Chapter 2 — Are You Sure You Should Be Killing Off Demon Lords Just Like That?!
“Are you sure you should be killing off Demon Lords just like that?!”
For a moment, Tomochika had accepted Yogiri’s response, but in the end she couldn’t help but feel it was going to cause more problems. Judging from the conversation they’d overheard, there was a considerable history behind the fight, and ending it like that might have cast shame on the hero.
“There was nothing I could do. It looked like we were going to get hit,” Yogiri answered plainly, giving no indication that he felt any sort of guilt. But there was no point expecting any remorse from him. He had only used his power because he’d been forced to. “Actually, more than the Demon Lord, aren’t you curious about the hero?”
“What makes you say that?” They’d merely stumbled across the battle by chance. The hero wasn’t of any importance to them.
“When Hanakawa’s group defeated their Demon Lord, they were forcibly sent back home, remember? So this hero might also end up being sent back. He might be able to give us a hint about how to get back ourselves.”
“Just because he’s a hero doesn’t mean he was summoned, does it?”
“Indeed, it is quite complex, but there are several types of heroes.”
“Huh? Mokomoko?”
The Enju robot, who had been driving the carriage up until that point, suddenly joined them inside. At some point, Mokomoko’s own ethereal body had vanished.
“I have gone to have a look at the hero. I figured I could use Enju to communicate my findings.”
“What was that about different kinds of heroes?” Yogiri asked.
Mokomoko began to explain, speaking through the android. First, there was the class known as “Hero.” It was a class related to the Swordmasters, and while it boasted enormous combat potential, it wasn’t directly related to the extermination of the Demon Lords. Those summoned from other worlds in order to fight Demon Lords were also called heroes. Their class wasn’t “Hero” but rather something more personal to each of them.
“Why is it so confusing?! Couldn’t they have named them a bit more clearly?”
“Not much I can do about that.”
“Well, there’s no harm in checking it out, right?” Yogiri asked.
“Exactly. If those heroes came from our world, there may be some method by which we can return home with them. We received the coordinates for our home world from Sion, but there is no guarantee they are correct. Trying another approach might be worth the effort.” That was why Mokomoko had decided to go inspect the heroes on her own.
“Are they even still there?” Tomochika asked, recalling how bitter Hanakawa had been about being sent back so promptly.
“Oh yeah, I suppose they might have been teleported home immediately.”
“There seems to be an issue,” Mokomoko observed. “They haven’t returned to their world yet, but... Well, let me start by explaining what I’m seeing.”
Soon after entering the domain of the Kingdom of Brea, if a person left the road and walked for a time, they would eventually reach the cliff where the Demon Lord and the heroes were fighting.
The Demon Lord was alone, but the heroes had brought an army along. That said, it was ultimately still a battle between the Demon Lord and a party of four. The rest of the heroes’ companions were unable to do anything, being continuously pelted with stone pillars falling from the sky. It must have been a sort of filter for the Demon Lord, as if to say, “If you can’t deal with an attack like this, you have no right to stand before me.”
We were simply enjoying some hunting, preying on what was conveniently nearby. You lot do the same thing all the time, do you not?
With her back to the wall stood a young girl with horns protruding from her head—the Demon Lord Tesla. She was the leader of the demons who operated in the area around the Kingdom of Brea.
Tesla was forcing her thoughts directly into the others’ minds. For those weak of heart, that was enough to force them to kneel down before her. It was yet another method of screening her opponents. As this was a hunting excursion, she was trying to determine who was actually worth her time. The four who had passed her tests were the hero Hellion, the hero Yoshimasa, the Court Mage Rimlette, and the High Priestess Mimir.
“Humans aren’t just animals!”
Yoshimasa couldn’t help but roll his eyes at the way Hellion raged at the perceived injustice. Having been summoned from another world against his will, Yoshimasa himself didn’t really care one way or another about what the Demon Lord or her underlings tried to do. Stop with all the talk and just fight already. And if you’re a real hero, do it yourself.
As he was thinking that, Rimlette whispered in his ear, “My, my. Why do you look like you’re sitting back and watching someone else’s business?”
“If we’re fighting a Demon Lord, we should be able to leave it to a real hero.”
