Chapter 7: Who Cares if You’re a God?

They could feel a hideous, nauseating miasma drawing near.

It grew thicker as time passed, suggesting that the evil presence was gradually increasing in power. In other words, they could tell that the Evil God’s resurrection was nigh.

They’d had time to prepare. The fact that they had secured the sacred territory’s core first should give them a significant advantage.

It was a round, open area made of stone, about 20 meters in diameter and completely empty, with two doors and nothing more. One door was the entrance they had used to come in; the other was the one the evil emanated from.

They were able to lie in wait for the Evil God to arrive.

They might be able to finish him off before he resurrected.

They weren’t going to let their guard down, of course, but they had hope.

They didn’t want to sacrifice innocent people, either; if they could stop his resurrection here and now, that would be for the best.

The Evil God was now close.

They held their breath, watching the door.

After a while, the sliding door opened.

The darkness was there.

To their spiritually sensitive sight, it seemed there was something pulsing in the darkness.

They opened fire.

They first focused as many attacks as they could on him from long range. They were using assault rifles. Whether monster or evil god, if it still had a physical form, physical attacks would work.

They were using silver bullets that had been blessed by the clergy, so they could count on them doing spiritual damage, too. Of course, distance diminished the spiritual energy of the user, so they didn’t think this barrage would completely finish it.

If they could just shave down the Evil God’s defenses a bit, they could use divine tools that channeled chi to deal the finishing blow, or they might need to directly channel exorcism power into a barefisted strike.

The bullets hit their target. They weren’t deflected; they plunged into the Evil God’s twisted, foul body, causing blood to erupt and flesh to go flying.

“It’s working! Keep it up!”

Following their leader’s order, the monster hunters increased their force. But the Evil God did not stop walking. It moved slowly but steadily towards the center of the room.

The attacks had definitely had an effect, but they hadn’t finished it.

Was it time to switch to direct attacks?

Just as they were beginning to wonder, a change began to occur.

The Evil God was growing.

It was swelling.

Just as they saw where this was going, the Evil God exploded. It had swelled like a balloon, and then burst.

“Did we... beat it?” one of them asked.

Blood and flesh were scattered like a mist, and the Evil God himself was nowhere to be seen. It seemed possible that he really had been destroyed.

But they weren’t about to be so optimistic. The Evil God’s presence had not vanished. On the contrary, its miasma had swelled explosively.

The bloody mist began to settle, revealing three humanoid forms.

One was the boy who had been the Evil God’s host, Hiromichi Rokuhara.

One was an eyeless woman with the lower half of a snake.

One was a slender man with wings.

“Three of them?” The commander was hesitant. If the Evil God had revived, that meant they were finished. He hadn’t had to think any further than that, but he was still surprised to see multiple figures there.

“I see! When you just stuck them all on one person it looked awful, and I honestly had no idea what it was getting at. So it’s a trinity thing, huh?” A red-haired girl spoke as she entered through the door behind the Evil God.

The Evil God apparently had companions. But they didn’t have time to worry about that now.

They had to do something about the Evil God. Even if they had no chance of winning, they had to at least try to do some damage.

“Hey, did you shoot something enchanted at us? That really hurt.” Hiromichi did not hide his anger.

“Focus your attacks on the boy! Everyone, switch to melee combat!” The commander unsheathed a katana.

The monster hunters each cast their assault rifles aside and drew the enchanted weapons that they specialized in.

Hiromichi disappeared, then reappeared abruptly in front of a monk. The monk hit Hiromichi with a vajra.

“Yeah, I can tell you have quite a bit of spiritual power, but that doesn’t hurt at all,” Hiromichi said.

The monk shouted out, panicked, and struck at him again and again. Hiromichi didn’t even bother to dodge.

“So that’s our endurance. What about our offense?” Hiromichi waved his hand lightly. It was enough to send the monk’s head flying.

