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TL: Thy Unsus

ED: UpsilonProgress-kun

Synopsis of the last chapter:

Silane: “……”

Synopsis of the last last chapter:

Gerbersan was about to die off-screen.

Silane: “……”

Though monsters were another story, there was nothing the knights could do by turning Juumonji into an enemy. I decided to ask them to fall back to prevent unnecessary damage.

Just to be sure, I gave Ayame to them. The small escort was shaking her dangling tail as Kei held her in her arms. She seemed to be saying “Leave it to me!”.

Leader courteously thanked me, and next to her Mikihiko raised his thumb and turned back. The knights followed after them.

Among them was also Sakagami, limp and unconscious in one of the knight's arms.

The knights had collected him, who lost consciousness from being unable to bear the pain of his injuries in both legs.

I couldn't go help Silane while leaving him as is, so I had no choice but to try to kill him a little bit ago, but now I didn't have to. If we let him live, we might be able to hear something useful later.

In any case, it could be said that the operation was a success.

Seeing off the knights, I turned back.

I wonder if this, too, was an act due to the feelings Silane had. Juumonji was being pushed away from where we were due to being pushed by her fierce attack. Silane's feelings were definitely confining the unreasonable violence that Juumonji wielded.

I didn't want those precious feelings of hers to disappear in an instantaneous, fiery end like a shooting star.

After taking a deep breath and resolving myself, I called out to my allies.

“Well, let's go.” (Majima)

By connecting the path to the Ghoul-turned Silane, her mind would recover, she'd join forces with us, and we'd defeat Juumonji.

Considering that a large battlefield like this, as well as the special characteristics Silane herself had, there would probably never again be an environment this well prepared.

My job was to touch Silane to connect her to the path.

My allies would use all their strength to open the way for that. The operation started now.

The one who advanced first was Gerbera. She folded her spider legs and jumped from a low, crouched stance.

The large, white spider-turned-cannonball thrust herself into the battle between the hero and the Ghoul.

“SHAAAAAAA!” (Gerbera)

Gerbera tried to send Juumonji, who turned his head in surprise, flying with a kick. I thought that if things went well, it'd end there, but naturally it didn't go that well. Juumonji just barely defended against the spider leg she swung down to crush his face.

“Uguu, Y-You……!!?” (Juumonji)

But, it seemed even a cheat holding ‘Scouting Corps' member couldn't kill the power of a blow he received if it was at full power and was from a fair distance away.¹ As we planned, Juumonji separated from Silane after being kicked away.

But, this was still half.

In other words, Gerbera threw herself in-between two fighting beasts. If you concentrated on one side, your response to the other would be delayed no matter what.

And, Silane currently didn't have any reason. Unable to even distinguish friend from foe, she was in the battle against Juumonji to let us escape even now. All those who got in-between her and Juumonji must've been seen as nothing but obstacles in her eyes.

“GAAaAAAAaa!” (Silane)

Silane's sword mowed down and cut off one of her spider legs.

Her second swing, swung with the same momentum, was stopped after digging very deeply into a thick part of her spider's outer sh.e.l.l due to Gerbera's reaction somehow being in time.

Her sword stopped there, but Silane, the owner, didn't stop.

Using all of her strength to pull out her sword, Silane's body came forward.

*Clack*, her teeth bit at her.

It was timing that made me go pale seeing it. When she got dangerously close to biting through her carotid artery, Gerbera's girl arm held back Silane by her forehead.

Her other hand grabbed the blade of the sword she thrust out for the nth time, and red blood dripped from her cut palm.

“One and a half legs, and now she's taken an arm, huh? ……Whatever.” (Gerbera)

Gerbera floated a smile so charming it made me reflexively stare at her beautiful looks in fascination.

Her fever of battle made the pure white girl s.h.i.+ne no more. So much so that even the blood she shed colored her.

