My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! - Volume 7 - Chapter 20

Chapter 20 — If There Aren’t Any Elves Here, Then There’s No Point Being in This Forest!

Hanakawa once again found himself in an empty white space. He had no memories of going to sleep. Just moments before, he had been walking through the Elven Forest with Yoshifumi. Maybe only his consciousness had been brought to this dream-like space. That would mean either his body was still walking on its own or maybe time was frozen while he was here.

“This again...” He looked around. He had figured he was about to be presented with another apostle candidate, but there was no one else there. “Will they show up later? I’m starting to feel like this is an entirely hopeless endeavor...”

Although he had tried to come up with many ideas for others to overcome Yogiri’s instant death power, it was starting to feel like it just wasn’t possible. Yogiri could detect killing intent and kill people at will. How on earth was one supposed to deal with that? Hanakawa’s imagination had run dry.

“In the end, I suppose only a being powerful enough to nullify his instant death power is capable of dealing with him.”

No matter how much defense or instant death resistance once possessed, it was meaningless to Yogiri.

“At first, I thought the ability to perceive killing intent would be the greatest issue. However, after testing a number of things, an unavoidable, unblockable attack that instantly kills is incredibly frustrating.”

Death was guaranteed, and resurrection was impossible. Even robots and the undead would die if Yogiri decided they should.

“As such, it appears the best option is to leave him be! If you avoid getting involved with him, he won’t do anything to you!”

“That’s no good!”

“Yeah, after all this, you have to do something.” Malna and Rilna suddenly appeared in front of him. Knowing this was a dream, he was hardly surprised.

“Nice to meet you again. So, who will you send next? Apparently the otherworldly witch Miranda has fled.”

“She ran to another world, so there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We’re the gods of this world, after all.”

“Is that how it works? I thought you put a curse on the apostles to make them die if no one challenged Yogiri.”

“Nope. Whether someone challenged him or not is kind of vague, so it’s all up to our discretion.”

“If we ever felt like, ‘Man, no one is trying anymore,’ then we’d start punishing people directly.”

Malnarilna’s power didn’t extend beyond their own world, and the punishment for breaking the rules they set wasn’t automatic but rather something they had to execute manually. Hanakawa didn’t know if that information would be useful, but he made note of it just in case.

“So what do you intend for the next apostle? Is there anyone stronger you can use?”

“No?”

“We thought it was about time we sent you.”

“You’ve helped everyone else a lot, so you’ve thought of what to do yourself by now, right?”

“Me?!” Hanakawa sputtered.

“I mean, that was the plan from the start, right?”

“You said you’d do it, didn’t you?”

He had promised he would fight Yogiri when he’d first met Malnarilna. He had forgotten about it with all the advice he had been giving since then, but the plan from the start was that Hanakawa would someday have to challenge him directly.

“Can I say that I changed my mind?” he tried.

“Aha ha, of course not.”

“You gotta be pretty brave to try and take back a promise you made with a god.”

“As I assumed!”

These two were gods. There was no way he could go back on his word to them. He would have to keep up his end of the bargain whether he liked it or not.

“So, did you decide on a power?”

“Did you think about it?”

“Uhh, actually, I have put some thought into it, but if you could give me a little more time...”

“Nope!”

“We already decided you’re next!”

“So decide right now!”

“Say it now!”

“You have five minutes!”

“Even if you haven’t decided by then, we’re sending you to Yogiri Takatou anyway!”

It seemed there was no way for him to buy any more time.

Wait, even if I am teleported near him, all I have to do is avoid fighting him, correct?

The other apostles had all been killed because they’d tried to attack Yogiri. So he just had to do nothing at all. Even if he was teleported beside him and ended up meeting him, he only needed to act friendly with him. It was hard to believe that after his involvement in all of this, Yogiri would consider him a friend, but if he begged on his hands and knees like always, he might be able to get Yogiri to forgive him.

“You’re not thinking of running away, are you?”

“You don’t think you can avoid fighting him, do you?”

“O-Of course not!”

“You don’t have to fight him at all, actually.”

“But there are only three apostles left, including you.”

“And the rule is that if no one challenges him for a full day, everyone dies.”

“You’ll die right away, you know?”

At this rate, he had three days to live, at best. If he didn’t want to die, he needed to think of a way to defeat Yogiri in the next five minutes.

“But if I had a way of defeating him, I would have told someone how to do that long ago!”

As he struggled in vain to come up with a way to escape his inevitable fate, that fate continued creeping ever closer, second by second.

◇ ◇ ◇

After the Jet Black Witch had left them, Yogiri, Tomochika, and Mokomoko were left alone for a while. While it would have been nice if that was the last of the apostles, counting the apostles who had attacked them from a distance, there were more than twelve already, so it seemed best to assume they would keep coming.

“It appears we have about two kilometers to go,” Mokomoko said, returning from above the canopy.

