I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 12 Page 15

  “Yeah, too bad we didn’t have any time to sleep...” I sighed in return.

  We were both nearly slumped over in exhaustion. All the shuttling to Laputa was work enough as it was, but we also had to coordinate with the soldiers and make sure all of the citizens were accounted for at the coronation ceremony. It wasn’t until Satsuki checked with her Omniscient Magic to make sure not even a single kitten had been left behind on Atlantis that we were finally able to relax.

  “Well, at least this will resolve Nyanyan’s story...”

  “Yeah...”

  Even R seemed to have taken a load off, and the three of us took a moment to chill until Satsuki came to tell us the coronation was at hand.

  “Rekka, Hibiki. The ceremony’s about to begin.”

  “All right. We’re coming.”

  Hibiki and I got up and left the king’s private quarters, which we had been using as a break room. The Great Library of the Heavens was the only manmade structure on Laputa, and the library was so packed with books there was no space for all the Atlantians. Because of that, the coronation ceremony was being held outside in the courtyard.

  Incidentally, the crown being used for the ceremony was the one Nyanyan had removed from Sherlyn. We’d held a simplified but official succession ritual after winning the race so Nyanyan could become the legitimate ruler and therefore remove the curse. Since Sherlyn had told Nyanyan at the beginning that the crown was something she’d retrieved from Boboza and accidentally put on, she went and actually stole the real crown—the crown from this time period—from Boboza in order to back up her story, then handed it over to the king of Laputa for safekeeping.

  “Ah, Rekka!” Rachelle called out, waving and smiling as we exited the library.

  “You’re in an awfully good mood today. What’s up?”

  I couldn’t help remembering how she’d spent the beginning of this trip complaining about the lack of carnage.

  “Heh heh, well, I got my fill of love energy from everyone when you grabbed on to Nyanyan during the race, so I’m totally satisfied for now!”

  “You don’t say...”

  I had nothing else to say to that. I guess at least there was no ensuing rampage this time, so no harm, no foul...

  Anyway, after shaking off the dumb angel that doggedly followed me around, I headed backstage where the ceremony was set to take place. And yes, there was actually a stage. The little robots of Laputa had built it overnight.

  “Heya, Rekka,” said Sherlyn with a friendly wave.

  “So you’re finally here,” said Chirika with a smirk.

  They and the other girls had already gathered backstage, and they welcomed us as we arrived. Technically, we had nothing to do with Atlantis or its people, so we’d decided to watch the ceremony from behind the curtain like this rather than standing out in the courtyard with all the other Atlantians. And the king of Laputa helped make that all possible.

  “Nyanyan Atlantia, daughter of the late King Zezenova, we acknowledge you as the legitimate successor of the crown, and present you... with this...”

  Actually standing on the ground instead of sitting on her flying sphere, the king of Laputa gently placed the crown on Nyanyan’s head as she kneeled down to receive it.

  “Zezenova was a good king... who served his people well. Do you swear to carry out his righteous rule... and follow in his footsteps?”

  “I swear it.”

  Nyanyan readily agreed, and the moment she did, the crowd in the courtyard erupted into cheers.

  “Hooray for Her Majesty Nyanyan!”

  “Long live the new king!”

  They were all celebrating Nyanyan’s ascension. It wasn’t like she’d done anything as king yet, but the people still welcomed her warmly. That was, I’m sure, in no small part thanks to the Laputian king’s praise of her father.

  “You all...”

  Nyanyan seemed to feel it too. She trembled with emotion as she looked upon her adoring people. The king of Laputa observed this all for a while herself before tapping her staff against the ground to get everyone’s attention.

  “Let us now commence the festivities to celebrate... the new king. Eat, drink, and dance... to your heart’s content.”

  “YEEEAAAAAH!”

  Cheers—or rather, one unified roar—several times louder than before echoed through the courtyard as the people began chanting the king of Laputa’s name.

  “How self-interested...” I sighed.

