Hayasaka Tooru—Tooru—was being carried by the holy sword wielder Tia, using the Holy Sword Lightbringer as a makeshift pack frame, and he was in a half-panicked state.

First of all, the power behind each step when she kicked off the ground was absurd.

It was probably some kind of magical effect that kept the impact from transmitting too strongly into the soil or asphalt, the tops of guardrails and utility poles, or the roofs of buildings. Otherwise, she would destroy her footing and be unable to accumulate the kinetic energy needed for high-speed movement.

The kinetic energy produced that way was enough to move two human beings, and the initial velocity was probably beyond the speed of sound. The reason was that something like a mana barrier had been deployed in front of Tia, and he could see the air slamming into it and being torn apart to either side.

Thud—a stomp—and then boom.

It made no sense, but in any case, that was how they moved.

Of course, you couldn’t keep exceeding the speed of sound forever. Since thrust was obtained by kicking off from footholds, the speed would constantly decrease while airborne. It seemed like reducing airtime would solve that problem, and whenever she could, Tia did exactly that.

When she couldn’t—that was when obstacles made it faster to leap over them.

It had been especially noticeable right after they departed the Sugai Dungeon, when they were racing through the mountains. She leapt higher than the treetops, blasted through branches, found trees suitable as footholds, and took the next step. Once they broke out of the forest, they hit a prefectural road; she kicked off the asphalt and then dove back into the mountains. This time, she accelerated by booting off a transmission tower standing on the mountainside.

Like that, they pressed straight ahead without deviation, aiming for the Noumi Dungeon.

After entering the urban area, she more often used rooftops and building tops as footholds to avoid killing people with the shockwaves of their movement, and their speed dropped a little. It was probably because exceeding the speed of sound would shatter windows with the shockwave—but the whole thing still felt like a joke.

People didn’t move like this.

Moving at this speed without destroying anything was bizarre. Well, she had blasted through trees, and maybe cracked the asphalt—but still.

On top of that—the fact that he himself could understand all this was, to Tooru, an abnormal situation.

Why was he able to understand something like this?

The scenery streaming past the edges of his vision was like watching footage from a train window played at ten times speed. Everything was far too fast.

And yet, somehow, he understood.

Stepping on the tips of utility poles, kicking off building walls, the scenery flowed past at a pace that made the word “dizzying” feel utterly inadequate.

Really… it was far faster than traveling by car. If that was the case, they should have moved like this to the Sugai Dungeon as well—but Tia probably hadn’t thought Tooru would need to go suppress a Dungeon Stampede. Regardless of Tia’s own thoughts, she had probably respected Tooru’s feelings and judgment.

Maybe it was because he’d snapped at the female elf in a fancy hotel that morning—thinking that, Tooru clung to Tia and let out a wry smile.

He didn’t think what he’d done was “good.” As he’d told Tia, the way he’d spoken had been “bad.” He’d gotten angry and traded stupid insults like an idiot. But that was Hayasaka Tooru for you—nothing could be done about it.

Even the reason he’d given Tia for heading to the Sugai Dungeon had been his honest feelings. It wasn’t a lie. And riding along—literally riding along—when Tia turned toward the Noumi Dungeon hadn’t been unpleasant either.

If he could stop it, then he would.

There was no need for any messy justifications.

Who cared about profit or loss? Who cared if he might be getting used? Was Tia dragging him into this mess? If he truly hated it, Tooru wouldn’t do it—and if he were angry, he would simply get angry. If his old life became impossible to maintain—well, it wasn’t a life he was that desperate to protect in the first place.

Hayasaka Tooru’s grandparents and parents had died in a Dungeon Stampede.

It had been like a natural disaster. He didn’t harbor an intense hatred toward anything or anyone. He didn’t have the energy to curse the world. He didn’t know enough to hate politics. Just as he’d told Tia, most people were doing what they could. The choice not to act, and the choice that one should act—everyone chose between them by their own judgment.

The people who wrote shit-tier comments on livestreams. The ones who did nothing but complain about content. The ones who posted opinions barely worth garbage on social media. The ones who put on smug expressions and sneered at others as vulgar masses. And the middle-school-dropout cleaner who argued back with them head-on……

Everyone had the option not to act that way, and yet they didn’t choose it. By their own will, they chose to be that way.

In the end, when Tooru’s family died, it was the same thing: either people chose, of their own will, the option they believed they should take, or they knew they shouldn’t—but couldn’t help not doing it anyway.

He himself was no different.

