by Hiro Ainana
“Lady Karina! That’s him.”
“Father, please stay back. Mr. Raka, Strengthening, please.”
“Karina? What was that voice just now…?”
Not understanding the situation, the baron continued clinging to Miss Karina as she pulled out the demon-sealing bell from a cloth bag at her waist.
“Lady Karina, it is good to see you safe. Who might these commoners be, incidentally?”
The magistrate, a lean man with pale skin and black hair, twirled his handlebar mustache as he glanced over at us and questioned the fake hero.
Behind me, a blue light shone from Miss Karina’s direction, and the baron and Miss Soluna shrieked. Most likely, she’d used her Strength Enhancement to forcibly peel the baron off her.
“Magistrate—no, demon! Your evil scheme ends here.”
“Lady Karina, whatever do you—?”
“There’s no use in trying to deceive me!”
Without allowing the magistrate to finish, Miss Karina raised the demon-sealing bell above her head.
The foul knight escorting the magistrate quickly cut in front of him, perhaps expecting her to throw it.
The demon-sealing bell rang out with a clear, cool sound.
“MYUWEEEEEN!” His true form revealed, the demon magistrate let out a shrill screech.
The knight, too, dropped to one knee as a semitransparent demon half rose out of his body. It quickly retreated back inside the knight, but the half that had shown itself was identical to the demon. Clearly, a doppelgänger was possessing the knight.
“Lady Karina, now!”
“Yes, I’m ready!”
Raka gave the signal, and Miss Karina charged toward the demon.
I had hoped the doppelgänger would be chased out of the knight’s body first, but he was only level 1. Miss Karina should be able to handle him without a problem.
I slipped a bronze nail out of Storage into my hand.
If anything unexpected happened, I planned to use Spellblade on the nail and throw it. If I stealthily recovered it and lied that the giants had given it to me as a one-time-use trump card, it shouldn’t be a problem.
With Raka’s strength aiding her, Miss Karina shot toward the hellish magistrate like an arrow.
“Miss Karina, have you gone mad?!”
Alarmed by her speed and unaware that the magistrate had morphed into a demon behind him, the knight raised his kite shield to block her way.
The demon was completely hidden by the large knight’s shadow.
“You are in my way, good sir!”
Miss Karina launched a flying kick at the knight’s shield.
However, even if he was rotten, he was still a level-20 knight. He moved the kite shield skillfully to parry Miss Karina and launch her backward.
She rolled across the floor. Then the hell demon howled again.
I sidestepped the intrusive guard to take care of the demon magistrate in Miss Karina’s stead, but he wasn’t there. Instead, I saw his tail for just a moment, disappearing into the body of the knight.
Don’t tell me.
“Miss Karina, the bell!”
“It’s no use, Sir Satou. Lady Karina has fainted.”
Since Raka was protecting her, a tumble like that shouldn’t have affected her so much. The hell demon’s howl must have been Psychic Magic.
Without hesitation, I ran over to Miss Karina.
The bell was probably the only thing that could drive the demon out of the knight’s body.
I picked it up and waved it at the same instant as he gained control over the knight.
However, I was too late. The demon started flickering back out of the knight’s body like a double, but only for a moment, and the knight’s head transformed into a cluster of tentacles like a sea anemone. The knight’s race had changed from Human to Demon, too. Perhaps because there were two copies of the demon, he had two tentacle heads.
Now that he had taken over the knight’s body, the demon’s level had changed to level 20 to match his host.
“How dare you, a little girl, ruining our plans!”
I had no idea what he was talking out of, but his anger was certainly clear.
“Demon! I will be your opponent. Satou, you must take the baron and his family and flee from this place!”
The fake hero drew his fake Holy Sword and strode toward the very real demon. His fear was obvious from his strange gait and trembling hands, though.
Still, the fake hero—Hauto did his best to smile reassuringly at us.
The demon had chosen the right man for the job. If he could just level up and get stronger, this guy had the makings of a real hero on the inside.
Well, I had no desire to let Hauto die in vain. We’d just have to be his reinforcements.
Since this thing could use only Psychic Magic, Arisa should be able to jam it.
“Liza, Pochi, Tama, take this demon down. Nana, you and I will handle his attacks.”
After finishing her Body Strengthening, Nana stood before the beastfolk girls.
Even suited up in her new equipment, it wouldn’t be safe to let Nana serve as the only defense against a level-20 opponent, so I joined her on the front lines.
The demon slashed with his sword, and Nana brought up her round shield to block it.
To make it easier for her, I aimed for the moment the two collided and delivered a firm kick to the demon’s shield to throw off his balance.
As soon as he was still, Liza moved to strike with her spear, but the tentacles on his head blocked her.
Just then, Tama and Pochi came up behind the demon and stabbed at his feet with their short swords.
The demon could feel pain, and he swept the sword behind him to drive the beastfolk girls away.
The two of them avoided the attack, but unfortunately, it struck Hauto instead.
He rolled across the floor a way and didn’t move for a moment. The wound didn’t seem to be serious, though, and he stood up unsteadily and returned to the front lines with his not–Holy Sword in hand.
