by Okina Baba
I wonder about that.
My Parallel Minds were supposed to be part of me, and they still managed to betray me.
Who’s to say this scythe won’t betray me, too?
“My, but you are cautious. Well, what you do with that information is up to you. I simply wanted to give a bit of a special present to one of my favorite people. You get to decide what you do with it.”
Oh yeah?
Well, this scythe is useful.
Really useful, in fact.
I’m not sure if I can take D’s words at face value, but I don’t want to give up the scythe, either.
At the very least, I’d like to keep using it until this particular incident is settled.
“I’m terribly pleased it seems to be to your liking.”
Ugh. Having my mind read is seriously a pain.
No matter what excuses I try to make, you’ll always know what I’m really thinking.
Fine, then, I’ll admit it.
I like it, okay? I reeeeally like it!
This thing is just crazy convenient, all right?!
It’s strong! Insanely strong! Sooo freakin’ strong!
And I made it with my own hands, out of my own body, so yeah, of course I love it!
You got a problem, dammit?!
“Now then, as I was saying, no one is coming to help.”
…Wow. Totally ignored me.
Uhhh. Okay. Fair enough.
No waaay.
So, um, what was that about no one coming to help?
Why is that, exactly?
“I thought it would be more entertaining this way, so I stopped him.”
What?!
So it’s your fault?!
I was a teensy bit worried that something might have happened to Güli-güli, but clearly I was wrong!
In fact, this might be even worse in a way!
You damn evil god! You’re seriously evil!
Who the hell would take the safest option off the table when the fate of the world’s at stake just because it’d be more entertaining?
Only the worst gambler ever!
I mean, I guess it doesn’t affect D much either way, but for those of us with our necks on the line, this seriously sucks.
I guess if you’re just a spectator, then sure, watching us struggle against all odds would be way more interesting than Güli-güli just poofing the problem away!
But put yourself in my shoes for a second here!
I don’t even know if it’s possible for us to solve this on our own!
“At any rate, you’re on your own, as you can see. Do your best to bring home a win, okay?”
You’ve gotta be kidding me!
Just like that, the phone in my hand disappears.
As usual, D sticks around only long enough to say her piece.
I bring the hand that was holding the smartphone in front of my face.
I’m guessing my expression is fairly different for once.
“What’s up, White?”
See? The Demon Lord noticed, too.
…Hmm?
I raise my head, peering at the Demon Lord and Potimas.
The Demon Lord looks bemused, and Potimas looks composed as usual.
Neither of them makes any reference to the smartphone I was just holding a second ago.
That’s odd.
They’re acting like the phone conversation I just had never even happened.
I guess for all I know, it really didn’t.
“Phone.”
“Hmm?”
I say the word “phone” as an experiment, but the Demon Lord just tilts her head, clearly having no idea what I’m getting at.
Potimas doesn’t respond, either, but I’m guessing he doesn’t get it, either.
Neither of them must have sensed my conversation with D.
In fact, it didn’t seem like they moved at all during the conversation, so maybe time was stopped or something.
Somehow, D sent me a message without either of them even noticing.
Once again, I’m reminded how unusual D really is.
A real god, an evil one.
No wonder D sees a possibly world-ending threat as nothing more than a source of amusement.
D lives in a different world in many different ways.
Physically, mentally, and in terms of power.
“You okay, White?”
The Demon Lord seems concerned about my unusual state.
Ahhh, after talking with D, that kindness heals my wounded heart.
Describing a demon lord as a healing force seems sorta wrong in various ways, but for now I’m just gonna lean into it.
Moving on some weird impulse, I end up giving the Demon Lord a hug.
“Huh? White?”
Now she’s even more confused.
Hrm. Because of our size difference, this isn’t quite the kind of hug I was going for.
I kinda wanted her to comfort me, but instead it feels like I’m picking up and reassuring a child.
Oh well, I guess that’s fine. Going along with it, I pat her head, since she’s at just the right height.
“Wh-whaaa—?”
The Demon Lord voices her confusion again, but she isn’t trying to pull away from me.
She’s just letting me do it, even though I’m sure her head is full of question marks right now.
I suddenly started hugging her and patting her head, so I can’t really blame her.
I’m the one doing it, and I don’t know what’s going on, either!
The fact that she’s not shaking me off in this weird situation is just further proof that the Demon Lord is a freaking saint.
How is she so tolerant?
Seriously, why is this person a demon lord?
It’s like one of the Seven Wonders of the World at this point.
“Could you put an end to this foolish charade already?”
On the other hand, the man who’s watching us coldly is absolutely the devil.
How is he so evil?
This guy stinks to high heaven! Or should I say to hell?
But I guess in this particular situation, Potimas is probably right.
We can’t just run away from reality forever.
