After confirming that the two people tailing us had been shot clean through the head, Rubelt slammed the accelerator and picked up speed.

Following the law of inertia, my body was pulled slightly backward.

“If you're gonna floor it, at least warn me first!!”

“Seriously? You're freaking out over this much speed? Quit complaining. We're in the middle of a car chase. Strap in and deal with it.”

Rubelt said that and pointed behind the car.

When I looked back, the two people whose heads should have been blown through were somehow already in another car, chasing us.

The fact that they could take bullets to the head and act perfectly fine put them on the same level as that shitty ogre.

“Drive safely, damn it.”

“Leave it to me. I will give you safe driving on the level of Frank Bullitt.”

That does not make me feel safe at all... He brought up Bullitt, that famous car chase movie, so where the hell was the “safe driving” supposed to be?

I seriously started thinking I should put on my seatbelt. At that point, all I could do was pray we would not crash into a gas station.

The two cars lit up the FR night, interfering with other traffic while throwing themselves into a car chase straight out of a movie.

Before I knew it, we had left the city and entered the mountains.

Rubelt controlled the car like it was part of his own body, and maybe because he was gradually starting to enjoy himself, he started making ridiculous demands of me.

“Gray! Use that thing and wreck their car!”

“Do not ask for the impossible! You think I can lean out of a car that is shaking this damn hard?!”

“You are a man, aren’t you?! You have balls, don’t you?! You can do it! You can kill them! Do it!”

“Gray-chan, if you are worried, I can hold you from behind.”

“Daaaamn it! You rotten bastards! Just wait until we get out of this alive!”

While trying not to fall out of the car as it tore through the mountain road fast enough to make me wonder whether we had suddenly entered a world rally race, I leaned out with Lyz supporting me and aimed my gun.

Whoa, it was shaking so badly I could not aim worth a damn.

That made me understand very clearly that earlier, they had kept the car steady so I could shoot more easily.

While I struggled to line up a shot, we apparently reached one of those sharp curves unique to mountain roads, and the car tilted hard.

Following the law of inertia, my body flew out through the window.

Shit. I am dead.

“Oops.”

Because Lyz grabbed me and pulled me back inside the car, I managed to avoid being thrown out.

“Hey, Rubelt! Are you trying to turn me into a stain on the asphalt?! My hair scraped the ground!”

“Hah? I cannot hear what a ball-less coward is saying!”

“Do not screw with me! Balls or no balls, people die when they die!”

No good. This bastard’s personality had changed like Honda from KochiKame.

He was high on driving.

I gave up on leaning out to destroy the enemy car and sat back down quietly.

“Is Rubelt on drugs or something? His head is full of maggots.”

“He is getting a little too excited by the car chase. He is not making calm decisions.”

“And we are sitting in the car that bastard is driving.”

We were going to die. No joke.

I looked at the car chasing us from behind, but it was still sticking close. This car was definitely going over 200 kilometers per hour, yet the other car maintained a perfect distance—not too close, not too far.

“Hmm. Why are they not using their abilities?”

“Abilities?”

“Right. Those brothers are Wizard-class ability users. One is an Ice Wizard. The other is a Flame Wizard. With their level of skill, even if they attack from inside the car, they can reach us and blow us away.”

Wizard-class ability users. If I remembered correctly, that was an ability category belonging to the magic system, allowing users to convert magic power into natural phenomena and use it. Apparently, within the broad category of magic-based abilities, there was a classification called Wizard-class.

Confusing as hell.

Anyway, that meant the enemies’ abilities were related to fire and ice. Uh, did I have any toys that could counter that?

“Gray-chan’s ability probably cannot handle that. If I could use mine, it would be fine, but...”

Maybe because she saw me fall silent and read what I was thinking, Lyz cruelly threw reality in my face.

Yeah. I already had a vague idea. Sad as it was, ordinary toys could not beat natural phenomena.

