At the same time, through the contract connecting them, Kuro's voice suddenly echoed directly in the mind of someone far away from their location.
'You too, Ishtar-sensei.'
Kuro's words once again echoed through the contract linking the two of them.
'I'm going to take you away from this world.'
Far away, Ishtar, who was leisurely soaking in an onsen, merely opened one eye.
The warm water rippled gently around her, while thin wisps of steam rose into the cold night air.
There was a brief silence.
Then a small sigh escaped her lips.
"…That human again."
There was no surprise in her voice. Instead, there was the familiar sense of exasperation that had become increasingly apparent over the past few days.
Moving to another world and leaving their original reality behind. Bringing along the children, the Servants, and even a Goddess.
To most people, it would sound like an impossible plan. Yet the way Kuro had delivered it just now made it sound as though he were simply informing her of the departure schedule for a short trip tomorrow morning.
The corner of Ishtar's lips twitched slightly.
"…Whatever."
She rested her head against the stone behind her and closed her eyes.
"But if it turns out to be boring…" A faint smile slowly appeared on her face. "You'll have to take responsibility, Master~"
Her voice sounded casual, with a hint of teasing.
After that, Ishtar simply returned to enjoying the warmth of the water without rushing to think any further about it.
She did not ask how he planned to do it.
Nor did she question whether something like that was actually possible.
Because if the past six days had taught her anything, it was that trying to find the limits of Kuro's abilities would only give her a headache.
"Hmph."
In the end, a small snort escaped her nose.
"If you've already made up your mind, then do whatever you want."
***
World: One Punch Man
Upon arriving in that world, Kuro immediately left Ishtar, Illya, Yuki, Osakabehime, Kama, and Tamamo at the house he had prepared in City Z during his previous visit.
However, his purpose for coming this time was not to relax, let alone make the world their new home.
There was something he needed to do.
And so, after making sure that everyone was safe and settled in, Kuro opened a rift in space and stepped into the Mirror Dimension.
Now, he stood alone in the middle of a distorted City Z.
Here, the sky and earth seemed to have lost all meaning. Skyscrapers folded over themselves like gigantic origami, overlapping at impossible angles.
Highways stretched vertically through the air, while rows of apartments hung upside down overhead like concrete stalactites.
Fragments of the city slowly drifted and rotated around an empty space that possessed neither center nor direction.
Gravity felt more like a suggestion than a law.
Some buildings stood upright, others lay sideways, while some clung to the sky like shadows forcibly given physical form.
From a distance, the landscape resembled a gigantic kaleidoscope that constantly shifted, never repeating the same pattern twice.
Thousands of windows reflected a golden light whose source was unknown.
The reflections collided with one another, multiplied, and then scattered again, forming a sea of light that shifted with every passing second.
And yet, there was no sound accompanying it. No city noise. No wind. No sign of life.
Only absolute silence stretched as far as the eye could see, enveloping the entire mirror world like a blanket covering everything beneath it.
A City Z completely severed from normal reality. Amidst this landscape that defied common sense, Kuro stood calmly. His black hair moved gently despite the complete absence of wind.
In his right hand, he held the Holy Grail of Uruk, a legendary artifact that had recently been used more often as a drinking vessel than for its original purpose.
His gaze swept across the world around him.
The folded buildings.
The suspended highways.
The endless sea of reflected light.
To anyone else, this place might have looked like a nightmare born from madness—or a catastrophic error in the fabric of reality.
To Kuro, however, it was nothing more than a workshop that happened to be extremely large.
The corner of his lips lifted slightly.
He then raised the Holy Grail of Uruk and finished the remaining wine in a single gulp.
The golden liquid disappeared without leaving a single drop behind.
"Hmm."
Casually lowering the Grail, he once again gazed across the boundless expanse of the Mirror Dimension.
Everything was ready.
Without saying another word, Kuro knelt down and placed the Holy Grail of Uruk on the rooftop beneath him.
Afterward, he took a golden ticket from his inventory.
