—I just don’t know how to handle girls like her...
He grumbled inwardly as he fell asleep.
But when he woke up in the morning, he noticed that it was strangely silent. He left his tent, and saw that Hiroshi’s tent had disappeared.
—Don’t tell me...!
Eiko’s tent was still up. He went inside and saw Korone standing there with her arms crossed, as if she were embracing someone. But Korone was alone, and completely motionless. She looked like some kind of surreal statue.
“She got me...”
Korone had been shut down. That much was obvious. Eiko must have persuaded Korone to give her a hug, and then pulled on the tail that was the power switch for artificial humans.
Akuto wrapped his arms around the frozen Korone so she wouldn’t fall over when she was reactivated, and then plunged his hand under her skirt and searched around for her tail.
—I hate doing this. I feel so embarrassed...
He somehow managed to stretch his hands behind her hips, trying as best he could to avoid touching her soft behind, and then touched her round tail. When he pulled it, he heard a low whir, and the light returned to Korone’s eyes.
“Now quickly, give me that special ningyo-yaki... huh? You’re not Eiko Teruya, are you?” Korone voiced her surprise expressionlessly.
“You were shut down.”
“Oh dear. So this wasn’t an attempt to use magic to change places with her, and then play with my body.”
“...Where did you get that idea? We don’t have time for your jokes.” Akuto pulled Korone off of him.
“So she must have...” Korone looked around the tent.
There was a letter placed on top of a small backpack. Akuto picked it up and saw that it was from Hiroshi.
《I realized that you’re only saying you’re going home to test us, boss. I promise you we’ll find the treasure on our own.》
Akuto put his head in his hands.
“Eiko completely conned him...”
“He’s an idiot, isn’t he?” Korone said.
Now Hiroshi was practically her hostage. Akuto opened the backpack and saw his share of the food and water. He put it on his back and started to fold up the tents.
“Are you going after them?” Korone asked. Akuto nodded.
“...Yeah, whatever. Their next stop was the Knight Equipment Research Lab, right? Do you know where that is?”
“Its location is recorded in the old files.”
“Then let’s go.”
Akuto started to walk. They had a head start on him, and he couldn’t imagine that he moved that much faster than they did, so he’d be arriving several hours after them.
“There must be something else protecting the treasure, right?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“That girl wants me to be the Demon King no matter what it takes, I guess. She was saying something about how it was fate.”
“It’s another sign that that everyone is expecting a lot from you.”
“Stop joking around.”
Korone’s tone was the same as ever, so he thought it was a joke, but Korone denied it.
“No, it’s not a joke. People expect this of you.”
“I don’t want to be the Demon King, though.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you want. It’s a problem of the ego, I suppose.”
“I don’t want you making this more complicated than it has to be. I want to make the world a peaceful place, and right now I think that’s going well.”
“Many humans would say the same thing. But even so, it doesn’t always go well. That’s what it means to be human. We artificial humans are all jealous of that.”
“That it doesn’t go well?”
“Indeed. Something like that.”
“Huh...”
For a fairly long time after that, the two of them walked in silence. They traveled down an unmaintained mountain road, and at the end of it they found an abandoned town. It had been destroyed in the war, and no one had ever bothered to repair it. Akuto had never seen an entire town in ruins before, and it was eerie enough that he was a little hesitant to go inside.
“Why didn’t they repair the damage to the town?” he asked.
“It appears that they didn’t have the funds. It’s on Academy grounds, so in theory, the Academy would need to fund the repairs.”
“And so they just left it like this, huh?”
Akuto started to walk down the city’s main street. The damage was horrendous, but he felt better when he realized that there were no signs of casualties.
“Two armies collided here after the residents were evacuated,” Korone explained. “The Demon King’s army was after the knights’ lab in this city, so the knights evacuated the residents and used the building we’re heading towards as a base.”
“I see,” Akuto said.
But just as the words left his mouth, there was a shaking like an earthquake and a low noise reverberated through his body.
“Looks like my bad feeling was right.”
Akuto put his pack down and started to run. Korone followed him and explained where they were going.
“I’m sure you already noticed, but the sound’s location matches that of the Knight Equipment Lab.”
“I know that.”
He turned the corner and emerged onto a large street. In the center of a plaza a little further down, he saw a half-destroyed five-story building. It was an old building made from concrete, which was a rare and valuable material now. The roof over the entrance had collapsed, and past it he could see a wide space that was probably the front hall.
There was a monster there.
—You’ve got to be kidding me, right...?
Akuto could see what looked like an iron giant. The humanoid figure must have been at least three meters tall, and it was wearing immense full-body armor. There were flashes of light appearing on its body, and when he heard Eiko’s shouts, he realized that they were her attacks.
With each strike there was a metallic clang, and sparks flew along the armor’s surface. He caught glimpses of Eiko as she moved — she seemed to be dashing around the giant, attacking it with her dagger.
—She’s not even scratching it.
