Paladin Of The End Volume 3.2 Chapter 3
Beyond the West Gate lay stone walls and stone floors—endless stone passages that gave a rigid and cold impression. The passages were wide with high ceilings, probably because they had been important trade routes with the elven lands.
A lot of dust had piled up over the past two hundred years. It would have been normal for a place like this to have spider webs everywhere and be covered in droppings from bats and beasts, but there was no sign of anything like that. The reason was the foul-dragon’s miasma filling the air with a black, mist-like smoke.
“Urgh.”
“I don’t think any of us want to stay here long.”
Though I’d stacked anti-poison miracles and magic upon us, I could still sense something unpleasant. And because of the miasma filling the air, we didn’t have a very clear view ahead of us, either.
“Enemy encounters and traps are the big worry,” Al said.
Ghelreis nodded. “Apart from the demon traps, I also cannot deny that there might still be some untriggered traps that were set by our fallen brothers.”
He was right. Since they’d been trying to repel a demon invasion, the dwarves of the Iron Country at the time must have prepared a large number of defenses. In a situation like this, it was possible to anticipate that we wouldn’t be dealing with tame traps that set off alarms, but serious ones that could kill you instantly if you stepped on them.
“About light. Gonna be using fire?”
“Let’s not. There’s a chance that there are buildups of bad air.”
The best practice for a source of light was to prepare both a magical light and a regular flame and make it so that even if one went out, you still had the other. However, this used to be a mine, so I had some concerns that buildups of gas could ignite here. Deciding to hold back on the fire, I supplemented Pale Moon by converging mana into several pebbles with the Word of Light engraved upon them and handed them out. Menel threw them into lanterns with shutters, making it so we could control the amount of light being produced. It was a trick that also considered the scout at the front of the party, who needed to work in low light.
“What order are we going in?” Menel asked.
“Menel, you lead us. Be on your guard for traps and demons. Ghelreis, you go behind him.”
I placed Menel, who had good ears and could detect traps, at the front. Next came Ghelreis. Like all dwarves, he could see in the dark and excelled at sensing things underground, and additionally, he had a good grasp of what the internal structure of the Iron Country was like at the time.
“Then Al and I will go in the middle. Reystov, you take the back, please.”
I placed Reystov the veteran at the end of the line and asked him to watch out for attacks from the rear. Because I could use magic and was the most powerful force in battle and Al had high physical offensive strength, I placed us right in the middle so we could quickly change places according to the situation.
“Our opponents are demons. There are some that crawl along walls and ceilings, and some have wings. Take care you aren’t surprised by an attack from an unexpected direction.” Everyone nodded.
As we got walking, I noticed Al constantly turning his head, so I added in a quiet voice, “Oh, I didn’t mean to stay alert in all directions at all times.”
“Really?”
“Yes. After all, that’s impossible.”
A person who has his guard up in all directions at all times only exists in the imagination. Humans can’t change the fact that they find it easier to detect things in front of them than behind them, and being constantly on your guard in enemy territory is exhausting. That’s why it’s meaningful to have a few people each look in different directions to cover for each other.
“Just keep it in the back of your mind. It’ll make it faster for us to reorganize ourselves.”
When you are actually attacked from an unexpected direction, whether or not you were told that might happen translates to a difference in the speed of the reaction. When something they weren’t expecting in the slightest happens to a person, they freeze up and stop thinking for an instant. It happens to everyone. I’d mentioned it just to be safe, but I’d forgotten that this kind of dangerous journey was a first for Al.
I re-explained in a way that was easier to understand. “Menel and Ghelreis are watching what’s ahead and on the ground, and Reystov is keeping an eye out behind us, so we should focus on what’s happening above and to the sides. The stuff about surprise attacks is just something to bear in mind. This will get pretty tiring, so we’ll take little breaks from time to time and have someone stand on watch.”
“Right!” Al nodded enthusiastically. He really was quick on the uptake, and his close-combat skills were improving rapidly as well. I was sure that he would get used to the tried-and-tested techniques of exploration just as quickly.
The straight path continued. We all pushed forward in silence.
Every so often, Menel would stick a palm out behind him to stop the rest of us, and spend a moment listening out or disarming a trap. Deterioration over the years had already rendered the bow guns in the walls harmless due to lack of tension, but the same couldn’t be said for the pitfalls and spike balls. Menel discovered those kinds of dangerous traps effortlessly and neutralized them with a practiced hand by either disarming the mechanisms or marking the spots that would trigger them.
As Ghelreis watched him work, he said briefly, “The Rock Hall soon. After that, it branches terribly.” Then, as an afterthought, he said, “This has been unexpected.”
I nodded in agreement. “Yes. There weren’t any demon ambushes.”
There hadn’t even been one. We’d clearly been discovered by the dragon, yet there was no sign of any of them coming to intercept us.
◆
“Does that, um, mean that the dragon and the demons aren’t acting as one?”
“Can’t be sure of that yet. Rock Hall’s coming up. They’re probably all waiting there, right? Hoping to surround the enemy in a wide, open place and finish them off with a full-scale assault. Usual stuff.”
Drawing the enemy deep into your own territory to encircle and destroy them was certainly an effective technique.
“On the other hand, if there isn’t an ambush in the Rock Hall...”
“Yeah. Al’s right if so.”
Ghelreis had said that the path branched terribly after Rock Hall. Once we made our way into one of those branches, the demons wouldn’t be able to track us completely. There was no way that whoever was leading the demons would choose not to send his forces to intercept us at Rock Hall. If something like that happened, the only possible interpretation could be that the demon leader hadn’t noticed our intrusion in the first place. In other words, it would be the surest possible proof that Valacirca, almost certainly the owner of that murderous stare, hadn’t teamed up with the demons at all.
“Wait...” Menel held a palm out behind him and stopped everyone. He listened out for something at the other end of the gently curving passage.
“What?”
“Noise. Something metal jangling. And footsteps, back and forth.” He spoke in a hushed voice.
“Is there an ambush?”
“Can’t tell. Something’s there. That’s all I’m sure of.”
“Rock Hall is very close,” Ghelreis said.
“Um, so... doesn’t that mean... this is... um...”
