Chapter 2: I’m a Level 1 Villager. Can I Beat the Demon Overlord?

I wasn’t sure whether they granted my request or not, but the king and his men gave me a guest room with a big canopy. I flopped onto the bed and finally got to catch my breath.

“Hero! Is there anything else you need?” Harissa was filled with energy, the exact opposite of how I was feeling.

“No, I’m fine. Can you just make sure I’m alone for a little while?”

“Of course!” Harissa gave a cheerful answer and went to pass my message on to the servant girls outside.

As I watched her go, I sighed to myself like an old man and said, “Wow, she’s got a lot of energy.”

“Do you like girls who are a little simple, like her?”

“No comment.”

I ignored R’s question and tried to think back on everything that was going on. It wasn’t good. A wizard, an alien, and a girl from another world. Just dealing with one of them would be bad enough. How was I supposed to handle all three? If you included R, the “girl from the future,” there were actually four of them. But the War of All was taking place in the future, and wasn’t important right now. That was the one thing I had going for me, maybe.

“Man... what the hell am I supposed to do now?”

“You’re in a whole other world now, too. You have to solve this problem first.”

“I don’t have the time. Even if I refuse to get involved in another world’s problems, Satsuki’s in danger even as we speak. I have to get back to my own world, and fast.”

The hands on my wristwatch had kept ticking even after I was brought here, so I knew it was about 2:00 PM on Earth. I’d arrived at the abandoned factory around 1:00 PM, which meant that about an hour had passed since Messiah had appeared.

Messiah had said he wanted to marry Satsuki, so he probably wouldn’t hurt her, but... I still needed to get back as fast as possible.

But for some reason, R was looking at me confusedly.

“If you’re going home to your world, does that mean you’re leaving this world to its fate?”

“What do you want me to do about it? I just have the bloodline. I don’t have any powers, and I’m not special. I can’t save anything.”

“Are you sure?” she asked again.

“Are you telling me I should do something?”

“No. But if you give up on this story...”

Before she could finish her sentence, Harissa came back from the hallway and the conversation came to an abrupt end.

“Hero? Were you talking to someone just now?”

“No. Sure you weren’t imagining it?”

“I must have been hearing things, then! I do that a lot! I once mistook my grandpa’s snores for a dragon’s roar, and the whole village ended up in an uproar because of it!”

Was that something you should say so cheerfully?

Harissa trotted over and sat down right next to me. Sh-She was really close...

“Hero! Do you need something from me?”

“Not really.”

“You must, though! The king told me to take care of you. Tell me what you want me to do. Anything!”

“Think you can sit a little further away, then?”

“I... I’m sorry? I was so excited, I got close to you. I stink, don’t I?” Harissa went beet red and jumped away from me.

“No, I didn’t mean that you smelled bad or anything...”

“No, I do! I’m a peasant, and I’m really not supposed to be here at all. So I know there’s peasant all over me! It’s coming from under my armpits, because I’m getting nervous just talking to you!”

This world probably didn’t have antiperspirant, did it?

Anyway, it looked like this girl— Harissa— was the one who’d brought me to this world. Which meant that if I wanted to get back, she was the person I should go to for help.

“Hey, so can I ask you something?”

“Of course! What is it, Hero?” It was hard to say this when she looked at me with those shining eyes, but... I didn’t have a choice.

“Please send me back to my own world.”

“Huh?”

Yeah, that’s about what I thought would happen.

“I can’t defeat the Demon Overlord. I’m not a hero.”

That’s right. I was just a normal guy. In an RPG, I’d be no different than a random villager.

“But... But! You were summoned by the secret ritual of the Aburaamian royal family! The legends say that a true hero will appear in a flash of bright light...”

“Sorry, I just have a tendency to get caught up in things like that. If you need a hero, ask someone else.”

“That... That can’t be true.”

“It is true.”

“No... It’s not true! You’re... You’re a hero. You have to be a hero. Otherwise, I’m in big trouble.”

To be honest, it hurt to say this stuff.

But I had things I had to protect. “That’s your problem, not mine. I don’t have time for this. Please, send me home!”

“Hwaah!” I got a little excited and yelled, and Harissa fell out of the bed. Her bright sunny smile vanished, and tears formed in her eyes.

“Ealim Nekram!” Harissa used her quivering lips to speak some kind of incantation. Suddenly, she disappeared.

“Huh? Harissa?”

