Chapter 9 | Jaldabaoth

 

1

4 Late Fire Moon (September) 9:10 PM

The woman woke up thirsty.

She stirred in her king-size bed and reached for the pitcher of water on the nightstand, but her hand whooshed through the air.

Then she remembered she hadn’t put the pitcher there today and sucked her teeth.

“Fwahhh,” she yawned. She both slept and woke up early, like an old lady, but she had gone to bed only an hour ago. It went without saying that she hadn’t slept enough yet.

She swallowed and put a hand to her neck.

Her throat felt sticky and parched, so she went to get a drink. She covered up with a heavy robe that was lying nearby, popped her slippers on, and left the room.

She was Hilma, chief of the drug-trafficking division, and this building was her base in the royal capital. Her subordinates numbered in the dozens and should have been busy at work, but it was so quiet it seemed like no one was around.

She walked down the hall feeling uncertain. The facility was always quiet unless nobles were visiting. But isn’t this too quiet?

The reason she invited nobles to the mansion was to forge connections.

In noble families, the heir generally inherited the house rather late. By the time their turn came, many were already over thirty.

Until then, they had no choice but to receive money from the current head of the household to lead their lives—despite being married and having children. That was why she invited those heirs to her property and entertained them.

She supplied alcohol, women, and drugs to them and whispered things in their ears to tickle their pride. She brought them together with peers of similar rank to give them a sense of camaraderie. By entertaining them like that, she was able to build friendly relationships.

And after those nobles took over their houses, it was her turn to reap a bountiful harvest. If they tried to cut her off, she’d give them the stick. If they made efforts to be more useful to her, she’d give them the carrot. And so she wormed her way further into noble society.

She walked down the quiet hallway to get some water.

It wasn’t bad that it was quiet. She preferred silence over a noisy commotion. She didn’t even attend the nobles’ wild parties, but she was fed up with them anyway. Still, this lull was terribly strange. The chilly stillness made her feel like she was the only one in the mansion.

“…What’s going on?”

There was no way even her guards would go off somewhere without informing her first. She considered raising her voice to call for someone, but she realized giving away her position would be a bad idea if this was an unusual situation. She considered returning to her room and going back to bed, but that seemed too passive.

Anyone who couldn’t act when the moment of truth arrived would be eaten up like kibble. That was her belief, and it was precisely because of it that she had been able to ascend the social ladder from high-class prostitute to where she was now.

She glanced both ways along the hallway. Sure enough, there was no one, so she set off again.

Her sixth sense told her to head for a secret room only she and very few others knew about. The room contained several enchanted items, some jewels, and an escape route. This building was her main base in the royal capital, but she had others. It might be a good idea to escape to one of them.

As she walked stealthily down the hall, she noticed something.

“What…is this?” She spoke in spite of herself, though in a low voice.

She’d discovered something bizarre out the window.

The thin glass pane was covered with layer upon layer of ivy. As a result, barely any light was coming through. She tried to open the window, but it wouldn’t budge.

Confused, she looked to the other windows in the hallway. They were all blocked with thick vines as well.

“What? Who the heck…?”

It definitely hadn’t been like this when she’d gone to bed. The plants couldn’t possibly have grown so much in only an hour. It had to be magic.

So who was the perpetrator, and what was their aim?

She had no idea. But she understood that she was in an extremely bad spot.

“Dammit!” Cursing, she started to run. She didn’t have the wherewithal to worry about the hem of her robe. She just had to get to the secret room as fast as possible.

When she reached the staircase, she looked at the first floor. As expected, it was silent.

She made her way carefully down the stairs by the moonlight filtering through gaps in the ivy, grateful that the thick carpet muffled her footsteps.

“!” When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was so startled she gasped.

There was someone standing in the hallway staring at her. The figure melted into the shadows, not because it was lurking there like a thief might but purely because of its dark skin. It was a dark elf, and its two sparkling, differently colored eyes seemed to float in the blackness.

Her visitor let the black cloth around it fall to the ground. The clothes beneath were those of a girl. She had a black staff in her hand and was looking Hilma’s way with upturned eyes.

The secret room is right behind this mysterious girl. Recalling the floor plan of the mansion, Hilma inched nervously forward, determined.

How great it would be if one of the nobles just brought her as a joke. But she quickly rejected that naive idea.

When she’d heard Coccodor had been captured, she wasn’t sure how the powers that be would react, so she’d been making preparations to evacuate to a safe location. She had no subordinates who, under those circumstances, would bring an outsider here without reporting it to her.

“Hey, little miss—,” she began, then furrowed her brow.

As a former high-class prostitute, she’d met a large variety of people from every walk of life. Her experience told her that the elf before her was a boy, not a girl.

His outfit was extremely elaborate, definitely not the kind an ordinary person could get their hands on. It seemed to be the sort of luxury good even Hilma didn’t have.

Dark elves used to live in the Tove Woodlands but were rarely seen in the kingdom these days. Now one was standing before her cross-dressing in expensive clothing.

If everything hadn’t felt so odd, she would have assumed he was a slave brought by some nobleman to satisfy his self-indulgent tastes.

“…What am I doing here?” he asked.

She slowly approached him in a way she hoped would cause as little alarm as possible.

“A-auntie, are you in charge of this mansion?”

Being referred to as an older lady didn’t bother her. To such a little dark elf, that was likely how a woman her age appeared to be.

“N—,” she started to say but stopped. She had a bad feeling.

She’d always prized these sparks of intuition. She’d lived her life trusting her hunches far more than common sense. Even when common sense had betrayed her, her hunches never had.

“Yes! Yes, I am in charge here!”

“O-oh, I see. Good.” The boy smiled. It was so pure that even under these circumstances, the desire to defile this clean creature flared up in her breast.

“S-so I guess it wasn’t a bad idea to ask those people.”

As if in response to the boy’s remark, a nearby door opened. A woman slowly appeared from inside. She looked like a girl wearing an odd maid uniform, but instead of the scent of perfume, there was a stench of blood and gore hanging around her.

Hilma put a hand over her mouth and suppressed a shriek.

A man’s arm dangled from the woman’s hand. Torn muscle fibers were visible, as if the whole thing had been ripped out of his shoulder socket.

“Wh-what…?”

“U-umm, er, it seems like some people are coming to attack this mansion, and there’s a lot we have to do before they get here, so I brought her along.”

“Don’t mind meeee. I got to eat my fiiiilll for the first time in a whiiiile, so I’m quite satisfiiiied.” She spoke, although her mouth didn’t move. That was extremely bizarre, but there were several even more pressing questions. Most shudder inducing was the mystery of what exactly she’d eaten her fill of. Hilma had a guess, but she didn’t want to believe it.

It was in that state of mind that she asked, “Hey, hey, a-are you gonna eat me, too?”

“Huh? Oh, uh, no. You’re different, Auntie.”

It provided no relief. She had a hunch—that an even crueler fate awaited her.

“H-heyyy, kid. Wanna have some fun?”

She slid the robe she was wearing off one shoulder.

She took pride in her body. When she had been a high-class prostitute, sleeping with her had cost an extraordinary sum. And even after that, she had maintained her charms and didn’t put on any extra fat. She was sure she could still get even the most antisocial guy in the mood, so she was confident she could easily arouse the interest of a child.

But there was no sign of any special feeling in the boy’s eyes.

She acknowledged that she wasn’t as attractive as the maid next to him. Still, despite having retired, she was a pro. She could get even the most halfhearted guy to burn up with desire.

She approached him slowly, so as not to cause alarm, with the smooth, graceful twists of a snake.

She didn’t sense any desire coming from the boy.

So she changed tactics. She slowly reached around his neck—and activated a magic item.

Tattoo of Viper.

