Chapter 57
※ This episode is a side story.
“Is it here?”
“No. They’ve already wiped out every trace and fled.”
“Another dead end. Tracking magic doesn’t work here either. So what do we do now, Klaus? We even have a fire—should we have a campfire?”
Leaving the ravaged city behind, Remilia Asephite spoke self-deprecatingly.
“You can still make jokes like that in the face of the Erosion?”
Sylvia pointed out how distasteful her behavior was.
“How far has the Erosion progressed?”
Klaus’s question was not asked to learn the answer.
“It’s obvious to the naked eye. It’s already terminal.”
Sylvia scooped up a handful of sand and let it scatter in the wind.
Klaus frowned.
Because this was unmistakably human bone powder, not sand.
The irreversible disaster had already swept through.
And at the center of that disaster was always Princess Estasha Latias de Kaizen.
“Baron Banafort? So what are we really doing?”
“I told you not to call me by my title.”
“Klaus Nestro Banafort, he-ro-nim.”
“...”
Klaus unfolded the scroll containing the conditional activation clause for mission failure, which he had received from Dark Star three days earlier, and checked its contents.
He bit down hard on his lip and, with no choice, relayed its contents.
“From this point on, Princess Estasha is a kill-on-sight target with no room for negotiation.”
“An imperial decree?”
“An imperial decree.”
“It should have come to that ages ago. His Majesty really is indecisive at times like this.”
Remilia was secretly pleased, as if a burden had been lifted from her shoulders.
“No other assistance?”
“There is. Thirty-one members of the Dark Star forces.”
“Can’t complain.”
“And the Pope’s personal order of knights and the Emperor’s Imperial Guard as well.”
“...What? Even Verstappen is coming, then?”
“Probably.”
“No, what’s so special about this princess?”
This princess, huh.
Klaus recalled the two-year journey they had taken to capture this princess.
She was not as powerful as the Empire’s Verstappen, the Holy Kingdom’s Azerbaijan, or the Demon King Alzahab.
If anything, judging solely by martial power, she was weaker than the chattering Remilia beside him.
Yet he had heard the order to capture her alive as soon as possible more than ten times already, and things had now reached the point where even the Emperor had turned his back on her.
‘Just how far ahead are you looking?’
“Klaus? There’s a survivor here!”
“Someone’s alive with the Erosion at the terminal stage? After saying that crap to me, Sylvia, you’re the one joking now!”
“There are life signs underground in the center of the city. Approximately two thousand. There’s one at the city’s main gate too. As it happens, it’s nearby.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, definitely.”
* * *
It was widely believed that once the Erosion reached its terminal stage, it could no longer be reversed.
That was what they had learned from the two previous Erosions, [Envy] and [Gluttony].
But when every plant and animal in the region began to rot away under the Erosion of Sloth, the only one who looked unharmed was a wretched boy on the outskirts of the city.
“Don’t let your guard down. He could be a demon.”
Klaus warned his companions.
According to Dark Star intelligence, it had recently been confirmed that demons were unaffected by the Erosion.
The Empire and other nations were already preparing to form a global alliance, believing the worldwide Erosion to be the work of the Demon King.
“He’s human, at least. My rosary isn’t reacting to him at all.”
“This makes me uneasy. Can’t we just burn him to death? It’s not like we’ve fallen for traps like this only once or twice.”
“Remilia, cast full-body protection magic. We should at least hear him out.”
“Whatever. I’ll cover you from a distance, so you guys go on ahead.”
Klaus checked the barrier of light wrapped around his entire body and approached the boy.
‘Around twelve to fifteen years old. He’s wary of us as well.’
Whenever they encountered an unidentified person, information was always key.
They quickly assessed the other party’s build, whether he had weapons, his intentions, and where he was looking, preparing for every unforeseen situation.
The boy was short and so emaciated that his ribs showed clearly.
He had roughly wrapped himself in whatever animal hide he could find, and even the only remotely intact pants he had were shorts unsuitable for the weather.
He had no weapon, but... he was carefully cradling a live white dove in his arms.
“Are you the hero?”
At the boy’s sudden question, Sylvia flinched and tried to intervene, but Klaus restrained her.
“You’d better answer only what I ask you now. Think carefully about your situation. Are you a resident of this city?”
“Yes.”
“Exactly where do you live?”
“You probably won’t know where it is even if I tell you...”
Klaus drew his sword and pointed it at the boy’s neck.
“Answer.”
“...! The... the three-way intersection by the eastern gate... I live in the house next to the mill with the big waterwheel!”
“Sylvia, check.”
