Chương 7: Chapter 6 - To Send a [[Message]]

We thought ourselves safe from the [Demon Lord's] wrath by simple virtue of distance. The demons appeared in the far west while we were in the far east. They would need to pass through two full nations before we ever felt the threat, or at the very least, fight through Gram and the deathlands. However, as we breathed our collective sigh of relief when the demonic army was pushed back, we should have known the [Demon Lord] had more tricks at the ready.

Just a few years later, coming from the volcanic region to the east, we were faced with a nigh-unkillable monster. A level 25 beast with a hardened shell that was ever burning and seemed unamused by our best attacks. We needed a [Hero]… but she was in the west defending the newly created wall separating us from the demons. We eventually slew the beast at great cost. We had lost an entire zone to its rampage, but we readied ourselves because we knew that was not the end. A few years later, the same beast attacked.

Confirmed then that this was a monster wave from one of the [Demon Lord's] zones, there was little we could do. With the density of his zones in the east, we could not capture and hold one for long. So, we simply did our best to survive. 50 years. 10 attacks by the infernal monsters, and then… nothing. After the [Demon Lord] returned, the attacks simply stopped. Besti remained on guard for decades, but the attacks eventually faded out of our collective minds as if they had never occurred.

Excerpt from "Infernal Dire Snails - The single monster wave" a Bestian historical document I had absolutely zero idea what had happened in Placeholder the last few decades, but it didn't really matter that much. First order of business. I thought. Let's see what I look like this time around. I pulled off my gauntlets so that I stopped being on fire, and then I wiped the layer of dust off the obelisk.

"Average height, average build," I said as I turned in the mirror.

"Not a woman or anything strange. Just… normal. Huh." I belatedly wondered if that had something to do with me not having a demon lord form set before I respawned, but that thought also reminded me. I should take care of that before the System chooses for me. I thought.

"ALTSYS!" I yelled at the sky.

"I WOULD FRICKIN' KILL YOU IF YOU EXISTED YET!" I spent the next few minutes just ranting and railing at whatever and whoever I could think of. AltSys. Admin. The OmniverseEngine. My past self. You know. The usual. I eventually got what I was looking for. System: Wrath Form Set"Aaaaand done," I said, taking a few unnecessary breaths to calm myself. Why go with wrath form again? Well, there were a few answers to that. First, it was the one I had the most experience with.

Second, I was aware of its downsides and knew how to mitigate them (including not letting it be set until after my respawn gave me my new body, I didn't want to be a dumb brute again). Third… it was also the first one that I could think of. Alright, what's the plan for this life? I asked myself. Admin hasn't shown up, even though the portal has been open for 50 years. I frowned as I sat down on the platform surrounding the obelisk.

"Come to think of it, he hasn't checked in since my first life." I paused as I tried to remember.

"Wait… didn't he message me when I was insane?" I mumbled. Needless to say, I didn't have a good idea about what actually happened or didn't during that time. That could entirely have been something that my broken mind made up. Either way, it didn't look good. More than 5 centuries without him popping in. I thought. Unless he stopped in to check without letting me know. I highly doubted that. Admin stop in without railing at me or threatening me to open the portal? Yeah, right.

I gave a sour look as I stared up at the ceiling.

"So, I can't even complete step one of my dubious plan," I chuckled mirthlessly.

"Unless I can come up with some kind of magic like Summon Administrator, it looks like I'm stuck." That thought resonated with something, and I furrowed my brows as I tried to figure out what it was. No spell could summon an admin. That would be ridiculous. I snorted. They have an entirely different realm and everything. Spells don't work there, and they even have their own version of MP.

"Their own version of MP," I stated aloud in shock.

"That's it!" I shouted as I bolted to my feet and began pacing.

"AltSys mentioned something about this… my MP to theirs… something like… the conversion ratio is terrible." I paused my pacing.

"Which means that I should be able to generate manipulation points… and if I can generate manipulation points…" I grinned.

