CHAPTER 29

Reverse Fireworks

I readily agreed to assist the imperial knights, who came scurrying for help after being attacked by the Demon Lord’s special forces, as one would expect from a goddess. However, what I really want to do is relax. Even Mash and Elulu of the dragonkin look exhausted, and I don’t blame them. After all, we just finished fighting the Great Mother, Queen of the Dragons. I turn my gaze to Seiya Ryuuguuin, the overly cautious Hero I summoned, to see how he is doing.

Yep. Just as I thought. Even Seiya’s exhaus— Hmm? W-wait… He doesn’t actually look that tired… I mean, I guess he looks sort of tired when I squint? Wait. No. I think it’s just my imagination… Ugh, I don’t even know anymore with that guy. As always, the Hero’s expression lacks emotion.

“Allow us to take you all to Olga Fortress!”

With great enthusiasm, the soldiers begin rushing over to their horses waiting nearby. However…

“That won’t be necessary.”

After stopping, Seiya sends me a look.

“It’s an emergency. Open a gate. We’ll take a shortcut to the fortress.”

“W-we can’t! Besides, I don’t even know where Olga Fortress is! I’m not allowed to create a gate to a place I’ve never been without getting Great Goddess Ishtar’s permission!”

Seiya’s expressionless glare is reminiscent of a Japanese Noh mask.

Wh-what’s his problem?! I bet he thinks I simply can’t do it! It’s written all over his face!

However, the next words Seiya mutters defy imagination.

“A dead light bulb… An empty bottle… Dust beneath a table… All those things make me think of you, Rista.”

“…?! All those things are garbage!”

Nevertheless, Seiya turns to the soldier as if he’s given up.

“You said the fortress was due north-northeast, right? Exactly how far are we talking?”

“It wouldn’t take more than an hour on horseback!”

“That’s not far at all. Let’s fly.”

Thereupon, Seiya’s body begins floating in the air, and the soldiers let out gasps of admiration.

“My God! The Hero can fly!”

“I can’t believe I’m seeing a human fly! The Hero really is on another level!”

“Now this is someone who can defeat Beel Bub!”

“…‘Beel Bub’? The hell is a ‘Beel Bub’?”

The moment Mash asks, the soldiers clench their teeth through grim expressions.

“It’s a monster that looks like a giant fly! Its army has been periodically attacking Olga Fortress, causing numerous casualties!”

“…So it’s going to be an aerial battle.”

With a finger on his chin while floating in the air, Seiya appears to be pondering something, but…

“First, we need to confirm the enemy’s position. Mash, you come with me. Rista, you take Elulu.”

“All right.”

After using Order, I receive Great Goddess Ishtar’s permission to manifest my white wings before taking Elulu’s hand. Seiya grabs Mash’s hand as well.

“Master! Are you sure?!”

“We have no other choice. Don’t let go.”

“You got it! I can’t believe I get to fly with you! I’m so pumped!”

Mash explodes with childlike joy as they take to the sky. With Elulu at my side, I follow along as we head toward Olga Fortress, leaving the soldiers behind.

After ten or so minutes spent following the superspeedy Seiya, Elulu pipes up.

“Hey, Ristie! What’s that?”

I notice a black cluster up ahead in the sky.

“Maybe it’s a rain cloud?”

At least, that’s what I think while gazing at it from afar. However, the closer I get, the clearer it becomes. It looks like a large cloud of black things gathering together.

“Um… That isn’t a rain cloud! That’s… That’s a swarm of flies! It’s the enemy!”

The hundreds of flies each appear to be roughly the size of a human as they vibrate their transparent wings and hover in the air. The collective sound of their horrid buzzing can be heard from relatively far away.

“Yuck! That’s so gross!”

Elulu’s hand begins trembling as she holds my arm. Slightly ahead, Seiya turns around and looks at us.

“Rista, we’re descending.”

“O-okay!”

Seiya swiftly descends into the vast forest below, and I immediately follow.

After arriving in the woods, Seiya hides in the trees while looking at the enemies far away in the sky. His eyes become even sharper as he stares at the swarm. He appears to be using Scan.

“Each fly exceeds level thirty. There are around three to four hundred of them. This may end up being worse than the army of the ten thousand undead depending on how you look at it.”

Seiya is spot-on with his analysis. A few hundred swift, airborne, high-level enemies is perhaps a far greater threat than an army of slow-moving undead.

“Let’s continue watching them for now.”

“Good idea.”

But as we turn our solemn gazes to the sky…

“Hff! …Blaaarf! …Uweeeh!”

With his hand on a nearby tree, Mash starts barfing all over the trunk directly in front of him, returning the nutrients to nature. Elulu gently rubs his back.

“A-are you okay, Mash?”

“Mm…! I—I feel sick…! Blllp…!”

I guess he got motion sickness from his flight with Seiya. I know how he feels, though—painfully so, because the same thing happened to me once before. It was a miserable plight. Seiya, on the other hand…

“Yeah, flies are disgusting.”

It seems he misread what Mash was trying to convey.

He isn’t throwing up because of the flies. You made him sick…!

Everyone is thinking the same thing, but no one can bear to mention it while the Hero is staring down the enemy so intensely. That’s when, out of nowhere, a massive, earsplitting explosion erupts from above!

