Chapter 135
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 135
“Well, whatever. I guess I’ll have to look after you. I’ll dig up enough Tobu for your share, too.”
“Lansler. Since you can’t remember your name, we decided to call you that for now.”
Even Pesil.
“Ah.”
Niphrim continued his pursuit of the wagons, his head bowed slightly.
“Ahahaha… ahahahahaha.”
When he lifted his head again, he was laughing.
“Ah, hahahahahahaha…”
Though his face looked as if he were about to cry, the sound was unmistakably laughter.
His pursuit grew even more frantic.
Leaping onto a collapsing wagon, Niphrim launched himself high into the air. As he landed on the second wagon, he swung his sword wildly. He began adding wild, unnecessary flourishes to his movements, each one designed to sow terror among the Orcs.
“Screeech, screeech!” the Orcs pulling the second wagon shrieked as they abandoned it.
Once the Orcs let go, the second wagon tumbled over the slope and vanished. This time, Niphrim didn't even spare a glance for the corpses falling from it.
The Orcs at the head of the column appeared to be officers. Unable to abandon their cargo, they drew their weapons and stood their ground.
“Prepare yourselves!”
At the officer’s command, the Orc shamans began to cast enhancement magic, desperately wringing out the last of their mana.
Intermediate Magic:
Niphrim’s sword was faster.
He cut down one Orc in a single blow, then immediately pierced the stomach of a shaman. Ripping his sword free, he spun and unleashed a wave of sword energy. The Orcs attempting to ambush him from behind screamed as they were blasted away. Without pause, Niphrim hurled his sword at another shaman trying to escape with <Transference>.
“Kuh, haaa, ack.”
Pierced through the heart, the shaman collapsed.
“Ahahaha.”
With only one Orc left, Niphrim laughed again. The creature, its will to fight completely shattered, groveled on the ground, trembling.
Niphrim wrenched his sword from the dead shaman’s heart, carved off a piece of its flesh, and chewed it savagely. The wounds that covered his body from the chase healed in an instant.
“Screeech, screch… M-M-Monster…” the Orc stammered.
Niphrim nodded and approached slowly.
“The villagers…”
“Screeech, screeech…”
“…Right. You have nothing to say.”
They must have killed them all.
“I have nothing to say either.”
The Orc scrambled backward on all fours. Niphrim matched its pace, walking in perfect, deliberate time with its retreat. Having been subjected to it so terribly himself, he knew better than anyone how to inflict terror.
*
A long time passed before the rain finally stopped.
The last Orc had long since grown cold, its face frozen in an expression of ultimate agony.
Niphrim raised his head, staring at the rain-cleared sky for a long time.
Darkness fell.
If everything had gone according to plan, the festival would have been in full swing by now.
“…”
Nothing remained. Or rather, what remained were countless
Orc corpses and his own exhausted body. The only other thing left was the single wagon beside him, but he couldn’t find the courage to lift its cloth cover.
“…”
He stood there, dazed. If this was the price for his past sins, then he had no right to complain. If anyone deserved to pay the price, it should have been him. Yet he was the only one left alive.
What meaning was there in a life like this?
No, perhaps this is the real punishment: being forced to live a meaningless life.
He wondered if this was what it felt like to lose all direction. When he was imprisoned and experimented on in the ‘Third Eye,’ the pain had been immense, but at least he’d had a goal: freedom. And there had been others who dreamed of that same freedom.
“…I have to bury them.”
In his heart, he wanted to hunt down and kill the Orc Chief. He was certain he wouldn’t lose now.
But the Orc main army was too far away. He couldn’t even guess the distance, and unless they were fools, they would have already altered their route or prepared an escape.
“…I have to… bury them.”
If he couldn’t catch the group that had already left, it was better to stay here than to exhaust himself chasing a ghost.
Amidst the chaos of the battle, the bodies of the villagers lay scattered everywhere. In the humid weather, they would soon begin to rot.
The couple who took him in, the grandmother, the uncle, Pesil—he had to bury them before their remains were lost.
