I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 3 Page 13

  You know, like... right now, for instance.

  “You know how weak you are, but someday there’ll be a reason you can’t give up! So you grit your teeth, and hang in there for all you’re worth! You ball your shaking hands into fists! You stand tall on your shaking legs! You have to fight, even if it means facing someone stronger than you! And that’s when you have to wring out every last drop of courage from the depths of your heart!”

  “I... I...”

  “Strength doesn’t mean courage. Courage is what the weak have when they need to be strong.”

  I turned around and raised the visor of the Infinity Reviver’s helmet. I looked straight into Hibiki’s eyes, into Kokomo’s mind.

  “Kokomo, I’ll say it again. If you want to be courageous, now’s the time!”

  “I...” Kokomo spoke using Hibiki’s mouth.

  There was still weakness in his voice. But that just meant I had to support him. Then he’d be able to find his courage. Because...

  “Kokomo, don’t let them beat you.”

  “I...”

  “Fight.”

  “I...”

  “Say it! Tell them!”

  “I...”

  Because I knew how Kokomo really felt right from the start.

  ▽

  I dropped Hibiki off with Kult and the others, then flew with Lea to monster mountain. I was going to face off with Zolphiakd where we could look down on the battle below.

  “You’re not going to run anymore?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  It would make it easier for Kult to do his part if I pulled Zolphiakd away from the fighting claymen. And here, if something happened, I could deal with it.

  “Then entertain me some more!”

  “!”

  Zolphiakd suddenly charged at me.

  His thick, hard skin worked like natural armor... and a weapon. His deadly fist flew right at me.

  “Tch!”

  I just barely managed to block his punch with both arms, but I lost my balance and almost fell off of Lea.

  “What’s wrong? There’s lots more fun to be had!”

  Three more punches from both fists followed. My ears were ringing from the impact.

  “Damn it!”

  I gathered the red aura in my right hand again and let it fly.

  “Not happening!”

  Zolphiakd easily dodged the red bullet, then summoned a spear of darkness to knock it out of the sky.

  “Tch! But my bullets were stronger than the ones before!”

  “Fool. All I had to do was increase the energy in the spears.”

  “You make it sound so damn simple...”

  “Come on, is that all you’ve got? You still haven’t entertained me!” he yelled.

  “Why, you...!”

  “Here I come!”

  This time, Zolphiakd charged with his spear.

  “Gyaaaoh!” Lea roared as she flicked her body to dodge the spear.

  “You won’t dodge my attack so easily!” Zolphiakd shouted.

  The spear’s tip began to grow. So he could freely manipulate things made of darkness energy like that?

  “Watch out!”

  I knocked the spear away with my gauntlet, but his black spear was more powerful than my red aura now. Punching at it chipped away at the Infinity Reviver’s gauntlets. I still didn’t have enough power to defeat him! From there on out it was all I could do to defend, and I started to get more and more worried.

  If I wanted to save everyone, I needed a way to defeat this darkness-eating demon and his ability to infinitely absorb energy... But I’d just gotten the hint I needed. Something had been changed when I’d become able to fire those bullets of red light. If I could figure out what that was, I could probably draw out even more of the Infinity Reviver’s power.

  Think. Don’t stop thinking. Don’t give up. You’re just an ordinary human! It’s the least you can do!

  “Ggyaaahhooohhh!”

  And then I heard a roar from far below. It was the victory cry of the nine-tailed fox. The other monsters had lost their ability to contain her, and were summarily defeated.

  “Oh no!”

  I took a quick look down at the mountain, and then back up above. I’d put “them” in charge of buying time if the nine-tailed fox won before Kult was ready. But I didn’t see them yet.

  “Lea! We’ll back the monsters up! Head for the mountain!”

  “I’ll do my best!”

  Lea answered me, but she didn’t sound as confident as I would’ve hoped. While we were speaking telepathically, I was still fighting off Zolphiakd. Since I couldn’t fly, Lea was keeping up with his incredible speed for me.

  Gradually she descended lower and lower, until we were low enough to see the fox’s tails... But it didn’t look like I’d be able to get down there and help!

  “Grrraaoooh!”

  The nine-tailed fox roared again and began to float up into the air.

  Oh crap... It could fly too?

  That worried me even more. And then a huge shadow passed overhead. Not a moment later, a silver spaceship slammed straight into the nine-tailed fox.

  “Iris, you made it!”

  “Yup! It just took a little longer than I thought to get ready. But talk about timing, huh? Tell me how perfect that was!”

  I could hear Iris’s cheerful voice through Lea’s telepathy.

  If anybody besides Lea or Kult could fight the nine-tailed fox, it was Iris with her super high-tech spaceship.

  “I-Iris, if you’re going to slam into it, at least tell me first!”

  I could hear Harissa’s voice from aboard the ship too. She sounded like she was going to cry. I assumed they were wearing seatbelts, but still, this was more like a traffic accident than anything else.

  “Grrrrrr!”

  The nine-tailed fox raged at its new and mysterious enemy.

  “Oh, tough little thing, aren’t you? Too bad I loaded this baby up with enough armor to crash straight through an asteroid belt.”

