Just as I was crossing the sea, a school of sea dragons suddenly appeared. They passed me by, instead attacking Fiorfata behind me.

Were they helping me…?

The sight rooted me to the spot for a moment. The last sea dragon to appear, also the largest of them by quite a bit, gave a glance backward. Its enormous tail flicked water at me.

The flying droplets hit my cheek, jolting me out of my surprise.

“…got it.”

I gave a small nod to it. I turned around, continuing on my way to the island country.

The sea dragons must have realized that Fiorfata was an enemy of this world. Perhaps they had heard the World Tree’s will, and just as they had been attacking human countries to liberate the Saplings, so too were they now understanding what I was trying to do.

I had looked into the eyes of that final sea dragon. Leave this to us, and we’ll leave the rest to you.

And so I had replied with a nod. I will, and I won’t disappoint you.

Pillars of water rose behind me with each of Fiorfata’s magical explosions, scattering sea dragon corpses through the sky.

The sea dragons were about four to five thousand combat power. Their opponent was more than a hundred times more powerful than them. But still they fearlessly challenged the Demon Lord, sacrificing themselves for the sake of Yggdrasia.

“I swear I won’t waste this time you’ve bought me!”

I stopped dodging, now focusing on pure speed. I used everything I had, turning even the lift created from flying close to the water surface to my purpose. The island of Roxante appeared in my view faster than I  expected.

Roxante was a port town. There weren’t many people living there, only a few tens of thousands at most.

As the harbor came into view, thousands of dark pixies buzzed up the sky like a cloud of locusts and attacked me.

“Out of my way!”

I turned my whole body into mist and passed them by, leaving behind a iced-over horde of dark pixies. I continued onward into the castle being attacked by the creatures and froze only the dark pixies currently engaging in combat with the soldiers.

“T-the Dark Lady?!”

The surviving soldiers shouted upon seeing me. I was already back to my human form.

“Take the townspeople into the forest, now!”

“W-what are you—”

“You’re all the same, monsters! Do you think me a fool?! I won’t give away my country!”

A middle-aged man wearing garish clothes appeared from behind the soldiers to interrupt us, approaching me with his sword out.

“I don’t have time to explain.”

As I swung at him, a single-edged straight sword appeared in my hand to decapitate the man.

This was… the black scabbard sword? I thought I couldn’t bring stuff back from Earth. Looked like it followed me by being my kin.

“Governor!” “DAMN YOU!!!”

The soldiers readied their spears, the humans’ hostility instantly surging. I calmed them down with a few more decapitations.

“If you want to live, then take your people to escape!!”

I released my presence in intimidation. The soldiers scrambled to run away from me, their eyes filled with terror.

There was nothing more I could do for the people here.

I scanned the place for presences and found the Sapling. I headed directly there, going through any walls blocking my path, then froze and shattered the Sapling.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 28]
[Magic Points: 77,000/106,000] 6,000↑
[Total Combat Power: 87,600/116,600] 6,600↑

The World Tree sent me another white magic stone. I was also naturally regenerating a bit of magic myself, but overall, my reserve was still slightly going down.

My regeneration was slow, perhaps because of my own evasive movements and high-speed travel. It would have been a huge help if the humans deployed their airships, though considering their attitude, I was quite sure even intimidation wouldn’t get them to act.

I jolted. The sudden bad feeling I had drove me to jump upwards with all my strength, breaking through the roof and shooting into the sky. The next instant, the castle I used to be in was scoured into dust by a magical blast.

“Fiorfata!”

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
・One of the seven Demon Lords ruling Netherworld. A god of the Netherworld.

[Magic Points: 578,500/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 648,500/670,000]

So the sea dragons already lost. The Demon Lord was still nothing more than a black dot above the sea in my eyes, yet I was already feeling the malignant presence all the way here.

Its magic had decreased a little. The sea dragons must have fought until their very last breath, then…

I swear, your deaths won’t be in vain.

I immediately flew southwest. The continent to the north had more countries, but it was also where Fiorfata was coming from, so I decided to start from the south.

I was heading for the large country of Sautonn, the City of Gambling. Normally I would be using the Sapling network to teleport to near Wartos, the City of Pleasure that had long since fallen by my hand, since it was faster that way, but I didn’t want to get too far away from Fiorfata. I had no idea what it would do. Besides, it’d be far more dangerous to reveal the existence of the Sapling network to it. The Demon Lord being interested in the World Tree would be the worst case scenario.

Also, keeping the damage to Yggdrasia to a minimum was already one of my goals in the first place. There was no choice other than to keep its attention solely on me.

I turned southwest, and Fiorfata chasing me from the northwest also changed its flight path.

This time around, I needed to cross nearly 500km of ocean. My speed when I wasn’t dodging was slightly slower than Fiorfata’s speed when it wasn’t attacking. It was gradually gaining on me.

Was there nothing else I could do? My impatience grew as the distance between us shrank.

But then, at some point during my flight, I noticed a group of something rapidly approaching me from the southeast.

“What is…”

They came closer, and I realized they were a group of some ten-plus monsters running on top of the waves.

They were… eight-legged horses?

[Sleipnir x18]
[Magic Points: 450] [Hit Points: 1800/1800]
[Total Combat Power: 2800] 

“Sleipnirs!”

I called at them. The herd neighed in response, and one of them approached me faster than I could move. It ran parallel to me, its back shaking.

“…you want me to get on?” I muttered.

The sleipnir grunted. I immediately jumped on.

“Please!”

It whinnied and moved. At the same time, a few other sleipnirs parted from the herd to slow down Fiorfata.

“Sorry… and thank you.”

My steed faintly shook its back. The sounds of exploding water rang out behind me.

The herd of sleipnirs were insanely fast, and before I realized, we’d already reached land. With the ground now under their feet, they moved even faster, practically skipping through mountains and forests to bring me inside the borders of Sautonn.

The villages and towns were being attacked by dark pixies. The moment they saw us, the swarm buzzed toward us, every single dark pixies scrambling to be the first to reach their prey.

The sleipnirs weren’t weak, but it’d still be risky for them to be swarmed by the one-hundred-combat-power dark pixies. I let loose cold mist to ward them off.

Just as we approached Sautonn’s capital, an explosion startled me. One of the sleipnirs burst.

“Damn it, magic artillery!”

The cannons on top of the city walls began their salvos of bombardment.

They had their own things they wanted to protect, certainly, and I didn’t begrudge them for it. But I had a world to protect, too.

“[Causality Alteration], [Dimensional Manipulation], parallel activation!”

Within the explosive rain, I stretched out my hands to the cannons several kilometers away and squeezed. The soldiers I assumed to be the gunners all erupted in blood and collapsed.

Then I saw other soldiers immediately arriving to take over. I clapped my outstretched hands.

“—[Gospel]—”

The dozens of knights and soldiers on top of the walls all crumbled into chunks of meat.

Screams of terror, of horror rang out from inside the walls, but they were silenced by the neighing of the sleipnir I was on. The herd jumped over the ten-meters-high city walls, protecting me from flying arrows and spells as they invaded the castle, finally bringing me to the Sapling.

“Thank you… this is far enough. Run away everyone, it’s not safe here.”

I hugged the neck of the wounded sleipnir, the steed whinnying painfully, and I said my thanks. I shattered the Sapling and received another white magic stone from the World Tree.

Sautonn’s magic barrier shut off as the city lost its Sapling, and I instantly felt Fiorfata’s magic power. I immediately went outside.

It was right at the moment the far-off Demon Lord fired off an enormous magical blast.

“[Causality Alteration], [Dimensional Manipulation], parallel activation! —[Nadir]—”

With a clap of my hand, Fiorfata’s magic blast and my own attack clashed in the middle and detonated, wiping out half of the enormous capital city of Sautonn.

***

While Shedy was fighting the Demon Lord Fiorfata as the Dark Lady, the corporation announced an emergency maintenance upon their realization of the incident currently ravaging Yggdrasia. The MMORPG World of Yggdrasia was temporarily unavailable to login for its players.

Meanwhile, hundreds of players had gathered in a certain overseas private server.

These players were of all genders and age… or to be more precise, the age range began on the somewhat higher side.

They weren’t normal players. They were all adults, carefully vetted for their relatively honorable moral compasses, and they had been told the truth. Anxious and at the same time unsuccessfully hiding their anticipation, they stepped inside the ‘personal room’ that had been prepared for each of them, and they found themselves in a waiting room quite similar to that of the login room of World of Yggdrasia. Instead of the tuxedo-clad dog that had been the official guide character, waiting for them there was an awfully chipper stuffed cat wearing a maid uniform with a miniskirt.

“Hellow, and meowcome to the Modification System: Secret World of Yggdrasia! The backdoor login program meowll be starting up soon, so don’t go a~nywhere!”

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

When the dangerous criminals throughout the whole world escaped from their prisons, it had been the beginning. The dark pixie incident had come soon afterward, and these criminals had been suspected to be the culprits.

Their true goal had been to summon the Evil God that they called the Fairy King. As the human race realized that a Cataclysm-class threat, an existence even more powerful than the Dark Lady, had been summoned, they soon found themselves in a battle for their very own continued survival.

With confiscated evidence and the testimonies of a group of prisoners that had been successfully prevented from killing themselves, the true identity of this Evil God had been partially revealed.

According to the old literature that had been left behind by the ancient elves thousands of years ago, this Evil God was no denizen of the Fairy World, despite its similar appearance. It was one of the Gods of the Netherworld.

It was the Unseelie Lord, the ruler of dark pixies. A true Evil God by all accounts.

Apparently, among the wanted criminal escapists, there had been a magician of Quarancinq who used to pursue dangerous, experimental summonings, and they had planned on calling up the Unseelie Lord.

With this newfound knowledge, the different names the countries of the world had given to the Evil God were now consolidated into a single title. The coalition of large countries that had been outside of the large-scale magic circle were now deploying flying battleships to subjugate the Unseelie Lord.

By all rights, the Heroes should have been taking command of the alliance army to unify the countries worldwide. But the most suitable Hero, the Warrior, were currently missing. Unconfirmed information had it that he had been seen to be working with the Dark Lady’s faction, betraying mankind.

The Heroine who had warned the whole world of the appearance of the Evil God, the Sage, had been reported to be the principal culprit behind the summoning of the Unseelie Lord, and was currently on the run. But similarly to the Warrior, a public investigation of the Sage at the moment would be very likely to provoke unrest among the populace. The search remained stalled.

The only Hero remaining was the Blademaster, but not many could catch up to what the eccentric genius was thinking. Before anyone could realize, the Blademaster had already departed on his own to defeat the Unseelie Lord.

The countries inside of the large-scale summoning circle that had called up the Unseelie Lord were currently suffering attacks from thousands of dark pixies.

Even when the whole world had united to fight back against the Unseelie Lord, these countries were still tied down by the dark pixies. They needed to deal with the magic circle that was spawning the creatures itself.

The Origin points of the magic circle were, by the Sage’s request, placed in sites with a mana supply line, so the locations themselves were known. The countries near the Origins were deploying knights and adventurers to raid the sites.

Among the Origins, the six points arranged in a hexagram on the outer circumference of the magic circles were the most important. They were also where the criminals’ resistance was the fiercest. One of the hexagrammal Origin points had been located in an old dwarven ruins in Touze Empire. The knights were attacking the place, but there were those among the enemies’ number who had once been involved in the development of deadly magical weapons. The attackers were taking heavy casualties.

