The Hero's Party Sets Out to Turn Back the World! (2)
After the secret departure ceremony—attended only by the emperor, a handful of his closest aides, and our parents, whom the emperor had secretly invited as a special favor—the hero's party set out on its journey. It was a distant road from which we could not return until the Demon King had been defeated.
Whether the emperor had kept silent or not, my parents seemed unaware of my true abilities. To my father, who looked as if he could not believe it, I could only answer with a lonely, "...It just turned out that way."
When I glanced back one last time beyond the city gates, my father’s lips were quivering and my mother was sobbing. The fact that their daughter had become a hero probably meant nothing to them. All I saw was the grief crushing their shoulders at the thought that this might be a journey from which we would never return. I forced myself to turn away from their unturning heads and clutched the clock hidden against my chest.
Even though we were called the hero’s party, what we actually did was closer to irregular warfare—special operatives. We were a small squad that moved through areas where large-scale clashes between the allied forces and the Demon King’s army were rare, slipping through the gaps. We were assassins tasked with special operations: infiltrating forests and mountains too difficult for armies to traverse, reaching regions where the Demon King frequently appeared, and eliminating him or his lieutenants directly.
It was brutal work. If any creature tainted by the Demon King’s magic discovered us, we could not let a single one escape. We could not allow the Demon King to learn of our existence. …Even if that creature was human.
We often fought the monsters that had always lived in the forests and the sheer cliffs of the rugged mountains, but we just as frequently encountered humans who had turned to the Demon King’s side or the devils directly under his command. The journey was so harsh that my completely untrained body made me something of a burden to the party.
That was to be expected the moment a mage joined the group. Aside from a few basic sword forms I had learned at university, I had never trained my body at all. We were the sort who were far more skilled with a pen than with our feet.
Still, we had to keep going. Massaging soles that felt ready to split open, soothing backs that felt ready to snap, we climbed mountains, crossed rivers, and leapt over tree roots. Not for the emperor or the empire, but so that no more wounded soldiers would be carried into the hospitals. We stuck exclusively to forested areas that concealed our movements and chose mountain paths with no trails at all, heading steadily north.
The journey was not boring. Even in places said to have no villages—or even a single farmhouse—within dozens of kilometers, we encountered people easily. Though whether they could truly be called people was another question. In reality, we only met things that had once been people. Just like now, for instance.
Mervin the elf, walking at the front, turned silently and pressed a finger to his lips. At that signal, everyone stopped. Soon, even our ears—not just Mervin’s sensitive elven ones—picked up the sound of movement. The clink of armor and weapons. It was the Demon King’s army.
Though they were called the Demon King’s army, their main force consisted of humans. Or rather, things that had once been human. They were still shaped like humans, but strange light glowed from their eyes and their veins had turned pitch black. They staggered about as if they had lost all reason, yet the moment they spotted us the entire horde would charge as one. Soulless soldiers whose bodies had grown to twice the size of normal men. These were beings directly corrupted by the Demon King’s magic.
Even in these forests, which held little military value, the Demon King’s patrols roamed in large numbers. A normal army would have stationed troops only where necessary, but the Demon King’s forces had no need for such restraint. Anyone corrupted by his magic—whether they had once been a farmer or a potter—had their bodies strengthened enough to fight. They never tired and never knew hunger. Within the Demon King’s territory, every single inhabitant was effectively a combatant. It meant he could throw every last one of them into battle. Perhaps he was even forcibly accelerating the growth of boys and girls to send them to the front lines.
And we had to kill every corrupted human we encountered. We could not leave behind any being that might report our movements to the Demon King.
“Kaaaaaaaah!!!”
Whenever that happened, the first to charge forward with a piercing war cry was the dwarf warrior Kadros, his entire body encased in steel armor so thick that not a sliver of skin showed.
With a shield the size of his own body in one hand and a massive axe with an equally enormous blade in the other, Kadros hurtled forward like a meteor without the slightest hesitation. The sight filled me with awe. I had once tried lifting that shield and axe during a night camp, but with my poorly developed frame I could barely drag them a few centimeters.
“Chop up and die, you stinking trash bastards! Kaji at-dira an dalumek!!!”
Mixing in words that were completely unintelligible yet clearly dwarven curses at least ninety percent of the time, Kadros easily sliced in half corrupted humans three times his size. Sometimes he cut them horizontally, spilling their guts; other times he split them vertically, letting their brains leak out. It was not a pleasant sight, but I could only marvel at that strength. Given the nature of our work, I had already grown somewhat accustomed to the sight of people being crushed.
