Episode 69 — Mystic Liquid
～ Part 1 ～
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Wind back time a little.
The great desert spreading on the New Continent was called the ‘Time World Desert’. The sea of sand filling up everything was fragments of a gigantic artificial magic tool that had crumbled in the mystical warring era, even now, each and every grains still maintained a reduced function of that time. So to speak, the interference to the surroundings time.
The sand of the Time World Desert itself was a convenient material for crafting items, but the desert where that sand amassed in large quantity was avoided by many adventurers as a monsters haunts.
The 4 students who lost their way in the Time World Desert didn’t know that fact. But of course, they naturally understood that staying there too long would bad. The desert heat would their stamina. Reincarnated as a nurikabe, Kabeno Chihaya could make a shade, allowing them hold out somewhat, but that too, had its limit.
“Iyaaa, hot! Really hot, Ha ha!”
Yukinoshita Suzuka, while loosening her chest with a smile, said so. Kabeno and Ozashiki was exhausted, they remained silent, unable to utter a single word. In this situation, the one suffering the most was in fact, Yukinoshita the snow woman, or should have been, but she was as high tensioned as ever.
“It’s okay, it’s okay! It’ll be fine, it’ll be fine, we can do it. We can’t give up. Let’s do our best!”
Intending to cheer everyone up, Yukinoshita talked on and on, but the fact is that she could only said the same thing over and over since a little while ago.
The practical problem now was that it was unclear how far this desert continued and which direction they go in order to survive. In the first place, they didn’t know clearly where on earth was this place and where did everyone go.
At such a time, a light wind blowed from above. The wind was lukewarm, but the meagre sweat was pleasantly chilled.
“Ou, I’m back.”
It was Karasuma Yoshitsune the crow tengu. Being the only one capable of flight among them, he was entrusted the job of generally scouting the area from the sky. With black feathers growing from his whole body, he too, seemed extremely hot.
“Thanks for your work, Karasuma-kun! Here, freeze ray of appreciation!”
“Don’t push yourself too much. You’ll use up your power.”
While bathing in the refreshing light Yukinoshita released, Karasuma waved a leaf fan. Cool air diffused in the area.
“Speaking of which, I often heard that you should use electric fan together with air conditioning.”
As Kabeno said, just a little cool air could make you more comfortable.
“So how was it? Looking from the sky?”
“Tentatively, the desert spread in that direction, the sea could be seen on the opposite side. And then, going really far this way, there’s green.”
“Ho~. It seems I won’t be melting in the desert just like this!”
With a smile, Yukinoshita swung her arms around, nodding.
“In terms of position, the sea was the closest. I think we should start from there and aim for the green area by going along the coast.”
“Then, the problem is going till that place and what we’re going to in the future…”
Karasuma’s words were answered by Kabeno’s heavy voice.
“It’s okay! We can go, we can go, we’ll manage it somehow!”
“Yukinoshita, saying that every time makes it lacking in persuasiveness…”
For now, the policy of the party was decided.
In the class, this combination mostly never hung out with each others, still, they could cooperate without breaking up, this would be the boon of the accumulation of these past 3 months. Return to human and come back to their world, this objective itself still coincided.
Only, in the direction they said they were heading to was exactly the relay camp of the human adventurers. And trying to head straight from here to there meant that they would be discovered and got ambushed by the adventurers, but of course, they had no way of knowing that.
“Huh!? Come to think of it, Ozashiki-kun is not here!?”
“He is. He’s right here in my shadow.”
And back to the present.
Kyousuke, Rin, Azuki, the 3 people went down the hill, crossed the wasteland and came back to the desert vicinity. Azuki was making her body smaller. The place she was attacked by the adventurers was exactly around this area.
Kyousuke still didn’t give up on trying to come to an understanding with the adventurers, at the same time, he hardened the resolve to reject any persecution and fight back if necessary. He absolutely had to avoid anything that seemed to harm Rin, Azuki and his other classmates.
The problem was Rin and Azuki’s filter off. Due to an emotional problem, it would be difficult for them to fight humans. Accordingly, Kyousuke would have to work harder.
If possible, he hoped they could uneventfully link up with other students.
“I’m a little worried since this area has no place to hide.”
Said Rin who combined with Kyousuke.
“Adventurers or lesser demons, it’s dangerous if either of them come. Let’s hurry.”
