“You can’t beat me at magic, and in terms of fighting, we’re fairly evenly matched. Why, then, didn’t you get some decent gear, and then attack me while keeping your cheat ability secret? Instead, you flashed it around to anyone you came across. You underestimated me, severely. You were rash and overconfident; that’s why you lost. Why didn’t you even use any battle techs? You might have done better with a few of those.”
If Kanata hadn’t killed anyone using Gungnir until finding Vandal, he wouldn’t have been so completely countered like this. If he had cast aside his prejudices and selected his gear based on capabilities, his knife wouldn’t have snapped like a twig, and Vandal wouldn’t have been tearing chunks out of his flesh along with his armor. If he had learned some battle techs, he might have had a better chance of killing Vandal. At the least, his knife attacks wouldn’t have gotten blocked by a tongue.
More than anything, if he hadn’t been fixated on getting this done quickly—if he had followed Rodocolte’s instructions, registered with the adventurers’ guild, changed Jobs, boosted his other stats, and waiting for a proper chance—he might have had much better odds.
“Curse you! You freaking monster! Don’t you dare look down on me!” Reflecting on these points was far beyond Kanata’s capabilities. He didn’t consider what was happening now to be his fault. He simply thought it was all unfair. He could do no more than hurl insults at Vandal.
“I see. It appears I was the fool here for attempting to talk to a man incapable of conversation. I think your MP is about to run out, no?” Vandal was shaking his head, clearly bemused. He started to give some MP to all the Fire Ghosts, including Princess Lebia and Kanata’s victims. “I’m happy to just kill him with my tongue, but do you want to do the honors?”
“Yes, of course! Everyone, chip in!” Lebia spread her dress of black fire and closed in with Kanata.
Kanata let out a terrified shriek as Lebia changed form in the blink of an eye, seizing Kanata and holding him in place. As Vandal had predicted, his rampant use of Gungnir had drained all his MP, and his cheat was now offline. Lebia held his body tight, crucified in the air, and then the wraiths of burning fire started to crawl up him from the legs. Kanata gave a terrible scream as his body started to burn.
“Funeral Pyre . . .” Vandal intoned, giving this new attack a name. “You appear to have Resist Fire Attribute, but that’s only working against you in this situation. This must really hurt, oh boy. I’ll make sure you can keep breathing, though. Don’t count on passing out from asphyxiation.”
As his entire body burned slowly to a crisp, Kanata screamed inside at how unfair this was—and how different from what he had been told. I received full military training on Origin! How can he be stronger than me? How can he avoid my knife attacks so easily? He isn’t scared or even remotely shaken by anything I do! This is a guy who was nothing but a lab rat for 20 years on Origin! After he was reborn, I thought he was playing king of the hill with his undead buddies! Rodocolte said he was far weaker—but he’s even more of a threat than when he was that undead! I got a body resistant to poison and disease, and I still can’t fight him!
Kanata had appraised Vandal entirely based on the information provided by Rodocolte. That was his biggest mistake. Rodocolte’s information was all out of date and acquired through the eyes of other people. It was like watching a documentary without any commentary. It wasn’t live or even recent in some cases. Furthermore, after Rodocolte obtained that information, Vandal had continued to grow more powerful and experienced far more hardships on Ramda than Kanata had ever known.
Compared to Vandal, Kanata had done very little since his arrival on Ramda. He had increased his level from 0 to 100, acquiring minor stat boosts, but that was it.
Kanata’s magic was all used up. He couldn’t cast a basic spell to light a cigarette, let alone use Gungnir. He couldn’t escape. He could only wait to finally burn to death.
Even so, Kanata still did not repent his ways. Because this wasn’t the end for him.
“Damn you! Don’t get too comfy, you gross little necrophiliac! You’re planning on turned me into undead and pumping me for info, huh? Hahaha, bad luck!”
“. . . Why do you say that?” Vandal asked.
“The ones like us, when we die, we return to his Divine Holiness before we can be turned into undead! It doesn’t matter how many times you kill us! We’ll keep coming back! Again and again, reincarnated by a god who wants you dead! We’ll kill you in the end!”
Kanata wasn’t about to lay down, die, and give up on his reward. He would beg Rodocolte for another chance for revenge on this loser who thought he was better than him. Next time, he would get that wonderful fourth life for sure.
“I won’t drop my guard next time!” Kanata screamed. “I won’t fight you alone! I’ll work with the others, and we’ll kick the crap out of you! All I have to do is kill you, and his Divine Holiness has promised to give me a life of luxury! Everyone is going to want a piece of you! Even Amemiya; even Naruse!”
Of course, Kanata didn’t know when the others still alive on Origin would expire. Rodocolte, the one reincarnating them, probably didn’t know either. Mari Shihoin was a good candidate, though—Metamor, the one who had killed him. If she was caught for his murder, she’d probably be executed. Kanata didn’t want to team up with the woman who killed him, but the rest of the group was constantly targeted by the terrorists called the Eight Guidance. At some point, some of them were going to die.
“Don’t get full of yourself, just because you saw through my Gungnir!” Kanata continued to rage. “The others have got crazy cheat powers like you wouldn’t believe! I’m going to team up with them, and I’ll kill you one day. I’ll kill you!”
Vandal’s tongue had still been outside his mouth for this entire time. As Kanata babbled on, his tongue sagged, and then returned to his mouth. Kanata took that to mean Vandal had been broken by this news. He was filled with such joy, his face twisting with glee, that he forgot the pain of being burned alive.
“You’d better be reaaaaady! After I’ve killed you, I’m doing to kill your women, your undead, everyone you ever met—blaarrgh—”
“Barbed Tongue.”
A wet sound interrupted his shrieks, followed by the sound of something hard cracking.
Kanata looked down to see Vandal’s tongue piercing his chest. However, there was no blood. He thought maybe he had activated Gungnir, without even realizing it, but then Vandal recalled his tongue and spoke.
“I just used my tongue and Spirit Bodification to crush your soul. It was my first time using my tongue to do it, so I didn’t completely smash it in one go, but I definitely made a big crack. It won’t take long to shatter.”
“Huh? What? My soul?”
“In other words, you are finished here,” Vandal said. “No more afterlife, no more rebirths, no fourth or fifth or any more lives.”
“You’re bluffing! That can’t be—gaaaah!?” Kanata’s face paled and he sounded distraught—and then a new pain, something far worse than being burned alive, raced across his body. It hurt so much, and yet he couldn’t tell which part of him was hurting.
“It can’t be! That holy moron didn’t say anything about this!” Kanata’s body was still resisting the flames, but something else—something more vital to the composition of Kanata Kaito—was cracking and splitting apart.