Combatants Will Be Dispatched - Volume 7 - Chapter 5.6

6

—The Midgard Mountains.

The artifact at the heart of all this trouble lies hidden within this mountain range that stretches for several miles near the Grunade Kingdom.

“Nyope nyope nyope! Nyoooo way, that’s definitely impossible!”

“Stop mewling, Tiger Man! A Kisaragi mutant has no business saying the word ‘impossible’!”

Having approached the Midgard Mountains, we listen to a detailed explanation of what we’re there to do, because, well, we can’t very well be horsing around with our lives on the line.

“Tch, so it’s not to do with exchanging the stone killing you at all! If that wasn’t the case, you could’ve mentioned it earlier!”

“N-no, I tried multiple times to explain... N-never mind.”

Lydia slumps, emotionally drained from her explanation, while Belial looks as lively and enthusiastic as ever.

Tiger Man, who was meowing noisily just now, then says in a perfectly sober and serious voice:

“I think we should just give up on this country and make one of the older kids the king. Mrrr.”

“Will this beast only be tamed by my sister? I think I look pretty similar to her.”

Lydia pouts at Tiger Man’s statement.

“Mrr. Yeah, you do look alike. Bruuut, I don’t have any interest in old meo-aids.”

“W-who are you calling an old maid, you disrespectful cur?! I’m only nineteen! Now try saying that again!”

“Mrr. Yeah, you do look alike. Bruuut, I don’t have any interest in old meo-aids.”

Lydia punches Tiger Man’s stomach several times after the mutant frankly repeats his previous line word for word. Alice, who had been using some sort of measuring device to investigate something, declares:

"There’s no doubting it now. The princess is right— this mountain range is alive. It’s a giant clump of life- form readings.”

There was a reason why dragon worship was widespread in the Grunade Kingdom.

There was also a reason why monsters wouldn’t approach the country.

It’s because Grunade took advantage of the fact that monsters wouldn’t approach Midgard the Primordial Dragon, and it used an artifact to keep the creature in a deep sleep.

The result was a holy land that would repel all monsters other than dragons where a small town was built, which then grew into a city, then became an entire kingdom.

The reason why whoever exchanged the stone would die was because the moment they replaced the stone, Midgard would wake for a brief moment and kill the individual who replaced it.

As for replacing the artifact’s stone, so long as the person possesses a magic device that only the king possesses, it can be done by someone who isn’t related by blood to the royal family.

Due to the artifact’s very loose restrictions on use, Alice proposed making an irredeemably awful criminal the king temporarily, but—

“Hey, Lydia. Leave the rest to me, the queen. I’m good at hunting giant lizards. I’ve killed a bunch of lizards since I got to this planet.”

“By lizards, do you mean Bursting Lizards? Comparing those to the Primordial Dragon is...”

Lydia can’t hide her concern as Belial insists on referring to lesser dragons as lizards.

Belial’s in a good mood, having convinced Lydia to temporarily make her queen by arguing she’d at least make sure things worked out okay.

Tiger Man, who has been raising a bit of a fuss, seeing Lydia and Belial’s exchange, slumps his shoulders.

“Fine...I’m committing to this, nyeow. I’m gonna spend mrrrost of the Evil Points I have to support you, mrrm."

......

“You’re a mutant and a leader. You’re standing on the frontlines with me.”

“Nyopenyopyopenyopenyope! ”

Seeing Tiger Man resume meowing, Lydia looks a bit troubled.

“Um, what do you mean on the frontlines? I thought Lady Belial was going to swap the stone for me...”

Having listened to Lydia’s explanation, Belial had very handsomely offered to take care of everything.

Lydia evidently took that to mean Belial would be taking on the task of swapping out the stone.

But if that was all that Belial was planning to do. Tiger Man wouldn’t be raising this big of a fuss...

And just then...

“Boss, I brought them as you asked!”

The ones waving their hands as they arrived in the Midgard Mountains were Rose and Russell carrying Nadia between them.

“Mrrm?! What are you doing here, Nyodia? It’s dangerous here, you should go hrrrome. Mrr.”

“The lizard lady told me I could come watch you being really impressive, Mr. Tiger.”