  “That’s how the citizens usually are. They vastly prefer celebration to ceremony,” Rain replied with a smile. “But the number of people looking up at the king with pride rather than looking away with disinterest is a real testament to the goodness of a kingdom.”

  Come to think of, Rain was a princess too. Those words had a certain weight coming from her. But just about as we finished talking, an exhausted Nyanyan retreated backstage.

  “Phew, I’m beat...”

  “Good work.”

  “This is more taxing than the race for the throne was. I wanna go home and sleep...” Nyanyan started to slump over immediately, causing the crown to slip precariously on her head.

  “Rekka’s right, Nyanyan. You did well.”

  “Oh, Rain. Heal me...” Nyanyan staggered into Rain’s embrace and made her pat her head lovingly.

  I honestly felt the same sense of relief, like we’d really accomplished something, and let out a small sigh.

  “Gratz on saving the story, Rekka...”

  “Hm? R?”

  Maybe I was just imagining it, but R seemed a little more deadpan than usual. Really, all I’d done was see to it that Nyanyan ascended the throne. The safety of the Atlantians wasn’t fully guaranteed yet... Wait, actually, come to think of it, we’d never even figured out why Atlantis sunk in the first place.

  “So how does it feel to take over the throne?” Rain asked as she stroked Nyanyan’s hair.

  “Hmm...” Nyanyan mumbled against Rain’s chest before narrowing her eyes. “It still doesn’t feel quite real... but I think I get it now.”

  “Get what?”

  “Why my father...”

  Nyanyan began to answer Rain with a tinge of embarrassment, but then...

  “Kyah!”

  “Uwah!”

  A sudden tremor rocked Laputa, knocking us all down. Those with a better sense of balance were back on their feet quickly and did what they could to help, like cutting down falling objects to shield everyone who was still on the ground. But while we were coping with things backstage, we could hear the clamor and panic of the crowd beyond the curtain.

  “What are these tremors?” I asked.

  We were on a flying island. There shouldn’t be anything to cause tremors. It wasn’t like a massive hunk of land could hit turbulence like an airplane would, either.

  “Hmm, I see... So that’s... what it was.”

  I looked up towards the source of that strangely calm voice to see the Laputian king sitting on her sphere, watching the shaking trees while nodding.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Previously, you said that Atlantis... would sink. And just now... We figured out the reason.”

  “The reason?”

  She’d figured out why Atlantis would sink? But we were on Laputa right now...

  “You’ve heard that Laputa and Atlantis are twin islands, no?”

  “Nyanyan mentioned it, yeah.” She’d said they maintained a fixed distance between each other and that Atlantis moved whenever Laputa did. “What about it?”

  “When Laputa moves, so too does Atlantis... But while Laputa floats in the sky, Atlantis floats on the ocean below.”

  “Okay...”

  I guess that much made sense. If Atlantis was a moving island, it was basically free-floating on the surface of the water.

  “You could think of it... as Laputa being connected to Atlantis... by an invisible rope. Simply put, Atlantis hangs below Laputa... by that rope.” Perhaps it was because she had the a
dvantage of sitting on a floating sphere, but the Laputian king seemed wholly unconcerned about the worsening tremors. “And it seems that, as it were... Laputa can no longer... stay afloat.”

  “How come?”

  “The island has likely reached... the end of its natural life. And when it falls, so too shall Atlantis. That is what is written... in the ancient scripts.”

  “What?!”

  If Atlantis was essentially dangling from Laputa and Laputa went down, then yeah, Atlantis would go right down with it. And come to think of it, when we’d first told her that Atlantis was in danger of sinking, the king had said something about it involving Laputa... This must have been what she meant.

  “How long do we have until Laputa falls?!”

  The tremors weren’t stopping, but I at least wasn’t feeling the sense of weightlessness that came with rapid descent. Maybe, if the island was basically dying of old age like the king had said, it would be a slow fall?

  “We cannot tell you precisely, but perhaps... about an hour?”

