Ch.89Monitor (2)

The Evil God seemed not to understand Lumia’s decision, as for a while only the “typing” message blinked without any actual message appearing.

From the beginning, Lumia’s existence wasn’t something worth the Evil God’s attention.

Through the incompletely transmitted information, the Evil God saw Lumia as merely another personality of Frey that would disappear soon anyway.

At best, she was just a convenient vessel to seal Frey’s power while the Evil God tried to persuade her.

But now Lumia had escaped the fake world with Frey’s power.

Whether the Evil God liked it or not, Lumia’s value had to be reassessed.

[Hmm… Unsatisfied with the fake, does she want a body in the real world?]

The total amount of power the Evil God could use was limited, even in this mental world.

[If that’s what you want, I can help you.]

[You just need to take my hand, and you can have Frey’s body.]

It seemed the Evil God had changed direction, trying to persuade Lumia instead of drawing me in.

Lumia smiled faintly at the Evil God’s words and demanded something more substantial than a handshake.

“I don’t really like verbal agreements. Please show me a proper contract.”

[Hmm, you prefer certainty over ambiguity?]

[Fine, here’s the contract. I originally prepared a slave contract for that child, but if you cooperate well, I can offer you an Apostle contract instead.]

After sending that message, the Evil God displayed an arrow on the monitor pointing at me.

It looked as if the Evil God was chiding me as someone who couldn’t be trusted.

Because of that, I had to struggle not to laugh to avoid being noticed by the Evil God.

‘Clearly, the Evil God isn’t in a normal state right now.’

I carefully observed Lumia’s reaction as she read the Evil God’s proposal with a smile.

Though Lumia was looking at the contract with apparent interest, the corners of her mouth couldn’t completely hide her malicious smile.

She seemed to have reached the same conclusion as I had.

[So, do you like the contract terms?]

“I’m concentrating on reading it, so please wait a moment~”

Even gods aren’t omnipotent.

In some ways, the position of being a god actually restricted their freedom more.

And these conditions didn’t change even for the notorious Evil God.

[You must have finished reading by now?]

“I’m still reading carefully, not done yet~”

Lumia was gently testing the Evil God’s reactions to see the extent of its awareness.

[Have you finished reading?]

“Not yet~”

[…]

As a result, we could feel the Evil God’s patience wearing thin, but this gave us more room to maneuver.

Now we could communicate with each other to a reasonable extent.

<Have you found a way to escape this mental world? No matter how narrow-minded the Evil God is, it will notice if we keep stalling.>

<Don’t worry, I’ve thought of two methods.>

Lumia winked at me, then smiled gently and spoke loud enough for the Evil God to hear.

“Well, I’ve decided.”

<The first method is to wait patiently. No matter how slowly time passes in this mental world, someone outside should have noticed by now.>

<That’s rejected. We don’t have that much time left.>

I shifted my gaze to the monitor that was quickly responding to Lumia’s words.

On the monitor, the Evil God was eagerly sending messages as if it had grown bored from waiting.

[You’re so cautious that I was dying of boredom.]

“Well, my life is at stake. I can’t make such a decision lightly.”

[Then please sign quickly~]

[Time is money! Time is gold! You know?]

[Even as a god, my time is expensive.]

The Evil God sent messages as if trying to prove its harmlessness, having abandoned all dignity.

Of course, to both Lumia and me, it just looked like a disgusting act.

‘After trying to crush my mind like a sandcastle just before, does it think it can hide behind such pretense?’

Or perhaps it was just the Evil God’s form of amusement.

Either way, neither the Evil God nor we had much time, so I gestured to Lumia to share her next plan.

<You seem to have been thinking about the second method from the beginning. Can you tell me quickly? The Evil God is becoming suspicious.>

<The second method is very simple. The exit from this mental world is right beyond that monitor in front of us. In other words, we just need to break the monitor and get out.>

Lumia, giving me an ominous smile in response to my urging, placed her hand on the God-Slaying Sword embedded in my chest.

With a foreboding feeling, I tried to say something.

“Wait a—!”

“Like this!”