"A simple message should be no problem." I didn't have any mana to speak of since I was stuck in the tutorial, which still inexplicably drained my mana, but that was what [Cast From SP] was for. I toggled that on and tried to remember what using manipulation points felt like.

"You're gonna regret having me use all of those admin abilities, AltSys," I stated as I closed my eyes and tried to focus.

"I know what your MP feels like now, and I just have to replicate it with-" I cut myself off as I found a way to convert the two. It was effortless when you knew where to look. However, that wasn't why I stopped talking. I shut up because of the feeling that had come along with the MP I had tried to convert. It felt like I had dumped a single pitcher of water into a dried-up lake. I stood there frozen, just processing that for several seconds.

"I'm gonna need a lot more mana," I finally stated. Fortunately, my instincts seemed to say that the amount I needed was orders of magnitude below the [Restart] ritual, but that was also depressing because all I wanted to do was send a message.

"Couldn't have it be easy," I mumbled as I pulled my gauntlets back out. I fumbled with them a bit before getting them on, but didn't pay it too much mind.

"Time to go clear the tutorial again," I snorted. Since I dumped all my SP for my quick experiment, I couldn't do much more than walk to the boss room. However, with my flames, and my opponents being all melee, that was all that I needed. They killed themselves on my body, and I arrived without a hitch. Then it was time for the ever-so-exciting wait for SP to refill. I already miss Insurance. I thought as I looked out at the gathered ants.

It wasn't exactly going to be a struggle to clear the boss, but the fact that I couldn't one-tap the ants without [Elemental Strike] was definitely annoying. One boring, but more irritating than normal boss fight later, and I had to decide where I would teleport out to. Let's see… somewhere without people. Can I teleport to New Besti? I asked, and then I stopped. Oh… Right. No obelisk there. We kinda used that for Tim and Cameron's undead army. Remembering Tim put a bit of a downer on my mood.

He may have been an undead monstrosity, but at least he was… well… a friend. I thought. Or at least someone who actually had the same goals as me. And I can't even say that his sacrifice was worth it because we didn't change a dang thing. I needed to stop dwelling on it. So, I decided to just pick a spawn point. Dave Paradise. I ordered. System: Warning. Zone is currently claimed by a hostile faction, and the boss is available. Do I look like the kinda guy that cares about a bunch of daves? I asked rhetorically.

And then, because the automated system didn't parse my rhetorical question, I waited there awkwardly. Just… send me out. I finished with a mental sigh. I appeared beside the… Wait. I asked myself as I looked around in the mid-morning light. Where's the obelisk? As we got the usual spiel from the System- System: The realm trembles as a new Demon Lord is born!

Demon morale has been restored, and darkness begins its nefarious plans to conquer the world -I also realized that the boss health bar for the Blob of Daves was already up and half depleted. The party of elves who were clearing it stared at me in shock... and one of them got a dave to the face.

"Don't mind me," I said as I pulled out Singularity.

"Just keep doing your thing. Pretend like I'm not here." As my mana bar adjusted… and showed as nearly empty, I realized that I had died with Singularity uncharged, and I hadn't remembered to pull it out before the tutorial spit me out at full resources. Things got even more awkward from there. The elves turned their focus to me, shouting in panic about how they were trapped in the boss room and needed to slay the [Demon Lord], and several arrows tinked harmlessly off my armor as their front liners charged me.

Then, the daves seemed to realize that there was a bigger threat afoot, and they stopped focusing the adventurers to hop toward me. My left hand met my face as I watched the oncoming foes. I… think they might just run if I kill off the boss? I asked myself. Their concern seemed to be that they were stuck in the boss room with me, so I figured they might run if I cleared the boss and then scared them a bit.

The only problem was that I had barely any mana to work with since Singularity was empty, and I was only at level 8. Just have to use SP for the difference. I calculated as a broadsword bounced harmlessly off me. But that will only give me one shot. The melee adventurers had gotten in range to damage their weapons on my armor, and it was starting to make the daves spread out more than I wanted.

