Part 6 of 8
Oh, and I’m called the Nightmare of the Labyrinth.
Since they’re spider monsters that appeared after the Nightmare vanished, people must’ve just assumed there was some connection there.
Which is fair, since there totally is.
Maybe I could send the spider babies after Team Yamada to buy some time… No, wait…maybe not. Yamada and friends would totally get killed.
Even just one of those babies nearly took down the previous hero, Julius…
It’s not like Yamada is significantly stronger than Julius was, so if he had to fight a whole swarm of those things, his party would get wiped out for sure.
I do think that Yamada’s stats are probably higher than Julius’s were, but he’s got waaay less actual experience in battle.
Not as solid in the spirit and determination department, either.
So in practice, he’s about as strong as Julius the hero at best, or possibly even weaker.
Julius did manage to defeat that queen taratect clone, after all.
Although, that being said, with his level of strength, he really shouldn’t have been able to beat that thing in theory…but he totally did.
That hidden hero power is scary.
And since Yamada has that crazy Divine Protection skill on top of being the hero, I’ve gotta be extra careful.
Hmm. Hmmmm.
Seriously, what should I do, though?
It’d be kinda difficult to hinder Yamada and company without actually killing them.
We’d have to slow them down somehow while keeping everyone alive, y’know?
Killing them would be so much simpler.
But I won’t do that, because Ms. Oka is with them, of course.
Still, even if we managed to just injure them a bit, a little Healing Magic would fix it up right away, and that would be that.
It wouldn’t even slow them down.
Should I just straight-up teleport them back to the kingdom?
…Nope, that’s no good.
I don’t have enough hands to spare.
Honestly, I’m so damn busy right now that I don’t really have time to go personally mess around with Yamada and friends.
The best I can do is send someone else to try something, but my only option in the Great Elroe Labyrinth is the spider-baby army.
And if I give those kiddos an order, I can easily see them getting too excited and going overboard.
Even when one of them attacked Julius the hero, it was because they somehow learned that I was planning to take him down in the war, and they wanted to take care of it for me ahead of schedule.
If I asked them to slow down Yamada and company, I could totally see them doing something totally horrifying like cutting off their legs.
Or worse, just getting carried away and killing them outright.
If they killed anyone besides Yamada, he could bring them back to life, but it’s one hundred percent still too dangerous. Better not risk it.
Honestly, I’m way too busy to deal with this right now. Since I can’t do much to them anyway, it’s probably for the best if I just don’t bother trying to interfere.
I don’t have time to waste on them, quite frankly.
Even just keeping an eye on them like this is about the most I can do.
Still, I gotta admit, it’s actually pretty fun to watch them.
What’s fun about it, you ask?
Oh, you know. All sorts of things.
I never get bored, that’s for sure.
They always run into one crazy situation after another when I’m watching them.
Like Shinohara turning into a human.
Or the time it turned out that she totally couldn’t swim.
Man, that Humanification thing was a shocker.
I went through sooo much trouble to become an arachne, and here she is, turning into a human just like that!
Even after evolving into an arachne, I had to turn into a damn god to get a fully human form, you know!
And there was no Humanification skill on my list of options, either!
It’s no fair that dragons get to do that by default!
If dragon monsters get it, spiders should get it, too!
Except unlike dragons and wyrms, spiders don’t have universal skills like that!
But whatever. It’s fine.
Especially since, after all that, everyone found out Shinohara can’t swim, which must’ve been sooo embarrassing for her.
Psh. I can’t believe that stuck-up bully couldn’t even swim.
You think I could see that without laughing?
Nope, not possible!
Aaah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
I can’t help taking a bit of pleasure in her suffering, probably because I have memories of being bullied by her.
Although the person who was actually bullied is the real Hiiro Wakaba, also known as D.
And I’d imagine it was probably more like being barked at by a harmless little puppy from D’s point of view.
But since the memories feel unpleasant to me, I guess D didn’t exactly enjoy it, either.
I assume.
Anyway, then the helpless non-swimmer Shinohara got chased in the water by a water dragon, just flailing around like an idiot.
Ahh, that was fun all right.
And then the dragon’s breath attack sent her flying, messed up her swimsuit, and got Yamada a nice little fanservice event, too, which was all hilarious to boot.
Shinohara doesn’t really seem to be aware of Yamada as a guy, but since she got squished up against him in such an unladylike state, of course he ended up staring at her a little.
What is this, a rom-com?
Obviously, there’s gonna be a bunch more accidental romantic moments after this, and she’s totally gonna end up falling for Yamada…
Then it’ll develop into a love triangle, and bam, we’ve got a juicy soap opera on our hands!
Oh man. Is Yamada gonna get stabbed to death, or will it be one of the girls? I’m on the edge of my seat here.
No, wait a sec.
Considering the effects of Yamada’s Divine Protection skill, isn’t it more likely that things will stay on the romcom route and somehow build up to a harem ending?
