Chapter 117
#Chapter 117: Demonic Sword Forte (19) - Repetition
“Fools.”
It was the Sage’s remark as the messengers fled, still refusing to give a definite answer about sending troops until the very end.
Pina tried to calm the Sage down.
“Those people must have their reasons.”
“Reasons, my ass. They’re just thinking, ‘I don’t want to get involved, so it’d be great if someone else stepped up and solved everything for me.’ Some of them probably want to let others fight the Demon King and wear themselves out, then stab them in the back and pocket all the benefits.”
By now, Pina had also come to understand the Sage to some extent.
Hatred of humanity. Distrust of humanity.
He hated humans deeply, despised their ugliness, and viewed their actions with cynicism.
“Hero, this is all pointless. Do you really think we’ll receive a proper reward even if we work our asses off fighting like this?”
“It’s not as though I’m doing this for a reward.”
“That’s a fucking idiotic way to think! You should take everything you can get. Why are you volunteering to be a sucker?”
The irony was that, despite hating humans so much, the Sage never left Pina’s side.
The Sage himself insisted that he was staying merely to observe, but Pina thought there had to be some other reason.
And rightly so. If he truly wanted only to observe, there would be no reason for him to help Pina by one means or another.
The Sage was skilled at spells that manipulated things found in nature, such as plants and rocks. They were excellent in battle, but just as useful in everyday life.
With a tap of his staff against the ground, a cabin would spring up on the spot, and the long branches of a tree would bear fruit that kept anyone who ate just one from feeling hungry all day.
Since they were forced to wander through territories occupied by the Demon King without a proper base, Pina’s life would have been several times more difficult without the Sage.
Yet no matter how capable the Sage was or how sharp Pina’s swordsmanship might be, there were limits.
They struck at the Demon King’s forces and withdrew, but tactics like that were possible only in the outlying regions.
To storm the Demon King’s strongholds directly and bring the war to an end, the difference in their fundamental numbers was simply too overwhelming.
They needed the strength of an army as well, but the various nations in the central region continued delaying their deployment with one excuse after another.
The Sage’s complaints and laments grew louder with each passing day, but Pina never stopped fighting.
As time passed, the situation grew worse.
At first, the Demon King’s army had regarded Pina and the Sage’s exploits as nothing more than a minor border disturbance and had not responded in force. But as their losses mounted, they began sending proper armies to capture and eliminate the two of them.
It was just when Pina thought that things were truly becoming dangerous.
“Hero, I’m truly sorry to have kept you waiting so long.”
The saintess.
The woman who had once asked for just a little more time had finally joined the two of them.
This time, she had not come alone, but led a considerable force.
“Who are all these people?”
“They are people who wish to fight alongside you.”
As if responding to the saintess’s answer, the forces behind her paid their respects to Pina and the Sage in their own ways.
Their armor and weapons were far from uniform. Some wore the armor of regular soldiers, while others were dressed as hunters or priests, and even ordinary farmers carrying sickles, plows, or other such tools were mixed in among them.
Pina was puzzled at first, but soon realized that quite a few of those who had come with the saintess were familiar faces.
They were refugees whom Pina and the Sage had rescued while fighting the Demon King’s army.
The people who had lost their countries and homes and fled in ragged condition had returned once more, their faces filled with resolve.
“Huh. Soldiers from fallen kingdoms. Priests of the Pantheon. And people from among the refugees. You’ve gathered a real rabble.”
The Sage’s tone was cynical, but Pina could feel it.
The fact that the Sage was admiring them in his own way.
Still, his way of speaking really was awful, so Pina was about to snap back at him when the saintess spoke first.
“Yes. We may indeed be a rabble. We are the people who were defeated by the Demon King and had no choice but to flee in disgrace. There are also allies who came from other countries, but they too have joined not as representatives of a unified force, but as individuals.”
But, she added,
“Even so, we want to fight. We want to stand against the Demon King. I don’t think we can bear to leave everything to the two of you and simply go on living one day at a time.”
Pina looked at the saintess’s face.
A shadow still lingered there.
It was the shadow cast by her guilt as one of the royals who had caused this entire situation, and by the fear that her identity might be exposed at any moment.
She still could not reveal her identity, and to some people, that might be called cowardice.
Nevertheless, the saintess had come here.
Even knowing that Pina and the Sage knew her identity, even knowing that everything would end if they revealed it, she had come to fight alongside them instead of throwing everything away or running from it all.
Not because anyone had pushed her into it, but of her own free will.
Pina thought that was courage, and even the Sage, though he clicked his tongue, no longer condemned the saintess as he had before.
Thus, this time, the hero’s party and their allies had truly gathered together.
From then on, hectic and breathlessly busy days followed.
At some point, Pina realized that she no longer went back and forth between the roles of audience member and actor. She existed solely as an actor.
The story no longer skipped from scene to scene as it had before, nor did the flow of time suddenly accelerate.
The days she spent as the ‘Hero’ were so dense and realistic that, despite knowing this was a fiction created by Sky Academy, Pina would sometimes lose her certainty.
Was she Pina of the Valestia family?
Or was she the ‘Hero’ who had defeated the Demon King hundreds of years ago?
Was the Sage, the saintess, the companions fighting beside her now, and all the time they spent laughing and talking together, nothing more than fiction?
