Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 13 - Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Those Who Fight Back Against Destiny

As I watched Andou dash off into the distance, all the tension that had been keeping me upright drained away and I flopped right back to the ground. Saitou offered me a hand up again, but I just shook my head.

“You can leave me be, thanks,” I said. “I know I said I’d stay and help like a real badass a moment ago...but honestly, I think even taking a bullet for someone’s beyond me right now.”

I could feel a sharp pain in my ribs—most likely, one of them was broken. Characters in battle manga say stuff like “Tch! That last attack broke two or three of my ribs” all the time before carrying on with the fight totally unfazed, but if you ever break a rib in reality, you’ll quickly realize that it’s a much bigger problem than those stories would lead you to believe. For someone like me with the body of a perfectly average, unremarkable high schooler, even a single broken rib was enough to take me out of the action, like it or not.

Ugggh. This hurts so friggin’ much...

“I’m not going to be useful regardless, so just ignore me,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to hold your crew back.”

“Oh...? All right, then,” Saitou said as she withdrew her hand. It hadn’t taken much at all to convince her to respect my wishes.

I heaved a deep sigh. “I’ll just stay back here and watch. I’m looking forward to seeing what Saitou Hitomi’s master plan ends up looking like.”

“Maybe don’t get your hopes up. I can’t guarantee we’re going to win this.”

“And yet you seem awfully upbeat, all things considered.”

There wasn’t a trace of concern or hesitation on Saitou’s face. It was like she knew exactly what she had to do and had no doubts whatsoever about following through.

“I guess that’s probably because I know I’ve done everything I can. If this doesn’t work, then that’s that—I tried my best,” Saitou resolutely replied.

Just then, another member of Saitou’s crew made her appearance.

“Hell yeah! Kick his ass, Toks! You’ve got three more minutes before Ryuu can use another big move—plenty of time to wipe the floor with him!”

Natsu Aki—a girl with long, braided hair who had the power Headhunting—stepped up to cheer Toki Shuugo on. It seemed safe to assume that their knowing Kiryuu’s power’s one weakness, its inability to chain together multiple powerful finishers in a row, was thanks to her. Her power allowed her to analyze other people’s abilities, and it could have easily told her precisely how long Kiryuu would have to recharge after using a big attack.

“Now’s our big chance—we’ve gotta get him while he’s outta gas! This is the one time he can’t actually use Lucifer’s Execution, the secret move that lets him sever the flow of time! He’s been keeping it in his back pocket and hoping to get a chance to be all ‘I never wanted to use this power, but I have no choice...’ this whole time, but right now, it’s off the table!”

Headhunting worked by scanning the memories of whoever its wielder used it on, meaning that all of their secret plans and hidden moves were like an open book to her. And, I mean...hmm. How to put this... It just felt a little wrong to me, you know?

This was just like when she’d revealed the nature of Andou’s power’s second stage. Having all of someone’s hidden abilities laid out on the table at once kinda made me lose interest in them. It felt like having someone drop a huge spoiler on you out of nowhere about a series you were reading. Aki didn’t seem to realize what she was doing at all, though, and kept throwing out pieces of really important information like they were nothing. She didn’t even put any effort into the presentation of it all—she just said it.

Never mind the state of the story for a moment... The power to “sever the flow of time,” is it?

I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that the power Kiryuu had been saving for just the right occasion was, in fact, time-based. I was certain that he’d been planning on using it in the last battle that would go down following the formal selection of the Final Eight—specifically, in his battle with Kanzaki Tomoyo. Gravity and time were supposed to be closely related in, like, a theory of relativity sort of way? Something about time moving slower in places where gravity’s stronger or whatever. Anyway, I had a feeling that Kiryuu had been planning to use that whole theory as an excuse to class-change from gravity-wielder to time-manipulator.

It seemed that the prediction I’d made about where Kiryuu’s plan was going might have actually been pretty close to the mark...though considering he’d since swapped Kanzaki Tomoyo out of the final boss role in favor of Andou—or rather, Guiltia Sin Jurai—I couldn’t completely say that I’d called it. Plus, it was really hard to imagine that a guy like him would ever be willing to settle for the sort of cheap ending that an utterly unremarkable reader like me could predict.

I’d sided with the group that was doing their best to put a stop to Kiryuu’s plan...but I couldn’t deny that a part of me regretted that choice. All the instincts that I’d developed over many a long year spent living as a reader were champing at the bit to see the end of the story that Kiryuu Hajime had plotted out. Some part of me was still truly excited to see what sort of incredible final twist he’d cooked up for his conclusion.

Kiryuu Hajime—aka Ancient Lucifer—was the origin point of the Fifth Spirit War in a very real sense, and thus he was the root of all the troubles it had caused. After winning the Fourth War, he’d flipped the script by asking to fight in another one right away, bringing the event to our city once more—and with a wide variety of new rules added in. He’d altered and edited the War as he pleased. In a certain sense, I suppose that this War was his New Game +.

The question remained, though: Where was it that he hoped to steer the story for which he served as both star and screenwriter? What would happen when only eight Players remained in the War—when the Final Eight had been selected?

“...”

Hmm?

Uhh...wait. What? Hold on. No, really, hold the phone for a moment.

Suddenly, a clear and intense sensation that something was extremely wrong came over me. I furiously racked my mind, trying to figure out what it was that had set me off.

Okay, so, who are the eight Players most likely to still be in the running now...? There’s the five literary club members, to start. They’re set in stone. Andou was just here a minute ago, and I met up with Tomoyo, Hatoko, and Takanashi before I came here. Chifuyu used her power to help Andou out during his battle with Tamaki too, and Kiryuu was almost certainly planning on keeping them around in the Final Eight from the start.

I glanced around at my surroundings. Saitou and Aki were standing nearby, while Kiryuu and Toki were fighting it out in the distance. Counting me, there were currently five Players on the scene. Five here, and five in the literary club. All together...

“...There’s ten people left?!” I shouted in wild, hysterical shock. Instantly, my midsection erupted in agonizing pain.

Right. Broken rib. Definitely shouldn’t be shouting right now. Ugh...

But seriously, though—how was I supposed to not shout after a shock like that? Surely you see what’s wrong with this picture?

“And that makes eight.”

“The auditions are over, and the players have all been chosen. Now—let the beginning of the end commence.”