I reluctantly let go of the Demon Lord, feeling like a child who’s been forced to put down their stuffed animal.
Not that I ever had a stuffed animal, in this life or the one before it.
“All right. Since White seems to have calmed down, let’s get back to our strategy, shall we?”
The stuffed animal in question, the Demon Lord, calmly resumes our strategy mission as if that never happened.
Oof. Gotta admit, that borderline indifference hurts a little.
“Problem is, I can’t think of a single way to approach this. I’m stumped.” The Demon Lord throws up her hands. “If we just had to destroy that machine, that’d be one thing, but if we have to make sure nothing explodes in the process…”
She sighs and glares at the final boss robot.
I guess she’s just as flabbergasted by this disastrous bomb-in-the-robot situation as I am.
“Honestly, maybe our best bet is to wait until Gülie gets back?”
“Most likely.”
What’s this?
Did Potimas just agree with the Demon Lord?
The Demon Lord seems as surprised as I am; she stares at the elf in blatant shock.
“Obviously, I do not desire any situation in which the GMA bomb explodes. Attempting to kill you two was, in the end, a secondary objective. If I can, I will, but if not, I care little. You are not important enough to be higher priority than a situation like this.”
Aaargh!
Can’t we just kill this guy already?
He’s definitely picking a fight with us, right?
But sadly, we probably shouldn’t kill him, at least not right now.
“Ignoring how obnoxious you are for the time being, shall we agree to wait for Gülie to come back?”
“Indeed.”
The Demon Lord and Potimas seem content to wait until Güli-güli gets back.
Unfortunately, that means I have to tell them what I know.
“Not coming back.”
“Hmm? What was that, White?”
“He’s not coming back.”
When I repeat myself, the Demon Lord looks puzzled.
But there’s also concern on her face.
“Did something happen to Gülie?”
A flicker runs across Potimas’s face at that.
Hmm. How should I answer? Something did happen, but Güli-güli isn’t hurt or anything…
“Yes. But he’s fine.”
That’s all I can think to say.
“What does that mean? Explain yourself.”
Yeah, that’s what I expected.
Even I would’ve been surprised if they actually accepted that answer without a peep.
But you’re asking me to explain this?
Do you know who you’re talking to?!
If I could manage talking well enough to explain in detail, I would’ve done that in the first place!
Can’t you tell that was the best explanation I was capable of?!
Ugh, this is a problem.
How am I supposed to explain all this?
Dammit, the fact that D told only me about this is a pain in the butt.
I wish this guy would’ve shared that information with the Demon Lord and Potimas, too…
Wait a minute—was this on purpose so D could watch me embarrass myself trying to get through to them?!
No waaay… But actually, knowing D, that’s entirely possible.
“I’m not sure what’s going on, but if White says Gülie is fine but can’t come back, that’s probably how it is. Even if we press her, I don’t think she’s gonna explain any more than that, right?”
As usual, the Demon Lord comes to my rescue.
She gets me so well that I kinda want to hug her again.
I guess she has known me in this life longer than anyone else!
Potimas shoots her a look, silently asking what the deal is, but the Demon Lord just shrugs.
Now it’s like she really did get him back with his favorite Do you really need me to explain it to you?
Although it’s not exactly a perfect revenge, since she doesn’t really know what’s going on, either.
Potimas doesn’t seem satisfied, but he seems to be forcing himself to go along with it for now.
His eyebrows furrow, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“So, White, is it safe to assume that Gülie is unharmed but he can’t come to our aid right now?”
I nod vigorously.
“In other words, we have to find a way to deal with that thing ourselves?”
She’s pointing at the final boss robot, so I nod again.
At that, both the Demon Lord and Potimas lapse into silence.
They’re probably racking their brains for a solution to this predicament.
Me? My job is to stand around staring blankly until one of them comes up with a plan.
What? Come on—I can’t think of anything.
If this was a monster I could Appraise, I could come up with all kinds of strategies, but this is a totally unknown opponent.
Machines are waaay out of my wheelhouse here.
There’s no point even trying to think about it.
And I make it a rule not to do anything pointless, so I’m just gonna leave this one to the professionals.
“I had hoped to avoid doing this, but I suppose I have no choice.”
Sure enough, Potimas seems to have come to a decision.
“There is one way. If it succeeds, we can silence both the GMA bomb and that fake Gloria.”
Potimas looks at us, waiting to see if we’ll go along with his plan.
“What is it?”
The Demon Lord wants answers before she agrees to anything.
We obviously can’t trust Potimas enough to consent to his plan without at least hearing what it is first.
“The body I am currently using is equipped with hacking functionality.”
He extends the pointer finger of his left hand, and it just…stretches.
The finger, which has transformed into a cord, must be the part with the hacking functionality he mentioned.
“I will insert this into that thing so that I may hack into its controls. If I succeed, I should be able to deactivate both the fake Gloria and the GMA bomb.”
