Chapter 1: The Abrupt Final Boss Battle

“A love interest who can’t fight becomes invisible! That’s the law!” Mutsuko declared.

Yuichi Sakaki stared listlessly at his older sister, who was as high-strung as always.

As usual, their topic for the day had nothing to do with survival.

It was after school on a Friday. The members of the survival club, along with their advisor, had gathered in their club meeting room in the old school building. Yuichi was sitting at the long table, chin in his hands, making it clear that he wished he were somewhere else.

The phrase “The Future of Love Interests!” was written on the whiteboard. The hyperactive girl standing in front of it was Mutsuko Sakaki, the president of the survival club and Yuichi’s older sister.

She was a slender girl with long black hair that was decorated with accessories that looked like knives. She was considered one of the most beautiful girls in the school, but her eccentric personality tended to keep the boys away.

The label “Big Sister” hung over her head, visible to Yuichi’s eyes alone. This was thanks to an ability known as “Soul Reader,” which displayed a person’s role in the world.

“Mutsuko... that one really hurt!”

The one who spoke was a petite girl sitting next to Yuichi: Aiko Noro, whose label was “Love Interest.”

She had originally been “Vampire” and had briefly become “Vampire Princess,” but “Love Interest” appeared to be her current default setting.

“After that comment about having a love interest power level of five, too...” Aiko murmured a moment later.

Yuichi overheard her; it seemed she had taken the comment spoken by Chiharu Dannoura during the spirits incident personally.

“Sakaki! Why can’t I escape the feeling that you’re talking about me, too?” Kanako demanded.

Kanako Orihara was the club’s vice president, and she was sitting across from Yuichi. She had a gentle air about her. Her own label had previously been “Isekai Fanatic,” then “Isekai Writer,” but it was currently “Love Interest III.” She was a published light novel author, and was currently rather well known around the school as a result.

The last member of the club should have been “Love Interest II,” Natsuki Takeuchi, but she seemed to be absent today.

Of course, even if she had shown up for class, she probably wouldn’t have come to club afterwards. For some reason, recently, Natsuki seemed to be going home the moment class ended.

Natsuki’s label had originally been “Serial Killer,” so the thought occurred to him that she might be leaving to get up to no good, but there was no way he could ask her about it, so he wasn’t sure.

“I don’t have abilities, but I can certainly fight.” The woman who spoke up from some ways away was a bespectacled teacher: their club advisor, Makina Shikitani.

She had previously been their enemy, but for some reason, she had locked off her own abilities and was now taking part in their club. She was a being known as an Outer, a creature that existed outside of destiny — although Yuichi still didn’t know the full scope of the implications of that.

“You think you’re a love interest?” Yuichi asked in disgust.

“Hmm? Of course I do. If I could have a label above my head, it would surely read ‘Love Interest,’” she said.

She didn’t have a label because she was an Outer; labels revealed a person’s role in the world, and Outers had no role.

Well, at least it makes it easy to identify who my enemies are... Yuichi had decided that he had no qualms writing off any Outer he met as an enemy.

“So when you say they become invisible, you mean they’re not popular?” Yuichi asked.

Mutsuko often spoke as if everyone knew what all her slang and abbreviations meant, so Yuichi had gotten into the habit of immediately confirming any time he had the slightest doubt.

“It’s not about popularity!” Mutsuko declared. “It’s more that you don’t even realize they exist!”

“But what does that have to do with their inability to fight?” Aiko asked. “I think love interests usually don’t fight, do they?”

“Oh, I forgot to mention! I’m only talking about battle stories,” said Mutsuko. “Of course you don’t need to fight in love comedies and stuff! You can assert yourself well enough just by flirting! But in a battle story, it’s easy to turn invisible if you don’t have any combat abilities. If you’re in a battle manga and you can’t fight, you never get any screentime! If you can’t be a love interest who supports the protagonist in battle, you’ll get forgotten, little by little!”

