I once again looked at the town inhabited by the rogue automatons, but it was hard to see there any malicious activity.

The human-like dolls were doing everyday activities, that befitted a normal frontier town atmosphere. There was no matrix stuff, and there were no giant death robots being built.

The automatons’ life was awkward, and they were doing things that actually made no sense for the machines, like the guards on the gates were trying to check the carriages, even though it was hampering the machine efficiency.

In the end I decided that it was not worth it killing them, and with this in mind I turned towards the wicked fox goddess.

Right at my thoughts, her grin suddenly changed to a truly wibeautiful and absolutely not belonging to a devil smile.

“I see no need in killing them.” I stated my decision, and after a moment, the goddess rolled up her eyes and played a short tune with the flute.

“What was that…?”

“Nothing much. I just cursed this land to be infertile for the next few centuries.” As if she said nothing wi, she shrugged her shoulders, and put the flute back into her kimono.

“Well-well, what a selfish child you are. To think you would put all of the work on my poor shoulders~… Let us keep going.” I made another decision. To not say, or think, of what exactly I think about it.

Seeing that this absolutely-not-wicked goddess was already leaving, like it didn’t concern her, I could only follow her.

At least she didn’t throw a meteorite at them…

“I am not so cruel as to punish them twice.” (A)

“What have you even punished them for, o Great One?”

“I felt like it.” She shrugged again, and continued walking.

[Seriously? You just had to do it? You couldn’t just leave them alone? Or is it some kind of a master plan?]

The loli kitsune turned her head towards me, and gave me a side glance.

What was reflected in her eyes could only be described as irritation, and I knew that her ‘irritation’ may be the absolute end of my life.

One thing is fearing her, the other is fearing that this crazy fox may do such stunts that I wouldn’t be even approaching to be capable to understand.  Like, destroying an entire city, or making gods shivered at mentioning her.

If only this entire might was not used by Aqua’s more talented twin sister…

As we continued to move away from the machine town, I noticed how the fields disappeared at one point. The landscape changed from rural to an absolute wilderness.

The more I looked at it, the more it felt like the entire area was abandoned by humanity.

However, Akagi-sama was easily finding some sort of a way through shrubs and grass.

Unlike what one could think that she is just heading somewhere, while actually being lost, what intrigued me was that she was actually knowing where she was going. Sometimes I would even be noticing barely visible remnants of stone pavement on the abandoned road. If she was just going by guess, I am sure we would never be following that road.

“Still, just where exactly are we going?”

“To the location of the artifact. It is a few days away from here.” (A)

“How about we just fly…?”

“Wow. If only this benevolent Akagi-sama knew beforehand, she would’ve bestowed a few thousand tons of cargo on your shoulders.” [No, thank you. I am truly alright.]

Even though we spent an entire day walking, we were yet to cross the abandoned lands. And the longer we walked, the more I felt like there is one fox, who was missing something.

“It is you missing. Look over there.” She pulled my hand, pointing at something in the distance.

I used the binoculars, and found that it was some kind of an old fort. The kind that would be inhabited by all sorts of lowlifes.

“Thank the Heaven, at least you can think through this much. See the mountains in the distance? Our destination is there. But… as you, I HOPE, can guess – there is an obstacle that must be removed. I do not want to dirty my shoes, so it is up to you. Go.” Then, the goddess disappeared in a torii gate, leaving me all alone to deal with everything.

Of course, the first thing I did was aiming the ridiculous guns at the fort.

“And…! FIRE!”

Bang Bang Bang Bang

The sound of the shots fired looked more like a petard setting off… But I was not getting disheartened.

Everything is better than firing the self-exploding guns.

I still had a few more trump cards on me. Namely, the secondary guns.

BOOM BOOM BOOM