Chapter 3 - Calamity Event

1st Saga - The Balance

Hanakawa Arc

[ The Finale Event will descend in: 0:01:00:03 ]

Massive barricades stood tall along the shores of Hanakawa. By now, all the streets of Hanakawa should’ve been empty with my dad having issued the order to evacuate through the valley in the case of an uncontrollable emergency. By now, all that remained was ourselves and the rest of the village sentry under the darkened night sky.

An unnatural wind began swirling around over the lake as a veil of clouds coalesced to obscure the moon and stars from sight. 

[ The opening act of the Finale Event will now begin ]

“What?”

The opening act? These messages seemed more and more like they were talking about a stage production rather than something that held the future of our lives in its grasp.

[ Survive the unending waves until midnight. Time remaining: 0:59:58 ]

The timer that had just appeared began to tick down. None of us had ever heard of an unending wave before, but what lay in wait for us for the next hour couldn’t have been more obvious. 

“Everybody! To your stations!”

My dad began shouting orders left and right as dozens of bolts of crimson lightning struck the ground beyond the barricades. 

As my eyes swept over the newly summoned beasts, a singular shared trait between all of them stood out. Not a single one was above a rank 1 threat. My dad seemed to notice this at the same time.

“Hold”

He raised his arm as a signal to not engage, then nodded towards one of our men positioned on a rooftop. The crackling of a flame sizzling could be heard, then a deafening Boom! In an instant, all the beasts had their very physical existence destroyed. 

Another barrage of lightning struck the shore. This time, the beasts ranged up to rank 2 threats, but not beyond. 

“There’s a pattern. The ‘unending waves’ will get stronger with each wave we defeat”

“Then why don’t we just not fight them?”

It was a logical idea. With the rank 2 threats unable to break down the barricade, we simply waited to see if the opening act could be completed in such a way. Unfortunately, it could never have been this easy.

[ Survive the unending waves until midnight. Time remaining: 0:50:01 ]

An additional message now appeared underneath the previous.

[ The 2nd wave was not cleared. A penalty will be issued. Now summoning the 3rd and 4th waves simultaneously ]

A massive chain of bolts rained down, from which emerged various beasts that now included rank 4 threats. The goliaths moved at the forefront of the charge, creating breaches in the barricade with their heavy swings. 

My dad issued the command for our vanguard to engage.

“There’s a way to clear this more easily. If we’re going off the first few waves, the penalties will be issued every ten minutes if the previous wave wasn’t cleared. That means we can take our time to clear out each wave as long as we don’t take longer than ten minutes, and if we take just under ten minutes to clear each wave, that means we can minimize the fighting necessary before the Finale Event”

In a series of shouts, my dad relayed my plan to the rest of the sentry. 

[ Time remaining: 0:21:35 ]

The unending waves were progressing smoothly. For a short moment, it began to feel as if the Finale Event could be cleared without a hitch.

The message box flickered in the corner of my eye. It wasn’t a large movement, but it was something I’d never seen before in viewing the messages nearly every day of my life. I looked directly towards the box, yet it now seemed stable once more. I returned my eyes to the battlefield.

[ T1m3 r3ma.// ; 9:99:99 ]

This time, I quickly snapped back to look at the message box. It didn’t change back. The letters morphed into numbers, the symbols into shapes, constantly shifting and wavering. Something was wrong, yet as I hurriedly looked around, nobody else’s faces indicated they were witnessing the same phenomenon.

[ System error. ]

A blinding crimson flash of light shone from behind the clouds, accompanied by a deafening roar. As if traced by the hand of a giant, a massive spell circle that spanned the width of the lake emerged in the sky.

[ Your Finale Event is the Calamity Event ]

…Calamity Event?

For some reason, I could now see the message boxes of everyone else around me. Their message was different from mine, reading:

[ The Finale Event has been delayed. The Calamity will now descend ]

A murmur of confusion rose throughout the crowds.

“The Calamity?”

“What the hell?! We didn’t even finish the waves!”

“Is there something wrong?”

“What’s happening?”

“What do we do?!”

From the center of the spell circle emerged a small orb of pure energy no larger than my fists put together, resembling the corrupted cores I so often destroyed in the sentry. It seemed that I was the first to notice it. Perhaps I was the only one who could see it. In the blink of an eye, the orb blitzed towards me.

I opened my eyes to an endless expanse of darkness. The only source of light appeared to be a window before me, taking on the appearance of a massive message box that relayed somebody’s perspective. 