“Azu-nyan, do you know where you were teleported?”
“Eh, let’s see. I was desperate when I escaped so…”
Well, that’s true. This place was a wasteland, similar scene spread everywhere.
But then, Kyousuke noticed something rolling in a corner of his view. Concentrating his none existence eyes, he understood that was a corpse of something. After having Rin resolve for that fact, Kyousuke approached.
“Uu…”
Rin groaned in a small voice.
“Lesser demon? Did the adventurers sometime ago killed it?”
That was a body of a demon with burns here and there, and cuts all over its body. Light had already disappeared from its eyes.
Azuki was scared of approaching, but separating form Kyousuke and Rin was even more terrifying, so while taking care not to look at the body as much as possible, she followed along.
“Kyousuke-kun, how much do you know about this world’s lesser demon?”
“Not much. Even the fact that that kind of monster existed, I heard it for the first time.”
“I heard a bit from Selena-chan.”
According to her, when one perused the history of this world, they would arrive at an event called the mythical war which happened in ancient time.
There existed gods who participated in the mythical war, and lost. That were those who were called the ‘Demon King’ and the ‘Dragon King’, etc. Even now, the followers directly descended from them remained, but those kept themselves hidden.
Directly descended from the ‘Dragon King’, was a race called dragonewt.
Directly descended from the ‘Sea King’, was a race called gillman.
Similar to those, the ‘Demon King’s’ direct descendants were the demons.
What people called darkness magic was a mechanism to borrow the Demon King’s power and invoked it, only monsters species connected to the Demon King could use it. Although not direct descendants like the demons, races such as incubus and succubus qualified for that.
“…That’s the first time I heard that.”
“Ha ha ha. You’re slacking off in your study, Kyousuke-kun. Hino-kun was enthusiastically investigating, you know?”
Other gods of the ancient times were the ‘Sword King’, the ‘Beast King’, the ‘Life King’* etc., well, there seemed to be various. Even now, the direct descendants of each were inhabiting the Old Continent as monsters. Only, the Demon King fled to the New Continent, so his descendants mostly couldn’t be found on the Old Continent.
Then, Kyousuke suddenly thought.
About the blood clan they were hostile against right now. Their ringleader was also a ‘King’.
While other chess pieces were called Pawn, Knight, Queen, etc., only that wasn’t ‘King‘ but ‘King‘ Was there any relation to this?
“(Blood King…. No, I’m overthinking)”
He had terrifying power indeed, still, Kyousuke felt it was insufficient to assume the title of god. Besides, those guys came from the same world as Kyousuke’s class.
“Umm, I’ve been thinking,”
Behind them, Azuki timidly said.
“If that’s the case, then that means Uozumi-kun has power rivalling Ryuzaki-kun and the lesser demons…?”
“In fact, Uozumi-kun may also be incredibly strong when he awaken to Phase 2.”
Rin said deadly serious.
“What’s most important right now is that even that lesser demon can’t win against a party of adventurers.”
“Since it’s lesser, I guess there’s a greater as well, I don’t think a lesser demon is as strong as Ryuzaki-kun, but it’s still dangerous even then.”
Surprised by the lesser demon attack, the female adventurer was whole roasted. But in terms of danger level, the adventurers party was lightly higher.
Kyousuke once again confirmed the lesser demon’s corpse. Starting from its horns, some parts of its body was unnaturally missing, this was obviously the trace of being intentionally torn off. Judging from how the corpse was still fresh, perhaps, this place was where they encounter the adventurers some time ago.
The rest was just to look for Karasuma and Yukinoshita from this area….
“Ah.”
Rin raised her voice.
“What happened? Rin.”
“Over there, perhaps, Chi-chan. There’s Karasuma-kun as well.”
From around his shoulder, Rin’s arm stretched out like a tentacle. When he looked over, certainly a big wall was walking over here from the desert. Next to it, a crow tengu was flying.
“Utsurogi-kun, over there, isn’t that the adventurers?”
Azuki also said in a voice full of tension. What she pointed at was the figures of 3 human hiding in a shadow of a rock.
It was the adventurer party from last time. The woman wielding the poleax and the man with the bandit atmosphere wasn’t there.
“Ambush…!”
Kyousuke clenched his fists. As expected, for the adventurers, Karasuma and the others were only mere monsters?
