Chapter 4: Necromancer and Stalker Versus Serial Killer and Strongest Little Brother

An intruder had broken the window to get into the cafe, and the customers had all fled.

A group of five men and women now faced off against each other.

Sakiyama was the one who’d broken the window to enter the cafe, but now he was just standing there. The woman in the black riding dress, who had called herself Natsuki’s big sister, was standing between them and the exit. Yuichi, Natsuki, and Ende were sandwiched between the two apparently-hostile presences who’d appeared out of nowhere.

Ende was smiling as if she found all of this very exciting, while Natsuki wasn’t even trying to hide her displeasure.

Yuichi cast a sympathetic glance at her. “Um, not to butt in on your family situation, but I guess we’re both having troubles with our big sisters...”

Of course, he thought, maybe this was just how big sisters were the world over: self-righteous, arrogant, and overflowing with confidence.

“She’s not my big sister,” Natsuki replied with a scowl. “She’s one of Nergal’s fourteen servants. Her name’s Alberta.”

That meant Yuichi was definitely the one being targeted. But it also changed things.

“What do you want?” Yuichi demanded. “We had a deal with Nergal. He said he’d leave us alone.”

Yuichi had won his game with Nergal, and Nergal had said he would keep his promise.

“Mm, I think you might be misremembering,” the woman told him. “Master Nergal’s precise words were, ‘If you win, I’ll let you go. I’ll allow for you to leave this place unharmed, and for Natsuki to remain as she is. I’ll even throw in a promise to never come after Natsuki again.’ So? I’m sure it’s fine for me to come after people who aren’t Natsuki.”

“Oh, for the love of... If I’d known, I would’ve asked for a more all-encompassing promise.”

“But that means you do have to leave me alone, doesn’t it? So I think you should go.” Natsuki took a step forward and glared at her.

It was true that if the promise was in effect, the woman should never be able to touch Natsuki again.

“Well, it’s true that Nergal rescinded his order for us to search for you,” the woman said. “But I still have my own personal business with you, unrelated to his.”

“Talk about splitting hairs...” If that was possible, Yuichi thought, she could argue whatever she wanted to. He grumbled to himself about how subordinates should really be more true to the spirit of an oath. “Anyway, you said you had business with me?”

“Oh, I did... but if Natsuki’s here, I don’t need you anymore,” the woman said carelessly. “I was planning to kidnap her boyfriend to lure her to me. I thought it might be fun to chop you to pieces and show them to her, or perhaps send her a picture of the two of us making love?”

“Boyfriend...” Natsuki murmured. “You disgust me, Alberta, but sometimes I like the things you say.”

“Takeuchi... did you not hear the other things she said?” Yuichi asked incredulously. He didn’t feel like he could let an unsettling comment like that slide.

“Sakaki, be careful,” Natsuki replied. “I think they’re both dead. Sakiyama was decapitated, and Alberta was chopped to bits by Takizawa.”

“They don’t look dead to me...”

“It seems Alberta’s a necromancer. She must be moving her own corpse around.”

“How are you supposed to move yourself around when you’re dead...?” Yuichi began. It made no sense to him at all, but he decided to give up on trying to understand it. What mattered was that both Alberta and Sakiyama were his enemies, and that they were after him. That made things feel a lot simpler.

Natsuki drew into a combat stance. Yuichi stood stock still and opened his senses to everything around him. Alberta wasn’t their only enemy; there was Sakiyama behind them, too.

“It really hurt, you see,” Alberta said casually. “I wasn’t expecting to die in a place like that. I don’t know how I’ll go about living the rest of my life.”

“Why not just die, then?” Natsuki snapped.

“Oh, yes,” Alberta said smoothly, either nonplussed by Natsuki’s biting retort or simply ignoring it. “You asked what I wanted, didn’t you? Revenge, of course.”

“The way that I recall the situation is that you had me at your mercy,” Natsuki said. “I didn’t do anything to earn your ire.”

“But if I try to take revenge against Aki, I’ll just lose.”

“In other words, you want to vent your frustration,” Natsuki said.

“Mm, more or less. The body I have right now is one I stole after forcing my way into a family home — my original body was chopped up too badly to recover, you see — but it must be a bad match, because I can’t seem to stop it from decomposing.”

Yuichi felt vaguely sick as he realized what Alberta’s casual words implied.

“So I was thinking, as a fellow servant of Nergal, my compatibility with you might be just a bit better. So, Natsuki dear... give me your body, would you?” With that, Alberta flipped up the skirt of her riding dress and drew a weapon from within.