Hellion had received his Gift from a Swordmaster and had been given the actual class of Hero. He boasted superior abilities in all domains. Yoshimasa wouldn’t have found it strange if Hellion could have defeated the Demon Lord single-handedly, while in contrast, he was just an average middle-aged man. He had no power that was useful for fighting, being little more than the worn-out individual his appearance suggested. Fighting had never been a realistic goal for him.
“You really are a poor learner, aren’t you? I told you, we’re going to fight together.”
Yoshimasa felt like he could hear a snapping sound come from his right hand as a brutal pain ran through his little finger. It was something he had experienced plenty of times before—the pain of the finger breaking. In fact, the finger hadn’t actually been broken, but the sensation felt plenty real. It was a restraint that had been placed on him the moment he’d been summoned to this world. Without inflicting any actual harm, Rimlette could cause him constant pain.
“No matter how much you hurt me,” he gasped, his face pale, “it’s still better than dying.”
There were numerous ways to control those summoned from other worlds, but the method Rimlette had chosen was extreme. Yoshimasa could effectively be tortured into doing whatever he was told. Among the various possible methods, this was one of the worst. And by using such a technique on him, it left him unable to fight properly anyway.
“Is that so? There are some things worse than death, you know? Well, for now let’s just watch. It is possible that Hellion will defeat the Demon Lord with ease.”
Yoshimasa’s class was Servant. His ability was to convert his life force into magical energy, so it was something he didn’t want to use recklessly.
“Take this!” Hellion drew his holy sword, sweeping it horizontally. The slash cut through the air, flying towards the Demon Lord, who didn’t so much as move. She made no effort to dodge or block the attack, taking the hit straight on.
“How dull. I thought you would be different from the usual assassins.”
She was perfectly calm. Hellion’s attack hadn’t caused her any pain. An instant later, she was standing directly in front of him. The hero couldn’t even react before she put a hand on his shoulder, crushing him into the ground just by pushing down.
The other three were dumbstruck. They had never imagined Hellion being defeated so easily. They’d known the Demon Lord was strong, but they had expected much more of a fight.
“Now then,” Tesla said, “shall we continue like this, one at a time?”
The heroes shrank back. This Demon Lord would have had no trouble wiping out the entire party, but she didn’t attack.
“Lord Hellion’s—What do we do?” High Priestess Mimir was clearly in shock. With their true hero out of the picture, their fighting strength had dropped sharply. Mimir had no particularly strong attacks, and Yoshimasa might as well have been completely incapable of fighting. The Court Mage Rimlette was their last hope.
“Bringing you along was the right choice after all,” Rimlette remarked, turning to her captive hero. “About fifty years of your life’s worth of magical energy should be enough to win.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! What’s the point of winning with a cost like that?!”
Yoshimasa had been summoned at the age of twenty-five, and even using his ability extremely sparingly, had already aged to thirty-five. If he used another fifty years of his life, he would be eighty-five. And there was a high chance the process would exhaust his remaining lifespan and simply kill him.
“The Demon Lord and hero both kill each other, bringing peace to the world. It’s a pretty common story, don’t you think?”
A sudden stabbing pain struck him as Rimlette spoke, causing him to crumple to the ground. It felt like a sword had plunged straight into his gut, making it impossible for him to stand.
“W-Wait, please! That’s too much!” Imagining the pain that awaited him, Yoshimasa began to beg, but he knew that Rimlette wouldn’t stop. He screamed as he felt the imaginary blade in his stomach begin to dig around inside him.
“Hm? Are you having a falling-out?” Even the Demon Lord was confused by Yoshimasa’s sudden wailing.
“What shall I try next? Perhaps tearing your fingers off one by one?”
“Stop...please, sto—” Yoshimasa’s supplication was cut off by another scream. He closed his hands around his right eye, writhing on the ground as he felt his eyeball being scooped from his skull. “T-Twenty years! Please, just take twenty years!”
“I suppose that’s enough. If I took fifty all at once, you might just collapse.” If the hero consumed more than his remaining lifespan, the power wouldn’t actually work. Rimlette couldn’t care less about Yoshimasa’s life, but there was no point in killing him without gaining something from it.
“I don’t really understand what you’re doing,” the Demon Lord mused, watching leisurely from afar, “but it appears you’ve come to an agreement.”
