The other world, Midgar, was a world overflowing with greenery, a world of swords and magic and monsters.
While there may have been some things that existed that surpassed even Earth's level of technology, at its base, the world was close to the Middle Ages in culture and development. It was as if someone or something was purposefully keeping it that way; they just didn't progress.
However, there was a single out of place "car" running out in the open over Midgar's wide-open lands. It was no carriage. There were no tamed monsters or anything pulling it. It was a steel box that ran on its own, something that would've been referred to as an "RV" on Earth.
The car, which clashed hard with the overall feeling of the world and looked very unnatural, was using its headlights to light the way as it proceeded during the night. Eventually, it entered some woods where it would be harder to be spotted and stopped.
"Okay, let's stop here for the night."
In the car, Naru handed out orders, deciding to camp out here for the day.
Well, if this could be called camping. At the very least, it was completely different from the dictionary definition of camping. They weren't sleeping out in the cold nor were they putting up tents. The RV Honda came with beds, so they would be sleeping soundly inside. It would be more correct to say they were just staying the night in their car.
But that concept didn't exist in this world. In fact, this sort of thing happened with carriages and the like as well, and it was still called camping.
So, in order to fit in with the logic of this world, there was no choice but to call it camping.
"Haruka, do we have enough food and travel funds?"
"Hmmm, we're a little low on money. I'll go back to Ydalir tomorrow to raise money, so can you transmute some suitable, low-strength knives or swords, please? I'll go buy food while I'm there as well."
"Understood."
Food and money were needed for travel.
While Naru and Haruka were discussing that, Fiona went off to the land of dreams ahead of them. The two of them also eventually finished their discussion and retired to bed, leaving behind only one steel maid that didn't sleep.
So as not to wake up her master, she was careful to make no sound as she got off of Honda, taking up an unmoving position just outside the entrance.
I can sense several life-forms nearby, but all of them are small bugs or animals. There's no need to be wary of them.
…At least, that was what one would normally think. But Penny didn't think that way.
She followed up on every single thing she sensed, and after observing the target closely, only then did she classify it as harmful or not. As a result, anything that was even remotely poisonous or venomous was mercilessly incinerated by lasers from her eyes.
Not even a single mosquito is allowed inside. Any who wander into my range will be instantly disposed of.
After a few minutes of that, the area within her field of fire eventually became 100% safe, and Penny stopped moving. But she only returned to standing stock-still in front of the door.
The night moved on, counting one in the morning and then two. Even then, Penny didn't even twitch. It was only around 2:30 that she suddenly raised her head.
Penny had very acute hearing. And her ears were currently picking up the voices of several men and a single girl.
"Stop struggling! Just calm down!"
"Heheheh! Curse your horrible luck, little lady. If there's anybody you should hate, it'd be your daddy!"
"No! Someone! Someone help!"
"No one's coming to a place like this! Just give up!"
From the sound of their voices, they should be about 5 km away from here.
It sounds like some burglars have kidnapped some poor village girl or something similar. Are they after a ransom? Or is it due to a grudge against her father?
Either way, it didn't matter to Penny.
Penny did not have the sense of justice necessary for her to proactively try to save the poor girl. To her, they were nothing more than small-fry whom she could leave alone as long as they didn't come near.
However, there was one problem. Judging from the direction they were progressing, there was a high probability they would be coming to the area Penny was protecting. And it was unthinkable that those types would have no reaction upon seeing a car like the one Penny was protecting. The possibility that they would raise a fuss and disturb her master's peaceful sleep was extremely high.
"Removal is predicted to take less than ten minutes. Life-forms that would be able to make contact with Honda within that time… Two."
Penny readied a rifle she had stored on her back and pulled the trigger without hesitation. Normally, the sound of a rifle firing would be loud, but Naru claimed that would be a nuisance to the surrounding area, so she'd made a new rifle that was silent when fired. It fired a tranquilizer round that would send even a dinosaur to the land of dreams in one shot, which neutralized the "life-forms that may approach within ten minutes"—a pair of stray dogs that just happened to be nearby.
So, after clearing any other sources of danger, Penny dashed off. Weaving her way through the trees, she became naught but a black shadow as she approached her target.
"Hey, bro, I can't stand it anymore. It's okay, right?"
"Oh, fine. Do what you want, you lolicon."