“Dammit! Erect a barrier! I’ll use Dimension Cutter!” The commander had determined that attacking alone wouldn’t do anything. He hadn’t even been able to perceive Hiromichi’s movement.

“Sure, bring it on. Sounds like a good test.” Hiromichi smiled confidently and beckoned him.

If he was underestimating them, that was to their advantage, the commander thought. If he took them for total fools, they might stand a chance. He charged forward before Hiromichi could change his mind, brandished his sword, then swung it down.

Hiromichi didn’t dodge.

The commander’s victory was assured. Dimension Cutter could cut through anything, no matter how sturdy it might be.

But Hiromichi had blocked the blade.

“What?!”

“Heh. So it can cut through anything, huh? Pretty amazing... But it needs to be a Japanese sword? Too bad. That’s in violation of the Swords and Firearms Control Law.” Hiromichi laughed as if he found something very funny. “You want an explanation? I stole your ability. I mean, if you could have hit me before I’d stolen it, you might have won, but...”

Hiromichi snatched his sword away. The commander couldn’t stop him; the boy was far too strong.

Hiromichi gave the sword a test swing. He didn’t have any real swordplay training. He was just swinging it randomly, yet with one cut, he bisected the commander.

“He was so brittle, I didn’t even need to use the ability,” Hiromichi lamented.

Despite seeing the most powerful among them — their commander — defeated, the remaining monster hunters kept up their morale. But to Hiromichi, the remainder were just cannon fodder. His expression immediately shifted to one of boredom.

“I guess you all had better die.” Hiromichi’s left hand glowed. He swept it sideways, releasing a flash.

The upper torsos of all the monster hunters present went scattering.

* * * * *

The Evil God’s power was overwhelming.

Perhaps that meant his resurrection was complete. But despite that, it had to be said that there was still something petty and human about his behavior.

“Ah, this isn’t good,” he muttered. “If I don’t find a way to hold back, Yuichi Sakaki will just crumple immediately...”

Ende could see nothing godlike in his smug behavior. “There’s a little too much Hiromichi Rokuhara in you to make me think the Evil God has really awakened... is it just my imagination?”

Ende approached. The slender man and the snake-woman remained still, so she walked past them to approach Hiromichi.

“Hmm? Oh, I’m not Hiromichi Rokuhara. It’s just that I have no distinct personality of my own,” he said. “I’m nothing but the will to eradicate humanity. I need a foundation to build on, or I’ll lack the self-determination to carry out that will.”

It seemed the host had an influence on the Evil God’s resurrection. Ende found that convenient enough for her purposes; the Evil God himself would have no reason to fight Yuichi. It was extremely possible that immediately after awakening, he’d start acting to carry out humanity’s destruction. But Hiromichi had a grudge against Yuichi, and if influenced by Hiromichi, the Evil God would probably want to defeat him.

“By the way, how are you going to wipe out humanity?” Ende asked casually. “The fight earlier proved that you’re certainly strong, but I’m sure you don’t intend to just go around killing people one at a time.”

“Certainly not. But exterminating humanity has become comparatively easy these days, don’t you think? They’ve created the means for it entirely by themselves. I just need enough power to get in and make use of those means.”

Weapons of mass destruction, perhaps? The fact of the matter was that humanity, right now, was standing upon thin ice.

Peace was maintained by the fact that the world’s great nations all had weapons pointed at each other, but a single mistake could tip the balance and set off a chain reaction of retaliation. That was probably what the Evil God was referring to.

“Anyway, I really need you to die,” he continued.

This was a possibility Ende hadn’t ever considered. She couldn’t die, and the Evil God had no reason to kill her; that was what she had assumed.

But suddenly, her chest felt very hot. It took Ende a few moments to remember what that sudden feeling was: pain.

She checked.

The sword Hiromichi had been holding was sticking out of her chest.

“Yeah, looks like Dimension Cutter did the job.”

The sword was pulled out of her.