Slowly, Niphrim rose to his feet and stood before the wagon the Orcs had guarded at the very front. Even as some had abandoned their posts to flee, others had risked their lives to protect this one. It must have been an offering for their Chief—premium goods, from their perspective. If so, wouldn’t the contents be in better condition? He hoped they were intact.
With that thought, Niphrim pulled back the wagon’s cloth cover.
“…”
He stood before that wagon for a long, long time.
“You’re… alive…”
He stood there blankly for what felt like an eternity.
Even if she wasn’t completely unharmed, it was fine.
“Pesil.”
“…Lansler.”
He had thought he would never hear that name again.
Phase. 8
“It seems it’s finally starting, Boss.”
Patrick spoke to Swallow, reading a newspaper by the light of a single magic lamp.
Swallow, as usual, had his eyes closed and his head propped up on his hand. But even in his drowsy state, he was listening.
“This is information gathered mainly from the merchant guilds of each region.”
After Swallow had driven the Orcs from the merchant guild district, the other guilds had offered supplies to the Primordial Core as a small token of their gratitude. From Swallow’s perspective, there was no reason to refuse food that was brought to him without his asking. Patrick, however, had a slightly different idea.
“This is an opportunity,” he had told Swallow, before turning around to make threatening demands of the other guilds.
“When we were chasing out the Orcs, you all lay low like dead mice. Do you really think bringing us a bit of food settles everything? My, my, you all live in such a convenient world, don’t you?”
As a result, Patrick had secured enough leverage to make demands that bordered on exploitation. And he was putting it to good use. The most useful application was gathering information from every corner of the continent the merchant guilds could reach.
“Reports of Orc sightings are flooding in from all directions. Mountains, rivers, plains, coasts… they aren’t picky. If I were to mark it on a map, they seem to be surrounding the Empire in a crescent shape.”
“Ah, is that so?”
“It seems they’re setting fire to every human village they see as they advance. The Empire must have noticed by now. It’s an overt act of intimidation, basically announcing, ‘We are invading.’”
“How commendable of them to try so hard.”
Patrick turned the page. Swallow, who had been giving half-hearted responses, glanced sideways. The newspaper, a special edition produced by the combined efforts of the regional merchant guilds, seemed to be filled with nothing but news about the Orcs.
“Also, what’s interesting about their movement this time is—”
“No, stop. Please, that’s enough.”
“Ah, in that case, understood.”
As Swallow waved his massive hand in annoyance, Patrick folded the newspaper.
“I wasn’t asking you to do anything. I just thought it would be fun to know. After all, watching a war is even more entertaining than watching a house fire.”
“That’s true, but…”
From an onlooker’s perspective, war was a form of entertainment. This was especially true for the Primordial Core, which had no stake in this war. Since they felt no particular emotion whether humans or monsters died, there was no game more amusing.
Rising from his seat, Patrick approached Swallow. He picked up a pouch he had tossed on the floor earlier and held it out. It had been asserting its presence from the corner for a while, giving off a strong aroma—the very reason Swallow hadn’t been able to fall asleep.
Opening the pouch revealed it was filled with white, fluffy things.
“After all, isn’t a match more fun the more you know about it? I was just suggesting we watch.”
“More importantly, what is this?”
“Ah, this, Boss, is something Lady Melju prepared. It’s called popcorn. She said our mouths might get bored while watching the war. She popped hard corn kernels, which even humans rarely use, with fire magic…”
“…So what is it?”
“A popped corn snack. Let’s eat this and watch together, Boss.”
*
In the middle of the night, Bathory paid them a visit.
It was Patrick who had called her.
They needed a way to watch the war, but they couldn’t leave the dungeon unattended, and Swallow had no intention of going out. This was the solution Patrick had devised.
If we can’t go out, we can just watch from inside the dungeon.
Magic was what made the impossible possible. And they had a highly capable mage named Melju on their side. All they needed was to project a screen using magic.
That was what the popcorn was for.
“That is impossible for me.”
Contrary to his expectations, Melju shook her head.
