It was Vandal, sharing his own powerful negative emotions via Spiritual Corrosion, who had triggered what the ghosts had themselves felt in the past and caused this vengeance-hellbent explosion. Further affected by Lebia’s history of being burnt at the stake, the princess had turned into a Rank 4 Flame Phantom, while the others became Rank 3 Fire Phantoms. If the Magicians and scholars studying magic at the magicians’ guild had witnessed this, they would have gotten very excited.
“You continue to impress me, Lord Vandal,” Eleonora said. “Well done.”
“Your legend only grows!” Zulan proclaimed.
His companions weren’t quite as excited but were definitely impressed. Vandal was himself surprised at how they had all suddenly caught fire. He had shared his own burning, boiling rage and hatred with them, but he hadn’t expected it to literally ignite something.
Of course, he wasn’t so surprised that he forgot what they came here to do.
“Very well! Let’s go and save our people!” Lebia shouted.
But rather than taking Lebia’s burning hand, Vandal turned and looked back down the passageway they had arrived through. “I’m sorry, after all that, but something has come up that I need to take care of first.”
There was a man standing there, around thirty years old, with black hair and eyes and both hands raised over his head to show they were empty.
“Hold on! Hear me out! I’m sorry about what happened! Forgive me!” Kanata Kaito kneeled before Vandal and then pressed his forehead into the dirt in apology.
When his Target Radar informed Kanata that Vandal was heading down beneath the castle, Kanata clicked his tongue in annoyance.
There would probably be limited space down there, making it harder for Kanata to bring his full strength to bear. If he unleashed his most powerful magic, he would risk his own life by potentially bringing the place down. He might be able to pass through rock and soil using Gungnir, but that wouldn’t bring him oxygen.
Furthermore, he had been hoping to attack using ranged weapons—what was called Bow Proficiency here on Ramda. But that would be difficult in a potentially obstacle-filled underground crypt. He might be able to use Gungnir to pass his arrows through any impediments, but he couldn’t make his eyes see through them.
That was why, on Origin, he had used an infrared scope to spot targets or used detection magic. There were no such scopes on Ramda, of course, and if he took the time to cast detection magic, there was a good chance it would only let Vandal know exactly where he was.
Given all of these issues, Kanata had decided to give up on a long-range attack. There were two reasons why he hadn’t decided to simply give up the attack and either wait for a better chance in the future or try to build a better chance for himself with a more refined strategy. First, Vandal was far more mobile than Kanata, and he might get away if left unchecked. Second, and more significantly, Kanata just wanted this over with so he could start his fourth life.
He had taken some holy water from one of the female adventurers he had toyed with, and he splashed it onto himself now in order to remove any spirits that might be attached to him. What he couldn’t know was that they weren’t there anymore anyway, having already gone over to Vandal.
Then, relying on his Target Radar, he passed through walls and the floor to reach the crypt.
That was when he realized Vandal knew he was coming.
This knowledge wasn’t a result of any of the skills he possessed. It was simply his instincts, honed by all the life-threatening situations he had survived during his previous life.
“Hold on! Hear me out! I’m sorry about what happened! Forgive me!” He therefore revealed himself earlier than intended and proceeded to grovel on the ground. He’s a little bigger than the info from his Divine Holiness suggested, Kanata thought. He’s got a whole bunch of monsters with him I never heard anything about, too. Are those—burning people? Outside, Kanata was desperately apologizing, but inside he was cursing Vandal for increasing his combat strength and berating his taste in companions.
“. . . What do you want to say?” Vandal asked.
Kanata was thrilled that he had chosen to talk rather than simply attack. A touch soft, just like he had surmised.
“You remember Origin, right? I’m Kanata Kaito. I was a student at the same high school as you—back on Earth, I mean.”
The spirits had told Vandal the name Kanata Kaito already, so he had already worked this much out. There was no one with the surname “Kaito” on Ramda. Even without all that, Kanata had been acting so strangely that being one of the reborn was the only way to really explain it.
“I was there at the laboratory,” Kanata said.
“. . . Now that you mention it, I think I do remember you,” Vandal said. This was new information. His attention had been held by Narumi Naruse and other more familiar classmates, and those like Kanata whom he hardly knew anyway hadn’t really held a place in his memory.
Vandal didn’t seem as moved as expected, so Kanata hesitated for a moment but kept his tongue moving. “We didn’t know you were the same as us. I really am sorry. Please, forgive me! If you can’t—go ahead and kill me. But please, just don’t kill the others!”
“Sure, okay.”
“Please—huh?” Kanata looked up, meeting Vandal’s blank gaze.
“I’m saying, I accept your apology for killing me on Origin,” Vandal clarified. “Rodocolte is the one at fault. If you’re willing to apologize for that, I forgive you. If you leave me and my allies alone, then we don’t need to interact with each other ever again. I’m very busy with all my own problems.”
For a start, they needed to set out to save the giantlings still working at the slave mines. So long as the reborn didn’t bother him, he didn’t care about them. Kanata or even the others. That was the truth.
Indeed, it would have been a bigger hassle if they asked to join him or asked him to join them. Their respective systems of values simply didn’t align. The only way he would consider it was if the reborn acknowledged the human rights of undead such as zombies and skeletons and showed respect to them.
But that wasn’t going to happen. On Earth and Origin, turning the dead into undead was considered defiling them. In all forms of stories, including religious ones, the dead had to be buried swiftly or terrible things would happen. That was how it always worked. In movies and games on Earth, there were scenes where, when a character was faced with their zombie girlfriend or father, they said, “That isn’t them anymore” and shot the zombie in the head. Vandal could see that same thing happening here. The best he could probably hope for was them agreeing to use undead as weapons.
In any case, he couldn’t let anyone dangerous close to Talosheim.
“Is that so? Okay then. I’ll make sure to let the others know. We won’t get in your—barrier.” Kanata specified the barrier that he was expecting Vandal to create and then quickly pulled the trigger on his crossbow, which he had been hiding by keeping the floor transparent using Gungnir. No matter how Vandal replied, Kanata had always been planning to find an opening and shoot him in the head.
The arrow indeed passed through the barrier that Vandal reflexively created, whistling past his ear and then plinking off the wall behind him.
But it hadn’t missed. Vandal had dodged it.
“I see,” Vandal said. “So your cheat ability is to be able to ignore things. Not just matter but also things like my barriers.”