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I used the Future Devil’s power as I sprinted full tilt toward the place where Denji and Bat were fighting.
The Future Devil’s power was the ability to see a little into the future with the left eye where it lived. A little, sure—but in practice, it meant seeing two or three seconds ahead.
Two or three seconds. In ordinary life, that was probably a very short time. But did that value stay the same in an emergency like this?
Absolutely not. Once the situation changed, that tiny stretch of time became worth more than gold.
Just like now.
The moment I got close to my target, I dropped my right knee to the asphalt and pressed my left foot flat against the ground to maximize friction. I’d just used the future to spike my speed, and now I needed to slam it back down just as quickly.
"Ghk...!"
A groan burst from my mouth. The soles of my shoes wearing down was no problem at all, but my knee getting shredded was the real issue.
My speed dropped, and I closed in on the spot I wanted.
Plenty of people would ask why I was doing this. If the goal was just to get to the target, there were countless other ways to do it.
Then I’d answer them like this:
"Let’s see if I can cut this thing!"
Bat had thrown the car it was holding.
Denji had caught that car.
"Like hell I care whether some bastard man lives or dies!"
And then that lunatic had babbled nonsense and hurled it back at Bat.
Shut up, because this was the only way to clean up after that insane bastard.
When Denji threw the car, the man trapped inside it panicked and scrambled out. Thanks to that, he avoided the worst-case scenario of being trapped inside a car that had been smashed and exploded by Bat, but he immediately ended up in the second-worst one: falling from the height of a second-floor building.
Terrified, he flailed while screaming.
I rushed to the exact spot just before he hit the ground and caught him.
Even if his fall had only lasted two seconds at most, I’d already locked in the exact position with the Future Devil’s power, so I could time it perfectly.
I quickly checked his condition. He looked pretty good.
So I rolled him onto the ground, yelled at him to run, then readjusted the sword I’d briefly held in reverse to catch him and turned my focus back to Bat.
Bat had puckered its mouth into a tube and was puffing up its lungs, or maybe its chest, preparing some kind of attack.
Seeing that with my own eyes, I started thinking fast. What the hell was that? It looked like an attack, all right. Since it was a bat, was it a sonic attack?
I ground my teeth. I could roughly make out the shape of it, but I couldn’t tell if I was right, and that uncertainty was driving me insane.
But just because I didn’t know, just because I wasn’t sure, didn’t mean I could stand there doing nothing. I hurled myself forward.
Its snout? Or its chest? ...I didn’t know. I still didn’t know.
But my body had already been thrown.
So now I had to attack somewhere and pray that wherever I struck was the right answer.
I jumped. That brought me to the space between its chest and its snout.
Screech!
The moment I landed, I swung my sword horizontally.
My sword strike left Denji, who had been fighting it all this time, silent. Bat, who had just finished preparing its attack, went silent too. And I, the one who’d attacked, swallowed my own silence as well.
But only for a moment. Bat, as if enraged, forced all its strength into a breath and exhaled.
.....
But nothing happened.
No, something had happened.
Whooo...
It was just so insignificant compared to what should have happened that it got buried.
I had cut off Bat’s snout. So instead of blowing out air properly, it let out a limp whistle.
"... Huh? What? What happened?"
Denji had been quiet, but once Bat started flailing helplessly, he finally understood what was going on and asked me.
I shouted back at him in a hurry.
"Hey! It can’t attack now! Hurry up and finish it off!"
At my words, Denji seemed to realize something and charged at it. I followed behind him.
Bat tried to restore its snout to its original shape. But most of the flesh there had been cut away, so going back to normal was impossible.
While it was still struggling, I screech-cut off one of its wings.
Denji drove into its heart.
Vrrrmm!! Vrrrmmmmm!!!!!!
The sound of the chainsaw grinding through its insides. I watched that sound and its wordless scream while neatly slicing off the remaining wing.
Then Denji tore through its back and emerged with its colorful innards hanging off him.
