The Red Sky, the Golden Moon, and the Dungeon
I left the Demon God and Makina to their happy demolition of the chicken and stepped outside.
When I lifted my head, a sky soaked red offered me its greeting. That violent color stained my golden irises crimson, and my face twisted before I could stop it.
The Demon Continent's red sky — a sky that, since the moment the Demon God descended, had never once come back.
Set beside a blue sky, there was nothing emotionally appealing about a red one. And yet live beneath a sky like that for a few hundred years, and not a single soul born of the Demon Continent found anything strange in the sight of it anymore. People from the other continents, living under ordinary blue, would come touring the Demon Continent, see the red sky, and merely widen their eyes, drop their jaws, and marvel. I was the only one who looked up at that sky and felt anything like displeasure.
No matter how many times I see it, that sky is unpleasant.
A red sky you could fairly call a supernatural phenomenon — it felt as if the thing were confirming, past all doubt, that this was not the Earth I had known.
And that moon is just as unpleasant.
The sky was not the only strange thing on the Demon Continent. Even at the hour when the sun ought to have stood at its zenith, nothing floated up there but a moon glowing a quiet gold, aloof and alone. Not that the continent was a land locked in night through every season. Day and night were perfectly distinct. The problem was simply that the moon rose by day, and the moon rose by night as well.
I was glaring up at the golden moon, eyes narrowed, when a spirit appeared in the empty air and addressed me.
"Why does Master have to pick on a sky that's just sitting there doing nothing!!"
Crimson plate wrapping him head to toe, a helm hiding his face — the Red Knight himself, the sort who looked ready to charge a battlefield at any moment, only shrunk down small and set floating in the air.
"Quiet, Achil. People are staring."
"Hmph! What does it matter if lowborn rabble stare? Master ought to grow accustomed to the eyes of commoners like that."
What was wrong with this thing? The way he advertised his chosen-people complex with perfect composure was genuinely revolting.
Achil, the Red Knight. Born into the intermediate realm when the System, unable to stomach the imbalance of good and evil, grovelingly begged the Demon God for help — the Red Knight of War. He was said to have reigned as an object of terror in that mana-rich intermediate realm, but here on Earth, the Tower's lowest floor, where not a single mote of mana existed in the air, he was nothing but a tin can that talked too much.
"Were it I, the moment those commoners so much as turned their eyes on me, I would have slaughtered the lot of them."
"Achil. I go a little easy on you lately and suddenly I look like a pushover? You're dead."
Achil's eyes went round and he tried to bolt, but I got a hand on the crimson helm before he could.
"M-Master... might we not settle this with words..."
He had curled in on himself and was attempting conversation with trembling pupils. I smiled sweetly at him.
"Of course we should settle it with words."
"A-as I thought, Mast—"
I clamped down on the grinning Achil's helm and slammed him straight into the ground.
BANG!
"A conversation of bodies, you little shit. Since when does a mere spirit sit at the same table as its master."
Planted in the floor, Achil could only twitch and tremble, and the other spirits appeared in the empty air to inspect him. The Black Knight Pipus circled and circled the fallen Achil, while the White Knight Nachal pressed an ear to the vicinity of his heart.
"Nachal. Is Achil dead?"
"Regrettably, he lives."
"Pity."
Survived again, did he. Achil, that cockroach.
I turned my gaze from him and lifted my head to the sky. A red sky that never rested a single hour of the twenty-four, and a moon that hung alone through both day and night — there was no reading the passage of time from either of them. But I could feel a gaze coming off that moon, shining gold just like the Demon God's eyes, and the sense crept over me that it was about time I headed back.
"You quit playing dead and get up, Achil. We're leaving."
A spirit was, in the end, nothing more than a mana-condensed lifeform born of the intermediate realm's abundant magic. Everything about them began in mana and ended in mana. Would a physical blow from me even work? As if to prove the guess right, the Red Knight who had been sprawled there sprang up the instant I called. Watching him rise, I felt the urge to kick him straight back down mid-motion.
But I was a woman who knew how to endure. I exercised the virtue of patience, swallowed the impulse, and turned my eyes completely away from Achil.
