Standing next to me, she held her own hand up to inspect it. Seeing Amelia bleeding normally would have made me sick to my stomach, yet for whatever reason, it felt oddly comforting tonight. Suddenly, Crow’s heart-wrenching voice rang through my ears.

“The thing that terrifies me more than anything else in the world…is when I try to reach out for something and my fingers touch nothing.”

Perhaps I wouldn’t always be able to reach out and grab hold of Amelia whenever I wanted to. Given how powerful the demons were, there was a very real chance she and I could have both died down there if Crow hadn’t shown up when he did. But so long as we both had these scars around our fingers, she and I would be bound for eternity.

“Amelia, I’d break every bone in my body for you, if that’s what you wanted. I’ll happily wear any scars you see fit to adorn me with. But in exchange, I want you to tell me everything. Anytime you want me to do something, or anytime something’s bothering you, you come and tell me. I’ll do whatever’s in my power to make things right.”

I knelt down and planted a kiss on the back of her left hand. Then, realizing I was probably making a giant fool of myself, I looked up to see her cheeks flushed bright red, before she placed her hands on my cheeks.

“All right. Then I want you to promise me something too. Promise you’ll never forget me, never go anywhere without me, never die and leave me behind, and never, ever look at anyone else but me.”

I stood up and wrapped Amelia in my arms; her tiny frame fit perfectly. “Your wish is my command, my dear. And I’ll do whatever I can to grant it.”

The “never go anywhere without me” part was probably a bit unrealistic, but I felt confident I could safely commit to the rest. I certainly had no intention of dying on her, or forgetting her, or being unfaithful to her.

Cradled in my arms, Amelia smiled, truly content. It was the first time I’d seen her smile like she meant it since the incident down in the labyrinth. It was the sort of smile she only used when she was alone with me and Night—not the fake one she gave to outsiders just to be polite.

I still wanted to go home to Japan, my mom, and my sister someday. But right here, in this moment, there was nothing I wanted more than to hold on tight to that smile.

 

POV: ASAHINA KYOUSUKE

 

THE ROOM CROW had so kindly let us borrow was the largest in the house, and the seven of us were all currently spread out across it, trying to relax. I stood near the door with my back against the wall and my arms folded.

Princess Amelia had instructed us to come to an agreement as a group on what we wanted to do going forward, yet no one was saying a word. Usually, it was Satou who tried to lead discussions, but he hadn’t said a word since we left the other room. Even Waki and Ueno, the two members who could generally be counted on to kick up a fuss, were silent. Nanase and Tsuda both looked awfully restless, while Hosoyama seemed cool as ever.

I closed my eyes and tried to go over the whole situation in my head. It was safe to assume that Akira’s ultimate objective was the same as ours: to return to Japan. If anything, he probably felt more anxious to make it home than the rest of us, as he had to take care of his mother and sister. So why was he moving separately? Perhaps it was simply that he had a different idea about the best way to achieve that goal, but as I understood it, the only way to return home after being summoned to another world was to slay the final boss—though I was by no means an expert on the genre, having only heard bits and pieces secondhand about the novels Akira loved to read.

Hang on. Could it be…?

My eyes shot wide open, and Tsuda, who’d been standing directly across from me, jumped in shock. I turned my eyes to look at Satou, who was staring pensively at the floor. “Tell me something, Satou… Do you have any intention of trying to slay the Demon Lord?”

Everyone looked at me as I broke the silence, then over to Satou in anticipation of his response. The boy scrunched up his handsome face like he was pouting and shook his head. This was a grave sign indeed.

If there was one thing the knights back in Retice drilled into our heads each day during training, it was that the Demon Lord could be slain only by the hero with the sacred blade and the Holy Sword Extra Skill, and right now, that hero was Satou. As long as we met those requirements, defeating him would be a piece of cake. Our job as the hero’s companions was to see him safely to the Demon Lord’s lair, but if the hero had no will or desire to slay the Demon Lord, then there was nothing anyone could do.

“Sorry, guys, but I really don’t see a need to go and slay the Demon Lord right now,” Satou said.

In fairness, he had a point. The Demon Lord had yet to show himself in any recognizable way since we’d been summoned from Earth, and only Akira’s team claimed to have seen demons firsthand. We couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that the incident with the monsters flooding out of the labyrinth in Ur was nothing more than an accident. My Intuition skill begged to differ, but that didn’t count as hard evidence.

“Th-then how are we supposed to make it back home to Japan, huh?!” cried Waki.

This was perhaps the primary counterargument. Up until then, we’d all believed slaying the Demon Lord was our one and only ticket back home, and it was what we’d been working toward ever since our arrival.

“Whaddya mean, ya don’t see a need? Weren’t you the one who got us all gussied up to go and take ’im out in the first place?” Ueno asked.

She was right. Satou was the one who’d made a rousing speech to that effect. But that was back when we all still believed the royal family of Retice had our best interests in mind. They told us the Demon Lord was committing acts of tyranny and terror all across this world, and that we were the only ones with the power to stop him.

“Look, I don’t have all the answers, okay?” Satou responded. “All I know is the one who told us the Demon Lord’s the root of all evil was the same guy who used his daughter to place curses on all of us. And from what I’ve seen, none of the people in any of the towns we’ve been to since seem like they’re oppressed or under threat from any demons at the moment.”

Ueno and Waki looked at each other, their eyes wide, as they realized the truth of what was being said. It was true; the places we’d seen were all bustling with life and prosperity. Even in the eastern nation of Yamato, which was the closest point on the continent to the demons’ domain, none of the citizenry seemed even slightly fazed by the supposed threat of a demon invasion. Nanase and Tsuda simply looked pensive, perhaps fearing the worst for the classmates we’d left back at the castle in Retice.

“Um, are we all forgetting that Oda literally just got seriously injured by the demons?” asked Hosoyama, raising her hand. “Do we think he’s lying about that, or does that not constitute a serious threat?”

I squinted, feeling skeptical. Her words were clearly those of someone who felt we should take Akira’s side on this issue, yet I couldn’t tell whether she had come to that conclusion independently or was merely giving her classmate the benefit of the doubt. I always had a hard time reading her; she wasn’t easy to read like Waki or Ueno.

“Yeah, and you know what else? Akira’s stronger than I am,” Satou jumped in. “Probably has been since we were summoned to this world, now that I think about it. Even with all our powers combined, we probably couldn’t hold a candle to him. So if he’s right, and these demons really are so evil and terrifying that even he barely survived one encounter with them, then the rest of us don’t have a chance in hell against them, let alone the Demon Lord. As it stands now, we’re barely stronger than the average warrior in this world.”

That was the first time I’d ever heard Satou admit something like that. He was always so self-assured and seemed to despise showing any signs of weakness or vulnerability. Nanase, too, looked like he could hardly believe the words coming out of the hero’s mouth.

“Look, I wanna go home just as badly as you guys do,” Satou continued, “and I promise you Akira does too. But he doesn’t seem to think slaying the Demon Lord is an urgent priority right now. Have you considered that maybe it’s because he knows none of us stand a chance of winning?”

A wise deduction, perhaps. Were this a video game or a fantasy novel, the heroes would likely make a valiant stand against the Demon Lord, be promptly overwhelmed by his power, then spend a long time building up their strength so they could defeat him the next time. But this was real life, unfortunately, and in real life there were no extra lives or convenient plot devices. If we faced the Demon Lord now, he would slaughter us all without mercy.

“I can tell you guys with 100 percent confidence that Akira is probably more determined than any of us to make it home to Japan, and he probably also knows better than any of us exactly what it’s gonna take to accomplish that. Which is why I suggested we tag along with him to provide support,” Satou finished, and everyone nodded to show their understanding.

“Gotcha. Was that your reasoning too, Kyousuke?” asked Nanase, turning toward me, the only other person on board with the idea initially.

“No, nothing like that. I simply wanted to support him however I could, as a friend. Though I admit I’d only drag him down at my current level,” I replied. By now, Akira had grown far stronger than I could have imagined. If we traveled together, it would always be him protecting me, not the other way around. I was incapable of standing beside him on the battlefield. I hadn’t witnessed his strength firsthand, mind you, but I could tell from a single glance the kinds of ordeals he’d been through.

“Well, I still don’t trust ’im, for the record. I mean, it was his dang dagger in Saran’s heart, for cryin’ out loud! Maybe if he treated us like actual freakin’ companions before that, I’d give ’im the benefit of the doubt, but no, he was always runnin’ off doin’ shady stuff all by his lonesome!” grumbled Ueno, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall.

“Didn’t we already go over this? We all agreed Akira didn’t kill the commander.”

After our group left the castle, we held our first team strategy meeting in order to verify we were all free from the effects of the curse and set some ground rules. It was then that we all agreed—based on Akira’s reaction to seeing Saran’s blood-soaked corpse and the evil words that Satou allegedly overheard from the princess—that there was no way Akira could have killed him.

Ueno, clearly incensed, gripped at her hair in frustration. “I ain’t sayin’ he did! All I’m sayin’ is that he’s been actin’ awful fishy ever since we got here, so we shouldn’t just take his word as law!” she asserted.

I cocked my head, puzzled. Had she expected Akira’s core personality to suddenly change because we’d been summoned to another world? He was always the loner looking at the rest of the class from afar, rolling his eyes as if we were all a bunch of fools and he was the only one who could see it. The only two classmates who ever attempted to interact with him were myself and Nanase.

“Yeah, I’ve gotta agree with Ueno here,” said Waki. “If he wasn’t wandering around behind our backs from the get-go, none of us would have suspected him in the first place. Well, other than Ryuusuke, maybe, but everyone knows those two have got beef.”

The boy Waki was referring to was Oka Ryuusuke—one of his fellow soccer team members and our class’s resident “life of the party.” The tall, relatively handsome Oka had been going out of his way to taunt and badmouth Akira ever since the spring of our freshman year. I wasn’t sure what the impetus for their antagonistic relationship was, but he was almost assuredly to blame for Akira having become even more reclusive in recent years. I asked Akira once if he’d ever said anything that might have offended Oka, and he didn’t even know who I was referring to. This was fairly typical; he only reserved room in his brain for the things he cared about. I was sure he didn’t remember Nanase’s name either, despite them ostensibly being friends. Now that I thought about it, I remembered seeing Waki join in on Oka’s Akira-bashing on a few occasions.

“I mean, yeah, we all know Akira’s a lone wolf, to put it nicely.” Nanase sighed. “Or, to put it not so nicely, he’s a stubborn stick in the mud who’s never willing to cooperate on any terms but his own. But that’s just who he is.”

I nodded in agreement, deciding to let Waki’s comment go. Instead, I turned to Tsuda, who was hunched over in a corner, trying to be as invisible as possible.

“Any thoughts about all of this, Tsuda?” I asked.

He shot up, clearly shaken by my sudden address. This was the norm with him, and I had a hunch he didn’t feel totally comfortable speaking with me. We were both members of the school’s kendo team, but I was its captain. He probably felt like a bit of an outsider as well, having only taken up kendo in high school, and thus lacking the more chiseled body of a longtime member. His form was unassuming and almost feminine, and I could understand why he might be intimidated by me.

“Oh, um, w-well…I haven’t really had many chances to interact with Oda myself, so I’m not a good judge of his character, but if you think he’s trustworthy, Asahina, then I’m willing to have faith in him.”

I couldn’t help but blink. He was willing to trust Akira simply because I trusted him? That would imply that Tsuda respected me far more than I would have guessed. And here I thought the boy was terrified of me. Just goes to show how bad I am at reading other people, I suppose.

“What’s your vote, Hosoyama? It’s three against two now,” I said, turning back to her. While Nanase hadn’t given his vote yet, I was fairly certain he’d be on the pro-Akira side, which would make it four against two.

“If we want to join up with Oda, I’m totally fine with that,” she said with an almost motherly smile. “Though we’d still need to get Princess Amelia’s permission, which is another story entirely.”

For whatever reason, that smile of hers gave me goosebumps. I couldn’t suss out her intentions, and that made me anxious.

“Well, we don’t even need to ask for Nanase’s vote, then, because we already have the majority,” Satou concluded. “So, Waki and Ueno, what’s it gonna be?”

We’d come this far as a team, but that didn’t mean we had to stay together going forward. It had benefited us to stick together at first, since we had a common goal and were all equally unfamiliar with the world of Morrigan, but we were about to venture into far more dangerous territory, and it sounded like Satou was giving those who wanted it the chance to leave. Akira certainly wouldn’t care who tagged along.

The two dissenters exchanged glances with one another, before letting out deep sighs of mutual resignation.

“Yeah, had a feeling that’s what you guys would decide,” said Waki.

“Well, I s’pose me not bein’ Oda’s biggest fan is my own personal problem. If that’s what y’all have decided, I’ll go with the flow,” Ueno said.

This was good news. While they were both free to do as they pleased, losing them would have greatly upset our party’s balance and fighting style. I wasn’t especially worried; it wasn’t as though they had anywhere else to go. Satou, however, breathed a sigh of relief.

“Cool, then it sounds like we just need to convince the princess now,” said Nanase.

I nodded. We didn’t know the first thing about Princess Amelia, but chances were she’d be a much harder nut to crack than Waki and Ueno. She was the single greatest obstacle between us and our end goal.

“Well, I guess we probably have until they depart from the beastfolk domain to convince them, right? And it sounds like Akira and his familiar are both going to need plenty of time to recuperate from their run-in with the demons.”

It wasn’t as though we didn’t have time to sort things out, but we couldn’t afford to rest on our laurels either.

“Hey, speaking of R&R, I heard there’s gonna be a big festival in Uruk pretty soon,” Waki said, suddenly changing the subject. “Heard about it from some of the girls on the boat ride over here.”

For a bit of context: the stray cats of this world were far less friendly and much more cautious than those back in Japan, but an animal trainer like Waki could befriend them immediately, at which point they turned into the most affectionate cats one could ever meet. It was for this reason that Waki (or more specifically, his cats) often enjoyed attention from the ladies of this world. A swarm of them had surrounded him for the duration of the boat ride from Kantinen to Brute, all looking for a chance to pet his cats.

“A festival, eh? That would make for a nice change of pace. Maybe we should see if they’re interested in checking it out?” suggested Satou, and the two girls of the group immediately lit up. I fully expected Hosoyama to be all over the idea of a festival, but apparently Ueno was too.

“But what kinda festival is it, do ya reckon?” Ueno asked Waki.

“Dunno. All they said was that it’s the perfect chance for young women to strut their stuff.”

That almost makes it sound like a fashion show of some sort, I thought to myself.

“What the heck does that mean…?” muttered Nanase. “And do we even know what the average ‘festival’ in this world entails?”

It was a fair question, to be sure. While to us Japanese, the word festival conjured up images of yukatas and fireworks and food stands, in some other countries, they were more like parades.

“H-hey, um, now that you mention it, I think I heard some of the older guys at the Adventurer’s Guild talking about that,” Tsuda chimed in hesitantly.

Likely due to his rather feminine appearance, Tsuda was frequently approached by other adventurers whenever we visited the Guild…or more specifically, the retired old men who still hung out at the Guild would try to pamper him with attention and drinks, which would draw the attention of the younger adventurers as well, and…well, you get the idea. I wasn’t quite sure how it happened or when it started, but I was fairly certain that if anything were to happen to Tsuda, every adventurer in Ur would rush to his aid.

“They told me there’s an annual contest there to determine who the most beautiful man and woman are across all races, and that it’s being held in Uruk this year,” Tsuda continued.

Aha. So it’s like something of a Miss Universe competition, then. I had to wonder if those sorts of things were an inevitability in every world, or if people summoned from ours had introduced the concept. At the very least, it seemed the desire to crown a champion in any field was a universal constant.

“And while they said there’s both a guys’ competition and a girls’ one, the girls’ one is by far the most popular. O-oh, and, uh…” Tsuda trailed off, his face turning suddenly pale.

“And what?” asked Nanase.

“Well, a-apparently the winners always go missing each year, and rumor has it their organs get sold on the black market…”

Organ trafficking? Such a thing was completely unheard of back in Japan, and the very thought of such a gruesome crime being commonplace only served to drive home how different this world really was.

“Why only the winners, though?” asked Hosoyama as she rubbed Tsuda’s back to calm him down.

It was a good question. A beautiful woman’s organs would be indiscernible from a plain woman’s, no?

“Uh, well, the guys at the Guild said that organs from young and beautiful people sell for obscenely high prices on the black market, for whatever reason,” Tsuda answered.

There was no such thing as a police force in this world. Back in Yamato, there was a faux-Shinsengumi band of neighborhood watchmen devoted to maintaining public order, but even that was a group of volunteers not officially affiliated with the local government. The governments of this world would take action if their sovereignty were ever put in danger, but they didn’t do much when it came to things like thefts, murders, and abductions. This lawlessness was a bit more understandable in a world full of monsters that seemed to constantly be at war, but one would think they could at least do something about the rampant crime. There were plenty of assassination and revenge requests posted at the Adventurer’s Guild, though most adventurers wouldn’t dare take on that sort of work. Cold-blooded murder was still pretty taboo in this world, and few wanted to bloody their own hands on someone else’s behalf. Not unless they were in desperate need of money, at the very least.

“What would you have us do, Satou?” I asked.

He took his time in answering me; it seemed like there was something about this particular subject he was trying to mull over very carefully. When he answered, it was with measured words. “You said the festival’s being held in Uruk, correct? You don’t think that villain Akira and Crow were talking about might be involved, do you? Gram, was it?”

Right, the guildmaster of the Uruk branch, and the man Crow’s been trying to get revenge against for the past hundred years.

