"Aaaaaahhhhhh!!!!"
In a burst of speed that even Ryuji couldn't track, Usagi instantly vanished behind Ami and Makoto, peeking out with tear-filled eyes as she desperately tried to hide from his gaze.
A wide, mischievous grin spread across Ryuji's face as he watched her trembling twin tails.
"So," he began, his tone teasing, "who were you going to teach a lesson again? Oh, and by the way... I've got clothes right here. If you meow like a cat, I'll give them to you."
His smirk was so blatantly smug that Ami pouted, stood up, and blushing fiercely snatched the clothes from his hands. He'd "acquired" them by breaking a shop window and leaving cash behind. She then promptly began pushing him out of the small ice shelter.
Makoto also rolled her eyes at him while comforting the shivering Usagi while gesturing for Ryuji to leave.
Rei studied Ryuji, her expression caught between gratitude and impatience.
"Mr. Ryuji, we truly appreciate your help, but now…"
She trailed off, though her meaning was clear. She was willing to sacrifice herself to shield the others from Ryuji's advances, she wasn't about to let him casually take advantage of any of them.
"Of course, I understand."
With an exaggerated shrug, Ryuji snapped his fingers. A wall of ice rose behind him, blocking any potential outside view.
Rei facepalmed.
"Mr. Ryuji… you're still inside with us. Could you please step out?"
"Oh! You should've said so earlier," Ryuji replied, feigning innocence. "I was just making sure no perverts were peeping while you changed. I'll head out now."
As soon as he finished speaking, Ryuji snapped his fingers, the ice wall shattered, and then he walked out.
Rei couldn't help but roll her eyes. She stood, one hand covering her exposed chest, and walked over to Ryuji. In full view of the other Sailor Moons, she leaned in and pressed a soft, quick kiss to his cheek.
Her lips were tender and fleeting against his skin. Blushing deeply... it was the first time she'd ever kissed a man other than her father or grandfather... she pulled back, a mix of embarrassment and defiance in her eyes.
"Satisfied?"
Without waiting for an answer, she turned gracefully, her long black hair swaying as she walked back into the ice shelter, leaving a faint scent of cherry blossoms in the air.
Ryuji was more than pleased, he'd only been teasing Usagi for fun anyway. With another snap of his fingers, the ice wall reformed, sealing the girls inside.
"Of course."
Inside, the Sailor Moons quickly began changing.
"Why are they all princess dresses?! And how did he know our sizes?!" Usagi complained, though it was clear she loved the style... she was just unsettled that Ryuji had guessed her measurements so accurately.
"I'm not sure," Rei admitted, slightly embarrassed. As the more mature one, she found princess dresses a bit childish. But seeing how much Usagi secretly adored hers, how thoughtfully Ami was tracing the fabric of hers, and how Makoto was also blushing at the frilly design, she decided not to comment.
"Maybe it was a coincidence, After all, when it comes to skirts, the size isn't really that special." Makoto suggested, though in her heart she wondered if Ryuji had specifically wanted to see her in a princess dress. So embarrassing…
Ami, recalling her promise to Ryuji, blushed as she clutched the dress. He really went and bought princess dresses… Convinced he was pursuing her, she bit her lip and resolved to sacrifice herself for the team.
I'll consider it repayment for saving us… and for training us!
Though she hadn't seen the entire battle, there was no denying Ryuji had defeated an enemy that had overwhelmed all five of them combined. More than ever, she felt they needed his guidance.
Steeling herself, she slipped into the dress and the matching high heels Ryuji had provided.
Once dressed, she used her water powers to dissolve the ice shelter. By then, people had begun to notice the commotion.
But what greeted Ryuji's eyes under the suddenly bright moonlight were five princesses.. radiant in white dresses, their shy blushes and flustered expressions only enhancing their beauty.
"We can't talk here. Let's leave first," Ryuji said quickly.
He snapped his fingers, and the ice shelter instantly vaporized into a thick, spreading fog. He'd already frozen the nearby fire hydrant shut, so someone could fix it later. While he couldn't precisely control the mist for combat, generating a dense blanket of fog was no issue. Soon, the growing crowd and arriving police found themselves blinded by the unnatural haze.
Seizing the opportunity, the group slipped away unnoticed. Thanks to Ryuji's earlier sabotage of nearby security cameras, they left no digital trace.
