Chapter 22: Volume 4, 2: Boss_Quest 02 "Double_Standard" Grade: ☆☆☆☆☆

Volume 4, Chapter 2: Boss_Quest 02 "Double_Standard" Grade: ☆☆☆☆☆

Part 1

Now, things were not going well.

While they had overcome a major battle with Royal Elf Sibyl who had played a variety of cards supplied by her residual memory materialization and they had safely retrieved Boo Boo, they did not have time to return to Earth for a short break. They did not know where the Sage was and she had apparently wanted to let Sibyl lose so the Elf could safely step down before she began something that sounded truly ominous.

Something was definitely going to happen.

And if they could believe the information estimated from the burned remains of documents that Boo Boo had pasted to the wall, the Sage planned to become an “even greater monster” than Ground’s Nir by fully controlling Lorelei which gave its wielder power in exchange for assured ruin.

They did not have a moment to spare.

If the goal was to protect everyone living on the island from a monster, it was pointless to let an “even greater monster” rampage around. No matter which side won, everything would be annihilated in the end. It was like suggesting to fire a nuclear missile because your opponent had one. That was not a fight to protect.

Defeated Sibyl was left with Alchemist Cheerleader Huldra while Beatrice, Armelina, Filinion, Wildefrau, and Boo Boo left the inn town. It would have caused a commotion to have Boo Boo walk freely around the human town, so as much as they hated doing so, they tied him to the cart once more and carried him out that way.

“So...” White Witch Filinion sighed as they removed the ropes from the cart at the base of a mountain away from the human settlement. “You’re saying this secret method to fully control Lorelei is hidden at the former site of Boo Boo’s village?”

“I don’t really get it either, but that’s what the Sage’s notes said,” said Boo Boo.

“That means the Sage at least believed it was there.”

Boo Boo got up from the cart and set his feet on the dark soil ground.

“We don’t know where Lorelei is now, so we can’t lie in wait there. That means the village is our only hint. I’d rather not go there since it will probably make me sad, but we have no choice. If we don’t pursue and stop the Sage soon, something bad is sure to happen.”

“Wheeze. I understand how you feel. I really do. But...”

Filinion sounded like she was melting away.

Beatrice and Armelina both had a very bad feeling about this.

“We just fought so hard against Sibyl and now we have to fight another group battle? We haven’t returned to Earth or spent a night at an inn! I’m all out of the Willpower needed for Magic!!”

“Hold it, cow!! It was the 3 of us who did all the work! You didn’t do squat in the healer role!”

“Who do you think it was that healed your tooth, you imbecile!? And the healer isn’t supposed to stand in the line of fire! You may not have noticed, but I did a whole bunch of healing! Without me, you definitely would’ve died 5...no, 10 times over!!”

“By the way, my body feels pretty sluggish, but that isn’t your fault, is it? I seem to recall hearing you say the reconstructive healing potion for my tooth was a special case in how mentally taxing it is in exchange for neatly healing facial injuries.”

“...Huh?”

“Cow, were you just throwing any old recovery potion at us!? That would explain why I’m all out of Willpower! That’s like giving me general anesthesia and performing major surgery just because I tripped and scraped my knee, isn’t it!?”

“Anyway, the Sage is already on the way to the former Iberian Orc village and we can’t afford to let her get away!!”

Beatrice and Armelina lectured her, but fully melted Filinion only childishly pouted her lips (despite being in college) and refused to listen.

Then someone else’s comment only exacerbated the turmoil.

It came from Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau.

“Now, I have never directly dealt with her, but the Sage is quite skilled, correct? Perhaps even more so than Sibyl? If we’re completely out of Willpower and can’t use any Magic when we do run across her, won’t we just be wasting that fateful encounter?”

“Ah, you idiot!!”

“Right? Right!? Not even Date Masamune or Takeda Shingen fought all the time without any sleep or rest. Getting your rest so you can fight at top performance is the key to victory, isn’t it? Yes, yes!!”

“That glasses cow is only complaining and buying time because she wants to take a break, so don’t encourage her! Ahh, she always latches right onto anyone who’s willing to listen to her...”

In the real world, this would have been a college girl clinging to a middle school girl’s leg, so it was an odd visual. But the Ice Waterfall Princess looked like the dominatrix type, so combining her with the slow glasses cow who had become a large golden dog was even more...something. Beatrice had trouble deciding if it was a match made in heaven or a dangerous mixture.

“(How about we have Wildefrau take responsibility for the glasses cow from now on?)”

“(That’s an excellent idea. It sounds like a nice hazing for our newcomer.)”

“You two! You’re trying to shove some kind of awful job onto me, aren’t you!?”

That said, Beatrice was also doubtful that they could defeat the Sage at the best of times. And it was true that their Willpower had been dragged down from middle midlevel to lower midlevel, so they could probably manage a normal Labyrinth crawl but might not have enough for hunting a major target. She had no intention whatsoever of supporting Filinion’s desire to take it easy, but they did need some way to recover their Willpower even a little.

“How about we take a nap as a compromise?” suggested Wildefrau in a somewhat flat voice with her hands on her hips. She seemed to have grown sick of having the cow clinging to her long leg. “Spending the night in an inn would of course be best, but that isn’t an option. So we can instead dedicate a short period of time – an hour or two perhaps – to get some deep sleep. Sleep is meant to recover our Willpower, so as long as we accomplish that, the length of time is immaterial.”

It made sense.

(Childish) Beatrice, Armelina, and Filinion flinched at having the (middle school girl) newcomer show them up like that, but when they thought about it, Wildefrau had worked her way up to the level cap just like them. She was no different from them when it came to work-related matters.

“Boo? So what are you going to do?”

“Well, if we just designate a period of time and say we’re going to sleep, I think I would just toss and turn.”

“Glasses cow, I bet you would sleep like a baby if you ran around to work off enough fat that those 2 giant things shrank by a few centimeters. In fact, you just don’t get enough exercise in general.”

“Or maybe the rest of us could sleep like babies if we grabbed the glasses cow’s 2 giant things and give them a twist. Okay, let’s test that theory.”

“I’m sensing some hatred for these breasts even though I didn’t ask for them to get this big... But I’m going to hide behind Wildefrau! Look at this incredible volume! This is how strong people can grow!!”

“Wait! This is too much for me to handle...!!”

Wildefrau began panicking once she was caught in the Boobs Substitution ninja technique, but the look in Beatrice and Armelina’s eyes was a cold one.

“Unfortunately, we’re not all that interested in Wildefrau.”

“Eh? Eh? Does that mean you’ve accepted me as a good person...?”

“I mean, Wildefrau only created those bodylines by adjusting her equipment. In reality, she’s a middle school girl. More accurately, she’s a jakigan-style kokeshi doll with a fairly undeveloped B-cu-...”

“Abyahabrbrpeh!? You...you aren’t supposed to mention that while we’re in Ground’s Nir, officer!!”

“The funny part is that she actually has a bigger cup size than a certain flaaat person I could mention.”

“That isn’t funny at all!! Get your butt over here, Beatrice!!”

Armelina tearfully yelled at her, but if they kept this up, dawn would arrive before they got a wink of sleep. They needed to discuss how to most efficiently get some deep sleep, not spend the night on girls talk.

And at times like this, the most sensible pitch was generally thrown by Filinion the glasses cow who knew a wide range of trivia (although it was mostly useless in battle).

“Then wouldn’t it be better to try out the method that’s been spreading through the inn town?”

“?”

“It’s all about sleepwear lately. Let’s have a pajama party☆”

Part 2

“Kh...”

Royal Elf Sibyl awoke to a dull pain piercing the middle of her gut. Unlike in the pure and deep forest damp with night dew, she lay on a simple bed and a tallow lamp produced air that felt like having butter shoved in her mouth. The sheet placed over her did not seem to use even silk thread, so each time she moved, she felt a pain on her skin like a hard brush scraping against her.

Where was she?

She worked her groggy head as she stared up at the low ceiling.

Her long ears then picked up on a secret conversation held in the poorly-lit room.

“U-um, do we really have to dress like this?”

“Of course. It would cause a scene if we said we had knocked out a waitress from a popular bar and wanted somewhere to interrogate her, so it was best to act like inn guests and rent a convenient room.”

“Gathering together in the inn town at night while wearing pajamas? That sounds naughty to me. I won’t let you lay a finger on Onee-sama!”

There was no point in pretending to be asleep, but Sibyl still kept her eyes only cracked open while observing what she could without moving her head.

Three girls stood at the bedside: a Summon Hunter with her long blonde braid tied in a large loop, an Alchemist Cheerleader with pink twintails, and a Noble Dancer with her blonde ponytail wrapped into a curl. It was obvious at a glance that they all had rare Jobs and had honed their skills to a frightening degree.

The one real problem was the fact that they had all removed their armor.

For some reason, they were all wearing pajamas in this inn at night.

The pink twintails girl moved her pompom-covered hands to line up small bottles on the side table. They all contained grooming supplies such as milky lotion and mudpack that she seemed to have gone out of her way to make using Alchemy.

“But, you know, I only said to wear pajamas, so that choice is your own responsibility. Why are you wearing a baby doll in enemy territory?”

“I-I’m sorry. I just went with what I normally wear...sob...”

“No, it’s fine, young lady. In fact, I’m quite a fan of that! Yes!!”

...The girl with the mole under her eye began speaking faster and seemed to reveal her true nature(?) a bit, but before Sibyl could figure out what exactly that true nature was, the Noble Dancer kicked the nearly fully-exposed butt of the Alchemist Cheerleader whose bare legs were exposed below her white and pink mini-China pajamas.

“I won’t forgive you if you make Onee-sama cry! I already don’t agree with letting you all look after her, so don’t get carried away!!”

“Y-you are very different from the cute Rusalka-chan mentioned in the reports. Plus, I don’t recall summoning you here too and you have no authority over me.”

Incidentally, the Noble Dancer was wearing a tank top and bike shorts. That kind of flexible material was fairly rare in Ground’s Nir, so she was clearly paying attention to how she looked even if it looked rougher.

And this seemed to be the limit for Sibyl.

The others had of course noticed that their prey on the bed had opened her eyes a bit to observe her surroundings. And that meant she was able to talk.

There was a moonlit window near the bed.

Sibyl took a deep breath and prepared to hop up from the bed.

“Achoo.”

But just before she did, she heard a sneeze from the pink twintailed Alchemist Cheerleader whose bodylines were exposed by the slits running all the way up both sides of her pajamas. Worse, she heard a sinister metallic noise. She saw a trio of metal claws stick out from the pink pompoms. And they were not meant to simply do damage. They contained a Magic curse that had a chance of causing instant death. Multiple Icons were wrapped around Huldra’s wrists.

If Sibyl had sprung up like a clockwork toy, the tips would have stabbed into her throat.

The success rate for instant death could not be very high, but that girl could make a great variety of Items using Alchemy. She had likely increased the success rate using plenty of consumable Items.

The pink twintail girl only smiled as the metal claws retracted into the pompoms.

“Now, then. Since it seems you can move, you’ll be helping us☆”

“Tch.”

Sibyl could not help but click her tongue when Huldra winked and stuck out her tongue a bit. From the looks of things, Huldra would not lock blades in a head-on clash with an enemy she wished to slay. That mini-China girl was like a Gimmick disguised as a treasure chest. Let her appearance fool you, and you would be devoured.

Having lost her chance to sit up, Sibyl felt pinned to the bed as she asked a question.

“What are you trying to do?”

“That’s our question for you.” The pompom-wielding Alchemist Cheerleader used Magic to make stars appear in her eyes for no reason. “What were you trying to do by working with the Sage? I believe the chief and the others are attacking that question from a different angle.”

“Heh,” laughed Sibyl. “I am the last of the Royal Elves, rulers of the noble forest. Did you think some simple savagery would be enough move my tongue? ...Or that’s what I would like to say, but since I lost, I can only assume the Sage herself set that up as the optimal outcome. It pisses me off, but I will follow her plan. That should be best for her in the end.”

“...I hate how arrogant this princess is.”

Sibyl did not let Rusalka’s comment get to her. And there was no need for her to remain lying down. She slowly sat up from the hard bed. She had already been irritated by the unpleasant light and smell from the tallow lamp overhead, so she got up on her knees to distance herself from it as much as possible.