“Gee, I wonder,” Hosoyama joked despondently. Indeed, one would think a man with such a laundry list of criminal activity would be bound to dip his toes in organ trafficking sooner or later.

“Well, whether it’s him or not, it’s still not okay,” Waki added, and Satou nodded in agreement.

“We might not be in a position to judge how big a threat the demons and monsters pose to us right now, but we are in a position to judge that no one has the right to sell off another person’s body. If it turns out this Gram guy is involved, then Crow will probably want in, and if Crow’s in, that means Akira probably will be too… Don’t get me wrong, the festival sounds fun, but this also sounds like the perfect opportunity for us to catch whoever’s behind these crimes and prove to Akira and Princess Amelia beyond a shadow of a doubt that we’re companions who know how to get stuff done.”

With this final decree from Satou, our next course of action was decided.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

“A FESTIVAL?! Are you out of your minds?!”

I couldn’t help sounding hysterical. I was so taken aback by the statement that I accidentally knocked over the water bucket I was using to wash my face. I knew the hero and his party had been talking things over last night while I was out in the forest with Amelia, because the light in the room assigned to them was on even after we got home. But I never would have expected them to invite us to a festival first thing the next morning.

Kyousuke, who’d floated the idea to me, picked up the bucket I’d knocked over and started refilling it. “No, we’re quite sane. It’s being held over in Uruk, and it’s quite famous from what we hear. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to take a look?” he said, wearing his best poker face.

I took the bucket back from him and furrowed my brow. “Uruk, huh?”

That was where the man we suspected had summoned the demons was residing—the same demons who had tried to kidnap Amelia. I did still want to pay him back for that. At the very least, I wanted to make him wish he’d never been born. I leaned over the bucket and splashed some water on my face, which helped to wake up my still-drowsy brain.

“You and Night are both well enough to travel, but not well enough to fight, right? Obviously, training is important, but why not take a load off every once in a while?”

I mulled over Kyousuke’s suggestion. I had no idea what the festivals in this world were like, but I had no doubt they’d be perfectly enjoyable. And if they were anything like Japan’s festivals, then there’d be plenty of yummy food, which I knew Amelia would love. The only thing concerning me was whether Kyousuke had some ulterior motive for this recreational detour.

“What are you scheming?” I asked as I dried my face with my sleeve. He couldn’t possibly know about Amelia’s legendary appetite, so he clearly wasn’t trying to win her over with festival food. Was there something else about this festival making him so determined to go? I looked at him quizzically and he simply chuckled.

“I think you’re being a bit too suspicious. Not that I blame you, given that you just nearly escaped death’s doorstep. Believe me, there’s nothing deeper to it. The girls in our party really wanted to go, and so we thought Princess Amelia might be interested as well. It will give us some time to think about how to best convince her to let us join you.”

It was true; I had grown a lot more suspicious after having lived in this world for a while, but being distrustful was almost a necessity in this world, where one wrong move could get you killed.

After a moment’s deliberation, I said, “Consider us tentatively interested, then. I still need to ask Amelia and Night about it, but I think they’ll probably be on board.”

I also wanted a chance to ask Crow what festivals in this world were like. My face washed and my head clear, I began to put together my plans for the day.

Unbeknownst to me, Kyousuke flashed a satisfied smirk.

 

“A festival?!”

Amelia and Night were about as shocked by the idea as I’d been. The only difference between them was that Night was immediately opposed to the idea, while Amelia seemed delighted.

“Master, this wouldn’t happen to be the upcoming beauty pageant festival being held in Uruk, would it?” asked Night.

“Hell if I know. All I know is that it’s in Uruk… Wait a minute. You mean they have beauty pageants in this world too?”

“Wait, so we’re going to it?! Oh, can we?! Pretty please?!” Amelia asked, her eyes lighting up as she grabbed my hand.

“Y-yeah, I figured you’d wanna go, so I told them we were tentatively interested… What’s so great about this festival, though?” I asked.

“I have no idea!” She beamed, and I couldn’t help but slump my shoulders.

“Why are you so excited to go, then?”

“I mean, it’s a festival, right? There’s bound to be all sorts of food and goodies!”

So it really was all about the food for her, then. Couldn’t say I didn’t expect that, though it was kind of cute to see her get all excited like this. I looked down at Night, who was standing up on his hind legs and facepalming with both hands.

“Master, Lady Amelia, please. They call that thing a festival, but it’s really just a glorified all-out brawl. Though there are plenty of excellent food stands, to be sure.”

“Are you saying you’ve been to this festival, Night?”

“Indeed. And not that long ago, actually.”

And so Night proceeded to give us the rundown of what the beauty pageant festival truly entailed. Apparently, it had begun in Kantinen many years ago, but it was now so large that the human continent traded off hosting duties with Brute every other year. The pageant itself was divided into both a men’s and a women’s competition, though entrants were free to sign up as whichever gender they liked, and crossdressing was fully allowed. The pageant was traditionally only open to humans and beastfolk, though there had been a surprise upset victory by an elven competitor a few years back. Also, the winners always received a fabulous grand prize, which changed every year—last year, it was a free lifetime pass to one of the finest traditional inns in all of Kantinen. Since the pageant was being held in Uruk this year, word on the street was that the prize might be something more related to fine cuisine this time around. Upon hearing this, a fire ignited in Amelia’s eyes.

“That’s it. Sign me up,” she declared, clenching her fists.

“…Master?” Night asked, looking to me with the hope that I could talk her out of it. I shook my head. Once Amelia had set her heart on something, there could be no stopping her.

“Why did you describe it as an ‘all-out brawl,’ though?” I asked. If it was really so dangerous, then I wasn’t about to let her enter, even if it meant incurring her wrath.

“Well, you know how rowdy men can get… When the winner gets announced and it’s not any of the women the crowd was pulling for, things can get violent rather quickly,” he explained. This I could see.

“I’m gonna win that grand prize, Akira,” Amelia asserted, as though she hadn’t heard what Night said.

Night and I looked at each other, then shook our heads, exasperated.

“Well, I certainly find it hard to imagine that there could be anyone more beautiful than you, Amelia. She’d probably be a shoo-in, don’t you think?” I asked Night.

“…Probably so.”

 

“You guys are headed to the festival in Uruk? Seriously?”

Crow seemed just as taken aback by the idea as the rest of us had initially. It made sense; most people who had just barely escaped from a close encounter with demons probably wouldn’t be raring to go to a festival the next day. If I were in Crow’s shoes, I’d probably ask our group to get the hell out of my house.

“Do you wanna come with?” I ventured, and Crow went silent and looked away.

Uruk was the country where his sister’s killer resided. I didn’t know why he hadn’t already gone and tried to exact revenge before now, but I could certainly understand why he might have reservations.

“You’re serious about this?” he asked.

“Completely. Amelia really wants to go. She’s all about good food, as you know.”

Crow gave a little nod of understanding and then looked up at the night sky with the same vacant eyes as the night before. And just like last night, it was only the two of us sitting in his living room. I let out a sigh.

The hero’s party had gone out to assist with the city’s reconstruction efforts, and Amelia, Night, and Gilles had headed out at the same time to gather additional foodstuffs in the nearby mountains. This was a necessity now that we had so many mouths to feed, but I wasn’t feeling well enough to go mountain climbing just yet, so I’d stayed behind to hold down the fort with Crow. The silence in the room was almost unbearable, though, so I’d decided to broach the subject of the festival and ask if Crow wanted to come along.

Amelia had told me all about how Crow and Night first met, as well as the unfortunate circumstances surrounding his sister’s death. Being an older brother myself, I could definitely sympathize with the feelings he was struggling with. No matter how much you might bicker and fight with your siblings, family was still family. Although, since Yui and I were twins born just minutes apart, I realized we might have grown up to be closer than your average siblings.

She probably doesn’t really even think of me as an older brother, and she’s always believed that the doctor mixed us up and that she’s actually the older sibling. Whenever she’s forced to introduce me as her older brother, it’s like pulling teeth for her, heh. But to me, she’ll always be my adorable little sister, no matter how feisty she can be. If someone ever took her life, there’s no way I’d be able to stop myself. I’d use whatever means I could, no matter how illegal, to make the bastard pay. Obviously, I haven’t been through what Crow’s been through, but surely he must feel the same way about his sister, right?

“You’re wondering why I haven’t gone after my sister’s murderer even though I know who he is, aren’t you?” Crow asked, his tail moving to and fro. This snapped me right out of my thoughts. He turned his gaze away from the window and looked into my eyes, but there wasn’t the slightest flicker of light in those obsidian pupils of his. “I can tell exactly what’s going through your mind. You might have a pretty good poker face, but your eyes say more than your mouth ever could.”

If Amelia was a sculptor’s vision of what the perfect elegant woman would be, Latticenail had the body of a voluptuous temptress that seemed far more realistic and human than an artist’s ideal. If the question was which one was more likely to make the average guy drool, Latticenail took the cake, no question. And with all due respect to the other contestants, it was very clear the competition had just become a one-on-one battle between Amelia’s pretty face and Latticenail’s luscious curves. There hadn’t been a single contestant yet who could hold a candle to either of them, and I didn’t foresee any other last-minute contenders for the crown. If there was an even greater beauty waiting in the wings, I’d almost worry a large proportion of the crowd would die from frothing at the mouth.

“And that concludes the runway portion of this year’s beauty pageant, folks! We’ll now move onto the judging portion! If you’re watching from one of our official viewing locations, please enter the number of your favorite contestant into one of our many voting panels! Remember, all you need to do is channel a tiny bit of mana into the panel, then write their number with your finger!”

As I listened to the announcer’s instructions, I found the panel nearest me and began tapping away at it. Obviously, Amelia was getting my vote. After seeing the “vote received” confirmation message on the panel, I went to find Amelia backstage.

“Akira!”

“Hey, Amelia.”

I found her in the waiting room backstage, where she and the nearly three hundred other female contestants were hanging out while they waited for the results to come in. Amelia was the only one who seemed to give off a radiant glow, even just by turning her head. By her side was Latticenail, with whom she’d been chatting amicably. I also noticed the two girls from the hero’s party sitting nearby.

“Hey, mister! How’d I do?” asked Latticenail, running over to greet me with a friendly smile. She looked so excited, it almost felt like I could see a dog tail wagging behind her, though I had to be seeing things. “Seemed like you were preeetty curious about what I was hiding under my cloak. Any impressions you’d like to share?”

“Yeah, I was pretty impressed, I’ve gotta admit. Though you’re still no match for Amelia,” I clarified as I ruffled my girlfriend’s hair. Amelia closed her eyes and purred contentedly. If Latticenail was secretly a dog, then Amelia could easily pass for a cat, and I was a diehard cat person.

Latticenail, unsatisfied with my response, placed her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks. “Well, yeah, no duh! Of course no one’s gonna be better than Amelia! There’s not another girl alive with a face like hers! But I mean, like… Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I know a lotta boys who’d kill for a chance with me!”

“Oh, Latty.” Amelia chuckled. “You’d be perfectly cute if you just learned how to keep your mouth shut sometimes.”

“Hey! Are you sayin’ I’m a pretty girl with an ugly personality?!”

As I desperately fought the urge to nod my head, I marveled at how friendly the two of them had become in such a short period of time.

“Hey, that reminds me,” said Latticenail, “I never did learn your name, did I, mister? I can’t just keep callin’ you ‘mister’ forever!”

Right, I guess I never did introduce myself, did I? I only knew her name thanks to Night and from her stat page. “Right, well then. Sorry for the belated introduction, but I’m Oda Akira. Or ‘Akira Oda’ in this world, I guess. Anyway, it’s nice to meet you.”

“Akira, huh? Okie-dokie! I’ll be sure to remember that, mister!”

“She says, before immediately calling me ‘mister’ again…” I laughed halfheartedly. I decided it might be a good idea to learn what I could from her, especially since it seemed like it would be a while before the pageant results were announced. “So your full name’s Latticenail, right? How come you registered as Latty, then? Is that just a nickname, or…?”

“Yup, I came up with it myself! Latticenail’s just so long and unwieldy, y’know? I did consider just going by Lattice, but Latty’s way cuter, don’tcha think?!”

It was true; “Lattice” sounded a bit too straight-laced for a spunky girl like her.

“Yeah, I like Latty better too,” Amelia chimed in. “She and I have been talking this whole time, Akira. You wouldn’t believe how funny this girl is!”

Amelia’s expression softened, and I nodded in agreement. I could totally see how Latticenail’s laid-back personality and way of speaking could help anyone feel more relaxed and at ease. There was a certain charisma about her that just drew people in.

 

“The results are in, folks! It’s time for the moment you’ve all been waiting for—we’re about to crown this year’s champions!”

Everyone in the waiting room perked up as the announcement came in. I’d gotten so involved in my conversation with Latticenail that I’d forgotten the pageant wasn’t actually over yet. She and Amelia turned to each other and smiled.

“Whoever wins, no hard feelings, okay?”

“Yup! Of course!”

According to the announcer, the top five contestants would be called back on stage. As all the other hopefuls in the waiting room clasped their hands in prayer, Amelia and Latticenail simply waited patiently for the results to be called out. While most entrants were probably just hoping for a spot in the top five, these two didn’t care about anything but first place (though in Amelia’s case, that was purely because she wanted the grand prize).

“So without further ado, it’s time to announce our winners! In fifth place…entrant number 108, Natalia!”

A girl in a dark orange dress suddenly burst out in tears before heading directly for the stage, all the while muttering to herself, either out of happiness or disbelief.

“Next up, our fourth-place winner…entrant number 25, Aldylla!”

A crowlike beastgirl in a blue dress stood up with a huff and stomped over to the stage. Apparently unhappy with where she’d placed, she shot Amelia and Latticenail a dirty look on her way out. To be fair, were it not for them, she may have stood a real chance of taking home the grand prize. She did have a nice face, if you could look past her stuck-up personality.

“And in third place tonight… Give it up for entrant number 2! Sonora!”

A timid girl in a white dress stood up and looked around awkwardly before heading out. Maybe she’d won people over with her skittish, klutzy persona. With her departure, the vast majority of women left in the waiting area lowered their heads in defeat. Everyone with half a brain knew Amelia and Latticenail were bound to take the top two spots—it was just a question of who would come out on top.

“And now, let’s hear it for this year’s first-prize winners!”

“Huh?!” they both gasped.

“Oh, I see. So that’s how it’s gonna be,” I said, realizing what it meant for second place to have been skipped entirely. Amelia and Latticenail shared a look that said they’d realized too.

“This is a historic moment, folks! For the first time in pageant history, we have a tie for first place! Give it up for entrants number 291 and 292, Princess Amelia and Latty!”

They’d both received the same number of votes, as unlikely as that seemed. As the announcer called out their names and the audience cheered, Amelia and Latticenail joined hands and headed back out to the stage.

“Now it’s time to present our two winners with their awards and prizes!”

I exited the waiting room and took my place in front of the stage; I wanted to see the look on Amelia’s face when they crowned her, and I couldn’t do that from backstage. She was already up on the glimmering stage, waving down at me with a smile. I gave her a little smile back, though a lot of the men in my vicinity seemed to think she’d been waving at them and started hooting and hollering. Judging by the fact that the scene hadn’t turned into an “all-out brawl” like Night described, I assumed most people in the audience were happy with the winners.

“W-well, let’s welcome to the stage our grand-prize winners in the 256th annual beauty pageant, Princess Amelia and Latty. The two of you have earned our most auspicious award, and we will now honor you as such. My name is Lapin, and I’m chairman of the pageant committee.”

The spotlight shined down on the two winners as they received their certificates from the very nervous-looking beastfolk representative who we had dealt with during registration—Lapin.

“Erm, as for the grand prize… I’m afraid it took a bit longer than expected to arrive, but you should be able to pick it up tomorrow. Is that all right with you both?”

Amelia nodded her head several times, her eyes aglimmer as she imagined what wondrous food items might be in store. We were going to stay in town for the night, then. I wondered if there were any vacant rooms left in the city.

Mali didn’t really have the infrastructure for the kind of tourist surge that came with the pageant. I could only assume all of the rooms in town were already taken by human contestants who’d traveled from Kantinen, so unless we got very lucky, we’d probably be sleeping on the streets. Amelia, Night, and I were used to roughing it, of course, and I was sure Gilles and Crow would manage, but I worried about whether my classmates would be able to deal with that.

“Yup, works for me too!” Latticenail smiled, agreeing with Amelia. My theory was there wasn’t actually a delay in the prize’s arrival, but that they’d only prepared enough for one winner as they hadn’t foreseen a tie. The bunnyman let out a heavy sigh of relief, but I couldn’t shake the feeling there was a deeper reason for his unease.

Ever since we’d arrived on this continent, I’d felt plagued by a palpable sense of foreboding, and it always turned out to be warranted. First we got accosted by ruffians, then Amelia got kidnapped, then the monsters came flooding out of the labyrinth, then I almost died fighting the demons, then the hero’s party showed up out of nowhere and convinced us to participate in this pageant, where we just so happened to meet the Demon Lord’s daughter… It felt like we were hitting snags at every turn. At this point, I was confident that we got ourselves involved in more dangerous affairs on a daily basis than anyone else would in their lifetime. What had I done to be cursed with such awful luck?

“That about wraps it up, folks! Thank you all so much for coming out to this year’s beauty pageant! We’ll see you all next year back in Kantinen, in the beautiful Kingdom of Retice!”

I couldn’t help but scoff. Retice was the country into which we’d originally been summoned, the one that had framed me for murder, and the one where more than half our classmates still remained. It was the largest of all human nations, so it made sense as a host country for the pageant. It also had a lot of beautiful greenery and pretty lakes, come to think of it. It was a very lovely place, in retrospect, though I could never see myself growing to love it while its current king and his daughter were still in power.

