Volume 13: Monsters, Beasts, and Animals
「Saotome Rui!! Look at me!!」
Kokujou’s twin swords tore through the wall of azure flame.
Rui gripped her sword, lightning and fire burst along the sword. As she spun around, her slash met Kokujou’s with a crash, black and blue sparks swallowing Aoi’s vision in an instant.
At the razor-thin boundary where darkness and flame clashed, the two girls fought evenly.
Kokujou’s poison could not touch Rui.
Rui’s thunderfire could not pierce Kokujou.
「Hero-kun!! If you’re not going to use that power, then you’re no use to me!! Don’t get in the way of my fun!!」
「I wasn’t planning to! I’m only looking at you, got it!!」
Rui’s cry rang out like a war drum, and her sword surged with strength.
The thunderfire pushed forward, finally breaking the deadlock.
One stray bolt lashed out, carving deep into Kokujou’s cheek,
Her first wound that day.
She laughed, giddy, drunk on the thrill of pain, her sanity nowhere to be found.
「Go!!」
Rui flung one arm back toward Aoi without looking, calling him to move.
The azure flame swept in behind her, forming a curtain between them.
As the clash of swords rang out behind him, Aoi sprinted through the charred ruins of the city.
He clenched the back of his left hand, spat blood from his mouth.
He arrived almost immediately.
It was the hardware store he’d visited with Kiriya not long ago, when they came to buy furniture.
Now, its glass facade was shattered and its contents lay in piles of wreckage across the floor, but the building itself had survived.
Aoi barged inside, crushing debris underfoot. He dug through the collapsed displays without hesitation.
Knives.
That was all that came to mind.
He tore one from its packaging and examined its dull edge.
It didn’t look especially sharp, but that couldn’t be helped.
His bones creaked. Blood from his nose dripped onto the sword.
No time to hesitate.
His body’s collapse was accelerating.
He pushed aside the remaining debris to clear a patch of floor, and pressed his palm down, like a fish pinned to a cutting board.
「…Thank you. For all the power you’ve given me.」
He gripped the knife with trembling hands, held his breath, fixed his aim.
He raised his hand, eyes fixed on the glowing shard embedded in his left hand.
And then,
「!!」
With every ounce of strength he had,
He plunged the sword into his hand.
「Guh—aaaAAAAA!!」
Aoi’s scream echoed through the empty building.
But he clenched his jaw hard enough to nearly shatter his teeth, cutting the cry short.
He immediately raised his arm again.
The pain he’d just experienced threatened to make him hesitate, but he didn’t stop.
Once more, he raised the knife high.
「Ugh…!! Aah, aaAAAH!!」
His past self would’ve blacked out by now.
But Aoi went beyond the limits of the person he used to be, slamming the sword into the back of his hand.
The tip sliced through pale blue flesh, spraying blood and bits of torn muscle across the floor.
Screaming through the pain that flooded every inch of his body, Aoi roared.
To save Kiyosato.
To leave no regrets behind him.
To be able to tell her how he felt.
This kind of pain, he couldn’t afford to stop here.
As his screams echoed over and over again, he felt it.
The pale blue glow creeping closer.
His breath came in shallow gasps.
Still, he dug his fingers into the exposed flesh, searching for the spear fragment with his nails.
Amidst the lukewarm slickness of blood, he felt it: a shard of something hard and mineral.
He groaned as its sharp edges bit into him, but still he pried it loose.
A piece not even a centimeter long.
Small, but glinting with a menace that could make anyone forget its size.
A pale-blue shard, gleaming like a monster that had once bared its fangs at humanity.
Aoi fumbled the fragment, dropping it to the ground,
Then collapsed onto his back, drained.
He coughed, breathing raggedly.
The heat and chill in his body faded, as if time itself had stopped.
The poison of “Void Essence” was gone now.
His body would deteriorate no further.
But of course…
The wounds already carved into him weren’t going anywhere.
His body was slashed to ribbons.
His stomach churned, his vision swam,
Inside, he had to be in even worse shape than he looked.
The dizziness threatened to pull him under.
All he wanted was to sleep.
「…Hah.」
But Aoi stood.
His body felt like a soaked rag, ready to tear apart.
Yet something in his heart burned too fiercely to let him fall.
Better this agony, than to close his eyes having done nothing.
He was born a mob, maybe.
But thanks to that…
He’d grown a resilience, a stubbornness, that he was sure no one else could match.
Leaving a trail of blood behind him, Aoi staggered toward the main road.
Gripped tightly in his left hand was the Malice Divine Arms of Armor-Eater.
