“This is terrible, Azusa~! The seal on an old god has come undone!”
“Azusa! An elder god has been revived! This is bad!”
They’re going to tell me now?!
“O-o-o-o-o-o-oh no…”
Pecora collapsed back onto the bed. She must have realized how bad the situation was at last.
“Hey, come on! You’ve got to tell us these things earlier! Pecora wasn’t taking this very seriously, and now she’s fainted!”
“Sorry~ We tried to resolve this secretly among ourselves, so we were a little late in contacting you.”
I felt sure organizations were not supposed to do that.
“Indeed. Things have gotten out of hand, and We could no longer keep quiet about it. Thus, We have come to inform you of the situation.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear right now…
“We’ve been aware of the elder god’s revival for some time now, but since it can change its appearance at will, We haven’t been able to locate it. We believe it is hiding in this underground city…”
“Nintan, can’t you use your divine powers to find it? And what is this elder god anyway? Do you know its name?”
“Do not ask Us so many questions at once! It is difficult to answer!”
When Pecora woke up, she and I listened to what Nintan had to say.
“First, though it is referred to as an elder god, that does not mean it is any older than the other gods in this world. It simply happened to be here when the world was created.”
“Yes. A colleague of Nintan’s. You know, like a former employee who retired.”
As always, Godly Godness’s comparison was a little too casual for the situation.
“Many gods presently live in this world. There are those who work very hard, those barely scraping by, and those who sleep in seclusion. But this god’s views did not line up with ours.”
“Like a band breaking up due to creative differences.”
Godly Godness kept interjecting, making it hard to concentrate.
“It is unique and has a hard time conforming. That in itself is not a bad thing, but allowing it to do as it pleased would have caused this world to develop in a bizarre and unpleasant direction. With no other choice, We sealed it deep underground. That is why it is called an elder god.”
So even the gods called it an elder god. What a stunning coincidence.
“Yes, if only you’d resolved the conflict more peaceably at the time, you would not have to panic today~”
“Godness, become a frog.”
Nintan had been pushed beyond her limit, and a cold white light shot out from her hand. When the light hit Godly Godness, she was once again turned into a frog.
“Oh, this is a rare variety of frog, ribbit! How lucky, ribbit!”
“Godly Godness, if you’re just going to get in the way, then please go home…,” I said.
It didn’t matter that she’d helped me before; if she kept acting like this, I would have a hard time continuing to believe in her.
“For your information, the elder god was not forcibly shoved underground. We offered it dominion over a portion of the underground and told it to do as it pleased. The seal—or rather, the boundary—is like a wall, erected so that there is no confusion as to where their dominion ends.”
“Meaning the wall was broken.”
“Back in the day, we did not anticipate development reaching this far underground.”
Godly Godness occasionally stuck out her frog tongue, distracting me.
“If I may, judging by what I’ve heard so far, it does not sound like this elder god is much of a threat, no? You are saying you sealed it away peacefully?” Pecora asked Nintan, clinging to hope.
“Yes, but that was a long time ago. We do not know what it is thinking today. And it controls all the intelligent life beneath the earth. It would be bad if such things came to the surface.”
I got the feeling Nintan had just blurted out something rather astonishing.
“So, Nintan, are you saying there are people living in the ground below us…?”
This was the first I’d heard of such a thing. In a way, this news was just as shocking as that of the sealed god.
“I do not know if they can be called ‘people.’ Their form is very different from your own. This is simply conjecture, but—if a regular person were to see these beings, their mind may shatter.”
That sounded terrifying!
“Gosh, that sounds an awful lot like the myths about Cthu-something-or-other, ribbit!”
Godly Godness had just said something only I could understand, but I agreed with her. There was something down here beyond our imagination…
“Ummm~ If I may ask a question?” Pecora timidly raised her hand. “There are other gods, yes? Are those gods also working to stop this one?”
Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know any gods besides these two. Wouldn’t an infinite number of gods be able to do something about this?
“She’s right,” I said. “From what you’ve told us, it sounds like even the gods from the same generation as this elder god are still around. It’d be really great if we could get their help.”
Nintan looked away.
“………The others insist that it is not their responsibility and that gods should not exert too much influence on mortal affairs. It seems they have decided to stay out of it.”