  Just an hour? The Nyanyan we’d met at the bottom of the ocean had said that Atlantis sunk so suddenly that there wasn’t even time to prepare the ritual to return to the past... And it seemed like that was happening again.

  “Damn it...!”

  Moving all the Atlantians to Laputa had completely backfired on us. It had taken us the entirety of two days to move them all up here, so there was no way we could evacuate them all now before it was too late.

  “Your Majesty! Is there no way to save Laputa?!”

  “Let us think... Japan is not far from here. If we utilize all of the island’s propulsion system, we might be able... to make an emergency landing.”

  “Then—”

  “However... there is not enough time. Even if we hurry... land would be just out of reach.”

  “No...”

  The Laputian king informed us of the hopeless situation in a rather plain fashion.

  “And we’d finally found... something new to research... in people. Alas, this is fate,” she said with a small sigh.

  Maybe it was the wisdom and weight of all her years, but she looked so gallant in that moment.

  “Hey, don’t chalk things up to fate so readily!”

  But unfortunately for her, I wasn’t about to accept the end that easily.

  “Your Majesty... You said that Atlantis’s connection to Laputa is like a rope, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And it’s Laputa that’s reached the end of its lifespan, so basically its ability to fly is fading, right?!”

  “That’s also right...”

  “Then...” I looked Nyanyan’s way and hesitated to say the rest out loud, but resolved myself and did it anyway. “If we cut the rope and drop the dead weight of Atlantis, will it make enough of a difference that Laputa might actually stay afloat until we reach Japan?”

  “Rekka...?”

  Nyanyan’s eyes went wide upon hearing my preposterous suggestion. Meanwhile, the Laputian king barely batted an eye.

  “If we cut the rope, so to speak, it wouldn’t be impossible. We would simply have to destroy the island of Atlantis. However... we would have to do so within the next... fifteen minutes. Otherwise... our altitude will already be too compromised.”

  “Roger that.” With a nod, I turned to Corona. “Corona, do you think you can do it?”

  “I can try.”

  “There’s no time. Please.”

  Corona nodded and transformed into full Demon King mode before taking off and heading down towards Atlantis. Would she be able to destroy a whole island on her own? I had to start thinking of backup plans ASAP.

  “Rekka...”

  But in the midst of that, Nyanyan’s worried voice reached my ears. Silently, I turned to face her. She was looking up at me, her face pale and her eyes wavering.

  “Is what you were saying true...? Are you really going to destroy Atlantis? Our homeland?”

  “I’m sorry, Nyanyan...”

  I couldn’t think of any way to save everyone here other than cutting Atlantis loose in order for Laputa to make it to land.

  “...”

  Yet even if that saved everyone, Atlantis was still Nyanyan’s home. Of course she’d be devastated over losing it. She might even argue against it or come to hate me over it. But even so, in order to save her story...

  “Rekka,” R suddenly called out to me.

  She had her hat pulled down over her eyes so her mouth was the only visible feature on her face. She’d been doing that and acting a little strange for a while now... I had a bad feeling about this.

  “Please leave Laputa with all the heroines immediately. If you use all the airships on this island, most of the people of Atlantis can still be saved.”

  “Wh-What...?”

  R would make nasty comments about my progress on a story from time to time, but she’d never told me to straight-up abandon one before. I was kind of shaken to hear it, but she explained while continuing to keep her eyes hidden from me.

  “Corona’s dark magic isn’t enough to destroy Atlantis. It might have been a different story if you had a large quantity of Tsumiki’s dark matter on hand... But fifteen minutes isn’t enough to prepare that.”

  “What? But then...”

  “Is your plan to make Satsuki use her Omniscient Magic to look up a strong spell like Divine Judgment and cast it to help out? She doesn’t have nearly as much mana as Messiah Kyandistrapps, you know. At most, she could use it once or twice. Do you remember how many times he had to use it to destroy that meteor? Or is your plan to ask Rachelle? Do you really think everyone can produce enough love energy for her in this dire a situation?”

