Chapter 3: Crisis

Chapter 3:
Crisis

 

POV: ????

 

MEANWHILE, deep in the Great Labyrinth of Brute…

“Shit, shit, shit, shit! W-we’ve gotta let the guildmaster know about this ASAP, or else the whole town’s gonna be in trouble!”

In the depths of the dimly lit labyrinth, the man’s frantic footsteps were drowned out by his own bestial, bloodcurdling screams. The screams were soon replaced by the sound of a young boy’s high-pitched laughter.

“Heh heh heh heh… Yes, that’s it. Kill them—kill them all!”

 

POV: NIGHT

 

AFTER CROW FINISHED his meal, Lady Amelia set about cleaning up. As she washed the dishes, she became lost in her thoughts. Something told me her conversation with Crow was far from over, and sure enough, Lady Amelia walked right back out to Crow the moment she was done cleaning.

“Your sister was murdered by the royal family, and what are you doing about it right now?” she asked, perhaps more intensely than she should have.

I suddenly felt queasy; there were far more tactful ways to broach touchy subjects, though I’d never known Lady Amelia to mince words. As a royal herself, she was likely used to people waiting on her hand and foot, and you could probably count on one hand the number of times she’d thought twice about how her words might make someone else feel. Luckily, it seemed her bluntness paid off this time.

“Right now? Nothing,” said Crow, with a self-deprecating smirk. “At the end of the day, I’m just a weakling who couldn’t even save his little sister. Besides, I realized a long time ago that she wouldn’t want me to get revenge.” He slammed a fist down on the table, and the heavy mace he’d just finished repairing fell to the floor. For the first time since the day we’d met, Crow was trying to open up to someone.

Lady Amelia looked at him with cold, unfeeling eyes.

It made a chill run down my spine. “L-Lady Amelia?” I whimpered, but she did not respond.

I could see the mana whirling in her deep red eyes. I’d known about her World Eyes skill, which she had in common with Master, ever since she and I had met. It let you see someone else’s stats, along with countless other things—according to Master, if you channeled enough mana into the superhuman ability, you could see anything and everything in the past, present, or future.

“Well, if I were your sister, I’d want to be avenged no matter what.”

Crow’s eyes widened as he noticed the strange flickering in Lady Amelia’s eyes and gulped down a breath. After a moment, he realized she was using a special ability. “An Extra Skill, eh? And what are those eyes of yours telling you about me?”

“Don’t ask me,” Amelia said, closing her eyes. “That’s for you to contemplate. But I will offer one piece of advice, as one who sees all: stop using your sister as an excuse to run away from your fears. It’s pathetic, and it’s not fair to her or you.”

It felt like, for the briefest of instants, I could see a face reflected in Lady Amelia’s eyes—the sad face of a young feline beastwoman who wanted to comfort Crow. With her World Eyes activated, it wouldn’t be all that strange to think I’d just seen a phantom of his sister for a split second. I knew Master didn’t have the skill level to perform a feat like that, and it must have required an immense amount of mana to pull off even for Lady Amelia.

Crow turned away, eyes downcast. “The food was great, thanks, but I think it’s time for you to go home for today.”

Lady Amelia thanked him for the kind words, then left.

I chased after her, looking back at the workshop several times with concern. Finally, when we were a good distance away, I looked up at her. “Are you sure that was a good idea, Lady Amelia?”

“It’s fine. Even if I somehow convinced him to teach me his secrets, they wouldn’t be of any use to me when taught by a man who’s given up on life, nor would they be of any use to Akira. The man is much more compassionate than he makes himself out to be, so I think he just needs a little time to stew.”

It felt strange to hear her give such a concise summary of a man she’d met only days prior, but I nodded my head and chalked it up to the power of World Eyes. For once, I felt a deep respect for a being who was not my master; though I was sure Lady Amelia would make a fine master as well.

 

Heh heh heh… Go, my minions. Go up to the surface and kill all those pathetic weaklings! Let the streets run red with their blood!

 

Just as I was chiding myself for having gone soft, my breath caught in my throat. Amelia had already noticed it. We both stared at the ground.

“What was that?”

“This is bad, Lady Amelia.”

Being a monster, it was only natural that I would pick up on it as quickly as Lady Amelia had with her World Eyes. Even some of the nearby beastfolk seemed to notice it a little bit, and they either tilted their heads or looked down at the ground. We could all sense something very bad was about to happen, and that monsters most foul were about to make a move at their master’s signal.

“Lady Amelia! Over there!” I cried, pointing to a cloud of black smoke spewing from the ground.

“H-hey, that’s where the entrance to the labyrinth is, isn’t it?”

“Has the calamity from a hundred years ago returned to destroy us once more?!”

“It can’t be…”

The townsfolk began to panic as they watched the cloud billow up to blot out the sun.

“The Nightmare of Adorea,” I muttered spitefully, looking up at black skies similar to those that had fallen over Adorea a century ago. Only this time, I wasn’t the one in charge of the destruction—I was among the besieged.

“I want to see what’s going on over there, Night!”

“On it!”

At Lady Amelia’s command, I enlarged myself. The nearby beastfolk screamed, thinking the black cat who had once laid waste to Adorea had come back to destroy them, but I had no time to reassure them. With a great leap, I bounded right over their heads and sought the high ground.

 

POV: CROW

 

“SO IT’S COME BACK to haunt me at last… The nightmare that has plagued my dreams each and every night these past hundred years…”

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

“OKAY, I’ve officially reached yellow rank. Please tell me I can finally enter the labyrinth.”

With one hand, I handed Yamato the stack of request sheets I’d been assigned by the Guild not two hours prior, fanning

them out like playing cards. There were five in total, all of which were completed and stamped.

“D-damn, Akira. You weren’t kidding when you said you don’t mess around,” said Yamato, unable to deny that I had a right to be as smug as I was.

Even Myle looked over in amazement from his station at the reception counter.

Mind you, these “official Guild requests” were nothing more than odd jobs they’d let pile up. One of them had been a long-standing request to give a crotchety old man a back massage, and it had apparently sent countless newbie adventurers running home crying for their mommies before I showed up and finished the job in ten minutes flat. In fact, the guy even made a point of telling me he’d exclusively request my services from the Guild from now on.

“How in the world did you manage to satisfy that old coot? You must have used some sort of magic,” Yamato muttered incredulously.

I cocked my head and responded plainly. “Magic? No, I just made small talk with the old guy for a while, started rubbing his shoulders, and bam, he stamped my flyer… Sheesh, I can’t believe you told me it’d take at least a week. Ten minutes was more than enough. I guess my job experience back in Japan gave me the skills needed to finish the job so fast.”

When you’re a part-timer working at a place with lots of older folks, you’re going to have to learn how to give a back massage sooner or later, whether you like it or not. You also gain a knack for placating jaded old geezers. I’d had to work with some very stubborn, closed-minded old farts in my previous gigs, so this guy had been a walk in the park by comparison.

Myle looked on, mouth agape, ignoring the adventurers he was supposed to be helping as he watched Yamato change out my dog tags for yellow ones.

“And what about these other requests? Let’s see, you did a house demolition gig, helped the old ladies in the neighborhood run some errands, helped a chef come up with some new fusion cuisine ideas… What was the last one again?”

As Yamato ran through the list of requests I’d been assigned, I exchanged my dog tags and fastened them back around my neck. I didn’t personally think I’d accomplished very much, so it didn’t really feel like I’d “ranked up.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Yamato exclaimed, looking over the flyers. “You helped clean out that infamous hoarder house! How in the world did you pull that one off?”

I could feel all the eyes in the building on us. Yamato didn’t seem to care one bit, though he might have been too excited to notice the attention. I simply nodded and rubbed my chin. I wasn’t exactly a neat freak, but I did try to keep things tidy, so seeing my first ever bona fide hoarder house had been a bit of a shock to my system.

“Well, for the demolition gig, the client claimed he could use a little bit of barrier magic. I had him set up a soundproof barrier, then I went in and took out all of the primary support beams, and boom. House demolished. I mean, it sounded like he didn’t care how it got demolished as long as the job got done, and that seemed like the fastest way to do it, y’know?”

I could already hear Yamato concocting a retort in my head. “But how in the hell did you break those pillars? They were about as thick as you are tall!” I didn’t really want to explain that I’d extended my Shadow Magic into the shape of a giant sword to cleave them in half, so I changed the subject before he had a chance to ask.

“As for running errands for the old women, I’ve got a pretty good handle on the city’s layout by now from eating out with Amelia all the time, so I just drafted up a plan that let me get everything I would need at the fewest number of stores, with the lowest prices, then plotted out the shortest route between them. Easy.”

I was the one who kept track of our family’s finances back in Japan. If I let my sister, Yui, do it, I knew she’d buy overpriced stuff, and whenever my mother was feeling well enough to go shopping, she’d come back with the lowest-quality stuff possible. The women in my family, I swear… It almost makes me understand why my dad left.

Once again, I could hear Yamato’s incoming response as he clutched at his face after I told him that had been the easiest job by far. “Wait, wait, wait! Are you some sort of super genius or something?! How could you possibly memorize all of that?! And how could you carry all those groceries by yourself, for that matter?! I know how much those ladies usually buy! We generally assign those quests to entire parties of adventurers! You were assigned it by accident!”