I couldn’t see her, but I could hear her running. Then the door to the room seemed to open on its own, and the footsteps continued out into the hallway.

“Did she use magic to turn invisible?”

“Dunno.” R was sticking her head out of the floor while the rest of her body was sunk beneath it. It looked like someone had chopped it off and put it there.

I decided to ask her, though I wasn’t expecting much.

“Do you know how to get back to my old world?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“Figures...”

“I asked this before, but are you really certain about going home to your world?”

“And I answered this before. I plan to get back home as soon as I can.” What was going on here? R was really persistent about this. “Does something happen if I go home?”

“Of course. If you leave, this world is doomed,” R said.

“Doomed?”

“You’d understand this if you thought about it for even a second,” she continued, crawling out of the floor as she spoke. “A story without a hero is doomed. There have actually been whole countries that were doomed because your ancestors gave up on them. For a story, the Namidare clan is its last hope.” Her eyes were clear and honest beneath her military cap, without a trace of a lie in them.

“Dad didn’t tell me that.”

“Because he’s your father. If you learned that a story you abandoned was doomed, you might do something reckless. As you yourself just said, after all, you’re just a normal person.” My dad had told me not to give up on them if I could.

Maybe he really wanted to tell me to save them, no matter what. He’d given me a hypothetical. Maybe he hadn’t given me a real example because he was my dad, like R said.

But what difference did that make? I had the laser gun and warp watch that I’d brought from the spaceship, and I had Satsuki’s cell phone in my pocket. The owners of those objects had asked me to save them and their stories as well.

There were three girls, three stories, and only one hero: me.

Was it possible for me to save them all?

“So, Rekka, what are you going to do?” R said.

“You’re acting like this isn’t your problem... It’s thanks to you that I’m not sure.”

“For my part, I need you to finish these stories and hook up with a heroine, or my mission is never getting done.”

“Did you maybe realize that my dad didn’t want me knowing all that stuff, and then tell me anyway just because it made things easier for you?”

“Oh, of course.”

“Why, you little...”

“Umimimimi...”

I grabbed R by the cheek and yanked it as hard as I could, even though none of this was really her fault.

Either way, I had to get this resolved. I couldn’t sit here forever.

I decided to get up from the bed and wander around for a while. It would be dangerous to leave the laser gun here, so I stuck it in my belt.

“Where are you going?”

“On a walk.”

“What are you going to do about going home?”

“Decide later. I’ll think about it while I’m walking.”

“I see.” I started to wander the castle. R came with me. The hallways were made of row after row of stone bricks. It felt like I’d become a character in an RPG.

“I can feel everybody staring at me.”

“Yup.” I was wearing a normal high school uniform, but since nobody else wore clothes like that here, I really stood out. People were staring at me, and I couldn’t concentrate.

“Maybe it would be better to just stay put in my room?”

“No, stimulating the soles of the feet activates the brain’s cells. When you’re not sure what to do, you can always go for a walk.”

“I didn’t know that. You’re pretty smart, R.”

“I sure am. And you’re just ignorant, Rekka.” Either be proud of yourself, or insult me, but please stick to one.

“Oh? Do I smell something good?”

“Hmm? You’re right.” R started to float through, and I followed after her.

We came to the room where the good smell was coming from.

“Looks like this is the kitchen.”

“Wait, R, do you get hungry?”

“No. But I do have a sense of smell, and it certainly smells delicious.”

“I see. I’m seriously hungry, though.” Come to think of it, I hadn’t had anything all day except for the toast I’d eaten this morning.

I opened the door, hoping that they’d give me something to eat.

“Um, excuse me...”

“Huh? Oh, wow! If it isn’t the hero!” A middle-aged woman welcomed me excitedly. She was probably the cook. “I’m so glad you’re here, Hero! The country’s finally gonna be at peace!”

I’m not a hero, though... But maybe it would be worth it to hear what she had to say before I decided if I was going home.

“I just got here, and I don’t know anything about what’s going on. Can you tell me about this place?”

“What, the king and Harissa didn’t tell you? My stars, that’s no good. We’re asking you to help us! Sure, if you want, I’ll tell ya everything ya need to know.”

“Okay, first tell me about the Demon Overlord.”

After that, she told me about the Demon Overlord and his armies.

She told me that after being sealed for several hundred years, the Demon Overlord had revived two years ago.