As a result, Touze Empire had deployed a task force of around thirty members, all of them either powerful knights, magicians, or trusted adventurers. Their plan was to invade the ruins through a secret pathway.

“Come on, geezer, think of your age. Why’d you have to come along?” said the emperor of Touze, Tischlar — or Tiz, as those close to him called him.

“Surely you jest, boy. I should think the Emperor himself going to the front line would be far more egregious.” The old butler blandly replied, his hands busy with his own preparations.

“…I told you, stop it with the ‘boy’ already,” Tiz said, sighing quietly with a wry smile.

Tiz and his old butler had decided to join the task force.

The emperor had nearly a thousand combat power himself, while the old butler had once been the leader of an intelligence organization. Despite his age, he was still more powerful than Tiz.

But this task force was embarking on what was almost, in a sense, a suicide mission. Even when the world was facing the risk of destruction, some might still accuse the Emperor of neglecting his responsibility by joining the mission.

But he had a reason for his decision.

While the country had been peaceful and the family hadn’t had a chance to experience the battlefield for several generations, at their roots, the Touze royal family was still a house of warriors. The emperor visiting the front line was practically a family custom.

Furthermore, Tiz was still young. The noble loyalists of the previous emperor was still opposing him even now. Tiz needed to show his citizens that he was taking an active role.

And finally: Salia, his former bodyguard knight, was directly involved in the current mission.

Salia was daughter to the knight squadron leader that was one of Tiz’s supporters. She couldn’t be allowed to fall into the hands of the loyalist nobles. It was why Tiz needed to keep the task force limited to just himself, the knights and adventurers he trusted, and Salia’s father and his aides. The matter had to be dealt with as quietly as possible.

The knights were distracting the enemies outside while Tiz’s task force infiltrated the dwarven ruins through the secret tunnel. They headed toward the Origin point that was still active to maintain the magic circle.

After several casualties, they reached the innermost chamber. Salia was waiting for them together with several of the most heinous of criminals being wanted worldwide.

“Your Majesty! You’ve come to see me!” Salia said, a crazed smile showing on a face half-paralyzed.

“Salia… I’m stopping you. Come on, geezer, knight leader.”

“”Yes, sir.””

The old butler responded dispassionately. The knight squadron leader nodded, his resolve hardened, though his lips still quivered upon being forced to kill his own daughter due to his position.

The escapists had only been incarcerated for their dangerous ideology. They weren’t necessarily personally powerful.

There were no deadly traps or magic weapons in the criminals’ hands, and the knights with nearly a thousand combat power and unbending determination soon proved too much for them. The task force tore through the criminals one after another, even as they took casualties of their own.

Soon enough, only Salia was left. She screeched, charging forward with the strength of an ex-royal bodyguard.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty! Sir TISCHLAAARR!!!”

In response, Tiz unsheathed the magic sword he’d acquired on his own when he was young. A single thrust pierced through Salia’s heart.

She reached out her bloody hands even as her heart was run through, giving him her final smile.

“…Ti…z…”

Then she overloaded the fire magic stone that Brian had given her, releasing an inferno to cover the two whole.

“Boy!”

The old butler let loose a shout that was almost a scream. Tiz appeared from within the blaze unharmed, flicking his cloak as if to blow away the flames.

“So you’re unhurt, boy…”

“…I should be, with just that much fire.”

Tiz was a Child of God, one who possessed a special ability. His was the Blessing of Fire.

Salia had been his bodyguard once. She was, of course, aware about his ability. She desired him, but she had no intention of killing him. She just wanted him to remember her death.

Tiz stayed silent, heavy thoughts apparent on his expression. He swung his enchanted sword without a word and shattered the magitool that was the Origin of the magic circle.

The mission was a success, despite vast casualties. The survivors cheered in triumph.

But this was not yet the end. The Evil God, the Unseelie Lord, was still there. The battle for the whole world was only just beginning.

“…Shedy,” he muttered. Thoughts of the Dark Lady Whitehare, the girl of white, and her lonely battle passed through his mind.

Tiz had heard that Shedy was destroying Saplings to prevent the collapse of the world from some of the captured demihuman resistance soldiers in his custody.

His fellow humans had all waved it off as simple nonsense, but Tiz had known Shedy. He didn’t think it was just meaningless destruction. As Tiz the individual instead of Tischlar the emperor, he had leaked the information that Shedy had gotten stronger after tearing down Xontdix’s Sapling to the resistance.

She was gaining power with each Sapling destroyed. And in the end, the world of humans would collapse, and the collapse of the world would be prevented.

What he did was treason, pure and simple. A betrayal to the human race and to the citizens of his empire. But a thought had taken root in a corner of Tiz’s mind.

In the end, is she not the only hope we have of defeating the Unseelie Lord?

***

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 26]
・The rabbit demon of Laplace. Trickster and guide of man’s fate.

[Magic Points: 83,400/100,000] 3,000↑
[Total Combat Power: 93,400/110,000] 3,300↑
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Absorption> <Materialization>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Simple Identification] [Human Form (Wonderful)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Dark Lady]

Quathuit’s Sapling got dragged into my fight with Fiorfata, and I got a little bit stronger again.

The white magic stone and the elapsed time had filled up my magic a bit, but the shockwaves from the Demon Lord’s attacks and my short-range dodging teleportations were preventing my reserve from being full.

“—[Gospel]—!”

My ranged attack wiped out the dark pixies that were naturally spawning around Fiorfata. Doing this was really rough on my mana reserve, but I had to keep attacking. The Demon Lord needed to be focusing on me-

“Whoa!”

Too close! I instantly teleported to dodge the blast it sent at me.

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
・One of the seven Demon Lords ruling Netherworld. A god of the Netherworld.

[Magic Points: 584,500/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 654,500/670,000]

Fiorfata’s own mana store was somewhat decreasing from being hit by my attacks and from shooting its own magical blasts a few times, but not that much. As I expected, the Demon Lord was also regenerating its magic with time.

But it was still, thankfully, wasting magical attacks on me in response to my provocations. Was it playing?

Quathuit’s capital was pretty much just ruins now. Fiorfata laughed, its body shaking, its withered arms and insectile wings spreading widely.

Though people in nearby towns might have had better luck, not many in the capital had managed to escape.

I wouldn’t justify myself, saying that their deaths were necessary to save the world. If they had to blame someone, they should blame me.

They would survive if only they just moved away from the Saplings, but right now, I had no way to tell them that. And even if I could, the human race had been dependent on the Saplings for far too long. They wouldn’t leave.

I had to continue fighting. I had to, in order to allow as many lives of this world to survive as possible.

Once more, I spent my hard-earned magic to attack the Demon Lord. I immediately headed toward the next country with a Sapling.

Fiorfata still followed.

Next up was the small country of Katrinne to the east. And after that, some distance away from Katrinne, would be the island country Roxante.

At my current speed, it wouldn’t take more than a few hours, but I had to do it all while dodging Fiorfata’s attacks and continuing my provocations. A game of chase where the slightest mistake would instantly kill me.

“There it is!”

Katrinne was coming into my view. This small continent had been close to the center of the magic circle, and damage from dark pixies had been particularly severe.

I didn’t have the leeway to help out the humans this time around, plus they were also aiming at me with magic artillery anyway. I kicked the shooters from the castle walls, turning the cannon that was moments away from firing toward Fiorfata’s direction.

It missed, obviously, but that was enough to get the Demon Lord’s attention. I guided its attacks, using myself as bait. The stronghold that Katrinne had as its castle fell, the magical barrier covering the city vanished, and the World Tree sent a white magic stone into my hand.

I threw the stone into my mouth and headed to my next destination, Roxante.

The country was relatively close, but I still had to cross nearly a hundred kilometers of ocean. There would be nothing I could use on the sea as shelter. Dodging Fiorfata was about to get a lot more difficult.

As I began to get impatient, seeing my magic reserve slowly diminishing, the ocean in front of me suddenly roiled and bubbled. Dozens of sea dragons appeared from the water.

Not now!

But just as I got ready for battle, the sea dragons ignored me, instead attacking Fiorfata chasing behind.

“…are you helping me?”

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

A large-scale mana quake originating from the central region of the Western Continent had been observed.

In the same moment, the Sage Heroine of Magic had also issued an ‘extreme threat warning’, announcing the appearance of a threat to the entire world: a Cataclysm-class monster.

As the monster began to act, around the world, all those above a certain level of power unconsciously sensed its presence. They trembled before what was thought to be an Evil God.

But the danger wasn’t limited to the Evil God alone.

Not only was the Evil God summoning an endless amount of low demons called ‘dark pixies’ around itself, the same dark pixies were also being spawned without limits from the Origin points that made up the worldwide magic circle. While protecting their citizens, the countries in the region were also dispatching their armies to clear out these Origins.

An international summit had been held through the use of the ‘clairvoyant mirrors’. Of those countries not directly handling the crisis, the small countries would give as much military support as they could, while the large countries would deploy their trump cards, sending squadrons of flying battleships — airships equipped with magical artillery — to defeat the Evil God.

It had been some ten-odd years since the technological uplift granted by an oracle of the Temples, and the subsequent beginning of the magical weapon project. Tactics against worldwide threats that made use of the Heroes as the centerpieces were now considered a thing of the past.

Nowadays, Heroes were only deployed in scenarios where magical artillery wasn’t available, such as in limited warfare. The enemy this time was designated Cataclysm-class, and so the humans believed that destruction of whole cities would be inevitable.

But mankind had forgotten. They had forgotten why Heroes were held in such high regard, why they were far more valued than an army of millions.

It wasn’t about their personal combat power alone.

In a world of peace, the human race had forgotten that Heroes were the hope of the people.

***

“Not like this…”

Marlene the Sage was at her secret hideout in the Academy City of Cinqres in the Central Continent. She was wrapping talismans imbued with holy water around her left arm, sealing the curse of the Unseelie Lord that had turned the limb grey.

There was no one else here. The majority of her subordinates had been buried in the collapse of the Tower of Truth.

She still had collaborators around the world, albeit not many of them. But she was faced with a far more fundamental problem: she could no longer show herself in public.

At the moment, Marlene was the criminal that had summoned the Evil God to this world.

She still had her reputation as a Heroine. Or from another point of view, it meant that without her reputation, she would be immediately thrown into jail the moment somebody found her. As it was, she could see what would happen if she showed her face: the Heroine would be forced to stand in the front line against the Evil God, to be used and thrown away.

Marlene’s pride could not allow it to happen.

The only way she could regain her honor now was to somehow deal with the Evil God herself. But she absolutely could not allow herself to be forced to fight until her death, to not be allowed even thoughts of retreat. She would not be enslaved.

Marlene caressed the enormous magic stone in the middle of the room.

It was the magic stone taken from the corpse of a Dark General-class monster defeated a decade ago, the Dragon Zombie. Marlene had recovered it in absolute secrecy. To make it into her trump card, she had been secretly stealing the mana of Cinqres over a duration of ten years, turning the stone into an explosive. It was the Yggdrasia equivalent of a nuclear weapon.