But I wouldn’t hear it. I moved on to the next request.

“As far as the fusion cuisine ideas went, well… I do a little home cooking, so I just gave a little advice using that as a basis, and the chef was totally spellbound by my every word… Is Japanese cooking really that rare here? I thought I heard the country of Yamato’s cuisine was pretty similar.”

I could already hear his protests as he banged his head against the reception counter. “How can an adventurer be a more accomplished cook than a professional chef?! He’s the head chef at one of the city’s most famous restaurants, for crying out loud!”

I was glad I hadn’t been giving him the chance to say these things out loud. If I had, his voice would have probably gone hoarse. I looked at him with something akin to pity in my gaze, but this only served to deepen his anguish. He tried to compose himself and asked me to please continue my story; the trails of blood running from his nose did nothing to help him look put together.

“Mmm, well, the last one was definitely the trickiest of the bunch,” I began, shrugging. “It was a fairly standard clean-up job, all things considered, but I’d never seen a hoarder house before, so I was pretty taken aback at first. Took me almost an hour to get the place cleaned out.”

It had all looked like trash to me, so I just had my Shadow Magic swallow it up; my shadows weren’t picky eaters, and they probably wouldn’t get a tummy ache from eating all that garbage. I didn’t know what happened to the things the shadows “ate,” and I didn’t care to find out. All I really had to do was sort out what needed to be kept from the rest and then clean up the place afterward. The place had been so dusty, my stay-at-home-dad instincts had kicked in, and I had a blast getting everything spick-and-span.

“Wow, a whole hour. What an ordeal,” Yamato grumbled sarcastically.

“Yup. But it was pretty fun, honestly. The client had been trying to find the key to the vault there for years and it was driving him nuts. He seemed very happy when I found it.”

Like clockwork, I heard Yamato’s response in his head as he shook his fists beneath the countertop where none could see. “That was the old duke’s manor, you idiot! The same one urban legends say still holds a vault filled with unfathomable riches despite having fallen into disrepair! The only reason it got so filled with trash was because the local thieves repeatedly ransacked the place over the years! They turned the whole building upside down and still came up empty! You’re telling me you found it in an hour?!”

Every adventurer in the building was now shaking with rage just like Yamato.

“Listen, uh, I’ve gotta go take care of some urgent business down in the labyrinth, all right? But it’s been fun doing odd jobs for you guys, so feel free to send more requests my way once I get back.”

I proceeded to stride gallantly out of the Guild HQ, aware of just how much the atmosphere inside had changed but pretending I was oblivious to it. Yamato and company watched in stunned silence as I waltzed out the door.

“The Patron Saint of Side Quests, eh…?”

That was what one of them called me on my way out the door, to which everyone nodded in agreement. The speed with which I had completed all the citizen requests made me something of a messiah figure in their eyes, evidently, and I would continue to be known as the Patron Saint of Side Quests by everyone in the Guild and by the townsfolk from that day forward. Little did I know, the legend of the Patron Saint of Side Quests would be heralded and passed down to future generations as they prayed for their messiah’s second coming.

 

And so, I was able to become a yellow-rank adventurer, thanks in no small part to my experiences back home.

I might have just finished taking care of five whole requests, but I was heading directly into the labyrinth—I was getting a very bad premonition about something, and alarm bells were ringing in my head like never before. They got louder as I got closer to the labyrinth. I wanted to nip whatever was giving me the bad feeling in the bud. Thankfully, Amelia and Night were spending their days over at Crow’s house, which was on the complete opposite side of town, so there was fairly low risk of them coming to harm. I wanted to get Amelia off this continent ASAP regardless, or else something told me she would end up having to use her Resurrection Magic again. Perhaps it was my Detect Danger skill trying to warn me.

“Damn.”

When I arrived at the labyrinth, it was already covered in a cloud of black smoke, and I could hear the screams of monsters racing for the surface. A group of Guild members scrambled to try to seal the exit. Since beastfolk were quite like beasts, they had a sixth sense that alerted them to danger. Thus the only fools loitering around the area right now were a few oblivious human Guild members and some adventurers that had been dungeon diving in the labyrinth.

“Hey! You need to get the hell away from here, now!” yelled a high-ranking beastfolk Guild member, trying to direct a few unarmed civilians to safety.

The other Guild members, realizing the danger was closer now, fled the scene, leaving the labyrinth entrance only partially sealed. I couldn’t really blame them; everyone had to look out for themselves, especially those with lesser or no combat abilities. And chances were the horde of monsters would bust through the doors, sealed or not.

“Hey! You’d better get going too, pal!” yelled a thoughtful beastfolk adventurer as he grabbed me by the arm and dragged me a few paces. “Can’t you feel it?! Some serious monsters are headed this way! The type that would normally take a whole raid party to defeat!”

“Yeah, I get that. But then how are we supposed to stop them?!”

He and I were the only two left in the vicinity. I noticed from his dog tags that he was a red-rank adventurer—one rank higher than me—and I could sense he had someplace in mind to fall back to and regroup. I relented and started running alongside him.

“We’ve gotta go to the Guild and report this ASAP. They’ll probably organize an emergency response team of every adventurer, ranks gold through yellow, but if we don’t get there in time, we’ll all be dead meat!”

“You’re awfully composed. Doesn’t seem like this is your first rodeo.”

“Yeah, same to you.”

I grinned. It was true; I’d had my fair share of near-death experiences during my long stint down in the Kantinen labyrinth—not that any of them were the sort of experiences I was especially proud of.

When we arrived at the Adventurer’s Guild, there was already a large group of adventurers ranked yellow or above gathered outside the entryway. I contacted Night via Telepathy and gave him a quick rundown.

“Copy that. Try to stave them off as best you can, Master. We’ll focus on evacuating civilians and minimizing casualties over on our end.”

“Cool, just be careful, okay? If you die, I die too, remember.”

“Pah. Just who do you think I am?”

“Right, stupid question. Let’s keep each other posted. Keep an eye on Amelia for me.”

Since we’d been bonded via a monster pact, our lives were now directly dependent on each other’s, but something told me there wouldn’t be any monsters down in the Great Labyrinth of Brute capable of endangering the life of the ex-final boss of the Great Labyrinth of Kantinen. Shortly after I cut off telepathic communications, the guildmaster, Lingga, appeared on a slightly elevated platform.

“Let’s dispense with the preamble, shall we? Everyone, pair up with someone nearby. They are now your partner, and you must trust them with your life. We’re going to stay in these pairs for the duration of this operation. If you ended up getting paired with someone weak, well, consider that very unlucky on your part.”

Normally, I would have protested such a ridiculous order, but this was neither the time nor the place. We were in the middle of an emergency here. An ordinary-looking human like me didn’t seem to belong anywhere near this emergency response team, but maybe it would be a good opportunity to rank up even further. Besides, Amelia was nearby, and I had a duty as the man in the party to protect her. Even if she was technically a much higher rank than me, and even if there was very little chance of her being in any real danger with Night around.

“Hey, you wanna partner up with me?” asked the red-rank adventurer I’d met at the labyrinth.

“Works for me. Thanks.”

“The name’s Senna, and I know I might not look like it, but I’m actually Guildmaster Lingga’s younger brother.”

He certainly didn’t look like it. Lingga was a leopard-esque beastman, while Senna was more of a lupine breed.

“Nice to meet you, Senna. I’m Akira.”

Well, that’s the introductions squared away. Though if he really is Lingga’s brother, I’ll need to stay on my guard. He may be dangerous.

“Are you a frontline fighter? Or do you stick mainly to the rear?” asked Senna, wagging his bushy tail as he scanned me from head to toe.

“Frontline, usually. I’m an assassin.”

“Then that works out well, ’cause I’m a fire mage, and I need someone to protect me while I cast.” He grinned, and I gave him a quick nod before looking around at the other pairs. It seemed most of them had known each other before partnering up.

Once everyone was paired off, Lingga resumed his speech. “Now work with your partners, and if any of you run into any major trouble, send the other back to seek help. If any teams are especially worried about operating on your own, you’re free to link up with other teams as well. We’ve just sent our fastest runners to warn the nearby towns and the capital, but we can’t wait for them. If we’re going to save our city, we need to do it ourselves. Don’t let the demons defile our town!”

A roaring cheer rang out from the crowd, but I furrowed my brow. “Demons?”

How could they say for sure this was demons? I could understand why they might associate the black skies with the “Nightmare of Adorea” incident from a hundred years ago, but I hadn’t heard anything about there being actual demons in that siege—only monsters. Night hadn’t said a word about any demons being involved, nor had any of the townsfolk from whom I’d heard secondhand whispers, and that was something people would have mentioned from the start. Other than the fact that Night had been acting on the Demon Lord’s orders, I didn’t get the impression that demons had been remotely involved with it.

If these people really thought this was a repeat of the incident one hundred years ago, in which Night had led an army of lesser monsters, why would they not assume this was the work of another intelligent monster leading an army of minions? I couldn’t imagine the guildmaster was saying the demons were involved out of pure speculation—surely he was aware that spreading those kinds of baseless accusations could be very harmful. He must have had evidence demons were involved.

