Yoshie was very impressed by what she heard.
—She’s so cool. I could never do something like that, so I’m really impressed.
“They really trust you, don’t they?” She was so impressed that she whispered into Junko’s ear.
“D-Do they...? I don’t think so...” Junko blushed and stammered.
—She’s just being humble.
Yoshie put her left hand on Junko’s shoulder, and then raised her right hand upwards. A huge map appeared in the space above them. It was a map of the world they were in.
“This is a map of this land. Let her be your commander as you explore. Once you’ve got enough experience, you’ll get an army of your own, and be able to explore without doing anything on your own. You can have fun, be safe, and get experience that will help you in the real world! But there’s no telling what will happen, so it’s safer to stay in groups...” Yoshie suddenly fell silent.
She heard a terrible low roar coming from the other side of the jungle. Everyone in the yard turned to look towards it.
A cloud of dust was rising from beyond the jungle, and gradually getting closer.
“Wh-What’s going on?” Junko asked.
But Yoshie didn’t have any idea herself.
“D-Don’t tell me something’s going on here that you’re not aware of...” Junko’s eyes went wide in surprise.
—I need to come up with some way to calm everyone down... That dust is probably an army, and the only people who could raise an army are on the Demon King’s side...
“N-No, I was just surprised that they acted so fast.”
“What do you mean?”
“Only someone on the Demon King’s side could command an army that fast. But you’d need to be incredibly decisive in order to take action in just a few short hours. They probably still don’t even know the rules!” Yoshie shouted in surprise.
But more than that, she just didn’t know what to say. As she stood there silently, Junko raised her voice.
“Everyone, prepare for battle! The Demon King’s army is coming!”
Yoshie shook a little when she heard her voice.
—I know it’s a game, but when things feel this real... I’m helpless, aren’t I?
But Yoshie knew now wasn’t the time to feel depressed. She looked around at the students to see how they were doing.
There were about 500 students there in all. Every one was a student of Constant Magical Academy. Of course, they were excellent fighters, and it would take more than something like this to scare them. But as each of them raised their weapons or tried to use their favorite spells, they realized once more that this was a game, not the real world.
“H-Huh? My nightstick...”
“I have a knife... But there’s no mana in it!”
“I can’t use my buff spells!”
Every one of those 500 students ended up standing helplessly in the yard.
“W-We’re sitting ducks out here!” Junko quickly turned towards Yoshie.
Yoshie was desperately trying to think. If the Demon King army was attacking, then maybe Akuto would come here himself. He seemed smart, so perhaps he was trying to get the students out of the game as soon as possible. If that were the case, then she could probably talk with him. And even if all the students died here, in a way, that would also solve the problem. But what bothered her was that there was at least one player in the game that she didn’t know about. Until she knew how they were going to act, she wanted to avoid letting any of the students die.
Yoshie finally decided on a course of action, and then yelled in the loudest voice she could muster.
“Get inside the school building! I’ll handle the army!”
Junko looked at Yoshie and nodded.
“I’ll go with you.” Junko leapt off the podium, and ran through the rows of confused students towards the edge of the yard.
“Right behind you!” Yoshie followed after her. Some of the students followed after her too, holding small knives and other weapons.
The cloud of dust on the other side of the jungle seemed like a giant wall getting closer and closer. The rumbling was loud enough now to make the students want to cover their ears.
As some of them began to run and scatter, and some of them began to follow Yoshie, the jungle split open right in front of their eyes.
A huge rhino appeared, trampling down the jungle trees. It was at least five meters tall. A rhino wasn’t usually a dangerous beast, but there was a nasty-looking red glare in its eyes, and it was charging with the speed of a horse.
“Gwahahahaha! I am the head of the Demon King’s army! Demon General Korone! I have come here by the Demon King’s orders to kill you all!”
A pretty young girl wearing mages’ robes was standing upright on the rhino’s stirrups. The girl — of course, it was Korone — was screaming expressionlessly about how she was going to kill them all.
The other students who’d been following Yoshie stopped dead in their tracks.
“Uwah!”
“Wh-What is that?”
“That thing is bad news?”
“What kind of game is this? It’s impossible!”
The students began to scream, and Yoshie and Junko came to a stop as well.
“Wh-Who’s that?” Yoshie asked.
“Korone. A Liradan observer. Her job is to observe Akuto Sai, one of our most famous students,” Junko answered.
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
“Glad to hear it. Maybe you can talk to her.”
“Will she listen to me? She’s on the other side, right? At times like this she can get really excited,” Junko said hesitantly.
She was right, too.
“I’m not here to talk! I’m here to kill you all!” Korone’s voice was emotionless, but only more terrifying because of it.
As she stood on the rhino — actually a monster called a Behemoth — she raised her staff and fired a green beam of light. The beam tore past the students as they fled, and a moment later, everything it touched exploded. Several of the students were blown into the air.
