22.
There were countless corpses.
Many of them had not died under normal circumstances.
Sejin looked at them and shook his head.
“No matter how chaotic a battlefield may be, it wasn’t this chaotic. This is… serious.”
“To that demon, the current situation may not seem strange, but to a third party, that’s not exactly the case.”
There was no distinction between enemy and ally.
They had simply been in front of him. They had attacked him, so he attacked them in return. That was all.
“Yes, that is something you’d normally see on a battlefield, but he seems to have no sense of moderation.”
“He’s probably not an ordinary demon.”
Sejin looked at Lucia.
There must have been demons in the world Lucia had originally come from as well.
If so, had Lucia ever encountered one?
Thinking that, he looked at Lucia.
Lucia shook her head.
“I’ve never faced a demon directly.”
“I was never sent to the fighting front… I only heard stories.”
“About what battlefields were like, and who fought how.”
“And about the heroes who always stood at the forefront of those battlefields.”
Heroes.
Sejin gazed ahead, thinking over Lucia’s words.
Could heroes truly be said to exist?
No answer came to that question.
He did not even know whether an answer could exist in the first place.
Because Sejin had never properly witnessed such a thing as a hero.
23.
“…What exactly are you showing us right now?”
“What meaning is there in showing us this?”
No one around him could answer the man’s question.
The current state of the battlefield.
This display showed how the battle was flowing, and the man shook his head at it.
“An outsider has entered.”
“Judging by the way he fights, it isn’t something commonly seen. Which means the opponent must be an otherworlder.”
“Even among otherworlders, fighting styles are formalized to some degree by race.”
“So, since the style we’re seeing now can be identified as that of a demon, the opponent is a demon from another world.”
He slowly analyzed what he saw.
Then he asked those beside him.
“How long has it been since that thing appeared here?”
“…Not very long.”
“We were able to find out because those who discovered traces of him on the battlefield informed us in advance.”
He looked at those answering cautiously, then turned to one person in particular.
The one who held the greatest authority here at present.
“Do you think that can be dealt with?”
“Do you judge this to be a problem that can be resolved with your strength, or with the strength of those currently on the battlefield?”
“…”
He swallowed.
He had to answer properly.
If he did not, no one knew what would happen to him.
“…That is…”
“You had best think carefully before you answer.”
“Depending on that answer, we—”
“Our Arma will be able to decide quickly how to act.”
24.
“It seems he’s already encountered Arma.”
“And Arma is probably asking what they intend to do now.”
“We’ll have to resolve this quickly. Otherwise, things will get very complicated.”
“They will.”
Arma was moving.
Perhaps Arma had been watching this situation from the very beginning.
Arma could move at any time, but they were not the ones who started wars.
They were mercenaries to the end.
They possessed the force to end a war, but they were beings who did not act on their own.
They asked the other party about their future course of action, confirmed it, and then moved.
“That is Arma.”
“The biggest problem is that they are beings whose actions you can never predict—when or how they’ll move.”
“Will they move?”
“They will certainly move once the war is over, but before that… unless some high-ranking figure involved in this war asks them to, they won’t move first.”
“But we have no way of knowing what choice that high-ranking figure will make… so all we can do is wait.”
Praying that they would not make the wrong choice.
Praying that they would escape this battlefield before Arma moved.
They had to think that way, hope that way, and keep moving.
Sejin looked at the mountain of corpses before him.
“…He’s killed a great many.”
“There’s someone over there.”
“It seems the person over there is…”
“Yes, most likely the culprit behind the current incident.”
“A demon who crossed over from another world.”
25.
Prutus was sitting quietly atop the mountain of corpses.
He was doing nothing.
There was no reason to do anything more here in the first place.
He had been heading somewhere, but there had been no purpose to it.
He was quietly waiting in a place whose location he did not even know.
Waiting for someone kind enough to tell him the way.
“But nothing comes from just waiting like this.”
“Everyone sees me, gets startled, and attacks first, you know?”
“I don’t know why they act that way.”
“Could you answer that question for me?”
“An otherworlder who suddenly appeared on a battlefield.”
