The Girl With the Blackwings 3

It took several minutes of waiting for the silent, long-eared gramp to start talking. He threw glances at me every now and again, before immediately getting scared and hiding his face.

Even so, he started to slowly, word by word, start talking, while still being extremely jumpy and sensitive to whether I was getting angry at every little thing. His story could be summed up into three points:

1. Even after one thousand years, the devil king is so scary it ain't funny.

2. Oh yes! Let's use an Xgate spell to summon a hero!

3. But somehow, it wasn't a hero, but a last boss that appeared...← We are here.

...So short! And it took him several tens of minutes to say that? Just how scared of me is he?

But more importantly, this place really was inside the game. I was already getting there myself, though. Not only that, it was one thousand years after the Midgar I knew. What kind of unknown world was I even called to?

No, but well, to tell the truth, I was a little excited at the situation.

I've always been optimistic, and I still feel like, as long as I'm having fun, I don't need to sweat the small stuff.

Now I could walk the world of Xgate Online, which I love, as Haru, whom I poured all my heart into making. As an online game addict, this was basically a reward.

Oh, right, the Xgate spell is derived from the name of the game, Xgate Online, and it was basically the blood and guts of this world.

The origins went back to when it was still a console game apparently, but it seemed that the protagonist of the original game was an average Japanese student. Said protagonist was summoned to another world via an Xgate, and over the course of the game's story basically was led to beating the grimm queen.

Anyway, for the online game it basically was there in name only... To think that bit of fluff survived. I actually felt a little moved.

Oh, wait, wasn't the hero supposed to appear in the year 3000 of the Midgar calendar?

Oh man, then isn't this timing perfect?

I dunno if an otherworld hero will actually appear here, in the online game world, but if he does I should totally get his autograph.

Still, I needed to figure out what to do now, first.

The elf grandpa and king over there have been looking so nervous for a while now and it's making me feel sorry for them. For now, it looks like I'm only going to be scaring them constantly by being here, so let's just show them I'm harmless and leave.

"...We see, We understand now. So the grimm queen is still alive and healthy... That one is also quite stubborn." The grimm queen got appended with a (lol) thanks to me, so hearing she was fine was a relief.

So, apparently, they tried to call a hero in order to counter her.

Hmm... Yeah, sorry. I ruined your long-awaited coming of the hero scene.

"Ahh, do not worry. We do not feel like doing anything to this world now. We have already been defeated, our dreams shattered… there is nothing We want to do now."

"A-are you telling… the truth?"

"Indeed. Although We lost, We were still satisfied with the ending of that fight. It's unfortunate that the ones who defeated us could not win against the grimm queen but… well, that is fine. More importantly, right now We just want to see this world and admire it." For now, I decided to throw all responsibility for the grimm queen to the hero that may or may not appear.

I'd rather go sightseeing around Midgar than do that. I wanted to walk with my own feet, and see with my own eyes.

Honestly, I almost wanted to leave right now.

"A king with no followers and an empty throne. It would be laughable to continue to sing of our supremacy like this, no? Right now, We are not the Black Empress Haru Heartfilia, but simply a girl who has had her dreams broken." I have no intention of being the Black Empress in this world.

Actually, if I did that I'd totally head straight for the most-wanted list. So I won't stand out, and instead have my fill of this world at my leisure.

As for how to get back to my world, well, I'll think of that later.

"So there is no need for your concern. Just forget about us, and do what you like, even try to summon another hero." I can't stand to sit here any longer.

I got up off my chair and opened a nearby window.

It was a strange thing, but I knew how to move my wings, something I'd never had up until now, like I'd always had them.

I even knew how to fly.

I was thinking that there was no way to physically fly with a person's body and these wings, but my instincts told me I could and gave me the GO sign.

"Well then, We will be leaving now. Let us meet again should the fates will it."

"W-Wai—! ..." I ignored the voice trying to stop me and spread my wings.

I jumped, and my body flew through the air splendidly.

I put distance between me and the ground in an instant, and in the blink of an eye the castle was already the size of a grain.

Ohh...

I'm flying... I'm really flying! I'm, like, swimming freely through the air! How should I express this feeling...

Freedom. Yeah, it's freedom.

The joy of being free from the bonds of gravity.

My feet weren't on the ground; I was completely free and insecure, making my way through 3D space. I can go in circles, I can go up and down, I can fly as free as I like! "Heh, heheh… Ahahahahaha!" I flew above the clouds, before descending rapidly, before stopping right above the ground, like bungee jumping without the cord. I started flying up right after almost hitting the ground, and returned to the sky, where I could see the whole world stretching before me.

Right now, the vast sky was my dominion.

There were no annoying crowds or traffic.

