Chapter 181

I stood inside the Demon King’s Castle, blankly spectating the frantic uproar unfolding outside on account of my preteen avatar.

“Uh… Hest Noona?”

Sprinting violently around the castle’s perimeter, Hest stumbled at the boy’s words, losing her balance and tumbling forward.

Crash!

Even though a mere fall couldn’t possibly damage the avatar, she rolled across the ground while tightly shielding the boy. Trapped beneath her weight, the preteen me looked up from the dirt.

“Noona, why did you kidnap me anyway?”

“Gasp…! To think I am looking at a child version of Master, whose arrogance usually stretches all the way to a parallel universe! And he called me Noona! So cute!! What kind of devastating destructive power is this…!!”

“Noona?”

“I-I am sorry. It is just… you were so cute that my plundering instincts kicked in before I could even register it…! Before I started this job, I was a rather renowned sky pirate, you see.”

“Noona, didn’t you say you were a mercenary before?”

“Pant, pant… The guys I used to pirate with washed our hands of that life and formed a mercenary band together. Then we got scouted by the Cross family.”

“Ah…”

“At any rate, I haven’t the slightest intention of causing any trouble for my little master. Do not be frightened; just squeeze your eyes shut for a brief moment and everything will conclude smoothly. Pant, pant…”

“Noona, your eyes look a little dangerous right now…”

It was at that exact split second.

“Stop right there! Hand over my little Orabeoni!”

“You total bitch! Who said you could take what’s mine!”

Sprinting like mad from the other side of the castle came Chel and Kelly, their eyes completely bloodshot. They had even gone so far as to draw their halberds.

At that terrifying sight, Hest bolted back to her feet and took off toward a distant mountain, still cradling the boy securely in her arms.

“Hey, Noona… why are we running away? No matter how I look at it, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to do this.”

“Because it is dangerous! Look! Look at those eyes completely shot with red veins from pure excitement!!”

“Mmm. Kind of like yours, Noona?”

Hest completely pretended not to hear and raised her voice.

“If the little master falls into the hands of those rutting fillies, I cannot even fathom what kind of horrific things will transpire! Ah…!”

“…So, what you’re saying is that if I stay like this, I’m the one who’s going to experience those horrific things?”

“Fufu! Do not worry, little master! I shall flawlessly protect you from those filthy creatures stained with raw desire! Even if it costs this Hest her very life!”

“…It’s no use. This Noona isn’t listening to a single word a person says.”

Within a few short breaths, Hest plunged deep into the dense, heavily forested mountain. Yet the exact moment a triumphant laugh surfaced on her face—

Roaaaaaaar!!

With a savage howling, a humanoid monster lion slammed down from the sky, shattering trees as it crashed into the earth.

“Tsk…!”

Rip!

Realizing combat was completely unavoidable, Hest grit her teeth and forcefully tore a long slit up the skirt of her maid uniform. Then, deftly drawing a dagger from her slender, exposed thigh, she shielded the boy behind her back.

A deep blue aura vibrated and surged wildly from her blade.

“You brutes! You won’t lay a single finger on the little master without stepping over my corpse first!”

Caught in a situation that felt half like protection and half like captivity, the boy muttered in utter bewilderment.

“Seriously… is this really a scene that needs to be this tragic?”

Perched atop the lion’s shoulders, Elizabeth firmly held down her wind-swept hair with one hand, letting out a deeply villainous, sneering cackle.

“Old man! I mean, little boy! I’ll rescue you from that dreadful maid!! Leo! Kill her! Kill that maid bitch who’s flaunting her thighs, and kill those two other bitches running over here all out of breath! Just kill absolutely everyone!!”

Contrasting his grand, high-spirited descent, the lion asked with a deeply hesitant face.

“Surely you do not mean for me to actually kill them…”

“Ugh! It’s been months since you became my pet, so how are we still so out of sync!? Who told you to actually kill them!? Kill them well! Well! Gently kill them so they don’t actually die!! Do you not understand what I mean!?”

“…I-I suppose I grasp the general sentiment. Well, they are ladies who wouldn’t die even if one explicitly intended to slaughter them anyway… I shall exert my absolute best efforts for the sake of my master’s dark desires…”

As Leo unleashed another thunderous roar, a four-way dogfight erupted among the lion, Hest, and the newly arrived Chel and Kelly.

The battle naturally shifted into a two-versus-two format.

It was bound to turn out that way. With Chel and Kelly joining forces to overwhelm the rest, it was plain as day that Hest and Leo would be swept away instantly if they insisted on fighting individually.

Boom, boom, boom!!!

Taking advantage of the gap where Leo used his physical barrier to shove back the duo’s onslaught, Elizabeth poked her head out from behind a tree roughly 50 meters away from the battlefield and shouted.

