Tilia (5)
"For now—for now, let's go back too. Tiable. Something feels off. I think we need to tell Redrago."
I agreed. An ominous feeling had settled over me. The Bloody Dragons were all gone, so heading back should be fine.
"L-Let's go. Lena."
I held out my hand to her, and Lena took it at once, as if she'd already known what I meant.
"Teleport."
The place I brought us to was Redrago's office.
Appearing so abruptly in front of him with Lena in tow, I got to watch Redrago startle in a way that was nothing like his usual image.
Maybe teleporting to the door would have been better. Fair enough that he'd be flustered. Next time, the door.
His voice was already steady again when he asked why I was there.
"Tiable, what brings you here so suddenly? In the future, I'd prefer you open the door and walk in."
He looked a little angry despite the calm tone—or was that just my imagination?
"Redrago, I—I really met a demon."
Redrago's brow twitched.
"A demon?"
When he shot Lena a look that clearly meant she should leave, she showed no intention of going anywhere.
"I was there when we met them too, so no real reason for me to step out, right~?"
He looked a little displeased, but he didn't throw her out.
"What happened? I want you to explain carefully."
"Uh, so, um—well—"
When I couldn't get the words out in any coherent order, Lena stepped in and started explaining for me.
On a guild request, they'd gone to Hiades Valley—site of the recent battle—to cull the Bloody Dragons, and found individuals of a different color. Then a demon who seemed to be their master had appeared, attacked them, left some cryptic words, and vanished along with the dragons.
Redrago's eyes blazed when Lena got to the part about registering me with the guild and taking me to the valley, but they cooled as the rest of the story sank in.
"...Just before she disappeared, the demon told Tiable they'd talk later, in Sepia."
"Doesn't that mean the demon's coming to Sepia?"
"Hmm. Plenty of strange points here."
"What's clear is that a demon is planning something aimed at Sepia."
"Thank you for the information. We'll prepare. Anything else unusual?"
Redrago set down his pen as if he'd written every word Lena said.
"Hmm, I don't think there was anything else?"
"Understood. You may go. Good work."
Lena and I turned and left Redrago's office.
"I felt this the last time we talked too—his way of speaking is really stiff."
Yeah, it does come across that way.
"B-But he's nice. Redrago."
"Well, I didn't say he was bad~"
Three days after the battle with Horn, Horn still showed no movement.
Strange. The remaining forces should have returned and reported—that it had been a one-sided massacre.
Why take no action at all? No contact. No further attack.
Redrago was thinking about Horn's total silence, as if nothing had happened, when Tiable and Lena appeared before his eyes.
They told him they had met some kind of demon in Hiades Valley. And about the strange Bloody Dragons as well.
A demon showing up at this timing—he had a feeling it was connected to Horn.
I may be seeing them with my own eyes before long.
A bright morning, yet the space was dark because of the curtains—thin shafts of sunlight slipping between them were the only thing announcing that morning had come.
When Tilia appeared there, the dim room lit up at once.
There were no luxurious furnishings; if anything, the place could be called ashen. A demon with dark black eyes and hair that seemed to drink in every color around them sat at ease upon a throne the color of blood. From either side of that pitch-black hair sprouted large black horns, gracefully curved and beautiful in form.
"What do you think you're doing?"
A single sentence brought Tilia to her knees.
"Tilia. Did I not tell you to keep any demonic involvement as hidden as possible?"
"Why did you make contact with humans?"
"L-Lord Dioakf, but my cute—"
"Mana Burst. Want to experience it? I'm not asking for excuses right now. I'm asking for a reason."
Head bowed, Tilia said nothing, only stared at the floor and trembled.
Dioakf paused a moment, then continued, gently swirling a glass of wine the color of blood.
"Do you know why I try to hide demonic involvement?"
"I'm not just any underling, and yet I went out of my way to give this to you—"
"If anything, the others are stronger, not weaker than you. Tilia. And still, the reason I specifically assigned this to you."
