The Finest Weapon
The fifth Demon King, Bercella, had just received a piece of news that left her reeling.
In the human kingdom, the Hero had finally begun to move — and word was that he had already obtained the Holy Sword and was preparing to march on the Demon King.
"H-how did this happen? How did he get the Holy Sword so fast?"
Bercella trembled from head to toe. She could see it all too clearly: herself, dying helplessly on the Hero's blade, just as her father, the previous Demon King, had done. The image terrified her.
Xavier, the Lord of Deceit, dropped to one knee before her.
"Please, do not trouble yourself overmuch. The Hero obtained the Holy Sword so swiftly only because of the woman at his side — Mireia."
"Don't tell me not to worry! If the Hero's got the Holy Sword, that means I'm next!"
"Your Majesty, the time to fear a Hero is when he has grown and become strong. As he stands now, he cannot so much as lay a finger upon you. Pray, be at ease."
"Ugh... nngh... But you've all done nothing but fail so far! How am I supposed to believe you?"
"Mm... failing to slay the Hero when the chance presented itself was indeed a blunder. And yet it remains equally true that the Hero as he is cannot touch Your Majesty."
Xavier was speaking the truth.
The legends of the Hero handed down among humankind were no mere stories. It was true that a Hero would, one day, inevitably come to the Demon King Castle to slay the Demon King. But the Hero of this age had put the woman named Mireia out in front of him and skipped that entire process. Without walking the stages in their proper order, a Hero could never become strong enough. By sheer fortune, the current Hero had strayed a long way from the orthodox path — and that was something that had never happened before, not once since Heroes and Demon Kings first came into being in this world.
Xavier had his eye on precisely that.
A Hero appearing and slaying the Demon King was a thing that had always come to pass, as inescapable as fate. This time, however, the Hero had stepped off the Hero's road of his own accord and was behaving in ways that made no sense at all.
Perhaps the power of the Goddess and the Demon God who first created Heroes and Demon Kings has begun to wane. If the chain that bound that fate has loosened — and that is why this strange Hero came tumbling out...
And it was not only the Hero.
The Demon King's Soul had always chosen none but the mightiest among the Pureblood Demons to become Demon King. At the very least, every previous Demon King had been so. But Bercella? She was a Pureblood Demon, yes — and yet she was no different from a young, timid little girl.
Of course, having been chosen by the Demon King's Soul, her power as Demon King would swell with time whether she willed it or not. Indeed, the monsters scattered across the continent were already stirring in answer as the Soul nested in Bercella's body grew stronger.
And yet... no matter how I turn it over...
The Soul's choice was absolute. It could not be undone. Even so, Xavier could not stop himself from thinking that there had been a candidate far better suited to the throne than Bercella.
Queen Ludmila of Einblad, city of the Pureblood Demons. Had she been the one to become Demon King, she would never have trembled in fear and thrown a tantrum at the mere mention of a Hero.
"I-I'm scared... What am I even supposed to do..."
Demon King Bercella clutched her head, at a complete loss.
Watching the scene in silence from across the room, Bloodstain, the Lord of Blood, turned and left, his footsteps booming against the floor.
Among the Lords who served the Demon King, Bloodstain was the most militant of the hardliners. His position had never wavered: marshal the demon armies, strike the human kingdom, and wipe out not only the Hero but every last human being. But with Bercella — the very wellspring of that power, the one who carried the Demon King's Soul — in a state like this, he could not bear to keep looking.
Xavier watched him go and let out a small sigh.
They all shared the same goal of killing the Hero to protect the Demon King. Even among the demons, however, opinion was split on how to go about it.
They will each go their own way, I expect. I wonder... how this will all turn out...
Xavier sank into thought. A Hero who was nothing like a Hero, and a Demon King who was nothing like a Demon King. Even he could not say how this tale would end. He could only wring from his mind whatever schemes might stop the Hero — for the sake of the Demon King he served now.
Fwoooosh!
On a quiet stretch of beach near Kubel, fierce flames surged from the sword in my grip and stretched out toward the sea. The fire of mana raced across the water for a long while before twisting upward into a roaring column of flame.
"What the hell even is this."
I grumbled and let the sword drop from my hand. The fire whirling over the water died in an instant.