“Tch! It can’t be helped. An temporary alliance just for this occasion!”

Leo muttered with a deeply awkward face.

“Th-That is what she says.”

Hest narrowed her eyes, giving a slight tilt of her head.

“…I suppose we have no choice.”

With their temporary truce declared, the clash resumed. Now that it was a balanced team battle rather than a chaotic free-for-all, the struggle became exceptionally tight.

Clang, clang, clang, clang!!!

While Leo used his brute physical pressure to firmly pin Kelly down, Chel thrust a spear surging with aura toward Hest. Deflecting the strike cleanly with her solitary dagger, Hest launched a sharp counterattack, prompting Chel to sneer mid-exchange.

“Hmph…! Maid girl. You’ve improved a decent amount…!”

“Tsk…!! You aren’t the only one who received teachings from Master, after all!”

Crash!

At that moment, Kelly unleashed a powerful charge, blasting back a lion multiple times her size. With a fierce battle cry, she swung her halberd toward Hest. A wave of aura as massive as a house erupted from the impact point, threatening to engulf not just Hest, but Chel, who was currently locked in a drawbridge grapple with her.

“Ah! Damn it! You crazy bitch! Where the hell are you firing that thing!!”

Exchanging a split-second glance, Chel and Hest clashed their weapons together, using the sheer recoil of the impact to fling themselves entirely out of the aura’s destructive radius.

Craaaaaaaaash!!

The overwhelming power completely sheared off a section of the mountain, leaving it utterly barren.

Having narrowly escaped Kelly’s ‘die-if-you-get-hit’ aura wave, Chel exploded in pure fury.

“Hey, you absolute psycho! Why the hell are you attacking your own teammate!?”

Kelly, whose eyes looked slightly out of it, simply gave a sharp chin gesture toward a specific spot nearby.

“Look. Over there.”

“…Hmm?”

A short distance away, a solitary preteen boy was resting his chin in his hands, casually sprawled on the ground while watching the spectacle.

Noticing their gazes shifting toward him, the boy flashed a bright, cheerful smile and waved his hand as if cheering them on.

The moment that sight registered, Chel and Hest felt as though they had been struck head-on by a truck loaded with pure cuteness. Without missing a beat, both tightly clutched their hearts and screamed.

“Gasp! S-So cute!!”

“Urgh… How completely wicked…!!”

Lifting her halberd high, Kelly spoke in a deeply dark tone.

“I don’t care if you’re my dear Chel unnie, there is absolutely no way I am sharing a magnificent creature like that. I simply cannot do it… I shall kill everyone, and I will stand at the absolute peak!”

“You crazy bitch… is what I want to say, but I hate myself for completely understanding where you’re coming from. It started out as half a joke… but wow, seriously… that is an entity you have no choice but to carry home.”

“You all talk quite a big game. Why are you two throwing a fit over what is explicitly mine? I am the one taking the little master home.”

“I’ve despised the way you subtly cling to Orabeoni under the pretense of being a maid from the very beginning. Fine. Let’s clear the air today.”

“You aren’t even Master’s actual comrade-in-arms, are you? Whining day in and day out about why you’re even here, and now you’re pretending to be close… it’s absolutely disgusting.”

“Good grief, there isn’t a single sane bitch in this place. Fine. Since the big battles were handled by those dragons and Orabeoni, our screen time has been a bit lacking lately anyway. Come on, you bitches. Let’s properly exorcise some grudges today.”

“Growl… Master. No matter how I look at it, this doesn’t feel like a place where I belong…”

“Shut up and fight. If I lose that kid today, you are grounded from going outside for a full year.”

“I-I understand.”

Craaaaaaaaash!!

Arriving at the scene a step late, I sighed and clicked my tongue at the sheer absurdity of watching the four of them fiercely tangled up, genuinely fighting as if they were trying to kill one another.

“Seriously, what is even going on? Is my avatar covered in honey or something? I deliberately made him cute, but is it really something to get this serious over and wage a full-scale plunder war?”

Shia had been blankly spacing out with a look of despair as if she had lost her entire kingdom after her boy me was snatched away. However, snapping back to her senses the moment I promised to make her another one, she casually shrugged her shoulders.

“Hmm. I can fully comprehend it, though.”

“You can comprehend it?”

“Indeed. If you had not promised to forge a new one for me, I would have dove straight into that brawl myself.”

“Okay, but why?”

“Heh. It is precisely because of what they call ‘gap moe’.”

I paused my train of thought for a moment at the deeply otaku-centric terminology that I never expected to hear in a fantasy world.

“…Hey. Didn’t I tell you to tone it down with the smartphone usage? That kind of vocabulary rolls off your tongue way too smoothly.”

“N-N-No! I strictly watch it for only one hour a day, exactly in accordance with the rules you set down!”

“…For real?”

