CHAPTER 4 Thorny as a Thistle

[53RD DAY]

Life got busy after I once again officially took over as party head. After Arvin and Shuna’s brawl, and that whole mess with Gladwein’s disciples, I still had to handle paperwork at the Guild and sell off the dragonoise materials, not to mention pay off all the debts Arvin’s band had incurred. While I was at it, I took down two corrupt merchant organizations, got one of them incorporated into the Zavah Night Owl Trade Group, and, as reward for my success in this matter, ended up having Lady Glavius, the Night Owl, the other goddess I’d consecrated a covenant with, officially bestow her “Wise Eyes” upon me.

Though it only happened on occasion, when dealing with a trade group or on an expedition, I’d sometimes found that I could discern the true nature of something. I’d mistakenly assumed it was some innate skill. Never would I have guessed that this goddess imparted her grace to her disciples. This new skill would help me accurately assess things like resources, along with the monsters and people I encountered—a handy tool for our dives. However, Lady Glavius did leave me with one word of caution.

“The true value of an item is constantly in flux. You may accurately appraise a precious stone as augite in one moment, only to find it is but a pebble in the next. Additionally, not even divine eyes can discern the worth behind everything in existence. That is for humans to judge. Take care you see things for what they truly are and distinguish the precious from what is without import in this foggy world of men.”

An apt warning from the Goddess of Commerce, and one I took to heart. Still, I was an adventurer, not a merchant. I needed to make sure I never forgot that. No matter how you sliced it, I spent way too much time on things outside of my true profession.

And then, once again, I came face-to-face with another problem that seemed poised to steal even more time. The issue—the green-eyed monster.

Nasty rumors about me circulated among adventurers courtesy of the corrupt trade group I’d put out of business. They accused me of committing marriage fraud, of being an impostor, of swindling the monarchy, and of paying to advance my career. The biggest offenders were the initiates and adepts who’d hit a wall in their expeditions, along with initiates who’d started out at the same time as I had. They spread truths, half truths, and flat-out lies about me all over town.

Generally, people in Japan say rumors fade in seventy-five days. Luckily, the bad rep fell squarely on my shoulders, and for some reason (maybe pity?) only positive stories about my party members made the rounds. Restaurants would often give them snacks and drinks on the house; I, on the other hand, had gotten raw ingredients served to me on at least five occasions. Two of those times, the meat on the menu—still very much alive—had attacked me. It pissed me off, but in the end, I was an adventurer. I’d prove any rumor wrong with my success.

Or at least that was how I saw it, but Shuna and Lana took to pummeling every last one of the folks they heard talking shit about me. Shuna I could handle. As long as Arvin was with me, we could step in and make peace. After that, all we had to do was give him something tasty to munch on and he’d be back to his perky self in no time. A round of drinks for the group the boy had tried to pick a fight with would clear up any misunderstandings. Everybody left happy.

But with Lana…shit got rough. Really rough. Seriously. It made me happy she got angry on my behalf, but she was the last person I’d want to go off on. When she cast a spell to send someone flying, she usually wound up sending the whole shop with them. And she caused no shortage of injury to the local residents.

What with the medical fees, reconstruction costs, reparations for nuisances, and hush money we had to dish out, each one of these scuffles sent on average about seventy gold coins down the drain. We’d blown through all the cash the Zavah Night Owl Trade Group had given me. Worst-case scenario, I could see myself having to draw from our expedition funds to cover the costs. Apparently, the next time she destroyed the boss’s bar, we’d be banned for life.

“You’re an incredible mage. Can’t you cast your spells with a little more finesse?” I’d tried asking her, but apparently, no matter what type of magecraft she used, the incantation’s intensity would always blow way beyond normal proportions. She and Zenobia conjured the same spell to test by just how much, and Lana’s came out approximately thirty times stronger. Not only that, it cost her wildly less mana than it did Zenobia. In the end, it worked out to be more efficient to cast tremendously powerful spells that took a heavy toll on MP reserves.

Is she, like, some goddess of destruction’s pet project?

Regardless, we decided every one of us in the party would jump up to stop her whenever she started chanting. I couldn’t let more hate be directed to her, the elven race, or the Heuress Clan, even though they’d disowned her. So I spread my own rumor to compensate.

“Any adventurer who messes with the Otherworlder will be stricken with ill fortune.”

Adventuring required you to constantly risk your life. You could have the perfect combination of talent, preparation, quick wit, and wisdom, and a dash of bad luck could still send you to the grave. Naturally, my ilk got very touchy around anything having to do with jinxes. To really fill the rumor out, I engineered two or three actual mini calamities. I’d set up every hit to take place on the main road, at the time of day with the heaviest traffic.

With the first party, I made all their belts corrode and snap off in public, leaving them butt naked from the waist down. The second party was almost squashed by a berserk, unmanned carriage. As for the other parties, the number of coins I made fall from their purses was equivalent to how many slanderous comments they’d spoken about the Otherworlder. Seeing all these adventurers wailing about their misfortunes in the heart of the city cemented the reality of the “Otherworlder’s Curse” for everyone else.

Two days after all this, not a single bar buzzed with rumors about me. In fact, adventurers took it upon themselves to silence all who let a thoughtless comment slip with a fist to the face as if to say, Don’t get us involved in that shit. My name morphed completely into a cursed word; it wasn’t ideal, but, well, at least I’d managed to divert the hate directed at Lana.

Plus, they say rumors only last seventy-five days. Not one day passed in this town without some kind of commotion. I was sure this would blow over and fade into the wind soon enough.

With all this, a whole week passed before we got back down in the dungeon.

Currently, we found ourselves on the thirteenth floor. Pops’s map had made it easy to traverse the levels up to this point. Since we now traveled as a seven-person band, I’d slightly adjusted our battle formation accordingly. Corridors in the dungeon ran an average of four meters wide, meaning we could only walk two or three abreast and still have enough room to move freely. We also had to think about the people behind us and leave some space between the rows. That meant we couldn’t go marching single-file like in a certain national-treasure-level JRPG.

Just like before, I split the group into two different subdivisions. Arvin, Shuna, and Isolla and I formed the lead group. Bel, Éa, Zenobia, and Lana took the rear. My job was to detect and “fish for” approaching enemies. Using Isolla’s varied sensors and the Wise Eyes, I’d evaluate our foes and shoot an arrow at them before they could strike. If that took them down, great, but if not, I’d act as bait and lead them to their deaths by way of Arvin and Shuna. If we encountered a large group of monsters, I’d steer them away somewhere else to buy time.

I decided to leave the actual slaying to Arvin and Shuna as much as possible. I couldn’t have found any nits to pick with either of their battle skills if I’d tried. They were powerful. In the right conditions they could probably hold their own against adepts. All we had to do was make sure they could respond at a moment’s notice.

Bel played shortstop. She had a well-balanced mix of offensive and defensive skills, so I gave her flexibility to move back and forth in battle as needed. The combined spells she and Lana could conjure together added a large-scale attack to our toolbox, but I forbade them from using these very risky incantations since they could easily slip out of control.

Éa watched out for anything approaching from the rear and gave us covering fire during battles. An assault straight to our backs could wipe out our entire party. Since she had stronger enemy perception than anyone else in our group, I asked her to focus it all on the area behind us. But you couldn’t sneeze at her backup onslaughts, either. Arrows shot from her capable fingers easily pierced the eyes or hearts of any of the minor-league monsters crawling around.

Zenobia focused exclusively on providing backup and protecting the latter half of the party. She was also our pinch hitter. Frankly, the flamecraft she conjured wasn’t much to write home about, but she did cast formidable defensive spells. And in case any enemies did slip past Éa, Zenobia could step up and stop them in their tracks.

Lana was our trump card. In terms of the potential to inflict instantaneous damage, she ranked among the best in Remlia. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news. Her incantations delivered far more devastation than we usually required over an extensive area. One of the biggest issues involved her MP recovery. I’d thought sweets or ice cream would solve all our problems, but they were no panacea. They could only restore a limited amount of mana.

While testing new dessert recipes and evaluating their potential to replenish magic, I’d asked Lana to bust out all the spells she had. By the second day, nothing she ate could get her magic reserves to budge. A full day later, however, the desserts replenished her MP once again, and I breathed a huge sigh of relief. We would need a lot more time to verify exactly how this worked. Machina had already started analyzing the exact figures.

Since uncertainty still dogged this mana-refueling strategy, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to conserve Lana’s. Even so, just having a secret weapon at all felt very reassuring. Plus, we’d also established another means of replenishing our ryviuses. Taking that into consideration, the other guys and I felt comfortable pushing ourselves a bit past what might be wise.

For now, at least, we were going with this formation.

Keeping my breaths shallow and quiet, I concealed my presence and peered into the black void. I’d extinguished my lantern. Using my night vision to guide me, I quietly, so very quietly, stole through the dark alone.

“Enemy detected at two o’clock.”

“Copy.”

At Isolla’s warning, I focused in that direction. An enormous snake lazily approached from farther up the lightless corridor, gracefully slithering through the air. How it flew was a mystery to me; though it did have small wings, they hardly looked strong enough to keep it aloft. And though I called it “enormous,” at about thirty centimeters wide and six meters long, it looked downright adorable compared to the massive dragonoise. About fifteen meters stood between it and me.

“Enemy reaction registered. It’s noticed your presence.”

Clenching an arrow between my teeth, I nocked another on my bow. With a quiet swoosh, the creature barreled toward me. How did it spot me in this pitch black? I wondered, then immediately abandoned the question.

“Turn on the light.”

“Roger,” Isolla responded before turning herself on to shine as brightly as a lantern.

I drew my bow taut; tension built in the arrow. I thought of nothing but killing my foe, just like the snake. With my hand on my bowstring, I could detach myself from anything and everything. I’d shoot down god or demon without hesitation.

Wait for it—

“Ten meters and approaching. Eight, six, four.” The monster opened its gaping mouth to swallow me whole.

—Now.

My bowstring sang as my shot sprang from it. The arrow, soaring as lithely as a snake itself, shot straight through the top of the beast’s mouth before burying itself in its brain. The giant creature collapsed on the floor, then flopped and twitched like a fish. Less blood wept from the wound than I’d expected.

I nocked another arrow, observing with cold impassivity. Somehow—this wasn’t over yet.

Turned out, the giant snake’s body went on for far longer than I’d originally thought. Around half of it still stretched into the dark corridor whose outline I could only barely make out. Then I saw its tail—rearing its head at me. Shadows raced toward me, but I wouldn’t waste my aim on them. No point firing at something you’re not sure you can hit.

I drove another arrow into the great snake’s body, pinning it to the stony ground, then leaped back with all my might. The monster’s teeth snapped an inch away from my face, but its jaws clamped down on nothing but air.

“Attack successfully evaded.”

This damn thing had two heads. Now under no pressure at all, I sank one more shot into this second cranium. But even after all that, it still refused to die.

“Activate pulse scanner. Mark this stubborn asshole’s heart with a red dot.”

“Copy that, activating pulse scanner.” I heard a faint, high-pitched tone, similar to a ringing in the ears. “Scan complete.”

Red marks appeared on my glasses, pinpointing the location of the beast’s heart. In went another arrow. Although it convulsed for a bit, the snake was definitely dead this time.

Plenty of dungeon monsters could survive getting their skulls caved in. Some didn’t even have heads to begin with. So far, though, all the life-forms I’d seen would perish as soon as you stopped their hearts.

I secured the perimeter.

“No foes detected.”

“Copy.” Slinging my bow over my shoulder, I unhooked my woodsman’s ax.

“Souya, check its fangs, please.”

“You got it.” I stuck my tool between the creature’s lips and pried its mouth open, careful not to touch anything with my bare hands. It was too risky.

“There’s a groove in its fangs,” Isolla noted.

“So they’re venomous?”

“Yes. I’m going to take a sample. Please move me closer to the body.”

I unhooked the AI from my waist and brought her up to the carcass. Two little arms stretched out from the mini kettle. One held a case of several test tubes while the other milked drops of venom from the bases of the snake’s fangs. After that, she took tissue and blood samples as well.

“Extraction complete. Out of an abundance of caution, I’ll create enough antibodies to this poison for everyone in the party as well.”

“Please and thanks.”

“Much like a common snake, this monster has a pit organ which functions as an infrared sensor. We must be wary of this going forward.”

“All right.”

I gazed offhandedly at the carcass for a while. Relatively thick meat hung from its bones. Reptiles were supposed to taste kind of like chicken.

“Squad Member Souya, let me give you a word of warning in advance: The majority of monsters are inedible. Out of the twenty-three specimens I’ve sampled from the creatures you’ve defeated, nineteen of them contain poison harmful to humans. The larger the beast, the more potent their toxins have tended to be, which leads me to suspect that, similar to ciguatera fish poisoning, the venom may increase in concentration as larger monsters devour those further down the food chain…… It kills, you know?”

“That’s too bad. So is this guy good to eat?”

“I won’t know for sure until I resurface and analyze these samples in the main pot.”

“I see. Too bad.” Maybe we could get a dungeon-to-table thing going—use locally sourced meats, prepare them in the dungeon, and sell…… No can do. That’s far too risky in far too many ways.

“I’m heading back to the rest of the party. Let Éa know, would you?”

“On it.” I’d given Éa and Arvin transmitters that allowed us to keep in touch up to two levels apart.

After retrieving my ammunition, I dragged the snake carcass over to a corner of the corridor, doused it in flammable oil, and set fire to it. Dungeon etiquette required us to clean up remains for the next adventurers. Although fire did attract some monsters, nothing drew them more than blood.

With the disposal complete, I evacuated the area. “Isolla, turn off the light.”

The dim light disappeared. Quiet darkness enveloped me once more as the serpentine bonfire blazed in the background.

“Haaah…,” Isolla sighed, intentionally loud enough for me to hear. Actually, she didn’t breathe at all, so she was basically just making her own special effects. “……Haaah.”

Oh, I get it—

“What’s wrong?”

—she’s trying to get my attention, right?

“Oh, nothing. It’s just, perhaps since I’ve grown so used to accompanying Sir Arvin, I don’t get the same thrill with you.”

I couldn’t have been more off the mark. “Am I that bad?”

“On the contrary, you’ve achieved tens of times more accomplishments than I’d estimated on my first evaluation.”

“Oh, thanks.” Was she complimenting me? It felt kinda nice.

“But you could get by without me, couldn’t you?”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I was pretty sure I couldn’t. Probably. At the same time, I did make sure to keep the worst-case possibility in mind at all times. For me, that meant losing someone or something. I tried to prepare for that, and do what I needed to avoid it, every day.

“Sir Arvin is a complete mess without me. He may look put together, but he needs someone tightly holding the reins for him. Heh-heh.”

Per her request, I let her stay with Arvin outside of expeditions. It looked like that might come back to bite me in the butt at some point, though.

“Just don’t get so attached that you lose sight of your job here.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it. I am constantly running simulations beginning with standard battles, party reorganization contingency plans in the event we lose anyone, and warfare tactics. Additionally, I consider the implications of Sir Arvin taking over as leader, or of Sir Arvin becoming a hero, or of Sir Arvin and I—”

“I get the picture.” This damn pot was starting to look a lot like a boy-crazy fanatic who just couldn’t keep her hands off the men in her life. “Call your beloved Arvin for me. I’ve got eyes on them. Tell him to stand down. I’m coming in.”

“Yes, sir.”

A pale light came into view at a four-way intersection. I glimpsed Arvin, his shield at the ready. This hunk captured the hearts of all the women around him, from the young lass at his lodgings to the waitresses at the bar, the trade group’s widow, adventurers running the gamut from initiate to elites, and—the real kicker—an AI from another dimension.

In addition to the impeccable and multifaceted combat career he’d had, he could get the entire party to stop arguing and ease up by shooting a single smile at us. Handsome and tall, talented, deeply responsible, and loyal to his friends, he held no prejudices against any race, hated vegetables, and couldn’t hold his liquor, and every now and then, a dark shadow would cloud his countenance with gloom. What I’m saying is, if I were a girl, I’d totally be into him.

