My youth story cannot be a knight war

The scarlet evil light split the earth like a long chain, and the sand, dust and black soil flew around, interweaving and spreading into strange shapes, the size of which was as shocking as the world-famous Nazca murals. The same red light lit up along each of the spreading trajectory lines.

In the very center of this unformed pattern, below the area where Gamio's corpse was suspended, a small stone platform made of earth and stone, engraved with hundreds or thousands of totems unique to the Gurongi clan, squeezed out of the soil, and each totem was shining with black light.

This is the altar, a concept and thing possessed by countless ancient civilizations of mankind. On the altar, they offer sacrifices to the objects they want to worship, praying for protection and blessings.

This was probably the most grand sacrifice since the concepts of "history" and "civilization" appeared on this planet. Although there was only one living sacrifice, the quality was so heavy that it could not be matched by all the previous sacrifices combined.

Because the sacrifice is a life form that has reached the ultimate realm. In terms of power and status alone, He is no different from a god to all life on this planet so far, and only such a life form is qualified to be the sacrifice of this ceremony.

This is the true purpose of "Kikiru". This sacrificial ritual, disguised as a "killing game", is to create a being that reaches the "ultimate" realm. The final stage of the game is to decide the winner between two identical ultimate life forms. The winner will have the power to bring about the "ultimate darkness", and the loser will become a sacrifice.

Therefore, those Gurongi who slaughtered humans before were actually also sacrifices in essence, no different from the humans who died at their hands. They were all there to lay the cornerstone for the completion of the altar. The evidence is the totems engraved on this altar.

If Kyosuke Kousaka were here, he would definitely be able to recognize the origins of most of the totems on these altars. Dozens of them were the identity signatures of the Gurongi who had been defeated by humans before, and more than a hundred others were the unfortunate ones who died tragically in the previous Daguba massacre of their own kind.

The remaining totems were all members of the Gurongi tribe who had participated in "Kikiludang" in the past but failed. In the end, even their names and existence disappeared in the torrent of time.

Their other identity is that they are all losers of "Kikiru".

The truth is so cruel. In the sacrificial ceremony, except for the final winner, all other losers will become the same sacrifices. From ancient times to the present, countless humans who lost their lives in this ceremony constructed every brick and stone of this altar, and those totems are the proof of the losers.

After spanning countless years and at the cost of the blood and flesh of countless victims and perpetrators, this ceremony finally came to its end.

The red evil light that danced like a whip finally dissipated at this moment, and a huge red totem appeared on the scorched earth after the battle. It was extremely complex, and every track was spontaneously wriggling, like blood flowing in human blood vessels.

The moment the totem took shape, red light with an intensity far exceeding that of the previous one lit up from each of its constituent lines, and then all these lights gathered in the center, on the altar. At this moment, all the totems engraved on it burst out with an incomparably bright black light.

At the same time, countless voices rang out on the altar as the black light grew stronger. There were shrill wails, furious roars, incoherent cries, and disdainful snorts.

"I don't want to die! I want to live! I absolutely don't want to die!!!"

"Why? I haven't even joined the game yet, nor have I broken the rules to hunt Lindo—why would you, Daguba!?"

"Damn it! KUUGA!!!!!!"

"Tsk! I never thought I would... If I could just kill those female Linduos..."

"Humph~ Losing is losing, there's nothing to say. What an ugly weakling attitude you guys are showing."

……

Countless overlapping and intertwined words were heard, a few of which were in Japanese, but most were in Gurongi, which clearly revealed the identities of these voices.

Those—all of them were the voices of the Gurongi who had perished in this ritual, the echoes of their souls' final appearance in this world.

And these souls turned into firewood and were ignited in the ominous black light, becoming the final step to complete the ceremony.

boom--! ! !

The red light condensed into a column, bursting out from the top of the altar, and directly hit the remains of Gamio that were floating just above the altar.

The moment it was hit by the beam of light, the body that could not be harmed even by a head-on hit from a hydrogen bomb melted away as fast as snow being doused in hot water.