The snake tattoos on each of her hands fleshed out, raised their heads, and struck at the boy’s body. If they bit him with their potent neurotoxin, he would immediately go convulsing into the next world. Hilma had no way to fight, so this was her trump card.

The snakes lashed out quick as whips, but the boy grabbed them dexterously and crushed them in his fists without a moment’s hesitation.

The Tattoos of Viper slithered back into her arms. The snakes themselves had been killed, so she wouldn’t be able to use them until a day had passed for recovery.

Now in the worst possible scenario—having taken hostile action without achieving anything—Hilma staggered backward. The most horrible thing, however, was that the boy’s expression hadn’t changed at all the entire time. He didn’t seem flustered after being attacked, and he didn’t look hostile.

“E-er…I’ll be…uh…going, then.”

Where? The moment the question entered her mind, a sharp pain shot through her knee. It hurt so badly she couldn’t stand, and she collapsed on the floor.

“Ahhhhhhhhh!” She let out an agonized cry and, in a cold sweat from the pain, looked at her knee—which she regretted. “My, my, my leeeeeeeg!”

Her left leg was bent the wrong way. Not only that, but her bones poked through the bright-red flesh.

Sobbing from the unbelievable pain, she thought to reach out a hand to hold it but hesitated. She was scared to touch it.

It was at that moment that the boy seized her by the hair—and set off walking.

He dragged her away with strength that didn’t match his boyish appearance. The young dark elf paid no attention to the sound of more than a few of her hairs tearing free from the scalp in his grasp.

“Ow! Ow! Stop it!”

In response to Hilma’s shrieks, the boy just gave her a quick glance. He didn’t stop walking. “W-we have to hurry!”

2

4 Late Fire Moon (September) 10:20 PM

After raiding the building, Entoma Vasilissa Zeta went out the door.

She gathered all the papers that had stuck to her feet, balled them up, and tossed them into the building.

Their original plan had been to dispose of any people inside, gather any important documents and items of value, and withdraw. It would have been best to leave no trace, like a bird leaving its nest, but they didn’t have time to go through the papers; since they simply seized everything, the aftermath made it look like a burglar had broken in.

Still, that in and of itself wasn’t a problem. Demiurge, who had sent Entoma and Mare out in the first place, had mentioned it as a possibility. The problem was that they were running far behind schedule.

None of the demons who had accompanied the pair from Nazarick were around anymore. Mare had captured the most important person in the building and gone ahead to their meeting before Entoma. The minions had taken the mountain of stuff responsible for the delay in their schedule and left.

Yes. The reason their calculations had gotten thrown off was that they’d discovered the basement just as it was time to withdraw. And it had been jam-packed with smuggled goods and what appeared to be illegal drugs.

Collecting all that had been slow going.

For one thing, the basement was split into a number of small rooms, and the valuable-looking items had been hidden among a huge mess of other things. A forest really did do a great job hiding trees. It was impossible for Entoma and the demons to carry out every single item, so they had to dive into the veritable jungle of loot and search for the best “wood.”

If the woman Mare took had been present at the time, they probably could have figured it out much faster, but they’d already finished with her by then.

Entoma and the demons had decided to inspect the items and cram the garbage into one of the rooms. Even for a crew with far superior musculature than humans, it was still an annoying job. Nevertheless, it was worth doing, and they had most likely succeeded in hauling all the valuable goods out of the basement.

Entoma, who was the last one remaining after acting as overseer, looked up at the night sky and wiped her forehead in that special motion reserved for those who have done their job. Not a single drop of sweat had formed, but the gesture reflected how she felt.

“Okay, thennn. Everyooooone, hurry up and haul that stuuuuuff.”

At Entoma’s orders, a bunch of heavily laden insects larger than humans flew off into the night sky. They were giant beetles she’d summoned with a bug tamer ability.

With the deep, loud drone of beating wings, they soared straight across the sky toward their destination.

After seeing off the insects and their items, Entoma remembered the object in her hand.

“Oh, I didn’t eat thissss. Oh nooooo, that won’t doooo.” She gave herself a theatrical thump on the head and brought the severed arm of the man up beneath her lower jaw. With a few sloppy scarfing noises, she whittled the arm down, and her throat moved. “Urp.” Her dainty belch was accompanied by the smell of blood and gore.

“The soft fatty meat of womennnnnn and the lean meat of childrennnnn are both tasty, but for a diet, the muscly meat of a man is bessssst.”

After consuming some of the flesh while deftly avoiding the bones, she chucked the arm back into the building.

“Delicioussss. Thank you for the meal.” She made a little bow at the mansion and then began departing for the next destination detailed in her orders, albeit later than planned. She hadn’t gone more than a few steps, however, when a voice called out to stop her.

“Hey there, nice evening, ain’t it?”

“…I wonder about thaaaaat. Doesn’t seem like a very good evening for you at alllll.”

It was hard to tell if the human who had slowly come into the open was a man or a woman. While the newcomer had the likeness of a woman somewhat, that hulking physique led Entoma to the conclusion that “male” might be the correct guess.

“What’re you doing out here?”

“Taking a walllllk.”

“…What’re you munchin’ on? Looks like you’re enjoying it.”

“Meeeeeat.”

“…A human’s?”

“Yessssss. Human meeeeat.”

Something cold had emerged in the man-woman’s tone, but Entoma didn’t worry. She wasn’t about to consider some human’s feelings. If the creatures bothered her, she would stomp them; if they didn’t bother her, she would ignore them; if she got hungry, she would catch and eat them—she thought so little of their kind, it would have been strange to care about the feelings of one of them.

“Uh-huh. So a monster appears? I didn’t know the Eight Fingers were keeping pet monsters. Well, it seems like they screwed up with the keeping part.”

The man-woman slowly held up a war pick. That was when Entoma began to feel troubled.

“Heyyyy, how about weeee just decide we never saw each other?”

A strange expression appeared on the man-woman’s face. It was probably surprise at hearing her proposal.

“I’mmmmm also here for worrrrrk, so fighting youuuuu would be a painnnn. Besiiiiides, I’m full right nowwww.”

“…Sorry. I may not look it, but I’m one of the kingdom’s top adventurers. I can’t just be all ‘Oh, I see’ and let a people-eating monster off the hook. We can’t have you existing in the human world.”

“Ah, what a bother. But you’re stronnnng. So maybe I’ll eat you laterrrr.”

Entoma fixed her eyes on the man-woman head-on for the first time.

He-she appeared to be a pure warrior.

Hrmm, must be pretty stronnnng.

Entoma wasn’t a warrior by trade, so she couldn’t gauge the strength of her opponents very well. Still, she could tell this one outmatched her.

“Rahhhgh!” The man-woman charged, swinging the war pick.

Entoma gracefully dodged. But the war pick pursuing her abruptly changed direction mid-swing. It wasn’t a fluid motion making use of centrifugal momentum but a brute-force swing that altered the weapon’s trajectory with overpowering muscular strength.

While dodging again, Entoma activated a skill.

“Eh? You’re just gonna keep running away?”

The war pick swung around. The wind it whipped up by passing Entoma’s head ruffled her fake hair.

“Hmmm. You must love whooshing that thing around, huhhh?”

In response to the taunt, she heard a “Tch.” Just as she was activating another skill, the war pick came down, but she dodged it easily. With no target left to strike, its momentum drove the weapon into the ground.

Entoma scoffed at the repetitive, workman-like attacks. Her face didn’t move, but as her opponent, the human could sense her ridicule clearly.

The next second, however, Entoma realized that the man-woman had done something possible only with overpowering strength: aim for that careless moment.

“Break!”

The earth around the war pick in the ground shattered all at once. No, the cobblestones collapsed. It was as if a massive earthquake had occurred in just that one spot. For the first time, Entoma couldn’t maintain her stance. Meanwhile her opponent, through the effect of what magic item, she didn’t know, remained perfectly stable.

