The Old Man
The old man stood blocking the fiend’s sword with his cane.
“Grandpa!”
“Didn’t I tell you to be careful?!”
The old man rapped me on the head with his knuckles.
“Ow!”
“Quit your whining! Looks like you’ve been hit with a debuff. Stay put and wait quietly over there.”
Thud—
The old man smashed one of the fiends right in front of him with the head of his cane.
The fiend’s pupils dilated from the impact and it crumpled to the floor on the spot.
The fiends following behind were flustered by the sudden appearance of the old man.
But the old man walked forward toward those fiends.
His figure was reminiscent of an aged general from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Yet the fiends slapped their own cheeks and snarled,
“Crazy old man. We’ll send you to the afterlife!!”
Three fiends charged at the old man in an instant.
“Heh heh, young ones against an elder.”
The old man smiled, gripped his cane with both hands, and revealed something.
A flash of light shone from within the cane.
“What’s that?”
The old man leaned his body forward.
The moment he stepped forward with his back foot—
With a whoosh, the old man had moved two meters away in an instant.
Holding a sword…
The flashing light inside the cane had been a blade.
And as the gleam intensified and the old man swung—
Red liquid sprayed from the fiends’ necks.
In an instant…
Thud— Thud-thud—
In that brief span, the sound of two heads rolling across the ground reached my ears.
“Bartier!”
At that, the fiend disguised as a bald priest shouted.
Bartier urgently began muttering a spell.
Hearing it, the old man spoke to her.
“Young lady, trying to make my body heavy like that young man’s?”
He grinned.
“Go ahead—if you can.”
The old man lowered his stance again.
I understood at a glance.
That was a runner’s crouch, meant to generate acceleration.
Then the old man muttered in a voice so soft it was almost a whisper.
“Double Speed.”
After that, the old man’s movements vanished for a moment.
It was instantaneous.
He advanced in a flash and cut the fiends down one by one.
It felt like a bee charging to sting—fast, precise, and devastatingly powerful.
The ground was stained with their dark-red blood, yet not a single drop splattered onto the old man’s white clothes.
Two, three.
When he had taken down a total of five, he turned his gaze toward Bartier and the bald one.
Fiends still remained, but the two of them understood perfectly.
The old man’s true targets were them, and finishing the job was far from impossible.
Bartier’s chant had already stopped.
Fear filled her eyes.
The fiend leader was no exception.
He gulped once and muttered,
“R-run… we have to run!!”
Even so, Bartier looked at the priest with desperate eyes.
“But Priest! If not today….”
“D-die… Bartier, let’s try again next time. I’m going first!”
The leader fiend at the very back suddenly thrust his right hand toward the sky.
In that hand was a white stone marked with the number 26.
“Crazy old geezer… Warp!!”
With that single word, the fiend vanished.
I looked at Bartier.
Her eyes held a vacant expression, and tears were streaming down her face.
She wiped them away, raised the hand clutching her own white stone, and cried out,
“Warp!!”
The remaining fiends, after a moment of hesitation, began warping one after another.
The old man cut down a few more, but before long the fiends had all disappeared.
“Young ones just running away…”
He wore a look of mild regret.
At that moment the crushing weight on my body lifted, and the slow effect vanished with it.
I simply collapsed onto the ground where I stood.
That was really dangerous.
I stared at the old man in front of me.
He flicked the blood from his blade onto the dirt once, then slid the sword back into the cane.
Then he looked at me, furrowed his brow, and barked,
“Young man in front of an elder! Get up!”
“I’m sorry!!”
Startled by the shout, I scrambled to my feet at once.
“Th-thank you. I survived thanks to you, Elder.”
The old man silently brushed off his clothes.
Bald, with deep wrinkles that made him look well into his seventies, and dressed in shabby garments.
No matter how I looked at him, he was just an ordinary neighborhood grandpa…
“Elder, how did you come all the way this deep into the forest…?”
I had never told him my location.
Of course, he might have overheard the conversation between Bartier and me earlier.
To my question the old man answered,
“That day, there was murderous intent in that elf woman’s eyes. You might not have noticed because you’re young, but I could tell. Haha!”