Sheesh, talk about selfish!
“And so we, the goddess and the frog, have been searching for this elder god, but we’re still having trouble.”
The way Godly Godness described the two of them made it seem like a frog was her default form.
I decided to think positively: Two gods on our side meant we had the advantage.
Come to think of it—there was still one thing I hadn’t asked.
“What’s the name of this elder god, Nintan?”
It sounded like there were many other gods in the world, so if it had a name, that’s probably what we should call it.
And there was a small chance that someone was staying at an inn under that name. I doubted anyone would check into a hotel as “Elder God,” at any rate.
“Its name? Dekyari’tosde.”
“That sure is hard to say…”
Maybe I should just stick to ‘elder god’…
The next day, we split up and scoured the underground city of Yostos for this Dekyari’tosde, the elder god.
That said, it could apparently change form at will, so we couldn’t base our search on looks alone.
Not only that, but since we were in the demon lands, the people came in all shapes and sizes. If this were a human city, everyone would look more or less the same, and we could have easily chased down those who stood out, but…
“Hey, Beelzebub, aren’t that guy’s horns just a little too long?”
“’Tis a normal length.”
“Isn’t that minotaur’s head a little too big?”
“’Tis simply his build. I do not have the courage to ask him if I may investigate his head merely because it is a little large… He may be self-conscious…”
“Don’t you think that demon’s tail is a little too long?”
“I have heard that letting one’s tail drag on the ground like that is quite painful. It does seem rather long…”
…It was hard to tell by appearance alone, since the demons were so diverse.
“I suppose ’tis truly impossible to try and pick out particularly strange passers-by.”
“Yeah. And if this elder god is still hiding somewhere in the city, I think I understand why they don’t want to cause a ruckus.”
Beelzebub looked at me questioningly, so I explained.
“I mean, you can look like anything here, and they’ll accept you. This elder god was so unique that it broke off from the other gods. Maybe a place like this is more comfortable.”
I doubted there were demons like this back when the elder god was sealed away. Maybe it felt like the world had grown closer to its ideal while it was gone.
“That would be nice… But hell’s bells, this elder god is giving us quite the headache. If only it would let us know that it had no intentions of causing any trouble.”
Considering Beelzebub was a demon minister, that seemed like a genuine sentiment…
“I suppose ’tis well enough that our morning search has yielded no results. We shall put our true strategy into motion this afternoon.”
“True strategy?”
“We shall seek out terrible artists. We are holding events all across Yostos asking people to draw. It’s reasonable to expect at least one drawing by afternoon!”
We already had the help of two gods, and yet our Plan A seemed to be full of holes…
That afternoon, we all gathered in a room at the Yostos city hall.
All the pictures collected from the contests around the city were being brought to us.
“DRAWING CONTEST: THE STREETS OF YOSTOS, DRAW YOUR MOMMY!, DESIGN THE UNDERGROUND CITY’S OFFICIAL MASCOT, TWENTY PERCENT OFF IF YOU SUBMIT AN ILLUSTRATION! …They really were just trying to get people to draw, huh?”
But I doubted an elder god would have a mommy, so that one seemed like a bust. And just as I’d predicted, all the drawings seemed to have come from children.
“The submissions for drawings of the city are all boring~ None of these exhibits any sort of talent. You have to do more than simply draw scenery.”
Pecora was so harsh… I wondered if the demon king was skilled in the arts as well.
“Your Majesty, the mascot portion isn’t much better. This one seems especially doubtful. It consists of a circle with sticklike hands and legs—that is all. I wish they would understand that less does not always mean more.”
The demons were acting like real contest judges. Weren’t we supposed to be doing something else? They weren’t the only ones, though—there was someone else here getting carried away.
“You have drawn well and carefully. I see originality in your color choices. That is all the feedback I have. Next picture.”
“Laika, you don’t have to critique every single one! That’s not what we’re here to do!”
There were more important things for her to focus on.
“Oh gosh. This is very inappropriate. I can’t show this to any of you, so I’m going to throw it away.”
“People really need to think about propriety. No matter the era, there are always idiots who think art is all about shock value. Even some of the gods.”
The gods, too, seemed a little distracted. I was starting to get nervous. They seemed to be taking each entry way too seriously.
