The Troublesome Party (5)
The party had grown quite a bit.
The archer girl still wasn't much when it came to physical reinforcement, but she had reached the point of forming arrows out of pure mana.
Honestly, these kids might have turned out better than the hero party.
No—if I said that out loud, it only made me think the hero party would have been a lot less of a headache if they'd trained like this from the start.
It was a shame I hadn't been able to push the hero party around however I liked. Still, these three had given me a decent dose of vicarious satisfaction.
The fundamentals were solid now. From here on they would grow well enough on their own.
"All right. Time to hunt some gargoyles."
"Huh? Gargoyles?"
"Yes. Gargoyles. We're going to kill gargoyles."
The blood-soaked, slightly dense party all wore the same startled expression.
Of course they did. To them, gargoyles were something of a trauma.
Before I stepped in, every last one of them had gotten thoroughly beaten.
"Then… gargoyles from the Demon Realm? The same kind Master took down before?"
They had already started calling me Master without a second thought. Good.
Exactly those gargoyles. I had cleaned out the temple ones myself, but the Demon Realm was vast, and plenty of monsters still roamed free of the expeditionary forces.
"Right. The same ones you first struggled against. I picked up a gargoyle commission."
"Gargoyles…?"
"Yes. Don't tell me you can't handle them?"
They weren't still scared, were they?
That would be pretty disappointing. After everything I had put them through, being stupid about it would be a real problem.
"No, it isn't that…"
"Then we're hunting them. When I say hunt, you hunt."
Who did they think they were, ignoring my orders?
"Yes, ma'am!"
The commission I had accepted led us this time to a place called the Ruins of the Demon Realm.
Strangely enough, it was an old castle that looked as though humans—not demons—had once lived there.
The architecture was completely different from anything demons built.
"Who do you think built this castle? Looking at the scale and style, it definitely isn't Imperial."
"Just from the feel of it, I'd say it dates back to the Kart Minor Kingdom Alliance."
This was no recent ruin. No one had maintained the place for a very long time, and the style belonged to an era long past.
"Wow. How can you tell just by looking?"
"I've got a good eye for these things. And even if they aren't full castles, old houses that look human-built turn up in the Demon Realm now and then. There's talk that the Demon Realm used to be human territory."
"Oh. If that's true…"
"Some say the humans of the Demon Realm fell and became monsters. Others claim there was some unspeakable catastrophe."
"That's… eerie."
None of it was certain, but I couldn't imagine the demons bringing humans into the Demon Realm, letting them build places like this, and then living side by side.
If they had forced humans into labor, there ought to be more recent structures, and there weren't. Some people claimed parts of the Demon Realm had simply swallowed human land, leaving the ruins behind.
That didn't hold up either. The Demon Realm's borders hadn't shifted for centuries.
The black soil, specifically. No change for hundreds of years meant the "encroachment" theory was nonsense. Ancient times were another matter, but that wasn't important right now.
"For now, all that matters is clearing the gargoyles."
"Yes."
Whatever history this castle held, it was none of our business.
"Um… are there really only gargoyles?"
The spear girl asked. Her name was Libia, I was pretty sure. If she was asking whether there were only gargoyles, the answer was no. I had taken a gargoyle-hunting commission, but the report also mentioned living armor. To clear the gargoyles, we would have to deal with those as well.
"No. There are living armors too."
"Why are you only telling us now?"
"Does it matter when I tell you?"
I didn't see why it would. Just think of the living armors as bonus income.
If we needed money, killing them was a good thing.
The only real issue was that these three had never faced living armor before.
"No, it doesn't… but you still should have said something earlier."
"Plenty of those teddy bears carried spears and swords of every kind. Treat them the same and just fight."
"Yes. Understood."
They barely pushed back anymore.
Living armor was weaker than gargoyles anyway. That was enough.
A bit tougher, sure, but only a little tougher than a gargoyle. Everything else—attacks included—would be slower.
"Gargoyles!"
"Strike first. Show me something different this time. Attack right away, like before."
Last time they had failed to smash a stationary gargoyle. Doing the exact same thing now was the best way to prove—and confirm—that their skill had risen.
The slightly dense party, tense as could be, nodded.
"Yes. Understood."
The fight began. Hans and the two girls each picked a gargoyle.
Hans's sword cleaved one open. A mana-forged arrow punched through another's brow. A spear drove straight through the third.
Clang—! Crrrack!
Thud! Rumble…
Kssshhh—shatter!
Three gargoyles died on the spot.
Yes. That was how it should go. After that much training, human decency demanded at least this much. They had already gone past the stage of celebrating over something this small.
Every face in the party wore the same dumbfounded look—had these things really given them so much trouble before?
"What? Too easy?"
"Yes. Last time they were so strong. Why do they seem so weak now?"
