Chapter 681: Giant Dragon and Divine War! Otherworld Visitors!
Kumagami cut his long hair, revealing his eyes for the first time in years. The dripping wet locks that usually shielded him from the world lay scattered on the floor of the Student Council room.
His mission seemed to have been forcibly terminated.
Takajō Jōjirō pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his expression unusually solemn. The usually energetic fanboy looked defeated.
"What exactly is going on? Why did our abilities become ineffective? I tried to use my high-speed movement to get lunch today, but I just... walked."
Tomori Nao sat behind her desk, her camcorder resting idly on the surface. She knew the inside story. She knew it was Ren's doing, erasing the 'disease' from the world.
But she didn't answer immediately.
She knew that even if she told them the truth—that a god-like administrator from another dimension fixed their genetic defects—they might not believe her. And she wasn't sure if revealing Ren's existence would invite retaliation or unforeseen consequences.
Although, she was completely overthinking this point. Ren wouldn't stoop to the level of punishing a high school girl who had lost even her defective superpowers. He had bigger fish to fry.
Tomori Nao sighed, the sound heavy in the quiet room. She felt that the Student Council's goal regarding 'Adolescent Syndrome' could be temporarily halted.
If, as Ren said, the syndrome had disappeared all over the world, then their main conflict was gone. The scientists would have no one to hunt. The danger was over.
Even if the syndrome hadn't completely vanished, their own abilities had indeed become inert. They were just normal teenagers now.
For the three of them as ordinary people, it would be extremely difficult to find and track potential ability users. Without Kumagami's divination or her invisibility, they were blind.
Even if they found targets, it would be very dangerous to try and stabilize the other party with the strength of ordinary high schoolers. They would just get hurt.
Therefore, this operation—their life's work—had to be temporarily stopped.
"Ring ring ring!!!"
The sudden shrill of the telephone shattered the melancholic silence.
Just as Tomori Nao was about to announce the decision to disband the operation, the vibration buzzed against the wooden desk.
She picked up her smartphone to check the message. Her blue eyes scanned the screen, widening with each line.
After browsing for a moment, she exclaimed in surprise, slamming her hand on the desk.
"Why are there so many transfer students?!"
"Transfer students?"
Kumagami and Takajō looked at her, confused by her sudden outburst.
Tomori Nao got up, her chair scraping against the floor. She walked to the printer, which had already begun to churn out documents automatically linked to the school's server.
She grabbed the warm papers and placed the documents on the table for them to see.
Kumagami's body trembled violently.
He stared at the top sheet. The photo was familiar, painfully so.
He saw that the top person on the list was named... Otosaka Shunsuke!
...
Location: The Otherworld - The Battlefield of Chaos and Harmony
An unknown world, far removed from the peaceful streets of Japan.
Here, the sky burned with the colors of magic and blood. There were many different races fighting for supremacy. Humans, Elves, Dragons, Angels... and even the arrogant Gods who sought to impose order.
But it was not peaceful here. It was a grinder of flesh and souls.
There were never-ending wars between the various factions, specifically the Faction of Harmony and the Faction of Chaos.
Among them, the Dragon race—the chaotic ones—probably had the most enemies. Their power was too great, their pride too high. Their enemies included humans, angels, gods... basically everyone who feared their freedom.
War was the simplest way to deal with hatred.
Just like this chaotic battlefield.
Dragons roared, their breath weapons clashing against divine barriers. Angels fell from the sky with burnt wings. Gods hurled lightning that shattered mountains.
Mountains and land were left in ruins, bombed by light waves and magic pouring down from all directions. The air smelled of ozone and sulfur.
One massive green Dragon, a Chaos Dragon of immense power, roared in anger when it saw its companion injured by a volley of holy arrows.
"Damn gods! You self-righteous hypocrites!"
Its dragon mouth opened, vast and terrifying, and a complex golden magic circle gathered in its maw. The mana density was enough to warp gravity.
"Burn!"
Boom!!!
A shock energy wave that pierced the sky shot out like a laser beam.
The impact went straight through several thousand meters, vaporizing the clouds and striking a minor god. The deity didn't even have time to scream before his body fell from the high sky, a burning husk.
But it was this momentary distraction—the rage of seeing a friend hurt—that sealed the Dragon's fate.
Someone among the gods, a high-ranking deity of war, completed a summoning magic.
The Green Dragon sensed something and looked up, its slit pupils contracting. A huge, intricate magic circle suddenly unfolded directly above it, locking onto its soul signature.
As it felt the danger, a massive golden sword blade, forged from pure divine light, shot out from the magic circle.
"The Sword of God!"
The Dragon's eyes widened in sheer terror.
The divine power contained within that blade was anathema to its chaotic nature. It was a weapon designed solely to slay dragons.
It wanted to use its dimensional magic to escape, to blink away, but the space around it had solidified. It had been locked by the Holy Sword. Escaping was useless.
Even if it flew tens of thousands of meters in the blink of an eye, the sword tracked it unerringly.
"Crunch!!!"
The sound of scales breaking was sickeningly loud.
The originally indestructible dragon scales, harder than diamond, were as fragile as thin skin under the sharpness of the Sword of God.
The emerald scales flew off without obstruction, glittering like jewels in the bloody light. Flesh and blood splattered across the battlefield. The Holy Sword deeply pierced into its back, nailing its essence.
"Gah...!"