It doesn’t seem like a matter of age.
I almost said it aloud but swallowed the words.
The old man finished brushing himself off and stared at me intently.
“Is there something you want to say…?”
At my words he suddenly pointed to the badge pinned to my chest.
“This?”
“Yes. Where did you get that?”
“This… was given to me by the Vice Knight Commander of Tebe.”
Hearing that, the old man said, “Is that so?” and stepped closer.
He held out his palm.
“Hand it over.”
“Huh? What?”
“Hand that over. I helped you, after all.”
When I made a thoroughly dumbfounded face, he continued,
“You survived because of that badge. That’s the badge of the Eisenhart family.”
“This?”
“Yes. I don’t know how you came by it, but since I’ve already given you great help, I’m confiscating it.”
With those words he peeled the badge from my chest and took it.
It was such a cool badge, though… damn…
“But who are you, Elder?”
“What does it matter who I am?”
“Ah… no… you’re just so strong… and you know about the badge too…”
The old man’s rough hand flew toward my back.
“Ack!”
He slapped me hard between the shoulder blades and said,
“Just an old grandpa.”
Then he looked around.
Scattered across the ground were the corpses of the fiends.
They were not monsters.
The bodies had not vanished on the spot.
“What kind of people would do something like this?”
“What else? Worshipper bastards.”
“What do they worship?”
The old man tapped the pentagram drawn on the ground with his cane and answered,
“Demons.”
“But why did they kidnap me? I’m neither a child nor a virgin…”
That was true. It was different from the sacrificial offerings for demon summoning that I knew of.
“Seems you’ve heard a thing or two. You climbed the Tower, didn’t you? Without using the stones?”
“Yes. I came after defeating the boss.”
“That’s why.”
“Huh?”
When I looked completely lost, the old man explained,
“They must have needed a stronger soul.”
A strong soul… yet I was still weak.
How long had it even been since I left the boss room today, and I had already nearly died again.
Was a soul of my level really a suitable offering?
“I’m weak, though… if you hadn’t saved me today, Elder….”
Seeing me look so dejected, the old man said,
“I don’t know exactly what kind of soul they need either, but a strong soul doesn’t simply mean physical strength.”
He continued,
“Still, the fact that you challenged the fifth floor means you have a somewhat sturdier heart than most people. Don’t be too discouraged.”
At those words I felt a slight pang of guilt.
I had somehow ended up challenging the fifth floor by accident…
But I forced a smile and said,
“Thank you, Elder…”
The old man smiled faintly in return.
“Then let’s clean up.”
He set down his cane, grabbed a fiend corpse by the head, and gestured for me to help.
“Yes!”
Together we fed the bodies one by one into the bonfire.
“But is it all right to do this? Elder, shouldn’t we report it to the village?”
The old man shook his head.
“They’ll find out eventually. If it’s discovered right now, you and I will be the ones under suspicion.”
A sudden realization hit me.
That was right. Fiends were not monsters.
We could easily be branded as murderers—or even as demon worshippers ourselves.
“My thinking was short. Elder, thank you.”
“Right. Then go on.”
“No, Elder. You saved me—at least let me repay you somehow…”
The old man waved me off with an annoyed look on his face.
I felt uneasy about it, but faced with his stubborn refusal I had no choice but to turn my steps toward the village.
“Thank you!!! Elder!!”
I offered one last bow of gratitude.
The old man simply waved back.
Two days later, rumors about demons and their worshippers had already begun spreading through the village.
Word had it that human-shaped bones had been found in the ashes of a burned-out bonfire, along with a goat’s head and a pentagram.
After that, a vigilante group formed in the village.
I went to the restaurant for a meal.
“Steak’s ready~”
I cut into the meat and thought.
Why did Bartier do something like that…?
The steak I had eaten the first time I met her.
Even though she was an elf, she hadn’t been sensitive to the smell of meat—had that been because, as a demon worshipper, she had already harmed so many humans?
But the thing I understood least of all was something else entirely.
It was the tears Bartier had shed at the very end.
Lost in thought, I moved my fork again.
What other reason could there be? They say never trust a woman’s tears!
I took a delicious bite of the steak.