"The Beast?"
"Yeah, you can think of him as the Grim Reaper. He does what a Grim Reaper would do, he appears wherever someone dies and takes the souls of the deceased."
"You seem far too afraid of him for him to just be the Grim Reaper. Way too afraid" Kaito remarked.
"That's because he isn't the official one" Hekapoo said with an ironic smile.
"He isn't the official one?"
"No. He's just another one of us, someone from another world thrown into this empty place. He's a soul collector. He claims the souls that interest him while they're alive, then comes to collect them after they die. He enjoys torturing them forever inside his lantern while feeding his own life force" Hekapoo explained.
"And nobody has decided to kill him?"
"It's impossible. He's immortal as long as he has his lantern, and it's impossible to separate him from it. The closer you get to him, the easier it becomes for him to steal your soul, so nobody gets close. They'd rather just live their lives. Besides, the strongest don't die."
"Well, it just so happens that we have to go to him."
"Are you crazy? I thought you were the normal one, at least!" Hekapoo exclaimed in disbelief.
"Because of the crown?" Marco asked.
"Yeah. If there really is a way to make the crown's wish granting power usable again, then we have to ask him. The fact that he tortures souls inside his lantern means they're still conscious, right? It's an opportunity."
"An opportunity to die. Do you happen to have something capable of defeating what is basically death? Because if not, then let's keep looking for Star. Besides, it's hard to believe that some magical crown grants wishes."
"Even for me, who believes in the greatest legend of all, true love, a wish granting crown sounds unbelievable" Marco agreed.
"I know the crown can grant wishes, trust me. We just have to ask him how to restore it to its original state. And I have a way to deal with the Beast."
Hekapoo and Marco looked at Kaito for a second before sighing.
"Fine. I'll trust you this once."
"I'll trust anything that brings me closer to Star."
'When did I mention Star?' Kaito wondered to himself, but he smiled anyway.
"Thanks. And thanks for protecting me earlier too. I thought you were going to leave after ten minutes? More than that must have passed for sure" Kaito joked.
"More than that? You spent almost an entire day with your eyes closed. You should get used to this place's weird sense of time before doing something like that."
"That much time passed?" Kaito murmured. "Well, thanks again for protecting me. Is your magic okay?"
"It's fine. I still have enough for years. I just like saving it. Besides, saving you was normal. You're our companion."
"Companion?"
"In the eternity I've spent separated from the love of my life, I never found anyone capable of replacing her. But more than that, I never found anyone capable of sharing my burden" Marco suddenly said, leaving Kaito confused.
"What this idiot is trying to say" Hekapoo interrupted, "is that it's hard to find companions. You know, at first this place had hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. Now we'd be lucky if there are a hundred left.
They all killed each other. They're complete psychopaths. Every now and then someone new arrives, but usually they either start killing everyone immediately or get killed immediately.
Good people are weak, and the ones who aren't weak usually aren't good people.
Anyway, it's hard to find someone normal to spend time with, so don't die. It'd be annoying to end up alone with this lovestruck idiot again."
"Thanks. I'm really glad I met you two as well" Kaito smiled.
I really like them even though I've only known them for...
'How much time has actually passed already?' Kaito frowned. 'Whatever. Time is weird here. Let's not think about it too much' he decided.
"By the way, do you know where to find the Beast?"
At his question, both of them looked at Kaito as if he were an idiot.
...
"Yeah, I should've guessed" Kaito realized as he flew toward another of the three islands, this time the one radiating the aura of death.
At this point Kaito wondered if he'd end up visiting all four islands and whether he should just skip this one and head straight for the last one.
Fortunately, halfway there he realized that would be pointless.
However, the trip wasn't peaceful. While flying, they stopped when they encountered someone floating atop an enormous yellow diamond.
"What's this? A new member in your little group of friends? How interesting."
The newcomer was a short teenage boy with curly black hair, wearing yellow clothes, with yellow eyes and even yellow makeup.
"Tsk, that's Yellow Steven. He's just as awful as the others, but not as strong, which basically makes him nothing more than an annoyance" Hekapoo said with disdain as she recognized the newcomer. "But don't get the wrong idea. He's just as cruel as all the others. If he had the strength, he would've already killed everyone."
Hearing that, Steven glared at her irritably before speaking.
"That's a lot coming from someone who only survives because she's good at running away."
"Well, I'm still alive. Does that bother you?" Hekapoo mocked.
"I'll kill you someday, demon, and I'll make you suffer before that. But let's put that aside for now. Who's your new friend?"
After threatening Hekapoo with death, Steven fixed his hair with one hand and naturally changed expressions as he looked toward Kaito.