Penny reached her destination, and there she saw the forms of the men as one of them was about to attempt something vulgar in the darkness.
Normally, one would have at least some feeling of disgust at witnessing this, but Penny felt none of that. She simply coldly analyzed her targets's numbers and battle potential.
First, there was the girl who was pinned to the ground. She must be somewhere between 14 and 15 years old. She is not carrying any weapons; she is basically harmless.
After that, there was the scoundrel that was happily ripping away her clothes. There was a knife at his waist but nothing other than that. His attention was completely on the girl, so to Penny, he wasn't too high on her list of target priority.
Then, there were six men watching excitedly. Each of them carried knives or swords, but they weren't of very high quality.
There was also one man who seemed to be the leader. Although the other's levels were all less than 10, he was at level 20. Still, he was nothing more than a weakling to Penny, not someone to be terribly cautious of.
Lastly, there were two men keeping watch on the surroundings, just in case. Although they must have thought the chances of being attacked were close to nothing, since they weren't being very serious about it.
In total—there are eleven people, and all of them are weak. I can easily exterminate them by myself.
Having judged that to be the case, Penny approached them openly, causing all of them to turn and face her.
"A-A girl? And a maid, at that? Why's there a maid here?"
"B-But… Heheh, what a cute girl."
The men seemed to have panicked a little over Penny's sudden appearance, but as soon as they realized her gender and the fact that she was alone, their attitude shifted dramatically. In fact, some of them even expressed joy that they'd just gotten another victim. They had yet to realize that they had just encountered the one weapon in the entire world that they should have wished to stay away from.
Depending on how they responded to her warning, they might still have been able to make it out alive.
"Warning. It is recommended that you go no further. It is recommended that you either retreat or make a detour from your current heading. Furthermore, if you do not heed this warning I will remove you with force."
Quietly and indifferently, Penny issued her final warning. This was Penny's first and last concession to them and their only chance to live. As long as they did not fulfill Penny's conditions for removal, she would not attack them.
After that, no matter if they devoured that poor girl or committed any number of evil acts, Penny would not interfere. They would be able to continue safely and freely.
However, it would be cruel to expect them to understand that at first glance. After all, she only looked like a weak maid. They could see no reason to obey her. After a moment of silence, the burglars laughed as they realized what Penny had just said.
Of all the things for this woman to say! She's hilarious!
The fact that that was the only thought they were able to muster was their biggest misfortune.
"Hey now, sister. You said something interesting there. So what'll happen if we don't listen to you?"
"As I have warned, you will be removed."
"HYAHAHAHAHA! Hey, guys, didja hear that?! This girlie's gonna 'remove' us!"
"Ohh, brave, is she?! I like brave girls like that! Makes me wanna mess her up and make her beg for her life!"
"So scaaary! I just might wet myself! Hyahahahaha!"
It seems they have no intention of heeding my warning. Still, I will wait for a reply, just in case. I must not jump to conclusions. That is what it means to be a maid.
One of the men brought out his knife and brandished it while approaching Penny as she continued to wait.
"Heyy, look! Look! I'm coming right at you! Aren't you gonna remove me? You know, you should back up what you say."
"…Is this your reply to my warning?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, it is. This is my reply."
"Is this your collective opinion? I will not allow you to change your reply later."
Penny checked to see if they were all of one mind. When she did, the men all cackled gleefully, tried to provoke Penny, or did something else which she took as agreement. Only the girl pinned to the ground was different.
They all underestimated her and spouted idiotic lines like, "Stop faking, and do it if you can!"
"It's all just words."
"It's a bluff."
"She's just pretending to be a big shot, all cold and collected like that, to make us leave."
They all were completely convinced of that. But that would plunge all of them into regret and despair. Because at that moment, they had just tripped the conditions for them to be attacked by the killer maid.
"You have fulfilled the conditions for removal—eliminating."
With Penny having handed out their execution sentence, their fates were sealed.
The first one to fall victim to Penny was the one who carelessly approached her while brandishing his knife. In an instant, Penny had grabbed his head and "spun" it. The human neck wasn't made to be spun 360 degrees. Having been moved like that while ignoring a human's limits, the man's neck broke, and he crumpled like his strings had been cut.
"Wha-?!"
"H-Hey, what did you just do?!"
"I have said I will remove you. And I am now acting upon it."