Suddenly, I felt the presence of someone standing in front of me, and I raised my head. I had a bad habit of getting lost in thought and losing sight of my surroundings. Thankfully, it was only Crow and Gilles.

“Hey, we need to talk. Come with us.”

“Whoa, wait a sec!” I sputtered as the two men grabbed my hands and dragged me off into a dark alleyway. It was a rather seedy part of town, far removed from the gaudiness of the pageant. As soon as we made it far enough that we couldn’t see the festival lights anymore, they unhanded me.

“What the hell did you drag me out here for?” I demanded in a huff, and the two of them looked at each other before answering.

“Truth is, we figured we’d end up having to stay the night in town, so we went out looking for inns preemptively,” said Crow.

“And as we were doing so, we heard some rather unsettling rumors we thought you should be made aware of,” added Gilles.

This gave me pause. What kinds of rumors? The use of the word unsettling led me to believe it was the kind of intel best discussed behind closed doors—the kind of intel that assassins and information brokers made their livings on. The kind of intel you had to stay abreast of if you wanted to make it in the underground sectors of society. Generally, such rumors were not to be taken lightly, even though new ones came out every day. One day, I’d need to learn the proper channels for keeping up to date on this sort of thing, but for now, I couldn’t really call myself much of an assassin.

Crow nodded to indicate that he knew what I was thinking, then went on, “We stumbled across this information by pure chance, but apparently, a lot of people claim the winners of the competition each year turn up missing. And the average person has no clue this happens. It’s apparently the main reason they have such a large number of contestants—so that, hopefully, no one will notice one or two going missing. But doesn’t that still seem a little strange to you?”

“More than just a little,” I said. “And it’s not like people from society’s dark underbelly don’t interact with regular people, so if there’s even a kernel of truth to these rumors, why haven’t they spread like wildfire?”

“That, and it doesn’t make sense that even someone like me hasn’t heard of this before,” said Crow. “Obviously, I’ve been retired for a long time, but I’ve always tried to keep my ear to the ground, and I have some pretty good sources… Which tells me this is something only a very small portion of underground societies might be privy to. Groups that work very hard to ensure information doesn’t get leaked. And when it comes to shady dealings even I don’t know about, there’s only one big thing that comes to mind.”

“And what’s that?” I asked hesitantly.

He grimaced. “Human trafficking.”

Human trafficking. It was among the worst crimes out there, even here in a brutal world like this. Back in Retice, when I’d had access to the castle archives, I’d read that long ago, the beastfolk used to sell the humans who came to their land in search of work into slavery, but the third hero to get summoned from my world put a stop to that.

There had only been four hero summonings before us, yet those four heroes had all left their mark on each of Morrigan’s continents. Their stories were told in epic texts describing the heroic deeds of the first and second heroes and their work with the elves and demons long, long ago, as well as the work of the third and fourth heroes in more recent times that focused more on the humans and beastfolk.

The third hero was particularly famous for his work in martial arts, swordsmanship, and the abolishment of slavery. He taught the beastfolk, who were far more predisposed to physical combat than magic, the way of the sword and martial arts, and put a stop to the slave trade they’d been involved in. The hero himself, though human, was said to have been a giant bear of a man, with a bighearted personality that appealed to the beastfolk. He was said to be the most charismatic of all past heroes, and he was still a popular folk hero to this very day. Beastfolk mothers and fathers would use his example to teach their young that their powers should only ever be used to protect the weak, never to oppress them.

I looked over at Crow, only to see he was bearing his fangs and his fur was bristling up; he, like most beastfolk, despised even the idea of human trafficking. I recognized that Crow was genuinely unaware of this despicable part of beastfolk society, whether through willful avoidance of the topic or unintentionally. It was the sort of thing no one wanted to believe might still be happening right under their noses.

“And there’s more to the rumors than that, actually. Some people think the whole thing about winners disappearing is just a sick joke someone’s been spreading around to get their kicks, while other people think the contestants are being chopped up and spirited away, if you catch my drift. It’s hard to find any concrete evidence of either theory, though, unfortunately.”

I could only assume that by “chopped up,” he was trying to imply that their organs were being sold on the black market. I would have assumed these beautiful people were being sold alive as sex slaves or something, had I not already heard about the organ harvesting.

“Anyway, I just wanted you to be aware of what we heard. Especially since we’re now well within you-know-who’s territory, both physically and figuratively,” Crow added, his eyes gloomy. He could only be referring to his sister’s killer, the man known as Gram. Mali wasn’t far from the city of Uruk, after which the country was named. If there really was human and organ trafficking going on here, there must have surely been someone working behind the scenes to keep the truth from leaking out. And with Gram’s experience as ex-prime minister, that sort of secrecy seemed right up his alley. It was starting to seem more and more likely that he was involved.

“I’m trusting you to take care of what we talked about, Akira,” Crow said, his dark eyes staring daggers right through me. It was the same look he’d had in his eyes that night in his workshop. It was enough to make my mouth immediately feel parched, and I recoiled a bit.

He was referring to what he’d requested of me back when I asked if he would come with us to the festival—the thing he said was the only reason he’d saved us from the demons. But I still hadn’t given him a definitive answer, and it seemed he was getting a little impatient. For one thing, he almost never addressed me by name, so the fact that he was doing so now was probably an indicator of his seriousness. But it still wasn’t the sort of thing I could decide on a whim, and I had no intention of letting him rush me to an answer. Crow realized I was indeed thinking it over and walked out of the alley, seemingly satisfied for now.

Gilles stayed back and looked down at me, his brow furrowed with concern. “Well, whatever it is, I can tell it’s probably not the sort of thing I could offer any advice on. Just don’t overexert yourself, and try not to pull your hair out over it, okay?”

Apparently, Crow hadn’t told Gilles anything.

“Oh, right. Says the biggest workaholic and worrywart in all of Retice.” I grinned. He seemed like a totally different person since leaving the castle, and I assumed the commander’s death had a lot to do with that. But he’d still come all this way to track us down, and I could only assume he had a hand in helping the hero’s party escape as well. It was almost like, despite his nervous temperament, he actively sought out and got himself wrapped up in as many precarious situations as he could find.

“I suppose you’ve got a point there,” he said, wearing the most serious expression I’d ever seen.

When we left the alley, we ran into Amelia, Latticenail, and the hero’s party, all gathered together in one big group. Amelia and Latticenail were chatting it up while the hero’s party made a circle around them, watching from a distance.

“Oh! Akira, Crow wanted me to tell you he decided to head back to the inn,” said Amelia.

Right, he did mention that they’d been out looking for a room, didn’t he? I guess I got so caught up in the more repulsive topics we discussed that I forgot all about that part.

“Where were you planning to stay tonight, Latticenail?” I asked, since she was the outsider in the group.

She simply shook her head and rolled her eyes, casting a sidelong glance over at the hero’s party. “Eh, I’ll prolly just find somewhere to camp out around here. Somethin’ tells me your friends won’t be able to sleep very soundly with little ol’ me around!”

With that, Latticenail took her leave, and Amelia, who’d taken quite a shine to the little demon girl, began sulking.

“You really didn’t want her to have to leave, did you?” I asked.

“I don’t know what it is about her, but she reminds me of Kilika in a way. Makes me feel like I need to keep a close eye on her, y’know? Though if Kilika heard me saying that, she’d probably kill me.”

I cocked my head quizzically. Her and Kilika? I had to admit, I couldn’t really see the resemblance, but in fairness, I’d only interacted with the latter very briefly during a tense situation in the elven domain. I trusted that Amelia would know better than me, what with her being family and all.

“Well, I’m sure we’ll run into her again tomorrow,” I said, trying to reassure her.

If the rumors were true, then Latticenail was in the same amount of danger as Amelia, but judging by her stats, she was probably more prepared to handle an ambush than we were. Having her stay in the same inn as us would only make things easier for the criminals if they were to strike, and it’s not like our group could offer Latticenail added protection, especially since there wasn’t a lot of trust between her and my other classmates.

 

When we got to the inn, I was surprised to find it was a rather clean and fancy place. Beastfolk buildings had a reputation for the interiors not matching the exterior, so a nice-looking building would often end up being quite the pigsty inside, but the minimalistic monochrome interior of the inn was like that of a high-class hotel back in my world.

“Pretty nice place, I have to admit. But can we really afford it?” I asked Gilles quietly. Given we were a group made up mostly of hungry teenage boys, and Amelia had a bigger appetite than all of us combined, I was afraid we might not even be able to afford the room service bill—let alone the nightly fees—with just the money we had on hand. But Gilles simply smiled and told me not to worry about it, which puzzled me. Before I had time to think much more about it, though, a kind-looking beastfolk came out to greet us from the back room.

“Welcome to the Hotel Raven, everyone. My name is Corvo, and I’m the owner of this establishment. Please feel free to relax and make yourselves at home.”

If the avian innkeeper of The Coop back in Ur had been a pigeon, then this fellow was a crow—though I didn’t know enough about birds to say for sure. I was judging purely by the jet-black wings jutting out from his back. As he guided us to our room, Corvo attempted to make friendly conversation with us.

“I was an adventurer myself, you know, once upon a time. Your friend Crow actually saved my life back then, believe it or not. When I heard he and some friends of his were struggling to find accommodations for the evening, I sought him out and invited him to bring his party and stay here.”

Ah, so that’s how this panned out. There seemed to be an awful lot of people out there who owed Crow a favor or two, I’d noticed. The owner assured us there was no need to worry about the bill, and he guided us to one of the nicest rooms in the hotel—one that surely would have cost a fortune.

“Mr. Crow? Your friends have arrived,” said Corvo, knocking on the door. Soon, Crow came to the door and opened it, letting us all see inside.

“Whoaaa!”

“Holy crap!”

My classmates oohed and aahed, and I simply stood there, dumbfounded.

“This is incredible!”

“Yeah, no kidding…”

The room was, like the rest of the hotel, monochrome in color, but the entire back wall was just one big window peering out over the festivities and the modest nightscape. Guess we must be on the top floor, which explains why we had to climb all those stairs to get here. What amazed me more than anything, though, was that the window didn’t seem to be made of glass—it was clearly a sturdy wall just like the others, and yet we could see straight through it.

“That wall is made from translucent monster scales so our customers can enjoy the outside scenery to their hearts’ content. Now then, please do let me know if there’s anything else I can do for you all,” Corvo said before taking his leave.

The room was all black and white, with the only hint of color being that of Crow, who was lounging on the black sofa and swirling a glass of wine in one hand, watching as the hero’s party members filed in and marveled at the cityscape.

“Pretty nice room,” I told him.

“Yeah, I honestly wasn’t expecting to get something this nice for free… But Corvo ain’t got ties to any shady underground dealings, and none of his employees are suspicious either. I think we can safely kick back and relax here.” Apparently, Crow had done some digging on Corvo after hearing the unsavory rumors. He gulped down the contents of his glass, then made eye contact with me for the first time since we’d entered the room. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about those rumors if I were you.”

This was not the statement I had expected. Perhaps Crow was a more considerate person than I had originally thought, if he was trying to reassure me like this.

“Even though Amelia’s the most likely target?”

“You’re the type of guy who can jump into action from a state of relaxation in no time flat. You’d be better served to just treat things like business as usual than to get overly hung up on it. It’s in her best interest too, trust me,” Crow said as he gazed out the window once more.

I sighed, amused, before sitting down on the adjacent sofa. “Y’know, you almost sounded like a caring mentor just then.”

“Didn’t you hear? I used to take on apprentices, way back when… Though they always ended up getting sent to the hospital.”

Amelia had mentioned this. Apparently, he’d been trying to pass on the secret technique taught to him by the Hero of Legend, but the process broke every pupil mentally and physically—that was the main reason he refused to teach Amelia.

“Y’know, I’m really curious—what is the secret technique, anyhow?” I asked.

Amelia hadn’t told me what it actually did. I would have thought, given that Crow’s class was blacksmith, any skill he could have possibly learned wouldn’t be too hard for anyone else to pick up with a little motivation, but perhaps it had something to do with the ability he’d used to cancel out Mahiro’s magic circles down in the labyrinth (not to mention the Shadow Magic controlling me) instantaneously.

Crow thought carefully for a while before answering. “To put it simply, it’s an Extra Skill that can negate any and all types of magic. It’s called Inversion. All you have to do is encounter a type of magic; then you’ll be able to create an ‘antimagic’ that acts like a serum designed to perfectly counteract and negate that magic.”

I was amazed. To think such a skill existed. No wonder Mahiro pulled back; without his magic circles, he was dead meat.

“But there are drawbacks to it. In order to use it, you need to learn the ancient tongue, and that’s no mean feat when each and every rune is tinged with enough mana to make anyone go insane. If you fall in too deep while trying to learn it, you can and will lose your mind.”

I assumed he was referring to the ancient runes lining the circumference of magic circles. I could see why they would be extremely difficult to learn, especially without the Understand Language Extra Skill, since they looked more like patterns than traditional characters.

“And even after you learn to read them, you still have to learn the vocabulary, which is a whole ’nother level of difficult… Took me nearly a hundred years to get it down.”

Hang on. Didn’t I hear that the average beastfolk lifespan was like, a hundred years and change? If it took him a hundred years to learn the ancient tongue, and that was before he and the hero’s party went and failed to slay the Demon Lord, which was already a hundred years ago… The math just doesn’t add up.

“How old are you anyway, Crow?” I asked.

“Who knows? It’s not customary for beastfolk to ask one another’s ages.” He laughed, looking up and away from me. “I honestly couldn’t tell you my exact age because I’ve forgotten it myself, but I’ve definitely been kicking around for at least two hundred years now.”

I gawked. And nearly half that time was spent learning the ancient tongue? I couldn’t imagine the kind of devotion and studiousness that would take. I could never stick to something for that long. Though I had to wonder: Why was he still alive?

“Well, actually, I remember the aging process started for me about fifty years after my sister was killed, so maybe I’m closer to two hundred and fifty or three hundred years old? Anyway, you can thank my whack job mother for the fact that I’m still around,” he went on.

I had a hard time imagining anyone describing their mother as a “whack job,” especially when Crow was quite the eccentric himself. Maybe it was hereditary?

“I mean, what kind of lunatic drinks an immortality potion by accident? That’s the only reason my mother is still alive and kicking, and it’s her fault I’ve lived at least twice as long as your average beastman,” he complained, before collapsing back into the sofa. Was he drunk? He seemed far more talkative and forthcoming than usual, and his current state reminded me of how the older guys I’d worked construction with had been when they got drunk.

“So you think her drinking an immortality potion is what gave you such a long life?” I asked, and he nodded, his eyes vacant.

“Yeah. That old crone drank the potion right before I was born, so it had a residual effect on me in the womb. It’s all her damn fault.”

I was pretty taken aback by his tone. It sounded like he resented her for something most people would be grateful to have. I could only conclude he longed for death, or at the very least he’d grown exhausted of living with only the search for revenge to keep him going. Japanese people had a longer average lifespan than people from other countries, but even among us, there weren’t many who made it beyond a hundred years. Since I’d only been alive for a tenth as long as Crow, I couldn’t even imagine what living so long would feel like. Maybe I could ask Amelia.

I noticed Crow had sunk down into the sofa cushions and fallen asleep. He looked very peaceful; it was not the expression of one who longed for death.

“I think it’s probably best you let him sleep,” said a voice from behind me.

I turned around to see Gilles standing there, a large comforter in his hands. I’d sensed him nearby a moment ago, and it was good to know my senses were still working properly. “How do you know Crow, anyway?” I asked as he covered Crow with the comforter.

He gave an awkward smile before sitting down on the white sofa across from me. “Well, you know he used to mentor pupils, correct?” he asked, and I nodded. We’d just been discussing that very subject. “One of those pupils was my mother. Though she’s no longer with us, rest her soul.”

My eyes widened a bit. Apparently, after Crow withdrew from the public eye, every country in Morrigan wanted to get their hands on the skill he’d acquired from the Hero of Legend, and they each sent representatives to try to learn it from him. Humans were no exception, and Crow did not refuse any apprentice at first; his desire for revenge was beginning to fade, and he was growing quite bored in his old age. Gilles’s mother ended up losing her mind in pursuit of the skill, just like all the other apprentices.

“My father was an adventurer, and he died when I was still quite young, so my mother had to raise me all by her lonesome,” Gilles went on. This reminded me of my mother, who was single, though she was too sickly to do much raising by the time my father left. “After her mental break, it was Crow who raised me. He was also the one who got me my position as a knight in the first place, and when he heard I’d left the force, he offered to take me in as a blacksmith’s assistant while I searched for other work.”

Gilles let out a wistful sigh as he looked lovingly down at the man sleeping on the couch. It was the same affectionate gaze one might expect a son to give their father, and a beautiful sight to behold.

“He’s both a savior and a father figure to me. I don’t hold what happened to my mother against him in the slightest. He’s a bit of an oaf, I’ll admit, but he’s certainly not malicious.”

“Yeah, so I’ve learned in the little time I’ve known him,” I replied. “Anyway, what is it you’re asking me to do with this information?”

I already knew Crow was a softie at heart who helped people in need. I wouldn’t exactly call him a people person, but I could tell he was a good egg just from the way the owner of this hotel gushed about him. But why was Gilles regaling me with all these old stories?

“I was hoping you’d be willing to do what the old man asked of you. As you can probably surmise, he doesn’t have much time left,” said Gilles.

“I’d really prefer not to get myself mixed up in all of that.”

