78. Just Kidding~

I’d sent message after message, dozens of them, but no reply ever came from Eve. The empty system window only spilled out a dry red glow, as if heaping scorn on me. Scrolling up like a madman, I hunted down the analysis she’d written before.

That ominous feeling was Eve herself vanishing. This was the price for abusing Overclock.

Back at the First Trial of Arms, when I’d first used Overclock to defeat the Fallen Hero, Arne VII, forcing that power out had cost me a shattered body, and Eve had flickered and crackled like a broken hologram. And this time I’d leaned on it far longer, far more recklessly than even then. Was that what had brought about Eve’s annihilation?

Eligos must know something.

My body had been resurrected flawlessly, without a single defect, and yet Eligos had told me that along with it, my soul was collapsing. Looking back now, wasn’t that “soul” she’d spoken of really Eve?

It has to be.

Holed up here fretting myself sick wouldn’t change a thing. I pulled myself together and made to go outside.

“By the way, Young Master, you’ve really got quite the body. And here I thought you were nothing but skin and bones.”

“…What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, it’s just — the second you woke up you looked so grim, I figured a little compliment might lift your mood, so I gave it a shot.”

Sylvia’s eyebrow gave a twitch. I had a gut feeling I’d taken on a real oddball for a comrade.

“…No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just — my body suddenly being perfectly fine feels strange to me, that’s all.”

“First time around, that’s only natural. But the compliment about your body — that wasn’t empty flattery.”

Sylvia raked her eyes over every inch of me, a strange smile playing on her lips.

“My girls took one look at those lean, firm muscles of yours and every last one of them was convinced on the spot.”

“Convinced of what?”

“Of my decision to come under your command, of course.”

I couldn’t make sense of mages as a breed. One glance at some firm little muscles and they were sold?

“…Unbelievable. Honestly.”

I let out a dry laugh, gathered up my sword, and rose to my feet.

“Where’d Big Sis Lillian go?”

“Why don’t you go out and see for yourself.”

As I followed Sylvia out onto the battlefield, I sent off one last greeting, one that wouldn’t even transmit.

No matter what.

The moment I stepped out of the waiting room, I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the dead center of the arena, a cluster of grown men sat huddled around an enormous cauldron, chattering away with the lively look of men who’d just conquered the world.

“What in the world is all that?”

“See for yourself.”

I strode off into the scene, which looked for all the world like a country market fair. As I drew near, I found a spearman with his head buried in a big leaf-bowl, eagerly slurping down whatever was inside. I called out to him.

“What’re you eating?”

At my question, the spearman scrunched up his brow and lifted his head. With some unidentifiable broth smeared around his mouth, he cut a downright menacing figure.

“How dare you interrupt this sacred hour of eating the vegetable soup that Lady Lillian boiled with her own two hands— gwuh-aaagh!?”

The instant he registered my face, his complexion drained white as a sheet of paper. He nearly dropped the leaf-bowl in his grip as he scrambled to his feet.

“Y-you’re awake!! Master!!”

“Master?”

“Ah—no! Young Master!! You’re awake!!”

At the commotion, the others gathered round turned their heads one by one.

“Hey, hey — Young Master Arden’s up!”

“Mwuh— wuzzat?”

“Quit stuffing your face, you pig of a man! The Young Master’s here!”

The men who’d been frantically gulping down soup a moment ago set down their spoons in unison and dropped to their knees. In an instant, everything around me fell silent. At a complete loss to make sense of it, I turned to Sylvia beside me and asked.

“What’s with these guys?”

“Who knows. Maybe they saw it?”

“Saw what?”

“Those firm abs of yours, Young Master?”

“Sylvia.”

“I’m just kidding. Just kidding~”

Sylvia stuck her tongue out a touch and laughed playfully.

Just then the minions parted like the Red Sea, and through the gap came Big Sis Lillian, a great cauldron slung across her back on a thick rack of vines.

“Oh? You’re up?”

Lillian came over, and the moment she set the cauldron down she seized my left arm.

“Whoa, you really are perfectly fine!?”

“Yeah — I went and successfully became master of the Fifteenth Demon Realm, after all. But Sis, what on earth is this whole situation?”

