Soon, the faint fluttering of Lily's eyelids signaled her return to consciousness. Her purple eyes, previously placid, snapped open. They darted around the unfamiliar room, taking in the austere, yet undeniably powerful, aura that permeated the space. Her gaze settled on me, standing calmly before her.
There was a flicker of fear in their depths, a primal human reaction to the unknown and the sudden loss of freedom. Yet, beneath it, a steely dignity radiated from her, a testament to her royal upbringing. She didn't scream, didn't thrash. Instead, she composed herself, her posture stiffening slightly even as she lay on the cot.
Her mind, despite the lingering haze of unconsciousness, was already racing, cataloging every detail. The room was not a dungeon cell, nor a lavish prison. It was a functional, almost spartan space, yet the quality of the materials, the subtle hum of magic in the air, spoke of immense, hidden power.
"Lily Font Gritonia, Second Princess of the Gritonia Empire," I began, my voice even, devoid of malice but firm with authority. "You are now our captive." I watched her closely, noting the subtle tightening of her jaw. A faint tremor ran through her, quickly suppressed.
"If you have any requests regarding your treatment, we are fine to adjust. However, note that only requests will be listened to. All demands are denied." My words were a clear statement of her new reality, a boundary drawn in the air. Her royal status, her lineage, meant nothing here.
She met my gaze, her fear evident but held firmly in check. Her voice, when she spoke, was polite, almost deferential, yet tinged with a desperate curiosity. "Sir," she asked, her tone surprisingly steady, "can you tell me why you kidnapped me?"
She had to know. The why was crucial. Was it ransom? Political leverage? A vendetta? Her mind sifted through all the common reasons for a princess's abduction.
A slight pause, then she continued, her voice gaining a touch of weary cynicism. "I am sure there are many reasons one can kidnap a princess, but my father doesn't really care much about me. If you ask for compensation for me, it won't be too great at all."
A bitter truth, delivered with a practiced, almost detached air. She had long ago learned the harsh realities of her position. Her value was often measured in political convenience, not affection.
I observed her, a faint smile touching my lips. She was good. Her composure, her quick assessment of her own perceived value, her attempt to gauge my intentions – all admirable. She was trying to negotiate, to find her footing in this terrifying new landscape.
But her understanding of 'value' and 'power' was fundamentally flawed, shaped by the limited scope of her world. She was a princess, yes, a symbol, a shell. But beyond that, she had no true grasp of what defined real strength, real influence, in the grander scheme of things.
She was talented, I knew, as a general and a strategist in her own right. Her tactical mind was sharp within the confines of her world's warfare, honed by countless hours studying battles and modern skirmishes.
Yet, she wasn't truly in contact with individuals of genuine, brute strength, the kind that could shatter mountains with a flick of the wrist or level cities with a single spell. Her understanding of power was limited to the scale of armies and the occasional, rare, powerful mage or such.
Those she knew of, like the Goddess and the Demon King, were distant, almost mythical figures, spoken of in legends rather than encountered in person. She had no real idea how truly strong, truly powerful, individuals like my subordinates – or even myself – truly were. Her world was a pond, and she had yet to see the ocean.
It was time to broaden her perspective. Time to show her the true scale of power that existed beyond her sheltered kingdom.
Without a word, I extended a hand, a faint shimmer of spatial magic coalescing around us. The air crackled with barely contained energy. Before she could react, before she could even utter a sound, the office, the cot, and the familiar scent of wood and paper vanished.
A dizzying lurch, a momentary disorientation, a sensation akin to being stretched and then snapped back into place. Her stomach churned. Then, as quickly as it began, it ended.
We were elsewhere.
We stood on a high vantage point, overlooking an endless, sprawling battlefield. This was Floor 18 of my domain, the War Cities of Nidolan and Grania. The sheer scale of it was breathtaking, terrifying.