What a scandalous skill! I’m definitely not jealous!
If every girl who joins Yamada’s side ends up falling in love with him, that skill is even scarier than I thought!
And it really does seem like a high percentage of them have already fallen head over heels.
Like his little sister, right? And Hasebe? And Ooshima?
Shinohara’s not there yet, and I don’t think Ms. Oka feels that way.
I don’t really think that half elf erstwhile maid of his, Anna, is in love with him, either.
It’s kinda more like loyalty than love, if I had to describe it?
Although I guess you could argue an oath of loyalty is pretty closely related to a declaration of love.
The nuance is just a little different.
…Huh?
I was only joking, but is it just me, or does Yamada actually have a harem forming around him?
Although that’s on hold right now thanks to Natsume.
…How much of this is the effect of the Divine Protection skill, I wonder?
If they fell for Yamada because of his personal virtues, that’s all well and good, but it’d be kinda messed up if it was because of a skill.
See, this is why it’s so hard to plan around a skill when you don’t know its exact effects.
What if that lucky-lecher moment when they got blown away by the water dragon was due to Divine Protection, too?
But if that’s the case, wouldn’t it mean that deep down, Yamada is secretly hoping for events like that to happen…?
W-well, he is at that age, I guess…
All jokes aside, though, it’s definitely kinda heartwarming to watch Team Yamada’s adventures.
I guess you could say there’s not much of a tragic tone to any of it.
Lately, everyone I have to do with seems to have some level of desperation due to a tragic backstory of some kind, y’know?
There’s the ones who try to fight against the grim fate of the demon race, like Agner, Balto, Warkis…
Not to mention the pontiff, who created a whole religion just to protect humanity and has been working his butt off basically forever.
Plus, there’s Black, who’s basically stuck between several rocks and hard places.
And of course, the Demon Lord, who rose up to save the Goddess.
Every last one of them has been driven to the depths of despair, and yet they keep fighting back without ever giving up.
It’s painful to watch.
But Yamada and friends don’t have that air of tragedy.
Sure, they’ve been through a lot themselves, and it’s not like they’re taking this lightly.
But still, they’re just kinda lacking it somehow.
The determination.
I guess that’s probably because they haven’t gotten into one of those situations yet that really puts your determination to the test.
Julius the hero, on the other hand, chose his own path in no small part because he had his determination constantly called into question.
But since this crew hasn’t experienced what I would call true suffering yet, it still doesn’t feel like they’ve really got their feet on the ground.
Not that you’d really want to get used to a violent, hack-and-slash world like this one, I guess.
But this is the same world Julius the hero wanted to protect.
So even though I’m sure these guys are totally serious, I can’t help getting a kinda warm and fuzzy feeling when I watch over them.
Watching guys like Agner was just stressful, and I ended up having to personally send him to his death, so that didn’t help.
…But if Yamada and his merry band do reach the elf village, they’re definitely gonna get caught up in the impending storm.
I doubt things will stay heartwarming for them then.
Because if they get involved in the battle at the elf village, they’re gonna find out just how awful this world truly is.
I was really hoping they would just sit tight and behave until it’s all over, without having to learn any of that.
But if the journey is going this smoothly for them, it means that’s what Yamada himself really wants.
At this point, I definitely have to suspect that Divine Protection is at play here.
And if this is what Yamada wants, if they’re going to get there no matter what’s waiting up ahead, then they’ll just have to accept whatever happens there.
Even if it’s something that goes against Yamada’s wishes.
Thus, we had some laughs, a few tears, and a little bit of sentimental rambling, to the point where I want to make fun of myself for going on such an emotional rollercoaster, but the long and short of it is: Sure, I’m keeping an eye on Yamada and friends.
It seems like Hyrince doesn’t want them to get to the elf village so quickly, either, as he appears to have planned an obstacle of his own.
As soon as Team Yamada sets foot in the Great Elroe Labyrinth, the craziest thing shows up.
An earth dragon, to be specific.
It’s a freshly evolved one, so weak that it doesn’t even compare to Araba.
I guess he had a wyrm in the Upper Stratum quickly exterminate a bunch of monsters up there so it could level up and evolve.
Man, way to mess up the whole ecosystem. Again.
I roll my eyes as I watch Yamada’s party do battle.
A dragon is still a dragon, even if it’s a relatively weak one.
Its stats and skills are far beyond those of any ordinary monster.
Even Julius never defeated a dragon. (Although I bet he could have taken on a lesser dragon if he encountered one.)
But for Yamada and company, this thing is far and away the strongest monster they’ve ever encountered.
Incidentally, if you don’t worry about categories like monsters and stuff, the strongest foe Yamada has ever faced is our own Vampy.
She’d be able to defeat an earth dragon like that without even breaking a sweat.
In other words, if they can’t even take on a baby earth dragon like this one, they definitely won’t be able to beat Vampy.
Still, Yamada’s stats are high enough that he’s probably not gonna lose, even if he might struggle a little.
