"I'm... going to die" Kiba muttered, not knowing what to do, no, knowing there was nothing he could do.
Bang!
"Kugh!"
But despite having already closed his eyes in resignation, he opened them again in concern when he heard a gunshot followed by a pained groan.
Turning his head, he saw Koneko being struck by a bullet, causing her to fall and crash into him.
"Koneko!" he shouted in alarm, wanting to go help her.
But he couldn't. He had not forgotten his own situation, he was seconds away from death.
"No, I can't die. I have to help her" he told himself as he gripped his sword once more and pointed it toward the attack before him.
'This isn't just about me. I carry the responsibility of the entire human race, but above all, I carry the hopes of my partner who trusted me.'
Despite the imminent attack and his weak power, at that moment all distracting thoughts disappeared from Kiba's mind as he closed his eyes and concentrated.
Within the infinite darkness stretching before him, a single line appeared, repeating itself endlessly for an indefinite period of time.
Finally, Kiba opened his eyes. They seemed to shine with determination as he performed a simple slash he had envisioned thousands of times in his imagination.
Swing.
The sword descended and Kiba appeared dozens of meters ahead.
At first everything seemed the same. However, the next second, the destructive sphere split in half into two perfectly symmetrical parts.
Crash!
And after splitting in two, the destructive energy simply vanished.
Having used all of his power, Kiba immediately fell to the ground, unable to conjure another sword, and wanted to turn around to check on Koneko.
But he couldn't, because when he looked at the sky he saw the dragon opening its mouth once more, this time creating not one sphere but dozens of them, floating around menacingly.
"So there's really no way, huh?" Kiba laughed as he watched the scene in disbelief.
...
After repeating the same type of attack over and over for a while, Yuuji was starting to get bored.
At least Koneko noticed that he didn't seem to use the weapon in his left hand, so she changed her tactics and tried to approach him from that side, creating a slight variation in the routine.
Even so, Yuuji got bored easily, so it only lasted a few minutes before he decided to end the fight.
That was interrupted when Koneko caught a glimpse of the battle between Kiba and the dragon out of the corner of her eye. Seeing her partner about to die, she became distracted for a second, and Yuuji, firing almost automatically, hit her in the shoulder with a bullet.
Bang!
"Kugh!"
Koneko groaned in pain before falling to the ground. Unable to right herself and land properly, she crashed directly into the hard asphalt of the street.
"Damn it." Yuuji widened his eyes as he realized what had happened and hurried down toward her.
Faced with Koneko's defiant gaze, unwilling to surrender, he raised his left hand and fired the gun he had not used during the entire fight.
And although Koneko tried to dodge, this time Yuuji did not allow her to, and her speed had also been reduced due to the wound.
But although she expected to die, Koneko instead found herself enveloped in green energy that flowed through her previous wound.
"I... healed?" she said in surprise, looking at the closed wound.
"Good, now cal..."
Yuuji stopped mid-sentence when he noticed something.
'It's reacting?' he realized curiously when the Excalibur in his inventory seemed to react to something.
Searching for the source, he turned around and saw Kiba neutralize a magical attack with a sword slash before collapsing to the ground.
'Was it because of him?' Yuuji wondered.
"Let's stop this" he said hurriedly when he saw Lala repeating the attack multiple times.
...
"Huh? You stopped that? How?" Lala wondered. Based on what she had seen, there was no way Kiba should have been able to stop that attack.
"Ah" she said excitedly as she thought of something. "Could you be like one of those protagonists who grows stronger during battles? How much can you grow?"
Wanting to test her theory, she ordered the cyborg dragon to repeat the attack, but much stronger, not only stronger but several times over.
"Stop."
Unfortunately for Lala, who had already begun seeing Kiba as a guinea pig to experiment on, Yuuji quickly appeared in front of her and stopped her.
"Huh? Why?" she asked in disappointment.
"We already achieved our objective. Let's go."
Yuuji returned to the ground beside Kiba and did the same thing he had done earlier for Koneko, restoring his condition, although not his power.
"Why?" Koneko asked.
As for the answer, there were two reasons why Yuuji did not kill Koneko and Kiba and even healed them, one pragmatic and one emotional.