Entoma saw the dirty edge of the war pick rise up.

I underestimated this person, she scolded herself.

Dodging it would be easy enough. Certainly, if she were a human and the ground beneath her had been destroyed, she would have lost her balance and found it difficult to escape between the two shock waves. But Entoma was one of the Pleiades, and all the magic items she had equipped were upper tier, so this situation didn’t bother her one bit.

There was just one problem.

To dodge, she had to jump aside, and it would get her maid uniform dirty.

Was that a pardonable offense? It was her best outfit, given to her by the Supreme Beings.

Time…to finish this.

Hostility appeared on her face beneath her mask for the first time.

Time to finish this.

I’m gonna kill you.

Filled with not the mild annoyance of a human brushing away a bug but murderous intent, Entoma raised her left arm to meet the descending war pick. Even a floor guardian wouldn’t make it through this attack unscathed, so for her, it would be nearly impossible.

The next second, instead of metal gouging flesh, the clang of hard object against hard object rang out.

Entoma’s left hand suddenly had a small shield sticking to it, quite literally. There was a bug with over eight legs clinging to her arm.

“What…is that thing?!”

“I…am a bug tamerrr. So I can summon bugs and put them to work for meee.”

She flung her other arm to the side, and a long bug that looked almost like a broadsword flew out of the dark night and affixed itself to the back of her right hand.

“Sword Bug and Shell Bug. I’m gonna kill youuuu. I wasn’t going toooo, but I can’t let this stannnd.”

Entoma charged and launched a single stroke.

She sliced open the man-woman’s armor, and blood spurted. But it was far from a lethal blow. Even if it had been impossible to evade Entoma’s all-out attack, the warrior had been able to get away with only a light injury.

So that stuff earlier about being top class in the kingdom was neither exaggeration nor a bluff. But if this is all this person’s got, they’re no match for me.

Entoma Vasilissa Zeta may not have been built purely for combat like Yuri Alpha, but she was still a member of the Pleiades, which meant that a mere human could never match her strength.

She swung again and bathed her face in the fountain of blood.

Because of the wound from the first attack, this blow cut deeper—not such a light injury this time.

“Your movements have changed! Does that mean you’re taking this seriously now?!” The angry shout came at the same time as he-she swung the war pick, and Entoma repelled it with her Shell Bug. The shock that ran through her was surprisingly intense, but she braced her legs and didn’t stagger so much as a step. There was no harm in doing so, but this was a manifestation of her pride—being moved by a human was obnoxious.

The man-woman didn’t die but instead, maintaining momentum, unleashed a fluid chain attack. It was an attack of Sturm und Drang and was probably buffed by one of those special “martial arts” exclusive to this world. But Entoma made skillful use of her Sword and Shell Bugs and blocked all fifteen attacks to emerge unscathed.

Entoma had no way of knowing, but that had been Gagaran of the Blue Roses’ ace move, performed by activating multiple arts simultaneously. It was a super-elite chain attack. Each blow in the barrage was backed by the full strength of Gagaran’s powerful arms and could defeat even the martial art Fortress—it was possible to stay on the receiving end only with a defensive art that no one but a few geniuses were able to acquire, Impenetrable Fortress. Yet Entoma was blocking everything with her innate physical strength alone.

This was a gap born of a difference in level and racial physical ability.

Even when the first glimpse of despair appeared in her opponent’s eyes, Entoma showed no emotion. The only thought in her head was to kill.

Pwah!

It was the sound of someone coming up for air. At the same time, the chain of attacks stopped. Entoma took her right hand—the one with the Sword Bug—drew it back like a bow, and thrust it forward like an arrow. Her aim was the chest of the man-woman in front of her.

The war pick rose up, but it moved at the speed of a tortoise. Entoma’s stab was faster and pierced the man-woman’s chest—

—or that was what was supposed to happen.

Her blade sliced air. The Sword Bug missed its mark and thrust into the darkness of the night.

Entoma’s head turned with an uncanny motion—to look at the interfering intruder.

More than several yards away was a woman dressed in black. The man-woman, out of breath, was behind her.

“Thanks, Tia. I thought I was a goner.”

“So you have red blood, too, huh, Gagaran?”

“What’s so surprising about that? I’m pretty sure you’ve seen me get injured plenty of times.”

“I thought maybe by now it’d be blue, like you powered up.”

“That’s not a power-up! More like changing races!”

“Then a class change.”

The sound of their cheerful banter irritated Entoma. She was the strong one, and therefore, she was the one allowed to be calm. They need to think about the position they’re in.

“Are you almossssst readyyyyyy? Said your good-byyyyes?” Entoma braced herself for the first time. She wasn’t scared of the man-woman—Gagaran. The problem was the new opponent—Tia. If her outfit wasn’t a fashion statement, it meant she was a ninja—a class that required at least sixty levels to acquire.

That meant the teleportation that had saved Gagaran from Entoma’s attack was ninjutsu.

If her opponent was really a ninja, victory wouldn’t be so easy, even for Entoma. She’d wanted to end this with some energy in reserve, but under the circumstances, she no longer had the luxury to hope for that.

“Spider Talisman!” Faster than her opponent could move, Entoma scattered four talismans.

The moment the sheets hit the ground, they changed into large spiders. On par with the results of the spell Summon Third-Tier Monster, the conjured spiders weren’t strong, but for Entoma, gaining even a bit of insight into what her opponent could do would be tremendously helpful and give her time to prepare herself for combat.

Although bug tamers’ bug weapons were powerful, they had their drawbacks. One of them was that summoning the bugs took a little time.

“Shadow Double!”

As Tia’s ninjutsu activated, her shadow wriggled, and another Tia appeared.

Entoma paid it no attention. The doubles created with Shadow Double had only a quarter of the power of the user. The only exception was its evasion, which was proportional to the amount of MP expended. The double might have been a tough opponent for her spiders, but to Entoma, it wasn’t even worth fighting.

The main problem was how much combat ability the original ninja possessed. Entoma readied her ace move, Bullet Bugs, and one other. At the same time, she slapped a talisman on herself to boost her strength.

The Bullet Bugs amassed out of thin air and began to envelop her left arm. About an inch long each, the insects gleamed like steel, and their pointy, conical bodies bore a close resemblance to rifle bullets. The similar shape was only natural, as they were put to the exact same use.

The ninja’s double had its hands full dodging an assault from one of the spiders, and the original was fending off two. She couldn’t be too terribly high level if she had taken out only one after this much time. In that case, even combining her potential with Gagaran’s was most likely not enough to interfere with Entoma’s victory.

Heh, it won’t be that easyyyyy…

She would settle this quickly, forcefully, and without mercy.

Satisfied with the weight settled on her left arm, she aimed at Tia.

The bugs had gathered on Entoma’s arm until it was twice as big around, and they began moving down past her wrist. After reaching the tips of her fingers, they all scrambled to be the first to take off. The continuous noise of their wings was reminiscent of a Gatling gun. Shooting mercilessly through her spider minions in the line of fire, a total of one hundred fifty Bullet Bugs choked the air as they streaked toward Tia.

These living missiles, which could penetrate steel, would scar and fell even the largest of tree trunks. But in the face of these death slugs, Tia relied on ninjutsu.

“Unyielding Diamond Shield!”

A shield, dazzlingly radiant with all the colors of the rainbow, appeared in front of her. The huge hexagon sparkled, ripping through the darkness, and the bugs crashed into it. The barrier lasted less than a few seconds before breaking apart with the clear tinkle of shattering glass, but by then, the barrage had ended, and Tia, safely behind cover, was unharmed.

