"Why won't that thing obey me?! What's wrong with it?"
Marios Takakuzure, the Candidate of Tower, was currently facing a serious problem. Right after the Labyrinth Battle Royale started, the undead creature Lost liked to call Frankenstein simply started going off on its own.
To tell the truth, it was never very obedient. It needed Marios and all his Cards to take control of it. But that wasn't an option this time.
Lost said he'd only bring stuff that would be useful in battle, so Marios' Cards stayed back. Marios was worried at first, but the Frankenstein hadn't been acting up in a while, so Marios figured he could somehow handle it alone.
But, right after the game started, the undead creature started moving on its own, as if it had a mind of its own. But it only seemed to be mindlessly walking around. However, at some point, as if it had detected something, it simply dashed off in some direction and Marios lost sight of it.
By the time Marios gave up on chasing it, he was already in Ginsei Academy's pool room, and he had no idea how to get back to his starting position.
He had tried forcing it to come back, but the creature wouldn't obey him. Marios was left with no choice but to take the rest of his models and go after that thing.
"Let's move out."
"Yees~"
Angie, the girl angel model, being Marios' best work, was the only one who could speak, so she was the only one that replied.
The reason why Marios wasn't separated from his models was because they counted as equipment, not as allies. But right now, Marios' biggest concern was to get the Frankenstein and get back to Lost.
However, there were other plans Marios didn't know of.
"Yahooo!"
That was all Marios heard before the sound of water splashing was heard. From the sound of it, some woman had jumped from a considerable height into the pool, but who would do such a thing?
It didn't take long for Marios to figure that out, because the woman herself climbed out of the pool.
The woman had long light brown hair that stuck closely to her body due to her recent pool dip. From her appearance, she looked to be around 20 years old, and that wasn't wrong, since she was actually 19.
But what caught Marios' attention the most was her clothing. It was an all-black costume that stuck closely to her body.
Marios knew that "uniform" and it told him a lot about the woman wearing it. She must be one of Hierophant's Cards. Though it was a little strange, since Marios thought they'd act stealthily, but that didn't matter right now.
"Are you one of Hierophant's Cards? Name yourself."
"Yup. Name's Barbara. I'm the Ace actually. Nice to meet you, Marios."
She clearly knew who he was, though that was hardly surprising.
"Why did you reveal yourself?"
"I'm supposed to keep you in place for a while. It seemed like you were going to leave this room, so I thought I'd show myself to keep you here, and I figured I'd also use that chance to dive bomb into this pool. I always wanted to do that while I was a student, but I was never able to."
Marios didn't like what he had heard. If she got orders to keep him there, that meant someone was coming. Regardless of who it was, Marios didn't want to stick around to find out.
He started planning a way to escape, though the only way he thought was realistically possible was to sacrifice some of his models to distract her for a while.
"Word of advice, don't try to escape. You're just going to make me work and I don't like to work, I take after my father. Just stick around. If you want, you can even look at my body. Here, I'll even open a boob window for you."
As she said that, Barbara ripped part of the chest area of her outfit, showing off some cleavage. That combined with how tight her costume was, enough to even show the outline of her nipples and some cameltoe, would have stolen the eyes and thoughts of any red-blooded man.
Truth be told, under normal circumstances, Marios would be no different. However, his loyalty to Lost, forced on him by Psyconnect, didn't let him give up just yet. He kept getting distracted, but he was still trying to come up with a plan to escape.
Barbara was lazy, but she wasn't dumb. She could tell Marios hadn't given up just yet, so she acted on her second plan to avoid working.
"Well, I was also told to get rid of the weaker models, so here goes, I guess. Eei!"
"Gaah!"
"Ouch!"
Barbara clapped. But it wasn't just any random clap. The shockwave alone was enough to destroy the weaker mass-produced models, while Marios and the stronger models, such as Angie, were launched against the wall.
Marios felt like he'd been punched directly. His body hurt so much he wondered how he was even alive.
Despite him being a Candidate and her being just a Card, Marios had to admit something, she was stronger than him. If she wanted, it wouldn't be any trouble to actually kill him.
While trying to recover, Marios took a second to think over his situation.
Knowing some kind of big fight would be going down today, Lost wanted to bring a small army to this battle, so Marios had brought nearly 100 models. And, with a single clap from Barbara, those models were now reduced to 5.
Those were: a mage girl, a four-armed muscular monster, someone that looked like some holy knight, a dog that looked like a Cerberus, and of course Angie the angel.
Those were Marios' strongest models, safe for the Frankenstein, and they even received Lost's black liquid as a power-up. Out of those, Angie was still the strongest.