That was how the Bat Devil met its end.
Denji, sprawled on the ground with its entrails draped over him like ornaments, painfully pushed himself up and went to the Bat Devil’s corpse. Then he used the chainsaw to rip and carve the body apart until he pulled out the cat.
After that, he carried the cat over to Power, who was lying face-down on the ground.
Wait a second. Was this right? The composition looked weird. ...I didn’t know.
Denji handed the cat to Power. Then he casually picked her up and started whispering with her.
Watching that scene, I called out to one of them.
"Hey, Future."
-You called!
For the record, this bastard sometimes tells me he thinks it would be way more interesting if he interfered like this.
In fact, yesterday or the day before, he suddenly showed up, shoved my head into his stomach, and said the future had changed, which was fun, and that it was fine if I called him sometimes too. Devils really were impossible to predict.
"Yeah. You didn’t do something to her, did you?"
I asked him because the whole setup felt way too unnatural, and I wondered if this bastard was the cause.
-What if I did?
Sure enough. It was him.
"Why the hell would you?"
-You know why!!!
Know what, exactly?
-The past! The original story! This is my reward for seeing the future of those two thanks to you!!!
His way of talking was fucking awful.
"What reward?"
-You left out an important character! How are you supposed to move the story forward if you don’t know her?!
"...."
I answered with silence. If I responded, he’d just get more annoying.
In short, this was what he meant:
The Future Devil had used my past to see the contents of the manga Chainsaw Man. In other words, it had seen a bunch of ridiculous futures.
Very satisfied with that, it had happened to notice that I’d forgotten Power, one of the main characters, and staged this little scene to make me remember her.
"Hah..."
I let out a hollow laugh. The more I summarized what he’d said, the more absurd it sounded.
"Reward my ass. You just wanted to see a future with Power added in."
-Not wrong! Puhahahahaha!!!!
"Hell yeahhhhhhh!!!!!!!"
Denji suddenly shouted.
Judging by the timing and his tone, it looked like he’d gotten a definite promise that he’d get to touch her chest.
Those damn devils really were impossible to pin down—
Bang!
I heard the sound of some weird cannon being fired. Startled, I hurriedly looked around.
"Aaaaaaagh??!!!"
Then I saw Denji, one arm torn off and panicking hard, and a strange lump of flesh eating that arm.
A devil. Right, another devil.
"Hey. When you saw my future last time, did you see this too?"
-Why are you asking something so obvious? There’s no way I couldn’t see the future! And this is something you can figure out too_
I didn’t even wait for him to finish before I grabbed my sword. Then I ran to Denji’s side.
Denji’s face hardened when he saw me coming at him with my sword, but then he noticed my clothes and shifted his attention back to the devil.
Denji pulled the starter on his chest. But the chainsaw only came out from his head. He probably didn’t have enough blood.
I held out my arm to him. He looked back and forth between me and my arm for a moment, then, when I nodded, he immediately bit down and started sucking blood.
Having your blood sucked felt disgusting. This wasn’t safe donation or a transfusion; it was bloodletting by mouth. There was no way that could feel good.
The devil—its face was gloomy... what even was that face? Anyway, the devil waited until Denji finished drinking.
And finally, once Denji had finished sucking blood and pulled the starter again, the arm—more like a lump of flesh, but whatever—started moving.
I tightened my grip on the sword and said,
"I draw aggro, you attack. Okay?"
"Okay!"
Denji answered as he charged forward.
No, not okay. Why was the damage dealer charging in first?
I had no choice but to follow him.
As I chased after him, arms surrounded me. One was above my head, one in front, one behind, and one to the side.
I used the Future Devil’s power. Thanks to that, I learned the arms were all attacking at once.
And the instant I realized that, the attack began.
First I cut down the arm in front of me. Then I rolled forward and sliced through another one flying in from behind. Then two arms changed course from the side toward my front and attacked at the same time, so I cut them both down together.
"Haa... haa..."