Plus, it’s not like he’s alone—he’s got allies like Shinohara.
Now that she’s evolved into a light wyrm, Shinohara’s stats are even higher than Yamada’s.
Monsters’ stats seem to go up faster than humans’, just like mine did back in the day.
Even though she’s technically still a wyrm, it looks like Shinohara’s stats are on par with a full-fledged dragon.
See? Just now, she sent that earth dragon flying.
Imagine a dragon getting punched in the face by a little girl and going down hard…
I mean, can you blame me for thinking it looks a little pathetic?
It looks like I’m not the only one who thinks that was embarrassing: The earth dragon itself is practically steaming and charges at Shinohara in a rage.
But Shinohara easily blocks the swipe of its claws.
So much for the pride of earth dragons…
After that, they use some kind of firestorm magic to pin the earth dragon, and Yamada delivers the finishing blow. Just like that, the earth dragon is done for.
Farewell, sweet pride…
Wow. Never mind slowing them down, didn’t you basically just give Yamada some EXP and the Dragon Slayer title on a silver platter?
Ahh, maybe that’s what Hyrince was after in the first place.
Like, if it doesn’t seem like we can stop him, we might as well make him a little stronger?
Hmm. Well, there’s no way of knowing right now what Hyrince was really thinking, but this totally worked out in Yamada’s favor.
Divine Protection doing its thing again, maybe…?
At this point, I’m incredibly tempted to just blame every stroke of luck Yamada comes by on his Divine Protection skill.
Wait, what’s this now?
“Hero?”
Making a surprise guest appearance while talking to Yamada and friends by way of Telepathy is one of my spider babies.
Huh? What are you guys doing here?
Um, hang on a sec, I don’t want you to do anything weird…
Crap. I’ve kinda got my hands full at the moment, so if the baby army decides to attack Team Yamada, I can’t stop them.
What do I do?!
“Hero.” “Ruler?”
“Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.”
Oh geez, a whole bunch of babies are swarming around them now!
“Cannot be Appraised?”
“Cannot be Appraised.” “Cannot be Appraised.” “Cannot be Appraised.” “Cannot be Appraised.” “Cannot be Appraised.” “Cannot be Appraised.”
“Ruler?”
“Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.” “Ruler.”
“Reincarnation?”
“Reincarnation.” “Reincarnation.” “Reincarnation.” “Reincarnation.” “Reincarnation.” “Reincarnation.”
“But they’re weak?”
“Weak.” “Weak.” “Weak.” “Weak.” “Weak.” “Weak.”
“Weak. Weak.” “Weak. Weak.” “Weak. Weak.” “Weak. Weak.” “Weak. Weak.” “Weak. Weak.”
Hey now! Just because they’re weak doesn’t mean you can attack them!
“You know about reincarnations?!”
There goes Yamada.
Is this guy totally fearless or what?!
I can’t believe he’s actually talking to the spider-baby army.
He’s not worried they’ll attack him?
“We do.” “We do.” “Of course we do.”
“Why do you know that?”
Phew. It doesn’t seem like they’re gonna jump him right away, at least.
“Master.” “Master.”
“Mother.” “Mother.”
Okay, you’re talking about me, right?
“Is this ‘Master’ a reincarnation?”
“You’ll know soon enough.” “You’ll find out soon enough.” “You’ll find out.” “You’ll know.”
Yeah, I guess that’s true.
If Yamada and friends end up reaching the elf village, we’ll probably meet face-to-face.
“What do you mean?”
“Proclamation.” “Pronouncement.”
“The beginning of the end.”
“The world begins.”
“The world ends.”
“Please wait! What does that mean?!”
Yeah, seriously, what does that mean?!
Do these kids even know what they’re saying?
They’re not just trying to sound cool and foreboding for no reason, are they?
“You don’t need to know.”
“You’ll die anyway.”
“You’ll all die.”
“Just struggle to survive.”
With that, the babies disappear, leaving Yamada and his party alone.
Ugh, now what…?
Looks like my kids are going through an edgy phase right now…
Now that they made it out of sight of Yamada and company, they’re jumping around looking super pleased with themselves, like We did the thing!
Where did I go wrong raising you guys?
…Well, they didn’t attack him, so I guess it’s fine.
They just rattled off some needlessly cryptic BS and freaked out Yamada and his friends… What were they trying to accomplish, exactly?
I have no idea what they’re thinking, even though they’re basically my descendants.
Was it a warning or something?
I dunno, though. I don’t think that’ll help.
At this point, it sorta feels like nothing Yamada and his friends do is gonna matter. They’re in so far over their heads.
In a way, I guess the babies might have succeeded in getting their group a little more mentally prepared for the worst.
Does that mean this was technically a positive event for Yamada, too?
…I dunno.
Divine Protection isn’t all-powerful; I probably shouldn’t blame it for every little thing.
If it was omnipotent, Natsume’s plot wouldn’t have succeeded in the first place, for one.
