About an hour.
Now that I couldn’t hear the guttural “grrr” sounds from outside anymore, I grabbed my smartphone and stepped out onto Illinois’s deck to scan the surroundings.
“A magnificent sight.”
Shelling, shelling, and more shelling.
Illinois’s full-barrage, all-range bombardment had been repeated until her mana was nearly depleted.
“Wow, it’s spotless now.”
There were no red entities on Illinois’s radar.
Whether this was the first floor or a boss floor wasn’t clear, but the streets of this pseudo-Shibuya had been thoroughly cleaned up.
Zombies.
Buildings.
“If anyone recognizes this as Shibuya, they must be someone who’s fantasized countless times about turning it into a wasteland in their dreams.”
“You think about stuff like that on a regular basis, Commander?”
“No way. If I really did think like that, I wouldn’t have considered the casualties and would’ve just sent Illinois charging in. Or I’d have followed the coastline and wiped out everything within her firing range.”
Is it impossible?
No, it’s entirely possible.
That’s exactly what many people feared when I first summoned Illinois.
Now that a battleship existed, the coastlines were bound to be devastated by the Summoner.
That misunderstanding was thoroughly cleared up when I had Illinois launch a long-range bombardment from the western to the eastern United States.
Ah.
It’s not just the coastlines. The entire planet is within firing range.
That EX-rank Summoner can reduce any place on Earth to ash if he so desires.
People may fear it in their minds.
But there’s a world of difference between imagining it and seeing it with your own eyes.
Even if this tower’s first floor perfectly resembles the streets of Shibuya…
“Maybe I should’ve left a bit intact.”
“Left it? Why? Once this place disappears, no one will even know what happened in here anyway.”
Drei giggled, mimicking the motion of filming with a camcorder in front of her eyes.
Being an android, it’s no surprise that she could turn everything she saw into footage if she wanted to.
“Unless you’re planning to warn Japan? Like, ‘This is what happens if you mess with me’?”
“Should I?”
“…That’s unexpected.”
Drei widened her eyes in surprise at my words.
“I thought for sure you’d say something else.”
“Like what?”
“Even if we wipe this place out as a warning, they’d still act recklessly because they know deep down we wouldn’t actually go that far.”
“…Who knows.”
Not at all.
“Protagonists in shounen manga or vigilantes who fight crime at night in American comics—or even New York’s friendly neighborhood guy—they don’t kill people. They might beat them half to death or ruin their lives, but they don’t kill them.”
“Weren’t you similar to them?”
“Maybe in terms of morality or humanity, sure. But I’m not that heroic of a person.”
I’m the kind of person who’s ready to destroy someone else’s everything to protect what’s mine.
Even if that includes lives.
Even if it’s not just one or two people.
“If destroying Shibuya means I can send a warning to the whole world, then maybe it’s a cheap price to pay. My public image would be ruined, though.”
“Yeah. And maybe someone who saw you as the ‘ideal hero’ would be deeply shaken.”
“Me?”
“I’m sure there’s at least one person like that. Someone who sees you as someone of the light, while they live in the shadows, deciding to live as the other side of the same coin. But if that person sees you blow away Shibuya and incinerate hundreds of thousands in Tokyo with a single push… how would they feel?”
“You’ve got it wrong, Drei.”
This is a very important point.
“If there’s ever a day I destroy Shibuya and its hundreds of thousands, it’ll be because I had a reason I couldn’t ignore. Isn’t that right, Kiharu?”
“Not wrong, nyah.”
Kiharu climbed onto my head and scanned Shibuya from above.
“Whether it’s the logic of sacrificing the few for the many, or humanity being on the brink of extinction unless Shibuya is wiped out, even if others curse at you, your partner made that decision knowingly.”
“Heh. Coming from the goddess who may one day force humanity to choose between destruction and salvation, those words carry real weight.”
“I’m placing my hope in this human too.”
Kiharu tapped my forehead with her soft paws.
It was a strange sensation, having my bangs pressed down by a squishy little paw, but I grabbed her and pulled her off my head.
“Yeah. Thanks to you, I always stop right before I press the ‘end of the world’ button.”
“So I was meant to be that kind of safeguard?”
“Something like that.”
The true final boss who might one day annihilate humanity.
Even such an existence is still holding back. So what excuse do I have to suddenly cause a Tokyo Big Bang or unleash Earth Destruction Magic?
“Kiharu, I’ll say it clearly again. I want you to be my restraint. You probably have more patience than I do.”
I must not.
I must endure.
“If you think about the previous games in the Fermata series, humans always messed everything up—regardless of the installment. After 60 or 70 hours of playtime, the true final boss shows up and says, ‘Yeah, humans are hopeless,’ and wipes out the world.”