Potimas keeps calling the final boss robot a “fake Gloria.”
Gloria must be the name of the original weapon, though it’s clear from his expression when he says “fake Gloria” that he isn’t too happy about the knockoff.
He must feel like an artist who’s been shown a counterfeit version of his own work.
“However, the hacking will take some time, and I will be vulnerable while I do so. If it attacks me while I am working, I will be unable to defend myself, and of course the cord will disconnect and the hacking will fail.”
Right. I can see why Potimas didn’t want to do this.
I’m sure being defenseless in front of the Demon Lord and me isn’t high on his bucket list.
“I will extend the cord from here and begin hacking into the fake Gloria. In the meantime, you two will protect my body and the cord.”
Immediately, the cord extending from Potimas’s finger begins to slither inside the room.
Hey, at least wait for us to agree!
But since he’s already started, I guess we don’t have much of a choice.
It’s not like we had any other plans anyway, so we’re stuck doing what Potimas says.
The Demon Lord seems to reach the same conclusion as I did; she heaves a loud sigh and keeps an eye on the cord as it moves.
I’m sure Potimas deliberately started without waiting for an answer, knowing we would have no choice but to accept it.
“White, you protect Potimas. I’ll cover the cord.”
The Demon Lord keeps her eyes on the cord as it moves toward the final boss robot.
Sensing its approach, the robot slowly shifts into action.
The final battle for the fate of the world has begun.
FINAL BOSS WALK-THROUGH
The final boss robot moves its multitude of arms, pointing its guns at the intruder.
The intruder in question, Potimas’s hacking cord, continues moving forward anyway, slithering silently along the floor like a snake.
Maybe that made the robot feel threatened, or more likely it was just set to attack anything that entered the room without permission, but either way it began attacking mercilessly.
All the guns unleashed balls of light at the same time.
Each of them was around the size of a cannonball, like the tank’s ammunition, so when all of them fired at once, it was like a blinding flash of light.
And it was clearly powerful enough to hurt a lot more than just my eyes.
A single shot was able to pierce the puppet spiders’ five-digit defenses, so a countless number of them?
If they hit that thin cord, they won’t just break it, they’ll evaporate it into nothing.
The rain of bullets, which is more like a wall of light at this point, zooms toward the cord, until the Demon Lord eats it all up in one bite.
She moved from outside the room to in front of the onslaught in an instant, then used Gluttony to consume the entire attack in order to defend the cord.
…What a cheater.
You really staved that off without a scratch, huh?
Would I have been able to do the same, I wonder?
Defend myself from the light without a scratch… Yeah, I could probably manage that.
But do it while keeping the cord safe, too?
Yeah, I don’t think so.
She definitely chose our roles correctly. I wouldn’t be able to keep that cord intact for very long.
The Demon Lord continues easily gobbling up the bullets that f
ly toward her and the cord.
It’s a fairly intense barrage, too, probably because the robot is powered by that bomb’s energy.
And yet, the Demon Lord’s not even breaking a sweat.
Wow, she’s amaaaazing.
I can just sit here in safety and watch her.
…Oh, maybe I spoke too soon.
Several of the arms turn their muzzles this way.
There are a whole lot of them.
That means they can shoot at me while still attacking the Demon Lord and the cord at the same time.
And since Potimas is operating the cord, he can’t move.
Light bullets shoot straight toward the immobile Potimas.
This is my chance!
It’s my time to be in the spotlight and the chance for an underutilized skill called Shieldsmanship to make its debut, too!
I spring out in front of Potimas, holding up my shield.
The bullets hit the shield, but since it’s been strengthened with Energy Conferment and Magic Power Conferment, they don’t do a thing!
Huh? Where did I get a shield like that, you ask?
So I just happened to find some convenient materials and repurposed them into a shield, so what?
Specifically, the crazy-sturdy-looking door that was blocking our path into this room before.
Heh, even a door that thick is no match for my special scythe.
But it’s sturdy enough to make an excellent shield.
As you can see by the bullets bouncing right off it!
Not a chance! It’ll never work!
So yeah, I can protect Potimas without a problem over here.
If anything, I’m more worried about the Demon Lord.
She’s having no problem protecting the cord right now, but it needs to make contact with the robot in order to hack it.
And she has to make sure it doesn’t get cut while it’s connected.
I’m sure the boss will put up a fight against the hacking, which could mean big trouble for the cord when it’s physically attached.
What is the Demon Lord going to do about that?
As I watch and worry, the end of the cord finally reaches the boss robot.
It glows for just a second, then plunges right into the robot’s body with brute force.
I guess that answers my question about how it was going to connect.
The cord makes its way farther into the final boss robot.
The robot tries to fight against it, of course, but its movements are slow.