“Hey, quit spacing out, would ya?” Senna chastised me, and I quickly snapped back to reality. “Now do you wanna try to link up with another group or not?”

“Nah,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t know about you, but I’m not much of a team player. I generally go it alone. Increasing our numbers will only give me more things to worry about.”

Senna nodded, then waved off the pair of adventurers who’d apparently come to ask us to join forces while I was lost in thought. The duo walked off, crestfallen.

“Akira. Senna. Your team is going to go provide backup for the red- and silver-ranked teams,” said Lingga, just as we were about to head into battle.

“Wait, you’re really gonna send a yellow rank to the front lines? Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Senna asked, concerned.

It was the first time I’d had anyone doubt my abilities in this town, likely because of the little show of power I’d put on for the townspeople when we first got off the ship.

“I don’t think you have to worry about this one,” Lingga assured him. “But if it really comes down to it, you can always just ditch him and run back here.”

“You got it, Boss.”

The two brothers exchanged a mischievous grin. Okay, I take it back. I can totally see the resemblance now.

 

POV: NIGHT

 

WHEN MASTER got in touch with me, I was running around town with Lady Amelia on my back, trying to offer a shuttle service for older citizens who didn’t have the strength to evacuate on their own. Most of them trembled in fear at the sight of me, but they were quick to hop on my back once they saw the horde drawing near.

“Quickly, Lady Amelia! We need to get out of here!” I cried, lowering my tail for her to grab on to after she helped the last citizen onto my back. But she refused to grab hold.

“There are still people who haven’t been able to evacuate up ahead, and the adventurers aren’t covering this area either. Someone needs to stay here and protect these people,” she insisted.

I saw the monsters closing in, and I hesitated. If I left and something happened to her, I’d have no way of getting in contact with her or finding her.

“You need to go, Night!” she cried.

I regained my composure and noticed the monsters were already upon us. They were all weak, low-level monsters that surely wouldn’t pose a challenge to a silver-rank adventurer like Lady Amelia.

“I’ll come back for you as soon as I can,” I said, then took off with the evacuees in tow. It wasn’t the cleanest way to do an evacuation, but we needed to do whatever we could to minimize casualties. I turned around as I landed back on the ground and looked back at her.

“Don’t worry. It’s probably gonna be me who comes running after you,” she said, turning toward the horde of monsters. “Gravity!”

Her silver hair fluttered as she channeled her mana into the spell, and the silver dog tags she kept hidden in her bosom were jostled free for the first time in a good while.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

“O ALL-CONSUMING BLAZE, let me wield thy raging tempest in the palm of my hand! Flaming Fist!”

The monsters closed in on Senna as he stood still to recite this incantation, then began to pull back once they realized what he was doing. He reached out his hands, from which a gigantic fist made of pure flame burst forth before sweeping across the vicinity, burning all the monsters directly ahead of us to a crisp. More monsters quickly swarmed in to take their place. We’d been fighting on the front lines for almost an hour now, and the horde showed no signs of diminishing.

It was just as Yamato had told us back at the Adventurer’s Guild—the monsters that called the Great Labyrinth of Brute their home had a variety of different weaknesses, making good teamwork an absolute must. I assumed the requirement to form well-balanced parties was likely a result of the beastfolk race’s unique tendencies. After all, the blood of beasts ran through their veins, and the different breeds and species they represented had a direct influence over their personalities and skills.

Beastfolk resembling predators were always quick to lose their temper and start fights, whereas beastfolk resembling peace-loving animals generally kept to themselves and tried to avoid conflict. So while there were many powerful beastfolk, their various natures meant that they didn’t always get along with one another very well—which might have been why they left it to us to decide our own partners.

“Akira, can you hold the line by yourself for a few minutes?” Senna asked in a haggard voice.

I turned to see him carrying two injured adventurers who’d been fighting on the front lines, one over each shoulder. They seemed to be on the verge of death, barely clinging to their last thread of life. I nodded, then borrowed a dagger from one of their belts. Good timing.

The one I’d been lent by the Guild had just shattered to pieces after I’d sliced through an entire group of monsters, and I’d noticed the blade this particular adventurer was using didn’t seem to dull or break no matter how many monsters he used it against. I was very curious to try it out for myself. I gave it a quick swing to test its weight. It was about the length of my forearm and the perfect weight for its size. A well-made blade by all accounts.

“Th-that dagger… I had it custom-made… It’s Crow’s handiwork… You’d better…return it when you’re done…” the adventurer muttered.

Interesting. That explains why it feels so good to wield, I suppose.

I nodded and tried to remember the man’s face. It seemed Night’s endorsement of Crow’s forging ability was well-earned indeed. As someone who couldn’t even afford his repair services at the moment, I was grateful just to have the chance to borrow one.

“Sorry about this. I’ll be back in a little bit,” said Senna, carrying the men away from the scene of the battle.

I grinned mischievously. Now I could fight without any reservations. There were still a few dozen adventurers trying to hold the line, but none within my immediate vicinity, and there was no way the few remaining would ever guess that a lowly yellow rank was about to take out all of these monsters in one fell swoop. I reached my hands out in front of me and gave the signal.

“Shadow Magic, activate.”

I’d been making a genuine effort to take Commander Saran’s advice to heart and never use Shadow Magic when other people were around to see it. I wasn’t too worried about my ability being seen—the average person would probably just write it off as an obscure deviation of Dark Magic—but on the off chance I lost control of it again, it would be better to make sure that there were never any innocent bystanders nearby. That was why I was always using Detect Presence.

The shadows manifested in puddles on the ground, deeper and blacker than the skies above, then swirled around my feet like dogs begging to play fetch.

“Go ahead, boys. Eat ’em up,” I ordered. “Fair warning, though: they probably won’t taste as good as the monsters you’re used to.”

Their first meal as my underlings had been a minotaur. Next was Fenrir, then the Chimera… Virtually every time I’d summoned them to swallow up a foe, it had been a rare and powerful enemy, so they’d probably developed a pretty discerning palate.

As my Shadow Magic began swallowing up the nearby monsters, leaving not even a single drop of monster blood in their wake, the other monsters started to flee, scrambling over one another in their haste. Because of the momentary hesitation, each row of monsters was quickly trampled and crushed beneath the bodies of their comrades in the row ahead of them, and on and on in a domino effect of death.

“Damn. It’s pretty horrifying to watch, but I gotta admit, it’s quite the sight.”

The horde of invading monsters, which had struck fear into the hearts and minds of the beastfolk townspeople, were now on the receiving end of that fear, crammed into tight spaces and being crushed underfoot. When I thought about the innocent beastfolk who’d had their homes destroyed, or the humans who were only here to work and gather money to send home to their families, I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the despair of these invaders.

Suddenly, I sensed another person via my Detect Presence skill, so I commanded my Shadow Magic to return to me at once. I thanked them for their service as they coalesced back into my shadow, then started cleaving through a group of straggler monsters with the dagger I’d borrowed, swinging in wide arcs so as to carve through multiple enemies at once.

“Sorry about that, Akira!” said Senna, rushing out from a nearby alleyway. I waved back at him. “Hey, is it just me, or are their numbers pretty thinned out?”

“Beats me. Haven’t been paying much attention.” I shrugged as he scanned the surrounding area before lowering my hand again and slicing an ox-like monster’s throat. “Maybe they went elsewhere because this area was proving too hard to control?”

Most of them had been swallowed by my magic, but there were still a few hundred stragglers, although none that could pose a challenge to us. Perhaps it would be a good idea to offer support elsewhere when we’re done, I thought, taking a moment to survey our surroundings. I was looking to one side when a fireball suddenly whizzed by in front of my face.

“Sheesh. If you’re just gonna stand there, make yourself useful,” griped Senna.

“Hey, man. I held the line all by myself. I think I’m entitled to a break.”

I could tell from Senna’s joking tone that he didn’t actually need my help.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a large, tiger-like monster from Crow’s materials list. Pretty sure I just needed its claws, right? I closed the distance in an instant and slashed through its entire body before harvesting the claws off its corpse.

“Don’t mind if I do,” I said, tucking them in my inside breast pocket.

“Looks like we’re about done here. Guess I’ll use my leftover mana to finish the job,” Senna said with a wry smirk. Then he started casting a spell. I could tell this particular incantation required a lot more focus than the others. Not wanting his efforts to go to waste, I took great care to ensure no monster made it anywhere near him before he was finished. “O purgatory flames, bring forth thy conflagration and reduce these heretics to ash! Inferno!”

He finished casting, and I waited. I scanned the periphery, yet nothing seemed to be happening. It was only when I cocked my head and started wondering if the spell had been a misfire that the ground began to quake.

“This way, Akira,” Senna said with a peculiar smile as the tremors grew stronger and stronger. It seemed the earthquake was focused only on the spots where monsters were standing.

“Whoa, what the hell is this?” I asked, but Senna simply chuckled and pressed his pointer finger to his lips.