Which way did I come, again... this way?
True to a walker blessed with two excellent feet, I meant to trudge on home and was just about to take a step — when a translucent window cut across the path in front of me.
A dungeon will soon be generated at this location.
Time Remaining: 5
A System message, sprung out of nowhere, informing me that a dungeon was about to be generated right here.
After the Tower was conquered, a phenomenon had taken hold: from among the floors, the 1st through the 99th, random portions of a floor were torn free and spawned upon the Earth. Dungeons. Bringing new content for the Earthlings who had grown bored once the Tower was conquered was all well and good. I just wished that content would refrain from dragging me into it.
Well, even so, this dungeon didn't look like it had anything to do with me. Five minutes? That was more than enough time to bail. I could just stroll back at my usual unhurried pace.
4… 3… 2… 1… 0
Ah, fuck.
In a warm room, the Demon God lay with his head pillowed on Makina's thigh, savoring the absolute pinnacle of a peaceful demon's life. He had worked her to the bone and eaten his lunch without lifting a finger, so his belly was full, and an Incarnation's plush thighs were soft.
"Kyah~! As expected of you, Makina. Those thighs of yours are equal to mine — or perhaps a shade beneath."
"Wow! I'm on the same level as the Demon God?! This is the best!"
A situation of pure perfection, save for one thing missing. Ragna, who was supposed to be supplying him with amusement, was currently absent. Still, it was about time she returned, so he linked his vision through the moon and looked in on what she was doing.
What entered the Demon God's eyes was Ragna seizing Achil's crimson helm and planting him straight into the ground.
As expected of my Incarnation. Most commendable.
Since ancient times, when a spirit started climbing above its station, it was a very important act to press the creature down and make perfectly clear who was master and who was slave. Truly, the sight of her establishing the hierarchy was worthy of the Incarnation of Pride.
That Ragna. Prickly little tsundere on the outside, but inside she must be in awe of me — respecting me, surely.
Entertaining a thought that would have made her shriek and deny every word of it had she heard, the Demon God went on watching her.
But the space around Ragna was wrong. The flow of space across the whole area was warped, and space itself bent in curves, as if gravity had folded it. On Earth, the Tower's lowest floor, where mana was not supposed to exist at all, sparks made of mana burst into being. And last of all, a phone call came in without warning.
He drew the phone from his pocket and checked the caller. As expected — a call from a very wise friend. There was no particular need to answer. He had already grasped what the news would be, and the call itself was surely nothing more than an attempt to avoid being charged with insolence for failing to inform him. He declined it with magnificent cool and turned his gaze back to the space around Ragna.
"Demon God, who was that?"
"A call from Laplace."
He answered Makina lightly, then frowned at the warped space and moved to reach a hand toward the area. All of these phenomena connected to a single conclusion. The Tower was already conquered, the Earthlings were bored for lack of new content, and the System had fetched them something fresh. And yet it dared try to wedge the space of another floor into a domain governed by the God of Space.
That System brat's arrogance truly pierces the heavens.
He had been about to casually put a stop to the System's new content when an amusing thought surfaced, and a bell rang in his head. The Demon God drew back the hand he had been extending, giggled, and looked at Ragna.
If she is this body's Incarnation, a trial of this degree will be nothing to her.
If he wished, he could erase the dungeon about to be generated this very instant, or move Ragna home. But that would be an act entirely devoid of pride. Fleeing from oncoming danger — for the sake of Ragna, who had received the Authority of Pride, he must not lift a hand. Thinking so, he felt the area around his heart grow warm of its own accord at the thought of his Incarnation, and nodded in satisfaction.
Makina watched the Demon God stare into empty air, giggling to himself and then suddenly nodding, and tilted her head.
"Demon God, is something fun happening?"
"Indeed. As expected of the one charged with this body's amusement — she has gone and pulled off quite a feat."
"Really? I want to see too! Demon God, show me!"
"Heh heh. You, who received the Authority of Space from me, will be more than able to see it once you have grown sufficiently."
"Waaah! Really? Makina wants to become a grown-up soon too!"