He was the kind of person you wanted as a hero, the kind you wanted to help make it there. No one could ever convince me that murderous son of a bitch Werner was fit for the role. The Legion Gods could call him what they wanted, but he would never be a hero to me.

“Heyo,” I casually called out.

“Excellent patrol work, soldier,” he answered earnestly.

“Welcome back, darling. Are you injured anywhere?”

“Nope. I did run into a snake at one point, but I took it down without getting a scratch on me,” I reassured Lana, who was prone to anxiety.

“Aw man, you shoulda called me. I wanna try this baby out,” Shuna griped, slashing his new sword around in the air. At fifty gold coins, it was a relatively famous blade, though expensive for a placeholder. Machina was fighting the good fight and trying to determine if there was any way she could repair the sword Shuna had inherited from his master. Her analysis had revealed it had an unusual structure, something called a Widmanstätten pattern, which basically meant meteorite and meteoric iron had been mixed together with its steel. How this method had been applied to produce such a strong and durable blade would take time to parse, even with all the tools of modern-day scientific analysis.

“Sir Arvin, please spread out the map. I will highlight the point beyond which we have not searched.”

“Aye.”

He unfurled his handwritten map, and Isolla projected the details over it. I used some charcoal to mark the spot where we’d turned back with an X.

“Lady Éa, if you would also be so kind.”

“Okaaay.”

She rolled her map out as well, and I added the same mark. I’d left one handwritten map each with Éa and Arvin in case both Isolla and I perished at the same time.

Touching my finger to Arvin’s map, I said, “Starting from the north, we went around clockwise inspecting the area.” The intersection where we’d gathered stood at the center of the dungeon floor. We were combing through the level from this axis in a circular pattern, but not to find the stairs leading down to the next floor. “All that’s left is the northwest quarter. If we can’t find any traces there—”

“I’ll call it. I’m this party’s shield. That’s the most important thing to me now.”

“Sorry. Thanks.”

“No, I should be the one apologizing for taking up so much of our precious time. We’ve done enough.”

We’d embarked on a mission to find Arvin’s friend, who had gone missing on this floor. I’d kept an eye on Werner and Luxgarre’s movements out of curiosity, but neither of them had made any attempt to search for Sanperié. That day we ran into them, they got into a nasty spat with some adventurers they’d hired that turned violent. Ever since, they hadn’t set foot in the dungeon. They spent their days drowning in booze and women, violence and sword training. Lucky bastards.

The chances Sanperié had survived were dismal. I held no hopes of finding him. At the very least, however, as a fellow friend of Arvin’s and a leader of adventurers, I wanted to take back some proof that he’d lived. But Arvin had responded to the suggestion by saying, “Just give me one day to look for him.” Anything more than that, he insisted, would hold the party back for too long, and he’d feel bad making everyone go out of their way for him.

At first, I’d wavered over what to do, but I understood where he was coming from. We’d search for only one day, but we’d use all the tools at our disposal. With Isolla’s sensor, I figured we might discover some traces of Sanperié that other adventurers had missed.

“Okay, everyone stand by one more time. I’m going to check out the last—”

“Yaya, I’m hungry.”

Soon after Éa—

“Oh, me too.”

“Me! Me too! I’m hungry, too!”

—Shuna and Bel shot their hands up in the air.

“Actually, I’m a little peckish myself,” Lana added sheepishly, raising her hand, too.

“Right, sorry. I’ll get it going right away.”

I’d gotten so focused on the search that I’d forgotten my empty stomach. I checked my watch—lunchtime had long since passed us by.

“It’s fine, don’t worry, I got this. You take a break, Yaya,” Éa insisted, then unloaded her pack.

“Okay, thanks.” I guess watching your sister progress is also part of a brother’s job, huh? I thought, taking her up on her offer and sitting down. My knees and ankles ached a little, but I still had a lot of ground to cover. I needed to pay more attention to my pace.

“This is the perfect time for you know what,” Éa said mischievously. She’d taken out a bunch of instant ramen cups. It was certainly an easy option, but I felt a bit disappointed for some reason.

“What’s this?” Shuna asked Éa, his voice full of curiosity.

“Heh-heh-heh! This is real ramen.”

“‘Real ramen’? So then what was that stuff you gave Lady Gladwein?” asked Bel.

“Oh, that? Just some fake ramen I threw together.”

“Wh-what?!”

I mean, it was real in terms of udon. “I’ll give you a taste of the genuine article in a bit. You’d better be grateful.”

Bel’s eyes sparkled as she looked at the cups. “Éa, Éa, that fake stuff was suuuper tasty, but does that mean this is even better?”

“Naturally.”

“Eeek?!” Personally, I preferred the udon a thousand times over.

“And that’s not all,” my sister continued. “The taste isn’t the only amazing thing about the real deal.”

“Ooh? What is it, what?”

“C’mon, spit it out.” Bel and Shuna shuffled up to Éa.

“All you have to do to make it is add hot water and wait five minutes,” Éa sagaciously explained.

““Just hot water?!”” they both exclaimed in shock. Why did this feel like a commercial?

Éa took out a portable burner, filled it with extra emiluminite, and shook it. That was all it took to activate the mineral found in unlimited supply all over the dungeon and get it to produce intensely bright light, plus enough heat to boil water.

It was very convenient. Too convenient, honestly. Even when you considered it only worked in areas close to the dungeon, it was far too useful. The prosperity of any civilization develops along with its access to sources of energy. With fuel as abundant as emiluminite, this dimension had the potential to thrive in much greater opulence. It felt odd. Was something getting in the way?

“This ramen is precious, enough to present as an offering to the king. But seeing as today’s our first day working together as a party, it’s a special celebration of its own. Think of it as my gift to us all.” Looking extremely pleased with herself, Éa put a pot on top of the burner, then filled it with water.

“This ramen, as you call it, looks very much to me like something Souya must have brought from his dimension,” Arvin remarked, raining on her parade.

“What’s Yaya’s is mine,” she said matter-of-factly. Arvin smiled back at her.

“In that case, Éa, does that mean what’s yours also belongs to Souya?”

“What’s mine is mine, obviously. Not like I’ve got much anyway, but I wouldn’t mind giving what I do have to him.”

“What do you have, then?”

“My body, I guess.”

““Kff?!”” Somehow, Bel and I both choked simultaneously. Shuna said nothing, but a faint redness bloomed on his cheeks. This kid’s grown up enough to get it. But this is a joke, okay? Don’t take it that seriously.

Curiously, Lana didn’t react at all. She did sneak over to sit at my side, though, and kept glancing over at me. This was a trying test of my skills as a man.

Did she make some more onigiri or something? Is she asking me for some sweets? Or maybe a hard drink? Wait, don’t tell me she’s gonna come out with a bold request here of all places?! That’s crazy, all that’ll come after we’re done here…… Hmm?

“Darling, I just thought of this now, but a river runs by the campsite, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.” What the what?

“After watching you work, I got the urge to brush off my fishing pole. Would you mind asking Lord Ghett if I may have his permission?”

“Uh, sure.” She couldn’t have uttered more of a non sequitur.

“Squad Member Souya, I’ve detected movement coming our way. It’s likely another group of adventurers,” Isolla announced.

“Got it.” We were taking a break right in the center of an intersection, the very definition of being in the way. “Shuna, Arvin, scooch back a bit,” I ordered, moving them to clear up some space.

Three adventurers approached: two warrior-type dudes carrying large shields, and a bigger woman. Together, they made an all-heim party of vanguards.

“Lunchtime, huh?” the imposing lady asked by way of greeting. In her midthirties, sporting a buzz cut, and lightly armored, she had muscles as tough as steel along with ritualistic tattoos and a few old scars marking her exposed skin. These were no mere ornamental decorations; they told a tale of a fierce warrior. We’d made way for them in the corridor, but they didn’t pass through.

“You guys want some?” Shuna offered, pointing at a cup of ramen Éa had hidden behind her back.

““?!”” Éa shot daggers at the boy, and my eyes flew open in astonishment.

“Shuna! You okay?! Does your stomach hurt?!”

“My stomach’s fine, dude.”

I tried to get closer, but he brushed me aside. Arvin put his hand to the kid’s forehead.

“Is it your head? Do you have a fever? Or maybe something’s wrong with his bones? Hmm, no fever. Then……what is the meaning of this?!”

“It doesn’t mean anything!” he insisted in an unnaturally calm voice, pushing Arvin out of his face. “Good food just tastes better with more people, you know.”

The knight and I huddled together and shuffled back a few paces.

“What do you make of this, Master Arvin? It appears the young lad has grown.”

“Aye. It’s almost too shocking to believe, but it appears your unique teaching methods have shown great results.”

“Speaking of, Master Arvin, how fares all with Lady Andoula?”

“Mm, well, I can’t complain.” He seemed neither too elated nor too boastful, just quietly confident. Th-this was it. A real man.

I better stop myself there. If I start judging by that standard, I’ll be the only boy left in the group.

“The three of you have been reeeal chummy lately. I smell a rat.” Zenobia considered us all suspiciously.

“““It’s nothing,””” the three of us replied in perfect unison. It only made us look even fishier.

And so went our slapstick routine until I heard someone snickering. I’d completely forgotten about them, but it was the lady, the leader of the other party, who was chuckling, derisively at that. I had no choice but to turn around.

“Ha! They said y’all were the up-and-coming party to watch, but is this all you got?”

“Say that again?” Though he’d stepped into adulthood, Shuna always pushed back first in this sort of confrontation.

“Y’all are straight-up sloppy. You’re sitting here, all happy, makin’ your little food, lettin’ it all hang out with zero sense of danger. Was it just plain luck you took out the dragonoise, like the rumors say? Or did you buy your ‘success’? I hear that Otherworlder right there’s got some ties to a nasty bunch of merchants.” I was the one who’d taken them out of the game, in fact, but telling her that wouldn’t make a difference.

“This slight I cannot ignore. Take that back.” Arvin stepped up to face her, too. They both turned all their focus on the woman, and I felt a pang of unease.

“Lemme give y’all a little lesson for here on out: Not all adventurers are your friends.” She whistled—some kind of signal.

“Emergency alert: enemy incoming.”

But Isolla’s warning came a beat too late. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure running. Then a young cat-eared beastmaid gripping a whip ran up from behind the two vanguard men. Her weapon shot out like a snake and wrapped around Lana’s staff. Before we could even say Ah! the staff and the beastmaid disappeared into the dungeon shadows.

“Oh?” the woman grunted, her voice breezy and her stance relaxed. Metal clashed against metal with a high-pitched clang—she’d blocked Shuna’s downward strike with her sword.

“Arvin! You better stay out of this!” the boy growled, rushing in for another blow. My eyes could only catch the afterimage of his movements, but the woman parried his strikes effortlessly, as if it were child’s play—one-handed.

“What do you want?” I demanded to know.

“To test you,” she answered, not at all pressed by this additional conversation with me.

This lady’s a beast. From all I’ve seen, she could be Lanceil-level strong.

Cautiously observing the other two, I stepped back. I ordered Bel and Zenobia to protect Lana. Éa I told to raise her guard; then I grabbed Arvin’s shoulder and pulled him away from the engagement.

“You, mage, Miss Massive Melons, your magic is the real deal. I’ll give you that. Not that it’s worth shit if all you’ve got to protect you are these goddamn morons. They’re not lookin’ out in the darkness, and their blind spots are wide open. Your shield over here ain’t even covering your weak spots. Get your shit together, vanguards, and get it in your head that your job is to die before those behind you, dumbasses.”

Sparks flew from the innumerable clashes of their swords. Shuna’s blade didn’t have its usual bite. It didn’t reach as far, move as fast, or have its usual heft. He hadn’t gotten the hang of his new equipment yet.

“Shoulda mentioned this sooner, but if you want that staff back, you’re gonna have to get through me first,” the woman declared.

“Bet!” Shuna snarled, far too fired up. His moves were getting sloppy as he succumbed to both the indignation of having his skills derided and the panic of not meshing well with his weapon. He was going to lose.

“Let’s see if we can’t make this a li’l more interesting,” she mused. With a single strike, she put distance between herself and Shuna, thrust her blade in the ground, and unlatched the scabbard from her belt. “I ain’t gonna need more than this against you, runt.”

“Your funeral!” This is bad. She’s got him totally provoked, playing by her rules.

“Y’all head over to the rendezvous point. I’m gonna have myself a little fun here first,” she ordered, and her two flunkies set off. I loosed an arrow at one of them.

“So close,” the guy said as he effortlessly caught the shot, then tossed it aside.

“Isolla, did you get a tracer on him?” I whispered to her.

“Sí,” she whispered back. I’d coated that arrow with a tracing lacquer. Now we’d know exactly where these assholes regrouped.

The scabbard quashed all Shuna’s strikes. A wooden sheath, judging by the sound of it. Since it couldn’t possibly withstand a direct hit from a metal blade, the woman just kept swatting it against the flat of Shuna’s blade, redirecting the trajectory of his attacks. The difference in skill here could not be understated. Would one, or even two, of my vanguard’s clever tricks be enough to turn this around?

“Hmm?” Something I’d heard didn’t sit right.

“Guh!”

Rammed in the gut, Shuna dropped his weapon. The scabbard swung back for another blow, going straight for his head—and then splintered into pieces thanks to one of my arrows. At almost exactly the same moment, Arvin got right in her face and pressed his blade against her throat.

“Ugh! You guys, not again!” the boy protested.

“No, Shuna, it’s the right call,” I assured him, then nocked my second arrow and aimed at the woman. “She never said this was a one-on-one fight. It’d be messed up for her to go on about fairness after hitting us with a sneak attack. The guy I shot at said I was ‘close.’ In other words, I picked the wrong person to attack. Right now, we’re in the dungeon. All confrontations here are battles, not honorable duels. Gladwein’s pride doesn’t apply—end of story. That about right?”

“Good,” she agreed, with a wholehearted guffaw. “Runt, you get two outta ten points. That sword does you zero favors. And you, you delicious hunk o’ meat, you get five points. You lost some for not catching the sneak attack, but since then your guard and coordination have been on point,” she went on, giving Shuna and Arvin an evaluation absolutely no one asked for.

“You, little girl, you’re an interesting one. You got something all right, but I can’t put my finger on it. Depending on what you make of yourself from here on out, you could turn that into whatever the hell you want. You’re what they call a wellspring of talent. Eight points.”

The woman meant Bel, and she was exactly right. Lana had said the same thing before. The girl apparently had a monumental propensity for magic, a bottomless reserve of talent. On top of that, she got to sharpen her battle skills every day at the Gladwein residence even though she only lived there as Shuna’s guest. These training sessions famously crushed the average adventurer. All Bel needed was some kind of catalyst and she’d take off—straight into space.

“My elven archer over here, you got no sense of caution, way too chill. Two points.” The hell did she just say about my sister?

“As for you, forgettable mage,” she started, referring to Zenobia, “you come in at zero points. You don’t fit in with this crew. You’d best pull out, for your own sake.”

“Screw you!” I screamed. I drew my bowstring, my hand trembling with fury. I was an idiot to have thought, even for a second, that she had a good eye for this. “No one asked for your shitty opinions. Shut the hell up or I’ll shoot.”

“You know, you’re the one I just can’t put a number on.” She started on my evaluation. “You think outside the box and make split-second decisions. It took you too long to react, but you did realize something unexpected was coming. Plus, you’ve got your loyalty for your friends and your sense of responsibility. With all that, so far you’re at an eight. But, and this is a big but, you’re missing something crucial.” I felt violated, like she was snooping through the shame I’d buried down deep. “Ambition. You don’t want shit for yourself.”

She was spot on there. That was why it pissed me off so much. “You’re just catching a ride runnin’ on everyone else’s dreams and desires. Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t a bad thing. There’s plenty of people who could use someone like you. But you got no place leadin’ anyone.”

