Ishura - Volume 3 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8: The Land of The End

Right as the grand battle between the Demon King’s Bastard and Rique the Misfortune and Krafnir the Hatch of Truth was unfolding—

In a different direction from the three of them, there was another person who successfully infiltrated The Land of The End, coming out between a gap in the warped and distorted trees without any proper road through them.

A man, short-statured with a round face. On his back, he shouldered a small wooden box.

“Well, I’ll be.”

Yukiharu the Twilight Diver put his hand up to his forehead, shading his eyes. A loud rumbling like cannon fire continued to ring out from far off at the edge of his line of sight.

What made it truly terrifying was that the sound hadn’t come from any gunpowder or explosive. It was the sound of something, which Yukiharu was unable to catch with his naked eye, smashing the terrain using just their physical strength.

He guessed it was probably the Demon King’s Bastard.

“That’s incredible stuff! A little ol’ guy like me’d be smashed to bits in an instant if I got wrapped up in that.”

“……”

Yukiharu continued talking to himself as he took his first step into The Land of The End and walked over the earth, filled with a damp silence.

“The research teams that come here meet one of a few possible fates. The first one is their carriages are totally destroyed, and they’re instantly knocked unconscious, then they decide there’s no hope for them and flee back home. That already sounds a bit strange, don’t you think?”

“…Strange how?”

“The fact that there’s eyewitness accounts of the Demon King’s Bastard spreading around. It means that they survived The Land of The End and got back home. Even after getting knocked out right smack-dab in the middle of the Demon’s King Army wandering around in droves.”

“…You’re right. If everyone died, there’d be no one to pass on the information.”

“That means this someone or other is taking down the research teams but, at the same time, also sends them back somewhere safer afterward, too. My thinking is: This pattern of events…is all from that Demon King’s Bastard person.”

There were happenings from within Final Land, a place that already gnawed at that sanity of all who stepped within its borders. The eyewitness accounts of the survivors thrown into chaos by these enigmatic attacks would likely be intermingled with a mix of truth and fiction. It was fair to say that Yukiharu’s position alone, able to compare all the results brought by the many research teams, made him able to notice the two divergent trends.

“What’s the other?”

“Everyone is killed.”

A reasonable result that anyone could imagine as the fate of those who stepped foot in The Land of The End. Thus, it was difficult to get information about the area out there, with exceptional stories about encountering the Demon King’s Bastard being the only ones circulating.

“The other pattern is that all members of the research team are confirmed dead. Don’t you think this is still strange, too?”

“…I get it. The dead shouldn’t be able to confirm themselves as being dead.”

“Thaaaat’s the rub. If everyone ends up getting killed in The Land of The End, they’d be labeled missing. No one out there is going all the way to The Land of The End to identify the bodies. Sort of like how the surviving research teams get driven out of the region, the murdered teams must be getting killed outside The Land of The End’s borders, too.”

Perhaps these two examples coincided on purpose. Supposing that after the Demon King’s Bastard wiped out their team, if there were some among them who had their lives taken while they were unconscious, accounts would come out that the mass killings were also caused by the Demon King’s Bastard’s attacks.

“……Who’s doing it, then?”

“You just met them, right?” Yukiharu replied while unhesitatingly prying open the door to a residence. His voice didn’t betray any unrest as he looked around at the remnants of the nightmarish tragedies that occurred to the people who once lived there.

“It’s the Free City of Okafu. They’re thorough. Trying to make sure that no one gets out with any information on The Land of The End. They circulated the rumors of the ‘Demon King’s Bastard,’ disposed of anyone trying to investigate, and ensured no one arrived at the answers behind the True Demon King. There’s definitely something here that’d inconvenience them if it got out.”

Even as he fished through the rotten and blood-drenched house, a big grin gradually began stretching across his face.

“A national-level scandal, just like you.”

“…………”

At the very least, he had been able to dodge their hounding on the way in. However, the trip home was definitely not going to go as smoothly.

Back when he ran into the mercenaries, perhaps it would have been better if he pretended to have absolutely no interest at all in The Land of The End or the True Demon King, instead. Yukiharu the Twilight Diver knew for a fact that wasn’t something he could do, though.

“Yukiharu.”

His current search wasn’t only for material proof. To Yukiharu, the people’s reactions when the topic of the Demon King came up, and even their deceitful replies, were all material for his reporting.

“Hey.”

“Here in this world, no one’s taken any pictures before, huh. In that case, a piece of a corpse…”

He wanted to know more. Every single one of the world’s secrets were endearing to him.

Anything he had yet to see. Anything unimaginably gruesome and cruel.

Far more than could ever fit in his old world.

That’s why someone must have prepared a whole other world for Yukiharu to investigate.

The feeling that he was truly closing in on the essence of the world was more important to him than anything.