“Screentime, huh?” Aiko murmured.

“Screentime...” Kanako whispered to herself thoughtfully.

“Like the team assistant in a sports manga, you know?” Mutsuko asked. “Sports manga is usually about the friendship between the men, so the love interest ends up feeling superfluous!”

Now that she mentioned it, that reminded Yuichi of an extremely popular sports manga. There had been a female assistant at the start, but at some point people had stopped caring about her, and she had more or less vanished as a result.

“Does that mean... I should learn how to fight?” Aiko asked, as if making up her mind about something.

“Hey, hey. What are you planning to fight, and how?” Yuichi asked.

“Well... um, you know, like how my brother did,” Aiko said. She was trying to keep it vague in front of Kanako, but she was referring to her vampiric powers, which could indeed make her quite a powerful fighter.

“I... I think I can use magic!” Kanako insisted, adding to the bizarre things being said.

Kanako had actually used magic in the past, but her memories of that incident seemed to have grown hazy since then. She had always been the type of girl to run from any sort of unrealistic phenomena she encountered, so when something happened that she didn’t understand, she probably rewrote the events in her mind after the fact.

“Well, setting aside the screentime stuff, feelings of intimacy between a man and a woman can really be affected by time spent together!” Mutsuko declared. “The closer you are and the more time you spend together, the more intimate you become! This is called the mere-exposure effect, also known as Zajonc’s Law, since it was first proposed in an essay by American psychologist, Robert Zajonc! It states that the human brain develops a fondness for the familiar!”

“Doesn’t that go without saying?” Yuichi asked.

“Yes, it does go without saying,” his big sister said. “But most people don’t actively think about it, do they? Whether or not you’re conscious of something makes a huge difference! So if you want a member of the opposite sex to like you, it’s important to keep close to them for as long as you possibly can! You also need direct contact!”

“Not sure how much I trust what you have to say about romance, Sis...” he muttered. She hadn’t been in any relationships as far as he knew, and she didn’t have any prospects in that regard, either.

“Um, but... if they don’t like you from the start, won’t it have the opposite effect?” Aiko asked, raising her hand.

“Well, they get used to you,” said Mutsuko. “Even if they’re thinking, ‘I can’t stand that jerk!’ If you spend enough time together, you might eventually develop an attachment!”

“Does it really work like that?” Yuichi asked suspiciously.

“The human mind is really simple,” Mutsuko said confidently. “It thinks, ‘I’m with them all the time. If I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t let them get so close.’ So it fools itself into thinking that it must like them. It’s similar to the suspension bridge effect: that it’s easy to get someone to accept a proposal if you make it while standing on a suspension bridge. It’s because the mind mistakes the excitement of being in a high place for the excitement of love.”

“Um, does that mean your feelings for someone could just be a misunderstanding?” Yuichi asked.

“In an extreme sense, yes. It’s all an illusion, a figment. Romantic feelings are just the necessary side effect of humans acquiring higher brain functions. As animals, humans could really pick anyone to pair off with in order to procreate, although genetic diversity is best. But humans have become intelligent, so we can’t bring ourselves to accept just anyone. We had to start developing reasons to accept them, so we came up with love... at least, that’s my thought on it, but I acknowledge there are counterarguments against that.”

Aiko seemed skeptical, but Mutsuko’s explanation didn’t seem to be over yet.

“There are actually romantic techniques based off of this human tendency,” Mutsuko said. “Want to hear them?”

“I don’t buy into your theory, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious,” Aiko said intensely.

Kanako also feigned a lack of curiosity while leaning forward a little bit.

“Well, one is getting them to give you presents and help you out.”

“The present strategy?” Aiko tilted her head in confusion at the mention of this strategy, which didn’t sound novel at all.

“No, no!” Mutsuko declared. “You don’t give presents; you get them. You don’t help them, you get them to help you. That’s how it works. Their mind will start to think, ‘Why am I helping them? I wouldn’t help them if I hated them, so I must like them.’ Unconsciously, of course.”

