“All right,” Al said the moment I reappeared. “Seiichi’s back. Let’s move.”
I’d barely returned from Terbelle, and the whole group was already packed up and ready to go.
“The dungeon where your dad’s being held… is it close, Routier?” I asked.
“Yes. Really close now. Just a little further.”
“Great! I’m so excited!” Saria chirped, bouncing with enthusiasm.
“Yeah…” Routier smiled faintly, but there was tension behind her expression, her eyes heavy with something unspoken.
Of course, she’s worried. Knowing the Cult of the Wicked One, there’s no telling what kind of messed-up things they might’ve done to her dad.
“All right then,” I said, taking a breath. “Let’s head out.”
Just as Routier had said, the destination came into view not long after we set off.
Ahead of us yawned a massive pit in the earth, with stone stairs spiraling down into its cold, dark, and foreboding depths.
“This is it, right? This is where your father is?”
“Yeah.”
Al scanned the area, then clicked his tongue in disbelief as he stared at the damage.
“Are you kidding me? Your attack shockwaves reached all the way out here?”
Just like Al had guessed, it looked like the seed I batted back had passed through this area, too. The ground was torn up in several places, with deep gashes clawed through the earth and a battlefield-like scar left across the terrain.
As I stood there, staring at the damage with a tight twitch pulling at my cheek, something strange caught my eye.
“Huh? Hey, Routier.”
“What is it?”
“Over there, near the dungeon where your dad’s supposed to be. The ground right next to it… doesn’t it look like there’s a huge hole, like it was scooped out cleanly?”
“You’re right…”
Next to the dungeon entrance, the earth had been hollowed out into a massive, perfectly round crater. It wasn’t jagged or chaotic; instead, it was a smooth, unnatural gouge in the ground. It looked more like something had punched a hole out of the earth than like something had exploded.
That… doesn’t look like my doing. Right? Please don’t tell me it was me again.
“Doesn’t really seem like this one’s your fault,” Al said as she crossed her arms and scanned the area, her brow furrowed.
“Yeah. The seed you knocked back definitely tore things up,” Saria agreed, nodding. “But this is different. It’s almost too clean, like only one spot was carved out.”
“But, who would do something like that here?” Zora asked, her voice low with concern.
Everyone fell silent, thinking. But no answer came.
What made it worse was that the crater wasn’t in the dungeon… it was right next to it. Why carve out just that one area and leave the rest alone? None of it made sense.
“Well… standing here isn’t going to solve it,” I said finally. “We should focus on finding Routier’s father for now.”
“You’re right!” Saria replied, her cheer pushing the group forward.
Still… that crater’s too clean. Too deliberate. I don’t like it.
Even so, we left the mystery behind for now and stepped into the dungeon where Routier’s father was supposed to be waiting.
✦ ✦ ✦
While Seiichi and the others descended into the dungeon, disaster was already unfolding nearby at a secret facility belonging to the Cult of the Wicked One.
“What the hell… What is this plant?!”
“Y-Yes, I under—GYAAAAAAHHHHHH!”
“What even is this thing?! Is it supposed to be a plant?!”
The facility had been constructed with high-level optical camouflage, making it virtually undetectable to the naked eye and to even magical senses. It was designed to avoid detection by any means, no matter how sophisticated.
When Seiichi and the others entered the dungeon, they didn’t even notice the building nearby.
And under normal circumstances, not even high-end camouflage could slip past Seiichi’s awareness.
But this time… the building hadn’t just gone unseen.
It was gone.
Without anyone realizing—not Seiichi, not his companions, not even the cultists inside—the entire facility had been relocated. Teleported to another planet.
Yes, the very world itself had intervened. As if deciding, “This subplot isn’t worth wasting Seiichi’s time,” the planet had quietly removed the building and dropped it somewhere else, all without fanfare or explanation.
And so, the crater next to Routier’s father’s dungeon, the one that had puzzled them all, wasn’t from the seed impact after all. It had been created when the structure was forcefully extracted from the earth and flung to an entirely different world.
The new planet had an atmosphere, gravity, and environment similar to their original one; it was technically habitable. But whether that counted as good luck for the Cult of the Wicked One… was highly questionable.
The worst part?
The transfer happened just moments after several of the strange plant seeds Seiichi had deflected had slammed into the building.
So when the Apostles inside finally realized what was happening, it was already too late.
They hadn’t just been hit.
They’d been hit… and launched to space.
Vitor hadn’t been the only casualty. The cultists in that facility had been pulverized just as spectacularly.
Now, stranded in an alien world and under siege by invasive plant life, the surviving Apostles scrambled for cover, panic rising with every second.
But there was one more thing they hadn’t realized yet.
They weren’t alone on this planet.
Unknown ecosystems. Unknown predators. Unknown… monsters.
“—GRRRUUUAAAAAAGHHH!”
“Eeeeeeeeek! W-What now?! What the hell is that thing?!”
“I-It’s a monster! It looks humanoid, but it’s carrying some kind of unknown gear!”
“W-Wicked One! P-Please, save us!”
No matter how loud they screamed, their god would never hear them.
Because this world… this planet… was one of many abandoned by the gods eons ago. A forgotten relic in a discarded corner of creation.
“A-All right! Use the specimens! Unleash the experimental monsters! Let them fight it off!”
“I-It’s the control system, sir!” the Apostle stammered. “We were drawing energy directly from the planet’s core, but the supply has been completely cut off! We can’t control the specimens anymore!”
“What?!” The leader’s eyes went wide. “Y-You don’t mean… No… it can’t be!”
But it was.
The worst possible scenario had arrived.
“GyaaaAAAHHH!”
“Kehehehehehehehehe!!”
“HISSSSHHHH! HSSHHHH!”
One by one, containment capsules burst open, releasing the monstrous bioweapons sealed inside.
Each of them had been designed for perfect obedience. They were imposing and devastating, but only under one condition: they had to remain on their original planet. That’s where the control systems had been calibrated, using energy only that world could supply.
But no one had ever planned for interplanetary travel.
How could they have? Who in their right mind would account for the entire facility being teleported to another world?
Now, with the planetary energy severed, the artificial lifeforms the cult had created no longer had a master to obey.
The failsafes were gone.
And the monsters turned feral.
“They’re out of control! We can’t stop them!!” another Apostle screamed as a mutated beast barreled through a reinforced wall like it was paper.
“This is it! We’re finished! It’s all over!!”
Panicked cultists scattered in every direction, shrieking like madmen as their carefully engineered creations descended upon them without mercy. The air filled with howls, hissing, metal tearing, and flesh rending.
Amid the chaos, the leader, the highest-ranking Apostle in the facility, stood frozen. Staring at the carnage in disbelief.
“Impossible… What is this? What’s happening to us? We were chosen. We were the ones favored by the Wicked One. So why?”
There was only one answer.
One truth that none of them would ever comprehend:
There existed something far more unreasonable than any god.
A human named Seiichi.
And that alone… was the reason they were doomed.