So, if Marios had any hope to escape, it would depend on if Angie could fight Barbara.
"Angie, take her own."
"Eeh?! B-but she's so strong. Can't we just stay put?"
"Just do what I'm saying!"
Unlike Yotaka's walking corpse, Angie couldn't disobey Marios because of Tower's power, which is also what gave her life. While not really wanting to, Angie got up and prepared to fight.
Using all of her speed, Angie attacked Barbara, but she easily caught her punch with her fist. Barbara could have easily counterattacked, but she knew better than to break Angie.
Instead, she said:
"You don't have to fight if you don't want to, you know."
"Then I won't!"
And Angie sat down on the spot. Marios' jaw dropped to the floor. Regardless of her own will, she shouldn't be able to disobey him. The Frankenstein should be the exception, not the rule. Even Barbara seemed surprised by this outcome.
Because of that, Marios' escape plans were completely ruined. The other models probably wouldn't be able to face Barbara, even together, and he now had to worry if they'll even obey him. Marios decided that his smartest course of action was to simply wait for rescue.
In truth, there was no problem with Marios' power, it just so happened that the opponent was bad for him. Barbara didn't actually think she had the power to overwrite Marios' control, otherwise she'd have taken all of the models instead of destroying the weaker ones, but she knew why she could do it. Though she had no plans to tell Marios.
Since Barbara achieved her objective of doing her job without actually putting in work, she decided to just spend time relaxing while waiting for Hirono and Amon to arrive.
She took her phone out of her Storage and also some earphones along with it, then she started using it as if she wasn't in some death game. The only inconvenience was that there was no signal here, so Barbara could only watch and play with the things she had downloaded and didn't require internet.
But it did well enough as a time killer, since, in just about 10 minutes, Hirono and Amon arrived at the pool room.
"Good job, Barbara. You may rest now, though I guess you're already doing that."
Barbara simply replied with a thumbs up to Hirono. She didn't actually hear him, but she could guess what he'd said.
Meanwhile, Amon went straight over to Marios.
"You've been under Lost's control for a while. Your models are useful, so I suppose I'll save you."
"What are you talking about? Master Lost would- … what? What was I…?"
Amon didn't have access to Cutting Connect, but that didn't stop him from destroying Psyconnect's chain on Mario's neck. Rather than the Yuugaoze Bloodline Magic, Amon used his Arcana's power to do it.
Marios had been under Lost's control for a long time, so it took him a second to recover.
"Bastard! I'll kill him!"
"You know very well you can't. But there is a way you can help me defeat him."
Remembering all the time he'd been under Lost's control made Marios angry, enough that he even forgot the usual joy he felt even in defeat. But Amon quickly made him come back to earth by dashing his hopes at revenge.
With all the time Marios spent with Lost, he knew very well he could never defeat him, but he also remembered that, right before he was enslaved by Psyconnect, Amon and Lost fought, and they seemed about evenly matched.
Lost had gotten considerably more powerful since then, but Marios didn't think Amon had no chance, after all, he was the Candidate of Fool. That's why Marios decided to hear him out, thinking it was his best chance at revenge, even if indirectly.
"What do you want?"
"You were with Lost for a long time, what did you learn about his powers?"
"You know it, don't you? That black thing he turns into. After a while, he gave me some of that, whatever it is, to put it into my models. Just that made them much stronger. Because of that, I studied that thing a lot. Most of my research is in my base, but some things are still recorded in my head."
Marios then began to tell Amon all he could remember about the black thing that made up Lost.
Most of it referred to how it could be used in his models, so it wasn't really useful information for Amon. But there was one thing that caught his attention.
"There is another thing I created for Lost, something we called Frankenstein. It was made using purely that black thing, as well as Yotaka's body and her Ace's head, since hers was missing."
"What's special about it?"
"I didn't think about it before, but I think… that that black thing has a will of its own. Even in liquid form, that thing would sometimes flow and undulate without anything causing it, but I always thought Lost had some level of control over it, and now that unholy creature refuses to obey me. Lost told me his story before, and he claimed that there was a voice in his head telling him what to do. I didn't think much about it before, but if it's true then maybe… what if whatever was talking with Lost wanted to control him? What if it picked an easier target, like…"
"Like a corpse, which no longer has a mind to resist it."
Hirono and Amon looked at each other. They knew a lot about the thing called Darkness because of the information Hirono and his Cards, as well as Aspite, got from the Golgotha mansion in Chevalleze.
Combining what they already knew and the theories they had already formed to Marios' information and theories didn't paint a pretty picture.
