Chapter 155
“…By the looks of it, it’s checkmate. Seems we were a little too slow in noticing it.”
At the summit of the Mafahl Tower, a woman was sitting on the throne and muttered as if she had gotten tired of it all.
Her eyes had no glimmer. There was no longer any of the brightness or cheeriness on the face of that girl as she once had as an adventurer when she was still young.
She had believed that if she continued to kill, kill and kill her enemies, there would one day be peace.
If it was for the sake of that peace, she would do anything that she needed to. By now, she was long used to being called a devil, a monster or an inhumane person.
But it seemed she had far underestimated the might of her own comrades.
By being too overzealous and engrossed with what was in front of her, she failed to take notice of the discontent and unhappiness of the ones who were following behind her.
The Goddess utilised that very misgiving to her advantage, such that their hatred and loathing for the woman sitting on the throne had gotten to the point of no return.
Perhaps the only one who was not affected and had not changed was the Vampire Princess alone. In respect of her willpower which was unyielding like steel, the woman sitting down on the throne felt respect from the bottom of her heart. In contrast, it could be said that the other six individuals were not as strong-willed as the Vampire Princess.
The fact that she was unable to take notice of that difference was perhaps a fault attributable to her on its own.
What was happening now was an outcome resulting from choosing to abandon the thinking process under the guise of a convenient word known as trust.
The eyes of the ones whom she called friends were now clouded with hatred and loathing. It had gotten to the point where any attempt at persuading them was likely to be rendered futile.
Although on the surface, they were still being subservient to her, she knew that, behind the scenes, they were steadily preparing for insurrection.
Furthermore, she had already ascertained and was aware of the fact that more than half of those in her army held the same opinion as them and were gleefully waiting for that to happen.
“It isn’t a checkmate yet. If it’s you, it should very well be possible to completely turn the tables around and start all over again.”
“Hmm, yeah, it’s possible. But you know, Ophiuchus… even assuming that I end up winning, what would happen then? Who exactly in their right minds do you think would end up following a ruler who massacres her own friends and allies? After all, a ruler who kills over half of her own subordinates is nothing but a tyrant. No one would recognise that individual. On top of that… once I do end up killing a lot of my allies and subordinates, even if I were to come out victorious, there’ll be nothing left in my hands. … Whether I win or not, I’ll only end up losing everything. From the moment it had gotten to this point, it was my loss.”
The ruler with the black wings mocked herself and laughed cynically.
She was sneering at herself for her own incompetence.
Until now, if it was for the sake of world peace, she did not mind being labelled as an evil ruler.
She believed it was fine for her enemies to consider her a terrifying slaughterer.
But in the end, she was feared even by her own allies. She was told that she was unworthy to be a ruler. With how things had developed, she was no longer a ruler at all.
She had become nothing more than a delusional fool who called herself a ruler.
“At the very least, the Twelve Stars will be left. And myself.”
“You’re right. I guess that’s the only silver lining.”
The black-winged ruler faintly smiled and chuckled. At that point, she was feeling ever so thankful for her dearest loyal followers who remained under her even in this situation.
And exactly because of that feeling, she thought that any further battle should not come to fruition.
If she fought seriously, it was not a battle that she would not be able to win. If she really felt like it, it was possible for her to suppress everyone and massacre them all.
However, heroes would not readily yield while they were roused under the influence of the Goddess. If she was able to completely suppress everyone and everything through the use of Coercion, she would have had an easy time. But the enemy would definitely be expecting Coercion and recognise its threat. Therefore, one could be sure that they would have some kind of countermeasure against it.
After all, it was not as if there were no skills or techniques which could render Coercion ineffective. Coercion was by no means an unparalleled and undefeatable skill.
Nevertheless, even if the heroes under the protection of the Goddess all came assaulting her, there was no way she could lose. But among the Twelve Stars… there would most definitely be a fatality.