“Gyaaah!”
“Aah!’
Two of them turned to dust and disappeared. The game had decided they’d died.
“...The system’s still functioning properly, huh?” Yoshie said, relieved.
And then she turned to Korone and yelled.
“Wait! There’s something in this game that’s not playing by the rules!”
Korone’s answer, though, wasn’t what she’d expected. She stopped the Behemoth in front of Yoshie and Junko, and looked down at the two of them.
“I am aware. That’s why I’m trying to kill all the students, to send them back to reality. I’ve looked into the data myself. From the speech you just gave, may I assume that you’re the game’s creator?”
“Correct. So you know that there’s somebody out there that’s not following the game’s rules?” Yoshie was a little relieved.
“Yes. But humans are difficult sometimes, aren’t they? If we kill them, they can go back to the real world, but they’re still trying to resist.”
“No, I think most people would try to run from that rhino...” Junko whispered to herself.
Korone heard her and nodded.
“It helps that they’re running, though. I can kill them more efficiently.”
Korone crossed her arms for a moment, and then gripped her staff again. The monsters behind the behemoth — goblins and orcs — began to run forward. Korone had brought 5,000 troops, half of the ten thousand-strong NPC army she possessed. They spilled into the schoolyard, turning it black like ink spilled across a page.
As the army raced past Yoshie and Junko, the goblins and orcs attacked the fleeing students from behind.
“Uwaaah!”
“No!”
The students screamed and turned to dust, one after another.
“Kill the boys! Rape the girls!” Korone shouted expressionlessly and emotionlessly.
“I always did think there was something wrong with her...” Junko sighed.
“I-Is this part of some kind of plan?” Yoshie asked. Korone nodded.
“Of course. I’m simply trying to bring an end to the game in the most efficient way. If you’ll simply leave it to me, I can bring about a game over by slaughtering them all quickly and efficiently.”
“B-But I’m partially responsible for this myself. I would appreciate it if you could leave this to me,” Yoshie said.
Korone, however, shook her head.
“If that’s how you feel, then it would be better if all the other students except you left. Or if you like, I can always kidnap the two of you.” Korone glanced down at Junko.
“If I kidnap you, you’ll be forced to wear lewd clothing and then go meet Akuto. This game has rules for producing children. If a man and woman spend the night in the same room together, they get a message saying, ‘You had a very special night last night,’ and then...”
Junko’s face turned an explosive shade of red.
“Y-You dummy! I would never...!”
“But you just imagined it, didn’t you?”
“A-Aah! Stop teasing me!”
“Regardless, we’re going to continue the game. If you don’t like it, then we can continue the game with you two as the heroes. You can take a little nap while I get rid of the other students. Once you wake up, head for the Demon King’s castle.”
Korone waved her staff again, and fired another beam of light.
“Watch out!” Yoshie jumped in front of Junko. But the beam of light pierced both of their bodies.
“Wha...?!”
Both of them moaned in pain.
—Even if it’s a game, you still feel pain, huh?
And then she understood what Korone had done. It wasn’t a fatal blow, it was just to knock them out.
And then, Yoshie and Junko passed out.
○
Let’s go a little further back in time.
When Korone attacked, Fujiko was the first inside the school building.
—This may be a game, but I still don’t want to die. And something doesn’t seem right about that Yoshihiko either. I need to survive a little longer, and do some research of my own...
The layout of the school building hadn’t changed, but its contents had. The classrooms had been replaced with mission-planning rooms and armories.
—Armories... That’s perfect.
Fujiko shouted as she turned around, “There’s weapons here! Everyone, grab them!” She went between the rows of spears and piles of swords, and grabbed the weapon she was most used to from the real world: a whip.
The other students who’d followed her picked up weapons of her own. The room was filled with students picking up weapons, when suddenly there was a cry from the next room.
“There’s spell books over here, guys! Anybody whose class can use them, come get one!”
—Come to think of it, I never bothered to check my class.
Fujiko opened her own screen.
Class: Herbalist. Level: 1 HP: 5 STR: 8 MGK: 15 ARMY: 0
—That’s right, you get your own army. They never really bothered to explain it, but looking at what Korone had, it’s obvious what one of them can do... I need to get my level up as fast as I can, then. This may just be a game, but I need to get as much experience as I can, so that it can help me in the real world... And more than anything, I need Akuto to get stronger.
Fujiko had secretly decided to betray everyone.
—So I need to raise everyone’s level and make them more powerful... So that I can have Akuto defeat them. That’s the plan I’ll use.
Once she’d settled on a plan, Fujiko went next door to the room with the spell books and found herself a Level 1 book that she could use. And when she saw that most of the students had found their weapons, she spoke.
“Everyone, this fortress isn’t going to last long! Let’s head out the back entrance and split up into the jungle! Then we can raise our levels and gather our armies, and when the time comes to defeat the Demon King, I’ll raise the signal for us to reunite!”
