Chapter 81 (1/2)

c.r.a.p, 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, surpa.s.sing Archdemons. A G.o.d 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 ident.i.ty.

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, slas.h.i.+ng 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 sp.a.w.ning 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce one kilometer across. A sharp clang of a tuning fork rang out, and in the very next moment, everything inside the white s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce 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 relations.h.i.+ps, 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?!”