Chapter 273 - Intensity 4
Eventually, the train slowly decelerated, coming to a halt with a high-pitched screech...
At the moment of stopping, the passengers swayed due to the law of inertia.
Amidst that, neither I nor the Royal Knight before my eyes—Odoric—moved an inch.
Because I am bracing my feet in preparation for the impending collision.
Because my physical abilities are on a completely different level from the Japanese people around me.
Both he and I are out of place in a train crowded with the evening rush hour.
He is a person who should not be here.
With a sound of exhaling air, the doors opened.
Simultaneously, Odoric dashed out with the momentum of a bullet. Of course, it was a full sprint, with no regard for the surrounding passengers.
"Hey! Apologize!"
As a salaryman who had been violently bumped into shouted in rage, Angelica and the others also disembarked from the train a little later.
Since I am a mass of justice and morality, I cannot perform such a feat as blowing passengers aside to get off.
Are you claiming to be justice with that loose sense of ethics...? Voices of protest seemed ready to rise from all directions, but I want to believe that my morals, aside from the sexual aspect, remain at the level of a common-sense person.
"So you intend to run away like that, huh?"
I held out my palm toward his receding back.
If I shot him with magic... Wait, the pedestrians are making this incredibly difficult.
"Tch. He's running toward the crowd on purpose, knowing full well."
To me, every Japanese person walking the streets is a compatriot. A burden I must protect. But to Odoric, they are merely shields.
It goes without saying which side is at a disadvantage when entering combat in a space where a large number of people are moving about as they please.
"—Or so you'd think, right?"
Is it just the shallow wit of someone from another world? It seems he has no understanding of how a Japanese crowd moves.
This is a developed nation, a country where the most disciplined people in the world live, and—it is a disaster-prone nation.
I applied Concealment Magic to vanish, then stomped my foot with every ounce of my soul.
Thump...!
A sound that resonated in my gut echoed, and a spiderweb-like crack raced out from beneath my foot. The scale of the crack must have been several meters.
Soon, a lateral shaking began, and the nearby people stopped moving all at once. By feel, it was around an intensity of four. No one would ever suspect that a single man had produced a tremor of this magnitude solely through the strength of his own legs.
I released the Concealment and screamed with everything in my lungs.
"Earthquake!! Get down!!"
In an instant, every Japanese person in my sight crouched down. What admirable civic standards.
In contrast, Angelica and Chloe were frozen with panicked expressions.
I slowly walked up to the two of them,
"That shaking just now was my doing. You don't need to be so scared,"
I said, revealing the trick.
Immediately, the color returned to the pale faces of the girls.
"Th-thank goodness. I thought for sure this was that Japanese great earthquake I've heard rumors about."
"It's my first time feeling a shake like this, so I was startled."
I bet.
Earthquakes were rare in the other world, after all.
Looking around, the Japanese people were beginning to evacuate calmly or crouching in postures to protect their heads, but the foreigners were making a fuss as if they had witnessed the end of the world.
Since ninety percent of the people have stopped moving, this is enough.
"Alright, this makes things easier."
"...Was Lord Father aiming for this?"
"I suppose. This is the best way to make only the Japanese stay quiet. More importantly, let's talk while running."
"Amazing... Lord Father wasn't just a man who keeps girls around..."
Having received words that were hard to tell if they were praise or insults, I began the pursuit.
The pedestrians will likely remain quiet for only a few more minutes.
I must hurry.
"Hey, that man panicking over there!"
Chloe's finger was pointing at a white man crawling on the ground with a bloodless face.
...Even if he is a Royal Knight, he couldn't withstand an intensity 4, the first of its kind in his life, I suppose.
"The whole ground shaking must be quite terrifying, huh!"
I put strength into my right leg and entered a jumping stance.
In an instant, my body soared through the air, closing a distance of twenty meters at once by eye.
Thud! The sound of landing.
From the smell of burnt rubber wafting from my soles, I could tell an incredible impact had occurred.
"Caught you, Odoric-san."
I grabbed the Royal Knight, whose eyes were wide with terror, and forced him to stand up.
"There are too many eyes here. Let's change locations."
A few seconds later, Angelica and the others caught up and began making a racket with voices like ringing bells, shouting, "Caught a groper!" causing curious eyes to gather on me.
"This guy is a groper."
Ah, is that so. Good job. If the girls say so, then that must be it. People uttered words to convince themselves and began a photo session with their smartphones in hand.
"Hey, didn't that guy just leap about twenty meters?"
One of the onlookers said something that made me flinch, but he was immediately heckled by other bystanders.
"What kind of nonsense is that? I was only looking at those girls' breasts bouncing while they ran, so I didn't really notice."
"When it's a jumping man versus beautiful girls' breasts bouncing, it's normal to stare at the latter. Are you okay, man? Are you a homo?"
"Wait, am I the weird one here?"
"Of course. It doesn't matter if a man jumps twenty meters or a hundred meters; more importantly, it's the girls. I like the blonde one."
"The ponytail one is more my type. Probably mixed-race. She's cute."
"No, I'm telling you, he jumped an impossible distance. I saw it!"
I dragged Odoric along, looking for the railway police... or so it seemed, but I actually ran at a speed no longer visible to the human eye and moved to the men's restroom.
I kicked open a stall door and threw Odoric inside.
"Guh!"
Having apparently struck the back of his head against the toilet, the knight from another world let out a groan.
"You know what's about to happen, right?"
"...Kill me."
"That's the spirit."
I generated a Light Sword in my right hand and brought it close to the tip of Odoric's nose.
"I'm going to slice off your lower jaw now."
"Wh...!"
"Obviously. Based on the status appraisal, it looks like you can use Sorcery. No matter how much I torture you, you'll just be healed by chanting a single word, 'Heal.' We'll start by making sure you can't speak. It's only natural, right?"
"I don't think you'll be able to extract information that way."
"I'll have you answer with blinks."
"..."
While breaking out in a cold sweat, Odoric answered.
"...Do it. No matter what you do, I will not betray His Majesty."
"Are you sure? Don't regret it later."
The moment I raised my right hand, I heard Odoric mutter, "Philia-sama...!"
...Philia?
"Is there something about that person?"