Plus his sister and Hasebe are still in Natsume’s clutches…
There’s no harm in being extra cautious, but I guess I shouldn’t be overly paranoid, either.
For now, I’ll just keep watching over Team Yamada.
I look down on the world from the window.
Below, I see the imperial army dispersing, heading to the rooms they’ve been assigned.
Among them, I recognize the face of the sainthood candidate Yuri and scowl despite myself.
“Hey there. You’re looking grouchy as usual, my dear fiancée.”
The door to my room opens without so much as a knock, and Hugo peers in.
“Silence, false hero.”
“Ooh, very scary.”
Looking unconcerned, he enters the room and throws himself down on the sofa.
“And don’t call me your fiancée. Disgusting.”
“Damn, that’s cold. Fine then, Sue.”
“Don’t call me Sue, either. Only my dear brother and my closest friends are allowed to call me that.”
“Yeah, yeah. Princess Suresia, then.”
Hugo shrugs while flashing a nasty grin.
Just looking at him turns my stomach, so I direct my gaze back to the window.
The imperial army is steadily approaching the elf village.
The troops will be resting here for today, then using a teleport gate tomorrow to move on to the next location.
And this room has been assigned to Hugo and me.
The two of us are technically engaged to be married, though it is very much against my will.
Most likely, this arrangement is only to make it seem natural for he and I to be seen working together.
But even if it is only a farce, the idea of being engaged to this man makes me want to vomit.
I would kill him right now were it not for the sake of my brother.
Yes, all of this is entirely for my beloved elder brother’s sake.
So I must endure, no matter how awful it may be.
One day, I met an evil god.
Despite her pure-white appearance, she was utterly evil.
When I went to punish the sinful fool named Hugo for attempting to harm my brother, delivering judgment with my own hands, I found that evil god doing something to Hugo instead.
My instincts told me that I couldn’t beat her.
If I tried to defy her, I would die.
As I stood frozen in true fear for the first time in my life, the evil god whispered to me.
“Shall I spare your big brother from any harm?”
From that moment on, I was in thrall to that god.
She promised that so long as I followed her orders, she wouldn’t lay a hand on my brother.
For his sake, I swear I’ll overcome any trial…
“We’ll be at the elf village pretty soon.”
Even without looking, I can tell Hugo is smirking.
He usually is, even though there’s nothing funny about the situation.
“Heh-heh. I can’t wait.”
I wish he would simply be silent and stop fouling my ears.
If my elder brother’s voice is like a symphony from the heavens, this man’s is like a grating performance on rusted strings.
Oh, how I wish I could hear my brother’s voice now…
Even a few scant words would ease the fraying edges of my heart…
“I hope you don’t mind if I join you.”
Ugh.
Another pest has arrived.
“Hello there, little princess.”
This is the evil god’s underling, Sophia Keren.
“What do you want?”
“I came to see how you’re doing, of course.”
“Then you’ve already seen, have you not? So please go away.”
It’s bad enough that I already have to put up with Hugo, the unbearable eyesore. If I’m made to endure any more, I might go mad with the stress.
“My, how rude. Couldn’t we at least chat a little?”
“I have nothing to say to the likes of you.”
“Oh, I see. And here I thought I would comfort the poor, tearful little girl who pretended to be brainwashed and betrayed her precious big brother.”
“Why, you…! That’s none of your concern! You’re just a god’s faithful hound!”
I wasn’t pretending—I really was brainwashed that time!
For some reason, probably by order of the evil god, I had no control over my body when I killed my father.
Why would she do such a thing?
This is just a guess, but I think she might have been giving me a way out.
So that it wasn’t my fault—I was just brainwashed.
That evil god is crafty and merciless, yet sometimes, she shows some half-hearted kindness.
Honestly, it would be easier for me to understand if she was simply pure evil through and through…
“Oh, am I? But aren’t you in the same boat now? That’s why you betrayed your brother.”
“No! I would never betray my brother!”
That is the one line I will never cross!
“But you are obeying our master, regardless. That makes you an enemy of humanity.”
“Nnngh!”
“There we go. Now that’s the face I wanted to see.”
Sophia’s lips curl with pleasure.
“You’re the worst.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
What an awful person.
She might even be eviler than the evil god herself.
I wish she would just die…
“Oi, Sophia. You’re not even gonna say hi?”
“Oh? I didn’t realize you were here.”
Sophia glares at Hugo as if she were looking at a parasite.
“Don’t make that face. I’ve got feelings, too, y’know?”
“Oh, do you?”
And what’s wrong with looking at a worm like a worm?
My eyes might rot out of my head, having to take in a worm and a she-devil at the same time.
“Well? Have you managed to get one of the Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues skills yet, princess?”
“…No, not yet.”
“Well, that’s a shame. Have you forgotten your promise to Master?”
Nnngh.
I did make a promise with that evil god.