“Of course, I bet it wouldn’t work if they really, really hate you,” Yuichi said. This surely only referred to someone who at least basically liked you.

Aiko seemed to accept the argument now, acting as if the scales had fallen from her eyes.

The three girls then blossomed in to love talk, asking Mutsuko what other techniques there were. Yuichi, feeling like he was being left behind, casually turned back to look out the window.

He heard a faint sound.

It was the kind of sound that you wouldn’t normally notice, and that you might ignore even if you did. But Yuichi sensed that something felt strange. Instinct told him that he couldn’t just brush this off.

“Noro!” How many times had this happened by now? Yuichi grabbed Aiko, who was sitting beside him, and picked her up in his arms.

A second later, the window broke.

Amidst the scattering shards of glass, Yuichi caught sight of the bottom of a shoe. Someone was flying in through the window.

Upon determining the glass shards wouldn’t hit anyone else in the club, Yuichi jumped back.

Glass rained down onto the desk as a person also landed on top of it.

Yuichi looked up at this person, still holding Aiko in his arms. It was a girl who had the label “Heir” above her head.

Yuichi couldn’t identify the person right away. He knew a couple of people with the “Heir” label, but this girl wasn’t either of them.

His classmate Kogan Yanagisawa was a man, so that didn’t match up. Neither did Chiharu Dannoura of the music curriculum, who was a woman, but one of substantial girth. That didn’t match the slender girl standing on the desk before him.

“My, my. Seen a ghost, have you, Yuichi Sakaki?!” the girl declared.

“Who are you?!” Yuichi shouted back. He had recognized the voice immediately, yet he couldn’t help but ask.

The voice was that of Chiharu Dannoura.

“Huh? Dannoura? Huh?” Aiko asked in shock as she climbed down out of Yuichi’s arms.

The girl laughed haughtily. “Indeed, ’tis I!”

“Yeah, we got that. Why did you break the window to come in?” Yuichi demanded.

“Sage Mutsuko told me that in romance, impact is of utmost import,” Chiharu announced. “I wished to test this theory. Create a powerful impact so that they never forget you, have them thinking about you 24 hours a day. And if you are always thinking about someone, the mind says, perhaps you are in love with them? Such is the tactic I seek to employ!”

“Sis! Stop spreading these annoying ideas about romance!” Yuichi shouted.

She was surely referring to the same romantic philosophies that Mutsuko had just been talking about, and Yuichi couldn’t imagine anything more obnoxious than ideas like that catching on.

“I’m not spreading anything! I’m just giving girlish advice!” Mutsuko objected, sounding hurt.

Yuichi looked at Kanako. She was muttering to herself as she wrote in a notebook. She seemed to have retreated from reality... which meant he could probably proceed as if she weren’t there.

“Um, I have a lot of questions to ask. But first, what do you want?” Yuichi asked Chiharu. If she had really only shown up to “make an impact,” he was going to want to knock her over.

“Ah, yes,” Chiharu said haughtily. “That resonance you mentioned has begun. I wished to communicate this to you as soon as possible, thus, I elected to come here myself!”

“Who would come besides you? And you could have just called!” he snapped.

“I deemed it important enough to climb down from the roof with a rope!”

“What does that have to do with its importance?!” Yuichi looked towards the window and saw a rope dangling outside of it. She must have rappelled down and broken through the glass. He had to admit, he was impressed by her physical prowess.

“Um, how did you lose so much weight?” Aiko asked.

“That’s your question, Noro?! Though I can’t deny I’m curious!” Yuichi added.

“Heh heh! I ascertained that Yuichi Sakaki did not like my previous appearance. I slimmed down via Dannoura-style dieting!” Chiharu, who was now so slim she looked like a completely different person, stuck out her chest proudly. Her chest hadn’t lost much mass despite her overall slimming down, but otherwise, she seemed to weigh about a third of what she previously had.