He could use summoning magic to make his armies appear anywhere on the continent, and once they were done pillaging and plundering, he could just bring them back to his castle again. Since there was no way to attack his armies, the humans were being slowly crushed.

This meant, however, that if the Demon Overlord was defeated, his armies would be gone for good. But his castle was on an isolated island and surrounded by a powerful barrier. There was no way for anyone to get in.

“We’ve tried a buncha times to get an army through the barrier, but we just kinda stand there outside since we can’t break it. Then he summons his armies, and he whups us.”

“If the barrier’s that strong, then there’s nothing I can do, right?”

“Nah, there ain’t nothing to worry about there!”

“Why?”

“Under the castle is the Hero’s Sword, which only the hero can draw,” she said excitedly. “They say the Hero’s Sword has the power to cut through any kind of magic. You’ll chop that barrier right in half!”

Well, that explained that, then. That was why everybody in this country was holding out for a hero.

The woman breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Thank goodness! Now the country’s saved, and so is Harissa!”

“Huh?” What did she mean by “so is Harissa”?

Just as I was about to ask what she meant, a man poked his head into the kitchen and yelled for someone to help him bring in some ingredients.

“Whoops! They’re a-callin’ me!” The woman bowed to me apologetically.

“Sorry, but I gotta go. If there’s anything else you wanna know, ask Harissa. She’s in the study.”

“The study?”

“It’s at the top of the west tower.”

“Thanks. I’ll check it out later.”

It would be kind of awkward to see her after I’d just yelled at her, but no matter what I did, I needed to talk to her again. I was curious what the woman had meant, too.

“Thank you. Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt you...”

“Oh, wait a second.” As I turned to leave, now it was her turn to stop me.

“About Harissa...”

“Huh?”

“I’m from the same village as she is, and I know her really well. She’s a really fragile girl. She’s honestly got no business being a military sorcerer. But things are so bad these days they practically forced her to work for them.”

This was the first I’d heard of Harissa working for the army. It was true that it didn’t seem to suit her.

“Please, Hero. Be good to her.” That was all she said before she ran out of the room.

“I guess I’ll go see Harissa.” R and I headed for the top of the west tower, where we were told Harissa would be.

“How many steps do these stairs have?” I complained, out of breath.

“Two hundred and fifty six.”

“I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I’m floating, so it doesn’t bother me at all.”

I tried to smack her down to the ground, but she slipped away.

After a few more minutes of banter, we made it to the top tower.

“Do you hear something from inside?” I asked.

“It sounds like crying.”

“I wonder if it’s Harissa...”

“It probably is.”

I was feeling pretty bad. I opened the door silently, so she couldn’t hear me.

The room was filled with bookshelves lined with scrolls and books, and there were piles of paper on the floor. If there was ever an earthquake, anybody here would be buried alive. The mountains of books meant there were a lot of places I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t tell where she was standing from the entrance.

I followed the voice and saw a girl in a robe, curled up in the corner with her hands around her knees.

“Harissa?”

“Huh?! H-Hero! E-E-E-Ealim Nekr...”

“Wait! Don’t run away.”

I grabbed her hand before she could turn invisible and escape again. She tried to shake it off.

“D-Don’t! If you touch m’hand, you’ll get filthy!”

Her accent sounded similar to the lady in the kitchen now. Didn’t she say they were from the same village? Maybe this was how she usually talked.

“Of course I won’t! Calm down!”

“No! When you touch me, my hands get all sweaty!” Her hand did feel a little slick, but that didn’t matter now.

I kept holding on to Harissa no matter how much she struggled, and her face got redder and redder.

“Pu-pu-pu-pu-shuuuu!” Eventually she overheated, and collapsed to the ground.

“Rekka, you should use that forceful nature of yours in another capacity.” R was complaining for some reason, but I ignored her.

“Now, then...” Once Harissa was staying put, I asked her about what I’d heard from the kitchen lady.

“So that’s what I heard. What did she mean about you being saved, too?”

“...I was supposed to be executed.”

For an instant, I gasped. “Wh-Why?”

“I’m a sorcerer, I guess, and I’m supposed to be good at summoning magic, but...” Slowly, she started to tell me the story. “My magic summons spirits from the spirit world. But spirits are really hard to deal with, and it’s up to the sorcerer to make them obey you. If you fail, the spirit can get mad and go on a rampage, or cause a lot of mischief, before they go back home.”

