by Okina Baba
Plus, its arms start firing off light bullets in all directions as it spins!
What an aggressive tank!
The indiscriminate barrage forces Riel and Fiel to fall back.
Ael retreats, too, but the tank stubbornly pursues her, so she can’t put much distance between them.
Geez, that tank is a total stalker.
A stalker that sends bullets flying everywhere and rotates at high speed while it chases you?
Worst stalker ever!
Okay, this is no time for jokes.
While the three puppet spiders are keeping the tank occupied, the Demon Lord brings the injured Sael to a safe place.
Namely, the hallway we came through earlier, where Mera and Vampy are holed up.
But she’ll be back on the front lines soon. Knowing the Demon Lord, she could topple that tank no problem.
As long as the puppet spiders buy some time for her, I’m sure the Demon Lord will destroy the tank without me having to lift a finger.
But we already know the tank’s main gun can bust through the puppet spiders’ defenses.
If something goes wrong, it’s possible one of them might die.
…I guess I’ll save them so the Demon Lord will owe me one.
As far as I can tell, I should be fine as long as I keep an eye on that main gun.
Scythe in hand, I break into a run.
Up the wall I go.
For a spider like me, wall running is a piece of cake.
In no time flat, I’ve climbed all the way up to the ceiling.
I run upside down along the ceiling until I’m directly above the tank.
Then I release my grip and free-fall.
As I’m getting ready to swing my scythe at it from above, the tank’s turret whips toward me.
Whoa, so you’ve got anti-air capabilities, too, huh?
A light shot comes flying toward me, and I immediately fend it off with my scythe.
The scythe slides right through the shell with a sound that can be described only as shiiiiing, splitting it perfectly in two.
Whoa! I gotta admit, I’m as surprised as you are.
I didn’t think that was gonna work, to be honest.
Not only that, but the two pieces of the shell suddenly lose their momentum and scatter into nothing.
The main gun that fired the cannonball is totally defenseless now, so I slice at it with my scythe.
The scythe cuts through the gun like butter, and it even keeps going, piercing into the body of the tank.
And since the tank is still spinning, it basically slices itself up on the scythe, turning into bits of scrap.
All that’s left are lumps of metal that look like a toy that someone tossed into a blender.
On top of that, the chopped-up bits of tank silently fade into dust.
It’s exactly like when I hit something with a Rot Attack.
Whaaaat? I thought the Rot attribute was all about death.
Why would it work on a nonliving thing?
And wait, what happened to the barrier that surrounded the tank’s armor?!
Why was I able to cut through it like that?!
Seriously, what is going on here…?
Well, uh, okay. I took care of the tank before the Demon Lord came back, and I got to have the spotlight for a bit, so I guess all’s well that ends well.
Yeah. Let’s not think too deeply about what just happened.
“Well, that was something…”
The Demon Lord looks at the pile of dust that was once the tank, her expression tense.
Even the puppet spiders look creeped out.
Come on—I just saved your asses. Do you really have to make that kind of face?
Wait a minute. The puppets’ expressions don’t change on their own. Does that mean they deliberately moved the thread around just to make these faces?
No waaay.
Behind the Demon Lord, Vampy peeks in from the hallway.
Glancing around, she confirms there’s no immediate danger and steps inside.
Mera follows behind her, carrying Sael on his back.
Sael is still missing all three of her left arms, plus a decent chunk of her abdomen.
She can’t seem to move her left leg, either.
Since the puppet spiders control their doll-like bodies with thread, they can’t move their limbs if the thread attached to them is broken.
It’s sort of like the motor nerves in humans. The thread Sael used to control her left leg must have snapped, so now she can’t walk.
Otherwise Vampy probably wouldn’t let Mera carry another girl like that.
I guess even she can put aside her jealousy in an emergency situation.
“Hmm. This place is worse than I thought. Since Sael’s been injured and all, maybe Sophia and Merazophis should head back to the surface.”
Not one person objects to the Demon Lord’s statement.
Ah, not that any of us is a person to begin with.
Putting jokes aside, if there are any more weapons like that tank in here, Vampy and Mera would only hold us back.
Neither of them are weak by this world’s standards, but it still took both of them to fight one or two robots.
They wouldn’t stand a chance against a large group of robots, never mind another tank.
Even the puppet spiders were having trouble against that tank.
The ruins continue past this room, through the door the tank emerged from.
Since there’s more to see, that means we have to keep investigating.
It would be best if Mera and Vampy went back to safety along with Sael.
But just as we all decide that, the earth shakes as if in protest to our decision.
This is one big quake.
The Demon Lord and I stay standing as if nothing happened, but the vampiric duo winds up falling to their hands and knees. Even the puppet spiders are wobbling as they try to stay balanced.
Then an alarm starts blaring.
The previous alarm had been going off this whole time, but with the addition of this new one, the noise is truly eardrum shattering.
