The Demon King reacted fast.
He thrust one hand at me, thin as dead wood, and muttered in a low voice.
“Where did a stray dog like you sniff this out?”
“Rumor on the wind.”
I answered carelessly while looking around the room.
It was large, as expected. Also archaic as hell. A fireplace. Paintings on the walls. A grand round table and rows of chairs—most of them overturned or broken. Looked like there had been a bit of a fight.
Servants lay dead all over the room.
And behind Lord <Amber Briar>, there was a girl in a white uniform lying on the floor. Long blond hair, probably natural. Western features far removed from the average Japanese face, and her expression suggested less strong will than a tendency to run headfirst into things. This had to be Sera.
She noticed me—or rather, Shirogamine—and shouted.
“Aki!”
Her voice was soaked with exhaustion. Sera lifted her head and seemed to struggle to get up, but all she managed was shifting a few centimeters. Apparently, she was being restrained by some means. Probably Lord <Amber Briar>’s peculiar power, I guessed.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Sera was viciously hostile. The way she spat the words out proved she had spent a long time in that kind of cultural sphere.
The delinquent kind, in other words.
Which led to one clear conclusion: King Arthur had failed spectacularly at raising his daughter.
“I told you to leave me alone!”
Sera barked like a dog.
“I never asked you to save me!”
“But you are our comrade.”
Shirogamine replied with a deadly serious scowl, giving the most boring answer imaginable.
“I told you we would come to save you. We are Heroes. It is only natural.”
“That’s not the damn point! Don’t stick your nose in this! This is my responsibility! That’s why I—”
“Yes! Exactly! Don’t stick your nose in this. Incredible. Now that is a line worth hearing.”
I cut into their shitty little conversation and drowned it out.
“You got captured way too easily, dumbass. Didn’t your father teach you not to follow strangers? What kind of upbringing did you have?”
“Who the hell are you?”
Sera turned eyes full of hostility on me.
“What are you even talking about? Did my old man hire you? That bastard, doing whatever he wants—”
“No. Sera. Yukine and I did!”
Shirogamine declared it with her chest out.
“To bring you back safely. You can rest easy now. We are here.”
“What?”
Sera’s voice and face were loaded with suspicion.
“I don’t know who that guy is, but I never asked anyone to save—”
“Oh, you didn’t ask? Does being rescued ruin your image? Stop us, then, if you don’t like it.”
I decided to mock Sera.
I must have had one hell of an irritating look on my face, because her cheek twitched with instant violence. Making fun of people improves my mood a little. I am that kind of person.
“Except you don’t have the strength. Which means your opinion doesn’t matter at all.”
“Master has a habit of saying hateful things. Do not worry. We will save you.”
As she said that, Shirogamine put her hand on the one-handed sword at her waist. I did not miss it.
“You already forgot the part where I told you to do nothing? Are you fucking with me?”
“Yes! I intended to ignore you and act in whatever way might help!”
Shirogamine’s answers were always refreshing. Proud, too.
“Our comrade is being held captive. If I do not stand against this, I am unfit to be a Hero.”
“You’d be better off unfit. Anyway, don’t move.”
I closed another half step toward Lord <Amber Briar>.
The Demon King reacted with tension. There was the faintest movement in his face, the clench of back teeth.
I could see all of it.
“I am deeply disappointed, <Amber Briar>. You should have stuck to petty business suited to your station.”
“…Where are you from?”
Lord <Amber Briar>, who had been watching me in silence for a while now, suddenly asked a strange question.
He had never taken his attention off me. He had been trying to read some kind of useful information from our conversation, which was impressive enough for small fry. If he had glanced away toward Shirogamine for even a moment—
No.
Right now, the Demon King’s question bothered me.
I suppressed any change in my expression as much as I could.
Where from?
A strange question. Was he asking who I belonged to? Of course, I was only a freelance Hero—a stray—but I wondered why he had asked.
Would it be inconvenient for him if, for instance, I had been hired by someone specific? By the Academy, say? No, would dealing with the Academy really shake him that badly? A guy about to make a fortune off ransom? Or was it just a bluff?
But while I was wondering, <Amber Briar> mumbled something under his breath.