I [Flash Stepped] into the middle of the slimeballs, waited for a couple of seconds, and then cast a [Hell Blaze] at my feet, bottoming my MP out, taking a bit of SP with it, but killing the boss. Then, since I didn't feel like fighting any of the adventurers, I just jacked my demon lord aura up to full.

"Boo!" I shouted. It turns out 9/10 adventurers recommend fleeing from the [Demon Lord]. The other 1/10 apparently just fall on their backsides and scream in terror. With a shrug, I started walking and then stumbled a bit as Singularity didn't move exactly like I was used to. I frowned at the staff and at my right hand. Weird. This body seems… uncoordinated, or something. I thought. I wasn't quite sure what was up with it, but I figured it was something to keep an eye on.

The 1000 mana for [Teleport to Beacon] seemed like it was taking forever to restore, and I was slightly worried about having shown myself so close to Jenkins. I didn't want a repeat of a bunch of [Paladins] [Healing] and [Curing] me to death, so I played it safe and cast [Teleport] instead once I got to the 500 mana mark. That got me somewhere in a Dryadal forest, and I sat on the ground to rest.

After an hour of wolves showing up and dying to my armor, though I did have to [Elemental Strike] the occasional alpha, I could finally cast my [Teleport to Beacon] and show up outside the dungeon in the eastern volcanoes. System: Zone entered, Great Eastern Volcanoes. Faction - Demon Lord"Wait, my faction?" I asked aloud.

"The [Hero] never reset the dungeon?" I frowned.

"I guess they didn't have enough time, but I thought for sure that [Duelist] chick would have come around here eventually…" I shrugged.

"Eh, oh well. The damage was already done my first life. All the zones around here are mine anyway. It being claimed doesn't matter one way or the other." Farming the dire snails took a little longer than average because they were technically in my faction and were not immediately hostile. Fortunately, there was nothing in the rules that said I couldn't murder my own monsters for levels… or so I thought.

"Really?" I asked as I killed the snail and didn't get anything.

"Was this a part of that contribution update BS?" I grumbled. There was a solution to the issue, however. First step, unclaim the obelisk. Second step, kill another snail. Third step, claim victory as they were now correctly giving me levels. Repeat step 2 until 20. I had 20 spell points and skill points I could spend, and I knew what I had to spend 6 of them on if I wanted to continue with my plan. This is awful.

I thought as I walked to the training zone I had set up for the children of the flame, since it was the closest obelisk I still owned. Do I really need to do this? I asked myself. And when I got there and put my hand on the obelisk, I sighed.

"Is there any other alternative?" I asked.

"Maybe I could just make do with [Blink]?" I asked myself. I knew that wasn't enough. For the next part of my plan, I would have to traverse the halls of my castle, which would take way too frickin' long if I had to wait for enough mana to [Blink] everywhere. I was resigned to my fate.

"Upgrade… [Pack Mule]," I grumbled to the obelisk. System: Applying experience retroactively for Pack Mule I flipped open my status and sighed. It hit level 8 and was now tied for my 2 nd highest skill with [Flash Step] and [Martial Arts]. Just… don't think about it. It's time to go get another big rock. By a big rock, I of course meant magicite. While I didn't need the entire chunk to just send a message to an admin, I figured that would be the simplest way to ensure that I had enough capacity.

So, I [Teleported] to the beacon I had near the mine, stole some belowsight eyedrops (since I'd apparently run out), and then snuck into the mineshaft I had cleared… or at least, I tried. The last part of the plan was much harder than I expected. While [Sneak] was more than up to the task, I couldn't find the mineshaft I'd made. It turned out that the several decades caused a lot of changes in a mine. Who knew? It took me more than an hour of looking before I gave up and realized that I had an alternate option.

I simply picked one of the many shafts they had open to the below and then cast [Teleport to Beacon], targeting the below entrance beacon. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. Then I put in my eyedrops, inverted my gravity, and tried to find the boss I had encountered earlier that was guarding the huge magicite crystal. It felt… lonely down there. I guess I miss Tim riding around in my head. I thought.