She could turn a capital city into ashes in a single attack with this. With the enormous amount of mana it consumed and its destructive power, even the Tower of Truth would have put it into the list of forbidden artifacts, never to be created or used, if they were aware of it.

Marlene reverently picked it up. On her expression was a hint of madness, the same madness of Brian and his cooperators.

***

“A Cataclysm-class monster…”

Gold the Warrior was infiltrating the small country of Oisadra, located in the southern region of the Eastern Continent. He, too, had noticed the manifestation of the Unseelie Lord. Through the demihumans’ information network, he had found out that it was a Cataclysm-class threat.

Gold had been cooperating with the demihuman resistance. He was no longer a Hero of humanity, instead deciding to fight as a true Hero, a savior of the world.

At first, he had thought he should inform everyone that the main cause lay in the deeds of humans, but he realized that in all likelihood, the nobility would never agree to it.

If he tried to leverage his Heroic reputation, he would also be bound by that very same reputation. More likely than not, he’d just be wasting his time.

Gold was aware of the Dark Lady Whitehare’s plans now. He couldn’t allow himself to waste time and worry about it when she was still continuing her lonely battle.

“What will you do, sir Hero?”

The young elven princess was with him on his current mission. She stared at him, her gaze cool.

He might have been cooperating, but until now, the Heroes had never shown any initiative in protecting demihumans. She must not yet trust him fully.

Should he fight the Evil God as a Hero of the world? Or should he save Yggdrasia by continuing as he had been, liberating Saplings from the humans’ hands?

“…I’ll continue to destroy the Saplings.”

Gold made his conclusion.

He still believed he should challenge the Evil God for the sake of Yggdrasia, even if he knew he’d lose. But he also knew that committing suicide wouldn’t save the world.

And this was a Cataclysm-class monster. A threat far surpassing the Dark General that Gold had lost to, as well as the Dark Lady Whitehare herself. He had enough presence of mind to understand that at the moment, he had absolutely no chance of winning.

Even if he succeeded in destroying the Saplings, everything would go down the drain if the world ended.

But according to a source of information in Touze Empire, the Dark Lady Whitehare had gained quite a bit of power after destroying the Sapling at Xontdix.

If that was true, then perhaps Gold and his allies could be of help to the Dark Lady simply by continuing to destroy Saplings.

Gold hadn’t been able to become the True Savior… but perhaps the Dark Lady could. Perhaps that girl of white would save the world.

“I’ll aid the Dark Lady. I believe it’s the path to saving this world.” Gold replied.

“I see. Then I shall also offer my cooperation, sir Hero.”

The elven princess looked into Gold’s eyes and nodded deeply. She showed a hint of a smile, and for the first time, it was for him.

***

One of the Heroes had reached for forbidden magic in order to preserve her pride.

One of the Heroes had thrown away his pride to protect the world, devoting himself to his duty.

And the final Hero…

“Hahahah! I, Calimero, shall surely vanquish the Evil God for the sake of my 12751 lovers all over the world!”

…the Blademaster. He had claimed the treasured holy sword of the Holy City of Ayune in order to complete his mission as a true Hero. Pure instincts was guiding him toward the Unseelie Lord Fiorfata, and he set out alone in boisterous laughter.

***

Even after spending ten thousand mana for my [Gospel], Fiorfata’s own magic only went down a thousand.

If I had to compare this whole situation to the video games I’d only ever read about, then I was pretty much trying to kill the last boss right after coming out from the tutorial here.

At least I got Fiorfata to focus on me. If I let it run amok, this whole region would be extinct of all life.

“―́́̀͢͠―̡̧̕͞∴̢≠̸͝∬̴̧̛͝͡†̸͘‡̡̀́͞∝̡̢̡͠∮̨͠―̵̕̕―̧́͢҉“

The moment I heard the ǹo̢͘i̸s̸e it made, I immediately teleported hundreds of meters away. I didn’t even dare to stay and watch what it was about to do.

Upon my arrival, I saw a small ball of light falling on where I used to be, violently exploding and scouring the buildings there into dust.

“Oof!”

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 25]
[Magic Points: 78,400/97,000]
[Total Combat Power: 88,100/106,700]

Just the shockwave alone already took off nearly five thousand, even through my hasty guard. This really wasn’t an opponent I could fight head-on. Out of all the battles I’d been in, this was the most hopeless.

But I still had a plan!

“[Dimensional Manipulation]!”

I teleported a magical blast right to Fiorfata’s head. It simply bounced off with a clang.

An attack worth five hundred magic was less effective than a scratch to a Demon Lord. But I needed it to see me as an enemy, else my whole plan would collapse.

“Come on, get me, Fiorfata!”

I shouted and whisked through the sky. I could see the Demon Lord behind me and chasing me, the fissure of a smile once more showing on its face.

I was about fifteen meters off the ground, flying fast. Fiorfata flew at the same speed, once in a while throwing at me the same explosions it did before.

I dodged, weaving left and right, sometimes even teleporting. Forests and hills turned into craters behind us.

But that was fine. Fiorfata knew I was a Demon, so it didn’t use the light that spawned dark pixies. It was only using simple magical attacks. Honestly, if it had used curses, the lingering damage to the environment would be so much worse later on.

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 25]
[Magic Points: 73,500/97,000]
[Total Combat Power: 83,200/106,700]

I was getting ground down, slowly but surely.

Fiorfata hadn’t even seen me as a real opponent yet. The Demon Lord was still just a hunter leisurely chasing around a rabbit to pass the time during a walk in the forest.

Right now, its frivolity was the only reason why I hadn’t suffered any fatal wounds yet.

But I wouldn’t even last for a few hours like this. I pushed down my growing restlessness and focused on dodging. Finally, I arrived at my destination.

“There’s Quathuit!”

Quathuit, a small country to the southeast of the City of Magic Quarancinq. It served as the middleman for trade between Quarancinq and the City of Gambling Sautonnn further south. On this small continent, it was the country with the most merchants.

From afar, I could already see the streets of Quathuit being assaulted by so much dark pixies it looked like a thick cloud of locusts.

“[Causality Alteration], [Dimensional Manipulation], parallel activation!”

I slapped my hands together. The thousands of dark pixies I could see vanished in an instant.

The knights fighting them were dumbfounded. Then they saw me flying, and they shouted.

“T-the Dark Lady?!”

“Evacuate, NOW!” I yelled, spreading my voice as far away as possible, and I passed them by. A moment later, explosions ripped apart the area, soldiers and all.

“Get to the forests!”

That was the most warning they’d get. I didn’t exactly care if humans lived or died, but that didn’t mean I wanted them to go extinct.

As Quathuit’s castle came into my view, the magic artillery set up on top of the castle walls all fired at me.

I squeezed my hand. The projectiles avoided me to instead rain down on the direction of the Demon Lord hot on my tail.

Fiorfata responded with its own explosions an instant later, bombarding the castle. Quathuit’s barrier disappeared, and the World Tree sent me a white magic stone.

One down. To the next.

A/N: Map update. Things are currently happening in around the central area of the left side.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Crap, he noticed me!

That thing summoned from the enormous magic circle saw me through one of the monitors. Apparently it even realized the existence of Earth in that instant. It greeted me in English.

That sort of horror could not be allowed to reach Earth right now.

Physical weapons such as metallic bullets and gunpowder explosions barely affected spiritual lifeforms. Submerging it in a large amount of flame would work, but to burn down something so powerful would require the direct heat of over a dozen volcano eruptions.

How could the humans of Earth even hit something that could move as fast as a missile while still not showing up on radar?

A Demon Lord. A demon of the highest rank, surpassing Archdemons. A god of the demons.

Fiorfata, the Unseelie Lord.

I hadn’t known this before. It had been my soul, a soul now demonic, that had told me the thing’s identity.

Had the summoners meant to call it up from the very beginning? Or had it been a mistake? Though judging from how overjoyed Brian had looked in his nasty monologue, it was far more likely that it had been intentional, that he’d worked with the criminal magicians of Yggdrasia for exactly this purpose.

At any rate, I couldn’t fight it here. Earth didn’t allow me to recover my mana, and it had six times my magic. I’d just get ground to dust.

On the other side of the screen, Fiorfata reached its hand out to Brian’s avatar, the ‘bridge’ that was connecting Earth to Yggdrasia.

The moment I realized what it was trying to do, I took out my demon blade from its black sheath and stabbed into the heart of Brian, still sleeping in his VR capsule, while using [Dimensional Manipulation] and [Causality Alteration] at the same time.

His bodies, both the one here and the one on the other side, jerked at the same time. The screen showed the blade coming out of Brian’s avatar from the inside.

I flicked the blade upward, slashing through his head to finish him off. Brian’s life, as well as the connection from here to Yggdrasia, abruptly vanished. Right before the screen cut off, Fiorfata looked at me and grinned.

…no chance of not being its enemy now, huh?

But wait, something was strange. Brian should be dead, yet I didn’t see his soul anywhere.

Just as the connection cut off and I was taking a breather, Brian’s corpse began to turn grey, bubbling and bursting into sludge.

I flinched. The sludge overflowed so quickly the capsule was nearly at its breaking point, grey flowers rapidly growing on the liquid. They bloomed in concert, and an eldritch voice came from the blossoms.

“..̢.litt.͝..ļe.͠.͏.̧b͞u̵n͜…͟ny͠.̢.̵.́”

The moment I recognized it was Brian’s voice, I instantly concluded that it would be far too dangerous to touch the grey sludge. I used [Dimensional Manipulation] to force a teleportation to outside the military compound.

So Brian had already fallen to Fiorfata’s Blessing, I see.

When I arrived outside the compound, the blizzard I left behind was still going on. Apparently the soldiers had already retreated. There was no sudden gunfire.

I stayed in mid-air and looked at the compound. The grey sludge erupted, bursting out of the roof.

“Ļ̧̨i̡̡̢͢͝ţ̢̛͢͏t̕̕͟l̴͘͠ȩ̴͘̕͠ ̀̀̕͟b҉̵̨͜u̷̵͘n̸̨͘n͞y͘̕͠!̴̀͡!̸̨!́̀͘”

Brian’s soul was transforming into a demon’s…no, that wasn’t quite right. More like it was being turned into breeding ground to give birth to more demons. Grey flowers continued to bloom on top of the overflowing grey mud, and they were spawning innumerable wicked-looking tiny fairies.

Dark pixies. So that’s what the low-demon subspecies of gremlins looked like. No matter how weak they were, the humans of Earth couldn’t possibly handle an infinite amount of them.

“[Absorption], [Causality Alteration], parallel activation!”

I cranked [Absorption] to full blast and absorbed all the heat, the light, and the mana from the surrounding, then I used [Causality Alteration] on the space of nothingness and rewrote every single thing that had ever happened inside it.

I took only the altered history inside me, mixing it with my internal mana, then pushed it back outward and focused it, creating a white ball of magic power inside my mouth.

I spoke words of power, at the same time expelling the ball toward the compound.

“—[Nadir]—”

In a blink of an eye, the compound, as well as what remained of Brian, were covered in a white space one kilometer across. A sharp clang of a tuning fork rang out, and in the very next moment, everything inside the white space dissolved into white icy dust.

I breathed heavily, despite my lack of need for respiration. The attack had been much too mentally demanding.