“True, but at least in that world, Hunters didn’t go wild like this, and politicians weren’t so deeply entangled with Hunters or the Towers.”
“So this world is worse? …Heh.”
Kiharu gently tapped my forehead again, offering silent comfort.
I pulled her down from my head and pointed toward the demolished Shibuya.
“It’s fine. Blowing stuff up like this helps relieve stress. You know how some people smash things to release frustration? In that sense, this Tower is actually… kind of perfect for me.”
KABOOOM!
Illinois fired her main cannon.
Not just any shot—it was a high-angle bombardment that left a crater in the already ruined ground, a truly massive explosion.
A familiar gate floated in the air.
The entrance to the next floor had appeared. I turned my eyes toward the direction of the dungeon entrance Illinois had blocked with her body.
“Kiharu. You said I might be a hero—like a light—for someone, right?”
“Yeah.”
“…That’s nice.”
A hero, huh.
“You know, there’s this thing people say about mobile gacha gamers?”
“What is it?”
“‘How many worlds have you saved today?’ Like, they’re busy saving different worlds right now.”
A joke.
It’s a roundabout way of saying someone plays too many mobile games, but if you don’t take it as a joke and actually think about it, it becomes quite meaningful.
“In the world of Hunters, maybe that’s what I was longing for. Maybe all those mobile games I played… were because most of them end in happy endings, not sad ones. The protagonist defeats the evil threatening the world and saves humanity.”
“…”
“Maybe I was hoping for that through mobile games. In an era where humanity climbs Towers, where most people fall into despair because they can’t clear them properly… I wanted someone who could clear the Towers and become a beacon of hope for humanity.”
Since I couldn’t awaken as a Hunter, I found vicarious satisfaction in watching heroes save worlds in mobile games.
But now, it’s different.
Now I am on the frontlines, clearing S-rank Towers and saving worlds one by one.
“…Everyone, listen up.”
I pointed toward the next Tower.
“After clearing this Tower—”
Beep-beep.
Before I could even finish, a high-priority alert came through.
“Elaine?”
[Elaine: Master. We have a problem.]
Elaine appeared with a rare look of concern on her face.
[Elaine: Here—]
* * *
WEEOOO-WEEOOO-WEEOOO!!
The emergency sirens blared.
Only after the sirens rang and law enforcement and Hunters created a tense atmosphere did the civilians finally begin to disperse, one by one.
The streets emptied in an instant.
Just like when a spatial rift opened between the hotel and Akihabara during the Master’s movement, the center of Shibuya’s scramble crossing was now gaping wide open.
“…As expected.”
The Prime Minister muttered under his breath.
“I knew it. I have to go in…!”
“Prime Minister!”
“We can’t just record what the Master says! We have to at least see what kind of battlefield lies inside that Tower, what kind of monsters appear—and gather data to prepare for the next Tower—”
Fssshhh.
The gate shimmered—
And the Master stepped out from the Tower.
“?!!?”
The Tower didn’t collapse.
“A…!”
The Master had simply exited on his own.
At that sight, the Prime Minister instinctively smiled and ran over.
“Master!!”
“…”
“Did you… perhaps… successfully clear the Tower?!”
The Prime Minister’s excited voice froze the others in place.
He asked that even though the Tower clearly hadn’t collapsed?
How shameless.
“We were actually just about to attempt the raid…!”
As if trying to save face. Completely transparent.
“We apologize, Master! The Prime Minister has lost his mind…!”
“Red Ruler! What are you even…!”
“Cleared…?”
The Master spoke in a sulky, almost annoyed tone, pointing back at the Tower.
“I was about to kill the boss… but I left.”
“…Sorry?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“This.”
The Master spoke with genuine irritation.
“An A-rank Tower pretending to be S-rank. That boss was faking the Tower’s rank.”
“Uh… so then…?”
“What.”
The Master raised a brow at the Prime Minister’s question.
“I only want S-rank Towers. Not fake ones.”
“Then… you didn’t clear it…?”
“Eh.”
The Master glanced at the Prime Minister and gave a slight shrug.
“Send in some A-ranks and have them clear it. I already broke the boss’s super armor for you.”
* * *
“A Tower that gives neither stacks nor experience? Like hell I’m going to clear that.”
It’s not ready.
Not yet.
“If the Japanese fail to clear it and it evolves into a real S-rank, then I’ll take it.”
“So then…”
“We’ll just have to go for a different Tower.”
Beep-beep.
“Alice.”
[Yes, Master!]
“This one’s not S-rank.”
I pointed to the sky.
“If we clear Babel, will that give me enough stacks to summon my next unit?”
