Chapter 5: Demons

Chapter 5:
Demons

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

HAVING SLAIN the eightieth-floor boss without much issue, the three of us quickly made our way down to the ninetieth floor. The boss there was a big, golem-like creature, also immune to magic. Since my twin daggers wouldn’t be of much use against a walking rock wall, I had to resort to using mana once again to take him out. But then I got careless, and the golem used its final breath to hit me with a mighty body slam. Thankfully, Lia cast a barrier on me at the last second, so I made it out unharmed—if that attack had hit me with its full force, it likely would have shattered every bone in my body. The lower-floor bosses were not to be messed with.

“Just three more floors, and we’ll be at one hundred, eh?” I asked as Night dashed into the ninety-eighth floor. I had to assume he was approaching the limits of his stamina too.

“Master… I think I can make it the rest of the way, but I doubt I’ll be able to assist you in the battle. You’ll have to save Lady Amelia yourself.”

I patted him on the neck to reassure him that he’d already done more than enough.

“Hey, Lia?” I asked. “Could you cast barriers on Night and me, just to be safe? And on Amelia too, once we get there? Don’t forget to cast one on yourself, as well.”

Considering I was about to go toe-to-toe with demons, I figured there was a good chance of them getting caught in the crossfire. Perhaps I was worrying too much, but I figured a little insurance couldn’t hurt.

“You got it!” she replied.

I could feel the demonic presence getting closer and closer; I was sure we’d run into them any second now. The mana in the air was so thick that it was making me nauseated, but the effect was relieved a bit after Lia cast her barriers.

“Aha! There they are!” yelled Night.

At last, we had managed to chase down the demon by the name of Aurum Tres. He was a short-statured boy with green hair and matching eyes wearing a devilish little smile. Even through the barrier, I could feel the overwhelming might of his mana; Night had told me what to expect, and he hadn’t sold Aurum short.

And right there, by the demon’s side, levitating just slightly off the ground, was Amelia’s limp and unconscious body.

“Well, hey there!” the boy cried excitedly. “Didn’t think you’d actually catch up to us in time! I mean, you were out cold from mana exhaustion for at least three days straight, weren’t you?”

I didn’t answer. It seemed the boy’s personality was about as mature as his appearance.

“Although I guess I shouldn’t have expected any less from you, Black Cat,” the boy went on. “Pretty smart of you to take Speedah’s form to tap into his trademark speed, but you must be way too tuckered out from all that running to fight now, huh? Surely you don’t think a mere human and a beastgirl will be enough to take on a demon, right?”

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back it up. I’ve got plenty of choice words for you, young man, but before we get to that: are you telling me the Demon Lord had a pet cheetah, and he named it Speedah?! What is with this dude and his penchant for awful names?! Poseidon was the only one thus far that was even remotely decent, even if I had plenty of other problems with his design! But anyway!

“You sure love to hear yourself talk, don’t you, kid?” I shot back. “Yes, I’m a human, and she’s a beastgirl, and we’re here to take you on. You got a problem with that, punk?”

“Uh, excuse me? A human and a beastgirl combined still isn’t much of a threat, y’know. Didn’t history teach you that your kind can’t win against us demons? Maybe if you were the hero, it’d be a different story, but you just look like a plain old assassin. And that beastgirl hiding behind you can’t even fight!” Aurum’s cackle turned into a hearty belly laugh. I gripped my twin daggers in both hands. “Heh heh heh! Y’know, I was planning to just kill you and get it over with, but I think I’ve changed my mind! I’ll torture you to death in front of your beloved Princess Elfie. That way, she can suffer right along with you. It’ll be like killing two birds with one stone!”

His smile disappeared and the room became deathly quiet. Lia, trembling, hid behind Night’s legs.

“Go ahead and try, kid. I’ve never even seen a demon before. Try to at least make this interesting for me, will ya?”

Aurum was standing in front of the stairway leading down to the ninety-ninth floor. I needed to ensure he didn’t escape. I told Night telepathically to try to block the exit when he got a chance, then gripped my daggers tightly and used World Eyes to take a look at Aurum’s stats.

 

AURUM TRES

RACE: Demon CLASS: Spearmaster (Lv. 70)

HP: 35000/35000 MP: 20000/28000

ATTACK: 42000 DEFENSE: 21000

SKILLS:

Weaponcraft (Lv. 7) Polearms (Lv. 9)

Swordsmanship (Lv. 8) Buff Up (Lv. 9)

Detect Danger (Lv. 9) Detect Presence (Lv. 9)

Intimidate (Lv. 9)

EXTRA SKILLS: Monster Control

 

I almost gasped, but I managed to hold it in. It seemed I’d underestimated just how powerful a demon could be. We were about the same level, yet his basic stats were significantly higher than mine, and he seemed to be skilled with swords as well, despite being a spearmaster. The only saving grace was that he didn’t appear to have any sort of magic at his disposal.

My palms were sweating. I was talking a big game, but this was the first time since arriving in this world that I’d felt genuinely threatened by an imposing foe. I wasn’t shaking in my boots or anything, but I was definitely mentally preparing myself for the chance that I might die. Should I use Conceal Presence just to be safe? No, that wouldn’t sit right with me. I need to face this prick head-on!

“I’m gonna shut that annoying mouth of yours for good, kid,” I announced.

“Not before I rearrange your ugly mug,” he shot back.

After a moment’s pause, we both kicked off the ground and charged at each other.

CLANG!

The sound of metal striking metal reverberated through the corridor. The wind howled violently around the spot where we’d clashed. Aurum was now wielding a long, thin spear he’d produced seemingly out of nowhere. Behind our crossed weapons, I saw his eyes widen. Then he grinned, pleasantly surprised.

“Well, well. Looks like you can talk the talk and walk the walk. You’re the first human who’s ever managed to block one of my attacks. This might turn out to be kinda fun!”

He pushed out of the weapon lock, sending me flying—I managed to twist my body around in midair and land on both feet. I couldn’t believe the amount of power this boy wielded in his shrimpy arms; he might have been the strongest person I’d met in this world—maybe even stronger than Commander Saran.

“No time to stop and think! C’mon, let’s keep it up!” the boy said, his childish voice growing madder by the minute. His pupils were dilated and burning brightly. This little boy was a berserker at heart.

“Ngh!”

As the boy leapt at me with another downward thrust, I crossed my daggers to block his spear, but the earth beneath me shattered with the resulting impact, and my feet sank a little way into the ground.

“Ha ha! Gosh, there aren’t even many demons who can last this long against me!”

“Aw, thanks… I’m so flattered!”

I mustered all of my strength and deflected his spear to the side. Okay, playing it defensively and going for counters clearly isn’t working. It’s about time I went on the attack.

 

POV: AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ

 

AS I LAY THERE, floating within a sea of unending darkness, I thought I heard Akira’s voice, followed by what felt like two clashing egos, both out for blood. These things combined to wake my weary consciousness from its torpor.

“Aki…ra… Akira…?”

I sensed him nearby. I could feel earth-shattering shockwaves causing the walls around me to crumble, but I remained unharmed.

“Ha ha! Looks like Sleeping Beauty’s finally awake!”

A child’s voice rang in my ears. I recognized it as the voice of the green-eyed boy who’d taken me captive.

“Would you pick a nickname and stick to it?! What happened to ‘Princess Elfie’?!”

“Gosh, you’re dumb. Do you not pay attention to context, or what? Sleeping Beauty is the perfect nickname for a princess who’s just woken up!”

I could hear their weapons clashing as the wall behind me trembled and quaked.

“This is no time to be referencing fairy tales, you stupid-ass kid! There’s only gonna be a happily ever after for one of us, and it sure as hell ain’t gonna be you!”

I blinked a few times, and finally the scenery surrounding me came into view. My body regained feeling; I could move my fingers again, and though my arms were still numb, I used them to prop myself up against the wall of the labyrinth.

“Akira!” I cried.

“Just stay right there, Amelia. Don’t worry… I won’t let him take you away from me again,” Akira yelled back.

Without even turning to face me, he unclasped his cloak and sent it flying in my direction. As I wrapped it around myself, I was completely enveloped in Akira’s scent, which calmed me down immediately. I moved slowly along the wall, and just as I felt like I was about to collapse again, something soft and fluffy propped me up. “Night?” I asked.

“Don’t overexert yourself, Lady Amelia. Believe in Master and let him settle this.”

Night gazed down at me with his warm, golden eyes. Even though he wasn’t in his usual cat form, I could still tell it was him. Using his tail, he enveloped my cold, weak body to help heat me up again. This, combined with Akira’s reassuring scent, did wonders to relax my mind.

“I do. I believe in both you and Akira,” I replied.

Akira, already bleeding from several wounds, was meeting the long spear of the little boy with his daggers, who was yet unharmed. Akira was clearly losing the battle, yet the fact that he was able to go toe-to-toe with a demon and only take a few cuts and scrapes was incredible.

“Akira looks like he’s having fun,” I observed.

“Master’s abilities are far beyond those of any other man or beast in this world. He can kill just about any opponent in a single blow. Not that he would ever go around seeking opponents just for the sport of it, mind you,” Night said, looking in their direction. Even though Akira was bleeding all over and probably in a lot of pain, he was grinning with delight. I’d never seen him actually enjoying a fight this much before. “I can understand why he might relish the chance to test his abilities against someone who can actually put up a good fight. So much so that he can’t help but crack a smile. If he really wanted to, he could probably use Conceal Presence and take the boy out like any other foe, but he’s intentionally chosen to fight him fair and square. Master tries very hard to tell himself he gets no thrill out of fighting, yet it’s plain to see that he most certainly does.”

I couldn’t deny it. He clearly was enjoying it. It almost reminded me of Kilika, training tirelessly day and night to hone her swordsmanship.

“I’m a little jealous,” I admitted quietly, letting my true feelings slip out. I hoped Night hadn’t heard.

“What’s the matter, buddy? You still haven’t landed a single hit!” the boy teased. “Sure, it’s cool that you’ve lasted this long against a demon and all, but what’s the point if you’re just prolonging the inevitable?!”

He had a point. While Akira hadn’t suffered any grievous wounds just yet, he was still losing a lot of blood, and his face was starting to turn pale. His blood was coalescing in little puddles all across the ground in a pattern that looked almost intentional.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Akira replied. “I was just getting warmed up. Now my preparations are complete.”