“We last met in mid-November, didn’t we?” Yuichi asked. It was a little hard to believe she could slim down so much in a few weeks.

“Please explain it to us in more detail!” Aiko burst out.

“Why are you so fixated on that?!” Yuichi couldn’t imagine why Aiko wanted to lose weight, but maybe that was important to girls.

“Hah! It’s simple. Decrease input, increase output! That is all!”

“If it were that simple, the world wouldn’t be full of dieting techniques!” Aiko said in a rare flash of anger. Chiharu’s casual way of putting it seemed to have gotten under her skin.

“Then let us say I supplemented with a Dannoura secret family medicine!”

“And what medicine is—”

“Enough, Noro,” Yuichi interrupted the rapacious Aiko.

Martial arts and medicine were closely related; there were branches that handed down secret recipes that modern science still couldn’t fully analyze. Any medicine that could be this effective must be extremely powerful, and probably wasn’t something an amateur should be meddling with.

“Dieting aside... you said the resonance has started? Do you know where the enemy is?” he asked.

“I do not!” Chiharu proclaimed proudly.

“Then what did you come here for?!”

“Try changing the way you’re facing,” Makina offered with a wry smile. “The strength and interval of the resonance should change. The degree of the change should give you an idea of what direction of the Divine Vessel lies in. Once you get used to it, you’ll be able to ascertain their positions more concretely.”

“Ah... hmm! Indeed... I feel several... the closest one is this way, I believe?” Chiharu tilted her head and pointed out the broken window.

The others looked in that direction, but of course, there was nobody there... which meant that the Divine Vessel host was, at least, not within their line of sight.

“That’ll make it hard for us to go after them... ah, wait! Monika’s in trouble!” Yuichi exclaimed.

Monika had some of the Divine Vessels, but she couldn’t be host to them, which meant she wouldn’t know about the resonance. Yuichi quickly put a call in to her.

✽✽✽✽✽

Off in the direction where Chiharu was pointing, there stood a group of three people.

This was right after Natsuki Takeuchi had run off.

“Hm? Huh? Natsuki?” Yurika Maruyama looked around herself, confused.

She was standing on the pedestrian footpath that ran along the highway, five minutes from school. Natsuki, who had been there a minute ago, had disappeared in the blink of an eye.

Before her stood just a preppy looking young man and a boy with a gloomy air about him, with long bangs that obscured his eyes. As if to add even more chaos to the situation, the resonance began in that instant, as well.

She had felt this once before — a dull sound in her mind, like the flapping of insect wings. This time, the sheer volume of it suggested that her enemy was right in front of her.

“Wow... I came to see the right arm. I never thought I’d find her on the way. I did suppress my presence to come after you... maybe that’s why I succeeded?”

The young man’s words snapped Yurika back to her senses. “Her” likely referred to Natsuki, so maybe they knew each other. But if Natsuki had run away the moment she saw him, their relationship was probably complicated.

“Hey! What do you want with Natsuki?” Yurika demanded.

“She’s calling herself Natsuki here, is she?” the young man asked. “Goodness, what a fix. You’re the one I came here to see, but I have business with Natsuki, too... well, since you’re the one here right now, I suppose I’ll deal with you first. It’s rude to think of another woman when in a lady’s presence, after all.”

“What?! Did you come here after my Divine Vessel?” It was sounding like it, yet something still nagged at Yurika. They should have had to wait for the resonance to find out who to fight, yet he had come here to find Yurika before the resonance even began.

“I’m the game’s organizer, actually,” he said. “I have a lot of preparations to see to now that we’re ready to get started, and that’s what I’ve come here for.”

Yurika hadn’t even known the game had an organizer, but now that he mentioned it, it wasn’t that surprising. The Divine Vessel War seemed like the kind of thing someone would arrange for a reason.

“Are you the one who started this resonance?” she asked.