He had abandoned a town being trampled by monsters and fled. His parents were there. His grandparents were there. Countless other people were there. And yet, not for even a moment had he felt like going back to help them. He didn’t feel deep regret about that. If he had gone, he would have died a pointless death. Without a doubt, a pointless death. That was true for almost all the ordinary civilians who had been there.

On television and online, there had been no shortage of people spouting irresponsible nonsense. People who smugly declared that this was what should have been done. People who swung the axe of “correctness” and declared that the on-site judgment of the explorer clan that had stood against the flood of monsters was wrong. Even though that clan had been wiped out. Even though they had saved a few families, killed some of the monsters, and died because that was all they could do—they were called fools.

Nothing but people saying whatever they wanted, without responsibility. When they talked like that, they weren’t looking in a mirror. No one cared how grotesquely twisted their own faces were as they dissected the judgments, mistakes, and deaths of people who had been pushed into an impossible situation.

Even though there was the option of not speaking that way.

Convinced that their own opinions were “right,” they kept opening their sewer-stinking mouths.

As if he could bring himself to hate things like that, one by one.

If he paid attention to it, he’d go insane. Getting angry was pointless. Hating it accomplished nothing. “Correctness” would never listen anyway. So it wasn’t needed. Correctness wasn’t needed. He didn’t care about their correctness. Somewhere along the way, he had grown numb, until he could snort at anyone’s words as long as they weren’t said directly to his face. He had even started to think that people who came at him directly were a little more decent, at least. They might get punched. They might get yelled at. They might get cursed out.

Don’t let your heart be swayed by things like that.

Those people wouldn’t be able to wield “correctness” in that hell anyway. No matter how lofty their opinions sounded, they were just grinning hideously from a place of safety.

He didn’t know them. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter.

And yet—even so—when it came to dungeons, he had begun to feel something like an attachment to them.

When he had become utterly alone in the world and had to decide what to do with himself, a job posting for dungeon cleaners at the Sugai Dungeon had caught his eye. That was all there had been to it. If it hadn’t, he might have gone to a vocational training center and become a real worksite bro—construction work, electrical work, painting, or even getting hired by a dwarf-run sheet metal shop.

Anything would have been fine. Anything at all.

As long as he could make a living on his own.

As long as he could live without causing too much trouble for others.

But in reality, this was how things had turned out.

He’d kept working as a cleaner and had even been suspected of wrongdoing, yet he’d never felt like quitting. In the end, he’d wanted to stay involved with dungeons. Who cared if no one acknowledged him? A bottom-tier cleaner—so what? If he wasn’t causing trouble for anyone, that should have been fine.

“Ah—damn it! I can’t get up to speed in the city!”

Tia shouted in frustration.

The scenery to either side was streaming past at high speed, but straight ahead, it looked almost sluggish.

After using a building rooftop as a foothold and leaping onward… it seemed she’d jumped extraordinarily high. They were at such an altitude that they could look down over the city, and because of that, a section of the urban area visible below was swallowed up in darkness, a hollowed-out void of night.

It was probably a blackout—monsters unleashed by a Dungeon Stampede must have rampaged through, severing power lines or something like that.

At the center of that darkness stood a five-headed monster.

Dimly glowing from the mana it emitted, only the silhouette of the gigantic creature floated up out of the night.

A thing of destruction, born from an incomprehensible “Dungeon.”

A thing that scattered death, created hell, and brought screams and despair.

A kind of symbol of this world after it had fused with another.

This world had merged with that.

No matter how numb he became—that fact alone was unforgivable.

“Tooru! Take out that cursed sword of yours! Tie that creepy ornament cord on the pommel to Lightbringer’s hilt!”

Faced with an order that left no room for questions, Tooru obeyed without a word.

Letting go of Tia while being carried at high speed was terrifying, but even so, he brought his hands together, left palm bracing right, and yanked the Cursed Sword Kagetsu out in one smooth pull. To anyone watching, it would have looked profoundly unsettling.

A hideously ominous, dark red blade.

The guard was black. The hilt was black. The red ornament cord at the pommel was wrapped around Tooru’s wrist as he held the katana. When he tugged on it, it extended, so without undoing the part wound around his wrist, he tied the slack to Lightbringer’s hilt. He didn’t know any knots that wouldn’t come undone, so it was a sloppy job. Even so, he somehow understood that it wouldn’t come loose unless he willed it to. That was simply how this thing worked.

While he was doing that, they began to fall, and by the time the cursed sword and holy sword were bound together with the cord, Tia was already moving into the next leap.

Thud—she jumped, and then boom.