I could fly as much as I liked; I could go anywhere!

"Haha... Flying through the sky like this feels nice. Now then, where should We go first?" It was actually more troubling to decide where to go if one could go anywhere.

For now, this country was out. That elf grandpa might have put out an order to everyone to arrest me, and if that was the case it'd be annoying to deal with.

I just want to have a leisurely trip around the world.

"...Hm? Ohh, that's… We see, so it still stands." While I was wondering what to do, something appeared on the edge of my vision. That something was a black tower, climbing high into the heavens.

I knew that building that was like the picture of a rude gesture challenging the heavens. I could never forget it. After all, that was the building I built with my friends, a symbol of our power.

The sky tower "Ouzel."

It was my base, made by me… no, by all of us.

"It seems our first destination is decided." I changed directions and flapped my wings.

The distance to the tower I could see in the distance was unclear. Most likely, it was pretty far away, but that was no problem for me as I was now.

After all, I have these wings to fly with.

"Hah!" I flew as hard as I could towards the tower.

It was a perfect chance to test just how far this body would go, and, most importantly, I wanted to try flying for real.

The scenery blew past me at a tremendous rate, and the wind caressed my cheeks. This was just my feeling, and I wasn't sure if I was right, but it felt like the scenery was passing me by faster than if I was riding a bullet train. And on top of that, I could pick out little details in the distance with my sight.

I could easily dodge any birds in my way, and it was easy to change directions while keeping my speed.

Ahh, it feels so nice.

It's uplifting my heart.

Flying was such a simple thing. I never expected it would make me feel this free and be this wonderful! However, all good things must come to an end.

After only a couple minutes of flying, I reached the tower and had to suddenly put on the brakes. The wind blew violently, and the atmosphere shook. It was only logical that a corresponding amount of wind would follow if something slightly larger than a human were to fly at that speed before suddenly putting on the brakes.

A weak opponent might be blown away with just the force of that wind.

Next, I climbed.

Past the clouds and yet still higher, I aimed for the top of the tower, made so that only a fraction of the most powerful flugels would be able to reach it with their flight.

According to a fairy tale, Icarus, who flew too close to heaven with his wax wings, had them melted and fell to the earth. However, my wings were not wax. Something like the light of the sun would never melt them.

I didn't know how many thousands of meters above the ground the top of the tower was, but after reaching it, I looked for the sole entrance built there.

There were only two ways to enter the top floor: to come in from the sky, or climb up from the inside.

It was a troublesome little tower, if I did say so myself.

While reminiscing in my mind, I entered the tower and entered the area where only the leader was allowed.

In Xgate Online, players who created countries, or in other words armies, were allowed their own base. Most bases were castles, but there was no real need for them to be castles. They weren't popular, but temples or shrines or, in extreme cases, cafes for some reason could become bases.

It made me think: I'm not sure how I feel about the center of a country being a cafe, but since it was allowed within the system there was no complaining about it.

Out of all those multitudes of options, I chose the tower.

Players were free to design their bases how they wished, so I got really into it. I customized the tower even more every time our forces grew bigger, and I even incorporated the ideas of players with better aesthetic sense than me, so I managed to make this "Ouzel Tower" the single best piece of architecture in all of Midgar.

"...It's grown old and worn. But We still see the resemblance." One thousand years had passed since this tower was in use, so it was quite worn and dirty. Even so, I could still see the shadows and traces of what the tower used to be.

The first thing I did was introduce my butt to the deep crimson throne, which, even after being broken, still looked imposing in the room.

The broken window was once occupied with stained glass.

Red, blue, green, gold, brown, orange, and silver. It represented the circle of seven elements that existed in this world: Fire, Water, Wood, Metal, Earth, Sun, and Moon. The glass, which even had the colors labeled, was now broken, however, with only traces of it remaining.

Elements in games were usually represented by the usual four: Fire, Water, Wind, and Earth, but Xgate Online's elements were made with the seven days of the week as reference. In order of weakness to each other, it went: Water > Fire > Metal > Wood > Earth > Water, and the player was able to choose their character's element in the character creator.

Of course, this affected the character's magical abilities, so it was important for people planning to play magic users.

As for healing magic… in this world it was called "heavenarts," and was treated as completely different from magic so even the flugels race could use it, but the character's element also played a big part in it. Messing up and making a fire-aligned acolyte, when fire basically didn't have any heaven-arts in it at all, would make for a sad character.

However, failing like that was also one of the fun parts of this game.

Running my fingers along the cracked walls, I reminisced on fun times.

Everyone was there back then. Everyone who followed me talked about just how huge they would make our army, and we had fun with other conversations about pointless things or made promises to hunt together. We partied together like idiots way into the night, and drank like we were bathing in alcohol...

