Selena (2)
Legion Commander Rex of the Demon Realm regarded the unfamiliar golem with growing curiosity.
Ziing— clack— ziing— clack—
A four-legged metal golem scuttled busily about, hoovering up the dust from the floor. Faint blue light flickered through the gold-trimmed seams of its silver body.
Oho. That's no ordinary sheen.
'Fine material for weapon ornamentation, that.'
Greed glinted in the eyes of a demon whose hobby was collecting arms. The thing moved remarkably smoothly — whatever process had made it, it was no crude craft.
'There was a golem like this?'
The golems Rex knew were lumps of rock and stone that lurched along unnaturally. This one, light and quick on its feet, was bouncing about tidying the place.
I'm taking one of these home.
Rex reached out absently to seize the golem by the scruff—
SLAP—
"??"
One foreleg rose and smacked his hand away.
Rex froze for a moment, dumbfounded.
What was that?
It had swatted him the way one swats a filthy bug off the skin. Even Rex, who was famously unobservant, could feel the peculiar, unmistakable revulsion in that gesture.
He simply could not understand it.
Fury aside—
'It slapped my hand away?'
A Legion Commander's seat in the Demon Realm was not something you could win at cards or snatch for free. Only demons at the very peak of physical power ever climbed that high; even the simplest movement carried a forbidding weight behind it.
And that wasn't all. What about his reflexes?
When the metal golem had reacted mid-reach, Rex had instinctively responded as well, compensating in an instant.
And the result?
SLAP—
Rex stared down at the back of his hand.
His thick, sturdy red skin had swollen up. Just a little.
"??"
When even your own eyes refuse to believe what they're seeing?
The mind goes blank, fogging over as if it simply stopped.
And then, as reality seeps back in and he understands what just happened?
He rages.
"!!"
Rex's heavy brow knotted into a scowl.
It struck ME?
A familiar of a nobody like Selena?
His already threadbare patience hit rock bottom.
And yet a thick, honeyed smile spilled across his lips.
Why?
Because I can collect the debt from Selena, that's why.
I'll pound this chunk of scrap metal into paste, carry it off, and she'll come crawling on her belly soon enough.
With that thought, he reached out his arm again.
This time was different from before.
No idle grab.
A fist.
Yes. His fist, driven by a clear and honest purpose — destruction — shot toward the golem.
You insolent little—!
And yet.
SLAP—
"??"
The swelling had gotten worse.
"Huh?"
A baffled sound leaked out of Rex's mouth.
Again.
SLAP—
"?!"
Why, you—!
SLAP—
"!!"
Rex's eyes began to bleed crimson. Acrid smoke and flames hissed through the gaps in his bared teeth.
Hehh. Hehh.
The prodrome of berserk rage.
Legion Commander Rex of the Demon Realm, going berserk?
Not even the Demon King could talk him down once that happened.
Just as his cracked pride tipped him over the edge into frenzy—
"Is something the matter here?"
Selena, mistress of the Succubus Territory, made her entrance.
Riding a circular disc of gleaming metal.
Strange metallic boxes drifted and bobbed in the air around her.
"?"
He had only a moment to wonder at her bizarre appearance before Rex's mouth curled into a thick, greasy grin. His slit, serpent-like pupils swept Selena up and down.
"Your hospitality leaves a lot to be desired, don't you think?"
"I don't recall inviting you, so what—"
"Kluk kluk kluk."
Even between Legion Commanders, the gulf was obvious. Rex spewed out crude banmal like a thug; Selena spoke in polite, deferential tones.
It was unavoidable, if nothing else, because of the racial limits of a succubus. However much the word Queen was attached to her species' name, a succubus was still a succubus.
Rex, by contrast, was a high-ranked demon whose blood ran thick with the lineage of the hi-orcs. Talent on top of bloodline — of course the difference told.
"Please stop causing trouble out here and come inside."
"Kehkehkek. Fine, let's go in."
Rex shot one last greedy glance at the metal golem, then followed Selena inside.
"..."
Trailing behind her, he surveyed the castle — and his expression grew steadily more complicated.
Hmm?
"..."
The sheer strangeness of the scenery left him flustered.
Doors that opened on their own, with no doorman to be seen. Elevators that whisked you to the upper floors in an instant, no stairs required.
'Levitation magic?'
No. The levitation magic he knew never operated this precisely — and besides, his body's magic resistance was high enough that such tricks didn't work on him anyway.
And what about the perfectly tuned lighting, humidity, and temperature?
A comfort that simply could not exist in the harsh Demon Realm — it unsettled him more than any threat could have.
When the woman ahead of him murmured something, the entire building seemed to stir, carrying out her instruction as though obeying a command. Bulkheads slid apart of their own accord to open a corridor; metal arms extended from the walls to hand reports to the woman walking before him.
A living building?
He was so thrown that the thought actually crossed his mind. He sat down in the reception room and drank tea that had delivered itself, and a hundred different thoughts churned through his head.
He wanted it.
'With a castle like this, I wouldn't envy even my father.'
And the more he looked, the greedier he grew.
Toying with his faintly swollen hand, he studied the woman seated across from him.
'Right. A castle this tempting is wasted on the likes of Selena.'
Exactly. It made no sense for Selena — ranked below him — to live in a place like this. Comparing it to the castle in his own territory only cemented the conviction.
He brought his fist crashing down on the reception room desk.
KWAANG—
"Are you aware that your familiar struck me?"
