Re:Zero - Jobless Reincarnation: Succubus Sword God? I don't recognize it!

Chapter 594 The Demon King's Request

The book maze was huge; Melna had been walking around for an hour.

Along the way, there were only bookshelves and many turns. To avoid getting lost, she recorded the information of the turns she had made on the way she came in inside her magic core so that she could return the way she came.

Ten minutes ago, she made a delightful discovery:

As they ventured deeper, the number of monsters around them increased, and the manuscripts on the bookshelves on both sides became newer and no longer as damaged as before.

At first, Melna judged that this might be related to the time when the manuscript was written.

But the notebook that the owner just flipped through was clearly a recent creation.

It wasn't until she noticed that even the monsters' movements while flipping through the books had become cautious, and that the spines were filled with historical records of major events in XXX country in XXX year, that she had another theory:
The placement of the manuscripts was related to time and their importance; the closer to the deepest part of the labyrinth, the more important the manuscripts were. That erotic dream notebook, which contained no real substance, was not considered 'important'.

Should the owner's diary be important?
Yes, although the diary itself only records the owner's troubles, worries, determination, and hopes.

However, because this diary comes from a future timeline that does not exist, it is rare and valuable. There is only one copy, so it must have been hidden by the Demon King in the deepest part of the labyrinth.

Her pace quickened, faster and faster, then she suddenly froze at a corner:

Before me, swarms of ant monsters and slime monsters were densely packed in the passageway, crawling all over the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling.

She stopped walking and subconsciously slowed her breathing.

There are no bookshelves along this stretch of road; to be precise, the bookshelves haven't been built yet.

The ant-like monsters were digging out broken stones from the wall next to them, swallowing them, and then spitting them out to form neat wedge-shaped blocks. They then used their sharp antennae to carve the stones into the shape of bookshelves, which were then carried to the wall by swarms of slimes and piled up to form a bookshelf corridor.

Melna covered her mouth:
Unexpectedly, the magic maze was actually created by these monsters.

Could they all be the Demon King's familiars?

After looking her over, the smile on her face gradually disappeared, and finally she looked ugly.

The monsters were densely packed, reminding her of the ghostly monsters in the archipelago.

They were packed so tightly that there was no room to pass through.

It seems that only this section of the road in front of us is being renovated. However, according to the important argument just now, the old master of the Notos family's diary may be on the outskirts of the labyrinth, while the master's diary should be deep inside the labyrinth.

In that case, as long as this project continues, the master and his companions may not have finished their plan even by the time they find the old patriarch's diary.

How to do?
Melna stared for a long time before gritting her teeth and trying to squeeze into a slightly sparser spot. Based on her experience of coming here earlier, she judged that these monsters had no intention of attacking people.

They probably wouldn't mind if a lady, a doll without a heartbeat, passed by.
Melna's foot, which was about to step forward, froze.

She stared in astonishment at the ant-like monster that reached up to her knees; her leg had barely touched its carapace as she stepped to its side.

The monster stopped moving, turned its head, and stared straight at him.

Only then did Melna notice that there were two eyeballs on the other's tentacles.

"Sorry"

Melna stamped her foot, then slowly backed away.

Step 1: All the ant-like monsters within a five-meter radius turned their heads and looked over. Melna felt the flow of magic power in her core freeze for a moment.

Step Two: Ants and slimes within a ten-meter radius all looked over, Melna's expression changed drastically, and she turned around and started running!
Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!
As I took a step, the heads of those monsters, like dominoes, turned their heads in a seemingly random way, appearing as if an ocean current was lapping against each other from near to far.

Melna had no time to look back; she used her breath magic, reaching almost her maximum speed while avoiding blowing the manuscripts on the bookshelves on either side.
Her hair was blowing wildly in front of her eyes. Melna was about to reach the corner ahead when she heard a faint rustling sound beside her.
She glanced to her side out of the corner of her eye.

