“This is just like the Kingdom of Dreams!”
“Oh-ho. It seems you have heard a thing or two about this place,” Beelzebub said. “You are close, but it would be more accurate to call it the Nightmare City. Many nightmares live here, you see.”
So I was right about the rest of it…
“Most nightmares like to live among frivolity. Apparently, it allows for more variation in dreams.”
“So that’s why it’s like a theme park…”
“’Tis indeed lively, yes. Some of the residents have many eyes, others have big eyes—they do not like the sun, so they live here. I find it hard to relax in this atmosphere, so I am not particularly fond of it.”
Behind Beelzebub passed a little band all playing trumpets. It was loud—not a place I could see her enjoying.
“So where in this underground city are we supposed to go…?”
If someone here told me an evil god’s seal was on the verge of breaking, I would almost assume they were telling me about a new ride.
“We can go to the place where the tablet was discovered,” Beelzebub offered. “As you can see, the area around the King Mole has been highly developed. We shall make our way to a place more remo— And why are some of us already treating this like a field trip?”
Both Flatorte and Miyu had bunny ears on.
“Some guy who passed by gave them to us. The people here are kinda funny.”
“They’re sooo nice! Omigosh, I think I love this place.”
It really was just like an amusement park… I couldn’t believe the demons had been hiding such a bizarre place this whole time.
Once the situation was resolved, I thought I might bring the kids here. They’d probably have a lot of fun. In fact, it was so much like an amusement park that I found it strange Beelzebub hadn’t already tried to bring them…
Maybe theme parks just weren’t a thing in her mind, and that was why she could only see it as a loud, overbearing city.
I couldn’t be sure, but I got the feeling she’d always had a somewhat distorted view of the world, even as a kid. I found it impossible to picture baby Beelzebub enjoying herself at an amusement park.
“Hey, Azusa,” called Beelzebub. “Look alive. We’re going.”
Everyone had set off, so I chased after them.
* * *
After walking for a little while, we came across an area marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
Wood planks painted in all sorts of colors covered the area, and on the boards was written YOU CAN’T COME IN HERE.
It didn’t matter if we were employees or not, however. We had the demon king with us. A spot in the wall of planks took the shape of a door, and we stepped right through it.
“It’s just a construction site,” I said.
“You are correct, Elder Sister. That is precisely what this is.”
At first, all I could see was an old street, so I wasn’t sure why the area was off-limits. But after we’d walked for about three minutes, the scenery changed drastically. The street ended, and we found ourselves at the edge of a vast wasteland.
A good number of demons were there, using pickaxes to dig into the ground.
“I see. So that’s why it’s off-limits.”
We were now outside the theme park area.
“It would destroy the atmosphere if anyone saw what goes on behind the curtain.”
“That is correct. It is considered inauspicious among the nightmares to have the machinations of their magic revealed,” Fatla readily explained.
“The underground city of Yostos is still working to expand their borders. This is one of the sites where that construction is taking place~ They’re building a new area inside the old city, which has been closed off for some time.”
Pecora seemed well-informed. Maybe she’d come to inspect once before.
“And I think the place they dug up the tablet was, ah… Over there.”
She pointed to a spot in the ground not too far away from us. And there, exactly where she had indicated, we saw someone pulling something that looked very much like a stone tablet from the earth.
What’s more, another demon was bringing a pickax down on it!!
“Nooo! Stop! Wait! Hold on! Stop!”
I interrupted them in a panic and asked the demon in question to dig somewhere else.
“They’re not preserving them? We almost watched a piece of history vanish before our very eyes…”
“Of course not. No one was ever able to read the tablets, so they’re usually treated like rubbish~”
They must have been losing pieces of the past for some time…
“I think they should probably stop construction entirely, but…I’ll leave that decision to you, Pecora…”
“Even if something outrageous were written on it, we couldn’t exactly announce it to the rest of demonkind~ And it would be quite embarrassing if the contents proved to be unfavorable for the royal family~”
Aha. So there were political reasons, too.
Miyu and Smarsly went straight to the tablet and began deciphering it.
“Ohh, so that’s how the grammar works. Gosh, that’s so funny. These conjugations are way too difficult. Can you imagine trying to actually use these?”
Smarsly was hopping beside Miyu. Fatla had placed the keyboard cloth under it again.
“This must be written in verse. The number of syllables per line is the same. Does this mean they can only write in a fixed poetic form? That’s sooo crazy inconvenient!”
Smarsly had been bouncing all over the cloth this entire time.
“Oh yeeeaaah. I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but it seems to mean incredible, mad, unbelievable, wild, surprising, all in one word! That would be sooo crazy hard to use. Super crazy!”
That sounded a lot like how some people were using the word crazy. Miyu had absolutely no right to complain.