Entoma clicked her tongue despite not having one. Still, uncovering her opponents’ hidden moves one after the other would illuminate the path to victory. Tia could still handle her attacks for now, but the moment they surpassed the ninja’s ability, they would be like a muddy stream surging past its banks to swallow everything.

With her bug sword, Entoma batted away the throwing knife flying toward her from the front, and with her bug shield, she blocked Gagaran’s attack from above. That blow must have come a long way down. The Shell Bug shrieked as the impressive momentum slammed into it.

If Entoma had been blinded by the dazzling light of the Unyielding Diamond Shield, she probably wouldn’t have been able to block Gagaran’s charging attacks in the dark, but her sight wasn’t about to be affected by something so minor. Moreover, her field of vision was much wider than humans’. Even with this mask on.

Perhaps judging a follow-up attack too risky, Gagaran glided out of range as if she were skating on the surface of a lake, barely moving her feet. Her agility despite her heavy build showed that her wounds had fully healed. She crushed Bullet Bug carcasses under her feet with dry crunching noises as she stood next to Tia.

“Crap, I have zero confidence we can win this. What’s up with her? Her timing’s so perfect! She blocked my attack without even looking!”

“Wider field of vision?”

“There’s something else. There’s a good chance she has a bug tamer ability or whatever. That or a special sense you get from some kind of magic spell… Still, though, why doesn’t she attack while we’re chatting? The advantage is overwhelmingly on her side.”

“A beast first assesses its opponents’ strength, then attacks their weak point.”

“Gotcha. So she’s checking out all the tricks up our sleeves, hmm? People who are actually cautious, unlike our Little Miss Tiny, are a pain in the neck.”

“I guess I shouldn’t underestimate theeeem too much just because they’re humannnn. Wellll, I have some other reasons, toooo, but…there, seeeee? In that case, I don’t need this bug.”

The bug clinging to Entoma’s right arm fell to the ground and scurried off, vanishing into the darkness.

“Instead…c’meeeeere.”

A new creature coiled around her free arm. It was like a centipede—no, it was a real centipede, albeit over thirty feet long and its face, if it could be called that, had abnormally sharp fangs.

This was the strongest insect she could summon, Whip Bug.

Entoma began bracing her legs.

She’d collected most of the data she needed about the humans in front of her—their attack speed, destructive power, defense, evasion, mobility, and so on. The only thing she wasn’t sure of was how Tia would address the situation, but that wasn’t worth getting anxious about.

“Oops.” Entoma felt around below her face. There was a clear, sticky liquid. “I thought I was fullll, but I guess all this exercise made me hungry agaaaaain.”

The fluid clinging to her hand was drool—proof of her yearning for the two humans, who were no longer anything besides food to her.

Humans were her favorite, but up until now, she’d had to subsist on green cookies and be satisfied with that. Of course, she didn’t hold it against the Supreme Beings. On the contrary, Entoma felt she was being given generous consideration. For example, when villagers were captured and used in healing experiments, she was allowed to eat their severed arms.

Still, on some level, she was just putting up with the situation, so when faced with these excellent specimens, who would make for the highest quality foodstuff, she couldn’t throw away the chance without taking even a single bite.

The two humans shivered under Entoma’s ravenous gaze. The reaction didn’t stem from fear of their powerful enemy’s bloodlust but from a physiological instinct born of being targeted by a predator.

“Kiiiiyaaaaaaaaa!” With a shrill battle cry like two pieces of Styrofoam rubbing together, Entoma went on the offensive for the first time in this fight. The motions of this predator hunting down her prey were direct and bizarrely fast.

By the time the shield bug had deflected the six throwing knives hurled her way, there was barely any distance left between them.

When Entoma saw Gagaran out front with her weapon at the ready, she decided whose she would neutralize first and lashed out with the whip in her right hand.

The longer a whip is, the slower its tip will move—that was a given. It was natural even for someone with superhuman strength like Entoma. But that assumed the weapon was like any ordinary whip.

What Entoma wielded was the strongest summoning she could accomplish with her bug tamer abilities…

Normally a whip would approach in a circular motion, but this one moved in an impossible way. It approached Gagaran quick as lightning, like an extension of Entoma’s arm, twisting at acute zigzag angles. Even an adventurer who’d experienced all sorts of unknowns wouldn’t have had a chance to see or experience inconceivable movements like these—only a cross between a living being and a weapon could perform this way. It was utterly natural to be at a loss during one’s first encounter.

But her ability to dodge it nonetheless proved she was an adamantite-rank adventurer—the highest-rank adventurer.

Gagaran just barely avoided the bug whip, and it whizzed past the side of her face.

“Watch out!”

The same moment Tia screamed, Gagaran was sent flying—by Tia’s ninjutsu, Ring of Fire Bombs, which she set off knowing it would hit both herself and her teammate. As the flames and explosive blast enveloped the pair, the Whip Bug suddenly made a hairpin turn to pass through the space where Gagaran’s head had been.

Without Tia’s resolve to take drastic measures, the Whip Bug would have undoubtedly decapitated Gagaran. It was a decent evasive tactic, but Entoma’s attacks didn’t end there. As if bound by a leash, the Whip Bug abruptly changed direction and headed for sooty, blackened Gagaran.

At the same time, Entoma threw a talisman in Tia’s direction.

Thunder Bird Talisman.

In midair, it transformed into a bird discharging pale-blue shocks and flew toward Tia.

When facing two opponents, one of them could be left to a bug. That was one of the good things about being a tamer.

A burst of electricity bathed the area in a pale-blue light, illuminating Gagaran, who was trying to subdue the Whip Bug, and Tia, in her pain.

“Dammit! I hate creepy-crawlies!”

Holding the bug’s head down with her war pick, Gagaran tried to pin it against her left flank, but it took advantage of its full thirty feet to wrap around her body.

A dagger Tia threw mid-charge crashed into Entoma’s shield bug with a clang.

“Wild Flight of Thunder Bird Talisman!”

Entoma scattered several talismans with her left hand. They changed into birds slightly smaller than the previous one and assaulted Tia all at once. Tia, however, disappeared, and the birds flew off when they failed to detect her.

The ninja loomed in the darkness behind Entoma, outside her field of vision. Tia had used short-distance teleportation. But Entoma had already found her. Some bugs have antennae, and the additional sense Entoma had was possible thanks to an organ very much like those, which detected changes in airflow.

She shot her few remaining Bullet Bugs at Tia, who oozed out of the shadows into the open.

“Kugh!” The grunt of pain was accompanied by the smell of fresh blood, but Entoma judged that her opponent still had the will to fight and made a follow-up attack.

“Bombing Talisman!”

An explosion larger than Tia’s broke the night’s stillness. The ninja was sent flying, and as she tumbled across the ground, Entoma threw more charms at her: Sharp Slash and Colliding Winds. Without a chance to stand up, Tia was cut and blasted, rolling away in a trail of blood.

“Tia…! You buggy bitch!” Gagaran’s insult came from the center of a lumpy sphere—the Whip Bug was completely coiled around her.

The plan had probably been for Gagaran to subdue the Whip Bug with her strength and for Tia to take on Entoma herself.

Entoma sneered beneath her mask.

All she could say was that they’d been too foolish. Humans of this caliber never had any chance of defeating Entoma, a member of the Great Tomb of Nazarick’s Pleiades. The smartest thing for them to do would have been to ignore that she was eating humans and withdraw as fast as they could. They were in this situation precisely due to that error of judgment.

“…I went out of orderrrr, but I guess that can’t be hellllped. In any caaaase, you’ve got a lot of musclllle, so you should be plenty substantial and tastyyyyy.” Entoma summoned a bug. This one wasn’t fiendishly dangerous in a fight, but its slender, syringe-like body contained a paralyzing poison.

