Beta placed her straight palm over her eyebrows, squinting through the bright artificial sunlight over at the head of the smoke trail.

She saw a blurry orange dot that, as her eyes were adapting, began to gain shape.

Lupusregina's voice cracked as she shouted in shock:

"That is… Shizu???"

Narberal, who was clenching her teeth, ready to engage, took a few moments to realise what Lupi had just said. Eventually, she turned her head and lowered her guard, cancelling the effect of [fly].

"Shizu? Since when can she fly? Are you certain?"

"I uh… I can't be sure, but that peach orange hair is the only one in the world I know of-su!"

Beta tightened her fists to shout with all the force she had:

"SHIZUUUUUU! OVER HEEEEERE!"

Seeing that Beta was struggling, Narberal soon pitched in, trying to make some hand gestures.

The "Shizuuu!" shouts continued for over half a minute.

[Colosseum, 6th floor of Nazarick]

A light metallic cling could be heard over the thunderous turbulence and the high frequency sound of the jet engines.

Shizu's regular round nose mithril boots with spiked lacework were now thicker, splitting up at the end into a shape roughly reminiscent of a vertebra, having hinges to every side attached to small fins, some of which air sprayed in a bright crimson.

At the centre, behind a row of thin black bars were two sky blue jet engines, the flames of which looked more like a miniature blue star.

Shizu's expression as she was coasting undisturbed through the wide sky was of immense content, while simultaneously spacing out completely - though, of course, recognizing the joy in her expression was nearly impossible if you weren't familiar with borderline emotionless robot faces.

Inside her mind, her thought voice was much more fluent.

*This is. Not exactly. A jetpack. But. It will suffice.*

With a corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a light show in the distance - most likely spells cast by the other two trying to get her attention.

She briefly and slowly rotated her eyes in their direction, without making the effort to turn her neck even slightly, after which she rolled them back forward.

[Back at ground level]

Deep breath.

"SHIIIIIZZUUUUUUUU!!!!!"

Beta gasped loudly a few times, until Narberal stepped in:

"It's useless. We need to focus on the right!"

With one last gasp, Lupusregina came back to her senses.

"Mhm! You're right! Get ready!"

Narberal placed a foot backwards, setting herself in a stable stance, while Beta slid her hand lower on her crosier, to swing with more force.

The fly growled to the challenge.

Lupi inhaled deeply, enough to create a small whirlwind, and implanted her feet sturdily in the ground to resist the lower pressure in front, ultimately drawing in enough air to fill a 3 story apartment building.

"[Scorching Ray]!"

Placing her fist close to her mouth, making a funnel, three meteor sized beads of fire hurled out at the behemoth fly.

Upon impact, the flames dispersed and the fly made a slightly irritated noise, without getting pushed back.

It didn't seem to have much effect.

"Fire resistance, huh? Shit… all of my strongest damaging spells are fire based."

Narberal hastily turned towards Beta in reply.

"Wait! Do that again!

"Why? It's not effective!"

"Trust me!"

Seeing how serious Nabe was about this, she must've had a good plan in mind, so Lupi didn't give it any second doubt.

"[Scorching Ray]!"

As soon as the giant spheres of flame came out, Nabe raised her hand:

"[Elemental Reaction - Lightning]!"

The fire began to shimmer brightly and the spheres elongated into sharp beams of lightning, which left several burn marks on the demon.

Narberal was unusually happy, clenching her fist with excitement.

"It's working! Keep it up! Summon fire and I'll turn it into lightning!"

"Eh, why aren't you just casting lightning magic? You have much stronger spells than I do!"

Narberal paused for a moment, then gave a brutally straight forward response in a dry voice:

"No. That would use up more of my mana."

"Why would you use mine instead????"

Just as dry,

"We can't tire ourselves. This is a battle of endurance. We need to hang on until help arrives."

Both of them were well aware of the flaw in that sentence, that Lupusregina was, without any way to sugar coat it, exhausting herself for Narberal at this very moment.

Lupi halfway furrowed her eyes:

"You aren't thinking about stalling… You're actually planning to save yourself up to steal the kill…"

The fly's tentacles reached out, grabbing Narberal from the side.

Just as she got lifted an inch, Beta's crosier cut clean through the tentacles, spinning thrice mid-air and returning to her like a boomerang.

"Keep away from it! Use only ranged attacks!"

For the following minute or so, they fought Amon strike after strike and smite after smite, slowly accumulating damage.

[Call Lightning]!

Inside the dome of the 6th floor, a storm of clouds swivelled closely above the fly.

