by Fujino Omori
“—”
So were the children.
Lai, Fina, and Ruu were among the group of orphans who had not yet escaped the plaza. They could not help watching through the gaps in the crowd.
The black monster, its massive one-armed form smeared in blood, was the most ominous and atrocious thing they had ever seen, and the sight of adventurers flying this way and that like leaves in the wind was a scene from their worst nightmares. They did not know if the black forms spinning through the air were weapons or human arms.
This overwhelming monster was completely different from the gargoyle and winged beasts they had been watching just a few minutes earlier.
Oh, aah—
To Lai, it looked like a windstorm of death.
If you touched it, you would die. That was the nature of the thing before his eyes.
He had only heard about floor bosses, never seen one, but he imagined that this was what they were like.
It was only natural that this most horrendous of monsters terrified the children to their very core. It was inevitable that they could move only their eyes and nothing else.
“UOO—”
In the space of an instant, the minotaur trampled the adventurers. Then it turned and looked straight into the children’s eyes.
Lai felt all hope drain from him. Fina and Ruu knew then that fear had no limits. Time slowed to a hellish crawl as their hearts tightened in their chests and their breath caught in their throats.
“Run, everyone!!” Maria screamed. She had been separated from the children and was standing toward the back of the crowd. But the children did not budge. Caught in the monster’s gaze, they could not move so much as a finger. And just like the children, the adventurers in the crowd had lost heart. Not one stepped in between the children and the beast. It took a step toward Lai, Fina, and Ruu as if it was searching for something. But just as the children felt that their hearts would explode from the overwhelming fear—
“—Yahhh!”
A white-haired adventurer burst through the cloud of dust and rushed the black monster.
“!!”
Bell’s sudden appearance shook the children free of their frozen daze. His fluttering white hair drew a pure-white arc as he flew at the monster, red knife in one hand and black in the other.
The minotaur felt a renewed surge of joy at the sight of his rival.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
“UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Lai saw it all. The scene was burned into his memory.
Bell was howling as blood flowed from his head and stained his face red.
He was different from all the other pale and shaking adventurers.
No one else would stand up to the monster, but Bell would.
He was the only one willing to engage the windstorm of death in battle head-on.
“Ah—”
Bell’s expression was completely different from any Lai had seen him make before. He had seen him miserable, smiling bitterly, afraid, and crying. Lai had felt Bell had betrayed him, yet his memories of him were happy. But none of these Bells matched the one before him.
That’s—
Here was the image of a man roaring heroically.
Here was the face of a man throwing himself into an adventure.
That’s—an adventurer.
The boy stared at Bell. His hands and feet shook. His chest grew hot.
Lai didn’t know what this feeling was—like he was about to cry.
He knew just one thing.
Bell Cranell was neither a traitor nor a coward. He was an adventurer.
“……!”
Lai opened his mouth and tried to speak.
There was something he had wanted to say for a long time.
Bell had been drowning in despair, and he wanted to apologize, to tell him something.
But he couldn’t form the words. He felt as if a string were wrapped around his throat, preventing him from speaking.
Fina and Ruu felt the same way. They stood next to him, tears trickling down their cheeks.
Lai willed his mouth to move as tears blurred his vision, too. Just then, he heard a voice.
“Goooooooooooooooo, Little Rookiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!”
The deep voice thundered across the plaza.
“!”
“Get ’immmmmmmm!! Kill the damn monnnnnnnsterrrrrrrrr!”
It was Mord, the rogue adventurer.
He and his companions had stayed a safe distance from the battle, but they were watching with beet-red faces, fists clenched tightly. Mord spit, and then shouted his battle cry at the fighting boy.
Lai turned his head to look at Mord’s, and the string around his neck seemed to fall away. The boy squeezed both hands tight, shut his eyes, and yelled as loud as he could.
“Go get ’im, big brotheeeerrrrrrr!!”
“This is…”
As Hestia gazed around the plaza in a daze, she noticed a change begin to occur.
“Bell! Big brother!”
“Yeah! You go…!”
“Give ’im helllllllllllllllllllllllllll…!”
Mord’s thundering shouts echoed alongside Fina’s and Ruu’s earnest cheers. Ganesha Familia was urgently attempting to evacuate everyone from the plaza, but when the panicked townsfolk heard the shouts, they stopped.
Everyone realized in astonishment what was happening.
A single adventurer was taking on the enormous monster and his horrifying ax, rushing at him with two terribly puny knives. The adventurer evaded the earth-splitting swing of the ax by a hairbreadth, then leaped at the monster with knives flashing.
The townsfolk blanched at the sight. The Guild employees were at a loss for words. The other adventurers clenched their fists.
This was a fight. This was a fierce struggle in which human and monster were threatening each other’s lives.
“Bell…!”
Eina could not stop herself from whispering his name.
Everyone watching realized the same thing.
There was no calculation in this fight and no ambition. It was pure will. Pure thirst for victory.
No one thought now to slander Bell as an “enemy of the people.”
