5
The Kaios Desert was arid and sunny that day.
As searing rays of sunlight poured down, thousands of soldiers marched through swirling heat hazes.
The Gazoob Wasteland was a rocky desert region where the borders of Shalzad, Warsa, and Israfan all met. Though it was rocky, that did not mean it was not also a desert. Most importantly, there was a place in the Gazoob Wasteland with even terrain and unobstructed views that made it a perfect battlefield. And the armies of Shalzad and Warsa were both marching toward that location.
“Prince Aram’s loyal retainer, Jafar, has arrived!”
“Jafar, sir! So you came, too!”
The soldiers led by the old general joined the forces from Shalzad that had answered the call.
Finally gathering up for the first time after the capital had fallen, the Shalzad army’s morale was high. The signal that Prince Aram had risked himself to send out had revived their spirits, and about twenty thousand troops were currently making their way to the battlefield.
“So! Where is Prince Aram?! Where is the next sun to illuminate the hearts of all Shalzad?!”
“…About that, well…he has yet to be seen…”
“What?!”
However, the all-important Ali herself was nowhere to be found in the Gazoob region. And not just her. The Warsa army was yet to be seen, either, despite the reports indicating they had already departed from the capital. At the very least they were not anywhere visible from the Shalzad army’s current position.
Jafar and the triumphant Shalzad forces froze at the soldier’s report as the dry desert wind blew through their camp.
“Advance! The Shalzad army must have gathered and deployed along the Gazoob Wasteland! At most there will be twenty thousand of them! Against our force of eighty thousand, that’s little more than a breeze!”
Around that time, the Warsa army was approaching the Sindh Expanse. It was a pure sand desert that enclosed the Gazoob Wasteland. Their supreme commander, Gorza, had split the host of eighty thousand into five different divisions before they clashed with the enemy.
“Surround their army both to insure they don’t advance into Warsa, and to make sure they can’t flee into Israfan! Warriors of Warsa, this is where we crush the last of Shalzad’s resistance!”
“WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The main division raised a thundering battle cry and the second, third, fourth, and reserve divisions spread across the dunes roared in response. The soldiers of Shalzad had only just reformed their army, so their chain of command would not be consolidated yet. That was where Warsa would strike.
Gorza’s plan was logical and reasonable, clear evidence of his competence as a commander. However—precisely because of that, he could predict it.
“Sir! Enemy at twelve o’clock!”
“What?! How many!”
On both the right and left flanks, there was a commotion spreading among the units at the edges of the formation as soldiers raised the alarm. The officers in charge of those units looked around, wondering if their strategy had been figured out when each of them saw it.
“Th-the thing is…you can’t even call it a force, sir…”
As their subordinates reported, it was not an army nor a smaller unit launching a surprise attack. It was just one person. Or rather four people.
One report of a white elf, one of a dark elf, one of a catman, and one of a set of four prums appearing in front of the second, third, fourth, and reserve divisions.
—Who could have predicted this? The gathering of Shalzad’s army was, in fact, just bait. The true final battle would not be in the wasteland but in the Sindh Expanse.
Eight followers would take on an army of eighty thousand.
As the Warsa troops looked on, dumbfounded, Hedin, who had devised all of this, pushed his glasses up,
“The preparations are all complete. Now to exterminate them. Leave none alive,” he declared
The adventurers readied themselves for battle, and immediately after that, the rout began.
“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh?!”
The war began with a scream.
An enormous cloud of sand wafted—no, exploded into the air. Seeing the cascade of sand, the commander in charge of the left flank raised his voice.
“Wh-what’s happening?!”
“The second division is being attacked!”
“A sneak attack by Shalzad?! How many are there?!”
At those words, the soldier’s voice trembled as he responded,
“I-it’s one person!”
“…What?”
Not one division or even one squad. One person. The commander could not believe his ears as a terrified report rang out.
“We’re being bombarded by a single elf!”
“Struggle for eternity, indestructible soldiers of lightning.”
Just a single stanza was chanted. The white elf was unleashing a torrent of magic with a super-short cast specialized for quick attacks.
“Caurus Hildr.”
A rain of white lightning fell on the battlefield. Despite being a super-short cast spell, an enormous number of lightning orbs devastated the Warsa forces. Each ball was the size of a human’s head. It was a thunderstorm of certain death.
The deluge of lightning was unavoidable, and the soldiers could do nothing but be blown away by it, their armor shattering as the electricity scorched their bodies.
“Don’t scream and don’t move. It messes with my aiming and lowers the efficiency. How irritating.”
Hedin continued his fusillade of magic as he muttered to himself. He was rapidly casting his magic calmly, coolly, and mercilessly.
“This is why I despise dealing with trifling people. You fools are always messing with my careful calculations.”
Deployed across the clear desert plain, the ten-thousand-strong second division was in utter disarray. All because of a single elf foolishly barring the way, unleashing a storm of magic capable of erasing hundreds of troops at once. The lightning balls seemed like a rain of arrows as it split the division straight down the middle like a hot knife through butter. The crazed symphony of thunder even blasted away the sand, causing the Warsa force’s formation to collapse almost immediately.
To a falcon overlooking the scene from the air, it was clearly visible. The magic attack left a giant gash in the ground where Warsa’s second division was deployed, like a dragon leaving a swath of destruction in its wake.
“Though most are cowards who cry out and try to flee, there are also warriors who wield a reckless valor and charge. Fear and excitement. Drown in the winds of battle, all of you slaves to the paradox of battle.”
Hedin mercilessly bathed in magic those mercenaries who turned and fled, and just as readily fired off a thunderclap to incinerate those tragically gallant warriors who charged forward to allow their comrades to escape.
Lowering his right arm, which held his rhomphaia, he held out his left arm and cast his magic. The rhomphaia boasted a long blade and a hilt designed to resemble a holy tree. Its name was Dizaria. Hedin’s first-tier weapon was both an excellent polearm while also serving as a staff to boost magic power.
“You will all be routed just the same, so at least maintain some discipline, you failures.”
Cries and screams went up all around. Hedin did not allow them any opening to approach him. His single-handed unending barrage crushed every charge the enemy mustered and incinerated any in the rear who attempted to retaliate with their own magic.
From the moment they had been caught off guard while spread out across an expanse of sand dunes where they could be seen clearly, they had had all their options taken away from them. It was impossible to have a unit stealthily sneak up on him from behind or pull off any other surprise attack. Those elven eyes, that race famed as fairy marksmen, caught every squad that attempted any covert movements and slammed them with another ball of thunder.
“What is ha—…What kind of monster is heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee?!”
The general in charge of the division cried out in unbridled panic.
Several messengers bearing more confusion reported in. Bombarded by that torrent of reports, he was the only person on that side of the battlefield who knew exactly what was happening. Every single person with a rank of squad leader or higher was being erased from the battle. The enemy possessed a terrifying, demonic eye—and by fully utilizing that keen insight that could interpret the miniscule ebbs and flows of the battlefield, their foe was annihilating the entire chain of command with sickening precision.
There was nothing more pitiful than an animal that had lost its head. The orders being sent to each unit became meaningless and the surviving soldiers had become little more than helpless targets. The aftershocks of their rising fear only exacerbated the meaningless deaths.
Precise marksmanship. Incomparable accuracy. And a command crueler than anyone’s. The white elf was a ruthless king who looked down on a force of thousands as he slaughtered them with lightning strikes.