On one hand, they already had a mission involving fixing the plot because of the changes they had made before. Yuuji was afraid that killing them would result in their next mission being to fix the disaster caused by their deaths.
On the other hand, he liked Koneko and Kiba, so he didn't want to kill them.
"I already told you why I came here. We are not your enemies" Yuuji lied. "I have no reason to kill you. Besides, you've already seen that you can't defeat us, right? Whoever is behind you, tell them that Issei is out of their league."
Kiba frowned at the response. Issei was a high-priority target that needed to be monitored. Even so, he knew when to give in.
"I understand. We'll give up on Issei" he conceded.
And Koneko simply nodded, not caring much either way. In fact, from what little she had seen of Issei, she did not like the idea of him joining them.
"It seems the negotiations were successful. In that case..."
"Wait!" Kiba stopped them before they could leave.
"What is it?"
"Are you... the 'Outsiders'?" Kiba asked hesitantly.
Koneko's eyes widened in surprise when she heard that and she instinctively stepped back.
"What is that?"
"Ah, right. You wouldn't know" Kiba acknowledged. "The Outsiders are a trio of individuals who appeared during the Great War.
There are supposed to be three of them, a cheerful pink-haired girl, a deadly assassin capable of transforming her golden hair into different weapons, and a man whose ability is to summon a tower capable of destroying everything.
It is said that they came from another universe, and their purpose for appearing here is unknown."
'That does sound like us' Yuuji admitted. 'But why would they know us centuries later? More importantly, why would humans know us?'
At that moment Yuuji realized that the changes in this world might be greater than he had believed, and that he was the obvious origin of all of them.
"Does your organization have information about us?"
Yuuji decided to try to uncover the changes in the world.
But after confirming their identity, Kiba and Koneko immediately vanished without a trace.
Clearly, they considered the matter important enough that they needed to flee and report it immediately.
"Huh? They could do that? Why didn't they do it earlier?" Lala said in surprise. "Yuuji, should we follow them?" she asked.
"...It's not necessary" Yuuji said after thinking about it for a moment.
Whatever that anti-demonic alliance was, they clearly knew them, and their attitude toward them was not good. Following them would only create more problems instead of answers.
They might even end up confronting the entire organization.
With that in mind, Yuuji decided to simply wait a day and have Mona report everything without complications.
"Alright" Lala nodded without questioning his decision. "By the way, Yuuji, you seemed pretty worried earlier?" she asked.
"Yeah, because it appears we're the obvious source of the changes in this world."
"Didn't we already know that?"
"Yes, but... it's different" Yuuji tried to explain. "Look, you know the butterfly effect, right?"
"Mm," Lala nodded.
"Good. When I say 'obvious source' I basically mean a shortened version of that."
"You mean we caused the situation directly instead of indirectly?"
As expected of Lala, she instantly understood what Yuuji was trying to convey.
The butterfly effect refers to a process in which everything in the world is connected directly or indirectly, so the simple flap of a butterfly's wings could eventually trigger a hurricane somewhere else, of course through a long chain of intermediate events. It is often used in time travel stories to show that a small change in the past could alter everything in the future, because things are far more connected than they appear at first glance.
However, because of Kiba and Koneko's wary attitude, as well as the knowledge they had about them, Yuuji realized that might not be the case.
Instead of Yuuji's actions during the Great War causing a chain reaction that eventually led to the current situation, it was more likely that his actions had directly created the current situation.
That was why Yuuji said it was basically a shortened version of the butterfly effect.
As for whether that mattered, of course it did.
If someone told you that a tornado on the other side of the world happened because of a stone you threw, how would you feel?
You probably wouldn't feel much guilt. Most likely you wouldn't feel any at all. After all, you couldn't control everything that happened afterward, so feeling guilty would be pointless.
But if someone told you that the nail you threw onto the road yesterday punctured a car tire today and caused several deaths, that would be different, right?
That was why Yuuji wanted to know more about the world's current situation.
"Mona, make sure to inform me the moment you discover what's going on" he reminded her.
And while that time passed, Yuuji would complete the mission.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)