An Ally Farther Than the Enemy
I descended with care, taking the measure of the field so the demons around me would not notice.
Once I was down, I saw there had been no need. They had already sensed, however dimly, that the Demon King was beaten and that his closest retainers had broken and fled.
"The Demon King has fallen! Flee, and I will not pursue you!"
A single amplification spell was enough to drive off the Demon King's host that had swarmed in. At the news ringing down from above, the army began to file out on foot through the gates posted in every direction.
The soldiers were weaklings who sang the Demon King's praises, but the mages and knights who commanded them were powers in their own right, the likes of true Demons. They owed the Demon King no loyalty, and they had no reason to spend their own men.
Watching that army drain away, I searched the Demon King's Castle for the Hero's power—and found a familiar, filthy strength, and beside it a precarious one, a lamp set before the wind that might gutter out at any moment.
The Demon King isn't dead yet?
He could not have much life left, though. The surest proof was that the power he had granted Bella and Tyrant had vanished.
This can't be mimicry.
He would never abandon every force outside and court that kind of danger merely to deceive me.
I released the isolation. Smashing a window and stepping through, I turned over excuses for why I was still so perfectly intact.
...If I say we only glared at each other until it was over, that ought to do.
He had no justice in him, and no great cause. Unlike the Saintess, obsessed with the extermination of demonkind, he could not have cared less how the war against them went. He could wear a righteous face well enough, but at heart he was a strange man who thought none of it mattered.
Looking back, I had spent five years at his side and still knew nothing of the human being called the Hero. Where had he come from? Quite literally, he had appeared one day out of nowhere and become the hero who would save this world. No one knew his birthplace, or his true name. They only guessed he was a man of some far-off land, because he knew so many peculiar things.
I set the musing aside and looked down the corridor. At the wretched sight that would twist anyone's face, I let my disgust show without restraint.
Blood. Blood. Meat. Blood.
Wherever I turned, the carnage would have suited a butcher's shop better than a castle.
Had he kept a guard even inside these walls? After what I had heard of the lesser demon tribes, I felt a stir of pity even for these misshapen dead.
...Hideous.
I picked my way deeper in, careful to tread on as few corpses as I could.
Just as everything beneath the sun vanishes into the glare until nothing can be seen, the Hero's presence was so vast that his position was, paradoxically, difficult to find. A spell that sought life rather than mana, however, did not care how strong that mana was.
Above.
Only two living things remained inside this castle, and both were in the same place.
Avoiding the bodies, I reached the room where the Hero waited, and—a rare sight—he greeted me with his breathing unsteady.
"You're here. For someone who said he couldn't last ten minutes, you held out quite a while."
"Yes. Because I didn't fight."
"What?"
"The enemy was wary of my magic coming undone if I died. When I told them that lifting the isolation would let you out, Hero, they couldn't bring themselves to attack."
"Ha. So where did those bastards go?"
"They fled. The Demon King was defeated, and his power was gone. They had no reason left to follow him."
"No loyalty in them at all."
I had thrown the words together on the spot, but the Hero swallowed every one of them without a shadow of suspicion.
"Where'd they run?"
"I don't know."
"Tsk. Useless."
Even if I knew, I wouldn't tell him. Bastard.
"By the way, Hero, your holy sword—where is..."
I had been glancing aside to escape that sharp gaze when I noticed the holy sword was not in his hand. Holy sword in name alone—nothing more than a blade the Church had blessed—but it was the Hero's symbol all the same. Wondering whether it had snapped in the fight, I asked, and he pointed wordlessly toward the back of the room.
"......"
A middle-aged man lay collapsed there in a wretched heap, the holy sword driven through his chest.
At a glance he looked like an ordinary human. Most demonkind bore some mark of their race—horns, wings—and he had none. Or perhaps he once had. His chest was pierced, his arms and legs were gone, and his abdomen had not been spared either. Even if wings or horns had been there, they could not have kept their shape through a struggle this violent.
"...Remarkable. And yet, to my eyes, he still seems to be breathing."
"He's about to die anyway. What does it matter? You finish him, if you want. Shall we get going?"
"Going where?"
"Gotta catch the demons that ran. I got a look from the side. One of them seemed like a woman."
"......"
It seemed I had badly underestimated the Hero's talent for detecting women. He had flown all the way to the castle in the literal blink of an eye, and in that brief instant he had still managed to spot Bella.
"...They fled in different directions, Hero, and a good deal of time has already passed. Not knowing which of the two is the woman, which would you even chase?"
"...What?"
"There is no need to do it now. And at present, are there not any number of more important matters? Your marriage to the princesses, for instance."
When we undertook this campaign, each of us had a promise from the king. The Hero's was marriage to the king's two daughters. Mine was a domain, and investiture as a count.
No one knew the princesses' beauty better than the Hero. Perhaps recalling hers after so long, he smacked his lips as if hesitating.