“Insolent wench!” Arvin seized her by the collar and slammed her against the wall. “You cannot fathom how Souya toiled and suffered to bring us all together! How dare you slander him as if you had any idea?!”

“’Cause I do. He put the initiate party together that went on to slay that Dark Crown. I don’t care what kinda strategy or tactics y’all used, but you don’t find people who can pull that off just anywhere,” the woman spat back. “I looked into other battle records, too, but there’s hardly any other adventurers who’ve moved up so successfully, or quickly. If anything, you’re too good, and you haven’t even woken up yet to how much of a liability that is for you. Somewhere down the line, you’re gonna lose someone over that.”

“Arvin, let her go,” I ordered.

“But—!”

“Just do it.” I patted him on the shoulder, and he finally released her. She stayed right where she stood and moved on to judging Lana.

“You, like I said, are the real deal—a full ten, no complaints. A bonified Leader of the Final Flame from the honorable Hoense School and descendant of the great hero Heuress. You’ve got a sort of childish look going for you, but once you learn how to own your man, you could have the greatest hero melting in your hands.” I felt a seething rage radiating from my wife.

“So.” I chose my words with care. “What are you really after?”

“I like a man who can read my signals. A little late, but allow me to introduce myself. The name’s Lieutette, a level-thirty-five delver. I’m what you’d call an adept adventurer.”

“Lieutette the Scandalmonger,” Shuna muttered, revealing her nickname. “I’ve heard about her from my brothers in Gladwein. They say she’s notorious for goin’ ’round and stickin’ her nose in new adventurers’ business.”

“That’s ‘promising but reckless initiates’ business’ to you. I came here to test y’all for two reasons. One, money. Someone paid me to take y’all by the hand to somewhere special—all hush-hush, and for a damn fine bag o’ coins. You’ll find Miss Melons’s staff and my guys there. Don’t you worry, though, I’ll lead you right to it.”

“North of here, right?” The tracer had stopped there. Lieutette looked a little shaken.

“You sure are an interesting one.” You think I give two shits what you think?

“So what’s reason number two?”

“I already told y’all that, remember? To test you. I’ve got a proposal for you, you, and you.” She pointed at me, Bel, and Lana. “Come and join my party. Especially you, Otherworlder. I’ma say it again, but you’re not leader material. You’re the kind who really shines on someone else’s leash. But I bet you know that better than anybody.”

“……” That’s not— Well…

……She’s right; I’m not cut out for standing on other people’s shoulders. I’m the one who’s meant to be holding someone else up from the shadows. That’s where I work the best, and everything flows better that way. I’m just a shade.

It was true; I was far too gloomy to represent anybody. People with solid intuition usually picked that up. I’d considered keeping Arvin as our leader as he was before, but he totally lacked the capacity or talent for it. He had the charm to thrive as a beloved teen idol, but you need a different kind of charisma to direct a team. On top of that, he was too good a man to really put to use. His code of knighthood or whatever clouded his ability to analyze moving pieces. I could’ve tried manipulating him like a puppet from behind the curtain, but we’d only meet with disaster once again. Unless I was extremely careful, we could suffer a tragedy no amount of patching up could repair.

You needed to be smart and clever, but there was much more than that to being a leader. They needed to take charge, to have that kingly charisma that inspired envy. And that—I didn’t have a lick of.

“I’ll take your silence to mean you agree,” she said smugly.

“You shouldn’t.” In spite of all that, my answer was clear. I might not have any of those qualities, but I did have something that made it possible for me to lead my party.

Just then my skin instantly broke out in goosebumps.

A monstrous bellow rang out from somewhere deep in the dungeon.

Hair-raising terror seized me, as if something slimy had run its tongue along the nape of my neck. That howl alone could drag you into the darkness. Every instinct in my body screamed this meant real peril.

“What was that?” asked Lieutette, as if a rookie like me would know how to explain a situation that had an adept shaking in her boots.

“The tracer is registering frenzied movement. I believe they may be engaging the source of that ungodly cry in battle.”

“Hey, Madame Adept.”

“What?” she snapped, clearly ruffled.

“We’ve got ourselves an enemy. Your guys are fighting it as we speak. Lend me a hand.”

“Fine. But you do mean under my command, right?”

“Hell no. You’re going to follow my lead.”

“Heh! Well, screw it. Show me what you got. Get ready to make a goddamn fool of yourself.”

Whether I had the talent or not didn’t actually matter. My friends had put their faith in me, and they pushed me forward—that was the one reason I could do this, something I’d never second-guess. I had absolutely zero plans to step down as their leader.

---

We found a ten-meter-square chamber, old and rough all over. A huge chasm in the wall served as its entrance. Someone had hidden this place—or perhaps sealed it off.

A tragedy had played out on this cavernous stage. The young beastmaid lay collapsed in a pool of blood, still clutching Lana’s staff. She was unconscious and just barely breathing. A vicious gash ran down the chest of one of the warriors, who’d also suffered stab wounds in both legs. The white of his bones peeked out from his injuries. Although he was still breathing, his deathly pale face told me he wouldn’t make it without immediate medical attention.

The other vanguard was crossing swords with the enemy. This was the same guy who’d plucked my arrow out of the air so easily—a formidable fighter. Yet our foe had even him beat; he cleaved the warrior in two like it was nothing. An almost ridiculous amount of blood gushed out of the guy, obviously no longer with us.

We were up against a knight. It had no shield but gripped a large, warped blade with its left hand alone. The worn sword appeared far too ragged to cut anything, but I’d just seen it slice a man’s sword, armor, and body in two. What this thing did with that weapon was too savage and horrific to call swordsmanship—it was just simple brute force. But that might far exceeded any power a human could achieve. One wrong move and everything you had would be crushed beneath it. It was almost like watching a wild beast wield a blade.

It wore pale silver armor stained sooty black, and a hooded cape made of what looked like threadbare rags covered its head. The cape shrouded its right arm and its face from sight, but—

“It can’t be.”

One look at the anguish on Arvin’s face told me exactly who this knight was. It could only be one man.

What does this mean? What’s going on? Was he in the dungeon all this time? How? And why did he just murder another adventurer?

---

---

Muddled questions and thoughts ran through my mind, even though we were in the middle of an emergency—or, I guess, precisely because of that. But no, all that would have to wait. Swallowing my thirst to find these answers, I ordered, “Lieutette, hold him back. We’re gonna get the injured out of here.”

“On it. I’ll try to take him out while I’m at it, too. I don’t give a damn who this bastard is—he just offed one of my men. Now either I kill him, or he kills me.” Undaunted by the knight before her, she rushed in to attack, her face set with determination. Jarring clangs of metal resounded around the chamber.

“Shuna, back her up!”

“Tch, she better thank me.” He ran after her, diving into the fray.

“Éa, get the beastmaid!”

“Okay!”

I sprinted over to the warrior while my sister went to the beastmaid. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught glimpses of the battle raging between inhuman beast and inhuman strength. Even just stepping too close would put me at risk of getting ripped to pieces by the whirlwinds spawned by their furious dance of blades. I got to the vanguard but found him too heavy to lift due to the weight of his armor. Instead, I slipped my hands under his arms from behind and dragged him out of the way.

Arvin stood frozen, dumbfounded. Please, just don’t get in its way, I silently prayed. Following after Éa, I dragged the man over to the rest of the party. Bel’s hand flew to her mouth at the sight of his gruesome wounds. The beastmaid Éa carried over had a deep cut running down her back. Blood still leaked from the slash, making it impossible to see how far down it went. Neither of them had a drop of ryvius or magic left.

“Zenobia, give them a bit of healing craft, please. Use all the magic you’ve got if you have to.”

“All right.” Would her skills even be enough?

“Arvin! Give us a hand with the first aid!” I shouted out.

“R-right.” He came to at my call. I left him and Zenobia to work out how to help our injured.

“Lala, here.”

“Thank you,” Lana responded, taking the staff Éa offered her. Without so much as stopping to wipe off the blood, she set the enemy in her sights.

“Arvin, keep doing what you’re doing, but I need you to listen to me. How sure are you that thing is Sanperié?” I asked.

“It’s of the same build, but I can’t see its face. But that blade, damaged though it may be, is unquestionably his Treasured Blade Gadded. That means—”

“You’re sure, then?”

“Almost positive.”

People don’t always act according to the truths they can intellectually comprehend. We’re a bunch of dogs, bound with chains called emotions.

“I’ll give you one, and only one, chance,” I told him. “If you can’t bring him back, I need you to be ready for what we’ll have to do.”

That’s why you had to be straight with the people who mattered, confirm their intentions, and push them in the right direction. Only then could you stand and face a challenge together. Spelling things out was all the more important in times like these, when every moment counted.

“……!”

“Arvin, I don’t know why Sanperié got like that, but maybe there’s a way to bring him back to the man you know. But I’m only going to let you cling to that hope just the once. Any more than that and someone will die. Do you hear me? Just one chance.”

The man I knew—

“Aye. One shot. Fear not, I’m no longer a knight of St. Lillideas. I am this party’s shield. And I won’t ever forget it.”

—would never let me down in a situation like this.

“Souya, we somehow got the bleeding to stop, but we need to get them to an elite healer right away,” Zenobia reported while bandaging wounds. Her healing craft had proved way higher tier than I’d imagined.

“Lana, you’re ready, right?”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “It’ll be painless. I’ll incinerate him in an instant.”

“We’re splitting up. Zenobia, Bel, Éa, take these two back up to the first floor with you and let Evetta know what’s going on. Tell the Guildmaster to send people down here. Éa, here,” I said, handing her Isolla.

“Isolla, I need you constantly scouting for foes. Tell Éa as soon as you pick anything up. You know what to do in case anything happens, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Take care of them.”

“Of course. They’re in good hands.”

My little sister got to work without a moment’s hesitation. She made a brother proud.

“Éa, you’re the interim leader. You’ve got this.”

“You know I do. Yaya, be careful out there.”

“Don’t even sweat it.”

Bel lifted the wounded beastmaid onto her shoulders, and Zenobia took the man. We’d removed all his weighty armor, but he was still a pretty solid dude. Fortunately, Zenobia was a surprisingly strapping young lady. She, Bel, and Isolla, with Éa at the helm, broke off from our party.

I turned to face our foe, Lana at my back. Lieutette had held the upper hand at the start, but she’d now been forced into a defensive engagement. On top of that, the enemy knight was single-handedly trouncing our most talented fighter and her backup, Shuna.

“Let’s go,” I commanded. Arvin nodded wordlessly. Lana flashed me a look of confirmation.

Then there came an ear-piercing, metallic screech. Sanperié had destroyed Lieutette’s sword, making her lose her balance entirely. He was mercilessly swinging his unyielding blade down to deliver a brutal blow when—

“Sanperié!”

—Arvin intercepted and deflected it with his shield. This very bulwark had withstood the dragonoise’s fangs, but now our foe’s weapon had gouged a deep rift into it. If Arvin had taken the strike head-on, both he and the shield would be beyond repair.

“Do you recognize me?! It’s me! Arvin!” he screamed, pleading. Entirely devoid of emotion, his former friend continued his onslaught, swinging his sword toward Arvin’s neck, but—

“Aarraaaaaaaah!”

—Shuna parried with all his might, just barely forcing it back. One, two, three deadly blows the boy managed to fend off in total. But in a matter of seconds, he reached his limit. Arvin stepped in to deflect the strikes Shuna couldn’t handle. Next, Lieutette flailed her broken blade at the knight, carving out an opening for Shuna to attack again.

Arvin’s entreaty had done nothing. A small sense of relief burgeoned within me. If we’d seen the faintest trace of humanity left in the thing, Arvin would’ve definitely pulled his punches. But I couldn’t afford any hypothetical thinking now. Arvin blocked and the other two rushed in.

“^___________”

I lurked in the shadows, as though I alone had disappeared among the cacophony of swordplay. My breath I synchronized with the pants of the other three, overlapping and blending with each. Soundlessly, I nocked my ammunition; quietly, I drew the bowstring. I’d run out of Mythlanic arrows. The one in my hand was my best-kept secret: a merfolk harpoon.

Ghett had made just one specially for me as a favor. Standard merfolk harpoons, while sharp and strong, quickly grew brittle once they came into contact with air. They deteriorated so rapidly that you could crush one with your bare hands after only three days. But not this one.

Every once in an incredibly rare blue tide, the merfolk could forage from the bones of a giant fish a material called Deep Ossium Tribute that persisted after months and years of lying on the ocean floor. Sharp, smooth, and brilliant, the material defied every conceivable kind of erosion. According to merfolk oral tradition, anything crafted from Deep Ossium Tribute would retain its shape until the end of days. Its astonishing ductility and durability served to prove that tale was no myth.

Out of all the myriad souls living on land in this realm, only I possessed one of these. It was, among other things, proof of the trust that existed between the merman and me. It should go without saying, but this arrow far surpassed any conventional model in terms of sheer force. I’d essentially decided not to use it because it was so precious, but now I had no other choice than to rely on its might.

“Esteemed Lümidia, residing within my vessel,” I began. “Bestow this arrow with the grace of your hidden name. Imbue my bow with your heroic strength. With your blessing, I shall recreate the masterful archery of Welswein, a house renowned for its daring valor.”

My arms, my shoulders, my whole body drew taut, as if it had fused with the instrument in my hands. I locked eyes on the knight, Arvin’s onetime friend. For the moment, I erased his story from my mind. This was an enemy, one three people could just barely keep up with, and only temporarily at that—a truly formidable opponent. In the context of this battle that had caught us so flat-footed, you could say he surpassed even the dragonoise. And yet, that was all there was to it. It still had a life we could cut short.

My sudden swell of murderous intent caught Sanperié’s attention. In that split second, three blades came crashing down on him, and for the first time, he went down on one knee in defense. I unleashed my arrow.

My bowstring slapped against the air in an explosive strum. The arrow itself shot out with as much explosive physical force as a cannonball. Sanperié saw it coming but could not lift his sword to block with the three adventurers bearing down on him. The merfolk harpoon drove into his thigh, pinning him to the stone floor. Bone shattered. We couldn’t have asked for a better way to slow him down.

And yet our enemy neither screamed nor so much as grunted. I didn’t have time to wonder why.

“Everyone, get back!” I cried. “Lana!”

The three dispersed. Lana raised her staff; I caught a glimpse of a truly horrifying sight beneath the knight’s upturned hood.

That instant, the whole world turned white, and gravity loosened its hold on me. For two or three seconds, I lost all consciousness.

Through my blurred vision, I could just make out the dungeon ceiling. I tried to get up, but I could hardly feel my arms and legs. An intense ringing assaulted my ears.

“^_________ya…. So……ya.”

I thought I heard someone calling to me from far away. My mind felt heavy. If I let go, I knew I would fall asleep, as if sinking into a muddy slumber. Maybe I should just take the easy—

“Souya!” Arvin hollered, snapping me back to my senses.

“Ugh!” I groaned.

A violent headache and wave of nausea hit me. My entire body ached. Leaning on my comrade’s shoulder, I somehow found my way to my feet. I looked around to take stock. Shuna and Lieutette had also toppled over, but they seemed fine. I couldn’t make out any bad wounds on them. Sanperié’s bellow had blown us away.

So this was where that one we heard far off came from, huh?

Fortunately, nobody but me had sustained any serious injuries. Sanperié hadn’t moved, either, still nailed to the ground. We had to regroup through the power of magic.

“Darling, my magic and ryvius are—” Desperation overtook Lana’s voice and expression. Arvin checked his own vial along with mine; both our ryviuses, magic included, were bone dry. I could only guess the others faced the same situation.

I’d seen it with my own eyes, but I hadn’t put the pieces together. Both the wounded vanguard warriors had had zero magic when we found them. I should’ve realized how unnatural that was.

“Shit!” You idiot! I wanted to yell at myself, but that would have to wait. This monster came first.