“Oh, please,” the boy laughed, holding his hands out to his sides in a shrugging gesture. “What could you possibly still have up your sleeve?”

“Shadow Magic, activate!”

All of the shadows in the dimly lit corridor converged into one—not just Akira’s and the boy’s, but mine and Night’s as well.

“Go!” he commanded, and the shadows dispersed and spread out across the ground.

I’d never seen this technique before. I’d only known Akira to be capable of using his own shadow. When had he learned how to control the shadows of the people around him as well? The shadows, meanwhile, seemed to be spreading out in a particular manner, as if they were being guided.

“The blood…” Night murmured. I looked around and noticed the shadows were indeed reconverging at the sites of the largest blood puddles scattered across the ground.

“They’re reacting to the residual mana in Akira’s blood and gathering in those locations…? Wait, no—are they recombining?”

Akira held out his hand, then clenched it into a fist. “Shadowbeast!”

The shadows atop the various blood puddles wriggled and squirmed out of the ground, taking on the shapes of four-legged, bloodthirsty beasts. The wolf-like specters charged the boy, deftly avoiding the wide sweeps of his spear, and started gnashing away at his legs, arms, and torso.

“Ngh!”

The boy spun around to shake off the beasts, tearing bits of his flesh away in the process. This time, it was the boy’s blood splattering across the floor, and in far greater amounts than Akira’s had.

All of a sudden, the tides had turned.

“Wow, kid. Your blood must be pretty tasty for them to be so ravenous. My Shadow Magic sends its compliments to the chef,” said Akira as the wolves circled around him like loyal dogs awaiting their next command.

The boy simply stood there speechless for a while, gazing down at his own bloodstains on the floor. Then he suddenly began to laugh. “Heh heh heh! AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!”

Akira seemed taken aback by this, as he recoiled a bit. After a moment, the shadow beasts disappeared, seeping back into the ground before returning back to the feet of their respective owners.

“So this is what pain feels like… This is what my blood looks like…” the boy muttered, clutching at the geyser of blood shooting out from his belly.

As Akira and I winced at the sight of his descent into madness, Night simply looked down at the boy with an unaffected stare.

“While it’s a well-known fact that demons have extremely high mana and attack power, it’s not as commonly known that their defense is also much, much higher than any other race. Normal weapons won’t even so much as scrape their skin, and even magic rarely proves effective… I knew several demons in my time at the castle who hadn’t shed a single drop of blood for as long as they’d been alive.”

If that was true, then I had to assume this boy’s defense stat was very high, judging from his reaction. It looked to me like he was delighted by the sight of his own blood, like he was enjoying feeling pain, like there was some thrill for him in the knowledge that he was indeed mortal like any of the other races.

“Aha ha ha ha ha ha! Wow, this is incredible. The other demons are gonna flip when they find out there’s a human like you to play with.” The boy laughed, so lost in the throes of rapture that his spear fell from his grasp and clattered to the ground. With his other hand, he produced a small flute. “Okay, you got to do your special move. Now it’s my turn.”

One look at that flute, and the moment just before my death flashed back into my mind.

“No! Akira, get out of there!”

“Too late,” the boy giggled as he raised the flute to his lips.

 

POV: LIA LAGOON

 

THE DEMON BOY named Aurum Tres blew into the flute, but it produced no sound. For some reason, Princess Amelia seemed insistent that it was very dangerous and that Akira needed to get the heck out of there. Heeding her warning, I turned to run away, but I discovered my legs wouldn’t move. Perhaps my body was suffering from the effects of prolonged exposure to demon-tier mana, despite the barrier I had cast on myself. Welp, I’m dead meat. This must be what frogs feel like when they realize they’re about to become a snake’s dinner.

“You forgot that we demons can control monsters and order them to do our bidding,” the boy said. “I can manipulate and use monsters as if they were extensions of my own body, even if they aren’t directly under my employ.”

Then, each and every wall around us opened up to unleash a horde of monsters. There weren’t just a couple dozen, or even a hundred—this was a veritable army that probably numbered well over a thousand. This was my first time delving deep into the labyrinth, but I’d heard plenty of stories about all the lethal traps littered about its halls, and how if you weren’t careful, you could get overwhelmed by a horde of beasts like this in an instant. Recalling these stories snapped me out of my stupor.

“Strengthen Spirit Barrier!”

All I could do at the moment was reinforce the barriers I’d already cast on my allies. I had been watching the previous battle from a safe distance, which unfortunately meant that I was now separated from the rest of the group by countless monsters. I grimaced as their disgusting faces closed in on me.

“No! Stay away from me!”

I pulled out a dagger in an attempt to fight them off, but these were high-level monsters from the deepest depths of the labyrinth, and my pathetic Short Swords skill (which the castle knights had forced me to learn) wasn’t going to put a dent in them. I was sure Akira would do fine on his own, and Princess Amelia had Night with her, so they would probably be okay. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like Aurum’s powers were capable of superseding Night’s pact with Akira and taking control of him.

That made me the weakest link in the chain. A small subset of the monsters was keeping Akira and Night occupied while the rest came after me. Monsters generally rushed at whoever was closest, but they seemed capable of complex thought and planning when a demon was around to give them orders.

“Sorry, gonna have to take you out first. Mahiro told me that if you let a guardian live, they’ll only make things more annoying in the long run,” said Aurum Tres.

He’d somehow made his way over to me without anyone noticing, and he was now grinning sweetly down at me from atop a large monster. The feeling of his overwhelming mana so close to me was enough to make my body quake, and I could no longer move my arms and legs. My dagger fell from my hand, clattering to the ground. I dropped to my knees and fell forward onto the cold, hard labyrinth floor. I could still move my eyes, with great effort, though all I could see was my impending death.

My life was on the line here, and I knew it. This was my punishment for insisting on warning Princess Amelia, for coming all the way down to this dark and desolate place despite my lack of strength. My life flashed before my eyes, and memories I thought I’d forgotten shot through my mind one after another, as if begging not to be left behind.

Right. I can’t let their memories die with me. I can’t let it all have been for nothing.

“I can’t afford to die down here… I’m gonna live, no matter what it takes!”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I felt strength coursing through my body once again—I’d finally adjusted to Aurum’s mana. With trembling arms, I lifted my upper body up off the ground. I scanned my surroundings and saw my trusty staff lying on the ground nearby—the staff that I’d never let slip from my grasp, not even for an instant, not when I fell off of Night, not when Akira grabbed me by the collar and tried to choke me…not even when my family died. It was forever my partner. I reached out and picked it up, then used it to support myself as I got shakily to my feet.

“Wow, you’re still kicking, huh? Your death would’ve been a lot less painful if you’d just stayed conked out on the ground, y’know,” the boy tutted.

Perhaps he was right. Maybe death would have given me some amount of relief—it would have at least freed me from this burdensome life I’d become obliged to bear.

“I can’t die yet… Not until I see him again… Not until I can express how I feel…”

Seeing how deeply Akira obviously cared for Princess Amelia made me feel a mixture of both envy and regret. It made me wonder if I should have told him how I felt back when we went our separate ways; if there was anything more I could have done for him; if I would have ever gone as far for him as Akira had for Princess Amelia. Thinking back on it now, I’d virtually always been on the receiving end of things, and I had almost never acted based on my own convictions or emotions. If I had, it was only after I’d been brought into the royal family.

But after meeting and observing Akira, my self-perception had changed. I didn’t want to be the one watching and envying others from the sidelines. I had to actually act on my emotions. Seeing Akira and Amelia’s relationship only drove home just how pathetic and foolish I’d been for trying to snuff out my feelings. I’d been using him as an excuse to run away from myself.

“I won’t run away anymore. I won’t just go along with what others decide for me. I… I won’t go back on my word ever again!”

The mana stone embedded in my staff began to glow with blue light. He had made me this staff from the mana stone of a monster he’d slain. With this staff in hand, I knew I had nothing to fear.

“I’m gonna see him again, no matter what it takes!”

I wanted to soothe his weary soul the way he’d soothed mine back when I was trapped and could think of nothing but revenge; the mana stone grew brighter in tandem with my convictions.

“Inverted Spirit Barrier!”

The mana stone grew brighter still, and my body began to glow as well. Judging by their surprised gasps, I could only assume that Akira, Night, and Princess Amelia were also experiencing the same phenomenon. This was a brand-new spell of my own design—a barrier I’d come up with after consuming volumes upon volumes of books in the castle library. I’d known all along that it was theoretically possible, yet whenever I’d tried it, a critical piece of the puzzle had always been missing. Now I knew what that missing piece was—it was my own conviction.

And now that I’d found it at last, the spell was complete.

“Huh, that’s not a spell I’ve heard of any past guardians having. Interesting. Is this what Mahiro was afraid of? Doesn’t look all that different from your usual barriers to me… Whatever. I’ll just have to attack you and find out what it does!” Aurum said. He then barked an order to all of the monsters in my vicinity: “Kill her!”

All at once, I was besieged by a flurry of fangs, claws, and magic. But I didn’t even flinch. I kept my eyes wide open, refusing to run and hide. I wasn’t frozen in fear or succumbing to despair; I no longer had anything to fear. I took it all head-on.

“What the?!” Aurum gasped.

It was all over in the blink of an eye. When the light receded, all that remained in my field of view was Akira, Night (whom Amelia was probably hiding behind), and Aurum Tres’s deliciously flabbergasted face.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

WHEN AURUM BLEW into his flute, I felt inaudible sound waves reverberating through the corridor. He was still only one guy, even if he had the might of thousands combined. But there was strength in numbers too, and the monsters he summoned from within the labyrinth walls quickly surrounded and separated us. To make matters worse, Aurum rode one of the monsters in Lia’s direction. I knew she had a small dagger for self-defense, but that wouldn’t help her much against a demon and a horde of the labyrinth’s most powerful monsters. Maybe Night, Amelia, or I could have held them off for a little while, but Lia just didn’t have the stats.

I could have just used my Shadow Magic to clear the rabble out all at once, but as long as Aurum was still alive, it was too risky to consume such a huge chunk of my mana. If only I had a less costly spell, like Amelia’s Gravity Magic…

“Gravity!”

Speak of the devil. Right on cue, her voice resounded through the corridor and squashed the monsters currently surrounding us like bugs. The area was cleared in an instant. I looked around and saw Amelia garbed in my cloak, leaning up against Night for support. Right, I tossed that over to her in the midst of the battle, didn’t I?