The immense divine power not only severely wounded it but also began to frantically seal its mana. It felt like burning acid pouring into its veins.
"Roar!!!"
The Giant Dragon let out a painful wail that shook the heavens.
It used its last ounce of strength, burning its very life force, to unleash all its power. It wasn't an attack; it was a desperate attempt to breach the dimensional barrier.
It spewed a powerful dragon breath, not at an enemy, but at the fabric of reality itself.
"Crack!"
The next moment, space suddenly shattered like a broken mirror. A vortex to another world opened up.
The tottering Giant Dragon's body quickly drilled into the shattered space, shrinking its form to fit through the unstable rift.
When the gods pursued to finish the job, the shattered space had already recovered.
The Dragon had escaped.
But it was already heavily wounded, the Holy Sword still lodged in its back, drinking its life.
...
Location: Mountains of Japan - Night
"Rumble!"
A loud rumble came from a mountain forest, vibrating the ground as if an earthquake had struck. Birds flew away in panic, and many ancient trees collapsed under a sudden, heavy weight.
Silence returned to the forest, save for the wind rustling the leaves.
And on a small, paved path in this mountain forest, a person was walking unsteadily.
"Ugh, so annoying... stupid chief... so tired..."
A woman in office attire stumbled along the road. She clutched a bottle of beer in one hand, her tie loosened.
"I don't want to work overtime at all... hiccup~ I hate overtime the most... Why do I have to code until my back breaks?"
The pink-haired woman wearing glasses mumbled, her words slurring together.
Combined with her swaying posture and flushed cheeks, it was clear this person was a hopeless drunkard.
Kobayashi. A programmer. A corporate slave. And currently, wasted.
She had missed her last train and decided, in her drunken wisdom, to walk through the mountains to get home. Or maybe she just got lost.
"Why is the world... spinning?"
As she walked, she suddenly seemed to hit something massive blocking the path and fell to the ground hard.
"Thud."
"Hiss~ So painful."
Kobayashi sat up groggily, rubbing her bruised forehead and groaning in pain. Her glasses were askew.
She had hit something very hard. And warm? And scaly?
Was it a utility pole? Or a weird tree?
She tried hard to open her tired, dead-fish eyes to look.
The moonlight filtered through the canopy, illuminating a massive wall of green scales. It seemed to be a very, very large object.
And then, two large, glowing lanterns opened and stared at her.
No, those weren't lanterns. They were vertical slit pupils. Eyes.
"Human... leave here!"
A weak voice, carrying a strong gust of air that smelled of iron and ozone, once again knocked the woman to the ground.
"Wow~ What is it! Wind?"
Kobayashi was still dizzy; the alcohol in her system acting as a buffer against reality. She didn't even care what was in front of her. A monster? A hallucination? Whatever. It couldn't be worse than her boss.
If she had been sober, she would have been so shocked she couldn't close her mouth.
It was a green Giant Dragon lying on the ground!
A creature that existed only in fantasy games and novels.
The Giant Dragon was precisely Tohru, the Chaos Dragon who had been severely wounded by the Holy Sword in the battle with the gods and accidentally escaped to this world.
She loathed humans.
Because in the world she inhabited, humans were insidious, cunning, and greedy. They hunted dragons for glory. They were enemies.
She wanted to kill the human who saw her in this pathetic state. She wanted to incinerate this small, pink-haired creature with a sneeze.
But the imposing aura vanished in an instant.
Weakness surged through her entire body like a tidal wave. Her massive dragon head drooped powerlessly onto the dirt.
The divine power of the Holy Sword constantly tormented and burned her insides, preventing her from healing.
It was already difficult for the Great Dragon to even speak human words, and she no longer had the mana to bother with a human.
I am going to die here, Tohru thought bitterly. Alone. In a strange world. Killed by a human god.
It seemed she was about to die.
She couldn't pull out the Holy Sword herself; her claws couldn't reach, and her magic was sealed. Only a being with separate mana or physical interference—like a human—could help her.
But she didn't believe that humans, the enemies of dragons, would be willing to help her. And even if they were, this drunkard looked useless.
So the Great Dragon closed her eyes, waiting for death.
"Tsk, this world truly can't stay peaceful for a single second."
A calm, male voice suddenly cut through the night air. It wasn't the drunken slur of the woman. It was clear, authoritative, and laced with amusement.
Ren appeared before the dragon's head, standing as if he had always been there.
He marveled at the sight. A massive dragon bleeding out in the Japanese mountains, and a drunk office lady poking it.
He hadn't had a few days of peace yet.
A dragon appeared, and a connection to the Otherworld also appeared. The dimensional fabric was getting messy.
He glanced at the person swaying and standing up beside him. The pink hair, the dead eyes, the beer.
He understood in his heart.
Good heavens, Kobayashi and Tohru both appeared.
The fateful encounter was happening right in front of him. This green dragon was undoubtedly Tohru.
Tohru's dragon eyes snapped open again, gazing at this male human who suddenly appeared.
Her instincts screamed danger. This was not a normal human. He had no fear. His presence was vast, overshadowing even the gods she had fought.
"Human... are you here to kill me?" she rasped, smoke curling from her nostrils.
Being able to appear silently meant he wasn't an ordinary person. Perhaps a dragonslayer from this world?
Tohru took Ren for someone who had come to take her dragon life. She bared her teeth in a final, defiant snarl.
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