“Why?! Why am I giving the Queen a piggyback?!”
The whiny voice of a panicked Bran echoes across the cracked walls of the stadium’s inner hallways, before being gradually drowned out by the muffled sounds of crumbling stone, falling debris, and crowds of shuffling feet all making their escape in the distance.
Atop his back sits Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed. Arguably the most powerful woman in the world. Not in terms of strength, but in the sheer dominance she holds over everything and everybody that exists within her ever-growing sphere of influence. Not to mention the boundless wisdom and foresight she’s said to possess. Enough to have earned the titles of ‘Omniscient Overlord’ and ‘The Queen Who Knows All, Sees All, and Stands Above All’. I mean, it’s surely no coincidence that she even managed to snag the title of ‘Greed of the Seven’ as well.
“Why?!” Mei-Mei complains right back. “Why are you giving the Queen a piggyback?!”
“Yeah!” I agree. “Why are you giving the Queen a piggyback and not me!”
Fwah~! I’m jealous! I want to carry the Queen around too! She’s small and cute and totally my type! I mean, so is Mei-Mei, of course. And I like carrying her around too. But, as a demon who’s spent most her life living inside a dank hole, I long for the warmth of a cute and shining idol whose radiance glitters like the sun! Whereas Mei-Mei looks more like she just stumbled out of a cemetery after clawing her way out of a shallow grave. In fact, it’s very possible that’s something she has actually done...
“U-uh...” Awkwardly clearing his throat, Bran finally turns to address the Queen at his back for the first time. “Y-Your Highness Queen Lady Majesty Kokoro...”
“Ah, just Kokoro is fine,” she responds rather nonchalantly to his panicked stammering of grand titles. It’s the first time she’s said something since Bran brought her over here.
“R-right... Ko-Kokoro...” Bran continues nervously. “I, uh, m-my apologies for dragging you away like that. I didn’t realize I had picked up someone of such... importance at the time. I’m sure you would have preferred to be tended to by one of your more capable knights instead...”
Queen Kokoro shakes her head and gives a short shrug. “I don’t mind. Thanks for getting me out of there.”
“R-right...”
I don’t know why Bran’s acting so nervous right now. He said this situation was ‘really bad’, right? What’s so bad about this? I mean, the Queen seems pretty nice, all things considered. Super chill too. I don’t think Bran has any reason to be scared of—
Hm? Actually, I feel like I’m forgetting something super important about Bran. Something about what happened to him before he got taken to prison. What was it again...? I remember being told back at the Spire, but...
Huh. Maybe it’ll come to me later.
“A-anyway,” Bran continues, turning his attention to me and Mei-Mei. “I’m sure the Queen will be in much safer hands with you two, so I’ll just leave her in your care and I’ll be on my way...”
“Ah, actually,” Mei-Mei stops him as he nervously attempts to lower the Queen to the floor. “Right now we were planning on pursuing Lust. Unless you want to accompany us, she’ll probably be safer in yours.”
“... Huh? L-Lust? You’re going after Lust?!” Bran readjusts the woman on his back and abruptly turns on his heel in an attempt to leave the way he came. “W-well, I should probably hurry and take the Queen to safety! I’ll leave you two to your suicidal tendencies and poor decision-making, and I’ll be on my way—!”
A sudden question from the Queen atop Bran’s back stops him in his tracks. “Do you know where Lemon is? Could you take me to her instead?”
“Huh? Lemon...?" Bran scratches nervously at his sweaty forehead. "Oh, that tall knight? The one in the golden armour? Well, I imagine she’s probably looking for you along the fallen stands where I picked you up. It’s probably better if you wait for her outside though. I mean, it’d be impossible to find her in...”
Bran’s voice trails off as the four of us are gradually made aware to the growing noise of fighting somewhere deeper in the stadium. Two women locked in mortal combat, if the sounds of their guttural struggles are anything to go by.
I can hear one of their muffled voices laugh between laboured breaths.
“Gyahaha! To think there were so many strong opponents gathered here! ‘Tis truly wonderful indeed!”
“Unforgivable!” the other voice pants. “For your insolence of disrupting an event planned by Lady Kokoro herself, I shall cut you down where you stand!”
The Queen seems to perk up a little at the sound.
“Oh! That’s Lemon’s voice,” she says, urging Bran onwards. “Let’s go this way.”