Criticisms steeped in malice and ridicule shaded with despair lost all meaning in the presence of this battle.
This was true mortal combat.
The sight of the adventurer bravely facing down this terrifying monster was worth more than a thousand explanations or excuses. There was not a trace of falsehood in the face of the one roaring at the black beast.
“Go…” a human finally whispered.
“Fight hard!” an animal person yelled.
“Don’t give in!” an elven girl screamed.
They were shouting at the boy locked in battle with the fierce monster in the center of the plaza.
A single word cascaded into a gigantic wave of voices.
“—!!”
As the lethal struggle unfolded in their midst, the pale townsfolk shouted until they were hoarse. The Guild staff turned their lost words into cheers. The adventurers raised their clenched fists to the sky.
All were shouting in support of Bell.
All saw the image of a hero in the boy’s brave fight.
An adventure…
The shouts of the spectators rang in Bell’s ears as he dodged the Labrys, keenly aware that his movements had sped up.
And that his heart had returned to where it began.
I want to have an adventure.
The voices around him sounded distant. Everything but his opponent disappeared from his field of vision.
All traces of hesitation and indecision had vanished from his face.
He forgot the Xenos, and Aiz, and the future. He forgot all the things that had been worrying him and focused solely on the fight at hand. He gave himself heart and soul to the smiling opponent before him.
He was starving, exactly as his opponent was.
Bell rea
lized instinctively that beyond the hunger for victory lay everything connected to his existence. This was a fight to save the Xenos, to reach the same level as his idol, to achieve the future that Wiene dreamed of. In other words, a fight for strength.
Onward, to adventure once again!!
His crimson knife yielded at last to a powerful blow from the Labrys. As the people watching screamed, Ushiwakamaru shattered to pieces.
I’m sorry. Thank you. I’m going on ahead.
Instantly, he shot a Firebolt from his empty hands, and then flew at the tottering minotaur surrounded by a shower of scarlet sparks.
Bell roared.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
The roars of the boy and the thundering shouts of the crowd echoed through the Labyrinth District.
“Hey, what are you doing?!”
“You, Amazon the Slasher!”
“If you move a hair, we will have no mercy.”
Tiona held her double-edged sword at the ready as she stared at the four armed prums before her. She was standing on the edge of the plaza where the battle continued to rage, but she could not move forward.
“Get out of my way!!” Tione shouted.
She, too, was blocked. The first-tier cat-person adventurer Allen Fromel was standing in her way. He parried each slash of her kukri knives with his spear.
“What the hell are you doing?!” she yelled, outraged that someone had obstructed her pursuit of the black minotaur.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” he responded with a chilly stare, then glanced back toward the ongoing fight between the boy and the monster. “Can’t you see the kid’s trying to be a man?” He spit on the ground.
“You’re a fine one to interfere,” Tione spat back.
Meanwhile, a good distance from where Tiona and Tione were stalled near the western edge of the plaza, the werewolf Bete stood on the edge of a roof on the eastern side and clicked his tongue dramatically.
“Tch…”
As he looked down on the white-haired boy, his face and its lightning-bolt tattoo twisted into a grimace.
Aiz stood near him, watching the battle in silence.
“…”
The two young elven boys guarding her and Bete—one with a white sword and the other, a dark elf, with a black sword—stood with their weapons at ease. They, too, were gazing down at the fight.
“…You’ve gone and done it now, haven’t you, Ottar?”
Finn stood nearby, facing the boaz warrior Ottar. He sighed.
“…”
The boaz was silent.
First-tier adventurers from Freya Familia were blocking all Loki Familia leaders from moving. But that was not all. Troops under Captain Ottar’s command had also pinned in place all the other Loki Familia members. That was why none of them had rushed into the plaza when the black minotaur appeared.
“I have only done what my goddess ordered.”
Ottar turned and threw his sword off the edge of the roof, his voice melting into the night air. The huge hunk of silver spun as it cut through the wind, landing point-down in the center of the plaza at the feet of Bell and Asterios.
Both human and monster stared at it. The next instant, Bell leaped toward the weapon, seized the grip, and pulled it from the ground.
The mad bull shuddered with pleasure as the final battle of his dreams came to life.
“Yah!!”
“UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”
Sparks sprayed into the air as the sword clashed with the Labrys. As the battle continued with new fury, the onlooking crowd screamed and shouted even louder.
“Ha-ha-ha…I wonder how Hermes feels now!”
Freya was on the top floor of Babel Tower in the city center. Watching from her perch at the highest point in Orario as the furious fight unfolded, the goddess sighed rapturously.
“Is this the fate laid down by some individual? Or is it simply a miracle? Whatever the answer…I am grateful for it.”
She was grateful for this turn of Fortune’s wheel—for the encounter between the boy and the monster. The beautiful goddess flushed and chewed gently on her bent pointer finger. She had left everything to her children so she could watch this scene.
Lost in admiration, she gazed passionately at the sparkling pure soul locked in combat with the raging bull.
