Why He's Needed (6)
What the hell is this?
Spatial magic—so rare that even the Demon King's army could count its users on one hand.
This was the first time Jim had learned that Milia could use it. As a demon spy, there was no more valuable piece of intel he could have stumbled upon, but right now, none of that mattered to him in the slightest.
What is happening right in front of my eyes?
Jim wanted to deny reality itself.
What on earth was this? What had all his effort been for, then?
"My effort...?"
Do you have any idea how hard it was to haul this wagon all the way here? Over mountains and through valleys, he'd treated the horses that pulled the carriages like family, guiding the wagon with nothing but devotion.
Even when a freak accident had cost him every last one of those horses, he hadn't despaired—he'd kept running toward this one purpose and nothing else.
The pride of a porter.
Yes, Jim had that. Even if it was nothing more than a cover for his spying, there had never been a moment when he wasn't serious about this work.
He was a porter. A man of noble pride, transporting cargo.
And yet...
"Then what's that over there?"
"Dunno. Some attention-seeker, probably."
"I think I've heard a rumor about the Hero Party having a useless baggage-carrier..."
Just like that, he'd become the insane attention-seeker who stupidly dragged a wagon by hand even while the party was moving luggage with spatial magic.
The murmuring of the gathered soldiers twisted the knife deeper into Jim's heart.
What made it even sadder was that Jim himself couldn't deny it.
"Ah! No—wait, that's not it. The wagon Jim brought is packed entirely with special items, so spatial magic wouldn't work on it."
"Ah... is, is that so."
The quartermaster, who had been staring at Jim with narrowed, suspicious eyes, finally nodded at Esmeralda's desperate excuse. Sure enough, when he inspected the supplies in Jim's wagon, every single item turned out to be a weapon engraved with magic.
"They do say magic can interfere with other magic. I suppose that's plausible."
Only then did the soldiers gathered around begin to nod along as well.
But Jim's heart had long since been torn to shreds.
Magic weapons, my ass. That meant there was no reason for him to exist on a normal day. The weapons the Hero Party usually used—aside from Esmeralda's sword—were all owned personally by each member anyway.
Which meant that from now on, all necessary cargo could just be crammed into spatial magic. It would be more convenient for travel, and easier for emergencies too.
"Miss Hero, I could actually use this—"
"No. Jim is an indispensable member of our party."
"I haven't even finished my sentence."
"Anyway, no. You'd just end up drowning in self-loathing again and trying to quit, going, 'Sob... I don't think I belong in this party!'"
"..."
Esmeralda's devastating rebuttal, as if she'd read his innermost thoughts, left Jim speechless.
Wow, I genuinely thought she could read minds for a second. Scary.
Jim bowed his head in utter misery. He'd come to a firm conviction: this cruel Hero Party would never let him go, even if he stopped being a porter.
"Jim."
"...Lady Milia. Since when have you been able to use this kind of magic?"
"You said last time that you were exhausted and wanted to quit. So when I went to the Magic Tower this time, I worked hard and learned it."
"I see..."
Truly the joint heir to the Seven Great Magic Towers. The way she said it—like picking up a snack on a whim while out shopping—had made him think for a moment that it was no big deal.
Still, wasn't the direction of her effort a little... off? Jim wept alone inside at Milia's twisted sensibilities.
"This should lighten your load, right?"
And there stood the very person who had crushed him into misery—Milia—wearing a faint smile, as if asking to be praised.
For Milia, who had no friends besides Jim, that smile was her most precious gift.
"Yes... thank you."
It was, admittedly, the perfect gift to send to a damn demon spy.
Pelheim Senoba, officer of Fortress City Senoba, was watching the Hero Party approach from a distance, kicking up a commotion, with icy eyes.
No—to be precise, she was watching Jim, the porter trailing along at the back of that entourage.
Weak. Worthless. A man not even fit to be used as a common foot soldier.
She did not underestimate the Hero Party. She'd only heard of them through rumor, but she didn't believe for a second that those rumors were exaggerated.
That was simply what a Hero was.
And what did it matter if they were only rumors? They were people who had already proven themselves.
The Hero had been chosen by god and wielded the Holy Sword; the saint was hailed as the representative of the Celestial God Order by her very existence. The mage was a prodigy of talent unrivaled even within the Magic Tower, and the archaeologist belonged to none other than the Eye of Truth.
But the porter trailing behind them was not. He was nothing but a survivor of a destroyed village who had insolently attached himself to the Hero Party.
"Can't even do the one job he has, can he?"
Look at him even now, dragging a single wagon and dripping with sweat.
He was a man unfit for the post of porter in the first place.
And what about the spatial magic Milia had just demonstrated? Did a party that had already reached such heights really need some green brat like that?
Pelheim Senoba knew.
"I'll have to sever that attachment."
She knew that all of it was nothing but lingering sentiment.
The attachment the Hero Party held for their porter. And the attachment the porter held for the Hero Party. Such things were a hundred times better cut off at the root, the sooner the better.
Ahead lay the frontline where demons and humans carved up territory and fought for it.