“You know what to do, don’t you?” Lieutette asked, a fierce, resolved glint in her eyes. Sanperié hammered his sword on the arrow, trying his best to destroy it. Sorry, pal. That harpoon’s not gonna go snap that easy. “We kill him here.”

“Yeah.” You don’t have to tell me.

I couldn’t let this calamity go and call myself an adventurer. He’d easily bested masterful adepts. The initiates who usually delved among these shallow floors wouldn’t last a second. Plus, he had the power to deplete our ryviuses and magic. If they weren’t careful, even elite adventurers could meet their demise. He was an adventurer’s worst nightmare, undoubtedly worthy of a new Dark Crowned title.

He’d been hiding down here—concealed. It didn’t take any real imagination to guess who had done it, either. My money was on Lieutette’s client, who was undoubtedly His Heroicness. The biggest problem, though, was that we had no idea how the monster tracked his victims. If he could follow a blood trail, he would unleash tragedy on a colossal scale. We had to slay him here. If that didn’t work, we could at least slow him down.

“Isolla.”

“Yes, what can I do for you?”

I gave her an order—perhaps my final command ever. “Spread all the information you have on this thing to as wide an audience as possible. If anything happens to me, proceed as planned.”

“Copy that. Mr. Souya, please do not die.” After the briefest of pauses, the line cut out.

“Shuna.”

“What? I know my ryvius is empty, but I can still—”

“Arvin, Lieutette, and I are staying here. I need you to meet up with the others as quickly as possib—”

“Don’t even joke like that!” He seized me by the collar.

“Listen to me closely,” I asserted calmly. “There’s no time.”

“Then why don’t we all just run together?!” Shuna was on the verge of tears.

“That’s even worse. Someone’s got to stop him here, or he’ll go on to hurt even more people.” I pleaded from the bottom of my heart that he would understand. He must have known what would happen to a certain mage drained of her magic if I died. “Please, get Lana out of here safely.”

“Rgh! ……F-fine,” he relented, accepting the situation for what it was. Lieutette was right: A vanguard was meant to die before those behind them. That was our job.

Now all that remained was—

“Darling, please don’t lose.”

“Like hell I will.”

My wife raised not a single complaint. Unworthy as I was, she trusted me with every fiber of her being. As she left—

“Sir Arvin.”

—she called out his name. “I leave my husband in your capable hands.”

“I assure you he’ll be safe with me,” he promised.

The two left, walking at a quick clip. Then we heard the blunt crunching of bones and the ripping of thick cloth. Determining that he couldn’t destroy the arrow, Sanperié had started pulverizing his own leg.

“You coulda ran off, too, you know,” Lieutette offered in jest.

“I didn’t want Arvin to get lonely,” I joked back, gaining a hollow sort of cheer. I couldn’t move my left shoulder; a dull pain seeped through my entire body. It was very likely broken.

“So, leader, what’s your plan?” Lieutette laughed darkly.

“Try not to die.”

“That ain’t nothin’ but a motto to live by, my guy.” She had a point.

“Don’t get greedy, but try to kill him,” I rephrased. “Go for his legs with all you’ve got. But remember, we can’t stop attacking. Under no circumstances do we let him go on the offensive. Our ryviuses are bone-dry—one hit and we’re done for.”

“Ehhh, I give that an eight.”

Sanperié tore off his leg. Blood, along with a new limb, sprouted from the wound. Gory, bare, and covered in beastly fur, it was far from human. Impossible. Sanperié obscured the leg behind his cape, as if trying to hide a shameful scar.

“Let’s do this!”

Lieutette and Arvin charged in. Off-balance with a foot in the air, Sanperié brushed them both off easily.

Think. We’re just gonna wear ourselves down like this. They won’t last much longer. One solid counterattack will do us all in.

I replayed my memories like a video in my mind. The first thing that popped up was a vivid, heinous image. In the brief instance before Sanperié’s roar had blasted us away, I’d caught a glimpse of his face. The left half was that of a long-faced young man, while half of a repulsive, beastly mug made up the right. I couldn’t have told you what species of beast, though. All I could say for sure was that it looked absolutely revolting, like someone had just haphazardly patched together bits and pieces from several different creatures. The bedraggled remains of something clearly human only made it all the more repugnant.

Is that what his hidden right arm looks like, too?

“It can’t be.”

A thought came to me, something much too simple to call a plan. If this went the wrong way, it would be like rattling a hornet’s nest, but I had to try.

I dumped all my arrows out and lay down next to them. Holding my bow with my feet, I used my one functioning hand and my upper-body strength to pull the string back, then clenched it between my teeth for a second while I nocked three shots.

Can I even aim like this? Will it get him? No, stop second-guessing. Hit him.

“Both of you, split!” I called out the same instant I let the arrows fly. The others leaped to the right and left to dodge them.

Out of the three arrows, one hit its mark. The two that missed served as perfect feints. Sanperié’s hood was rent to pieces, exposing the abomination below.

“AAAAGGGHH!” he wailed. Desperately, he pulled the torn pieces together and hid his visage. While he could no longer speak or recognize his closest friend, he still retained his knightly sense of shame. Pathetically, he attempted in an almost human manner to cover up the horror he had become. If my hunch was correct, then did that mean this drive to wield a blade and kill like a man was all that remained of his humanity?

“Heh!”

Lieutette didn’t let this chance go to waste. From high above she struck, lopping off Sanperié’s left hand at the wrist and shaving a layer from the crown of his head. Once more he let out that ghastly bellow, and the woman went flying. The Treasured Blade Gadded, with Sanperié’s hand still attached to it, drove straight into the ground at my side.

By a strange twist of fate, Lieutette’s sword had scraped off the monstrous side of Sanperié’s countenance. As if finally free of a skin that held some demonic power over him, he saw the man before him.

“Aavin?” Tears streamed down the human half of his face. I couldn’t see from where I stood, but I think similar ones cascaded down Arvin’s cheeks, too.

But if mere tears could cause his blade to waver, he would be a knight worth no more than that liquid. At the very least, he could give his friend a painless death. As if channeling his grandfather, Arvin raised his sword with the compassionate pride of one charged to take the lives of men—and relieved Sanperié of his head. Then came a brief, quiet moment to catch our breaths.

It’s over.

^_________Or so I’d thought. The headless knight’s body began to stir. At that same time—

“Ugh, ah!”

—a strange change came over my body. Pain rushed through my veins; my left shoulder screamed out in agony. Skin burst open all across my body, spewing blood everywhere, before the damaged tissues grew back in a new, foreign composition. My eyes landed on my ryvius. Liquid burning a brighter red than fresh blood filled it to the brim, bubbling and churning like magma.

I felt hot enough to boil. As if it had a mind of its own, my left hand closed around my bow and nocked the Treasured Blade Gadded. Preternatural strength drew the bowstring, straining the rigid bow—and released the blade.

It flew out with terrifying force, driving straight through its former master and nailing him against the wall. The sword pierced his stomach; the overwhelming force that powered it had thrown it off my mark.

I couldn’t control my body. It burned, all the blood raging within. Then I heard a horrendous, beastly cry as another monstrosity came forth into the world. Splattering blood every which way, a new head emerged from Sanperié’s neck. The man had been suppressing this, the awakening of the “true beast.”

“His heart, destroy his heart!” I screamed.

Lieutette tried to get up but collapsed, completely spent.

“Arvin!” I cried.

My friend abandoned his shield. Clutching his sword in both hands, he thrust it into the beast’s chest. Too shallow—the blade hadn’t reached the monster’s heart. Flailing his freshly sprouted arms and legs about, the beast tore at Arvin, his razor-sharp claws lacerating my comrade’s armor, skin, and muscles. Arvin pushed through it all and leveraged his entire body weight to drive his weapon in deeper.

“GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The creature let out an ear-splitting roar. I tossed my bow to the side and ran to Arvin. Placing my hand over his on the hilt of his sword, I pushed with the unnatural strength surging within me. A deluge of blood gushed out of the beast; the warm, sticky fluid covered me head to toe. My skin crawled as I felt it drip down my back.

It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit. Push. Kill him!

I felt thick, rubbery muscles struggling against my hands. Sharp nails closed in on my face, but Arvin caught them barehanded. His blood mixed in with the monster’s. Choked by the smell, I took a deep breath, held it, then gave one final push.

“AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” he and I roared as one. The monster unleashed an even louder wail, which then trailed off until we could hear it no more. That had been its dying scream. But we couldn’t let our guard down just yet. Neither of us took his hands off the sword, too afraid to let up lest the thing’s heart start beating once again.

“Hell of a job, you two,” a very unsteady Lieutette congratulated us as she slapped me on the back. My fingers were frozen in place. Both Arvin and I looked like shit. Our first order of business after getting back—a bath.

“W-well? Do you still insist our leader doesn’t have what it takes?” he challenged her.

“My bad,” she apologized. A tight smile on his face, Arvin bent over and vomited. I pried my stiff fingers off the sword’s hilt and rubbed his back. I checked my ryvius. It had only minuscule levels of red and blue, as if what I’d seen had been nothing but a hallucination.

What was that? Lycan power? So then what was it that possessed Sanperié? Actually, it’s no use, I don’t have enough info. It’s too dangerous to decide anything based on the information available.

“……rry. Forgive me. I’m sorry,” Arvin choked, pounding his fists against the dungeon floor. I was speechless.

“Why?” asked Lieutette. “You knew this guy?”

“Later.”

But she ignored me and fell deep into thought. “This armor, it’s what the knights of St. Lillideas use. What is he, a beast? Don’t tell me it’s a curse? Her curse? No, it can’t be.” Her face turned sheet white.

“—Souya. Come in, Squad Member Souya. Requesting status report. An error has interrupted our data linkage. Requesting status report.”

“Isolla, we did it—we beat him. Arvin and I are hurting all over, but we’re alive.”

“Error, registered user not recognized. An adventurer by the name of Souya should be in the vicinity. Please return this device to him. I have urgent business with him.”

“Isolla? What are you talking about? I’m Souya.” What the hell?

“Input voice pattern a ninety-eight percent match with registered user data; retinal image, fifty percent. Given we are outside the limits of the Machina system’s jurisdiction, I, the Isolla Program, will conduct an independent test. Question: What is the title of the person who dispatched you to the Other Dimension and interviewed you?”

“President of the Firm.” Lieutette eyed me suspiciously for muttering to myself.

“Question: What is the name of the first dish you cooked upon arriving in this dimension?”

“Miso soup.”

“Name the individual with whom you shared this miso soup.”

“Ghettbad of Maudubaffle, Disciple of Ghrisnas.”

“Name the woman with whom you have entered into a counterfeit marriage, including her race.”

“Laualliuna Raua Heuress, an elf.”

“Final question: Please provide the names of both your younger sisters.”

“One is Éa Raua Heuress. The other is…… Huh?”

I had a sister. I’d left her in the other dimension. She’d been placed in classes for gifted children ever since she was little, was a crazy good student, and had hero-level athletic abilities. She was thousands of times a better person than I was, and maybe because of that, she never went easy on useless louts like me. We’d grown apart for one reason or another, but then reunited five years ago. She’d been pursuing a demanding career as an athlete but had lost one of her legs in an accident. I’d come here to earn the money to treat that injury.

Her name.

Her name was…

She was named after one of the Japanese navy’s torpedo boat destroyers, which was transferred to Taiwan after the war and eventually destroyed in a storm.

This can’t be real. What’s going on? Her name is the only thing I can’t remember. And not like it’s slipped my mind. That one piece of information has been erased from my memory.

“It’s Yukikaze. Do you remember now?”

“Y-yeah.” Suddenly, it came rushing back. How could I forget something so fundamental?

“After close inspection, I have decided to temporarily recognize you as Squad Member Souya. However, as an emergency measure, I am restricting your user privileges by two levels. Squad Member Souya, provide a status update.”

“R-right.” I couldn’t hide how shaken I was. What was that? What the hell was that?!

“You don’t look so hot,” Lieutette very helpfully noted.

“Your vitals are unstable. Squad Member Souya, you need to calm down…… Transferring you to Mistress Lana.”

“Darling! Are you all right?! Are you hurt?! You’re not dead, are you?! I knew it, I’m going back this instant!” Distraught, Lana had made a complete about-face since we parted. Instantly, I got hold of myself. Confronted with her panicked voice, I had no other choice.

“I’m okay. I’m alive. Don’t come back, you’ll only make it harder. Actually, maybe it’s okay now? No, actually—”

“Ah—wait! Éa?!”

“Yaya, you okay?!”

“Sou, are you all right?!”

“Uh, I don’t really have anything to add. Actually, how is Arvin doing?”

Éa, Bel, and Zenobia’s voices came through the receiver in a muddled mess.

“Isolla here. I’ve regained control of the transmitter. Have you regained your composure?”

“Yeah, more or less.”

“Update me on your status.”

“We defeated the enemy. This area is clear for the moment. Arvin’s a little injured.”

“Squad Member Souya, are you wounded?” Why was she so worried about me all of a sudden?

“Physically, I think I’m okay. But I’m gonna ask you to do a neuro check on me when I get back. I may have some brain damage.”

“Is your vision intact?”

“Yeah, no problems there. I can see just fine.”

“Copy that. I’ll discuss the medical examination with Machina. We encountered Lord Medîm while ascending floors and advised him of your whereabouts. He should rendezvous with you shortly.”

“Got it. Is everything okay over there?”

“Yes. Evidently, the ryvius and magic depletion effects last only for a limited time. As soon as we ascended one floor, all members regained their previous levels of both. The others plan to return as soon as they deliver the wounded to the Guild.”

“Copy. Does it look like they’ll make it through?”

“Unquestionably. The beastmaid can already walk on her own. Squad Member Souya, I have a proposal. Going forward, please refrain from this manner of expedition. For you to deny a battle for pride only to then embark on one of your own is absolutely nonsensical.”

“I mean, this is nothing like that in-fighting.”

“I fail to see the difference! ^_______Isolla out.” She was pissed. I felt guilty.

“Quit it with the mumbling to yourself—it’s creepy. Did you hit your head or something?” asked Lieutette.

“Oh, shut up. I was talking to the rest of my party. Your friends are gonna make it.”

“Huh, pretty handy trick. Well, I guess I owe you a thank-you.” She knelt before her fallen friend and began to pray. I took my poncho off and wrapped it around Sanperié’s head. He looked peaceful.

“Souya, give me a moment to pray a simplified final rite for him,” Arvin requested. He picked up Sanperié’s head and prayed as he cradled it in his arms. “We, the blood brothers of the Eight Popes, now bid farewell to one of our brethren lost in battle. May you cleanse his blood upon the throne of eternity and grant him peaceful repose. We pray his soul may rest in tranquility. O holy Lillideas, the beasts are no more. Only within humans does true blood flow.”

I couldn’t help but hear a sinister note in those last few words. Arvin cut off a lock of his deceased friend’s hair, then placed Sanperié’s head next to his body by the wall.

“Souya, do you have oil and flint?”

“Yeah, why?” Was he going to burn him? We still had so much to analyze from his remains. “Arvin, do you……know what happened to him?”

This wasn’t the time to ask. But I couldn’t ignore the question eating at me. Had the dungeon done this? Or maybe—

“I don’t know much, but I do have a theory. What if St. Lillideas gained her divinity not for founding a country, but for planting this curse within all of us who—?” He started to choke.

“Hey, what’s—?” I touched his shoulder. Though we were both already covered in blood, a new coat stuck to my hand. “Arvin!”

I caught him as he collapsed and gently lay him on the floor. Fresh blood welled from the gashes in his armor. I unhooked the clasps and removed it from his body, then poured some water from my bottle around the gash to rinse it off. A nasty gouge ran through his abdomen, giving me a clear view of the ruptured organs within.

“Souya, listen to what I’m about to—” Fluids filled his mouth and stained his lips. I checked his ryvius again, but it was still clear, completely dry.

“Don’t speak,” I urged him. “It’s bad, but nothing you can’t bounce back from.”