A demon ambush was probably a safe assumption. We all nodded together and gripped our weapons.
“Ghelreis and I will go in with our shields up and test the waters.”
We took the large shields off our backs. If we covered each other with these shields which could cover the vast majority of our bodies, we would be able to endure their attacks even if they had us half-surrounded and fired on us all at once the moment we left the passage. After seeing how much power they were packing, we could decide our course of action according to the situation. For instance, we could withdraw, barrage them with magic, or retreat slowly into the passage as we dealt with them.
“Menel, you provide support from the end of the passage. Al and Reystov, stand by. Use your judgment and attack when it looks right.” Keeping it short, I told everyone their roles. We reorganized our line, cut down the amount of light from our lanterns, silenced our footsteps as much as we could, and continued along the passage in deadly silence.
Stopping just before the Rock Hall, I made sure everyone could see my hand—the hand gripping my spear—and I raised one finger. Then I raised a second. And at the instant the third was raised, Ghelreis and I started charging forward, our shields held in front of us.
Once we entered the wide-open space, the miasma thinned.
It was a vast cylindrical space with a very high ceiling. A spiral staircase ran up the wall, similar to the inside of a screw hole, and at countless places along it I could see passages going off in different directions. And also—
“Ohhh!”
“Dwarves! Dwarves are here!”
“Humans, too, and an elf.”
“Did Lothdor not fall?!”
“Are you alright? Did you have to run?”
“Are you injured? Don’t worry, my brothers, this place is safe!”
Many voices echoed around the Rock Hall.
Ghelreis’s face crumpled. I, too, unconsciously grit my teeth.
“How is the war going?”
“Come over and talk.”
“You must have had a hard time.”
A large number of skeletons were calling out to us.
Gathered near a sturdy defensive barrier, they stood wearing armor, with axes in their hands and shields on their backs, full of the will to fight. They had been reduced to undead, their rational minds probably half-consumed by the attachments they had held in life, and even now they still continued to fight, not even understanding what had become of themselves, to protect their already long-lost homeland.
◆
Ghelreis pressed his lips together tightly and breathed in and out several times before he finally managed to squeeze out one word. “Everyone.”
“Ohh!”
“You, you’re Ghelreis!”
“I thought you escaped.”
“What about the people? Are they safe?”
“Why are you here?”
Having no eyeballs, the skeletons had no normal sense of vision. They must have recognized him through some supernatural sense.
“Could it be you snuck away from the group and came back?!”
“Hahaha. How very like you.”
“You’ll be in for it when the Captains hear about this.”
“But you have guts.”
“Indeed. Having you will be a tremendous help. Come, let us fight together.”
The skeletons laughed loudly. Ghelreis tried to say something, but the words caught in his throat. Nothing else would come out. Who could blame him?
I should probably send them on, I thought, and went to take a step forward when someone grabbed my shoulder. I turned around.
“Al...”
Al—Vindalfr was there. He had a serious expression unlike any I’d seen from him before. In his eyes dwelt a dignified light. “Let me. I think I should be the one to tell them.”
I watched him walk towards them. There was no need to lend him a hand. That was how I felt.
“My lord?”
“Lord Aurvangr?”
“No, but it can’t be. His Highness should be in the throne room.”
Al stepped forward in front of the murmuring skeletons.
“My name is Vindalfr!” He struck the long handle of his halberd against the stone floor. “I inherit the blood of Aurvangr, final ruler of the Iron Country!”
The skeletons stirred again upon hearing these words.
“Final?”
“He will not be the final.”
“Not as long as we are here.”
“Yes.”
“Look at us. Our spirit remains strong as ever.”
“As long as we remain standing, the Iron Country has not yet fallen.”
“Yes. It has not fallen.”
“It has not fallen.”
Al looked around, not responding to the voices being raised from every direction. “This is a spectacular defensive barrier, well constructed. You must have been mending it and improving it continually for some time.” His face expressed complex emotions that couldn’t be put into simple words. I wondered what he was thinking right now about this sight he’d encountered in the homeland he’d never before visited.
“Sure is.”
“We exhausted all our technical capabilities.”
“We will never allow the demons entrance through the West Gate.”
“The Iron Country will never fall.”
“Yes. It will never fall.”
Voice after voice denied ruin.
“I understand. I understand.” Al accepted those voices. And then, he screamed, “But even so, the Iron Country has fallen!” It was a pained, heartrending scream. “You warriors all died! Our monarch Aurvangr perished! Lothdor withered pitifully, and the Iron Country became the Rust Mountains, infested by demons and a dragon!”
Ghelreis, Menel, Reystov—none of them said a word.
“That... cannot... be.”
“It will not fall.”
“The Iron Country will not fall.”
“It will never fall.”
But now, some of the skeletons had started to make quiet groans.
“You know it is true! As brave warriors and dwarves, do not avert your eyes!” Al’s voice beat the truth against them, again and again. And before I knew it, the skeleton’s voices had also begun to wither. Their faces no longer had any expressions, but I felt as if I could see them filling with despair.
“But still...” Al drew a deep breath and shouted even louder. “But still, you warriors!” The halberd that had once belonged to Ewen the Immense struck stone once again. It had a crisp sound, the kind that called a person to attention and made them stand up straight. “My grandfather Aurvangr did strike back at the foul-dragon and stole away one of its eyes! It is a hero’s accomplishment, praised even by the gods!” Al’s natural voice echoed around the Rock Hall. “And I... I, Vindalfr, have rushed here with heroes of this modern age to carry on his great feat!”
His back was no longer curved.
“All you warriors! The Iron Country has fallen! It has fallen without doubt! But may our creator Blaze and the god of the flame Gracefeel hear my words on their holy thrones—”
The skeletons’ drooping heads began to rise.
“I swear to you here! That on the names of the good gods and the countless spirits of our ancestors, I will take back the Iron Country and its former prosperity!”
They were powerful words, words of zeal that lit a fire inside the heart. There was no timid hunched-over dwarf standing there anymore. Instead—
“The fire of the furnace still burns! The flames shall spread from your divine torch and purge the rust, and the mountains of rust shall be mountains of iron once again!”
A lord stood before us.
The skeletons moaned. But the tone was different from before.