The group didn't head home right away. Instead, they stopped at a small park.
All five girls were already out of breath. At some point, they had reverted to their normal forms. That alone made Ryuji raise an eyebrow because it shouldn't have been possible.
If his memory served him right, the girls' powers came from their past lives. Since those powers were their own, why did losing their transformations make them ordinary humans again?
He couldn't figure it out, and since he didn't have any clear memories of the original plot to rely on, he decided to ignore it for now. Instead, he focused on a more practical question.
"So, tell me... how did you lose?"
In his opinion, that monster had been troublesome, sure, but if it hadn't been for saving these five idiots, he wouldn't have needed to use his awakening at all. He could've just burned it with fire or even outlasted it. His control over water was far greater than Ami's anyway, so there was no need to fear something like that.
He had only used that unfinished technique because he wanted to save them. The backlash had almost killed him.
To be honest, Ryuji still felt uneasy thinking about it. If the World power of 7 Days to Die inside him hadn't stepped in, he might have been seriously injured due to the side effects and the five Sailor Moons would have died with him.
It wasn't an exaggeration. The power he had unleashed was far beyond what he could control. For a moment, he felt as though time itself had warped.... even light twisted unnaturally before his eyes.
He wasn't sure if that had been an illusion, but one thing was certain: that move should remain sealed. Without the help of the World Power, it was nothing but a suicidal technique... a forbidden power that someone at his current level had no right to wield.
It's like someone in an Ultraman series suddenly gaining the power to create artificial Ultras, or letting a mid-tier country suddenly obtain a device that could neutralize nuclear weapons and then deciding to start World War III.
Things like that never ended well.
"…Still, it is one hell of an ultimate move," Ryuji muttered. "Normal opponents probably couldn't handle it. Emmm… though before I use it again, I'd better work on my escape speed."
Because right now, the biggest issue was that he couldn't run out of the blast radius in time... meaning he'd die right along with his target. If he could fix that, it might not be so bad.
But for now, what mattered most was figuring out why a monster infused with World Power had appeared near them in the first place.
"That monster was like all the others," Usagi explained, cheeks flushed. "It just appeared out of nowhere. We were crossing the river when it suddenly showed up and attacked us. The rest… well, you saw it yourself."
She didn't mention that she had been the one caught first and that was why the others had been captured too. What puzzled her most was why the octopus-like creature had seemed to focus only on her, chasing her relentlessly.
"That's right," Rei said without hesitation. "It was like it had its eyes locked on Usagi. If not for that, we could have escaped."
Usagi's face turned even redder. She didn't argue, because it was true and Ryuji was their instructor. He deserved to know.
"I see…"
Ryuji scratched his head. Of course, he knew the reason... Usagi was the protagonist. Targeting her would yield the greatest reward for anything trying to disrupt the story.
Still…
He looked at Usagi for a long moment, deep in thought.
The last World Power he'd captured had embodied emotion/love. It had attacked this world's heroines and everyone around them to corrupt the bonds of love and friendship that held the story together.
That explained the previous incident.
But what about this World Power?
"Could it be…"
He recalled the two tentacled monsters he had faced.
"If both were tentacle-type monsters, then the first one top capture the Sailor Moons clearly intended to do… that. For a World power of reproduction, violating someone is standard practice... forcing a pregnancy is an easy way to destroy love itself. Once a heroine bears such a child, no matter how pure her love once was, cracks are bound to appear. And this one, another tentacle creature with the ability to dissolve clothes which is so erotic...yeah, that's the same pattern… plus…"
Ryuji glanced at the five girls, now dressed in elegant princess gowns, and couldn't help recalling the 'original plot.'
If the Sailor Moons were to bear the octopus monster's children and if those children retained human minds and saved their mothers then, knowing how kind these girls were, they would never marry anyone else. They'd devote themselves entirely to raising those children instead.
The World Power really is brutal in it's actions, huh.
He knew well that the World Powers had no emotions or will. They didn't lust after human bodies or beauty. They were twisted manifestations of a world's broken laws cold, mechanical entities that cared only about fulfilling their own warped objectives.
Human feelings and willpower were nothing more than tools to them.
That was why Ryuji wasn't even sure if they truly possessed consciousness. What he did know, however, was that their methods were as crude as they were terrifying.