“Lust’s too, it seems,” Mei-Mei urges me in the same direction with a tap on the head. “Let’s go finish this little tournament of yours, shall we?”
“Right!” Slapping my feet across the debris-littered floor, I take off down the collapsed corridor, Mei-Mei bouncing along above my shoulders.
“Wait!” Bran complains after us. “If you’re going that way, take the Queen with you! W-wait!”
“Fwahaha! I wanna join in on the fun too! Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Keh-heh... I’m curious to see how effective my explosives were.”
“I don’t want Lemon to do anything too rash without me. We should hurry!”
“Why?!” I hear Bran complain as he’s forced towards the sounds of commotion at the whims of the Queen atop his back. “Why do I have to run towards Lust?! Why did it have to be the Queen?! Why do I have to...”
The sound of the man’s complaining trails away at my back as I continue my dash down the broken walkway, leaving him in my dust as he does his best to follow along behind.
“Fwahaha! Is it this way? Or maybe this way? How about this way?”
Dipping beneath caved-in ceilings, scrambling over collapsed walls, and leaping across fractured flooring, I do my best to follow the sounds of combat coming from... somewhere. It’s hard to tell with all the crumbling, shouting, stampeding, and general noise rumbling across the entirety of the collapsing stadium. It’s also really hard to navigate as well.
Maybe I should take a page from Lust’s book by taking the most ‘direct’ route through the stadium. But that would probably just create an even bigger, more confusing-to-navigate mess...
Just as I begin to consider kicking down a wall or two, I notice some activity from up ahead. A large group of collared slaves and armoured knights seem to be working together to pull the injured and unconscious out from beneath the rubble before hurriedly carrying them away. Leading the group is a bespectacled, blue-haired man in a black coat, expertly directing each individual rescuer to the next person in need of rescue.
“I need an endurance-type holding up that wall while a slippery-type crawls through that gap! And over here I need—! Oh!”
The man looks startled when he sees me and Mei-Mei’s sudden approach, before quickly burying his surprise behind his annoyingly high collar while pushing his glasses up his face with a single finger.
“Fwah!” I come to a grinding stop in front of the man. “It’s the Analyst!”
It’s the Analyst—Keytone Clugose of the Elitist Four. I didn’t expect to see him here since we knocked him out of the tournament and all, but I guess he decided to hang around anyway.
“Heh,” he chuckles smugly. “The gorilla-pervert type, is it? And another tactition type, same as me. I was expecting you two would arrive soon.”
“Keh! No, you weren’t,” Mei-Mei snaps back. “You were clearly surprised to see us arrive just now.”
“Yeah!” I agree. “He even made that weird ‘Oh!’ noise when he saw us!”
“...” Ignoring our comments, the Analyst turns away from us, flicking his black coat out behind him in a dramatic fashion while pushing his glasses up his face once again.
“Pepper, just ignore this pretentious idiot and let’s keep trying to find a way down to—”
“The final bell tolls beneath the noontide sun,” the Analyst interrupts, flicking his coat once again and striking another annoyingly dramatic pose.
“... What?”
With an outstretched arm, the Analyst points down a wide, empty hallway. From the looks of it, most of the collapsed stone and wreckage has been pushed aside, creating an easy pathway through.
“The fate of our future lies beyond that corridor,” he says. “What kind of future does it lead to exactly? I couldn’t tell you. The variables at stake are beyond even my analysis. All I can do is pave the way forward and trust that whatever Lady Kokoro has planned will come to fruition.”
So... This way to Lust then, huh?
“Right! Thanks!” I call back to the strange man as I continue my dash down the corridor he instructed us to follow.
“Heh... Good luck...” With another flick of his coat and adjustment of his glasses, the Analyst goes back to skillfully guiding the team of rescuers towards evacuating more survivors caught beneath the collapsing rubble.
For somebody with the odd hobby of being an annoyingly dramatic weirdo, maybe the Analyst isn’t such an annoying guy after all. Just a dramatic weirdo.
Following the corridor along, I can tell that the sound of fighting below is definitely becoming clearer. It doesn’t just sound like the two women fighting either. There’s lots of people.
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Fwah~! I’m really missing out on the fun, aren’t I?