“You'll forgive me, so I'll forgive you. Well, I guess breaking your cervical vertebrae won't do anything to your body now.²” (Gerbera)

The arm holding her face flung away Silane's body with all her strength.

The *snap* sound I heard was probably her neck bones breaking from bearing the load. Silane's tail-spinning body struck the ground hard.

Gerbera, on the other hand, didn't look at Silane, who she flung away—she turned around, and attacked Juumonji.

“……You again, huh?” (Juumonji)

“Yes. Your opponent is me. Let's get along now, shall we!” (Gerbera)

I had to do my job while Gerbera held back Juumonji.

Lily and I started running towards the crash location of the flung Silane.

Silane's body, which bounced on the ground and swam in the air, had broken hands and feet from the impact of the crash.

From what I'd seen, Silane's regeneration ability as an undead monster surpa.s.sed Gerbera's natural healing ability. This much damage would be repaired relatively quickly. However, even she couldn't get fix her posture right now. She'd also dropped her sword. Right now was a chance.

“YAAAaAA!” (Lily)

Having gone first, Lily jumped onto Silane and thrusted her spear, which caught Silane.

The tip of the spear stuck in her large thigh pierced into the floor, sealing Silane's movemen——no, the dead wouldn't be stopped by this much.

“GAAaAAA!” (Silane)

Silane forced her body with bones broken all over to get up with strength alone. With snake-like movements, she attacked Lily.

If Lily was a human, the match might've ended there. Or, if Silane still had reason, she might not have performed such a simple attack.

“I got you now.” (Lily)

The satisfied smile Lily raised despite being attacked by Silane goopily collapsed.

Having undone her mimicry, she exposed her nature as a slime and took Silane, very close to her, into her body.

When I caught up to Lily, Silane was struggling inside Lily's semi-liquid body tissue as though she was drowning

The nonsensical power she had as an undead monster couldn't be fully exerted if her hands and feet were broken. It wouldn't be possible to restrain her for very long, but right now this was enough.

“Silane……” (Majima)

Rus.h.i.+ng over to her, I immediately reached out towards Silane.

Taken in by Lily, Silane had only her face on the surface. What I tried to touch was her cheek. “Now that I see her close up, the wounds on her face covered in purple flesh look painful…….”

When I thought that, the color of fluttering gold spread out as if to cover my field of vision.

“Avoid it, Master!” (Lily)

That scream came from Lily, who hurriedly constructed only her upper body.

Lily's bodily fluids were on her cheek. I noticed that the golden that had covered my field of vision was Silane's long, blonde hair. “No way, she shook off Lily's restraint with that body——”

“Guu, GAH!?” (Majima)

——Right when I thought that, my body instantly twisted.

Since Lily was restraining her in addition to her repeated injuries, Silane's movements were, naturally, sluggish. Her attack was off target, but even so, she bit into the area between my left shoulder and neck.

“Giii……G-ku……” (Majima)

Intense pain struck my brain.

Things like body strengthening via magical power were useless against monsters. My muscles were severed, and blood oozed out. The chills I got despite being alive made my skin crawl.

I swallowed my scream. I clenched my teeth.

Forcing the stiff muscle of my face to move……I lifted my lips.

Nothing to it. The operation…was a huge success.

In order to connect Silane to the path, at minimum, I had to touch her.

However, the deeper the contact, the stronger the connection I established with her was. So, it'd be better to touch her as deeply as possible.

Silane bit into me, and some of me got swallowed by her. This was now a bond of blood—something incomparable to just touching her.

Even deeper than hugging her, I touched Silane's being. Our hearts got so close it was impossible to have them closer.

And, my consciousness darkened.

I sunk down somewhere deep.

——Now, let's take back what was lost.

Before I knew it, I was floating in darkness.

My surroundings were pitch black and suffocating, as if I'd sunk into a deep sea.

I couldn't see anything, nor could I feel anything.

