Side Chapter 8: The Tournament Part 3: Best Not Peer Into the Abyss of People’s Minds

The intrusive silence made itself clear as everyone waited for the next match, not even a whisper could be uttered at the moment. The things happening within this arena were so astonishing that one had to wonder whether they were actually dreaming or not. That was how fantastical it all was to everyone, from the regular class E dunce student to the most talented teacher to the nation representatives who sat in their cozy seats. The first and second heroes who had bitterly fought against each other lost to the Principal’s demons, this was the name that the representatives gave the secret group of heroes who suddenly grew strong from out of nowhere. The fear was creeping in and settling itself down on all of them, escape was a dream because of the nature of the place they found themselves. This was a traveling city, teleportation from this high would be suicide. And flying devices like airships couldn’t keep up because of the speed that this large city was going, there was a reason why one couldn’t simply attack the Academy City of Vivicetto. They all sat in their seats, tight lipped and watching as their expectations were being crushed right in front of their eyes. They still had an ember of hope within their eyes as they saw the next runner-up to being the winner of this championship walk up the stage. If one could say that this man was going to win via appearance alone they would be right, the way he walked in full swagger as he treated the world around him like some sort of play that only he was the main character made those who hated him hate him even more.

One could feel like they were seeing a trail of flowers being left as he walked, he had long black hair tied into a ponytail. His black eyes couple with his handsome face could woo any woman from their feet in an instant. He could very likely get the things he wants completely for free if the other party was a woman, that was how influential his beauty was. His beautiful eyes turned up to look at his audience and with that he let out a smile that could ease the tension that had been built up until this point by the strength of the monsters that had invaded their tournament. It was a reassuring smile like a mother’s to a crying child, it gave them all a sense of security they never felt before thus making the heavy atmosphere become normal once again despite there being another who was going to fight him in the next couple of minutes.

“My dear roses in the moonlit valley I shall grant honor to my fallen comrades, I will show them how strength is also beauty!I, Ichinose Nagi shall prevail where others have failed.”

Ichinose Nagi, the boy was listed as the most beautiful man within the school, a title that was hard to get because of the numerous beautiful nobles who had similar kinds of beauty. Nagi stood at the very top of delicate beauty with Tadashi coming in on a close second, his tall figure waited for his opponent whom he would avenge his fellow hero classmates with. Nagi had tapped into the limitless potential of telepathic magic which was largely underdeveloped and was now reaching very high strides, even if he were to quit being a hero right now he would become a very useful sage via spreading of his knowledge on the subject. His expertise on said telepathic magic was not a laughing matter either, he could read people’s minds like a book, simultaneously use weapons such as swords and spears all whilst reading tomes that would increase his magic capacity to an even greater height. This man was certainly dangerous in his own right, if he were to be left alone unmonitored it would cause a great deal of trouble, however with his kind of personality the representatives who were thinking the same thing had their worries quickly vanish like mist. 

He stood arms akimbo with a warm smile on his face, confidence was certainly high despite seeing what was done to his comrades. Did he have an ace up his sleeve that would change the game entirely?They just didn’t know and that made all of them excited for what would happen next. Nagi waited patiently for the next Principal’s demon to arrive with the footsteps of such a person being his answer. The particular slowness of this figure made him feel uneasy, there was something unnerving about an opponent who knew they had a fight before them and yet took their time to walk towards the entrance into the arena. It was mocking him to a certain degree and he couldn’t put up with it anymore thus he spoke once more to instill a little bit of self consciousness into whoever was walking towards him. 

“Please hurry it up will you. I know you have doubts about doing any of this, so I will make your defeat as painless as possible”

Nagi said with a chime in his voice as he impatiently tapped his right foot repeatedly as the opponent took their time exiting the arena opening. Their glowing eyes were intimidating that was something that he could not shake off, like they were peering deep into his soul, he tried to make them not disturb him that much but it became much worse. Whoever it was they came out of the entrance and finally reached the stage.

