Let's Finish This Cleanly
“A punishment, is it.”
I looked around inside the storeroom.
“Yes. I’m a bad girl who told a lie. So, Lord Karma…”
“Conveniently, there’s something perfect right here.”
I pointed a finger downward.
For some reason, a vaulting mat was already laid out—thick blue mattresses.
“Haha, I knew it. I knew once I got this far, Lord Karma would accept me. Then I just have to go over there and lie down…”
“Get on your hands and knees.”
“What?”
Lucia’s pupils began to tremble.
“Wh…? Lord Karma, you’re joking…”
“Does it look like a joke?”
This was the athletic equipment storeroom. Suitable objects were piled everywhere. Blue mattresses, of course, and more than enough gear for ball sports as well.
I picked up a wooden baseball bat.
“L-Lord Karma?”
“Why are you still standing? I told you to get down.”
“I… are you serious? Lord Karma, I was only…”
Thud.
The moment I rested the bat on my shoulder, she reluctantly approached the mat and half-heartedly dropped into a push-up position.
Whoosh—
When I swung the bat through the empty air, her thighs flinched.
“As expected, this won’t do.”
Seeing that, I set the bat down. She let out a sigh of relief.
“Hah… r-right? Of course Lord Karma would never hit me…”
“You’re currently enhanced. A wooden bat like this wouldn’t even register.”
I tossed the bat onto the floor and lifted something more appropriate—a wooden parallel bar used for gymnastics—with both hands. It was far heavier and sturdier than a baseball bat.
“Kyaaah! A-are you really going to use that?!”
“Don’t move.”
“If you swing something like that, I’ll… I’ll break!”
Whoom!
I gave it a test swing. The weight felt excellent—reminiscent of the greatsword I had used in my previous life. For an ordinary person it would be a lethal weapon, but for Lucia in her current state it would make a perfectly suitable tool.
“Was helping with Laward’s training also a lie?”
“Y-yes! It was a lie! I’ve never met him even once! I didn’t see him during the break either!”
Lucia shouted in a panic.
As I had said, every one of her stats was currently enhanced. Holding a push-up position shouldn’t have been hard for her at all, yet she was trembling violently.
“Is that true?”
“It’s true, it’s really true! Meeting him alone? That’s completely impossible! If anything, I hate him because he’s someone Lord Karma pays special attention to!”
Is that so…
So this woman was wary not only of the other heroines, but of men as well…
“Hmm.”
“P-please believe me!”
“How am I supposed to believe a liar?”
“That’s…”
“Nothing left to say? Let’s finish this cleanly in one go.”
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”
She kept crying out. Given the position she was in, though, it felt less like I was talking to Lucia and more like I was having a conversation with her backside…
“I’ll never lie again! I won’t do things like this to get attention… never again!”
The reason four landmine endings still hadn’t locked was probably because of Lucia. Including the ending where she was the protagonist, her affection levels also influenced the clear conditions for the other heroines’ landmine routes.
So the unpredictable Lucia—especially the Lucia overflowing with energy right now—was the one still holding those endings open.
Not just her own ending.
She was a heroine who could shake the mental states of the others as well. She was already being wary of Veronica. The way she had described Veronica as catlike, and given the nature of the dating-sim genre, a “catfight” might already be a foregone conclusion.
“Mm.”
But what could I do?
I couldn’t stand to watch that kind of thing.
A little cute jealousy I could overlook, but flooring the accelerator this hard did not sit well with me.
I didn’t particularly want to punish Lucia either.
And this was absolutely not catering to any preference of mine.
Even so, to prevent the landmine endings from triggering, I needed to make an example of her starting with this first offense.
The hidden ending required Laward and the heroines to form a single team.
A party of young men and women whose hormones were running wild—yet one that thoroughly excluded romantic feelings and moved solely toward the goal of stopping the apocalypse.
A hero’s party.
In the hidden ending I was building, that party had no need for conflict of any kind.
I brought the parallel bar near Lucia’s rear and took careful aim.
