Monster no Goshujin-sama - Volume 4 - Chapter 10

Chapter 10: The World of Light

Unlike with monsters, we couldn’t possibly ask the knights to face off against Juumonji. We couldn’t afford more needless casualties, so I asked them all to back off. I had Ayame go with them just in case. Kei held the tiny bodyguard in her arms as Ayame’s fluffy tail wagged vigorously about. She was telling me to leave it to her.

The commander gave me a courteous bow, while Mikihiko stood next to her and gave me a thumbs-up before they both turned on their heels. The knights followed them, one of them carrying the unconscious Sakagami. He had passed out, unable to bear the pain from his injuries, so the knights had been able to secure him. We didn’t know what would happen if we left him at large while we tried to save Shiran, so although I’d had no choice but to kill him just a few moments ago, the situation was different now that the knights could restrain and watch him. We could possibly still get more information out of him.

In any case, that was a matter for later. I saw the knights off, then turned around. Shiran was forcing Juumonji away from our position with her fierce attacks, a result of the feelings she harbored.

Shiran’s strong desire was definitely confining Juumonji’s irrational violence. I didn’t want her precious sentiments to burn out like a shooting star. I took a deep breath, made my resolve, and called out to my companions.

“Okay, let’s go.”

If I could connect to Shiran through the mental path and retake her heart, we could join forces to defeat Juumonji. Considering Shiran’s own distinctive characteristics and this immense battlefield that had turned her into an undead monster, there would likely never be another opportunity like this where all the circumstances lined up.

My job here was to touch Shiran to connect us. Lily and Gerbera were to put all their strength into creating that opening. Our operation started. Gerbera took the fore. She folded in her legs, sank close to the ground, and leaped. The large spider turned into a white cannonball and forced her way into the fight between savior and ghoul.

“Shyaaah!”

Juumonji turned around in shock as Gerbera’s powerful kick came flying in. I thought that maybe things would end right there, but that was far too optimistic. Juumonji managed to block the blow using his broadsword at the last second.

“Ugh! Y-You again?!”

Having said that, even a warrior like Juumonji couldn’t dig in and withstand the full force of Gerbera’s momentum. Gerbera sent him flying back, tearing him away from Shiran just like we planned. That was only half of the plan, though.

Gerbera had thrust herself between two raging beasts, so to speak. If she paid too much attention to one, she’d be too slow to react against the other. As she was now, Shiran had no sense of reason. She couldn’t distinguish between friend and foe even as she stood against Juumonji so that we could get away. Her single eye could only see us as obstacles that hindered her from devouring him.

“Graaaargh!”

Shiran’s blade severed one of Gerbera’s legs. She had already struck again by the time Gerbera managed to react, stopping the sword after it dug into an area of Gerbera’s carapace that was particularly thick. This was enough to stop the blade, but not its owner. Shiran pulled out the sword with all her strength and lunged at Gerbera using her own body.

The sound of her teeth snapping shut rang out. My blood ran cold. Gerbera managed to grab Shiran’s forehead and force her back right before the ghoul tore into her carotid artery. Her other hand grabbed the blade of the sword coming down at her. Blood dribbled from her palm and fell to the floor.

“One and a half legs and a hand, huh? It matters not.”

Gerbera flashed a beautiful smile that had me charmed for a moment. The heat of battle made this girl shine like no other. Even her flowing blood seemed to vividly color her beauty.

“I shall forgive it, so you should do likewise. Worry not, your body won’t care about a broken spine at this point.”

Using the grip she had on Shiran’s face, Gerbera flung her full force. A crunch echoed through the corridor as Shiran’s neck broke from the stress. Her body violently tumbled across the ground. Gerbera, meanwhile, didn’t even watch as she turned around and charged at Juumonji.

“I’m getting sick of you...” he grumbled.

“Likewise, but I’ll be your opponent. Do keep me company!”

I had to accomplish my own task while Gerbera kept Juumonji at bay. Lily and I ran to where Shiran crashed. Her body had bounced off the ground and was now twirling through the air, her limbs broken from the impact. At a glance, her regenerative abilities as an undead monster even surpassed Gerbera. Such wounds would heal quickly. Still, she shouldn’t be able to prepare herself for battle with broken limbs. Her sword was no longer in her hand. This was a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

“Hyaaah!”

Lily lunged forward and caught Shiran with her spear. The point went right through Shiran’s thigh and stabbed into the ground, sealing her movements. This still wasn’t enough to stop the dead, though.

