50. Find It, The Secret Key

It took three days to get from the house to the Abyss, and two of those three were spent running a marathon straight out of hell.

One day’s plenty to recover a body run completely ragged… as if.

The state I was in when I arrived at the Abyss was honestly beyond words. My legs wobbled like a newborn calf in the marathon’s aftermath, and a sour reek of mingled sweat and dirt came wafting off me from every direction.

The very person who’d reduced me to this state, Seraphina, stood off at a distance with her arms folded, while Lillian, every bit her sister, kept clear of me and stayed glued to her side.

A heartless world without a single soul on my side.

Just then, someone quietly came up beside me.

“Young Master… are you all right?”

Elli pulled a clean handkerchief from her pocket and carefully dabbed the sweat and grime from my forehead. I let her hand do its work without protest, watching her blankly for a moment before I spoke.

“Weren’t you the one going on and on about Leo being a traitor, traitor, not too long ago?”
“Th-that’s…! I…!”
“I’m joking.”

Surprisingly, Elli had come on this expedition riding in Valerian’s carriage rather than mine. I let out a snort of a laugh and took the handkerchief from her.

Even so — to think she’d come riding in Valerian’s carriage of all things.

Before we set out she’d come to me, head bowed, calling it “something I absolutely have to do,” and I hadn’t bothered to stop her. Still, actually seeing her standing in the enemy camp(?) gave me a strange feeling.

In this world, what matters most for an NPC is, of all things, mental fortitude. Overcoming the demon’s temptation writhing inside the body took an iron will, and on that front Elli had a DV cleaner and clearer than anyone’s. I’d built a whole truckload of plans around putting her front and center, but….

If she’s that sincere about it, dragging her away by force isn’t a decent thing to do either.

Even the Cowherd and the Weaver Girl¹ endure all that hardship just to meet once a year; who am I to throw cold water on somebody else’s love life?

“Go on, hurry. Knowing Big Brother, he’ll have something to say if you’re late.”
“…Yes. Take care, Young Master.”

Elli headed back to Valerian, who was watching us from afar.

“Hey! You take good care of Elli, you hear me!”

At my shout, Leo gave a startled, awkward nod. He had no talent for fighting, but with the girl he liked walking into a dangerous place, he’d volunteered as a porter and tagged along.

Don’t either of you die.

All I could do right now was hope the two of them stayed alive.

I turned my gaze to Lillian and Seraphina, waiting at my side. The two of them caught my look and stepped closer.

“Ready?”

I nodded at Seraphina’s question.

We stood at the dead center of a desolate red wasteland, a barren plain that looked to hold nothing at all. But at its very heart the earth gaped open like a hideously torn wound. Around the pit, three massive greatswords had been driven deep into the ground, set like the vertices of a triangle, and a faint blue light spilled from their blades to form a thin membrane over the mouth of the pit.

Is this the barrier Kairon mentioned?

To keep the demons from bursting out, he’d spread a barrier using his own swords as the medium, sealing the entrance.

Seraphina, Lillian, and I drew the greatswords all at once.

Vrrrmmm—!

The triangular barrier dissolved, and the pent-up crimson-black demonic energy erupted skyward as if blasting free.

“I’ll go first.”

Without hesitation, I flung myself into the rift.

The rift was, to put it simply, a teleport linked to another location.

The problem being that the location is the Demon Realm.

Before my eyes stretched a very long bridge, its far end out of sight. On either side, a thousand-fathom cliff yawned with no railing to speak of.

The bridge was wide enough for a car to cross, but knowing it was a single span floating over the abyss filled me with no small dread.

“…If you fell off, they’d never even find your corpse.”

Lillian peered down beneath the bridge and made a sickened face.

Valerian’s group must have been dropped somewhere else; they were nowhere in sight. Well, they’d manage one way or another.

“We can’t go back anyway, so let’s get moving.”

Coming in was free; getting out was another story. Our goal was to obtain a Demonblood Stone.

I took the lead, Lillian held the center, and Seraphina covered the rear.

“Bit too quiet, isn’t it?”

Lillian said, trembling.

“They know the person they’re up against is the Empire’s Knight Commander.”

The silence was unnerving. Only our footsteps and breathing struck the cave walls and echoed back; not a hint of life could be felt.

Yeah, this is a Demon Abyss all right.

This stillness was proof the demons had intelligence. Anything with a measure of intelligence never charges recklessly, so they’d be hiding in the dark, breath stilled, watching us.

Part of it’s probably that Kairon’s been subjugating this place time after time, so the demons don’t dare lunge in carelessly.

An Abyss is built, at its foundation, from three gates. Right now we were crossing the bridge over the first of them, a vast underground labyrinth, and at its far end lay the entrance to the second gate.

It’d be nice to slip through quietly, but….

There was no such free lunch in this world. The door to the second gate was firmly shut, and to open it we had to find the key hidden somewhere here in the first gate.

And that key is held by one of the demons in this place.

Which meant a fight with the bastards was an unavoidable fate.

“Are you really sure there’s something here?”

After walking a long while, Lillian, unable to bear the suffocating silence, cautiously broke it.

— Sure? Sure? Sure?

The instant her voice rang out and rippled through the cave in echoes…

Skritch.

From the ceiling came a very faint sound.

Hundreds of red glowing eyes that had been hiding in the dark flashed all at once.

“Battle stations!!”

Black shadows came pouring down from the ceiling, the walls, and the floor.

“Kieeeeek!!”

With shrieks, dozens of demons sprang out from every direction and fell upon us.

“Kya, kyaaah!”

At the sudden ambush, Lillian screamed and crumpled to the ground.

