"W-wait, Yuki-san," Konrad yelled, too late to stop her.
For all the effort they've put into not getting humiliated—
Forget that. He had something else to worry about.
"So, what's the great idea?" Midori-kun asked, uncrossing his arms only to plant them on his hips. "I've spent more than a hundred years trying to figure this out, but you, a newbie—"
"I have found this out by chance," he interrupted. "And it was all thanks to you."
Kaede closed the door to lean against it.
The encore was still going in the background, but they were all alone.
Konrad sighed. How does he explain it?
"Not sure what spell you were casting on us, but it turned into one of those time traps. The one you researched. Dunno how or why, but I've opened a portal from there, right here."
"Bullshit," the Demon Lord scoffed. "Why do you think I've hunted dungeon cores?!"
Finding his backpack, he pulled out his notes.
Did he carry them everywhere? Figures.
"By your metrics, opening a portal cross-planet takes five thousand mana. Interplanetary goes at twenty thousand. But interdimensional?! Here, child, look at the estimate and weep."
The paper had a complex math problem running down to a ridiculous final tally.
A hundred thousand mana points, give or take.
With Konrad's thousand, and the same amount tucked away in his adamantite blade—
But he shook his head. The Demon Lord was missing the point.
"As I said, our duel pushed me into a shortcut by accident," he repeated.
"My wither spell?" Midori-kun scoffed, brows raised.
"Well, it wasn't withering by the time it hit us," he said with a shrug. "That's how that time trap thing you were analyzing came to be. If we could set that one up from the start—"
"Here? Now? Impossible," the mage-turned-school-boy shook his head. "It's an untested theory."
Another sigh.
The Demon Lord had very little faith in himself.
"Test it now, then. We have the mana, and Yuki-chan's buying time," Kaede pointed out, rolling her eyes. "The alternative is that Lucifer's imps blow us up, or we get jailed for killing them."
Yeah. That summed it up well.
And speaking of Yuki, their rivals' encore had ended, and they hadn't even started on the spell.
A microphone screamed with feedback through the cheering crowd.
"Okay, I'll admit defeat," Yuki-san yelled, voice muffled by the walls. "But, like, two of my friends played instruments for the first time. And you brought your own audience. I call foul."
"Oh, man, here she goes," Kaede whispered, listening on as well. "We'd better hurry."
Right. The spell.
"You have it?" he asked the Demon Lord. "Will you help?"
"It's not that I have a choice," Midori-kun sighed, digging through his backpack.
Meanwhile, Yuki's voice filled the Underground Club.
"I'm a bassist. Hoshi-sama is a bassist. We both played with this band—and no, it's not new at all. But what I'm trying to say is—I want a fair, one-on-one duel, you and me. Pick any song."
Konrad stilled again to listen.
The girl sure was cocky to challenge a literal idol. And in front of his fans, no less.
But from the cheers, they didn't seem to mind another encore.
"Come on, she didn't buy us a day. We have to get started," Kaede reminded them.
And indeed, there was a lot to do.
"Look, even if this works," Midori-kun said, pulling out a stack of papers from his bag. "No way I can cast this thing all at once. I'm a genius mage, but a spell this complex on the first try?"
"How do you usually do it?" Konrad asked, impatient.
Sure, he knew the struggle, having experimented with unique illusions before.
But those were easy and cheap.
Failed once? Tweak one bit and cast again. When it was no more than five lines of 'code' and ten mana at most, he could reorganize the runes and try until it worked.
But this spell cost him more than half his entire pool and consisted of hundreds of lines.
"I'd write things down," the Demon Lord answered, having pondered for a while. "With glowing ink. Or a mana crystal. Anything conductive. Then tweak on the go and charge it with essence."
Logical. Effective. Too bad, they had none of those, except—
"Would my blade work?" Konrad unsheathed Welf's masterpiece from the guitar case.
Midori-kun's eyes narrowed.
"Adamantite?" he muttered, more to himself than to ask him the obvious. "Writing with a sword would be rather clumsy, but I doubt we'd get anything better than that."
Yes. Finally. Now, they were on to something.
And without ceremony, the Demon Lord took his weapon and slashed at the ground with it.
Full force. Sparks were flying everywhere as he drew a huge circle around them, taking up much of the green room. Yeah, Konrad didn't think this through.
"W-wait, I've some armor pieces, too." He scrambled for his gear. "Smaller. More manageable."
The mage did not relinquish his sword, but nodded, shooting a glance at Kaede as well.
"Grab a piece each, then, and start scribbling," he said. "If we split the workload, we'd might actually finish before the girl loses out there."
Yeah, no. He had no confidence in anyone. At all.
But his idea was sound.
"Sure hope this'll work," Kaede stepped closer with a smirk, claiming one of his arm-guards. "I don't want to be here when we have to explain why the floor looks like this."
Ugh. Right. They were ruining the Underground Club's interior.
That was kinda rude. But still better than explaining why there was a massacre here.
He took the other arm-guard, the part covering the elbow ending in a point. Perfect for carving. And as he got to work on his runes, the ongoing bass duel blasted in the background.
This new song was groovier than the stuff they've played earlier.
And even if he couldn't see the stage, it was easy to tell who played which part.
The two must have been taking turns. He imagined that Pink-Hair-san's technique would be perfect, but Yuki-chan's? Wild, energetic, fast, the switches between them were obvious.
"Hmm, she's not half bad," the dragoness mumbled, her tongue poking out in concentration.
"Focus on the runes," Maou grunted, having cut his fingers twice already. There was that saying that the pen was stronger than the sword, after all. "And, uh, could you take a look at this part?"
Whether he asked Konrad or Kaede was hard to tell.
The former had no idea about the question, having only memorized the runes a few days ago.
The dragoness leaned closer with hum, though.
"Kinda wasteful," she said, scribbling over the Demon Lord's writing. "Why not use this?"
Wasn't that affecting the whole spell?!
Oh, but right. There was something about the Green Mage stealing her magic at one point.
She was a powerful monster, after all.
"What did I tell you about calling me that?!" Kaede snapped, making him recoil.
Damn it. She still had the capacity to read his mind? He forgot to block that for a while, having more important things to worry about. He fixed a rune he had butchered.
"Sorry, t'was a compliment," Konrad mumbled, avoiding her eyes. "Let's, uh, focus on the thing."
And as he said that, a huge pentagram was starting to take shape around them.
About halfway done.
But from the cheers on the other side of the wall, the bass duel was about to wrap up.