Stray

ught he was dreaming.
All this was a ridiculous and long dream.
Geographically, there shouldn’t be any earthquakes in Noer, so this was completely unrealistic.

Seeing that the man was about to lie down again, Oliver hurriedly went up and grabbed him by the collar.

“…What are you doing?” Nemo said slightly annoyed.

“Now is not the time to take a nap.” Ann looked around.
“Thank him because you need to get on your feet now!”

“It’s coming!” The grey parrot was still wailing, as if its secret crush was about to come over.
“It’s coming—!”

Nemo rubbed his eyes and was howled awake.
No longer muddled, he soon found that the culprit had appeared.
A scarlet column of gas spewed out from the worm, and it didn’t spread out naturally like ordinary gas but split up like octopus tentacles and rushed to the ground.
The vibration gradually became slower as gas continue to spew, which didn’t reassure them much.

“What is that?” Nemo stared at the pillar of gas.
There was no doubt that it was rushing in their direction.

“Pandorater, the beauty of the abyss.” The parrot’s unpleasant voice was full of longing.
“So they dance like that… ho, ho.”

The other three couldn’t understand and didn’t intend to understand its aesthetic at all.
They couldn’t even distinguish between an arm or leg on that thing.

“What will it do?” Ann stared warily at the gas column.

“How would I know?!” The parrot rolled its eyes.
“Not all superior demons know each other.
Would you know what a beautiful girl walking on the street wants to do?”

“But I can at least understand her expression,” Ann gritted her teeth and replied.

They didn’t care whether if it was the parrot’s dream lover or not.
The humans present had more important concerns… Although no one wanted to believe it, there was some truth in what the parrot said.
The thing that was about to collide with them was a superior demon.

“Well, she doesn’t look very happy,” the parrot whispered.
“It must be you humans who made her unhappy.”

“I have read in a book that the body of a superior demon shouldn’t be able to leave the Abyss—” Nemo frowned, trying to recall more details the autobiography of a clergyman he had once read.

“Yes, well, to put it in a way you can understand; that thing is at most, one of her arms,” the parrot said.
“What a pity…”

Nemo didn’t feel much loss at all.
He turned his head to ask Ann what to do next, but found that the remaining two were sweating and their faces were horribly pale.

“Are you alright?” He swallowed his original question back and replaced it with a different one.

“Don’t you feel it?” Oliver shifted his standing position to make himself stand more firmly.
“…The sense of oppression.”

Ann’s situation seemed slightly better than Oliver’s as she nodded silently in agreement.

Nemo closed his eyes and felt hard.
“No.” He shook his head in frustration and looked at Oliver.
“Is it uncomfortable? Do you want me to help you?”

Oliver smiled and waved his hand, indicating that he could still stand while Ann glanced at Nemo giving him a deep look.

“I heard about it once,” she said in a hoarse voice.
“I always thought it was fake… but…”

“When I was drinking, I heard mercenaries mention that a demon warlock was mixed in a Black Chapter test, and she scared off the Seymour Worm… but that was nearly a hundred years ago.”

“Scared off?”

“Yes.
I was also very curious.
Demon warlocks are not the peace-loving types, so I inquired more about it.
The result I found was… the Black Chapter is a means used by countries to maintain stability, and they will not allow the existence of someone too powerful and aggressive to exist.”

“Aren’t there many solutions? For example, don’t give that person a black badge, or wait for him to join the Black Chapter before rescinding…” Nemo suddenly had a bad feeling.

“You two deserve to be comrades.
Two idealistic fools of the same mold.” Ann grinned weakly.
“It’s a night long dream*, and the guys above know better than anyone else.
The Seymour Worm is the Black Chapter’s ceiling, which refers to more than just its strength… Maybe we shouldn’t have resisted it at all.”

*(夜长梦多) Idiom referring to letting something prolonged could make the situation change unfavorably.

“You think too much,” the parrot interjected disdainfully.
“That worm is still very healthy.
It’s not different from cutting your finger with a knife.
Fuck, I hate this way of speaking in metaphors in order to make you understand.
I’m becoming a god damn poet; in short, it has enough magic for it to recover three to four times over when it’s on the verge of death, and the taste was particularly quite rich.”

“You killed it?!” Nemo strangled the bird’s neck and shook it a few times.

“Bah, no!” the parrot roared, looking like he wanted to spit on Nemo’s face.
“Don’t you think I didn’t want to? Do you think I can eat something like that with my size? I can only take in a few mouthfuls of magic power from it.
It still has a lot left.
It’s alive and well—!”

Before it finished screaming, the shadow of the worm in the distant shattered like foam as red mist rolled over.

“…Well, now it’s dead.” The grey parrot added bitterly, “I didn’t do it though.”

“In other words, you’re saying they will bring in a more powerful demon than the Seymour Worm to get rid of the ‘instability factor’, right?” Oliver pointed to the red mist that had touched the edge of the grass and concluded.
“Basically, to eliminate us?”

The mist was like a scarlet tide, pouring into the forest.
It seemed difficult to tell whether it was a gas or a liquid being so up close to it.
It swept the shrubs and tree trunks, though the plants seemed to be unaffected by it.
On the edge of the red mist, more than a dozen people and several animals were rushing in their direction.

A deer that was seemingly injured was running slower, got one of its hind legs caught in the mist.
The mist that touched the fresh flesh suddenly came to life and enveloped the deer—

Tearing it to pieces.

Kinky Thoughts:

They really can’t catch a break.