Chapter 10:

Episode 4.1 - Doomsday

Our Perfect Isekai World is Spoiled by a Demon Girl?!

Episode 4 - The End of the World

It's a nice ass. There is no two ways about it. It's no dumpster truck, petite in its way, but it’s plump and round, and the tail peeking out from it utterly perfects the image.

If you're wondering why I'm staring at Ko's ass, I doubt I have a very satisfactory answer. I do have one half-baked excuse: A couple of days ago, she snuck off from Eshu and I, to have a secret tryst with Lady Lila by moonlight. Ever since the two have been oddly close, and moreover, Ko's cat emote seems to have broken, stuck permanently on. Ko says she doesn't mind this, as she'd been thinking of leaving it that way already. Apparently, the tail in particular feels as natural to her as her legs. I'm not sure I follow that explanation, but if she's happy, it's fine by me. It is a very fluffy white tail after all.

Actually, it's not the only odd change; my hair has reverted to a light brown shade. My hair in the old world was naturally brown, but a while back I changed it to black for more protagonist energy. Yet I woke up one morning and it was brown again.

Eshu, the only one of us to have no odd cosmetic changes occur, said she likes this colour more, so I guess I don’t really mind. Still, it does make you wonder what the heck is going on with all these bugs in the world, if that's what they truly are.

Speaking of, we're making the trek up to the fort's roof, through the narrow, winding stone staircases. Lila claims today is the day, Armageddon, doomsday, end of the world. Ko and Lila are a couple of steps ahead, then Eshu and me, followed by the skeleton man we see most, the one with the goofy top hat.

"Hey, hey, Sek, is it a reverse harem or a normal harem, if it has boys and girls?" Eshu says beside me.

"Err, what?"

"My harem, is it reverse or not?"

"Who says it's your harem? As the man, surely it's mine," I point out.

Eshu gives me a pointed look like I'm wearing clown make-up, "Sek, don't be silly. You don't even like Lady Lila. No, it's clearly Eshu's harem; everyone likes Eshu. No one fights with Eshu. Simple."

"She has a point," Ko says from ahead.
"Mmmhmm," Lila adds.

"You can't be serious," I say, my shoulders slumping.

"I have a Tsundere and a Kuudere and a Nyandere," Eshu continues happily.

"Don't call me a Tsundere," I retort a little too fast.

"I never said who was who," Eshu grins back viciously.

"Urk..."

"Maybe I need a better balance, one more guy makes two and two," she adds, ignoring my suffering.

"Guhhhhhh! And where are you going to magic one of those from?"

"That Mike guy was pretty nice."

"More like hot as hell..." Ko mutters.
I find myself a little offended at that, "Yes, well, he's gone, so tough."

Eshu lays a hand on her chin, looking awfully serious. I'm half afraid she'll trip on one of these narrow steps. "What about the skeleton men? How 'bout you, guy?"

"Grk, Urk, Roh?" the little fella behind us squeaks in a clicky tone, looking, if it's at all possible for the skull of a lizard to look so, embarrassed.

"Hee-hee, is that a maybe?"

"You can understand them, Eshu?" Ko asks.

"Hmmmmmm, more like, interpret."

Even Lila looks impressed, "Now that's something special."

"Well, even if it is, he's a skeleton, they all are, he's not going to be much... You know," I mumble, that sentence quickly feeling rather dangerous.
Eshu grins, "You can't be sure until you try."

"He's literally an undead!"

"Urk, Urk!" the 'guy' seems to disagree.

"Quite right," the demon who spawned him adds. "Major Tom and all his people are only undead by technicality. In actual fact, if you leave the Estolpfo alone in the wild, they act more like a pack or tribal creature. They also don't come from the dead. No one's ever actually witnessed it, but leave two who like each other alone together and an egg will just kinda’ appear."

"You're kidding?" Just what sort of ‘meme mob’ did the developers go and leave in the game?

