Volume 2 – The World Sneered
Chariot’s body was almost erotic, bewitchingly glittering as the flames burning the village lit it up.
The boorish burial car of the Death God with its exposed bones contrasted it.
Mary and Ami, who were sitting in the driver’s seat, could not be seen in the night’s darkness.
It looked like a type of monster, no matter how you looked at it.
“Ooooh!”
“Hrrraaaah!”
They both stepped fully stepped on the pedal.
Crimson flames lit up Chariot’s backside.
Cruz had the upper hand when it came to speed.
He broke the sound barrier and charged at his enemies as a violent sound reverberated.
But Mary’s side had plenty of power too.
Because this was a combination of Death God and Wheel of Fortune.
Chariot greatly surpassed them in terms of just mana.
There was no knowing what would happen when these two powers collided.
(I can’t even imagine it…… Even I’ve never had such an absurd fight before!)
But there was no space for fear in Cruz’s mind.
It was filled to the brim with excitement.
Adrenaline paralyzed his normal senses.
His desire to see what would happen in this battle between car and car surpassed his fear of death.
Only a single moment passed by.
But, perhaps having his sense of time destroyed by drugs, things looked like they were in slow motion and felt like seconds, or even minutes.
But this was not forever.
The time finally came.
It was like a clash between stars as a destructive noise that could tear off eardrums assailed the drivers.
The ground under them burst open, the trees in the area were blown away and not even rubble was left of the houses.
“Gah, aagh!”
“Guuuh!”
Mary and Cruz clenched their teeth and endured the fierce impact.
Ami leaned over and clung to the door to stop herself from being blown away.
Chariot’s bumper broke, its headlights stopped working, and a small gap opened up in its hood after it contorted.
Meanwhile, most of the front part of Mary’s car was crushed.
At this moment, Cruz and Mary were the closest to each other that they had been since they started this fight.
“That’s a nice car. I like it, I’m gonna take it when I win.”
“I haven’t shown you all its functions yet.”
“I’m looking forward to it!”
Both parties stepped on the pedal again.
Krrrrrk! Tires spun and the cars pushed each other.
Mary’s car had no need of a pedal in the first place.
The wheels moved by Ami’s powers, so there was no need to install a complicated feature like to use mana to drive the car.
But the reason Mary chose that method anyway was because she was not sure if it would ‘still count as a car’ otherwise.
It seemed that only attacks by other cars worked on a car that used Chariot’s powers.
Mary saw a little fear in Cruz when she attacked, so she realized it would be possible to break through the car’s protections with a strong enough attack, but that was not the right way to do it.
So, what was the ‘definition of a car’?
Wheels attached to an object?
Then Ami should have counted as a car too.
But her attacks did not work on Chariot.
As such, it was necessary for the object to be as close to a car as possible in order to have Cruz recognize it as a car.
Perhaps Cruz saw through this ‘pickiness’ of Mary, which made it even more fun for him.
He did not care about running out of mana and fired his back boosters at full power while pushing Mary.
“That must be pretty powerful if it can compete with my Chariot. But such hasty preparations are not enough!”
Chariot, while getting damaged, continued destroying the bone car.
Mary’s defeat was inevitable if they continued pushing each other like this.
But she was calm.
Even if the car was destroyed, even if her foe had more power, these were trivial problems.
She had been in fights like this many times.
And the way by which she won with Death God despite everything…… was ‘regeneration’.
“I’m going to reconstruct, Ami.”
“Okay, I’ll handle the alignments!”
The car started disintegrating after the two spoke.
“What!? You’re dismantling it yourself!?”
Cruz was shocked.
The obstacle in front of Chariot disappeared, and the silver gale went off in the distance.
Mary and Ami used their powers to dodge the charge, and literally recreated the bone car.
“Hahaha, your car is back to normal after damaging Chariot’s beautiful skin this badly? Now you’ve done it!”
Cruz did not turn right away, and took some distance from Mary and Ami.
The headlights were gone, and the back boosters were not active, so it was difficult for Mary and Ami to see Chariot.
“Did he flee?”
“I don’t think so. His choice to flee disappeared the moment we created a car.”
“Why?”
“He’s just that kind of man. His pride is heavy, even heavier than his life.”
Mary’s words were almost like a prophecy.
Immediately after her remark, orange flames lit up the darkness just for a moment on Mary’s right side.
“Here it comes!”
“Woooooo!”
Chariot used what little mana was left and sped up.
“He’s not gonna…… wha!?”
“It’s flying!?”
Cruz used debris as a jumping platform and attacked violently from the sky.
A rain of machine gun bullets poured down from above Mary and Ami.
The car’s body blocked most of the bullets, but some of them penetrated the car and cut Mary’s cheek.
She paid no attention to it, and suddenly took off.
But Chariot had already gone out of sight by then.
“Hmm…… It looks like he gave up on attacking directly.”
“Yes, because we can repair our car whenever we want. Still, hit-and-run tactics are cunning and steady.”