“If you wish for respect, you must first wear the bare minimum of clothing and follow proper etiquette, human. You claimed it was necessary for camouflage, but it saddens me that such a strange outfit even qualifies as camouflage...”

Then the rough sheet fell away from her chest.

She was naked save for some bandages.

Time ground to a halt.

After being knocked unconscious in the battle, she had been taken to a nearby inn for treatment. She should have considered this possibility, but seeing it for herself was something else entirely.

The body illuminated by the flickering light of the impolite tallow lamp was lacking in curves, but it also contained flowing bodylines that attracted the eye of any who saw it. Rather than protect her sensitive skin, the bandages wrapped around the important bits provided the sinister seduction of a certain kind of dancer.

Then Rusalka gave a wicked grin.

“The bare minimum of clothing, hm? Poo hoo hoo... That really is the bare minimum...”

Immediately afterwards, the princess grew red to the very tips of her long ears, she uttered an unintelligible scream, and a fairly large pillow flew through the air.

Part 3

They had to recover their Willpower as quickly as possible so they could use Magic.

They could not afford any delay, so they chose Boo Boo’s brick house as their rest area. Beatrice and the others needed to get some pajamas, so they stopped by the inn town treasury to withdraw some personal items before regrouping at Boo Boo’s place.

After exchanging a glance, a complicated look came over Beatrice and Armelina.

“What’s this? So all of us already had pajamas prepared?”

“I never had a chance to try them out. If I wore costume pajamas deep in the dark Labyrinth, someone might mistake me for a Gimmick and attack.”

“Um, costume...?”

“Cough, cough!! Oh, dammit, I guess you’re finding out later regardless! Look forward to it, Wildefrau!!”

The four of them intruded on Boo Boo’s house and then held out their Shining Weapons.

“Set the time for an hour from now.”

“Ehh? Can’t we take 2 hours?”

“1 hour!”

“Then let’s go with 3 as a compromise!!”

“That’s even more and we don’t have time for regurgitating clichéd gags, Filinion!!”

“Sigh. Then can’t we go with an hour and a half?”

The newcomer sounded exasperated and rubbed her index finger against her temple, so the other 3 girls quickly shut up. This was strange. She was supposed to be the insane queen who laughed loudly while taking a liquid nitrogen bath in the snowy mountains, so how had she taken up the position of the sensible one?

At any rate...

“Okay, all our timers are set. If we relied on just one of them, that person might deactivate it. We would feel like idiots if we all fell asleep and woke up to find the sun rising.”

The timer was already running, so they had to cut out any pointless chatting. They had Boo Boo leave the house and then changed into their pajamas.

“Ha ha. The cow looks like a mafia don.”

“I’m only wearing a gown! And I chose it because it feels a lot like the juban I’m used to!!”

“Oh, so that’s what you meant by costume pajamas.”

“Laugh if you must, dammit! But I’m never leaving this bear!!”

And...

“...By the way, what do you think you’re doing, Wildefrau?”

“?”

“Don’t just tilt your head! I’m asking why you’re sprinkling flower petals over your naked body!!”

“You have to ask? What can I say other than this is how I relax? Hm, hm, hm, hm, hmmm.”

“And now you’re making a ridiculously simple shower using water Magic!? You’ll get everything damp, so do that outside!!”

It was Armelina’s turn to be the sensible one, but her shouts fell on deaf ears as Wildefrau put her hands behind her head and stuck her massive chest out to catch the hot water on her entire body. She had clearly entered her own world.

They could understand why she would want to wash away her sweat before going to sleep, but why would she do so in the very room she planned to sleep in?

“It’s no use, Armelina. Ask a pervert to be normal and you’ll only get perversion out of them. Nudists speak the nudist language. It won’t even look like they’re speaking the same language as the rest of us.”

An odd noise resembling a sneeze came from a beam near the brick house’s ceiling.

“Hm? Hmmm? Yawn. Is someone talking about me...?”

“Meridiana, how many times do I have to tell you you’ll catch cold if sleep in such an indecent state of undress? Zzz...”

Beatrice shook her head with a meek look on her face and finished her thought.

“...You really should have picked up on this from the moment she goes around wearing nothing but a sword.”

But the other 3 sent icy looks her way.

“By the way...”

“U-um, Beatrice? About that thing you’re changing into like it’s normal...”

“What...no, it couldn’t be... Is that the legend that was said to have already gone extinct at my school?”

Beatrice looked like she had no idea what they were talking about.

For some reason, she had changed into red bloomers and a short-sleeve shirt.

“What? They’re just pajamas. I saw them for sale at the inn town and thought they were perfect.”

“What do they teach you at the Detached Magic Palace!? Are you insane!? There’s also something wrong with whatever shop went to the trouble of recreating them so perfectly in Ground’s Nir!!”

“No, no. Iroka learned her lesson and told me they aren’t actually cutting-edge sportswear. That’s why we decided to overcome that hardship together by studying up on their proper usage.”

“Y-you were right. Ask a pervert to be normal and you really will only get perversion out of them. It’s like a universal law or something.”

“Try saying that again once you’ve put on at least one article of clothing, nudist.”

Anyway, Boo Boo’s house had no bed. Most likely, the Fairies had been unable to make on that could support his weight. There was a blanket set stuffed with Ghost Down folded up in a corner, so they laid that out and lay down on it.

It was quite large since it was made for Boo Boo’s size, but it still had to hold 4 girls. Plus, one of them was nude and another was in bloomers. It was a post-apocalyptic sort of chaos.

“Sniff, sniff. Mh, this blanket doesn’t smell much like Boo Boo. Is he still just lying on the floor?”

“I’ll light an aroma candle regardless. Hm, hmm, hmm. This is the time for a White Witch Mixing expert’s Candy Rose☆”

“Hey, those have to be adjusted for each person, so it might put you to sleep, but it’ll keep us awake.”

“Yawwwn... I don’t mind,” said Wildefrau. “One of my strengths is my ability to sleep soundly anywhere as long as I have my usual night cap.”

“You can sleep in the nude anywhere? Ha ha ha.”

“Beatrice, you don’t have a leg to stand on in those bloomers of yours.”

Armelina acted like the one speaking down to them from a stage of sensibility, but the others had of course noticed what was going on there.

“Hey, Armelina?”

“What?”

“...Why do you have a pillow in addition to your pajamas? And not just one, but a lemon normal pillow and a banana body pillow?”

“G-gulp!!”

That was naturally because she had enough personal items to have buried a secret treasure chest behind Boo Boo’s house, but they could not find out about that.

“And the rest of us were going without because the giant Boo Boo-sized pillow would hurt our necks! In fact, if you’ve got 2, then you can hand one of them over, can’t you!?”

“You’re not making any sense! When did you become a socialist, Filinion!?”

“Oh, shut up, you! Everyone, let’s submit this flaaat girl to some tickle torture and steal those pillows!!”

“Well, if that’s your idea of recreation...”

This led to the outrageous scene of 4 girls wriggling around underneath a giant blanket, but...

“Hyahn!?”

“...Um, Armelina?”

“Cough! Cough, cough!! It’s nothing! I’m doing just fine!!”

As Armelina blushed and choked, Beatrice successfully swiped the wonderfully manly body pillow.

The Holy Swordswoman in bloomers lay on her side, used both her arms and legs to cling to the giant curved banana, and muttered to herself.

“Sigh. I need to get Boo Boo to wear pajamas sometime...”

“That sounds like a good idea, but I’m a little afraid you’re going to try to get him to wear bloomers.”

Despite all that, they had only just finished rescuing Boo Boo and defeating Sibyl, which had brought extreme tension and exhaustion. More than the pajamas or aroma candle, the greatest spice may have been freeing themselves from their weariness.

Part 4

And precisely an hour and a half later...

“Everyone, lend me a hand! We need to restrain this indolent glasses cow! She secretly got up and tried to cancel the timers on all of our Shining Weapons!!”

“Oww, ow, ow, owww.”

“The scary part is that you think that might actually trick us into thinking you’re half asleep. Is your head actually empty and the glasses are your true form? Are you a pair of glasses that turned into a cow that only eats and sleeps!?”

“And doesn’t this mean her own plotting did her in? She’ll be the only one of us that didn’t get any sleep,” pointed out Wildefrau. “And isn’t the healer a crucial part of a Party?”

Filinion had proved herself to be an insidious sort of cow, but no amount of rubbing her eyes and wobbling her head would stop time for her. The girls had recovered some of the Willpower needed to use Magic, so they folded up the blanket set, returned it to a corner of the room, and removed their pajamas before equipping themselves in their combat style which included armor and miniskirts.

Boo Boo had not once set foot in the house.

They could hear a shrill voice from the garden out front. That would be Ileana, the sexy brown woman who stood at the peak of the Mandragoras, who was being watered. It seems Boo Boo had not slept either.

“Boo, is it time to get going?”

“Yes, it is. Nnn...”

Beatrice nodded while stretching to drive out her remaining sleepiness.

She had to focus on what was to come.

Beatrice, Filinion, Armelina, Boo Boo, and Wildefrau seemed like quite a group, but they were up against the Sage who had every Element fully covered. They already had no idea how to defeat her, but she was also trying to obtain even more extraordinary power by fully controlling Lorelei of the Break News.

If what the Sage had once told Beatrice was accurate, she felt some guilt about destroying the Iberian Orc village. But despite that emotion, she had kept working by sealing the digitized souls in the Shining Weapon and gathering corpses to create Disaster.

No matter what it took, she would slay Ground’s Nir, the monster lurking in the depths of the Labyrinth. That was a noble goal, but “no matter what it took” had a frighteningly wide range when it came to her. They did not know what kind of conclusion she envisioned, but since she was convinced all life on the island would be wiped out, it was entirely possible she would deem saving a single life a victory on her part. That would sound contradictory coming from anyone else, but the Sage was known to take things to that kind of extreme.

“We need to visit the site of the Iberian Orc village. We focused on recovering Willpower, so the Sage will likely have gotten ahead of us to an extent. We need to make sure we make up for that by the end. Boo Boo, can you lead us to where the village was?”

“Yes.”

Beatrice had known Boo Boo since he was little, but she did not know where his village had been located. In that sense, the Sage’s whims had helped them out quite a bit. If she had disappeared with Boo Boo while Beatrice’s group was dealing with the residual memory bar prepared by Sibyl, they would have had no hints remaining to track her down.

At this point, they doubted the Sage had been looking down on or underestimating them.

After all, she had apparently ordered Disaster and Sibyl against them while at least somewhat hoping those two would lose and drop out of the fight.

The Sage would not interfere with Boo Boo’s actions or with the actions of those who traveled with him.

She seemed to have made a major change in policy from when she had remained hidden in the underside of the world, but that likely meant she did not have time to bother with that anymore. The monster was closer to completion than she had anticipated, so she wanted to increase everyone’s odds of survival by attacking it from multiple angles. That was what she had told Boo Boo, but it could be summed up as follows:

I might not succeed.

So it’s a relief to know there’s some insurance in case I fail.

She might be unable to defeat the monster even with Lorelei.

She might fail to control Lorelei and go on a rampage.

She might defeat the monster with Lorelei but become some kind of imaginable calamity afterwards.

In the end, she did not have all the answers despite talking like she did. She had only blindly made it this far.

“...How selfish.”

“?”

Boo Boo tilted his head at Beatrice’s muttered comment.

Boo Boo veered to the side into some underbrush in the forest a short distance from the usual entrance to the Labyrinth. No, that was not it. It was hard to tell in the dark forest at night, but when he parted the underbrush, he revealed a narrow animal trail.

“If we follow this, we’ll reach your village, won’t we? Fwehhh. I feel like I’d get lost on my own...”

Filinion’s cheerful tone belied her words, so she may have been relieved to have some kind of path to follow. But Beatrice’s expression grew tense.

“I don’t know the exact date, but it has to have been quite a while. Boo Boo, have you visited the village since then?”

“No. Squeal. Because seeing it makes me sad.”

Wildefrau frowned at that.

“But wait a minute. Then, um...who has been walking this animal trail to keep the underbrush down?”

“If it wasn’t Boo Boo, then there’s only one other option.”