“You sure are really confident for a third place you know. I am pretty sure the sixth place should feel really ashamed he allowed someone like you beat him.”

The voice coming from that cloak was feminine, he had to change his demeanor to whoever was beneath it very quickly. Before he could do so the figure removes its cloak revealing a face he knows very well, she used to be very unremarkable and boring. Down to the point everyone in their idol school bullied her for even existing, she was unremarkable and he promoted the rule as student council president that it was fair to “guide” those who were ugly in the eyes of the school. It was clear what he meant by that. A dull person who did not deserve to be in their school and yet here she was barely recognizable at the moment. That very same unremarkable, boring, dull girl was standing right before him, fate had treated her fairly well blessing her with above average beauty and he could feel the strength lightly coming out of her body through small traces, to say he wasn’t intimidated by the current version of herself would be a massive lie. Funamori Minami was standing before him, she was taller than previously when he last saw her at their school. Wearing a black leather coat, sleeveless black polo neck halter vest revealing her finely toned abs and arms filled with strength. Below that were black denim that seemed very flexible and boots of the same color felt like they could knock a grown man’s teeth out from his mouth. She slowly pulls up her gloves, the most noticeable change about her was the cat ears on her head and the tail that was right behind her. She had changed races for some reason, was that why she seemed so much more of a threat now than ever?

“Funamori-san, what a surprise to meet you here. I did not expect this at all.”

“Not really. C’mon now in a world this large it shouldn’t surprise you.”

“Really now…?”

“Yes”

“I see”

She was way more confident as well, this was rather strange. A person with self esteem issues like her couldn’t recover from something like that as easily and talk back to him such a strong way. He bows before her to get into her graces, this tactic would certainly work against her. It would lower her guard and he would have an easy win because of his mental manipulation of her mind, this was how he got what he wanted in this world and if he were to go back he would easily become a very powerful idol what more politician in his later years. 

“I apologize for treating you harshly before. I am sincerely sorry for anything that happened to you because of my part in it. Now please cease this madness, join me and we could be a part of something more”

For a moment she had gone silent and he had thought he won against this new version of Minami however the following moment seemed to mock this little effort of his.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!”

“Eh?”

For a clear moment the stage seemed to rumble and shake with that powerful laugh, something was clearly wrong and he couldn’t have a good grasp on it. He could feel it from the bottom of his heart that there was something amiss with her reaction. Most girls would throw themselves at him and forgive him for any sort of wrongdoing he had done to them but this case was different. She merely laughed at his effort to do so and proceeded to throw a knife near his right foot. This was the clear sign she wasn’t easily charmed by his looks or words or his telepathic magic. This was more serious than he initially thought, whatever happened to Minami had fundamentally changed her and made her become something else entirely.

“You never change Senpai. That’s good, your little manipulation efforts can work on your bitches not me. I know the real you, the you that you would like to hide from everyone.”

“……”

She was becoming increasingly unsettling the more time passed. He was reaching the point that the previous two before him had reached, the point of no return. If he could avoid this then he would be able to win this match. With words he could convince her that this wasn’t necessary and that she needed to come back to common sense, surely she would listen to a classmate if he tried hard enough.

“Please, think thoroughly about this your decision has consequences. I do not know what happened to you but we can all let it go under the bri-“

“The you that was satisfied in letting me drown in despair because of my appearance. The you that is now pandering to me because I’ve achieved passable beauty and strength. Yes that scumbag who is trying to invite me to a group of people who do not care about me”

She had already caught on to what he was thinking and had already exposed it for all to see. He had to stop her right here and right now otherwise his polished reputation would sink into complete chaos. He readied himself to attack her with intent to kill but that is when it happened. Something that would completely change the outlook of her strength into a whirlpool of mystery.

Suddenly out of nowhere the sun had changed into the crimson moon with foreboding clouds surrounding it, it was night time. Everyone within the arena were visibly confused by what was happening, there was plenty of reason to. Day had abruptly changed into night from seemingly out of nowhere and this was done by a single person whose aura was slowly turning into something from out of this world.

