I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 3 Page 7

  But then they were all gone as quickly as they had come, leaving only the scars of battle behind.

  “And that’s done... or not, I guess.”

  Just because the immediate danger had passed didn’t mean I’d actually solved anything.

  “Waah! I have to go. I... I have to go!” Kokomo stood up, mumbling to himself again, and staggered off after the other monsters.

  “Hold it.”

  I wasn’t letting him take Hibiki’s body again.

  “L-Let me go!”

  “You were useless just now. What do you think you’re going to do? If I hadn’t helped you, Hibiki—the girl whose body you stole—would’ve died too.”

  “W-Waaah...”

  Okay, “useless” may have been a little harsh. He collapsed to the ground and started to cry. It kind of felt like I was bullying a little kid...

  “Listen, just tell me what’s going on. Maybe I can help.”

  “Wh-Why?”

  “Well...” I told Kokomo about the bloodline of the Namidare and tried to get a better handle on the situation. “So the nine-tailed fox inhaled too much poisonous ki and went berserk, and you and the other monsters were trying to seal it away... Is that right?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. But...” Kokomo fell silent.

  Well, he probably didn’t want to talk about how he’d failed. I could understand that, but...

  “About that. Why do you have to be the one to do the seal?”

  Even if he wasn’t fighting directly, it seemed reckless to make a little kid face a dangerous monster like that. He’d been too scared to do anything when it came down to it.

  “My mo... The nine-tailed fox can only be sealed by my Fumetsu magic.”

  “Huh? What’s Fumetsu magic?”

  “It’s a bit of a long story, but...”

  Fumetsu magic was evidently a type of magic used to seal—“fu”—and destroy—“metsu”—evil ki energy that caused plagues and natural disasters. The magic itself was activated with the six-pointed star Kokomo tried to use earlier. And because the poison ki had essentially possessed the nine-tailed fox, it could now be sealed with Fumetsu magic too. That’s how Kokomo explained it.

  “Hmm?”

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing...” It felt like I’d heard something about an evil energy that caused plagues and disasters before... but whatever. There were more pressing matters at hand. “Anyway, this Fumetsu stuff... How come only you can use it?”

  “Fumetsu magic involves a special kind of spell that only the family of the nine-tails can use.”

  “The nine-tails...?”

  Wait, wasn’t it a nine-tailed fox that had gone crazy? What was going on here?

  “The nine-tails have had the job of ruling over the other monsters and driving away the poison ki that appears in this land for generations. But... this nine-tails did it for too long.”

  “...And ended up going crazy, huh?” It made sense... but that raised a new question. “Wait. If you can use this Fumetsu magic, then you’re...”

  “...Yeah. I’m a nine-tailed fox too.”

  “Then...”

  “The nine-tailed fox that went crazy is my mom.”

  ...I thought so.

  Before he’d combined with Hibiki, Kokomo had been in the form of a fox. The thought had crossed my mind, but that meant...

  “You’re trying to seal your own mom, Kokomo?” I had to ask. I couldn’t believe it.

  “...I can’t help it. It’s because I’m so weak.”

  “How is it your fault?”

  “Poisonous ki can cause natural disasters and stuff, but it also has a bad effect on the heart... In my case, that effect is fear.”

  Kokomo shook. There were tears in his eyes.

  “When I try to use Fumetsu magic to get rid of the poisonous ki, I suddenly get so scared that I can’t do anything. If I fail, I might succumb to the poison ki. Maybe it’ll drive me crazy too. Maybe my limbs will just rot off... When I think about that, the spell stops working, and I run away...”

  Kokomo kept shaking as he cried.

  “Mom worked to get rid of the poison ki for twice as long as most nine-tails since I couldn’t do it... So because I didn’t have the courage, my mom absorbed too much poison ki and went crazy...”

  “...”

  You know... Why were all the stories this time so awful?

  I was just a wimpy kid myself. If was told to go somewhere full of poison gas and take care of it alone, I was sure I’d run away too.