I wasn’t a charity worker, nor did I see myself as some champion of morality and righteousness. I did owe Crow my life, and I owed Gilles an awful lot for helping me escape the castle, but I still had my own main objective to fulfill. I needed to get home, and I knew the key to achieving that had to be somewhere in either the Demon Lord’s castle or the castle of Retice. We’d been summoned here to slay the Demon Lord, but I’d noticed the magic circle they’d used to bring us here was almost identical to the ones the demon’s second-in-command had used against us.

“Yes, I know you’ve got a lot on your plate as it is and that you’re already anxious enough to head over to the Demon Lord’s castle,” said Gilles.

“Then would you please stop trying to—”

“It wouldn’t even be much of a detour, I promise. Especially since you already swore to rescue and bring home the elves being held captive by his trafficking ring—or did you forget?”

I could have punched my past self in the face for that promise; I hadn’t expected it to come back and bite me in the ass.

“Besides,” Gilles continued, “you’re going to need Crow to make it to the Demon Lord’s castle anyway. I’ve never been there myself, but I’ve heard it’s extremely easy to get lost along the way. And you certainly can’t trust that demon girl to be your guide.”

He had a point; having someone with experience traversing the hellscape of Volcano along for the journey would be a good idea. It wasn’t as if we could just go out and buy a map of the continent, after all. We needed someone who was familiar with the lay of the land, so earning a favor from Crow might not be such a bad idea.

“You make a good point,” I said. “But it’s not such an easy thing for me to agree to, you understand.”

I mean, what Crow asked me to do is something I’m morally opposed to on every level, I thought to myself as Gilles stood up and laid his hands on my shoulders.

“I’ve said my piece. The rest is up to you to decide. Though I would ask that you come to a decision quickly, because there’s no telling how much time he has left.”

After Gilles left the room, I simply sat there on the sofa, listening to Crow softly snoring as I gazed out upon the nightscape of the town glowing beautifully in spite of the moral quandary I was now being forced to confront.

 

“Have you been getting enough sleep lately, Akira?” Amelia asked me the next morning. She’d woken up before the others and seemed concerned upon discovering I’d already been up for quite some time, sipping my coffee-like beverage. The honest answer was no, I hadn’t been sleeping much at all, and I knew exactly why. It was because of Crow’s heavy request, and my conversation with Gilles the night before.

“No, not really, but it won’t affect my combat ability, so don’t worry. Besides, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten a full night’s sleep in this world without literally fainting beforehand,” I joked, raising a hand to cover part of my face. I probably looked like hell, and I should try to do something about it before the others woke up.

This only made Amelia more suspicious, however, and she moved my hand aside to get a good look at me, then cupped my face in both her hands. “You have a bad habit of trying to keep things to yourself, you know. Would it really kill you to rely on me a little bit more?” she asked.

“N-no, trust me, it’s nothing you need to worry about…” I sputtered, but I couldn’t escape her discerning crimson eyes—especially not when she was holding my head in place. For the first time ever, I was afraid of those eyes.

“I understand you’re probably only keeping quiet to protect us or someone else…but if that’s how it’s gonna be, then you leave me no choice but to take matters into my own hands. Because someone’s got to look out for you,” she said. I felt mana gathering around her, and my body became enveloped in a pale blue light. “Sorry to have to do this, Akira. Spellcraft… Forced Sleep!”

“Ame…lia…”

The last thing I saw before my consciousness faded was Amelia’s face, looking down at me as though it pained her deeply to have to do this. It was then that I felt despair for having worried the one I loved enough that she felt she had no other choice but to force me asleep.

 

POV: AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ

 

AFTER DRAPING A BLANKET over Akira’s limp body, I took a moment to examine his unconscious face. I traced my fingers along the dark circles beneath his eyes. They’d gotten a lot deeper, even since yesterday.

“Remind me never to get on your bad side, Princess,” I heard a sleepy voice say. I looked up to see Crow staring at me from the sofa with a wide grin on his face.

I glared at him. “What did you say to Akira to make him like this?” I demanded, and Crow looked away before stretching his body like a cat. I simply stood there, shielding Akira without taking my eyes off of Crow.

“Hey, don’t furrow those brows so much. You’ll just get wrinkles prematurely. Besides, all I asked him for was a little reasonable compensation for saving his life.”

I gasped as an image of him running to our rescue in the Great Labyrinth of Brute flashed through my mind. “Is that the only reason you came and saved us down there? Answer me,” I demanded, glaring at him even harder.

At this suggestion, Crow grimaced ever so slightly. “Well, I dunno about that. I saved your sorry asses purely out of the goodness of my heart… It was only after the fact that I started thinking maybe I deserved a little thanks in exchange for my services. But I can see why you’d think that’s lousy of me.”

With this, his expression suddenly turned vulnerable, and I was a little disconcerted by it. I hadn’t developed the same rapport with him as Akira had, so I still didn’t understand what made the man tick. All I knew was that I’d rebuked him for acting like he’d given up on avenging his sister, then realized afterward he and I probably had a lot more in common than I’d initially thought. Now I wasn’t sure if it was really fair for me to criticize him when I probably would have done the exact same thing.

“I used to look up to you an awful lot, y’know,” he said, and I was about to scream at him for trying to change the subject when I realized what he’d just said, and my words caught in my throat. He looked at me, my mouth hanging open, and let out a chuckle. “I mean, you were the princess who saved the entire elven race in their hour of need, right? The little girl who used Resurrection Magic and Gravity Magic to save her people—almost sounds like something out of an epic poem or some legend. You were the type of person I always wanted to grow up to be…though my perceptions obviously changed once I actually met you and realized you’re just as fallible as any other person.”

“I hate people who put me on a pedestal like that,” I replied. Especially since it’s usually followed by them looking down on Kilika like some sort of villain just because she was the one who accidentally caused that whole disaster.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Crow said with a bitter smirk. “That’s just the type of person you are… Anyway, did your boyfriend tell you I’m the one who made Lia’s staff?” I shook my head. Akira and I hadn’t had much time to sit down and talk lately, so there was probably a lot of information we had yet to exchange. “Well, it was the staff that let me know you guys were in peril. Speaking of Lia, did you notice her name is the last three letters of yours?”

“Are you implying that she was named after me?”

“That’s right. I gave her that name because I wanted her to grow up to be a strong woman like you,” he said.

I was genuinely a little surprised by this, though I quickly collected myself and squinted suspiciously at him. “And what exactly are you telling me this for?” I asked, unsure what Lia, a princess of Uruk, could possibly have to do with what we were talking about.

Crow scratched the back of his head and looked outside as the sun slowly rose over the city. “Not sure, really. I wanted to test this boy named Akira Oda you seem to admire so much and see if he’s truly worthy to stand by your side, is all. When I named Lia after you, I thought there’d never be another person worthy of fighting alongside you, and I still feel that way.”

My blood began to boil. “Do you have any idea how much unnecessary stress your selfish desires have piled on Akira?!” I snapped, and Crow froze. I couldn’t see his expression amid the rising sun’s glare through the window, but it felt like he was more vulnerable now than ever.

“I wasn’t expecting him to stress about it so much. Though when I explained to him that the compensation I had in mind would also be in your best interest, he seemed conflicted. The boy loves you an awful lot, that’s for sure, but not so much that he’d throw away his humanity for you.”

Love could indeed make people blind. I’d lived far, far longer than Akira had, so I knew that much to be true. If Akira ever became too blind to tell right from wrong because of me, I would have no choice but to exit his life.

“He’s every bit the man I thought he was.” I smiled gently.

“So it would seem,” said Crow, shrugging his shoulders and gazing into the sunrise. “But the fact he’s conflicted at all means there’s still a part of him that feels like he owes me. Something tells me all it would take for him to cast aside his humanity would be one last push… Like, say, if you were to be put in harm’s way again.”

In other words, be careful.

On that note, Crow shot a quick glance at Akira and then left the room. I never did get him to tell me what exactly he’d said to Akira, but what he did tell me was perhaps more astonishing.

“You…wouldn’t throw away your humanity for me, would you, Akira?” I asked, knowing full well I wouldn’t receive a reply.

 

POV: ASAHINA KYOUSUKE

 

WHEN I WOKE UP the next morning, I discovered Akira asleep on the couch and Princess Amelia sitting next to him, running her fingers through his hair. It had been quite a while since I’d last seen him asleep.

“It’s quite rare to see him sleeping so vulnerably,” I said, and Princess Amelia’s shoulders shook a bit as she looked up at me. There was sadness in those eyes; something must have happened while I was asleep. But before I had the chance to ask, we were interrupted by Ueno, who had just woken up.

“What in the… Amelia, yer already awake?! Dang, I thought for sure I’d be the first!”

“Yeah. I couldn’t sleep, really,” said Amelia, still cradling Akira’s head in her lap. The look in her eyes shifted closer to affection than melancholy.

“Hot dang! I ain’t never seen Oda lookin’ all defenseless like that… Well, nah, I guess I have, but it’s sure been a hot minute!”

I nodded in agreement. Akira had a bit of a reputation for being the class’s “sleeping beauty.” He would stay awake for classes taught by teachers he was afraid of or who he knew would wake him up, but aside from that, he slept through the school day. It was a wonder he managed to avoid failing his exams, though I was probably the only person who knew that. If our other classmates caught wind of his grades, they probably would have accused him of cheating. Even I had been suspicious of him before I learned he often studied during spare moments at his many part-time jobs.

“Sounds like you know something about Akira I don’t. Consider me curious,” said Princess Amelia, and she and Ueno began chatting away, prompting me to take my leave ASAP.

“I’ll be in the next room. Call me when you’re ready to leave,” I said.

“What the—?! Were you here the whole dang time, Asahina?!” shouted Ueno. Apparently, she genuinely hadn’t noticed me. I thought she was simply ignoring me.

“Yes, I’ve been here all along,” I said, before promptly exiting the room.

We were planning to go pick up the prizes for Princess Amelia, Latticenail, and Satou (who’d easily won the men’s competition) later this afternoon. Apparently, the majority of entrants in the men’s competition were big, bodybuilder types, so everyone who preferred simpler pretty-boys rallied their votes around Satou. Entering him in the men’s pageant was always part of our plan, but we certainly hadn’t expected him to actually win anything, so I did a double take when I heard he’d taken first prize.

We’d been doing a lot of thinking and digging over the past few days based on the intel Tsuda originally provided. The deeper we looked into it, the more likely it seemed our original suspect, the Uruk guildmaster, Gram, was involved in all of this. There was now little doubt he’d had a hand in the disappearances of the previous pageant winners, and he certainly wasn’t doing much to hide it. Even without the use of a professional informant or investigator, we’d managed to gather all this information from regular adventurers like ourselves. In fact, it seemed that Crow and Gilles, who had been using private investigators, hadn’t found enough pieces to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that Gram was involved. Now the question was whether we should tell Akira’s group about our findings.

Upon exiting the room, I found Satou waiting for me, leaning against the wall. “Did you find the answer you were looking for?” he asked, and I nodded.

The dark circles under Akira’s eyes were growing deeper with each passing day, which was why I’d fought back when Satou and the others insisted we should tell Akira everything we knew. Obviously, the safest thing to do would be to tell everyone to tighten security around Princess Amelia and Satou in anticipation of an ambush. But after seeing Akira just now, I’d only grown more steadfast in my resolve.

“I still don’t think we can tell Akira… Though knowing him, he’s begun doing some investigating of his own by now,” I said.

“Such as?”

“Haven’t you noticed? Night’s been missing ever since yesterday evening. Whether he’s standing guard somewhere to protect Princess Amelia or out gathering intel on his own, I couldn’t tell you, but the fact that he’s Akira’s familiar means that he can communicate and act on Akira’s orders even from afar.”

Though opting not to share our intel with Akira would require that we come up with some sort of excuse as to why we hadn’t told him sooner.

But it seemed Satou was convinced, as he nodded. “Well, you know Akira better than the rest of us. So I say we should trust your judgment on this.”

I smiled weakly. Satou had known Akira just as long as I had. How sad it was that our relationships with him were so different. “Let’s let Ueno keep Amelia preoccupied while the rest of us go over the plan one last time. Gram’s sure to go after the pageant winners before long, but it’s possible we can use me as a decoy, since I’m technically a winner too. C’mon, the others are waiting back in the bedroom.”

I voiced my agreement and followed him back to our private quarters. I hadn’t seen Akira sleeping as soundly as he had been in quite some time. The past several days, he’d been going to sleep after us and waking up before us. I wasn’t sure if he was getting less sleep than he normally would or if he wasn’t able to sleep at all, but it was clear just from looking at him that his health was taking a hit as a result. Maybe having Princess Amelia next to him was what allowed him to sleep peacefully again. Regardless of why, it was good to see him getting sufficient rest while he could. I’d noticed Akira seemed to have become a more laid-back person since he met Amelia. Though I was worried that if anything ever happened to her, he’d turn into a killing machine in an instant.

 

POV: AMELIA ROSEQUARTZ

 

“HEY, YOU SURE it was a good idea to leave him snoozin’ in there?” Crow asked me once we were on our way to collect the prizes at the location they’d given us yesterday. Akira had still been asleep by the time we were heading out, so we just left him lying on the sofa. Crow had already returned to his normal, brusque manner of speaking, despite talking more softly and politely with me earlier this morning. He’d even made it sound like he knew all about me and Kilika.

The news about monsters from the Great Forest Labyrinth flooding out and massacring the elves was big news at the time, and it quickly reached the shores of the other continents; sharing information regarding demon and monster attacks was also required by law in order to prepare for any potential demon invasions. It was commonly known by people at the time that Kilika had caused the incident by placing too much bait at the labyrinth’s entrance because that was what the official reports had stated. However, no reports of the incident remained after my father had all documents destroyed, so the only feasible way one could know the specific details (especially about Kilika) would be if they were alive at the time. Based on the beastfolk lifespan, there was no way Crow had been alive that long. I wanted to ask him about it, but if by some chance I’d misinterpreted his reaction and I ended up revealing Kilika’s secret after everyone worked so hard to sweep it under the rug, I’d feel terrible, so I refrained from broaching the subject.

“Akira’s been overexerting himself a lot lately, so he needs his rest. Besides, we’re just going to pick up the prizes and then head straight back to the inn. It’ll be fine,” I said. Once we had our prizes, we had no need to stay in Mali any longer. We could head out as soon as Akira woke up—he might even be awake by the time we got back.

“Gotcha… Well, here’s hoping we all make it out of here alive, I guess,” Crow mumbled, though I wasn’t able to catch the last few words he said.

“Welp, this is the place… Er, ain’t it?” asked the Ueno girl, whose confidence faded upon seeing the dingy, dilapidated building in front of us. It was an old hotel—certainly not the sort of place one would expect to pick up any grand prizes. All at once, the mood of the entire group tensed up. We’d been on high alert today from the start, but I didn’t think anyone could have foreseen this turn of events.

“Wha… Who’s there?!” shouted Crow. I whirled around to see a single man, dressed in black, standing behind us. The others quickly turned their gazes on him as well.

“You’re…that committee representative, right? Lapin, was it?” the Hosoyama girl asked, her eyes wide. She was right; at first, I thought it might have just been long white hair, but they were definitely the floppy bunny ears of the man we’d met yesterday. Only this time, he didn’t seem at all meek and cowardly, but instead stood before us fully confident, almost foreboding.

“Looks like it’s you they’re after, princess,” said Crow.

I snapped back to my senses and saw that several other men, also dressed in black, had begun to surround us. They seemed rather unintimidated by the fact that we had both the current hero’s party and a member of the previous one with us, not to mention my own combat prowess. There were about twelve of them in all, and they quickly closed in on us, leaving no room to escape.

“You’re the real Princess Amelia, I take it?” said one of the men.

Immediately, the hero’s party members formed a circle around me to protect me from their advance. They reacted so quickly, it was almost as if they’d been expecting an ambush. But now wasn’t really the time to be concerned about that.

“Yes, and what business is it of yours?” I said, narrowing my eyes. The men in black looked at each other and nodded. Even without a skill like Detect Danger, I could tell these men weren’t looking for a simple chat.

“Lord Gram would like to speak with you. You’ll be coming with us now.”

I felt Crow go into ferocious mode beside me. Gram was, after all, the name of his sister’s killer.

“And why, pray tell, should the princess of the elves deign to answer the summons of a mere guildmaster?”

It was supposed to be the royals who did the summoning, not the other way around. The disregard for common etiquette was disrespectful to say the least. Yet my words were lost on the men in black, as they simply stepped closer. They were determined to take me by force if they had to. Behind them, I could hear Lapin cackling maniacally.

“Oh, Princess. What were you thinking, coming to a place like this with only a bunch of kids and an old man past his prime to protect you? Why, you didn’t even bring that boy who’s always following you around,” the bunnyman taunted.

Apparently, it had been Akira they were most worried about… Perhaps they didn’t know these were members of the hero’s party. They needed to take a page out of Akira’s book and do their research beforehand. I let out a heavy sigh, then held one hand out in front of me.

“Gravity!”

Immediately, the men in black all fell to their knees under the sheer weight of my magic. I used to have a hard time controlling it so that it only affected my enemies and not my allies, but I’d learned how to better direct it during my time with Akira down in the labyrinth. I was feeling a little weary since I’d just created a new spell with Spellcraft, which drained a fair bit of my MP, but I still had more than enough to deal with these ruffians.