However, that was no time to be wrapped up in my thoughts, so I kept moving. I got lost a few times and even found the portal I made that would transport me to Heaven due to bugs, but after hours of searching, I found what I was looking for. The boss health bar for the Crystalline Calamity popped up, and I grinned as I released my inverted gravity and splatted onto the ceiling.

"Like shooting fish in a barrel," I chuckled as I peppered the boss with [Mage Bolts], just like last time. I frowned a bit as I did, though. I was using Singularity to cast them, and it seemed my aim was a bit off compared to normal. That went away after I swapped to my left hand, and I stopped and stared at my staff as if it had the answers to the strangeness I was feeling. Then, my eyes widened.

"No frickin' way," I muttered. I pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, and then, because I didn't need [Invert Gravity] for the moment, I stowed Singularity. I sat down and tried to write with my right hand, just like I always did. I made a horrible, illegible mess. I swapped to my left. My writing was back to normal.

"I had no idea the System could just… make me left-handed," I said with a tinge of concern. I don't know why it was a shock. It was so much less of a deal than almost every previous change it had forced on me. Horns. Height changes. The one time it made me a woman. However, this just felt like… more of a violation. In all my previous lives, I at least kept a semblance of the same amount of coordination from my training, even if I had to adjust to different wingspans and body shapes to use it correctly.

But having my dominant hand switched like that made it feel like it could just take any of my other coordination away from me too, whenever it wanted. Just a reason not to dilly-dally with taking this whole thing down. I grumbled as I put my stuff away, pulled out Singularity, and then realized I had ink smudges all along my left hand. How do lefties deal with that? I asked myself on my final tangent. Then, with a shake of my head, I returned to [Mage Bolting] the boss to death.

Its ignoble death took even longer than I remembered, but the giant magicite crystal was secured. Then I just had to [Invert Gravity], mine out the crystal, and then heave it off the ground until my inventory let me collect it. That last part took a few tries, unlike the first time I had done the maneuver. It was just a guess since I couldn't easily compare, but I had a sneaking suspicion that the obese greed form had a bit more physical strength to it than I realized.

I closed my eyes as soon as I felt the gargantuan chunk of crystal go into my inventory so that I wouldn't see the System message if it came.

"Moment of truth," I stated.

"Am I over-encumbered? Will I have to go and drop a bunch of stuff off and come back?" I took an unneeded deep breath and then… a single step forward. I grinned.

"Alright, I hated upgrading it, but the skill was worth it." I opened my status and scrolled through my inventory, just for the novelty of having a giant crystal in there. I saw it and a few other things in there that I had almost completely forgotten. Old man Jenkin's iPod. I thought as I looked at perhaps the strangest thing in a very odd list. The adamantium cuffs that Elnil enchanted to help capture me. Part of me felt like throwing them away. The time I had spent captured by Gram was… not pleasant.

However, a louder part of me refused to throw them away because they were made by probably the greatest [Enchanter] who would ever live… and because I might want to copy that rune structure at some point. After that was my wand that gave 150 mana… and all that reminded me of was the missing one that gave 200 that I had loaned to Erica and would never get back. I'm so glad that I didn't actually kill her. I thought, with a sigh of relief. However, that was short-lived because of the next item on the list.

The fire dragon egg.

"An entire species that I failed," I stated aloud as I looked at their last remaining member.

"But what can I do? Raise the last one, just so that they all die with the OmniverseEngine?" I put everything away.

"Enough stalling. Let's get back to business." While I could have walked back the entire way, I instead used [Teleport to Beacon] again. Honestly, I was surprised that it let me return to that same beacon, but my combined levels in [Spatius] and [SpatialTemporus] cut the cooldown on each individual beacon even more than I expected. Then, I simply climbed the rope, waited for my mana to come back, and then teleported across the world to my castle. It was surprisingly empty.

