As long as there’s no notice from the other nations about it, this will be the first battle between a God Hero and a Demon Lord.

Whether a God Hero is truly the trump card to overturn the Demon Lords. It was supposed to become an important cornerstone, but I was unable to defeat Michael.

The God Hero didn’t lose to the Demon Lord, but it wasn’t able to beat it either.

For us humanity, who are heavily inferior in numbers against them, this is nothing short of saddening.

“…I don’t think it is such a bad thing.” (Mirack)

I couldn’t defeat Michael.

“The Demon Lords are our enemies…but, just as he said, I think that we both are great opponents.” (Mirack)

There’s types of opponents.

The type of opponent that the more you fight them, the more both of you regress; the ones that the more you fight, the more you grow.

In that sense, we can categorize them as bad and good opponents, but the truly troublesome ones are probably the good opponents rather than the bad ones.

That’s because you can simply defeat the bad opponents in your hatred.

But the good ones, the opponents that you connect with from things other than hatred, just how do you reach a good conclusion to it?

“I couldn’t tell anymore. How should I wrap up my battle with him? Is it fine with just one of us dying? I began to feel that just doing that would not be good.” (Mirack)

“Mirack-chan…” (Karen)

Michael and I; hero and Demon Lord; human and monster.

In this battle of supremacy, just in what way would it be desirable for our battle to conclude?

“In order to grasp that answer, I have to fight him once more.” (Mirack)

It is inexplicable, but for me, the unavoidable battle between Michael and I in the future was something that I was looking forward to on the same level as how I look forward to reuniting with Karen and the others.

“…Now that I think about it…” (Mirack)

Karen was about to leave the room, but I let out a final question.

“I didn’t see Haine this time. What happened? He is the type of guy that would stick his head in other people’s business even when you don’t call him.” (Mirack)

Maybe there was an even more precarious situation happening somewhere else and he headed there, so I was a bit worried.

When I asked this, Karen’s expression visibly clouded and she muttered.

It was such a low mutter that I had to ask again, and I finally understood what she said.

“Missing? Along with the Light Founder?” (Mirack)

• 277: Fantasy physics study

And so, in the end, I -Kuromiya Haine- should be the one closing this.

We are still in the Nameless Desert.

In order to bring back Mother Earth Mantle who it would be nice if she were caught inside the Black Hole.

Yorishiro, Shiva, and I were cooperating in destroying the Black Hole, but it isn’t working at all.

It isn’t even showing signs of going well.

The only weakness of my Black Hole is to eliminate the dark matter core inside of it with Light divine power. The Black Hole itself would be eliminated and might release Mantle who is probably caught inside of it.

However, no matter how many times we try, the light divine power gets caught in the high gravity of the Black Hole before reaching the core.

Even when we increased the power with the air lens of Shiva and my gravity lens, we couldn’t break through the heavy gravity.

We tried many times with light divine power, but they all ended in failure.

Right now, we were splattered on the ground resting our mental and physical exhaustion that was accumulated from all the failures.

Adding that we are in the Nameless Desert, being crazy hot is making it even more exhausting.

There’s no signs of anything going well and there was a sense of fruitless effort welling up inside of us already.

“How about we return…?” (Yorishiro)

The first one to voice out words of surrender was Yorishiro.

“As expected, we were underestimating the power of darkness. No matter what plan we have, it won’t work on the Black Hole. It is true that if the return of Mantle happens, we will be in an advantage, but if we get too adhered to that, it might end up being fatal.” (Yorishiro)

It is as Yorishiro says.

In the first place, the three people here are the incarnations of the Dark God Entropy, the Light Goddess Inflation, and the Wind God Quasar. In other words, a gathering of Gods.

“In the time we are doing this, who knows when the Demon Lords will begin moving. Let’s abandon the matter of Mantle and prepare for things in the range of what we can do.” (Yorishiro)

Her logic was so sound we couldn’t say a single word of objection.

If we could salvage Mantle here, we could make Sasae-chan into an Earth God Hero and it would increase a lot our fighting forces against the Demon Lords, but…that’s not the only problem.

It is rather Coacervate that’s a problem bigger than Mantle.

The possibilities of him cooperating are despairingly nonexistent. It is impossible to make all five into God Heroes in the current state, so it might not be necessary to force us in bringing back Mantle.

Let’s be reasonable here and think of a way to win with the cards we have at hand.

“…Aren’t you misunderstanding something?”

And in that moment, someone had cut in.

Within the group of three here, the one who spoke at last was Shiva.

“Misunderstanding? What is it we are misunderstanding? Now that it is impossible to bring back Mantle, we have to hurry and make Hyue-san and Mirack-san into God Heroes. I think convincing Nova will be difficult, but simply having the prospect of convincing makes it better than the other two. We should quickly—” (Yorishiro)

“That’s not what I am saying.” (Shiva)

Yorishiro pressed on, but Shiva stopped her.

“What I mean is that what we were lacking wasn’t output, but accuracy.” (Shiva)

““?””

We didn’t understand what Shiva was saying.

