Chapter 7 — I Was Planning on Doing Something about That Eventually—With These Glasses!
“Dammit! What the hell is that guy’s problem?! How can he just turn people into weapons like that? That’s totally cheating!”
The horned boy, Naltine, jumped awake on his stone bed. Technically, he was one of the Four Heavenly Kings. With no guarantee he could ever return, he hadn’t been willing to send his real body for the invasion. Instead he had sent a clone, which naturally hadn’t had the Philosopher’s Stone in it.
“That pisses me off! I’m gonna murder that guy!” With no idea what had happened, if Naltine the Weakest had headed out to seek revenge immediately, he would just be struck down. As furious as he was, he could at least understand that. If he wanted to be sure he succeeded in killing the Sage, he needed research; he needed a proper plan.
“So, what happened?” While controlling his clone, his true body was asleep. All of his senses had been connected with the clone to allow him to control it from a distance, but having the connection severed so abruptly caused those senses to go crazy. He had lost understanding of when and where he was as a result.
Naltine looked around. It was a stone room, barely furnished. He immediately remembered that this was his room. The chair, desk, and bed were all made of stone, created along with the entire castle by Stone Creation magic. Though the appearance and interior looked exactly like a castle, everything in it was made of stone. Of course, that was only the base of the castle. If one didn’t like the stone furniture, they could bring ordinary furniture in without issue. However, the town occupied by monsters was just a natural cave. Getting ordinary furniture wasn’t especially easy, so Naltine had made do with the stone furniture provided to him. There was nothing in the room he could use to tell time, but he hadn’t spent all that much time controlling the clone. He couldn’t have been asleep here for very long.
Standing from his bed, Naltine left the room. The plan to invade had been devised by all of Gorbagion’s Four Heavenly Kings and carried out with Gorbagion’s blessing. He had almost certainly been watching to see how it turned out, but Naltine felt it would be best to report anyway. Walking through the windowless, gloomy hallways of the castle, he quickly made it to the war room. This chamber was similarly bare, having little more than a large round table in the center. Numerous images were displayed on the walls, including one showing Naltine’s fate in the human city. Four were seated at the table, with one seat left open. Naltine took the open seat.
“He turned you into a sword and is gonna sell you at some shop. You really are super weak, huh?” The speaker was Breia the Solid. He was an enormous, vulgar man with skin like stone. When Gorbagion had chosen him to be a member of the Four Heavenly Kings, he had said, “You’re a power type, right? We definitely need one of those.”
“So what? You think you could’ve beaten him?!” Naltine bit back. “Doesn’t matter how tough you are if he turns you into a weapon, does it?!”
“It appears his ability is only effective within his field of vision. Is it a type of evil eye? There should be any number of ways to counter it,” said Graze the Enlightened. He had three eyes, so his glasses had three lenses as well. Gorbagion had selected him, saying, “You’re going to be the ingenious one. Make sure you wear glasses from now on.” He wasn’t actually all that smart, though. Naltine was convinced Gorbagion had just picked the smartest-looking guy he could find. Their army was made up of reckless, foolhardy types who considered themselves invincible. “Ingenious” wasn’t really a word that could be applied to any of them.
“Doesn’t your character overlap with that Shirou guy’s?” Naltine asked. “Since you both have glasses.”
“Hah. My glasses are three times the glasses of any human’s. On top of that, I have hundreds of sets of glasses, and they all transform.”
“What difference does that make?”
“That dog...is...so cute...” said Haruka the Hollow Claw. Her long hair covered most of her face—and most of her body, for that matter. Gorbagion had chosen her, saying, “We should at least have one woman, right? And we still need someone to be the sinister, spiteful one, so you can do that too.”
Naltine had been chosen because Gorbagion wanted a kid, and having someone who only looked like a child wasn’t good enough.
“Yo, good job out there! Did it hurt when he turned you into a sword?” The guy casually calling out to him was a young man with black hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The head of the Four Heavenly Kings, Gorbagion himself. Declaring himself to be the Demon Lord, he had made this place into a Demon Lord’s castle. Everyone in his army was a monster, but Gorbagion himself looked like an ordinary human boy.
“I didn’t really feel anything. The moment I turned into a sword, my connection was broken, so I have no idea what it would feel like if it happened to my real body.”
“Anyway, Operation Kill a Bunch of Humans to Declare We Exist and Make Them Hate Us had a few problems, didn’t it?” Gorbagion said.
“What do you mean?” asked Graze.
“Well, if you kill all the humans there, no one will know it was us who did it.”
“Ah, precisely.” Graze nodded deeply.
“What do you mean, ‘precisely’?! You all told me to go kill everyone there!” Naltine shouted. The Demon Lord’s army was primarily driven by momentum. Everything they did was determined by the energy and atmosphere of the moment.
“Also, if you wipe out everyone, you can’t use the gates anymore,” Gorbagion added.
“Right? That’s why I captured the guild staff right away.” Naltine’s pillars could absorb and release living things. Since they had no idea how to use the gates, he’d absorbed the guild staff into his pillar for good measure.
