The first thing I needed was to focus my own will.
I closed my eyes for just an instant.
There was a way to heal these injuries faster. I could use two more syringes of <E3> in a row. Just like the washed-up Hero they called Levi had shown me that night, I could probably even heal broken bones right away.
But the drawbacks were huge.
First, <E3> was expensive as hell. Then there were the addiction symptoms caused by acute ether pollution. The latter in particular could not be ignored. Taking <E3> too easily, in excessive amounts, produced ruined human beings far too easily. It was one of the problems that came with the Hero trade.
So first, I had to cut away the option of rapid healing through <E3> intake—and the violent impulse it brought with it.
I focused my will on good things. Card games with friends. Cold beer. Hot pizza. I repeated them inside my mind, then opened my eyes. Took stock of the situation.
One of the grotesque giants had just noticed us and was lumbering our way.
“What the hell do we do?” Sera shouted.
Shirogamine answered with eyes so bright and clean they were almost insane.
“We charge! While protecting Master, we secure a route of retre—”
“Don’t, dumbass.”
I threw a chunk of rubble lying nearby and stopped that stupidity. It hit Shirogamine square in the back, and she said something that sounded like a protest, but obviously this was not the kind of situation where I had time to care.
“Forget about me right now. I’ll manage somehow. Whatever happens, do not cover me. I mean it. It’ll seriously piss me off.”
“But, Master—”
“Shut up. First, Shirogamine. You charge in and go for the knees. Break its stance. Sera, you take the waist. Don’t give it an opening to attack. If you get scared and your coordination lags, you die—and.”
Then I shoved Indo away and let go of her collar.
“You cut off its attacks. Support Sera and Shirogamine. If you screw up, both of them die. Got it?”
“I understand. That would be a problem.”
“Good.”
Yukine Indo answered very simply.
The giant that had noticed us had apparently identified us as prey now. It accelerated, its step smashing the floor as it charged. This might be my last chance, so I decided to give them one piece of advice.
“There’s a trick to it. Remember that a sword is a blade.”
That was something I had thought several times while sparring with these girls.
Maybe it was because they trained with practice swords, but they tended to use their weapons by slamming them down, like axes or machetes. It was too inefficient, and it ruined swords fast.
“Put it against the enemy’s body and slide it—no, that’s not it. Sink it under? Hm? Whatever. If you screw it up, you’ll die anyway, so try it first.”
I could not exactly criticize Shirogamine too loudly. I knew very well that I was bad at explaining things.
At any rate, the grotesque giant was already right in front of us.
I could tell Sera had bitten down hard on her lip from tension. Tension was not bad. It was about time I let it loose.
I shouted at the top of my lungs.
“Practical-combat training! Do it!”
Shirogamine was the first to run.
It was an acceleration that looked as if her sense of fear had broken. Sera followed a split second later. Indo had already leaped through space and vanished.
I was not all that worried.
I had already seen from their earlier coordination that, when those three functioned as a team, they became a fairly troublesome murder machine.
In short, the problem was how to build that machine.
Each of them had her own personality, and their individuality—or rather, their habits—were far too strong. All three tried to take on roles that suited their own personalities.
That was wrong.
The Academy probably had not been able to correct it—or more likely, the result of trying to correct it was the pattern where Indo launched the first move, Shirogamine covered her, and Sera aimed for the finish. Freezing them into that pattern was the fastest way.
As for Shirogamine—she probably had not been counted as fighting strength. Of course she hadn’t. She was too hard to use. Better to stick her somewhere convenient and have her provide support. That was probably why they had even given her a shield.
But that was not what those three were supposed to be.
They should take roles suited to their traits, including their abilities, weapons, and techniques. Depending on the situation, they should make use of those traits while killing their habits and personalities. Someone had to teach them how to do that.
In other words, flexibility.
“Going in!”
Shirogamine said it briefly.
It was a terrifyingly straight-line charge aimed below the knee.
As the one taking the role of first strike, Shirogamine was far too defenseless. She did not care at all about the fist the grotesque monster raised. Her slash looked like she was throwing her whole body away with it.
She was practically a human bullet.
But with Indo shifting to support, that attack worked. Shirogamine could be counted as fighting strength.
The arm swung to intercept Shirogamine was torn off by Yukine Indo as she leaped through space, and it was already flying through the air.
Then Shirogamine’s strike landed.
THUNK.
There was a dull, hard sound, and everything below the grotesque giant’s left knee blew away.