I said I would help her and that I would acquire one of the Seven Deadly Sins or Seven Heavenly Virtues skills.
If I can accomplish that, she’ll guarantee my brother’s freedom and set me free.
But I haven’t managed to do it yet.
“Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I don’t think Master had very high hopes for you anyway.”
“Ha! Guess some of us are just built different.”
I clench my fist.
How humiliating!
I can’t bear to be looked down on by such filth!
“That face is even better.” Sophia’s smirk widens. “A spoiled little princess who grew up wanting for nothing, trembling in humiliation. Now that’s a sight for sore eyes.”
Scum. The absolute lowest of the low.
“……”
See, even a massive scumbag like Hugo looks taken aback.
Why should scum that alarms even other scum deserve to live?
I wish they would die…
Aside from my brother, what’s the point in all the riffraff that persists in this world?
I wish everyone but my brother and I would just die.
“But is the plan still gonna work if this one doesn’t make it in time?”
“It should be fine. It seems the more ruler skills that are acquired, the better, but I’m told that the bare minimum has already been met. I imagine it will just be easier if there are more, no?”
“Uhhh, sure. Not that I care, ’cause I don’t really know how to use the ruler skills’…keys, was it? Whatever.”
I don’t see how he can be so carefree when he’s being controlled by an evil god and evidently has two of these “keys.”
As far as I know, they have a total of six keys so far: Hugo’s Greed and Lust, Sophia’s Envy, and a few I haven’t met, namely someone called Wrath with the corresponding skill, someone named Merazophis with Perseverance, and the Demon Lord Ariel’s Gluttony.
I don’t know what these keys are for, either.
But I doubt the evil god is going to use them for anything decent.
“Isn’t it more of a problem that Yuri can’t get one? She’s a reincarnation just like us, dammit.”
“I’m sure some are suited to it better than others, even among reincarnations.”
I almost feel bad for Yuri, too.
Even if she was a rotten harlot of a nun who kept trying to seduce my brother, it’s cruel that she’s been brainwashed and forced to do their evil bidding…
But I suppose I don’t really care, since she tried to tempt my brother and all.
Maybe she’ll just screw up and go off to be with that god she loves so much.
Since she’s a true believer and all, I assume she would like that.
“Oh, that reminds me. I heard your dear brother is heading to the elf village. Did you know?”
“?!”
My brother?!
“Maybe you’ll get to have a touching reunion there.”
Brother…
I want to see him.
But I’m also afraid.
What am I going to say to him…?
“I’m told Ms. Oka is with him, too. Not to mention Katia, Fei, Anna…he’s very popular with the ladies, isn’t he?”
Those harpies…
I see now.
While I’ve been suffering like this, they’ve been cozying up to my beloved brother…
I was always suspicious of that “Ms. Oka” woman.
And then there’s Katia.
I thought she was a friend, but if she dares touch my brother, I won’t show any mercy…
“Y’know…this chick’s quick to trash-talk other people, but she’s just as bad, isn’t she? There’s no way she’s thinking anything good or wholesome right now, am I wrong?”
“Master would never take a truly decent person under her wing, obviously. She picks and chooses so that she won’t feel too bad if they have to suffer a little bit.”
“Heh, gotcha. Makes sense to me.”
The scumbags are talking among themselves now, but it’s just the incoherent warbling of garbage masquerading as people.
I won’t pay them any mind.
Considering how freakishly busy I’ve been lately, you gotta wonder why I didn’t take care of more of this stuff before everything hit the fan, right?
Well, let me clear that up right now!
I didn’t have time!
I was really busy before, too, even if it wasn’t quite this bad!
After all, I am technically a commander.
I had to manage my troops and all that stuff.
And guess what?
On top of that, my core force is the Tenth Army, which barely had any soldiers to its name.
I had to gather up the losers who didn’t even fit in the leftover divisions, forming the Tenth Army out of a bunch of problem children who couldn’t find a home anywhere else, you know?
How long do you think it took to break…I mean, train them into real soldiers, get them armed, and wrangle them into the bare minimum level of functionality for an army?
Day in and day out, I spent every second preparing them for battle without a moment to rest.
Talk about exploitative.
I demand! A paid vacation!
Ah, I got denied again…
And guess what else?
I was doing a bunch of other stuff at the same time, too.
First of all, improving on my mini-mes.
You know, the information-gathering clones I unveiled during the big war.
Basically, I took the palm-sized spider clones I created initially and made them stronger.
They’re still the same size, but they’re stealthier, immune to any detection skills, and can even transmit everything they see and hear right back to me.
I expanded on that feature even more during the war so that they can now transmit those images to special monitors, too.
They’re like super-efficient self-driving mega-cameras!
I scattered thousands of them all over the planet, using them to gather all kinds of information in real time.
That’s how I got the deets on where all the elves are at, too.
Not to mention their hidden teleport gates.
Heh-heh.
The Word of God religion and the elves are both pretty keen on information gathering, but none of them hold a candle to meeee!
