After that, we kept looking at social media on Elvis’s smartphone.
“Demons post too, huh…”
There was a photo of an orc holding up a boar with the caption, “Got one!” It was surreal, yet it had a huge number of views and likes.
“That’s pretty amazing…”
Yeah, seriously.
“It’s fine to look, but be careful—there’s a ton of fake news. Assume more than half of it’s false, whether it comes from our side or the human side. Have you found anything about your companions?”
Elvis asked while driving.
“How do we search?”
Hmm…
“Swords?”
A lot of them carried swords, which were hardly common in Japan.
“Swords, huh… Wait, there’s a guy openly carrying one.”
Sure enough, on the smartphone screen was a guy who looked like a delinquent carrying a sword.
“Humans are carrying weapons now too. They’ve learned about mana.”
Learned about mana?
“What do you mean?”
“Well… I said mana is like magic power, but that’s not quite accurate. It’s certainly used to cast magic, but mana is closer to life force. And it can be taken from other demons, like you gave me earlier.”
Taken…
“I don’t get it at all.”
“Let’s see… Suppose I’m a demon with one hundred mana. Earlier, I received thirty mana from you. That would bring me to one hundred and thirty, making me correspondingly stronger. The numbers are only examples, of course.”
So it’s like combat power?
“What do you mean by ‘taken’?”
“Earlier, I received it through a contract. But mana is also needed to buy things. It serves as our currency, and the amount a demon possesses determines their rank.”
I see…
“So it’s power used as currency.”
“Yeah. And you can also take it by killing the other person.”
Things are getting dicey.
“Sounds like conflict will happen.”
“It already does. Savage ogres are especially bad—they’re always thinking, take, take, take. Still, anyone who behaves that way gets ganged up on. Demons have all kinds of beliefs, and we have laws and order too.”
“Not much different from humans, are they?”
That’s what it feels like.
“Hehehe. Some humans think that way too. Well, everyone has their own views, so it’s hard to say. Anyway, this mana can also be taken from humans.”
Humans…
“Didn’t you say humans don’t have mana?”
How do you take it from them?
“No, no. Wait, some humans do have mana. But what I meant was the opposite of what you’re thinking. In other words, humans can also take mana by killing demons. Humans already know this too.”
Humans taking demons’ mana…
Ayaka and I looked again at the delinquent-looking man brandishing a sword on the screen.
“You probably think demons are slaughtering humans one-sidedly, right? No, that phase ended long ago. Now it doesn’t matter whether someone is human or demon. The world has entered a survival-of-the-fittest phase, where the strong take mana from the weak and grow even stronger. Remember this too: even in a human town, not everyone will necessarily be on your side. This is no longer the peaceful Japan of ten years ago. It’s a post-apocalyptic world.”
So it’s come to that.
In just ten years…
No, ten years is enough for people to change.
We did.
“Seriously…”
“We came back from another world, only to find that our own world had changed this much…”
It’s changed too much.
There’s almost nothing left of what it was.
“That’s why I asked. Whether your comrades are strong. Well, they seem to be, so they probably won’t be killed easily. If anything, your comrades are more likely to be the ones causing trouble.”
Unfortunately, I can’t deny that.
“What do you think?”
I asked Ayaka.
“I think those of us in the Dropout group will be fine, but what about the Vanguard? I heard they did whatever they pleased.”
We were strong because we had the blessings of our jobs and skills.
And it’s true that there were people who didn’t use that power only for hunting monsters.
“We’ve actually seen it.”
Classmates who really did whatever they wanted…
“I see…”
Ayaka looked down.
“I can tell you had factions, didn’t you? One group actively tried to defeat the Demon King, another did whatever it wanted, and then there was your group.”
The Dropouts.
“Not everyone can pursue the same goal. That was true of us and of the people in the other world.”
So many things really happened.
There were plenty of good people, but just as many bad ones.
The enemies weren’t just monsters.
“That’s true for all humans. No, demons too. Well… we’re almost at the city proper.”
Elvis stopped at a red light. Cars passed through the intersection from both directions, and every occupant was a demon. Not only that—the pedestrians crossing the road were demons too.
“It really is a demon town… werewolves are just walking around normally…”
“There’s even a slime.”
It was rummaging through a trash can.
“You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
When the light turned green, Elvis drove on. Demons were everywhere, going about ordinary lives—walking along the street, working in shops, sitting on benches… Every one of them was a demon.
“It feels like humans just turned into demons.”
“Yeah. It’s an uncanny sight.”
What’s this?
“Admittedly, the population is lower than before. Demons are only about 10% of what the human population was.”
Even so, that would still be over 10 million in this country.
“Hey, are we really going to be okay?”
“Want to test it out? Hold on a sec.”
Elvis said that and pulled into a convenience store, parking in the lot.
“A convenience store…”
“How nostalgic.”
Yeah, really.
“Get out. Apples alone won’t fill you up, so let’s buy some food. I need to buy cigarettes too.”
Um…
“They sell them?”
“They do.”
What the hell is going on…
“We don’t have any money, you know?”
“That’s why I said you don’t need money. What you need is mana.”
Mana…
“So we just pay by transferring it like I did to you earlier?”
“Exactly. You take the items to the register, the clerk calculates the price, and the register automatically draws the required mana.”
Seriously?
“Hey, if our mana gets taken, does that mean we get weaker?”
“That’s right. Your magic power decreases.”
Magical power recovers though…
No, is it like our max MP decreasing?
“Then if we buy too much, we’ll eventually run out of magic power, right?”
“That would be a problem. I’m genuinely weak without magic power.”
I was a mage and an alchemist, after all—not a sword fighter like Ayaka.
“They won’t take much. The mana Yuu gave me earlier would be enough for me to live comfortably without working for a year.”
Huh? I gave him that much?
“I don’t feel like I decreased that much…”
“Goods simply cost very little mana. Besides, you two are probably far beyond normal. It makes me wonder how much mana you must have absorbed to accumulate so much.”
Take…
“Hey, we got stronger in the other world, didn’t we?”
I looked at Ayaka.
“I was thinking the same thing. We were weak at first too. But as we defeated monsters, we naturally grew stronger and learned new skills. Before I knew it, my Sword Fighter class had evolved into Rune Knight.”
The same had happened to me. My Mage class had evolved into Alchemist.
“Haha? You guys, didn’t you take mana in the other world?”
That’s what I think. There was no explanation like that, and the people in the other world never said anything about it.
“That seems about right…”
“Y-yeah. That’s probably it.”
It felt as though the dots had finally connected.
Once, while four of us boys were adventuring together, we found the body of a female classmate. In a nearby town, we later encountered a male classmate with an unbelievable amount of mana and dull, clouded eyes. We were frightened and left immediately, but afterward, we wondered whether he had killed her. Had that tremendous mana come from killing Sakashita-san…?
“Yuu-kun?”
I must have been looking down without realizing it, because Ayaka was peering at my face.
“Ah, sorry.”
I remembered something unpleasant.
“With that much mana, how many monsters did you guys defeat?”
Elvis asked at just the right moment.
“I didn’t count.”
“Of course not… we were defeating them almost every day…”
“That’s amazing. You guys have really become monsters.”
Monsters…
“How rude.”
“Hehehe. Take it as a compliment. In a world like this, being a monster is reassuring. All right, let’s go. Keep your chins up.”
Elvis said that and got out of the car, so Ayaka and I exchanged glances. Then, nodding to each other, we got out of the car and followed Elvis into the convenience store.
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