  “Grrr!”

  The fox tried to leap at its foe, but...

  “Uwah! Ealim Nekram!"

  Harissa’s invisibility magic made the ship disappear.

  “Grrr?”

  The fox looked around, but of course, it couldn’t find them. And then, the now invisible ship slammed into it again.

  “Gwaah!”

  The angry fox’s eyes went blood red as it formed whirlwinds and pillars of flame all around it.

  “Iris, Harissa, get out of there if things get dangerous!”

  “Everything’ll be just fine! Leave it to me!”

  “I-I’m okay, too! Be careful, Sir Rekka!” Harissa added.

  We ended our telepathic communication as we each turned to face our opponents.

  “Hmph.”

  For some reason, Zolphiakd’s attacks were slowing down.

  “You’ve been distracted. Don’t you realize that you should be playing with me and me alone?”

  “...I’m not doing this for you,” I said.

  “What?”

  Zolphiakd and I glared at each other. But Kult suddenly interrupted before things could escalate further.

  “Can you hear me? We’re ready.”

  “You’re done already? That was fast.”

  “Indeed. Tetra was a splendid assistant.”

  “Rekka! Are you okay?” a female voice cut in.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Good work, Tetra. Kult, get started.”

  “Certainly. I’ll have it done within ten minutes.”

  Ten more minutes.

  Kult would make it happen. I was sure. He was a genius who’d already saved a world once.

  Then it would just be up to me to do my job. And what’s more... I was getting really tired of this asshole.

  “Zolphiakd, you sure you’re not mistaken about something?”

  “Me? Mistaken?”

  “How many people do you think are involved in the stories you play with for fun?”


  I squeezed both my hands into fists.

  “How much do you think the stories you destroy mean to the people who are part of them?”

  A red aura burst forth around my hands. It was hot, and it shone with its own light. It burned like real fire, as if in response to my anger.

  “This isn’t some game. These stories are people’s lives.”

  I’m not letting you destroy them.

  I’m not letting that happen.

  The only place I wanted to see sad, emotional stories was in fiction. What reality needed were hopeful stories with happy endings, no matter how unrealistic they might seem. And if the blood within me made that possible...

  “In the name of the Namidare family, I’m going to save them all!”

  No more running.

  When this story began, I ran away from everybody. I told myself it was because I didn’t want to hurt them, but it was actually because I was afraid they would reject me. I tried to make it so I couldn’t be a part of anyone’s life at all. But that was impossible.

  And so now I was going to stop hiding from the truth. I couldn’t stop being me. That was obvious. That was normal. I should’ve known that.

  The important part was realizing who I was, and then making a decision: what did I want to do about it?

  If only I could save a story, then I would save it. If the stories put the people around me in danger, I’d save them too. If everyone would help me, even when I was weak, I would use their support to help protect them too.

  That was my decision. And when I said those words aloud...

  “!”

  As if in response, the red aura expanded around my fists and burned all the way up to my shoulders.

  “Save them all? You think you can do that when I have the power to destroy everything? You just try!” Zolphiakd cried, his voice cold and hollow.

  As if making good on his threat, he formed dozens of spears with a wave of his hand. I could feel that the power in these was far stronger than the ones from before.

  “...”

  But they didn’t seem like a danger to me now.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest, and then pulled them back like I was drawing two giant bowstrings. When the spears started to move, I released the power building up in my arms. Crescent blades made from the red aura rocketed forward, striking down the spears.

  “What?!”

  I could hear the shock in Zolphiakd’s voice as I opened and closed my fists to see how it felt. The red aura had gotten stronger again... which meant that I was starting to draw out the power of the Infinity Reviver. But what was the key to doing that?

  “You interest me... But it’s too early to get cocky!” Zolphiakd sounded happy.

  But then something weird happened.

  Black particles rose up from the ground and started to gather beneath him. The black particles—they must have been darkness energy—were coming from the claymen’s battleground and monster mountain.

  “Hahaha! This place is filled with energy to feed me. That mad beast and the war between those humanoid things are producing lots of powerful darkness.” Zolphiakd laughed and created dark spears in both hands. “Now entertain me more!”

  We clashed with each other harder than before. The red and black auras collided, exploding like fireworks.

  We could both manipulate our weapons however we wanted, so there were sometimes blades, sometimes bullets, and sometimes other types of weapons as we slashed, stabbed, punched, and fired at each other.

  Zolphiakd and I seemed almost equal in strength. That just meant he was still enjoying himself. But...

  “Gyaoh!”

  “Lea! Are you okay?”

  “Tch... Sorry. He’s getting too fast for me!”

  Lea couldn’t keep up with us. I was fighting, but leaving all of the moving and maneuvering to her. That was becoming a fatal flaw. The white dragon was covered in wounds, and I had cuts on my sides and legs too.

  “Lea, don’t try to force yourself to keep up with him!”

  “But...!”

  “I’ll protect you! Don’t try to dodge! Just slam me into him!”

  “Got it!”

  I was her shield. I focused on following his movements and blocking his attacks. I was especially careful to block anything going for Lea.

  “What’s wrong? You’re having trouble keeping up!”

