Chapter __ - Setera the External
At the end of the age of the True Demon King, a man and a beast continued a yearlong journey. An aimless journey with no destination, and no guarantee they would be able find what they sought.
Even then, it was by no means a trying journey. Ozonezma the Capricious had the power to fend off any threats that approached them, and Olukt the Drifting Compass Needle had his soothing songs.
“Thus, blessed rains washed over the land / The soldiers’ swords at last fell / Ahhhh, none at all doubted / the sincerity of the princess who gave her life / the realm now tranquil / that beautiful wish.”
Ozonezma closed his eyes and listened to Olukt’s song until the last reverberations of his instruments died down.
The beast, born for battle, had lived for nothing but slaughter, and felt like that sole drive was enough to save him.
As if by magic, the song could heal terror.
“……There’s a boar.”
“INDEED.”
There were in the middle of a forest. Apparently, Olukt and his dulled sense of danger had noticed the presence of the beasts resting in the shade of the roadside trees. Ozonezma could tell their numbers as well. Four. Or perhaps, it was a mother with her farrow.
“THEY DON’T INTEND TO FIGHT. WE CAN LET THEM BE.”
“Ha-ha! Look, I’m not bragging, all right? But even beasts will listen to my songs. So if that’s the case, don’t you think I might have a shot at defeating the Demon King, too?”
“IMPOSSIBLE.”
Ozonezma agreed that there was indeed a power within Olukt the Drifting Compass Needle’s song.
Soulless beasts were enthralled by the beauty of the melody and stopped their legs and wings. Even those with explicit hostile intentions were unable to help themselves from listening along.
Though Ozonezma recognized the wonder of his music, which could touch those in the realm of madness, he still believed the man’s experiment was reckless.
That didn’t change the fact that Ozonezma, accompanying Olukt on his experiment, was just as reckless himself.
“DO YOU REALLY THINK YOU’LL FIND THIS THING YOU ARE AFTER WITH THIS METHOD OF YOURS?”
“In all honesty, there’s no real way to know without asking the Wordmaker themselves. I’m doing it because I don’t know, see? We’re getting to the next town before the day’s out, okay?”
“…WE’LL ARRIVE IN THE EVENING. WE SHOULD QUICKEN OUR PACE A SLIGHT BIT.”
From one town and then onto the next. Olukt would earn coin with his songs and travel onto the next place.
Towns didn’t always welcome the company of a drifter bard. Without Ozonezma at his side to protect him, Olukt was in more danger inside town limits than on the open road.
As if he had exchanged everything for his lyrical talents to resonate with the very world itself, Olukt was astonishingly inept as a fighter. While he was blessed with the physique for it, both his technique and his decision-making were hopelessly slow.
It probably seemed like a cruel joke to anyone who looked at him that the man remained on his journey to defeat the True Demon King.
“OLUKT. WHAT IF… WHAT IF YOU DO NOT FIND THE SORT OF INDIVIDUAL YOU SEEK? WHAT WOULD HAPPEN THEN?”
“When that time comes, it’ll probably be the end of it for us. Everything would turn into a big, wasted effort… But that’d be all. Or perhaps, someone else will defeat the True Demon King for us—how about that? There’s probably others out there like us, attempting this stupid endeavor…trying out a loony method of their own.”
“…A LOONY METHOD…”
“You know the story? There was some smart guy out there who tried to poison the Demon King to defeat them. If I remember, inside the champion’s bag was some mechanism to discharge a deadly poisonous gas when opened up. The idea being that if this fella closed in on the Demon King without realizing it, then just by taking out his weapon, the Demon King would die.”
“…WHAT HAPPENED?”
“In the middle of the night, he opened up his bag himself. The champion who tried to set up the trap died and took everyone else in the same building along with him. The end.”
The Demon King’s terror eroded the very intent to resist them.
The people themselves feared their decision-making. Even should one attempt to kill them via soulless constructs, automatic machinery, or explosives, as long as the person setting up the trap had a soul of their own, they would be terrorized by their own actions and driven mad. Regardless of the distance and timing, they would avoid putting their plans into action.
Would attacking indiscriminately do the trick? Did they need to keep the True Demon King out of their perception? Did they need to make sure their own self-destruction was incorporated somehow?
Anyone with a bit of a head on their shoulders could come up with any number of different methods to defeat a tremendous fear that they couldn’t approach or think about.