What used to be the compound was now nothing more than a perfect hemisphere in the ground with a diameter of one kilometer.

I’d just refilled from a mana storage tank, and now my magic was already down to half. Thankfully, the white space had succeeded in wiping out Fiorfata’s interference together with Brian’s soul.

…Demon Lords were crazy. I really, really couldn’t afford to leave it alone.

Excluding master-servant relationships, normal demons generally feared those of a higher rank. For better or for worse, however, I wasn’t a normal, natural demon, and so I could face it without fear ruling me.

I needed to get back to Yggdrasia right away.

If I could drag out the engagement and fight while destroying Saplings for more power, then I should be able to survive Fiorfata, if only barely. It was going to be a very tight balancing act.

But I couldn’t return from here. I’d already torn the facilities of this compound to pieces with my [Dimensional Manipulation]. Now, the only remaining decent connection to Yggdrasia was at the 12th research center that held the game department. The dimensional distortions themselves still remained in several locations, but crossing dimensions alone by my own power was still far too dangerous.

And even if I wanted to return to the 12th, I would need to travel a distance that was practically continent-spanning. I was quite sure I could do it in a day as I was at the moment, but I wouldn’t know what was happening in Yggdrasia in the meantime. Besides, it’d be dangerous to allow that Demon Lord to find out how I came here.

What should I do, then?

“[Dimensional Manipulation]”

I used the skill to search for cyber activity in the local area.

There had to be something here. There were more than three millions of them throughout the whole world, after all.

“…there you are.”

I teleported directly there, even if it was a bit of a waste of mana. The outside scenery abruptly changed into a cramped room. I appeared right when the young man inside, probably of Hispanic descent from his appearance, was about to put the VR device on his head. He gaped at me.

“T-the Dark Bunny Lady?!”

“…sorry, let me borrow that for a bit.”

That title again? I really have to wonder what sort of impression these people had of me.

He was a player of the MMORPG World of Yggdrasia. The VR device he possessed was granted access rights to the 12th research center through the game program.

I pushed him to the side and touched the device, using my Dimensional Manipulation skill. Yeah, this would work. I could get to Yggdrasia from here.

Just as I was about to leave, however, the dumbfounded young man returned to his senses and called at me in a panic.

“W-wait! Please give me an autograph!!!”

What.

I dove into the digital world after signing on his shirt. I arrived at the login screen for World of Yggdrasia, a place I’d been to only once before.

“My, my, miss No. 13, right? Well then, please show me your login ID and-argh!”

“Out of my way.”

The guide for the game, the tuxedo-wearing stuffed toy in the shape of a dog, was blocking my path, so I tore it apart with my claws and continued to the door deeper in.

I used Dimensional Manipulation to force the closed door open and jumped into the light inside. I arrived at the World Tree, where I’d set my home to be.

The moment I returned, the ball of slime and the little monkey that were my two kins scrambled to be the first to dive into my chest.

*boing!*

“Ook!”

“Hey, Blobsy, Panda. Sorry to have made you worry…”

*boing-oing!”

“Oookkk…”

They nuzzled against me as I petted them… they were shivering a little? Oh, they were scared. Being kins to the demon that was me, they’d also realized that the Demon Lord Fiorfata had appeared in this world.

“Listen up, okay? I have to go fight it. So you two should stay here.”

*boing!!!*

“OOK!!!”

Both of them clung to me, seemingly wanting to follow along.

“Come on, listen. You two would evaporate from just the shockwaves alone. Just stay here, protect our home so that I can fight without worry… please.” I said, fixing eye contact with them.

*…boing.*

“Oook…”

They reluctantly relented and moved off of me.

It was better this way. I wanted them to survive even if the worst happened.

“World Tree! Where is Fiorfata?!” I asked, looking up at the enormous trunk. With a shake of its leaves, it told me as much as it knew about the current situation of Yggdrasia.

“Eh?”

And two white magic stones, the same stone I received whenever a Saplings was reborn, fell from the World Tree into my hand.

Had the demihuman resistance done it again? Or had the country that had summoned Fiorfata fallen? Apparently even in this chaos, the World Tree was still searching for safe locations to revive Saplings in.

But once Fiorfata started being active, there was no guarantee those newly reborn Saplings would remain safe. I needed to attract the Demon Lord’s attention away from the new Saplings.

“World Tree! Strengthen the barrier around you as much as you can, and make sure nothing gets in here. If you die, this world dies with you, so stay safe. I’ll be going.”

Just as I activated the Sapling network to teleport to where Fiorfata was and the scenery was beginning to change, I saw Blobsy and Panda mysteriously looking and nodding at each other.

I noticed something wrong in the air the very moment I arrived.

From the new Sapling inside a valley, I flew into the sky. Several hundred kilometers away, grey miasma was rising up from somewhere inside the capital City of Magic Quarancinq.

I’d guessed correctly, it seemed. Quarancinq’s Sapling had been destroyed.

I cut through the air, heading toward the capital city. There, inside the collapsing spire, I saw the Demon Lord Fiorfata spreading its grey sludge.

The surviving humans were fighting back with magical artillery, but even if the weapons could shoot down a flying dragon, they still weren’t enough to do anything to the Demon Lord.

Fiorfata only smiled at the meaningless resistance, a crack running through its featureless head. Just as it was about to fire off another Blessing Light to give birth to more monsters…

“—[Gospel]—!”

The Demon Lord’s head was barely pushed backward by my attack, and the shockwave cleared away the surrounding sludge. Fiorfata was still, its posture fixed in place. Only its head turned to look at the one who had attacked it, and it smiled.

“Fiorfata! Your opponent is me!”

[Shedy] [Race: Bunny Girl] [Archdemon Lv. 25]
・The rabbit demon of Laplace. Trickster and guide of man’s fate.

[Magic Points: 84,000/97,000] 6,000↑
[Total Combat Power: 100,100/106,700] 6,600↑
[Unique Skill: <Causality Alteration> <Dimensional Manipulation> <Absorption> <Materialization>] 
[Racial Skill: <Fear> <Mist Form>]
[Simple Identification] [Human Form (Wonderful)] [Subspace Inventory]
[Dark Lady]

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
・One of the seven Demon Lords ruling Netherworld. A god of the Netherworld.

[Magic Points: 598,400/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 668,400/670,000]

A/N: She’d attacked the thing partially to protect the new Saplings, but also to minimize further damage. Damage to the human countries didn’t count, however, since she also needed to destroy the Saplings.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Quarancinq, the City of Magic, was a large country located to the western side of Yggdrasia. It was where Marlene the Sage, the Heroine of Magic, was working with Brian, the mastermind behind the dark pixie incident that was turning the world upside down, to complete his plan. His goal was to take vengeance against the Dark Lady, and to do so, he was going to summon the Fairy King.

The Fairy King was a fictional character of nursery tales and children’s books. The stories went that bad kids would be taken to the Fairy World, while good kids would receive gifts from fairies. The King was nothing more than a made-up figure to fool children.

Marlene was aware of the existence of another dimension, and yet even she didn’t believe the Fairy King truly lived.

All the same, she still decided to lend Brian her expertise. For one, she would be paid, and for two, she thought the plan would be an opportunity for the stagnating field of magic to be given a new breath of life. But most importantly, it was the little bit of curiosity within her that had wanted to witness what comes at the end of Brian’s insanity.

With the cooperation of Brian’s allies — a group consisting of the worst criminals who had escaped from their respective incarceration all over the world — and the magicians of the Tower of Truth, Marlene had created a global-scale magic circle, the very first of its kind. By Marlene’s request, mana had been collected from the Saplings of multiple countries to power the circle. Activating the circle had given form to the thing in front of her.

“What… is that?”

It was a grotesque thing, its black, scraggly torso and limbs resembling nothing so much as a withered tree. Ragged, translucent insectile wings squirmed and twitched, the sight unsettling to all those watching.

At first, Marlene couldn’t feel any power coming from it. Its appearance was disturbing, granted, but it was doing nothing beside making a strange noi҉se. For a moment, she thought they’d made a mistake, that they’d summoned an unusual curio, nothing more.

But that wasn’t right.

Marlene’s instincts of a Hero was telling her that the thing in front of her was not what she had thought it to be.

No one else could understand its power. If she hadn’t had her experience of fighting a Dark General as a Hero, she wouldn’t have realized the dissonance.

When faced with an overly enormous pillar, a normal person would think it to be a wall, a dead end. They’d stop. But Marlene’s experience told her it was no wall, that there was more behind the pillar. She knew. She had, unfortunately, known.

A crack formed on the blank surface of its oval head. It was smiling. As the n͞o҉i͟se it emitted formed distinct words, Marlene finally understood its true nature.

An Evil God.

The very next moment, she ripped off the necklace on her chest, using her magic to pulverize the special magic stone enclosed in the center, and she shouted at the top of her lungs.

“Extreme threat warning! A Cataclysm-class has been confirmed at Quarancinq! By the authority of a Hero, all countries are requested to enter maximum alertness!”

Saturated with magic power, the special magic stone disintegrated. At the same time, the magic circle sealed inside of it activated to transmit Marlene’s words to all the human countries of the world.

Alarms blared throughout the Tower of Truth. Armed with magic assault rifles supplied by Marlene, the magic knights serving as security for the Tower ran to her.

“Lady Marlene! What happened?!”

“What is this monster?!”

“A Cataclysm-class monster…?”

“F-fire at will!!”

The hail of enchanted bullets rained upon the assumed Evil God. It showed not a single reaction.

In addition to the combat power identification, enemies of the human race such as monsters were also classified according to another threat level system. This system also took into consideration special abilities and other factors immeasurable by the Total Combat Power indicator alone.

Disaster-classes were capable of destroying a village or town. The country would deploy soldiers or knights.

Catastrophe-classes were capable of destroying a capital city or a small country. Subjugation of the threat was a matter of national survival.

Calamity-classes were capable of wiping out a continent’s population of humans. Defeating the threat required an alliance of multiple countries, with Heroes as the army’s center.

Generally, the ‘Dark Lord-class’ began with the Dark Generals from the lower end to true Dark Lords officially recognized by multiple countries. The former correlated to the Catastrophe-class, while the latter was Calamity-class.

Humans had judged the Dark Lady of the current generation, Whitehare, to be a large threat to humankind due to her actions and ideology, and so had designated her as such. However, her goal was only restricted to ‘the destruction of World Saplings’, and her personal power was on the lower end when compared to the Dark Lords of ages past. It was why her threat level of Catastrophe-class continued to be unchanged.

Cataclysm-classes, however, were exponentially more dangerous than the Calamity-classes of Dark Lords below it.

Those included in this class were Gods. They were far beyond anything humans could throw at them. The very survival of the world was at risk the moment they became an enemy.

They were to Dark Lords as adults were to babies. What Brian had done in an attempt to defeat Whitehare was practically equivalent to burning down the forest to kill a pest.

Marlene could not even begin to fathom what he had been thinking. She spared a glance to the man while keeping her attention on the Evil God. Brian began to speak to Whitehare on the screen, his expression enraptured.