“Ah—”
A second later, the moment the wall of soldiers being shredded by his magic started to thin out, a magic blast mercilessly filled the general’s field of view with impenetrable white. Consumed by the flash of light, he readily departed the battlefield that was swirling with screams and despair.
Having been obliterated by a lightning lance, that general was actually exceedingly lucky. Thanks to that, he was able to pass on without experiencing the suffering of losing a limb or the intense pain of having his skin scorched by a bolt of lightning.
“Shooting off magic everywhere as if I didn’t know any better…This may be the pinnacle of boorishness, but I suppose it can’t be helped.” Hedin was just calmly talking to himself as the soldiers’ cries filled the air. “Who in their right mind would face a force of ten thousand head-on, after all? Extermination via magic is the most efficient method. This way at least minimizes the annoyance.”
He spoke as if he was explaining the most obvious of facts as he nocked yet another magic arrow to loose, continuing to lay waste to the barbarians.
He did not allow anyone to flee the field. By the time a unit took a step that might have led them to safety, he had already shot off another bolt of lightning that landed right where they were moving toward. Hedin was very precisely and carefully making use of his mind even then, enveloping the battlefield in a lightning barrier to trap the Warsa army.
The moment they realized that no one would be allowed to retreat from the sand dunes that had come alive with lightning, the soldiers finally started to call out, pleading for their lives with no concern for how unsightly or pathetic it appeared. And because of those offensive cries, for the very first time, Hedin’s face, which had stayed calm throughout the entire massacre, finally changed.
“Why in the world…Why in the world did you seriously think your cries would reach anyone who would listen? You seem to have gravely misunderstood your situation. Who would allow even one of you to live?”
As bolts of lightning crackled in the air, a single core member of Resheph Familia—a Level-2 man—saw the elf’s lips moving and turned pale.
“A faction of people close to you cast aside their humanity and defiled the Lady’s property. You dishonored the goddess’s love in that oasis town. You covetously desecrated a sacred domain that must never be touched!”
After Leodo had been razed, Hedin had buried the corpses of the former slaves, Freya’s property, with full honors. He understood. He knew full well that their dignity had been trampled upon. He knew that every last one of those slaves who were being sold for their looks and abilities had passed from the mortal realm in the depths of despair.
This was the obvious result. Axiomatic. If Warsa were inclined to laugh and brush off such things as merely the vagaries of war, then it was only natural that they would go on a spree of pillaging and rape. But given their position, there was no reason for a high-minded elf like Hedin to turn a blind eye to their behavior. Once he had sworn to become an executioner, there was nothing left for those soldiers beyond every last one of them being wiped off the face of the planet.
“You dare claim you are without sin? That you weren’t responsible? Do you take me for a fool? You reek of the same stench. You have already embraced that same sadism and carry that same beastly stench!”
A blazing rage was ignited by his goddess’s defiled love. And faced with that conflagration of wrath and spirit, the Warsa forces near Hedin even forgot their thoughts of escaping as the blood drained from their faces, and they despaired, quivering in abject terror.
Hedin’s coral eyes narrowed sharply, and the next moment the corners of his eyes flared up as he clenched his glasses, tearing them from his face and shattering them in his clenched fist.
“There is no reason that I of all people would overlook such a flawed world!!”
The fairy’s fury. The intellectual mask that Hedin wore fell away as he revealed his true self, unleashing the storm of murderous rage that he had not allowed to erupt before.
“And on top of all that, you hunted down and pushed that girl to such lengths—if I don’t impose the true meaning of havoc upon you myself, then how will I face my mistress or that young king!”
His loyalty to his goddess and the indignation he felt for that girl whose country had been ravaged. All of those emotions exploded as the fairy transformed into an apostle of destruction.
Hedin roared his duty.
“Your sentence is death! Barbarians of the desert!”
“…That’s the kind of thing Hedin would say,” Hegni murmured to himself.
“No—nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”
Countless corpses were scattered all around him. The people screaming in fear were, of course, the soldiers of Warsa. He was the right wing of the assembled army. Facing off against the third division, which consisted of another ten thousand men, Hegni, a magic swordsman just like his old foe Hedin, had chosen not a long-range magic battle but a hand-to-hand, head-on brawl.
“But unlike him, my magic doesn’t have a very good range and isn’t nearly as convenient…”
As the soldiers cowered before him, he stood there, immersed in his own world. The dark elf swordsman lowered his eyes, hiding his mouth behind a high collar as he muttered quietly.
“…This is just more my style…”
And then, he raised his sinister black sword in one hand and caressed the surface of it with his other hand. It was a first-tier weapon, Victim Abyss. Hegni’s most trusted weapon, his comrade in battle, it was a jet-black blade with a jagged lightning-bolt shape to it and was capable of unleashing an incomparably sharp slash. It was a superior-grade cursed blade made for him by a certain hexer that boasted an ability to extend its slash in exchange for consuming more of his stamina.
The black blade that was seemingly forged from condensed darkness caused the brown desert to absorb pools of crimson blood, staining it red.
“…Hee-hee, hee-hee-hee-hee, your chance encounter with my pitch-black blade has sealed your fates…The fiery sands flutter and crimson flies…My blade calls for sacrifices. Meaning…y-y-you will die.”
He had preemptively slashed his way into the center of the enemy’s formation. He was secretly scared of all the eyes staring at him as he tried to explain himself. What he had intended to say was something along the lines of “I’m the one assigned to deal with your group, so I’m going to exterminate you. I’ve already broken through and completed the initial skirmish, so please prepare yourselves,” but what actually came out of his mouth was quite different.
And faced with that, the soldiers of Warsa responded pitifully.
“Wh-who is this guy?!”
“I wondered who the hell was slashing at us, but this guy is crazy!”
“Why’s he grinning like that while babbling like a lunatic?!”
“He’s an elf, but that grin is like a damn ogre’s!”
“He looks like he might start licking his sword any second now!”
“Seriously, what the hell is he even saying?!”
His incomprehensible rambling did a fantastic job of aggravating his already poor communication ability, and the ghastly grin was a consequence of his face tensing up from the nervousness, but the storm of comments from the Warsa soldiers stung Hegni, who by any measure was the absolute strongest there.
Argh, I can’t take it. I want to die.
So the pitiful dark elf hid face behind his deep collar and slashed away as his cheeks burned in shame.
“Guaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh?!”
He flew into an intense sword dance. His black sword became a flash of light, slicing through several soldiers at once like it was nothing. Their shield walls, ready spears, swinging swords, and everything else in the blade’s path were all cut down. Each swing of his sword composed a rondo of cries and suffering. His black cloak danced through the air behind him as if he were a conductor leading a gruesome orchestra.
There was no darkness to hide his shame or his silliness. It was not night like when he had fought before. The desert sun shone bright, exposing Hegni’s wild sword dance to the world. To the enemy forces, it was an incarnation of terror, and to Hegni it was the equivalent of a hellish one-man performance atop a stage for all to see.
Argh, they’re watching me. They’re all looking at meeeee. Arrrrgh, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. Why did I ever become a first-tier adventurer? I don’t need the attention, just let me sink into the darkness to fight! Or even just become the darkness itself. Why didn’t I become an assassin? I can’t do it, this is too hard, I just want to hide in the forest, aaaaarrrrrgh. I just wanna lay my head in Lady Freya’s lap—no, the other way around, I want her to lay her head on my lap.