Hearing that, Mr. Tiger glares at me, the one who gave the lizard lady her orders.

“C’mon, Mr. Tiger, Nyodia's watching. Hoping to see just what you can do.”

“You better be ready for what’s coming your way once this is all done. I'm going to put all sorts of things in my report to Lady Astaroth, mrrr!”

Mr. Tiger puffs out his chest as he tries to threaten me, but in those terms, I have the high ground.

“If I report your crimes from this whole incident, Tiger Man, the retribution squad’s going to come looking for you.”

“There’s nrooo way I’d actually do something like that to mrrry best friend Six! When we get back to Hideout City, I’ll take you to a good bar!”

My best friend meows and wraps his arm around my shoulder to play off his last comment as a joke.

“Stop playing around, Tiger Man! Hurry up and commit yourself, dammit!”

Receiving both Belial’s chastising and Nadia’s hopes, Tiger Man looks up.

“Frrrrine. On mrrry prrride as a mutant. I'll deal with this purrrimordial dragon or whatever! Mrrrm!”

Alice shakes her head even as Tiger Man declares his readiness.

“Lady Belial, this isn’t gonna work. I checked this thing’s mass, you won’t be able to do anything to it without using a nuke or something. It’s impossible to blast apart an entire mountain range without a huge arsenal of weapons. And you don’t have your teleporter. Lady Belial. You can't even order weapons right now, right?”

As Alice says, if we’re really going to fight an enemy that's the size of the mountain range in front of us, yeah, that doesn’t sound doable.

But right now, we’ve got the most powerful, most tenacious boss in Kisaragi with us.

“Listen to me, Alice. No one in Kisaragi should ever use the word 'impossible.’”

Belial then crosses her arms across her chest and looks up at the Midgard Mountains, stepping out in front of the box-shaped machine that’s probably the artifact.

When I look over the rest of the Midgard Mountains, I can see the faint outlines of a dragon.

Meaning the giant life-form several miles long is really about to start moving.

“Mutant Tiger Man, here’s your orders! Once Midgard the Primordial Dragon awakes, buy me three minutes of time!”

“Improssible!”

Belial glares at Tiger Man for his immediate rejection of her orders.

“Say that it’s impossible again, and I’ll give you a beating."

“It’s impossible if I don’t gigantify.”

Tiger Man goes sprawling as Belial follows through on her threat.

“You really punched me! I did say ‘if I don’t gigantify.’ You’re always so damned unreasonable, mrr!”

“Well, I mean, you mutants can’t use gigantification until you’re near death, right?”

I guess that was just Belial trying, in her own way, to help Tiger Man gigantify.

Tiger Man is struck dumb for a moment, but then murmurs out his next sentence as a last gasp of defiance.

“Gigantification heavily consumes a mutant's lifespan, and we're told we should only use it once. But I’ve already used it twice, mrrrm..

"I see. Just shut up and do it.”

“Totally unreasonable!”

Belial forces Tiger Man to shut up, then turns to me standing toward the back.

“Combat Agent Six! Send a memo to Kisaragi HQ asking for all the nitro cartridges they’ve got!”

“Seriously? If you take that much nitro, I can’t take any responsibility for what happens afterwards.”

How in character for Belial to put her own body on the line when she’s making her subordinate Tiger Man do the same.

Clasping her arms together over her head, Belial stretches out her back and then begins warm-up exercises.

As I send the order to Kisaragi, I think back to when Belial helped me loosen up my body by stretching with me until the morning.

I guess the Belial from then and the Belial from now are the same at the most basic level.

Although she had been so tame and skittish before her enhancement surgery, she now says...

“Alice! If anything happens to me. explain the situation to Kisaragi HQ! I should have about half a million Evil Points saved up. Say that it’s my last command, and as a special exception, have them transfer my points over. Use those points to deal with the Primordial Dragon before it manages to fully wake up!”

She, the person who, since receiving her surgery, has tried more than anyone to protect her allies...

“Half a million points? Are you serious?! Just what did you do, Lady Belial? Well, with that many points and every option on the table, the dragon...should be killable... Would it be? Maybe...?”

