“Jelanos.”
“What is it, my master?”
“Can’t this monster be controlled? It’s heading toward my school right now.”
Standing on the rooftop, Tsukimi Ryuune frowned slightly.
Although she was indeed indifferent to human lives, she still did not want the place she had grown used to staying to be demolished just like that.
“I’m afraid not. Once a monster is released, it can no longer be controlled. Now we can only see whether the humans of this Earth have any way to stop Melba.”
Hearing the words “cannot be controlled,” Tsukimi Ryuune instinctively pressed her brows together.
She had wanted to question him about something, but suddenly remembered that she was merely a bystander.
If she interfered too much, it would become her destroying the world, which would directly contradict her original intention of just watching the show.
“Forget it.”
“Anyway, as long as I want to, I can restore everything. I should try not to interfere at all.”
She sighed, then slowly sat down under the nearby parasol and took a gloomy sip of black tea.
Will that guy die?
If he’s still at school right now…
Watching the direction the monster was advancing, the figure of a certain someone inexplicably appeared in her mind.
That guy who always repeated the same words and stubbornly wanted to save her.
Would he know that she was actually no longer at school?
Forget it. Why am I worrying about him?
He’s not someone important to you.
—…
“The students have mostly been evacuated, Yuto-sensei. You should go take shelter too!”
“It’s fine, you all go first! I need to check the teaching building one more time to see if any students have been left behind.”
“Then be careful.”
“Mm. By the way, Fujimiya-sensei, have you seen Tsukimi Ryuune?”
“Tsukimi Ryuune?”
Kagami Yuto stopped in his tracks and asked, his eyes full of urgency.
“No. She might have already evacuated with the crowd. I have a pretty clear impression of that child’s appearance. If I had seen her, I would definitely remember.”
“I see… alright…”
Kagami Yuto pinched his brow in frustration.
Although his intuition told him that was probably the case, just to be safe, he still had to search the entire teaching building thoroughly.
For that reason he even went up to the rooftop, but found no traces there either.
“There should be no one left. I hope you really have already left the school, Ryuune-san…”
At the same time, the explosions overhead grew closer and closer, and the ground beneath his feet began to tremble frequently.
All these signs indicated that the monster was gradually approaching the place where he was.
“Help… is anyone there…?!”
“? There’s still someone?!”
Having found no one, Kagami Yuto was about to leave when, while descending the stairs, he heard a faint cry for help.
It was a female student who had accidentally fallen and injured her leg during the evacuation, unable to move and thus trapped on the third floor.
“Sensei, save me! The mon… monster is coming! I don’t want to die!”
The moment she saw someone appear, the girl broke down in tears from fear.
Seeing this, Kagami Yuto could only soothe her while carrying her on his back to evacuate.
“Don’t cry, classmate. Sensei is here. I’ll get you out of here right away.”
At those words, the girl on his back finally stopped crying.
Even so, when they passed through the school playground and he happened to catch sight of the enormous monster battling the human military in the distance, Kagami Yuto’s heart still couldn’t help but feel a trace of fear.
So he was already this close to death? If the fighting spread even a little closer in this direction…
“Report to command, two civilians who have not yet evacuated have been found in Zone E3. Should we cease attacks on the monster?”
“What? There are still people who haven’t evacuated in Zone E3? We’ve been holding the monster back for so long!”
The two fighter jets engaging Melba stopped their machine-gun fire upon hearing this, but that allowed the monster to seize the opportunity and shoot them down with a single strike.
This scene left Tsukimi Ryuune, who was observing from several kilometers away, somewhat silent.
“It seems human weapons are completely useless against ultra-ancient creatures. Whether cannons or missiles, they can’t even inflict any damage.”
Jelanos’s chuckling voice reached her ears, and Tsukimi Ryuune, who always liked to contradict others, merely said it was boring.
But the facts were indeed so.
Facing Melba’s assault, the human military was being completely crushed with almost no chance of victory.
They had used nearly every conventional weapon available, and Japan’s Ministry of Defense had even urgently requested assistance from the US Air Force stationed in Japan, yet even so they still could not halt Melba’s advance.
“I thought I would get to see an exciting showdown, but it turned out to be a completely one-sided situation.”
“In the end, it’s because humans have no experience dealing with monsters.”
Looking at the once-prosperous city now reduced to a hellish wasteland of ruins, Tsukimi Ryuune, whose heart had already grown somewhat numb, sighed helplessly.
“That’s enough. It’s time for me to step in and stop it from continuing its destruction. Besides, I’ve already grown tired of watching.”
She found herself a reason to intervene.
Not far in front of her, the cosmic weirdo Jelanos was about to say something when, the next second, a strange phenomenon suddenly appeared in the sky above Minamihara City.
A beam of light pierced through the thick clouds and shot toward Melba’s location, like a sharp blade cutting through the air.
Melba, having broken through the military blockade, was about to advance further—its target coinciding with Kagami Yuto, who was evacuating toward the subway station.
Sensing the movement behind him, the latter immediately ran forward with all his might.
The girl on his back had long since fainted from fright.
There were still three hundred meters to the shelter.
Three hundred meters might take a half-minute even for a sports student, but for a monster thirty stories tall it was only a matter of a few seconds.
Watching the black shadow at his feet gradually cover him, Kagami Yuto’s heart was instantly filled with despair.
“Damn it… I was so close…!”
He closed his eyes in despair.
Just when he thought he was definitely going to die, a tremor like a giant boulder crashing to the ground came from the earth behind him!
At the same time, Melba’s sharp roar rang out.
This sudden change left Kagami Yuto frozen in place, but what shocked him even more speechlessly was the enormous figure that had appeared out of nowhere behind him, blocking everything for him…
“A silver… giant.”
At the same time, in another corner of the city, Tsukimi Ryuune was equally shocked.
Just now, she had sensed a mysterious aura invading her world, using a channel similar to that of the cosmic weirdo Jelanos beside her.
At first she thought it was her imagination, until she saw that silver giant silhouette descending from the sky…