Goblin Slayer - Volume 8 - Chapter 9.1

Interlude – Of How It’s Better Than Dragon Slaying, Probably

“Well now, that is quite the plan!” 

“Oh, you’re too kind.” 

They were at the house of a noble, which stood beside the river that flowed through the capital. It was so late at night that even the moons had hidden their faces. 

Two men sat drinking at a table in a parlor whose luxury befitted a high official. 

One of the men wore clothes cut to accommodate his portly frame; he was part of the nobility of this nation. 

Across from him sat a man bearing a strange holy mark in the shape of a single forbidding eye; he was one of those who followed an evil cult. 

In short, this was one of those events that had been held time and again since the very founding of the world, a banquet between companions in evil. 

“Controlling the goblins using the fiery stone from heaven, causing them to kidnap the princess and sacrifice her to resurrect the greater demon…” 

“If we could crossbreed the greater demon with the thing from beyond the stars, we could create a true horror,” the cultist concurred. 

“It could impersonate the princess, but it would be under our control, so we could manage the king somehow.” The nobleman gave a belly-shaking laugh. He didn’t seem to have any doubts about his ability to control an unknown entity from another realm. “If even one of those plots succeeds, well and good. But even if they all fail, if we spread a rumor that the princess was violated…” 

Then no one would want to marry her. The power of the bloodline would wane, the king’s royal glory would be overshadowed, and the scales of the Court would tilt dramatically. 

“Why should that whelp of an adventurer run the government just because he’s got a few drops of royal blood in him?” the nobleman said, shaking his head in intense displeasure. It was a gesture overflowing with pity for the world, with righteous indignation, completely characteristic of the great many high-class people in town. It said more about who he thought was fit to control the government than a thousand speeches ever could. 

“…As for myself, I’m perfectly content to let His Majesty sit on the throne, so long as my faith continues to spread,” the noble follower of the God of Wisdom said pleasantly. “The knowledge of him is good for my profits, after all.” 

“But what’s to be done about the hero?” 

“Easy enough. She’s a sweet little girl whom we can wrap around our little finger with a bit of fawning: O Platinum!, we’ll say. O great hero!” 

The first nobleman allowed the cultist to pour him more wine. He wiped away a few red droplets with his sleeve. 

“If she plays along with us after that, then fine,” the cultist continued. “If not, we find some convenient excuse to send her on a suicide mission.” 

“I can’t see myself getting along very well with her type.” 

“Nor she with you, I suspect. How I would like to see her and her friends begging pitifully for their lives.” 

The nobleman smirked at the nasty image in his mind. The cultist, picking up on his amusement, chuckled and sipped his own drink. It made scant difference to him what happened to some so-called hero, or sage, or sword saint, women all. 

But if his spawn were to gain their powers, what a thing that would be. Yes, that was all he cared about. 

Knowledge was power, and power ruled the world. Few could truly understand what a sweet and beautiful thing that was. 

That thought might have prompted, in some sense, a small factoid that flashed through the cultist’s mind and then disappeared. 

“…I was thinking, it’s been some time since I heard any rumors of that interloper.” 

“Heh-heh—what, do you believe what people say? Don’t make me laugh. That’s just the idle fancies of peasants.” 

That was when it happened. 

The quake, the wind, the thunder. 

For a moment, they thought perhaps it was the sound of the river grown especially violent, but then came the roar. 

It was, quite literally, the sound of a battering ram at the castle gates, the prow of a ship striking a wall. 

Bursting through the wall of the parlor came, indeed, the prow of a ferryboat. 

“Wh-what is the meaning of this?!” the nobleman and the cultist shouted. 

An answer came, likewise, from the ferryboat: “It’s been a long time, you scum.” 

The sculler existed more as a small, dim silhouette than anything—judging by the lines in the figure’s black clothing, might it be a young woman?—but this spy was not the source of the words. 

Instead, the speaker was a man, standing beside the sculler with a dignity that seemed out of place. He looked down at the astonished villains and growled derisively, “It’s been a long time, you scum. Have you missed me?” 

Look—yes, look—at his glittering accoutrements. Shining brightly even there in the dark were his armor, his shield, his helmet, and his gloves, as well as the sword that hung at his hip. He carried enough magical items to astound any onlooker: a blessing of Healing, an Evil-Banishing Light, an Anti-Freezing charm, a Primal Flame, and a Whirling Wind. And his name was… 

“The Knight of Diamonds…!” 

He was supposed to be nothing more than a myth, a fairy tale passed around among the common people. A phantom about whom whispers had spread in the city these past few years. A man who hid his face and punished evil by darkness, a true knight of the streets. 

But he couldn’t be real; there was no one that crazy. 

For starters, slaughtering crooked merchants and nobles and cultists of one’s own accord—didn’t that make him a simple murderer? How could that boy playing at being king, with all his talk of righteousness, allow such acts to go unchecked? 

Yet, there he was, right in front of them. But who exactly was he? Or what? 

He must be a simple deviant. 

Thus the nobleman seemed to think. He had either remembered his own station and honor or had concluded that his visitor was a simple ne’er-do-well. Feeling he had a better grasp now on his own position, he said forcefully, “Impudent fool! Whose residence do you think you’re in? Remove your helmet, at once!” 

“Oh-ho. So you want to see my face, eh?” The Knight of Diamonds sounded almost amused; he laughed with a sound like a lion bearing its fangs. “I’m happy to oblige—but I don’t think you’re going to like it.” 

With that, those glittering gauntlets reached up to his visor, lifting it without a sound. 

Then his face stood revealed. The nobleman and the cultist alike felt their eyes go wide. 

“Wha…?!” 

“It—it can’t be…!” 

That was all they could say. 

They were witnessing something that could not be. Something unbelievable, something that shouldn’t exist—but the knight’s was a face they knew all too well. 

Their knees went weak, and they gasped for breath, forgetting themselves as they babbled, “Come! Come forth!” 

The shouting brought armed men of the noble’s personal guard running. The cultist, meanwhile, warped space as he summoned fiends and ghouls from another realm. The fact that the guards didn’t flinch at this was proof enough that they were coconspirators of the men. 

Gods. The Knight of Diamonds groaned. 

Yes, one had to be broad-minded enough to accept all kinds of people, but that was no reason to turn a blind eye to evil. And there was no arguing with men like this; they would simply try to twist everything to their benefit. On top of that, considering how personal the stakes were in this instance, everything seemed tailor-made to put the knight in a bad mood. 

The young woman in the shadows, seeming to sense the knight’s thoughts, let out a breath of simultaneous exasperation and resignation. The Knight of Diamonds ignored her completely, laughing out loud. 

“It looks like you’re far beyond talk. Your fate is sealed.” 

Still looking at the pitiful noble in front of him, the knight lowered his visor once more and drew his sword. 

The blade was all blinding flash, the stroke so violent and so precise that even the wind from the passing sword could have beheaded a man. 

As if to emphasize to the men that they couldn’t flee from before his blade, the Knight of Diamonds declared, “On behalf of heaven, I claim your lives!!” 

Here, now, there was no place for mercy anymore.