“Utter nonsense.”
In the past, that was what I would have thought.
Out of nowhere, he asks whether I’ll move forward, then starts talking about the path ahead of me.
So I answered the question for now.
Then, all of a sudden, he says he’s going to burn up magnificently and disappear.
Who could hear that and clap, going, “Wow! You’re going to burn up and vanish for me! Thank you! Thank you!”?
To “burn oneself” could mean giving one’s all in passion and effort, or sacrificing something one possesses to achieve something.
But disappearing meant exactly what the word implied.
Well, it was possible he had simply gotten excited and phrased it that way.
But the relief and satisfaction in the old man’s tone, and the presence that was gradually fading from him, gave me an ominous feeling.
Only five days.
The time I had spent with the old man was only five days.
Even so, the thought of him leaving did not feel good.
He was a rather strange old man, but a bond was still a bond.
There was no way sending someone off could be pleasant.
When you work as a mercenary, there are people you have no choice but to send off.
“Egil!!!!!! Damn it!!!!!!!!!!!!”
A comrade who had certainly been alive before the commission began,
A comrade who had laughed loud enough to make the mountains ring, saying we should make a bet over drinks once the job was over,
Had died because mercenaries had no value, because he had been sent into the jaws of death as a meat shield for reconnaissance without even proper safety measures.
After the battle ended, I sank to the ground and held him in my arms.
Back then, unlike now, rather than blaming my own incompetence and powerlessness, I blamed those damned nobles more.
If only we had been properly supplied. If only we had had enough antidotes and equipment.
I closed my eyes and had no choice but to let him go.
There was nothing I could do.
Everyone had known it was dangerous work when they began.
That we would be treated poorly, that supplies would be lacking.
Whether knight or mercenary, we were people who went out and fought on the same battlefield.
And yet the worth of our lives was clearly divided by rank.
They had become mercenaries despite knowing all of this.
Every moment was urgent.
There was no time to soothe their souls.
If we stopped walking then, even more people could die.
It was work where lives were regarded as less than ants, but even so, the only ones capable of doing what someone had to do were mercenaries like us.
And so I spent years sending off one person, then another.
At some point, I came to hate forming new bonds.
Because they might disappear someday. Because the familiar things I had grown used to might become something newly unfamiliar to me.
Sending people away was always something I hated.
***
I moved after the old man.
Then, in the distance, I saw a sight that should not have been possible.
‘A castle…?’
It was a castle.
Fundamentally, people did not live in the Demon Realm.
In other words, it made no sense for a castle with such a cleanly maintained exterior to exist in the Demon Realm.
The old man stopped for a moment and asked me a question.
“Tell me everything you know about the sword, and about realms.”
It was a sudden question, but I told him everything I knew for the time being.
That there were various principles to the sword, and that aura possessed various attributes.
That the realms went in the order of Runner -> User -> Expert -> Master -> Grand Master.
And besides that… this and that.
“Hm…”
After hearing everything I said, the old man gave a slight nod.
It seemed like a nod meaning he had grasped my level to some extent.
“There is much information missing about aura. Engrave this into your mind.”
Until now, the old man had never given me a teaching he emphasized to the point of telling me to engrave it into my mind.
He had given teachings as though mentioning them in passing, as though simply tossing them out.
Which meant that what he was about to say was a teaching not easily heard anywhere, one even a Master considered important.
I listened to the old man more intently than ever.
“Aura is, in other words, a world.”
Within you lies a world that is yours alone.
It is so for every person.
That was what the old man taught me.
“Aura is a world…”
I kept murmuring those words.
I carved them firmly into my mind so I would not forget them no matter what happened.
After finishing his teaching, the old man turned his back again and walked forward.
“The aura of the master of the castle you see now, in other words, the concept his world handles, is spacetime.”
“Spacetime…?”
“It means he can handle the concepts of time and space through aura.”
Time, and space.
Two concepts that all races, including humanity, had never perfectly conquered, and were said to be impossible to conquer even in the future.
A being capable of handling both concepts at once, concepts that sounded like fraud just by hearing of them.
Such a being could not be a mere monster.
Which meant…
“It’s a demon. And a fairly high-ranking one at that.”
“Yes. Among demons, it is one of those called demon archdukes.”
A demon archduke.
By the realms defined by humans, it was a monster one would need to be at the Master level to face.
The old man looked toward the top floor of the castle and spoke.
“Today, I will destroy that thing.”
He was saying he would kill such a monster.
The old man did not even hold a single cheap iron sword in his hand.
Even so, he seemed filled with confidence and certainty.
The old man’s voice did not tremble in the slightest, and his bearing was as calm as ever.
