Chapter 5
Chapter 5
ONCE THE ADVENTURERS finished off all of the remaining daemons in sight, we decided to keep moving.
Clara and some of the other adventurers began to shower Mora and me with questions, but Sedam quickly put a stop to that. He gave us the pragmatic reminder that it was more important to reach someplace where we could secure our safety first. Everyone agreed, so I followed the adventurers on foot, leading Mora on the phantom horse.
“Well, this looks like it will be fine for the time being,” Sedam said.
We stopped in the middle of the mountain path, just before a narrow suspension bridge that reached over a large chasm. His decision was probably based on the fact that as long as we weren’t pinned from both sides, the bridge’s bottleneck would make it easier for us to either run or defend our position.
“I am Sedam, an adventurer from Relis. We came here in response to a request to save that girl from bandits.”
“I knew it!” Mora exclaimed.
Sedam explained his party’s circumstances to me in detail. From the look of his bow, quiver, and other equipment, he appeared to be a ranger. He was calm and intelligent, and reminded me of the kind of university professor that appears in overseas nature documentaries.
Sedam’s explanation matched what I expected. Mora looked ready to cry tears of joy.
“Now, with that out of the way,” Sedam began.
I cut him off. “Wait… Please wait just a minute!”
In line with my first impression of him, Sedam was the most inquisitive of the group. Although he had restrained himself before, now he looked ready to pelt me with questions.
“What is it?” Sedam asked.
“My circumstances are a little complicated, so before you ask any questions, can you give me a chance to explain myself? My name is Geo Margilus, and I am a magic user—a wizard.”
“A…wizard?”
I could barely get the first sentence out of my mouth, and the adventurers already viewed me with suspicion. The sorceress’s gaze was particularly painful, and it didn’t help that she was a fair-skinned, blond, blue-eyed beauty with a powerful presence. But I ignored their gazes and continued.
I explained that I was from the distant country of Getaeus, and that an accident involving magic had transported me into the nearby mountains. I summarized everything: I was captured by bandits, fought them off, rescued Mora, and was now on my way to deliver her to her father, who we assumed was in Yulei Village.
“If you’re going to make things up, you should try a little harder,” quipped the sorceress, with a look of distaste. “You’re not at all convincing.”
The sorceress, whose full name was Clara Andell, wore a fitted shirt and pants under her cloak. All of it looked well-made and expensive.
“Miss Clara belongs to a noble family,” Mora explained in a whisper. “So it would be best not to make her angry.”
Well, I am—or was—a seasoned employee at a large company, I thought. I’ve had a few strong-willed women like her work under me over the years. Despite how beautiful she is, I should be able to keep my cool no matter what she says. Or so I told myself. But if I were truly confident, I wouldn’t have had to give myself a pep talk in the first place.
“Well, to be honest,” said Sedam, “I have to consider the possibility that you are the sorcerer leading the bandits, and that you just took Mora and ran when you saw the swarm of daemons coming your way.”
Although Sedam still seemed to doubt me, he didn’t express as much hostility as Clara did.
“I understand my story is hard to believe,” I said, “but I do have Mora to vouch for me…”
“He’s right!” Mora piped in.
“…and as for the bandits’ sorcerer,” I continued, “He’s right over there.”
The others fell silent as I pointed to Jargle’s statue, which the sprite porter still held in tow, oblivious to everything else around it.
“Yeah, I was gonna ask about that…”
“I see that it’s a statue and a bag…but how are they floating?”
The first to speak up were the two warriors, a middle-aged man (though perhaps still younger than me) named Djirk, and a young man named Ted. They were fixated on the floating objects. In contrast, the red-haired woman, Fijika, was the least interested, keeping her attention on our surroundings.
“Well, you did save our skin and help us defeat the daemons,” continued Sedam. “For that, I am very thankful.” He bowed his head toward me.
“Th-thank you! It’s only natural.”
“Really, we owe you our lives.”
Ted and Djirk followed suit with their own thanks.
“I suppose I have to admit, you did help us,” added Clara, reluctantly.
While I wasn’t sure how much of my explanation Sedam and the others believed, it at least seemed like I’d earned some of their trust.
“Well, you know… Mora asked me to, so…”
“Mister Geo is amazing! He can use magic!” Mora piped in again.
