Towards a Glory Not Worth Taking

by Ao Jyumonji

  “Got it! I’ll take you up on that kind offer!”

  “Tokimune, Haruhiro!” Soma shouted. “You guys, too!”

  “Roger!” Tokimune called.

  Tada clicked his tongue and slammed his warhammer into a cultists’ head. “You want the main dish and now the desert all to yourself?! You greedy pig!”

  “You already had enough, yeah?! Fucking Tada! Anna-san is heavy tired!”

  “Well, if that’s how Anna-san feels, I guess I have to! I’ll back off for you this time!”

  Haruhiro didn’t answer one way or the other. No, of course, he wanted to escape the moment he could, but was this okay? Gogh had told him to stick with them until the end. He’d thought that maybe he was obligated to. Still, though, shouldn’t he obey Soma? ...Which had priority?

  While he was wondering, the time to choose closed in on him. Or rather, it arrived.

  “Now, go!” Soma lowered his hips and took a position with the flat side of his katana touching his shoulder. There was an abnormal power swelling up inside his entire body. It looked like the orange-colored light of his armor had grown stronger, too. “Hahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

  There were a number of cultists, of hydra tentacles, and of white giant body parts that were not so much slashed as pulverized and their chunks, shards, fragments, innards, and bodily fluids were scattered over a wide area. It was Soma. There was no question that Soma had done it. Had he charged in and swung his katana? He must have. But was that all it had taken to do all that? It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been.

  But the reality was that one swing from Soma had wrecked a large number of enemies who were now all dead at worst, or unable to continue fighting at best. With one strike, Soma had put a big hole in the force of enemies pursuing them.

  Lilia and Kemuri didn’t miss a beat before going into that hole and widening it. No, it wasn’t just Lilia and Kemuri. Shima. Even Shima went with them, swinging around a weapon that looked like a metal whip. Was that sexy older girl going to fight in that bewitching outfit?

  Then there was one more. The masked man with the needlessly long arms who was wearing the bizarre armor charged past Shima and into the midst of the enemy.

  Zenmai the golem. He had no weapons. Or rather, both his arms were armored with metal and could be used either as swords or hammers.

  “Uhuhuhuh... Aren’t you going to run away, you trash?”

  The eerie voice came from beside him. Haruhiro turned to look, startled, and there, with a childlike physique and boyish face, but eyes reminiscent of a bottomless swamp, was the necromancer, exuding a miasma-like presence.

  “You’re in the way... Get lost already...” Pingo said.

  “Y-Yessir! S-S-S-S-Sorry!” Haruhiro yelped.

  Right. That’s right. If Soma says to run, it’s time to run. We have to. We’re late. We’ve fallen pretty far behind. Soma was just too incredible. No, now’s not the time for excuses.

  “L-L-L-L-L-Let’s go, guys!”

  Oh, crap. I’m panicking pretty badly. I can’t see my comrades’ faces properly, either. I didn’t hear their response. But we’ve got to run. Is everyone coming? I feel like they are. Ranta and Yume, and Shihoru, and Merry, and Kuzaku. What about the Tokkis? What about Akira-san and his group? I can see their backs up ahead. They’re pretty far, huh? We really have fallen behind. What am I doing?

  Mimorin turned back and shouted something.

  The giant god. It’s close. I keep looking up. It’s raising its right foot. Is it trying to stomp us? Better avoid it. Need to run. At full power. Full burst. Run away at top speed. Who cares what direction? I don’t wanna get stomped.

  That was all he thought as he dashed. There was a rumbling, an incredible shaking of the ground, and he almost tripped. From that, he knew he apparently hadn’t been stepped on. If he got stepped on, there would be no more tripping, no more anything.

  He could see now why the volunteer soldiers had been running back and forth. They had to head for the hole in the initial hill. In their heads, they knew that, but they couldn’t do it.

  It was the giant god. The giant god was scary. They had to run from it. That was the sole thing occupying their hearts. Their bodies were prioritizing that whether they wanted them to or not.

  On top of that, visibility was bad. Every time the giant god stepped on the ground, a cloud of dirt rose up. It was raining dirt and sand. In the most extreme cases, they couldn’t see more than a few meters in front of them.