It was a whip. Despite her outfit, it wasn’t a riding crop, but a bullwhip, of the sort an animal tamer might use.

“Hey, this is getting pretty exciting,” Ende commented. “I don’t think it has anything to do with me, though, so I might just sit back and watch... wait, I know. Since it’s no fun to see a big battle setup like this interrupted, I’ll set up a ward to keep people away. I’ll even do it for free.”

As if seeing that the battle was about to start, Ende moved to the back of the cafe and sat down in a random chair. Then she pulled out her smartphone and placed a call. Yuichi wasn’t sure what she was doing that would keep people away, but all he could do was let her handle it.

Alberta didn’t even glance at Ende as she swung her whip directly at Natsuki.

But the whip didn’t reach her. Yuichi had grabbed the tip.

“Huh?” Alberta asked, agape. She seemed to have great confidence in her skill with the whip, and likely hadn’t been expecting the first attack to be stopped.

“Sakaki, you can catch whips?” Natsuki asked.

“Yeah, I’m used to it.”

There were theories that a whip’s attacks could exceed the speed of sound. In reality, it was dubious that any whip meant for attacking could exceed the speed of sound, but naturally, the fantastical concept appealed greatly to Mutsuko. Because of that, Mutsuko had developed a whip that really did exceed the speed of sound, and had used it on Yuichi many times before. Thanks to that, he’d learned how to cope with even the most unpredictable high-speed attacks.

“Takeuchi, you do something about Sakiyama,” he ordered. “I’ll handle the whip lady.”

“I will,” Natsuki agreed. “Watch out for any spikes she might throw; if they strike you, you’ll be cursed.”

“That’s not much of a warning...”

Natsuki turned to face Sakiyama.

Yuichi looked at Alberta again. There was something strange about her center of balance; she must have had even more heavy weapons under her skirt.

He estimated, from that one whip strike, that she was a little bit stronger than Natsuki. It was hard for him to say whether she was really “dead” or not, but there was definitely something awkward about her movements. Altogether, she wasn’t that strong, Yuichi determined.

“It looks like you aren’t an amateur... But I can’t have you getting a big head just because you anticipated one little attack.” Alberta released the whip and flung her skirt up theatrically.

The thighs he glimpsed beneath the skirt were, as he’d thought, equipped with a plethora of weapons.

Alberta grabbed a few of them and threw them at him in one smooth motion. A spike went flying right at him from her right hand. From her left hand came a disc-shaped weapon, a chakram, that traced a curve as it flew at him.

Yuichi closed the space between him and Alberta and snagged the chakram out of the air. He also dodged the spike, just to be safe.

“Sorry, I’m used to chakrams, too,” he told her. His big sister Mutsuko had developed a weapon called a chakram shooter; naturally, she’d tested it on Yuichi, so he knew how they worked, too.

“I knew long-range weapons wouldn’t work from the moment you grabbed the whip!” she snapped.

Apparently Alberta had just been using the projectiles to limit his range of motion, as she quickly hefted a hand-ax in a double-handed grip and swung it at Yuichi as he approached. But Yuichi was already in her personal space before she could finish the blow.

He held back her arms’ descent from below, then crossed them. As her center of balance shifted upwards, he slammed a palm into her vulnerable chest.

But there was something dubious about the way the strike broke her ribs and crushed her lungs; he was sure he hadn’t hit her hard enough to do that.

So Yuichi flew back, getting space between them as Alberta doubled over.

“Looks like you really are dead,” he said.

Alberta’s body was brittle, containing none of the sustaining life force of a living human’s body.

Seeing a corpse moving around inspired a certain degree of primal terror, but it appeared to be, in itself, a fairly easy thing to fight.

Though normally, crushing a person’s lungs would end the battle...

People couldn’t move if they couldn’t breathe, but that didn’t seem to matter when the body was already dead.

Alberta looked up from the place where she was crouching, and grinned.

Yuichi put up a hand casually to grab the thing whizzing at him from behind.

Alberta’s face twisted in surprise.

“I told you, I’m used to chakrams,” Yuichi said. He was holding a chakram made of transparent material. When she’d initially thrown the first, she’d probably thrown another on a wider arc.

It’s trouble, though...

He could beat her, certainly, but she seemed like she’d take a lot of work to knock out. He’d have to bludgeon her into immobility, but he was hesitant to go that far against a woman.

He glanced behind him to see how Natsuki was doing. She’d cut Sakiyama neatly up into a pile of immobile pieces. She hadn’t seemed to show a moment’s hesitation.