—...No, wait a second. Why am I remembering it like I was there?

Thinking carefully, the Haru in the game was the one drinking booze. It wasn't me. I was sitting in front of my computer.

In the first place, I was thinking of it like it happened a long time ago. But it was only a few days ago that my army split in two. It was way too early to think of it like a nostalgic memory.

This won't do; could it be my memories are mingling in with Haru'?

This was a mixing between games and reality.

Well, given how things are going that's exactly how it was, though.

Also—

"How strange. This should be our first time seeing this, but We feel it to be nostalgic. We feel relaxed in this place." There was a sense of nostalgia welling up in my chest. It was strange, like I'd come back home after being gone for a long time.

Is something wrong with me? Or am I really starting to merge with Haru herself? At the moment, I couldn't tell.

"...Hm?" Suddenly, I heard a sound.

In this place, where I should've been alone, someone other than me made a sound.

Without turning my head, I looked towards where the sound originated from, and saw an unknown girl.

Her blonde hair like the sun seemed unreal in its color, and her eyes were like a sea blue. She was wearing a bright, orange dress, and her skin was fine and white like fresh snow. Her face was amazingly well formed.

… I don't know this face.

At the very least, she wasn't a member of my army, whom I allowed up here on the highest floor.

Who is she? Why is she here? 

"—Big Sis Haru! You're Big Sis Haru Heartfilia, aren't you?!" The unknown girl shouted and ran over to me, before gripping my hand.

She looked truly happy from her face to her smile, and I got that she was celebrating my return.

But sadly, I didn't know her.

"You... Who are you?"

"S-So mean! Did you forget me?! I'm your number one little sister and loyal advisor, Orange! For these one thousand long years, I've always, always been waiting for your return here, you know?!"

Orange? Little sister? Advisor? What is this girl talking about? I don't have any family and I had members of my army who acted as advisors, but none of them went by the name Orange, and I didn't have an actual advisor. Least of all a girl named Orange...

…

—No, there was.

Right, I remember now.

Back when I first made our base, I placed a lot of objects around to decorate the place, and I think one of those was a girl NPC.

That's right, characters were included in the objects you could place around your base. They just walked around randomly and had no meaning and were complete background characters, but I definitely placed one here.

I did it for a pretty meaningless reason, that being that it felt kind of lonely being in a base without any mob characters, so I ended up forgetting about her. I think I remembered getting high on myself back in the beginning and gave her a weird background like "Haru's little sister and Advisor."

But she wasn't capable of combat, and to be honest she was basically a decoration that happened to move around and was shaped like a person, so I didn't bother to remember her. So at some point, she really did start to become part of the background.

So, that girl who I completely forgot gained a will and has been waiting this entire time? Even if I didn't remember, she did? So she'd been loyally waiting here the entire time, fulfilling her role of advisor? "Ahh, yes… We remember now. Forgive us, Orange. Something was wrong with us, to forget one such as you." This wasn't a game.

I felt like the truth, which I'd been taking for granted all this time, was suddenly thrust in front of me.

Even if I didn't care or forgot, this world had other lives that would be affected by it.

In the game, forgetting something slight like a decoration would pass with just a, "Oh I forgot about it. Oh well." But that won't fly now that they're alive, with their own thoughts and sense of self.

"Good work. Well done protecting this place while We were away, Orange."

"Y-Your praise is too much!"

I must never think of her as a 'human-shaped decoration' ever again. I must always see her as an individual, a person.

"Excuse me, Big Sis. Just how did you manage to revive yourself?"

"Ahh, that? They tried to summon a hero… Excuse us, We don't know the name of the country. For now, the king of a country to the west made an error and returned us from subspace. Thanks to that, as you can see, We are free to move as We wish."

"West… .that means the country of Laevateinn. Their movements have been hinting at a hero summoning for a while now, so that's what it was..." According to Orange, that country's been trying their best to summon a hero for a while now.

Thanks for the hard work.

And, well, sorry. That I was the one to come out.

"Indeed, and so We are currently dull to the ways of this age. I have heard that that grimm queen is still alive and well, though."

"That's right! Those heroes that defeated you, Haru, those fools ended up splitting apart with their own countries before getting beaten to pieces by the grimm queen! They're so useless!"

Ahh, yeah. Sorry, Orange. Splitting up the army was established beforehand. Actually, that entire event was made for our army to split up...

Well, as expected, the monolith that was Haru's army crumbled, and after that many different players formed their own forces as they liked, aiming to be my successor. So that was how the world split apart, huh?

After all, fighting with the grimm queen was fighting with the official last boss.