  Which way should he go? Where was the initial hill? Haruhiro quickly lost sight of Akira-san’s party and the Tokkis. That meant he no longer had his guides. He nearly stopped. But he couldn’t just stop. If he stopped, he would surely be stepped on. If he was stepped on, he’d be crushed flat before he had time to think, I’m gonna die.

  “Who...?!” someone shouted.

  Yeah, you said it. Who was it? Haruhiro couldn’t help but think while feeling like he was going to puke up bloody vomit. Who thought it was a good idea to try and defeat the giant god?

  Well, yeah. It was Tokimune. Not like saying that now is going to help. There’s seriously no helping this. No helping this at all.

  “Everyone’s here, right?!” he shouted while tasting dirt in his mouth.

  “Yeah!” He heard Ranta’s voice.

  “Here!” Yume followed.

  Kuzaku said, “Yep!”

  Merry said, “I’m okay!”

  But he didn’t hear Shihoru.

  No way, seriously, don’t do this to me, please.

  “Shihoru? Shihoru?!”

  “...Yes!” she called.

  Oh, good. She’s here. Thank goodness. My eyes hurt. This dirt is awful. It’s hard to breathe, too. Run.

  He still had no choice but to run. He was running pretty much blind, but there was nothing else they could do. He didn’t even have a good grasp of where the giant god was anymore. He could hear a zushing, zushing sound, so they couldn’t be that far from it, and he was more or less certain that it was still close.

  From the incline and the white pillars around them, it felt like maybe they were climbing the hill? If they were, it was luck. They hadn’t come this far because he was aiming for it. It was a coincidence. With good luck, they might escape from the Dusk Realm.

  “It’s a hole!” Yume said.

  She was right. The hail of dirt and sand had let up just enough that they could see a hole up ahead. There were volunteer soldiers rushing inside it, too.

  It was the hole. The hole. The way out.

  Suddenly, courage welled up inside him, and, We’re saved, he thought. Now we’re going to make it. We don’t have to die. We can live.

  Haruhiro tried to speed up. He’d been running as fast as he thought he could all this time. Could he run any faster than this? He felt like he could. Was it the rush of adrenaline? Humans were amazing.

  “Oh, crap!” Ranta shouted.

  Suddenly, someone pulled on the back of his cloak, so he wasn’t able to unleash that speed that went beyond his limits. Ranta. It was Ranta’s fault. Because of Ranta, Haruhiro tripped and fell. No. It wasn’t Ranta’s fault. It was thanks to Ranta.

  Ranta might have just saved Haruhiro’s life.

  If he had kept running like that, something bad would have happened. Haruhiro hadn’t noticed it at all. His focus must have been taken up by the explosion of thoughts and emotions when he believed that they could get out, they could escape, they could live. He hadn’t been looking at all.

  It was the giant god. The giant god’s right foot, or maybe its left foot, came down on the hill, right where that hole was.

  “Nooooooooooo! Shihoru let out a scream.

  “It’s go—” Merry couldn’t even finish the word.

  “Whoa...” Kuzaku fell back on his rear end.

  “No way of goin’ home now, huh...” In blank amazement, Yume said something that hit the bullseye. Probably because she was an archer.

  ...No, no, no, no, no.

  “W-
W-We’ve gotta run!” Ranta was about to take off somewhere, then his shoulders slumped. “Wait, wh-where do we even go?”

  “Somewhere!” Haruhiro responded immediately.

  Somewhere? Where’s that? I don’t know. We’re screwed. But this is where I’ve got to dig in my heels, or rather, this is where digging in my heels won’t do any good but I’ve got to do something, or rather it all seems kinda pointless and there’s nothing but despair and I want to cry.

  The rain of dirt and sand soon started in earnest once more. He couldn’t see a thing. For now, he was just going to race down the hill.

  The footing was bad. Really bad. Beyond bad. His foot got caught. He tripped, or rather fell. He scrambled to keep going.

  If one of his comrades was in reach, he grabbed them and either pushed or pulled them along. In turn, they pulled him along, too, and helped by pushing him from behind. When one of the giant god’s feet landed nearby, they called out their comrades’ names and checked if everyone was okay.