“Finally, my wish shall be granted… or should I say your wish, little bunny? I had hated you so, so much, ever since you gave me this body. I could think of nothing else but you… but one day, I just… realized something, you know? I realized I wanted to break this world. The moment I did, I finally understood you. Hahah…maybe I’ve fallen in love with you. So I’ll break this world, I’ll break you, and I will break… for you…”

The madman desired the end of the world, and even of himself. Cold dread ran down Marlene’s spine as she listened to his insanity. She immediately chanted the most powerful spell she could use.

“[Freeze]!!”

The sixth-rank spell would completely transform a single target into ice and shatter them, ignoring any remaining health. If the target could be affected by the spell, then death was guaranteed.

She had wanted to listen to her fury and kill Brian, at first, but the man didn’t pose a threat with his combat power. Instead, the pride and self-respect Marlene had as a Hero guided her spell toward the Evil God.

“…wha?!”

The spell of [Freeze] she’d casted with all her power shattered into nothing more than icy dust as it touched the skin of the Evil God.

Marlene had cut no corners with her spell, even when she had cast it in her rage. She had had a hand in summoning it to this world in the first place. If she didn’t take the lead in dealing with the threat, she was liable to lose everything she’d gained in her life until now.

So she’d shot her spell with everything she could muster, with every intention to kill. Even if her target resisted the spell, it would still give her a clue to its strength depending on how it defended itself.

Yet the Evil God had done nothing else other than floating in place. It hadn’t blocked, it hadn’t dodged, and still it was unscratched. It might as well be a knight in full plate mail being pelted with snowballs by children. It didn’t even deign to spare her its attention.

No, that wasn’t quite right…

As Marlene’s attack hit the Evil God, for the very first time, it did something.

“‡̶͜͠∴̷̷҉̢͘*̢͘͜͜͡∋̶̢̨͢＊͝͏͠＊́͏̷†̵̢̧̛”

The Evil God uttered a sound… words.

An abrupt wave of rainbow light spread throughout the area. The magic knights who had gathered here by the threat warning found themselves changing.

“W-what is this?!”

“AAAAARRGHH!!”

“M-my arms! My leAAAGH!”

Their skin began to turn grey, bubbling and boiling. What looked like grey-colored flower buds began bursting out of their ashen flesh.

The knights writhed about, half-crazed, horrified by the impossibility that was happening to them. But they began to lose strength soon after, as if the flower buds were sucking up their energy. They couldn’t even pull off these parasites.

What were these plants? What was this transformation that the Evil God’s light had caused? Just a single burst of light had disabled the best knights of Quarancinq, without even allowing them a chance to do anything.

And yet it wasn’t even an attack. It was nothing more than a Blessing that the Evil God, the demon, had granted to herald the beginning.

“Grk-”

One of the grey-tainted knights abruptly croaked. He collapsed, his expression ecstatic, his body fully subsumed by the color. The corpse slowly melted, leaving behind a patch of ash-colored flower buds all blooming in concert.

The sweet aroma of the grey flowers suffused the air. Those who smelled it soon found themselves suffering the same fate as the knights, to be nothing more than euphoric seedbeds for the plants. The blooming flowers released tiny dark pixies — winged, wicked fairies, as emaciated as mummies — and the creatures quickly overflowed.

Under the blissful control of the fragrance, the knights reached out to the dark pixies. The small creatures smirked, flying to the knights to rip out their throats with fangs and teeth.

One after another, the knights lacking magic power became nothing more than nutrients to feed the grey growth, giving birth to dark pixies, and dying to them.

Only Brian was untouched by the grey. His demented smile turned into mad laughter.

“Come on, Unseelie Lord, god of the Netherworld! Consume this world! Devour Earth! Purge all of existence!”

Looked like the flowers get those with lower magic power first, Marlene thought. She grunted in effort, using her own magic to hold at bay the grey corruption that was gradually claiming her left arm. As despair filled the hall, she activated the final disposable magitool she had to teleport away, escaping Quarancinq.

Surrounded by the knights who had all succumbed to the growth and the demonic Unseelie Lord itself, only Brian was still laughing in his madness.

Brian was safe only because he was in Yggdrasia as an Avatar, while his real body was on Earth. But the very fact that he was using an Avatar was hinting the presence of Earth to the Unseelie Lord, the planet attracting the demon’s interest with its generous population of corrupted souls.

The world of Yggdrasia, and the world of Earth. It had been by corruption that the Unseelie Lord heeded the call of the humans’ summoning and manifested itself. Joy filled it, as it discovered something special enough to catch its interest. It stretched out its arm, the black, withered stick of a limb heading for Brian, for the bridge between two worlds.

“Agkh!”

And at that exact moment, a straight sword appeared to pierce through Brian’s heart from the inside out.

He looked down on the blade and laughed, his euphoria undiminished. The blade slashed upward to cut through his head, and his body vanished in a shower of light particles.

The monitor screens shut themselves off one after another. On the last screen to shut down, the Unseelie Lord saw the sight of a white rabbit girl glaring at it with crimson eyes, her hands still holding onto the sword that was stuck inside the man sleeping in his capsule. Its faceless head cracked open into a grin.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

After I finished Contracting and Threatening the President of this country — which I’d done just for the sake of it, really — I headed toward my original objective that had brought me to this compound: the mana collection facility.

It was where the dimensional-crossing equipment and the mana-gathering system were located. Once I destroyed them, I should still be able to buy myself quite some time even if they were reconstructed later.

To those creatures called humans, ‘pain’ was something very much forgettable. Intimidation was meaningless. The pain would pass from their memory in a blink of an eye, and history would repeat once more.

But if I could buy myself ten years’ time, then I could use it to destroy only the Saplings while keeping Yggdrasia’s environment as intact as possible. I would be able to grant new lives to all the ninety-nine secret alpha testers. The souls of my comrades would finally get their well-deserved peace…

And my power would surely have grown even further by then. Dealing with Earth could wait until it happened.

I left the command center and went further down the hallway. The AI-driven automatic self-defense system appeared from the walls and ceiling, apparently detecting noises. They couldn’t see me, however, and stayed inactive in malfunctioning confusion. I tore them apart with claws.

As the security system broke down, bulkhead walls began to slam down to block the hallway.

I clicked my tongue and immediately dashed forward, sliding under the first and second walls, slipped through the third as mist, but didn’t manage to pass through the fourth. They seemed to be airtight.

My ability to create cold mist could only take away heat, so it wasn’t very suited to breaking metals. I could probably use more magic power to force my way through, but my magic was getting low from all those extravagant attacks I’d been doing, so I decided to just take my time breaking the wall.

Well, I said that, but really I only needed a crack so that I could slip through as mist. The walls only delayed me, at best.

“Is this the place?”

After spending about an hour breaking through the walls and further progressing down the hallway, I saw a door that looked even sturdier than the one leading to the command center.

“…also disconnected too, huh.”

I couldn’t open it through cyberattacks. While my Dimensional Manipulation might allow me to mess with living beings and probably kill AIs from afar, getting it to do what I wanted was still difficult.

No other choice, then. Just going to have to do it the old-fashioned way. As I rubbed my shoulders, loosening my right arm, the closed door slowly opened.

“Hmm?”

Outside of all my expectations, the door unlocked.

But it looked like the people wearing white coats inside the door also shared my surprise. The three, possibly researchers, displayed an expression of absolute shock. The moment they saw me, the middle-aged woman and the somewhat-younger man hastily took out their guns. I immediately took my straight sword out from its black sheath and cut through their necks.

Their heads fell near the remaining geeky-looking young man. He squeaked in terror, his legs failing him.

He didn’t have a weapon, I noticed. I walked up to him, my razor-sharp high-heeled shoes loudly clacking in deliberate steps. I pointed my sword at him and he rapidly shook his head, looking deathly pale.

Oooh, right… I’d heard that this straight sword had once been used by the eastern mafia. It had drunk the blood of around a hundred people by the time I first got it, plus I also fed it a few more victims afterward. It was pretty much a ‘demon blade’ by now.

Yeah, I was quite sure killing anything with this would send their souls directly to hell… It looked so sinister I wouldn’t be surprised if it got an extra effect to terrify people.

…wait a minute.

[—] [Black-Scabbard Demon Blade] [Kin of Shedy, the Demon]
・A demon blade that strengthens itself with each life it takes.

[Magic Points: 50/50] [Durability: 1494/1500]
[Total Combat Power: 150]
[Skill: <Fear> <Confusion> <Magic Regeneration>]

The demon blade turned into my kin… So weapons could become one too, I see. Surprising.

Ah, but it also had the same [Fear] I got, so I returned it to its sheath, otherwise the conversation would be getting nowhere. The color of the young man’s face improved just a little bit.

“Are you people the only one here?”

“Y-y-yes, yes, ah… no, no! M-mister Brian is here too!”

So that cockroach really was here.

“Right. What’s he doing here?”

“M-mister Brian is our o-observer… a-and…”

“Mmm, yeah. Where’s he now?”

“H-he’s, he’s been inside the VR capsule since a while ago! Don’t kill me!”

“Right…”

I had a bad feeling about this.

I took enough from the mana storage tank to refill myself. I left the smashing for later, instead heading for the VR room.

I stood in front of the door, and just as I got ready to wrench it open with brute force, it opened by itself once again.

…was all of this Brian inviting me in?

I took out the sword from its black scabbard and carefully entered. There was a row of around ten VR capsules inside the poorly lit room, and only one of them were lit up.

I peered inside. A man resembling Brian was deep in his cold-sleep, his two arms and one of his legs replaced with prosthetics, eerie pitch-black eyes of machinery still wide open.

Was his consciousness in Yggdrasia right now? I wasn’t sure what he was planning to do, but I knew leaving him alive would be dangerous. As I readied my cursed blade, one side of the wall suddenly turned into a screen to display a man with black prosthetic eyes, his surroundings unfamiliar.

“Hey, is my lovely Bunny there? You don’t show up on the screen, but my eyes can see there’s someone there.” He chuckled.

That’s him. That’s Brian’s voice.

The view I could see behind him resembled an old Western European town hall. There were a few other humans, as well as what looked like a lot of monitor screens showing different sceneries.

“…what are you planning?”

I ceased my manipulation of the cameras and showed myself.

“Ooh, I finally hear you… ooohhh! It’s the Bunny! We finally meet.”

Brian displayed a full-face grin, his motions exaggerated.

“Answer me.”

“Mmm, right, so—”

“My, did the Dark Lady Whitehare really show up where you wanted her? Doesn’t look so special up-close. She really is just a beastman girl, isn’t she?”

Interrupting Brian was a human woman in her mid-twenties barging onto the screen. Beautiful, but it was a flashy kind of beauty.

“…who are you?”

“Whaaat?! You don’t know me?! Are you really the Dark Lady?” The woman on the monitor scoffed in derision. “Fine then, stupid beast, I’ll tell you. I am one of the current generation of Heroes, Marlene the Sage. Do you understand now, idiot rabbit?”

“…a Hero?”

Was she the rumored Heroine of Magic, then? I didn’t know how truthful she was, but with how haughty she’d been, calling herself the Sage without a single bit of shame, and surrounding herself with servile good-looking young boys, she was giving off the same vibe as that Perverted Hero.

“…and what do you plan on doing?”

“Why should I be telling you—”

“Aah, that’s my cue to explain!” Brian returned after being pushed outside the screen. “I’ve prepared the best present for you! Behold!”

