"...What did you just do?" Heekapoo asked in shock as she looked at all the changes around her.
"I used holy magic to purify all the death energy on the island" Kaito replied casually.
"And you can do that? Just like that?"
"No, the energy here is quite strong, that's why I split myself into two versions. The one working over there is stronger at good aligned magic."
"This... I hadn't realized it before, but aren't you way too powerful?" Heekapoo said, as if she had only just grasped everything Kaito had done so far.
To be exact, whether it was when he dealt with the jester or later with the Ice King, it had all been so fast and easy that it was impossible to truly comprehend Kaito's strength.
On one hand, by the time they arrived he had already dealt with the jester. On the other, dealing with the Ice King had been as simple as moving his hand and taking away his crown in a single motion.
This time hadn't been difficult either. He had literally just flown to the center of the island and cast magic.
However, the fact that for the third time everything had seemed so effortless, and she still hadn't been able to witness his true strength, didn't make her underestimate him. Quite the opposite. After seeing it happen three times, she realized it wasn't that the previous circumstances had simply been favorable, but that Kaito might possess both the methods and the strength to make any enemy look easy and quick to defeat.
Heekapoo looked toward the other two islands they had crossed earlier and only confirmed her thoughts. Just a few weeks ago there had been a frozen island and another overflowing with digital corruption, effects that had lasted for centuries, but now all three were simply ordinary islands.
"I am."
"Still... isn't that a bad thing?" Heekapoo realized.
"Why would it be bad?" Kaito raised an eyebrow at the question.
"Because if someone as strong as you was sent here, then the ones responsible must be incredibly powerful, right?"
"Yeah. I didn't stand a chance against even one of them."
"And they'll let us leave this place?"
"They should let you" Kaito replied as he looked at Heekapoo. "You came here by mistake, after all."
"And you?"
"They told me I was condemned to stay here for a thousand years. Unless that much time has already passed, I'll be in serious trouble if I manage to leave before then."
"Impossible. It's only been a month since you got here. Then don't you seem a little too calm for your current situation?"
'A month already? Time here really is strange' Kaito realized once again how bizarre the flow of time in this place was.
"It's not that I'm calm, there's simply no reason to panic" Kaito said. "Even if they try to send me back after I leave, I'll still do it. I need to get out. There are people who need me... people I need."
"People, huh? I wonder if anyone misses me" Heekapoo wondered with a nostalgic sigh.
"Impossible. The closest person to you was me, and I only knew you for one Earth day" Marco added from the side, having listened to the entire conversation.
"Marco, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything" Heekapoo replied irritably.
""I'm back.""
At that moment, Kaito's duplicated voice echoed as the other Kaito appeared beside them.
"You're done?" Heekapoo asked as she looked at the island before her, now completely free of the black mist and overflowing with life.
"It's done. I purified the entire island" Kaito nodded.
"You must have needed an incredible amount of magic for all that, right?" Heekapoo said with admiration. As a magical being made of magic itself, she knew just how absurd the feat he had accomplished really was.
However, to Kaito, who knew true magical monsters like Mashiro, what he had just done wasn't particularly impressive.
"A little" he answered honestly.
"'A little?' Then you're 'a little' annoying" Heekapoo complained, thinking he was just pretending to be humble. "So now we're going to look for the Beast?"
"Yeah. About that... it's already dead" Kaito said, sounding surprised himself by how things had turned out.
"What? You... killed it? Just like that?"
"To be exact, it died on its own. Its powers were basically darkness summoning, moving through shadows, binding souls, appearing before them at the moment of their death, and immortality as long as it had its lantern."
"I know. I was the one who told you."
"Exactly. And the holy magic didn't just purify the entire island, it also illuminated all of it, eliminating every shadow. When I found it, it was already extremely weak and had no way to escape. As soon as I took its lantern away, it simply... died."
"That's killing it!"
"I'm not sure. I'd say it died because of the consequences of my actions, but not that I personally killed it."
"What's the difference?!" Heekapoo snapped.
"Alright, don't argue with my other self. He's the good version, so he won't admit he killed anyone" Kaito decided to interrupt the argument between them. "Give me the lantern."
After saying that, Kaito frowned. Telling himself to hand something over while simultaneously hearing himself say it before receiving the object felt incredibly strange.
"I'll use Soul Manipulation" Kaito said, more to focus himself than for anyone else's benefit, before beginning.
As energy rapidly flowed into the lantern, inside a completely black space similar to another one he had been in before, Kaito saw thousands of different soul like entities. Most weren't human, and even more of them weren't conscious anymore.
After a quick scan, he found Finn among them and spoke.
"It's been a while" Kaito greeted him.
"Ah! What? What is this? How did you get here? Did you die too?" Finn immediately recognized Kaito, who looked like just another soul to him, and asked in surprise.