After all that training, the gargoyles were supposed to look weak. They were weak. These three had simply been that pathetic until now.
"You've gotten stronger. You can handle most ordinary monsters from here on. We'll clear the entire castle, then call it graduation."
"Yes."
Dozens of gargoyles nested inside the old castle.
My slightly dense party smashed their way forward, crushing every one.
That alone was enough. The gargoyles were wiped out in moments, and the living armors appeared.
Living armor—empty suits left to rot until miasma filled them and turned them into monsters.
They could handle that much.
"Grrrrrrr…"
The only sound was the hollow moan of wind echoing inside empty metal.
My dense little party launched their attack. Mana-charged blades, spears, and arrows punched straight through the living armors.
Crrrunch. Crack!
"Grrraaaaagh!"
The living armors shrieked and charged, only to be shattered in seconds under the party's onslaught.
"Whoa. We're taking them down so easily now."
"Right? With this much power, we won't lose face anywhere."
"Then this is a good place to graduate you."
This was enough. They would keep growing as adventurers, build a reputation, and eventually attract a proper mage.
Mages were high-value assets no matter what anyone said. You needed real results before one would join you. There were plenty of bastards who treated mages like hired hands, but I had drilled into these three from the bone that mages were elite talent. They wouldn't mistreat one.
Thoom. Thoom.
A cautious sound rolled down the castle corridors.
Hmm. Of course something was here. Calling the place an old castle had given me a bad feeling from the start. I had expected nothing worse than living armor.
That clanking, those heavy footsteps—whatever it was, it was big.
Sure enough, something strange was descending the central staircase.
A figure clad head to toe in black armor, its face hidden behind a featureless helm.
"Oh. So there was a big one after all."
"What is that?"
"Some kind of living armor, I suppose. Might even have been the original master of this castle."
No—I was almost certain of it.
"So it used to be human?"
"Only if we can talk to it. Think it can talk?"
I had no idea. Still, fighting here felt like a bad idea.
"Can those three handle it?"
"Hmm. Sometimes the best move is to charge straight in."
"What?"
If this thing really was the castle's former lord, it might still understand speech.
The pressure it radiated already surpassed my dense little party.
And that might not even be everything. The miasma it carried told me as much.
"You there, knight! Are you the master of this castle?"
"Keh-keh-keh. I wondered who had woken me… so it is humans. How long it has been."
It could speak, at least. The speech itself was archaic—nothing like the modern tongue—and the voice was unnaturally deep, which only made it stranger.
Still, conversation was possible. That was the important part. The fact that it bothered to specify "humans" suggested the thing in front of us had not been an ordinary man.
"You weren't human while you lived, were you?"
"No. I was human. I simply fought monsters until the moment I died."
Fought monsters until the moment of death?
Anyone who could raise a castle in the Demon Realm and hold out against monsters had to have been someone of renown. Long exposure might have let the miasma seep into his body. In the distant past, techniques for resisting miasma had been far rarer than they were now.
"Your name in life?"
"It has been far too long. The name itself is hazy. My epithet, though… they called me the Divine Sword."
Given the castle's age, we were talking about the Kart Minor Kingdom Alliance era. In those days the title "Divine Sword" carried the same weight as today's Sword Saint. Someone who could swing a blade like a god—if he had ever set his mind to conquest, the Empire would have been founded long before the Ban Tribe rose.
That left only one candidate.
"Veratel, the Divine Sword?"
"Kuhahahaha! Yes! Yes, that was the name! Veratel!"
The castle's master clutched his belly and roared with laughter.
"King of Falsk, one of the fifty-odd nations of the Kart Minor Kingdom Alliance."
"Impressive, girl who carries miasma. What is your name?"
He could see inside me? My dense little party glanced my way, but only tilted their heads; they clearly hadn't understood the remark.
So I was supposed to introduce myself.
This was awkward. I had planned to give my name only after we parted ways with these three, but a king of the past was asking. I couldn't very well refuse.
Especially not when that king was Veratel the Divine Sword. Neither the atmosphere nor the speech felt like a lie. I never would have guessed the Divine Sword himself had built a castle in the Demon Realm.
"Olivia Lapa Ashtar."
The three standing in front of me stared hard.
Their gazes were heavy. Proof they knew the name Ashtar. I hadn't lied, so there was nothing to feel guilty about… but still.
"Hoh. A noble, then. Even combing through my oldest memories, I have never heard of such a house."
The castle's master stroked his chin with clear interest as he studied me.
"It is a great house of the Armeria Empire—founded by the Ban Tribe after they conquered the Minor Kingdom Alliance."
"The Ban Tribe… Kuhahahaha! Prairie bumpkins conquered the Alliance and founded an empire? Truly astonishing!"
Prairie bumpkins, was it? That rubbed me the wrong way.