In the afternoon, when the sky had already begun to turn orange.
Shido and Toka’s date was slowly drawing to a close.
“I... was destroying such a beautiful world.”
Toka’s murmur could be heard by everyone on Fraxinus through the camera filming them.
“Destroying...”
[Spacequake].
Jae had learned about the disaster called a [Spacequake], and he knew what kind of damage it left behind.
A calamity that erased entire spaces as if wiping away every last speck of dust. Since the cause of a [Spacequake] was a [Spirit], it was no exaggeration to say that Toka, as a [Spirit], was destroying the world.
Jae closed his eyes and thought.
Could that really kill him?
“Impossible.”
The answer to the question he had been worrying over for some time was no.
Even if his body were ground to dust, even if not a single grain remained, Jae would revive at the bonfire.
Even if there were no bonfire, he would be reborn at the point where he had first set foot in this world.
No matter how desperately he tried to escape eternal life, he could not. Immortality was not a blessing, but a curse.
“What do you mean, impossible?”
Kotori asked at Jae’s muttered words.
She wondered what strange thing he had been thinking about again.
“Nothing much. I was just gauging whether a [Spacequake] could kill me.”
A body that could not return to his original world. A flesh cursed with immortality and persistence, unable to die or break. Someday the commander, the interpreter, the vice commander, and every other crew member would die. When all of them were gone, only Jae would remain.
The only freedom he could choose was death.
“...What?”
At the unimaginable remark, Kotori stared at Jae in shock.
His face was still hidden by his helmet, so she could not see his expression, but what on earth had led him to say something like that?
Unable to understand his way of thinking, she asked carefully, “You... want to die?”
Kotori did not know what Jae’s abilities were.
Physical strength beyond human limits, fire-related powers, healing abilities—those were the things she knew about Jae. So hearing him say that, she assumed he possessed something close to immortality. But more important than that was the fact that Jae had spoken as if he wanted to die.
“Not yet.”
Jae shook his head.
He had no intention of dying yet.
In the first place, since he could not even die, there was no meaning in living just to seek death. For now, he wanted to rest.
Finding a way to die was harder than finding a needle in a desert, so he decided to set it aside.
That, too, was work.
“...You’re more twisted than I expected.”
Reine looked at Jae and gave that assessment.
She was not particularly worried about him.
She only wondered whether someone in that mental state could properly guard Shido.
Even if he possessed combat power on par with a [Spirit], if his mind was that badly broken, problems were bound to arise.
Of course, since the graph analyzing Jae’s emotions in real time showed not even the slightest change, her interest quickly faded.
“Catch it! That’s all you need to do!”
Just then, the boy shouting words of salvation to the girl drew Jae’s attention back.
Shido reached out to Toka and shouted that he would accept her.
Toka, who had been attacked by AST every time she appeared and had come to believe that all humans wanted to kill her, felt the wall around her heart crumble at Shido’s words.
Because it really seemed like he could save her. Because if she stayed with him, she might no longer have to be attacked.
Just as Toka was about to reach out to grasp the hand offered to her.
“Hmm.”
With Jae’s low hum.
Bang!
The gunshot rang out like thunder.
The boy who pushed the girl aside and took the shot in her place had an unimaginably huge hole blown through his body.
“Shi... do...?”
With the person who had helped her dying before her eyes, the Spirit’s emotions plummeted to the bottom.
“Ah, ah...”
The blood flowing from the boy’s body pooled on the ground, replacing the girl’s sorrow.
“I thought... if it was Shido, it would work... But it wasn’t.”
Before long, that sorrow became rage.
“This world... denied me.”
The Spirit stomped the ground violently.
“Adonai Melek!”
A massive throne appeared, and the girl’s clothes instantly returned to their original form. She grabbed the handle hanging from the end of the throne that had risen from the ground and pulled.
“Isn’t that bad?”
Jae asked Kotori while staring at the screen.
He had clearly been told that his mission was to guard Shido, so he wondered why they had not sent him in for a situation like this.
“It’s fine.”
But Kotori answered his question calmly and pointed at the screen with her chin.
“You really, really, really...!!!”
Leaving the enraged Spirit behind, the screen showed only Shido.
Tadak, tadak
Shido’s body suddenly began to burn.
“Ah, hot...?! ”
And then, the moment Shido came to his senses, the hole was gone as if it had never existed.
“Regeneration.”
It was a different kind of recovery from Jae’s, but the sight of him regenerating together with fire was deeply impressive to Jae.
It was a scene that made him understand why the commander had not given the order.
“I told you there was no need to worry.”
As if saying it for the flustered crew to hear, Kotori muttered it and turned back, finishing her preparations to receive Shido.
“Shido-kun has been recovered!”
“Good. Let’s turn him into a handsome prince who rescues the princess. Ah, and...”
Kotori glanced at the screen and said to Jae, “Hyun, get ready. Our princess seems to be rather violent.”
On the screen Kotori was watching, the Spirit could be seen relentlessly swinging her sword at the white-haired girl.
It was a situation where Shido could easily get caught up in it, so Jae needed to go along.
“......”
Jae answered with a silent nod.
“Now, let’s begin our war.”
Crack!
At Kotori’s words, after she bit down on her stick candy, all the crew nodded.
“Hearing the commander say that makes it sound like child’s play.”
“...Hey.”
Jae paid the price for speaking out of turn by getting struck on the head by Kotori.
Kannazuki, looking at him with envy, was just a bonus.
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