by Hiro Ainana
Thanking the shopkeeper, I checked on the girls, and they seemed to have made their choices.
To kill time, I picked out a few extra pieces for friends like Miss Karina and Miss Sara.
For a moment, the face of my friend Zena from Seiryuu City came to mind, so I decided to get something for her, too. For that, I chose a blue glass brooch that would match the clothes she’d worn on our date.
Haggling over all of it would’ve been a pain, so I simply paid up.
Obviously surprised that I’d bought everything without trying to talk down the price, the shopkeeper smiled as he finished up the transaction.
“Young master, if you’re buying souvenirs, why not pick up an orc glass goblet?”
He had probably pegged me for an easy mark and pulled out a box from the back of the shop.
“What is orc glass, exactly?”
“It’s glass made in the Orc Empire, of course,” he answered as he opened the case. “Did you know that this area used to be shared with the orcs until the ancestral king defeated the demon lord?”
“Yeah, so I’ve heard.”
“Well, it’s called orc glass because it was a specialty of that empire.”
Out of the box came a red glass goblet.
It had silver decorations around the handle, and blue glass in the shape of a flower was welded to the center of the body. The welding was so seamless that it looked as if it had all been one piece from the start.
“…It’s quite impressive.”
“Isn’t it, though? I only have two, so how about six silver coins?”
That was actually slightly cheaper than the market price. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to find any buyers around here.
I decided to buy it at the asking price and use it for drinking alcohol and such.
After shopping at a few more stalls, we arrived at the restaurant as planned.
I wasn’t sure what sort of introduction the tour guide gave for us, but even the beastfolk girls were welcomed in without a problem. We were given a private room and an excellent feast.
The main dish consisted of giant prawns made into boat-wrap sushi, with carefully crafted sides in small dishes and bowls, as well as a spread of colorful fruits and vegetables for the taking.
As far as I could tell, the tour guide had even informed the place that some of us couldn’t eat meat or fish.
If I ever built myself a mansion, I’d like to have a butler or a secretary as talented as her.
“Tummy’s fuuull?”
“So happy, sir.”
Tama and Pochi murmured contentedly, their stomachs swollen with food. All that eating had made them sleepy, so they were starting to stagger around.
In fact, all of us had eaten a bit too much for dinner, so we took a stroll along the harbor before heading back to the ship.
“The steamed prawns were adorable, I report.”
“Yes, the plating was exquisite.”
“The food was delicious, and the prawn shells were delightfully crunchy.”
Nana, Lulu, and Liza all spoke highly of the meal.
Liza’s comment was a little strange, but I decided to do the polite thing and ignore it.
“Full,” Mia mumbled as she took my hand.
Arisa, who was holding my other hand, was very quiet.
She’d been very cheerful during dinner, but once we started our walk, she took on a worried expression and seemed to be deep in thought.
“Did you eat too much and give yourself a stomachache?”
“…Yeah, a little.”
That almost certainly wasn’t the cause, but I didn’t want to bring up the dream she’d had during our afternoon nap.
If she wanted to talk about it, she would probably bring it up herself.
We walked in silence for a while, enjoying the night breeze. The stars and the city lights reflected together in the great river, creating a beautiful picture like none I’d ever seen.
When I stopped to gaze quietly at the scenery, Lulu gave an emotional sigh.
“How dreamy.”
“Lulu’s observation is correct, I affirm.”
By all appearances, they were enjoying the view of the river, too.
I had a strange suspicion that they weren’t actually looking in that direction, but… There wasn’t anything else around to call “dreamy,” so it must have been my imagination.
“Should we get going?”
Sensing something was off, I looked down.
In the brief time that we’d stopped walking, Tama and Pochi had fallen asleep at Liza’s feet.
Since both their bellies were so full, I had Nana and Liza carry one each, instead of Liza carrying both under her arms like usual.
“Master, there is a ship moving on the river,” Liza murmured discreetly into my ear.
Wondering who would be sailing after sunset when travel on the river was prohibited, I opened up the map to check.
Affiliation: Wings of Freedom
“What, these guys again?”
Arisa broke her long silence to react to my muttering. “Is it that group of demon-lord worshippers?”
“Yeah, looks that way.”
The city’s Wings of Freedom members were going somewhere on that ship.
It’d be one thing if officials were just chasing them away, but I couldn’t let it slide if they were off to get up to no good somewhere. If I ignored them and they summoned a demon lord or something, that’d be a huge pain.
I put a marker on the ship itself and the most important-looking members.
Wondering if Miss Sara’s emergency summons had anything to do with this development, I opened the map to check her status.
—What?!
“What’s wrong, master?”
I was too shocked to answer Arisa about what I’d found.
Condition: Possessed
It was Miss Sara’s current status.
A Secret Night
Satou here. There’s this line I read in an exorcism novel once: “One must never negotiate with demons. They tempt and seduce humans with their honeyed words.” I still think back on that sometimes.
“Master! What’s wrong?”