“Hyaah! I’m sorry! I’ll never do it again!”
“Never do what again?”
“Even if you cheat, I’ll pretend not to notice the first time!”
“…You don’t seem to be reflecting at all.”
“Th-then… two times…?”
“You’ll take two hits.”
One clearly wasn’t going to be enough.
Since she had answered that she had never met Laward, the worst-case scenario I had imagined hadn’t come to pass. All the effort I had put into keeping him separated from the heroines hadn’t gone to waste—yet an example still needed to be made—
“Wait.”
“…Yes?”
“In order to plan this stunt, you must have scouted the location beforehand.”
“H-have I become a criminal…? I just wanted Lord Karma to…”
“You came by the Academy, didn’t you.”
“Well… yes. I did stop by once to air out the storeroom and clean the mattresses…”
You’ve got to be kidding me. Seriously?
Why prepare something like that so thoroughly?
“You might be sensitive about hygiene… so I prepared the place… and myself… properly…”
“Don’t casually try to sit down.”
“Yes… anyway, I did stop by…”
“What day of the week was it?”
“This past Tuesday.”
Tuesday?
Tuesday was the day the southern district had gone to hell—it wasn’t a worship day.
Meaning she hadn’t been there either during her preparations or today.
“…Why do you ask?”
Clatter—!
I dropped the parallel bar.
Punishing Lucia no longer mattered in the slightest.
“Then where has Laward gone right now.”
Absurdly enough, thanks to Lucia I was able to learn relatively early that Laward had truly vanished.
When I asked the Academy staff, they said they already knew he was gone, but since it was currently break they hadn’t paid it much mind. In fact, they spoke as if they had assumed I already knew.
But before entering the Academy, Laward had made several promises with me.
A few related to his socialization.
And, most critically, that he would not go outside without my permission.
There was good reason for that. If Laward arbitrarily left the Academy, he would die.
This game killed people in the most ridiculous ways.
It was an unchanging setting of the game—a hard rule.
Fortunately, because it was currently break, the condition of “having quit” did not apply. But if he remained absent once the semester began, that rule would activate in the end.
Laward would die.
Nine days remained until the start of the term.
A little over a week.
If he didn’t return by then, Laward would be run over by a carriage and die, get hit by an apple and die, or die in some bizarre method I couldn’t even imagine.
Laward disappearing without contacting me even once felt wrong no matter how I looked at it.
So the thought that it hadn’t been of his own will came naturally as well.
A kidnapping?
I already had a history of rescuing him after he was kidnapped, so maybe he was just the type who got kidnapped easily.
But there was no way he had been taken by something as low as slave traders again.
Trash of that level attacking him would amount to nothing more than a novel method of suicide.
That would kill them in the most absurd way imaginable.
Laward would kill them.
In that case, it had to be the work of the Death God Cult—but how had they managed it?
Even for the Death God Cult, dealing with Laward shouldn’t have been easy.
The only foreseeable scenario—and the only real variable—was Laward’s conspicuously low Intelligence stat.
If Amelia’s stats formed a neat, evenly stretched hexagon, Laward’s were deeply recessed on one side.
That side was Intelligence.
The possibility that he had been deceived by someone—
“Is… more than high enough.”
Damn it…
I should have made him read books once in a while instead of only making him train…
“Lucia. Veronica’s back, so it should be fine to leave your post.”
“Huh? Ah, yes. Should I come look for him too?”
“You caused this, so you should take responsibility.”
“What…? I was the one who discovered he was missing, though…”
“If you wanted to be alone with me that badly, this works out perfectly. Let’s go.”
“Yes!”
Lucia beamed and stuck close to my side.
She didn’t seem to care in the slightest whether Laward had disappeared or not.
Slip—
Meanwhile, I used the ring to transform into Karma’s appearance.
When pairing with Lucia, this form was more convenient.
I had visited the Magic Tower during the break, run into zombies in the south…
I had thought there would be nothing more to do, yet a sudden event had cropped up.
Winter break was longer than summer break—did that mean it was also harder?