"Hirono, without letting Lost know, tell your Cards to make sure everyone is protected. I have a bad feeling about this."
"Certainly."
Normally, a member of the Hiraizumi family wouldn't simply obey any Devil King Candidate that gave them orders, even more so the Candidate of Hierophant. However, Amon was Barbatos' adopted son, the Candidate of Fool and one of the favorites to win and become Devil King.
That's why Hirono really felt he was just getting a head start by obeying Amon. He was likely to become Devil King anyway.
Hirono was going to communicate with his Cards, but something stopped him from doing so.
"Guuu! My chest hurts."
The angel girl, Angie, let out a pained voice. Marios, Amon and Hirono looked at her. Even Barbara's attention was caught by her.
Then, they all noticed that the other models also seemed to be in pain. Some even seemed to be twitching.
Angie then started vomiting some black liquid, the same one that had been used to repair her and make her stronger. That same liquid was also coming out of the other models.
"W-what's going on?!"
"I don't know, but we have to do something."
Amon got closer to Angie and pointed his palms to her. She then started glowing white. The black liquid started disappearing, as if it was evaporating, and Angie seemed to get better.
"T-thanks."
"Don't thank me yet."
Marios also tried to save his models, but unfortunately he lacked the power Amon had. The best he could do was feed them more mana to try and get them through this.
However, that proved to be the wrong move. A few seconds after, the models other than Angie burst, and the black liquid inside them splashed over a large area. Including on Marios himself.
If it was just that then it would have been fine, but that was merely the precursor to disaster.
"Wa! Aaaaaaah!"
Marios started being consumed by the black liquid. He tried running to Amon to see if he could help him, but tentacle-like things came out of the black liquid on the ground and kept Marios in place until he was eventually devoured.
With Marios' death, Angie returned to being an inanimate model, since Materialize's power was no longer active on her. Still, she was much too valuable to leave, so Amon decided to take her along.
"Come on, get up!"
Barbara said as she touched Angie, and the model sprung back to life. Amon was surprised, but he could look into that later.
"We have to escape!"
Of course, both Hirono and Barbara could see that the black liquid was spreading, and that the tentacles were trying to grab them. They escaped together with Amon, while Hirono was finally able to relay his orders to his Cards.
But that proved ultimately unnecessary. Because Barbatos' message soon followed.
{Everyone, this is an emergency announcement. I'm suspending the bending of the space that made this into a labyrinth, you can now walk or fly about in Ginsei Academy like normal.}
Since Hirono, Barbara and Amon had already left the pool room before space was returned to normal, they ended up gaining quite a distance from the black liquid, though that wouldn't last for long.
{Listen well, the Labyrinth Battle Royale is officially suspended. A Disaster has happened in this world sensei put you all in. sensei will be there in a few minutes, so try to survive for as long as you can. If you see a black liquid, avoid it as much as possible.}
A Disaster, sometimes called Divine Disaster, a phenomenon of unknown causes that often left the area in which it happened completely devastated. Though, in reality, Barbatos and a few others knew what caused those Disasters.
Amon froze for a second. When he was younger, he fell victim to one of those Disasters and he's only alive to tell the tale now because Barbatos saved him. That was also the day Amon learned the truth behind the Disasters.
He wanted to join the fight, but he knew he couldn't. A power comparable to the Devil King's is needed for such a thing. With just Fool's power, Amon could keep the black liquid under control, but he'd have a hard time fighting the cause.
"Hey, you feeling okay?"
"Y-yeah. Let's try and meet up with someone so I can keep everyone protected."
"Ken tells me Aspite and Noda are nearby. Sol said he found Fleminar and Marchosias and they seem fine, so he's going back to bring Noda's Cards to his location. Nana saw Lizel, Miyabi, Reina, Stella and Neith fly off in Top Runner, she's now going to protect herself, since it seems like another one of those… things appeared there. Hinata was with Yuuto, Rinne, Hisoka and Hime. I can't get in contact with her, but they were headed in Lost's direction. If the same happened there, we might have to assume the worst."
Hirono nonchalantly reported on the chance of his own sister's death. Though they all knew that he was worried deep down.
With nothing else to do, Amon decided they should go to where Aspite and Noda were, that way he could use his power to protect the biggest number of people possible.
Amon's soul already had a dark spot from how much he wanted revenge against the cause of the Disasters, so much so that he didn't mind thinking of the people in this Devil King War as mere pawns. But having to sit out of this battle made that dark spot grow, and it wouldn't be long before it would spiral out of control.