No, wait, humans could not beat natural phenomena either.

“Your magic circuits still have not recovered?”

“Not yet. It was not a poison I had antibodies for, so full recovery is slow. A lot slower than expected.”

The fact that she could get poisoned and still act this calm was already strange, but the time for pointing that out had long since passed.

Apparently, it had something to do with that “Alice Organization” and this or that, but I had not been listening properly, so...

Let us get back on topic.

They had a way to attack us, yet they were not attacking.

In other words, there had to be some advantage created by not attacking, or some disadvantage created by attacking.

The reason they did not use abilities in the city was probably because there were too many witnesses. But now we were inside an empty forest. This should have been the perfect chance to attack... Hmm? Inside a forest?

“Hey, Lyz. Which ability user is driving?”

“Hmm, probably the ice one.”

“I see. So they do not want to start a forest fire either.”

“Oh, Gray-chan, you are smart. Forest fires stand out, after all.”

“That is the deal. Hey, Rubelt, you junkie! How long until we get down the mountain?!”

“Who the hell are you calling a junkie?! Less than ten minutes!”

The mountain road had already started sloping downward. Rubelt was probably not wrong.

He was high on driving, but it was nice to know he could still hold a conversation.

“Then let us come up with some kind of countermeasure while we still can. My body is starting to get used to this car chase too.”

Now then, what should I do? I had already thought of several options, but I was better off not assuming any of them would work.

Inside the shaking car, I pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

***

The brothers chasing Gray and the others were in the car behind them.

The older brother, Fray Brave, made no attempt to hide his irritation as he put his feet on the car’s dashboard.

Seeing his brother’s feet land roughly on the dashboard with a heavy thud, the younger brother, Ice Brave, let out a small sigh as he turned the steering wheel.

“Nii-san, stop being rough. You are going to break the car.”

“Hah? That filthy bitch is right there in front of us, and we still don’t have permission to move. What the are the higher-ups even doing?”

“Nothing we can do about it. They’re checking whether any important people got dragged into her mess. If somebody tied to a left-wing politician got caught up in this, we’ll be the next ones getting fucked over.”

“Tch. I’m honestly impressed those bastards still think they can kill us. Are their brains stuffed with flowers or something?”

“They’ve always been idiots. We’re only sticking around in this organization because Sensei’s here, but those morons still haven’t figured that out.”

The only reason they obeyed the organization’s orders was because someone they owed a debt to was there. If Sensei had not existed, these brothers would have already killed the Alice Organization’s researchers and run away.

They had already crossed the limit of what the organization could control.

“Still, those driving skills are insane.”

“Thank you, Nii-san.”

“Not you. I’m talking about the people we’re chasing. Is that Lyzvelt bitch driving?”

“No, she’s sitting in the back seat. The driver’s a man.”

“…That’s impressive.”

The older man narrowed his eyes at the car weaving through traffic ahead of them.

“That guy drives like a professional racer.”

Fray praised his opponent with genuine admiration. One of his good points was that he honestly praised people who could do things he could not.

Of course, that did not include the researchers of the Alice Organization, who repeatedly carried out inhuman experiments, or Lyz, who was an especially precious specimen even among the few “successes.”

“There is also one more person in the back. The guy who shot through your head.”

“Ah, the one who stuck his face out the window earlier and nearly fell out. He should just break the rear glass and shoot from there. If he has the skill to put a bullet in my head with one shot, then he should be able to wreck the car from there.”

“It is probably bulletproof. Maybe he judged it would be better to use it as protection instead of breaking it. Still, that was some impressive shooting. It might have only landed by chance, though.”

“It was not chance. He aimed properly, and it flew exactly where he wanted it to go. I underestimated him, thinking there was no way it would hit, so it nailed me.”

After saying that, Fray touched the spot on his head where he had been shot.

If that person was such a master marksman, he might have been someone rather famous. Fray felt a little disappointed inside, thinking it was a shame he would have to kill talent like that.

