Editing Apocalypse Witch:Volume3 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 9===

Utagai Karuta slowly let out a breath.

“Sacri-sama.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that, Aine.”

The boy looked over with weary eyes as he sat on the floor.

He was at an airport boarding gate.

If his words had gotten through to the students, they would worry for their own lives. And even if they had not gotten through, his popularity would plummet because he failed to understand them. No more students would be willing to risk their lives on his instructions.

Believe him or not, the operation had already failed. He had ruined everything in the preparation phase, so Kyouka had to be extremely disappointed in him.

Which was exactly what he had wanted.

He had been sick of getting other people involved in his own issues.

He did not care if his feelings failed to get through to them and he did not care what happened to his social standing. Their own lives had to take top priority.

The word “strongest” could mean a number of things and he had chosen the card he wanted from that deck. So now he had to continue down this path. He could look back after he had accomplished something.

“…”

He would be alone from now on. He should have been alone from the beginning. His desire to take back Gekiha and the others from the first ship was his own personal thing.

(It’s the same for Marika.)

Everything tasted bitter in his mouth.

It was too late to feel regret now.

(I shouldn’t have assumed she would participate just because she’s one of the world’s strongest too. Stepping down should have been an option for her, but I took it from her!!)

He would save Amaashi Marika, so he would fight the real Threat.

But he could not drag the second ship’s students along with him for that.

[[Image:ApocalypseWitch_v03_07.jpg|thumb]]

“I threw out every advantage I had.” Self-deprecation filled his voice. “I lost their trust and cooperation, so this battle isn’t going to be easy.”

“That is fine.”

“Sorry. Our link means there’s no way you can back out of my selfish fight here.”

“If you desire something, then I will fight for- hm?”

The ever-calm Aine’s eyes widened a little.

He had shoved a perfectly ordinary piece of chocolate into her lovely lips and she munched on it.

“What is this?”

“My thanks.”

Securing basic necessities like food and shelter had been a challenge in the frigid cold of the Crystal Beach artificial resort, so he had started carrying around emergency food like that.

“This seems inefficient to me,” said Aine. “If you wish to expand my abilities, I strongly recommend giving me pure gold to ingest. ''Strongly'' recommend.”

“This isn’t about that.”

He smiled a little.

It was a genuine smile.

He tried to imagine the look on her face if he strongly ordered her to remain here. He then imagined the possibility of leaving her where it was safe so he could continue down the path of his ''selfish fight'' all on his own.

(That’s a meaningless fantasy.)

“Sacri-sama?”

He shook his head.

That crystal girl tilting her head curiously there was an alternate form of Crystal Magic armor, so she was supported by the Crystal Magician, which meant Karuta. Even if they were separated, she would no longer function if he died.

(I will win this.)

Hence why they were linked.

Plus, there was only so much he could do on his own.

(I need to think about what I can do under the conditions I’ve decided on. The strongest will stumble if I let myself get distracted, so I need to keep running forward no matter how bad it gets.)

“We should get going soon. Aine, are you ready to go?”

“Yes. What is our primary objective?”

“?”

“Is it defeating the Threat, rescuing Miss Marika and the others from the second ship, or retrieving Sir Gekiha and the others from the first ship?”

“All of the above. That’s what it means to protect the world.”

He did not hesitate to answer as he got up from the cold floor. Night had fully fallen in the world visible outside the glass wall, but the oil fire was still burning ominously beyond the horizon.

He was on his way there.

How many of the real Threat were on that ship? Thousands? Even more? And he could not just slaughter them. Rescuing Marika, Gekiha, and the others increased the difficulty dozens of times over.

An ordinary attack would never work.

(So it’s time to become that real pain-in-the-ass who researches everything in detail to find a weak point.)

That thought put a smile on his face, but then…

“Senpai.”

He heard a voice.

A voice he had never expected to hear reached him from behind, causing his thoughts to briefly grind to a halt.