“…Yukiharu. You didn’t… I can’t see, but—”

“U-urrgh, n-nooo, help, help…”

He heard a minia’s weeping voice come from the area to his flank.

No, he might’ve heard it the whole time. He felt hot.

“You’ve been stabbed, haven’t you?!”

“Aaah…”

Fully absorbed in his investigation, Yukiharu at last turned to look behind him.

A victim of the Demon King…… A wretched woman, her whole body damaged, was crawling on the floor and jabbed a rusted kitchen knife into Yukiharu’s stomach.

He must’ve been so excited that he hadn’t noticed her until she got close. No, that wasn’t it. Throughout all his field investigations up until now, Yukiharu had never neglected such rudimentary precautions.

“I get it. I… I see. So that’s it. Ha-ha. This is incredible!”

Yukiharu vigorously scratched at the wound in his flank, left behind after the knife slipped down to the floor. He was laughing.

It was said once anyone got themselves caught up in the tragedy of the Demon King Army, it was already too late for them.

“…Dread. I’m scared. I get it. That’s why m-my curiosity and terror, took over my mind, and w-without knowing……I lost my, my composure… This has never happened to me before…!”

“Yukiharu!”

“Help, help, please help me. M-my husband, I—I ate my husband.”

“Ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha… Well now, miss, well, well, well… You really did me a number…”

For a brief moment, Yukiharu laughed while staggering on his feet. Laughing while blood poured out of him was definitely not the mark of a sane mind. However, there wasn’t a single soul in this abandoned land to point this out to him.

The woman slowly dragged herself along and gripped on the knife once more. She had grabbed it by the blade.

“Help.”

A leather shoe pounded her face.

“……You’re in the way.”

Still smiling, Yukiharu brought his foot down on her face again.

“You’re a nuisance. A real pain, truly. You’re interrupting my investigation. It’s…it’s so interesting, and you had to interrupt me.”

A second time. A third time.

That was enough to stop the languid and debilitated woman’s breathing, but Yukiharu struck her with several more kicks.

“…Phew. Okay. Theeere we go… Nice and calm again.”

“Hey. I know I’m not really one to talk, but…you’re not really in a good spot, Yukiharu.”

“Ha-ha-ha! Maybe. But as long as we’re in The Land of The End, you don’t have any proof that you haven’t gone loony, either, right? Hell, truth is, you’re not even the type to get scared or worry yourself over a minian life anyway, right?”

“……”

“See? Totally calm and clearheaded. Supposing… Supposing I wasn’t, you and I are still in the same boat together. I’m gonna be thorough with everything, right up to the end, got it?”

There was a compulsive elation in Yukiharu’s tone. Fear—and curiosity.

“…That’s true. If you really sought to abandon everything, you’d throw me away first. I’ll do my best to keep you company, then, at least until you end up dead.”

“Ha-ha-ha, thanks. Seriously…… You’re a big help. I really do feel that way…… Yeah.”

He wiped off the tips of his shoes as he answered the wooden box.

This was still the first house. Until the moment he got his hands on the truth, a truth whose very existence was uncertain, he needed to keep struggling through this nucleus of fear and madness.

“Hello there, Twilight Diver…… We meet again.”

Exiting The Land of The End, Yukiharu was greeted with a gun barrel.

The sun had long since set, and he had severe wounds all over his body that gave him no guarantee he’d be able to walk back to civilization.

“Ha-ha-ha… Well, hello…my merchant friend. I didn’t catch your name on the road in… How unbecoming of me.”

“Oh please. I’m not someone worth mentioning, see.”

He was the mercenary captain from the Free City of Okafu he had encountered on his way into The Land of The End.

He appeared to have joined up with another small group before sunset, with now ten of them total. After continuing his investigation within the ceaseless madness and terror, until all his stamina was spent, this development all but eradicated his hopes of returning home.

“You find anything special? Not that it’ll change things.”

“……It seems to me…that you couldn’t immediately……get a larger-scale force into action, huh? Nofelt’s troops are right over there in Alimo Row, I guess……since Aureatia’s curbing Okafu’s military movements…”

Words were only going to buy him a small amount of time. The mercenaries had no reason to entertain Yukiharu’s attempts at conversation.

This mercenary squad wasn’t trying to steal information about The Land of The End, after all—from the start, their goal was simply ensuring Yukiharu’s silence.

“Ha-ha-ha…… S-still, though……”

“I’m not trying to apologize or anything, but I don’t really bear you any ill will. Sorry about this.”

“…There’s one, though. One person who can get a large number of troops into action.”

—Suddenly.

Arrows flew in and pushed aside the tips of the mercenaries’ barrels. Sniper fire from deep within the darkness. Hit with the unexpected assault, many of the soldiers dropped their weapons. The captain immediately went to draw his short sword.

A carriage, rushing at high speed, forced its way in between the two of them.

