“Welcome.”
Wakaba spreads her arms in greeting.
This place is strange.
It’s pitch-black everywhere you look, except we can all still see one another just fine.
How can it be so dark but so clear at the same time?
In the center of that darkness sits Wakaba.
Several monitors float in the air in front of her seat.
“Ahh, I get it…”
This murmur of comprehension comes from Demon Lord Ariel, not me.
She’s sitting in a chair, too.
Hers is white and has a weird texture that somehow reminds me of a spiderweb.
Four small spiders are holding up each of the chair’s legs.
“Small” is relative here, since they’re still around the size of a tarantula from Earth, if not bigger, but compared to the giant things we rode to get here…well.
Anyway, these small spiders are holding up the Demon Lord’s chair and carrying it around.
At first I thought it was mean to make such tiny spiders carry her around, until I noticed that she obviously wasn’t doing very well.
For real, she looks like she’d barely even be able to stand without fainting dead away.
Is she sick or something? Either way, that definitely caught all of us by surprise.
“It’s an honor to meet you. I am Demon Lord Ariel. Please forgive my rudeness for entering your presence in such a disgraceful state.”
“No problem. Also, you don’t really need to introduce yourselves, or be so prim and proper. I know all of you perfectly well, and respect isn’t worth anything unless you really mean it from the heart.”
Is that her way of saying it’s no use trying to put on a polite act?
“Lemme ask you this, then. You’re Wakaba, aren’t you? What’s the deal with that?”
Getting a little annoyed, I go ahead and address her without respect. Hey, she asked for it.
It’s not my problem if a few people, like the pontiff and that demon guy, stare at me with their eyes bugging out of their heads.
“Right, I suppose I should introduce myself first for those who aren’t entirely in the know. I’m D, an evil god. That’s not my real name, of course. And I also spent some time at the same school as you reincarnations. At the time, I went by Hiiro Wakaba. Also not my real name, of course.”
Neither of them is your real name?!
Then can you really call that introducing yourself?
“Uhh…come again? You spent time as a student with the reincarnations?”
Hyrince cautiously ventures a question.
“That’s correct. And that’s when an attack trying to kill an administrator from this world came after me. It was actually intended for the ebony god, until Goddess Sariel redirected it by making me the target instead. As you can see, I’m perfectly unharmed, but all the students who got caught in the blast were killed. I suppose you could say it’s this world’s fault, and mine, that the reincarnations died.”
Hello?! It’s a little late for that big reveal!
Are you kidding me?! Seriously?!
“Excuse me? Are you joking? Can I punch this chick?”
“Fei! Cut it out!”
Shun hurriedly stops me when those words come tumbling out of my mouth.
Come on, I wasn’t really going to punch her, I swear.
But seriously, I spent so long feeling guilty in that egg ’cause I thought I was being punished for bullying Wakaba, only to find out it’s her fault we died in the first place!
I want my money back!
Can you blame me for getting the urge to punch her just a little bit?
“I felt bad about it, too, you know. That’s why instead of just letting you all die, I collected your souls, gave you skills, and sent you to be reborn in this world with your memories intact.”
“What, like that’s supposed to make up for it?”
“That was the idea, yes.”
“It’s not like we asked to be reincarnated, you know.”
“Does that mean you would’ve preferred to just die?”
“I mean…”
Well, no, but still…
Obviously I wouldn’t want to just die for no apparent reason and stay dead.
But I can’t say for sure if it was better that we got reincarnated.
Especially when we got caught up in all this “end of the world” stuff here.
“Couldn’t you have just made it so we didn’t die in the first place?”
Natsume speaks up.
That’s kinda surprising.
I didn’t expect him to take the initiative on anything at this point.
“In theory, that would’ve been a possibility, yes.”
“So why…!”
“Well, I was under no obligation to go that far for you. Reviving the dead is a whole lot harder than reincarnation, you know.”
Harder? So we got reincarnated just because she was feeling lazy?
“You can’t be serious…!”
“If you’ve got a problem, take it up with the people of that world. It’s not like I tried to kill you. I felt a bit of guilt and pity for you dying in an accident that wasn’t your fault, so I lent you a little hand, that’s all.”
When she puts it that way, it’s hard to argue back.
I know it wasn’t really her fault.
And I know we’ve got her to thank for the fact that we were reborn at all.
But still, still…!
“You’re saying this like you did it for our sakes, but that’s not actually true, is it? I bet you had your own goals in mind, and us getting reincarnated was just a bonus, right?”
“Right. Why do you ask?”
Wakaba doesn’t even try to dodge my question.
I knew it.
She definitely doesn’t seem to feel any kind of guilt, pity, or any such noble emotions toward us, that’s for sure.
The only feeling I get from her is that old familiar sense that she’s looking down on us like ants beneath her feet.
“It wasn’t any particularly lofty goal, though. I just figured I might give that world a little boost. Things were getting stagnant there, plus it looked like it was on a one-way path to destruction pretty soon. So I figured if I gave some souls from another world a little bit of power and sent them to reincarnate into this one, it might shake things up a bit.”
Wakaba looks at us with the cool expression of someone observing the behavior of lab rats.