Dwarves were fond of making all sorts of mechanical devices but disliked magic, I had heard. Kadros was a pure warrior who knew nothing of magical tricks. That was hardly a weakness, however.
He would boast whenever he had the chance that the weapons he used were forged from dwarven meteor-iron alloy—an imitation of the exact composition extracted from a meteorite—and that they were mass-produced in a fully automated, rational smelting furnace. He had every right to take pride in his equipment. When that gear combined with the immense strength unique to dwarves, the resulting combat prowess was dazzling.
In the middle of the fight, a sharp clang rang out. Several corrupted humans had finally noticed Kadros’s surprise attack and were launching a coordinated counteroffensive. Swords and axes flew at him. His thick shield, made of solid metal, blocked every blow with a single motion. Thanks to the heavy weight of the full-body steel armor, Kadros did not budge an inch even after blocking more than a dozen strikes.
Once Kadros had drawn their attention completely, an ear-splitting roar erupted. The thunderous boom, shockwave, and subsequent painful ringing in my ears made me grimace. The moment the noise subsided, a bold and thunderous shout rang out.
“Battle is good. It is enjoyable! Glazalus will kill them all! More than the dwarf!”
And he did exactly that. Paying no mind to the fact that we were right beside him, the ogre Glazalus had fired his cannon—nearly as tall as he was—at point-blank range. The scrap-metal grapeshot swept the lightly armored enemies away like a broom. All that remained were a few high-ranking foes clad in heavy armor.
“Damn beer-barrel head!! I got hit too, you stupid ogre bastard!”
Even though he had been hit, Glazalus’s grapeshot had failed to leave so much as a scratch on that magnificent armor. “Glazalus is wise. I knew it would! Dwarf armor blocks everything!! Then all is well!”
Glazalus paid no attention to Kadros’s complaints and charged forward powerfully. He was not as fast as Kadros, but his enormous body—large enough to make the corrupted humans look like children—was so imposing that even an elephant would have fled. The ground shook with every step of his crudely made yet absurdly thick iron plate and scale armor.
I had heard that a goblin merchant caravan visiting Glazalus’s tribe had boasted of their craftsmanship, so he had ordered them to melt down every scrap of bronze they possessed to make that cannon. In exchange, he had given them several head of livestock. Since it was a trade between a slow-witted ogre and cunning goblins, the goblins had probably profited far more, but the cannon had certainly done its job.
When an ogre’s monstrous strength swung that barrel with all its might, heavy armor meant nothing. Corrupted humans flew through the air, armor crumpled, and slammed into trees. Thanks to their magic-tainted armor they did not die in a single blow, but they were incapacitated—knocked unconscious or left groaning in agony. They would be pounded into minced meat by the ogre’s fists while still inside their armor, and the shattered fragments would become ammunition for the next volley of scrap-metal grapeshot.
“Little one!”
Kadros called me “little one” even though I was a head taller than he was. And the fact that Kadros—who should have been wholly focused on his own fight—had called out to me could only mean…
It was an emergency.
I whipped my head around and spotted a Demon King’s soldier bursting from between the trees, charging straight at me.
Tch… There were more in the rear.
I desperately recalled the swordsmanship I had learned at university and drew my one-handed blade meant for self-defense. With a sharp clang, the enemy’s sword clashed against mine.
The swordsmanship instructor said the cross-guard side, near the root of the blade, is the “strong part”… Remembering those tedious lessons, I held the swords together for about a second. The opponent began pressing down with brute force, trying to overpower me and cut all the way through. The instant I felt the pressure, I angled my blade and let the force slide off to the side. With a body far smaller than average—practically the size of a child—I could never win a contest of strength. My only choice was to use technique to strike at the enemy’s weakness.
Damn it… I was supposed to cut the moment I deflected the attack.
I had also been taught that anyone who moved the sword stiffly, thinking instead of letting the body move naturally, was an amateur. Naturally, I was the amateur. With half-baked swordsmanship that had not yet become part of my muscle memory, I could not subdue an opponent who was trying to kill me. The soldier recovered from his collapsed stance and swung his sword again.
Tch…
But that sword never reached me; it was severed in two. The cross-section of the blackened iron blade the Demon King’s soldier had wielded glowed with incandescent light, then gradually cooled and turned red.
“Get away from our delicious-smelling—no, our precious mage, you trash!”