  Who could blame Kokomo for being weak? His mother was probably only planning to do it until he grew up, right? What was wrong with a mother caring for her child? And now the result was this story about a kid who had to seal away his crazy mom?

  Hell no.

  If my bloodline was getting me involved in something like that...

  “Fine. I’ll help.”

  “...Help what?”

  “Well, you know... Huh?”

  “Rekka Namidare, what are you talking about?”

  Hmm? Was it my imagination, or had her voice changed again...?

  “Hibiki?”

  “Who else would it be?” Hibiki looked at me suspiciously.

  Evidently her mind had finally woken up from the shock of combining with Kokomo.

  “Um... Where’s Kokomo then?”

  “Kokomo? Who the heck is—I’m inside her.” Hibiki’s words were cut off by what I assumed were Kokomo’s.

  “Hey, what’s going on here? Huh? There’s a weird voice in my head... Hey! What’s going on here, really?!”

  Hmm... Both Hibiki’s mind and Kokomo’s mind were inside her body, but since they were sharing a mouth, it was getting confusing.

  “Um, well, you see...” I explained everything that had happened so far to Hibiki.

  “A second story...?” She said with a surprised expression.

  She looked at the ground for a while.

  “Sheesh... This isn’t normal at all,” she muttered to herself.

  But then she looked up at me.

  “It’s really a terrible story. Just awful. So, Rekka Namidare, what do you intend to do?”

  “I want to save both Kult and Kokomo.”

  “...I see.” For a moment, she frowned, but then she nodded. “Koko... do you have a last name? Tch, whatever. Never mind. Listen up, Kokomo. I’m about to ask you some questions. Answer inside my head.”

  Hibiki closed her eyes. I watched her eyelids twitch a few times as I waited for their internal conversation to end. She eventually opened her eyes again.

  “The plan was for the other monsters to weaken the nine-tailed fox, and then have Kokomo seal it.”

  “I see... but...” I thought back to the monsters attacking the fox. “To be honest, they were no match for that thing.”

  “I guess it’s as strong as the legends say it is. According to the stories, it destroyed three countries.” Hibiki nodded. “But this Fumetsu magic is very powerful. There’s a reason only the nine-tails can use it. I think my role is to work together with Kokomo until he can master the spell.”

  In manga and light novels, it was common for two people to get combined in an accident and have to work together to fight something.

  “But still... he has to seal away his own mother?”

  “Rekka Namidare, are you really going to make me go through this again?”

  By “again,” she was probably referring to our fight in Kult’s lab. If I hesitated to help seal away the fox, the damage might get worse... That must have been what she wanted to say.

  I mean, maybe I was just being idealistic, but... If somebody is crying at the end, it’s not a happy ending, is it?

  “...Um, I’m okay.” Kokomo slowly and hesitatingly spoke to me through Hibiki’s mouth.

  “But...”

  “Fumetsu magic can both seal and destroy poison ki, although normally you just use the destruction spell. That’s the obvious choice. But when the poison ki is so stron
g that even a nine-tailed fox can’t destroy it, you use the sealing technique. And then you just let the poison ki slowly dissipate inside the seal.”

  “Dissipate?”

  “It gradually becomes harmless,” said Kokomo.

  So that meant...

  “If the sealing works, I can save my mom... It’ll take about a thousand years though,” he explained.

  “I see.”

  I was glad that he could save her, but wasn’t a thousand years a little too long? I mean, Kokomo was still a kid. Didn’t he still want to have his mother around...? Or maybe this was his way of proving he could stand on his own. The nine-tails were the rulers of the monsters, so the next one should be Kokomo. Was he deliberately taking on the job of sealing her, trying to shoulder that burden? No, but...

  “Hey, Kokomo—”

  “That’s all we need to know, right? So don’t use my mouth without permission anymore, Kokomo.”

  Just as I was about to ask what he was really after, Hibiki cut me off.

  “Wait. One more thing...”

  Except before I could ask this time, I was interrupted by the familiar roaring sound of a jetpack overhead.

