"King Ruger was kind of strange, wasn't he?"
Kraiss said. Enkrid glanced at the big-eyed bastard sitting across from him in the carriage. He wondered what the man's angle was.
"There's no real reason for him to step up for something like fighting demons and wiping out the Demon lands, is there?"
Kraiss was right.
The small kingdom of Evergart was a small country. A nation with only one trade city and one small farming city.
And because of the existence called Bartolo, its Guardian Knight, it was also a peaceful nation inside.
'Not an isolated life, but a stable one.'
Even in Enkrid's eyes, the people living in Evergart were lucky.
Unless there were no dangers on the continent and no such thing as the Demon lands, there was no reason for them to give up their own peace and step forward when outside threats were this clear.
That was how it looked if one thought in ordinary ways, but Kraiss immediately refuted his own point. Most likely, this had been what he meant to talk about from the start.
"We can more or less tell why he's stepping forward now. That king saw tomorrow."
It was the sort of thing a pessimistic optimist would say.
In short, it meant this.
Ruger had judged that if he stayed satisfied with the present, he would be left behind by the changes that were coming. He had judged that of all the winds that had blown across the continent until now, the one blowing now was the strongest.
Even if they failed to wipe out all the Demon lands, the shape of the continent had already changed, starting with the Safe Road.
'One demon lord of the Demon lands was killed.'
Anyone who understood the meaning packed into that one sentence would naturally recognize the change it implied.
On top of that, Balrog had died too, and several bandit gangs and cult groups had been smashed apart and scattered.
It was not that thieves had vanished completely. There were still bastards around stealing and snatching things in petty ways.
And though few in number, remnants of the cults were still spread here and there, still causing trouble.
But they no longer had the strength to do whatever they pleased the way they once had. At this point, only scraps really remained.
With the destruction of the cults and the bandit gangs, and with Naurillia establishing relations with Aspen, its old enemy, Naurillia had reduced its enemies.
Most of all, the moment it won the recent war in the south, it became the conqueror of the central continent.
And because Crang worked for the continent's stability apart from the war, even people who knew nothing called him a great king.
He already had the title Unification King attached to him as a nickname.
And naturally, the fame of the Mad Order of Knights, the sword of that king, had risen high as well.
"They say Sir Enkrid steals a woman's soul just by being looked at?"
That kind of thing went around, and the phrase demonic knight spread.
"The barbarian who cuts throats the moment your eyes meet."
That was what they said about Rem.
The owner of the greatsword who swung it even while sleeping was Ragna.
And the apostle of the War God, born a bear beastman but turned human by spells, that was Audin.
"Hoho, the Lord wishes to see the one who came up with that nickname."
Audin had murmured that after hearing it.
Besides that, there were stories that he had hired the entire Dagger of Geor, the greatest assassin group on the continent, and about a beastwoman that smelled musty, a deserter who had left the Red Cloaks, an abandoned shepherd from the wasteland, a giant born of the War God, and so on.
You could tell by the quality of the nicknames, but many of those stories had started in Border Guard in the first place.
"But if you ask whether it's grown bigger than the Empire, then no, it hasn't."
Kraiss finished.
The Empire had unified the continent's currency and language through war. That sounded simple, but it was hard even to imagine how such a thing had been possible.
King Ruger would not have been ignorant of the Empire. Even so, he had stepped outside his safe fence.
Putting aside the threat of the Empire and the existence of the Demon lands and demons, if not now, there would never be a moment for him to step forward.
So—
"I suppose you could call it one step to avoid being left behind."
If things stayed as they were, Evergart would be buried in history and disappear. Knowing that, the trade city had already established ties with Border Guard, and the direction of how the city was run had changed to one that leaned on Naurillia.
"Of course, I know that king didn't look like that calculating of a man."
Just as Enkrid was about to say something, Kraiss cut in first. Somehow that looked irritating. The bastard was really hard to beat in an argument.
He knew how to break the flow of a conversation and drag the situation where he wanted it.
And Enkrid understood the real reason Kraiss was bringing this up now too. Before speaking of hope, he wanted to burn away the leftovers of fear still clinging inside him.