As I stood frozen in shock, Arisa repeated her question.
“Go back to the ship without me. I have a little business to take care of first.”
“Wh-what do you mean? Come on…tell me.”
Arisa looked pale. Unlike her usually joking expressions, this one was completely serious.
“Lady Sara is in danger in the old capital. I’m going to go and help her.”
“The oracle priestess…? You don’t think they’re trying to resurrect a demon lord, do you?!”
That was probably taking it too far.
We’d destroyed the chaos jar necessary for the ritual, after all, and I’d also confiscated the malice urn I found on the way here. If a demon lord was going to be resurrected, it shouldn’t happen for a very long time.
For now, they had probably summoned a minion as a first step toward their ultimate goal.
“No, no. It should only be a lesser demon.”
“D-don’t go! What if it does turn out to be a demon lord?!”
The other children seemed convinced, but Arisa was unusually worried.
“It’ll be fine. I’ll come back safely; don’t worry. I promised I’d make you some tasty kobumaki, remember?”
“D-don’t jinx yourself, stupid!”
True enough, it did sound like the kind of line you’d say before going off to your death, but I had no intention of getting myself killed.
Uncharacteristically distressed, Arisa clutched my robe so tightly that I thought her delicate fingers might break if I pulled it away.
“Lady Sara has been possessed. I have to go help her before things get really bad. Let go of my robe, Arisa.”
“I can’t… Do you remember when I mentioned having a bad dream this afternoon?” Arisa’s voice trembled. “I was lying… It was actually about you fighting
a giant man with a boar’s head. You were wielding a black sword, but the giant used a golden blade to cut you down…”
Arisa’s halting confession was a bit too serious to dismiss out of hand as “just a dream.”
For one thing, she didn’t know about my black Holy Sword. But even if there was a demon lord there, I couldn’t just leave Miss Sara to fend for herself. If I just waited for a hero to come from the Saga Empire, it would probably cost Miss Sara her life.
“Don’t worry. Even if a demon lord is there, I’ll just beat him. So let me go.”
“No! Don’t go… I’m worried.” Arisa shook her head obstinately.
I felt guilty about the tears in her eyes, but I had no time to argue like this.
“If you won’t listen to me, I’ll have to give you an order, all right?”
“Go ahead and try… My heart won’t lose to some stupid order.”
I had no choice. I didn’t like to use orders, but right now, Miss Sara’s life was on the line.
“Then…this is an order. Let go of my robe, Arisa. I order you to go back to the ship and wait.”
“I won’t! I won’t let you go!”
Even after that, Arisa refused to release my robe. Her breathing grew ragged, and drops of sweat formed on her forehead.
She was probably suffering for disobeying her slave contract.
“D-don’t go… Sa…tou…”
The pain rendered Arisa unconscious, and she collapsed, still hanging on to my robe.
“A-Arisa!”
Anxiously watching the proceedings, Lulu rushed over and caught her by the shoulder.
I carefully pried the unconscious girl’s fingers from my robe and put her hand in her lap as Lulu held her.
I patted Arisa’s head. She still looked agonized even in unconsciousness, so I murmured in her ear that I was calling off the order.
I wasn’t sure whether it would work, but after a moment, the pained expression left her face.
“Lulu, take care of her, please.”
“O-of course.”
I gave a gentle kiss to Arisa’s cheek, wiping away her tears. “May fortune favor you.”
“Master, good luck, I encourage.”
“Please don’t push yourself too hard, master.”
“Satou. Come back safely, okay? You can’t get hurt. Promise?”
I nodded at Liza, Nana, Lulu, and finally Mia’s uncharacteristically long statement, then disappeared into the night dressed as the silver-masked hero.
Incidentally, Tama and Pochi stayed asleep the whole time.
Before my urgent trip to the old capital, I stopped at the viceroy’s mansion to see Miss Karina. I needed to borrow the demon-sealing bell back from her.
When I looked up her location on the map, though, I noticed something strange.
Condition: Paralyzed
Guess there’s trouble at the viceroy’s place, too.
I came down from the sky onto the balcony of the evening party’s venue.
“Now, where should the torment start? Which of you will be the first to offer your despair to the malice urn?”
A man in a purple robe was standing on a table in the center of the room.
He was a member of the Wings of Freedom and a level-31 necromancer. The spirits floating around him had the inherent ability Paralysis. Without my AR indicator, they would’ve just looked like translucent brown objects.
“Well, who better to sacrifice than a maiden? Go, my poltergeists…!”
At the necromancer’s instructions, a rope flew out of his bag and wrapped around the fallen Miss Karina, hauling her up.
She must have left Raka behind to participate in the banquet.
“Ngh, Satou…”
“Bwa-ha-ha! Calling the name of your beloved in your final moments? By the time this man arrives, you’ll be in such a state that he’ll cry out in despair at the sight of you!” The necromancer sneered down nastily at Miss Karina. “Let’s start with that chest of yo… Gah!”
