What Does It Have to Do with Me

"Now that's a genius idea!"

"Even I, Rick, have to admire these idiots. They actually came up with an absolutely brilliant idea that amazed me!"

When Morty found the suitcase-sized Reality Instrument on the spaceship and asked AI Rick to take a look at it,

the latter was also shocked by the thing's capabilities after listening to the explanation and examining it himself.

Unlike the Silent Sword, a weapon designed specifically to kill Cthulhu monsters,

the Reality Instrument was, in a sense, absolutely an SSSS-rank divine artifact.

It might be at a disadvantage against enemies on the physical level, but against enemies on the spiritual level, or even those in nonphysical forms,

it was practically a divine artifact.

"So you haven't tested it in actual combat yet?"

"No problem! I'll install it on the ship. Most of the parts on this spaceship are original parts from the one underground anyway!"

AI Rick acted immediately, installing the Reality Instrument onto the ship.

Half an hour later,

the two of them piloted the two-seater spaceship straight into outer space.

When they broke through the atmosphere and saw the dazzling sea of stars in the Cthulhu World, Morty was deeply captivated by the beautiful yet dangerous world before him.

Unlike the world Morty came from,

the space in this world was filled with battlefields left behind by the large and small conflicts that occurred every few thousand, ten thousand, or even hundreds of millions of years between Cthulhu's three major factions.

After at least several thousand years of erosion,

these battlefields had transformed from ugly ruins into scenes brimming with artistic tension.

For example, the nebula on the right side of Morty's field of vision.

It was arranged in a three-dimensional cone.

It was obvious that the massive being who had been beaten back then had been pinned to a planet by an incredibly powerful opponent and pounded mercilessly...

In the end, the entire planet had been shattered into fragments scattered across at least dozens of light-years in a conical formation.

Only the once-sharp edges had been worn smooth and round by time.

It had become like a neon light on the body of a colossal reinforced-concrete city beast amid the sea of stars.

"It's so beautiful..."

"It's so depressing..."

The old man and the young man aboard the ship sighed at the same time.

Then Morty saw AI Rick pull out a bottle of liquor from somewhere and tilt his head back to chug it.

Morty, who had long been extremely dissatisfied with Grandpa's drunk driving in space, reached out and knocked the bottle from AI Rick's hand.

"What the hell! What's wrong with me having a little drink? Aren't you getting a little too controlling?"

AI Rick glared at Morty and shouted angrily.

Morty's face darkened as he said that once this was over, AI Rick could drink wherever he wanted.

Grandpa's drunk driving in space had already given him psychological trauma.

Last time, their spaceship had nearly blasted a huge hole straight through a Galactic Empire warship.

So if he dared to drive drunk, then forget about going to Sothoth Star today.

They would go straight to find Cthulhu instead. That would be even more convenient.

Morty was using Cthulhu to scare him again.

Although AI Rick was unhappy about it, he had no choice but to endure it.

He didn't have a Portal Gun. Otherwise, he would have escaped the Cthulhu World long ago. Once they dealt with Cthylla's situation,

he would show Morty something big!

As the two headed toward Sothoth Star, Cthulhu's home planet,

Rick, who had returned here, gloomily discovered that his home was once again surrounded by a bunch of Flymen.

As everyone knew, the Galactic Empire's influence was not limited to Universe 137.

Otherwise, it would be impossible to explain why Flymen were present at the dimensional customs checkpoint Grandpa visited for the first time in the show, or why, after he screwed up and fled to another world for the first time in the show,

the Galactic Empire's Flymen still appeared in another universe.

The Flymen were formidable!

But Rick definitely wished the Flymen would all die.

Because there was no way this group of six-foot-tall Flymen had established the Galactic Empire by topping up phone credits.

Neither viviparous nor oviparous creatures, the Flymen's maximum reproduction speed had outright crushed AI cloning technology.

This had given them the racial trait of being impossible to wipe out completely.

An unmodified Flyman family, a husband and wife, could give birth twice a year, producing three thousand children each time.

It only took three months for them to grow from larvae into adults.

And thanks to genetic modification technology, their lifespan had been raised to eighty years!

Therefore, Ricks in every world, just like Rick, deeply despised this ugly race with its absurdly massive population.

Now these Flymen had come knocking.

Rick had no intention of talking.

He just wanted to start fighting.

But the other side stepped forward and stated that they had not come for Rick, but for the whereabouts of 137.

Rick had already pulled out his gear and was preparing to summon seven or eight Old Gods to wipe these guys out.

But when he heard that they wanted 137,

he stopped what he was doing.

He could definitely beat them, but their fly-like habit of swarming around would surely annoy him to death afterward.

So if they wanted to find Rick from Dimension C-137,

why not send a diplomatic document to the Citadel of Ricks? Why come looking for him?

"You're a Rick. Don't you know the Citadel of Ricks has always been hiding somewhere we can't find?"

"Even if we could deliver a diplomatic document to them, they wouldn't be willing to hand over that guy from 137."

"So you came to me because you think I can help you?" Rick sneered.

The Flyman leading them was a level-nine sergeant. That rank, and the word "sergeant," meant that he was only one opportunity away from entering the Empire's ruling class.

So he appeared very serious and sincere.

"You Ricks are a major problem for the Galactic Empire, but we have countless other major problems to deal with. So there's no need to think that our Galactic Empire is especially targeting you, right?"

"Sometimes when your Portal Guns run out of energy and you come through our portals, have we ever seriously investigated your identities?"

"So, just like the purpose of our visit here,"

"137 has gone too far. He and his friends occupy two of the top ten spots on the wanted list."

"These so-called freedom fighters keep challenging the order that keeps everything stable, so I also know that you have dealings with the Shadow Group."

"The purpose of my visit this time is to ask you to make a suggestion to the Shadow Group."

"Hand over 137, and we can cooperate!"

As an outsider, Rick had been forced into the first contact between two major powers simply because he knew Grandpa.

Rick had countless curses he wanted to throw at Grandpa.

He really must have been blind back then to insist on saving that old layered pancake's life, only to end up tangled in such a cursed fate!

And now, the Galactic Empire had come knocking to check his meter, carrying his bill with them!

There was no fucking thing he could say!