Mushoku Tensei (LN) - Volume 22 - Chapter 8

Chapter 8:

Imprisoned in Fort Necross

Rudeus

“LOOK, HERE WE ARE,” Atofe said. After flapping around in circles above Fort Necross, she alighted on a building located not too far away from the arena, then threw me into a room within it.

“Um, where exactly…?” I began tentatively. The room was made for a little girl. Everything was baby pink. There was a canopied bed, white furniture, lace curtains, and a fancy teapot. It looked like a room in the Asuran palace, but even Ariel’s room wasn’t this girly. The only thing that didn’t fit the aesthetic was the view out the window: reddish-brown earth, a mountain covered in spooky trees, and I even spotted Black Drakes flying around in the air above the mountain. Not that that wasn’t striking in itself…

“The princess’s room!” Atofe declared.

“Princess…? You mean this room belongs to your daughter, Lady Atofe?”

“No! I don’t have a daughter!”

I know. Orsted told me that much.

Demon King Atoferatofe Rybak had only one child. A son. North God Kalman the second.

The Epic of the North God currently in circulation was mostly about him. He’d slain a giant king dragon and defeated behemoths on the Begaritt Continent. He sounded like a genuine hero, but Orsted called him an “idiot boy.” As they say, like mother, like son.

“Then this room—”

“It’s your room!”

“This isn’t really my style.”

“Eh heh heh. Don’t hold out hope that your champion will come and save you! You’ll be here until you die!” Atofe cackled.

She wasn’t listening. With another “Mwaaahahahah!” Atofe left the room.

All right, what was going on here? Was I imprisoned? The door wasn’t even locked. Was this Atofe’s roundabout way of proposing to me?

Dude. I don’t get it.

“Excuse me,” came a voice from behind me, and I turned to see Moore. Thank goodness. Someone sensible.

“You appear to be confused,” he said. 

“Yes,” I replied.

“Please take a seat. I’ll explain.” I sat down obediently on a ridiculously girly chair. It was pretty comfy. They must have used good materials and a really fluffy cushion. It was a bit small for me, though; more the size for someone more petite. A teenage girl would suit it perfectly.

As I sat down, Moore took the teapot and poured a cup of tea. Both the pot and the cups wouldn’t have looked out of place in the hands of royalty, specifically Asuran royalty. I’d seen the same kind used in Ariel’s chambers. The liquid that came out was a bit different, though. It was cloudier than black tea, and a more subdued color. 

What is that, I wondered. Wait, I’ve seen it before. That’s Sokas tea. 

Nanahoshi lusted after the stuff. Although I guess she didn’t drink it for the taste.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. “Don’t mind if I do.” At least my tea was the normal kind. I was grateful for that.

“Good. Now, where would you like me to begin?” Moore asked.

“At the beginning, then in order from there if possible.”

“From the beginning?” Moore made a thinking gesture, then, as though something had just come to him, he began to speak.

“Lady Atofe was born at the end of the first Human-Demon War.”

“Wow. So even Lady Atofe had parents, huh?”

“Indeed. Her honored mother is said to have been of great intellect, like Lord Badigadi.”

Great intellect like Badigadi…? Okay, I guess we’re going by immortal demon king standards here.

“Lord Badi grew up watching their wise mother while Lady Atofe grew up watching their father, the Immortal Lord Necross Lacross. Back in those days, Immortal Lord Necross Lacross held dominion as the most powerful of all the demon kings.”

The Immortal Necross Lacross was one of the Five Great Demon Kings from the first Human-Demon War. There wasn’t much information left about him, but compared to the other demon kings, he was supposed to have been incredibly powerful.

“Lord Necross Lacross was slain by the hero Arus. I was not yet born, and I do not know how one ends the life of an immortal king. Nor does Lady Atofe, who was but a child. Lady Atofe says that what she does remember is that when she saw her father die, she knew beyond a doubt that she had to get stronger and become a mighty demon king.”

Right, so now she’s like…her dead father?

Despite looking like she never thought about anything, Atofe was striving toward something.

I hadn’t met many demon kings, but it was true that of all of them, Atofe was the most archetypical. How to put it? She was like the physical incarnation of violence and fear, or something. She just was a demon king. Best way I could explain it.

“However, we immortal demons do not pay heed to the past. His Majesty Necross Lacross was a mighty king, but no one knew in what way he was mighty.”

Ah, that makes sense. She wanted to be like her dad, but she only had a vague idea of what he was actually like. 

Typical Atofe. This time, it was like daughter, like father. Maybe all immortal demons were like this, deep down.

Her father hadn’t left any records behind to demonstrate how mighty he’d been either. A human would have left overblown accounts of their own greatness, but immortal demons lived so long that they didn’t look back on the past. Possibly at the time, they didn’t even have the concept of keeping records. There was no need to learn from the past. That was obvious to them. If you thought like that, you didn’t leave any sources behind.

“I have a question for you, Master Rudeus.”

“Yes?”

“What kind of being is a demon king? How are they spoken of amongst humans?”

“Uh…”

Demon kings… Demon kings…

In this world, demon kings were no more than the rulers of parts of the demons’ territory. But I only thought that because I knew a fair bit about the Demon Continent. 

What about an ordinary human? What did people in Asura or Ranoa say about them?

“They say they’re overwhelmingly powerful and humanity’s natural enemy, and also that they sometimes kidnap princesses—oh.”

“That’s right,” Moore said.

That’s right, indeed. 

“After His Majesty Necross Lacross passed away, Lady Atofe, who knew not what it meant to be a mighty demon king, sought to learn from humans and so gathered sources from them.”

“When you say it like that it sounds like Atofe was reading them herself,” I interjected.

“It was, of course, her personal guard at the time who did the reading.”

