The City Is the Bait
The Hero stood on the verge of finding the Black Archmage hidden among the refugees.
But let us rewind the clock a little.
Shrrk—
In a single instant, the Demon King's soldier blocking the path lost its head.
The Hero flicked the blood from his blade and swept his gaze across the burning street. Against expectation, the adventurers and city guard still fighting back were slowly gaining the upper hand, and the situation was improving bit by bit.
Setting aside the losses from those who hadn't managed to evacuate during the initial ambush, the odds of the city actually falling were slim.
And yet—
"Something about this is strange."
"Wh-what do you m-mean by that?"
"The attack has no visible purpose. For a sudden strike on a city like this, it's far too..."
The Hero began to answer the voice that had come from behind him, then turned around to face its owner.
"You followed me?"
A trace of emotion, however slight, had slipped into his usual gentle tone.
"Y-yes...! Even if I c-can't join your p-party... I w-wanted to h-help somehow..."
The Mage, assuming that faint edge was irritation, answered with timid hesitation.
But the Hero seemed to find her answer far from unwelcome. He regarded her for a moment, then turned back toward the flames.
"Then stay close to me."
"...Y-yes! H-Hero...! Hehe... hehehe..."
Joy blossomed across the Mage's face for an instant before she caught herself, matched her expression to the gravity of their surroundings, gripped her staff tight, and steeled herself for the battle at hand.
"S-so... what did you m-mean earlier, when you said things were s-strange?"
The moment a lull gave them room to breathe, the Mage asked again.
The Hero scanned the burning street, took a moment to organize his thoughts, and answered.
"Every action has a cause and an effect."
"However trivial the act, something must have set it in motion."
Just then, a monster came charging from across the alley with its weapon raised. The Hero didn't so much as break stride as he swung his sword.
Shrrk—
The monster's head rolled across the ground.
The stroke was so effortless it looked as though he had casually swatted away a sheet of paper that happened to flutter past his face.
"This attack is no different. If they struck the city, they must be trying to accomplish something."
The Hero flicked the blood from his blade and continued in a level voice.
"If the goal were plunder, they'd be ransacking for food, weapons, and valuables."
"If conquest, they'd have moved to seize the gates, the administration office, the armory first."
"If slaughter, they'd have blocked the civilians' escape routes and targeted the squares and shelters where people gather."
"And if retrieval, they'd have made straight for whatever person, object, or stronghold they'd lost."
At that moment, the Saintess came hurrying into view from down the street. The Hero had sent her off separately just before they left the inn, asking her to confirm the City Administrator's whereabouts. As she drew near, he asked at once.
"Saintess. Did you find the Administrator?"
"No... I thought he might be under the guard's protection, so I checked the administration office and the watch posts too... He wasn't anywhere."
"...Understood. Thank you for your efforts."
The Hero gave his short reply and turned his eyes back to the street. The Demon King's Army was still smashing buildings and setting fires.
And yet they hadn't touched the food stalls left toppled in the road. There was no movement toward the armory or the administration office. They hadn't blocked the routes civilians were using to flee, nor concentrated their attacks on any single location.
"As you can see, the Demon King's Army isn't trying to secure anything right now."
the Hero said quietly.
"They're simply spreading chaos across the entire city."
"Wh-what does that... mean?"
the Mage asked carefully.
The Saintess, too, turned back to the burning street and furrowed her brow.
"You mean taking the city isn't the point?"
"That's correct."
The Hero nodded.
"It's highly likely that sowing the chaos itself is the purpose."
But the Mage still didn't fully understand, tilting her head in confusion. The Hero looked at her for a moment, then spoke.
"Let me give you an example. Do you remember the orcs that raided your village?"
The Mage's face froze instantly, and the Hero added quickly,
"I apologize for dredging up painful memories. But do you remember what they searched for first?"
"Th-that was..."
Her lips trembled. The question might as well have been tearing the wound back open, and tears welled up despite herself. But she decided she couldn't stay silent when the Hero had asked her directly, and began fitting the pieces of the puzzle together in her mind one by one. Reaching through her scattered memories, she answered.
