The Great Sephiroth
"I can't believe it…"
That was her impression as she watched the Devragon fleet being swept away, bursting apart like fireworks.
Overwhelming.
That single word said everything.
Even the main cannon fired from the Devragons' largest mothership was swallowed whole by the enemy's hexagonal translucent barrier, absorbed without so much as a ripple.
The reverse, however, was another story entirely. Every single shell the enemy spat out like ordinary fire carried more force than a blast from the Devragon mothership's colossal main gun. Merely grazing their defenses tore them open, dealing annihilating damage.
The enemy landed nothing; this side missed nothing. It was a truly unreasonable arrangement — and that was precisely why a real battle could never take place.
Roughly a million streams of light poured out with every volley, and the Devragon lines were gouged away in chunks, swallowed by explosions. Was this what it felt like to watch a hundred thousand common soldiers charging a grand archmage? Watching the warships pour out light from a standing start without a shred of tension, she found herself speechless.
A warship 4,200 kilometers long.
Ah… calling that thing a 'warship' is strange in itself. At a glance, it looked less like a vessel and more like a small planet built entirely of machinery.
"…"
So this must be the 'helper' the Juddak mentioned, right? Because if it wasn't… then it would mean she was supposed to stand up and fight against that. Which was obviously impossible. She'd sooner just die.
As she spectated the battlefield, her mind drifted to the past. It felt like only yesterday that she'd been overjoyed at designing a flight craft capable of breaking atmosphere. Now all she could manage was an empty laugh. Moments ago she had been crushed by the mere sight of the Devragons' nearly 2,000-kilometer warship — and now this.
Come to think of it, the timing seemed almost too convenient. Had the Juddak calculated even this? If help had arrived even a little later… even with the vessel he had specially lent her, she wouldn't have held out much longer. What she'd endured earlier truly beggared the word 'terrible.'
Before the all-out battle began — though her debt had already breached 300 million — she had enjoyed a brief taste of victory after crushing the scout fleet. And then.
When the enemy's main force arrived, despair took her. The scale of that fleet existed on another plane entirely; she hadn't even the strength left to scream. No matter how extraordinary her vessel's speed, if that many ships coordinated a proper net of fire and attacked all at once, there was nowhere to run. A true dilemma with no way forward or back.
Worse, the enemy had deliberately aimed its fire at the planet to keep her from fleeing — and she'd boiled with fury at the sheer cowardice of it, seizing hostages on top of overwhelming force. They kept escalating their attacks bit by bit, as if testing her limits. After her frantic dashing about blunted their assault for a time, the result was this:
> DEBT ACCRUED: -3,165,375,995 P
Three point one billion….
"Is this what they meant by a debt no longer feeling like a debt?"
It just looked like a number now. Well, whatever. Even if she didn't lift a finger, knowing the Juddak's personality, he'd find some way to squeeze it back out of her. Yeah.
In any case, it seemed everything was over now.
When that colossal ship had first appeared, she'd wondered what on earth it was — it even looked like something that had rolled through rough country, patched and stitched together in places. Apparently that had all been deception. It cruised leisurely through the void, spectating its own space fleet battle. Now and then the aftershock of an attack came flying her way, but it broke apart in empty air without dealing any damage — the newly arrived warship had apparently taken some kind of precaution.
Yeah. The fact that her debt wasn't climbing any higher made it certain.
'Still, better not get too close.'
Unlike the opening moments, the Devragons were now fighting back in earnest, locked in a fierce exchange. But since they weren't inflicting any real damage, the outcome looked painfully obvious.
So she idly watched the space fireworks (or whatever you'd call it) and stole a glance at the community. Just in case the Juddak had come back.
'Hm?'
The Juddak was nowhere to be seen, but a bizarre attention-baiting post was drawing all the heat, and the community was roiling because of it.
'This is….'
A cursed image with badly corrupted text that seared the eyes. And yet the reason she endured the eye-ache and read it to the end was a single photograph.
'That's the exact same ship?!'
She couldn't fail to recognize the subject of the photo glimpsed between the broken characters — after all, it matched the very entity currently detonating the Devragons in real time in the far distance.
'The photo only shows the lower hull, but I'm sure of it!'
A few words in the text were still legible, though — she could just make out terms like "Administrator," "gift," "salvation," "banzai," and "butler."
The community response was lively.
The reactions were mostly negative, but plenty of people believed it too.
Amused by the whole situation, she quietly uploaded a photo of her own.
Needless to say, the community exploded.
The comments rolled in one after another, everyone busily tearing into each other over who was right.
"Pfft!"
A laugh escaped her despite herself. Watching the users swarm like a hive of bees, flapping between euphoria and panic over a single photo in the middle of all this, gave her a rather strange feeling.
Anyway, she had no desire to wade any deeper into that mud pit. She left the community — the Juddak, after all, didn't seem to care one bit about reactions like these.
'That's right. What's life worth, anyway? You live wild and you go when it's your time.'
It had probably started the moment her debt crossed two billion. That was the instant she'd converted to full YOLO.
But even that reverie was about to be cut short.
[This butler has rather splendid fortunes, doesn't she?]
"…Pardon?"
Butler?
A inexplicable chill ran through her.
One of the Roots of the Great Sephiroth.
Before a statue in a temple where white marble and the great trunk of a tree wove together in harmony, the empty air began to shimmer. The shimmering soon cracked open, and from within, a blood-soaked man tumbled out and rolled across the floor.
"Gahhhh!"
The man's condition could not be called good by any stretch of charity. Half his face was twisted by burns, patches of his body were frozen solid with rime, and silver blood streamed from his wounds.
"Khh… damn it all!"
Managing to haul himself upright, he limped hurriedly toward the temple's depths. Reaching a small, pond-sized spring, he threw himself into it.
Splash—
A few moments later, when he lifted his upper body from the water, his flesh was already healing — nothing like it had been before.
Ssshh—
As he slumped down, a slender tree root descended to prop up his body.
"Damn it!"
Though his external wounds had healed considerably, the man's hardened expression would not soften.
"A plane shattered… how could this happen?"
Silver blood still trickled from his split flank and the numerous places where his body had fared poorly.
"I nearly lost my divinity."
Crack—
He had plunged into an unstable dimension without thinking, and had nearly crossed a river from which there is no return.
"It couldn't have been them… their doing…."
His eyes boiled with a fury he could not contain. Not long ago, he had sensed calamity befall his children — and having been confined to penance at the time, of all things, he had been forced to do nothing but watch from his place.
'To lay hands on me… the audacity.'
A silver aura seethed around him, on the verge of erupting.
"Hoo…."
Barely calming himself, he deliberated. The children who had suffered this calamity were, after all, the very culprits who had landed him under house arrest in the first place — so their annihilation gave him no particular grief. He had even considered disposing of them personally, if it came to that.
But the plane itself being damaged was another matter entirely. A world he had been cultivating had been wrecked — as if not merely the crop but the field itself had been ruined. Restoration was impossible for the time being.
Gazing at his slowly knitting wounds, he lowered his gaze and stilled his eyes.
'Should I report it?'
The man recalled a certain existence and shook his head. No. He would stay silent. Better not to fan the flames needlessly. That was the conclusion he reached — for if it became known that a plane under his care had been damaged, there was no telling what punishment might descend upon him.
And yet.
"I cannot simply let this pass. Whoever dared lay hands on what is mine… I will find them, without fail…."
He clenched his fist until it creaked.
Before long, a silver current began to whirl around the temple. The wrath of a patron god who ruled an entire world would be no light thing to bear.