The Fervent Sand Baths

by Nagaharu Hibihana

  When we investigated other places, knight-shaped golems that had been hidden among statues of knights attacked us, swords in hand. It seemed like the first sacred king’s party didn’t even give these guys a passing glance when they made their way to the demon lord. They must have been in a real hurry.

  All the better for us, though. The chances that treasures remained untouched in this castle grew higher.

  “Take this!” I swung my broadaxe—or rather, a hammer that I had formed with sand around the blade of the axe—down and crushed a golem knight. It fell onto the sand-covered carpet floor. We had already fought several golems, but blades did little against their tough bodies. It was easier to smash them down using a blunt weapon.

  “Some heavy security, huh...”

  Clena grumbled as Rium retrieved the magic crystal from the remains of the knight golem. So far, we had encountered one hidden golem for every five knight statues, but there were no precedents for me to judge if that was a high ratio or not.

  “Isn’t this pretty normal for a castle?”

  “Well, it’s true that castles have really strict defense systems. But it’s not normal to have this many golems.”

  “Hm, so you’d say there are too many considering they had soldiers stationed in the castle as well?”

  “Normally the purpose of golems is to spot and detain intruders,” Rium said, having just finished collecting the magic crystal.

  So in other words, golems didn’t have to be strong enough to defeat someone. The way they pre-emptively attacked approaching intruders was similar to how a burglar alarm worked back in my world. I could understand what the girls had meant just now.

  That still didn’t explain why so many golems had been set up here, but I was hopeful that this just meant they were guarding valuable treasures. Or perhaps Nobunaga was much more on guard about surprise attacks ever since the Honnouji Incident, but we had no way of ever finding out.

  So far we had found some home furnishings, decorations, and other paraphernalia. They hadn’t been damaged from the battle, but were still plenty worn down from 500 years’ worth of erosion. I didn’t want to be too greedy, but after all our effort in having come this far, I was hoping to find more valuable spoils.

  “Sir Touya! I found a big door!” Roni, who had been using her agility to scout out the area around the corner, came back to me in a frenzy.

  “How many statues?”

  “Five on either side, so ten total!”

  “So a few of them must be golems, huh?”

  “If it’s someplace important, then they might all be.”

  “Alright, let’s destroy them all before we get too close.”

  We didn’t have to worry about making a sound here. No matter how much of a ruckus we made, there were no longer any guards around to stop us.

  According to Rium, in the past decade or so, they had started developing golems that would explode once an intruder got close, rather than outright attack them. That sounded less like a golem and more like a land mine, though.

  The four of us bunched up close and peered around the corner. We saw ten knight statues lined up along two walls, and a large set of doors farther in. The knight statues looked exactly like the one I had just destroyed.

  “Okay, I’ll take the right.”

  “I’ll take the left.”

  Clena took up her sword and Rium grabbed her silver spear. Clena was probably intending to use magic, instead of fighting head-on with her sword. Rium would be using the same spell she had used to fight the sandworm a while back.

  “Alright, Roni and I will handle the leftovers.”

  The two of them nodded in reply and started chanting their spells.

  “O Wind Blade, cut them to pieces!” Clena launched a piercing wind from her sword and tore through the statues along the right wall all at once.

  “...Go forth, o spear.” Rium moved to the left wall and threw her silver spear at the statues like a dart.

  The spear was pencil sized when she threw it, but grew to the size of large lance in the blink of an eye, skewered the heads of the statues, then broke apart.

  The statues on the right all roared as their heads rolled off. The ones on the left remained silent, their heads destroyed.

  Shoot, the farthest statue on the right only had the top part of its head sliced off. The head of the one down on the left also hadn’t been fully skewered. There were cracks in the armor, but it was still fully functional.

  “Roni, take the left!”

  “Got it!”

  Not a moment later, I started to form sand around my broadaxe and rushed in.

  The two statues brandished their swords and started moving. The second to last one on the right also tried to move but lost its balance, falling to the floor. That one also hadn’t been properly sliced.

  I ignored the golem that just fell and used my shield to block a strike from the other. A metallic clash resounded, grating on my ears, and at the same time Roni smashed the left golem’s head with a dropkick. It was a death blow on the part that had already been cracked, and the golem fell to the ground as its head was smashed into pieces.

  The left side was now taken care of. All that remained was the golem in front of me.

  I pushed against it with my shield, then struck its sword-wielding arm while it was caught off balance. The golem tried throwing a punch with its other hand, but I absorbed the impact with my shield and slammed my makeshift hammer against its leg. Its thigh was too sturdy to break from a single hit, but I had managed to crack it nonetheless, stripping it from the ability to support its own weight. As it tried to brace itself to stand up straight again, the leg I had just delivered a hit onto broke apart and sent the golem tumbling to the ground. I drew myself away so that it wouldn’t land on top of me.

  All I had to do now was finish it off. It couldn’t get up again with only one arm and a leg. I smashed down on both this golem and the one that I had felled earlier with my hammer.

  After the battle, Rium went to collect the magic crystals while we stayed alert of our surroundings. Clena had sliced through two of the magic crystals inside the golems with her wind blade, but the rest were still intact.