“Arisa, I’m counting on you to jam his magic.”
“Okeydoke!”
The instant the demon started howling the beginnings of a spell, Arisa interrupted him with a chantless Mind Blow.
Nana used that opening to make a Shield with Foundation Magic, making it even easier for her to block the demon’s magic attacks safely.
“Mia, please try to heal everyone. Lulu, you’ll be Mia’s guard. Don’t use the gun.”
“Mm.”
“R-right! I-I’ll do my best.”
Mia held up a staff from the Garage Bag, and Lulu raised a frying pan in front of her chest with trembling hands.
Part of the reason I warned her not to use the gun was that I didn’t want to show off a rare magic tool, but I also wanted to avoid friendly fire.
Arisa interrupted the demon’s magic, Liza and Nana held him down at the front, and Tama and Pochi whittled away at the demon’s health. It was our usual pattern of cooperation.
Hauto recklessly rushed in front of the demon and got his arm fractured by a tentacle attack, but Tama and Pochi rescued him before the demon could follow up, so his life wasn’t in serious danger. Mia immediately started giving him first-aid treatment with healing magic.
I also made sure to ring the demon-sealing bell regularly to keep the demon weakened.
As Tama and Pochi were using mithril alloy short swords this time, the enemy’s HP was disappearing more quickly than usual.
I didn’t want to drag things out too long, so I occasionally helped with a few kicks on the front lines.
“Take this, sir!”
Pochi landed one last satisfying critical hit, and the demon became a cloud of black dust that sifted through the gaps in the full-plate mail.
When the powder was gone, the armor and helmet dropped to the floor and scattered.
“Gooone?”
“There’s no more meat inside, sir.”
“You mustn’t
let your guards down, you two.”
A fragment of the demon had transformed into a rat scuttling out of the armor.
But Liza was still on high alert, and she immediately impaled the rodent with her Magic Cricket Spear and turned it to black dust.
“Liza’s amaziiing!”
“Indeed, sir!”
Tama and Pochi praised Liza as they warily scanned their surroundings.
Just in case, I checked the log to make sure we’d defeated the demon and did another search on the map to reassure myself there weren’t any more demons or doppelgängers in Muno City.
“Good work, everyone. You can stop being in battle mode now.”
At my words, the beastfolk girls relaxed and put away their weapons.
“Cooore?”
“There’s a core here, too, sir.”
Tama had found a small stone inside the armor. Pochi picked up a tiny one near where Liza had defeated the demon rat.
So were demons considered a kind of monster?
The greater hell demon I’d defeated in Seiryuu City hadn’t left a core behind, as far as I knew. I didn’t remember any from the lesser one, either.
What was the difference here? Was it because I’d used a Holy Sword?
I put a lid on this unanswerable question, collected the dazed Miss Karina from the side of the wall, and brought her to the baron.
Arisa had dispelled the effects of the demon’s Psychic Magic, but Miss Karina still showed no signs of opening her eyes.
“So the magistrate and Sir Eral the knight became demons? Y-you… Do you know what’s going on here?”
“Nice to meet you, Lord Baron. I am Satou, a traveling merchant.”
I introduced myself to the alarmed, suspicious baron, then laid Miss Karina down on the sofa.
The fact that I got to hold her princess-style certainly had its perks, but I wasn’t about to revel in those in front of her family.
“All I know is what I heard from Raka and Lady Karina. Is that all right?”
“…That will be fine. Who is this Raka anyway? Is it one of these young ladies…?”
As soon as the exhausted baron shifted his attention to my kids, his gaze became a stare.
He’s not a lolicon, right? What’s going on?
“…Animal-eared folk? S-Sir Satou, don’t tell me you’re a hero, too?!”
Startled by the baron’s passion, Pochi and Tama flattened their ears fearfully.
Come to think of it, Miss Karina was surprised when we first met, too.
“Just as I said, I am only a humble peddler. My comrades are not heroes, either.”
I wasn’t lying. I was just a peddler who happened to have the Hero title.
Not that anyone had a lie-detecting skill. Still, there could be trouble if a careless fib triggered Raka’s Perceive Malice function.
“Lord Baron, I am the one known as Raka.”
The baron blinked in surprise when Raka’s voice issued forth from Miss Karina’s pendant.
So her father didn’t know about Raka. It wasn’t a family heirloom?
Raka explained to the bewildered noble how he and Miss Karina had met.
The short version was Miss Karina had been walking through the ruins of Marquis Muno’s villa and happened upon a hidden chamber under a floor where Raka was enshrined, thus becoming his new master.
I waited for an appropriate lull in the conversation, then redirected the topic.
“Lord Baron, may I continue?”
“Yes, pardon me. Please go on.”
“Very well. If I may…”
I told the baron what I’d heard from Miss Karina.
I explained how she discovered through Raka that the magistrate was a demon, visited the Mountain-Tree Village to request help in defeating him, met us on the way, and borrowed the artifact from the forest giants.
While we were talking, some maids arrived and said a room had been prepared for us, so the baron and I sent the others ahead while we went to his office to finish our conversation.
