Tespatium had collapsed to the floor and was writhing in agony.
Screaming, shrieking, its body was slowly disintegrating under the old man’s aura.
“H-how. A mere human dares to do this to me… I’ve never heard of an aura that can repel demonic energy so effectively. It is as if it exists solely to annihilate demons.”
The bastard kept muttering.
How. How.
It seemed unable to accept its own defeat.
I could understand that feeling perfectly well.
Of course, saying I understood a demon was, in itself, a fairly heretical thing to do, but,
I’m pretty sure everyone else besides me was thinking the same thing, too.
At this point, the old man had practically been playing with it.
He’d beaten the shit out of it one-sidedly.
The moment that demon caught the old man’s eye, its fate had already been decided.
Seeing how the old man beat it down as if he knew the guy all too well, I wondered if that might be the case and asked him about Tespatium’s abilities.
As expected, the old man already had a complete grasp of that bastard’s abilities.
“Do you know what a layer is?”
To summarize the old man’s explanation simply, it went like this.
First, it was true that the bastard could manipulate space-time.
But that ability was not free and unlimited.
For example, take what happened when I was flung away before entering the castle.
Let’s call the time when I walked with the old man to the castle gate A, and the time when I was standing atop the ashes of the monsters B.
A is still flowing.
Because it is the present.
But B is the past.
Something that has already stopped.
The past and the present cannot coexist.
Because stoppage and progression cannot exist at the same time.
That was why I hadn’t simply been moved, within the time frame called A, to the place where I had stood in the past.
I had been trapped in an entirely different time frame called B.
Tespatium had cleverly dug a detour to avoid the fact that the past and present cannot exist together.
Also, A and B basically cannot interfere with each other.
For example, if I moved while I had been shifted to B, the scenery around me would change based on the time frame of A, but if I tried to damage a tree that belonged to A, that would be impossible.
It was literally a layer.
On the timeline called A, only I had been peeled away into the layer called B.
They overlapped, but they could not interfere.
Then one might wonder what merit there was in the Demon Grand Duke sending me to the time frame called B.
After all, the Demon Grand Duke in A couldn’t attack me in B.
To state the conclusion first, if not for the old man, I would already be dead.
Because the place where I had been standing was the Demon Realm.
If I had stayed in the time frame called B for a long time, my aura would undoubtedly have dried up completely, and I would have been eroded by demonic energy just like that.
Also, ordinary people supposedly cannot return from B to A in the first place.
There are several methods one can use to return from B to A.
1. Waiting for the timeline to recover on its own.
The world has a law by which it tries to maintain the set timeline as much as possible.
Whether human or some other being, to forcibly twist the timeline, one needed the strength to overcome the world’s restorative power and completely separate A and B.
It was something like the principle that a great deal of force is needed to escape the influence of gravity.
In any case, most beings do not possess that level of power.
That was why the branched timeline B would eventually have no choice but to return to A someday through restorative power.
The problem was that no one knew how long it would take for that to happen.
If the Demon Grand Duke used as much power as possible to trap a specific being in the timeline called B, then it would take that much longer to be restored.
One might say I could just escape outside the Demon Realm within the timeline called B.
But the old man explained that Tespatium could keep stacking layer upon layer, like winding film, and force me to remain in one place.
For this reason, if not for the old man, I would have one hundred percent died without being able to do a thing.
2. Operating aura to gnaw away at Tespatium’s world.
This was the second method.
In the end, stacking space-time like layers was a power possessed by Tespatium’s demonic energy.
Therefore, by clashing energy against energy and offsetting Tespatium’s demonic energy, one could make it more vulnerable to the world’s restorative power.
Then one could return to the original timeline more quickly.
I had used method number two.
Because in the process of operating my aura to defend against the demonic energy, Tespatium’s demonic energy would naturally have been ground away.
But my aura probably wouldn’t have been all that threatening to a Demon Grand Duke with a realm above Master.
That was exactly why the old man had waited until I ran toward him.
Whether in timeline A or timeline B, as long as I could enter the range of his aura, his aura could tear Tespatium’s demonic energy to shreds and call me back to the original timeline, A.
Because before the old man’s aura, any timeline was nothing more than a meaningless concept.
Besides that, among Tespatium’s techniques were things like summoning objects from thin air or distorting space.
Apparently, when separating or combining the layers called A and B, something that happened on one side could temporarily affect the other side, or whatever.
In any case, it was too complicated, so it seemed best to omit any further explanation.
I hadn’t followed the old man because I particularly wanted to know the Demon Grand Duke’s abilities, either.
It was enough to just think, oh, so there are abilities like this, and move on. There was no need to go out of my way to understand them.
Of course, it was a story I didn’t particularly care about, but,
Even as Tespatium’s body disintegrated, it listened to the old man’s explanation with an expression of utter despair, like a shop owner whose trade secrets had all been revealed and who woke up one morning to find branches popping up everywhere that made the exact same flavor as his own store.
