CH 65

[The Adjutant’s Challenge!]

—Explosions and death throes echoed across the plain. The sky was filled with thick black smoke, and the area around Helheim had turned into hell.

Seele smiled wryly as she glanced in its direction. “Haha, that’s my Great Demon King for you. Crazy as usual~.”

Her fans—like me—must be raving watching her rampage, but I bet the devs are having stomach aches. With how a single player slaughtering tens of thousands of people, many will surely send complaints to them saying “She’s using cheats?!”, “What’s going on with the game balance!”, or something along those lines.

So, they’ll either heavily nerf her like last time or just make some moderate adjustments and brazenly advertise ‘Demon King Yuri’ as the game’s ambassador of sorts for free… which will the devs choose, I wonder? Seele grinned.

Either way, Seele believed that disgustingly beautiful thug Demon King would shout “With spirit and guts, you can do anything!” while she continued to rampage and no one would be able to stop her.

Seele looked away from the hell-like scene and shouted at the large army she led.

“We’re going according to plan! While our Guild Master is pulling most of the heat, we’re gonna destroy our enemies’ guild bases!”

[Oooooooooooooooooooooooohhh!] More than 700 NPCs roared.

Including the familiars summoned by summoner NPCs, their number was over 1,300, cramming a corner of the plain.

“Squad A to Squad E will split up and move separately. Now, crush our enemies—!!!”

Thus, the trampling began.

Squad A, led by Seele, rushed toward the nearest dilapidated mansion. Their goal? The ‘Guild Core’, obviously.

Dozens of enemy players who were in charge of defending the base were taken by surprise by their raid.

“O-oh no, it’s the enemy! E-everyone—!”

“Slow!” Brandishing her red greatsword, Seele swiftly cut down the frontmost defender.

The rest need not be said. Taking advantage of the unrest among the enemy ranks, monsters controlled by the summoner NPCs and the highest-class, brutal-looking mercenary NPCs all poured into the mansion at once.

They lunged at every enemy player in sight and literally ripped them to pieces, opening the way to the Guild Core.

“Hahaha! How impressive! Well, they’re all over level 50, after all! Okay, whatever guild this is, it’s time for you to retire!” Seele took a giant swing at the Guild Core with her greatsword, having sprinted through the passageway that the NPCs had opened by force.

That marked the end of the battle. With dumbfounded looks on their faces, the enemy players disappeared into particles along with their guild base.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

You have defeated the guild, ‘Beat up by Super Sadistic Hot Girl Guild’!

+1000 event points to the guild ‘Guild of Yuri’!

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“Alright, good job, guys! Oh, looks like we can now expand our guild base and add various features from the event point exchange page!

“We gotta pick up our pace. Let’s rampage more, earn more points, and make our guild the best in the world!!!”

[Ooooooooooooohhh!] The NPCs raised their arms in excitement at Seele’s words.

They were fundamentally nothing but artificial beings, but that was exactly why they were hungrier for the glory of ‘victory’ than anyone else.

“I want to set myself apart from my mass-produced kind.”

“I want to win, grow, and become me and only me.”

“I want to raise my status, fame, and value so that I can look down on the inferior NPCs idling about in the cities.”

Such desires filled them. Because they were made to imitate humans.

It was their heartfelt wish to fulfill them.

“Seele-aneki, let’s get our next prey!!!”

“Let’s show the Great Demon King our brave figures!”

“Glory to our guiiiiiiiiild!!!”

One after another, the NPCs shouted about battling and grabbing victory.

Seele smiled seeing their brave figures. They were the ideal subordinates she had dreamed of.

“You guys sure are amazing. You’re neither timid nor lazy. You’re ten billion times better than the guys I used to surround myself with.”

She recalled the PKs who had abandoned her to escape from Yuri, only to end up ruthlessly slaughtered.

If she had also tried to escape back then, she surely wouldn’t have been in such a good situation as she was now.

Due to her innate stubbornness, she had persistently stuck close to Yuri, wanting to give her a piece of her mind, and as a result, before she knew it the two of them had pulled an unprecedented feat that was taking over a whole city, causing a huge an uproar.

Seele would never forget the excitement she had felt that night. The Demon King had opened her eyes to a much greater high than doing silly PK, and for that, she felt heartfelt gratitude toward her.

…Of course, she had no intention of saying it to her face to face because it was embarrassing.

“Fufu… let’s move on to crush the next guild base, then, you bastards!!!”

And so, Seele and the large army of NPCs destroyed one guild base after another.

Most of their forces were out, mobilized to subjugate Demon King Yuri and capture Helheim, so their defense was weak.

That said, each base at least had dozens of players stationed, still, they were completely helpless in the face of an army consisting of level 50 and above NPCs who were loyal to their orders and high-class monsters.

Using an analogy, the players were like a band of robbers trying to stop a professional army. Which meant, no amount of resistance they mustered could stop the NPCs.

With their high-level fighting abilities and the ex-PKer Seele who was familiar with combat against players as their commander, the NPCs crushed more than 30 guilds in no time.

Everything’s going smoothly. We keep this up, and victory will definitely be ours, Seele thought as she ran across the plain—but at that time…

“Ng—?!”

…chills ran down Seele’s spine. Her guts were telling her that it would be bad if she stayed where she was, so she instantly jumped back, and right then…

A man with a spear fell like a meteor onto the spot where she had just been a moment ago.

The impact shattered the earth, and Seele was sent flying along with the NPCs around her.

“Ghhhh?! W-what the hell’s wrong with you, attacking people out of the blue…?!” Seele managed to recover her posture. She gripped her greatsword tightly and glared at the sudden assailant.

“—Fuh, to think you could dodge my strike, I commend you, kin of the Demon King. However, the eventual winner will still be me! This hero’s spear will absolutely pierce through you!”

“Huh…?” Seele furrowed her brows seeing the man speaking with a brave tone.

His line was imposing and he got a hero look going to a T… but one thing spoiled everything.

His face… it was incredibly plain.

It had no defining features—the epitome of mediocrity one might say—but strangely, Seele found him kind of familiar.

“Ah~… you’re one of the winners of the battle royale, Yario, aren’t you? The dude who survived to the very end by fighting in a very plain way.”

“Wha?! Y-you called me plain?! Little lady, you’ve just touched my reverse scale!”

“Wow, your reverse scale is really low, dude…” Seele never let her guard down even as she made fun of him and she tightened her grip on her greatsword.

Yario, with his all-rounder job ‘Brave Lancer’, was a formidable opponent.

His fighting style was plain itself. From the clips of the battle royale Seele had seen, he would stab swordsmen to death as he kept out of their sword range, at times he would throw his spears at his enemies to defeat them from mid-range, and when things got dangerous, he would quickly go into hiding and let them go past him.

His plain fighting style despite his role-playing as a hero often became the topic of discussion on the message board.

Yes—to put it another way, this man had the talent to always find the optimal way to win.

Even though he was role-playing as a hero, he’d always opt for surprise attack first and foremost, and even when he was pissed off like right now, he wouldn’t attack recklessly.

In fact, he won one of the battle royale rounds with this fighting style, so his combat power as a player need not be doubted.

However,

“Well, no matter. Regardless of who you are, I’ll beat the shit out of you. With ‘spirit and guts’, to borrow the words of the Great Demon King!”

As Demon King Yuri’s adjutant, she would tarnish her reputation if she couldn’t even beat the battle royale winner.

While telling herself so, Seele began to fight against the formidable opponent.