After that, the course of events I expected was as follows.
1. Meet Bell and the others.
2. Greet one another with smiles, then either rest within the Holy Kingdom or move on to our next destination.
In the first place, the Holy Kingdom had called me here to investigate me,
so now that the investigation was over, I didn’t think there would be anything in particular left for me to do here.
But…
‘ I was wrong. ’
Why am I here right now?
***
This was how it started.
I did meet Bell.
What I’m about to say isn’t because I particularly want to go, “Williamliam, did you trick me…?”
It’s just that,
he was a bit lacking in his explanation.
“Evan!”
I met Veronica and the others and talked with them.
Whether they had been well. What had happened.
Those sorts of things were the main topics of conversation.
They said they had been conducting joint training with the Knights of Radiance until now.
When I heard what kind of training it was, it was a little different in nature from the training I’d been doing.
If I had been purely building up combat experience in one-on-one fights,
Bell and the others had been learning how to fight more organically as a team.
When I heard that, a question popped into my head.
‘ Are Bell and the other party members more experienced than me in one-on-one fights? They must be, so they didn’t get the same training as me, right? ’
So I asked William…
“No? The Hero’s party is at about the same level as you.”
???
“Then why only me…?”
“Ah, so that was what you were curious about.”
William made the kind of expression that looked like he should have a speech bubble saying, New! At long last! floating over his head,
and then said,
“Let us find that out from now on.”
And so…
I ended up here.
The brief meeting with the Hero’s party had just been something along the lines of, “You parted so suddenly, so go say hello.”
Our work in the Holy Kingdom hadn’t actually ended yet.
“Hoho… Instruction cannot end half-finished. Naturally, you must also build up real combat experience, no?”
William said that,
but in my opinion, because the Hero’s party kept getting into danger like a bunch of fragile ocean sunfish, the imperial family or the higher-ups had simply decided to attach guardians to us and let us grow safely.
Of course, this method had the limitation that it wouldn’t allow the Hero’s party to overcome adversity purely through their own power, nor would it explosively drive individual growth.
But things like that would probably be adjusted as much as possible by William and the other knights of the Holy Kingdom.
“To gain real combat experience, from now on, I need you to catch some demonfolk.”
Demonfolk (魔人).
Just hearing the name, they sounded like half-breeds between demons and humans,
but in reality, that wasn’t the case.
I had no idea what kind of mentality they had, but demonfolk was what people called those who revered and worshiped the demonic.
It wasn’t exactly a derogatory term, either. They went around calling themselves that.
You might think that, being called demonfolk, they did something grand,
but for now, compared to the name, they were a group that hadn’t really shown anything properly.
Massacring the residents of a rural village and carrying out some ritual whose effects no one knew,
or attacking a passing merchant caravan, that sort of thing…?
Of course, both were serious crimes,
but they hadn’t secretly brought monsters into the Empire, nor attacked important figures of the Empire.
They hadn’t summoned demons within the Empire, either.
They were ambiguous even to call demonfolk, and in truth, what they did had less to do with the demonic and was simply evil deeds—in other words, ordinary terrorists.
Then why hadn’t they all been rounded up until now?
You could say that if they were just an ordinary terrorist group, it would be better to send people out and wipe them cleanly away before some unknown variable occurred.
But as you can tell from the examples I just mentioned, compared to dungeons or other threats, the scale of damage they caused was pushed back in terms of priority,
and while they didn’t do anything particularly notable, their overall combat strength as a group was higher than expected.
Every single member used the dark arts.
They simply didn’t do anything major with that power.
Ah, the dark arts are also called black magic by the world at large.
The necromancy used by the Elder Lich I met before was one type of black magic.
A very long time ago, I once tried to explain the Black Tower, then said I would leave it for later.
The Black Tower is the place that studies and handles black magic.
It is a tower located somewhere different from the other towers, including the White Tower,
and surprisingly, its exact location has still not been identified.
According to rumors, its location constantly changes, or it is a tower built upside down through the underground, and so on. There’s a lot of talk about it.
Looking at things like this, you could understand its position as being, “Damn it, it bothers us, but they’re skilled enough that we can’t deal with them quickly, and it’s not exactly urgent for now, so we’ll look at it later.”
They were being left alone for now, but if even just the stories about the tower were true, technology on that level implied the possibility that there was at least a Master-level or higher powerhouse in the organization.
Some people still insisted that they had to be uprooted for certain right now.
Anyway,
seeing as the target for real combat wasn’t monsters inside a dungeon but demonfolk, it seemed the Holy Kingdom had identified the locations of some of these demonfolk.
‘ They use black magic, huh… ’
Personally, it would be a lie to say it didn’t bother me at all.
It bothered me quite a lot.
Of course, they must be taking me because I could win, but black magic was magic about which very little was known.
If it was a major branch of black magic like necromancy, I felt like I could respond to it, but they might use some strange kind of black magic.
‘ Enough. I’ll know once I experience it. ’
Conveniently, there wasn’t much time left before I faced them.
I didn’t know what kind of nerve they had, but they had made a base not far from the Holy Kingdom.
They probably thought, “It’s darkest under the lamp,” but the Holy Kingdom wasn’t such a sloppy organization that it wouldn’t check beneath the lamp.