I wasn’t even a student preparing for exams.
Honestly, even if Laward had been captured by the Death God Cult, I didn’t get the sense he was going to die anytime soon.
Laward’s Divine Power rank was SS.
A rank only the protagonist could possess.
He had obtained something above S-Rank.
It was a shame that what he gained from the Dowon Festival event hadn’t been an Intelligence stat, but it still hadn’t been a loss.
Obtaining SS-Rank was valuable in itself, and more importantly, it confirmed that his potential exceeded my expectations.
The protagonist and the heroines would eventually catch up to me—and then surpass me.
Laward, in particular, was almost there.
Clank—
“…Heavy.”
The air was heavy.
It felt as though that heavy air was boring through his skull and pressing down on his brain.
Blood seemed to rush into his head until it was about to burst.
When Laward carefully opened his eyes, the surrounding scenery flooded into view at once.
A black mountain. A black sea. A black sun.
He had woken in a place that was pitch-black everywhere.
On top of that, the entire landscape looked as if it had been flipped upside down—a bizarre vista—
Oh. I’m the one who’s upside down.
He realized it only after organizing his thoughts.
He was hanging from the edge of a cliff with shackles on, dangling upside down.
The air had felt heavy simply because he was inverted.
This place is…
Where?
He tried to reason it out, but quickly gave up.
Nothing came to mind at all.
Instead, Laward thought about how he had ended up here.
Tracing his memories, he recalled the priest from the chapel coming to the Academy.
The priest had said that his teacher, who had gone south, was in danger, and Laward had immediately set out after him.
The problem came after that.
Something invisible had attacked him, and he had lost consciousness.
No—whether he had truly lost consciousness was unclear.
He simply had no memories after that point.
I felt something, though.
Someone had been behind him, he thought, but he hadn’t been able to see them.
Next, the priest’s final words floated vaguely back to him.
I… I’m sorry, Laward. There was nothing I could… gahk!
Had the priest been threatened somehow?
If that was why he had deceived him…
He better not be dead.
The assailant had coerced the priest into capturing Laward, then disposed of the priest as well.
That had been his last memory.
Clank!
Laward twisted, trying to free himself from the shackles.
If he shattered them he would fall off the cliff, but—
I’ll worry about that when I get there.
For now, Laward focused only on breaking free of his bonds.
As he poured all his strength into it, a voice suddenly came from beside him.
“You’re noisy.”
It was a voice he had never heard before.
When Laward turned his head, he saw someone bound just like him.
No.
Not a person.
Hanging from the cliff in a birdcage-like prison, exactly as he was, was a horned demihuman.
“Who are you?”
“Hah. You’re not even surprised.”
The horned man let out a hollow laugh.
“Just answer the question.”
“You want us to exchange names here? Forget it. I’m just a prisoner.”
“A prisoner?”
“Yeah. You and me both. We’re all in the same boat—dragged here against our will.”
As he spoke, the black sun slowly shifted, and places that had been cast in shadow were brightly revealed.
Prisoners.
Besides Laward and the horned man, countless others were hanging from the cliff.
“What the hell is this place…?”
“A prison built by those Death God Cult bastards.”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear me? I said a prison…”
“That means this is one of their strongholds.”
“Well, yeah. Something like that. But… why are you smiling?”
“Then that means I found one! Great!”
“You crazy son of a… how the hell is this a good thing?”
“Haha… Teacher is going to be so happy…”
Teacher.
The moment he thought of him, Laward suddenly noticed that his sword was gone.
“Hah—Teacher bought that for me.”
“What have you been rambling about this whole time…”
“And I have to get back before the semester starts…!”
At the thought of having lost the sword and possibly failing to keep his promise as well—
“That can’t happen.”
Laward’s eyes turned sharp in an instant.
Wuuung—
Both of his hands flushed a deep red, and the manacles locked around his wrists shattered into pieces.
Crack—!
“Wha…”
As if they were a single body, every prisoner hanging from the cliff turned to stare at him in shock.