16.
“We’ve bought enough for now…”
“Is there something urgent?”
“Something urgent… Yes, there is.”
Sejin nodded with a sigh.
They had come to the department store, bought the things Lucia needed, and then purchased a few more items Sejin thought were necessary before getting back on the road.
“It’s about time for me to go back to work, so something urgent has come up.”
“By work… you mean the battlefield?”
“Yes. I have to go to the battlefield. We need to get the bare minimum of what we need and leave quickly.”
Sejin had to go to work.
Sejin had to be deployed to the battlefield as a mercenary.
What those words meant was—
“That means I have to go to the battlefield too.”
“Unless there’s an option to leave you in someone else’s care, yes. More than anything, it would be quite dangerous for you to be alone when you still haven’t learned enough about this world.”
One way or another, Lucia would have to head to the battlefield as well.
“When do we leave?”
“I can’t say exactly when we’ll depart, but we’ll be contacted soon. So we should prepare as much as we can at home.”
17.
“…Hmm.”
“What is it?”
“It seems I’ll have to go to the battlefield soon. I was thinking about that.”
“The battlefield… Come to think of it, I have been hearing news like that. At the moment, opinions haven’t been unified, so our side hasn’t been able to reach a decision.”
“Do you think you will?”
“No. We probably won’t. And even if we don’t reach a decision, they’ll choose something else.”
“…Arma.”
“The tide of war can never be predicted. But if Arma moves, everything will change depending on which side Arma belongs to. That’s the kind of people they are.”
Choi Seongjae let out a sigh.
Arma. Some thought of them as an ordinary mercenary group.
Those who knew about Arma did not say that.
They were extremely dangerous.
Getting involved with them was something to be avoided.
“If Arma is confirmed to appear, everyone will steer clear of it.”
“It was already that kind of place to begin with, but yes, even more so. That’s enough about Arma. It’s not certain anyway. What matters right now is that mercenary.”
A mercenary was heading to the battlefield.
The government had no need to pay attention to them.
It was not an important matter to them.
However, Choi Seongjae was troubled over this incident.
The reason Choi Seongjae was troubled—
was because, among the mercenaries, the man who was currently closely connected to the otherworlder would be deployed to this battlefield.
“He won’t be able to get out of it. If he makes his living as a mercenary, that’s only natural.”
“Yes. Even so, I hoped it would be delayed as much as possible. It seems that was too much to ask.”
“War doesn’t wait for us. Whatever situation we’re in, that doesn’t matter to them. That’s why things turn out this way.”
The man shook his head.
Choi Seongjae looked at him and sighed.
“Do you think it will be resolved smoothly?”
“I don’t know that, but I do know about the mercenary currently looking after the otherworlder. He’s no ordinary man. So I don’t think there will be a problem. What matters now is… yes, what happens on that battlefield.”
18.
“…Phew. Is this a battlefield?”
An unfamiliar place.
A figure had appeared somewhere unknown.
“̧̼̰̬̓̉͗̈̿͋̀̈́̆͌̏̀̑͌̓̽̀͌̿̊̕͘̚̕̚͝ͅ”
People speaking words she could not understand.
They were shouting.
They were flustered, and they were shouting at her.
“Ah, right. This was another world. Silly me.”
Smiling, she pointed a finger at them.
A very small light.
That small light shone, then pierced straight through their bodies.
“My apologies. I wasn’t properly prepared, you see. Still, isn’t it a bit much to point weapons at me with such menacing faces? I happen to have trauma when it comes to weapons being pointed at me.”
She looked at them with a smile.
They were already unable to move.
But the fact that they were in such a state had not mattered from the start.
“Phew. It worked.”
For now, the only thing that mattered was the fact that she had succeeded.
That was why she was smiling.
19.
“What’s the situation?”
“Not good. As always. Supplies are still coming in, but there’s no telling how long that will continue either.”
“…So this is the battlefield.”
“Is that the young lady?”
“Yes.”
After arriving at the battlefield, they had been moving busily.
Lucia had no idea what she was doing or what she was seeing.
Everything was rushing by, and she was simply moving along with that current.