As if he were someone who had woken up early in the morning and was heading out for a walk to rouse his body.
***
According to the old man’s explanation, this castle originally could not be seen with the naked eye.
If, in the far future, humans advanced into the Demon Realm and passed by without knowing of the castle’s existence, heading deeper in,
Its role was to suddenly appear at the moment they felt most secure and had no leisure to watch their backs, then sweep them away.
I wondered how on earth the old man knew such things, but I did not ask him.
Because in this world, there were sometimes things that would hurt you if you knew them.
In any case, I was following behind the old man, drawing closer and closer to the castle.
“Ugh.”
The closer we got to the castle, the stronger the pressure bearing down on me became, even more than when I first stepped beyond the barrier.
“The closer you get to him, the more his world will try to crush and swallow you.”
The old man gave me advice.
“Reveal your rank. Emit your aura. Show that the world known as you is not so easy to look down on, that it is not a world that can be swallowed as if it had never existed from the start.”
After hearing the old man’s words, I immediately began circulating my aura.
It had not been long since I awakened my aura, so the amount I had was not that great.
Once I circulated my aura, it became much better, but the amount was small, and as my world was still feeble, I did not think I could maintain it for very long.
Still, the fortunate thing was that the old man had passed an aura cultivation method on to me.
As long as I could escape this damned Demon Realm, my aura would gradually increase.
It was not something I needed to worry over or grow impatient about simply because my current amount of aura was small.
After confirming that my condition had improved, the old man began walking again.
Just like that time when he had shown an overwhelming majesty that crushed the monsters down.
The old man freely released his aura.
‘What, if it’s this much…’
I slowly lowered the amount of aura I was circulating.
Because the old man’s aura was pushing away the demonic energy in its place, there was no need for me to waste what little aura I had from now on.
If a situation arose where I needed it, it would not be too late to circulate it again then.
When the old man entered within a certain distance of the castle, monsters crawled out from within.
‘Th-their presence…’
Even so, the monsters I had seen until now had been opponents I could cut down if I tried.
Their numbers were large, and their patterns and traits were troublesome, but they had been at a level I could somehow handle with the techniques I had learned within the old man’s larger design.
But these things that came out of the castle were different.
I was currently a lower-rank Sword Expert who could barely draw out aura.
But those things seemed to be disasters at least at mid-rank Expert… To defeat them reliably, one would need to bring an upper-rank Expert.
‘He can really defeat those things, and the demon archduke who should be at an even higher realm than them, even without a sword…?’
They were monsters dangerous enough to make even me, who knew the old man’s overwhelming martial might, feel slightly uneasy.
But the old man soon showed me clearly that my worries had been needless.
‘The old man’s presence…?’
The old man—he—was clearly revealing his own existence amid the wave of monsters.
It stood out more distinctly than any bearing or presence I had seen from the old man until now.
‘I will burn up magnificently and disappear for your sake!’
I had not expected the old man’s words to appear in this form,
But that statement was truly the perfect expression.
Right now, he truly looked worthy of the words burning up and disappearing.
The old man’s entire body wavered with dark red flames.
They were flames completely different from the holy fire said to be wielded by the Saintess of the Holy Kingdom.
Whether the old man’s aura or mine,
It was true that the aura seemed to take the form of flames.
But if asked whether those flames were closer to something sacred or ordinary, that was not the case.
It was a slightly unlucky thing to say, but… if I had to classify them, I thought they were closer to hellfire.
Hm…
Hellfire was a bit much.
Right, karmic fire.
Let’s call it karmic fire.
Within the fiercely blazing flames, the old man shaped a sword out of aura.
Holding the sword, the old man quietly gazed at the monsters swarming toward him.
He did not charge first or swing his sword rashly.
If the person standing before me had been an ordinary man, I would have thought he was frightened.
But even someone who did not know who the old man was would find it easy to realize, upon seeing his back now, that his waiting came from overwhelming confidence.
The monsters drew closer and closer.
Fifty steps.
Thirty steps.
Twenty steps.
Ten steps.
Five steps.
Just as the monsters’ attacks rushed toward the old man’s life,
—Fwoosh.
Before I knew it, the old man had passed through the wave of monsters and was standing beyond it.
The sword that had been in the old man’s right hand had, at some point, risen to his left shoulder and slanted downward as if to guard his torso.
As though he had achieved his purpose, the old man turned his wrist and flicked the sword down again from the upper left to the lower right.
When that series of movements ended,
The monsters all stopped in place at once.
And not long after,
—Fwooooosh!!!
The monsters’ bodies were instantly engulfed in blazing karmic fire, turning to ash and melting away.