He was facing ten thousand enemies. It was a concentration of gazes unlike any he had experienced before. Unlike monsters in the Dungeon, they were people with intelligence, which just made it all the worse for Hegni, causing the incoherent thoughts in his head to mix and merge. While he was performing a cruel dance of blades, his stress was threatening to break past his limits.
I can’t do it…I guess I have to use it.
Because of that, Hegni fled to his magic.
“Draw thine sword, King of the fiendish blades.”
He plunged his black sword into the sand before him, and a black magic circle appeared around it, then expanded as he closed his eyes and began chanting fluently.
“Sacrifice reason and offer up blood. Slaughter all until the feast is finished.”
The soldiers did not even have time to defend themselves as they watched in shock. The dark elf’s short cast ended, and he spoke the name of his spell.
“Dáinsleif.”
The black magic circle at his feet shone and then shattered. The fragments of lights were absorbed into his body. A veil of light seemed to envelop him completely, but it disappeared in an instant as he slowly opened his eyes. And then he suddenly spoke:
“—You villains who have acted as you pleased in this desert, offer up your blood. Only through that may there be forgiveness for the grave treason you have committed.”
It was a firm, resolute voice and menacing attitude entirely at odds with how he had been acting before, which just confused the soldiers even more because of the sudden change in demeanor. His eyes did not betray any hidden insecurities. Instead they were raised sharply, like a true swordsman’s.
Hegni’s magic, Dáinsleif. It had the unusual effect of modifying his personality. It was counted as a rare magic, one that allowed Hegni to embody the mental image he had of himself. It was the key to the ritual that allowed the weak-willed, nervous elf to become a true warrior. It bore a resemblance to a certain prum hero’s fighting spirit buff magic, but Dáinsleif did not have an effect that increased his status. It merely manipulated his personality, making it a seemingly plain ability among a rather flashy class of magics.
“Speak your final words should you have any. There shan’t be mercy.”
However, his magic was so specialized in manipulating his psyche that it surpassed autosuggestion and was a genuine modification of his self. Its effect literally turned his personality and vocabulary into that of another person, effectively making his ideal self a reality.
It was a magic that summoned the strongest possible version of himself that had grown out of an obsessive self-hatred. The moment he cast that spell, Hegni transformed into a merciless, cruel, murderous, and domineering warrior king, like a cursed sword that once drawn could not be sheathed until it had satisfied itself by shedding the blood of countless people.
“—Shuffle off this mortal coil, rabble. Unseemly tributes who have been forsaken by the goddess’s love, you are best dead.”
In an instant, Hegni disappeared. The desert sand exploded up into the air from his unexpected step as he dashed forward, cutting down an entire platoon before the enemies even realized he had moved.
“Ahh—Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
That was how the true banquet of despair began. Having activated Dáinsleif, Hegni had rid himself of every last shred of mercy. The limiters inhibiting his full strength had been removed by magic. He transformed into a man-eating fiend that even his old foe Hedin would say, “That rogue is the strongest among all elves when it comes to hand-to-hand combat.”
Moving like a black sliver through the soldiers’ ranks, he struck each and every one down, leaving none alive as he created a storm of slashes. The soldiers of the third division who saw him were more terrified than the soldiers on any other battlefield, because what they saw was the personification of a demon blade. A manifestation of death itself that paused only to dedicate more blood and viscera. The soldiers understood it instinctively as they cried and their teeth chattered, until a split second later, they became the next offerings to his sword.
Hegni’s title, Dáinsleif, was indeed derived from the name of his magic.
It was the greatest compliment paid him by the fanatical and intense fans he had among the gods, in honor of the way he transformed from a comical dark knight into a true warrior king of darkness.
“There are many tributes this time…but be at ease, I have plenty of slashes to dole out. This blade of mine shall mark your grave.”
In the name of exterminating the whole army, the evilest fairy resumed the massacre.
“General Orcas! The enemy has appeared!” a soldier reported.
“What?! What scale and from which direction?!” Orcas roared out with a booming voice.
As the clamor of battle rang out all around the Sindh Expanse, General Orcas, the aged general who was a veteran of many battles against Shalzad, was at the very rear of the formation, leading the reserves. They had twenty thousand troops who were supposed to react as the battle developed and support the main divisions as needed. It was a position of significant importance in battle.
The enemy’s tactician even saw through the existence of our reserve forces and had troops lying in wait.
He suspected that the composition of their formation had been leaked to the enemy, since other divisions had already encountered surprise attacks that had been devastating enough that the cries could be heard from beyond the dunes even before the reports arrived.
“A bombardment carried out by a single person” and “A single swordsman cutting down more than half a force of ten thousand” and other absurd reports were flying all around, so he knew that the battle was enshrouded by the fog of war. However, his suspicions were overturned when learned of his own situation.
“There is one person each to our north, south, east, and west, sir!”
“………Huh?”
“Ummm, that is…well, there is one person in each direction, sir. In front and behind, and left and right. There are four armored prums in total…”
The well-trained soldier was at a loss for word for once as he struggled to clarify his report.
Orcas sat atop his camel as he trained his eyes in the directions the solider indicated—and he saw them, just as reported. At the summit of the sand dunes in the cardinal directions around his force of twenty thousand, there stood four short prums wielding a spear, hammer, battle-ax, and greatsword respectively.
“Hu—…Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Has Shalzad lost its mind?! Just four people to face off against an army of twenty thousand?!”
Orcas could hardly believe his eyes as his battle-hardened body shook from laughter and several people around him also broke out into guffaws.
No matter how strong they are, we’re a force of soldiers and mercenaries who have all received Falna. Even if they could take out one thousand each, three thousand more would easily overwhelm them. And they’re prums! The weakest of all the demi-humans! What a joke!
“What of it?! Do they intend us to act as if we’ve been surrounded by a force of just four people?! Don’t make me laugh, fools!”
A wave of scornful laughter spread from the tough old general to the surrounding troops. Needless to say, they had let their guard down.
—If there was any miscalculation in Orcas’s analysis, it was that he had not known that his opponents, despite being prums, were considered possibly the strongest prums in the world, four of the precious few first-tier adventurers in the world, members of the Freya Familia.
In other words, he was entirely wrong.
“Everyone’s in position.”
“Shall we?”
“Let’s.”
“Let’s do this.”
The Gulliver brothers were standing stock-still atop the sand dunes as they looked down on the Warsa army, their voices overlapping despite being so far away from each other, as if they were telepathic.
To the four of them, distance did not count for much. As long as they could see each other, it did not matter whether the enemy was just one or ten thousand, they would exterminate them with such tight coordination that did not allow even one soldier to escape.
Staring blankly down at the army below them roaring with laughter, they lowered their visors and leaned forward, seemingly pulled down by gravity as they dashed down the dunes. An instant later, cries and screams began ringing out from all directions at the same time.
In later years, it would come to be known as the Battle of the Sindh.
A battle told in countless bards’ songs and children’s plays about the prince of a country in ruins who, with the aid of eight anonymous heroes, foiled the plot of evil deities manipulating Warsa behind the scenes. There would be no end to scholars and historians attempting to determine what exactly happened that day.