The air here was thick with the din of clashing steel, the roar of spells, and the guttural cries of combatants. The ground trembled beneath our feet with the impact of countless blows. Smoke plumed into the sky, not from burning cities, but from constant magical bombardments.
Below us, armies clashed in perpetual, brutal conflict. It was a war without end, a constant, churning maelstrom of combat. Legion upon legion of warriors, mages, and monstrous beasts tore into each other with relentless ferocity.
This entire floor was dedicated solely to the practice of war. It was a training ground, a vast, complex simulation designed to hone martial skills to absolute perfection. Every strategy, every tactic, every individual combat technique could be tested and refined here.
Automatic resource reversal ensured that every structure, every piece of equipment, every fallen warrior, was instantly restored. A castle wall, crumbling under siege, would shimmer and rebuild itself in moments. A shattered sword would reform in a warrior's hand.
It was a true training room for war, a crucible where one could die countless times and still resurrect with no penalty. Everything here was temporary, even the passage of time and the aging of the combatants, as it was only to cultivate war-related skills, nothing more. A warrior could spend a thousand years fighting on this floor, gaining experience, without aging a single day in real time.
Lily stared, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and dawning horror. Her breath hitched in her throat, a small, choked sound. She saw a warrior cleaved in two by a colossal axe, only for the halves to knit back together in a flash of golden light, the warrior rising again, axe in hand.
A mage, mid-spell, was vaporized by a firestorm, reduced to nothing but ash, only to reappear moments later, shimmering into existence, ready to cast again. Monstrous creatures, larger than anything she had ever seen, tore through formations, their roars echoing across the plains.
It was a cruel-looking place, a nightmare made manifest. She saw warriors chopped to thin slices, skewered on spears, eaten in one bite by monstrous creatures, flattened like paste under titanic blows. Every instance, someone was dying cruelly here, their forms dissolving only to reform, ready to face the brutality once more.
And there was no pain suppression. No magical dampening of sensation. This floor was designed to practice war in its purest, most visceral form. The screams, the agony, the terror – it was all real within this simulated reality.
All memories and experiences were never reset here, including the searing agony of death and the cold grip of fear. It was meant to break the weak and forge the strong, to instill a true understanding of the horrors of battle, so that when they faced real combat, they would be utterly prepared.
Lily's hands instinctively flew to her mouth, her knuckles white, trembling. She felt it already, the raw, undeniable power emanating from every single combatant below. Even the weakest soldier here, a mere foot soldier, seemed to possess strength that dwarfed the mightiest heroes of her own empire. The sheer, unadulterated power was suffocating.
A cold dread settled in her stomach, a leaden weight. Her carefully constructed worldview, built on the perceived might of her kingdom and its heroes, shattered into a million pieces. She understood.
Every single individual fighting on this floor could easily take over her empire, or at the very least, destroy it utterly, without breaking a sweat. Her world, her understanding of power, was a child's drawing compared to this terrifying reality. Her kingdom was a fragile toy, easily crushed.
"Seeing you like that," I said, my voice cutting through the din, calm and clear despite the chaos below, "I can finally say I can see you understand now what your position here is." I felt a quiet satisfaction. This was a necessary step.
In so many narratives, so many animes, countless casualties happen because no one ever truly grasps the overwhelming strength of the protagonist or their allies. People die in vain, caught in conflicts they can't possibly comprehend, fighting battles they were never equipped to win.
It's better to reduce unnecessary losses as we go, to make sure everyone understands the new power dynamics. To make sure they know their place, and the true power that dictates the flow of this multiverse. This display, though shocking, would save countless lives in the long run.
She stared at me for a long minute, her purple eyes no longer softened, but sharp, calculating, and undeniably fearful. The 'kind and good Princess' act had completely fallen away, replaced by the raw intelligence of a survivor, stripped bare of all pretense.
"What do you want from me?" she asked, her voice low, serious, and devoid of any pretense. Straight to business. Exactly what I wanted. The fear was still there, but now it was tempered with a desperate pragmatism.