For the sake of preventing that from happening, the most optimal solution was for her to promptly leave the stage.
Alternatively, she could swiftly massacre Alioth and everyone else before the Twelve Stars could be defeated and it would be a problem solved… but she knew that she was unable to put that into practice.
If she were to do so, it would mean that she was no longer herself but merely an empty shell which had abandoned all emotion and sentiment.
“… Looks like there’s no other way but to think of ‘a way to lose’.”
“A way to lose… did you say?”
“Yeah. If what the people desire is for me to step down as ruler, then, I shall answer by granting it to them. I will stage the loss and investigate the one who caused all of that to happen in the meantime.”
“That’s…”
“For you, it will most likely be a painful and audacious road. If you want to defect from me, now is the perfect time, you know?”
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Even if she were to leave, she would not be blamed.
The king was hinting this to her. However, in response, the young girl called Ophiuchus merely smiled courageously.
“No thank you, Ruphas-sama. I have no intention of going back to being a doll. Until I met you, I was nothing more than a doll that didn’t possess an ego of my own… You were the one who turned me into ‘me’. In return for that, I’ll fool even the Goddess-sama herself.”
Replying as such – a young blue-haired girl displayed her unwavering loyalty.
During the very brief instance as I passed between the worlds, a strange memory ran through my head.
In that memory, I was exchanging a conversation… but I wondered who exactly it was with.
As if I was having a dream, the face that I saw was very hazy and I was unable to make out who it was.
It was just that… recalling that blue hair, I could not help but associate it with the woman that I was currently chasing after.
In any event, it seemed we were able to successfully cross over to the other world. I was no longer able to feel either arcane or divine power.
This was a world devoid of any fantasy elements. A world ruled entirely by the laws of physics and science.
Yet, it was a place far more developed as a civilisation than the fantasy-filled Midgard. There were many high-rise buildings lined up next to each other. In a way, perhaps this was a place that was more fantasy-like than Midgard.
In other words – this was Earth. And just now, Benet and I had set our feet down on the land of Japan.
“…… So this is another world.”
Illustration from AWLBA Light Novel Volume 7
Benet muttered whilst she looked around the surroundings.
As to be expected, it seemed that even for her, she could not help but be astonished by the sight of what she was seeing for the first time.
There were steel boxes that were running on the road. The buildings that were lined up were mostly high-rise buildings.
In public parks, children were playing without a shred of fear or any threat from magical beasts. Also, as a side note, the air was excessively dirty and polluted.
It was a strange feeling. After all, even though there were convenient powers such as alchemy and arcane magic, Midgard was still stuck in the Middle Ages. Yet, this world where no such powers existed had progressed to this point.
The people who were walking on the street stalled, looked in our direction and started whispering to each other discreetly.
As to be expected, the colour of our hair was quite conspicuous. Well, I supposed we did not look like Japanese people by any means.
Well, whatever. I guessed that for now, I would check our current position.
If we just casually loitered down the road, we were bound to find some information signs sooner or later. I would be able to determine where we were from that.
As for visiting a police box… I wondered what I should do. It would have been fine to consider it as one of our options if the way I spoke was not permanently stuck in a haughty tone.[4]
Admittedly, seeing a blonde woman using the archaic first-person pronoun of “I (yo)” haughtily in the Japan of this world would be far too strange.
And to top it off, right now, we were unable to take out and verify our personal identities. As such, in the worst-case scenario, we might get arrested under suspicion of being overstayed illegal foreigners.
As expected, we should avoid the option of asking for directions at a police box.
“For now, let’s follow the path down the road. There should be an information sign somewhere.”
“I’m not quite sure what’s happening, but I’ll leave it up to you.”
As I walked down the road, I randomly picked up a rock and tried crushing it.
There was no difference in grip strength. My physical abilities were the same as when I was in the other world.
I thought that perhaps it would give rise to a difference in physical capabilities across the worlds, however, it seemed that was not the case.