Then, with an ungodly sound, the ground began to crack beneath the monsters’ feet. Although they clearly wished to escape, it seemed their legs wouldn’t move. Something spewed forth from the cracks in the earth, consuming the monsters whole in a matter of seconds, leaving only their mana stones behind. Thanks to my superhuman eyes, I was able to perceive exactly what that something was.

“Was that…magma?”

The only other time I could remember seeing magma was during a class field trip to Mount Aso, in one of those museum videos they had playing on repeat on the observation deck. It was a thick, bright-red liquid that moved slower than molasses yet could consume an entire mountainside’s worth of trees as it rolled downhill.

“Hey, good eye!” said Senna. “That’s correct. It’s a spell that draws magma forth from deep underground, then sends it right back down after the job is done.”

Well, that’s not terrifying at all. There was nothing but abject horror in the eyes of the few remaining monsters who’d just watched their friends get taken out by some unknown force. There were even a few idiots who were begging us for their lives. I wondered why they weren’t running away, but then I noticed that the immense heat from Senna’s spell had fused their feet with the ground. That explains why they aren’t moving, I guess. Now they’re just stuck here forever, probably in immense pain, knowing full well they’ll be next.

“What a cruel spell,” I muttered, knowing that if Night were here, he’d probably call me a hypocrite for my wanton use of Shadow Magic. The difference there was my spells swallowed their victims whole in an instant, and when I sneaked up behind a monster to assassinate it, it was over before they ever had a chance to feel terror. This large-scale spell of Senna’s, however, was practically akin to torture or a war crime. The mere thought of it being used on other people instead of just monsters was enough to make my skin crawl.

I watched as the remaining monsters vanished one by one, leaving nothing but mana stones to indicate they’d ever been there. And at last, the area we’d been assigned was completely free of monsters. Finally able to relax, I let out a deep and exhausted sigh.

Then I got a telepathic transmission from Night, who sounded like he was at his wits’ end.

“Master! We have a problem! Lady Amelia’s been kidnapped!”

My mind went blank. All I could feel was an overwhelming, white-hot rage.

 

POV: AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ

 

“HUFF, HUFF… There’s too many of them… I can’t hold them off much longer…”

Thankfully, my MP was never at risk of running out, but it was still exhausting having to expend so much of it in quick succession. I could only hope Night would make it back soon, but even then, it would take a good amount of time to help all these elderly folks to safety.

“I’ll just have to keep them at bay until then…”

I held up my arms, covered with cuts and scrapes, and reached out to the sides. I could heal little cuts in a matter of minutes, but it was a futile effort since new ones would immediately take their place. I was standing face-to-face with a battalion of what must have been hundreds of monsters—and those were just the ones in my immediate field of vision. If you included those currently pillaging the abandoned houses and the ones no doubt looming in my blind spots, they likely numbered well over two thousand. I was lucky enough to be able to cast Resurrection Magic on myself so that I’d be automatically brought back to life if I died, but the side effects of consuming such an enormous amount of mana

meant that I’d be rendered completely vulnerable, unable to even move for quite some time.

“Gravity!”

Every monster directly in front of me within a twenty-meter radius or so was squashed to a pulp, organs and viscera of dozens of monsters splattering across the vicinity. It was a gruesome scene certainly not fit for children’s eyes—like one of those “R-rated movies” Akira had told me about. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really in a position to be careful about property damage at the moment, so the force of my spells had also destroyed quite a few nearby buildings. It would likely take quite some time for this part of the city to be fit for habitation again, even after the monsters were gone, but I didn’t feel too bad about it—there were lives on the line here, and I couldn’t afford to hold back.

“Night, what’s taking you so long?”

I prayed nothing had happened to him as I continued to fend off the oncoming wave of monsters, who ran over the corpses of their comrades without any hesitation.

“Well, well, well. I recognize that Gravity Magic… You’re the little elven princess, aren’t you?” said someone who sounded like a young boy.

I didn’t know where the voice was coming from, but it was awfully foreboding to hear such ominous words in a child’s voice. I looked around frantically, searching for the owner of the voice, having been under the impression that I was the only non-monster left in this entire district. Was it a young boy who we’d failed to evacuate? No… There was something about this voice. Something I recognized.

“Up here, silly. Do you really not have Detect Presence or any skills like that?”

I looked up and saw a cute little boy with emerald-green hair and eyes to match perched atop the head of a long-necked monster (which Akira probably would have compared to a giraffe if he were around). There was a twinkle in the boy’s eyes indicating he was enjoying the chaos.

Then it dawned on me.

“You’re…the demon who attacked the Sacred Forest all those years ago, aren’t you?”

It was the same incident I’d recounted to Akira back in the Great Labyrinth of Kantinen, the one in which Kilika had accidentally caused monsters to flood out from the Great Forest Labyrinth. But I remembered now—there had been a demon leading the horde, and I could distinctly recall the same glint in his bright-green eyes and the way he’d said “See ya later!” in that boyish voice of his as he rode off. I had been just a child at the time, so I hadn’t known it then, but when I got older and learned what the demons were, I realized the boy leading the pack must have been one of them. I’d only seen him for a split second, so I had been sure whether I should tell my father what I had seen. If the demons were attacking, it meant the Demon Lord was going on the offensive, and that wasn’t the sort of thing you wanted to spread false alarm about. It could result in a large-scale counteroffensive that forced us to cooperate with other races who our people didn’t much care for, and all based on a purported sighting by a lone elven girl.

“Hey, you remembered!” the boy exclaimed. “Yep, that’s me! Gosh, I’ve still gotta thank your sister for giving us an excuse to come out and have a field day like that. That was the most fun I’d had in a long, long time!”

Just as I realized he was indeed a demon and had assumed a more guarded posture, the boy’s voice became much shriller and more jovial. His cheeks were flushed pink, as if he were enamored with a new toy. The monsters had stopped their invasion and were now moving in to surround me on all sides as though I were their primary target. I’d never seen so many monsters in such a tight space before—not even in one of the labyrinth’s many monster lairs. Even with my Gravity Magic, which could take out vast swaths of enemies in a single blast, the odds were stacked against me.

“So listen, Princess,” the boy went on, lowering his voice. “I’ve actually got a little job I’m gonna need you to do. So as much as I’d like to just kill you right here and now, I’m afraid that’s not gonna fly.”

His green eyes glimmered ominously, and suddenly the monsters who’d been frozen in place began to move again. Not in a wild rampage, but in a more organized manner, like they were following orders. I wanted to let out a grunt of frustration, but I stopped myself, thinking that wouldn’t be very ladylike, and simply furrowed my brow instead.

“But I do know about that magic of yours,” he continued, “so I’m afraid I’ll still need to incapacitate you a little bit, m’kay?”

He flashed a devilish grin, but his eyes remained so pure and childlike that I might’ve had a hard time believing he wasn’t just a playful little kid if it weren’t for the enormous amount of mana radiating from his body.

“Oh, but that assassin friend of yours? The one brought here via the hero summoning ritual? Yeah, I’m probably gonna have to kill him, FYI. His Majesty said he’ll only get in the way of our plans, and on top of that, I just can’t stand his ugly mug. I hate it when human worms like him don’t know their place. Need to kill him to make sure he doesn’t achieve his goal, y’know?”

If my brow were capable of furrowing any deeper, it would have. We already knew the Demon Lord was aware of Akira from the message he’d had Night pass along, of course, but we’d only come to this continent to get Akira’s sword repaired so he’d stand a fighting chance against the Demon Lord, who had explicitly summoned us to his castle. How exactly were we “getting in the way of his plans”?

“But you’re probably gonna want to stay alive so you can bring him back in case I do kill him, right? So you’d better hurry up and use that Resurrection Magic of yours to make sure you survive this! Don’t worry—I promise I won’t kill him before you have a chance to recuperate. And I’m a man of my word!”

The boy raised a hand, and the monsters started closing in on me.

“Oh, right! And the name’s Aurum. Aurum Tres. Now don’t go forgetting it, m’kay?”

The boy lowered his hand, and the monsters rushed me all at once.

 

POV: NIGHT

 

“AURUM TRES,” I muttered to myself as I examined the scene of the carnage. I was about 90 percent sure it was him—I’d recognize the mana signature anywhere.

“Night, are you listening to me? Did you see the guys who kidnapped her or not?”

Master’s voice was even deeper than usual. He was making quite the effort to appear calm and conceal the immense rage he was feeling, but it was still abundantly clear he wanted to hunt down the perpetrators as fast as humanly possible.

“Yes, I know who it was…but I’m afraid you’re no match for him. I would recommend waiting until you’re stronger to go after him.”

“Even though my stats are already higher than those of the previous Demon Lord? Are you serious?”

“I assure you, I am.”

I was keeping my voice a little softer than usual—perhaps I was feeling a bit shaken up by this as well. But if he was here, then His Majesty was planning something. I never would have imagined that, before becoming Master’s familiar, such a thought would ever make me sick to my stomach.

“Can you at least tell me the name of the guy who kidnapped her?” Master asked as I leapt up to a higher vantage point and looked down at the bloody scene. The stronger one’s mana, the more they carried in their blood, to the point that it was possible to distinguish whom a given bloodstain belonged to even a little while after it dried. There was no question the blood I was looking at was Amelia’s, as it contained traces of mana strong enough to kill an ordinary man.