"Hmm~ Finally straight to business~" I mused, a faint smile playing on my lips. "Well, you see, you are the one with the best, most up-to-date, high-level information in this world."
"That is what I want from you. Tell me everything you know. Nothing else do I need from you." I paused, letting the weight of my demand sink in. "And don't leave out even common sense things you know. I want even that as well. Every piece of data, no matter how trivial it seems to you, could be crucial to me."
Her brow furrowed, a mixture of confusion and suspicion in her gaze. "Why do you want to know that?" The question was direct, a challenge to my motives. She was trying to find the angle, the hidden agenda.
"Well," I replied, leaning back slightly, crossing my arms, maintaining a casual demeanor that belied the gravity of my words. "I am not from this dimension. We just came to this dimension after our own dimension got destroyed."
You might be wondering why I'm telling her that I'm from another world. Isn't that one of the big 'no-no' rules for any inter-dimensional travelers? A secret to be guarded with one's life, lest it cause paradoxes or attract unwanted attention?
Simple. She will never leave from here. She is surrounded by my subordinates, and this entire domain is designed to be inescapable for anyone not explicitly allowed to leave. She will eventually find it out by herself, through observation or deduction. It's better to control the narrative from the start.
And it's not like I need to hide it much, considering this world has a 'Hero Summoning' setting. It provides a perfectly solid, believable excuse that will work very well here though it's not a complete excuse. I can simply say that because of the Goddess illegally smuggling heroes from another world, I got swept up in the spatial instability caused by such a massive, cross-dimensional summoning. It's a convenient lie, one that aligns perfectly with her existing resentment towards the Goddess, making it even more believable.
It paints the Goddess in a negative light, which would only serve to solidify Lily's cooperation. A calculated risk, but one with high rewards.
Now, for the truly important question. The one that would confirm my suspicions and set the stage for my next moves. The key to understanding my current position in this new reality.
"Say," I began, my voice casual, yet my gaze unwavering, "do you have any idea why we might be in this world? Dimension travel isn't easy. It usually only happens when someone or someplace becomes spatially unstable."
I continued, weaving my fabricated truth, making it sound plausible within her limited understanding of multiversal mechanics. "As our world got destroyed, our base's security function automatically leaped us to this world due to an unstable spatial fault here."
Lily's eyes widened, a gasp escaping her lips. "What?!" Her composure, which had been so carefully maintained, finally fractured completely. Her body trembled slightly.
"Could it be...?" Her voice dropped to a whisper, a flicker of understanding, then horror, crossing her face as a terrifying implication dawned on her. The pieces of her own world's mythology and my sudden appearance clicked together.
"You see," she stammered, her gaze fixed on mine, a desperate need for answers in her eyes, "our world was summoning a Hero... Maybe that's why you came to our world?"
Jackpot! That's what I wanted to know the most! The confirmation I needed. The pieces were falling into place with satisfying precision. My initial assessment had been correct.
I kept my expression calm, betraying none of the internal satisfaction that surged through me. "Hero Summoning?" I prompted, as if merely curious, urging her to elaborate. I needed every detail.
"In this world," she explained, her voice still a little shaky, but gaining a desperate urgency, "the Demon King exists, and he is far stronger than us. So the Goddess is summoning us a hero to fight off the demons."
"Who is the current Hero?" I asked, my mind already racing, connecting the dots, pulling up all the relevant information from my vast knowledge base.
"The Hero isn't summoned yet," Lily replied, her eyes still wide with the implications of her own words. "He will be summoned by midnight today."
I see. So, I am truly at the very start. The precise moment. Probably by now, Makoto would have already met the Moon God and discovered he is from a different world, having been rejected by the Goddess.
This was excellent news. This gave me the perfect chance to make a few crucial adjustments here and there, to subtly guide events in a direction more favorable to my long-term goals. The timeline was perfect.
