Chapter 76 - The Invader II

The Magical Girl Council’s vaunted aircraft carrier (40 tons, equipped with a kitchen and recreational facilities, formerly used as a fishing-ground cleanup vessel before commissioning as a carrier, launched in 1996) reached the target waters in under two hours.

The magical girls immediately took up their positions and began fishing. They had the skills of seasoned fishers.

“Whew, we were starting to run low on food anyway, so I was thinking of going fishing, meow.”

“By the way, Undertaker. I’ve heard rumors that Korea has an awakened with prophetic powers. Is that true? You’re acting with complete confidence that an anomaly will appear out here at sea, too.”

I shrugged.

“That’s a secret. But this time, at least, it was a constellation that told me, not a prophet.”

“A constellation...? Oh, those gods that exist only on the Korean Peninsula.”

The magical girl nodded, apparently satisfied.

This might come as a surprise, but Japanese awakened didn’t particularly question why the constellations were so active only on the Korean Peninsula. They seemed to regard them as a kind of local deity.

They might be decked out in strange outfits and obsessed with magical-girl cosplay now, but before the void erupted in earnest, they had all been people with strong spiritual sensitivity. Mediums, shrine maidens, and the like.

“...!”

While everyone was enjoying the fishing, a taciturn magical girl perked up her ears and pointed at the sky.

“Meow? What’s wrong, Ciel?”

“Hmm?”

Everyone aboard the carrier looked up. Before long, every pair of eyes widened.

A UFO was falling from the sky.

“Meow?! Wh-what is that, meow?”

“... Good heavens.”

RRRROOOOOM!

The UFO plummeted, ripping through Earth’s fragile atmosphere. But at an altitude of 600 meters, it began slowing sharply. The sea heaved with violent waves, as though welcoming the extraterrestrial visitor.

SPLOOOOSH!

With a sound that swept across the surrounding waters, the UFO landed—or rather, splashed down—in the sea.

The tsunami it raised rocked even our carrier.

“Meeeeow! Save this kitty, meow!”

“Deceleration—balance—defense.”

The hull lurched. It had nearly capsized, but the group’s magic restored its balance.

As spray blanketed our vision, the UFO’s enormous bulk slowly bobbed into view on the surface.

“Good heavens. Undertaker was telling the truth. An anomaly really did come down from the sky.”

“...! ...!”

“Astonishment. Evidence for hypothesis that anomalies may originate in space. Necessary. Prepare paper.”

“There’s no academic society left to review a paper even if you publish one, meow! Besides, we don’t even know if it really is an anomaly, meow. What if they’re actual aliens?”

I wiped the seawater off my face and spoke calmly.

“Get ready for combat first. We’re about to make a gacha pull to find out whether they’re good aliens or bad ones.”

“Hmm.”

“Ah, good point, meow.”

Our astonishment was short-lived. The others and I immediately went on guard.

“Warning. Presence detected.”

The moment the blind magical girl specializing in reconnaissance and enemy detection murmured those words, steam hissed from the UFO.

PSSSSSH!

Unlike the previous run, when all the aliens inside the UFO had already been slaughtered, this time there were unmistakable signs of living occupants.

“...”

“...”

Everyone held their breath at what might be humanity’s first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life.

A shadow flickered beyond the mist and steam.

A sudden gust carried the smell of gasoline from somewhere, plastering it against my face.

The blind magical girl murmured,

“Approaching.”

BOOOOM!

The instant she finished speaking, the enemy beyond the steam leaped into the sky and landed on the carrier.

An astonishing leap. Also an approach one ought to avoid if one intended to have a friendly conversation with us.

“Enemy!”

“I-it was a bad alien, meow!”

On the violently rocking hull, the presumed alien extended its arms.

SKREEEEEEE!

Perhaps it was spreading its arms wide in its own alien way of saying, “Hug me.”

Unfortunately, it had eight arms rather than two, and meter-long scythes where its fingers ought to have been. There were rather too many problems with enjoying an affectionate embrace.

As such, the following judgment could hardly be called an overreaction.

“Engage!”

CLAAANG!

My blade carefully parried the alien’s eight scythes. More precisely, it tried to carefully parry them.

‘What the hell is with this strength?’

A crushing blow. I’d assumed it could be no stronger than Tenlegs, but a single stroke of its scythe nearly sent my sword flying.

Its strength wasn’t the only surprise.

SKREEEEE!

The eight great scythes naturally attached to its eight arms unleashed dazzling, swift waves of attacks. I couldn’t grasp their precise principles, but there was unquestionably a highly developed martial system behind its scythe work.

One blow, two, three. Just when I thought I’d blocked one, another scythe came in from the side. I drew up my aura to cut its entire arm off, but it didn’t work at all.

“This is fucking insane.”

Getting that kind of exclamation out of me in run ninety-nine wasn’t easy.