I hated to admit it, but Shirogamine’s charge, with the limiter called fear removed, was a powerful enough weapon to be hard to deal with as long as she had adequate support. In any situation, against any amateur, a suicidal strike could sometimes reach even a first-rate master.
“Sera!”
Shirogamine called her name and smashed the monster’s head with her shield as it lost its balance.
What was she, a barbarian?
In that instant, the fight was decided. Sera’s single slash, released with some incomprehensible yell, tore deep into the monster’s waist and destroyed it.
Using Sera as the finisher was not exactly wrong.
The problem was the timing. Watching Shirogamine and Indo coordinate, waiting for the right moment to jump in—that kind of thing just meant leaving combat strength idle in a situation like this. Unless the coordination was almost simultaneous, there was no point.
“Good.”
Because I was a proper educator, I decided to praise them for once.
“That’s it. Don’t forget it.”
With that coordination, they could probably handle one or two more. As long as they buried the monsters one at a time before they got surrounded, they would not fall behind that easily.
The problem was me.
A giant had noticed that I was not moving and was coming closer. Gradually picking up speed. That could not be helped. If we had stayed together to intercept them, we would have been surrounded and crushed in no time. Before that happened, I had needed to send my shitty disciples away from me.
I just had to manage somehow.
What I needed was hope—a hope that this would work.
Inside my mind, I built a castle of hope. Card games with friends. Cold beer. Hot pizza. I would pile on a mountain of cheese. I would not touch any more <E3>. I would fight as I was. My left leg still would not move.
My left arm was bent in a strange direction, but I could just barely lift it.
I would sacrifice it.
The monster closing in on me had raised an arm tipped with warped claws. Fortunately, they did not look very sharp. I would hook my left arm on those claws and sweep the arm aside. Of course my arm would probably tear off, but it was fine. Probably.
I could stretch out the instant I received pain by several times over, take my time overcoming it, and then move into an attack.
It would be hellish pain—but it was fine.
I could do it.
I wanted to roll away without thinking, but that was a bad move. A slow death. Even if I had to say goodbye to my left arm, I would cut off its leg and make it fall from the impact. I readied my sword.
I prayed that this plan would work.
But I should have thought about it.
There was no way God would listen to some half-assed prayer of mine. My everyday conduct was far too bad. It was always like that. Maybe that was why I had fallen into this line of work in the first place.
This time, the worst possible factor destroyed my plan.
“Master, please rest easy!”
Shirogamine’s sword stabbed into the monster’s arm as it swung down.
“I will rescue you.”
She could not cut it in half. Among these girls, Indo was probably the only one who could accurately cut off an arm being swung at high speed.
What the hell do you think you’re doing?
That was what I thought.
A tremendous violent impulse boiled up inside me. In fact, if my leg and arm had been intact, I would have given in to it. That was how bad her move was. It was about the worst move she could have made.
Shirogamine’s strike drew the monster’s attention in a half-assed way.
And naturally, its opposite arm counterattacked Shirogamine. At her head.
Shirogamine tried to block it with her shield—impossible.
The shield shattered, and the claws gouged away the left half of Shirogamine’s face.
Blood sprayed.
Shirogamine was sent flying and rolled to my feet.
Even now, I can say without a doubt that the action I took then was the correct move.
I left Shirogamine alone and stretched out my body. Twisting my upper half, I slammed my bastard sword down. The sturdy blade severed the monster’s left thigh, then carried through with enough force to smash its right knee as well. The monster collapsed and went rolling away with the momentum of its charge.
“It is all right now.”
That was what Shirogamine said.
The left half of her face had been destroyed. Blood flowing from the crushed eyeball dripped onto her red party dress and mingled with it. Even <E3> could not heal an organ that had been lost.
Shirogamine smiled with a face like that—and I felt fear again.
What the hell is this girl?
“If something happened to you, Master, I would not know why I exist.”
Shirogamine was trying to stand, using her sword as a cane.
“I finally found my goal.”
Any number of questions rose inside me, but I managed to answer only the simplest one.
In other words, at that moment, I learned the true identity of my intense anger toward Shirogamine.
It was extremely personal.
What Shirogamine was trying to do was my ideal. A Hero who did not kill anyone. She was trying to do something I could not. There was a part of me that thought something like that was absolutely impossible. It had been impossible for me. I had wanted to become something a little better than a piece of shit who earned money by killing people, but I could not.
It was just me taking it out on her.
“I want to be an astronaut.”
Or,
“I want to be a soccer player.”
It was the same feeling as wanting to mock someone who started saying things like that.
I envied Shirogamine.