“Oh senpai. You silly little goose. Your tactics do not work on me, either you fight me like a man or you die. That is the law of this world you live in, I learnt that from my sensei”

“W-Wait we can talk about this. W-We can work things out”

“Enough words. I don’t want to hear them”

Breaking out in cold sweat upon seeing her this way Nagi tried to convince her once again but her sheer murderous bloodlust did not allow him to continue further on. Her glowing crimson eyes stared back at him just as they did at the beginning of this interaction of theirs, she smiled viciously like a carnivore that was ready to pounce on its prey, showing off the fangs that looked like they were ready to do the job. A massive storm of pain was about to hit him and he wasn’t prepared enough to even try to defend against it.

“You’re not coming?Then allow me to smash that handsome face in!”

She leapt forwards leaving behind a crimson afterglow that displayed her speed, late in reacting to her quick movement because of his face she grabbed his face and slammed him to the ground kicking him into it before grasping his tie and throwing him to the wall where he lands with a loud thud. Breathing hoarsely he stared at the monster that Minami had become, she was terrifying. He sends several punches made out of psychic energy flying towards her but she dodges them with ease not giving him the moment or time to do much in terms of stopping her. In great fear hastily putting up a long wall to protect himself so he could buff himself up for this fight Nagi is forced to accept this person was in fact a beast, not a human if at all. 

“I will calm you down and we will all be happy together. Just like the old days!”

“FUCK YOUR HAPPINESS!!”

“NO!STOP!”

Minami leaps backwards with her fist ready to strike as she sprints towards him, several spears are made to break her speed but she breaks them fast enough to the extent Minami is merely using them as props to add more to her momentum. By the time she arrives Minami spins above the dome like wall and crashes into the epicenter where she continues to punch it until it shatters into a thousand pieces, he stares into her abyss filled eyes for a bit and sees the madness within them and tastes the full brunt of the stream of punches she does on his precious face. After being done with his face she kicks his balance and grabs his legs and throws him into the air where he is sent flying. 

“AIR DROP!”

He breaks his acceleration by creating wings on his back but it was already too late as Minami is above him and lands a dropkick on him that sends him spiraling down within an instant. He crashes into the ground and lays motionless for a while, Nagi was shocked at the current strength she had at the moment. There was no way he could defeat her without going all out and breaking some bones. Slowly healing his face was the option here because it was much better that way.

“I have to admit you are very lethal Funamori-san, a little too harsh with your rough handling”

“I can go further than that you know. And if you are going to kill someone do not do it as half-assed as you were about to do Senpai. That is massive disrespect to your opponent who is going out their way to fight you.”

He slowly got up wiping off the blood coming out from his mouth, she was starting to piss him off with her newfound confidence. He wanted to crush it into pieces and see her crying in front of the masses that were watching them. To begin with Nagi never held a weapon against his opponents because he could straight up make weapons on the fly when he needed to but this was single moment that he actually started regretting that entirely. It was clear the beginning of this fight was her toying with him to see how far he would go and anything less than really killing her would be detrimental to him.

“Stop trying to analyze me and we might actually get somewhere. Use your full strength and I will utilize about 10% of mine”

“Quit it with the bluffing just how strong have you become in this short period of time anyway”

“Enough to kill about 1000 goblins, 1000 hobgoblins, 1000 kobolds and 100 orcs.”

“I will reveal your lies right here!”

“So you are becoming serious now huh?I guess this is what I’ve always wanted, I will break the shackles that you’ve placed on me in our world. I will become more and with my friends I will reach the pinnacle of strength and beauty”

Her gloves glow into a stream of golden lines as Minami sprints towards Nagi who had constructed a thousand knives that flew to skewer into minced meat, she nimbly evades them with ease knocking some back with her tail. Rapidly approaching Nagi she leaps up into the air where she takes out daggers of her own which she throws to him that shatters his into pieces and cut his cheek as he barely escapes their imminent stabbing. Using the knives that were still being flung at her as footholds she finally reaches his position within seconds and punches his face which sends him flying shortly before he stops himself and constructs massive swords that would slice her into pieces. Minami sees this and sighs before she smirks as she stands in place for them to hit her.