“I guess trying to find someone bad at art wasn’t such a good idea after all…”
Since these contests were open to anyone, it only made sense that most people who entered would be those who were skilled or who liked to draw. It seemed unlikely that someone bad at drawing would even enter. The idea was obviously flawed from the beginning.
Sighing to myself, I flipped through a stack of self-portraits. They were mostly pretty good, though I had a feeling many of the entrants had purposely drawn themselves better-looking.
Then, mid-flip, I froze.
The portrait in front of me was neither good nor bad—it was like someone had randomly drawn lines all over the place.
“Whoa, what is this? Abstract art? Postmodernism?”
When I went to the modern art section in museums back in my previous life, I remembered seeing a lot of pictures of circles or squares, or where the paint was just poured onto the canvas—things I had no idea how to appreciate. This was like those.
Such pieces often had abstract titles as well, like Work 1 or Work A; maybe that was some kind of rule. In my opinion, they’d tried too hard to be unique and ended up all the same.
It seemed the demons had that kind of stuff, too.
“Hey, Pecora. Does this count as art?”
I showed the portrait to Pecora, since she seemed to know what she was doing.
“No, Elder Sister,” she said immediately, waving her hand. “There is hesitation in the lines, and the image is meaningless. There is no imagination, no effort. I doubt it counts as a picture.”
She was surprisingly strict… That last part even seemed unnecessarily cruel. Maybe in the past, someone had told her such a picture was art, and it had irritated her.
But the picture in question was in the self-portrait pile. What about it counted as a self-portrait? Did the person who drew it actually look like that? Or was it a representation of what they looked like on the inside?
“Oh! Lady Azusa, is that the same artist as this picture?” Laika held up another drawing that was also just a mess of lines.
“Whoa, that’s awful… What was the theme for that one?”
“My Ideal Image of the Demon World’s Future.”
“Yikes!”
“Hey, Azusa!” Beelzebub called out. “Check the name of the artist on those two!”
I looked at the name box. “Uh, sorry, I can’t read demon script.”
“You are wrong. That is not demon script.”
Wait, could it be…?
When Smarsly saw the writing, it began hopping like mad.
Miyu rushed over. “Omigosh, this is crazy! That’s the same writing as the clay tablets!”
There was probably only one person who could write in that language.
“And this is the special character they used for the god. That’s why I had nooo idea how to pronounce it.”
“Give it to Us!” Nintan immediately checked the name box. “It says Dekyari’tosde in the ancient script. This is it!”
So that was the name of the elder god!
“Is there anything written in the address box?” Beelzebub asked. “We might be able to find out their location!”
Nintan flipped the page over.
“Promised Hill Hotel, Room 505. Is there a hotel here of such name?”
“That is a very fancy hotel in the Yostos Uplands,” said Pecora. “The cheapest room goes for seventy thousand koinne per person, per night.”
We’d finally found the elder god.
“I suppose it is worth trying every strategy…,” Laika murmured, impressed.
“As long as it turns out all right in the end,” I said.
We headed straight for the hotel.
The manager even gave us a description of the god.
He said, “Their face looked like a terrible drawing.”
That seemed a bit rude considering they were a paying customer…
We asked for a little more detail, and he said their face and body were so chaotic that the sight made him uncomfortable. Apparently, it grew a little more warped with each passing day.
When we showed him the awful, weird drawing, he said, “That’s the spitting image.”
“Then that means they’re actually pretty good at self-portraits~” Godly Godness sounded oddly satisfied.
“Right! Time to beat it up!”
“No, Flatorte, don’t! It’s too dangerous! At least come up with a plan first!”
In the end, we learned that it always had its breakfast delivered to its room, so we decided to come back then.
“If we approach it now and it escapes, it will be very difficult to search for it at night. We must approach it in the early morning, when its guard is most likely to be down.”
Somehow, the plan sounded so petty when a god said it…
The next morning, after plenty of rest and recuperation, we headed for the room where the elder god was staying.
Not all of us were going in through the door, however. The two dragons, Beelzebub, and Pecora were on standby outside the hotel window. If the god tried to escape by jumping out the window, those on standby would chase them down. Only the two gods and I were making our way into the room.
