“Excellent, excellent. Quit spacing out, Young Haj. You said you needed three minutes to beat that oversized Devourer, right? Then get to work. I can’t hold it off for long.”
“A-Alright. I’m still not sure what’s going on, but thanks for saving us, Fish-san.”
Hajime once again got back to work.
The giant silver silhouette continued fighting with the sea angel, dodging its attacks and keeping it away from Tio. Upon closer inspection, Hajime realized what he’d thought was one silver creature was actually a huge school of fish. Not monster fish, just regular everyday fish. However, there were hundreds of thousands of them all gathered together. With that many, even they could hold their own against the sea angel. Still, they wouldn’t be able to keep it up for long; thousands of fish died in every attack.
Why on earth is a fishman here? Shea stepped up to ask what everyone else was wondering. It was a rare sight to see Yue huddling behind Shea and not the other way around.
“U-Umm, Fish-san? Is it alright if I call you that? Uhh, what exactly are you doing here?”
“Hmph, I wasn’t doing anything. I was just minding my business, swimming along, when I sensed this huge explosion of mana. I heard your Telepathy too, so I rushed over, only to find Young Haj about to be eaten by a giant Devourer. I didn’t really know what was going on, but my friend was in trouble. I wouldn’t be a man if I didn’t help him out.”
“Umm, what about those fish... Also, what’s a Devourer?”
“That thing you’re fighting. They’re known as Devourers. They’re creatures that used to live in the sea long ago... Actually, they’re more natural disasters than creatures. People say they’re the ancient ancestors of monsters. Oh, and I’m controlling those fish with my Telepathy. The kind of Telepathy my species uses lets me communicate to some extent with all sea creatures, even if they don’t have mana.”
Shea’s jaw dropped open. Fish-san was a fishmancer. As he finished his explanation, the last of his fish army melted away. The Devourer once again chased after Tio, determined to swallow them all whole.
Fortunately, he had managed to buy them the three minutes Hajime needed.
Hajime set up his super-sized torpedoes around the edges of Yue’s barrier. In three minutes he’d crafted roughly 120 of them. Floating next to him were a number of small circles equal to the number of his torpedoes.
Hajime poured his mana into the spirit stone and launched all of the torpedoes simultaneously. They left a trail of bubbles in their wake as they sped toward the Devourer. These were no normal torpedoes. Simple explosives wouldn’t do any lasting harm to the Devourer, after all. It would just regenerate all of the jelly that had been blown apart.
Irked at being interrupted, the Devourer sent out a barrage of tentacles to swat down the torpedoes. However, Hajime guided the torpedoes to weave through the tentacles. With his Limit Break, he was just barely able to control all 120 of them at once.
“You’re not gonna dodge, are you? Hope you like my present, then.” Hajime muttered viciously. He figured since the Devourer dissolved anything that got close to it, it never bothered dodging.
His guess proved to be correct. After making it through the forest of tentacles, Hajime’s torpedoes all smashed into the Devourer. It hadn’t even tried to move out of the way.
However, there was no explosion. The torpedoes slowly melted into the Devourer. All of the black dots sticking out of it almost made it look like it had been poisoned.
Hajime needed to hurry and complete his preparations before the torpedoes melted completely. He pulled a large amount of sticky black liquid out of his Treasure Trove. It was liquified flamrock. Then, he poured the liquified flamrock into the circles floating around him.
A second later, the Devourer was dyed pitch-black. The blackness spread through its body like ink through paper. Black liquid moved to fill every inch of its translucent jelly. The liquid flamrock was being transported from the circles into the Devourer’s body.
The circles were actually all miniature warp gates connected to their respective torpedoes. Anything that fell into the circles around him appeared at the corresponding torpedo. His torpedoes hadn’t actually been the weapon, they’d just been its means of delivery. Their shells only existed to protect the warp gates inside of them from being corroded away instantly.