“He seems pretty interesting too.”

“...Nii-san. Orders from above. Once they get down the mountain, the road will be straight for a while, so finish them there. Looks like the organization has moved its personnel as well.”

“So this fun little drive only has about ten minutes left, give or take. That is a shame.”

For Gray, who had come to this world only recently, a turning point was approaching. Among the many branching paths ahead of him, this was an important event that would decide the way he lived.

***

The mountain road car chase, like something out of a certain manga with a “D” in its title, was entering its final stage.

Only one gentle curve remained. If we did not make our move here, we would lose our chance.

“We only get one shot. If we screw this up, the car chase keeps going.”

“It will be okay, Gray-chan. If you do it like that time, you can pull it off.”

Seeing my slight anxiety, Lyz whispered in my ear as if trying to reassure me.

After talking with Lyz, I had realized something. This girl seemed to rate me way too highly.

She did seem to understand that I was weak, but she seemed absolutely convinced that I was some genius strategist. I had no idea when or where she had gotten that impression.

Well, I only had one possible guess.

She was probably giving me a high rating because of how I escaped from that ogre. But she was overestimating me a little too much.

What the hell did she expect from someone who had been a student in Japan until just three days ago?

While thinking that I needed to correct Lyz’s impression of me someday, I focused on what was in front of me for now.

The match would be decided in an instant. According to Lyz, even wrecking their car would not kill them, so I would go ahead and do it without holding back.

Both cars entered the final curve.

At the exact moment the car’s inertia peaked, I immediately used my ability.

“Good, Toy Box.”

What I materialized was a toy that had been used since ancient times: stones.

The stones appeared in the enemy car’s path, blocking it off exactly as intended.

However, that alone would not stop the car. The car they were driving blew through the stone wall and took the curve beautifully.

Just as expected.

“Watch your step.”

The stones were a decoy meant to draw their attention. My real target was the oil I had scattered across the asphalt.

Even water could steal friction and cause accidents, so oil, which was more slippery than water, would make an accident even easier to trigger.

Just as planned, the enemy car slipped and spun, rushing straight toward the guardrail.

But that alone was not enough. If it merely slammed into the guardrail, I could not say we had shaken them off.

“How does it feel to become a movie stunt?”

I carefully watched the spinning car and tried to destroy the guardrail before it hit... Well, that was impossible, so instead, I installed a ramp that would let the car clear the guardrail.

The toys I used were Plarail tracks, stones, iron pipes, and wire. I placed stones underneath, put iron pipes on top, then laid rails over them so the car would not simply crash into the pipes, and used the wire to control and secure everything in place.

Maybe because I had practiced between the ogre fight and this car chase, the range of my ability and the things I could control had increased.

On top of that, to make it even more slippery, I courteously scattered oil over my homemade ramp.

This was all done on the spot, so honestly, the chance of failure was higher than the chance of success. But maybe God was on my side, because the car spun like a Beyblade and flew into the forest.

It was so clean I almost wanted to applaud.

“Amazing! As expected of you, Gray-chan!”

“I got lucky. I had other plans ready in case this failed, but I am glad it worked.”

Lyz, who kept praising me, looked at me with sparkling eyes.

Her emotions seemed to get the better of her for a moment, and she hugged me, but unfortunately, I did not get to enjoy any soft sensation.

If I can still think about stuff like this, then I guess I still have some room to spare.

Thinking that, I immediately removed all the toys I had materialized. With this, even if they understood that they had been attacked by an ability, they would not be able to guess what kind of ability it was.

Even if they did guess, they should mistakenly assume it was an ability that materialized stones.

“Rubelt, the car chase is over. Let us hurry up and run.”

“That is a nice ability you have. Interesting way to use it.”

Rubelt’s mouth, reflected in the rearview mirror, was curved in a faint smile.

Chapter 11: Car Chase