“And where exactly was it you were planning to take me, hm?” I asked, looking down at the men now trembling on all fours. I probably looked quite cold and terrifying in that moment; it wasn’t a side of me I ever wanted Akira to see, but if I had to resort to torture to get an answer out of them, I was absolutely prepared to do that. I wasn’t raised like your average pampered princess, after all. The high elf nobility had ruled over the Sacred Forest for hundreds and hundreds of years, and our people had been forced to do many unsavory things to protect that rule. I was not the sweet, beautiful woman Akira thought I was. I might have acted like a carefree, absentminded fool around him, but you could be sure I would not sit idly by whenever some terrible villain made an attempt on my life.

“If you don’t feel like answering the question, I’ll be happy to squash you all like bugs,” I said, lowering my hand just a bit. Even this was enough added force to make their bones audibly crack, and they all collapsed down on the ground.

 

POV: SATOU TSUKASA

 

IT ALL HAPPENED so fast. One minute, we were suddenly surrounded by a bunch of strange men in black clothes, and the next, they’d all been brought to their knees. All we did to help was stand around and watch. We might as well have not been there at all.

“Now, answer me. What are you people after? Where is Gram, and what is he plotting?” demanded Amelia as she lowered her hand to amplify the force again. Her eyes were cold and full of hatred, almost to the point that I myself felt pressured to answer her question myself. My other party members were starting to look rather pale from fright as well.

We’d all sort of assumed Amelia was a weak fighter. We’d never seen her fight before, so we had no way of envisioning how she might handle herself in combat. Our whole plan had been developed around the idea that she couldn’t protect herself, so it had been misguided from the very beginning. I had to wonder if Akira knew things would play out like this, and that was why he’d been so lackadaisical.

“W-we don’t know anything! H-honest!” blathered the committee representative, fear painted all over his face. But Amelia was not moved by the man’s pitiful plea; if anything, she seemed offended by it.

“Do you know what I hate more than anything else in this world?” she asked, lowering her slender arms even further. There was no longer even a flicker of light in her eyes; to the screaming men floundering on the ground, they probably looked like the eyes of death. “I’ll give you a hint: it’s being lied to. And I don’t believe for a second you don’t know anything. I’ve lived hundreds of years longer than you fools. You really think you can pull a fast one on me?”

The fact that elves lived extremely long lives was such common knowledge in this world that even our group knew it, despite never getting an education about this world back in Retice. Though I never knew they could be such ferocious fighters too. Eventually, Crow stepped up and gave the silent men a harrowing warning.

“I’d answer the lady’s question if I were you. She’s dead serious.”

In other words, she was more than ready to commit murder. And this world wasn’t like Japan; if she felt sufficiently threatened by these men, then we had no right to stop her from doing so in self-defense. Not that we could stop her even if we tried—all we could do was watch from the sidelines as the men were squashed into pancakes.

“A-all right, all right! W-we’ll talk!” screamed one of the men as his bones began to snap under the pressure. A few seconds later, and it would have been too late.

Amelia raised her arms up a bit, but she did not stop casting her spell completely. “Then you can explain yourselves from down there. Try anything funny, and I’ll crush you all.”

The moment I saw Lia take a deep breath, I was anticipating a scream, so I’d covered my ears. Amelia, unfortunately, hadn’t seen this coming and had suffered the full brunt of the auditory attack.

“Really, Akira?” Amelia said spitefully, shooting me a reproachful look. I could only smile sheepishly and shrug my shoulders.

“He really taught you how to use Inversion, Princess Amelia?!” asked Lia, her shoulders still trembling in disbelief.

“H-he did, yes,” Amelia answered, recoiling from the sheer force of Lia’s interrogation.

It felt like I was a fly on the wall watching one head of state threaten the other. Though in reality, they weren’t truly on equal footing. Amelia was the rightful heir to the throne of all elfkind, while Lia was an adopted daughter of the royal family of just one beastfolk nation, without a drop of royal blood in her veins. Anyone with half a brain could tell who the more powerful princess was.

“Ahem. I beg your pardon. I shouldn’t have lost my composure like that,” said Lia, clearly feeling a little embarrassed. Though I could certainly understand why this revelation would be such a crushing blow, given how much respect she clearly had for Crow. “Anyway, I suppose you’ll have to tell me more about that later,” she continued, straightening herself. “We’ll be arriving at the royal palace shortly.”

“The palace? Are we being given an audience?” I asked, finding it hard to believe that any king would let a sketchy assassin like me anywhere near his castle.

“Correct. My foster father wishes to welcome Princess Amelia to our kingdom…and he’d like to speak with you as well, Akira.”

Now this I was not expecting. What could the king of the largest beastfolk nation want with me? Surely he couldn’t know I’d been summoned here from another world. Had he heard of my reputation as the “Silent Assassin”? I dearly hoped it was anything but that.

“I don’t really know the details myself—just that he knows you’re an adventurer who’s earned the elven king’s respect, and he has some request he’d like to make of you.”

This was making less and less sense by the minute. The only way I’d earned the elven king’s “respect” was by him begrudgingly allowing me to serve as Amelia’s bodyguard, and that was hardly a reason to let an otherwise suspicious man with no documented background in this world into a royal palace.

“Guess I’ll just have to hear it from the man himself, then,” I said. We floated along in silence for a while after that, but then I remembered another question I wanted to ask Lia. “Hey, Lia, do you know a guy named Gram? Supposed to be your cousin, from what I’m told.”

Lia’s ears perked up, which told me she did indeed know him. Amelia, meanwhile, was stuffing her face with the teacakes lining the table as though she couldn’t care less about this particular line of discussion.

“Well, I was only adopted into the royal family, and by the time I got here, Lord Gram had already left his post as prime minister, so…” she trailed off, a little wary.

“That’s fine. Just tell me your general impressions of him based on your personal experience.” I looked imploringly into Lia’s eyes, and she finally let out a sigh and relented. Amelia and I sank deep into our chairs and prepared for a story.

“Lord Gram is the only son of King Igsam Lagoon’s older sister. The current ruling family’s lineage is rarely blessed with healthy births, so when Lord Gram was born, it was cause for grand celebrations.”

I can already see where this is going, I thought to myself as I nabbed a cookie from the snack table.

“And since King Igsam and the rest of the royal family pampered him to no end in his youth, well…Lord Gram developed something of a superiority complex, and he quickly fell under the delusion that the entire world belonged to him.”

So he got his every wish granted as a child just because he was born into a fancy palace. Must be nice to be on the winning team from birth, even if no one can decide what family they get born into.

“Eventually, he begged King Igsam to let him serve as prime minister, and after that, he was pretty much unstoppable. Women served him, children were sold by him, and men were brought in to do his dirty work. If anyone ever defied him, he’d use his personal team of mercenaries to silence them for good… The best way I can describe him is he doesn’t think of anyone else as human, unless they’ve caught his fancy. He thinks of people like playthings.”

Then his little power trip got so out of hand that they forced him to resign, and he became a guildmaster instead, eh? Lia seemed like she had more to say about Gram, but she simply stared at the ground.

“But he continued doing as he pleased, even after he was appointed as guildmaster…and now not even the king can stop him.”

Now that I couldn’t understand. How could the king’s nephew carry more influence than the king himself?

“So they let him continue to abuse his influence as the king’s nephew, even after he was essentially banished from his position of power?” asked Amelia, stealing the words right out of my mouth.

“No, the only influence Gram has the ability to use nowadays is that of any other guildmaster. It’s not political strength he has anymore—it’s military strength.”

“Those hired mercenaries of his, you mean?” I asked.

“Correct.” Lia nodded, then took a sip of tea. “I hate to say this, but…those mercenaries are far stronger than our country’s strongest battalions. He uses illegal back-alley drugs to enhance their physical capabilities far beyond that of any ordinary person. I wouldn’t even call them people anymore. After a few doses, they lose the ability to speak, so I highly doubt any of them lead ordinary lives. They’re just mindless drones.”

Lia bit her lip, and I could only imagine the things she had seen. Chances were, she’d come into direct contact with those mercenaries more than once.

“What else can you tell us about them?” asked Amelia as she crammed her mouth full with sweet after sweet. I wondered if she was even tasting them; they were probably some pretty pricey confections too, and she was just shoving them down her gullet.

“Well, from what I’ve seen…the way they move, it’s like they don’t even have control of their own bodies, which I assume is a result of the drugs. They’re nothing more than killing machines designed to follow orders. While I’m by no means an expert on the subject, I am told there are indeed drugs out there capable of such a thing.”

“I can’t imagine they’re produced by any reputable drug manufacturer,” I mused, “so I’m guessing there must be someone with a chemist or pharmacist class creating and selling them on the black market. It takes a pretty unique skill set to create medicine and whatnot.”

“Right. Our investigators have been looking into that too, but we haven’t found any leads just yet,” said Lia.

The simple existence of things like classes and stats had the ability to change our perception of the world—as I’d learned all too well since first arriving in Morrigan. After all, none of us ever would have felt we had the strength to slay monsters back in our world, and the only real difference was that now we had classes and could see our stats displayed as a number. This one little change made a world of difference; when your class was decided from birth, you didn’t have to worry about what you’d be when you grew up. And since you could see your stats, you could easily see your own strengths and shortcomings. Morrigan was a far more dangerous world than ours, but it was also a lot simpler to get by in many ways. Though one thing both worlds had in common was that there was never a shortage of evil scumbags looking for ways to use their powers for evil. And to think whoever made this drug that turned people into killing machines could have probably used those skills to save lives.

“I’m not surprised that your official investigators are having trouble digging up information, to be honest. People who get involved in shady stuff like this generally do a good job of keeping themselves hidden,” I said.

“Yes, King Igsam feels the same way. If I had to guess, I’d say that’s probably the main reason he’s interested in enlisting your services.”

As the royal palace came into view, I gazed up at it and sighed. It was time to find out if the beastfolk king’s summons would be a blessing or a curse. I had no reason to suspect foul play, but I’d learned the hard way after coming to this world that you should never take a monarch at their word. I needed to stay on my guard.

 

The enormous building was nestled in a river valley between the mountains, and it was both far grander and far more serene than either the castle in Retice or the organic palace in the elven kingdom. I had to admit, I was expecting something a bit cruder and more boisterous from a race known primarily for short tempers.

“Welcome to the royal palace. Watch your step and be careful not to slip and fall.”

Because the castle was built to straddle a river, the air was a bit humid, but not unpleasantly so. I gazed up, and had to take a moment to catch my breath—I couldn’t even see the top of its tallest tower. It looked an awful lot like a certain school of witchcraft and wizardry.

“So I get that the castle’s got plenty of natural protection since it’s surrounded by mountains, but wouldn’t you guys kinda be in trouble if enemies tried to launch an attack from the mountaintops?” I asked Lia after we stepped off the boat.

“Nope.” She shook her head with a smile. “The whole place is enveloped in a huge spherical barrier from high up in the air to deep underground, so an invasion is pretty unlikely.”

Judging by the smug expression on Lia’s face, I assumed the barrier was one of her own spirit barriers and had been put in place by Lia herself. I looked up once again and saw the translucent membrane enclosing the castle on all sides. Was a single cast of Spirit Barrier really enough to protect an entire castle?

“Now come along, you two. King Igsam’s audience chamber is right this way.”

The audience chamber was an unfathomably large reception hall, much like the one we’d first been summoned into back in Retice. I had no idea what the obsession with needlessly large chambers was in this world, especially when something about the size of our student council room would have easily done the job. The only people to be found in the entire expansive chamber were the king, a lionlike beastfolk seated on his throne at the far end, and one horselike beastfolk knight standing beside him. My Detect Presence skill didn’t find any hidden presences, so it really was just the five of us in the massive room. Somehow, that made me more uneasy than the alternative.

“Dear Father, I bring before you Princess Amelia Rosequartz of the Elves and her escort, the summoned hero Akira Oda, just as you requested,” Lia said with a bow, and we followed suit. I had wanted to keep the fact that I was summoned from another world a secret, but it sounded like Lia had already divulged that information to her father.

The king whispered back and forth with the knight by his side for a moment before finally addressing us, at which point I lifted my head to see him grinning from ear to ear. “Oh, good, yes! Thank you, Lia. Please, come closer, all of you.”

Despite his welcoming smile, there was something in his eyes that made me viscerally uncomfortable—like he was salivating at the very sight of me. I pretended I hadn’t noticed anything amiss and approached the throne. The knight sized me up before letting out a pompous “hmph,” making his opinion of me clear. Lia went to stand behind her father’s throne as King Igsam addressed us.

“I thank you for answering my summons, Lady Amelia. And you as well, Lord Oda,” he said with a merry smirk before rising from his throne. I didn’t really know what the proper etiquette was when greeting a ruler of a different race, so I followed along with whatever Amelia was doing. Granted, I didn’t feel the need to be especially polite since I knew he’d summoned me here to make a request of me, but I didn’t want any bad behavior on my part to reflect poorly on Amelia.

“It’s been quite some time, King Igsam,” said Amelia.

“That it has, that it has! Say, have you given any more thought to the matter we discussed when last we saw each other?” asked the king, and Amelia’s face immediately scrunched up as though she’d been forced to eat a bowl of nasty bugs. I had no idea what matter he was referring to, but it had to have been something awfully unpleasant for her to react so viscerally. But just as I was about to shrug it off as being none of my business, Amelia turned to look at me.

“I’m afraid Akira has already filled that position, Your Majesty,” said Amelia, blushing up a storm.

What in the world were they talking about?

At this, King Igsam frowned, but quickly regained his composure. “I see. Well, that’s a shame… In any case, let’s dispense with the niceties and get straight to the point, shall we?” He sat back down on his throne. Not a moment later, the knight took a single step forward.

“Princess Amelia, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Victor, and I am a knight of the imperial guard, as well as His Majesty’s personal knight attendant. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said the horseman, bowing to Amelia with a flirtatious smile; he ignored me completely.

Amelia nodded to Victor before turning back to King Igsam. I noticed a vein popping out of Victor’s head, offended at how little attention she had paid him. When the king began to speak again, I turned my attention to him.

“Firstly, I would like to thank you for aiding my daughter in the Great Labyrinth of Brute and ensuring she made it home safely. As her foster father and king of this nation, you have my deepest gratitude. Thank you,” said the king as he leaned forward in reverence, but Amelia quickly shook her head.

“The incident in question only transpired because I was foolish enough to get myself kidnapped. Lia simply came into the labyrinth to rescue me. If anything, you should be thanking Crow and Akira for her safe return.”

“I see. You’ll have to offer Crow my thanks for his efforts, then.”

Hey! Am I invisible here, or what?! I was starting to feel like I was being ignored on purpose.

“Now then. On to the other matter I wished to discuss with you today,” said the king, before finally making eye contact with me. It was then that my Detect Danger skill started ringing alarm bells in my head. Gee, thanks. Took you long enough. What a great skill—waiting to warn me until it’s already too late to turn back. “I hear you’re one of the summoned heroes. Akira Oda, was it? I have a request I’d like to make of you, if you would be so kind.”

“Depends on what it is,” I replied, trying desperately to hold in a heavy sigh.

“How dare you speak to His Majesty so rudely!” cried Victor, incensed by my candid demeanor, and I couldn’t help but let out the sigh I’d been holding in.

And here I was trying awfully hard to be polite.

“You really expect me to take on a request without even hearing what it is? Tell me the details of the job and what you’re offering me first, then we’ll talk,” I said, and King Igsam gave a weak little smile.

“It seems our hero from another world is shrewder than we anticipated. Very well, then… I would like you to perform an assassination for me. As recompense, I can offer you guaranteed safety for as long as you are within our borders.”

When I saw the smirk plastered across the king’s face, it struck me that this man was the exact kind of person I hated most.

“Sorry, no deal.”

“Wha?!” Victor gasped as his eyes shot wide open. I wasn’t sure if the beastfolk people saw their king as a god or something, but he sure seemed surprised that anyone would dare to say no to him.

“And why not?” asked the king. “I’ve heard you’ve been attacked by countless monsters and villains ever since arriving in this world. Not just by those bandits in the elven domain, but in Ur and Mali as well. I was under the impression that one’s personal security and freedom were what mattered most to you people who come from a world of safety and comfort, where war and strife are all but nonexistent.”

I wasn’t sure where this guy had gotten his information about our world, but he had some serious misconceptions.

“No offense, but I can take care of myself, thanks. I don’t need your protection.”

Maybe he didn’t realize how high-level I was, but just from checking the stats pages of various people around the palace, I knew no one here could hold a candle to me. To be fair, they had no way of seeing my stats. However, if he was so familiar with the attacks we’d faced, shouldn’t he also have heard how I’d wiped entire hordes of monsters off the map with ease?

“Yeah, right, kid!” Victor scoffed. “I bet you started the rumors about how easily you wiped out the monsters in Ur yourself!”

I could certainly understand the unruly horseman’s doubts. The average citizen who knew nothing about my Shadow Magic and hadn’t been there to witness it themselves would have a hard time believing so many monsters could have been swallowed up in the blink of an eye.

“Wow, so you’re calling him a liar?” Amelia chimed in with a frown. “And what exactly gives you reason to believe the rumors aren’t true, hm?”

“Well, what makes you so sure he’s not making it up?! They say you were kidnapped at the time, so you couldn’t have been around to see it! There’s no way a shrimp like him could have killed more than a hundred monsters with a wave of his hand!”

It seemed we had devolved into judging people by appearances. Where did this guy get off? King Igsam, meanwhile, was doing nothing to reel his man in, just watching the proceedings with an interested grin. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amelia’s scowl deepen. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen her so pissed off before.

“The fact that you even got word of the attack implies there were people there who saw it firsthand and lived to tell about it. Do you not believe a word your fellow knights tell you either? And as it happens, I think I know Akira’s abilities far better than someone who only met him today. So do us all a favor and keep that mouth of yours shut. Your pathetic bickering is starting to get on my nerves.”

