One Punch, Please?
One punch, please?
KWAANG!!
"WAAAH!"
"The water—!"
"This way, this way!"
"Huh? Who are—"
Grab! She snatched people by their clothes.
There was no time to lose.
"YAAAH!!"
"Just come with me!"
Young Lily swept up the trembling fathers and mothers of the village and shot skyward in an instant, the whole lot of them in tow.
The pressure that weighed down the entire space couldn't offer even the slightest resistance to her wings.
Honestly, though...
Gulp.
Flying was something she would never get used to!
"AAAAAHHH!!!"
"KYAAAAAAAHHH!!"
"STOOOOP SCREEEEAAAMIING!!"
─...You're the one screaming the loudest, you know.
Two people held aloft by a pair of white hands slicing through the air, and a small girl with wings.
The three of them, screaming the whole way, arrived at the highest point of the village—the hill they used to play on—where several people had already gathered.
"Hah... hah..."
"We're here! Everyone down!"
"Where are we...?"
"Over there! Go on!"
"Wait a sec! You're Lily, aren't—"
WHOOOOSH!!
Whump! The man she'd carried up in her hands covered his face with both arms as the gust of wind bowled him over.
Lily rose in a whirlwind and, just as quickly as she'd brought them, vanished from sight.
The couple stood staring blankly at the spot where the storm had passed through, then looked up at the sky.
"...What on earth was that?"
"Just now, that was..."
"Hey! Everybody over here! We have to get to the highest ground we can!"
Slosh. Slosh.
The village was filling with water.
And a girl from the village was flying around in some strange suit of armor?
The rescue was far from over.
Day 3
01:00
"WAAAAHH!!"
"It's okay! Hush now, don't cry!"
An hour had passed since the nightmare descended on the village.
The water had risen considerably—by now it was up to an adult's waist.
I smashed straight through the wall of one of the few houses still standing and gathered a baby wailing in a high bed into my arms.
"There we go! Let's go!"
"Lily..."
"Ma'am?"
Crunch! I crushed through the wall of the next room.
Inside, a woman was pounding on a door with hands rubbed raw and red.
It was the fruit vendor they saw all the time.
"...Something about you has changed. The Lily I knew wasn't like this."
"Ah, yeah, probably not. But don't worry! I've gotten super strong!"
This impossible armor, with the power the Dream Fairy had granted her.
At first she hadn't known what to do with it, but with this, saving everyone would barely be enough to use it up.
I held out my hand.
"Come on, hurry! Everyone's waiting."
"I'm fine. Take the child first, quick—"
"What was that?"
Grab!
My white hand darted out and seized the woman by the arm.
Well, not my real hand—one of the long, slender great hands attached at my side.
"Lily?!"
"I'm not abandoning anyone, so just come with me."
Here we go!
KWAAAANG!! In an instant she shot through the broken wall, and set the woman and the newborn baby down on the hill.
"What in the world..."
"There you are."
"Ah... oh."
Dazed, the woman took the infant I'd been carrying in my arms.
"Right, keep at it. I've still got people left to save."
"Wait, just a moment!"
"Yes?"
I stopped, just before taking off again.
There was no time to lose.
I'd rescued almost everyone, but there were still about three or four houses I hadn't reached.
The water was already up to a grown man's waist—if adults might barely manage, small children couldn't hold out against it for long.
"I'm in a hurry. If you want to ask me what's going on, I'll explain later."
"People! You're going to save people, aren't you!"
"That's right."
"There are people in places you don't know about. Not everyone is at home."
"...? Where?"
The woman's face grew heavy as she spoke.
I couldn't tell whether it was the situation that weighed on her, or the place she was about to name.
"The abandoned ship."
A small vessel at the far end of the harbor, half broken, run aground and left to rot.
There were people there too.
01:15
One-fifteen.
After checking the last remaining house, I soared into the sky.
Thankfully, every villager I knew was now safe.
Everyone was accounted for, so I should probably join the others soon, tell them the situation, and help organize some kind of response—but I moved back toward the village, saying there were still more to save.
"Could it be true?"
─Hmm... Hard to say. I'm not picking up any life signs, at least.
The place the fruit vendor—the one raising a newborn—had told me about.
'The abandoned ship.'
"I remember the abandoned ship. Dad said it could never be used again, and after the villagers stripped it for parts and pieces, it was just left there."
Left alone, it would rot away or fall apart on its own—she'd never even been out to see it. And now there were supposedly people there?
It was hard to believe.
─It might be a bit of a delicate situation.
"That's strange. Everyone in the village is kind and helps each other, so there aren't any poor people. We're all about the same—nobody would be sleeping rough on an abandoned ship..."
─What if they're not villagers?
I flinched.
My body, heading for the harbor, stopped short.
"...Sorry?"
