Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, Vol. 5

by Hiro Ainana

  Even the main street had no separation between roads and walkways, so progress in the carriage was slow. I sent Temple Knight Heath on ahead as a messenger to the Tenion Temple.

  In the meantime, I decided to check the map once more. There were no demons, chaos jars, malice urns, or anything of the sort, but I did find twenty or so demon lord–worshipping Wings of Freedom.

  I decided to write down on paper the names and whereabouts of the members and mail it off to the city guards in the dead of night.

  “Masterrr?” Tama, who was riding the runosaur along with Pochi, called to me from outside the window. “Sword fiiights?”

  “Master, humans are fighting over there, sir.”

  Interested, I came out to the coachman stand to look where they were pointing.

  There was a great deal of people gathered in a large park nearby, making for quite a lively mood.

  “Over there, master.”

  “I wonder what it is? An exhibition fight, maybe?”

  I looked curiously toward where Lulu was pointing, and Arisa stuck her head out as well.

  It was dangerous to drive while distracted, so I had Lulu stop the carriage for a moment.

  “Maybe it has to do with the martial arts tournament Miss Jojorie mentioned?”

  Right—there was a big tournament being held in the old capital soon.

  “It’s probably a preliminary battle to decide who gets to enter. Want to go check it out?”

  Jackass had gotten out of the carriage to stretch and made a suggestion.

  Wait, when did you get out?

  “Lord Tolma, we must first go to the Tenion Temple…”

  “Oh, don’t be such a stick in the mud. Let’s pick up some grub at the food stalls first!”

  Ignoring the temple knight’s reminder, Jackass cheerily slipped into the crowd.

  “I’m sorry. Tolma is always like this.”

  Miss Hayuna tried to apologize to the temple knight, but her expression remained stoic as ever.

  “…Sir Pendragon. I’m terribly sorry, but would you mind lending me one of your talented servants to retrieve Lord Tolma?”

  “Sure, that’s fine.”

  Since her main duty was to protect baby Mayuna, the “oracle priestess,” she couldn’t leave.

  I sent Liza and Nana to collect Jackass.

  Tama and Pochi, still riding the runosaur, sniffed the air.

  “Sweet smeeell?”

  “It’s a different smell from the honey pastries and the licorice, sir!”

  After a moment, the scent reached the rest of us as well. It smelled like traditional Japanese sweets, specifically red-bean paste.

  “Oh man, that smells great! Is that…? Is that red-bean paste?”

  Arisa was getting especially fired up for whatever reason and whipped her head around searchingly.

  “You there, young master! Would you like a Gururian cake?”

  A girl with a food tray suspended from her neck emerged from the crowd and approached the coachman’s stand where I was sitting.

  She reminded me of a Showa-era salesgirl selling bento boxes at a train station, or something along those lines.

  Alas, she wasn’t wearing a Japanese-style outfit to match—just ordinary commoner’s clothes with a short apron tied around her waist.

  “Sure. Could I buy eleven, please?”

  “Yes, of course! That will be eleven large coppers.”

  I didn’t feel like haggling, so I handed her two silvers and one large copper.

  That was pretty expensive for a pastry, though. Each one cost the same as a night’s stay at the Gatefront Inn back in Seiryuu City.

  I handed out the leaf-wrapped Gururian cakes to everyone.

  I thought the temple knight might decline, but she gladly accepted it. It seemed girls who disliked sweets were rare even in a parallel world.

  “Mrrrr. Black things.”

  Mia was eyeing her cake rather distrustfully.

  “It’s a sweet pastry made with grains and bean paste,” I informed her, and she cautiously took a bite.

  “…Yum.”

  With this brief statement of approval, Mia cupped the Gururian cake in her hands and began eating it reverently.

  “I think it could stand to have a bit more sugar.”

  Critical though Arisa was, she devoured hers in an instant.

  I’m guessing that if they used more sugar, which is always expensive, the pastries would cost even more.

  “Hmm. So it’s that, is it?”

  “Yeah, it must be.”

  Arisa and I both recognized the pastry as ohagi, a traditional Japanese sweet.

  Instead of mochi, there was a clump of glutinous rice that hadn’t been pounded smooth.

  The red-bean anko was lumpy, giving it the feel of a very traditional ohagi.

  “So the name of this city…”

  “Yeah, it must be a pun.”

  I couldn’t tell this to anyone else—they would have to understand Japanese to get the joke—but there was no mistaking it. Ohagi was made by packing sweetened white rice together, then rolling it (gururi) in red-bean paste (an). That had to be where the name “Gururian” came from.

  Whoever named this city was definitely a Japanese punster.

  After we finished the ohagi, there was still no sign of Liza, Nana, or Jackass.

  “I’m going to look for them. I’ll bring Tama and Pochi as escorts, so the rest of you wait here, please.”

  With that, I headed into the crowd, holding Tama’s and Pochi’s hands.

  Usually, this would end in even more kids getting lost, but I didn’t need to worry about that as long as I had my radar.

  “Anyone who wants a badge of participation for the preliminary battle, line up here! You don’t need to go to the town hall. We’ll sell you one right here at this branch office!”

