Carrera, hearing the voice of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there, realized she couldn’t spend another moment as a spectator. She couldn’t believe it, but she also wasn’t foolish enough to think this was some kind of dream.
“Hey there,” she said. “Didn’t die after all, huh?”
“Heh. Thanks to how weak you are, I had to be summoned from the afterlife.”
The man smiling wryly at her was Lieutenant Kondo—someone Carrera was sure she had killed herself.
Unbeknownst to Carrera, Masayuki had just invoked his ultimate skill, Lord of Heroes. This Kondo did exist, but was not exactly a living person. He was an “einherjar,” akin to a digital life-form. Kondo’s presence would normally be impossible, but thanks to Masayuki’s skill, he had rushed over to Carrera in her time of greatest need.
“Now, don’t tell me the demon powerful enough to kill me is going to meet her end here?”
“Don’t believe it for a minute. I was just about to punch this guy out, too, until you so rudely interrupted me.”
Kondo didn’t bother asking Carrera how. He just smiled, nodded, and said, “Good, then. I’ll help you if you’ll let me.”
It was a very casual offer, and Carrera accepted it as a matter of course.
“Well, you know, given the state I’m in…sure.”
Her pride as a demon wasn’t a concern. In fact, she sounded happy about this. A new and powerful partnership had just been formed.
Despite the desperate situation, the two were casually working out their plans.
“So what’s your strategy?” Carrera asked. “You gonna beat her for me or what?”
Now that they were a team, Carrera was already making some pretty harsh demands. It made Kondo roll his eyes at her, sighing.
“Well, not even I could beat someone like that.”
He always was a realist. And although he was only several minutes old in this manifestation, he still calmly, accurately grasped the situation. The subsequent decision he made was just as rational.
“But fortunately for us, her eyes are on everyone else,” he said.
“Oh?”
“If we can’t win the normal way, we’ll just have to use a hidden trick.”
Kondo put his hand on top of Carrera’s.
His intention was to pour his power into the Golden Gun in Carrera’s hand.
“Holding my hand out of nowhere… You’re gonna make me blush.”
“Quiet. Now’s not the time for jokes like that.”
Carrera was actually pretty serious. Getting the cold shoulder like that made her pretty angry. But Kondo was right. If she wanted to keep her friends out of harm’s way, they needed to defeat the enemy, and they needed to do it right now.
She focused her attention on what Kondo was trying to do. Then it dawned on her.
“Oh. Your Judgment Bullet?”
“Yes. I’ve put all my power into it. You just focus on using this.”
He didn’t ask whether she was well versed in the weapon by now. Carrera noticed that, too. It made her feel a little better.
“Right,” she said, a big smile on her face as she accepted the job. “I’m on it.”
Piriod was dominating the battlefield. There were twists and turns along the way, but things were generally going how she wanted them to.
There were far fewer deaths than expected, though, which was problematic—and none at all even from the enemy side. Some were injured seriously enough to require evacuation, but they all must’ve been given magic- or potion-based first aid, because not a single one lost their life for her. She had gone to the trouble of creating this special force field to capture the power seeping out of the dead that’d no doubt be strewn across this field, but it didn’t produce nearly the results she hoped for.
Still, though, eating my children allowed me to join all our power together. There’s that upside, at least.
Her power had skyrocketed to unimaginable levels since the start of battle. It was in more than just comparative energy, too—she had taken on all her children’s skills and their mastery of them. Adding these newly acquired melee combat skills to the Dominate Space she already specialized in, she’d no longer lag behind these annoying worms clinging to her.
Those worms—Obela, Middray, Carillon, Frey, Geld, and Gobta-Ranga—were demonstrating some excellent coordination, keeping the damage to a minimum for them all. They couldn’t do a thing to mortally wound Piriod, but they were proving to be surprisingly difficult to kill. It was frustrating.
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