On Being Exiled at the Demon King's Doorstep
The Hero's Party had reached the Demon King's Castle. Cross the single small mountain before our eyes, and slitting the Demon King's throat on the way back would be nothing at all. We were the strongest Hero's Party alive, after all.
And now? After all this?
"Sorry, but you're going to have to leave the Hero's Party, Kyle."
Riel, our leader and the Hero, said it as she stepped into my path. Golden hair spilled down over silver armor, and she looked every bit the princess knight out of a fairy tale.
"And what fresh, inventive bullshit is this supposed to be?"
"Please don't speak so vulgarly. This is a decision we reached only after careful deliberation."
Iris, the Saint, slipped out from behind Riel to add her voice. In her nun's habit, she fidgeted with the rosary nestled in her silver hair. It had been a long time since that shy, timid little thing opened her mouth at all. Whatever this was, it was shaping up to be a seriously earnest conversation.
"They're calling it 'we.' You're on board with this too, Lapis?"
"Well... I guess?"
Lapis the Archmage—blue hair in twin tails, a brimmed hat on her head—answered without much interest. She stretched long, as if her whole body were heavy with languor, and made a point of not meeting my eyes. The three of them throwing fits on their own was nothing new. Coming at me like this, all of one mind, was not. I was starting to lose any feel for what new frequency of bullshit they'd tuned in.
"So the three of you mean to cut me from the party with the Demon King's Castle sitting right in front of us?"
"Yes, Kyle. We all weighed this carefully. I'd like you to go along with it."
The other two nodded as if in agreement.
"You've lost it. You've actually lost it."
Even hysteria has its limits, and this had crossed the line. Fury climbed all the way to the crown of my head. I raked a rough hand back through my hair.
"Are the lot of you actually in your right minds? Did you all swallow the wrong drugs together? I've been cleaning up after every last one of you this whole time, and now you can't see a thing in front of your faces?"
We had a single step left. One pace forward, and vast wealth and honor—the peace of the world itself—would be in our hands. And now, out of nowhere, they meant to smash a perfectly sound party and throw me out? Unless the Demon King's Army had brainwashed them, they couldn't possibly say a thing like that.
"Don't tell me this is because you don't want to split the reward, you lot."
"That isn't the reason, Kyle."
"I am not a materialistic person like you."
"Uh. I do think it's a little bit of a waste, though."
The Hero, the Saint, and the Archmage each denied me, and each for a different reason. They hadn't been brainwashed, and if money wasn't the point, then what in the world was? My thoughts snarled into a knot. I pressed a hand to my brow against the ache.
"Then why are you doing this to me."
I was so wronged I nearly shouted, and I swallowed it only just. In a moment like this, losing my temper would only cost me.
"Ha... what?"
"Your ability is trash. So we're throwing you out of the party. It's all you've got, isn't it?"
I doubted my own ears. Riel, though, looked entirely sure of herself. She gazed down at me with a face that was righteous and unashamed, worthy of the name Hero, and the sight of it turned my stomach.
"You don't think we made it this far because of that ability?"
The power I carried, Curse Immunity, nullified every curse aimed at me and every curse within a set radius. Because of it, we had slipped the dream fiends that crossed into our sleep to lay their charm, and we had stayed safe from the black mages who dulled the body or cast curses of decay. I had even carried them through a hallucinatory labyrinth that took other parties a month or more, and I had done it in two days. And this was the treatment I got in return. The sheer nerve of it.
"Without me, you wouldn't even have gotten this far."
"No. Even if you hadn't been here, Kyle, we would certainly have defeated the Demon King."
Riel cut me off as cleanly as a blade.
"I'll admit the ability helped us. But all it did was make the road of our adventure a little more comfortable. Which is to say we'd have had no trouble without it."
This time she patted my shoulder, as if she meant to persuade me. Far from persuaded, I only grew angrier.
"No trouble without it, is that what you're saying...?"
I smiled, thin and unpleasant, and pointed at the book in Lapis's hands. The cover bore a grotesque face. It was a cursed grimoire—the Necronomicon. With the grimoire I had brought her, Lapis had become an Archmage.
"You think that lazy lump, the one who does nothing but sleep, would've become an Archmage without me?"
"What are you even saying... I would've managed just fine without you. Probably..."
The blow had landed. Irritation crossed Lapis's face. She yanked her brimmed hat down hard and turned away from me.
"And what about her."
This time I pointed at Iris, hiding behind Riel's back.
"A fake Saint who can't even properly cast a single holy spell with any power to purify. Do you have any idea how much we saved on holy water because I was there in her place?"
"That is rude... Kyle!"
"I can afford to be a little rude to you. You're supposed to be the Saint, and a demon cursed you so badly you cried through nightmares every night. Don't you remember? It all cleared up because you stayed next to me."