  A big bald man was holding up a bronze badge-like object and shouting.

  Oh, so these were the badges you needed to bet to enter the match.

  “The winner is the Wolf of Walt Village, Ton!”

  And this round had just ended.

  The young man named Ton received a badge from the winner. His friends crowded around him, handing him drinks and a towel to wipe his sweat.

  “Wow, Ton! Three more and you can enter the prelims!”

  “Psh, this is nothin’!”

  Ton had seven badges crammed onto his shirt.

  So you needed to win nine street matches to qualify for the preliminary round of the tournament.

  “I’m not gonna stop at the prelims.”

  “Yeah, I bet you’ll get four wins in the prelims and move on to the second round no problem, Ton!”

  “Ha-ha, damn! If you get that far, you might get to be a knight.”

  No wonder people were so excited about making a splash in these matches, with a carrot like that in front of their faces.

  This would increase the number of people who could fight off monsters in the territory, too, so it sounded like a good event overall.

  The participants mostly ranged from levels 5 to 7, with very few of them more than level 10.

  “There’re still four more qualifying spots for Gururian City, so you’ve got this in the bag.”

  “I wouldn’t let yer guard down. Last year, the three remaining spots all went in a day!”

  “Yeah, I got no time for breaks. Who’s going to be my next challenger? I’ll take anybody on!”

  A middle-aged man responded to Ton’s hotheaded declaration, and another match began.

  I was fairly interested in the match myself, but when I spotted Liza and Nana on the other side of the crowd, we went to meet up with them.

  “Oh nooo?”

  “Liza is being bullied, sir!”

  As we got closer, we saw five good-looking young men surrounding Liza and Nana.

  “Master, help is required, I request!”

  Noticing me, Nana rushed up and grabbed my hand to drag me over.

&nb
sp; I stood in front of the youths with Nana still attached to my hand.

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “I’m these young women’s guardian.”

  These children were all from noble families living in Gururian City. All five of them had a blank space in the affiliation section of their profile.

  None of them seemed to have a rank or title, and frankly, they probably didn’t have jobs, either.

  “Do you have some business with my children?”

  Normally I would be more polite, but I remembered the advice Viscount Nina had given me during her political purge of Muno Barony: kowtowing to power-hungry young nobles would only go to their heads, so it was better to act haughty with them.

  “I—I ordered that demi-human to hand over her magic spear, but she won’t do as she’s told!”

  “A weapon like that would clearly be best suited in the hands of Horan here, the spear master…”

  “If you’re her master, you’d better order her to donate her spear to Lord Horan!”

  So basically, these childish nobles were saying, I want your weapon; give it to me. How could someone in their mid-twenties be so unabashedly stupid?

  By the way, the so-called “spear master” Horan did have the “Spear” skill, but he was only level 4. Liza could probably knock him out while whistling a tune.

  As I was wondering how best to deal with these idiots, I got backup from an unexpected place.

  “Hey, guys.”

  “What do you want? Back off, plebian.”

  The man who pushed his way through the group was none other than Tolma the jackass, still in his traveling clothes.

  “Sorry, but we have to go see Lady Sara at the Tenion Temple, then say hi to our friend Lord Worgoch. If you have nothing else to do here, would you mind getting on your way?”

  “Sara… Isn’t that the duke’s daughter who’s staying in the Tenion Temple?”

  “And Lord Worgoch is a viceroy, isn’t he?”

  Tolma’s words set the young nobles quaking in their boots.

  “Listen, commoner! It’s poor manners to act friendly with those above your station! I’ll make you pay for that right here and now!”

  Horan, the ringleader of the cowering group, flew into a rage and drew his sword.

  “My, you’re short-tempered. Here, have a look at this.”

  Jackass reached into his coat and produced the dagger with the Siemmen family crest on it, showing it to the foolish young nobles.

  “H-hey…!”

  “Th-the biggest noble family in the old capital…”

  Horan and the others all knew the name and crest of the Siemmen family; they drew back with exclamations of surprise. It was like when an undercover cop flashes their badge.

  Smiling faintly, Jackass took a single step forward.

  “““We’re so sorry!”””

  Immediately, the young nobles apologized in unison, then scrambled away toward the main street with their tails between their legs.

  I certainly hadn’t expected this guy to come to our rescue.

  Guess I should probably go back to calling him Mr. Tolma in my head…

  “That was a great help, Lord Tolma.”

  “Oh, not at all. Actually, I was hoping you could do a little favor for me anyway…”

  Tolma pointed sheepishly at several food cart owners, who seemed to be waiting on him.

  …So you didn’t bring any money, huh?

  All right, I’ll drop the “Mr.” From now on, he’s just Tolma.

  Once I’d paid for Tolma’s food, we went and bought a few things to bring back for the others at his recommended stalls of choice. There were a lot of food cart staples, like chicken skewers and melons chilled in well water.

  While we walked around, I asked Tolma why the nobles were so interested in Liza’s magic spear.

  “I see. So a magic spear would exempt them from the first preliminary round for the martial arts tournament?”

  “That’s right. Not just spears, either—Magic Swords and mithril blades and such work just as well.”