“Graaaargh!”

Even with all her broken bones, Shiran forced her muscles to move. She attacked Lily with snakelike movements. If Lily were human, this would’ve ended things. Or perhaps if Shiran still had her sense of reason, she wouldn’t have been caught by such a simple trick.

“I’ve got you now,” Lily said with a satisfied smile.

Shiran came biting in, but Lily’s face crumbled away. She undid her mimicry and enveloped Shiran within her slimy body. By the time I caught up, Shiran was squirming about as if drowning within Lily’s half-viscous form. Even with her abnormal physical strength, she couldn’t get out with her arms and legs broken. Lily couldn’t restrain her for long, but this was more than enough.

“Shiran...”

I ran up to them and immediately stretched out my hand to Shiran. The only portion of her that remained outside Lily’s body was her face. I went to touch her cheek. Taking a closer look, I saw the scars on her purple skin. They looked painful...and the moment that came to mind, gold covered my entire vision.

“Get out of the way, Master!” Lily screamed, having hastily reconstructed her upper body.

Lily’s body fluid splashed against my face. I realized the gold covering my eyes was Shiran’s long blonde hair. To think she would shrug off Lily’s hold with her body in such a state...

“G-Gah?!”

I didn’t really have the time to be thinking of such things as I writhed in pain. Thanks to the repeated damage to her body, the lack of time to restore herself, and Lily’s hold on her, Shiran’s movements had been dulled. Her attack missed its mark. Instead, she sank her teeth somewhere between my neck and left shoulder.

“Ugh...”

A sharp pain ran through my brain. Despite the mana strengthening it, my body was still so fragile. Her teeth crunched their way into my muscles. The feeling of being eaten alive sent shivers down my skin.

“U-Urgh...!”

I swallowed my urge to scream and clenched my teeth. I forced the convulsing muscles on my face to move...and smiled.

This was nothing. Our plan was a success. I only had to touch her to connect the mental path to Shiran. But the deeper the touch, the deeper the connection. And this was so much more than a light tap. Shiran’s teeth were digging into my body. She was swallowing a part of me. This wasn’t even just a matter of being in contact anymore. Our blood was mixed. Our very existences entwined with each other deeper than any embrace, bringing our hearts closer than any other action could.

And then...my consciousness faded away. My very being sank into the depths. I didn’t resist the familiar sensation and simply continued sinking deeper and deeper.

Now then, let’s go take back what I lost.

◆ ◆ ◆

Before I knew it, I was floating in darkness. It was like I had sunken deep into the ocean. Everything around me was pitch black. I couldn’t see a thing. I couldn’t touch a thing. My body didn’t even exist here to begin with.

This realization was a big difference from the last time I was here. I suddenly came to an understanding. With no body, I couldn’t see; I couldn’t stretch out my hand to touch anything. This was a bit of a problem, however.

I didn’t wander in here meaninglessly. I came here looking for something. I couldn’t accomplish my goal without seeing anything. I tried sharpening my senses to somehow see within this deep darkness.

It was like I was trying to become a light to cast away the shadows. In the next instant, I turned into a pale blue flame, floating in the middle of this pitch black world. The human-sized blaze swayed about and scattered embers in all directions. That was when I first noticed there were several other flames floating about.

There was a quietly burning red flame, an energetic but smaller flame, a flame that was both red and blue, and a large white flame. There were countless other lights floating in the darkness, but unfortunately, I could neither see nor sense them. They weren’t within the range of my own illumination. In short, this pale light was both my sense of vision and my sense of touch here.

It was a mysterious place. I tried stretching out my arms, causing pale embers to scatter, stretching my flame into the darkness. The light split in two, and I could now see my hands in front of me. It was a strange sensation. It wasn’t like seeing things with my eyes at all. If it were, maybe it wouldn’t have felt so strange.

Perhaps that was why I found something out of place with these two protruding lights. Looking closer, I could see there was something quite interesting there: a small crack on my left hand.

The pale flame actually had miniscule fissures running down it, fissures I could only see by straining my “eyes.” And as I stared in fixation at my own existence, I realized there was another red flame mixed within my blue one.

I wondered what it was. It was rather curious, but I wouldn’t get anywhere by pondering over it. It wasn’t like I could grasp what exactly this place was by thinking about it. However, though I didn’t understand it, I knew instinctively that I had to come here to fulfill my goal. I even knew what I had to do. So that was enough for me. I changed gears and got to work.