Perhaps because the body was already dead, there was nearly no blood.

“I’m finished,” Natsuki said. “What about you?”

“I feel a little bad for Sakiyama, but...” Yuichi said. The man might have been a stalker, but he still thought the man deserved a little more feeling than that.

Natsuki walked up next to him; now it was two against one. Alberta winced, seeming to realize she was at a disadvantage.

“What’s going on here? I can’t lose to people like you! No, I know! It’s this body that’s the problem! I never should have chosen this weak little body!” Alberta shouted.

Yuichi thought Alberta might be setting up for an escape; her shrill cries were probably a bluff. She just wanted to distract them long enough to get away.

“Takeuchi, what should we do with her?” he asked. Ende’s ward seemed to be working, but they also needed to act soon. Normally, he wouldn’t mind if an enemy wanted to run away. But the way she was acting, Alberta might come back again with a stronger body.

“I think we’ll have to kill her,” Natsuki said. “Don’t worry, even if the police find her, she’s already a corpse, so the time of death won’t finger us. At worst, we’ll get off with desecration of a corpse.”

“I wasn’t asking about the legal ramifications... should we contact Nergal? Maybe he can pick her up...”

This was all Nergal’s fault for failing to adhere to his promise. Yuichi felt he had responsibility to come here and collect her.

“You know... Sakaki, you can be extremely insensitive sometimes,” Natsuki said with a frown.

“Ah... right, we can’t do that. Sorry.” It seemed the antipathy between Natsuki and Nergal was deeper than he’d imagined.

“If you can’t do it, Sakaki, I will.” Natsuki strode forward, apparently thinking they’d make no progress if she left the matter to him.

He was just about to warn her not to let her guard down, that Alberta might not be completely out of the fight — when suddenly, it was all over. Alberta’s head tumbled off of her shoulders.

Judging by the shocked expression on her face as her head rolled around on the floor, not even Alberta herself knew exactly what had happened.

“Takeuchi, did you do that?” Yuichi asked. He was sure that no one present had done anything, but he had to ask anyway.

“If I had a move that would work at this distance, I would have used it already.”

“You know it wasn’t me either, of course,” Ende added from the distant place from which she’d been watching the battle.

There were no customers or servers around, either; they were the only ones present.

“What happened?” Yuichi looked at Alberta. Her head really had been sheared clean off, with a cut as smooth as if it had been done with a sharp sword.

“I don’t know. I’m as surprised as you are,” Alberta’s head admitted as it rolled along the floor.

Even the one who’d been decapitated didn’t know, it seemed.

“If my big sis were here, she’d say ‘is it a new Stand user?!’ or something...” Yuichi snarked, but at the same time, he knew that this was a seriously dangerous situation. If this had been an attack, that meant the person behind it could kill without warning.

If the enemy is nearby and has to see what they’re attacking, that’s a little better, at least...

It might be wishful thinking, but if that wasn’t the case, then they were all fish in a barrel.

Yuichi opened his senses, searching for a presence.

He could tell that someone was outside. A moment later, the cafe door opened, and a girl carrying a sword came in.

It was Yurika Maruyama.

Previously her weapons had been converted from toy swords, but what she was carrying now appeared to be a genuine broadsword. She was also wearing proper armor, unlike before. It wasn’t exactly full plate, of course, but she had a headpiece, a breastplate, gauntlets, and leg coverings to protect all her vitals.

“Ah! Hey, look, look! The Brave Slash I just learned actually hit!” Yurika called out the door after seeing the condition of things inside the cafe.

“Don’t just whip that stuff out! You scared the hell out of me!” Another person entered, bristling with annoyance. It was a sullen-looking boy wearing a uniform for the same school as Ende’s.

“Don’t worry,” Yurika assured him. “My skills only hit monsters I’m in an encounter with. But once I’ve encountered them, they can even slice through walls to get at them.”

The two were looking at Alberta, which meant they probably weren’t here for Yuichi and Natsuki.

“That’s Maruyama... which means that guy there is Ryoma Takei?” Yuichi murmured. Which would mean that Yuichi hadn’t even had to search; the person he had been looking for had come right at him.

They’d been through so much that he’d almost forgotten how this all started, but he now remembered that Ende mentioning that someone was coming.

“Sakaki, Maruyama’s here,” Natsuki said. “Didn’t you need to talk to her?”

“I did, but uh... given the situation, I’d... sort of like to leave things to them and run away...” Yuichi had been hoping to leave the rest to Yurika and run along home, but the presence of this boy, who might be Ryoma, had complicated things.