“M-My dear. Does your trust in me truly amount to only this much? I genuinely grieve.”

“Then why are you explicitly avoiding my eyes?”

“I’m not. At any rate, I’m not. Real, honntoni not.”

“Phew…”

For reference, Shia is the only one to whom I have revealed the data-connected smartphone—a folder phone, at that—granted to me by Lumina.

Why go out of my way to hide it? Well, I figured that Earth’s internet culture and content would simply be far too intense of a stimulus for the people of this mundane world.

Case in point, I did a quick test using Shia as a guinea pig… and it took exactly two days for even Shia, the literal avatar of the ‘my-pace’ attitude, to end up with her face completely buried in that screen.

In fact, on the third day after lending it to her, when I tried to take the phone away because she was getting a bit too absorbed, she literally threw these words at me.

‘Wow, smells like a total boomer. This thing is my literal one-tool right now, and you’re snatching it away for real? Are you trying to get your legal guardian status revoked, or what?’

…That was the very first time I truly learned the meaning of seeing the sky turn yellow from sheer shock.

She didn’t mouth it out of malice; she was just trying to apply what she had learned in her own way… but still, that was explicitly crossing the line.

So from that day onward, I immediately wiped YouTube and the web browsers from the phone, leaving behind only streaming applications like Netflix and Disney. I also structured it so that viewing was strictly permitted for exactly one hour a day.

Revealing it to the others? Not a chance. If even Shia turns out like that, who knows how the rest would be influenced and in what manner?

Instead, I set up a movie theater in the basement of the Demon King’s Castle for the others, screening films roughly twice a week.

The reception has been remarkably good; it seems several of the maids count down the days just waiting for that exact hour.

It’s not that things resembling movies are completely nonexistent in this world… but since they are strictly the exclusive property of nobles or gentry, the acting, story, and directing are all at a level that makes you go… good grief.

At any rate, she seems to be heavily into animations lately… which is exactly why that kind of vocabulary pops out of her mouth from time to time.

“Whatever… fine. I’ll interrogate you about that later… but what on earth is gap moe supposed to be anyway?”

“My dear. While it is true that the women around you harbor affection for you, that stems entirely from your outward specs—your body, your face, your skill, and your financial wealth. You know very well it is not due to your personality or character, correct?”

“…What’s wrong with my personality or character?”

“The literal definition of ‘I alone am honored throughout heaven and earth.’ Full of yourself. Arrogant.”

“…….”

“To put it bluntly, do you not look at everyone else besides yourself as a fool who is lacking somewhere?”

“…N-No. It’s not to that extent.”

“Like hell it isn’t. At any rate, in a situation like that, a small, cute boy who is a literal part of you and shares your likeness—yet possesses a deeply gentle personality—clings to them while going ‘Noona~’ and acting all cute… do you truly think those people could remain sane? Thus, the romantic affection they had tightly suppressed due to your indifferent attitude exploded all at once toward your little avatar. It means it is the literal definition of gap moe itself.”

“M-Mmm…”

“So? When are you going to forge mine?”

“…Right after I break up their fight.”

Craaaaaaaaack!!

A massive spatial fracturing cleaved the mountain to the left and right, causing the startled group to leap backward with a swift motion.

“Orabi?”

“Orabeoni?”

“Master!”

“Uh… Sword God.”

“Stop fighting. I’ll forge one for each household… no, one per person, so you can all take him and play.”

At my words, their eyes widened to the size of saucers.

“M-Master. Is… is a thing like that actually possible?”

“I haven’t tried it, but it should work, right?”

In an instant, the eyes of the three burned wildly with pure desire.

“W-Well, if that is the case, there really is no need to fight…”

“Y-Yeah… that’s true.”

“Yes, yes. F-Fighting is a bad thing, after all.”

Letting out a hollow laugh at their Udyr-grade stance shift,¹ I immediately granted their wishes.

Of course, I couldn’t pull them out as freely as I did back when I was an Archangel grade practitioner…

But since they aren’t for combat anyway, if I moderately lower the completion level of the clones and focus instead on increasing the quantity…

“Ta-da. Three more clones added. Since there are four in total, take one each, starting with Shia.”

At my words, they began to slowly approach my boy clones, exhaling heavy, ragged breaths.

“C-Come here… N-Noona will treat you well.”

“Orabeoni… a whole crowd of small, cute Orabeoni…”

“Ah… I-I don’t know which little master to choose…”

Uh, wow… I can smell a literal crime brewing from somewhere…

At that terrifying sight, the clones turned back with faces slightly paralyzed by fear, begging for help.

“Main body Hyung. I’m a little scared…”

“C-Can I run away?”

I subtly avoided the pitiful gazes of the boys and spoke.

“Sorry. Just play with them for a bit. They won’t actually eat you.”

“…….”

“…….”

“…Probably.”