“Keepin’ the guildies alive sounds like a pain in the ass! If I went, I probably never woulda made it back!” Breia laughed like an idiot.
“Attacking cities is hard, isn’t it? Setting up a base in the field maps might be smarter, but I don’t think that’s an option anymore,” Gorbagion sighed. It seemed some other problem had reared its head while Naltine was away. “Apparently, the guy you were trying to fight in that city was named Yogiri Takatou.”
“That loser who sent his friends to fight for him? I didn’t realize he ever said his name. What about him?” Thinking back, there had only been one guy among the people in that fight. But he hadn’t introduced himself, instead stepping back to make the dragon and the city guard fight in his place.
“Didn’t you hear the message from the Great Sage?”
“No?”
This castle was populated by the members of Momurus, one of the factions of Four Kingdoms. Since the Sages didn’t really interact with the floating continent, the players of Four Kingdoms didn’t know much about them.
“I guess it happened while you were still knocked out from the link being cut. Some guy named Mitsuki said he was the Great Sage and sent a message to every human in the world. It also went out to the more intelligent monsters too. It was broadcast to the whole world all at once.”
As they would find out later, even those who had been asleep or unconscious when the message was broadcast could remember it clearly. Naltine was a rare case, being unable to recall the message due to his consciousness being between his clone and main body at the time.
“He says he reset the whole world.”
“I see...” Blind to what was happening, the members of Momurus had been annihilated in an instant by the UEG before the reset. Since they were unaware they had even died, the reset didn’t feel especially real to them.
“No one this Yogiri guy killed before the reset came back to life afterwards. Supposedly, he killed more than sixty million people. Which means everyone in the world hates him now! Wiping out a city or two like we did is barely a fart in the wind! Sixty million people is ridiculous!”
Naltine couldn’t believe what he was being told. He couldn’t imagine anyone believing a message like that coming out of the blue. “Sounds fake to me. You sure he wasn’t lying to you?”
“Yeah, that’s a good point,” Gorbagion conceded. “He didn’t show us any proof, so he could have made it all up. But we all accepted it as true anyway. There was probably some magic in the message that forced us to believe him. I can see it being like a geas that forces us to believe it, but most people in the world don’t think that way. That makes it the truth now, regardless.”
“So nothing we do will get people to focus on us?” Unaffected by the geas, Naltine just couldn’t accept it was true. But if Gorbagion said that was how things were, there was no point objecting. Gorbagion was the Demon Lord, and Naltine was no more than his servant.
“That’s right! He said that if someone kills this Yogiri guy, he’ll bring everyone else back to life. Most humans are obsessed with trying to take him out now!”
“So we’ve decided to change our plan,” Graze added. “We’ve decided our first course of action should be to eliminate Yogiri Takatou.”
“Is he really that big a deal? He didn’t seem all that impressive to me...” Naltine had met him face-to-face, and he hadn’t seemed like anything but a normal human.
“Either way, he can kill ya with a thought. I’d crush him, though!” Breia boasted.
“And how exactly do you plan on beating someone who can kill you with a thought?”
“Hah, there’s no way that crap will work on me. And when it bounces off, I’ll just go bam! And he’s toast.” He clearly hadn’t thought this through.
“That isn’t a bad strategy,” Graze said. “Killing him before he has time to think seems like a good idea.”
“So we’re going to focus on trying to kill that guy now?” Naltine asked.
“Yeah,” Gorbagion nodded. “Right now, nothing we do will get us any attention. This Yogiri guy is stopping people from being afraid of us. Once we get rid of him, we can go on to my next plan.”
“I feel like us pretending to be the bad guys in this Cavern Quest game is going to be hard enough on its own...” Though a bit late, Naltine was starting to have doubts. The final objective of Cavern Quest was to defeat Lasbo. No matter how much people hated the Demon Lord and his army, they could never take Lasbo’s place as the final boss.
“I was planning on doing something about that eventually—with these glasses!” Graze said, pushing all three lenses of his glasses up with a finger.
“‘Doing something’? Like what?” Naltine asked.
“Oh, have you already forgotten? I was the one who discovered the bug allowing us to infiltrate the human city. If I can find more holes like that in the game’s security, we can alter the system according to our wishes.”
Naltine wanted to shut him down for pretending to be so smart when he wasn’t, but he decided to hold his tongue. Gorbagion himself had given Graze this role. Denying that meant denying the Demon Lord himself.
“Anyway!” Gorbagion said. “Your primary objective is to obliterate Yogiri Takatou! The world might get reset after that, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!”
“Got it! Let’s go!” replied Breia.
“Leave it to us, Your Majesty,” said Graze.
“If we kill Yogiri...can we keep the dog?” asked Haruka.
“Fine. I wanted to deal with that Shirou guy, but okay, I’ll take out Yogiri first,” Naltine agreed.
That said, finding Yogiri was going to be quite a challenge. Carrying out that order would require careful planning.
