In a Female-Dominant World with a 5:1 Gender Ratio, I Saved a Girl as a Kid, and She Said She Wanted to Be My Bride—Who Would’ve Thought She Was a Princess… - 43-44

Chapter 43: The Electronic Labyrinth and the Eliminating White Blood Cells

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(Alto’s POV)

Sleipnir raced forward, sliding across the metal floor as if gliding. The blizzard outside felt like a lie in comparison to the silence here. But this quiet was not peaceful. It was an inorganic, cold-blooded silence, utterly devoid of any sign of life.

On both sides of the corridor, glass cylindrical columns stretched endlessly into the distance. Inside them floated pale blue liquid and something like a fetus.

“…What the hell is this?”

I looked around in shock.

Are they human? Or monsters?

“‘Seeds.’”

Gideon spat bitterly as he gripped the handlebars.

“Backup data for this world’s ecosystem. …Or perhaps a dumping ground for failed experiments. From here, he designs whatever species catches his fancy and releases them onto the surface.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…! This place is a factory for life?!”

The truth that this world—spoken of in terms of magic and magical beasts—was actually a terrarium crafted by someone’s hand. I understood it intellectually, but seeing it with my own eyes made me feel sick. Lilianna’s “curse” was probably nothing more than one piece of “experimental data” to him.

“Disgusting.”

A voice suddenly echoed directly inside my head. It sounded close… And clear.

“Do not gaze upon my beautiful collection with those filthy eyes.”

“Where the hell are you?! Show yourself!”

As I shouted, the space ahead in the corridor warped. Silvery liquid seeped up from the floor, rapidly swelling. Not just one. Ten, twenty…Enough to fill the entire passage. They took on human shapes, transforming into faceless knights with mirror-like surfaces. In their hands were silver spears formed by reshaping parts of their own bodies.

“Security Level Five. …Virus elimination program activated!!”

With that announcement, the silver knights all moved at once.

Fast.

There was no preparatory muscle movement. They accelerated instantly from zero to top speed, rushing straight at us.

“Tch! These don’t look like simple mud dolls this time!”

“An autonomous internal defense system! You could call them this tower’s ‘white blood cells’!”

Gideon sharply spun Sleipnir aside, barely evading the thrusting spears by a hair’s breadth. As we passed, I smashed the nearest knight’s head with a magic-enhanced fist.

Badiii!!

The head shattered. But the feedback felt strange—hard, yet brittle. And in the very next instant, the scattered fragments gathered like mercury, regenerating the head in the blink of an eye.

“They regenerated?!”

“Physical attacks won’t work! These things are data itself!”

The knights tightened their encirclement. New enemies seeped out of the walls and ceiling, even cutting off our retreat. They were trying to crush us with sheer numbers.

“Alto! Save Gungnir! Break through with your fists here!”

“But my blows don’t work on them!”

“Don’t destroy them! I said erase them!”

Gideon’s roar snapped me to attention. Right. My power wasn’t just “physical enhancement” or “destruction.” My true essence was “abyss” itself. An error that rejected system recognition and nullified all interference. If they were data itself, then instead of destroying them, I just had to delete them.

“…Alright. So basically, it’s cleaning time.”

I stood up atop Sleipnir. I altered the quality of my magic power. From the hot, violent “power of destruction” to the cold, silent “power of abyss.” I raised my right hand toward the oncoming silver wave.

“Deletion complete.”

Hyuun.

Without a sound, the space in front of me became “empty.” There was no explosion. No impact. The dozen or so silver knights that had been there simply lost their existence altogether. Not even fragments remained for regeneration. Their program code itself had been erased from the world.

“Wha—!?”

A shocked voice leaked out of the void.

“You overwrote my code…? You’re not just an ordinary human…?!”

“I’m an irregular that doesn’t go the way you want!”

I grinned and slapped Gideon on the shoulder.

“The path’s open! Punch it, Senpai!”

“Heh, you’re developing a real nasty personality!”

Gideon floored the accelerator. Sleipnir blasted straight through the tunnel of nothingness I had forced open. Shaking off silver arms reaching in from both sides, we sped deeper into the corridor. Eventually, at the end of the long passage, a massive circular hall appeared. At its center yawned a gigantic shaft, so deep the bottom couldn’t be seen.

From far below that hole, a baleful red-black light pulsed ominously.

“There…!”

Gideon brought the bike to a sudden stop. We peered down from the edge of the shaft. The depth had to be several thousand meters. At the very bottom, we could see a gigantic crystal, pulsing like a heart.

“That’s the main server… The Demon King’s true body.”

At last, we had it. The source of Lilianna’s suffering. The true identity of the god ruling this twisted world.

“We’re going down, Alto. …No time to wait for an elevator.”

Gideon pushed up his goggles slightly, a mad grin spreading across his face.

“We dive from here.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me…!”

“We crank gravity control to the max and plunge! Before his counterattack arrives, we jump straight into his lap and fire at point-blank range!”