That said, these little spy clones have zero firepower and can easily be crushed by a stray footstep, which is a bit of a bummer.
That doesn’t happen super often, since they’re so stealthy and all, but once in a while, there are accidents and stuff like that.
But I guess we’ll just have to call that the cost of doing sneaky business.
Even if it is a major pain to replace them when they get squished.
So I was simultaneously operating a few thousand spy-ders while doing all this, right? And that’s while producing a bunch of battle clones at the same time.
As you might imagine, battle clones are mini-mes that are meant to be used for fighting instead of spying.
Unlike the spy clones, they come in different shapes and sizes depending on their purpose.
First, we’ve got the mass-produced all-purpose battle clones!
These guys are about three feet in size.
They look more or less like me in my Zana Horowa days, the form I evolved into right before arachne.
Basically, a white body with scythes for the two front legs.
And they’re just about as strong as I was back then, too.
They shoot lots of magic—I guess it’s technically conjuring now—they use Evil Eyes like crazy, and they counter with the scythes if an enemy gets too close.
They’re fully loaded with thread and poison, too, of course.
As you can gather from the fact that I called them mass-produced, I’ve got lots of these all-purpose battle clones.
How many? Well, that’s a military secret.
Next up is the queen taratect clones.
That’s what I sent in against Julius the hero during that war.
They’re clones I made based on Mother, the “bigger boat”-level huge ones, that crush things with the sheer power of their giant bodies.
Honestly, their overall capabilities aren’t that much higher than the all-purpose battle clones.
But since they’re physically so much bigger, they cost a lot more to make, which means I’ve only created a handful.
Finally, there’s my aces in the hole: the space-specialist clones.
As the name implies, they specialize in spatial conjuring. They’re the same palm-sized shape and appearance as the spy clones, but their abilities are on an entirely different level.
They can create other dimensions, erode the fabric of space—crazy stuff like that.
Since becoming a god, I’ve developed an incredibly high aptitude for spatial conjuring for whatever reason, and these clones are loaded up with the culmination of all that progress.
They can slice through space to remove heads and whatever else. Without some way of countering that, no enemy stands a chance against these space-specialist clones.
I mean, they could teleport your torso right off the rest of your body.
Even if you try to run away, they can tamper with space itself, so there’s nowhere to go.
The only way to counter them would be by meddling even further with my spatial meddling; you’d have to be at least as good at it, and probably better.
In system terms, I think even maxing out Dimensional Magic, the evolved form of Spatial Magic, wouldn’t be enough to save you.
In other words, it’s basically impossible to oppose me for anyone who operates within the bounds of the system.
Damn, I’m strong. Waaay too strong.
These battle clones generally exist in a separate dimension created by the space-specialist clones.
I can call them out whenever I need them.
Although at the moment, the only time they’ve seen any outside action is when I sent a Queen clone against Julius the hero.
I’m not slacking off; I’m just putting them into power-saving mode to conserve energy.
Don’t get the wrong idea there.
When Vampy and company defeated those legendary-class monsters and such, I fed ’em to the clones in my separate dimension, saved up some energy, and created more clones whenever the energy stores went past a certain point.
I’ve been slowly but surely increasing the numbers of my battle clones with that routine.
Considering that they started as cute but useless palm-sized spiders, they’ve come a long way, that’s for sure.
Seriously, those things were absolutely worthless at first.
Slow and steady wins the race, I guess.
Not everything is like skills, where you’re guaranteed to get stronger if you keep training, but I think you’re still bound to get a certain level of results if you put in lots of hard work.
Anyway, I’ve got one more kind of clones, a pretty weird type.
These ones are very much related to a different job I’ve been working on in addition to my job as a commander.
These clones are called system-related clones.
I assume you can piece that one together.
Basically, these clones have various tasks related to the system.
My ultimate goal is to destroy the system and use the energy released to rejuvenate this world.
There’s a lot of thorough preparation involved, as you might imagine.
And to do all that preparation, I’ll need to understand the workings of the system down to the tiniest detail.
This is a make-or-break gamble with the fate of the world on the line, after all.
You can’t be too careful, even to the point that it might seem borderline paranoid.
So even in the early stages, I’ve put a ton of extra work into investigating the system.
Between my job as a commander and all that clone work, I was seriously busy for sure. But honestly, it’s this system investigation that’s taken up the bulk of my resources.
The fact that I created clones for this specific purpose should tell you just how much effort I’ve been putting into this.
To sum it up, I’ve had no time to rest whatsoever!
Do you get it now, people?
Even before things got as busy as they are now, I was still crazy slammed!
Who among us would dare go up to that super-busy spider of the past and tell her, Hey, things are gonna get even busier soon, so put your back into it?!
Even if I did know the future, I would’ve said, Sorry, I’m already at my limit!
Come on, Labor Standards Act, do your thing here!
Ah, this is a different world, which means that doesn’t exist here…riiiight…
This suuucks.