Hot damn. I felt like I had just witnessed a murder. Never before had I seen a man get so thoroughly destroyed with words. Her skill with words was evidence of her having lived longer than anyone else in the room. Victor gritted his teeth in silent anguish.

“I cannot speak to the validity of any rumors about Akira’s actions that day, as I was not there to witness them myself,” Amelia continued. “However, it should go without saying that my absence does not make Akira a liar. As such, this line of discussion is pointless and unproductive…so let’s return to the matter at hand, shall we? Who exactly is it that you want Akira to assassinate?”

Right, I’d totally forgotten about the assassination gig. I guess I got a little too distracted by him insinuating I couldn’t protect myself.

“As you are both adventurers yourselves, I’m sure you’ll already be familiar with his name,” the king began, “but the man I’d like you to assassinate is the guildmaster of the Uruk branch—Gram.”

And there it is. I heard Lia gasp in surprise. Amelia and I reacted similarly.

“So you want to put out a hit on your own nephew,” I stated.

This was quite the request. Hired by a king to kill a member of the royal family. I wasn’t a citizen of his country, so he couldn’t order me to do it, yet I still felt a certain compulsion to give it some serious consideration due to his legal power. It put me in an awkward position.

“So you already know of Gram. Good, that will expedite things. Kill him, and in exchange, I will guarantee your safety.”

“Were you even listening to me?” I asked. “I’m strong enough to defend myself, and I don’t do hit jobs.”

He was starting to get on my nerves now, but just as I was about to lose my temper, Amelia grabbed me by the hand.

“Then how about this?” she suggested. “Why don’t you have the strongest soldier in the entire castle come down here and fight Akira. If Akira happens to lose, then we will accept your terms. But if he wins, you will let us leave here in peace. Would that be all right with you, Akira?”

I nodded, then looked up at the throne.

“Are you sure about this, Lady Amelia? He may be a summoned hero, but there’s no way he could win against a beastman,” said the king, his elbows propped on the throne’s armrests.

Finally, it was all starting to make sense. In this world, demons were the top dogs, followed by elves and beastfolk, with humans as the weakest race of all. This universal understanding was both why Victor doubted me over trusting his informant’s words, and why King Igsam offered safety instead of any monetary reward. It was all because I was a human, and humans were weak.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” I told him. “I’m also not the kind of guy who backs down when someone calls me a liar in front of the woman I love.”

“Then I do hope you won’t regret making a fool of yourself in front of her when you lose.”

 

Not wanting to do battle in such a fine building, we all went out to the castle courtyard. As we stepped up onto a raised platform, I got my first good look at Victor, and I was a little taken aback. Earlier, the lower half of his body had been hidden from view behind the throne, yet now I could see it all.

“A centaur, eh…?”

He was not just a horseman—he was half man, half horse. I’d seen an awful lot of beastfolk since arriving in Brute, but never one that seemed so much more “beast” than “man.” Most just looked like humans with a few little beastlike traits and facial features, but this guy was full-on horse from the waist down.

I wasn’t sure how word had spread so quickly, but a rather large crowd had gathered to watch the duel—there were so many spectators that I had to wonder if they’d been waiting in the wings for something like this to happen. The palace was a place of quiet serenity, yet this one small part was in an absolute uproar. The vast majority of the audience seemed to be soldiers, though there were a fair few government officials in attendance too, and I wondered if they should really be watching this while on the clock. I didn’t know what this world’s obsession with duels was, but apparently they were a major form of entertainment. I could kind of understand the fascination in Brute, given the stereotypes about beastfolk temperaments, but it seemed bizarre that even the peace-loving elves had jumped at the chance to hold a duel while I was there.

When King Igsam (with Lia and Amelia in tow) walked out onto the second-floor balcony, a hush immediately fell over the rambunctious audience. They were far more disciplined and orderly than the king’s soldiers back in the castle of Retice, that much was for sure. Usually men like them couldn’t help but make a stir upon seeing Amelia’s face for the first time.

“Now then. We are gathered here today to bear witness to an auspicious bout between the summoned hero, Akira Oda, and the castle’s finest soldier, our very own Victor.”

Hearing that Victor was supposedly the strongest fighter in the castle came as a bit of a surprise. He had initially struck me as the type of workhorse who would spend all day hunched over a desk writing reports, and I could see many soldiers in the crowd far more muscular than him. Can’t judge a book by its cover, I suppose.

The crowd whispered among themselves upon hearing I was a summoned hero, which didn’t surprise me. After all, aside from myself and the hero’s party, all of my other classmates were still locked up tight in Retice, and no one really knew whether they were alive or dead. There were even rumors circulating that the recent hero summoning ritual had been a complete failure, and that Retice was just trying to hide it.

“On my name as Igsam Lagoon, King of the great beastfolk nation of Uruk, I do hereby recognize this bout not as a simple squabble between individuals, but as an officially sanctioned duel. Duelists, take your positions and prepare for battle.”

As Victor rested his massive battle-ax on his shoulders, I drew the two daggers made from the remains of the Yato-no-Kami and held them in a backhanded grip.

“Let the duel begin!” King Igsam declared from his perch on the balcony.

Immediately, Victor rushed across the platform, hooves pounding as he closed the distance and swung his mighty battle-ax downward.

“Whuh-oh. That was a close one,” I said. Psych. I could’ve dodged his attack in my sleep, but the crowd sounded impressed.

“Whoa! How the hell did he dodge that?!”

“I’m not even sure I could have dodged that one…”

After whiffing his first attack, Victor put distance between us again and we both circled the edges of the arena, staring each other down.

“When I first heard them talking about the assassin who fights like a warrior, I thought it was the dumbest thing I’d ever heard, but it seems you really do know a thing or two,” Victor muttered under his breath. I was a little surprised that he would try to strike up a conversation, but I remained on my guard, awaiting his next move. “However…let’s see you try to dodge this!”

He swung his battle-ax with even greater speed than last time, but once again, I side-stepped it quite easily. Only this time, Victor predicted followed through on his swing.

“Hup!”

Not in the mood to be cleaved in half, I jumped out of the way of the oncoming attack and landed right on top of the blade of Victor’s ax.

“Wha?!” he blustered.

“Hiyah!”

I dove and swung my dagger at Victor’s throat, but he quickly pulled his battle-ax back in to deflect it. After a smooth midair recovery, I landed on the ground a safe distance away, but before I had a chance to catch my breath, Victor charged, his ax raised high overhead.

“Whoa! That little guy jumps around like a freaking acrobat!”

“He’s so fast, it’s insane!”

“Dang, I didn’t even see it…”

“H-have you lost your MIIIND?!” I screamed as I careened upward before landing on the rooftop. I knew screaming was a surefire way to get us caught, but she hadn’t left me much of a choice, slinging me to the roof without so much as a word of warning. I looked down over the eaves to give the perpetrator a piece of my mind, only to find her smiling sheepishly.

“What in the world were you—” I started, but then I realized she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the mouth of the alley.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing here at this hour, little girl?!”

As a bunch of light sources flooded into the alleyway, I saw that Latticenail was completely surrounded by city guards, but she didn’t seem fazed by the intimidating soldiers in the slightest and just kept on smiling.

“Oh, well, y’see, I’m just a simple traveler, and this is my first night in town. But before I could even find an inn to stay at, everyone suddenly disappeared! Looks like I’m gonna have to sleep outside tonight! But I guess I got a little lost, tee hee. Could one of you big, strong guards lead me out to the city gates? Heck, I don’t even know where we are right now!”

I was surprised at how quickly she’d thought up a story, especially given how much she vehemently hated liars. Even if it was for the purposes of avoiding a fight with the city guards, I never thought she’d lie. Everything was riding on her story, and one little slip-up could mean curtains for us.

“Whaddya mean, kid? We’re in the alley behind the Adventurer’s Guild—it’s about as far from the city gates as you can get. And didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s dangerous to go wandering in this city without a guide?”

“No way! Seriously?! Gosh, I guess my sense of direction’s even worse than I thought! Oopsie, tee hee!”

Apparently, this wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, and the guards quickly walked off with Lady Latticenail in tow. As soon as they took their eyes off her, she looked up at me and gave a little wink to wish me luck. I nodded back, then snuck in through the (thankfully) unlocked skylight.

When it came to sensitive information, most people kept it somewhere it wouldn’t accidentally be discovered. The attic I landed in fit the bill. At first glance, the only things that seemed to be stored in the attic were a broken broom and a bunch of trash, but it was still worth taking a look. Gram didn’t seem like the type to go to great lengths to destroy the evidence, so it was entirely possible that I’d find something damning without much trouble.

Being in cat form was awfully convenient when searching for hidden things—I could sneak into tight spaces, and with great olfactory senses, I could easily sniff things out. For really tight spaces, I would probably need to shapeshift into a slime, but I really didn’t want to do that unless absolutely necessary. Using Shapeshifter cost an enormous amount of mana, and all the slimes I’d encountered that I could turn into were bright and gaudy colors, hardly good for stealth; I hadn’t personally seen the black slime that Lady Amelia described, thus that color wasn’t an option. And while a dog might have had a better sense of smell than a cat, I had a predisposition against canines and preferred to avoid them whenever possible.

“Doesn’t seem like anyone’s been in here for quite some time. I’m not catching a whiff of any scents, unfortunately.”

The room hadn’t been cleaned in quite some time, so the entire place was caked in a thick layer of dust. It seemed safe to assume there probably wasn’t anything mission-critical hidden up here, but just as I was searching for a ladder leading downstairs, a corner of the floor opened up. I hid under a nearby desk. Presumably, this was the door to the attic I’d been looking for, and someone had just opened it from down below.

“Ugh. Why do I gotta climb up into this musty old attic just to hide his dirty laundry?” I heard someone mutter as they clambered up the ladder. “I get that I’m basically a slave to him, but would it kill him to take care of this junk himself? Like, what would he do if I did a crappy job of hiding it and someone else found it? I dunno what the king was thinking, making a guy like that guildmaster… Though it’s not like King Dingaling’s all that great at his job either.”

I held my breath as though my life depended on it, but thankfully, the grumbling man never came anywhere near the desk I was hiding beneath.

“Lord knows the world would be a better place without ’em… Both Gram and the king.”

I could only assume he was talking about King Igsam (whom Master had met earlier today), but I was struggling to imagine what sort of person he must be for his citizens to loathe him so much. I doubted this disgruntled man was the only one who referred to him as “King Dingaling.”

“Why doesn’t he just burn these documents, anyway? All they are is a potential liability for him.”

The man grumbled and complained but still did as he’d been told, which I was very grateful for. If what he claimed was accurate, then these documents were exactly the type of evidence Master was looking for.

After a moment, the man left the attic.

“This was the easiest stakeout yet!”

Everything Crow had said was true. Gram had bought a human woman with a chemist class as a slave and forced her to create the boosters for him. Her name was Amaryllis Cluster. She had won the Mali beauty pageant a few years back, and she’d been sold shortly after. I didn’t want to believe the rumors of a burgeoning slave trade in beastfolk territory, but I couldn’t argue with facts. I knew Lady Amelia had been pursued by organ traffickers, but if the common folk were to learn that the royal family was involved in slavery, respect for the crown would crash to an all-time low.

“All right, now I just have to bring this paperwork back to Master, and I can finally be by his side again.”

Since the pageant in Mali, Master and I had only communicated telepathically, so we hadn’t actually met face-to-face in quite a while. I folded up the documents detailing Gram’s misdeeds and held them in my mouth as I exited through the skylight. It didn’t feel like I’d been in the attic for very long, yet the sky was already lightening. Once morning came, I’d need to use Telepathy to ask Master which inn they were staying at, but before that, I needed to regroup with Lady Latticenail.

 

“Hey, you made it out alive! Nice work!”

I sought out the highest hill on the outskirts of town, and sure enough, that was where I found Lady Latticenail. Whenever she ran and hid from us back at the Demon Lord’s castle, she’d always go somewhere up high—and as His Majesty always said, “Where smoke will rise, fools will climb.” I didn’t quite understand his meaning, but it always managed to make Lady Latticenail puff out her cheeks in displeasure, so I assumed it was an insult.

“So how’d it go?” she asked.

“Quite well. Look here—written evidence showing Gram not only owns slaves and forces them to make illegal drugs, but also exports them to the human continent!”

Lady Latticenail’s eyes went wide as she scanned the papers I’d found. “Where in the world did you find this stuff?”

“Erm, up in the attic of that building you threw me on top of. Why do you ask?” I said.

She narrowed her eyes for a split second before resuming her usual smile. “Well, that’s great news.”

“Indeed. Thank you very much for your assistance, Lady Latticenail. I do feel bad for making you lie, however…”

“What? I didn’t lie. You know how much I hate liars, don’t you?” she said, genuine confusion on her face.

“B-but when those soldiers surrounded you, you said…”

“All I said was that I was a traveler who was new in town, and that everyone was already off the streets by the time I got here, which is true. As was me saying I was gonna have to sleep outside for the night, and that I didn’t know where I was. After all, all I did was follow you the whole time, don’tcha remember? I wasn’t paying any attention to where we were walking. I didn’t tell a single lie.”

“A-as if! How else would you have known which roof to throw me on top of?!”

“Oh, yeah, that…” She flashed a devilish grin. “Guess I just happened to throw you in the right direction and you just happened to land on the roof of the Adventurer’s Guild, which had an unlocked skylight leading into the attic where someone just happened to leave the evidence we were looking for, huh?”

Her mischievous smirk was beginning to creep me out, so I took a step backward, but this only made her grin wider.

“Don’t sweat the small stuff, big guy. Sometimes coincidences happen, and you need to embrace that… Now your master gets what he wants, and I got to have a fun little time too. All’s well that ends well!”

I feared I would never understand this girl. Unlike Master, who had a clear goal in mind at all times—returning home—I had no idea where Latticenail’s motivations lay, nor what purpose she was living her life in pursuit of. And I found that genuinely terrifying.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, I got a telepathic transmission from Night asking where we were staying, and only a few minutes after I told him, he and Latticenail arrived at our hotel room door. The sun wasn’t fully up yet, so Amelia and Crow were still fast asleep in the room next door.

“Here is what you requested, Master.”

I grabbed the documents from Night’s mouth and gave him some pets and chin scritches as a reward, and he started purring loudly. “Thanks, this is huge. And thanks to you too, Latticenail.”

Latticenail smiled and stuck her head out toward me.

Confused, I tilted my head. “What are you doing?” I asked.

She turned her eyes up at me and pouted. “Ugh! I’m sayin’ I want head pats too, numbnuts! How come you recognize when she wants ’em, but not me?”

“Because Amelia’s the only woman whose body language I care to understand—ever think of that? And no, I will not be giving you any head pats.” I was so confused; why was this demon acting so entitled?

She let out a heavy sigh and gazed upward. “Sheesh, I got first place in that beauty pageant too, y’know. Way to make me lose confidence in myself.”

Personally, I was convinced she’d only won by a fluke—something about the lighting must have shown her off at the perfect angle or something. Growing tired of dealing with Latticenail, I shook my head and turned to Night, who had been watching her with a pensive look.

“What’s the matter?” I asked, scooping him up in my arm, and he looked at the documents in my other hand. Right, I still need to take a look at those. Whoops. I blame Latticenail for distracting me. I unfolded the sheets of paper and gave them a quick once-over, and then I understood why Night was so on edge. “Night, where exactly did you find this stuff?”

“In the attic of the Adventurer’s Guild,” Night replied with a puzzled look. “Why do you ask? Lady Latticenail asked the same thing. Is something strange about those documents? Are they forgeries?”

I gave him some pets to reassure him, and he purred loudly once more.

“No, it’s not that. It’s just that they’re almost too perfect, is all. But I’m pretty sure all the info written there is legit,” said Latticenail.

But therein lies the problem.

“Thing is, if these were really just lying around in the attic of the Adventurer’s Guild, then that probably means there’s someone else out to assassinate Gram. Someone who’s much closer to him than he even realizes, most likely.”

I nodded in agreement. If we didn’t act fast, someone might steal this hit job right out from under our noses.

“W-wait a minute! How can you know that for certain just based on where the documents were hidden? Couldn’t it just as easily have been an oversight on Gram’s part?”

“I mean, look at this. Doesn’t it seem a little funny to you?” I said, holding the papers out in front of Night. I felt kind of bad that he was still having trouble seeing what the problem was, so I decided to lay it out for him (though I couldn’t resist a little chuckle). “First off, why would anyone keep a neat and tidy list summarizing all of their crimes up in their attic? What would the point be? I mean, look at this stuff… Human trafficking, organ trafficking, murders, the names of all the mercenaries under his employ. It’s almost like these documents were prepared specifically to tell someone like us about Gram’s crimes. Hell, you could probably start a war with something like this. Slavery’s totally illegal among the beastfolk nations, after all. Even assuming someone close to Gram was instructed to hide these somewhere no one could find them, they clearly did it in a way that suggests they wanted them to be stolen, or maybe that there was someone else who was supposed to come pick them up. You just beat them to the punch.”

Now that Night had a handle on the implications of all of this, his expression grew grim. “It wouldn’t just lead to war. It would mean the utter dismantling of the royal family of Uruk. And if that were to happen, Lady Lia’s life would be in danger too.”

Of course it would lead to a revolt. Just the word slavery was enough to fill any beastfolk with disgust, so the idea of a royal family member doing it? And according to these documents, it wasn’t just beastfolk slaves, but humans and elves too. Some of these names were probably those of the elven wives and children I’d sworn to save. I couldn’t exactly turn a blind eye now, when I’d stumbled upon where they were being held.

