Chapter 18

I didn’t know the secret to summoning that red fire. The only thing I had to fight the demon lord was my gacha ball.

Meanwhile Truck-kun was platypus-fighting for control of cannibal chief’ camel during a siege against the demon lord. Man, I love that last sentence. How did things get so crazy?

Then the demon lord landed in front of us with such force that we were all knocked off of our camels. I stood holding nothing but a gacha ball. The demon lord rose, over three meters of metal topped by glowing red eyes.

He pointed at the gacha ball. “That is the device inscribed across our lands as if by the workings of the divine! No wonder these savages took up the confidence to attack.”

I looked at the gacha ball, then at Nyarin. “How many cliffs did you carve a gacha ball image into last night when you were using that True Sight thing?”

“I didn’t know what path we would take or if you’d miss some, so I carved it into half of the surfaces on this entire reality.”

No wonder everyone had considered the carvings to be a sign from the divine. Nyarin’s attempts to make sure I saw the carving had manifested as a miraculous message from the heavens all over this side of the continent.

The demon lord looked between us, clearly confused. His red eyes narrowed in distrust.

The cannibal chief stood and raised his ax in an attempt to cut my skull in half. He screamed, “False God!” as the ax came toward my head.

The demon lord summoned a fiery whip and smote the chief down in the blink of an eye.

That was a very bad sign. I raised the gacha ball up toward the demon lord.

And to my amazement, the demon lord took a step back, fearful of it.

The battle field around us fell silent.

The demon lord dismissed his magical fire whip. Man, that was a cool weapon. “Give me the sphere.”

“Um, no?”

“Was that a question?”

“Um… no?”

The demon lord’s eyes narrowed.

“Just give it to him. Maybe he’ll let us go.”

“Okay, you can have it.” I said, stepping forward with the gacha ball offered up in my hand.

The three meter tall demon lord took another step back, nervous. “Okay, I’m getting confused by all of the mixed messages.”

I saw Nyarin close her eyes and focus. Flickers of red flame began to lick out from her closed eyelids. I just needed to give her time.

The demon lord summoned a massive sword. “I shall kill you all and take this sphere of power for myself.”

Nyarin’s eyes widened in terror and the wisps of red flame she had managed to summon disappeared.

I didn’t want to experience dying. I might remember it, and suddenly I realized that Nyarin and Truck-kun would remember it too.

I had nothing but a plastic ball and a sick platypus, and I was fresh out of donuts to reload the platypus.

I swallowed down my fear and held the tiny plastic gacha ball over my head. “Very well, come and take it from me if you can, you pathetic worm!”

The demon lord stopped and his shoulders slumped in frustration. “Words can hurt, you know. This is really confusing. Are you keeping the sphere from me, threatening me with it, or offering it.”

“I’m… threatening you with it?”

“Was that another question?”

“Clearly this sphere is a device of ultimate power. I know that the divine creator of this realm has chosen a hero and granted that hero any power of their chasing. Are you the hero?”

“Um, yeah.”

The demon lord seemed surprised by my candor. “And that sphere is the power granted to you by the divine?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Stop with the questions. I’ve heard enough. Give me that power and I will spare your life. Deny me, and I will risk a conflict with you.”

“I really can’t give you any power.” I said, hefting the gacha ball as if its uselessness was self-evident.

At that moment my attack platypus jumped from the barren, blasted ground and pounced on the demon lord. The demon lord punted Truck-kun away.

“Very well, I’ll just have to take your power by force.” The demon lord stabbed his sword into the ground between us. Red magical lines traced themselves through the ground. I found myself standing in a spell circle identical to another one underneath the demon lord himself.

“I call upon ancient magics.” He intoned. The spell circles sealed and both he and I were sealed into our respective circles by magical barriers. “Ancient spirits, gods, and timeless forces, I invoke the Rite of Exchange. Grant me the power of this incredible divine sphere. Exchange my power with everything granted to him by the divine!”

There was a loud noise, a bright light, and suddenly that jerk had stolen my gacha ball.

And also just as suddenly I was filled with all of the demon lord’s power. Man I felt good after two weeks of rough camping and donuts. At a flick of my wrist my body was suddenly covered in black armor. I summoned a fiery whip to my hand out of pure reflex.

The demon lord, now without his armor, stood in the middle of the battle field with nothing on but underwear. He looked at the gacha ball with obvious disappointment. “What?”

Truck-kun had managed to crawl back to the demon lord and pounced again. The demon lord threw the gacha ball and Truck-kun was recaptured into the ball in a burst of light.

I paused for a moment from my exalting in all of the power the demon lord had traded for a plastic ball. Despite my luck, this was all still a failure. I was supposed to be getting out of these Isekai, not battling demon lords.

The world started getting fuzzy. I had completed the purpose of this Isekai. I no longer had a goal here now that Nyarin knew that I had been faking amnesia for weeks. The reality around us was crumbling.

“Dammit,” I said as the world grew indistinct and melted away, “not another Isekai.”

A funny thought occurred to me. I saw Nyarin struggling to summon the red flames as the Isekai around us fell apart. I felt the spell pulling me back into flashbacks of my own memories. Nyarin had told me that Truck-kun couldn’t summon that red fire within the gacha ball, since he technically didn’t exist in this reality.

So what would happen now? Nyarin was too panicked to summon the fire and control the next Isekai. Truck-kun couldn’t.

Could I?

My mind worked quickly as I remembered my life. Years of playing in grade school came back to me. Years of trying to recreate that kind of joy and freedom as an adult came back as well. I pushed aside memories of my happiest days, because they came with the pain of remembering Sachiko.

I had to believe that I could summon that True Vision red flame myself. My mind raced. Nyarin had been distracted by fear and unable to summon True Vision. I remembered seeing through that True Vision and immediately seeing that everything was fake.

And then it hit me. Nyarin had been chanting to herself ‘its not real’ again and again. It wasn’t a magic incantation, but what if that had been more than just a fear reaction as the cannibals came for us? What if that was the secret to the True Vision.

The truth was, everything around us was fake. None of it was real.

I focused on that one truth and suddenly the world went red. I could see through the demon lord. I could see that Truck-kun was stuck in the gacha ball the demon lord was picking up, but also that Truck-kun was effectively imprisoned outside of reality.

And I realized that with Nyarin too terrified to disbelieve the Isekai and Truck-kun held in the gacha ball, I was the only one with the power to direct the spell to the next Isekai.

I could feel the spell working. Through the True Sight I had a slight sense of control over what it did, but the True Sight I had created was far weaker than what I had experienced thanks to Truck-kun. But it was enough to let me influence the next reality.

I sighed. “Dammit, not another Isekai.”