Chapter 12 — I’m Not So Rude as to Complain to the Person Who Saved Me

Tomochika had figured there was no way she could sleep next to her classmate. But despite her doubts, she had indeed fallen asleep at some point during the night. When she woke up, she realized that Yogiri was clinging to her. With a start, she lurched back to wakefulness in a sort of panic.

While she had a general grasp of the situation, her understanding didn't reach past the fact that Yogiri's face was buried in her chest, a realization that left her feeling anything but calm. She knew plenty of useful techniques to use against opponents who were grabbing her, so she could certainly extricate herself from Yogiri in a way that would be extraordinarily painful for him. In fact, her first instinct was to do just that, but she quickly reconsidered.

Yogiri was still asleep. In short, he was holding her unconsciously. There was no way he was doing it with malicious or improper intent. He had just felt something soft and snuggled up to it. Realizing this, Tomochika hesitated to do anything violent. Seeing his face in the dim light of the room, he looked as harmless as ever, making her initial impulse to cause a scene seem like total overkill. On top of that, she got the impression that he was sleeping so deeply because of the constant use of his power, which pretty much meant that he was exhausted from taking care of her. If this could give him some semblance of peace, then she could deal with it.

As she considered things, she turned to look away and screamed. A face was peering at her through the wall. In response to her surprise, the face called out to her.

It is me! There is no need to be so alarmed!

"Mokomoko? Have you been sitting in the wall all night?!"

Yes. Is something wrong?

Thanks to Tomochika's outburst, Yogiri opened his eyes with a grunt, prompting her to hurriedly jump away from him.

"Come on! Sticking halfway into the room like that is terrifying, especially when I forget that you're here!"

Yes, well, about that. I am indeed somewhat stuck.

"What do you mean by stuck?"

I told you earlier that this tower is trying to collect spirits, yes?

"Yeah, and you said it would be no problem for someone like you."

The walls and floors of the tower are used to absorb and collect the spirits. So after merging with the wall, the pull got quite a bit stronger. I figured I'd be able to get myself out at some point, but as time went by I began to realize that I am actually in a rather dangerous situation.

"Well, we were only together for a short time, but I won't forget you. You were a pretty unforgettable person, all things considered," Tomochika said, clapping her hands together in prayer along with her short eulogy. While the family spirit had been useful to an extent, it was annoying to have her around all the time, so the loss didn't bother her all that much.

I'd appreciate it if you didn't write me off so quickly!

"But there's nothing we can do, is there? If this place is absorbing ghosts, then that's that."

You still have the boy! Come on, you can help me somehow, can't you?!

Yogiri yawned, still half asleep. Tomochika turned to him and quickly explained the situation. In spite of her words, it would have made her feel a bit bad to leave Mokomoko behind like that.

"Is there anything you can do?"

"Hmm...I suppose I could try taking out whatever is collecting spirits. But there's probably a reason it's doing all that, so I'm not sure it's a great idea to just kill it off..." Yogiri looked at Mokomoko, and it didn't take long for him to make up his mind. "Well, whatever. Mokomoko is more important than the people here, anyway."

"Can you do it?"

"It's not targeting me, so it's kind of hard to narrow down the thing responsible, but..." He pressed a hand to the wall. "I can feel it trying to absorb 'life' in general. Maybe I can manage it based on that."

A moment later, Mokomoko shot out into the center of the room.

Ohhhh! I thought I was going to die!

"Didn't you die a long time ago?" asked Tomochika.

You're awfully cold for someone talking to her own ancestor.

Yogiri's face was growing increasingly troubled. "Seems like things are getting kind of bad."

"What's wrong?"

"Well, not only did I kill that Dark God earlier, but now I've killed part of the tower as well. That can't be good. I feel like we should probably get out of here before someone complains."

"That sounds like a great idea. We didn't really mean to come here and get involved in the first place, so there's no reason for us to stay any longer than we have to."

Tomochika leaned over and looked out the window. The sun was just climbing over the horizon. It would be best if they finished up and left the tower by the end of the day.

◇ ◇ ◇

"Things seem pretty calm now, so I suppose we should talk about our goals here."

"You consider us lying in bed together to be a calm situation, huh?"

Tomochika seemed unhappy about something, but after having slept so well, Yogiri's head was clear. With no one else around, it seemed like the perfect time to discuss everything.

"Fine. What do you want to go over?"

"First, I want to confirm our main objective, which is to — at the very least — get the two of us back to our home world."

Truthfully, his main concern was getting Tomochika back, regardless of whether or not he made it himself, but he didn't think she would react well to hearing that. "Our secondary objective is to figure out exactly how to accomplish that main goal."