  The first order of business was to get out of range of this rain of dirt. That became his goal. He couldn’t think of what would come next, and he didn’t need to.

  The giant god didn’t seem to have any intent of leaving the initial hill, so though it came at risk of life and limb, Haruhiro and the party eventually reached their goal. Once they did, a new difficult problem presented itself.

  Enemies.

  They encountered cultists, and were forced to decide whether to fight or flee.

  If there had been one or two enemies, they would gang up on them and kill them quickly. But cultists and white giants from all over the Dusk Realm were on the move towards the giant god. In other words, it seemed they were gathering at the initial hill.

  Haruhiro and the party, on the other hand, were trying to get away from the hill. That meant they were inevitably going to bump into enemies, and if they stopped to fight, the enemies would come one after another until they were the ones outnumbered.

  Haruhiro decided to flee. He ran in the direction where there were no enemies.

  He soon started to regret it, thinking it might have been a mistake. The number of cultists chasing them was gradually growing, and soon there would be more than ten. If he thought about it calmly, this was a situation that would inevitably end in them being defeated and wiped out.

  It’s my own fault, thought Haruhiro. Because Haruhiro had made the wrong choice, everyone would die. In this awful place.

  Where was this place, even? He could see the giant god going on its rampage near the initial hill, so he could get a rough grasp of his location. Only a rough one, though. There weren’t a lot of geographical features or buildings in the Dusk Realm that could be used as landmarks, so it was hard to pinpoint their current location. Difficult though it might be, that didn’t stop him from guessing.

  Ranta was at the very rear of the group, behind Shihoru, who was totally out of breath. That was deliberate, no doubt. He was protecting Shihoru. The guy had some good in him after all.

  Haruhiro was at the head, with Yume, Kuzaku, and Merry behind him in that order. This wasn’t a marching order he had decided on. It was one they just ended up with.

  The cultists weren’t that fast. They also showed a hesitance to keep chasing after Haruhiro and the party. If the party had more energy, they might have been able to shake them off. Thanks to that, they had been spared. So far, at least.

  It was only a matter of time, though. Shihoru, for one, was getting close to her limit. If any of them, not just Shihoru, were to stop, they’d have to fight. If they fought, he figured there was an eight to nine out of ten chance they’d lose.

  The truth was, he had one plan. However, he couldn’t say it was very feasible. The odds were pretty low, he had to admit.

  When he looked back, the number of pursuers had gone up again. Were there fifteen? Sixteen, maybe?

  If only Kuzaku had his shield. No, it wouldn’t have made a difference. He wanted to call out to his comrades. To do something to encourage them.

  What could he say? When at best it was just going to give them temporary peace of mind? If Haruhiro, Kuzaku, and Ranta worked together, could they hold off the enemy for a few minutes? While they did, Yume, Shihoru, and Merry would get away—They’d get away, and then what? Should they try their luck on an all-or-nothing battle while he was still able to think straight like this?

  It was sixteen against six. They weren’t just Pansukes—there were one or two Tori-sans, too. They couldn’t win, could they? No way, right? Maybe they had, like, a one percent chance? Could he bet on that one percent? Were they going to die, right here?

  Instant death from being stepped on by the giant god would have been easier.

  “Hey!” a woman’s voice called out. It wasn’t Yume, Shihoru, or Merry.

  Where was that from? Haruhiro looked around.

  There was a depression up ahead on the left. Something jumped up out of it. It was a person. Two people. A man and a woman. The woman was tall. They were both in pretty incredible outfits. The woman’s in particular was crazy.

  There wasn’t that much skin exposed overall, but the bits that were exposed were all ones that would make you think, Wait, you’re showing that? Was she showing them on purpose?

  Also, there was her figure. Her breasts, her butt, her thighs... they all had the perfect amount of meat on them. She also had an hourglass figure and long arms and legs. Gorgeous curly hair. Her appearance was as gaudy as gaudy could be. Harsh eyes with large pupils. Deep-red lips.

  She was a dominatrix. That was the only word that came to mind to describe her.

  “We’ll save you, so lend us a hand!” the dominatrix called.