  R called me out on everything that had crossed my mind, leaving me at a complete loss for words. Wait, more importantly...

  “Why are you telling me all this? Aren’t you forbidden from helping me with any stories?”

  That’s what she’d told me in the past when I asked her for advice, but if that was really the case, it was breaking the rules for her to be telling me so plainly which plans would fail.

  “The answer is simple: Nyanyan’s story is already over, so I’m free to give you all the advice I want,” she said in her usual matter-of-fact way.

  But how could that be? There was no way Nyanyan’s story was over right now with Atlantis on the verge of destruction...

  “What are you talking about, R?”

  “I already congratulated you on completing it, didn’t I? Just think about it. What did I tell you when we first came to the past and met this Nyanyan?”

  When we first got here? If I recalled correctly, she’d said that Nyanyan’s wish wasn’t to save Atlantis per se, but to do something about the coup... It was different than what the Nyanyan we’d met at the bottom of the ocean had wanted, so it changed our angle in pursuing her story here. But either way, I’d known Atlantis was going to sink and done what I could to try and save the people. I’d assumed it would all work out, but... No, it couldn’t be!

  “The Namidare bloodline makes you the last hope of heroines who are stuck in desperate stories. Desperate, but not completely doomed. If you get caught up in a story, that means there’s still a chance of it being saved. And you did that here. You helped Nyanyan win the race and ascend the throne.” R paused for a moment before continuing. “And at that point, Nyanyan’s story was resolved. All the Nyanyan here in the past wanted you to do was help her take the crown. It didn’t involve the fate of Atlantis or Laputa or anything past that. In other words... You aren’t involved in a story right now.”

  If I wasn’t involved in the story, that meant my bloodline didn’t apply... That meant that despite all the work I’d done, there wasn’t necessarily a chance it would make any difference. This part of what I’d thought was Nyanyan’s story was potentially doomed from the start. It was similar to what had happened with Lyun, but the difference here was that the story I thought I was trying to solve—Nyanyan’s wis
h to save the people of Atlantis—wouldn’t come to be for another thousand plus years. In short, I was out of my element. I was in over my head trying to change the past when it had nothing to do with my bloodline, which was why R was telling me to get out of Dodge. However...

  “R, even if all that’s true, you know I’m not the type to just turn tail and run, right?”

  She heard me, but didn’t answer.

  “Even if I’m not involved in the story right now, I made a promise to save the people of Atlantis. So I’m not giving up until the bitter end!”

  I declared my intentions clearly, but R just sighed.

  “Well, I figured as much...” R raised her head and flashed a slightly more exasperated expression than usual before sighing again. “So, what are you going to do then? Even if you’re not going to give up, I can’t allow you to willingly walk into a romantic suicide pact, you know?”

  Corona didn’t have enough firepower to destroy the island by herself... If R, with all of her abilities and insight from the future, said so, then I had no reason not to believe it. We had ten minutes left, tops. I began racking my brain for a quick way to come up with the additional firepower we were lacking.

  “Ngh... Hngh...”

  Before me, Nyanyan was moaning in anguish. There was no way of saving everyone other than destroying Atlantis. However, Atlantis was her homeland. It had been her whole life up until now. It had taken the Nyanyan we’d met at the bottom of the ocean over a thousand years of solitude to realize that she’d rather save her people than her kingdom, but the Nyanyan before us now was only a child. There was no way she’d be able to come to the same conclusion. But just then, Rain placed a hand against the worried girl gently.

  “Nyanyan.”

  “Rain...?”

  “As a princess, I know how you must be feeling right now.”

  Nyanyan turned to Rain, looking at her intently.

  “Our decisions come with great responsibility, and sometimes that’s a frightening thing.”

  “That’s right... I’m scared. Atlantis is our home. I know that we have to destroy in order to survive, but I’m still afraid... What if everyone hates me if I don’t stop Rekka? Our home... We’ll have nowhere to go. I’m scared, Rain!”