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 just 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.
“So? Did you call Gülie?”
“Oh.”
The dragon looks away awkwardly.
It was probably so focused on fleeing that it forgot to call in its boss.
“Hurry up and call him already! This is exactly the kind of thing an administrator should take care of! Call him! Call him now!”
“All right already! Just quit wringing my neck, crazy lady!”
The Demon Lord is shaking the wind dragon back and forth by the neck.
I wish they’d drop the comedy act and just call him already.
As I shoot them a bland look, something tugs on my sleeve.
“Who is this ‘Gülie’ she’s talking about?” Vampy asks, still with a slight lisp.
Normally she’d just ask the Demon Lord directly, but since the Demon Lord seems to be busy forming a comedy duo with the wind dragon right now, the baby’s asking me instead.
Uhhh.
How do I explain this?
Gülie, who I call Güli-güli, the man in black.
If I try to explain who he is, I’m going to have to talk an awful lot.
I mean, he’s an important figure.
Güli-güli is an administrator. In this world, that practically makes him a god.
He manages the system and makes sure the world is operating smoothly.
The UFO that just appeared is clearly an anomaly in said world.
In other words, it prevents this world from running smoothly, which means it’s within an administrator’s power to remove it.
A god like Güli-güli should be able to do something about this.
That’s why the Demon Lord is demanding that the wind dragon summon Güli-güli.
Dragons are basically his underlings, after all.
They’re like his on-site staff who keep things under control in various places.
So of course the wind dragon must have a way to contact its boss, Güli-güli.
We just need to get it to call in Güli-güli so he can take down the UFO lickety-split.
That pretty much sums up the information I have, but…can I actually explain all that?
I have absolutely no communication skills, so how am I supposed to get through that much talking?
Most of the time, I can barely manage a single word.
This is mission impossible here!
What am I gonna do? Huh?
I’m in trouble.
A different kind of trouble from our last situation.
I managed to run away from the UFO, but this time I have nowhere to run.
Vampy is gazing up at me with such pure eyes. I can’t let her down… I can’t… Or can I?
Wait, why should I have to explain such complicated stuff in the first place?
Can’t I just push that responsibility off onto the Demon Lord?
I’m sure she’ll explain things soon enough.
Explaining stuff like that is the Demon Lord’s job. She’s just busy with the wind dragon right now.
Yeah. That’s it.
I don’t need to take the most difficult pass through this.
All I have to say is, Just ask the Demon Lord!
But right as I’m working up the courage, somebody interrupts me.
“Could it be the black-clad gentleman who visited us one evening?”
Dammit, Mera! Why do you have to cut me off me like that?!
“What? When was that?”
“I believe it was shortly after we met the pontiff of the Word of God religion.”
Thinking about it, Vampy nods slowly.
I’d forgotten. The bloodsucker duo actually met Güli-güli once.
It was after he showed up to tell me to stop my rampaging Parallel Minds.
“Oh, that’s right. The person who just casually joined our group for an evening and then was mysteriously gone the next day?”
Looks like Vampy remembers him, too.
Güli-güli’s a distinctive-looking dude, so it makes sense that he’d leave an impression.
And like the Vampy said, he just randomly started drinking with us that one time; then he was totally gone the next day.
“It seemed as though Lady White and Lady Ariel already knew him. May I ask who he is, Lady White?”
Oof! Now Mera’s coming after me, too!
Why does everybody have so many damn questions for me today?!
I mean, I guess I can’t blame them for being curious about who the Demon Lord would depend on for help in this situation, but still.
Ask her, not me!
“A god.”
This was becoming more and more of a pain, so I gave the shortest, most arbitrary answer.
Of course, that only left the bloodsucker duo even more confused, but I don’t feel like explaining any more than that.
“That doesn’t tell— What?”
Vampy starts to press for more information, but Ael stops her, sensing that my irritation meter is getting high.
For whatever reason, the puppet spiders are better at gauging my feelings than the vampires in our party.
