Chapter 7
“A... villager?”
Nothing about it made sense. There were so many questions.
How had he blocked all those attacks? Why was a villager in a place like this? Why wasn’t he wearing any armor—or even carrying a weapon? And why was he protecting a demon?
A being they couldn’t understand stood right before them. Why was he picking his nose in a situation like this? Was he making fun of them? These questions raced through the minds of every member of the Hero’s party.
“You’re that villager from before!”
At last, Rex remembered that he’d seen the villager standing before him just a few hours ago. Kagami had made so little impression that Rex had completely forgotten he was there.
“...How’d you do that?”
“Huh?”
“How did you block my attack? What did you do? What kind of item did you use?!”
Rex put his pride ahead of questions like why Kagami was here and why he’d helped the demon.
Kagami had endured Rex’s supposedly unstoppable special attack without a scratch. Rex simply couldn’t believe it—and he couldn’t forgive it.
“An item? What are you talking about?”
As Rex demanded an answer with a bitter grimace, Kagami gave him a knowing smile.
“I just blocked it with my right hand... Though it hurt a fair bit.”
“Your right hand...?”
Rex glared at Kagami with distaste.
“At any rate, I’m glad you’re unharmed. We nearly killed an ordinary citizen.”
Kururu stepped forward, attempting to calm Rex.
Then Kururu bowed politely. At this point, how Kagami had blocked the attack didn’t matter. The priority was to find out why the villager before her was protecting a demon—and whether he was an enemy.
“That girl is a demon. Did you know that when you protected her? Or... did you know nothing about her? Please tell us.”
“No, she’s not a demon.”
In response to Kururu’s question, Kagami stated it plainly, as if declaring, “You’ve got it wrong.”
Of course, Kagami knew the girl before him was a demon.
And he knew the Hero’s party was trying to kill her because she was a demon.
“I can sense the magic that demons give off from that girl. She can’t be anything but a demon.”
“Ah... well, she’s not a demon. She’s my little sister.”
At those words, every member of the Hero’s party stared at him in disbelief. The girl herself let out a “Huh?” and tilted her head, bewildered.
“Y-your little sister? B-but what about that magic? You seem to be human...”
“This, see? A Blue Devil horn. You know what it does, right? I had my little sister carry it.”
As he spoke, Kagami reached under the tattered cloak of the girl before him and showed them a rare drop—a Blue Devil horn—as if she had been carrying it all along.
As long as the magic contained in a Blue Devil horn lasted, it completely erased monsters’ hostility toward whoever carried it. Since its magic leaked out freely, it had to be kept in a special bottle or leather pouch.
However, its magic was the same as that given off by demons. Using it in a dungeon would cause a huge number of monsters to spawn. For anyone else inside the same dungeon, it was an incredibly troublesome item.
“I’d taken a quest to hunt Blue Devils, and this one happened to drop. I didn’t have a storage pouch with me, so I gave it to my little sister to keep her safe. Didn’t want it to go to waste, either.”
Saying that, Kagami showed the Hero’s party his quest form, where the magic imbued in the paper displayed proof that he had defeated thirty Blue Devils.
Of course, Kagami had only just taken the Blue Devil horn out of his storage pouch to show them. His claim that he’d had her carry it was a complete lie.
With the demon girl’s magic adding to the effect, Kagami imagined that a huge number of monsters were spawning somewhere even now. He gazed into the distance, entertaining the rather crooked thought that it’d be great if this led to another quest being posted.
“A-a villager... just the two of you? You defeated thirty Blue Devils? I-I’ve never heard of that!”
Tina couldn’t hide her shock—not so much because the girl was a demon, but because the villager before her had a quest form, and one that was already completed at that. She couldn’t help raising her voice.
“There are so many things to question. Are you really a villager?”
When Parnah asked with a wry smile, Kagami immediately brought up his status window. Faced with a status window that unmistakably said “Villager,” Parnah’s face stiffened as she muttered, “No way...”
They’d assumed his claim to be a villager was a complete lie.
Just like Tina, Parnah had never heard of a villager taking on a high-difficulty dungeon.
No wonder she couldn’t hide her surprise.
“The effect of a Blue Devil horn only lasts about five minutes, though...”
At that, Kururu voiced another concern.
It was certainly surprising that a villager was here at all, but what bothered her was that the effect of a Blue Devil horn—one that lasted only five minutes—was still conveniently in effect.
“I apologize, but could you take off your little sister’s hood?”
“No... that’s a little difficult. My little sister’s shy.”
“Why? If she just took it off and showed herself for a moment, that would clear up our doubts.”
“My little sister... has a condition where, when she shows her face, she suddenly goes berserk like a Berserker to hide her embarrassment.”
“I’ve never heard of any such condition...”
Kagami hadn’t expected them to press him this persistently, and his excuses were becoming obviously slapdash. Perhaps realizing there was no way to keep hiding it, the girl took off her hood of her own accord.
“H-hey!”
When the girl removed her hood, her head, which had been more than half concealed, came fully into view.
Her glossy red hair shone like a jewel. A braided pigtail fell along the right side of her face, and two small horns curved downward from the back of her head, blending in among her shoulder-length locks.
Seeing them, Kagami let out a light sigh. “Oh, boy...”
“Turn around, please.”
At Kururu’s instruction, the girl obediently turned her back to them, exposing the horns growing from the back of her head.
“Just as I thought... You can’t talk your way out of this, can you?”
As she spoke, Kururu readied the rod she was carrying. The girl, by contrast, had more or less given up. At the same time, she felt grateful to the young villager who had suddenly appeared and shielded her.
But there was a limit to how long she could keep making excuses.
If she continued with these pathetic lies, they might decide she was his accomplice and put the villager in danger, too. Better for only one person to be sacrificed―—―—that was what she decided.
“No, uh... those horns are accessories.”
But Kagami refused to give up. He came up with a nonsensical excuse to protect the girl.
The girl stared wide-eyed at Kagami, amazed that he hadn’t abandoned her at a time when, by all rights, he should have.
“Accessories? They obviously grow right out of the back of her head!”
Even Kururu, Rex, Tina, and Parnah could only manage wry smiles at that desperate excuse.
“No... well, uh... I fitted the horns directly into the back of her skull... like, put them right in.”
“E-excuse me?”
Just imagining such a painful and impossible way of attaching accessories left the Hero’s party frozen, their faces tense.
“H-here, like this... Hoo-yah!”
As Kagami said this, he gripped the Blue Devil horn. The next moment, he rammed it into the side of the pedestal with sheer force, making a loud, dull thunk ring through the space.
“Whaaaat...”
Tina, Parnah, and Kururu were utterly appalled by his implausible excuse.
Yet among them, Rex alone stared wide-eyed at Kagami’s incredible feat.
The villager had just used nothing but his physical strength to force a Blue Devil horn into the sturdy pedestal—simply pushing it in. The pedestal was made from a special material and sealed the holy sword that only the chosen could wield.
Rex alone instantly understood just how abnormal that was.
“B-but! I’ve never seen any animal or monster with horns shaped like those!”
Next, Tina pointed out something that was particularly hard for Kagami to answer.
“Well... you see... I broke the horn once, then... glued it back together, reshaped it into what it is now... and jammed it in.”
At those utterly nonsensical words, Parnah furrowed her brow and let out a baffled, “Huh?”
Seeing her reaction, Kagami panicked.
“Ah, no! That was... the story about what I did for my cousin! I got it mixed up! For my little sister... right! I made a horn from scratch and shoved it straight in!”