With the bug in hand, Entoma approached Tia with a light step.

She’ll make a great souvenir. There were quite a few creatures who preyed on humans in the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Entoma was sure they would be delighted.

“Hmm? What’s thiiiis?” Entoma’s superior senses detected something long, thin, and cold approaching from overhead, and she leaped aside. That same moment, a spear jammed into the spot where she’d been standing.

It was a lance like a knight might use, made out of crystal, but it was no ordinary make. The fragile crystal had broken the cobblestones without so much as cracking itself.

“Magic…I suppoooose?” Psychic caster Entoma sensed something from the lance that anyone with a magic-using class would understand.

“That’s right. A tier-four arcane spell, Crystal Lance.” The one who answered was a figure who had gently alighted on the end of the shaft—a short, robed woman wearing a mask who spoke with a young-sounding voice.

Another one? Entoma was getting sick of this. Just as she thought she’d captured a delicious meal, another intruder had appeared. At this point, it would have been harsh to tell her to restrain herself.

“Could I have you leave it at that?”

“Who are youuuu? If you leave right now, I’ll forgive youuu, so can you go off somewherrrrre? I like tender chillllldren, but there aren’t so many parts of them you can eaaaaat. I’ll fight you after I eat these twoooooo.”

“I see. A monster that feeds on humans, huh? Is that maid getup you’re wearing some kind of joke? I can’t imagine anyone would be happy to have a monster who reeks of blood serving them.”

“SAY THAT AGAIN, YOU LITTLE BITCH!” Entoma let her real voice slip in spite of herself and grabbed her throat.

The newcomer’s remarks were so unforgivable, she nearly lost herself in violent emotion. She was seized by the urge to rip this girl limb from limb, not by the principle of survival of the fittest but out of contempt.

What did she just say to me, one of the Pleiades of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, who serves the Supreme Beings?

Hellfire crackled and popped in the pit of her stomach. “YOU’RE DEEEAD!” She couldn’t help her voice, but she felt her back bulging and frantically tried to keep at least that under control.

“Evileye!”

Entoma learned the masked woman’s name—the name of the opponent she had to kill with all her might—when Tia shouted it.

“I wondered what you guys were doing… Good grief, this is some elementary stuff: Think about the difference in ability between you and your opponent. This one is stronger than you guys…but weaker than me.” With a flourish of her cape, Evileye shouted, “How dare you bully my comrades, monster! Now I’ll give you a taste and see how you like it. Better be grateful!”

Entoma couldn’t have cared less about the shouts from beneath her opponent’s mask.

Steeped in murder, she charged. Her brain, ruled by hatred, was barely conscious of the other two any longer except as bothersome little pebbles.

You say there’s no one who would be happy to have me serve them?!

The words went around and around in her head.

She moved her Whip Bug. Apart from the three feet or so she was holding on to, the rest was in a huge ball. At its core, of course, was Gagaran.

“I’LL CRUSH YOU AND YOUR COMRADES! YOU AWFUL WOMAN!”

Her blow fell like a hammer.

“Hmph! What a pitiful attack.” Evileye didn’t break her composure. “Reverse Gravity!”

Entoma resisted the spell, but her Whip Bug became weightless and floated into the air.

As a rule, gear resisted when the equipper did, but in the case of a bug weapon, it wasn’t the tamer but the bug itself who had to do the resisting.

That led to situations like this one, where Entoma didn’t get affected but the Whip Bug did. The bug may have been able to attack on its own, but this was one of its drawbacks.

Naturally, having been hit with that spell, Entoma was forced to discard her original plan.

Sensing Entoma’s intentions, the Whip Bug withdrew its entire thirty-plus-foot length from Gagaran all at once, like a tape measure winding up.

Meanwhile, Gagaran fell to the ground, and Evileye gave her instructions. “Gagaran! You’re in the way! Heal Tia’s wounds or something! If your gauntlets are out of power, use a potion!”

Injured humans would recover. If that was all, there was no issue—neither of those women was capable of fighting Entoma. But adding the caster in front of her into the equation changed things.

Evileye was on an equal footing with Entoma. If she received even a little support, the battle would tilt to Entoma’s disadvantage.

So Entoma decided—although she didn’t really want to—to use her true ace move. She’d already used it once to annihilate all the enemies in the mansion, but she could still unleash it two more times.

The move was spewing out meat-eating flies—Fly Breath.

This breath released a mass of flies that didn’t eat away at meat but instead bored into flesh and left maggots, like botflies. They dealt damage over time as the maggots burrowed into the victim’s body. Even more terrifyingly, that wasn’t all: The flies that emerged would form a huge, cloud-like army and attack anyone within range, minus special exceptions.

Entoma opened her throat up wide, baring her true mouth, which was near where a human’s jaw would normally be. To an onlooker, it probably looked like her jaw had been split.

With a retching noise, she spit up a glob of insects.

“Hey! Don’t tell me that ability has something to do with an evil spirit! If that’s the case—” Evileye created a white fog to intercept the flies.

A chill attack was a clever way to intercept, but it would have a hard time providing complete protection. The best would have been a spell or something that caused a blast that could scatter the swarm.

She messed up.

Entoma imagined Evileye being eaten up by maggots, but the counterspell turned out to greatly surpass all her expectations.

The flies bathed in the fog dropped to the ground, and then the haze enveloped Entoma. That moment, she was assailed by unbelievable agony.

“Aghhhhghghgh!!”

The maid’s face was steaming, and she was writhing like she’d been doused with acid.

Evileye had meant only to render her opponent’s breath attack ineffective, but it appeared that she’d inadvertently discovered her true identity.

“Whoa, whoa, can we make it?” Gagaran, war pick at the ready, was watching for a chance to charge. As an excellent warrior, she must have seen that this was where the battle would be decided. Really, judging from their opponent’s capabilities, they needed to end this fight now and as quickly as possible.

The reason Gagaran didn’t charge was that the flailing thirty-foot Whip Bug wouldn’t let her get close. Still, it seemed like the futile resistance of someone who was already defeated.

“What the heck was that spell?”

Evileye answered Tia’s question. “An insecticide spell, Vermin Bane. One of the evil spirits from two hundred years ago had an aspect of an insect. I developed this to exterminate the bugs it used. It’s one of my original creations.”

“Hey! It won’t hurt us, will it?”

“No. It works specifically against bugs and has no effect on any other living thing.”

“…Her face is melting.”

“Tia, that’s because she’s actually a… Huh? No! That’s not a face!”

As if it had been waiting for Evileye’s shout, the maid’s attractive features sagged and fell to the ground with a splat. It looked like the skin of her face had sloughed off, but that wasn’t it. The underside of the skin that had dropped to the ground was covered in insectoid legs.

“Are you serious? A mask-shaped bug…?”

“Guhaaah!”

With a violent retching noise, the maid exposed her throat. A single fissure ran along her extremely rigid-looking neck, and a rather large glob of liquid spilled out.

It looked like vomit, but it was definitely something else—it started to squirm on the ground.

“What the…?”

Even Evileye gasped at the scene playing out before their eyes. She’d never seen anything like it in all her long life.

“A Lip Bug.” That’s what Tia called the soaked, leechlike creature writhing on the cobblestones. “It’s a bug that consumes human vocal cords and then produces the victim’s voice.”

The tip of the skin-colored leech resembled human lips, and it was gasping in the adorable voice the maid had been speaking with earlier.

As everyone stared, the hand covering the maid’s face slowly moved away. The features she revealed were practically an insect’s.

All the Blue Roses recoiled from her strange appearance. They had guessed as soon as the mask bug had fallen to the ground and they saw how effective the insecticide was, but having the reality before their eyes still sent a jolt of terror through them.