"For that reason, if the ministers of Evergart have any sense, they won't oppose King Ruger's decision either."
"You don't like King Ruger's complaint?"
Enkrid asked as if matching his rhythm. The carriage went thunk and shook after rolling over a stone, but as Leona had promised, it did not toss his ass off the seat. The shock-absorbing device installed on the carriage was working properly. Apparently it had been made by bending in highly elastic metal and layering leather over it.
"No. It's a good thing. But how should I put it? It's like standing at the edge of a cliff and hoping the wind won't blow."
One wrong step and you fell. People did not have wings. So if you fell, you died. That was the end.
Kraiss's anxiety had grown larger than before. That was why he was going on at such length now with useless things they both already knew.
"We'll win, right? We are going to win, right?"
Kraiss asked as he opened the side window attached to the carriage. The sound of hoofbeats—clop-clop-clop-clop—was not especially fast. Wind came through the window. A faint dust rose over the stone road of the Safe Road, but it did not blow in. The carriage only moved at a moderate pace, not very fast.
"What do you think?"
Enkrid asked back. Kraiss turned his gaze from staring blankly out the window and looked back at Enkrid, blinking those big eyes before he said,
"We have to."
Yeah. We do.
You goddamned pessimistic optimist, that's obvious.
"We will."
Kraiss heard the answer he wanted and nodded. The arrival of the Empire's envoy in the capital had been the start of this conversation. Whatever they wanted, this was a chance to measure the Empire.
So this was the time to keep their heads straight.
They could not shake off every bit of their anxiety, but this was the process of letting some of it go and putting their faith in something.
Enkrid spoke, then turned his eyes out the window. His eyes met Esther's as she rode out on horseback, claiming the carriage felt suffocating.
"Do you need a witch's advice?"
"No."
Enkrid shook his head, then said again,
"I'm going to fight until I win."
In one sense, it was a stupid and very simple thing to say, but there was not the slightest doubt in the resolve carried by those words. Enkrid would do as he always did, and he would move forward as he believed.
His determination and will had not faded in the slightest.
"We have a guest."
Esther said from atop her jet-black horse.
When she pointed ahead, they saw a squelching shadow. There was no other way to describe its texture or shape.
It was a shadow risen from the ground. It looked as though someone had mixed mud into it. A crack formed at its center and split open, exposing pale skin. Starting with fingers, an arm emerged.
Kraiss stuck his head out the window, and the coachman—who was also a Border Guard soldier riding beside Rem—tilted his head, then calmly slowed the carriage.
A pale hand came out from between the shadows, and then its mouth opened.
"Convey m—"
Thwack!
It did not get to finish speaking. An axe flew in, splitting through the hand that had been emerging and cutting through the flesh inside the shell of shadow.
Rem pulled a trick from the driver's seat. He stuck only his right leg outside, leaned half his body over, drew his right arm all the way back, then snapped it forward.
When Rem jumped down from the driver's seat and raised his left hand, the disk that had sliced apart the monster blocking the road made a wide circle overhead and landed in his hand.
Smack.
Catching the throwing axe lightly, Rem asked,
"What are you?"
By then, Enkrid had already gotten out of the carriage as well. Listening to Rem, he thought,
Didn't people usually ask that before they started fighting?
Well, if it was clear the thing was an enemy, then this was not bad either.
The chunks of flesh torn apart in every direction, mixed with black blood, wriggled and gathered back into the shadow.
"So you collapsed the boundary between the surface world and the inner world."
At some point Esther had gotten down from her horse and walked to within five steps of the shadow monster.
She quietly observed it with her lake blue eyes. Danger? Nothing like that existed. Esther had room to spare.
"I am Su—"
The monster inside the shadow stretched out its pale-skinned arm again, trying to assert its intent. A voice leaked out from the split opening.
Boom!
Esther crushed it with a gesture before it.
Enkrid recognized that Esther had just compressed the wind and used it like a rock.
"Oh."
Rem let out an admiring sound.
After crushing the monster with wind pressure like that, Esther said casually,
"So it doesn't die. What a strange spell."