Instead of answering, Lillian swirled the ladle around inside the cauldron with a triumphant look on her face.

“Can’t you tell just by looking? I’m feeding the kids. You promised them meat and beds, didn’t you? There wasn’t any meat, so I whipped up some soup with special veggies I grew myself with mana. Well? Smells incredible, doesn’t it?”

The aroma teasing my nose was undeniably first-rate. Maybe that was why my stomach growled the moment I caught the scent, as if to remind me that even Mount Kumgang isn’t worth seeing on an empty stomach.

“No wonder you’re hungry. Here, take a seat.”

With practiced skill, Lillian plucked a large leaf clean off a vine and folded it deftly into the shape of a bowl, then filled it to the brim with thick, piping-hot soup and handed it to me.

“Here, Sylvia, you take one too.”

The look in Lillian’s eyes was far too fierce to refuse, so Sylvia and I obediently accepted our leaf-bowls. Sylvia took one taste and promptly fell to wolfing it down without a word. Watching her, I scooped up a spoonful myself and put it in my mouth.

“…Whoa, this is seriously good?”

At my praise, Lillian hummed a little tune and swung the ladle around again.

“There’s plenty more, so just say the word!”

Once the meal was over, we fell into idle chatter about this and that. Nothing especially important, mostly Lillian singing her own praises over how deliciously she’d boiled the soup.

“As expected of Lady Lillian!”

Lillian’s fanatics had clustered around her at some point. At that, Sylvia whispered low into my ear.

“Young Master, the truth is, over these past three days Lady Lillian gave that lot a very thorough education.”

“…Education?”

“Yes. That following her is all well and good, but she’s nothing more than your right hand, Young Master — so they’re to swear their absolute, unconditional loyalty to you. And should anyone break that rule, or show you any disrespect…”

Sylvia dropped her voice even lower, her small breath brushing ticklishly against my ear.

“…she sternly warned them they’d be banished from the ‘Cult of Lillian’ on the spot, and never permitted to lay eyes on her again for the rest of their lives.”

“…I see.”

“Shall we make one too? We could call it the ‘Order of Arden.’ I’d be glad to serve as your devotee number one.”

“Absolutely not.”

“I’m just kidding. Just kidding~”

Listening to Sylvia’s joke-laced chatter while I scanned my surroundings, I was struck by a sudden question and turned to Lillian.

“By the way, Sis — where’s everyone else?”

“Everyone else who? There are so many people around, I can’t tell who you mean.”

Lillian played dumb and lobbed the question right back. Exasperated, I opened my mouth.

“Who do you think? Obviously…”

“Obviously me, of course! Young Maaasterr—!!”

Before I could finish, a small shadow came flying like a cannonball from a corner of the arena and threw itself into my arms.

“Young Master! I’m so glad you’re safe! Hwuaaahh!”

“Whoa, whoa, Elli. I can’t breathe…”

“Are you feeling okay? Does anything hurt anywhere?”

Elli pulled back from me and looked me over every which way, the rims of her eyes already raw and swollen from tears.

“I’m perfectly fine. What about you?”

“Lady Eligos healed me, and eating the meals Lady Lillian makes brought me right back from the brink of death! Ah… am I overdoing it a bit, in front of a Young Master who actually died and came back to life?”

At the sight of Elli scratching the back of her head in embarrassment, I let out a soft snort of laughter.

“Well, you’re not wrong. I really did come back from the dead, after all.”

And so Elli and I went on trading banter like that.

“So you’ve forgotten me completely after all, it seems.”

At that, I turned toward the flat, dry voice coming from behind me. There stood Leo, hoisting his travel bag back into place, wearing the same expression as ever.

“…You were alive?”

“Yes. As you can see, stubbornly alive.”

“Where the hell have you been all this time, and what were you doing?”

At my question, Leo’s gaze drifted naturally toward Lillian, who just kept scrubbing away at the innocent cauldron, whistling and pretending not to hear. Leo let out a deep sigh and opened his mouth.

“I told the young lady no, absolutely not — that she should stay by Young Master Lucius’s side and let me go in her place. I tried to talk her out of it. But the young lady was dead set on going no matter what…”

When Leo rolled up his sleeve, vivid blue-black bruises stood out clearly across his arms and legs, left by something that had bound him with crushing force.

