217
I Killed the Demon King. It Was a Mistake.
Chapter 217
Jerry's desk was filled with signs of defeat.
The ashtray had died heroically, pierced by countless arrows made of cigarette butts and matches, while crumpled papers and pens lay scattered about like defeated soldiers.
Jerry fidgeted with a piece of ration packaging paper on his table.
[Gloria has been kidnapped by devils. I won't be able to return for a while, so I'm entrusting the unit to you, Jaery.
P.S.: Raven will be going with me too, so just take good care of Whitey.]
How desperate must he have been to write on ration packaging paper, and how rushed to misspell Jerry as ‘Jaery’?
Jerry struck a match and lit his pipe.
After taking a deep drag to calm his nicotine-excited nerves, he muttered to himself.
"...I knew this would happen."
He should have grabbed Caesar's pant leg and stopped him when he said he was going to the Beast people Forest for a bit.
Though he promised to return before the rain stopped, he hadn't come back even by the morning when the rain started falling.
Just why was Gloria kidnapped and what exactly happened?
Jerry's concerns couldn't be eased even with the nicotine remaining in his pipe.
Just then, the command tent flap lifted and a soldier entered.
"Urgent news!"
"Heeeeek!"
The quartermaster Gavin, who had been dozing off in the command post, jumped up startled and fell backwards.
Jerry looked at Gavin with exasperation.
That guy Gavin, he usually does his work well, but he does even better when severely pushed from the side.
When Caesar introduced such a young fellow as the quartermaster, Jerry honestly didn't trust him, but he turned out to be extremely meticulous and even had the foresight to see into the future.
The problem was that he lacked the charisma to command soldiers, so Jerry had kept him close by to teach him, but...
That chicken-hearted nature showed no signs of improvement.
"What's the matter?"
"Wizard Raven has returned!"
Good.
If Raven was back, Caesar must have returned too.
Jerry jumped up and stuck his smoking pipe into the ashtray.
"Where is she?"
"She's coming here right now..."
At that moment, the tent opened by itself and a short magician walked in.
Her eyes always looked drowsy, but today they seemed particularly tired.
"Jerry, Caesar has a message for you."
"What? Then Lord Caesar..."
"Couldn't come due to urgent business. That's why I came instead."
Jerry felt slightly relieved.
At least it meant Caesar wasn't dead or seriously injured.
"But he clearly promised us, didn't he? That he would return before the rain stopped."
"He said to tell you he's sorry about that. Well, I'll be going now."
"...What?! What? Wait a moment. Is that all?"
"That's all, isn't it?"
What nonsense is this, sending Raven just to say sorry?
What kind of ridiculous story is this?
"Shouldn't you at least tell us where Lord Caesar is?"
"Oh, Caesar is at the Succubi Castle right now."
"The Succubi Castle? Why?"
"To treat Gloria. He probably won't be able to return for a while."
"What? How long?"
"That's undetermined too."
"What?! How can the unit function without its commander?!"
"We have you, Jerry."
Jerry had a headache from how tiresome this situation was.
"While I'm grateful for your trust, won't the other soldiers be very anxious? Please, at least for the sake of troop morale, if he could just show his face..."
"Oh, and since devils might target this place, I'll deploy anti-archdevil defensive magic. You all should stay alert too."
"What? Devils?"
"Yes. Since we killed the Heart Mage Raum, the devils of Niflheim won't stay quiet. Belial will probably target us."
Raven said while lifting the tent flap.
"Well, I've said everything I needed to, so I'm going to sleep. Don't look for me for a while."
"Wait a moment..."
Raven left the command tent without even listening to Jerry.
Jerry grabbed his head and shouted.
"Argggh! Now devils too?!"
***
Caesar blankly stared at the vast ocean while feeling the sea breeze.
Perhaps because of the rain, the sea mist that had settled was quite gloomy.
“It might be gloomy in the morning and afternoon, but the night sky will be a sight to behold. This is the best spot I know.”
Caesar looked at the grave buried next to the cliff.
There was a wooden gravestone there with ‘Tatiana’ written on it.
"Well, even if you don't like it, there's nothing we can do about it. They say a good location is one that's better for the living to see than the dead, so..."