“Amelia! Night!”

I leapt over the fallen monsters and dashed over to the two of them.

“I thought I heard you asking for my help,” Amelia said, her face pained.

Wow, it’s almost like she read my mind. I hadn’t realized the spell would take so much from her, but she didn’t seem to be in that much pain, so at least things had turned out all right.

“Yeah, you did great,” I replied, running my fingers through her hair for the first time in a good while. At this, she nuzzled up to me like a purring cat. She must have been awfully scared and lonely without me.

“Look, Master. Our barriers are still in effect. Which must mean…”

Leave it to Night to get us back on track. I supposed Amelia and I might have gotten a little carried away with our reunion, but he was right—now was not the time. “Right, that means Lia must still be alive. If anything, it feels like our barriers just got stronger,” I replied.

I tried to prick my arm with my dagger to test it out, but the weapon bounced right off, followed by a pale flash of light. Maybe now I could withstand more of Aurum’s attacks. I was impressed; when we’d first entered the labyrinth, I’d thought Lia’s abilities were pretty lackluster, but it seemed she’d just been saving up for the main event. The fact that she was still alive meant she was stronger than I’d thought, and according to Lia, she could feel when any of her barriers disappeared, so she had to know that we were still alive as well.

Nice. Then we’re all still accounted for.

“Wait. Who’s Lia? You’re not cheating on me, are you?” asked Amelia, her ears having pricked up at the sound of another woman’s name. She looked up at me with teary eyes.

How cute… Er, I mean… “C’mon, Amelia. You know I’d never cheat on you,” I reassured her. “Lia’s a guardian and a beastfolk princess. She came here to warn you that the demons were out to kidnap you… Obviously she didn’t make it in time, but still.”

“Oh, really? I’ve never met a guardian before.”

Evidently, guardian was a pretty rare class. Maybe not as rare as spirit medium, but certainly not common. It often felt like I was surrounded by nothing but rare classes. Almost made the word lose all meaning to me.

“Well, guardian or not, she won’t last very long against a demon,” Night warned, and I nodded.

He was right again. We didn’t have time to be standing around talking like this, but something told me that Lia would be just fine. Maybe it was the fact that my Detect Danger skill, which had become like something of a sixth sense for me, wasn’t going off at all.

That being said, we didn’t have any reason not to go help Lia out, and Amelia had already taken out all the monsters on our end of the corridor, so we headed over to flank the monsters surrounding Lia from behind. Luckily, Aurum hadn’t realized we’d already cleared out so many of his goons, so we could sneak up on them without being noticed. Just as we were about to launch our attack, a powerful voice rang out from the center of the monster congregation.

“Inverted Spirit Barrier!”

A glowing light shot out from the middle of the horde of monsters, and our bodies began to glow as well.

“Wh-what’s this?!”

“Calm down. It’s not anything bad.”

“Another barrier?”

As the three of us shared in our mutual confusion, Aurum ordered the monsters to descend upon Lia with all their might. But after a moment of silence, the monsters assailing Lia all fell lifeless to the ground. The ones with sharp claws had scratch marks all over their bodies, the ones with giant fangs were covered in bite marks, and the casters seemed to have been singed by their very own magic. It seemed the monster’s attacks had been reflected back at them.

“Well, well. Never seen a barrier used like that before,” I marveled.

“Likely because it’s never happened before. No guardian throughout history—that I know of—has ever been capable of anything like that,” Night said, his eyes wide with awe.

“Dang. You think it’s an original of hers, then?” I asked.

“You mean, she just created a new spell out of thin air? Even though she doesn’t have Spellcraft like me?” Amelia asked, equally astonished.

I grabbed one of the few stragglers by the scalp and hurled it against the wall. It exploded in a gory mess. Amelia, meanwhile, picked off a few monsters trying to sneak up on Night from behind with a tiny bit of focused Gravity Magic. I looked over at Lia, and we made eye contact.

“Sure seems that way,” I replied. “And she looks a lot more confident now than she did earlier.”

As our gazes met, I sensed a newfound resolve in those cobalt-blue eyes of hers. Perhaps she’d found a new purpose in life in the face of certain death. The monsters that had been surrounding her were now utterly wiped out. All that remained was Aurum and the monster he was riding on.

“Would you all like to know a fun fact?” asked Aurum.

He was unfazed by the tables turning significantly in our favor. If anything, he seemed even more overconfident. My Detect Danger skill hadn’t gone off earlier, but now it was ringing like crazy.

“We can control monsters even without that little flute, y’know. Maybe your traitorous kitty cat friend didn’t know this, but the flute actually serves two distinct purposes. The first is that it allows us to give the monsters more precise orders,” Aurum explained, then paused and looked over our heads with an ominous smirk.

“And secondly, it allows us to let our fellow demons know when we’re in need of help, no matter how far away they might be,” came an unfamiliar voice from behind us.

The moment we turned to see who it was, there was the sound of glass shattering, and the light enveloping our bodies suddenly began to fade. Our spirit barriers had all been broken simultaneously—no doubt the work of this newcomer.

“It’s not like you to call for help,” said the new voice. “How’d you get those wounds?”

Standing at the other end of the corridor was a young man with long black hair and eyes to match, whose youthful face was adorned by a pair of refined glasses. With his pale hands, he smoothed out his frizzled hair (though a single stray strand stuck defiantly up) and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He was grinning, yet his eyes indicated that he was anything but amused. His mana was incredibly overwhelming, and it sent a chill running down my spine. Lia had already passed out from its sheer magnitude.

“Sheesh, Mahiro! Took you long enough! And yeah, I know! I wouldn’t have called you out here if I didn’t actually need the help, silly!” said Aurum. His grievous wounds had done nothing to affect his childish personality, it seemed. His injuries would have certainly been enough to kill anything less than a demon, yet he looked right as rain. That had to be thanks to his substantial HP.

“I was wondering what was taking you so long. Didn’t think you’d get tripped up by a bunch of kids. Come on, let’s go,” said the young man, who suddenly appeared directly behind us.

“What the?!” I gasped.

I’d been watching his every move extremely closely, so I had no idea how he could have slipped behind us without me noticing. There wasn’t even any indication he’d used some sort of teleportation magic. It was obvious this guy was much more powerful than Aurum.

“Mahiro… He’s their second-in-command. The little boy told me so,” Amelia said.

So he did outrank Aurum, if only by a single promotion.

The young man by the name of Mahiro took a quick look at Aurum’s wounds before shaking his head in disappointment and turning to look at me. “I guess he was no match for you, was he, Oda Akira?”

I tensed up. It had been a long time since I’d been called by my full name in proper Japanese order. This, combined with the young man’s facial features, made me realize something. “Wait… You’re Japanese too, aren’t you?” I asked.

In this world, everyone went by their given name first, surname second, and since the language was different too, you could always tell when someone wasn’t a native speaker from their accent. This guy had a very Japanese intonation, not to mention a very Japanese name.

“Yes, I suppose you could say that,” he replied. “I’m a bit different from you and your group, but I am indeed Japanese. The name’s Abe Mahiro. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but I’d be lying through my teeth.”

A bit different from us? What did he mean by that? And if he was originally from our world, then how could he be a demon?

“Oh, dear, look at the time,” Mahiro continued. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’m afraid we’ll need you to hand over the princess so we can be on our way now.”

I stepped forward to put myself between him and Amelia. Night crouched into a combat-ready stance as well. I felt bad for leaving Lia in her unconscious state, but right now, I needed to focus on protecting Amelia.

“Good grief. You’d think the third-in-command would be able to handle kidnapping a single elven princess on his own, but apparently not. Just goes to show that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” Mahiro sighed, then clapped his hands together.

A piercing sound shot through the corridor, and when he pulled his hands apart again, strange runes came flying out of his palms by the dozens. They spun around him, then arranged themselves neatly in a circular pattern, forming a magic circle.

The symbols glimmered beautifully in the darkness, and I stood there mystified for a moment. It wasn’t long before Mahiro sent his finished magic circle into action.

“Marionette!” he cried, channeling his mana into the magic circle. The circle glowed red before shooting through the air in our direction.

“Amelia, look out!” I screamed.

“Eek!”

I’d been prepared for him to target me, but the circle flew toward Amelia instead. I tried to warn her, but it was too late. The magic circle hit its mark, sending Amelia careening into a nearby wall. She crumpled to the ground, motionless.

“Damn it! Amelia!”

I dashed over to her and scooped up her limp body. Blood was pouring from a cut on her scalp, but it appeared she was still alive and was merely unconscious; any human would have surely died from the impact.

“You rat bastard!” I yelled at Mahiro.

“Dear me, has anyone ever told you that you’ve got the eyes of a common lowlife? Why, one look at your ugly mug and you’ve got me clutching my coin purse in fear!” the man said, trying to taunt me.

It worked—my blood was boiling.

“Don’t let him get under your skin, Master,” Night warned, having gone over to assist Lia.

I clenched my fists. I wanted to sock him right in the kisser, yet I knew deep down that I probably didn’t stand a chance against him. I needed to get the hell out of here, and fast. Hell, the whole plan had been to rescue Amelia and run for our lives from the beginning, though Aurum had thrown a wrench in that idea.

“I take it you’ve officially marked yourself as a turncoat now, Black Cat?” Mahiro asked. “I don’t want to get reprimanded later if you’re on some undercover operation I wasn’t briefed on.”

Night changed back into his usual black cat form, then glared down at Mahiro with his beady golden eyes. “Never again will I return to His Majesty’s throne room, for I am Black Cat no longer. You may call me Night,” he said proudly.

“Very well. Then I suppose I won’t get in trouble if I skin you alive and make a nice fur coat out of you, will I?” Mahiro smirked, and Night gritted his teeth.

“I’d like to see you try.”

 

POV: NIGHT

 

MAHIRO ABE.

A crafter of magic circles, an art form thought lost by the other races, and a man who surely numbered among the top two or three strongest I’d ever known. He had more mana than any other demon, and he was the only man who could rein His Majesty in whenever he lost control. And now I was baring my fangs at him. To be blunt, there was no way in hell I could defeat him, especially not after expending so much of my stamina running down here and suffering several injuries in the previous battle. I only had about enough mana left for one more use of Shapeshifter. Even if I somehow eked out a victory against him, there would still be Aurum Tres to worry about, so I wasn’t optimistic about my chances of making it out of here alive.

