“Oof, my whole body aches. My back’s seriously going to snap.”
With Daebbangi’s help, moving the capsule to a deserted stretch of coastline wasn’t as difficult as I’d expected.
The guy made an excellent shuttle, and true to his title as master of the sea, he controlled the waves and pushed the capsule deep onto the sandy beach.
The problem was the process of moving this massive lump of metal from that not particularly wide beach to the abandoned resort building nearby.
“Damn it, they say Japan has so many bears, so why isn’t there a single one in Okinawa!”
I’d tried to grab even a passing bear and put it to work, but unfortunately, my search results informed me that there were no bears in Okinawa. In the end, that meant only one thing: I had to do the heavy labor myself.
“Haa… haa….”
Anyway, after barely managing to get the capsule settled somewhere safe, I braced my hands on my knees and gasped for breath.
Roughly brushing off my sweat-soaked clothes, I finally stared head-on at the enormous capsule before me.
“Hrm. It’s not making any special sound.”
In Transformation Musou, the protagonist, who came to the Hero Association after being not-quite-invited by his childhood friend, a budding hero, feels a resonance the moment he steps into the association building, as though something is desperately calling out to him.
Following that mysterious sound deep into the basement, the protagonist finally discovers the capsule he believes has been calling him.
Just then, the association is attacked by villains, and in that desperate, do-or-die situation, the capsule opens the moment the protagonist touches it. That was the story.
“It only reacts to the chosen one, was it?”
No matter how long I waited, no matter how thoroughly I touched every corner of it, the capsule remained silent. But that was exactly what I’d expected.
It wasn’t like I was some chosen being, and I had absolutely no intention of becoming one either.
“But that doesn’t mean there’s no way to open it.”
To begin with, this capsule was originally designed to be opened from the inside.
It was just that the coordinate settings had gone wrong, and the impact from crashing into the sea had knocked the system out, preventing it from opening.
In that case, the answer was simple. I just had to restore it to its undamaged state from before it broke.
I slowly placed my hand on the capsule’s cold metal surface.
My second ability, Restoration, could return anything to its original state as long as some form remained, no matter how ruined or broken it was. It began forcibly reassembling even this overtechnology device that didn’t yet exist in this era.
Impurities like barnacles and seaweed that had clung thickly to the exterior crumbled into powder and fell away.
The dented outer wall regained its original smooth curves, and the scratched, damaged surface of the machine gleamed as smoothly as though it had just rolled out of the factory.
When I felt that even the damage invisible to the naked eye had been repaired, I took my hand away.
Immediately afterward, a majestic operating hum rang out from within, as though the dead machine had regained its heart.
[ ─ System Rebooting…… ]
[ ─ Main power reactor output stabilized. ]
[ ─ External atmospheric composition analysis complete: no toxins or hazardous elements detected. ]
[ ─ Temporary error detected in master authentication system…… Switching to forced manual opening mode. ]
Chiiiiik—!
With the sound of compressed air escaping from within, the tightly sealed hatch of the capsule finally opened.
And inside, with clear green hair cascading down, a girl dressed in a suit one might see in a sci-fi story was sleeping soundly, utterly unaware of the world.
Looking down at her sleeping face, I smiled in satisfaction.
“You’re sleeping like a log.”
“Mmng…….”
Perhaps reacting to my muttered words, the girl’s eyelids trembled faintly.
“Ugh, where is this……?”
“Yo. Sleep well?”
At my greeting, delivered in a hoarse voice, the girl blinked unfocused eyes.
It didn’t take long for her hazy green eyes to take me in completely.
And the moment she recognized my face reflected in those clear eyes, the peaceful atmosphere shattered in an instant.
“Kyaaaak!! W-w-who are you?! Are you a villain?!”
“Who are you calling a villain?!”
“If someone with a face that scary isn’t a villain, then what are you?! Villain! Evildoer! Heinous criminal!!”
“You little brat?!”
After I went through all that trouble to get her out, what? Villain? Evildoer? Heinous criminal?! Is that any way to talk to someone the second you open your eyes?
Damn it, I know my face looks a little rough, but treating me like a villain the moment we meet is too much, isn’t it?
‘Phew. Calm down, Kang Jinu. You didn’t come all this way to argue with her.’
Right. The reason I went through all that backbreaking labor to get her out was to make Nova the protagonist.
And to accomplish that goal, I desperately needed the help of this squawking brat.
“──I’ll get straight to the point, Makina.”
“H-how do you know my name……?”
“Hand over the Core Relic.”
“……What?”
Wariness flashed across Makina’s face.