"Hello?" I called out. Since there hadn't been a war in the past 47 or so years, I assumed all the demons would be hanging out at my castle. Maybe even waiting for me to get back. The fact that there was no one, not even an imp, to greet me suggested otherwise. I walked to my throne room, a bit puzzled.

"Did they all die again? Without there even being a war?" I asked. I realized that I had a 1 mana way to tell if that happened, so I might as well give it a go.

"[Message] Anger. Alive?" I asked. The [Message] failed. I repeated it for all the others. Hysteria was dead as well, but surprisingly none of the others had kicked the bucket. I got confused one-word replies from all the others, except Spite, who gave me the very charitable- Spite: What do you want? I was honestly confused for a moment until I realized that was just what auto-translation put it as. In reality, that phrase was just a single word in… whatever language demons spoke. I shook my head.

Not sure why I didn't notice that earlier, but I guess I had other things on my mind. Or at least, that was my excuse for not realizing that the "people" I talked to last life didn't have their lip flapping matching up with the language I was hearing. That all took enough time that I made it to my throne room, and I sat down on one of the steps leading up to the throne as I thought. I hoped there would be demons around here to help me charge this up… but I guess it doesn't matter too much.

I thought as I looked at Singularity. 6000 mana an hour will make this go fast… at least relatively. So, I don't need any of the demons here, but… what have they been doing all this time? I wanted to save my mana, but [Message] would just take a couple hundred at most to get a good idea of what was going on… if I asked the right demon. That meant Spite was out right away. Anger and Hysteria were also out because they were dead and likely didn't know as much.

Even if I wanted to pay the extra mana to send an [Advanced Message] cross-dimension. Who else… Desire? My fist unintentionally clenched. No. Voracity? Tiredness? … Trickery? I frowned. For some reason, it didn't seem like asking the demon whose entire thing was deception was a good plan.

"Oh, right. Avarice," I nodded. He seemed to have a decent head on his shoulders, at least for a demon.

"[Message] Avarice," I cast, my question could have been summarized as "what the heck happened?" but I wanted to give him a few more words than that to work with.

"I have returned to my castle, but there is no one here. Please explain what has been going on for these past few decades." Avarice: Be not angry, your lowliness. But now is not a- Destroy those archers! Run them down if you want your worth in gold! As the [Message] swiftly turned to him giving out what I could only assume were orders, I blinked in confusion. Well, now I'm curious. I pulled out my black mithril hand mirror and then cast.

"[Scry] Avarice." And so I got to watch the tail end of Avarice and a bunch of greed demons running down and slaughtering Gram troops. That much wasn't unusual. No, the weird thing about that was that the greed demons were wearing armor. That, and when a squad of Dryadal's heavy cavalry rode up to them, they greeted them as if they were friends. Or, at least, not hostiles.

"Here's your pay," the lead elf said with a slight sneer as he tossed him a sack that clinked as Avarice caught it. It took me a moment to realize that was odd with how coinage worked in Placeholder, but it sounded like some gems were clinking around in there too, which made that make at least a bit of sense. Avarice grinned.

"A pleasure doing business with you as always," he stated with a mock bow.

"[Message] Avarice," I cast again.

"I am [Scrying] you. Now would be a good time for an explanation."

"Of course, your lowliness," he stated. It was a bit irritating that the words come across both the [Message] and the [Scry], but that was a small price to pay to get some dang answers.

"Without your great leadership-" he started. Brown noser. I thought.

"-it was never in question that we weren't a match for the forces of Heaven in direct conflict. So, after some… reshuffling, the demons have each gone their own way under their respective leaders." After that, he gave me a quick summary of the past couple of decades from his point of view. After the "reshuffling" that he mentioned, which I was capable of reading between the lines and knowing what that meant, most of the demons took a different approach to the wall.