“Hmm? Oh, the fact that the resonance started now was coincidence. The Divine Vessels make that happen of their own will.”

“Okay. So, what did you want, then?”

“I want to test you to see if you’re worthy to participate,” he said. “Fight this boy, would you?”

“Here?” Feeling a bit dazed, Yurika put her right hand into her bag, wrapping her fingers around a spring-loaded gun she had brought with her in secret. It was a toy she’d bought at a cheap candy store that couldn’t even pierce through a sheet of newsprint.

“I’ve put up a spell to keep people away,” he said. “You should be fine for a little while. Of course, if I’d known this would happen, I would have put up a barrier... then she couldn’t have gotten away, either.” The man looked a bit chagrined.

The boy at his side spoke up. “H-Hey! I’m really supposed to do this? Are you sure?”

“Given your ability, you should be fine,” the man said. “Of course, remember that it’s just a test. You can wreak as much havoc as you like, but I’m stopping things the minute I get my result.”

Had he not used his ability before, or did he just have no confidence? One way or another, the boy seemed timid as he stepped forward.

The closer the boy came, the more clear it became: he was host to a Divine Vessel.

Defeating the hosts of Divine Vessels was Yurika’s job as a righteous hero.

Becoming a Divine Vessel host could be something that fell into your lap. But those who participated in the battle to get wishes couldn’t be anyone decent.

They were evil — and if they were evil, it was okay to kill them. Yurika pulled out the peashooter and fired.

Both the peashooter and her right arm were enveloped in a black flame that gave the toy every bit the power of a real gun.

Yurika didn’t even move very quickly, yet the boy still couldn’t dodge it in time. The bullet hit him straight between the eyes...

...But that was all.

It was just a silver-painted toy ball with no real power behind it. It bounced off his forehead and rolled onto the ground in exactly the manner that one would expect.

Silence fell. Both Yurika and the boy froze up in surprise.

For Yurika, it was over the fact that her ability hadn’t worked.

For the boy, it was over the fact that she had fired a toy gun at him in this situation.

“Ah, shall I explain? Neither of you seems to understand what just happened,” the young man said breezily as he watched things play out. “Your ability enhances weapons such that even a toy gun can be lethal. I wonder what you named the ability...” He didn’t seem to mind interrupting them despite the fact that they were in the middle of a fight.

Yurika ignored him; she didn’t care about ability names.

“Oh, but naming these things makes them so much more exciting,” the man said. “Let me see... let’s call it ARMS. It’s a rather basic pun — arm, arms — but at least it’s transparent. This boy’s ability is Skill Eater. Put simply, it’s an ability that devours other abilities — negates them, in other words.”

“ARMS?! Hey! If you know this stuff, then tell me! What would’ve happened if I hadn’t been able to negate it?” the boy yelled at the man.

Yurika began to back away. There was nothing she could do. She had other toy weapons in her arsenal, but they meant nothing if he could negate her ability.

“Not even I can say what an ability will be before it activates,” the man said. “And I’m sure you can handle a death or two. You must have some insurance.”

“Well, whatever,” the boy said. “So I can negate the abilities of Divine Vessels, right? Isn’t that kinda cheating in a supernatural battle like this?”

Yurika began to think. It was true that negating abilities was a threat, but surely there must be some condition attached to it.

As the boy had said, the Divine Vessel War was a battle of superpowers, and the Evil God had arranged it for some sort of purpose. He’d handed out the vessels and arranged the resonance to cause battles to happen, which meant that he wanted to see them fight.

While things might never be perfectly fair, he couldn’t want to see completely one-sided developments, either. Which meant the boy must have some weakness, or some limit to what he could do.

While she was thinking, the boy came even closer.

He was walking more confidently now; perhaps negating her ability had encouraged him.

Yurika examined the boy.

His uniform was that of Seishin High, just like Yurika’s. He wasn’t carrying a weapon, and the fact that he was walking towards her suggested that he had no long-range attack capabilities.