But weren’t demons beings that couldn’t fathom or understand human emotions?
Just how miserable did it feel after having all its abilities exposed by the old man and getting thrashed so brutally that it was feeling emotions like a human?
“Sigh.”
You’ve got it rough.
And so the Demon Grand Duke slowly turned to ash in vain and scattered into the air.
Whoosh.
The old man used his aura to completely burn away even the remaining ash.
It was an end unbefitting a Demon Grand Duke.
Rumble.
When Tespatium died, the castle shook violently.
As if an earthquake had struck, the pillars slowly began to collapse, and debris came falling down.
As though to accelerate the collapse, the old man gripped the Formless Sword in a reverse grip and drove it into the floor.
Then the castle began to quake even more violently than before, and within a few seconds, it vanished and was annihilated as if it had never been there.
“What the…”
When I voiced my doubt about what had just happened, the old man answered me rather kindly.
“It was already an ancient castle being held together by demonic energy. If that thing died, then it is only natural that the castle would collapse as well.”
The Formless Sword in the old man’s hand slowly disappeared from the tip.
Once again, the old man returned to his previous state, where his presence was faint.
No, maybe it had gotten even worse than before…
Now it had reached the point where I would momentarily be confused as to whether he was even in front of me.
“Are you trying to play hide-and-seek or something? Show a little more presence, will you?”
At my words, the old man chuckled and shook his head.
“Impossible. I am nearing my limit now.”
The old man hurriedly moved his feet.
“Follow me. There is no time.”
I followed the old man and walked again. And again. And again.
As we walked, I asked him many things.
Because for some reason, I had the feeling that he would answer me now.
Among the questions I asked, the one I was most curious about was this.
“With skill like that, why didn’t you go after the Demon King? Why did you kill a Demon Grand Duke?”
The old man, who had answered my other questions quickly unlike usual, maintained his silence for quite a long time this time.
After much thought, the old man gave me an answer of about this level.
“Because that was the extent of the contract I made, and the role I had taken on.”
Well, he was a man who usually answered that way anyway, so it didn’t particularly make me more curious or anything.
I guess this is why familiarity is scary.
Even abnormal things, if experienced for a long time and continuously, become something you take for granted.
Well… even setting aside the fact that I had gotten used to it, he had answered the other questions quite clearly, so I was satisfied with an answer of that much.
Examples of the other answers included things like these.
The many varied ecologies and troublesome aspects of the Demon Realm.
A rough explanation of the other Demon Grand Dukes.
And various other bits of basic knowledge.
They were all things necessary for living as a mercenary,
knowledge that even former mercenaries who had lived as mercenaries for a long time did not know,
and to me.
No, to most people, they were truly fascinating stories.
Of course, as if he had to maintain his concept of an old man who said things that made no sense, he would sometimes slip in and sell me things like how to make certain desserts, how to ignore the waiting line at a shop, royal etiquette, or knowledge about various flowers.
I just let it pass while thinking, oh, so this is what the mercenary uncles meant when they grumbled that old people talk a lot.
“It would not be bad for you to try learning magic.”
“Pardon?”
But I can’t just let this one pass.
Magic, all of a sudden?
Me?
Didn’t you definitely need talent to even start that?
Anyone could start with the sword, but magic was different.
It was a little easier to understand if one understood the difference between aura and mana.
Aura, in any case, began from the body.
What began from the body extended all the way to the sword.
That was why there were occasional cases where lightning came out of one’s aura and such, but even then, it was still connected to the sword and the body.
Magic, however, was different.
Magic could make mana float in empty air entirely on its own.
By the standards of a martial artist, that was a feat even a skilled Expert could not easily accomplish.
Like that, magic was simply the domain of pure talent.
“It may seem strange to you now, but you have talent. You will probably realize it soon enough.”
The old man seemed to think I had talent in that kind of magic.
Listening to the old man, I thought,
‘Bullshit.’
Whether or not one had talent for magic was usually all determined from the age of five.
There were rare cases where that was not so, but I was already far too old.
Even if my talent awakened now, it would surely be difficult to achieve greatness.
‘Still, for some reason…’
Why is it that, because the old man said it, it feels like I really might have talent?
It’ll really be fine even if I start now, right?
What if I try doing both for no reason and fail to reach greatness even with the sword I was good at?
“Whether you do it or not is your choice. But in my eyes, you certainly have talent.”
With those words as his last, the old man fell silent again.
Why, you little—seriously,
Do you have any idea how complicated my thoughts have become back here?
Just tell me to do it, or tell me not to.
Pick one of the two, will you…
It was a sigh. Nothing but a sigh.
Still, in a little while, I probably wouldn’t have to think about these headache-inducing things anymore.
Because this time, the old man had said he would truly teach me forms and things like that directly.
‘I’m coming for you, old man’s insanely awesome techniques!’
Like a child right before tearing open a birthday present prepared for a special day, I was incredibly excited.