They say too much of anything is bad for you, but this guy was really something else. It was like an embodiment of all the worst aspects of fatherhood—no, that wasn’t all—it was all the worst parts of manhood, too. This thing was the type of asshole that could die and be reborn a hundred times over, and it would still come back as an absolute piece of shit.
Sorry, you electric deadbeat, but your masturbatory ways end here.
I’m not letting you touch my friends with that filthy-ass skill of yours!
“Blast has made contact,” said Albi, using telepathy. “Damage successfully prevented using Fourth Field. No injuries to report from the three behind you.”
“…Good.”
I heaved a sigh of relief from within the monochromatic world.
Well, I couldn’t actually move my body because of the effects of my skill, so I didn’t actually sigh. It was more like an air sigh.
“Wouldn’t that imply a regular sigh?” Albi shot back.
“All right, fine, call it an ersatz sigh, then.”
“That makes it sound like some sort of special attack. What a nerd.”
Albi was as full of complaints and jabs as ever. But at least she was keeping me company in that lonely, frozen world. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to refuse her good will.
“How admirable of you. You’re far easier to deal with when you’re nice and obedient.”
“Yes, yes. Thanks a lot, O goddess of sarcasm.”
But that didn’t mean I had no complaints.
That said, after seeing Keraunos and Jupiter’s relationship, I started to think my bond with Albi wasn’t so bad after all… Comparatively speaking anyway.
“Hey, Albi. how do you think that spirit got to be such a piece of crap, huh?”
“I suppose it was simply designed that way.”
A blunt response and a strong rebuttal of the belief that human nature is fundamentally good.
“That overly idealistic point of view is only relevant when discussing people. It has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to us spirits.”
“Fair point.”
“Besides, a Sublime Demis type, such as Keraunos, traditionally has no mental or emotional faculties. Thus, discussing their lot in terms of good or evil is unproductive. They are forces of nature. No more and no less. Think for a moment, if you would, about the rain, which you so loathe. How could the rain possibly consider a person’s feelings? It cannot—that would be impossible.”
Weather can’t sense how we feel. It doesn’t matter how much I wish for the rain to stop—rain’s gonna rain. And the opposite is also true. No matter how much people might pray for it, rain just isn’t going to fall in certain regions.
How people feel about it is completely irrelevant. It just is.
“Thus, simply imbuing a being composed of little more than miasma and lightning with a single feeling and expecting it to have functioning emotional intelligence is, and always has been, foolish. But those fiendish scientists likely thought such a flaw was little more than a trifle.”
Those researchers were willing to conduct experiments on a bunch of kids. I doubted they cared one bit about the relationship between the spirits and their pact holders. For a bunch of scientists looking to upload emotions into a spirit, they were pretty damn heartless. Talk about irony!
“…Ugh.”
I could feel a dull pain spreading through my body. It felt awful—like my soul was being forcefully torn out. Despite using Fourth Field so many times, I never got used to this awful sensation.
“Already giving up?” asked Albi.
“Psh. Don’t be stupid. I’ve still got…plenty left in me…”
Keraunos’s blast was still going strong. It showed no sign of stopping or dwindling in the slightest. I had to dig in my heels and hold out against this hellish torment for a while yet.
“…Anyway,” I said telepathically. “Back to what we were talking about. You make it sound like Keraunos is a victim.”
“I suppose it is, in a manner of speaking.”
A poor spirit, captured according to the whims of a bunch of humans and forced to bear emotions it wasn’t equipped for.
Looking at it that way, I guess even that piece of garbage could garner some sympathy. A sad past is a sad past. I bet if I was one of the kind main characters, I might have even felt compassion for Keraunos. Too bad, though…
“Who gives a shit?!”
I’m not a main character—I’m the smack-talking tutorial miniboss!
Oh, it had a sad past, did it? Am I supposed to feel bad? Well, cry me a freaking river. This prick can choke on it and die for all I care.
Good or bad, just or unjust, victim or perpetrator—I couldn’t care less about any of it.
You’re the one who chose to stand against us. And now you’ve pissed me off.
That’s all the reason I need. So it’s time for you to die. Meet your miserable, pathetic end. Get ready to have every ounce of your self-respect smashed to bits before I send you to hell.
You’re gonna pay for the things you’ve done.
Sad past, happy past, none of it matters—I’m gonna straight up murder this asshole.
You tortured Jupiter for years. You screwed with Szilard’s clan. And you’re the reason we had to put our adventures beyond the fifteenth floor on hold.
You stole Jupiter’s memories and hurt Eliza. You stole the girl’s home and trampled all over her dignity. You’re the reason she cries.
Plus, do you have any idea how much money I blew on those accessories?!
And I had to pull Haruka into this dangerous fight because of you.
Even my sister and aunt were inconvenienced by your electric ass.
And now, you’re the reason I’m stuck here alone in this stupid black-and-white world struggling to hold on.
The pain I feel? Keraunos’s fault.
The suffering? Chalk it up to that electric douchebag.
This weird itchiness? All that deadbeat dad’s doing.
The nausea? It’s ’cause of the black-lightning beast, obviously.
I turned all the anguish I felt into hatred, all the pain into fodder for my murderous rage.
I hated that spirit. I hated it so much. A hundred times over, I hated it. And I wasn’t done yet.
“You’ve just achieved a new record, Master. This is the longest you’ve ever kept Fourth Field active.”
“…Yeah? Well, I’ve still got plenty left in me.”
I could feel my anger boiling away inside me, and yet I felt completely in control of Fourth Field.
Skill efficiency—it seemed I had finally managed to figure out how to maintain my skill while using the minimal amount of spiritual power.