“You wouldn’t want to mess up then, huh?”

“Yes. But I really screwed up.”

“When?”

“When I participated in the Seventh Anti-Demon Overlord Expeditionary Force.”

“Geh!” That was a hell of a time to screw up.

“I tried to fight the demons that the Overlord had summoned, but... I couldn’t control the magic...” As she spoke, her voice began to mix with sobs.

“I wrecked our camp, and we had to retreat. I was supposed to be executed for what I did! But I’m the last summoner the kingdom has left... so they said if I could summon a hero with the royal family’s ritual, the king would give me a special pardon.”

“I see...” That’s why she said she needed me to be a hero.

“But it doesn’t matter anymore.” Suddenly, she smiled like a girl who was already dead. It looked like she’d just given up on everything, I guess.

I’d never seen anyone smile like that before in my entire life. There was a pricking pain on the left side of my chest.

I’d lived a normal life in a normal way, and so it was impossible for me to understand what she was going through. But I could tell from her smile that she was facing an incomprehensible despair. Was that the kind of smile I was supposed to see on a girl who was younger than me? Or did everyone in this world smile like this, because of the Demon Overlord? Is that why nobody tried to save Harissa? Because in this world, despair was normal?

“I’m slow, and I cry, and I can’t work in the fields, and I’m the most useless girl in the village. When the army’s test showed I could be a sorcerer, I was happy, but in the end, that didn’t work out either.” Harissa buried her face in her robe-wrapped knees. It was like there was no one in the world who could fix that gloomy smile of hers. “I just bring misery and disaster to everybody. I deserve to be miserable. I’m better off dead.” She smiled as she spoke.

Instead of reaching out for help, she smiled like she didn’t care how it was going to end. No. That wasn’t right. You can’t just accept death that easily.

Harissa had reached out for help. She’d reached out to a hero from another world, and I’d knocked her hand away.

She didn’t want to die. She was a normal girl who wanted to live... Who wanted someone to save her. That’s why I...

“Like hell you are.” This time, I reached out and grabbed the hand I’d knocked away.

Harissa looked up. She looked straight up at me, tears streaming down her face.

“Don’t you ever say that you deserve to be miserable.”

“Hero?”

“That’s the same as saying it’s normal for you to be miserable, and I refuse to accept that.”

I liked normality. I loved it. That’s what made you happiest.

But what Harissa said was the exact opposite. She said it was normal for her to be miserable. And that... I just couldn’t take it.

“Aaah... God damn it! Fine!”

I roughly scratched my head. Harissa was looking up at me in astonishment.

“Sorry, Satsuki. I’ll be back as soon as I can, I promise. So just hang in there.” I apologized to Satsuki back on Earth.

I knew I didn’t have time for this... but what could I really do? I was the only one who could save this story, or this poor little girl. So... the normal thing to do was save her, right?

“I’ll defeat the Demon Overlord for you.”

▽

Harissa said that the hero’s first job was to pull out the Hero’s Sword and then gather companions at the tavern. But I didn’t have time.

“B-B-B-B-But you’re going to defeat the Demon Overlord, right?”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a wizard and a space king lined up after this.” I didn’t have time to go through the tutorial.

“It’s 2:30, huh?” I’d been here for half an hour. Iris had said her warp would take three hours, so I wanted to get back by then if I could.

So the biggest problem was the time it was going to take to get there.

“Um, hero. You’ve been staring at that thing for a while. What is it?”

“This? It’s called a watch. It tells me the time.”

“Wow. That’s really convenient. So is that a watch, too?” Harissa pointed to the warp watch on my other wrist.

“This is something different. It’s called a warp watch.”

“A warp watch? What does it do?”

“You can calculate coordinates for a place, and input them into this, and it’ll teleport you to that place.” I couldn’t do coordinate calculations though, so it was useless to me. Though if I could use it, I could teleport right past the barrier and into the Demon Overlord’s castle.

As I sighed in frustration, Harissa slowly raised her hand.

“I can do coordinate calculations.”

“Seriously?!”

“Y-Yes. You need to be able to do coordinate calculation to be a summoner, so you can specify where you’re going to do the summon.”

“Yes! All right, can you put them into this, then? What I need is the coordinates for the Demon Overlord’s castle, relative to where we are now.” I told her what I needed and gave her the warp watch.

“Um, there should be a map of the continent somewhere in this room. I’ll look for it.” Harissa charged into the mountain of papers and books.