If it was him, then Yuichi’s objective of finding him had been effortlessly met, but he hadn’t actually decided yet what he’d do once he found the guy.

I’m supposed to fight him, right?

Ende seemed to want Ryoma and Yuichi to fight, but from the way she was talking, it seemed she was going to just let it happen rather than trying to force it. But a fight probably wasn’t going to spring up under these conditions. Yuichi didn’t have a Divine Vessel, so Ryoma had no reason to fight him, and Yuichi didn’t feel like picking a fight just to get Ryoma’s.

“Ah! Natsuki! What are you doing here? I’ve been looking everywhere!” Yurika cried theatrically as she noticed her friend. “Look! I’ve been running around everywhere searching for you, and I leveled up a ton and got a new party member!” Yurika stepped over Alberta’s body to approach Yuichi and Natsuki.

“I’m glad to see you’ve acquired a proper set of equipment,” Natsuki said.

“You see a friend dressed like that, and that’s the first thing you say?” Yuichi watched the two of them, suddenly feeling drained.

“Sakaki, too... what are you doing here?” Yurika asked, sounding surprised to see him.

“I could ask you the same question,” he returned. “By the way, is that guy’s name Ryoma Takei?” Yuichi pointed at the boy.

“Yeah, it is. He’s in my party. His job class is Goof-Off.”

Ryoma was in the process of picking up Alberta’s head. “Are you the one who killed Mio and my big sister? Where’s Kotori?” His voice was cold as ice, with all emotion stifled.

“Oh, please. Do you know how many people I’ve killed?” Alberta responded in a mocking tone. “I don’t ask the name of every single one. Use some common sense!”

Ryoma threw her head against the wall with all his might.

“What violence,” Natsuki said, a bit disgustedly.

“Yeah, I feel like we shouldn’t be watching this. Is it okay for us to be here? I’d really like to go home.” Yuichi felt like he’d been shuffled off of center stage and into the wings, like he’d been dragged suddenly into someone else’s plotline.

“We stopped by Ryoma’s home and found his childhood friend and big sister dead, and his little sister missing,” Yurika explained. “We went searching for the killer, and it led us here.”

“How did you find her?” Yuichi asked. It would be one thing if they’d caught her in the act, but it didn’t seem possible for a pair of novices to track a killer who had already left the scene of the crime.

“The resonance,” Yurika said. “Apparently the culprit had a Divine Vessel, and it was still resonating, so we just followed that.”

“The resonance lets you tell where Divine Vessels are,” Yuichi nodded. “But how did you know that the criminal had one?”

“Once you get used to it, you can sense lingering resonance,” Yurika explained. “In other words, you can vaguely identify places an enemy used to be. I guess it’s because they don’t want people just running away all the time when the war enters its final stages...”

If that was to be believed, then either Alberta or her borrowed body must have been a Divine Vessel host.

Isn’t this all a little contrived? Yuichi thought. It felt like all of the elements of the story were conspiring, like someone had arranged for them all to fight here and now.

Yuichi cast a glance at Ende, who was watching from a distance. He didn’t know what was going through her mind, exactly, but she really seemed to be enjoying herself.

“Isn’t a hero supposed to get info by talking to people in town?” he asked.

“Oh, I have that skill, too, but when I used it, everyone just started repeating the same thing over and over again, and it got kind of creepy...” Yurika responded.

The whole time they were speaking, Ryoma had been approaching Alberta’s body. He crouched and listened at her chest. Then, upon noticing a mole next to her collarbone, he let out a howl of anger.

“I knew it was you!” Ryoma grabbed Alberta’s head in one hand and squeezed.

“He knows where all his little sister’s moles are? Isn’t that a bit creepy?” Natsuki commented.

“Why are you asking me?” Yuichi replied.

Alberta’s body was apparently that of Ryoma’s little sister. He didn’t know all the details, but apparently Alberta, having been killed by Aki, had gone off searching for a body she could use, broken into Ryoma’s house, killed his little sister, and stolen her body.

“It’s certainly a tragedy, but it feels like it’s none of our business,” Natsuki stated bluntly.

“Yeah, I think you’re right...” Yuichi scratched his head.

It was so sudden, it was hard for him to feel sympathy for Ryoma. It was like tuning in to a soap opera he had never watched before, right in the middle of an episode.

“But by the way, you really shouldn’t underestimate me,” Alberta said. “Did you really think I’m helpless when I’m just a head?”