As I race around another corner, I find myself sprinting down a familiar-looking walkway. At the other end, I can see light filtering through the wide-open exit in the distance. Sunlight.
“Back to the arena, huh?” Mei-Mei comments. “How fitting.”
This is one of the tunnels leading into the centre of the stadium and back into the arena itself. It looks like Lust has taken the fight back into the fighting pit! Neat!
As I burst back out into the open air, the feeling of cold stone beneath my feet becomes the satisfying crunch of warm dirt once again. However, taking a few running steps into the arena, I’m suddenly forced to a grinding stop.
“... Or not,” Mei-Mei adds, having also spotted the reason for my sudden halt.
In the centre of the arena—taking up most of the field before us—is a hole. A big hole. More like a crater, I would say. What once was a flattened fighting pit below a circle of seats making up the audience stands is now a crumbled mess of rubble and concrete collapsed across the edge of a fractured field, threatening to spill over into the giant hole now sat in the centre of it all.
Approaching the edge of the hole, I peer down into its depths, illuminated by the midday sun shining directly overhead. As wide as it is, it only seems to go as deep as the basement level of the stadium.
Counting each exposed floor running down the length of the crater like the layers of a hastily hacked-apart cake, it’s only about three floors deep. Dirt is slowly cascading off the edge, trickling down the jagged stone and bent metal jutting out from each floor and slowly pooling in clumps at the bottom of a debris-littered basin of broken bits of building. And standing at the centre of it all...
“Fwah! It’s Lust!”
Looking a little worse for wear than when I last saw her, Lust stands proudly at the bottom of the crater. A crater of destruction reminiscent of the one that took out the Curse Ward and the top levels of the Spire back when we made our big escape. There are fresh wounds cut deep into her scarred flesh, patches of her skin have been burnt black across her bloodied body, and viscous crimson globs continue to spill out from the festering hole Mom left in her torso. But despite her body being burnt, bloodied, battered, and seemingly on the brink of collapse—Lust is still smiling.
“Hoh...?” Noticing my presence, Lust shifts her attention my way, her cloudy eyes casting an unfocused gaze up towards my general direction. “Is that you, Daughter of Glutt—?”
Before she can finish, a torrent of blood spews out from her mouth in a fit of violent coughing and hacking.
“Gyaha...” she pants, wiping in vain at the corners of her upturned lips, only smearing even more blood across her face in the process. “My apologies... Now that night has fallen, ‘tis become difficult to see the opponents standing before me...”
I take a quick glance up at the cloudless sky, its midday sun shining warmly down into the arena below.
“’Tis strange...” she continues, half mumbling to herself now. “Such a cold and starless night...”
The bodies of many knights lay littered across the rubble—dozens upon dozens of them—scattered messily around her. And directly at her feet, an especially tall knight lies motionless, her once pristine and shiny golden armour now battered and bloody. I recognize this knight. She’s the one always standing close to the Queen. The one the Queen was so worried about. It’s—
“Lemon!” A cry from nearby snatches my attention away and I turn to see who it is.
Standing along the edge of the hole a short distance away, a sweaty and shaky-legged Bran peers hesitantly into the crater, the Queen still clung to his back.
“Lemon!” the Queen yells once again, leaning over Bran’s shoulder to get a good view herself. “What are you doing down there? Are you okay? Do you need help?”
“P-please stop squirming around so much,” Bran complains, struggling against the restless woman as she shouts over his head. “We’ll wait for the gorilla and zombie to get rid of Lust first, and then we can go check if that knight of yours is still—”
“Lemon! Lemon, answer me! That’s no place to be lying around! Look how dirty your armour is!”
“Queen— I mean, uh, K-Kokoro...” Bran continues to nervously voice his complaints. “I don’t think she can— W-wait, can you please sit still for a moment? It’s getting really hard to carry you.”
“Lemon! Lemon, it’s almost time for us to go!”
“Again, I don’t think she’s conscious enough to—”
“Lemon! It’s almost past noon and I haven’t had lunch yet! Lemon!”
“That’s what you’re worried about?! S-seriously, stop moving around so much! It’s dangerous up here! And I don’t want to slip and—!”
On that final complaint, the crumbling dirt slips away beneath Bran’s feet, sending him toppling over the edge with the Queen still clung to his back.
“Why?!” I hear him tearfully shriek as they both plunge down into the crater of rubble.
