Mage Milia (12)
I was never particularly strong.
I wouldn't go so far as to say I lacked talent, but I never had the opportunity to put what talent I had to use.
Take the dark magic I had honed in order to join the Demon King's Army — and the rank of lieutenant I climbed to through it. Up to that point, I could claim my gifts had done admirable work.
But everything after that was the problem.
I had stalled. The environment left me no other choice.
While I was infiltrating the Hero's Party, there was no way to train my dark magic — my one true breadwinning skill. I had to remain an ordinary villager at all times, after all.
The one silver lining was that I'd never bothered to train my body. Thanks to that, my act as a run-of-the-mill porter was flawless.
……Which is exactly how I ended up like this.
"Full of little tricks, aren't you?"
"Gahk?!"
I hadn't come within a hair's breadth of Five, commander of the Legion. No matter how much dark magic I unfurled to bind her ankles and hammer her from behind, she didn't so much as flinch. Most of my spells were burned to ash before they ever got close, and even the ones that landed had no effect worth mentioning.
Her body itself was flame.
"Aww, look at you, trying so hard. It's cute, really. But what can't be done can't be done. I figured you'd at least be able to judge that much. Just how stubborn can one person be?"
"Hahk…… hahk…… But I can't exactly lie down and die for you, now can I?"
"You should be thinking about how to run away."
"And if I run, would you kindly let me go?"
"Obviously not."
Crack!
A kick came flying.
Five was no mage. But then again, she wasn't a warrior either.
She wielded an authority akin to magic itself, and she drew her swordsmanship and physical arts from her memories as a former Hero — yet that power, too, was effectively frozen in time. Her true strength lay in that ability to spawn clones of herself, and in her dominion over flame.
Even that alone was more than enough to earn her the fifth seat among the Legion Commanders — and more than enough to grind me into paste.
Seriously, what a dirty cheat.
Stronger than my dark magic, and leagues beyond the body I'd spent three years conditioning as a porter. Was I allowed to feel this cheated?
"Wouldn't fighting head-on like this at least have better odds?"
"I suppose you could think that."
Five pressed her foot down hard on my chest as I lay sprawled on the ground, mocking me all the while.
Honestly? It was a little thrilling.
Just a bit more pressure and something was bound to show. A voice in the back of my head was murmuring that this whole queen-play arrangement wasn't entirely without merit.
I really am a lunatic. Even I think so.
"Well, I'm a demon with rather a lot of greed, so I can't help myself."
Run away alone?
Sure. I could do that, couldn't I?
But if I held my ground here, then not just me — Milia and Irina could live too.
Of course, I hadn't forgotten my position within the Demon King's Army. I always kept in mind that the Hero's Party might well meet its end in battle against us. She was a Hero who'd taken up her sword to fight in the first place — if she died fighting, that was simply how it went.
But this time was different.
Not one of our usual escape operations. Just a Legion Commander who'd taken a personal interest in me, barging in on a whim.
Yes. This was an obstruction of the plan.
No — forget the complicated reasoning. Simply put: I didn't like it. That was all there was to it.
The me of right now simply followed a feeling even I couldn't explain.
"Now then, shall we start wrapping this up?"
"Couldn't we talk a little longer? If we just keep talking, surely we can come to an understanding."
"That's the laziest stalling tactic I've ever seen, and I've seen some lazy ones……."
Five raised a flame above her open palm. It spun furiously, compressing tighter and tighter, blazing so brightly that merely looking at it threatened to blind me.
One hit and I'd be dead on the spot, no question.
"But doesn't this strike you as unfair?"
"What does?"
"Why am I the only one fighting? I'm the weakest member of the Hero's Party, you know."
"……"
Five whipped her head around.
There stood Milia, leaning on her staff, staggering closer step by halting step. And behind her, blooming like a flower — a writhing mass of black tentacles.
The more I looked, the more my skin crawled.
This went beyond merely bizarre. This was a flatly, biologically unacceptable sight. Just remembering the sensation of that thing coiled around my ankle earlier was enough to make me shudder to my core.
"……You were wrapped in that horrifying thing?"
"It's not horrifying."
Right — back then, Milia had shielded her body with those tentacles against Five's attack. Disgusting gambit, honestly. Then again, it was magic of her own making, so I suppose her feelings toward it must be different from ours. I chose to believe that.
"Because this is a symbol of love."
The most appalled expression yet crossed Five's face — worse than anything she'd shown so far.
I was probably no better off.
Goosebumps erupted across every inch of my body. She was insane. Genuinely, certifiably insane.
Five had been right all along. I should have run — not from her, but from Milia. I'd actually been fleeing from her at the start, hadn't I? How had I managed to forget that?
"But if you're going to deny my love, then……"
The logic of a madwoman.
Standing before it, I felt myself utterly crushed. I couldn't understand it at all. Even I, who had erased my karmic lines and reclaimed enlightenment, wouldn't have understood it.
What kind of reasoning circuit produces a conclusion like that?
"I won't let you get away with it."
The tentacles behind Milia's back began to writhe like something possessed.
I was afraid to keep watching. What on earth was she about to do?
And yet, at the same time — hope kindled in my chest.
What exactly is she going to do to Five? I have to know. I really, really have to know.
How would it end, with those things coiling around Five's smooth, slender legs?
"Eh, um……"
Five, perhaps glimpsing her own future, began to back away unsteadily. She still held an overwhelming advantage in power, but apparently no amount of strength could override that instinctive, visceral revulsion.
And in the very instant Milia's tentacles came surging toward Five — the instant Five flung out her hand, ready to unleash the compressed flame hovering above her palm—
CRUNCH!
