Prologue
“You’re the Hero, aren’t you?”
The girl hanging in midair sounded delighted about it. Long silver hair, bound at either side of her head, swayed, and her deep crimson eyes were bright with interest. There was a smile on her lips with a streak of cruelty in it, the look of something that has sighted prey and is already licking its chops.
In front of the East Gate of Ecclesia, the crowd came apart. The guards on the gate and the priests marshaling the queue all craned up at the sky, and a messenger went off at a run. The people waiting to enter the city panicked in every direction at once: some dropped where they stood, some sat down hard, some simply ran.
Damn Elf. Of all the places to pick for a scene…
The girl’s eyes were fixed on one man among them. Ash-gray hair, black eyes, young enough that he could still pass for a boy: Sieg, the Hero of this generation. He buried everything he was feeling and looked up at her, putting his face in order, blinking, playing a man who had never seen her before in his life.
“Um, Sieg-san… that person, is she…”
His traveling companion had already shifted into a fighting stance as she asked it: pale gold hair, blue eyes, Cordelia, Fifth Princess of the Kingdom of Veltoria. She had seen the length of the girl’s ears and worked out what she was faster than anyone else at the gate.
An Elf.
And from the shape of those ears, an Elf out of one of the high clans.
The royal house had dealings with the Elves, enough that one could tell roughly which clan a pair of ears belonged to. By Cordelia’s reckoning, the girl above them stood very high indeed.
Sieg clicked his tongue and signaled her with his eyes to come down further along the road. Getting clear of the gate and letting the whole thing blur into rumor was the only play he had. He spoke to the princess.
“No idea who she is. We’ll go straighten it out. Move.”
“Y-Yes!”
They put the gate behind them fast. A glance back showed guards and priests converging on the spot, but High Grand-Priest Roderick was in this territory, and Roderick was a friend; he would invent some reason and the report would die with him.
…Do this for me, old man. Nobody finds out I’m the Hero.
Sieg had no intention of collecting any more companions.
They reached the shade of the trees along the highway, and the girl who had flown after them came down. She was still wearing that robe, far too big for her thin frame, and Artifact-grade gear out of the Age of the Gods besides: no weight to it at all, and a defensive rating that beggared belief. She had bragged about it at length, last time around. Sieg remembered.
The long-eared girl looked him over and grinned.
“Yo~, this generation’s Hero is pretty young—…wait. Huh!? Why~?”
Her brows drew together in the middle of her own sentence and her head tilted. She had used [Appraisal] on him, then, and hadn’t bothered to ask first.
Sieg carried an appraisal-blocking ring embedded inside his body, its effect pushed to the ceiling by sheer volume of mana. Not even a High Elf, it seemed, could read through that. He sighed and said it plainly.
“You appraised me. So you already know. I’m not the Hero. No [Hero’s Crest], either.”
He held out his left hand and let her check.
When a man awakens as a Hero, the crest surfaces on the back of his left hand. Sieg had lost his left arm before he awakened, so his sat on the elbow instead. It was a measure against ever being identified as the Hero.
The girl stared at the back of his hand and looked thoroughly unconvinced.
“Weeeird… I was so sure it was you.”
“Misunderstanding cleared, then. Are we done? …We’re going.”
“Eh? Ah, yes! Excuse us!”
Princess Cordelia bowed hurriedly to the girl and fell in behind him. The long-eared girl came after them, enjoying herself thoroughly. Sieg walked a little further, stopped, and turned around.
“…Why are you following us? You’ve established I’m not the Hero.”
“Aaah? Hero, not Hero, doesn’t matter. You’re my research subject. So I’m coming along to observe you. Understand? Human male.”
…What?
Sieg pulled his face into a scowl to keep the surprise off it. She researched Time Magic. Which meant she had picked something up: some observation, some trace of a man walking the same years twice.
No proof, though. So she intends to tail me as fieldwork. One more thing to deal with.
The long-eared girl carried on without the slightest interest in any of that.
“So. You. Name? Hard to call you anything without one.”
Sieg kept a sullen silence, and it was the princess who ventured in.
“Um… Exalted One. This is Sieg-san. I am called Juliet.”
“Hoo~. Now you have some manners. Whereas this one over here… aah, and this is exactly why Humans are…”
Sieg glared. It bounced off her entirely, and she named herself.
