Beyond M-Eclipse: Easy Mode LIVE

———Wiina———

“You’re really not afraid that one of those brats is gonna see you.” Rico said while I was playing on my phone, laying down on the hard surface.

“The only ones that came here already know who I am, so it’s not even a problem.” I dismissively said while scrolling through the website. “Besides, another body is downstairs anyway, they’ll only think I am here because I’m bored. They won’t suspect anything.”

“Still. Pretty rare for you to appear in person nowadays. What is with the less public appearances anyway?” She remarked while sitting next to me.

“Don’t want to ruin the mystique. Also, there isn’t much use for this default identity outside of that.” I answered while putting my phone away, staring at the clouds that passed us by. “As it stands, there isn’t much for me to do outside of picking random places to drop at and have a bit of fun.”

“Hmph. Considering what you’re doing, it’s hard to tell if it’s only for your amusement.” She remarked, sounding a bit irritated. “Well. I guess playing with your morals intact isn’t all that bad. Use it while you have it.”

“Weird how that’s the hottest commodity for people like you.” I remarked as I kept staring at the sky.

“It’s not something that can really be rebuilt again.” She explained. “The longer you live, the more you become desensitized to everything, that can really dampen your inhibition and other senses. You can only hope that wherever you go, your lack of inhibition is less frowned on.”

“Certainly a problem everyone who lives for too long has to deal with. I’m just not even close to getting there yet.” Having a pretty good social network also helps, both on the mundane ends and the more supernatural. “…How long have you even been alive for anyway?”

“No idea how I’m supposed to answer that.” She stood up and leaned her head to one side. “Most of it has been pretty foggy due to that ritual. I guess effectively speaking… maybe not even a hundred years? I hate to say it, but most of it has been on autopilot…”

“You still talk like you’re much older and wiser than that, you know?” I pointed out. Despite her tendency to belittle Walsuna’s age, she doesn’t act like a young adult she’s supposed to be either.

“Ah. I blame that on someone else instead of me personally. You can’t really blame me for the constant sophistry.” She said with a wry smile. “You know, I’m normally pretty approachable. Pretty friendly and have more of my morals intact. I should’ve been like that.”

“...You do know I don’t know your full story, correct?” I can’t really get what she is talking about without the appropriate knowledge.

“...Let’s just say you don’t associate yourself with two Devils, I think that is more than enough explanation.” She vaguely said while scratching the back of her head.

“Two? How rotten is your luck?” I know she has ventured into different worlds before, but meeting two of those is still quite a streak of bad omen. Considering what she said, she didn’t run into the nicest one.

“Very bad. Let’s just say that.” She flatly stated. There seems to be a lot she can say about her backstory that isn’t really appropriate right now. It’ll probably take a long time to explain even if she comes up with visual aid.

“I suppose with that kind of misfortune, the story will be quite long and convoluted. Best to not talk about it.” I said while recalling what Walsuna had told me in the past about Rico’s origin, which certainly felt like it was missing a large chunk of the story. “So. It seems like there is a monster flying over here.”

“Indeed.” She said before pulling out that bamboo sword. Despite its harmless appearance, in the hands of someone like Rico it is no different than any other star-destroyer.

*Flap* *Zip*

The monster finally showed up in front of the ship’s deck. It looks like a cloud made of flesh with weird wings spreading out of it, its entire body made out of purple and green colors.

*Leap* *Slash* *Swirl*

Before it could even begin to attack, Rico had already jumped towards it and sliced it in half with the dull weapon and made her way back to the deck. It doesn’t even take a second for the threat to be neutralized. The corpse quickly fell through the sky to a fate unknown as the sky was torn apart by the force of the swing.

She landed back on the deck gracefully and put the bamboo sword away, the object not looking like it had endured the force of a swing from someone who terrorized the stars.

“Alright then. I don’t think Edea even needs to announce that anything even happened this time.” Rico remarked.

“It’s just one slightly strong monster, nothing worth mentioning.” I pointed out. “Perhaps it could give Kenni some trouble, but that’s the furthest it could go.”

“Hm. Speaking of Kenni, what happened to that woman?” Rico asked as she walked back to me. “She’s been missing for months now.”

“Who knows? I doubt she’s dead.” I said, not really caring about what is going on with that one. “...This next location wouldn’t provide much of a struggle, will it?”

“Definitely not. I doubt they’re letting me make that kind of decision for maybe at least a few weeks.” Rico said with a wry grin. “But you don’t need to worry about your group. Your friends definitely need something way harder than this, so it’s pretty easy to convince others to let this group in particular get their asses kicked in next week. Consider this a break week before we break them.”

“Ain’t that peachy.” I haven’t been informed of that just yet. At least with the two of us around even if the difficulty is cranked up to eleven, none of them will be in trouble.

“Are you just going to lay down for the entirety of the trip?” Rico asked, seeing me not moving an inch.

“I’ll be fine.” I have another body I am moving in the lobby down below. There’s no need for me to move this current body. If anyone saw me. Let’s just say they found an easter egg and left it at that.

“Oh. Before I forgot to ask, whose idea was it to have that baby monster tag along?” Rico asked. It seems that she wasn’t informed about this before the trip started.