But then she saw an ant with six legs, its legs leaving afterimages, already on her right side, its eyeballs on its antennae staring straight at her.
! !
Melna instinctively wanted to cast a fireball, but after glancing at the bookshelf next to her, she forcibly restrained herself.

However, her surprise did affect her speed.

The ant-like monster beside her overtook her, bent down, slammed its head into the ground, and launched itself into the air. Then, to Melna's chagrin, it presented its abdomen directly in front of her.

The latter couldn't stop and crashed headlong into it. The sharp armor on the ant monster's back pierced her legs, leaving several deep wounds. However, its abdomen was very soft, making her feel as if she had bumped into a ball of cotton.

Before she could even process any other thoughts, the countless legs in her eyes tightly wrapped around Melna's body.

thump! !

The monster and Melna rolled on the ground like a ball, the latter dizzy and still trying to break free, only to find that ants swarmed up around her, surrounding her from all sides.

In the corridor, the black ant swarm gradually engulfed Melna completely, until finally only a terrified eyeball remained visible.

The last ant covered it.

With a soft rustling sound, the belatedly arriving miniature slime crawled up, forming a blanket around itself, and placed the ant ball on it as if gathering food, before heading deeper into the maze.

They passed through corridors and turned corners, during which time the struggling protrusions on the ant ball gradually subsided and returned to silence.
Finally, perhaps seeing that Melna had given up struggling, the ants scattered and helped transport the slime.

The dark figure moved aside, revealing Melna's body.

It wasn't as terrifying as she had imagined, with half of her leg corroded. In fact, the injury she had just sustained on her calf had already healed after she used her healing technique.

She got up on the monster carpet, looking confused:
"As expected, they were no longer restrained once they stopped struggling. Luckily, I resisted the urge to unleash magic, otherwise, if I had damaged the books, they might have really attacked me."
But where are you taking me?

Melna cautiously stretched one leg out of the monster blanket, only to be followed by the antennae of an ant-like monster.

She met the eyeball on the tentacle and gave an awkward smile:

"I'm just doing some light exercise. Don't... don't... misunderstand."

The ant retracted its antennae, and Melna could only obediently sit on the monster's back, where she remained for an hour.

During this time, Melna's expression gradually changed from confusion to surprise to bewilderment to astonishment.

The monsters were incredibly fast and had a clear objective. Finally, after turning a corner in a corridor...

My vision suddenly became clear.

It was so cheerful it was hard to comprehend. Melna stared wide-eyed at the tiered hall before her, which was the size of a theater, but unlike the tiered seating in a theater, rows of black bookshelves descended in a circular staircase.

At the center was a massive black sticky creature, as large as the temple of Arsmiris.

Its body maintains a fluid shape, occasionally forming bulges that then sink back down.

It's like bubbles bursting in boiling water.

From the center of those bubbles emerged thick tentacles; at first glance, there were dozens of them.
It looks terrifying and is extremely dreadful.

But Melna's expression didn't show much fear; instead, it was somewhat surprised.

Each tentacle held a pen at its end, and it was copying various manuscripts onto blank sheets of paper spread out on the ground, as if...
Elementary school students rushing to finish their homework on a weekend evening.
Writes super fast~
Melna licked her lips and looked at the ants around her.

They silently put Melna down and then dispersed into the corridor behind them like a tide, disappearing in a moment.

She then turned to look at the lord of the library labyrinth, the Demon King—Bedobe Toberta. His head had a unique tentacle that wasn't copying the text; instead, it stood upright, with an eyeball splitting out from it, radiating magical energy as it looked towards the dome of the hair salon in the hall.

Melna swallowed hard.

Although I don't know why this happened, the result is inexplicably good.
She resisted the strong urge to start searching the surrounding bookshelves for Aisha's notes, and walked cautiously to the Demon King, looking up at it:
"Hello? Are you His Highness Bedobé Toberta?"

The Demon King paid no heed; all he could hear was the dense sound of copying.

The smell of ink was so strong it was almost nauseating.

Melna hesitated for a moment, then repeated her greeting.