The largest monitor being hung from the ceiling of the hall displayed a world map. It took me a moment to realize it was of Yggdrasia since I’d expected the World Tree to be in the center, but this map had pushed it to the side.

So the center was… the Western Continent… the City of Magic Quarancinq? The moment I recognized the place, a magic circle large enough to cover the whole world appeared on the screen, with Quarancinq as its center.

“That’s…”

“Howsat, ever seen a magic circle this size—”

“Heheh, that’s my magic circle you’re seeing there, little Whitehare! Can you—”

“Indeed! This will allow us to call upon the supreme one, the Fairy King!”

“I might not really believe he exists, but this is still a great step forward in the study of magic!”

I had no idea if they were fighting or getting along. They just kept trying to push each other out of the screen.

“…the Fairy King?”

I think I saw that name in a Temple somewhere, if I remembered correctly.

“Alright, it’s showtime!” Brian announced.

All the monitors began to be colored blood-red, and the continent-spanning magic circle being displayed on the enormous monitor started shining faintly.

…no! That’s no fairy summoning!

I’d never had an actual look at a magic circle before, but I still knew. I was a demon now. I knew. Whatever coming out was not going to be a fairy!

“Stop that!”

I couldn’t return to Yggdrasia right away from here. [Causality Alteration], then. Brian and Marlene needed to go down right now!

I immediately stretched out my hands and crushed their pasts.

“AAAAAAaaAArAGGH!!”

But instead of my intended targets, those coughing out blood and collapsing were instead the young boys that had been their shield.

My eyes widened. Marlene smugly cackled.

“Brian sent me records of your fights. You’ve given up one too many secrets, rabbit!”

She was right. My [Causality Alteration] prioritized visual information. It had misfired once before at the battle of Xontdix when the guards jumped into my aim.

The bloody light was gaining in strength, and something was trying to take shape.

“Brian’s prepared this trump card just for you, you know? Be grateful.”

“I sure did, little bunny. I sure did.”

“No, you don’t understand! That thing should never be summoned!”

The magical light filling the screen subsided, the room plunged into absolute silence.

Marlene looked to the ceiling, seemingly thinking it had failed. Only Brian still showed his demented, knowing smile.

“…it’s there.”

The center of the hall was also likely to be the core of the magic circle. There, black light flashed. Slowly, quietly, it revealed itself.

“…what… is that?”

I couldn’t feel any power from that thing. Then where was this shivering coming from…?

Marlene had looked quizzical in the beginning. Soon afterwards, her face grew paler and paler. Had her instincts as a Hero revealed the Truth to her, then?

It was a thing of pure blackness. Arms and legs of over two meters, spindly like dried wood. Its torso was just as long, the surface as smooth as a slim length of log. Frayed insectile wings of translucent black grew from its back.

Perhaps its appearance could resemble fairies, if one squinted. But it wasn’t. I knew it was no fairy.

It smiled, its mouth looking like nothing more than a fracture on the smooth surface of the pitch-black egg that it had for a head, and it began to speak meaningless noises.

“…̧͖̰͕̂ͧ̈́ͧ…§̴͉̋̈́̓̃̂ͭ̚∝̽͊͂̔ͨ͏̱̱̤̻…̟̗̗̤̤͖̊̿͒ͧ̿̅ͣ＊̛̺̭̜̙͖̇͋†̼̻̘̃̓́͛͋͠∮̨͉͎̙͒ͪ∬̰͎͖͖̦ͅ∋̎͑ͣ…̫͉̲ͅ…͚͉̜̲̯̽̓ͅ＃̛̂ͣ́ヾ̐̅̏͒̑…̈́̈̔҉̲͎̣…̡̮̭͓̥＃̵̯͚̋ͦ͌ͅ…̧̻͙̬̳̯ͪ͑†͉͇̯̮∴̵͉ͯ̿͂ͧ̉ͨ‡̤͓͖̦̭̮́̍ͩ̊∝̑͆…̦̘̦̯̗ͥ̿͗̏…͕͎̱̖ͥ̀̐ͦ…̸̞͓̗̮ͬ…̦͇̹͆̆͊̃̀”

This thing…

[Unseelie Lord・Fiorfata] [Race: Dark Pixie] [Demon Lord]
[Magic Points: 600,000/600,000]
[Total Combat Power: 670,000/670,000]

…is a demon of the Netherworld!

“̳̆̅̇ͩ͜…̭̺͂̊̿̌̽∮̞̜͈̠̋̎͒͝ͅ∬̨͙͗…̃ͬ̈́͏͓̰͈̦̦̖̟ヾ̓͌́҉͚͓̝͙̞͚ͅ…̠̜̘̝̯̪͙͐̏̉̇̚…͎̮̹̫̤ͣ̈͛͠…͠…̛ͭ̎…̺̪̘̩͉ͤͪ̅…͉̳̲̘͖ͦ̍…͙̼̱̥͙̭̣͗̾͐ͩ̌̽ͯH̛̬̻͙̉ͦeͭ̽̓ͨ͂y̷̘͈ͅ…̷̥̠ͫ̊̿ͯ͒t̻̞̖̞̗̮ͦ̑̌͐̎̉́h̡̀̓̿é̶͓͙ͨ̓r̹͍͂̑͌̓ͤ̋e̵͂̏ͪͮ̎̒̇…̛̘…̷̹̮͔̗͖̝̒̃ͯͮ̃̀?̨ͪͤͩͪ”̲̐ͦ̏

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

“Hey there, Mr. President. What’s up?”

The kind-looking old man on the large screen faintly raised an eyebrow upon my candor.

The President. The person with the most executive power in this country, as well as the commander-in-chief of the military. Everyone knew of him. Even test subjects of human experiments who had had their official records erased, like me, knew of him.

“You bitch…!”

The irreverent greeting apparently didn’t sit very well with the commander of the compound. I leisurely stretched my hand toward him and squeezed. He spat out blood and collapsed on his knee, his organs suddenly sickly.

The man in his early fifties on the screen stayed implacable with his smile. He didn’t even blink at the supernatural sight.

“Hey yourself, cute little bunny lady. You’re No. 13, correct?”

“Close enough.”

While I might not care to be called by the human name that I’d long since abandoned, these people just kept using ‘No. 13’ all the time. Did they think that those in this country who no longer had a family register didn’t deserve a name? Or had they been seeing me as nothing more than a guinea pig from the very start?

The man slowly nodded. He clasped his hands on the table, fingers interlocked, and leaned deeply back on his chair.

“You don’t show up on digital footage, but you do on this screen, luckily. I’ve seen your battles. Just the damage reports alone were more than enough to tell me how amazing your power is.”

“Thanks for the compliment.”

What was his preamble leading up to? After a while, he began his talk with a politician’s smile, his motions exaggerated as if he was making a public speech.

“I’ll get straight to the point. I want you.”

“…”

“I believe we can work together. Join me, and I will give you everything you want. Status. Honor. Fame. Money. Or perhaps you’d like a date with a Hollywood star like girls your age? With my authority, I can give you any lover you want. If you have religious problems, then I can ask that country to issue you ‘indulgences’ by the dozens. And if you really need to fill your stomach, you can get death-row inmates on a regular schedule. Ah, but spare my wife and citizens, alright?” The man chuckled.

“…why would you offer so much?”

He seemed to have taken my response as me sitting down on the negotiations table, if only tentatively. He enthusiastically began his presentation as though he was talking to another world leader.

“You are the perfection we seek. With the use of mana, the infinite energy of the new world, and an Avatar incorporated abilities of paranormal humans, you have passed through evolutions after evolutions to become the ultimate weapon! The militarized monster avatars had been the greatest dream of the researchers ever since they knew of the existence of the new world and mana, and you are the ultimate conclusion! You are a goddess from the machine. You are Dea ex Machina!”

“…”

“Wield your extraordinary power! You shall play the part of the Dark Lady as you have done on Yggdrasia, and you will reign as the Evil of Earth. You will justify our nation’s conquest of the world. The eastern countries will inevitably oppose us, and you will annihilate them as the Dark Lady. You will lead an army of militarized monster avatars numbering tens of thousands, all controlled by the best of my soldiers! Your mother may have been an immigrant, but she is one of my people all the same. And even if you’re no longer officially a citizen of ours, your patriotism must surely still be alive! Come, join me! You are… you are…”

As the rapturous man stared at me, slowly, his expression transformed into one of shock.

Color receded from my white skin, turning it into an inhuman alabaster. Crimson escaped from my pupils to invade the whole of my eyes. Blood-red fangs grew to peek out from my lips. White miasma of biting cold overflowed from my body. The fear-paralyzed commander near me froze and rotted, himself still conscious throughout it all.

“…a Demon…”

The man on the screen whispered, his voice shivering.

He really underestimated me, I see… I could see the figures of several guards wearing black and some people who seemed to be his secretaries reflected in his wide-open eyes of shock.

I gently stretched out my hands toward the people I saw in his eyes and joined my fingers, enveloping them all in my palms, and I whispered.

“Causality Alteration, Dimensional Manipulation, parallel activation.”

Then my hands slammed against each other.

“—[Gospel]—”

In that instant, the man on-screen opened wide his eyes in surprise. The people in his sight crumbled as chunks of blood and meat, as all the healed afflictions of their lives suddenly relapsed in their terminal stages.

***

In his youth, he had once been in an apprenticeship to a secretary of his father who had still been a politician at the time, whose torch he would eventually take up for his own. Back then, his father had told him about a national secret: the discovery of a new world.

It had been a matter of utmost secrecy. Holders of the secret weren’t even allowed to tell their family. He had been grateful for the love his father had shown him in telling him, and at the same time, disappointed by the naivete his old man had displayed as a politician.

Ten years later, as a government official, he had earned the position to participate in the development project of the new world, Yggdrasia.

The new world had fascinated him. There were dragons, griffons, monsters of legend. There was the power of ‘magic’ that allowed mortal humans to create miracles. If such legends had remained even on Earth, then it was entirely possible an actual god could exist on Yggdrasia.

And now, as the President of this country, he had seen a Goddess, and she was a Demon.

Upon developing mana-based weaponry, it had been him who had proposed to use inhuman avatars in the form of monsters instead of creating weapons for human use.

He wanted to see a being that transcended humans. He wanted to see an existence that could absorb the lifeforce of their defeated enemies, gaining power without limits. Yet the test models of monster avatars were only somewhat more strategically useful than the current weapon technology. It hadn’t been what he was looking for.

But then, she appeared.

She was the ultimate perfection, the dream that he, that all his researchers shared.

She was the absolute weapon, the Goddess that proclaimed herself a Demon.

“…a Demon…” He unwittingly let loose a whisper upon the sight.

The girl of white with a pair of rabbit ears on the screen was being bleached of all colors, crimson eyes and growing blood-red fangs the only exceptions.

He was only looking at her through a screen, and yet he could not stop shivering. He felt as if he’d returned to being a baby.

Join me, he had said, and as if in response, she stretched out her own two arms and crushed something in her hands. He heard her whisper.

—[Gospel]—

In that instant, the secretaries and security staff in his office fell apart into nothing more than blood and flesh.

But that wasn’t all. The security system to report any unusual events within the building still detected nothing out of the ordinary, its lights green, while the terminal detecting life signals was displaying a red light for everywhere inside the building except him. Only him.

This was no Good News. This was the herald of a merciless demon.