“I guess it’s good that we’re getting closer,” Tomochika replied, “but we have no idea what we’re going to do when we get there, do we?”

“There might be elves,” Yogiri suggested, trying to make her feel better.

“I wonder about that...” Despite being called the Elven Forest, there didn’t seem to be any trace of them, so it seemed unlikely they would suddenly appear. “I wonder if you killed them all?”

“You mean maybe every single elf was Izelda? I guess it’s possible, but he spread himself out to improve his chances of survival, so I don’t think he’d be an entire race.”

“Seeing as it’s called the ‘Elven Forest,’ I’d hate to think there aren’t elves anywhere...” In spite of her words, it appeared Tomochika had given up.

Mokomoko continued cutting a path through the forest. She seemed to have grown quite accustomed to her new role.

“Hm? Something is coming!” she said, coming to a halt. They were about one kilometer out from the ruins.

“There’s...a little bit of killing intent.” Yogiri felt it faintly. It didn’t seem like someone who was absolutely determined, but more like someone who was half-heartedly setting their sights on them.

“It’s probably another one of those apostles,” Tomochika sighed. Yogiri was similarly sick of them.

“They are above us,” Mokomoko observed. “It seems they are traveling through the branches.” Now that she mentioned it, they could hear a faint sound of rustling in the trees ahead of them, growing gradually louder.

“That’s a new approach,” Yogiri observed.

“Yeah. Before, they just waltzed up to us or attacked from a distance, right?”

The apostles so far had attacked either brazenly, directly, thinking that Yogiri’s instant death ability wouldn’t affect them, or carefully from a distance, trying to take him out without him noticing. If this was neither, perhaps they weren’t an apostle after all.

“Elf...holy land...trespass, humans, unforgivable...die...the barrier...stay away...shrine...great tree...die...die...”

They began to hear broken, disjointed words coming from the trees. Even their translation tool seemed to be having difficulty handling what it was picking up. Whoever it was was clearly having difficulty speaking the common language of this world.

“I-Is it really?! They’re here?! They’re finally here?!” Tomochika was immediately excited.

“Dannoura, no matter how you look at it, they’re clearly hostile. Don’t be so happy to see them.”

“But they even called themselves elves!”

They might have had to kill them right away, but Tomochika wasn’t taking the situation as seriously as Yogiri was.

“What should we do?”

The hostility was getting stronger. If the elves didn’t want the three of them to proceed, maybe it was best to do as they were asked and turn around. However, if they were going to be attacked, they would have to defend themselves.

“It would be best if we could discuss things with them. It is a little irritating to have them watching us while hiding. Here.” Furemaru extended in Enju’s grip. With a wide swing, she cut away the branches and leaves covering whoever was watching them.

“Geh, ga!” With a surprised cry, the owners of the mysterious voices came into view.

“Uhh...”

Tomochika cocked her head. They were incredibly hard to describe. Among the animals Yogiri knew, the closest thing he could think of was a gibbon, but these had four arms. Two long arms were being used to grab onto and travel through the branches. The remaining two held primitive-looking black stone tools. They had legs, but they were short and thin, seemingly not used much for a life in the treetops. In all, they looked like some kind of monkey, but their skin was green and hard. Their faces were shaped like upside-down triangles, and they had enormous eyes similar to a praying mantis. They almost seemed like insects that looked like monkeys.

“What the hell kind of elves are these?!” Tomochika exploded.

They were nothing at all like what the term “elf” had made her imagine. But considering the forest they lived in, Yogiri figured their appearance made sense, so he wasn’t overly surprised.

“They do have pointy ears,” he noted.

“That’s the only thing, though, isn’t it?!” On the sides of their heads were something that appeared to be ears, which were long and came to a sharp point. “Give them back! All my expectations! My romance! My fantasy!”

“From their perspective, that’s a pretty unreasonable thing to ask.”

Tomochika had gotten her hopes up all on her own, so that was hardly the elves’ concern.

“Are they not going to attack us?” Yogiri wondered.

“Perhaps not,” Mokomoko answered, “but it doesn’t seem like they intend on allowing us to proceed either.”

The elves had taken up positions in a wide formation in front of them. Seeing that the trio was heading for the cluster of buildings, they were likely there to stop them.

“Does that mean those buildings were the elves’ city after all? That’s good.”

“What’s good about that?! Who cares, if this is what’s living there?!”

Yogiri tried calling out to them. “We’re trying to find a way out of the forest.”

“Go...away...”

“Doesn’t seem like they understand. Now what?”

The first impression the elves gave was like that of a primitive, tribal people. Yogiri wasn’t so arrogant as to kill people like that just because they were in the way.

“Let’s just get out of here! If there aren’t any elves, there’s no point being in this forest!”

“It’s not like we came here for the elves...but I guess if they don’t want to let us through, we don’t have to force our way past them.”