“Now we can get there. Next up is the weapon.”

The first thing I thought of was the Hero’s Sword. “It’s supposed to be able to cut through magic. Can I use it to defeat the Demon Overlord?”

“I guess my first question would be if you ever learned how to use a sword,” R said.

“Oh...” That’s right. I was just a normal guy. Even if I did have a weapon, it wouldn’t do me any good if I couldn’t use it. I’d never held a sword in my life, so even if I did have the Hero’s Sword, it wouldn’t be of any use to me.

A normal hero would probably start by building up experience points fighting slimes and learning to use his weapon, but I didn’t have the time.

“Well, that’s a problem...”

And then Harissa ran back to me, in the exact same way that she’d run off. “Hero! I finished putting in the coordinates!”

“Really? That was fast.”

“I worked really hard. Now we should be able to jump right to the center of the Overlord’s castle— hwah?!” Before she could finish her sentence, Harissa stepped on some of the papers on the floor and slipped.

I quickly reached out and grabbed her to keep her from falling.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m jes’ fine!” For some reason, Harissa was shaking as she moved away from me. Her face was bright red... Had she hit her nose on my chest?

“Rekka, how were they?” R peered right into my face. I glared back at her to see what she meant. “Her breasts. Her bust. Her boobs, if you prefer. You copped a feel just now, didn’t you?”

“I did not!” My voice was loud enough to startle Harissa.

“H-Hero?!”

“Oh, sorry. It’s nothing.”

Damn it! R got to say whatever she wanted because nobody but me could see her. I cursed at her, silently this time, and went to pick up the warp watch that Harissa had dropped. And then—

“Coordinate entry confirmed.” An electronic voice came from the warp watch. “Ten seconds to warp. Nine. Eight. Seven...”

“W-Wait—!”

Wait a second! Had this thing turned on? Did the impact from hitting the ground flip the switch? Iris hadn’t told me how to cancel the thing. The countdown continued as I panicked, until there wasn’t any time left to look at it at all.

“Whatever! We’ll just go right now!” If I didn’t grab it, the warp watch would go to the Demon Overlord’s castle all on its own. And if that happened, there was no way I was getting back home today.

I told myself that I didn’t have a choice, and then wrapped the warp watch around my wrist.

Harissa grabbed my hand. “I... I’ll go, too!”

“You idiot! Let go—” I tried to shake her off, but I couldn’t do it in time. The countdown read “zero.”

“Initiating warp.”

▽

In the next moment, I found myself in a very cold place.

“H-Huh...?!” My head was spinning. Was it an aftereffect of the warp? I took a look around.

The floor felt cold, so it was probably made of the same stone as the king’s castle, but it was cold in a very strange way. The only light was from the torches on the walls, and the room was too big for them to show any more than their immediate surroundings. There were no windows, so there was no sunlight, and the air was freezing. Who built this place? It’s defective! Someone call the architect!

“Ow... where are we?” I could hear Harissa’s robes rustling next to me as she spoke. She’d ended up coming with me.

“Harissa! Why did you follow me?”

“B-B-Because I couldn’t let you go alone!”

“Why? That’s why you summoned me, right?”

“At first, yes... but when you told me that my problems weren’t your problems, I started thinking.” My eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness, and I got the sense that Harissa was looking down at the floor.

“What you said was right. This world isn’t your world. Our problems aren’t your problems. But instead of solving our problems ourselves, we tried to turn to you for help. The king, the generals, everyone, even me... we were all really selfish.” Harissa held her staff tight to her chest.

“But then you said you’d fight for us anyway. For this world, which isn’t your own. I’m embarrassed that I was only thinking of myself. So let me fight with you, please.” I could feel Harissa’s resolve, and it was painful.

“Don’t get the wrong idea.” I needed to correct one thing, though. “I’m fighting the Demon Overlord for you.”

“F-F-For me?!”

“Of course.” It would be rude to say that I just took pity on her, so... I didn’t.

“For me...”

“Huh? What’s wrong, Harissa? Is your face red?” Her cheeks were blushing so much that I could see them even in the darkness.

“N-N-No! I-It’s n-nothing!”

“Well, if it’s nothing, then fine...” My ears were stinging after she’d yelled right next to them... but that didn’t matter.

“So yeah, I don’t want you to be put in danger. I’ll fight the Demon Overlord myself.”

