Around the same time up in a certain sky isnd a couple of girls messed around, building a castle. They used the doll castle that Merumeru made as a scale model. Currently, they were working on the first floor’s walls and a basement level. Apparently the lower levels y underwater.

  “Merumeru, ru” Merumeru marked the line on the stone walls.

  “Is that the water line?” Magical girl Cosmos asked.

  Merumeru nodded.

  “You want the basement to be submerged? That is going to be really rough on the foundation. Though the height seems about right. So long as the dam stays filled to the same level then it should be right about this height.” The cross-dressing woman wore Alex’s clothes that didn’t fit her at all. “I see you got a drain down there.” Cosmos gestured to a raised grate. It had a slot a block of stone was slotted to fit in and block the drain. The little slime girl had put a lot of thought into the plumbing of this pce.

  Merumeru and Cosmos had excavated a several thousand foot ten foot deep square and lined it with rocks. It would have taken normal people a lot longer to move all that earth but Cosmos could use spacial magic as good as any archmage. Making a portal to move the ground and leave it straight was a trivial task for her. The other odd thing was that the stone pipe that Merumeru made was wider than it needed to be. It was wider than a human’s shoulder width. Merumeru liked to go through pipes but she was squishy, she could fit through pipes a few inches in diameter. Cosmos had asked her about the purpose of the extra wide pipe choice but couldn’t understand the slime girl’s answer. The valves were a bit of a problem. Merumeru first tried making a sb of stone. It fit in a slot and stopped the water, but the water pressure from the dam kept the blockage firmly locked in pce. The slime girl was learning plumbing through trial and error. Deciding to help the slime girl by cheating, Cosmos acquired a valve that looked like it would work from Alex’s world. It was made of inch thick stainless steel and weighed many tons. She used her trick to avoid having to deal with merchants by just taking it and leaving a mostly-gold asteroid in its pce. She wasn’t sure what the exchange rate for steel to gold was but figured 1 to 1 was an erroring on the side of caution. No one would compin if she over paid right? The valve was a nifty design, it even came with a counter weight so that the slime girl could operate it with her low strength. It just opened and closed very slowly. The point being that if everything worked properly together the basement should fill to the line and stay that way. Extra water would drain away and more water wouldn’t come in because it was flush to the normal level of the dam. Even if the dam’s water level rose, the extra water in the basement should just drain out.

  “Ru ru ru me.” Merumeru inspected the levels and the stone floor. She had spent days working on the cement blocks that Cosmos had procured through her portals getting them to form together in a watertight way. There were many stacks of those giant blocks with metal rings sticking out of the top along the basement area. The idea was to make a floor that spanned hundreds of feet not crooked though the whole distance.

  “Do you want to try opening the valve and see if it works?” Cosmos procured a thing in Alex’s garage called a ser level that she thought was fun to py with. They used it to make a line of light that showed where the top of the basement should be. She put it on the central wall and watched everything line up nicely. “I can help you with the valves.” There was a valve at the dam and a valve at the castle. Both had to be open to fill the basement.

  It took some effort to get the rge valves open but they opened with the sound of creaking metal. The pair celebrated loudly when the water filled up the basement to the fill line and stayed there.

  At that moment something wicked approached. The sky darkened, birds flew away (along with some ducks) and a gray blob bumbled up out of the drain grate.

  “Someone makes their ominous entrance.” Cosmos put her hands on her hips. “Oh great deity of grudges, wherefore art thou gracing us with thine presence?”

  “Meru?” The slime girl looked a little scared and turned to look to Cosmos for answers.

  “Hey mister blob, please tone it down a little. You are scaring the children.” The fnnel wearing magical girl chided.

  The rather ominous looking blob made an angry face but the atmosphere became more normal. “Fine.” The blob harrumphed.

  “So, again what brings you here.” Cosmos asked again.

  “I have some information that I thought you’d like to know. Two of those in my domain have come across information that it looks very likely that the demons are about to viote the accords.” The blob spat out. “Not that I care or anything.”

  Cosmos smiled and whispered into Merumeru’s ear. “Mister blob is a bit of a tsundere. But don’t tell him I said that.”

  “Hey, I heard that!” The blob gave another angry face. “This is serious. I thought you would like a heads up and a chance to gear up to make a dramatic entrance.”

  “What happened? Did the demon queen order the hunting down of fmingos? If so, I think I should pay her a visit that ends with her hurtling through space into the sun.” The fnnel cd magical girl grinned evilly.

  “Sadly no, the demon queen has been sleeping for years, pying house with her captured prince that she keeps trapped in a dream. The demons that come from hell only have their contract that keeps them in this world.” the god of grudges expined. “It looks like they are going to attack Fufi in ignorance, not knowing what she is.”

  “Meru!” The slime girl excimed. She worried for her friends.

  “Don’t worry little one. Breaking the accords will only bring overwhelming consequences on those that do so.” The blob gestured a slimy appendage to Cosmos. “She’d been making pnar dismissal enchantments for decades. There are enough to purge the whole world of extrapnar beings.”

  “Hey, everyone needs a hobby.” Cosmos protested.

  “Hmm, how can we twist this to cause the most damage to demon-kind?” Cosmos considered the situation. “I don’t think I can wake up the demon queen. That would also be a viotion but maybe I can provoke one of her generals?”

  “Merumeru me me ru?” Merumeru asked.

