Chapter Three: The Guy Who Wants a Fourth Life
Kanata Kaito was a half-Japanese American. Both his parents were Asian, however, so he looked Japanese, and few people believed he was anything else. That meant he had never been picked on—but also never attracted attention from other students or been especially popular. His academic performance was average and slightly above average in sports and PE. Native English speaking didn’t help him with the nitty-gritty English grammar taught in Japanese schools, so his performance there was actually poor.
Then he had got blown up and killed during their school trip.
“Kanata, we’re close to the drop point.”
The pilot’s voice snapped Kanata back from his recollections of the past. “No problem.” He checked over his parachute and gear one last time. Once before he had got too cocky and almost died during a practice drop, so now he always checked his parachute carefully.
He had his magic and his cheat all loaded—here on Origin, what they called his “Gift.” But still, from his 28 years of life here, Kanata knew that even those who had been reborn here could still very much end up dead.
“Okay. Let’s wipe out these terrorist scum.”
“Hey, Kanata. Don’t forgot, your mission is to rescue the president’s kidnapped daughter.”
“I know. Hey, do you think the pres will get mad if I ask his daughter for her number?”
“No comment. I will say—Hanna is only fifteen. She’s half your age, old man.”
“I’m still in my twenties, okay! I’m not old yet!” If his past life was added in, he was over forty.
“Whatever. You are cleared to jump, Gungnir.”
“I really hate that codename.” Kanata gave a sigh, and then leapt out of the helicopter, which was protected by optical camouflage created using light attribute magic.
When Kanata Kaito had been reborn on Origin, with his memories of Earth and incredible powers, he had been Kanata Smith. He certainly hadn’t needed the god to leave him with the same first name, but it didn’t take him long to adjust to everything.
Apart from the fusion of science and magic, Origin was a lot like Earth. It had the same number of continents, in similar shapes, and the international situation was similar too. All of this helped him quickly adapt.
While Kanata concealed his cheat power, trying to use it as little as possible, he couldn’t hide the affinity for magic he had been gifted. So he had a bright and fun childhood as a magical prodigy. His parents were richer than his folks had been back on Earth, and they spoiled their little genius, buying him whatever he wanted. He was constantly the center of attention at school, and always had a girl on his arm through his teens.
It was like a dream come true. He couldn’t have asked for a better second life. He might have had more difficulty with his studies at college, but he had expected to become pretty famous simply by working on his magical talents.
That had been the plan, anyway.
However, before he even hit twenty, he met them—the others who had been reborn here.
I know exactly who to blame for the fact I’m skydiving out a helicopter to attack a bunch of terrorists with an assault rifle and combat knife, Kanata thought.
That would be Hiroto Amemiya. He was a hero on this world, and the leader of the 100 reincarnated. Kanata only had one cheat, but Hiroto had multiple such abilities, so he was overwhelmingly powerful. He had been searching for others like himself, seeking to use his power for world peace or some crap like that. That guy definitely read too many comic books. With great power comes great responsibility? Who says that outside of a movie?
He wondered for a moment what was going on with that series back on Earth. The hero in question didn’t even have his own movie here, as the big green guy was much more popular on Origin. Maybe because he defeated his magical enemies with nothing but raw strength? He heard one critic theorize it was some kind of pushback against the magic-dominated society.
As he mulled these things over, Kanata opened his parachute and cast the magic he had been preparing. He controlled heat and air, bending the light around himself to hide from the terrorists below, as in a heat haze.
“I hope that keeps them off my back—nope?!”
A few holes were instantly punched into his parachute. He was being fired on from the ground. Kanata promptly cut his parachute loose and dropped down into the ruins on the outskirts of the terrorists’ base.
Kanata had a very low estimation of how things had gone, ever since he met up with Hiroto Amemiya and the others. Hiroto called their cheats “Gifts” from God and formed up a special ops team capable of operating internationally—a team of heroes.
They fought natural disasters, monsters, and undead, attended charity gatherings and signed photos for kids, and appeared on TV to give interviews.
Hiroto had skills, of course. Kanata admitted that. On Earth, Hiroto had been an unemployed slacker living at his parent’s place; they eventually kicked him out, and he had been taking the ferry to a relative’s factory for a live-in position when tragedy struck. But the way he acted here was nothing like a freeloader.