Suddenly, Alberta’s hair began to grow. It wound itself around Ryoma’s hand, crawled up his arm, and began to bind his entire body.

“Urgh...” Ryoma let out a groan as the hair began to coil around him. Soon, he was encased in a black cocoon of hair. Bound head to toe, it seemed unlikely that he could possibly break free. It was looking far more likely that he’d end up smothered to death.

“I see. I was wondering how Alberta managed to grab someone’s body when she was just a head. So she can do that, too...” Natsuki said, sounding rather impressed, despite the bizarre scene in front of them.

“What should I do? Should I help him?” Yuichi asked.

He still couldn’t help thinking it was none of his business. For some reason, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he shouldn’t interfere.

He turned to Yurika. “Hey, Maruyama, isn’t he in your party? Shouldn’t you help him?” he urged. She seemed to know Ryoma, so maybe it would be appropriate for her to interfere.

“I’d like to, but if I try to attack, it’ll probably hit him, too,” Yurika responded, eyes narrowed.

Ryoma had been holding Alberta’s head in his right hand, which she had forced behind his back. It would certainly be hard to hit just the head under these conditions.

“What about that slash you used that went through the wall?” Yuichi replied. “Can’t you use that?”

“I’m not sure if it’ll discriminate between targets now that they’re joined together like that...”

“It’s looking like he’s beyond hope, so maybe I should just kill them both and put him out of his misery?” Natsuki offered, seeming to find the whole situation annoying.

“Natsuki, you...” Yuichi was about to scold her, but suddenly, there was movement from Ryoma’s end.

He released a howl, which grew and grew in volume.

Then the mass of Alberta’s hair began to swell, as if a powerful pressure was being exerted from within. The hair couldn’t stand against it.

Bam! In a deafening burst, Alberta’s hair went flying, torn to shreds.

“What in the world...?” Yuichi murmured in disbelief as he watched Ryoma emerge from within.

His entire body had begun to shine.

Ryoma raised his right hand, still holding Alberta’s head in it.

“Huh? Wait, wait, I’m feeling a creak... stop it! I can’t afford to lose any more of myself!” Alberta screamed.

Ryoma, consumed by rage, had begun squeezing Alberta’s head. The light subsuming his body began to focus in the lone hand holding Alberta.

“Natsuki dear, save me!”

But of course, Natsuki was under no obligation to save her, and Alberta’s head ended up crushed.

Perhaps because she had been using necromancy to prolong her life, the crushed head released no splatter of blood. It just turned to dust, which scattered across the floor. Alberta’s and Sakiyama’s bodies both turned to dust and crumbled, too.

Silence fell.

“Well, it looks like it’s all over now... do you think we can go home?” Yuichi whispered.

“I suppose,” Natsuki said. “But didn’t you call me out here because you wanted to find Maruyama?”

If he did just go home, it would mean that Natsuki had wasted her time coming here. Yuichi was just thinking about how he didn’t want to do that, when Ende moved into action.

“Yuichi Sakaki! Have a look at this, would you?” Ende walked towards Alberta’s remains and pointed. There was a strikingly white rib buried deep in her remains.

“Is that... a Divine Vessel?” he asked.

“Yes. A Divine Vessel, reverted to its initial state without you needing to dirty your hands to get it. Now you can take it as a host. You can gain its divine power, and use its resonance to find the other parts.”

“Hey... did you plan it all so things would turn out this way?” he demanded. It was certainly sounding that way, but Ende’s only response was a cryptic smile.

Just then, the previously silent Ryoma howled out. “Don’t you dare! That’s Kotori’s body! I won’t let you people have it!”

Ryoma’s body began to glow even brighter. The light erupted powerfully in time with Ryoma’s release of anger. It was now as if his entire body was wreathed in flame. He’d gone completely berserk.

Yuichi was feeling a creeping realization that he wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this.

“Okay! Awakening event complete!”

But Ryoma’s manner changed on a dime. In an instant, any trace of the tragic protagonist seeking to avenge his little sister was gone.

“The ‘Do you want power?’ trigger is a little meh these days, but the other options weren’t exactly great, either,” he said flatly. “So, who are you anyway? Some ordinary person who just got mixed up in this?” Ryoma asked, looking down his nose at them.

“Huh? What? When did you start acting this way?” Even Yurika was shocked by the sudden change.

“Let’s see... What’ll our next event be?”

Ryoma was suddenly holding five cards in his right hand. Yuichi had no idea where he’d plucked them from.