Kiryuu had very clearly—and loudly—declared that there were only eight Players left after he’d taken out Tamaki. That was the whole reason I’d used the special privilege I’d had tucked into my back pocket for ages to make myself into a Player. I’d thought that bumping the number of active Players back up to nine would spoil his whole plan. I thought that I’d thrown a wrench into his story’s works. But now...there were ten Players left?

“Bwa ha ha! ‘Ten people left’? Yes...of course you’d have questions about that,” Kiryuu said, retreating a safe distance from Toki and glancing over at me. I’d shouted loudly enough for him to make out my words mid-battle, apparently. “Yes, I did indeed say ‘That makes eight.’ But...”

An arrogant smile spread across Kiryuu’s face.

“...I don’t remember ever saying that I was telling the truth.”

“...”

Ugggh.

I just... I don’t even... Ugggggggggh.

An overwhelming sense of exhaustion assailed me. I’d screwed up, plain and simple. I’d known that you could never, ever take anything that Kiryuu Hajime said at face value, but I’d gone and done it anyway. I’d seen so many people make themselves look like total morons by making that exact same mistake, and yet here I was, failing to learn anything at all from their examples.

Most likely, Kiryuu had just been trying to look cool when he’d said that. He’d gotten so worked up by his reunion with Andou Jurai—an event to end all events, in his mind—that he’d made up the “that makes eight” line on the spot, just to add a sense of drama and urgency to the scene. It was like he’d slammed on the story’s accelerator, speeding toward its climax so that he could end a volume on a major cliff-hanger or something. The truth, meanwhile, was that there were still plenty of Players left in the game.

This was not funny. It was misery-inducing. It was exhausting. Even now, this late in the game, he was still as big of a poser as ever. On the other hand, maybe that was just a given. After all—we’re talking about the Kiryuu Hajime. The Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First.

“Wasn’t that much of a lie, though. After all...it’ll be true before you know it,” Kiryuu said. He raised a hand as he spoke—and the next thing I knew, the ground where Toki had been standing sunk into itself.

Toki’s naturally swift reflexes just barely saved him. He threw himself out of the line of fire, but he ended up sprawled on the ground as a result. The attack had been quite mild compared to Road to Abbadon, the one Kiryuu had tried to use on me shortly before, but it had still certainly exerted more than enough force to squash a human flat. In other words, while he wasn’t in perfect shape just yet, Kiryuu seemed to have recovered a reasonable amount of his MP.

Toki clicked his tongue with irritation. “Go to hell!” he spat as he rushed toward Kiryuu once more.

Toki’s onslaught made it clear that he hadn’t earned the title of Fallen Black’s assault leader for nothing. He didn’t bother with feints or trickery—he just charged in head-on, throwing everything he had at his opponent.

Frankly, I thought that made him an idiot. If Kiryuu really had recovered to an even slightly appreciable degree, then Toki was fighting a losing battle. His style had always been to overwhelm enemies who over-relied on their powers with pure physical might, but Kiryuu’s mastery over gravity wasn’t the sort of power you could overcome with hand-to-hand combat skills alone. It was a terrible matchup for Toki. He might as well have been launching a suicide attack.

“Be silent in slumber, ye seasoned warrior.”

What could I even say other than “called it”? As Toki made a beeline for Kiryuu, Kiryuu activated his power. He launched a very simple gravitational wave...probably. I technically couldn’t see it, but I was pretty sure that’s what he’d done.

Once again, the earth sank in on itself. This time, however, it did so in a far wider area than before. No matter how exceptional your reflexes were, dodging an attack like that just wasn’t humanly possible. Toki, however, didn’t hesitate. If anything, he ran with even more vigor than ever—which was possible because the attack hadn’t hit him at all. A gap had opened up in the wave of gravity, splitting it vertically and causing it to rush past him on either side.

A look of astonishment passed across Kiryuu’s face. His attack had been cleaved open like Moses parting the Red Sea. The gravity waves themselves were invisible, but the distortion of the ground that they left in their wake made what had happened plain to see. Amid a swath of devastation, a single, straight line of earth was entirely untouched, connecting Toki to Kiryuu—and Toki was sprinting down that one-way path like his life depended on it. In fact, he was sprinting like he’d known it would be there from the very beginning.

“...You’re wide open,” a dull, gloomy voice rang out as a small-statured boy stepped onto the scene. It was Akutagawa Yanagi, holding a hand outward with two fingers spread apart, like he’d just used them to zoom in on a smartphone’s screen.

Dead Space: the power to put the spaces between to work. It allowed its wielder to find and wrench open any and all gaps that they could perceive. Even a completely invisible gravitational wave, it seemed, was nothing more than a gap in Kiryuu’s defenses to Yanagi. He’d forced the wave open, creating the perfect path for Toki the assault leader to continue his charge.

I understood all that logic. There was just one thing that I didn’t get, though.

“W-Wait, why...?” I asked. “I thought you were on Kiryuu’s side?”

The last I’d heard, Fallen Black had fractured into three factions, each of which had started warring with the others. Kiryuu Hajime, Akutagawa Yanagi, and Hinoemata Tamaki had made up the Kiryuu faction; Saitou Hitomi, Natsu Aki, and Toki Shuugo had formed the Saitou faction; and Yusano Genre and her merry band of alternate personalities had gone solo, becoming a faction of their own.

Tamaki had already been knocked out of the running, but Akutagawa, at least, was still supposed to be part of Kiryuu’s camp. He was cold and calculating to a fault, and he had decided to join up with Kiryuu after logically and dispassionately analyzing the state of the conflict. How, then, had he been able to pull off teamwork on the level of precision he’d just displayed—so precise you’d almost think it had all been planned out in advance—with his supposed enemies?

“...Hmph,” Akutagawa grunted in response to my baffled, disbelieving exclamation. “As if I’d ever side with that moron. It was all an act.”

I was speechless.

“Sorry for tricking you, Sagami. The truth is that we used you,” Saitou said, stepping in to fill the void I’d left in the conversation with an explanation. “Akutagawa’s been pretending to be on Hajime’s side while reporting back to us as a spy the whole time. Hinoemata too, of course. We didn’t know what sort of crazy crap Hajime might decide to pull if the whole team betrayed him right from the start, so we made it seem like he still had allies.”

Saitou had laid her plan out pretty matter-of-factly, but as it sank in, I realized just how terrible its implications were—how terrible, and how tragic. I couldn’t hold back my astonishment or my sympathy.

