Chapter 110
“Farmers would be absolutely furious if they saw this.”
Honestly, it was embarrassing to even call this farming.
After all, the whole process was happening without me lifting a finger.
First, I let Greed out and had him collect all the metallic elements that would interfere with farming.
In the process...
[Star Relic Fragment]
[Gold Fragment]
[Platinum Fragment]
Several precious metals came along for the ride, too.
This is strange, though.
Even though this is supposed to be a mental world, I can use all my items, and even materials like these show up as items.
“Maybe I’ve gotten close to understanding how the system works?”
... So what?
What can I do now that I’ve gotten close?
Nothing, I guess...
I should stop daydreaming and focus on escaping this place.
First, collecting the metal and using the microorganisms transformed by Pride to revitalize the field were easy enough.
The problem was water.
“I can take care of that.”
I guess a Demon Lord would naturally have some talent for magic.
At Gremory’s gesture, rain suddenly poured down.
Once the ground was thoroughly soaked, Gluttony dug neat furrows across it.
“All right, let’s get to work.”
“... Me, too?”
“Who else is going to work here? The sooner we finish, the sooner we can leave. Don’t you want to get out?”
“I do...”
“Then let’s hurry.”
I even brought Athena out for the first time in a while.
Athena stretched her arms into long shovels and got to work.
... She’s good at this.
That was when it happened.
[Kyukyu wants to be summoned.]
Wait, Kyukyu can be summoned, too?
What even is this place?
“Summon Kyukyu.”
─Kyu-uuuuuu!
As soon as Kyukyu appeared, Kyukyu snuggled against me for a while, then went out into the field and rolled around.
“Kyukyu, you’ll get covered in dirt! No, no!”
Even though I tried to stop Kyukyu, now Kyukyu was digging right into the ground.
But...
[Slime Lord ‘Kyukyu’ is making an enormous area fertile.]
[Time required: 1 hour, 7 minutes, 8 seconds]
“Wow.”
Even you’re earning your keep, Kyukyu.
Though just being cute is enough to earn your keep.
Then we should hurry, too.
Following the furrows Gluttony had dug, Gremory, Athena, and I began planting the seeds one by one.
Whatever else, seeds were precious.
We had to raise them carefully.
“My back hurts...”
“Now, now. Are you allowed to straighten your back after planting only twice?”
“... I’m not?”
“The rule is to straighten up after planting three times.”
“Hwaaaang...”
I doubted Her Highness the Demon Lord had ever had an experience like this before.
Still, it was a rural experience... one people paid for nowadays.
Think of it as a good experience and get on with it.
Well, it’s nice to be reminded of the army for a change.
Ah, no, it isn’t nice.
Only after planting seeds for more than ten hours did we finally run out.
Now all that was left was to wait.
Even if barely any time passed outside, what were we supposed to do here?
I’d used microorganisms to speed up the crops’ growth far beyond anything normal.
But this still wasn’t something that could be done in a day or two.
I figured I’d be bored for a while.
Maybe this was for the best.
“I’m not letting them get me again.”
That bastard Baal.
You just wait right there.
I’ll get out and make a proper Demon Lord out of you.
**
Baal and Agares spent some time with Kim Segyun’s vacant body lying nearby.
“Waiting, huh.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had to feel that.”
Ever since becoming Demon Lords, there had hardly been anything they needed to wait for.
A snap of their fingers was enough to make everything happen as they wished.
“Can’t we just speed up time?”
“If we do that, his mind might be destroyed instead of being subjugated. We should set a reasonable time multiplier and keep an eye on him. It wouldn’t have been difficult if all we wanted was a corpse, would it?”
“... You’re probably right.”
“Well, then. Shall we see what he’s doing?”
But then...
Baal sensed a flow of demonic energy nearby that caught his attention.
“Is that Amon?”
Amon, the Seventh Demon Lord.
The Demon Lords up through the Sixth were primordial Demon Lords, so they weren’t likely to interfere.
The Third through Sixth Demon Lords had already fallen into ennui.
They had handed the power of their retainers over to Baal and Agares, leaving everything to them.
But from the Seventh Demon Lord onward...
They were beings who knew nothing of the Demon Realm’s ‘creation.’
They were beings from after the Age of Strife, who knew nothing of ‘Paradise.’
─Baal! Agares! I will not stand by and watch you monopolize the power of the ‘Demon God’! That power belongs to me!
The powerful avarice pouring from Amon’s entire body made Agares furrow his brow.
True to his title as the Demon Lord of Temperance, who considered control of one’s emotions a virtue, Agares felt intense displeasure just sensing a fragment of that greed.
And it wasn’t just Amon.
High-ranking Demon Lords were converging in great numbers.
“Fools... To be taken in by an illusion like the power of the Demon God.”
“Isn’t this for the best? We would have had to wipe them out in the new Paradise anyway.”
“That’s true.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Agares stepped forward and casually swung his hand toward the countless armies of Hell.
An earthquake struck across a vast area, and countless troops were swallowed by the fissures that opened up.
The ground closed again after swallowing them.
With a single casual sweep of Agares’s hand, close to several million demons and magical beasts disappeared.
─Agares!
A furious Amon and several other Demon Lords attacked, but...
“Tsk, tsk.”
Agares clicked his tongue and swung his hand again.
Countless pale arms burst out of their bodies.
─W-what is this?!
Amon, apparently startled, was soon pinned all over by the arms sprouting from his body.
─Guh...!
A hand was wrapped around Amon’s throat.
Baal watched with a pleasant smile.
“As expected, your power to wield karma (業) is as strong as ever.”
The higher the rank of his opponent...
The more spiritually dignified they were...
The stronger Agares’s power became.