  “I finally caught up to you!”

  And with the jetpack came a voice I recognized.

  That’s right. We’d been running away, hadn’t we? I turned around and looked up at the sky. Kult, the magical scientist from another world, had followed us.

  ▽

  “Wait, is your jetpack bigger than before?”

  “Fwahahaha! I am a genius, and I don’t make the same mistake twice! If I’m higher up than you can reach, I don’t have to worry about you counterattacking!”

  The way he laughed made him sound like an idiot, but it was a good strategy.

  In fact, Kult’s jetpack was about five times the size of the last one. It was more like a flying mechanical chair. And with it, he was over our heads and out of our reach.

  “Hibiki, you don’t by any chance have a gun or anything, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Just checking.”

  Well, this was no good. We had no way of attacking him like this.

  “Wh-Who’s that? Kokomo, don’t use my mouth! I-I’m sorry!” Kokomo didn’t know who Kult was, so he tried to ask, but Hibiki angrily cut him off. With it all coming out of Hibiki’s mouth, it sounded like a comedy routine.

  But leaving that aside, how were we supposed to get out of this?

  No, wait. Last time was an unfortunate misunderstanding, but I didn’t really want to be Kult’s enemy. If I could persuade him now...

  “Hey, Kult! Listen to me!”

  “Haha! Begging for your life, are you? Well, it won’t work!”

  “No, that’s not it...”

  “There will be no mercy! Behold my latest invention!” Kult shouted.

  As he pressed a button on the armrest of his flying chair, it instantly began to transform.

  “Wait... What the heck?”

  “Gwahaha! Did you see that?”

  I stared in shock at Kult’s transformed invention.

  It was like... It was like a personal flying battleship... or something. Kult’s body was still exposed like before, but dangerous looking weapons were poking out of the chair. I saw what looked like eight Gatling guns.

  And here we were... We didn’t even have a shield, let alone a gun. This was way more than we could handle.

  “Now, witness the power of my Battle Kult Ship!” As he spoke, all of the Gatling guns pointed towards us.

  Crap!

  “Run into the forest!”

  “Take this!”

  Kult and I shouted at the same time. His Gatling guns opened fire, freezing the whole area around us.

  “They’re shooting instant sorcery capsules?!”

  This was a lot more dangerous than Kult’s crappy pitching. The trees of the forest we ran into were being frozen at an alarming rate. The leaves and branches blocked the capsules for the first two or three seconds, but the Battle Kult Ship plowed straight through the frozen limbs like an icebreaker, shattering them as it went.

  “Gyaaah! Aaah! Aaah!”

  The nuts in the trees screamed as their comrades were frozen. Their chorus of terror sounded like the prelude to the end of the world. My eardrums felt like they were about to burst.

  “I knew it! You punched him too much, and now he won’t listen to us!”

  “Shut up! For now, think of a way to get us out of this!”

  “Good point!”

  I had three choices. One: Destroy the Battle Kult Ship, or maybe just the eight Gatling guns. Two: Escape successfully. Three: Suddenly gain the abilities of the world’s greatest conman, and then talk Kult down.

  Any one of them would require a miracle.

  For the first one, I didn’t even know how I would go about doing it. So, for the time being, what we really needed to do was flee. But how do you escape from somebody who can fly?

  “Aah, damn it! I’ve got nothing! Hibiki, do you have any ideas?”

  “...I’ve got one more police baton hidden in my jacket. The only thing I can think of is to fling it at him and hit him in the head.”

  “Will that work?!”

  “I’m good at throwing things!” she yelled back.

  Come to think of it, she’d knocked a capsule straight out of Kult’s hand before on the mountain behind the school.

  “But do you have time to throw it?”

  “If you’re willing to be a decoy, but...”

  One of us would be a decoy while the other took him by surprise. It was a pretty typical plan. But it wasn’t going to work. Because...

  “Kult’s after me, after all.”

  She was right. Even if we split up, Kult would follow her. In other words, I couldn’t be a decoy.