“Walsuna’s, of course. I suppose having that miserable thing holed up in a classroom all day is not good for its mental health.” I said while giving out a noncommittal guess. “Only Emmie would be bold enough to take on the task, you have seen how she’s going to do it, right?”

“Put it in a jar and strapped it to her back. Barbaric, that’s for sure.” Rico remarked, sounding like she had not looked in the mirror. “How are they going to make sure it doesn’t turn into paste with how fast she can move?”

“It’s more of a special chamber Edea made up, that should cushion it more than enough.” I explained. Obviously even if we put someone else to the task they would all be way too fast for the little creature to survive.

“Hmm… Hopefully that hag actually has some way of making it grow quickly. Not like it has any mental issues that need fixing.” Rico commented as the ship flew past a group of dark clouds.

“I’m surprised you’re not volunteering for that.” I remarked.

“Harvesting emotions doesn’t do much for me anyway, and I didn’t even know about this arrangement until today.” She pointed out.

“So you also didn’t know that the main point of this trip is to feed it.” I said that and she quickly turned around.

“What the hell? Why was I told literally nothing about this?” Rico asked, feeling completely befuddled by this arrangement.

“Probably afraid you’ll take too much initiative and try something crazy. Need I remind you that you also possess the title of the Devil.” She is already categorized as one of the most dangerous people in the multiverse, no way they’re letting her in on the loop on everything. It’d be catastrophic if she gets any funny ideas. “Being an offshoot of an Archetype has already made people see you as unstable and unreliable, need I remind you.”

“Isn’t that just because no one has a precedent for… Nevermind. Whatever, I’ll just go torture people to get that off my mind.” She said as her body language became erratic for a few seconds.

“You’re still on the clock.” I reminded her. I don’t care if she has a bunch of prisoners rotting on a remote island or something, this is more important than that.

“Oh come on, I’m just going to use another body for that. That’s not slacking, is it? You’re also doing the same thing.” She argued.

“If we’re going to talk about that, we both are heavily slacking off with how little of our faculty we’re using.” I pointed out. “Everyone at the top isn’t really giving it their all. We have a crap ton of resources to accelerate-

“Yeah yeah, I get that. Yeesh…” Rico cut me off before I could explain further. “I think we have already rushed their development quite a lot. Almost all of them can already raze a town to the ground, we don’t need to rush past that.”

“Mostly with the second semester.” I pointed out. It was a lot more chill with the first half of the year, and now they heavily increase the amount of training. “Don’t you have plans after graduation?”

“That’s more on that hag’s end instead of mine, not much I can say about that.” She replied. “...Also, what is with today? There’s another monster coming this way.”

“I’ll deal with it.” Another voice interjected, walking up to the deck.

“Ah, the star student.” Rico sarcastically remarked as Emmie approached us with the creature stuffed in the chamber and tied to her back. “Looking to perform an early demonstration, I see.”

*Crash* *Roar*

The lizard-like monster then slammed itself onto the deck, having a similar coloration and bulging muscle appearance of the cloud monster from earlier, its eyes focusing right on Emmie and ignoring the two of us.

*Dash* *Slash* *Strike* *Swing* *Evade*

She quickly ran in and began attacking it while the monster tried to retaliate to no avail. While the monster is certainly not weak much like the one with terrible luck, against someone like Emmie it is completely outmatched at least in terms of agility and dexterity. She couldn’t quite take it down in only a few hits, needing to move around and making sure she doesn’t stay in one place for too long, but since she doesn’t have to put much effort into not getting hit, she is the one holding the advantage.

*Spin* *Swing* *Slice* *Growl*

Spinning to get the momentum going and the next scythe swing cut one of its limbs clean off, causing it to reel back in pain.

*Swing* *Leap*

It swung its massive tail that took up a lot of surface area, causing Emmie to jump to avoid it.

*Sizz* *Blast* *Crash*

Suddenly it then launches an explosive projectile from its mouth and gets Emmie, causing her to be launched towards the middle of the deck and hitting a wall. It doesn’t cause any appreciable damage but it causes the monster to become more aggressive.

*Ram* *Leap* *Crash* *Slash*

It tried to ram its body into Emmie, but she quickly jumped out of the way and got some hits in as the monster reacted to missing its mark and hitting the same wall.

*Dash* *Slash* *Dash* *Slash* *Dash* *Slash* *Dash* *Slash* *Dash* *Slash*

Emmie, looking rather impatient, then began running around and hitting the monster from all directions, quickly changing her position and making it hard for the monster to track and counter her, quickly whittling it down within less than a minute despite its durability.

*Slash* *Slice*

She then dealt a finishing blow that bisected its body in two, ending the fight with a definitively lethal blow.

“...Say. What level is this monster?” Emmie suddenly asked as Rico walked down the stairs to approach her.

“Hmm… Probably stronger than whatever is in that Fantarban Realm.” Rico gave an answer without sounding too sure.

“I see…” She said before walking back down into the lobby below.

“That was certainly not the answer she wanted.” I pointed out.

“So what? She’ll get something more exciting eventually, right?” Rico said with a grin before also walking down into the lobby, leaving me with this corpse to deal with. Whatever, I don’t need to move in order to collect it into my personal item space. I’ll continue to laze around up here.