Armelina’s tone was low and she had likely reached the answer already: the Sage.

That woman had attacked the Iberian Orc village herself, so she would remember where it was. Since the animal trail did not seem to have been created recently, she may have been visiting to investigate something from time to time.

Was she there yet or not?

The answer to that question would determine their strategy, but they had to prepare themselves for the worst. Their odds of survival were greater if they assumed they were arriving late.

The Sage sought a method to perfectly control Lorelei, the demonic blade that destroyed its wielder by too easily giving them ultimate power.

(But what connection is there between the Iberian Orcs and Lorelei? If their entire species was focused on the monster, I doubt they would have sealed it away.)

They had a lot of questions, but catching up to the Sage came first.

Beatrice was worried about what catching up would mean. Part of her feared she was inviting people she cared about toward a precipice leading down to hell, but they had to do this regardless. Sitting still to not anger the Sage was no longer an option. All life on Ground’s Nir and the Magic and Pieces that supported the world order back on Earth were hanging in the balance. There was no longer a safe zone in either world.

And as she thought about that, Boo Boo came to a stop.

The underbrush and trees thinned out.

There was a large clearing up ahead.

“This is the place,” he said without looking back at the others.

He may have been afraid to set foot somewhere that would remind him so strongly of his friends’ and family’s deaths. Beatrice recalled how often he had said he was afraid of ghosts.

Beatrice took a step forward to stand by his side and then gently held his hand.

“Let’s go, Boo Boo.”

“Right. I won’t let a tragedy like that happen to anyone else ever again.”

They then stepped into that forbidden land.

Originally, the forest’s trees would have been cut down to create the clearing, but the passage of time had allowed green underbrush to cover the dark soil. But it was much shorter than on the animal trail and someone might have thought it was the perfect spot for a picnic if they were ignorant of the horrific tragedy that had occurred there.

What looked like a few small mossy hills remained. They resembled the leaf house that Boo Boo had made, but with their owners gone, other plants had grown on top of them.

“But, huh? Isn’t this kind of weird?” White Witch Filinion sounded frantic and began fidgeting with her glasses. “A ghost town would rot away with time, but doesn’t this look oddly organized?”

It was true some of the houses remained, but most of them had collapsed. And instead of piles of rubble, the building materials seemed divided into systematic piles. The wooden pillars were with the other wooden pillars and the leaf roofs were with the other leaf roofs.

A thought came to Beatrice.

She called up her frames and lines using fire illusion Magic and moved her fingers along to fill them with what they knew.

“Maybe it was for Sibyl.”

“What do you mean?” asked Boo Boo.

“I guess you wouldn’t understand since you didn’t see her yourself. The Sage’s aide was a Royal Elf with a Skill that allowed her to materialize residual thoughts.”

“I heard about that a long time ago. The Royal Elves were praised by everyone because they had the power to lead people astray in the forest. Boo, their enchanted forest is really mysterious!”

Beatrice belatedly realized that may have been one side to it. That may indeed have been the greatest Skill for a people who wanted to protect their lives in the forest.

“And the Sage seems to think the gathered strength of the Iberian Orcs is the best way of fighting the monster. The souls in your Shining Weapon and Disaster were both byproducts of that research. Then what about Sibyl? If she could summon a large group of Iberian Orcs using the items left in the village, wouldn’t that give the Sage the fighting force she wants?”

Beatrice felt like she had found the four corner pieces of the jigsaw puzzle.

She still had a lot of work to fill in the entire picture, but she had a solid starting point.

“But in the end...”

“Yes. If that had actually worked, the Sage wouldn’t have let Sibyl go. Or maybe Sibyl showed no sign of success at the final stage, so the Sage switched over to Lorelei.”

She severed the line between the Sage and Sibyl and connected the former to a Break News instead.

If the method of fully controlling Lorelei was hidden in the Iberian Orc village, then it felt all the more like the Sage’s plans were all tied to the Iberian Orcs. Or maybe dragging around her past sin was how she intended to strengthen herself.

Armelina gave some quiet instructions without moving her lips.

“Either way, we’re standing on the same stage as the Sage. She could attack us at any time, so keep your guard up.”

Beatrice naturally stayed back to back with Boo Boo as they moved and Armelina did the same with Wildefrau. Filinion was left out, but she was not suited for battle and no one could relax with her watching their back. Having her follow one or the other of the pairs was for the best.

They had no way of investigating the abandoned materials gathered for Sibyl’s residual thoughts.

They instead checked the triangular silhouettes covered in green that still somewhat retained their original shape. They had been leaf houses instead of log cabins or brick buildings, so even if they collapsed, no one would be buried alive inside.

They did not seem at all lived in.

There was nothing of note left inside, the leaves on the floor had rotted away, and fast-growing weeds had filled the inside.

“...”

Boo Boo did not speak a word.

He was the only one who had lived here, so he was the only one who could know what feelings filled his chest. There was no need to force him to verbalize them and affix the label of a specific emotion onto them. It was best to leave them as pure, formless feelings that only he could understand.

How many more times would he have to feel like this before they caught up to the Sage?

As Beatrice wondered that, something changed.

“Boo?”

“What is it, Boo Boo?”

“Wait, Beatrice. Everyone else, too. I’ve never seen this building before.”

Everyone stopped and turned toward Boo Boo.

He seemed unsure of what he was saying, so he brought a hand to his mouth and tilted his head.

“I thought the elder’s big house was here and no one was allowed inside without his permission.”

The leaf houses had no locks, so the Iberian Orcs had likely lived a communal lifestyle where they could freely visit each other and borrow things. If this one house was notable for needing permission to go inside, then it gave of a sense of authority. Before even bringing up hackers or jailors and prisoners, the ability to protect one’s secrets and divulge others’ secrets was the peak of a certain hierarchy.

“But now there’s this small house here. Squeal... The elder’s house wasn’t this small. Even if I was smaller back then, I wouldn’t mistake something this small for being so big.”

Based on the moss covering it, this building had not been constructed after the fact.

Wildefrau thoughtfully placed her index finger on her slender chin.

“Would the elder’s house have also had a triangular tent structure with a single space inside?”

“Y-yes. Most likely. What about it?”

“Then the elder’s extra-large house would have had an extra-large space inside, so couldn’t it have contained an entire normal house inside it?”

“Ah, are you saying there was another, smaller house inside the big one? Like nesting dolls or miniature household shrine!?”

In that case, this was the core of the secret the elder had protected by forbidding the villagers from entering his house. There had to be something there. It felt like they had taken a step closer to the Sage who sought complete control over Lorelei.

Beatrice added a new frame with her fire illusion Magic.

They were approaching the truth.

“Let’s go. Can you do this, Boo Boo?”

“Yes. Don’t worry.”

Boo Boo remained stopped and stroked his tusk with his right hand just once. The others did not know the details, but that may have been a ritual before setting foot on holy ground. They did not know the custom, but they made sure to bow before continuing.

They were finally getting close to the core of the issue.

It looked a lot like the other collapsed houses, but it was somehow different.

It was possible there was a secret grimoire inside, that the Sage was grabbing it right this instant, and that she would stab them with a blade or Magic as soon as they pushed open the leaf entrance.

Beatrice and Armelina naturally held their Shining Weapons more tightly.

This might be the end.

They might be pulling the trigger of ruin.

Beatrice gulped and whispered something.

“...I’m opening it.”

Did the leaves contain a powerful disinfectant, or were they just thick? The leaf entrance had maintained its original form without rotting away. Beatrice grabbed it and Boo Boo did so too. They both nodded and then opened it together.

They sensed an odd smell.

And they had been right to be on their guard. If they had carelessly stepped inside, they really might have lost their lives.

It was a rusty smell.

And the entire floor space of the leaf house was filled by a square hole.

Beatrice pitched forward as she came to a quick stop. The darkness of night was part of it, but the hole was still strange. She could not see the bottom. At first, she wondered if it was a trap meant to punish those who entered holy ground or if it was used for some kind of depressing ritual, but then Filinion provided a different theory while pushing up her glasses.

“Hey, Beatrice. Be careful and look here. On the side of the square hole.”

“?”

The Holy Swordswoman looked puzzled, but she finally realized what Filinion was trying to say.

What was causing the rusty smell?

“What is this? They look like metal rails.”

They ran vertically down the wall. And instead of normal train rails, they were jagged. Instead of having pieces missing or broken off, it was clearly made that way on purpose. It almost looked like the teeth for round gears to fit into.

And there were rails set up on all 4 walls. They could not say how long the rails were because they vanished into the seemingly bottomless pit.

“Which means...”

“This isn’t a pitfall.”

Armelina and Wildefrau exchanged a glance.

Beatrice sighed and placed her hands on her hips.

“They may be for an elevator or lift. And if the elevator itself isn’t here...”

“Ah, wait! Beatrice!?”

Filinion cried out because Beatrice kneeled down and stuck her head into the hole. If she lost her balance, she would fall right down.

“Someone hold onto my hips.”

“U-um, I’ll do it, but...”

“Someone other than Filinion! She’s actually volunteering for once, but I don’t trust her arm strength!!”

Boo Boo’s large hand wrapped around her hips and she leaned even further down. She was nearly flipped entirely upside down and she pressed her ear against one jagged metal rail on the wall.

She waited in silence for a few seconds.

After confirming something for herself, she muttered a comment.

“There’s an odd vibration. This elevator is descending even now. And there’s only one person that could be riding it: the Sage!!”

Part 5

Let’s have a pajama party☆

“Pant!! Pant...!!!!!!”

In a room at an inn town inn, a Royal Elf with 100% of her face blushing red had wrapped her entire body in a cheap sheet, turning herself into a living summer roll. She then rolled off of the bed and sat trembling in a corner of the small room.

Finding herself naked save for some bandages seemed to have upset her.

She was a summer roll instead of a spring roll because the sheet was incredibly thin and her silhouette showed through. Even if she was somewhat lacking in curves, the feminine curves she did have showed boldly through. Combined with the shadow created by the tallow lamp, it looked like she was being crassly tormented by human civilization.

The first to speak was Huldra, the Alchemist Cheerleader in mini-China pajamas that left her legs bare.

“Now. Then. Since you’ve woken up, how about we have a chat? I’d like to hear about your relationship with the Sage.”

“F-fine, then. ...But only if you give me another sheet. My heart can’t bear this see-through thing.”

Rusalka, the Noble Dancer in a tank top and bike shorts, tossed her a spare sheet and Gruagach, the Summon Hunter wearing an adult baby doll, fidgeted her inner thighs. Seeing Sibyl’s reaction may have reminded her how embarrassing her own (80%+ transparency) see-through outfit was.

Huldra dragged over a chair with a back and sat in it backwards. She spread her legs wide like someone who had failed to clear a vaulting box and she rested her arms and slender chin on the back. Without the chair back, her mini-China would have been woefully insufficient to hide everything.

After letting go of her pompoms, she patted her own face with her hands and rubbed the mole below her eye with a finger.

“Feel free to talk once you’re ready.”

“Are you removing your makeup to lower your Hate value? I’m willing to explain without being lured into ‘carelessly’ letting something slip.”

After increasing her defense power with the double sheets, Sibyl finally took a deep breath.

“I will tell you what I know, but I haven’t been following the Sage from the very beginning. As a Royal Elf, I have an extremely long life. Since my appearance remains the same in the past, present, and future, the Sage may have found me easy to approach as she jumps between those time periods.”

Time periods.

Huldra and the others had heard talk of that from Armelina.

And they had also been told not to just accept it as fact.

“First of all, what was the starting point for the Sage? Was it simply a Gate accident, or did she intentionally travel between time periods with some objective in mind?”

“I have no way of proving any of this. But if what she said is true, you could call it an accident and you could also call it intentional.”

Living Spring Roll Sibyl gave a cynical smile in the corner of the room.

“It would seem that something greater than you can imagine will happen in the future.”

Part 6

A giant elevator in the elder’s house had been hidden from the rest of the Iberian Orc village.

But where did it lead?

Given what spread out below Ground’s Nir, the answer seemed self-evident.

“Y-you mean Boo Boo’s village had their own entrance to the Labyrinth when all of humankind had just the one?”