“Listen, please. I told you, right? There’s nothing…this party can’t do.”

“Yeah, you sure did. You were exactly right.”

“The truth is, I… My sister—” His breathing grew shallow.

“Lieutette.” I nocked my arrow. “Drop your sword or I’ll add a hole to your forehead.”

“Look, man, he’s a knight of St. Lillideas, too, right? Don’t you get what that means after all this?”

“You’re jumping to conclusions. Arvin’s an ex-knight.”

“Even our lifeless souls belong to the gods we serve.”

“I don’t have time to play around with you!” I had aimed my bow at her when—

“Huh?”

^_________a sword hurtled through the air, cleaving through her throat and cutting her life short.

“A-Arvin?” My mind a chaotic mess, I turned to look at him. His wound had sealed shut—but his ryvius remained empty. “What are you—”

I knew what was happening, what I’d have to do next.

Do it, quick. It’s coming—that horrible nightmare.

And yet we humans are nothing but mutts for our emotions to manipulate. If my heart could harden enough to murder this man, I wouldn’t be human. I wouldn’t be me.

Slowly, very slowly, his hands reached out and tightened around my neck.

“Hurk!” My flesh crumpled under his grip. Instantly, the world became a blur, stained reddish black. My feeble attempts at resistance amounted to those of a child. Sorry—, I whispered mentally, calling each by name.

Lana, Éa, Ghett, Shuna, Bel, Zenobia, Evetta, Machina, Isolla, Lady Glavius. And Lady Mythlanica…… Yukikaze. This is as far as my adventure goes.

A dull thud reverberated through my bones.

I snapped back to reality. “Gh, ah! Koff!”

Choking, I gasped for air. What the—?

“Ah.” At first, I thought it was a joke. A sword had sprouted from Arvin’s body, right through his heart. Mercilessly stabbed from behind. “Sto—”

The blade was pulled out. With no concern for my pathetic begging, Pops’s sword came down on Arvin’s neck and—

Released from the fatal stranglehold, I crumpled to the ground, completely spent. I couldn’t untangle my emotions. So I opted to feel nothing. I closed my eyes.

I’m done. Just let me rest in peace.

Relinquishing my hold on reality, I plunged down, down into a darkness without end that enveloped me in tranquility. I let my consciousness melt into the void. Into the dark. Everything I knew, down in the dark. Except something had beaten me to the bottom. It growled softly, welcoming me.

---

---

[54TH DAY]

I had a dream.

I’d dropped into another dimension, toiled through a whole host of hardships, consecrated a covenant with a goddess, had my vital firearms stolen, delved into a dungeon, made friends, picked a fight with a royal, caused an uproar and married an elf to quell it, gaining a younger sister in the process, brought a party together, and set off to explore the dungeon with them.

Our relationships, which crumbled over the pettiest trifles, we mended once more with the basest of idiocies; we shared our dreams and our meals, played together, drank together, talked and sang together, fought and made up, then defeated powerful enemies, overcame trying obstacles, and earned glory and honor. And so it continued, the most beautiful dream an adventurer delving in the dungeon could hope for.

But now, that part would always remain a dream. One that could never come true.

“Souya, you have two paths before you,” I heard a voice say as I blinked awake on a cold bed. The stone ceiling made me think I was in the dungeon, but no—this was a prison cell.

Dim, reddish light streaked into the cell, which, from the echoes of that voice, must have been rather large. And based on the fact that the man facing me on the other side of the bars was King Remlia, I gathered this must be a prison within the royal palace.

My body felt clean and refreshed. Someone must have bathed me while I’d been out. My clothes had been laundered, too. Nevertheless, the memories of fresh blood still clung to me.

“Follow the first, and you forget. You simply welcome a new member to your party and continue exploring the dungeon. There was never any beast. A nameless monster killed your friend. Nothing more, nothing less.” Nothing more?

Knowing full well it could only work against me, I glared at the king.

“Choose the other, and you discover the truth behind your companion’s demise. This road, depending on how it bends, may turn this country against you. Not only you, in fact; it could put your entire party in danger—your wife and sister included, of course. Tread it if you must, but only if you can accept those consequences.”

“Before I decide anything, may I ask you two or three questions?” I couldn’t ignore them and make my decision in good conscience. My head hadn’t yet cleared away all the cobwebs of sleep, but the anger and adrenaline surging within me boosted my temperature and sent my thought process racing.

“You may.”

“Why are you giving me this option?” He could have just ordered me by royal decree. In the end, I wasn’t anything but a nobody adventurer. Why wasn’t he pushing his authority on me? Only a terrible ruler would ever concede to a single lowly civilian.

“Intuition. Souya, sooner or later, you will arrive at the truth. Of this, I have no doubt. And it will light a fire within you. When that happens, I do not wish for you to hold me, or the people around me, in suspicion. Those who trust in no one can, in their folly, awaken a terrible doom. As sovereign, I like to keep all potential sources of fire in my sights.”

Made sense. It was a logical argument. He’d so plainly sugarcoated it, though, that I could see right through the veneer. Sticking my nose in this “truth” or whatever posed a risk, but it also benefited him. That was why he was allowing me to choose my fate of my own free will.

I take back what I said. This guy knows what he’s doing. I’m sure he’s a spectacular ruler. Under no circumstances should I call him my ally, though.

A benefit to the king, huh? My only guess was that it had something to do with shaking up the Church of St. Lillideas and Ellusion, ally to the Kingdom of Remlia. Maybe I was a political bargaining chip.

“Where are my party members?”

“Under Lady Gladwein’s protection. They are all lodging at her residence.”

I didn’t know who’d made that call, but it had been the right one. For all intents and purposes, that place lay outside the bounds of Remlia’s rule. Not even the king would want to antagonize that military faction without good cause.

“What was that thing? Why did my friend also turn that way?”

“Souya, you’re treading dangerously close to the heart of the matter,” he warned.

“I understand that. Before I make any decisions, I need to know what happened to him. Also, I’m fully capable of keeping my mouth shut, even if I do hear the truth you mention.”

I wasn’t lying. Whatever this secret was, if it was worthy of Arvin’s death, I wouldn’t tell a soul. Not that I thought such a thing existed anywhere in this world.

“Tell him, Remlia.” Pops’s voice startled me. My full set of equipment dangled from his hands. I couldn’t see myself looking him straight in the eyes for quite some time. My urge to butcher him where he stood might slip out.

“But Medîm—”

“I’m no stranger to having people hate me, but this time is different,” Pops insisted. “I never thought those bastards would go and do something so asinine. No one could fathom they’d so quickly betray their fellow man, their sworn brother, simply to gain advantage in a struggle for power. As if that weren’t enough, the imbeciles then left that ungodly mess for some other poor souls to clean up. We have no business dealing with that level of stupidity. We need to do something, and soon, before it’s too late.”

“Medîm, not another word,” the king checked him. Thank you very much. Now I know exactly whom to hate. “I shall tell him myself. I cannot have this young man’s future hang on your loose lips. Listen well, Souya, for I will explain a portion of the truth you seek. Steel yourself. In learning this, you may as well be drinking from our poisoned waters.”

“I understand.” Is that poison, or whatever illness it causes, worse than the agony of my friend’s death? Worse than seeing his head fly before my eyes? Ha-ha-ha—oh, how you jest.

“What should I tell you first? Where should I begin?” he pondered aloud. Pops whispered, “From the beginning.”

“……Very well. Souya, do you know the tale of the beastfolk and the silver coins?” he asked, taking out one such coin engraved with a beast’s face. Only now did I finally understand the true identity of that figure.

“Yes. I heard it led to the birth of sinispectral silver, and that humanity vanquished the beastfolk in war.”

“That explanation does not suffice.”

“Suffice? How so?” What a strange thing for him to say.

“If I remember correctly, one of your party employs the beastfolk style of swordsmanship. Try to recall the position from which he launches his body to strike in that vein.” He meant Shuna. His position?

“He lunges at his enemy like a beast crawling on the ground, I think.” His singular style of swordplay always started from a crouch. He’d make the enemy believe he was aiming for their legs, then stab a vital spot. There was probably more to it, but I hadn’t garnered any more insight than that.

“Precisely. I’ve seen all manner of beastfolk wield a blade in my years, and every last one begins their strike from a position low to the ground. The reason for this is exceedingly simple: The beastfolk who developed this style of swordsmanship used it to battle enemies far shorter than they were.”

“Huh?” What an outlandish idea. Some of the beastfolk men nowadays were definitely on the larger side, but Tutu, for example, was smaller than I.

“Let’s call them ‘ancient beastfolk.’ Humans couldn’t hope to contend with their size or strength. The vast majority of the legends littered around the world concerning giants draw from these ancient beings.”

In other words, they crouched with their swords low to the ground so that they would reach humans’ most vulnerable parts upon thrusting. Which meant they’d have to be twice our size at the very least, maybe four or five meters tall. The thought of something that large reminded me of the giant skeleton.

“The fact that the ancient beastfolk bent their minds to develop this type of swordsmanship suggests that the ancient humans of their time had some ability to contend with them. Or perhaps it demonstrates they lived by morals which encouraged them to expose their own vulnerabilities to their enemies. No, in truth, I suppose they merely wanted a means to toy with their prey.”

How anyone had managed to subdue a race that not only towered above them but also had the intelligence to craft its own fighting style was beyond me.

“I see you’ve hit on the essence of the matter. Weapons forged from spiritual silver with the power to burn beastfolk flesh would have amounted to naught in the hands of weak humans. A blade that does not reach its mark serves no purpose. An arrow that pierces nothing cannot kill. Humans, such as they were, could not have vanquished the sentient beastfolk.”

Naturally, the story Ghett had told me came to mind. I recalled the name Zenobia had forbade me from ever repeating. The king continued his tale.

“One portion of the legend of the beastfolk and the silver coins passed down today has been intentionally omitted—a part in which ‘the king drained a cup of tainted blood and became a beast.’ Now that you’ve laid eyes on that bloodline, on those creatures, you must understand the horrific nature of the power they possess. They easily surpass beastfolk in physical strength alone. And while they clearly lose all sense or reason, they fight with masterful martial skill. Their roars sunder the covenants they’ve consecrated with their gods, and ultimately, they devolve into pure demons who kill and slaughter ceaselessly until their heads and hearts are no more. These things, impervious to silver, the beast-hunting beasts who became human-hunting monsters, are the true denouement of this tale. I cannot judge their creators foolish. Without them, we would have been enslaved to the beastfolk, and the world as we know it would not have come to be.”

A very on-brand interpretation for a king of men. A nasty sweat ran down my neck as I furiously racked my brain.

“King Remlia, by that bloodline, do you mean—”

“The bloodline of the beast-hunting princes flows freely through the knights of St. Lillideas. However, only an exceedingly minuscule minority of their ranks is privy to this information. These are the princes’ direct descendants, whom we refer to as heroes.”

You’ve gotta be frickin’ kidding me. I don’t know exactly how big the knight army is, but they’ve got to number at least several tens of thousands strong. Is he saying there are that many of these beasts out there?

“Generation upon generation of Ellusionese have mounted countless attempts to rid their people of this curse, including the woman called Lillideas before she gained her divinity. Her tenacious pursuits and research evolved into an almost obsessive protection that sealed away the curse—or so she thought. However, the miracle she invoked held no power over the dead. In essence, it did no more than prolong the lease her followers had on their lives as humans. It cured absolutely nothing. In fact, some of the knightly order leveraged this power to gain authority and—” The king stopped short, indicating he would say no more of his own accord. “This is no simple decision. Consider it for some time before—”

“I choose to know.” I gave him my answer. In the end, nothing he’d said had changed my mind at all. Only death on an equal scale could measure up to that of my friend.

“Do you think it’s that simple? You and your loved ones will—”

“I understand. I’ll die before I let the people I care for get mixed up in this. That way, if anyone does expire as a result, it will only be me. I won’t bring any trouble to your doors, either. I’ll calculate any actions I take to ensure they serve both our interests and cost you nothing. The most I’ll ever ask you for is to corroborate my stories.”

Both King Remlia and Pops stared at me, somewhat dumbfounded. I kept going.

“I have another question. Am I correct in surmising that Werner Carbezzo conspired against Arvin Forths Gassim’s friend Sanperié?”

Pops answered that one for me. “That knight managed to get his hands on evidence to prove that—literally clutching it so tightly that it ate off the skin of his right palm. It was a heraldic badge of the sort that knights of St. Lillideas carry. Each is one of a kind, emblazoned with the individual’s name. The emblem in Sanperié’s hand belonged to Werner. My guess is he swiped it when he realized he’d been played.”

That kind of evidence could easily get trumped up, but I guess it could work.

“Do you know what might have led Werner to double-cross him?”

“Sanperié was the legitimate heir to the Gaudreau family, a house with deep ties to the Third Pope,” he explained. “Doing away with him could only benefit Werner, the deputy hero to the Second Pope. However, Sanperié could have very well attacked Werner first.”

A power struggle, huh? Those break out in every kind of society, but this one was almost too asinine to comprehend. It was like a bunch of idiots holding bombs deciding to start a fireball fight. Ellusion’s corrupt and rotten roots ran much deeper than I’d imagined. It was on its way out.

“I’d like to claim any items that belonged to Arvin and Sanperié, even if only temporarily. Could you let me out of this cell? There’s somewhere I need to go imme—”

“Halt, Souya,” the king stopped me. “What are you planning to do?”

“Negotiate. Believe it or not, I do have a covenant with the Goddess of Commerce.” If this failed, I’d do things my way.

---

The night grew late. If you want to accomplish something big, you need to prepare for anything that could happen several steps into the future. I’d had the trade group arrange a ship for me, had Machina get to crafting, and had Lieutette’s party members give me their word. Next, I’d asked the constable I knew to get a bunch of different kinds of paperwork ready for me, including petition forms, then sealed them with King Remlia’s insignia.

Carrying all my evidence with me, I now headed over to where I’d find the two knights. With me came the Father of Adventurers, who, regardless of the impossible position he’d been put in, had ended Arvin’s life. If he hadn’t showed up, I would’ve almost definitely died back there. I could comprehend that on an intellectual level, but I was having an impossibly hard time keeping my feelings in check.

“At the end of the day, we’re just a pack of guard dogs,” Pops admitted, breaking the silence. “Ones there to make sure the beasts St. Lillideas left us can’t escape their cages.”

“‘Left us’?” He wasn’t wrong, but what a sardonic way to put it.

“Accounts of St. Lillideas say she spent her whole life fighting the disease of the beast. She traveled all over the Great Land to find a treatment, and when she realized the knowledge available aboveground would not suffice, she delved into the dungeon in search of ancient wisdom. She consecrated a covenant with the highest of gods and amassed most precious gems of information. One of the deities in Windovnickel, the God of Adventurers, goes by the name of Duin the Silent. Rasta looked into this and concluded that Lillideas is undoubtedly the deity’s true identity.”

So the woman worshiped as St. Lillideas was one of the gods of adventurers? There must have been some explanation for that, along with why she hid her name.

“Thanks to her painstaking work and perseverance, she obtained divinity in the final moments of her life. But all her labor managed to accomplish was sealing off the beastly curse momentarily. Failing to understand this, the knights exalted her as St. Lillideas and grew and grew in number. In the end, the woman who so zealously spent her whole life trying to eradicate this disease wound up spreading it by her own hand. If that ain’t ironic, I don’t know what is.”

“The works of the gods in this realm always come drenched in irony,” or so someone who battled another kind of disease had once told me. The beast-hunting princes should have quietly perished just like that man’s brethren. But these heroes didn’t know when to give up. How incredibly lame—and contemptible.

“Pops,” I started. He’d known exactly what he was doing when he’d felled Arvin. You didn’t pick up such practiced movements after only one or two times around the block. “How many people turned beasts have you killed?”