The young man inspected each of them closely. “Oh, so this is Yuichi Sakaki. I was told I was supposed to beat him, so I guess I’d better kill him now,” he said without hesitation, glancing at Yuichi.

“But why? That doesn’t make any sense!” Yuichi protested.

“I was told you’d be my biggest obstacle in the Divine Vessels War. So I’d better just kill you while I have the chance, right?”

“You need to think this over a little more,” Yuichi said. “You can’t just talk about killing people like this. Is your wish really so important you’re willing to kill for it?”

He knew that he was unlikely to talk Ryoma down, but he at least needed to try to find a way to a ceasefire. Even if it was all just lip service, it was important to Yuichi to try. It might still turn out that fighting was the only way, but he wouldn’t be able to get serious unless he’d positively exhausted all other options.

“My wish?” Ryoma asked. “It’s to live a peaceful, ordinary life.”

“Come on, then!” Yuichi shouted.

It seemed self-evident to Yuichi that you could never live a peaceful life after killing people, but Ryoma kept talking nevertheless. “They say the Evil God can grant any wish. Which means that no matter what I do, I’ll get my peaceful life in the end, right? So what does it matter if I kill people? Once I get my wish, the rest will sort itself out. So logically speaking, it makes sense to resort to absolutely anything as long as it means I win. Right?”

Not only was this guy weird, he seemed to have an utterly bizarre take on the world. Yuichi determined there was no way to avoid a fight.

“I’d heard you were a ‘Protagonist,’ but ‘I’ll kill anyone who stands in my way’ is a pretty dime-a-dozen villain speech, don’t you think?” Yuichi asked.

“Hmm? Oh, I see, Ende’s here too,” Ryoma said. “Did she tell you about that? Don’t worry, a protagonist will always angst a little bit about killing people, but give him a few words of comfort, and he’s right back on his feet. Besides, you guys were working with the killer, so I’m totally justified.”

Yuichi had no idea what Ryoma was talking about, but he decided it might be best to ignore it. It was all nonsense anyway; listening to it would just confuse him.

Ryoma made a move. He threw one of the cards he was holding into the air.

Yuichi braced for an attack, but the card merely flew upwards, then vanished into light.

“Event: Someone precious to Ryoma was killed by Alberta and Yuichi Sakaki. Ryoma fights Yuichi, wins, and gains even greater power.”

The voice that spoke those words seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

It didn’t seem to be an attack, and what the voice had said had seemed like total nonsense. Yet Yuichi felt a sinking feeling in his gut.

It reminded him too much of the words of power that Makina Shikitani had used.

“Stay right where you are. Or do you want me to kill her?” At some point, Natsuki had gotten around behind Yurika, and was holding a medical scalpel to her neck.

Yurika looked startled. “Huh? What? Aren’t we friends?”

“Yes, and it pains me to have to do this to a friend, but you’ve left me no choice.” Natsuki let out a theatrical sigh.

“You do have a choice! And that blade is digging into my neck!”

“Whenever I see a TV show with a scene like this, I think... if the blade isn’t making contact, you can’t slice their throat right away, so it’s not much of a threat. Don’t worry. It’s buried five millimeters into your skin, and my skill at decapitating people is among the best in Japan.”

“None of that is at all reassuring!”

Suddenly, Ryoma began to chuckle. After laughing for some time, he turned his eyes contemptuously to Yurika. “Actually, I’m done with you. I thought a Hero love interest might be interesting, but you’re a total idiot. Nothing moe about you at all.”

Ryoma turned his left hand to Yurika. The light that encompassed his body began to concentrate in his left hand, then he fired off a shot of light.

“Get out of the way!”

Yuichi knocked Natsuki over.

They both fell to the side, and the shot of light passed through where Natsuki had been. The shot toppled over the tables behind them and kept on going, not stopping even after it blew a hole in the wall.

“The blade! The blade’s digging in! I’m bleeding! I’m telling you, I’m bleeding!” Yurika screamed.

“Isn’t it amazing that I didn’t cut your head clean off?” Natsuki commented.

“That’s not something to brag about!”

It had happened so suddenly, Yuichi hadn’t even thought about the blade, but he was relieved that Yurika was safe.

It seemed that Ryoma needed to focus those light blasts before he could fire them. He hadn’t fired a followup shot, but the light around his body was growing more intense. It wouldn’t be long before he acted again.

As Yuichi began thinking about how best to deal with him, he heard Ende speak up excitedly from close by.