“I am Liliandiris, of the Isfaal Clan, of the Forest of Nephilia. Heard of us?”
The princess all but jumped at the name, and went down on one knee. She was royal; she knew the name of that most exalted personage very well indeed.
“M-My deepest apologies! You are a High Elf! I did not know, but that is no excuse. I beg your pardon for every discourtesy until now! …S-Sieg-san! Sieg-san, please, you must bow your head as well!”
Her voice dropped to a hiss on the last of it. Sieg didn’t bother. He answered the princess instead.
“Listen. She turned up out of nowhere and attached herself to us uninvited. She’s owed nothing.”
Then he turned to the girl.
“You listen too, Liliandiris, or whatever you’re called. Having you trail after us is a nuisance. I’ll stretch a point and allow it. But you’re your own problem. I’m not carrying you. Understand? High Elf woman.”
“Sieg-san!!”
The princess’s face went white and the words came out as a scream.
The High Elves were a rare people, charged with watching over where the world went, and the High Elves of the Isfaal Clan stood higher still, high enough that people worshipped them. To throw abuse at a High Elf was very close to defying a god. She had been raised on that since she was small.
Trembling, the princess stole a look at Liliandiris, and after a moment, the High Elf’s face broke into a grin.
“Kukuku! First time anyone’s ever talked to me like that! You’re fun, Sieg, or whatever you’re called. Kufu, you two go on ahead. I’m only following.”
Sieg’s face soured. He gave the princess her orders.
“On your feet. First thing is a carriage. We’ll buy one off a caravan. The territorial capital was picked clean.”
“Ah… yes!”
The princess bowed to Liliandiris again and followed him, and the High Elf came after them, enjoying herself thoroughly. Sieg glanced back at her and let out a long breath.
Liliandiris—Lilis—had never made any sense to him. She had run him ragged the last time through, too. Needling him for no reason, then turning around and leaning on him like a child, then dumping some disaster in his lap; he had never once been able to work out what she wanted.
And besides that. Sieg thought back, and the crease set between his brows.
He remembered Lilis dying very clearly. An Archmage, and she had died as open and unguarded as that. He still couldn’t make it fit.
He let the last journey run a while longer, then shook his head clear.
Never mind. Lilis does as she pleases. She’ll be bored of this soon enough.
…I would very much like her to be.
And so it began, the strange road taken by a Hero, a princess, and a High Elf.
⁂
The Dark Continent. The Demon King’s Castle—
Beneath the castle a vast shaft had been sunk, and it ran down so far, and the dark in it stood so still, that it might have gone on to the lip of hell. Toward that shaft, from all around, ran thick tubes like blood vessels, and a great slow sound beat through the castle. Every tube pulsed, and fed mana and miasma in enormous quantities to the thing at the bottom.
The thing was shaped like a cocoon, and it grew larger by the day.
—The Demon King.
The cocoon might fairly be called the Demon King’s placenta. Inside it he fed on mana and miasma and grew, and in time he would be born; the day of that second coming drew nearer hour by hour.
A figure stood on the rim of the abyss, looking down into it. The shape, wrapped in a pitch-black robe, called itself the ‘Strategist.’ Ahead of the Demon King’s return, demons of many kinds were being brought into being, and among them the ‘Strategist’ was a special case. Reconnaissance in force before the second coming, and the gathering of intelligence: that was the office of the ‘Strategist.’
And the ‘Strategist’ was troubled. Legion, of all things, had been broken. The plan had been to take the temple city in a single stroke and shut off the loathsome Blessings the gods handed down, and that plan had come apart like wet paper.
Eyes narrowed, the ‘Strategist’ turned it over.
(The reports are fragmentary, but this can only be the work of the Hero of this generation. He is growing far faster than projected… His true measure must be taken before Lord Demon King returns to us.)
There were few pieces still on the board, and demons cost real resources to make. Against precisely this sort of accident, though, the ‘Strategist’ had put production into demons with a talent for the oblique.
(Hm. With that one, we might even put our demons back into service twice over… We can afford no waste.)
The ‘Strategist’ gave the order to the lesser demon waiting in attendance.
“Summon the [Contractor, Moloch].”
‘Zhah!’
The lesser demon answered and went up the stair to carry the word. The ‘Strategist’ set a finger against its chin, and its eyes narrowed.
“Now, then. Let us be favored with a viewing of this Hero’s skill.”