  In the end, all ten of them were golems.

  “Sorry, I messed up the angle a bit.”

  “Don’t worry about it. That was the best way for you to attack without risking harm.”

  The golems’ sensors were usually inside their heads. Their source of power, the magic crystals, were located in the center of their torso so that power could flow evenly through the rest of their body. That didn’t exactly mean they represented the brain and heart of a person—the sensors were their eyes and the power source was simply at the body’s center. Rather, all golems needed “eyes” regardless of their shape, and it was up to a crystal mage’s individual skill to properly conceal them.

  “Huh? Sir Touya, the door is unlocked,” Roni, who had gone one step ahead of us to investigate the door, called out to me in a bewildered voice.

  “What?” I responded, as baffled as she was.

  “Is it really unlocked, Roni?” Clena turned to her to reaffirm.

  “That wouldn’t make sense,” Rium said, puzzled, having just finished retrieving the magic crystals.

  Those two had every right to be confused. Having ten golems lined up to block the path, yet not locking the door, was far too lopsided in terms of security measures.

  “B-But it really is open!”

  “Any traps?”

  “Not as far as I can tell! Honest!”

  Roni started getting teary-eyed while our gazes collected on her. I wanted to pat her on the head, but I was wearing gauntlets, so I held back and left it to Clena. There I stood, in front of the door, alongside Rium.

  “Is it possible to take anything out of here without disturbing the golems at all?”

  “It’s possible for the golem’s master, or someone who already has permission.”

  “So basically, there wa
s someone who had permission.”

  There was a chance that, 500 years ago, someone took the treasures out of this room.

  Since there were no traps to be wary of, I went ahead and cracked open the door—then noticed something.

  “Roni...” I beckoned her over and whispered something into her ear. Her eyes widened in surprise, but she quickly regained her composure and gave me a serious nod.

  I opened the door and looked around the room. It was pretty spacious inside. There was one small window high up on a wall, so the room was only dimly lit. I set out light spirits to illuminate the room.

  To the left and right of us were shelves. The bottom of each shelf was lined with large treasure boxes, while the top shelves held many small boxes, weapons, and armor. There were three full sets of armor on the wall facing us. They weren’t knight statues, though. The armor gave off a metallic luster, bathed in the light of the spirits. Looks like this was an armory.

  “Sir Touya...” Roni whispered into my ear.

  “I see... so that’s where Goldfish is.” I pointed my axe at the black set of armor on the left.

  The armor didn’t move or speak a word, though. Maybe he thought we wouldn’t find out if he remained silent. That was naive, though. When I had cracked the door open, I noticed a faint but distinct smell.

  “If you want to hide, do something about that smell first.”

  Yes, it was the same rotten smell from the pond in the temple. Upon closer inspection, the left shelf was lined with helmets and armor parts. Maybe he had taken apart his original armor and set it on the shelf, then sat himself down wherever there was space.

  “Heheheh... I thought I’d gotten rid of all the moss.”

  I heard Goldfish’s voice. It was indeed coming from the black armor set.

  “Moss? Were you hiding that armor inside the pond?”

  “Hiding? That pond used to be my home.”

  “So you were from the temple, after all.”

  I had suspected as much. Despite all that rambling about the demon lord, his behavior indicated a much stronger loyalty to the Goddess of Darkness.

  The jet-black armor used its gauntlet to raise its visor. The sound of clanging metal filled the otherwise silent room. Behind the visor was something that looked like a fish bowl, and there was Goldfish, gently flapping his big fins inside.

  Judging by how the gauntlet just moved, I would guess that Goldfish had the power to control the armor like it was his own body. He had somehow escaped into the pond last night, retrieved his armor, and snuck out of the temple. And since he knew that our destination was the demon lord’s castle, he hid himself among the furnishings in this armory.

  Goldfish picked up a tall, two-handed broadsword that was next to him. We knew then that he wasn’t intent on letting us out alive. We assumed our battle stances, readying ourselves against his attack.

  However, there was one thing I didn’t understand about Goldfish’s behavior.

  “Answer me one thing. Why did you lead the first sacred king to Hadesopolis?”

  “What are ye getting at?”

  “I understand your allegiance being with the Goddess of Darkness, rather than the demon lord. But the battle between the first sacred king and the demon lord was also a battle between Jupiteropolis and Hadesopolis.”

  “More specifically, it was Hadesopolis against the alliance of other nations, with Jupiteropolis at its center.”

  “Then wouldn’t you have been committing treachery against the Goddess of Darkness, leading the first sacred king to her head temple?”

  “...I may have made some miscalculations.”

  “Miscalculations?” I couldn’t see him clearly behind the visor, but he appeared a bit downcast, and likely wasn’t lying.

  “Did you ever think it was strange? A hero of the darkness, summoned from another world, was the demon lord. Then who was the lord before he was summoned?”

  I looked at the other girls after that question. They didn’t have any answers, though, and only shook their heads.

  Goldfish continued to tell his story, maybe feeling a sense of superiority over us now. This was just a part of his raw personality.

