Before I’d realized it, I was laughing. I thought I lacked firepower, but this? This was something else. I’d barely had to lift a finger to destroy all of these monsters. It put even modern weapons to shame. I’d over-overkilled them.
What I’d done was extremely simple. I’d positioned Black Wind a thousand meters above the ground and dropped the rocks out of Shadow Storage. That’s right—all I’d done was drop rocks on them. I’d adjusted their trajectories a little with Puppet Master, but that was pretty much all the effort I’d put into this attack. How was it that barely any effort from my side had yielded such destructive results? The only complaint I had was that it had taken a little over five minutes for the boulders to land. I’d had to start preparing for this attack in advance.
I could hear the sound of their impacts from all the way over here. It was so loud, I could feel the rumbling inside me. I was so happy I’d been able to use Conqueror on Sylph. Thanks to that, I’d gained Black Wind, an amazing ability.
“The momentum of each rock is actually 268,330,281,814.8 kilogram meters per second, the force of which is 30,000 tons. They’re basically meteors.”
Mental Math coming in clutch! It was amazing how the numbers I’d come up with so clearly conveyed the gravity of the situation. A wide grin spread across my face. I turned to the summoner. She was trembling, which was only natural after witnessing such a sight. Her eyes were trembling and her face was pale. I grabbed her by the hair and made her look closer.
“Look! Open your eyes and really get a good look. The bug army you were so proud of is in pieces.”
“N-No...”
“Aw, don’t cry. Just look. Isn’t that amazing? Why are you trembling? What happened to your revenge? What happened to that kid you’re working so hard for?”
“Nooooo!” she cried out. At that point, no other words came out of her mouth—only sounds. Maybe this was a good time to try hypnosis again. I could tell there was still resistance, but I pushed hard...and this time, I felt it succeed.
It seemed that the despair beat out her desire for revenge. Her crying stopped immediately as she fell under my hypnosis, leaving her face a teary, snotty mess. Her eyes had lost their fire and gone unfocused. Perfect. I’d proven my theory about mental strength increasing or decreasing the ease of putting someone under hypnosis. Tonight had been a fruitful day of many discoveries.
“Shouldn’t you stop the attack?” Sylph asked. “There aren’t any monsters left.”
“Good point. Could you deploy Black Wind over there and recover the rocks and monster pieces?”
“You got it. I’m seriously impressed, you know. Their body parts really are everywhere. I wonder if Ariya and the others are okay.”
“Y-Yeah... Probably.” They’d gotten a good distance away, and since there was no air resistance, the boulders hadn’t exploded or anything. There might have been some waves of impact, but...they must’ve been fine, right? Ariya probably did something with magic. There weren’t any problems.
Sylph finished collecting everything while I was absorbed in my thoughts about the others. Most of the rocks had broken.
“Doesn’t look like I can use them again... Guess I can’t use them willy-nilly...ah...”
“Huh? Inori?!” For some reason, Sylph’s voice seemed distant.
Crap, my consciousness is fading. I felt my body make contact with something hard and flat. Oh, this is the ground. I could tell Sylph was shouting something, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Was this Mana Depletion? Impossible. I’d barely used any.
Anyway, this didn’t feel like me losing consciousness, but something forcing my soul from my body. It was as if I were being spirited away, just like that time. I tried to fight the feeling but couldn’t. Could this possibly have been a god’s doing? Shit, I didn’t expect them to come after me directly. I bit my lip in frustration as I felt my consciousness slip away.
Level 15. Demon class changed from Baron-Class to Viscount-Class.
Baron-Class Authority Skill has changed to Viscount-Class Authority.
All Skills have been improved.
Inori Takafuji will now be transported to the space between worlds by the Goddess of Summoning.
Oh, this is your doing, you stupid goddess?
“Oh, you’re awake. It’s been a while— Hrmff!”
As soon as my eyes opened, I saw the goddess’s face, so I decided to punch her in the gut. After taking a good hit to the solar plexus, she hunched over and fell to her knees.