I rained Short Stun spells on the man to protect Miss Karina and her magical breasts.
With an utterly unoriginal screech, the man flew backward, crashed through a wall, and disappeared from the room.
I was careful not to kill him, but his condition read Serious Injury, and his HP was almost gone.
The spirits and the rope-wielding poltergeist came after me, but I used a Holy Sword from Storage to destroy them in a single blow.
I also collected the malice urn from the table into Storage.
“It seems you lead quite a turbulent life, Daughter of Muno.”
Trying to remember how I’d played the hero last time, I gave Miss Karina a potion to heal her paralysis.
“…Th-thank you, S-Sir Hero.”
“I apologize for asking this in such a situation, but I must request that you lend me your demon-sealing bell. I’m afraid it is terribly urgent.”
Miss Karina hesitated a moment, then undid the top button of her shirt and pulled out the bell from her chest.
The valley from which it came threatened to steal my gaze, but I forcibly resisted, reminding myself of the situation at hand.
“H-here you are…”
“Yes, this is it. Thank you.”
Miss Karina looked like she wanted to say something, but I simply promised her, “I’ll bring it back to you when it’s all over,” handed her enough anti-paralysis potions for the other guests, and left the mansion behind.
Later, when the viceroy returned with the troops he’d gone to summon, they collected the near-dead necromancer.
I soared through the night sky above the river on my hang glider, arriving over the old capital in less than a half hour.
According to my map, Miss Sara’s current position was in the Boar Lord’s Labyrinth: Ruins.
When I turned on the map’s 3-D display, I found her marker shining far below the capital in a blank zone of the map.
Using that information, I searched for a way underground.
Beneath the old capital was a complicated mazelike sewer. There was even a shelter below the nobles’ quarters.
As I continued my survey, I found dozens of the Wings of Freedom moving through the sewers.
That’s suspicious.
I put markers on all the members in the old capital, then headed toward the entrance to the sewers.
I kept the markers open in a corner of my vision, where I soon saw the location for some of them change from Ougoch Duchy to Boar Lord’s Labyrinth: Ruins.
So my hunch was right.
As I monitored their movements, the members all collected in the same place and somehow moved into the labyrinth.
Once I’d determined the fastest route to their meeting place, I headed into the tunnels.
As I approached the entrance to the tunnels, I had to use a perfumed handkerchief to cover my nose and mouth and ward off the horrible smell.
The passages of the sewer were filthy, so I used “Skyrunning” to sprint through the air without touching the ground.
As I flew along, I checked my equipment.
I definitely had enough weapons. Aside from the Divine Blade, I had the Holy Sword I usually used, Excalibur, as well as three other Holy Swords and a Holy Spear, plus two magic blades and the Magic Bow that the giants gave me.
Most of them had been stashed away in Storage since I first got them in the Valley of Dragons, but I should be able to use them without a problem.
In addition, I had ten disposable Holy Arrows, plus the three Holy Short Spears I made in the same batch.
With the help of my “Overload” skill, I had already filled these disposable weapons to the brim with magic power.
My armor, on the other hand, was a bit of a problem.
My Meteor Shower had destroyed most of the high-quality armor from the Valley of Dragons, I think, so all I had was a single Holy Shield. The rest was armor I’d made myself.
Still, it was better than nothing. I used my “Quick Change” skill to
put on some armor.
On the off chance that there really was a demon lord waiting for me, I didn’t want to be the idiot who showed up in a cloth outfit.
Before long, I arrived in the area where the cultists were congregating.
There were a few alarms disguised as spiderwebs along the way, but I used my “Trap Detection” and “Sense Danger” skills to avoid them with ease.
As I continued through the sewers, I stole a purple robe from a lone member and put it on.
The uniform was designed to hide the wearer’s face and body shape, as befitting a secret society. It was so loose that I could even wear it over my leather armor.
“The wings dance…”
“In the skies of freedom.”
My “Keen Hearing” skill picked up on a conversation from the other side of the tunnel.
This was probably a code members used to identify each other.
I passed through the tunnel quickly, repeating the password to the man standing in front of a suspicious-looking door at the end.
The man stepped aside silently, allowing me through.
On the other side of the door was an enormous room. A scarlet object, perhaps a giant magical device of some kind, was enshrined in the center. Conveniently, the room was dimly lit, so my face was barely visible under the hood.
Several members were gathered around the object, arguing about something.
“What shall we do? Our young nobleman Purple Three has yet to arrive.”
“Knowing him, he may just be resting somewhere.”
Apparently, one of the executives was running late.
“There is little time left before the ritual. We shall have to go on without him. Do you have enough magic?”
“Indeed.”
The male who spoke first seemed to be the leader, while the woman who responded was checking the control panel of the magic device.
The word ritual definitely disturbed me a little, but I took comfort in the fact that it hadn’t taken place yet.
If they’d just send me along with these guys, I should be able to save Miss Sara.
“…The gate has opened.”
“The time is now, comrades! Let us set forth toward the ritual!”