And one particularly famous point of study shrouded somewhere between the myth and truth of the battle was regarding the birth of a revolutionary tactic.
It was the “groundbreaking encirclement and annihilation formation carried out by just four people.”
It was a maneuver where just four people in total were positioned at the north, south, east, and west of a force of twenty thousand that was both incomprehensible and yet somehow powerful beyond belief—a maneuver that would shock later military scholars and tacticians.
Renowned military scholars howled at its mention, as if to declare “How is that possible, you imbecile?” But it was emblematic of the age of deities, and records indicated that it was, in fact, used to wipe Warsa’s force of twenty thousand off the map.
Records of that unbelievable battle were left by a historian who was well-known in the desert realm, Orcas Gruen. He was one of the few survivors of the Battle of Sindh and the one general who saw firsthand what occurred that day, and when he described the battle in his autobiography, the next passage he wrote was: “My humblest apologies. I’m truly, truly sorry for looking down on you.”
“General Jafar! Warsa’s army has already begun the battle!”
“What?!”
As Hedin, Hegni, and the Gulliver brothers embarked on their respective rampages and the agonizing cries of Warsa’s army echoed throughout the desert, the Shalzad army deployed all by itself in the Gazoob Wasteland finally realized what was going on.
Based on reports from scouts saying, “I don’t really get what’s going on, but Warsa’s army is getting its ass handed to it,” the army hurriedly advanced toward the Sindh Expanse.
“Well, by the time they get there it will already be over,” Freya said.
She was sitting in a chair with her legs crossed on the deck of the Fazoul Trading Company’s desert ship. The ship was being steered by merchant trainees, keeping a safe distance from the battlefield while still being able to observe what was happening, as it leisurely cruised through the sand.
“Is this really okay, Lady Freya? Letting Lady Ali…Prince Aram move separately?” a stout, toned man asked.
“There’s no helping it, since she said she wanted to see the battle with her own eyes. And if she is to be king, that sentiment is entirely reasonable,” Freya responded.
Ali was currently watching the battle from an even closer position with the bare minimum accompaniment from the trading company. Freya was more worried about her being attacked by monsters than soldiers, but figured it should be fine.
With the overwhelming battle going on around them, the monsters would be cowering in fear and not attacking humans. A smile crossed Freya’s face as she imagined the look on Ali’s face as she watched the battle.
“…Speaking of, though…who are you?” Freya asked, turning to the tall, handsome man who was waiting at her side as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
She had been wondering about him for a while, but he had preternaturally adopted the role of her attendant so well she had not really had a chance to ask. The brown-skinned man responded naturally.
“I’m Bofman, milady.”
NO WAY! Freya thought in her heart, forgetting her character for a moment.
The self-proclaimed Bofman was not a fattened blob of flesh but a well-sculpted mass of muscle. He had a short mustache, but beneath his brown skin, he had the physical structure of a slightly smaller Ottar.
Freya’s wide-eyed gaze conveyed the question What happened during that one night?
“Last night I received a strict punishment from Messrs. Ottar, Allen, Hedin, Hegni, and Gulliver and was made aware how unsightly I truly was…Muscle is righteousness.” The self-proclaimed Bofman averted his eyes as he responded.
But his answer was incomprehensible to Freya. It was not just his appearance; even his tone had changed. Such a dramatic transformation in the course of a single night shocked even a goddess.
“…Why don’t you come to my room tonight?” Freya suggested.
“No, a lowly beast such as I am not worthy to be summoned by you, Lady Freya.”
However, a gravelly, handsome voice politely rejected her. She wondered why she felt like she had been defeated. Freya was a bit annoyed by that and made a mental note to torment Ottar later.
“…Lady Freya, that is…”
Bofman and the rest of the crew all looked in the same direction. When Freya also glanced over, she spotted an air current rising into the sky, creating a sand tornado—
“A…a sandstorm…”
A fiendish vortex filled the sky as the soldiers of Warsa trembled in fear. The powerful wind whipping the sand into the air swallowed up the soldiers running for their lives one after the other as their screams were swept up into the storm.
Warsa’s fourth division, ten thousand soldiers, fell into a panic at the inexplicable phenomenon occurring before their eyes.
“Wh-what is that?! Magic?!”
No. It was the aftereffects of someone sprinting. A preposterous, inhuman, almost supersonic movement kicked up a wind that scattered sand through the air. It was nothing more than a side effect.
The unit commander who cried out saw the single flash of a silver spear come from inside the depths of that evil storm for just a second before it pierced his chest.
“Gaaaaaah?!”
Paying no heed to the soldier who collapsed with blood pouring from his chest, the fighting cat kept sprinting.
“Tch, just like in Sand Land, huh? This always happens in sandy terrain.”
Despite having already lost count of how many enemies he had killed, Allen did not slow his spear in the least. As he ran around in every direction at top speed, leaving only death in his wake, his passing created a tremendous wind, giving birth to a sandstorm that swallowed up an entire division of Warsa troops. He continued striking down his targets at an ever-faster rate as they fell into a panic.
The fastest in Orario.
Allen was faster than every other adventurer, and he ran riot around the battlefield, kicking up an enormous plumes of dust like a blindingly fast chariot. To the soldiers, it was like a natural disaster or a gigantic monster attacking. Their taste for battle vanished, but Allen did not allow even one who turned their back to escape.
There were no calls of surrender. No one would think to wave the white flag in the face of a storm. Because of the sand, no one could even see Allen as every last one of them fell to his silver spear without exception.
“Ha-haaaaaaaa!”
At least that was how it should have been.
Someone charged into the wall of sand, broke through, and swung dual swords down at Allen. Allen considered parrying with his spear for a moment—but quickly decided to avoid the blades instead. His superhuman dynamic vision noticed that the blades were a suspicious red and blue color.
And, as if announcing he was correct to jump back, a stream of flames and a blast of frost erupted from the blades. The combination of searing flames and ice that froze even the desert scattered the sandstorm. Allen stopped moving when he landed on the ground, observing the enemy that had been able to attempt an attack on him while he was moving.
“You’re the one! You’re the guy trying to disrupt my lord Resheph’s plan!”
It was a lean and tall male elf. He was untanned with long black hair, wearing a cloak over his otherwise bare upper body. His face and chest were covered in warpaint-like tattoos, but he did not seem to be a proper warrior, instead giving off a bit of an ominous air.
“I am Lord Resheph’s greatest follower, the leader of his familia, Seal!”
“…Do all the servants of that Resheph or whatever have the same bad habit of introducing themselves?”
The man who called himself Seal did not pay Allen’s gaze any heed as his delightedly clanged his magic swords together.
“You’re strong, aren’t you?! I can tell just by looking! What was with that speed?! Are you by any chance a warrior from outside the desert, like us? No, wait! Is there any chance that you might be an adventurer from Orario?!”
Perhaps getting excited in the heat of the moment on the battlefield, or perhaps losing himself in joy at the appearance of an overwhelmingly powerful warrior, the elf twisted his face in a way that disfigured his features as he shouted, guessing at Allen’s true identity.
Resheph Familia’s leader spoke in a grating voice that served only to increase Allen’s irritation even as the strange man’s smile deepened.
“Even I, a kavir, can’t hope to win against you! No chance at all! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! Scary, scary! Aaaaah, what a fearsome warrior!”