And then Al walked up to each of them in turn. He held their hands, smiled at them with a face on the brink of tears, and spoke to them. “So... please... enough. Rest now. You have all done well.” Each time, another of the skeletons returned to ash.
For a while, the Rock Hall was filled with the sounds of axes, shields, and armor clattering to the stone floor.
◆
After the final corpse had crumbled to the floor, Al turned around. His expression made him look like a completely different person. Maybe all the things he’d experienced up until now had changed him, or maybe it was that one instant. Perhaps it was both. People tend to have aspects that rarely change, but sometimes, a person can change into something unrecognizable in a single moment.
“Well said. Well said, young master.” Ghelreis’s voice was full of emotion. “Let us purge the demons and accomplish this without fail. Young master, this bag of bones will protect you even if it costs him his life.”
“Please don’t let it cost you your life,” Al said with a wry smile. “There are still many things I need you to teach me. About these mountains, and about battle.”
As Al said this without a hint of tension, Menel clapped him on the shoulder. “The revival of a country. Brother, what a pain-in-the-ass oath you made for yourself. You didn’t need to get so serious about it. That was dumb.”
Al shook his head. “No, it wasn’t so dumb.”
“Oh?”
“Unlike the oaths that you two made, Menel, Sir Will, mine has an end. So who’s the dumb one?” he said mischievously.
“You got me.” Menel laughed.
Reystov nodded, completely cool as always. “To fulfill that oath, first we need to win. And survive.”
“Right!” Al nodded, then looked back at me. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Sir Will. Shall we go? I await your instructions.”
Hearing how humbly he prompted me, I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “No more ‘Sir.’”
“Huh?”
“Having royalty as my squire would be a little too much, don’t you think?”
There were appearances and authority and things like that to think about. If Al was going to set his mind on taking back his country and becoming its ruler, I couldn’t always have him bowing his head to me. So I decided to tell him that now was a good point to end our relationship as knight and squire, master and disciple.
Al suddenly got all flustered. “What?! B-But, um, Sir Will!”
“Look, I said no more ‘Sir.’ The determination you just showed and that oath, you meant them, didn’t you?”
“Of course!” His answer was instant. He strode up to me and looked directly up at me. “I will not break my oath to the gods and my ancestors.” Then his tone became even stronger. “But Sir Will, you will still always be Sir Will to me. You are my one and only master, and I respect you.”
His imploring eyes took the wind out of my sails. In his hand, he was gripping the handle of Blood’s dagger, which I had gifted him.
“Is that so...”
“Of course it’s so. Just because I call myself a ruler doesn’t change my feelings of respect.” Al’s determination looked firm.
“I guess we’ll have to keep it, then.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, and Al?” I smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “You did well. I’m proud of you. And they must have been happy, too.”
“Thank you!” Al nodded, smiling brightly. Then, as if he had suddenly realized something, mixed feelings showed in his expression. “I wonder if I should be a little bit grateful to the god of undeath, too.”
As someone serving the god of the flame, it was a little hard for me to agree with that. But still, there was no doubt that the reason the warriors had been able to pass on happily was because of Stagnate’s blessing. The only problem was that it was also due to Stagnate’s blessing that they had gotten so lost and spent the last two hundred years suffering from their obsession. I could only make the same kind of complicated expression myself.
“J-Just a little is probably okay,” I said to him.
He laughed nervously and offered a small prayer to the god of undeath as well. I got the feeling that my god was making an incredibly sour face, but I apologized in my mind, asking for her understanding. “Right then,” I said, after a breath.
“Ya.”
Our conversation reached a stopping point, and everyone took that as a cue to take hold of their weapons again. I could hear sounds in the distance, coming through all of the Rock Hall’s passages, that seemed to be getting closer. Among them were heavy footsteps and light footsteps, dragging noises, grating noises, and eerie cries.
“It was necessary, but it seems we’ve taken a little too long.”
It seemed that the demons had finally picked up on our intrusion. But it was too late now.
“Let’s go,” I said, holding up my spear. “To take back the Iron Mountains and the country of the dwarves.”
From here, the task was simple. Push forward, farther and farther forward, and cut and kill and slash and slay.
“On the flame of Gracefeel!”
◆
The first thrust of my spear pierced the bat-like wings of the wiry demon in front of me. As it fell, I kicked it as hard as I could. A strong impact shook my greave. I had definitely shattered its skull. Not stopping to check, I swung Pale Moon around again with a shout. I swept aside several smaller demons in one swing, smashing them into a wall and destroying them.
These were strikes with no technique, just pure muscle power, but in a melee like this, going wild and never letting up was a better idea than overthinking things. Get ripped, and you can solve pretty much everything by force.
After smashing and destroying the remainder of the mob as well, fully repulsing the attack from the rear, I turned to look at the others. The group of demons attacking us from the front were being overwhelmed. Pincer attacks are a powerful strategy; however, lacking the power to make the pincer lethal, they had achieved nothing more than splitting apart their own forces, making each side a target for being individually destroyed.
The wide stone passage continued to fill with the crumbling dust of defeated demons. Reystov in particular was displaying incredible fighting skills at the front of the line. He was unstoppable death incarnate. The moment he encountered an enemy, he leaped into range and killed it with a swift thrust straight out of his normal stance. In the rare case that they survived the hit or that several foes charged at him at once, he would chain together attacks and kill them all before they had any say in the matter.
That was all he was doing when it came down to it, but that simplicity was his strength. No matter what kind of enemy came or from where, he would get the first strike and make it lethal. He would crush his opponent with the strongest attack at first encounter, never giving them the chance to dictate the pace of the fight. It was a simple style of relentlessly forcing his greatest strength onto his opponents.
To undo his strategy, one would either have to unleash an incredibly cunning scheme or use simple strength or numbers to give Reystov more than he could handle. But Reystov was a solidly high-level master of the sword, and on top of that, his favorite weapon now packed extra ferocity, having been strengthened by Gus’s Signs among other things. Just now, a few demons had attempted to shoot him and cast magic at him from outside his range, but they crumbled to the ground after being impaled through the throat and spinal cord by his sword’s “extending thrust.”