In other words, even in this world, I would be able to move faster than the speed of sound and punch faster than the speed of light.
It would even be possible to reach the moon with a single leap.
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However, if I were to attempt any of that in this world, it would cause major collateral damage on Earth. Therefore, I absolutely could not do it.
As a precaution, we wore bracelets which greatly restricted our abilities. Notwithstanding that, it would still be more than very easy to annihilate a city or two by running at our full strength. So we had to be really mindful.
As I was thinking such thoughts, Benet was casually crossing a major road whilst ignoring traffic lights.
As one could have expected, a truck which was coming down the road was sounding its horn as it closed in on her. Yet, even after seeing that, Benet showed no indication of attempting to avoid the hit.
Let alone that, she clenched her fist lightly and…
“Oi, hold it.”
I quickly grabbed Benet’s nape and pulled her back.
Because I greatly held back the speed at which I pulled her, there was no collateral damage to the environment.
Nevertheless, a few students who coincidentally saw my movement were standing in a daze.
“Oi, did you see that just now? I’m not imagining things, right?”
“Huh, ahh, yeah. That blonde lady just moved at an unbelievable speed just then…”
“Or more like, isn’t she too much of a beauty? Could she be an idol?”
From the looks of things, even the speed that I had just used was far too much.
Well, whatever. There should not be a problem even if I left it be.
With only so many of them, it would only end up as a strange happening of the day.
It could be that some of them would post it on the internet and whilst it might turn into a funny story, I doubted anyone would truly believe it.
In the meantime, I left the place all the while holding onto Benet.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
“That’s my line. What were you planning to do?”
“That golem-like object was buzzing and charging towards me, so I was merely trying to make them realise their place.”
“That’s not a golem. It’s a vehicle. And you were the one at fault for crossing the street while the traffic lights were red. In this world, there are strict and precise rules in place to determine whether a person or vehicle should cross the road.”
“Traf-ik lahyts?”
“That thing. The thing that’s giving off three different coloured lights.”
After this conversation, I explained traffic lights, roadways and cars to Benet. However, it was questionable whether she even understood half of the things that I had said.
Halfway through, when we were talking about the blue light of the traffic lights, she suddenly said: “That’s not blue but green, isn’t it?” At this point, I was not sure how to reply back to her, but… really, I wondered why it was even called a blue light.[5]
If I recalled correctly, it was something along the lines of, back in the olden days of Japan, all the colours were expressed through four colours; blue, red, white and black, so it’s vestiges of that or whatever.
In any event, I wouldn’t be able to stop monitoring Benet, huh. I mean, I really didn’t know what she was going to end up doing.
I was contemplating this as we continued to walk down the street, and what do you know? We ended up finding an information sign as I had expected.
Our current location is… Tokyo, huh. The place that “I (ore)” used to live in previously was Niigata, so it’s unexpectedly close by.[6]
If I recall correctly, it should be to the north side of Tokyo. So, if we continue to progress in that direction, it should work out in the end.
But the problem we have is the mode of transportation. After all, I currently don’t own any currency from this world.
I do have things like jewels and gold in my possession so there’s an option to liquidate them, but as I recall correctly, doing those things require me to show my proof of identity.
So how should I go about things? Maybe we should just move around by jumping from the roof of one building to another?
I mean, in all likelihood, we probably wouldn’t be spotted that easily.
But even if we could do that, it would be appropriate to have some money on hand, just in case. After all, I want to bring back some food from this world when I go back.
… Hmm, maybe I’ll use that trash skill that I haven’t used in a long time.
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– Skill [Money Getter].[7]
This was one of the skills that a ranger could learn. It was a useless skill with the effect of allowing the user to find and pick up money during the battle.
The amount of money that one could gain by using this skill only amounted to a smidgeon, so it was too insignificant. Furthermore, as the user would be defenceless whilst the skill was active, it was often cancelled halfway after getting attacked by the enemy. Needless to say, if the skill was interrupted, the effect of the skill also ceased.