The very weapon he’d kept close, hidden against his chest this whole time.
Blood gushed from the back of Aoi’s hand, running down the key in crimson threads and dripping intermittently to the floor.
The Malice Divine Arms, a savage artifact of pure corruption, capable of tainting the human soul.
Among them, Armor-Eater was said to be one of the more stable, with relatively low contamination risk.
But it was still dangerous.
Still…
Compared to Counterblade or Fallen Madness, the burden on the body was far lighter.
And more importantly, Aoi was certain of one thing:
No matter how violently his heart surged with emotion, it would not lose sight of his goal.
「《Resonate.》」
《『Armor-Eater 』, Warning!!》
He whispered calmly.
In response, a man’s voice, cheerful and synthetic, rang out from the relic.
Aoi’s eyes turned forward, to the explosion of light down the main street.
As if heaven and the underworld were colliding.
He raised the key, and thoughts came flooding back.
So much regret.
His life had been full of it.
But that was precisely why he couldn’t die now.
Not to fall into the darkness and lament.
Even if he regretted, he had to climb over it, to stop the next sorrow from being born.
That’s what Rui had taught him.
If he died here, how many more regrets would follow?
He would be overwhelmed by shame, for ending his life so recklessly.
He’d fail to save Kiyosato, lost in the dark.
He’d betray Akari and Kotone, who’d desperately tried to stop him.
And he’d never tell Rui how he felt.
To end like this… would be no different from the final moments of Nakahara Kasane.
He’d failed.
He’d made mistakes.
But even so, he had tried to change, he was changing.
And if he hadn’t changed yet, then he would now.
Even if he was just a mob again.
This time, he couldn’t let it end here.
He didn’t want it to end.
『《Connect ,C’mon!!》』
A torrent of violent power surged within him.
Something gripped at the edges of his consciousness, trying to pull it away.
But Aoi didn’t let go of his determination.
《Welcome to Delta Server》
He exhaled, and kicked off the ground.
☆
A flood of fire spread, pushing aside the collapsing weight of entire buildings.
Lightning rained from the sky, piercing through swarms of insects.
Black waves surged in response, clashing and canceling out those attacks,
An endless back-and-forth of wide-area devastation.
Swords collided again and again, forcing both sides to break away to avoid the shockwaves.
Rui clicked her tongue in irritation.
The black mire was spreading wider and wider.
And from it, an endless stream of creatures emerged,
Making it impossible to close the distance.
But in terms of sheer offensive power, Rui held a slight edge.
Even Kokujou couldn’t claim dominance in a long-range engagement.
Overwhelming firepower.
Absolute, deadly poison.
As their intense clash reached a standstill, a new figure suddenly leapt from behind Kokujou, as if to break the deadlock.
「Kokujou!!」
The sharp voice belonged to Kotone, still carried on Hayato’s back.
Kokujou narrowed his eyes in amusement,
And as if following Hayato and the others, another uninvited guest revealed itself.
A monstrous butterfly, towering high into the sky.
Hayato shouted.
「Rui! I’m backing you up!!」
「…Hmph. Don’t you mean you need my help?」
She swept her sword in a horizontal arc.
The unleashed storm of thunder and flame shot past Kokujou’s head, hurtling straight toward Toukatsu.
「Wah—!!」
Explosion.
A shrill, almost feminine scream burst from Toukatsu as the blast hurled Hayato and Kotone into the air.
The two of them flew apart, tossed by the shockwave.
They sailed over the poisonous mire, landing near Rui.
Truth be told, she could’ve caught either of them.
But she knew all too well that nothing good ever came from catching that man, so she caught Kotone alone.
While Hayato faceplanted into the ground, Rui gently lowered Kotone to her feet.
「Sazanami-kun!? Did you see him!?」
Kotone fired off her question in rapid succession.
When Rui nodded, Kotone let out a breath of relief.
「Then where is he now!?」
Before Rui could answer, Toukatsu, crashed into the ground, let out a shriek.
Even now, it flailed its wings, charging up light within its grotesque mouth.
Rui spoke.
「Who knows—」
But even as Toukatsu writhed, trying to unleash its beam.
Something came flying from above.
「—But it has been nearly two minutes.」
In that instant, Toukatsu let out a scream.
Something, no, someone, dove down, sword in hand, and plunged it straight into the creature.
Black flames erupted.
Toukatsu thrashed wildly… and then wilted, strength draining from its massive body.
Rui’s eyes narrowed slightly.
She recalled what Aoi had told her,
That he was just a mob, someone standing at the edges of the world.
「…Is that really true?」
Watching him now…
It was hard to believe that ever was.
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