Existence (1)
Draped in a bearskin, the figure trudged through the streets astride a donkey. It was not a sight one would readily encounter even in the desert, yet no one paid the presence the slightest attention.
Humans truly are fools. To think they can seize power without paying a price.
A slender black hand pushed the bearskin back. As the bear’s head covering the face fell away, curling locks spilled free. Well tended, they shone with a healthy luster and not a single tangle.
Believing there is no price—that itself was the price.
Whether the being found its own hair pleasing or not, it slowly twisted a strand around its index finger.
Though it is a little disappointing. I still have no desire to go beyond this city just yet.
When the long hair had wound itself tightly around the finger, the being simply snipped it off.
Ha. What are Pandemonium and Moby Dick even doing? They still have not managed to kill a single hero, so why must I… Ugh, I do not want to.
The severed strands began to slip free and scatter; the being gathered them into its palm. The donkey brayed once, loud and sharp.
Do not rush me. I know full well. Fail, and Hellel will never stop nagging. But what am I supposed to do? The hero and I are the worst possible match. If I could fight head-on like Gretchen, fine—but all I can do is overlay dreams…
The donkey brayed again.
And the one with the best compatibility against the hero is in that state. Infuriating. I have never liked that Gretchen from the beginning… Prancing about claiming to be the strongest after the king, yet when it actually matters…
A soft whoosh. Fire sprang unbidden to the hair resting in the palm. In an instant the strands were consumed; a single puff of breath sent ash drifting into the air.
Might as well give them a little trouble while I am at it.
The ash powder swirled away and settled upon someone far down the street. Hair neatly divided into gray and black whipped around.
“……?”
The Inquisitor suddenly turned to look behind her, so I reflexively glanced back as well. A purely automatic reaction, and one that yielded nothing of note.
With the signal fires lit, the streets thronged with citizens evacuating according to protocol and soldiers racing toward the walls.
“What is it? Did something catch your attention again?”
“…No. I simply felt as though something was behind us. I must have been overly sensitive.”
“If you sensed something, do not dismiss it so lightly. With demons invading, we cannot rule out the possibility that something has already slipped into the city.”
“Yes, understood.”
She agreed readily enough, yet she did not turn back the way we had come. It really must have been nothing more than a feeling. The fact that she showed no further reaction said as much.
“More importantly, we should hurry.”
Standing idle in these cramped streets would only hinder the flow of people. We pressed on with renewed speed. Our destination was the section of wall where the demons were approaching.
“They actually let us up here.”
Dev’s thoughts mirrored my own exactly.
Setting combat strength aside, this was not a true emergency—well, it was urgent, but nothing like the chaos of Zakrati where no one could respond properly—so I had not expected them to allow irregulars like us onto the battlements. Yet here we were. Unexpected.
Or was it simply the backing of the Temple and the Magic Tower that had secured permission? Ah, that might actually be it.
“I have never been up here during something like this either… but it is only Stage One, so they are allowing it.”
At that moment Kankan, who had somehow ended up accompanying us this far, leaned in to whisper.
Desert demons, he explained, rarely charged straight in. They preferred to halt within sight of the city, gather their forces, and wait anywhere from half a day to two full days before advancing. That was why mages and priests were summoned to the walls—to assess the enemy’s scale and prepare accordingly. The reason we had been allowed up was most likely the same.
“The Archmage and the Representative are both figures who could easily serve as central pillars of their respective factions. Permission for them is only natural.”
A priest who had come with us confirmed the guess with absolute certainty.
…So what about the rest of us? Just hangers-on who had slipped in alongside them? Being able to grasp the situation was not a bad thing, but the feeling was still odd.
“…They are deliberately giving the demons time to prepare?”
“Rather, it is believed to be a trait of the Great Demon commanding that army. The one that has nested in the desert is Duke, known by the name of ‘Sloth,’ so the theory is that it simply moves slowly.”
Oh… so when they said Great Demon I had wondered which, and it turns out to be Sloth.
I ran through the faces of the Seven Deadly Sins. If it was Sloth, that meant either Astaroth or Belphegor.
Whether those were even their true names was anyone’s guess, and while the former might have been imposing, the latter left me with nothing but the indelible mental image of someone sitting on a toilet, so it was hard to feel particularly threatened.
“…Is it not dangerous if a Great Demon is present?”
“In all the years past, the Great Demon of Sloth has never once taken the field personally—not even during the periods when the demons’ power was at its height.”
“Even so…”
“Of course the past is no guarantee of the present. Still, we are already inside this city. There is no way to avoid it. All we can do is be careful.”
“That is true enough.”
Dev fretted a moment longer, then asked for whatever information we had on Great Demons. He clearly intended to cram whatever he could into his head for later use.
“Information on the Great Demons—especially Sloth—is scarce.”
“Why?”
“As the Archmage just said, it has never shown itself on the front lines. Stories surface now and then during interrogations, but they remain at the level of oral tradition. Nothing approaches the level of detail you are hoping for.”
Perhaps because the topic was demons, the Inquisitor rarely interjected. Whether the claim of “oral tradition” was accurate or not, the explanations that followed were mostly of the “back when tigers used to smoke” variety.