“NOW DIE AND NO LONGER COME BACK!!”

The swords land on her but she stops them with her index finger and thumbs from both hands which shocks Nagi as she lifts them up with him along and slams him into the ground. With a very smug smile on her face she crosses her arms and looks down on him in the most pitiful way one could think of.

“C’mon little ugly duckling, you can do better than that. Or are you that weak and pathetic.”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH YOU STUPID INSOLENT FUCK!!I AM GOING TO SHRED YOUR FACE INTO RIBBONS THAT I WILL USE TO DECORATE MY ROOM AND USE YOUR BONES AS MY FURNITURE!!”

“Heh”

His roar was powerful and clearly he was pissed off by what she had said, it had worked ghost flames of crimson started flying towards her as he levitated from the ground. Usually this would cause a person to lose heart and apologize but not Minami she had faced greater horrors than this. She uses her great speeds to  rapidly reach him, just as she is about to be hit by the fireballs that were heading her way the impossible happens and she punches them back to Nagi who gets burnt by his own flames. His anguish filled screams echo throughout the arena but that doesn’t stop Minami who grabs his legs and throws him to the ground where she kicks into his stomach before he makes the tiles fly towards her as just as fast as her move. She punches those to back at him as they break into his skin, she grows out her claws just as he launches a hundred more at her. 

Magic tiles were hard to break, what more deflect through normal means, what was happening here was breaking common sense. Minami was doing just that and arriving at his location with great yellow winds carrying her, Nagi puts up another mana wall but that one breaks and another but she continues to punch them into dust as she draws closer to him. She punches his face on cue and drives her elbow straight into his chest which prompts him to fall forwards but then he is met with her knee that hits his face directly and sends him flying once again. Tumbling around like clothes within a washing machine Nagi hits another wall which he propels himself out with her a psychic sword that would directly attack her conscience. 

“EAT THIS!!”

“NO THANK YOU”

Blade and claw clash as what was supposed to happen didn’t. Instead Minami pushes him back with her stream of claw strikes that create a mix of golden and purple sparks that run across the stage, with one more strike the sword shatters entirely allowing her to grab his tie and use to slam him into the ground. Before he could get the chance to attack her she stomps his head into the hard magic tile and takes a hold of the back of his head, in clear brutality she sprints with his face still in the ground before chucking him into the air. For a brief moment he sees the face of a battle devil that is proficient at close quarters combat grinning from the bottom of its jet black heart.

“Wa-“

Its five fingers turn into a fist of death as his solar plexus is immediately punched, Nagi is sent spirally towards the next wall but he does not hit the wall that he was now getting comfortable with but instead a kick makes him fly into the air in a near straight line. He tries to stop himself but it doesn’t work as she puts her hands together to slam him back to the shattered ground. It made what Toshiro did to Tadashi look like a joke as she seizes his collar and slams him into the ground again before repeatedly bashing his head in constantly. She hurls him at the wall breaks for a moment but shatters completely as she punches him even further into it, with magic beams being hastily put him as she continues to punch him straight outside of the arena she uses him like a dart and launches him towards the gate of the Academy City. Right before he hits the gates she kicks him back to the arena gripping his head to smash into every single window in the houses in between and finally tossing him into a wall before she slows down. That was a lot of damage, so much that the wall was still repairing itself. Nagi was barely hanging on a thread and yet he was the one who said he would turn her face into ribbons and use them as decorations. He was all bark and no bite when it came down to it, she had completely broken his facade of what was strength. And that was just 10% of her overall power. His bones were certainly broken and he couldn’t utilize his full power, he was powerless against someone like her.