“Come on, hurry up. If you don’t, I’ll impale you from your rear through to your mouth.”
“Dammit! Fine, I’ll do it!”
Yoshimasa grabbed his right wrist with his left hand, pouring his power into it. He could feel something sliding out of his body—twenty years of his life. It manifested as a ball of glowing light above his palm, and at the same time his body began to wither. In an instant, he had aged to fifty-five years old.
Rimlette took the glowing sphere of power. That was what she had been willing to torture him for. Normally, one would be concerned that forcing another to fight by torturing them would negatively impact their performance, but in Yoshimasa’s case, all he had to do was give up his life force. The concentration of magical energy produced could then be used by someone else.
“So, two of you at once, is it? That’s fine.”
“Take this!” Rimlette swung her staff. A magic circle appeared around the Demon Lord, and she was immediately consumed by fire. A tremendous pillar of flames stretched up into the sky, erupting from the ground underneath her.
“Did we get her?!”
They had won. Even a Demon Lord couldn’t have survived that kind of attack. Yoshimasa turned to Rimlette, hoping to see that same conviction on her face, but she had gone pale. He wasn’t entirely sure how her magic worked, but from the look on the mage’s face, he could tell that she hadn’t succeeded.
The flames faded and a figure emerged. The Demon Lord showed no sign of having taken any damage. The young girl hadn’t been so much as singed.
“That was impressive. Just for a moment, I actually had to focus on defense. But your follow-up needs work. I didn’t even move. Why did you not keep attacking?”
Rimlette had already expended all of her power, and Yoshimasa couldn’t use his ability in rapid succession.
“Then I suppose it’s time for my rebuttal. It would be an insult to sit here and take your attacks forever. Allow me to give you a suitable response.”
The Demon Lord floated up into the air, facing a palm towards the trio. Yoshimasa could tell that she was gathering power, and before long, flames began to appear in her hand, growing rapidly in size.
“What the... How big is she planning on making it?” he muttered in awe.
“That’s not just a ball of fire. It’s a ball of intensely concentrated magical energy. And yet it’s still so large...” Rimlette murmured, the shock plain on her face. Even Yoshimasa, with no knowledge of magic at all, could tell it was something phenomenal.
“There’s no way we can win...” Mimir whimpered.
As if they had already given up, the three stood there dumbly, watching the sphere of flames grow. The super-compressed energy in that ball of power would no doubt incinerate the entire countryside when it was released.
“Dammit! No one told me it would be like this!” Yoshimasa cried out. “Didn’t you say that with my power you could defeat the Demon Lord?!”
Then the fireball was unleashed into the sky. Perhaps Tesla was just that relaxed, or perhaps she was only trying to threaten them. Yoshimasa watched the Demon Lord, failing to understand what was really going on.
Tesla fell. Straight down. The palm where the fire had been gathering was now facing the sky. She struck the ground with a dull sound and after a short bounce stopped moving.
“What?! The Demon Lord!”
“You did it, Yoshimasa!”
Mimir began to praise him, but he had no idea what had just happened. Having calmed down, Rimlette shot a small ball of fire at the Demon Lord’s body. The corpse was immediately incinerated, burning away to ash.
Yoshimasa couldn’t figure out how, but the Demon Lord was dead.
The Demon Lord was dead. But since Yoshimasa was still standing there, Rimlette was suspicious. His contract was only meant to last until the Demon Lord’s death. Once she had been defeated, the outsider should have returned to his original world immediately. That was the arrangement, but he hadn’t disappeared yet. It made her wonder if what they had just defeated was truly a Demon Lord.
“Oh? I didn’t even know you could make a face like that,” Yoshimasa retorted, prompting Rimlette to reflexively activate the curse. Whenever he insulted her, she instantly punished him. It was a habit she had developed from her experience with training people from other worlds. She sent over the image of his right elbow being smashed, but Yoshimasa’s smirking face didn’t change.
“Hey now, did you forget? That curse was only valid until the Demon Lord’s demise.”
The curse that kept the young man under her control was tied to his summoning contract. If the contract had been fulfilled, the curse would cease to function. That was obviously what was happening now, so why hadn’t he been sent back to his own world?