Having acquired the most vital piece of information, I turned to Tomoe and Shalltear, who had been standing silently, observing the entire exchange. Their presence alone was enough to keep Lily subdued.
"She has confirmed the Hero Summoning," I stated. "She will now provide you with all the information I require, from the most important secrets of this world to basic, everyday common knowledge. Do not leave out anything, no matter how insignificant it seems."
Tomoe nodded, a faint, knowing smile on her face. "Understood, my Lord. We will be thorough." Shalltear merely gave a sharp, almost eager nod, her crimson eyes fixed on Lily. The princess flinched slightly at the directive, but remained silent, her eyes still darting between my impassive face and the two formidable figures beside me. She knew she had no choice.
Just in case you are wondering why I included Shalltear in this task, it's because she is genuinely smart. Don't get fooled by her occasional idiotic, brute-force suggestions at all. She is a 'growing-type' smart individual.
The more she learns, the smarter she becomes. Of course, this might seem like nothing special to a mortal, whose cognitive abilities often peak and then decline. But an undead vampire lives on forever. And having a 'growing-type' smartness for those who live forever is truly deadly.
Especially when she is a genius for her kind. She possesses a learning speed that would take a 100,000-year-old 'growing-type' smart undead to achieve, she will accomplish in only one year. It might still seem a bit slow compared to a human's rapid initial learning, but she is a pure 'growing-type' monster. Her potential is truly terrifying.
Everyone else eventually hits what we commonly call a 'wall of talent' or 'limits' in our growth. We might slow down, or plateau, finding certain concepts or skills difficult to master beyond a certain point. But she doesn't have any kind of wall. She can consistently keep growing, without ever slowing down. She truly is a monster who is still at the stage of an infant, in terms of her potential. Never underestimate her.
Well, I left them to their task. Lily, though a captive, would find herself in an unexpected position of importance, her knowledge meticulously extracted by two of my most capable subordinates. The interrogation would be thorough, efficient, and yield precisely what I needed.
I had more pressing matters.
I made my way to my personal laboratory, a smaller, more contained space than the treasure room, but equally filled with arcane wonders. The walls were lined with glowing conduits and intricate magical diagrams. Test tubes bubbled with strange concoctions, and holographic displays flickered with complex data.
It was time to check my Smartphone World Item.
I pulled the sleek, obsidian device from my robes. Its faint hum was a comforting vibration against my palm, a subtle thrum of immense power contained within its mundane form. I needed to run a full diagnostic, to ensure its lore-based functionality seamlessly integrated with the magical energies of this new dimension. The success of so many future plans hinged on this device. It was my ultimate trump card, my key to limitless power.
I placed it on a specialized charging pad, and the hum intensified, a soft light emanating from its core. Data streamed across the holographic displays, confirming its operational status.
Suddenly, a distinct spatial distortion rippled through the air, several miles away from Zeldonia. It was subtle, but unmistakable to my senses, a faint tremor in the fabric of reality itself. My diagnostic tools registered a significant energy spike.
Looks like while I was engrossed in my plans and the smartphone, night had indeed fallen. The shift in spatial energy could only mean one thing. The Hero's summoning.
Well, now Misumi Makoto is here in this world. The Hero has arrived. The Goddess's unchosen champion, albeit one she shouldn't have discarded.
Really, what should I do about him? I mean, I genuinely hadn't thought much about what to do with him at all. My plans were more focused on the long-term, on understanding and subtly influencing this world, not on specific individuals.
Should I hire him? That seems the most reasonable option. He's powerful, capable, and could be a useful asset, especially given his unique circumstances. But his personality... that's the problem. He's known to be somewhat difficult, not easily swayed or controlled, especially after being mistreated by goddess.
His canonical path involves a lot of independent growth and a certain degree of anti-social behavior. Integrating him into my hierarchy might prove challenging.
Well, I will just have to decide at the time I meet him. For now, my smartphone is more important. Its successful adaptation to this world is paramount. The Hero can wait. My priorities were clear.