“B-B-But...!”

“I don’t care what you say. I’ll give you the warp watch. Use it to go back to the castle right—”

“No! I’mma fight wit’ you, too!”

This was going nowhere. She’d started to throw a tantrum, and dropped back into her country accent.

As I tried to figure how best to persuade her...

“You there...” I suddenly heard a third voice. It was a low, baritone voice that shook the whole room. It was coming from the back of the room, where the darkness seemed deepest. “Why are you shouting in my bedroom?”

My eyes had finished adjusting to the darkness, and I could see the speaker clearly. The first thing I saw was a huge bed that looked like it could sleep fifty people. I could see a tail the size of a log draping down the side. My eyes followed the tail up to a huge body, framed by wings the size of a ship’s sails. It had four thick, tough-looking limbs. Sharp claws. Hard scales. Fangs. Red eyes, shining in the darkness. A face like a terrible carnivorous lizard, with a crest on top. I’d played enough games to know what this creature was.

“A... A dragon?!”

“Th-The Demon Overlord?!” Harissa and I screamed at the same time.

The scaly, green dragon Demon Overlord narrowed its eyes at us, seemingly annoyed.

“What’s going on? I’ve never seen rotten corpses with such clean bodies.”

“R-Rotten c-c-c-corpses are a kind of m-m-m-monster!”

Thanks for the explanation, Harissa, but that wasn’t what I wanted to know right now. I wanted to know what was going on.

Per usual, I looked to R for an explanation. How many times had I done that today? “Harissa input the coordinates for the center of the island, right? If the Demon Overlord’s castle is at the center of the island, then do you suppose you teleported right into his bedroom?”

Gah! How could I be so precise? No, how could I have such crappy luck?

“Excellent work. You hit the jackpot. Way to go, Rekka.”

“Shut up!” But yelling at R wasn’t going to make this situation any better at all.

I stood between Harissa and the Demon Overlord, and turned to face him. What’s my plan? I don’t have a plan! The Demon Overlord scratched his jaw with fingers thicker than my torso as he looked at us in confusion.

“That girl just called you a hero. But the barrier isn’t broken...”

“Th-That’s right! I’m not a hero!” I nodded frantically as I tried to talk to the Demon Overlord.

“But if you’re not a hero, then who are you?”

“I... I don’t know?”

“I don’t like wasting time with stupid questions.”

“I... I’m just lost!”

“I said, I don’t like wasting time.” Every time the Demon Overlord opened his mouth, the room shook and the stone floor quaked. That was how overwhelming he was. There was no way I could take him in a fight.

I was panicking, and I was having a hard time thinking of things to say. I couldn’t come up with a good lie to get myself out of this! At this rate, it was going to be game over before I could do anything.

This is no good. Calm down, Rekka! Find some way out of this! I patted myself down, looking for some way out of this.

And then my fingers caught on something on my belt. This was...

“A-All right... I’ll tell you the truth.” I summoned up all my courage and steeled myself for what I had to do.

“Oh? And what is that?” I drew the laser gun from my belt and immediately fired it.

“DIE!”

“What?! GWAAAAAH!” The Demon Overlord must’ve been caught off guard, because my crappy surprise attack hit him dead-on.

“Wh-Wh-What the hell?” Wait, that laser beam was huge! This isn’t a laser gun, it’s a laser cannon! A torrent of destructive light poured out toward the Demon Overlord and swallowed the upper half of his body.

And when the light was gone... I saw a hole in the wall leading all the way outside the castle, and the black ash that was all that was left of the Demon Overlord’s upper body.

W-Well, that was cheating, kind of, but if the Demon Overlord’s dead, that’s all that matters, right?

I wasn’t fully satisfied, but Harissa was looking at me excitedly, with stars in her eyes.

“W-W-Wow! I thought the art of light magic was lost centuries ago! You really are the hero of legend, Sir Rekka!”

“Um, well... Maybe...” That wasn’t magic, but I guess I don’t need to tell her that.

Anyway, if the Demon Overlord was dead, it was time to go home. There was still a lot I had to do.

“Hahahah... Splendid, hero!” And then, I heard another baritone voice echoing through the room.

“Th-The Demon Overlord?!”

“Humanity created light magic to defeat me. I’m surprised that anyone still knows how to use it.” I could hear the Demon Overlord’s voice clearly. Which meant I wasn’t imagining it. The Demon Overlord was still alive.