If you work almost any kind of job in Japan, you will experience others bowing their heads toward you in thanks as a custom. My experience was no exception. However, this was the first time I’d ever had anyone thank me for saving their life. (I hadn’t ever saved anyone’s life before, after all.) I was embarrassed! I didn’t really know what to say, so I was thankful that Mora jumped in. Unfortunately, what she said appeared to strike a nerve with Clara.
“He cannot be a sorcerer, because sorcerers without mana do not exist!” Clara shouted, as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Without mana, huh? I thought. Jargle said almost exactly the same thing. What does that mean?
“With respect to that, I have some questions I’d like to ask. Can the sorcerers of Sedia see mana?”
For the record, if I cast the appropriate spell, I should have been able to see mana as well, but according to D&B rules, mana was explicitly not required to cast a spell.
“Of course we can!” Clara replied angrily.
“But isn’t sorcery what’s making the statue and bag float?” said the warrior-priest, Torrad. Despite his heavy armor, shield, and mace, the young man seemed to have a very easygoing nature.
“Well…” Clara started.
“Wait,” Fijika interrupted in a low voice. “More daemons have come.”
“There are tons of them!”
“Imps, fiends, and even a gigant…”
We had moved to an area not far from the path, where there were fewer trees and a better view.
It felt good to be able to look out on such a clear day, all the way to the horizon, with the foothills in view and a road stretching east and west into the distance.
The problem was, the valley several tens of meters below was filled with an army of marching daemons. From behind rocks and trees, we looked down at the army below. Fortunately—if anything could be called fortunate in this situation—it did not appear that the daemons were looking for us.
The most common daemons in the army below were imps, and for about every twenty of them, there was a fiend. Furthermore, there was a third kind, one that stood out the most: a giant swaying daemon the size of an elephant. This was a gigant. It had short, thick legs, an overweight body, and long arms, with a nose and tusks like a boar. The closest monster it could be compared to in D&B terms was a troll.
As far as I could see, there was only one gigant. But it was so large it nearly filled the valley below, and it carried a club made of several logs tied together. One was more than enough.
The valley was forested, so it was hard to see the full scale of the army, but they most likely numbered in the hundreds in total.
“But really, these things make goblins, ogres, and trolls look cute in comparison…” I looked through my Telescope Lens, a magic item that, as its name suggested, worked just like a telescope. I’d already worked up a nervous sweat just looking at them.
These were daemons, not D&B monsters. While they could be described in terms of those monsters, they were fundamentally different. They especially lacked the feeling of being common, low-intelligence creatures only there for adventurers to slay.
The daemons were pitch black, as if they had bathed in tar, their features indistinct but for those glowing, hate-filled, golden eyes. As I watched them through my Telescope Lens, I could sense their seething hatred of humans, their desire to kill. I felt I finally understood why Mora and the bandits were so frightened of my ogres. These monsters were far more like the undead than living creatures.
Even so, it was clearly an army, not just a swarm this time. There was order in the ranks. They were marching in formation. As long as they don’t have a human in their sights to drive them crazy, it seems they are capable of organizing, I thought, eyeing a fiend carried by imps on a pallet in the center of the march, who I suspected was their commander.
“If they continue their march through the valley, they’ll break out of the forest somewhere,” muttered Djirk. “Are they planning to attack Yulei?”
Mora looked frightened.
“If we hurry, we may be able to get to Yulei before them,” said Sedam. “At least we can sound the alarm.”
“But even if we get there in time to warn them, there won’t be enough time to evacuate,” responded Torrad. “Wouldn’t it be better to go the Castle of the White Blade to call for reinforcements?”
Even if we’re able to do either of those things, who could win against an army like that? I thought, listening to Sedam and Torrad’s discussion.
“Once we leave the forest, we should split into two groups. Whatever we do, we need to hurry.”
“Uh… Umm…” Is it okay for me to stand here idly like this? I thought.
Over the past two days, I had experienced combat, at least in some form, but I’d never really planned anything out. I was just acting on impulse. However, this time I had a distinct choice. I had to decide whether or not I would fight.
