Demon Lord
Young people who had never lived through a war, and outsiders like the players who had crossed over from another dimension, didn’t truly feel it, but scars from the Second Race War still remained all across the Ardeena Continent.
Which made sense.
Not even half a century had passed since the war ended.
Even though direct fighting had dwindled toward the end of the long conflict, thanks to the Holy Kingdom’s intervention and the exhaustion brought on by years of war, no one remembered those days fondly.
For that reason, with a few exceptions like the Holy Kingdom, hardly anyone liked demons.
And one of those people was the young man guarding the entrance to the village of Caelan, a place neither too big nor too small, just the right size.
The young man, who had just turned twenty this year, had not lived through the race war himself.
But he knew exactly what it had been like, because he had heard enough about it to make his ears itch.
“Jack.”
At the voice calling his name, the young man, Jack, sighed and turned around.
It was a familiar voice, but not one he was especially happy to hear.
“Haah... You really shouldn’t come here. It’s dangerous.”
Just as Jack had expected, the person speaking to him was someone he knew.
An old man leaning on a worn cane to support his bad leg.
The old man, who had been knocking absently at his hunched back, narrowed his eyes.
“What? Dangerous? You little punk, I’ve been through worse than this when I was young!”
“Sigh...”
That was already the second sigh.
Jack could predict exactly what the old man was going to say.
Do you know how I ended up with this leg?
“Do you know how I ended up with this leg? I got it when I was fighting desperately against a monster that attacked the village! A glorious wound, that’s what it is!”
And how I didn’t sleep for three days straight, and so on...
“Back in my day? The demons kept invading, so I had to fight without a wink of sleep for three whole days!”
“Yes, yes, I know. I know, so please just go back already.”
“Kids these days are terrified of nothing but a few monsters, shaking in their boots... Tsk, tsk!”
Jack had heard it so many times he could recite it himself.
Listening to the man talk, you’d think he was some battle-hardened hero who had courageously stood against the demons and monsters threatening the village.
But Jack knew the truth: the old man was as far from a veteran hero as could be.
The reason for his bad leg was that, when he was young, he had climbed a mountain to gather herbs, tripped over a stone, and fallen.
Likewise, the story about demons invading and him not being able to sleep because of the fighting was a lie as well.
Jack had heard the real story from other old men, so the words only amused him.
Even so, he never called the old man out on it, because despite the shameless exaggeration, he knew the old man wasn’t a bad person.
“Here, have this.”
Whoosh.
Thud.
The bread the old man threw arced through the air in a neat parabola.
Jack caught it easily and grinned.
“You really shouldn’t keep giving me things like this.”
“Wipe your mouth before you talk, you brat.”
Guard duty was boring.
Standing at the village gate all day and doing nothing but keeping watch—how could that not be dull?
So Jack had been grumbling at the old man’s visit, but truthfully, he didn’t dislike it that much.
It definitely wasn’t because the man gave him food.
“Anything happen?”
“What would happen in a sleepy little place like this? At worst, a lost monster might wander by...”
“Hey! If you let your guard down like that, you’re just asking for trouble!”
“Who said I was letting my guard down? I’m just saying, that’s all.”
Jack yawned lazily and brushed off the old man’s words with half a mind.
If he made it obvious he wasn’t listening at all, the old man would only start scolding him more, so he kept his gaze turned toward the outside of the village.
That was why he noticed the anomaly.
“...Huh?”
“What is it? Something wrong?”
“That... Um, can’t you see it?”
“...Are you bragging that your eyesight’s better than mine now? Fine, you little punk! You’ve got a big one on you, don’t you!”
“Hey, I’m eating bread, and you’re talking about poop... No, I mean, I’m eating bread—why are you talking about poop? There goes my appetite.”
Jack grimaced, suddenly imagining a foul smell rising from the bread.
But that aside—
Jack stuffed the half-eaten bread into his pocket and stared outside.
If he wasn’t mistaken, someone was approaching the village.
“...A girl?”
Jack muttered in confusion, his face scrunching up.
It wasn’t strange for peddlers or travelers to come to the village, but a little girl wandering alone outside the gates was unusual.
And judging from the lack of weapons, she didn’t seem like some mercenary looking for work, either.
“Jack.”
Was she a child who had split off from a nearby caravan?
“...Jack.”
No, with a face that pretty, maybe she was the daughter of some noble family who had run away from home.
“Jack!”
“Agh, geez, you scared me!”
Jack, whose imagination had already run away with him while watching the girl, snapped back to reality at the old man’s sharp shout.
“Why are you yelling? Have you gone senile?”