“But my power is far greater than this!” The lower half of the Demon Overlord’s body began to ripple and tremble. The ash on top of it blew away, and a new upper body formed. Now he had four eyes, with tiny little pupils giving off an evil light. His arms split into two at the elbow, and now there were twice as many forearms and huge claws. His newly grown scales had changed from green to gold. The old scales on the bottom half of his body fell away, and it became the same color as the top.

“Hey... Harissa... what’s that?”

“I... I... I don’t know! The records didn’t say anything about this!” Harissa fell flat on the ground again

“Did you think I did nothing during the centuries I was sealed away?” The golden dragon chuckled throatily. I could see sharp fangs when it opened its mouth.

“Your attacks cannot touch my second form.”

“What?! Seriously?!” If that was true, I was screwed. I was lucky even to win the first time.

The Demon Overlord gave a sadistic smile as he saw our shock.

“There were two things in the last battle I fought that defeated me. One was light magic. The other was the Hero’s Sword, which nullifies my magic. But after long, long years of research, I succeeded in replicating the power of the Hero’s Sword for my own use.”

“B-But that means...” Harissa shouted in despair.

“That means... what?!” I didn’t know what was going on, but I screamed, too.

The Demon Overlord grinned cruelly, its fangs peaking from its mouth.

“That means that the light magic you just used can’t affect my second form.”

“B-But then...” Harissa’s voice was shaking, and it sounded like she was about to start sobbing.

If magic wouldn’t work on him, that meant that a sorcerer like Harissa— no, she and probably everyone else in the world— had lost their one way to fight the Demon Overlord.

But instead of despair, I just felt mildly curious.

“Now despair, puny humans! Kneel before the manifestation of your destruc—”

“Take this!” I pulled the trigger on the laser gun before the Demon Overlord could finish his sentence.

“GYAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” There was another scream, just like the one before, as the Demon Overlord turned to ash. The room became silent once more.

“Thought so.” I nodded, sure of my theory now.

“Huh?!” A moment later, Harissa screamed. She was as surprised as I’d ever seen anyone in my life.

“Wh-Wh-Wh-What’s goin’ on? How’d yer magic work on th’ Demon Overlord?”

“S-Stop shaking me. That was...” Just as I tried to explain, the Demon Overlord revived again.

This time, his lower half turned into something like a centaur, and his arms and legs had split into four. He was more than twice as tall as his last form, and his head brushed against the ceiling of the bedroom.

“What did you do?! Magic’s not supposed to work on me!”

“It’s simple. My gun isn’t magic. It’s science.” Alien science, to be precise.

“S-Science?!”

“Just die already!”

“GWAGGGHHHHH!” I was getting sick of talking to the Demon Overlord, anyway. Demon overlords usually rambled a lot.

But then he revived again. “Listen to m— GYAAAAAHH!”

“Are you really the her— UGWAAAHH!”

“Would you just— GWWWAAAHHHH!”

Give it up already. Damn.

“How many more forms do you have?”

“Do not think you can defeat me! With every transformation, my power grows! And I still have two more to go!”

“So I pull the trigger two more times then. Got it.”

“Wai— GOOWAAAHAHH!”

And so the Demon Overlord collapsed to the ground, burnt to a blackened crisp. He wasn’t lying about powering up. By the time I’d finished off his last form, instead of turning into ash, he’d turned into barbecued dragon meat. It smelled pretty good, actually.

There was a moment of awkwardness. Sure, if you grew up hearing tales of a legendary hero, seeing the Demon Overlord defeated like this was probably enough to crush your dreams. But at least I beat the guy, right? Right?

I’d learned something from this, too. If I’d only been caught up in Harissa’s story, I probably would’ve taken the Hero’s Sword and went on a journey to defeat the Demon Overlord. I would’ve gone to the tavern to recruit allies, and raised my sword and magic skills fighting random monsters before finally battling the Demon Overlord. But if I’d done that, I would’ve had a horrible time trying to handle the Demon Overlord’s second form, since magic wouldn’t work on it.

Instead, though, I’d been caught up in three stories at once. And that meant there was no need to care about the rules of any one particular story. That might help when I was dealing with Satsuki and Iris’s stories. I made sure to remember it.

“So... yeah, no point in hanging out here forever. Let’s go back to the castle.”

“R-Right...” Harissa nodded, but she seemed somehow unsatisfied by the fact that the strange power of science had so easily defeated Demon Overlord.