Unlike me, where there was no prize even for beating me, beating the grimm queen had a clear prize to it. That was, rare items and drops. Of course, it'd be hard to get people to unite for that. In fact, there'd probably been vicious people getting in the way of others so they could get to the prize first.

But that's really just in terms of the game.

In this world, where the game was real, they split apart for some unknown reason, and no one knew why they lost.

No, in the first place, just how much of the game's settings were applied here? Was stuff that got cemented into the history of the game, like fighting the grimm queen, reflected here? Or did this place have its own history? ...The more I thought about it, the less I figured I knew. In the first place, it was weird that game settings even applied.

Just what kind of relationship do this world and the game Xgate Online have? They definitely aren't just different worlds that happen to be similar.

"...Big Sis?"

"Ahh, sorry. We were just thinking. Orange, if possible, could you tell us about what has happened since We left this world?"

"Yes, of course! If I can be of service to you, Big Sis, please ask me whatever you wish!" Orange replied to me with a smile as clear as a cloudless sky.

W-what a nice girl.... this girl might become my oasis in this place.

For now, I've gotten something I need to protect.

It's a simple thing. Cute girls are the world's treasure.

It's only natural for a man to want to protect them.

"Then, starting from those awful, hateful heroes that defeated you: after the battle they were hailed as the Seven Maidens of Midgar, and they each formed their own country. Of those, four of them are already dead of old age, but three of them have long life spans, so they're still alive."

No doubt the Seven Maidens of Midgar were the other famous high level players from Xgate Online. Each of them mastered their classes, or specialized in a gimmick, and we went hunting or boss-killing several times together. They were former comrades.

… I wonder how they are. Are they like me, where on the inside they're players? Or not? Of course, I'd like them to be the former, but I won't be able to tell unless I see them in person.

For now, let's set meeting them again as one of my objectives while I travel around this world.

"All of the Twelve Zodiac's Guardians are alive and well. However, they've all scattered and spread after you were defeated, and right now, I only know where six of them are. Out of those, two of them have sided with the grimm queen as revenge against humankind for having beaten you."

The Twelve Zodiac's Guardians.... Their official title was The Twelve Heavenly Zodiac's Guardians, and they were NPCs or companion monsters.

One of the classes I'd mastered was 'Monster Tamer,' which gave me a skill to tame any monsters I'd defeated with a certain chance of success. Of course, once they became friendly their stats and data were changed from when they were wild. But for a Monster Tamer, who had almost no ability to fight themselves, taming strong monsters was a matter of life and death.

And I was… very lucky.

I'd gotten boss monsters that only appeared in events and rare monsters that basically never spawned at all. I managed to tame extremely rare high level monsters, and because of that I got full of myself and named the twelve strongest of them generals of my country Zodiac, giving them the title of 'Twelve Heavenly Zodiac's Guardians.'

For big bosses, it's cooler to have strong subordinates with titles like 'The Four Divine Kings.'

There was a time when I thought like that.

Anyway, please try not to pry into that stuff. It was a mistake of my chuunibyou days.

...Well, to be honest, there are also things other than monsters mixed in, but that doesn't matter right now.

"The grimm queen, huh...? My my, even if this was brought on by our own worthlessness, they've done something quite shameful, haven't they? We will have to fix this promptly."

And one more goal for the trip. That is, to round up all the Twelve Zodiac Guardians, and take responsibility and stop them if they're doing something stupid.

Man, to be honest, it's actually causing me stomach problems just thinking about how monsters I've tamed and raised are causing trouble. I'm gonna have to stop them, even if I have to beat them up a little, won't I?

"Hm… Orange, for the three heroes that are still alive as well as the Twelve Zodiac Guardians that you know of, are you able to put their locations on a map?"

"Yes, certainly."

For now, I'm going to see whether or not the heroes are the same as I am. And if the Twelve Zodiac Guardians are doing something stupid, I'll stop them and return them to the tower. Let's make this the goal of my travels for now.

...Ahh, right.

And I need money, too. It's going to be really important to earn some money, since I've got nothing at the moment. I'm gonna have to find some way to make money, fast.

"It's done. I've drawn their locations on this map, please take a look."

"Hm."

I took the paper from Orange and looked at the map. Looking at the heroes first, the closest one to this tower was in the country of Svel, 1400km to the north. That was the location of the elven heroines, Juvia. And right next to Svel, at the base of a nearby volcano, was one of the Twelve Zodiac Guardians: Fiona of Aries constellation. She'd built a fort and was currently repeating attempts to invade the country.

...What the hell is that sheep doing?

Anyway, this is probably best as our first destination.

I'll get an ulcer if I don't stop that dumbass sheep.

Oh man, prospects are grim, aren't they? But it's true there's a part of me that thinks this'll be interesting.

Now then, let's start by earning some money to travel with, why don't we?