(Wataru... I’m sorry...!) As she foresaw her end, she closed her eyes and drooped her head in resignation!
At that very instant...! The morning sun rose above the distant horizon!! The divinely warm light of the morn enveloped the entire wasteland!!!
“GDLSUMHLTMSRAAM attack!!!!!” A booming voice echoed through the area!!
Fllllllaassssshhhhhh!!!!!
A powerful flash redirected the sunlight, assaulting the corneas of the monsters!! The monsters began to panic, blinded by the sudden burst of light!
“Aaagghhh! I can’t see!”
“My eyes! My eyes!!”
“Wh-What the hell was that flash!?”
“Wh-What just happened!?” Résistance turned around, having luckily avoided the light by looking down at the ground!
“Rrrrraagghhhhh!!!!!” A bald man built like a mountain was energetically striking a bodybuilding pose! Double Biceps, to be more exact, with both arms raised to the heavens to accentuate his upper-arm muscles!!!!!
“Wh-Who are you...?” Résistance asked, dumbfounded!
“Nice to meet you! My name is Garland! Garland the fighter! I came to save you, at Aria’s request!” Garland explained with a glimmering smile!
“A-Aria...?” Résistance repeated! Aria peeked her head around Garland’s mountainous body! “Aria!”
“Are you okay, Résistance!?” Aria ran over to the former knight, and began healing her with magic!
“I thought you ran away...”
“I would never! I went to call a friend who could help you in combat!”
“That’s me!” Garland chimed in!
“But how did you get him here in just a few hours...?” Résistance asked. “Can you teleport with magic, too?”
Aria shook her head! “Nope, I hit him up on Bookface Messenger!”
“Oh, right!” Résistance admitted! “I didn’t think about that!”
That’s right! Using the popular social media app Bookface, people of this world could communicate with people far away! Now, many of our Dear Readers might protest this turn of events! “Wait a minute, there’s no way that a fantasy world has social media!” Calm yourselves! That’s just your internal bias against Isekai cultures talking, Dear Readers! Of course any fantasy world can have social media!
Having received Aria’s SOS message, Garland had sprinted through the desolate wasteland in a mere three hours, where it would have taken any normal man at least ten!
“Okay, Résistance! You can finish them off!” Aria encouraged Résistance after healing her wounds!
“Right!” Résistance stood, and took up her sword!
Surviving the very serious, life-or-death situations up to this point had mended their relationship! Now, Aria and Résistance were unmistakably bonded by friendship!
“Garland, was it!? Thanks for the hand!”
“No need to thank me! My family’s trapped in that castle, too... I’m going to defeat these monsters and save them, once and for all!” Garland lowered his stance, and flexed his entire body!!! “Hrmph!!!!!”
Brrrrrripppppp!!!
His thin white shirt tore to absolute shreds!! Garland’s chiseled-like-a-Greek-statue body was fully revealed!!
“You monsters...! I’m going to save my wife. My daughter. The people of my town...! Let’s go, Résistance!!”
“You got it, Garland!!”
Résistance and Garland charged at the still-blinded monsters!
“Rrraaggghhh!”
Résistance’s elegant flicks of the sword! Garland’s dynamic clothesline! Each and every move they made were one-and-done attacks!! The powerful duo began taking down the horde of monsters for good!
Meanwhile, Wataru was utterly confused by Deus’s revelation!
“We’re the same...!? What the hell do you mean!?”
“Just as it sounds! Like you, I came from the other world... From Japan!”
Wataru kept up his guard, but his brain was flooded with questions!
“Hmph! Confused...? I was surprised when my messenger told me that someone named Wataru Ito had defeated Résistance. It’s a Japanese name if I’ve ever heard one...”
“Keep talking...!” Wataru urged with the expression of a Nio!
Deus continued, maintaining his Fighting Mantis stance! “Until a century ago, I was living in Japan. I suffered diabetes from my unbalanced diet and lack of exercise. As a result, I died young...”
“O-Okay...!” Wataru couldn’t decide if the backstory deserved the serious tone Deus was using!
Deus kept talking, as stoic as ever! “After my death, I met a beautiful goddess in the darkness... I made some deals with her, and I was reborn as a Demon Lord with a body strong enough to withstand diabetes...! That being said, I was never actually cured of diabetes, so I needed to watch my diet.”
“Wh-What the hell are you talking about...!?!?” Wataru was losing him! “I was living in Japan until recently, too! But I didn’t meet any goddess! My body’s the same as it was when I left!”