“Okay, I think I got it! Pretty easy, huh?”
“What’s it say, Miyu?” I asked.
“It says, Crazy. Just crazy. Totally super craaazy.”
“If you didn’t want to tell me, you could have just said so.”
“Listen, translating ancient languages is, like, super hard.”
I was pretty sure the problem was something much more fundamental. There simply had to be a more concrete way to phrase whatever she was saying.
Then Smarsly began hopping around on its cloth keyboard.
“What’s that, Smarsly? Carelessly trying to put the concept into words will cause the meaning to escape our grasp. The original word is so transcendent she is forced to describe it in vague terms. Huh. Well, I guess I understand.”
Maybe it was like how describing enlightenment with words only made it harder to understand…or something.
“Don’t be fooled,” said Beelzebub. “They are simply unable to interpret the language satisfactorily, so they are using overly broad language to cover for it.”
Beelzebub was pulling no punches!
However, there were a number of other clay tablets, and Smarsly and Miyu were busy deciphering all of them. They probably couldn’t spend too much time on each one individually.
“Incredible… Those markings do not even look like words to me, yet you can read them… This is not something I could do… I suppose there is good reason you are called a sage.”
Laika was genuinely impressed. She was smart, insofar as she had really good grades in school (though that was quite impressive by itself), but she couldn’t do something like deciphering a strange language. I couldn’t, either. It was a superhuman feat.
“Right,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do to help here. I’ll leave this to Miyu and Smarsly.”
While the two sages were deciphering the tablets, Flatorte decided to take up a pickax and help with the construction. It seemed she had a lot more fun being active than she did sitting still.
As it turned out, the new clay tablets held a lot of information we hadn’t known previously.
“When the seal is broken, our god will be revived and save us from the deep dark. That seems to be what it says,” said Miyu.
That sounded terrifying…
“This one seems to be a prayer to the god. It even has what looks like the god’s name.”
“So we finally have a name… What is it?”
But Miyu shook her head. Smarsly hopped on its keyboard to spell out: “Unreadable.”
“It’s a special character just for the god’s name, so I don’t know how to pronounce it. Suuuper annoying.”
These ancient beings were really making things hard for us.
“Oh! This one says where the god is sealed up.”
Great! That sounds like a real breakthrough! If we can figure that out, we can shore up the seal so it doesn’t come undone!
“Hmm. This is crazy. I have to solve a crazy-hard math problem to learn where the seal is. I swear, this just gets crazier and crazier!”
I got the feeling Miyu was going out of her way to work in the word crazy wherever she could.
The rest of us couldn’t even tell it was a math problem, so there was no way we could help. I decided to leave the solution to the experts.
Miyu stuck a potato battery into her back.
“I totally need an energy boost! I swear, I so do not have the words to describe how crazy this is!”
Miyu put a piece of paper on the ground and sprawled out on her stomach, then began writing something very quickly.
Smarsly flew over the keyboard.
“Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy!”
Wow! All she was saying was the word crazy over and over, but she was definitely writing out a very long math formula!
“Lady Azusa, I am so impressed…,” said Laika. “I wish I could show Falfa… Seeing this has taught me once again that I have so much room for improvement… I want to take the next step forward…” She wiped away a tear.
“Is this really that inspirational, Laika…? I can tell they’re doing something really difficult, but that’s about it…”
Flatorte, meanwhile, had stopped digging and was sleeping on the ground. Apparently, this deciphering business was no big deal to blue dragons… No, that was being reductive. There had to be some blue dragons who were exceptionally smart, right? …Right?
Thirty minutes had passed when Miyu placed down her pen and slowly stood.
“It’s solved,” she announced.
“So where is the seal?” Beelzebub asked.
“Well, if we assume the tablet was discovered in the same place it was originally buried, then it’d be over there, I guess. I can see some crazy-bright light, too. We probs need to guard that spot, or, like, something might come out.”
Miyu pointed in the direction of some ongoing construction.
“Oh, no, that just happens to be a district they’re working on,” Pecora said breezily.
“Your Majesty, this is terrible! Will you not show even the slightest alarm?!”
“But panicking won’t change anything, Beelzebub. A leader must remain calm and composed.”
“There is a time and a place for everything!”
“I don’t think this is the time and place for you two to be arguing! We have to hurry and go!”
We rushed over to the spot that supposedly housed the seal.
We have to get there! We have to make it in time!
Sure enough, the ground there was glowing with an unnatural brightness. I could tell right away that it was a special place.
“There! There it is!”
But as we got closer, we saw something ominous. The glowing spot was covered by a black cloth…
Pecora, undaunted, threw back the cloth. The earth beneath was a different color from the surrounding area, and we could see the traces of someone really going to town with a pickax…
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