Oh. I see. So...Kiryuu was betrayed by literally all of his allies. What I’d thought was a split in the faction was actually just him getting excluded from the group. And yet, up until this very moment, he’d thought that he still had friends... It’s hard not to feel a little bad for the guy.

“Siding with Hajime would have made most of us look like we’d completely lost our minds, but I figured that Akutagawa and Hinoemata could manage to make it look convincing enough, considering what they’re like. Akutagawa’s always decided whom to ally himself with based on who looks more likely to win, plain and simple, and Hinoemata... Well, Hinoemata has that whole obsession with Andou Jurai going on, and she never seemed to pay any attention to the actual Spirit War at all.”

“...Really, I think he would’ve believed it even if someone other than me or Hinoemata had joined him. He never questioned me at all. That guy’s totally convinced that he has a leader’s charisma,” said Akutagawa. He almost sounded like he pitied Kiryuu for a moment.

“I get it now... So Tamaki—Hinoemata getting Akutagawa to help with her plans, Kiryuu showing up here, and you arriving on the scene with suspiciously perfect timing were all part of a long-term espionage operation,” I observed. “Gotta say, though...I’m surprised, Akutagawa. When I heard you’d sided with Kiryuu I was a little confused at first...but I barely had to think about it at all to make sense of it. It felt like the decision that you’d make.”

Yanagi had always sided with whoever was strongest—whoever seemed to have the best chances of winning. He viewed the world through a calm, logical, and steadfastly pragmatic lens. In that sense, him allying himself with Kiryuu felt natural.

“But now you’ve jumped ship. You’re going for the long shot, lending a hand to a team that the odds are stacked against.”

“...So?” Akutagawa curtly replied. “The way I see it, nothing’s logical about obsessively calculating what will profit you the most and what everyone’s chances of coming out ahead are. Sometimes it’s not so bad to throw all that away and make a stand against the side that disgusts you.”

“Is that so...? Well, well. I guess I’ve been had, then.”

They’d fooled me from start to finish. Akutagawa and Saitou had both told me the bald-faced lie that Akutagawa was on Kiryuu’s side, knowing that I was connected to Kiryuu and would likely bring that false information up with him. In doing so, I’d made him that much less likely to suspect that there was a spy in his camp. They’d exploited my determination to stay an ever-neutral onlooker, taking advantage of the fact that I was willing to share confidential information with anyone and everyone if my whims drove me to do so.

“Honestly...first Kiryuu, and now you too? It seems everyone’s willing to lie to their readers these days.” Feels like you’re laying on the narrative trickery a little thick at this point.

While I was muttering to myself, Akutagawa stepped forward. He raised his hand once more, invoking his power to wrench open another barrage of powerful gravity waves, neutralizing them right before they made impact. He even opened up gaps in the air itself to generate powerful gusts of wind, impairing Kiryuu’s movements while aiding his ally’s.

As Toki fought on the front lines, Yanagi supported him with everything he had. A gloomy shut-in and a violent delinquent, two individuals you’d think would never see eye to eye, were taking on their former leader as a shockingly coordinated team.

“Ugh...” Kiryuu grunted as his back thudded against the concrete wall behind him. A combination of Toki’s knifework and Yanagi’s blasts of wind had overwhelmed him, literally forcing his back up against a wall—specifically, against one of the towering supports that held up the bridge over the river.

Kiryuu was cornered. There was nowhere for him to run. If ever there had been a moment when he was at his weakest, it was now. Toki, however, didn’t take advantage of that opening. Instead of piling on the pressure, he laid off, backstepping away from his opponent. It didn’t take long for me to figure out why.

“See you in hell, you dipshit of a boss,” Toki triumphantly declared—and an instant later, a thunderous crack rang out as a fissure raced its way up the concrete wall behind Kiryuu’s back. The cracks spread throughout the support before anyone could react, and at the same time, the horrible, screeching creak of metal straining to its absolute limit sounded from the bridge above. In the blink of an eye, the whole structure began to collapse.

Zigzag Jigsaw allowed Toki to leave a fragment of his knife behind in anyone or anything that he cut. That fragment would move with a will of its own, traveling to the core of its target and destroying it from the inside. For a person, that meant the fragment would travel to their heart and tear it to pieces—and for a building, it would target and bring down whatever structural supports it could access. Just as the smallest of leaks can sink the greatest of ships, even a slight graze from Toki’s knife would develop into a fatal injury.

Most likely, Toki had made a few cuts on the bridge in advance, leaving pieces of his knife inside. Then he’d waited until those fragments were just about to finish destroying the structure’s core before luring Kiryuu underneath it just as the collapse would begin. From the very beginning, the combination of shut-in and delinquent had all been for the sake of this one, single attack.

A roaring clamor filled the air as the massive bridge began to collapse into the river beneath it. The wreckage covered Kiryuu in an instant, blocking him from sight. Considering how quickly it had happened, there was no conceivable way he could’ve escaped. He’d entered the scene by standing atop the bridge’s highest point for maximum impact, and now he found himself buried beneath it. You could hardly have asked for a more ironic conclusion.

“D-Don’t you think you might have overdone it a little...?” I asked apprehensively. “I mean, are we sure that there weren’t any civilians on that bridge? We Players come back to life if we die, but if some random person who happened to be nearby got killed—”

“There is no cause for concern, onlooker.”

Just like that, a girl wearing the sort of bright pink nurse’s outfit that you don’t even see in eroge anymore stepped seemingly out of nowhere to answer my question. There was a mirthless archaic smile on her face that gave her a mysterious, almost inhuman presence. That told me that her core personality, Yusano Genre, was currently in control.

“Militaria’s power has driven any passersby away from the vicinity,” said Genre. “No innocents were harmed in the bridge’s collapse.”

Genre’s multitude of personalities predated her participation in the Spirit War. The power that the War gave her, Sex Eclipse, allowed her to transplant those personalities into other individuals, essentially acting as a form of possession. That wasn’t the only power she’d been given, though: Every single personality within her had each been given their own individual power as well. The basic rule of the Spirit War was that each Player got precisely one power, but Genre was an exception among exceptions. She was the War’s greatest renegade—or perhaps its most blessed participant. Anyway, I hadn’t met Militaria myself, but apparently, her power gave her the ability to drive people away from a chosen area.

“Genre...” I muttered. “Don’t tell me—you too?”

