NOVEL NEXT Interlude: The Kill Zone
Fujino Mitsuru is dead.
She technically still breathes and moves, but this is a formality; she is dead with complete and total certainty, because a slab of rock almost exactly the dimensions of Shibuya Scramble Square has just materialized one thousand meters above her position in the Arksview Forest, and is hurtling towards her at exactly thirty-two meters per second per second. She is aware, with exacting precision, of its definitive location and speed, because her Unique Skill is Inevitable Eye; it grants her total awareness of everything around her at all times, and until about two seconds ago was generally a source of security and comfort to her (due to its ability to perceive, locate, and track all information and threats despite stealth, invisibility, or obscurity of any kind). Her B-Rank Class, Chaos Assassin, has a very large number of powerful techniques for killing opponents and none at all for destroying, evading, or otherwise escaping the doom which is hurtling towards her at this very moment. Her overland speed, while prodigious in the extreme, is exactly half of what would be required to clear the impact zone during her remaining six seconds of existence; her most powerful attacks, if directed at the ground beneath her feet, would be capable of digging a hole six meters deep but would be incapable of shielding her from the hammer-blow of compressed air which would strip the flesh from her bones almost instantly after the strike.
Her Unique Skill grants her the ability to analyze the correct attack, defense, or countermeasure for any escapable situation; and so, confronted by the spectre of 730,000 kilograms of ineluctable igneous death, it simply lists, accurately and exhaustively, all the pertinent facts -- an ironclad proof of how all the multifarious ways she might attempt to evade such a fate will not work. And so it is not surprising that Fujino Mitsuru, whose favorite food is octopus and who once dreamed of being a chess champion, simply stands still for five seconds, gripped by despair. At the ultimate last moment, a miraculous escape does not occur; the specifics of what follows are best elided.
And then, four minutes later, someone else makes things even more unpleasant for her.
Kurihara Yuki is, and has always been, invincible.
She was invincible on Earth, before her Summoning; she has been invincible since long before she glimpsed her A-Rank Status in the Speculus of Distinction. Her Class, Golden Oathkeeper, is among the most powerful in scope of all support classes available to the forces of humanity; she can heal nearly any injury, summon shields and force fields capable of withstanding nearly any attack or impact, and bestow blessings and enchantments of nearly every conceivable nature upon both her allies and herself. She can raise the physical attributes of any ally to A-Rank with a single spell, and target up to a hundred allies per casting; the effect is somewhat short-lived, but how long does it really need to last when the battle is over long before it expires? She can hasten, strengthen, electrify, and fortify any ally within her line of sight a dozen different ways, and also call down bolts of incandescence at distances of up to ten thousand meters that have destructive force sufficient to vaporize a small mountain. On this, the first real scouting expedition of her party into the uttermost fringes of the area surrounding the dungeon they are to explore, she is expecting to have to do nothing at all; she has already bestowed many long-lasting enchantments upon Fujino-chan, who is their forward intelligence, and nearly twice that number upon the rest of the party (particularly Arima-sama, who hardly needs her protection but seems to expect it as her due nonetheless). But none of these things matter; even entirely bereft of MP and all of her Class Skills, she would still be invincible.
The reason for this is that her Unique Skill, Erase Presence, is a perfect defense against any attack; she has been honing it since she was very small, practicing silence and unobtrusiveness as a way to avoid the hideous fates meted out to those of her brothers and sisters who attracted their father's attention. She keeps it active at all times in the field; it does not prevent her from casting spells (including offensive ones!), has no time or usage limit, and requires only the barest hint of effort to maintain. She routinely sleeps with it active; she has maintained it while masturbating to orgasm in the midst of a crowded strategy meeting. It eradicates all traces of her existence -- sight, sound, touch, temperature, and all others -- with complete totality. And so it is very much a surprise to her when, roughly nineteen minutes after Fujino Mitsuru dies, she is decapitated by a razor-sharp sword driven forth by the Chaos Assassin Skill Anarchic Execution and guided home by the Unique Skill Inevitable Eye. The rotting hand that grips the blade disintegrates a few seconds later, but it is too late for anyone to stop what is in motion.
Nakatomi Takashi is very confused.
This morning, he enjoyed a delicious breakfast; he strode forth in expectation of either a very boring scouting mission or a very exciting battle, and it has never entered his head that he might be in any real danger. As an A-Ranker, he knows with a deep certainty that he is special, chosen, and preserved for a great destiny; the fact that his Hell Gambler Class so perfectly suits his reckless confidence only reinforces his stolid belief in his own significance. He has, just this moment, noticed that his teammate Yuki-chan is both abruptly perceptible and obviously dead, which upsets him; she was super hot and he had harbored very specific intentions regarding her body vis-à-vis his own. The thought we are under attack smoothly glides through his awareness, but Nakatomi Takashi is nothing if not adaptable.
