Karkinos looked up at the sky, troubled. In terms of final outcomes, Sanieve would definitely lose. Lufas and the others would always catch up to him eventually, no matter how he tried to run. It might take a month, or it might take only a week. However, if it took even a day, Earth would be destroyed. In order to prevent that, Sei and Karkinos had to figure out a way to resolve the situation themselves.
Sanieve wouldn’t give them time to think of a plan of action though.
“Sei, my B O Y! Over here!”
Karkinos pulled on Sei’s arm.
A bullet pierced through the area Sei had just been occupying right afterwards. When he looked back, he saw that policemen who’d been turned into golden statues were discharging their firearms at him. It wasn’t just the police either. Everybody was heading towards Sei and Karkinos with empty looks on their faces.
“This is...” Sei trailed off.
“He most likely has the ability to control those he turns into golden statues, which means O U R enemies are...this entire world!” said Karkinos.
At the moment, the entire world was under Sanieve’s control via his skill, meaning everything was moving as he wished.
A fighter jet passed overhead with the explosive sound of a sonic boom, firing its cannons at them, heedless of the fact that they were in an urban area. Sei dodged the fire and slammed a kick into the vehicle. However, nothing happened. Sei’s blow, which would normally have effortlessly broken through a fighter’s thin shell, was easily turned aside by its surface this time as it settled its sights on him.
Karkinos’s scissors followed up in a sweeping slice, though, and the fighter was bisected. A stiff, golden pilot was ejected, falling to the ground with a metallic sound. This would normally have resulted in instant death, but the goldification actually worked in Sei and Karkinos’s favor here, as it protected the pilot.
“Sei, my B O Y, where’s your weapon?!” asked Karkinos. “You should still have the sword gifted to you by Miss Lufas, right?”
“I left that in my house! You can’t just bring a sword around with you in Japan!”
“O H M Y G O D! Seriously?!”
Having landed on the ground, Sei took off running. They were in the middle of a city. Fighting here would cause too much damage.
Hordes of SDF soldiers ran after the two, probably having come from a nearby base. Sei looked for an area where they could safely intercept these enemies, but unlike Mizgarz, Japan was packed full of buildings and civilization. Being able to look around and have no buildings in sight was rare. When it came to cities, such places were basically nonexistent.
“First, let’s figure out what we know. Right now, that ouroboros is swirling over this world, closing it off from the outside. We cannot hope for Miss Lufas and the others to notice if we don’t do something about that.”
Karkinos batted away all the bullets they were taking from SDF machine gunners’ strafing fire, the resultant wind knocking them all down. Following that, an RPG came flying at them, which was promptly kicked off course. In the following opening, Sei jumped in and knocked the offending SDF soldier down.
“But either way, W E do not possess the ability to do anything about that. Still, if his explanation is correct, that is a body created from mana... And if it’s made from mana, we can put a hole in it.”
“I see!” Sei exclaimed. “Virgo’s...”
“That’s right! It would be possible with her Vindemiatrix!”
Virgo’s unique skill, Vindemiatrix, dispersed mana unconditionally, making it an antimagic skill without parallel. There were cases where it would take some time before the mana disappeared, because of the amount being dispersed, but even then, they should be able to put in a small hole through the ouroboros by Karkinos’s estimation.
“Basically, what W E need to do is wake up Virgo.”
“But how?!”
“That’s simple, of course! Since ancient times, a sleeping princess has been woken up by a prince’s kiss. That is what I’ve learned from this world’s culture,” Karkinos said.
“What?!” yelled Sei.
Karkinos’s sudden and seemingly baseless suggestion made Sei turn red. What the hell is this man spouting in such a serious situation?! However, Karkinos looked surprisingly serious, though he’d said it jokingly.
“Listen here, Sei, my B O Y. Virgo is undoubtedly asleep because of something our enemy’s done. However, she has very high resistances. With all the fuss that’s going on, she would normally have gotten up long ago. So why is she still asleep? M E thinks that it’s because she doesn’t want to wake up...wouldn’t you say?”
Karkinos ran, speeding through the cityscape faster than Sei’s eyes could keep up with, leaving behind silver flashes that each spelled the bisection of a tank or fighter jet. After rendering those gems of modern weapons technology powerless, Karkinos once again returned to Sei’s side.
“Virgo doesn’t want to face reality. She doesn’t want to hear the continuation of what you were about to say before... Those feelings of hers are keeping her asleep, so there is O N L Y O N E solution!”
While Karkinos was talking, he grabbed Sei and one of the SDF officers. He jumped, first from building to building, then gradually onto even taller structures. Karkinos didn’t possess the ability to fly. However, his high physical ability allowed him to reach the ouroboros if he made full use of it.
After making a final leap, Karkinos dropped the SDF soldier he’d grabbed when he was about to stall in the air and used him as a footstool for another jump. This is fine. He’s turned to gold, so even if he falls, he won’t die... Probably...
He managed to reach the ouroboros with this second jump, landing on its too-huge mass.
“So you’ve come,” Sanieve said, appearing before them.
Virgo was laid down behind him, breathing gently in her sleep. There was no sign of her waking up on her own.
“But just because you are here does not mean you’ve won,” Sanieve continued. “It is time for you to be forced to acknowledge your own powerlessness.”
“Now then... Why don’t we just see about that?!”
Karkinos jumped forward, swiping with his scissor blades. His attack surpassed not only the speed of sound but also the speed of lightning, and Sei couldn’t even see it happen. In the end, however, Karkinos’s role in the Thirteen Stars was as a shield. He was not suited for offense. Although he wasn’t suited for attacking, he was certainly strong, and his attacks were still more than enough to exterminate most enemies despite that disadvantage.
Still, his enemy right now was even stronger than the Thirteen Stars. His blades, which looked like they’d hit square on, only managed to leave behind a small scratch on Sanieve, leaving Karkinos shocked silent.
“This is the skill Muliphen,” Sanieve explained. “Only representatives of the Goddess are allowed to have it. I have just placed a limit upon you.”
Mizgarz was a world bound by gamelike laws imposed by the Goddess. Vitality was represented by an easy-to-understand HP metric, as was the damage inflicted on others. Normally, no such convenient thing existed. Imagine, for example, a random person with 100 HP. If they were to be struck by a baby, they would lose 1 HP. That would mean if they were struck one hundred times by a baby, they would die. In what kind of ridiculous world would that ever happen? However, Mizgarz was just such a world where something like this was made reality, and its people were forced to live under those silly laws.
Finally, the Goddess had given the denizens of the world a “limit wall.” It was a shackle placed upon them so that no matter how strong they got, they would never break the world itself. It also ensured that no matter how powerful they were, they would never deal more than 99,999 damage in a single blow. Because of that, even Leon, who was supposed to boast the most power among all the Thirteen Stars, could not destroy a planet in one attack. In this way, the limit that Sanieve had placed on Karkinos was even lower, limiting the damage Karkinos could do to only four digits—in other words, 9,999 damage.