What If the Strongest Villain from the Original Story Became the Protagonist's Ally?

I intervened in the battle between Iris and the giant crocodile.

Iris had reached her limit.

From here on, I will handle it. It would have been fine if she could defeat it, but if it was impossible, I’d just eliminate it myself.

I wouldn’t let Iris be killed. Absolutely not.

“Wh-wh-what!? My masterpiece’s charge was, was, stopped with one hand!?”

In the distance, the robed old man was letting out a voice of shock.

I had prioritized Iris since she was suddenly in a pinch, but because of that I’d missed the chance to defeat that old man.

Oh well. Even if he ran, I could easily catch up.

I returned my gaze to the crocodile and grinned under my mask.

“Now then… how should I defeat you?”

“Guruaaaaaa!”

“Whoops.”

The crocodile monster went into a rage at having its attack stopped by me.

It began thrashing around wildly and forced an attack.

I was fine, but Iris was already at her limit. I reached for her waist, lifted her up, and moved away from that spot.

“Y-y-y-Yuu-san!? This is a princess carry!?”

“Your words are getting a bit strange, Iris.”

“B-but! Yuu-san is carrying me… ~~~~! Fuhi.”

“Fuhi?”

Did she get overwhelmed? A strange sound came from Iris.

Since there was only me and her here, it was definitely Iris’s voice, wasn’t it?

Come to think of it, she’d made strange sounds before too. Did Iris have a habit of making weird sounds when her emotions ran high?

I filed the question away in a corner of my mind and set her down in a safe spot.

“Iris has already done enough. You can rest here.”

“Will you be okay alone? Yuu-san.”

Iris, with her feet on the ground, looked at me with a worried expression.

If she’d seen the earlier scene, I didn’t think she needed to worry… but yeah. It was her way of being considerate. Iris was kind, after all.

I gave a thumbs up and—

“Easy victory.”

—said that before returning to the crocodile monster.

“What easy victory! Before my masterpiece, you’ll die unable to do anything! What happened earlier was just luck!”

“I defended barehanded using magical power, you know? There’s no room for luck to intervene.”

“Silence! If magical enhancement and attack timing align, that kind of phenomenon can occur!”

“Hmm… like a perfect guard in a game?”

Whether it was true or not was questionable, but I didn’t need him to believe me anyway.

I was going to kill that big monster now. No further proof was needed.

I drew my sword from its sheath and pointed the blade toward the ground. I slowly approached the crocodile.

“If it ended too easily, I couldn’t show Iris something cool… Plus, I want her to use my magical power usage as reference, so—hang in there, okay? OK?”

“Guruaaaaaa!”

Instead of an answer, the crocodile monster roared.

It charged toward me while shaking the ground.

“Such a one-trick pony… don’t you have any other attack methods?”

How many times had I seen this guy’s charging attack just today?

It could breathe fire or attack with claws, but for some reason it stubbornly used charges against me.

Even though it had just been stopped moments ago.

I held my sword in an overhead stance.

When I gathered magical power, the sword glowed faintly purple.

The final boss’s magical power being an ominous color was standard. The magical power that normally couldn’t be visualized—only Yuguram broke that convention.

From the distance—

“M-magical power… magical power has gathered to the point it can be visualized!?”

—I heard Iris’s shocked voice. Her voice trembled slightly. It would be perfect as cheering.

The monster gradually closed the distance. When it came right in front of me, I lightly swung my sword.

Just that was enough for my strike to kill the monster’s momentum and easily blow away the massive body dozens of times larger than me.

From fighting me and watching the battle with Iris, I could roughly predict what the crocodile’s durability was like.

So I smacked it with the flat of my sword. If I cut with the blade part, it would almost certainly end in one hit.

“How’s that, Iris? That was the ‘gather magical power and hit’ strategy.”

“I know that much! Besides, Yuu-san has too much magical power to be useful as reference!”

“Oops… that’s true too.”

I had deliberately held back to show off how amazing I was, but maybe it would have been cooler to defeat it in one hit?

She even said my magical power usage wasn’t helpful as reference.

“Gu… gaaaaaaa!”

The monster that had rolled on the ground regained its posture and gathered magical power in its mouth.

Oh, this time it was going to breathe that flame. But come to think of it, this was the middle of a forest. It would be troublesome if it breathed fire.

But I couldn’t cancel the opponent’s attack before the breath started either… yeah.

I’ll just end it now since it’s getting troublesome. I should have gone with one hit from the start.

Thinking that, I poured even more magical power into my sword. The old man was conveniently nearby too, so if I blew them both away together—everything would be resolved nicely.

“Wh-what… what is that amount of magical power!?”

The old man raised his voice upon seeing the magical power gathering in my sword.

But it was too late.

I swung my sword in a straight line toward the old man who was trying to escape using the monster as a shield, releasing magical power.

Vast magical power, just magical power—erased everything in front of it in a straight line like a beam of light.

Thunderous sound and pale purple. Those two things filled the world.