“Looks like the queen’s started fighting.”
Miss Ariel murmurs quietly.
We’re in the Bottom Stratum of the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
There’s certainly no way to see whether the queen is fighting from here.
Maybe she’s using Panoptic Vision to check on the battlefield?
Miss Ariel has been weakened considerably since that last battle, enough that it’s even having a detrimental effect on her everyday life. Should she really be using a skill like that?
Well, I suppose she wouldn’t use it if it wasn’t safe.
I am a little worried, but I don’t have much of a choice but to trust Miss Ariel to know what’s best for herself, I’m sure.
Now then, perhaps I ought to use Panoptic Vision myself to check on the situation outside.
This skill allows me to see quite a long way, even in spite of the considerable distance between the Bottom Stratum and the outside.
Sure enough, the first thing I see is the queen fighting fiercely near the entrance to the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
Her opponents are a leopard-like monster and a red dragon.
Both of them are probably ancient dragons.
I mean, the leopard is controlling lightning, while the other is breathing fire.
A lightning dragon and a fire dragon, perhaps?
While the queen fights those two beasts, a humanoid army is stationed nearby.
Or rather, two separate armies: One is the demon army.
I even see a few faces I recognize.
Which means the other must be a human army.
The rest of the spider swarm is fast approaching the humanoids.
They’ll collide any moment now.
“Should we call the other queen here, too?”
Looking away from that battlefield for the moment, I check in on the other entrance as I speak.
The Great Elroe Labyrinth is a massive dungeon that connects two continents.
In other words, there’s an entrance on each landmass.
And while one of the entrances is entrenched in all-out war, the other is perfectly peaceful.
At least, as peaceful as anyplace can be when it’s being guarded by another queen taratect and her army of spiders.
Since it looks like the humanoids have decided to focus all their forces on attacking one side, I thought I’d suggest that we summon the queen from the entrance that’s not under siege.
“Nah,” Ariel answers immediately. “I’ll keep an eye on things for now and summon her when the time is right.”
Summon, she says…
“Are you sure about that?”
“As sure as I can be, anyway.”
Won’t summoning be much harder on her constitution than Panoptic Vision?
But just as I expected, Miss Ariel only brushes off my concerns.
She looked pained enough after the first time, though…
Miss Ariel had to summon the queens to each entrance of the Great Elroe Labyrinth, of course.
Though we were at least able to use that spaceship to get to the entrances, Miss Ariel was clearly exhausted after the summonings.
I suppose it was worth the effort, but still…
“Summoning certainly is convenient.”
“Oh, right. You can summon your dear Merazophis, too.”
Being able to instantly call backup to your side is a serious asset in battle.
I’d hate to be the poor sap fighting someone when a legendary-class monster suddenly pops into the mix.
And the queen brings more than just her own strength, too.
“It seems almost like cheating that your summoned subordinate can summon her subordinates, doesn’t it?”
“Eh, I guess.”
The queen has a lot of subordinates of her own.
Just by summoning a single queen, you essentially get an entire spider army thrown in for free.
It’s a little unfair that she’s strong both individually and in a group, isn’t it?
“Well, as far as foul play goes, I’d say being a vampire is even cheaper than little old me. Your subordinates can multiply like rabbits if you feel so inclined.”
Touché, I say.
Being a vampire, I can suck an opponent’s blood and turn them into a vampire, too.
Then, with the Kin Control skill, I can control them as my servants.
And then I can use that freshly made vampire to attack someone else and create yet another vampire.
Those vampires can attack other vampires, and so on and so forth, allowing me to make as many vampires as I so choose.
The scariest part about that is that I can force our enemies to join our side, I suppose.
Not that I would do any such thing.
“You realize you could do that anytime you want, right?”
“No, thank you. Merazophis is the only servant I need.”
I’m not going to turn any old riffraff into my vampiric spawn.
Being my servant is a position with special meaning, and I insist upon keeping it that way.
My enhanced hearing picks up on a muttered comment from Ariel: “She forgot about Wald. Poor guy.”
…I didn’t forget about him!
I was just, you know! Counting him in a different category, that’s all!
“Hrm. At any rate, it looks like the queen is fighting Fire Dragon Nguyen and Lightning Dragon Gohka…”
My guesses about the ancient dragons fighting the queen were right: The one in dragon form is a fire dragon called Nguyen, and the leopard-looking one is a lightning dragon called Gohka.
“…Two ancient dragons might be a little too much for her.”
Just as Ariel says, the queen is starting to lose.
Even a legendary-class monster like her evidently struggles against a fellow legendary-class, let alone two ancient dragons at the same time.
But apparently that isn’t Miss Ariel’s only concern.
“Where are the other ancient dragons?”
Two ancient dragons are fighting the queen.
But there are supposed to be four others: Water Dragon Iena, Wind Dragon Hyuvan, Ice Dragon Nia, and Dark Dragon Reise.
It just so happens that I’ve even met Hyuvan and Nia myself.
Although it’s not as if we had much of a conversation—we just briefly introduced ourselves in the middle of other recent happenings.
I’m told they were technically enrolled as members of the Ninth Demon Army, of which their boss Black was the commander. Still, they each have their own territories to control, and I’ve been busy with business of my own. We never ran into each other before all this started.
Really, if we were going to end up on enemy sides like this, perhaps it’s better that we weren’t friends in the first place.
Knowing each other better might only have made it harder for all of us.
“Could they be in the labyrinth already, by any chance?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I certainly haven’t heard anything to suggest it.”
Miss Ariel’s spider monster spawn has already spread throughout the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
If anything happened, they would report to Miss Ariel right away.
The lack of reports thus far would suggest that nothing unusual has happened inside the labyrinth, at least not yet.
“But yeah, something feels off for sure…”
The missing ancient dragons.
The silence in the Great Elroe Labyrinth.
Normally, we should be celebrating that, but just as Miss Ariel says, it seems a little too convenient to be true.
It’s as if something has gone amiss just out of sight…
“What’s that? Huh? Water?”
At that exact moment, Miss Ariel suddenly turns tense and starts muttering something.
Right on cue, I suppose.
It looks like she’s getting a report from some of her spawn.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure what exactly…but something’s definitely up.”
I guess the report wasn’t too clear on the details.
Most of her spawn aren’t terribly intelligent to begin with, so a lot of their reports tend to be a bit short and to the point.
But still…“water”? What’s that supposed to mean?
“Ah!”
Just as I’m contemplating this mystery, Ariel lets out a short cry.
“Wh-what the hell does she think she’s doing?!”
Then it crescendos into a bellow.
“Flooding us? Are you kidding me?!
…Come again?