Because, in the first place, even my own body didn't exist right now. Since my body didn't exist, there was no way I could see, and I couldn't reach out to anything either.

But, that was a bit troubling.

I hadn't gone astray here. I'd come to find something. So, it made no sense if I couldn't see anything anyway.

I tried to somehow perceive within the deep darkness.

That was the equivalent of turning myself into a light and illuminating the darkness.

Before I knew it, I'd become a bluish-white flame, floating in the darkness.

The human-sized fireball shook, scattering sparks in all directions.

Only then did I notice that there were several fireb.a.l.l.s floating nearby.

A red flame burning peacefully, a smaller but energetic flame, a dichromatic red-blue colored flame, and a large, white flame…….

There were signs of countless other lights floating in the darkness, but unfortunately, I couldn't see or feel as far as where they were s.h.i.+ning. The point was, this light—me—had a sense of vision and a sense of touch in this place.

“What a strange place”, I thought.

As I tried to stretch out both my hands, sparks scattered with a *gooohh*, and flames reached out towards the darkness.

I could see that my hands were there twice, as if they were in double exposure.

It felt strange, but it wasn't like it was caught by my two eyes that'd existed from the start, either. Even though they were like that, it wasn't strange.

Which was why when I tilted my head “Huh?”, it wasn't because I was doubting the strangeness of my double perception. It was because I found a concerning part in the image of myself that I saw.

——There was a tiny crack in my left hand.

No. When I took a closer look, there were several minute cracks running on my body that I wouldn't have noticed had I not looked closely.

And while I stared at my existence, I realized that the blue flame—me—was mixed with a different red flame.

……What did this mean?

I hadn't wondered about it, but only because I'd make no progress even if I brooded over it. If I started to say such things, I didn't even know what this place was.³

But even if I didn't know what this place was, I knew that I needed to come here for a goal. So, that was enough. I didn't know how long I could stay in this place. I didn't have the time to be speculating carefreely.

Switching over my feelings, I started moving.

Where I had to go was a deeper level. I slowly dived to the bottom of the darkness.

This s.p.a.ce was too big. So big that I couldn't even imagine how long it went on for. ……Maybe the concept of “an end” didn't exist.

It was a good thing I knew where the thing I was searching for was. A thin, red like blood connection like a spider's thread was guiding me to my goal.

The effect it had appeared to only be painful thoughts. But, I didn't know when this connection would be severed. I had to hurry.

Sink. Sink. Sink deeper.

While I did that, the signs of the other lights around me disappeared.

I even felt a heavy, physical pressure in the increasingly deeper darkness. “A small light like me might be crushed by the ma.s.s of this overwhelming darkness on a whim”……While stifling a fear like that, I firmly held back the impulse to rise to the surface as fast as I could and kept diving.

Before long, I found my goal.

What was there was a violently burning yellow light—a flame burning brightly and the doubled image of a girl.

After my brief moment of joy due to finding her, I unintentionally frowned.

The image of the girl, holding her knees in her arms and her eyelids lowered, was severely damaged.

Starting from the deep injuries Juumonji gave her, cracks ran down her, almost covering her entire body, and many of them were so deep they could've been called crevices.

The image of the wounded girl was sinking to the bottom of this darkness even now.

Slowly, but surely…….

The cracks increased along with that, the crevices grew deeper, and the small fragments that broke off drifted in this vast darkness, breaking into small pieces and melting like a salt clump melting in water.

And as if fighting against that, the girl's light was blazing vehemently.

——I can't disappear yet. I have something I need to protect.

That one wish was fixing the image of the girl, which should have sunk in one go originally and broken, into this place.

That wasn't all.

If I observed her very closely, something different was mixed into the girl's light.

A huge number of fragments, each very small and not as clearly shaped as the image of the girl, were burning as vehemently as Silane's light. I felt independent wills there, like that of the girl's.

Perhaps they were the『feelings』left behind by many of the people who lost their lives to defend Fortress Tilia.

