My Instant Death Ability Is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me! Volume 13 E-Book

Tsuyoshi Fujitaka

• Herausgeber: J-Novel Club
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: My Instant Death Ability is So Overpowered, No One in This Other World Stands a Chance Against Me!
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 307

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

After the Great Sage resets the world, Yogiri and Tomochika are forced into Van’s new game in order to obtain the Philosopher’s Stones—their only lead for getting home now that Luu is gone. Although Yogiri can’t use his power without breaking the game, Tomochika’s combat prowess and the old friends they made along the way may be just enough to get them to the final boss. Everyone’s in for a surprise, however, when the Philosopher’s Stones start disappearing from the game...including the stones the party’s collected so far! To make matters worse, the Great Sage finally makes a move against Yogiri while they’re coming to grips with the missing stones!

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Characters

Chapter 1 — I Definitely Didn’t Intend for That to Be Possible

Chapter 2 — We Don’t Really Have Any Reason to Go Out of Our Way to Help Them

Chapter 3 — You’re Making This Sound Like a Manga That’s About to Be Canceled!

Chapter 4 — This Feels Super Wrong. Isn’t There a More Natural Way of Doing It?

Chapter 5 — It’s Like He Is Saying “We Can Just Use the Whatever Balls to Bring You Back to Life, So It’s Okay to Die!”

Chapter 6 — I Already Messed Up, So I Figured It’s Okay to Just Rip It Out

Chapter 7 — I Was Planning on Doing Something about That Eventually—With These Glasses!

Chapter 8 — Interlude: It Went So Well, It’s Starting to Go Bad

Chapter 9 — I’ve Seen This in Games Before; I Guess It’s Actually Possible

Chapter 10 — I Am Always in the Shadows, Protecting My Charge Unseen

Chapter 11 — Why Did I Choose to Accompany You Lot Again?

Chapter 12 — It Is like a Blowout Sale on Philosopher’s Stones!

Chapter 13 — What Proof Do You Have of Such a Thing?! That Is a False Accusation!

Chapter 14 — And Let Me Guess, Your Chop Has the Power of a Punch?

Chapter 15 — He Looks Dead, but I Don’t Think It’s My Fault

Chapter 16 — Interlude: I’m Happy It Only Cost Me This Much, Because This Isn’t Nearly Enough

Chapter 17 — It Appears You Have Some Business to Resolve, So I Will Be Going On Ahead

Chapter 18 — Now I’m Mad! No More Mrs. Nice Goddess!

Chapter 19 — If This Was a Game, They Would Make Sure to Leave One Out for Us

Chapter 20 — A Dream-Like Battle between Two Perverted Women

Chapter 21 — There’s a Limit to How Lazy You Can Be!

Chapter 22 — Interlude: I Believe It’s Reasonable to Assume My Master’s Wishes Did Have an Influence on It

Side Story: The Beginning

Afterword

Color Illustrations

About J-Novel Club

Copyright

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Color Images

Chapter 1 — I Definitely Didn’t Intend for That to Be Possible

The guildmaster’s room was on the second floor of the adventurer’s guild. It was Sage Van’s personal room, so no one could enter it without his permission. Van typically stayed inside his games while they were running, so this had become his place of residence. One might assume this is where he managed the game while it ran, but once he had set a game in motion, he rarely interfered with it. Ideally, he would set up the rules of the game, and the interactions between players would carry it forward from there.

Instead, he spent his time here thinking up his new game. He loved making games, and his mission in life was to find ways to entertain the Great Sage. At this point, Cavern Quest hadn’t elicited a response from him. The game had just been revealed recently, so it would take some time for his elder to give it an evaluation. Though Van had confidence in all of the games he made, none of them had managed to please his grandfather. There was a good chance this game would fail like all the others, so Van felt he had no choice but to start working on another one.

“Hmm. I thought Cavern Quest was pretty simple, but maybe I should try to go even simpler. Maybe something like a fighting game. Two are trapped inside, and the survivor gets to leave...” Sitting at his desk in his extravagant room, Van was scribbling ideas on a piece of paper. “But then the strongest person wins every time. That’s not super interesting.”

“Do you have a minute?”

Van raised his head at the sudden voice. A young man with a long coat and glasses stood in front of him. The Sage Shirou. He was the submaster of Cavern Quest, one of the few people with permission to enter this room.

“Yo. What’s up?”