  “The demon queen is abusing a loophole in the system.” The blob of gray answered Merumeru’s question. “She was a royal before she gave up her humanity. Demons don’t have csses. But someone who turns into a demon keeps their css. Normally, summoning demons is draining, they can only keep so many in the prime material pne for so long but if they swear loyalty and become a noble’s vassal then rather than draining the caster it drains the nd they own. This way, she can bring as many demons into their world that are willing to accept her terms. That is why the war was so unfair. The number of low level demons in hell is functionally limitless compared to the popution of Terre. Their home pne is a giant battlefield on a bsted wastend. The most common cultivation resource there are other demons. Anyway, the point is that the demon empire is a hydra. Cutting off one head will not make a meaningful impact on their numbers.”

  “That’s enough. We don’t need to share such heavy things with children.” Cosmos pointed a finger at the blob. “I know you’ve got many grudges against the demons to fulfill. You even offered me a way out of the accords to join the battle against the demon queen. I saw how well that went for that one member of the hero’s party though.”

  “Meru?” Merumeru’s head spun at all the information.

  “The first time I met mister grudge was when the hero’s party failed. He offered me a way out of the accords but it would require me dying and becoming a revenant. He’s not a bad blob but he’s not a good blob either.” Cosmos sounded a bit annoyed. “When the st member of the hero’s party fell he took the deal that his soul would not rest until the grudge against the demons was fulfilled.”

  “He still fights till this day.” The blob interjected.

  Cosmos continued. “He’s died so many times. I watched him for a while hoping he’d be able to do what the hero could not. For decades he sughtered demons every day up to tier 3 but he met his match when he interrupted a tier 4 kaiju’s cultivation. The kaiju killed him.”

  “You are not telling the whole story. The only thing that can end a revenant is the fulfillment of their grudge.” The blob emoted angrily.

  “Yes, but they still lose levels when they die. That blow was one he couldn’t recover from. All of his gear was lost and he came back for a rematch but it went even worse. The former knight died again and lost another level. He fled, but without his gear he could only handle tier 2 and tier 1 demons.” Cosmos expined to the slime girl. “Eventually, he lost all of his levels getting repeatedly killed when they figured out how revenants work. The demons sealed him in a coffin.”

  Merumeru shuddered. “Ruuu.” What a horrible fate, to be betrayed by two members of your party, go on fighting and not do more but be a drop in the ocean. She looked a little sad.

  “Don’t be sad. Revenants are undead. They tend to be incredibly mentally resilient.” The blob paused. “There are thousands of them pulling out the nails that hold the demon empire up. They don’t do much but they don’t give up.”

  “Can we take a look? Can I use your pool?” The blob gestured to the water. Merumeru nodded in agreement. The grudge deity spread out a sheen on top of the water his body. It dispyed like a projector. A pink fme could be seen floating in the bckness. A pair of white fmes burned in the background. “Looks like he’s still in the coffin. Only the life sense is working.”

  Shouting and talking could be heard and the stomping of feet. Many other white fmes moved around in the distance. Eventually someone with a bck and white combined fme could be seen. That fire was a lot bigger than the rest.

  “The pink fme is a magical girl. The white fmes are normal people. The bck fme is a demon. You can tell it is possessing someone because it is smothering the white fme.” Cosmos expined what was going on to Merumeru.

  A sound of shoveling could be heard. The two white fmes and the pink fmes were off in the distance. Eventually, the sound of dragging and the thump of being dropped into a hole resounded from the image. Then a whole bunch more fmes started approaching. There were a bunch of small bck ones on one side and a bunch of small red ones on the other side. A rge red one led the smaller red ones.

  “The red ones are fire demons.” Cosmos expined to Merumeru. “The bigger one is a tier two demon.”

  The image shifted to the inside of a carriage. Stuffed animals and dolls lined the compartment. As threats to destroy the carriage came out, the corners of vision kept getting redder.

  “I’m surprised Alex didn’t open the coffin. I wonder why she didn’t let him loose.” Cosmos patted the slime girl on the head. “I’m not sure what that other thing is. A cursed object perhaps?”

  The blob nodded. “Yes, that is a hero doll. The amount of resentment directed at it turned it into a cursed doll.” Grudge dismissed the image and continued. “As to why the coffin wasn’t opened. It is because of the cursed clothing. It forces the wearer to obey the commands of her mistress.”

  “That’s silly, any magical girl could get out of that easily.” Cosmos scoffed. “The only thing she’d need is a cute pair of scissors. If the clothing is less cute then the cuter thing will prevail. This is basic magical girl training. Cuteness is the most important thing for us.” Cosmos reached into empty space and her arm disappeared into a portal that she fished around it. She pulled out a pair of scissors that had gems attached to them and ribbons wrapped around the handles. “See, cute scissors!”

  The blob frowned. “Anway, this is just a professional courtesy. It is not like I care or anything.” Grudge formed his hands and touched his two pointed fingers together nervously. He lowered his head a bit and got quiet.

  “Thank you.” Cosmos pulled out a wand with a star floating unattached on the end. “Anyway I’ve got a king to trick into attacking me.”

  “Magical girl Cosmo, Transform!” The fnnel cd magical girl held up her wand and floated into the air, magical starlight swirling around her and obstructing her from view.

  The blob with ‘hmph’ then drained down into the sewer grate, leaving the area.

  Merumeru could only watch with wide eyes.