It would be better for both of them that way.
Pelheim Senoba. The iron-willed veteran general of the frontline who plagued us demons at every turn. The emotion I felt the first time I faced her was fear.
"Hmm."
An immaculate, squared posture. A single eye appraising him like a merchant judging wares. The old general, who had survived countless battlefields, was sweeping her gaze over us as if taking our measure.
That alone was enough to make a demon spy like me cower instinctively.
I stood stiffly at attention, doing my best to hide it, but the cold sweat running down my cheeks was impossible to conceal.
God, look at my face right now. This is terrifying.
Then, after surveying our group at leisure, Pelheim finally spoke.
"What has you trembling so frightfully, over there?"
Oh no. Did she see through me?
What do I do? My life was already flashing before my eyes like a lantern show.
My birth. My enlistment in the army. And now, this very moment.
Damn it, that's only seven years' worth of memories!
Was that seriously all the valuable content my life had to offer? Right now, when I'd been pulled from grunt duty into a deadly assignment like this, facing threats to my life every single night?
THIS is a life?
"Th-that's, uh, your, your, your expression is just really, really scary, ma'am."
"Oh—ah, my apologies, Miss Tina. I didn't mean to frighten you."
I'd been busy calculating some twenty-six or so escape routes in my head when I heard that. Only then did I glance sideways and spot Tina shaking like a rain-soaked puppy.
So full of herself all the time, and yet she was more of a scaredy-cat than I'd thought.
Then again, depending on the species, wasn't her chest smaller than a bird's?
"When you live at a frontline like this, scowling becomes a habit, you see. So I suppose it happens even now, without my meaning to... My apologies."
Pelheim Senoba gave a small smile and offered Tina a piece of candy.
Oh, you sweet old woman, you have no idea.
Do you know how much our girl hates being treated like a child?
I've tried bribing her plenty of times myself—candy, snacks, the works—but it never worked on her.
"Wow! Mint candy! Delicious!"
Wait... so it was just a matter of taste?
When she said she hated being treated like a child, could that possibly have been what she meant?
Maybe I should prepare some yokan jelly next time.
...No. Before that—there IS no next time. I'm quitting this cursed Hero Party as fast as I possibly can!
So I refuse to think about a next time.
As I was driving myself on with that grim resolve, Pelheim Senoba's gaze finally landed on me.
"And you are... hmmm. The porter who was moving the luggage, I see."
"Ah—please, not 'the porter who was moving the luggage'—Jim, who IS a porter. A lot of people still get confused!"
"I... I see. So the Hero calls her comrade 'luggage.' Perhaps I was mistaken about her."
"No, it's not a matter of my character—it's that Jim's name IS Jim. He is very much Jim, who is absolutely not luggage."
"Er... ahem! Right. Understood. I seem to have misspoken."
The Hero's pointless interjections. Even in a situation like this, her sheer nerve was almost worth acknowledging.
She did look like a lunatic, granted. But thanks to that, the tension in the room eased a fair bit.
Could she have cracked jokes on purpose to help me relax? No—she's a fool. She probably has no idea what she's doing.
"Hehe."
Suddenly, the Hero's gaze swung toward me. It was an airheaded-looking smile.
At the same time, I thought I heard a faint grinding sound from somewhere, but it was probably just Tina crunching her mint candy.
"Still tired, are you? All that sweating—thoughtless of me. Let me put up a cooling spell."
"...No, thank you. You should be thinking about the condition of those standing on the frontlines before someone like me."
"Is that so? Your consideration is appreciated."
With that, Pelheim began fiddling with the temperature-control device. Before long, a cool breeze began to flow, and Pelheim gave a shrug of her shoulders and sank into her chair.
"Hot day. A little cooler suits these old bones better."
No, really, I'm FINE.
The sweat I'm dripping right now is not sweat from being hot!
I don't need this kind of elder-consideration!
But it wasn't as if I could actually say any of that. In the end, the temperature control Pelheim Senoba had switched on began cooling the room down.
"Hm? Still hot?"
I was still streaming with cold sweat. If things had stayed as they were before, it might have stopped—but now that she was adjusting the temperature, it felt like my tail was about to get stepped on, and I only grew more flustered.
"Well, well... Now that I look, that doesn't seem to be sweat from the heat, does it?"
The room had gotten cold enough to raise goosebumps on my skin, no matter how you looked at it.
Unless Pelheim Senoba was an idiot, she could tell my sweat wasn't coming from the heat.
"Are you perhaps—"
Ah. I am SO screwed.
Just as Pelheim Senoba began glaring at me with those glacial eyes—
"Actually, we're all quite exhausted—would it be all right to do the report later?"
The Hero barged in.
The timing was exquisite. To any observer, it would have looked like she was swooping in to defend me.
But whether Pelheim Senoba found some weight in the Hero's words or not, she answered with a wry smile.
"Ah, of course. This old woman was detaining young people again. Rest up for now. We'll talk later."
Somehow, it seemed I'd made it past the crisis.
Though my opinion that I was thoroughly, irreversibly screwed remained unchanged.