“Fwah—! Bran!” With Mei-Mei atop my shoulders, I immediately jolt forward and down into the crater myself.
Though it’s not that far a drop, I’m not confident in Bran’s ability to survive even a slight cold, let alone a three-storey fall. Plus, the Queen is with him too. And if I were to ‘accidentally’ slip while diving in to save the two of them and my hand ‘accidentally’ ended up brushing up against one of the Queen’s more sensitive areas in my attempt, well, that would just be a completely accidental accident that couldn’t be helped, right? Nobody could blame me for that at all, right?
“Fwehehe...” Eagerly licking my lips, I launch myself down into the hole as Mei-Mei clings tightly to my neck. Quickly reaching the toppling two, I immediately move to snatch them out of the air, however—
A flash of golden light whips past my vision, whisking them away before I have the chance.
My feet hit the ground with a heavy crunch, and I’m left looking at my empty, Bran-less hands, void of any cute, squeezable dwarf flesh.
“... Fweh?”
“Lady Kokoro, are you injured?” the deep voice of a woman asks softly from nearby. Their voice is muffled behind their helmet, but their words are clear nonetheless.
“Me? I’m fine. It’s you I’m more worried about. You okay, Lemon?”
Looking over to my side, a tall, golden knight stands, both Bran and the Queen cradled carefully in her large arms. Delicately lowering each of them to the floor, she drops to one knee in front of the Queen, no longer atop Bran’s back but standing on her own two feet atop the rubble.
It’s Lemon—the Queen’s aide. No longer lying motionless at Lust’s feet, it seems this loyal knight had noticed her queen was in distress and moved to save both her and Bran from their fall before I was able to. Her golden armour is a lot more beaten and battered than it was when I first saw her, and there’s blood dripping out from between the gaps in the faceplate of her helmet. It’s clear she’s pretty injured beneath that armour, but it’s hard to tell just how much because she’s doing a good job of masking it.
“Please, do not worry about me, my Lady,” the knight replies. “It was due to my own incompetence that I allowed you to drift from my protection. After this whole matter is settled, I swear to take full responsibility for my insolence.”
“Ah, don’t worry about it.” The Queen shrugs. “Bran brought me back to you, so it’s all good now.”
“Bran...?” Lemon tilts her head, before shifting her attention to the man at her side. “Ah, this frail and plain-looking man? If I’m not mistaken, you’re one of the slaves participating in the tournament, are you not? You have my gratitude.”
“S-sure...” Bran nods, nervously rubbing at his shoulders, now free from the burden of the dwarven Queen. “Was the ‘frail and plain-looking’ comment really necessary though? I mean, why—? Ah, n-nevermind. Forget it...”
The Queen gives Bran an appreciative nod. “Mm. You have my gratitude too. What do you want?”
“... Huh?” The sudden question catches Bran off guard. “What do I want?”
“Yeah,” the Queen replies. “Pick something.”
“Pick something...? W-what do you mean?”
“I mean for helping me, obviously. Pick something you want. Anything. I’ll give it to you.”
“... Huh?” Bran stands in stunned thought for a while, before slowly shaking his head and backing away. “N-no, that’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”
Hah?! What the hell are you doing, Bran?! If that were me, I’d totally be asking to kiss the Queen on the mouth or for cheaper slaves or something! I don’t know why he’s still being so weird around her! Weirder than usual, at least. I feel like there’s definitely a reason for his odd behaviour around the queen, but I’ve forgotten some super important detail about him that might explain it. Just what was it...?
In response, Queen Kokoro simply shrugs. “Well, if you change your mind, just let me know before lunchtime, I guess.”
“S-sure...” Awkwardly slinking away, Bran scampers his way over to me and Mei-Mei, nervously glancing back over his shoulder every now and then.
“Oh, Bran.” Mei-Mei speaks up as he makes his way over to stand behind me. “Nice work. Congratulations on not being executed.”
“Shut it!” he hisses back. “She’s supposed to be ‘all-knowing’, right? So either she knows I’m innocent, or she’s just conveniently forgotten about my insignificant existence in the first place, and I don’t want to push my luck just in case it’s the second one!”
I feel like my previous lack of interest in Bran’s backstory has got me a little out of the loop right now. What was it he did to get sent to the Spire again...? I feel like this is an important piece of information somehow, but I just can’t quite remember it...