The back of Five's skull shattered, and her body began to blur and fade.
"Haah…… haah…… Vermin…… extermination…… successful."
I spun around, and there she was — Saintess Irina, in an even greater state of dishevelment than before, breathing hard through a throwing stance.
The Hero Party's flawless combination play: Milia's madness to pin the enemy's gaze, and her own disciple Irina to finish the job.
Even the Demon King would fall to this. One hundred percent.
That said, watching her heave for breath mid-throw was, hmm, rather alluring.
Tap.
And I immediately saw what she'd thrown.
What had shattered the back of Five's head was none other than her trusty morningstar. The crater in Five's skull, blood streaming down from it — it was a grotesque sight to behold.
"……Well done, both of you. Looks like I bought the time we needed after all."
I'd faced Five with my own grim resolve, but there was simply no beating the genuine article — the true Hero's Party.
Just look at her.
Look at that pitiful figure, clutching at her tattered, shredded clothes with one small palm. Look at the milky-white skin peeking through the gaps she couldn't cover — at her waist, between her thighs.
This was the Hero's Party. Even their resolve for facing an enemy was on another level.
Mm. Resolve. Very good.
"Whew…… Still, I'm glad it seems to be settled. But I'm sorry — I'm afraid this is where I stop."
Irina managed something like her usual, serene smile, and then promptly crumpled to the ground.
She'd simply run out of strength, most likely. She wasn't dead. The fact that a priestess like her had held out this long was already remarkable in itself.
Which left……
"……Are you all right, Lady Milia? If you're tired, feel free to pass out just as you are."
"Yeah, I'm fine."
And there stood the mage Milia, tentacles still writhing at her back.
My head chilled over in an instant.
Five's clone had been dealt with, and the conscience of the Hero's Party — the Saintess — had collapsed. All that remained was the wicked mage who'd sworn to kill me and keep me by her side, and said wicked mage's tentacles. And me: a pitiful demon spy, drained of strength, without even the energy left to run.
"Let's talk."
"Inside the tentacles."
"Lady Milia, please calm down. This does neither of us any good."
"I'll be the one to decide that."
"……No, hold on. Isn't that something we should be deciding together?"
Th-this concerns me rather deeply too, doesn't it? Am I wrong?
Milia advanced toward me, her face utterly expressionless. As if to defy that blankness, her tentacles thrashed behind her like something demented.
"……No one wants to see this, Lady Milia."
"I do."
"The ending will be a tragedy."
"Not for me."
"Lady Milia!"
"……"
But when I shouted at her, almost driving her onward, Milia stopped.
Her brow had knotted — apparently something about this displeased her.
Even so, the fact that she'd stopped, even for a moment, was what mattered.
"Lady Milia — what was that memory you treasured for three years?"
"……"
"I don't know what it was. But if things go on like this, I'll end up a complete fool who knows nothing."
"You're already a fool, even now……"
"Me — unable to speak a word, unable to express a single thing — does that really make you happy? Conflict, exchange, the expressing of feeling — aren't those the very things that make me me?"
My own words, but honestly? Not bad.
Strange — I felt almost clever. Had Five's rough handling of me knocked something loose in there?
"Lady Milia, a memory is the sum of all of those things together. Please don't heap so much meaning onto this one body of mine alone."
"……Then what? If I don't do this, you're leaving."
Among the Hero's Party, Milia was the most passive soul of them all. It made sense that I'd become someone special to her.
And that was probably why watching me try to flee had been so painful for her.
She'd have wanted to stop me. No — she had stopped me. I can't claim I bore no fault for plotting my escape again and again……
"Lady Milia, where there are meetings, there are partings. That's simply how it is."
"……Do you really have to go?"
"Yes. There's something I need to confirm. It's my life's goal. To betray it would be to stop truly living — just as the Milia of the past once believed."
"……"
These three years.
Yes — those three years.
The efforts of the fool Jim, striving to understand the person called Milia.
Right now, that was enough. We had reached each other that way, hadn't we? Stupid, socially inept — but together all the same.
"But I will come back someday. So that we can meet again."
I couldn't say when that would be.
But if I met with the Demon King, talked things through, and reached a peaceful settlement, then there would be no reason left for me to stay in the Demon King's Army.
And then, perhaps, I could return. Not as the Hero Party's porter, of course.
But yes — those three years of journeying had been hard on me. And yet they'd been enjoyable, too.
So I truly believed a reunion someday wouldn't be such a bad thing.
"So let's look forward to that reunion, with glad hearts."
"Look forward……?"
"Yes. Look forward to it."
Behind Milia's back, the tentacles that had been writhing so furiously slowly began to still.
Right. A reunion was all I needed. All I had to do was convince her this was no eternal parting.
I would flee from here, return to the Demon King's Army — but someday. Yes, someday we would meet again. Like a scene out of a fairy tale.
"Farewell then, Lady Milia. Until next time."
"Jim……"
I turned my back on her and bid her goodbye.
My line, but that had been fairly cool of me, hadn't it? No wonder I was popular.
Savoring that glow of satisfaction, I began sketching out my plans for what came next.
Yes — my journey started now.
"Stop spouting nonsense and hold still. Who said you could leave?"
CRACK!
And with that, an attack from an unknown source caught me squarely on the back of the head, and I went down.
That was strange, surely?
I was sure I'd made my case so well.
"Obviously, staying together without ever parting beats promising a reunion someday. Am I wrong?"
"……No. You're right."
It was a fair point. A perfectly fair point.
Which was, apparently, why I'd been hit.