...is now fully committed to taking out a monster so big, so powerful, that even challenging it seemed foolhardy, all for the sake of a princess she’s just met, a princess of a country that had been an enemy.

“U-um... You can’t possibly mean to defeat Midgard? Midgard the monster that’s worshipped as a god, and is said to end the world once awakened...?”

Lydia looks up in disbelief, prompting Belial to lightly pat her on the head.

“Once I do, that means you and your descendants won’t ever have to risk your lives swapping out stones, right?”

She smiles gently, and Lydia’s face flushes as she stands there in shock.

Yeah, even when she’s lost her memories, she’s still the same person at heart.

So unabashedly generous, the sheltered girl, who would have lived quietly and calmly had the world been peaceful, turns her back to Lydia and calls out loudly:

“Step forward once the artifact’s sorcery stone is removed, Mutant Loli-man! But before we do that, call out your crimes that caused this whole incident!”

“I abandoned my post of defending the hideout, then kidnapped a princess who was still a minor and stole a national treasure! I assaulted knights who invaded the woodlands, and committed countless violations of orders by interfering with the invasion plans of Alice and the others, and increased the ranks of enemy countries, mrrrm!”

You can’t deny the man is pretty bad when he’s got a list of crimes like that.

It’s not an exaggeration to say this entire affair is all his fault.

“Ordinarily, execution is a fitting penalty for all of that, but if you survive this encounter, you’re absolved of all of your recent screwups! Your beloved lolis are behind you. Don’t you dare back down, even if it kills you!”

“Hrmph. You may be an unreasonable, violent, and toxic boss, but you’re always so damned good at motivating us to frrright!”

Belial knocks the sorcery stone from its place on the artifact.

As everyone waits, something toward the bottom of the mountain range opens.

Based on the fact that it seemed to move to focus on something, that must be Midgard opening its eye.

Standing in front of the artifact, Belial wobbles for a moment when that eye stares at her.

Watching from a distance, Rose yells out at the top of her lungs:

“Lady Belial, that’s no ordinary eye! It’s an evil eye that can kill the weak-willed with a single gaze, so please be careful!”

Having heard words that sound like something out of a cringy eighth grader’s notebook. Tiger Man steps forward as if to protect Belial.

We can feel Midgard awakening as the ground below us begins to shake.

Two of Earth’s greatest beasts face off against a life-form far beyond the size of any reasonable scale, one the size of an entire mountain range.

Russell looks at their backs like a child looking at the hero he admires and calls over.

“Don’t you dare lose, Tiger Man! You’re the ultimate mutant, aren’t you?!”

“Tiger Man! Lady Belial! If you need help, call! I can at least buy you two seconds by really, really trying!”

I really don’t think she could last that long, but Rose, drawn in by the two of them, offers her cheers, holding her fist up.

The ground shakes so much that we can’t remain standing, and Lydia takes her little sister’s hand and kneels as though in prayer.

“Super-giant hostile life-form. Midgard the Primordial Dragon. If we can kill this thing and send its samples back to Earth, it’ll be a gigantic profit!”

Even Alice the android seems to be infected by the heat of the moment and urges them on.

“Lady Belial, here comes the nitro cartridges! The rest is up to you!”

Belial, who has been waiting behind Tiger Man with her arms crossed, injects the just-arrived nitro cartridges into her neck without a moment’s hesitation.

“Mr. Tiger! Go get 'em!”

Nadia, evidently feeling something in the air, adds her own voice to the fray.

Tiger Man’s broad back twitches, and the Midgard Mountains slowly begin to move.

When the Primordial Dragon turns its body, the rocks that had been deposited upon its body begin to rain down like avalanches, but they’re all blasted to pieces by Belial’s giant explosion!

“I am Tiger Man, King of the Woodlands and leader in the Kisaragi Corporation! So long as I have the cheers of the lolis behind me. dragons don’t scare mreee!”

“I, Belial of the Hellfire, Supreme Leader of Kisaragi Corporation, have come from a distant world to hunt all the hostile life-forms and invade this planet!”

With a thunderous cacophony like a volcanic explosion, the giant mountain range flings off the earth and rock that was crusted onto its body, giving a great roar as it rears up!