At the same time as Gamio's body melted, another, even larger, dark evil light bloomed in every part of his disappearing body, like a black bud blooming in mid-air. The light, whose aura was incompatible with this world, spiraled up into the sky and soon disappeared into the atmosphere.

This ray of light passed through the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere surrounding the earth at an extremely fast speed, releasing terrifying elemental flows and energy particle flows wherever it passed, stirring up the fragile atmospheric balance of the planet and causing friction, thereby causing a huge electromagnetic storm, and the scale of this storm is still expanding as the distance increases.

From the perspective of the universe, the blue-green planet located third from the solar system was spewing out an indescribably vast black stream from central Japan into space, which was surrounded by a violent electromagnetic storm.

This scene was like a beating heart that was stabbed with a knife. Blood spurted out along the hole under the reverse blood pressure, and could easily spray out a distance of more than several meters.

In the concept of the universe, this distance of "several meters" has been multiplied incomparably.

Under the observation and calculation of countless near-Earth aliens scattered around the Earth in space, the length of this long stream surpassed the straight-line distance between the Earth's poles in a short period of time, and even easily reached a value of over 100,000 kilometers. Moreover, the momentum at the front end remains unabated, as if it is going to sprint directly out of the solar system.

But it didn't take long before the momentum of this long stream stopped, and it stopped exactly in the middle area between the earth and the moon, and the light stream at the front suddenly stagnated.

But this is not a lack of follow-up, because the light stream at the front is still surging and wriggling, but after crossing a certain distance line, it disappears out of thin air, as if it has hit a high wall that is invisible to the naked eye.

What kind of high wall could withstand such a planet-sized impact? The answer to this question was given the next moment.

A dazzling stream of red fire suddenly lit up out of nowhere, and the flames ignited the dark and deep starry sky of the universe... This scene was simply trampling and even ravaging the scientific common sense of mankind so far.

Because flame is an entity that exists in the form of "burning" after the temperature reaches a limit, but in order to achieve this condition, the first thing needed is sufficient oxygen, but the universe is a vacuum and dead world, and the concept of oxygen does not exist at all!

But this scene, which is impossible to happen in the scientific sense, actually appeared in the universe today, under the monitoring of all space probes, and even under the gaze of all human beings on this side of the earth.

The flame drew a parabolic trajectory in space, leaving a stream of blazing fire along the way. The flame swayed and rotated as it moved forward, and soon connected with the flame trajectory line that appeared before, forming a huge and boundless ring of fire.

This ring of fire was located in the center of the black light stream, forming a convergent ring that surrounded the long stream. The front end of the long stream disappeared when it overlapped with the ring of fire, and sank into an invisible "cave". The ring of fire was burning fiercely.

Finally, a pitch-black color spread from the front end of the light flow toward the inner circle of the fire ring. This darkness was deeper than the darkness of the universe, and even colder and more terrifying. The fire ring was immersed in darkness, forming a black "round mirror" that could not see any scene behind it.

Amidst this pitch-black darkness, a red light silently erupted, and a circular, overlapping crimson shockwave spread out into the surrounding space, its momentum like a tide and a hurricane!

Earth, at the forefront of this beam of light, was naturally the first to be enveloped. As the crimson shockwave passed through the planet, the entire planet trembled slightly, invisible to the naked eye.

But for human beings living on Earth, the world began to shake at this moment.

……

Everything was shaking, the sky, the earth, the ocean, and the countless small cities built by humans on the land, and even every building in them were shaking.

"——!!!"

Kyosuke Kousaka quickly grabbed the window frame of the school corridor to stabilize his body, and then an unprecedented tremor came from under his feet. At this moment, almost everyone around him fell to the ground, and the deafening screams resounded through his eardrums.

Kousaka, who did not fall, stared at the sky intently. Just at the other end of the azure sky, a huge ring of fire was burning silently. It had crossed the long distance from the universe to the atmosphere and was imprinted in his strongly contracted pupils, as if the edges of his pupils were burning.

The ring of fire is connected from beginning to end, and its shape is like the Ouroboros in mythology, representing infinity, cycle, rebirth and eternity.