Caesar hesitated for a moment before speaking.
"But I'll make you one promise. If I ever meet Lebelia, I'll bury her next to you, Tatiana."
I don't understand why the world takes good people first and lets the bad ones live prosperously.
This damn world is hard to understand even if you want to.
Just then, Caesar sensed someone behind him.
It was Borden.
"Is Agatha ready?"
"Yes. She said the preparations are complete."
"Then we should go."
Caesar said while touching Tatiana's gravestone.
"I asked the succubi and vampires to take good care of it, so they'll do well. See you later."
Caesar headed towards the Succubi Castle.
They say face the dead from behind and the living from the front.
Now it's time to save Gloria.
***
When Caesar entered the inner chamber, he saw Gloria lying on the bed.
Agatha was beside Gloria, holding her hand and using magic.
As Caesar approached, Agatha stopped her magic and said.
"You came?"
"How is Gloria? Can you treat her?"
Caesar listened intently, standing straight as if waiting for a doctor's diagnosis.
"Gloria had a total of 78 nightmares. They all have different scenarios but share the same ending."
"It must be me losing to Raum."
"To be precise, it's about your death. The trauma from that is so severe that it's difficult to address."
Although Caesar roughly knew the situation through psychometry, hearing Agatha's objective diagnosis broke his heart.
"If Gloria wakes up like this, what exactly will happen? It seems like it would be hard to distinguish between nightmares and reality."
"You're right. However, if I take time to treat her slowly, she'll be able to recognize reality. But once Gloria becomes aware of reality, she's very likely to become overly attached to you."
"What exactly does that mean?"
"It means she'll become extremely anxious when you're not visible."
"You mean like separation anxiety?"
"Yes, that's the accurate term. The problem is that these symptoms could be very extreme. In severe cases, she might self-harm or become extremely wary of anyone trying to approach you. I can't even predict how serious it might get."
Caesar had glimpsed Gloria's nightmares through psychometry.
Therefore, he knew that Gloria's condition wasn't just like a puppy's separation anxiety.
It would probably be much worse than that.
"Or conversely, she might think you're dead. So she might completely deny that you're alive."
"So basically nothing is certain?"
"Exactly. We'll only know once Gloria wakes up."
Caesar pointed to Flawless in Gloria's hand and said.
"Can't this help overcome it?"
"I'm barely holding on thanks to this Dragon Language Relic. For some reason, Gloria seems to be living in a dream shown by this relic."
"A dream shown by the relic?"
"Yes. Though I'm not sure if this is the right way to express it... Rather than Gloria dreaming, it feels like Flawless is dreaming? No, it might be more accurate to say they're sharing a dream. Like how you entered my dream."
Dreaming implies consciousness, so does this mean Flawless had something like self-awareness?
Such things weren't mentioned even in the Valent Saga.
"Have you seen cases like this before?"
"No. This is my first time seeing such a situation since birth, so I'm not sure. It's my first time seeing a Dragon Language Relic with my own eyes anyway."
"So should we consider Gloria to be trapped in Flawless’s dream?"
"I don't think it goes that far. But to treat Gloria, we need to remove Flawless."
"Why?"
"Because of Flawless, I can't tell what kind of dream Gloria is in right now. I can enter the dream, but there are many limitations. Proper treatment is impossible like this."
"Flawless might be completely blocking your approach. Technically speaking, you're using mental manipulation magic to penetrate the dream."
"That's true. It's quite confusing as this is the first time I've seen such a bizarre artifact in my life."
Caesar stroked Flawless in Gloria's hand.
"So is it impossible to access Gloria's dream right now?"
"As I said, entering is possible. But I can't leave this house with a strange garden. It might be deeply related to Gloria's inner self..."
"House?"
"Yes, a two-story house surrounded by high walls with a garden... Anyway, no matter how much I look around there, I can't find Gloria. I couldn't open the house doors either."
A two-story house...
Caesar felt like he knew which house it was.
But since he wasn't certain, he didn't mention whose house it might be.
"So anyway, to treat Gloria, we need to transfer Flawless to someone else?"