◇ ◇ ◇
“Ahhhhhh! Huh?”
Screaming as she hurtled into the abyss, Tomochika realized she was suddenly standing on solid ground again. There was no sensation of having struck the ground after falling from a great height, only the sudden realization that her feet were firmly planted.
The place in front of her seemed familiar, a collection of wooden buildings built on dry, barren earth. They were in Cavern Quest’s city. Van had told them that there were a number of identical cities differentiated by their channel numbers, and like he said, the placement and shape of the buildings was identical.
“Uhh, Takatou—”
Turning to talk to her companion, Tomochika couldn’t help but burst out laughing. They had managed to avoid being split up, but he looked totally different. His clothes were all black. His pants, shirt, and coat were all black, and he had an unreasonable number of belts and chains hanging on him. The skull motif of his other accessories gave his outfit a real punk feel.
“What the heck is that?! Why are you suddenly cosplaying?!”
“That’s what I wanted to ask you,” Yogiri shot back.
“Huh?” At his words, Tomochika looked down at her own body. Her clothes had changed too. Her outfit had become black and extremely revealing, and it had clearly been designed to emphasize her figure. She was wearing a headband with fake horns, completing the look of an evil demoness commander. Although she had wanted to strip off her armor earlier after hearing it was made from people, she hadn’t been wearing anything weird like this under it.
“It seems our appearance has changed as well.” Atila’s white clothing had similarly turned black, and Dai was now wearing black armor as well.
“What’s going on? Why do we look like we’re suddenly in some middle school cosplay club?”
“These clothes are gifts from the Great Sage.”
Tomochika turned at the voice coming from behind them. A woman wearing glasses stared coldly at them.
“I am the secretary of the Great Sage. You may call me Alexia.”
“Why are so many people appearing out of thin air today?!”
“You’re from the Great Sage, huh?” Yogiri said. “You guys have really made things difficult for us.”
“The Great Sage has done nothing but share the truth. I suspect everyone in the world feels similarly upset by your actions.”
“So, what’s this about?”
“From this point onward, everyone in the world will be aiming to take your life,” Alexia explained. “You are an enemy of the people, the great evil standing out from among all lesser evils. As such, the Great Sage has deemed these clothes appropriate for your role.”
“Does he have any style at all?!” Tomochika complained.
For a moment, Alexia’s eyes flashed with pure hatred. Though she had a calm and casual demeanor, she made no effort to hide her anger. “Well...fine, I guess. I am only here to deliver the Great Sage’s message.” It seemed she had reined in her feelings. Tomochika decided it would be best to watch what she said from now on.
“What happened to the equipment we were wearing before?”
“That has all been refunded as DP,” Alexia said curtly.
“That doesn’t sound fair!”
“But the Great Sage is our enemy now,” Atila spoke up. “How can we trust clothing he has given us? There is no telling what traps he has worked into them.”
“There is no need to worry about that. The Great Sage is effectively omnipotent in this world. If he wished to harm you, he would have no need to use such tricks.”
“Yeah, but I still don’t want to walk around wearing this!” Though Tomochika was trying to keep her comments to herself, she couldn’t help but let that slip out.
“Is that so? I would think these clothes should be invaluable to you,” Alexia replied.
“How so?!”
“As a gift from the Great Sage, they were made with ordinary materials and through ordinary processes.”
“Uh, so what?”
“You said you disliked the equipment given to you by Shirou, did you not? All equipment in Cavern Quest is made from people. The clothes you are now wearing are the only exception. Do you not think that makes it a wonderful gift?”
“Are you serious?! These are the only normal clothes in this place?!”
“Yes, the only ones. Your gear is now the only exception.”
They technically still had the clothes they had brought in from the surface when they’d first joined Cavern Quest, but those were ordinary clothes. They didn’t provide any defensive bonuses.
“But, uhh...this is so revealing, I can’t imagine it has much defense...” Tomochika mumbled.
“It was made through the Cavern Quest system, so its abilities are not related to its appearance. To put it in terms of a video game, you can consider them to be items of SSR quality.”
“Seriously?!”
“They are a present from the Great Sage. He would never give you something you couldn’t use.”
“The design makes them pretty hard to use!”
“It appears speaking any further with you will only infuriate me,” Alexia said coolly. “Please allow me to take my leave.” She promptly vanished.
“Did she really come here just to give us this equipment?” Yogiri sighed. She had called herself the Great Sage’s secretary, but she hadn’t given them any useful information. She had basically just said, “You’re the bad guys now, so you have to look evil.”
“It appears so, but to be able to change the very clothes we are wearing speaks of great power,” Atila commented. “We cannot let our guard down against such an opponent.”
“Really? I actually have to wear this?” Tomochika complained.
“I kind of like it,” Yogiri offered.
“Yeah, that’s not the problem...” It was certainly better than being rejected, and being told he liked it wasn’t a bad feeling either. But even so, Tomochika just wasn’t happy with her new outfit.
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