"Dead serious. They may not be as intelligent as some demon species, but left alone, they'll graze on grass - err, no one knows where that goes either, but it makes them happy. They'll also search out others of their kind, and when they find them, form tribes. Hunt, patrol, teach each other things, proper little societies."
Our mighty ‘Grand Imp’ pauses unhappily for a moment, "Most demons treat them as things. They don't need to graze or rest; it's just what they do naturally. They are a favourite for frontline vanguards and unpaid labour."

"Wait, wait, wait, so like, you didn't just summon them out of thin air?" That had been my presumption at least.

"Eh? By Iona, no. I can summon shadow apparitions, sure - but those aren't alive, just a temporary mimicry of life. The Estolpfo are a sapient species. The ones I've been bringing here, I teleported from home. They have served me for years.
What? Did you presume they were 'less than NPCs' or something?"

"I ah..." She has me there.
Lila is one thing; talking characters in a video game do generally have more comprehensive scripting. Monsters like the skeleton creatures are just, I mean, I'm not wrong.

"Mistress, you called him a major?" Ko asks. She's constantly using the word mistress lately; it seems to make Lila happy, and me cringe.

"Right, guess I never mentioned that? Before I deserted to come here, I was Specialist Major Rowan of His Sovereign's Royal Forces. Tom was the head of my personal battalion, a captain. Since I'm now my own lady, I thought he should have the rank. The hat denotes his role."

"The hat...."

"Yes, the hat."

I look cautiously at Eshu, Ko does too, her eyes suggesting the girl keep her mouth shut.
She, of course, does not. "We thought it denoted him as being special," she says with that remarkable skill for no tact.

"Of course he's special, he's my oldest servant," Lila nods her round head proudly.

"No, umm," should I really say this? Ko’s gaze now on me suggests otherwise, but if I don’t, Eshu probably will anyway, haha…

"Special as in, a charity case, one you keep around to pour the tea out of the goodness of your heart..."

Lila stops in her tracks, or well, floating. She turns icily on us, "Pouring the tea is a great honour, as is the hat of leadership! Tom is my oldest and strongest piece! He could beat all three of you!"

"Now you're bluffing."

Our ‘mistress’ flails her thin arms rather childishly, albeit quite cutely too, "You imbecile! He's nearly level 200, a Tier 2 species, unlike you Tier 1 humans. He's an evolved class, Estolpfo-Lizardguard!"

"But he looks just like the others," Eshu says, tilting her head.

"That’s... He was always shorter than his peers. Before he evolved he was only half that height. But height has nothing to do with skill or power! Hmph! You should all show more respect to your senior, damnit..." Lila mutters, turning and floating up the last few steps into the cool dusk air on the fort’s terrace.

"Teleported them from where?" Ko asks, perhaps trying to soothe our accidental insult of our supposed ‘senpai’.

"When I left, my fellow military inspectors put my forces and stuff in storage. Like I said, there's a lot of Estolpfo mistreatment. It worked out though. Putting them in rows in a dark, locked shed made it very easy to pinpoint their location and, carefully, using very little power, teleport them one by one. I've told you before, I look after my positions; I'd hardly leave my troops behind. It was a bit close, mind, only grabbed the last couple just yesterday. Still, no man left behind, K’?"

"Y-you really went that far for them?" I ask. My reward is a cold glare from Ko and Lila; they're starting to act concerningly like sisters.

I suppose this at least explains why the number of skeletons around the fort seems to increase daily.

"Well enough talk for now, we have a job to do today." She floats over to the parapets and looks out rather stoically, "Here, I got these from the menu, should let you see some of what I can."

We step up to three steampunk-looking telescopes on little tripods, "Bought with our resources, you mean?" I grumble.

"Not really. You guys sucked at 'gaming', ya' know that? This fort generates far more material and gold by the day. The Estolpfo massively increases its habitation count, thusly increasing the profits even more. Finally, your human lands are oddly lacking in rulership; this is the only castle in the region, which automatically marked me as the local landlord - even more profits.
Honestly, I could pay back the paltry sum I used from you three at the start and still be rich. Heck, if we live through the day, I'll give you each an allowance."

"Way to hit my gamer pride..."