Without Anger or Hysteria there to lead them, the wrath and madness demons were leaderless and easy to convince (i. e. threaten) to go on a suicidal charge into the wall and the host of Heaven that was summoned to defend it. That burned that specific cooldown; from there, it was up to every different faction how they wanted to get across. Trickery and Desire had it the easiest. The deceit demons simply snuck their way past the wall, while the lust demons seduced their way through it.

It was more difficult for Avarice and the others, but they bided their time. With the imps, low-level demons, and other monsters respawning much faster than Anger and Hysteria, they were able to use them as a distraction again before their normal leaders respawned. Then, with a few well-placed tricks from each faction (like the greed demons bribing the soldiers), they got past the wall with limited casualties. After that, the demons who were now free and clear had a choice to make.

While they could go on their own rampages again, that would likely mean getting killed and sent back... which would place them under Anger's command again. Instead, thanks primarily to Trickery, they went with something more subtle. They decided to integrate themselves into society wherever they could fit. That was primarily in the lawless underbelly, but surprisingly that wasn't everywhere that they managed to infiltrate. Avarice was perhaps the most shocking with that.

He and the greed demons had managed to make a name for themselves as mercenaries for hire in the new war that had been started… which was something I had to have him back up and explain. To put it short, Gram and Dryadal were at it again, and the dwarves were holing up in their stronghold, watching them fight.

I had no doubt that the war was demonically influenced, especially since it would have been trivial for shapeshifters like Spite or Desire, or even an illusionist like Trickery, to fan the flames of species superiority again. If I had been your average everyday demon lord, I probably would have given them a raise for them getting my enemies to fight each other. Since I wasn't, I mostly just groaned into my hands as I continued listening to Avarice over the [Scry].

He finished out telling me that he wasn't really sure what the other demons were up to, but that Trickery had come up with one specific deception that he thought I should know.

"In order to distance ourselves from the wrath and madness demons who are still stuck throwing themselves into that wall-" Avarice fidgeted a bit.

"-we made claims that they are entirely different beings than us. We claimed that they are true demons who desire only destruction, while we are devils instead. With devils being open to contracts, willing to abide by certain laws, and not only wanting to destroy things." Avarice wrung his hands and bowed toward my [Scry].

"The downside is that you yourself are still believed to be a demon. Of course, Trickery did all of this without your approval, your lowliness, and I played no part in the creation of this-""[Message] Avarice," I cast to cut him off. That particular lie sounded like one that would benefit the greed demon the most, so I was very much of the belief that he was just throwing Trickery under the bus now that I was back.

"I don't particularly care. Keep doing whatever, just so long as you keep any humans from coming out to my castle." I could practically feel his relief from half the world away.

"Of course, your lowliness," he replied. Then he paused.

"Just humans?" With a roll of my eyes, I cast again.

"[Message] Avarice. Humans, elves, dwarves, anyone. I'm going to be working on something, and I don't want to be interrupted."

"Understood, your lowliness." With that, I cut the [Scry] off. Well, I didn't end the world, but it sounds like I sure as heck made it worse. I sighed. And things are really going to go to Hell when I finally succeed in getting Admin here. I don't think trying to fix this is worth the time. I looked in my inventory at the giant crystal.

"Let's get this show on the road," I stated as I pulled it out… Or at least tried to. I forgot how long it took to pull heavy items out of my inventory, and I was stuck waiting for the full minute. It took so long that I zoned out and nearly jumped out of my skin when the giant rock finally appeared and slammed into the ground in front of my throne steps.

"Now, to just fill this up with about… Maybe a million mana or so?" I asked as I put my hand on the magicite, which drained my mana bar. That was a large number, but it seemed like at least the right ballpark for the cast I was planning. And that wasn't even that long of a wait in the grand scheme of things. With Singularity out in my throne room, I had more than 6000 mana that recharged every hour. With a regeneration rate like that, it would only take- System: Dangerous ritual cast detected by alert system.

Issuing Quest System: The Demon Lord has begun casting a ritual that could destroy Placeholder! Stop the ritual in the far west at the demon lord's castle before it is too late!