"Another bat wings and suit guy? You have some weird fetishes."
"Pffft, hahaha, Kaito, I told you he was weird" Hekapoo laughed instead of getting offended, completely agreeing.
"I'm Kaito. Nice to meet you" Kaito introduced himself with a friendly smile that nobody could mistake for the smile of a bad person.
"Yellow Steven. You don't seem very strong."
"I'm not. By the way, what's your gem do?"
"My gem? It's my true form. This physical body is basically just light. Thanks to it, I can not only do that, but also manipulate light to such a degree that I can create weapons or modify other Gems.
Impressed?"
Steven, who had been used to living like a king before being sent to this place where he could barely defeat a handful of people, took advantage of the unusual opportunity to show off.
"Light manipulation, yellow, it fits together so perfectly it almost feels orchestrated" Kaito murmured.
"What are you ta..."
Halfway through his sentence Steven froze as he felt the gem in his navel being removed as if it were nothing, ending up in Kaito's hand.
A normal Gem would have been fine, because the gem itself is their true form and what Kaito had done would simply be equivalent to moving it. But Steven, being half Gem and half human, immediately collapsed in agony as half of his body had effectively been torn away.
"Haaa... haaa..."
He began gasping desperately as though suffocating while lying atop the yellow diamond he had been flying on, but it only lasted a second. Not because he recovered, nor because he died, but because the diamond vanished once he could no longer maintain it with his powers, sending Steven falling directly into the void.
After that, Kaito put the gem into his pocket, thinking about giving it to Lala to study, or to Tomoya if she couldn't make use of it.
'Removing this would've taken me a tremendous amount of effort not long ago' he thought with satisfaction.
Officially, he could now move both ordinary objects and objects connected by either physical or non physical bonds without encountering any resistance. The only thing left was learning how to move objects with the strongest possible connection, objects that had always been part of something from the very beginning. In other words, removing a part of something.
However, finding something like that was difficult. Something like Steven's gem was probably the closest example Kaito would find for quite some time, at least when it came to living beings.
Because of that, Kaito figured it would be easier to practice on the closest equivalent, internal organs. Though he'd have to train that later once he found someone to test it on.
"...What's wrong?" he asked after noticing the two of them staring at him in stunned disbelief.
"You just... killed him?"
"Didn't you say he was evil? What's the problem?"
"No. There really isn't one. It's just surprising. You were talking to him so naturally, then the next second you killed him. You might be more dangerous than we thought" Hekapoo realized.
"Hesitating at times like this usually ends badly, you know? So I'd rather be decisive when necessary" Kaito explained.
"Well, as long as you're not our enemy, it doesn't really matter" the red haired demon finally shrugged.
"Yeah, but please keep acting normal around us" Marco nodded.
'Marco spoke normally? Did I shock him that much?' Kaito wondered in surprise.
As they continued talking, they finally reached the island, although none of them approached its surface.
Whether it was the ground or the vegetation, everything there was dead. There even seemed to be very little oxygen, as though even the air itself existed there only to die.
The closer you looked toward the center, the less you could see. While the outer edges were covered by a black mist that merely obscured the view, the island's center was absolute darkness where not even light could penetrate.
At least, not natural light.
'Reflection.'
With a single thought, Kaito split into two versions of himself.
It was the effect of the Reflection skill, which divided the user into two forms. One could only use good aligned magic, while the other could only use evil aligned magic. In exchange, the usable type of magic became three times stronger, a 300% increase.
"Two Kaitos?" Hekapoo asked in confusion.
"Wow, it's been a while since I last did this" Kaito said as he looked through both perspectives simultaneously while experiencing the effects of controlling two bodies at once.
Fortunately, one of them didn't have to do anything, so it wasn't too confusing.
"Alright, looks like it's my turn."
The good aligned Kaito, with blond hair and blue eyes, spread his white feathered wings and flew into the sky until he reached the island's center.
There, he conjured ten identical rings of holy magic, stacking them one above another over himself. They immediately began expanding. Starting from the bottom, each ring grew until together they covered the entire island, each one slightly smaller than the previous.
The black mist, the death energy that had been barely noticeable around the edges yet impossible to ignore at the center, rapidly disappeared at impossible speeds.
But the holy magic didn't stop there. It also nourished all the dead life throughout the area. The cracked earth began repairing itself while lush green grass sprouted across the ground. The twisted, withered trees slowly straightened and regained their color as fresh leaves burst forth at incredible speed.
Within seconds, the black death that had once covered the island was replaced by vibrant green overflowing with life.
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+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
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(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)