Naturally, the liquid flamrock itself began to dissolve inside the Devourer as well, but there was so much of it that it couldn’t get rid of it in time. It tried to split itself into pieces to save parts of it from being filled, but Yue and the others weren’t about to let that happen. They used barriers, ice spells, and breath attacks to keep it busy. Hajime hadn’t asked Yue to make the gate because he knew she wasn’t skilled enough with the magic yet to accurately open one inside a moving target. For now, the best she could do was connect two points in space.
The Devourer had gathered all of its jelly in one place to give itself an advantage over Hajime, but that backfired on it now. It would die precisely because it had gone all out. Hajime kept pouring flamrock in until he was sure the Devourer was thoroughly saturated.
He grinned wickedly at the Devourer, a sharp glint in his eyes. There was a small burning object in his hand.
“Let me show you what hell feels like.” He flicked it into one of his warp gates with his thumb. It stuck to the flamrock, pouring through and reappearing inside the Devourer. 3,000 degree flames spread to every inch of the monster’s body, devouring the Devourer whole.
It transformed from black to red in the span of a few heartbeats. As the flames were originating inside of it, the Devourer had no way to fight back. It could only watch in horror as its body was eaten away.
Soon, it couldn’t contain the flames inside it, and gouts of fire shot out of it. However, this just made it catch fire from both outside and in. The flames were so hot that they evaporated the surface of the ocean and a large cloud of steam covered the Devourer.
Jets of water shot up as the hyper-pressurized steam rose to the surface. The sea began to roil and bubble as the parts of the Devourer still underwater burned away. Yue’s barrier kept the choppy waves off them while the party searched the area, making sure no traces of it remained.
They combed the surroundings for a while, but they didn’t see any more jelly. Hajime used his Demon Eye and Farsight to check even more thoroughly, but still didn’t see anything.
Now he was certain. The ancient monster of the depths, the Devourer, was no more.
“Gah... That was hard...” Hajime’s warp gates lost their glimmer and fell to the ground as he stopped powering them. The swirling cloud of mana that had surrounded him so far faded away as well. He slumped to his knees and grimaced. He’d overexerted himself using Limit Break, so now he was left with a pounding headache. Still, his eyes glowed with the joy of triumph. They’d done it.
“Hajime, are you alright?”
“Hajime-kun, I’ll heal you right away, don’t worry!”
Yue walked over and helped him stand, Kaori started casting healing magic, and Shea and Tio ran up and hugged Hajime.
“We did it, Hajime-san!”
“Wonderful, Master. Your murder methods are as creative and cruel as always. That sent shivers down my spine.”
Kaori’s healing magic soothed Hajime’s headache, and he smiled at his comrades. A grumpy old man’s voice interrupted their celebration.
“Hey, Young Haj. Next time you’re about the blow the ocean up, tell me first. I thought I was going to die back there.”
“Ah, Fish-san. Sorry. I was so focused on killing it that I forgot.”
The explosion of pressure caused by the heat had blown the fishman away too. Hajime had been so focused on killing the Devourer that he’d forgotten the fishman was also in the water. He also hadn’t expected an explosion. The interaction between the flamrock and the ocean had surprised even him.
“Well, I won’t deny killing Devourers is pretty taxing. You guys did a good job.”
“If you hadn’t saved us back there, we might really have died. Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. Though I was just repaying my debts, so don’t worry too much about it.”
“You’re so cool, Fish-san. My thanks to whatever coincidence brought you here.”
“Young Haj, a series of coincidences is what we call fate. It was fate that you saved me back in that city, just as it was fate that brought me here to save you.”
Hajime and the fishman smiled at each other. It almost looked like they were communicating silently. The girls whispered to each other as they watched this bizarre spectacle.
“Is it just me, or does it feel like they really understand each other?”
“Is this what friendships between guys are like?”
“Hajime-kun, is the first friend you made in this world really a fishman? I know you didn’t get along with other people back in Japan, but that doesn’t mean you have to turn to other species!”
“They were like that last time, too. I guess it’s the boys’ version of girls’ talk or something? Though he’s talking to an old man and not a boy... Actually, he’s not even an old man. He’s just a fish.”