“Yes. I, too, have collaborated with Saitou Hitomi to oppose Kiryuu Hajime,” Genre indifferently confirmed. “I departed from Fallen Black in order to defeat him, but I was never concerned with the idea of doing so one-on-one. It would be strange for me to suffer from such a preoccupation, considering there was never just one of me from the outset,” she added. I got the sense that she was trying to be witty, but even then, her expression never budged. “If Saitou Hitomi and her fellows were willing to join me in opposing Kiryuu Hajime, then I saw no reason to refuse their assistance.”

Genre teaming up with Hitomi’s team was not a development I’d seen coming. This wasn’t the three-way split that I’d taken it for—the conflict wasn’t even in that dimension. This was a coup. The Twelve Wings of Fallen Black whom Kiryuu had assembled (of which there weren’t actually twelve, but never mind that detail) had all, without exception, betrayed him. A single woman who shouldn’t have been anything more than one of his many wings—the woman who’d devoted herself to him with a sort of dedication that no one else had ever displayed—had stolen his entire organization from under him. As things stood, the fallen angel’s wings were now all in her possession.

“I must praise Saitou Hitomi’s willingness to use every resource available to her,” Genre continued. “After all, I once intended to take her life in order to announce my intention to oppose Fallen Black.”

“You... Huh?”

“Moreover, I killed Tanaka Umeko while pursuing that objective.”

“Huuuh?!”

“I truly admire her willingness to join forces with me in spite of those circumstances.”

I whipped my gaze over to Saitou.

“That’s not how it happened,” Saitou said with a slight shake of her head. “Genre didn’t kill Umeko. Umeko died to protect me,” she quietly but emphatically asserted. She said it in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument. “I’m not going to claim that I’m not at all conflicted about working with her...but I’ve decided that right now, I need to prioritize getting as much backup on my side as I possibly can over my own little hang-ups. That’s what it’ll take if I want to beat Hajime.”

With that, Saitou turned to look once more at the pile of rubble. Her allies all had their gazes fixed on the bridge’s fallen remains as well.

By all reasonable standards, there wasn’t a chance in hell that Kiryuu was alive. As terrifying of a power as Lucifer’s Strike was, it did nothing to make Kiryuu himself indestructible. He was a perfectly ordinary, flesh-and-blood human being, and like most humans, having several tons of rubble on his head would kill him before he had time to realize what had even happened. Plus, he couldn’t use his control over gravity to reduce the rubble’s weight with his MP depleted. Saitou’s team had won...or rather, it was exactly the sort of situation that would make them think they’d won. In truth, however, not even one of them had let their guard drop.

The seconds ticked by. At long last, the cloud of dust that had been raised by the collapse began to disperse.

“You know, this is the one power that I never wanted to use.”

There he was. He stood atop the wreckage, his jet-black coat trailing behind him in the breeze, completely unharmed. Steel and concrete had fallen upon him like rain, but he hadn’t been so much as scratched.

Kiryuu lightly jumped from the pile of rubble...and vanished into thin air.

“It’s too powerful, see. Can’t exactly control it.”

The next thing I knew, Kiryuu appeared in a completely different place, several meters away from where he’d been before—only to vanish once more before I even understood what I was seeing. Once again, he appeared elsewhere, then disappeared just as quickly. It was as if someone were flicking a light switch that controlled his existence on and off, and after every disappearance, he shifted position before reemerging again. It felt like I was watching a stop-motion video with an incredibly low framerate.

This shouldn’t be possible. What am I even seeing? What sort of power is this...?

...is probably what most people would have thought under those circumstances, but honestly, I figured out the broad strokes of it pretty much right away.

“Bwa ha ha!” Kiryuu cackled. “I’ve gotta hand it to you. I never thought anyone would make me use this power... This is the true, innate nature of the power I was born with—the power of beginnings, and a power so fiendishly brutal, I had no choice but to seal it away. And that power’s name—”

“Okay, guys, Ryuu just used Lucifer’s Execution! It’s that time-severing thingamajig—you’ve all read my report and we did plenty of prep work, so you know the drill! Just keep calm and stick to the plan!”

The other members of Hitomi’s team nodded in response to Aki’s shout.

“That... That power’s name is...” Kiryuu mumbled. He’d just had the perfect opportunity to reveal his hidden trump card taken away from him, and he looked downright devastated. The look on his face was so pitiful, even I felt a little bad for the guy.

Okay, see, this is the thing. This is exactly why Aki’s power should never, ever exist in a supernatural battle story.

A power like hers made battles instantly boring. There’s nothing fun about fighting an opponent whose secret moves and hidden powers get spoiled before they’re even used. I’ll admit that I’d always been the sort of person who thought that plot twists that go “The truth is, I haven’t even been taking this fight seriously” and “Actually, I still have one trick up my sleeve” and “This move’s odds of success are too low, so I’d normally never use it, but” and “This is the one power I never wanted to use” and so on were solid signs that an author was gearing up to compete in the Asspull Olympics...but you know what? Asspulls are good, actually! A turn-based contest of competing asspulls is exactly what a supernatural battle should look like. That’s exactly why Tamaki’s and Umeko’s powers worked the way they did.

But anyway, that’s more than enough of my reader’s perspective. Back to the scene at hand.

Lucifer’s Execution: the power to sever time itself. The phrase “sever time” on its own was a pretty clear giveaway that it had something to do with time manipulation, and if he could mess with the flow of time, then his having emerged from a rain of rubble unscathed and flying around in stop motion both made total sense.

Time manipulation powers were, statistically speaking, more likely than not to end up in a final boss’s arsenal. Only characters important enough to influence a story from start to finish were allowed to set foot in the temporal realm. I didn’t know exactly how Kiryuu’s power functioned, but there was still no question at all that it was a mighty power indeed.

“Bwa ha ha...” Kiryuu laughed once more, though this time, it sounded a little forced. It seemed he’d more or less recovered his emotional footing. “Fine, then. If that’s how you want it to be...then I’ll carve my power’s name into your very souls, and brand you with the sigil of the conquered while I’m at it!”

With that enraged shout, Kiryuu made his move—or, rather, he prepared to make his move. He thrust his hand into the air, looking like he was about to recite some sort of incantation, eyes glimmering with a fiery passion all the while. Kiryuu Hajime was obviously about to use his final, most secret of special techniques: Lucifer’s Execution, the power to sever time itself.

In the end, however...I never actually found out what specifically that power was supposed to do. After all—he never got the chance to use it.

“I had faith, progenitor.”

The voice rang out seemingly from nowhere at all, but I knew its distinctive tone in an instant. I also recognized the strange way in which she referred to people by appellations rather than their names.