"No. I killed the Beast and took its lantern" Kaito replied naturally. "Can you finish what you were saying before you died?"
"You killed... No, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's no longer my concern anyway." After a brief moment of surprise, Finn simply let it go without caring. Now that he was dead, he no longer felt any attachment to the world of the living or its affairs. "About what I wanted to tell you before, the crown can grant one wish to the first person who uses it. Of course, that wish was used by me a long time ago before I came here, so it's no longer available. But there's someone in this place capable of controlling reality. If it's him, then maybe he can restore the crown to its original state."
"Who?"
"I don't know his name or even what he looks like. The only thing I know is that he's the ruler of the last island. I hope that helps you somehow" Finn answered without adding anything else.
'So in the end I have to go to the other island after all, huh?' Kaito thought ironically.
"That's enough, at least. Then I'll be going now."
"Wait!" Before Kaito could leave, Finn suddenly stopped him.
"What is it?"
"I'd like to ask you something before you go. Do you think there's any way we could return to the cycle of reincarnation? Not just me, but the tens of thousands of souls here, many of them innocent" Finn asked. "I understand I may not deserve it, but... even so, I'll be selfish and ask you this one last favor."
Kaito thought for a second before replying.
"...I'll try. But I can't promise anything."
"Thank you. That's all I ask" said the former Ice King with a smile full of relief.
...
Back in the cemetery, Kaito opened his eyes again with a complicated expression on his face.
'Sorry, old man, but... reincarnation doesn't exist.'
Kaito wasn't saying that from an ideological standpoint. He had seen it himself before, the place where all the souls of this world ended up.
Once they died, they all went there, where they simply lost all consciousness for eternity, waiting to be summoned someday or for their world to be rebuilt.
As he thought about that, visible irritation appeared on his face.
Deciding to ignore it for now, Kaito stored the lantern in his inventory. Even if he couldn't help them reincarnate, if he released them outside the cemetery they would at least merge back together with the rest of their souls, where they would at least have a second chance someday.
"What happened? Do you know how to repair the crown?" Heekapoo asked when she saw Kaito return.
"Yeah. We have to go to the last island. There's someone there who can manipulate reality" Kaito explained. "Maybe he can restore the crown to its original state."
Heekapoo let out a helpless sigh before speaking.
"You know? I think I've been saying this a lot lately but... ARE YOU CRAZY?! Reality manipulation, we're talking about reality manipulation. No matter how strong you are, you can't beat something like that, right? Do you think manipulating reality is something just anyone can do?"
'Reality manipulation is... something anyone can do' Kaito suddenly realized.
As he looked back at his own status, he almost wanted to punch himself for his stupidity.
'I can do that too. I have Omnipotence' he thought with an ironic smile, though he soon realized a few problems. 'Still, I'm not sure the crown can get me out of this place.'
After all, no matter how much of a "wish" it was, everything in this world had limits. Kaito wasn't sure the crown could truly get them out of here.
'Could I use Future Vision to check?' he wondered, but quickly realized it wasn't practical.
Future Vision had two uses. One was seeing the future of a specific target for an entire day. The other was seeing the general future for ten seconds.
And while the first seemed useful, it actually wasn't in this situation, because Kaito would only see the object itself, the crown in this case, and everything that happened to it over the next day, without seeing anything else.
The problem was that once the crown had been restored to its original state and he wished to leave this place, there was a chance the crown would attempt to fulfill the wish before failing. In that case, Kaito would simply see the repaired crown and the wish being made, fooling himself.
Of course, this limitation existed because of Kaito himself. When he thought about obtaining an ability to see the future, his main objective had been to learn the effects of unknown items so that a situation like the one with Yukino's barrier would never happen again.
Naturally, seeing the future was incredibly tempting, so Kaito wanted that as well. But in the end, his Future Vision only allowed him to see ten seconds into the future. It seemed even his luck had its limits.
The question now was, could he see the entire process within ten seconds to determine whether it would succeed? After all, from using Omnipotence, restoring the crown, making the wish, and finally waiting for the crown to fulfill it, more than ten seconds could easily pass.
After thinking about it deeply for a while, Kaito reached a conclusion.
'Let's do it. Even if it doesn't work, we'll just have to go to the last island and try again.'
Kaito immediately activated his Future Vision, and images flowed into his mind like a very short three dimensional movie.
The next ten seconds unfolded before him from his own point of view, from restoring the crown and making the wish to watching it activate.
But just as Kaito had expected, the time wasn't enough. The moment the crown unleashed a light blue beam into the sky and a snowstorm gathered around him, the vision ended.
"I have no idea whether it'll succeed" he sighed in resignation.
'Damn it, why does it have to have so many unnecessary special effects?' Kaito complained inwardly.
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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)