“To be honest with you, I really couldn’t care less whether this or any country in this world falls apart,” I said. “However…”

Now that we’d stuck our heads into this conspiracy, it felt like we had a responsibility to do whatever we could to stop it. I wasn’t sure how much I could do to protect Lia’s family, realistically, but she had cast that barrier that saved our hides down in the Great Labyrinth of Brute, and she’d helped us out of a bind yesterday. Not to mention, Amelia had taken a real liking to her. I let out a heavy sigh. The only thing these documents didn’t tell us was who had been meant to find them.

“It’s the Kingdom of Retice,” said a voice from the next room. I turned to see Crow standing in the doorway. How did he always know exactly when to make the perfect entrance? It was starting to really freak me out. Only this time, I was less surprised by what he had to say and more repulsed.

“The Kingdom of Retice? What about it?”

That was the country that had summoned us to do its bidding, and the one that had killed Commander Saran. If I hadn’t run away when I did, I would probably be pushing up daisies right next to Commander Saran. There was no doubt in my mind they’d summoned us for nefarious purposes, and if it weren’t for my classmates still stuck there, I would be happy to never hear the name “Retice” ever again.

“I heard the gist of your conversation, and I think your supposition is mostly correct. Think about it: What country would benefit the most from having documents that would give them an excuse to go to war…? If you ask me, it can only be Retice,” Crow said as he trotted into my room and plopped down on the sofa.

“I’ll go ahead and refrain from asking what the hell a demon’s doing in our hotel room,” Crow went on, looking suspiciously at Latticenail, who shivered uncomfortably in response. Since Crow didn’t have World Eyes, he shouldn’t have been able to see through her Mana Suppression skill and recognize her as a demon. He must have known her, but he continued speaking before I had a chance to ask. “Anyway, you wanna know how things are going over in the Kingdom of Retice right now? You’ve got a lot of acquaintances over there, don’t you?”

“More like comrades, but yeah,” I said. They were more than acquaintances, but certainly not friends. It was hard to express the concept of “classmates” in a world where that term didn’t exist. Hell, I wasn’t even sure they had schools. “To be honest, I couldn’t care less what becomes of them, though I suppose I might lose a little sleep if they were to die due to my own inaction.”

“Gotcha… Well, I’m afraid I don’t have any intel to share about the other summoned heroes. All I can say is that the amount of food being shipped into the castle hasn’t changed.”

I was surprised to hear myself sigh in relief—apparently, I cared more about my classmates than I thought. I didn’t regret running away from the castle the day they tried to pin the commander’s murder on me, but I did wish I could have done something to break all my classmates free of the curse they were under beforehand. I’d been too caught up in my own business and still reeling from Commander Saran’s death. I liked to tell myself they’d be safe so long as Gilles was there to look after them, but now he had left the castle behind, and I could only speculate as to how they were doing now. I didn’t know why the hero and his party had left the others behind, but I could assume the vast majority still hated my guts.

“As long as they’re not dead, I guess. Anything else you’d like to share? I assume you’ve got good reason to believe the kingdom’s trying to start a war?” I asked, and Crow gave a solemn nod, his expression grim.

“I do,” he replied. “When you were back at the castle, did you ever hear rumors circulating about how the king had taken an interest in the art of resurrecting the dead?”

I searched my memory, then nodded. I recalled Commander Saran telling me something along those lines in the castle archives. About how the king had lost his beloved wife in a tragic accident, and how he’d devoted his life to bringing her back, even at the expense of completely neglecting their daughter. I had to wonder if the same sort of obsession would consume me were I to lose my mom or my sister.

I had shrugged off the story when I first heard it because I was under the impression it was impossible to bring back the dead, even in a world with magic. Hell, even with Amelia’s Resurrection Magic, it wasn’t possible to bring back people who’d been dead for decades. Things like that only happened in fairy tales.

“But what does it matter?” I asked. “It’s not possible, and I don’t see what that could have to do with them trying to pick a fight with Uruk.” If bringing people back from the dead was possible, then we wouldn’t need to go on this dangerous revenge quest to begin with.

Crow’s face remained deadly serious. “What if I told you it was possible, at least theoretically?” he asked, and I could almost feel the blood of everyone in the room run cold.

“Oh, come now, surely you jest? One can’t simply bring back the dead,” Night muttered incredulously.

But Crow wasn’t the type to say something like that lightly, and if it was true, then there was a chance we could bring his sister back.

“Hate to break it to you, but you actually can… Only problem is it costs tens, or even hundreds of thousands of lives in exchange. Not sure I know anyone who’d want to come back from the dead if they knew it meant sacrificing that many innocent people, but hey, to each their own.”

I was taken aback by this information, but also a little relieved to hear Crow had no delusions of attempting something like that to bring back his sister.

“How does it even work? And why does it cost such an exorbitant amount of lives just to bring back one person?” I asked.

“I couldn’t tell you; all I know is the price for bringing one person back to life via the Equivalent Exchange skill is an ungodly amount of lives. Hence why the king of Retice is itching to start a war. At first, he was trying to pick a fight with the human nation of Yamato, but Gilles and company put a stop to that.”

I see. That would explain why he had been forced to resign from his post. I didn’t know which country was stronger, but a war between them would have certainly resulted in countless deaths. I wondered if the people of Retice were in support of this warmongering, or if the king was just too cruel to care what they had to say.

In any case, this Equivalent Exchange skill seemed like quite the game-changer. From the way Crow made it sound, it was capable of letting someone do just about anything they pleased, so long as they could pay the necessary price. Such a skill would be invaluable not just in combat scenarios, but for everyday purposes as well.

“And how exactly did you come into possession of this intel?” I asked, finally giving voice to the biggest question I’d wanted to ask. Where in the hell was Crow getting all this precious information from?

Crow simply laughed and tousled my hair. “That’s a secret,” he said before waltzing out of the room.

God, why did he have to act like such a typical overconfident pretty-boy? Especially when he was old enough to be in a nursing home.

 

“Okay, folks! Today, we’re gonna make up for the guided city tour I didn’t have the chance to give you yesterday!”

After the sun had fully risen, and Amelia was drowsily eating her breakfast, Lia paid a visit to our hotel room. When Amelia had first woken up and seen Latticenail and Night hanging out, she’d stood there dumbfounded for a minute before gleefully embracing them both as I explained the task I’d asked them to perform. Amelia had not seen Night in weeks, after all.

Given that we hadn’t given Lia our hotel information, Crow must’ve told her. As I watched Lia and Crow converse happily with each other, I couldn’t help but wonder at the relationship dynamic between them. It remained a mystery to me.

With Night on my shoulders for the first time in ages, we stepped out into the city. Latticenail decided to tag along, albeit with her face concealed under her hood. Beastfolk had awfully good noses, so there was a chance they’d be able to sniff her out as a demon even with her Mana Suppression skill on. How they could possibly recognize the scent of demon, I didn’t know, but it was better to be safe than sorry, especially considering that if anyone were to discover her identity, there’d be nothing but trouble. Latticenail herself was initially opposed to the idea, but she eventually caved to reason, donning the monster-repelling cloak Mahiro had made (which could also conceal her presence).

“Glad you decided to come along today, Crow!” Lia said happily.

“Yeah,” said Crow, who was walking beside her.

Lia seemed to be feeling a lot more chipper today, at least judging by her tail swinging rapidly to and fro. I remembered hearing that dogs wagged their tails when they were in a good mood… Or was that an indicator that they liked someone? I forgot. In any case, Lia seemed to be really enjoying herself today.

“Someone sure looks happy,” Amelia remarked as she watched the two of them.

“She must’ve really been looking forward to seeing Crow, eh?” Latticenail teased.

Night and I looked at each other, neither of us quite understanding what they were getting at. The two women sighed as though we were the most hopeless men on the planet.

“Can’t you guys tell? Lia’s totally got a thing for Crow. As in, a crush kind of thing. Anyone with eyeballs can see it.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Night looked just as shocked as I did.

“God, guys are so dense about this sort of thing. I literally just met the girl this morning, and even I could tell.” Latticenail sighed.

In my defense, today was the first time I’d seen the two of them interact. But if she did have a crush on him, that would explain why she seemed weirdly jealous that Amelia had learned Inversion from him before she did.

“Okay, I’ll admit I didn’t realize it, but isn’t the age gap between them a little too wide?” I wondered aloud. After all, Crow had to be at least a hundred years older than her.

“Oh, age doesn’t matter one bit in beastfolk relationships! Especially since beastfolk don’t generally show the physical effects of aging. Hence why most people wouldn’t really bat an eye to find out that a youngster like Lia was dating a geezer like Crow. Y’know, hypothetically.”

I had to admit, the words coming out of Latticenail’s mouth were giving me serious culture shock, but I tried to wrap my head around it as I looked up at Lia, who was blushing from ear to ear. This was unmistakably the face of a girl in love. Then again, I felt like I’d seen Yui make faces like that whenever Kyousuke was around, so maybe not.

“Let’s give the two of them some alone time, shall we?” Amelia suggested.

“Yeah, good idea,” Latticenail said, and the two of them turned down a nearby side street.

Figuring Crow would be able to sense we’d taken a different route, I decided to follow after them.

“Wait a minute. Isn’t this the street where…?”

As we turned the corner, Night started looking around nervously. Latticenail, too, narrowed her lavender eyes upon noticing a particular signboard.

“Yeah, we came through here last night. Which means if we follow this road all the way, it’ll take us straight to the Adventurer’s Guild.”

It was off the main road, yet plenty of people were still using the side street—many of them clearly adventurers, and many more than even in Ur.

“Would you like to stop by the Guild, Akira?”

Come to think of it, I hadn’t been to a Guild branch since we left Ur. I had no reason to, especially since Crow had been ensuring we didn’t have to pay for our hotels, but I was interested to see what the largest Guild branch in the beastfolk kingdoms looked like. Especially since Gram was the guildmaster of said branch.

“Sure, why not? I’m curious as to what it’s like.”

“Then let’s head on over there!” Latticenail said, taking the lead. I asked if she knew the way, and she said she never forgot a path once tread. I liked to think I had a pretty good memory for those sorts of things too, but the labyrinth that was Uruk city had made me reconsider. “This was the place, right kitty-cat?”

“Yes, this is the one.”

It was a fairly dingy looking building from the outside, featuring the same crossed swords emblem painted on a sign outside the Ur branch. Presumably, it was the emblem of the Adventurer’s Guild.

“I’ll wait outside. Just holler at me when you’re done! I might be behind the building,” said Latticenail.

“Got it. Will do. Well then, shall we?”

I watched Latticenail turn the corner, then placed my hand on the door to the Adventurer’s Guild and stepped inside.

As much as I wanted to pluck one, perhaps it would be a good idea to heed his warning and enjoy them from afar. They were more beautiful in large groups like this than alone in a vase anyhow.

“The ‘higan’ in higanbana apparently refers to a place called nirvana—their name for the place we go after death. You could say they’re the flowers of the afterlife. Though even Akira didn’t know exactly why they were named that.”

“Nirvana, huh… They’re so beautiful, though. Why associate them with death?”

Was there really no better name? What an unfortunate flower—first it was unlucky enough to be poisonous, then it got a morbid name. I couldn’t help but feel bad for the poor flowers as I watched them sway in the wind.

“Well, they are pretty nice-looking, at least,” said Lord Crow.

“Yeah. Why did you bring me here?”

I turned to look up at Lord Crow as he stared at the flowers.

He furrowed his brow and inclined his head as though he felt a little awkward. “Why? I was just walking around town yesterday and happened upon these, and I felt like showing them to someone… That’s the only reason. No ulterior motives.”

This did not seem like the sort of thing he would do purely by chance at all. To be fair, he had liked pretty flowers for as long as I’d known him. Those light-pink flowers that floated on lakes, those purple flowers whose petals fell from the sky like rain… He would always find places with flowers like that, then show them

to me and me alone. I was sure I’d never forget the sight for the rest of my life. After living in the palace for so long, I’d almost forgotten just how beautiful flowers could be.

“You probably won’t be able to memorize the way to get here, though, so don’t try to come back here on your own,” said Lord Crow, worried despite his tough façade.

“Then I guess I’ll just have to drag you into coming along, won’t I? Looks like we just added yet another secret spot to our repertoire,” I joked.

“Wow, you actually remember those old trips?” Crow responded, gazing down at the red spider lilies with the slightest, almost imperceptible hint of a smile.

 

POV: ODA AKIRA

 

“PLEASE, you have to let me be your apprentice!”

“Absolutely not.”

The lionman pleaded with twinkling eyes and a tail wagging fast enough to serve as a boat rudder. He looked like a puppy begging for a treat. How had I gotten myself into this situation? One minute he was on the floor begging for my forgiveness, and now he was imploring me to take him on as my pupil.

“Why not?!”

“Because I don’t take apprentices, I don’t have the skills to teach someone, and I don’t know the first thing about you.”

With this, Kerria swooped in to speak on Raúl’s behalf. What was with these people? I would have appreciated it if Amelia

would stop laughing and help me out of this pickle. And I was going to give Night (who was still struggling to suppress his own laughter) a piece of my mind when we got back to our hotel room.

After the lionman had first fallen to his knees before me, the rest of the adventurers still in the Guild had left (probably in fear of Amelia), and we’d sat down in their empty seats. I had hoped to leave right after them, as we had no business at the Guild and I didn’t want to run into Gram, but before we made it to the door, Raúl, Kerria, and the shifty-eyed Mamoru blocked our path and forcibly treated us to tea by way of apology. Only, instead of tea cakes, we were treated to stories about Raúl and Kerria. I’d been certain they were lovers, but they were actually just childhood friends.

“Raúl and I have been inseparable ever since we were born. As you can see, my legs don’t work, so he’s been helping with the heavy lifting my whole life. He’s also a huge worrywart, so he always hangs out at the Guild with me whenever he doesn’t have any business to take care of.”

“Bwuh?! I don’t come here for you! It’s my duty as a silver-rank adventurer to be here on call!”

“Yeah, yeah. So he says, while also being single-handedly responsible for stopping any and all bar fights and scaring any adventurer who says a single bad thing about me out of town.”

“That’s just a coincidence! Honest!”

The two of them began bickering again despite having been warned about it by the assistant guildmaster. They were obviously very close, so much so that I couldn’t have been the only one to mistake them for a couple. Kerria had been born without the ability to walk, and after her parents died when she was young, Raúl stepped in. Maybe it was my own prejudices talking, but he didn’t strike me as the type to go out of his way to help others. If anything, he seemed like the type to always need motherly guidance.

“Raúl’s a pretty good cook too—better than your average chef, I’d say. And he does all the chores and everything. Bet you didn’t expect that, huh?” Kerria told Amelia, almost as if she was bragging.

“No, I can’t say I did. Wouldn’t have expected that at all. Not. At. All,” Amelia replied.

“All right, that’s enough! You don’t have to be so rude about it!” growled the lion in question, and Kerria went pale, apparently worried about how Amelia would take the outburst.

Over the course of our discussion, Raúl’s internal hierarchy had become clear: I was the strongest person out there, followed by gold-rank adventurers, then himself and all the other silver-rank adventurers, then below that was where Amelia and everyone else fit in. Which struck me as kind of funny, given that Amelia was a silver-rank adventurer just like him. I wondered what his metrics were. Was it just because Amelia didn’t look particularly strong? Because if anything, an argument could be made that she was stronger than me, considering she had a limitless supply of mana and a far greater depth of experience in battle and in this world. I had waltzed into this world not long ago and wasn’t even using my skills the way they were intended. But Amelia didn’t seem too offended by Raúl’s remarks, so I didn’t make a big deal out of it.

“Cooking, huh? What’s your specialty?” I asked.

“Well, uh… I can make a pretty mean stew out of general boar meat and potatoes. Sometimes I’ll throw in a few carrots for good measure,” he replied, scratching his cheek in embarrassment.

The difference between the way he talked to me and the way he talked to Amelia was night and day. I found myself wondering if the dish he described would taste anything like Japanese-style stewed meat and potatoes. At my house, we always threw carrots into the stew too, not to mention konjac, burdock, and taro. And general boar wasn’t exactly the hardest monster to hunt either—any half-decent adventurer could take one down without too much trouble. They were stupid creatures that charged headfirst into you, so as long as you knew when to dodge out of the way, you were all set. Their meat was pretty tasty when grilled or roasted, though it was too close to beef for my tastes. There were also regular boars here that were a fair bit smaller than general boars, but they weren’t really good for meat and were instead hunted for their thick hides, which could fetch a decent price.

“So, whaddya say? If you agree to take Raúl on as your apprentice, you could come stay at our place and enjoy the high life with us!”

“Aha! I knew you were trying to wingman for me!”

And here I thought we’d changed the subject. This redheaded lion and his golden-haired cohort didn’t know how to take no for an answer.

“Sorry, but we’re on a bit of a journey, and we’ve got places to be. I can’t afford to stay in any one place for too long,” I told them.

“A journey, eh? And where is it you might be heading?”

Generally, an adventurer, despite the name, stuck to one or two towns, taking on requests from the local Guild branches. Guilds liked having strong and high-ranking adventurers on hand whenever a problem arose, so they tried to encourage people to settle in one place. However, I wasn’t an ordinary adventurer, and I wouldn’t have even registered with the Guild if it hadn’t been a requirement for entering the Great Labyrinth of Brute. I also had no intention of settling down in this world or having someplace to call “home.” My only home was back in my world with my mom and Yui, and as I’d already explained to Amelia and Night, nothing was going to change that.