"F-food...! They were l-looking for things to eat."
The Hero gave a light nod, as if she'd answered correctly.
"They had likely run short of supplies on the march. So they raided the nearest village to make up the difference."
He turned his gaze back to the battlefield before them.
"But the Demon King's Army here shows no movement toward acquiring anything at all."
They took no food. They seized no weapons. They made no attempt to occupy the city, and none to kill its people efficiently. Despite committing a force that was far from small, all they did was shake the city with noise and fire.
Which left only one possibility.
They were not trying to draw something out of the city.
They were trying to lure something into it.
The Hero closed his eyes briefly.
A being that must be drawn here, even at the cost of sacrificing a considerable force.
A target that must be eliminated or captured, even if it means using an entire city as bait.
The one existence the Demon King's Army resents most of all.
He was no fool.
The answer came easily.
Himself.
The Hero slowly opened his eyes.
"Saintess. Mage. From this point on, I need your help watching for anyone behaving suspiciously or standing out in any way."
""Yes!""
The two girls began listening intently to his every word. They didn't hesitate. They didn't question.
"The adventurers, mercenaries, and city guard are excluded."
The Hero continued his calm explanation even as he held back the tide of oncoming monsters.
"Most of the adventurers and mercenaries fighting on this street were part of our temporary party until just recently, so I remember every one of their faces."
"The guard has identity verification and a chain of command besides, so an outsider couldn't easily slip in among them."
The Hero's sword slid past the shaft of a monster's spear and ran it through the chest.
"And if our target had approached openly as one of the Demon King's Army, a fight would have broken out long before he ever got near me."
Withdrawing his blade, the Hero looked down the street where the refugees were streaming away.
"Therefore, the ones we must scrutinize are the civilians."
The Saintess found herself staring at his back.
Why does he know these tricks so well?
He was assuming scenarios of someone concealing their identity and closing in with a familiarity that was far too natural.
But this was no time to ask. The Saintess pressed her lips together and turned her attention to her surroundings.
While the Hero held back the Demon King's Army and bought them time, the Saintess and the Mage took opposite sides of the street and began studying the refugees.
Countless people were pouring out into the road, fleeing the flames and the black smoke. A woman running with a child sobbing in her arms. A merchant burdened under bundle after bundle, urging his family onward. Young men carrying a wounded man between them at a run. Even an old woman clutching the hand of a terrified, crying child as she pushed through the crowd. Every one of them moved to survive, each wearing their own expression, their own gestures of desperation.
It was among them that the Saintess spotted a few suspicious figures.
"Those people..."
They were seizing the chaos as an opportunity — looting fallen shops and stuffing the goods into their clothes, or quietly slipping abandoned luggage into their own bundles. Among them were faces that, mere hours ago, had been trading jabs about her and the Hero behind their backs.
The Saintess's teeth clenched on their own.
I have to protect even people like that?
Cynicism boiled up inside her — but at least none of them had anything to do with the Demon King's Army. She forced her anger back down and resumed scanning the crowd.
The Mage, meanwhile, was trying to watch everyone all at once, and a faint dizziness was creeping over her.
E-everyone looks suspicious...
Some people wailed far too loudly. Others, paralyzed by terror, wore no expression at all. Judging by appearances alone, she couldn't tell performance from the real thing.
"Nnngh..."
Worst of all, her own past kept surfacing, making her shudder. It was only natural — the Mage had not yet fully overcome her memories of that day.
And then, she happened to look down at the staff she had been gripping so tightly.
The massive crystal set into its head. A magical tool — look at your target through the crystal, and you could see the mana flowing through your surroundings and the magic dwelling within objects and people alike.
The Mage hesitated a moment. She had tried it a few times before, but had never grown fully comfortable with it.
Still, if this was the only thing she could do right now, there was no reason not to try.
She began looking at the refugees through the crystal, one by one.
The mana of the terrified churned violently. A runner's mana rippled in time with their breath and heartbeat; in the wounded, the flow sputtered and broke at irregular intervals. The mana of a woman who had lost her child shuddered in every direction, on the verge of collapse.
