Somehow, Living Life in Another World is Wrong, as I Expected Ch. 10.3

It’s a miracle that I still remember all of these tropes when I haven’t so much as seen a light novel in years. Maybe they’re just burned in. Maybe they’re muscle memory for the brain. Or maybe I’ve been living in one long enough that even if I wake up with gray hair and a mortgage, I’ll still know how the beats land.

Here’s the thing: teaming up with a previous antagonist is cheap - until it isn’t. It’s a coupon you pull out when the story needs a twist, and it’s a test you hand the characters when the world needs an answer. You don’t do it because it feels good. You do it because the alternatives are worse.

Which is why my hand is on a humming wall of mana, and why Karsten’s glare is drilling a neat hole through my skull while Romanée-Conti watches me like a patient teacher with a very sharp guillotine in the back room. Natsuki's already sprinted off to find Beatrice; he tossed the match, and I’m the one standing over the fuse.

Rat bastard.

Anyway, readers like seeing people grow. They don’t like watching them trip forever. If you make every rescue late, every turn too slow, it stops being a story and starts feeling like the nightly news. That is to say, bleak, numb, and too real to enjoy.

That’s why the classics let the hero arrive late once, twice, then push them to keep a promise not to be late again, until the story snaps and reminds them (and us) that they’re still human. The rhythm only works if you give people a reason to keep reading, a little catharsis between bruises.

So when the clock is melting and the ceiling’s about to come down and the fastest bridge across a ravine is the person you swore you’d never stand beside?

I’ve spent enough time sneering at shortcuts to know that sometimes, the shortcut is the only road left that isn’t a cliff.

The wall of pink thrums against my palm like it’s breathing through its teeth. Mana tickles the bones, builds a tiny storm in my wrist, and for a second I picture nerves fraying like rope. Karsten doesn’t blink. She knows what she has to do. Questions that she and I have, I have no doubt are the same. If I lower this, if he moves there, if the Fingers twitch, if we believe Natsuki and Barielle - what happens?

Too many ifs.

So I clear some out. Not aloud - Karsten can read a plan in the way I shift my weight. If anything went sideways, I'll do my best to open a path for her. I could plainly see that the Fingers were given just enough food and water to survive, what with their countenances being what they were. In a modern world, that may sound cruel and a war crime.

On this one, it was just common sense.

Saying that, it would be easy for Karsten to barrel them over should they try anything. However, the same could not be said for Romanée-Conti. He didn't need sustenance in the way a normal human, or any mortal for that matter. Instead, he fed on mana, which is how he had lived for well over a hundred years.

And judging from how he fought us off the first time around, just me and Karsten wouldn't be enough to beat him. However, it was also quite clear that he cared for his Fingers, as much as any Cultist could feel care in the first place.

Well, to make a long story short, we're essentially threatening him to play nice by waving a big stick around his Fingers as hostages.

What?

I know how to be a bad guy too, you know.

…

“I’m watching you. All of you.” I gave a glare to the Cultists in front of me as our group moved through the mansion. I didn’t want them to be behind me at any point. I didn’t trust them at all. Still, it was almost pitiful watching how the Fingers moved.

Well, not my fault they’re Cultists.

In the end, it had taken me a fair amount of time to actually pull down the barrier, maybe around ten minutes. In that span of time, the sun had already set, though I still hadn’t heard anything from Natsuki. Karsten was still with me, which gave my sense of safety just a bit of weight to it.

That didn’t stop me from worrying about Felt, though.

Yes, I know, admitting I’m worried is a gross, out of character moment. I also know I don’t give a fuck with pretense anymore.

I had worked with Felt and Rom for quite a bit now, and, had I been younger, perhaps I would have attributed caring for her was a simple matter of proximity and familiarity. That we were still strangers that had vastly differing goals that only coincidentally crossed paths through the act of earning enough to eat.

I wasn’t, though. It’s perhaps fair to say that I had grown up a bit, enough to make me realize it was exactly that proximity and familiarity that had borne that strange companionship in the Service Club, and was the same thing I was experiencing with Felt and Rom.

The time would come where I would have to leave. To go back to the people I held dear. Maybe then, I would feel that I had lost something. But, none of the future ever discounts the present, nor the future.

Regret? Sorrow? All of those things are for the future me to experience. Right now, I just want to make sure the people in the now are able to still experience it.

I knew Rom would keep her safe to the best of his ability, but if me and Karsten weren’t enough to deal with whatever Natsuki was worried about? Physically strong as his genes made him, there was a reason we called him Old Man Rom.

If someone like Granhiert-

“Ara? Isn’t this a surprise.”

…Me and my big mouth.

…

Grainhiert stood before us with a vicious smile. She was dressed in the same way that she did when I first met Natsuki, and still had the same kukri I had forged. The sight of it sickened me.