Random Summon Heroic Spirit Ticket.
He placed the ticket inside the Grail.
Kuro then stood and took six steps backward.
His right hand slowly rose.
On the back of his hand, the Command Spell began to emit a faint red glow.
He closed his eyes, focusing his thoughts on the Heroic Spirit he wanted to summon—or, more precisely, the Heroic Spirit he desperately hoped would appear.
At this moment, Kuro was attempting an experiment that was fairly risky even by his own standards.
He intended to combine the Random Summon Heroic Spirit Ticket from the system with the Holy Grail of Uruk.
Two things that, in theory, should have had absolutely nothing to do with one another.
It was true that the Grail remained an extraordinarily powerful wish-granting artifact.
However, its power was not absolute.
Especially when used outside its original reality.
And even more so in a world that possessed neither the concept of a Holy Grail War nor a Heroic Spirit summoning system.
Under normal circumstances, using the Grail to summon a Servant in a place like this should have been impossible.
But that was precisely where the experiment came in.
The Random Summon Heroic Spirit Ticket was an item that could be used anywhere and at any time, without being bound by the laws of the world in which it was activated.
In other words, the ticket could accomplish something that even the local world's system did not support.
According to Kuro's hypothesis, the ticket might possess direct access to the Throne of Heroes—or perhaps to some mechanism even more absurd than that.
After all, Kama's existence had already proven that the system did not particularly care about the limitations of conventional summoning rituals.
Therefore, if the ticket functioned as a "path," while the Holy Grail functioned as the "wish," then in theory, the two might be able to complement each other.
And at the moment, Karna and Astolfo were the two Heroic Spirits Kuro wanted to summon.
His eyes opened once again, fixing themselves intently on the Holy Grail of Uruk.
The Magic Circuits within his body lit up one by one, connecting him to the wish-granting artifact through a stable flow of prana.
"With this treasure," he said solemnly, "I summon the Son of the Sun God, Karna… and one of the Twelve Paladins of Charlemagne, Astolfo."
The next instant, a magic circle manifested around the Holy Grail of Uruk.
Blue light spread outward, forming an intricate pattern that continued to expand across the rooftop.
Seeing this, a faint smile appeared on Kuro's face.
It seemed his theory had worked.
Or at least, that was what he thought for the first few seconds.
Then the entire magic circle suddenly cracked.
Cracks of light spread in every direction like glass being forced to withstand far too much pressure.
CRAAACK!
In an instant, the formation shattered into countless fragments.
The rooftop beneath the Holy Grail immediately collapsed from its center. Cracks spread in every direction, destroying part of the structure before finally coming to a halt.
Kuro instinctively leaped backward onto another rooftop.
At precisely the same moment, an overwhelming amount of magical energy erupted outward.
A gigantic pillar of magical energy shot upward like a spear piercing the heavens.
More precisely, it pierced through the distorted cityscape that had been serving as the sky of the Mirror Dimension.
A wave of energy swept across the surrounding area like an invisible storm.
Kuro's hair whipped violently from the pressure as he instinctively raised one arm to shield his face.
Then something even worse happened.
His body suddenly felt unbearably heavy, as though he had been bound to a gigantic vortex that continuously sucked away magical energy.
Prana poured out of his body in an utterly absurd amount.
Even with Eldritch Magic connected to the reserves of mana crystals within the Gate of Babylon, the pressure he was experiencing remained overwhelming.
His vision wavered slightly.
His legs lost their balance.
And a moment later, he was already down on one knee atop the rooftop.
Still reeling from the shock of the ritual's backlash, Kuro could only stare at the pillar of light continuing to tear through the Mirror Dimension in the distance.
His brows slowly furrowed.
"…Damn," he muttered quietly. "I didn't expect the result to turn out like this."
His gaze remained fixed on the phenomenon before him.
"I deliberately didn't use Sha Naqba Imuru because I thought there wouldn't be any problem."
He fell silent for a moment before finally letting out a long sigh.
"…Looks like I was being too naive."
____
Author's note:
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