I walked aimlessly, simply following behind the old man.
Where we were going no longer mattered all that much.
To explain why… sorry, but it’ll take a while.
Before I begin, since you might not remember, I’ll explain it once more and move on.
The place I had been in until just moments ago was Rotten.
Don’t get the wrong idea. I don’t mean Rotten, the large city I mentioned before.
All the lands managed by Marquis Rotten—people called all of that Rotten.
Apparently, it was easier for people to remember if they named the region after the biggest city there.
To distinguish between the two, you just have to tell from context whether it means the city or the region…
Anyway, back to the point.
Sereuteuham Rotten. He is a marquis.
The greatest role of a marquis is to defend the border.
Normally, you’d think that means defending the border from other countries, but Rotten is a little different.
Let’s roughly picture a rectangle.
You can imagine a lumpy rectangle that looks vaguely like a continent.
At the very top is the Astra Empire. Nearly 70% of the rectangle’s area is all territory of the Astra Empire.
Below it, various small and medium-sized nations fill the rest.
If you’ve followed me this far, then the “Map of the Lunia Continent,” named after the chief goddess Lunia, should be more or less complete in your head.
I don’t know exactly how you imagined it, but it would be good if you colored the outside of the continental map black.
Because from now on, that place will be called the Unexplored Zone, the Demon Realm.
The Demon Realm and black—an extremely fitting color combination.
Anyway.
Now that you should have some understanding of this world, I’ll properly introduce Rotten once more.
Rotten is located in the northern part of the Astra Empire and defends the Astra Empire’s border from the Demon Realm.
Here, “border” doesn’t just mean a line drawn on a map.
To prevent monsters from freely crossing over from the Demon Realm without any obstacles, the Astra Empire built a massive wall called Caliseo, backed by overwhelming technology and capital.
That wall is the border of the Astra Empire.
Now then, what’s the conclusion of this long-winded, boring, pedantic explanation?
I’m currently outside Caliseo.
The Demon Realm.
A land where no one lives.
A place surrounded on all sides by monsters, where there is no food to eat and not even water to drink. The goddess’s earth, which must once have been abundant.
After coming this far, does it really matter where I’m going?
I’m already fucked. If I get even more fucked, so be it.
Besides… it’s not like I’m here against my will.
One day ago, in other words, the day I followed this old man.
I persistently asked the old man our destination.
I told him everything else was fine, but I at least wanted to know where we were going.
Then the old man told me,
“We are going to the Demon Realm.”
I didn’t come here knowing nothing.
If I had wanted to go back then, I had more than enough chance to do so.
It’s not like I’d sworn to follow that old geezer even if it killed me. If I didn’t want to go, I could simply not go.
And yet, the reason I chose to follow that old man was surely… because of sights like this.
—Swoosh.
—Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwang!!!!!
***
“It’s a forest…”
A forest.
I’m not joking. It really was a forest.
Even though I had studied quite a bit about herbs and ecology as a mercenary, those were the only words I could use to describe this forest.
The reason I had studied those sorts of things was to survive.
Because of the nature of mercenary work, you get called all over the place.
And since we were treated half like meat shields and expendable goods, supplies were often poor, so we frequently had to fend for ourselves locally.
For a mercenary, herbs and ecology could be considered basic knowledge.
But the forest here didn’t match any of the knowledge I had learned during my life as a mercenary.
Here and there, there were trees that resembled ones I knew, but most had been so severely transformed by the influence of demonic energy that their original forms were unrecognizable.
The old man walked through this unknown place as if he were entering his own living room.
I followed behind him again.
“Whoa…”
I looked around every corner of the forest.
The forest of the Demon Realm was extremely alien, and for that reason, it was a place that kept drawing my eyes.
The mystery of the unknown stirred my sense of adventure quite strongly.
—Whisk. Whisk.
“Hm?”
Did I just see that wrong?
I thought something black passed overhead.
—Whisk. Whisk. Whisk.
No, I had seen it correctly.
An unidentified shadow was circling around the old man and me.
When I showed signs of growing somewhat wary, the old man opened that damned heavy mouth of his and explained those things to me.
“We used to call them ghost monkeys. Their forms cannot be seen, but their shadows can, so during the day they weren’t particularly noteworthy monsters. In dark places or at night, their danger level rises, so you need to be careful then.”
“!!!!!”
As I was listening intently to the unknown knowledge coming from the old man’s mouth, the things called ghost monkeys lunged at me.
“Ookki!”
“Ook-kik-ki!!”
The old man had said that during the day or in bright places, their shadows were easy to see, so their danger level was low, but,
for me, who still wasn’t used to predicting movement by looking not at their forms but at their shadows, they were quite troublesome opponents.
“Ah, damn it, seriously!!”
I dodged some attacks by moving my upper body, and those I couldn’t avoid with movement, I desperately knocked away with my sword.