Kanata also didn’t appreciate getting dragged into all this.
He had never wanted to go on an adventure or be in an action movie. And he wasn’t one for sweating his ass off for the sake of folks he didn’t know and would never meet. He just wanted everyone around him to sing his praises while he enjoyed the easy life.
What he found hard to believe was how many of his old school friends supported Hiroto Amemiya. All of them were overjoyed to become superheroes. They happily went west to help out with the next calamity, then east to cooperate on investigating criminal activity, and loved their lives in the limelight with all the media attention.
Most of them did, anyway. Some of them shied away from the media exposure. But they still supported Hiroto overall. They believed that it was safest for them to be in a single organization in order to prevent them from being misused by the nations of this new world. Having formed such an organization, it was then necessary to make their existence as widely known as possible, especially among the common people, in order to earn the trust of the people. With most of the reincarnated supporting Amemiya, it would take a lot of courage to speak out against him.
It also seemed that the governments of the world had known about Kanata’s special ability even prior to his reunion with his old friends. They knew his face and name using the MP imprint that was the Origin version of fingerprints or retina scans on Earth. If he hadn’t been reunited with Amemiya and the others, the government would have found him eventually, and he’d simply be working for them instead.
Amemiya’s plan to gather in a single organization with a lot of media exposure would keep all information open, preventing the reborn from being used by clandestine or criminal organizations. The thing was, Kanata didn’t care about any of that.
Once he was placed with 99 other reborn, his excellent magic proficiency, superlative talents, and high MP were quickly buried by the excellence of everyone else. He became something he had never been on this world: a regular person. In terms of magic, he only had a high level of fire attribute plus average wind magic. His cheat ability was also highly suited to work in the field. That was where his silly Gungnir codename came from . . .
“And why I’m out here, risking my life on secret missions for almost no pay!”
He opened his backup chute just before crashing into the ground, using some wind magic to make sure it opened completely, lessening the impact. He tumbled and rolled, managing to pull off a safe landing. He recalled the map that he had memorized, and then muttered, “Light, heat, MP.” With that, Kanata vanished.
Well, I just became see-through. With his field of vision enveloped in darkness, Kanata proceeded based on the map in his head.
Kanata realized that he had been detected during his parachute drop because the magic he had used had been caught by a sensor. Terrorist scum! Where did they get the latest MP sensor technology from? For that reason, he decided to turn invisible to the naked eye, heat sensors, and MP sensors. Now he was quietly closing in with his target.
That was Kanata’s cheat ability.
The reason he hadn’t used this on his descent was because the cheat abilities still took MP to use, and he wanted to conserve it for later. Using the ability in this way also blocked his own vision, meaning he could have easily crashed into something if he tried to land blind.
He finally reached the building where the terrorists were holding the president’s daughter.
“Detect Biological Heat.” Kanata turned off his cheat ability, getting back his eyesight, and then checked out the building with magic that detected the heat from living organisms. It also detected small wild animals in the vicinity, but he ignored those.
There were seven heat sources of adult proportions. Four of them were scrambling around. They had to be the ones who noticed Kanata’s descent and fired at him. The remaining three were all close together. Two of them were low, suggesting they were sitting down. The third was high, standing up.
“There’s no way two terrorist lookouts are sitting down on the job in front of a president’s daughter who’s bigger and heavier than me.” Kanata had seen pictures of the girl—she was small and only 15 years old. Even if she were big for her age, the standing figure couldn’t possibly be her.
“I’ll start with the other four.” He couldn’t tell which of the sitting ones was Hanna, and so he decided to take out the moving targets first.
“Structures.” With that murmur, he pointed his assault rifle at one of the heat sources and pulled the trigger. A gunshot rang out, but the shot that he fired passed through the walls of the building without leaving a sound or trace behind. He quickly followed up with the other three targets. The terrorists had realized that Kanata was using magic again and were hurrying to locate him—when all four of them suddenly stopped moving.
They had been shot, without any warning, by bullets that had suddenly appeared from the walls and floor. This was how Gungnir did business. Impediments meant nothing to him, allowing him to easily shoot the weak points on any target at any time.