He had fully intended to smash the desk, but it hadn't so much as flinched, which threw him off. He buried the confusion and bellowed instead.
"I'll take it as a declaration of war against me, then!"
Yes. Tremble like you always do. You know perfectly well what happens when you provoke my temper!
But his expectations were only half met.
She did seem flustered by something... but the look she was casting around wasn't at him—it was toward...?
What's over there?
The golem. The one that had slapped his hand away earlier?
"Ah! Don't kill it! It may not look it, but that's—well, it's a direct subordinate of the Demon King, so...!"
Did I hear that right?
This crazy bi— is actually debating whether I should be killed or not?!
Watching Selena completely ignore him, Rex blew his top.
Ohhh. Beat him half to death and he'll come around on his own.
The golem? The castle? He can hand both over as tribute.
No — for an insult this deep, maybe I just kill him outright—
His berserk rage finished in an instant, and his fist drove straight for Selena's face.
It was on an entirely different level from before.
Naturally. His berserk state was nothing like the frenzy ordinary demons achieved. A current of crimson energy coiled and roared along his outstretched arm.
Die.
The instant the word left his lips—
[BEEP! Hazard detected within the vicinity of a Class-1 Protected Individual.]
[Removing the element threatening the protected subject.]
[SWITCHING TO COMBAT MODE]
Clack— clack—
Whrmmm—
The golem swelled in size in the blink of an eye, long blades of steel erupting from its frame as crimson light flashed across its body.
Time seemed to slow for Rex. And yet even within that syrupy drag, the golem moved with unnerving, effortless speed—?
KWAAANG—
"Ghk—!"
He was blasted away by the golem's casually swung metal arm — and before he had even touched the ground—
[Terminating hostile target.]
"W-wait—!"
FLASH—
A burst of light swallowed his vision whole, and consciousness left him.
Thud—
Rex's upper body had been blown clean off. He did not move again.
"KYAAAAAH!"
The shockwave that followed swept through the reception room, and wind howled in through the wall that was no longer there.
Ziiing— clack—
The metal robot returned to its original form in an instant. The wall, too, bounced and wriggled back into place, sealing itself as though nothing had happened.
But Selena's frantic mind was slow to follow.
"Uh, ah...?"
Thud—
The strength drained from her legs, and she sagged where she stood.
The Demon King's son has been killed.
...
But no sooner had the thought formed—
She watched something kill a Demon Realm Legion Commander with a single artillery shell.
Hmm...?
...
Come to think of it, this is its own kind of problem...
"Haah..."
She didn't know anymore.
She just wanted to stop thinking. From now on, it was her who had every reason to stay on the good side of the Star Emperor and the Pirate King.
A dimensional pathway, warped beyond time and space.
Colors bled into one another like paints spilled across wet canvas, the boundaries between hues blurred, the outlines of objects smeared soft — as though everything were about to melt into the void. A place where a single misstep could leave you a dimensional drifter, lost forever between worlds.
Dimensional pathways were, by their nature, exceedingly dangerous. Which is why battle inside one should have been unthinkable.
KWAAANG— KWAANG—
—KIIIEEEEECK!
KUOOOM—
A colossal silver trunk erupted out of nothing and slammed a monstrous kaiju into the wall of the pathway. Pinned there, the beast vaporized in an instant.
Fallen into another dimension? Lost as a wanderer of time and space? Erased from existence itself? No one could say.
That was the kind of place this was.
And yet.
—KYAAAAK!
[Ghk!]
The belly of the giant who had summoned the trunk was speared through by a tentacle in the blink of an eye, spraying silver blood across the void.
Dozens of silver-clad giants were locked in a ferocious struggle against tens of thousands of monsters. The creatures flung themselves forward in mindless waves, heedless of their own lives, while the Sefirot Clan held formation and barely kept them at bay.
In a tucked-away corner of the battlefield, one of the Lower Roots busied herself batting the kaiju aside, lending support wherever the line buckled.
[Watch out!]
A kaiju had slipped behind her before she knew it. She whipped up a flare of silver flame and shoved the creature away in a hurry.
Like the Mid-Upper Roots around her, she pushed back and killed and pushed back again — but the sea of monsters showed no sign of ending.
[What in the world lies beyond that breach?!]
Burn the Holy Blood as fuel and sweep them away in one blow, and still they came, endlessly. Every so often a high-grade kaiju would surface, and lives would hang by a thread.
How had it come to this?
They had merely been chasing a single Fine Root.
The Chaos spawn holding the dimensional pathway shut. The ones who had gone berserk, hurling themselves at their quarry before it could even flee. Combat within a dimensional pathway — practically a taboo. She had hastily requested reinforcements from the Upper Roots to clear the things out, but the enemy had done exactly the same.
A skirmish small at first began to swell.
A titanic turtle-shaped kaiju emerged and spewed out endless clouds of lesser spawn. A grotesque super-sized beast shaped like a monster's gaping maw began sucking in friend and foe alike.
In response, Sephiroth's forces began pouring across dimensions to join the fight, and soon a battle as fierce as anything on the front lines raged in full.
The kaiju of Chaos hurled themselves into the fray like beasts avenging a murdered parent, spilling forth wave upon wave of monsters. Great Sephiroth, sensing something deeply wrong, steadily escalated its support in an effort to dig out the reason why.
Escalation upon escalation — a cataclysmic battle in a dimensional pathway that no one had ever predicted.
And the fighting, growing fiercer by the hour, had already begun to drift down a road that no one foresaw.