It was insane. But it was also the shortest and fastest route. I steeled myself and raised Gungnir.

“Got it. …Let’s go… This is the final stage!”

Sleipnir leapt into the air. We plunged headlong, straight down into the abyss where the Demon King awaited.

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Chapter 44: The Throne of the Abyss and the Administrator’s Cold Sneer

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(Alto’s POV)

Hyuoooooo…!!

The sound of the wind had already become a thunderous roar that pounded against my eardrums. Sleipnir inverted its gravity control and was falling straight down while accelerating. This was no roller coaster. This was a suicidal freefall dive.

“Don’t bite your tongue! I’m not hitting the brakes!” 

Gideon shouted. Below us, a red-black, pulsating light rapidly expanded in our field of view. We were about to traverse several thousand meters of depth in mere tens of seconds.

『Persistent flies.』

A cold voice echoed directly inside my head. The next instant, the entire surface of the shaft walls lit up with geometric patterns.

Buuunn!!

Countless red beams of light fired from the walls. Guided lasers. A torrential rain of high-output heat rays surged toward us, threatening to skewer us as we fell.

“Damn it, intercept fire!?”

“Hang on! Barrel roll!”

Gideon forcefully slammed the control stick down. Sleipnir spun like a drill as it continued to fall. The beams grazed the hull, scorching the armor.

“Uoooooh!!”

Amid the spinning view, I thrust my hand toward the incoming lasers. There was no need to aim. I deployed a membrane of void around us, nullifying everything that touched it.

Jjj—jjujuju!!

The instant the red beams touched the black membrane, they turned into noise and vanished.

“I see it, the bottom!!”

At Gideon’s shout, the view suddenly opened up. Beyond the shaft, there spread out a gigantic space beyond imagination. A dome-shaped underground chamber. The ceiling towered hundreds of meters high, and every wall surface was completely covered with machines resembling server racks that blinked with pale blue light. And at its center…

Above a vast expanse of cooling water like an underground lake, a single island floated. At the center of that island sat a massive crystal, the main server and standing before it was a single man.

“Reverse thrust!!”

Gideon pushed the throttle wide open. Blue flames erupted from Sleipnir’s underside, forcibly killing our downward momentum.

Zazazazazaz!!

We slammed hard onto the island’s metal floor, skidding forward while scattering sparks. We came to a stop just a few dozen meters in front of the man. I dismounted the bike on unsteady legs and leveled Gungnir. I looked at the man before me.

Ancient garments resembling a white lab coat. Translucent skin and silver hair. And golden, vertically slit pupils like those of a reptile. He looked exactly like the figure I had seen in the hologram. He did not flinch at our presence, merely gazing down at us with open contempt.

“…Yo. You’ve been holed up in one hell of a deep hole.”

I spat the words out without concealing my killing intent. The man—the Demon King—replied in a voice devoid of emotion.

“This is the core, the heart of the world. …It is not a place that inferior lifeforms like you are permitted to tread upon.”

The man casually waved his hand. That alone brought down a pressure so crushing it felt as if the air itself had frozen. It wasn’t magic. It felt as though the settings of this very space had been altered.

“There is no need for me to introduce myself, but I will praise you. You are the first humans to physically breach my firewall.”

“I’m not just some human. …I’m Alto. The man who came to save Lilianna, the one you tried to kill!”

I shouted.

“It was you, wasn’t it!? The one who’s been tormenting Lilianna all this time!”

“Tormenting her?”

The Demon King tilted his head, genuinely puzzled.

“That girl was designed as a biological key to access my system. …A tool fulfilling its intended function. What is there to question in that?”

There was no malice in his words. Only absolute arrogance, seeing humans no differently from pebbles or machine parts. To him, Lilianna’s pain and our rage were nothing more than error logs.

“…Gideon-san.”

“Yeah. I know.”

Behind me, Gideon let out a low groan while preparing Sleipnir for a restart.

“This thing can’t be reasoned with. …Its sense of ethics is fundamentally different from ours.”

I aimed Gungnir straight at the Demon King.

“I didn’t come here to debate. …I came to delete you!”

I refined the magic power within my body. Lilianna’s suffering. My rage. I turned it all into energy.

“Oh? You think that obsolete toy of yours can harm me?”

For the first time, the Demon King wore a sneering smile. Behind him, the massive crystal—the main server—began flashing violently in red.

“Very well. That futile resistance of yours… I will overwrite your very existence with my power.”

The Demon King raised his right hand. The space let out a groaning sound. Around him unfolded rings of light, complex geometric patterns unlike magic circles.

“Heads up, Alto! He’s not using cheap magic! He’s rewriting physical laws!”

“Perfect! We’ve got bullets that break rules and logic!”

I placed my finger on the trigger. Two extraordinary powers facing off. A system administrator who fancied himself a god and a bug meant to kill gods. Within the underground abyss, the final battle with the fate of the world at stake had begun.

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