I don’t know if it’s because they’re spiders like me or if it’s simply their animal self-preservation instincts, but when my mood starts to sour, they tend to sense that and stop bothering me.
I guess they understand that I prefer being alone.
Ael must have put a stop to this conversation because she noticed my mood, but apparently Vampy isn’t amused.
She gives Ael a pouty glare, but the puppet spider ignores her.
I can’t blame her for not being scared of an angry baby.
Man, though, leave it to the eldest sister of the puppet taratects. She’s great.
I guess I don’t mind letting her sneakily steal the spotlight once in a while.
Leaving Ael to take care of Vampy, I go to check on Sael instead.
She’s lying on the dusty ground, attended to by Riel and Fiel.
With her three arms and part of her torso still completely gone, it’s painful just to look at her.
The left side of her abdomen has been blown away, so her left leg isn’t working, either.
But while it might look bad, her actual spider body isn’t injured at all.
The puppet spiders’ outer bodies are just that, after all: puppets.
As long as the small spider within is unharmed, they can just fix their puppet bodies if they get broken.
But I put a lot of hard work into their puppet bodies.
Since I took such great pains to make sure they looked as close to humans as possible, I can’t remake those limbs in a single night.
But in this situation, Sael not being able to fight is a problem, too.
We don’t know what’s going to happen next, so at the very least, she ought to be able to protect herself.
Just look at the fight against the tank. Since Sael was injured, we lost our biggest powerhouse, the Demon Lord, while she was bringing Sael to safety.
No opponent is going to miss an opportunity like that.
I don’t want anybody dragging me down.
It’s not like the puppet spiders are weak. Their stats are all over a thousand, making them obscenely strong monsters from any normal perspective.
But in this case, they aren’t well suited to this particular battle.
I don’t think the puppet spiders could have beaten the tank alone.
Their swords were getting deflected, and magic wouldn’t work because of the mysterious barrier.
But the tank’s main gun easily blew through the puppet spiders’ defenses.
They couldn’t have won that fight.
The tank was so strong that even the powerful puppet spiders were just holding us back.
If we have to fight something like that again, I’d like them to at least be able to stay out of my and the Demon Lord’s way.
If nothing else, I need to get her back to a functional level.
It’s not going to look pretty.
That bothers me aesthetically, since it’s like slapping a half-assed touch-up over my delicate masterpiece, but this is an emergency measure.
I use Divine Thread Weaving to start working on Sael’s missing parts.
As long as I don’t get hung up on appearances, I can restore her functionality from before she was injured in just a few minutes.
As I’m working on fixing Sael up, I sense a warp in the air nearby.
It’s a sign that someone is about to Teleport here.
But who?
Güli-güli? No, it’s not him.
Güli-güli’s teleportation is a lot cleaner than this. His runes are so precise, I can’t help admiring them.
But the warp I’m sensing right now isn’t clean at all.
Frankly, the runes are a lot cruder than mine, even.
It can’t possibly be Güli-güli.
Who is it?
A certain mechanical elf appears in the back of my mind.
For now, I stop working on Sael and get ready for battle at a moment’s notice.
Then two men arrive via Teleport.
…Who are these guys?
One is a very suspicious-looking fellow whose face is covered with a cloth, probably the one who did the Teleport spell.
The other is an old man wearing fancy-looking priestish robes.
This is shady.
The first guy seems suspicious because of his getup, but the second guy seems suspicious, too, because he’s so out of place here.
I Appraise the two of them right away.
To very surprising results.
“Forgive us. I must apologize for appearing in front of you so suddenly, but this seems to be an emergency situation.”
The old man smiles so gently, it practically calms down the whole wasteland.
He looks like such an affable geezer that it’d be easy to let my guard down, but I definitely can’t do that.
Because the only result I got from this old man when I Appraised him was <Appraisal Blocked>.
That means this guy must be a ruler with at least one Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues skill.
And I have a feeling I might know which one.
“Dustin. What is the pontiff of the Word of God religion doing here now of all times?”
