CH 113

AN: The illustrator of this work, Hirame Shibaishi,

He posted the third announcement manga on his Twitter!

(Thank you for the wonderful announcement, sensei!)

The fourth page of the announcement manga is content that appears in the third volume of the book version.

Please purchase it by all means.

The Daemon Emperor raised her scepter and opened a hole in the dimension, and Maya drove all the strategic satellites into Zirke’s core at almost the same time. Shortly after Lulu staunchly defended Fortress Kerviel, a large part of the Hercules Star System was swallowed up by the dimensional fracture.

From the Hercules star to the sector where Fortress Kerviel was located, it was instantly sucked into the black and white space and swept away.

Hart instantly felt that the light had broken through the outer edge of the star system and had become smaller, going beyond the range of one light-year.

It traveled 10 light-years, 50 light-years, 100 light-years away, and soon the marooned Hercules System’s outer rim became small and invisible. The numerous surrounding stars also became small particles of light and receded from Hart’s field of vision.

It was not until 10,000 light-years away that Hart regained a perception beyond his comprehension.

The density of white in the black and white space exploded, revealing a dense belt of stars in the center of the Milky Way. And then, when it exceeded 100,000 light years, the entirety of the Milky Way galaxy was clearly visible.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, the Small Magellanic Cloud, and the Canis Major dwarf galaxy and other entities appeared small in the field of view, becoming too small to be recognized immediately. Small particles of light similar to the Ursa Minor and the Draco Dwarf Galaxies were also visible, but they disappeared before they could be confirmed.

The ratio of black and white was rapidly becoming dominated by black.

How far will it go? As the chills ran through Hart’s whole body, the ratio of white began to rise rapidly after it exceeded one million light-years, calculated by hand based on the size of the Milky Way galaxy.

(Is the sucked-out part of Hercules Star System being sucked into something?)

With no way to confirm the accuracy of Hart’s intuition, the Hercules Star System was plunged into a light filled with white…

In a dedicated seat in the Central Command Center of the large space colony, Yúnlán regained consciousness. His nausea and dizziness were so severe, discomfort rose up from inside his body.

Enduring it with shallow breaths, he looked around.

Dead bodies…not really, but humans were lying down all over the place, and android soldiers and first-aid carts were rushing around to help.

Looking back at what had happened, Yúnlán pictured the scene of Zirke punching a hole in the void with a scepter and swallowing everything into it.

It would be easy to protest what they’ve done, but in their situation, they would end up saying they had no choice but to do it. In fact, Yúnlán and his men were on the verge of losing to the Royal Army, and Zirke had been bombarded with 42 strategic satellites.

Thinking that they may have taken the first step from the jaws of defeat, Yúnlán asked the Daemon King Mariel, his contract Daemon.

『Tell me about the situation.』

Sure enough, Mariel replied in a cheerful mood.

『I’m not sure how to tell you, but first of all, I want you to apply for a direct contract with me before you run out of time. Can you ask me to make a contract, including the phrase Dianthus chinensis, which is the direct contract keyword? 』

『Okay. Please make a direct contract, Dianthus chinensis, will that do?』

『Yes, it’s okay. I’ll explain then. This is the Andromeda Galaxy. You in the Milky Way are not the only ones with whom we are contracting. This is a galaxy with other Daemons.』

Mariel explained one word at a time, but Yúnlán’s understanding could not keep up.

『I beg your pardon. Come again?』

『This is the Andromeda Galaxy. We Daemons are also active outside the Milky Way. In this galaxy, there are intelligent alien life forms that have reached interstellar civilization, and Daemons that contract with them. Do you get it?』

When asked, Yúnlán’s response was that he had a hard time accepting reality. His thoughts froze as his brain tried to process the situation.

Yúnlán then protested Mariel’s explanation.

『Please don’t add new information where I haven’t yet swallowed.』

Extraterrestrial intelligent life outside humanity that has led to an interstellar civilization… these words were so intense that Yúnlán was forced to reconstruct his common sense.

After some due consideration, he came to the conclusion to postpone the matter for more than a day and a night, and confirmed a pressingurgent problem.

『What happened to the battle between the Daemon Emperor and the Spirit Emperor? And do you know the status of the war?』

When asked, Mariel projected an external image of the space where Zirke had appeared on the screen of the Central Command Center.

The mysterious planet where Zirke was supposed to have been has disappeared, and countless shattered strategic satellites are floating in the area.

When Mariel reached out to the image, a dark gray planet that Yúnlán has never seen before appeared. The grey planet was drifting through space like a ghost, drifting towards the sector where Fortress Kerviel was located.