Voices were raised in agreement.
“That’s right! That’s our best move!”
“It’ll give us a chance to have some more fun, too.”
“This place feels so real, I don’t want to get killed.”
“We can split into groups of two or three and run.”
The students began to leave the room.
“Fujiko! Let’s escape together!”
Three of Fujiko’s younger admirers said as they ran towards her. Fujiko smiled and nodded.
“Of course. We can leave together. Are you ready?”
They all left the room, and found that the hallways were in chaos. The students had never learned to fight as a group, so they weren’t able to seal the entrance in time. And now they had to fight Korone’s monster armies. The halls were filled with ear-splitting yells and the clanging of swords.
“Hurry!” One of the girls pulled Fujiko onwards. But even as she ran, Fujiko’s mind was on something else.
—If I’m right... this may be easier than I thought.
Fujiko looked at the three girls she was escaping with. The three of them seemed genuinely scared. She could understand why; the place felt extremely real.
—Which means that they’re not likely to be thinking straight.
Fujiko grinned to herself. She’d chosen a different route than the others to make her escape. The only people in this hallway were her and the other three. Only a single orc soldier was following them. The three girls seemed to have no interest in trying to fight it.
“You three go on ahead without me!” Fujiko shouted.
The three of them went out without her. They turned back once, looking worried, but when she shouted at them again they turned their backs to run.
Fujiko waited for the instant they weren’t looking, and swung her whip at the orc, catching the tip right on the edge of its sword.
“Hahh!’ She pulled back on the whip, yanking the sword from its hand. But even after the sword was gone from its hand, she kept pulling, flinging the sword towards the fleeing girls behind her.
“Gyaaah!” The sword embedded itself in one of the girls backs as she fell. She instantly vanished, leaving the sword behind.
—Just like I thought.
Fujiko smiled to herself. The other students, and even the girl herself, probably thought that the orc had killed her.
—You get a lot of experience for killing players!
Fujiko had already gone up a level. She swung her whip a few times at the defenseless orc to defeat it, and then caught up with the other students like nothing had happened.
“Are you okay, everyone?”
“Yes, but that sword the orc threw got one of us...”
“There’s no need to be sad about it. It may have been awful sight to see, but it’s still just a game.” Fujiko smiled.
○
“I have slain 357 humans, my master.” Korone said as she knelt in front of Akuto at his castle.
“Wow! Great job, Korone!” Keena said, clapping her hands as she leaned up against Akuto on his throne.
“Don’t do that. You’re making us look like an evil army.” Akuto sighed.
“I’m just trying to establish a mood, that’s all,” Korone said, and then she took out a crystal ball to show him. The ball showed the destroyed school building, the trampled yard, and the corpses of the orc soldiers.
“What a mess. I don’t see any students though, I guess.”
“Of course. I was able to keep this within the boundaries of the game.” Korone lowered her crystal ball, and then called up a large screen.
“And here you can see everyone’s complaints.”
“Complaints”? Akuto looked at the screen. It was showing an internet message board.
“Well, as long as everybody’s alive...” Akuto sighed, not sure how to feel about this.
/> “It looks like we can view the game’s message board in the real world, and people in the real world can also see part of the game.”
“Part of it?”
“They get an overall view of the game, as well as the numerical data. I was able to confirm this on the message board.”
“Just like when we went into the book, huh? Fujiko seemed to be able to do the same thing then. Anyway, I’m glad we’re getting data from the outside.” Akuto nodded.
“Now, on to crush the survivors.” Korone stood up.
“Hey, you’re getting too into character again...”
“Once you’ve started a massacre, it doesn’t end until everyone is dead,” Korone said, clearly enjoying her role a little too much. But Keena stopped her.
“Wait. Something’s not right.”
“Not right?” Akuto turned to look at her.
“I think the game’s changed a little,” Keena said as she motioned for him to look at the screen.
“What’s changed?”
“Um, the goal was supposed to be to beat the Demon King, right? But now it’s to find the Grail.”
Korone followed Keena’s gaze and pointed to a spot on the screen. The goal was written there, just like she had said.
“Somebody’s changed the game... Maybe that’s it. That other player that person was talking about might have started to take action.” Akuto sounded a little worried.
Korone looked at it and nodded.
“Then we must commence the slaughter immediately. We’ll slaughter them all, and not worry about anything else. Let’s just focus on the slaughtering, in fact.”
“I’ve never seen you look so excited...” Akuto sighed.
○
Meanwhile, back in reality...
“What are you doing to my school?” Lily said, plainly upset.
She’d heard what had happened. Lily had come back to find the school empty, but then students started to appear out of nowhere around her. And they were saying strange things about having been sent inside a video game.
“But if we say they were all sent into dat Vii-Pii-Ess thingamabob, that would explain it, raahht?”
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 7 Page 6