  “But even if they did get the exemption, wouldn’t they just be sorely defeated in the second preliminary round if they don’t have the strength to back it up?”

  Did they want to join the tournament in the old capital that badly?

  “That’s not it. See, if you’ve gotten through the first round of qualifiers, you can enlist in the duke’s royal guard.”

  “They would go to all that trouble to get into the royal guard?”

  “You may not know this, Sir Satou, but the royal guard is something of a dream job to young nobles without titles of their own.”

  I see. So this was an underhanded way of getting a job offer from a place that would normally be out of their league.

  Now I understood a little.

  But whether I would actually go along with that was another question entirely.

  I just hoped they would keep their little endeavor far away from me from now on.

  Once everyone had eaten the food we brought back from the stalls, we resumed our journey to Tenion Temple.

  “People of Gururian City! Wake up from your false religion!”

  I heard a suspicious-sounding call from outside the carriage window, so I moved next to Lulu and took a look.

  The speaker was a man in a purple robe standing on top of a barrel at the side of the road.

  He was part of that Wings of Freedom group of fanatics we’d encountered in Muno City.

  “The gods do not want people to be happy! It is their will that permits us to go on cowering before the threat of monsters yet labels any movements toward freedom as ‘taboo’! Good people! Now is the time to take back the freedom of humanfolk!”

  The purple-robed man’s speech was so insane that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find him frothing at the mouth, but the people passing by gave him no reaction.

  Only one person stood up to challenge his speech: Lady Knight, who was accompanying us.

  As a knight whose job it was to defend the temple, she probably couldn’t just let his heresy slide.

  “Stand down, you demon-lord follower!”

  “Tch! Damned watchdog of a foolish god!”

  The minute he recognized Lady Knight, the purple-robed man jumped from the barrel and took off down an alley like a rabbit.

  “Stop right there! You cur!”

  His sudden dash must have triggered an instinctive reaction for Lady Knight, who took off after him on horseback.

  Won’t your boss be angry that you abandoned your duty of guarding baby Mayuna?

  With that trivial thought passing through my mind, I searched the city map again for the Wings of Freedom.

  For some reason, most of them were moving like they were being pursued. Most likely, they’d attempted to give speeches until the authorities or temple officials gave chase.

  …Hmm?

  Suddenly, a red spot appeared on the map.

  Right on the street we were traveling on…

  “Run away! There’s a monster in the streets!”

  A shout from the crowd caused a panic to break out on the main avenue.

  Scores of people began fleeing from where the monster had appeared.

  “Arisa!”

  “Okeydoke!”

  With a single deep breath, Arisa invoked her Psychic Magic spell Repellent Field.

  After the Psychic Magic landed, the people fleeing all around us started to avoid our carriage, as if they’d seen something truly disgusting.

  We’d used the same spell to deal with the people fleeing from the goblins in Muno City.

  Once I saw that it was working, I checked the details of the red light on my radar.

  It wasn’t just a monster… It was a demon.

  “Everyone but Lulu, prepare for battle. Lulu, please park the carriage on the side of the road.”

  Of course, the only “battle preparations” that really needed to be done were Arisa and Mia collect
ing their staffs and Tama and Pochi their short swords from the Garage Bag.

  While they set about doing that, I pulled up the map.

  The creature that had appeared was a lesser demon called a short-horned demon.

  He was level 30, with only the race-specific abilities Transform and Flame Hand and the skills “Super Strength” and “Hard Body”; he had no magic-type skills at all. He was probably meant to be some kind of advance guard.

  By all appearances, he was already engaged in battle, surrounded by knights and warriors from levels 13 to 33.

  There were at least three people around the same level as the demon, so they should be all right without me… No, wait.

  “It takes a full squadron to stand a chance at defeating even a lesser hell demon, and you still risk losing half.”

  The temple knight Sir Keon’s words echoed in my mind.

  I didn’t know how large a squadron of knights was, but it was probably more than seven.

  Besides…near the demon, my radar showed the blue dots that indicated acquaintances of mine. Two of them.

  I couldn’t just look the other way.

  “Lulu, you wait here. Take care of the horses and the carriage. You too, Mia and Arisa—”

  “Coming.”

  “I’m coming, too, of course!”

  Mia and Arisa didn’t even let me finish telling them to stay before they refused.

  “All right. Just hang back and cover me. Nana, keep Lulu safe. Liza, follow me and direct Tama and Pochi.”

  “Master, here.”

  Arisa handed me the fairy sword and its belt.

  “Thank you, Arisa. Let’s go!”

  With that, I rushed through the thinning crowd.

  As the others followed, I told them that it was a demon up ahead, not a monster, and explained his level, skills, and things to watch out for in the battle.

  I planned to leave the fighting to the knights and provide them support from behind, while the others transported or healed the wounded.

  The beastfolk girls had higher defense than the knights of the same level, so as long as I covered them well, they should be able to stand up to even a lesser demon.

  Still, I had no idea why a demon had materialized in the middle of the city all of a sudden like this.

  At the very least, I was certain there’d been no demons here when we entered the city.