The same reaction.

She blinked and noticed that the copying of the manuscripts under the tentacles around her was still being scribbled over. Upon closer inspection, she realized it was an unfinished letter.

Li Amin realized that the Demon King was using his Demon Eye to transcribe the written records being generated in various parts of the world at this very moment. She took out her maid's notebook from inside her clothes, picked up a quill pen, and wrote:
"Hello? Are you His Highness Bedobé Toberta?"

The instant the words were written, sure enough, a slimy bubble suddenly burst open on the body of the demon king beside her, from which a tentacle emerged, picked up a blank piece of paper from the ground, and wrote the same thing:
"Hello, are you Bedobee?"

The writing abruptly stopped here, and the tentacles abruptly ceased.

Melna was a little nervous, and at the same time, she sensed that the atmosphere in the hall had suddenly changed in a strange way.

She looked around, and all the tentacles stopped writing.

The next instant, the tentacle with the demonic eye on its head bent and suddenly stabbed at her!

It was incredibly fast! So fast that Melna had no chance to react at all.

It abruptly stopped ten centimeters from her face, its demonic eyes gleaming with an eerie blue light as it stared into Melna's constricted pupils. Then, it circled Melna, scrutinizing her closely before returning to her.
He pulled out a piece of paper that read: "So it was you. Welcome to my labyrinth, automaton from the future."

Melna breathed a sigh of relief and wrote, "It's me. Did you invite me here just now?"

Instead of answering, Bedobé Toberta asked, "What brings you here?"

Melna wrote carefully: "I'm looking for another diary. I'd like to ask you to help me find it. Of course, I can find it myself, as long as I don't bother you. I just came to say hello."

To everyone's surprise, the eyeball revealed a hint of mockery: "You can't find it."

Melna was taken aback: "What?"

His eyes darted around Melna, left and right: "I said, you can't find what you're looking for."

Melna's eyes widened as she suddenly realized that this copy was extremely valuable, because even the original owner no longer possessed it.

The image of Aisha with a furrowed brow as she slept suddenly flashed before her eyes, and Melna immediately became anxious, hastily writing, "Since you know what I've come looking for, you should know that it is extremely precious. I beg you. This is very important to us."

"Then why should I help you? What do you have in exchange for my assistance? Is it gold and silver? Or some other vulgar things that humans find unbearable?"

Melna's face paled: "I...I have the future course of history in my mind, I can write it down."

"The world has merged, the future you wrote about no longer exists, the 'past' written by your master is based on real events, while what you wrote is just a story."

"The knowledge of puppetry technology...this is the technology of the future."

"Not enough, one book isn't enough, the value isn't enough. What you want to see can only be seen here, but what you've written, I just need to wait, and I'll be able to see it."

Melna was stunned and speechless.

She looked down at her hands, remained silent for a long time, and then suddenly laughed.

"This time, my 'value' has been realized."

I met the people I was meant to meet, and experienced adventures I never imagined, including the islands, the turbulent seas, and Bereas.

This was said by Bedobé Toberta, who had no ears and could not hear, and just stared at him in confusion.

She narrowed her crescent-shaped eyes, her gaze fixed on the maid's notebook.

But in her mind, she saw Aisha's gaze as she looked at Eren.

She picked up her pen and wrote:
"Anything, I am willing to give anything."

I am an automaton from the future. From the perspective of an automaton, I am not unique, but from the perspective of someone from the future, I am unique.

I am willing to exchange my future for your service, to become your collection, to transcribe books for you, but I cannot do so immediately. I need to wait for some time.

Before she could finish writing, the look in the eyes on the tentacles instantly changed from arrogance to terror, and they slammed onto Melna's hand.

Another tentacle quickly wrote: "Servant? Are you joking with me?"

Melna was also stunned: "Huh?"

The Demon King stared at her intently for a long time with his radiant demonic eyes, then wrote: "We can make an exchange. I don't need any servants. I just need you to do one thing for me."

(End of this chapter)