They’d died. They’d died in a blink of an eye. Inside this building, this stronghold that could withstand even a nuclear attack, everyone beside him had turned into nothing but chunks of meat—

“Mr. President.”

His breath hitched. He was sure her sudden voice had come from the screen, yet he felt as if she was standing behind him, whispering right into his ear.

It was the voice of a young girl, light and airy… and he didn’t dare turn around. Cold sweat dripped from his whole body. His vision darkened.

Was she still there, on the other side of the screen? The presence he felt right behind him was terrifying his very soul. Waterfalls of sweat poured from all of him. He couldn’t even move his eyes from the fear.

“You said I was ‘perfection’ you seek, but I’m still not perfect.”

He gulped, feeling as though her sweet breaths were right on his skin.

“I’ll be stronger. Much stronger. Strong enough to defeat this country… no, to wipe out this whole world.”

He gasped.

“Do you want to protect this world?”

“…”

“Then you know what you should do, right? Even if this country was gone, some other one might still try to invade Yggdrasia. You will stop them. You’ll stop them even if you have to go to war with them. Even if you have to risk your own life.”

“…wha…what if…”

What if I can’t? He couldn’t finish his words, but it didn’t matter.

“If you can’t… then I’ll just break everything.”

Even if this country stopped its invasion, as long as its people still lived, then information would leak. Another country might just decide to take up the mantle.

The girl was saying that if they did, he would have to stop them however he needed to. With an economic war, or even with military force. He must, else he risked the end of this world by the hand of the Goddess.

The whole of humanity were her hostages.

“It’s a promise, then. A promise between you and me… and a Contract between the President of this country and a Demon.”

***

I sighed in relief. That was… stressful. I was still just eleven… maybe nearly twelve years old now. This wasn’t the kind of negotiation I should be doing at my age.

I already made my warning just in case, but I didn’t really trust this country that much.

Which was why I didn’t apply my Demon’s Contract to the individual, but instead the president of this country. Although in the worst case scenario, they might still decide to follow through with their plans even if they had to sacrifice their leader…

Well, whatever. If they follow through with their plans, then I’d just follow through with my threats.

The last thing I needed to do here was destroying the mana-collecting system. I’d listened to my emotions and let loose earlier, so I’d like a chance to refill a bit of my magic.

Besides, I also found a bit of curious info in the phone of that commander back then. An observer had been appointed to watch over the construction of the mana-gathering and mana-utilization system at this compound, and the name was Brian.

…I had no idea what sort of devil’s luck he had, to have apparently survived me twice. If he was here, then I needed to make sure he doesn’t live this time.

***

Quarancinq, the City of Magic, a large country situated on the Western Continent of Yggdrasia. Inside the great hall of the country’s Tower of Truth, hundreds of black-colored boards, each as large as the length of a man’s outstretched arms, were being set into a circular formation as part of the preparations for a new summoning circle.

“So this is what you call a ‘monitor screen’, is it?” Marlene the Sage, the Heroine of Magic, said, her fingers touching one of the black boards.

The ritual that she had developed in cooperation with Brian, the mastermind behind the dark pixie summoning incident, required them to be in correspondence with their assistants throughout the whole world through the use of these black boards.

Apparently, the black boards were described as ’communicable mirrors of clairvoyance’.

The magitool was so rare that the only people who could get a hand on them were nation leaders, and yet the Temple had prepared for them an inordinate amount just by Brian’s say-so. She felt as if she’d had a glimpse into the unfathomable depths of the man.

And at the same time, Marlene was exhilarated. She was a magician, a truth-seeker, and no magicians could possibly contain their excitement in front of the enormous, continent-spanning summoning circle, and the Fairy King that would be summoned by consuming an amount of mana equivalent to that possessed by ten Dark Lords.

Brian was working with one of the black boards, his hood pulled low to cover his eyes. He was making the final adjustments with the person on the screen, a young woman with a constantly-twitching face full of scars.

“Miss Salia, we’re starting on our end. You must be thrilled, aren’t you?”

“Indeed I am, sir Brian! Have no worries, this is practically my own garden.”

“Then I leave it to you.” He chuckled.

Apparently this young Salia woman used to be a noble of Touze Empire. No healing spells had been able to completely cure the frostbite she’d suffered to her face. Twitching nerves had turned her smile as demented as Brian’s own.

“So Brian, are you done preparing?” Marlene called out.

Brian hung up the call. He pulled back his hood, revealing pitch-black artificial eyes surrounded by strange scars, and he cheerfully smiled.

“I am, madam Marlene. We are ready to summon the Fairy King. Once we do, this world shall greet its new sovereign! The Dark Lady would surely fall by his hands!”

“…indeed. I look forward to it.” Marlene slowly nodded.

She was disquieted, a sense of dread settling in her upon seeing his exuberant grin. She convinced herself it was just his black-colored fake eyes, nothing more.

A/N: The President believed that all of his ordinary citizens were patriotic. He does think there are some politicians who weren’t acting in the interest of the nation, but the politics don’t really have anything to do with the story and it’ll just get really long, so I’m leaving that part out.

The typical protagonist would probably try to get the truth out about the consequences of the mana exploitation and give the human race a chance to make things right, but not Shedy. She’s already “given up on expecting goodness out of mankind”, so she’s just looking for the power to punish the transgressing humans.

The girl of the story is no longer a “human”, so she’s not going to hesitate to kill people in order to protect a baby animal.

Previous Chapter | Index | Next Chapter

Standing in front of me was a priest, a warm smile adorning his face.

But he was no normal person. His magic power and combat power were both quite high. In Yggdrasia, he would have been a Rank 4 or Rank 5. People with such power weren’t all that rare among the players and the senior knights, but this was Earth, a planet without mana. How had he gained such magic power?

[Middle-Aged Priest] [Race: Human ♂] [Saint]
[Magic Points (MP): 150/150] [Hit Points (HP): 250/250]
[Total Combat Power: 840]

‘Saint’…? The skill Identification quantified the information about my target that I perceived through my senses and magic, then showed the results to me. Thus, the impression that I had of the target could affect the information that the skill displayed.

I’d always thought that as I was a monster, my Identification results were more accurate than a human with their inferior sensory organs.

Either the impression I had upon seeing him had named him a Saint, or the instincts that I had as a demon was telling me so.

“…what are you?” I narrowed my eyes in wariness and asked.

His smile only became bigger.

“My name is Aiden, a man of the cloth. Ahh, demon, I have been waiting so long to talk with you. Come, come, let me prepare you some tea.”

As Aiden was about to move to the table, I asked.

“Aren’t you a priest? Why do you believe in the existence of demons?”

He turned around with a beaming smile.

“Indeed, indeed I do. The existence of evil demons is what proved the existence of the good God, after all.”

I had no idea what he was saying. I was curious about who he truly was, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to hold a conversation with someone that might as well be advocating that even demons were the creation of God.

Yet just as I was about to go deeper into the facility, ignoring Aiden, a sudden attack came from my back that held not a single whiff of killing intent. I immediately blocked with my fist and retreated.

“…you want to fight?”

The edge of the glove on my left hand, the one I’d used to block, was crumbling into particles of light.

…could this be… the power of a Hero? No, not quite. It was similar to the power that Gold Hero guy had used, but the elementals couldn’t exist here on Earth. There was no way Aiden could have received an elemental’s Blessing.

Aiden, unchanging smile on his face even as he’d attacked, made the sign of the cross on his chest and replied.

“Hear me, demon… If you are still intent on corrupting the world of Man, then as a devout follower of God, I shall not allow you to transgress any further. Repent, demon. Receive my purification, and your sins shall be absolved.”

He’d absolve a demon? He wasn’t even God, just a normal human. Was he really saying that? He even used the words “the world of Man” despite proclaiming himself a follower of God. Was this the humans’ own sin, then?

So anyway, he wasn’t giving me a choice here, was he?

Aiden’s muscles bulged under his vestment, cloth straining against his skin. Was it a sort of body reinforcement? Curious, but if he wasn’t willing to listen, then I had no reason to let him live.

“Ready yourself!”

Aiden let loose a merciless fist. His blow looked quite a bit sharper than what his combat power suggested. As I expected, skills installed into avatars were a far cry from skills gained with real experience.

I still had far more combat power though. I effortlessly stopped his fist, grabbing it with my hand. But just as I was about to freeze him with the contact, a powerful light shone from his fist. At the same time, I felt his soul surging.

He gave a cry of sustained effort, and my grasp on his fist was repelled. For a single instant, I certainly felt power equivalent to that of a Hero’s from Aiden.

But there was something more important. I had an inkling of what the source of that power was.

“…so you’re burning your own soul to gain power, is it?”

While I might have become a demon, I was an artificial one. I wasn’t all that well-versed in matters of the soul.

But the World Tree had told me about the reason for the soul’s existence. With the knowledge, I could see how sinful it was to turn your own soul into power.

“Indeed, demon. To be closer to the teachings of God, I have trained myself for many decades, and I have finally reached the truth! I have been granted the power to create miracles!” Aiden replied, sounding enraptured.

“…even if your soul disappear for it?”

“Such a foolish question. It is exactly the moment that I shall be released from the impure flesh, when God shall welcome me to His side!”

Now that? That made him interesting to me.

Perhaps it was my demonic instincts talking. My soul, the soul of a girl who’d become a demon, was whispering to me, saying it wanted to corrupt Aiden’s own soul, so ignorant, so innocent.

“Then I’ll tell you the truth…”

“Spare me your deception!”

Aiden charged toward me, once more burning parts of his soul. Even if he could approach the strength of a true Hero in just an instant, I still had nearly ten times his combat power. I fended off his attacks, slamming him onto the ground, and I stabbed my scarlet claws into his forehead.

“[Dimensional Manipulation]”

The evolved skill could now affect space itself instead of just electronics. And my power to manipulate electrons was no longer limited to the digital world — I could now even interfere with the faint bioelectricity that all living beings possessed.

It should work. Theoretically. I turned a part of my own memory into digital information, turning it visual, and directly poured it into Aiden’s brain.

He screamed in pure anguish. Blood streamed from his eyes and nose.

After the ‘video’ finished playing, Aiden lay still, deathly silent. Several minutes later, he slowly stood up, looking at me with the fearful eyes of a child.

“You know what you need to do, right?”

“Yes…”

Souls of living beings who had died were gathered by the World Tree. Souls that had earned a lot of experience would get a part of it recycled to the world, while they kept the rest to be reincarnated. Evil souls were dropped into the Abyss. The rest of the souls would be recycled into the world, reborn as a completely new life.

And souls with especially high amounts of experience would transcend into elemental spirits, to carry life throughout the world.

The lifeforce of the recycled souls were ‘mana’. As mana filled up the whole world, it allowed the elemental spirits, who served as red blood cells to carry life to every corner of the world, and the demons, who served as white blood cells to kill evil souls, to exist.

But in Yggdrasia, the human race was consuming that mana without limits, and the corporation of Earth was stealing it away. It was what had set the world on the path to destruction.

Earth, a world that had lost its mana, was facing the inverse problem. More and more souls were being born without being culled, and on top of that, the humans were even consuming and killing Earth’s feeble elementals, the spirits the only thing barely holding apocalypse at bay, in their quest for more power.