If that wasn’t ominous enough, red lights start flashing all over the place.
“Yikes. This can’t be good, huh?”
Yeah, no kidding.
My danger senses are flying off the charts.
“Forget what I said before. Let’s all get out of here!”
With that, the Demon Lord scoops up Vampy and Mera under each arm and makes a break for the hallway.
The puppet spiders take off after her, still a little shaky on their feet.
I bring up the rear.
We dash through the hall, through the hole in the elevator, and back into the long hallway.
The moment we get that far, there’s a particularly large tremor and a loud boom.
The sound clearly came from behind us, so I look over my shoulder.
A wall of flame is rushing toward us at an alarming speed.
Uh-oh. This is bad.
Making a snap judgment, I charge right into the puppet spiders in front of me, wrapping my arms around them.
The impact lowers their HP a little, but there’s no time to worry about that right now.
I race down the long hallway at full speed.
Faster than the flames closing in on us!
Speeding along the hallway, I burst through the busted door and start climbing the holes I made back to the surface.
In front of me, the Demon Lord is escaping even faster than I am, so maybe she’s using her full speed, too.
Our bodies bump against the sides of the cramped tunnels, but that doesn’t matter.
I sure wish I’d made these things bigger, though!
I keep climbing the tunnels I’d dug before until I reach the ants’ nest, then keep speeding toward the surface.
All I’m thinking about is moving forward, trying not to focus on the heat licking at my back.
As I hear the ants’ nest collapsing
behind us, I finally see the light of the surface!
Aaaalmoooost theeeeere!
I jump out of the hole so fast, I can almost hear a popping sound effect.
Then I keep sailing up in the air.
Whew, we made it!
Before I can breathe a sigh of relief, the ground explodes.
A giant flame pillar shoots upward, barely missing my nose by an inch.
That was close!
If I’d been a second slower, we would’ve gotten roasted by that fire.
But my relief lasts for only a second.
Uh-oh.
In my arms, the puppet spiders are staring down in horror just like I am.
They’re so surprised that they’ve forgotten to change their expressions.
And I can’t say I blame them.
There’s an even bigger flame pillar coming up below us, so huge it makes the previous one look like a joke.
The word “pillar” doesn’t even seem like enough anymore. It’s more like a solar flare.
It’s like we’re watching the end of the world.
The scene is so unbelievable that I almost don’t even notice the heat pushing toward us.
Then I see something flying upward in the middle of the inferno, seemingly slowly but it must actually be flying into the sky at an astounding speed.
Once it’s ascended, the flames settle down.
But that’s not the end of it.
If anything, I get the feeling that our battle has just begun.
Something emerges from the remains of the flame.
I can describe it only as a gigantic UFO.
An enormous round flying machine, so huge that you would have to measure its length in miles.
That’s what’s calmly flying into the sky.
Close by, the Demon Lord mutters what we’re all thinking.
“Unbelievable.”
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS ALWAYS APPEAR OUT OF NOWHERE
Man, what the hell?
Seriously…just…what?
Hang on a minute.
Let me calm down a little.
How did things end up like this?
We randomly found some ancient ruins.
We explored them and got attacked by a robot army.
Then by a big, scary tank.
Things started getting sketchy, so we escaped from the ruins, then boom! Fire pillar.
And then, of course, this colossal UFO appeared.
Nope! Nope! Nope!
I still don’t get it!
Seriously, what’s going on?!
How? Why? What do we do?!
Help meeee!
As I fly into a total panic, I hear the sound of wings flapping closer.
“Hey, buddy! What’s the big idea, you damn dirty spider chick?!”
A giant pteranodon-looking wind dragon flies up to the Demon Lord.
Of all the dragons that rule over this wasteland, this one’s probably the strongest.
“We let you pass ’cause you said you wouldn’t do nothin’, but fat lot of good that did us! What’s the deal?”
…Why is it talking like that?
Even through Telepathy, this guy totally sounds like a second-rate grunt.
C’mon—this is a dragon, though. I’m sure it’s just putting on an act. Right?
“Better fess up, or things are gonna get ugly!”
“Oh? And what’s a wind dragon possibly going to do to me?”
“I ain’t stupid. I know I can’t whoop you, spider! But if you lay a hand on me, the boss is gonna have a thing or two to say to you, got it?”
Ah. I see.
It really is just a lowly grunt.
As soon as the Demon Lord got a tiny bit threatening, its tail went between its legs.
Plus, it’s totally hiding behind the authority of its so-called “boss.”
Is that really okay with you, dragon?
I dunno, considering how Araba was and all, I thought dragons were proud, powerful beings as a rule.
This guy’s totally ruining that image right now.
Ugh. I’m kinda getting bummed out by this.
“Oh yeah? All right, that’s perfect. I have a feeling we might not be able to handle this thing alone. Go ahead and call Gülie, will you?”