“What is this?”
Sejin looked at the state of the battlefield and asked about something he could not understand.
There was no one who could explain it.
It was not an ordinary war.
No, at first, it had clearly been an ordinary war.
It had been the kind of place one could see anywhere.
“When did it become like this?”
“At some point, it suddenly changed. It seems a massacre was carried out as though it didn’t matter which side anyone belonged to.”
Someone was rampaging across the battlefield.
It was possible for someone to go mad and run wild like that, but the scale was too large.
“…An otherworlder?”
“Perhaps. Nothing is certain. There were no witnesses. Everyone who witnessed it is dead.”
“…”
At the trail left by someone unknown, someone whom for now they could only judge to be an otherworlder, Sejin clicked his tongue briefly.
20.
There were various races in the world.
They lived in the world in various ways.
And among them, if there were any who had to be treated with particular caution, they were the “demons.”
Demons—a race known to be the most skilled in magic among all races.
There were many stories about their origin, but nothing was certain.
Such demons were always a headache in any world.
Belligerent beings.
Beings who, whenever friction arose, always caused damage on an enormous scale.
Because such beings were demons, dealing with them was a constant source of trouble.
“Fleeing to avoid those bastards was indeed a wise decision. I didn’t expect my body to change like this, but this isn’t bad either. It makes me feel young again.”
In one world, she had been a Demon King.
As the ruler of the demons, she did what she could and what she wanted to do.
Whatever her intentions had been, she had many enemies simply because she was a demon.
Both within the demons and outside them.
“Still, to think I would end up falling onto a battlefield. I escaped a fight, only to arrive in a place filled with fighting.”
Campaigns to subjugate Demon Kings were always taking place, and after facing them, the choice she eventually made was to flee.
There was more than one Demon King, so even if one Demon King disappeared, another would take that territory on their own and manage well enough. Thinking so, she did not hesitate.
The demon Peuruteusu looked up at the sky.
“This isn’t the sky I used to see. Not bad. I don’t yet know what kind of world this is, but at the very least, it seems better than the previous one. The weapons of this world are rather fascinating, but I have no need to take an interest in them.”
Peuruteusu examined the gun with curiosity.
Then she threw it away.
After all, she did not know how to use it, and it was not an important item to her.
“Battlefields are always frightening places. Even when I’m in this state, turned into a woman and made younger, they attack me right away.”
Even now, someone was aiming for Peuruteusu’s head.
Because she was on the battlefield, and because she was an unknown figure.
Because, at the very least, they could not think of her as a civilian.
Within that fear, they chose to kill.
And that choice continued to fail.
21.
“I’m becoming more and more certain. The target is definitely an otherworlder. And judging by the way they fight, the target is presumed to be a demon.”
“Of all things, a demon.”
There were demons in every world.
This was a fact everyone knew.
And everyone also knew that the fact the opponent was a demon was reason enough to lament.
Demons were not opponents one could face easily.
Moreover, in the current situation, they could not tell whether the other party was friendly or not. No matter what intentions the other party had, they were still a demon, and if a fight broke out, people would die.
“More than anything, we need to end this quickly.”
“Why do you think that?”
“An otherworlder demon has appeared on a battlefield in a war that was already far from normal. If the higher-ups hear about this, what do you think they’ll do?”
“Naturally, they’ll use whatever means they can to end the battlefield somehow.”
“Yes. And there has always been one method most suitable for that.”
“…Arma.”
Lucia listened to their conversation.
She could not understand what they were worried about.
Sejin let out a sigh.
“Arma. People commonly call them a mercenary organization, but it’s already hard to call them just an organization. Some even say they’re more like a mercenary nation. That’s how enormous their scale is.”
“Are they dangerous?”
“They’re not the kind of people you can dismiss with a simple word like dangerous. If Arma is deployed to the battlefield, the war will end, but it won’t end in anyone’s victory. Arma will simply make the war end. What form the war takes when it concludes doesn’t matter. That’s the kind of people they are.”
Sejin rose from his seat.
“For now, we move to where that thing is. It won’t be too late to think once we’re there.”