“So nothing useful at all.”
“It is also proof of how thoroughly the Great Demons have erased records of themselves—the same reason their true names remain unknown.”
“…We do not even know their true names?”
“That is correct.”
“Unbelievable.”
Thus Dev and I reached the top of the wall having learned almost nothing.
“Do not stand there. That is the supply route.”
Kankan, who claimed to visit this place often, quietly steered us clear of mistakes.
“There is a roof?”
Curiosity bubbled up in its place.
Indeed, the walls of Far Enoch were peculiar: high barriers rose on either side of the walkway, and a roof had been built over the top as well, completely enclosing the defenders. I had never seen a fortification like it. If they were going to cut holes in the ceiling anyway, why bother putting a roof on in the first place? It seemed stifling.
“Demons come from the air too. The roof keeps them from killing us. We use those holes to spear anything that lands on top… though the ones that spit fire sometimes reverse the situation.”
“Ah.”
Dev, who knew many things but little of military architecture, nodded along to Kankan’s explanation. I absorbed the new knowledge as well.
Places that regularly faced demons were simply different. Compared to elsewhere, the preparations here were thorough to a degree that almost felt excessive.
“If the forts in the Yabad Region had something like this, we would have suffered less.”
“Flying demons are not something one encounters there.”
“Do the demons not simply smash the walls?”
“When the assault is fierce, the walls do break. But having them still means fewer deaths than not having them.”
“The height seems a bit low… Do Shagi soldiers not find it inconvenient?”
“Any higher and the spears would not reach. Besides, those whose build is large enough for this to be a problem are assigned elsewhere from the start.”
I was grateful the Inquisitor and Dev asked the questions for me.
I stuffed their conversation into the back of my mind. Filling in the gaps in common knowledge bit by bit made later life easier. Most of it would never be needed, but one never knew.
“This way.”
At that point a figure who seemed to be a commander called a small group up into the watchtower. Naturally neither Dev nor I were included, but that itself did not particularly matter.
Even without climbing the tower we could survey the desert through the openings cut into the wall.
“Surely those cannot all be demons…?”
“They are.”
“Yes. We gathered every Shagi and Cueoty with sharp eyes and confirmed it multiple times. There is no mistake.”
I finally understood why they went so far as to build a colosseum just to keep powerful fighters in the city. Even if the demons only attacked once every few years, an army of that size meant they could never afford to thin their own forces.
I barely restrained the urge to click my tongue and instead clenched and unclenched my fists.
Beyond the slit of the wall, the desert horizon writhed with a faint black line. Every last one of them was a demon.
“This is serious. When was the last invasion?”
“…Two months ago.”
Meanwhile the Archmage and the priests who had gone up the tower conversed with the commander.
Perhaps because I had been told the interval could stretch as long as seven years, two months did not feel especially distant.
“Is this kind of spacing normal?”
“No. The shortest recorded interval is one month, but that was during the era when the demons’ power was at its absolute peak. In these more settled times, even the fastest assaults come only after half a year… usually a full year. That has been the pattern for the past twenty years.”
Dev beside me blinked. Given numbers that clear, anyone would realize this was no ordinary occurrence.
And what was the defining trait of our party? A hero’s party whose ultimate goal was Satan himself.
“…You sure are popular, Wallflower. Demons just keep popping up wherever we go.”
I could not disagree. This was not Kimchi Dumpling’s fault; the story itself was simply broken.
“More importantly, what about the Martial King…?”
“…We will have to postpone. At the very least, so long as they have not… you know.”
“It is possible they have.”
Kankan made a gesture of clasping both hands together, indicating the demons. As long as they had not made a deal with those things, it should be fine—that was the implication.
I had my doubts. Nothing but a gut feeling, so I could not press the point hard, yet the back of my neck still itched.
“Then there is nothing we can do. Nothing on this land takes priority over demons.”
“…True.”
“No matter how badly they want us dead, they will not try anything while demons are invading.”
“That is something we may need to reconsider.”
Even without a direct connection to the demons, using the chaos of battle for an assassination attempt to silence us felt entirely plausible.
Hmm. Still, none of us were so weak that we could not handle that much. The Archmage would be in the safest place anyway, so he was fine.
Well… given my position I was not really free to speak up, so it would be better if I simply stayed more alert myself.
The moment they showed up aiming for our backs, I would crush them.
“They would not have invaded after only two months without reason. We cannot know what tricks they may have prepared, so I recommend strengthening the search.”
Fortunately the Archmage, still up above, conveyed the concern to the commander in carefully indirect terms.
Regrettably there was no mention of the suspicious figures already inside the city. Whether they had truly allied with demons or were merely corrupt, the matter was still too uncertain.
There was no solid evidence to begin with, and even if we tried to extract some, time was too short.
“They may already have prepared some mischief on the walls or in the city center. Bombs are one concern, but recently in the Yabad Region…”
The Archmage went so far as to mention the cursed jars we had suffered from so thoroughly in Yabad.
Thanks to that, the searches of the walls and the civilian shelters would grow even more meticulous. Security would tighten another notch as well.