Ende backed away.

“You Outers seem to fancy yourselves gods, but to me, you’re just a part of the same humanity that needs eradicating. Obviously, I’m going to kill you if I have the chance.”

This future shouldn’t have existed, Ende thought. This completely unforeseen development left her feeling totally adrift.

The room spun around her, followed by a sensation like plunging backwards into darkness.

“I forcibly narrowed down the possibilities.” The one who said that was one of the Evil God’s bodies, which had not made one move up until this point. It was the slender man.

“My, my. You look so shocked. After all this, are you truly afraid of death?” That teasing voice came from the half-snake woman with no eyes.

Ende typically claimed that she was bored of living, but the truth was, she felt very differently when death was there, staring her in the face.

“Whew... well, it is a little shocking,” she bluffed as she backed off further. “I’ve gotta say, it’s scarier than I was expecting...”

Fortunately, he had missed her heart; piercing a lung was a serious injury, but it would take more than that to kill an Outer for good.

Still, she would only survive until his next attack. Now that she knew what the Evil God could do, there didn’t seem to be much hope for escape.

Just as she was about to give up, a drone interposed itself between the Evil God and Ende.

“Run!”

As Mutsuko shouted, the drone lit up. It let out a flash of light directed at the Evil God.

Ende ran for the door opposite the one she had come in from.

“Tch!” The Evil God snapped his tongue, annoyed.

It was a simple move, but it had been surprisingly effective.

“Hey, everyone knows that the Taiyo-ken works even on top-tier enemies!” Mutsuko boasted.

Ende hesitated for a moment, wondering if it was all right to leave Mutsuko there. But even if she stayed, there was nothing she could do in her current condition.

She ran out the door.

* * * * *

Yuichi righted himself in the thick cloth tube and arrived on the second floor in a snap.

He found two people lying there, likely a part of the group of the monster hunters from before. There were no external injuries, but they seemed to be dead.

“Did you guys do this?” he asked.

There were specters wandering around the old classroom, though not as many as there had been the last time he was there. When they saw Yuichi, they scattered like ants. They must have remembered the way he’d torn through them last time.

He checked behind him and saw no sign of pursuers, so he walked out of the classroom.

A long wooden hallway extended before him. It was definitely a different layout than the school buildings at Seishin High, but he could tell right away which way to go. He just had to follow the fresh footprints.

Yuichi continued on, smashing the occasional specter that attacked.

The hallway curved, making it hard for him to see very far ahead. Not only was the layout different from the one at their school, it seemed like it couldn’t possibly exist in their world.

As he walked, he saw more signs of blood and rust and burn marks, and the otherworldly atmosphere grew stronger.

Am I walking in a spiral? It’s a one-way road, but how do I know which classroom is the way out?

The hallway had been curving right the entire time. There was probably something at the center of the spiral, he thought.

As he walked on, he caught sight of a figure writhing in pain.

It seemed like it must be one of the monster hunters who had come in before him. If the man was still alive, Yuichi couldn’t just abandon him.

Yuichi approached, but his eyes opened wide as he recognized the person — the last person he would have expected to see here.

“Hey.” Ende looked up, her face contorted in pain.

Her dress was stained with blood, and she appeared to be injured. He didn’t see Hiromichi or Mutsuko nearby, so he wondered suspiciously what Ende was doing here by herself.

“I came here because you said it would be the final battle. What the hell is going on?” he demanded.

Of course, ever since entering high school, he hadn’t understood most of the things he’d gotten involved in. Maybe it was a bit late to talk about that.

“Ha ha ha, it kinda stinks,” Ende said weakly. “I got betrayed.”

She didn’t seem to be lying, so this probably wasn’t a trap.

“Was it my sister?” Yuichi asked.

“You go right to suspecting your own sister? You can be surprisingly cruel.”

“I never know when it comes to her.”

“I got stabbed by the revived Evil God. I guess I really am just a god in name only... this is where that Outer overconfidence gets you.”