"Looks like I don't have to calculate it after all," I grumbled as the timer popped up. 6 days, 14 hours, 59 minutes, 53 seconds.

"How is this a ritual?" I asked the ceiling.

"And how could this possibly destroy all of Placeholder? And aren't you supposed to wait until I actually start casting?" I knew that there were several reasonable explanations for why it triggered. First, based on what I could tell from my previous attempt at converting mana into manipulation points, the process wasn't very difficult once you had the mana. In other words, it was going to be fast.

Second, if you counted the fact that it was likely going to result in a demon's permanent takeover of the world, this was world-ending in a way. That meant it was only fair that the [Hero] gets a chance to respond to it. And third… I was still just sure that the OmniverseEngine hated my guts. Right back at ya. I retorted mentally. That bit of childishness done, I thought over what that quest actually meant.

The [Hero] will come running, and while I really hope she's more than 7 days away, I should probably check on that. I pulled my hand away to let my mana tick up.

"Just need to cast a [Scry] and…" I trailed off.

"Wait. What's the [Hero's] name again?"

While I didn't remember the woman's name, fortunately, I had several demons that I could contact to find that out again. Shalia Zinphyra. Once I confirmed that, I made sure to [Scry] her to see what she was up to. Unfortunately, it seemed that she was making her way to my castle at best speed with a small group of other people that I took to be her party. I could somehow guess she would get there before I could finish my "ritual."

[Heroes] had an annoying habit of managing to do that, even when it didn't make any dang sense. Like John when he interrupted [Restart]. I grumbled. I shut off the [Scry] to conserve mana and pulled out the dungeon's scrying mirror instead. I pointed it at the entrance to the ring of mountains around my castle, then decided to keep dumping mana into the crystal until they got close. It was a boring process… that also became more irritating than I anticipated.

"Y-y-your lowliness," came a slightly shrill voice from the portal. I looked over and saw an imp cowering in fear on the floor. Oh. I thought. Must be newly respawned.

"Yes, yes," I said with a dismissive wave.

"Get out of here. I'm busy." The imp scurried frantically toward the door. Then it was back to my thoughts until-"Y-y-your lowliness," came the voice again. I looked up, saw the imp that was going out the door, and then swiveled my head to look at the next groveling imp.

"Get out of here," I stated a bit less patiently.

"Y-yes, your lowliness!" With that taken care of, my thoughts turned back to…

"Y-y-your lowliness," came yet another imp. I groaned and then looked up at the sky. Why? I asked. Why do they have to-"Y-y-your-" the voice came again.

"SHUT UP!" I shouted as I glared at the imp that had decided to bother me twice… until I realized that there were now two of them. Then a third one appeared, prostrating himself next to the others, and I sighed. I need to deal with this before they drive me insane. I reached for a lesser-used skill from a subclass that was still stuck at level 3. [Edit Dungeon Properties] from the [Dungeon Master] class.

From there, I selected the demon portal, was grateful that it let me move it, and then I walked it down to the dungeon of my dungeon. I placed the portal opposite the portal to the dragonlands, and then nodded to myself… as a dozen imps suddenly spilled out of the Hell portal at once.

"Your lowliness!" they all exclaimed in unison as they scrambled over each other to throw themselves on the ground before me. I didn't even grace the useless imps that had been backed up in the teleporter with a response. Now back to figuring out how to deal with the [Hero]. I thought as I walked back to my room. And then, of all possible sources of inspiration, the imps gave me an idea.

Shalia was making haste to the [Demon Lord's] castle. A level 25 [Duelist]-[Hero], she was one of the strongest single fighters who had ever graced Placeholder… which is why she was insulted by the [Demon Lord's] response to her mission.

"Imps, imps, it's always imps!" Bertrand, a human from Gram, complained after they were woken up for the dozenth time by a small group of the tiny demons.

"Cease your complaints, human," Shalia said in a tone that brooked no argument.