“Gyahaha! How amusing!” A sudden burst of laughter draws everyone’s attention back towards the centre of the crater. “How amusing indeed...”
From afar, Lust looks fondly over at the newfound burst of activity from the previously unresponsive knight, excitement showing in her cloudy eyes.
“Apologies, my Lady,” Lemon says, addressing her Queen as the ongoing threat of Lust draws the golden knight back to her feet. “But it seems lunch may have to be delayed until after this situation is resolved.”
“I see...” the Queen responds, a slight frown on her face. “How disappointing.”
How disappointing...
...
At those words, I can feel a certain shift in the air, and an odd prickling sensation run across my muscles. I might not be as sensitive to these feelings as someone like Lust, but even I can pick up this unmistakeable electricity in the air. The feeling of bloodlust.
“Disappointing...” a knight groans through gritted teeth, picking himself up out of the rubble where he once lay motionless, his silver armour torn and bloodied from battle. “Disappointing...”
“Pathetic...” another spits beneath his helmet, scrambling across the crumbling stone as he fishes for a weapon beneath the dust and debris. “How could I even call myself her knight if I let it end here...?”
More and more groans fill the collapsed arena as more and more bodies buried amongst the rubble begin to stumble to their feet, a mix of sadness and rage clouding their expressions, and genuine anguish in their voices.
“It’s already past noon...” Another knight tries in vain to pick his sword off the ground, his hands too broken and mangled to wield the weapon any longer. Realizing the futility of it, he instead scoops it up in his mouth, brandishing the blade from between his teeth.
“Already noon... How could I let this happen...?”
“I could never forgive myself...”
Soon, every knight that was once lying motionless among the rubble is now standing tall and without fear, ready to throw their broken bodies at Lust of the Seven without a shred of hesitation.
“I can’t believe it’s already past noon...” one knight sobs, tears streaming down his face. “It’s already past noon and... Lady Kokoro hasn’t even been served lunch yet!”
“Unforgivable!” another cries. “How could we be so pathetic as to delay our beloved Queen’s lunchtime! This is unforgivable!”
“Yeah! Watching the Queen stuff her chubby cheeks with food every lunchtime is always the highlight of my day!”
“Exactly! And the thought of hearing her hungry little belly rumbling away is a fate worse than death itself!”
“A-actually, that sounds like it might be kind of cute. I kind of do want to hear that...”
“Fool! As cute as it would be, it isn’t worth the embarrassment it might cause her to have other people hear something like that in public!”
“Y-you’re right! Forgive me! I wasn’t thinking straight! It must have been this concussion!”
“Stop messing around, men! Your broken bones, concussions, and fatal injuries will have to wait until after the Queen’s had her fill! Now let’s stop delaying and finish off Lust already!”
“Right!”
So this is the power of Greed, huh?
An unfathomable sense of foresight coupled with the undying loyalty of the thousands of knights at her disposal. No, the undying loyalty of millions at her disposal—possibly hundreds of millions—if the reactions of the Krumbledome’s audience during the tournament are any indication of how the general populace sees her.
Although she might seem a little ‘ditzy’ or carefree at times, there’s no doubt in my mind that this cute little woman is a lot more devious than she lets on.
With her knights now back in action and facing off against Lust, Queen Kokoro carefully dusts off a particularly flat mound of rubble sticking out of the ground, and delicately sits herself down on it, making herself a comfortable viewing seat for the final fight to come.
“Gyahahaha!” Lust laughs, clearly amused by the unexpected series of events unfolding before her. “So this is the strength that accompanies the Greed of this era, is it? How amusing indeed!”
With a smile on her face, Lust beams gleefully in Queen Kokoro’s direction.
In response, I hear the Queen sigh a remark under her breath, just barely audible enough for a demon like me to hear.
“Again... Who the hell is ‘Greed’ supposed to be...?”
Sat atop her throne of rubble, Queen Kokoro la Peppyseed—Greed of the Seven—meets Lust’s intimidating grin with a mischievous smirk of her own.
“... Whatever,” she mumbles, raising a hand up in front of her. “I just wonder what’s for lunch today...?”
—And then she snaps her fingers, signalling the beginning of the final battle of the Krumbledome. The battle to finally put Lust to rest. Once and for all.