The alien was plainly stronger than Tenlegs. Not just a little stronger, either—six times, seven times... no, by a margin too large to quantify.

“U-Undertaker? Are you okay, meow?”

“Not really! This bastard’s strong!”

“This is serious. Ciel, turn the ship around. We need to retreat and call for reinforcements. I’ll help Undertaker—”

The magical girls’ judgment was sound, but as with everything in life, being right yourself doesn’t mean others will oblige.

BOOM! BOOOOM! BOOM!

Aliens rained down from the UFO onto the carrier. That alone sent the hull rocking uncontrollably as waves surged in from every direction.

SKREEEEEEE! SKREE!

I could already see seven aliens. Their skin was melting like candle wax. That melting, sagging skin was the source of the overpowering gasoline-like stench.

“Fuck.”

For the first time in a long while, a chilling cold sweat ran down the neck muscles I’d honed over dozens of regressions. One of these things was hard enough to handle, and now there were seven more?

But cold sweat alone was insufficient to convey the urgency of the situation. Suddenly, the corridor I’d seen inside the UFO in run ninety-eight flashed through my mind.

The corridor covered in corpses.

‘Then doesn’t that mean there are at least 120 of these bastards?’

Just then, a scream erupted from the magical girls.

“Aaaaaaah!”

A sideways glance showed me they were helpless against the aliens’ attacks.

A feast of scythes. The girl known for her meowing speech had her limbs severed and flung into the air, along with the black umbrella she always carried.

“Damn,”

“...!”

Even after their companion’s death, the magical girls tried to remain calm to the very end. Flames sparked here and there, and magic flew everywhere. But as three seconds, five seconds, seven seconds passed, their bodies were cut apart, scattering blood.

[“Undertaker, run—”]

THUD!

Even the blind magical girl, the last survivor, fell silent as a tail burst through the center of her torso while she tried to send a telepathic message. Blood poured from the alien’s sharp tail.

Time until total annihilation: just eleven seconds.

They hadn’t neglected their guard. Nor were they low-caliber awakened.

They might not have been on par with a regressor like me, but all of them had been through plenty in the Council. They were veterans who had survived this long in the Japanese archipelago, one of the hellscapes beyond human endurance.

And they were wiped out. In eleven seconds.

“God fucking damn—”

For the first time in a long while, foul curses spilled from my mouth one after another. A familiar sensation. But by no means a welcome one. Yes, that same sheer fucking misery I’d felt every day back when I was fighting bloody battles against that damned octopus-headed Tenlegs spread from the capillaries throughout my body and filled my mouth.

“You sons of bitches!”

I somehow drew up as much sword force as I could and swung. With the others all dead, staying here even one more second would leave me surrounded. I had to kill at least the one right in front of me.

SKREEEEE!

I hauled up my sword force all at once and crammed every bit of it into the blade.

KABOOOOM!

Less a slash than a brutally forced blow, my strike scattered the alien’s entire body into chunks of flesh.

SKREE?

SKREEEEE!

Had the death of one of their own shocked them? The aliens aboard the ship, now numbering in the dozens, all turned toward me.

They were clearly wary.

Slowly... very slowly, they began surrounding me, as though cornering their prey.

I slid backward as well, trying to keep the angle of their encirclement at 180 degrees or less.

As though displeased, the aliens spat out cries of “Skree!” and “Skreeee!” But they didn’t charge me immediately. They had effectively conceded a move.

...

The waves sounded softly. We kept our distance, leaving the bodies of four magical girls and one alien between us as a silence poised to erupt into violence stretched on.

“...”

I could retreat if I wanted to.

The aliens were certainly strong and fast. But I doubted they could keep up with my speed. The magical girls had probably sensed that difference at the end, which was why they’d told me to [“Run”].

But.

‘I can’t let 120 of these monstrous bastards loose on the world.’

I tightened my grip on the sword hilt and adjusted my stance. Only one phrase repeated in my mind.

Mutual destruction.

‘Then I’ll gather as much information as possible in this run and take you on in the next.’

Above all, the decisive reason I couldn’t retreat was that there must be another being that had slaughtered all 120 of these incredibly powerful aliens.

‘I have to get a look at that thing’s face. Its traits and abilities too, if possible!’

Was it something like the queen of this alien swarm, or an entirely different creature? At present, I had no information whatsoever.

If anything, I was fortunate to have discovered, even this late, that such an unprecedented anomaly existed. Didn’t that mean it had crashed into the East Sea in previous runs, then vanished without a trace to lurk somewhere I knew nothing about?

It would be a Continent-class threat at the very least, and most likely Ocean-class.

I couldn’t even imagine how many civilians and awakened it had killed all this time, beyond my sight.

‘No matter how many runs it takes, no matter how many decades or centuries, I’ll slaughter you for good!’

Just as I was steeling myself to fight to the death—

SKREEEEE...