“So you are the one they sent? Why? Don’t tell me that was truly—”
“Simple enough.”
I had no intention of asking dumb questions like What do you mean? or What are you talking about?
I did not know why, but <Amber Briar> was shaken. No reason not to use that.
“Because you’re a fool, <Amber Briar>.”
Truth be told, I was already done preparing for combat. Inside my pocket, my left hand was gripping a cylindrical object about the size of my palm. A slightly special hand-thrown weapon. My thumb was already on the pin, ready to pull it whenever I wanted.
And while doing that, I kept talking as if none of it mattered.
“To be honest, I’m surprised too. This was a sudden job. You know Ishinoo? The bastard bet I’d die.”
“What are you talking about?”
Of course he had no idea what I was talking about.
<Amber Briar> twisted his face slightly and tried to listen more closely.
Lucky me.
This guy was mistaking me for something.
“Ishinoo? Is that him? Is that a name?”
“A name. Sure, that means something. You know, Ishinoo’s hobby is—”
Right there, without dragging it out in the slightest, I pulled my left hand out of my pocket.
I was holding a small cylindrical container.
“What is that?”
To his credit, <Amber Briar> noticed instantly.
But he was a few tenths of a second too late.
Before Lord <Amber Briar> could do anything, I leisurely pulled the pin and threw the cylindrical weapon.
Its true identity was, in fact, nothing special. A hand-thrown smoke bomb that used black powder.
It spewed grayish smoke and was mainly used to block the enemy’s field of vision.
Indoors, the effect was even stronger—though in this case, concealment was not the real purpose.
The point was to make things clearly visible.
“You stray dog!”
Demon King Lord <Amber Briar> thrust out his right hand and moved it broadly. The motion looked like he was grabbing something and hauling it in.
I knew what that motion caused.
As a Demon King, <Amber Briar> was third-rate at best. He had used his power in front of people too often, and by now even its traits had been exposed.
Lord <Amber Briar>’s ether perception was exactly what his name suggested.
Apparently, he could see “thorned plant vines” threaded all through space.
Grabbing, moving, and manipulating those vines was the trick behind Lord <Amber Briar>’s magic. The thorn-vines “touched” by Lord <Amber Briar> could affect physical objects and living creatures. That was how he moved things without touching them and restrained other people.
Either way, those “vines” were visible only to Lord <Amber Briar>.
Hard to dodge. Hard to defend against.
Normally.
When the room was covered in smoke, things were a little different.
As the smoke filled the air, the movement of the “vines” <Amber Briar> sent out became indirectly visible as they parted it. And I, given enough effective time, could measure their trajectories.
Inside a sensation close to time stopping, I calculated the route that would let me dodge the “vines” and close in.
Several obstructive “vines” were in the way. So, accelerating to a speed only a little slower than a bullet, I gripped my sword with both hands.
If a “vine” was interfering physically, then in that instant, I could interfere with it too.
I had predicted that much. Lord <Amber Briar> had relied on his ether perception too heavily and shown it off too often.
“Do not come closer.”
The command came low and growling, one-sided and absolute.
Lord <Amber Briar>, now plainly showing both anger and fear, moved the “vines” for defense. That only made their motion clearer.
The frightening thing about his “vines” was exactly one point: they were invisible.
Once they could be seen, they were not much of a threat.
I accelerated a little more and moved around the swarm of “vines.” I plunged into the churned smoke and cut away the invisible “vine.”
A faint resistance came through the blade.
The distance between Lord <Amber Briar> and me had already shrunk to two steps.
“Do not come closer!”
<Amber Briar> screamed and tried to move the “vines” in a large sweep.
That kind of thing created openings.
In other words, it made him easy to catch with a simple feint.
If you divide double-edged sword attacks very roughly, they fall into two types: attacks with the front edge, and attacks with the back edge.
The front edge is the side of the blade facing your opponent when you hold the sword in front of you.
The back edge, meanwhile, is the side facing you.
Switching between those two edges is one of the most basic ways to feint. You show a front-edge cut from the front—then twist your wrist and slash another target with the back edge. That kind of trick. My master had lazily called it the “twisting technique.”
That was what I used then.