Despite recognizing the difference in their strength, Seal could not stop laughing. Meanwhile, Allen had moved beyond displeasure and was ready to commit murder. Just when he had decided it was enough and was about to run down the elf—Seal noticed his ferocious hostility and quickly began to move.
“At this rate, I’ll be killed! So I’ll just have to show you my invincible warrior-killer technique!”
And he followed that up with a hair-raising chant.
“Run wild! Wind of pestilence!”
Allen gazed in surprise for a second when he realized it was not magic but a curse as Seal revealed his unerring technique.
“Hal Reshef!”
A bewitching light shimmered in Seal’s eyes. Even Allen, whose legs could allow him to completely evade a barrage of attacks and the full brunt of an area of effect spell, could not evade a ray of light that worked on eye contact.
Allen immediately covered his eyes with one arm after the flash of dim, dark-purple light, as he stood there scolding himself for being careless. It was uncommon for curses to do direct damage like attack magics, so he did not move as he tried to determine the attributes of the curse afflicting him.
There were no abnormalities in his extremities, and he could not verify any kind of status ailments. Even if his magic or skills were sealed, it was irrelevant, since he did not need anything other than his raw strength to crush them. There were no obvious impediments to his five senses. Based on the quick double check he performed, Allen suspected it might be a counterattack sort of curse. The sort that inflicted whatever damage the cursed person dealt back onto them.
Having figured out from Seal’s speech that he was not the kind of person to fight directly, Allen made a frustrated noise as he looked back up.
“…?”
Seal had disappeared. And not just him. Allen could not see any of the other soldiers, either. There was only the blue sky, the expanse of sand, and the murderous heat of the sun beating down on him.
Allen’s thoughts immediately jumped to the idea he was hallucinating, but he quickly rejected that hypothesis. The corpses of the soldiers that Allen had killed were still visible, and the blood on the sand was still there, too. And most of all, Allen’s keen nose could still sense countless soldiers in the surroundings.
—Concealment? Did he drop a pain-in-the-ass illusion on me?
Allen’s brow furrowed as he looked on dubiously, preparing to follow his nose to slam his spear home, but—
“Big Brother.”
That girl’s voice stopped him in his tracks.
“—”
On his right, a girl suddenly appeared, tears in her eyes as she stretched out her hand toward him. The way she struggled to walk over to him was as if she had just suffered horrific injuries.
It was a catgirl wearing her battle gear, an adventurer like Allen. She had a gold shoulder piece on the opposite shoulder from Allen and brown fur. She did not have it with her there, but Allen knew that she carried a golden spear as well.
The fearsome fighting cat Allen forgot his annoyance and hostility, his eyes going wide as he stood there.
“Please wait, Big Brother…Don’t leave me behind!”
Without a doubt, it was Allen Fromel’s little sister, Ahnya.
It worked! I’ll be taking some more of that sweet, sweet high-rank excelia!
Seal was sure of his victory.
He had changed locations, lowering his body and camouflaging himself against the sand using his cloak, as he licked his lips while watching Allen stand there stock-still.
He, of course, could not see Allen’s little sister. The person facing Allen was an assassin from Resheph Familia with a poison dagger in one hand hidden behind his back.
Hal Reshef. As Allen surmised, it was an illusionary curse. Seal, the caster of the curse, had no way of knowing who the victim was seeing, but knew it was that individual’s most beloved person. That was the effect of Seal’s curse, Hal Reshef. It revived the traumatic memories deep in his target’s heart, a curse that brought forth a heartrendingly foul pestilence.
Seal had used that power to lay low countless warriors stronger than himself. Given the nature of statuses and leveling up, it was essentially a rule that those who had accomplished great feats had also paid some sort of price. Whether their dark past involved a comrade, family, or a lover, they were all a perfect fit for Seal’s curse. No matter how strong someone was, they would be shaken by the appearance of the person most precious to them and replay some tragic memory in their mind, leaving a fatal opening for Seal to exploit.
It’s all thanks to this curse that I’ve gotten to Level Four.
Seal had no doubt that he was the weakest Level 4 in the world. Up against a strong opponent, he could only gain excelia by catching them off guard with tricks like that. His techniques and tactics were mediocre, and his abilities were all at the lowest levels. The adventure he had embarked upon was equivalent to the labor of gradually whittling down a rampaging wild bull. He was not really a warrior at all. He was a hexer.
However, Seal also had no doubt that he was the strongest. At the very least as long as he wasn’t fighting a monster. He was the strongest in the world when it came to fighting other people. There was nothing fake about the most beloved person Allen was seeing at that very moment. It was projected from within him and was without doubt the person he truly loved above all else. Their shape, voice, scent, feel—all of it was real. They were reflections of his own memories, and no one would be able to doubt what had been engraved deep in their own heart.
Of course not. How could anyone raise a hand against their most beloved? The trauma every victim of Seal’s curse saw was like a crossroad in life where the path had been chosen long ago and could not be rejected or denied now.
My lackey’s dagger is coated in a powerful poison, a drop item smuggled out of the Labyrinth City…You won’t be able to defend against it no matter how strong you are.
There was a chance that when Allen was stabbed he might kill the lackey in confusion, but that was fine. Seal had plenty of pawns capable of playing the role of a victim’s most beloved. Allen could not see them currently because of the curse, but all the scared soldiers watching from the surroundings would do just fine. The world Allen currently saw was a mixture of illusion and reality, and until Seal released the curse, he would never break from the nightmare of seeing his most beloved.
“So, how will you scream for me?”
Seal watched with a sadistic grin.
“…”
Allen looked down silently. The assassin moved closer, step by step. The man who appeared nothing like the adventurer’s little sister to Seal slowly lowered his arm. The voice tearfully calling for her big brother rang in his cat ears. And the moment his sister was right before his eyes—the moment the assassin’s blade could finally reach him…
Allen swung his silver spear with all his might, turning his little sister into a broken lump of flesh.
“?What?!”
Time froze for Seal and for all the members of Resheph Familia who were familiar with his ability. The soldiers of Warsa were struck by a pure terror. Having killed his little sister with his own hands, Allen snapped like never before.
“You showed me a real pain in the ass…”
His chilling voice revealed that his normally restrained wrath had broken free. His voice was brimming with murderous rage, causing Seal to break into a cold sweat as he reflexively leaped backward.
Whipping around faster than the wind, the fighting cat locked his eyes onto Seal.
He should only be able to see his most beloved person—how did he recognize me?!
Seal dropped all pretenses as he screamed:
“Someone stop hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiim!”
Resheph Familia and the soldiers reflexively obeyed his order. The soldiers all looked like Allen’s most-beloved person as they barreled down on him. In Allen’s eyes, they looked exactly like his sister in her adventurer’s equipment; like his sister wearing her uniform for the restaurant; like his sister from days long past when she was young.
And not realizing the fuel he was adding to the flames of Allen’s wrath, Seal watched what happened next. The cat’s body blurred as he dodged and slaughtered every last one of the little sisters charging at him.
“Wh-what are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu?!”
His spear pierced and its shaft smashed as he unleashed a flurry of blows to take the sisters apart. As Allen kicked up a storm wiping out all the enemy troops, Seal could not stop himself from screaming as he raised his twin blades. While the grunts were holding the cat back, he frantically readied himself to finish the adventurer with his magic swords.