It wasn’t a question of whether I could do something. The question was more along the lines of, “Is it all right for me to do this?” I was confident I could wipe the entire army out on my own, but it felt like cheating, and that wasn’t the only problem. I still didn’t know why the Watcher had brought me to Sedia. If I wiped out the daemon army, it was possible doing so would lead to an even greater tragedy. Was I about to pull the trigger of some metaphorical gun? What if it turned out that in Sedia, daemons, not humans, were the right and proper inheritors of the land? That was a common plot in fantasy settings.
Even if none of the above posed a problem, it was very likely that performing such a grand act would irrevocably alter my status in Sedia. Even if the result was me getting held up as a hero, that was nothing I wanted, and my potential change in status was just as likely to be negative as positive. I could be accused of performing a forbidden art or painted a heretic. All were very likely scenarios.
Was this army really going to attack Yulei? There was no proof. Shouldn’t we first try to reason with the daemons, instead of exterminating them? (I’ll admit that by the end of my stream of thoughts, I was reaching into the absurd.)
I was afraid of what the uncertain future might bring. This is not a game. I am not Geo Margilus. Geo Margilus might be a grand magic user who has saved the world several times over, but I am a forty-two-year-old ordinary human being, used to a peaceful country where we talk things out, not engage in battles.
A human like me needed a compelling reason to act.
“Umm… What casualties do you expect?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“If these daemons attack that village, what kind of damage or casualties do you think there will be?”
“Did you see how many are down there?!” Ted couldn’t hold back his anger. “There’s even a gigant! If they reach the village, everyone will die!”
“No…” Mora looked from one adventurer to the next, pleading for someone to argue back, but they only averted their eyes.
“Mister Geo… My father’s in Yulei…” Mora anxiously tugged at my sleeve.
Earlier today, I thought, I fought just because Mora asked me to, but this time, I have to take ownership of this decision, and responsibility for it, no matter how much I might regret it later.
“Don’t worry,” I said quickly. “I’ll do something.” I didn’t want to wait for her to ask me to save her father. I didn’t want to give myself the opportunity to use her plea as an excuse. This time, I was acting on my own.
“You’ll do something? What did you have in mind?”
“After those powerful incantations you used, isn’t your mana all used up?”
Both Sedam and Clara eyed me with suspicion, but readying myself for what I was about to do, I didn’t have the capacity to answer them.
“All right, let’s do this!” I said, slapping both hands against my face. I turned my attention to the invisible force field surrounding me. That force field was the product of one of the spells I’d cast as Mora and I were leaving the bandits’ fortress: Fly.
With the support of that force field, my body began to float.
“What?! He… He’s flying?! He’s flying!” I heard the adventurers cry from below.
At first, I felt a little ill, remembering the stomach-twisting nausea from my flight on the phantom horse, but I forced it out of my mind. I didn’t have time to be airsick.
I looked down and shivered. It was my first time flying without any kind of support, and it was far more frightening than being on the phantom horse. It seemed that the force field was protecting me from the wind and changes in air pressure, but having nothing under my feet was a definite psychological strain.
“This is going to be dangerous, so please evacuate this area and take cover. I will take the daemons down.”
“Hey! What are you… Wait!”
“Mister Geo!”
Still nervous, I flew after the daemon army. The maximum flight speed allowed by Fly was fifty kilometers per hour, so it only took me a minute or two to reach the front of the march.
“As a consequence of this spell, a stone wall five meters high, fifteen meters wide, and thirty centimeters thick will be created in a location in my line of sight. Wall of Stone.”
“Gree?!”
“Gyaiie?!”
The spell caused a giant stone wall to materialize in the valley. I picked the spot where the valley was narrowest, so the wall was able to completely block the daemons’ advance.
I then flew down and landed on top of the wall.
I wanted to look at the daemons up close before I set out to exterminate them. I could cast the spells from far away and out of sight, but I still had qualms about destroying such a great number of living things without any interaction with them, and—however unlikely—there was a small chance we might understand each other.
From the daemons’ perspective, a giant stone wall had suddenly appeared out of the middle of nowhere. Of course, they were startled and confused. However, once they saw me, a human, standing on top of the wall…nothing else mattered to them. The daemons in the valley erupted into screeches and screams.
“Kshaaaa!”
“Gya, gya-ga!”