But I’m still gonna do it, since I’m the one who decided to take all this on in the first place!
So let me give you the rundown on what we’ve learned about the system so far.
First of all, what exactly is the system?
Well, it’s a super-huge conjuring created by D!
Its main purpose is to dole out skills and stats and stuff to all the living things in this world, collect all of that in the form of energy when those living things die, and use that energy to revive this dying world!
Damn, that’s a long sentence!
Where’s the TL;DR?!
And that’s still simplifying it quite a bit, just so you know.
Basically, the system is a messed-up conjuring that forces anything living in this world to save up energy while they’re alive, then pay it all back when they die like some sick loan shark coming for their due.
Training your skills and stats is the main method of saving up that energy, a gamelike feature which I think is probably D’s personal preference.
And that energy is used to help restore this world, which is on the brink of destruction.
If you’re wondering why the whole world has to depend on such a convoluted system in the first place, it’s because the humans of this planet really screwed things up long ago, apparently.
If you wanna know the details about that part, ask Taboo.
It even comes with a free service where you get to hear a voice saying “atone” all the time, whether you’re asleep or awake.
Although I weaseled out of that little contract when I became a god!
It was always pretty annoying, so that was a relief.
Anyway, enough about Taboo. From what I’m told, the people of long ago managed to use up this world’s energy until it was almost completely drained. Then this goddess became a sacrifice to fill that void.
I don’t really know the details myself.
Honestly, I don’t think I really need to know, either.
I’m guessing that knowing more about it would just make me sick to my stomach.
After spending time with people who were there when it happened—like Black, the pontiff, and especially the Demon Lord—I’ve definitely gotten the impression that some awful stuff went down.
And since the living things in this world are trapped in a hellish cycle where they die, get their energy stripped away, and are reborn into the same world all over again, I suspect that’s intended as a punishment, too.
Although I wish they wouldn’t drag us Earth reincarnations into their problems!
Back to the subject of the system, though. Aside from those basic functions, D also added a solid handful of just-for-fun features.
That includes most of the gamelike aspects, like skills and monsters.
I don’t think stuff like skills, stats, levels, and so on were really necessary to get living things to store up energy.
That part definitely smells like D messing around to me.
What about monsters, you ask? That’s a little harder to define.
Even if the initial idea of skills and stuff was just for fun, once you’ve chosen that as the method for saving up energy, you need to have everyone fight one another.
Monsters were created to give people something to fight.
If this is a video game, they’re the enemy characters.
And the system generated those enemies.
But I get the impression that the system only created monsters at the beginning, and they’ve been naturally reproducing on their own since then.
Since it costs energy to produce monsters, it’s better for the system’s purposes if the monsters breed anyway.
Ultimately, this means the monsters that currently exist are a mix of various factors: descendants of the monsters initially created by the system, animals that already existed in this world that adapted to the current environment, and some combination therein, to the point where you can’t even categorize them all anymore.
At this point, all the system really does with monsters is imprint them with the instinct to attack humans on sight.
I know that sounds like a massive pain from the humans’ point of view, but it’s not like there’s an obvious alternative if the system needs living things to fight one another.
Besides, monsters are an integral part of the food chain at this point. It’d be worse for the world if they suddenly disappeared.
In addition to monsters, the system has other ways to make people fight one another.
Namely, the hero and the Demon Lord.
The hero is human.
The Demon Lord, a demon.
They each lead their respective peoples and fight each other.
Both of them get titles with unusual perks and abilities, too.
The hero gets the special effect of being able to match the demon lord and can use the Sword of the Hero. Plus, the hero can power up in a crisis.
While the demon lord doesn’t have a special effect against the hero, they can use the Sword of the Demon Lord.
It seems like a bit of favoritism toward the hero, but that’s because humans and demons have different base specs and life spans and such; it’s basically a handicap because the demon lord is likely to end up stronger than the hero.
Without that, humanity could easily end up at the mercy of one demon lord for ages.
The problem here is that with the hero’s special effect against the demon lord, he can fight on equal footing no matter how much stronger the demon lord might be.
Except that means that for a weaker hero to catch up to a strong demon lord, a bunch of energy has to come from somewhere.
So basically, the anti-demon-lord effect is really a power-up that steals energy from other parts of the system.
And did I mention the current Demon Lord is the strongest in history?
Like, her stats hover around 100,000 on average.
What would happen if the hero tried to fight her?
A huge amount of energy would be pulled out of the system and totally wasted, that’s what.
We can’t splurge like that when we’re trying to save up energy here!
Besides, this whole thing also means that the existence of the hero is a threat to the Demon Lord’s safety, which is why I obliterated Julius during the war and hacked the system to try to remove the very existence of the hero feature while I was at it.
As we all know, that ended in a big fat failure.
I researched the system pretty thoroughly and thought I’d be able to pull it off, but I guess that was overly optimistic.
