The ability to rewrite reality—to make an already occurred reality into a lie. They said it was far too powerful an ability for a single human to possess, but it was not an invincible power without any penalty.
The range and strength of what she could make false could not be strengthened through her own training; rather, it grew stronger depending on the number of people who believed in the ability’s owner.
When no one knew of her ability, she could comfortably increase the number of people who believed in her, but from the moment her ability became known, people only had to seek out and stop the one who was unnaturally good at granting wishes while rapidly expanding her faction.
The reason the school’s queen had lain low for a year was that, no matter how much she expanded her faction, she judged the chances were high that she would be cut down before she gained enough power to defeat the others.
In truth, compared to the ability she possessed, it was difficult for her religion to greatly expand its influence.
For reasons unknown, the Association’s most threatening reaper was searching for her, the student council president had set aside all else to hunt her as if she were his sworn enemy, and the woman who could be called the “current” queen of the school was also sending people out to find her.
To escape all that surveillance, Kang Yuri had been turning people into her believers in places without CCTV, but naturally, there was a limit to doing things that way.
Two hundred people in two weeks. She had gathered believers quickly, but increasing their number beyond that had grown sluggish. Since the more people who followed her gathered, the easier it became for others to discover her, it couldn’t be helped.
Thus, rather than gathering any more forces, Kang Yuri decided to be satisfied with the strength she had amassed and immediately attacked Erika, who had become her objective.
She knew from tormenting her at school. Erika’s ability was heaven beyond heaven. No matter what crisis she sensed, she would overcome it by any means necessary—an ability that truly seemed close to invincible.
However, there was one form of “torment” Kang Yuri had never tried at school, and the sleeping pills worked successfully on Erika, producing meaningful results.
After that, it was simple. All she had to do was bind her with a psychic power suppressor she had modified in her own way.
No matter how close to the strongest Erika’s psychic power seemed, when Erika had harmed herself, Kang Yuri had seen the blood that splattered then and reached a certain conviction of her own, which was what made this attempt possible.
—That her psychic power was not perfect. And if that was a weakness that had arisen because Kim Haneul and the student council president had been connected, then even now, when there had been no news of those two breaking up, it would still be maintained.
Once she was bound by those chains, it would no longer matter; there would be no need to pay attention to the psychic power she possessed. Now that she could no longer receive the protection of the psychic power that had guarded her, what expression would she make, and what would she say?
The woman, whose appearance exuded a sacred atmosphere that made it easy to gather “believers,” flung the door open with that expectation in her heart. The light from the corridor illuminated the dark interior and showed Kang Yuri the situation inside.
The girl who had been indifferent to everything, showing interest only in matters related to “Kim Haneul” as far as Kang Yuri was concerned, wore a fluttering dress, and a chain connected to the wall was fastened around her ankle.
A woman she had been interested in ever since their first year.
Yet even if everyone at school ostracized her, as long as she could love the person she loved, she did not care who tormented her. And yet, she was far too strong to torment into paying attention to her.
The reason Kang Yuri had suddenly gone off the rails and left school was undoubtedly the disregard she had received from Erika, but that disregard had not existed only during their “second year.”
And beside her was someone said to have been assigned as Erika’s guard, but honestly, in this important moment, Kang Yuri did not particularly want to care whether she was there or not.
“Checkmate.”
The woman, who had yanked the chains out of the wall and now had chains with threatening lumps of iron attached to both arms and legs, was smiling ominously. As if mocking Kang Yuri’s thought that she could simply let her out at an appropriate time—
What is this?
Kang Yuri was shocked, but she forced herself to remain calm and immediately used her ability. Beside the woman who had been alone, two men appeared.
“Holy Maiden, please step back.”
“Huh? So I just have to take that one down?”
She made false the situation in which she had come here alone without guards, and rewrote reality into a situation where she had come here under protection.
The activation speed of her ability was something she could sufficiently train through personal effort, after all.
The moment she grasped the situation, she summoned reinforcements. It was an excellent judgment, and those she summoned were the strongest among the ones the queen had recruited over the past two weeks.
A gardener who could cultivate man-killing grass even in barren soil, and an iron-wall man of the Association who absolutely never fell.
In a world where the strength of one’s ability did not greatly improve one’s quality of life, martial force capable of facing both of them at once was exceedingly rare. Unfortunately, however, their opponent was someone who far exceeded the “queen’s” expectations.
The chain attached to Iska’s left wrist seemed to sway, and then the lump of iron fixed to the end of the chain struck the heads of the two men who had appeared to guard the queen.
“Guh!”
Without even having time to use their abilities or the techniques they had honed, the two collapsed, blood spraying from their heads. In a manner so easy it felt hollow compared to their reputations.
“Ed! Gray!”
Even for the queen, it seemed to be a shocking situation, and she screamed. But unlike her seemingly flustered appearance, inwardly she tried to use her ability to erase the very situation in which the lumps of iron had struck their heads.
Inside a building filled with people who believed in her, it was not even all that difficult, so her attempt to nullify Iska’s blow should have succeeded.
If not for the chain that was now gripping the queen’s left ankle.
“...You shouldn’t have been able to use psychic powers. How?”
The queen could understand Iska’s absurd physical abilities, which had allowed her to rip out the chains.
Because activation-type psychic powers rapidly consumed the body’s stamina each time they were used, those with activation-type psychic powers tended to have better physical abilities than ordinary people.
Even if they rapidly consumed physical stamina, that standard was only “rapid” by ordinary people’s standards, so the more one used an activation-type psychic power, the more one’s physical abilities rose. If one reached the peak of that, then it would be entirely possible to perform the trick of ripping out chains without using psychic powers.