“Judging by that reaction, you don’t realize what’s happened, do you?” Shirou said with a sigh.

He was right; Van didn’t know anything that was happening at the moment. But the season had only just started, so from his previous experience, things wouldn’t pick up for some time yet. If they weren’t going to do anything impressive, it was best to leave the players to their own devices for now. Or so he had thought, but Shirou’s exasperation seemed to indicate otherwise.

“Did something happen?”

“The most important items for the current season are the Philosopher’s Stones, right? And you set seven of them up as items within the game?”

“Yeah, that’s what I did.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” Shirou asked.

“Huh? Are you worried about those? Uhh...yeah, I definitely put one stone each in six people and a dog,” Van said, looking up at the ceiling as he recalled the information. He himself possessed a Philosopher’s Stone and was managing the six spares that were left over. He clearly remembered picking seven random characters in the game and embedding the stones in them.

“Yeah. Aoi was with me when I did it, so you can ask her if you want to be sure.” The Sage Aoi had wanted to give Yogiri Takatou all of the Philosopher’s Stones so that he would leave this world. She had demanded that Van hand his stones over. Van himself didn’t care much about the stones, but he felt like handing them over for free would be too boring. He promised to make them items in a game for Yogiri to obtain, but Aoi wouldn’t trust him to actually do it unless she could see it with her own eyes.

“There are fewer now.”

“Huh?”

“There are now only six items labeled Philosopher’s Stones in the game.”

“No way...” The Philosopher’s Stones were made to be indestructible by the game system, and removing them from the game should have been impossible. Not quite believing what Shirou had said, Van checked on the current locations of the stones. Four remained in the bodies of their hosts. Two had been removed from their hosts. That made six total. There were supposed to be seven stones, but Van couldn’t find any trace of the seventh. “Shirou, you didn’t take any of them out of the game, did you?”

There were only a few ways an item could be taken out of the game space. Van or Shirou could take items out as game masters, and anyone who cleared the game could take their items with them when they left as part of their reward.

“Obviously not. There would be no reason for me to do that. How about you?”

“I didn’t do it either,” Van said. “Well, this is bad. Looks like the last boss isn’t clearable anymore.”

“Exactly. You can’t even reach the last boss’s area without seven stones.”

Van paused for a moment. “Hey, could I borrow your Philosopher’s Stone?”

“I don’t mind, really, but wouldn’t it be easier to just change the settings of the game?” Shirou replied.

“That would be lame!” Van shouted, breaking his usual nonchalant air. He could, of course, change the rules of the game partway through, but doing so was unfair to the players and would shake the foundation of the game itself. A game whose rules constantly changed would be a piece of garbage. Van’s pride as a game developer wouldn’t stand for that.

“I feel like sneaking another stone into the game to hide the error is equally lame,” Shirou countered.

“As long as there are seven stones in the end, the flags will still trigger. That’s better than changing the flags themselves, don’t you think?”

“I’m not sure it’s wise to just deal with the symptoms of the problem without investigating the underlying cause. The disappearance of a Philosopher’s Stone is unthinkable. Even if I gave you my stone, if another one disappears, you’ll have no choice but to change the rules anyway.”

“Hmmm. There’s no way this should have happened in the first place... Oh! There are more stones in the game! Yogiri Takatou got some from Sion!”

Van checked the items in Yogiri’s inventory. There were no Philosopher’s Stones. There were stones in the dog and elf that were nearby him, but Van already knew about those. He expanded his search to the inventories of Yogiri’s party members, but none of them had stones either.

“Did they leave them somewhere?”

“I don’t know the details of their situation, but is it possible that they let Sion hold onto the stones?” Shirou suggested.

Van had complete control over the contents of the game. If they were trying to be careful, keeping their other stones out of the game was a reasonable decision. But Van felt like he was forgetting something. He dug through his memories for any important information on the Philosopher’s Stones.

“Oh!” he suddenly exclaimed.

“Did you discover something?”

“So, uhh...before everything got reset recently, some of the Philosopher’s Stones fused together and turned into a girl. If that happened again, it wouldn’t be that weird for one of the stones to disappear...”

“In that case, the idea of using the Philosopher’s Stones as items inside the game was doomed from the start, wasn’t it?”

“I guess, but I’ve taken the stones out and lined them up with each other plenty of times before and that never happened.”