“When I told her that if she was so set on going, she’d have to overpower me first, she actually trussed me up tight with vines and left me behind. And then she only came back to fetch me three days ago.”

“…”

“She could’ve at least left me facing the sky — but no, of all things, she left me with my lips pressed flat against the cold stone floor. My mouth hasn’t gone crooked, has it?”

Judging by how smoothly the words came tumbling out even as he grumbled, he seemed fine enough for now. I rose to my feet and gave Leo a couple of pats on the shoulder.

“You’ve had it rough too.”

“It was no hardship. Though from what I’ve been hearing here and there, they say you genuinely died and came back to life.”

“That’s right. Just resurrected, in fact.”

“Sounds like you had it rough.”

“Thanks.”

“Of course.”

While we’d been waging our desperate battle in the arena, it seemed Leo had been fighting one all his own. In any case, having confirmed that Elli and Leo were both safe and sound, I looked around for the others, who were nowhere in sight. But Lillian, noticing where my eyes had gone, beat me to it.

“My eldest brother and my other brother, and my sister, have already gone back to the house.”

“…Back to the house?”

“Yeah. The three of them already left, two days ago.”

“So all three of them made it out safe, then.”

“Safe, I suppose, if you can call it that…”

At my words, Lillian frowned, looking troubled.

“My other brother said he can’t remember a single thing about why he was even here. My eldest brother heard that and spat out his usual venom — ‘pathetic wretch’ — and in the end my sister told them to stop fighting and just go back to the house and report in for now, so the three of them set off ahead.”

Lillian’s explanation left my thoughts in a tangle.

Lucius, of all people, with amnesia.

In truth, the memory Lucius was surely holding was the single most powerful weapon there was against That One’s scenario. That he’d reached this place before we’d even broken the Abyss’s seal was decisive proof that some outside power had intervened.

I’d been hoping Lucius might be carrying some clue about this ‘That One’ bastard.

To think they’d gone and had yet another mud-slinging brawl among themselves and left before I could even question him. My own family or not, ours was truly a household coming apart at the seams.

“Anyway… where’s Eligos?”

Without a word, Lillian pointed off past the battlefield. There, beneath the deepest shadows of the arena, I spotted a violet-haired woman tenderly feeding the black horse, Abigor. I walked slowly over to her.

Eligos had plainly heard my footsteps, yet she asked without turning her head, her tone indifferent.

“And how does it feel, then — to have become master of the Fifteenth Demon Realm?”

“…Hard to say. Doesn’t feel like much has changed, honestly.”

When I answered with a touch of formality once more, Eligos finally turned her head to look at me and gave a small smile.

“Now that you show me courtesy again, it feels as though you respect me — not half bad, that.”

“Well, we’re comrades who’ll have to get along from here on out.”

“Comrades, you say…”

Eligos set the word on her tongue and slowly rolled it around. To a demon, “comrade” was likely a foreign sound, one she’d never once heard in all her life.

“Comrade? Was your offer not to grant me the seat of your right hand? I was certain I had earned that place by laying down my own Demon Realm.”

Unfamiliar with the word “comrade,” my ass. This ambition-soaked demon was already coveting a spot in my inner circle.

“You should’ve taken the offer right when I made it. That ship has already sailed.”

“So you deceived me?”

“Well, that’s what you get for testing the waters. Still, since you seem to want it, I’ll put you down as a candidate for the right-hand seat.”

Eligos let out a hollow, helpless laugh. It was about time I got around to the real reason I’d come here.

“Anyway, where’s the Demonblood Stone? I can’t become the formal heir without it.”

In the game, the Demonblood Stone was a gem that dropped when you killed Eligos. Since it fell only if you slew the boss, and its owner was very much alive with her eyes wide open, there was no way to get it now unless she handed it over willingly.

“You already have it.”

“…What?”

“Check your pocket.”

When I thrust my hand into my pocket, my fingers closed around something bulging.

“You have a surprisingly hapless side to you.”

Blankly, I looked down at the red-glowing gem resting in my palm.