The Poisoned Farewell
The weather had been gloomy all day, and now I knew why. “You spiked it with poison.”
My words made the entire party hall freeze over in icy silence. The moment I’d lifted the glass to my lips, the sweet aroma of liquor had been pierced by a vile stench that stung my nose. Most people wouldn’t have noticed it, masked as it was by all those blended spices. But after cutting down countless demons, it was a smell I could never fail to recognize, no matter how much I might wish otherwise.
“I’d love to see the face of whoever mixed hydra venom into a cocktail.”
I hurled the glass to the floor. The remaining liquid splattered across the tiles alongside shards of glass, and everywhere it touched, thick smoke rose with a foul odor as the surface began to melt.
Despite the dramatic display, the people gathered in the hall didn’t look surprised. They stared at me with pure terror in their eyes. It seemed everyone here, including the one who had poisoned the drink, was in on it. The only person who hadn’t known about the plot to assassinate me was me.
Among them, the priestess who had been blending in with the crowd couldn’t hide her panic. She looked utterly lost.
“Tell me, Eris. You know something, don’t you?”
Saintess Eris. My comrade who had fought beside me to defeat the Demon King. One of the heroes, and the spiritual pillar of our party. She was the one who had united us all under the banner of protecting the world from the demon race.
But something felt wrong. Eris wasn’t the kind of person who could do something like this.
When I calmed my anger for a moment and thought it through, it all made sense. So that was why I had felt uneasy even before the party began. She had known about the conspiracy against me, but the pressure from those old high-ranking clergy had kept her from telling me.
“Let’s move somewhere else.”
“Is that really necessary? It looks like everyone here knows except me. Why don’t I just flip the whole place until someone spills the details?”
“Roen!”
The moment my hand moved toward the hilt of my sword, Eris’s eyes filled with tears. Her voice was desperate.
“Please. Let’s move somewhere else.”
“I’m not in the mood for some long, tragic story. Just get to the point.”
“Roen……”
“Why did you try to kill me!”
Eris pressed her lips tightly together, but tears began to fall from her eyes. Then, in a voice she forced to sound resolute, she said,
“Haa……”
So they weren’t going to kill me, just make me leave? After I had risked my life to defeat the Demon King for the sake of the world, they wanted me to leave? And what did she mean by saying it was for my own good?
Part of me wanted to tear this entire hall apart, starting with the capital itself. But that was impossible with my power alone, without my comrades. I could make those who tried to poison me pay dearly, but I would die in the process too.
The armed guards gripping their weapons were trembling. If I went on a rampage, they would be forced to throw their lives away for the sake of the people sitting at the tables giving orders. They were nothing but pitiful pawns on a chessboard.
At first glance, Eris’s words sounded cruel, but in truth she was giving me a chance to escape while begging me not to cause any unnecessary deaths.
“Fine. I’ll leave.”
I took my hand off the sword hilt. Then I picked up another glass of liquor that was sitting nearby and downed it in one go. Even though it was sweet and fragrant, it tasted only of bitterness. Must have been my mood.
“I swear. I will not return of my own will.”
“Roen, where will you go?”
“Don’t be so naïve. You think I’d say that in front of these bastards?”
To be honest, I was worried about Eris too. There was no way she had orchestrated this. She had probably been pressured by those so-called esteemed superiors and forced to keep her mouth shut. It was obvious she would continue to be used by those black-hearted schemers.
“I’m just going to hole up in some remote countryside village. That’s all you need to know.”
After leaving the party hall, I headed straight out of the city without hesitation. But I could sense several people quietly following me. They were probably waiting until I reached an isolated area before eliminating me.
I stopped, turned around, and spoke.
“Go back. You already know, don’t you? That you can’t kill me anyway.”
“Tsk……!”
Only then did they realize they had been discovered. The assassins wearing black masks surrounded me all at once, weapons drawn.
“Sir Roen, you’re making this difficult for us. We were trying to send you off quietly and painlessly, out of respect for our past bond.”
So they were going to send me off comfortably without pain. How terribly kind of them.
“You’re the ones who can’t read the situation. If it weren’t for Eris, you’d all be dead already. So I’ll say it one last time.”
Once again, my hand moved to the hilt of my sword.
“Go back. And tell them this: I truly will not return, so they can stop worrying. But if you lay a hand on Eris or any of my other comrades,”
It was over in an instant. I drew the sword from my back and swung it powerfully toward the sky.
A moment later, the thick clouds high above split cleanly in two, and the sky cleared to a brilliant blue.
When the assassins saw it, their bodies went limp. They quietly sheathed their weapons.
“I will come back and make sure you regret it.”
“……Everyone, stand down.”