“Squeal. We had no interest in somewhere as scary as the Labyrinth. I don’t understand why the elder didn’t seal up something so dangerous.”

Boo Boo really did not seem to know what this was for.

But at the same time, the Sage had mentioned a duty and raison d'être for the Iberian Orcs that Boo Boo had been unaware of. They had carefully monitored the movements of the Labyrinth and worked together to stop the monster in its depths when it was nearing completion.

Was this the entrance they had used for that attack?

If so...

Could it be...?

“...I found something.”

Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau spoke up while observing the crumbling leaf building. Instead of the outer wall, she was looking at the inner wall that was difficult to see with the hole filling the floor space.

That area was relatively un-decayed and she had apparently found some writing there.

It said the following:

Central Shaft

Island ← to the → Abyss

It was no more than the remains of a sign written on the wall, so it could only give them so much information. Even so, they thought about what it could mean.

It was a sign of great change to come.

Beatrice’s mass of frames and lines was changing form like an amoeba.

“Island... Well, that must refer to the island of Ground’s Nir.”

“Which means the other end is the abyss... I assume we can just take that literally. So is this elevator a shortcut straight down to the bottom of the Labyrinth!?”

“The phrasing of ‘Central Shaft’ is extremely curious. I mean, if that’s accurate, wouldn’t it make the Labyrinth entrance we normally use a back entrance or side entrance!?”

“There’s a bigger issue.” Beatrice pointed out the most important aspect of this. “Why is there a sign written in the alphabet here? Remember when we were preparing for Boo Boo’s birthday party? Didn’t we have trouble with the culture of the Iberian Orc village because the only records were cave paintings written in some kind of hieroglyphic symbols?”

“Ah.”

It hit them once she mentioned it.

But in that case...

“This wasn’t written by the Iberian Orc elder. This writing suggests that the elevator itself has relations with another species...with humans.”

Only one possibility came to mind.

And there were more questions.

“Boo Boo’s Shining Weapon had ‘Iberian!’ carved into it in katakana. But that was given to him by the Sage after she destroyed the village.”

Naturally, the origin of the term “Iberian” would not be found anywhere on Ground’s Nir. It was clearly borrowed from a well-known variety of Spanish pork.

Meaning...

Had she been involved in the elder’s secret, the construction of the elevator, and the naming of the Iberian Orc species?

Had she not unilaterally slaughtered them while viewing them with nothing but bigotry and discrimination? Had she sent them to their graves only after building up a close relationship?

In truth, they had not entirely trusted what the Sage had told them. But now they had some objective evidence. They could no longer doubt her. Everything she had said was true, but that only made it worse. She had not protected out of love or killed out of hate. She had killed even though she loved them. She had killed because she loved them. They could not leave Ground’s Nir’s direct fate and Earth’s indirect fate in the hands of someone like that. Who could say how many lives would be lost in her attempt to save everyone?

Beatrice once more peered into the depths of the pit.

The pit itself had likely already existed. After all, the Sage had not existed before Ground’s Nir’s origins. So had she been the one to build the actual elevator and place a lid over it? Controlling a great power was harder than creating it. That was an impressive accomplish in and of itself.

Boo Boo had once said that the humans had suddenly appeared in Ground’s Nir one day and started challenging the Labyrinth. That supposedly held back the disaster spewing forth from the depths of the dark hole. And that was why the humans might be messengers of heaven.

She was down there.

The Sage was headed straight for the bottom of the Labyrinth.

“Boo Boo, and everyone else too. There’s something I want to say before we jump in.”

“What is it, Beatrice?”

“Well.” The Holy Swordswoman took a slow breath. “To be honest, the Sage is powerful. I don’t know if we can defeat her even with everyone here working together. I don’t want to lose no matter what and I want to bring everyone back alive, but we need to consider the worst case scenario.”

“Wh-what are you trying to say?”

“It’s simple.”

She shut her eyes, removed the final barrier, and forced her eyes back open.

And she spoke to them all.

“If it looks like we can’t avoid being wiped out and won’t be able to stop the Sage, then kill me. That might just erase the Sage.”

The atmosphere seemed to freeze.

“Hey, wait, hey!”

The first to erupt was Armelina.

“Didn’t I tell you? The Sage didn’t necessarily use a Gate to travel through time. She might have adjusted her Percentage-type equipment until she looked just like you. We can’t say for sure she traveled to the distant past from the distant future! Besides, if your death would directly affect her as a time paradox, she wouldn’t treat your life with such reckless abandon!”

“I don’t fully believe it myself.”

“Then!!”

“So this is a hypothetical. If we know none of us is going to make it back alive and the Sage seems to be holding back to keep just me alive, we need to suspect that’s why. And we need to try every method available to us. Killing me might not change anything, but then again, it might. If we have no other option, then that’s our last resort. I don’t think we should give up without trying it.”

“Are you insane!? Even if the attack on the Iberian Orc village was done by you from the future, that’s something you can stop based on your actions now, isn’t it!? You may not be able to change the past, but you can change your own future!!”

Beatrice could not nod or shake her head.

No one could guarantee she really could change her own future with her current decisions.

Nor could they guarantee that changing the past with her current decisions was the right thing to do.

“Beatrice.” Boo Boo brought a hand to his mouth. “If what I’m about to say is completely misguided, then you can get mad at me. So will you hear me out?”

“What is it?”

“Boo,” groaned the gray pig-faced giant.

He cut right to the chase.

“Beatrice, are you afraid? Afraid of what you might do?”

The crimson Holy Swordswoman, one of the strongest level cappers, jumped like a scolded child. She said nothing for a while, so Boo Boo simply waited.

And finally, Beatrice, who normally acted like a big sister, opened her trembling lips like she had lost a test of endurance.

“...I am afraid.”

She hung her head and did not look up.

She could not look Boo Boo in the eye even after spending so much time with him.

“Of course I’m afraid!! I did something in the future? It can’t be overturned because it happened at a set point in the past? How can I accept it when someone says that was my crime!? I would never do that and I would never hurt you or the other Iberian Orcs for any reason! Just thinking about purging the village makes my skin crawl!! But I have no way of proving that here! No matter what theories we propose and no matter how much you say it’ll be okay, there’s still a 1% chance, isn’t there!? There’s still a slight chance that I’m just a bad person and that I’m a hopeless piece of shit that could take everything from you after smiling by your side!!!!!”

“...”

“I hate it!! Of course I hate it!! I’m afraid of having this set in stone, but I can’t relax when it isn’t settled either! I mean...how!? How do I stop a crime I can’t imagine I’ll ever commit!? Will my death solve everything, or is it all a bluff and that won’t solve anything? I don’t even know the answer to that, so I’m afraid! I’m just so very afraid!!!!!”

It was possible not even Boo Boo knew how to respond to a girl who was so badly shaken up. He had challenged a 1000m dragon to a fight and cut through a group of delinquent soldiers, but he may have been helpless here.

But as awkward as he might be, he made an attempt.

He did not have to be clever about it.

“Beatrice. It’s true you might not be able to change the future no matter what you do. You might not be able to overturn something that happened in the past. The truth might be the worst one we can think of and simply learning of it will cause great pain. But...”

He paused, but did not stop.

He had more to say.

“Even if we find that worst answer, I still want to be by your side.”

She had no words.

Beatrice’s breath seemed to have caught in her throat as she looked up at Boo Boo.

He had a kind look in his eyes.

“Even if you really are the one who destroyed my village and even if you are the person trying to bring a great storm to Ground’s Nir again, I will still forgive you. I will still be your friend. So I won’t let the truth take you from me. I won’t let something like that take away someone I care for. Don’t worry, Beatrice. I’m with you.”

“...No one else would forgive me.”

“That doesn’t matter. All of the villagers’ souls are in this Shining Weapon and they might be angry when they hear about it, but I’m willing to fight for you. I’ll have a fistfight with them all after resurrecting them.”

“I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself.”

“Then I’ll fight you again. I won’t even let you hurt you. I don’t care if no one understands or if it makes you my enemy. I’m fine getting covered in scars to protect you.”

She could not get any more actual words out.

Beatrice clung to and buried her face in someone who had been with her for so long. She abandoned the face of the reliable big sister and wept like a young child.

“...There is nothing worse than this,” announced Boo Boo as he wiped her tears away with a large finger. “So, Beatrice, don’t fear the worst. Even if you draw that card, nothing will change. I won’t go anywhere.”

Part 7

Once Beatrice had calmed down, they took specific action.

The elevator descending into the abyss was still moving. Climbing into that pit would take them to the Sage. They would definitely meet her. But that would undoubtedly develop into a fight to the death.

“We never did figure anything out about Lorelei, but given the situation...”

“Yes. We should assume it has already fallen into the Sage’s hands.”

As Filinion and Wildefrau discussed that, Armelina manipulated her Shining Weapon metal staff. The weapon specialized in physical attacks and could transform into almost any blunt weapon, but one of those was the breaking wheel, an execution device modelled after a giant gear.

“The gear shape isn’t really necessary for beating people, so there are apparently theories that it was originally a ritual tool used to worship a sun god. Anyway, I think we can get down if I make sure the teeth fit into the jagged rails.”

Boo Boo did not need to rely on any tools. He peered into the hole without anything in his hands. He seemed intent on grabbing the metal rails and using his grip strength to slide down.

Boo Boo and Armelina.

They had 2 different methods of descent, but...

“...” (←Beatrice climbing onto Boo Boo’s big head.)

“...” (←Filinion clinging to Boo Boo’s thick waist.)

“...” (←Wildefrau holding onto Boo Boo’s muscular leg.)

“Well, I can sure see how much you all trust me!! But climbing down on my own will be easier anyway!! Ga ha ha goddammit!!”

Regardless, it was time to get started.

Boo Boo and Armelina both used the elevator’s gear shafts to slide down the vertical walls.

They could not see the bottom and they could not predict how far down they would have to go, but they did see some unexpected “changes”.

“What are these? Layers?” asked Armelina as she watched the wall so she could continually adjust her speed on the giant gear.

There were indeed strange layered pattern, like in a baumkuchen or mille-feuille, but these layers were not simply dirt or rock. One layer was packed full of rusty nails, one was filled with wood materials, one contained giant macarons and whipped cream, and one was a solid layer of large clock hands. No two were the same.

Filinion spoke in a trembling voice while clinging to Boo Boo’s waist from the side.

“So high, so high, so high... I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared... But wait, isn’t this Steam Grave 80, Clockwork Resistance 22, Sweets Circuit 32, and Clock Party 45? E-eeeeeeek...”

“That just shows how much we’re skipping past with this shortcut. Honestly, I feel like half of my life is being rejected after risking my life exploring through all that.”

The pit was known as the Central Shaft, but it was not just a straight shot down. The route probably changed automatically so it avoided the other rooms and passageways as the Labyrinth irregularly changed shape. Again and again, it bent at right angles to travel sometimes vertically and sometimes horizontally. The fixation on 90 degree angles may have been to lay out the rails like a jungle gym and thus allow a flat-sided elevator to travel freely in any direction.

Boo Boo and the others picked up speed in the vertical portions and converted their potential energy into kinetic energy to clear the horizontal portions like it was a roller coaster.

The long, long pit twisted and turned like a great serpent with no end in sight.

And she was up ahead.

The Sage. That woman who looked just like Beatrice but was fundamentally different.

Part 8

In the Detached Magic Palace of Roppongi, Tokyo...

“Phew.”

Unless an old-fashioned banquet happened to be held there, the large mansion was always wrapped in deep darkness at night. But that did not mean there was no one inside. Even now, the maid named Iroka wore a cardigan over a dark red camisole, tensed her beautiful face with glasses and a mole below the eye, and stared at the computer in her room.

As rare as they were these days, she had a tower-style computer designed with internal upgrades in mind, but it was nothing more than a terminal. The actual computer was a giant supercomputer filling 1/3 of the space below the Detached Magic Palace’s grounds.

She tapped her glasses by her temple a few times and then searched through the past logs yet again. It did not add up no matter how many times she checked, but it had happened regardless.

This was the eldest sister’s room, but Misoka, the 2nd sister, was lying on the bed in a bath towel and munching on fried squid.

“How many times have you checked now? I’m telling you, you just aren’t going to find how she got in.”

“This is my duty.”

