“Want to go to the team dinner tonight, Teacher Yuto?”
Kagami Yuto, who had been spacing out a little, heard someone suddenly call him and fell into a brief daze.
“Ah, no… no thanks. I’m not free today. Sorry.”
“That’s a shame. Say, Teacher Yuto, do you not really like this kind of gathering? I don’t think I’ve seen you join many.”
“No, it’s not that. I just always happen to have something to deal with.”
He rubbed his nose a little awkwardly, but it had to be said that this was also the truth.
As a teacher, he did want to use gatherings like this to get along with his colleagues.
But as things stood, he was not only a teacher.
He was also the Ultraman guarding humanity.
With that duty on his shoulders, he had no mood for those relaxing activities.
It was like a soldier on watch not being able to drink.
Someone always had to be there to keep the city safe.
“Actually, relaxing once in a while is fine too. Keeping your heart strung tight the whole time wears a warrior down.”
Roa’s voice came into his mind.
Even he, the one involved, could not help sighing at how hard Roa was trying.
At that, Kagami Yuto sighed helplessly.
“It’s fine. Once everything is over, I’ll give myself a proper vacation.”
“The priority is still to settle what’s in front of us. It’s been a while since the last incident. I keep feeling the monsters will show up again before long.”
He paced back and forth before the computer desk.
The notes on the desk were filled with his analyses of the enemy’s intent.
In the spare moments of his work, he had been studying this seriously the whole time.
“Mm. Aside from all that, there’s actually something I’ve been curious about.”
“…What?”
“This goes back a ways. Yuto, do you remember why I transferred my power to you?”
Kagami Yuto, who had been deep in thought, suddenly heard him say it.
Those words pulled his memory straight back to the battle three months ago, the first time he and Roa had met.
“Back then I saw you fighting the monster, and halfway through you suddenly vanished.”
“Yes. That was me being ‘banished’ by some mysterious power.”
“Including where I am now. Even I don’t know which stretch of the universe this is.”
There was helplessness in his words.
Hearing them, Kagami Yuto sympathized, and at the same time gradually caught the point he wanted to make.
“A special mysterious power…”
“Mm. It might be something like a planetary will. This is a little troublesome to explain. You can think of it as every planet that has given birth to life being alive, and a planetary will is a higher form of life like that.”
“Alive… the Earth?”
It was the first time Kagami Yuto had heard of this concept.
It went a little beyond his understanding of life.
“Looks like I still don’t understand the universe well enough. My idea of life has always been based only on what I’ve seen on Earth.”
He had been a little troubled by this, but the moment he thought of how Roa, the one speaking with him, was a life beyond what an Earthling could imagine, many of the things he could not make sense of gradually eased.
“The mysteries of the universe are far more than you imagine. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Even we of the Ultra race can’t claim to fully understand the whole universe.”
“The Ultra race? You mean you have companions, Roa?”
At those words, Kagami Yuto’s interest was suddenly stirred.
“Of course. My homeland is the Land of Light.”
“There are many seniors there who are like me, and even stronger than me. By the way, the lives of our Ultra race are extraordinarily long. About tens of thousands of times the limit of a human lifespan.”
“Tens of thousands of times. That’s incredible…”
“Human civilization is only a few thousand years old. Doesn’t that mean that for you Ultramen, witnessing a civilization’s birth and rise is nothing more than the snap of a finger in a life?”
“Mm. More or less.”
At those words, Kagami Yuto was even more shaken.
He did not feel at all that Roa was lying.
By now he had already seen countless things beyond his understanding, and he suddenly felt that his old imaginings of the universe had all been conservative.
“So, by that logic, the one protecting the guy holding the Evil Beast Lock… is the will of the Earth?”
“…I don’t know. But I think there shouldn’t be anything else on Earth that could do these things. I’ve never understood why the planetary will treats me as an enemy, while that alien isn’t banished along with me.”
“When both of us are outsiders.”
At those words, Kagami Yuto fell silent too.
Indeed, this was very hard to explain.
If one spoke of destruction, every appearance of the monsters caused far more than he did.
Even so, the will of the Earth still ignored all of it.
It made one have to wonder what method the enemy hiding in the dark had used.
“Mr. Roa, can a planetary will be controlled by someone?”
He asked, as if something had suddenly occurred to him.
“Controlled by someone…”
“In theory, yes. Sorry. I still know too little about this. Studying has never been my strong suit.”
Rarely, he heard a thread of shame in the other’s words.
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I was only asking.”
“Mm… Actually, I think that if that guy really could control the will of the Earth, then there would be almost no chance of us defeating him.”
“At the very least, we couldn’t have won the previous fights. That we could win only means he hasn’t yet reached the level we’re imagining.”
Kagami Yuto nodded.
In his heart he agreed with this explanation.
“Then all of this seems to make a bit of sense.”
“The reason that alien is still willing to stay on Earth is nothing other than the will of the Earth. Maybe he really has found some way to seize and control it, and whatever that method involves is very likely in Minamihara City…!”
“And his motive for releasing the monsters is probably just to have them clear the obstacles on Earth for him. All the more reason we have to stop him.”
When he finished, he felt as if his mind had finally been unblocked.
The direction that had troubled him for so long was finally beginning to grow clear.
“A very reasonable guess.”
“But this way, it’s a bit of pressure on me too. After all, we don’t know how far the enemy has already gotten.”
Roa’s voice carried a thread of gravity.
“That’s true. But I’ve already thought of a way.”
“Oh? What way?”
Kagami Yuto smiled.
This time, rarely, he kept them in suspense.
“This is where we need human wisdom. Speaking of which, I really feel like a detective right now.”
What Kagami Yuto did not know was that the being he had just called the will of the Earth was, at this very moment, sleeping deeply in his bed at home, and thoroughly wrecking the quilt he had gone to such trouble to fold.