“Granhiert.” I said, because anything else might have made me tear into her.

She lifted the blade a fraction in a hello that felt like a threat, "Hachiman!” She sang back, tasting the syllables, “Your child here works as flawlessly as ever.”

That bile? Mine. I swallowed it.

Karsten didn’t bother with greetings. Her stance lowered, hand on the handle of her sword. Romanée-Conti drew a calm half-step toward his Fingers, a cold glare in his eyes. Looks like he knew Granhiert. Good, no need to explain.

But, if it was just Granhiert, Natsuki wouldn't have needed the damn Cultist to fight with us.

And sure enough, the wall beside us tore open. A lumbering wagpig, familiar. Mabeasts of all kinds flying about, familiar. A child with blue hair, familiar.

That one big fuck in Cultist robes? Unfamiliar.

“Meili, can you do me a favor and take the others away? I want to have a little private reunion with Hachiman here.” Granhiert called out to the kid on the wagpig, Meili. I remember her from when they had attacked Emilia, the first time I had truly fought against Granhiert.

Unfortunately for her, I wasn’t about to let her dictate the flow of the fight like that. With one thought, I had opened a portal right beneath the wagpig. When it was about halfway through, I forcibly closed the portal, intending on chopping off the giant mabeast and killing it in one blow.

See, this was something I had figured out a while back, borne of a morbid curiosity of mine. If I were to open a portal and close it before the entire body came through, what would happen? The answer is, it varies.

When it comes to inanimate objects, they just get cut. No worries about that then. The problem comes from living beings, who have an innate resistance to being chopped in half due to, and I’m only theorizing here, their Od. Od, being connected to the very lifeforce of the being in question, instinctively prioritizes the survival of the individual. It forces a great amount of strain on the victim’s gate by forcing mana through it in order to create a ‘push’ against the closing of the portal.

However, there is a limit. What happens when that strain is too much? When the strain on the victim’s Od is too much? All the ‘force’ that was built up would be released in one fell swoop, causing a catastrophic collapse.

Again, theoretical, as the only person I had ever tested this on was only myself. I wouldn’t dare put anyone else through testing this just to sate my curiosity.

But, against a mabeast? That didn’t have the same anti-magic effects as the Whale?

Free game.

“Ah! Piggy!”

The moment I started to close the portal, I could feel the strain that the wagpig was putting up with. It groaned and roared in pain, but nothing could stop it now. I could tell, compared to a human or demi-human, this mabeast just had less Od capacity, owing likely to a ‘lesser’ connection to the Od Laguna - or something. I don’t know, and I don’t care.

What I cared about was that meant it didn’t take long for the portal to collapse completely, taking with it the entire lower half of the beast in front of me.

“No!” Meili wailed out as tears started to form in her eyes. I didn’t let that affect me. Child as she was, she was just as culpable in everything happening now. Cruel as it may sound, she was just as much a danger as Granhiert and the still unnamed figure in the robes.

Speaking of which, the same figure acted quickly once the mabeast fell, grabbing Meili and leaping into the air to gain some distance. Just as fast, more mabeasts roared in defiance, charging towards us. Clearly, they knew that they needed to keep the kid safe in order to control the mabeasts, so it was a good plan to get her further away from the actual fighting.

If it wasn’t me they were up against.

Mid-air, with no way to dodge? Easy pickings.

I opened another portal in the figure’s path. With him being in the air, there was no way to change his momentum. The moment he passed through the portal, they’d be sent so high up, that the impact they would create would have made a decently sized crater.

Except, I didn’t expect this motherfucker to grab the rim of my portal. With one fluid motion, one that I couldn’t even react to, their hand swapped places with their foot, and they were instantly launching in another direction. In between, they twisted their arm into the robe, before pulling out a strangely shaped cleaver, the length of which was bigger than my torso.

And then threw it.

I barely had time to duck as the blade approached me. The impact it left behind me was enough to send my ears ringing.

Holy shit, that was close.

Beside me, even Karsten looked pale at the display. The Fingers, though still weak, seemed to have resigned themselves to fighting this fuck. Romanée-Conti, meanwhile, looked cold as he looked towards the pair. Granhiert was saying something, pouting and all that. It would have looked cute if it wasn’t her, but as it stands, it just made me even more uneasy.

Romanée-Conti spoke to us quietly, “That one is not normal.”

“No shit.” I grumbled as I stood up, “Who the fuck even does all that?” How the hell they managed to grab the edge of a portal, I don’t know. What I do know is that they’re going to the top of my ‘do not approach’ list.

Still, Romanée-Conti shook his head, not taking his eyes off our opponents, “I believe that one is…no, I’m certain. That one is a corpse soldier.”

…Zombies. I had to deal with zombies.

What even is my life anymore?

…