I turned around and looked down at Lady Amelia, who’d suffered a traumatic head injury, and Master, who was trying desperately to stop the flow of blood. These were the two who had saved me from my fate of dying a worthless death at the bottom of a labyrinth. Only Akira Oda was my master, yet Lady Amelia was just as important to me. I would never forgive anyone who injured her so gravely.

“Tell me, were you always this feisty?” asked Mahiro. “I seem to remember you being a good, obedient little kitty.”

“You have harmed my master and the one he loves dearly. I have nothing more to say to you,” I responded matter-of-factly.

“If you insist.”

Mahiro brought his hands together again. When he pulled them apart, he gave birth to a magic circle of unfathomable, mind-boggling complexity. The fact that he could handle such a complicated conjuration all by himself, and with such blinding speed, was what made him the demons’ second-in-command.

“If you had just died a lonely death like a good little servant down in that labyrinth, it would have never had to come to this… Such a shame,” he lamented.

As the blinding light from his conjuration pierced my eyes, I tried to picture someone in my mind—an image of the strongest man I’d ever done battle with. The only man I thought might conceivably stand a chance against Mahiro.

“Night, is that…?” Master began, dumbfounded. I was impressed that he recognized the person I was shapeshifting into while I was still mid-transformation, and from behind, no less. But I supposed I shouldn’t have expected any different. The man had met his end right before Master’s eyes, after all.

“Well, well… If it isn’t the late sage, Sir Saran Mithray,” said Mahiro.

Standing now on two feet instead of four, with shining white armor on my back and long golden locks flowing in the air behind me, I glared over at Mahiro with cold, unfeeling eyes. I was now the very image of Master’s savior and mentor, Saran Mithray.

“It takes an awful lot of mana to shapeshift into a person, you know. I’ll need to recuperate for quite a while after this, so let’s make this quick, shall we?”

As an animal myself, trying to take the form of a human required a Herculean amount of effort. I would have preferred not to take this particular form in front of Master, but the dire state of our current affairs hadn’t given me much of a choice. I raised my left hand skyward and began to recite an incantation.

“O heavenly gavel, let thy judgment rain down upon those who would do my master harm! Hammer of Light!”

The dead man’s light magic was unbelievably powerful, even for a sage, and it was honestly a bit hard for me to bear as a creature of the dark myself. But that went for Mahiro as well. The light collected in the air above my raised hand, and when I brought my elbow down, it condensed into the form of a mighty mallet; it was easy to imagine what an earth-shattering event it might be were I to bring that hammer crashing down.

“Bwa ha ha ha ha! Yes, that’s the ticket! Oh, it’s been ages since I last saw that one!” Mahiro cackled, clapping his hands together once more. This time, the magic circle he created was so massive, it would have likely taken well over a dozen mages to craft under normal circumstances. Yet there he was, a single demon, conjuring it in a matter of seconds.

“Storm Ruler! Golden Ray!”

He channeled mana into this new magic circle as well, as the one he’d conjured previously, to cast two distinct spells at once. My eyes widened upon hearing the names of these spells; they were both types of magic I’d witnessed before.

Storm Ruler was, as the name suggested, a spell capable of bringing thunder and lightning crashing down upon a wide area with such force that a single cast could bring an entire country to its knees. Golden Ray was a type of light magic whose strength was either on par with or exceeded that of Hammer of Light. And while demons had, with few exceptions, no propensity for light magic, a runic mage like Mahiro could imbue his magic circles with spells of any element he pleased. It was a skill of his that I had been quite thankful for back when we were allies, but I was deathly afraid of it now that we were fighting on opposite sides.

Just as I was about to bring down my Hammer of Light, intending to stop Mahiro from channeling mana into his magic circles, I heard a soft whisper echo through the corridor.

“Shadow Magic, activate.”

“Master?!”

I spun around to see Master drape his cloak over Amelia and lean her against the labyrinth wall before ruffling her hair and turning back toward the center of the action. “I can’t let you do this alone, Night,” he said. “And besides, all this extra light is perfect for my purposes.”

It was true—the light from my Hammer of Light and Mahiro’s magic circle had the auxiliary effect of casting enormous shadows all across the formerly dim corridor. It seemed Master had realized my Hammer of Light and Mahiro’s Golden Ray were comparable in strength and would only cancel each other out. This meant I’d be leaving us wide open for his Storm Ruler area-of-effect spell to kill us all, and we couldn’t have that I would sacrifice myself to protect them from the spell if it came down to it.

“If you die, I die too, remember?” Master said. “I’m afraid I’m not ready to give up the ghost just yet. You just focus on your own spell. I’ll try to do something about his.”

I had been prepared to give my life for Master all along. We would simply need to terminate our pact, and he could survive. Maintaining a master-familiar bond required both parties mutually agreeing on the pact, after all. If I wished to annul it, then it would lose its efficacy, and as long as Master didn’t stubbornly insist on maintaining the pact, then either of us could die without affecting the other.

However, he seemed insistent on keeping me alive.

“If you think I’m gonna let you die here without telling me how you knew the commander, you’re wrong… Besides, we fight better as a team anyway,” said Master.

It was true. He and I generally split up to take out separate groups of enemies, as combining our powers was overkill for the vast majority of foes, so we didn’t often fight side by side. It felt surprisingly good to fight alongside a partner who had your back. The most recent time we’d fought together had been the day Lady Amelia was kidnapped, I supposed, though I didn’t remember much of that considering the ravenous beast I’d transformed into at the time. Which reminded me—Master had tried to tell me something back then, hadn’t he? Well, drat. Now I really need to make it out of this alive, or else I might never find out what it was.

“Very well, Master. I leave it to you.”

I left Lady Amelia’s protection in his hands and focused all my mental strength on pouring as much mana as I could into my Hammer of Light. At last, it was done.

“Now die,” uttered Mahiro.

Our spells clashed—his Golden Ray firing upward as my Hammer of Light came crashing down, knocking it out of midair with an earth-shattering impact. The two spells had effectively canceled each other out. This had given Mahiro more than enough time to activate his Storm Ruler spell…but it also gave Master’s Shadow Magic ample time to stretch through the air and swallow up that spell, magic circle and all.

“Wha?!” Mahiro gasped in bewilderment as the light of the spell he’d been counting on was extinguished by the shadows. This must have been quite the eye-opening experience for him—I couldn’t imagine he’d ever had one of his magic circles eaten before.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

AFTER MY SHADOW MAGIC swallowed up Mahiro’s magic circle, I fell to my knees.

“Master?!”

Shadow Magic really did expend an exorbitant amount of mana. If it was just firing shadows like bullets through my enemies, I could do it countless times, but little attacks like that wouldn’t work on a demon, and over time the fatigue would build up regardless. I was trying to save my mana so I didn’t end up incapacitated, but when Night tried to sacrifice himself, I didn’t really have much of a choice. And now my mana was almost all gone.

“His Majesty told me about you, but I didn’t expect you to have grown this much in such a short time. Certainly wouldn’t have expected you to be able to gobble up one of my magic circles. But I assume that used up the last of your mana reserves, so let’s finish this, shall we?”

Mahiro snapped his fingers, and I watched him carefully, bracing myself for whatever was about to happen.

But nothing did.

“Master!”

Night, his mouth agape, seemed to be gawking at something behind me. I spun around to try to see whatever it was, but I was stopped dead in my tracks before I could even get that far.

“Nghk?! Wha?”

“Master!”

A deep red liquid began to trickle out of my mouth, dribbling down to form an expanding puddle on the ground. The smell of blood pervaded the area. Presumably, my Detect Danger skill hadn’t triggered because I was all out of mana, or perhaps it would have never anticipated any sort of danger coming from this particular source.

“Isn’t it beautiful, being killed by the one you love? Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’m afraid His Majesty has deemed you an obstacle in his path toward revenge against this world. Now be a good little boy and exit stage right,” said Mahiro.

I looked down to discover a thin, delicate arm jutting out of my stomach—someone had impaled me with their bare hands from behind.

“No… NOOOO!” I heard a voice cry behind me.

I twisted my neck to see Amelia staring down in horror at the hand she’d just plunged through my abdomen.

“I didn’t do that! Why did my body just move on its own?!” she screamed. Her body was emitting a pale red light.

It was then that I realized she was being controlled, no doubt the purpose of the magic circle Mahiro had initially thrown at her.

A twisted sneer spread across the demon’s face. “My Marionette spell draws out 100 percent of its victim’s latent physical and mental abilities, then adds my own stats on top of that,” he said. “So even a weak little princess like her could impale your already battered body.”

“Ame…lia… Ghgk!”

I was losing more blood by the second. Soon, all the strength drained from my body, and when Amelia pulled her arm out, I collapsed to the ground as if she’d just ripped out the very essence of my life, root and stem.

“NOOOOOO!” she screamed, her sorrowful cries echoing through my rapidly fading consciousness.

“My, oh, my. Killing the man you love most… Are you a closet psychopath?” Mahiro teased as though this weren’t all his doing.

I felt my blood boiling even as my mind continued to fade.

“M-Master?”

Fighting through the pain and numbness of my blood-drained body, I slowly lifted myself off the ground once more. I raised my head to look Mahiro directly in the eye. When he noticed me, his one stray hair shot straight up like a soldier at attention.

“Are you sure you’re only human? Why, you’re almost as resilient as a demon.”

But I ignored this question and turned to face Amelia instead.

“A-Amelia… I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me.”

“Akira…”

I wiped the tears from her drenched cheeks, accidentally smearing a bit of my blood on her face in the process. Then my knees gave out, and I fell against her. She stumbled, but she held my weight just fine.

I was so cold, but my blood flowed seemingly without end. Perhaps straining to sit up hadn’t been a good idea after all, but I had to do something to try to feign that I was okay. Otherwise Amelia would never forgive herself.

“You’re like an annoying little cockroach in the kitchen that refuses to die, you know that? Why, you even kind of look like one in that black armor of yours,” Mahiro said, facepalming. Then he snapped his fingers once more, and Amelia’s face twisted in fear.

“N-no! Stop it!” she cried.

“Marionette’s an awfully tricky spell,” he continued. “Even an old hand like me needs to be very careful with it. But it’s perfect for catching someone off guard with a little betrayal from a trusted ally, wouldn’t you agree? That’s the sort of death idiotic normies like you deserve, if you ask me.”