Aiden, now aware of the truth, walked out without a word, heavy thoughts apparent on his face.

He would be following my wish, I was sure. He would leave to hunt down the magicians who were toying with souls and spirits, those who were going against the world’s order.

I could see his soul, formerly pure to the point of foolishness, slowly beginning to blacken with his newfound knowledge.

The presence of life deeper inside became much clearer to my senses, as if a blanket of fog hiding it was now gone. Maybe those three magicians had had something to do with it.

Two soldiers were standing in front of a door mid-way through the hallway. It looked like it was the command center. I felt the presence of several people inside.

The end of the hallway led to the mana-collection facility. Once I smashed it, the corporation and the government’s effort to gather mana from Yggdrasia would be set back a decade.

If I wanted them to back off completely, though, I’d have to do something about this country and its government itself. I should be able to buy enough time for me to gain the power I needed to fight off the whole of Earth.

Reaffirming my resolve, I ran down the corridor.

“T-Target sighted! It’s Whitehare!”

“Fire at will! Kill her!”

The two fully-equipped soldiers in front of the door fired their assault rifles, probably magical. They covered the hallway with bullets.

I immediately transformed completely into mist to get through them with minimal damage. I reached the soldiers, instantly freezing them. My claws in human form shattered the ice statues.

The door of alloyed metal was half-frozen, submerged in air so cold diamond dust was forming. I put all my strength into an elbow smash and slammed into it, the impact heavy and echoing.

The combat power of a demon was calculated from magic power, so it changed depending on what my status was at the time. All the same, I imagined that if my status was converted to a normal living being’s, I should be able to get at least 300 Strength.

A few more strikes forced the bent door to open up for me. Inside, military operators were breathing out white air, looking half-frozen already. Looked like the cold mist I let out previously had already permeated the room.

They fired their guns. I instantly tore apart their necks with my knife, the final survivor being a commander who was trying to contact someone.

“D-damn you…” he sputtered.

I ignored him to give a demure curtsy to the large wall monitor. On-screen was a man whose face even I knew.

“Hey there, Mr. President. What’s up?”

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“Hmm, so you’re the demon?”

The equipment to bridge the gap between Earth and the new world of Yggdrasia, as well as the mana-gathering and mana-storage systems, were located within a military compound. The hallway that would lead me there was also the one connected to the command center where the military generals were. A very strange man wearing round sunglasses and a black cloak was lying in wait for me in the hallway.

How odd, to see just a single person here… no, wait, he was accompanied by a pack of dirty stray dogs behind him.

But this was weird. I wasn’t exactly indiscriminately throwing around my demonic magical power around the place all the time, but I also wasn’t suppressing my racial skill of [Fear].

Perhaps the man was resisting it the way some trained knights and soldiers could, but that pack of stray dogs should only be normal animals. Yet not only did they show not a lick of fear, they were even baring their teeth and growling at me, looking obviously, unnaturally hostile.

Was it hypnosis? Or drugs?

[Sunglasses-Wearing Man] [Race: Human ♂] [Weirdo]
[Magic Points (MP): 5/5] [Hit Points (HP): 110/110]
[Total Combat Power: 182]

Just a normal human, although his combat power was quite high considering. Perhaps he knew some sort of martial art, and I was sure the other factor was the magic power he possessed, even if he barely had any.

He shouldn’t be a problem to me in terms of combat power, but I still didn’t know who he was. I narrowed my eyes at him, and he took an exaggerated step backward.

“Ooooh, now that’s scary. Thought you were just a cute little lady, who knew you were a demon? Look, I’m getting goosebumps.”

As the man rolled up his sleeves to show me, he suddenly whipped out an oddly-shaped knife that looked like a bolt of lightning, using it to cut into one of the dogs next to him.

“Go.”

The wounded dog leaped forward without even a single whimper. It came in contact with my mist and immediately froze in mid-air, the ice sculpture sailing past my side.

“…what were you trying to do?”

He chuckled. “Oh, I’ve just finished my preparations.”

Right then, what looked like some fog burst out from the frozen dog and flew into the man.

I sensed a sudden outpouring of something similar to magic power from him, and I took a reflexive half-step dodge. The wooden door and the frozen dog diagonally behind me began to be invaded with greyness at visible speed.

Wait a minute, is this…

“…petrification?”

“Cor-rect! Amazing, I’ve never seen anyone managing to dodge it right on the first time!”

What did he do? Even in Yggdrasia, only certain monsters have the ability of petrification. It wasn’t something Earth’s technology could replicate.

“Who are you…?”

“My, sorry for the late introduction. My name’s Herdu, and I come from a long-established line of Czech black mages. If you’re a real demon, you should know the mages of old, right? Tell me who’s better, me or them?”

As he gave his introduction, he stabbed his knife deep into the neck of another nearby dog. Herdu smirked even as the spurting blood smeared his face, and he once more absorbed something.

[Sunglasses-wearing Man] [Race: Human ♂] [Black Mage]
[Magic Points (MP): 50/5] [Hit Points (HP): 110/110]
[Total Combat Power: 182]

He was holding more magic than his limit… I see. He was probably forcibly turning the lifeforce of other living beings into his own magic power.

He was one of the Earthborn mages. These people must have done a lot of experimentation to leave behind their magecraft in a world that no longer had mana. The way they do magic was fundamentally different from people in Yggdrasia.

But you know…

“Can you dodge this time?”

Herdu once more fired his chantless spell. His magic power was absorbed into the wall, then suddenly reappearing on top of my head.

I just swung my hand to whack it off-course.

“…huh?” Herdu gaped in disbelief.

I brushed off the stony powder sticking on my glove, as if they were nothing more than dust.

“…tsk, tricks,” Herdu said, slashing into several more dogs in succession, killing one and only lightly wounding two others. As the two wounded dogs dashed towards me, at the same time, Herdu also shot his spell with the magic power he gained from his kill.

I didn’t dodge. A single swing of my arm flung both the flying spell and the attacking dogs away. Herdu’s face twisted in shock as he saw what I did.

“Haahhh?!”

The spell composition was interesting, and I thought it could be quite effective depending on how it’s used. It would have been dangerous to me if I’d still been a Low Demon.

But you know, there’s a fundamental problem… you’re using way too little magic.

Since he’d been killing every single time he used his spell, he must not be able to store the magic gained from the lifeforce of others. The maximum amount of magic power Herdu could use at any one time was likely to be only 50.

Upon the sight of his spells being so easily parried, he began to lose his composure, his face twitching.

“W-who the hell are you?!”

“Who? Didn’t you already say it yourself just a while ago?”

Or perhaps… he didn’t actually think I was a demon?

He recalled his words, and his face rapidly paled. He once more prepared to raise his knife against the defenseless strays, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to struggle, perhaps to run away. I stretched out my hand and squeezed.

*crack!*

His knife shattered, the stress suddenly too much for it. His spell composition unluckily unraveled, and his limbs began to turn gray from their tips, turning into stone.

Herdu screamed and wailed, tormented by the backlash of the black Curse magic. I leisurely walked close to him. He tumbled on the floor, trying to get away, his legs already failing him.

“…where are you going?”

“W-wait, please wait! I-I can give you money… I mean people! Animals! I can give you as many lives as you want! Yes, you’re a real demon, right?! M-make a contract with me. I know! I know demons can’t unleash their true strength in the mortal world without a Contract with a human!”

What the hell was he saying? Didn’t he see how I dealt with the army outside?

“That’s right! With a contract with you, I’ll become the greatest mage in this world! Once I do, I’ll give you as many souls as you want! Kids, women, whatever you want!”

“I see…”

So he would make children into living sacrifices. To me.

“Unfortunate for you, I already have the best contractor. Cheap souls like yours aren’t worth my time.”

I gently touched the fingers of my hands together and crushed my palms against each other. The stray dogs he had been controlling until now abruptly regained their senses. They stood stock-still for a moment in blank shock, then they began to growl hungrily at me and Herdu.

The stray dogs didn’t attack me, fearing me. But Herdu was right there, his arms and legs petrified.

I walked past the crawling man. He called after me in panic.

“H-hey, wait…”

“Sorry. I’m in a hurry.”

I ran to the end of the corridor. I heard sounds of growling, of fighting behind me, and a short while later, the dying screams of the man who called himself Herdu echoed in the compound.

*

After a while, the hallway widened. There was a vending machine and a bench. A giant man, advanced in years, was drinking from a small can. He quietly turned around upon noticing me.

“The spirits of virtue are astir. I see your true face, evil spirit wearing human skin. This is the world of man. Return to hell where you belong, dark one.”

The old giant said, stretching out his hand that held the can with the words ‘RED BEAN SOUP’ written on it toward me. Then he squeezed, and the steel can folded like wet paper.

‘Spirits of virtue’? Earth had so little mana even I, an archdemon, was finding it difficult to stay here. There was no way the elementals holing up in the spirit world would show up.

Seemed like this old man was also an Earthborn mage like Herdu. He seemed slightly different, though. He could see that I was a Demon right away.

[Huge Old Man] [Race: Human ♂] [Shaman]
[Magic Points (MP): 3/3] [Hit Points (HP): 130/130]
[Total Combat Power: 144]

The old man took out a tree branch, leaves still attached, and began chanting some sort of incantation.

“—O’ spirits, grant me the power to repel evil!”

In response to his call, what looked like three balls of light floated out from the tree branch.

Hmm… that was surprising. He actually called up real elementals. Weak and so immature they might as well be babies, but real elementals all the same.

But the spirits had been forced to appear in a world without magic, and their very existence was eroding by the seconds. Even their weak magic was being absorbed by the old man. They were beginning to peter out.

“My name is Ohan. Dark spirit, you shall perish before our virtuous power!”

“—Leave—”

I said, putting magic power into my voice. The elementals were forcefully sent back in an instant.

“…huh?” Suddenly losing the power of the spirits that he had stolen, the old man shrunk into a size smaller, as though he had also lost a part of his life force at the same time. He staggered, falling onto his knees. My claws gripped his head.

“…did you not hear their screams?”

The old man froze in terror. I took all his life force and his heat, then crushed the shriveled frozen head into dust.

“So that’s what the Earth mages are doing…”

In a world without mana, the techniques they were leaving behind were those that stole power from others.

If this continued, this world would be heading towards destruction like Yggdrasia, too. But with the power I had at the moment, I couldn’t stop it yet.

There was something else I should be doing instead. I continued deeper down the hallway.

Some time later, a double door appeared in my view.

I felt the presence of only a single person inside. I carefully opened the door, watching for any more ‘mages’. I didn’t know what room it had been originally, but right now it had an ‘altar’ made out of stacking tables covered with cloth. It looked like a chapel.

There was a priest praying to the cross set on the altar, his back turned to me. He slowly stood up and turned around, greeting me with the gentle smile of an old Father.

“Greetings, demon.”

[Middle-Aged Priest] [Race: Human ♂] [Saint]
[Magic Points (MP): 150/150] [Hit Points (HP): 250/250]
[Total Combat Power: 840]

This guy… he’s a little different.

A/N: The work of the remaining magicians on Earth ranged from giving advice by divination, academic research of the soul, to assassination.

If an Earth magician was fighting against a normal human one-on-one, then their skills would make them quite strong, but they don’t actually have any experience fighting someone really powerful.

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