“This is what he is now. He’s totally nuts, but he’s still a protagonist. Anything he does will be run through a righteousness filter, fudging the details of what actually happened.”

“You mean that voice from before?” Yuichi asked.

“Yeah. He can use his event cards to determine what happens next. Of course, it can’t completely twist a person’s free will, but it’s possible that if you lose to him here, what it said will become true. His power can even overwrite things that have already happened. In other words, you’ll be retroactively turned into the killer.”

“Dammit! Was this really what you wanted?!” Yuichi shouted.

“I just wanted to give Ryoma more power. I never thought things would come to this,” Ende said theatrically, throwing up her hands.

“If you’re going to enact a crazy scheme, at least think it through a little more!”

But as Ende had said, he couldn’t leave Ryoma at large. He wasn’t sure if beating the man would really cause him to lose his protagonist abilities, but for now, punching was pretty much Yuichi’s only option.

In other words, it was his usual way of thinking.

* * * * *

Now, use your power! Take your revenge! the voice resounded in his head.

He’d begun to hear the voice when he’d been wrapped in the hair, driven to the brink of despair.

Ryoma wasn’t good at fighting.

He’d solved a variety of problems in the past, but he hadn’t done it using his own power. By himself, he was a fairly useless human being. He was well aware that he couldn’t do much of anything without someone else’s help.

But the person who had killed his sisters and his childhood friend was right in front of him.

That person was going to kill him if he didn’t do something.

It couldn’t be allowed.

Not having power was no excuse.

If he was killed here and now, it would all be for nothing.

Ryoma struggled. He struggled and struggled, but his body wouldn’t move. And just when he was about to give up and admit that he couldn’t beat this woman...

Do you want power? the voice asked him.

It was the voice of the devil.

He realized that to respond to it would be to do something he couldn’t take back. But he felt no hesitation.

Give me power! Ryoma answered immediately.

I shall.

Immediately, power welled up inside him. Like a dam bursting, it came out as a torrent from the depths of his soul.

Anger filled in the void in his heart. The power of violence stained his soul black. But he didn’t mind. It was a small price to pay for vengeance.

Nothing else mattered now. He just needed to beat them.

The next thing he knew, the hair that was binding him had blown apart, vanquished by Ryoma’s overflowing power.

He focused that power into his right arm. Crushing it had been extremely simple. He could see everything clearly now.

Kotori’s body crumbled away, leaving only a single rib behind.

A Divine Vessel.

He didn’t know when Kotori had acquired it.

She’d always been the sort of person to invite trouble, he thought, and the memory brought another wave of anger surging inside of him. Still, while it might be a part of a god, it was the only memento he had of Kotori.

Unsteady on his feet, Ryoma began walking towards Kotori. It was then that he saw it.

“Thanks. I really wanted this. Saved me a lot of time.” Yuichi Sakaki stepped on Kotori’s remains to pick up the rib.

That was right.

He was still here.

They were still here.

Yuichi Sakaki, Natsuki Takeuchi, and Yurika Maruyama were here.

“Don’t lump me in with that Alberta freak, okay?” Yuichi Sakaki said with a cruel chuckle.

Kill, kill, kill! something inside of Ryoma was shouting. Was it the thing that had given him power, or his own voice? He couldn’t be sure. But part of Ryoma was remaining excessively calm.

Yuichi Sakaki was merely a human. He wasn’t a yokai like Alberta, or a person with RPG hero powers like Yurika Maruyama, or an awakened existence like Ryoma.

He could feel a clear difference between them. This man was nothing to fear.

Still, that didn’t mean he could just let him go.

He wouldn’t play with him. He’d just kill him quickly. He turned his right hand towards Yuichi and fired a shot of light that had relatively little power behind it.

It was just meant as a diversion, but Yuichi Sakaki wouldn’t know how much power it had. He’d have to dodge it, no matter what.

After firing off the blast, Ryoma moved with all his might. He used the aura around him as a propellant, then ran in an arc to get around behind Yuichi.

A simultaneous attack from the front and behind.

He reared his left arm back, focusing power in it. Once it contained enough power to punch a person into powder on impact, he thrust his fist as hard as he could at the back of Yuichi’s head.

He heard a dull thud.

He was confused.

He was looking at unfamiliar scenery, his body was racked by pain, and his memories were fuzzy.

The sound had come from right above his head, and just before he blacked out, he realized the world around him was upside-down.