Amelia’s hand impaled me once more. My body quivered, though I couldn’t tell which one of us was shaking.

“Grghk!”

I was so unbelievably cold. I remembered thinking to myself a while back that if I had to die at someone else’s hands, I wanted it to be Amelia’s. But now that it was actually happening, and I was forced to watch the tears run down her face, I wanted to slap my past self in the face for ever thinking that. Had I truly forgotten what it felt like when Commander Saran died? How it felt when my father abandoned us that day, leaving us lost and alone? Had I already forgotten the lesson I learned from that trauma?

 

A person’s death is far more painful for the people they leave behind.

 

I didn’t want Amelia to ever have to go through that. And I still hadn’t achieved any of the things I’d sworn to myself that I’d accomplish.

I’m cold.

I couldn’t die yet.

So cold.

I had to defeat Mahiro.

So cold.

I couldn’t let them take Amelia.

So cold.

I still had to avenge Commander Saran.

So cold.

So very, very cold.

All the strength had drained from my body. Amelia was screaming uncontrollably. Night simply looked on in an open-mouthed daze, while Mahiro’s lips twisted into an evil grin.

 

No. I can’t die yet.

 

“MASTER’S INJURIES HAVE EXCEEDED ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS. AUTO-ENGAGING SHADOW MAGIC, RECOVERY MODE.”

My lips moved, but not of my own volition. What was this phenomenon? I tried to writhe about on the ground to resist it but to no avail. I could only watch as my shadow wriggled beneath me before enveloping my entire body.

“MASTER’S MP SUPPLY DEEMED INSUFFICIENT. RECOVERY WILL REQUIRE THE USE OF EMERGENCY MANA STORES.”

My body began to grow lighter. The bitter cold was gone. The pain too. I had no idea what was happening to me, but it seemed like my Shadow Magic had somehow activated itself on its own.

“RECOVERY COMPLETE. PROCEEDING TO ELIMINATE REMAINING HOSTILES.”

The two gaping holes in my abdomen had been completely healed. That done, the shadows around my torso dispersed and wrapped around my arms and legs instead.

“HOSTILE DETECTED. DEMON. NAME: MAHIRO ABE. CLASS: RUNIC MAGE.”

My body was moving on its own—or rather, the shadows wrapped around my limbs were compelling me to move. I now knew all too well what Amelia must have felt like only a moment ago. Losing control of your own body was not a pleasant feeling whatsoever.

 

POV: NIGHT

 

IT WAS THE SAME PHENOMENON that had occurred the day Lady Amelia was kidnapped. Master had used up all his mana again and suffered lethal wounds, to boot, but his Shadow Magic had once more kicked in automatically, replenished his MP, and healed his wounds. I wasn’t sure if it was a skill set to activate whenever he was on the verge of death or a subconscious command he wasn’t even aware of, but any sort of magic that could save someone from the brink of death was a very powerful tool in the hands of a man like Master—even if it wasn’t quite as powerful as Lady Amelia’s Resurrection Magic.

“NOW ENGAGING COMBAT MODE. ELIMINATING ENEMY: MAHIRO ABE.”

Master’s Shadow Magic was speaking through his mouth, the same as before. The voice was still his own, yet the odd phrasing and bizarre intonation belonged to someone else. This time, I noticed the shadows had wrapped themselves around his arms and legs and were manipulating his body.

“I’m not sure what this bizarre charade is about, but do you really think you still stand a chance?” Mahiro asked. “You humans are simply lesser beings. That’s all there is to it. Now go back to wriggling around on the ground like the lowly worm you are.”

With that, Mahiro snapped his fingers, and a new dazzling magic circle was born. Lady Amelia (who was still standing behind Master) assumed a battle stance.

“H-he’s controlling me again! Akira, watch out!” she cried.

Against her will, she raised her arms up in the air and brought them back down, casting her signature Gravity Magic. Suddenly, Master’s entire body was forced down by the pressure of unfathomable g-forces, and the ground cracked beneath his feet. But he was not brought to his knees—he remained standing, defiant and undeterred. This left him a sitting duck for the spell Mahiro was about to cast with his newest magic circle.

“Whirlwind Scythes!”

An unending barrage of whirling blades was unleashed upon the corridor. Somehow, none of them hit me or Lady Amelia—they were all homing in on Master specifically. This was peculiar, as Whirlwind Scythes, like Storm Ruler, was an area-of-effect spell designed to kill all enemies in the vicinity. It must have taken quite a bit of mana to focus such a spell on a single target.

“To think he was capable of such a thing…” I muttered to myself.

The Mahiro I knew was a fairly lax individual—his lone stray hair always dangling to and fro as if it were a representation of his fickle personality. I had never once seen him let his emotions show on his face beyond a simple smile. He was ever the enigma. No one seemed to know who he was, where he’d come from, or how long he’d been here, but somehow he was the only one who had the power to rein in His Majesty as the demons’ second-in-command. This was a fact I had always internalized, yet I apparently had never grasped the true scope of his might. To have such complete control over one’s magic was astounding indeed.

The only attacks I had ever suffered from Saran Mithray, and thus the only ones I was capable of emulating in his form, were Hammer of Light and one other, but there were special requirements for using the second attack that had not yet been met.

The whirlwind of blades ceased, but the dust had yet to settle, so I still couldn’t quite make out Master’s figure. I knew he had to be alive, though.

And so it had been Master who protected me in the end once again. I wondered if there would ever come another day when we would truly fight alongside each other as equals, like we had earlier.

“I poured an awful lot of mana into that last spell, you know,” Mahiro murmured. “Every last blade hit its mark. So tell me: how exactly are you still alive?”

Finally, the dust settled, and I saw Master standing there, right where he had been all along, his posture unchanged. The combination of Lady Amelia’s Gravity Magic and Mahiro’s Whirlwind Scythes hadn’t even been enough to make him flinch.

“RETURN TO ME, YATO-NO-KAMI,” said the specter controlling Master’s body.

I looked around and saw the two daggers that had once been Yato-no-Kami lying on the ground a short distance away. At Master’s command, they vanished into thin air before reappearing in his hands.

Where in the world did he learn to do that?

“Those blades…” uttered Mahiro as he gawked at the two daggers. He could likely sense a certain power from them.

I’d never seen Master recall them like that before. Even when he threw them at enemies, he always ran off to collect them right afterward, even when the situation didn’t really permit. This implied that the Shadow Magic controlling Master’s body was more familiar with how to use the blades than even Master was.

“Wha?!” Mahiro flinched as Master closed the gap between them in an instant, slicing off a few strands of Mahiro’s hair with a slash, which snapped him right out of his reverie.

Master’s movements were almost impossibly fast now. It seemed the Shadow Magic controlling his limbs was pushing them well beyond what they were capable of doing under human power. I had to wonder if such a thing was safe, even if the shadows did have the ability to heal any injuries they might sustain.

“Ngh! How are your slashes so strong?!” Mahiro asked through gritted teeth as he crafted magic circle after magic circle to use as makeshift shields against Master’s successive swipes. But the speed and ferocity of Master’s strikes cut straight through each and every one.

“SHADOW MAGIC—SHADOWBIND.”

The shadows splayed out between Master and Mahiro shot out of the ground and restrained Mahiro like a prisoner in chains. Master had likely surmised through observation that Mahiro needed to clap his hands or snap his fingers every time he wanted to create or activate a magic circle. He was therefore attempting to bind Mahiro in a way that rendered him incapable of doing so.

“YOU WILL RELEASE AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ FROM YOUR SPELL,” said the Shadow Magic, pressing a dagger up against Mahiro’s throat.

Even this did not break the demon’s smile. “Hate to break it to you, but I don’t need my hands specifically to craft magic circles,” Mahiro laughed. “We runic mages are far too clever to let ourselves be bested by an Achilles’ heel like that. Speaking of which…”

It was a fatal oversight. The shadows were primarily focused on binding his hands, but his legs were still free to move however they wished. With one last smirk, Mahiro clicked his heels together, and the same aura of light produced every time he snapped his fingers began to emanate from his feet.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

WHEN A BLINDING LIGHT suddenly flashed before my eyes, I (or more accurately, the Shadow Magic controlling me) closed my eyelids to shield them. Closing one’s eyes in the midst of combat was a mistake that could have lethal consequences. The spell Mahiro cast with his feet shot through my torso like a harpoon. Just how many times am I going to be impaled today, anyway?

“DAMAGE SUSTAINED. INJURIES EXCEED ACCEPTABLE PARAMETERS.”

Ha! What parameters? You’re just taking my body for a joyride! I wanted to laugh, but the noise refused to leave my throat. I didn’t have the power to break out of this phenomenon, and there didn’t seem to be any sort of kill switch to turn off my Shadow Magic once this had begun. It had saved my life, however, so I decided I’d shut up and defer to its judgment for now.

“SWITCHING TO RECOVERY MODE.”

The gaping hole in my body created by Mahiro’s magic closed up in an instant. What a bizarre feeling it was to be saved by the volition of one’s own magic.

“What’s gotten into you, anyway?” Mahiro asked suspiciously. “Those magic daggers, those shadows swirling around your body, that bizarre way you’re speaking… If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were possessed by something. Am I right?”

Right on the money. If I could move my hands right now, I probably would have applauded him for being so observant.

“I NEED NOT ANSWER THAT QUERY,” said the Shadow Magic, much to my surprise.

I felt my body tense up, through no will of my own. Mahiro, having broken free of his restraints, brought his hands together once again. How does he still have mana left over after cooking up all those magic circles? Nevertheless, the air was yet humid with his oppressively thick mana.

“Fine, then. I guess I’ll just have to take you in and torture the answer out of you. And here I was only planning to bring the princess back to His Majesty, but you just changed my mind. In fact, I’m more interested in you now than her.”

I appreciate your interest in me, but I’m straight, thanks.

“Hand of the Divine!” chanted Mahiro.

From the demon’s back, a giant hand made of glimmering light was born, which shot over in my direction to try to apprehend me. My Shadow Magic didn’t even flinch.

“A GREATER LIGHT ONLY BRINGS WITH IT DEEPER AND DARKER SHADOWS. I WILL CARRY OUT MY MASTER’S WISHES,” hissed the Shadow Magic, seemingly addressing me directly. It was then that I learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that the magic did indeed have sentience of its own. It raised my hands high above my head, then addressed Mahiro once more: “IF YOU DIE, YOUR SPELL ON AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ WILL BE BROKEN. NOW, PREPARE TO BE EVISCERATED.”