After responding like that for quite a long time, I gradually began to get used to seeing their shadows.
If things had continued like that, I might have been able to kill all those monkeys.
Yes, if things had continued like that.
“Huh?”
The shadow of a ghost monkey suddenly grew a little thicker.
How much thicker, you ask… Right, it changed as if there were two ghost monkeys.
What I thought might have been my imagination became three, then four as time passed, and,
“Fuck me…”
Eventually, the entire area turned black.
I realized.
This pack of monkey bastards numbered at least over a hundred.
On top of that, they weren’t just numerous; they were also quite intelligent.
There were so many monkeys that the whole area had turned black, but instead of attacking all at once from every direction, they were thoroughly carrying out guerrilla tactics, with only a few striking and withdrawing.
The number of monkeys attacking and the directions they came from were all different.
If they had just rushed in all at once, I could have cut anywhere and scored a hit.
“Ghk.”
Small scratches were gradually appearing all over my body.
It wasn’t that they had no bodies, only that I couldn’t see them, so I had been blocking as much as possible by reading the flow of the air,
but it seemed my concentration had now reached its limit.
‘Why the hell isn’t even one of them going after that monster old man!! Are they discriminating between people or what!!!!!!!!!’
He had no sword.
He wore a hood, but even the monsters must know from what they could glimpse on the outside that he was an elderly old man.
And yet, the fact that they were only attacking me meant…
‘Do I look that easy to you?’
It pissed me off.
It was humiliating.
I never knew my own weakness could be this humiliating.
In my life until now, strength had never quite been my number one goal.
I started mercenary work because I liked helping others. If I had a martial goal, I would obviously have aimed to join the knights.
But in this moment, the strength I had put off was something I needed desperately.
Perhaps I had lived only in places that were too safe until now.
Perhaps, because I had only faced limited threats within that giant wall I had passed long ago, I had never obsessed over strength.
In truth, if you want to protect and help someone in any situation, you have to be stronger than anything else in the world.
If you aren’t strong, you can’t even protect yourself.
Only now did I truly realize that fact.
“Graaaaaah!!!!!!!”
Rage surged all the way to the top of my head.
I didn’t want to lose to them.
And I was disappointed in myself for having settled until now.
—Shiiik!!!
I swung my sword instinctively.
I swung, and swung, and swung again.
Like a lion driven into a corner making its final struggle, I clung on to the bitter end.
In the process, wounds that would likely become scars,
and red blood flowing from my body increased.
I didn’t know anymore.
Submerged in the adrenaline racing through my body, my consciousness gradually sank into a trance.
More efficiently,
so I could cut down those damn bastards a little more,
so I could feel them even if I didn’t chase them with my eyes, even if I couldn’t see them,
I focused my nerves, and focused again.
I controlled and restrained every movement of my muscles, pressing forward to satisfy the primal desire to take those bastards’ heads.
Then,
at some point, a dark-red energy was following alongside my sword.
—Whoosh!
Darker than the flames that had burned down the old village where I lived as a child,
more violently,
the energy thrashed wildly around my sword and cut down the monkey bastards.
As if a river were winding its course, my body rotated.
As I willed, as I desired.
The aura brutally annihilated the enemies before my eyes.
“Haa… haa…”
But that was as far as it went.
Although I had realized aura in a temporary state of awakening, these were different in nature from the monsters I usually faced.
My sword had grown sticky with their blood, and its edge was chipped here and there.
With a sword like this, I could no longer land an effective attack on the enemy.
“Kkik-kik.”
The monkeys’ gazes.
Their cries were so irritating.
It felt as if they were laughing at me.
As if they were condemning me, saying that no matter how much I struggled, I was nothing more than something fleeting that would shine for only a moment before disappearing.
‘If only I were a little stronger.’
Longing and regret filled my head.
I want to be strong. I want to be strong.
Though it was only for a short time, during that moment I probably yearned more earnestly than anyone in the world to become strong.
Just when I thought I would collapse like that.
At that very moment,
“Huh…?”
The old man drew aura from his fingertip.
Clear and dense.
Aura of the same dark-red color as mine.
—Swoosh.
The old man drew a line.
From left to right.
It was just an ordinary horizontal line.
And yet, who knew how many profound principles were contained within that simplicity.
—Kwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwa-gwak!!!!!
“Holy shit…”
I supported my body with my sword.
Even so, I did not take my eyes off the unreal sight unfolding before me.
I raised my head and engraved it in my mind until the very end.
“This is the realm you must reach.”
The dense forest.
The swarming monkey bastards.
With a single gesture from the old man, they were erased from the world.
What remained where the forest had once been were only the weeds that had long since bowed their heads to the old man,
and the stumps left behind by foolish trees that had failed to do so and kept their backs stiffly upright.