First, I stepped in and raised the sword as if to split his skull straight down the middle.
Naturally, the enemy prepared to deal with the fatal attack that should have been descending from above. Lord <Amber Briar> did the same. He thrust out his left hand and tried to draw in a “vine.”
And in my case, I could make that feint work at its absolute best.
Because I could move after watching my opponent begin to respond.
The time needed to see, think, and act—I could use it ten times, twenty times more effectively than most people.
My thoughts accelerated.
From the high guard, I twisted my wrist sharply. I changed the blade’s path and dropped the back edge toward his arm.
Just dropping the blade.
A very simple feint, but in the hands of a master, it was highly effective.
Yes, a master. Me, in other words.
“Ah.”
Shirogamine’s voice probably reached me a little late.
The back edge of my sword tore through the “vine” and easily severed Lord <Amber Briar>’s left arm.
The Demon King screamed.
The sound was hideous, like metal being torn apart by force. Blood, blackened and polluted by ether, gushed out, and <Amber Briar> rolled away, trying to escape.
Like hell I would let him.
I reset my sword and pursued.
With one hand, he should not be able to manipulate the “vines” in any complicated way. I would take his head now. With that decided, I stepped in.
That was when something changed in <Amber Briar>.
There was a wet little creak.
My ears caught it.
I heard it, and I had time to think about what it meant.
From where?
From the base of the Demon King’s left arm, the one I had cut off. From the clean severed surface.
I saw the wound writhe.
What the hell?
I focused, trying to understand what it meant.
I could not guess a damn thing.
The next instant, something pitch-black spilled out of the wound where the Demon King’s arm had been.
An arm, I thought as I watched it.
A thicker, larger, blacker, deformed Demon King’s arm.
I had no idea what was happening.
Regeneration of a limb.
That kind of trick was impossible no matter how many ether-enhancement organs you had installed to raise your regenerative power. It was completely different from merely closing a wound.
That was why we Heroes went out of our way to fight with archaic weapons like swords.
And I had never heard of <Amber Briar> having ether perception capable of anything like this.
Lord <Amber Briar> should only have been able to perceive invisible “vines,” touch them, and manipulate them. That was all.
No. Wrong.
I should think about reasons and causes later.
In reality, this bastard’s arm had regenerated, and it was attacking me.
Dodge.
I thought it, but at the very last instant, even my <E3>-enhanced reflexes lagged behind.
It was that fast.
“Master!”
I heard Shirogamine shout.
<Amber Briar>’s new black arm sent me flying, and I became aware of myself rolling across the floor.
The pain arrived late.
“What…?”
Lord <Amber Briar> muttered, sounding confused more than anything, and glared at his own grotesquely regenerated arm.
More than that, he grabbed at it as if trying to stop it.
“Stop.”
The Demon King even gave his own arm a command.
But the arm seemed to betray its master’s will completely. The black arm moved like an independent creature, like a snake, and swelled even larger. It writhed, trembling.
It smashed away the round table in the center of the room, crushed chairs, and stretched toward the girl still lying on the floor.
Sera raised her head and somehow tried to roll away.
But that was all it amounted to: a faint squirm.
The “vines” were still restraining her body.
I did not think Demon King Lord <Amber Briar>, having realized his end had come, had decided to target Sera. The Demon King’s corpse-like face, with almost all expression muscles seemingly extinct, made his own unwillingness obvious.
“Shit.”
I cursed.
Because the situation had gotten even worse.
Someone reacted in that instant.
The air in front of Sera wavered like heat haze and twisted into a vortex.
That was the only warning.
Yukine Indo’s face, battered and wounded yet still prim as ever, appeared there at once. She had cut in between Sera and <Amber Briar>’s black arm.
I accelerated my thoughts.
I focused until I could perceive the world almost as though time had stopped.
The first thing that crossed my mind was anger at Yukine Indo for moving so rashly, followed by the urge to attack her.
True, I had forgotten to nail her down with a direct order not to move. She had been so badly wounded that I had let my guard down.
I wanted to break Yukine Indo’s ribs and soccer-kick her in the face over and over.
But that impulse had been amplified far beyond normal by <E3>. I needed to calm down.
