With those as his last words, Rochefort was gone without a trace. Only the scars left by the ice spears remained behind, to tell the tale of the battle that had just taken place.
“Here.” Yuichi handed the fingerless gloves back to Mutsuko.
“Aww, why? They’re so cool!” she cried.
“They’re broken,” Yuichi said, not meeting her eyes.
“Oh! Well, that’s that, I guess!” Mutsuko said, seeming to accept the excuse at face value.
Aiko had her doubts, though; he was probably just embarrassed to keep wearing them.
With Rochefort gone, the wall of ice covering the stage was beginning to fade away, as well.
The three of them turned their eyes to what lay beyond.
There was a girl there, on her knees, supporting herself on a staff clutched in two hands. The staff was highly decorated, as if it was designed to be a ritual item. She was dressed like a witch, with a cape over her shoulders, and a wide-brimmed hat on her head. She appeared to be praying.
“What are you doing, Orihara?” Yuichi asked, his tone one of exasperation mixed with relief.
Aiko let out a sigh of relief herself. The girl up on the stage was definitely Kanako, and aside from her strange outfit, she seemed okay.
“Orihara! If you wanted to play witchy girl, there are better ways!” Mutsuko moaned. “This is such a cliché! C’mon! You have so many more options these days, even pink frilly dresses!”
“You just found your missing friend, and that’s the first thing you have to say?!” Yuichi reproached her.
“Orihara, let’s go back together. Everyone’s worried about you, okay?” Aiko called to her, calmly.
It was at this that Kanako finally responded. She lifted her face and gazed at Aiko and the others, glassy-eyed, like she had just woken up from a trance.
“Sakaki... everyone...” Kanako murmured.
“Orihara! You shouldn’t try to be a magical girl until you’ve done more preparation!” Mutsuko called indignantly. “You could have gone through the club room and found much better stuff!”
But Kanako shook her head. “I’m going to an isekai. Actually... I’m calling one here. The sorceress said that would be faster...”
“Orihara!” Aiko called. “Can’t we find another way to get you to an isekai? You’re affecting too many other people this way!”
Kanako picked herself up on trembling legs, and timidly raised her staff above her head.
“Yah!” She swung the staff down with a half-hearted cry.
Aiko was staring dumbly, waiting to see what would happen, when Yuichi suddenly grabbed her.
“Huh?” Aiko breathed in surprise as she found herself suddenly in motion. Yuichi touched down some ways away, in that same instant, she saw a wall appear in the space she had just been.
A wall of ice had formed between them and the stage, crackling frigidly.
Kanako looked just as surprised as they were, which suggested to Aiko that she wasn’t trying to hurt them. She just didn’t want to be interrupted.
The wall of ice Kanako had made was less substantial than Rochefort’s — it was thin, brittle-looking, and fully transparent — but it seemed that buying time was all Kanako wanted to do, and she ran backstage and disappeared.
Yuichi struck the wall of ice with his fist. He easily opened a hole in it, but that didn’t bring the whole thing crashing down, and the hole he had opened slowly filled in.
“Dammit! We’ll get outside and head her off around back!” he shouted. Giving up on destroying the wall, Yuichi ran for the exit.
Aiko was about to run, too, when suddenly, the whole gym began to shake with a loud noise.
“Huh? What? An earthquake?” Aiko instinctively crouched down. It felt like something big was happening.
The shaking quickly subsided, and the next thing Aiko knew, Yuichi was at her side.
Just as she was beginning to wonder if the earthquake was Kanako’s doing, too, she heard the sound of static coming over the speakers.
“I will now explain the game. I’ll only say this once, and I will not take questions. There are three basic rules:
“One, violence is prohibited.
“Two, If you lose your right to exist, you die. Check the back of your hand, please. You should see the Roman numeral III there. That represents your right to exist. When you begin the game, all players have three, and you each lose one every hour.
“Three, players can gamble these with each other in any way they wish. I guarantee that all debts will be paid.
“This ends the explanation. There are other rules, but you can learn them as you play. Now, let’s start the game.”
The announcement came without warning, then cut off just as abruptly, allowing no room for discussion.
“Is that... Miss Shikitani?” Aiko asked. She had recognized that blunt way of speaking.
Aiko looked at the back of her hand, and indeed, she did see a “III” hovering in the air above it. It was vaguely luminescent, like a hologram.
Yuichi also checked his hand. “Shikitani’s ability? But I thought she could only use it in enclosed spaces...”
Aiko remembered him explaining about that in Tomomi’s restaurant.
“What ability? Does that have something to do with these numbers appearing?” Mutsuko asked, and Yuichi explained: Makina’s abilities included “Sealed Room Game,” which let her set the rules in an enclosed space, and “Inviolable Domain,” which protected the objects necessary to keep the game going.
After hearing the explanation, Mutsuko tried bopping Yuichi with her fists in a mock tantrum, but they never reached his head. They just deflected and slipped off of him, like he was made out of rubber.
Next, Mutsuko lightly rapped her own head. This time, it hit. There seemed to be nothing preventing someone from touching oneself.
