He Wasn't Joking?

The afterglow of the setting sun spilled across the floor, and the club's usual activities seemed no different from any other day.

Yukino Yukinoshita sat quietly by the window, reading a book. Miko Yotsuya held a carton of milk, luxuriating in the Safety Barrier Lin Xiao unconsciously radiated.

At the other end of the long table, Eriri gripped a pencil and frantically scribbled over something in her sketchbook. As she drew, she did not forget to glare viciously at Lin Xiao, who was sprawled across the desk asleep, with the look one reserved for a hopeless idiot.

"Hey, Lin Xiao! How much longer are you going to sleep, you bastard?"

Eriri poked Lin Xiao's arm with the shaft of her pencil, her golden twin tails swaying in displeasure. "You dragged me into a club with such an embarrassingly cringe-worthy name, yet as the president, all you do every day is sleep! What happened to that grand declaration of yours about becoming the Sole Sovereign Throughout the Ages? Are you saving the world in your dreams now?"

Lin Xiao rubbed his bleary eyes and yawned. "Eriri, even God needs rest. Besides, times are so peaceful now. Where would I even find that many great calamities to—"

Rumble—!!!

Before Lin Xiao could finish speaking, a sudden change erupted!

A horrifyingly violent earthquake instantly swept through Sobu High School!!

"Aahhh!" Eriri screamed in fright and threw herself straight into Lin Xiao's arms.

"Warning! An unknown spatial distortion has appeared above Chiba Prefecture! This is not a drill! This is not a drill! Citizens, please pay attention to your personal safety!" The shrill disaster alert instantly rang out across the entire city.

Lin Xiao pulled Eriri protectively into his arms and abruptly looked out the window. The sky, once dyed red by the sunset, now resembled a torn rag, split open by a massive cosmic wormhole!

Accompanied by a terrifying roar, a cosmic monster over sixty meters tall crashed down from the wormhole, its body covered in hard armor interwoven with silver and blue, its head shaped like an enormous scythe!

Cosmic Combat Beast—Gobu

"A... a monster!! It appeared again!!!"

Watching the horrific giant outside roar at the sky and casually fire a light projectile that reduced an abandoned building to dust, Eriri's pupils shrank to pinpoints. At that moment, the blood throughout her body seemed to freeze.

Boundless terror instantly swallowed this pampered young heiress. Before that absolute violence capable of destroying a city at a whim, human life was more fragile than an ant.

"Lin... Lin Xiao! Run! Hurry and run!!!"

Eriri snapped back to her senses, tears pouring uncontrollably from her eyes as she clutched Lin Xiao's wrist. "This building is too dangerous! Come with me! We have to get out of here first!!!"

Although she usually called him a chuunibyou, at a true moment of life and death, this childhood friend's first instinct was still to grab his hand tightly and never abandon him.

Yet what filled Eriri with terror and despair was that no matter how hard she tugged, the boy who usually looked somewhat frail stood with his feet rooted in place, utterly unmoving.

"Lin Xiao?! Have you lost your mind? What are you spacing out for?!" Eriri's voice cracked with urgency, thick with sobs.

But when she turned her head, she saw an extraordinarily strange sight.

At this critical moment of life and death, the other two girls in the clubroom had not run either! Miko Yotsuya's legs trembled in fear, yet she looked at Lin Xiao's back with reassuring eyes.

The normally aloof Yukino Yukinoshita was also staring intently at Lin Xiao.

"It seems the All-Heavens Rescue Club's after-school activities will have to begin ahead of schedule, President."

"Have... have you all gone crazy?!" Eriri broke down. She could not understand why these people could remain so calm in the face of a sixty-meter monster.

"Eriri, don't be afraid."

At that moment, a large warm hand gently settled on Eriri's brilliant golden hair, tousling her twin tails.

Eriri froze and looked up.

Lin Xiao was gazing at the terrifying monster wreaking havoc outside. He showed not the slightest fear. Deep within his unfathomable eyes, a dazzling, sacred crimson radiance slowly lit up, like a rising sun!

As that light emerged, the suffocating sensation of the earthquake and the fear surrounding them were instantly swept away by a warm, mighty power.

"Lin... Xiao?" Eriri stared blankly at her childhood friend, whose entire body had begun to emit red light.

Lin Xiao slowly turned around. Looking at Eriri's tear-streaked face and her hand still tightly gripping his wrist, his lips curved into an exceptionally gentle yet wildly arrogant smile.

"Ten years ago, on the mountain behind the orphanage, you cried and called me a hopeless chuunibyou."

Lin Xiao's voice sounded ethereal and vast amid the rumbling explosions. "You thought my words, 'A great calamity is approaching,' were a lie I made up to get out of playing house."

"But, Eriri." "When I said back then that I would become the Sole Sovereign Throughout the Ages, I... wasn't joking."

The instant his words fell!

Bzzzz—!!!!!

A crimson pillar of light brighter than the sun erupted from the floor of the clubroom without warning! Violent photon energy instantly blasted through the clubroom ceiling, transforming into a sacred aurora that connected heaven and earth as it pierced the sky!

"W-What is this?!" Eriri reflexively shut her eyes against the blinding light, but she felt neither heat nor harm. Instead, she felt as though she were wrapped in an exceptionally warm ball of cotton.

The next second! Rumble rumble rumble!!!!

Within that crimson pillar of light that joined heaven and earth, a fifty-meter giant clad in red and silver, with an azure timer embedded in his chest, crashed down beneath the skies of Chiba Prefecture!

The Light Giant, Ultraman Gaia! Had descended!

"Hah!" The giant released a battle cry that resounded through the clouds and charged at the monster, which had frozen in shock at the sight of him.

Inside the roofless clubroom, Sawamura Eriri sat dumbly on the floor, trembling as she rubbed her eyes.

She followed the enormous silhouette of the giant's back, as weighty as a mountain range. That red-and-silver body, that godlike oppressive aura, and that warmth she knew down to her bones—the same warmth that had just been stroking her head.

"He... he is..." Eriri's mouth fell open. Her beautiful eyes were filled with an unprecedented shock so intense that her entire worldview seemed to crumble.

The little boy from ten years ago, who had run into the deep mountains with his back to her while saying incomprehensible things, and the fifty-meter giant before her, standing head-on against a natural disaster, overlapped at this moment with perfect, absurd clarity!

He really had not been joking?

Seeing Eriri's expression, so stunned it was on the verge of collapse, Yukino Yukinoshita, who stood beside her, brushed the dust from her skirt and walked to the window. Looking at the invincible red giant outside, she spoke calmly.

"Allow me to introduce him again, Sawamura."

Yukino's voice drifted through the wind. "The one standing before you is the president of the All-Heavens Rescue Club, as well as the incarnation of Earth's Will..."

"And your childhood friend... who intends to become the Sole Sovereign Throughout the Ages."