Whatever she found so heartbreaking about that, tears welled at the corners of Iris's eyes. Unbelievable. Who here actually had the right to feel hurt?
"Even after the curse lifted, you sobbed every single night, and I was the one who calmed you down. You'd wake at dawn too scared to go to the bathroom alone, so I went with you every time, instead of these two."
Shame, maybe, flushed Iris's face, and she glared at me as if she meant to kill me. A coward who usually resembled a small animal—even like this, she wasn't frightening in the least.
"And you. Are you really going to be all right?"
Last of all was the Hero, Riel Ballenhart. My eyes went to the sword at her hip. Demon Sword Gram, which had no business hanging on a Hero who claimed to pursue justice, flaunted its baleful shape.
House Ballenhart was a ducal house that had produced exceptional Heroes generation after generation, but not every child born to it carried a Hero's gift. Riel Ballenhart was the proof of it. Unable to so much as properly take up the Holy Sword, she had been treated as a fake.
To that half-made Hero, I had offered another choice: a demon sword. And that choice, in the end, had made Riel a true Hero, admired by every citizen of the kingdom.
"You're really telling me there's no problem at all?"
"There isn't."
I had asked in earnest. What came back was a careless scrap of an answer.
"Ha... sure. Not a problem in the world. You think you've become something? You think you can see the Hero's quest through without me?"
"Yes."
Riel shoved me, hard and irritable. I couldn't brace against a Hero's strength. My body dropped to the ground in a ridiculous heap.
"It's all right, Kyle. Even without you."
The eyes looking down on me were cold past enduring. Damn it. This felt like absolute shit. Powerlessness seemed to break over my whole body, from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet.
If I had followed my heart, I would have turned my back on them—I don't need a party like this—and walked away. But we had come too far for that. I couldn't quit, if only because everything I had built up until now would be too great a waste.
Even if it makes me look pathetic, I can't give up here.
I had held out all the way to this point. Right. Once. I would lower my head just this once.
"Hey, Riel. We've come all this way. Can't you just take me with you this one time?"
For something said by the only man in the Hero's Party, it was abject beyond words.
"I'm sorry, but no."
"I'm begging you."
Once more. A single time would be enough. If I could only reach the Demon King's Castle with this party, I was sure I could bring back the Demon King's head. At last I would set a period at the end of this long, long story. That alone would do. All I needed was the knowledge that I had worked, and that I had seen the adventure through. Money and honor weren't things I particularly needed. World peace? That had nothing to do with me either. They called it a Hero's quest, but in truth it was no different from a war between nations. If anything, it might have been better for everyone if the Heroes never invaded the Demon King's Castle at all.
Even so. Having come this far, I had to see the end.
Being looked down on by these people was shitty enough. Watching every effort I had poured in come to nothing was worse by a margin I couldn't measure. How long had I rolled in the dirt like a dog for the sake of bringing the Demon King down? The soil I had eaten alone would fill an entire athletic field. And the way I had catered to the party members' every whim like a handmaid—by now I was skilled enough to take work as a maid or a butler and live quite comfortably off it.
"Even so, no."
Riel's voice was firm. The eyes she turned down on me were strangely gentle, and a shade of pity lay in her tone.
"You... cra—"
What the hell is this crazy bitch saying.
I was too dumbfounded for the rest of it to leave my mouth. Set those three aside—they had already left the realm of ordinary people—and I was a power ranked among the ten strongest in the kingdom. I barely steadied my breath and tried to go on.
"Cr—crazy— no. Wait. You actually think that?"
"Yes. Kyle is weak. Your physical ability doesn't stray far from an ordinary person's, and above all, you rely far too much on cursed armaments. The way I see it, keep on like that and you'll die soon."
It was a bitter thing to admit, but I truly had no talent. Because of that, both my body and my technique fell well short of the geniuses. Even so, I had believed I'd reached the furthest limit an ordinary person could reach. In Riel's eyes, it seemed, that still wasn't enough. I had covered the stats I lacked by relying on cursed armaments, and now and then a gap opened and I came within a breath of dying. Once or twice, at most. Spend any time on a battlefield, and things of that sort happened constantly.
I looked up at her, ready to make my case. She answered only with silence, and with eyes that had settled, heavy and low. There was no point in speaking further. It is not easy to turn the heart of someone who has closed their ears, looked away, and already passed judgment—and if that someone is the Hero, Riel Ballenhart, it is harder still. I did not think I could persuade her. Not by any means I had.
"So this is as far as it goes..."
I squeezed my eyes shut and, in the quiet of my heart, made my farewell to the party small enough to keep. In the end, all I could do was give up.
"Fine. I'll leave the party. In exchange, hand over every cursed armament you're carrying."
If I was going, I would take everything there was to take.