“Are you okay?” Yuichi knelt down next to Ende.

He rolled up her shirt to look at the place the blood was coming from. She seemed to have been stabbed on her right side, just above her breast. The wound already seemed to be clotting (perhaps because she was an Outer), but she should probably still take it easy for a while.

“You just perform sexual harassment at the drop of a hat, huh?” Ende asked.

“Do you get mad every time a doctor sees a woman naked? It’s like that, okay?”

“Well, I could be pretty bold in my day. I won’t make a fuss.”

“Will it heal?” he asked.

“Yeah. I feel pretty bad, but it’ll heal in time. Hey, do you mind if I give you a little warning?”

“What the heck? Are we friends now?” Yuichi snorted.

“I guess it would seem abrupt to you, but I’ve been watching you in action for a while, and I’m a fan.”

“A fan wouldn’t do all this crap to get me into trouble.”

“Sure they would,” Ende replied. “If you have a comic about an invincible hero, what kind of fan wants to read about them just puttering around the house all day? They want him to fight powerful enemies and get out of jams, right?”

“I’m really sick of having everything compared to a story,” Yuichi shot back.

Even if the worlds they lived in really were stories, what did that matter? It wouldn’t change a thing about how Yuichi did things. The nature of their world meant nothing.

“You’re cut off from Mutsuko Sakaki’s world right now,” Ende told him. “Which means you no longer receive the blessings of a worldview where the things little brothers do always go the way their big sisters plan them. If you go now, you’ll be killed helplessly.”

“Didn’t you want me to get killed? Maybe he did betray you, but if I lose, that still suits your objective, doesn’t it?”

“To be honest, I’ve kinda stopped caring about that,” Ende said. “I talk about how I’m bored and have nothing to do, yet here I am on the brink of death. The world is still full of unknown things. It makes me think, I have better things to do than to play around with high school students. Besides, I owe Mutsuko.”

“What happened?” he asked.

“I was about to be killed, and Mutsuko saved me. That’s why I’m warning you: You can’t win as you are right now. If you go back now, you might survive. Take a few people you want to protect and get out of the school.”

“Give me a break,” Yuichi spat. If he’d been willing to do something like that, he wouldn’t have come here in the first place. Besides, if what she said was true, running away would mean abandoning his sister. Yuichi couldn’t even think of doing that.

“Well, I sorta figured you’d say that.”

“Then why did you bother?”

“Because you can’t win,” Ende said. “One last warning: just because you’ll run into Mutsuko up ahead doesn’t mean you’ll be returned to her worldview right away. So don’t count on that.”

Yuichi couldn’t even comprehend Ende’s warning. She was talking about him being torn out of Mutsuko’s worldview, but he hadn’t noticed any signs of that happening. He certainly didn’t feel any weaker.

“What about Rokuhara?” Yuichi asked. “Did he get his wish?”

Supposedly, the Evil God could grant any wish. It seemed impossible, but if it was that powerful, then he didn’t stand a chance.

“Hiromichi? He’s dead.”

“What, was his wish to rest in peace or something?” Yuichi asked dubiously.

“His wish was to become the Evil God and destroy the world. That wish was granted. The Evil God has manifested using his body as a host.”

“I didn’t realize he was so mad at the world,” Yuichi said. He’d seemed like a real jerk to Yuichi, certainly, but he hadn’t thought the guy would go that far.

“The more Divine Vessels he took into his body, the greater his urge for destruction grew,” Ende said. “Their influence made him long for the destruction of humanity. That’s apparently how it works.”

“So that’s the gimmick, huh? What a con game...”

The god couldn’t just break a promise, so he’d used a technicality to get around it. But that meant that Monika’s wish couldn’t be granted, and neither could Yuichi’s original wish, to get rid of Soul Reader.

“Heh. Mutsuko said the same thing. I guess siblings really do think alike...”