─If they're outsiders, it's entirely possible. That woman might have hesitated to mention it precisely because they're outsiders.
"...We don't turn outsiders away, though."
─Are you sure?
"Yes."
I was sure.
It was such a tiny village that outsiders rarely came through, but now and then traders arrived with goods to sell, and a few had come and gone over the years.
Nothing had ever happened. No one had ever caused trouble.
"I'm certain. That's never happened."
So let's go see, first.
If we went, we'd find out something.
Although—if it was already broken, and the villagers had stripped it for parts...
Shaaaaaaa...
"Ah."
─It's already gone.
Where the ship had been was long since filled with churning waves.
Not a trace of the vessel remained in the sea.
"......We were too late."
It had already been half-destroyed; the sea must have simply swept it away.
...Should I have gone straight there the moment I heard?
'But the villagers mattered more to me.'
Still, the people on that ship could have been villagers too, couldn't they?
'No—they could have been outsiders.'
So what if they were? Outsiders are people too.
'Villagers come before outsiders, though.'
People's lives are precious. There's no such thing as choosing whether or not to save someone.
'Then why didn't you go to the ship first? You knew the ship was the most danger—'
GWOOOONG!
"Ugh?!"
Ziiiing...!
Her head rang out of nowhere.
Tears trickling at a pain she'd never felt since putting on the armor, the girl opened her eyes to find the Fairy looking down at her with a disgruntled expression.
The Fairy, a truly tiny fist raised, gave a little smirk.
─You are not everyone's savior.
"...But."
─Didn't you say it yourself? That even though I couldn't stop the nightmare, I did my best.
Good or bad aside, whatever the reason, it was the Dream Fairy who had failed to stop the Nightmare Great Demon King.
And yet Young Lily had insisted it wasn't the Fairy's fault.
─You just have to do your best within what you can do. Don't go worrying yourself over things that aren't your part to play.
"...Can I really do that?"
─Yes. And honestly? All this brooding is gross.
She was only twelve.
Getting a little power and immediately whipping herself into a spiral over whether she'd saved one person more or less—Lily found it genuinely distasteful to watch.
─A child should act like a child.
"Uu..."
─Enough. Go take a look at that spot.
Young Lily made her way to where the ship had been.
Before long, the White Savior that had enveloped her entire body seeped out into her surroundings and began its survey.
─...Nothing's here?
"What?"
─There isn't even a trace that the ship ever existed.
As if it had never been there at all—not a single mark remained.
Young Lily shook her head.
"Th-that can't be. I don't know about people, but the ship was definitely there!"
─Well. It seems to have something to do with the clock... I can't look into it right now.
Whether it was a lingering effect of the Calamity Domain already in progress, analyzing the region itself was proving difficult.
In its current state, it wasn't something that could be easily pieced together.
─But something is definitely here. A region this empty? Something must have intervened.
"...Then what do we do now?"
─......
'I' gazed out over the sea through the Fairy's eyes.
The Kraken's Calamity Domain was indeed in progress, but its aftereffects weren't as large as I'd feared.
The village had nearly submerged, yes, but at this level, the threat was genuinely weak.
'Probably skirting the very edge of its territory. Less a targeted attack than something just passing through.'
Which meant, for now, no one was about to drown.
But if the system said 'Gaze', then this place had most assuredly been marked. The Kraken's eye, once it fixed on a target, never lost it—not unless the eye itself was destroyed.
"There are two ways to do this."
One: simply load the third save from after the failure, complete the ritual, and evade the Gaze.
The priest had said the ritual was no longer any use, but looking it over roughly, it wasn't entirely useless.
It had already undergone its fair share of refinement—it could hold out for a day, maybe two.
With a couple of days, I'd get two or three more hints, and the odds of clearing the dungeon would climb as well.
"...Fairy?"
Young Lily, unable to hear my muttering, looked up at me.
Her expression said she'd saved the people just as I'd told her to, but now had no idea what came next.
If I took the first option, Young Lily would lose her memory—spared the shock, spared the guilt of failing to save someone.
I had no desire to foist a burden of duty onto a twelve-year-old. There was no reason at all not to choose it.
And yet.
"I'm going with the second option after all."
If I let myself be dragged along like this, completed the ritual, or hunted down some hidden authority and somehow dodged the Kraken's eye—
'Would that really be the end of it?'
No.
The final destination of Young Lily's storybook was the fall of the Nightmare Great Demon King—the Kraken.
It was the endpoint of the plausibility that permitted my interference, and at the same time, exactly what I wanted.
'From the monster that would crush an innocent village.'
─All right, Lily. Time to land one on the Nightmare Great Demon King.
"Huh? One punch?"
─Yep. Want to clench your fist for me?
Young Lily tilted her head and clenched her fist.
And then.
"A hammer?"
A hammer had appeared in her hand.