“Kneel before me, humans! You are no match for the devastating power of my Aerial Assault Flies!”

I peer into the sky to see the source of the colossal voice, which could even be heard from lands far, far away. It was different from all the other flies. Because of my supreme vision, which surpasses that of a human, I can easily tell that it’s a monster. While it has the face of a fly, it stands on two feet. Its multiple large red eyes are the size of a fist, and its hands remind me of pointed scissors. It is more than obvious that this irregular monster is the leader of this swarm. I use Scan to check the enemy’s stats just like Seiya did.

BEEL BUB
LV: 76
HP: 18,963	MP: 8,751
ATK: 7,877	DEF: 5,969	SPD: 487,562	MAG: 883
Resistance: Fire, Water, Ice, Lightning, Poison, Paralysis, Sleep, Status Ailments
Special Abilities: Evade (LV: MAX), Flight (LV: MAX)
Skills: Acid Spit, Rolling Dodge
Personality: Cruel

It doesn’t appear to be one of the four generals, and its stats aren’t even that impressive…or so I thought. I take another look at Beel Bub’s speed. It wasn’t just my imagination.

“Wh-what is up with its speed?! It’s in a completely different league!”

“Unbelievable…”

Even Seiya gasps for a change.

“How can it talk with a face like that? Where are its speech organs?”

“Who cares?! Look at its speed stat!”

“H-hey, Ristie, Seiya! Look over there! It looks like the Roseguard soldiers are trying to attack it!”

Squinting, Elulu points not at the sky but at the surface. On a faraway plain stands a group of archers, preparing to shoot the airborne enemies. Beel Bub seems to notice as well, but the monster doesn’t run away. In fact, the swarm of flies decreases its altitude.

“Come on, give me your best shot! I even lowered myself so your arrows could reach.”

Arrows pour into the sky like inverted rain, all closing in on the smug leader. It’s a brilliant, unified attack. However…the enemy’s formation remains stalwart. Even watching from afar, it is clear the archers’ attack doesn’t reduce the enemy forces in the least.

Seiya mutters:

“It’s not just Beel Bub. The other massive flies seem to have high evasion as well. It doesn’t look like a single arrow connected.”

Once the barrage of arrows comes to an end, the flies instantly descend and begin attacking the soldiers. The archers who fail to escape are captured by the flies’ six legs like prey. Then the flies immediately ascend into the firmament once more until they’re around fifty meters high. After coming to a complete stop with the soldiers in their arms, Beel Bub bellows:

“It is time! Today we will be having yet another reverse fireworks display!”

R-reverse fireworks?! Don’t tell me…

The bad feeling I have becomes a reality. Beel Bub gives the order to the giant flies to release the soldiers at once, and in the blink of an eye, gravity hurls them straight to the ground. Elulu looks away while Mash clenches his teeth. Beel Bub, on the other hand, sounds amused.

“Ah, the view from up here is truly superb. Just fantastic. Brains and intestines gushing out; beautiful bloody flowers, all in full bloom, spreading across the ground! It’s a shame you all can’t see it—since you’re all dead!”

After the cruel joke, Beel Bub strains its voice even more.

“What is taking the Hero so long?! Someone, bring me the Hero! This massacre will not end until I end him!”

By my side, Seiya calmly mutters to himself.

“This was all done to lure me out…”

“Master, I can’t wait anymore! Let’s get him!”

As Mash hastily assumes a battle-ready stance, Seiya holds him with a hand on his shoulder.

“Calm down, Mash. You can’t underestimate flies. They can move faster than we can blink. Plus, they’re monsters in this world, which means they can probably move faster than we can even imagine. I sent out three Automatic Phoenixes to confirm, and they were almost instantly destroyed.”

“Y-you mean those powerful firebirds?!”

“Yeah. And that fly is asking for the Hero, despite knowing that I have already killed two of the Demon Lord’s generals. In other words, it has complete confidence in its ability to fight in the air. We can’t approach it without a plan, so just focus on observing the enemy for now.”

Beel Bub boisterously buzzes as if it were roaring with laughter, satisfied with the human fireworks.

“Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz!”

It then takes its army and disappears into the northern sky.

We leave the forest after the enemy is out of sight. Then we slowly walk toward the large fortress we can see up ahead. Olga Fortress’s sturdy outer walls are made of brick, but it’s damaged here and there due to the enemy’s attacks. But the real tragedy is what happened on the plains around the fortress. It’s hard to even look.

“Elulu, get behind me.”

“Okay…”

I watch out for Elulu. Seeing the dead bodies on the ground—or what remained of them—would be a sight far too gruesome for a young girl. Once soldiers, they became “reverse fireworks” that were dropped from dozens of meters up in the air and reduced to puddles of blood and viscera. It’s hard to believe that these terribly mutilated husks used to belong to living human beings. I also catch glimpses of corpses that appear to have been dissolved by the flies’ acid spit.

Elsewhere in this vision of hell is a soldier kneeling in prayer in a pool of blood. As if having taken note of our approach, the figure glances in our direction. Wearing armor with golden inlays, the soldier’s eyes open wide at the sight of the white wings on my back.

“At last… You have come…!”

The soldier removes her helmet to reveal long azure hair. While beautiful, her face shows unyielding determination.