“Ugh, that voice...” he groaned. “You’re Diablo?”
He would realize after this much. Gewalt had met him more times than Noah or Aira.
“Where are the others?” Diablo asked.
“They’re dead,” Gewalt spat out bitterly.
Diablo felt his breath catch in his throat. He didn’t know them that well, and he’d only just started remembering their names... But they were still part of the same party for a time. His heart throbbed painfully as the weight set in.
“...I see,” he eventually managed to say.
“You come here now, you good-for-nothing?!” Noah bellowed at him angrily. “What did you even come with us for?!”
Diablo couldn’t refute what she was saying. Klem may have given him a Demon Lord’s power, but he was still too emotionally bruised from the loss of her. He’d only just worked up enough motivation to get moving. Hearing Aira’s scream as she fell into the water duct snapped him out of his sorrow... But while Noah and her group were fighting for their lives, Diablo was curled up on the floor.
As a party member, he needed to at least apologize to them — Diablo knew that much. But the words wouldn’t come. Conversing with people normally was too difficult for him, especially when he was being blamed for something and shouted at.
If he tried to apologize now, he would just look away and stutter. Diablo couldn’t talk without acting like he was in the game, after all. Just like how an ape couldn’t fly, weeds couldn’t walk, and bugs couldn’t write. It was impossible.
And so, Diablo spoke grandly.
“I am Diablo, a Demon Lord from another world! Anyone who turns their blade against me will be wiped from existence!”
Noah stiffened in place, her eyes wide. Maybe those words, coupled with how he looked now, overwhelmed her. Or maybe she was simply disgusted beyond words, since she knew who he really was.
—I won’t know what you’re thinking unless you say it.
“A man of the mortal races may say what he wants...” Emperor Gelmed remarked. “You are all equally powerless before me.”
“Hmph. It seems you’ve grown senile, old man,” Diablo retorted, not allowing his composure to crack. “I just told you, I am no mere mortal.”
The Emperor had absolute confidence in his powers. Diablo, by contrast, could only pretend. He was, in fact, terrified. He broke into a cold sweat as his heart beat faster.
—If this were in the game, I’d be flaming the forums like crazy about it being a broken event! No walkthroughs, no redos, the location’s hard to reach, it’s all decided by one fight, and if you lose, you die!
While Diablo spoke with a Demon Lord’s haughty dignity, his gamer mind was working at full throttle. Noah could fire powerful spells in quick succession, so the fact that the Emperor was able to block them all implied that he had some ability to nullify magic. Either that or rapid HP recovery.
“...That’s what Emperor Gelmed looks like now,” Noah said to his back. “It’s called ‘the Magimatic Garment Cross Reverie.’”
“What?!” Diablo replied, shocked.
“I don’t know how it’s related to the game...”
The MMORPG Cross Reverie. The game Diablo and Noah had played. The very same one that his character, Diablo, whom he was summoned into the body of, was from. It wasn’t clear how the MMORPG and this world were related, and based on what Noah told him, this world didn’t even seem to conform to the same flow of time as their old one.
But just then, Diablo heard a sound in his head. It was some kind of alert, perhaps part of the Demon Lord’s power. Emperor Gelmed — the Magimatic Garment Cross Reverie — floated up into the air. Diablo braced himself for battle. He was in front of a powerful raid boss and didn’t have the time to bother with its name or lore right now.
“There’s a barrier around Cross Reverie,” Noah added. “Swords and magic don’t work on it.”
“Hmph. Same as me, then,” Diablo said.
“What?”
His 《Shining Wing Armor》 had a barrier too. On top of its thankfully-high defense, ordinary magic and attacks were ineffective against it.
—How do I hit this thing, though?
He wasn’t going to beat this opponent by staring it down. For a moment, Diablo considered his usual strategies. For example, waiting for the opponent to lift its barrier, or alternatively, striking it with high firepower attacks repeatedly until their defenses broke. But just then, an idea he wasn’t aware of surfaced in his mind: a technique he had never used before.
—A spell that can penetrate barriers?
He wasn’t sure if he could actually cast a bona fide Demon Lord spell. That doubt weighed on his mind for a moment.
—Can I really do it?! Just use it without ever trying it before, just firing it off against a raid boss in the moment of truth?! What’s this thing’s cast time? Its cooldown time? Its MP cost? Can I dodge while chanting it? Can it even break through Gelmed’s barrier anyway?!
Although he was panicking under the surface, Diablo’s attitude remained uncompromisingly smug.
“My magic will destroy you!”
“What?!” Noah stared at him. “You think you can beat him?!”
“Out of my way, girl! Get away if you value your life!”
—This spell might be dangerous. Please move away!