Reystov was untouchable. And now, Al was learning a lot from him about how to fight. Al had always been quick at absorbing knowledge, picking up techniques and attitudes like sand absorbing water, but I’d never felt it as strongly as right now.
As if he had copied Reystov’s boldness and simply imprinted it on himself, Al leaped into dense patches of enemies and swept them away with his Immense halberd before they could manage a response. Its thick and bulky blade was sized like a traffic sign or something from my old world. The sight of Al bellowing as he sliced demons in half with it was pretty amazing to behold.
No matter what enemy appeared, Al would force them to face his phenomenal physical strength and heavy weapon, obliterating all their defenses and sending them flying. That was probably the bedrock of Reystov’s fighting style, and Al had picked it up from him.
Three demons had just come charging at him at the same time. One giant swing of his halberd cleaved them all through the chest. He was like a small tempest.
“There should be a branch coming up next. Take the right.”
Ghelreis, on the other hand, wasn’t getting directly involved much. He just gave us directions as he watched Reystov and Al grow the pile of demon corpses at a frightful pace. From time to time, he would lumber into action and deliver a mighty finishing blow to a demon who was still breathing or use his large shield to cover a tiny gap in Reystov and Al’s defense.
There was absolutely nothing flashy about his work, but it was a great source of relief to know that we had backup waiting, with strength in reserve, who could trade places with us if needed. The reason Reystov and Al were able to go so wild was a result of Ghelreis’s intelligent support. He truly was quietly brilliant.
“Got it nice and easy back here thanks to our tough-as-nails front line,” Menel said casually while firing his bow. Silver-string produced an airy note, and the glint of the mithril arrowhead shot through the air. At the end of the passage, beyond the darkness and miasma, something gave up a mortal cry. We made our way forward and discovered, in the process of turning to dust, the remains of a Commander-ranked demon shot through the heart.
At a whistle from Menel, winged fairies danced playfully through the air, retrieved the arrow that had come to the end of its flight, and carried it back into his hands. Menel’s gaze as he accepted it was the complete opposite of his casual expression.
He manipulated the elementals of earth to trip up dangerous demons, and he used the elementals of air to prevent his enemies from being able to utter Words. The support of the fairies was extremely precise, striking directly at critical points and demonstrating Menel’s full potential as the linchpin of our defense.
“And thanks to all the demons piling in, there’s no need to watch out for traps, either,” he added.
It wasn’t all bad news that waves of demons were coming one after another. The fact that these were passages that demons continued to pour through meant that the dangerous traps must either have been removed or set off by rank-and-file demons. There was little danger to us in following the path they’d already taken. That was the reason I could afford to break up our previous formation and put Al and Reystov, who were very good at forcing their way through enemies, in charge of the front.
“Will, are you okay by yourself back there?”
“Hm? There’s not much pressure coming from the rear. I’ll be fine on my own.”
The demons were launching sporadic attacks from the back as well to pressure us, but these I was handling by myself, eliminating every enemy that came my way.
Demon armies were more of a hassle than human ones. The Soldiers were all savage warriors with no fear of death, and the Commanders were just the same, with the addition that many of them were also users of magic and blessings. If a large number of fearless Soldiers forced me into a chaotic battle in a relatively wide and open place with constant long-range attacks from Commanders and Generals, even I could find myself checkmated.
That was why I had laid out a plan for outflanking our enemy to get inside the tunnel-filled Iron Country. This approach gave us a good chance of victory. At the risk of repeating myself, if a pincer attack is carried out without the power to make the pincer lethal, it’s nothing more than a division of forces that makes each side a target for individual destruction.
“Rear guard all by yourself and not breaking a sweat. You’re as ridiculous as ever. Gods.”
“It’s not really like that.”
If I’d been on my own, I was sure that I’d have built up so much mental fatigue that I’d definitely have made some kind of mess-up by now. The only reason I was able to push myself so far was because I had allies whom I could leave the other side to.
◆
“Ghelreis, how far along are we now?”
“We’ve avoided the main route where we’d have been more easily surrounded and descended to the third level through the side paths. Soon will be the Hall of Light, and I expect the dragon will be in the Great Cavern beyond that.”
We pressed onward, calmly crushing our enemies as they came. I had no idea where the leader of the demons would be; however, there were only a limited number of places in the dwarves’ underground kingdom where a dragon could indulge in a long slumber.
“Long ago, our forefathers drained the stagnant water from an underground lake and created the Great Cavern. It lies at the very core of the Iron Country.”
There the dragon was entrenched, and in all probability, he was waiting for us—Calamity’s Sickle, with its golden eye.
“The demons should work out that we’re heading towards the dragon. Assuming they lie in wait for us, where would that be?”
“The Hall of Light, I imagine. It’s the throne room where Lord Aurvangr gave his last speech so many years ago.”
“We have to take it back,” Al mumbled.
I nodded too. “Yep. Let’s take it back.”
We meant the throne—and also the crown. They were just symbols, but that was also what made them important.
“All that work for a symbol? Whatever floats your boat, I guess. I’ll back you up.”
“Me, too. Everything taken should be taken back.”
Menel and Reystov nodded and continued forward, beating the hell out of even more demons. They poured out in great swarms, but the majority of them were Soldiers, or Commanders at worst. Pitted against accomplished warriors, they might as well have been scarecrows.
We traveled through dim stone passages one after another that twisted and branched, sometimes into up and down routes and sometimes with stairs. Suddenly, I caught a glimpse of light.
“Huh?”
A strong, warm light, at odds with this underground space, spread out from a rectangular doorway. It looked like the entrance to a world of light. When we stepped inside, a bright space was there, a vast space with lines of many pillars. There was a chalk ceiling, and a smooth floor in which I couldn’t see any joins. All over the ceiling were lines of magic lights cut from clear crystal with Signs carved into them. It was beautiful, dazzling lighting, as though the light of the sun had been replicated within the room.
I didn’t have to be told to know that this was the Hall of Light, the seat of the monarch. And dead ahead, opposite the entrance and at the other end of the rows of pillars, was the throne. It was beautiful and decoratively carved, and sat on it was a single demon.
