Wednesday, 9:17 a.m. Castle Standard Time.
Velzavelle was mid-pull on the guaranteed SSR pity counter.
Phone in left hand, me squished against her right cheek like a stress ball.
The alarm klaxons went off.
Red runes lit up across every wall like a rave from hell.
She didn't even look up.
"WHO THE FUCK IS KNOCKING BEFORE NOON ON A WEDNESDAY?!"
Her voice cracked the obsidian ceiling. Three demon generals fainted from pure terror.
I just jiggled once on her head (current location: living beret).
The throne room doors exploded inward in a shower of holy light and sparkles.
In marched the Four Heavenly Heroes, looking exactly like the wanted posters, only shinier.
Leading the charge: Claire de Lumière, Saintess of the Holy See, Level 99, bearer of Aegis Lux, the Goddess's personal microphone on earth.
Golden hair glowing.
White-gold armor reflecting purity in 8K.
Face locked in righteous fury™.
She pointed her staff and thundered:
"Demon King Velzavelle! Your reign of terror ends tod—"
She saw me.
More accurately, she saw me perched on Velzavelle's head like a smug blueberry pom-pom, waving one tiny stub in greeting.
Time stopped.
Claire's halo literally glitched into heart shapes.
Leon the Hero, behind her, whispered in horror:
"Captain… your divinity is leaking."
Claire didn't hear him.
She was already walking forward in a trance, staff clattering to the floor.
Velzavelle finally noticed the intruders.
She blinked, wiped away the dried gacha tears, and tilted her head.
"Oh. Wednesday already? Damn."
Claire was now one meter away.
Then half a meter.
Then she knelt.
Reached both hands toward me like I was the original scripture.
"May I…?" she asked in the smallest, most broken voice ever recorded from a woman who can call down orbital judgment.
Velzavelle's danger instincts finally booted up after three loading bars and a Windows error sound.
Crimson magic detonated across the room like a nuke made of blood roses.
"Touch Poyo-chan and I will erase your soul in thirteen dead languages," she hissed, voice layered with enough draconic harmonics to make the air bleed.
Claire didn't even blink.
She looked up with tears already streaming and whispered:
"I will abandon the church.
I will burn the holy texts.
I will fall right now if you let me hold him for five seconds."
Dead. Silence.
Even the castle's background invasion BGM awkwardly faded out.
Velzavelle's brain performed a full blue-screen-of-death, rebooted, then blue-screened again.
I jiggled once from atop her head.
"Poyo?"
That did it.
Velzavelle's murderous aura vanished like someone yanked the power cord.
She reached up, gently lifted me off her head, and (after the longest suffering sigh in history) placed me directly into Claire's waiting palms.
"Five seconds," she muttered. "Then you leave and reschedule your apocalypse for after maintenance."
Claire cradled me like I was the Goddess herself reincarnated as jelly.
Her face ascended to a plane of existence previously unknown to mankind.
Pure bliss. Actual tears of joy rolling down cheeks that had never cried in 99 levels.
"Hello, little one," she whispered, voice trembling. "I am Claire, and I am going to hell for this and I have never been happier."
I patted her thumb with my tiny slime hand.
"Poyo~ ♪"
She made a sound exactly like a kettle exploding, then fainted dead away.
Leon barely caught her before she face-planted.
He stared at me in open existential horror.
"What the fuck is that thing and why does it have war-crime-level cuteness stats?!"
Aria the elf, who had been live-recording everything on a magic crystal since the doors exploded, zoomed in on my face and squeaked:
"I can't upload this, it'll break the scrying network again!"
Mako the berserker took one look at me, roared "SMALL BLUE WIFE!" at 180 decibels, charged forward, tripped over Claire's unconscious body, and ate marble.
Velzavelle pinched the bridge of her nose so hard it left marks.
"Poyo-chan, come back. Party's over."
I rolled up Claire's arm, across her shoulder, boinged once, and landed perfectly back in Velzavelle's embrace.
The Demon King hugged me tight and glared at the heroes like a dragon guarding her hoard.
"Raid failed. Come back next week. Bring better emotional resistance. And snacks. Poyo-chan likes blueberry pancakes."
Leon opened his mouth to protest.
Claire woke up, sat bolt upright, and declared in the most serene voice imaginable:
"I am converting the entire Holy See into the Church of Poyo. Services will be held by hugging plushies of his likeness. Heresy is officially canceled forever."
Leon looked at Claire.
Looked at me.
Looked at Velzavelle openly nuzzling my slime head while muttering "mine mine mine."
He sheathed the holy sword with a sigh that aged him ten years.
"...Next week it is."
As the heroes dragged their broken saintess away (she was trying to crawl back while babbling in holy tongues), Velzavelle carried me back to her setup.
She flopped into her gaming chair, placed me on the desk, and opened the gacha app again.
This time she got Summer Berserker Artoria in one ten-pull.
She stared at the screen.
Stared at me.
Then, very quietly:
"Poyo-chan… did you just rig the gacha for me?"
I gave her the most innocent jiggle in existence.
She burst into fresh tears and buried her face in my squishy body.
Outside the castle, the human army's morale hit absolute zero when their saintess emerged holding a hand-drawn sign:
War postponed indefinitely ♡
Reason: Too round to sin
The invasion was officially canceled.
Velzavelle spent the rest of the day feeding me pancakes and whispering "I don't deserve you" between sobs.
I just settled on her head like a crown and decided something very important.
If being the cutest creature alive was my cheat skill…
…I was going to abuse it until every single person in this world was too emotionally compromised to ever fight again.
Starting with the shut-in dragon currently humming lullabies while designing a Poyo-chan onesie in MS Paint.
Mission accepted.
Chapter 2 End.