Idol Gunner [Yuri Villainess LitRPG]

Run.

That was the only thought that came to Kana’s mind. Even if it did, though, there was a massive hole in that simple plan. Surrounded by an ocean of enemies, they had no place to run to. They had no tool to cut through these enemies and reach the gate. Despite being in sight, it was further than it had ever been for the members of Velvet Beats and Fluorescent Angels.

The demons stopped moving, too. Some of them were still rattled by the quick death of the giant, while the others had paused out of curiosity. All of them had their eyes on the idols. Every single one of their minds, probably asking the same question – why had they stopped, and was it permanent?

Their getting that second answer would be disastrous. Kana needed to do something, and it needed to be quick. As some of the enemies right in front of them started closing in, she grabbed Jina’s hand and gave it a squeeze. That made the wolf-cut girl look at her. If they had a mere moment to communicate, then there was nobody Kana trusted more.

She blinked twice and then pointed at one of the demons a little deeper into the crowd. Not deep enough to be inaccessible, but still far enough to be a headache and a half. But that guy was their only chance. Carrying a simplistic, rusted sword, it was the only demon Kana could see that was visibly carrying a weapon.

On their side, at least. To the west, it looked like Kelsey had also found a similar target. To their south, Fluorescent Angels whispered to each other as they tried to figure out a plan. In front of them, too, though, was an enemy with a weapon. One person had to start it, and that was what would open the gates.

Perfect for her, then.

Jina nodded, and Kana gave her a nod back. A quick second look at the approaching demons, and then, a soft whisper.

“Now.”

Screaming to make themselves seem larger, Kana and Jina put their hands in front of their face and started running. Pushing into the barrier of demons that had been made around them, the two broke through the first wall and got into the main horde with relative ease. It was only after that that the difficult work began.

Hitting demons in the face as they got closer, Jina cleared the path. The muscles that she had built up with all the melee class training had finally come in use in a more direct manner. Behind her, to keep the demons from scratching them with their blindly attacking hands, Kana swept her feet in every opening she found. Knocking down four to five of them at once, she made sure Jina’s frontal attack was not stopped.

The girls in the circle had started their attacks as well, which was great.

While Fluorescent Angels slowly made their way through the enemies with Saturn as their main guard, Kelsey jumped from one demon’s head to another. Her experience with vantage points and rocks had clearly given her enough confidence to keep up with quick movement like this, while still maintaining her strong grip and balance.

“Here!”

A single shout from Jina was all it took to bring her back. She pushed another demon out of her way as it scratched her arm and kept moving. Hands landed on her shoulders, and arms, and chest, and hair, and face, but she kept going. One tried to pull her back with a choke, but she screeched and scratched its skin with her own nails, making it withdraw.

In front of her, Jina was in a worse position. With two scratches on her face, she had already started to bleed. Yet, standing her ground despite eight demons trying to pull her back, she kept holding the demon with the sword tightly. Kana rushed in, stretching her hand out to get the weapon before it wrestled out of her clutches.

The moment her hands landed on the hilt of the sword, Jina let go. Pulled away by the eight, she disappeared into the sea of monsters. At the same time, the owner of the sword tried to fight back.

“Jina!”

Kana swung it once, cutting through the demon’s stomach and leaving a nasty gash on its skin. As it cried and took a step back, she turned her attention to where her partner had vanished.

The goth girl had been pushed to the ground by the rabid animal-like crowd. Waving the blade in her hand without a hint of understanding how it worked, Kana tried to clear a path to her. Slashing and cutting through the skin of the monster, she could barely keep up with the amount of blood that spilled on her or how many demons she was wounding. With her eyes on her partner, Kana found that suddenly, without the reward, the numbers had stopped mattering.

Cutting the neck of one of the ones holding her down, Kana pulled the others away. Jina, too, wrestling her way out of the grab, kicked a few of them in their stomach and crotches before slowly starting to get on her feet. Kana gave her a hand and used the others to keep the threat of the sword alive.

“You take it.”