How could I describe that classless demon sitting brazenly upon the throne? The first words that came to mind were “humanoid insect.” The green shell like a jewel beetle’s that encased its two-meter-tall muscular body made it look almost like a samurai in full armor. In its hands was a horrifyingly thick, spiked club. The demon had the mouthparts of an insect, complete with mandibles. And like some kind of sick joke, on top of its head, in addition to a pair of feelers, sat the crown.
If I remembered correctly, this was a General-ranked demon: a Scarabaeus.
“Sir Will...” After looking at the figure of the demon for a while, Al’s expression turned serious. “Let me do it.”
“Al—no, Vindalfr. Good luck.”
“Thank you.” Al marched forward, no longer turning around to reply.
“Wh—Hey!”
“It’s okay, Menel. Let him go.”
“You want to talk about it first?! That’s a fig General! His chances are—”
“Even so, this is Al’s fight.” I said it so strongly that Menel fell silent. “It’s the fight of a king for his throne.” Menel didn’t look at all happy about it, but a warrior’s pride was at stake. This was a battle in which none of us could afford to interfere.
◆
In the chalk pillar hall filled with light, Al marched confidently towards the throne, which was placed on a slightly higher level than the rest of the room. The beetle-demon—the Scarabaeus—languidly rose to its feet.
I could feel a prickling in the air as mana converged on the spiked club in its hands. And I could tell even from its emotionless, bug-like exterior that it held strong contempt for its diminutive challenger and had confidence bordering on arrogance in its own power. Even though its forces had been thoroughly slaughtered and its territory encroached upon, it was probably convinced that it could simply deal with us itself and there would be absolutely no problem.
As Ghelreis watched Al march forward, he took a fresh look at the demon and muttered, “I don’t like the look on it.”
I thought the same thing. But the demon’s arrogant confidence wasn’t without basis. Even though it may have borrowed the power of the foul-dragon to do it, this beetle-demon had in fact been the fall of the Iron Country, wiping out an entire army of dwarves who were prepared to fight to the death.
“It’s strong,” I replied.
If this was the supreme commander of the demon army that the High King had dispatched to the Iron Mountains, it would most likely mean that it was at least the equal of the horned demon called a Cernunnos that I’d fought in the Lord of Holly’s domain. It was probably stronger.
With humans, a commander’s rank and their prowess in battle don’t necessarily match up, but when it came to demons, the ones of higher rank were generally stronger and smarter. If it were me fighting it, the odds would likely be in my favor. The beetle-demon did look solid and had magical armor I couldn’t identify, but I thought I’d still be able to overcome it. For Al, though, this might yet be too difficult an opponent.
“You’re gonna let him die ’cause of some pigshit warrior hang-up?” Menel said with a very sour look on his face. “You’re not the only one who taught him, you know.”
“Yeah, I agree.” Reystov nodded. “But either way...”
“Yes. We probably won’t be able to find the time to get involved.”
Just as Al began to close in on the Scarabaeus, the demon raised a sickening cry from its mouthparts. At the same time, the Hall of Light’s dazzling illumination dimmed. The light from the Sign-engraved crystals had been obscured by winged demons descending on us from all angles.
“Fig!” Menel shot through several of them in such quick succession that it would have been impossible to follow the movements of his hands. Demons fell one after another onto the highly polished floor.
This was what it came down to. Demons didn’t possess the poetic sense to entertain the idea of a one-on-one fight in any case, and there was no advantage to them in doing so. It was obvious that they would surround us here and go for the kill. That was the real reason I had allowed Al to go alone.
“Now I get it,” Menel said. “Hey, Al! If it looks like it’s not working out, hold out till we win and keep him on his own! Don’t you die!”
The best case would be if Al won, of course, but even if he didn’t, so long as we could just keep their “strong piece” occupied with our “weak piece,” we could turn the tide of battle comfortably in our favor. If Blood had been here, he might have recommended a one-on-one battle without that kind of calculation behind it, but as for me, I didn’t romanticize battle like that. It was simply a calculated decision.
But I had no intention of making light of those sorts of ideals. One’s pride, one’s duty, one’s mission—the amount of passion brought about by these formless things sometimes had the power to smash all ordinary predictions and calculations.
“Thank you very much, Menel!” Al called out. “But I will win. I will beat this thing!”
Then he roared. “On the flame and the fire, the mountainfolk shall put thee to death!” He sprinted at the demons’ leader with the ferocious roar of a warrior. “Take my dwarven axe!” His halberd cleaved an arc through the air towards the commander of the demons.
◆
The demon’s club intercepted the halberd. Splinters flew everywhere. Immediately, the halberd turned, cutting a new arc towards its foe. Roaring, Al chained together attacks with violent intensity, pulling back and swinging around his long-handled axe. Because Al was tall for a dwarf, when he swung around his halberd, he had a moderate edge in reach compared to the Scarabaeus with its club. With this all-out barrage of blows from outside his opponent’s range, which reminded me suddenly of Blood and his broadsword, Al was probably intending to make the most of his advantage.
However, I didn’t have the luxury of watching intently.
The Hall of Light reverberated with loud footsteps, the shrill screeching of weapons, wails, and deathly cries.
Hordes of Soldier demons attempted repeated assaults against us through the entrance we came in by, and each time, they were crushed by Reystov and Ghelreis. Like a storm, Reystov stabbed, swept, and cut them down with his blade of mana. The ones who managed to narrowly evade his attacks were checked by Ghelreis waiting to the side and smashed to pulp.
Just as a lion doesn’t fear a herd of gazelles, and a wolf doesn’t fear a flock of sheep, the two trained warriors didn’t fear these hordes of demons and in fact were driving them away. I too readied my spear, pointing it towards a demon that was starting to get too close and held a curved sword in its hand.
All around the hall, demons that had probably been waiting in ambush here the entire time were appearing. They were mostly Commanders, but occasionally there were some of higher level that were likely approaching General rank. Brandishing Pale Moon, I stabbed them, slammed them, and destroyed them one by one.
A chill ran down the nape of my neck. I instinctively bent backward. Something swept by where my throat had just been. Then came a second and third strike. I parried the slash and the thrust mostly by gut feeling and took a large leap backwards to dodge. I’d definitely knocked away something, but I still couldn’t see a thing.