In front of Penny, who parted the grass as she approached, the men finally realized the dangerousness of who they'd just encountered.
"No, she's not normal."
"She isn't reacting at all after killing someone."
There were only two actions the men took in front of the steel maid. One was to charge, consumed by rage. The other was to freeze, consumed by fear.
Neither choice was very smart. Although having ignored her warnings in the first place was not very smart, either.
Of the two men who charged her, one died instantly, his head pierced through by Penny's eye lasers. The other had his head caught by her and squished like a tomato.
The remaining men's faces were frozen in fear as they questioned whether a man's skull was really that easy to crush. But Penny showed no mercy to those men.
Three down, seven more to go. Penny would continue to attack until they were all dead.
"Ee-EEEEEP! P-Please stop! I'm sorry! Save me!"
"W-we won't do bad things ever again! W-We'll listen to what you say! So…"
Two more of the men lost power in their legs and fell over, desperately begging Penny for their lives. One of them was the same man who'd just said, "Makes me wanna mess her up and make her beg for her life," and the other was the idiot who'd joked about wetting himself.
I suppose this is what it means to make good on your word. The two of them were begging for their lives with messed-up faces, dark patches spreading from their crotches. Although it didn't seem like either of the two of them remembered what they'd just said.
"No."
"N-No way…"
"I will not allow you to change your reply later. I believe I told you about this beforehand."
"N-No! Stoooooooop!" The two men, who were unable to even stand out of fear, ate Penny's iron fist.
Both their heads caved into their bodies like failed clay figures.
This makes five. Only five left.
Penny grabbed a man who had completely lost his will to resist and was trying to crawl away by his hair, standing him up before caving in his face, which was tainted with despair.
Then, she killed a man who was running away by shooting him from behind.
One of the men had taken the girl hostage and was yelling something, but Penny killed him with her eye lasers.
The man who was begging for his life with his head scraping the ground was in the perfect position to be stomped on, so Penny did just that.
This makes nine. I can sense the last one. He is far away.
Apparently, the man had realized that he was in trouble the second Penny killed the first man and hurried to run away.
"…"
"Eep?!"
Penny turned her head to look down at the girl, her neck whirring with the action.
Ah, yes. This girl has yet to respond to my warning. Judging from the situation, she may not have heard it.
So Penny once again gave the same warning to the girl as she did to the burglars. "Warning. It is recommended that you go no further. It is recommended that you either retreat or make a detour from your current heading. Furthermore, if you do not heed this warning I will be forced to remove you with force."
"Ah-aahh… AAAHHHH… ! S-save me! Someone… SOMEOONNEE!"
The girl, scared of Penny, was crying as she desperately tried to escape.
She tripped and fell several times, and although she was slow, she was heading in the opposite direction of where Naru was. In other words, she was heeding Penny's warning and retreating. Among all the people tonight who Penny had warned, she took the smartest and most correct action.
"I thank you for your wise decision," Penny said calmly while doing a perfect curtsy. Of course, even that looked like nothing more than the action of a fearful god of death to the girl.
However, Penny was not done. There was still one man left who had spurned her warning. Penny raised her head and walked, chasing the last man.
"Fuck! Fuck! Goddammit, what was that?! What the hell was that?! That's insane! Was she a god of death or something?!" The man trembled viciously as he hid behind a tree. His eyes overflowed with tears, and he couldn't stop sweating.
The man had committed evil acts many times in his life. He stole food and money from the weak and raped several women. No one would praise him for the way he lived his life. He deserved to be arrested and brought to judgment. However, even that man stubbornly clung to one thought:… I don't want to die.
"No, I don't wanna… I don't wanna die… I don't wanna die… !" The man was regretting something for the first time in his life.
He would laugh like an idiot every time someone called him a demon or monster or something, and he felt nothing whenever he trampled over people weaker than him. But now, the man regretted something from the bottom of his heart for the first time in his life. He regretted having encountered something he shouldn't have.
We should never have gone that way. We should have been more careful when that woman showed up. It'd have been easy to see that things were strange if we'd just calmed down, right? It's clearly not normal for a maid to be in the woods, where people don't normally go, in the middle of the night.
But it was too late. They were regrets exactly because he didn't realize these things earlier. Regrets only appeared when it was too late to fix things.