Considering the size of the castle, the number of servants struck me as very small. Maybe he had budgetary constraints. There wasn’t even a maid in the office, never mind a civil official.
When I’d finished the tale, I took a deep drink of the weak herbal tea that a maid had brought earlier.
“So that’s what happened…”
“The story doesn’t end there, Lord Baron. A spirit in the giants’ village warned me that a great crisis is approaching Muno City.”
Since I couldn’t just blurt out that I’d seen it on my map, I claimed to have heard it from a “spirit”—the dryad. Raka wasn’t around, so I could get away with taking a few creative liberties.
“A crisis?!”
“Yes. There has been an immense outbreak of goblins near the city. I was told that the number might well exceed ten thousand.”
“Ten thousand…?!”
The blood drained from the baron’s face.
Far from coming up with a plan or calling on a subordinate to do so, the baron simply stared at his feet in shock. He didn’t appear terribly competent as a statesman.
Taking this into account, I tried to give an innocuous proposal.
“Forgive my arrogance, but perhaps it might be best to have the people in the nearby villages take refuge inside the city walls or evacuate them far away?”
“Y-yes, of course! That’s perfect. I’ll call the magistrate right—”
For a moment, the light returned to the baron’s eyes with my encouragement, but he faltered again when he remembered that the magistrate had been a demon.
“Perhaps a civil official would be preferable?” I offered, and then he was able to dispatch soldiers to help evacuate the villagers safely.
I also suggested that he send out a messenger to call back the army fighting the bandits.
We would have only about half our troops to protect the city in the meantime, but there was no helping that.
“Lord Baron, there is actually a bit more to the story.”
“Th-there’s still more?!”
Well, I had to let him know about the demon. We’d have trouble if he thought the copies we’d taken care of were the end of the matter.
“Yes. The same spirit also told me that there are more demons than the ones we defeated earlier…”
While I spoke, I checked the demon’s current position on the map. The doppelgänger heading toward the hydras’ habitat had reached his destination, but other than that, there were no further changes.
However, the number of dots that indicated the soldiers and thieves was decreasing at an alarming rate. There were only four or five hundred people left—only a fifth of the initial number.
Even soldiers with no opponents nearby were getting injured.
There must be some kind of infighting.
I understood why when I checked their status conditions.
The soldiers had the Confusion condition. Those doppelgängers did have Psychic Magic, after all, and now they were surrounding the army.
There was no reason for me to go rescue a bunch of bad guys, but it was still upsetting to witness all those casualties.
I wanted to charge into battle and get rid of the demon once and for all, but even with my speed, it’d take at least an hour. Unfortunately, I probably wouldn’t make it there in time.
I hid my frustration with the “Poker Face” skill and continued my discussion with the baron.
“The spirit told me there were sightings of multiple demons in the hydra den and the thieves’ fortress in the forest.”
“M-multiple demons?! …C-couldn’t this be an omen of a demon lord’s revival?!”
A demon lord? I certainly hoped not.
I checked the map just to be safe, but I didn’t see anyone in the territory with the title Demon Lord, “Unknown” skills like Arisa, or anything like that. But the blank area where the demons had been hanging about was right below the baron’s castle—
“
The ground is weeeird?”
I remembered what Tama had said when we’d entered the castle.
At the time, I’d assumed she meant the demon magistrate that was in the prison beneath us, but…he didn’t have a demon lord egg or something rolling around down there, right?
“Lord Baron, I was also warned to ‘beware the basement.’ Would you happen to have any idea what that might mean?”
I casually left out the part about who’d given me this advice.
“When this was the marquis’s castle, the Undead King Zen laid a curse on the City Core in the basement… Perhaps it’s referring to that.”
…Listen, old man. Don’t go blabbing about the City Core in front of a random outsider! That’s supposed to be a big secret known only to lords!
I bit back an outburst with the help of my “Poker Face” skill and took a deep breath to calm myself.
The baron seemed unaware of the faux pas, so I pretended not to have heard it and carried on.
“So there is a curse?”
“That’s right. If any nobles or other ambitious folks set foot in the basement, they’ll be afflicted by a curse that will gradually sap their strength and energy until they eventually die.”
“Wouldn’t it be best to have a priest without ambitions remove the curse, then?”
I assumed they’d tried that already, but I was pursuing the subject out of curiosity.
“When I became the lord of this land, I asked the holy woman and head priestess of the Tenion Temple to do so, but even they could only make it halfway down the staircase before it became too much to bear.”
I assumed the curse had dissipated once I set Zen’s soul to rest, and even if not, I would probably immediately get a “Curse Resistance” skill as soon as I set foot on the stairs and would make it down to the basement easily enough.
I bet this “holy woman” was a pure and beautiful lady, though. Once I reached the old capital, I would have to get a look at her, even if it was from far away.
“In that case, how about letting a civilian soldier or civil official go investigate?”
“Impossible. I once had the bravest of all the commoners in the territory, Sir Zotol the knight, investigate, but…he only made it halfway down before he was overcome with panic and fled. An ordinary civil official couldn’t even approach the stairs.”