“The Philosopher’s Stones were sealed by Malnarilna, weren’t they? Perhaps she did something to them?”

“Now that you mention it, gramps did say something about Malnarilna dying...” The Great Sage had said Malnarilna’s death was the trigger for the whole world’s collapse. Malnarilna’s power as a god was keeping numerous dangerous beings locked away.

“So, what should we do? I don’t think we can use Philosopher’s Stones as key items in the game anymore.” Shirou was exasperated, but Van never would have expected Malnarilna to die again. One of the main reasons the Great Sage reset the world was to bring her back to life. Even imperfect as she was, Malnarilna was the god in charge of this world. With memories from before the reset, there was no way she would fall for the same trick twice.

“I guess we’ll change things a bit.” They didn’t have enough stones anymore, and there was a possibility that the number they had would continue to shrink, so the gimmick had already fallen apart. No matter what changing the rules might do to his pride, maintaining the current rule set wasn’t going to work.

“There were six people and one dog who had Philosopher’s Stones in them. Let’s make those seven trigger the flag for the last boss instead of the stones.”

“Some of them are already dead, though,” Shirou reminded him.

“Then whoever kills them will get that attribute instead.” All battles that took place in the game were recorded. It was possible to find out who had been killed by who at any point after the fact.

“That makes the game clearable, but what about your promise to give away the Philosopher’s Stones as a reward for clearing it?”

“There’s nothing I can do about that, is there? It’s not my fault the stones are disappearing.” Even if Yogiri and Aoi blamed Van for not keeping up his side of the bargain, there was nothing he could do about it.

“I suppose that resolves the issue of the Philosopher’s Stones. There’s one more issue I’d like to bring up, though.”

“Oh? What’s that?” Van asked.

“Monsters are attacking the human city.”

“How did that happen? There shouldn’t be any way for monsters to even get there.”

“Apparently, there’s a way for human players to bring monsters back to the city with them.”

“Bring monsters with them? No, that shouldn’t be possible... Oh!” Van suddenly shouted, impressed. Monsters couldn’t use the gate to make it into the human city, but anything adventurers wore or carried would be treated as a part of them and therefore transported along with them. It was possible that was how the monsters were making it into the city. He wasn’t sure that was enough for them to be able to mount an invasion, but once the exploit was known, it wasn’t technically impossible. “Well, that’s a problem. I definitely didn’t intend for that to be possible.”

If the purpose of the game was just to have fights between humans and monsters, there wouldn’t be any issue. But Van’s intentions were for the game to be about players systematically improving their equipment and eventually taking down the last boss. It wasn’t just about killing.

“Well, that should be easy enough to fix, so let me—” He just needed to add more checks to the gates. As he thought through the practical solutions to the problem, he noticed a woman standing beside Shirou.

“I don’t remember giving you permission to be in here, Alexia.”

The self-styled secretary of the Great Sage gazed back at him coldly through her glasses. “I have a message from the Great Sage. He finds the current situation interesting and does not wish for you to change it,” she stated matter-of-factly, unfazed by Van’s irritation with her.

Chapter 2 — We Don’t Really Have Any Reason to Go Out of Our Way to Help Them

Yogiri’s group was utterly confused. They had just returned to Base Town to find a hellish scene of monsters ripping people apart. Yogiri had killed the monsters that had tried to attack them, but they had no idea why monsters were there in the first place.

“If the monsters made it here, they must have come through the gate.” Yogiri turned around to look at the large doors they had just come through. The town was in an isolated cavern that they had only managed to reach because Van had teleported them. As far as Yogiri knew, these doors were the only gate that allowed entry or exit.

“I heard there was also a way to change channels,” Tomochika said, reminding Yogiri of the explanation they heard from Van. “There are a bunch of towns similar to this one, and they’re distinguished by their channel number. Maybe the monsters can come here directly from their town?”

“The place I was in was hardly a town. It was little more than a cave,” Atila replied. “It is just a hunch, but I suspect it is impossible for them to come here straight from their own town.”

“Is there a reason for the monsters to attack Base Town in the first place?” Yogiri asked.

“Defeating humans earns them DP,” Atila answered. “The more creative they are in the killing, the more points they earn. It would not be strange for a raid on the city to accrue a large number of bonus points. Even if there were no such bonus, the humans here would never expect an attack and thus be easy prey.”

“Monsters have to pay the Life Tax with DP too, right?”

