Fallen from the Sky (1)

A girl fallen from the sky.

The phrase brought to mind a classic animated film that had been famous roughly a century ago. The only problem was that experiencing it in the flesh was an utter headache.

"Man, I'm exhausted..."

It had been nearly two days since the spacecraft I'd mistaken for a meteorite crashed into the earth. It had only been forty-eight hours, but that was more than enough time to completely shatter the fragile balance of my daily life.

The main culprit behind that disruption was none other than gate duty. Ordinarily, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sweeping the gates was a leisurely, meticulous routine that stretched from morning until just before sundown. But the thought of wandering the wasteland all day while leaving an unconscious, unidentified girl unattended left a knot of unease in my stomach. I simply couldn't bring myself to do it.

In the end, I was forced to compress the entire gate-clearing routine into a frantic, one-hour sprint early in the morning. That left the remainder of my day wide open, which was promptly filled by an entirely new task: clearing out the surrounding area and foraging for supplies.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't fundamentally different from my usual chores of clearing rubble and scouting fallout shelters, but the scope and the time required differed by several orders of magnitude.

Well, clearing the area didn't take long.

Finding a reasonably intact building and vaporizing everything around it with psychokinesis was simple enough. The real challenge lay in tracking down the supplies.

"......"

I cut my train of thought short and glanced to the side. There, lying upon a pristine bed, rested the girl. Pure white pajamas on a pure white mattress, framing hair as white as fresh snow. It was an almost ethereal, surreal sight to behold against the backdrop of this ruined world.

"At least she makes a nice picture."

It did look nice. Looked, anyway. Considering the ridiculous lengths I'd gone to in order to set up this scene, it had damn well better look nice. Sprinting across the globe like a lunatic to track down undamaged furniture, rummaging through collapsed department stores for suitable clothes, and then going through the awkward ordeal of changing her into something comfortable... No matter how I sliced it, it had been pure, unadulterated suffering.

Naturally, I hadn't harbored an ounce of impure intent while dressing her. I hadn't even laid a finger on her; the entire wardrobe change had been carried out purely with telekinesis.

"Ahem..."

Still, my conscience twinged just a little.

Regardless, every step of the process had been born of necessity. For the girl to recover, she desperately needed clean clothing, a sterile environment, and proper medicine.

She needs to actually wake up before I can ask her anything, though.

This mysterious girl had remained unconscious for two straight days. In hindsight, it made sense. Her physical condition was anything but light.

When I pulled her from the crater on the day of the crash, her body was burning with a dangerously high fever. The bizarre hospital gown she wore was soaked through with blood. She suffered from severe bruising, multiple fractures, and ruptured internal organs from the spacecraft's impact, not to mention a deep laceration on her ankle that had bled relentlessly. In short, an ordinary human would have dropped dead on the spot several times over.

In the predawn hours of that first morning, I scoured the entire planet searching for the ruined remains of pharmacies and hospitals that might have retained any salvageable stock. But after twenty to thirty years of abandonment, finding unspoiled medicine proved an impossible dream.

Ultimately, I was forced to synthesize the knowledge in my head with medical texts scavenged from ruined libraries to administer emergency first aid. After burning an entire day on the effort, I had finally managed to stabilize her into the relatively peaceful condition she was in now.

"It really was a pain in the ass."

The reason I went through so much trouble at the cost of an entire day was simple enough: saving a person was the natural thing to do. Even if I had been branded a Demon Lord, and even if half of humanity had perished by my hand, my conviction to save lives had never truly vanished.

...Still, it'll probably take a while before she opens her eyes.

Even accounting for the fact that she clearly wasn't an ordinary human, I estimated it would take several more days for her to regain consciousness. No matter how powerful an ability user might be, biological recovery had its limits.

"By the way..."

Just who on earth was she? Now that I finally had a moment to breathe, the question bubbled up to the surface.

She's definitely an ability user, that much is certain.

The wavelength radiating from her presence carried the distinct signature of an awakened ability user. The fact that she had survived hurtling into the planetary crust inside a vessel devoid of proper deceleration gear meant her physical durability was off the charts. Surviving that crash alone placed her well above most physical-enhancement ability users.

Yet rather than her status as an ability user, the real mystery—and the core problem—was where she had come from.

It's not like I can just fly out into space to check.

All I knew was that the remnants of humanity who survived the global conflict had boarded thousands of starships and abandoned Earth. I had watched that exodus with my own two eyes, but that was where my knowledge ended. Whether those who fled had settled on Mars, scattered across the Jovian asteroid belt, or ventured beyond the solar system entirely, I had no way of knowing. For the past twenty years, the only signs of life orbiting Earth were the automated surveillance satellites of the Argos System.

"I put up a barrier to block the satellites just in case, but..."

The moment her ship plummeted, I had instinctively cast an obscuring barrier with my abilities, so I could guarantee the surveillance satellites hadn't caught much. It had been an almost reflexive measure, and at the time I assumed it was the right call... but looking back, I wondered if I had acted too hastily. If someone had witnessed this girl crashing to Earth due to some freak accident, there was a chance they might have mounted a rescue mission or intervened in some way.

"Whatever, who knows—"

Whether I'd acted like an idiot or played it smart, the results remained to be seen.

"...More importantly, when the hell is the Demon Lord Gallery coming back online?"

Around the same time a certain resident of Dimensional Depth 100s was grumbling about an inaccessible forum, the high-level assembly in Pandemonium was barreling toward its finale—and the Demon Lord Gallery was racing toward its own cataclysmic climax.

Thanks to someone who had acquired dubious administrative privileges and mass-banned every user not originating from Hell, the gallery had long since devolved into an echo chamber for the underworld faction alone. The brakes had snapped off hours ago, and with the emergency ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠containment measures—namely, the moderating armbands—nowhere to be seen, the forum accelerated into an unhinged frenzy fueled entirely by sheer hatred for Pandemonium.

Along the way, the board had weathered explosive flame wars, unspeakable profanity spams, arguments spilling outside the designated bloodsport threads, and blatant vote manipulation on the popular posts board. Yet, true to their nature as Demon Lords forged in Hell, the users gradually regained their composure. And once calm set in, they united around a single, singular topic: ruthless retribution against Pandemonium.

The only difference this time was that they were channeling their cold logic and formidable intellects to weave an inescapable net. To put it bluntly, an army of Hell-born Demon Lords was openly coordinating an interdimensional cyber witch-hunt—a literal, physical extermination campaign targeting specific Pandemonium users.

Under normal circumstances, Hell's denizens would never dream of offering a helping hand to anyone else. Yet faced with a chance to enact vengeance built up over hundreds of millions of years, they refused to let the opportunity slip away. Their coordination grew tighter and their plans more meticulously structured than ever before.

The fiery madness that had consumed the board seemed to fade into memory, but that by no means meant the gallery had returned to a civilized state.

A grotesque blend of peak Demon Lord cursed imagery and the universal mindset of if I'm going down, I'm taking everyone with me wreaked havoc on the board. One or two of these psychological landmines appeared on nearly every page of the popular posts, inflicting deep mental trauma on forum lurkers across multiple realms.

Yet no matter how much they flailed in agony, no moderators arrived to save them. Driven to the brink of madness, several ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠users finally arrived at an undeniable conclusion.

Pandemonium feud or not, the consensus was clear: if they wanted a clean gallery, they were going to need slaves.