“Maybe people aren’t what they seem to be?”
“He’s a mercenary. He must be used to fighting.”
“What do we do?”
“We’ll shoot him with guns – Myriad Corpse Burial Gatling.”
Multiple guns grew out of Mary’s car, just like Chariot.
Further, their calibers and shooting speeds surpassed Chariot’s guns.
Cruz may have had the advantage in the field of ‘cars’ when Mary created one with her powers.
But that was only relative to his Sorcery Rating.
It was simple.
Car versus car.
Charge versus charge.
Guns versus guns.
But this was enough to make the Goddess of Victory smile on Mary and Ami.
“……There it is!”
Bwoosh, flames roasted the air.
Chariot momentarily sped up to its very limit and utilized debris to jump up while dodging the collision.
“Hyaahaaaaaah!”
Cruz cheerfully fired his guns from above.
“Fall!”
Without even evading this, Mary shot a bullet of bone.
Her body was damaged by many gunshots already, but her eyes glared only at the ‘enemy’.
“Hah, you’re a brave princess! But I have attitude control!”
“Then I’ll have to aim at the jet propulsion holes!”
The bone guns focused on the holes with flames coming out of them.
Bone fragments entered inside and the car’s engine stopped functioning as smoke started coming out.
“Ooooooh! Is my Chariot going to fall!?”
Chariot landed on the wheels on its right side after Cruz lost control in the air.
It kept tilting and was about to fall over.
“Not yeeet!”
Cruz stepped on the pedal and tried to get away from Mary while doing a wheelie.
But she did not let him.
She chased after him and continued to shoot.
“Go, gooo! Do it!”
She firmly held the steering wheel as Ami cheered for her.
Cruz could not get much speed going on two wheels.
The distance between them quickly closed.
“You ain’t gonna catch me, time to speed up!”
Cruz clenched his teeth and prayed to Chariot’s arcana.
However, the flames spat out by Chariot were incomplete and weak.
It said ‘EMPTY’ on the mana meter.
“Out of mana!? Ah, shit, I guess I used it all up because I’m fighting arcana users!”
Mary and Ami caught up to Cruz.
Then, the bone car’s front side opened up as sharp teeth came out of it and an eerie mouth appeared.
“Hey, hey, hey…… Are you serious, princess? Uaaagh!?”
Mary stabbed Chariot’s trunk with the teeth.
The mouth opened and bit down.
It kept biting as the car’s rear window broke, its rear wheels punctured, and swallowed the car as its wheels contorted.
Cruz stepped on the pedal over and over again, and tried to turn the steering wheel, but there was nothing to do now.
No, perhaps he could avoid being preyed upon if he crawled out of the car, but he had no such intentions.
“Chariot. It looks like this is where it ends for us.”
Perhaps having given up, he took out a cigarette from his chest pocket and nimbly took a puff.
He then held the burning side up.
“Pheew…… Sorry, I didn’t want to smoke in the car. I hope you can forgive me this time.”
Half of the car was already swallowed, and Cruz did not have much time left.
He decided to use this time to talk to Chariot instead of to resist.
The prodigal son was born in an aristocratic family and blessed with a talent for sorcery, but wanted to be a racer instead of a sorcerer.
That was the man named Cruz Arotam.
His family disowned him, and he lived freely after that, but was one day chosen by the arcana of Chariot. Perhaps it was destiny.
His family flip-flopped and flattered him as their ‘proud son’ after that, and the Empire also praised him as a genius sorcerer.
He could not avoid joining the imperial army after that.
But he thought that he could still have some degree of freedom by utilizing his influence as an arcana user.
With that in mind, after some negotiations, Cruz managed to be accepted into the army while still continuing to race.
He even used the army’s money to build the best car ever made.
Of course, he had to join the battlefields as the arcana user of Chariot now and then, and accepted that he might eventually die one day.
So he did not have many regrets.
He made sure to have as much fun as possible.
And, in the end also……
“Ganadia’s hero, Cruz Arotam, a car maniac to the core, was eaten by a monster car. That’s a pretty good story.”
His cranium got crushed by teeth.
The car and his body were squashed and mixed together, and Cruz fell prey to Death God’s jaws along with Ganadia’s boasted custom car, Chariot.
The mouth that grew from the bone car disappeared after Mary finished eating and the car disintegrated.
Standing in the now mostly empty village, Mary and Ami took a big sigh of relief.
“That’s one.”
“This isn’t a failure now, so I feel pretty good.”
They wanted to avoid the failure of this surprise attack coming to an end without any kills, so this was a big relief.
“So Cruz was brought here from another country too, huh……?”
“I feel a little bad for him, but we had to kill him.”
“Yep!”
“Besides, I think he died a satisfying death.”
“……Satisfying?”
“Because he died fighting a cool car.”
“Hehehe, we did this together, so!”
Ami and Mari intertwined their arms and returned towards the cabin.
Cutie and Calaria were supposed to be fighting Ox, but……
There were no sounds coming from their direction.