Yuichi felt a little annoyed by the comparison, but this did make it sound like the Evil God wasn’t omnipotent. After all, if he was omnipotent, he wouldn’t have been sealed in the first place.

If he was truly omnipotent, humanity would have been destroyed a long time ago. Which meant Yuichi had some hope of fighting him.

“If I keep going, will I run into the Evil God?” Yuichi asked.

“Yeah. It’s a one-way road. There’s a door at the end of it. I don’t think he came out after me, so he’s probably still there.”

“I’ll go, but what will you do?” Yuichi felt a little hesitant to leave her here all alone. As an Outer, she might be okay, but he still felt obligated to ask.

“I think I might show you the way,” Ende said. “I tried to run away, but I really do want to see how it ends.”

“Fine. I don’t know how it’ll turn out, but just stay in a corner.”

Yuichi pulled Ende onto his back. She had a small frame, so she wasn’t much of a burden.

Yuichi resumed walking down the spiral corridor.

As he walked, Ende told him everything she knew about the Evil God. He was skeptical about any information given to him by her, but it still seemed worthwhile to keep it in mind.

Eventually he arrived at the end of the hall.

There was a door there — an ordinary sliding door like one you might see in any classroom. Yuichi opened it and came out into a ringed room.

It was the opposite of the hall he had been walking in: the walls and floor were made of stone, and in its extravagance and tranquility, it did seem worthy of the name “sacred territory.” But it was also filled with the smell of blood.

Perhaps this was natural in the Evil God’s realm, but there were also dead bodies scattered all around them. Most of them were deformed, with nothing but a lower half.

“I’m so tired of waiting! There’s nothing here! What could he even be doing?” He could hear Mutsuko’s voice coming from the center of the room.

Straight ahead of him, in the middle of the room, Mutsuko was bound to a cross.

“What are you doing, Sis? Did you get betrayed or something?” Yuichi demanded.

Her hands, feet, and torso were bound with chains, and she was covered in blood, suggesting she had been beaten.

Three figures stood in front of the cross, presumably the Evil God.

Hiromichi Rokuhara, carrying a katana.

A slender man with wings.

An eyeless woman who was a snake below the waist.

A threatening aura hung around each of them.

“I forgot to mention this, but the Evil God is a trinity now,” Ende said from where she clung to his back.

“Yeah, I got that.” Yuichi set Ende down. It might be dangerous for her inside the room, but if she wanted to see how things turned out, this was her only choice. “Hey, why did you tie up my dumb big sister?”

“Did you just call me dumb, Yu?! That’s such a dumb thing to say!” Mutsuko shot back. She didn’t have her usual forcefulness, perhaps because she knew she was responsible for the mess she was in.

“I did think it might be funny if she was dead by the time you got here,” Hiromichi said. “But I thought that if you arrived here and still couldn’t save her, that would cause even deeper despair. Don’t you?”

The entity had Hiromichi’s face and spoke with his voice, but Ende had said that Hiromichi was dead, and that this was the Evil God, whose personality was merely influenced by the boy that they had known.

Yuichi had been thinking of his fight against the Evil God as a grudging inevitability. The lives of the people in his school were on the line, and given the way things had gone, he couldn’t just abandon them. He had been acting mostly out of a sense of duty.

But now it was different. The moment he had seen his sister there, bound up and listless, this had become Yuichi’s personal fight.

He was angry.

He was going to crush the ones who had done this to his big sister. He made that decision in an instant.

With perfectly natural steps, Yuichi began walking towards Hiromichi.

* * * * *

“I recall you had a run-in with my avatar before. Are you planning on using the same move twice?” the Evil God asked.

The three of them shared the avatar’s memories. They remembered what Yuichi had done the last time.

“Hmm, you really seem to be mad,” he added.

Yuichi wasn’t trying to hide his anger, but he also wasn’t acting recklessly; his every move conveyed calm. Of course, nothing he did would work on them. Yuichi seemed to have confidence in his speed, but they could just steal that ability away from him.

