Become What You Want to Be (16)

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like.”

Rex couldn’t understand what she meant. The resolve to face death was a form of courage possessed by everyone who set out to defeat the Demon King—and an absolute necessity. In a quest where they never knew when they might die, and death was all too likely, the Hero’s party had long since lost any fear of it.

Even so, being told Kagami lacked that fear didn’t quite register.

“Fear of death? Even we lost that fear ages ago—and we’re not that Villager. Is that what makes him special?”

Takako let out a soft sigh at Rex’s words. “You’ll understand once you see it,” she said, and then fell silent as she continued running toward the western gate.

A little while later, a huge wall came into view, along with a man in a familiar surcoat.

“Menou!”

Despite having gone ahead, Menou was just standing there, doing nothing. Alice raised her voice to call out to Menou.

When they reached the western gate, they found that the gate in the wall, which should have been shut, stood open.

Menou and a dozen or so gate guards stood there, frozen in place, mouths agape and faces stricken with shock. They stared beyond the gate as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

“Menou-chan, where’s Kagami-chan?”

Takako called out to Menou, but Menou still didn’t say a word.

As if bound in place, Menou stared at one spot and pointed beyond the gate, as though unable to put what he saw into words. The moment everyone followed Menou’s finger, everyone except Takako wore the same stunned expression as Menou and the gate guards, speechless.

Beyond the western gate stretched a dry expanse of land: sparse patches of grass so thin they seemed about to dry up and vanish, dead trees snapped in two, and jagged rocks strewn everywhere. The setting sun bathed the red earth of the Atros wasteland in crimson.

Just as the gate guard had said, a horde of monsters—surely ten thousand or more—was advancing on Salmaria. But the monsters had stopped their march a short distance from the city.

“K-Kagami-san?”

Where the monster horde should have filled their view stood a single, demon-like figure, so overwhelmingly imposing that the army itself seemed insignificant. Alice could hardly believe her eyes as she stared at Kagami.

The monsters had no intention of attacking their original target, Salmaria. Every one of them had fixed its hostility on the lone figure before them. The instant the figure appeared, they had instinctively judged, “We have to take this thing down here, or we’re in trouble.”

That figure had a human form, but green skin and strength enough to lift boulders with ease. Kagami gripped the leg of a one-eyed giant many times larger than a human—a Level 168 monster called a Cyclops—and swung it around like a weapon, sweeping aside the countless nearby monsters as if scattering confetti.

There was a human who could swing a Cyclops around with one hand—a creature said to be so dangerous that no one should engage it in close combat without a plan.

Those who witnessed the scene couldn’t even bring themselves to put into words just how insane it was.

You’d understand if you saw it.

“W-watch out! That guy!”

The instant Rex shouted, a Level 126 flying monster with a reptilian appearance, mixed in among the horde, fired a straight beam of heat from its mouth at Kagami.

Kagami narrowly dodged it, but perhaps a moment too late: a deep gash opened on Kagami’s cheek. Seemingly unbothered, Kagami grinned fearlessly and hurled the Cyclops in hand at the flying monster.

The moment the Cyclops left Kagami’s grasp, the monsters around Kagami all attacked at once... but a blast erupted around Kagami, who vanished from the spot in an instant.

A moment later, Kagami’s blurred form appeared again and again right in front of the monsters, as if leaving afterimages behind. Kagami thrust both hands out so quickly that it was impossible to tell what was happening. The monsters were launched into the air like scattered confetti, then transformed into money.

But the instant Kagami finished the attack and set foot down where Kagami had been standing, the Cyclops swept its enormous arm at Kagami without pause, smashing Kagami into a massive boulder nearby.

And that wasn’t all. Dozens of flying monsters fired heat rays at the boulder Kagami had struck, triggering countless small explosions around it that together looked like one enormous blast.

Unable to withstand the heat rays, the boulder was half-destroyed. Sand thrown into the air by the explosions billowed like smoke. From within it, Kagami emerged and ran leisurely back toward the horde. Blood ran from Kagami’s forehead, and Kagami’s clothes were in tatters, but a sharp gaze and fearless grin made it seem as though the attack had meant nothing.

“Hey... that person...”

Everyone there understood what Parna, sweat beading on her shocked face, was trying to say. Kagami was definitely taking damage—serious damage. And yet... Kagami faced the monster horde without fear. They couldn’t help holding their breath at the sheer madness of it.

“I told you, didn’t I? That child has no fear of death. No matter how much damage Kagami takes, Kagami won’t try to fight safely until on the brink of death. All Kagami thinks about is whether it’s possible or not. If Kagami decides it’s possible—decides to do it—Kagami won’t stop until death. And if Kagami decides it’s impossible—decides not to do it—Kagami will give up right away.”

As they listened to Takako, the Hero’s party watched Kagami keep fighting despite being battered and could hardly believe their eyes. Little by little, though, Kagami’s wounds seemed to be disappearing whenever Kagami fought without taking another hit.

Perhaps Takako could tell what they had noticed. “That’s one of Kagami-chan’s Skills,” she murmured. The Hero’s party once again stared at Kagami in shock.

Kagami took damage that should have been fatal, yet never faltered. Kagami charged in, healed those wounds while fighting, then fought again, got hurt again, and... smiled. Like a demon.

Perhaps Kagami had left Alice with the Hero’s party because Kagami didn’t want Alice to see this. That was how unmistakably abnormal Kagami seemed now. With bloodlust in Kagami’s eyes and an aura so forbidding that meeting that gaze might freeze your spine, Kagami faced an army of ten thousand monsters.

Everyone there understood the moment they saw Kagami: this was Kagami’s true power. Kagami’s presence was so overwhelming that it made them realize Kagami hadn’t been serious at all when facing them.

One against ten thousand.

Though the odds were impossibly steep—perhaps outright insurmountable—they found themselves more afraid of Kagami alone than of the army of ten thousand. They couldn’t help but feel that Kagami might defeat every last one of them.