  The man shot past Haruhiro. He had white hair, and the lower half of his face was covered by a mask. He was wearing tight-fitting black clothes, or armor, it wasn’t clear which, and he raced along on all fours like a dog.

  Why did the man have a collar on? It was like he really was a dog.

  An unfamiliar man and woman... was not what these two were. Haruhiro had never spoken to them before, but he’d seen them. They were an unforgettable pair. They were a little famous in this business.

  Lala and Nono.

  The dominatrix was Lala, and the white-haired man with the collar and mask was Nono.

  Why were they here? There was no way of knowing that.

  Nono passed by Ranta in no time flat, then attacked the cultists. The way he attacked them was just like a dog. Nono slipped under the cultists’ outstretched spears, then bit one Pansuke in the throat—or that was what it looked like. But Nono’s mouth was covered by his mask. He couldn’t bite like that, and he wasn’t a dog, he was a human. He didn’t bite the Pansuke. He’d drawn a knife from his hip just before he’d jumped, and stabbed it into the cultist’s face.

  They say there’s no reward without risk. Well, Nono set out to prove that. It went without saying that going right into the middle of the enemy group was dangerous, but it was hard for the enemy to deal with, too.

  Especially since the Pansukes’ weapons were long spears. If Nono got in close, they had a hard time fighting back. What was more, Nono was nimble like a cat rather than a dog. He instantly closed in and made contact, then delivered a death blow with the knife in his right hand.

  Alternatively, he would punch them with his left fist. He’d wrap his arm around their necks and snap them. He used one Pansuke he had in a pinion as a shield against the Tori-san’s Thunder Sword Dolphin. Then he pushed the Pansuke towards the Tori-san and instantly killed another Pansuke.

  “Don’t just stand there and gawk!” Lala called.

  While they were focused on Nono, enemies had come to attack Lala, too. The dominatrix wasn’t a melee fighter like Nono. She used a bow. It was pretty short. She nocked a short arrow to her short bow and fired.

  Nocked an arrow and fired.

  Nocked an arrow and fired.

  Yume could use Rapid Fire, but nothing like this. It was fast. Too f
ast. Also, close. Lala was firing at close range. Firing like crazy.

  “Oh?! Ohh?! Ohhhh?!” Ranta lifted up his Thunder Sword Dolphin and charged at the enemy.

  “Uh...?” Kuzaku looked to Haruhiro.

  “D-Do it! Go!” Haruhiro nodded and went after Ranta.

  It was a bit sloppy, but they couldn’t let this chance slip away. The enemy were clearly panicking. If they didn’t strike now, when would they?

  Push. We have to push and push, and of course we’re exhausted, but we’ll squeeze out what strength we can and push like crazy.

  Of the sixteen, Nono probably got four or five, and Lala shot just as many. The rest were finished off by Haruhiro and the rest on pure momentum. Before the last of them went down, Nono had already started collecting Lala’s arrows for her.

  With the enemies gone, Lala accepted her arrows back from Nono and then immediately ordered them all to, “Run!”

  It didn’t feel like they had a choice in the matter. If they disobeyed her, something horrible would probably happen to them. They wouldn’t get off with just a spanking.

  “Wh-Why?!” Haruhiro asked as he chased after Lala and Nono.

  “Why what?” Lala responded without turning back.

  “No, it’s just, Akira-san said it looked like you two had run away...”

  “You make it sound so bad,” Lala said. “Our horse-dragons got crushed, so we had no choice but to lie low.”

  Lala and Nono had ridden horse-dragons from Grimgar into the Dusk Realm. Now they were on foot. It was probably true that their horse-dragons had become unable to move and they’d abandoned them, or they had been killed by enemies.

  “Err, um... Where are we going now?!” Haruhiro yelped.

  “I have an idea,” said Lala. “If you can’t keep up, we’ll leave you behind. Nono, carry the mage girl.”

  Nono silently nodded, rushed over to Shihoru, quickly put her on his back, and caught up to Lala in the blink of an eye. She talked tough, but maybe she was a surprisingly good person? But she might also have been planning to sacrifice them if the time came. Even if that was the case, the two had saved them, so they couldn’t really complain.