by Aneko Yusagi
“No. There are some similarities, but we are different.”
“Kizuna, there are ghosts in this world, right?”
“Yes. I told you about our fight with the ghost ship, didn’t I?”
Who knows what to make of ghosts and souls? Regardless, it was clear they existed in this world too. If Kyo was the sort of person that I thought he was, he would definitely research them.
“Question: Glass, can Spirits like you see ghosts and souls?”
“Yes, certainly more easily than normal people can, but you can see them too if you use your shikigami.”
“What are you getting at?” one of the women in Trash #2’s group asked.
Glass looked just as confused as they did.
“I was thinking that, when your beloved man died, what if the Spirits that were with you went chasing after his soul?”
“Yes, well . . . there are certainly many Spirits that don’t believe life ends with the death of the body.”
I was right. I had to be right, but there was still something off.
“Can I ask what Kyo does with the people he captures? This world has its own special crimes, doesn’t it?”
“Yes. There would certainly be problems if the people you killed came back as undead zombies, or as ghosts . . .”
Glass suddenly realized what I was saying. Yomogi and Tsugumi did too.
“I think you may be correct. And there’s a good chance that Kyo got rid of the guy you loved, so you’d better prepare yourselves for that.”
Tears came into the women’s eyes, and they turned away from me.
“But if you are so heartbroken that you don’t care if you live or die, you are just creating a nuisance for everyone. I’m not saying he’ll be an undead zombie. But if I’m right, then . . .” I explained what sort of research I thought Kyo was carrying out.
“I heard a similar idea once, a long time ago. But could it really be?”
“I think so. And I played an action game like that before. If you don’t know when you’re going to die, it makes sense to have a line of defense ready,” Kizuna said.
“Aren’t you taking this all a bit far? You’re talking about fairytales now!” L’Arc said.
“You’ve been chosen to wield a vassal weapon, and you’re worried about fairytales? Besides, half of the stuff that happens in this world is straight out of a fairytale.”
None of this stuff could happen back in the Japan I knew, but I was in a fantasy world now.
L’Arc wasn’t convinced, but I was.
Now, we just had to break into Kyo’s laboratory to get the proof.
We had to prepare for the siege.
We boarded Ethnobalt’s boat and took off.
For the first part of the journey, we rode on the mysterious lines that linked the dragon hourglasses. Along the way we ran into occasional groups of flying monsters, and even some enemy soldiers. Thanks to the new accessories I gave to Glass and L’Arc, we were able to defeat them all easily.
The journey was so easy it almost made me worry.
We traveled like that for three days when we found it.
“That’s Kyo’s laboratory over there,” Yomogi said, pointing to the sky above an area of foggy, misty forest.
“Where? Maybe I just can’t see it through all the mist, but it just looks like forest to me.”
“You can’t see it from the outside.”
“We can’t take the boat much deeper into the fog. It’s too dangerous,” Ethnobalt said.
“The mist confuses all who enter. We would certainly become lost within it, if it were not for this bell,” Yomogi said, showing us a small bell.
I hadn’t heard of this special bell yet, but it sounded really important.
Then again, he had been using Yomogi this whole time—maybe her bell wouldn’t work either.
“With this bell, we should be able to see the laboratory shortly after entering the fog.”
“Then I guess we better get going.”
“Very well,” Ethnobalt said.
Yomogi rang the bell.
The boat lurched forward into the fog and mist.
“. . . ?”
Raphtalia looked concerned, but we kept pressing forward. Yomogi continued to ring the bell, and it chimed through the mist.
But then the mist cleared for a moment, and we discovered that we had returned to the place where we originally entered it.
“Weren’t we just here?”
“No, it can’t be! We must have made a mistake. Let’s just try it again,” Yomogi said.
Ethnobalt turned the boat back into the fog.
Once again, a few moments later, the fog cleared and we were right back where we started.
If I were Kyo, I would have done the same thing. I said, “I guess that bell of yours doesn’t work anymore.”
“But I . . . Kyo . . .”
We were stuck. Stuck right before the enemy’s hideout. He really did have a good place set up for himself. Even if they lost the war, he’d be safe in there, safe to go infect some other country for his purposes.
“Isn’t there something we can do to get rid of all this fog?”
“Sure there is,” I said, showing a bioplant seed to Kizuna.
“Naofumi, you can’t be serious . . .” she said, her face pale.
“I am. We set the stats to make it reproduce quickly, then seed the whole forest. The bioplants will take over in a couple of days. Then what good will this forest do him?”
“But you’ll throw the whole ecosystem off balance. What if it spreads over the whole continent?”
That was something to worry about. But we had to find some way to get to Kyo.
We needed to try something, and this was my best idea. Once we took care of Kyo, we could try using it on the war front too.
“There is a chance that it could pollute the continent, but if it looks like it’s going to be a problem, we’ll just have to use magic to burn them all up. We have weed killer too, if we need it.”
Besides, when the bioplants spread, they always had a central tree that controlled the rest of them. If we took care of the master tree, we could get rid of them all in one blow. When I chose the bioplant stats, I could program a weakness into it that we could exploit later on.