However, the cat’s wrath had crossed its boiling point. Allen leaped away from the remains of his most-beloved lying scattered around the ground. The dune he had been standing on exploded from the force of his leap as he unleashed his strongest charge, passing by Seal, who was swinging his twin blades down.
“What?!”
A ray of light flashed past right as Seal’s arms swung down through the air. But his arms had both disappeared below the elbows. He froze when the magic swords he had been holding fell to the ground behind him, sticking out of the sand.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH?!”
An ear-splitting wail reverberated across the sands.
The shock of losing both his arms to Allen’s silver spear, the lightspeed movement that was impossible to sense, the burning pain in both his arms, and the sense of inescapable bloodlust that he never before felt—all of it ate away at Seal’s mind, warping the elf’s features as tears and beads of sweat coated his face, like he had lost all hold on his senses.
“Hey, asshole.”
The sound of the man’s voice behind him was more chilling, more terrifying than anything Seal had ever felt. Unable to breathe, Seal struggled to fill his lungs as Allen’s subzero voice continued.
“You look just like some dumbass I hate more than anything in this world, too.”
Liar, liar, liar! What you’re seeing is the person you love the most! The irreplaceable other half of your soul! It can’t be the person you hate the most!
—But why, then? Why can he so mercilessly and calmly swing his spear at his most beloved—?
—What the hell is he seeing with those eyes of his?!
“Undo this curse now. If you don’t, I’ll murder you. Slowly and painfully.”
“O-okay! I got it! I’ll do it! So don’t kill me!”
Allen threatened Seal with a low, quiet, murderous voice as the bawling elf just about wet himself while intoning the curse removal.
“Be gooone, epidemic calamityyy!…It’s gone! It’s gone! You’re greatest love is gone!!! So! So please don’t!”
Announcing that the curse was removed, Seal begged for his life, half crying, half laughing.
Three seconds.
Allen gritted his teeth as tight as he could?and then swung his spear down with one hand, splitting Seal straight down the middle.
“You didn’t undo anythiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!”
His howl thundered across the plains. Allen’s eyes still saw his little sister, still saw that idiot, that disgrace.
His rage that had long since passed its boiling point and finally reached its critical point. He instantly cut down Seal, who had lost his reason and had not been able to control his magic well enough to undo his own curse. Now the elf’s horrific corpse lay on the sand.
When Seal had failed to undo the curse, Allen had thought it would end once the caster was dead, but even after cutting him in half, her face was still all he could see. The effect continued even after the caster was unconscious or even dead—meaning it was the type of curse that would only disappear after a set amount of time had passed.
Allen’s fur stood on end in rage. Sensing the danger, the soldiers, who all looked like his little sister, cried out in terror as they tried to run away from Allen’s silver spear.
Don’t fuck with me. I won’t allow it. I won’t forgive anyone masquerading as that nitwit.
Allen would never accept that that was his truth. Because of that, there was only one thing left to do.
“—I’m gonna slaughter every last one of them.”
Ghastly was the only word to describe what followed.
Generally speaking, it was impossible for an army to be entirely wiped out. Once a force took greater than 30 percent losses, the battle would usually be over. However, the division that Allen had targeted was slaughtered to the last man by the fighting cat who enthralled to his rage. In order to erase the scene that so disgusted him, Allen summoned forth dozens of sandstorms, manifestations of his wrath.
“Whoa, whoa, they got Seal?!”
The transport and logistics squad. The true final line of Warsa’s army.
Inside a tent that had been set up there, even Resheph could not hide his surprise at the reports flying in and the accelerating disappearances of children who had received his blessings.
“Y-yes, sir! And the other elite members of your followers are being defeated across all fronts! Our forces are not being allowed to retreat or even be routed. The only division still capable of fighting is Gorza’s main division!”
“What? There are only eight of them, right? Are you freaking kidding me?” Resheph groaned, struggling to believe the reports he was hearing.
“I’m not freaking kidding you, sir!”
Even a god like him could not see through what was happening on the battlefield out there. But that did not stop him from breaking into a smile.
“Damn, I’d rather my premonition wasn’t right, but it looks like I’m gonna have to use my trump card. ?”
Standing up as the soldier looked at him in confusion, Resheph left the tent. He headed toward the part of the camp where supplies were being kept. There was a strange sight to behold there. It was a gigantic cargo container that would never be mistaken for carrying weapons or rations in it. It required several hundred people to carry it, and it contained the ace up Resheph’s sleeve.
“Iza, send this to the middle of the battlefield. Don’t worry, as long as you have this magic item I got from those Evils guys, it will do as you say. Probably.”
Calling out to the lone tamer among his followers, he handed over a crimson whip with jewels in the end of it. At his command, the tamer swung the whip and a roar shook the ground. The giant cargo crate shattered as the troops around it drew back. A giant shadow that terrified even the tamer moved to the command of the whip and started advancing toward the battlefield.
“Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You always gotta save your trump card for the very end. ?”
The god’s laughter rang out as everyone in the transport unit was frozen in place. Resheph turned around to head back to his tent, content that all that was left was for his trump card to take care of all those getting in his way. But as he departed, he paused for a second and turned to one of the messengers.
“Oh yeah, we got any word about who the enemy is? If they could kill Seal and the others that easily, then it’s gotta be someone from Orario, I’d imagine.”
“Y-yes, sir…the second and third divisions were assaulted by an elf and a dark elf respectively…”
“Uh-huh, uh-huh.”
“And the fourth division and reserve forces were cornered by a catman and four prums…”
“Uh-huh……hmm?”
“And the central division is being approached by a large boaz man…”
“…”
There, for the first time, Resheph’s composure finally cracked.
A flurry of sand shot into the air. The Warsa general Gorza looked on with a trembling gaze as the resulting cloud grew big enough to block out the sun.
“What is he…?!”
The man held an unbelievably large sword. After he utterly smashed both wings and the central unit, he calmly strolled through the path he had created. The man did not needlessly kill anyone. He only turned his blade on those who approached him, using his overwhelming physical strength to crush them.
He was a boaz.
“We can’t even stop his advance…?! It’s just one man!” Gorza spat out as he watched through binoculars from far at the back of the main force.
The absurd reports he had just been getting from the various divisions being destroyed had sounded like lies, but at this point he had no choice but to believe them. The enemy really was attempting to eradicate an army of eighty thousand with just eight people. But Gorza could not give up. If they could not take Shalzad even after bringing in an outside power, a pestilence, then his position and his patron god’s authority would plummet.
Even if it was just petty pride, if he could not at least take out a single enemy warrior—
“…?”
All of a sudden, a shadow appeared. He wondered if a cloud had floated across the sun, but that was not it. It was a gigantic monster whose head stretched up toward the sky.
“What?!”
More precisely, it was an enormous serpent. The gigantic monster had appeared behind Gorza, from the direction of the supply lines.
“I-it can’t be…a basilisk?!”
It was a name that every resident of the desert realm knew from bedtime stories. A feared and despised creature.
A basilisk.
It had the imposing figure of a serpent, but it was also unmistakably a member of the dragon family, the strongest species of monsters. The giant serpent breathed fire while spreading a paralyzing toxin that seemed to petrify those afflicted by it. In ancient times, basilisks had destroyed countless cities and spread such devastation around the world that anecdotes about the menace of basilisks were still told all around present-day Kaios.