They felt dirty knowing that a monster this far removed from humanity had managed to infiltrate their world.

“YOUU…YOUU…!” It was a stiff-sounding voice that was difficult to understand.

“Well, isn’t your voice just the cutest thing now! I like this one better,” Gagaran spat in disgust, overflowing with hostility. Of all the Blue Roses, she was perhaps the most human. It could have been that she wanted to offer some small gesture to the poor girl whose voice the bug had originally stolen. She seemed to grip her weapon even more tightly.

“Y-YOU HUMANNNNN!”

Earlier in the fight, their opponent had always appeared composed. But now, she’d lost her calm.

If that was the case, there was no longer any time to conserve power—they needed to start in with fierce attacks.

“The real battle begins now! Don’t let your guard down, you two! Know that she’ll be attacking even more brutally than before!” Evileye warned the other two. But knowing them, they didn’t need to be told. They’d probably been ready to risk their lives since the moment the fight began.

The bug maid’s back swelled, and four long appendages—spider legs—surged out from beneath her clothes. It looked like she was carrying them on her back.

Using her new legs, she made an incredible leap, almost as if she’d used Fly. With the height advantage, the monster spewed carnivorous flies down on all of them.

Clicking her tongue, Evileye cast Vermin Bane again.

“YOU’RE THE ONLY ONNNE! YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE I’M SCARED OOOOF! IF I CAN JUST KILL YOUUU, THE REST ARE A ROUTINE JOOOOB!” The bug maid landed. All the flies she’d spit up were dead, and she glared straight at Evileye with her compound eyes. It was probably true that Evileye was the only one who could fight on equal footing with her. If Evileye lost, this phase of the battle would be decided, and Gagaran and Tia would surely be slaughtered, but Entoma’s decision to limit her focus to one opponent was still a mistake.

“Rrragh!” Gagaran struck with her war pick from the side.

No matter how superior Evileye was, this powerful warrior wouldn’t just leave things up to her—she would fight. She might have known there was a good chance she’d be intercepted and seriously wounded, but she would fight alongside her comrade. Evileye smiled at her beneath her mask—the kind of expression she’d be too embarrassed to make without something covering her face.

The monster went to dodge Gagaran’s attack but paused for a mere instant—due to Tia’s ninjutsu, Unyielding Chains. She seemed to have immunity rather than resistance, so the trap skill was unable to stop her completely, but the creation of even the smallest opening was enough for Gagaran.

The monster countered Gagaran’s strike, extra powerful thanks to Strong Blow, by spitting spider silk—enough to turn the warrior’s entire upper body pure white.

The thread was both sticky and rigid; even Gagaran with her strong arms didn’t seem able to rip it apart so easily. She aborted her attack and tottered to the rear. Instead, it was the monster who charged.

“Crystal Lance!” A translucent missile shot toward the beastly girl.

The lance struck its target and sunk in deep, but she didn’t seem to feel any pain. On the contrary, she was calm enough to begin amassing countless bugs out of the dark night, swarming around her left arm.

“Vermin Bane!”

The white fog whooshed toward them, and the bugs on the monster’s arm fell to the ground while she let out another pained scream.

Her mouth, where a human’s jaw would have been, aimed for Evileye and spewed the same spider silk that had targeted Gagaran.

Blocking it with magic would be a waste of MP. I’m immune to hold-type techniques, so I guess I should just take it and— Wait, no! Evileye panicked and cast a spell.

The substance from the monster’s mouth was definitely a form of thread, but it shone as if it was harder than what had hit her companion.

“Crystal Wall!”

The crystal wall before her eyes broke into pieces, as if it’d been slashed up by a sharp blade, and disappeared.

“So it’s a spiderweb that can slice?”

“Here’s a present for you!” Tia threw a net of black threads that spread out in the air, but it didn’t tangle up the monster. It passed through her body like an illusion and fell to the ground.

“So she really does have complete resistance to obstruction.”

“Tch! Time to strategize!” Gagaran said, disgusted. She kicked the maid away, which also put some space between them.

Surprisingly, when her foot met the maid’s outfit, it made a metallic noise.

The other Blue Roses, on the alert for area-of-effect attacks, joined Gagaran as she retreated to gain some distance from the bug maid.

“DAMMIIIT, DAMMIIIT! COMING TO ATTACK MEEE…HOW ANNOYIIING!”

Gagaran watched the maid snap her lower jaw and spoke softly to Evileye. “Did you hear that sound just now? That maid outfit can’t be as hard as my weapon, can it?”

“It seems to be woven from some type of tough metallic thread. Judging from how thin it is, that material must be overwhelmingly harder than your boot.”

“Harder than…adamantite?”

“Not only that! All her gear is high-class stuff… My earth magic doesn’t seem to do much. That means something she’s equipped with must decrease any magic damage we deal her. Honestly, I don’t think clever backdoor attacks will have much effect.”

“Which means?”

Evileye grinned under her mask at Tia’s question. “We obliterate her head-on with the strongest cards we have to play all at once.”

“Isn’t that easier said than done? How are we going to pull that off? If we don’t do it quickly, she’ll power up with her talismans!”

“All we have to do is each use our most powerful move. I’ll use my insecticide spell.”

Obliterating her with the big guns all at once wasn’t going to be such an easy task.

Normally, she would support the warriors with Sand Field: Single and Partial Petrification to kill their opponent’s mobility, but that wouldn’t work on this maid.

Before, Evileye had believed it was a mistake to concentrate on pure attack magic, that she could leave dealing damage up to Gagaran’s physical attacks, and that her role was to devise a plan for if those stopped working. But she couldn’t say that anymore. It’s my personal belief that casters who rely on pure attack magic are second-rate, but I guess this time I have to bend.

Evileye assembled the spells she needed to cast. Shard Buckshot at maximum power would be most effective, but her comrades would get caught in the fire. Her high-tier, original spell Vermin Bane burned through a lot of magical energy, so she wanted to save it for when the maid summoned more familiars if possible. In that case, the best choice was not her preferred tactic but acid magic instead.

The three of them traded glances to confirm they were ready, and all attacked at once.

Evileye’s Acid Splash formed the main thrust of the attack. Tia didn’t have as much firepower, so she mainly supported with items. Using her martial arts, Gagaran struck again and again.

After a short while, the balance had shifted.

Certainly, their opponent was strong. She could attack with multiple types of spider silk, magic talismans, and summon bugs. She also had more powerful magic items than the Blue Roses did.

But although the Blue Roses’ healing resources were dwindling, the bug maid was withdrawing more often.

If anyone asked Evileye what had influenced the battle the most, she would have proudly answered, “My comrades.”

Certainly, Gagaran and Tia were weak compared to Evileye and the monster before them. Still, they outnumbered the creature, and that couldn’t be taken lightly. The ability to recover while attacking was a big deal. It was even better to be able to receive healing from a supporter when one didn’t have a way to heal oneself. That made all the difference.

“Careful not to make simple mistakes! Let’s keep the pressure on!”

3

4 Late Fire Moon (September) 10:27 PM

It was a fierce battle.

The bug maid finally sunk to the ground like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

Evileye had lost a lot of magical energy, and most of her consumables were gone. In terms of sheer profit and loss, she was far in the red.

“We won.” Breathing roughly, covered in wounds, Gagaran proclaimed their victory. She didn’t have a single healing item left, but she hadn’t lost as much health as her visible injuries made it seem.

“Let’s deal the final blow.”

“Yeah,” Evileye agreed with Tia’s suggestion. The bug maid was dying, but she wasn’t deceased yet. Her shrill cries were proof of that.

The safe thing to do was to unhesitatingly take her life while she was already robbed of her capacity for combat.

Tia charged with her sword but suddenly froze. Faster than Evileye could ask what was wrong, she saw what had happened.