“I’m not afraid to hit a girl.”
“Wh-What was that for?! What did I ever do to you?!”
“You sicced that Justice-For-Show guy on me. Remember?” Like hell am I gonna let you say you don’t remember.
After a few seconds of racking her brain, she seemed to realize what I was talking about. “Oh, wait. That guy? You’re still mad about that?”
“Of course I am! I’m a man of my word.” I said I was gonna give her a good smack, and now I had. I looked around. It was just as blank of a space as I remembered. “So what’d you bring me here for? Need something?”
“I brought you here not because I need something from you, but because I needed to do something for you.” She began moving her fingers.
“Do something for me? Changing me from Baron-Class to Viscount-Class?”
“Right. You might not be in that world anymore, but I have to follow its rules for vampires. I also need to raise the level of some of your Skills. I have to make sure to manually do this.”
Apparently, there were several rules that came with leveling up one’s authority. One way to do it was to defeat several beings above your own authority. The other way was to defeat a being two authority classes above you. There were other rules, but either way, none of that should’ve mattered because the world I was in didn’t have the same kinds of beings as the one where these rules would apply. It seemed the goddess was adjusting my stats to account for that.
Usually, raising my authority would have automatically raised the strength of my other cheat abilities, but in this case, the goddess had to call my soul here to do it directly.
“Is it really okay for you to go so out of your way to help me?”
“Well, I’m the one who tweaked all your abilities in the first place.”
“You’ve really got a lot of time on your hands if you’ve been paying such close attention to me, huh?”
“No,” she pouted. She’s just as cute as I remembered. I wanna poke her puffed-out cheeks.
“It’d be great if you could adjust them to my specifications...”
“Sorry, no can do. Also, your Skills are going to evolve on their own, in ways that I can’t predict either. However, maybe as a little bonus, I could alter one of your Skills a bit more.”
Fantastic! “How much is ‘a bit more’?”
“I could change the font of the Skill on your stat screen.”
Wow, that really is a little bonus... “Anything more...useful?”
“What did you expect? I’m using my own authority via my Divine Blessing, not the summoning system.”
I guess gods had their own circumstances to worry about. Hm, then what about... “Could you add, like, a notification or history log?”
“What?”
“When I was summoned here, I saw notifications about my Skills. I want something like that to pop up whenever I level up a Skill or gain a new one. If possible, I’d like to be able to toggle it on and off too.”
“Oh, I see. You’re thinking about this like one of your world’s games. Sure.” The goddess seemed to fidget around with something again, and then my body emitted a faint light.
“Here you go. Congratulations—you now have the Notification Skill.”
“Awesome.” For some reason, I couldn’t open my stats, so I guess I was just going to have to check later.
“We finished quicker than I expected. There’s still time left until you’re scheduled to be sent back.”
What should we do then? Shoot the shit? “Can I ask you something then?”
“What is it?”
“Can you tell me about the god or whatever higher being in the world I’m in?”
She grimaced. “Ah... Yeah, that’s been a problem in the celestial world too. Well, I can’t really go into detail.”
“Are there rules saying that gods can’t directly interfere with the mundane world?”
“Yeah, there are.”
“So in that case, wouldn’t the actions of my world’s god be considered interference?”
“Yeah...they might be going a little too far.”
“Might be?”
She looked like she had trouble finding the right words. “I shouldn’t really be telling you this, but that world absolutely refuses any interaction from other worlds. We’re restricted from interfering with other worlds ourselves, so we can’t exactly figure out what’s going on.” Yeah, you really shouldn’t have told me that. “Well, anyway...you should be fine,” she said, brushing off the issue.
I asked her a few more questions before I felt my consciousness begin to fade again.
“Looks like time’s up. Good luck.”
“Yeah, you got it,” I said, before returning to my body.
“Still not a word of thanks... That’s just like him. I kinda miss him, though.”