“So ‘Inviolable Domain’ forbids violence against others, I guess,” said Mutsuko. “I wonder if I could commit suicide? Or poison people?”
“Don’t even speculate,” Yuichi said. “We’re not gonna go along with that creep’s game.”
To check for himself, Yuichi reached for Mutsuko’s face, and his hand slipped off this time, too.
“What do you think of this, Yu?” she asked.
“If you could control your vectors perfectly, maybe...” Yuichi said.
“I see... I don’t suppose I can ask how you knew about all this, Yu?”
“...I don’t want to say yet,” Yuichi replied after a moment’s thought.
He must still be keeping Monika’s existence a secret from Mutsuko. Maybe he just didn’t want to rely on his big sister for everything.
“I see,” said Mutsuko. “Never mind about that, then! Let’s head for the new school building to do something about the person who made that announcement!” Even at a time like this, Mutsuko clearly couldn’t restrain her excitement.
As they left the gymnasium, Aiko turned her eyes to the new school building, then froze.
“Um... wait... what?” Aiko looked to Yuichi for explanation.
“You think I understand it?” Yuichi answered in an utterly baffled tone of voice.
Aiko looked at the new school building one more time to confirm.
The tip of the inverted castle was sticking into the building’s roof.
It was around 5:00 PM by the time they arrived at the new school building’s entryway hall. It should have still been light outside at this time of day, but everything was rather dark, thanks to the fog.
The school building interior was unchanged, despite the spire of a castle sticking into it, but the students inside were far from unaffected.
Confused crying, level-headed discussion, reckless running around: their reactions were all over the map.
“It’s no use! We can’t leave the school grounds!” a group who had been checking things outside reported back.
“You mean it’s not just the fog?!” somebody else cried.
“There’s some
thing like a wall there! And we can’t get through it!”
This was Makina’s “Inviolable Domain,” the defensive field that protected things necessary for the game. It was probably covering the whole school.
Even the students who doubted the situation at first gradually seemed to be coming around to believing that the announcement was true.
The numbers hovering over their hands; the fact that they couldn’t escape; the transparent membrane that covered each of the students, forbidding violence... It was all evidence that the rules stated in the announcement had been true.
“So, what do we do? Head for the broadcast room?” Yuichi asked Mutsuko. They had made it to the new school building, but he noticed that she didn’t seem to have a game plan past that.
“First, to the roof!” she declared in response.
“You’re not just saying that because you want to see the castle up close, right?” Yuichi asked dubiously.
Mutsuko showed him her tablet, which was streaming video from the roof.
He could see the castle tower intersecting with the roof, but there was no destruction. The joining was a clean one, as if they were co-existing in the same space. It looked like a piece of avant-garde sculpture. There was a woman in glasses there, too, walking along the roof.
Yuichi recognized her. It was Makina Shikitani.
“If she was the woman who made the announcement, then she’s clearly the cause of all this!” Mutsuko declared. “If we can just do something about her, then we’ll have time to work out Orihara’s problem afterwards, right?”
“I’d be more surprised to hear she didn’t have anything to do with this, yeah,” Yuichi remarked. She had said it was a secret, but maybe Makina’s original goal had been to get everyone in the school involved in her game.
“Let’s proceed with caution!” Mutsuko declared. “She might have set some traps on the way!”
“You look pretty happy about all of this, Sis...” Yuichi was feeling a bit fed up with his sister’s eternal optimism.
“By the way, where’s Takeuchi?” Aiko asked, as if only just remembering her.
“We don’t have time to search, but knowing her, she’ll figure it out on her own,” Yuichi said. They hadn’t run into Natsuki since parting ways in the club room, when she had said she would be searching for Kanako in the new school building. Aiko seemed to be worried about her, but that couldn’t be their priority right now.
The group started heading for the roof. Mutsuko’s prediction about traps proved wrong, and they easily reached it.
Nearly the entire roof was dominated by the castle’s upside-down tower, but there was no sign of damage to the structure itself, confirming that there was some kind of supernatural phenomenon at play.
Yuichi looked up and saw the castle itself, even more massive than the tower already spearing the roof, and the vast stretches of land further up. The scale of it was so enormous, it made it hard to judge distance properly.
“If this is the tip of Castle Zalegrande, that must be the Demon Lord’s living space.” Mutsuko pointed to the upside-down veranda. “It looks like the woman in glasses got in through there.”
“We’ve come this far,” Yuichi said. “We’ll just have to go inside.”
He approached the veranda and peeked inside. It was a disorienting sight, with the ceiling and floor reversed. Thinking about it, the roof should have reached the third floor of the school by now, but they’d seen no influence from the castle there, suggesting some kind of dimension warping phenomenon must be involved.
The room didn’t have the eerie sort of atmosphere you’d expect from a room in a Demon Lord’s castle. It was done up all in white, and overflowing with good taste.
“How do we get in?” Yuichi asked. If they just jumped in, they’d drop to the ceiling, which was about five meters down. Yuichi would be okay, but he had his doubts that Mutsuko and Aiko could land safely.