“Correct. Otherwise there would be no reason for them to proactively attack humans.”

“I am sure we all have many thoughts on the matter, but I do not believe this is the place to be discussing it,” Edelgart suggested.

“I guess we should take a look outside,” Yogiri agreed. They couldn’t accomplish anything by standing around, and the current state of the guild didn’t make them want to stay for very long either. With Yogiri in the lead, the rest followed him outside. The dog Dai, Tomochika, the city guard Edelgart, the dragon Atila, and the elf Sakut followed behind him, in that order.

The scenery outside wasn’t all that different from what they had witnessed in the guild. Corpses littered the streets. The sheer number of bodies made it clear that the adventurers had already lost the battle.

“Looks like everyone was wiped out,” Yogiri said. The town was quiet, with no signs of continued resistance.

At this rate, the city will lose its function and we will be unable to participate in Cavern Quest any longer, Mokomoko remarked. If you cannot register for quests, you will not be able to head out into the fields.

“Huh? Wait, does that mean we’re stuck here?!” Tomochika exclaimed.

“That would be pretty strange. If that were the case, the monsters would be stuck here too.” Though he didn’t know what the monsters were after, it seemed unlikely to Yogiri that they would thoughtlessly go berserk.

Hmm... If their objective was to acquire DP, then being unable to return would be an issue for them.

If their only desire was to kill humans, that may not have been the case, but according to Atila, the monsters that had come here from the surface had some measure of intelligence. They didn’t know how the power structure among the monsters looked, but it didn’t seem likely the monsters would allow themselves to be treated as expendable.

“You need to sign up with the guild to use the gate, right?” Yogiri thought back to how the quest system worked. After finding a quest on the board that you liked, you would take the number printed on it to the reception desk. The door in the middle of the guildhall would then open and teleport you to the field for the quest. “Did the receptionists actually do anything once we gave them the quest number?” he asked Tomochika. He didn’t recall seeing them do anything at all.

“Hmm. I seem to remember them writing something down.”

“Maybe we can do that ourselves and take other quests. If only guild staff can do it, we’ll be pretty stuck.”

“Though it is a slim hope, perhaps we should search for survivors?” Edelgart asked with a sigh. It didn’t seem she believed they would find any.

“Leave it to me!” cried Atila. “With my supernatural senses as a dragon, I can find any survivors in no time! Hmm...I do notice a weak presence...but it is weak. They may already be on the verge of perishing.”

“We should still check up on them. Where are they?”

“There and there. I suppose in there as well. There are also monsters in there, so the fighting may still be ongoing...” Atila said, pointing at the weapon shop, the inn, and the information shop in turn. Despite her claim, there was no indication that fighting was still in progress. If there were survivors, they may have been in hiding.

“It seems dangerous for us to split up now,” Yogiri said. “Let’s all go to the information shop together. Is that okay with everyone?”

“Why there?” asked Tomochika.

“Perhaps because we can get use out of the weapon and item shops just by taking the equipment left there, but the information shop will be useless if we don’t save the people who run it.” Though she spoke with a bitter expression, Edelgart didn’t seem to have any objections.

“Wait a minute!” Sakut shouted. “Are you planning on letting the others die?!”

“We don’t really have any reason to go out of our way to help them,” Yogiri answered her.

“What? Are you all okay with that?”

“We should of course save those we can, but we still don’t understand the situation very well,” Yogiri continued. “Rescuing those at the information shop will give us a better chance of figuring out what’s going on, so that seems like the best course of action.”

“I am technically on the monster’s side, after all,” Atila added. “Though I have an interest in human society, the lives of individuals in any given city do not mean much to me.”

“Wouldn’t it be normal in a situation like this to try and save everyone?” Based on Tomochika’s expression, she had just remembered that playing the archetypal heroes would result in more DP.

“Couldn’t you kill all the monsters in the city with your power?” Edelgart asked Yogiri.

“Not unless I notice them myself.” That said, even if he could have, he wouldn’t have. He didn’t think it was acceptable to slaughter beings just because they were monsters. “I thought it would be best to head to the information shop together, but if you don’t want to, you don’t have to come with me. That’s where I’m going, though.”

They wouldn’t save anyone by arguing here. Leaving everyone else to make their own decisions, Yogiri began heading to the information shop, but he soon came to a stop. The doors of the shop opened and someone stepped outside. It was a boy with horns growing from his forehead, carrying something like a pillar on his shoulders.