The shadow said only this, then the fearsome and threatening Hand of the Divine vanished without a trace. Or rather, it was swallowed without a trace. At this, even Mahiro seemed at a loss for words.

“KNOW YOUR PLACE, DEMON. YOU DO NOT STAND A CHANCE AGAINST ME.”

Mahiro’s jaw dropped. He tried to collect himself and flash a confident smile, albeit one that was twitching with rage. “Well now…” he began.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Night and the others taking a step back and bracing themselves for the demon’s next attack. Hell, I probably would have too, if I’d had any control over my body. It seemed awfully ballsy to mess with the demons’ second-in-command.

“You’ve got quite the mouth on you for a lowly human,” Mahiro snarled. For the first time, his smile was nowhere to be seen. It wasn’t as if his constant smiling was a result of joviality or an indicator of his mood or anything—it was clearly the default expression he wore for show, probably as an intimidation tactic. Still, it was harrowing to watch it vanish without a trace. “Your kind can never hope to defeat us demons. That’s just an inevitable fact of life, I’m afraid. Accept your fate and submit.”

More than anything in the world, I hated being talked down to or treated like I was lesser, but I had to admit there was a kernel of truth in what Mahiro was saying: humans were generally too weak to take on demons. The only reason I stood a chance against him at all was because my stats were basically glitched. I was pretty sure this one demon could handily take out the hero and my other classmates combined without even breaking a sweat. We’d been fighting for a good while now, and his mana showed no signs of depleting. Moreover, the only reason I’d been able to put a dent in Aurum was because he’d been careless.

Apparently, my Shadow Magic felt differently about all this.

“IF IT IS MY MASTER YOU REFER TO, THEN I SUGGEST YOU THINK AGAIN. YES, HARD WORK WILL NOT ALWAYS ALLOW ONE TO TRANSCEND THE MEANS OF THEIR BIRTH. NOT ALL PEOPLE ARE CREATED EQUALLY IN THIS WORLD, AND SOME OBSTACLES ARE TOO GREAT TO OVERCOME. BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN ONE SHOULD SIMPLY GIVE IN WITHOUT EVEN TRYING.”

A vein bulged on Mahiro’s forehead. Apparently he was beginning to lose his temper. “What do they teach you humans in schools, anyway? Just take a look at any history book. Humans have never won against the demons. Never,” he reiterated. “Well, not including heroes, of course.”

He didn’t think summoned heroes could be lumped in with the regular humans of this world. Interesting.

Mahiro clapped his hands together, and the red aura surrounding Amelia’s body grew thicker and more vibrant. She let out an agonized scream as her body contorted in response to whatever new spell Mahiro was putting into effect.

“You can gobble up magic with those shadows of yours, right? Well, go on then! Eat your fill!” Mahiro cackled.

Every time I watched my Shadow Magic swallow another spell or a group of monsters, I found myself wondering, Are there any limits to how much it can eat? From my experiences thus far, I had no evidence to say one way or the other. According to Commander Saran, there was no such thing as Shadow Magic in all of recorded history, so what was this power I had, anyway? It had almost razed an entire forest in the past—what if swallowing too much of Mahiro’s magic made me lose control of it again? Oh, wait… I already have lost control of it, duh. It’s taken over my whole body this time.

“Aqua Needle!” Mahiro shouted.

All at once, dozens of magic circles appeared throughout the corridor, summoning forth a flurry of high-velocity needles made of water, all of which shot through the air in Amelia’s direction. Still under Mahiro’s control, she was helpless to dodge the assault. I tried to reach out my hand in her direction, knowing full well that my body would not listen. But I just couldn’t bear to see Amelia get hurt anymore.

“HNNNGH!”

To my surprise, it seemed my emotions won out over the control of my Shadow Magic, and I was able to dash over and wrap Amelia in my arms to protect her from the storm of needles. The needles were merely liquid, yet at such high speeds, I had no doubt they would feel like icicles piercing through me like pins into a pincushion. I wasn’t ready to die today, but more importantly, I wasn’t ready to watch Amelia suffer any more than she already had.

“Master!” I heard Night say in a harsh whisper as I braced myself for the imminent bombardment.

I had to wonder just how many times I was going to be impaled today.

In the end, though, I would not be killed by this attack. Both Amelia and I would make it out just fine…because we were saved just in the nick of time by a dark figure with a long black tail.

“You two all right?” asked our savior.

“Crow… What are you doing here?” Night asked.

Crow didn’t answer the question; he simply snorted and shot Lia a knowing glance before turning to face our mutual enemy.

“Great. First a human, now a beastman. And the infamous Crow, no less,” said Mahiro, his smiling face betraying just the slightest hint of unease.

“Infamous, you say?” Crow grinned deviously. “Oh, I’d love to hear what kind of stories they tell about me back in Volcano, demon boy.”

As sparks began to fly between the two of them, Night herded the rest of us back to a safe distance near the corridor wall. It seemed that somehow the spell on Amelia had been broken, and the Shadow Magic controlling me had also disappeared.

“Do Crow and Mahiro know each other, Night?” I asked, leaning my battered body up against the wall for support.

Night, still in the form of Commander Saran, quickly did the same beside me. Amelia stood a short distance away, probably still rattled after being forced to try to kill me. Thankfully, I’d come away without any major injuries and just a bit of blood loss.

“Crow was a member of the previous hero’s party who fled after failing to slay His Majesty. Yet the beastfolk king and the citizenry did not hold Crow’s failure against him, as by the time they reached His Majesty’s castle, there were only two of them left alive to take him on. The odds were more than stacked against them, and they did better than any reasonable person could expect. They nearly succeeded.”

My eyes widened, but I noticed Amelia’s didn’t seem that surprised. Perhaps she already knew all of this. It definitely did strike me as strange that a failed hero would be reaccepted by society, even if he was by no means living the high life in his little blacksmith’s atelier. Crow’s was the sort of immense failure that often drove people to suicide, yet I supposed if they really had nearly taken the castle all by themselves, maybe people had been more understanding.

“I was by His Majesty’s side at the time, so I didn’t witness any of this firsthand. I simply thought the hero’s party was beaten handily early on and fled with their tails between their legs. It wasn’t until a while after the fact that I heard from one of my subordinates that two of them actually did make it almost all the way to the throne room.”

I had to wonder what any of this had to do with Crow being able to break the spells Mahiro cast on Amelia and me. I shot Night an impatient look, and he rolled his eyes as if to say “Hold your horses, I’m getting to it.”

“Apparently, it was Mahiro who delivered the final blow that convinced Crow and the hero to retreat. But Crow was already not at his best by the time he reached Mahiro, so the two have never fought on level ground before. According to Mahiro’s report, Crow was still able to counter each and every one of his spells.”

Night and I both turned to look at the two men in question. Mahiro’s overconfident facade was nowhere to be found; he seemed extremely annoyed, almost as if he knew deep down that he didn’t stand a chance against Crow.

“Long time no see, Mahiro Abe,” said Crow.

“You beastfolk are only supposed to live, what, about a hundred years longer than humans? How in the hell are you still kicking, you geriatric old coot?” asked Mahiro.

He had a point. If Crow had been involved in the Nightmare of Adorea debacle a hundred years ago, and his stint as a member of the hero’s party had happened even before that—and if you considered that he must’ve needed an awful lot of time to get as strong as he was before that… He had to be approaching the end of his life expectancy by now, right? It was pretty hard to tell a beastman’s age just by looking at him, though.

“Don’t talk down to me, you little runt,” Crow growled. “I may be past my prime, but I’m still more than capable enough to handle a brat like you.”

“So it would seem,” Mahiro said, shooting a quick glance in our direction. “As evidenced by the fact that you effortlessly broke them out of my spells.”

“Yeah, well, your Marionette spell was practically undone before I even got here. Did you just lose your focus and let it slip? Or did you take a hit that made you lose your focus?”

“Don’t act like you don’t already know, you crotchety old fart.”

It was plain from his tone that Mahiro was getting more frustrated by the second. With his usual pompous and overconfident smile, you’d think he’d be one of those characters who never broke out of formal speech, but apparently not. Crow was clearly a bit tickled by Mahiro’s obvious agitation too.

“I guess the last hero summoning ritual wasn’t a waste of time after all. Looks like we got at least one decent fighter out of it, anyway,” Crow said, presumably referring to me. His impression of me had apparently changed quite a bit since we first met. The two men glared at each other for a while, until at last Mahiro caved and pulled back.

“I’ll let you live this time, Crow. But next time, you won’t be so lucky.”

“Funny, that’s exactly what I was about to say to you.”

Crow had officially won the stare-down. Mahiro clicked his tongue in frustration, and he scooped Aurum into his arms from where he lay unconscious atop his mount. I hadn’t noticed him faint; I’d been wondering why he’d been so quiet during my battle with Mahiro. I stood up and glared at Mahiro just as he was about to leave. Noticing my gaze, Mahiro walked over to me with Aurum still in his arms.

“We’re falling back this time, but don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because we’re both Japanese, you pitiful human,” he said.

“Don’t make me laugh. You hurt Amelia, and I’m going to make you pay for it. You can count on it, bub,” I retorted. We locked eyes for a moment, but then Night pulled me back.

“Master, we need to leave.”

I turned around to see that Crow was already on his way out of the corridor with Lia in his arms. I turned to Amelia, who was still looking anxiously down at the ground, and grabbed her by the hand. Startled, she looked up at me.

“C’mon. Let’s get out of here,” I said.

 

“Nngh…”

When I awoke, I didn’t know how many days had passed. All I knew was that it was dark outside, and that I was in a familiar room. Right. This was where they’d taken me after I collapsed due to mana exhaustion. Which meant this was Crow’s house. I could hear Amelia, Night, and Crow talking over in the next room. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but Night seemed a little offended by something, and hearing Amelia safe and sound put my mind at ease.

 

After we made it out of the labyrinth, we’d all headed straight for Crow’s house as fast as our exhausted bodies could take us. We hadn’t even stuck around to confirm that Mahiro and Aurum had teleported out of the labyrinth, though that seemed like a pretty safe bet.

“All right, now eat some food and get some sleep. We can talk things over later.”