“Governments and agencies around the world are trying to track down where Tselika went. This is out of our hands.”

Yes.

The Nonhuman named Tselika had apparently contacted their master, the girl in a red dress, via her smartphone, but they had failed to trace the connection or even detect its presence at all. The short message still found on the smartphone was starting to feel like a ghost. There was a slight possibility she had forced her way in or taken advantage of some kind of vulnerability, but as time passed, they should have been able to at least figure out what route she used. But this time, there was nothing. When Iroka had first received the report, she had honestly felt her loyalty waver for just a moment. As inappropriate as it was, she had suspected the red dress girl had faked it to test their security.

“A fair amount of time has passed since Tselika made contact.”

“Just a few days.”

“But every government and every agency have been working nonstop and have yet to track her down. At this point, I can only describe it as abnormal.”

They both fell silent at Iroka’s comment.

The look on their faces said they could already partially guess the likely answer.

“If this goes higher than the governments or agencies, there’s only one possibility.”

“Are you suggesting she has reached those Over the Wall people?”

At that moment, a new window opened in a corner of the screen. It was an intruder alert, but from an odd location. Instead of the main gate or the mansion’s front door, a door within the building had opened and closed.

“Curse those perimeter guards. What are they even doing?”

“Did someone get in without the PSIA guards noticing?”

It was like the footprints of a ghost.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

What route had they used to get inside?

“...”

“...”

The maids exchanged a glance and then slowly stood up. Glasses Iroka threw a few small bottles of lotion into her stockings while Sporty Misoka removed the lampshade from a large lamp in a corner of the room.

“You’re kidding right? So with this kind of skill, would it have to be an Over the Wall?”

“It’s too soon to say, but Miss does seem to be having some kind of conflict with the Sage.”

“Either way, Tselika and the Sage are both Over the Wall.”

The maids were tasked with guarding and defending the mansion if it came to it, but they had not been issued any obvious blades or firearms. That was of course to avoid providing political enemies with fodder for scandals. They would rearrange everyday items to kill any heavily-equipped criminal and insist that it had all been justified self-defense. That was the sort of combat skill demanded of maids sent by the state.

The 2nd sister slowly opened the room’s door, checked the dark hallway, and took the lead.

“But why the kitchen? Are they trying to poison the food?”

“Yet if they don’t care if it looks like homicide, there are much simpler and more reliable methods.”

The mansion was large, but they still stopped whispering when they approached the kitchen.

They communicated using hand signals and continued on in.

They could hear it.

There was a disconcerting rummaging sound.

“(The refrigerator.)”

“(The poisoning might be a diversion. Once we’ve settled things with this intruder, we need to check over the entire grounds for bombs or gas containers.)”

It was fortunate their red dress master was absent, but if the Gate was destroyed, she would be unable to return from Ground’s Nir, so the danger remained. They had to quickly settle things with whoever was in the kitchen and then search the entire area.

“(There’s a single person in front of the refrigerator. I’ll charge in, so you follow after a short delay.)”

“(Understood. But we cannot tell how they are equipped with the refrigerator door in the way. If the initial attack fails to finish them off, prepare to keep going even if they take me out.)”

They did not need a countdown.

The 2 maids swiftly but silently charged into the dark kitchen. Whoever was busy sabotaging the contents of the fridge turned back toward them and the fridge’s light illuminated their face.

“Mutter, mutter. Whah ish it, Onee-hyan and Onee-hyan?”

Haruka, the 3rd sister, held a giant sausage in her mouth and carried pork pate, ham, bacon, olives, oil sardines, a menma bottle, bamboo kamaboko, chikuwa, and more in her arms. The glutton wore only the top of a track suit and her small head wobbled back and forth.

While half-asleep, she had apparently been hungry, wandered around, tripped various sensors, and finally reached the kitchen refrigerator.

That would explain the lack of a response from the main gate on the perimeter and the mansion’s front entrance.

The 2 older sisters slowly let out a long, long sigh.

And...

Whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap, whap!!

“Gya, gyaaaaahh!? Eh? Eh? Huh? Why am I in here!? And why are both of you spanking me at once!!!???”

Part 9

“I don’t know when exactly it is.”

In the corner of a room in a completely normal inn in the inn town, Living Spring Roll Sibyl had wrapped multiple sheets around herself to hide her bandaged but otherwise naked body.

“But at some point, the world approaches the moment of its demise. That is hardly surprising since everything ends eventually, but the Sage has apparently directly faced that moment.”

“...So she was sent to the past to cut through that disaster?”

Huldra urged her on with a frown. Doomsday scenarios were common topics of discussion, but she and the others who worked in the underside of history were aware how surprisingly stable the world was. The kind of all-out nuclear war seen in cheap SF movies could not occur so easily.

But Sibyl shook her head.

“No, that’s not quite the right way to look at it. Think of it like a thought experiment where the technology to travel through time is publicly available and not monopolized by anyone.”

“Publicly available...?”

Rusalka trailed off.

Next to her, Huldra drank a clear red liquid. It was probably a perfume that changed her scent from within. As an Alchemist Cheerleader who manipulated her Hate value with makeup, she may have been secretly working at Sibyl’s mind.

Had the Royal Elf intended to reveal everything from the beginning, or was she being lured into it?

Sheet Bagworm Sibyl slowly sighed and kept speaking as if slowly turning some heavy gears.

“They would have no way of knowing if sending someone special to the past would definitively overturn the future. They would not even know if destiny can be manipulated by human hands.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“There would be no need to limit themselves to just one person or to even continue thinking about changing the future.”

The others had a bad feeling about this.

This was supposedly a hypothetical story, but alarm bells went off in the back of Gruagach’s mind, telling her she must not listen to any more of this.

But Sibyl kept talking. As if it was some form of harassment.

“Couldn’t they just send all 7 or 8 billion of them into the distant past?”

It was a frightening idea.

They did not know what kind of problem would occur in the distant future. But even if everyone returned to a point in the past when resources and food were plentiful, what would happen when that many people arrived all at once? The planet would surely be eaten away into a desert planet in no time.

“Well, there’s another trick to it beyond that.”

“?”

“Whatever the case, that does not happen. Because someone already stopped it. Can you now imagine where the Sage may have come from?”

“What are you talking about...?”

“Kudryavka.”

She spoke a certain name.

“The Sage would often call herself that in a self-deprecating way. According to her, she was the final test model and the rest of mankind was meant to follow after her if she succeeded.”

“But that didn’t happen. So was the Sage deemed a failure?”

“If so, she could not be here now.”

There was only one other possibility: she had succeeded, but the migration of mankind had not begun. Why would that be? There was only one answer that would lead to that contradictory conclusion.

“After the Sage traveled back on time, she used all of her power to go around destroying the technology needed for 4th-dimensional travel. Thus, no one else could follow. To protect everything else, she abandoned her own era. She decided to take a one-way trip.”

The name Kudryavka had been mentioned.

That dog had become history’s first to leave the earth when placed on a spaceship launched by the Soviets. The data taken from her had been used to ensure a safe trip to space, but her own safety had not been guaranteed.

“She had no place on Earth, so she apparently found living as a stranger in Ground’s Nir more comfortable. Her friendship with the Iberian Orcs was not done out of self-interest. She was saved by the kindness of those who reached out a hand when she thought she could only wander for all eternity.”

But good intentions did not necessarily lead to good actions.

“But that is why,” said Sibyl, “the Sage cannot stop now. She was unable to save those who saved her and they even thanked her for killing them, so she was not even given a chance to be judged for her crimes. And I do not think she was wrong either. She pulled that sorrowful trigger to oppose where the world was headed.”

Part 10

In her red armor and white miniskirt, the Sage stood motionless in the center of the elevator that was too large to ride alone but too small for the powerful Iberian Orcs to ride as a group.

She had constructed it at the request of the elder and other Iberian Orcs. The Enter Kosmos project to the east had attempted to stop the irregular changes to the Labyrinth by forcibly driving a giant wedge into it, but since that had failed miserably, she had not stuck to that shape. The shaft bent flexibly to match the Labyrinth’s changes and automatically redesigned itself to reach the bottom without running into the rooms or pathways, no matter what structure they had. She had been ecstatic upon completing it, but even this large elevator had not been enough to carry them all. They seemed to mostly use their great muscular strength to directly cling to the shaft and descend that way.

(And in the end, it comes to this.)

It had taken quite a long time, but nothing had gone according to plan. Boo Boo had not created a new village. Sibyl’s intellectual mind had failed to comprehend the Iberian Orc tactics which were rooted in combat instincts, so her false reproductions created from residual memories had only been able to do so much. It had taken far too many corpses to create just the one Disaster, so a mass-produced unit had been out of reach.

And now Lorelei.

It now behaved like one of the Break News, but the Sage herself had originally created it as a demonic sword that easily placed its wielder in the position of the strongest. She had hoped to create a power to use in place of the Iberian Orcs who had felt bound by their duty. In the end, its immense power would drive your body and mind out of control if you did not gradually familiarize yourself with its power in stages, so she had been forced to leave it in the hands of the Iberian Orcs who already knew how to control great strength.

Lorelei had remained in their village for a while and she had asked them to use their excellent minds to construct a means of perfectly controlling it, but it had gone missing during the confusion of the purge. Their elder had bowed down to her and insisted it was necessary, but she was still ashamed. She had worked alongside the delinquent soldiers of Elkiad, so some idiot must have stooped to looting as well as slaughtering.

The Iberian Orcs had been everything to her.

When she described it as an enjoyable period of her life, it was always their smiling faces that came to mind.

She still remembered it so vividly.

The round children had looked like stuffed animals as they ran around the village. Those true heroes had had the greatest power and yet had not drowned in it. They had never used their strength for anything besides their self-sufficient lifestyle or their duty to protect everyone. They had lived a simple but warm life in the village. To avoid unnecessary confusion, the Sage had arrived through a tunnel leading directly to the elder’s house from an area far from the village, but listening to the happy voices outside the house and peeking out through the gaps in the large leaf entrance had cleansed her heart.

They had asked her to tell them a human word that represented the ideas of “amazing”, “big”, and “reliable” and she had answered half in jest, so she had panicked a little when it had stuck.

They had been kind people.

As a result of breeding with all kinds of animals and plants and taking in the strengths of those other species, they had been stuck on the path of decay, as if their blood was rusting. But even though she had been no help there, they had thanked the Sage to the very, very end.

They had asked her to look after the sole surviving child and the world.

They had said she could handle the task posed by the Ground’s Nir monster awaiting completion in the depths of the Labyrinth.

That was all there was.

Traces of happiness. Dregs of kindness.

The Sage had utterly ended it all and that was why she had had nothing else to cling to.

It must have been a complete disaster for those caught in the middle. This enveloped both Earth and Ground’s Nir, so she could not look anyone in the eye.

But she would follow through to the end.

She might become a wandering empty shell of a person, detached from reality, but she would keep the promise she had made, no matter how twisted it had become.

That was her decision.

So...

“I wonder if Boo Boo will show up even though he knows he’ll lose.”

As soon as she whispered that, a gray pig-faced giant fell atop the giant single-panel elevator. The Sage was truly frustrated to see Beatrice, Filinion, Armelina, and Wildefrau with him. If the shape of his bonds had been just a little twisted or if he had held even a hint of obvious wicked thoughts or greed, he might have done exactly what the elder had wanted and attempted to fight the monster with a new village.

Once her thoughts reached that point, a faint smile appeared on the Sage’s lips.

...I suppose that wasn’t really an option.

The Sage was a woman, so if she had wanted to, she could have approached ignorant Boo Boo and introduced him to such things. But she could not imagine that working. If Boo Boo had been knowledgeable in such things and continued making the same choices, she doubted he would have gathered as many companions. The Sage had felt no qualms about involving 2 entire worlds for her own dried-out objective, but even she had been hesitant to destroy that.

Beatrice had been clinging to Boo Boo’s head, but she jumped down to the floor and asked a question.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing really.”

The Sage casually responded while lightly tapping the pommel of her sheathed Shining Weapon.

She spoke to the girl standing beside the gray pig-faced giant. To someone who was doing something she never could.

“I just thought it was interesting that everything you are building up will create my own flesh and blood.”