“Powers of time manipulation are a poor fit for this girl’s ability. Her power, after all, cannot be used unless she is able to witness the very instance that another power comes into effect. And yet...I had faith, progenitor of the Fifth Spirit War. I had faith that you would, without question, strike a pose or recite a chant that told me unambiguously when you were about to use your power.”

That peculiar, distinctive manner of talking—like she was monologuing and held no interest at all in listening to what anyone else had to say—could only have come from Yusano Genre...but the voice itself was nothing like how she usually sounded. It was the voice of someone entirely different—but not someone unfamiliar to me. In fact, it was a voice I knew quite well.

“Phew... All right! That’s mission accomplished,” came another voice, one much less focused and clearly rather relieved. It was Genre’s normal voice...but no. That wasn’t quite right. The speaker wasn’t Genre at all. “Ugh... I-I was so nervous! I’ve never had to impersonate Miss Genre before... I was on pins and needles worrying that someone would call me out...”

“A-Are you...Fantasia?” I asked.

“That’s right! It’s been a while, Sagami,” the girl in the pink nurse’s uniform replied with a cheerful smile. The eerie archaic smile she’d worn before had vanished into the wind.

Yusano Fantasia was one of the many personalities in Genre’s roster. She was also the most sociable of them all, and as a result, hers was the personality who’d spent the most time in surface-level control of Genre’s body. Genre herself had been acting as the main personality more often than usual lately, but up until quite recently, she’d lived as Fantasia the vast majority of the time.

Anyway, it seemed that the person who I’d thought was Genre was, in fact, Fantasia putting on an act. I hadn’t noticed at all—though of course, since they were the same person, I wasn’t going to beat myself up too badly over that mistake.

But in that case...whose voice had I heard just now? Who had come from nowhere flawlessly replicating Genre’s characteristic cadence?

“Progenitor. I have laid countless plans, run myriad simulations, all for the sake of defeating you. And, at the end of my labors, I reached the conclusion that this was far and away the most likely strategy to grant me success,” said the person I was convinced was Genre. It really did sound just like her, while also sounding nothing like her whatsoever. “The most likely to grant me success...and far and away the most expedient means as well.”

Finally, a girl stepped through a void in space. I assumed she’d used some sort of power to pull that off, and she might’ve been watching the battle play out through a hidden camera or something as well.

That girl...was Kudou Mirei.

Kudou was a third-year at the high school I attended, the former student council president, and—most importantly—the wielder of a supernatural power, just like the five members of the literary club. She possessed the ultimate power of usurpation, Grateful Robber, capable of stealing any other power she so chose.

The girl who’d suddenly arrived at the battlefield was unmistakably Kudou, but the aura she exuded was nothing whatsoever like her usual self. She had a calm, mysterious presence, and a hollow, emotionless, archaic smile graced her lips. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that although she was Kudou, Kudou herself was not holding the reins. Kudou Mirei had been taken over by Yusano Genre.

Sex Eclipse, the power of fractured identities, was the ability that Genre, the core personality of the whole Yusano conglomerate, had awakened to. She could use it to implant any of the personalities within her into another person’s body, and—as Aki had secretly informed me some time prior—if the core personality herself took over another individual, the effects of her mental domination became dramatically harder to resist.

“Kiryuu Hajime. Your power...is mine now.”

The moment the words left Kudou Mirei’s—or rather, Yusano Genre’s—lips, Kiryuu staggered, seemingly slumping over in exhaustion. His eyes were wide with astonishment, and an expression of frustration came across his face as he turned to look at the girl who’d stolen his power. He glared at her like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

“No...way... Kudou...Mirei...?” Kiryuu grunted.

“Hmm. It seems I’ve succeeded,” Genre dispassionately muttered using Kudou’s voice. She clenched and opened her hand a few times, as if to test her newfound strength, then raised that hand to point at a patch of ground a short ways in front of her—which instantly sunk into itself with a heavy thud. “The analyst was correct, then. By stealing his power to sever time, so too have I stolen his power to desecrate the force of gravity.”

The power Genre had just used was, without question, Lucifer’s Strike. She really had taken Kiryuu’s ability for her own. She’d casually, easily, and entirely claimed it.

“A new personality awakened within me,” said Genre. “Yusano Destinia is her name, and the power she awakened to in turn was that of omni-comprehension: Hard Watching. It grants her knowledge of every living Player in the War, as well as an understanding of their powers. Not as deep of an understanding as the analyst’s power gives her, however—Destinia can only understand their capabilities on a surface level.”

It sounded like a similar sort of power to Natsu Aki’s, but with very different strengths and limitations. While Aki’s power gave her deep, complete knowledge of anyone she could directly observe, Destinia’s seemed to give her shallow and incomplete knowledge of everyone on a broad, all-encompassing scale.

“It was through use of Hard Watching that I came across this girl. The power she bears is so mighty, it defies comprehension,” Genre said with her ever-present, empty smile. “It is preposterous...unthinkable beyond measure. How could a power such as it be allowed? How could it be acceptable for her to be able to steal any number of powers, at no risk to herself, with no requirement other than witnessing them in use? It is a violation of all rationality, and one of such excessive scale it could very well cause the collapse of the Spirit War itself. It rivals even System in the sheer danger it presents.”

The ability to steal any power just by seeing it really was way too overpowered. You had to wonder if something had gone fundamentally wrong when it was given to Kudou. If a character with a power like that turned up in a supernatural battle manga, they’d throw the whole story’s power curve out of balance single-handedly. It really was just as balance-breaking as System—or perhaps even more so, actually. It ran the risk of tearing apart a story’s world-building from the ground up.

The fact that its user had been isolated from the Spirit War along with the literary club’s members, preventing her from joining the battle in any real capacity, had kept her from exercising her true, terrifying potential so far...but when you thought about what she could have done, calling her power cheating felt like an understatement. The fact that it was both the ultimate buff and debuff all in one was enough to put it in the upper echelons of the power tier list on its own, but when you added in the fact that the conditions of its activation were so lax—well, the word “powerful” just didn’t do it justice anymore.

Even the godlike powers held by the four literary club girls were but dust in the wind in the face of Kudou Mirei. She was the human incarnation of avarice, capable of devouring power after power without cease thanks to the auspices of her Grateful Robber...

“So, this is the true face of Kudou Mirei’s power, the hoard of the raging despot, Tyrant’s El Dorado...”