Akuto was struck by the realization that he had no idea what to do. He couldn’t come up with any kind of plan at all. But he knew he had to save her.
“What am I supposed to do against a monster like that?” he complained to nobody in particular as he readied his incantation gun.
Suddenly the giant froze.
—Huh?
Akuto couldn’t imagine that it had heard him from out here, but he was fairly certain that the giant had noticed him. It spun around and began to walk towards the collapsed entrance. The opening was too small for it, so its shoulders smashed right through the rubble as it came outside. It ignored the falling concrete pieces, kicking up dust as it walked.
Even Akuto couldn’t help but feel fear at the sight of the colossal giant shaking the earth with each step it took.
It was three meters tall, fully covered in armor, and the gauntlet on its right hand was massive. It held an axe the size of a full-grown person.
—No way. I’m not fighting a monster like this! Maybe I can just stun it for a minute and give them time to get away...!
Akuto fired the Incantation Gun. Of course, he aimed for the chinks in the armor. There was a gap on the backside of the knee to give it space to bend. It was too dark to see past the giant’s face guard, so he couldn’t tell what was inside. But whether it was human or machine, it was sure to take damage from an attack to the back of its knee.
He controlled the bullet’s flight path to make it strike there. But just when it looked like it would hit, the giant moved its knee the side and blocked it with the armored front plate.
“What!?”
Akuto couldn’t believe that thing was capable of something so fast and precise.
—How could that huge body�
�s senses be so sharp?
He remembered that it had just heard his tiny whisper, too. It would be harder than he thought to break through its defenses.
Then he heard another shout. Eiko had jumped out from the building and tried to attack the giant from behind. But of course, the giant could sense this. Eiko was aiming for the gaps in the armor too, but it dodged out of the way at the last second once more.
The giant swung the axe at her as if it was swatting a fly. Eiko dodged it easily. The giant didn’t seem like it could be that precise in battle — it kept trying to swing its axe at Eiko, but she leapt from one spot to the next before it could hit her.
Since dodging was so easy, the idea of running didn’t seem to occur to Eiko. At this point, Akuto was ready to knock her out and run, but he quickly realized that this would do no good. Someone else had run out from the building.
It was Hiroshi. Akuto had no idea why, but he was holding an electrified baton like the ones modern knights used when patrolling the town, and trying to attack the giant.
“Hiyaaah!”
—Well, damn... Hiroshi’s not going to run either, huh?
Akuto finally decided that the best course of action was to keep firing his gun at the giant to distract it. It was either annoyed by the bullets, or decided that Hiroshi wasn’t a threat, because it turned its face towards Akuto just like he’d hoped.
But the giant started to walk in broad strides, moving much faster than before. Akuto tried to run, but given the length of its stride, there was no way he could outrun it. Now it was Akuto who was in trouble.
—Man, this isn’t funny at all.
The giant was almost on top of him. But even as Akuto panicked, he was able to come up with a plan. The giant’s only weapon was its axe. Eiko was dodging it easily, but even if the giant was slow, it was only slow until it actually started to bring down the axe. Once it started to come down, it came down fast, and it was too big to dodge by jumping out of the way. Akuto just wasn’t fast enough to try.
—So I’ll just have to...
Akuto loaded the most powerful explosive bullet into his Incantation Gun. If he manipulated the mana to make the biggest explosion he could, he should be able to blast away the giant.
He readied the gun, and didn’t bother to aim. He knew the enemy would try to block it with its armor.
The giant raised its axe as it charged. Akuto could hear the sound of it ripping through the air.
—Now!
Akuto pulled the trigger.
At the Academy, this bullet was only used by students brawling with each other. But the instant the bullet hit, Akuto filled it with mana from the surrounding air. The explosion quickly swelled up to ten times its normal size.
A ball of light swelled up with a roar at the impact point on the giant’s chest.
The light engulfed the giant and kept spreading.
The shock wave raced through the whole town, momentarily shaking the surrounding rubble.
After he’d blown up the classroom last time, Akuto had investigated the force of the explosion he’d caused as part of an effort to keep it from happening again. The result, he’d found, was that it was between five and seven kilos of force per square centimeter. Without something to protect you, the explosive pressure alone could just about kill you. Even as the explosion was dispersed through the air, this direct hit to the chest should still be enough to take down the giant... or so he’d thought.
—Wha—!?
Akuto was astonished.
The ball of light faded away. And the giant was unharmed. The only sign that it had been hit at all was the steam coming off the heated metal.
“No way...” Akuto said.
The giant raised its axe again.
It was too late to get away.
The axe started to come down, aiming straight for Akuto.
It sliced through the air straight towards him.
And then there was the awful wet sound of metal slicing through meat.
“Boss!” Hiroshi screamed as he ran towards the giant’s back.
“Kyaah!”
Even Eiko screamed as she looked up at the giant’s back.
But—
—Oh, I see. So that’s the trick. This is what it means to be good at some things, and bad at others. I guess it was a good idea I went to talk to Fujiko.
Akuto now realized how valuable that information was.