“Yu, why don’t you go in first and catch us?” Mutsuko asked.
“Yeah, that’s probably the best option.” Yuichi stepped in through the veranda window, readying his body to absorb the shock of the fall.
But his expectations were immediately betrayed, as his sense of up and down was suddenly flipped.
“Huh?” Yuichi was falling not towards the ceiling, but towards the floor, head-first. He quickly planted his hands, rolled forward, and righted himself. He looked up and saw Mutsuko and Aiko, watching him through the window, upside-down.
“Gravity inversion?!” Mutsuko exclaimed. “That’s so cool!”
“So much has happened that I’m not as surprised as I feel I should be...” Aiko muttered.
Mutsuko was overjoyed about it, but Aiko’s feelings seemed more mixed.
“If we’re just falling to the floor, that isn’t too bad,” Yuichi said. As long as they took their time, it shouldn’t be a problem for them.
Mutsuko and Aiko entered carefully, clutching the windowsill. The minute they were inside the castle, their sense of up and down seemed to flip, though after a moment’s disorientation, they got used to it.
Yuichi looked around the room again. It was a beautiful space, done up all in white. The large canopy bed in the middle suggested that it was a bedroom.
“Where did she go?” Yuichi wondered. There was no sign of anyone in the room.
“Good question,” Mutsuko said. “If it’s like the novel, this is the White Tower. If you go through the door across from the bed and follow the passageway, you’ll get to the Black Tower. If you want to go somewhere else, you’d have to go down the stairway.”
“Let’s go to the Black Tower first.” Yuichi’s judgment was based purely on the thought that it would be annoying to have to climb back up the stairs once they’d gone down.
Chapter 7: Reckoning in Sky Castle Zalegrande! (While It’s... You Know... Falling)
Kanako had been told that she was an “Isekai Writer.” She could make the worlds she imagined become reality.
She hadn’t been told why she was that way, but if it was something she could do, she decided, then it was worth a try. Even if her power could destroy the world, in the state she was in now, Kanako would use it without hesitation.
The sorceress had said the school was a good location. The powers of an “Isekai Writer” would increase with the number of readers she had. If she wanted to bring an isekai into being, the sorceress had told her, then she should use the school, where she already had influence.
Numbly, Kanako had done just as the sorceress said.
Her memories of what had happened after that were hazy. The next thing she knew, she was running across the athletic field away from Yuichi and the others. While outside, she saw the moment when the castle and the school overlapped.
The isekai was here. In that instant, Kanako felt the gears lock into place.
Kanako remembered that the sorceress was waiting for her on the roof.
This was a good start. Now she needed to be taught how to turn the entire world into an isekai.
She was just heading towards the new school building, when suddenly, that announcement began. It was the sorceress’s voice. She was saying something about a game, but she had never mentioned anything to Kanako about this...
But then, the change was being fueled by her story, The Half-Isekai Classroom. Perhaps the sorceress was trying to recreate the tragedies that played out in the story.
Kanako had to go to the roof. Before now, just thinking about it would have filled her with terror, but now, she was at peace. She could use magic now. In this world, Kanako Orihara was effectively God.
Take me to Zalegrande Castle!
With that one wish, Kanako’s body lifted into the air.
Trembling, with eyes clenched shut, Kanako flew. Soon, she arrived on the roof.
She opened her eyes and looked down, but the sorceress was nowhere to be seen. Had she gone into the castle, then?
Kanako flew in through the rows of pillars above.
&nb
sp; The minute she entered, the world twisted around her. Up and down had been reversed, but since Kanako was floating, the effect had been minor.
She touched down and looked around. She was in the mid-air corridor. It was lined with pillars, like walls, on either side, with archways supporting it. Magical lights lined the ceiling, making things as bright as daylight there.
Kanako knew this place. A slowly-curving hallway ten meters wide and a hundred meters long, linking the Black and White Towers.
This was the isekai that Kanako had created.
But right now, it only existed within the school, and this was far from the world that Kanako wanted.
Therefore, she needed to know. She needed the sorceress to tell her how to turn the whole world into an isekai.
Kanako began walking forward slowly, in the direction of the Black Tower.
The corridor’s gentle curve prevented her from seeing all the way to the end of it, but before long, a person came into view. The woman in glasses, the sorceress, was standing in front of the door that led to the Black Tower. When she saw Kanako, a faint smile appeared on her lips.
“Thank goodness you’re here. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
Something was wrong.
The sorceress really did seem to be glad to see her. But something felt off to her about the way the sorceress was acting.
“I never stick to just one plan,” the sorceress continued. “I’d come up with quite a few alternatives in case any one of them failed, but here at the end, with success in my grasp, I started to realize I had neglected one small detail.”
Kanako began walking towards the Black Tower. The closer she got, the greater the sense of wrongness grew.
“What do you mean?” she asked, uncertain of what the sorceress was talking about.
“I neglected to take steps to make sure you’d come here. I’d be utterly disgusted with myself if I’d come this far and failed to stick the landing.”
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