“Cadere Araneum!” I incanted a Word, dropping down a web of magic. Entangled in the web, there was something in a place where nothing seemed to be. Maybe this demon had hidden its form with the Word of Invisibility, or maybe it was always invisible to begin with. I had no time to check. As the enemy struggled, I swung down my spear and crushed it. “There’s invisible enemies here!”
“Oh, for hell’s sake! ‘Gnome and Sylph, dance hand in hand! Whirlwinds of ochre and curtains of dust!’” Immediately after I shouted, Menel called to the elementals of air, and dusty winds blew about the hall. It was the spell Ochre Dust. We fired arrows and threw daggers one after another into the places where the dust warped strangely, and invisible foes let out cries of mortal agony.
Menel dashed around the battlefield keeping a reasonable distance from the rest of us, prioritizing flying demons, spellcasters, and enemies with frustrating abilities like that invisibility and taking them out at frightening speed. I felt grateful that because of him, I didn’t have to be too wary of back attacks and could focus on using my muscle power to tackle the things in front of me.
That said, I also couldn’t afford not to use my head.
“Currere Oleum.”
After completing a sideways sweep with the blade of my spear, I cast a Word and ran grease across the floor. Several of the enemy group fell flat on the ground. As they struggled to escape while covered in grease, I ran each of them through with the blade of my spear. The tricks I’d inherited from Gus for the specialized use of magic for crowd control were as versatile as ever.
Once the enemy forces had eased off a little, I breathed out and took a glance around at the situation. Reystov and Ghelreis were still fighting and holding an advantage.
I took a look over at Al as he let out a loud roar.
From a series of overhead swings hammered down with all his might, he suddenly changed direction and executed a precise foot sweep. But it wasn’t just any foot sweep; the Scarabaeus’s foot had been taken out by a halberd with a metal hook. Its left ankle twisted violently.
“■■■■!”
The demon let out an inhuman scream, its mouthparts making scratchy insectile noises, and it collapsed to the ground. Al stepped forward. He raised his halberd high into the air. He was going for the kill.
That instant, the demon grinned.
The Scarabaeus dodged the axeblade and jumped, as though it had no ankle injury at all.
“Wh—”
No, it wasn’t “as though.” As if by a miracle, its wound was actually gone.
“Blessing!”
By the time I realized it, it was too late. The attack that Al had put his whole body into had missed, and the demon, laughing raucously, slammed its club into his torso.
◆
“Gah—”
Al’s feet left the ground, and he slammed back-first into a pillar. At the same time, there was a flash. Layers of chains made of mana wrapped themselves around Al’s body, binding him to the pillar. The club had the Sign of Spellbinding engraved into it!
It looked as if Al had managed to take the blow itself on his armor, but there was no way to avoid the damage to his organs. He had just barely kept hold of his halberd, but those magical chains couldn’t be destroyed by physical strength. He was in mortal danger.
Demons were warriors who knew no fear, and the higher-level ones among them were sometimes sorcerers or priests of the god of dimensions, Dyrhygma. I should have known that they would use blessings just like me!
I grunted in frustration. I wanted to fire off the Word “Dispel Magic,” but doing so wasn’t so easy. As two demons came at me from the left and right, I exploited a slight mismatch in their coordination, first kicking one away and then immediately turning adroitly and stabbing the other. But even in that small amount of time, the next attack from another demon was already heading my way. I whipped my spear down and smashed the demon to the ground. This really wasn’t the kind of situation where I could afford to give Al a helping hand.
“Dammit!” Menel cursed. He had his hands full as well.
Reystov and Ghelreis, too, were stretched to their limits dispatching hordes of demons. The beetle-demon clicked its mouthparts and laughed unsettlingly as it drew close to Al, who was still chained to the pillar.
“Al!” I couldn’t help but shout.
“I’m... fine.” Amid the noise of battle, for some reason, I could make out his voice—and the heat that filled his words. “I will not lose.” The indestructible chains groaned. “I swear on my oath and on the dreams of my kin...”
Al’s face turned bright red as he pulled at the chains with all his might. The pillar to which he was chained seemed to warp. It groaned. Fissures ran through it—
“I will...”
The Scarabaeus realized what was about to happen, and it raised its spiked club in a panic, ready to strike. But it was too late.
“Take back our homeland!”
The pillar that the magic chains were wrapped around broke apart. The chains slackened. Al’s halberd, which he had swung up from below to intercept the demon’s club, had at some point become engulfed in bright-red fire. I felt the aura of a god. It was a brave, manly aura that was neither the god of the flame’s nor the god of undeath’s. I got the feeling that the corners of his mouth had curled up into an awkward smile.
Al bellowed. The axeblade imbued with divine fire traced a crimson trail and sent the spiked club flying through the air with the Scarabaeus’s hand still attached. But the beetle-demon was itself a storied warrior. Disregarding its sliced-off hand, it drew a dagger with its other hand and charged forward, trusting in the defense of its shell.
But that was nothing other than a blunder. That was Al’s range.
He grabbed hold of the Scarabaeus’s arm. He bent down low and pulled it towards him, just as I’d taught him, with the same movement I’d used when I threw the forest giant. There was a mighty roar. A large body flew through the air, and the King of the Iron Country slammed the invading demons’ supreme commander to the ground.
It may have been protected by a tough shell, but the impact shook through its body, knocking the breath out of it. Yet the demon showed a dogged refusal to be beaten. Out of nowhere, it issued four jointed, insectile limbs from its body and wrapped them around Al, pulling him in towards it. The two fell to the ground and rolled, fighting. Then, a piercing, alien scream arose from the tangle. Sticking into a gap in the Scarabaeus’s shell near its neck was a right-wield stiletto. Blood’s favorite custom dagger would not permit its opponent to fight back at this range, and healing miracles would be of little help to the demon with that blade still lodged into its neck.
“What you’ve taken—” Al held the struggling demon down and forced the blade in farther still. “You will return!”
The demon twitched two or three times. Then, at last, it stopped moving completely.
Blood’s voice, which I remembered so fondly, revived once more in my mind.
— One thing is always on their minds, day in and day out. The question of what is worth laying down their life for. What is their reason to fight.