"If it were simply about killing humans, I'd have sent someone else. Not a weakling like you."
Weak. Weak. Every time she heard that word, Tilia's head sank lower.
"Your specialty is brainwashing magic, isn't it? Among those under me."
"You could have carried this out without being discovered. But you got foolishly worked up."
"Since it's come to this, Tilia. You will declare war on Sepia. Make your name known to Sepia and the surrounding nations."
Dioakf took a sip from the glass, then poured the rest over the head of Tilia, who was practically prostrate on the floor.
"I'll handle the rest."
A grinding sound came from Tilia's teeth, but it never reached Dioakf's ears.
"I-I'm irritated. Irritated. Irritated. Irritated. Irritated. Irritated!"
Back at Horn's royal castle, Tilia repeated the same words over and over, swinging her arms.
Where her arms should have been, long violet blades had taken their place, and she cut and cut and cut through Horn's soldiers who had already become her thralls.
Severed bodies made unpleasant sounds, only dirtying the already fouled corridor further.
"I—I just finished making Horn mine, and over a little chat with some humans!"
She wasn't wrong. The day she turned Horn's commanders into thralls, every soldier in Horn had become Tilia's thrall.
Day and night, she had kept expanding her thralls, somehow trying to build a force that could surely destroy Sepia.
She had gone as far as Hiades Valley to try reusing the Horn soldiers who had died there. Seeing the slaughtered men, Tilia had judged Sepia's forces considerable. By luck she had found a pack of Bloody Dragons, decided they would make good troops, and turned the dragons into thralls as well.
She had done her best in her own way to carry out Dioakf's order to destroy Sepia—even if the "hide any demonic involvement" he had stressed had not been followed at all.
"Why"
"Are you"
"Doing this!"
With every surge of force in her words, more of the thralls standing still were sliced in half.
As time passed, the thralls that had been cut in two fused back into one with grotesque sounds and formed ranks again.
"Huuu—this isn't enough to calm me down! Sepia—I'll go to Sepia and kill every last human."
"First I'll make every remaining human mine, then I'll destroy Sepia!"
"That's what Lord Dioakf wanted too!"
A week after meeting the demon.
I'd gotten hooked on the guild and accepted a few requests with Lena. Doing quests together, I'd gotten quite close with her too.
Hugo and Hwia made it very clear how much they missed me once I started spending more time outside the house than in it.
"Tiable, are you going out again today?"
"You're going out together today?"
I felt bad for them, but learning about this world through quests was just too much fun.
Ah—the Giant Frog I'd been curious about looked more hideous than I'd expected. Like some under-evolved prehistoric creature, its two eyes bulged as if about to pop out, and its whole body was a brownish color with disgusting slime dripping from its skin.
How could something look like that. I don't think I can... ever eat those skewers again. They tasted good, though.
Of course, today I was heading to the guild for another request.
"Lena—!"
"Oh, Tiable! You're early today?"
"What kind of request are we doing today?"
Lena and I spent a long time searching the wall packed with request papers for one that looked good. Even amid the always-noisy guild, a particular conversation stuck in my ears.
"My friend who went to Horn three days ago still hasn't come back. It was nothing important."
"The country that declared war on Sepia—mph"
"That topic's under a gag order, you idiot. Never outside the guild."
"Right. I've heard a lot of adventurers who go to Horn aren't coming back lately."
"Maybe they're charging absurd tolls? I heard Horn's about to go under these days."
"Could be?"
Adventurers going to Horn aren't coming back?
"Hey, Lena."
"Yeah. You mean that conversation?"
So she'd been listening too.
"Sh-Should we go to Horn?"
"Hmm~? Nope."
Lena refused flatly. Wait—she could answer that fast without even a second of thought?
"There's no money in it."
Why is she so obsessed with money? Seriously, why?
What is she scraping every coin together to spend it on?