“Your pride has betrayed you, progenitor. In your arrogance, you have fallen victim to Kudou Mirei’s Eater Eater.”

...and apparently, Kiryuu and Genre had both independently given said power their own names.

Well, this is getting confusing. I think I’ll stick to Andou’s Grateful Robber, personally.

“It baffles me as to why this girl was given such an unusual and unorthodox power...but I saw no reason not to make full use of it. Now that I have done so, and now that your power has been stripped from you, you are nothing more than a man like any other,” said Genre. A slight sense of superiority had slipped into her words, accompanied by an equally faint touch of pity.

Kiryuu, now powerless, staggered to his feet in a daze. Lucifer’s Strike, the power that had made him the most dangerous Player in the War, and Lucifer’s Execution, the power he’d kept hidden away in his back pocket, waiting for just the right moment to use it, had both been taken from him by way of avarice incarnate.

“This was our plan, Hajime. This whole time, our goal was to have Kudou Mirei steal all your powers away from you in one fell swoop,” said Saitou. “Not even Aki’s power could predict what exactly would happen if Kudou stole them from you. We decided that if we wanted to be as careful as we possibly could, we’d need to have her steal your power after you’d tried to bring out your hidden ability. I’m just relieved to see that it worked out.”

The pieces of Saitou Hitomi’s plan had finally fallen into place. While a three-way power struggle had played out on the surface, behind the scenes, she had directed every single actor in the scenario to take action against Kiryuu Hajime, leaving him entirely isolated. She’d even pulled me into her scheme, using my status as a reader to leak false information to her foe, all for the sake of engineering the single moment of weakness she’d needed to rally her troops and crush Kiryuu in an all-out offensive. Then, when his back was up against the wall and he’d had no choice but to use the secret power he’d been eagerly waiting to debut for so very long, she’d stolen it from him before he could even show it off.

As far as plans went, it was stunningly nasty...and stunningly effective. She’d brought together so much force to use against Kiryuu it was downright excessive, she’d ironed out her plan so thoroughly that there wasn’t the slightest crease to be seen in it, and she’d ultimately defeated him so soundly that it was safe to call her victory absolute. She’d so mercilessly used strength in numbers to crush a single foe, it’d make even a Super Sentai hero wince.

“So, Hajime? What do you think?” asked Saitou. “We are Fallen Black. We’re the team you brought together, the team that fought by your side, and the team that you just couldn’t manage to lead.”

The twelve wings of sable darkness: Fallen Black.

Its first wing: Eternal Wink, aka Saitou Hitomi.

Its second wing: Dead Space, aka Akutagawa Yanagi.

Its third wing: Head Hunting, aka Natsu Aki.

Its fourth wing: Zigzag Jigsaw, aka Toki Shuugo.

Its fifth wing: Sex Eclipse, aka Yusano Genre.

And, although they weren’t present at the moment...

Its sixth wing: White Rulebook, aka Tanaka Umeko.

Its seventh wing: Lost Regalia, aka Hinoemata Tamaki.

And finally...

Its thirteenth wing: Innocent Onlooker, aka Sagami Shizumu.

Those were the names of the twelve wings—or really, the eight warriors—whom Kiryuu Hajime had gathered to serve him. A team in name only, each and every one of its members lacking all but the flimsiest sense of solidarity. To make matters worse, their boss had no charisma or leadership ability to speak of. All in all, they were a ragtag gathering of mismatched powerhouses to the bitter end, each far too strong in personality to ever truly blend in with the rest of the group.

And yet, now...each and every one of them had fallen under the command of a single woman. She’d directed them with precision, and not one of them had fallen out of line. The group that Kiryuu Hajime had so miserably failed to manage ran like a well-oiled machine under Saitou Hitomi’s leadership.

“I don’t think I’m particularly amazing at this or anything like that,” said Saitou. “I’m not very charismatic, and I’m not much of a leader either. I’m as ordinary as it gets. But the thing is, Hajime...I was able to pull it off because of you. You made yourself into such a clear and obvious enemy, it was easy for the rest of us to come together to face you.”

“Dammit, Hitomi,” Kiryuu growled, gritting his teeth with frustration.

“Heh heh!” Saitou chuckled as she watched him. It was like she couldn’t hold back her mirth. “Well, this is nice. At long, long last...you’re finally looking at me.”

Saitou’s smile didn’t last long. It vanished away before I knew it, replaced with a dangerously pointed glare. She faced Kiryuu down with the bitter dignity of a true commander.

“It’s over, Hajime,” Saitou declared. “I still have no idea what you were trying to accomplish...and I guess now I never will. There’s one thing I can say for sure, though: We’re through with playing along with your games. We’ll defeat you. We’ll bring an end to your story.”

As she spoke those final words, Saitou’s allies—the teammates who had gathered up behind her—sprang into motion. Toki Shuugo, Akutagawa Yanagi, Yusano Fantasia, and Genre in the guise of Kudou Mirei went on the attack. Every one of them excelled in personal combat in one way or another, and all of them attacked in unison, dead set on ending their battle once and for all.

Kiryuu Hajime didn’t move. Most likely, he couldn’t move. Robbed of his power, he didn’t have any means by which to counter their all-out attack.

It was over. There was just nothing Kiryuu could do to pull off a dramatic reversal anymore. No convenient plot twist could make the impossible possible.

“Yeah...I get it. I was wrong.”

Suddenly, Kiryuu spoke. His voice sounded weak and somehow resigned.

“In the end, I never managed to make all of you see me as your boss...but, of course I couldn’t. I never told you the first thing about my goals or my true intentions, and I never put much faith in you either. A guy like me could never cut it as your boss. Ha... The twelve wings of Fallen Black? What a crock of bullshit,” he spat with a sardonic sneer. “I was wrong... I really was.”

Kiryuu repeated himself, over and over...and as he did, his smile changed. What was once a sneer spread wider, splitting open into a crazed, ghastly grin.

“I was wrong to think that I, Kiryuu Heldkaiser Luci-First...could ever let a team, of all things, hold me back.”

With a booming thud, the earth sank into itself. It sank deeply, a broad swath of the land pushed flat. The four members of Fallen Black who’d gone on the attack and those of us who’d stayed behind were all caught in the impact, driven to the ground by a powerful force. There was only one exception who remained standing: Kiryuu Hajime himself.