Diablo pushed Noah back behind him. Emperor Gelmed stole the power of God — meaning Diablo would have to use the full power of the Demon Lord Krebskulm. If Noah were to be caught up in his attack, she wouldn’t walk away unscathed, even if she was a level 300 sorcerer. Gewalt wasn’t anywhere in sight, of course. Thanks to his crafty intuition, he knew to make himself scarce.
Diablo thrust both arms forward. He wouldn’t use Tenma’s Staff — no, he used this body as his weapon, since it was close to his image of Klem and what she would have done.
—Bubbles.
Several bubbles, each of them a world of their own... That image formed keenly in his mind. As one bubble pressed against and then penetrated another... This was it — a blade that could pierce worlds.
“《Dimension Blast》!”
Flashes of light burst out of his extended palms. They reached the barrier around Cross Reverie and blew it away.
“Ugh?!” Emperor Gelmed screamed for the first time. “Ah?! Aaaaaaaaagh!”
All the tentacles around them were blown away along with the barrier. The water below them parted, and the previously submerged tree roots were crushed and carved out. The wall behind Cross Reverie crumbled, as did the surrounding walls and the floor under the roots.
—Wait, this is bad!
He did expect the attack to pierce the barrier, but it ended up destroying everything around them as collateral damage. Falling rubble blocked his field of vision.
—What happened to Emperor Gelmed?!
Diablo didn’t dare assume he had defeated him. Even if he did, he’d still need to finish him off. Diablo wouldn’t let such superfluous thoughts cloud his judgment. He was prepared for the worst, no matter what.
All the water that had been in the pool around them made an audible bubbling sound as it drained away.
“The floor’s collapsing!” Noah called out nervously.
†
Noah screamed as she fell. The massive roots still spread out across the floor now crumbled as the floor fell apart beneath them. Diablo assumed Noah could use flight magic at her level...but her eyes clung to him, wordlessly asking for help as her hands grasped desperately at thin air.
—Are you telling me a level 300 sorcerer can’t use flight magic?!
Diablo clicked his tongue bitterly and paused his offensive. The mental image of the next spell he was going to cast faded away. He spent MP on flight magic instead, an ominous magic circle forming around him.
Heat coursed through his back as four large, sinister, glowing wings of light manifested behind him. They resembled an insect’s wings, but were firm, with sections that were transparent. Kicking against the air, he took off after Noah. Compared to the speed of flight that his Empty Sky’s Gambol was capable of, he was now substantially faster. He felt like a fluttering bee in flight.
When Diablo fought the Demon Lord Krebskulm, she had never moved like this, so his ideas for this power must have differed from what Klem’s had been. He knocked away the rubble in his path and pulled Noah’s falling body into his grip.
“Aaah?!”
She held onto him for dear life. He pulled her closer, trying not to think about what he was doing too much. Being bashful about it now would be pointless. If he didn’t save her, he’d effectively be abandoning her to die. The situation was critical, so he only acted reflexively.
“Can’t you use flight magic?!” Diablo shouted at her.
“I-I can! I-I think I could... But I’m not...good at it...”
Diablo remembered something Noah told him once.
I tried to see if I could cast level 300 spells, but I’ve avoided combat, so I’ve never really tried to use offensive magic. You do know that dying in this world means you actually die, right? Why would I put myself in that kind of danger?
Diablo could agree with her logic. He became an adventurer without really knowing what this world was like, but if Rem and Shera, his summoners, were instead something like merchants or politicians, his life could have been very different.
Even so, Diablo spoke overbearingly.
“Fool! Having a grasp of your own abilities is the most basic thing you must do!”
“I did try! But now it won’t work...”
“That’s why I said you must grasp the extent of your abilities! You have to train until you can cast a spell at a moment’s notice! That is when you truly grasp your abilities!”
“L-Listen, I’m not a machine...!”
—Maybe, but high-ranking players in my time took doing that for granted.
During its closing years, the MMORPG lowered its difficulty, making itself easier for new players in a bid to draw in a bigger user base. Mastering the hotkeys and committing them to muscle memory in such a demanding manner simply wasn’t required of players at the time Noah played.
But they didn’t have the time to talk about this. Diablo heard another warning in his mind, like someone was alerting him to something.
“I know!” he hissed, as if to silence that alarm in his mind. Diablo maneuvered through the air evasively, twisting his body as he performed steep turns. The enemy was firing a barrage at him from above, and he still needed to avoid the falling rubble.
“Ngh!” Noah let out a suffocated cry in his arms.
She might have been a level 300 sorcerer, but she was still a human woman, and his wings were carrying them at high speeds. He was protected by his armor, but the strain of his movements was too great for her. With all the water and rubble raining down on them, visibility was poor, and at times like these, he needed to focus on either defense or dodging.
—We really burst all the way out of the castle...