  “You think so, huh?!”

  The Infinity Reviver’s glowing red gauntlet and Zolphiakd’s fist shrouded in a dark aura collided.

  Zolphiakd didn’t move his fist. He just leaned in and moved his face closer to mine.

  “My power is still getting stronger. At this rate, you’re eventually going to die.”

  “Thanks for the warning... but don’t worry about me.”

  “What?!”

  “My plan’s working just fine. That ‘eventually’ is never going to come.”

  I deliberately laughed.

  The next thing I knew, I felt the unique sensation of telepathy in my brain.

  “It’s me, Kult. We’re all ready here!”

  “Huh? Can you hear me? Um... It’s me, Tsumiki! I made what you asked for and gave it to Otomo!”

  “Roger!” I yelled aloud as I sent the same message telepathically.

  “Now it’s time for my counterattack!”

  I pushed myself away from Zolphiakd. When I put some distance between us, the telepathic channel opened again.

  “Rekka! Lea! I’m teleporting what Tsumiki made to the sky above you with my magic! Make sure you grab it!”

  Lea and I looked up as we heard Satsuki’s voice. Several dozen meters above us, there was a large, black object—the dark matter that Tsumiki had cooked from the laughing nuts on monster mountain.

  “Diediediediediedie!”

  They were telling something to die...

  Those things had been creepy before, but at least their laughter was cheerful. What the hell did Tsumiki do to them? Well, that didn’t matter now.

  “Gyaooh!”

  Lea grabbed the dark matter in her maw and swallowed it down. Instantly the wounds on her body healed, and she began to grow. She still wasn’t back to her full strength, but where she’d been the size of a large shark before, she was now the size of a steel transmission tower. As the power flowed through her, something that looked like a floating pair of golden headphones appeared around her head.

  “Mmm... Tsumiki’s cooking is always the best.”

  “Really?”

  I still couldn’t believe it, but Lea loved that stuff. It was also the most efficient way for her to get her power back.

  “Let’s go, Rekka!”

  “Right!”

  Lea’s body snaked back and forth as she charged at Zolphiakd. His dark spears tried to pierce her flesh, but spears of water sprung from the golden headphones and knocked them away. And that wasn’t all. A waterspout seemingly appeared out of nowhere and threatened to suck him in.

  “What’s going on?!”

  Zolphiakd seemed a little frightened by our sudden power-up, and he formed his black aura into a small blade to cut through the waterspout. In the momentary opening that created, Lea rammed him.

  “Gwah!”

  Struck by something several hundred times his mass, Zolphiakd groaned in pain. Now that the tide of battle was turning in her favor, Lea continued the onslaught using both her body and her water magic. But she was still up against a demon with the power to destroy worlds. Even if he was on the defensive now, he didn’t seem to have taken damage from anything except the initial impact. He was still deflecting her attacks.

  As the battle carried on, we found ourselves back near the fighting claymen. The last time we were here, we’d been high up in the sky, but now we were close enough to the ground that I could see their bare clay faces.

  “Heh. Are you sure it’s a good idea to bring me close to a battlefield? The hatred and sorrow created by war is the perfect energy source for me.” Zolphiakd
laughed at my apparent slip-up.

  “Hah! Just try it!” But I laughed at him too.

  The demon seemed uncertain.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look down!”

  “?”

  As he did, his uncertainty became shock.

  Just like before, thousands of claymen were below us, crowded together. But the yelling had stopped, and they all had lowered their weapons.

  “How?! It’s too soon for the battle to be over! The dark energy of hate and sorrow can’t have disappeared this quickly!”

  “They lost their reason to fight.”

  “Impossible! You can’t stop a war that easily!”

  “Then do you know why they were fighting in the first place?”

  “...”

  “If you don’t know, then I’ll tell you. It was over the color of their skin. They were fighting because they were different colors.”

  “The color of their skin?!”

  Zolphiakd looked down again. All the claymen below had turned white. Despite their huge advantage in numbers, there was not a single gold clayman to be seen now.

  The trick was Kokomo’s transformation magic and Kult’s instant sorcery capsules. First I’d had Kokomo use his transformation magic to turn into a white clayman. Then I’d had Kult replicate that magic with his instant sorcery capsules and use the Battle Kult Ship to scatter them on the battlefield. Now all the claymen were the same color.

  And without a reason to fight, the battle was over.

  “Rekka, I’ve connected telepathically to all the claymen.”

  “Thanks, Lea. Give them a really loud howl.”

  “Indeed.”

  “GWYAAAOOOOOOOOOOOH!”

  Lea’s extra loud roar echoed from one end of the massive battlefield to the other. The claymen, who were still uncertain how to handle this sudden development, all looked up at the sky. They saw Lea—or rather, Leviathan, who looked just like the dragon god they worshipped—and they all fell silent.

  “Do you hear my words?” I spoke directly into the minds of the claymen.

  Of course, I was met with many surprised thoughts. But since I couldn’t answer each question individually, I got right to the point.

  “Heed me well! God has seen you fighting over the color of your skin, and is deeply grieved! She has changed all of your skin to white so that this war may never happen again!”