“I have no interest in who you are. Even if you are me. Boo Boo said he would forgive me even if I committed a great crime. He said he would forgive me even as I pitifully trembled in fear of punishment! So I won’t fear the worst case scenario. Even if there is no changing what you did, I can flatten it down and begin building anew! And I’ll build up all sorts of things you never did!!”

“I see, I see, I see.”

The beautiful woman in red armor and a miniskirt repeated the phrase in a singsong way and stopped toying with the pommel. She used her dominant left hand to silently squeeze the grip of the sheathed Shining Weapon rapier.

She had slayed many foes on the way here. The remains of their Shining Weapons could be seen as gravestones and she had gathered them all together to expand this weapon.

She drew that tower of death.

The distorted blade shined and an even more tattered smile appeared on her face as she spoke.

“That’s really not fair, Beatrice.”

Part 11

Even as she spoke those words, a sinister magic circle danced on the Sage’s back and the hellfire produced by the pieced-together sword in her left hand fully blossomed as a bright and colorful flower.

“Fire Thro-...”

“Metal Je- Black Smo- Napalm Fi- Cause an Expl- Fry As- Shockwa- Steam We- Spark Stor- Hot Fire!”

She stuck to fire. Before Beatrice could release a single piece of Magic, the Sage simply spun the tip of her sword in a large circle to send out a fierce storm of dozens...no, a hundred times as much Magic. Beatrice had learned a total of 14,000 Magic spells, but she was still swallowed up by the maelstrom of light and sound, even if she could still neutralize all damage with her 100% Fire Resistance.

“Beatrice!!”

The first to move was Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau who specialized in the opposite Water Element. There was no need to hold back at this point. She released the many belts binding her body, grabbed the cross-shaped sword, and forcefully drew it from the scabbard. It produced true absolute zero. A magic circle appeared in the center of the cross-shaped sword. By freezing everything, including normal gases like oxygen and hydrogen, it provided the triple threat of extreme low temperature, asphyxiation, and no air pressure. That made it a cruel but powerful anti-personnel attack.

Wildefrau’s absolute zero vacuum provided similar damage to throwing one’s opponent into cold outer space where no sunlight reached, but...

“100% Water Resistance. Did you think only you could use that?”

“Wha-!?”

Those simple words overturned everything. The woman who should have died did not. Wildefrau was as confused as someone seeing a decapitated knight continue to walk around, but the hands of the clock were still moving.

And it was not the Ice Waterfall Princess that the Sage singled out.

She continued to wear down Beatrice, but with a maelstrom of Water Element Magic this time.

“Water Je- Liquid Hamm- Teamwo- Bock Bod- Sickle Mete- Aqua Clo- Cloud Whi- Snake Wat- Light Blood!”

There was no relying on Elemental Defense this time. Even the red veteran Holy Swordswoman would take damage from water Magic. All sorts of Magic poured toward her like horizontal rain and a single hit would tear her body limb from limb and blow her to pieces.

“...!!!???”

Wildefrau placed a magic circle on her sword and rushed in between them.

She had 100% Water Resistance. For this one moment, she could negate any damage from 100 or even 1000 attacks at once.

“In that case...”

Something audibly sliced sharply through the air as the Sage pointed her patchwork rapier toward the heavens.

“Wind or Earth? Wouldn’t 100 attacks from either splatter you across the floor in a single second?”

“!! Boo Boo, match your timing to mine!! It’s time to attack!!”

“Boo!! Understood, Armelina!!”

A rush from anything but Fire or Water would crush them all before they could dodge or defend, so the only way to survive was to make sure the Sage did not have time to leisurely use that Magic. Boo Boo and Armelina’s thinking was not exactly wrong.

However...

“Not good enough.”

She spun around.

Showing no concern for the miniskirt exposing her thighs right up to the base, the Sage whirled her body around. Once she had built up plenty of centrifugal force, she released a high spin kick toward the center of 4m Boo Boo’s gut. He placed his thick Shining Weapon in the way to defend, but it was all useless. The immense kinetic energy released from her heel caused the pig-faced giant to bend and then fly backwards.

“...!!!!!!”

Armelina clenched her teeth, but she could only continue on while assuming Boo Boo had given her an opening. They had attacked simultaneously, so the Sage’s body was defenselessly exposed after launching the wide spin kick. Armelina could do it now. She changed her Shining Weapon metal staff into a ball-and-chain and raised it in preparation.

Then the Sage vanished.

A silver flash of light took her place. Time seemed to stop and the cold realization that she was about to be cut through raced down Armelina’s back. She had concluded the flash came from a blade.

But she was wrong.

It was instead the path of the Sage’s heel blurring like a tail light.

She had no idea how many times she was hit.

Countless dull pains raced through her entire body, she entered a tailspin, and she rolled backwards.

“Ah, ah, ahhh...”

The direct combat level cappers and the Iberian Orc had been swept aside in the blink of an eye. Filinion, their healer, was the only one left and she felt like she was inside a castle tower as the castle burned and fell to the enemy.

The Sage spun around to look her way.

She looked the defenseless White Witch in her fearful eyes.

She adjusted her grip on the patchwork Shining Weapon and moved her alluring lips to whisper the words of death.

“Blade Roc-...”

A giant form charged in toward the Sage from the side. After being knocked away, Boo Boo had gotten back up and, without using his log of a Shining Weapon, made a full-power tackle as if to shatter the Sage’s slender waist.

Not even a large trailer truck crashing at full speed could have produced as dreadful a noise.

But...

“100% Impact Resistance.”

She was unharmed. Entirely unscathed.

The Sage’s slender waist was fine and her feet had not slid even a centimeter along the floor.

“You can do it with physical attacks too!?”

Armelina roared at her from the floor, but the Sage remained motionless. Her fist flew toward defenseless Boo Boo with her weapon’s handguard acting like brass knuckles. Someone on her level would be able to beat down an Iberian Orc while unarmed. And once that was complete, she would take out their healer, Filinion. The White Witch was the cornerstone of their tactics, so with her gone, Beatrice and the others would be tormented to death.

But the great noise that burst out was metallic in nature.

It was not the sound of flesh being struck.

Then everyone noticed that Boo Boo had just barely slipped his Shining Weapon in to block the handguard the Sage tried to hit him with. Unlike the previous spin kick, this attack had not had her body weight or centrifugal force behind it.

The sound of his bones creaking filled the space.

With the Sage’s strength, breaking the weapon and Boo Boo’s arm would be a simple task. But Boo Boo was not defeated. He could not be broken here.

“I won’t give up. I will reach a future where Beatrice and the others can return with smiles on their faces...”

“That isn’t your decision.” The Sage’s expression was unconcerned. “It is mine as the victor.”

With another great noise, the Sage’s eyebrows rose slightly. It was the look of someone finding a supposedly simple calculation was not adding up. She seemed to find it odd that he still persisted.

“Besides, there was something strange about what Beatrice and the others said and what you said. It never made much sense to me.”

“For example?”

The patchwork blade grew red hot.

Many pieces of Fire Magic struck Boo Boo like a point-blank range shotgun blast. He did not have Elemental Defense like Beatrice and the others did. If he did not dodge, he had to hope his tough skin could stop it. But he clenched his teeth. Even as he slid along the floor, he swung his Shining Weapon and knocked down the next round of Magic.

“If you really are Beatrice, why do you hold your sword in your left hand? Beatrice has always been right-handed!”

“Ha ha. Is that all!? How much time do you think I spent coming this far, Boo Boo? Is it that surprising that a few traits might change in that time?”

Something swished through the air again and again.

The smiling Sage was tossing her patchwork sword from one hand to the other and back again.

“Besides, I’m just as strong with my right.”

“That’s enough, Boo Boo! Dodge!!”

Beatrice’s shout was immediately followed by dozens of ice spears flying toward the Iberian Orc. He shattered them with his giant Shining Weapon, but the small shards were still sharp blades. This only increased the number of attacks and his entire body was exposed to a downpour of glass.

A rusty smell filled the space.

But Boo Boo did not give up. Even with his tough skin torn and bloody, his knees did not bend.

“Bh, gh...squeal... And that weapon...is strange too. I don’t really get the Magic that humans use, but Beatrice’s has a cleaner shape. It’s not all pieced together and beaten up like that...!”

“Wouldn’t it be odder if I was still using the same weapon after so much time? The march of technological progress is a fast one. Clinging to an obsolete Shining Weapon would only work against me.”

This time, it was wind.

Several violent gusts whirled around the Sage and detonated on her signal. An invisible wall raged out with the force of an explosion and pushed the ice blades even deeper into Boo Boo’s flesh.

There was a low roar, but Boo Boo planted his feet firmly on the floor and held his ground.

No scream escaped his tightly clenched teeth. He was still fighting.

“Then!! It really is strange!!”

“Boo...Boo...?”

Battered Beatrice looked up at that precious person’s profile.

He continued glaring at the Sage and spoke words sharper than the ice blades.

“Then why are you wearing the same red armor as Beatrice!? You said it yourself: technology progresses quickly, so you wouldn’t stick with the same equipment forever! I know humans wear Magic in the shape of clothes. And I know a single choice can change their strength considerably! So!! It makes no sense for you to choose the exact same clothes as the Beatrice here ‘now’!! It would only make sense if you were wearing something else entirely!!!!!”

“...Ah...”

Beatrice looked back and forth between the Sage and Boo Boo.

The Sage was still smiling. No, it looked more like her smile had frozen.

“The tree diagram of Magic is not infinite. There is a limit that-...”

“If Beatrice was already the strongest she could be and had no room for growth and thus no reason to change her clothes, then it makes no sense for there to be such a large gap between your powers.”

Yes.

That was right.

The Sage’s Stats were ridiculous, but she would have to rely on her Percentage-type equipment that was her clothing. But in that case, why did she look so much like Beatrice? If she was dressed the same as Beatrice, she would have the same adjustments as Beatrice. But that was not the case. The Sage had made an unnecessary detour to dress just like Beatrice and yet produce entirely different values. That would be 2 or 3 times more difficult than simply coordinating her outfit for optimal strength.

Why would she go to all that extra effort?

What reason was there besides fooling someone and deceiving everyone?

“I know.” Bloody Boo Boo spoke while breathing heavily. “I’ve watched Beatrice more than anyone, so I know things about her not even she knows. There’s a small mole on the back of her neck near the nape, hidden by her long hair. You wouldn’t have known that was there!!”

Beatrice gasped and reached for the back of her neck.

If this was the same person with the same equipment, that would be definitive proof. If there was no mole on the Sage’s neck, it would mean she was not the same person as the real Beatrice.

The Sage remained motionless for a while.

Then her empty right hand silently moved. It looked like she was brushing back her long hair, but that was not it.

She was revealing the nape of her neck behind the left ear. Seeing that, Beatrice’s vision nearly blacked out. The Sage was not hiding it. Nor was she hesitating. Which meant...

“Is this good enough for you, Boo Boo?”

Beatrice felt a shock like having a stake driven through her heart. He had said he would forgive her and he had consoled her, telling her not to fear the worst, but it still weighed heavily on her to have it confirmed as truth.

“Yes.”

But that was not what this was.

Boo Boo had more to say.

“That’s enough. Beatrice has no mole on the back of her neck.”

This time, the flow of time really did seem to freeze.

Beatrice could not check the back of her neck, so she had to receive confirmation from Wildefrau who had fallen in a tangled pile with her.

“You’re kidding... There really isn’t anything there...???”

After initially adjusting your appearance, it would not change within Ground’s Nir even if you put on or took off your equipment. That meant the Sage had to have done something else to add this mole. Perhaps some kind of disguise Magic.

“Having everything go your way ended up working against you, Sage. But I won’t let your disguise fool me any longer.”

Once more...no, as many times as it took, Boo Boo moved his bloody body, clenched his teeth, and adjusted his grip on his Shining Weapon.

“You aren’t Beatrice. I can tell because I’ve watched her more than anyone. I don’t know who you are, but I know more about Beatrice than you do!”

“...So what?”

The weapon in her left hand and the entire left half of the Sage’s body were enveloped in hellfire.

This was somehow different from before. He had incurred her wrath now.

“What does it matter that you’ve found some excuse to claim I’m not Beatrice, Boo Boo!?”