Leaping almost straight upward, Tia released the hands that had been firmly securing Tooru, seized the hilt of the holy sword—and spun, whirling through the air.

“Cut it down, Tooru!”

Saying that, Tia layered mana onto her rotation and hurled the holy sword—still connected to the cursed sword by its ornament cord—flinging Tooru along with it.

There was no hesitation. Of course there’d been no prior discussion, no warning, no shared understanding or silent coordination. At most, there might have been the faintest hint of a wind-up.

In any case, she threw him—like a pitcher from a fantasy-leaning baseball manga.

From the one being thrown, there was nothing to do but go flying like a cursed pitch.

“Are you serious…?!”

The sensation of breaking the sound barrier.

And yet, there was no air resistance.

Looking closer, Lightbringer was glowing a pale blue-white, protecting its owner, Tooru, with mana.

Which meant—

He was tearing through the air at Mach speed, and in less than two seconds, the five-headed monster was practically right in front of him.

At that moment, Tooru wasn’t thinking about anything.

He regripped the hilt of the holy sword that was dragging him through the air with his left hand, and somehow—he didn’t even know how—he hauled it in close and mounted the holy sword like a surfboard. For some reason, the ornament cord of “Kagetsu” had stretched even further, causing no interference with his supersonic midair surfing.

Why do something like that?

Because if he stayed in a posture where he was just being dragged along by the holy sword, he wouldn’t be able to swing his blade.

Lightbringer increased its luminosity.

The speed dropped. But there was no shock. The holy sword was unleashing mana to cancel out the forward kinetic energy. It was probably similar to how an aircraft doesn’t tear itself apart when it brakes using reverse thrust.

Blazing with an absurd amount of light, he came to a halt in midair—just for an instant.

The five-headed monster was right there.

Without thinking, he swung “Kagetsu.”

In the darkness of night, the red-black blade traced a baleful moon.¹

――Cleave.

Something that was not a physical force severed all five of the monster’s necks at once.

The Cursed Sword “Kagetsu” was less a weapon than a cursed tool, and the act of swinging it was equivalent to a mage’s incantation or a sorcerer’s woven spells.

A cursed tool that drew forth a future in which the target had already been cut apart.

A curse that acted directly upon the soul—the divine realm that connected to the material world. And thus, so long as something existed in this world, it could not escape being cut by “Kagetsu.”

If it existed, it could be cut.

That was all.

“…Yeah, I dunno how this works but… I’m gonna fall, right?”

He’d been launched at a ridiculous speed and cut down the monster in midair. That part was fine. But Tooru wasn’t Tia—there was no way he could fall from that height without getting hurt.

If he crashed into the ground, he’d just die. Plain and simple.

And yet, Tooru didn’t panic.

Because—

“Ta-daa! I lose my manifestation if I move away from you, Tooru, but I can remanifest near you! I told you I’d protect you, didn’t I?”

Laughing cheerfully at a time that made no sense at all, the holy sword wielder appeared right beside the falling Tooru. She casually grabbed both Tooru and Lightbringer—the sword he’d been using as a surfboard—and somehow, without him feeling even the slightest impact, set them gently down on the ground.

After that, lowering him with a casual heave-ho, Tia looked at him with a completely unguarded, radiant smile and said,

“You did great. You stopped the damage that monster was going to cause. People who were supposed to die didn’t. Things that were supposed to be destroyed weren’t. Things that were supposed to be taken weren’t taken. That’s because of you. You protected them. Well done, Tooru. I’m proud of you.”

If she hadn’t been the very person who’d thrown him at the five-headed monster, he might have been genuinely moved to tears.

That was how deeply Tia’s words resonated in another person’s chest.

She must have encouraged countless people like that when she was alive.

Not from afar. Not after the fact.

Always—right there, in the moment, in front of them.

But after confirming that “Kagetsu” in his right hand had dissipated into a red-black mist, Tooru took about five seconds to slowly stand up, shot a glare at the female holy-sword hero, and said,

“I’m never counting on your idea of ‘protecting’ me again. Because of you, I went through some absolutely insane shit. I think you’re a complete dumbass.”

“—Huh!? What? That wasn’t the touching moment just now…?”

“Like hell it was.”

“Huhh… that’s weird… Usually people get all emotional at times like this. Tooru, isn’t there something wrong with you? I’m honestly questioning you now.”

As Tia tilted her head in genuine confusion, Tooru held it in for a moment—then failed, letting out a wry smile despite himself.

And with that, it was over.

For the time being.

1. Forgot if I mentioned it before but “Kagetsu” means sth like Baleful/Calamitous/Wicked Moon.