According to the plan she should have summoned vines at once to support us, but…

With zero actual combat experience, the moment she laid eyes on the demons her mind seemed to go blank.

Every fiber of me wanted to dive in aggressively and shatter their formation, but I couldn’t.

In the end I fought defensively, batting away the claws of the lunging demons while shielding Lillian.

Defend, and defend again.

Each swing of my sword wasn’t even enough to cut down a single demon, and on top of that, guarding the trembling Lillian behind me, I was hard-pressed just to block, let alone counterattack.

At this rate, I’ll wither and die.

Their numbers surged in without end while we marched in place. We were holding for the moment, but if this turned into a war of attrition our stamina would never last.

Kwaang—!

A blue flash split the air.

…Or it would, if not for Seraphina.

As the blue sword-energy carved a half-circle through the air, a dozen-some demons lunging at Lillian froze over and shattered to pieces.

“Pull yourself together.”

Seraphina barked coldly and reset our battle line.

“U-Unni—… Sis.”
“Lillian. As you are now, you’re a burden.”

Seraphina’s voice was sharp as a blade’s edge.

“House Arne has no need for dead weight.”

She truly left Lillian lying where she’d fallen and shot forward like an arrow. At her coldness, Lillian’s eyes trembled like an aspen in the wind.

“Don’t run away!”

At my shout, Lillian flinched. I batted away the claws of the demons swarming in again and shouted.

“This time it might not be ten years — it might be your whole life.”
“…”
“Do you want to live as a loner all over again?”

I deliberately poked at her trauma. Some half-baked comfort wasn’t the right answer here; this was a battlefield where lives hung by a thread, no place for there-there coddling.

“…er.”

In that moment, Lillian murmured something, and…

Kradunk—!

with a hand glowing fresh, vivid green, she slammed it down onto the floor.

Enormous vines erupted from the ground like whips, dozens of them stretching out in every direction to lash the cheeks of the charging demons and snare their limbs.

“…Sorry.”

I answered with a nod in place of words.

There was no longer any need to worry about Lillian’s safety, it seemed, and thanks to that I could finally start swinging my sword with an easy mind.

They’ve got numbers, but their combat strength is weak.

The instant I stopped pouring everything into defense and let my sword off the leash, the tide began to turn. Their filthy-huge numbers were a problem, sure, but a rabble’s a rabble for a reason, isn’t it?

“Kieeeeek!”

The demons couldn’t lay a fingertip on us, yet the bastards wouldn’t fall back. Far from retreating, they trampled their comrades’ corpses and charged all the more ferociously. Even watching their own die right before their eyes, plain as day, their assault never dwindled.

Clang!

The lower-rank demons fought mainly with their own claws and talons, so rather than go for their necks I used my reach and cut only at their arms and legs. I refused, flatly, to crush their windpipes.

These were creatures that wouldn’t retreat even as their comrades dropped like autumn leaves in the wind, yet, comically enough, the moment an arm or a leg came off, they fled.

This isn’t a fight to kill.

I never once got worked up. When a demon with a severed leg went crawling away, dragging itself across the ground, I’d long since lost any urge to chase it down.

Killing the demon bastards matters less than getting everyone out alive.

Was this the kind of pride a knight was supposed to have? I couldn’t say, but I swung my sword to protect myself and Lillian.

“…Weak.”

Seraphina didn’t make that list, and for an obvious reason. She was stronger than me.

The demons must have realized Seraphina was the strongest, because they’d started concentrating their assault on me.

Being judged weaker than even Lillian stings a little, though.

Before, I’d had a few seconds to catch my breath after felling one; now there was no break in the chain of my sword’s strikes. The instant I let my blade stop, their claws and talons looked ready to run me through.

Was I frightened, in a situation like this?

This is fun.

Here in a moment where I might well die, I was feeling the dopamine. It beat the days I’d spent mashing a keyboard to grind these demons down, by a mile.

Any revulsion at killing a living thing? That had never been there to begin with.

That didn’t mean I’d awakened to slaughter, though. The simple truth was that every instant of it was so, so enjoyable, wielding the swordsmanship I’d honed all this time and feeling for myself how much stronger I’d grown as I put it to use.

My heart ran hot like this, yet my head stayed cold all the same.

Dozens of demons that had been hanging upside down from the ceiling came dropping down without a sound, seizing the moment while I dealt with the ones in front.

“Lillian, Sis! Above!”

At my shout, Lillian reacted instantly.

Kradunk—!

Green vines spread across the air like a net, and the falling demons were caught up in them and bound fast, unable to budge.

“Now, Sister!”

Seraphina swung her sword without hesitation, her blade tracing a long horizontal line through the air. This was no simple cut. The frigid air bursting from the blade spread out as if to freeze the entire space.

Crrk! Kwaang!

The demons bound in the vines, and the ones charging head-on as well, dozens upon dozens, were split clean in two by that single stroke and turned to shards of ice.

An overwhelming AoE. This was the caliber of an Empire Knight Commander.

“…Is it over?”
“Sis, that’s the one thing you absolutely must not say.”
“Eek! What do we do?!”

Fortunately, the classic “Did we get ’em?” cliché didn’t trigger. There were no recovery items here to top up HP or mana the way a game would have.

“My arms are dead.”

I could physically feel the strength bleeding out of my arms with every swing. And for all the demon cheeks Lillian’s vines had been slapping, her own mana had to be running just as low.

Just as I went to sit down for a moment’s rest…

“Ah, this is just cheating.”

A horde of demons came swarming from the far end of the bridge.

A late cliché trigger? Now that’s just a bit much.