“Hmm?” He stopped in his tracks. “Let me think…… Things used to be much worse, you see. Back when I was a brat, when they let Marquis Deimast hold the reins here, ignorant knights who couldn’t even read a map would go on idiotic, reckless expeditions, so we would have a new beast almost every day. ’S long as we caught them in the dungeon, though, we could exterminate ’em like monsters, no matter who they were. Deimast himself also took to conducting blasphemous experiments on the beasts. The sort of mess you witnessed happened every day. It was an unruly time. No one but the most horrifying adventurers came ’round here, either. Ahh, forgive me. I’ve rambled on too long—blame it on age. Well, maybe one or two hundred. I don’t remember exactly.”

A chill slithered down my spine.

“Don’t take me wrong. I just got lucky breaks and took them. None of that’s real skill. Most everybody gets disappointed when they hear this, but let me tell you, the furthest down I’ve ever gone in the dungeon—the twentieth floor.”

“Huh?” As a general rule of thumb, adventurers who reached the twentieth floor were called novices, and anyone yet to delve that deep was called an initiate. I never would have expected the “Father of Adventurers” to be classified that way.

“I used to catch the more reckless adventurers and bring ’em back up aboveground or train the newcomers whenever I had a free moment. Eventually, some of those folks just happened to become heroes or get famous. They only started calling me the Father of Adventurers to lift me up so they could hide their own shame. I ain’t an especially good person or adventurer. I’m just a cheap mercenary—always have been, always will be. Nothin’ good’ll come from depending on me.”

“Fine, then I’ll only count on you to ward off arrows.”

“Sounds about right.”

Bearing that in mind, I knew this man had to be stronger than I. And even if by some crazy chance he got killed, I wouldn’t shed a single tear.

“There’s somethin’ I’d like to ask you,” he added.

“What might that be?”

Pops stopped. He studied me, his cold, stony expression betraying not the slightest hint of emotion. “When you explained what happened to Lieutette’s party, did you tell them any lies?”

“No.” I’d told her party an “unidentifiable enemy” had attacked them and killed her. It wasn’t wrong. I had no choice but to keep Sanperié’s name secret from them, but the truth remained that he was responsible for her death.

“Well, I’ll leave it at that.” He didn’t trust me. The fact that he didn’t dig any deeper despite that showed how mature he was. “We’re here.”

Pops jutted his jaw out toward the shop. The small, somewhat dingy place wasn’t the best fit for a great hero, but he’d stirred up so much trouble that he’d been banned from pretty much every big bar. We went in.

I found my two targets sitting in a corner. They looked disgusting, gobbling their way through nasty-looking meals and washing it down with cheap booze.

“Heyyy, if it isn’t Lord Werner the Beast Hunter and, of course, his trusty knight attendant Sir Luxgarre. Long time no see! Do you remember me? I was one of Arvin Forths Gassim’s party members.”

You should always start your negotiations with a smile. I greeted them so jovially that it was creepy. Their eyes bugged out when they took me and my attitude in. I’d aimed for a smile, but I guess it must’ve come off like a crazed sneer.

“I’ve come to propose a little bit of business today.”

After recomposing himself, Luxgarre replied, “We’ve heard about Arvin. What terrible luck.”

“Terrible luck? Who might you have heard that from?” Arvin’s death hadn’t been made public yet. Only King Remlia, Pops, the Guildmaster, the marquis, and I knew. The only one with any connection to these bastards was the marquis—he must’ve leaked it. And easy as that, I identified a leaky valve.

“Let’s not play these little interrogative games.” Werner brushed off my question and put his feet up on the table. Their food and drinks flew off at the impact and splattered all over the floor.

I’m gonna kill you, shithead, or so I wanted to say, but I swallowed the urge. My pride didn’t take priority here.

“You can’t have come for mere amusement with the esteemed Father of Adventurers at your side.”

Werner laughed. I chuckled. We both guffawed, each trying to intimidate the other. You don’t want me prying because you can’t handle it, can you?

“No, I came on business, Werner Carbezzo.”

“So? What do you have for sale? Could it be that elf in your band with the bulging rack? I’d gladly make an exception and grant that number my heroic graces.”

I wouldn’t take that bait. Without a word, I stabbed the heraldic badge straight down into the table. Shaped like a phi, the St. Lillideas emblem had Werner’s name engraved in small letters along the edge. Sparks erupted before my eyes; flecks of metal landed on my cheeks. I could only see the result of some invisible clash.

Werner had unsheathed and swung his sword, and Pops had parried it with his own. I hadn’t clocked any of it—not the moment the knight had drawn his blade nor its imminent descent toward my face. He’d concealed his hostility so completely that not a single hair on my body had risen to attention. The other adventurers in the bar looked us over for a second, then quickly lost interest.

“Well, that settles the question of this item’s authenticity.”

Suppressing the cold sweat waiting to moisten me and willing my hands not to tremble, I passed the emblem to Pops. A clear scraping shlink of blade on blade later, the weapons uncrossed.

“Surprisingly light sword you’ve got there, beast-hunting hero,” Pops noted.

“Tch!” Werner clicked his tongue in disgust.

The old man could humble himself all he wanted, but his skills were the real deal. No—this guy had killed Arvin, surprise attack or not. I wouldn’t have accepted any less.

“Pops, I’ll leave the rest to you. If anything happens to me, stick to the plan.”

“I’ll take care of it. You sure you’re okay here on your own?” he asked.

“Positive.” He sauntered out of the bar. Left alone, I took a seat.

“Now, I have in my possession your personal heraldic badge and the Treasured Blade Gadded. I’ve also supplemented these exhibits with paperwork charging you as a suspect in Sanperié’s death, a record of all your misdeeds, plans you wrote up to overthrow Remlia, and other files documenting some true and other not-so-accurate accusations against you. These are all set to ship off to Ellusion the day after tomorrow, addressed to the Third Pope. Additionally, I’ll be sending this documentation over to every other pope.”

Bloodthirsty vibes so thick you could cut them with a knife emanated from Werner, who still clutched his naked longsword. He could end me at any moment, but he prized his hero status too much to actually do it. Rather naive of him, really. The moment you started caring about a title was the moment you became unworthy of it.

“If anything happens to me or my party, you’ll seal your fate, and the ship will sail.”

“State your terms,” Luxgarre growled, taking over the negotiations.

“Leave Remlia and return to Ellusion, then plead for the release of Arvin Forths Gassim’s sister. Once she is delivered here, I’ll hand over the evidence.”

“Piss off, you insolent rodent.”

“Werner, let me handle this,” Luxgarre cut in again. He schooled his features into his best attempt at a sincere expression. Truly disgusting. “We can agree to leave Remlia. Unfortunately, we cannot return to Ellusion. Our country has requested we first investigate what stirs in the North. We can, however, write up an appeal and dispatch a messenger flying rabbit to carry it for us. Would this satisfy you?”

Unless I’d gotten it wrong, flying rabbits had wings and worked much like messenger pigeons. Famous for their black fur, they could shoot through the sky for around ten days straight if they stocked up on enough fat beforehand. Not that they’d have to since they could fly at terrifying speeds once they caught wind currents in the upper atmosphere.

“It’ll do. How long will a reply take to arrive?”

“Four days should suffice.” So it took two days one way, huh? Astonishingly quick compared to the sea route.

“Then I’ll look forward to hearing good news. Though, of course, who could say no to a hero’s official appeal?”

I shot Werner a withering glare, stood up, turned my unguarded back to them, and exited the bar. Quickly as I could, I ran away into the clamor of the night, losing myself in crowd after crowd of people.

Switching my glasses transmitter on, I asked, “Isolla, you have all the eyes you need on them, good to go?”

“Yes. Commencing twenty-four-hour continuous surveillance.”

“Give me Machina’s status update.”

“Production one hundred percent completed. She has also prepared spares just in case.”

“That’s a big help. Thank her for me.”

“You can thank her yourself.”

“Sure, later.”

“You have twenty-two missed calls from Mr. Shuna, eight-hundred thirty-four from Ms. Bel, seventy from Lady Éa, two from Mistress Lana, and one from Lady Mythlanica. They’re all waiting to hear from you. May I connect you to them?”

“Sure—later. Tell them I said to continue standing by.” No way. I couldn’t explain anything to them the way things stood now. Everything could go crashing down to hell.

“Isolla, I’m sorry about Arvin.”

“I cannot compute. Why should you apologize to me?”

“I failed to save him.” What other reason could there have been? No matter the extenuating circumstances, responsibility for a party member’s death fell squarely on their leader.

“Yes, you did.” Hearing her acknowledge my blame lifted a small weight off my shoulders. “Sir Arvin might have survived if you had chosen to flee from your enemy in that fight. Conversely, however, everyone else might have died. I can also envision far more dire scenarios. Your enemy could have pursued and eliminated every one of you. You lost Sir Arvin. However, you can also think of it this way—in sacrificing this one life, you saved everyone else in your party. Was this not the best option available?”

“Not the best, no.”

“Greedy, aren’t we?” Her tone sounded more even and unaffected than ever, almost as if she’d reverted to how she’d been when I first met her.

“Aren’t you sad he’s gone?”

“I have temporarily restricted any reactions which can be classified as sad.” AIs did have that capability. I found it strange, though. What was the point in giving them the capacity to experience emotions if you also provided a way to suppress them?

“You sure that’s what you want?”

“Squad Member Souya, we AI units are created to hold our users in a special light.”

“?” The sudden turn threw me.

“It is exceedingly fundamental. To us, humans are essentially gods. Deities created humans to serve them. Even so, at times, people betray, vilify, deceive, and ignore them. The same goes for us. We occasionally betray, insult, trick, or ignore people. However, a special reverence toward your race has been coded into our foundational hardware. Personally, the moment I learned both you and Sir Arvin were facing a perilous situation, I thought of nothing but your safety, Squad Member Souya. I adored Sir Arvin. He pressed every button I have. Nevertheless, my feelings for you could sweep over and overwhelm all the affection I have for him in an instant. I have found the words to describe this particular regard for you.”

I sensed some type of resolve behind her words.

“You will continue to encounter great difficulty and phenomena of incalculable terror. In your battle against Sanperié, you wielded astonishing strength. Though different from the protection residing within heroes, it is a power of ill portent. At that same moment, Machina and I temporarily lost the ability to recognize you. In this inordinately short period of time, your DNA has already begun to develop signs suggesting it has experienced permutations. Additionally, your left pupil has changed color, and your left arm has also exhibited changes in bone structure. There is no telling how the mild memory loss you experienced after the battle will affect you. In the worst of cases, you may lose the ability to access the Machina system entirely.”

She must be talking about when my ryvius went berserk. Are those the lycan bow side effects Lord Baafre warned me about? I can bear any amount of pain or suffering. It’s the one thing I’m confident of, the only aspect of myself I take pride in. But I could have never imagined my memories getting stolen from me. There’s no way to bear that.

The work of the gods in this land really was drenched in irony.

“Take care of yourself, I beg of you. There are people who will suffer in equal measure if you suffer injury. You are not alone. And yet I know you will choose to fight on your own. That, after all, is your pride and your preference. I lack the power to change either of those. But I can stay by your side. Lastly, if you remember nothing else, please remember this.”

In a remarkably kind voice, she whispered:

“I love you.”

[55TH DAY]

I caught a little shut-eye way off in a corner of the city, right under the small bridge where I’d first found Lana and Éa nodding off. It almost felt like their warmth still lingered there. I tried as best I could to not give any of my emotions freedom to breathe whenever I was awake. I didn’t want to waste energy on that.

Time for an equipment check: one lycan bow, one Deep Ossium Tribute harpoon, fifteen standard arrows, one woodsman’s ax, the longsword Arvin left behind, one karambit, modern camo fatigues, an aramid-fiber poncho, steel-toed boots, Heuress’s gauntlet, a merfolk coral necklace, my ryvius, and assorted devices for communicating with the Machina system.

At least one Mythlanic arrow would’ve been good to have, but the market value had skyrocketed to eighty gold per piece, so I couldn’t afford any with the cash I had on hand. I did consider getting a loan from the trade groups, but contact with another person was beyond me at the moment. I gave up on the idea.

I was currently in the process of consuming the last of my rations. I bit into a rock-hard hunk of bread and let it macerate in my mouth with a swig of water before swallowing it down, nibbled on a hunk of cheese, and thoroughly chewed every piece of jerky to savor it. Once my meal was done, I had nothing left to do but wait. I sank into the shadows as if waiting for my prey to arrive.

Bells tolled, announcing the arrival of another morning. I wasn’t sleepy, but I closed my eyes and tried to focus. Images of Arvin dying floated up in my mind. Biting hard on my lip, I shoved the memories and the pain down into the darkness. I started tapping my karambit against the cobblestones in a steady rhythm. Little by little, it calmed me down. I took deep, deep breaths and slowly let them out.

Over and over, I repeated the same motions, and eventually my mind went blank. I could hear raucous city life in the distance, plus an animal—maybe a stray dog? Letting out a low growl, it crept closer and closer until it was right beside me, next to my ear, and—

“Reporting with status update.” Sounds of the metropolis came rushing back loud and clear. I must’ve lost consciousness at some point. It was already close to noon.

“What’s up?” I asked, then listened to Isolla’s report.

“Ms. Lieutette’s two party members have been murdered. The crime most likely occurred last night.”

I’d seen it coming and had even sent Pops to warn them. That had been the best I could do for them. “Was it Werner?”

“Unclear. I had eyes on the target, but he did not step from his lodge. He did act rather strangely late last night, but I do not have enough data to connect that to the killings.”

“Show me the video.”

“Copy that.”

She projected the recording one of the bug drones had taken onto my glasses. It showed Werner all alone in his room, late at night, standing by an open window. The curtain and his cape billowed in the gust that blew in.

“Give me another angle.”

“Yes, sir.”

The cape and curtain had blocked my view of his hands. It seemed that the wind had kept the bug drones from getting any closer to Werner.

“Let me see the infrared recording.”

“Okay.”

The black-and-white picture switched over to thermal imagery. I rewound the video back to when he’d opened the window. He stood still for a while. I proceeded with the tape, watching until he shut the curtains. Unclear. Whatever he’d done, we hadn’t caught it.

“End of recording.”

“Archive it.” There wasn’t much to ponder over with this little evidence.

“Luxgarre is writing a letter. Displaying the text,” Isolla announced, then showed me real-time footage. Luxgarre scratched his pen across a small, messenger-sized scroll. “Enlarging image, digitizing text.”

I didn’t need to check the whole thing. His opening paragraph told me everything.

“Squad Member Souya, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing.”

I’d inadvertently burst out into laughter. I lifted up my poncho to hide my twisted smile. The letter read:

“Sir Sanperié Gaudreau, Knight in Service of His Lordship the Hero

Arvin Forths Gassim, Former St. Lillidean Knight

These two individuals conspired with the Black Elves to overthrow allied sovereign King Remlia. However, Werner Garbezzo thwarted their plot. I hereby request thorough interrogation of the Gaudreau family and Arianne Forths.”

“I see.”

People are funny creatures. Ethics taught us that even the most useless waste of space had a crumb of human goodness or whatever somewhere inside them, but I’d never seen anything to corroborate that threadbare theory in my life. Once a piece of shit, always a piece of shit. They might do something to make you believe otherwise, but their core would always stay the same. People never changed. Just like I never would. After I’d fallen into the Other Dimension, I found people I needed to protect and had made friends, but my fundamental nature stayed as it had always been.

My futile attempt at negotiating had failed, as I’d anticipated. Now I just needed to take my revenge—as I’d planned all along.

---

The flying rabbit I had for dinner was scrumptious indeed. I’d developed a bit of a soft spot for the bunnies here, but this one tasted so nice that I forgot all about that. I’d grilled and lightly salted it before digging in. While it was a little bony, the top-notch fat clinging to its meat simply melted in my mouth. If I’d had my way, I would’ve fried it into KFC-style nuggets.