Every person was different. But every flow matched the emotions and physical state showing on the surface.
And then one figure passed within the crystal.
"...Huh?"
A coat stained with blood and soot. An arm wrapped in bandages. A gait that staggered as though its owner might collapse at any moment — on the outside, an ordinary wounded man you could find anywhere.
But the mana was wrong.
Far, far too calm.
None of the telltale traces of injury. None of the trembling of fear. Even as screams erupted around him and fire clawed at the sky, the mana within his body flowed with a steadiness that chilled the blood.
It wasn't peace.
It looked as though someone had forcibly crushed it flat so it would not waver.
His words and bearing, and the flow of his mana, matched not at all.
The Mage's eyes flew wide open.
"H-Hero! Over there...!"
Without a moment's hesitation, she pointed at someone in the crowd of refugees.
The Hero didn't ask why. But neither did he condemn the person outright on the Mage's word alone. He simply began walking toward them.
Seeing the Hero approach, the figure hunched further into itself like an wounded civilian. The distance between them closed rapidly.
Five steps. Three steps. One.
The Hero's hand found the hilt of his sword.
By the time the figure realized something had gone wrong, it was already too late.
Shrrk—!
The blade left its sheath and came slashing down in a diagonal arc.
"What the hell—!"
The figure threw both arms up on pure reflex.
KAANG—!
A transparent barrier bloomed out of empty air, and blade met wall with a jarring, metallic shriek.
In the same instant, the transformation spell holding the guise of an ordinary citizen warped and buckled. The blood-soaked coat and bandages blurred away like melting wax, and beneath them appeared a black robe and a pallid face.
The Black Archmage shrieked in pure irritation.
"Goddammit — how the hell did you catch me!"
Bullseye.
"Y-you're telling me the Hero swings a sword at a civilian without a shred of hesitation?!"
The Black Archmage seethed from behind his barrier.
The Hero sheathed his sword and answered flatly.
"I wasn't swinging in earnest."
"Wh... what?"
"The angle was such that even if you hadn't defended, I'd have done no more than slice the hem of your coat."
The Black Archmage's eyes tracked the arc of the blade still caught against his barrier — and found that the stroke had never been aimed squarely at his body from the start. Without the barrier, the blade would have slid outward, cutting through nothing but the trailing edge of the coat. It was a trajectory skewed just subtly enough that a closer look would have given it away. But the Black Archmage had cast his defensive spell without a moment's thought to spare.
Exposing his own mana — and shattering his own disguise along with it.
"You... you tricked me!"
The Hero didn't so much as blink.
"Says the man who orchestrated this attack."
The Hero settled into his stance. The screening was complete — there was no longer any reason to hold back.
Faced with the Hero's posture, coiled as though to lunge at any moment, the Black Archmage weighed teleporting away on the spot.
But.
I'll be damned if I run...!
He had acted entirely on his own initiative, without informing the other Heavenly Kings — or even the Demon King himself. If that came to light, it was only a matter of time. Should he fail now and slink back, he knew exactly how the others would sneer. And above all, the pride of the Black Archmage — a man devoted to the pursuit of truth — was at stake.
"Haah... well, I've already been found out. The plan, the ambush — it's all wasted effort now anyway."
The Black Archmage released the mana he had been concealing until this very moment.
"...!"
The sheer density of the explosively swelling mana alone drove the Hero backward. Rolling across the ground and righting himself, he looked up to see the Black Archmage standing atop the air itself, a sinister grimoire unfurled in one hand — reigning there like a being worthy of his name.
As if to prove his pretense was over, every trace of blood, soot, and bandaging had vanished from his body like a mirage. The man who had traded in light words moments ago now radiated an arrogance and power matched by no one.
"I am the vanguard of the Demon King's Army — one of the Four Heavenly Kings, and a seeker of the truth of all things."
"The Black Archmage."
"As of this moment, I hereby begin my research into the existence known as 'the Hero.'"
The battle was only now beginning.