“He has come over to our side, so the moment his contract was fulfilled, we cut his ties to his home world.”
At some point, a man had appeared beside them. Horns were growing from his head—proof that he was a demon.
“We promised to take him in on condition that he slew Tesla.”
“That’s right,” Yoshimasa added. “This guy managed to lure the Demon Lord way out here for us.”
Rimlette hadn’t even considered the possibility that Tesla acting alone had been the result of someone else’s scheme. She’d merely thought that her side had been given a once-in-a-lifetime stroke of luck.
“To what end?” The situation was fairly bad, but Rimlette maintained her composure.
“So that I can do whatever I like, of course. I’ve had an awful experience so far, wouldn’t you agree?”
As Yoshimasa spoke, the High Priestess stepped up beside him.
“You too?” gasped Rimlette.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m the one who introduced him to the demons. I wanted to be with him...”
The hero put a hand on Mimir’s shoulder. “This is how it’s going to be. Now, if I get to do whatever I like, I’m gonna have to start by taking my revenge on you. I need to make up for the thirty years you stole from me, right?”
“And what can a Servant like you do?”
“Actually, now that the connection to my home world has been cut, I can use my power’s full potential.”
Rimlette felt a chill run down her spine. He was doing something to her, and it didn’t take long for her to figure out what. A ball of light appeared above Yoshimasa’s palm, a concentration of power born by converting one’s lifespan. Rimlette noticed immediately that it had come from her own body.
“When it comes to the Servant class, there’s no requirement that you convert your own life force. I’m now able to take anyone’s.”
“Give it back!”
“This would be about seventy years, wouldn’t it? I wasn’t worried about you dying or anything, but are you even human? You don’t look any different.”
Yoshimasa cradled the sphere of light to his chest. The energy was absorbed into his body, and his age immediately began to rewind. He now looked even younger than when he’d first been summoned, appearing to be around twenty. He could freely control his age with the life force he had leeched.
In an instant, their positions had been reversed, and Rimlette felt her heart being thrown into a pit of despair.
“So, that’s basically what happened.”
“Could it be more complicated?! I don’t entirely understand what they’re doing over there.”
Inside the carriage, Mokomoko had just concluded her explanation of the events unfolding between the heroes by way of the Enju robot.
“I arrived in the middle, so I don’t know every detail, but it does seem like a rather puzzling situation.”
Tomochika didn’t appreciate her guardian spirit leaving it at that. She felt the complexity of the situation deserved a bit more clarification.
“Is the guy who was summoned Japanese?” Yogiri asked.
“He certainly seems to be.”
“You said they cut his connection? I assume that means his connection to our world?”
Tomochika knew that if a part of someone was left behind in their home world, they could use it as a lifeline to pull themselves back. At least, that’s what they had heard from an Aggressor they had previously encountered. It sounded like this Yoshimasa had been in a similar situation.
“And when they cut that connection, he got stronger?” Tomochika asked.
“Indeed. How can I put it? Before cutting the connection, a portion of his power was being used to maintain it. The reason you were summoned here without that connection to our world was because they were hoping to make you as strong as possible.”
It was often inconvenient to have someone remain after their purpose had been served, so when a person was summoned from another world, some sort of connection to their home world was normally maintained.
“I guess we can leave the hero alone, then,” Yogiri said. “It’ll be a pain if they notice us, so let’s hurry up and get on the horse and go.”
“Wait, wait, wait! Are you really planning on ignoring them?!”
“There’s no way they’ll have advice for getting us back home now. What’s the point of getting involved?”
“I mean, you’re not wrong...” It did seem like a situation they probably shouldn’t stick their noses into.
“Yes, well, about that. Actually, I’ve been caught.”
“What?! How?!” Tomochika blurted out in response to Mokomoko’s sudden confession.
“They just sort of grabbed me.”
“Mokomoko...after all that proudly declaring that you’re some high-level divine spirit...” Tomochika muttered, turning cold eyes towards the robot.
“Things like this don’t normally happen! But I was preoccupied with controlling Enju! And I never thought they would notice I was there!”
“I guess we have no choice now.” Yogiri stepped out of the carriage, Tomochika close behind him. They couldn’t just abandon the Dannoura ghost.
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