“Could I have you leave it at that?”

She couldn’t believe it, but at some point, a man had arrived and was standing in front of the bug maid.

He wore strange clothes that were not ordinarily seen in the region. From what Evileye knew, it was a type of garment worn in the south called a suit. The newcomer also wore a mask, so she couldn’t see his face.

Only one thing was certain: He couldn’t be human. A tail was visible behind him.

“Hey, Evileye, is he a relative of yours?”

Don’t be stupid, she wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out. She felt like she’d been struck by lightning. When she looked at her right hand, it was soaked with sweat.

“Are you all right? I’ll take over from here, so please go back and rest.”

The man completely ignored the Blue Roses, even though they had their weapons at the ready, and spoke gently to the bug maid. It was enough to make him likable despite being an enemy, but not to Evileye.

The horror that had made it all the way to her toes wasn’t going away.

Her survival instincts kicked in. She lowered her voice and frantically told Gagaran and Tia, “…Run. Idiot, don’t look this way. Stay quiet and listen. That guy is…incredibly strong. A monster among monsters. Run away as fast as you can and don’t look back.”

“…What are you going to do?” Gagaran asked, distraught.

“Don’t worry about it. Once I’ve bought enough time for you two to escape, I’ll teleport away immediately.”

It wasn’t clear how, but the injured maid who shouldn’t have been able to move staggered to her feet. It didn’t seem like she’d used healing magic nor that she’d quaffed any medicine, either.

A bug flew over from out of sight, attached to her back, and took off into the night sky. The maid howled shrilly as she flew away.

The Blue Roses had let her escape from right under their noses, but it was more important for Evileye to not take her eyes off the man before them. That went for the other two as well. Their foreheads were slick with sweat, and they stood frozen.

After watching the maid go, the man turned to Evileye and the others.

Evileye had been alive for over two hundred and fifty years—she’d seen countless powerful beings. The aura hammering into her now was on a whole different level.

No, this sickeningly hideous malice was incomparable to any other.

In terms of strength, he was probably equal to the platinum dragonlord. He was so powerful, she couldn’t tell for sure.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting. Now then, I’m a bit pressed for time, so shall we begin?”

“Hurry up and run!” Evileye’s cry was no more than a terrified shriek.

The other two abruptly turned their backs. It was impossible to ask them to feel no guilt at leaving their friend behind. That was precisely why they hadn’t retreated immediately upon hearing Evileye’s instruction. But they trusted her. They knew she would either find a way—or escape.

But their beliefs were easily overturned.

“First, we’ve only just met, so it’s hard to part, but I’ll take the liberty of preventing your teleportation. Dimensional Lock. Parting with a farewell is delightful both with regards to etiquette and emotion, don’t you think?”

He prevented the casting of any teleportation magic in the area with a skill that only some super-elite demons and angels could use. With that, Evileye’s escape route was cut off.

But that was no problem. She’d known from the beginning that this would happen—that the one who stayed behind, the rearguard, wouldn’t return alive.

“If we’re gonna die, there’s an order to follow. The young ones survive, and the ones who’ve lived a long time die. That’s the most proper way to do it.” After bidding farewell to her retreating friends, the woman who’d lived over two hundred and fifty years confronted the impossible opponent before her.

“All right, then, after you. Of course, if you don’t do anything, I’ll go ahead and attack first.”

His murderous aura, entirely contradicting his placid tone of voice, was horrifyingly intense. Evileye mobilized all her willpower and shook off the evil presence.

I am Evileye. The legends sing my praises. No matter how immensely powerful my enemy is, I will fight!

“I’ll take advantage of your kindness and go first, then! Eat this! Maximize Magic: Shard Buckshot!”

For her opening move, she cast one of her favorite spells, scattering crystal buckshot just a bit smaller than her fist.

The keen shards caused more damage when they hammered into the enemy at close range, but she hesitated to approach the demon.

For all my resolve, I’m sure wimping out, she scolded herself, but it was natural to fight cautiously while her opponent’s power was an unknown quantity.

The masked demon opened his arms in welcome. He bathed in the rain of crystal bullets—or rather he would have, except right before impact, the spell disappeared. It vanished so suddenly it was like it had never been there in the first place.

Racial magic immunity?! You’re that strong?!

As the disparity in ability between opponents widened, it was easier for spells to be neutralized.

Ignoring Evileye, who had chosen incorrectly for her first move, the man gracefully spread his arms, as if he were about to conduct an orchestra.

“Hellfire Wall.”

Evileye whirled around in disbelief at the wave of heat from behind.

Black flames that could never have existed in nature roared as if to consume the night.

Gagaran and Tia were enveloped in the fire mid-escape. They danced like puppets and then fell to the ground like sacks of garbage. Even after the flames vanished like an illusion, there was no sign of movement from either of them. Evileye suppressed the urge to run over to her companions. She couldn’t believe it, but she had no other choice. She knew—those had been fatal wounds, and in a single attack, two of her friends, who had stood beside her through thick and thin, had been murdered.

She ground her teeth to suppress the scream that wanted to come out.

“My plan was to stop just before crossing that line, but it seems they were weaker than anticipated. For them to die from such a fire… I’m sorry for your loss.” The man bowed low as if he was sincerely remorseful. It seemed so artificial to Evileye that she could no longer hold back her emotions.

Why had he ignored Evileye right in front of him, the one attacking him, and gone after the other two behind her? She was sure it was because they’d fled. But there was another even more important reason.

Since she understood how overwhelming his advantage was, she had known full well that he didn’t even consider her a threat. But in reality, he hadn’t even considered her an opponent.

Before me is someone who is not running away. I’ll crush the ones who are running first. That was probably his casual assessment of the situation.

“…It’s so tricky to judge how much to hold back to prevent death. And I can’t take you as the standard. Why were you in a team with them when there is such a huge discrepancy in your abilities? If it weren’t for that, I think I could have found the right level…”

“Don’t! Evennnnn! Taaaaaalk! Waaaaaaagh!” Her voice was not a frightened shriek but a shout of anger. With a hate-filled war cry, Evileye ran. No, perhaps it would be more correct to say she glided by the power of magic. She gathered magical energy in her fist and prepped a contact spell that would be difficult to neutralize or resist.

The demon raised his fists to intercept her. “Demon Aspect: Giant Arms of Great Evil.”

His arms swelled to several times their normal size and lengthened until they touched the ground. They weren’t inflated with air but brawny tools for killing.

Those deadly limbs would deter anyone’s approach. Evileye was momentarily daunted, but she steeled her resolve and decided to weave her way in and attack.

As Evileye rushed forward, the giant arms closed in on her. They were so much faster than she’d thought possible, like a huge wall filling her entire field of vision. She immediately judged them too hard to dodge and cast a defensive spell. “Translocate Damage!”

Her sight went dark right as she felt the impact, and she was sent flying. Her field of vision whirled crazily around and around, and she couldn’t track where she was. She hit the cobblestones, and her body bounced like a ball. She landed again and skidded.

But she was unharmed.

She used Fly to perform a motion that shouldn’t have been possible—she got up.

She had no wounds.

Of course, if she hadn’t used the spell to change the physical damage into magical energy loss, she would have been half-dead.

“Maximize Penetrating Magic: Crystal Dagger!” She created a larger than usual crystal dagger and fired it. The pure physical damage of the spell was difficult to neutralize, and she used a skill to boost its penetration potential.

The demon didn’t dodge but simply took it. She’d cranked the power of the spell all the way up, but it didn’t appear to have any effect on him.

“You’re unscathed even though I boosted the spell with defense-neutralizing power? You’re a higher-ranking demon that I thought—no, you might be even stronger than an evil spirit! Are you gonna tell me you’re an evil spirit king?!”