The Demon Lord frowned! “Hm... Perhaps you were merely ‘transported’ instead of being ‘reincarnated’...”
*Note to Editor. #1: Replace all instances of ‘reincarnation’ with ‘transportation.’ - Simotti
*Note to Editor, #2: NVM. I don’t really care. - Simotti
“What say you, Wataru? Will you join me? I think we’d get along, given our common background...” Deus proposed with a grin!
Wataru slowly shook his head! “No!!!”
“No? Why not, Wataru? If we join forces, we could conquer this world.”
“Drop it!! I’ll never join you!!”
“I see. How unfortunate... Hrmph!” Deus leapt out of his Fighting Mantis stance! He jumped high into the air, coming down with a powerful punch!!
Wataru awaited Deus’s attack in his Hot-Blooded Stance!
“Htbld!!!”
DDdddrrrrraagggggggmmmmmm!!!
They collided with incredible force! Wataru leaned into the impact and caught Deus’s punch with his outstretched right hand!
“Rrrrragghhhh!!!” Wataru immediately attacked with his left hand!
The instant he touched Deus, the Demon Lord’s body dissipated into nothing!!
“An illusion!?”
“Hm hm hm... Magic has more uses than you know...!” The real Deus had in fact snuck behind Wataru while his illusion jumped up! The Demon Lord immediately kicked at Wataru’s back!! But Wataru would not go down so easily!!
“Bck!!!” With the reflexes of a man with eyes in the back of his head, Wataru crouched to avoid Deus’s kick! The Demon Lord’s foot only grazed Wataru’s hachimaki!! Immediately, Deus used his teleportation spell to create plenty of distance between Wataru and himself!
“Didn’t think you had enough stamina in you! I’m surprised!!” Wataru said as he slowly rose to his feet!
“I’ll give you a momentary peek behind the curtain before I kill you,” Deus countered. “My stance has a special effect of accelerating my internal generation of magic...!”
That’s right! While maintaining the Fighting Mantis stance, Deus had revealed that he was reincarnated from Japan to confuse Wataru, while buying himself enough time for his magic reserves to regenerate!
“I see...! Hey, Demon Lord! I got a question for you!!!” Wataru asked with a solemn expression!
“...What is it?”
“Demon Lord... What is your goal in the end for all this???”
Deus the Demon Lord gave an ominous grin! “Exterminating the weaker species. That is all. The strong survive while the weak perish. Humans are weak, so I’m going to exterminate them.”
“...You used to be a human, too!!”
“That is precisely why I know how weak humans are, now that I’ve become a Demon!”
“I get it...! It just means you’re going to be taken down by a weak little human!!” Wataru taunted!
“Hm hm hm... You really believe you can best me?”
“You heard me!!”
“You puny human!” Deus was suddenly enraged, stretching his hands up to the heavens! He flexed his fists, and the auras of darkness around them doubled in size! His fists were hardened more than ever! “Take this!” Deus sank into the Fighting Mantis stance once more, then charged Wataru!
Zdrrrrrrsshhhhhh!!!
“...Don’t point your empty fist at me!” Wataru spat out.
Deus’s fist had stopped a mere fraction of an inch before Wataru’s face! Wataru’s counter uppercut had struck Deus clean in the gut!
“Wh-What the...!?” The Demon Lord groaned!
What is art? This is a question that has plagued mankind since the dawn of time. Most of us live our entire lives without finding the answer. But we, Dear Readers, are met with the great fortune of witnessing the very answer to that eternal question! Wataru, his right arm twisted into his enemy’s abdomen with the force of every molecule in his body, his hachimaki fluttering in the wind... and his Nio expression. This tableau was the ultimate form of art, ascended from the flawless mastery of martial arts!! If Michelangelo, the famous Italian Renaissance painter, had been there to witness it, he would have undoubtedly painted our ultimate fighting teen as a masterpiece that would inspire any human that beheld it until the end of time!!
“All right, Deus... I’ll take you on a relaxing flight, 800 meters into the air...!!!”
Deus was knocked directly up into the air! He struggled mid-air in an attempt to stop his rising, but his body refused to obey his brain’s commands! “Wh-What’s happening!? I’m burning up!”
“Just now, I poured my hot-blooded energy through my fist and into you!! An ordinary body won’t be able to contain the overwhelming hot-bloodedness!!!” The ground rapidly continued to fall away from Deus, and before long he reached the height of 800 meters!!! “So...”
“Wh-What the...!? Urgah!” Deus began writhing in agony!
“All you’re going to become... is a cloud of ash!!!”