“To think I am able to watch this fight once again!”
“Hey now…What’s going on here?” Hermes muttered.
Asfi reversed her invisibility and appeared behind him on the top of the tower where he stood.
“Lord Hermes…The situation has spun out of control. In all the chaos, the Xenos got away from me.”
Hermes did not respond. He simply stared at the plaza, stupefied.
The stage he had so carefully prepared was completely destroyed. His scheme had turned to dust.
Asfi watched her stunned patron deity silently.
Suddenly, a gust of wind blew off his traveling cap. Hermes snarled, roughly pushing back his orange hair.
“Everything is ruined…!”
A single monster had crushed the plan he had labored so diligently over. Drowning in a despair he had never experienced before, the god clenched his teeth and glared at the minotaur with deep hatred.
Yet at the same time, there was joy in his eyes as he looked down on the plaza.
“Oh, damn. I may as well accept it. I’ve lost! How could I possibly have imagined this scenario?”
The plaza echoed with battle cries, roars, cheers, and prayers. The people in the crowd were completely drawn in by this genuine battle between boy and beast, forgetting even their desire to escape. Hostility and despair had been replaced by a whirlwind of excitement.
Even if everything had played out according to Hermes’s plan, it likely wouldn’t have gone this well. The god would not have held the people’s hearts in the palm of his hand like this. Of course not. Even when the boy was in the midst of battle with the gargoyle, he had been suffering and constantly resisting.
All-knowing, all-powerful god though he may be, Hermes could not have conjured such a scene. It was better than a real adventure.
“Is this what you meant? Was this it, Zeus? Did you disappear from Orario because you foresaw this?!”
Behind him, Asfi gasped. Both she and Hermes were completely enraptured by this scene as brilliant as lightning that swept away the darkness.
“Only one who resisted the divine will of a deity could shine like this!”
The world wanted a hero.
It wanted a blade to rip through the darkness of old, a light to overcome long-held desires, a roar full of ugly yet noble life.
It did not want a puppet who danced for the deities but rather the potential to overcome thousands of years of stagnation in the mortal plane.
It wanted a familia myth, a story woven from pure will.
“In the end…is this black beast the polestar that will burn the weaver’s hand and show him the way?”
I’m a complete clown.
Hermes shivered in humiliation at the strange scene that so eclipsed his own divine will.
“The wisdom of the Sage, the strategies of Braver, the schemes of a god…This pure power has smashed them all to pieces.”
Hermes narrowed his eyes as he drank down the last dregs of his own shame.
“Ah, such a beautiful, loving fight to the death…”
His voice was full of respect for this struggle between the boy and the monster—this scene from a heroic tale that had gripped the hearts of the people and would not let them go.
“Oh…!”
As the crowd shouted and trembled, Hestia, too, shivered and pressed her hands to her chest. All she could see in the gaps between the wall of waving people was Bell’s back as he faced down the black monster.
“Lady Hestia!” Lilly shouted.
“…Let’s go! We’ll leave the minotaur to Bell! We can’t get in his way!!” Hestia replied. They had to escort the hidden Xenos to Knos
sos. Borne up by the surge of battle created by their familia member, the remainder of Hestia Familia was prepared to risk their lives to do what must be done.
Before leaving the plaza behind, Hestia looked one last time toward the center. The sight of a new story being written across Bell’s body burned itself into her memory.
“The mortal plane isn’t half bad.”
Somewhere in the world, someone spoke.
The innumerable stories playing out on that mortal plane belonged to the children, but still, the deities lurked in the background. That was certainly true.
But.
No matter how much the strings were pulled, or the lines whispered from backstage, or the movements rewritten mid-step, there were naughty children who did not listen. They raged across the stage, most of the time making mistakes too terrible to look at and drawing contemptuous laughter. But sometimes, they overturned the preestablished harmony entirely.
They turned stale operas into hitherto unseen dramas.
“It’s always you children who surprise us and surprise the world.”
Somewhere, someone smiled.
The struggle between Bell and Asterios raged on.
There was not a soul in Orario who did not hear the voices rising from the Labyrinth District.
They were cries of neither terror nor sorrow but rather a feverish, limitless excitement.
Even the townsfolk who had shut themselves inside out of fear now timidly opened their high-up windows or ventured onto roofs. They turned toward the eastern part of the city and pointed wordlessly toward the plaza in the Labyrinth District.
The fever spread.
Most of all, it spread among the deities who danced in joy, their shadows stretching over the city. And then—
“They’re moving!!”
Bell had been hurled down at the feet of the screaming townsfolk in the plaza, and now he vaulted off the cobblestones as high into the sky as his Level 3 Status would allow him, hoping to prevent the townsfolk from being drawn into the fight. Of course, Asterios followed.
The sound of two pairs of feet landing on a roof was followed by the thunder of the Labrys making contact, and then the pounding of running feet.
Asterios’s gaze never wavered from Bell as the boy left the Labyrinth District. The two forms ran alongside each other across the rooftops.