But I learned my lesson, which is why I’m now trying to deepen my understanding and control of the system even more.
And what I really need for that control is the ruler skills.
We’re talking about the Seven Deadly Sins skills and the Seven Heavenly Virtues skills.
These skills actually serve as keys to access the system.
Once you have a ruler skill and you establish your ruler authority using the information obtained from Taboo, you get a bunch of special privileges.
Like the abilities to block Appraisal, do a search of the system itself, and so on.
Still, using those special privileges too often will wear down your soul, so I can’t say I recommend abusing them—except blocking Appraisal, which doesn’t seem to really cost anything.
The ability to block Appraisal came in handy quite a few times before I became a god.
Anyway, while I was investigating the system, I figured out that you can use these ruler skills as keys to access a sort of secret menu.
When you get your ruler authority confirmed, a list of things you can do is basically installed in your head, but this was most definitely not on that list.
In other words, you’d have no way of knowing about it unless you’ve thoroughly inspected the system like I have.
So I did all that and found out about the secret menu.
And wouldn’t you know it…
It contained the system’s self-destruct program.
Just as I suspected, given the awful nature of D’s personality, of course she would include a hidden backdoor.
It even comes with a nice little README file explaining how to use it. You gotta laugh.
Makes you wonder if there was any point slowly saving up energy through the official menu in the first place.
And if I felt that way, I’m sure it was even worse for the likes of the Demon Lord and the pontiff, who really have been slowly, carefully saving for all these years…
But luckily, since the Demon Lord was on the verge of giving up, she was thrilled to see some light at the end of the tunnel at last.
Although I’m sure she wishes she’d known about this method sooner.
I mean, if they’d activated this right after the system was created, the world could’ve been saved already.
They wouldn’t have had to suffer through this long, drawn-out cycle of living, dying, and passing on energy through the official channels.
I’m sure there have been more tragedies throughout history than you could count, and the Demon Lord and the pontiff have probably seen all of them.
So I imagine learning that those might not have needed to happen in the first place must’ve been tough.
But you can’t change the past, so I guess there’s no point dwelling on it.
I can’t alter the tragedies that have already taken place. I can only try to make a better future.
Let time travelers handle past crises, although I don’t know if anyone even exists who can manage something like that.
I mean, D has a crazy amount of knowledge—I wouldn’t be surprised if she could do it.
If nothing else, though, I certainly can’t.
I’ve gotta focus on what I can do instead of dwelling on what I can’t.
But wait!
There’s one thing I can’t do by myself!
And that’s increasing the amount of people with ruler skills.
Ruler skills are the keys to the system.
See, you actually need all the ruler skill keys to activate the self-destruct program in the system’s secret menu.
Every! Single! Key!
Yep, that does it. This game is impossible!
There are several ruler skills that aren’t even held by anyone right now.
Worse yet, one of the people who does have a ruler skill is someone who will absolutely never cooperate with us.
You guessed it: Potimas.
Honestly! Why does that guy have to get in our way at every turn?!
The dude’s very existence is a thorn in my side!
Do you have any idea how I felt when I figured out how to activate this secret menu?!
I wanted to run right into a wall!
But it’s just like that famous basketball coach once said: “If you give up, the game’s already over.”
I racked my brains over what I could possibly do, and in the end, I decided to cheat.
Keys, doors, opening…
Yeah, let’s pick the lock!
…You there, the reader who just thought What the hell does that mean?
If the direct approach doesn’t work, you’ve just gotta use workarounds instead!
Since this secret menu itself is already a workaround, there’s nothing wrong with using yet another workaround on it, if you ask me!
Besides, I’ve got no other choice, because I’ll never be able to get the keys from all the ruler skill holders otherwise.
At any rate, I sat down and made a list of people who might be able to get ruler skills.
Then I decided to recruit as many as I could.
We already started with three people with ruler skills on our side: the Demon Lord has Gluttony, Vampy has Envy, and Mr. Oni has Wrath.
Next, I began conducting close surveillance on demon army commanders, famous humans, fellow reincarnations, and other important characters.
My spy clones definitely came in handy there.
And next thing you know, Mera picked up the Perseverance skill.
That was a bit of a shocker.
Mera was originally just a normal person, you know?
He’s had a pretty wild ride of life since then, especially since he turned into a vampire and all, but I still can’t believe he came so far as to get a ruler skill.
It’s supposed to be suuuper hard to get those skills, you know.
I mean, even Julius the hero didn’t have one!
If even the appointed defender of humanity couldn’t get any, that’s definitely a rare set of skills.
…Although I guess I can’t really talk, since I had four of them, or five if you count Wisdom.
By the way, it seems like the Wisdom skill was made specifically for me.
I got it when I maxed out Appraisal and Detection, but the Demon Lord’s done the same thing, and she didn’t end up with Wisdom.
Oops, I’m getting off topic.
At any rate, Mera really worked hard.
Good work, Mera.
Keep it up, please.
Part 6 of 8