"And that's why we're heading to the capital...to meet up with this Sage Sion person and ask her about it. That's the whole reason we're trying to track down our class. You said to get at least the two of us back home, but we'll take the others with us if we can, right?"

Their classmates were currently trying to accomplish the missions that the Sage had assigned to them. If they continued to clear those missions, Sion would eventually show herself again. She was the one who had brought their class over to this new world, so there was a chance she could tell them how to get back.

"I won't go out of my way to abandon them, but things might not work out even if we do find the others. That's why we're here in the first place."

"What do you mean?"

"There's no guarantee that we'll actually meet the Sage, or that she'll tell us what we want to know even if we do find her. She might not even know how to get us back in the first place. That's why it's important for us to get as much information about this world as we can. The Swordmaster seems like a pretty famous guy, so I thought he might have some clues for us."

Yogiri had been hoping to get some information from the old man, but all they had found there was a massacre under the guise of an unusual trial. He was beginning to think there was no point in them staying any longer.

"Oh, really? I thought we were mainly looking for a way out of the canyon."

"I've actually got an idea about that. I was looking down at the canyon while we were on the rooftop, and I've got a pretty good idea of the landscape now. What about you, Mokomoko?"

Indeed, especially since I can fly even higher. I have more or less determined a way for us to make our exit.

"Really? Was I the only one standing around like an idiot doing nothing up there?" Tomochika quickly changed the subject, trying to hide her surprise. "Also, that Aggressor robot said that we could return home as long as we knew the coordinates of our home world, didn't it?"

In addition to the coordinates, we also need the necessary energy. Remember, that creature left a part of itself in its own world as an anchor, which allowed it to return home with a minimal expenditure of energy. But that is not an option for us. You can think of it like...this world exists at the bottom of a crevice. Falling into a crevice is easy, but climbing back out requires a significant amount of energy.

"When you say 'an anchor,' you mean like a ship's anchor, right? Like it's connected by some sort of string?" Tomochika asked. She was finding the whole concept a bit difficult to visualize.

Something along those lines. It is just a metaphor, but you can imagine the robot having a lifeline connecting it to its original world. Someone pulling on that line would draw it back home.

"Okay, so we need energy. That doesn't help us a whole lot," Yogiri mused. They didn't know how much was needed, or in what form it would have to be.

I believe this tower may hold some clues about that. I was not simply trapped in that wall doing nothing. I was also monitoring the flow of power around us.

"I don't know, it sounds like you're making that up right now."

Quiet, you! Thanks to my efforts, I was able to recognize that the souls of the dead are being collected in one specific location. They are likely being used to maintain the barrier around this place. I do not know what level of power this Dark God possesses, but maintaining a barrier capable of stopping time just to restrain it must require an enormous amount of energy.

"I'm not really up for killing people just to steal their energy," Yogiri replied, although knowing that one could collect and store energy in such a way could prove useful to them, so he mentally made note of it anyway.

"Yeah, that's going a bit too far."

"Our immediate objective is still to get to the capital and rendezvous with our class, so we do need to get to the bottom of this tower." He was beginning to think that getting stuck on trying to talk to the Swordmaster was merely a waste of time.

"So we're back to the obvious conclusion."

"I just want you to be ready. I'm going to kill anyone we come across who seems to be an enemy."

"And that's different from the usual how?"

"I normally only kill people when I absolutely have to," Yogiri argued, finding Tomochika's skeptical look a bit hurtful. "But in this tower, those aiming to be Knights are more than ready to kill anyone they encounter. Hesitating at all could mean death."

"Like I said, that's nothing new. If you're asking if I'm prepared for that, then yes. You using your power to protect me is the same as me killing them myself. I've known that from the start."

Don't look down on the daughter of a warrior's house! Mokomoko said firmly.

This time it was Yogiri's turn for blank amazement. It still surprised him that Tomochika would be so easily prepared to take other people's lives.

"Like I've said, I'm not going to complain about how somebody saves me. Although...I do think we should keep the killing to a minimum, if we can," she added, feeling the need to throw in that caveat.

After a short pause, Yogiri changed the subject, somewhat embarrassed by her total trust in him. "Actually, I'm getting kind of hungry. We haven't eaten anything since yesterday, have we?"

 ◇ ◇ ◇

"Umm, I feel like walking around and looking for someone without any clues at all is kind of pointless."

The sky above was just starting to grow light. Daimon Hanakawa was trudging along behind a confident Aoi. Despite having given her every last drop of information that he possessed about Yogiri Takatou, she had yet to release him. Her ship — which he could only think of as a flying saucer — had landed in the canyon, and they had walked from there.

Upon learning that her targets had trekked out into the canyon itself, Aoi's investigation of Hanabusa had come to a quick end. It hadn't been too long since their quarries had left the city, so she knew they were out here somewhere. Unfortunately, the canyon was a large, maze-like region. Searching it from the air hadn't gotten them any closer to finding the pair of otherworlders.