It was clearly some kind of sorcery, but it hard to grasp at a glance. Her blue eyes filled with light. Curiosity raised its head.
For her, digging into a spell was exploration into the unknown. Learning something new was simply too enjoyable. That was why she was reacting like this.
Kraiss and the coachman soldier just watched.
"Thi—"
Another voice came out from between the mass of shadows. It was the moment a head suddenly thrust out between pale lines. Enkrid, who had approached without anyone noticing, softly drew his sword in a slant right in front of the monster.
Slice.
The lightly swung sword cut through the shadow mass itself. The blue light of the Will on the blade left an afterimage.
Between the severed shadows, black blood and lumps spilled out. An arm and part of a torso with pale skin, black organs and the like, scattered across the ground.
"…I came to offer help, you idiots. Come find me before you wage war. I'll be waiting in the Demon lands."
The pure white monster muttered with only its mouth still alive. The shape of a muzzle that had flowed out from between the shadows muttered those words, then vanished while scattering dull white ash. In the end, the monster left behind only a little white ash.
"Bone Head."
Esther summoned a Flash Golem and scraped up the traces the monster had left with her finger. She looked at it closely, then said,
"It's a kind of summoning spell. It was prepared in advance and laid down here."
The spell itself was not complicated, but—
"Does that mean it knew we were heading this way?"
Kraiss asked. His brow narrowed. It was the expression he wore whenever something happened that displeased him.
"So because it's a demon, it knew we were coming and waited for us?"
The coachman soldier muttered.
"You think that's it?"
Rem took that remark at once.
No one here was stupid. Rem had caught the point of the question Kraiss had thrown out with his brow furrowed.
"That's right. It wasn't prepared for long. At most a day or two. It isn't the kind of spell that lasts longer than that."
Esther finished. Kraiss clicked his tongue lightly and turned to Enkrid.
"There's no chance I can just go back to Border Guard alone, right?"
"Yeah, no."
Enkrid answered immediately. Just as Rem had caught on, Enkrid had too.
'Spell, two days, ambush.'
More exactly, it seemed less like an ambush and more like it had come to deliver a message, but Enkrid saw those as the same thing. The conclusion was this.
'Someone found out the route we were taking and even passed along the timing.'
There was no need to ask who owned that summoning spell. It belonged to a demon.
And judging from the message, it sounded like another pathetic trick.
"It was a letter stamped with a seal, and the arrival of the Imperial envoy was something only those in the know were aware of."
Kraiss said.
Were demons omniscient and omnipotent?
The answer was no.
If Esther was right, they were merely beings thrashing about in hopes of ascending, becoming gods.
"If it didn't know in advance and prepare, then there's only one conclusion."
Kraiss said it again and looked at Enkrid.
"Because it's a demon after all?"
The coachman said from the side—in other words, the Border Guard soldier who found thinking bothersome.
"Someone told it. Just because it's a demon doesn't mean it knows everything."
Enkrid answered, breaking the soldier's prejudice too.
He did not know exactly what demons were capable of, but one thing was certain: if you feared or worshiped them blindly, you could not deal with them.
"I see," the soldier answered, then nodded. The amusing thing was that the soldier had not gone pale with fear. Even so, his face still looked dazed.
"We'll know when we get there."
Rem said. That was the right answer. Esther said she was sick of riding horseback and climbed into the carriage, and this time Enkrid mounted a horse.
They sent the coachman soldier back with one of the horses.
Then before even another half day had passed, a goat with its whole body stained pitch-black and red eyes blocked the way ahead.
"I am Go—"
Just because it could talk did not mean there was any reason to listen to it.
Slice.
Enkrid jumped down from the horse while charging forward and split the thing vertically just like that. The goat monster, whose tongue had turned into a serpent and had been lashing through the air, did not get to continue speaking. This one did not leave behind white soot.
It died like an ordinary monster, scattering guts and flesh and leaving a corpse.
"This seems like a different demon too."
Kraiss said it while sitting in the driver's seat. If you looked at the situation before and after, there was something to be learned from it.
Just as before, it seemed this too was another demon, another lord of the Demon lands, trying to court Enkrid.
Caw—!
High overhead, a crow cried noisily.