Yeah, I thought as much.

“Various demon kings were mentioned in those texts. Those known as ‘mighty’ all bore some points in common.”

“Points in common? You mean…”

“Yes, the qualities you just listed.”

Overwhelming power, humanity’s natural enemy, kidnaps princesses. 

Also, gets defeated by the hero who comes to rescue the princess.

“Didn’t you think that sounded off?” I asked.

“I hadn’t been born back then, and her underlings at the time likely knew little about humans. There were also documents amongst the demon records that contained similar stories—though, of course, the immortal demons themselves left no records. The story of how a demon king kidnapped a princess and was defeated by the hero Arus…”

Oh, right. Okay, now I get it.

During the first Great Demon War the hero Arus had taken six companions and slain all of the Five Great Demon Kings. He was the hero who beat Kishirika and brought a war that had lasted a thousand years to a close. There had been a story like the one Moore described in one of the tales about him. The gist of it was that he defeated the demon king, rescued the princess, then married her and founded the Asura Kingdom. However, according to the histories I’d read at the Boreas house, Arus hadn’t actually set out to save the princess and the demon king hadn’t actually kidnapped her. 

A human nation had, in an act of strategic diplomacy, offered the princess to the demon king as a hostage. Arus, for totally unrelated reasons, had invaded the castle and struck down the demon king. As a result, the princess ended up getting rescued. That was what’d really happened. 

Authors of later years hadn’t told it that way, though. Many of them added some dramatic flair to the tale of the hero Arus and his battle to rescue the princess. Some of them must have known more of the story than others. Either that or they’d just been writing pure fiction, totally divorced from history. Depending on the book, it was a different demon king who kidnapped the princess, and the princess’s name and her homeland varied too. If you believed all the stories, all five of the Great Demon Kings kidnapped a princess, then the hero Arus defeated all of them, got a happy ending with all the princesses, and the newly founded Asura ended up with a whole harem of queen consorts.

And she’d…believed all of them. Lady Atofe had, I mean. She thought that what was written in those books was the truth of what heroes, princesses, and demon kings were like.

“Now I understand. So that’s why Lady Atofe has such a violent disposition.”

“No, no,” Moore replied, “she’s always been like that.”

“Oh. All right then.”

She hadn’t transformed into violence incarnate along the way, then. That was just kinda her.

“She’s that sort of person,” Moore went on, “she interpreted the demon king characters in the way that was most convenient for her.”

It felt like she hadn’t so much chosen a preferred interpretation as simply ignored the parts that she didn’t like. The result: Immortal Demon King Atoferatofe, fear incarnate. Don’t get me wrong, I think it worked. There were a lot of humans who genuinely feared Atofe.

“Okay,” I said. “How is that related to why I was brought here?”

“You said you were a princess.”

“My just desserts, then…”

“Even in jest, you shouldn’t have said it.”

You say that now, but how was I supposed to know Atofe thinks the normal thing to do with a princess is to kidnap them and lock them up?

“So what are Eris and Roxy doing now?” I asked.

“The champions must undergo trials to demonstrate their might to the demon king.”

“Which means…”

“Essentially, if you want to fight Lady Atofe, you have to defeat her personal guard first. Miss Eris and Miss Roxy are battling with the guard’s most spectacular idio—that is, with our specially selected elite warriors.”

So Eris and Roxy were in the middle of beating Atofe’s Ultimate Four (the specially selected idiots).

“That doesn’t sound good,” I said. I wouldn’t have minded if it were for fun; Eris was spoiling for a fight anyway, so that worked out perfectly. But if it was a fight to the death, that was different. “Right. I’m very sorry, but I’d better be going. I’ve gotta go help Eris.”

Moore called after me “Wait, please.”

“You’ll have to fight me if you want to stop me. And hey, it’s not that unusual for the princess to fight too, these days.”

Something told me that fighting my way through Moore was going to hurt a bit. When I faced Atofe last time, it turned into a magical shoot-out, and I’d come out worse for wear. I’d thought about how to deal with that for the next time…but the gap in our experience was too vast. No matter what I did, the odds wouldn’t shift massively in my favor.

This time, however, I had the Magic Armor. Victory wouldn’t be determined by whoever was the best at shooting off magical attacks. 

“Don’t get worked up,” Moore said. “Lady Atofe might be dead serious about all of this, but we, her servants, don’t enjoy murdering people. Not in this day and age. Even if your friends are defeated, they’ll only lose an arm or something at most.”

“You mean it?”

“Be that as it may, their opponents are all members of Lady Atofe’s personal guard. Warriors who came to this land to dedicate themselves to training for as long as it takes. I would caution against expecting an easy victory.”

I didn’t like the sound of that…but I still thought that if anyone could handle them, it was Eris. Moments like these were why she worked so hard. Well, okay, maybe this specific situation was a bit different. The point was, she was ready to wield her skills when it was demanded of her. Roxy was there with her, besides. If Eris was the brawn, Roxy was the brains. I was confident that together, they could win. Or at least, I hoped they could.

This was still Fort Necross, however. As the tales told it, it was basically the Sword Sanctum, North God Style edition. Everyone here had traversed the Demon Continent to reach it. These weren’t people who did things halfway. 

Beyond my concerns about winning and losing, though, I also realized I just wanted to see Eris in action. She served as my sparring partner to train in close-combat fighting, and I still couldn’t beat her, not even in the Magic Armor. I wanted to see how well she did in a place like this.

“Um, okay, can I just go and like, cheer them on?”

“You may. The princess’s words of support are supposed to give heart to the heroes, after all,” Moore said.

“You don’t have to make fun of me.”

I hurried back to Eris without much further ado.

Stay strong, O brave champions! Your princess is coming!