Once we arrived at the house, Crow brought out some fruit and bread for us to snack on. I didn’t know just how long we’d been fighting with the demons down there, but I was starving, so I gratefully accepted the vittles. I remembered nothing after the food. I didn’t even remember climbing into bed, so I assumed someone must have carried me there. I was so exhausted that I’d probably conked out halfway through my little meal. Tends to happen whenever I use Shadow Magic.

“Looks like your feisty companion’s woken up,” I heard Crow say from the next room.

Then I heard the sound of Amelia and Night getting out of their seats and dashing over. When they opened the door, I had to shield my eyes from the light coming in from the next room.

“Akira!”

“Master!”

Before my eyes could even adjust to the light, they had pounced on me, and I fell promptly back into the bed. It seemed like I still hadn’t fully recovered my strength.

“Akira, I was so worried, I…I…” Amelia sputtered as she pressed her face into my chest.

I ran my fingers through her hair, unable to find the right words. I knew she probably still felt horrible for having almost killed me, even if it had been no fault of her own. If my Shadow Magic hadn’t kicked in to save my life, I probably would have been six feet under by now. Something told me Amelia was going to hold it against herself no matter what I said, so I decided that perhaps it was best to just not bring it up and hope time healed those wounds.

“How long was I out, Night?” I asked as my feline companion hopped up to his usual perch on my shoulders.

He let out a sigh and shook his head as though I were a child who’d just gotten himself into trouble again—a gesture which mildly annoyed me, but I let it slide. “Only a day this time. You didn’t deplete all of your mana again, thankfully, so it was probably just plain old exhaustion. Though I must say I expected better of you. Why, Lady Amelia and I recovered within a matter of hours, you know,” he teased. “Oh, and Crow has already escorted Lady Lia back to the palace, just so you’re aware.”

I knew Night was only teasing me to try to lighten the mood to lift Amelia’s spirits, but it was still a little irksome. Okay, maybe more than just a little. But I held my annoyance back and lowered my clenched fists.

“So what’s new? Anything?” I asked. I couldn’t imagine that nothing of import had happened the entire day I was out cold. However, I didn’t expect this question to make both Amelia and Night immediately stiffen.

“Yeah, we can talk about that after you come out here. You’ve got guests.”

I turned in the direction of Crow’s voice and saw someone else standing in the doorway—someone I never would have expected to see. My jaw hanging wide open, I threw the covers back and sat up in bed. Night was sent flying off my shoulders from the momentum, and while I normally would have scooped him back up and apologized, I had more pressing matters to attend to right now.

“Vice Commander Gilles?!” I gasped.

“In the flesh. Been a while, hasn’t it?”

I ran over to the man, who greeted me not with his usual worrywart expression but with a wry smile. He wasn’t dressed in his usual knight’s garb, instead wearing a set of light armor designed for traveling, but there was no doubt about it. This was the same Sir Gilles I’d come to know back in the Kingdom of Retice. I glanced over my shoulder at Amelia and Night. He was still grumbling on the floor after being flung aside, so she was trying to console him.

Seeing this comedic display, Vice Commander Gilles laughed heartily. “Looks like you’ve found yourself a fine set of companions,” he said.

“Y-yeah, I guess you could say that,” I replied, scratching my cheek bashfully. I couldn’t hide anything from Vice Commander Gilles. He was almost as much of a mind-reader as Commander Saran had been before him.

He laughed at my hesitant reply.

Night, having leapt back up onto my shoulders, was peering teasingly into my eyes. “You ‘guess,’ Master? Go on, tell him we’re the finest companions a boy like you could ever hope for. No need to be shy.”

Don’t push your luck, bub. I grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and flung him back onto the bed. I didn’t have time for any of his mewling right now. I held out my hand to Amelia, who took it tentatively.

“Let’s go, Amelia.”

“O-okay.”

She still seemed a little bit tense, but her hand in mine was every bit as warm and reassuring as usual. As we walked together through the doorway, I was met with yet another surprise. While I maybe should have expected as much given that Crow said I had “guests”—plural and not singular—I was still completely thrown for a loop when I saw the people sitting patiently in the next room.

“Hey, Akira.”

“K-Kyousuke…?”

There in the sitting area were seven of the classmates I’d left behind when I fled Retice Castle. There was my friend Kyousuke, the hero Satou, and…well, I couldn’t remember the others’ names.

I’d seen all of their stat pages back when we were first summoned, but so much had happened since then that I’d completely forgotten. My classmates, for their part, seemed less interested in me than the lovely lady whose hand I was holding.

“What are you guys all doing here?” I asked as I took the seat across from Kyousuke. Unfortunately for them, I wasn’t going to address their curiosity regarding Amelia unless they came right out and asked me who she was.

“My Intuition skill told me we’d find you here,” said Kyousuke. “And we were on our way to Ur anyway to seek out a skilled blacksmith when we bumped into Sir Gilles on the ship over.”

Apparently Vice Commander Gilles and Crow were acquaintances, and he had just so happened to be on his way to the same exact place. So, he’d joined up with Kyousuke and my other classmates to come here and introduce them to Crow, who was about as skilled a blacksmith as they could hope to find, if you were able to look past his personality.

“Wow. I’m surprised the castle’s allowing you to be away for so long, Vice Commander,” I said.

To my surprise, though, Sir Gilles shuddered uncomfortably at this simple offhand remark. “Er, yes. About that…” he began. “Please stop calling me Vice Commander, would you? I’ve resigned from my post as a member of the Knights of Retice.”

I blinked a few times. Now there was a surprise. I had found it odd how casual his tone seemed to be, compared to when we’d last spoken, but I never would have expected him to have quit entirely.

“Well, perhaps it’s more accurate to say I was forced to resign,” he added. “I guess the king felt that my fellow knights and I were becoming too much of an obstacle to his master plan.”

Now that I could understand. With Commander Saran gone, I was a little worried about what might be going on back at the castle if Sir Gilles wasn’t there to keep an eye on things, but apparently I’d underestimated just how conniving the king could be.

“So tell me, Crow: what exactly are all these people doing here?” I asked, thinking it far too convenient to be a mere coincidence.

“Don’t ask me,” he said, furrowing his brow. “Little Gilles here is the only one I asked to come. Those kids just decided to tag along with him.”

“Little” Gilles, huh. It felt weird for him to be talking about a grown man as though he were a little kid, but maybe that was just a result of Crow looking awfully young for his age.

“Well, I can’t speak for the other six,” said Kyousuke, “but I came because I wanted to join up with you, Akira. Would you mind if I tagged along?”

Night quickly leapt up onto my shoulders.

“I already told you, that’s not going to happen! Master only has room for one partner, and that’s me! You think I’d just hand him over to a no-name ruffian of dubious origin like yourself?!”

This must have been what I heard Night complaining about from the other room when I first woke up. Though Kyousuke was decidedly not just some “no-name ruffian” of dubious origin—if anything, Night was the one who was of dubious origin here.

“I’m talking to Akira right now, Night. Please try to keep it down,” said Kyousuke.

“Who gave you permission to call me by that name?!” Night hissed.

Was this what the fearsome Nightmare of Adorea had been reduced too? An easily offended pussycat? And since when was Kyousuke so talkative? Why, he was talking so much that my other classmates were looking at him like he was a completely different person. In any event, I couldn’t stand to have Night hissing in my ear, so I grabbed him once again by the scruff of his neck and set him down on a nearby table.

“Hey, if you guys wanna duke it out, take it outside. I just woke up and you’re already giving me a headache,” I said, and the two of them both stopped dead in their tracks. Amelia looked over at me, impressed with the amount of authority I was displaying.

“How are you feeling, Akira? Doing okay?” asked the hero, who I’d been making a distinct effort to ignore up until this point.

“Yeah, more or less,” I replied, and he let out a sigh of relief.

This puzzled me, I had to admit. It was no secret that he and I hated each other’s guts, though I’d always been under the impression that it was he who wanted nothing to do with me, and I was simply keeping my distance. Where this sudden change of heart was coming from, I couldn’t say.

Before I could pursue this train of thought any further, Crow stepped forward as if he had something to say. He looked around at the people who’d intruded on his humble abode with a look that was cold and inhospitable even by his standards. Gilles, meanwhile, simply sat and sipped his tea.

“Listen,” said Crow, staring directly at me. “I get that your little friends here are just worried about you and want to make sure you make a full recovery, so as much as I hate unwanted guests, I’m gonna make an exception just this once. But if they can’t behave themselves, just know that I reserve the right to kick them all to the curb.”

Always so testy, this one, I thought with a sigh. I appreciated that he was trying to be considerate of me, but he didn’t have to be so prickly about it.

There weren’t a lot of chairs, so all of my classmates aside from the hero and Kyousuke were forced to stand. Gilles stood opposite Crow, who stood next to me, and Amelia stood on my other side. I could tell that the hero, who was sitting across from Amelia, was feeling a little flustered by her beauty, but Amelia wouldn’t even so much as look at him. Kyousuke, who was sitting across from me, was still having a stare-down with the kitty cat. Sparks were flying all around.

“Well, for starters, Crow… Were you able to dig up any information on Lingga?” I asked, referring to the matter I’d asked him to look into back when I passed out due to mana exhaustion. I figured he probably wanted to get down to business, but I wasn’t really interested in being the facilitator, so I decided to steer the conversation in that direction. Suddenly, all eyes were on him, and he frowned and took another sip of his tea before responding.

“Yeah. He’s totally innocent,” Crow replied at last.

This was not an answer I’d been prepared for. I was all but certain it had been Lingga who’d paved the way for the demons to invade the city. He was by far the most likely culprit given the circumstances. Sure, the common belief was that the Demon Lord created the labyrinths, but did that really make it possible for his lackeys to teleport between them with such pinpoint accuracy? I remembered Commander Saran telling me once that magic was a very inexact science. So while there did exist magic that could teleport you to wherever you wanted to go in an instant, it was apparently nigh-impossible to teleport somewhere you hadn’t been before. There would have needed to be some sort of symbol or landmark near the destination Mahiro had been aiming for, at the very least. And since Lingga just so happened to be the guildmaster of a city with a labyrinth, and just so happened to have that Inconspicuous skill that would make it easy for him to sneak down to the bottom floor and place said symbol, I was fairly certain he was guilty.

“But I do know of someone else who I think might be our guy,” Crow said, clenching his fists. He was digging his claws so deep into his palms that blood began to trickle out, but he didn’t seem to notice. “He’s the guildmaster of the Uruk branch, and I can tell you from experience that he’s as rotten as they come.”