"Yes. Didn't someone named Tatiana already transfer Flawless to Gloria? We need to transfer it in a similar way before treatment becomes possible."
Making her transfer Flawless.
If it were that easy, Raum would have used it on Tatiana right away.
"Do you know how Tatiana transferred Flawless to Gloria?"
"You just need to directly hand over Flawless. Of course, there needs to be a clear intention to hand it over."
"This has become quite troublesome..."
Agatha held up two fingers.
"Then there are exactly two solutions to this problem. First, you can enter the dream with me to find Gloria somewhere in that house and receive Flawless. Then Flawless will be transferred to you and treatment will be possible from that point."
"Is it possible for me to enter Gloria's dream?"
"It's possible. But as I said before, you might not be able to escape from that house. Even if you find Gloria, Flawless might interfere."
"Then what's the second method?"
"The second method is to wake Gloria up now and ask for Flawless. It's the simplest method."
"That won't be easy. If we wake her now, she'll have trouble distinguishing reality from nightmares. That means transferring Flawless while her mind isn't properly back, and Flawless might not accept that."
"Hmm... Strictly speaking, wasn't Tatiana also not in her right mind when she transferred it? She didn't hand over Flawless after completely breaking free from Raum's brainwashing."
"What I'm saying is that nothing can be certain. If we try to use magic to put Gloria back to sleep after waking her now, Flawless will definitely interfere. Then we'll be in a situation where we can't do anything."
Agatha heaved a deep sigh.
"So in the end we have to go into the dream and convince Gloria. And we don't even know if that will work or not."
Caesar couldn't even imagine the concept of convincing Gloria in a dream.
After all, the world of dreams itself was very unfamiliar to Caesar.
Still, they had to at least try.
"Okay. Let's say we manage to remove Flawless. How do you plan to treat her?"
"I plan to change all the endings of Gloria's nightmares. Instead of you dying, we'll manipulate the nightmare to make Raum die and distort the memories. But there's something important here."
"What's important?"
"The scenario can't proceed with you directly handling Raum."
"What does that mean?"
"If you step up to kill Raum, she'll become very obsessed with you as I mentioned before. She'll think that only you could kill Raum and escape from that cave. Then you might have to make all of Gloria's decisions for her."
Caesar seemed to understand what kind of scenario Agatha wanted.
"You want a scenario where Gloria directly kills Raum?"
"Yes. The problem is it needs to be a scenario that Gloria can accept. If she notices even a slight oddity, the dream itself could break and we'd have to start over from the beginning, or it could go in a completely unexpected direction."
If Gloria directly handles Raum, she'll gain confidence that she can solve problems on her own, and consequently, her obsession with Caesar will fade.
"The problem is no matter how much I think about it, I don't know how to modify the dream. Raum is a pentagonal demon, but Gloria who's been a knight for less than a year defeats Raum? Even if it's a dream, it doesn't make sense."
"It's a dream anyway, so isn't it okay if it's a little unrealistic?"
"That would be fine for a normal dream. But this is a major event that changed Gloria's inner self. If we mess with the nightmare wrong, Gloria might break."
Caesar wiped his face with his dry hands to drive away the fatigue.
"Okay. There's no point thinking about that problem now, so let's start with removing Flawless. Can we do it now?"
"We can."
When Agatha extended her hand, Caesar took it.
"Let me emphasize one more time that this method has almost no chance of success. So don't push too hard and approach slowly."
"I got it."
Caesar took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
"Then I'm going in. 5, 4, 3, 2..."
A drowsy feeling enveloped Caesar's body as if falling asleep.
***
When Caesar opened his eyes, the space he faced was all too familiar to him.
"This is..."
Ivy vines were carefully attached to the walls, and trees were modestly decorated near the walls.
And the lawn in the garden was evenly trimmed, with a two-story house in the center of the garden, its modesty and simplicity showing a strange charm.
"Do you know this place?"
Agatha spoke from beside him.
"Yes. I know it very well."
"Where is this?"
Caesar thought he understood why people get homesick.
He wanted to immediately climb the stairs, open the terrace door on the second floor, and throw himself onto the king-size bed in the master bedroom.
"My house."