  “Damn it! We’ve got nothing! Kokomo, do you have any ideas?!”

  “H-Huh?” Kokomo gave a surprised gasp. He hadn’t expected to suddenly be included in the conversation. Hibiki looked upset at this reaction, but given the situation, she didn’t complain.

  “I’m sorry to get you caught up in our problems, but if we get taken out here, you’re finished too! Do you have a spell or something you can use?”

  “I... I only know how to use the most basic one...”

  Kokomo didn’t sound very confident, but I listened to what he had to say with every ounce of attention I could spare. This would be our ticket out of this mess!

  ▽

  “Hahh... hahh...”

  I was running out of breath already. I needed to finish this before I couldn’t move anymore!

  “Hibiki! Kokomo! Let’s do it!” I yelled.

  Hibiki took a small, palm-sized tube out of one of the many pockets of her cargo pants.

  “Don’t breathe in too much of the smoke!” she shouted as she pulled the pin to the tube. Instantly, we were surrounded by smoke.

  “Wh-What?!” I heard Kult yell as the sound of the Gatling guns stopped.

  “Rekka!” Then I heard Kokomo’s voice as he used Hibiki’s hands to touch my chest.

  ...Hmm? Was that right? I couldn’t tell.

  “Is the spell working on me?”

  “Yup. It’s fine!”

  “Okay, got it!”

  That was the signal.

  I took a quick breath to avoid inhaling too much smoke, picked a direction, and ran as fast as I could.

  “Huh?!”

  Kult reacted when he saw me leap out of the smoke. He was probably checking to see if I was Hibiki.

  “There you are!”

  And then he pointed his guns at me.

  “...!”

  I ran as fast as my legs would carry me away from the exploding ice magic, smiling to myself.

  “Ooh. Your ugly smile actually looks good on Hibiki’s face, huh?” R said.

  “Shut up!” I kept running, doing my best to ignore her.

  Kokomo had put a spell on me to alter my appearance. Apparently it was something
that all foxes and raccoons could do, and he’d used it to make me look like Hibiki. Because of that, I was able to distract Kult after all.

  Just then, Hibiki’s police baton came flying out of the dispersing smoke in a beeline for the back of Kult’s head. But just before it hit him...

  “Nwah?!”

  Some kind of sixth sense must have saved him, because Kult saw the incoming baton and raised his left hand to block it.

  KA-CHINK! There was a metallic noise as the baton rebounded and fell to the ground instead of hitting him in the head.

  “Did we fail?”

  I grabbed on to a nearby tree trunk and came to a sudden stop.

  This was bad. At this point, I at least had to get Hibiki and Kokomo out of here... I turned around and deliberately charged towards Kult.

  But for some reason, so did Hibiki.

  “?!”

  At this rate, we’d both be caught! Hibiki knew that one of us was supposed to be the decoy, so what was she thinking? I had no idea what she was trying to do.

  “Gaah! Which of you is the real one?”

  But Kult was confused too.

  The Battle Kult Ship only had Gatling guns on the front in order to concentrate its firepower. And since he couldn’t fire on us both, it looked like he couldn’t decide which “Hibiki” to attack. So...

  “Rekka Namidare! You run!” I yelled in Hibiki’s voice.

  Kult! You’re a genius, so you should figure it out!

  If one of the two Hibikis calls the other “Rekka Namidare,” who’s who?

  “So you’re the real one!”

  That’s right! Aim at me!

  I succeeded in tricking Kult, then turned around to run again. Now all I needed was for the real Hibiki to get as far away as possible...

  “No! Come after me!”

  Aww, damn it!

  I looked behind me as I ran. Hibiki had picked up something from the ground and was holding it high for me to see.

  “That’s...! That’s it!”

  I changed direction yet again. It felt like I’d been doing that a lot. My ankles were screaming, but I headed for Hibiki while keeping away from the Gatling guns as best I could.

  “Wait!” Kult yelled as he followed us in his flying battleship.

  But this was the last spurt. I moved my arms and legs as fast as I could, forgetting even to breathe.