Hmph. I suppose she’ll entertain me until I find my next game.”

  “Game? Entertain you?”

  “Indeed. This whole world only exists to amuse me.”

  “You... You tried to destroy this world just for fun?!”

  “That’s a small matter... compared to the sin of boring me,” he said in the same creepy whisper. “I certainly hope this girl can provide me some source of amusement. Once I’m bored of her, I’ll just kill her.”

  “You asshole!” I screamed. But I still couldn’t stand. “Damn it...!”

  Was this the end?

  “Heheh. Now then, I think it’s time to go outside. I’m free now, after all.” Zolphiakd cracked his knuckles as he spoke.

  Instantly, he was shrouded in a massive explosion.

  “What?”

  There was a flash of black light as I was blown back.

  “Gwah!”

  After a few seconds of an odd floating sensation, my back hit the ground hard.

  What just happened...?

  For a moment, the shock blinded me, and it was difficult to hear anything. It sounded like something was collapsing far away.

  “...Oh.”

  The blackness finally started to recede from my vision. The first thing I saw was scorched grass.