An innumerable number had done exactly that.
During this twenty-five-year span, there was no doubt the world had exhausted every possible means its people could come up with.
Even the First Party had been defeated. Including the most wicked demon king of all and Ozonezma’s creator, Izick the Chromatic. If victory was impossible for those seven, then no matter how powerful one may have been, it must have been impossible to lay a single finger on the True Demon King.
Which was why, in actuality, their quest was nothing like a tactical operation—unable to discover a method to defeat their enemy, it was like they were clinging hopefully to some baseless and enigmatic magic charm.
What they were doing was something the weak did when forced up against oblivion.
IT’S STRANGE, Ozonezma thought as he walked behind Olukt down the road.
This journey, the first he had done with a companion since creation, was by no means a trying one.
DESPITE BEING SO UTTERLY RECKLESS, IT DOESN’T SEEM LIKE A HOPELESS QUEST—OR PERHAPS, HE REALLY CAN…
—Sure enough, at the end of that year, they would meet him.
Olukt found the ogre that, most likely, no one else would have ever been able to find.
Had it been a revelation, bestowed by his talents for song, that led Olukt to discover him?
Or perhaps, it was but a piece of cruel destiny.
At the time, no one knew the answer.
The traveling company of just two had increased to three.
The ogre, lacking the power of Word Arts, was given the name Setera the External.
He was terribly small for an ogre, being only half a head taller than Olukt.
Just what sort of name had Setera been given originally?
Or perhaps, had he never felt such a thing was necessary from the beginning?
Setera didn’t insist on anything at all himself, but nevertheless, he silently accompanied Olukt on his journey.
When danger arrived, he fought with just as much bravery as Ozonezma, never eating people despite being an ogre, living disciplined as though he was an oracle, and solemnly joined their journey.
While they were unable to exchange conversation, Ozonezma started to put a bizarre trust in the ogre, occasionally leaving his own life in his hands during a battle.
The ogre, unable to understand Word Arts, still listened to Olukt’s music together with Ozonezma.
In those moments, Setera seemed calm, as if his mind was at peace.
The three continued their journey.
Until they reached their final destination.
“…Kuta Silver City. This place is Kuta. No doubt about it.”
Olukt looked at the charred remains of the sign bearing the town insignia, and he broke into a twitching, taut smile.
The shape-shifting city, a new building popping up each time one visited, had teemed with people and activity.
Indeed, that was how it had once been. Now it had changed shape entirely. All of it.
“WITH THE LOSS OF SHINJI THE PIECE COLUMN, THIS DOWNFALL WAS AN INEVITABILITY. BEFORE THE THREAT OF THE TRUE DEMON KING, A CITY’S SIZE IS INSIGNIFICANT.”
“I know. I know, but…now that I’m seeing it for myself, the reality really hits you hard.”
Olukt’s unrest didn’t only come from the drastically changed cityscape before him.
Dyed in gruesome blood, with the vestiges of agony and death left behind everywhere they looked, the town was completely finished.
In this day and age, such ruins could be found all across the land.
But Kuta Silver City was different.
The Demon King was here. The source that was painting over the land with a dark, black terror.
“…Ozonezma. Do you know where the Demon King is?”
“……”
Ozonezma was levelheaded. He had stopped and didn’t move.
Just like the brilliant warriors who had come before him, he could sense the terrible menace.
He knew where it was coming from. Amid the silence of death, there was a single life lingering.
He didn’t want to face it. He didn’t want to get close.
Ozonezma was an artificial life-form, created by the self-proclaimed demon king Izick to collect biomaterial and equipped with all the functions needed for combat.
Even still, there was one function, courage, that he hadn’t been given. He had been made this way to act as an assistant to Izick and never disobey him.
Beside him was Olukt, while Setera vigilantly protected their rear.
Still, it was frightening.
“Setera…”
“…………”
The ogre didn’t let out a single groan, even in the thick of such soul-crushing terror.
Setera was a chosen being. He had the power to erase any and all mysteries of the world with just a thought.
It wasn’t only Word Arts. All supernatural phenomena—including the paranormal effects of magic items, clearly not the product of Word Arts—were meaningless to Setera the External.
He negated anything that lay outside the natural laws of the physical—a supremely powerful supernatural skill, even capable of killing a dragon without a fight.