Just then, a golden light shimmered from Ryuji's hand. In an instant, new information flooded into his mind... a message from the 7 Days to Die World Will itself.
It warned him never to use that move again in this world. The timeline here was already unstable, and his attack had caused far greater damage than he realized. What looked like a spatial cut had, in truth, sliced through something far more fundamental.
He had accidentally severed a world line.
Ordinarily, his power shouldn't have been enough to do that. But the sword he wielded had carried a certain aura... one that had granted him temporary authority to do the impossible. Without it, even ten times his current power wouldn't have sufficed.
But he had done it. Ryuji had indeed cut through an unknown timeline... erasing an entire possibility from existence.
Although the world had reconstructed that lost thread, the truth remained: Ryuji had destroyed a parallel world that should have existed.
Yes. He had committed an act of world destruction.
Even though that world had never truly existed in the physical sense, Ryuji's strike had genuinely severed one of its potential realities. The world's will had managed to patch it up afterward, but that didn't change the fact that Ryuji had experienced the destruction of a world with his own hands.
That was why the spatial-time rift was taking so long to repair. If he ever did something like that again…
He would be forcibly ejected from this world.
And not in a gentle way... not thrown into another universe that could accept him but cast straight into the void itself.
Still, this was mostly because the space-time of this world was already unstable. The river of time was full of holes and fractures everywhere, and that instability had turned a small mistake into a catastrophic consequence.
So this time, it was only a warning, not an immediate punishment. In fact, to compensate for the danger Ryuji had caused, the world's will had even granted him a special privilege.
"Honestly, I don't even know what to say to that," Ryuji muttered.
Everyone around him seemed frozen in time, as if the world itself had stopped, and Ryuji found himself grumbling toward the 7 Days to Die World Will.
"I always thought a world's will would be some grand, majestic entity… but you guys are really unreliable, huh?"
He couldn't help himself. The 7 Days to Die world just threw people into deadly situations for no reason. The will of the Demon Slayer world was a bit more responsible, sure, but the missions it issued were absolutely insane... no normal person could handle them.
And this world? Its world will had completely messed up its own timeline, creating a bug that sealed his skills as a result. It reminded him of those incompetent game companies that break their own systems with bad patches.
Yet, despite his frustration, the 7 Days to Die world will remained utterly emotionless. Ryuji felt no trace of sentiment... only a calm, mechanical message entering his mind:
[This is a necessary act. You cannot yet comprehend our existence. In truth, we may not even exist.]
After sending that cryptic message, the world will fell silent again, returning to its usual lifeless stillness. The world around him slowly began to resume.
How could I possibly understand your kind of life form?
Ryuji sighed, rolling his eyes.
He didn't even understand how he had crossed worlds in the first place. He couldn't grasp how nuclear fusion truly worked.... how could he possibly understand the nature of a world's will?
Even now, he couldn't tell whether the aura lingering on his sword, the trace of world energy had been given to him intentionally, or whether it was some kind of hidden trap. Was it truly part of the reward the will had promised him… or something else entirely?
There was just too much of a difference in level between them.
As the five girls around him slowly returned to normal, Ryuji took a deep breath and made up his mind.
"Alright. You girls really need training."
The five of them looked down in embarrassment. Seeing their guilty expressions, Ryuji's tone turned firm and serious. Without his world-shattering trump card available, he couldn't afford to be careless anymore.
His current power was still growing... steadily, but slowly. There wouldn't be any sudden leap in power anytime soon. This phase could last years, especially since he still didn't fully understand the limits of his own abilities.
"Yeah. We know."
Usagi nodded firmly. This time, she didn't resist his training. She knew all too well... if Ryuji hadn't been there today, their fate would have been far worse.
Even if she still felt shy, even if she still thought of him as an incorrigible pervert, she understood clearly now: she could never allow her own weakness to put her friends in danger again.
Because this time, it had been her fault that everyone nearly died.
If she hadn't been caught, the Sailor Guardians might have escaped unharmed.
But because she had made that one mistake, the entire team had been pushed to the brink of destruction.
She clenched her fists tightly.
She would never allow something like that to happen again.
~~~~~~~~~~
You can support me by subscribing on Patreon and read up to 20 chapters ahead.
patreon.com/Ranabir_20