“Gruooo! Gu-gaa!”
The imps and fiends spewed foam from their mouths, fangs clacking. Their murky golden eyes glittered at me, full of hatred.
“Yeah… I don’t think negotiations are going anywhere.”
It took me long enough, but finally I had to admit that these daemons were mortal enemies of humanity. There was no way we could reconcile.
“Gyah! Gyaah!”
From farther back in the ranks, something came flying at me. It was a rain of countless arrows from imp archers, loosed on the orders of the commanding fiend. Though their rage appeared to make them insane, they were still functioning as an army—and that only made them all the more frightening. However, before any of the thick black arrows reached me, they were all deflected and sent flying away. I owed that to the second of the precautionary spells I’d cast earlier: Protection from Arrows.
“Gyarrr!”
“Gishaah!”
Once the commanding fiend realized projectiles had no effect on me, he swung his arm, and the imps in the valley all immediately charged against the wall. They pushed, they shoved, clambering over each other with swords and axes in hand, each wanting to be first to land a blow. At the rate they were going, it wouldn’t take a minute for them to scale the wall—but, of course, I was under no obligation to wait.
“Gyaw?!”
I leaped from the stone wall, back into the sky. The imps shot more arrows and threw hand axes, but these were ineffective.
“Well… I suppose I’m relieved, in a sense,” I muttered to myself.
Sure, I didn’t feel great being subject to such an intense level of hatred. My throat was parched and I had broken into a cold sweat. But now, at least, I had no qualms whatsoever about what I was about to do.
“Open, Gate of Magic. Reveal your form to me.”
Once my physical self rose high into the sky, to a point where I could see the entirety of the army, I held my position in mid-air. Then, my imagined self stole through the magic gate and down the spiral staircase. I wanted to completely destroy the hundreds of daemons that filled that valley, and I wanted it done quickly—I didn’t want to give a single one of them any chance to escape.
In that case, what spell should I use?
In D&B, there are actually very few pure attack spells. Starting from the most basic spell to the highest rank, they are: Mana Bolt (Rank 1), Fireball (Rank 3), Lightning (Rank 3), Ice Storm (Rank 4), and Meteor (Rank 9). Of course, taking a broader sense of the word, many other spells could be used to attack. In the past, I’d even come up with a few original spells together with my game master based on manga and anime. However, we had one unwritten rule.
Only one particular spell could be the strongest.
“As a consequence of this spell, eight meteors will be summoned from the heavens to rain down upon my enemies. The damage of the collision will be determined by a 20d6 roll, and the additional damage from the ensuing explosion will be determined by a second 20d6 roll.”
In the spellbook archive, I threw an absurd amount of six-sided dice upon the elevated bookrest, and once the damage had been set, a surge of chaotic energy far exceeding that generated when I’d cast Fireball rushed out into the world.
“Rank 9 spell: Meteor!”
Eight bright lights cut through the blue sky, raining down upon the twisted valley filled with daemons.
On impact, the daemons in the direct path of any of the shining meteors were sent flying, torn apart like the shreds of a popped balloon. The ensuing explosions filled the valley completely. They burned flesh to the bone. With nowhere to go but up, the shock waves sent pieces of flesh and splintered bone flying into the sky. Even after the initial wave, long after anything was left alive, bursts of energy continued to rock the valley; the land itself surged up like a tidal wave.
“Wh-wha?! Whoa!”
First, the shock wave hit hard against me, and then the sound of the blast rocked my insides. Even though I was protected by Fly’s force field, and was far away from the blast, I felt like a leaf in the wind. If the daemons made any sound, I couldn’t hear it over the blast.
“What the hell?!”
It reminded me of the documentary footage of nuclear weapons testing I saw once on TV.
Shielding my face with both hands, I tried to get a look at what was happening in the valley. It was hard to tell from all the smoke and flames and upended earth, but I could say for certain that none of the imps or fiends or the gigant retained any form other than amorphous clumps of flesh and ash. The land itself had changed.
In the context of a game, I had used Meteor to destroy castles and groups of monsters before, but until I saw it with my own eyes, I didn’t fully comprehend how powerful it was.
I floated there, shivering. In Sedia, the power I have as a Level 36 magic user may be on the same scale as holding nuclear weapons.