They opened their eyes and used their arms to prop themselves up. Their vision was shaky and all that could be clearly seen from the feed was what was directly in front of them. No, wait. Their arms? It felt wrong, but there was no mistaking it. Those were my arms. How and why was I watching my own perspective like this? I tried to make my body in the feed move the way I commanded it, yet the only movements that followed were those of my current existence in the void.

Their vision gradually focused as I set my eyes on what lay in the background. The sight nearly made me hurl, if doing such a thing was even possible in this plane. Hanakawa was engulfed in a sea of flames, crumbling buildings breaking down all around me. I heard the screams of the pained and dying as if it was through my own ears.

Multiple voices in the distance were shouting towards ‘me’. I instantly recognized their voices, and the rapidly approaching figures confirmed my suspicions. If only for a moment, I felt relieved. Their faces were now in view, their expressions dominated by fear.

Against futility, I tried to move towards them. As the body in the feed began to move, the last flutter of hope left my body. 

[ “Kouki” has activated Steel Armament ]

My arm swung without hesitation, barely being blocked by Kouki’s main ability at full power. His body rocketed back from the impact while my own was barely phased.

My parents began yelling at me, their voices slightly muffled, yet their intent was still conveyed. Against my will, my body once again swung towards them, overpowering them just as easily as Kouki. 

“What the hell is this?! Stop it!”

I began shouting at the feed and tried to smash it with my fists, yet my arms simply passed through the projection. Desperately, I kept trying to break the feed to no avail. Of course, I had never been able to interact with the messages, so why would this be any different. A sense of helplessness overcame me as I turned away, the desperate shouts of my family still traveling to my ears. 

“Why…”

I began muttering to myself. The sounds from the feed started becoming more vivid. The crackling of fire as if it were right next to my ear, the splintering of wood as if it was broken in my hands, the breaking of bones as if they were within my body. I tightly squeezed my eyes shut and tried to cover my ears, yet the sounds were coming from within my head at this point. 

Gentle approaching footsteps caused me to raise my head from my curled up position. These weren’t coming from the ‘real world’, they were here with me in this solitary void. I glanced towards the source of the sound and staggered back. The figure resembled me, only with red eyes and coursing red veins along their hands and the sides of their face. 

“How are you enjoying the view?”

The figure addressed me with a provocative tone. 

In a reflexive fit of rage, I lunged at the ‘me’ in front of my eyes, while the ‘me’ in the feed was breaking down what our family had built.

[ Your mana attribute has embodied Steel ]

[ You have activated Steel Armament ]

Seeing the messages filled me with unquenchable rage. These stupid things were now trying to help me after ruining everything just earlier?

I swung again and again at the other me, his face becoming more and more disfigured with every hit. For some incorrigible reason, he kept smiling.

At some point I grew tired, not physically, but mentally of everything around me. I looked towards the feed, my eyes now bloodshot, watching as my physical body commanded sparks of crimson energy to plunge what was left of Hanakawa deep underground into a cavern. As we fell, I glimpsed a look of resolution in Kouki’s eyes. Something had changed since I last looked at the feed. 

The water from the lake began pouring down into the sinkhole, washing away everything in its path. The view in the feed began to adjust to the darkness underground, revealing an ancient city of stone ruins and strange architecture. Such a sight would’ve captivated the younger me, who wanted to learn all there was about the history surrounding our village. 

I punched the other me once more, maybe just out of spite. 

“Letting all that anger and energy out, doesn’t it feel good?”

The other me was still rambling on with his nonsense. I picked him up by the throat, about to pop that goddamn smirking head of his, before deciding to toss him off into the darkness. His voice still returned.

“You can’t get rid of me. I’m you, after all”

He was both wrong and right. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, but everything that was happening pointed towards one conclusion: I had somehow become corrupted. I vaguely remembered a text in the archives on the corruption of living beings, but I didn’t bother to recall its exact words. They were meaningless to me now. 

The feed now showed me wandering amidst the ruins, where my physical body paused in front of a crystalline growth along a wall. I gazed into ‘my’ reflection. I looked almost the same. My eyes were the exact same as the other me in my mind, and there was a gaping hole in the center of my chest, in the middle of which a corrupted core was sustained. The sight didn’t add any additional shock at this point. My physical body lingered in front of the reflection for some time, as if to taunt me. 

“What the hell do you want?”

I addressed the other me in a cold tone.

“Oh, nothing much. Just what you could never obtain alone. The ability to free your village and travel beyond the Horizon, the ability to wield power beyond what any of your family ever could… There’s some more, but you’ll soon understand”

[ “Koharu” is attempting to become one with your existence ]