The only time an individual might use this skill was when they had absolutely no money left. Yet even at such times, it would usually be resolved by selling some items that they had on hand. Therefore, in the end, there was no role for this skill to play.
I also tried using the skill a few times right after I obtained it, but due to the lack of uses that the skill had, I quickly and decisively abandoned using it.
The name of this skill was always brought up whenever there was a discussion about useless skills on forums and bulletin boards.
Notwithstanding all of that, I supposed under the condition where one had no proof of identity and no money whatsoever, it could be useful.
I then used telekinesis to pick up a 500 yen coin from the ground and caught it.
In a way, what I did just now was misappropriation, but let’s not talk about that. I mean, if it was just this amount, I doubt most people would bother taking it to a police box.[8]
Needless to say, 500 yen would be spent almost immediately. As such, there was a need to somehow increase what I now had.
Fortunately, there was a slot machine shop nearby.[9]
Honestly speaking, I wasn’t actually familiar with them, but I thought it’d be fine one way or another.
I’d show the might of my 9280 luck stat that’s ordinarily not being put to use.
I temporarily took off the bracelet and walked into the store.
Benet’s face grimaced due to how dirty and noisy the inside of the building was, but she did not show any indication of going wild.
Well, I guessed regarding the noisiness, there were also gambling venues in the other world and it was not all that different.
The outcome was we had overwhelming winnings.
About halfway through, I also gave some coins to Benet so that we could fully abuse our high luck stats to get as many jackpots as we could.
After seeing the anime characters on the slot machines, there was quite an impressive and memorable situation where Benet kept making straight man’s retorts along the lines of “Isn’t this guy’s eyes way too big?” and “Isn’t this guy’s face way too big?”
But for now, we had increased the amount of money that we had on hand to over 100 000 yen. Therefore, if it was just to buy random things here and there in this world, it should be enough.
As we were planning to take off after re-equipping the bracelets, we heard a scream from some distance away.
When we turned around to check what was happening, there was a truck heading right towards a young child’s position at an intersection slightly away from us.
The traffic light for the pedestrian’s path was blue (green). In other words, the truck had to be the side which was ignoring the traffic light.
Ok, ok, you’re in rush, you’re in rush, we get it.
I lightly kicked the ground below me and reached the intersection, then punched away the truck which was closing in on the young child.[10]
Well, I described it as punched away, but I only made it float slightly. Of course, I did not go to an extreme extent of sending the truck far away to prevent subsequent nuisance.
After floating in the air for a few seconds, the truck landed back down on the ground safely. Even though the driver inside had lost consciousness, I confirmed that he was still alive.
The driver was holding onto a smartphone…[11]
That’s dangerous. You’re driving inattentively? This piece of shit.
Maybe I should have punched it a little harder.
When I looked around, people were making a fuss and some of them even had their smartphones out and directed at us.
Oh shit, I might have gone a bit too far.
I slowly left the place, making sure that I did not go faster than the speed of sound – was what I’d say, but I supposed for normal people, it would look like super high speed – taking Benet with me and jumping away from where we were.
“Oi, I thought you said not to cause an uproar?”
“Sorry, I don’t even have a retort to that.”
As if I was running away, or rather, I was, in fact, running away… I leapt from one roof of a building to another.
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(Author note)
[Money Getter]
Trash skill.
All it does is find and pick up money that is lying around on the ground.
Having said that, it’s not like there’s money lying around on the ground everywhere. Yet it still finds it.
Maybe it’s actually a skill that just teleports money that’s classified as “not in the possession of anyone” to a position near the user.
(Author note end)
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[1] “https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Pay_Day_(move)”.
[2] Not actually “kk?” in the raw but it has a similar effect. I couldn’t replicate the exact joke in the raw, so you’re stuck with “kk?”, kk?