“I don’t know. I really don’t think we should use that.”
“There you go, moralizing again. So what’s your plan? I mean, if you know something I don’t, then by all means, tell us how to fix this.”
“But what about the environment?”
Kizuna and I were really snapping at each other now. Behind us Raphtalia and Raph-chan raised their hands.
“Excuse me. Can we try something?”
“You have an idea?”
“Yes. Ethnobalt, please proceed as I tell you.”
“Rafuuu!”
“Very well.”
Our flying ship turned, and once again entered the mist.
After we had flown a little way in . . .
“To the right—now to the left! Yes! Now just keep going straight,” Raphtalia explained.
Ethnobalt listened to Raphtalia and Raph-chan’s instructions, and kept the boat on the course they indicated.
“Angle it to the right. Yes, and now backwards.”
“Backwards?”
“Very well.”
He did as Raphtalia indicated and angled the ship so it would go backwards.
We slipped out of the fog again, but now we found ourselves somewhere new. The wall of fog stood imposing before us, but there was something new jutting out of it: an imposing building. We’d made it.
“Whoa! We did it!”
“The mist reminded me of the illusion magic I’ve been practicing. I suspected there might be a particular path through it, and I was able to find it,” Raphtalia told us.
So it was a maze . . .
It was sending us back to the start every time we hit one of its invisible walls.
Raphtalia and Raph-chan could f
ind a way through because they were good with illusion magic. A lost woods gimmick wasn’t going to work with them on our side!
“Alright, we found the lab, thanks to Raphtalia! Let’s go finish this!”
“Yeah!” everyone shouted in unison.
Ethnobalt piloted the boat into the building’s courtyard, and we found ourselves facing the entrance to Kyo’s secret laboratory.
Chapter Nine: Kyo’s Laboratory
“So this is Kyo’s laboratory . . .”
It looked like an old, very Western-style mansion, which was weird, because this whole country looked Japanese otherwise.
From the look of it, I expected to find his hideout down in a hidden basement chamber.
“This way,” Yomogi said, taking the lead. She had spent a lot of time there, but . . .
“I don’t see any of the rest of Trash #2’s women. If we run into them, I have a lot of questions I’ll want answered.”
“They probably know that we’re here.”
I looked around the courtyard, then agreed.
“They might have been sent out on a mission too. Or maybe they evacuated.”
There was another possibility, but I didn ’t want to think about it.
Could he have sacrificed the women for his experiments? No . . .
“Those with a taste for blood might have been sent out to the war front. But he didn’t bring everyone here to begin with.”
“No?”
“Kyo only brings people he really trusts here. He helps all sorts of people, but he doesn’t like it when people go poking around in his business.”
Of course he doesn ’t; he has a lot to hide. He was like the best student in school, but lived a double life.
“So only Kyo’s most trusted companions know about this place. At least, that’s what I thought,” Yomogi said bitterly. She’d thought she was special.
So we weren ’t going to be able to use the women as hostages, they were all in this together. Kyo must have brainwashed them, just like he had Tsugumi and Yomogi.
“Whatever. As long as Kyo is here, we can carry out our plan. If he isn’t, we raid his laboratory for what we can use in the war, then destroy it.”
After all, he might have run away if he knew we were coming.
“Grrr . . .”
“Don’t you forget, you are helping an enemy nation. You’re not operating on your own, you’re a soldier for us now.”
Yomogi curled her hand into a fist, “That’s cowardly!”
“You don’t think it’s cowardly to try and take control over another country?”
There were people like that, people that believed you could do anything, as long as you thought you were right. It was a convenient, opportunistic way to live. It reminded me of Itsuki.
“Kiddo. Give it a rest, will you? We’ll know the truth once we get in there and find it.”
“Good point.”
I had barely finished my sentence when the roar of a beast echoed through the courtyard.
I quickly turned to the source of the roar, and found myself looking at the same White Tiger copies that Trash #2 had been researching. There was also a red bird, which I ’m guessing was a vermilion bird, and a black tortoise with a snake for a tail.
“Gahhhh!”
Then there were people , people that looked like they had been merged with beasts and were on the verge of insanity. The beast side of their bodies was much larger than the human side, and it had nearly taken them over completely. Their eyes were fierce and wild, and saliva dangled from their gaping mouths.
“There’s the truth for you right there. Kyo isn’t trying to hide it. Looks like we are too late for some of them. Kizuna, can you help them?”
“I don’t know, but I can try.”
Yomogi frowned, “Kyo, how could you do something like this?” She drew the katana that Kizuna had given her.
We were going to support her in battle.
“Let’s go!”
“Gahhhh!”
The beasts roared like a gong initiating battle, and they rushed us. We met them head on, and the battle began in earnest.
“Damn. The beast side had taken over too much. My weapon doesn’t see them as human anymore.”
Kizuna had tried to slice off the beast half of the enemy, bur the holy weapon no longer distinguished between their human and beast parts. That meant that Kizuna was now the strongest attacker in the group.