“His name is Aurum Tres. He was given the surname Tres because he’s the demons’ third-in-command. And yes, the current Demon Lord’s subordinates are indeed so powerful that they’ve surpassed even the previous Demon Lord—Aurum Tres among them.”

Master knelt down and grasped a fistful of the blood-soaked sand at his feet.

“Well, let’s clear out the remaining monsters before we do anything else. They’ll get no mercy from me after this.”

Sure enough, a group of monster stragglers soon began to congregate around us, drawn either by the scent of Lady Amelia’s blood or by our presence.

“Very well,” I replied.

But Master didn’t even look up.

“Shadow Magic, activate.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a result of Master’s rage, or if he was simply channeling more mana than usual, but the number of shadows he summoned forth from the nearby craters (which had likely been formed by Lady Amelia’s Gravity Magic) was staggering. Previously, I’d only known him to be capable of making use of his own shadow and maybe the shadows of a few other nearby objects.

I took a deep breath, then used Shapeshifter to transform. I’d made the mistake of taking the form of a dragon before despite not being able to accurately emulate the hardness of its scales, but not this time. I was now taking the form of a monster I’d fought directly on many occasions. When the light from the transformation sequence abated, I was quite a bit taller than my previous feline incarnation, and I had three sets of eyes to work with.

“A Cerberus, seriously? How many monsters in this world are gonna ape Greek mythology?”

I heard Master muttering about something, but as the drool dribbled from my ferocious mouths, I sensed my thoughts growing more and more beastlike by the second. Even now, I could only comprehend about half of what he’d just said. In this form, I was far more powerful, nimble, and resistant to basic attacks, but there were certainly drawbacks as well. I was reduced to no more than a frothing beast that felt nothing aside from a deep instinctual desire to kill, kill, kill. The biggest hurdle to taking forms like this was always finding someone capable of stopping me before I went too far, but now that I’d teamed up with Master, I was sure that wouldn’t be an issue.

“Mas…ter… I’m going to…destroy them now… When I’m done…you need to stop me…”

I leapt forth without waiting for Master to answer, immediately pouncing on the nearest monster and ripping out its throat. Then I moved right on to the next before the first could even choke out its final breath. I grew wetter and stickier as the entrails of my victims splattered against my fur, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was trying to quench my insatiable thirst for blood.

“Ohhh, I get it. You can’t control yourself when you’re in that form, can you?”

Master’s voice resounded through my brain, but I couldn’t respond.

“Yeah, I can relate. I was just having some trouble trying to control my Shadow Magic at full blast, but you’ve bought me enough time to get a handle on it. Thanks, big guy.”

The words seeped through my ears, but I had no idea what they meant. I made a mental note to try to think back on them after I’d reverted to my original form.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

WHEN I SAW the puddle of Amelia’s blood on the ground, which was large enough to have been from a lethal wound, something snapped in my brain. I didn’t lose control of myself and start breaking things, but I had a bit of a mental breakdown from the overwhelming rage, powerlessness, and sadness I was feeling. Some other monsters appeared afterward, but I was in no state to pay them any mind. I felt like a lost child who’d been left behind in a dark and unfamiliar city.

“Shadow Magic, activate.”

Needing some outlet to vent my frustrations, I unleashed my Shadow Magic, carrying with it the full weight of my fury. I couldn’t control it.

“Mas…ter… I’m going to…destroy them now… When I’m done…you need to stop me…”

I was too focused on trying to get a better hold on my Shadow Magic to even notice that Night had transformed himself into a Cerberus. Seriously, why were there so many monsters from Greek mythology in this world?

Night said not another word before leaping into the crowd of monsters and ripping out the throat of his first victim, sending blood spraying across the ground. The corpses continued to pile up as he gnashed and ripped apart multiple monsters with his three distinct heads.

“All right. I think I’ve got it under control now.”

I couldn’t just stand back and let him do all the work now that, with great effort, I’d managed to subdue the Shadow Magic raging like a wildfire within me and harness its powers as my own once again. There was still much about the ability that I didn’t know or understand—how far my range of control over it extended, and what its limits were. It was clearly a power far stronger than I had any right to control, yet weirdly enough, that didn’t intimidate me whatsoever. Using Shadow Magic to clear an opening in the middle of the monster horde, I leapt over to Night’s side. In his drooling Cerberus form, he seemed to have lost all sense of reason. He was acting purely on one instinct: to destroy.

I thanked him for keeping the monsters occupied thus far as I joined him in the fight, though it didn’t seem like any of my words were getting through to him, so I decided it would be best to save this conversation for later. With my dagger cloaked in Shadow Magic, I stabbed deep into my first victim’s vital organs. The other shadows at my feet stretched out across the ground, somewhat of their own volition, and began gobbling up monsters left and right, devouring them whole.

“Wha… Hey, Night!”

When I looked up, I saw that my partner was no longer by my side, but instead continuing his rampage elsewhere. He was still within my line of sight, but much too far for either of us to provide support to the other if things got dicey. Perhaps the monsters were intentionally trying to separate us—it did seem like they were acting on the orders of a more intelligent being rather than just their own impulses.

“Must be those damn demons.”

They were the only race capable of controlling monsters. It was the same power that made them so reviled by the other races, to the point that they had been exiled to the most inhospitable of Morrigan’s four continents, the hellscape known only as Volcano. If the demons were attacking, then it could only mean one thing: the Demon Lord was on the offensive. I couldn’t speak to what the royal family back in the Kingdom of Retice was truly planning, but it seemed the timing of their ritual to summon an unprecedented twenty-eight heroes was a little too perfect.

“Aurum Tres,” I muttered, letting the name linger on my lips as I clenched my fist and let my shadows writhe. “You’re not gonna get away with this.”

As a bit of an unrelated aside, I’d never known what love was like back in my world. I loved my mom and my sister, Yui, of course, but I’d never been in love. Every girl I knew had thought I was a freak or a creep due to my appearance or my attitude and stayed far, far away from me, and it wasn’t like I’d had some conveniently gorgeous childhood friend I could develop a relationship with either. Hell, I didn’t have any long-term friends, and since high school, I’d been too busy with work to even think about my pathetic love life.

That meant Amelia was the first girl I’d ever properly fallen in love with. The fact that she was a princess didn’t deter me in the least, and I was pretty sure that if she died, I’d never love again. I wanted nothing more than to cherish and protect her. When I failed her, it felt far worse than merely failing myself. And right now, she was somewhere far beyond my grasp. I didn’t even know where she’d been taken. She could have been in immense pain at that very moment. She could have been calling my name, crying for help. Yet I had no way of running to her side. No matter how many of these monsters I killed, it wouldn’t bring me any closer to Amelia.

“GRAAAAAGH!”

The thought filled me with a blinding fury. A darkness even blacker than the skies above fell over the vicinity—my Shadow Magic had broken out of its confines and spread out far beyond my reach.

“Begone, filth! Shadow Hell!”

The monsters sank slowly into the black-dyed streets, and like quicksand, the shadows had them stuck fast. By the time they’d sunk all the way in, my MP was almost completely depleted, and when the shadows came rushing back to me, the skies overhead returned to their natural blue. As I looked up to confirm the nightmare was over, my body fell limp.

“Hm…? Master?!” said Night, somehow managing to catch me before I hit the ground. I was surprised to see that he’d returned to his giant feline form. “It seems your Shadow Magic… Or rather, the new type of Shadow Magic you just used has the power to cancel out other types of magic as well. It broke me out of my transformation the moment I came in contact with it. But more importantly, what in the world were you thinking?! How could you be so reckless?! Couldn’t you have just picked them off one by one?!”

Night’s angry voice rang through my dizzy, exhausted mind like a siren, making my throbbing headache all the more painful.

“Sorry, Night, but can you save the lecture for later? I gotta take a nap.”

Night protested, but I closed my eyes regardless. I’d reached my limit. He was right, though—I had gone way too far. For once, I’d let my emotions get the better of me. If my MP hadn’t run out, my shadows probably would’ve gone on to raze this entire neighborhood. I should’ve known better than to let myself lose control like that, but ever since I met Amelia, it was like I’d become a different person. And yet, as someone who’d never cared one iota for anyone outside my immediate family back in my world, I considered this ability to feel emotions for other people an improvement.

“Don’t worry, Amelia… I’ll save you… I promise…”

These were the last words I whispered before finally passing out.

 

“MASTER’S INJURIES HAVE EXCEEDED ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. FATAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED; EMERGENCY ACTION REQUIRED. AUTO-ENGAGING SHADOW MAGIC, RECOVERY MODE… MASTER’S MP SUPPLY DEEMED INSUFFICIENT. RECOVERY WILL REQUIRE THE USE OF EMERGENCY MANA STORES. INITIATING RECOVERY… RECOVERY COMPLETE. DISENGAGING SHADOW MAGIC.”