Azalea the saint, her entire body wreathed in sacred flames, thrust out a hand wrapped in holy fire with an expression full of fury. It was that hand that had snapped the blade aimed at me. Azalea had not even touched the greatsword on her back; with a single gesture she had reduced the Demon King’s combatant to ashes, along with the seven other soldiers who had been rushing in behind him.
“It may be unfamiliar to you, but you must learn how to protect yourself, Kaira. We cannot always be there to save you. Though I must admit, the more things I get to burn, the more fun it is.”
The saint’s face was smiling as brightly as the flames that enveloped her body. A hint of madness glinted in her eyes.
How can a woman this battle-crazed possibly be a saint…?
While entertaining such pointless thoughts, I focused on the battle that was not yet over. Beyond the enemies Azalea had incinerated, another wave of weapons and armor was surging toward us. This time I opened my spellbook and concentrated properly.
My professors had said that no matter how chaotic the situation, no matter how many distractions there were, a mage must remain calm. One needed a sharp mind to verify whether the formula, gestures, incantation, and logical structure were complete; whether the reagents and catalysts required for difficult spells were all present; and whether the magical circulation system was functioning correctly.
A faint light rose from the spellbook and scattered the formula I had drawn in charcoal.
“Hoo.”
I had successfully manifested the spell I had prepared, consuming it properly. I had certainly grown since my university days, when I had been frightened every time I cast magic.
The enemies rushing toward Azalea and me toppled where they stood. Menelon’s Ice Sheet. A spell that created a thin, perfectly smooth low-friction zone for a very brief time in a targeted area. Who would have thought I would end up using the same spell I had once employed to clean the university hallways in actual combat?
The duration was short, so it only tripped them once, but that was enough. Tree roots were already erupting from the ground, wrapping around the fallen Demon King’s soldiers’ necks and dragging them down into the earth. The fallen men were swallowed beneath the cold soil in an instant, accompanied by the helpless crunch of armor. They would never emerge again.
Mervin the elf, who had summoned the roots moving beneath the earth to devour the Demon King’s soldiers, simply stared silently at the ground that had swallowed them. His expression showed neither pity nor hatred—as though he simply disliked the thought of corrupted beings defiling the soil. The quiet elf gently shook the two blades at his waist, closed his eyes, and listened to determine whether any enemies remained.
I had heard that Mervin was a forest guardian who had protected the heart of the vast woods on the southeastern edge of the empire. I had never seen any elves besides him, but the elves I had learned about in university classes mainly lived in several mirage-like floating magical cities in the middle of the southern desert, in wastelands without even an oasis. I had studied much of the magic and magical theory they had created. The forest elves were said to be a kind of ideological dissidents who had abandoned magic and left the cities. We had not spoken much because of his reticence, but Mervin, true to his nature as a forest elf, seemed to know little about magic. Instead, he commanded something I knew nothing about—nature spirits or an aspect of the earth deity. Far from the peaceful power one might imagine from the word “nature,” it was precisely because of that that it felt even more eerie. His profession seemed to consist of unpleasant sorcery: moving plants that should not move, swarms of insects of unknown origin, burying enemies alive, transforming them into bloated, poison-filled lumps, or impaling them on branches like skewered crows. He also handled the sword he had trained with for hundreds of years as though it were an extension of his own body.
Mervin appeared to have found no more enemies and remained quiet. The other companions scattered to search for remnants. Hoo. That should be the end of it. Left alone, I released the tension of battle and watched their retreating figures. That was when something dropped from above.
“Ah?!”
A lightly equipped enemy stabbed a dagger at me. How did he hide his presence—ugh… I barely dodged the blade, but I could not avoid the hand that seized me. Without hesitation, he began choking my throat while preparing the next strike. There was no time for the other heroes to help.
“Ugh…? Kgh, hkk… u-uh…”
I was dressed in light traveling clothes that only protected against the northern cold, since armor would interfere with my magic. My opponent was a muscular man whose entire body had been enlarged by the Demon King’s magic, making him appear one and a half times my height. If that dagger—driven by the monstrous strength granted by corruption—struck me, I would be gravely wounded or killed. If I were merely injured, I might be able to rewind time or use healing magic to survive somehow, but if I lost consciousness from being choked or died instantly from the dagger, I would have no chance at all.
To die at the hands of an enemy my companions could kill with a mere gesture was ridiculous. I could hear the heroes rushing toward me all at once, but it did not seem they would arrive in time. I had been given only one or two seconds at most. As I struggled, grabbing the hand that held the dagger in an attempt to delay the next strike even a little, my mentor’s words echoed in my mind like a hallucination.
It was the question of what would happen if one divided a person’s body and heart and then turned back time.