Yuichi was in Skill Eater range.

They activated Skill Eater.

Yuichi’s fist was in their gut.

“Huh?”

They couldn’t steal the skill.

Their defenses had been breached.

They didn’t understand.

They had tested their defensive prowess earlier; no matter how many times they were attacked, they shouldn’t even be able to feel pain. Yet Hiromichi’s body, as part of the Evil God, staggered in pain.

“What the hell is a ‘skill,’ exactly? If you’re talking about a technique, that’s not something you can take from a person,” Yuichi said, answering the question in the Evil God’s mind.

“Dammit!” The Evil God swung the sword.

It was Dimension Cutter. There was no defense that could stop this skill. It would work flawlessly against any opponent.

But Yuichi ducked and dodged it, and lashed out with his foot at the same time.

Hiromichi’s hand couldn’t withstand the force, and the katana went flying.

Glassy-eyed, the Evil God looked at Hiromichi’s fingers, which were bent in impossible directions.

“So what if you can cut through anything? Most swords will already kill you if they hit you, just like bullets,” Yuichi said.

Yuichi’s strength defied common sense.

This was impossible.

The Evil God was confused.

Even if they had taken on vulgar priorities from their blending with Hiromichi, a god was still a god. They couldn’t possibly be beaten by a human. Yet the Evil God couldn’t keep up with Yuichi’s movements.

They formed a fist with Hiromichi’s broken fingers and swung as hard as they could. It was a powerful enough blow to knock a person’s head off. Once it hit, it would be over.

But Yuichi didn’t dodge it. He stepped straight forward and struck with his fingers straight out, a piercing blow.

Yuichi’s arm moved forward, past Hiromichi’s strike, and kept going.

Hiromichi’s knees buckled; just making contact with Yuichi had thrown him off balance.

Yuichi plunged his outstretched fingers into Hiromichi’s chest. Breaking through the breastbone, his fingers dug into the body’s heart and snatched out the core that lay within.

“Not this one, huh?” Yuichi said, crushing the core before immediately disappearing from Hiromichi’s sight.

The flagstones shattered with an explosive sound.

The Evil God tried to use the snake-woman’s pit organ to seek out Yuichi’s location, but it was no use.

The snake-woman had already been cleaved in half, the core inside her stomach sliced through.

The Evil God looked at Yuichi through the winged man’s eyes.

Yuichi had already made his attack.

A sharp blade was protruding from the winged man’s back. A blade that had sprung out from Yuichi’s elbow had speared him through the heart.

It had skewered the true core that controlled the trinity.

* * * * *

“What the heck happened?” Ende gazed, dumbstruck, as she watched Yuichi unchain Mutsuko.

Without being under Mutsuko’s influence, Yuichi shouldn’t have had the abilities to do the things she wanted him to. Even now, there should be no shared worldview effects between the two of them.

Yet Yuichi had dispatched the Evil God with ease.

The fact that he had crushed its core meant that it would never revive again.

The Evil God was now dead.

And Yuichi and Mutsuko were approaching.

The next thing she knew, Ende was walking the spiral corridor towards the exit.

“What’s going on here?” Ende came back to herself and asked Mutsuko, who was walking beside her.

Yuichi was walking a little ways ahead of them, perhaps as a security measure.

“Oh, that?” Mutsuko asked. “It was one of those shonen manga ‘my true power has been sealed’ things, of course!”

“Huh?”

“Yu’s a... what-do-you-call-it... natural talent.”

“Um, that’s seriously not enough explanation...” Ende said.

He clearly did have natural talent, but it was impossible to think that it would be enough to defeat a god.

“Here’s how I saw it!” Mutsuko declared. “If I raised him to just be able to do anything with ease, he wouldn’t turn out very good, right? People have to work as hard as they can, grit their teeth, face setbacks, and rise again! And since that’s what I thought, that’s how it turned out!”