Unlike a moment ago, when she had been startled and on guard, she curled up inside the capsule and glared at me.
“You… how do you know about that? No one in this era should know that name.”
“Keke, I know far more than you think. I know where you came from, and even why you were stuffed inside this tin can.”
Makina, the girl who leapt into the past carrying humanity’s final hope in order to change the doomed future.
The narrative of Transformation Musou was about her joining forces with the chosen one—the protagonist who resonated with the Core Relic—to defeat the villain threatening the world.
“……I don’t know how you found that out, but do you think I’ll just hand it over because you asked? This is meant for the hero who will save the world. It’s not something I’d give to a villain like you!”
For that reason, Makina resisted stubbornly, as if she would never hand it over to me no matter what happened.
As she curled her small body as tightly as she could inside the capsule, her eyes even held the grim resolve unique to one who carried the future on her shoulders.
Yeah, Makina. I know from reading the original that this Core Relic thing is incredibly important to you, and that you have to protect it even at the cost of your life.
But I’m not so free that I can sit here and indulge all your stubbornness right now.
I arrogantly rested my arm on the entrance of the capsule and looked down at her at an angle.
“Whether you hand it over or not, you’re going to lose all of it anyway.”
“What? What are you talking abou—huh?”
But before Makina could even finish speaking, an ominous vibration rang out from behind her.
Along with a low resonance—woong—the air pressure inside the capsule suddenly fluctuated.
The moment she turned her head with a puzzled expression, wondering what was going on, metallic objects burst upward, emitting dazzling light.
It all happened so quickly that before she could even react, they tried to escape from the cramped capsule out into the wide world outside.
“Whoops. Where do you think you’re going?”
But just before they could get out, I, who had been waiting in advance at the capsule entrance, swiftly slammed the hatch shut.
With a dull bang, the escape route was completely blocked.
“Phew. Just barely made it in time.”
Fortunately, not a single one escaped the capsule.
Good thing I knew that when the capsule crashed into the sea due to the coordinate error, not only the system but even the storage device had been damaged. Otherwise, the same thing as in the original would have happened.
No, since the original hadn’t even begun yet, would the situation have been even worse?
“W-wuaaak!! Why are these things suddenly going berserk? I definitely locked the storage compartment properly—no, why is this broken?! Aaaah, stay still for a second! Ack! Wait, if you rampage like that in this cramped space—ack! Ack! Aaaack, I said stay still!!”
Somehow, I prevented a major accident, but in exchange, the sealed capsule became rather noisy inside.
Since they’d failed to escape, it seemed they were thrashing around in that cramped space. Just from the screams coming from inside, the situation sounded like a total mess.
‘Well, what can you do? This happened because she failed to manage them properly. The person who failed to manage them should clean it up herself.’
Still, it was extremely fortunate that things ended at a level she could actually handle.
In any case, I leaned my back against the capsule’s outer wall and took a brief rest, using the loud banging from inside as background music.
“Hwaaaang! Don’t hit the same spot again!! It hurts! It hurts, I said!! Please calm down, you guys!!”
Makina’s tearful voice echoed pitifully through the metal wall.
Sorry, kid. But if I open it now, it’s obvious those things will try to run away again. For the sake of humanity’s future, you’ll have to sacrifice yourself a little more.
Just like that, who knew how much time passed.
When the commotion inside died down and even the mechanical noises quieted, the hatch slid open.
“You done?”
“……Yeah.”
Makina appeared, having barely managed to clean up the scene.
However, Makina’s appearance, perfectly fine just moments ago, was now a complete mess.
Bluish bruises covered her here and there, and a huge bump had risen on her head.
Apparently, the situation inside had been even more brutal than it sounded from the outside.
“Hic…….”
Tears had gathered at the corners of her eyes, probably because the places she’d been hit still hurt, but she seemed to be forcing herself to hold them back so she wouldn’t look weak.
The sight was so funny that I wanted to preserve it in a photo, but I didn’t do anything that would lower the favorability I’d worked hard to raise.
Instead, I gently placed my hand on her head and used my ability to heal her.
“Huh? What, you had a healing ability?”
“Well, something like that.”
“……Th-thank you for healing me…….”
She’d been calling me a villain and whatnot just a moment ago, but at heart, she was still a kind and simple little brat.
“Then, since your wounds are gone, shall we continue the conversation we couldn’t finish earlier?”
As we returned to the main topic, Makina’s face turned serious as well.
Even so, the sharp wariness she’d shown a moment ago seemed to have softened somewhat.
As expected, helping people first really is the way to go.