He felt Rin’s body tensed up. At this rate, Karasuma group would definitely received the adventurers’ surprise attack. Conversely, if they were to attack, the adventurers would be taken by surprise. But that meant turning Rin’s power against the human.
The burden was too heavy for Rin whose filter had already run out.
“Kyo, Kyousuke-kun. Are we going…?”
“I’ll go. Rin stay here.”
At any rate, they had to teach Karasuma, Yukinoshita about the adventurers. If they moved, the adventurers would certainly noticed. But if he could only do this, then there was nothing but to do it.
“Utsurogi-kun, this, I don’t know if it can be use as a weapon but still.”
Saying so, Azuki softly took out a wooden bucket.
“Well, well, it seems better than hitting with bare hands…. Thank you.”
Kyousuke said thanks and received the bucket. Rin’s body slipped down from Kyousuke.
“Kyousuke-ku…”
“I’ll be back soon.”
Kyousuke said so and started running off the rock’s shadow where the adventurers hid.
“UOOOOOOOOOo!!”
No matter how big he roared, his throat wouldn’t break. When Kyousuke howl, the hiding adventurers set up their weapons and turned around. Swordsman, magician, and priest. They had to be familiar to battles. Without panicking, the swordsman came in front, the magician readied his staff.
A skeleton holding a wooden bucket was charging, if looking from the side, people might not understand what was happening.
First to move was the magician. Chanting some kind of spell, the staff that was probably a catalyst released a suspicious light. The air split, lightning struck. Kyousuke threw the wooden bucket with all his might.
Lightning attacked the wooden bucket, the bucket he received from Mitarai Azuki was smashed into tiny fragments.
Glanced, Karasuma and the other stopped their march. They noticed this place’s abnormality.
Rin and Azuki started taking a detour to their place. Rin’s movement speed was slow, Azuki put her into the second wooden bucket.
“Tch, strategy failed!”
The leader swordsman annoyedly shouted.
“Is this guy the skeleton sometime ago!?”
“Careful, Rezbon. It’s more intelligent than it looks!”
Kyousuke clenched his fist. Coming this far, he would do what he could with the Jeet Kune Do he copied.
The swordsman raised his sword overhead. Kyousuke stopped his feet and jumped back. The sword vainly cut the air. And this time, the vigorously stepped forward. Passing the sword blade between his ribs, he grabbed the swordsman’s arm.
“Damn it!”
The swordsman raised his voice. Kyousuke unclenched his fist. Making the best use of these bone limps, he choose the most effective means of attack.
Was this also the influence of the filter being cut? There was a slight hesitation. However, Kyousuke easily shook off any hesitation. Ease up and he would be killed. And then, the ones who got killed wouldn’t just be himself.
“IIiyAaaaaa!”
The extended fingers were stabbed straight into the swordsman’s face. Several fingers extended in sword hand shape clawed the man’s cheek.
“Gyaaaaa!!”
A scream that stirred one’s disgust and guilty conscience. The index finger and the middle finger, precisely stabbed into the man’s left eye. ∗Crunch∗, the sensation of the eyeball being crushed transmitted to this fingers. Kyousuke pulled out his right arm and threw the gouged eyeball to the ground.
“Filhana, do something! Support!”
While preparing to invoke magic, the robed man shouted.
“Ah, yes!”
When the woman raised her staff, a gentle light pour down on the swordsman.
“OoOOryaaa!!”
The man, while blood dripping from his left eye, swung his sword. An attack with agility and sharpness more than just now slipped through Kyousuke’s rib and crash into his left arm.
He didn’t have a sense of pain. But there was impact. His arm split and were blown off. Kyousuke’s body should have been strengthened by Akai’s blood, but the sword attack the man released exceeded that. Being struck by the blade, Kyousuke’s left arm was smashed.
“O thunder!!”
Kyousuke staggered, he separated from the swordsman. The magician man immediately invoke the spell he had on standby. Again, lightning ran, without any fragment of mercy, it overwhelmed Kyousuke.
“Gaaaa!”
That instant, Kyousuke’s consciousness slightly flew.
Losing this left arm wasn’t so painful. He was keenly aware of the difference in ability between them. At this rate, if the swordsman was to take a step forward and smash Kyousuke’s head, the battle would end. It was just that simple.
“Kyousuke-kun–!!”
It was at that time that a voice echoed, pulling back the last bit of his fading consciousness.
To be continued…
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