"Must you fixate on demons you may not even be able to catch? If word of this got out in the first place, every finger would point at you."
"You threatening to snitch on me?"
"Perish the thought. I don't have lives to spare—would I dare? But what of the Saintess?"
"......"
"You know better than anyone how violently she loathes demonkind. The succubus Jessie. You remember her?"
Jessie was a succubus who had wagged her tail at the Hero, and had her skull crushed by the Saintess's hand for it. Perhaps recalling that day, the Hero knit his brow and let out a long sigh.
"Yeah. That crazy bitch might actually do it. If only she weren't the type who never looks before she leaps..."
"In any case, the priority now is to return in triumph with the Demon King's head. Rather than leave things as they are, let us summon all of your lovers to this castle."
"Summon them?"
"Symbolism is what matters in a thing like this. Cutting off the Demon King's head where I alone can see it carries less weight than doing so before every eye, does it not?"
"...True. Even you manage to say something right, once in a while."
Was he picturing the moment he would take the Demon King's head in style, with all of them watching? The corners of his mouth looked ready to reach his ears. Pandering to him more than necessary turned my stomach, but if it meant letting those two go, then so be it.
Who would have thought that people I had known for less than a day would come to matter more than those I had spent three years beside?
I scoured the room clean with magic, then called the Hero's lovers with a summoning spell. They were startled at first, but the moment they heard the Demon King had been brought down, they smiled.
"Magnificent, Hero."
"What a glorious deed! At last we can bring good news to His Holiness, who lies awake every night!"
"So we get to go home! Yes!"
Each congratulation carried its speaker's character. A warm little mood was just about to settle—leaving me out of it—when Princess Melia spoke up without warning.
"I sense a great deal of mana outside. Are there still remnants nearby?"
"Hm?"
"Enemy soldiers remain outside. The Demon King has fallen, and his lieutenants have fled. The soldiers are running as well, but there are so many of them that some seem to have been left behind."
"What?!"
The three of them started, though honestly I saw nothing worth that much alarm. With Bella and Tyrant gone, no amount of rabble could stand against us. Before that, they would not even think of trying. Lieutenants fled, lord defeated—what foot soldier would have the nerve to face the Hero?
"There is no need to worry. Even if they all rush in at once, it will mean nothing."
I had already isolated the room. Unless someone of the Demon King's caliber arrived, or a mage on my level, no one could force a way in. I explained it briefly, so that even the three of them—laymen where magic was concerned—could follow.
"I see. Then that must be it."
"Whatever else one might say, Lord Elang has never once been wrong. Leaving demons alive does nag at me a little, but..."
Melia accepted it, and the Saintess—perhaps because the Hero was right there—was swallowing her discontent, when Karin suddenly put herself forward.
"There are still grunts left? What was Elang doing while the Hero was fighting?"
Her face was far too calm for fear. It held nothing but irritation.
"I was locked in a standoff with the Demon King's lieutenants, so I had no room to spare for the rabble. And if the Demon King had fallen, there was a chance the Hero was wounded as well..."
"You call that an answer?!"
What, exactly, was the problem? Even when I added to the explanation, Karin would not let her anger go, accusing me of talking in circles. Even the Saintess, who despised demonkind, looked ready to accept it and move on. Only Karin would not.
"Pfft."
I understood why the moment I saw the Hero laughing beside her.
Karin was stroking his ego—the ego of a man who had been quietly sulking because the princess and the Saintess had praised me.
"...I'm sorry."
Realizing this was not a thing reason could settle, I dropped at once into a low posture, and, as always, repeated nothing but apologies until the Hero's petty pride was satisfied.
"Karin, that's enough, isn't it? Even Elang's allowed a mistake once in a while."
"Well, if the Hero says so..."
About five minutes in, perhaps growing bored of it himself, the Hero stepped forward to mediate.
"Hah..."
The headache. The headache was coming on. Whenever Karin and the Hero trampled my pride, a vicious one always descended to torment me.
"Elang. Be more careful from now on."
"That's right. However pressed you were, you mustn't leave demons behind."
"All of you, enough. More importantly, it's time to finish this."
While the two of them belatedly piled on—pandering even as they reproached me—the Hero approached the Demon King. One might expect some respect for an opponent fought to the death, but he looked no more moved than if he had knocked down a street thug.
He drew the sword planted in the Demon King's chest. The man groaned and coughed up a great gout of blood, and it was astonishing that he was still alive at all. The holy sword rose high, then came down on a slant across his neck. No miracle intervened—no spell to stop the blade, no comrade rushing in—and the Demon King's head fell.
That was the end. Without any reversal, and in a sense far too emptily, his life was cut short.
"Waaaaah!"
A cheer went up. I did not see who raised it, but it was probably the Saintess or Karin.
Dead...
I even cast a life-sensing spell, and in the moment I confirmed that the Demon King was truly, completely dead—
"You have labored long and well. My Hero."
It appeared.