That was the definition.
The killer maid who was the object of the man's fear appeared and turned her head around as if she were looking for him.
Please, don't look this way. Just let me go. Don't notice me.
However, his plea wasn't granted.
The woman turned her back to him and took a step forward, giving the man a measure of relief. But right afterwards, the maid's head turned around 180 degrees and stared right at where he was!
"EEEEEEEEEEP!!"
The man screamed and attempted to run. But it was already too late. No, it had already been too late back when he hadn't heeded her warnings.
With her head still turned around 180 degrees, Penny half-ran backwards at a fierce speed until she was right in front of the man. It was exactly because she normally looked so beautiful that her current movements inspired so much fear.
Then, after turning around to face the man properly and realigning her head, Penny grabbed the man's neck.
"P-Please! Save me! Let me go! I-I'll do as you say! I'll leave!"
As if she were reading off the answer from a preplanned list, Penny said the exact same thing as earlier, word for word. "I will not allow you to change your reply later. I believe I told you about this beforehand."
It was useless to look to her for mercy. The same went for a change of heart. After all, Penny fundamentally lacked those emotions. She didn't have a heart to change. Once Penny decided on something, that was it. No matter how close her form was to human, her essence was of a loyal, metal golem.
"I-I'll give you anything you want! You can have all my money!"
"I will not allow you to change your reply later."
"R-Right, I'll give you my subordinates… No, slaves! So…"
"I will not allow you to change your reply later."
"H-Hey, come on. I'm begging you here… I'll do anything… W-What can I do to get you to spare me?"
"I will not allow you to change your reply later."
Her course of action was already decided. No change would be allowed.
The only person Penny would allow to change her course of action once begun was the one she recognized as her master. Of course, that was clearly not this man. In other words, he had absolutely no possibility of surviving.
This was what it meant to have no heart. In fact, Penny actually did lack such a function.
Penny closed her grip, signaling the end of the conversation, and her hands closed around the man's neck like a vice. Moonlight shone upon the two of them, projecting their shadows upon the trees around them.
Then, the man's shadow was torn to pieces.
"Elimination complete. No signs of life. Ending attack. Proceeding to dispose of the bodies before returning."
The next thing Penny did was dispose of the bodies she'd created.
Penny's two arms detached from her body, flying around as if they had minds of their own. Then after a few seconds, her arms came back carrying all the burglars they could, dropping their bodies in front of Penny. After a few rounds of that, Penny had gathered all the bodies. Lastly, Penny blasted a hole in the ground with her lasers and threw the bodies inside before burying them.
Next, I need to wash my hands. While Penny had been careful not to get any blood spatter on herself, her hands were still soaked with blood.
She went to a nearby spring and, using detergent that was normally used to clean Honda (made by Naru), she carefully washed her hands while making sure to leave no traces of blood. Then, Penny returned to the car.
There were no animals or monsters around, so just as Penny expected, nothing had happened.
All this occurred within a scant ten minutes.
***
"Yawn. We slept well."
Naru was the first to awaken the next morning, and she got out of bed while still rubbing her sleepy-looking eyes.
Pulse and breathing are all normal.
Penny waited until Naru woke up completely before speaking up. "Good morning, Master Naru."
"Ahh, good morning, Penny."
"Today, you slept for 8 hours, 14 minutes, and 44 seconds. The amount of sleep required to best maintain a flugel's proper health is 10 hours, so I humbly recommend you later take a nap for 1 hour, 45 minutes, and 16 seconds."
"No, it's fine. We do not care to manage our health in such detail."
Naru washed her face using a washbasin and dried off with a towel. Penny would have been willing to do that for Naru at any time, but Naru had wanted to do it herself and refused, leading to this current situation. To Penny, that was slightly disappointing.
However, in exchange, Naru gave Penny the job of combing her long hair, so Penny had no choice but to leave that alone for the moment. Using a comb, Penny gently but quickly combed and arranged Naru's hair.
Naru, seeming like she'd just thought of something, asked a question.
"Oh, yes. Did anything happen during the night?" She might have sensed that something had happened. Naru's intuition was sometimes abnormally sharp.
However, Penny maintained her expression, making sure to reply naturally. "No, nothing that would concern you, Master."
Like that, they continued their journey. The sky was a clear blue. On the surface, things were nothing but peaceful.