Yet, aside from the ruins, they had no other places they could think of going. They still had no idea how to get out of the forest.

As they considered their options, a light began to shine in front of them.

“Are the elves attacking?” asked Tomochika.

It was a circle of light about a meter across. The complex geometric shapes made it look like a magic circle of some sort.

“Guo, gya!”

They had thought it was a magical attack on the part of the elves, but the elves themselves seemed just as surprised by its appearance. As a person appeared in the center of the circle of light, they made a panicked retreat, seeming to find the sight impossible to believe.

“Huh? Hanakawa?”

Their classmate, Daimon Hanakawa, appeared from the light.

◇ ◇ ◇

“First of all!”

“First of all?”

“First of all, please calm down!” Hanakawa said the moment he appeared. “You may be thinking something like, ‘What is this guy saying all of a sudden?’ but first, deep breaths! Haste will only lead to making mistakes!”

“I mean, we’re pretty calm,” Yogiri replied. “You’re the one who’s panicking here.”

“Then you won’t go, ‘Eternal Force Blizzard! And they die!’ on me, will you?”

“If you don’t attack us, then I won’t, so relax.”

Hanakawa had heard plenty about Yogiri’s power. It was normal for him to be afraid of it after having witnessed it himself, but he should have also known that Yogiri didn’t just use it whenever he felt like it.

“First of all, I have no intention of being your enemy. I only wish to explain the current situation!”

“Fine. Mokomoko, could you make a tent for us? Let’s take a break.”

“Very well.”

Mokomoko created a tent from Furemaru, and everyone stepped inside. They sat down on the floor, facing Hanakawa.

“Now then. About this situation. You have been attacked by a number of people calling themselves apostles recently, correct?”

“Yeah, we were.”

“Those were all assassins sent by Lord Malnarilna to kill you, Sir Takatou. So, and this part is important, please pay careful attention so you don’t misunderstand, but...I would like you to hear me out without getting angry. You won’t get angry with me, right?”

“That depends on what you say.”

“Umm, well... I have also become one of those apostles—”

“So you’re here to kill Takatou too?” Tomochika asked.

“Is that so? That’s unfortunate.”

If he attacked them, Yogiri would have no choice but to retaliate. He couldn’t say that he felt nothing at the prospect of killing Hanakawa, but he wouldn’t hesitate if he had to.

“Of course not! Absolutely no way! I am fully aware that I have no chance whatsoever against you! I have no intention of becoming your enemy!”

“Then why are you here?”

“Lord Malnarilna teleported me here to try and force me to fight you.”

“But if you don’t want to fight, then what’s the problem?”

Apostle or not, if he didn’t attack them, they wouldn’t have an issue.

“Right. But what are you going to do then, Hanakawa? Just wander around the forest?” Tomochika asked.

“Wait! Why are you working on the assumption you will be abandoning me already?!”

“Come on. We’ve all been acting like nothing happened, but remember what you did when we first got to this world?” Tomochika asked, looking at him through half-closed eyes.

Immediately after they were summoned, Hanakawa had decided to use his advantage of prior experience in this world to do whatever he liked. The first thing he had done was attempt to assault Tomochika, so it wasn’t so easy to forgive him.

“Huh? Oh, uhh, didn’t you end up forgiving me at some point along the way?”

“No?”

“Ah, I see.”

“I think it’s a bit too cruel to leave him here, though, so we can at least take him outside the forest with us, can’t we?”

“Ohhh! As expected of Sir Takatou! You have certainly come a long way since abandoning me in the Forest of Beasts!”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.”

“I almost died there, you know! I am rather magnanimous, so I hold no enmity towards you for that time, but there still remains a problem with my role as apostle!”

“What is it?”

“Well, you see, if no apostle challenges you for a full day, then every one of us dies!”

“Speaking of which, how many apostles are there?” Yogiri asked.

“Their numbers continue to increase with no strict limit, but last I heard, there were three left, including myself.”

“So you have at most three days left to live?”

“That is correct, but I would appreciate it if you sounded a bit more concerned! I have no wish to die!”

“Yeah, I guess everyone feels that way,” Tomochika commented offhandedly.

“So flippant! I would ask that you treat my life with a bit more, how would you say...gravity?”

“But that’s your problem.” Yogiri figured there was nothing they could do about it.

“As such, I would like you to fight me now!”

“You just said you had three days left, didn’t you?”

“Well, I was told to fight you and return, so I can’t just refrain! So I would like you to pretend we are fighting extraordinarily hard, and after a resounding victory for you, I can say, ‘I tried my best but didn’t stand a chance, as expected of Sir Takatou.’ And then you can be like, ‘Heh, you’re pretty good! I like you! Good fight, let’s call it a draw!’ If we do that, maybe I’ll be able to extend my deadline a little!”

As usual, Hanakawa suggested an incredibly annoying plan.