“Oh, I’m impressed there are still survivors,” he said, impressed. “Wait, have we met before?”

“Oh! You were one of the guys with Hanakawa!” Tomochika shouted, stimulating Yogiri’s memory. He had been one of the people they’d met in the guildmaster’s room. Van had called in six people, all of whom had Philosopher’s Stones in them.

“Hanakawa is the dude who got his chest ripped open, right?” the boy said. “Man, that guy has terrible luck. We had no way to fight back there. I was afraid he was going to do the same thing to all of us.” He dropped the pillar to stand it on the ground, the pillar’s massive weight causing the earth beneath their feet to shake.

As if that was some sort of signal, monsters suddenly piled out of the buildings around them, twenty or so of them forming up behind the boy. It seemed he was in command of the creatures attacking the town.

“Hey...that is what I was talking about. I can feel there are humans in that thing,” Atila said, hesitantly pointing at the pillar.

Yogiri looked at the pillar. It was about twice as long as the boy was tall. And it was made of flesh. It must have been made from numerous people. He could see arms, legs, and faces all crushed together.

“You’ve got a nasty hobby, don’t you?” Yogiri said.

“If we wiped out all the humans, we wouldn’t be able to go home,” the boy replied. “At least this way, they’re still alive, right?”

Yogiri looked more closely at the pillar. Judging from the faint wriggling and weak cries coming from it, it did seem that the people who made it up were still alive. He also noticed that one of the people in it was the receptionist from the guildhall. If the boy had kept her alive, it was likely they did need guild staff around to open the gate.

“What are you doing here?” Yogiri asked.

“What do you mean? I’m just playing that dumbass Sage’s game like he wanted.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Though Yogiri couldn’t help feeling resentment towards the boy, as he said, it wasn’t really his own fault. If Yogiri wanted to complain, it would make more sense to talk to Van himself.

“I guess we should get this over with. What’re your names?”

“Why do you want to know?” Yogiri asked.

“Come on, you should be able to figure that out. This is a pretty common template, isn’t it?”

“Oh, right!” Yogiri recalled the rules surrounding DP. The amount of DP gained increased by doing dramatic things, but any sort of planning in advance would nullify the bonus. “I see. But in that case, if you’re going to ask someone their name, you should introduce yourself first.”

“Ah. Is that right? Very well. I am one of Gorbagion’s Four Heavenly Kings. My name is Naltine the Weakest.”

“Wait, you’re fine with that name?!” Tomochika blurted out in shock.

“‘The Weakest’ is your nickname?” Yogiri asked, not sure he had heard correctly.

“Exactly. I am the weakest, as in all the others are stronger than me. Of course, that’s just among the Four Heavenly Kings.”

“You seem awfully proud of it! You don’t mind being called the weakest?!”

“Come on, even I don’t take that to be literal. But it’s better for my character if I claim to be the weakest than if I claim to be the strongest, right?”

“I...guess?”

“Anyway, regardless of what I think, that’s what Lord Gorbagion decided.”

The questions are truly endless, are they not? asked Mokomoko. Who is this Gorbagion? Why is he using a Buddhist term like “Four Heavenly Kings”?

“That’s enough for my introduction. Now, tell me your names.”

“This is the dragon, Atila. And this is the city guard, Edelgart.” Introducing the two of them, Yogiri stepped back. As if recognizing what he was doing, Tomochika and Sakut stepped back with him.

“What are you doing?!”

“Hold on...shouldn’t you be the one fighting him?”

Atila and Edelgart complained after being left in front by themselves.

“He has a Philosopher’s Stone inside him. If he dies, the stone loses its power, so could you restrain him so we can take the stone out before he dies?” Yogiri said.

“I suppose there is no other way,” Atila frowned. “Though I cannot say I like it!”

“Are you sure I shouldn’t help?” Tomochika murmured.

“Those two seem pretty strong, so you can leave it to them.” Yogiri was armed as well, but he didn’t feel like he’d stand a chance against a group of monsters that size.

“Couldn’t you at least deal with the monsters in the back?”

“I’d rather resolve the situation without using my power.” If they attacked him and he had no other choice, he would use his power to defend himself, but he didn’t want to use it proactively.

“Fine! I will finish them in no time!” Atila stretched a hand forward, firing lightning.