The three of us slowly walked down the hall.
“Ooh… I’m nervous…,” I muttered.
We were up against a terrifying god, after all. We had no idea what it would do.
“It’s all right, Azusa,” said Godly Godness. “You are much better at art than they are.”
That doesn’t really matter at the moment.
“Um, Godly Godness? Do you know what sort of person Dekya…this elder god is?”
The name was so unique that I’d already forgotten it.
“Well, I haven’t been in this world from the beginning~ But since they’re from Nintan’s era, I suppose they’re just as powerful as she is.”
Nintan looked irritated, but what Godly Godness was saying made sense.
If the elder god was truly on the same level as Nintan, then Nintan and I had a chance of beating it. After all, I’d once bested Nintan myself.
“Dekyari’tosde is tricky to deal with. One never knows what sort of thing it might do. Do not let your guard down. And if it has been accumulating power deep down in the earth all this time, then it is entirely possible it has grown too strong for us to touch it.”
That also made sense. Like Nintan said, we really shouldn’t let our— Wait, hold on, what was that, again?!
“What do you mean it might be stronger? Shouldn’t you have said that a little earlier?”
“I don’t think that should come as any surprise… It is perfectly reasonable to think it may have been gaining power without our knowledge! It may have been sealed, but it was not frozen. It was simply forbidden from coming to the surface…”
“All right, that’s enough. We’re here.”
It seemed we’d already arrived…
Godly Godness leisurely knocked on the door. “Good morning! We’ve brought your breakfast!”
We didn’t have any breakfast, of course. I wondered if it was all right for a god to lie like that. Then again, since we were dealing with another god, it was probably fine.
What would come out and greet us? I was genuinely nervous.
I gulped.
Slowly, the door swung open.
On the other side of the door was—
—a slime.
“What…? That’s…a slime, right?”
I was looking directly at it. The only difference between it and a regular slime was that it was silver.
“OH! Do I look LIKE a slime?”
A voice came from the creature.
“Um, is that you speaking…? It seems like your appearance has changed significantly from when you first checked in…”
I had no idea what was going on.
“OH YEAH! People kept being like, ‘What the heck are you?’ so I changed into something different!”
If the slime had changed its body, that meant it had to be Dekyari’tosde, right?! And what was up with the way it was talking…?
“DO YOU understand what I’M saying? This is our first meeting, so I’m not CONFIDENT in my language.”
Was this…like how Muu’s speech sounded a lot like an accent to me? Was this the same phenomenon?
“Oh-ho. You have long held no connection with this world, and it seems your speech has suffered~”
If that was how Godly Godness saw it, then she must be right.
“OH! You know I’M a god! Who are YOU?”
“I AM GODLY GODNESS. I AM A GOD.”
Godly Godness was acting like she was trying to communicate with some foreign tourist.
“I LIKE FROGS VERY MUCH.”
I guess she became fond of the little guys after being turned into one over and over. But was that something the elder god needed to know?
“WOW! AMAZING!”
And now the elder god was playing along?!
“Um, Your Divinity… Why are you a slime?”
I decided this would be faster if I asked myself.
“I can take on ALL sorts of forms,” it responded. “I TRIED to imitate the people who live in this world. But everyone’s REACTION was so strange! I thought it might be due to my lack of visual SENSE, so I TRIED out all sorts of things.”
Now that the elder god mentioned it, I could see papers covered in weird drawings scattered all over the floor farther back in the room. Though I wouldn’t have known they were supposed to be any more than lines if no one had told me otherwise.
“And these slime creatures have a very SIMPLE shape that seemed easy to COPY, so I TRIED it!”
That made sense!
“I see, I see~ This god can freely change its appearance, but with no visual sense, its attempts at taking a demon form resulted in some unidentifiable being. So it decided to settle for something simple—a slime. Now that I understand your circumstances, the mystery is not all that complicated.”
Godly Godness roughly summarized the situation.
“EXCELLENT! ALL RIGHT!”
When I heard the silver slime’s words, all my tension dissipated.
“But HOW did you know WHERE I was? HOW STRANGE.”
Indeed, from the elder god’s point of view, it must have seemed like a bunch of people found out where it was and suddenly barged in.
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