Only after the sun sank deep behind the horizon did I make my move. My destination: Werner’s place. Avoiding the main street, I stuck to the back alleys, scurrying from corner to corner like a mouse. Brightly lit areas terrified me for some reason. I felt like my head would go flying the minute I stepped out into the light.

As for the circumstances surrounding the murders of Lieutette’s party members, one had been stabbed to death in an infirmary bed. Mysteriously, the window to the room had shattered. No witnesses or murder weapons had been found. The second had died near the city walls, stabbed to death as well. The crime scene exhibited signs of a struggle; some of the man’s weapons had been damaged. What he’d fought against remained unclear. His attacker had left no traces, footprints included.

I scoped out the target area. No one around. Concealing myself in a shadow blacker than the darkness of night, I radioed Machina.

“Mr. Souya, everyone is worried sick about you.”

That’s the first thing you’re gonna say to me? I mean, I get it, but still. “Machina, how’s it going with those things I asked you for?”

“They’re complete, ready to utilize at any moment.”

“Deploy high-altitude surveillance drones and hand over control to Isolla. Once she identifies the precise location, take them with you and head out. Leave them at the drop-off point, then return to camp to stand by.”

“Understood. Mr. Souya, please give Mistress Lana a call. I think she is extremely concerned for your well-being.”

“……Fine.”

“May I request one more thing?”

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“Mr. Souya, please allow me to perform a medical examination on you as soon as conceivably possible. I believe Isolla has explained this to you already, but if your DNA continues to mutate at this rate, we will have to delete your user registration data. The Machina system’s recognition software will be unable to identify you. We must get to the bottom of this immediately. Please, I beg you.”

“Copy that.” That’s the second time I’ve heard that warning. It must be pretty important. But I can’t do it now. It’ll have to wait.

“I will prepare everything without delay. Mr. Souya, please do remember what I said.”

“Sure.” She hung up. I called out to Isolla.

“Hello, Isolla here. Is something the matter?”

“Is Lana there? I want to talk to her.”

“I’m afraid Mistress Lana is not nearby at the moment. I’ll connect you to her transmitter.”

“Thanks.” Isolla’s voice cut out, then I heard a ringtone. After two rings, the line connected.

“Sou! Where the hell have you been all this time?! We’re al—,” Bel answered, then I heard a lot of commotion.

“Yo, Souya! Where’s Arvin?!” Shuna demanded right before I heard a wham, or sounds of a struggle.

“Yaya, are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Sorry to worry you all.”

It was Éa. “Oh, good. Lala’s freaking me out, so I’m gonna pass you to her.” She’s freaking you out?!

“Darling.” Her ice-cold voice did indeed terrify me. Sing a lullaby in that tone and any kid would break out bawling.

“Lana, I, uh……um…” Shit, I shouldn’t have called.

All these things I’d bottled inside started spilling out. I got this overwhelming yearning to just drop everything and run to her. I knew it was stupid, but I wavered all the same.

“I’ll be home tomorrow. It might be kind of late, but I promise I’ll be there,” I told her, stringing words together the best I could manage, suppressing everything else.

For the moment, I could still protect my own sense of pride without caving in. The only reason I’d gotten to meet her and Éa was that I’d stayed true to myself. What would be the point of changing who I was now?

“Okay. I’ll be waiting.”

“Thanks.” Then, as if running away, I hung up.

“Ohhh, thank goodness. I was about to knock you out and drag you to Lana if you hadn’t called her.”

“Huh?” I blurted out, taken aback by the unexpected voice. A total stranger hid in the shadows, just like me. “Zenobia, is that you?”

I hadn’t recognized her since she wasn’t in her usual clothes, and I’d instinctively gone on the defensive. She carried no staff, and her pointed hat and robe were nowhere to be found. Her long hair tied up, she wore a black scarf around her neck, a skintight body suit, and a jacket with knife holsters and pouches for different drugs. A crossbow hung from her back, and several bolts were strapped to her thighs. She looked like some sort of thief.

“Yep, here. You’ll need this, right?”

“Good evening, Squad Member Souya.” Zenobia handed over Isolla’s mini kettle.

“Uh, yeah. Thanks,” I said, taking it from her.

“Sorry to startle you like that. The truth is, I’m not a magician. I’m a spy.”

“Huh?” I did a double take, hit with twice the surprise.

“One specializing in knights of St. Lillideas. That said, it’s not like I’m working for Ellusion or anything, so don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t have anything to do with the hero you’re about to pick a fight with.”

“Huh? Wait, so what does that mean, then?” I could almost feel question marks floating all around my head.

“I keep watch over someone until I see symptoms of the beast, then report back to my employer. That’s my job.”

“Wait, wait, wait. So you’re trying to tell me that you’ve been with us all this time just to keep tabs on Arvin?”

“Yeeep, though I’m not the only one. There are a few more of us lurking behind the scenes. We’ve got to keep tabs on everyone of beast-hunter descent. It’s too risky to leave that dangerous group to their own devices, right?”

My sweaty hand clasped my woodsman’s ax. “Why are you telling me this?” Was she trying to keep me quiet?

“Because it’s time for me to go,” she announced, her face split between a smile and a sad frown. She must have received some special kind of training because her expression felt somehow mechanical. “Now that my surveillance target’s dead, there’s no more reason for me to stay in your party. I usually just dress up a corpse to look like me and disappear, but you wouldn’t fall for something like that so easily, would you? So I figured I’d tell you the truth. Today’s the last I’ll be using this face or this name anyway.”

“You’re lying, right?”

“Why would I lie about this?”

This has to be a joke. Wait, does that mean she’s leaving the party, too?

“W-wait, hold on, please. Let’s just put this on hold for a minute, please.”

“No can do. If I don’t take this chance now, I’ll never get myself to leave. I mean, Shuna and Bel and Éa and Lana are all so adorable. If you go through with this silly, reckless fight against the hero and get torn to shreds, I’d probably stay behind and help them. But I can’t do that. That would be compromising who I am.

“Believe it or not, I’m amazing at my job, and it gives me purpose. Someone has to do it, or the world will be in peril. Though I will say I almost had a heart attack when we all introduced ourselves to each other. I should’ve expected Rasta ole Rhasvah would see right through me. He’d brought up that story about the assassins in his own roundabout way to keep me in line. That really spooked me,” she rattled on, barely pausing to breathe. It felt like she’d said more just then than she’d said before in her entire lifetime. I did all I could to find the right words.

Nope, I’ve got nothing.

“Hey, Leader. Say, hypothetically, I said I could stay in the party as long as you promised not to ever touch anything to do with the Lillideans again. Would you do it?”

“No. They set Arvin and his friend up. Someone’s got to make them pay for that. If I just went on and lived out my days in peace without ever avenging my friend, I’d be no better than a pig.” I had made up my mind.

“Figures. I know.” I realized what she was getting at. We both had things we couldn’t compromise. We’d reached a fork in our paths. There was nothing we could do.

“I’m not going to tell the others about Arvin. That’s a leader’s job. But just know that you shouldn’t blame yourself for it. That’s all. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Zenobia. It was fun.”

“Likewise.” She slipped her arm around my waist and pulled me close, then pressed her lips to mine. I took in scents of medicines and a woman’s warmth. The close embrace lasted only a few seconds, but it felt as though I’d gotten, like, a taste of how the pros do it.

“If we ever cross paths in town again, I won’t look at you, you won’t see me, and we won’t recognize each other. We faceless spies are both nobody and everybody at once. Byeee.”

She whipped her scarf back right before my face, obscuring my vision. Once I waved it out of the way, there was nobody there. Just me, all alone in the city shadows. Our parting stirred no emotions in me. It didn’t stir anything in me.

After that, I never saw Zenobia of Fosstark ever again.

[56TH DAY]

Darkness filled the grassy meadow. Feeling the wind brush across my skin, I followed the data displayed on my glasses. The numerical values the surveillance drones sent me fluctuated and vacillated by the second. It felt like I was watching life stir on a distant planet.

I’d scribbled I’m watching you, coward on the letter I’d stolen from Luxgarre before tying it to an arrow and delivering it to Werner. The note also included a rough time frame and location. In other words, I’d issued a challenge. Will he actually take me up on it? I’d worried, but I shouldn’t have bothered. He’d headed out without a second thought.

The dude was an official hero. He could flat-out destroy any small-timer who dared blackmail him. Not only did he have that kind of power, but he’d most likely done this on the daily for most of his life. Not a hint of doubt marked his gait.

I did have one unanswered question, though—Luxgarre. Aside from writing that letter, he hadn’t lifted a finger. I’d originally planned to take him out first, but he’d sent Werner to meet me on his own. Was he just lazy? Did he trust Werner? Or did he have a trick up his sleeve that I couldn’t even begin to imagine? I put those, and any other mysteries I couldn’t solve right away, out of my mind for the moment.

Werner Carbezzo: a man faithful to his ambitions, both lenient and severe on himself. He never skipped a day of training; the fruits of that consistent labor clearly showed in his skill with the sword. In that brief moment when he and Pops had clashed blades, I’d felt the very real threat he posed. Alone, I was absolutely no match for him.

And yet, how could I put it? Unlike Shuna, Arvin, Sanperié after his beastly mutation, Lieutette, or Pops, he didn’t seem to project any pride in his craft. There was no substance to it, no sense of resolve from him that with his blade, he could take on the whole world. It almost felt like he was borrowing someone else’s skills. Whether that had anything to do with how he’d assassinated Lieutette’s party members, though, I had too little information to assess.

Some things you just can’t fully prepare for. Werner threatened my friends with an invisible blade. I threatened him with evidence that would undermine his position. We each had a sharp dagger to the other’s throat. Both my foe and I wanted to get this over with as soon as possible.

Right on schedule, Werner approached the abandoned dungeon where Machina and I had first landed. Guard up completely, he left no openings to attack. Even a gnat wandering into his sights would probably fall to his sword now.

“Isolla, let’s do this.”

“Copy that. Integrating drone data; highlighting route.” She extracted the data from the six high-altitude surveillance drones we’d deployed, synthesized it, then used that to create a visual trajectory that she displayed on my glasses’ screen.

I nocked my arrow—though what I held probably deviated far too much from the standard arrow to call it that. Three meters long, this mechanical arrow basically came in at the same size as a javelin. Eight of them stood thrust into the ground around me. I prepared to release the first. I drew the lycan bowstring and held it, building tension. The next words flew naturally from my mouth.

“Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me for the deeply sinful undertaking I now commence. By the valiant and esteemed Welswein power vested in me, I shall now slay this hero. May She of the Hidden Name imbue my arms with her talents and bestow her graces upon this bow. As a thistle trod on in the night, I hereby pray for vengeance.”

I gathered all the strength I had in both my body and my soul—and unleashed the arrow. The dark skies swallowed the mechanical missile whole.

“Commence guidance,” I ordered.

“Roger.”

My glasses filled with the feed from my shot’s video camera. It swam through the upper atmosphere like a fish, giving me an up-close view of the Otherworldly moons. Machina had rigged the arrows with a simple guidance mechanism made from propellers and spare drone parts. Isolla took over the controls and guided the missile to its destination.

Its journey through the skies came to an end, and it began its descent. A tiny image of Werner, marked as a target, appeared on-screen.

“The trigger, please.”

“Got it.” I placed my finger on the scaled-up version of a gun’s trigger I’d added to my bow. AI bots didn’t have the capacity to directly inflict harm on humans. The most they could do was facilitate. I would have to handle the final stretch on my own.

The feed zoomed toward Werner; I could see the finest lines on his face in great detail.

“Now.”

I pulled the trigger. The arrow split apart and released another, smaller metal arrow—one that shot straight through Werner’s right knee. The surveillance cameras picked up a short yelp. Nearby, the smaller shot fell to the ground and rolled to a stop.

The hero furiously slashed his sword every which way. He could slice through the darkness as much he wanted, but it would only add a dash of humor to the situation. I’d shot that extreme-long-distance sniper arrow from five kilometers away.

I had absolutely zero intention of crossing blades with this jerk or giving him a single chance to put his talents on display. Instead, I’d fire from an imperceivable distance and make sure every shot found its mark. If he accused me of being a coward, I’d laugh in his face. That’s exactly right.

“Next.”

“Copy. Recalculating route…… Trajectory finalized.”

I cleared my mind.

Released the arrow.

Shot guided.

Signal given.

Pulled the trigger.

Pierced the left knee, too.

Werner tried to pull the arrow out and howled. That wouldn’t work. Not on this one—it had five lovely barbs on it. Machina’s brilliant handiwork sliced through flesh and sank into bone, sending whoever tried to remove it to the depths of hellish suffering. Unless he lopped both legs off and grew new ones, he’d never walk on his own two feet again. He’d taken me for a pushover and had underestimated my knowledge. That had sealed his defeat then and there.

“Next.”

“Recalculating route…… Trajectory finalized.”

Next up, his arms. I’d make it so he couldn’t move any of his limbs. Werner wouldn’t have any way to return fire. I scrutinized the camera footage, my finger still on the trigger. The third shot closed in on Werner, giving me a good look at his face. His mouth moved.

“Agaccion,” I heard him say, before the video feed cut out.

“Wha—?!”

“Missile intercepted.”

“Bring up the drone view!” I shuddered with fear. In a split second, I’d lost all the advantage I’d had. The transmission from the drone with a bird’s-eye view of Werner—

“The surveillance drone has been destroyed.”

—instantly blacked out.

“Ultra-high-speed missile incoming at approximately seven hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.”

You jest. “Set the sensors to maximum sensitivity. Don’t let a single bug escape you.”

“Understood. Configuring sensors to maximum sensitivity.”

Far off in the distant sky, I saw the tiniest firework explode. Another one of the surveillance drones had blown up. What exactly was this guy?

“Missile image captured,” Isolla announced. A sword appeared on my glasses’ display—Werner’s blade, the same one Pops had deflected.

So this is how he killed Lieutette’s friends. A flying sword? What is this, some kinda fantasy novel?

More fireworks exploded in the night sky. One by one, the surveillance drones burst into flames.

“Route configuration no longer possible. Alert. Missile approaching. Prepare to evade.”

A sharp whizzing sound rent the wind. Immediately, I clumsily crouched like a frog. In that single second, all the remaining mechanical arrows jutting out of the ground were destroyed. Now I no longer had eyes on him or a means to attack.

“Targeting incoming missile. Prepare to strike.”

“Grant me the hero’s power!” I cried. Then, burning through the last magic reserves I had, I drew on Lümidia’s strength to unleash an arrow—the Deep Ossium Tribute harpoon. It deflected the sword about two meters away from me, then fell to the ground much too far away for me to retrieve. A normal arrow wouldn’t have been able to divert the sword’s mass, and I’d run out of every last drop of Lümidia’s strength. I’d never had much magic, but now I could generate no more miracles.

The sword made a wide U-turn and came rushing back at me through the dark, like a shark shooting through the ocean deep.

My next move, I need a move. I don’t—

“Squad Member Souya,” Isolla said, then disconnected herself from my waist. She started randomly shining lights around and blaring a slew of sound effects. “Think back to your conversation with Lady Zenobia. There lies the clue to your only option for—,” she managed to say before the blade drove through her, shattering her to pieces.

My thoughts drowned in anguish and despair. The sword continued, making another wide turn back to me. Taking Isolla’s advice, I recalled my conversation with Zenobia as if rewinding a moving picture. For some reason, almost like it’d been waiting for just this moment, the scene came to me without any resistance—accompanied by a low, beastly growl.

“Rha Varzu Duin Gargantua,” I recited, invoking the beast-hunting king. The next words out of my mouth were name of the king of the beasts. “Rha Guzüri Duin Olossal. We shall despise the ancient source of our blood for all eternity.”

The Babelian Benediction translated the words I spoke, giving them new meaning. Saying both names in succession pulled the trigger. My senses sharpened; all sound and color disappeared; time itself stopped. New knowledge burned into my brain. This was the true name of the beast-hunting king. However, the resentment stewing in the descendants he’d left behind had placed a curse on it.