His frame was lanky, indicating a lack of physical strength, while Yurika was an athletic girl. She thought maybe she could take him in grappling.

As he approached, the boy raised his arm.

His hand was open, suggesting preparation for a slap, but he was too far away for that.

He launched his attack, which was laughably slow and shaky.

Yurika didn’t even have to dodge; she just stepped back. The boy’s palm passed through the air in front of her. Her body shook from a sudden chill, and she was assailed with a terrible feeling of loss.

She had lost something, but she didn’t know what.

“What... was that?!” In her confusion, Yurika ended up asking her enemy about it.

“This is the true power of Skill Eater: the power to steal the abilities of another,” said the man.

The man had had no reason to reveal the true nature of the boy’s ability, and plenty of reasons not to, yet he’d answered her question without concern.

“Earlier you said that it negated abilities...”

“Skill Eater does both,” said the man. “It can negate abilities directed at him, and if he gets close, he can devour an ability and take it for his own.”

“Hey, what is this? Avoiding surprise attacks? It’s a dud...” the boy spat as he scooted away from her again.

“That will happen sometimes,” the man said. “You won’t know what abilities you can steal until you try. Incidentally, avoiding surprise attacks means that even if someone attacks you out of the blue, the attack won’t hit—”

The young man began explaining more to the boy. Yurika began to think about running. She couldn’t think of a way to fight back at the moment, so her best option seemed to be running away to buy time.

“—Oh, and I don’t recommend running away,” the man said, as if he’d read her mind. “This is a test. Why don’t you show me how you’d handle this situation?”

If it was a test, what would happen if she failed? It seemed too much to hope for that he’d just let her go home.

He called me a hero, but I can’t do anything...

Even if Yurika was a hero, her only power was to be revived in a church if she died. That could be her key out of here, but Yurika didn’t have the courage to commit suicide. She remained stock still as the boy approached.

Without the ability to use her right arm, Yurika was just an ordinary high school girl. She didn’t have any way of fighting someone with supernatural abilities.

“Yeah! Don’t run away! Give me a decent ability already!” the boy shouted.

Yurika let out a gasp at the boy’s words. He was assuming Yurika had multiple skills, which meant there might be more in her hero’s arsenal. The moment she realized that, a strange sight appeared before her.

→Item

Strength

Skill

Ally

Other

It was a list of words in a white frame.

Yurika realized these must be her hero skills.

It wasn’t quite what she’d been expecting, but perhaps it was modeled after a video game. There was a cursor on the list which she could move with her own will.

But what should I do?! She didn’t know which one to choose, but she also didn’t have time to think about it.

Yurika chose her command via instinct.

“Urgh!” The next instant, the boy let out an undignified shout and went flying off to the side.

The one who had done it was a man dressed in black: Soichi Kiryu, the man in the church who had called her a hero.

Kiryu’s hips were lowered, his fist thrust straight out to the side. Given what had happened, he must have punched the boy from the side.

The boy was currently lying on the ground, having first crashed through a shop sign and hit a wall.

“Yurimaru. Have you finally realized how to use your powers?” Kiryu asked.

Yurika had chosen the Ally command, meaning the one friend she had waiting in the wings had been added to her “party.”

“Damn! That hurt! What the hell? I thought this skill let me dodge surprise attacks!” the humiliated boy cursed at the man, still lying on the ground.

Yurika was surprised he was still conscious, although his arm and leg were bent at strange angles — broken, or perhaps dislocated.

“Surprise attack dodging avoids only the blow that begins the battle,” the man said. “The effect won’t activate while battle is in progress.”

“You said you’d protect me! Look what she did! Why did you let this happen?”

“Don’t worry,” the man said. “The ability you stole the other day enhances your endurance. You’ll recover soon enough, although you will be immobile for a while. All right, you both pass. I’d be worried about the girl by herself, but if you’re with her, I think she’ll be fine.”

The man was now standing beside the boy. Yurika hadn’t even seen him move.