But even though she had intended to wipe out the entire crowd of monsters, the lightning all collected into a single point, striking a single monster in front of the boy and thoroughly roasting it. Burned to a crisp, the monster dropped to the ground.

“What happened?! Why was there suddenly a monster in front of him?!”

“Speaking of which, doesn’t it seem like there are more monsters around than before?” asked Yogiri. Originally there had been about twenty monsters behind the boy, but at some point they had been surrounded.

“There are more pillars too!” Tomochika cried. Pillars similar to the one at the boy’s side had popped up all around them.

It appears the monsters are arriving through those pillars.

The flesh of a number of the pillars was swelling up, dumping monsters out on the ground around them.

“Well...I guess it’s not the first time we’ve seen something like this,” Tomochika grumbled.

You seem to have become rather jaded.

“Can you blame me after all we’ve been through?”

I suppose not. But do you not think this situation will be too much for Edelgart and Atila alone?

They were thoroughly outnumbered. Though each individual monster didn’t seem all that strong, the numbers alone would easily make up for any gap in strength between them. And judging from Atila’s attempt at wiping the monsters out earlier, some among them could draw in their attacks to protect the other monsters. No matter how strong their attack was, it would only be able to kill a single shield monster.

“I thought it would be difficult for such a large number of monsters to make it in through the gate by using adventurers, but this makes sense,” Yogiri observed. Naltine was likely the only one who had actually infiltrated the town that way. Once he was inside, he could create as many monsters as he wanted.

Seeing as the receptionist is in that pillar, it appears he has the ability to absorb and preserve people.

“He probably can’t make monsters forever, so you’ll win eventually if you keep killing them,” Yogiri said. “Good luck.”

“Do not be ridiculous!” Atila shot back.

It didn’t seem like they had much of a chance. But just as Yogiri had accepted the fact he would have to do something about the monsters, they suddenly disappeared.

“Huh?”

“Hm?”

“What?”

“Uhh...?”

Everyone looked around in shock. Even Naltine was taken by surprise, so it was unlikely he had done anything. The monsters had simply vanished, leaving countless pieces of equipment strewn about the ground. At first, they thought it was the equipment used by the monsters, but all of them seemed brand new.

“Sorry, I have some information to tell you about Cavern Quest. May I speak with you for a moment?”

Looking up to see the source of the voice, they saw a young man wearing a long coat and glasses looking down at them from the sky. The man floated down, landing between Naltine and Yogiri’s group.

“Who are you?”

“I am the submaster of this game. Or perhaps you would recognize the name Sage Shirou better?” he replied nonchalantly.

Chapter 3 — You’re Making This Sound Like a Manga That’s About to Be Canceled!

“What happened to that Van guy?” Yogiri asked.

Van was the one who had created Cavern Quest, so he was responsible for everything that happened here. He may have left some minor matters to the submaster, but Yogiri felt like anything involving the Philosopher’s Stones should have been dealt with by Van himself.

“It seems his pride has been hurt a little. I happened to be nearby when he started sulking, so he pushed the annoying work on me,” the man named Shirou replied with a bitter smile. It didn’t seem like he was particularly excited about this job either. “Now then, would you mind putting your battle on pause for a little?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Well, I do! What the hell is going on here?!” Naltine roared. “How is it fair for the people running the game to suddenly pop up out of nowhere and attack only one of us?! We’ve been playing by the rules the whole time! You can’t just say us being here was ‘inconvenient’ for you!”

“It does feel a little unfair, doesn’t it?” Yogiri understood his complaints. Even if the monster attack on the city was done through some sort of bug or exploit, it made more sense for the staff to start with a warning rather than instant punishment.

“When did I attack you?” Shirou asked.

“What?! All of my lackeys disappeared the moment you appeared! Wait, wasn’t that you?” Naltine was taken aback, confused by Shirou’s sincere question.

“Yes, I’m the one who turned them all into equipment.”

“Then it was your fault!”

“It’s possible he just did that to calm the situation down, though,” Yogiri interrupted. “He might turn them back after.” If he turned them back into their original forms later, what Shirou had done wouldn’t really be an attack.

“Oh, I see. Not like that makes it okay, but I’ll forgive you if you hurry up and turn them back!”

“No, they can’t be returned to their original forms,” Shirou explained.

“Then it was an attack! Are you trying to mess with me?!”