Sylvia closed her eyes and expanded her sense of presence.
The magic she released analyzed the city’s terrain and landmarks in minute detail.
“There’s a waterwheel—one at the eastern gate.”
“The city gates are closed, so why are you wandering around outside by yourself?”
“Well... there’s a small hole in the eastern gate, so I snuck out through it. To be the first to receive bread from the angel...”
“An angel?”
“Yes, she told me that the hero would be coming here!”
When Klaus looked at Sylvia, she gave a small nod.
“She comes every morning at dawn and—”
Sylvia’s eyes resonated with mana.
“Khk...! Cough!”
An invisible hand clutched the boy’s throat.
His feet slowly lifted off the ground as he writhed in pain.
“She was a curly-haired blonde woman, wasn’t she?”
“Ugh...!”
“She’s a demon—the demon who turned your village into this.”
As Sylvia withdrew her mana, the boy crumpled helplessly to the ground.
“Hk... Cough, cough...”
“Sylvia?”
“This boy isn’t contaminated by demonic energy at all. How is that possible...?”
The boy clutched his throat and shouted at the heroes in a voice filled with resentment.
“So what if she’s a demon...! You... you weren’t there when we needed you! Even when everyone in the village turned to stone, you didn’t come to save us! The angel healed every single villager!”
“What?”
“And that’s all? There’s nothing to eat in this land where not even a blade of grass can grow, so she goes to the neighboring village at the crack of dawn every morning to buy us bread!”
The boy recalled.
When the seed of the Erosion was discovered inside the city, the first thing the lord did was seal it off.
By the time the people noticed, they had ended up trapped inside the stone walls that were supposed to protect them from outsiders.
The lord had already fled, and the people had no way to escape the Erosion.
Only a tiny number of strong people could climb over the outer wall, which stood over thirty meters high, relying on nothing but a sickle; everyone else could only wait wide-eyed for approaching death.
Rotten grass powder, not flower pollen, drifted through the air.
The carcasses of livestock were left lying around as if it were nothing.
Even knowing that eating it would contaminate them with the Erosion, the people had no choice but to eat it with tears in their eyes.
At first, Grandmother suddenly clutched her chest and collapsed. When she opened her eyes afterward, she could no longer move her lower body at all.
Next, the jovial butcher collapsed. The man whose belly had once been full of soft flesh became hard all over, like a block of stone.
One by one, the people stopped moving.
They fell asleep.
And without anyone noticing,
their breathing had stopped at some point.
The village was engulfed in silence, to the point that one wondered whether there could be a quieter death.
The boy pounded frantically on the innocent city wall.
Begging it to let him out.
But one day, a miracle occurred.
A hole appeared in the magically treated city wall, which had seemed impossible to bring down no matter what anyone did.
[Would you like some bread?]
At first, he thought she was a witch when he saw the strangely dressed woman.
But after tasting the bread and milk she offered him, the boy couldn’t resist the temptation even if she was a witch.
[Take me to where the patients are.]
She said she had a way to heal the villagers.
It was clearly an empty promise, but the boy followed her, clinging to even that straw of hope.
Then a miracle occurred.
The magic circle she created was far larger than the city wall was high.
The woman engraved more than 85,000 runes into the magic circle day and night.
And the golden mana she infused announced a new dawn for the city.
[It will become an asset even more precious than a piece of bread. In our world, we call this compassion and hope.]
She handed the boy a white dove.
She promised that if he released the dove from the center of the city every day at noon, the contaminated land would be purified and return to fertile soil.
It was hope.
Hope that the villagers could live again.
The pain of parting with the dead was still greater for now, but a spark of hope kindled in the boy’s heart.
“How can people like you be heroes!”
Perhaps that was why, even though he instinctively knew he shouldn’t defy these people, he wasn’t ungrateful enough to turn his back on the kindness they had shown the villagers by saving them.
“What are you still bickering about? Why is this taking so long? At this rate, the princess will get even farther away.”
Remilia, her patience exhausted, flew over from a distance.
“First, we’ll check the villagers’ condition. We’ll pursue the princess afterward.”
“What? You said it was an imperial decree! Can you just do whatever you want, Hero?”
“...”
Klaus looked at the boy, huffing in anger.
The sight was exactly like how he himself had looked as a child.
[A nation exists because it has people who always look toward tomorrow.]
There was much to do, and his thoughts were tangled.
The people were suffering under the Demon King and the Erosion, yet the hero had to kill Princess Estasha.
Just what was right and what was wrong, what was true and what was false?
The unyielding world offered no answers.