“I will begin with the basics. Why is it that the light divine power is not reaching the core of the Black Hole?” (Shiva)

Because the gravity of the Black Hole is…

“The Black Hole pulls in everything no matter what it is, right? In that case, even if the light is caught in the gravity, its destination should be the center of the Black Hole. In other words, at the super-compressed dark matter core. In that case, even if we did nothing, the caught light would reach the dark matter, isn’t it?” (Shiva)

“Yeah but…” (Haine)

“You said that the light would be infinitely caught inside the Schwarzschild radius, right?” (Shiva)

“Well, that’s right.” (Haine)

Sorry, but I actually don’t understand it well myself either.

Don’t you think the words Schwarzschild radius sound cool though?

“When you approach a certain distance to the Black Hole, no matter what power you have, you won’t be able to return. That radius is one that you can’t return from. If you make one step into it, no matter what it is, you won’t be able to escape from the Black Hole —even light.” (Shiva)

Oh, I am impressed you know so much about it, Shiva-san.

By the way, Yorishiro had already given up in understanding.

“And so, returning to the previous topic, we have shot light divine power in order to destroy the core of the Black Hole. But we didn’t succeed once. We were thinking that the reason was because the light divine power lacked in strength to break through the gravity, but is that really the case?” (Shiva)

“Then, what is the reason for the failures?” (Haine)

“Until now, we were aimlessly shooting light to the Black Hole. We didn’t try to accurately shoot at the core. Isn’t that the problem?” (Shiva)

“…”

He does have a point.

The Black Hole looks like a pitch-black sphere, but that’s because it doesn’t let even the reflection of light return which makes it look that way.

The super-compressed dark matter core can be said to be the only thing with substance inside the Black Hole, but because it is super-compressed, it is a thousand times smaller than a grain of sand.

If you want to aim at it and hit it, you would need God-like precision.

But Yorishiro and I didn’t take it as an important point to stress.

We had the positive thinking that since the Black Hole is absorbing everything, even if we don’t seriously aim at it, it should go to its target on its own.

Without noticing that we were contradicting ourselves because of the light being caught by the Schwarzschild radius.

“Listen well. Even with that, the strongest element against darkness is light.” (Shiva)

Shiva’s professor-like lecture continues.

“The one with the highest possibility of escaping from the Black Hole is light as well. The speed of light is the fastest and has no mass after all. It is probably that the light, which has been shot blindly into the Black Hole, would graze the core and pass by it, but the gravity catches it and pulls it back.” (Shiva)

Yeah yeah (I don’t really understand).

“If it were a normal substance, it would be pulled by the gravity just like that and fall into the center of the Black Hole. But light is different. Light is good against darkness, but has no mass and flies at high speed, so it goes against the gravity and can proceed through the contrary direction of the gravity. Even if it enters the Schwarzschild radius.” (Shiva)

Yup yup yup (still don’t understand).

“But everything that enters the Schwarzschild radius can’t get out, which is absolute. As a result, what happens is that ‘the power trying to escape’ and the ‘power trying to pull in’; both the high speed and high gravity balance each other out and stop into a boundary line between possible to escape and impossible to. That’s…” (Shiva)

The Schwarzschild radius…

This radius is basically the satellite orbit of the Black Hole. The light that gets caught in a battle of speed and gravity ends up being unable to move from that place.

“I have made a wordy talk there, but what I mean is that in order to destroy the Black Hole, we have to aim the light divine power accurately and hit the core.” (Shiva)

That’s why Shiva said that rather than output, we need is accuracy.

“Understood.” (Yorishiro)

Yorishiro who had given up on listening has revived!

“Just means that instead of blindly shooting, we should aim this time, right? Why did you make such a long talk just to say that? Is it that men think they will look cooler by sounding intelligent?” (Yorishiro)

“You woman also immediately shutted out the talk you yourself had no interest in! As I thought, all women aside from Juo are idiots!” (Shiva)

Them not getting along is a default.

But even if Shiva’s hypothesis is correct, it is not as if things have been easily resolved now.

The destruction of the Black Hole is still a treacherous path.

Because as I said before, the core of the Black Hole is thousands of times smaller than a grain of sand.

But its mass is several hundreds of times that of a mountain though.

Accurately hitting such a small target is close to impossible.

“I will do something about it.” (Shiva)

Shiva jumps in.

“I am the Wind God Quasar, but I am also the human that has the position of Wind Founder. I have confidence in my aim as a dual wind gun user.” (Shiva)

“Shiva…” (Haine)

“Of course, in terms of long range sniping, I am no match for Hyue, but…there’s still worth in trying. I will fix the direction of the light beam of Yorishiro with the air lens. Haine.” (Shiva)

“Yes?” (Haine)

“I will have you take the role of feeling the position of the core as a darkness user. Let’s try struggling a bit more before giving up.” (Shiva)

Shiva stands up as if saying break time is over.

I also follow and stand up. Yorishiro, as if saying ‘good grief’, lifts up her big butt from the sand.

After many failed attempts and hypothesis, we were approaching the destruction of the Black Hole.

But even with that, it would still require hundreds of test shots more in order to pierce through the core of the Black Hole.

In other words, what I am trying to say is that it will still take more time to save Mantle.