The one who seemed to be the leader of the assassins gave the order to his subordinates. Then he clasped his hands together and bowed deeply and respectfully toward me.
“Thank you for sparing our lives, Sir Roen. However, we cannot simply let you go.”
“What? So you want to try after all?”
When I moved to ready myself again, the leader hurriedly waved his hands and began making excuses.
“Proof! We need proof! Evidence that we inflicted a fatal wound on Sir Roen that would lead to his death!”
This was ridiculous. They had pretended to let me go at the party for the sake of appearances and because of Eris, but they had never intended to let me live in the first place. In that case, vague evidence wouldn’t convince anyone that I was truly dead.
After thinking it over……
“Take it.”
I tossed them my massive greatsword.
“Levatein…? Are you sure about this?”
“It doesn’t matter. I doubt I’ll have any reason to use it anymore. Is that enough?”
“Yes. If we stain Levatein with our blood appropriately, it should serve as sufficient evidence.”
“You guys have it rough too. All because you ended up serving the wrong superiors.”
“I completely agree…… Whoa!”
The leader nearly lost his balance and fell over when he tried to lift Levatein. It was far heavier than a normal greatsword.
“Careful. You’ll end up dead for real while trying to get blood on it.”
In the end, three more assassins had to join in. Even with their combined strength, they barely managed to lift it. Only then did I turn away again.
“I’m leaving now. Oh, and don’t even think about following me. Even without Levatein, I can kill the likes of you without breaking a sweat.”
“We who have lived alongside death are not that foolish.”
The assassins bowed to me once more.
“Farewell, Sir Roen.”
“You guys take care too. And try not to die.”
I already knew where I was headed. The place I had planned to return to when my life finally reached its very end.
But the biggest worry of all gripped me.
What on earth am I supposed to say to Mother when I see her……?
Elver. The village where I was born and raised. I had said I would hide away in some remote corner of the world, but even so, this place was excessively isolated. It took a full two days of walking just to reach the nearest village that held a small market.
Still, perhaps because more than ten years had passed since I left home, the village had changed quite a bit. There were fields so vast it made me wonder if there was enough labor to tend them, and several newly built houses that seemed to match that scale. Things I had never seen before, even facilities and tools I had never encountered in the cities, occasionally caught my eye.
It’s not just strange, it’s downright awe-inspiring. To think people would come to live in such a remote place.
The biggest reason I had left home in the first place was precisely because of how isolated it was. I had grown tired of the excessively quiet and boring rural life.
And the place I finally arrived at was a small, worn-down house. The house I had lived in as a child. Although there were signs of repairs in a few places, aside from that, it looked exactly as I remembered.
The lights were on, smoke was rising from the chimney, and the savory smell of bread filled the air. It seemed someone was living here. There was no guarantee it was Mother, but I took a deep breath anyway and knocked on the door.
“Yeees~!!”
Huh? Had Mother’s voice always been this bright and cheerful? It had been a long time since I last saw her, and she would be quite advanced in years by now. That definitely wasn’t Mother’s voice. Then whose was it? This voice that sounded somehow familiar……?
The door swung open with a refreshing clatter. But the person who opened it for me wasn’t Mother. It was a woman I had never seen before. No, wait. I had thought there was no way she could be here, so I was momentarily confused, but I had definitely met this woman before.
That face. That voice. Hair as red as blazing flames, and eyes of a deep blood-red that no human or elf could possibly possess. My instincts, surging wildly, cleared away my confused mind and told me the truth.
Yes. This woman was……
“The Demon King, Demon King Ilenater!”
I regretted it from the bottom of my bones. I had defeated the Demon King, but I hadn’t finished her off. Why was she hiding in my childhood home? Was she planning to track down and eliminate the heroes who had faced her one by one, then invade the human world again? If so, the world was once again in danger. This disaster was the seed I had sown, so it was only right that I reap it with my own hands!
Without hesitation, I reached for the sword at my back, but……
Huh? Why does it feel so empty? Come to think of it, I didn’t have any weapons on me right now! The fact that I had thrown away my beloved sword only just occurred to me.
But while I was trying to keep my turbulent emotions hidden and act calm, the other party……
“You! You’re finally back?”
Ilenater greeted me with a bright expression, as if she had been waiting for me all this time.
That’s strange? When I returned from defeating the Demon King, no one had welcomed me this warmly. What was going on? What was she scheming?
That was only natural. The Demon King Ilenater I had met and defeated was definitely……
In that moment of carelessness, Ilenater began to laugh with a wicked grin.
“Ehehe, do you know how much I wanted to see you? How long I’ve been waiting for you!”
“I didn’t want to see you again at all.”
“That’s so mean. But……!”
Her blood-red eyes sparkled as Ilenater stretched both arms toward me and rushed forward.
“We finally meet again!”