Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 1 - Chapter 5.4

4 

A few days later. 

“Hey look, it’s the Fly!” 

“Hey, Fly! Unzip your fly!” 

Children follow me, chanting taunts as they fling rocks at my back. 

“Oh, look… That’s the guy everyone’s talking about…” 

“…Want to talk to him? He might unzip his fly for us!” 

I hear some young women, students probably, exchange whispers a little distance away. 

“U-um… I’ll take this one and that one…” 

I do my best to ignore all the hushed gossip and order my food from the lady at the skewer shop. 

“A chargrilled lizard skewer and a rat skewer, right? That’ll be six copper.” 

I count out the coins and hold my hand out toward the lady… 

“Eeep!” 

………… 

As I stand there with the coins in my outstretched hand, the lady looks contritely toward me, then lets out a soft giggle. 

“S-sorry. Um, I thought you were going to unzip your fly and take the money out from there.” 

“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Alice! Listen! Everyone in the city is being so mean to me!” 

I rush into Alice’s room crying. 

“Hmm? What’s wrong, Fly? Did it get caught in your fly?” 

“Stop calling me Fly!” 

Thanks to a wanted poster put up by Snow, I’d become famous as the neighborhood pervert. I hear a voice from outside the window. 

“Hey, Fly! Come on out! Show me your magic trick!” 

“You damned brat! I’ll pants you in front of everyone and reveal you as Captain Commando!!” 

I prepare to jump out the window after the kid, but Alice grabs my arm as she continues writing on a sheet of paper on her desk. 

“Stop that, Fly. If you get in trouble now, you’ll actually be arrested.” 

“Don’t call me the Fly! Dammit, and to think I was doing this to prepare for the fight against the invading army!” 

Yes, that’s right. The flashing was something I was doing to earn Evil Points. 

“I mean, yes, I told you to go earn some Evil Points, but I didn’t expect you to earn them that way, Fly.” 

“Stop it with the Fly!! And as for the bastards in this city, once the battle is over, I’ll show them that I’m not just a pervert!” 

“I didn’t think you’d actually admit that you’re a pervert… All right, I’m just about done.” 

Alice sets down a map and some forms on the desk and turns to me. Chewing on the meat skewers I bought, I take the seat across from her. 

“For starters, we’ll need a lot of anti-personnel mines. We should also get a few anti-tank mines for the really big demons.” 

I let Alice figure out how to spend the Evil Points acquired over the past few days. I could have done it myself, but I figured I can trust the high-spec android. 

“We’ve got a little over five hundred points right now. I’d like to keep around two hundred points in reserve. So we can spend three hundred. Let’s have them send three anti-tank mines, with the rest of the points going to anti-personnel mines.” 

“Never thought I’d see the day when I spent Evil Points on land mines. What a waste…” 

Ordinarily, Evil Points are used to get powerful weapons that can’t be bought with money. Anti-personnel mines are cheap. Depending on the type, you can buy multiple without breaking the bank. 

“Think they’ll send us mines if we offer our gold coins?” 

“Probably not. The Supreme Leaders don’t care about money as much as they care about having you rack up evil deeds. The plan probably goes something like this: You commit a steady stream of evil deeds, then something really atrocious, and ta-daa! You’re a villainous Supreme Leader.” 

Eh, I suppose that’s been the case since I was still on Earth. 

“Do they really think I’m capable of heinous evil deeds?” I let out a soft sigh, thinking about the three top Supreme Leaders. 

“Hey, however bad you are at it, you’d actually managed to rack up a pretty decent amount of points. Of course, now that everyone recognizes you as a pervert, and Snow’s put you on notice, you won’t be able to earn more this way… Still, you did really well given how petty your deeds were and how little time you had to do it.” 

“Um…are you praising me or insulting me? I can’t tell.” 

Alice starts writing down the equipment to be teleported over. 

“All right. Let’s go over the rest of our plan. If the Demon Army invades while the Chosen One is away, the Demon Army’s going to win. That’s the worst outcome for us. We’ll have to abandon this base, and this kingdom is the largest in the area. Once it goes down, no one will be able to stop the demons. If they keep going and invade neighboring countries, it doesn’t matter where we go. We won’t have any breathing room to put our teleporter together.” 

Where the hell is the Chosen One anyway? 

“It takes a month to assemble the teleporter and stabilize the connection, right?” 

“Right. If we rush it, we might manage three weeks, but we want to avoid that if possible. I never want to deal with an unstable teleport again. So a month to be sure.” 

Wait…? 

“‘Again’? Wait, was your first unstable teleport the time you were sent here with me? What was our actual chance of success on that trip anyway?” 

“At any rate, we need the kingdom to repel the upcoming invasion and then maintain a safe environment for us to assemble the teleporter. But as it stands, the kingdom will lose if we don’t intervene in some fashion. We’ll still probably end up relying on the Chosen One, but we need to buy enough time for him to get here. Therefore, we’ll be installing mines and traps and using guerrilla tactics to slow the advance of the Demon Lord’s Army.” 

“Don’t change the subject. Just how risky was that first teleport? Come on… Guerrilla warfare, huh? That brings back memories. We set a lot of traps back then, too. I wonder how the tiger man and chameleon man are doing these days? They saved my neck more than once in those jungles.” 

If those two were here, this fight would be a cakewalk… 

“Ideally, we could have Kisaragi send us some reinforcements. Unfortunately, the Supreme Leaders dislike throwing employees away on one-way missions, so they probably won’t authorize reinforcements unless there’s a way to get them back to Earth.” 

“Uh, they sent me here without any guarantee I’d get back safely…” 

Alice spreads out the map, pretending not to hear me. “All right, let’s figure out the enemy’s invasion route. I mean, it’s pretty obvious based on this area’s geography and the size of the enemy army…” 

“…Hey, Alice. Do you think the Supreme Leaders secretly hate me? They don’t, right? I’m a Supreme Leader candidate after all…” 

Alice completely ignores me and stands up. 

“Right. Let’s bury the mines around here, where human hunters aren’t likely to go. There’s only so much we can do, but let’s go and thin out the advance units of the Demon Army while we wait for the Chosen One to get back.” 

“C’mon, Alice! Tell me I’m right! Please? Please?! Pretty please??!”