One of the mercenaries had their breastplate smashed and sent flying by the horse’s hooves. This wasn’t the only carriage that burst in, either. Several carriages followed after it, one after another.

Yukiharu smiled as he covered his bloodied face in his hands.

“…A commission to exterminate the Demon King Army…from the Lana Farmlands. A commission from a settlement within Aureatia’s sphere of influence, in order to preserve their peace and order. Aureatia doesn’t have—especially not under Nofelt’s personal authority—the resources to intervene.”

Even as he spoke, the lights of the carriages continued to gather, coming to a halt and circling around Yukiharu. The mercenaries cloaked as merchants were simply outnumbered, unable to stand against them.

“Twilight Diver……!”

One among the contained mercenary squad stirred.

It was the old man in the carriage bed, with the large scar on his forehead. The elderly man who had been staring vacantly at the sky earlier stepped forward faster than a flying arrow and tried to run Yukiharu through with his spear.

“First. Piercing slash…!”

“Gramps, wait!”

Even the mercenary troop captain’s attempt to restrain him was too late for the wholly unexpected display of masterful speed.

However, a finger cutting in between them firmly gripped the spearhead and used the momentum to slam the elderly man to the ground.

“Stop it!”

It was a young girl, hiding her bare skin under a large overcoat.

Even as the long delicate finger clenched the rough blade, not a single drop of blood fell from her skin. Facing toward the elderly man, dumbfounded that his full-powered thrust had been stopped, the young girl shouted a comment terribly out of step with the situation.

“This person could’ve died, you know!”

The mercenary captain was perplexed at the sequence of events that had just played out in front of him.

“D-dammit! What the…what the hell is this?! Rique the Misfortune?! Damn you!”

A young dwarf descended from the head carriage. The man who had interrupted the mercenaries’ attacks with his volley of arrows.

Having accepted the commission from the Lana Farmlands, Rique the Misfortune must have had, on the other hand, a contract with the Free City of Okafu to clean up the aftermath. Capturing all of the Demon King Army in The Land of The End and eliminating all potential threats, including the Demon King’s Bastard, were coinciding interests.

“I’m the one who should be asking what’s going on here,” Rique flatly declared as he kept his short bow at the ready.

“The conditions of my agreement with Okafu…were to guard the remnants of the Demon King Army we recovered. As long as you’re trying to kill Twilight Diver here to ensure his silence, who’s to say you won’t do the same to the Demon King Army folks we captured? You’re going to have to travel with us to settle things with whoever’s responsible.”

“Dammit. You naive and ignorant punk… So we’re the ones made out to be the fools here. Did you hear there was a unit like ours here…from Twilight Diver over there?”

No average person was capable of approaching The Land of The End. Even for the mercenaries trying to protect the region’s secrets, they were only capable of attacking people along their way either into The Land of The End or on their way out.

Therefore.

“…Nah. I had Thousandth serve as the intermediary.”

“Rique. I don’t really think it’s necessary to answer that honestly.”

If they had come in contact inside The Land of The End, there was no way anyone could know.

Zigita Zogi the Thousandth. He was a logistics specialist, origins unknown, who was accompanying Rique the Misfortune this far as a subcontractor. However, from the very beginning, he had devised a way to mobilize a large-scale transport caravan and slip it past the Free City of Okafu’s vigilance and make Yukiharu the Twilight Diver, continuing his investigation of the True Demon King, meet up with Rique in The Land of The End.

“…Well, there you have it.”

Yukiharu stood his wound-riddled body up and shakily boarded one of the carriages.

“Thousandth. He was one of my clients.”

This time, it was the mercenaries’ turn to raise their hands up in surrender.

“We’ve been duped, all right. All those guys were supposed to cleanly disappear from the Final Land…and today’d finally be our last day stuck doing this dirty work.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha. Well, I can sympathize. But having everything get wrapped up all at once like that……doesn’t happen very often, after all.”

At last getting a firm sense that he had escaped the terror, Yukiharu smiled and sunk his body into the carriage passenger seat.

“Well, no. I wouldn’t say that’s always true.”

Zigita Zogi answered from the seat across from him.

“The story of the True Demon King. And Okafu the Free City. And the Old Kingdoms’ loyalists. As well as the Royal Games preliminaries—perhaps, everything is going to get settled all at once.”

“Ha-ha-ha-ha……”

Yukiharu answered with a dry laugh. The wooden box slung on his back stayed silent the whole while.

“A torn piece of fabric’s going to do all that?”

“That’s right. Very well done, Master Yukiharu.”

Zigita Zogi peered through a magnifying glass inside the carriage at the item Yukiharu the Twilight Diver had risked his life to recover—a torn piece of clothing, the size of his finger.

It was a definitive and decisive piece of information.

“…With this one item, I’ve assembled all the material I need for the negotiations with Okafu.”