That was truly what Olukt had continued to pursue: a being inconceivable to this world.
A power to negate everything. A power that didn’t cause anything.
With him at their side, Ozonezma believed that they could manage to fight against the Demon King.
However.
Now that the time had come, now that they were standing here, this conviction disappeared without a trace.
Would that really be enough to make killing the Demon King possible?
“…OLUKT. I WAS RIGHT; THIS EXPERIMENT IS RECKLESS.”
“Ha-ha-ha… What’s the matter, Ozonezma? Getting cold feet now that we’re here?”
“THAT IS EXACTLY RIGHT. IS IT NOT SO FOR YOU?”
Ozonezma couldn’t advance another step farther. No matter how much bravery he tried to drum up within himself, he couldn’t do it. He rued his lack of such a function.
Perspiration. Pulse. Breathing. He could tell that Olukt was terrified beside him.
For someone who wasn’t a warrior like him, the fear alone was enough to endanger his life.
“O-OLUKT. PLEASE. WE CAN’T GO ANY FARTHER.”
He just needed to pretend he hadn’t seen anything.
Pretend that their journey had been a waste of time.
If they turned back now, they would simply go back to the lives they had lived beforehand with nothing changed, and no one would criticize them. From the start, Ozonezma hadn’t held any belief that their method would actually be able to defeat the Demon King.
Eventually, this world might be annihilated, but that wasn’t a burden that a single person was meant to bear.
“……U-uuunh…”
They had come this far.
He had listened to Olukt’s songs on the main roads, the sun peeking through the trees.
Ozonezma had even felt proud watching the city people applauding the bard from afar, as if they were cheering for himself, too.
Their nigh-impossible quest, which they themselves hadn’t truly believed in, had finally been completed.
Freed from his duty of blood and slaughter, Ozonezma had been able to witness it, witness the beautiful world for the first time.
He may not have been the hero. Even then, he had adventured with his companions.
Ozonezma didn’t want to believe that those days of adventuring had all been leading to this kind of ending.
Beyond them lay only despair.
“Setera!”
Ozonezma looked at Setera. Was he really going to defeat the True Demon King for them?
Setera remained silent. He quietly lingered where he stood, showing no signs of moving forward.
In which case, their quest had been a mistake.
The fact that Setera was unable to move forward with such terror in front of him was the proof, wasn’t it?
“Ha-ha-ha-ha… I told you, Ozonezma… Someday…someday.”
Ozonezma would die. Ozonezma could clearly understand that if he continued from there, he would die.
Olukt must have understood it just as much himself.
“Even if we don’t move forward now, someday, the fight will come. If that bravado I showed you… If that can’t protect me right now, then what else is there?!”
“NO…! WAIT… STOP! THERE IS NO HOPE OF WINNING AGAINST SOMETHING LIKE THIS. EVERYTHING WAS A FAILURE FROM THE START.”
Ozonezma could tell that by stepping out in front of them all, Olukt was trying to give them the courage to move forward. Despite being nothing more than a bard, with no warrior strength to speak of.
“I CANNOT GO! FORGIVE ME… FORGIVE ME, OLUKT…”
“Really? Well, makes sense, doesn’t it? Of course, huh… Well, that’s fine. I get it, I know… Ozonezma. Sorry for making you go along with my selfishness.”
Placing a hand on the downturned head of the beast many times bigger than himself, the bard smiled.
Then he walked off.
“Take care of Setera for me.”
No matter how much Ozonezma wished that he would stop, Olukt continued to walk.
It was a scene Ozonezma had seen countless times in the past.
Many… So very many champions doing the same thing and walking to their deaths.
Alas. Why did people decide to attempt bravery?
“You’ve got courage. I know that for sure, after all our time together.”
“……!”
Ozonezma tried to advance. Warily, he took two steps forward.
His legs trembled, and his strength gave way. If he didn’t follow after Olukt, the man would die.
“I said this to you right at the beginning, too, didn’t I?! I’m doing things whether you’re coming with me or not!”
He spread his arms out wide, right in the middle of the deathly scenery.
His departing figure grew smaller and smaller.
So far.
So far was the difference between himself and this mere minia.
Courage was the one function the invincible chimera hadn’t been equipped with.
“I’m gonna move the heart of this True Demon Lord with my music!”
The man laughed at the all-too-preposterous words himself.
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