They were both a little confused and a little creeped out that Hajime seemed closer to a fish than to them. After a while, it seemed Hajime and the fishman’s conversation came to an end.
“I’ll be leaving then, Young Haj. We’ll meet again, if fate wills it.”
“Yeah. Stay safe, Fish-san.”
The fishman turned around and swam off after hearing those words. However, just as he was about to vanish from sight, he stopped and turned to face Shea.
“Good luck. I know you’ve got a lot of rivals, but you can do it. Whenever you two have kids, let me know. I’ll let them play with mine. I’ll introduce you to my wife, too. Bye, then.” He turned back around and vanished into the deep blue sea.
Hajime and the others were stunned.
“He’s married!?”
No one had expected that. Hajime had thought the fishman just liked wandering around, but it turned out he was actually a deadbeat dad. It took a while for everyone’s shock to wear off.
Chapter III: A New Vow
“Daddy! It’s morning! It’s time to get up!” A young child’s voice rang out through the second floor of a certain house in Erisen. The sun had crested over the horizon, and was making its way up the sky. Looking out the window, one could tell the weather would be great.
“Haaah...” Hajime rolled over in his bed. The young child, who was of course Myu, ran over to him to wake him up.
She jumped up onto his bed and landed squarely on his stomach. The full weight of her body pressed down against him.
She may have been a little girl of only four years, but people were heavy. She still weighed around 16 kilograms. If something that heavy slammed into a normal person’s stomach, they’d normally groan in pain. Hajime, though, barely felt it. Still, he wasn’t too happy about being forced awake.
“Daddy, get up. It’s morning. The sun’s out.”
“Hey Myu. Good morning. I’m up, so you can stop slapping me now?”
Myu had been happily slapping Hajime’s cheek to wake him up. He raised himself to a sitting position and lifted Myu off him. Her long emerald hair spilled out behind her. He smiled as he looked up at her. They really did resemble father and daughter.
“Mmm... Hajime? Myu?” A tired voice called out to Myu. Hajime pulled back the sheets to reveal Yue, sleeping curled up in a ball next to him
Despite the fact that she’d just woken up, her hair wasn’t messy at all. It glimmered in the sun, and her eyes shone like rubies. She blinked a few times. Like Hajime, Yue was naked. Her long hair fell over her shoulders, covering portions of her porcelain-white skin.
“Why are you and Yue-oneechan always naked, Daddy?” Specifically, Myu meant why they were always naked when she came to wake them up in the mornings. Hajime and Yue hadn’t become nudists since returning from Melusine’s labyrinth.
“You don’t have any pajamas?” Myu asked innocently. She looked at Hajime with pity, and he exchanged glances with Yue. There was no way they could give this pure girl an answer that would corrupt her mind. After agonizing over it for a few seconds, Yue came to his rescue. She gave a very respectable, mature answer.
“Myu, you’ll understand when you’re older.”
“I will?”
“Yeah, you will.”
With that, they dodged a bullet. Yue would let Remia teach her daughter about sex. However, Myu wasn’t completely convinced. She tilted her head and, after a few seconds of thought, turned around and asked another damning question.
“Do you know because you’re big over here, Daddy? But I don’t have one of those... Does that mean I’ll never understand?” Myu started poking at Hajime’s morning wood. Hajime hurriedly pulled her off.
“Myu, don’t touch that. Listen up. You’re a girl, so it’s normal not to have one. Don’t worry about it. In ten years, no in twenty years you’ll... Actually, just never worry about it.” Hajime started spouting some very dumb things with a very serious face. Myu had no idea what Hajime was trying to say, but she nodded all the same. Satisfied, Hajime began combing her hair with his fingers. Myu forgot all about what she’d been wondering before and leaned into Hajime.
Yue watched the proceedings with an amused look on her face. His surprisingly insatiable libido combined with his overprotectiveness for Myu made for an interesting mixture.
Hajime averted his gaze. The three of them sat there in the morning sun for a while longer until Kaori and Remia showed up, wondering why Hajime still hadn’t come down.