As it's long tendrils zig-zagged close to ground level to attack, Lupi avoided with a high jump, running up the tentacles towards the core.

The clouds crackled and flashed rapidly, preparing a thunderous blow, which struck the fly, stunning it completely for a moment, creating a wide enough opportunity for Beta's crosier to deliver the finishing blow.

Sliding off of the fly, she was still holding tightly to the crosier, expecting the worst.

The monstrous black body started bubbling like boiling tar, becoming a softer mush in the process.

"What is it? Is it regenerating?"

Both of them stepped back. A cold drop of sweat ran across Beta’s cheek while the same thought crossed both of their minds: ‘it won’t be that easy’.

Just as the fly’s amorphous body finished shaping back into a solid, a bright heavenly light struck it down to the ground.

As the smoke was clearing out, the Pleiades were waiting to see the figure of their divine saviour.

The behemoth fly was completely squished on the ground, struggling to lift its head.

On the top of its head, CZ2128 Delta was sitting crouched up with her arms around her knees.

Despite it’s desperate efforts, the demon was unable to stand up.

Shizu Delta, despite being 4’9’’, was composed of a mithril alloy, reinforced with adamantintite. Her weight was, such, exactly 488 kg, or 1075 pounds.

In addition, all of the Pleiades battle maids wore a full plate armour, composed of mithril, beliad and galvoln. This easily added an extra 650 pounds to the calculation.

In total, Shizu’s mass was over 782 kg, if you also considered the mass of the weapon and consumables she always had on herself. This would pin down even certain large beasts, especially those that relied on wings for movement.

“Get out of there, Shizu! It’s going to eat you!”

Shizu partially unfolded herself, placing her arms to her back in a comfortable sitting position.

Lupi was watching in panic as the fly’s tendrils swirled around Shizu.

“He. He. That. Tickles.”

After little time, her body was completely covered in black goo.

Suddenly, the lump of goo exploded, with Shizu thrusting herself 50 feet up, then stopping her thrusters to fall back.

The fly’s enormous gelatinous body acted as a trampoline that completely broke Shizu’s fall. The demon let out a gasp of pain.

“That. Was. Fuuun. Do. It. Again.”

After that, Shizu repeatedly thrusted herself, falling back on Amon’s head each time.

Lupusregina lowered her shaking hand, failing to understand how to deal with this situation.

Looking to her right, she heard Gamma mutter, full of awe:

“A purely chaotic… downright destructive force!”

(...)

Seeing that it had no chance of escaping otherwise, Amon shrunk down the body of its host, making the gargantuan behemoth fly now the size of a tennis ball.

Desperately flapping its tiny wings, it escaped Shizu’s sight only for a split second, rushing to flee as far away as possible.

Shizu looked around for a few moments, until finally seeing the fly that was about 3-4 meters away.

Realising that it had been noticed, Amon flapped his wings even more frantically, until suddenly-

Squish!

Shizu’s arm extended from her wrist, getting a clean hold of the fly.

“Caught. You.”

Their eyes met, as the fly was squealing in fear with unintelligible murmurs.

Shizu, in return, had the same cold eyes as always - because they could not look any different.

From Amon’s perspective, she was now a gigantic deity, who was holding him at their mercy.

However, since Amon was now the ‘perfect size’, Shizu had an immediate thought in mind, that was anything but merciful.

Her eyes scanned the area, but she didn’t seem to find what she was looking for.

“Narberal. Can you. Make. A target?”

“A target? Hmm, I suppose I can make a pink mark on a tree.”

Shizu nodded in approval, after which Narberal grabbed some fairy dust from her component pouch, spraying it on a nearby tree to Shizu’s left, with a gentle motion of her wrist.

Acknowledging the target, Shizu reconstructed her right hand into a massive double barrel gun that looked large enough to work as a turret on a battleship.

Ever so casually, she loaded up the fly into the chamber and shot it spot on the glittering pink mark, overwriting it with a splat of blood and fly juices.

She walked to the tree to pick up the fly, as if she was playing darts, repeating the operation several times.

“I…suppose we took care of that…” - commented Beta, immediately after which she redressed herself:

“We should hurry back and search for the Throne Room!”

Behind them, a lavender portal grew up to the shape of a gate, inside which a visage of the Throne Room manifested behind a ripple effect.

This was the 9th tier spell [Gate], that only Ainz and Shalltear were capable of casting.

Demiurge stepped with both his leather shoes on the short grass. He clapped slowly and firmly.

“My commandments to you, Pleiades! Please, follow me. Our supreme ruler has summoned you to the Throne Room.”

[end of chapter 7]