Overwhelming black clouds rolled in from all directions of the sky, filling the sky and covering everything in sight with a layer of darkness, while the ring of fire burned even more fiercely and dazzlingly in the darkness.

But in the center of the burning ring of fire, there was an even more terrifying and profound darkness. Just by looking directly at that color, Kousaka felt as if his soul was frozen, and the coldness all over his body devoured every inch of his mind and body.

“What is that!???”

His lips were trembling violently, and Kousaka felt that his brain, which was not very smart but could be said to be clever, seemed to be filled with paste at this moment. All this had completely exceeded the limits of his rational acceptance.

What the hell is this!? What on earth is happening in this world!?

Countless questions popped up in my mind, but none of them could be answered.

But soon, Kousaka found that he no longer had time to think about these miscellaneous things. Even more terrifying changes came from the blind spot of reality, shattering his thinking.

“——Wow!?”

A strong pulling sensation came from his whole body. Caught off guard, Kousaka jumped out of the window under everyone's gaze after letting out a short scream.

……

"That is……!?"

Looking at the burning ring of fire swirling in the pitch-black sky, Zaimokuza, who was holding on to an external air conditioner beside him to steady himself, was almost speechless, and his teeth were chattering so much that he almost bit his tongue.

Yuigahama Yui and Yukinoshita Yukino, who were holding onto the same air conditioner next to him, also had dull expressions on their faces. Especially the latter, she could no longer maintain her usual rational and cold image, and her cherry mouth opened into a circle.

"Hey, hey, hey! Is this a joke?! Can someone explain this to me?! What the hell is this?!"

Shizuka Hiratsuka's expression twisted and twitched violently as she hugged a tree. She looked at the terrifying vision in the sky that shattered all common sense of her past life, and spoke tremblingly.

She asked this question just to vent her emotions, and she didn't expect to get an answer at all, but she didn't expect that someone would actually answer her.

"That is the 'Ultimate Darkness'...!"

A difficult voice was heard, and Hachiman Hikigaya, who was holding a drainpipe not far from Zaimokuza, was also staring at the sky and the ring of fire that occupied the sky, and spoke with a twitching eye.

"Hachiman, y-you said that's-what exactly is going on???"

This sentence immediately attracted everyone's attention. Zaimokuza quickly turned his head and wanted to ask, but when the words came to his lips, he didn't know how to say it. It would take some time for his thinking and organizational ability to recover from the shock caused by this scene.

"I don't know much... but if my guess is correct, then this must be the success of No. 0 in the future--!!!?"

"Ugh!!!"

Before he could finish his words, the expressions of Hikigaya and Zaimokuza changed at the same time, and they subconsciously grabbed the drain pipe and air conditioner beside them tightly.

An inexplicable force pulled their bodies upwards, instantly lifting them into the air.

"Xiaoqi!?"

"Zaimokuza-san!"

However, the other three people here did not change at all, as if they did not feel the existence of this force at all. They stared in amazement at the two people's feet raised into the air, swaying like carp flags fluttering in the air.

"Hey! Zaimokuza! Hikigaya! What's wrong with you guys!?"

In order to avoid being pulled up, the two of them grabbed the support beside them, and their faces turned red from the effort. Shizuka Hiratsuka immediately realized that something was wrong and asked hurriedly.

"N-I don't know! Suddenly--Ah!"

"Zaimokuza!"

Zaimokuza tried to speak with great difficulty, but his breath ran out the moment he opened his mouth. His palm accidentally loosened its grip on the air conditioner casing, and he was about to fly into the air under the force.

Fortunately, Hikigaya noticed it. He quickly reached out and grabbed Zaimokuza's panicked right hand, pulling him in mid-air.

But the combined weight and strength of the two people placed a huge burden on Kigaya's hand that was holding the exhaust pipe. His face instantly became extremely ugly, but he still gritted his teeth and held Zaimokuza's hand tightly without letting go. With the strength of one person, he maintained the bodies of the two people and leaned against the wall of the teaching building with Zaimokuza.

"Hey!"

This scene immediately startled the other three people. Among them, Shizuka Hiratsuka didn't care about anything else and immediately let go of the tree, crawling towards here staggeringly.