It wasn’t as if adding “king” to anything entailed that it was strong, but it was true that within races, those with “king” or “lord” in their names were more powerful. Probably the only race that allowed for someone weak to be called “king” was the human one.

“Demon Aspect: Sharp Cutting Claws.” The demon’s fingernails grew to over two and a half feet long. Evileye could sense they were sharp enough to cut all manner of things.

It’s probably impossible for me to recover Gagaran’s and Tia’s bodies while I escape. If the others came, they’d only be deadweight in this fight. If I could at least move the battlefield somewhere else and make it easier for the other two to find the bodies…

Evileye twisted the corners of her lips upward.

In the worst case, Lakyus, who could use resurrection magic, would face this demon, but she wanted to avoid that at all costs.

“Here I go!”

Just as Evileye was about to attempt her difficult plan, something fell between the two of them with a huge racket.

Unable to withstand the weight, the cobblestones cracked, and dust wafted into the air.

It was a warrior, balled up to protect himself on impact.

His raven-black armor reflected the calm luster of the moon, which imbued it with exquisite beauty. His crimson cape fluttered behind him like leaping flames against the backdrop of the night sky. His impossibly huge swords, one in each hand, radiated the light of judgment.

The dark warrior rose slowly. He was massive. In terms of height, he was probably as tall as the demon. But just as devils shrink away from holy light, this sizable demon seemed fearful of the dark warrior. Apparently, he couldn’t believe his eyes.

Evileye heard someone gulp in the silence. It was the demon. This creature, whose power even Evileye couldn’t fathom, was holding his breath before this great warrior.

A cold voice cut through the night air. “Now then, I wonder which one of you is my enemy.”

Intermission

It was a room that embodied the words exquisite luxury.

The crimson carpeting was soft and sank underneath one’s feet up to the ankles. The natural wood of the settee was elaborately carved in French rococo style and the seat, upholstered in genuine black leather, gave off that gleam only leather has. On the settee sat a single man leaned back with his legs stretched comfortably out.

Handsome. If a portrait could perfectly capture his appearance, people would evaluate him as such.

His blond hair reflected the magic light illuminating the area and twinkled like the stars. His long, tapered eyes, deep-purple like amethysts, charmed the heart of anyone who saw them.

However, anyone who laid eyes on him in person would probably first think of a word other than handsome. He was swathed in an atmosphere that had nothing to do with his looks, an aura exuded solely by those born to stand at the top. No one would have any first impression but this: He was a ruler.

His name was Jircniv Rune Farlord El Nix.

At the young age of twenty-two, he was emperor of Baharuth. Feared by nobles, respected by the people, he was said to be the greatest emperor in their history. He’d also been called the “blood spilt emperor” due to his purging of nobles, and neighboring countries feared him as well.

In addition to Jircniv, there were four male attendants in the room, but they stood so straight and still they could have been mistaken for statues.

Jircniv looked away from the papers he’d been going over and stared into space. It was as if there were a blackboard in the air and he was writing his thoughts on it.

Eventually, he snorted. The sound could have been interpreted as a scoff or a grunt of interest.

It was caused by the intelligence he’d received from one of his men in the kingdom. Just then—

—the door was opened without a knock.

It was so rude that the attendants lowered their hips and turned to the door with hostility. But upon seeing who entered, they returned to their normal guarding stance.

The visitor was an old man with a white beard halfway down to his feet. His hair was also snowy white, but it hadn’t thinned.

His many years were evidenced in the wrinkles on his face, and his sharp eyes contained the unmistakable twinkle of wisdom.

He wore a necklace of countless crystal spheres strung together, and there were several chunky rings on his withered fingers. His pure-white robe fit loosely and was made of extremely soft material.

When asked to envision a caster, any layman would imagine him—that’s what he looked like.

“Well, this is worrisome.” The first thing out of the old man’s mouth as he came slowly into the room was a grumble. His voice retained more youthfulness than one would expect from his appearance.

Jircniv shifted his curious gaze with just his eyes. “What is it, Gramps?”

“I looked, but I couldn’t find him.”

“And what does that mean?”

“…Your Imperial Majesty. Magic is the logic of this world. You must stud—”

“Yeah, I know, I know.” Jircniv waved him on with disinterest. “Your lectures are too long, Gramps. Can you get to the point?”

“…If Ainz Ooal Gown really exists, then he is in possession of some rather powerful magic items. Or if he’s avoiding detection with his own power, I’d wager he has at least as good a command of magic as I, possibly even greater.”

The room grew nervous, excepting the emperor and the old man.

Had they really just heard that? Someone was equal to Fluder Paradyne, the most elite caster in all the empire’s history, principal court wizard, and the great sage known as “Triad Caster”?

“Aha! So that’s why you seem so happy, huh, old man?”

“As I should! I haven’t met an arcane caster equal to or better than me in two hundred years.”

“Did you meet one two hundred years ago?” the emperor asked, propelled by curiosity, and the principal court wizard recalled the distant past.

“Hmm. The fairy-tale Thirteen Heroes… I met one of them, tamer of the dead Ligritte Belzú Kaurau. She was the only one. Well, the other casters of the Thirteen Heroes may have been superior to her, but…”

“So do you think there are any arcane casters more powerful than you now?”

Fluder’s eyes were distant. “Hmm… I’ve probably come further than Kaurau did, so… But I have no proof… Magic isn’t the kind of discipline where superiority is easily decided.” The emotion behind his words as he slowly stroked his long beard suggested he was confident in that. Then he raised an eyebrow. “I do hope this Ainz Ooal Gown can be counted as more powerful than me.”

Jircniv smiled in satisfaction, took one of the papers scattered on the settee, and held it out to him.

Fluder seemed dubious, but he took the document and ran his eyes over it. “Ooh.”

That was his opinion on the matter. But the expression on his wise face had changed considerably. His eyes were blazing—he looked just like a ravenous beast.

“I see. So the caster you had me search for did this? Very interesting. They must have taken on about ten members of one of the theocracy’s special units, just the pair of them… Hmm, hmm. That’s someone I’d really like to meet and discuss magic with.”

The paper was a report of what Gazef Stronoff had told the king, as well as the writer’s personal impressions.

“So did you send someone to this village, Your Imperial Majesty?”

“No, I didn’t go that far. It’d be conspicuous to send someone.”

“…We could send my disciple…no. If this document is true, we’ll want to cultivate friendly relations with him.”

“Exactly, Gramps. If he’s a power that can be controlled, then I want to welcome him.”

“I think that’s a perfectly wonderful idea. All sorts of wisdom is necessary if you want to peer into the abyss of magic. If possible, I’d like to meet someone who has blazed the trail…” His voice was full of longing.

Jircniv knew what Fluder’s dream was.

Exactly as he said, Fluder wanted to view the depths of magic. To that end, he wished more than anything to study under someone who had glimpsed what he desired most.

The magic users who came later needed only to follow the path that had been blazed—usually by Fluder. Taking the most efficient, suitable route, they could cultivate their ability without any wasted efforts.

But Fluder, pushing the envelope on his own, couldn’t do that. He was fumbling in the dark, so his progress came only at the expense of tremendous energy. He would have been an even more powerful caster if he could have developed his talents more efficiently.

It was precisely because Fluder understood this that he sought someone to show him the way. There were limits to natural ability. He didn’t want to do more for nothing in return.

The reason Fluder took on disciples, too, was because he hoped one of them would surpass him and buoy his efforts. Unfortunately, so far it didn’t seem as if that wish would come true.

This was the one wish Jircniv couldn’t do anything about. So he changed topics. “I’d also like to gather intelligence on the new adamantite-rank adventurer who popped up in E-Rantel. Will you help me?”

“Of course, Your Imperial Majesty.”