“To project a screen, I must have a familiar with eyes to show whatever is on that screen. To watch the war, the familiar would have to go to the battlefield… Setting aside the risk of the familiar dying, sending it that far is impossible in the first place. The connection breaks if it gets too far from the caster, long before mana becomes an issue.”
“For magic, it has quite a lot of common-sense limitations.”
Accepting this, Patrick immediately asked for an alternative. Melju hadn’t completely ruled out the possibility; she had merely said, “It is impossible with my power alone.”
“It can be done if we use a different method.”
According to Melju, there was a type of magic that operated on a different principle. Instead of using a familiar’s eyes, it was a magic tool that captured the scene at specific coordinates and projected it onto a screen. Since it could capture a wider scene more safely, it was a much better option. However…
“This, too, is nearly impossible right now. The only magic tool of that kind I have ever seen is Obscuritas’s crystal ball.”
“Obscuritas.”
If Patrick remembered correctly, that was the name of the Demon King who was second-in-command to Yubar.
“Lady Melju, how long does it take to get to Obscuritas’s Demon King Castle from here?”
“Ah, stop right there! Going there to steal it is not a good idea. I think it would be a waste of time… Besides, that crystal ball is so small that barely one person can look into it. Furthermore, Obscuritas placed an imprint on it, so the moment it gets too far from him, the crystal ball will shatter.”
This was a solution the Demon Kings had devised to settle their conflicts over magic tools.
“Then dragging the Demon King all the way here… that certainly wouldn’t be a good option.”
Patrick imagined dragging the Demon King by the collar all the way to the Primordial Core, but decided it wouldn’t look very dignified.
“Even when I visited Lord Swallow’s treasure vault last time, there was no such magic tool. There are probably only a few outstanding mages in the world who possess such high-grade magic tools.”
Only a few outstanding mages in the world.
Patrick fell into thought. Speaking of outstanding mages, wasn’t there one nearby, even if she didn’t typically enjoy conventional magic?
The magic tool the Boss borrowed when he went to Knecht was also quite rare…
Just in case, he visited Cheite Castle. Bathory had replied in a nonchalant voice, “Huh? I have them. They’re scattered all over the place.”
Her pale, slender finger pointed here and there around the room. At first, Patrick was puzzled, but then he realized.
The large full-body mirrors scattered all over the room.
Every single one of them was the exact magic tool Melju had described.
A world-class mage was right next door.
…
“Ah, indeed, everyone here is one of those rare existences in the world…”
There was a fair amount of bewilderment in Melju’s voice. It was a fact she sometimes forgot, now that she had adapted to her surroundings—the beings laughing and chatting around her were all entities that would be considered disasters if they ever went outside.
“Sometimes, I even forget that this place is a Great Evil Cave.”
“It’s fine. That’s not your fault, Lady Melju. It’s the Boss’s problem.”
Nodding vigorously at Patrick’s words, Melju took in the sight before her. Past Room 4, dozens of butlers were busily moving luggage. Among them, three high-ranking retainers were entering Swallow’s room, each carrying a large full-body mirror.
“Oh, Patrick.”
Bathory, who had been directing the butlers from afar, approached Patrick and Melju with a smile.
“Lady Bathory, thank you for offering your help so readily.”
“I’m glad to be of help.”
Her attitude was slightly friendlier than usual, so excessively soft that it was unsettling. As Melju trembled slightly beside him, Bathory’s gaze shifted toward her.
“We meet again, little Demon King.”
“Y-You’ve… Hello, Lady Bathory.”
Melju bowed her head, her body stiff. From her perspective, Bathory’s presence was still highly overwhelming. As if telling her not to be so scared, Bathory placed her hands on both of Melju’s shoulders.
—That touch, too, was incredibly gentle.
“Hieek!”
Melju trembled like a leaf in the wind. Sensing something ominous, she shot a desperate look at Patrick, only to find him deliberately avoiding her gaze while saying something strange.
“I am so proud of you, Lady Melju.”
“My, look how nice the Demon King’s skin is.”