 

As the mechanical voice came out of my mouth, my body was enveloped in a gentle light that healed my wounds and sent me drifting off to sleep. My pale face, drained of all its mana, was restored to its original color. It was a phenomenon that had only happened to me once before, well before I met Amelia or Night, when I’d nearly died from the injuries I sustained during the Chimera boss fight.

Night, recognizing his master was no longer in mortal danger, ceased his desperate flight in search of help and slowed his gait.

 

When I came to, I found myself in an unfamiliar room.

“Mm?” I mumbled groggily.

“Oh, good. You’re finally awake, Master.”

As I sat up in bed and surveyed my surroundings, a house cat–sized Night greeted me from the windowsill next to my bed. He seemed fairly exhausted himself.

“Night, where are we?” I asked.

“In my humble abode,” said a voice that was decidedly not Night’s. Yet it was one I recognized.

“Crow?” I said as the black-furred feline blacksmith approached me, carrying something in his hands. Aside from the bed, the small room had little in the way of furniture—not even a closet. It was clear that its owner didn’t use it for any purpose other than sleeping.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Awful. How long was I out? And did you find Amelia?”

My body felt as heavy and lethargic as one would expect after an especially long sleep, and my brain still wasn’t working properly. I felt like I hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since arriving in this world, as death seemed to always be right around the corner, yet today I awoke feeling perhaps a little too well rested. I assumed I must have been out cold for a good while. As the cogs in my head finally started moving again, I held a hand up to my forehead and tried to regain my bearings.

“Oh, so that’s it, eh? Amelia got kidnapped by the demons?” asked Crow.

“Unfortunately so. We managed to stave off the monster invasion, but we still don’t know where Lady Amelia’s been taken. And to answer your question, Master, you’ve been unconscious for the past three days.”

I was a bit taken aback by this. Had I really slept for three whole days? The longest I’d ever been unconscious before was that time I got hit by a truck when I jumped in front of it to save a child who was playing in the middle of the street, and even then, I was only out for two days. Thankfully, I’d managed to slip between the tires when I fell, so I hadn’t been injured too badly, and from what it looked like, I hadn’t sustained any major injuries this time either. So why had I needed three whole days to regain consciousness? I looked over at Night, who had a pensive look on his face.

“Night? What’s wrong?”

I scooped him up to pet him, and he started purring like the little cat he was. Amelia and I would often compete to see who could get him purring faster.

“Master, I… No, never mind. It’s not important.”

It sure as hell sounded important, but I knew better than to try to force Night to tell me something when he clearly didn’t want to.

Crow, having waited patiently for us to finish speaking, stepped forward and placed the objects he’d been carrying in my lap. “Here’s the item you asked me to work on. I assume you’ll need it if you’re gonna go off and pick a fight with the demons. I went ahead and spotted you for the materials and labor costs, but I expect to be repaid in full at your earliest convenience. I also went ahead and sharpened up that dagger you were using while I was at it. Tell the owner I hope they continue to make good use of it.”

I looked down at the dagger I’d borrowed from the fallen adventurer, which now gleamed in the light as though it were brand-new.

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” I said, before looking at the other two daggers sitting in my lap. “You had to split it in half, huh? Guess I must’ve really done a number on the poor thing.”

“That you did. But hey, you’re an assassin, right? Dual blades should be a little more your style anyway.”

The two daggers were all black from sheath to hilt, and upon pulling one out, I confirmed the blades themselves were still every bit as black as I remembered. There could be no mistaking it—my trusty katana, the Yato-no-Kami, had been split in two. There’d been a huge crack right in the middle of the blade when I left it with Crow. From the way he explained it, the katana hadn’t been beyond repair, but he made an executive decision to adapt it after taking my class into consideration.

“Oh, and I want you to have this as well,” he added, dropping a small box in my lap.

I picked it up and looked it over.

Night seemed to already recognize whatever it was, as his eyes shot wide open. “Wait a minute. Is that…?”

“Yes, it’s exactly what you think it is. Go ahead. Open it up.”

At Crow’s insistence, I hesitantly lifted the lid of the tiny box. “Is this…a ring?” I asked.

It was a fairly primitive-looking piece of jewelry, clearly designed for men, with a blood-red gemstone embedded in the center. It had no name engraved on it, yet there was a message written in English in a tiny font on the inside edge: “LET ME BE YOUR GUIDE.” I read it aloud, then translated it for Night and Crow. My English wasn’t great, but I knew enough to understand what it meant. More than anything, I was just surprised to see yet another language from my world had made its way into this one. I assumed the ring must have been forged by an adventurer who’d been summoned from somewhere in the Anglosphere at some point in the past.

“You can read that, huh? Guess I shouldn’t expect any less from the hero,” said Crow.

“Yeah, it’s not the language of my home country, but it’s one of the ones from my world.” And I’m not the hero, technically, but whatever.

Crow nodded in understanding.

He’d probably figured I wouldn’t be able to read it since it was written in a different language than the one engraved on the Yato-no-Kami, and since my Understand Language skill didn’t seem to work on languages from outside this world, he would have been right if I hadn’t studied hard for all those English exams. I usually slept through most of the school day, but I tried to stay awake for my Japanese, English, and math classes at the very least. Not because I thought those subjects would serve me well in the future or anything like that, but because those were the classes with the scariest teachers. My English teacher, in particular, was bright and bubbly on the surface but had an eagle eye for snoozing students. And if you did get caught dozing off, you could expect to be woken up with a pop quiz about the lecture you’d just slept through.

“Well, that’s a pretty fitting inscription. That ring will light the way to whatever it is its wearer seeks. Just slide it on, then think really hard about what you most desire. The light from the ring will lead you right to it.”

My heart skipped a beat. It could lead me straight to what I most desired? Could I use it to find where they’d taken Amelia? I slipped the ring onto my pointer finger and tried to picture Amelia in my mind.

“Whoa!”

A red beam of light shot out from the ring and hit one of the house’s walls at a slight downward angle. I quickly surmised it was pointing in the direction of the Great Labyrinth of Brute.

“Hold on a minute. That ring is a national treasure, is it not? How in the world did you come to possess it?” Night asked Crow, clearly suspicious. The ring was apparently supposed to be locked up tight in a castle vault somewhere.

Crow shrugged and shook his head. “Got it as a gift from someone I helped out way back when. Couldn’t tell you who, since they didn’t reveal their identity to me, but it seemed useful, so I graciously accepted.”

He then made a quip about how he was glad to finally have a guinea pig to try it on and confirm it wasn’t cursed, a joke which Night clearly did not find amusing. He shot Crow a death glare that said he should thank his lucky stars it wasn’t cursed, or else his entrails would be splattered across this house.

“Well, the good news is we can use this to find Amelia,” I said, changing the subject. “How ’bout it, Crow? You wanna come with us? Night told me you’re gonna be mentoring Amelia. Wouldn’t it be only proper to go save your apprentice?”

“Sorry, since when am I her mentor?” Crow snapped, giving Night a dirty look. “I don’t recall ever agreeing to anything of the sort.”

“Well, that you’ve put up with her this long means you must be at least considering it, right?”

This question gave Crow pause. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking; he just stared off into space for a while before finally answering. “Perhaps. I suppose if she makes it back here alive, I wouldn’t mind giving her some pointers.”

“Are you serious?!” Night was so overjoyed that he pounced on Crow in a way that was cute in his house cat form, but would have been lethal were he at his full size.

“Don’t make me repeat myself. And that’s only if she makes it back alive.”

Heh. Despite his tough-guy front, Crow was a bit of a softie on the inside. I was relieved to hear he would lend Amelia a hand, even if it sounded like he had no intention of helping us rescue her.

“Can I ask you for one other favor, Crow? I want you to do a little digging and see if you can find out who’s conspiring with the demons.”

At this, Crow stopped trying to peel Night off his head and gave me a sour look; his expression was always a little sour, though, so it wasn’t a big change.

“Way ahead of you,” he replied. “The general public still doesn’t know the demons were behind the attack, but it’s only a matter of time before the king puts out an official statement. That means we’ve gotta figure out how they sneaked in, and with whose help, before they have a chance to flee.”

I nodded in agreement. Even if this was a port town, it wasn’t so lightly guarded that demons could have just slipped in unnoticed. If anything, the town was even more security-conscious because it was a port—I’d needed official permission from the elven king to even enter the country. The proximity to the labyrinth meant the town was home to a major guild branch and an ever-increasing number of skilled adventurers who increased the city’s security. While it was true that humans and demons didn’t look all that different on a superficial level, demons exuded such an immense amount of mana that even the most ignorant fool with no eye for magic could recognize them from a mile away. Not that there were many such fools among the beastfolk, who prided themselves on their alertness and were notorious for trying to pick fights.

“Well, if I were you, I’d start with Guildmaster Lingga and his little brother, Senna,” I said, and Night and Crow both looked at me like I was insane.

“Master, surely you don’t mean…”

“When Lingga was addressing the Guild before the attack, he explicitly said not to let ‘the demons defile our town,’ but no one had even caught the faintest whiff of any demons at that point. So why was he so sure they were involved?”