“What’s his name?” I asked.

I could see Night’s fur bristling. Amelia, too, stiffened up. Then, with clear-cut malice burning in his eyes, Crow finally uttered the villain’s name:

“Name’s Gram. He’s the current king’s nephew, and he used to be prime minister. Also happens to be the guy I’ve been waiting a hundred years to get revenge against.”

My ears immediately perked up at the name Gram, though I couldn’t quite remember why. I looked over at Night to see if he could help refresh my memory.

“No, you’re not imagining things, Master. That was the name of the supposed ringleader of those ruffians who attempted to kidnap Lady Amelia back in the elven domain. The ones we suspected might have been official knights of Uruk.”

Come to think of it, Night mentioned the name ringing a bell back then, didn’t he? He’d said there was once a prime minister by the name of Gram, so this had to be our guy. To think he’d become guildmaster for the Uruk branch since then…and that Crow had beef with him.

“This is the first I’m hearing of any revenge, Crow. Did you guys already know about this?” I asked Amelia and Night. It sounded like there’d been some sort of communication breakdown. Not that we’d had much time to share intel lately, what with me being unconscious and Amelia getting kidnapped and all.

“Yeah, Night told me about it back on the day Aurum attacked the city,” said Amelia.

“You can tell him about it later. I don’t wanna hear it,” said Crow, looking away.

Must be a touchy subject for him. I’ll just have to have Amelia fill me in later. “So what makes you think this Gram guy could have been behind the invasion?” I asked, shifting gears.

“Well, for starters, he’s got a history of stuff like this. One need only do a little digging to find plenty of evidence of corruption and backdoor deals he’s been a part of. The man is basically evil incarnate,” Crow replied, looking back at me.

Evil incarnate, eh? Seemed fitting for the man who tried to kidnap Amelia.

“Embezzlement, larceny, kidnapping and imprisonment, slavery and trafficking…” Crow went on. “You name it, he’s done it. Only thing you might actually have a hard time pinning on him is murder, because he makes his cronies do the actual dirty work. But the man’s definitely killed a lot of people, make no mistake.”

I assumed the trafficking was referring to the elf trafficking, specifically. But I had to wonder: if this guy’s rap sheet was so long, why wasn’t he in prison right now? I was about to ask this question when I realized the answer was probably pretty simple.

“Let me guess: he gets away with it because he’s a member of the royal family,” I said.

Crow nodded, and Amelia bit her lip. It must have been hard for her, as a member of another royal family, to see someone else abuse their power so blatantly.

“He’s been using his status as the king’s nephew to his advantage and getting involved in all sorts of dirty business ever since he was named prime minister. He got caught red-handed once, so he was forced to step down from that post, but that didn’t stop him. He’s pulling the exact same crap today as guildmaster.”

I glanced down at the amber liquid in my teacup. I couldn’t believe such a villain was roaming free in this world. He might have even been more wicked than the royal family back in Retice.

“You can’t pin anything on a member of the royal family. Rumor has it there have been plenty of assassination attempts too, but the skilled mercenaries under his employ always put a stop to those, then retaliate with a vengeance… The man’s a waste of flesh that doesn’t deserve to live, plain and simple.”

It was hard to disagree with that appraisal after what I’d just heard. That being said, I still wanted to do some investigating of my own into this Gram fellow. I didn’t want to assume guilt right off the bat like that stupid hero wannabe who had killed the good Demon Lord’s wife.

“So what evidence do you have that suggests he had a hand in letting the demons into the Great Labyrinth of Brute?” I asked.

“Apparently, he’s made some sort of back-alley deal with the demons.”

At this, I looked up from my teacup. I’d been under the impression that demons would never bother conducting business with the “lesser races” whatsoever, shady or not, but evidently I was wrong—though I’d only met two demons myself, and they could have been outliers.

“And from what my acquaintances in the Ur branch were able to tell me, I learned an interesting little tidbit: Gram was permitted entry into that very labyrinth only a few short days ago.”

Okay, now this was starting to get pretty damning. I was all but convinced at this point. There was no reason for a man who had an entire army of trained mercenaries at his back to go into the labyrinth. Why would he ever need to fight enemies or get stronger? From what I’d heard so far, I was picturing him as the quintessential lazy villain who just sat on his ass bossing his little minions around. That was how it always was with his ilk…though, come to think of it, the king of Retice had been pretty slim. Borderline gaunt, almost. Villains with his body type were usually saved for the final boss.

“And wouldn’t you know, the Guild employees also told me Gram was wearing a very large cloak that day to conceal his identity, coincidentally enough. They said they wouldn’t have even known it was him if he hadn’t been forced to show them his dog tags to be granted entry,” Crow went on, and I sighed in disbelief as our suspect dug himself an ever deeper grave.

“It may have been a monster-repelling cloak,” suggested Night, and suddenly all eyes were on him.

“What’s that?” asked Crow, and Night quickly obliged.

“It’s a vestment that allows demons to travel while making their presence and mana signatures undetectable to all but the most powerful of monsters. Obviously, no demon would have any trouble with such weak monsters, but the whole reason Mahiro designed it was because he couldn’t be bothered to deal with them all the time. There are magic circles woven into its interior that allow one to safely pass by any monsters as weak as those on the lowest floor of the labyrinth.”

Well, if Mahiro had designed it, I could see why it would be so effective, but had he really just called the lower-level monsters “weak”? In that case, I didn’t even want to know how powerful the monsters were over in the demons’ domain.

“Sounds like an open-and-shut case, then. Gram’s our guy,” said Crow, standing up from his chair as if to say the conversation was over. He seemed antsy, like he wanted to go do something about it without further delay, and he stepped out of the building. After the door slammed behind him, I turned back toward the hero.

“So where do you guys plan on going from here?” I asked.

The hero seemed startled by my direct address (which was probably warranted, to be fair). One of the other boys who always tried to talk to me in class answered for him.

“We’re still focused on moving toward our ultimate goal: slaying the Demon Lord.”

“You lot are going to try to slay His Majesty? Don’t make me laugh!” Night snorted, and one of the other boys (who seemed to be an animal tamer of some sort, judging from the little monkey perched on his head and the kitten on his shoulder) didn’t take kindly to this.

“Uh, ’scuse you? What’s your problem, pussycat? Whose side are you on, anyway?” the boy said.

“Yeah, no kiddin’!” a girl with a Kansai accent chimed in. “He was bein’ awful rude to Asahina a li’l while ago too! What gives?!”

Apparently the other students had only been so docile out of fear of Crow’s wrath, and now that he was gone, they were prepared to be as unruly as they pleased.

“I’m on the side of Master and Lady Amelia, for your information! And if Master couldn’t even defeat the demons’ second-in-command, you meddlesome kids don’t stand a chance of defeating His Majesty himself!”

“You don’t know that!” cried one student.

“Yeah! We’ve gotten really strong too!” said another.

I wasn’t sure just how much stronger they’d gotten, but I was willing to bet Night was probably right, judging by the way the knight-looking boy seemed to be on the verge of tears. His teary-eyed face and delicate figure sure did make him seem effeminate.

“Do you people want to sleep outside tonight, or what?” Kyousuke said matter-of-factly, and the argumentative students shut their mouths. “If we’re going to defeat the Demon Lord, we’ll need to greatly increase our collective strength first. We know full well we’re no match for him as we are now, hence why we’ve come to this town known for having both a highly skilled blacksmith and a labyrinth in which we can hone our abilities.”

That was all well and good, though I had a feeling it would be a while before the labyrinth was open to the public again, and Crow didn’t seem like he was really in the mood to take on any new requests at the moment. Their trip here might have been a rather pointless one.

“Given that the labyrinth is unusable at the moment, and that our finances are in a pretty good state right now,” said the hero, choosing his words carefully, “I was thinking the rest of us should join your team along with Asahina.”

“Absolutely not,” I said almost reflexively. The hero must have been expecting this answer, as his expression didn’t change whatsoever. “That goes for you too, Kyousuke. Sorry, but I can’t take on any new companions that can’t hold their own when fighting alongside me. You guys would be nothing more than a liability, and we don’t need any more healers or support classes either.”

It was harsh but true; we were never going to beat the Demon Lord if I had to worry about protecting our weaker party members at the same time. I shot a quick glance over at Kyousuke, who was biting his lip and looking down at the ground, then stood up from my seat.

“I need to speak with Crow real quick. In the meantime, I’ll let you guys have some space to think things through. Just don’t try to come up with a way to change my mind, because you’ll be wasting your breath,” I said. I placed my hand on Amelia’s head, and she twitched in surprise. “Amelia here is the only one I fight for. If you can somehow convince her that you won’t be a liability, maybe I’ll reconsider. Just don’t get your hopes up.”

I whispered to Amelia that I was counting on her, then promptly left the building. The hero and Kyousuke watched me closely as I stepped out the door, but I didn’t once look back.

I wasn’t lying just to remove myself from the situation—there really was something I wanted to ask Crow about, so it was time to figure out where he’d gone off to. Thankfully, I didn’t have to look far, as I found him right next door in his workshop, looking pensively over his various smithing tools.

“Crow,” I said, and he slowly raised his head.

“Oh. Hey,” he replied, only looking briefly over at me out of the corner of his eye.

I leaned my back against the door frame and looked the man over, his catlike features illuminated by the pale moonlight leaking in through the opened door. I wasn’t sure what he’d come in here to think about without even turning the lights on, but I decided to get straight to the point. “There’s something I wanted to ask you.”

He scrunched up his face. “Sorry, can it wait? I’m a little busy right n—”

“What is it that you’re most afraid of?” I interrupted.

With this, I finally managed to grab his attention. He turned to face me with a bewildered look in his eyes. “Where the hell is this coming from?”

“Just my own curiosity, really. What scares you more than anything else in the world?” It really was just plain old curiosity, but I had a feeling that Crow and I might have similar feelings about stuff like this, so I figured I should just ask and see what he said. Something told me that if anyone could relate to the feelings of helplessness and anxiety I’d had when Amelia had first been kidnapped, it was him.

“The thing that terrifies me more than anything else in the world…”

Crow turned his gaze to the moon shining through the door behind me. There was no hint of his usual shrewd and calculating persona in those eyes—only the look of a vulnerable and broken man who’d lost more than anyone could ever know.

“…is when I try to reach out for something, and my fingers touch nothing.”