Think within one second.
What should I do?
The enormous black arm was clearly no longer under <Amber Briar>’s control. The odds that its attempt to crush Sera was a bluff were extremely low. Sera could not dodge on her own. Yukine Indo, who had stepped in to shield her, had taken too much damage. Just standing looked like an absurd effort. Maybe the bones in her leg were broken.
Even with bodies reinforced by <E3>, the result would be both of them getting crushed together.
Could I accelerate from here and finish <Amber Briar> himself? Take his head? Sever the base of that black arm?
No. Even then, the huge black arm would keep its momentum and crush Sera and Indo.
If I intended to save Sera and Indo, I would have to do both at the same time.
They were strangers anyway.
Let the two stupid girls die for now.
Then take <Amber Briar>’s head.
If I could do that, this would have been much simpler. At the very least, I could kill Lord <Amber Briar> safely.
The problem was the recovery of the loaned money. The possibility of being sued by King Arthur or the Academy. Other things too.
Also, something my master had told me while he was alive.
What separates a piece of shit from something beneath one is what happens when your own life or health is in danger.
When it is not, anyone can pretend not to be worse than shit.
My overly clear head could judge what the “correct choice” was in moments like this.
I had that much time.
There was one method that might save Sera and Indo right now.
Someone a little sturdier than they were, someone uninjured, had to take the damage for them.
After that, it was no longer time for thought.
It was time to move.
“I swear to God, I hate this shit.”
I felt that from the bottom of my heart.
But I had no other way to do it.
That was how I had lived my life.
I needed full acceleration.
Bullet speed.
I closed in, grabbed Indo by the scruff of the neck, dragged her down, knocked her over, and pinned her to the floor together with Sera.
I ended up covering them with my own body.
“Wha—”
Indo tried to say something, but I grabbed her jaw and shut her up.
I hoped she could feel every last bit of my anger.
The impact hit my back in the next instant.
The blow was so fierce I could not even curse.
Somewhere inside my body, something cracked—or rather, broke. That was the kind of pain it was.
I was used to it, so it was fine.
I told myself that desperately.
I was used to it.
It was nothing.
The problem was what came after.
How was I supposed to kill Lord <Amber Briar> from this position?
The black arm would hit us again. This was close to checkmate. If I kept taking hits, I would die.
I had to attack.
With what?
Yukine Indo’s ether perception—teleportation?
Could she use it?
I looked down at Yukine Indo, trapped beneath me.
She was staring up at me with a terribly confused expression.
“Indo.”
I called her name.
No response.
Why the hell was she spacing out so peacefully?
I was incredibly pissed off.
Before I could call her name again, another impact slammed into my back.
I could not make a sound.
I had no idea where or how I had been hit, but it felt like the inside of my skull was burning.
This was bad.
Too strong.
There was no time to give Indo instructions or slap some spirit into her.
Maybe I had chosen wrong.
If another hit came, it would be dangerous.
Was I going to die?
Me?
In a situation this stupid?
To be honest, at that moment, I started to make a small kind of peace with it.
The Hero trade always brushed up against death. If you tried to kill someone, it was only natural that someday you might be killed in return. That was the mindset required for the job.
If I could at least meet that moment as something not quite beneath a piece of shit, then maybe I could feel a little better—
But the third impact never came.
Instead, Lord <Amber Briar>’s grating scream rang out again.
“Huh?”
I think I made a slightly ridiculous sound.
When I looked back, I saw the black arm writhing through the air and tumbling across the floor.
Someone had Lord <Amber Briar> pinned beneath one foot.
Her long black hair flipped up, and she—Aki Shirogamine—smiled.
“That was, without question, perfect master-disciple teamwork.”
Apparently, she had cut off <Amber Briar>’s arm again.
I could not move right away, thanks to the pain and shock, but I did have one overwhelming question.
And anger.
After I had told her so many times not to move on her own.
“I see.”
Aki Shirogamine nodded.
I had not said a word out loud, yet she responded with an entirely serious face.
In other words, that was her ether perception.
“Yes.”
Shirogamine answered honestly.
“I can hear people’s thoughts.”
The room spun.
And not only because of the pain.