  “...It wasn’t you, was it?”

  “Would that it were, but the citizens of Hades never woulda conceded to that. There was a king before. And the Hades royal family.”

  “The Hades royal family...”

  So basically, when the demon lord was summoned, the royal family was absent for whatever reason. No, I bet that they had all passed away.

  “So a hero who had been blessed by the Goddess of Darkness was eligible to become king?”

  “Bingo. And you better believe he was capable. He put policies into play that none of us even considered before, and really spurred the development of Hadesopolis... All was good and well up to that point.”

  Goldfish pierced his sword into the ground. He was angry. The anger seeping out of him was almost palpable.

  “But the bastard started getting full of himself! Even though the Goddess of Darkness had given him new life, he acted like he was god himself and started disrespecting the temple!!”

  Oda Nobunaga had gone through years of struggle when he fought against the Ikko-ikki, a religious group, at Ishiyama Hongan-ji. Goddesses aside, I wondered if he just disliked the temple or even religion in general. I read the atmosphere and kept my mouth shut, however, and continued listening.

  “So I started thinkin’—if that bastard died, then a new hero of darkness could be summoned to this world.”

  A switch flipped inside Clena at that point.

  “Wait a second! So just because you wanted to eliminate the demon lord, you invited the enemy in?! And risk damage to your country?! Go fight him yourself!!”

  “Calm down, Clena.”

  I held Clena back with my arm, as it seemed like she was about to jump Goldfish any second.

  He probably would have had trouble commanding political authority if he attacked the demon lord himself. Akechi Mitsuhide had defeated Nobunaga during the Honnouji Incident, but he ruled for a mere 13 days due to his inability to gather allies. There was also the chance that Goldfish was simply not strong enough to take him on.

  “So you took refuge in the spring to avoid getting caught in the battle, huh.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And your miscalculation was that the demon lord hadn’t been completely defeated.”

  Goldfish gave no reply. Bullseye. If he could have had any facial expressions, then he must have looked incredibly frustrated right now.

  I understood the gist of it now. He had guided the first sacred king, but by no means was he his ally. He hadn’t exactly betrayed the demon lord, either. He was simply on the Goddess of Darkness’ side.

  But in the end, Goldfish’s plans fell through. The demon lord wasn’t killed, only sealed, so they were unable to summon a new demon lord. Hadesopolis sunk under the earth, and Goldfish, having retreated to the spring, could go back no longer.

  Well, the first sacred king had also been summoned as well. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that he knew another demon lord would be summoned if he killed the current one.

  After hearing all this, I could make a guess at who Goldfish really was.

  “A devoted follower would be ashamed of you right now.”

  “What’s that?” Goldfish pulled his sword out from the floor and pointed it at me. I didn’t back down, though.

  “Why didn’t you protect the temple when the first sacred king attacked? You’d have plenty of fighting power with that body.”

  “I absolutely mustn’t risk death. Not in a million years!”

  “See, that’s what I’m wondering about!”

  Right, that statement was a big hint to uncovering his real identity. I myself had been summoned by the princess of the royal family and the Goddess of Light’s temple elder. Then who was it that summoned the hero of darkness?

  “The one who summoned the demon lord f
rom my world—it must have been you.”

  Goldfish remained silent. It didn’t feel like he was trying to feign ignorance, though. He seemed like he was playing along.

  “The reason why you lead the first sacred king here, and why you retreated to the safety of the spring, was that you were the one who could summon the next demon lord.”

  “Uh-huh... and?”

  Goldfish wasn’t denying it. He was definitely stringing us along.

  I might as well ride this out now after having come this far. I came at him with my final theory.

  “One of generals you had mentioned before... One who was still alive, the Masked Cleric.”

  Clena, recognizing the name, looked to Goldfish in shock. Yes, to the full-face helmet that completely enveloped the fish tank.

  “You could call that a mask, right?”

  “Heheheh... haaahahahah!” Goldfish suddenly burst out laughing. “Good job, I say! I’m impressed you managed to arrive to that! Even the citizens of Hades often mistook me for the Guardian.”

  I had considered that possibility as well. If one of those sets of armor had been gold, I might have guessed that he was Golden Armor as well. However, temple knights existed in this world. It wouldn’t be strange for them to be clad in heavy armor like this.

  “Heheheh... It’s too bad, though. If only I had been summoned, I woulda made a damn fine demon lord.” He drew back the sword he had been pointing at me, then changed his posture to an experienced battle stance. It seemed the time for talk was over.

  The Masked Cleric, one of the remaining 16 demon generals of Hades. One of the leaders of the demon lord army was standing before us.

  Fourth Bath – Opening the Lid on Hell’s Cauldron

  “Fall back!”

  We ran out of the armory into the hallway and immediately shut the door behind us. We backed off a little farther, and I opened the door to the Unlimited Bath. His weakness was my MP-infused water.

  “Roni, get the hose!”

  “Y-yessir!” Roni flipped around on her heels and made way for the Unlimited Bath, but she stopped in her tracks at the sight of something next to the door. “S-Sir Touya...”