Boo Boo spun his Shining Weapon around and held it tightly.

And he made an announcement as if to shake off the ominous rusty smell of death with his own bestial odor.

“Isn’t it obvious? Now I have no reason to hold back as I beat you to a pulp.”

Part 12

When you got down to it, this was only an issue of the heart. No matter how much he cornered her with his words, he could not overturn the actual difference in power.

Or so it might seem, but that was not true.

The previous exchange had contained a truly important fact.

“Hmm?”

In an inn room, Alchemist Cheerleader Huldra sat in a chair with one leg bent so she could use a small piece of cotton soaked in nail polish remover to remove the pedicure adorning her toenails. This was a very risqué pose with regards to her mini-China pajamas and the base of her thighs.

She was adjusting her Hate value to loosen Sibyl’s tongue.

Sibyl stared at those toes as she spoke.

“For one thing, how was the Sage able to reproduce Beatrice’s appearance so thoroughly? Adjusting her equipment can theoretically induce a certain amount of change, but reproducing it to that level would be nearly impossible. But that is why you can find such deep karma there.”

“?”

“I said that all of mankind planned to migrate into the past to escape destruction in the distant future, didn’t I? But simply transferring the people would cause the world’s resources and food supply to dry up in no time. Simply put, the total population would more than double in size with the people of the future and the past.”

“Are you saying there was a way to solve that problem?” asked Gruagach.

“It’s something you all have come into contact without questioning it.”

While wrapped up as a living spring roll in a corner of the room, Sibyl flicked something into the air using her thumb.

It was one of the Gimmick Gears used as currency.

“Now, a question: why is this Gear considered to be as valuable as money?”

“Well, because analyzing the Gear can provide a lot of Experience P-...”

Rusalka trailed off.

Huldra and Gruagach exchanged a glance.

“Yes.” Sibyl toyed with the Gear in her hand. “Experience Points.”

A great roar exploded out.

The Sage’s attack was as fierce as ever and facing it head-on would undoubtedly lead to death.

Fire, Water, Wind, Earth...and various kinds of physical attacks. She fully covered all Elements and truly stood at the peak of all Magic, so a straight fight with her would be suicide.

Or it should have been.

However...

“Boo!! Beatrice, Wildefrau!! Don’t stay in one place!! We all need to surround her!! She doesn’t want us to attack from multiple directions at once!!”

Boo Boo gave instructions while holding White Witch Filinion under his arm.

“...”

For the Sage, crushing them one at a time was a surefire way of destroying them as they surrounded her, so she should not have needed to panic. However...

“Armelina!!”

A splendid metallic sound shook the air.

The Sage’s eyes had pursued Wildefrau and her 100% Water Resistance, but a ball-and-chain had slammed into her from the side.

However, the Sage had not even bothered to block it with her patchwork blade. The metal ball had collided with her temple, but she did not so much as budge.

She glared over at the Fighter Priest.

“100% Impact Resistance. Have you already forgotten?”

“...!!”

Armelina began flinch back, but Boo Boo gave a shout.

“That doesn’t matter!! It’s true hitting you won’t get through to you, but as long as we keep hitting you, you have to keep defending against those attacks. You can’t ignore them! After all...!!”

“Ah,” said Filinion as he carried her around.

Boo Boo filled in the puzzle pieces.

“You don’t always have full coverage for every Element! Boo, it’s the same as that mole! You swap in the Element you need at the moment, so it looks like you’re fine no matter what!!”

It was true that the Sage had let fly great torrents of Magic and that she had swapped out the Element to attack the weaknesses in their Elemental Defenses.

But she had never used multiple Elements at once.

When using fire, she had used only fire. When using ice, she had used only ice.

Altogether, it looked like she was using every Element, but when looking at any moment in isolation, it looked like she was focusing on a single Element!

“Your total amount of Experience Points wasn’t that different from ours,” said Beatrice in shock.

And her voice soon rose to a shout.

“But those Experience Points aren’t fixed!? Are you freely reallocating them however you see fit!? Is that why it looks so much like you have every Element!?”

“...!!!???”

A single mole could move beyond the psychological and change the tide of an actual battle. To support Armelina, Boo Boo grabbed his giant Shining Weapon and faced the Sage once more.

All so that he could pass the final baton to Beatrice, who he so cared for!!

“So what will happen if Beatrice or Wildefrau attack you with fire or ice as if stabbing you in the side? You have to keep defending against the hits from the front, so you won’t be able to defend against the other Element!”

The air roared.

The air wrapped stickily around Armelina’s blunt weapon and Beatrice’s flames as they swung their Shining Weapons toward the Sage.

“...No.”

But.

But.

But!!

“100% Impact Resistance. 100% Fire Resistance.”

Her voice was no more than a whisper.

She did not fall back even after having her secret revealed. The Sage exposed her body to the multiple attacks and stood stock still with a grin on her lips.

“Have you forgotten? I can freely reallocate my Experience Points. This isn’t a problem as long as I can reach for multiple Elemental Defenses instead of focusing on just one.”

It was a nightmarish answer.

Armelina had attacked from the front and Beatrice from the side, but the Sage was unharmed. That vision was more effective at breaking their will to fight than any attack.

But they still could not give up.

There was no need to.

People who only believed what they saw with their own eyes would be fooled by prestidigitation. But if they thought about it for themselves and made links in their mind, they would not be led astray.

“Boo. Then why didn’t you do that from the beginning?”

“...”

“You had no real reason to hold back. There’s only one reason why you would still stick to using only one Element for attack and defense.”

“Sage, it may be true you can reach multiple Elemental Defenses at once.”

Beatrice kept pushing on her blade that would never reach her opponent and she smiled at close range. The magic circle on her back spewed explosive flames.

“But once you do that, you lose your all-around perfection. After all, the total amount of Experience Points available to you doesn’t change! Reaching 100% resistance isn’t easy. The quadratic curve requires so many Experience Points as you approach 100% that a lot of people claim it simply isn’t worth it! Once you’ve applied your Experience Points to reach 100% for multiple Elemental Defenses, you don’t have enough left over for any attack Magic, do you? In that case, your situation will only get worse and worse!!”

At first glance, it might seem that the Sage still had the superior position.

Even if she could not attack, she maintained her invincibility. So it might sound like she only had to close herself up and wait for a chance to counterattack.

“You understand, don’t you?”

But that was not the case.

The crux of the issue lay elsewhere.

“Our equipment is Percentage-type Magic that takes that form. We can’t wear equipment that forcibly increases our Parameters by surpassing the limits of our Willpower. We select equipment that fits within the determined value and use what’s left over for our Command-type Magic.”

Beatrice pierced right to the center.

She pushed her rapier forward with her dominant hand while using her other to point back over her shoulder with her thumb.

“So you can’t keep defending forever. You have Impact Resistance and Fire Resistance, but we still have Wildefrau. She can slice you with her sword and then finish you off with ice. Do you have the Experience Points needed to cover both Cut Resistance and Water Resistance, Sage!?”

“!?”

The Sage’s eyebrows moved slightly at that.

It may have been possible for her to squeeze out enough Experience Points. She might have been able to reach 100% for Impact Resistance, Fire Resistance, Cut Resistance, and Water Resistance.

But she should have realized something else.

Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau specialized in her absolute zero attack which required Water Resistance, but she could also making cutting attacks. So the shape of the weapon could provide normal physical attacks without relying on the standard Elements.

And Beatrice had intentionally avoided mentioning a certain attack.

The Sage’s Elemental Defense was switched on and off as she announced them, so she could not automatically defend against an attack she was not aware of.

Now, what was the Shining Weapon the red Holy Swordswoman held?

Yes, the tip was flat as it was used for Magic, but it was still a rapier.

“...!! A piercing attack!?”

At first, no hint of concern appeared on the Sage’s beautiful face.

But a fearless smile came to Beatrice’s lips as she responded.

“No, Weasel’s Cut.”

This time.

This time, all emotion briefly vanished from the Sage’s eyes.

Her mind went blank.

“The temperature difference in the air creates a pressure change which produces a vacuum blade tornado! It’s the Wind Element!!”

There was one thing about Beatrice one must never forget.

That Holy Swordswoman had mastered 14,000 kinds of Fire Magic, but she could use those flames to make attacks in any Element and had even fought on equal footing with Boo Boo once.

“The Shining Weapons and Gates have always been terminals meant to manage the Experience Points earned by you humans. The data is manipulated from Earth and used here. So there is a way to use that.”

When Sibyl explained that, Huldra gulped.

“It is true they have no effect until we cross between worlds. So what are you saying? The Sage is a completely different person who had the exact same Experience Points as Beatrice injected into her!?”

“This is not simply talking about techniques and knowledge. After all, the points represent all experiences. This goes beyond simply adjusting her equipment, so it probably would greatly change her facial and skeletal structure.”

People’s appearances were changed by their daily experiences. A diet or physical training were obvious examples, but the amount one ate or drank, the amount of UV rays from the sun, and the amount of stress or sleep also had an effect.

“What is an individual? How do you define someone’s body, appearance, mind, or soul? There is no clear answer, but it is true that experience has a significant effect on them all. People’s inborn traits, their surrounding environment, and the path they walk are all used to hone themselves as they seek their endpoint. All while they take in and accept it all as experiences: good or bad, reasonable or unreasonable. You could view the manipulation of Experience Points as intentionally moving to a different set of rails and removing all random chance from the changes made to you. It means to develop yourself just like choosing a path along the tree diagram of Magic. That flexibility goes well beyond what you call selective breeding or gene manipulation, as those can only influence inborn talent.”

It was just like the preset examples for Character Creation. It was like choosing the Job, equipment, and Magic recommended by a guidebook or website. Injecting yourself with all of Beatrice’s Experience Points was exactly the same as following the path she took and learning all of her idiosyncrasies and traits while Leveling Up from the beginning.

“It is the same as great pressure creating jewels underground. Of course, not everyone can become her. It may have been rare to find a specimen with such a perfect aptitude for the Beatrice Model to be flawlessly remade into her both inside and out. ...And that must be what allowed her to accomplish that irregular reallocation.”

“You make it sound like the queen bee and worker bees that divided by the queen substance and the royal jelly. Why the obsession with Beatrice?”

Gruagach sounded nearly speechless.

Sibyl sighed.

“She is one of humanity’s strongest, one of the representative level cappers. In other words, she was a success model. The Sage was originally a Kudryavka for 4th-dimensional travel, so they probably wanted someone with a powerful body and clever mind who could withstand a great change to her environment. If the decision had gone slightly differently, they may have chosen the Filinion Model or the Armelina Model.”

“Huh? But does that mean the Sage only looks just like Beatrice while in Ground’s Nir? Does she become someone else entirely when she returns to Earth?”

“I have no way of seeing things on Earth, so I can’t really say. But if so, I doubt she would have felt like she lost everything.”

“You mean...?”

“Just as there is a wall between Ground’s Nir and Earth, there is a wall between the future and the past. If her appearance is adjusted when she crosses that barrier, she will still be someone who has ‘breached the impassable barrier’ whether on Earth or Ground’s Nir, so I suppose she would remain as the Beatrice Model.”

Sibyl took a slow breath and shook her head.

“The Sage always spent an excessive amount of time in Ground’s Nir. I don’t know how many safe houses she has on Earth, but she had to have spent most of her time here in Ground’s Nir. I think she returned for the bare minimum required to recover her internal clock and such. It really didn’t seem like she was looking for a place for herself on Earth.”

The transfer of Experience Points.

As long as they found a way to do that, the population would not increase.

Even if they sent 7 or 8 billion people into the past, the food supply and resources would not dry up. As long as there was no extreme difference between the two populations, the one-way immigration would be a success. As long as you had a clump of carbon to receive the great pressure, you could make a jewel. They only had to remake their bodies, inside and out, into someone else so perfectly that their parents could not tell them apart. They had to accept that it was the people who would be devoured. And as long as they were aware that the future would be destroyed, they need not fear any time paradoxes.

But...

“Then who is the person who became a special bee?”

“That would be the Sage. The Beatrice Model Sage.”

“No, not that. Who was she before being remade by the Experience Points!?”

“It’s because she doesn’t know that that she has no choice but to cling to her position as the Sage, as the powerful Beatrice Model.”