"Don't worry about it. I can tell which places have high Fate scores, which basically means that important events are likely to happen there."

"Ah, so now you're just meta-gaming. Is something wrong with your head?!"

"Hey, who do you think you are, talking to her like that?" a voice called out from the sheath at Aoi's hip.

"Hahaha! Like I'm about to be threatened by a knife that can't even move itself!"

"Well, I guess it is kind of meta. I can see Fate itself. In short, if this world were a movie, I would be able to read the script."

"Like I said, if you can do all that, what need do you have of me at all?! Why did I have to come with you in the first place?!"

"It's not that simple. To keep the movie metaphor, there are multiple protagonists all in motion at the same time. Multiple scenarios are unfolding at once, so the script is fairly chaotic. It's not easy to see through it all, and depending on the situation, each scenario can change in complex ways over time. I can only see the things that are right in front of me at any given time...and we're here, by the way." She pointed at the sky. In the darkness of the early morning, the spot she had indicated seemed to be glowing.

An enormous dragon, cloaked in lightning, was floating in the air.

"What the hell is that?! It's obviously absurdly strong!" The moment he saw it, Hanakawa recognized that it was a being on an entirely different level. There was no way they could win against it. If it unleashed its breath at them, they'd be dead in an instant. Judging from its appearance, it probably had lightning-property attacks. There was no way he could dodge such an assault, and with his meager defenses he would be dead the moment it struck.

"We should run! Even your abilities can't beat that thing!"

From this distance, once they had the creature's attention, even fleeing would be impossible. And Hanakawa figured Aoi would have no way of fighting a winged opponent, anyway.

"Why do you think I can't beat it?"

"Your power doesn't work on primeval beings, does it?!"

Hanakawa had seen Aoi fight in the Forest of Beasts. There, she had used the same cheat-like powers as Rikuto, and then erased them. Her ability seemed to negate the powers of those who had received their Gifts from someone else. It was hard to believe it could also work against a monster that was naturally so strong.

"Ah, it seems you've misunderstood something. Enemies like this are easy," Aoi said casually. "There's no way something so big could actually fly, right?"

The dragon abruptly fell from the sky. Even confused and caught totally off guard, it somehow managed to catch the air with its wings and glide into the side of the cliff, barely avoiding the fall to the bottom of the canyon below.

"My ability is simple. Just World works by dragging others into my own internal world. In other words, it changes the world around me to match my personal beliefs."

"Like I said, that's ridiculously overpowered!" Hanakawa couldn't think of her ability as anything but preposterous. It seemed like the ultimate trump card, capable of doing anything at all.

"That's not true. I can't do anything that seems impossible to me, and those with high Fate levels aren't affected at all. In those cases, I need to allow Fate to guide me."

"I-Is that right? A-Anyway, it seems you've defeated this monstrosity." Hanakawa approached the dragon. It had somehow managed to claw its way up the cliff face and was now lying on the ground. Its head was large enough to swallow him in a single bite, but perhaps disoriented by its sudden fall, it simply lay there with its mouth open and its tongue sticking out.

"Hah, you're just nothing but a big, dumb lizard, aren't you?"

"I wouldn't get that close if I were you."

Without warning, the dragon suddenly leaped up, snapping its jaws shut. Everything from Hanakawa's right elbow down disappeared in an instant, brutally bitten off.

Hanakawa screamed, but he was more than accustomed to such injuries. His experience surviving numerous battlegrounds as a Healer wasn't an exaggeration. Within moments, his right arm had been restored and he had jumped away from the dragon.

"As you said, it's a big lizard. That's still plenty dangerous, don't you think?"

"Can't you do something about it with your power?!"

"Of course not. It makes perfect sense for there to be a reptile of this size. There's no way I can deny its existence."

"Then what are we going to do?!"

"We'll just have to fight it normally. I'm pretty strong, so it shouldn't be a problem," Aoi said as she drew her knife.

Was she planning on fighting the dragon with a tiny knife like that? It seemed crazy to Hanakawa, but he had not yet had a chance to see the reason for her confidence.

But before Aoi had even appeared to attack, the dragon's head was torn clean off.

"What just...?! Did you do something?"

"No. But this isn't good. In fact, this might be the worst possible situation for me."

Something was now standing where the dragon's head had been, blood gushing out in a river around it. It had a strange but vaguely humanoid appearance. Its blood-soaked body was covered in a lustrous black metal, with spikes and blades sticking out of every joint. It was hard to believe that someone could fit inside that slender body, meaning it was likely not a suit of armor.

"The Hedgehog..." Aoi muttered.

It was one of the beings the Sages referred to as Aggressors.