Unless you were like Night, who had a direct link with the demons, there was no way to know where they were or what they were up to—so where had Lingga’s intel originated from? I’d also noted that, when the majority of adventurers gasped at the mention of said demons, Senna hadn’t seemed fazed in the slightest, which struck me as pretty suspicious. And was it really standard procedure to force the yellow and red ranks to team up with strangers to go fight on the front lines? There were plenty of silver-rank adventurers who could’ve helped with that. Why hadn’t he sent them to hold off the monsters and had the lower-ranking adventurers help the civilians evacuate? The guildmaster’s plan hadn’t accounted for the civilians at all…which would have forced any capable fighters stuck in more densely populated areas to stay back and fight off the monsters while helping the elderly and disabled evacuate.

“Unless it was all a setup?” I finally said, opening my eyes after a long silence.

“Master?” Night responded incredulously.

“I think there’s a good chance Lingga’s our informant. He’s the one who decided where and how to dispatch the adventurers, and he doesn’t seem like the type to make a stupid oversight like, say, completely forgetting to send capable fighters to defend unarmed civilians. Especially with the monsters in every corner of the city.”

Night frowned, grasping my implication. Crow, for his part, scowled like he’d swallowed a bug.

“So what’s your theory?”

“I think it’s possible Lingga predicted Amelia would stay behind to help with the evacuation, and he intentionally tried to overwhelm her and keep her in one place.”

Of course, this was all pure conjecture. There were plenty of other people who could have been pulling the strings, or maybe someone had seen a demon and was able to relay the information to Lingga from afar via some unique skill.

“So you think he organized the adventurers the way he did specifically to get the elf princess trapped and alone,” Crow said. “I’ll see if I can find any evidence to support that theory, but for now, I think you should get a little more rest.”

I nodded and promptly sank back down into the bed, already on the verge of passing out again. I knew Shadow Magic consumed an immense amount of mana, and I always tried to use it sparingly unless it was an emergency, so this was a first for me. I’d never experienced what it felt like to use up all your mana, but I never could have imagined it would feel this terrible. I would be careful to not let it happen again. As soon as I closed my eyes, my mind drifted into sleep. I could hear Night and Crow discussing something quietly, but it sounded like radio static in my current state, and it only grew fainter as my consciousness sank deeper into darkness.

 

POV: NIGHT

 

I PANICKED A BIT when Master seemed to faint again, but Crow assured me that he was merely sleeping, so I let out a sigh of relief. There was no shortage of mages who’d met their end due to mana exhaustion—it was no laughing matter. My demon superiors had theorized every breath used up a small bit of mana, and with Master having just narrowly escaped death, I couldn’t help worrying that something so minuscule would be the final nail in his coffin.

“Gotta admit, I’m impressed he made it out of there alive,” Crow muttered.

I considered telling Crow about the strange phenomenon that had saved Master’s life, but neither I nor Master had any idea of what had actually happened.

Crow gave me an impatient look. “What? If you’ve got something you wanna say, then say it. Otherwise, I’m gonna head out,” he said coldly, looking down at me where I lay on the bed.

I couldn’t stand against that look. I caved and told him all about Master using up his mana by casting an extremely strong Shadow Magic spell, and about the words I’d heard coming out of his mouth as I dragged his battered body to Crow’s home.

“Huh. That doesn’t sound like any automatic recovery magic I’m familiar with. And where the hell did the ‘emergency mana stores’ come from?”

I let Crow stew over the information for a while as I checked on Master. He winced a bit at the cold touch of my paw on his forehead before falling back asleep.

“Hrm. Well, he doesn’t seem to have a fever, and that’s one of the telltale symptoms of mana exhaustion,” I said. Suddenly, my patient grabbed me and tucked me under his head like a pillow. “M-Master…? Erm, Crow? A little help, please?” I didn’t want to force my way out of Master’s grasp and risk waking him, so I turned to Crow for assistance, only to discover he’d already left. “Blast… Ugh. Master, what am I ever going to do with you? You realize that by losing control like that, you put my life in danger too, don’t you?”

Before he and I made a pact, I’d found the boy’s wanton fearlessness in the face of death rather amusing, but now that we were bound, I wished he would start taking things a bit more seriously. My heart couldn’t take much more excitement, and I wasn’t ready to die just yet. When His Majesty assigned me to my post as the final boss of the Kantinen labyrinth, I’d accepted knowing full well I would likely die down there someday, but that resolve hadn’t lasted for long. I’d found myself constantly wishing I could escape from that commitment, and while I eventually did, it certainly hadn’t been in the manner I would have expected. But it was still better than being stuck down there forever.

Regardless, I wasn’t ready to die, which was exactly why I’d made the pact in the first place. Despite knowing it would mean my own death if Master should ever perish, I told myself everything would be fine so long as I made sure to protect him. I hadn’t expected him to flirt with death at every opportunity he could get, even if this was the first time his life had ever truly been in danger since we’d teamed up. An ordinary human would have died from that first arrow ambush back in the Sacred Forest, but thanks to his extraordinary skills, Master was evading fatal attacks on what felt like a daily basis.

“Please don’t die, Master. I’m begging you…”

I nuzzled his cheek. It felt a little bit patronizing for a once-proud monster like myself to be reduced to a mere pillow, but I paid it no mind. Master had been treating me like a stuffed animal since we first became allies down in the labyrinth, so I was used to it by now. True to his word, he’d made cuddle sessions a mandatory event each day before bed, just as he’d promised he would when we first made our pact. I moved closer to his body and prayed, whispering the same three words over and over.

“Please don’t die.”

What I perhaps hadn’t realized was that my fear of Master dying had long since transcended a simple desire to not die myself. It wasn’t long before I gave in to his comforting warmth, laid my weary head on his arm, and drifted off to sleep.

“Mas…ter…”

 

Not long after this, Akira wearily opened his eyes to discover a soft, furry mass had fallen asleep in his arms.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I promise I won’t let anything happen. I’m not gonna go dying anytime soon. Not before I make it back home, at least.”

He wrapped his arms tight around his familiar, then fell once more into a deep, deep slumber.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

THE SKIES OUT THE WINDOW were dark when I next awoke. I tried to jump out of bed, insisting we start looking for Amelia at once, but I was talked down by Crow and Night.

“It’s already nighttime, and it’s only going to get darker outside. I know that might be favorable for an assassin, but don’t forget, the darkness is advantageous for monsters as well,” Night warned.

“Besides, you haven’t fully recovered yet,” Crow added. “Go back to bed.”

I wasn’t sure how the two of them could possibly be so calm about this, and I was soon overcome with immense frustration at the thought of making Amelia wait even a moment longer.

“What the hell, guys? Do you not have any sense of urgency?!”

I slammed my fist into the wall in a fit of rage. I knew throwing a tantrum wouldn’t help matters, and I wouldn’t even have been in this situation if I hadn’t used my Shadow Magic without considering the consequences. I also knew the two of them were probably beside themselves with worry for Amelia as well, but I couldn’t stop myself from taking my frustration out on them.

“Trust me, Master. We want to rush to her aid just as badly as you do.”

“Speak for yourself. Far as I’m concerned, you can take all the time you want, Mr. Silent Assassin,” Crow snarked, and I would have blown up at him if it weren’t for the last two words he’d said.

“‘Silent Assassin’?”

Crow smirked at my dumbfounded expression. I was used to his sarcastic smiles by now, but this one sent shivers down my spine.

“It’s your new nickname, Master,” Night said matter-of-factly.

Noooo! Damn it, don’t tell me that! If you’re gonna be the bearer of bad news, at least ease me into it first! This was a problem my friend Kyousuke had always had too. He’d walk up to you, drop an information bomb sure to ruin your day, then walk off like he didn’t even realize he’d done it. Maybe he and Night were secretly related somehow.

“Apparently, a good number of civilians witnessed you using your Shadow Magic to wipe out the monsters,” Crow explained. “They watched from the nearby hill they’d been evacuated to. It’s not often a yellow-rank adventurer becomes famous enough to get their own alias. The Guild’s even officially approved it. Isn’t that swell? Must be nice to have such a cool title, huh?” Crow slapped me on the shoulder with a grin before waltzing outside.

I was left there in bed, clutching my head in my hands. “No, no, no! I can’t have a nickname! I’m an assassin! How can I be stealthy if everyone and their mother knows who I am?!” I cried.

“It’s true, being famous generally doesn’t help one sneak around unnoticed. For what it’s worth, I still think you do a far better job of keeping a low profile than any other assassin I’ve met,” Night said, trying to reassure me.

That’s not the point, Night! I thought. Ugh, why did I have to get the most edgelord-sounding nickname imaginable?! And since when does the Guild get to decide what nicknames get approved?! I sure as hell wouldn’t have approved this! “I swear to god, my classmates better not find out about this… Especially not Kyousuke or the hero. They’ll never let me live it down…”

Kyousuke would probably just say “Good for you” and mean it, which was honestly even more embarrassing than being made fun of. The hero would probably look at me in horror and say “Oof, that sucks,” which would be insulting enough on its own, but then he’d no doubt go and tell his harem, who’d then spread it around until everyone in class knew my shame. I let out a deep and pained sigh.

“Damn it, Night. Can’t we at least try to get them to change it to something a little less cringeworthy?”