Six days had passed since they’d ridden Tio back to Erisen after clearing the Sunken Ruins of Melusine. They’d been staying at Remia’s house, and since their return they’d been the talk of the town.
The party had spent the past six days mastering the new magic they’d acquired and repairing and improving their equipment. Though, with the great food and warm weather, they spent more time vacationing than preparing really.
Still, six days was a long time to spend even if they’d been both training and vacationing. The reason was of, course, Myu.
Hajime wouldn’t be taking Myu with him on his travels any longer. There was no way he’d able to take a four-year-old girl into a labyrinth located on the other edge of the world.
Worse, the two other labyrinths were in even more dangerous locations. One of them was located in demon territory, in the Frost Caverns of the Schnee Snow Fields. The other was on the Divine Mountain, of all places. Both would require them to dive right into the heart of the enemy. It was impossible to leave Myu somewhere safe while he challenged those labyrinths.
Myu herself seemed to have realized that too. Every time someone tried to bring up the topic, she’d start acting extremely spoiled and make it difficult for anyone to mention it. They dragged out their training more than they needed to just to have an excuse to stay longer.
“Still, we really need to get moving soon... Haaah, I’m going to have to tell Myu. You think she’ll cry? Actually, she’ll definitely cry... Man, this sucks.” Hajime sat on the pier and sighed to himself. He was out transmuting more equipment for their upcoming trials. When he’d first left the abyss he couldn’t have cared less about anyone in this world, yet now he was depressed over parting with a single girl. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“This is all your fault, Sensei...” Though his words sounded harsh, there was a gentle smile on his face. It had been Aiko’s guidance that had led to such a shift in Hajime’s thinking. He was no longer willing to sacrifice anything and everything for the sake of his goal.
As he watched Yue, Shea, Kaori, Tio, and Myu frolic around in the water, he realized he was glad Aiko had lectured him. Had he simply abandoned Myu in Fuhren, or decided to ignore Ankaji’s plight, or just left Myu with Remia the moment they’d found her, chances were his comrades wouldn’t have been smiling as happily
as they were now.
It was true that leaving those people he’d saved to their plight wouldn’t necessarily have caused Yue and the others to be depressed.
But still, he was certain they wouldn’t be nearly as happy.
He didn’t have any proof, but he was sure of it.
All because he’d taken Aiko’s words to heart. He’d avoided going down what she’d said was a lonely path.
“Guess she was right.” Hajime smiled ruefully to himself. He watched as Myu skillfully evaded Yue and the others in a strange game of tag. Despite the fact that they were all overpowered beyond measure and were working together to try and catch Myu, her swimming abilities kept her ahead.
I never thought saying goodbye would be so hard... Hajime couldn’t lie to himself. He sighed for the umpteenth time that day. The moment he brought up the fact that he’d be leaving, he knew he would end up marring her smiling face with tears.
As if sensing his worries, Remia swam up to Hajime. She stopped in front of his legs, which were dangling in the water. Seawater dripped off her emerald-green hair. She’d tied it back in a single braid, and was wearing a light-green bikini. When they’d first met her she’d looked haggard, but thanks to the restoration magic they’d found in Melusine’s labyrinth she was as lively as ever. It was hard to imagine she was old enough to be someone’s mother.
Hajime could see why every bachelor in town wanted to be her new husband, and had even started a fan club for her and Myu. Her beauty rivaled that of Tio’s, and she looked absolutely stunning in her bikini. Furthermore, because she was in the water, she was eye-level with his crotch. Hajime, who’d been worrying himself sick over Myu, was taken completely by surprise.
Remia placed a hand on Hajime’s knee and looked up at him. Her expression was one of gentle concern.
“Thank you, Hajime-san.”
“Where’d that come from? I didn’t really do anything deserving of thanks, I don’t think.” He looked quizzically down at Remia.
“Ufufu, don’t be silly, you’re worrying so much for my daughter’s sake. As her mother, it’d be wrong of me not to thank you.”
Arifureta: From Commonplace to World's Strongest Vol. 5 Page 22