“Wait, you for real, girlie? He could bump you off in one blow, y’know?”
“Yeah, yeah, just call him. Can’t you see what we’re up against?”
The Demon Lord points at the giant UFO.
Ah, so “boss” was referring to Güli-güli.
Right, I guess if a dragon was going to call for a superior, it’d obviously be Güli-güli.
“Of course I can, you palooka! What the hell is it anyway?!”
“That’s what I’d like to know! You realize it was buried under this wasteland, right?! How could you not notice something like that was here?!”
“Huh?”
The wind dragon closes its mouth and looks down stupidly.
What are we gonna do?
This guy seems like a total moron.
I’m starting to wonder if the ruins were actually that well hidden or if it’s just that the dragons here were too stupid to notice them.
“Listen up. I’m gonna explain really simply so that even your tiny little brain can understand. We happened to find some ruins hidden underground dating to an era before the system started operating, so we took a look around. And then that thing came out. Got it?”
Yeah, that was a brief summary, all right.
“I don’t get it!”
And yet, the wind dragon is doing somersaults in the air to show how confused it is, or at least that it doesn’t believe the story.
Honestly, it looks like a giant baby dinosaur throwing a tantrum.
This isn’t gonna work.
“It doesn’t matter! Just call Gülie already!”
Her patience running out, the Demon Lord gives the flailing wind dragon a light shove.
It looked fairly restrained, no more than a gentle prod, but due to the Demon Lord’s crazy-high stats, it still sends the wind dragon plummeting downward.
“……”
The Demon Lord watches the wind dragon fall for a while, then turns back toward the UFO, utterly expressionless.
I guess she’s just going to pretend that never happened.
No waaay.
That was ridiculous.
Okay, maybe she’s right. We’d better get back to the problem at hand.
We’ll just ignore the fallen wind dragon.
It’s still got some HP left, so it’s not dead, at least.
Right now, we have to figure out what to do about this UFO in front of us.
There’s actually a decent distance between the weird floating craft and us.
But since the damn thing is so big, it messes with your sense of scale, so it feels like it’s right under our noses.
That’s how huge it is.
I can’t help being impressed that something that big was somehow buried underground.
I guess that’s what the heart of the ruins really was.
The robots and the tank were nothing but its defense force—this UFO is its ultimate weapon.
Frankly, the tank was enough of a pain for me, but this giant thing totally upstages it.
I kinda want to run away from reality, to be honest.
Quit busting out stuff that doesn’t fit into a fantasy world!
Whose idea was this stupid giant UFO?!
It obviously doesn’t work with this setting!
But complaining in my head won’t change what’s in front of me.
What are we going to do about this?
It almost seems like the kind of thing we can’t do anything about to begin with.
“Erm, Miss Ariel? What are we going to do?”
Vampy voices my question for me, still in the Demon Lord’s arms.
“Good question. I get the feeling even I would have trouble bringing that thing down. We might ju
st have to wait for Gülie to get here.”
That’s a surprisingly meek statement from the Demon Lord.
But up against that thing, I guess even the Demon Lord falls short.
Something thuds against my chest.
Looking down, I see Ael struggling to get free of my arms.
Oh right. I guess I’m still holding them.
Riel and Fiel aren’t moving, just staring at the UFO in shock.
This situation is so crazy, their minds might have frozen up entirely.
Of course Ael would be the one to come to her senses first, as the “eldest.”
But I can’t let go of her up here.
I tighten my grip, trying to send a message to her to keep still.
Ael tries to give me the puppy-dog eyes, but I ignore her.
There’s no time for that now.
The UFO has sent something flying toward us.
At first, it looks like a swarm of insects. Like mosquitos or something.
But that’s only because it’s so far away. These things are actually way bigger than insects.
In fact, they’re fighter planes that are around the same size as the tank from before, and they’re zooming right toward us.
It looked like a swarm of insects because there are so many of them.
“Retreat!” the Demon Lord shouts.
Holding Vampy and Mera, who still has Sael on his back, the Demon Lord quickly dashes away in midair from the swarm of fighters.
I follow close behind her, of course.
I’m not fighting all those things!
And if they’re the same size as that tank, does that mean they’re about as strong, too?
We can’t beat those!
No matter how strong the Demon Lord might be or how nearly immortal I am, none of that matters against this horrifying force.
Our only option is to run for our lives, without looking back.
The wind dragon?
Who cares!
Dragons should be able to take care of themselves!
Besides, I heard some kind of shriek behind me, then the panicked flapping of wings, so it’s probably fine.
“Oh man, we’re screwed.”
“You said it. That thing’s bad news, man. Real bad news.”
Having shaken off the fighters that were tailing us, we finally catch our breath in a remote corner of the wasteland.
The wind dragon somehow managed to safely keep up with us, too.
Although its vocabulary has depleted so much that it’s just saying “bad news” over and over.