* * * * *

Yuichi ducked, dodging the bolt of light in front of him and the strike at his back simultaneously. He then crouched down and took a step, grabbed Ryoma’s right arm, and used a zhen jiao while at the same time thrusting his left elbow into his back. If Mutsuko were watching, she would have gleefully explained it as a combination of liu zhou tou and laohu dou mao from Bajiquan.

Yuichi’s elbow struck Ryoma’s solar plexus in a counter. It was the kind of strike that would kill an ordinary human, but Yuichi knew Ryoma was far from ordinary.

He squeezed the other man’s left arm with his right hand, and then thrust the left arm he’d used in the elbow strike under his crotch. At the same time, he dropped his hips even lower and extended his left leg between Ryoma’s legs. From that position, he bore the man on his shoulders and tossed him.

Crushing Ryoma’s balls with his left hand, he drove the man’s head into the floor. Then for extra insurance, he kicked him in the head with a low snap kick. Ryoma was sent flying.

Tipping over cafe tables, he only stopped when he hit the wall. The aura around his body extinguished.

“Sakaki... I’m a serial killer, and that gave even me pause,” Natsuki criticized. “Did you really have to go that far?”

“You said people can’t just go around talking about killing people, but I’m pretty sure you were seriously trying to kill him there...” Yurika added.

“He’s not dead. I held back,” Yuichi said with the air of an excuse.

“How strange,” Natsuki said. “Does ‘holding back’ have a different meaning from the one I’m familiar with?”

“My initial elbow strike didn’t have a lot of penetration,” Yuichi said. “I think that aura thing had some sort of property that absorbs attacks, so I figured this wouldn’t be enough to kill him.”

Of course Yuichi wouldn’t go this far against a normal opponent. He’d only done it after determining that it would take a considerably powerful attack to get real results.

Yuichi approached Ryoma, who was slumped against the wall.

He was alive. But his face was pale, his breathing was quick, and his heart rate seemed to be up.

“Is he in shock?” Natsuki asked. “He might die if we just leave him there. Not that I would mind.”

“That’s when it’s handy to know a super doctor!” Yuichi said.

He was referring to Kazuya Noro, Aiko’s father. Apparently, he was known as a super doctor, so as long as Ryoma wasn’t dead, he could probably save him.

“That’s... strange,” Ryoma murmured. “It wasn’t supposed to go that way... you were supposed to die as part of a demonstration of the power I awakened as a result of the death of someone close to me. I’m the protagonist... how could this happen?”

Saying that much must have been considerably painful for Ryoma, and Yuichi couldn’t understand why he’d bothered. He really must have found it all utterly inconceivable.

“Whoever said a protagonist can’t lose?” Yuichi snapped. “There are plenty of bad-end stories out there.”

Yuichi wasn’t sure whether Ryoma had accepted that explanation or not, but either way, the man fell unconscious directly afterwards.

Yuichi looked over at Ende, who was sitting in a seat some distance away. He thought she would be frustrated, but she seemed as fascinated by the proceedings as ever. She even applauded Yuichi.

“Wow, I guess a protagonist won’t work either. I had a feeling that might be the case, of course... but overturning something like that really took a lot of power.”

“Can I be done with the war now?” Yuichi asked. “You’re satisfied, right? I can just walk away?”

“Hmm, if that’s what you want, I don’t mind...”

It was a line pregnant with meaning. Still, Ende didn’t seem like she was going to try anything else right now, so Yuichi decided to focus on the aftermath.

With Ryoma having been soundly beaten, the Divine Vessel had been ejected from his body. Yuichi looked down at the ground and saw an eye-sized glass ball had fallen next to him.

He was about to reach for the Evil God’s eye when, suddenly, it was snatched away.

He turned to see a small machine with four propellers — a drone — flying quickly off with the eye.

“Huh?” Yuichi watched the drone go.

It was heading for the broken window, where he saw two people standing on the window frame.

“What are you doing here, Sis?” he asked.

Mutsuko Sakaki stood there boldly, arms crossed.

Yuichi felt relieved.

It was easy to guess what she was doing here. She had a tendency to show up at the strangest times, and he assumed she was probably just swiping the item out from under his nose for some stupid reason, like that she’d thought it sounded like fun.

Any reservations he might have were overshadowed by his relief at seeing his missing sister again.

Perhaps that was why it took him a little time to realize what was off about the situation.

He hadn’t noticed the boy standing next to her at first, but as the drone approached him, it extended its manipulators and handed him the eye.

Yuichi was dumbstruck.

“What’s going on here?” he burst out.

The person standing next to Mutsuko was Hiromichi Rokuhara, the boy who had stolen Soul Reader from him.