"It merely shows his desperation, that is all." In reality, her thoughts were near the same as Bertrands, but she wouldn't let that weakness show. It was dangerous enough bringing along humans on this urgent quest, the ashlands being designated a neutral zone or not. It is not beyond those savages to make a pact with devils, after all. She mentally sneered… and ignored that Dryadal had done the same numerous times.

Despite the [Demon Lord's] near-comical attempts to stop them, they made their way to the castle with plenty of time to spare. Perhaps that would have been different if they had not repelled a large host of demons, including their two commanders, a mere week before, but it seemed the [Demon Lord] was confident enough in his own power that he didn't believe he needed any of his other forces. Shalia would show him.

While there were others on this mission, with the Hero's Rapier, and the Hero's Regalia, she wouldn't even need them. She would immediately issue the [Demon Lord] a [Hero's Challenge] and defeat him solo. Shalia thought she had her wish when the countdown stopped with mere hours to go as they approached the castle.

"The [Demon Lord] has stopped the ritual to deal with us," she told her party.

"Everyone, keep your eyes peeled for ambush." The party nodded, and they traversed the castle on high alert… but ran only into more imps. Shockingly, even the boss monsters that usually guarded portions of the castle no longer seemed to be there. That meant there was only one thing left for the party to do. Aware of how the previous [Hero] met his ignoble end, Shalia shifted her armor to Adamantium mode as she shoved the doors open and entered the room.

"[Demon Lord]!" she bellowed as the monster stood across the room.

"As [Hero] of Placeholder, I issue you a-""[Teleport to Beacon: Fire Dungeon Entrance]," the [Demon Lord] interrupted her as he finished casting. Then, with a smirk and a cheeky wave, he vanished. Shalia and the rest of the party were stunned.

"Did he just… run away?" Bertrand asked. Unfortunately, it seemed he didn't. System updated the countdown, it jumped up from 3 hours to 15, but the quest was also updated.

"Stop the ritual in the far west at the demon lord's castle" became "Stop the ritual in the far east at the fire dungeon" just like that.

"Coward!" Shalia yelled, as there was nothing else she could do.

"Stand and face us!"

Meanwhile, this coward had pulled the giant magicite crystal back out in the deactivated fire dungeon.

"I'm so glad I figured out that this 'ritual' was portable," I said with a chuckle. My throne room was the best place to start it because of the 5X mana, but there was no reason I couldn't just pick up the magicite and move elsewhere when the [Hero] got too close. It took over half a day to finish from there, but it was finally ready. I had the barest amount of mana needed to make a manipulation point. I placed my hand on the crystal, focused, and then tried the conversion process.

It was as simple as I thought, but the problem was that I could tell my manipulation point was decaying. After all, I wasn't an admin, so I supposed that made sense. However, that meant I was now panicking as I had a bit less than 1 manipulation point and needed to spend it immediately. I got myself under control and tried to figure out how much it would take to send an admin a message… my instincts at least told me I could and that the more letters, the more it would cost.

With only 1 quickly diminishing manipulation point, I didn't have time to waste, and I figured it didn't really matter what I said. Only who I said it to.

"[[Message]] Admin," I… cast?... invoked?... used the manipulation point.

"Hi." There was a slight rumble as I used the ability I probably shouldn't have been able to, but then the message was off. Part of me wondered if I had just made a terrible mistake. Would it even recognize "Admin" as a valid target since that wasn't his name? How did admin-level [[Message]] even work? Unfortunately, none of those things were even a consideration. ERROR: No admins detected! The System blared at me after a moment. ERROR: Detected disconnect from rest of the OmniverseEngine!

Please reconnect world "Placeholder" to the nearest hub immediately!

"Disconnected?" I muttered to myself.

"But that means…" I didn't finish my thought aloud. There would be no admins to steal manipulation points from. No one to use to sneakily figure out how the OmniverseEngine works and take it down. No eventual revenge against Admin. I left the giant magicite crystal behind and slowly walked away from the dungeon in a daze. I exited the dungeon doors and looked at the bright eastern sun. What do I do now?