At the same time, Yukinoshita gritted her teeth, used one hand to grab the air conditioner, and stretched out the other hand towards Hikigaya and Zaimokuza, trying to grab them.

"Yukinoshita—ngh!"

Hikigaya looked at Yukinoshita's hand reaching for his wrist, and tried hard to hold on to Zaimokuza for a while longer.

But his thin body structure meant that he did not have much strength. He even had a hard time doing ten pull-ups in physical education class, not to mention that the weight of two people was now resting on just one arm without much muscle.

So when that hand opened and grabbed down, Hikigaya finally loosened his grip on the drainage pipe with all his strength, and the fingertips of the two hands crossed and then separated.

"Uhhhhh!!!"

"Wow!"

Amid the two's screams, Yukinoshita watched helplessly as Zaimokuza and Hikigaya, who had lost their stability, floated into the air, their bodies tumbling and flying towards the dark sky.

The hand she stretched out to her friend could not catch anything, and her fingers could only flex and stretch weakly, as if trying to grasp the two figures that were leaving.

"Hey!"

"Xiaoqi!!!"

"Zamokuza-kun!!! Hikigaya-kun!!!!!!"

In the dark world, Yukinoshita's voice rang out, echoing far and wide.

61. Connect Everything (6k)

Bellissimo Ricordo restaurant, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo.

Despite all that had happened, and the heavy damage that the entire Tokyo metropolitan area suffered in a short period of time, this restaurant miraculously survived and was not destroyed in the previous disaster.

The biggest damage was probably that all the glass in the first-floor windows was shattered by the shock wave. Apart from that, no one was hurt at all. In Tokyo, which is now littered with ruins and charred corpses, this restaurant is one of the few lucky ones that remained intact.

And now, on the top floor of this restaurant, in the warehouse that Zaimokuza used as a bedroom, a slender and beautiful figure was standing in front of the skylight of the room, looking up blankly through the cracked glass of the skylight at the sky covered by dark clouds, and the red ring of fire that flickered in the dark clouds.

"That's it, there's no doubt about it! That's it...!"

Asahina Mikuru looked at the ring of fire, her pupils trembling violently, incomparable fear and panic dancing in her chestnut eyes. Her beautiful face now looked like a small animal panicked by a natural disaster.

A pair of fair hands nervously grasped the collar of her shirt. Asahina couldn't help but take several steps back in fear. The fear engraved in her memory was completely multiple at this moment, making her recall everything clearly.

"At that time, what appeared in the time tunnel was this thing!"

Asahina could never mistake the ring of fire in the sky, and the impression it left on her was unforgettable. It was precisely because of this ring of fire that she had fallen into this state, unable to return home.

She still clearly remembered that when she was traveling through time on a time machine, she suddenly saw through the window of the machine that countless black fogs covered everything in her sight, and the edges of the black fog emitted a strange red luster.

A powerful energy flow shattered the machine's gauges on the spot, and the overload damaged most of its functions. Although the situation was extremely urgent at the time, Asahina subconsciously cast her eyes towards the source of the light in panic.

At that moment, Asahina saw, in the black fog that filled the entire time tunnel, a huge and dazzling ring of fire appeared in the interweaving of darkness and red lightning. It was so huge that it seemed to cover the entire world, leaving a "mark" for the specific concept of time that the human brain could not understand.

At that time, the time machine she and her companions were carrying happened to pass through the inner side of the ring of fire, just like a thread passing through the ring at the end of an embroidery needle.

Then the time machine was completely damaged by the explosive energy, and Asahina fell into a coma due to the violent shock inside the machine. When she woke up again, she came to the present era and was forced to become a future ghost wandering in the past.

All of her companions on the mission were lost in that encounter, and to this day, the detection equipment hasn't picked up a single signal from any of them. This has often left Asahina with pessimistic doubts, wondering if she's the only one who's arrived in this era, while the others have drifted off into other eras, perhaps the future or the past, in the turbulent currents of time.

That experience turned into a deep fear that lingered in Asahina's memory, waking her up many nights in terror. Every time she woke up, she would breathe a sigh of relief, because no matter how terrible it was, everything was over.