Silane had received the magical power the fortress had been filled with, and turned into a monster. The magical power she received then was something that had leaked from the souls of the soldiers and knights that died fighting to protect the fortress. It wouldn't have been strange for a few of the deceased's feelings to have remained there.

If so, Silane was like a crystallization of the precious desires “to protect the people” right now. It wouldn't be good if she was lost as a pitiful Ghoul like she was now.

With new determination, I reached out my hand towards the burning image of the girl.

I understood instinctively how I could take back the girl in front of me. The person themself naturally knew how to use their power, called “Grace” in this world and “Cheat Abilities” in the colony. That didn't change, even in places they didn't know.

My stretched out fingertip touched the girl's shoulder. ——A *crack* noise was made, and a minute cracks ran to my fingertip.

I held my breath.

……”It's as I thought”, that thought crossed my mind.

I think I was only frozen for a minute.

It was a shock, but it wasn't surprising. I had also known this from the beginning, after all.

This was my power. I knew instinctively what I could and couldn't do.

Of course, I knew things other than that, too.

I'd had a bad premonition ever since I decided to recover Silane's mind.

But even so, I decided I would get back Silane's mind.

I decided to move forward without hesitation. Even if something were to happen to me…….

It was too late for that. It wasn't a reason to stop my hand.

Without hesitating, I hugged the girl's image. At the same time as that, my own flame spread out, covering her light.

By me doing so, the crumbling image of the girl slowly became visible.

Relieved, I……heard a sound like a broken scream rising from my whole body.

As though it was unable to bear the burden, the surface of my image cracked. Maybe it was because I'd touched something that normally wouldn't have been touched, or maybe it was a natural phenomenon.

It hadn't been fatal at all.

Unlike Silane, the cracks were shallow at most, and my image didn't collapse either. This wasn't something that would threaten my life.

But, even if it hadn't been fatal, there were things that couldn't be recovered from.

To put it into words, this was a one-way ticket journey. If I looked back at the place I'd descended from, there wasn't a way back there anymore.

What had happened to my body was that type of event.

But even so, I didn't think that I wanted to let go of Silane. I didn't want to lose the girl in front of me. Yes, it was because I strongly felt that.

……But, why did I feel so strongly that I wanted to get her back?

Was it……because she believed in me, someone alien to this world?

Yeah. I guess that was definitely one of the reasons.

But, that didn't seem to be the only reason.

When I closed my eyelids, the figure of Silane facing Juumonji came to mind.

The knight that continued to fight, even after death, with the feeling of “I want to protect someone”. That was one of the proofs that this world wasn't something just ruled by power.

The『bullied child』Riku Kudō—someone who'd been tormented for a while by Sakagami before coming to Fortress Tilia, and in the end, had his life tragically stolen from him due to a plan Sakagami partic.i.p.ated in—described this world as a place where『the strong could behave however they liked』.

I couldn't deny that statement which he'd given me in a tone like he'd given up.

I myself was a human on the side of those who trampled down with power like that, after all. In that kind of meaning, Kudo might have been like myself reflected in a mirror.

But, Silane's existence proved that this world wasn't that cruel of a place at all.

The powers without any feelings we'd been suddenly given had tragically destroyed the former colony, and now Fortress Tilia as well.

Rampaging power would definitely bring many things to ruin. That was a fact.

But, the feelings that'd just been trampled down weren't useless.

If my power helped get back Silane who'd proved that, wouldn't it compensate for that?

Still holding Silane, I started rising from the depths of the darkness.

The breaking sound continued.

I had a hallucination that I was falling somewhere, even though I should've been ascending. I was going down a staircase I could never descend from again, step by step…….

——Do you know, milord?

A line that'd been thrown at me suddenly crossed my mind.

——That's a very dangerous way of thinking. Even I can easily guess that. If you bear everything like that…….

……Yeah, that certainly might've been true.