“The enemy general,” Al yelled, “is slain!”
— And when they find it, they go into battle with their souls burning with the fire of courage, and never once fear death.
“Wow...”
You were right, Blood. You really were. It was just as you said.
Dwarves are true warriors.
◆
After Al had claimed the head of the Scarabaeus, the demons who had been surging towards us until that point suddenly slowed. Perhaps they had been under the Blessing of Frenzy, which the evil gods often gave to their followers.
If this was a story, the enemy would probably have taken flight at this point. However, it seemed that the demons weren’t such easy foes. The mere death of their general hadn’t caused them to lose the will to fight or their ranks to collapse. On the contrary, a few Commander demons immediately took over leadership and rallied the Soldier demons, putting up a strong resistance; meanwhile, several demons with bat wings flew around the hall, perhaps trying to take back the head of their leader. They darted at Al, who had mostly checked out mentally after claiming the demon’s head.
“You feckers!” Menel shot down most of them, firing arrows in quick succession, but finally his quiver was empty. Two demons came from above, descending quickly upon Al. There wasn’t time for him to defend—
I tossed my shield aside, bent my body backward, and hurled Pale Moon with all my strength.
It wasn’t a spear meant for throwing, but my body was well trained and my weapon familiar, and they answered my unreasonable request regardless. Two dying screams overlapped. Its blade glinting and its handle bending, the spear I had thrown had flown through the hall, impaled the two demons through the chest, and pinned them to a distant pillar.
“We’re not done, Al!” I called out. “Keep it up just a little longer!”
Coming to his senses, Al shouted back, “Yes, sir!”
Blood had told me once in the past that on the battlefield, the moment when a warrior defeats a strong foe and claims their head is the moment when they leave themselves the most vulnerable. I even had a memory of a relevant picture I’d seen in my previous world, in a book about Japanese history. I think it was about the Sengoku period or Edo or something. It had showed a warrior in the process of claiming the head of the enemy he’d defeated getting his own head chopped off by a different enemy. It showed that the moment of sweet victory is exactly when defeat and loss creep up on you.
Even as my mind wandered over these irrelevant thoughts, my trained body never stopped moving. Seeing that I’d lost my weapon, a demon swung its two-handed greatsword down towards me. I stepped towards it and to the side, dodging the swing. Then I placed both my hands on the back of the handle and continued the arc downwards, forcing the swing of my opponent’s sword to continue beyond the point where it should have stopped. The natural limits of the demon’s body prevented it from keeping hold of the sword.
And then I snatched it.
At the same time, using the momentum from my opponent’s swing, I sliced the demon wide open from its thigh to its stomach with its own sword. In terms of time, it was a mere moment. From the demon’s perspective, in the single instant it had swung its sword down, its opponent had dodged and closed in, and simultaneously its sword had disappeared from its hands and its thigh had been slashed. The demon might not even have understood what had happened. While thinking that I’d never expected to use this showy technique in an actual battle, I swung the sword I’d stolen without a moment’s hesitation and finished the demon off.
To be honest, this weapon’s center of mass was a little too close to the hilt, and I wasn’t very fond of two-handed greatswords. However, under Blood’s teaching, I had learned how to handle pretty much anything that could be called a weapon. Whatever a weapon’s intended purpose, as long as it wasn’t something difficult like a chain weapon, I could probably use it, and I wasn’t about to be choosy in a situation like this.
Another demon charged towards me. I gave it a slight opening which it took, attacking me head-on. With perfect timing, I pulled one leg back and dodged, then countered by chopping off its hand at the wrist.
It was useful, and honestly to be expected given the greatsword’s weight, that all I had to do was connect and wrists would fly off regardless of bone or anything else. I personally preferred spears, but I felt like maybe I could understand why Blood had adored two-handed swords so much.
I continued brandishing the greatsword for a while, lopping off limbs and chopping through torsos. Then, I checked the situation around me again.
Reystov was breathing quite hard. I couldn’t blame him. He’d been going too wild for too long by this point. Ghelreis was similar. Only the sound of heavy breathing could be heard from beneath his helmet. Even Menel, who commanded a view of the whole battlefield and had been lending his support to everyone, was starting to dull, and Al was hard at work protecting him in spite
of his own injuries.
If we continued this much longer, we really would reach our limits. But now that we’d killed the majority of the high-level demons, the rest of them were starting to show signs of faltering. It was about time I acted. I dashed at the final Commander I could spot, chopped off its head, and belted the Word of Departure at the demons in the hall.
“Discede!”
I felt a colorless, transparent pulse of mana spread out from me like a wave.
We had secured the upper hand now. The point of this attack, using a Word that left strong mental effects, was to give the demons a final extra push.
The demons who were hit by it cringed and stopped dead in their tracks. Some of them who were especially weak or took a direct hit from the Word immediately turned to dust and crumbled where they stood, and the rest who survived finally started to scatter.
◆
The demons started to flee. Al must have been at his limit; he sunk to the floor on the spot.
Menel and Reystov, who were used to fighting for real, summoned the last of their energy to sink arrows and blades into the backs of the escaping demons, inflicting as much damage on their forces as possible. Even though they had lost their leadership, having demons on the loose would be a recipe for chaos in this area. The fewer of them there were, the better. If our enemies were showing us their backs, we had a duty to take them out and not ignore them.
Meanwhile, Ghelreis kept a vigilant watch, and as for me, after finally taking a moment to catch my breath, I set about healing everyone’s wounds.
“Gracefeel, goddess of the flame, grant us healing and vitality...” I put my hands together and prayed. Warm light flowed from everyone’s wounds, returning them to normal as if the injuries had never existed there to begin with. However, I couldn’t bring back the stamina everyone had used up. We couldn’t afford to get overconfident.
After that, we did a once-over to make sure there weren’t still any enemies hiding anywhere. After we confirmed that we had completely chased the demons from the Hall of Light, we all shared smiles again. Each of us spontaneously raised a hand, and the crisp, refreshing sound of palms clapping against palms reverberated around the hall. My arms were tired, but a gentle warmth was left behind in my palm. It was the warmth of victory.