“But it’s weird that you only attacked Naltine. Does that mean you were punishing him for abusing the bug?” In online games, even if the bug was a mistake on the developer’s part, it was common for players who exploited those bugs for their own gain to be punished by having their accounts closed. If one thought of Cavern Quest as a game like that, it wouldn’t be that strange for the staff to take such a hard-line approach.

“Takatou, I think you should just let it go...” Tomochika said. Yogiri’s group had also brought a monster through the gate. Tomochika must have been trying to avoid calling attention to that.

“Ah, you mean because monsters are in the town? They found a legal way to do it, so there’s no penalty. However, if it becomes an obstacle to the game’s progress in the future, we might have to deal with it.”

“Then what do you want?!” Naltine shouted.

“I just find large groups of monsters to be off-putting.”

Shirou’s words struck everyone silent. It took a moment for them to understand what he was saying.

“You mean like a kind of trypophobia?” Yogiri asked, still confused. Trypophobia was the irrational fear of large groups, especially groups of small holes.

“Similar, but not quite the same,” Shirou replied. “I find large groups of living things to be repulsive. I’m not really worried about small holes.”

“I thought he looked too normal. That’s more what I’d expect from a Sage!” Tomochika exclaimed.

“What? So you turned my lackeys into equipment just because of your feelings?”

“Their levels were pretty low. The weapons they turned into are all basically garbage.”

“You’re dead!” Naltine picked up the pillar at his side and swung it at Shirou. But the pillar went flying in the wrong direction, a single sword dropping to the ground where Naltine had once stood. This time, Yogiri was able to see what happened. Naltine’s body had turned solid, then compressed into the form of a sword before dropping to the ground.

“His level wasn’t too bad. He makes a decent weapon. But he doesn’t quite meet the threshold of being a rare item. It’ll probably do as a somewhat expensive sword at a shop, though,” Shirou mused, picking up the blade that had once been Naltine.

“Huh? You’re going to sell him?” Tomochika stared at the sword, dumbstruck.

“My role in this game is item and level design. My main responsibility is creating methods of obtaining equipment to match player ranks to keep the game balanced.”

“So the armor I’m wearing is...”

“The armor was Machef Druid. Your gauntlets were Gamerlin Andora.”

“Noooo!” Tomochika hurriedly began stripping off her armor.

“That is an odd response,” Shirou said. “No matter what it used to be, it’s just plain armor now. It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.”

“Of course I’m going to be concerned about it!”

“Hey, that guy had a Philosopher’s Stone in him. Are you sure it was okay to turn him into a sword?” Yogiri asked.

“That’s what you’re worried about?!” Tomochika exclaimed. “Well, okay, that’s important too, but the fact he’s turning people into weapons and selling them is disgusting!”

“Whether they are sold or not, I have no idea how he did it! There is no way to defend against an attack we cannot even perceive!”

Though Tomochika and Atila seemed on guard, Yogiri didn’t feel threatened in the least. While turning someone into a weapon didn’t necessarily count as an attack, Yogiri couldn’t imagine it as anything else. If Shirou tried it on Yogiri himself, the Sage would instantly die. It was the same as anything else.

“No, he had no such thing in him. I wouldn’t turn a Philosopher’s Stone into a weapon like that.” So either it had already been removed or he had never had a stone in the first place. Though it seemed suspicious coming from a Sage, they were the ones who set the rules for this game. If Yogiri started doubting them now, there would be no end to it.

“So, you wanted to talk about something?” He tried to get the conversation back on track. Shirou had apparently come there because he had something he wanted to tell them.

“It’s about the Philosopher’s Stones. Due to unavoidable circumstances, the rules around them will have to be changed. Van decided it wouldn’t be fair to change the rules without informing you.”

“What, he’s not going to hand them over after all?”

“No, that is not an issue. The problem is that the stones have started disappearing.”

“Huh?” Yogiri was taken completely by surprise. He had only come into this game because he was after the Philosopher’s Stones. If he couldn’t even get them after all, he had no reason to be there.

“Van prepared seven stones for use in the game, but at present there are only six.”

“That changes everything, doesn’t it?!” Tomochika snapped.

Yogiri could understand her desire to complain. They had only joined the game to acquire the Philosopher’s Stones. If they couldn’t get them at the end, there was no point in playing.

“I fully understand your feelings, but the seventh stone has disappeared without our knowledge, so there is nothing we can do about it.”