As soon as Jina got back up, Kana handed her the sword. Clearly, she was the one at an advantage with that weapon here.

“Yea….Kana!”

Jina swung the sword the moment it landed in her hands, and Kana ducked. The owner of the sword had found his way back and was getting prepared to land a hit with a large rock. Thankfully, before anything could happen, the sword found its way to his neck and sliced right through.

A spurt of blood covered Kana’s hair, and she looked up to see Jina in a similar position to herself. Behind her, two demons were starting to make their way in. She tried to get up, but the sword was still in the way. She couldn’t do it just yet. She needed to be quick, though. Crawling it was, then. Kana put her hands on the ground, moving forward. Not very far now.

“Jina…”

Her voice reached the girl, but only when it was too late.

Too late, because there was no need to warn her anymore. In front of Kana, both the demons dropped dead. In each of their heads, a knife. She looked back and noticed Kelsey, who had a sword in one hand and was flipping a knife in the other.

“I got only three, so you'd better grab those before you get up.”

With that, she went back to killing her own set of enemies.

Kana, taking her advice, pulled both of the knives out of the skulls and stood up. Her back pressed against Jina’s, she readied the knives for quick attacks using both hands, and cleared space with warning slashes. The enemies started backing up, which was good.

But all this meant was that it had taken them this long, and this much work, to just get back to square zero. To claim back the power of keeping the demons away with threats, Kana and Jina had taken almost five to seven whole minutes. During this time, they had killed a total of two enemies. Just two. Many more wounded – but regular wounded demons didn’t earn points.

Kana chuckled, and Jina chuckled back. Panting, the two of them looked in the direction of Fluorescent Angels.

Those three had also managed to get back. All three of them had swords or knives in their hands and were clearing the place out. Kana started to move towards them first, but then Jina pushed forward and took over. Her sword was much more reliable when it came to taking space, while Kana could keep the back safe as necessary with her knives.

“Kelsey-chan! Atlas-chan!!” Jina screamed to get their attention, “Come together. We’ve got a better chance to push through the gate like this.”

Their third Velvet Beats member did not take time to catch on. She immediately started moving in their direction. Fluorescent Angels, on the other hand, talked to each other first. It was only after what looked like a mildly heated discussion that Atlas started to move.

This was good, Kana thought. With the six of them together, getting back to the gate did not seem like a very difficult task. It would be tedious, and probably take longer than it should have, but getting there was what was important. In a situation like this, the Coalition probably wasn’t going to close the gates at the usual time and would allow all of them to make it back.

Slashing through the hands of anyone who dared come close, Kana kept the back clear. Jina made way to the other girls, and soon enough, they were all together.

Changing their positions so that all of their backs were pressed against each other, they readied their weapons. Now, it was a matter of attrition. Little by little, they would need to make the demons move. Coordination would be an issue, too. Walking at the same time in the same direction while maintaining their formation would take some trial-and-error.

The weapons were not perfect either. Despite being sharp, they were rusted. They could soon break, and leave them defenseless once more. They needed to be quick and smart about this. They needed…

Kana stopped thinking. As the sound of a helicopter’s rotor blades made itself known, she realized that thinking was useless right now. Because she wasn’t alone. Even though she kept the knives up and attacked the enemies once in a while, she realized why the others weren’t panicking quite as much. Because they had trust in this exact outcome.

Standing in their positions, the girls waited as the first bullet from the helicopter landed. One demon dropped dead. Then, one by one, many more started to get taken out. Two gunmen, through the helicopter’s open door, rained fire on the demons below. A third member, at the same time, dropped a ladder to allow them to climb up.

“Go.” Kana whispered to Jina, who shook her head.

“You go first. I can handle more with the sword!”

Kana wanted to fight back. Inherently, she wanted to speak up and complain about someone trying to doubt her abilities. But for some reason, she just nodded. Somehow, she just knew that refusing right now would be disastrous. Not in terms of the helicopter needing two trips because of its three-person limit, but…something else.

So, all she did was grab the ladder and start climbing. After her came Neptune and Saturn. The three of them got into the helicopter, and it started moving. They were going to be dropped straight to the gate, and then it would go back for the others.