The worldview of a Worldview Holder was greatly influenced by that person’s thoughts and wishes. This was probably why Mutsuko’s worldview was “An Unforgiving World That Rewards Only Effort.”

“I can’t accept it!” Ende burst out. “‘Natural talent’ beat the ‘Protagonist’ of a story? It defeated an evil god who’s been around since the dawn of civilization?!”

“Actually, you can use Soul Reader, right?” Mutsuko said. “What did it say when you looked at Yu?”

“It just said ‘Yu’! It didn’t mean anything!”

“That’s how you see him when I’m the central figure, right? What about from other points of view?”

Ende activated Soul Reader and looked at Yuichi, who was walking ahead of them. Unlike Yuichi’s Soul Reader, Ende’s was complete. She could turn it on and off freely, and see more detailed information.

The words over Yuichi’s head now said: “The Last One Standing: Humanity’s Line of Defense. Guardian of the human-centric world we currently live in. He fights against those who attempt to upend the world order and rework it to be centered around gods and mythical creatures.”

“That’s way too big! What the heck?!” Ende exclaimed.

“Gods, yokai, monsters, fantasy world people... those are all impossible daydreams created by the imaginations of totally ordinary humans,” Mutsuko said. “They wouldn’t exist if there were no humans around. In their own mythologies, they existed before humans did... but could they continue to exist if humans went away? Are they really that stable?”

“So Yuichi has the power to deny their existence?” Ende asked.

“It’s not anything quite that grand, I don’t think. Say there’s a world where people can use magic, and one where people can’t. What happens if the two bump into each other?”

“You end up with a world conflict. The two fuse, with the weaker world absorbed by the stronger. In most cases, the more special world is more powerful. So if that happened, the magic world would overwrite the normal one.”

“Yeah. It might seem that way at a glance, and Yu doesn’t deny the existence of gods, yokai, or magic either. But it’s not all as one-way as you’d think. Fusion means the two worlds mix together to create a new world. And Yu doesn’t think for a second that there could ever be an enemy he can’t beat.”

“You mean... Yuichi Sakaki has created a world where he’s invincible?”

“Not quite that far,” Mutsuko said. “But he can make sure there’s always a chance that he can win. And if there’s a chance that he can win, he will win!” Mutsuko’s confidence seemed to be eternal and absolute.

“What the heck...? Then what’s the point of the Unforgiving World That Rewards Only Effort?” Ende complained.

Ende had assumed that worldview was the reason Yuichi Sakaki was so strong. In a world where those who put in effort were the strongest, he could always beat those who didn’t put in effort.

“That’s so he’ll train!” Mutsuko declared. “And when he’s unleashed, his effort combines with his natural talent and makes him even stronger!”

“You make it sound so simple...” Ende still couldn’t really accept it, but since Yuichi Sakaki really had won, she had little choice but to do so. “Well, I still have questions, but fine, I guess. So what are you, Mutsuko Sakaki? Why do you know all this? Why did you push that over-the-top training on him?”

“Ha ha! If we ever get a second season, I’ll tell you then!” Mutsuko then ran up to Yuichi, leaving Ende befuddled. “I can’t believe you used the saber, Yu! I’m so happy! I just knew you’ve wanted to use it since the first time I showed it to you!”

“Shut up! I didn’t know what I was gonna be facing down here, so I just decided to take all the most dangerous stuff I could carry!”

The weapon that Mutsuko had created, called a saber, was affixed to Yuichi’s forearm. It was a blade that traced up his forearm all the way to his elbow, and flipped open when triggered. He’d apparently come here with it equipped, and used it to finish off the Evil God.

“Aww, why are you taking it off?” Mutsuko complained. “There’s no need to be bashful!”

“It’s in the way! It’s still non-retractable!”

Yuichi stripped the annoying saber off his arm and threw it onto the ground.