“Bwa ha ha, bwaaa ha ha ha ha ha... Yes, that’s right. I was wrong from the very start. Playing this friendship game and trying to fight as a fun little team was all a mistake.”

He laughed. He cachinnated. He let out a sneering, scornful, mocking cackle, his black and red eyes shining all the while.

“After all, the path I’m walking...the ideal I’m pursuing...the world I see before me...no one other than I could ever understand any of it. It’s far beyond the imaginations of you petty plebeians!”

“Ugh... Gaaaaaah!”

A wail of anguish escaped my lips as an impact crashed across my entire body. It was like an invisible giant had brought its hand down on me, crushing me beneath its massive palm. I heard similarly pained grunts and screams from the others as well. This wasn’t a fractured rib’s worth of pain anymore—it felt like my whole body was broken.

It was like we’d been made to kneel before a king. Like we’d been made to supplicate ourselves before a demon lord. Like we’d been made to grovel before a god. Like the ironclad hammer of a fallen angel had been brought down upon us. We who had dared to rebel against Kiryuu Hajime had now been laid low, one and all.

“U-Ugh... H-How...?” Genre—by way of Kudou Mirei—managed to choke out from the patch of ground where she’d been driven to her knees. “I stole your power... Lucifer’s Strike was, without question, in my grasp... So how...did it return to you?”

That was the only possible conclusion: Kiryuu had regained his power. The invisible force that was currently crushing us couldn’t have been anything other than his gravity manipulation. A power that should have been pilfered had somehow returned to its owner’s hands.

“The power to steal any foe’s ability after seeing it be used, with no further conditions or restrictions...? Hmph. That was a bad call. Sure, giving the first enemy a sense of impact is important, but even in that context, Kudou Mirei was just too powerful,” Kiryuu monologued matter-of-factly. “Under ordinary conditions, she would’ve awakened to the power to copy someone else’s power, and only for a limited time. Someone stepped in to change it into an outright cheat that let her steal powers for a potentially unlimited duration, though—and that someone was me.”

“That’s...absurd,” said Genre. “Wh-Why would—”

“Isn’t it obvious? To hype up the moment,” said Kiryuu. “I’d wanted to give Andou Jurai—Guiltia Sin Jurai—a moment to shine. I’d wanted to gift him a spectacular first battle in commemoration of our momentous chance meeting. It wasn’t easy, you know? It took a lot of work to set up a legitimately mighty enemy that his power could triumph against.”

The moment I heard those words...the pieces finally clicked together. The absurdly, irrationally powerful nature of Kudou Mirei’s ability and the fact that her battle with the literary club had almost seemed tailor-made to allow Andou to contribute in the most contrived way possible all made sense. It really had been contrived, because it was all part of the story that Kiryuu Hajime was telling.

Originally, of course, Tamaki was the one who had arranged for Kudou to be made into a Player. Tamaki had decided to use her as a tool to mess with Andou—and Kiryuu, in turn, had used Tamaki’s plan to fulfill his own designs. I had some doubts about the timeline of those events—it didn’t quite feel like they all lined up perfectly—but if you took into account the fact that Kiryuu had the ability to direct the flow of the Spirit War itself, those quibbles seemed downright petty. It was abundantly clear that the spirits had the ability to meddle with humans’ memories, so convincing Kudou that her power had always allowed her to fully steal other Players’ powers would have been the simplest of tasks for them.

Kiryuu had engineered Kudou Mirei’s actions—engineered Grateful Robber’s capabilities—all for Andou’s sake. It was like how light novels would always make sure that their first volumes ended on a big, climactic moment. Even a slice-of-life light novel had to give its main character a chance to shine somehow, and modifying Kudou’s power to be ultra-broken had given Andou his. She was turned into a character against whom the literary club girls’ godlike abilities would do nothing, but who could paradoxically get trounced by a lame gimmick like Andou’s “black flame that doesn’t burn” shtick. The power to steal powers, in fact, was probably one of the only abilities that could fulfill those very strict conditions.

“It was a pretty clever way to make him look good, I gotta say...but I might’ve tuned her power to be just a little too over-the-top broken while I was at it. And so, I’ve decided to fix it,” said Kiryuu. “Kudou Mirei’s Tyrant’s El Dorado: ‘Allows the user to steal any power that they see being used—with the exception of Kiryuu Hajime’s, upon which the power will not function.’”

I had no idea what I was listening to. The extra note that Kiryuu had appended after his description of Kudou’s power was so profoundly, childishly direct, I didn’t even know what to call it. It made no sense.

All of us were as baffled as could be, but Kiryuu ignored our confusion and just kept talking. The look in his eyes was full of a calm and composed joy as he swept his gaze across us, eventually landing on Akutagawa Yanagi, who, despite being prostrate on the ground, was still desperately trying to move his fingers into position to invoke his power.

“Akutagawa Yanagi’s Dead Space: ‘Allows the user to perceive and forcibly enlarge any and all gaps—with the exception of powers invoked by Kiryuu Hajime, upon which it will have no effect.’”

Like always, Akutagawa spread his fingers apart—once, then twice, and a third time for good measure. Nothing happened. Until moments before, he’d been easily opening gaps in the invisible gravitational force Kiryuu wielded, but now, he couldn’t influence it at all.

“Natsu Aki’s Head Hunting: ‘Allows the user to determine the full capabilities of any powers held by individuals they see—with the exception of Kiryuu Hajime’s power, which it cannot see through.’ Toki Shuugo’s Zigzag Jigsaw: ‘Allows the user to leave a fragment of their knife in anything they slash—with the exception of Kiryuu Hajime, who cannot be the subject of their attacks.’ Saitou Hitomi’s Eternal Wink: ‘Allows the user to give individuals they see an Evil Eye—however, this power will be rendered unusable for thirty minutes starting from the moment of this revision.’ Yusano Genre’s Sex Eclipse, plus all affiliated personalities’ individual powers: ‘Due to a violation of the one Player, one power standard, all personalities aside from the core personality, Genre, will have their powers stripped from them.’”

Kiryuu blabbed on and on without cease, listing off our powers and appending a new restriction to each one. The way he spoke was so expository, so specific and pointed, that it felt like he was reading out the changelog for the rules of a card game that had had its power inflation problem go well past the point of reason.

“Sagami Shizumu’s Innocent Onlooker: ‘Allows the user to cause others to have visions of their future—however, use of this ability will cost the user their own vision.’”

The next thing I knew—as soon as the words left Kiryuu’s mouth—the world was cloaked in darkness. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see anything at all.