Appearing behind the main force, the monster trampled the soldiers in its path. More and more people cried out and abandoned their positions to run away. This clash had long since ceased to be a battle between humans. Gorza and his aide-de-camp desperately took refuge to avoid being consumed by the chaos.
This was Resheph’s trump card. The unleashed basilisk had already killed the tamer. It had not been controlled by the whip, perhaps because the collar placed around one of its fangs—which was as large as a grown man—might not have been a finished product. Either way, the monster had crushed the annoying man yelling orders at it with its giant tail.
The basilisk swung its thick neck, as if only humoring the dead tamer’s final words, and focused its gaze on Ottar.
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Its body was over twenty meders long.
It tore through the sea of sand and charged straight at Ottar. It was an assault intended to crush anything in its way, a lethal technique that would leave nothing in its wake.
To take it on, Ottar, who had until that moment only been holding his sword with one hand, finally wielded it using both hands.
And then—
—he split the giant serpent’s body with a single slash.
“?”
There was a loud noise as the two pieces of the serpent’s body fell to the ground and a curtain of sand flew into the air. And there was an enormous, deep slash left in the sand where Ottar’s attack had split the ground. The desert fell silent.
His swing had caused a tremor that shook the entire battlefield. It had reached not just the Warsa forces or Shalzad’s army but even Ali, who was watching from afar.
While the soldiers of Warsa were frozen in place, the curtain of floating sand gradually cleared, and their dusty faces turned pale as they stared, speechless.
The basilisk had been split perfectly down the middle and was lying dead on the sand. And in the middle of its corpse stood the boaz warrior still holding his sword where he had swung it down. The man who had unleashed that tremendous slash slowly released his stance and put the sword back on his shoulder as he had been carrying it before.
“Raise the white flag.”
“What…?”
“We’re surrendering.”
Gorza lowered his binoculars as he gave that simple order to the soldiers close by. Ignoring their confusion, the commander looked off into the distance as he cast aside his fighting resolve.
“There’s no way we can match a monster like that.”
“A wise general…it would be a shame to kill him.”
Seeing the dozens of white flags being waved, Ottar thrust his giant sword into the ground. His rust-colored eyes narrowed as he spoke.
“Hedin, I’m not going to kill them all. I want to give this potential a chance to grow.”
The strongest adventurer left those words to the wind after destroying the enemy’s will to fight with a single strike instead of rampaging through countless soldiers.
The Battle of the Sindh ended with the warrior’s single blow.
“Prince! Prince Aram! General Jafar has rushed to your side!”
An old general and the troops he led approached Ali, who was standing atop a high sand dune overlooking the battlefield. Behind the general was the Shalzad army marching beneath the battle flag of the moon and jasmine.
“Your cunning in preparing a preemptive surprise attack is nothing less than spectacular! Allow us to join in as well! We shall crush the villains of Warsa! Where is the enemy?”
The old general Jafar was beside himself in joy at the prince’s growth, and the soldiers behind him raised a hot-blooded battle cry. But in response, Ali just continued to stare into the distance, absorbed in the scene in front of her.
“I-it’s over…” Ali said, looking on in shock as she slowly raised a hand and pointed to the results.
“Huh?”
“It’s…it’s really over…”
Countless Warsa soldiers were collapsed all across the giant desert that lay before them. The tiny shadows at the edge of the horizon were all the same. The corpses crumpled atop one another, and the horrifically broken weapons and armor all combined to form tens of thousands of gravestones. The atrocious Resheph Familia members had all been killed. The wind was gradually burying their leader Seal’s corpse under the sea of sand.
The main force commanded by Gorza, which had surrendered, was bound with ropes and being led away by nervous Fazoul Trading Company merchants who had stuffed themselves into armor. Jafar and his troops froze at the sight, their jaws dropping.
“The giant walls surrounding Orario…” Ali caught her breath as she subconsciously started speaking. “They aren’t for protecting their city from outside attack, are they?…They’re for keeping the adventurers locked away inside…?”
Ali was sure of it. And she was correct. That was why the Labyrinth City hated allowing its assets to leave the city. Part of it was to keep other influential groups from gaining power, but the true reason was to keep the powerful upper-tier adventurers from being let loose upon the world.
If Orario unleashed their adventurers, it might lead to genocide. That thought was precisely what they wanted to keep the rest of the world from thinking.
Ironically, all of their precaution was to prevent the world from knowing that adventurers were just as much monsters as the calamities they were fighting.
In the ancient times, people had built a fortress to keep the monsters from flowing out of the giant hole and spreading across the land, a predecessor to the current city walls. However, Ali realized that the modern wall also served as a cage to keep the adventurers locked in after witnessing that battle.
The victors standing atop the sand dune numbered just eight. A boaz, a catman, a dark elf, a white elf, and four prums.
Ali was struck with awe again at the overwhelming victory that the adventurers had achieved. The battle that decided the fate of Shalzad and Warsa had been brought to an end by just those eight followers.
The sun hung low, nearing the horizon as the sky gradually darkened.
The natural results after a battle were occurring in the Sindh Expanse. The soldiers of Shalzad, who were disappointed at not getting to fight, looked like they were in a dream as they carried away the utterly ravaged corpses of the Warsa soldiers who had caused them so much suffering. They still had not cleared away all the dead bodies.
Resheph had disappeared in the chaos, running away somewhere. The being who had sparked the flames of war himself had not been captured, but the goddess had merely said, “Was there even a god called that? Whatever, just leave it be. He’s not worth the effort,” as if she was incapable of caring less.
The war was over. It was honestly debatable whether it could even be called a war, but either way, the fighting was done. The invaders had been removed—the girl’s oasis country was liberated.
“Ahhh, Solshana…! I’ve returned!”
Leaving the cleanup work to the soldiers, Ali and the generals headed back to the capital first to report the destruction of Warsa and the return of peace to their people as soon as possible.
There was a white marble palace and a castle town around it. The beautiful cityscape had been wrecked during Warsa’s invasion and the defenses had been mercilessly destroyed, but inside the walls, the citizens who had been persecuted so badly raised a thunderous, rolling cheer. And the voices that reached Ali’s band were hailing a hero’s triumphal return. It was a bit uncomfortable for the generals who had not done anything, but for Ali, it was a cheerful moment.
The capital she had fled so pitifully. The homeland she was finally returning to. Her eyes began to fill with tears.
“…Freya!”
As the generals began to dismount from their camels, Ali turned back and ran.
The goddess and her eight followers were standing with their backs to the red sky.
Ali ran to the familia that had saved her.
“You have my eternal gratitude! Thanks to you, peace has returned to Shalzad!”
“It has.”
“I could never have done this myself! Neither returning to my homeland nor returning the smiles to my people’s faces!”
“Indeed.”
“Please accept my thanks! Though it may have been nothing more than a whim to you…I was saved by you!”
“I’ve been accepting it for a while now.”
No matter how many times she shouted her thanks, Freya’s responses were calm and collected. And having shouted too much, Ali was gasping for breath as she quietly tried to calm her breathing and locked eyes with the goddess’s silver gaze.
Time did not wait for her as the sun continued to set. Their shadows grew. Long, shimmering shadows stretched out into the sea of sand. The girl’s shadow flickered in the desert wind, trembling faintly. As if she were fighting something within herself.