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility, but now that the entire town is abuzz with gossip about the elusive ‘Silent Assassin,’ I think you’ll have a hard time getting them to switch over to something else. Though I hear there was a contingent of townspeople insisting on the name ‘Dark Assassin’ instead,” Night said, shaking his head. He clearly did not understand the true severity of the situation.

“Dark Assassin? That’s even worse! I use Shadow Magic, not Dark Magic! Is every single person in this city a moron?!” I asked grumpily, and I could almost feel my shadow nodding emphatically in agreement.

“Well, I don’t know. Perhaps it looked to them like you were controlling a cloud of darkness. You must also remember that your Shadow Magic is a rare, undocumented school of magic. How could you expect the average person to tell the difference? You did cloak the streets in a veil of darkness, after all.”

Night gave me a wry look as though he knew I wouldn’t have a good comeback. And damn it, he was right. I also couldn’t deny that, regardless of how edgy my nickname was, the fact remained that an assassin who went around defeating monsters by harnessing the power of his shadow was about as edgelordy as you could get. Maybe it would be better to silence everyone in town to make sure there was no risk of my grandchildren ever finding out.

“Let’s just get some sleep, all right? We’ve got an early morning tomorrow!” I said before slamming my head down into the mattress. Apparently my body was still in dire need of rest, as I immediately felt my eyes growing heavy. I was also no stranger to falling asleep after flinging myself onto my bed in anger. My sister, Yui, loved to tease me about it.

“Yes, yes. Whatever you say, Master.”

“Don’t be snippy with me,” I grumbled hazily before I drifted off completely.

 

“You can’t recover from mana exhaustion in only a few days, Master. Especially not after it nearly killed you,” Night murmured before leaving the house.

My Shadow Magic had automatically replenished my mana, yes, but it had only brought me back to the bare minimum of what I needed to stay alive. The only way to recover was to gradually drink mana potions and rest. I was now about 70 percent recovered, but it would be best to wait until I was back to 100 percent. I knew this, yet I was so fraught with worry for Amelia that I couldn’t stay asleep for long, which meant my recovery was taking much longer than it should have.

“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon… Hurry up, damn it…”

 

POV: SATOU TSUKASA

 

“ASSUMING OUR ULTIMATE GOAL is still to slay the Demon Lord, where do we go from here?”

After some much-needed R&R in the eastern country of Yamato, I and the other members of the hero’s party were finally ready to gear up and get moving again.

“Well, we’re gonna want to be prepared, I can tell you that much. From what I’ve heard, the previous generation’s hero lost all his party members except for a single beastfolk representative at the hands of the demons and monsters before they even made it to the Demon Lord’s throne.”

This had happened nearly one hundred years ago, and the disgraced hero had long since died of natural causes. It was theorized that the current Demon Lord might be the same one from back then, since no one had been able to slay him, but no one was sure how long the average demon lived.

“Guess that means we should be careful not to underestimate the Demon Lord’s cronies, huh?” Hosoyama said.

I nodded. “Well, we don’t know exactly how strong the last hero’s party was, but we can certainly assume it was composed of the finest living warriors from across three continents at the time.”

“In other words, there’s no doubt they were far, far stronger than we are now,” Asahina muttered to himself.

For the past several days, we’d been taking on requests posted at the local Adventurer’s Guild. There weren’t a ton to choose from, given that there was no labyrinth in the area, but since Yamato wasn’t a popular stop for adventurers, there were plenty of requests to defeat low-level monsters that were trivial for us but intimidating for the average civilian. We split up and took care of each and every one, and we were finally reconvening to take a breather. There didn’t seem to be any powerful monsters in this part of the continent—certainly nothing as strong as the minotaur we had fought down in the labyrinth, at least. Even the training Sir Saran and Sir Gilles had put us through had been more taxing than fighting the nearby monsters, none of which were stronger than those found in the first few levels of the Great Labyrinth of Kantinen.

“We’d best be careful we don’t get too big for our britches, then,” Ueno grumbled, her arms crossed as she mulled over our options. It seemed everyone in the group was at a loss regarding what our next step should be aside from myself and Asahina.

“Well, we just reached yellow rank, which is great, but there’s not much more we can do to get stronger in a city that only has weak fodder monsters and no labyrinth… So if you ask me, there’s only one thing we can do.”

As Ueno said, it was imperative we took things slow to make sure we didn’t get ahead of ourselves, but there wasn’t much more to be gained from staying here, and plenty we could learn from venturing elsewhere.

“Man, I really don’t wanna have to say goodbye to Japanese food again…”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m sure Tsuda will do his best.”

“Why does it always have to be me?” grumbled our party’s primary chef, Tsuda Tomoya. He was a knight class, but his cooking was so good that he’d become something of a maternal figure for the group. Our two female party members also had the Cooking skill, but he had done the cooking for his entire family, so his skill level was by far the highest.

For reference, the last remaining member of the party was Waki Daisuke—the guy who was always saying “praise the lord” in reaction to any remotely auspicious happenstance. His animal trainer class wasn’t always the most useful; its biggest applications had been taming some little monkeys in the nearby forests and befriending stray cats around town. He was a pretty lackadaisical guy in every respect, and he was prone to going off on tangents in every conversation. He was the oldest child in his family, but in our group he was definitely the annoying baby brother.

His skills would be invaluable if they could be used to tame monsters, but unfortunately that wasn’t how it worked. Apparently there were so-called “monsterlords” who could domesticate monsters like the demons did, but they only came around once every several hundred years or so. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to keep something so hostile as a pet, but to each their own.

“Guys, I’m not a miracle worker. I can’t cook every dish on the planet, and it’s not like there’s a ton of good ingredients to go around either,” Chef Tsuda grumbled. Nanase patted him reassuringly on the back.

Nanase Rintarou was a master in the art of communication and understanding, as evidenced by his ability to hold a conversation with even the most curmudgeonly students in our class (read: Akira). I’d even heard he’d once managed to get Asahina, a man of few words, to open up to him and gush about his favorite anime, though these rumors were unconfirmed. Still, Nanase was probably the middle child of the group, which I suppose made me the oldest.

“Don’t take it personally, Tomoya,” said Nanase. “He’s only saying that ’cause everyone here loves your cooking. And I get that it’s hard to get the right ingredients for traditional Japanese cuisine here in this world, but you could probably at least season things in a pseudo-Japanese way, couldn’t you?”

“I guess I could probably come up with something, yeah,” Tsuda agreed.

“Whoa! For real?! Dude, work on that ASAP! I need this in my life!” Waki begged.

“Same! I can be yer taste tester if ya want!” added our disenchanter, Ueno Yuki. She was a ray of sunlight for our group. I had a feeling that if she or Waki ever stopped smiling, it would be the first sign of the apocalypse. I’d probably place her as the second-oldest daughter of the family.

“I’ll eat anything as long as it sets my mouth on fire,” Hosoyama Shiori said with a delicate, feminine expression at odds with what she was saying. A well-known lover of spicy foods, she couldn’t eat anything here without burying it under a heap of foul-smelling blue seasoning of dubious origin. I wasn’t sure if she had been the same back in our world and just done a better job of hiding it, or if this was a new development. Regardless, I’d probably place her as the eldest daughter.

Which left Asahina, who I suppose would be the father of the group.

“Okay, enough about food, people! We still haven’t decided what our next move should be!” I shouted in a desperate attempt to steer the conversation back on track. Everyone fell silent as I scanned their faces to see if anyone had any decent ideas.

“We need weapons,” said Asahina, leaning up against a wall. He could always be relied upon to offer helpful input regardless of the subject.

“You make a good point. I’ve got my holy sword, so I’m all set, but Tsuda’s sword is so beat up that it’ll probably break soon.”

“We’ve got plenty of money; maybe it’s about time we got everyone some new equipment.”

“Oh, in that case, maybe it’d be a good idea to get me and Yuki some weapons to defend ourselves with too! Things got pretty dicey for a minute there yesterday.”

Our current formation was as follows: me, Asahina, and Tsuda in the front, with casters Nanase, Ueno, and Hosoyama pulling up the rear and Waki as a floater. This still left us vulnerable to attacks from behind, and while we all had the Detect Presence skill, none of us had reached a particularly high level in it. We still needed to keep a watchful eye out to make sure we didn’t get ambushed.

“Why don’t we head over to the beastfolk continent? I’ve heard they’ve got the best blacksmiths in the world over there,” Nanase suggested, and suddenly all eyes were on him. “I mean, I guess it was just a rumor, but I even heard that the beastfolk survivor from the previous hero’s party has his own workshop over in the port town of Ur.”

“I believe the Great Labyrinth of Brute is in Ur as well,” said Asahina.

Welp, I guess that settles it, then! “All right, folks! Tomorrow morning, we leave on the first ship to Ur in order to buy ourselves some shiny new weapons! Would be nice if we could enlist the services of that world-famous blacksmith, but let’s not get our hopes up. As long as we can find some weapons that work for us, that’s all that matters.”

Everyone raised their fists and cheered in agreement, and I let out a sigh of relief. Finally, it was beginning to feel like we were getting ahead of Akira in the race to slay the Demon Lord.