“Thought we were really gonna die there,” Menel said, laughing in relief. “Turns out charging into the main base of the demons with just the five of us was pretty reckless.” He put an arm around Al’s shoulder. “Good job, brother! You really pulled it out of the bag!”
“N-No, I hardly...”
“No, you holding the boss back made it a ton easier for us to go all out,” said Reystov.
Ghelreis nodded, too. “If their general had been allowed behind us, we could have been smothered and killed.”
I was in total agreement as well. “It was you who took them back. The mountain, and the crown.”
I picked the crown off the Scarabaeus’s head, which was rolling on the ground, and tried to hand it to Al. However, he turned it down with a shake of his head. “No. Not yet. We still haven’t taken everything back.”
After hearing his voice so full of determination, I nodded too. He was right. Indeed, we hadn’t yet taken back the whole of these mountains. The dragon remained.
“But if we do take it all back, Sir Will, I’d like you to be the one to crown me.”
“What? That’s a job for a high-level priest, isn’t it?”
“You are a high-level priest, numbnuts!”
“Huh? Oh... So I am.”
Everyone burst into laughter. I laughed, too. It had only just occurred to me that we could laugh. We could all still laugh.
Our opponent was going to be a strong foe the likes of which we’d never faced. It was difficult to call our situation ideal, but battle was always like that. Even if the situation left a lot to be desired, we had to do the best with the cards we had. We’d used up quite a bit of stamina, but we were still brimming with the will to fight. Our spirits hadn’t been dampened. We were in the best condition we could hope for right now.
“Let’s go. We’ll start by putting all the magic and blessings we can on us ahead of time.”
“Wait.” Reystov was frowning.
“What’s wrong?”
“Look over there.” He pointed to the area in the center of the hall, where countless demons had turned to dust. There were little mountains of the stuff all over the place.
“Huh?” Al tilted his head. Then, all at once, he turned completely pale. “It’s gone.”
“Gone? What’s gone?”
“The Scarabaeus’s body!”
“What?! Wait a fig second, we’ve got the head right here...”
We had its head. But—only now did I realize—it hadn’t turned to dust! Demons, who were visitors from another dimension, always turned to dust when they were killed. Sometimes weapons or other small parts of them would remain, but nothing like this.
“It ran off...”
“Will, slow down, brother, how the hell could a body without a head—”
“If its body is like a bug’s, there’s a chance. Haven’t you ever seen a bug moving after its head’s been pulled off?”
Insects have a rope-ladder-like nerve cord running throughout their body from the cerebral ganglion that corresponds to their brain. I remembered reading somewhere in my previous life that it was one of the unique features of insects’ bodies that they could distribute their information processing because of that structure. In other words, if that beetle-demon’s body resembled a bug’s on the inside as well...
“It had its head taken off and it still ran. I don’t know how capable of thought it is right now, but...”
Some high-level miracles could regenerate missing body parts. I had my doubts whether a head could be regenerated—such a thing was impossible to test or verify for humans—but it wouldn’t be at all surprising to me if it was possible for demons.
“Menel, track it.”
“Got it!” Menel immediately started tracking its movements.
While he worked, I began placing effects and strengthening magic on everyone. If we allowed the general to get away and rebuild its forces, we would be done for. There was every chance that next time, we really would be surrounded and killed.
“After it!”
Everyone raised a battle cry.
◆
Tracking the Scarabaeus took us out of the Hall of Light and following passages even deeper into the heart of the mountains.
Ghelreis said, “This is the way to the Great Cavern.”
“Maybe it went to get help from the dragon?”
“Possible. But it’s also possible it can’t think much and it’s just running blindly wherever its body takes it.”
I hoped it was the latter.
With a full set of strengthening magic upon us in preparation for an encounter with the dragon, we ran through the labyrinthine stone passages, shining up our surroundings with the light of our magic lanterns. The farther we advanced, the thicker the miasma became. If the dragon was the one producing this miasma, it had to mean that he was now very close by.
“Be careful, everyone!”
We made our way through the corridors, passing dusty, ancient rooms and halls. We crossed bridges over deep chasms. And finally, we reached a large, dark hall.
I couldn’t tell just how large it was; even with the range and brightness of Pale Moon’s blade set to their maximum, its light didn’t reach the far walls. It must have been an enormous smithy. Furnaces full of cold ash from which the fire was long gone were lined up like rows of giant tombstones. I could imagine that long ago, next to these roaring furnaces, experienced craftworkers had yelled at their apprentices over the racket of clanging hammers. There would have been songs to set the pace of the work as the contraption for transporting the ore clattered to and fro. But now, the fires were gone and the hammers had ceased; there were no voices of dwarves and no machines in motion. The darkness and silence was total.
Ghelreis, who knew how this place had once been, clenched his teeth. “Let us not lose track of it.”
“Yes.”
Nodding, we followed the demon’s trail.
It wasn’t very long before we were able to find the Scarabaeus. It had its back to us, facing the darkness of the Great Cavern, and it was making some very animated movements. It craned back and raised both its hands high above where its head should have been, as if pleading to a higher power for salvation.
At that exact moment, the demon was crushed.
Replacing it in my vision was a huge—altogether too huge—scaly arm. The General that Al had struggled so hard to defeat, who had been one of the highest-ranked demons there was, had been squashed like a mosquito in a single strike.
“Ghaha. How weak.”
From behind the Scarabaeus crumbling to dust came an inhuman laugh.
A black figure was lying there in the darkness. It was massive. No, the word “massive” didn’t even come close to describing it. What came to mind at this moment, as out of place as it was, was my old school in my previous world. If the school building as I looked up at it from the front gate had been a living creature, perhaps it would have made me feel like this.
The silhouette shifted. I was hit by a cloud of heated miasma. I could see the glint of gold and silver in the area around the silhouette, reflecting the light of our magic lanterns.
“Welcome to my bedchamber.”
A golden eye stared at me. I was gripped by an urge to turn around and sprint in the opposite direction. What the hell was I supposed to do against this?
I grit my teeth and tensed my stomach.
“Weakling, mortal, speak thy name.”
The black dragon cloaked in miasma with a golden eye, Valacirca—Calamity’s Sickle—slowly raised his head.
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