A mountain near the Holy Kingdom.
Between cleverly hidden cracks in the rock, space was wavering.
Clear proof that the entrance had been concealed with magic.
I looked at it and ran all sorts of thoughts through my head.
Because I had to think about how to infiltrate that place.
On top of that, I had to consider the possibility of traps when entering that wavering space.
For example, things like being trapped inside an illusion formation if you didn’t enter in a specific way.
Or only being able to enter if you had a specific identification token.
There were more than one or two troublesome things if you got caught by them.
But…
‘ Is it really right for me to be doing this? ’
Since William brought me here…
wouldn’t he already know how to enter that place?
It wasn’t as if he would have come here without even figuring that out.
He was someone who said time was precious, after all.
“Um…”
Just as I was about to ask William a question.
—Boom!!!
Without a word, William fired aura toward the entrance.
—Rumble, rumble…
The barrier collapsed, making all my various worries seem pointless.
Well… this did solve the problem of entering,
but if he did this…
If he did this…
Uh…
“Won’t they all know intruders have entered? What are you going to do if they all run away…?”
At my question, William answered casually with a calm expression.
“Ah, there is no need to worry about that in particular.”
Oh…
As expected, you had a plan, Lord William.
Now then, what should I do?
“Go in.”
“Pardon?”
“This old man opened the path, so just turn off your brain and go in.”
???
You’re telling me to go in there when the demonfolk know intruders have come and have finished preparing for us…?
For real?
No matter how you look at it, those guys can use magic in their own way.
If a swordsman enters a mage’s workshop, isn’t that giving up every advantage a swordsman has?
Like I said before, the key is to keep closing the distance so they can’t use magic and pull the mage into your range…?
A-are they really that low-level?
“You are an important talent who must do many things in the future. The fastest way to raise such a talent is to throw him in first and see what happens.”
“Uh… that’s not wrong, but…”
Weren’t you people attached to us so we could grow safely?
“You said before that you were a mercenary, did you not?”
“I still think I am, in my own way…”
“The general perception of mercenaries is not particularly good, but among ordinary people, there is still an image of them as problem solvers.”
That was true…?
Errands, finding missing cats—if it was within reason, they accepted pretty much anything as a request.
“But you cannot be satisfied with that level. Are you not a mercenary belonging to the Hero’s party, no less? In that case, you must… hm… Ah! Yes! You must become something like an all-purpose problem solver who can resolve any situation.”
—Thump!
We had been looking down at them from relatively high ground,
and William pushed me in the back.
Then,
“Aaagh!”
I fell helplessly downward and ended up standing before the collapsed entrance.
And just then—
“We’ve found an intruder!!”
“Brethren, make that foolish commoner repent through death!!!”
I ran into the brave demonfolk who had come out to check what had happened outside.
Now I truly couldn’t back out.
If I backed out here, I would be confirmed as complete dead weight.
Why?
Because if I didn’t catch them now, they would all run far away, and when we came later, it would be hard even to grab them by the tail.
Then the efforts of the people who had gone through hell until now to find their location would become meaningless.
They were working hard with the belief that if they found the information for us, the rest of us would take care of it.
If we let these people get away, who would diligently search for information?
They would already have the negative thought that even if they found it, we would lose them anyway.
“Hah, fuck…”
‘ The mercenary has completely lost his mind. ’
I had been carefully looking for a way to eliminate the demonfolk, but I hadn’t really known what that method was.
Then, one clever old man came up with an incredible idea.
It was to just kill them all indiscriminately.
Fuck.
—Shing.
I had no choice but to draw my sword.
And then,
—Tap-tap-tap-tap!
“You who defy the natural order…”
Before the demonfolk could finish their incantations, I rushed in,
—Whoosh!
and separated a demonfolk’s head from his body.
“You bastard!!!!!!!!”
However, a few of them managed to avoid my sword and survive.
‘ Body reinforcement magic? ’
With ordinary body reinforcement magic, it would have been impossible for them to dodge my sword.
When I roughly checked with my senses, there was already that great a difference in level between us.
Which meant…
—Crumble…
‘ As expected. ’
After observing their bodies for a moment, I saw that they couldn’t withstand the body reinforcement they had cast on themselves and were slowly breaking down.
Normal magic did not allow for body reinforcement like that, so it seemed black magic had spells that granted explosive reinforcement effects in exchange for the user’s body in that manner.
But,
‘ Well, it’s not like I was swinging seriously, either. ’
I had been distributing my stamina appropriately to match the level of my opponents. It wasn’t as if I would get blocked by small fry like these.
If that were going to happen, I would have put down my sword long ago and gone back to Rotten.
And there, I would have gotten a job as a merchant caravan guard.
Even with my old skills, I probably would have gotten guaranteed employment until retirement and pretty good treatment, right?
‘ Hah, fuck… Looking at the situation now, I kind of want to see the future where that happened. ’
Of course, it was a joke.
Sigh.
This is just my lot in life.
Still, if I grew through this, then it was indeed something that would help the Hero’s party… especially Veronica.
‘ This is why women are dangerous. ’
I let out a sigh and began cutting down the demonfolk one by one.