I ’d seen her abilities before, when we were traveling together. She was so strong that it was like being able to fire off Reverse Snow Moon Flower at no cost and with minimal cool down at any time. As long as she wasn’t fighting other humans, she was a real monster on the battlefield.
She flew through the crowd, slicing them down. When they fell, they looked like they were saying something.
Kizuna, Glass, and Raphtalia had tears in their eyes.
“What is it?”
“They . . . Before they die, they thank me.”
“Dammit! They’re really making this hard!” L’Arc shouted. As understanding dawned on him, he hesitated to fight.
I blocked an attack with my shield and nodded.
“Don’t sympathize or you’ll end up dead. There’s nothing we can do for them now.”
We had a choice between people we could save and people we couldn ’t. I wish we were strong enough to save everyone, but we weren’t.
“Kizuna, you know what’s going on here, don’t you? Back in the world I was summoned to, the Spirit Tortoise familiars infected people like parasites. We couldn’t save them. Some of that might have been the Spirit Tortoise’s doing, but the other half . . .”
She nodded.
“I had really only understood half of your story until now .”
“Kiddo’s world took a really hard beating. You’re right. We weren’t ready.”
“If you still want to try and save them, try to knock them out of the battle, at least.”
Actually they regenerated very quickly, so unless we sliced all their limbs off, they regenerated and came back after us.
There weren ’t any good options.
“Uh . . .” Filo muttered. She looked unnerved. She never was very good with this kind of thing.
I knew how she felt, but we didn ’t have a choice.
“Ha!” Raphtalia swung her sword, then slid it back into its sheath. Then she drew her other sword and dashed through the crowd of encroaching monsters. “Mr. Naofumi is right! We cannot forgive the monster that did this! We must press forward!”
The monsters around her fell to the ground.
She was right. If we hesitated, we ’d be done for. And if we didn’t make it, there would be no one left to stop Kyo.
L ’Arc sighed, “The path forward is covered in blood, but if it means the people’s happiness then we have no choice but to wade through it. I didn’t think the day would come when I’d be learning something from you, Kiddo.”
“Don’t confuse it for wisdom. I just do what I have to, and when someone tries to kill me, I take them out first.”
If I didn ’t, that would be the end.
I ’d done it plenty of times. The Church of the Three Heroes tried to assassinate me. L’Arc and his friends tried to assassinate me. The Spirit Tortoise tried to kill everyone to make a magic barrier.
I had to defeat them all, otherwise there would be no future for me.
I ’m not saying that I didn’t have regrets.
But if we didn ’t keep moving forward, we’d never repay the debt we had to all those who had already lost their lives.
“The reason for Ost’s death is right here. We’ve come to repay that. The enemy might make it hard on us, but there is no going back.”
“That’s just like you, Kiddo. I like it.” L’Arc readied his scythe.
“Agreed. I like it too,” Ethnobalt said, turning his vassal weapon into a much smaller boat.
What was he going to do?
“I may not be the strongest fighter he
re, but I’ll do what I can to support the rest of you.”
He turned the boat ’s cannons on the encroaching enemy.
“All Cannons Fire!”
There was a deafening blast, and everything went white.
I ’d heard that Ethnobalt’s abilities were very weak, that his attacks were basically useless. And after all the cannons fired, the results supported all that I’d heard.
The monsters and transformed humans turned and smacked the cannonballs down, as if they were nothing but mosquitoes. Ethnobalt rose higher into the air on his boat and waved to us.
“I’ll keep them distracted! Please, hurry on!”
“But . . .” Kizuna stretched out her arm to him, but he was too far away to touch.
The vermilion bird copies could fly, and the white tiger copies were jumping on ledges and trees and swiping at the boat from below. The black tortoise copies were wresting boulders from the ground and throwing them at the flying boat.
I didn ’t want to leave him there. It was like leaving a rabbit surrounded by wild beasts.
“I’ll be alright. I have a vassal weapon, don’t I? Let me do this! I’ll do my best!”
“Ethnobalt!”
“Pen!” Chris bounded forward and leaped onto a white tiger copy, and then a vermilion bird copy, then jumped up onto the stern of the boat.
“Chris.”
“Pen!” he waved down to Kizuna, as if to say, “Leave this to me.”
“Naofumi, please. Protect Kizuna for me.”
“Fine.”
“Feh . . . Are we really leaving him?”
“Yes. Kizuna—let’s go!”
“But!”
“We don’t have the time to sit around entertaining these monsters! Kyo could get away!”
Ethnobalt made up his mind to help us. I had to respect his resolve. And he had Chris with him. If things went south, I hoped he ’d be able to escape.
“Now’s our chance. Let’s go! Let Ethnobalt do what he wants!”
We all ran toward the mansion.
Looking back, I saw Ethnobalt luring the monsters out toward the woods. He was waving to us.
Inside the mansion, it smelled like someone had been there recently. It looked that way too, like someone had set up and been living there for a while.
“You said he only brings his most trusted companions here, right?”