But, there were some things I couldn't surrender even so.

Now that I thought about it, it might've been like this when I decided before to protect Katō-san, too.

Even though I knew it was wrong, I decided to protect her to protect the『something』within me. This time was the same.

The same as Juumonji, I suddenly got power.

When I first realized I had the power to lead monsters, I had thought it was the power to survive alone in this cruel world.

But, it was thanks to this power that I was able to meet Lily and them.

I could declare that the bonds I'd raised with them so far were more important than anything to me.

“That's why”, I thought.

Sure, this power in and of itself might have been hollow without any feelings.

But, it wasn't hollow—at least, not for me. This power had the feelings of me and my family. I believed that. I wanted to believe.

And, what I strongly wished to get back with that power was here.

So, betraying that wish was equivalent to denying the feelings in this power.

I couldn't do that. Absolutely not.

——Takahiro-dono?

As I kept rising to the surface, the girl's voice reached my ears.

When I looked down at Silane, who I was holding, only one of her eyes was slightly open.

Her pupil, carrying a vague light, noticed me. At that moment, the path between me and here changed into an solid one.

No. Maybe it was the opposite? She woke up because the connection became solid. To prove that, the irregularity occurring in my body settled, and Silane's collapse calmed. And, the color of Silane's light changed from yellow to red.

——This place is? ……No, I am?

Silane's tone was half asleep and half awake. Her consciousness seemed to be fuzzy as well, and her gaze was shaking unsteadily as though she was drifting on the waves.

For her, this might have appeared to only be an event in a dream. Here was that kind of place, and before she woke up again, it was an environment like this.

——Oh. I see now. I used up all my strength and was defeated, huh?

A dry smile floated on her face, which was missing an eye.

A line of tears ran through the crevice on her face.

——Yet again I failed to the thing I had to protect.

An image flowed into me from her exposed heart through the path.

It was the figure of a young, male elf who'd died inside the deep forest.

And kneeling in front of his corpse, which looked similar enough to Silane that it made me think it was her blood relative, was a very young, crying girl.

The scene I saw was only that, but I was able to feel more than enough of the heart-splitting grief she had in that moment.

Perhaps this was the memory of the beginning of Silane's battle after she picked up the sword to protect others. The girl started walking to reduce the sadness from this world, even if only one, with the great loss she experienced as the starting point.

However, her path was interrupted midway, and Silane once again spilled tears at her own powerlessness.

If the beginning was tears, then the end was also tears. That would be too sad.

——Don't give up, Silane. It's not over yet.

——Takahiro…-dono?

As I continued rising, I confirmed the existences of the several lights I'd seen earlier where I looked up at.

Now, it was just a little further.

——Let's go back, Silane. Kei is waiting.

When I told her that, Silane looked at me with a dumbfounded face.

She must've been unable to believe my words.

But, we had the path now. It was transmitted to her that I was telling her the truth. Like the surface of a lake, Silane's single pupil shook.

From Silane's eyes, a single tear fell—but not one of sadness.

From that alone I was able to think that my choice hadn't been wrong at all.

Silane and I gathered with all the other lights, joining them. My consciousness turned from side to side. All kinds of dazzling lights covered my consciousness——I returned to the real world.

Translator's Notes

¹ - Not entirely sure about this one. ‘ただ、十分に距離を稼いだうえで勢いを乗せた全力の突撃を喰らっては、いかに探索隊のチート持ちといえど威力を殺しきれない。' ▲

² - Not sure how to translate this. ‘なに、頸椎が砕けたところで、今更どうこうなる體ではあるまい' ▲

³ - Confused about the first part. ‘そんなことを言い始めたら、この場所がなんなのかさえ、おれは把握していないのだ。' ▲

Sorry if this chapter is a bit weird in places, I had a h.e.l.l of a time with some of the lines.

If you guys notice anything wrong, please let me know!

-Thy Unsus