“Let’s just say that if I told you where we’re headed, you’d probably laugh at me. That’s the kind of place our final destination is,” I said, attempting to gloss over things. Unless there was someone in this building who was itching for a war between the humans and beastfolk, I couldn’t just go running my mouth about this sort of thing. Not that I expected anyone to believe me even if I did lay it all out on the table. That yes, I was summoned here via the hero summoning ritual, but no, I didn’t really care about killing the Demon Lord. Surely this idiot who had taken it upon himself to develop vast delusions about me wouldn’t be able to wrap his head around my circumstances.

“Somewhere we’d laugh at you for trying to go, eh? Any ideas, Kerria?”

“Nope, I got nothin’.”

As the two of them attempted to puzzle it out, I downed the last of my tea and stood up. “I think it’s about time we joined back up with our friends. Raúl and Kerria, it was nice to meet you.”

We needed to find Crow and Lia, who’d probably lost track of time. Our hosts looked sad to see us leave, but their expressions brightened a bit when I said we’d still be in town for a few days. Now even Kerria was making the puppy-dog eyes at me.

“The tea was delicious, thank you,” said Amelia, rising from her seat as well.

“Could you wait just one moment, please?” said an unfamiliar voice from the inner part of the building, just as I placed my hand on the doorknob.

It wasn’t Mamoru or any of the other Guild employees. Amelia and I both turned to see a slightly chubby man standing at the opposite end of the room. He hadn’t come in through the front door, so he was Guild personnel…but his presence was rather ominous. That impression wasn’t helped as the other Guild workers’ faces turned grim the moment he appeared. Or the fact that he was blatantly undressing Amelia with his eyes.

“Miss Amelia Rosequartz, I take it?” the man asked with a devious grin. “Gram Cluster, owner and operator of the Uruk Adventurer’s Guild. There’s something I’d like to discuss with you in private. Would you be a dear and come speak with me in my office?”

I scowled. Here he was—Gram, in the flesh. The man who led demons into the Great Labyrinth of Brute so they could kidnap Amelia, who wanted to chop her up and sell her organs on the black market for winning the pageant, and who had killed Crow’s little sister. None of his attempts at Amelia had been successful, but there was no denying they’d caused us a serious amount of harm. Normally, this would be when I grabbed him by the collar and gave him a piece of my mind, but that didn’t seem to be a good idea. We needed an exit strategy; it would be nice to make it out of here without any trouble.

I could hear his greasy face smacking around as he spoke, but I was vehemently opposed to acknowledging this asshole’s existence, so I didn’t even deign to look his way. I stepped in front of Amelia to protect her from having to look at him and to keep his eyes off her.

“Oh? And who might you be? I was having a conversation with Miss Amelia, if you don’t mind,” said Gram.

Now his eyes were locked right on me. I got goosebumps; it was extremely rare for me to hate another person as much as I hated Gram. I’d never even hated any of my unintelligible or obnoxiously temperamental teachers this much.

When I refused to respond, Gram took a real look at me for the first time and, noticing my outfit, clapped his hands. “Oh, I see. You’re Miss Amelia’s escort, are you? Well, good work, sir. I will take her from here. Return to your homeland and rest easy.”

What was this guy going on about? I was kind of like her bodyguard, but I wasn’t gonna let the rest of that crap fly. He was speaking as if I’d fulfilled my duties and it was time to hand over the girl.

“Beg your pardon?” I said in a threatening voice so low that it even took me by surprise. Nearby, I could see Raúl and Kerria trembling in fright. Apparently, my malice was plain to see for all but Gram.

“What, have you not been paid yet? How much did the elven king offer you? I’ll pay you double that, so consider yourself relieved from duty. How did a lowly human like you even manage to get so close to Miss Amelia in the first place? Did you seduce her?”

This guy had a fairly low opinion of humans. There was nothing worse than a guy who truly believed all of the awful crap that came out of his mouth, and Raúl wasn’t about to sit back and listen to him insult me.

“Watch your mouth. That’s the Silent Assassin you’re talking to, not to mention a summoned hero. You might be the guildmaster here, but I won’t stand by and let you disrespect him like that,” he said, puffing out his chest as he stepped forward in my defense. I really wished he hadn’t done that.

Immediately, the look in Gram’s eyes changed. “So you’re a summoned hero, are you? Well, that’s awfully strange.”

“How so?” I asked, despite my better judgment.

“From what I’ve heard, the current party of summoned heroes has only ever left Retice Castle once, to do a trial run down in the Great Labyrinth of Kantinen, and they’ve been sequestered in the castle ever since. So how could the summoned hero himself be here right now? Finally felt like getting off your rear end and slaying the Demon Lord, did you?”

All of the previous heroes had contributed something to the development of this world. Some may not have slain the Demon Lord, but all of them at least did something to make the lives of its people better. Things like cameras, for example, which didn’t seem like they belonged in this world, had been introduced by heroes. But our party of heroes hadn’t really accomplished anything since being summoned here, with most of my classmates refusing to fight and remaining cooped up in the castle. Most people probably thought we were no-good, lazy deadbeats—and they were probably right. All we’d done in our time here, as far as they knew, was learn how to fight and take a trip to a labyrinth, but the truth was that the average citizen had no idea how unreasonable their expectations of the summoned heroes were. We’d been summoned here from a world at peace, most of us never having even been in a fistfight before, yet they thought that as heroes, we owed it to them to do something to improve their lives, not realizing how selfish that mindset was or that we hadn’t come here by choice.

“I may have come here via the hero summoning ritual, but I’m not your hero. And we have no intention of slaying the Demon Lord,” I said at last.

“I see, so you’re not the hero. But what’s this nonsense about not wanting to slay the Demon Lord? That is the job of a summoned hero and his party. That is your purpose in this world, and that is how it has always been.”

Why did the people of this world always try to foist their problems onto someone else? If they were genuinely in dire straits and got on their knees begging for our assistance, that would be one thing, but from what I could tell, the king of Retice had no intention of ever trying to help us slay the Demon Lord. Unfortunately for him, we weren’t simply puppets who took orders and carried them out without question. We had our own emotions and misgivings about killing other people without any real justification. And so he’d used his daughter to try to place a curse on us all. I still remembered the curse I overheard her placing over the main hero: “May the hero ever embody his title, both in words and in deeds…” In other words, they just wanted us to be the idealized heroes the people of this world expected us to be. And I wasn’t here for that.

“I don’t give a damn what you think my ‘purpose’ here is. We were dragged here against our will from a world where people actually know how to get along for the most part. How ’bout you guys try solving your own problems for a change? Don’t expect people from another world to always be there to do your dirty work.”

I had no intention of being a good Samaritan like the summoned heroes of old. Maybe my classmates would, through no will of their own, be the heroes everyone wanted them to be since they were still under the curse, but I wasn’t the type to do something purely out of the goodness of my heart. I didn’t work without compensation unless it was something I genuinely wanted to do. I didn’t take orders from anyone.

Gram raised an eyebrow, then brought his face close to mine. I took a single step back as he whispered quietly to me so no one else would hear. “Then I take it you have no intention of granting the dying wish of the foolish oaf who sacrificed himself just so you could escape the castle? Would you like to know what his last words were? I could tell you. He mentioned an ‘Akira’—that’s your name, I take it?” he asked, and my blood began to boil. “Oh, his final moments were so entertaining to watch, let me tell you. I’m so glad I decided to equip the Night Ravens with body cameras.”

“So you did murder Commander Saran…”

I hadn’t been there for the commander’s final moments. Obviously, I wanted to know what his last words were, but more than anything, I was just glad to finally know for certain who had killed him.

“Well, do you want to know or not? If you’d just come along with Miss Amelia, I’d be happy to tell you all about it.”

But I simply laughed and shook my head. “You just made a huge mistake in telling me that, my friend.” This time, it was me who put my face close to his. “If I were you, I’d sleep with one eye open tonight.”

Finally, I’d found him. The man I was meant to kill. The one I had to assassinate.

“Oh, I’m sorry you feel that way,” said Gram, “but I’m afraid you won’t be leaving here alive.”

The moment Gram finished speaking, he snapped his fingers, and three men garbed in all black appeared as if from nowhere. Their eyes were lifeless, and I knew immediately they were under the influence of Gram’s boosters. The only other people left in the Guild building aside from me and Amelia were Night, Raúl, and Kerria; Mamoru and the other employees had long since fled the scene. That was fine by me, since it meant I could fight without worrying about accidental casualties. But just as I was starting to plan out my first move, Kerria wheeled herself forward until she was sitting right in front of Gram.

“Guildmaster, what is the meaning of this?! This man is an adventurer! You can’t just—”

Gram cut her off. “How impudent for a commoner like you—and a human, no less—to address a member of the royal family such as I. Kill her along with the other human cur. It’s time for me to collect what is rightfully mine.”

With that, one of the men in black sent Kerria flying across the room, wheelchair and all. Her head hit the wall with a loud crack, and she fell to the floor in a heap. Blood poured from her forehead; if she didn’t receive treatment, and fast, she might die. All the man had done was take a single swing at her with his fist, and it was enough to send her careening into the wall. These drugged-up mercenaries were not to be underestimated.

“Kerria! You bastard!” screamed Raúl as he lunged at the mercenary responsible.

I could only watch out of the corner of my eye, since I had the other two mercenaries to worry about, but I could immediately see why he was called “Raúl the Whirlwind.” His movements were fast and tempestuous, without even a moment’s hesitation.

“You take care of Kerria while I deal with these guys!” I yelled, catching one of their fists and grasping it tightly in my hand.

“You got it!” he cried back.

“Get down on the ground!” shouted Amelia as I wrapped my other arm around her. With her Gravity Magic, she wouldn’t have too much trouble taking care of the other two mercenaries, but I was worried about Raúl, who was slowed down by the fact that he was carrying Kerria’s unconscious body under one arm.

“Night! We can handle these two—you go help Raúl! Just don’t kill ’em.”

“On it,” said Night, hopping down from my shoulders. He used Shapeshifter to turn into the cheetah form he’d used down in the Great Labyrinth of Brute and raced over to Raúl’s aid.

“That girl is my property, and you will return her to me right this instant!” demanded Gram, reaching out his hand as he walked over to us.

Something snapped inside me, and I slapped his hand away with a disgusted grimace. “Amelia doesn’t belong to you! She’s mine, so keep your grubby hands off her!” I screamed, tightening my grip on the mercenary’s fist. “Shadow Magic, activate!”

Our shadows combined at our fists. I took control and sent them wriggling and writhing across the floor.

“Make an escape route for us, boys!” I commanded, and the shadows quickly gobbled up the heavy door blocking the entrance to the Adventurer’s Guild. “Night, Amelia! Time to blow this joint!”

“Got it!”

“Right behind you!”

Amelia used her Gravity Magic to force Gram and the three men in black to their knees, as Night (still in cheetah form) sprinted over with Raúl and Kerria on his back before leaping out of the gaping hole where the door had once stood.

“Damn you! Don’t let them escape! What are you three doing?! Get up, you imbeciles! Hurry up and go after them!”

With Gram screaming at us to no avail, Amelia and I took our leave of the Adventurer’s Guild. I was expecting to be surrounded again once we made it outside, but there were no other men in black in sight. The only people around were a few adventurers and rubberneckers who’d heard the commotion and had come to see what was up. Night was long gone, and since I didn’t remember how we’d gotten here, I had no clue which way to go.

“Hey, Mister! Up here!”

Recognizing Latticenail’s voice, I looked up to find she was flying through the sky, holding on to what looked like a giant white wing. She swooped down and reached out a hand down to pick us up.

“Amelia!” I yelled.

“Ready!” she replied.

Clasping Amelia’s hand tightly in mine, I kicked off the ground and grabbed hold of Latticenail’s hand, and the two of us were pulled up into the sky.

“Man, flying sure is fun, don’tcha think?” said Latticenail, who wasn’t struggling at all to support the extra weight. “Good thing those doped-up mercenaries can’t fly too, am I right?”

“Thanks, Latticenail. You really helped us out of a bind there,” I said, noticing the cuts and scrapes all across her body. I assumed Gram had had the entire building surrounded, and she had picked up on this before we’d even set foot into the Guild. Hence why she had opted to remain outside—it seemed she’d taken care of all of them single-handedly.

“Nah, don’t mention it! I like you guys, and I’d feel awful if you were to die on my watch!” she said proudly. She really had saved our bacon. If we’d tried to escape on foot, they probably would have caught up to us sooner or later.

We rose higher and higher into the sky until we could see the entirety of Uruk spread out below us.

“It’s so pretty…” Amelia breathed.

Boats were making their way gently down the canals, and all the people walking down the streets were reduced to the size of ants. The waters for which the city was known shimmered like precious gems.

“Yeah, it is,” I whispered, not even knowing that at that very moment, in another corner of the city, Crow and Lia were looking straight up at us.

A fair princess called my name, but I pretended not to hear.

 

I knelt atop the slanted rooftop of the building Gram called home, my silhouette every bit as dark as the night sky behind me. I loomed there for quite a while—watching, waiting—utterly motionless aside from the fluttering of my cloak and long black scarf in the midnight breeze.

I needed to avoid fighting his mercenaries. I had done no preparations in advance, so I didn’t know what times the guards made their rounds. With the help of Conceal Presence, it would be easy for me to slip in and kill Gram, but things could still turn out badly for me if they discovered he was dead before I could escape. It would have been better to draft up a more organized plan beforehand, but given there was a chance I might have changed my mind, or that Gram could have discovered where we were staying, I couldn’t risk waiting any longer. Hence why I needed to scope the place out, watching carefully for the right moment.

I spent a good while monitoring the goings-on in and around the building. After some time, I rose to my feet with a sigh, drew my twin Yato-no-Kami daggers, and readied for combat. A man emerged directly in front of me, seemingly out of thin air. Just like me, he was garbed all in black and lightly armored. Another assassin had arrived to get in my way, just as I had feared. Obviously, Gram had no shortage of enemies who might pay to see him offed, but I’d hoped could get through tonight without encountering any other assassins.

The only noticeable differences between myself and the man was that I had daggers and he had a sword, and that I had my black cloak and scarf. They really did get in the way of an assassin’s work, so this didn’t surprise me. I’d only taken these extra items from the castle because I thought they’d look cool, but it wasn’t as though they had any practical use beyond some camouflage. I didn’t find them cumbersome, but there was no denying that they were unnecessary.

The other man and I locked eyes, glaring at each other for a moment before the other man lost his nerve and looked away.

“Well, look who it is,” the man said. “You here to guard the place, hotshot? Or are you just out to slit our poor guildmaster’s throat?”

Apparently, I’d become quite famous among my fellow assassins, which struck me as kind of funny, given I’d yet to carry out a single assassination.

“And yours, if you try to get in my way,” I responded matter-of-factly, making it clear that I had no intention of letting anyone stop me from doing what I came here to do. Unless this guy was even dumber than Raúl, surely he’d take the hint and stand down. I had conveyed my vendetta, plain and simple, and I could see the other man shaking in his boots. He was much more of a rookie than I expected; I would have thought anyone who dared to try their hand at assassinating a man protected by an army of souped-up mercenaries would at least have the skills to get the job done.

“Well, that’s just great. Never thought I’d get the chance to go toe-to-toe with the Silent Assassin himself. Lucky me,” the man said, sighing in resignation.

He braced himself for combat, but I could tell his mind was flip-flopping between fight or flight. In his current state, it was clear that even if he swung that sword of his, it would have all the force of a wet paper towel behind it. The sheer malice I was exuding made him break out in a cold sweat. I simply stared at the wimpy man without a shred of empathy, like a hunter would stare down its prey. I waited until just before the man was about to exhale, then lunged forward with my dagger and tore through the frigid night air.

Before the man even knew what hit him, he fell to the ground with his eyes wide in horror and his hands clutching at his neck, trying to stop the geyser of blood now spurting from his throat. Only a moment later, he choked out his final breath and lay still on the cold rooftop. I stood up straight, wiping the blood off of my dagger.

It was the first time I’d ever killed another human being, yet I didn’t feel strongly about it. I wasn’t sure if that was the result of my Assassination skill trying to mitigate the shock, or if I was simply that cold and unfeeling, but I let out a sigh of relief nonetheless; I’d been worried actually killing another man might make me lose my nerve.

Meanwhile, it seemed the night watchmen inside had thinned out. Thankfully, they hadn’t noticed the duel that had just taken place outside. Perhaps these zombified mercenaries were also incredibly dense or unobservant.

Activating Conceal Presence first, I used my Assassination skill to unlock a nearby window and slip into the bedchambers of my true quarry for the evening. I looked down at Gram as he lay there, snoring loudly.

My dagger quivered slightly in my trembling hand as I held it aloft, despite the fact that I’d just easily killed someone. I brought my other hand up to hold the blade steady, then tiptoed quietly across the room to press it against Gram’s neck. To think that as soon as this blade hit its mark, I’d be saying goodbye to any chance of ever returning to the peaceful life I once enjoyed.

“Sorry, guys, but I have to do this. It’s the only way I’ll ever find closure. With this one man’s death, I’ll be exacting justice for so many people. And one in particular…”

I whispered these words of reassurance to my mother and Yui as a specter of the boy I had been—a typical high schooler by the name of Oda Akira—then mustered my strength and made a single, decisive slash.

After only a few short convulsions, Gram breathed his last. A shame he hadn’t suffered longer, considering all the long years Crow and so many others had suffered. This wretched villain had caused so much so many different people so much pain over the course of his pathetic life, yet in the end, he only had to endure for a single second.

I didn’t regret killing him, nor did I feel any sense of satisfaction for having successfully carried out my revenge. The only thing I felt was a deep and singular emptiness—one that ate at me like a gaping hole in my chest.