NOVEL NEXT 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 wouldn’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!”