Mariel didn’t speak out loud about that phenomenon. And Yúnlán, looking at Mariel’s expression, knew that the Daemon Emperor had been defeated.

However, in terms of the war situation, Yúnlán’s expectations were completely off.

『When we passed through Lady Zirke’s Daemon Realm, the intermediate spirits could not withstand it, and the Monarchy’s fighter crafts, whose magic element engines had malfunctioned, were swallowed up in the higher dimensional space. Fortress Kerviel, which is protected by two peculiar Spirit Emperors, seems to be safe and sound, though.』

『What!?』

Yúnlán was so surprised that instead of asking Mariel, he uttered a voice while operating the equipment around him to project a star chart onto the screen of the Central Command Center.

The results of the Multidimensional Magic Conversion Observation Wave are superimposed on the star chart, but the only response he could see was that of Fortress Kerviel.

Mariel reached out and the Alliance ships emerged one after another. Only about 20% of the remaining vessels are floating quietly in the battle zone. On the other hand, not a single Monarchy fighter craft, which had been so numerous, remained. The explosion light of the ships, which had covered the area like a thick cloud, were not visible at all.

Although Fortress Kerviel seemed to be safe, it was impossible for it to break through the 200 million fighter crafts by itself. The Battle of Hercules can be considered a successful defense by the Alliance.

However, there were too many problems other than winning the battle at the moment.

『I think it’s about time Ishidor’s Daemon King Nixe made a move, so I’m going to step away for a bit.』

『What do you mean?』

『Ishidor is going to try to reestablish a realm in the Hercules System, for the sake of the Herculeans, now that they no longer have a ruler. That timing would be most convenient.』

After saying this, Mariel disappeared from Yúnlán’s sight.

The first anomaly occurred on the planet Alcaeus, directly beneath a large space colony.

From the underground space near the surface of the planet, a sky blue light, similar to that which had created the realm in the Ten-to Star System, suddenly swelled up. And just as it was about to extend into the star system, the gray light emanating from the space colony attacked and captured the sky blue light.

It was like the tentacles of an octopus entangling and seizing its prey.

The sky blue light struggled to escape, but as the gray light increased in intensity, approaching the sky blue light as if crawling at high speed, and quickly eroded it. Part of the sky-blue light that suffers from algae was taken in by the gray light, which was whittled away and emaciated.

Mariel’s erosion rate increased at an accelerated pace, spreading across the planet Alcaeus, filling it with gray light as if to repaint the sky blue.

There was originally a difference in the amount of energy of the Daemon King.

When they invaded the three star systems of the Republic of Frodi, the three Daemons that Ishidor possessed sucked two-thirds of the miasma of each plant, and Mariel absorbed the remaining one-third, making a total of a planet’s worth.

Between Mariel and Nixe, Mariel has more energy. Mariel, who even set up a surprise attack, cannot be defeated by Nixe.

Eventually, when all the sky blue light was sucked away, the gray light extended toward the Hercules star, connected with the star, and then spread throughout the star system.

“Has Mariel’s realm expanded?”

Yúnlán, who has a direct contract with Mariel, had the feeling that Mariel’s realm had expanded within the Hercules Star System. The realm extended to the outer edge of the star system, and a large amount of magic that remained in the combat sector was absorbed by Mariel.

In the realm that Mariel expanded, nearly a billion corpses were floating cruelly, and the remnants of the Spirits and Daemons that had a limited contract with them were floating in space. Even if each one is small, when gathered together, they will form an enormous power.

However, only the light of the Daemon Emperor Zirke, which was probably the most massive and densest of all, was absorbed by Fortress Kerviel.

How much light did it continue to absorb?

Yúnlán, who continued to look at the endless stream of light, suddenly sensed a surge in Mariel’s power. And when he sensed that the Daemon contracting with him had been promoted, he understood that Mariel was the one who had targeted and eaten the Daemon King.

Mariel, who had no sense of camaraderie from the beginning, didn’t seem to care that she had suddenly attacked the Daemon King from behind and ate it, and spoke to Yúnlán.

『Sorry to keep you waiting, there’s one more thing I need to do. It would be better if Yúnlán was here, so please listen with me.』

Yúnlán nodded in agreement, and one of the images on the screen in front of him was distorted, projecting a giant pink jellyfish-like object.

“Whoa!?”

In front of Yúnlán, who involuntarily raised his voice and looked up, the pink jellyfish flashed three times, and then instantly transformed into a young girl with pink curly hair.

Then she talked to Yúnlán with a smile.