*Swoosh- Crack-!*

Ignoring my words, Lumia roughly pulled the God-Slaying Sword from my chest and sliced the monitor in half.

Although the pain wasn’t as intense as it would have been in reality, it still hurt, so I glared at Lumia reproachfully.

“Glare all you want~ I learned it all from you.”

“I don’t recall teaching you how to draw a sword from someone else’s chest…”

“Repay what you receive. That’s your motto, right? So I just slightly repaid the pain I received thanks to you.”

As Lumia said this with a wink, I couldn’t find any suitable retort.

It was an undeniable fact that I had put Lumia through terrible pain by treating this body roughly.

“Yes, I suppose this is my karma… Shall we focus on escaping first?”

“Let’s do that~ Though I doubt breaking a monitor will solve our problem with something that calls itself an Evil God.”

Having received the nameless sword back from Lumia, I stood beside her facing the Evil God, which was gradually changing its form.

[Why? I thought I was offering you fairly good terms.]

“No matter how fancy it looks, a slave contract is still a slave contract. Its essence doesn’t change.

And if you want to hire a beautiful Sword Saint like me, you’ll need to offer much more than that~”

“That’s quite the self-praise.”

While we were talking, something quite alien emerged from the darkness.

In the sky, there was only a single enormous hand, and from strings connected to that hand hung numerous monitors.

Inside each monitor, different people were busily living their lives.

“By the way, why do I have the nameless sword while you have the God-Slaying Sword?”

“This is just a mental world, so the God-Slaying Sword probably doesn’t have any special abilities anyway. Does it matter?”

“For a gamer like me, appearance is an endgame content I can’t give up.”

While I valued performance most, I didn’t want to sacrifice appearance.

As a rule, if something looks bad, you lose motivation even when playing well, but if something looks good, you stay motivated even when the game isn’t going smoothly.

“So please give me the God-Slaying Sword—”

[I feel like I’m being ignored too much.]

[Let’s start with fire.]

*Twitch.*

Lumia and I felt our vision change drastically in an instant.

The ground we were standing on suddenly began to burn, and the air we were breathing became scorching hot.

“Did you notice any warning signs just now?”

“I saw the ring finger among those fingers in the sky twitch, but nothing else…”

I could instinctively feel that escaping from this place wouldn’t be easy.

The fact that such a powerful magic activated without any warning signs meant that even worse things were possible.

Indeed.

[You shouldn’t be so surprised by that level.]

[This time, fire and wind.]

*Twitch. Twitch.*

Following the complete transformation of the area, the Evil God immediately launched a vicious magical attack.

*Crackle-!*

A firestorm suddenly summoned from thin air grew larger by absorbing the energy from the fire zone and rushed toward us.

Knowing that the attack would only grow larger and chase us if we tried to avoid it, we moved first.

“I’ll take the top.”

“I’ll take the bottom.”

Without hesitation, Lumia and I moved toward the storm, each heading to the position closest to us.

We were aiming for the points where the different elemental properties had imperfectly merged.

‘It’s a powerful spell, but disharmony always occurs between different elements.’

The more skilled the caster, the harder it becomes to find such disharmony, but fortunately, this didn’t seem to be the case.

*Slash-*

As the two different weak points were cut, the storm lost its form and dissipated, becoming part of nature.

But it was too early to feel relieved just because one storm had disappeared.

The Evil God wouldn’t have thought that this level of attack would cause us significant damage.

[Your response is faster than I expected.]

[Then how about this.]

[This time, fire and death.]

*Twitch. Twitch.*

Once again, the fingers floating in the air moved.

This time, a Death Knight wrapped in blue flames emerged from the ground.

The energy it emitted felt ominous, but the Death Knight didn’t get a chance to move.

*Slash- Crack.*

Before the Death Knight could properly move, Lumia and I had already dealt with it.

“It looks difficult, so I’ll just skip it.”

[…Isn’t that too underhanded?]

“And I’ll take that as a compliment.”

*Slash-*

Leaving the bewildered Evil God behind, Lumia and I smashed one of the many monitors spread out before us.