Trying to calm his startled heart, Jack asked irritably.
Senile? You little—if a guard’s got his head in the clouds, what the hell is the point? Just like a young’un to go drifting off...
He expected the old man to bark back like that, but contrary to Jack’s assumption, the man was staring at him with a seriousness Jack had never seen before.
“You’re the one who’s not paying attention! More importantly, this isn’t the time for this. Do you have your whistle?”
“Huh? The whistle? Of course I have it—”
Even as he answered in confusion, Jack lifted the whistle hanging from his waist.
Blowing the whistle to warn the others when danger approached the village was part of a guard’s duty.
“Blow it. Now!”
“Y-yes?”
“...Aigoo, this is maddening, you brat!”
The old man snatched the whistle from Jack’s hand and blew it himself.
Peeeeep!
The shrill note rang out across the village.
For a moment, the village fell into silence.
Peep!
Peeeeep!
And then, as if answering the old man’s whistle, more piercing cries burst from all over the village.
Was he senile, or was this really an emergency?
As Jack weighed the old man’s sudden behavior, the scales tipped toward the latter.
Clenching the weapon tightly in both hands, Jack asked, “So what exactly is going on?”
“Can’t you see it right there?”
“The girl?”
“I don’t know whether she’s a girl or what, but—”
The old man thumped his own chest, frustrated that Jack still wasn’t getting it.
“No...!”
Jack felt wronged in his own way.
How was he supposed to know what the old man meant if he didn’t explain properly?
“The magi, boy, the magi!”
“Magi?”
Only then did Jack finally see the black mist curling around the girl.
Even though Jack had grown up in a relatively peaceful place, he had still seen monsters before.
That was why he could recognize the black fog enveloping the girl as magi.
“...A demon?”
As Jack muttered that, the girl continued steadily making her way toward the village.
Jack watched her with a tense gaze, then suddenly felt a hand seize the back of his neck and let out a strangled noise.
“If you’ve got time to mutter, then run already!”
“C-ckh, ckh! ...What? Run? Shouldn’t we stop her?”
“You look at that and think you can stop it?”
Jack followed the direction of the old man’s finger with his eyes and immediately understood what he meant.
Anyone would have, seeing the plants around the girl rapidly lose their vitality and droop the moment the black mist touched them.
The world, once full of color, was being stained black, yet the girl at the center of it all remained bright and vivid, like a flower just beginning to bloom.
“Why don’t you stop her, then?”
“...Ahem. If I weren’t so old, I could have taken her down in one stroke...”
The old man’s earlier bravado shrank again.
And with it, Jack’s brief surge of hope at the man’s dependable air deflated as well.
Of course it did.
With a sigh, Jack hoisted the old man onto his back.
If they tried to run with that bad leg of his, they’d be caught in no time.
“Hold on tight.”
“If I were ten years younger...”
“There he goes again. If you bite your tongue, don’t blame me for it, all right? Quit yapping and hold on tight.”
“...”
Once he was sure the old man had shut his mouth, Jack kicked off the ground.
A few minutes later, complete silence settled over the peaceful village of Caelan.
The girl walked without destination.
She had no such thing as a destination.
She simply went wherever her feet led her.
So if the girl had turned east, that was purely by chance.
‘─────?’
‘──. ────.’
‘...──.’
“...”
Perhaps she had sensed, on some instinctive level, that she should head east, but that wasn’t important.
At least, not to the people caught up in her path.
When caught in a typhoon, most people either thanked God for surviving or cursed the fact that the storm had come; very few wondered why the typhoon had appeared in the first place.
The girl’s existence was much the same.
Swish!
An arrow sliced through the air.
The sharply honed arrowhead flashed in the light as it sought the girl’s life.
Yet the girl didn’t even notice the arrow flying toward her.
Even if she had noticed, how many people could have dodged an arrow that was already practically at their nose? In any case, it was obvious that if things continued as they were, the girl would lose her life, scattering red blood across the ground.
If she had been an ordinary girl in appearance, that surely would have been the end of it.
Just before the arrow reached her head, the black mist rippled lightly like a wave and slapped forward.
Thump.
“?”
The arrow lost all force the instant it struck the black mist, which had risen like a solid wall to block its path, and dropped to the ground.
Not even if someone had tossed a dead branch by the roadside would it have fallen so weakly.
To aim for someone’s life was an unmistakably hostile act.
The girl had been threatened with death out of nowhere while walking down the road, but she blinked as though she hadn’t even realized anything had happened.
And then, before her, a figure appeared.
“...Commander. How did you end up in this state?”
With a voice heavy with unspeakable complexity, Eric asked.
No answer came back.