SKREE, SKREEEE. SKREE...?

They faltered.

The aliens I’d expected to charge at any moment hesitated. I would have liked to think my presence had suddenly frightened them... but that didn’t seem to be the reason.

Their eight arms trembled, and their tails swung wildly from side to side.

Some craned their necks like deer and screamed upward, “Skree! Skreeee!” Others twisted their limbs and vigorously scratched at their own skin.

In other words, it was almost as though...

‘... They’re suffering?’

One alien flopped onto its back. Just as an Asiatic black bear rubs its back against a tree, the strange creature rubbed its entire body against the carrier’s deck.

The difference was that it screamed in excruciating pain as it did so.

SKREEEEEEE!

SKREEEE! SKREE, SKREEEEE!

The other aliens soon began thrashing too. One slammed into the wheelhouse instead of the deck, while another even used its arm scythes to shave thin slices off its own skin.

“No, what the hell is...?”

Why were these things, which had radiated the presence of the ultimate life-form just moments ago, suddenly acting like this?

Bewildered, I lowered my sword’s point. I approached one at random and stabbed it in the gut. It simply slumped, without any particular reaction.

“Huh...?”

On closer inspection, the skin that had been melting and dripping like candle wax had now evolved beyond candle wax into a chocolate fountain.

Flesh streamed down. Their skin was literally melting, as though they’d been doused in acid.

SKR, EEEEEE...!

They twisted and thrashed with their entire bodies, but their chocolate-fountain show only accelerated. Muscle tissue emerged, bones that looked at least four times thicker than a human’s were laid bare, and finally their grotesque organs were exposed.

Then all of those melted and ran off too.

After a mere two minutes, all that remained on the carrier’s deck were pitch-black, slime-like lumps.

“Huuuh...?”

I went inside the UFO just in case, but there was no twist waiting for me. There were slightly fewer of them, but just as in run ninety-eight, the corridors were lined with alien corpses.

The strange creatures that might have been the strongest species in the universe... were all... dead.

Humanity hadn’t even done anything yet.

“...”

SPLASH.

As an experiment, I scooped seawater into my palm and splashed it onto a corpse that looked relatively intact.

Something astonishing happened. The alien’s skin tissue melted and ran off in an instant.

“Huuuuuh...?”

I tested it again. This time, I brought drinking water from the carrier instead of seawater and splashed it on.

The result was identical. The alien’s skin, bones, and internal organs turned into sticky liquid.

“Oh...”

And then I understood. Why these monstrous creatures had all died. Why they’d never shown their faces in any of my runs.

“These bastards’ weakness is water...?”

Then you shouldn’t come to Earth, you lunatics.

5

I named these aliens the “Warrior Race.” And after run ninety-nine, I stopped paying any attention whatsoever to the UFO falling into the East Sea or the Warrior Race.

No matter how powerful the Warrior Race might be, no matter how vicious—enough to give even a regressor like me trouble—it made absolutely no difference.

Their weakness was water.

To state the obvious, water covers 71% of Earth’s surface. And this might be rather surprising to the aliens, but there are plenty of days on Earth when H₂O falls from the sky. Sometimes it even keeps up for days on end.

Ah, you don’t know, aliens? This is what we call the “summer monsoon”—

‘How can a life-form’s weakness be water?’

It was truly bizarre, but considering how rare a substance water is in this vast universe, perhaps humanity and Earth’s other life-forms were the strange ones.

“Oh, G-Guild Leader! Look over there! A shooting star...!”

“Hmm.”

In some runs, I happened to witness the meteor shower while near the East Sea, but I watched the night sky with decidedly mixed feelings in my eyes.

The fact that anomalies which might have become the greatest enemies of my life as a regressor were diving into the East Sea and dying en masse every run was, well... a rather strange feeling.

‘... But what if the Warrior Race aren’t anomalies at all, and really are aliens?’

What if that UFO was merely a tiny scout ship, with their main force elsewhere?

What if they realized water was their weakness, made some sort of high-tech raincoats, and invaded again with their bodies wrapped up tight?

What if humanity and the anomalies of Earth were all annihilated together by the Warrior Race’s invasion?

“A-a wish. Hurry and make a wish, Guild Leader. If you make it before the star falls, it’ll come true!”

Faced with Sim Aryeon’s special skill, Pestering, I raised both hands in surrender.

“Sure, why not. Let’s make a wish.”

If, by some remote chance, the aliens launched a full-scale invasion, what could I do? I’d have to spend another long stretch regressing, making a space-war movie this time.

Praying that such a disaster would never happen, I respectfully clasped my hands.

‘Just give up on Earth and move on, my alien friends. I don’t know what kind of planet you call home, but I guarantee it’s less fucked up than our neighborhood.’

A twinkle.

As though acknowledging my wish, the shooting star glittered above the East Sea in year nine.

- The Invader. End.