Chapter 175
◇◇◇
Sensei has a slight concern of her own.
「Well, you see, this isn’t something to worry too much about. But when we went into the Sealed Dungeon and came back out, there was a discrepancy of a few days between the time inside and the time outside. If I recall correctly, three days in there was about a week out here.」
While Anon has already shared this information with Sensei, the others quickly calculate that 「the time passed was more than double.」
「Similarly, if the space where son-in-law was dragged into has a different flow of time from the outside world, we might have a bit of a problem on our hands.」
Though Sensei describes it as 「a problem,」 if the time flow is three or four times faster than the outside world, there’s a possibility that while they’re taking their time here, Ichiro is being forced to fight alone for an extended period.
「Lady Omi!! Then we can’t waste time here—!!」
Everyone present except Sensei immediately arrives at this possibility. Among them, Purume, the eldest, is the first to raise her voice.
However, Sensei responds gently.
「Puru, calm down. As I mentioned at the start, this is an extremely unlikely phenomenon, so there’s no need to worry too much. Even if there is a time difference with the outside world, it would be at most like the Sealed Dungeon, where one day here is about two days there. For us who are heading to Sena to rescue son-in-law, it won’t be that significant of a loss.」
Sensei says this much, but then seems to lose a bit of confidence in her own words.
「Then again, considering it’s him we’re talking about…」 she ponders with her arms crossed—and finally concludes,
「I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to hurry to his rescue.」
Using these words as their cue, Anon and the others spring into action, quickly preparing Crane’s Guidance and joining up with the three who were on the Virtuous side.
◇◇◇
Despite having lived for a long time, knowing many things, and accumulating various experiences, there was something that even Sensei couldn’t predict.
That was, of course, Ichiro’s critically low Luck.
However, there was a reason for this.
Due to his critically low Luck, Ichiro had fallen into so many dangerous situations that 「This is bad! This is bad!」 had become his catchphrase, but recently, the frequency of such incidents had somewhat decreased.
This was because Ichiro had been living with two beings who were like goddesses of victory(?).
Sena and Sensei’s presence had been preventing disasters from befalling him. Of course, neither of them was doing this consciously.
However, now Ichiro is alone again.
As one might expect, an extraordinary disaster has befallen him.
It was even worse than what Sensei had mentioned as a worst-case scenario.
From when Ichiro disappeared until they managed to regroup in the city of Skuld using Crane’s Guidance, less than two hours had passed for them.
However, sadly, for Ichiro who continues to fight against Ainika in the separate space, two days have already passed.
One hour in the outside world equals one day in the space where Ichiro is.
This far exceeds Sensei’s prediction that even a three or four times time difference would be nearly impossible. Here, Ichiro has demonstrated his extraordinary bad luck.
○○○
「Die!!」
「Aaagh!! You’re persistent!!」
Since Ichiro can now draw in qi from the outside world and convert it to mana, there are effectively no restrictions on his mana usage.
However, this doesn’t mean he has found a decisive way to defeat Ainika.
What should have been instant death during the gaps in his ultra-acceleration has turned into what you might call an eternal stalemate—no, it’s worse than that, considering the food and water situation, not to mention the potion problem.
Unless he can figure out a way to defeat the enemy soon, running out of strength and dying is inevitable.
While thinking about such things, Ichiro’s throat becomes dry, so he once again slices Ainika into pieces and annihilates him with Light Magic.
Since Ainika will stubbornly revive anyway, Ichiro quickly gulps down water from his magic bag.
As expected, right before his eyes, the vanished particles gather into ash, the ash gathers into flesh, the flesh swirls together into a mass, and in no time at all, Ainika completes his revival.
「No matter how long you persist, it’s futile. You are destined to die anyway.」
Ainika declares.
Last time, Ichiro had kept an accurate count of the enemy’s revivals, but this time, he has given up counting. Still, given that he’s been fighting continuously for two days, he must have already defeated the enemy more than the previous 1,080 times.
By this point, Ichiro isn’t just fighting back; he’s making sure to try various experiments while fighting.
For example, he’s been thinking about whether he can completely annihilate the enemy, or if not, whether he can at least find a way to vanquish him with minimal effort, and has developed several Light Magic techniques toward these goals.
Though these are mostly variations of existing Light Magic that he can use.
Among them, he feels particularly good about 「Light Fan,」 which can attack an extremely wide area in one swing.
When he swings it, it makes a 「whoosh」 sound.
After annihilating the eternally reviving Ainika once again, Ichiro shouts:
「What am I supposed to do?! Somebody help me!!」
If you enjoy it and wish to see more, please consider giving it a 5-star rating for the series on NU. Click Here.
Check out my Patreon for early access to upcoming updates. Patreon Link