Now that she mentions it, we hadn't really been trying to stack resources; our humble little house would have generated just the bare minimum versus this whole fortress set-up.
"Survive today, eh? Guess we will find out for sure if you're crazy or not."

"Sek, you should look at this," Ko says from her telescope."

"Huh?"

"No really, look, baka," Eshu adds more urgently.

I shrug, feeling a bit silly, but check my own. "What the hell?"
If you've ever played one of those battle royal type games, where the walls of the world visible close in as a timer ticks down, maybe you can visualise what's happening before me. In the far distance, towards the game-world borders we're familiar with, towering walls of magnetic blue hexagons are pulsating. They reach impossibly far into the sky, way beyond the skybox limit, and most likely far below ground level, too.
And then the walls flash.

"Did you see that!" Eshu says.

"Yup," Lila nods, "Every few days at first, then once an hour, now--"

"Again!" Ko adds.

"--now more and more often."

I turn to Lila, "Why didn't you show us this before? Is it, like, everywhere?"

"Sort of. Behind us, to the south, you don't wanna' look. The East is my homeland, the West is the Mechanised Empire, but south of us is just… Nothing, an empty void. Truthfully, I hope it stays that way. As to why I didn't show you, well, why would I?"

"Because it would have proven all your speeches about the end of the world!"

"So? I never needed to prove anything; you're my slaves, not a democracy."

That rather boils my blood, but now doesn't seem like the time for another argument, especially since, if this is really happening, then Lila truly is our only hope? I guess?
I mean, ok, the barriers around our world are true, and they are weakening, but this could all still be an in-game event, right? A man's cope never dies, I suppose…

"Right then, you know the plan," Lila announces with a clap of her hands.

She floats to the middle of the roof, where usually the table and chairs for tea are, but today there's no puffy umbrella.

"When I activate this spell, I'll be briefly vulnerable. Moreover, there's a chance others like me have snuck through the walls ahead of time and will be aggressively drawn to here. You three will defend me. Tom will stand there; through me, he will coordinate all other Estolpfo in the fort, and they'll protect us from any attacks below.
Should things go super bad, he'll be my last line of defence, or step in to rescue you guys. That said, once he does that, the network will fall, and every warrior will be on their own. So don't fuck up, K’?"

She explained this to us prior, but now it's actually happening? I feel myself start to sweat and shiver. The hell are we about to face?

We're dressed for the occasion, no gym clothes or lounge wear today. Lila used the menu to buy us all custom armour. Ko is in this flowing emerald-coloured battle kilt that leaves her legs plenty of room. Her torso is covered in a lighter red leather armour, and she's wearing those wolverine-looking gauntlets of hers.

Eshu has this stylish cream overcoat on, hooded and everything. It's an assassin’s cowl, apparently, and goes well with the knife skills she is so naturally good at. Beneath it is something more appropriate for a wrestler, I feel, but supposedly the coat has a good enough armour rating that her lazy underclothing won't matter much.

Things are more reserved with me. A long, straight sword; a big but fairly light rectangular shield. An iron helmet and breastplate. Honestly, I probably look lame, like some generic city guard in an open-world game, complaining about arrows and knees…

Lila holds up three stubby little fingers, "One is my ultimate shield, been shimmering on the boil for a whole month, it should survive even a direct hit from anything my side has. Two is a chaff barrier, designed to repel all manner of gases and poisons. I had to edit this one the most based on the Mechanised Empire’s tech I read about in the tutorial - a shocking amount of really nasty 'biological' weapons and radiation shit they seem to love - hopefully I've done enough. And three is just the battery; I've been channelling a Grand Demon's worth of magic into it daily. It should allow everything to hold for weeks, maybe even months, if I'm right and nothing comes too close to us. But, if I fail to cast the spells, or they aren't enough..."

"Then?"

"Then, it sure was nice knowing you all," Lila grins rather more shyly than you'd expect from her.

I sigh before hoisting my weapons more firmly. The others do the same, Ko in particular stepping in front of the demon, "Alright, chances are nothing from the south, right? Eshu, you stand East, Sek, West."

"That's my lieutenant," Lila grins impishly. Ko smiles right back.

It's time, doomsday.