『Ahaha, sorry sorry, I had to match not only the language but also the appearance. Hi, Dear Mariel… no, Lady Mariel’s contractor. I’m Theia. Theia, the Daemon King.』

『Master Theia, it’s been a long time. Thank you for pulling me along.』

Yúnlán, who received the same kind of bombshell as when he regained consciousness, replied out of a sense of responsibility as he became more conscious in light of his own position.

『I’m Xǔ Yúnlán.』

『Yes, thank you very much. It’s nice to meet you.』

The light tone of Theia, a self-proclaimed Daemon King with pink curly hair, left Yúnlán bewildered. Regardless of the confusion, Mariel began to make requests to Theia as soon as they had finished their introduction.

『On to business, I have about 100 billion life forms that can be fitted with replica Daemons. Please cooperate with me by using all of them as bargaining chips, except for the 5.6 billion that belong to my contractor, Yúnlán.』

『That’s a great help. If you give them to me, I will increase their number, and the deal will be over. Lady Mariel, if you also collect the miasma and release it as crystals containing Daemons, I think our relationship will last longer.』

『That includes a lot of things, like a debt. But I will adjust it according to teacher’s advice.』

When Yúnlán realized what the conversation between the Daemons meant, he felt a sense of dread at the thought of livestock being kept on a ranch.

But Yúnlán, the prey, cannot interrupt the conversations of the predators.

In front of Yúnlán, who watched in silence, Mariel appealed.

『The Milky Way galaxy is very unfavorable. There are about 10 Spirit Emperors and Spirit Kings there. We had 5, and all that’s left is just me and one stupid Daemon King. Maybe Lady Zirke didn’t have any ambition from the beginning.』

Mariel pleaded innocently, and Theia nodded with a calm expression on her face.

『How many light years do you think the civilization there is spread out over? Ours is about a quarter of the size of the Andromeda Galaxy. It’s a failed civilization that has quantized their body and lost mana and miasma, so it can no longer cross the barrier.』

『My side is spread about 2,000 light-years across. Some of the major races possess mana.』

『Is this a second-stage early civilization, one per star system?』

『That’s right.』

To Theia, who was surprised with her eyes wide open, Mariel affirmed with an amused look.

『For creatures with such strong amount of mana, there might be a fragment of the Daemon God’s energy crystal on the birth planet. You see, they were shattered and scattered in the previous apocalypse.』

『You mean that in the process of evolution, human beings adapted to the crystalline fragments and took in their power? That would explain why the inherited mana decreases with each generation, but it seems that nothing changed when the Daemons set foot on Earth, the planet of origin.』

When Mariel denied it, Theia tilted her head.

『If that were the case, I wonder if it was after the life forms have absorbed all the fragments so much that the Daemons don’t react. If you were able to convert such a high concentration of life forms into energy, you were lucky, Lady Mariel.』

『Yes, very much, I will share it with teacher, so please help me.』

Smiling with Mariel, Theia eventually tightened her expression and declared:

『I’ll have Gremory send an advance party and warships.』

It was as if the calm surface of the sea suddenly began to undulate.

In a part of the Hercules Star System, gray magic essence emitted a strong brilliance like lightning. As it swirls, it expands rapidly, creating a gigantic whirlpool in the surrounding space.

The huge whirlpool was about 2,000 kilometers in diameter, about the size of the Transition Gates found in the Monarchy and the Alliance. However, it was not a normal gate, but a peculiar swell like the one in the Fukashiro Star System.

Eventually, when the expansion of the whirlpool subsided, hundreds of 800-meter-long objects and eight 5,000-meter-long objects overflowed from the gate, covered with pink light.

The emerging group began to move through the star system at an unknown engine output, except for one 800 meters long object, which showed the response of a magic element engine.

The hundreds of objects split in halves and headed to the planet Alcaeus and Fortress Kerviel. The one object that showed a magic element engine response and eight larger objects all headed toward the star.

On the other hand, Fortress Kerviel reversed and accelerated rapidly as it broke away from the star system.

April 3746 AD.

In another galaxy, humanity made contact with an advanced alien civilization.

★Postscript

Thank you for reading Volume 6 of the web version.

Volume 3 of the book version will be released today (March 15).

Sales will have a big influence on the decision for the next volume.

Thank you for your purchase.

TN: Woah!! Escalation!!! Guess we’re in the endgame now!

Honestly though, with everything that happened so far, no one in that Galaxy could pose a threat to Hart. So makes sense to bring something in from another Galaxy.

How will things pan out? Find out when we return for the Final (Web Version) Volume.