Yuichi suddenly remembered how the wooden man worked. “Wait, am I stupid?”
It was powered by electricity, which meant it wouldn’t be able to move this forcefully without a strong power source. That meant it needed external power, and indeed there was a cable to provide it trailing out from its back.
But it was proving hard to get around behind the wooden man. Mutsuko must have known that he would go after the cable, because the wooden man moved lithely, blocking Yuichi’s every attempt.
She must have programmed it to anticipate Yuichi’s behavior, as its movements seemed precisely calculated to counter his.
While he struggled to get behind it, he heard Natsuki’s voice. “Do you want me to cut this?”
“Yeah! Do it!” Yuichi shouted reflexively.
Natsuki had woken up and was still staggering, but she got around behind the wooden man. The cord was made very sturdily to prevent cutting, but Natsuki easily sliced through it with her scalpel.
“Umbilical cable cut,” the wooden man said abruptly. “Switching to internal power. Self-destruct sequence engaged.”
“Self-destruct?!” Yuichi yelled.
Perhaps because it was on internal power now, the wooden man’s movements had slowed greatly.
Yuichi took Natsuki’s hand and began to run away at full speed. He swooped up Yurika and ran out of the cafe. They kept running until they found themselves in the back alleys they’d been in before.
Some time later, he heard what sounded like an explosion.
Yuichi realized he’d left Ryoma back there, but he found he couldn’t care anymore, sinking to the ground in both physical and mental exhaustion.
By now, it was completely dark. Luckily, they were in a back alley between buildings with light streaming out from the windows, so they could still see.
“Are you okay?” Natsuki asked Yuichi, who hadn’t moved since collapsing.
He wasn’t okay at all, but he knew he couldn’t just stay down forever.
Yuichi looked up. “To be honest, I’m not.”
His sister had always been reckless, but he’d never thought she would join the enemy.
“Was she brainwashed?” Natsuki asked.
“My sister? She’d be the one doing the brainwashing. So it was probably her idea to join them. I just never thought she’d go this far because I didn’t want to get Soul Reader back.”
“I see,” Natsuki said. “I don’t know much about your circumstances, Sakaki, but is it possible she’s not really turning against you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Maruyama and I are still alive,” she said. “You can’t use the Divine Vessels if their hosts are still alive, can you? He said something about not needing her pitiful power, but wouldn’t it make things easier for him later if he just killed us?”
Natsuki was right. There was no reason for them to let them live. If Mutsuko had wanted to kill them, she could have just detonated the wooden man.
“I guess it could be a kind of training?” Yuichi hedged.
Becoming Yuichi’s enemy to help train him did sound like the sort of thing his sister would do. He was starting to think it was possible. She’d never turned against him before, but she had nearly killed him several times, so maybe this wasn’t really all that out of the ordinary.
“Okay. Let’s get going.” Yuichi stood up.
Natsuki looked dumbfounded.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“You bounced back so quickly, it shocked me.”
“I can’t exactly stay depressed forever.”
“I thought you’d beat yourself up until it was time for your big comeback,” said Natsuki. “So, what’s your plan?”
“There’s somewhere I need to go. Takeuchi, can you take Maruyama home?”
“Certainly, but will you be all right by yourself?”
“I think so.”
“I see.” Natsuki said nothing more and headed back to Yurika.
Yuichi continued down the back alleys, towards the entrance to the sewers they’d used the other day.
At the end of an alley was a manhole. Normally a person would need special tools, but Yuichi slid his fingers into the hole grips and lifted it easily.
Yuichi was just about to climb down when he heard a voice from behind him. “Do you have business with me?”
He turned to find a flashily dressed man with a kind disposition. It was the person who had arranged the Divine Vessels War, the avatar of the evil god Nergal.
“If you’re going down there to hunt monsters, I won’t stop you, of course...” the man said.
“I guess I do have business with you,” Yuichi said. “Your sacred territory is down here, right?”
Ende had said the Evil God’s revival would happen in his sacred territory, so Yuichi had decided he’d just go and clean things up there first.
“Wrong.”
“Wrong?! But I saw the altar down there!”
One level down from the sewers was a labyrinth of passageways, and further in was a dome-like space. There was an altar there, which Nergal had treated like his own, so Yuichi was convinced it must be his sacred territory.
“The altar is there for humans to revere their god,” Nergal said. “It’s a human realm, not the same as a sacred territory.”
“Then where is it?”
“Oh, come now. You think I’m going to tell you where my sealed body is?” Nergal asked, dumbstruck.
“Look, I don’t know anything about your sacred territory, and this is the first I’ve heard about you being sealed there,” Yuichi said impatiently.
“What are you intending to do, then?”
“Well, I was told we’d fight the final battle there.”
“I see. But the body of the Evil God will only revive in the sacred territory after all the Divine Vessels have been collected. In other words, after the war has ended.”
Which meant that even if Yuichi went there now, no one would be there.
“Fine, but where is the sacred territory?” he asked.
“I don’t see why I should tell you that.”
“That reminds me,” Yuichi said. “One of your subordinates attacked Takeuchi. You really need to get your people under control. Or are you the type who washes his hands of what his servants do?”
“Hmm. I try to give my servants a long leash, and I value their autonomy... but I won’t try to talk my way out of responsibility. Fine. The sacred territory is at your school. Is that good enough?”
“The school? Really?”
“Well, you should try to find the rest out yourself,” said Nergal. “I feel like I’ve done you a pretty big favor already.”
“I guess it was a little out of line to ask a sealed guy where he was sealed.”
“As a bonus, I’ll tell you that Hiromichi now has all of the Divine Vessels except one, and more than enough energy to revive me. So it’s more or less already finished, in more ways than one.”