“…Freya…I…”
Lit by the sunset, she was struck by a feeling as if she were gradually becoming just Ali and not Aram. The feeling of losing the mask and armor of a king, her feelings being exposed. It had not even been two weeks, but the time she had spent with Freya seemed to hit her all at once. The anger, sadness, and despair. Each and every word the goddess had spoken during that time echoed in her heart. A maddening, indescribable thing was clawing at Ali.
Freya was just looking at her, making no attempt to say anything. Ali was currently being faced with a choice. The goddess and her followers before her. And the magnificent palace and her people, her country, behind her. As if the sunset was telling her to choose, forward or backward.
“…”
Ali glanced at the catman. Allen seemed about to say something, but in the end, he said nothing. She could feel his gaze telling her, Make up your own damn mind.
“…Prince Aram?”
Jafar and the others finally noticed Ali and turned around.
It’d be fine, wouldn’t it? Just take her hand.
No, of course it wouldn’t be fine to cast my country aside.
But what I truly want is—
Desire and conflict. A taboo agony afflicted the last remnants of her rationality. And having lost Aram’s armor, the naked Ali could not resist the impulse. She could not reject the irreplaceable time she had spent with the goddess.
I’m sorry you were not born a man. I could not even grant you happiness as a woman—
The words her mother had left her. That Ali would not be able to find happiness as she was.
If it were me, I would fulfill your every need, whether as a man or a woman…
The words of the goddess whose figure overlapped with her mother. Her bold claim that she could grant Ali happiness.
For the first and final time in her life, Ali, who was unable to be fulfilled as either a man or a woman, wanted to scream out her selfish desires.
Just as she was about to stretch out her trembling hand—
“I don’t need you.”
The goddess’s voice stopped her.
“Eh…?”
“I said I don’t need you, Ali.”
Time froze for Ali as Freya repeated herself. Not understanding what was happening, the girl froze.
“It was a miscalculation on my part. You aren’t suitable to be my Odr.”
The goddess’s eyes narrowed coolly, as if measuring the brilliance of the girl’s wavering heart.
Ali’s face filled with despair. The pain of being cast away rippled through her like cracks opening up in her body. The disappointment from the goddess, the one being in the world she did not want to disappoint, seared her heart, causing tears to well up in her amethyst eyes.
Wait. Please. Don’t go.
While those voiceless shouts filled her throat, the goddess started to turn away.
“So go forth and live as a king.”
“?”
Ali’s eyes opened wide. And what she saw was not disappointment or scorn on the goddess’s face but a smile lit by the setting sun. And just like that, as if it were nothing, Freya turned away and started walking. And her eight followers followed after her. There was no farewell. No promise to meet again. No good-bye. The goddess just passed from Ali’s sight like a breeze.
The desert wind blew, and hair fluttered as a lone tear trickled down a single cheek.
“Are you sure, milady?” Ottar asked.
“Yes,” Freya responded as she continued walking. “She can’t set aside her country. Even if she did what I wanted, her radiance would be gone.”
Freya had seen Ali’s conflict. Not only that, she had not allowed the girl to choose. She had pushed Ali away herself.
“The reason she could resist my beauty was because she was a king. What captivated me about her was the brilliance she had as she tried to behave as a king. If she stopped being that, then that brilliance would become something boring…would degrade to something no different from anyone else.”
An Ali who was not a king was just a girl like any other. Just an unpolished gem that might as well be a stone. Because Freya could not attain her, she could become a glimmering jewel whose brilliance Freya could respect and enjoy from afar. So Freya would respect that beautiful radiance rather than try to keep it for herself.
“I got a little bit attached, but…using that excuse to please myself and rob her of her potential would be wrong.”
She looked back over her shoulder just once. The girl was still standing there, her eyes not looking away at all despite how far they had gotten. However, finally, she raised her arm and rubbed her eyes. And as if conveying her determination, she turned her back on Freya and started walking. Toward the people waiting for their king. Toward the desert kingdom.
Freya smiled one more time, like a mother watching over her child.
“Sorry, Allen. I wasted all your effort.”
“…I don’t know to what you might be referring. Did you perhaps imagine something?” Allen responded indignantly.
“Hee-hee. Sure. Let’s call it that,” Freya said, giggling softly.
Ottar and the other followers glanced back at the girl just one time. Hedin looked back the longest, but finally, even he turned his back. As followers who had sworn their loyalty to their goddess, they would accompany her. Freya stopped at the top of a high sand dune with them at her side as she announced her farewell to the desert realm.
“So, shall we go back to boring Orario, a place more intense than any other?”
The series of battles involving Shalzad and Warsa and later Israfan would later come to be known as the Calamity of the Hot Sands.
From the impossible-seeming start of losing its capital, the Kingdom of Shalzad faced a threat to its very existence, and having survived that, it started developing at a pace that left neighboring countries in awe. And it went without saying, of course, that the brilliance of the fifteenth king, King Aram Raza Shalzad, was crucial to those developments.
The Battle of the Sindh led to the decline of Warsa and neither they nor Resheph Familia—who had been active behind the scenes in the lead up to the battle—ever threatened Shalzad’s peace again. Rumors spread from the Labyrinth City that their country was under the protection of a certain strongest familia, though those rumors were never confirmed or denied.
It is impossible to determine the truth of the matter, but a statue to the eight gallant heroes who were said to have saved the country was constructed in the central plaza of the reconstructed Solshana at King Aram’s behest. And apparently there was quite a debate about whether or not those statues’ faces resembled some certain adventurers.
And while the kingdom was developing, it was said that the muscular organization, the Fazoul Trading Company—which had apparently undergone a muscle revolution—was always there supporting it. Bofman Fazoul, who had worked so hard in the shadows during the war with Warsa to aid King Aram and continued to support the king afterward, was the man of the hour, and on the back of his muscles charisma, his trading company became extremely successful. The rebuilding of Leodo progressed, and having stepped away from the slave-trading business, the Fazoul Trading Company became famed for never losing out to armies in terms of military power—a rather dubious claim to fame.
Shalzad experienced a golden age thanks to the rule of King Aram.
The king was widely hailed as the greatest player of Halvan in the Kaios Desert, and he used his strategic prowess in political and military affairs as well, and when the time came to put up or shut up, history remembered him as always daringly stepping up to the table. It was said that the king experienced an awakening during the Calamity of the Hot Sands, though he had a playful side as well, and would steal away from his advisers to go play Halvan around town, and he was seen many times out walking around enjoying a kebab.
King Aram was a handsome man who was wise, indulged in many pleasures, and was always beloved by his people. He would later be known as King Aram the Wise. At the time, he was recorded as having said:
“In the midst of that turbulence, a silver light shone upon me.
“It resembled both the moonlight high in the night sky and the ripples on the surface of the oasis. That light delivered a revelation from the heavens. In order to never turn my back on the teachings that light granted me, I continued pushing forward so that I could hold my head high with pride. That was all.”
He left a successor and continued to rule justly until the very end, and he was hailed by all for his enlightened rule. His reign and his immense efforts led to the first-ever great power being born in the central region of western Kaios.
“The Heroic King.”
“He Who Rules the Board.”
“Aram and the Eight Warriors.”
He was known by many different names and his tale was passed down to later generations in anecdotes and children’s stories.
And whether a certain beautiful goddess smiled when word of those feats reached her ears—the world may never know.
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