It was unclear if the current Sage was primarily the Experience Points from the future or the specimen in the past, but she was still the Kudryavka for a 4th-dimensional travel experiment and had traveled to the past ahead of everyone else. But before the benefits of that experiment could be shared with the future human race, she had cut all ties and stopped the mass immigration. There was no way to know what had happened in the future, but with their 4th-dimensional escape route gone, they had likely been destroyed.

Why had she gone that far?

The answer to that could be found here.

“4th-dimensional travel via Experience Points was hailed as a new freedom that used every human being in the corresponding time period as a resource. To put it another way, it allowed them to destroy the human race at some point in the past in order to save themselves. The Sage cut all ties in order to protect everyone from that method. As a result, the modern Kudryavka was not caught in the future destruction and found herself trapped in a cage fare more lonely than outer space.”

They worked together perfectly.

Boo Boo, Armelina, and Wildefrau launched their strongest attacks and Beatrice caught the Sage completely off guard by using fire as a starting point to use Magic of a different Element.

The Sage had not expected the attack at all.

Weasel’s Cut enveloped the target in a tornado created from vacuum blades.

A dreadful roar seemed to compress space and several jewel-like drops of red flew through the air.

The Sage’s beautiful skin had been so untouchable, but now it was marred by countless small cuts. And it decorated the air with beautiful blood drops.

The Sage had not covered all forms of attack and defense from the beginning. She had rearranged her Experience Points to match the situation and freely reset her tree diagram of Magic to produce attack and defense of whichever Element she needed. If the amount was set, then there was a limit to what she could respond to.

Boo Boo and the others still did not know how she had managed something as ridiculous as rearranging her Experience Points.

But they still got an attack in. They had proven that she was not an absolute existence. She had to observe her enemy to predict their Element and then manually select her Resistance, so there were countless ways to fool her.

There were about 32 ways this could play out from here.

Now that she was actually injured, the Sage would definitely have to increase her Wind Resistance. If she did not fill in that weakness, she would be bisected. But if they knew she was going to defend against that, they only had to use a different Element.

They got ahead of her.

They surpassed her.

The Sage had always continued forward no matter what happened. But Beatrice’s group had stepped out ahead of her!!

“Oh.”

For the first time.

For the very first time in this battle, a look of true desperation appeared on the Sage’s face.

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!”

Something happened.

It was not over yet.

She held her patchwork rapier in her left hand, but her right hand remained oddly empty. The fingers of the gauntlet burst. From the back of the hand to the fingertips, it transformed into 5 translucent red blades that seemed to be made of glass. They jutted out far narrower and longer than the rapier.

Lorelei gave one the strongest power.

What had ever happened with that?

“But no matter what might happen, I am the last of the Royal Elves. I was certainly surprised when someone approached and immediately said I seemed nostalgic. Even after she explained her situation, there was only so much I could do.”

Sibyl narrowed her eyes and sounded like she was recalling a distant memory.

“My Skill materializes residual memories. I could not reproduce the techniques of the destroyed Iberian Orcs, but I was able to bring back a few valuable documents.”

Yes.

For example...

“The wall painting depicting the secret method of fully controlling Lorelei.”

The final attack moved beyond the Sage’s own ability to reallocate her Experience Points. That was why it smashed the assumption that she could not counterattack when forcibly bringing multiple Elemental Defenses up to 100%. Lorelei itself was supposedly a Break News that easily granted its wielder their image of the strongest. It was plain as day what flaw the Sage would think needed fixing.

“Melt Cutting!!”

“Cold Edge!!”

Multiple magic circles shined and blades cut at her from the left and right simultaneously, but the Sage did not move. Simply by standing in place, she deflected the Shining Weapons of the Holy Swordswoman and Ice Waterfall Princess.

“Full defense for all Elements.”

“...”

That alone was frightening. An Elemental Defense required massive amounts of Experience Points as it approached 100% as a quadratic curve, so maxing out every Element was insane.

But she did not stop there.

Lorelei’s violence went much further.

“Equals unlimited automatic Experience Point acquisition.”

“...!!!??? You don’t have to fight or explore the Labyrinth? Just by holding it, it gives you an inexhaustible supply of Experience Points!?”

In a way, that may have been an item anyone would covet.

And if she would automatically receive more Experience Points than she could ever use, she could bring every single Elemental Defense up to 100%. Not only that, she could also reach every single attack Magic on the Magic tree diagram. She could have it all without bothering to reallocate anything.

The Sage had filled in her gaps.

A counterattack of overwhelming destruction was finally beginning.

And if an attack with another Element could not slip through any longer, Boo Boo and Armelina’s lives would be snuffed out as they made their physical attacks from right in front of her. They knew that, but there was nothing more they could do.

Things were already on the move. The scales were tilting toward defeat.

But just before that happened, bewitching laughter slipped into their ears.

“Everyone, aren’t you forgetting someone?”

A voice followed.

It came from Boo Boo’s side. Until now, ‘Anatomia Puzzle’ Filinion had been nothing but a burden in glasses, but now she threw some colorful test tubes toward the Sage.

She was only a healer, the cornerstone of support that could not cause any direct damage.

But that was not necessarily true.

The Sage had announced that she would take no damage from Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, or any kind of physical attack. The same was likely true for Status Effects such as poison and paralysis.

But that was exactly the point.

“There is no real reason to negate healing.”

“?”

“So no matter what Elemental Defense you have, you can’t negate healing.”

There was a splashing sound.

The Sage had merely watched the colorful test tubes because she had assumed the glasses girl was only throwing them away, but it was too late to stare in shock now.

Beatrice knew what it was.

That potion had healed her back tooth without altering her sensitive face in the slightest.

But...

“Take this: a reconstructive healing potion that heals all wounds!! But in exchange, it saps the Willpower you need to use Magic!!”

“Wha-...?”

What would happen if she was hit with more and more of those special recovery potions that came at a great cost?

Nothing more was necessary.

No matter how many Experience Points she built up and how much Magic she learned, Magic was Magic.

Magic had to consume Willpower to be released into the world.

That was true of the Command-style that produced fire or ice from a Shining Weapon and of the Percentage-type that took the form of clothing to change one’s Parameters or increase one’s Elemental Defenses.

“You can no longer use Magic.”

So what would happen if all of that Willpower was taken away?

What would happen now that she was out of gas and the breaker had been thrown?

Even the invisible Elemental Defenses were subconscious Magic. They would no longer function once the Willpower at the foundation was stripped away.

...Lorelei would easily grant its wielder their idea of the strongest, but it would take advantage of the weaknesses.

That blade had become a legend of its own, so was it now swallowing up its own creator?

“It’s time you were defeated, Sage! As no more than a normal person!!”

Finally. Truly finally, a magic circle exploded from Beatrice’s back now that everyone had passed her the baton. Her rapier roared through the air, flames blazed out along its path, and it scored a direct hit on the Sage’s stomach.

With a great din, the Sage was blown away.

This faceless person had adjusted their clothing Magic and rearranged their Experience Points to maintain the illusion that they were Beatrice. Beatrice’s eyes met that person’s for just a moment.

The Sage reached out her Lorelei-transformed right hand as if trying to grab something.

Was she trying to reach Beatrice? Or Boo Boo?

Long silver and red hair flew, spread out, and revealed the skin a bit behind the left ear.

There was no mole there.

They had concluded that she had hastily added it unnecessarily when Boo Boo had made his false claim.

But wasn’t there another way to look at it, even if it felt like overthinking things?

What if the real Beatrice had learned to transform at some point? If she had never had the mole but hastily added it after Boo Boo’s false claim, did that really prove anything at all?

It all remained foggy.

It was like searching for the top and bottom side of a Moebius strip.

Before any answer could be found, the Sage slammed into the layered wall of the shaft and then fell. Boo Boo and Beatrice both ran over, but they did not arrive in time. Their outstretched hands felt nothing in their grasp and the Sage simply fell. She slipped through the gap between the large elevator floor and the shaft wall and then she vanished into the seemingly bottomless darkness below.

Part 13

No one moved for a while.

The only sound was that of the large gears moving.

“Is it...over?”

Beatrice eventually spoke.

She had made the final attack, but it did not seem real even to her.

That barrier had been far too great.

But they had crossed it. Beatrice, Filinion, Armelina, Wildefrau, and Boo Boo. They were all there. None of them was lost.

“It’s over. It’s really over...”

“Actually, let me see your injuries, Boo Boo! You’re all sliced up!”

“Squeal. I’m fine if everyone else is.”

“That isn’t what she was asking. It’s free, so let Filinion heal you.”

They began arguing like normal, but Ice Waterfall Princess Wildefrau looked around and then straight up.

“Umm, how do we stop this elevator?”

“Huhh!?”

Beatrice sounded flustered.

The White Witch also froze in place after pulling out a colorful test tube.

“Wh-what happens if we can’t stop it!? U-um! We can just hit a button or pull a lever once we reach the bottom, right!? Please don’t tell me it’s a one-way trip and we have to fight our way back up from the very bottom of the Labyrinth!”

“Wildefrau, can you freeze the elevator’s gears with your absolute zero vacuum!?””

“Well, I could, but any unnecessary force on the frozen parts would probably cause them to shatter.”

“Umm, meaning...?”

“I don’t know what kind of safety features this thing has, but we might just fall straight down. And even if it worked, we’d still be stuck who knows how many hundreds or thousands of meters belowground. Oh, but the Labyrinth is connected through subspace in some parts, isn’t it?”

“E-e-eeek!?”

As usual, the White Witch grew pale and shrieked.

Beatrice rubbed her slender chin.

“If possible, we could use emergency escape Magic.”

“After fighting Sibyl and then the Sage? Who here can use Magic that’s that much of a drain on your Willpower?”

“More importantly...”

Wildefrau remained surprisingly cool-headed throughout.

She may have been the kind of person that kept her distance and thus did not allow a panic to spread to her.

“The Sage had built up such insane power to fight that Ground’s Nir monster, right? Isn’t that why she was using Lorelei to obtain full coverage for all Elements? If we defeat that final trump card but don’t do anything about the monster...um, won’t we be neglecting something rather important?”

“Wait. Hold on.”

Armelina pressed her index fingers together in front of her flaaat chest while hoping against hope that she was wrong.

The arrangement of frames and lines made from fire illusion Magic was not complete.

It was not over with just the Sage.

“D-do we have to continue right on to the giant Magic kaiju battle with that monster!? We’re all beaten up from the Sage and haven’t recovered at all! Moving straight from the Sibyl battle to the Sage battle was bad enough, but we have to go for 3 in a row!!!???”

That said, this position was unfilled now that the Sage had been defeated. Someone else would have to fill it. If that monster reached the surface, all life living on Ground’s Nir would be wiped out and devastating chaos would reach Earth once the economic support of Magic and Pieces was lost.

Someone had to do it.

...And if whoever it was had to take over for the Sage, they would naturally have to be someone who had proven they were more powerful than her.

Between the Lines 2

My stance has gotten a lot better?

What are you talking about? I still haven’t beaten you.

How is it I can’t beat someone who uses no Magic and just swings around a blunt weapon? I, well, use a bit of a trick, but I can access almost any Magic usable by humans.

Why is that a problem? The biggest problem is that I can’t hold it against you even as I keep losing.

In the end, all of the distortions may be focused here.

I was supposed to win, win, and win some more in order to save 7 or 8 billion people, but that’s exactly why nothing remains for me. To be honest, I might have fallen into despair in a world that didn’t teach me how to lose.

I was glad.

I was glad to find there was someone I couldn’t stand up to, a barrier I couldn’t cross.

I guess it taught me that the world is a sturdier thing than I thought and that I can’t just go on a wild rampage. It’s weird, but you looked like a strong lifeline to me. I finally found a thick, thick lifeline that I could entrust my full body weight to.

Hey, elder. I’m grateful.

It’s kind of embarrassing saying it out loud.

So you said you had something important to tell me. What is it? Ha ha. Don’t look so reluctant. I’m indebted to you. You really did save my life, so I’m willing to do anything that could help you.

Ksh.

...Ksshh, kssshhh...

Ksssssshhhhhhh!!

(Notice / Conversation log partially missing. File is unplayable.)