That was something only possible if her physical abilities far surpassed Kim Haneul, the strongest among those the queen had faced, but if her opponent possessed an unreasonable body that far exceeded Kim Haneul, a famous figure at school, she could make some sense of it.
She said Kim Haneul was the strongest among those who had faced her, but the city was vast.
However, the skill Iska had used to handle the chains, almost like a trick, should normally have been impossible. The chains attached to Iska were also chains with the ability to suppress psychic powers.
The ability that freely manipulated those chains and silently coiled around her ankle looked almost like a psychic power, but there was no way she could move chains that interfered with psychic powers by using psychic powers.
In other words, Iska’s pure skill was so outstanding that it appeared to be a “psychic power.”
There was no way she could have known she would be chained, so this technique was likely one of the many skills she had learned while training various arts.
“You don’t need psychic powers for a little trick like this. It’s just pure technique.”
A monstrous psychic so absurd that the queen could not even estimate how many people would have to believe in her for her to defeat this opponent.
Even that performance had been carried out while not using her ability.
If that physical ability were combined with the psychic power she possessed, just how strong would she become?
She might possess power equal to that silver-haired woman of the Association, known among criminals as the reaper.
As the queen stood almost aghast with shock, Iska shrugged her shoulders and approached.
The instant she discovered the queen’s location, she bound the queen so she could not flee and overwhelmed her in a single stroke—an abnormal situation.
Erika watched that sight blankly. Even if she had possessed her blessing, it was such an overwhelming display that she could not be certain she would have been able to win against Iska.
And to think she was showing that against a woman who, in system terms, was supposedly the first boss of the main scenario, capable of reality manipulation.
“If you wanted to face me, you should have gathered at least a hundred thousand people. Then it would’ve been a match.”
That was why Erika could not help but know. That woman had to be an important character in this world.
And in a world where there was already a main heroine, that woman’s role could only be one of four things.
One of the final bosses waiting at the end of the story, the protagonist of another genre, or that side’s main heroine.
If not, then she would be the owner of the sole role above the main heroine: the one who would defeat the final boss together with the protagonist.
“It’s over.”
Yes, that woman might very well be the true heroine.
As Erika was guessing Iska’s role, Iska raised her right hand high to decisively finish off the queen.
Perhaps to avoid being struck by the attack, the queen spat blood toward Iska’s face.
Since there was no reason to let blood get in her eyes, Iska took one step back. Then, the queen’s complexion suddenly turned pale, and the chain that had been coiled around her ankle had disappeared before anyone noticed.
“Sorry, but it seems that match isn’t over yet. Since you’d been sticking around for the past two weeks, I thought someone had assigned you as Erika’s guard, but I never imagined you’d be this powerful. I’ll admit it. I can’t beat you. But not being able to beat you doesn’t mean I’ve lost.”
...She had been around for the past two weeks? For Erika, who had not noticed anyone attached to her at all, those words were rather bewildering.
Iska, who had supposedly been by her side for the past two weeks, and the school’s queen, who had supposedly been watching that.
Erika folded her arms over the goosebumps rising on them. Why were there so many women among women who obsessed over other women?
This dating sim was definitely not a yuri work or anything like that. Since a “male protagonist” existed, it was surely a normal dating sim in which all the heroines held the possibility of falling in love with the male lead.
“Everything that led to you coming here is nothing but a lie. Now disappear to where you were supposed to be. In the first place, even if I brought you here, I intended to leave you alone. My objective was never you from the start, so why do you keep butting in and getting in my way!”
Having noticed that the chain was no longer moving, the queen quickly used her ability to make it so Iska had never been in this place.
If the ability had activated, Iska should have been returned intact to the place from which she had been abducted. But Iska remained standing in front of the queen.
If anything had changed from before, it was that the chains hanging from Iska had been dyed gold and were crackling with electric currents.
Just as the queen had used her ability to forcibly return her body to the state it had been in before being caught by the chain, even with the chains attached, her ability should have moved Iska back to the place where she had been abducted.
Then why was her ability not working?
The queen tried to back away and flee, but Iska had already approached and seized the queen’s hand so that she could not escape, making flight impossible.
“I made a promise. No matter what situation I was in, if the other party fulfilled my objective, I would protect Erika too.”
She had spread the chain’s power to suppress abilities around herself in the form of electric currents, suppressing the power that made what was currently happening into a “lie.”
The very fact that Iska had not been suppressed by chains that were supposed to suppress abilities, and had instead used her own psychic power to spread the force of “ability suppression” around her, revealed the extent of her capability.
“I won’t deny that I’m trash, but the one interfering isn’t me. It’s you. You’re trying to turn me, someone who’s trying to keep a promise, into a shameless bastard who can’t keep one. —That’s why you lose. Because you got in my way.”
Perhaps unable to withstand the golden currents, the chains bound around Iska’s limbs finally turned to ash and vanished.
Before the “ability suppression” function lingering even in the dust could disappear, Iska’s right hand briefly vanished, and after that, the school’s queen collapsed where she stood.
For someone who possessed the power of reality manipulation, it was an empty conclusion. But neither the queen nor her subordinates died. Murder by psychic power was taboo in this country.
Furthermore, the queen was merely the first boss in Erika’s scenario, one that had failed to be wrapped up in their first year.
In other words, finishing off the queen, who could rise again at any time, was not something Iska—who merely possessed overwhelming martial force—could do.
“I’d say that about covers the price of the ice cream. Now the rest is your turn.”
My turn?
To do what?
Even as she remembered the system’s declaration that if she did something lewd, the queen’s torment could be stopped, Erika deliberately pretended not to know and showed Iska only confusion.
Iska approached Erika, who had merely stood there watching this entire incident, crushed the ability-suppressing chains binding her with her grip, and smiled wickedly.