I headed further down toward what I was looking for. A trail of blood much like a thin red thread guided me to my destination. I gradually sank into the depths of the darkness. This space was endlessly vast. I couldn’t even imagine how far it went. Perhaps the concept of a boundary didn’t even exist here.

On that point, it was fortunate I already knew where my goal was. It made the painful experience I went through earlier worth it. I didn’t know when this connection would be severed though, so I had to hurry up.

Sinking, sinking, sinking, just sinking away.

Eventually, the other flames around me were no longer visible. The darkness grew thicker and thicker, feeling like it had a physical weight to it now. It was like the overwhelming darkness was trying to snuff out my tiny little flame. I suppressed my urge to resurface immediately, swallowed my own fear, and pushed on deeper.

Before long, I found what I was looking for. It was a violently burning yellow light, the blaze of Shiran’s projection. I felt joy for a moment, but then I suddenly grimaced. The image of her cradling her knees with her eyes closed pained me terribly.

The wounds from Juumonji’s attacks had carved cracks all over her entire body. Quite a few of them were so deep it was better to call them rifts. Even now, her wounded projection continued sinking deeper into the darkness. Slowly, yet surely...

The deeper she sank, the more the cracks multiplied, the more profound the rifts became, and the more fragments broke and floated off into this vast space. She was like a lump of salt dissolving in water, breaking down into tiny pieces and vanishing into nothingness.

Her light blazed brightly as if resisting such a fate. This glimmering combustion was none other than a manifestation of her will.

“I can’t disappear yet. I have things I still need to protect.”

That single thought maintained her projection here, regardless of the fact that it should have crumbled into the void of this darkness long ago. Upon closer inspection, there was something else mixed into her light.

They were all fragments, miniscule and with no definitive form like hers. A tremendous number of them were fixed inside Shiran’s light and burning fiercely. I could sense an independent will within each of them. These were perhaps fragments of emotions from all the people who had lost their lives fighting to protect Fort Tilia.

Shiran had turned into an undead monster by devouring the mana that filled the fortress. That mana came from the scattered souls of the soldiers and knights who died protecting it. It wasn’t all that strange for their feelings to remain in miniscule quantities.

In that case, Shiran was a crystallization of the noble desire to protect others. I couldn’t possibly allow her to lose this in the form of a pitiful ghoul, no matter the cost. I renewed my resolve and stretched out my hand to her burning projection. I knew what had to be done to recover the girl in front of me. We could use the inherent power we called cheats, which they called blessings, as naturally as breathing. That didn’t change even in this inexplicable place. I stretched out my fingers and touched her shoulder.

A small fissure ran down my hand with a crack. I gulped, but a part of my brain remained calm and looked at the scene before me. It was just as I had thought. For a single instant, I stiffened up. I felt shock, but this was what I expected from the very beginning.

This was my power. I knew by instinct whether something was possible. I knew other things about it too, of course. The moment I’d decided to retake Shiran’s heart, I’d had a bad premonition. Regardless, I’d resolved myself to do it.

I’d decided I would accomplish what I had set out to do, no matter what. There was no turning back now. I had no reason to stop my hand. I wrapped my arms around her without hesitation. At the same time, my own flame spread out and enveloped her light.

With that, the crumbling of her projection slowed down considerably. It seemed to be going well. I felt a sense of relief wash over me...as I heard screams from my entire body.

The surface of my projection was cracking all over, as if it couldn’t withstand the pressure of the depths. It was the same as when I touched her shoulder with my finger. I had touched something that wasn’t meant to be touched, so maybe this was perfectly normal.

This wouldn’t prove fatal, however. Unlike Shiran’s, the cracks running down my body were shallow and didn’t cause my projection to crumble away. My life wasn’t at threat, probably. Still, there were things that couldn’t be regained, even if it wasn’t fatal. This was a one-way road, so to speak. After taking one step in and looking back, there was no longer a path behind me. If I continued down my current trajectory, there was no guarantee I wouldn’t end up falling into the pits of hell.

That basically summed up what was happening to my body. Nevertheless, I didn’t consider letting Shiran go. I didn’t want to lose her. My feelings were strong...

Why did I feel so strongly about taking her back, anyway? Was it because she believed in me when I was nothing more than an alien to this world? That was certainly true. It was one reason for my feelings. I knew it wasn’t the only reason, however.

When I closed my eyes, I could see her standing against Juumonji. She was the knight who had continued to fight with the desire to protect someone in her heart, even in death. Her way of life proved this wasn’t a world dominated only by strength.