He’d thrown the Incantation Gun down at his feet. And with his now-free hands, he’d grabbed the giant axe that was as big as he was. He’d grabbed it just before it hit his forehead, and was trapping it with his palms.
—Damn it. I’m the reserved type, so I never would’ve thought I’d be good at something as risky as this.
His muscles were bulging up so much, you could see them clearly through his clothes. He’d filled his muscles with mana, and now he was many times stronger than before.
—And unlike other magic, I can tell the power’s completely under my control!
Akuto looked up.
The giant was clearly uncertain of how to deal with this. It couldn’t push the axe or pull it, so it was just shaking its body violently. No matter how strong Akuto was now, his weight hadn’t changed. This meant all the giant would have to do is lift Akuto up in the air, but Akuto had dug his feet into the ground, and was using the strength of his legs to stay there.
“Don’t resist, please...!” Akuto said as he twisted the axe.
The giant pulled harder to get it back. It was a test of strength between Akuto and the giant.
But the battle was over quickly. Since the giant refused to let go, its arms twisted with the axe, and finally its whole body was flung to the side.
The ground shook once more. Hiroshi and the others even jumped a little.
Akuto took the axe out of the giant’s hand. He tossed it up in the air, let it spin once, and grabbed by the hilt, then began to swing it around as if it were a quarter the size it really was.
The giant didn’t speak, but it began to crawl away from Akuto with sluggish movements. Then it stood up, turned, and began to walk away. Its movements felt less like fleeing than an admission of defeat.
—Why do all the guardians of the treasure have such distinct personalities?
Akuto wondered. But Hiroshi ran up and yelled, as if trying to interrupt his thoughts.
“Wow! Way to go, boss!”
Akuto tossed the axe aside. This time Hiroshi had done something he couldn’t just shrug off.
“Don’t even start. What were you thinking, going someplace so dangerous?”
Hiroshi didn’t seem to understand what he was saying.
“Huh? I figured that as your first student, boss, I had to get stronger.”
“Why? It’s not like there’s ever any real point in fighting. Did this last fight actually get you anywhere?”
“You can only say that because you’re strong, boss! You need to think about how we, the weak, feel!”
—Suddenly he’s the one who’s mad at me?
This didn’t seem fair to Akuto, but since Hiroshi seem excessively mad, he decided not to say anything.
“Okay, I get it. But I’m telling you, I don’t really understand who’s weak and who’s strong either.”
Akuto shrugged his shoulders and turned to look for Eiko. She was looking at Akuto with even more excitement than Hiroshi.
“You really did come! I knew it!”
Eiko ran up to him expectantly, but he walked straight past her towards the lab.
“You’re going to try and force me to get involved in this no matter what, right? So I’m willing to play along and see where this goes. Just don’t forget that this is because you’re holding my conscience hostage.”
“Aww, why are you acting like such a goodie-goodie? I know you’re not!” Eiko said angrily.
—I just don’t know how to deal with girls like her...
Akuto went inside the ruins of the lab. He was a little curious about what
they’d been researching there, but it had been totally stripped clean. He checked each of the rooms that led off the front hall, but all of them were empty. The only one with any furnishings at all was the room in the far back.
—Come to think of it, the message only mentioned the back shelf.
The only furnishings in the room were some steel shelves. He opened all the drawers on the shelves, but all he found was a tablet about the size of a notebook. He picked it up and saw that it was an old electronic toy. You could take photos with it, which would then appear on the screen. Then you could draw or make notes on them with an attached pen.
—Another toy, huh?
Akuto turned on the tablet, feeling a little confused. The stored picture was a scene of a cave entrance surrounded by trees. There were words written on the side.
《Behind the shrine in the back. If all three are gathered, use this tablet to photograph your palm as identification.》
Akuto put the device in his pocket.
—I don’t know why, but... something seems terribly sad. It feels like this is more than just a treasure hunt.
○
“The ‘Finding Groundwater!’ device!” Korone said as she held up the two bent-metal rods she’d taken out of her bag. “Now we can track the flow of the underground water.”
Korone held the rods in both hands and started to walk, the rest of the group following behind her. At first the rods swung randomly from left to right, but after they’d walked for a while, both of them turned in the same direction. Korone said she was using them to detect mana, but Akuto wasn’t sure he believed her.
“We’ve been wandering the woods for a pretty long time now. Are you sure about this?” he asked, worried. Korone nodded.
“It’s just fine. We just have to follow the flow of the underground water.”
Nobody had seen the cave in the picture before, but Hiroshi had suggested it might be the limestone cave in the back of the forest, which he’d heard rumors about before.
“Limestone caves are only formed when there’s a source of underground water, so if we find one in the area marked by the map, it will lead us there,” Hiroshi had suggested.
“Why are there rumors about this cave?”
“They say there’s a hot spring there. Sometimes when people go to look for it, they can’t find it. So the rumor is that it’s some kind of phantom hot spring.”
Demon King Daimaou: Volume 2 Page 9