I took a breath. Then, hearing the whoosh of wind from behind, I twisted my body sharply.
There were three arms behind me. I cut all three at once.
Once I’d cut through the arms, I saw Denji rampaging on top of the devil.
Denji had climbed onto its body, stomping and wildly swinging his arms. It was sloppy as hell, but the chainsaw still managed to carve through the devil’s soft flesh and land meaningful blows.
The devil writhed in pain from Denji’s attack. Then it suddenly convulsed in a strange way and started spewing liquid from the ...nubs? stuck all over its stomach.
Denji couldn’t withstand the convulsions and fell.
The moment he hit the ground, he tried to get back up and attack again, but—
"W-what?! Why can’t my body move?!"
He was bound by the liquid from those nubs and couldn’t do anything.
"Grrr...!!! How dare you kill my man and try to kill me too?!! You little punk?!!! Bat and I promised to eat every person in the world! I have to keep that promise, too... and now you’re trying to kill me as well?!!! I’m definitely going to kill youuu!!!"
"I’m not interested in your dream at all, so just tell me what this is, you bastard!!"
"How dare you laugh at Bat and my promise?! Ha! Fine, I’ll tell you what it is! It’s my slime!"
"Slime?! What the hell is that?!"
"How ignorant! For Bat to have been beaten by a thing like that... poor Bat..."
"Fuck!"
I cut off the conversation that was making me feel dumber just from hearing it and ran forward with my sword held straight. The devil, noticing me, spat slime from the nubs and pulled out huge spikes from its arms.
Slime, spikes, and blood. ...Leech?
"Get a grip, Shin Gongja. It’s not certain yet. So..."
One arm flew at me. It was covered in huge, vicious spikes packed so densely that if I took that head-on, I was done for.
Focus on the situation.
I first brought my sword down hard from top to bottom and sliced the incoming arm in half, then used the Future Devil’s power. After that, I cut down every arm flying in along its trajectory and kept moving forward.
The devil must have sensed the danger, because it started pouring out even more slime and moving even more arms. It also launched plenty of indirect attacks, like jamming arms into the asphalt and using the ground to strike.
Of course, thanks to the Future Devil’s power, I cut through and blocked all of it... but I was reaching my limit.
Still, I didn’t stop swinging my sword. The arms kept coming.
'But Shin Gongja, if you just stand here, aren’t you going to die?'
Maybe because I’d given it blood, maybe because I was tired, random thoughts started creeping in.
"Future, shut up."
Before I knew it, I was on top of the devil’s body.
'But why are you struggling so hard?'
"I said shut up."
Dozens of arms surrounded me from every direction. Then they grew spikes.
I gripped my sword as long as I could, turned the blade downward, and spun once in a flash. A small gap opened below me.
I slid through that gap and escaped the arms. They immediately aimed at me again, but I cut those down too and kept advancing.
'You don’t have to fight here like this.'
"Shut the fuck up already!!"
One, two, three, four, five. A fairly hefty number of arms. The devil kept shaking its body and sent three of them at me and two at Denji, who had shaken off the slime and was slicing at its legs.
Denji got hit by one, cut down another, and I cut down all three of mine.
After getting hit by one, Denji spat blood and got dragged toward the devil’s head, but on the way he split its body open with the chainsaw.
The devil let out a shriek and shook violently under Denji’s attack.
That was a mistake.
"Somehow the roles ended up reversed."
You draw aggro, I attack.
I cut off the head of the devil that was screaming.
"Uwaaa..."
Denji fell straight down and sprawled on the ground.
The devil’s corpse collapsed onto the asphalt. Its head twitched for a moment, then went limp.
I blurred my senses while standing on top of its corpse.
'... ...'
Random thoughts kept their silence, then disappeared without a word.
-!%#!@!$
I didn’t know exactly what Future was saying, but it sounded like it was laughing and saying this was fun.
The voices around me were....
I didn’t know.
I just wanted to rest.
I wouldn’t be able to open my eyes again until two whole days had passed.
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