“Reverse Crux Errata.”

I could no longer see what sort of face Kiryuu was making...but it wasn’t very hard to imagine how prideful he must’ve been as he revealed yet another of his beloved power names.

“This is the one power that I never wanted to use,” said Kiryuu. “It’s too powerful, see. It makes everything way too easy to control.”

Oh. Of course.

Why hadn’t I noticed sooner? This Fifth Spirit War had begun after Kiryuu, the winner of the Fourth Spirit War, had asked to fight another round. As his addition of the Final Eight rule made clear, he was, in a very real sense, the War’s true overlord. To put it in different terms, he had admin privileges over the whole War. If he’d had the ability to modify Kudou Mirei’s power and turn it into a game-breaking cheat, then it stood to reason he could freely meddle with other people’s powers as well, remaking them from the ground up if need be—and apparently, he could do so in real time.

Kiryuu Hajime had just rewritten all of our abilities. He’d gone out of his way to specifically purge the elements that were inconvenient to him and add ones that worked in his favor. He’d acted like the developers of an online game adjusting characters and abilities that were too strong in order to balance them, or like the makers of a card game writing errata to deal with overpowered cards or rules inconsistencies. He’d patched our powers.

“Are you serious...? You can’t do that...” I said with a pained chuckle. It was so absurd, I couldn’t even bring myself to despair over it. I couldn’t see how everyone else was reacting, of course, but I had a feeling that they were in much the same boat as I was. Kiryuu had demonstrated that he was operating on such a thoroughly different level than us that despairing over it would just feel stupid.

Reverse Crux Errata. He’d done his best to name it like one of our powers, but from what I could tell, it wasn’t precisely a power itself. Rather, it was his name for the authority that he held over the whole War—a power that existed in a completely separate dimension from the ones we held. That explained why Head Hunting had never even hinted that he had such an ability.

When the cards were all on the table, the situation was surprisingly simple: we’d never stood a chance from the start. Kiryuu Hajime could easily defeat any foe he went up against, and he could win the whole War just as effortlessly. He could also put on a convincing act that any battle he engaged in was hard-fought with no trouble whatsoever. He’d been going easy on all of us, enjoying a self-imposed challenge run. From the very start to the very end, from top to bottom, the whole Fifth Spirit War had been nothing more than a chance for Kiryuu to indulge in an over-the-top power fantasy. He had never been playing the same game that we were. He’d never lived in the same world—never saw things the way we did. Even calling him the War’s overlord felt like an understatement. He wasn’t the overlord of the War—he was, in a very real sense, the author of our story.

To Kiryuu, our powers were nothing more than elements of a plotline that he was still in the process of working out. He could revise them whenever and however he pleased. If a power was so strong it was getting in the way of the story, he could just hit the backspace key and act like it had never been there at all.

A story can have all sorts of its aspects get altered solely according to its author’s whims—and, as a result, can all too easily collapse in upon itself. The Spirit War had already collapsed in just that manner. As things stood, no one had the slightest chance of standing up to Kiryuu. He was unbeatable. His power was so absolute that complaining about how cheap it was didn’t feel worth the effort. No matter how the characters in a story struggled, they could never defeat their own author.

Our tale of supernatural battles had broken down in the most bullshit way possible: with the introduction of its own author into the story itself.

Silence fell. Nobody was saying so much as a word anymore. The fact that we felt tens of times heavier than usual thanks to the gravitational field was part of the problem, but more than that, our spirits had been shattered.

To pull out another card game analogy, it was even worse than playing a one-of-a-kind card and informing your opponent that all of your cards are toons now, so nothing affects them anymore. It was more like the sheer unfairness of playing against the game’s creator and having them decide to change the rules on the spot after declaring that one of your cards was too powerful. It was stupid, and once that line had been crossed, there was nothing left to do but flip the table and call it a day. Shifting back to story terms, if I encountered a twist like that in a book, I’d throw it straight at the nearest wall. You just didn’t do that.

What are you thinking, Kiryuu? You have to know that this is the one line you should never, ever cross, right?

“...Ugh. Hmnh... Ahhh!”

While most of us suffered in silence under the crushing force of Hajime’s gravity...a single individual was still trying to resist. Even after being hit in the face with the most awful, plot-decimating twist in history, just one of us was still willing to play along.

“Agh... Argh... Haaah... Ha ha... Ha ha ha ha! Yeah... I guess this isn’t happening,” said Saitou Hitomi. Her moan-like grunts of exertion had finally given way to resigned laughter. “I’d really thought I had you for a minute...but I guess this is as far as a foil like me can ever go. Damn it all... Who knew you’d be saving a trump card like that all the way to the very end? For god’s sake, couldn’t you be just a little predictable at least once in your life?”

Saitou sounded frustrated—as frustrated as she’d ever been. Her chagrin was clear in every word she spat out.

“Hey, Hajime,” she continued. “If you kill me here, I’ll come back to life without any memories of any of this, right? In that case...why the hell not? Might as well take this one last chance to just put it all out there.”

Saitou took a quick breath and hesitated for just a moment.

“Love ya, Hajime.”

She came out and said it—and in a weirdly showy tone, to boot. She put all her stubbornness—her inner self—her everything—on display. She’d put everything she had into betraying Kiryuu Hajime, scheming with all her might to bring about his downfall, but at the end of the day, who she was at her core hadn’t changed at all. On the one hand, she’d fought him with all her might, but on the other hand, she’d faced him with more sincerity and devotion than anyone else ever could have.

Kiryuu offered no response to Saitou’s out-of-the-blue, eleventh-hour confession of love. In my blinded state, I had no way of telling how he reacted to her all-too-intense feelings.

“...Later, Fallen Black.”

As he spoke those words—the last he cared to offer to us—the air around me seemed to shift. I could feel something so terrible looming over me, it made my whole body break out in goose bumps. Screams of shock and despair rang out around me. Kiryuu had clearly used some sort of absurd special ability, but I had absolutely no clue what specifically it was.

What I did know, though...was that our time in the spotlight had come to a close. Our hopes and dreams would have to be carried on by those who’d spent the whole story so far indulging in the little pleasures of their commonplace adventures.

Welp. I guess this is it for me. Take care of the rest, Jurai—nay, Guiltia Sin Jurai.

As I said that final, internal prayer, an incomprehensible and illogical power assailed me with irrational force. Before I’d even had time to feel pain, I was gone.

Bye-bye.