In terms of time, the fight lasted all of three minutes.

However...

“Everything’s been completely blasted away...”

Rose murmurs in a shocked stupor, but no one responds.

No, it’s probably more accurate to say no one can reply.

“That was more than I imagined. I didn’t think it would be this much.”

The one who finally voices some agreement is Alice, the only one here who’s spotless, thanks to hiding behind me.

By “more than she imagined,” does she mean the legendary monster Midgard or Belial’s combat ability that managed to defeat even that monster?

“Forget that. You need to stop hiding behind me every time something happens.”

“Aw, don’t be like that, partner. You know if I take damage, the whole neighborhood’s gonna have a bad day,” Alice says before she starts gently wiping the dirt off my face with a towel, but that’s definitely not enough to fool me.

I take another look around, but thanks to the Primordial Dragon Midgard’s rampage, there’s nothing there.

The trees that had been growing in scattered clumps and the smaller mountains were blasted away.

And on this ground, which has been reduced to nothing but a giant empty space, lies the giant body of Midgard itself. Lydia, having confirmed that it’s stopped moving, stares up at it in shock.

Even as I stand there having trouble accepting what’s just happened, Belial appears covered in dirt. It seems she must have broken her right arm, hanging limply by her side. She calls out to me:

“Six! Ready a bath!”

I hand a moist towel to my unreasonable boss, who demands the comforts of civilization out here in the middle of nowhere.

“We’ll have to wait until we get back to the hideout. Besides, if you take a bath in a place like this, I’ll be guaranteed to peek. I might even come and join you in the bath.”

“Well, that’s another thing to add to my report. Go and get chewed out by Astaroth.”

Alice injects Belial’s broken arm with medical nanobots as we banter, and nearby, a badly wounded Tiger Man smirks with a pale, deathly expression as he’s taken care of by two lolis.
And—

“For them to actually take down the Primordial Dragon...”

Lydia murmurs in shock, staring up at the sprawling body of Midgard.

A bright-eyed Rose climbs atop Midgard’s corpse and begins gnawing on it.

"Good thing microwaving did the trick! If that didn’t work, we would’ve had to order a shipment of nukes!”

"That’s definitely not an order I'd let you place. Well, in any case, well done.”

What Belial calls microwaving is a name Lilith gave to a move spawned from pyrokinesis.

From what they told me, it works by directly heating a life-form's cells instead of attacking them with flames. It’s basically a finisher that works like the heating mechanism in a microwave.

Because it looks grotesque when used on living creatures, it’s a big move that Belial doesn’t like to use much.

When Midgard awoke, it first took aim at Tiger Man.

Having already been badly injured when Belial hit him, he didn't hesitate to use his tramp card, burning his own lifespan to gigantify and grab Midgard’s head.

Belial climbed onto the rampaging dragon’s head, then used all of the available nitro cartridges to nuke its brain, leading us to our current situation.

After she finishes wiping the dirt off her face, Belial starts walking to Lydia, who’s dumbstruck.

The princess, seeing the raw power wielded just moments ago, trembles and is unable to move.

Everyone stops what they’re doing to watch as Belial approaches the princess.

As we watch with our breath held to hear what unreasonable, impossible demand Belial will make for this act of stupendous achievement...

“Hey, Lydia. As you can see, I’ve killed the Primordial Dragon that’s been causing you so much heartache.”

Lydia’s caught in dumbfounded awe as Belial makes it sound like she hasn’t done anything of real consequence.

“Y-yes! Um, to receive such a blessing, and to have been shown that level of power, our kingdom will happily pay whatever amount that you choose to ask for—”

Belial grins from ear to ear, cutting off Lydia with a laugh.

“Can we call it even for all the crap Tiger Man caused, like stealing the national treasure, kidnapping, and all the rest?”

At the unexpected words, Lydia looks at Belial as though she can’t believe her eyes.

Then, looking upon Belial as though she were a hero who arrived when all hope was lost and saved the day:

“...Y-yes. Yes, of course!”

Lydia smiles brightly, an expression of pure joy appropriate for someone her age, a smile unburdened by the constant tension that was, until then, a fixed feature on her face.