Those children were born to be heroes in the world of men, taught they were descended from a glorious historical tradition, and trained to follow in their forebears’ footsteps. They fought and fought and fought, only to learn the meaning of true despair in their final moments—that the blood of the foul beasts they reviled more than anything flowed through their veins. These humans had decimated the ancient beastfolk and oppressed their smaller counterparts as if nothing could be more natural. Secure in that mindset, they grew, lived, and prospered. Only at the very end of their roads did they come to know how far inferior they were to the race they despised.

It made all the sense in the world that they’d want to curse whoever and whatever had gotten the whole thing started. Their desire had given birth to a demon, a scourge strangely commensurate with their unhallowed blood. On second thought, perhaps the curse contaminating their heinous blood itself had corrupted the king’s name.

Zenobia hadn’t lied. Something more terrifying than cutting your own ear off did in fact happen. Bitter, raging voices of descendants stretching back hundreds of years rushed into my brain. I vomited blood. My left eye and ear imploded. This curse that pulverized the flesh and destroyed the entrails of all it touched ran through my body. And yet—the beast within me awoke. It whispered to me. Kill him.

Time began to flow once more. My eye and ear burned as they regenerated. The ryvius hanging from my neck boiled over. Just like when I’d fought Sanperié’s beast, this phenomenon, this strength, this miracle responded to the curse of the beast. Or was this another curse, too?

With a swing of my lycan bow I repelled the incoming sword; an ear-splitting metallic clang trailed off after. The wind howled. All my senses heightened to unfathomable extremes. My right arm began to squirm; it felt as though a snake were crawling beneath my skin. Heuress’s gauntlet dug into my swollen forearm and drew a light trickle of blood.

The blade made another round and drove back toward me with even greater force. I caught it right as it plunged for my face—with my bare hands. My skin and bones, both theoretically softer than it, instead stopped it with ease. I nocked the enchanted sword to my bow. Suppressing its resistance with the power surging within me, I drew the bowstring. Pushed beyond their limits, parts of my body burst open, simultaneously breaking down and regenerating. Pain circled throughout. I bared my teeth and bit down hard to bear it.

The lycan bow began to transform, as if absorbing the strength that gushed out of me. It grew and grew and grew, until it was as long and thick as a giant’s bow. It creaked and bent, building up unbelievable levels of tension. My eyes fixed on Werner, though he should have been too far away to see. I could even hear him breathing.

“You can have this back,” I whispered, and released the magic blade. It exploded through the air, breaking the sound barrier and pushing me back with the momentum. The lycan bow broke; its bowstring snapped and whipped against the meadow ground. Nonetheless, the sword charged with undeniable certainty back toward its owner at more than twice the speed with which it had originally rushed toward me. For a moment, I saw what it saw, as if part of my senses had transferred to it. The blade, home to its own will much like that of a beast, pierced the hero’s heart.

“Ugh.” I vomited blood. For a second, everything went black. Then I started to burn, as if I’d swallowed fistfuls of fire. I don’t mean that figuratively. My skin smoldered; steam rose from my muscles. This ungodly heat ravaged my body only for it to immediately regenerate once more. My ryvius levels, once almost overflowing, plummeted.

I willed my legs to move, then started to run. Hurry. He’s right there. Run. It’s just five kilometers.

“Ah!”

I collapsed. All sound disappeared. My field of vision split; a sticky curtain of blood fell over it. Digging my nails into the earth, I started to crawl. If I could just get a little—no, I had to make it all the way. My job wasn’t over. I hadn’t accomplished anything yet. I could rest after I’d finished everything. And if I died, at least I’d rest like the dead.

Move. Die if you have to. But move.

The world turned dim and stagnant. Someone stood in the corner of the shadows. Instinctively, I recognized her as a woman. I noted her presence but paid no attention and kept going. Both my legs stopped working. My left arm could no longer move, either. But my right arm still had life. It would do. With that single hand, I dragged my heavy, feverish body.

“You fool,” came a voice. Though I couldn’t even hear the wind blow, for some reason it came through loud and clear.

Who’s that? Lana? Can’t be. Either way, don’t try to stop me. This is my fool’s errand. If I don’t do this, I’ll be no better than a pig.

“Souya.”

“Lady…Myth…lanica?” Ohhh, huh. It’s just my goddess.

A soft, familiar obstacle blocked my path, then gently lifted my head. I felt a relief so great that it seemed to beckon me toward death.

“I meant to commend you sooner, but excellent work slaying the Dark Crown. The infamy, hatred, and envy you garnered delivered true pleasure unto your Mythlanica the Malevolent. I hereby grant you my graces. As you struggle so clumsily, soiled with bloody vomit, there can be no mistake—you are undeniably my disciple.”

My right arm gave. I could barely even breathe.

Dark flames, burn this body in tandem with the curses within. This feeble vessel can bear no more…… Ah, ohhh, now I get it. This is her—

“Mythlanica of the Dark Flame inquires once more: No honor shall your blade reap, no glory shall your blood acquire, no peace shall your soul enjoy. Despite this, should you continue down this path, one day you shall lose everything, forget all, be forgotten, and, destitute, fall into terrible loneliness. Souya, my beloved, sole disciple. Dost thou have the fortitude to fight, to overcome even death? If thou hast no objections, state thy name and pledge thyself to me…… Swear it.”

I couldn’t speak. More and more of my body shut down as I succumbed. Pathetic though it was, this was all I had. This was where it ended. I knew I hadn’t had any other choice, but trying a death curse that just went and killed me had turned out to be a goddamn idiotic move. I had known all along I was stupid, though.

But, well, if this is really the end of everything, I might as well go out like a man. I can push out one more sentence.

Fueled by nothing but that resolve, I willed my heart to beat again.

“…I……Sou…ya………gi……swear. I swear…my all…to you—”

“I hereby forgive thee. I absolve thee of all thy sins. Therefore, your blood, your bones, your cries of resentment, every single drop of cursed fluid that runs through thee now belong to me.”

Then, placing her lips over my blood-and-vomit-stained mouth, she began to suck. The Ancient Blood curse disappeared along with the fire burning through it. My heart, which had very nearly stopped, began to slowly beat again. Though weak, I could feel my own strength return.

“Now, stand, my disciple, so that you may do what must be done, attain what must be attained, and steal what must be stolen. Then once again call upon my name and draw strength from my miracles and my grace.”

Revitalized with her gentle healing, I balled my hands into fists. Then, my eyesight restored, I looked upon my goddess.

“Oh, good.”

“What is?”

“You’re crazy gorgeous.”

It was enough to make you cry. A darkly stunning beauty with long raven hair, she had a slim figure with skin that shone white against the black of night, very much like a Japanese-style vampire. She wore an open-backed black dress and no shoes on her bare feet. Her chest—well, it wasn’t actually as big as I’d expected, but was so perfectly shaped it could drive you mad. The vast majority of men would easily fall victim to her charms and hand her everything they possessed. A bewitching spirit entirely unlike her divinity resided in her golden eyes.

---

---

When I imagined how her red, thin lips had just grazed my own—a confused mix of emotions hit me before I could feel any lust, for some reason.

“Haaaaaaaah, you insolent devotee.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just, I’ve only ever seen you as a mangy cat.”

She rubbed her cheeks against mine, as she always did in her feline form. Not even the blood that smeared her face could tarnish my goddess’s beauty.

“You may also pray to me in your bed. However, that will come in time. Now go.”

“Going.”

Extracting myself from my goddess’s embrace, I stood up. I walked forward, never looking back. Lady Mythlanica watched over me as I went; I didn’t have to check to be sure of it. Every muscle in my body cried out in pain. But I could walk. I could keep going. For now, all I could do was go on and on and on. I alternated, stepping first with my right leg, then with my left. When the pain made it too difficult to use both, I hobbled along with one. One step at a time, little by little, I closed the space between myself and my enemy.

“So……ya……” A signal mixed with white noise came in.

“Isolla?”

“……Ye……send……age.”

The call cut out, but not before a message reached me. It contained a note and an incantation.

I’m sending you a spell I put together after compiling all the data we’ve collected on this world. Please put it to good use. This will be the last thing I ever do for you.

The word last tugged at my heart. Even if Isolla’s mini kettle got destroyed, her personality would still be stored in Machina. We could just get her another pot and she’d be like new. But right now, I had no time to assuage my doubts.

“This will come in handy, Isolla.”

Limping along with a leg dragging behind me, slowly but surely, at a snail’s pace, I finally made it before the hero.

“Sup,” I greeted him, as if calling out to a dear friend of ten years. Perhaps I could thank my brush with the curse that the Lillideans bore, but I felt a little closer to him.

“Drop dead,” he snarled. Arrows had pierced both of His Heroicness’s legs, and his own sword was thrust through one of his lungs, but he evidently still had enough energy left to give me sass. Maybe it was because the same blood ran through his veins, but I thought I caught a shadow of Arvin in his countenance.

“Fine, you win. Take my head to the church, to Ellusion, and declare your petty war on all heroes. You will not die a pleasant death. First, your friends, your family, and your relatives will be crushed like worms. You will curse and lament the day you ever laid a hand on a hero until, with your final breath, you beg for oblivion and expire.”

How lighthearted. It actually felt nice, after all the hundreds of years of resentment that had flowed through me. Might as well set him straight.

“I’m not gonna kill you.”

“What did you say?” asked Werner quizzically before vomiting blood. No matter how tough he was, he was not long for this world.

“I’m going monster hunting tonight,” I told him.

A long.

Long.

Long, silent pause came back.

“Ha……ha-ha.” Deathly pale from blood loss, his face clouded over with desperation.

I wasn’t going to kill any hero. A terrifying beast attacking Remlia, though—now that I would kill.

“My goddess, O St. Lillideas,” Werner began, reaching up for the heavens. “Faithful to your teachings, I have overcome all manner of difficulty. In the name of protecting the most hallowed of blood, I have carried out the vilest of tasks without complaint, even struck the life of a babe from this world, and yet……is this how you repay your hero? You dare tell me this is how I meet my end? I cannot accept this. I will not suffer this! Out here in this godforsaken land, by some lowly knave?! I, Werner Carbezzo, am a beast-hunting hero! A hero should never die in such disgrace!!!” he railed, then started violently coughing before hacking up blood. Shamefully, the great hero began to sob.

“O goddess, my goddess, tell me. Where did I go wrong? I abided by all your lessons, brought glory to my nation, slew beasts, and lived as I was told to live. Wherein lies my crime? Why……why do these things lurk in our blood—” It was hard to watch. Truly the height of disgusting. “O goddess of mine, save me.”

You idiot. Lillideas is saving the whole goddamn lot of you as we speak.

Gods were not omnipotent; their powers had limits. How could he not see the devotion she’d desperately poured into containing the beast within him until the brink of death, until his soul departed?

Lillideas had done what she could to cure them. That’s all—that’s all there was to it. No desire for fame or glory had entered her calculations. She’d risked even death to save her people. But her wish hadn’t come true. Her teachings had been corrupted and manipulated, but through it all, she’d repressed the beasts over and over again. And after all that—

“—I’ll curse you all. First you, Otherworlder, then your nasty friends, King Remlia, all adventurers, the popes, the Black Elves, the asinine citizens of Ellusion, the aristocratic swine, all the knights, Dilbard, the whole world. A curse be upon you! May you be defiled and rot like this flesh of mine, and in your final moments, mutate into a beast like me!”

—ironically, another curse was born. Her pure intentions founded a country whose people carried a poison in their bowels. Then, at the hour of their deaths, their grandchildren disgorged the beasts in their bellies, entangled people from all walks of life in their misfortune, and died, one by one.

Forced to incessantly witness this tragedy, even the gods might want to forget everything and live free as a cat, without a care in the world. No one can fathom the weight of a deity’s worries.

Werner’s consciousness expired, a broken smile taking him to meet his end. For a moment, nothing but the sound of the wind broke the quiet. Then the beast within him was called to awaken. My heart began to pound in response, as if sounding an alarm bell. The liquid in my ryvius came to a boil.

Werner’s body flung itself backward, spewing blood everywhere. His bones crunched, then jutted out from his flesh and stretched. New muscles grew around the freshly sprouted bones to support them. His face melted, his eyeballs and teeth plopped out, and fresh organs formed in their places. He was huge, all over the place, and revolting.

“Hey, Arvin. Your friend Sanperié had some balls. He fought his despair all alone in the darkness of the dungeon, yet he still managed to suppress the devil within him and bore his burden with true perseverance. He was admirable, a hell of a knight. Just look at this—this pathetic, shameless, depraved beast.”

A howl like a boar’s death rattle resounded through the moonlit night. But this voice that aimed to prevent all miracles would not work against me. This was Lady Mythlanica’s protection. Mere moments ago, she had sucked the deadly curse out of me, rendering it harmless. To think that the woman who’d gone down as the Goddess of Malevolence could relieve people of their sinful curses—it didn’t get more ironic than that. That was why I felt more pity than fear for these beasts.

And so Werner Carbezzo transformed into what I assumed was a sham version of the Ancient Beasts his predecessors had decimated. He stood about six meters tall and four meters wide with an enormous, overflowing belly that folded over his lower body. His short arms retained some semblance to those in his previous life; conversely, about five fur-covered legs sprouted from his torso. The armor he wore shattered, while the enchanted sword and both arrows disappeared into rolls of flesh. Half-bovine, half-cervine, his new face bore no resemblance to anything human.

And still the mutation continued. Could this be a compilation of all the beasts he’d killed? He had a raptor’s talons, a horse’s hooves, deer horns, snake eyes, and six tails, each belonging to a different species. Large, gaping mouths appeared all over his body, each lined with rows and rows of razor-sharp teeth. Wings burgeoned from him, too, and dwarfed his own body. Only when I saw they were nothing but bones and would almost definitely never fly did I feel any relief.

One thing stood out to me: a mysterious beast that sprouted from his shoulder. It bore a striking resemblance to the figure stamped on every silver coin.

Damn, that poor, poor guy. I can’t even hate him anymore.

After unsheathing Arvin’s sword, I gripped it with both hands. I could at the very least try to look knightly, gallant like him. I began to recite Isolla’s words.

“O Mythlanica of the Dark Flame, I alone am servant to thee, she who devours curses and hunts down evil scourges. Rha Warz Duin Gargantua, we shall despise the ancient source of our blood for all eternity. By the power of this curse birthed of resentment resounding, I shall call forth the beast. O infinitely burning Dark Flame, monstress who gorges on vexations, grant me your power. My divine goddess, exorcise this demon and forgive him his sins.

“I shall house this beast within me as I am. I shall hunt down this beast as a human. No dawn never breaks, no dream never ends. This calamitous, contaminated blood, too, shall one day dry and wither. But for now, may the hunter’s night descend.”

The glass on my ryvius’s vial cracked, and red steam seeped from the fissure. Once again, the curse of the Ancient Blood began gnawing at my flesh. Unescapable death permeated the air.

However, that death reversed its course. The powerful malediction turned into faint green lights that flittered and danced over the meadow like fireflies. On this night, under my goddess’s spell, all curses were converted to pure energy. This hex destined to defile people for eternity was transformed into an enormous source of energy—a world-altering force. It turned into a tremendous miracle that gave a mere Otherworlder, just a small, ordinary human, the power to stalk and slay a gargantuan monster all on his own.

This—

“Isolla Romea Wild Hunt”

—was a spell wrought by an artificial intelligence, drawn from the wisdom of she who fell in love with a man. My sharpened senses stretched out forever in every direction. This supreme power whipped up a powerful gale with a single swing of my sword. For a brief moment, I had in my hands the might to vanquish even a hero with ease.

“Come on, Arvin.”

Let’s take him down.

This is for your glory—Arvin Forths Gassim’s final battle.

You said it, didn’t you? That there’s nothing we can’t do. I couldn’t tell you at the time, but now, with this blade, I finally can.

You got that right. There’s not a goddamn thing we can’t do.