Juumonji and Sakagami had mercilessly killed Kudou Riku, the bullied kid whom Sakagami had dragged along and tyrannized even before coming to Fort Tilia. Kudou had once told me this world was one where the strong did whatever they wanted. His tone had sounded completely resigned, and I was unable to object at the time. Such tyranny had also trampled me, after all. In a sense, Kudou was like my reflection. But Shiran’s existence proved that such cruelty wasn’t all there was to this world.

These powers that were given to us out of nowhere, that contained no feelings or emotions, had cruelly destroyed the Colony. Now they trampled over Fort Tilia. Such rampaging strength certainly brought many to ruin. That was true. However, the feelings of the weak weren’t so powerless that they simply let themselves be trampled down.

If I could use my power to retake Shiran, who had proven this very fact, such a price was trivial. I held her in my arms and rose from the darkness.

Splashes continuously resounded as we moved higher and higher. We were supposed to be going up, but I felt like I was falling. I was going down a one-way staircase, step, by step, by step. Down, and down, and down...

“Do you understand, My Lord?”

Words that had been said to me suddenly came to mind.

“That is a tremendously dangerous train of thought. Even I can easily imagine it. If you try and bear everything on your own like that...”

She did have a point there, but I didn’t plan on yielding. Thinking back on it, the moment I decided to shelter Katou might’ve also been like this. Even though I knew it was inconvenient, I decided to protect her so I could protect that “something” within me. This was the same.

I was similar to Juumonji. I had been pulled into this world and given a power out of the blue. At first, I didn’t know of this power within me, having been nothing more than a member of the home team with no chance of encountering any monsters. But as I lay on the verge of death, I fortuitously met Lily and realized I had the ability to tame monsters. At the time, I thought this power was so I could survive on my own in this cruel world.

Back then, it was merely a convenience. However, I was able to meet Lily and the others thanks to this power. The bonds I’d formed with them were more precious than anything else.

That was why the following thought came to mind. This power was certainly an empty thing with no feelings or emotions within it—at first. It was more than that now. It was filled with the feelings of my servants. That was what I believed, what I wanted to believe.

And here, there was something I keenly wished to recover using this power. Betraying such a wish would be similar to denying the feelings charged within it. I couldn’t allow that to happen no matter what.

“Takahiro?”

A girl’s voice reached my ears as I continued my ascent. I looked down at the projection of Shiran in my arms, and she faintly opened her one remaining eye. That eye, filled with a boundless light, recognized my existence. In that instant, the mental path between us took on a firm shape. Or perhaps it was the opposite. The mental path took on a firm shape, which caused her to awaken.

As proof of this, the change happening to my body started to settle down. The crumbling of Shiran’s body calmed down as well. The color of her light also turned from yellow to red.

“Where...? Why am I...?”

Shiran spoke in a trance. Her consciousness was still fuzzy, and her eye was shaking like a trembling wave. To her, this probably looked like nothing more than a dream. That was the sort of place it was, and her state before waking up was pretty bad.

“Oh. I see. I used up all my strength and broke.”

The girl who had lost an eye smiled dryly. A single tear ran down her cracked cheek.

“Once again, I couldn’t protect what I had to.”

A single image from her fully exposed heart flowed into me through the mental path. It was a picture of a young man who somewhat resembled Shiran, dying within the forest. A young girl was wailing on her knees in front of him.

That was all I saw, but it was enough to feel a sorrow that felt like it would tear apart my heart. This was presumably Shiran’s memory from when she first decided she would take up a sword and protect others. She had used her great loss as a starting point and walked down the path of constant battle, hoping to decrease the number of tragedies in this world, even if only by one instance.

The path she walked was cut off halfway, and now she once more cried at her own powerlessness. Everything started with tears, and now it ended with tears. It was far too tragic.

“Don’t give up, Shiran. It isn’t over yet.”

“Taka...hiro...?”

As I continued to ascend, I saw the lights that were present when I had first entered this space. It was just a little further now.

“Let’s go back, Shiran. Kei is waiting.”

Shiran looked taken aback. She definitely didn’t believe me. But now that we were tied by the mental path, she could sense that I was telling the truth. Her eye shook like the surface of a lake. This time, her tears weren’t from sorrow. This was more than enough for me to feel that my decision wasn’t a mistake.

I joined the other flames with Shiran.

Light filled my entire consciousness and blinded me.

Then, I returned to the real world.