Lately I had been practicing control of the mana I'd taken in at Einblad. The moment I tried to release it outward, it would go berserk, as if the power itself had lost its mind. Just now I had only meant to lay the thinnest coat of flame along the blade — and I had lost control, and ended up with that mess.
I closed my eyes and reached for the mana accumulated in my body. I could feel it at once: the color of every last bit of mana I had built up until now had changed, tainted by what I had absorbed in Einblad. Like a few drops of red ink fallen into clear water, even the mana I had originally possessed was being pulled along with it.
That, most likely, was why I couldn't control it. Even if I drew in fresh blue mana through Mana Conversion, it would still fall under the influence of the Einblad mana already inside me.
At first I had thought I might be able to grind the problem down with training. But the more I trained, the worse the runaway seemed to get. If anything, the symptoms had been milder back when I was putting down the Undead.
My current state was like reaching for a door only for the door to shatter — or lifting a cup to drink only for the cup to explode in my hands. The one mercy was that the problem only showed itself when I projected mana outward. If the same thing had been happening to my body simply from carrying this power around, I wouldn't have been able to function at all.
"Hnn..."
Yunoa had come to possess mana that was neither human nor demonic, and was struggling to control it.
He harbored the shallow notion that training could solve this problem.
But training was never going to help with a problem born from the very nature of the mana itself being different.
Could've told me that a little sooner, you know.
Do you have any idea how hard I've been working to get this mana under control? If it was going to be a waste of effort, you could've said something before I poured everything I had into it.
What does a strong adventurer need?
Out of nowhere, Narration flung a question at me.
Was it asking me? No — no chance. This thing didn't communicate with me in the first place.
What a strong adventurer needs...
The adventurer rank the guild recognizes?
That didn't feel right. After living as an adventurer for a while, I had come to realize something. The ranks the guild handed out were not an absolute measure of strength. The gap between Bronze and Silver was real enough, yes — but from Silver onward, even adventurers of the same rank could be worlds apart in skill. The fact that the whole system was carved into just three ranks — Bronze, Silver, and Gold — already meant it did a poor job of telling the strong from the stronger.
And looking at how the guild's promotions actually worked, it was entirely possible for a Silver-rank adventurer to be stronger than a Gold-rank one. I didn't know if such cases existed in practice, but without sitting the promotion exam, your rank simply did not go up. If your goal was just to scrape together a decent living, there wasn't much reason to claw your way from Silver to Gold. Sure, making Gold came with minor perks — no need to file a transfer report when you changed regions, a little more respect among other adventurers — but would that many people really throw themselves into more dangerous work just for that?
I didn't think so.
So what else did a strong adventurer need?
A memory flickered through my mind. It was from when I had first decided to become an adventurer — when I had realized, to my surprise, that the job actually required a fair amount of starting capital, and I had gone around earning money with Meruru. The reason I had been making that money was because I needed a sword.
The sword I had bought with those earnings was lost when I fell into the hole at Horn Canyon. The one I carried now was a gift from Benos, a young man of the Karia Tribe — a blade forged from mushrooms that grew in the underground of the Demon Realm, as hard as steel. It was sturdy, and it sat in my hand surprisingly well, so I had been using it just fine without ever buying a replacement. The power of an attack depended so heavily on the mana the wielder used that I hadn't really felt the need.
As my thoughts arrived there, I found myself turning Narration's question over again. Had I been operating all this time without paying nearly enough attention to my equipment?
Mireia, a Gold-rank adventurer, carried a longsword that was exceptionally long and keen. Even at a glance, it did not look like any ordinary blade. Other adventurers, too, all wore weapons that suited them. I had even caught glimpses of people carrying swords whose blades shimmered with a distinctive light.
Ever since I had learned that mana existed, I had poured myself into one thing only: strengthening my body through Mana Conversion, and mastering techniques that put that mana to use. But even in those old stories of Heroes that kept drifting my way, wasn't a weapon like the Holy Sword essential?
Gear advantage.
I had been overlooking the importance of good equipment. This world was overflowing with all kinds of wonders. The mana-control problem could not be solved by training alone. Then maybe it could be solved through gear. A weapon with magic worked into it, or accessories, or armor — if I made use of things like that, I might just find a way.
Well, Narration? How's that for a conclusion?
I asked the question inwardly. But of course, no answer came.