“A being whose purpose is unknown suddenly appears, and if he acts in ways that defy everyone’s expectations, then of course…”
“Of course they try to kill me?”
“That too.”
“That’s how war is.”
A group emerged, attempting to speak calmly.
Prutus was watching them with interest.
Though the other side did not feel the same.
“Let me ask one thing first.”
“Demon, what do you intend to do here?”
“Who knows?”
“I know nothing about this place, so as for what I should do… I’m not really sure. Do you perhaps intend to kindly tell me?”
“I doubt things will end well just because we kindly tell you.”
“Everyone involved in this war already knows about you.”
“And discussions are being held about how to ‘deal with’ the battlefield that has turned into chaos because of you.”
“Deal with?”
“I don’t know what the world you lived in was like, but in this one, there are vicious bastards who clean up battlefields after wars end.”
“And if those bastards are given permission, they’ll do anything.”
Sejin aimed his pistol at him.
“Which means dealing with one demon running rampant here right now probably won’t be that difficult.”
Then he pulled the trigger.
26.
The opponent knew nothing about the weapons of this world.
However, that fact did not become an advantage in the current fight.
Even if one did not know how a weapon was used, there was no problem if one dealt with the opponent before that weapon could be used.
“…Tch!”
“There were many things in this world that weren’t weapons used in the world I came from.”
“Even so, I won’t be done in by those weapons. Do you know why?”
“Because all you have to do is kill the user before they use it. Stop the user from being able to use it.”
“There are many who act that way, after all.”
“Correct.”
When Sejin pulled the trigger, all he had to do was use magic to deal with the bullet before it reached him.
In that manner, the opponent neutralized Sejin’s attack.
“You see, in my original world, I was a Demon King.”
“My current body isn’t the body I had back then, but it’s not so poor that I can’t make use of it.”
“Why would someone called a Demon King come to this world?”
“It doesn’t seem like you were simply transferred here.”
“I ran away.”
“The methods used by the one I was fighting were grotesque, you see.”
“Grotesque?”
“To kill me, Demon King Prutus, the king of a certain human nation summoned an otherworlder.”
“The summoned one had no real reason to fully comply with that king’s demands, yet he was desperate to kill the Demon King and his subordinates.”
“Truly desperate.”
Prutus sighed.
An otherworlder acting in order to kill him and his subordinates.
No matter how one looked at it, that was not normal.
The other party did not care about his assessment.
“Are humans originally like that?”
“No. No, they aren’t.”
“That was a method neither humans nor any other race would use.”
“That man was the sort of being who would use anything without hesitation, whether human or not, so long as it could be used.”
“Alive or dead, it didn’t matter as long as it could be put to use.”
“He made something called ‘biological bombs.’”
“I don’t know how he made them, but I didn’t go out of my way to find out.”
“Because I wasn’t some lunatic who would use them while knowing how they were made.”
Prutus spoke of the worst person he had ever faced.
Sejin knew of people similar to those in Prutus’s story.
“He sounds like Arma.”
“The ones you were talking about?”
“So… those dangerous people who will eventually come if things are delayed any longer?”
Prutus brushed himself off and looked far into the distance.
“What do you think the best decision is in the current situation?”
“At the very least, not wasting time like this.”
“But if you struggle, Arma will arrive even sooner.”
“I haven’t particularly struggled, though?”
“If you can say that even after considering your actions so far.”
“Is your goal my death?”
“No. My goal is to remove an unnecessary element from this battlefield.”
“And that unnecessary element means you.”
“However, even if that unnecessary element is removed, it does not necessarily have to mean your death.”
“All you need to do is move along quietly.”
Prutus looked at Sejin.
Then he looked at Lucia behind Sejin.
Prutus seemed to be thinking about something.
Once his thoughts were sorted, he looked at Sejin and smiled.
“Mm. I just had a good idea.”
“I doubt it’s a good answer.”
“Once this matter is settled, I’ll follow you.”
“But before that, I’d like to confirm something.”
“About you, and about the technology this world possesses.”
Prutus was moving with a smile.
Sejin sighed as he watched him.