[3] Night Wizard! is a TRPG that was adapted into an anime in 2007. The setting features an alternate Earth, where magic is hidden, dealing with otherworldly invaders. The wizards would create barriers, known as Lunar Robes (月衣), around themselves to allow the use of magic.
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Wizard!”.
[4] In Japan, you see these small police stations/boxes here and there, quite literally everywhere. Some are quite spacious, but most are small. I’ve even seen ones that are smaller than 3m by 3m wide. You can report crimes, but for most people, it’s there like a… err… to serve as a “community helper”. These police boxes can serve as a lost-and-found, a port to help out the young children or elderly people with their need, etc. One of the common ways people use these police boxes is to ask for directions or ask about information about the location where it is based.
For example, you might be a tourist or just simply someone who lives in a different part of the city/suburb/prefecture, and you’re not familiar with this location. You might ask them where you are on the map, where XYZ street is, where the nearest train station is, where the shopping mall is, etc. Ruphas is saying that that would have been an option but can’t because of the way that she talks.
[5] Well… you know around the world, the three colours of the traffic light are green, yellow and red? In Japan, the colours are the same most of the time; green, yellow and red. But for some strange reason, they call it “blue” instead of “green”. Honestly, I wondered why they called the green light “blue” when I was living in Japan too. Granted, the green light looks a bit bluer (? If you want to try and forcibly justify it) compared to the rest of the world, but I would say they’re still definitely green (or more like, there’s no way to say it’s not green unless you change the very definition of what green/blue means…). Admittedly, occasionally you see actual blue coloured lights, but they’re super rare and are exceptions. I’m sure there’s some history to it and an actual reason.
VecnSensei to the rescue! (below)
Actually, the Japanese terms for these colours use kanji (漢字, literally “Chinese character”), which were adopted from the Chinese language. In Chinese, 青 is actually a colour somewhere between green (緑) and blue (藍), such as cyan. The word can also be used loosely to refer to either green or blue, such as 青菜 (“green vegetable”) or 青天 (“blue sky”).
In Chinese, it is more frequently used to refer to green than blue. In Japanese, it’s the opposite. The green traffic light being called 青 in Japan is probably a legacy of its Chinese origin. This becomes an issue when a translator fails to take the language of the raw into consideration.
青 (Chinese) – “https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92%E8%89%B2”.
藍 (Chinese) – “https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%97%8D%E8%89%B2”.
緑 (Chinese) – “https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%B6%A0%E8%89%B2”.
青 (Japanese) – “https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%9D%92”.
[6] Tokyo and Niigata are both prefectures in Japan. In the map given below, Tokyo is 13, and Niigata is 15. They’re approximately only 300 km away from each other.
“https://japanthis.com/2013/07/11/why-does-japan-have-prefectures/”.
Prefectures in Japan – image from the link above
[7] Money Getter (マネーゲッター).
[8] If your country uses a dollar system, think of 1 yen as 1 cent. 500 yen = approx. $5 = approx. 4.2 Euro = approx. 3.9 pound. Give or take 10-20%.
[9] You don’t see them often in other parts of the world, but in Japan there are slot machine shops (Pachinko) shops quite literally everywhere. It’s honestly hypocritical because everyone knows Pachinko/slot machines are gambling… and gambling is illegal in Japan… BUT because the winnings from the slot machines are dealt with in a separate shop, it doesn’t get caught under the gambling law. i.e. semantic and technicality bullshit, but the government doesn’t care because it nets them a lot of tax revenue (just like tobacco and alcohol around the world). [Abroad in Japan] made quite a good video on this topic so I’ll link it here.
“https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2065.html”.
“https://www.japanhoppers.com/en/all_about_japan/leisure/177/”.
“https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachinko”.
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tBy2jemw4s”.
[10] Vecna: Yamete! Truck-kun needs to send him to another world!
Tp + The Author: NOT TODAY!
[11] Vecna: He’s just faking it to find another opening to send the kid to the other world…