“You think I will allow you to leave?” Kiryu asked, assuming a fighting stance while facing in the man’s direction.

He dropped his hips and spread his legs, shifted his weight to his back leg, and turned his palms upwards with both hands thrust forward as if to guard his face.

“Yes, I do. Because you’re physically incapable of stopping me.”

The man grabbed the boy’s collar and jumped. In an instant, they were both on top of the five-story building the boy had slammed into before.

It was true that he probably couldn’t follow them like this.

“Goodbye. The real battle will start soon. I hope you’re looking forward to it.”

With that, both the man and the boy disappeared.

The Divine Vessel resonance had stopped at some point, but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with the pair’s disappearance.

Yurika had heard that resonance didn’t stop until something was settled, which meant that must have occurred somewhere else.

Kiryu released his fighting stance and turned to face Yurika. “This happened because you rely too much on your Divine Vessel.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Yurika demanded. “And what have you been off doing, by the way? I haven’t heard from you since that first time!”

“I have been preparing the church. Rejoice, for you have steadily been gaining new disciples.”

“Disciples? The heck?” she cried.

“Believers in the power of the hero,” he intoned.

It seemed Kiryu was involved in some kind of hero-based religion. From his outfit she had assumed he was a Christian priest, but that appeared to not be true. He seemed to be the founder of his own sect.

“Well, all right,” she said. “Whatever the reason, you did save me, so... thanks.”

“I merely did what is expected of me,” he said. “But I really must have you grow a bit stronger, Yurimaru. To have been nearly beaten by one of his level...”

“Okay, I get it. I need to level up or something, right?”

The command list had disappeared at some point, but she was able to bring it up by focusing on it. She chose “Strength.”

Name: Yurimaru

Level: 1

Power: 5

Endurance: 10

Speed: 6

Wisdom: 2

Luck: 20

HP: 15

MP: 6

The string of numbers around her seemed to indicate Yurika’s stats.

Yurika felt a sense of danger run through her. The numbers did seem awfully low. She needed to do something about that as soon as possible, but she didn’t actually know how to level herself up. This wasn’t a video game, so there weren’t just monsters wandering around for her to fight.

Well, I guess I just need to beat up something or other...

There were plenty of bad people out there in the world. As a righteous hero, Yurika thought optimistically, that she could just beat them up.

“I’ll just level by beating up some worthless punks who don’t deserve to live... ah!” Yurika had gotten a little distracted by the strange series of events, but she was suddenly reminded that Natsuki was missing. “I’m gonna go look for my friend! See you later!”

“Understood,” said the priest. “But might I offer you one word of warning?”

“What is it? I’m kind of in a hurry!” Yurika snapped.

Natsuki had run when she’d seen the young man. In other words, she’d known he was dangerous. It was quite possible that those two would be going after her next, and Yurika was itching to find her first and save her.

“You won’t be able to use that technique again for a while,” said the priest. “A hero can have four allies at maximum, and once you have placed someone in your party, you cannot trade them out until you have more than four.”

“Fine! I see!” She didn’t actually see, but Yurika began running anyway.

✽✽✽✽✽

“Now...” After seeing Yurika off, Kiryu resumed course to his original destination.

He had been lucky, perhaps, that he had happened to be so close to Yurika. If he hadn’t been, he wouldn’t have been able to join her party; she couldn’t instantly call a party member who was too far away. Perhaps, though, such luck was one of her natural heroic qualities.

First, we must cut unneeded ties...

With his newfound confidence that Yurika had talent as a hero, Kiryu hardened his resolve.

He arrived in front of a moderately-sized, five-story hospital building. As he entered, he found a gathering of anachronistic-looking delinquents lazing around in high-collared uniforms.

They were lounging on the sofas, surrounded by cigarette butts and empty beer cans. It was unlikely that there were many people eccentric enough to want a check-up at a hospital like this.