At this level, even if the corrupt gladiators really had sided with demons, they would be hard-pressed to move freely. At most they might act personally once the fighting began…
Objectively speaking, that was an acceptable risk. At least we would not be facing something with the firepower of bombs.
“Ah, here they come.”
Perhaps ten minutes later—sooner than expected—the Archmage and the commander descended.
Of course the conversation had been brief largely because a defensive battle left little room for radical changes in strategy.
Priests would reinforce the walls and treat the wounded as always. Mages would use wide-area magic to cut down as many demons as possible. Soldiers and colosseum gladiators would hold the walls and key points throughout the city. End of plan.
Unless new techniques or weapons appeared, the basic pattern of battle was unlikely to change.
“You.”
Yet the Archmage singled me out first among those waiting below. His expression was subtly tight, as though something troubled him; his gaze flicked back and forth between the Inquisitor and me.
Since he said nothing further, it was either still uncertain or something we did not need to know.
“I told you when we entered the city, but from this moment on you are not to move alone under any circumstances. And do not set foot outside the walls.”
Instead he continued without pause.
“There may be no precedent, yet both the hero and you are present here at the same time. If they have come knowing of our presence, there is a chance the Great Demon itself has taken the field. In that case you too could become a target.”
The worries and admonitions were entirely reasonable. To my ears, however, they sounded suspiciously like a summoning chant for a Great Demon.
Well, after they had gone and laid out the stage so carefully, it would almost be stranger if a Great Demon failed to appear.
“If they are coming, they could at least hurry up…”
Regardless of any demon-summoning incantations, preparations for the defense continued.
Troops were stationed along the walls, arrow stockpiles rechecked and redistributed where short, and vetted irregulars—gladiators and adventurers—were brought in as additional forces.
Everything moved according to priority, almost like watching the hopeful version of a group project. The difficulty of the assignment, of course, was anything but trivial.
“Damn it. Just sitting out there staring at us… I cannot sleep…”
Yet the demons kept gathering in ever greater numbers, far outpacing our preparations. The black wave on the horizon was now visible even to those with ordinary eyesight.
Worse, they did not charge in recklessly. The ones who suffered for it were the soldiers.
Relax, and the enemy might come at any moment. Stay tense, and the strain itself drained one’s strength. That was the dilemma.
“Do not worry so much.”
Not everyone was doubled over with nerves, however.
The veterans who had survived in this city for years remained relaxed whether demons massed outside or not. Familiarity had settled deep into their bones.
“Stop freezing up and have some mid-morning snacks!”
The same went for the citizens who, after the evacuation was complete, had volunteered for rear-support duties.
Even if they did not climb the walls themselves, the townsfolk who had endured decades here did not treat the situation with particular gravity. To them it was little more than an annual event, so I could understand the attitude.
“More importantly, why is the Martial King nowhere to be seen? Looks like all the other gladiators showed up.”
“No idea. Earlier I heard the commander calling him a bastard, though.”
“Huh. What is that man up to this time? Hey, Red Mane! You hear anything?!”
“…I do not know. How am I supposed to know what is going on inside someone else’s head?”
But the Martial King not coming… that was truly suspicious. Completely suspicious.
“Right, now that you mention it, is there not a newcomer who arrived a few days ago?”
At that point someone sought me out. The Archmage had been assigned elsewhere, and Dev had gone to the latrine, leaving me in a somewhat awkward position.
Kankan seemed to regard me as the silent type, so no help would come from that quarter. In the end I would have to open my mouth myself, would I not?
We were going to fight together, yet I was already about to get on their bad side.
“Heard you came from the Yabad Region. Tell us what happened over there. Something big went down, right?”
Mm, yes… this was awkward indeed.
Nibbling at the bread and dried dates the residents had shared out, I opened my mouth.
“Taking amusement in another’s misfortune? Your character is something to behold.”
“…….”
Could we not simply keep our mouths shut?
“Young master, I brought some food… why is the atmosphere like this?”
Mercifully, just before the air turned catastrophic, Dev came trotting over.
His eagerness to share the tasty things he had wheedled from the townsfolk was almost touching. I had no intention of accepting what felt like money stolen from a child’s piggy bank, but still.
“Want some?”
“It is all dried vegetables.”
“If you have a complaint, come take it up with me.”
“No, it is not a complaint. Vegetables are expensive—how did you even get these?”
“I have my ways.”
Around then someone approached with heavy, measured steps. I did not bother turning my head, so all I saw was the large shadow cast upon the ground.
“Who… uwek?!”
“Y-you?!”
More than that, the voice sounded vaguely familiar… Wait—gah! A wild Berserk has appeared!
“Nice to see you. I wanted to greet you earlier, but only now got the chance. Ah, Kankan, you are here too? It has been a while.”
What astonished me most was not the fact that the approaching shadow belonged to Berserk, nor even that Kankan seemed to know her.
Overriding all of that was one remaining fact.
“Hm, did I startle you? Sorry. I came to apologize, so please do not run away.”
Berserk… you were capable of speaking this calmly?!