In an instant, he activates two of his most powerful abilities; first, his Devour Mana Unique Skill, which he extends in a circle nearly a kilometer wide around the three remaining members of his party (Arima-sama, Takano-kun, and himself) at maximum strength. So focussed, any hostile spellcaster or effect will be rendered instantly harmless and unprotected; it is thus with supreme confidence that he follows such an action with his Damnation Wheel Skill, which destroys a contiguous but much smaller circle just beyond the his party's line of defense. Such an attack, which automatically targets any struck foe's weakness, floods outward into the mana-parched space he has just created; an area of almost exactly 0.5π² square kilometers explodes in profane, infernal devastation. Which would be very effective except for the fact that there is a fourth person, standing just behind Arima-sama, who is not supposed to be here and who is gesturing rather lackadaisically towards him. Arima-sama whirls around and blinks in his direction.
A moment later, Nakatomi Takashi is hurled with unimaginable force into the dome of the firmament, some 768,000 kilometers away. His body does not survive the experience.
Exactly the same thing happens to Takano Shuji, except he survives.
What has happened is a total mystery to him, but he doesn't need to understand what's happening; he just needs to not die. He activates his Immovable Defense Unique Skill 238 milliseconds after becoming aware that he is under attack; this is shortly after he has already been ejected from the world's surface, but before he impacts with the force of a mid-size hydrogen bomb into the unbreakable border of this world's physical universe. Several radians distant, he sees Nakatomi Takashi's impact, though he does not recognize its significance (currently the least of his problems).
Takano Shuji is concerned, but not unduly so; despite the fact that he appears to be in outer space, there is air to breathe here and the temperature is not uncomfortable. His Eternal Vigilance and Watchful Guard Skills will preserve him as long as necessary without sleep, food, or water, so he is in no immediate danger. The one problem he does have, however, is that he is trapped, motionless, in an empty void with no way to return to aid his comrades. If he deactivates his Immovable Defense skill, he judges that he will eventually fall back to earth; but below him is a vast, inhospitable sea, and the one thing Takano Shuji cannot do is survive underwater.
We'll come back to Takano Shuji. He's not going anywhere for a long, long time.
Arima Ayame is very, very frightened.
In the space of one second, everything has gone completely to shit; she has just witnessed the zombified, undead corpse of Fujino Mitsuru appear from absolutely nowhere in the blink of an eye and decapitate Kurihara Yuki. Her S-Rank Intelligence deduces, in the tiny fraction of time which follows, exactly what has occurred -- someone has killed Mitsuru-chan, reanimated her corpse, and used her Inevitable Eye Unique Skill to defeat Yuki-chan's Erase Presence Unique Skill and eliminate her before anyone can react. This is the precise moment of greatest danger; the enemy, whoever they are, has made the first move, and her life (and, she supposes reluctantly, the lives of all her comrades) depends upon correct and instantaneous action. She judges, with uncanny accuracy, that the most likely place for an enemy to be is directly behind her; and so she whirls, eyes narrowing, and takes stock of the situation.
Exactly as she feared, two terrifying figures are behind her; ten feet tall and clad in black robes, they hold staves adorned with skulls, and greenish vapors drift from their hoods. She has no weapons (why would she need weapons) but she has countered their attack and robbed them of the element of surprise. She has no time for subtlety; instead, she simply exerts the full force of her Supreme Gravity Skill upon them, and they disappear. She could have crushed them, but prudence dictated a more cautious approach; there is no guarantee that they did not have pressure resistance or HP in the millions. It is possible her foes have survived; they may have access to powers of flight, may have survived impact with whatever solid body arrested their fantastical momentum. But she has bought herself one precious second, during which she is not under attack and can act to escape.
Marshaling her will, she activates her Intangibility Skill, but it does not respond. This has never happened to her before; understandably, she experiences panic for the first time since her arrival in this world. In desperation, she activates her Windstep Skill to teleport away, but it too fails to heed her command. Her blood pressure escalates; her heart pounds as though it will burst in her chest. Her surroundings are dimming; something's wrong, she can't raise her arms and the left side of her face is drooping.
Unbeheld, a figure -- robed and cowled, with great horns which protrude through primly-cut holes in its hood -- watches impassively as Arima Ayame twitches, jerks, and slides nervelessly to the ground. Gently and carefully, the demon known as Aldabath Zerom withdraws its psionic presence from her mind, where it has spent the last several seconds disrupting first her visual cortex signals, then her motor centers, and finally her brainstem. As she gasps and chokes, two other robed figures join it -- Ergnoth Tuex Quern and Vium Mortumferus -- and they all watch together as Arima Ayame experiences first a series of strokes, then a cerebral hemorrhage, and finally fatal hypoxia. No one speaks.
After everything is finished, Vium Mortumferus gestures (it must be noted, somewhat vehemently) at her corpse, and it dissolves into green fluid which rapidly evaporates; no one has yet been identified who possesses any kind of Resurrection Unique Skill, but no sense in taking chances. Their mission successful as planned, the three demons sink into the ground and disappear; there are no witnesses.
In Strathmore, Saiki Suzume awakens and clutches at her left hand with a gasp of pain. The gemstone atop the ring she wears on her index finger has just turned red, and tomorrow morning's strategy meeting is going to be very grim indeed.