Could an experience be this vivid and this intense, truly?
Pina tried somehow to preserve her original identity, but it was not easy.
The days she spent confronting the Demon King as the Hero were so dense and realistic that she could hardly distinguish them from reality.
Days spent coordinating with countless people, putting one foot in front of the other with all her strength, and struggling desperately through fierce battles were saturated with color.
The hardships and joys that a girl named Pina Valestia had experienced over more than a decade of life seemed pale beside that intensity.
《That is precisely what it’s after.》
《Contractor, it wants you to lose your original self and become the ‘Hero.’ It wants to overlay the Hero onto your personality.》
《What a ridiculous notion. Who has the right to declare that your life is inferior to the Hero’s?》
And the demonic sword she held easily brushed aside Pina’s anxiety.
Do not let yourself be cowed by the life of the Hero.
Their lives undoubtedly shone with an intense and dazzling light, but that was no reason for Pina to surrender her own life.
《The ending prepared for this stage will probably be a tragedy.》
《They probably believe that, for the past to be truly inherited, you must regard its pain and suffering as your own and empathize with it.》
《But, Contractor, you have no need to play along.》
《Change the development however you like, distort the process, and twist the ending.》
Forte declared without hesitation that this was the power for that purpose, and the demonic sword for that purpose.
So Pina did exactly that.
“Tsk, tsk, you pathetic lot. You call this thing a base?”
“Everyone! The Sage says he’ll build the building himself, so please step aside and get some rest!”
“W-What? Hey, you little bastard! Who said you could decide that on your own!?”
“Ah, he seems embarrassed, so everyone, please turn your eyes and ears away for a moment!”
“I’m not!!”
Sometimes, Pina tactfully rendered the Sage’s words and actions—he was good at his work but always managed to make people dislike him with his mouth—and made the others laugh.
“Um, Hero. If it’s not rude, may I ask what that lump of meat and leather over there is? Is it perhaps meant to frighten the Demon King’s army and keep them from approaching?”
“…I-I thought everyone was getting sick of eating only fruit, so I tried to cook something, but, well…”
“……I’ll help you. I used to sneak into the kitchen and try cooking when I was young. And, Hero, you mustn’t cut meat with a greatsword.”
“Yes.”
Sometimes, she delighted everyone’s palates with hunting and cooking, clumsy though her skills were.
“It’s a hydra! If you simply cut off one of its necks, two heads will grow back in its place! Hey, fake saintess! Burn the severed section with a blessing the instant the Hero cuts it!”
“It doesn’t seem to be regenerating.”
“What?”
“Ah, Demonic Sword—no, we solved it with the power of the demonic sword!”
Sometimes, she saved the lives of those who would have died by swiftly subjugating monsters that would originally have caused enormous casualties.
“You want us to send reinforcements? Why should we?”
“If we leave the Demon King alone, the entire continent will be plunged into chaos. When that happens, Your Majesty and the Aizern Empire will suffer considerable losses as well.”
“You make a grand fuss about a Demon King, but isn’t it just one devil? What was it, saintess? Judging by what you can do, I might even grant you special treatment—cough!”
《Well done.》
Sometimes, she beat the emperor of an empire with her scabbard when he made a lecherous proposal to the saintess under the pretext of providing support.
Pina could not have done these things alone.
But Forte had been with her, and with the help of the powerful and versatile demonic sword, she covered countless tragedies with comedies.
And at last, they were able to reach the Demon King’s castle.
“Heroes, we wish you good fortune!”
“Leave this place to us and head inside!”
After moving inward for some time, with the sounds of spears and swords growing distant behind them,
the saintess went pale at the transformed appearance of the castle where she had once lived, while the Sage, seemingly tense about the battle to come, clicked his tongue several times.
Tense, Pina quietly opened the door.
A throne at the deepest and highest point.
There stood the Demon King.
It was a black figure.
The armor covering him from head to toe was black, as was the magic roiling beneath his helmet.
It looked as though darkness itself had taken form, put on armor, and was pretending to be human.
Pina felt an indescribable sense of dissonance at the sight.
In the story of the Hero that she knew, the Demon King was described as the embodiment of evil.
The Demon King loved violence and slaughter, indulging himself in human screams and suffering as though they were delicacies.
He mocked the heroes’ adventures and tried to tempt them into corruption with cunning words.
Yet the Demon King standing before Pina now did not seem interested in them at all.
He did not rage at them for daring to interfere with his plans, sneer at their efforts, or rejoice at the existence of worthy opponents.
Pina dimly grasped the nature of that inorganic, frigid gaze.
It was numbers.
It was the gaze of someone who saw war, governance, and each of the countless lives lost because of them as nothing more than numbers on a document.
That was why the concept used to describe that great demon was 『Massacre』.
The Demon King rose.
And the next moment, Pina’s head was severed and sent flying.
Her vision spun dizzily.
Her companions fell as well, unable to withstand even a single blow from the Demon King.
As her vision sank into darkness, she heard the voice of the demonic sword she trusted.
《It seems the play really didn’t like the fact that we overhauled its contents.》
《This is the stage’s final desperate struggle. No matter what you see, do not waver, Contractor.》
***
"We will be victorious."
'Hero' confidently declared to his companions.