He slowly turned around to find Natlena Blast standing there. She must have been looking all over for him because she was out of breath and red in the face.

“Thank goodness you’re still in the airport. You seem logical at first, but, um, when it comes down to it, you’re really hard to predict.”

“Natlena?”

“Please let me help you.”

She was very upfront about what she wanted.

She looked like her breath was catching in her throat, but not because he had yelled at her earlier

One look in her eyes was enough to tell.

“I’ll be honest, I’m really scared. But because I’m scared, I want the help of the world’s strongest – of the Four Living Gods. So please don’t abandon us now. This might be simpler and easier for you if you leave us behind, but please think about how we’ll feel.”

“You can’t, Natlena! You’d just be letting us manipulate you!”

“But,” cut in the 12-year-old girl with the slight smile of someone trying to calm a frightened child. “I said I’m being honest, didn’t I? So let me lay it all out there. If Omotesandou Kyouka told me to fight for her, I wouldn’t be able to trust her. What she says is accurate, but accurate is all it is. There isn’t a person I can trust behind those words. …But it’s different with you. We wouldn’t follow just anyone with the title of world’s strongest. You’re the one that told us to consider our options again before making a decision. Because this is our life. So we’ve decided for ourselves who it is we want to follow. Are we just throwing all our problems on the world’s strongest so we don’t have to deal with them ourselves? Maybe. But we were the ones who considered our options and decided ''which of the Four Living Gods we felt we could trust the most.''”

“…”

“I won’t regret this no matter how it ends, so please take me with you, Senpai. We finally ended the chain of revenge between the two of us, so you can’t just leave me now.”

The boy forced his lips together for quite a while before finally squeezing out some words.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I’ll follow you anyway. Because I couldn’t just let you be torn to pieces by the Threat after you so stubbornly insisted on worrying about us more than yourself.”

He actually laughed a bit at that one.

He felt like his cunning image was crumbling away and though he would start sobbing if he let his guard down, but he managed to avoid that.

“You can’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because one extra person wouldn’t change anything. I can’t just bring you to your death.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about, Senpai. I said ‘we’ earlier, didn’t I?” She smiled. “Because I thought up this argument with the help of Yamane-senpai, Nekoumi-senpai, and, um, a lot of the others too.”

This time, Utagai Karuta stopped breathing altogether.

He had thought he had to protect her. He had thought the Four Living Gods were done for if he let her be killed for no reason. But Natlena Blast had surpassed him at some point.

“I’m not worthy to fight alongside the rest of you.”

That was not something to say in front of an underclassman.

He knew that, but the words spilled out all the same.

He bit his lip.

“I lied to you all so I could save my friends. We really should have abandoned Second Grimnoah to the Threat and built a Third Grimnoah, but I insisted on retaking the second one because of my friends from the first one crystalized on the lowest level. Even though they’re nothing but strangers you never even met. Dead strangers.”

“Why would that be a problem?”

She did not even hesitate to respond and she smiled at the shocked look on his face.

“All that tells us is that you never abandon your friends no matter what, right? And that you truly believed you could save your friends with our help. It meant you trusted us enough to leave them in our care. Why would we have a problem with that?”

“…”

“I’m glad the world’s strongest is someone with so much kindness in his heart. So I don’t want this age to end and I don’t want someone else to take over the title of strongest. Do you get what I’m saying now, Senpai?”

How much strength had it taken for her to say that? Even if they had reached an understanding, he would forever be the person who had killed Anastasia Blast, her sister and the former strongest. But she had still said she would accept it and that she was happy with this era.

“Those people mean so much to me.”

“I can tell.”

“But I don’t want to lose anyone else to rescue them. I don’t want to see that happen again.”

“I know that too, Senpai.”

He was asking for so much, but the small girl slapped her own small chest to accept the job.

“So let’s make it happen together. There is no first ship and second ship – we’re all Grimnoah together.”