▽

We warped back to the castle study.

“Okay, send me back to my world.”

“Already?!”

“Yeah.”

I’d said it a lot already, but I didn’t have time to waste. To get back to my old world, I needed the person who summoned me here, in other words, Harissa, to do another ritual to send me back. It was pretty simple.

“All right, go ahead and do it.”

“You’re really leaving already?”

Yeah, that’s what I’ve been saying.

Why didn’t Harissa want me to go back? The hero she’d summoned, or at least, the person who was supposed to be a hero, had defeated the Demon Overlord. All she had to do now was tell the king and receive her pardon. She didn’t need me here for that.

“Stare...” R was staring at me so hard she literally said the word “stare.”

Wh-What had gotten into her?

For now, I decided to try and persuade Harissa. “Why don’t you want me to go home?”

“Well, um... I haven’t told the king yet, and... if we defeated the Demon Overlord, I’m sure there’s going to be a celebration. S-So you need to be there.”

“No, I kind of cheated when I beat the guy. I don’t need a celebration. And I want to get back as soon as I can.”

“Is there someone waiting for you in your home world, hero?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah...” I was pretty sure that Iris and Satsuki were both waiting for my help.

“I see...” Huh? Why did Harissa look so sad?

“Jesus...” R was rolling around in mid-air. She looked just like my dad did when he was trying to open a stuck lid.

“I understand. I’ll send you back to your home world.”

“Great, thanks.”

“But first, please take this.” Harissa handed me a loop carefully woven from red thread.

“A red bracelet?”

“This is a magic item called the Red Thread. Do this, and...” Harissa took out a thread from the bracelet and wove it around her pinky finger. “The Red Thread has the power to connect people. If you put it on your body and make a strong wish, you can always come back to Aburaamu.”

“Hmm...” So it was a one-way ticket to this world, huh?

“Why are you giving me this?”

“In the end, I wasn’t any help in defeating the Demon Overlord. But if you ever find yourself in trouble back in your own world, I want to help you.”

“You helped a lot, Harissa. So don’t worry about it.”

“What are you talking about?!” Harissa shouted. It was probably the first time I’d seen her mad. “You don’t know how grateful I am to you! If it weren’t for you, I would’ve been executed. You fought the Demon Overlord when I was too pathetic to do it. You’ve done so much for me that I could never repay you.”

I nodded, feeling a little overwhelmed.

She must’ve been crying from yelling too much, because she wiped her eyes. “If you’re ever in trouble, use the Red Thread. I promise I’ll help you.”

“Got it. Thanks.” After all that, I couldn’t just give it back to her. So I took the bracelet and thanked her.

Harissa drew the complicated magic circle needed to send me home on the floor of the study. I didn’t know what the pattern in the center meant, but it was just big enough for one person to stand in.

“It’s a lot smaller than the last one, huh?”

“Summoning someone is hard, but sending them back is easy.”

“Hmm... then the most important part of being a summoner is the summoning part, then.” I decided to say something to her that I’d been thinking for a while. “Hey, Harissa, are you sure you’re not actually a really strong sorcerer?”

“H-Huh? N-No way! I’m a failure...”

“But if the ritual you used to summon me was a secret of the royal family, it had to be really complicated, right?”

“Well, yeah...”

“See? You’re probably really good at summoning spirits or whatever. Making a spirit obey you once you’ve summoned it is mostly a matter of being tough and intimidating, right? I mean, I don’t know anything about it specifically, but... I think what you lack is self-confidence.”

“Self-confidence?”

“Yeah. You were the only sorcerer in the party that defeated the Demon Overlord, after all. From now on, be more confident, and stop thinking of yourself as a failure.” Hmm... Why did I decide to lecture her like this? I wondered, but I actually knew the answer.

The real reason I’d decided to beat the Demon Overlord was that I wanted her to be able to fight. I wanted her to have the courage to believe that she could be happy, and to fight, instead of just giving up on everything and thinking that she deserved to be miserable. If she couldn’t do that, she could never live a normal life.

I wanted her to find happiness, instead of giving up. Was that just me being a show-off? Well, it probably didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I was going to see her again. It wouldn’t matter if I embarrassed myself a little before I said goodbye.

The sending circle filled with light— and just before I went back I thought I heard her whisper, “I hope I can see you again someday, my hero.”