That was because he twisted and wielded the karma of those with a high rank.
Those burdened with more sin karma (罪業) were even easier to deal with.
The other Demon Lords also attacked, only to be subdued by Agares and vent their frustration.
“You’re trying to monopolize the power of the Demon God!”
“... Weren’t you all trying to get it for yourselves, if you could?”
“......”
“But don’t worry. There’s hardly any of that power left anyway.”
Baal smiled as he watched Agares, then slowly turned his gaze toward his own abyss.
He’d set a time multiplier of tens of thousands, so even in this brief interval, several months must have passed.
Just what kind of reaction was Kim Segyun having in the mental world?
Had he gone mad?
Was he still trying to figure out how to escape, consumed by rage?
“Well... it’s still much too soon.”
All that remained was to watch his reaction and slowly wear him down mentally.
It was unexpected that Gremory had been pulled in with him, but...
It didn’t matter if there were two of them.
Having someone to rely on might make it take a little longer, but...
This was his mental world, where he could adjust the time multiplier as he pleased.
He could make millions of years pass in a single day.
“Let’s see...”
When Baal turned his old, deep-set eyes toward the abyss...
His eyes...
were tinged with an unusual hint of alarm.
What in the world were they doing in there?
What he saw was...
a field turned golden and Gremory, thoroughly drunk.
For a moment, he was so stunned that he couldn’t even figure out what to do.
“I can’t just leave them alone...”
Just then...
A thoroughly drunk Gremory staggered to her feet...
─Hey!! You old geezer!!
With an incomprehensible shout...
she threw a punch straight at the space around her.
Crack!
The space split with cracks like glass.
“Aaaaargh!”
Blood gushed from Baal’s eyes as he stared into the abyss.
From his mouth and ears, too...
Blood poured from every opening in his body.
Even as blood streamed from his eyes, Baal desperately tried to repair the shattered mental world.
But...
“G-Gremory... how...?”
How could this be?
How could she have a ‘god’...!
“Baal! What’s going on?!”
Agares asked in alarm, but Baal wasn’t even in a state to answer.
The mental world in Baal’s dazed mind...
The abyss...
Crack!
The sound of it shattering rang through his entire mind.
“Blergh!”
A foul-smelling black substance and a swarm of flies poured from his mouth.
At the same time...
Agares felt life returning to the bodies of Kim Segyun and Gremory.
“Oh, no...”
Kim Segyun had come fully to his senses.
Only then did he let out a deep breath and glance around.
“I spent a whole year farming and making booze in there, you bastards.”
He spoke, his voice full of pent-up fury.
“You’re all dead.”
He growled fiercely.
But Kim Segyun wasn’t the only problem.
“Gre... mory...”
Unlike Kim Segyun, Gremory smiled sweetly, her beautiful smile on full display.
But Agares knew the anger hidden behind that smile.
Grinning drunkenly...
“Agares... hic... when did you get... hic... so small?”
Demon Lords didn’t judge their opponents by their physical size.
They saw only the difference in rank.
To Gremory, Agares and Baal’s size...
was unmistakably different from before, when they had been towering giants.
**
It had been a year.
For nearly a year, I’d grown rice and kept Gremory drunk, over and over.
Fortunately, because Gremory had a Demon Lord’s body, she wouldn’t get alcohol poisoning even if she got drunk.
And finally...
Gremory broke through the barrier of the abyss.
When the barrier shattered, I felt my consciousness get sucked away in an instant.
“... This is my body.”
Only then did I feel relieved.
I glanced over at the two old men.
You made me suffer like hell for a whole year?
“Agares...! Get a hold of yourself! This isn’t over yet...!”
Baal shouted, coughing up blood.
At his cry, Agares finally came to his senses.
“... Even if you got out of there, you’ve still got a long way to go. Without ‘Jealousy,’ you can’t defeat us...”
Jealousy?
That must be another useful entity, huh?
I’d have to get it someday.
“If I don’t have the strength to face them directly... I’ll have to use my head.”
I’d had plenty of time in there.
What else would Gremory and I have done with all that time?
Played patty-cake?
No.
I’d spent all that time thinking about how to beat those two once I got out.
And the conclusion I reached was...
“Can’t I just cut off their supply lines?”
Just as troops need to eat in order to fight...
Demon Lords need their ‘retainers’ to wield the power of a ‘king.’
Their own accumulated rank was certainly powerful enough.
But their true power...
was supplied through their retainers.
In that case...
“Wouldn’t they be helpless without retainers to supply them with power?”
At the same time...
I lit the methane produced by my methanogens and shot up into the sky.
Baal realized what I was planning and urgently stretched out his tentacles, but...
“I’ll take care of the two of you.”
Gremory smiled serenely and cut off Baal’s outstretched arm.
Baal and Agares’s faces went pale in an instant.
Of course, no matter how much stronger Gremory had become, she still wasn’t strong enough to overwhelm the two of them right away.
She’d only become strong enough to break out of the mental space.
But...
She was strong enough to keep them occupied.
And while Gremory held them back...
“No!”
Even without ‘Jealousy,’ I could still take on their retainers, even if I lacked the strength to fight the two of them directly.
Their retainers were another matter.
The millions, tens of millions, of retainers...
would be swept away in an instant.
Gluttony...
was exactly that kind of being.
Baal and Agares, who knew better than anyone how terrifying Gluttony was, shouted in fear.
“Stop him!”
“Someone! Anyone! Stop him!”
But the beasts that flew at me to stop my ascent...
could only scatter and vanish without even daring to come close.
“I’ll reduce the Demon Realm to the Stone Age.”
This was the rage of a man who’d been trapped for a year and forced to grow rice.
Rice farming is terrifying, isn’t it?