Later, Aidi’s participation was both quickly and easily decided on.—By that, I mean that Rokuko returned and told me she’d be participating.

“Which is why we’re going to have a strong helper.”

“Uh huh.”

Well. I definitely didn’t expect a Demon King Faction core like Aidi to come to our aid.

There’s many things I can’t show her… actually, no, I was already intending to hide all of my trump cards from Haku-san anyway, so nothing’s really changed.

Rather, the heck’s going on with her helping out? I thought this was turning into some freak proxy war between Haku-san’s faction and the Demon King Faction.

“You know, that’s not even the most surprising part. I mean, Core No. 8-sama—oh, that’s the leader of the Beast King Faction, the DP Ranking’s 10th position, the Beast King, okay? That Beast King bowed his head and told Haku Ane-sama Please take care of No. 629, it caused such an uproar.”

“Heeh. Beast King Faction, so the leader of the faction that Orange belonged to?”

“Exactly, nkyuu~. For Core No. 8-sama to lower himself for my sake, nkyuuu…!”

Orange’s orange bunny tail was flapping up and down in glee. So fluffy.

I see, so the faction’s leader publicly lowered his head for the sake of an estranged underling. If doing that would be enough to earn himself that much loyalty, it doesn’t seem like it’d be that bad of a hand to play at all. Even without listening to the praising part of the story, I could tell it was about him demonstrating how open-minded he was.

Moreover, he even managed to raise a flag for Orange—who by all rights should have been alienated—to return… which meant that, by returning with intelligence about Haku-san, he’d effectively be a spy for them.

I couldn’t be sure if I was just overthinking it or if the Beast King was acting out some master plan, but in either case, I felt as though he was an opponent I couldn’t afford to let my guard down against.

Let’s try and not antagonize him. Well, I doubt I’d actually be able to antagonize someone in the top 10 in the first place.

“… But I get the feeling there’s something else going on with Aidi being our ally… Kehma, what do you think?”

“Huh? Oh, well, I definitely wasn’t expecting her help, but I have no problem with it. It actually settles our offensive strategy.”

“Eh, really?”

I was originally wanting to learn more about Core No. 564—our opponent—before deciding on our strategy, but now we can just leave that to Aidi.

It’d be better if we provided a bit extra for it as well, but keeping it to a modest level would be best.

“Yep, there won’t be an issue unless Aidi betrays us and attacks us.”

“I see… So you’re saying that it’s better to let Aidi go fully on the offense so that she has no part in our defense. I don’t think she would since she pledged to Father-sama, but she could keep the momentum going and turn on us after everything’s decided… Taking that into account, there’s no choice but to have her attack.”

Rokuko smoothly figured out my reasoning on how to make use of Aidi.

Yeah. She’s gotten pretty smart, seriously.

“I was originally thinking about somehow instigating Wataru into it, but now that it’s come to this, it’d probably be better to just have him focus on defense.”

“Thinking about that, Aidi’s participation is actually a good thing, isn’t it.”

“All that’s left is using Meat and Ichika, though it might be better to just leave all that to Aidi…?”

“… Kehma, Kehma. What should I do?”

“Orange, butter up all the adventurers coming to the dungeon.”

I left the customer service portion to Orange, who had been listening in silently the whole time.

As for the dungeon, after Rokuko and he had gone to the assembly, I’d gone back to disseminate the acknowledgement that this dungeon was for the sake of loving on rabbits. There were a few uncertain issues, but the dungeon didn’t seem to be in danger for the time being.

Strawberry, the rabbits, as well as Meat and Ichika were all controlling the white rabbits at the moment, doing their best to charm the second search team. (It seemed like Misha had put some word out about it)

“Got it, nkyuu. I’ll show kyuu I could even charm a succubus!”

“And now I’ll be moving on to doing what I couldn’t do while you were absent.”

“Y-Yeah. I should’ve told kyuu about it sooner, but I thought Rokuko told kyuu already.”

Well, normally that’s the sort of thing a Master and Core would discuss with each other, after all. There’s no helping that Orange thought it was something he didn’t need to tell me.

“Please tell me around a week before the time comes next year, alright?”

“Oh, sure, I’ll try to say something if I don’t forget.”

Looks like she won’t tell me next year, either.

I sighed.

“By the way, did anything else happen at the assembly?”

“Oh yeah, I got a lot of attention from having that Dungeon Battle with Haku Ane-sama last year. Oh, my rank went up too! I’m 182nd! Aidi was 175th, so I think I might catch up to her next year. I could even outpace her! We’ve really done great, Kehma. Hohoh~”

Rokuko rubbed her finger across the bottom of her nose in boastful pride.

I couldn’t really tell how good of a thing it was to raise in rank, but it’s probably better than I thought it was.

“That so? That’s good, then… How about you, Orange?”

“I was 290th, nkyuu. Went up ten ranks since last year~”

So Orange was overtaken by Rokuko and I in that one year… Well, our earnings still have a huge way to go to get to where Ontentoo and Haku-san are.

“By the way, what’s Core No. 564’s rank?”

“167th. They had a few million DP.”

“That’s a pretty strong opponent…”

“About what we’d expect of a 500 series Demon King Faction core. But he’s basically sentenced to death by Core No. 6. And you know what happened then? Aidi riled him up and he undid his humanization and returned into this baphomet…? Thing.”

“Hoh, baphomet?”

That’s some important information. If we can figure out our opponents true form, we should be able to form a meta (that is, take special measures). Still though, the heck was a baphomet, again? Some kind of goat-headed demon, I think… what kind of weak points would it have?

Maybe I should ask Haku-san or Aidi—if I have to…

“Are there any special victory conditions for the Dungeon Battle?”

“None. It’s the usual win by touching the Dungeon Core. Aidi said that she might just go and destroy it though.”

“I don’t doubt that.”

“… But isn’t this basically a three on one? I’m starting to feel sorry for No. 564. Even if it’s three of us 600 series cores against a single 500 series, I can’t see this as balanced.”

Hmm. It I recall, there’s around a hundred year gap between every hundred cores.

Taking that into account, it’s hard to tell if even this three-against-one is even… and even then that doesn’t factor in whether they have a master or not.

Case in point, that trivial trio—all also 600 series cores—had no masters and were treated as a single team.

“I wonder if Aidi knows whether Core No. 564 has a master or not…”

“She might? She’s Core No.6’s favorite, after all.”

Yeah, let’s have Aidi get us some information.

I guess all that’s left is to prepare our defenses until the time comes?