The Demon Lord confirms my suspicions: This guy is the leader of the biggest religion in this world.
The other guy must be a guard whose role is to transport the pontiff via Teleport and protect him.
The Demon Lord looks at the old man—the pontiff—with an intense glare.
“This busy time is exactly why I made haste to come here. You may not like this, but could we perhaps call a temporary truce in order to deal with this threat?”
As the pontiff makes this proposal, I notice him glancing briefly at Vampy and Mera.
I guess I have heard about this guy. The others ran into him while I was dealing with my rampaging Parallel Minds.
So the pontiff is this old man?
The Word of God religion stands in direct opposition to the Goddess religion, which is worshipped by the people of Sariella, the location of the bloodsucker duo’s hometown.
Since this old man is the head of that religion, he’s the guy who gave the order to destroy Vampy’s town.
That means that, to the vampires, he’s responsible for the deaths of their family and masters.
Since he appeared, Mera and Vampy haven’t exactly looked thrilled, but they haven’t said anything yet.
It seems like they’re trusting the Demon Lord to take care of things.
The Demon Lord glances at them and appears to pick up on that decision.
She nods briefly, then turns back to the pontiff.
“Oh yeah? I won’t deny that things look bad right now, but what exactly do you think you can do by waltzing in here now? Against that thing?”
She points at the UFO floating in the distance.
“Anything I can do, of course. Surely we cannot ignore it.”
“Hmm? Aaaanything, you say?”
“Just so.”
The Demon Lord sounds jokey, but the pontiff nods with a deadly serious expression.
Luckily, I don’t think anyone but Vampy and me noticed that she was joking.
The Demon Lord continues as if nothing happened. “Okay, but is there anything you can do about this? Even I get the feeling I’m kinda out of my league here.”
The Demon Lord glowers at the UFO.
She’s extremely powerful, but she’s still just one individual.
I guess a single person can only do so much against a giant weapon that’s probably out to slaughter everybody.
“I hate to say it after you came all this way, but I’m fairly confident our only option is to have Gülie take care of it.”
I agree with the Demon Lord.
That UFO isn’t the kind of thing any single individual can go up against.
Unless that individual happens to be a god.
It would be insane for the humans of this world to try to fight that giant thing.
“That is correct. This is a situation for me to deal with alone, not any matter for you to worry yourselves about.”
A voice echoes through the air.
Moments later, I sense another warp in space.
That means he sent his voice ahead in a way that I couldn’t even sense? This guy really is amazing with runes.
Another man teleports among us.
Clad in black armor, with black skin, black from head to toe.
Administrator Güliedistodiez.
One of the strongest beings in this world has made his appearance.
“There you are, boss!”
The wind dragon bows its head to Güli-güli.
This just makes it seem even more like a small-time grunt.
Man, dragons are supposed to be majestic, y’know?
“Thank you for informing me. Ariel, I am afraid you have been inconvenienced due to my own oversight. Let me take care of things from here.”
Ooooh.
Now, that’s a dependable guy.
I mean, gallantly showing up to rescue his underling? Is this guy a hero or what?
This makes me feel a little better.
If Güli-güli’s saying he’ll take care of it, that means he can bring that UFO down, right?
Then the Demon Lord and I just have to sit back and watch.
Whew. Thank goodness.
But right as I’m relaxing, there’s another warp in space.
The third time today.
I have a bad feeling about this one.
And I mean a really, reeeally bad feeling.
Two more men appear by way of Teleport.
“Oh good. The rest of you are all here.”
As soon as the first man appears, everyone else turns a murderous gaze toward him.
“Now, now, don’t be so quick to anger. I’ve come to help this time.”
An ordinary person probably would’ve passed out from all the hate being directed toward him, but this man just lets it roll right off him.
“Unfortunately, Güliedistodiez alone cannot take down this foe. As much as it pains me, we have no choice but to combine our forces.”
I’m sure everyone else had the same thought: It pains us a lot more than you.
The man known as the patriarch of the elves, Potimas Harrifenas, takes a single graceful step toward us.
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