“Awww is senpai doing alright?I am sure makeup will fix that”

She smirked as she looked down on him, there must be something he could do to at least humiliate her!Anything would be good at this point!He stopped to think and realized there was, if he used that he would easily win. And she would scream just like back then, he shambles about in the rumble and quietly laughs to himself.

“Oh?I knew you had an ace in the hole senpai, show it to the entire world!”

“YOU FOOL!!”

He fires a beam straight into her mind so he could intrude into her thoughts and her subconscious. He used this skill unconsciously to produce an effect that would make him likable to everyone and now he was making an effort to use it against her. Everyone had bits and pieces he could manipulate in order to stir them in his direction. The mental structure of humanoid creatures were all the same and he could manipulate them into his bidding. 

But not Minami’s mental structure.

Her’s was abnormally different, he felt like he had entered an alien world that run under vastly different physics than earth. Everything felt wrong, too wrong for comfort. The feeling of wrongness that could be described was similar to this: Finding the liver inside of the place where the brain was supposed to be and in the shape of the brain with parts of the intestine mixed inside here and there. No human’s mind could be like this, none, it wasn’t possible. And yet here he was staring at this thing of a subconscious and mental structure. How could one think with a mind like this?How could they even reason with the world outside, the further he went in the worse it became. He was afraid, very much so. He wanted to escape but there was a prize waiting at the end for him. 

He finally reached the core of her subconscious with the first thing he was greeted with was sheer darkness, a deep chasm was right at the center. 

“No….no no no no IT CAN’T BE!NOTHING AFTER COMING ALL THIS WAY?!WHAT!NO IT CANNOT BE POSSIBLE!!”

Nagi stared deep into the blackness of the chasm and then he began to see something coming from deep within. He wished he never saw anything at all, down in that forbidden darkness was something lurking, moving in a weird form and spreading from whatever abyss it was inside of all the way to the top. And then came the eyes they spread like a plague and were everywhere, the sounds of what was rising to the top were what made him realize his folly. Minami was not normal in the slightest, and when he saw the grotesque thing that crawled out from the chasm he could not take it anymore as his own mind was failing to comprehend what it was staring at. He could not give it meaning and yet it was there, it stared to invade his mind to make into a mess just like Minami’s. If he did not escape right now he would be just as insane as her, he ran. He did not look back and came back to the living world. But that did not stop it from following him there. Everyone and everything were the thing that he saw in that abyss.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUH?!?!?!?!STOP!DON’T COME NEAR!STAY AWAY FROM ME!THEY ARE EVERYWHERE!EVERYONE HAS BECOME IT, DON’T WANT TO HAVE EYES ANYMORE!THEY ARE DISGUSTING AND THE CLEAR REPRESENTATIVE OF WHAT LIVES IN OUR COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS!!IWILL RID MYSELF OF THEM!!!!!”

Nagi screamed as he tries to gouge his eyes out from his head in an attempt to stop seeing what he saw.

“NOOOOOOOOOO DO NOT STOP ME YOU MONSTERS!!LET ME REST!!PLEASE!!!I PROMISE I WILL BE A GOOD PERSON!!I PROMISE I WILL NOT MANIPULATE PEOPLE DOING WHAT I PLEASE WITH MY PSYCHIC MAGIC!!I WILL BE A GOOD BOY!!JUST LET ME REMOVE MY EYES!!I WILL BITE MY TONGUE AND SWALLOW IT AS A RESULT!!”

From the outside whatever happened from within Minami’s mind had completely scarred him mentally. She had already left the stage and had her victory over him, his eyes were glowing into a deep yellow color as sheer insanity had reached him. She smiles as she sees him being carried away with his hands cuffed and gagged to prevent him from swallowing his tongue, he continued to scream.

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to peer into other people’s minds?That rude you know”

It will likely take a couple of months at this rate which was just what she wanted. He would live in constant terror and knowing he could not receive medicine for such delusions Minami smiled softly as he was going to suffer just like her back in their home world. Her path of strength and beauty would not end here, she would continue it until she was strong enough to kick the ass of the god who dumped them here.