“This a surprise,” he said. “I was expecting a medical Outer.”

“What’d you say?!” One of the delinquents rose to his feet, let out a stupid-sounding scream, and grabbed at Kiryu.

But the moment he put his hand on him, Kiryu merely twisted his shoulder, and the delinquent went flying. He had anticipated his opponent’s movements and synchronized with them, using his opponent’s strength against him.

The delinquent lost his balance and stumbled across the room at high speed. As he slammed loudly into the wall, the other delinquents stood up en masse.

One of them threw a punch. Kiryu grabbed the fist with his left hand, stepped in, and hit him with his right elbow. Another came in with a kick.

Kiryu slapped the knee of the kicking leg with his palm, stepped in, and slammed the back of his fist into the goon’s face.

The techniques, which weren’t terribly impressive in and of themselves, still took out the delinquents one by one. Once he had beaten enough of them, the rest of the goons just stepped back and watched from a distance.

With his obstacles gone, Kiryu now proceeded deeper into the hospital. He found the hospital director’s room and entered to find a man in a white lab coat standing there.

He was Kiryu’s true objective: the man who had given Yurika the Evil God’s right arm.

“How utterly deplorable,” Kiryu said. “To allow delinquents to run rampant over a hospital is an insult to the medical profession.”

“Fine words from a violent priest,” the man said. He must have known that Kiryu was there, yet he remained perfectly at ease.

If this man was what was known as an Outer, then he likely had no fear of being harmed by a mortal. Still, Kiryu had not come here to question him. He had spoken up only out of a sense of playfulness.

Slowly, Kiryu approached the man in the lab coat. Perhaps the man didn’t know what he was there to do, because all he did was stand there. He must have been confident that no matter what he did, he could survive it.

Kiryu came within touching distance of the man. He gently took his left arm and pulled the man close, then placed his left palm against his chest. The movement was so gentle that the man apparently felt no malice whatsoever.

Zhen jiao, the stamping foot.

Kiryu stepped so hard he cracked the floor beneath him.

He kicked off the ground, channeling all the power of the recoil into his upper body. None of it was wasted; every bit of it passed through his hand and into the man’s chest.

“What...” The white-coated man’s eyes opened wide in surprise.

He must have found it unthinkable, that such an attack couldn’t possibly hit him, and yet...

“I have fought your kind many times before, and I have come to understand something,” said Kiryu. “Fast attacks are ineffective. For some reason, you always dodge them.”

Projectile attacks were the best example. No matter how many times you fired at them, the shot never hit.

Kiryu continued, “But you cannot possibly dodge an attack from point blank range.”

That did not mean that you could just plant a gun barrel in their chest and fire. If you did, the gun would just jam. Knives would also break, and poison would suffer a chemical reaction and lose its potency.

However, it was harder for the influence of a Worldview Holder to affect the body of another person. A person was like a little world unto themselves. This meant that the most effective method against an Outer was to attack them bare-handed at close range.

“Th-That won’t be enough to—” the man objected. He coughed up blood that sprinkled Kiryu’s clothes, but Kiryu wasn’t fazed.

Another zhen jiao.

There was no sign of damage to the man’s chest, yet all the power was focused on a single point: his heart.

“I was told to consider people like you ‘exceptionally lucky,’” Kiryu said. “I never expected that a single attack would finish you.” Part of an Outer’s nature was that if there was even the slightest chance to survive, they always would. Which meant he had to systematically shave away any chance of survival until at last they were dead.

Kiryu continued hitting him with penetrating tou jin strikes. Even after the man stopped moving, Kiryu kept attacking, and only released the man when he was sure that he was dead.

Just to be sure, he produced a knife from his pocket and threw it at him. It didn’t miss, but stuck right into the man’s stomach — which meant, in Kiryu’s judgment, that he was no longer an Outer now, just a mere sack of flesh.

“Now, Yurimaru can focus on her exploits as a hero,” Kiryu said with satisfaction.