Ellie groaned. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live down the indignity!”
Standing astride a humongous Red Dragon in her guise as the Wicked Witch of the Tower, the Forbidden Witch was leading her hundred-strong dragon army into the Demonkin Nation on a mission to lay waste to the royal palace. Despite hurtling along at speeds that would see any normal rider blown from their perch, Ellie maintained her balance on the back of her dragon with ease, as if she were standing in a meadow on a cloudless day. She was able to do this because she had cast a spell that constantly adjusted the wind pressure around her, meaning no gusts would blow back her hood to reveal her face. This feat was in no way challenging for the Level 9999 superwitch, yet despite making what would normally be seen as a rather grand entrance into enemy territory, she was gnawing her handkerchief and grumbling.
“I was so busy searching for a spell that would bring back our dear elder brother, I failed to realize I was going about it all wrong,” Ellie bemoaned. “My sorcery is pure trash compared to Blessed Lord Light’s Unlimited Gacha, but I’d completely forgotten that! If only I’d realized sooner, I would’ve been able to provide the Blessed Lord with much-needed solace instead of Mei!”
Ellie stopped gnawing her handkerchief and held a hand to her head to stop herself from swooning. Much to her chagrin, Mei had been the one who’d reminded Light that he might still be able to save his brother if he pulled the right card from his Unlimited Gacha, and cheered by this realization, Light had commanded Ellie to take her dragons and attack the Demonkin Nation’s palace. Her mission came in three parts, the first being to have her dragons reduce the palace to ashes.
Her next objective was to capture Voros, the demon prince who had provided backing for Doc’s human experiments that had been responsible for turning Els into a monster. As had been the case with Doc, Light wouldn’t be able to rest easy until Voros was punished accordingly. Burning down the palace would serve as a warning to all the other demons who thought they could just turn a blind eye to that level of barbarity.
The final aim of the mission was to declare Absolute Autonomy for Humans in the Demonkin Nation, which would force the inhabitants into freeing all of their human slaves unconditionally. It was the same edict that had been imposed upon the Elven Queendom, the Dark Elf Islands, the Dwarf Kingdom, the Onifolk Archipelago, and the Beastfolk Federation, and all the former slaves would subsequently be relocated to the Great Tower.
Light had also ordered her to punish any and all slave owners who resisted the Absolute Autonomy edict, yet Ellie hadn’t encountered any major issues the last few times she had freed slaves. Although during the manumissions in the Elven Queendom, there’d been scores of slave traders—particularly heinous characters, who routinely tortured and killed their bondservants—who refused to hand over their human chattel. In response to this opposition, Ellie had a dragon eat one of the slave traders alive in front of a crowd, and after that gruesome display, none of the other elf slave owners defied the Absolute Autonomy order.
Anyone who goes against Blessed Lord Light’s order should suffer the cruelest fate imaginable, Ellie thought. But there were too many of them. I would’ve had no time for anything else.
Focusing on punishing any and all of the odious lawbreakers would have distracted Ellie from carrying out Light’s commands to the fullest, so she had settled for making an example of a few unlucky slave owners.
“I wasn’t able to provide comfort to His Blessedness, but I did receive a direct order from him, so this is hardly the time to be pitying myself!” Ellie remonstrated with herself. “I need to focus on carrying out my mission!”
She curled up both of her hands into fists and snorted defiantly. Her job was to descend on the Demonkin Nation’s capital and strike fear into the locals, much as she had done in the Elven Queendom. With her dragons by her side, Ellie would demand that Voros hand himself over to her. If he readily complied, all the better, but if not, Ellie would simply locate the demonkin prince and capture him by force. It would certainly be faster than getting other people to do it.
While Ellie went over the plan of attack in her mind, she saw a blast of light burst forth from where Voros’s palace was supposed to be.
“Huh? What was that?” Ellie wondered aloud.
The flash of light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Using sorcery to boost her eyesight to get a telescopic view of the palace that was still some distance away, Ellie zoomed in on a pile of rubble where the palace should have been. Furthermore, there appeared to be something moving in the rubble. It was yelling something, but Ellie was still too far away to make out any of the words, which was probably just as well because the figure looked a lot like Light had done when he’d snapped and nearly killed Doc following Els committing suicide. Even from afar, Ellie could tell the figure had an extraordinarily high power level, so she activated an SR Telepathy card to report what she had witnessed to Light.
✦ ✦ ✦
✰✰✰
“The Demonkin Nation palace got destroyed before we even got there?” I repeated.
“Yes, Your Blessedness,” Ellie replied. “I witnessed a beam of light rise into the sky along with debris from the palace. What looked like a male human crawled out from beneath the destroyed building, but he didn’t appear injured at all, and he proceeded to go on a rampage amid the wreckage.”
I’d been sitting in my office in the Abyss when I’d received the Telepathy message from Ellie, and before she gave her report, I’d assumed she had finished her job a lot quicker than expected. Of course, that had turned out not to be the case at all. She went on to tell me that the guy who had crawled out from under the wreckage of the palace appeared to have a black mist surrounding his hands and feet, and when she said he was rampaging through the rubble, it was a real demolition job, like a crazed bull destroying everything in a china shop. Ellie was keeping her distance just to be on the safe side, and had run an Appraisal on the man. The stats were all scrambled on his name, but the data did confirm he was Level 9999. His title was similarly scrambled, but from what Ellie could make out, this person was some kind of “god” who was a “fomenter” of, um, something. She opined that he must have been a “Mad God” and a “Fomenter of Calamity,” judging by the level of destruction he was causing.
Who would’ve thought there’d be a Level 9999 like us in the Demonkin Nation? I pondered. Since he was able to destroy the palace with ease, does that mean this is the bad guy who wiped out my village?
But I quickly dismissed the notion. Sure, the guy’s level surpassed 9000, but why would he go quiet for so long after destroying my village, only to wake up one day and go berserk? That didn’t make much sense. I was also wondering if that guy was even a Master in the first place. But Miki had told us there were only five Masters in the Demonkin Nation, and eleven overall.
“Or there were eleven before you guys killed Daigo, so I guess that means there’s only ten Masters that Miki knows about,” she had corrected herself. This guy, who was on a rampage, might have been part of the Dragonute Empire faction of Masters, but that was such a blind assumption, I couldn’t say how likely that was.
“Ellie, did any information on this guy turn up in Gira’s or Doc’s memories?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, Blessed Lord,” she replied. “That treacherous criminal, Doc, was laser-focused on his abominable research to the detriment of everything else, so he had no intelligence of interest to offer us, while Gira’s memories only contained his desire to take down C using his own powers.”
In her report, she had written that Gira thought so highly of himself, he believed he could actually kill C if he used all the tricks he had at his disposal. He also couldn’t wait to see the dumbfounded looks on the faces of the Dragonute Empire Masters when he did so.
I wouldn’t call that “valuable intelligence” either, I reflected. I thought for a moment, then made my decision.
“Ellie, stand by and keep watching our rampaging friend while I go have a chat with Miki,” I said. “She might know something about who we’re dealing with here. If this guy tries to attack you, retreat. I don’t want you to engage anyone who’s Level 9999 without more intel.”
“As you wish, Blessed Lord Light,” Ellie replied. “I’ll continue monitoring the situation from a safe distance.” It was a good thing Ellie was so quick to adapt to new orders, since it meant I shouldn’t need to worry about much with her on the case. I cut the Telepathy link and told the fairy maid on duty in my office to set up an appointment with Miki.