As they flew, Kana looked down at the battlefield. The horde was much larger than she had anticipated. They did not just stretch to the edge of the map, but even beyond that. They went on forever, and ever. Even though she could see the end of their army, it didn’t mean that it was small.

Wider than it was longer, this massive horde was new. It was planned, if she had to guess. And it contained more than a hundred thousand enemies. The demons had planned this as a proper, tactical assault against the Coalition. It had clearly been a conscious choice.

As they made their way to the Gate, Kana wasn’t sure how the rest of this was going to go down. What she did know was that things were going to change. They were going to change in a way that would cause ripples across the industry. This was not expected. Even Tanaka could not have foreseen this. She herself, despite knowing how structured the demons really were, could not have predicted a full-scale war.

_____________

Once the gates were finally closed for good, the dead bodies of the few demons who had managed to cross over to Earth were disposed of. All of the idol groups’ managers had already made their way to the ruins and were standing beside them as they all awaited an official announcement.

Full of girls whispering to each other as the Coalition’s officials huddled about and tried to bring things under control, the ruins were buzzing more than they ever had. The number of helicopters that had been brought in and were not being taken away would be difficult to cover up. No matter how good you were, it was bound to attract attention.

“Band-aid, Ohara-san?”

Yamada handed two of them to her, who took them with a smile. Kelsey had refused hers, citing that she hadn’t been hurt much. Kana had one on her arm, but that was all she needed for now. They would need proper medical attention soon. But right now, the doctors were busy with Lilac Shower’s groups.

Even the healing was segregated by the leaderboard positions. It was so exaggeratedly evil that it almost made Kana laugh.

“Excuse me, may I have your attention, please?”

All of them turned at once to look at the man who had appeared at the top of the ruins’ main building. Sporting top-heavy, thick white hair defined primarily by his long bangs, the man had more going for his looks than his voice. Because no matter how hard he tried, his squeaky speech had already made Ruby Passion Jr. laugh.

But since they were the only ones, Megumi Ishida went quiet quite soon.

He cleared his throat once, reading from a script in his hands.

“Uh…The Agencies Coalition would like to sincerely apologize for the collapse of the System. We did not intend for that to happen, and we did not expect such large-scale attacks. While we are not equipped to answer all of your questions just yet – primarily because we ourselves are not sure of the extent of events - we would still like to give you a short glimpse into what went down tonight.”

He started flipping to the next page.

“Next page? How big is his handwriting?” Jina whispered.

Somehow, that made Kelsey chuckle.

The man continued, “Uh…Every single group was attacked by a larger demon that we are currently calling a ‘Giant Demon’, out of…obviousness. This demon is a variety that we have not seen before. This has not been an issue before, as evidenced by the two incidents that occurred recently involving Sakai Entertainment and Lilac Shower. The System is protected against such unknown threats and takes them into account to divide points.”

He flipped the page once more, causing even more girls to start whispering to each other. As he got to the third page, his eyes started to survey the group to see just how many were laughing at him already. For just a second, in that surveying, his eyes met Kana. And they stayed there. For longer than they should have.

Five seconds’ worth of staring, accompanying his quivering lip. Only then did he continue.

“However, we do not know what happened in the case of these Giant Demons. Almost all groups defeated them at the exact same time, which, paired with the unknown variable, caused the System to short-circuit and crash. We’re working on bringing it back, but we do not know how long it will take. Alongside this, we will also be conducting a continuous, persistent investigation into the sudden influx of enemies in the Monster Dimension.”

The man then kept the pages aside and grabbed the mic. Eyes on Kana once more, he kept looking at her. She did not reply in any way. Matching his expressionless authority, she tried to win the little competition he had put them in.

“Until then, however, the Agencies Coalition would like to announce that the competition stands cancelled for the week. This might be extended, if need be. But for now, that is what we have decided upon. The leaderboard positions for the weekend performances will be the same as last week, to ensure that we’re being fair.”

And that made Kana blink, and she lost.

Her mind.